The Copywriter Club Podcast

Starting and growing a copywriting business isn’t easy. So when we find a writer who seems to have figured it out, it’s worth taking a closer look to see what’s going on. So for the 422nd episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, I asked Megan Smyth to share more about her business and podcast and how she’s gotten so many things right as she’s grown. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.

The Copywriter Accelerator Fast Track

Rob Marsh:  One of the things I love most about what I do at The Copywriter Club is the opportunity I have to see copywriters grow in so many different ways. They get better at writing. They build and develop amazing businesses that support the lifestyle they want—sometimes that’s something as dramatic as a full-time, six-figure business and other times it’s a part-time gig that helps pay some of the bills. And for copywriters who already have a business, it’s fun to watch them change and update the way they market themselves, create products, and find their ideal clients. Honestly, it’s a big part of why I do what I do.

Hi I’m Rob Marsh and on today’s episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, I talked with copywriter and launch consultant, Megan Smyth. As you’ll hear during this interview, Megan is one of those copywriters who has made big changes to her business over the past couple of years. Megan’s a pre-med student turned copywriter and the business she’s created will inspire anyone who is just starting out or is ready to make a change—heck, I’m inspired by the progress she’s made. So stick around and listen to what Megan has to share about how she did it.

Just a quick note… on this episode, we’ll mention The Copywriter Accelerator program that helped jump start Megan’s business and brand creation. That program is no longer available—at least in the format that Megan participated. However, we’ve taken all of the content, the 8 modules and blueprints and several bonuses and repurposed them into what we’ve called The Accelerator Fast Track. This version is designed to help you get results even faster. If, as you listen to us discuss that program, you are interested in how it might help you and your business, simply visit thecopywriterclub.com/fasttrack to learn more.

And now, let’s go to our interview with Megan Smyth.

Megan, welcome to the podcast. Tell us how you got started. How’d you become a copywriter, a course creator, now doing some coaching as well? You’ve come a long way.

Megan Smyth: Yeah, doing all the things. Well, first of all, thank you for having me. I’m very excited to be here. It’s an honor to be on this show. It’s one of the very first podcasts I started listening to on this journey. So, you know, if we’re talking about how I got started, very first copywriting and business podcast I ever listened to was yours. And I’ve learned so much from you and Kira. But yeah, so to kick it back, I did not grow up dreaming of being a copywriter. I’ve yet to meet anyone that even knows what that was at a young age. My plan was to be a doctor. So I studied pre-med in university, and I realized about halfway through that something was just not right. I was enjoying it, but not as much as my friends around me in the program. And I was sort of on this fast track to success. It seemed like I had it all figured out. I was in this great program. I was applying for early admission to med school and all these things. And there was just this voice in the back of my head that was like, this is not it. Something’s not right. And so when all of my friends in the program were writing the MCAT over the summer, I took the summer off and I booked a one-way ticket to Thailand. And that was sort of my escape plan. Rather than tell everyone that I was having these doubts, I just left the country for three months. Just ran away from my problems, which is what you do at 19 years old. And I was just not sure what I wanted to do. I thought med school might not be it, but I wasn’t sure what the other options were. And so I thought I would use this time to do some soul searching. I went to Bali. I did the whole thing. And I realized on that trip, what I really wanted to do was travel. That was a big motivator for me. I wanted the freedom to be able to work wherever I wanted to see the world and meet new people and have new experiences. And so I started looking for a career that would allow me to do that and stumbled into copywriting because I’ve always loved writing. And I just really fell in love with it from the beginning. I loved the sales aspect of it and the psychology aspect of understanding how people think and why they make decisions. And I started copywriting while I was still in university. And then I, you know, had a couple of clients on the side. I left my day job pretty immediately after graduating, which I don’t recommend. Just don’t head first into the whole thing. The same year I graduated, I was like, I’m going all in on this business. I launched a website as you do and waited for clients to just magically find me. They did not. And then in January, the next year I joined The Copywriter Accelerator and that is when things started to take off for me.

Rob Marsh: So when you first launched, obviously this was before the accelerator or whatever, how did you get your first couple of clients? I mean, how did you even have the guts to say, I’m a copywriter, not knowing anything about it?

Megan Smyth: Yeah, well, I didn’t. That’s a great question. So I applied for this job that I randomly found while browsing the web for things to do online, how to make money online. And someone had posted this job, and she was looking for actually a blog writer. And so that was how I started. And she was, at the time, yes, she was running a blog, but she was also running launches for her. She was a coach. And so slowly over time, I was watching her launch, and I had ideas and suggestions for how she could get more people in this program. And so she sort of brought me into that world of launching. And I ended up working with a seven-figure coach as my first client, just sort of out of the blue. I was 19 years old, I had no experience. And so there was a bit of luck involved, but I had the guts to apply to this job. And I basically said in my application, I have no experience, I have no qualifications, but I am willing to work so hard and I think I could do this. I think I could make a difference in your company.” And she took a chance on me and to this day I’m very grateful for that. That sort of got my foot in the door and I just sort of gained experience as I went.

Rob Marsh: I love that you had the guts to go for it because most of us, especially 19, 20 years old, most of us would be like, Oh, well, you know, I’m not qualified. And I think more, even more women than men, oftentimes we back up and, and aren’t willing to step forward and say, well, I might not be qualified, but I’m willing to give it a go. So I love that approach.

Megan Smyth: Yeah. Thank you. I was just going to say that I think a big contributing factor was, you know, I almost didn’t apply for that job, but I, in the back of my head, I remembered reading the stats somewhere that, you know, men will apply for jobs if they only meet something like 40% of the qualification criteria, whereas women don’t apply unless they have a hundred percent of those things checked off. And I just thought, screw that. I am not going to contribute to that. I’m going to apply. Cause the worst case scenario is they say no. And, you know, I tried to put myself out there and it worked out.

Rob Marsh: Yeah, it’s amazing. And it’s probably should be one of the big takeaways from this episode. We’re only a couple of minutes in and go for it is the lesson there. So you got into the copywriter accelerator and then you started to make some changes to your business. Talk about that and the thought process that went into deciding where you were going to focus your time, the kinds of clients you were going to serve, the kinds of services that you wanted to offer.

Megan Smyth: Yeah, so by the time I joined The Copywriter Accelerator, I had been writing copy for over a year at that point, and I felt like I was getting really good at that side of things, but I still wasn’t really treating it as a business. It was really hard to get out of that side hustle mindset when it had been a side hustle, you know, when I was in school, and then I had a day job working in medical research at the hospital all day, and it was hard to transition just my mindset around that. Now I suddenly had full-time hours that I could give to my business, but I had no idea what to spend that time on. And so, you know, in the accelerator, we learned all the different aspects of running a business. And that was when I started to really think through like, what is my marketing strategy going to be? How am I positioning myself? What is my branding? All of these things that sound like really basic, but you know, again, I was 20 years old and I had planned to work in the medical field. I had no idea what I was doing in business. It was all new to me. And I just, I loved it. I just kind of soaked up everything from Yunkira like a little sponge. I was like, how could I get the most possible out of this experience?

Rob Marsh: Yeah. And, and then you’ve now you’ve launched a lot of stuff. So who did you ultimately decide to serve and what kinds of services did you launch with as you came out of the program?

Megan Smyth: Yeah, so when I initially was in the program, we played around with niching. I was, like I mentioned, I started, my very first client was a coach and I loved working with female business coaches. And so I did a lot of work in that space, but towards the end of the accelerator and, you know, in the years that followed, I actually changed my target audience, actually widened my niche, which I think is less common. Everyone talks about, you know, go as narrow as possible. And for me, working with just female coaches felt like a bit like putting myself in a box. And so I widened to what I now call, you know, purpose-driven brands. So women who just really want to make an impact, whether that is in the coaching space and serving people that way, whether it’s, you know, sustainability focused, they just have this sense of impact and, you know, positive change that they want to create in the world. And my job is to, you know, give voice to that brand and help them amplify that impact.

Rob Marsh: So are you still doing launch copy or does it run the whole gamut?

Megan Smyth: It runs the gamut. I would say I specialize in launch and sales copy. So I call myself a sales copywriter. It is mostly launches and evergreen funnel copy. However, there is a fair amount of brand messaging involved in that because a lot of times people come to me for one thing and they end up realizing they do need clarity on their overall brand positioning as well. And so I really become like a long-term partner for my clients, like through launches, but also, you know, through their brand evolution and, and all of that. So I do work on a variety of projects, but specialty is sales.

Rob Marsh: It feels to me like you bring a lot of marketing strategy into it as well. I mean, even as you talk about how you engage with your clients, you know, where you’ve got to figure out, okay, what are the missing pieces? What do they need? So what’s your approach there as you, you know, as you sign up a client, how do you bring strategy to the initial call so that you’re actually helping them do more than just write copy?

Megan Smyth: Yeah, so I realized pretty early on that great copy is useless without a strategy behind it, as much as that pains me. But my very first projects, I would write, let’s say, sales page copy or emails or something like that. But without that strategy, the clients either weren’t seeing results or they weren’t implementing them in a certain way. I had all these ideas to share on how they could potentially improve that strategy. And so strategy is a part of the conversation from day one. I don’t do any copy projects that don’t involve the strategy piece. It’s just like a non-negotiable for me that I’m going to be involved on that side of things as well. And so I transitioned, I would say right outside the accelerator around that time was when I started doing consulting as well. And so now that’s sort of like the baseline for me is I will either do just consulting, just the strategy, and they can hand it off to another copywriter. or I will do both, but I will not do copywriting without the strategy.

Rob Marsh: So what does a project look like then? As a client shows up at your door, you know, I want to work with you, Megan. I’ve got, you know, I’ve got to launch a product or I’ve got, you know, some other need. Step us through how that looks from your standpoint and how you would engage a client.

Megan Smyth: Yeah. Great question. So as soon as they inquire, I’ve got sort of a pre-call nurture sequence that takes people through like a little bit of what my process is and what makes me different, you know, testimonials, that sort of thing. So that we’re kind of set up going into that call. We’re on the same page. And then we get on a call and I kind of put on my, my old doctor’s hat and I try and diagnose what the real issue is that they’re coming with me. I’m not trying to like pitch them on a certain service. I’d like to go into those calls with an open mind and really figure out what they need to get the results that they are looking for. So for example, I just had a I just booked a project with these two business partners who are launching a product in the new year and they came to me wanting funnel strategy and copywriting, but they weren’t even sure which copywriting assets they needed. They weren’t sure if they need a new sales page, no email funnel, all of that thing. And so I walked them through the process of what that would look like in terms of research and strategy. And like I said, I always start with that. And so we have now signed on for that like base launch consulting package. And once we map out what their funnel is going to look like, then we enter phase two, which is copywriting.

Rob Marsh: And when you’re mapping for somebody, are you doing that before you start the project? Is it a paid service? Is it part of your research process to basically put together that whole strategy map for them?

Megan Smyth: Yeah, so the way that I structure it is the strategy is sort of a separate package. Like this is our baseline package. We’re gonna do launch consulting. We’re gonna map out that strategy together. That is the paid package. And then copywriting is like an additional service on top of that.

Rob Marsh: Okay, cool. And then what? Then what happens? How does the project go?

Megan Smyth: Yeah, so after the copywriting phase, essentially, they will take the copy and implement it. And I am there sort of as their partner throughout that, you know, to answer questions, to help them, you know, connect with a designer or whoever else they need on that project. And once they launch it from there, then we’ll do a debrief to gather all the data, analyze it, and continue to optimize for next time. The goal for me when I’m working on projects like this, whether it’s a live launch or a funnel, is to create something that is not just going to generate sales once, but to create a system that they can use over and over again in their business and set them up for long-term success.

Rob Marsh: You’re creating assets basically for them that they can use long-term. Okay, so I want to ask about money. When you first started out writing those first few blog posts, about what were you charging per project?

Megan Smyth: Oh, $20 an hour or something like that. Yeah.

Rob Marsh: Okay. All right. Fair for a 19-year-old college graduate.

Megan Smyth: It felt like a ton of money at the time. I was like, I have made it. I have arrived. And I will also say, I’m Canadian, and so $20 US was more than I was making, I think, at my hospital research job at the time. I was like, this is amazing.

Rob Marsh: Yeah. All I have to do is just fill in the 40 hours and I could be rich. Okay. So compare that to what you would charge on a project today. How has that changed?

Megan Smyth: The minimum project price for the consulting alone on a launch project is 3000 US. So yeah.

Rob Marsh: So big changes.

Megan Smyth: Not even in the same, yeah.

Rob Marsh: Yeah. And I mean, now you have the potential to make more than a doctor would make in some cases.

Megan Smyth: I do. It’s funny you say that. My goal since starting my copywriting business has been to make more money than I would have as a doctor. I was going to be a trauma surgeon, so setting a high bar there, but working half the hours or less. That’s the goal.

Rob Marsh: Yeah. Fewer gunshots to attend to. Well, you’re a cannibalist. There probably aren’t very many of those, but fewer car crashes to attend to, more words, more money.

Megan Smyth: Yeah, exactly.

Rob Marsh: Okay. Well, you’ve also added some other things to your business besides just the copywriting projects. So you have a course that I think is going to become a membership at the beginning of the year. Talk about that. I think as I was going through your site and seeing all the things you’ve added since the last time you and I were able to chat, you’ve got like the Firestarter framework. And so, yeah, I want to hear all about this.

Megan Smyth: Yeah. Okay. So where to start? Well, I’ll start with the course sales liberation. So you mentioned that what I do for my clients is I like to create sales assets that I can use over and over again. And so I have put that framework into a course for people to do the same in their business because that’s what I did in my own business was create these revenue generating assets. And it’s, I think, you know, a missed opportunity for a lot of service providers, especially they were asking me like, how are you growing your sales this much while working fewer hours? I only work like part-time hours, but I am able to make a full-time income. And so obviously people were like, how are you doing this? And I started sharing more about that. I was like, well, instead of, you know, creating fresh content every week, like I’m not a big social media person. I don’t want to be posting every day or engaging every day. And so I started thinking, how could I create that same leverage in my own business that I create for my clients? And so that’s where the Firestarter framework came from. And part of that framework is creating those long-term assets. And that’s what I built my course around to help people do as well.

Rob Marsh: So talk about some of those assets that you’ve built that attract those clients.

Megan Smyth: Yeah, so it’s different in every business. In my own business, it’s different for the copywriting side and the course side. So in the copywriting side, I have things, like I mentioned, my pre-call email sequence. That does a lot of the heavy lifting for me. Everything from my inquiry form on, it’s very structured to do the selling for me so that my job is easy when I get on sales calls. It doesn’t require a ton of time. writing these emails from scratch for every new lead. They have, you know, the inquiry form qualifies them. Then they go through this email sequence that sort of positions our call for success. Like I mentioned, testimonials, it walks them through the process, frequently asked questions, all the things that would normally come up on calls, that all takes place in an automated email sequence. So by the time we get on a call, they are pretty much ready to go. Very few questions. And then, you know, the proposal, contract invoice, that’s all automated and templatized. It’s all got a nice automated system for it. And then once they are clients, I of course have a process like for retention and referrals and all of those things. So a lot of different systems going on in my business. And then in terms of assets, like on the course site, it’s a sales page and an email funnel and that’s it. It’s simple.

Rob Marsh: So, and when you launched your course, did you have a big list? How did you promote the course in order to bring people in?

Megan Smyth: No, I did not have a big list at all. I want to say like less than 200 people, like very small email list at the time. I did promote it on email a little bit on Instagram, not so much. I think the key was having written so many other launches, I knew what I was doing on the email marketing front and so I had very high conversions on the emails that I was sending. It was a two-week launch sequence and I had a freebie going out before that. I sent out a free email sequence for two weeks and that was just very educational, very value packed. It started lining up, you know, overcoming objections and all those things. So that was sort of my prelaunch runway. And then another two weeks of sales emails and that was it. I essentially sold it only on email.

Rob Marsh: Yeah. Through to your 200 person list and you basically fill your course. That’s awesome. That’s yeah, that’s amazing. And, and since then you’re now thinking about turning the course into a membership. What’s the thinking there?

Megan Smyth: Yeah, group coaching. So I realized that people were, you know, they were getting great results from the course, but so much of it is meant to be customized. It’s very much like choose your own adventure course. It’s not like, you know, here’s what I did and here’s the exact template you have to follow. There are lots of templates for you to choose from, but as I mentioned, every business is different and I wanted to get people, you know, the flexibility and also the space to ask questions and say, look, how does this apply to my business? What do I do in this instance? and that sort of thing, not to mention all of the mindset drama that comes up when we talk about sales and selling ourselves and marketing our business and all the resistance around that. And so I really came to the conclusion that people would be better served through a group coaching program and to have access to that community and to that support. And so we are relaunching in the new year with that coaching element added.

Rob Marsh: So we can pop on your email list and be ready for that in a bunch of weeks when that comes around.

Megan Smyth: Yeah, exactly. You can watch if you’re just curious what that email sequence looks like. It had like a 40% conversion rate from the freebie to the paid course. So if you just want to watch someone, I personally as a copywriter like to watch other people’s launches and see what they’re doing in their emails. I do the same thing. Yeah. Yeah. So if you just want to come spy on me, that’s cool too.

Rob Marsh: Yeah. Well, I’ll be hopping on your list to make sure that I’m part of that launch when you’re ready to go. Okay. So you’ve got serving your clients, you’ve got the course that’s becoming group coaching. What else is going on in your business?

Megan Smyth: Great question. What isn’t going on? I feel like there’s always so many things happening, but I would say the group program is my main focus at the moment. I am taking on fewer copywriting projects to make space for that because I do have a one-on-one coaching upgrade. and I have one-on-one coaching clients at the moment as well. And so I want to make sure I’m serving everyone to the highest capability and not taking on too many different things. So I am stepping back from copywriting, have very few projects that I take on on that side to focus more on the coaching side of the business at the moment. And I would say that’s where my my number one priority is. I’ve also got a podcast. I’ve got a lot of other things going on. And so I want to make sure that I’m not spreading myself too thin and that I’m prioritizing serving the people who are already in my space.

Rob Marsh: Now, let’s talk about your podcast. I’ve listened to a couple of episodes as you’re out there. Why did you decide to launch a podcast? And it’s not really a podcast about copywriting. It’s more about this broader marketing world, basically serving the clients that you have. So yeah, talk a little bit about that.

Megan Smyth: Yeah. So the purpose behind the podcast was I was having a lot of one-on-one conversations, both with like coaching and consulting clients and just with friends in the online business space. Some were copywriters, others were, you know, designers, photographers, coaches, all kinds of different niches. And there were so many conversations that we had where, you know, people, the general consensus was, and these were all women. Um, but the, because as we talked about something that was like, you know, difficult or challenging, it was going on in our business. And someone would say to me, like, Oh my gosh, I’m so glad you said that. I felt the same way, but I’ve never heard anyone say that before. Or like, I’m so glad you brought that up. I’ve been going through the exact same thing. And I just thought, why are we not having these conversations out in the open? Because entrepreneurship can be a really lonely journey, especially in the online space. And so I wanted to create a space for people to have those open and honest conversations about the good times and the bad times. you know, the challenges and how we overcome them. I’m a very honest and blunt person. And so I wanted to kind of challenge people to talk about that stuff, like, you know, the money issue, and, you know, what you do in a slow season, and all of these things that I felt like weren’t being talked about. and to have those hard conversations. And so that was the original purpose behind the podcast. And it’s grown and evolved from there, but I would say it’s not a ton of educational content. It is more so people being honest and sharing their stories and knowing that we’re all on this ride together.

Rob Marsh: I think part of what I like about your podcast is how it dovetails with the branding on your website, which also feels like, maybe it’s not meant to attract men so much, but it feels like kind of a girls group, like welcome to, like let me put my arms around you and be part of this club that I have. And so, you know, it fits, I mean, again, the kinds of conversations that you’re trying to have fits with that vibe in a really big way. I’m guessing that was intentional.

Megan Smyth: Yeah, absolutely. The podcast is called Blaze, and that comes from the word trailblaze. I feel like we were all sold this idea of there being one right way to do business. In the coaching industry, especially, people are like, I have this blueprint here. Take it and follow it. This is how you do things. You have to do this. You have to do that. posts on social media. You have to grow your email list. You have to do this and you should do that.” And I was really tired of that. And I just wanted to give people the opportunity to share their stories. Because like I said, I was having these one-on-one conversations and the understanding that I was getting was like, there is no one right way to build a business or to do that. You can do things your own way. You can do them differently. And here is this incredible community of women to show you what is possible.

Rob Marsh: Yeah, I endorse that a hundred percent. Obviously you went through our program, which is all about, you know, figuring out your way to do the thing that you want to do. But there’s way too many people out there selling the blueprint or the way. And so I think that’s probably why even me listening to your podcast really resonated, you know, some of that messaging there.

Megan Smyth: Yeah, for sure. That’s my messaging around selling as well is that so many people I talk to, they hate selling themselves, absolutely dread it. When I did market research before launching my course, that was the number one word that came up. I would say, when you think about marketing your business or selling yourself, what comes up for you? Everyone was saying dread. I was like, this is a conversation we need to change because I do believe there is a sales and marketing strategy out there for everyone. And it might take some work to find it. You might have to do some experimentation. But how can we find a way to make this work for you? Because if you don’t enjoy it long term, that’s not going to work for you and your business. And so we want to find a way that feels fun and sustainable. And there are so many different ways that can look. And so I love being able to showcase that on the podcast as well.

Rob Marsh: I think, yeah, looking for things that you dread is a great way also to find problems to solve for clients, right? If they dread it or, I mean, and it’s not just a copywriter thing. I mean, I dread doing the books. I dread taxes. I dread, like, I hate even opening up the bank account. I just want to know there’s money in there. Like, I avoid all of that stuff. And so, yeah, like identifying those kinds of problems that people dread is probably a copywriting, not really a secret, a great thing to look for when we’re looking for problems.

Megan Smyth: Absolutely. Yeah. Bookkeeping was the first thing I outsourced to. I feel like on that one.

Rob Marsh: Okay. Well, let’s talk a little bit about your brand, because it’s very different again from what you started out with. And I kind of already said what at least it feels like to me, but when you went to, you know, create this visual look for your website and the messaging on your website, uh, what was the process and what were you trying to convey?

Megan Smyth: Yeah. Okay. So I’ll start with what I was trying to convey and then I’ll walk you through kind of how we brought that to life. But the, the sort of vision for the brand was when I started my business and even before that, you know, just growing up, um, and watching the business space, like as a little girl, I would watch dragon’s den, which is basically our Canadian shark tank for American listeners. I would watch these business conversations and pitches. And it was a very like male centric environment, at least back then there was one female dragon on the panel and she was always being interrupted and spoken over. And it was just like a very male environment. And so that was what I grew up watching. And I, as a little girl, internalized that and I never even considered business as a career path, like never had entrepreneurship in my future. was not on my mind at all until, like I said, university and much, much later. And even then when I came into this space, there was a bit of the old pushy sales tactics as well. It was very old school boys club kind of vibe. And I wanted to shake that up a bit through copywriting and through this conversation around sales and the way that the sales industry is going in the online space. I think we’ve seen that shift in recent years from the pushy tactics don’t work anymore. No one wants that. in their own business. It’s not working on consumers either. And so I was like, let’s change that conversation. And so I had this vision in my head of Like I said, that old school vibe, the boys club, and the visual concept that I worked with a messaging strategist and a designer. The messaging strategist is one of my friends from The Accelerator, so I can thank you for that connection. We worked together to come up with this visual concept of a woman walks into this bar, this old school bar in Edinburgh, Scotland. That was the pitch she gave me. It’s very specific. She walks into this bar. Yeah. And she’s the only woman in the room. And she walks in and she goes up to the bar and she orders a scotch neat. And everyone just kind of sits up and takes notice. And it’s like, this is her place now too. And the fact that she’s there kind of opens the door to other women to be there as well. And so that was a very high concept pitch for this. And thankfully, I had a very talented designer who took that and turned it into beautiful visuals as well.

Rob Marsh: Yeah. And then as far as the messaging that goes along with that, I’m assuming you wrote the messaging. Yes. Maybe I’m wrong about that. I don’t know. And so what is the thing that you’re communicating there that’s backed up with the visual?

Megan Smyth: Yeah, so same thing in the visual. Some of the pitch concepts from that messaging that I worked on, like I said, I did write the website copy myself, but I had a lot of help from my friend from the Accelerator, Kristen of Cursor and Ink. We can give her a shout out. She worked with me on the strategy behind the messaging. And so some of that did make its way right from the strategy document onto the website and homepage, especially the concept I just mentioned of the woman in the bar. I think that is still a line on one of my website pages. And, you know, just this vibe of like shaking things up and, you know, burning the old sales playbook and writing our own rules, that’s really heavily featured in the messaging. All the fire imagery that’s, you know, out now on the podcast and the course is just kind of this common thread throughout of, you know, we’re here to make some noise and make some change as well.

Rob Marsh: Yeah, I think before we started recording, I mentioned that when I saw your website, saw all the things that you were doing, it just was one of those things where I’ve got to have Megan come on the show because I wish I could take people back in time and show them where you were, you know, three and a half, four years ago, you know, before you started in the accelerator and then what you’ve done since because I think it’s amazing and I admire a lot of the the work that you’ve put into creating that business and the way that you’re showing up in the world is, I just think it’s phenomenal.

Megan Smyth: Thank you. That means a lot.

Rob Marsh: Yeah. Okay. So all of this is set up so that you can work part time, so you can travel. So how’s that working out? How many hours do you work and what are you doing with the rest of your time?

Megan Smyth: Great question. What am I doing? I’m chilling a lot. I am learning very slowly. I realized recently that I came to the conclusion, you know, I never learned how to relax like in my entire life. I’ve always worked multiple jobs at a time, like all through school and everything. And I am slowly but surely carving out more time for just relaxing and for hobbies, time with family and friends, getting outside, all of the things. But I would say I work anywhere from 10 to 25 hours a week, maybe 30 max, depending on what I have going on on that season. If it’s busier with client work, launching the course obviously takes extra time, things like that. But I have been able to travel a lot and to really enjoy the places that I visited. That was my big thing is I didn’t want to be in these beautiful places and be stuck indoors on my laptop. I wanted to get out and explore and I’m so grateful I’ve been able to do that.

Rob Marsh: So what are some of your favorite places you’ve been able to travel to?

Megan Smyth: I would say, okay, so I was in Greece for two months earlier this year and the entire time was just like an absolute dream. Total bucket list destination. I timed it right with the time zone difference between Canada and the US and Greece because I got to go out all day and spend all day exploring and wandering through olive groves and exploring ancient ruins and then in the early evening, I would come on and have a couple of calls, do a couple of hours of work, and then just kind of wind down in the evening and just enjoy my time. And that slower European pace of living was just so good. And I’m so excited to get back there.

Rob Marsh: Yeah. I’ve been to Greece. It was a long time ago. It was basically backpacking as a student with one of my friends, like I said, a long time ago. It’s definitely one of the places I need to get back to.

Megan Smyth: Yeah.

Rob Marsh: So beautiful. So in order to make all this happen, do you have a team that supports you? You mentioned you outsource your bookkeeping. Is there anybody else that you’ve got that is helping you run all of this stuff?

Megan Smyth: Yes. I do outsource. Actually, my bookkeeper is my sister. She was my very first hire. I have outsourced quite a bit to her. She started out just doing the books and she’s become my complete operations manager. She handles all of the system side. She’s very organization minded. To have her brain on that is so helpful for me. We’re opposites. I’m the visionary, creative, And she’s like, let’s bring that back to earth. Like we’re going to make a plan. We’re going to make a strategy and do all the things. And so she really is like my right hand woman and I could not do this without her. And so she’s become more and more involved in the company. And then I also have VA who does podcast editing and helps with a few other like marketing admin tasks. And so no, it is not just me.

Rob Marsh: Amazing. So what’s next in your business? I know you’re, you’re launching the group coaching. Anything else that’s coming up to be excited about?

Megan Smyth: I would say that is the main focus. Like I said, at the moment, I am just beyond excited to launch this program again. I’m really excited about the workshop I’m hosting, going into that launch as well. I know the purpose of a workshop or a webinar is to launch the course. It’s part of the launch, but I’m honestly just really excited for the workshop aspect and to deliver free value there, whether or not people buy the course, because the workshop is centered on what we just talked about. that’s creating a full-time income on part-time hours. And whether that’s because people want to travel like me or they just want more time with their family or to focus on their health or whatever it is, I’m really excited to share kind of behind the scenes of how I’ve done that and how I’m helping my clients do that as well.

Rob Marsh: So since you’ve ended up on a very different path than the one you thought you were going to be on when you first went to university, What advice would you give to teenager you, maybe 20-something you, that would make a difference in the pathway that you’ve chosen?

Megan Smyth: Yeah, I would say stop worrying about what everyone else wants. do your own thing. And that kind of is the message, like I said, of my brand and the podcast and all that as well. But back then I was so caught up in I think other people’s ideas of success, hence studying medicine. That was very much an idea that was kind of planted in me from other people. It was like this idea of what a successful career and life would look like. And it took a lot of time and I think introspection to think, well, what do I think a successful life looks like? And it turns out it wasn’t med school. It was completely different than that. Turns out all I wanted to do was, you know, be creative and travel and, you know, help more women make more money in their businesses. And that’s my dream. And your dream doesn’t have to look like anyone else’s. So I would just say to trust yourself. Stop worrying about what other people think.

Rob Marsh: I, again, I wholeheartedly agree. If I had done what I thought I was going to be doing back in college, I’d be an attorney. I would probably hate my job. I mean, I think I would have probably been a decent attorney, but it wouldn’t have been nearly as much fun. So yeah, as I look back, I’m like, yeah, serendipity, you know, play around, have fun, let things happen and see if the path just ends up being a little different.

Megan Smyth: Another way to say that would be to follow the fun. What genuinely lights you up and what do you have fun doing? Because I think a lot of people assume those have to be separate things. They’re like, I can’t have fun doing the thing that’s going to make a living. That’s for hobbies. I’m like, I think there is a way to make that happen. I’ve created it. You and Kira have created it. So follow the fun in both your life and your business.

Rob Marsh: Yeah, for sure. I feel like that might be a pretty good place to end. Megan, for sharing so much about your business and what’s going on. Like I said, I’m just I’m amazed at what you’ve built. I shouldn’t be amazed because obviously you’re so good at this stuff anyway that it would have happened no matter what. But just having the back row seat and watching you do all of this stuff has been a lot of fun for me. So, yeah, good. Good job. And thanks for sharing so much.

Megan Smyth: Yeah. Thank you so much for having me. Definitely would not be where I am now without you guys and The Accelerator.

Rob Marsh: You’re nice for saying that. Thank you. Thanks to Megan Smythe for sharing how she got started and the business that she built. You can find her on her website, megansmythe.com, which we’ll link to in the show notes. Her podcast is called Blaze and you can find that on Spotify and other podcast platforms. Be sure to jump on her list so that you can watch her launch for her group coaching that we talked about during the show. So yeah, if you join the list, you can check out what she’s offering there.

Before we sign off, I just want to repeat one of the ideas that we talked about early on this show, and that’s the willingness to go for it. Megan had it, and a lot of successful copywriters do, but too many copywriters hold back and wait for client work to find them. or they wait for opportunities to come their way, and that just doesn’t happen enough to make it a viable strategy for success. You have to put yourself out there, you have to try new things, you have to take risks, and it might require you to do a few things that make you uncomfortable, make you step outside of your comfort zone. If you’re not willing and able to do that, you’re going to struggle to make things work as a copywriter.

So this is me encouraging you to put yourself out there, pitch podcasts that you want to speak on, write for publications that can get you in front of your ideal clients, create and send that pitch to the client or to the event manager, to the podcast host that you want to connect with, go for it. 

What does it take to create a course that delivers on its promise and ensures that students get through all of the material? On the 421st episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, copywriter and course corrector, Maya Stojkovich, shares her COURSE framework for creating and fixing the programs experts sell in order to get results. There’s a ton of crossover with copywriting sales messages, so grab your headphones and let’s get to it. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.

The Course Corrector

Rob Marsh: Why are so many course creators failing when it comes to selling their courses? Or worse, they do sell their courses or memberships or workshops, but the people who buy them don’t finish them. I’ve certainly bought my share of courses with the full intention that I was going to complete the training and the assignments, and they’re still waiting there months… sometimes years later. What’s up with that?

Hi I’m Rob Marsh and on today’s episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, I talked with copywriter and course corrector, Maya Stojkovich. Maya is one half of the partership behind the Course Corrector—a program designed to help course creators fix the things that keep course buyers from finishing the work and getting the result they want. The other half of this partnership is Linda Perry who has been on the podcast several times before. On this episode, Maya shared the formula for making sure a course will deliver the promised result and keep students engaged. And smart copywriters will notice some big similarities between what she shared and what we often put into a winning sales message. So stay tuned.

Just a quick plug… this episode is sponsored by The Copywriter Underground… the only membership for copywriters focused on helping you build your business skills—the skills that help you attract clients, create services they want to buy, price them effectively, and run a business that’s fully booked and profitable. Does it reallly make a difference? Yes it does. Members tell us its the best investment they’ve ever made in themselves. The training resources, templates, critiques and community are game changers. And you can find out more… even try it risk free for thirty days at thecopywriterclub.com/tcu

And now, let’s go to our interview with Maya Stojkovich.

Transcript underway…

Marketing consultant, Leticia Collins is our guest for the 420th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. She’s an expert in community-based email list growth, so it’s no wonder she added 4300 people to her list in less than a week. Want to know how she did it? Then this episode is for you. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.

Leticia’s website

The money is in the list, or that’s what we’re told. And before you can work on getting some of that money out of the list and into your business, you need a list. If your list is small, you need a bigger list. If your list is full of the wrong people, you need to find the right people. As a business owner, one of your big challenges is your list. And knowing that, would you like to hear how you can add hundreds, maybe even thousands of qualified names to your email list in as little as a week?

Hi I’m Rob Marsh and on today’s episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, I talked with marketing strategist Leticia Collins. Tish is a successful marketer who has worked hard to grow her list. And in this interview, she shared how she added 4,300 subscribers to her email list in one week. And triped her revenue in the process. If you want to grow an email list full of potential clients for your business, this episode is for you.

Before we get to that though… you hear me tell you about several resources that we’ve put together to help you build and grow a writing business. I’m going to quickly list a few of them here so you can get the help you need… we have a free facebook group called The Copywriter Club. You can find us on Facebook and request that we add you to the group where you’ll find seven years of threads about all kinds of copywriting and business questions. 

Obviously you know about this podcast. You’re listening to it right now and there are more than 400 interviews with successful copywriters and other experts in our backlist. Once you’ve listened to this episode, scroll through to find interviews with people like Seth Godin, Jay Abraham, Jereshia Hawk, Joanna Wiebe, Todd Brown, Kennedy and so many others. Honestly, it’s the best free library of copy, content and business ideas that you’ll find anywhere. And it’s at your fingertips. Take a minute now to subscribe on your favorite podcast player so you don’t miss another episode.

And right now you can get our free, 36 page mini-book called How to Find Clients when you go to thecopywriterclub.com/findaclient . I guarantee you’ll find at least one and probably 5-10 ideas you can use to find a client for your business. We’re here to help you build a business, so be sure to take advantage of all the free resources we’ve provided for you.

And now, let’s go to our interview with Tish Collins.

Welcome to the podcast, Tish. I want to start with the question we always start with, which is how did you become a content creator, a digital marketing strategist, business mentor, all of the things?

Leticia Collins: Hi, well firstly thank you so much for having me on, it’s so lovely to be here. And I got started in business, I started my business back in 2019 and I never really saw myself becoming a business owner at all, I kind of fell into it. It started when I went to university, I studied journalism and creative writing and one of our assignments, one of the very first assignments was for us to start a blog. I had always wanted to do that. So I was really excited about it. I started my blog and it was going to be like a portfolio for when I became a journalist. Obviously that didn’t happen. Um, but what did happen is I began to grow my blog. I grew my Instagram. I started working with brands and I kind of started my first business that way. And then after a few years I began to get some questions about how I was getting paid to work with brands and growing my Instagram so fast. And so I thought, you know what, there is a bit of a market here. There’s people who want to learn how to do this kind of thing. So I started my first proper business as an influencer coach. And I did that for a little while. And then I kind of started to realize that actually working with brands is great, but it’s not a sustainable form of income. And so I started teaching these people how to actually create their own products and services and how to monetize that way. And it just kind of snowballed into what I am now, which is a marketing strategist for online business owners.

Rob Marsh: I love that. I want to know a little bit more about the whole influencer coach thing, because obviously there are a lot of people out there who would like to be influencers. There are a lot of copywriters, marketers, freelancers who maybe they don’t want to be influencers, but they want to be able to do the things that a lot of influencers do, that is grow their audience and share their expertise. So maybe just as in a couple of minutes, you can tell us, what does it take to really be that kind of an online presence and almost influencer?

Leticia Collins: Yeah absolutely um I think I mean the main thing about influencers and content creators is that they are a personal brand right so it’s a lot of sharing your personality like behind the scenes of your life and what you’re up to and I think that actually having a background in that really helped me when it came to build my business because I already had a personal brand, I already knew how to grow that and so I was able to lean into that with my business and really connect with my audience. So yeah I think if you’re wanting to be an influencer content creator then it’s definitely about building a strong personal brand and just not being afraid to show up and share like the real and raw version of you because that’s what people really like. It’s the authenticity and the things that people can relate to.

Rob Marsh: I sort of question this a little bit because there are a lot of people who don’t want to share that, you know, behind the scenes kind of stuff or be raw and vulnerable. And I’m sure that you don’t need to share everything, but is that really a requirement or can you build an online brand without going so deep in your personal life?

Leticia Collins: I don’t think that you need to share everything. There’s a lot that I don’t share, but it’s a lot of like the small snippets. So speaking about business owners specifically, it’s the simple like, what are you doing today? Like what’s going on behind the scenes in your business? Are you recording a podcast episode? Are you working on a product? Like that kind of thing. And also just sharing your personality. And that doesn’t have to be like, uncomfortable it can be within your copy you know your writing you don’t have to get on video all the time but within your writing just injecting your personality and kind of like words that you say quite often or things that are going to make you relatable and just not sounding robotic right?

Rob Marsh: Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. Because again, yeah, I don’t want to share everything. But I do think that there’s a way to talk about the things that we do in a more authentic or raw way than just, you know, posting up, you know, lead magnets or whatever.

Leticia Collins: Yeah, no, definitely.

Rob Marsh: So let’s talk about how your business works today then, because you’ve got a couple of different things that you do and a few different services. Who’s your typical client and what’s the kind of work that you’re doing today?

Leticia Collins: So I typically work with online business owners, so coaches, service providers, and course creators. And I help them with their marketing and business as a whole, but I’m specifically kind of looking at helping them create a digital product or course so that they can, so they don’t have to rely on one-on-one services all the time and trading time for money so they can kind of make I don’t want to say passive income, but maybe more like leveraged income where they’re not having to show up all the time. And I also help them to grow their audience so that they have someone, their ideal client to sell that offer to.

Rob Marsh: So let’s talk about offers first, because again, this is the work that a lot of the content creators and copywriters who are listening right now do for their clients or they want to do for themselves. What are the first steps? If I want to build my own product or have my own digital products to sell, where should I start? And maybe there’s a process for doing this properly.

Leticia Collins: I think it does help if you’ve worked one-on-one with clients for a while before so that you know what the process is yourself so you have like your own defined process and then kind of just pay attention to what you’re always teaching again and again. Is there something that you could actually package up and put your framework into its own product or course so that you can then market that to more than just one person at a time. So I think that’s the best way to get started is to pull from your experience. And as you notice, you know, the same thing coming up over and over again, you’re going to realize that there is actually a market for this and be able to sell that in a one to many format instead.

Rob Marsh: I’d love to get your thoughts on this because I’ve seen this happen over and over where somebody like, let’s say it’s a copywriter, uh, they’ve been doing copywriting for a while. They’ve had some success in their niche and they think, Oh, I’m going to start selling templates to copywriters. And, uh, you know, maybe they sell a few, but it doesn’t go quite as well compared to Maybe a similar copywriter who does the same thing, but instead of selling templates to other people doing the same work as them, they sell templates within their niche to business owners who need this thing. Do you have thoughts around where is the better market and should you start in one and move to another?

Leticia Collins: I think it really depends on your business, but if you’re a copywriter and you’ve been working with a specific niche, I think it’s always best to start out with selling to that audience that you’ve already created. And then as you build that and get like a better understanding of how running a digital product based business works, then Perhaps if your next goal is to work with copywriters and you do have that understanding and experience then that can always be a route that you can go down after.

Rob Marsh: OK, yeah, that makes sense. So as you’ve built your business, you know, I’ve been watching what you do for a while. I’ve been on your list for a while and seen, you know, you’re doing a lot to grow your own audience. You know, tell us about your efforts there. And hopefully there are some tips here that we can steal and use in our own businesses.

Leticia Collins: Yeah, I’m trying. So I started my business back in 2019 and it took me quite a while to actually get to the point where i had like a solid audience and i i think i used to struggle a lot with growth i had a community on instagram um but nothing like i didn’t really have an email list so it got to 2022 and i had around 700 people on my email list and I just said to myself one day I want to make 2023 the year that I really grow my email list and that’s what I really leaned into that year. So I started 2023 with 700 subscribers on my email list and by the end of the year I had over 7,000 subscribers. Okay that’s big. Yeah, it was a big growth and it all came because I decided that I was going to lean into the power of collaboration. So I was really leaning on other business owners, supporting them, having them support me and we were leveraging each other’s audiences to grow and that definitely was, still is the biggest way that I’m growing my audience.

Rob Marsh: So before we started recording, you told me that you actually grew your list by 4,300 subscribers in a single week. Tell us a little bit about that.

Leticia Collins: Yeah. So like I just said, 2023 was the year of growth. I was contributing to bundles, I was participating in freebie swaps, I was speaking in summits, I was just doing everything I could to grow my list and in August I decided that I had gotten results from contributing to bundles so I wanted to actually host my own bundle event and I’ll quickly explain for those who might not be familiar with bundles but a bundle is a collaborative list building event where a group of experts within a similar industry or niche come together to serve a common audience and each business owner will contribute one of their paid offers usually priced between $9 to $97 and they’ll give it away exclusively for free for those who sign up for the bundle. And then the bundle is open for a limited amount of time and anyone who registers is then able to sign up for the gifts inside. So when someone signs up for your gift they give you their name and email address and so you get to grow your email list with targeted leads. Now as a host you have the opportunity to grow your email list even more because you are getting the emails of every single person who signs up for that bundle. They’re going straight to your email list, you don’t have to wait for them to opt in to the gift you contribute. So I hosted my first bundle, it was called the Balanced Business Bundle and we had I think 40-ish contributors. It was open for a week and in that week we had 4,300 people sign up for it and that was all organic so I managed to grow my email list by over 4,000 people organically in one week so that was a major boost to my email list.

Rob Marsh: Yeah, that’s amazing. Were you able to track those, uh, new subscribers to like sales or, you know, how long they stick around? You know, what does that look like long-term?

Leticia Collins: Yeah. So I still have stats in my email provider. I had a tag created specifically for the bundle. And, um, so I’ve seen through, I think, how long has it been over a year now? I still have quite a few of those on my list still. Um, In the weeks following, I gained two private clients directly from that event, who I’m actually still working with now. And over the following months, through my emails and them just being in my world, I enrolled hundreds of new students into my courses and digital products. It was a major growth, not just for my audience, but for my business and my revenue as a whole. And I would say that that is all down to email, you know, having a strong welcome sequence in place and then nurturing them with regular emails and selling regularly too.

Rob Marsh: We’ve participated in several bundles and I haven’t seen 4,300 people join our list, but we’ve seen big bumps in our list when we do that kind of thing. So I like it. But one of the things that occurs to me is that for most people, these happen by invitation, right? They wait for a bundle collector to reach out and say, Hey, do you have something? Would you like to participate? And I wonder, you know, if somebody’s thinking, well, this would be great. How can I get on some of these people’s radars? How do I get noticed? So they’ll reach out to me. Is there an easy way to do that? Or do you just need to watch for bundles happening? You know, what would you do?

Leticia Collins: So I think if you’re looking to be invited that it helps to see, you know, if, is there a bundle that’s happening like annually or quarterly or something like that, that you can kind of email the host and be like, I would love to be considered for the next one. And a lot of the times they’ll have a wait list or. something in the email software that software where they can reach out to you when that happens. So that’s one option, but there are also a ton of Facebook groups that people who run bundles specifically post in to find contributors and there’s often an application process. I think that I don’t find that a lot of bundle hosts actively reach out to people anymore and it’s mostly through application where they’re posting it in a Facebook group or somewhere like that. So I would say to go to Facebook groups and browse directories. I actually, in my membership, we have a directory that features different bundle events, different summit events, and so I’m always looking in these Facebook groups and adding that to the directory so that members can easily go and apply for them. So if you’re if you’re in those Facebook groups, then you are going to see those opportunities and it’s really easy to apply.

