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The Copywriter Club Podcast
TCC Podcast #466: A New Kind of Copywriting Business with Krystle Church
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- [00:00]
A
When your business stops working for you, what can you do to fix things? This is the Copywriter Club Podcast. There are a lot of copywriters who build successful businesses writing for clients. Or maybe they build an agency around their offers and their niche. But then after a few years, they don't love the business that they created for themselves. Sometimes we just burn out, need to do some something a bit different. Maybe they no longer want employees or contractors. Maybe they get tired of working directly with clients and putting up with bad clients. Maybe they realize that instead of using their skills to attract customers to other people's businesses, they could be using their skills to sell products and services to their own clients. And then many of us are entrepreneurs at heart and have always wanted to build a business other than writing for a list of clients. Shifting a business from offering services to clients to something else can be a challenge. It's a very different kind of work. Instead of creating assets for clients, you may spend your time creating assets for your own business, then spend even more time getting attention for your offers. For many copywriters, this is the dream a copywriting business with customers instead of clients. But there's a lot of work that goes into a business switch like this. Validating offers. Finding a client base for your offers, which is almost certainly going to be a very different set of clients than you've been writing for. Building out marketing systems to sell your new products. Figuring out how to deliver value when you're not actually delivering copy. I wanted to talk about this with someone who's gone through this process recently. So I invited copywriter and coach Crystal Church to come back to the podcast and talk about the changes she's made to her business over the past couple of years. The business Crystal has today is very different from the one that she was running two years ago. She's excited about the new direction and having more fun than she was when she was burning out with a calendar full of projects that required her attention from the time she woke up until she went to bed at night. If you've been thinking about reimagining your business, this episode may give you a few ideas to try. You'll even get a few tips about validating a new offer. And you might even decide to dabble with an offer of your own for your niche. That at least gives you a taste of what a different kind of business would feel like. This kind of business isn't for everyone. In fact, it's probably not for most copywriters. But it's worth thinking about how you might be able to add to or change your business so that it fits your needs a little bit better. Before we get to my discussion with Crystal, this episode is brought to you by Research Mastery. Research Mastery is the one stop program or course that will change your writing for the better. Instead of just organizing words, you'll have the tools and strategies you need to truly understand your customer so they relate to the offer and and they'll buy more often. Research Mastery digs into the four critical areas of research and if you miss one of them, your research just isn't complete. And it also includes the AI tools you need to do research faster, more effectively, and more profitably. You can learn more about this unique program@thecopywriterclub.com researchmastery and now my interview with Crystal Church. Crystal, welcome back to the podcast. It's been a long time since we talked. As you know, as we were just chatting before we started recording. Even in person, I feel like I see you all over the place because I see your emails, I see the programs you're putting out. But we Talked on episode 271, which has got to be like five years ago the last time.
- [03:42]
B
Wow.
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A
And your business has changed a lot since then. So catch me up. What's going on in your world? Copywriting, coaching, and all of the things that you're doing.
- [03:54]
B
First of all, thank you so much for having me back. It is an honor to sit in this chair and be here with you and I love seeing everything that you're doing with a copywriter club. And yes, a lot can change. I think five years in like entrepreneurship and online marketing is like 20 years in another industry.
- [04:11]
A
Decades. Yeah.
- [04:12]
B
Right. So a lot has definitely changed. And the business that you see today is very different from when we talked. I think that was like end of 2021, early 20 too. And I was running a micro agency. I had a small but mighty team of writers myself and some educational offers and I've actually burnt that whole side of the business down. There's no more boutique agency. It is me. And no calls on my calendar. And I'm in love with it and really just focusing on what I love best, which is kind of marrying the copywriting part of my brain with the old teacher self as I used to be an educator and so living in the world of programs and teaching and mentoring as much as I can.
- [04:59]
A
So you're not taking any copy projects anymore? You're. No.
- [05:03]
B
This is kind of wild to say, but this is the very first year. So since like December 2024, I shut the doors. No more copywriting projects. Applications that we still get because things are yet to be fully updated are just being referred out to copywriters that I know and trust. And it feels really, really say no, no, thank you. Here's somebody else.
- [05:28]
A
I think a lot of copywriters have, you know, so many copywriters come into this and you. We're good at writing. So, you know, we start writing and maybe we start at the bottom with blog posts or whatever and we level up and then we're doing launches and sales pages and all of this stuff. And at some point a lot of us start thinking, well, I've got this skill set, maybe I'll, you know, sell my own products. And you know, clients are so hard to work with, so why wouldn't I just make myself my own client? You've basically