Rob Marsh: And if I’m thinking, OK, I’d like to actually host my own bundle like you did and get the full benefit of this event. What you know, again, what are the best practices and how should we get started with that?

Leticia Collins: That is a good question. I would say that you need to really have a feel for how bundles work first. So make sure that you’ve contributed to bundles, you understand how it works, you kind of know the process. And then when it comes to hosting your own bundle, the key is to just kind of be organized. So I would start with coming up with a theme. It does help to have something that is more niche so that you’re going to attract the right person because you don’t want a ton of unaligned people coming into your audience, you want people who want to learn about what you teach on specifically. So if you host a bundle then I would make sure that it’s specifically on what you teach on and targeted towards the audience that you want to have in your audience. So that would be the first step. And then the next step is to put out the applications, you know, post in those Facebook groups, find people to contribute and actively reach out to anyone who you feel is the perfect fit for, or has the perfect target audience for what you want as well. Um, and then just being organized is another tip. I think bundles are a huge thing to run, there is a lot that goes into it, and I, my very first bundle, I think I had about 10 or 12 contributors and that was enough. So now I’m running bundles with like 70 contributors, but I would not have been able to do that beforehand without having that experience first. So I would definitely start small and get a feel for it. And then the thing with bundles is that it is a repeatable process. So once you’ve done one bundle and you have all the assets, you have the to-do list, you have like everything in place, then you can just duplicate that and repeat it again and again.

Rob Marsh: And I know that obviously you can set this stuff up with basic website builders, but are there any specific tech tools that help manage this process? Or is it just use the tools that you have?

Leticia Collins: I think you can mostly use the tools that you have. I host my bundle on my website. You obviously need an email marketing software, most business owners have that, and if they don’t then they definitely need to get one. For the checkout I do like to use Thrivecart because I can also use their affiliate software and I like to use an affiliate link for my contributors so that I can track who’s getting the clicks, who’s getting the sales, you know, and also see who’s not pulling their weight and promoting because that is always, like with bundles they only work if everyone pulls their weight and does promote so if you’re seeing that someone isn’t promoting then you can reach out to them, you can ask them what’s going on, and if needs be, then you could remove their gift if they’re not promoting, but yeah, that is a big one. And I haven’t used this myself, but another tool that I have seen a lot of bundle hosts using and finding really helpful is a tool called Spread Simple. There’s two, there’s Spread Simple or Softer. And they just create a really easy database of all the contributors gifts that allows registrants to search through and just easily find everything.

Rob Marsh: It makes sense. You know, I can imagine a lot of businesses should be contributing to bundles, even if they’re not hosting their own. It seems pretty easy when you have a small product, in that’s related to everything else there to help grow a list. So, you know, hopefully this is something that opens eyes for a few additional people to participate in.

Leticia Collins: Yeah, and one of my favorite things as well is that actually you don’t need to have a load of digital products but a lot of the time you could just if you’ve got a course or a signature program you can often just pull a lesson or a module out of that and submit that to a bundle and that’s not available on your website but it is still a paid offer and if you’re contributing that for free then anyone who signs up is going to get like the foundations of your program and see exactly what it is like to work with you and then you have that able to kind of pitch them afterwards and be like you’ve got a small snippet like this is what you’ll get if you if you work with me so they can then go on and decide to purchase the full thing. So I think that’s actually one of the best ways to contribute to a bundle.

Rob Marsh: And then obviously it’s not just about getting these people on your list. You want to be able to follow up. You hopefully have things that can help them solve additional problems. So as far as the follow-up email sequences, what do you recommend there?

Leticia Collins: Again, I think it depends from business to business. I personally, so as an example from my business, I have a membership called the Audience Growth Club. So it’s all about audience growth. So when I’m contributing to bundles, I am contributing gifts about audience growth and often it’s a masterclass from that membership. So I’ll contribute that. and then I will have a tripwire on that gift that will then offer them a deal if they were to join the audience growth club there and then and regardless of, well if they take me up on that then obviously they just go straight into my normal emails but if they don’t then they’re entered into my welcome sequence and I share a little bit about me, my journey, I deliver them some value around the topic of audience growth and then after a little while of just nurturing them, getting to know them and forming that connection I will then start to talk about my membership and release the pitch sequence and after that I will add them to my regular email list and I will send emails you know to maybe three times a week sometimes but it’s just always about keeping them nurtured and delivering that value so that when they are ready, regardless of whether they join in the pitch sequence or they don’t, um, I’m still delivering them value and giving them that opportunity to purchase.

Rob Marsh: We maybe have, uh, answered this question in some ways because we talked about the 4,300 subscribers, but what other results have you seen in your business since you’ve been focusing on business or on audience growth?

Leticia Collins: Through all of the collaborations that I’ve done, I would say the biggest thing is that I’ve been exposed to a whole new audience. When you team up with a competitor, you are able to get in front of their audience, and while they’ll likely have a similar audience to your own, they won’t have the exact same people in their audience, so you have the opportunity to reach ideal clients who may not have found you before. Another thing I’ve noticed is that it’s really helped to establish my authority and build trust. For example, you know, if you appear as a guest on a podcast, you can use the opportunity to establish yourself as an expert and authority and a thought leader within your industry. And on top of that, when you’re collaborating with established business owners, you are also being promoted to their audience and their audience already know and trust them so it’s likely that they’re going to trust anyone that that business owner collaborates with and think that they’re also trustworthy so that’s an immediate credibility boost for you as a collaborative partner. And we just spoke about the sales but another thing is with collaboration is that It saves you a lot of time and money. If you wanted to grow your audience by yourself, you would either need to dedicate a ton of time to do this or throw money into paid marketing and ads, but leveraging someone else’s already warm audience, that allows you to grow quickly and save on that money and save on that time that it would have taken if you were to do it by yourself.

Rob Marsh: And do you also do ads for your bundles when you, uh, when you launch, are you doing, you know, Instagram or Facebook ads or anything like that?

Leticia Collins: I don’t know. I focus primarily or solely on organic marketing.

Rob Marsh: Are you posting on Instagram about the bundle? So you’re using your organic reach to advertise that.

Leticia Collins: Yeah. I mostly post to my email list, but when I’m running my own bundle, it is a lot of the contributors sharing and doing that organic promotion for me so I don’t, I do promote the bundle but I don’t need to be like doing anything else extra to promote it.

Rob Marsh: Yeah, I’m trying to remember how I first saw you and what you did. And I know, you know, some of the earliest contacts that I have from you are regarding the Simple Business Bundle. And I’m thinking I must have seen it on Instagram or something like that and clicked through to see what you were doing. So yeah, as far as like getting the word out, it feels like there’s a lot of work there. But again, it can really pay off, obviously.

Leticia Collins: Well, the beauty of it is that you’re not having to do all of that promotion yourself because I’ve just, I just wrapped up a bundle last week and we had 70 contributors and every single contributor sent two emails minimum and some of them promoted on social media as well. So that was thousands of people hearing about the bundle without me really having to do anything other than supply them with some swipe copy to get the word out there.

Rob Marsh: And so typically, you shared the 4,300 in one week. Typically, what kind of growth would somebody see for participating in a bundle like this? And I know it’s probably going to range, if only 12 people are participating versus 70, obviously the potential audience is significantly smaller, larger, whatever, but what should we be able to expect?

Leticia Collins: It definitely does vary, um, I’ve had contributors to my bundle add thousands to their list, I’ve had them add hundreds, um, but it depends on, you know, how many people contribute to the bundle, like how much competition there is and how niche it is, but I think it also depends on your specific gift, so is it something that a lot of people are going to want to opt in for? I mean, I don’t think it’s a bad thing to only get a few, like a hundred subscribers maybe, from a bundle, because if you’re delivering, you know, a niche gift, you only want your ideal client on there. So if you were to then get like 500 subscribers, but they’re not your true ideal client, then it’s kind of like, what’s the point in having those subscribers? So Yeah, I don’t think there is like a defined answer. Yeah.

Rob Marsh: Yeah, that makes sense. And it might not be really a fair question because the results are going to be so all over the place that it could be really hard to predict other than to say, there aren’t a lot of downsides here, you know, as far as growing your list. And so, yeah, even if you only got 20 new people, that’s 20 new people that you can influence and interact with.

Leticia Collins: exactly yeah and like i say like giving giving a niched down gift is probably the best way to go because you’re not going to get every single person on your list you’re only going to get the people who are actively interested in what you offer and so whenever i’m helping my students contribute to bundles i always say like sometimes they say i want something that’s going to reach the masses and be attractive to everyone. And I’m like, no, like you don’t, you actually don’t want that because you just want your ideal client, not everyone. Otherwise, you know, email lists aren’t free. And if you’re having to keep on paying, like depending on how big your list is, then you want to keep it to your ideal client.

Rob Marsh: One other thing that I see with bundles, and this probably becomes problematic in some ways if you’re participating in a really large bundle with 60, 70 people in it, is standing out from all of the other products that are there. I haven’t seen this a lot, but it feels like really paying attention to the name of your product or the hook for why they might want your product. It’s really critical, especially if you’re, I mean, you’re almost competing against everybody else in the bundle.

Leticia Collins: Yeah, no, 100%. And I think the main thing to really look at is your graphic as well. What can you do to make your graphics stand out from the rest? And I think it’s always good to have a little bit of color, have a bold title or like a description of what the gift is. And I think it’s also good to have an image of yourself because that’s instantly going to draw the eyes to your gift as well. Right.

Rob Marsh: Yeah. Yeah, that’s good advice. So we’ve talked a lot about bundles, but what are some other ways that business owners can grow their audience organically?

Leticia Collins: There are so many ways to collaborate. I mean, it can look anything like podcast guesting like we’re doing here. It could look like hosting a joint live training, speaking in summits. That’s something I’m really leaning into at the moment as well. Even affiliate programs are a great way to collaborate. And those are just a few, but yeah, there are so many ways.

Rob Marsh: And as far as finding these kinds of opportunities, is it similar to bundles where you’re looking at Facebook groups, you’re looking for maybe recurring summits and asking to participate? What is your recommendation there?

Leticia Collins: Yeah, so for summits and bundles, I’m always looking at Facebook groups. And there are a lot of Facebook groups out there specifically for collaborations. So there are podcast guesting groups, there are bundle groups, there are summit groups. Facebook, I think, is just such a goldmine for finding these opportunities. And also just, if you see someone in your industry, your niche, who has a similar target audience to your own, don’t be afraid to reach out and see what you can do. I love hosting freebie swaps. So if those listening don’t know what that is, it’s just kind of when two business owners will share their lead magnets with each other. And then they’ll promote those lead magnets to their audience to kind of cross pollinate And it’s a really simple collaboration that you can do in like 20 minutes So I love that as an easy way to collaborate and a lot of the time I just reach out on Instagram and say look like I’d love to collaborate. Here’s my idea Would you be open to that and nine times out of ten? It’s gonna be a yes

Rob Marsh: Yeah, this is something that I’ve seen a lot of. We’ve been approached, we’ve talked with other people about list sharing and sharing lead magnets. One hiccup that tends to happen with that is some people have really large lists and some people have very small lists. And sometimes it’s a little hard to ask or to you know, um, ask somebody else if your list is super small to share theirs if it’s large. Um, so as far as like finding people who are the right people, um, you know, what, what do you tell your clients and the people in your membership?

Leticia Collins: Yeah, I get that. And it can be awkward to ask, but what I would recommend is to put together your own little application for if you want to do freebie swaps for those freebie swaps. Um, and then in that you can ask, you know, how often do you email your list to make sure they’re active and what is your current list size so that you can make sure it’s not going, it’s going to be a mutually beneficial collaboration, you know, it’s not going to be one sided. So I think applications are probably the best way to go.

Rob Marsh: Yeah, that makes sense too. And another thing you might want to ask about is open rates, because a list of, say, 10,000 with a 15% open rate is not the same as a list of, say, 5,000 with an 80% open rate. Yeah, absolutely.

Leticia Collins: But at the end of the day, I think a lot of it is about trust as well. Like, there’s no way to really truly know, but you’ve just got to trust that the other person is honest. And even if they’re not, like, it’s not going to be a major loss if you’re not, like, if it’s just a freebie swap. It’s not a, it’s just like, you know, you’re helping each other out. So I think that’s always a good thing to do anyway.

Rob Marsh: Yeah, agree. Okay. I would love to shift our conversation just a little bit away from this, you know, audience growth and talk a little bit more about some of the services that you offer. Specifically, you know, one of the things you help clients with is marketing plans. And there are Again, a lot of content writers, a lot of copywriters who would love to go broader with their services than just writing the copy. They’d like to start helping with the strategy, with the planning, with figuring out what needs to be added. And so this is a really broad question, but how do you approach these marketing plan type clients? What’s your process there?

Leticia Collins: Yeah, the 90 day marketing plan is actually something that I introduced recently. So I’ve been working with my first few clients and I have been loving it so far. So we always get on a call first so I can really get to know them and their business and what they’re currently doing. And then I’m asking them, you know, what are your goals for the next 90 days? And sometimes they want to launch, sometimes they just want to increase sales naturally. And so we’ll go with whatever they have that goal for. But I always suggest because, you know, you think of 90 days as being quite a long time, but actually in the marketing world, it’s really not. So I always suggest focusing on one main offer to drive sales to and it does depend from business to business so that might not be great advice for one specific business but that’s why we have that call at the start so that they we can kind of get an idea of what does actually work for them um and yeah I think it’s just such a fun a fun way to um experiment and try new things I always have my clients trying new things and a lot of the time you know I with the with the with the marketing plan we don’t just focus on the content but also growing the audience and improving the offers as well so I’ll always go and audit their offers their sales page and see what could be improved and I just look at it from a ideal client’s perspective and deliver that feedback to them. And I really love doing them.

Rob Marsh: Do you have a checklist that you’re going through as you’re doing your audits or as you’re thinking through the plan? You know, the basically the go-tos, we know we want to, you know, start collecting emails, we want to be emailing weekly or daily or whatever, you know, or is it completely organic and you’re just coming up with something different for each person?

Leticia Collins: It is- it’s normally different for each person, um, and, you know, I have, like, my benchmarks, like, you should be emailing once a week, social media, that kind of thing, but I’ll always ask, you know, what’s going on in your real life? Like, what can you reasonably commit to? And if there’s a client who’s saying to me, look, I’m- I’m so busy, I don’t have the time for all of this, I can commit to one email a week, maybe two social posts a week then we’re going to build the plan based off that. Because I really truly believe that you should be able to build your business around your life and not the other way around and I’m always figuring out ways to help my audience with that. So if there’s something they can’t do then we’ll try and find an alternative

Rob Marsh: I’ve noticed because I’m on your list, email is a big part of what you do and how you run your business. Talk a little bit about your thoughts around email marketing, why it’s so critically important, why you email, the number of times that you do, should you be selling in every email, those kinds of things.

Leticia Collins: Okay. So yeah, I love email. I’ll start with a little bit of backstory. I mentioned earlier that I started my business on Instagram. It was the platform that I used to build and market my business on. And I’m not saying it was a bad decision because it did a lot for me. I found my first clients on Instagram, I found my first students, and I created a really great community. So I owe a lot of my success in business to social media because it really gave me that initial foot into the online world. But it also wasn’t sustainable. So after a while I found that I was creating Instagram post after Instagram post and while I was doing a great job nurturing the audience I’d built there, it really wasn’t helping me grow my audience so well. And I also started to realise that I was putting my business in jeopardy by relying so heavily on social media. I kept on seeing those horror stories of business owners who, like me, had started their businesses on Instagram and were using it as their sole marketing strategy and then they went to login one day and their entire account had been deleted which meant that they had to start all over again from scratch. And although that hasn’t happened to me, luckily, it did give me the kick in the backside I needed to build my audience somewhere that I owned and didn’t have to worry about losing. And that’s when I really started to prioritize email. And over the past couple of years, I have truly fallen in love with email marketing. And the thing I love most about it, other than the fact that you own your audience, is that email is literally the most direct way to reach your audience. 

When someone hands over their email address to you, they are giving you permission to send your message directly to them. With social media, you’re battling against algorithms and thousands of competitors, but you can always guarantee that any emails you send will land in your audience’s inbox. Plus, I found at least that it requires a lot less effort than social media. I found myself struggling to post consistently three to four times a week, create the graphics, show up on stories, create reels, you know, all the things. But with email, I’m creating one to two emails a week, maybe three on occasion, and it feels so much easier, and I no longer feel like I’m on a content hamster wheel. And I’m getting so much more engagement and sales for my content as well. I think there’s some stats out there that say for every dollar you spend on email marketing, you’re likely to see a return of, I think it was around $30. I can’t remember the exact stat, but it was something crazy like that. So yeah, I just love how sustainable it is. I love how you’re in control and I love that you get to see a higher return as well.

Rob Marsh: And do you use a template? I mean, because I’m on your list, I see what you’re sending. There’s certain boxes here and there. Are you basically using the same things in each email or how often do you change those up?

Leticia Collins: Yeah, so I have a template that I created that’s like a basic outline of what I want my email to look like. I try to brand it to my business so that when someone opens up my email, they know that it’s from me, like it’s recognizable, it’s not just black text on a white screen. So I do that with my brand colors and my logo. And then the boxes that you’re talking about, I think that you might be referring to my roundup email. yeah like at the bottom of every email there’s like a roundup yeah yeah so i started doing that a little while ago and i initially got the idea from damaju i don’t know if you’ve heard of her but she’s a great email marketer as well and she had this thing where she was doing um I think she called it four by four footers where you just get to share your like what you’re up to that week a bit of behind the scenes share some affiliate links and so I like to do that my own version of that at the end of my emails and you know I share what I’m celebrating this week the events that I’m loving this week behind the scenes of my business like the things that are going on and I’ll often use that to share affiliate links as well. So if I’ve just started trying out a new product, I’ll link it there. Um, I’ll talk about the bundles of the summits that I’m in. I’ll talk about podcasts that I’m on and I just use it as a way to kind of increase my click rate as well because people, I’ve noticed that people really like this, this roundup style. Um, and I’ll get a lot of clicks on that.

Rob Marsh: Yeah, I’m really intrigued by it because it seems like an opportunity. It’s almost like you’re sending four emails at once or five emails at once where you’ve got your main message, but then you’ve got just some fun stuff at the bottom. And I would love to have that look inside your email provider and see where are those clicks coming from? Do they come from the top of the email or do they come from those extra things that you’re adding? Which again, I really like.

Leticia Collins: Yeah, and I think that actually having that thing at the bottom that’s encouraging the clicks often encourages the clicks for the main portion as well so it’s like kind of training your audience to to click.

Rob Marsh: Yeah, yeah, I totally see that. I may have to experiment with this in my own email list and see how it goes.

Leticia Collins: You should. It’s so fun. I love doing it. And it always gives me an opportunity to actually have a look through and see, you know, what could I promote right now? Like, what could I tell my audience? And like we mentioned before about showing your personality, You can really do that here in a really easy way and that’s why I always have you know, I’m like recently I had an My section that’s like I’m excited about and I was just like I’m excited about moving into my new flat and then I got some people reply and be like well, congratulations and you know, I just love to use it to share a bit of my everyday life and to have that interaction or spark that interaction with my audience as opposed to just being solely business related.

Rob Marsh: Yeah, this seems like a really good way to do what we were talking about when we first started and that, you know, when we were talking a little bit about being that almost influencer, you know, this is a way to share some of the behind the scenes that’s not in an overt way. It’s not too sherry or too vulnerable, but just kind of fun.

Leticia Collins: Yeah, exactly. And people really do love it. You’d be surprised at what people enjoy.

Rob Marsh: Yeah, or maybe not. So I’m curious, Letitia or Tish, as you’ve built your business, what are some of the mistakes that you’ve made along the way that you wish you might be able to go back and say, I wish I hadn’t done that?

Leticia Collins: Oh, well, firstly, I think my biggest mistake would have been, you know, relying on social media so heavily. When I first started my business, I do wish that I’d started my email list sooner. And I wish that I had focused on or used collaboration as a way to grow my email list sooner as well. I don’t like to say that they are mistakes but they’re more of a learning curve that I experienced or a lesson that I’ve learnt. Something else I have realised recently is that it’s okay to experiment and pivot and I think when I first came into the online business space I struggled with this. I thought that I had to box myself in. I saw so much content about the importance of niching down and that old saying of if you’re speaking to everyone you’re speaking to no one and while I do agree to an extent I also think that when you’re first starting out it’s okay to not have it all figured out. It’s okay to experiment and figure out what path you want to go down. And, you know, we spoke earlier about how much I’ve pivoted from an influencer coach to social media and content creation and now into business and marketing and since then I’ve had the honour of working with all different types of online business owners in all different areas of their marketing and from doing that I found that actually I’m multi-passionate. I have learned that there are certain areas of business and marketing that I don’t like to teach on such as ads on LinkedIn, for example, and I’ve learned that I love to help online business owners create digital products, but I also love to help them create funnels, and I love to help them grow their audience and improve their email marketing. So I’m multi-passionate, but my overall passion is helping online business owners create a simple business that doesn’t require them to be glued to their desk. My passion is helping these business owners create sustainable and scalable businesses and that is my niche. So some people might say that being multi-professional is a mistake or that you know we should niche down more but I found that that’s what works for me and that’s what I enjoy and I don’t personally want to put myself in a box.

Rob Marsh: Yeah, I think that’s fair enough. We talk a lot about niching and the importance of that, but niching only, well, niching works, but it works when it works, right? Like, you know, if you want to go super narrow and you can connect with that kind of an audience, then great, do it. And you’re doing fine. But if you want to go wide and you can connect with a broader audience there, and that also works, then lean into that. So it feels like you have a niche, but it’s wider than just industry.

Leticia Collins: Absolutely. And I did kind of kick myself a lot when I first started my business because of that, because I really thought, you know, I have to be really niched down. I have to speak to just one specific person, but that does work for a lot of people. And it is a really good strategy for a lot of people. But for me, it doesn’t work. And over the years of having a business, I realized that, you know, I like to break the rules. I like to experiment with different things and that is what works for me and so I think the ultimate lesson is that you know yourself and your business best and you should trust yourself to kind of have that intuition and follow the path that you want to create for yourself.

Rob Marsh: So I guess I could just check the last couple of emails that you’ve sent to see what you’re most excited about coming up but what’s next for you and what are you excited about in your business?

Leticia Collins: Oh so like I mentioned earlier, I recently launched my membership, so I’m just excited about getting to support my members inside there. I have a few other ideas for things that I’m- I’d like to create over the next quarter, but to be honest, I’m- I know it’s only October, but I’m getting really excited for December and just having the Christmas season and all the holiday content and just getting to have A bit of a rest as well because as much as I love to work I love to rest and just take some down time. So I’m really excited for that Amazing.

Rob Marsh: Well tish I really appreciate you taking some time to share so much about your business if people Want to connect with you want to get on your list and see what you’re doing You know with your emails or are interested in some of the programs things that you’re you provide where should they go?

Leticia Collins: Yeah, so you can connect with me on Instagram. I’m at marketingwithtish. And if you want to join my email list, I actually have a free resource that shares 18 ways that you can collaborate to grow your audience. And it gives more details on each of the strategies as well. And you can get that at latishajcollins.com forward slash collab if you want to dive a little deeper.

Rob Marsh: Yeah, I’ve seen people selling entire courses on this kind of thing. And the fact that you’re offering that information for free is pretty great. So I encourage everybody who’s listening to check that out and keep up with what you’re doing. Thanks, Tish, for spending so much time and sharing so much about your business. Really appreciate it.

Leticia Collins: Yeah. Thank you so much for having me.

Rob Marsh: Thanks to Leticia for sharing so much about how she’s grown her list through bundles and other community-based email sharing programs. I really enjoyed this discussion. Tish’s ideas around coming up with content and putting your own personality on it are the kinds of things that more writers need to be doing. And I think there are a lot of ways to apply the list growth strategies that Tish talked about as well. Finding a bundle that includes your ideal clients is a good first step, but what if there isn’t a bundle out there that works for you? I’d suggest maybe you should create your own. Why not be the person who gets five or six or maybe even more influencers who are working in your niche to share resources and lists with each other to create some momentum and energy for the services that you all offer. It might be the start of more than just a list growth initiative. You might find partners and others who can help you grow in so many different ways. 

If you don’t have a group of other copywriters and content writers to partner with, that’s where a group like The Copywriter Underground could come in handy. There are several other copywriters in The Underground working hard on growing their businesses and their lists, and it just might be the place where you could find your list growth partner. If you’re not a member already, you can learn more at thecopywriterclub.com/tcu. Like I was saying, there’s a lot we can all learn from Letitia. I’ve even borrowed the idea that we talked about from her emails, using my own emails once or twice. Be sure to connect with her on Instagram at MarketingWithTish, that’s her handle, and grab her 18 ways to collaborate to grow your audience freebie at LetitiaJCollins.com/collab.

The publishing platform Medium’s been around for years. But the company has made a few changes recently that might make you reconsider whether or not you should be writing on Medium. Our guest for the 419th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast is Thomas Smith. I asked Thomas to share some of the reasons Medium has become a place for readers to find great content as well as a place for writers to not just share their thoughts, but also to potentially earn a respectable income stream by posting thoughts there instead of social media or your own blog. Why Thomas? Well, he’s earned more than $19,000 for a single post on the platform, and well over six figures over the past couple of years. So he knows a thing of two. And he shared it all on this episode. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.

Thomas’s Thrive on Medium Course

Rob Marsh:  It’s been said so often that it’s almost become a meme… there’s this idea that successful millionaires… or maybe its billionaires, I can’t quite remember, but successful millionaires have on average seven different streams of income. They may have a salary or income from a business they own, they earn dividends on their investments, maybe they have income from property they own, and so on. And people share this idea with the intention that those of us who hear it will also think about ways to add different potential income streams to our businesses.

But as a content writer or a copywriter, you may not have access to investment that pay dividends yet. Or property you can rent out. Or many of the other more traditional ways these very wealthy people earn money. But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t options for us. In fact, some of these options may be easier for you and me, than for the Jeff Bezos and Elon Musks of the world to capitalize on.

Hi I’m Rob Marsh and on today’s episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, I talked with successful Medium writer, Thomas Smith. Thomas has been writing on and making good money with Medium. He recently released a course that shows how he does it. And I wanted to chat with him about the possibilities for content writers and copywriters to use Medium as a potential revenue source—especially for the kinds of writing we might want to do for ourselves instead of our clients. If you write for you… you may want to listen to this episode twice so you pick up on all the ideas Thomas shares about growing an audience and income stream using Medium.

Before we get to that though… you hear me tell you about several resources that we’ve put together to help you build and grow a writing business. I’m going to quickly list a few of them here so you can get the help you need… we have a free facebook group called The Copywriter Club. You can find us on Facebook and request that we add you to the group where you’ll find seven years of threads about all kinds of copywriting and business questions. Obviously you know about this podcast. You’re listening to it right now and there are more than 400 interviews with successful copywriters and other experts in our backlist. Once you’ve listened to this episode, scroll through to find interviews with people like Seth Godin, Jay Abraham, Jereshia Hawk, Joanna Wiebe, Todd Brown, Kennedy and so many others. Honestly, it’s the best free library of copy, content and business ideas that you’ll find anywhere. And it’s at your fingertips. And right now you can get our free, 36 page mini-book called How to Find Clients when you go to thecopwriterclub.com/findaclient . I guarantee you’ll find at least one and probably 5-10 ideas you can use to find a client for your business. We’re here to help you build a business, so be sure to take advantage of all the free resources we’ve provided for you.

And now, let’s go to our interview with Thomas Smith.

Thomas, welcome to The Copywriter Club Podcast. I’d love to start with your story. How did you become a content consultant, a writer, creator, I mean, of your course, Thrive on Medium, which I should just mention right up front, it’s a course not just about writing for Medium, but actually making a living from it. So how did you get there?

Thomas Smith: Yeah, so my background is actually in AI, going way back to before it was a thing. I have a degree in cognitive science with a focus on AI from Johns Hopkins University. I was studying that kind of technology when it was literally on a whiteboard. You were drawing neural networks with a dry erase marker. So it’s come a long way in the time since then, but that was my original background. And I’m also a professional photographer. So I combined those two interests. I launched a company that uses AI to help archives, understand what’s in their archives, find photos in their big collections, get those out there for people to use. Been doing that since 2010. And along the way, I really learned how to kind of take those two interests of AI and photography and combine them in my own business, but also to explain them to people because AI is super confusing and photography is very technical. It’s also creative. There’s a lot of things that people have to understand in order to do both of those. So I kind of developed an expertise, I would say, in explaining those kinds of complex technologies in fairly simple terms and started to publish articles about photography and about AI. And originally I was just writing for publications in the photography space. I was writing for some bigger publications too, like IEEE Spectrum and that kind of thing. And I came along Medium, found Medium, this was in 2019. And I can go into a lot more detail about exactly how Medium works, but it just felt like it was going to be a great home for my writing where I could Basically talk about these topics that I’m very passionate about and have a lot of real world experience in and explain them to people and kind of share how to, how to use AI and how to do photography and how to build a business. All the stuff I picked up along the way in a way that would be really helpful. And it turned into not only a successful kind of platform for me, but also something that helped me launch. a consulting component to my business, where now I’m not just doing photography and using AI and helping archives, but I’m actually helping other companies understand how to tell their story in that space, how to share what they’re doing on Medium and on other platforms. It’s turned into essentially a content consulting business. That’s now almost the size of my core business with photography and AI. So Medium has been a huge piece of that, not only direct earnings on the platform, which I’ll get into, but also the way it’s helped me kind of add that onto my existing business.

Rob Marsh: That’s, yeah, that’s amazing. So as I hear you talk about this, I’m curious, and maybe this is where we get into how Medium actually works, but why Medium over, say, my own blog or Substack or some other publishing platform where I can share what I write? What’s so great about Medium?

Thomas Smith: Yeah, so I think, you know, it probably makes sense to step back and talk just briefly about what Medium is. I think everybody’s probably aware of it, especially if you’re a writer, you’ve seen it, it’s out there. But basically to break it down to the very basics, it’s a subscription platform. So people pay $5 all the way up to around $15 a month. There’s different levels that people subscribe at. And in exchange for that, they get access to all of the writing on the Medium platform. And a lot of it is behind this Medium paywall where you have to be a paying subscriber to have access to it. At the moment, Medium has about a million paying subscribers. They’ve grown tremendously over the last few years. They were around 750,000, uh, coming out of the core pandemic time when people were, you know, at their computers all the time, they’ve since grown even more dramatically up to around a million. So they’re bringing in probably five to $7 million a month from these subscribers. And they basically send that back out, the majority of it back out to writers who contribute on the platform. And so what I really loved about it initially is that I was an AI expert. I was a photographer. I was working with archives. I had all this knowledge, but I didn’t really know how to build an audience on a blog. I didn’t know how to create Substack. I don’t even think it was necessarily a thing at that time. It was, it was in its infancy, but you know, I was pitching these big name publications. I get a lot of stuff rejected. It was a lot of work just to keep pitching. Uh, I didn’t know how to launch a blog and build an audience around a blog. And what appealed about Medium is if I went and just share really useful stuff that helped people based on my experience, Medium had this built in audience. of, you know, that time, probably 500,000 people. Now it’s a million people. And if I’ve just shared stuff that was great, they would bring that audience to me and monetize it for me. And I could just focus on the writing and focus on being helpful. So I really love that element of it, that it didn’t require the expertise and the work of building an audience. It just required writing great stuff that people found useful.

Rob Marsh: Yeah, I like that too. I think one of the big challenges of getting the word out is having your audience. It’s great to drop an email to your list, but if you’ve only got say a thousand people or maybe even 200 people on your list, that’s the limit. Whereas there are platforms like Medium where you can get so much more exposure. Let’s talk about how you do that then, because it’s one thing to write something great, hit publish on Medium. I’ve actually seen that happen where you do that and then crickets, right? So obviously there’s some tricks here.

Thomas Smith: Yeah, so it’s definitely, you can publish stuff and it can go nowhere. You can publish stuff and it can take off. My best story ever on Medium, and I should just preface this by saying I’ve written about 790 articles. on the platform now. Um, it’s changing every day cause I’m always constantly adding to that. Um, my best article ever got around, I think about 11 million views. So yeah, when you say the sky’s the limit on it, you know, I don’t have 11 million people on my newsletter. I can tell you that. Um, So there definitely is the potential for a story to go big and go out to a broad audience. Basically, fundamentally, there’s two ways that you get traffic on Medium. One of them is Medium’s own internal audience. So again, that’s a million paid subscribers, but there’s also people who create free Medium accounts and are on the platform. I don’t know exactly how many people there are, but there’s this internal audience that Medium is sending stuff out to. And the other piece is there’s an external audience, which is basically the entire internet and Medium is tied into that very well. So you talk about SEO and SEO topics here on the podcast. Medium has a domain rating of 94. So if you’re in the SEO space, you’ll know that’s a very powerful domain. It ranks really well in search. So people come in from there, um, all kinds of aggregators like Google news will pick up Medium stories. people will link to them and cite them in other places. So there’s external traffic, which is all the traffic from those sources. And then there’s the internal traffic that comes from Medium’s own audience. And to get the internal traffic, there’s a couple of different ways to approach that. One is to build your own following on Medium. So like most social platforms, you can write a story on Medium and people can follow you. And kind of opt to get more of your content going forward. And you can do a lot to connect with people on the platform. It’s a very kind of community oriented platform. So yeah, if you just publish something and don’t do anything, it’s probably not going to go anywhere. But if you publish something and go out and find other people who are writing about similar topics, chime in on their, uh, their stories and share, you know, some kind of useful insight, cause you can leave comments on a story that can help to build your audience. If you publish something there and share it with an audience on another platform, like if you do have a newsletter, you can send your Medium stories out to them. If you’re active on social, you can do that too. You can share stories with clients directly and bring people over to the platform. You can also, if somebody comments on your story, which happens quite a lot, again, it’s a kind of a community orientation there. You can respond to their comments. Medium seems to be really prioritizing that now. If you do that, that helps to build your following. And basically over time, by doing those things, you’ll build up your own following on Medium. And when people follow you, it doesn’t mean they necessarily get every single article that you publish, but Medium sends everybody who’s a subscriber to the platform, something they call the digest every day. And it’s basically a set of stories come through person’s email to basically an email newsletter that’s automatically generated. based on their specific preferences, stuff they like, stuff they’re interested in, stuff they do professionally. And Medium learns this about all of their subscribers over time. And so if you write something and people come and read it and they have particular preferences and interests, then Medium will start to send your story to your followers in their digest who have similar preferences and interests. And as you can imagine, as you build your following on the platform, there’s more people who can potentially get each of those stories. As you cover a broader range of topics, there’s more kind of topics that you can cover. And Medium will even send things that are three or four years old in some cases. So as you build up the number of stories and the followers, you can get traffic on stories you wrote, you know, five years ago, even. I’ve seen that happen. So it’s sort of a cumulative thing. It’s a slow build on that piece of it. There are, however, a couple of ways to accelerate that internal traffic. Um, one of them is to get into a publication. So Medium has these almost like internal collections of stories is the way I think about them. They’re still on the mMdium platform, but they’re called publications. They are run by an editor. Most editors are volunteers, so they, they aren’t getting paid. They’re not taking any of the earnings from your story. Um, and they basically curate stories and then you can submit your story to a publication. And if the editor decides to publish it, it’ll go out not only on your own Medium profile, but also on the publications page. And a lot of publications on Medium have their own very large following. So people can follow a publication just like they can follow an author. And so some of the bigger and more established publications could have 200,000, 700,000 people following them. And if you can get a story in there, even if you’re a fairly new writer, then you get access to that big audience. And that’s going to get your story out to a broader set of people again, through that digest and the recommendations Medium sends out. And then that’ll kind of come back to you too. So if you engage with that audience, then people will not only follow the publication, but they’ll follow you. So getting into a publication is a great way to increase that reach, kind of catapult yourself a little further ahead. That’s how I got started. I published basically crickets for a long time. I pitched a big publication no longer exists. It’s called One Zero. About three or four times the editor rejected me. Finally, I got a story in there and that really started that snowball effect of accumulating followers. Now the, I think the biggest way though, and the one that’s most exciting, there’s a new program on Medium. It’s been there for about a year. It’s called the boost program. This is basically Medium’s response to the huge amount of AI content. It’s out there kind of polluting the internet at the moment. Uh, it is a human focused program. It’s a human curation program. And so basically Medium went and found over a hundred at this point, subject matter experts. in every field you can imagine, physics, parenting, all kinds of stuff, travel. I’m personally one of the subject matter experts for gender of AI, for example, based on my background, and found all these people and turned them into boost nominators. So basically, we can go and have a publication on the Medium platform. We can find stories that are in our area of expertise. When we do that, we nominate those stories to the Medium team. Again, very manual process. Um, the Medium team will review that story and if they think it’s great and it’s pretty hard to get boosted, it’s a, I can’t say the exact number, but it’s a fairly low success rate. But if you do get boosted, it’s means you have really fantastic writing. And, um, that story will go out generally do about 10 times more people than a typical Medium story would. So I’ve seen writers come to the platform who are brand new, who have three followers. And in the first week, if they read a great story and it gets boosted, they can get thousands of views on that story and pick up hundreds of followers pretty much overnight. So that’s sort of the swing for the fences. You’re probably not going to get stuff boosted early on. Even as a veteran writer on the platform, my success rates, you know, probably 30, 40%, but when you do, that’s the best way to grow that audience and earnings too, which we’ll get into very quickly.

Rob Marsh: Okay. So I’ve got a lot of questions about this then. As far as Medium goes, it feels like it’s a little bit of a library or wild, wild west of content. You could basically write about anything. So again, considering our audience, copywriters, content writers, They may have personal things that they want to write about. Maybe I want to write a Western fiction story of some kind. Maybe I want to write about technology like AI. But for the core business things that we write about, how good is Medium for business compared to platforms like LinkedIn, where you expect to have business articles on the feed all the time?

Thomas Smith: It’s actually, I think, one of the best things to write about on Medium. So yes, it is a platform you can write about anything. That said, Medium’s audience cares deeply about specific topics. And the ones that are biggest, I would say, are kind of, it’s really anything that helps people level up is the way that I like to put it. It’s kind of like If they can learn a new skill, if they can find a better way of doing something, a way to optimize something in their life or their work, that’s why people are on Medium. And there’s certainly, you can write poetry, you can write fiction, but the majority of people want to learn some new skill. They want to improve in some way. And so learning a new business skill is a really fantastic way to, you know, something people want to do on Medium. And sharing a way to learn that new business skill is a really great way to you know, engage with that audience. So I would say topics that relate to running a business to building a business are definitely one of the most engaging topics on there. And so if you’re writing about, you know, how to win clients in the copywriting space, if you’re writing about how to edit a story to get it into a big name publication, or how to start a local newsletter or anything like that, that content would do extremely well. Again, If you’re helping the person level up and learn some new skill or improve their skills in some way, then that’s a great thing to be sharing on Medium.

Rob Marsh: And then you kind of answered this question already, but how long can it reasonably take to build up an audience or to get to the point where you’ve got the views that you want or that you’re even making money in doing this?

Thomas Smith: You know, it really depends, um, on what you’re writing about and if you can get something boosted early on or not. If something gets boosted in the early days, you can earn substantial money just through the Medium partner program. But let me step back for a second. There’s a bunch of different ways to monetize on media. I’d say there’s probably five core ways that you can monetize. The one that most people jump to is the partner program and Medium is kind of unique in this area. A lot of partner programs, like if you’re going to publish on Tik TOK or something, you really have to have a huge reach before you’re going to make any money at all from it. Even something like the Facebook bonus programs is one that I think a lot of people are focused on right now. You need millions of views. You need a lot of followers to even get into the program. The Medium Partner Program, all you have to do is become a paid Medium subscriber. So you got to pay your five bucks a month and you’re pretty much into the program. You have to live in a geography that’s allowed, but there’s about 70 countries now where you can be in that program. And once you’re in the Partner Program and you pay all your content on Medium, you get paid for every person that reads that story. And there’s a whole formula that determines exactly how much getting things boosted makes a big difference. Having followers makes a difference. The amount of time people spend reading the story makes a difference, but fundamentally you’re getting paid for every person who reads that story from literally day one. So, you know, are you going to earn a ton of money from the very get go? If you get something boosted, yeah, you can earn hundreds of dollars on a story in your first week. Um, I work with somebody who. Came to the platform, got a story boosted in this first week and was at about $115 in a week on the platform. Most people, it’s probably not going to be that quick of a build. It’s going to be something where you build up a set of stories over time. Maybe you sometimes get stuff boosted and get a big bump, but it’s going to be this gradual sort of cumulative building of the earnings from the partner program. And at this point with almost 800 stories on Medium, If I just sit down and do nothing on the platform, if I literally don’t publish a story for a month, I’m still earning about $1,200 or $1,300 a month from the partner program, just from that passive set of stories that I’ve built up. So, you know, it’s not going to be job replacement income for most people, but it’s a pretty nice passive thing. If I write more stories and I get stuff boosted, then the earnings go up from there. In August, for example, I made $4,424 on the platform. My best month ever when I got that 11 million view story was $19,000. And a single month from the partner program. Wow. So again, that’s a lot. I mean, that’s nothing to sniff at. Yes, exactly. That would be nice if it was every month. It’s certainly not. Even the 4,000 was a particularly solid month, but that gives you a sense of the potential there. It’s a, it’s a slow build as you build up your collection of stories with these big spikes, if you get stuff boosted, essentially. Um, there’s plenty of other ways to monetize though. I think the partner program is maybe my number two or three way to monetize on the platform. Let’s talk about some of those others. Yeah, absolutely. So I think the best one and probably the one most relevant to folks here is to use Medium as a lead generation strategy for your business. And what that looks like is you publish a story on Medium about something that you do. And that could be, again, for copywriters, it could be, you know, how do you write in a way that doesn’t sound like AI? You know, how do you write a landing page that encourages more people to sign up for your newsletter or to purchase a course or a product or something like that? It could be, you know, tips for using AI effectively in your writing. It could be tips for tools that you could use, really anything that would be relevant to your target customer and you share something useful to them. And then at the end of your story, you include a call to action that can be as simple as, you know, if you wanted me to do this for you, or you want to hire somebody to do this work or to coach you through it, here’s my email address. And it can be literally again, as simple as that. If you have a newsletter, you can include a call to action for people to sign up for your newsletter. That works extremely well too, especially if you have a lead magnet, if you’re giving away a guide or an e-book or something that people want, that can be a very effective strategy there. But basically, you write about the stuff you would want people to hire you to do. It can’t be salesy. It has to genuinely deliver value. And again, at the end, you put in a CTA for people to contact you. And I know writers and writing coaches who have built a whole business just out of that. You know, sharing tips for editing, for example, sharing tips for getting into big publications. They include a call to action about hiring them. They’ve built a whole client base just through writing on Medium. In my case, again, I added a whole consulting arm to my company. basically by writing about what my company was doing and then including my contact info. And I had people start to reach out and say, you know, Hey, can you just do this for me? I don’t, I don’t want to learn how to do it. Can you just come in and do this work? And, um, I’ve started to do content consulting. I’ve started to teach people how to use Medium. Um, I’ve done, uh, PR consulting. I’ve done anything that revolves around content essentially out of that. So just write about the stuff, you know, deliver value, include a CTA. either to your newsletter or directly contacting you. And again, Medium’s audience is there to learn. They’re there to level up. And if the fastest and easiest way to level up is to hire you, people on that platform will go ahead and hire you.

Rob Marsh: Makes sense. Yeah. Okay. So that’s two of the four or five ways to monetize. What else?

Thomas Smith: Yeah. So, you know, I think Those are the two there I would split out into two different ones. So there’s the partner program, there’s lead gen and there’s newsletters. I kind of lumped them together, but in reality, combining those together, the newsletters and lead gen is probably, there’s probably people who will do one or the other. So even if you’re not trying to bring in new clients to your business, You can easily capture people’s email addresses and build a newsletter, uh, publishing on Medium. So that would be again, including a CTA, ideally, ideally a lead magnet. You can build your own list. I use Convertkit. A lot of people use MailChimp. There’s all different kinds of programs. You can even pitch your Substack on there. A lot of people have a Substack already and they come to Medium and use it as a way to grow their Substack. So you can basically have a CTA. It says, if you want more of my writing, you know, subscribe to me directly on this other platform. Even if you’re not immediately selling something or you don’t have space for another client, that allows you to capture that person’s contact info and send your new stories out to them. You know, send, if you have a course, you can pitch that to them. If you have other tools where you’re an affiliate, you can, uh, you can pitch that to them. And it just, it’s in a way to, to capture that relationship and take it off of the Medium platform. 

One of the cool things with Medium, they actually encourage you to do that. So anyone who posts on like Facebook or even LinkedIn knows if you try to bring people off platform, you kind of get penalized in your reach. Like they don’t want you to do that. Medium is different. Um, doesn’t, doesn’t seem to impact reach at all to include those kinds of calls to action. And Medium even gives you a way to put a subscribe link in the CTA. That’s all within the Medium platform. People can actually press a button and get on your email list within Medium, and you can export those emails and put them in Convertkit or MailChimp or whatever. So, partner program, lead gen, building an email newsletter. 

Another great way is to use Medium as a platform for what I think people would call kind of like thought leadership, or it could also be considered almost like a PR platform. And I know you recently had a guest talk about, you know, PR and going to PR through, through a different approach. I think a lot of the tips shared there are very relevant here too. I have gotten coverage for my company in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Coindesk, a very specific place talking about crypto. And a whole bunch of other publications through writing on Medium. And the reason for that is that a lot of journalists are media members. It’s a platform where journalists might publish their own work. They read each other’s work on there. 

There’s big name people like Barack Obama who published stories on Medium. So journalists are there and following along. And so when I’ve written pieces generally about my company, but with some kind of, um, broader tie-in. I did a story about how a tool from Microsoft called Copilot—this was early in the generative AI days—was helping me to code better, to write Python code. Even though I’m not a great coder, I could use this tool and sort of improve that. And this hybrid of me and the tool was more powerful than me or the tool alone. And a journalist from the New York Times read that story, reached out, asked if he could interview me. and ended up doing a feature story about my company and how we’ve used AI and this specific tool. 

As your guest before had shared, it’s incredibly impactful to your business, both in terms of SEO, backlinks, that kind of thing, but also just notoriety to be featured in these big name publications. So using it as a platform to connect with journalists, using it as a place to publish those kind of thought leadership pieces, to get speaking engagements and that kind of thing, I’ve found can be really effective. It’s a little more indirect way to monetize, but if you’re building a business, it really helps when I can say, you know, my business will go to images, go to images as seen in the New York times, you know, does blah, blah, blah. It establishes that credibility. And that again, all came through Medium. 

The final way to monetize. And this is one that I do a bit, but I’ve seen other people do incredibly successfully is through affiliate marketing. So if you have tools that you use. that you find to be really effective in your own work, you can often sign up as an affiliate for that tool, where if you promote that tool, or it could be somebody’s course, you have a friend who has a course, and somebody purchases that, then you get a commission on that sale. And I’ve done this for everything from like, I wrote a story about the Swiffer Wet Jet, which is a cleaning cleaning product, all the way to—I’ve written detailed software explainers about AI tools that I use in my company. And as an affiliate, you can write about that on Medium. You can include a link to that tool with your own affiliate tracking code. That’s totally fine with Medium. You have to disclose that it’s an affiliate link. But if somebody clicks on that and makes a purchase, then you end up with a commission. And again, thinking about the fact that Medium has a DR 94, it ranks very highly in Google. 

If you wrote a great software explainer about some, you know, high price, complex piece of B2B software, even something as simple, you know, in the copywriting spaces, like I’ve reviewed grammarly and talked about grammarly. And how it fits for specific parts of my business and where it doesn’t work and that kind of thing. I’m in their affiliate program. I include a link. If somebody decides to check them out and click through, I got a commission on that. There’s so many affiliate products. And if you write good reviews, not sort of… There’s a lot of affiliate stuff that gets a bad rap, I think, because it’s not well done, but if you write a really good and helpful review and you include an affiliate link and disclose it. And people click through and buy. I’ve had single stories on Medium that have earned over a thousand dollars a month for in some cases, a year and a half, just from the affiliate links in those stories. So yeah, that’s the final piece. So basically partner program, affiliate marketing, thought leadership, building a newsletter, which again, you can then use for all of the above. And then, I think the biggest one, the best one is direct legion.

Rob Marsh: Yeah, all of that stuff that we probably should be doing in our own businesses, even if all you do or think of yourself as a copywriter or a content writer, there’s so many different ways that a platform like this can help boost a business. So as you were talking, I noted down a couple of additional questions. You mentioned paywalling your content. Is there ever a reason why you wouldn’t want to paywall your content? Obviously, you don’t make money on stuff that’s not paywalled, I believe. I could be wrong about that. But, uh, you know, is there ever a reason why you would want free content on Medium?

Thomas Smith: Yeah. It’s a question I get asked a lot. You know, if I’m doing lead gen, should I still pay wall? I tell people in general default towards paywalling your content. And the reason for that is that I have not seen a big difference in, external traffic to articles that are paywalled versus articles that aren’t. So Medium, like most platforms, is not going to kick out like the Google bot or the bots for search engines or, you know, AI tools and that kind of thing. At this point, they’re going to be able to see the article. They’re going to be able to index it. And most people have a certain number of free Medium stories they can read remaining in their account. And I don’t know how many Medium gives them before they pay wall stuff and sort of make it a hard paywall. But most people can read a couple Medium stories per month, um, before they get sort of kicked out of the platform. They can’t, they have to subscribe to access. 

So what I find is that most of the time, if I write a story in paywallet, the people who are coming for that one-off, you know, external view, like they’ve searched the topic on, on Google and they come to Medium, they probably have a free story and they can probably read it and still click my affiliate links and still find my lead gen CTAs and still get on my newsletter. It’s not going to make a big difference, but the people who are within the Medium platform who are in the paying subscriber list are still going to see that story and read it and also get paid through the partner program. So I think of it like YouTube, most people who are on YouTube and are monetized, they’re not making a living off of the AdSense income that comes from YouTube ads from Google. What they are doing is making an income from sending people to their business, any people to their newsletter, you know, getting sponsors, that kind of thing. But the money you get from those ads, those ad sense ads, on there, it’s nice. It’s a little extra bonus, even if you never get any other benefits. You can still pick up a little money there. Maybe it’s latte money. Maybe it’s not, you know, life-changing, uh, income. I would think of it as being very similar to earning on YouTube. And, um, I think that, you know, you’re, you’re still going to make that sort of background layer of income from the partner program. The majority of the income is going to come through those other opportunities in the, you know, in most cases, but just like with YouTube, where if you have a video that really goes viral and takes off. suddenly, you know, those earnings from the AdSense trickle, you know, it’s normally just sort of like supplementary income can become very substantial. And that’s the same way to think about it on Medium, the partner program earnings are kind of that nice baseline, it’s passive income in the long term, it’s a little bonus on top of what you’re going to get through those other strategies I mentioned, but As you know, my $19,000 a month illustrates if something gets really a lot of play, which can happen or in the new environment on Medium, if it gets boosted, then you can really make substantial money just from that partner program. So I wouldn’t cut that off. I would leave it paywall for that possibility that it’s going to go viral and then you can make a huge amount from it or over the longterm, that little trickle. that comes in and cumulatively builds to $1,200 a month or whatever it is for me now. But at the same time, if you do pay wallet, you’re probably not cutting that many people off. The only exception I would say to that is if you’re writing a story where really your only goal is affiliate marketing, we’re trying to rank on Google, you’re trying to bring people in and send them over to a tool that you use or something like that. Sometimes I will take those stories out from behind the paywall, just because that’s my main way to monetize. There’s probably not going to be that much internal traffic to them on Medium. So you might as well just take that paywall down. Otherwise, though, I just encourage people don’t be afraid to paywall it because it really doesn’t seem to turn that many people away.

Rob Marsh: Yeah, that makes sense. So another question, you know, you’re talking about pitching publications, pitching your stories, your articles to publications. Would you pitch old stories? You know, you’ve got 800 stories. Hopefully most of them are good. Would you ever go back and say, OK, well, I wrote this two years ago, but it’s still relevant. It’s still good. Can I pitch that to a publication or are they really only interested in the newest stuff?

Thomas Smith: Mostly it has to be, you know, under six months old to get into a publication. It can vary, but that’s sort of the sweet spot. You can actually send a draft to a publication before it has even been published. A lot of publications like that because then they’re sort of the first ones to publish it and get it out there. So ideally you write a draft, you submit it to a publication, they accept it, they actually control when it’s published, and then it goes out and you get access to that audience. One thing that can happen that is another nice thing about Medium If you write a great story and it starts to get traffic on Medium independently of a publication, um, a lot of publication editors were also reading Medium. We’ll see it. And people will actually reach out to you in many cases and say, Hey, I think this story would be a perfect fit for my publication. Do you want to submit it? So a lot of it can actually come about organically just by publishing stuff that you know about and then waiting for, um, for editors to approach you.

Rob Marsh: Makes sense. And then are there, uh, rules or, or maybe a Medium culture about submitting to multiple publications at the same time? You know, is it not cool to do that or, you know, how does that work? If I’m a publication editor, am I going to get mad if I see your article show up in somebody else’s publication after you’ve pitched me?

Thomas Smith: Yeah. So you can’t submit to more than one at a time. So the submitting to the publication. It’s to get into the publication in the first place. It’s usually a very manual process. It’s literally like every publication is different. Some have a Google form. Some have just an email for the editor. Um, some have submission guidelines. Some of them it’s, you just have to kind of guess. Uh, but you basically connect with the, with the editor of the publication. They can then add you as a writer on me. Once you’ve done that, it’s all on the platform. So you can have your, you can write your story when you’re in the draft, you have a little dropdown and you can choose any publication that you’re a writer for and choose to submit the story to that publication. When you do that, the editor will get that story and they can decide to publish it. They can make edits to it, or they can decide to reject it. If they reject it, it comes back to you and you can still publish it on your own profile or find another publication. But you can’t submit it to more than one publication at a time. So it is this serial process. And, you know, that can be frustrating because, uh, publication editors are volunteers. Some people get a very small stipend to participate as, um, nominators. Medium is very straightforward about that, but it’s, it’s small. Um, so it’s mostly a volunteer opportunity for editors. They don’t get a cut of your partner program earnings either. You still get all of that. So it’s usually sort of a labor of love, um, or, you know, somebody who’s building a publication that relates to their own business. So the times to wait. Depending on the publication can be weeks in some cases. So you do have to prepare yourself for that. Um, but no, unfortunately, you know, you can’t directly send it to multiple publications. One thing you can do, and I encourage people to do though, once something’s published on Medium. You can pitch it to as many traditional publications as a reprint as you want to. Um, so I’ve had a lot of stories on Medium that then end up getting reprinted elsewhere in much bigger publications. And again, if your strategy is lead gen and thought leadership, that sort of follow on effect and ability to double dip, um, can be really substantial too.

Rob Marsh: That’s almost my next question. You know, I know that there are some adjustments you can make to a Medium article once it’s gotten its popularity or it’s gotten a lot of traffic where you can adjust the canonical back to your own website if you’re republishing. But, you know, what should I be thinking about as far as republishing? Should I publish on my blog first, publish on my substack second, Medium third, Medium first, substack second? Like, what is the optimal way to get it in front of as many audiences as possible?

Thomas Smith: It depends on the story. Medium is, is very okay with, um, posting content that you’ve published somewhere else. So even for boosted stories, it’s not going to hurt you to take something that you wrote on your blog and publish it on Medium. So yeah, some people think, oh, it has to be original. That’s not the case. They’re fine with stuff that’s republished as long as it’s yours. The one thing they don’t want is you taking somebody else’s story and then trying to publish it on there. Um, so that’s the first piece is you can always publish it on your own blog. You can always publish it on your sub stack. And then publish it on Medium. As you mentioned, you can canonical link back. So basically all of the SEO impact of that story will pass through over to your blog. It won’t steal, you know, traffic from your blog, um, to, to republish it on Medium. So that’s the way I see a lot of people do it. They publish on their own newsletter first or on their blog first, then they republish the story over to Medium at 48 hours later, in some cases, uh, sometimes, you know, months or years later, if they’re, if they have a big blog or a big newsletter, and they want to add Medium as kind of a new, like separate channel, they’ll go back and take their back catalog of content and just go through and publish it on Medium, maybe tweak it a bit to fit the audience, throw in some CTAs, submit it to a publication or publish it on their own. That’s a very legitimate way to do it. Another way I’ve seen it done is to write the story on Medium first, publish it on Medium, try to get it boosted, see where you can go from there, and then later publish it to your newsletter or your sub stack or publish it out on your blog. I think if your audience overlaps between Medium and those other places, that’s a better way to do it. Um, because Medium will send the story out to. All the people in, you know, all your followers in their email. So if they do that and the person gets the story and then, you know, you go ahead and take that story and send it later, or you sent it to your sub stack and then they get it on their Medium digest. They’re sort of getting the same story multiple times. And people sometimes unsubscribe or they get upset because they feel like they’re getting spammed. So what I like to do is publish it on Medium first. And then I actually have a tag in my newsletter software that says that the people who are my subscribers on Medium basically leave them off of the email when I send a Medium story out. And that way it avoids them getting the story twice. If you published your substack or your newsletter first, And then publish on Medium, you can’t tell Medium, hey, don’t send it to all the people who are sub stack subscribers. So that’s the one where if you have a very overlapping audience, maybe do Medium first and then set up that manual exclusion. So you’re not kind of spamming people. Yeah, that makes total sense.

Rob Marsh: How about like, as far as publishing goes, let’s say that I’ve, you know, published a bunch of articles, I’m getting the hang of it, I seem to be getting a little attraction, should I start my own publication? Or am I better off using other people’s publications as an audience tool?

Thomas Smith: What I tell people is only start a publication if you’re planning to A, connect a domain name to it, which you can do, or B, accept stories from other writers. If all you’re going to do is publish your own stuff and you’re not going to connect a custom domain to the publication, then there’s really no reason to do it. You’re better off just publishing to your own profile. Um, if you want to connect a custom domain, which Medium lets you do, that’s great because you can then connect it to Google search console, for example, and see where people, what people are searching for to land at it on it. You can have a, basically a brand that you build around it. That can be a great way to kind of take the Medium platform and use it almost like your own personal blog with monetization and all those tools still enabled. The downside is you lose the SEO impact of Medium’s, very strong domain. So if you’re trying to get stuff to rank on search, it’s not as good of a solution, but again, if you want better analytics and you want to build your own brand within the platform, uh, creating a publication, connecting the domain, it’s a good way to do it. I have one about, um, so DIY life tech. It’s a Medium publication. It’s a got its own custom domain. It’s tied to my YouTube channel in that case. So I’m not as worried about getting traffic within Medium, but it’s cool. I don’t have to run my own separate blog if I want to link to it, you know, from YouTube and I can still monetize on Medium. The second one is if you’re going to get stories from. Other writers. And if you want to do that work and be an editor, um, that’s fantastic. You know, you’re doing a real service to the Medium community by doing that and build up that publication. Pitch, basically go out, find stories you think are a fit, message the author, say, do you want to be in my publication? You can get people in there. Over the long term, it can be a great thing to do, especially if you’re running a business and you can say to your colleagues, hey, you should publish a story on my Medium profile. It’s a great offer for people. It’s a great way to meet new writers and build a community. I run a publication called The Generator about generative AI. It’s a lot of work. It’s fun, but it’s a lot of work. So I would not bite that off until, you know, you really feel like you have the time for it. Um, in the early days, I would focus on submitting to other publications or publishing on your own profile. Again, with the exception, if you want to connect a custom domain.

Rob Marsh: Yeah, it makes sense. Okay, we’ve talked about all of the reasons we should be doing it, all the benefits. Let’s do a quick primer. How do you get started? As my first article to publish, what are some guidelines here so that maybe I get a good first bang for my buck and I feel really good about the process and I’m willing to invest in this thing?

Thomas Smith: Yeah, I mean, I think the first thing is getting started is very easy. You create a Medium account. It’s free. You subscribe as a paying member. It’s $5 a month, so it’s not a big investment. Once you do that and you publish your first story, you can apply for the partner program. You connect Stripe to it. You fill out a tax form and you’re monetized. You can do it in an afternoon. It’s very, very easy. So that part is quite simple. choosing what to write and deciding how you’re going to build an audience on the platform, I think you want to look at what are skills that you have in your professional life or experiences that you have in your personal life that you can write about, you would enjoy writing about, and that other people would, again, get some benefit from. They would level up in some way. They would learn something new from that. And if you are a copywriter, that could be copywriting. It could be editing. It could be Pitching stories, could be working with journalists, writing sales page copy that converts, building a newsletter. All the stuff you do for your own business is all fair game to write about and would do well. It could be case studies. I did this for a client and here was the outcome. There’s a bunch of different ways to approach that. That would be a great place to start based on your own work experience. Personal stories though can do extremely well too. So if you went through something, if you experienced some life challenge. Um, maybe, you know, your business didn’t go well when you first started it. That’s also a great thing to write about. It really just has to be based on something, you know, in the real world. It’s not like SEO writing where it’s kind of, you adopt this generic voice, you know, it’s not you. It doesn’t have your own voice in it. Medium is very different. People want to hear from you. They want to know about your expertise, your experience, your trials and failures and successes. And they want specific, you know, real world data. So anything where you feel you can do that. and deliver some value to the audience. That’s a great place to start. I also encourage people look at the topic list for Medium. There’s actually a Medium. You can go to Medium. If you search Medium topics on Google is I I’m sure we can include a link too, but there’s a actual list of all of the categories you can write in. Um, and that can give you ideas. That’s how I got started. I went through, I was like, Oh, photography. Yes. You know, art, yes. technology, Python coding, like all these things. Yes, I can write about all of those. So that can provide you some inspiration. And that can get you started. If you can get a story boosted in the early days, that’s a huge, you know, win for for your motivation. But I encourage people to really come in thinking about it as a long game. Yeah, don’t think about it as something where you’re going to get even into the $100. Quickly, it takes time, like my first month on the platform, I made $7. And I probably published like 10 really solid stories. So it’s a cumulative thing. It builds over time. You need that followership. You need the community. It’s not a get rich quick type of thing. It’s not a side hustle where, you know, you can do it, you can launch it and be making tons of money in the first month. Um, it’s something that’s going to be a slow burn and you have to be ready for that and ready to keep publishing. Like any writing, you’re going to get rejected. Things aren’t going to do well. You’re going to write a great story and it’s going to get zero traffic. Um, that’s going to happen. So if you can weather that and keep publishing and keep writing great stuff, cumulatively over time, that’s where you’re going to start to see. Those benefits. And it was probably three years into writing on the platform that I really started to get clients out of it and build that content consulting piece to my business. I’m still earning money from the partner program along that whole, that whole route, but kind of think of it as something you’re going to do over the longterm. And that’s going to set you up for success. And ultimately those bigger wins down the line.

Rob Marsh: Two things that I really like about this for copywriters, content writers, is number one, we spend so much of our time writing for our clients and writing marketing materials, but at the same time, we often have ideas of things that we want to write for our own. I mentioned maybe I want to write a Western or maybe I want to write something else. Uh, and, and this seems like the place where you can really broaden your reach of your writing skills and just have a place where there’s an audience to consume some of that stuff. So I love that. And it, it can be done for fun, but also may lead to a little bit of income for you. And then the second thing that I love about this is just the opportunity that’s there. Like you said, so many different ways to grow a business. We’re already writers. We know how to catch attention with great headlines. We know how to write hooks. We know how to hold attention as we write an article or a story or whatever that is. having the extra exposure of a Medium audience over a personal blog where you might get a dozen web visits a month or whatever. It just feels like it’s an opportunity that if you’re doing writing anywhere, if you want a place to explore, this is a good place to do it. Really low risk with the potential, certainly no guarantees, but the potential of a decent reward, especially over time.

Thomas Smith: Absolutely. And it’s just very freeing. That was my, you know, the thing that keeps me there beyond the benefits to my business. It’s just that, you know, you write for SEO and it’s, you really, it’s just boring. You don’t know who wants to write a 3,000 word article reviewing, you know, some, some very specific, you know, appliance or something like that.

Rob Marsh: Must include this keyword in the second headline and that keyword in the third headline. Right. All of those kinds of things are.

Thomas Smith: Yeah. You’re writing for a machine and it just gets boring and Medium is, is so freeing because it’s your voice. you can write about whatever you want you can find an audience is gonna be people on their care about it you build community there’s a lot you a lot of feedback you start a lot of great conversations get people engaging with your work and especially if you’re kind of in the space of just writing for clients. Or, you know, you’re writing for SEO and you’re writing for machines all the time. Uh, just, just try it. And I guarantee you’re going to feel so much better about the stuff. It’s going to engage you creatively in a way that that kind of writing, you know, sometimes does, but often it can become just sort of wrote. And I think it’ll be a better writer across your business. If you have that outlet in addition to, you know, sometimes that kind of writing that you just. sit down and write from the heart or your own experience in your own voice, that ultimately actually drives even more interest in the business. So yeah, it’s very freeing. It’s a wonderful experience just to be on that platform as a writer.

Rob Marsh: That makes a lot of sense. So Thomas, I know because of the success that you’ve had and the experience that you’ve got writing Medium, you’ve put a lot of this stuff into a course to help other people do this. Obviously, you’ve given us enough to get started here, but if somebody wants to go even deeper, figure out, you know, exactly step-by-step what they need to be doing to – I guess a great word would be to thrive on Medium, where would they go or what should they be looking for?

Thomas Smith: Yeah, so you can go to thriveonmedium.com. That’s the page that I have all about this. And I share a lot more detail there, you know, totally for free. You can go, you can get on my newsletter too. I send out all kinds of stuff about optimizing headlines, choosing topics, finding the niche that’s going to work for you. you know, case studies, like breaking down exactly how much specific stories stories have earned and that kind of thing on there. And then yeah, if you want to dive even deeper, my course is probably 25 video lessons at this point, talking about everything from getting started getting monetized through to pitching publications, how to get boosted, I have a whole module about that. If you sign up on the website, I have a boost checklist where you can check through and see if your story is boost eligible and tweak things and fix them. I have a getting started checklist again, totally for free. So yeah, head over to thrive on Medium. You can access all those resources. And then if you want that really like sequential walkthrough of everything I’ve learned on the platform, those five different ways to monetize exactly how to do all of that and all those case studies. Um, then that’s the, that’s the course. And again, you can access that on the thrive on Medium site.

Rob Marsh: Yeah, we’ll definitely be looking at that and I’ll link to it in the show notes in case anybody’s driving and they can’t type that in really quickly. One last question about that, the boost program. So there are these boosters who can find content. Is there a list of these people so that we can forge personal connections with them or is it purely by luck they have to discover you?

Thomas Smith: Yeah, so it’s a combination. Um, I would say probably about 80 of the boost nominators have chosen to be public about it. You know, obviously I’m one of them. Medium has a list of all of the boost eligible publications. I linked to it from within the course. I’m sure you can find that the link we can share here too. Um, but you can start there and it has contact info for all of the people as well as what topic their publication covers. And again, it’s everything. Don’t think, oh, I’m, you know, I’m not a Python programmer. I don’t, you know, I don’t do natural language processing. I’m not going to be a fit. There’s boost nominators for every topic you can possibly imagine. Um, there’s also people who are like, you know, the Michelin inspectors of the world who choose to remain anonymous and they will find you, or you may publish in their publication and not even have any idea that they’re the one, you know, nominating your story. Medium also has their own team of boost nominators, very secretive, we don’t know exactly who they are, that go around and look for stories on the platform to boost independently of them being nominated by a subject matter expert. So their own team is out there searching too. And all that’s really just to say, if you write something really great, and it does have to be really great on the platform, it’s likely that that’s ultimately going to be found and boosted. There’s a lot of different ways to get into that program.

Rob Marsh: But this gets my brain going, you know, because I’m writing in so many other places. And especially when we talk about repurposing content, if I’m already writing it in one place, why not have it in Medium just in case? And, you know, with all of the potential that’s there. Uh, it seems like a no brainer in a lot of ways. So I just, I want to thank you for sharing so much about, you know, this, not just the platform, but you know, how to get started and your approach to it. You mentioned the Thrive on Medium course, but if somebody wants to follow you personally or see what you’re up to, maybe on Medium, maybe elsewhere, where else can they find you, Thomas?

Thomas Smith: So I’m on both Medium and X formerly Twitter as @TomSmith585. So you can find me there. You’re also totally welcome to email me directly. It’s Tom at gadoimages.com. Happy to answer questions. Happy to, you know, send along links and send you over to the course. If you, if you can’t find it, um, or to add you to my newsletter, feel free to reach out anytime, just, you know, directly by email.

Rob Marsh: Amazing. And someday we’ll have to have you come back and talk about photography and AI, uh, some of your other expertise, but I appreciate your time, Thomas. Thanks.

Thomas Smith: Thanks so much for having me.

Rob Marsh: Thanks, Thomas, for sharing so much about how he’s been successful on Medium. This isn’t the kind of thing that’s going to bring you money overnight, but Medium could be a long-term play for you to bring money into your business, especially if you like writing about different topics, or you write fiction, or you just want to get your ideas out into the world and not have them get lost in a social media feed. Now, a few weeks ago, we interviewed Gloria Chow on the podcast. That’s episode 413. She talked about PR as a platform for building authority. And Thomas mentioned something very similar about using Medium for this task. 

The one thing that I like about Medium’s potential for this is that they have an engaged audience of readers who are there waiting for great content. They’re not browsing through social media, trying to find something to entertain them, but they’re actually there looking for good content to read. And the audience is so much bigger than you’re ever going to be able to attract on your own blog. And there’s almost certainly more people on Medium looking for your content than people who are going to find you on social media or LinkedIn, where they’re going to see your thoughts before they scroll onto the next thing. Even beyond the potential to earn money, it’s a great place to build authority. And who knows, maybe you’ll get noticed there and be added to an even larger platform. And we heard Thomas talk about that earlier. If after listening to this episode, you try out Medium or maybe you’ve been writing on Medium for a while now, I’d like to hear about your experience. Hit me up at rob@ thecopywriterclub.com and let me know how you fared at Medium and maybe keep an eye out there for some content from me and possibly The Copywriter Club in the future. Who knows? Maybe someday there will be a Medium publication by The Copywriter Club where we can all share and boost each other’s writing. 

Thanks again to Thomas. Be sure to go to all of the places that Thomas mentioned where he can be found. We will link to his course in case you’re interested. Those will be in the show notes. Also to his LinkedIn and various places where you can find him.

Want to write a book? There are plenty of experts who will tell you how. But Allison Fallon has an approach that’s different from all the others—at least, that’s how it felt to be. Allison is the guest for the 418th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast and when you hear what she shares about the process of writing, I think you’ll agree, she does this a little differently—and it might just be the approach that works for you. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.

The Power of Writing it Down by Allison Fallon

Rob Marsh: As a copywriter or a content writer or someone who is thinking about exploring these career paths, you’ve probably toyed with the idea of writing a book. Maybe you’ve got a great story that absolutely has to be told. Or perhaps you’ve heard that a book is the best business card and can open doors with clients who then hire you to write for them. Or maybe you’ve got a screenplay you work on for a few minutes after your client work is done. More likely… you’ve thought about one or more of those things, but haven’t yet put pen to paper, or fingers to keyboard.

I’m always thinking of ideas for books, some of which I have started, others I’ve put away for later. And to help me as I process these ideas, I’ve read several books about writing books… how to do it, what to include, all that stuff. Recently I came across another book about writing books that was very different in its approach. It changed the way I think about writing… books and other things too.

Hi, I’m Rob Marsh, and my guest for today’s episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast is author and book writing coach Allison Fallon. You’ll hear me say it in the interview, but Allison’s book, The Power of Writing It Down, felt more like therapy than another book about putting together your book chapters in a particluar order or writing scenes or character development. After reading it, I wanted to talk with Allison about her approach and what it means, particularly for writers who might be writing to a non-fiction audience. I think you’re going to like this interview.

Before we jump in with Allion…

Last week I mentioned our special free report called How to Find Clients. And I want to share that again because it features more than 20 different things you can do, starting right now, to find your ideal clients. It also shares the 4 mistakes you absolutely can’t afford to make when looking for clients—if you do, you are dead in the water… and it also shows you five things you need to do before you reach out to the people you want to work with IF you want them to say yes. This isn’t some dainty one page PDF you’ll forget about in a day or two… it’s 36 pages jam packed with ideas that either we’ve used in our own businesses or we’ve seen other successful copywriters use to grow theirs.  You can get your free report by going to thecopywiterclub.com/findaclient   that’s all one word. Thecopywriterclub.com/findaclient. Get your free report now.

And with that, let’s go to our interview with Allison…

Allie, welcome to The Copywriter Club Podcast. I would love just to start with your story, and I know you’ve got a really great story, but how did you become an author, speaker, founder of Find Your Voice?

Allison Fallon: Yeah, I have always wanted to be an author for as long as I can remember. I often tell a story about being in fourth grade, and that was the first time that I really realized that I had a teacher who pointed out a skill I had for storytelling. And I just remember feeling like, oh, I can like something and be good at something and be acknowledged for it. And so that kind of started the spark for wanting to tell stories and in a longer format, like writing a book. I just can, through my high school and college career was always very focused on that I would be a published author someday. 

And then, you know, when I was in high school and college, I also had a lot of really well-meaning adults in my life who would say, that’s a great thing that you want to be an author, but you also need a backup plan because writers don’t make any money. And so I, at their advice, got a master’s degree in teaching and started teaching in the public school system in Portland, Oregon, where I’m from, and taught for about three years. My plan was to teach and kind of do the writing thing on the side. I thought like, well, I have summers off, right? Like two months off every summer, which is a misnomer. I mean, for any teachers out there, like you’re saints and you really don’t get – you don’t get that much time off in the summer. You’re curriculum planning. You’re, you know, especially as a new teacher, you’re like setting up your classroom. Like there’s so much to think about and do. And you’re probably working a second job on the side because teachers also don’t get paid very well. 

And so when I realized my plan wasn’t going to work very well, I took this giant leap, which I write about in my first book. My first book is called Packing Light. And I took this big leap out of the teaching profession to do the thing that I had been wanting to do forever, which was to write a book. So I didn’t renew my contract for the following year. And I did kind of like a gimmicky, stunty sort of thing with a friend where we both quit our jobs. We sold all of our physical possessions. We packed our stuff into a Subaru Outback. And we spent almost a year traveling around the United States. We visited, we drove to all 48 states and then in the end flew to Alaska and Hawaii to kind of check those off the list and wrote a book about that called Packing Lights. So that was my first, you know, published, published work. That’s how I became an author. And there’s a lot more that I could say, but I’ll stop there. What questions do you have about that?

Rob Marsh: I mean, first of all, hitting all 50 states is an accomplishment in itself. Now I’ve got to go back and listen to that book, because that sounds fantastic. But I’m curious, because as a writer today, what are some of the specific skills from teaching that translate directly into writing? And part of the reason that I ask this is, our audience is copywriters, content writers. There are actually a ton of people who have been teachers who move into writing for all kinds of reasons. And maybe one of the reasons is because, you know, copywriting selling in a huge way is actually teaching.

Allison Fallon: It is. Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, capturing an audience’s attention, I will say, you know, as challenging as it can be to capture your audience’s attention in a book, or if you’re a copywriter, like in a sales sequence or something, it’s easier than capturing the attention of seventh and eighth graders. So yeah, so I took some of the skills that I learned in that teaching profession, I suppose, and transferred them to writing. Although, I will say since my teaching stint was short, it was just under three years that I was teaching. I think there’s a lot that I’ve learned as a writer that I could also maybe translate back to the classroom if I ever wanted to. 

But the biggest thing that I did, when I published Packing Light, And it hit the market, you know, as an author, a first time author, like you don’t have any idea what to expect. And so I went into it very blind. The book did really well. Like it’s sold, I think it’s sold somewhere around 30,000 copies now at this point. So it did well. It made the publisher happy, you know, it bought out my advance, all of those things that you want it to do. And what was shocking for me is that even though it sold really well and everyone’s like, yay, and I’m getting all these pats on the back, it wasn’t generating an income for me. And so I was like, oh, maybe all these adults were right who told me you can never make money as a writer. So I was like, I’m going to have to pivot and figure out, even though I was living really lean at the time, I was living like in a $500—I think I was paying like $500 a month for like a tiny 500 square foot apartment in the city. And I was literally sleeping on a mattress on the floor. I was living very, very lean. And I can remember going to Trader Joe’s and spending like $30 for the week on my groceries. And still, whatever royalty checks I was getting just weren’t even, you know, they couldn’t support my life. And so I was like, I’m going to have to figure out a way to generate revenue. 

And that was really how I got into coaching and teaching other authors. And that’s where The Power of Writing It Down, the book that you read, that’s where that was born from and where Write Your Story, my most recent book, was born out of that experience because I pivoted to use my curriculum development skills to start teaching other people who also wanted to write books how to do that.

Rob Marsh: So let’s talk about The Power of Writing it Down. Before we started recording, I mentioned that this book is unlike any other book about writing books that I’ve ever read. And I’ve read a bunch of them. There are plenty of books on how to write a business book, how to write fiction, all of that. This felt, in a lot of ways, like therapy to me. And I don’t know if that was intentional, but talk a little bit about that book and why you wrote it.

Allison Fallon: Well, my dad’s a therapist. So I kind of wonder sometimes if the therapy element of the way that I teach writing comes from just growing up in that environment. So that’s, I’ve definitely, you know, like gotten a little bit of that from him. But also, This is born out of my personal experience because the evolution was that I wrote Packing Light. 

It came out. I realized, oh, this is not going to pay my bills. So I’m going to have to figure out another way to generate revenue. So I started coaching and teaching other authors who were either aspiring authors or who had written books before but needed help kind of crafting their outline. Or I was doing some ghostwriting, too. So I was actually writing manuscripts for authors. And one of the things that I realized while I was working with all these different authors is regardless of what you are working on, If you’re working on a business book or a self-help book or a memoir or a fiction novel, whatever you were writing, the writing was having an impact on your personal life. It was like watching someone write a business book and their business suddenly was functioning better or watching someone write a book about relationships and it was forcing them to kind of confront these issues that were happening in their relationships and really getting them to ask deeper questions and have this very transformative experience the act of writing. 

And so I started noticing that this was happening. And it was like a flag for me. Like, I was like, wow, is this just, am I just biased because this is the work that I do? Or is it really true that writing about our life experiences actually has an impact on those life experiences? And while that was happening, I also went through a massive um, like upset in my life. I went through a divorce. It was, I was in business with my now ex-husband. And so our business dissolved. It was a really tragic situation at the time. And I started writing about what was going on in my life. I just started like, it was like, I couldn’t stop myself. I was supposed to be working on this other project and I couldn’t get myself to focus on that project. All I wanted to do was write about what was taking place because it was like this life raft for me. It just felt like, This is the only way that I can try to make sense of the absolutely senseless stuff that’s happening around me. And so that experience, which later turned into my book called Indestructible, a memoir about leaving that marriage, that experience really solidified for me that writing about our lives can be deeply transformational and healing and can totally shift your perspective and change the course of your life for good. I mean, I think of that book, Indestructible, of the four books I’ve published has sold the fewest number of copies. I think it’s sold not quite 10,000 copies. And that book is my, it’s my favorite book. It’s the most important book to me because that book changed my life. 

I really believe if I hadn’t written that book, I wouldn’t be married to my current partner. I wouldn’t have the happy, like really happy family life that I have right now because that book gave me this opportunity to shift my perspective about what was unfolding inside of my life.

Rob Marsh: You actually write a little bit about that in The Power of Writing It Down, how the first draft of that book was not at all what ends up in the last draft of that book, which I found really interesting because, especially when it comes to personal narrative, like the going through it process is very different from the reviewing it process. Will you talk a little bit about that?

Allison Fallon: Yeah. So the first draft of the book, what I share in The Power of Writing It Down is that the first draft of the book, which was just like guttural, it was from, you know, like the raw, the most raw part of me just telling the story exactly as I would tell it to a best friend sitting across the table from me. And when I went to go back and reread what I had written, what I realized is the hero of the story, who’s me, but it’s kind of detached from me because I’m telling it on the page… the hero of the story as I’m reading it, I don’t like her very much. Like this horrible thing has happened to her and she’s been victimized in many different ways. But also like she’s complaining, she’s whining, she can’t see the opportunity that’s been given to her. When you’re watching a movie and you just want to scream at the main character, don’t walk down that hallway. That’s how I felt about her. She just keeps complaining that she lost this dude who was horrible to her. 

Seeing her as the main character in the story, I really wanted her to take life by the horns and file for divorce and just decide that this is the best thing that’s ever happened to her. And so that really informed the way that I wrote the second draft. It shifted my paradigm so completely that I was just like, oh, that’s the kind of hero that I want to be in the story. And I was able to kind of write her into the story as I was becoming her, if that makes sense. I think that’s how writing, how it has that impact on us is that we both become the character we want to be as we put that character on the page. And then sometimes we put the character on the page or we put the words on the page and we think like, okay, that might be true for me today, but I don’t want to be that person in the story anymore. And it gives us a chance to kind of upgrade the story to the next draft.

Rob Marsh: So one of the things that I struggled with as I was listening to and reading this book was the kinds of books that I want to write are definitely not personal narratives. And I started, it’s like, I want to write about a business book, or I’ve got like five different ideas for novels that I’ve sketched out, outlined, whatever. And your book made me stop and think, well, wait a second, you know, maybe I should add in more journaling or more, you know, of my own personal narrative. I wonder, like other people, as you coach them, as you work with them, like, how are they feeling about that same conflict? Because they feel like very different writing styles and processes.

Allison Fallon: Yeah, they are. I teach an online course called A Book in Six Months. And in that course, I teach people to delineate whether they’re writing a story driven book, which would be like either a memoir or a novel. or whether they’re writing a content-driven book, which would be like a business book or a self-help book. And there’s some gray area in between, but I can almost always help them divide their book into one of those two categories because they are different. They operate differently. They follow a different narrative arc. And so you need to know up front which type of book am I writing so that you can organize it in a way that makes sense for the reader. I will say, as far as a novel goes, you said you don’t really think of yourself as wanting to write a memoir, but you do have these ideas for novels. 

There’s a ton of research that shows that novel writing is as impactful to the human psyche as memoir writing is. In fact, Jessica Lowry wrote a book called Rewrite Your Life that’s all about how writing fiction has an impact on our actual lives, that as we write about these characters, that we actually transform and change as people too. And I believe from 10, 12 years of doing this work, that writing content-driven books is the same. You know, you – even if you think you know what you want to say, you don’t really know what you want to say until you put it on the page.

And sometimes you put it on the page and you think like, I thought that’s what I wanted to say but that’s actually not right at all and I need to edit it and upgrade it. And sometimes you put it on the page and you go like, oh my gosh, I didn’t even know I thought that or I believed that. But yes, that’s exactly what I’m trying to say. And it just shows you. It’s like looking in a mirror and this is what I talk about in Write Your Story, which is my most recent book. 

In Write Your Story, I talk about how putting your story on the page is like looking in the mirror and seeing yourself clearly, sometimes for the first time. Sometimes we’ve looked at ourselves like in a foggy mirror or like in the window of the car where you can sort of see your reflection, but not totally. And when you sit down to write whatever it is you’re working on, a business book or a story, you see yourself clearly as if looking in the mirror for the first time. And so sometimes you go like, oh, my eyes are blue. They’re not green. All this time I thought they were green, but they’re blue. And so that self-awareness and ability to adjust and upgrade the paradigms that we bring to our writing and to our life is a big part of why I think writing is so transformative.

Rob Marsh: Yeah, I agree a hundred percent. And I think you make it absolutely clear in the books that you write, like how transformative it really is. Some of the examples you share are really amazing. And a big part of why I wanted to chat with you today, because I just think that even as a writer, you know, like I’m a copywriter. I write every single day. I write emails. I write for clients. But most of that writing isn’t all that introspective. I’m selling things, that kind of thing. And so again, this is where I think your book really shifted a lot of my thinking around, maybe I should start writing down pieces of my life story for my kids to read. And I’ll share this—yy dad wrote down his life story. It’s an amazing book. It’s like four hundred and some odd pages long. And it is one of my favorite books I’ve ever read. I mean, his life story is great. Nobody would look at him and say, you know, it’s anything special. But obviously it’s special to me. But I will say the amount of things that he accomplishes in his life as I’m reading through it, I’m like thinking, wow, I’m a schlub. I haven’t done half of what he’s done. You know, I need to step it up. Yeah. I’m not really sure where I’m going with that comment. But, you know, again, just this introspective angle that you bring to, you know, what we should be doing as writers and the transformative power of that. I just it has my brain spinning in a lot of ways.

Allison Fallon: And, you know, to answer your last question more pointedly, I would say I am a big believer that what fuels your creativity is your story. It’s your personal experience. It’s your unique vantage point. It’s your, your, your 100% unique perspective. Like our perspective is as unique as our fingerprint, you know, no other person on the face of planet earth who has ever walked here or will ever live here in the future can have the exact same set of circumstances that you’ve had in your life. And so because of that, you bring this unique viewpoint to the world. And if we want to fuel our creativity, however, we’re, we’re, you know, using that creativity, if it’s toward copywriting, or a business book, or something altogether different, like, you know, maybe you’re not even a writer, you’re doing something different. 

But fueling that creativity comes from understanding our stories. I really believe that. And so even when I’m working with someone on a business book, a lot of times, we’ll have this cool moment where we’re like mapping out the book together. And they’ll be telling me this story about something that happened to them when they were four years old or six years old or something. And it’s like, oh, that’s why you do what you do. Now it makes so much sense. That experience that you had made such an impression in your physicality that it is fueling you. And sometimes we discover those things and we go like, oh, maybe I should heal that wound because it’s fueling me in a way that I don’t really want to go. 

Or sometimes we go like, oh, no, that just makes everything click because it makes sense why I would care so much about this cause or be working on this other thing. And so I think, you know, touching, touching into like your personal story and even what you mentioned about reading your dad’s story, when we start to understand how we’re connected to the greater, you know, family tree, the tree of life, that also helps us understand our place in the world. You know, like I mentioned a minute ago, my dad’s a therapist. It’s like, well, no wonder I’m so fascinated about people’s internal environments and what makes them tick because I grew up, you know, like I can remember being in fifth and sixth grade pulling books off of my dad’s bookshelf that were like on intimacy and marriage. And I should not have been reading those books, but I was always really fascinated by it. So I mean, some of that’s probably genetics and some of it’s been passed down through example, but understanding that connection that I have to, to my relatives can help me understand my place in the world.

Rob Marsh: So let’s say that I’m ready to write a book, right? I’ve had the book project in the back of my head for a long time. I know this is very common for people who come to you for help. How do we get started? Where do we need to be in order to start mapping out what does a book look like and what is the story I want to tell?

Allison Fallon: Yeah. A couple of things that I teach right off the bat is the first one is the controlling idea of the book. So we really need to understand what is this book actually about. And this will surprise a lot of people who have not written a book before, but a book can only be about one thing. Seems crazy that it can only be about one thing because it’s, you know, 50, 60, 70, 80,000 words. And that’s a lot of ground to cover on one topic, but it really can only be about one topic. If it’s about more than one topic, it’s not really a book, it’s a collection of essays or – I mean, you could pull a collection of essays together into a book and it still would need to have some sort of controlling idea that holds the whole thing together. So it’s not like – I think a lot of people have this mistaken idea, and this was true of me before I ever wrote a book, where like if I just write enough blog posts, I can kind of print them off and put them together and that’ll be considered a book. It’s not about getting to word count really. It’s about really understanding what’s the one thing that I’m writing about. 

And so helping people define that from the very beginning of the process is super important to helping them craft the outline and then helping them complete the manuscript. And what I teach people to do, this is unique to what other writing coaches do, but I teach people to write their book to what I call one perfect reader. So sometimes in publishing spaces, you’ll hear people talk about demographics, like, what are the demographics for this book? What’s the target market that we’re trying to hit? And I just find that in the writing phase of things, in the marketing phase of things, it helps to talk about demographics. In the writing phase of things, here’s why it doesn’t help to talk about demographics. Because if I put you on a stage in front of 1,000 people who were all of a similar demographic and told you to tell your story and put a spotlight on you so you can’t see anyone’s face and the whole audience, you’re gonna have a hard time knowing where to start, knowing what details to include, knowing how, you know, what is the narrative arc that I should follow? Versus if I put you across the table from your brother, or from your neighbor, or from your best friend, or from your grandmother, and say, now tell your story. 

And it’s one person who you’re looking at, and it’s someone whose face you know, and whose name you know, and who you recognize, like you understand how this person operates and you know them very well, you’re going to have a much easier time telling the story. And I just find working with authors that when I can help them write their book to that one perfect person, who maybe is representative of a target market, but when we write the book to one perfect person, it’s just much easier to actually execute the manuscript.

Rob Marsh: So to make this really understandable, can we talk through just a couple of examples of the controlling idea So for instance, your first book, which is Packing Light about traveling around the country. I mean, obviously the controlling idea isn’t just travel or travel with a best friend. How would you describe that idea?

Allison Fallon: The structure for the controlling idea that I teach is this story is about, or this book is about, and it’s a little different for a story-driven book versus content-driven, but a quick controlling idea for Packing Light, which I didn’t, I wrote Packing Light with no controlling idea.

Rob Marsh: Right. So this maybe came before you figured this stuff out.

Allison Fallon: Yeah. But it would be something like this story is about a young woman who is dissatisfied with her life, who decides to quit everything and go on an epic adventure to see if she can find herself.

Rob Marsh: Okay.

Allison Fallon: Then if you wanted to add to it, you could say what she discovers is that life is – I don’t know. Let’s see. The resolution of the story usually comes at the end of the controlling idea. What she discovers is that life is much more complicated and beautiful than she ever imagined. So it’s really, I mean, Packing Light‘s really a coming of age story. And then Indestructible would be the stories about a woman who leaves an abusive marriage, you know, dissolves her entire life only to discover that she’s stronger than she ever imagined.

Rob Marsh: And then a book, like your latest book, right? Your story, how would you define that controlling idea?

Allison Fallon: Yeah. So this story, I mean, I have a controlling idea for it somewhere. I would say this book is for, usually with content-driven books, you say this book is for. Okay. This book is for, oh, you’re putting me on the spot here. This book is for anyone who believes that there’s more to life than meets the eye and is willing to follow a trusted path to uncover the depth and beauty of their story.

Rob Marsh: OK. I love that. Yeah. Yeah. And so again, when I think about the books that I want to write, which are probably more content books or more business type, like let me show you how to do this thing. That controlling idea is going to be related to both the person who’s reading it, but also the thing that I am teaching.

Allison Fallon: Yes. So the controlling idea is built around the problem, the one big problem that your reader is facing, the path out of that problem and the resolution. So yeah, if you’re writing a business book, it’s like this book is for any small business owner who’s stuck at under a million dollars and wants a trusted process to triple their revenue or quadruple their revenue or whatever it is.

Rob Marsh: Which is actually a pretty familiar formula to a lot of copywriters because it’s basically a sales page. You’re talking about, here’s your problem, here’s the solution, the way you solve it, and here’s the result.

Allison Fallon: Yeah. And I mean, the skill of copywriting is such an amazing skill to bring to book writing. I really like how I was trained as a writer and my natural bent with writing came more from poetry and essay writing and storytelling. And I think, especially in my early years as a writer, I leaned more on the beauty of the prose than actually making a point in the story. And so that was a weakness for me as a writer, that I had to learn along the way. I had to learn how to be like, well, what’s the takeaway for the reader? What’s the point that we’re making here? What’s the moral of the story? Because the story has to be pointed somewhere or people lose attention, no matter how beautiful the prose is. 

Now, on the flip side of that, if you’re a copywriter, if you’re trained as a copywriter and that’s your skill set, you almost have an advantage to me because you come at this understanding the structure of how a chapter should be put together, of how to keep, you know, capture and keep human attention. And when you understand that, anybody can go back through and make the prose sound more beautiful or add more stories to make it, you know, flow a little nicer or make it more interesting or whatever. But understanding the structure is, in my opinion, really the hardest part. 

And so I teach this to a lot of writers because a lot of writers come to the process of writing a book and they think, oh, I could never write a book because, you know, I don’t have a degree from a fancy university or I don’t, you know, I’ve never been published before or I’m really not that great of a writer. I’m not good with grammar. I’m not good with spelling, whatever. And I think that’s actually a huge misnomer, that if you understand the structure of how to capture and keep human attention, and you know how to put a chapter together, that’s really all you need to know to write a book. And everything else along the way, in my opinion, can be learned. I mean, even the structure can be learned. I teach a lot of that in my courses, too. But it’s the first thing that has to be learned.

Rob Marsh: OK. Yeah. And that makes a lot of sense. So let’s say I have a controlling idea. I know who my perfect reader is. What comes next?

Allison Fallon: So the next thing I would do in my courses is put together a robust outline. Okay. And that’s a really involved process. I use three by five note cards with my clients when we put together outlines for books. And we do that by writing a paradigm shift for each chapter, the controlling idea for each chapter, a paradigm shift, what stories we’re going to tell in the chapter, what the takeaway for the reader is. And I have a formula that I follow that we put that all together. So once you have the outline written, the writing of the manuscript actually becomes quite easy. I share this story in Write Your Story, but when I first wrote Packing Light, I wrote the draft to that book and threw it away probably three times. Well, maybe two. So wrote it, threw it away, wrote it, threw it away. And the third time I wrote it was the draft that actually went to the publisher. A big reason for that is I didn’t know where I was going with the book. I just knew I liked writing. I had a story I wanted to tell. I was like, I knew these interesting things were happening to me, but I didn’t really understand what the point of the book was. And so understanding what the point of the book is, is a major obstacle to overcome.

Rob Marsh: Yeah. That’s the whole reason to do the outline is the point of each chapter of the point of the entire book. Exactly. You put it together. And then like you said, once that’s done, the writing part should be easy. Do you have tips or tricks for the actual, okay, I got to put my butt in the chair and I got to crank out, you know, a thousand words today or 4,000 words or whatever it is.

Allison Fallon: Yes, my first tip is to implement your writing time into your schedule long before you are on a deadline. So essentially, to have times of day and times of week that are dedicated to your creative writing or to this project. So if you have times of day that you’re writing for copywriting or writing for your job or whatever, that’s not the same as writing for your book project. So I tell people to keep this really achievable. So don’t say to yourself, I’m going to get up every morning at five o’clock in the morning. I’m going to write for three hours before I go to work because you’ll think you’re going to do that. And maybe you do it for one week or if you’re really disciplined, you do it for two. But then you start to falter and fall behind that insane expectation for yourself. 

And then people get in this cycle with themselves in book writing where they’re just like, I’m not disciplined enough for that. I tried to do that once. And, you know, I told everyone I was going to write a book and I was a complete failure. Instead, say to yourself, OK, what can I realistically do inside of the life that I’m currently leading? Could I realistically write one or two days a week? Could I realistically write for an hour at a time? Maybe I do set my alarm earlier one morning and get up at 6 and write for an hour before I get my day started. Or maybe I choose one day a week. Maybe it’s a Saturday and I write for three hours at a coffee shop while my spouse handles the kids or whatever. Build that writing time into your schedule now. Before you’re on a deadline, you’ll be much more likely to succeed when the time comes to actually complete the manuscript.

Rob Marsh: Yeah, to me that feels like one of the biggest challenges because like you said, life happens, all of those good intentions, you know, I’m going to be writing it and suddenly you’re so far behind and maybe even it’s worse if you don’t have that deadline with a publisher, if it’s just your own personal project because it’s so easy to let ourselves off the hook for doing that.

Allison Fallon: Yeah, I teach my writers to put it on their calendar. Like whatever system you use for calendaring, I use iCal, so I’ll put my writing time in my calendar. And if my writing time is in my calendar from 7 to 8 o’clock, then that’s what I’m doing during that time. And I teach my writers to treat that time just like you would any other appointment in your calendar. So you know, you and I had this scheduled, I don’t know, four weeks ago, five weeks ago, something like that. And unless I’m sick, or my child is sick, or there’s some other kind of emergency, there’s no way that I’m gonna text you or email you and say, I’m so sorry, I’m not gonna be able to make it to the interview today. I just didn’t feel like it. Just I slipped in instead. You know, So treating our writing time just like we would any other appointment in our calendar, where of course there are times when you cancel it. If your family member passes away, you cancel it. If you have an emergency work trip, you might cancel it. If your kid is sick, you might cancel it. But otherwise, you show up, and you show up for yourself. And I also teach people, because people will say, well, I’m feeling really stuck in my writing, so I just didn’t do my writing time today. And one of the things I teach people to do is if you feel like you genuinely can’t make progress in your writing, you do something that feeds and nourishes the writing. So maybe that’s a walk. Your 7 to 8 AM is scheduled, and that’s your writing time, and you honor it. Maybe you don’t feel like you can get any writing done, but maybe you just go for a walk. Or maybe you go for a drive. That’s something that my husband will always do when he’s feeling stuck on something. I like to go to a yoga class, something that kind of clears my head. Maybe you sit at your computer and just have the discipline of sitting there even though you don’t get any words on the page. I’ve had it happen before where I think I’m stuck on a writing project and so I just force myself to sit at the computer even if it’s for 30 minutes. And at 28 minutes into my 30 minutes, I have an idea and I write for 45 minutes and make some progress. So, you know, any little thing that you can do that feeds or nourishes the writing is considered, you know, part of that writing time.

Rob Marsh: I don’t know if this is an apocryphal story or not. I think it was told about Alexander Dumas, who when he would sit down to write, I think he would take off all of his clothes and leave them outside of his office so that he couldn’t leave the room because he’s naked. Like I said, I’m not sure if it’s a true story or not, and I’m not sure that I would recommend that to anybody either as a writing practice. But if that’s what it takes to get you to sit down and actually do the thing, maybe there’s some value in… I love just… If you have to sit and look at a blank page for 30 minutes, then that’s what you’ve done. I just think that’s a great practice.

Allison Fallon: And just keep in mind, this is one of the things that I’ve really come to recognize over the years of working with hundreds or even thousands of people. is everybody processes really differently. And so when I first started doing this, and I was young in my late 20s, I, I was a very disciplined person. I would have classified myself that way. I didn’t have any children. I wasn’t married at the time. And so my way of processing information and my way of you know, executing on a writing project was very specific. And I taught other people as if everyone else should sort of like fit into this little box. 

And one of the things I’ve learned with just working with so many different people is everybody’s different. Everybody’s life circumstances are different. And we have to find a way to make writing fit inside of the circumstances that we’re actually experiencing. So I’m not saying that it never makes sense to change your life circumstances. But, you know, like, for example, I have kids now. I have two little kids who wake up super early in the morning. And I don’t set an alarm clock because they wake me up. I mean, sometime like between 5.30 and 6.30 is when they wake up. And I used to do my writing time first thing in the morning. I was like, I was very disciplined about it. I would get up, I wouldn’t touch my phone, wouldn’t touch my computer, wouldn’t talk to anybody until my writing was done. I’d make myself a cup of coffee, I’d sit down, I’d write for two hours, and that was what I did every morning. And now that’s just not accessible to me. 

So instead of being like, well, I guess I’m not a writer anymore, I can just decide like, oh, what works for me is to drop them off. I drop them off at 8.45. I come home and I’ve got, you know, some time from 9 to noon where I can get some writing done. So you have to figure – and another example of this is I used to book a cabin somewhere or, you know, like I’d go to the beach or I’d go to the woods for a couple of days to get a writing project done. 

That’s how I wrote Indestructible. I booked a little condo at the beach for 10 days. and wrote almost the whole manuscript while I was at the beach. And I used to really like proselytize that, like, this is the way to do it. It’s the way to get your writing done. And now I’m like, as a mother, I’m like, I could not disappear for 10 days. Like, what would my family do for 10 whole days? I mean, they would survive physically, but I think it would be a big strain on the family. And for me, you know, it just wouldn’t work for me to – I don’t want to be gone for that long from my kids right now. So it doesn’t have to happen that way is my point. It can happen a lot of different ways. And I want people to hear that and know that whatever life circumstances you have, and however you process information, some people process information better when they’re not sitting at the computer. Maybe you’re walking around your backyard and you’re voice to texting, and that’s how you write a chapter. That’s fine. There’s no one right way to do this.

Rob Marsh: Do you think that everybody has a book? I believe everyone has a book in them.

Allison Fallon: I’ve been strongly refuted on that by other podcasts and stuff that I’ve been on, but I believe everybody has a book in them.

Rob Marsh: Let’s talk about that. Why? I don’t have a strong feeling one way or the other. I feel like I’ve got 30 books in me that would love to come out if I will let them, but I can imagine that there are people who think that they don’t have anything to say.

Allison Fallon: Everybody has something to say. Everybody’s fascinating. I mean, it all has to do with the way that you look at the life that you’ve led. And sometimes people will come to me and say like, you know, everyone tells me that I’m supposed to write a book. Some people just have details to their story that are just extra fascinating. It’s like they’ve been through, you know, so many different wild things and so many synchronicities have happened to them. Some people just have life stories that are like that. Some people have life stories that are a little more vanilla. But it’s a matter of how you look at it and how you structure the story, what you focus your attention on. 

Think about when you’re putting a book together, you get to choose as the author what details you want to include and which ones you want to leave out. And so you get to decide what the reader is going to pay attention to. And I think that there’s something to be gained for each of us in taking a look at our life setting, like, you know, what have I experienced in my life? What have I been through? What’s happened to me? What have I accomplished? And really thinking through, like, what would I want to put someone’s attention on? What do I want to be remembered for? What parts of my life do I want to remember? What parts of my life are most important? And not everybody’s going to want to do that. 

And again, as I’ve matured, I feel like I’ve moved away from convincing people who say they don’t want to write. I don’t feel that I need to convince them that they do. But if someone comes to me and says, listen, I’ve always wanted to write a book, but I’m not sure I have anything interesting to say, I’m like, try me. Let’s talk about your life. I promise you, I will find something interesting. And people inevitably, it’s like human nature, people bury the lead to their own stories. They’ll tell you the 10 most mundane details of their life first. And then you’ve been talking with them for an hour and they finally drop the one nugget that you’re like, wait, what? An hour to tell me that part of the story. That’s definitely the most interesting part. So we just have a way of burying the lead or not seeing what’s most interesting about us. And I think that’s the thing that, you know, if we’re all given like a gift, a thing that we’re good at, you know, in this lifetime, I think my gift is being able to see what’s most interesting about people. and really believing everybody is interesting and being able to find that nugget.

Rob Marsh: I think from the standpoint of the person who may be thinking or who isn’t able to say that most interesting thing early on, it feels to me like fear is a really big here where sharing something, even if it’s an amazing thing, amazing accomplishment or experience or whatever, fear holds us back in so many ways.

Allison Fallon: 100%. Yeah, I mean, people are scared. What’s wild is like the thing, I believe the thing we want most, the thing we’re most hungry for as human beings is connection. And connection comes through vulnerability. So it comes through me showing you the truth of who I am. And also showing you the truth of who I am is the most terrifying thing I could ever do. Because it’s like handing you the weapon to say, here’s the most tender part of me, if you really wanted to hurt me, you could now because I’ve shown this to you. And so I think we’re terrified of that. And also, it is the window to being connected to others. And I think that’s a lot of what I’m teaching people when we’re working together on a book. Not every person I work with finishes their book. And sometimes people will get really hard on themselves like, you know, I put all this money and time and effort into this and I I did never publish the book. And it’s like, well, did you transform? Did you change as a person? Oh, yeah. I’m a much better leader. I’m a much better dad. I’m a much better person because I wrote that book. Well, then, you know, it wasn’t a wasted investment just because it didn’t hit the New York Times list.

Rob Marsh: Yeah, that’s a whole other reframe, I think, when it comes to, you know, if you’ve read a book, you kind of want to see it on the shelf at Barnes & Noble, which, again, is terrifying, but also exhilarating, right? So we’ve talked a lot about the stuff that we should be doing or should be thinking about if we want to write a book. What are the things, the big mistakes that we make as we approach these kinds of projects that hold us back or keep us from succeeding?

Allison Fallon: Okay. Well, the biggest mistake, I talked about this briefly earlier, but the biggest mistake that I think a lot of authors make is not understanding if they’re writing a story-driven or content-driven book. And like I said, there is this kind of weird gray area in the middle where it’s harder. Like there are some books that are very obviously story-driven books. Any memoir, any fiction book is obviously a story-driven book. Yeah. Harry Potter, story-driven. Wild by Cheryl Strayed, story-driven. Then there’s books that are obviously content-driven, like any, you know, leadership book, textbook, business book. If you go into the business section, every book that you pull off the shelf there is going to be content-driven. Then there are these, middle ground kind of books, like a collection of essays, I would make a strong argument that a collection of essays is usually content driven. Even though the essays are stories, the collection is making a statement about a topic, which is content driven. Another example would be like, Glennon Doyle, her book, Untamed, is one that a lot of people mentioned when they’re talking about a story driven book, and I would argue that book is content driven. Even though it’s, I don’t know, 100 chapters of various little short and longer stories from her life, it is a book that teaches the reader, you’re tamed, you shouldn’t be tamed, you should be untamed, and here’s how to become untamed. So I would argue that that’s a content-driven book. And making the decision about which category your book falls into is the first choice you really have to make in order to know how to structure the book.

Rob Marsh: Donald Miller’s A Million Miles in a Thousand Years. I don’t know if you’ve ever read that book, but that sort of feels like a story-driven content book as well. In fact, it’s got to be one of my favorite books that I’ve read and shared.

Allison Fallon: It’s definitely a content-driven book, yeah, but it’s through the lens of storytelling.

Rob Marsh: Yeah. Yeah. Okay. That’s good to know. Any other mistakes?

Allison Fallon: People make the mistake of not writing the book that they want to write. So people write the book that they think the market is asking for, Which, you know, I, I’m hard pressed to call it a mistake because there’s some value to writing the book the market is asking for. In some ways it can get you in the doors of publishing so that it opens doors for you to write, you know, whatever you want to write. So in some ways there’s value to that. You can, you know, write the book that the market is asking for. It opens doors for you in publishing. You can get a publishing deal. You can get, you know, the book in bookstores and that may open the door for you to write the book that you want to write later down the road. But I just find that authors will have a lot of regret about wanting to write one book and a publisher, you know, they have some connection with a publisher that wants them to write some different book. So they end up writing that different book instead. And then this book that they wanted to write just never really gets legs or gets off the ground. And I’m of the belief that when a book idea comes to you, it’s like the Elizabeth Gilbert Big Magic idea that like, it’s going to visit you. And if you don’t take it, it’s going to take off and visit somebody else. And so, you know, you may not get another chance to come back around to that book. I don’t, I don’t know. And I’ve worked with a lot of people who have some regret about wishing that they would have written the one book that they wanted to write instead of the one that the market was asking for.

Rob Marsh: Yeah, that feels like a really easy thing to do too. I mean, even if you don’t even plan on publishing or you’re only sharing it with your family or friends or whatever, writing to please them instead of the story that you want to tell feels really big. Well, I mentioned that I had read your book, The Power of Writing It Down, but you’ve got this new book, Write Your Story. Tell us about that book, what it’s about. I mean, it’s already on my list of things to read, so you don’t have to convince me, but I’m curious what else is in it and how you describe it.

Allison Fallon: Well, I wrote Write Your Story because I was teaching these workshops with Donald Miller. He and I together were teaching these workshops called the Write Your Story Workshops. And we started doing these workshops because we were meeting a lot of people who felt they had a story that they wanted to tell and they weren’t sure where to start. And some of these people had aspirations to publish a book, but not all of them. Sometimes people were just like, listen, one of the women was like, I adopted my two daughters. They’re twins. And she’s like, I want them to know their story. I want them to know where they came from. what was going on in their mom’s life that made them, you know, their adoptive mom’s life that made her want to bring them into her world. I want them to understand their biological mom and where they came from and all these different elements. She’s like, I could never tell this story publicly, but I really want this story to be passed down to my daughters. And you’d be shocked how many times I hear that from people who say, I could never publish this story, but I really want to share this story with my family and friends.

And so Don and I just started feeling like there was this need, this hunger from people who wanted to share their stories and just wanted to know, like, how would I structure this? Where would I start? What’s most interesting about this? So we started teaching these workshops and, you know, like 50 people at a time would come and tell their stories. And it was so inspiring to watch these people take stories from their lives and put them on paper, even if they had no plans to publish. And so I wanted to take the concepts that we were teaching in that workshop and put them in the book. So that’s what the book is. It teaches you a structure that literally anybody can use to take a story from your life and put it on the page. And it works if you’re wanting to write a book to publish, and it also works if you’re just wanting to tell a story to pass on to your grandkids.

Rob Marsh: I love that. Like I said, it’s on my list, and hopefully a few other people will add it to their list as well. If somebody wants to follow you, learn more about your processes for writing, maybe even engage you for some of your coaching services, Allie, where should they go?

Allison Fallon: The platform where I’m most active is Instagram. So my handle is at AllieFanelon on Instagram, A-L-L-Y-F-A-L-L-O-N. And I will post about all the different products and services that I have. to offer there and any new workshops I’m doing or where to get the book, all of that should all be on Instagram as well.

Rob Marsh: Amazing. And I mean, people can find your other books at the library, at the bookstore, wherever books are found. Yeah, it’s like I said, The Power of Writing it Down was a real paradigm shift for me as far as writing goes. And it just made me think about writing, the process of writing, the benefits of writing differently. And as soon as I saw that, I’m like, yeah, I want to chat with you on the podcast because I think it could be the same for a lot of other, those of us who do marketing writing all the time, but maybe there’s some other story to be told.

Allison Fallon: So thank you. Thank you so much for having me.

Rob Marsh: I appreciate it. I want to thank Allison for sharing her process for writing and thinking about putting a great book together. If you like what she shared, you should definitely pick up her book, The Power of Writing It Down or her newest book, Write Your Story. I still haven’t read Write Your Story, but it’s on my list and I’m looking forward to that one. We also talked a little bit about Indestructible and Packing Light, a couple of her other books, which you might be interested in reading as well. I will link to those in the show notes, so you can check them out if you want to. 

What Allison shared about using writing as a tool for personal discovery, even for business books and other nonfiction, is, I think, unique. Sharing what you know, whether in a book or some other platform, isn’t just about landing a client or selling a product. Rather, it’s often about something deeper and you can’t discover that until you start writing. And it’s got me toying once again with the book or the books that I keep telling myself that I am going to finish. You should definitely look Alison up online. She’s at alisonfallon.com and you can find all of her books at Amazon and other bookstores. I’ve linked to a few of them in the show notes of this episode to get you started. 

In the 417th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, I spoke with case study copywriter Dana Owens… and of course we talked in depth about writing case studies. But as we talked, Dana shared her connection secret for getting plenty of leads for the work she wants to do. It’s a great idea that any copywriter can borrow and use to grow their own business. But to get it, you’re going to have to listen. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.

Dana’s Tools for Case Study Writers

Rob Marsh: One of the client finding ideas I like to talk about is making connections with other service providers. Instead of thinking of other copywriters as the competition, think of them as business associates who can support you in all kinds of ways including by sharing leads. I’ve mentioned more than once that copywriters have shared leads with me that have resulted in more than six figures worth of business over the years.

With results like that, of course you should connect with other copywriters and content writers. But there may be an even better group to connect with when it comes to getting clients. It’s just one of the things we cover on this episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast.

Hi, I’m Rob Marsh, and my guest for this episode is case study copywriter Dana Owens. We covered a lot of ground in this interview including how Dana kind of stumbled on this perfect partner for leads in her busines. If you write case studies it’s a connection idea you can steal and use today. But if you write any other kind of copy, you can use this idea as well, you’ll just have to figure out who your perfect connection partner is. So stick around to hear more about it.

Before we jump in with Dana…

It’s been a little while since I’ve mentioned our special report called How to Find Clients that features more than 20 different things you can do, starting right now, to find your ideal clients. It also shares the 4 mistakes you absolutely can’t afford to make when looking for clients—if you do, you are dead in the water… and it also shows you five things you need to do before you reach out to the people you want to work with IF you want them to say yes. This isn’t some dainty one page PDF you’ll forget about in a day or two… it’s 36 pages jam packed with ideas that either we’ve used in our own businesses or we’ve seen other successful copywriters use to grow theirs.  You can get your free report by going to thecopywiterclub.com/findaclient   that’s all one word. Get your free report now.

And with that, let’s go to our interview with Dana…

Hey Dana, it is so great to see you. Welcome to The Copywriter Club Podcast. You know how this goes because you’ve been part of The Copywriter Club world for a long time, but let’s start with your story. How did you become a copywriter?

Dana Owens: Well, first of all, I’m so excited to be here. I actually learned that copywriting was a real thing from the Copywriter Club podcast. Seven years ago, I remember taking a road trip with my husband. And that was like back in the day where I had to connect his iPad to the car through a USB cord. And I had like 10 episodes of The Copywriter Club Podcast downloaded. And throughout the road trip, we listened to the episodes. And that’s when I realized copywriting could be like a real career and a real business. And that’s when he also learned it. So the fact that I’m talking to you today is just like, I don’t know, a funny, funny, full circle moment.

Rob Marsh: So that’s amazing.

Dana Owens: Yeah. But I started, um, I got involved in copywriting. Like I wish I would have started so much earlier than I did, but I graduated with a journalism degree and became a journalist for one year. Um, I went to work for a local, I’m from Michigan. So it was like a local small town paper and was the police reporter into the police beat. I was so naive. I mean, I had my trusty journalism degree, but had no idea what I was doing. And it was kind of a bust that first year there. I have a lot of funny stories, but I realized I did not like journalism because basically, especially as a police reporter, all I was doing was reporting on bad news. And so I’m an optimist. I wanted to report on only good news. And I was like, Dana, you are so naive. Like, how are you ever going to get a job just reporting on good news? But what I learned through that job is that I loved interviewing people. So I took that. And then I actually went, I moved to Chicago and I started to work as a creative writer for an advertising company, just a little teeny advertising company. And, um, that’s where I kind of started to figure out that copywriting was actually a thing. Although it took me another, I mean, so several years to actually start to, um, start doing copywriting formally. and start to really turn my attention directly onto writing for sales and marketing. So I got my start indirectly through an entrance through journalism and advertising. But it was really when I had had my kids and was like, I’m looking for just a little something to do on the side that I was contacted by an old boss of mine who really was the one that pulled me into copywriting. And that was, gosh, 10 years ago. It’s only grown and grown and grown since there.

Rob Marsh: So what kind of work were you doing in the agency, in the small ad company that you were working for as a writer? What were you writing?

Dana Owens: I was primarily, this sounds so boring now, but I was primarily writing like website copy, but really product descriptions for, they were a professional photography company. And so every single thing that I was writing about had to do with some type of professional photography equipment. And that was, again, just so not for me. I’m super creative, and I want to be exploring big ideas and positioning things in a picture-particular way. And it was definitely not a position that I was going to be able to stick with long term, but it really did set the foundation for the work that I do today. But that was it. There was no way I was going to be a pro at professional photography equipment, but I started learning about the sales and marketing world in that way. So it was beneficial.

Rob Marsh: Yeah. Especially when we talk about high-end equipment, you know, that you have in the, the, you know, the world of photography, like everything looks the same. Obviously it’s not the same. And so being able to sell one product over another does become a, I mean, that’s a skill and being able to identify how they’re different and who they’re for, I think could be incredibly useful.

Dana Owens: Well, it, it, that is a really good point. And also it was so highly technical because the people that the audience that I was writing for, they understood the differences between the brands of all of these different lenses and all of these different light boxes. And they understood the outputs and all of this technical stuff. And so I really had to learn it myself and it was so boring to me at the time, but what it has really translated for me. in, you know, when I started in the areas of copywriting that I was really interested in was how to take technical information or complex information or even jargon from that that was well known, you know, in one industry and how to make it more palatable and understandable to different audiences. So now that you’ve brought me back to those days, like it’s it the connection is very clear that, you know, Having to specialize in an industry like I did for that amount of time, I think it was like four years I worked in that job, it really did start to build that skill of being able to communicate things, communicate complicated ideas and technical ideas in a way that people liked to consume it. So that was helpful.

Rob Marsh: Yeah, I had a similar experience early on in my career. I worked for a day planner company, imagine writing about day planners for four years. It’s like, OK, well, this year’s edition of the day planner is blue as opposed to black, or this edition of the day planner has quotes. And yet it’s that repetition actually polishes your ability to connect with an audience and figure out what it is that they need to know about in order to buy. So, yeah, those It feels boring. It feels repetitive, but it also develops a really important skill set for copywriters.

Dana Owens: It totally does. And I think, you know, I was like new out of college. Rright out of college, I had gone and I worked at the newspaper and on the police beat for a year. And then I moved from Michigan to Chicago. And then I had for four years, this job writing about professional photography equipment. And like, I think those intro jobs, those getting started and like, figuring things out on your own. I mean, sometimes you’re like, Oh my gosh, I can’t wait to get out of this job. But I haven’t had, I look back on those experiences as absolutely critical, like building blocks for what I’ve been able to create today. And so, you know, earlier on in my career, I’d look back and be like, Oh gosh, I hated that job. But now I look back and I’m like, I’m really thankful for that job because it was tough to get through. And I didn’t want to go in there most days, but there was a purpose to it. So it was all good, you know?

Rob Marsh: Yeah, it’s a good place to learn the basics. So you started kind of your side gig when you had your kids and an old boss reached out to you. Like, talk a little bit about that process, because again, this is, I mean, you know this from experience. This is one of those things where copywriters have a difficult time figuring out where do I get clients for my side gig? How do I create these relationships that turn into work? So yeah, how did that work for you?

Dana Owens: Well, it’s kind of funny. We talked about my job writing about professional photography equipment, my boss at that job, he was like in charge of our entire marketing arm of the business. And so, you know, he had been my boss for four years. I had actually, after I left that job, I did a total career change and went into elementary education of all things. It was a seventh grade teacher and a second grade teacher. for many years. And that, again, like you would think, what does that have to do with copywriting? But it actually, again, taught me how to take complicated ideas and topics that they were complicated to a seventh grader or complicated to a second grader, and really figure out how to talk about it in a way that they could understand, cut through all the noise and go right for the main message. So I did that. And then I had by that point, I’d had two kids, I was a stay at home mom for a while and just kind of figuring out like, what do I do? I want to be home with my kids for as much as I can. And the boss that I had from that professional photography writing job, he reached out to me. He sent me a Facebook message and he’s like, Hey, I know, you know, we haven’t talked in like years and I am no longer with this company that we worked together at, but I have my own, he’s a designer. He had his own design and branding company. And so he was looking for a part-time copywriter to help him out. Just at that time, it was like. Little teeny projects. Like I’ve got like one or two little projects a month and you know, I, I hear that you’re, you know, you’re got two kids, maybe you’d have time to do this on the side. And at that time, I really was one looking for ways to just to start working again. But also I missed writing so much after spending some time in education. And so it was like, how can I say no to this? Like, this is super easy, no problem. And so That’s how it started. It was just this little invitation. And really, when I got the message in my Facebook inbox, I just remember reading it and being like, oh, this just feels kind of meant to be. This is perfect for me. I want a way to get back into writing. Here it is, an old connection of mine. I’m not starting from scratch with someone I barely know. I don’t have to go out there and get my own work. This guy is literally just dropping it in my lap, these small things. And so it started for the first six months, it really was like these one or two little teeny projects that I could do around my kids. And then he took on a much bigger client. It was a coaching company who at that time specifically did leadership and development for middle managers, which was at that time kind of a niche of theirs. And so he took on this client and all of a sudden there was like tons of writing work just for them. So he kept coming back to me like, hey, I got a little bit more for you. Hey, I got a little bit more. I got a little bit more. And all of a sudden, my two little projects a month went to very steadily like quarter time work. And I mean, it wasn’t like maybe a year after that. I was working like part time for him just on this one client. but doing all types of different work. I was starting to do all of their marketing collateral, starting to do, like they were doing curriculum design and I was writing some of that and all kinds of, all kinds of stuff. And then I remember at one point I started to, um, they already had case studies in place, but I was working to kind of beef up their case studies. And it was through that client in that. intro to copywriting thing. And with them, I worked maybe for three years. But that was the first time I realized I put the pieces together about what a case study was and like why companies needed them and why this coaching company in particular desperately needed them. And so that was like the seed that kind of turned into the passion that I have now, but also like just me launching off and going. I was still working for him. And with this coaching company, but I started to take on my own clients on the side and see like, Hey, this has been a great launch off point to work with him, but I’m a very independent person. I don’t want to just be his, like I was, I was a contracted person, but like I did it, I felt like an employee and it was like, I really want to go off into my own now and start to build. The business that I want to run the one that I want to create. And so, but that was the start of it all.

Rob Marsh: And did I hear you right? You said you’re still working with him today.

Dana Owens: No, I’m not. No, I actually… I feel so bad, but in the process of my growth, I had to… It was one of those situations where he had literally given me this opportunity when I was a stay-at-home mom, and we had so much fun together. Our personality, we were both goofballs, and we just laughed so much. We talked every single day for years around projects, and we had a blast. But his, we just ended up having different philosophies on the types of clients that we wanted to take on. And I had a real, I developed this real line in the sand around. I knew that as I developed in my business and as a business owner, that there was a real line in the sand of, I am a consultant first and foremost. That’s how I feel. It’s really developed as my specialty and like what I love. about my skill set. And he, because of that nature of mine, like if someone wasn’t going with my strategy enough, like it’s one thing, you know, I know, I’m going to present my strategy at the end of the day, it’s what the client wants to do. But if there’s too much of a misalignment, I am going to say that we’re not a fit, whereas he would have continued the relationship much longer than I would have. And so we never had any disagreements or anything. It was just like a different philosophy. And so I was like, you know what? I think we just, it’s time to move on. And he was fine with it. But I mean, we worked together for a good seven years. Yeah.

Rob Marsh: I seem to remember. I mean, it might’ve been a different client, but when you were in The Copywriter Accelerator, you were working through some of this stuff and trying to figure out like, what am I going to be building and what am I doing? And really trying to figure out how you were going to niche your business.

Dana Owens: Yeah. Yeah. Oh my gosh. And when I was in the accelerator, it was, I mean, I think the one thing that if I would go back, I mean, cause that was like seven years ago. If I would go back as me now and talk to me in The Accelerator, I would have just told myself to chill out. Like I was so interested in like, I’ve got to find a niche or what am I doing? Is my writing perfect? And how do I, you know, get away from this client that I feel like I’m spending way too much time with? And now at the vantage point that I have, it’s like all of what was going on in there and all of that angst and like, it was all for such a purpose. And I wish that I would have just looked at it as like everything that was coming into my work world and every day with my clients and all of these challenges and things that I was working through, like it was all leading me to the place that I’m at now, which is total freedom. But I was just like, Oh, I just want to get there. Like I just, I just want to skip over what has become seven years of experience so I can just get there like right now. And That would have been a huge disservice if I would have just gotten there immediately because I’ve learned so much along the way. But yeah, I was totally wrapped up when I was in the accelerator and feeling like I was devoting way too much time to this guy. I wasn’t spending enough time on building my own business. But the funny thing was, is I had no idea what I wanted to do within copywriting.

Rob Marsh: Yeah.

Dana Owens: And so I had a whole lot of generalist copywriting time to go before My niche found me. I didn’t go out looking for it. It literally found me and it was like, oh, this is totally it. But I wouldn’t have found that if I would have gone searching for it on my own.

Rob Marsh: So I want to come back to that. But you mentioned needing to go through these steps, the accelerator, and then really figuring it out. What are some of those steps that you went through over those years before you landed and said, yep, this is the thing?

Dana Owens: Like I just needed experience. Like I, so I was working for that guy with the old boss, you know, and, um, so I was doing a whole bunch of different types of copywriting for him, which was great, but it was really primarily focused around this one client. So I wasn’t getting a whole breadth of experience as far as client diversity goes, but I was getting a lot of experience as far as deliverables go.

Rob Marsh: Yeah.

Dana Owens: So while I was working for him as well, I found another web design and branding agency that I started. I came on as like a contractor as one of their copywriters. And in that one, I still actually got a very good breadth of deliverables. Like I was doing a website copy. I was doing sales emails. I was doing, oh gosh, sales pages, just. social media content, like anything you could think of really. But with that, um, with that opportunity, I was also getting the breadth of clients. So whenever a client would come in, it would be all of these different industries. And then I would get paired with that project and what I would receive. I wasn’t doing, I wasn’t doing anything. Well, I guess I was kind of doing client facing work. I think at one point in the process, I would be able to speak to the client But most of it was reviewing transcripts where the business owner had interviewed the client, talked about the business strategy, what they were going to do with the new website. So I was listening to a strategist strategize with the new client, which was so beneficial. And then I would get all of these notes about how to position the website copy and or how to position a sales page. And so then I would take that and I would write, you know, create the deliverable. And so that was just like, if my working with the, you know, my old boss was like level one, this other opportunity was like level two. So, but it was those steps where I was still during that time being like, Oh, I just want to build my own business. Like I want to get out from underneath these people, but it It was all foundation that I needed and experience that I needed to figure out what types of copy I liked and what types of copy I didn’t. Sometimes the types of copy I was good at, I didn’t really like writing. And some of the time, the stuff that I thought, like I wrote it and I was like, Oh, this is crap. I’d turn it in to get reviewed. And they’d be like, this is amazing. Zero edits. And so I needed to go through all of that, all of that trial and error and getting used to getting feedback and being reviewed. And at first I was terrified of that. And now I’m like, just tell me, you know, like, I don’t have time to worry about what the feedback is. I gotta, I gotta get on to other things. So here’s what I did. Here’s what I’ve done. Give me the feedback and let’s go, you know? So I had to learn how to accept feedback. I had to learn. what types of copy I really loved, which ones I was good at, when to use what, you know, what types of copy are effective in different situations. I had to learn how to write for different audiences in different industries. I mean, there was just an infinite amount that I had to learn in those years that has served me great now.

Rob Marsh: Yeah. I mean, the process really is, you’ve got to get through it. And when you do and you succeed and you have clients, it gives you the confidence to do the things that you love. And speaking of the things that you love, you landed on case studies. I mean, in my LinkedIn feed, in my world, you’re one of the two or three uh, copywriters that I know that are entirely focused on case studies and it’s your thing. Let’s talk about that. How did you figure out that this is the thing you loved and you wanted to do for, you know, the, maybe not the rest of your life, but for the foreseeable future?

Dana Owens: Yeah. Well, there were two things that happened and The Copywriter Club is so instrumental to this. So at the time that I realized what case studies were was when I was working with my old boss and we were, you know, doing all this work for this coaching company. And so for the longest time, this coaching company, who I sat at the time, really was focused on providing leadership development for middle managers. They were very niched in working with middle managers, and they weren’t, they didn’t have a lot of competition. So they were used to you know, pitching these larger companies or having people come to them and they would explain their offerings and they would close the deals. So that’s how it was for like the first two years that we worked with them. And then after about two years, there was this influx of companies that came in all doing L&D, all doing it for all types of different managers, middle managers included. And they had this real, oh man moment where they were like, We’re, the marketplace is becoming flooded and we’re going into, and some of these competitors are amazing. Like they, their board of directors is like they’re celebrities on the board of directors. Like they are so dialed in. They have so many features that we don’t have. We still stick by our process and our product, but we are drowning amongst these competitors right now. And so they were going into these sales meetings and they were like, We’re having such a hard time closing these deals. Like what is going on? So my old boss and I started to really think about what we could do to help them, what collateral they really needed in these sales meetings and how they could position themselves to get back to closing these deals easier. And I remember at around that time I had been, I mean, I was like in the copywriter club one night, I’m like scrolling through the Facebook group. And I remember somebody posted a question and they were, they were like, or they were kind of doing event session. And they were like, I mean, I was talking to this prospect today and like their website is terrible. Like the design is terrible. And the copy on it is terrible. And I was trying to like tell them why they needed really good copy. And they basically ignored me and rolled their eyes or whatever. And they’re like, why do some people refuse to update their websites? Okay. And there were all these different comments and the people were saying like, I know it’s so infuriating. Like people don’t understand the value of good copy. And they were just going off and sympathizing with this person. And then there was this one guy that just posted this very simple comment. And he said, results sell. And he said, If their copy is crap and their design looks super old and outdated, but they are producing results, they don’t need to change their copy. It’s not at the top of their priority list because the results are selling itself. And I was just like, results sell. That is exactly it. It was like this eureka moment for me. And it’s like, duh, of course I know that. But it was just the simplicity in the way that he said it. And I related it right back to this coaching company. And it was like, they are not doing enough, if anything, to really hone in on the results. They need to lead with their results. And if they can do that, they can cut through all of these other companies. Because they were seeing good results. So that all of a sudden it was like this little like switch turned in me and I became so passionate about helping. I wanted to help them package up their results. And I knew from looking at some of their previous case studies that their case studies were not compelling. They weren’t well done. They weren’t adequately showcasing the results that their clients had seen. And so I, I’m very passionate. Like when I find something that I’m passionate about, I am like, Watch out, people. I will be heard. I don’t care if I’m this peon copywriter. I’m going right to the CEO. You’re going to know that I’ve got a great idea for you. So I went charging in there. We’ve got to focus on your results. Please, I want to rewrite all your case studies. I want to interview your clients. And I even went so far as to start thinking, how can we set? They were just starting a new, nine month coaching engagement with a very high profile brand. And I was like, we have got to set up this coaching engagement. So you are actually getting the data and the feedback from the client. Periodically throughout this engagement to write, to create video and written the most killer case study, because it’s going to be your best sales enablement tool going forward. So I am flying in there with all these ideas. This is what I want to do. And I was so disappointed because it was totally met with not entirely deaf ears, but they, this is where I’m talking about where the philosophical differences, I knew without a shadow of a doubt that this was a huge missing piece for this company. And they loved everything I was saying, but they weren’t, they didn’t have I don’t know, courage, that sounds like the weird thing to say, but it’s like they weren’t willing to shift their processes to gather the information to really create compelling case studies. And so that was one huge thing where I was like, okay, that’s fine. If you guys aren’t on board. Totally cool. But because I’d been doing so much web copy work with this other, uh, web design and branding agency, I was seeing over and over again. that the coaching company wasn’t alone. I was talking to so many other companies and I was starting to say how I want to take a results driven approach with your website copy. I want to go in talking about your results. I don’t want to go in talking about what you do and the features and benefits of your products and services, even though that’s super important. I want to lead with your results. What insight do you have from your customers that can help you do that? And so many companies, basically everyone was like, we don’t really systematically gather anything right now. We have some good testimonials. We can give you testimonials, but we don’t, we’re not tracking and measuring the outcomes that we want to be known for. We, we don’t have any case studies to share with you that you can riff off of or incorporate into your website copy. And it was like. You know, I went through a five companies like this and it was like, this is a huge hole that I saw. And I was like, I love, I, I’m so passionate about this. I want to just do this and only this, because there’s not literally a business that’s in operation that cannot benefit from this. And I’m going to hang my hat in this niche and go for it. And then I have, that’s what I did.

Rob Marsh: Yeah, this is amazing. So I can, you know, believe that there are other copywriters out there thinking, okay, well, yeah, results driven approach leading with results. This sounds great. Maybe I should be doing case studies, or at least be encouraging more of my clients to be doing case studies, but they don’t know how to do it. So I know you’ve got a very detailed process. In fact, you’ve got some templates that you share with copywriters to walk us through all of that stuff. But will you give us the basics on what we need to do for writing case studies so that they actually do the thing they’re supposed to do?

Dana Owens: Well, do you mean from like the, if you’re a copywriter and you want your clients to be, you want to be, do more case study writing for your clients or for you to be, do you mean for copywriters who want to niche like I did exclusively into creating case studies.

Rob Marsh: Let’s talk about doing it for clients, you know, so that we’re helping them. And, you know, if we want to extrapolate from that, OK, this is how we would also do this kind of thing. We can do that. But yeah, how do we help our clients create great case studies?

Dana Owens: Yeah, well, so the first thing is, I mean, like I said, there’s not a business in operation that cannot benefit from case studies, from having them as sales enablement tools and marketing tools in their business. That goes for product-based businesses, service-based businesses. If there’s a company, even a business owner who’s just getting started and they have one happy client, they have someone to create a case study around. So it’s really applicable to anybody and any business. And so from the standpoint of a copywriter, let’s say you’ve been hired on to do anything. You can always suggest an additional product. or an additional, you know, deliverable to a company that you’re working with, like, Hey, have you ever thought about creating case studies? So it’s a great way to continue working with the company that you love and just add value for them. Because I’ve, you know, even though case studies is like a buzzword and you go to so many websites these days and you see there’s like a case study tab on their web, their website. It doesn’t mean at all that the case studies up there are well done and done in a strategic fashion. So for any copywriter, it’s the chances of you being able to add value to your client by creating case studies for them is like almost assured. But the way to do it is just, you know, when you’re in there in a copywriting project, you have access to a lot of typically client research. Sometimes you’re doing your own client interviews, all of that stuff. You’re literally sitting right there at the front door of being able to take what you’re learning about their clients and turn it into a case study. So the first thing is just whatever it is you brought in to do, whether it’s a sales sequence or it’s a sales page or it’s, you know, a website copy, or even just a one sheet on like a company’s product or whatever. If you have any access to client feedback for any of those projects, look for the wins, look for client quotes or client feedback about the experience they’ve had with the company itself, with the product or service, and then just look for, can you kind of piece together the story arc of Where the client was, you know, was there a picture of what life looks like before the product or service came into their life? Do you, through the active working with the company and learning about their services, can you kind of see what, what is unique about it and how clients have used it or experienced it? And then are you starting to see the outcomes that a client has had through you know, working with the company and their products and services. And if you can see that story arc, it’s such an easy pitch just to say, Hey, can I put this together in the form of case study for you? And, and you can use this as a sales announcement tool or however you want. Um, so that’s what I would get started. Really. It’s just looking at the story overall of the product or service within a company. And if you can figure out these are the common challenges, this is how the solution fits into solving them. and these are the common outcomes and results that a client typically has, boom, like walk through that door and create a case study about it.

Rob Marsh: So where are, I mean, you mentioned everybody can use case studies. There are case studies out there, but a bunch of them aren’t that great. Where are people making mistakes with case studies? Like what separates the good from the bad? What is it that makes it bad?

Dana Owens: Yeah, okay, I am super passionate about this. Number one, there’s like, just the word, like when you hear case studies, it does. And I hear Joel Klettke talk about this all the time. Like case studies just sounds so clinical and it’s true. It really does. Customer success stories. It’s like, there’s so much, it’s so much of a better, friendlier term. And I try to use that wherever I can, but I’ve recognized that like most people do know the term case studies. And so. So many times when I try to shift the language to use customer success stories, people still bring it right back to case studies. But when you think about case studies and just that term, it sounds so dusty and boring and often jargony and clinical. And so. The bad case studies are all that, all of that boring stuff. But one thing is to make case studies truly compelling. I’ve been so passionate in my process. hinges on having a direct interview with whoever my clients’ clients are. So the biggest mistake that I see companies making with their case studies is that they try to create them in-house. And, you know, of course, like you’ve got copywriters on staff sometimes or content writers on staff or anybody on staff. Sometimes people, you know, put VAs in charge of this or whoever is available. And they’re like, Oh, let’s create some case studies to give to the sales team or to use like, you know, for the business owner to use when they’re in sales calls. But the biggest mistake is creating your own case studies in house. When you have an out, and this is an opportunity for any independent copywriter. Who’s not on someone’s staff. When you have an outside person who knows what they’re doing, mind you write and create your case studies for you. You are. bringing a neutral third party in with a totally neutral ear, one, to help you gather insights from your customers. That’s one big benefit. But also, it just puts your client, whoever you’re interviewing, at ease because it’s so much less awkward for them to talk about the service or product that they’ve used. Typically, when you’re talking directly to the company about the service, You wanted to talk about all the good stuff.

Rob Marsh: Yeah, you can’t be honest. At least you feel like you have to put a good spin on it, right?

Dana Owens: Yeah, but when you’re talking to someone like me or another copywriter who’s not associated with the business, I’ve learned that there’s a lot more comfortability and there’s so much more candid in what they say. So rule number one is when you have someone outside of the house doing your case studies, you get so much better insights that make the case study more compelling. But you’re also able to tell the case study from the vantage point of the customer instead of the company. So the biggest thing is when companies do their own case studies in-house, it’s yet another way that the business is talking about itself. And that is what just gets my goat because it’s like companies talk about themselves all day long in everything they do. They talk about themselves on their sales calls. They talk about themselves on the website. They talk about themselves, you know, in all of their marketing collateral. And case studies are one avenue. If you do them through the vantage point of the customer, that you have a tool that can connect peer to peer with your prospect. So don’t give up that opportunity. And so compelling case studies are told through the customer’s perspective. So you do have that connection point with your prospect. That’s number one. The second thing that makes for a good case study is making sure that it is formatted in a way, if you’re doing a written written case study, where it’s even a video case study where it’s actually consumable. So much of the time I’ll see that someone will take the time to have a case study created and then they put it up directly on their website as just this giant wall of text, super small font. And it’s like, no one is going to read that.

Rob Marsh: Or it looks like a white paper, you know, maybe they create a PDF or something and it just looks like a white paper.

Dana Owens: It’s so boring. There’s no graphics. There’s no like, oh yeah, it’s. Boring things don’t get consumed. It goes back to even if you have a one page case study, if it’s super boring and not told through the perspective of the customer, like it’s not going to get read. And then same thing with video. If you do a video case study, but the case, the video is like three minutes long and it goes into every, there’s not a lot of flow or story arc to video. It’s someone’s going to watch 20 seconds of it and be done. So compelling case studies actually get consumed. But the last thing about a compelling case study—and I’m sure we can talk more about this—is compelling cases actually get used. They get used as sales enablement tools. And so what I see so much is people will take the time to create the case study, but then they slap them up on their website. And sometimes they beautifully build them into their website. So I don’t mean to say they always slap them up, but they put them up on their website alone and think, okay, case studies are meant to live on your website. But when they’re up there, you are literally hoping that someone finds it and clicks on it. And my whole thing with my case studies, these are sales enablement tools. First, I’m going to teach you how to put these things in your sales process and use them. How so that you can close sales, not use them the first and foremost as a marketing play and pray that somebody connects with it. And so another, the third biggest mistake is that people only associate case studies with marketing and not with sales.

Rob Marsh: So let me ask you about that. So as a copywriter, do you actually jump into Salesforce or any of these other sales tools and say, this is where it goes. It’s going to be sent out at this point in the sales process. Like you’re getting that deep into the sales conversation.

Dana Owens: That’s where my work has gone. I didn’t start out that way. Five years ago, when I put my flag on the case study planet, I wasn’t, and now I’m going to become a sales enablement consultant. In the beginning, it was like, oh, companies need a way to showcase the results that they’ve had and case studies can do it. Everything was just about talking to you know, running these client interviews and creating the case studies. And then I would say, there you go. Look at this amazing case study. Like, let me know if you need anything. And then I would disappear and people would be thrilled to have this case study. But I realized over time that I was like, wait a minute, like they’re only putting these things on their website. Like these can help you close sales. And so it was over the course of, you know, the first two years of me doing case study work that I thought, Oh, and this is another thing to talk about, like the evolution of any form of copywriting. When you, this all comes with experience too. Like you started out saying, I love to do sales pages and I want to do sales pages. Or for me, it was, I love case studies and I want to do case studies. When you really start to specialize in one area. You go in with the vantage point of, for me, it was all about the case studies, but, but as you go, you start to see all of the gaps that come up. either their front end or the back end. So the first thing for me was, oh, companies not only need these tools, I got to teach them how to use them. I can’t just hand them off and like think they’re going to use them effectively. And my results that I can use to market my own business and sell my own case studies rely on my customers using them correctly. So I can’t just deliver the case study and say adios, like I’ve got to help them use them effectively. Then it became, oh, these customers are coming to me and saying, I love what you’ve done. How can we make the case study even more compelling? How can we include data? And then it was like, well, what kind of data have you been collecting? And they would say, no.

Rob Marsh: Yeah, of course.

Dana Owens: So then it was like, oh, another opportunity for me to add even more value for my clients. I can help them recognize the outcomes that they want to be known for to differentiate themselves. And then I can help them think of simple systems that they can put in place that will gather data that we can use in our case studies. And that’s kind of great work stability for me, too, because the more data they’re collecting, the more results they clearly see, and the more case studies they need me to help them with. So it works both ways. Going back to your question about how to use the case studies, that was what resulted over the couple of years of me starting to do this. And I became really passionate about helping companies figure out what, and this was so interesting because you just, I just thought naively like, well, of course every company knows what their sales process is. You’re like, they’re in business. Right. And then, and then I put myself through this process and this is how I developed the process at all. And I was like, Well, what’s my sales process? And then I thought, well, I’m sure I’ve got one here somewhere cause I’m making sales, but like, what is it actually? So I really sat down and plotted out and it turned out there were like three different sales processes that I had given how people find me. And I took myself through the process. And then I asked myself, well, where, if someone is going to fall off of one of these processes, where do they fall off? And there was typically one or two big spots where they were going to fall off. And it was like, okay, that’s where my case studies go to help to move, continue to move the conversation along or provide that, you know, the proof that somebody needs that I’m legit or whatever it is, you know, whatever buyer hesitation there is, the case studies, you implement them there to remove that hesitation. And so I just use that same process with my clients. where it’s like, okay, here are your case studies. Please don’t just put them on your website and think that’s the only thing to do with them. Let’s, now I do a call at the end of my process and it’s like, let’s really map out your sales process. No, I’m not, I don’t call myself a sales consultant. So like a sales consultant is going to go way deeper into this than I would. But as far as the case studies go, I have them, let’s map out even just one of your sales processes. Let’s highlight if someone’s going to fall off, where do they fall off? And then let’s put a process in place for where you insert your case studies into that and what you say specifically. That gets these in front of people’s eyes, you know? And so, um, yeah, I teach them that too. I don’t want there to be any holes from somebody saying, Thank you so much for your product. And then when I follow up with them and I say, well, how’s it been working for you? And they go, I don’t know. I do not want them to say that.

Rob Marsh: I love this. I mean, you know, because you went through the process with us, but in The Copywriter Accelerator, we talk about the different ways that you can show up in your business as a partner for your client or as an order taker at the low end or at the high end, really, as a consultant, as a partner who helps figure out solutions to big problems. And it’s really easy to say, well, I write case studies and that’s a solution to a problem, but you’ve gone wider to identify what’s the real problem, which is they need sales. And yes, a case study will help them get there, but if they’re not using it, It doesn’t help them all that much. And so I think it’s genius to jump inside the tools that they’re using. Not only that, though, of course, you’re writing case studies and you love that. But if you’re in a Salesforce tool and you’re looking at the entire sales automation process, you can say, wait a second, why isn’t an email going out between week one and week five? Why would you let a whole month go by without reaching out to a hot prospect? And you can start to say, well, OK, maybe it’s not a case study that fits in here, but we need to start telling them about this demo that we have or talk about some of the benefits that they’re going to get. And so it’s an opportunity to create a ton of work for yourself if you want it. And you said you don’t call yourself a consultant here, but that’s exactly what you’re doing.

Dana Owens: Oh, no, I do. I do. Now I do.

Rob Marsh: OK, good.

Dana Owens: Now I am a hundred, like, that’s like my biggest joy is being the, as getting in there in the strategy. But I couldn’t have done that in the beginning because I had to work with all of those clients first. And I had to have, start with the, it was all about the deliverable, but that’s, that’s the, you’re in, you know? And it’s like that with the deliverable is what I loved, but in going through client after client and getting inside their business, That’s where you, over time, you start to see where the holes are. You know, you think your deliverable is filling the biggest hole and maybe it is, but when you’re in there, you recognize, oh, there’s this issue that needs to be fixed and this, and then all of a sudden you understand the full picture. And that’s when you become the, that’s when I became a strategist. I won’t speak for anyone else. But one thing that you said about, you know, you. When you’re in there and you start to take on more of the consultative role, You definitely, and you’re, you see the gaps that need to be filled and how they can be filled and you create more work for yourself. What I’ve learned you also can do, and this has been so huge for my business is you also. Find really great, like collaborative partners for yourself, strategic alliances. So I never went into this thinking that my best collaborative partners were going to be sales consultants or sales coaches. They absolutely are. And so now I’ve learned to, when I network or I’m talking to people or who I reach out to, to just start conversations with on LinkedIn or wherever is I am a perfect pairing with the sales coach because they’re, they’re the ones that do the deep nitty gritty with the sales process. And I don’t really want to get in there and dig through your CRM as much as I want to help you strategically select the right clients. to get insights from and leverage in your case studies. But like for sales coaches, they’re in there. They’re in this business working on the sales process. They’re the ones that say, oh my gosh, you’ve had X, Y, and Z amazing client result. We need to bring in Dana to help you package these up. And then she’s going to work side by side with me in the sales process to figure out how to use these tools and the right way to get these prospects from a maybe to a yes. And so these, like aligning with just a couple sales consultants has changed my business because I just, it’s them and growth strategists. I just get the steady stream of referrals from these people because it’s just such a natural way for them to add value to their clients by bringing me in. And I, um, I can seriously help their process by doing what I do.

Rob Marsh: Yeah, that makes total sense. The one other thing that occurs to me as you’re talking about this entire process is that clients may think that they can use an AI tool to write a case study, but very few clients are going to be able to figure out how to use AI to go through the entire sales process and identify, okay, here’s a need here and here’s a need here. I’m sure that there are tools out there that can do it, but stringing them together to produce the result would take way more work than hiring Dana to come and do this for me. And so it just makes so much sense as a service offering for a copywriter who does the work that you do, case studies.

Dana Owens: Yeah. Well, I still like when I think about AI taking over case studies and customer success stories, it makes me sad because I would never like there is so much benefit to a business by having an actual human being talk to their clients. And, you know, of course, like, that’s one thing I just AI or not, like, you should never outsource that to Yeah, to anyone because or I mean, outsource it to a human, like, you should never like circumvent that. and not have a human being to do it just because it builds trust. Like it makes your client feel so valued. The company itself gets these valuable insights and then you have an actual human strategist who’s putting all of these connections together for you. But yeah, you can feed this transcript into AI and have AI generate the case study for you. But I just, I like anything. I mean, it’s efficiency sake, heck yes. You know, like you could generate a whole bunch of case studies that way. And that’s if that benefits your business, then more power to you. But I’m all about really strategizing, not having you don’t need to have at least not the companies I work with have a million case studies. You really can can do so much with just a strategically created three to five that are very specific and targeted. And I still feel like it is so so helpful to have a human being putting together. If you do have that small collection, having human right position, connect with those stories, like AI cannot do that yet. Cannot connect in that way. So yeah, that’s all I have to say about that.

Rob Marsh: Yeah. Until then, until then we need more Dana’s out there doing this stuff. So, just a last point of discussion. When it comes to copywriters charging to do this work, I’ve seen a really wide range. In fact, I’ve experienced a really wide range. I’ve done case studies, I think, on the low end for like $750 for two to three pages. I’ve charged $5,000 with one company for a case study that I did for them. Big executive coaching company, right? It was totally appropriate. but there’s this massive range. What should most copywriters expect to be or where should they be when they’re talking to companies about, well, B, I’m wording this terribly, but what should they be charging and how much can they make?

Dana Owens: Well, I think if you’re just getting into it, like I think when I just started doing this, I remember I was working at Amy Posner. She was my writing coach at the time. And I remember her saying, well, what can the market bear? And she threw out there, 750 bucks. And I remember thinking, Oh, gosh, I hope that’s not like the going rate for case studies, because I’m not going to be able to do this for long. But I think I did start out charging $750 per case study. And it was probably like a 1200 word, you know, case study. That was a great place for me to start. Because I look back on my entry level case studies, and they’re so much more in depth now not and I don’t mean long, I just mean juicier and what I pull out of my client interviews is so much juicier and the design is improved and the positioning is improved.

But to get started, I felt like it was, I felt really good about 750 and it wasn’t so much that I felt like it had to be this Pulitzer prize winning case study. But I, once I, once I started to get really good feedback, like, dang, this is great. I started to increase, increase. And so. I would say like a really solid rate for a case study, again, in like your first year, 18 months would be like 1500. Now I’m easily charging 25 to 3,500 for a, I call them full story case studies or like the more in-depth case studies. Um, but I, now I, everything for me is about working with companies who are ready to jump in and do a collection of case studies. And so those projects for me are, you know, anywhere from 5,000 to 15,000 for a collection of case studies. And now I, I feel like I’m being paid for my strategy. I’m being paid for my interviewing skills. I’m being paid for my writing and project management skills. And like I said, helping them insert that these, these tools into their sales process. So, so the sky’s the limit really, because everyone says you want it as close as you can get to the sale. That’s like the best place to be. And case studies, if you position them, which I do for a sales enablement tools, you are right there in there with the sale. So you, this, you can charge a lot as long as you have the experience, you know, you gotta, you gotta hone your, hone your skill first.

Rob Marsh: I mean, in a lot of ways, case study is just sort of a mini sales page, right? It’s not 15,000 words. Well, I guess a case study could be 15,000 words as long as it’s that compelling and there’s all that information that needs to be shared, but probably not. But yeah, it’s a mini sales page and if you can tie it directly to the sale, you should be able to charge more for it. So that’s awesome.

Dana Owens: Yeah.

Rob Marsh: So I know you’ve got a resource that might help out some copywriters who would be interested in doing more case studies and doing them professionally, not just handing over a Google Doc saying, here you go. Tell us about that and how people can get a hold of that if they’re interested.

Dana Owens: Yeah. So I just wanted to, this was like two years ago now, I wanted to create a resource that, because I was getting so many questions from copywriters about, hey, what interview questions do you ask? And can you tell me like how you How can I help companies strategically pick the right clients to feature in case studies? So I was getting the same questions over and over. And so I decided to put together a do it yourself. It’s a digital workbook. It’s actually interactive and it takes, it’s my whole process, but it’s, it goes through, um, an interactive worksheets and it teaches you all of the different portions of my product, my process. and basically teaches you how to write your own one page case study. It was a little bit too difficult to figure out how do you teach someone to write a 1500 word case study, but a one pager is a great place to start.

So it’s a, it’s a self paced, but it’s a digital interactive workbook. And it’s kind of cool. Like it teaches you how by section, how to write the case study. And then at the end of the workbook, it spits out your case study text. So not only can you create case studies for your own copywriting business, but if you’re a copywriter who wants to incorporate case study writing into your bag of tricks, it teaches you my process that you can use with some of your copywriting clients. And it’s at a really, you know, approachable price point. And the best thing about it is you can take yourself through the process. And then at the end, you can hit clear. All the copy is cleared and you can go back and use the workbook again and again. So, um, yeah, you can find that on my website. It’s nextlevelcopy.com. And I’m always, my inbox is always open to talk to anybody about the workbook. If you go through it and you have questions, like I, my inbox is free to anyone. And I love to respond because I love to talk about case studies.

Rob Marsh: That’s awesome, Dana. We’ll make sure that people go check that out. We’ll link to it in the show notes in case somebody’s not able to scribble this down while they’re out running or driving or doing something else. But make sure that people can check that out and your website, Next Level Copy. Is that the best place to find you? Should we also be looking on LinkedIn?

Dana Owens: Yeah, my website is a great place emailing me. I’m, you know, an avid emailer. So that’s Dana at nextlevelcopy.com. And then I’m also at LinkedIn. on LinkedIn and my handle is nextlevelcopy, all one word, all lowercase.

Rob Marsh: Everywhere you are. Thanks, Dana. This has been amazing and really enlightening, actually, especially on how copywriters can expand out of that doing the work, just showing up to be told what to do and actually start to advise and consult with clients in a bigger way. So thank you.

Dana Owens: Yep. Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. This has been fun.

Rob Marsh: That’s a wrap on the interview. Now, you obviously heard about how Dana is connected with sales enablement coaches to get the kind of work that she wants to do. You may not want to work with sales coaches yourself, but what about SEO strategists or launch managers or email list managers or any of a variety of other marketing jobs that help define what kind of content needs to be created for a client, but they may not have the time or even the skills to do that work.

If you can connect with three or four of these people, you’ll have more work as a copywriter than you can actually get to. And then you’ll be the person that’s sharing leads with other copywriters. Partnering with the right people is a game changer for copywriters. In fact, it’s one of the 20 plus ways that we share in the ways to find clients in that free download that I mentioned at the top of the show. If you’re looking for other ways to connect with your ideal clients, go to thecopyrighterclub.com forward slash findaclient to get your report now. Then try the different ideas and see what works for you. That’s thecopyrighterclub.com/findaclient.

Thanks again to Dana Owens for sharing so much about her business, how to write case studies, what exactly the niching has done for her and her business, and so much more. You can connect with Dana at her website, nextlevelcopy.com. She’s got a freebie on her site, but it’s not really for copywriters. It’s because she’s a true expert. She understands that her clients don’t want stuff about copy. They want to understand how to use the work that she does to help them grow. So the freebie is all about how to use case studies to promote your business. You can sign up for that if you want, or you can find her on LinkedIn where she posts from time to time.

Starting a business is hard. And having enough runway to get off the ground is a big part of whether you succeed or fail. Content creator and author of the Hey, Freelancer newsletter, Blair Sharp, is our guest for the 416th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. Blair shares how she made sure she had enough runway to figure things out when she launched her business. There’s a lot in this episode, including Blair’s story of giving up alcohol. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.

Blair’s website

Rob Marsh: This podcast episode is all about what I like call runway. And maybe the best way to explain what I mean by that is a comparrison of your business and an airplane. It takes energy to get an airplane of the ground. The pilot needs to spin up the engines, the aircraft has to accelerate, the wing flaps need to be adjusted to get “lift” so the aircraft rises. And because all of this takes a bit of time… you need a runway to move down while it all comes together.

Your business is a lot like that. Most businesses don’t take off like rocketships. They need runway while you figure a few things out and get the momentum to take off. It takes time… so having a long runway can really benefit your business.

Hi, I’m Rob Marsh, and on today’s episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, I’m speaking with content creator, part-time psychometrist and author of the Hey Freelancer newsletter, Blair Sharp. The way Blair has built her business is the perfect example of using a runway and time to figure things out, instead of just leaping into the unknown and hoping for the best. It’s a model that a lot of freelancers could benefit from. So stick around as she lays out how she’s made it work for her.

Before we jump in with Blair…

Tomorrow,  October 9 is the day of our next members-only training on how to create a lead magnet that not only helps you grow your list, but attracts your ideal clients and buyers, not just people looking for a free download. Our guest Kennedy from Email Marketing Heroes will be sharing a totally new way to create lead magnets that create buyers. That’s how he describes it.

If you want to build your own list or you want to be hired by clients who need help with emails and lead magnets for their own lists, you need to see this masterclass. And the best way to do that is to join The Underground at thecopywriterclub.com/tcu. As a member you’ll have access to dozens of expert trainings all focused on helping you attract more clients and get stuff done. I promise, you can use these trainings to build your skills and expertise so you can raise your rates and earn the living you deserve from your copywriting or content writing business. So jump in at thecopywriterclub.com/tcu today.

And now, let’s go to our interview with Blair…

Hey Blair, welcome to the podcast. We want to start out by asking how you became a content writer, actually also a psychometrist, I think is… Yes, you said it correctly.

Blair Sharp: Most people don’t know what that is or know how to pronounce it.

Rob Marsh: Okay, so psychometrist and you’re the author of the Hey Freelancer newsletter. Yes. And so yeah, let’s dig into that. How did you become all of these things?

Blair Sharp: Yeah, right. Well, it’s kind of a long story. And whenever I tell it, I don’t really know, like, where should I start? We’ve got 60 minutes here. So I’ve been a psychometrist, which means I test people’s thinking. So I work at the Mayo Clinic. I’ve been there. I’m in Rochester, Minnesota. I’ve been at that job for just over 10 years. So I just hit my 10-year mark. And I started writing for a local parenting blog, just on a volunteer basis, in 2019. And really enjoyed it, just as a little hobby. I was doing a lot of essays, some things in the community. And it was kind of like a nice other mom. It was like a mom blog, basically. And so I started there. 

And then I slowly started like, dipping my toe into other kinds of writing and writing for other other places, just kind of one off things. In 2020. Then I decided to also go into Instagram a little bit more outside of my personal Instagram. And I created an alcohol free Instagram account, which is there’s a whole space for every kind of Yeah, content, right? Like online, there’s there’s a space for everybody. So there’s a whole like sober Instagram, a sober section of Instagram, I guess you could say. And so I quit drinking in 2018. That’s kind of like the background of that. But I started wanting to tell my story about that and just have it resonate with other people, because that’s kind of a hard thing to do. So I started doing that. 

And then that’s what led me into more mental health writing. And I connected with different brands and companies and did some essays and did some topics about alcohol and sobriety and mental health and things like that. So that kind of got me into that lane, I guess. Um, and I’m still working full time. I’m also a mom, so I’m doing all the things. Um, so it was a very slow, like it felt kind of easy now that I’m looking back at it. I think I was a little stressed at the time when I’m doing all these different things. Um, and Instagram was just for fun. You know, it ended up being, I did make a little bit of money, right. With like brands and things like that. Nothing too, too wild, but, um, I wrote an essay, I guess it was an op-ed for Scary Mommy, which is a parenting website about my decision to quit drinking back in 2021, I think is when I wrote that. And that was the first time that I was like, whoa, I could really like, like scared mommy’s a pretty big platform. 

So I was like, wow, I could really write for these big name brands and things like that. So that was my first like, aha moment, like, maybe I should try this a little bit more, like keep going and learn how to pitch places, learn how to um, how, how to be a writer today, you know? Um, and so I did, I did that again, slowly, just like one off things, um, started making a little bit of money. Told my husband how much money I was making to prove that, Hey, I could maybe like, you know, less than my hours at work. And so I did that again, slowly, um, here and there, um, my supervisor would let me have days off and things like that. And so I eventually wanted to go part-time at my work. And I put in for that. And it took about a year to actually go part-time. In that meantime, I was still kind of dropping my hours and working less. I was still writing and making money off of it. At some point in there, too, I started calling myself a writer. There’s that moment. I’m not formally trained. I have a psych degree, which is very good for writing, actually. And so I then once I dropped part time, which is about a year ago, so I’ve been doing almost a year, a year in October. 

Yeah. So now I kind of I feel like my day job is now my side gig is kind of what I feel like. You know, I have insurance, of course, like that’s a problem for a lot of, you know, small business owners, independent writers. So I have insurance through there. I have this dependable work. Um, just last week I worked an extra day just because, um, I, a few of my contracts ended recently. So I was like, okay, I’m going to come in tomorrow. And they’re like, all right, we can use you. So it’s really nice to have that backup as, um, Just in those times, just in case. Um, cause I’m not very, I’m not very risky anymore in my, you know, old age. 

Rob Marsh: Old age.

Blair Sharp: I was a little bit more risky, hence the alcohol free story. But now I’m a little bit more risk averse, you know, a family and bills to pay need health insurance, which I could get for my husband too. But, um, you know, it’s just Nice to have that background just in case.

Rob Marsh: Yeah. I love the way that you build your story or the way that this developed, because as we said briefly before we started recording, there are a lot of copywriters right now who are looking for something to augment what they’re doing with copywriting. It’s hard to find clients. And AI is a challenge in all of the things. That’s not to say that there aren’t tons of opportunities out there, because there are. But while you’re going after those opportunities, it’s nice to have a stable, you know, either a permanent client or an employer who can help with some of those hours. I like to think of it as extending the runway. You know, if you’re going to start a business and you’ve got, you know, $10,000 in the bank or whatever, that’s your runway. And when the money’s gone, if you haven’t figured it out, now you’ve got to, you know, go back to work or you’ve got to do something, right? And you’ve done a really great job of extending your runway as you built a writing business.

Blair Sharp: I always have the runway there just in case, right?

Rob Marsh: Yeah.

Blair Sharp: And I was really careful too about that when I went into writing a little bit more as like writing for work. I call it writing for work. I was kind of writing for fun to begin with, you know, learning how much I should be paid and things like that. But when I first started, I made sure that I had kind of like a a cushion of money, I guess, you know, I figured out the the big thing was to figure out like, okay, if I do drop to part time, how much money do I need? How much is just enough, right to cover that part time drop? And you know, and I know that what that number is. So as long as I’m getting that every month, like I feel okay. I would like more than that, obviously, you know, goal. But so I still have I still have, you know, I have that idea in my head. And then I keep try to keep that much in that business account, you know, just in case, like for times like this, when I dropped, or had, I didn’t drop clients, a few things ended, I had like a summer opportunity that just ended, and then another one also. So there’s things in the pipeline, but I’m in this like weird, as most of us, you know, who are doing freelance work here and there, you know, one off things, you have to kind of be ready for that in case Like I say, I get nervous, like all my clients are going to want to like drop me like the same month, you know, and then I have no money coming in. So it’s good to just kind of have that background because then you’re not stressing, even though I’m still stressing.

Rob Marsh: I think that’s the freelancer fear. We all feel it because there is risk here. Clients aren’t forever. Projects don’t always work out. And every once in a while, it all happens at the same time. And yeah, you panic. And if you don’t, like we said, if you don’t have that runway, now you’re operating from a place of panic. And clients can feel that and desperation. And it’s not a good place to be. So like I said, I love the way you’ve built this. So I am curious, talk to us about psychometry, being a psychometrist, like what, like measuring the way people think, what even is that?

Blair Sharp: probably sounds way cooler than it really is.

Rob Marsh: I’m like, I want to be a psychometrist, whatever that is.

Blair Sharp: Yeah, yeah. Well, we are looking for a few more people, so let me know if you want to move to Minnesota.

Rob Marsh: Yeah, well, maybe after the winter. We’ll see.

Blair Sharp: Yeah, right, right. Yes, so it’s in the neuropsychology division. And so I work very closely with neuropsychologists. So I don’t do any of the interpretation of the results of the tests that I give. I just give the patients the test. So I’m sitting across the table from a patient who comes in who might have brain fog. Maybe they’re older. It’s not always older people. There’s a lot of people who are younger. Maybe they have cancer or maybe they’re going to have surgery. So they need a before and after. Um, testing. So basically like it’s between two and four hours that I sit with them and give them tests. So I’m reading a story and then I’m going to have you tell me the story back. And then I’m writing down everything, you know, keeping track of everything you’re saying. I might say numbers and then have you say the numbers back and then I might say them and have you say them backwards, things like that. Um, different puzzles, like putting blocks together to match a design language, things like, tell me all the animals you can think of in a minute. And then I’m stopwatch and I’m writing everything down in the meantime. I’m also, um. keeping an eye on the patient, like, are there any behavioral things that I need to keep track of, you know, we write behavioral observations down, which I think is very helpful, again, with a psychology piece of writing, like, especially if you’re writing to sell, right, like, if you’re doing copywriting, I’ve got I’ve gotten more interested in like email marketing lately, too. And just like, I love writing, Like conversationally, like I’m just talking to a friend. And so I think that the emails really, that’s a good place for me to be. If I like really enjoy it, I have to do work that I enjoy too. Otherwise it will not. It will not last long for me. I will not want to do it much longer. So I also got, this is a whole nother topic, but I also got diagnosed with ADHD about a year ago.

Rob Marsh: Okay.

Blair Sharp: And I’m learning a lot about. Um, those, those little things that, um, I just thought were me, me being weird. Oh, it is still me being weird. But, um, so a lot of those, those things are coming up as I’m, you know, trying to keep track of all my clients. I never had to do that before at my job, my day job. I I’m doing, I’m bringing the same story to every single patient, which sounds really boring, but it’s actually makes it really easy for me. Okay. Yeah. So, um,

Rob Marsh: So what, what are you measuring? Like, what is the measurement? Like, what’s the purpose of the tests?

Blair Sharp: So all the tests are different. There’s a whole list of tests and it might be usually every patient has similar lists of tests, but it might depend on what they’re there for. If they’re having a language issue, um, like aphasia or maybe they have, um, you know, visual issues. They might have a little bit more visual tests. Um, so we were, we’ll test things like memory, attention, problem solving, processing, speed, language. Um, we do some mood measures. Like, I don’t know if you’ve heard of the MMPI. We don’t do that as often. It’s like a personality questionnaire like that, but, um, just like general thinking.

Rob Marsh: Yeah.

Blair Sharp: Which would be nice if everybody could just have a baseline one of these, right?

Rob Marsh: Yeah, that’s kind of what I was thinking. This is why it’s interesting to me because obviously, as copywriters, as marketers, we are interested in the way that our audiences think. And so, yeah, if everybody could show up and on your sign-up form on your website, they could basically say, yeah, my psychometry number is a nine or whatever. That might give us some information. Right. Yeah. So you’re looking for this stuff so that you can either measure increases or declines over time, or just to set some baselines for different kinds of memory treatments or other functional things that are impacted by brain work.

Blair Sharp: Right. So the results, the numbers, the scores, I guess, will be compared to the average for that person’s age. And then for education, sometimes that plays into it too. So I’m 38. They’re not going to compare me to an 85-year-old’s memory, like what it should be based on the normed data.

Rob Marsh: You should come out pretty good.

Blair Sharp: I hope. Yeah, right. I always kind of joke with my patients because it’s hard. It’s hard to do this stuff. It’s frustrating, especially if they’re struggling. And so it’s also my job to get them through three hours of testing. Um, but it’s like, yeah, well, you’re 85, you know, like, I’m not going to compare you to a 20 year old. Don’t worry. Like, you know, kind of joke around with them a little bit to keep them like, okay, yeah, you’re right. You’re right. You know, I’ll just do my best. I just have to do their best basically. Um, but yeah, it’s kind of frustrating for patients.

Rob Marsh: Yeah. Well, that’s, that’s really interesting. So, I mean, you, you kind of started answering this, but what do you take from that that is directly applicable to your writing and to the way that you connect with your audiences?

Blair Sharp: I think just a big thing is just working with humans and like understanding people. I’ve always had jobs in that mental health psychology kind of area, you know, whether it be working with kids with autism, I worked, uh, I ran a group home for adults with mental illness before this job. So I’ve always worked in that area, that’s how I started, you know, in the mental health writing space. And so, yeah, I just think knowing what people think, not what they think, how they think, and kind of like what kind of things would they want, because I try to put myself too in other people’s position, like, especially if I’m writing about a new topic that I don’t really know much about, like, well, what would I want to know about, like, as the person who’s actually reading this, you know? Yeah. Or, you know, just making salesy things, not salesy. I feel like that’s very important these days, especially like people know when they’re being sold to, right. Especially with, you know, influencers and Instagram and TikTok and all that kind of stuff. Like we know when you’re just trying to sell me something versus like, oh, you really like it and you want it, you know, share about it. So, yeah.

Rob Marsh: It seems like you probably have an advantage over a lot of content writers or copywriters where because of this experience and trying to understand people deeply and connecting with them, that may be a superpower of yours that a lot of us ought to be picking up on or doing more things to develop.

Blair Sharp: Yeah, I should probably run with that a little bit more.

Rob Marsh: I mean, if you were going to, you know, if, if I was going to say, Blair, I need help with that. Like, what would you say to me to help me develop that kind of empathy or connection with my audience?

Blair Sharp: As a writer, you mean?

Rob Marsh: Yeah. As a writer or, you know, for the people that I’m trying to connect with, you know, when I’m writing a sales page or an email or whatever.

Blair Sharp: Right. I would try to focus, um, kind of think about the stuff, the kind of content that you like, like, you know, Um, what makes you stop and read something or what kind of. Uh, I’m, I’m kind of thinking like I’m like a video Instagram sort of brain lately, but what reels or what videos or blogs are you sharing with your friends? Like, what are you, what are you sending and keep that in mind? Because that means like, okay, you’re, you’re picking up on that. I don’t know how to say it. Like what are your likes? And then think of other people. That’s probably the people that depending on the audience, right? Like if you’re not the audience and it’s different. Um, and of course, if you’re just writing something like a how to, and you just have to do bullet points, I would, a big time, I would keep in mind that people are, have a short attention span these days. So, just keep that in mind and talk to people. right? Like just talk to people connect with people like real life people in you know, day to day had those conversations, friends and family just try to try to put yourself in other people’s shoes when you’re just like, in your day to day. And I think that helps me with writing

Rob Marsh: It’s interesting that you mentioned paying attention to what you connect with. Last week’s episode of the podcast, I was talking with David Deutsch, an A-list copywriter, and that’s one of the pieces of advice he gave as far as improving your copy. He’s like, notice what you notice and then try to figure out why. Why did it connect with you? What is working? What made you curious about it? How does it hold your attention? And that’s a great way to start picking up on the stuff that works.

Blair Sharp: Was it, was it funny? Was there a joke? Did you, you know, what part of the, what, what part of your reading, let’s say it’s a blog at what, or an article, what, what part of it did you kind of lose interest and then why, like, why did it get boring? You know? Again, like I said, like I’d like to do work that I like that should be obvious, right. For everyone, but it’s not. Um, so I love using humor and sarcasm and jokes, not necessarily like pop culture references or anything like that. I, I like that, but I don’t think that hits with everybody, especially, you know, you never know who’s going to read it, but, um, so. I like to add those kinds of things in there, just that conversational to like, it’s people like being, um, people like attention. They like, when you think that you, they care that you care about them. So if you’re talking to them, in a tone. And again, this isn’t going to be general overall writing, obviously, like not technical writing, you’re not going to write like conversational, maybe. I don’t know. But I don’t I don’t do that for that reason. So, you know, just like saying things like, you know, what’s the good or we have good news for you or saying a sentence and then being like, right, like, like those kind of like conversational, and I think reading out loud But I always read my stuff out loud before I am done with it. Uh, a few times to make sure it just sounds, it flows. Right. Um, it doesn’t sound too, too stuffy or too much like a robot, I guess these days.

Rob Marsh: You’ve mentioned a couple of things that I think are really important to touch on. Number one, significance. This psychological principle that we all need to feel important. As a reader of something that a content writer writes or a copywriter writes, we have to feel seen and heard. You can’t just be telling all the time, right? There’s that connection that you’re talking about. which I think is really critical. And then the other thing, you know, as we talk about like noticing where people drop off, that is so hard in your own writing because when we’re writing things down, everything is important. Everything is good. We wouldn’t put it in if we didn’t think it was good. And so having that second reader or something that can tell you where that drop off matters.

Blair Sharp: Yep. And yeah, definitely like a second set of eyes. That’s totally, even coming back to something, a day or two later, I really try to avoid writing, editing, turning in something all in one day. Sometimes you just have to, right? So you might have to take a break and come back. But it’s wild. Sometimes like I will turn something in, it’ll be like two weeks later, I might read it when it’s published or whatever. And I’m like, Oh, that was awful.

Rob Marsh: I know.

Blair Sharp: Good. I’m good. Or I’ll read it out loud to my husband and he’s like, oh, pretty good.

Rob Marsh: Sometimes I’ll have the opposite where I’ll pick up something, not that’s been published, but I’ve picked up something that I’ve written a few days ago. I’m like, wow, that’s got to be way better than what I’ve got down on paper.

Blair Sharp: And that’s why the second glance at it, I try not to do too many glances. You could sit there all day or all week and go over and over and over it. At some point, it’s just got to be good enough. Um, that’s another, that’s a problem of mine of like, what’s good enough. You’re like, don’t need to, you know, make the Mona Lisa here, but, um, you know, let’s try Picasso maybe.

Rob Marsh: Yeah. So let’s turn the conversation just a little bit. You know, as you, you had this job that was, you know, your runway basically allowed you a little bit of freedom to start building a side hustle as a copywriter or as a content writer. And I’m curious, okay, as you sort of figured that out, that’s what you were going to do. What did you do to start connecting with your clients? What kinds of pitches were you doing or how are you connecting with people in order to, you know, get gigs later on?

Blair Sharp: Yes, I am of the mind of just throw everything at the wall and see what sticks right like it kind of goes back to when I was on alcohol for on Instagram posting about alcohol free life and things like that. dm’d like 14 different brands that I knew either like had a blog or a newsletter or, you know, obviously a website, and was just like, Hey, wondering if you need any help with writing, because I am available. There’s a very short, like, even places that I hadn’t ever even, you know, just cold dm’ing them. Yeah. And one of the first people that responded was a treatment center. And the person was like, Oh, my gosh, you have excellent timing. And I was like, And so then I went and got a call from them like, you know, a few days later, a week later. And she’s like, Oh, when you DM me, I was like in the going away party for content person.

Rob Marsh: Wow.

Blair Sharp: That is good timing. Isn’t that crazy? And things like that happen all the time. Like, I don’t know if it’s just me or just, I really noticed those universe, the universe is doing the thing, you know, that it does. Um, it’s good to, good to recognize when that happens because it does happen. People just don’t recognize it. Um, but anyway, so yeah, I started writing for them and then, um, you know, building up like sort of a portfolio with that volunteer, uh, mom blog, um, role, I guess, not really a job cause I wasn’t getting paid, but, um, I had a lot of like. Published clips, you know, no one else didn’t know that it wasn’t my job. I just put it in a portfolio. I made a website. Um, people say you don’t need a website. I prefer to have a website cause it’s easy to just, here’s my, here’s my website, right? Here’s my links. My website’s pretty basic. It’s not anything too extravagant, but I just started getting on all the newsletters that send out freelance jobs or pitch places that want editors, you know, editors that are looking for pitches for certain topics and just started pitching, started making connections. Um, I had a lot of connections with that Instagram account. So, um, and I grew it to like 18,000 followers in like a couple of years. So I was kind of known a little bit in that space. 

So I would, you know, reach out to certain beverage brands and I did some articles for them and things like that. Um, so just like little by little, really, um, making connections with other writers. I started, um, posting content on LinkedIn in like 20, I wrote all this down. I don’t remember where, but, um, about two years ago. So about 2022 is when I started posting stuff on LinkedIn, connecting with other writers, and just like, becoming friends with people that are in my ear, my, you know, writing community, I guess. And so when I’m even just like, a couple weeks ago, when I was looking for some more clients, I would send out a message like, Hey, let me know if any of your clients are looking for more writers, or if you see anything that you think would fit. And so I’ve gotten jobs from that, like people will say, Oh, yeah, hey, here’s the name of my editor, here’s the editor’s email, like just giving me those kinds of things. Because you know, the whole search of trying to find an editor’s email or a content leads email, like, which can be kind of fun, I feel like I’m pretty good at finding the information, but I have no problem just like sending a cold message out like, hey, or a cold DM. Hey, You know, I’m available. Here’s some of the stuff that I’ve done. Let me know if you need any help. Super, super like short. I might throw in like a, I know you’re busy, so I’ll keep this short.

Rob Marsh: So that they, um, Is that usually the initial contact that you’re sending out is just that real brief pitch. Yeah. And then how do you follow up?

Blair Sharp: I’m not great at following up.

Rob Marsh: Again, so typical of us as copy. I’m not sure that I’ve met more than a handful of writers who are like, oh yeah, I am the copy. I’m the follow up person, king or queen, whatever.

Blair Sharp: I usually don’t actually, unless it’s like something that I know they’re looking for people maybe. Like if it’s just a cold message, like, hey, I see you have a blog that you haven’t updated in six months. Do you need any help with that? I might not respond back. I don’t want to bug people because I hate when people bug me like that. So I don’t want to be that person. But yeah, a lot of it is just making connections with people online, on LinkedIn. I know they say you don’t need to have a personal brand or you don’t need to be on social media. I think it’s helped me a lot. I think it’s helped me a lot being on LinkedIn and posting on LinkedIn regularly. meeting people, making those connections.

Rob Marsh: And you do have a brand, like you’ve got brand colors, you show up, you know, the same way, you know, in everything that I see, particularly with your newsletter and the assets around that. Talk about, you know, how you went about developing that, choosing, I mean, it’s kind of a bright pink color, it really stands out.

Blair Sharp: Yeah, all of my stuff that I have is so random, like, I have a picture. I took some branding photos, I guess, is that what they’re called, a few years ago. And I was wearing this dress that I wore for our wedding. What is it? The rehearsal dinner. It’s a pretty flowery dress. I’m in some of my pictures, but at this point, it’s old. My hair is shorter. And I went to Canva and I was just like looking, you know, the dropper that you can use to find the colors. And I was like, oh, that’s a nice pink. And it was like one of the pinks that was on the dress. And like, that’s just the pink that I started using. That’s so random, but it works. Yeah, isn’t it random? And then, yeah, so I just did that and all this. I mean, like I said, I’m not trained in any of this stuff. YouTube is my best friend. I have learned how to make a banner, make a newsletter, make a newsletter header, things like that, like all that branding stuff I’ve really just learned by YouTube or Googling, like Google, Google’s actually my best friend, probably. Just learn on the go, learn as I go, whatever I need as I need it. Right now I’m kind of trying to figure out how to use CapCut to make videos for Instagram. I’m back on Instagram again, I’m back on Instagram again, but I’m back on it as myself Just a person, not, not a freelance writer, not an alcohol free person, just posting whatever I think is funny and, and. Having fun now.

Rob Marsh: Very cool. So what does a typical project look for you? Once you connect with that client and they come back to you, what are you doing?

Blair Sharp: Yes. So I’m, I like to be really organized. So I want to make sure first, like that I know exactly what they are expecting, you know, whether or not they give me a brief or some, some of my clients just give me like a title and that’s what they, you know, Um, and depending on whether or not they want SEO, um, they want me to use, you know, SEO in, keep that in mind or not. Some of my clients are just like, just write it. Yeah. Um, so I make an outline first, first, always an outline. I have to have an outline. I can’t just go for it. Um, but I usually will. So I do an outline and then I will just kind of, let’s just say it’s a blog or an article. I’ll just pick a spot that I can just start. What’s the easiest place to start versus starting at the top? And it might be the top. It might be the introduction. I don’t know. It depends on the day. It depends on my mood. And I just start writing. And then eventually, it just comes together. It’s like magic. Because I just pick a spot. And then I pick another spot. And I write that section. And then I write. And then I don’t do a lot of like, upfront research necessarily. I will research as I go, which maybe isn’t the most time effective thing, but it works. It works for me.

Rob Marsh: I’d love to step through an example of how you do this because it doesn’t sound like you’re using a template or that you’ve got a framework that you’re writing to. You’ve got the idea and it’s going to come out, right? So, I mean, you don’t have to use a real project if you want, but let’s say that you’re writing an article about psychometry, right? Sure. Yeah, which you probably actually don’t have to do a lot of research on that because you know it, but you start with whatever feels comfortable. You go back. I’m trying to outline the process for you.

Blair Sharp: Right. Thank you. Something relatable right in the beginning to kind of get people to know that they, or get people to think that they need to keep reading. Like, oh, this is for me. Maybe a question. I write for a women’s health website called Rescripted. And so same with that. We’re talking symptoms of something, right? So I might say that tummy bloat, for example, just like the last one I wrote. Something that’s relatable to get people like, oh, yeah, I do have that problem. I need to keep reading. I need to know what the fix is. But yeah, psychometry, I don’t know who’s going to read that. That’s a hard topic. Other than me, maybe, yeah. What is a psychometrist? That could be a good, yeah. But then, yeah, a relatable, something in the beginning, like, depending on if you’re writing to someone who has memory issues, or if you have a person who’s a family member has memory issues, like how to deal with that. So it might be like this, you know, question of like, does your dad keep forgetting, you know, where he put his keys, and you have to make a list, you know, just like something really relatable, and then going to like, And then I usually start off with just like the basics, like what would be like, what is a psychometrist? And then very like, maybe dry, but make it make it fun. Because like, that would be a dry. I’d really have to really give a lot of put a lot of oomph into that one. And then I really like to have my headers like picked out. from the beginning. The words don’t have to be exact. I’ll change them up a little bit. But as far as organizing it, I really like to have it organized first and see it, not necessarily what I’m going to put in each area, but what the areas are. What are the different headers, like the H2s that you’re going to put.

Rob Marsh: It’s like you’re signposting for yourself as you’re writing. Does that make sense?

Blair Sharp: Yes. Yep. So I do that. I usually save the ending for the end just to see how it ends. And then I always try to make sure that it flows from one to the next so it’s not choppy and in block form. It kind of flows into the next section.

Rob Marsh: Yeah. I mean, it makes sense. I write very similarly. Because I write so much sales copy, I tend to, it’s not necessarily a framework or a template, but I kind of know the 10 or 14 things that need to be included at some point, but it’s almost never in the same order, right? You know, it’s like, well, sometimes this goes first and sometimes I want to start with the personal story, whatever that is.

Blair Sharp: Yeah. And it all depends too, like on who I’m writing for, like what do they want, you know? Um, I was writing some emails for, um, a sober brand. This person had a podcast or has a podcast and a sober membership. And so I was writing these emails. Those were super easy to write because that was like me, right? Like my quitting drinking and things like that. Um, so that was a lot more like putting emotion into it, getting people to feel seen for sure. And that stuff, a lot of the mental health, um, getting people to be like, Oh, I’m not the only person that’s going through this. Like, Oh, I did. I did that too. I didn’t realize that other people did that. Like those kinds of things, like those aha moments, like, okay, well, I really need to like, keep reading this, or I need to share this with someone that I know, things like that.

Rob Marsh: So as you figured this stuff out, you’ve built a business. Next, you launched a newsletter to help other freelancers do the same. Tell us about Hey Freelancer, why you launched it and what it’s about.

Blair Sharp: Sure. So everything kind of always goes back to me starting on Instagram. I did start like an alcohol-free newsletter when I was back on Instagram. I just knew that I liked to write and so that was a way to write and Instagram was a very visual platform. So I got into writing there. I kind of lost the love for that topic. So I only did it for maybe four or six months or something like that. But then when I got to LinkedIn, I started talking about freelancing. creating and writing online and all that kind of stuff. And people really were resonating with the stuff that I was posting on LinkedIn and stories. And, you know, I would say how I did something and people like, Oh, my gosh, like, I never even thought of that or something like that. And so grew my following on LinkedIn, I started a newsletter called the relatable create the relatable creator. That’s what it was called first. I didn’t want people to call me the relatable creator, but that’s ended up what people are having because people always say, oh, you’re so relatable. You’re so like normal, you know? And it was very vague. It was you know, you have to niche down if you want to grow. And so as soon as I decided to switch to just freelancers, because that was what a lot of my subscribers were anyways. So I was like, OK, this is easy. I just changed the name to Hey Freelancer. I started writing just about freelancing and that’s when I really saw it take off because that’s where all the freelancers are right on LinkedIn. Everybody’s on LinkedIn trying to get jobs and connect with other people. So yeah, I started writing about freelancing and it grew and I did my real It’s not a secret, but like my the way that I grew, I think the fastest was that it goes out on Tuesdays. And on Monday on LinkedIn, I would write a post every Monday, I would write a post that related to the topic of Tuesday’s newsletter. And then it’d be like, if you want to hear more, subscribe to the newsletter, it comes out at six o’clock tomorrow morning. And then that’s how I got so many subscribers. I haven’t been sharing. I’d like 1500 right now. I haven’t been sharing it anywhere else as much, just LinkedIn. I can’t do two platforms at once. It’s just too much for my brain. I can’t do them well.

Rob Marsh: I’m right there with you. I struggle. I know I should be posting on Twitter. I should be on LinkedIn. Pinterest should be a thing. Our Instagram account is a mess. It’s hard to do more than one or two things. I will say, for me, I do email really well. We have a daily email that goes out and that happens. So that’s our one thing. Everything else is sketch. So I totally get what you’re saying.

Blair Sharp: Yeah. I also, you know, there’s this thing that’s always happened to me is like, my social accounts or whatever will following will grow, grow, grow, grow, grow. And then I have my friends who are like, Oh, you got to do something with that. Like, you have to leverage that you have to make money off of that. And I’m like, Oh, I know, like, I feel like I’m leaving money on that table. So like, the plan was to always make products, digital products, like make, you know, freelancing roadmap or here’s whatever. That was always the plan. And I had weeks where I would go, okay, I’m going to sit down, I’m going to brainstorm. I wrote it all out like a big mind map on my whiteboard. I was like, yeah. And then I just never would finish it. So now I’m in this weird space. I’m like, you know what? Just do what you like to do. Just do what you like to do. Because for me, if I don’t do something that I enjoy, it becomes a chore and then I quit. Which is fine. Like quitting is great. I love quitting things that don’t make you, you know, energized. But with content, we know that if it becomes a chore, and it and it is something that you don’t actually like doing, it’s going to show up in the writing, like people are going to know that it’s just like, yeah, I chat GPT, like five ways to start freelancing, and then I just put it in my newsletter, you know, people are gonna know. So I’m trying to figure out how to, so I’ve taken a little break on the newsletter just a few months, just randomly was like, I’m going to stop doing it because it’s become a chore. And I’m going to figure out what I’m doing. So right now I’m in the figuring out stage. And I think I’m just going to start writing about stuff that I like to write about related to freelancing related to work versus these like tips and tricks and advice. I mean, it’s advice, but it’s more experience advice and like, storytelling. Because that’s how I’d rather write. I’m not like this guru, this LinkedIn guru, you know, like, here’s how I made $10,000 in two days, as a freelance writer, and I just started like, you know, those, those, I’m just not that person. And I think it took me time to realize, I’ve always known that I’m not that person. But it took me time to realize, I don’t have to try to be that person either.

Rob Marsh: I have a feeling too, if you started writing that, your newsletter audience would be like, wait a second, this isn’t the Blair we signed up to hear from.

Blair Sharp: Yeah. So that’s what I’m worried about. That’s why I haven’t done it yet. It’s on my list. But I think I’m going to try to give me a chance and stick around for a little bit. And then if you don’t like it, I totally understand. There’s tons of people who do educational type writing. Here’s how you make a website. Here’s how you DM somebody, which I can write about that too. But we don’t all have to be the same thing. And we don’t all have to have the same people who are interested in reading our work either. I think we get hung up on that too. I don’t like every writer. I don’t, how they write, you know, I don’t, we don’t resonate, but there are people that do, there are people for that person. We don’t have to be everybody’s person. So it’s hard to, especially if you’re online and you’re seeing what everybody else is posting, you’re like, Oh, look at all those comments and those likes, you know, like maybe I should do more of that, but then I’ll do it for a little bit, but then, you know, I don’t want to after a while.

Rob Marsh: So it’s not authentic.

Blair Sharp: Yeah. I really want to be myself.

Rob Marsh: When you’re writing the newsletter, what is that process? Are you, do you spend like all day Friday researching writing or is it a two hour thing? Pretty easy to do.

Blair Sharp: What is that one? Is templated. Okay. Template for that. So, um, I have a Google sheet that has. topics listed, you know, I wrote all the weeks out and I just wrote, put in topics, kind of as placeholders. I’ll move them around a little bit. It might depend if I get a sponsor or something like that and I have to write about something else. But I don’t have a specific day. So my weeks are Mondays and Tuesdays. I’m at my day job at mail as a psychometrist. And then Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, I’m at home. So I have three days to do writing or any of those other things. And so I just kind of fit it into my schedule. I don’t always feel super creative every single day.

Rob Marsh: I don’t know about you.

Blair Sharp: But then your personal stuff, it’s different for like, if it’s a client and they’re paying me, I can sit down and yeah, you got to crank it out. I can do it. Yep. But I might wake up and be like, Oh, shoot, you know, I didn’t fall asleep till midnight last night. I couldn’t fall asleep. I’m so tired. Just can’t do it today. I have to do this or that. So I just kind of fit it in where I fit it in. And to be honest, towards the end of before I just took this little break of the newsletter, I was doing it last minute. And I also hate that I don’t like doing that. I want to sit down in the morning. Okay, this is like every writer’s dream, right to sit down in the morning with a cup of coffee and the sun is shining in and like you want that but like that’s like not the reality sometimes.

Rob Marsh: Very rarely, though, very rarely.

Blair Sharp: Those two days a year are great. Yeah, exactly. Gosh, I love those days. I just wish I could bottle those days up. What did I do? What did I eat that made me feel that way?

Rob Marsh: The day before, how did I fall asleep on time?

Blair Sharp: Where did I go for a walk? Let’s retrace. that would be ideal right to like wake up and sit down but but it got to be where I was doing it last minute I didn’t like that I didn’t like rushing it because then it felt like it wasn’t really me giving my full like energy to so I’m I’m trying to figure out um I think this is a thing for a lot of people just constantly trying to figure out the best way to um to do good work especially their personal projects it’s hard when you have personal projects yeah

Rob Marsh: Yeah. Balancing client work with your own business is one of the biggest challenges that freelancers face. Yeah. For sure. For sure. So I want to ask you about your sober story, the alcohol story, which is part of your origin. What led to that and how has it impacted your life?

Blair Sharp: Yeah. So I’m a pretty open book with that. I’ve written about it a lot. I’ve been on over 20 podcasts talking about it. So it’s a short version. Um, I was always like a binge drinker with no off switch. That’s what I say. Once and this is like for anything like if I have caffeine, like if I drink something now, like I need to have it make it count like it needs to have caffeine and like I’m not just drinking some bubbly water like I need caffeine or something. So it’s definitely like my brain. That’s just how it’s wired. That’s just how some people’s brains are wired. Yeah. When I would have one drink, I’d be like, what’s the point? I still don’t see the point of one drink. I would want a buzz. I want something out of it. And the problem with me was that I wouldn’t ever want it to stop. I was never a daily drinker. I didn’t lose my marriage. I did get a DUI when I was 25. I’m 38 now. So I did have that happen. 

But I’m in Minnesota or the Midwest. I could name off. five or six of my friends who also have DUIs, you know, like it’s so that was kind of normalized to this binge drinking. It’s not as much anymore. And I think social media has to do with it because people don’t want their… I can’t imagine having like Snapchat when I was in college, like the things that would have gotten sent without me knowing, you know? So, yeah, I had a blast in college, made tons of mistakes, tons of memories. Um, but then when I got out of college, it was like, okay, now you should calm down. And I got good jobs. I was functioning, right? I wasn’t waking up drinking. I wasn’t drinking every day. Like I said, but on a Friday night I would go, you know, go out with friends or whatever. And I would just get super drunk. Like I would be up in like binge drinking, which is what most of us did. And then eventually it just got hard to keep up. Like the hangovers got way worse. You know, I was having to drink. more just to like, I don’t know, I guess I was just drinking more and more. And then I became a mom when I was 30. Okay. And that’s really when like, there was no it was, it was a problem. But it was like the same problem. Like everybody had, right? Like, Oh, got too drunk last night. What happened? Right?

And then I became a mom. And then I’m like, Oh, shoot. Now I am responsible for another human, not just myself. You know, And so I, I had no problem quitting drinking when I was pregnant, didn’t miss it. Just kind of interesting. Like, you know, there’s, yeah, there’s some psychology there that it was like a, here’s a break that you didn’t know you needed. Right. But I did get back into drinking, like after I had him. And there was one night it was super like this could have been any night like this could have just happened where my husband was away and I was home with him with my son. He was sleeping like I was just, you know, having some wine because that’s what moms are supposed to do after a hard day. You know, like this whole mommy wine culture. Yeah. And I like tripped over the baby gate just like like this isn’t like a weird thing. Tripped over the baby gate, dropped the wine glass, shattered the wine glass, and I’m cleaning it up. And my husband gets home, and he says, you can’t. I don’t think you should drink anymore with him in the house alone. He had put on little rules for me to. He doesn’t drink, by the way, which is interesting. He has a bad stomach, so it’s like a physical rule. It’s not like he didn’t have a drinking problem. 

He had put on rules like, OK, if you’re going to go to so-and-so’s house, just stay overnight. I don’t really want to be around you. You’re drunk. Because you just don’t stop talking, and then you stay up all night, and all this stuff. But he said to me, I think you should stop when you’re around him alone. And I was like, oh. So that kind of made me think a little bit differently. And that following Monday, I was at work, and I read an email from Scary Mommy. and a blog about a mom who doesn’t drink. And I was like, Oh, there are people that just like, decide to not drink anymore, not, not because they went to rehab, or because they live under a bridge, or they went to jail, like, they just decided alcohol is not serving them anymore. So they decided to quit. Like, I didn’t even know, like, it was almost like I got the okay, to just don’t do it. You know, and so I actually looked up the author of that blog on Facebook and sent her like this 900 word DM.

Rob Marsh: Wow.

Blair Sharp: Like telling her what happened that night before, like, what do I do? I don’t even know where to start. What should I do? And she said, you don’t have to drink anymore. I was like, oh, Never thought about that. Like I just didn’t think it was a thing. All my friends drink. Again, I live in the Midwest. This is what we do. Sunday football, right? It’s Bloody Mary’s after you go out the night before. Like it’s all these things. Alcohol is so, it’s everywhere, right? Not just the Midwest. But I was like, oh my gosh. So she gave me a bunch of resources. She gave me books to read, podcasts to listen to. And I dove head first into all that stuff. And I did not drink again after that day. So I count that day as February 26, 2018. I count that Monday as the day that I decided. I don’t count the last time I drank, even though it was a few days prior, because I didn’t think about not drinking forever until I read that blog. And that’s where that op-ed came in for Scary Mommy. The op-ed is about me reading the Scary Mommy article and then deciding not to drink because of that article. So it’s a full circle universe.

Rob Marsh: Yeah. Well, and I mean, this isn’t the point of your story, but how important content is in our lives and content writers, we don’t always see the impact that we have. I mean, you know, not all content is going to change a life, but There’s an opportunity there where we can make a real difference when we do our jobs really well. So again, I know that wasn’t really the point of your story, but as you’re talking about this, I’m like, wow.

Blair Sharp: No, but it’s true. That’s so true because then when I started posting on Instagram and sharing my story, I would get these messages, just like the message that I sent. And whether it be like a post or a reel or maybe, you know, I used to write on Medium a little bit. So I would write blogs on Medium and then share those. And people would be like, whoa, I just read that. And like, that was me. you know, how did you start? Here we go. I’m telling you the resources now and I’m giving you the books and the podcasts to listen to. And yeah, it’s pretty cool because I just wrote I’m earlier this year, I wrote an article for Expectful, and it was about being a mom who doesn’t drink. And it was the whole story. And like, as soon as that story got published, I was getting emails from people, readers saying, wow, it’s exactly like what That’s exactly what my life looks like right now. Like, I don’t know where to start, you know, like, how do you go out with friends? How do you. Survive the world without having, you know, wine at five o’clock after your long work day, you know? So, um, it has to get bad enough. I would say it has to get bad enough for you to want to change it. You can’t. And that’s why it’s so hard for like family members to try to get people to either quit drinking or, you know, doing drugs, things like that. Like the person has to like, realize like, Oh, I could live a better life. And honestly, I call it. I call it the secret to my life. Like, everything is different. Like, we’re like, Oh, what’s different since you quit drinking? Everything, like everything. Like I probably I wouldn’t be talking to you today if I had, you know, like, it’s just wild. So

Rob Marsh: Yeah. And here’s another copy lesson, right? Like you can’t give your reader or your prospect a desire, which is why we have to tap into where they are as opposed to try to convince them that they need to move to where we are, which, yeah, basic copywriting skills. So yeah, it’s a very lifelike demonstration of it.

Blair Sharp: Yeah. Yeah. It’s pretty cool. Again, the universe. I always think of the universe. I’m not very like woo-woo crystals and like birth charts or anything like that. I’m just like things happen. Like if you put good stuff in the world, if you connect with people on a real life basis, like things will happen.

Rob Marsh: Yeah, I’m the same. I’m not a woo-woo guy, but I believe the universe gives us back what we put into it. Yes, so much. Well, Blair, this has been great learning about you, your business, and basically how you’ve built it on the side as you’ve, you know, been employed with an employer. Maybe you’ll end up going full time. Maybe, you know, who knows what the future happens? We’ll see. If people want to find out how that story ends, though, or they want to connect with you, where should they go?

Blair Sharp: So everything’s on my website. It’s just BlairSharp.com. Also, you can find me on LinkedIn. I have a little cheese emoji next to my name. That’s just because I like cheese, really. It’s not the sharp cheddar or anything like that. It’s not the sharp pun. It just so happens. But yeah, I’m on LinkedIn. I’m also, again, like I said, I’m starting on Instagram, which I’m kind of having fun there. So that’s called the Blair Sharp Project. That’s my handle.

Rob Marsh: Amazing.

Blair Sharp: Blair Sharp, The Blair Sharp Project. So that’s just fun stuff like funny millennial mom, introvert, ADHD, whatever I feel like writing or creating over there.

Rob Marsh: So we’ll link up to all of that in the show notes so people can check you out. Thanks so much for being here.

Blair Sharp: Yeah, thanks for having me.

Rob Marsh: Thanks again to Blair Sharp for sharing so much about her business, her newsletter, and educating me on exactly what a psychometrist does, as well as her story about getting sober. I had a lot of fun, and more importantly, I learned a bunch of stuff from this interview. You can connect with Blair on Instagram at the Blair Sharp Project. She’s got all of her links there, and be sure to jump onto her newsletter list in case she starts sending that out again, as we talked about just a few minutes ago. You’ll also see her popping up on LinkedIn quite a bit, and she’s worth a follow there as well. 

Most writers focus on the writing part of copywriting, which only makes sense as we’re writers. But maybe we should be doing more copythinking before we start to write. Our guest for the 415th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast is A-List Copywriter David Deutsch. And when it comes to thinking about copy, David has few peers. He talked about strategy, writing emotional copy, coming up with big ideas, and much more. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.

David’s website

Rob Marsh: When we started The Copywriter Club Podcast, one of the things we were adamant about was that we would interview copywriters at all levels of experience and at all the various stages of their business journey. So we’ve spoken with copywriters who are just getting started along with those with years of experience. We’ve interviewed copywriters who call themselves content writers, strategists, consultants and various other titles. We’ve heard from marketers and authors and experts in all kinds of fields. In fact we used to start the podcast with the promise that you would listen and walk away with plenty of ideas you could “steal” for your own business.

With that background, it’s always a thrill to get the opportunity to interview an expert copywriter who has earned his place on the A-List. One of the go-to copywriters when it comes to being coached by one of the very best in the direct response world.

Hi, I’m Rob Marsh, and on today’s episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, I’m speaking with A-list copywriter David Deutsch. David has generated more than a billion dollars in sales over the course of his career. Not bad. And probably someone we can learn from. You’ll hear this in the interview, but one of the things David likes to talk about is the difference between writing and persuasion and copywriting. The two ought to be the same, but often they’re not. I know I say this every episode, but I think you’re going to like this interview. So stick around.

Before we jump in with David…

It’s October. Which means the year is 3/4 done… we’ve all got one more quarter to reach the goals we set for our businesses at the beginning of the year. So let me ask you, how is it going? Are you ahead or behind your goals? What can you accomplish in the next 12 weeks that will move your business forward and set you up for a successful 2025… hard to believe the decade is half over… any way in my opinion the best place for copywriters to stretch and reach their goals is The Copywriter Underground, the paid membership with more than 100 hours of training, including an entire course on selling, a mini-course on proposals, more than 27 different templates, including a legal agreement, and so many other resources designed to help you grow. And each month, we invite a different guest expert to teach a new skill… this month’s members-only persentation is by Email Marketing Hero Kennedy on creating lead magnets that attract buyers, not freebie seekers to your list. It’s the kind of skill that will help you build your own list and make you so much more valuable to your clients. It’s happening next week in The Copywriter Underground which you can join at thecopywriterclub.com/tcu.

And now, let’s go to our interview with David…

David, welcome to The Copywriter Club Podcast. I would love to start with your story. How did you become a direct response copywriter, a copy coach, and I think what some people would even say, you know, original member of the A-list of copywriters that are out there? Tell us how you got there.

David Deutsch: Oh, well, thanks. It’s great to be here, first of all. And, you know, I started on I don’t know how far back to go, but I started my advertising career at Ogilvy and Mather in New York, which was David Ogilvy’s agency back when he still occasionally roamed the halls. And I you know, worked in the ad world for a while after that. Um, and it was, it really taught me, first of all, of all the advertising people, David Ogilvie was the most accountable, the most direct response, enthusiastic. So I always had that training in, it’s not just creativity, but it’s selling right. And it’s not creative unless it sells. And, um, When I first encountered Jay Abraham, I was like, wow, there’s this whole world out there of direct response. There’s this whole world out there of more accountable advertising. I want to be a part of that. So I kind of left the ad world and started working for the boardrooms, the Agoras, Healthy Direction, some of the big publishers, as well as all sorts of entrepreneurs and startups and fun stuff like that. But it was always more or less direct response oriented. It was always about getting a response, getting an order, getting a name. 

And after doing that for a few decades, I started teaching, coaching other people how to do it, because I kind of found that it’s really pretty easy in a way to turn someone, turn their thinking, right? Most people think incorrectly about writing. They think, well, how can I write? How do I put the words? What are the right words to put on the page? Rather than, hey, you know, if you had to convince someone to go to a certain movie or to go to this restaurant versus that restaurant, you wouldn’t sit down and be all writerly and try to compose something. You would just, your natural persuader would come out. So, I find that just getting people in touch with that kind of goes beyond all the formulas and the templates and all, which are great to have. But the main thing is, how do you get in touch with that ability that you naturally have to help people, help to persuade people? So that’s what I do now. I still do some writing occasionally, although it’s more partnerships, kind of getting together with people and creating a product or working with them as part of their team. and have my own products as well, because nothing keeps you as sharp in terms of writing.

Rob Marsh: You’re having to sell your own things.

David Deutsch: It’s like, boy, you really pay attention to the numbers. And that’s what copywriting is in a way. It’s as much of a science as it is an art.

Rob Marsh: I love that. So before we jump into how you do that and the strategy, all that, you’re one of the last guys around that really remembers Ogilvy, David Ogilvy. His books, I think, almost set the stage for much of what became the direct response industry, even, you know, before the internet sort of, you know, took over a lot of that, but just tell us, you know, just a minute or two, your thoughts about that whole experience for you and how formative it was for you.

David Deutsch: Well, I think being at Ogilvy was kind of like being at a teaching hospital in a way, right? People taught each other and there was a body of learning that you learn from. It was partly a mythology in a certain way, which was interesting, right? The myth of David Ogilvy and what he did and how he was. And of course, he perpetuated that myth by occasionally wearing kilts and doing outrageous things in restaurants and doing outrageous things in presentations. But, you know he loved the English language. You can tell his writing is so masterful in its command, in its exactness, its use of language. And he loved getting results. He loved selling. He didn’t just write for sport for its own sake, for winning awards, right? He called direct mail my first love and secret weapon. because he used it once to sell a hotel back in the day. And so, you know, and I think also his putting his teachings in different forms, right, in his lectures, in his books and things has kind of inspired me to share what I know, to be part of that passing on.

Rob Marsh: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I love reading his books to this day. Some of the things that maybe he teaches are a little dated, but you know, I’d still say 80% of what he taught, what he talks about is applicable to the work that we do. Certainly what we’re doing online, you know, where response is so much of what we have to do. But I’m a little bit jealous that you had that experience of being at Ogilvy in those days.

David Deutsch: Yeah, I’m very I’m grateful. Because It’s like I fell into it in a certain way. You know, I got a job there. It wasn’t even in the writing. And then I got into the writing part of it. But I was just like, Oh, I’m at an agency. That’s interesting. You know? Yeah. And, but I kind of fell in love with it. You know, just got kind of swept up.

Rob Marsh: I think, yeah, I think that happens to a lot of us. I’m, you know, much the same way. I had an opportunity at the very beginning of my career to start writing and I’ve loved it ever since. Yeah, it’s, it got its hooks in me and I’ve not wanted to let go. You mentioned when you left the agency, you started working with a lot of these big name direct mailers and it was all offline, I believe at the time. As you list off some of those names, I can imagine a lot of direct response copywriters thinking, wow, that’s the A-list of clients. It feels charmed in a way. How did you connect with that first client that then led to the next, whether it’s a boardroom or Agora or… Yeah, how did that all come together?

David Deutsch: Well, that’s an interesting question, interesting story. In the Jay Abraham corpus of work, there was a mention of a guy named John Finn, who was a copywriter’s agent in Los Angeles. And I thought, I should copy, I should copy, I should write to this guy. And I wrote to him. He was very receptive. And he hooked me up with different clients. and hooked me up with a guy named Jim Rutz, who was a very well-known writer in the world of direct response and in those big, you know, with those big companies. And I started working with Jim Rutz, which was a great learning experience, amazing command of language, amazing command of selling. It’s like you can’t put his right, you read his writing and you can’t put it down. So I worked with him for a while and, you know, he was kind enough to introduce me to the players there and they knew that I worked with him. And eventually I began working with, with his blessing, working with them on my own. You really can’t be working with someone, you know, both for, I think the, the learning, because, you know, it’s you can learn all you can from books, right? But unless you have someone that’s really tearing your work apart, right, and that’s really, you know, giving you feedback on it, and then showing you exactly what to do. Sometimes, it’s hard to learn plus the contacts that you make, I’ve made working with Jim and working with other people and working with John Finn.

Rob Marsh: Yeah. Tell me, are there two or three major lessons or takeaways that you had from your experience working with Jim Rutz?

David Deutsch: Sure. I think the main thing was don’t be boring. First of all, do not bore. And Jim was just amazing at using colorful language. He even wrote to the reader’s highest intelligence. Sometimes you come across words you didn’t even know what they meant. And either it didn’t matter, or you kind of knew what they meant from the context. So it didn’t matter in that sense. But he could take anything and make it into an interesting story, put an interesting twist on it. So I think there was really, you know, there’s really learning that. And I think also, I learned from him, just the power of a great idea of an outrageous idea. Half of the ideas he came up with were terrible, but the other half were genius. You never kind of knew which one was which. But that’s how it is, I think, with great ideas. Someone comes along and says, I got this great idea for a drink. We’re going to make it. It’s going to be really bad tasting. It’s going to be full of sugar and caffeine. And we’re going to put it in a little can, and it’s going to be really expensive. We’re going to call it Red Bull. I mean, that sounds like a terrible idea, but it turned out to be a great idea.

Rob Marsh: So what I mean, since you mentioned that, let’s let’s talk a bit about ideas. And I know this is something that you have been talking about and teaching about pretty in depth most recently, although throughout your entire career, ideas have been a critical part of your success. So, yeah, let’s talk about this. Where do ideas, well, actually first, what is an idea? Because I think a lot of times we talk about this, oh, you got to have the big idea in order to write a sales page or to have a campaign or whatever. And there’s a huge disagreement as to what even qualifies as a big idea.

David Deutsch: Yeah, yeah. And disagreement is silly because an idea is whatever you want it to be. Who cares, right? There’s no definition. Oh, this is the definition.

Rob Marsh: That doesn’t make it to idea status. That’s a concept.

David Deutsch: Yeah. You know, an idea is a new way of doing something. It’s a new way of saying something. It’s a new way of presenting something. You can have an idea for where to go to lunch. You can have an idea for how to change the world, you know, with a new iPhone. There’s all sorts of ideas, right? Idea for a heck of an idea for a headline. You can have an idea for a product. So I think what we’re talking about in a way though, is, is ideas for copy. Yeah. Right. And to me, a big, like what they call a big idea is an idea that you can really build a promotion around. right, that sustains a whole promotion. Like you see that with Agora, the stuff that they do. You see that with some big health promotions. You see that in the ad world, of course, right? What’s the idea behind this commercial that kind of sustains it, that gives us a premise to build on, right? Like “End of America”. Well, yeah, the idea, it’s not an earth shaking idea. But the idea was that the end of America, which is just kind of a little bit of hyperbole, that, you know, America, as we kind of know, it is coming to an end, and you need to be prepared. And not in a gloom and doomy way that there’ll be blood in the streets, but just that, hey, it’s gonna be some big changes. And you could either profit from them, Or you can kind of watch your portfolio go down from. 

A lot of my favorite big ideas are just opposite ideas. That’s one of the things I teach in my Idea Power training. Just do something opposite. If everyone else is zigging, you zag. If everyone else is saying, do these things to be healthy, you can say, hey, all that stuff’s a lot of crock. You’re not going to be healthy because you don’t do this and do this. You be healthy by doing this stuff that I said, looking at it in this new way. Right? Like, yeah, you shouldn’t need a ton of sugar. And yeah, you shouldn’t smoke cigarettes. But you know, drinking eight cups of water a day isn’t going to help you and not drinking coffee is going to help you because coffee is good for you in a lot of ways. And that was an actual promotion. It was very much like that. It was like, you know, had enough with all these people telling you all those things not to do right. It got your attention.

Rob Marsh: So what are some other, I’m going to use the word framework here. It’s not really a framework, but you know, if we have these tools, like, you know, opposite ideas, what are some others of these tools or frameworks that we can apply as we start thinking through, okay, I’ve got a promotion or I’m coming up with a hook for something. Maybe it’s not even as big as a campaign. It’s just, you know, I want an article on LinkedIn or on my own blog or whatever, but I need that hook. What are some of those other tools that we can apply to the thoughts as they come?

David Deutsch: Well, I think people get stuck, right? They just, they don’t think of it as in a fluid sort of way as how can I take what I have, right? And kind of what can I add to it? What can I subtract from it? Like maybe an idea comes from zooming in. on something like Ogilvy zoomed in on the clock in that at 60 miles an hour, the loudest noise in this new Rolls Royce comes from the electric clock, right? He zoomed in, right? You can zoom out, you can focus on one particular feature, right? A lot of times an idea or your ideas or promotion sounds really bland, right? Talking about Oh, this revolutionary thing is going to change your thinking in the world and how you do it. But if you really zoom in on one little thing, how it neutralizes a certain molecule in order to switch off your, I don’t know, hunger hormone or whatever it is, right? And then same with adding something, right? What can I add to this? How can I throw in Donald Trump? How can I throw in a celebrity? How can I make it relevant to what people are seeing going on in the world now? And of course, you see that in financial stuff, right? It’s like the agora, the Trump checks, or the Trump secret, or how the election’s gonna change something. And you see it in health by the celebrity connection, right? Celebrity secret. And I’m not saying don’t just automatically add the word celebrity into it, but look for the connection that it might have to some celebrity, right? Maybe some celebrity does something that’s along these lines that you can kind of use that as a tie in. Maybe people in Hollywood are doing it. People at Hollywood are doing everything. Chances are, you’re doing whatever it is your product does.

Rob Marsh: Yeah, there’s truth there. So I want to ask you, when you get a new assignment, what is your process? Because do you jump into the product first? Do you start researching the customers? What does that even look like when an assignment lands on your desk?

David Deutsch: First of all, first thing I do, and it’s something I got from Clayton Makepeace, is I just start coming up with ideas. because I don’t want to fill my head with a lot of cans, cans, you know, it’s this, it’s not that. The first things that come to mind are usually the things that would get me to want this thing that I want this thing to have, right? Like, you know, and as you kind of what used to be called open the box, right? Of materials and background research, open the files nowadays. You know, you may find, oh, I can’t really say that it enables you to live forever, but I can say it enables you to live longer. And I can say, you know, certain other things about it, right? But a lot of the thinking about it, a lot of the analogies about it, a lot of the directions that you get when you first don’t have anything, you know, uh, hemming you in can be very productive. So that’s, that’s kind of my starting point is do that for awhile and then say, okay, I’d like to, in the research now explore certain things. Like I want to explore this thing about longevity here. I want to explore how it helps you live longer. Um, and rifling through some of the other stuff. Maybe I’ll see some unexpected things. I’m, I’m looking for that, you know, It was discovered by a headhunter, by someone got it from headhunters in the Amazon jungle, right? How close can I come to the one-legged golfer, the famous John Carlton ad, where the guy got it by the technique from watching a one-legged golfer. I want to find those things. And I want to know enough about the market, who we’re writing to, right, to know not just, oh, they’re male, they’re this, they’re educated, they want to make more money. I want to know why they want to make more money. I want to know what drives them. I want to know what keeps them up at night. I want to know what they, as Jane Kennedy would say, I want to know what they talk to their spouse about at night, driving to see their kids, you know, or not at night. I don’t know why I threw in at night, but, you know, like, what do they just say to each other in private, right? How can I kind of tap into that? And then I want to know, how the product works, you know, like really well, I hate getting copy from people. Um, where it’s like, obviously, it’s written by a copywriter that read a couple of pages of stuff about blood pressure, but doesn’t really understand, like, if I was talking to a doctor, it’d be a totally different conversation. Not like he’d use big words, but it would be obvious he understands how blood pressure works. Right? It’s obvious from this copywriter, he doesn’t understand how blood pressure works. He just kind of knows how to talk about it. And when you read it from someone that’s really maybe gone out and read a book or two about blood pressure, really understands the different ways of getting blood pressure down, really understands what happens when blood pressure goes up, right? How that puts pressure on every organ of your body. It’s not just, oh, it’s a number, and it’s a bad number when it’s a high number, right? We’re talking about every organ of your body is being overtaxed by this high pressure, fluid pressure up against it, right? And getting rid of it just frees up your circulation. You know, I had a client and he did a lot of he was in the facial skin care. And I said, you know, I read your stuff. I don’t really feel like you really know, I mean, I feel like, you know, skincare better than most people, but I don’t feel, you know, what’s really going on under there in the epidermis. I feel like, you know, enough just to write what you need to write for it really, you know, kind of well. And he was right. You’re right. You know, I’m going to go read up on some books, right? I’m going to go read some books. And he came back. He was like, God, it makes such a difference now when I write about it, right? Even if I’m not directly referencing what I wrote, what I write and the way I say it is different. Because I know, you know, what’s I know the 90% under the iceberg now. So anyway, I got off on a little rip. But so that’s what I do then. And then I just try to write, you know, maybe I’ll come up with some headlines. Maybe I’ll have an idea for an opening. I don’t really care where I start. I just want to start I want to start getting stuff on paper. I think that’s real important. And then try to get something down, complete as quickly as possible. and see if it works or if it doesn’t work. I like to work on Scrivener for longer stuff, because it’s really easy to organize stuff in Scrivener. It’s really easy to move it around. It’s kind of a word processing program, like for writers. And it’s like everything you always wanted a word processing. I wish Word divided things into Windows easier. And I wish that column where you can make it so they have the table of contents. I wish that was a little better and more active. I wish all these things. It just does that.

Rob Marsh: Yeah, Scrivener’s made for, I think, originally for novelists, right? So you can move characters around or chapters around or whatever. Because of that, though, I think it becomes a really powerful tool if you’re writing long form, because oftentimes you’ll tell a story that later, as you’re writing, it’s like, wait, that doesn’t really fit up above, but it does fit down below. The copy and paste scroll in Word is so much less effective than what you’re talking about with Scrivener.

David Deutsch: All you have to do is move the title in that over here, I guess, in that left-hand column, just move it down to where you want it. You don’t have to like take the whole thing and cut and paste it. Exactly. The other thing that I love is that you can keep all your research right there on that same column. So it’s like, oh, I want to look at that PDF. Oh, I want to listen to the recording that we had the call with the client, right? It’s right there. I want to see that chart again. The chart is right there in that column.

Rob Marsh: Yeah, it makes footnoting research so much easier. It’s a great tool, Scrivener, for all of this. It’s so cheap.

David Deutsch: It’s like, what, 49 bucks or something like that?

Rob Marsh: Yeah, it’s cheaper than Word, for sure. So as you’re writing this, and I know I kind of asked this before we started recording, and you’ve been doing this long enough that you obviously know, okay, at some point, I need to be building authority or I need to be introducing proof at this point. But do you have a framework or an outline in the back of your head that you’re writing to as you sit down, or do you just let it come out of your fingers as it comes?

David Deutsch: To some extent, it comes. I mean, there’s a basic There’s certain basic outlines that are kind of in my head, you know, there’s the, you know, the problem. you know, I want to, you know, I want to let people know that there’s a problem. And if it’s a problem that, you know, oh, there’s a knife stuck in their neck, okay, well, I don’t have to sit there and go, you know, it’s really hard to have a knife stuck in your neck. And people look at you funny, but you know, it’s embarrassing, you know, you’re less productive at work. Like, I don’t have to do that. I just have to go, I got a thing here that can get that knife out of your neck. If they’ve got arthritis, Okay, little less so, right? I don’t have to harp on how painful arthritis is. They know it’s painful. Maybe I have to remind them a little bit. Maybe I have to play a little bit on, you know, you can’t pick up your grandson. That kind of hurts, makes you feel a little less, you know, useful. Just, you know, just step on the corns a little bit. If it’s high blood pressure or if it’s like, you know, high blood sugar, well, that’s a little different because there’s not those constant reminders like you have with arthritis. So I got to do a little more pressing on the problem. I got to do a little more reminding them that, hey, it’s not just, you know, a number that your doctor says you really should get down. This is a ticking time bomb in your body that’s liable to go off as a stroke or a heart attack at any minute. Um, And then, of course, there are some things where they don’t even know it’s a problem, like, oh, I never knew I needed this, right? You’ve got to tell, like Scrivener, right? Nobody knows they need Scrivener until you tell them, hey, there’s this better way to do this thing, right?

Rob Marsh: Yeah. Life insurance strikes me as one of those kinds of products where you absolutely need it if you die, but it’s one of those things that you don’t even want to think about needing. And so, yeah, hardly even like hits your radar, right?

David Deutsch: Yeah. Like I think Dan Kennedy says, you got to show them the coffin. There’s no life insurance. I came close to that. I sold a book on estate planning.

Rob Marsh: Okay, basically the same problem.

David Deutsch: Same thing, I had all those same problems, which is of course planning for death and who you’re gonna leave money to. How do I make this interesting, right? And it was one of the first things I did for Boardroom and it was a great training ground, right? Because it really like, okay, in trying to make that interesting, it was like, well, now I, it was like lifting 50 pound weights and now 10 pound weights don’t seem that heavy anymore.

Rob Marsh: Yeah, for sure.

David Deutsch: I remember, if I could just share one thing, this long thing about how you have to be really careful to dot all the I’s and cross all the T’s because if you don’t do certain things, then the money that you think is earmarked for a certain beneficiary might not get to that beneficiary because you’ve misstated something or haven’t specified this in this certain place. And I turned that into how to avoid accidentally disinheriting your heirs.

Rob Marsh: Yeah. There’s a connection there, right? Yeah.

David Deutsch: To me, that really sums up how do you take something boring, make it into not boring? How do you take something that’s just informational and make it relate to something that they care about, which is, you know, their heirs, you know, getting what’s coming to them.

Rob Marsh: Yeah. So as you’re writing, I’m curious about the effort and the amount of work that you put in. And maybe this is something that you coach people on. For a beginner, intermediate copywriter, how many headlines, how many hooks should they be coming up with? Or is their writing, whatever this thing is that they’re writing, a sales page, a blog post, a case study, whatever, how many rewrites does it take to get to something that’s actually good? And I know that’s a really nebulous question, so I apologize for that.

David Deutsch: And of course the answer is it depends, right? Yeah, of course. Like 50. You know, three is often a good number, right? You get to two, you revise it once.

Rob Marsh: You’re talking about the actual article itself, not necessarily headlines. Headlines would be more than three. Yeah.

David Deutsch: Yeah. The actual overall thing, right? You do it once, you go, you know, I missed this. I missed this. I don’t know about this approach. I want to try this. That’s kind of a second draft. And then you see other things become clearer because you fix some things. Other things are now a little out of whack or now it becomes clear that the conclusion is not as good as it could be. So the third time kind of does it right. Headlines, it’s good to generate, I don’t know, 20. You know, it’s good to generate 30. You know, the main thing is a to make them all as different as possible. Don’t just like, you know, Oh, should I instead of like, like how to make more money and live a better life? Make more money and live a better life. I’ll take out the how to like, no, that’s just to say.

Rob Marsh: right?

David Deutsch: Right. Like you really want something like, you really want to base it on a different hypothesis. Maybe they don’t want to make more money. Maybe you’re wrong about that. That’s the most important thing that that’s the thing that’s going to work. Maybe they just want to look good to their to their family. Maybe they want to be a good provider. Maybe they want to maybe it’s keeping score to them. Right? You know, so the headline then becomes how to prove your sixth grade teacher who said how to prove wrong your sixth grade teacher who said you’d never amount to any Like maybe, so that’s another headline, right? And what’s another headline, right? What if we took it and extended it, the benefit, right? It’s not the money, it’s the thing you can buy, right? Why not spend next year vacationing in Europe, flying first class and staying in a first class hotel instead of going to the nearest beach or something, right? It’s not quite the same thing now. It’s different emotionally. It’s different conceptually. So, you know, again, people get hemmed in. They’re like, Oh, I got to say these things in the headline. And I got it. Got it. They try to make the headline into a sales pitch. And as you know, it’s not a sales pitch. It’s a read the next read what’s under the headline pitch.

Rob Marsh: Yeah, it’s it’s a catch your attention. So that you can get them into the next sentence, right?

David Deutsch: Nobody ever read a headline and went, I’m gonna buy this thing. I’m

Rob Marsh: So, you know, to bring us back around then to, you know, back to ideas, how do you know when you’ve got a good idea? Because, and this is obviously the reason we want to come up with a lot of them, because the first few ideas are generally not great or they’re so common, you know, that they’ve been used and seen before. How do you know when you’ve got that one or, you know, two or three maybe that you’re just like, wow, we definitely need to test this or we need to use this?

David Deutsch: Yeah. Well, um, first of all, I don’t mean to be pitchy here, but they can go to, um, speaking of writing.com forward slash IP. And there’s a test that they can take to see whether something is a big idea or not.

Rob Marsh: Okay.

David Deutsch: And couple of things on that. One is, you know, You’ve got to train yourself to recognize good ideas. I mean, that’s what you’re trying to do here, but to feel good ideas, right? You read something like End of America. Can you feel like it does something to you emotionally that gets your attention? You can feel that when everybody reads at 60 miles an hour, loudest noise in this new Rolls-Royce electric clock, you feel like it does something to you. They laughed when I sat down at the piano, but when I started to play dot, dot, dot, Right? You feel that. Yeah. And, um, you’ve got to learn to kind of feel that, like practice it with other headlines. Like, does this do that to me? Right. Does this, is this a big idea? And then learn to recognize it in your own, looking at them as if you didn’t write them. Right. Like, look at it. Like, okay, if I will, I’m just encountering this headline. I didn’t write it. Oh, you know, Does it? Yeah, that’s not very interesting. It looks like a million other headlines. I mean, right, like, because it stops being your precious baby. And you’re seeing it as other people see it. Okay.

Rob Marsh: I mean, in the real world, the way to do this probably is to look for those things that do stop you, that do catch your attention, that you’re just like, wait a second, why do I love that ad? Or what is the thing about that that made me stop as I was going to go get a drink during the commercial break or whatever and have to finish watching that? Or I’m turning the page and I have to read this and trying to, I guess, figure out what is the thing about this that made me stop?

David Deutsch: Yeah. I mean, that’s something I learned from Steven Kotler. I was very articulate about that best selling author. And he says, Look at how something made you feel. How does this make me feel? And then why does it make me feel this way? How does it make me feel this way? And I think there’s a couple things when it comes to big ideas, right? The first is, you know, I think, Oh, he said, Does it make me go? Wow, when I saw it, someone else’s idea? Do I go? Do I wish I’d thought that?

Rob Marsh: Yeah.

David Deutsch: And you can kind of do that with your own ideas. The other is, is there an emotional component to it? End of America. There’s emotion there. They laughed when I sat down at the piano, but when I started to play, da, da, da, there’s a lot of emotion in that. Vindication, resurrection, proving others wrong, not being laughed at anymore. So much emotion there. So does it have that emotion? And is it a big enough idea to carry a whole promotion, right? I mean, Ogilvy’s thing was for, you know, 12 mistakes, let’s say, that people make when they read English. You know, to this day, people look at that and they go, I wonder what those 12 mistakes are. Maybe I make those 12 mistakes. And it carries the whole promotion, because as it talks about those 12 mistakes, it talks about why you should buy this course.

Rob Marsh: Yeah, I love that. Okay. I want to change gears just a little bit and talk about this idea that, again, before we started recording, I mentioned Brian Kurtz mentioned this to me. I’ve heard him say it a few times, this idea of copy thinking as opposed to copy writing. You’re the guy that coined that phrase, I believe. What is copy thinking and how is it different from copywriting?

David Deutsch: You know, I think Of course, you’ve got to think to write, but I think a lot of people just kind of go on automatic pilot when they start writing. right? And the automatic pilot is programmed by their, by their eighth grade English teacher and maybe college, you know, courses and things they had to write for that. It’s programmed by, okay, I’ve read a lot of this stuff and I know what it sounds like and I’m going to make it sound like this sort of thing. It’s not your fault, right? You’re, you know, not to blame for being overweight or not rich or whatever it is.

And now, okay, now I’m in the story part. So I am going to tell this story, right? So come hell or high water, no matter how boring it gets, they’re gonna tell that story from beginning to end, right? Because they’re not thinking about, well, maybe the best way to tell this story is to start at the end of the story and work my way back, right? In medias res, as they say. Maybe the best way to, you know, whatever it is, maybe there’s a better way to do this than just kind of regurgitate the stuff that occurred. Because AI can do that, right? AI does that very well. So what we need to do is to get off of the automatic pilot and take control of the throttle or whatever the thing is called in an airplane. And fall back on our own experience and our own expertise and our own insights that we have and our own, even wit and humor and personality and what we are and what’s inside us.

And that means thinking. That means like just sitting quietly before you start to write and go, well, what do I want to say here? What do I know about this? What do I feel about this? What do I want the person I’m writing to, to feel? Right? What story do I want to tell and how do I want to tell that story in a, you know, in an interesting way? And what strategy should I use, right? Is everyone else, you know, zigging, so I need to zag? Have people heard, you know, the Schwartzian, have people heard this to death? And I can’t just come in with a better way to lose weight or a better way to make money. I’ve got to come in with, you know, why French women don’t get fat, right? Or I’ve got to bring in, you know, you know, this radical new way of making money or address the market directly, right? Tried every way of making money and can’t seem to do it. Here’s what you’re missing. So that’s what I think is lacking so much. And I think it’s more and more lacking as people kind of rely more and more on AI output, whether they cut and paste it, which horrifies me. Or whether they use it you know, incorporated themselves, they need to add that strategic element to it. They need to add that strategic element in terms of even how they prompt AI, right? Like, hey, here’s what I’m thinking. How do I go against what people are doing? What’s the strategy? What’s the way? Like, have a conversation with AI. AI isn’t just write me a sales letter or write me an email, right? It’s like, hey, let’s talk like you’ve got this intern. that is working for you, right? You don’t just say, go write me a, well, you might, but go write me a sales letter. It’s like, hey, let me tell you what I’m trying to do here. What are your ideas? What do you think? What do you think about this? What do you think about this, right? How would you take this? How would you dimensionalize this? What other ways could you do this? Give me five other ways to tell this story.

Rob Marsh: Yeah, yeah. It feels to me, and I agree, that what copywriters, maybe we’ve got an entire generation of copywriters who are used to taking an assignment from a client and assuming that the strategic thinking has been done. You know, they’re asking me to write a sales page. So I’m, you know, I, I’m assuming that they know how to drive traffic to the sales page or they’re asking me for an ad. So I assume that it’s about this thing that they’ve asked about rather than taking that step back to, to really do the strategic work. And I think that’s hard for a lot of copywriters because oftentimes we don’t have that background.

David Deutsch: Yes, we don’t have the background and thinking is hard work. And people are under deadline pressures. But that’s what people need to do. And when you do do it, it makes the writing so much easier.

Rob Marsh: Totally.

David Deutsch: Because you’ve got that insight. You’ve got that direction. You’ve got that strategic underpinning. You know what you’re trying to say, what needs to be said, how it needs to be said. You know, sometimes I feel like that’s my whole purpose as a coach is just to get people to stop and think, you know, to just say to people, Hey, how would you say this? So forget about writing, right? Just sell it to me. How would you sell it to me? Right. And then at first I’ll kind of copyright selling it to me. No, no, no, no, no, no. Just I’m your friend sitting in a bar. Just tell me about this thing. Don’t tell me your strategic, you know, whatever your, you know, what you think the copy should say.

Rob Marsh: Yeah.

David Deutsch: You know, tell me as a friend, because that’s what copy is. I forget who said this, but it’s kind of, um, it’s like just putting your, you know, putting your arm around someone and saying, Hey, let’s go look for, you know, close together. You look, you look good in this. You don’t look good in this. Right.

Rob Marsh: Yeah. So you mentioned using AI, obviously not to do the writing, but as an idea buddy. How have you used it to improve strategy, or how are you coaching other writers to use it? I know you can sort of have that back and forth, but do you actually ask a tool like Cloud or ChatGPT for strategic ideas to start with?

David Deutsch: Yeah, sometimes. I think Ask for strategic ideas, bounce strategic ideas off of it. Ask it, why would this not work, right? You can ask it unlimited questions, right? Why not ask it why something wouldn’t work so that you could avoid finding that out later? Or at least consider, oh yeah, it might not work because people might be offended by this, or might not work because that’s not the benefit people really want, or whatever it is. But yeah, sure, have that. conversation with it. And I wouldn’t say don’t use it to write, but that’s a very far part of the AI process, right? Yeah. When it’s ready to actually write something, you know, like first you’ve got to go, what’s the avatar? What’s the strategic? What are we trying to do here? And, you know, AI, as you probably know, is very step by step. It doesn’t do well with find an avatar, think of a strategy, and, you know, do an outline and write it, right? It likes to do those things in stages, like, let’s do the avatar first together. Let’s do this together. Let’s do that together and go back and forth.

Rob Marsh: Yeah. I mean, as a writing buddy or as a thought buddy, AI can actually be a really great tool to force us to do the things as copywriters that we often skip over because we think we know the audience, or we think we know what the right feature is. And if we have that go, that back and forth, you know, tell me why this won’t work. Give me three additional things that I’d be thinking about here, kinds of prompts could, I mean, it just, Like, it’s part of that copy thinking process.

David Deutsch: Sure. It’s a great copy thinker. You know, what are five things that people with diabetes wish regular people without diabetes knew? Right? That could be some pretty good stuff to have in your promotion. What are five things that, you know, people with diabetes, you know, what are their biggest obstacles? What do they hate most? Right? You know, questions like that can give you real insights. into a target market. I mean, probably can’t beat going out and talking to people with diabetes. But you know, it’s a good it’s a good thought starter, right?

Rob Marsh: Yeah. Yeah. So we met in person a few years ago at one of our events, Copywriter Club in Real Life. I think we were in Williamsburg there. And one of the things I noticed that you were doing as all these presentations on stage, I looked over at one point and you were busily scribbling notes into a notebook, which impressed me a little bit because I don’t think there was anybody on stage with less experience or with more experience than you. So there’s a lot of people who have been maybe doing this for only a couple of years or whatever, and you’re still scribbling away tons of ideas, thoughts that you’re having. And like I said, it impressed me because I was just thinking, if somebody with three, four decades of experience is here learning. There’s a lesson here for the rest of us. So that’s a really long introduction to my question, which is, how do you stay sharp today? What are you doing to learn? Where do you focus your reading, your journaling, your thinking, basically, to make sure that you’re growing your skills?

David Deutsch: Ooh, that’s quite a question. You know, there’s a lot of things, right? Keeping current with what’s going on, whether that’s social media. I love TikTok, which is, of course, a great way to know what’s going on because it’s all on there. Although it does kind of gravitate me away from, you know, young person things kind of into, you know, things more appropriate for my age.

Rob Marsh: Yeah, the algorithm still works.

David Deutsch: Yeah, the algorithm works really too well. Because whenever I say to my daughter, hey, did you see that thing on, you know, whatever, she’ll be like, yeah, Dad, you know, that’s on the old person feed, right? But it’s a great way to keep up with stuff. Being around young people, coaching young people is a really big help. You know, reading a wide variety of things Um, not just stuff that, you know, you’re interested in, but stuff that you might not want to be, you know, exposed to. Right. Um, whether that means watching, you know, Fox news or watching, you know, I love to watch Fox news and I love to watch, um, you know, CNN. Right. I love to see all ends of the spectrum. This goes back to the thing about taking notes. And I think there’s a couple of things there. One is they may have different insights than I do. They may have learned different things. They may know some things that I don’t. But even the things that they know that I know, they may know a different aspect of it. I may learn something from how they applied it or how they used it. That’s something I got from Jay Abraham, right? You go to the same seminar as someone, find out what their takeaways were, right? Because they won’t be the same as your takeaways. Different people see different aspects of things. And so, you know, I think that’s really important too. And just, you know, using the tech. The best advice I ever got about AI is just use it. you know, plan your vacation with it, use it. Don’t worry about getting this new plugin or, you know, this hot new, you know, just become familiar with it.

Rob Marsh: So here’s a slightly contrarian question, but what drives you nuts about copywriting today?

David Deutsch: Well, a lot of it is AI copy. When you can look at it and you go, oh my God, AI so wrote that. You can see that in editorial stuff, right? You can see that in copywriting. So that drives me a little bit nuts. I think it drives me a little bit nuts when people just are kind of writing on automatic pilot. because it just seems like a waste of a person, you know, when this person is an individual and has got things to bring to it and is only bringing to it, you know, this homogenized, you know, vomiting forth of everything that’s ever been written before in a different, you know, the classic being, you know, it’s not your fault.

Rob Marsh: Might as well have AI write it if that’s all you’re going to bring to the table.

David Deutsch: Yeah, because that’s exactly what, and that’s why AI is so good, because it’s good at doing it’s good at taking everything and making it sound like it, you know, it sounds like. And the danger is, as people become more and more immune to that, right? And what is, I don’t know, I forget what the word, inured against that, right? Like with stock photography, we can look at something, oh yeah, stock photography, you know, There’s the people posing around the boardroom table, right? Maybe we didn’t at first. We went, oh, nice photograph. Oh, look, they got all that set up and lighting. And now we just go, yeah, that’s the stock photography. Yeah. And it’s kind of becoming like that with AI, I think, too. It’s like it’s got that soulless kind of ring to it. And that’s why I think it’s really important for copywriters to read people like, to read writers with voice like Stephen Kotler, like Norman Mailer, like Tom Wolfe, you know, to really experience what real voice and copy can sound like and personality. Because that’s what people read, right? They read things like that that are interesting to them. And more and more, we’ve got to hold people’s attention. We’ve got to get people’s attention. It’s getting hard to do that, right, for everyone everywhere because people are so buried in all the noise and all the stuff that’s out there, they’re not responding like they used to.

Rob Marsh: I think that this is a really important point. You know, Gary Halbert was famous for handing all of his copy cubs a Travis McGee novel, you know, to basically, you know, get them thinking, you know, in a different way. And like you said, when we show up, we were hired to write copy. So we put on our copy goggles and we write copy. But that’s not the stuff that connects deeply. That’s not the stuff that’s emotional. And we’ve got to go beyond that automatic stuff. And it’s fiction. The writers you named are phenomenal for voice. dozens of others that we can name that also do that. But it’s a reminder that if you’re not reading fiction or poetry or outside of the realm of just copywriting books, you’re probably shorting your ability to write well.

David Deutsch: Yeah. I mean, a lot of what I train people in is fiction techniques for nonfiction. Right? How do you build characters? How do you build suspense? How do you, how do you plot, you know, the stories that you tell? And of course, we’re doing real stories, hopefully. But you know, they’re doing with fate was so what, right? A story, a story is a story. And an interesting story is an interesting story. Like Howard Gossage said, people read what they’re interested in. Sometimes it’s an ad. Yeah, right. And all those writers, Mailer, Tom Wolfe, Stephen Kotler, I forget the other one, but they all wrote, even David Wallace, they all wrote fiction and nonfiction, right? And the reason their nonfiction was so great was because they brought those novelistic techniques, those fiction techniques to their nonfiction.

Rob Marsh: Yeah, there’s a great lesson there. So you started out a few decades ago doing this. If you were coaching somebody, maybe it’s a friend of your daughter’s or whatever, they’re just getting their start. I want to be a direct response copywriter. Where would you tell them to start? What would you tell them to do? What are those first couple of steps you would coach somebody on?

David Deutsch: Well, I’d start them out with, you know, the basic books, right, the Hopkins, the Ogilvy, the capels, give them a foundation in the basics of direct response, because those haven’t changed, right, the basic tenets of Hopkins, the testing, right, more important than ever, easier to test than ever. The basic human nature stuff in those things hasn’t changed, right. And then I think I would make sure that they not only knew copywriting, but they also knew you know, how to make a funnel, they also knew SEO, they also knew, you know, CRO, conversion rate optimization. Yeah, right. They knew those things that they didn’t just think of. And they just didn’t think of themselves as writers, right? Writers is one thing that they do. They’re people that get sales that get, you know, I’m someone that gets sales for people get response. And sometimes a lot of that revolves in writing because you have to, you know, write stuff for CRO and SEO and all those other acronyms to work. So I tell them like, just know more than other people. That’s a big thing in what I teach, right? Just know more than other people, right? Know more about copywriting, know more about the products, know more about the market. It’s hard to write better. Right? You know, people are, some people are good at writing, some people aren’t that great at writing. But it’s real easy to know more than other people. Like some writers are really good writers, I’m sorry, some copywriters are really good writers, like Bencivenga, you know, and other people like that. Other people are good enough, but they’re really good at knowing what to write, right? Really good at knowing what to put on paper to get people to react in a certain way, to do certain things. So just know the history of copywriting, know the history of the industries that you’re working for, right? Just put in that work, especially when you’re young and you need to differentiate yourself.

Rob Marsh: This is where every copywriter should be more curious than anybody else, right? That’s like one of the number one character traits, I suppose, that really set us apart, or at least should set us apart. If you’re curious, you learn.

David Deutsch: I mean, imagine that friend of a friend’s daughter or whatever it is, right? And, you know, she knows copywriting. So she goes, you want a copywriter? I can write copy. Nah, we got plenty of copywriters. We don’t have an opening right now. Right. But if she goes in there and she’s like, you know, Hey, I can help you improve your sales. You know, I do copywriting and I do other things like what’s the biggest problem you have right now? Well, we can’t really get our leads to convert. Well, I, you know, I know a little bit about that, right? I know a little bit about converting leads and here’s some of the things I found. Tell me more about it. So she may be a copywriter, but she’s getting her foot in the door with whatever their problem is because she can help them solve it. And she can use copywriting to help them solve it. But because she knows a little bit about the funnel and how to convert leads and how to get more leads or whatever it is, she’s got so much more exponentially a chance at getting that job, getting that, you know, project.

Rob Marsh: Yeah, I love that. This has been a great conversation for me, David. It’s been great to connect with you and hear your thoughts on all of this stuff. But it’s only been 50 minutes. I’m guessing there are a lot of people who would like more David in their life to be on your email list, possibly even jump into one of the courses or the trainings that you offer. You mentioned the website earlier. It’s speakingofwriting.com. Is that the best place to go?

David Deutsch: Yeah, absolutely. I’m so happy now I have a website. David L. Deutsch, D-E-U-T… I don’t have to do that anymore. Now it’s just speakingofwriting.com.

Rob Marsh: Well, and plus there’s the other, the other David Deutsch, who’s the famous physician or, or whatever, if you misspell your name, all his stuff comes up. So yeah. Speakingofwriting.com is the easiest way to find you.

David Deutsch: Yeah. That’s where they can go. They can, you know, sign up for my newsletter. They can, uh, find out about products there. There’s a bunch of articles and there’s two free reports, one on copywriting and one on, uh, creativity, how to come up with great ideas.

Rob Marsh: Yeah, I love that. Thank you so much for your time and again, for sharing. I’d love to have you come back sometime. We can talk about some of this stuff even at greater depth, but I appreciate your willingness to share so much, David.

David Deutsch: Thanks. My pleasure. I’d love to come back. I think we’ve got a couple more hours in us.

Rob Marsh: Easily. Thanks. Thanks again to David Deutsch for going deep on copy thinking, finding ideas, strategy, and so much more. There’s just so much to learn from this interview, and I’m already going back and taking additional notes. 

David talked a little bit about writing emotional copy. He shared some really good ideas on how to do that, paying attention to the way that copy makes you feel as you encountered it. We have a how to write emotional copy workshop with a bunch of different bonuses. If you want to check that out, you can find it at thecopywriterclub.com/emotion. And of course, you can connect with David at his website, speakingofwriting.com. There’s a couple of bonuses there. And if you go to speakingofwriting.com/IP, you can get the checklist that David mentioned early on in the interview about how to know if you’ve got a good idea or not. And of course, join his list there so you can keep up with what David’s doing in the world of copywriting today.

Standing out as a content writer when you offer the same services as every other content writer is hard. We’re talking blog posts, case studies, white papers… But if you’re willing to go beyond the expected and find deeper problems your clients have, you can carve out a very different kind of business. For the 414th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, I spoke with content strategist Sarah Hopkinson about how she found a problem that she can solve and be the only content mixologist doing what she does. If you’re a content writer who wants to solve bigger problems than writing blog posts for SEO, you’re going to like this one. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.

The Pocket Guide Sarah Created for us

Rob Marsh:  A lot of content writers focus on serving clients who have obvious content needs. They know they need blog posts for SEO or case studies for a sales funnel. They’re solving problems that their clients know they have. And while there are plenty of opportunituies for copywriters in this space, there is a ton of competition too. Because a lot of writers, especially writers who are just starting out, will gravitate to these obvious problems and the clients who know they need these assets.

But there are deeper content needs that are a bit less obvious. And they can be a rich opportunity for the smart copywriters who can unlock them. Let me give you an example… there are hundreds of podcaster and video channel owners with months or even years of episodes full of great ideas and insights. But most podcast listeners don’t have the time to listen to every episode in order to get those insights. Take this podcast for example, if you were to listen to every episode, it would take you twelve weeks if you listened 8 hours a day to hear everything we’ve shared. But what if an enterprising content writer could unlock those insights so listeners didn’t have to put in the time, but could get the ideas in a lead magnet or PDF resource for a client. Now that’s a non-obvious content opportunity that a lot of clients have but almost no copywriters offer.

Hi, I’m Rob Marsh, and on today’s episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, I’m speaking with content strategist and podcast content mixologist Sarah Hopkinson. Sarah has created a business that does exactly that—uncovers the best lost and hidden content that podcasters have in their archives, then helps her clients find new uses for those assets. Sarah has staked out a unique position in a niche with a ton of potential clients that almost no one else is serving. And I asked her how and why she did it. Stay tuned to here what she had to say…

Before we jump in with Sarah…

On this episode we’ll talk about the kind of lead magnets and other content that Sarah creates for her clients. We actually asked Sarah to go through some of our older episodes to find the very best ideas that our guests shared about finding clients. If you’d like to see what she discovered, simply visit thecopywriterclub.com/pocket. If you go to that url, you’ll be able to download a report that shares the ideas that Sarah uncovered on those older podcasts—ideas that still work today. Any way, check it out at thecopywriterclub.com/pocket

And now, let’s go to our interview with Sarah…

Sarah, welcome to The Copywriter Club Podcast. Tell us, how did you become a copywriter and a podcast content strategist?

Sarah Hopkinson: Hey Rob, it is great to be here and I’m so excited to talk to you. I got into copywriting through like many copywriters, a slightly long journey. I did a degree in French and linguistics, which really set me up for life in France, and I decided that that was my goal to move from Britain to France, so I did that. When I arrived in Nice in the south of France, I bounced around a little bit, did a few small jobs before I landed a job with a big travel company producing content for them. in English and French. So that was kind of content writing and also research, content curation. But then in 2020, the world changed quite substantially with COVID and I was made redundant. And as part of my redundancy process, it took quite a long time. So I had time to think about I wonder what I want to do next after this job. And I’d heard of copywriting before, and I started telling people that I wanted to be a copywriter until somebody said to me, Oh, great. So what is that? And I thought, what an unfair question to ask. Um, so I had to start doing research on copywriting, uh, and I found out that it still interested me. It was what I wanted to do. So that led to me creating my own business in 2021, Copyhop. Uh, and I was recommended the Copywriter Club podcast by a friend and I did the accelerator, found my niche and here we are today.

Rob Marsh: So content strategist for podcasts is something that’s a little bit different. There aren’t a lot of copywriters. Well, there are a few copywriters certainly doing podcast type work, but you’re kind of in a niche that’s pretty small and maybe a niche that you’ve carved out or kind of created on your own. So tell us, why did you choose content for podcasts?

Sarah Hopkinson: Yes, I chose it because I’ve been into podcasting for a long time just as a hobby, listening to podcasts. So when I started my business as a copywriter, I thought if there are writing services that podcasters need. And through kind of poking around on the internet and looking at the podcasters that I follow, I noticed that they had show notes. So I started selling podcast show notes on Fiverr. And I have to say as a service, it really took off in a short space of time. It got quite popular. And I had quite a regular client base who would ask me for show notes. And then they started asking me for other things. For example, mostly blog posts, but also picking out highlight quotes and writing a bit of social media copy for their podcasts. And I got great reviews about that. And it made me think, I feel like there is something here that podcasters need this service because they need to keep promoting that podcast. They want to build a community around that podcast. And they’re doing that by publishing this content in various places on the Internet. And also, you know, there’s value in a podcast episode. But if you don’t keep on advertising that one podcast episode, it kind of sits in the archives and dies. And I thought, I bet that there’s scope here to turn content that podcasters have already made into something that continues to make them value instead of it being kind of a one-time effort that brings in a few listeners and then you just shelve it and don’t go back to it. So that was the idea behind offering the services. But yeah, it was really through the help of The Accelerator that I was able to kind of shape and define what I wanted to offer to my podcasting clients.

Rob Marsh: So I’m not really intending this to be an ad for the accelerator, but talk to us a little bit about that process that you went through as you were thinking through, okay, I want to do this. How did you then say, okay, these are the services I’m going to offer. Are these the kinds of clients that I’m going to work with? What was your thinking there?

Sarah Hopkinson: I think I had kind of the kernel of the idea of there is something more here that podcasters need. But, um, I think that the program helped me to develop exactly what it was that I wanted to offer podcasters and to help me kind of shape it in my mind of working with podcasters on projects. So I think that the, you know, the support that you and Kira gave me was really valuable for me being able to do that. Um, But I think really the process around it was also thinking about it from the point of view of what suits my life and my business that I can offer as well, which was a piece of the picture that I hadn’t really put in there, but obviously it’s very important to think about that too. about what you can realistically do as an online service provider. So I think that, yeah, going through the program helped me to take something that was an idea into a full-blown website and service that I offer. Almost an online persona, really.

Rob Marsh: Some copywriters might be listening and thinking, okay, there are, I don’t know, quarter of a million, half a million podcasts out there. Maybe it’s even more than that. You probably know the numbers better than I do. And so this might be a pretty good way to get started as a copywriter. But most of us, when we think about this stuff, thinking, OK, well, I don’t really want to write show notes, you know, or, you know, the the caption that goes into social media, which is really what we see usually when it comes to, you know, writing for podcasts. So you’ve gone a lot broader than that. Talk about some of the kinds of projects that you work on and all the content that’s involved in that.

Sarah Hopkinson: Yes. So the things that you mentioned, the show notes and stuff is kind of at the lower end of the spectrum. And the kind of projects that I really enjoy working on with clients go a bit deeper than that. So instead of looking at an individual podcast episode, which is what you would do with show notes and probably with blog posts as well, I like to, with my podcasting clients, I talk to them about the entire archive of podcast episodes that they have and help them to turn it into another form of content. For example, an email series or a lead magnet. And if we’re producing, if I’m producing for them, for example, a lead magnet, it might be because they’re getting ready to sell a course or some kind of service to their podcast listeners. And therefore my lead magnet, I go through their podcast archives, looking through the lens of a theme, really. something that’s come up often in their podcast episodes across multiple episodes. And I pull those strands out and put it together in the form of some kind of downloadable PDF. But it’s really focused on the value that the podcaster shares in their podcast episodes, packaging together different information, such as what this cool guest said in this one episode compared to this expert from another episode. and putting it together in a way that delivers a lot of information to their listeners that their listeners wouldn’t necessarily have got by themselves just from tuning into an episode here and there.

Rob Marsh: Yeah, I like it. Obviously, you did something like that for us a while ago, and it’s a lead we use, we throw it out there every once in a while. And I will share the link in the show notes if anybody wants to check out that that you did. But it’s a lot of work. Like this isn’t, you know, I mean, you’ve got the listening, then you’ve got to pull out all of the ideas, and you’ve got to, you know, write it all together. So these aren’t small projects.

Sarah Hopkinson: Yes, it is quite time consuming. And sometimes it feels like stepping into somebody else’s universe, really. Because one thing that I love about the podcast is that I work with that they’re so dedicated to their subject matter. And they, you know, they care so much about it. So I really try and treat that with respect. But Yes, some of my pricing depends on, for example, how organized their podcast archives are, because if they’re organized, it’s a lot more easy for me to go in there and find the information that I’m looking for. And if it’s a bit of a jumble, it’s going to take a little while to unpick. So that can be hard to know until essentially the gloves are off. But yeah, it is a bit of a labor of love in some ways. You know, I feel like a bit of a archivists or kind of audio archaeologists going through and finding, finding little bits of information. And sometimes the podcaster will say to me, Oh, I’d forgotten that we even said that, but actually, it’s really important. So it’s difficult, but it can be very satisfying too.

Rob Marsh: I like the idea of the audio archaeologist. There’s definitely a lot of work. I mean, it’s funny when I go back and listen to our older podcasts, and we’ve had 400, I think close to 440 episodes. That’s not the official number because we’ve had a bunch of secret episodes. in between episodes and those kinds of things. But there’s a lot of content there. And I don’t even remember half of what was said, especially with those older episodes. And so there’s a lot of value in having somebody go back, find some of that stuff. Obviously, if you’ve got transcripts, you can dig in and find it. But if It’s a lot of work to go back and listen to 440 episodes that are an hour long. It’s a half a year’s work if I were going to go through every single episode and try to do that for us. So obviously you limit it a little bit when you’re in this kind of project.

Sarah Hopkinson: Yes, I do limit it. I wouldn’t listen to every single episode. That’s why the angle of the theme is quite important because That’s a good way of eliminating some of the less relevant content right from the bat. But I think that podcasting isn’t quite like social media where you really have to be publishing a lot to stay on top, but still there is a kind of a pressure of forward momentum that you need to do release episodes and keep your podcast feed fresh. So that’s where I feel like my service provides a lot of value because you can’t both prepare for, record, edit, and release new episodes, and at the same time, put all of this care and attention into the episodes that you’ve already made. Even if it’s your full time job, that’s a lot of work. That’s where I like to provide a support for the podcasters so that they can carry on doing the things that they love doing and I can do the bits that I love doing.

Rob Marsh: So you mentioned earlier, you didn’t tell us the pricing, but you said that it can vary a bit based on the organization. Outline a project for us and tell us about what you would charge for something like this. So maybe we use it for an example. the lead magnet that you created for us, it was a little while ago, so I’m guessing your prices are a little higher than they were when we paid, but what does a typical project look like from a price standpoint?

Sarah Hopkinson: That’s a good question. It depends a little bit on the scope of the project, but if I’m producing something like that lead magnet that I mentioned before, where it’s focusing on a particular theme, kind of prepping the audience for some kind of launch to come in the form of a book, then I would probably start my pricing around around $1,500, $1,600 for a fairly simple, straightforward project. And if The things that would complicate it would be more episodes to listen to or blending several themes at once. But really, I think that two is kind of the max so that it stays simple and coherent for the audience. But that’s the price point where I feel like I can dive in and get some really good quality work done. And they’ll also get value from it as it’ll help to get people onto their email list so that they can kind of click in the launch funnel.

Rob Marsh: Yeah, and that’s one of the challenges that podcasters have is you may have several hundred or several thousand listeners, but getting them onto an email list is a big challenge. And so finding that kind of content that gets people engaged. And then, of course, you’ve got the challenge of following up with a regular email, something not all podcasters do.

Sarah Hopkinson: Yes, I like to think that I’m kind of helping to provide that bridge to turn a podcast listener into somebody on your email list and then into a future client.

Rob Marsh: So I’d love to get your thoughts on this. I’ve seen some podcasters take interviews and simply publish the interview straight as a book on Amazon. Those kinds of things don’t really appeal to me. Might as well just read transcripts on a website or listen to the podcast. But what is involved? I know one of the services you provide is creating an actual e-book from this content, which is a much more substantial project. What’s involved in that, turning interviews into something that’s actually readable as a book?

Sarah Hopkinson: Well, to go back to what you were saying about just taking a transcript and kind of publishing it as a book. I think that that misses the mark because one of the hills I will die on is that people speak very differently from the way that they write. And it doesn’t, so that’s why transcripts can actually be difficult and sometimes almost painful to read. Because what makes sense out loud doesn’t make sense written down. So I think if that’s what you’re doing, just publishing a transcript, it’s probably not really going to help anybody. Fun side fact, that was one of the big discoveries from the Watergate scandal, that there were all of these transcripts of these conversations going on and the content was obviously quite shocking in nature. But the other thing that people were shocked by was that they couldn’t really understand the transcript because the conversation was kind of messy and jumbled. And you had to really hear the audio file to understand the mechanisms of how people were talking to each other, which is what our brains do all the time. 

But to go back to how you can actually make audio content valuable in written form, I think it’s about, again, about looking at the themes of the conversation, the insights that come up. So when I’m looking at a transcript, I use a couple of different AI programs just to get it nice and clean. And then take a summary of it from there. And also, perhaps the summary is AI generated. But from there, for me, it’s almost a journalistic writing process. to get the information into something that’s digestible in written form. So it takes several stages to take it from an audio recording to a written book. And also, if you’re writing something as large as a book, you need to be really kind of fleshing out the extra detail, doing the fact checking, all the contextualizing that you might not have from the interview. But yeah, you’re going to, if all you’re doing is taking something from A to Z with nothing in between, your end product isn’t going to reflect the real value that you could get from the podcast episode.

Rob Marsh: Yeah, it drives me nuts when I go back and read our transcripts as I go through. Like you said, sometimes you have half of a thought and then your brain figures out a better way to say it and so you stop and you rephrase and as this stuff is put together and piled up in a conversation on paper, it’s messy and it doesn’t make sense a lot of the time. What’s worse is for me, I say things like, you know, and um, and like so many times, and that stuff gets picked up in transcripts and also drives me crazy. having somebody who can clean that all up and, and, or, you know, being a writer who can do that yourself, it’s a really valuable service for those who want to, again, uncover content from podcasts.

Sarah Hopkinson: Yeah, people talk messily. And that doesn’t mean that it’s messy to listen to. But if you want to turn that podcast into something else, you have to you can’t just, you know, copy paste and publish. There’s, as you say, there’s an art in that, that goes into helping people get the most out of your podcast. I also like to think of it as kind of extending the podcast experience as well from something that you have in your ears. to something that really becomes part of your world, whether that’s because you’re suddenly on that podcast’s email list, or you’re following them on social media, or you got their ebook or their kind of mini guide. It helps you to kind of feel more connected with them and the subject that you both care about.

Rob Marsh: Yeah, that’s a really good point. So let me ask you about finding clients because it feels to me like a lot of podcasters, they put out a podcast, the podcast is alive and out there, and that’s how most people engage with what they’re doing. Do they always feel a need for extending content? I guess that’s a really long way of saying it feels like some of these clients may not feel like they need a content strategist or a copywriter to help them out. So how do you go about helping them see the gap there that you fill so that they’ll hire you?

Sarah Hopkinson: That’s a good question. I’ve found my most successful clients from cold pitching. With cold pitching, I do a lot of the filtering on my end to make sure that I think that I would be a good match for the client that I’m pitching to. Some of the things that I look for in particular is a podcaster who’s been going for at least a year. Um, and I also look at, uh, things that give me clues about, um, it’s not necessarily to do with how successful the podcaster is, but, um, things like if they have a team around it, if this podcast is something that’s really serious for them. So I like to work with podcasters who have the podcast as part of their business. For example, the podcast is kind of For some businesses, they’re de facto marketing that they find their own clients for their own business through that podcast. That for me would be the sign of a potentially a good client because they know that their podcast is valuable and they want to get that value from it. So yeah, the pitching process for me is actually quite intensive because I’ll be listening to their episodes. I’ll be following them online. I’ll be subscribed to their email list. Um, and if they start talking about things like a launch, that’s where I think, okay, this is a podcast that I could work with. 

So that’s, so I do a kind of a big pre-selection and then in the email conversation I have with them, which I’ll probably be outreaching to them several emails. Um, I’ll be using arguments with them around what, that they’ve already invested value in their podcast. but they’re not necessarily extracting that value back from it. So kind of putting it in monetary terms, um, to convince them that, that these are the kinds of services they need. And it’s not a service that every single podcaster would need, but for certain podcasters, it’s something that really helps them to kind of move their podcasts into the next level in terms of monetizing their content and building the community around it. And that’s where I feel like I can really help.

Rob Marsh: Yeah, as you described that process, it feels pretty intense. In our P7 client acquisition system, we walk through how do you pitch clients. I think you’ve seen some of that stuff. There’s two different kinds of pitches. There’s the MVP, which is down and dirty. It’s real quick. You find a list of people that you can send out brief emails to and connect with. you’re doing what we call the goat pitch, which is really going into understanding the client and what they need and their voice. And there’s a lot of risk in doing that because, you know, if you spend five to 10 hours, you know, on your, you know, trying to figure this stuff out, even before you send a pitch, that takes a lot of time and you’ve got to have a pretty high hit rate. So, you know, what’s in the pitch that makes people respond positively?

Sarah Hopkinson: Yes, it is kind of a high risk strategy from that perspective. I have a pitch template that I use. But the template for me is really just kind of a structure that I hang my message on. So for me, my template is, you know, in paragraph one, I’m going to open with something that’s very complimentary about their podcast that shows the underlying messages, I’ve listened to several episodes, you know, more than one episode, and then, and then I go into talking about, you know, because I’ve listened to your podcast, I know that you’ve got this launch coming up, or something else that’s important to them and also timely, that there’s some element of time pressure. And then I introduce myself as somebody who can help to alleviate that and them with that kind of time pressure with this problem that they’re dealing with. 

And then I’ll follow it up with kind of relevant testimonials, and then close out with, you know, another kind of other kinds of reasons why they should get in touch with me. And also it’s something kind of fun and lighthearted, but relevant to them, you know, if they say that they live in Chicago, that I’ll mention, you know, maybe you would hope you would go out and enjoy a great deep dish pizza tonight, something like that, like just kind of fun and light. So it’s a template, but it’s highly adaptable. And that helps me just to keep in mind what my goals are and what I think this particular podcast would respond to. I think if other people are intimidated by this kind of intensive process, I would say that it is difficult to execute because I know that I’m committing to a certain number of hours of listening to their content. But I do that in a very focused way, you know, that I’m listening always for where the opportunity is for me. So it’s a very kind of active listening process. And I would say that even though I don’t always get a positive response in the sense of great, let’s hop on a call and work together. Because the process is so personalized, I nearly always at least get a response. Nearly all of my pitches have some kind of response. And that response might be positive in some other way, as in, this isn’t for me, but I know somebody who might really like this, or this isn’t for me now, but I’m looking to do this in six months. So it’s not necessarily about getting a win right there, but it’s about opening a door and it’s the start of a relationship. And I’ve had podcasters who have come back to me and said, yes, now it’s time. Let’s go.

Rob Marsh: And when you put that much work into the front end of a relationship, it’s so much easier to maintain that the person that you’re reaching out to knows that You’re genuinely interested in at least the work that they’re doing, if not them personally. So I love this approach from a pitching standpoint. Like you said, it’s a little bit high risk and it’s intense on the front end, but the result is, honestly, it’s a network that could feed your business for years to come.

Sarah Hopkinson: Exactly. And I like to think of there being multiple touch points in the conversation. Um, and podcasting really lets you do that because I can comment on several episodes, but also I can, um, leave a review of the podcast, which I do with using my name and my business name. So I can reference like, Oh, if you, Hey, if you got a review recently, a good review, that was me. Um, so it’s, it’s just little ways of showing that your, that you really care about them as a person. And most podcasters respond to that really positively. So I think if you’re in this kind of high risk pitching strategy, look out for the other touch points as well, where you can build on this relationship and try and get some kind of positive out of it, even if it’s not the, hey, what’s your bank details, I’m going to wire you some money right now.

Rob Marsh: Yeah. So this might be a selfish question because I have a podcast, but are there things that podcasters should be doing that would make it easier to work with a content strategist somewhere down the line in order to create these kinds of assets that help uncover older podcast episodes that might have value in them or to keep them alive in some way?

Sarah Hopkinson: That’s a really good question. One thing that I advocate for is having some kind of spreadsheet where you document stats about your episode, as in episode number, episode title, maybe guest, that kind of thing, but also tagging broad topics that you covered. So for the Copywriter Club, it might be things like pitching. mindset, working with a coach. It could be email copy, SEO, things like that. So you can have those already created in like a drop down on your Google Sheet. And you can just kind of tick which ones apply. And that means that you’ve got one table or one place online where you can see everything. It is a big job to do. If you haven’t done it regularly, that’s why it’s if you If you can, it’s best to start at the beginning and do it every week. But yeah, it really helps you kind of keep tabs on those episodes and otherwise. I know because I had access to your archives, having those transcripts done and published somewhere online, not publicly, just somewhere where you have access to them, that’s kind of the beginning of it. But yeah, content tagging is really, really helpful.

Rob Marsh: That would have been fantastic advice seven years ago. Where were you?

Sarah Hopkinson: I’m sorry, I don’t have going back in time powers.

Rob Marsh: I mean, obviously we have transcripts of just about every episode that we have. So that resource is there, but that’s actually a brilliant idea to have the broad general topics in a spreadsheet. I’m kicking myself for not having thought of that before. Yeah. So, you know, podcasting world has changed a lot in the last decade. You know, there are, I think at this point, there are a lot of people saying it’s too late to start a podcast. There are too many podcasts out there. Most podcasts don’t even get you know, a hundred listens to a single episode, so is it even worth it? What would you say about all of that? I guess in a general sense, you know, is podcasting still a place where we should be? And then in maybe a very specific sense, a second question is, should more copywriters have podcasts?

Sarah Hopkinson: I speak to a lot of people in the podcasting industry and I’ve, attended podcasting conferences. And this is a conversation that happens a lot. And I think that like many other phenomena, podcasting had, you know, it started off slow, but then it had a huge boom era. And it’s a medium with a very low bar to join, which is why there was such a huge boom. You know, you don’t really even need to have a microphone to have a podcast. You can just record stuff on your phone and publish it. So the barrier to entry is very low. It’s almost nil. And I think that we are out of that phase now where anybody could start a podcast and be successful. And I think that what that’s done is it’s it means that people who want to start a podcast now, I would say to them, do it, but be intentional about it, because it’s no longer a quick win strategy. And so I think that it’s what podcasters now and podcasters of future need to remember is that your podcast has to be about something, you have to have a goal in mind of what you want that podcast to achieve for you. And that goal might not be 100% like the content that you’re talking about on every episode, but you have to know what that podcast represents in terms of either your business or personal goals. Because also with it, with the lesser quality of podcasts dying, It means that the ones that survive have to be good in some way, they have to be fulfilling a need. Or if you’re entering a category where there’s high competition, then you have to provide really high quality content, which means that it’s a lot of work. And you’re not going to be able to do that work unless you know the why behind why you’re doing it.

Rob Marsh: So yeah, so I guess the second question is, should copywriters, should we all have a podcast? Maybe not about copywriting, but focused on our niches, or is all of that work that you’re talking about, does that kind of eliminate it for most of us?

Sarah Hopkinson: I wouldn’t say every single copywriter needs to have a podcast, but I think if it’s something that you feel compelled to do, then absolutely explore it because it’s not going to cost you a ton of money to set up. It’s just going to be more of an effort in terms of the time that you put into it. So if you don’t feel like podcasting is for you, then not having a podcast won’t harm you. I don’t think that you’ll have a client who’ll say, I’ll never work with you because you don’t have a podcast. But if you think that you can see a podcast out there, you know, if you have an idea of a podcast in mind and think, oh, that would be super great, but I can’t find a podcast like that, then you can step up totally and be that person. So I think it comes down to how much it speaks to you as a genre. And I would say, for example, for me, I don’t like Instagram. It’s not something that appeals to me, which is why I don’t put a lot of effort into it. So I would view it in the same way as you’ve got to be discoverable online somewhere. It’s about choosing a place where you feel like you can flourish.

Rob Marsh: Yeah, I think that’s a great answer. There’s so much opportunity, but it is or needs to be purposeful. And there’s a lot of, you know, there’s so many not just copywriting podcasts, but podcasts out there, which you think, Oh, this is a great idea. And they get to five or six episodes and it just peters out. Maybe they’ve shared that idea and they’ve covered it and that’s okay. Um, but really extending something for longterm is, you know, it takes a lot of effort and thought.

Sarah Hopkinson: Oh, true. Well, you guys know that better than everybody, but, um, pod fade is real where you just can’t keep up with the rhythm that you’ve set yourself. As you say, there are some podcasts where it was never designed to be, you know, a weekly show forevermore. Maybe you just wanted to have a podcast where you would talk about one subject matter and you covered it. And I think that’s fine if you do that and you wrap it up and you say, you know, we’ve come to the end of the arc of this story of this subject. It’s it’s finished. But if you’re aiming for something more long term, you have to be really realistic with yourself about how you’re going to be able to sustain it. And maybe that’s why you look into getting a team around you to help you.

Rob Marsh: So while we’re talking about this, you’ve gone through this process yourself and are starting a podcast. That’s The Rumor later this month. Tell us about what that is and what’s involved in it. And from what I’ve heard, your podcast is actually a little bit more involved than the typical interview show like this one.

Sarah Hopkinson: That’s right. Yep. The rumors are true. I am starting a podcast with Nicole Hyman, who I met on the Copywriter Accelerator. She and I clicked and we had a lot in common and she came to me with this idea earlier this year and we’ve been working on it ever since and we’re about to launch, which is really exciting. So our soon to be published podcast is called the Tried It podcast, your proven pathway to a better copywriting business. And you’re right that it does involve even more work than the other podcasts out there. Because in our podcast, we take a book about an aspect of copywriting, whether that’s kind of the technical side of copywriting, or running a kind of copywriting freelance business. And over the course of one episode, we discuss that book. and what we thought about it, points that we agreed with, things that made us think about. And we choose three things each that we’ve learned from that book. And we go away and work on them in our own businesses or on our client work. And then we have a follow up episode. where we talk about what we learned from that process, whether we’re going to carry on doing these three goals, what we would recommend to other copywriters. So the idea behind it was really having a way to kind of formalize that commitment to growing as a copywriter, because there’s a lot of podcasts out there that give fantastic advice, but they don’t necessarily kind of lay out what that pathway of growing and developing your skills looks like. So in the podcast, we are really honest and transparent about the things that we do know, the things that we don’t know, how our clients received our work with the ideas that we use with them, and how other copywriters can grow their skills in a more kind of intentional way.

Rob Marsh: So tease the first episode. What’s the book that you guys are talking about in the first episode?

Sarah Hopkinson: Oh, well, the first episode, we decided we were going to go for kind of a writing Bible. We went for Everybody Writes by Anne Handley, second edition. It’s a great book if you’ve never read it, because she’s such a brilliant author and she gives really great advice about writing, which is applicable to everybody. So it’s not just for copywriters. Um, so we, we both read it separately. Um, and actually I ended up reading it almost two times all the way through because I felt like there was so much that you could get from it. And then yes, both Nicole and I made our own separate implementation goals. And then in the next episode we discussed how we got on with them and yeah, the things that we, that we learned from Anne Handley that I’m still trying to practice today.

Rob Marsh: Yeah, that’s a good starting book. I am really looking forward to tuning into this idea of a podcast. It’s different from what most copywriting podcasts are. So, yeah, like I said, the end of this month, we’re hoping for the launch and yeah, we’ll check it out.

Sarah Hopkinson: That’s right. Yes, we’re launching it with an official launch party, an online launch party, which is going to be on the 26th of September. It’s going to be live on LinkedIn. So that’s Nicole and I celebrating our achievement, kind of birthing the podcast into the world. and we’ll be releasing episodes on Tuesdays from the Tuesday after that, which is the 1st of October.

Rob Marsh: Amazing. Okay, so let me shift gears a little bit. After you went through The Copywriter Accelerator, you did some work on your own personal brand, you know, creating a website and doing a photo shoot and really, you know, from where the before was on your website to the after was a really amazing transformation. Talk about that process and why you made the choices that you did.

Sarah Hopkinson: That’s a great question, Rob. I wanted to have a website to showcase kind of my new services. And I spent a long time thinking about the theme and my brain loves kind of metaphors, analogies, and I was trying to think of a way to demonstrate visually what I do for people and Uh, after thinking about it for a long time, the idea kind of came into my head out of the blue of, um, that I’m like a podcast content mixologist because I take ingredients that are already there from your podcast episodes and shake them up in a new way, just as, you know, adding a couple of different, you know, spirits, ingredients together makes a new cocktail. Um, so I think that I also wanted to showcase with it also like my fun side and to give people something a little bit, not, not exactly aspirational, but something that would demonstrate the value that they’re going to get from it. Um, so that, that was the idea behind it. So I asked a photographer friend of mine to do the photo shoot. So that was me. investing in it a bit, but not too much because I didn’t want to spend loads and loads of money on an idea that I was still kind of testing that was still quite new. But I have to say, from having the idea to executing it and launching the website, it was quite a nerve wracking process, especially I discovered that I hated writing my own website copy. It made me feel very I don’t know, very vulnerable in a way to write about myself and to try and sell my own services. So it definitely was not as straightforward as I thought it was going to be.

Rob Marsh: Yeah, a lot of copywriters actually hire other copywriters to write their websites because, you know, it’s, well, the joke is the shoemakers’ kids have no shoes, right? When it comes to telling our own stories, for some reason, we just aren’t, I think this is a human thing, not a copywriting thing, but a human thing. We’re conditioned or maybe we evolved to try to focus on other people and on ourselves less. That’s definitely a common challenge.

Sarah Hopkinson: Yes, I definitely I’d heard of other copywriters struggling with their own copy. And I thought, oh, that’s strange. Well, you know, too bad for them, but it’ll be fine for me. And you know, I had it as an action item in my calendar one afternoon, you know, start writing website copy. And within two minutes, I was in this kind of torrent of despair. And I was like, Oh, I understand it now writing your own copy can be very difficult.

Rob Marsh: Yeah, it’s not the easiest thing. As we come to the end of our time together, I’ve got just a couple more questions. One is about AI and how artificial intelligence is impacting podcasting, transcripts, the marketing of podcasts. What are you seeing there? And I guess, what are you excited about as far as AI goes?

Sarah Hopkinson: Yeah, that’s a really good question. Because as much as we have talked about AI in the world of copywriting, and how it’s changing copywriting, there’s been parallel conversation about how AI will change podcasting. So I really feel like I’ve had it from both sides. And I think that both fields, podcasting and copywriting, is similar in that there is a lot of AI anxiety going around. But I noticed the same trends in both. The AI is swallowing the work at the end of the spectrum, which requires less brain effort, less personal touch. But there’s still so much scope for real human involvement and real human creativity. One of the AI anxieties that I had was that I was at the London podcast show in May earlier this year. Somebody played us a clip of a podcast that was 100% AI generated as in script written by ChatGPT, cover art by MidJourney, voice generated using the software. And I thought, oh, wow, this is a bit crazy. And I don’t think that that will be the future of podcasting because I think humans are still so fundamentally interested in connecting and being involved with other humans. But there are some really cool tools out there. For example, there’s an AI parroting tool where if you’re trying to, for example, get a read-write, this is more for advertising on podcasts, but if you’re trying to get an AI voice to say a particular phrase for you, like a catchphrase or something like that, you can design the voice and then you speak into the software to give it the exact inflection that you want that voice to use. And the voice will mimic your inflection. And it’s just amazing. And it saves that kind of playing around with a tool that doesn’t really understand what you mean. Say it more energetic, say it with more of a lift. So that’s a really cool tool. And there are some other good tools out there that’ll help you with summarizing content, highlighting content, which I find quite useful to use. I use Otter.ai for my transcripts, things like that. But yeah, there’s going to be a lot more personalization in podcasts in the future, which is something that’s really cool to look out for, such as little extracts of podcasts. It’ll change perhaps based on your location or the time when you’re listening. And maybe you won’t even know it, but that’ll be done by AI and it’s all there to make the podcast more relevant to you.

Rob Marsh: Yeah, that seems positive, mostly. You mentioned the completely fake podcast, script written by AI, the voices by AI. In theory, that sounds really cool and interesting, but I think ultimately, if you know that, if you know it’s not a human being, We tend to lose interest because you’re right. I have less interest in wanting to know what chat GPT thinks about something as opposed to Sarah Hopkinson—you know, the human element—is meaningful, which going back to the way you pitch, you know, the reason your pitches work is because you are creating, forging a human bond. And I guess maybe once AI can imitate that human bond perfectly, we’re in trouble. But until then, I’ve got a lot of hope around the work that we do.

Sarah Hopkinson: Thank you. I do too. And I agree. I think that there will always be a space for humans to position themselves as experts, but also experts who really care. And I think that the future of copywriting and podcasting really leans into that. The AI voice generated stuff is cool. But when I listen to that, I find I’m really just listening to the voice wondering, oh, that’s clever how the robot makes that voice. I’m not listening to the content anymore. But when you have a human who’s taken the time to share their thoughts with you on a topic they really care about. That’s where the magic is.

Rob Marsh: Yeah, I agree. We already mentioned the podcast, but what are you excited about in your own business? What’s coming up for you and what are you working on?

Sarah Hopkinson: That’s a good question. Yeah, the podcasts I’m really excited about. I’m also over the next couple of months slowly building in a new service into my business where as well as providing, for example, lead magnets for podcast launches, I want to be able to offer the launch elements as well so that a podcaster who, you know, let’s say is some kind of coach with a podcast if they want to start selling a course that I could not only help them have the lead magnet that would get people onto their email list, I would be doing the mechanisms of the launch as well. So that’s something that I am starting to work on and I’m hoping to launch it next year. So I’m really investing in training myself to be able to do that, both from the sort of learning technical point of view but also with my confidence. So I’ve just started working with a, with a business coach as well to help me deal with the anxieties that come around changes in your business.

Rob Marsh: Nice. Sarah, if somebody wants to connect with you and everybody should definitely be on your email list to, you know, get the updates as you drop podcasts and other ideas about writing for podcasts, where should they go?

Sarah Hopkinson: I’m quite active on LinkedIn, Sarah Hopkinson. My website is copyhop.co, but I would say those are the best places to find me. LinkedIn, my email list. I do have an Instagram account, but it’s pretty quiet.

Rob Marsh: As you mentioned. Thanks, Sarah. This has been awesome. I appreciate your time. 

Thanks again to Sarah Hopkinson for sharing so much about her business in this interview and some of the things going on there. I love that Sarah had to research what a copywriter does. And since we’ve been talking about uncovering excellent examples of old content that gets lost and ought to be resurfaced, I should point you to one of the oldest episodes that we’ve done, an interview with Ry Schwartz. Ry said almost the exact same thing. He was hired as a copywriter, then had to go and Google, what does a copywriter do? He shared that story in episode two of the Copywriter Club podcast. That was a long time ago, seven years ago. There’s a lot of great stuff in that episode about coaching the conversion and so many other ideas. It’s definitely worth checking out. If you can’t find it in your podcast feed, it’s online at the copywriterclub.com. Simply find the podcast tab at the top of the page. or you can just search Google for thecopyrighterclub.com and Ry Schwartz, you’ll be able to find it. 

I have to admit that I’d like to take some of the transcripts from our podcast and turn them into written books and post them on Amazon or other places where people find books. There may be AI tools that will help with that at some point, or there might even be some that are doing that today, though so far the tools that I’ve tried are less than optimal. They don’t quite give me anything that really feels like a book that I’ve written. So we’re going to see where that goes in coming months, but there’s just a huge opportunity to unlock so many of the ideas that people talk about on podcasts like ours and share them in different modalities, like books, possibly videos and other printed materials. 

Sarah mentioned as we were talking cold pitching to find her clients, we briefly mentioned our P7 client attraction system that includes lots of templates and other tools to help copywriters find and land their ideal clients. Sarah took advantage of what we call the GOAT pitch. That stands for the greatest of all time pitch. If you want to know how to create your own GOAT pitch, You can learn how to do that and see examples that we share in P7 when you go to thecopyrighterclub.com/clients. And of course you should connect with Sarah on LinkedIn and at her website, copyhop.co, where you can sign up for her weekly newsletter. And if you’re listening to this podcast week that goes live, please be sure to check out Sarah’s podcast launch this week. That’s going down on LinkedIn in just a day or two.

Standing out and getting noticed is hard in a world with more than a million people calling themselves copywriters and content writers. Posting on social media, writing for LinkedIn, or even creating content for Google or Pinterest—all of those things work. But who wouldn’t love to be featured in the Wall Street Journal or Business Insider? You get positive press and a high-value link to your site for SEO. Sign us up. But hold on… it’s not as easy as you might think. My guest for the 413th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast is Gloria Chou, a self-made PR specialist. And in this interview she spells out how you can attract those high value press placements to help grow your business. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.

Gloria’s website

Rob Marsh:  As you think about your copywriting or content writing business and all the things you need to do to get yourself out there and in front of your ideal clients… there are a lot of options. There’s social media with its various options from TikTok and Instagram to LinkedIn and Twitter and more. You can create a YouTube channel or a podcast. You can show up at events or in groups in places like Facebook. You can start your own groups using tools like Telegram, Skool, Circle, and of course Facebook. You can ask your existing clients to introduce you to their network and build a business on referrals. I even know one writer who had his car wrapped with a vinyl cover that advertised his work and contact information. 

And honestly, those are just the most popular options—except maybe that car wrap. That might be a little more rare.

One of the most effective ways to get yourself out there is to be featured in a major publication or possibly on TV using PR. That kind of exposure comes with instant credibility and potentially, a massive audience of potential clients. What would an article in The Wall Street Journal or Business Insider do for your clients attraction efforts? I’m guessing it wouldn’t hurt. And if you’re like a couple of copywriters I know, it could instantly double or triple your business almost overnight.

Hi, I’m Rob Marsh, and on today’s episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, I interviewed former television producer and diplomat and current PR guru expert and unofficial hype woman for dozens of small businesses, Gloria Chou. Gloria’s approach to getting PR is a bit different from other experts who talk about it and definitely worth learning about. What she shares in this interview could be just the thing you need to land the publicity you need to take the next step in your business. So stay tuned to hear what she had to share.

Before we jump in with Gloria…

You only have a couple of days until the next guest expert workshop happening in The Copywriter Underground. I’ve shared a lot of details about what The Underground includes on past episodes, so let me just say this. Unlike a lot of other memberships and groups, the underground is designed to make things easy. There aren’t dozens of modules to watch or complicated hoops to jump through. Just the focused insights and ideas you need to grow your business from wherever you are today to that goal you want to reach. We make building a copywriting business do-able. 

So I mentioned the training coming this week. It’s with Pinterest Marketing expert Heather Farris. She’s going to  show you how to use Pinterest to drive leads to your business. And how just one or two posts, can send new clients your way for years after you post on that platform. It’s a workshop that could add a bunch of new clients and thousands of dollars in new revenue to your existing business. And you can do it in about 30 minutes a week. To get access to Heather’s Pinterest secrets, you’ve got to be a member of The Copywriter Underground, which you can do at thecopywriterclub.com/tcu.

And now, let’s go to our interview with Gloria…

Gloria, welcome to the Copyrighted Club podcast. Tell us, please, how did you become a PR guru and I guess the unofficial hype woman for dozens of small businesses?

Gloria Chou: Thank you so much for having me, Rob. Yeah, so I always say like my alter ego, if I wasn’t doing this, I’m like that person like at a concert, let’s say a hip hop concert, that’s like hyping the crowd up before the main guy comes on. I just love to see people win. And, you know, I was always a person that was like connecting my friends to different opportunities. But funny thing is, is that I’ve actually never worked a day in my life in PR, never worked in an agency, whether it’s marketing or PR, I actually used to be a US diplomat. So I had a very non-traditional path to becoming what I am today. And I just started picking up the phone and cold calling after I got my first PR gig. Because again, I never worked in PR, so I didn’t have contacts. And from just literally, I kid you not, cold calling the operator at the New York Times, starting from the operator, and perfecting that pitch so many times after being rejected, of course, even more times, I picked up on patterns of like, okay, this is what an editor wants or this is how I can write an email to a journalist who doesn’t know me, who actually will respond and say, tell me more. And so I’ve kind of been able to kind of hack it and I come up with my proprietary pitching method that now I teach everybody called the CPR method. So that’s kind of the long and short of it is crazy career transition, cold calling, and kind of always been an industry outsider. And so now I teach other people how to hack their own PR.

Rob Marsh: So I’m really curious how somebody goes from the idea of being a diplomat, which I know it’s probably not as sexy as what it seems like, you know, the James Bond movies or the Netflix specials or whatever, but diplomat PR is a pretty different career change. So what sparked that?

Gloria Chou: So I grew up bilingual, bicultural, I’m Chinese-American, and I studied abroad in South Africa. And so I’ve always been interested in just having a very international life. And so I thought, OK, well, maybe my niche is in diplomacy or something to do with international relations, which is what I studied in school. I ended up getting a scholarship. I ended up, you know being fast-tracked to the Foreign Service and I quickly realized that there are two types of people in the world people who like to stay in the boundaries and kind of just do what they’re told and people who are More creative and visionaries and like to kind of just learn by getting into the fire. 

So I’m the latter type I am NOT the type that’s just like okay let’s just do this because this is the way it’s always been done and so I realized that even though the career was incredible, right? I got to travel, I had the most amazing benefits, still do miss those benefits, that ultimately was not aligned for my personality. And there was also a part of me that wanted to just work with women of color, you know, which is like people like me. And so with all of that, I decided to leave that career and kind of have a midlife crisis, I guess, if you will, give up this very, you know, prestigious quote unquote career and kind of restart my life. And so that’s kind of what I did. And slowly and slowly I started to get tiny little PR gigs. 

I remember the first PR gig I got was my friend who was taking a sabbatical from diplomacy. And he’s like, yeah, I’m working for this FinTech startup. We haven’t really raised money. We don’t have any budget. But sure, like if you can get them on CNBC and Wall Street Journal and New York Times, like they’ll pay you like 250 bucks per feature, which is like not a lot, right? And no one really does No PR agency will do that. They don’t give you any guarantees. 

I had to start from the bottom, so I was like, sure. And so I had no idea what AI, fintech, anything was. And I just started looking at Excel spreadsheets and sitting with their engineers and figuring out, what is the story here and how can I pitch it to the press? And I think just from doing that over and over and over again, I have this skill of finding out what is the storyline that’s really relevant from something that maybe is very complex or maybe not as interesting, and how do we make it interesting to the media? And then I didn’t have any contacts. So what did I do? I had to literally Google the operator and start cold calling. And so I think it’s the combination of getting rejected, cold calling and doing it over and over that now has built my business to what it is, which is a really untraditional way of doing PR and giving that power back to the people, which is me saying, you don’t need to hire an agency. You own your own story. You’re the best advocate for your business. Now, how can you just pitch in a way that is proven to get that person on the other side to respond? So that’s really kind of what I’ve built with my PR community.

Rob Marsh: That makes sense. I think a lot of small business people are thinking, okay, well, I’m putting stuff on Instagram or I’ve posted on my blog. That’s PR. Tell us why that’s not actually PR and what we should maybe be doing, some of the things we should be doing differently.

Gloria Chou: Well, you know this better than anyone, as CEOs, it’s all about how can we work smarter and not harder? How can we move from the $10 an hour tasks, which we can delegate and automate, social media, customer service, making reels, writing captions, how can we move from those $10 an hour tasks to the $10,000 an hour things that actually builds an asset for your business. 

So when I think about social media, it is not an SEO asset. It’s not SEO friendly. It doesn’t build your SEO. You don’t own your social media. It can be hacked, banned, restricted at any point. So for me, it’s not an asset, right? What is an asset is building SEO, and what builds SEO are backlinks. So when you get featured in the New York Times or Forbes, those backlinks have very high rankings, which will really boost your SEO. Not only that, unlike social media and ads, Having a piece, whether it’s on a podcast that you trust, whether it’s on Forbes, it’s credible. So you’re also not only getting traffic, but you’re gaining the trust of your audience, really positioning yourself as an authority and standing out from the competition. No other marketing activity gets you all those buckets, but PR does.

Rob Marsh: Okay, so how do we do it then? You know, because it sounds great. I would love to have a feature in the Wall Street Journal with a stipple drawing or whatever, but that feels like a really big reach from where a lot of copywriter businesses are. Sometimes we haven’t even really defined who we’re working with yet or exactly what we’re really good at. So where do we start?

Gloria Chou: Well, I will say that the reason why you think that is very normal is because the industry has told us for decades that you have to pay someone who knows someone, and it’s really about this kind of gatekeeping, and it’s about privilege. And what I’ve discovered is that journalists don’t want to talk to agents. They don’t want to talk to PR reps. They want to talk to you, the founder. So how can we just remove that middle layer, but learn how to talk to journalists in a way that they want? Because here’s the thing, the news cycle is 24 hours a day, seven days a week. They need information, right? You’re actually doing the journalist a job and helping them by giving them content, and they want to interview fresh voices. If journalists only interviewed the top people, right, the people from Fortune 500 companies, they would lose their credibility very quickly. So put your name in the hat, first of all. Know that journalists want to hear from you. Now, that’s the first thing. Second thing is a lot of people just aren’t taught how to pitch to the media because it’s not something that we’re taught. We’re taught how to market. We’re taught how to sell our features and benefits. But here’s the thing. The journalist is not your customer. They’re never going to buy from you. So you can’t be too direct in how you’re selling. So if you pitch the journalist like you’re pitching to a customer, Then the journalist will say, well, we have an entire ads department, happy to take your money, why don’t you buy an ad? And if you don’t want to buy an ad, you have to position yourself as an expert. What does that mean? It means that you need to have a point of view on a specific topic or an issue and you want to lead with that instead of what you’re doing. Does that make sense? Yeah. I have someone who’s a speaking coach and she helps introverts really, you know, get their copy and messaging out there in a world full of noisy extroverts is what she calls. And so her pitch was not about like, hey, this is what I do, this is what I serve. She started her pitch using a third party data point from a research institute that said that introverts were actually better suited for certain C-level positions than extroverts. And then she went on to say why and kind of the speaking tips and different words that introverts should use and not use. And she ended up being featured in over four different magazines. So you see how that’s leading with the issue or the trend and not leading with what you sell? And I think that’s really the key of it all is you really need to position yourself in that way and translate your marketing pitch into something that the journalists can actually use. How can you provide tips, solutions, steps, framework? How can you pitch it in a way that’s relevant to what people are talking about?

Rob Marsh: I want to come back to the pitch and get really specific on this. But first, you mentioned we have to get on the list. We have to be the go-to person. So I’m going to speak for whoever I think is listening. Maybe I don’t have a lot of contacts or I have zero contacts. Maybe I read a local paper. I’m like, oh, I know the name of the business editor at my local paper. How do I get myself on the list? Are we talking about signing up for things like HARO or is there a better approach?

Gloria Chou: There’s a couple of ways to do it, like grassroots, right? To me, when you boil it down, PR is two things. It’s writing a pitch and knowing who to send it to. So we talked a little bit about the pitch. Now let’s talk about who to send it to. You’re not sending it to the generic inbox at New York Times. You’re not sending it to the editor-in-chief. They’re busy doing their own book tour. And so for us, it’s really about finding the staff reporter that covers that beat or that issue. It could be the person that covers entrepreneurship. It could be the small business reporter. It could be fashion, finance, whatever that is. But make sure you are targeting it to the specific journalist and not a general inbox that just goes into an internet black hole. So that’s number one. Number two, obviously, you can set up a Google News Alert, where Google gives you all the articles that are digital articles, online articles that are being written about your keyword. So if you’re a copywriter for fitness, right, you’ll be able to see all the different news articles. And you can start to create your own media list by copy and pasting the journalist name and email. This is public information. Obviously, in our program, we have a database of 100,000 journalists to save you that time. But you can start off doing very grassroots thing like Google News Alert, sign up for Haro, and also follow different hashtags on Twitter and LinkedIn. Because guess what? Journalists are writers and they are publishing on those platforms. And so what better way to connect and break the ice and say, hey, I love this article that you wrote. Have you thought about this other topic or are you doing a follow up? So those are very kind of organic ways. There’s a couple of hashtags you can follow on Twitter and LinkedIn. One of them is a journal request. And so that just means that the journalist has a request for interviewing a certain type of person for their story. And if you fit the bill, then you should answer that.

Rob Marsh: And if you see that, how quickly do you have to respond? You know, if I see something from a week ago, I’m guessing it’s too late, right?

Gloria Chou: You know, it depends. If it’s someone who is writing for a top tier outlet, they’re probably going to have a lot of responses already. And so time is of the essence, but it takes two seconds to go every day to just do your Google News alerts, you know, check the hashtags. And before you know it, you will start to populate your own media list of whatever, you know, journalists that are covering your keyword. Social media is amazing. We live in such an amazing time where people are not really at their desks anymore, right? And so it’s not like you can’t reach someone on LinkedIn or on Twitter by just complimenting them on their article or even in the DMs. So use that to your advantage, the fact that we do have such an accessible way to contact people through social media.

Rob Marsh: Yeah, I really like that idea. I mean, obviously, we’re already following people, maybe not necessarily in our niches, you know, maybe I’m following news resources so having those conversations almost feels like that’s been happening anyway. And you’re suggesting just make it work for your business and point it in a slightly different direction.

Gloria Chou: It’s a different mindset because I think as founders, we’re all about that sales and marketing message, which we’re so good at, but we just have to put on a different hat in order to talk to the journalist. I always say, and I teach this too, I always say pitching to the media is like peeling away the layer of an onion. And it works for whether you’re pitching for a podcast or anyone else. It’s really, are you pitching to someone who’s not a customer, right? So think about the first layer of an Añon as a very general pitch. The ones that I get in my inbox all the time because I host a podcast and it would be like, you know, why women need to focus on wellness and mental health. Like, okay, that’s not really flavorful in terms of the onion. I want to peel away to get to the core of it. And so that requires two things, which is specificity and relevance. So let’s workshop that a little bit. Okay. Why in 2024 women over 50 are facing a mental health crisis. Do you see how that’s more specific?

Rob Marsh: Yeah.

Gloria Chou: And how can we make it even better? Why after COVID, suicide rates for midlife women are exponentially increasing, right? So you see how with every time you pitch, you get a little bit better, you get a little bit more specific. And that’s how I want you to think of your pitch, whether it’s for a podcast or an outlet, you just got to peel away the layers of the onion.

Rob Marsh: And this is where a lot of our listeners who have copywriting skills and persuasion skills, this is where some of that, how do you create a good hook or how do you create that curiosity and get attention and hold it starts to come in. So the audience that we’re talking to right now ought to have a leg up on the typical business owner who doesn’t actually know how to do all of that stuff.

Gloria Chou: Yeah, and I will say like, yes, you know, copywriters are great with subject lines. But what you don’t want to do is when you pitch to the journalist, you don’t want your subject lines to be weird or clickbaity, because it’s just going to go in the trash. And so I have a whole training on subject lines, but the subject line cannot be like, You know, like those fun ones that the copywriters have, like this email only has nine words in it. Don’t do that. Your subject line needs to be specific about what the story could be. It almost reads like the title of an article, right? It could be something like, you know, as a copywriter for top level executives, these are five words that they never use. You see how that is very specific. So I would do something like that. I would not put your name or your company or what you’re offering because there’s no context or relevance to the journalist.

Rob Marsh: Yeah, you’re definitely not selling a product here. You’re really just trying to show up as an authority.

Gloria Chou: And offering something of value, being a solution for somebody.

Rob Marsh: Got it. So coming back to the pitch then, are you suggesting that we should actually be pitching ideas, article ideas, and that kind of stuff? Or are we just trying to create these connections so we’re there as a go-to when they need us, maybe both? What does that look like?

Gloria Chou: It’s all about connection, but how do you get them to actually connect with you, right? You have to position yourself as an authority. Let’s talk about my CPR method. The CPR method is the culmination of years of cold pitching, thousands of cold calls, and throwing spaghetti on the wall and lots of ugly cries because, again, I had a lot of failures because I didn’t know anybody in the media. It was just cold calling. I found that when people responded to me or when I got my clients on CNBC or New York The structure of the pitch had these three elements. C for credibility, P for point of view, R for relevance. And I usually like to structure my pitch starting with the relevance. Why? Because you’re competing for their attention every single line. You know that as a copywriter. And what is news if it’s not relevant? So I want to talk about what’s going on right now. It could be something about elections. It could be something about AI. 

What is trending right now? It could be seasonal. It could be something that’s topical. It could be something that is already making headlines. It could be a contrarian point of view. Start with the relevance, and then go into your point of view, which is P in CPR. I usually like bullet points, so it could be three tips, three things, three whatever that is, and then conclude with your credibility. Again, your credibility is the least important part. It could just be like, I am a copywriter that’s worked with 20 different people in this niche, and here’s what I found. You don’t need all these accolades. You don’t need to be featured. So that’s really my PR masterclass in a very short window, but it’s basically CPR, credibility, point of view, relevance. 

Always start with the relevance. Go into the three bullet points for point of view. Conclude with a little bit about yourself. Don’t go into your unpublished autobiography. hyperlink to your About Me section so that they can discover more. Do not attach long PDFs. You’re not going to go through it. And then the closing should be like, I’m happy to chat about these trends. I’m happy to offer insight. Here’s how it can be reached. Put your phone number and tell them they can call or text you.

Rob Marsh: Yeah, I like all of that. So I actually kind of want to take a step back here because like talking through the process, talking about, OK, these are the things you should be doing. But maybe we need to start with this question, what should my goal even be as a sole proprietor running my own business? Is it even possible for me to be in The New York Times if I start this week? Can I be in there next month? Or, you know, like, where do I start and what is that bill to fill? What does that look like?

Gloria Chou: I mean, we’ve had people pitch and then get a response from a journalist within 24 hours and get featured. So it can be quick. It can be quick, especially now with digital, they need content like all the time. So here’s another thing if you have a limiting belief. I had someone who is a Pilates teacher and she is also, you know, service-based and she got featured in the same magazine twice, like US News and World News. So there’s no limit to how many times. And I’ll give you another example. She got featured in an article called What is Pilates in 2023. So just when you think everything’s been talked about, it’s not about newness. It’s just about positioning your pitch in a way that is digestible to the journalist. So if she can get featured in an article called What is Pilates in 2023, there’s your limiting belief right there about like, you know, I need something new. So no, it’s not about positioning something new because there’s readers at every level. It’s just about positioning in a way that’s not about selling your products or services and me, me, me, me, and just giving them an idea of how they can maybe frame a story because again, they need to pump out stories. They need those eyeballs.

Rob Marsh: And it sounds like you’re not saying start small. You’re not saying start with the local newspaper and level up from there. I mean, is it go big?

Gloria Chou: There are other publicity coaches who do teach like, you know, like, so there are different tiers, right? And some people will teach you how to be a contributor, which is basically you writing free content. But I always say, let’s just go for it. Let’s just go for the highest thing. At least if we don’t, then at least we can get to a mid tier one. So I really think there’s a lot of buckets in PR and you want to get as much as possible so that you’re consistently planting the seeds and getting the SEO. You have your podcast, which is more long-form storytelling. That’s probably something that your people like a lot. And so if I’m pitching for a podcast, and I have a training for this too, instead of the three bullet points, it’s like, here are five questions I can answer on your podcast. So that’s much easier for them. But again, don’t pitch something that’s super general. Make sure that you are shaving away the layer of an onion. And then you have your seasonal stories. So end of year, beginning of year, these are important themes. End of year is all about self-care and family dynamics. Beginning of the year is about planning and regimen. So think about how you can pitch for that, too. And then there are evergreen stories where it’s copy hacks and tricks that can work for anyone. So there’s tens of different buckets, and they all do their job, which is get you noticed, get you that traffic, get you that SEO. So I wouldn’t say one is better than the other. I think you should be aiming for all of them. The local store, the local one is good. The local one, you can talk a little bit more about yourself because obviously it’s a hometown story. So especially if you have a partnership with an organization, if you give back to charity, then I would definitely highlight that. Are you bringing jobs to your community? Are you hiring? Those are all the good things that would be perfect for a local news.

Rob Marsh: When we’re talking about these seasonal kinds of opportunities, obviously there’s some timeline here. My approach would be, oh, I just wrapped up Thanksgiving dinner. Somebody is going to be writing about Black Friday. Maybe I should pitch a journalist and it’s Thanksgiving evening, right? Too late, I’m guessing, in most cases. What should those timelines look like? If I’m thinking, OK, I have something that I might be able to contribute for, say, like the Super Bowl or Black Friday. How long in advance should we be looking at?

Gloria Chou: So everyone’s editorial calendar is different, right? So, you know, we have journalists that come into our program to coach our people. So we had someone from Forbes and she writes like gift and travel guides. And she says usually four to six weeks is good. Now, if you want to get into print, like Oprah’s favorite things, and we’ve had people get in there, print is like six months in advance. But for most of what we’re talking about, it’s going to be digital because then there’s SEO backlinks. Feel like very few people are doing print these days. So it’s four to six weeks and so obviously the earlier the better, right?

So if you’re trying to do something for Black Friday, like right now at the time recording in September would be absolutely perfect. To start drafting and then do that follow-up. Here’s another pro tip: after do not send an email unless you have an email tracking device installed we have software for everything get analytics see if your pitch is being open and And then you can make a drama in your head about whether or not the person hates you or they probably don’t even know you, right? So let’s figure out how do you get your emails open. If it’s not, it could be a deliverability issue. It could be an email issue. It could be a subject line issue. Let’s solve for the right problem. And so having that software to tell you who’s opening it, and if the journalist opens it three or four times, by the way, that’s a sign that they really like it. They’re just trying to find a place for it, right? So that’s a huge help in terms of my students.

Rob Marsh: In the novel writing world, it’s not cool to send out your transcript to several different readers at the same time. You kind of send one, you get the response and go back. That may be changing. Is that the same in PR? You know, if I have a pitch, can I send it out to 10 people at the same time? Or am I trying to be respectful that it’s like giving you the offer first and I want to hear back?

Gloria Chou: If you have something titillating that’s like an exclusive, you could shop around an exclusive. But if you have something that’s not a sensitive subject, I say pitch to everybody.

Rob Marsh: Okay, that makes sense. And then once we have that in place, let’s say that we’ve been successful and I’ve gotten two or three placements, I’ve been quoted in an article or two. How do I use that to grow my business? What are the best ways to actually capitalize on it?

Gloria Chou: Okay, to answer your question, this is where we can have fun because it’s like, oh, I’ve been featured and it becomes an addiction. People always tell me, oh, I wish I started this PR earlier and didn’t buy into this whole concept of I need to be a certain size business or I need to have a huge following because it’s not true, right? Okay, so let’s say you get it, you can put it on your email footer as seen in, you could write it into a newsletter, you can repurpose it into a blog, you can repurpose it into 30 types of content. I always say I’d rather start with a PR feature and then repurpose it into my content, then just create Instagram posts for Instagram. That’s not a smart use of our time. So always think, how can I work smarter and not harder? Sorry, my voice is a little chokey. I have a little seasonal allergies and it’s tickling my throat.

Rob Marsh: It’s all good. It’s all good. OK, so that that makes a ton of sense as well. You know, and again, as marketers, we should be able to figure out like, oh, yeah, I’ve been featured in The Wall Street Journal or even in my local paper. I want to let people know. And I imagine when that happens two or three times, that actually helps with future PR as well.

Gloria Chou: 100%. Like I said, PR is the only thing that gives you all those things at once. Your SEO, your traffic, your credibility. It allows you to charge higher prices, right? Because what’s going to, it’s really a third party validation. Ads don’t do that and neither does social media. I can go and buy a thousand followers today, right? We know that. So that’s why PR is something traditionally that the agencies have charged a lot for and what I’m trying to make it very accessible by kind of what I’m sharing with you here. And I always say like press just begets more press and if they actually see that you’ve been featured and you’re vetted You’re credible, you know how to talk to the media then it’s just a very lower It’s a lot lower bar for them to feature you again and again and in fact a lot of times People get featured in the same article, let’s say it’s like Forbes or whatever, because a journalist already knows them, and then you become their go-to person if they need a quote on something. It’s not a one and done. Once you’re on their speed dial, you cultivate that relationship. That journalist now, most of them are freelancers, so they’re writing for four or five different outlets. You can probably get featured in all of them, but you need to make that first contact. You need to do the work of pitching yourself and at least get in the arena.

Rob Marsh: So what about paid opportunities? Every once in a while I get an email or, you know, somebody connects with me on LinkedIn and they’re like, Hey, you know, we have this opportunity to feature even like video. Like I can get you on a TV show supposedly, but it’s going to be $5,000 or maybe it’s not that much, you know, for a mention or whatever you think about that crap.

Gloria Chou: You’ve really struck a chord. This is the bane of my existence. This is why PR gets a bad rep. They actually even target me. I’m like, yo, your targeting is not good. You’re targeting me. Anything that’s pay to play is not earned media. It’s not organic. It’s an ad that they’re masquerading as PR, but it’s basically them paying for an ad which you can just directly get with that publication, but they are giving you an upcharge because they’re the middlemen, right? So that’s really what it is. And a lot of times those TV things with like retired D-list actors, you pay a lot of money, they make you feel good, and then it airs in a South Dakota town at 4 a.m. when no one sees it. So not all publicity is created equal, but the best publicity is free publicity because that’s earned publicity. You cannot pay a New York Times journalist to feature you. You cannot pay someone at TechCrunch to feature you. That is not editorial. That’s advertising.

Rob Marsh: Yeah. So we’ve talked about a lot of the stuff we should be doing. Can we talk about some of the biggest mistakes? Obviously, doing the opposite of what you’ve been talking about, that could be a lot of mistakes. But what are some of the biggest pitfalls that you see, especially as we begin this process and we start to step forward and trying to get ourselves out there, that we really ought to avoid doing?

Gloria Chou: So not being specific, not being relevant to the times, making your pitch super long so that when they open it, it’s like five big paragraphs and immediately they want to stop clicking on it. So use my CPR method. Do not attach any kind of slide deck or case studies. If they want to learn more, you can add a hyperlink. Don’t add too many images, one tops. As a copywriter, you probably don’t need to be adding images. Images are more for like products, so just keep it very short. Another big one is not following up, because everything, you know, everyone that gets featured, they probably had to follow up. And so no, you’re not bothering the journalists, you’re just simply reminding them. I like to follow up on email and DM after seven days. So every week, I like to follow up. And then using your email tracker, you can see who is opening it. If they don’t open the email, they probably don’t even work there anymore. But if they keep opening the email, and the software will tell you, actually, like, this person actually clicked on the email four weeks later, it means that they went back to their email for a reason to open your email. At that point, you want to keep the conversation warm, like you would a lead, and just be like, hey, I loved your article that you wrote last week. Are you working on this? Lots of different ways you can break the ice with the journalist, whether it’s compliments, whether it’s asking them what they’re working on. that helps us nurture a relationship because that’s what it is. It’s not like buying an ad. You’re nurturing a relationship with a writer that has the ability to tell your story to millions of people. And so, yeah, it takes some time. We’ve had people getting featured in one week. We’ve had people getting into Vogue from a pitch that they pitched six months ago. But you need to start planting the seeds now. Which leads me to my last thing, the big mistake is waiting until you’re ready. Because what you don’t want to do is wait and then look around and be like, hey, I launched. And it’s like crickets. So the smartest entrepreneurs are building a relationship with journalists in their beat even before they’re launched. So that way when they do launch, they can go back to the journalist and it’s not the first point of contact.

Rob Marsh: Yeah, that actually seems like the biggest key is that this is the kind of relationship building that you need to be doing now. I mean, we do the same thing with clients. You don’t want to have to reach out and ask for the favor when you’re desperate for clients. And I’m assuming it’s the same thing with PR. It’s like the first contact isn’t the big ask. If it is, sometimes it works. I mean, two out of 100. But if you’ve got that relationship, it makes all the difference.

Gloria Chou: It’s really what it is. It’s really a relationship building. And once you do build that relationship, like I said, there’s no limit to the amount of stories they can write because they’re probably freelance writing for multiple outlets.

Rob Marsh: So let’s say I’ve been listening to you talk, Gloria, and I’m ready to do this. Maybe I’ve got a niche, and so I’m starting to look for a couple of people who write within my niche. I start to reach out to them. Other than sending them a specific pitch, is there anything else I should be doing that basically gets me on the radar so that they can see, oh yeah, this is a guy I can trust?

Gloria Chou: I teach this follow-up framework in my program where you basically just schedule send all the emails. So it’s not like you have to do it like when you feel like doing it because otherwise it’ll never get done. So just spend a few hours on a Monday or a Friday, batch like schedule all of them. You can press the schedule send button so that the email goes out on a weekday at 9 a.m. for example. and then actually DM them. So it’s really important on your media contact database, which we have as well, it’s like, you need to know where they’re on social media, so that way you can follow up with them and connect with them on social media on more than one platform. Most journalists are open to that. There are some journalists who will say, DM’s not open, or don’t message me. That’s fine, I think that’s a rarity. But it’s really about, like you said, a lead, it’s like multiple touch points. I have you on my email, but I also am talking to you on the DMs. So how can we increase that frequency? Another thing is to monitor what they’re talking about. So someone just wrote a story about, like, let’s say leadership for, you know, like leaders who are on the spectrum, right? And if you have some experience with that, or you’re working with a client, like, that would be a great time to be like, hey, I loved your story about that. Here’s also what I found to be interesting and just start a conversation with them.

Rob Marsh: Yeah. Again, the relationship side makes a ton of sense and I love where that takes us. So, as far as then getting started, you know, we’re starting to see some success. Is there anything else that we need to know or keep in mind as we start to, you know, go down this road as far as getting PR, sharing it with the world, you know, steps that we need to be taking?

Gloria Chou: I think it’s literally 90% mindset because it’s a very unnatural act, especially for my community as women of color to take up space, to pitch themselves. And so I think if you can get over that, that’s like 90% of it. It’s just pressing that send button because I always say everything you want is on the other side of that send button. And the CPR method also works for speaking and awards. It’s just a way of having a conversation that gets that person to say, yes, tell me more. And so I think that you can think about where else you can be applying this. Think about how your business needs you to be its number one advocate and spokesperson. No one else can do that for you. Now, once you master this, you can delegate this to a virtual assistant, but you need to learn how to pitch. You need to learn the fundamentals of it. And then you can create a system, right, in your business where, like what I have, where someone’s pitching me for like, you know, 50 different podcasts, and then every month we’re kind of looking at how many we’ve got. So that way you have a steady rotation of that visibility, whether it’s podcasts, whether it’s online, whether it’s speaking or awards. But you want to start to create a system in your business like you do with everything else, because this is really the $10,000 an hour asset that you’re building that’s going to give you a lot more ROI than spending hours on social media.

Rob Marsh: Obviously, we don’t want to spend hours doing it. What is the appropriate amount of time? And I’m guessing when we start, it’s going to take a bit more time. But yeah, if I’m running a business, I’m working with my clients, how much time should we be spending on PR?

Gloria Chou: Well, I mean, like you said, you know, you got onto my free PR masterclass. I mean, that’s 45 minutes of training. Once you watch that, you start drafting your pitch, you start getting your media list together, put the two and two together. I mean, you can start with just 15 minutes a day and just start connecting with five journalists a day because you’re already on social media watching animal videos and cooking videos anyways. Why not just spend a little bit of that time to actually connect with journalists? And before you know it, you’re going to be able to start to create that list and connect with a lot of journalists, and you’re going to have your own contact database.

Rob Marsh: What gets you most excited about the future of PR and the possibilities here?

Gloria Chou: For me, it’s making media representation more diverse. So we know that black women start small businesses more than any other demographic. We don’t see that in the media. And so for me to help people really leverage this way of doing media, which is to be their own publicist, I’m really hoping that we’re going to be able to see more diversity of stories. When we think about entrepreneurship and small businesses, I’m hoping that we’re just going to have more diverse people from all walks of life being featured. And that’s the work that we’re here to do. That’s the work that I’m here to do. And that’s what really drives me every day.

Rob Marsh: Yeah, I love that. Maybe one final question. How is AI impacting this realm of either pitching, coming up with ideas in the interface between journalists and business owners?

Gloria Chou: So obviously, I don’t have to tell you since you’re a copywriter, it definitely helps you, right? So in terms of research, you can ask it, what are some of the trends? But I don’t think that AI is super updated, so it doesn’t give you all of the topical things that’s really in the news. So I think it’s less relevant for PR. What you can do is after you write the pitch using my CPR method, you could Spit it in chat to make it more concise, just to shave off a few words. I think that could be a good way. But so far, I haven’t really found AI to be super helpful in writing pitches because that relevance piece is like, it’s super new, right? It’s like you need to know what’s going on. You need to be a good steward of the news and see what’s happening.

Rob Marsh: Seems like there might be some opportunity for somebody to come along and create the AI HARO type tool out there, but I haven’t seen it yet.

Gloria Chou: I do use ChatGPT to rewrite your press page and bio section. So if you need help to rewrite the about us section, that’s great. You can use that with ChatGPT

Rob Marsh: Yeah. Cool. Gloria, where can people find out more about you, your programs, especially the way that, you know, you’re working with, as you said, women of color. And there are a ton of introverted women, you know, who are copywriters, content writers, who definitely need help getting out there. Actually, all of us do. I shouldn’t even limit it to introverts. Men, women, we all need this help. Where can we go to get that from you?

Gloria Chou: Oh, thank you. Yeah, so I’m on all the social media things, mainly on Instagram, at Gloria Chow PR. That’s Gloria C-H-O-U PR. You can watch my free masterclass, the one that you watched, which actually reveals word for word, from subject line to the last sentence, how the CPR method is used. And you can watch it now at GloriaChowPR.com slash masterclass for free. I also host my own podcast called Small Business PR, where we are asking journalists all the things that nobody will tell you. Things like, what do you not like in your inbox? What about sending samples? What about follow-up? All those questions can be found on my podcast. So those are the ways you can connect with me. I love being in my DMs. I love meeting people. So DM me and let’s chat.

Rob Marsh: If you’re struggling with the idea, I’m not ready to do this, the podcast stuff that you put out there may be the thing that helps people get over that. So they have the information they feel like they need. So yeah, check out all those resources. Thank you, Gloria. We appreciate your time.

Gloria Chou: Thank you.

Rob Marsh: Thanks again to Gloria Chow for showing us her framework for getting PR along with so many helpful ideas for doing this work. You can check her out at GloriaChowPR.com and Chow is spelled C-H-O-U. So GloriaChowPR.com. There’s a free masterclass on her site that will get you started and help you decide if this is a strategy that could work for you. 

Gloria also has a podcast. I’m going to be on her show in the coming weeks talking about email and how to make sure that your messages get read. So you can check that out as well. Be sure to subscribe to her podcast. 

This whole topic of PR and getting coverage in the media is not one of my areas of expertise. We’ve done a bit of it early on when we launched the first TCC IRL, that’s our in-person copywriting event. We were featured in Inc Magazine. We probably should have leveraged that success to build even more PR as we talked about with Gloria earlier in this episode, but building trust and establishing yourself as the expert that your clients can’t wait to work with is something that we’ve helped a lot of copywriters do. We’ve built a bunch of helpful resources inside the Copywriter Underground to help you do that. 

And once you start to get PR, you need a home base where people can learn about you and how you can help them. And that’s where all those links that you’re going to be getting will be directed. Hopefully that’s to your website and not necessarily to a LinkedIn page that you don’t control. The resources in The Underground make it easy to figure all of that out. Be sure to visit TheCopywriterClub.com/tcu to learn more about those.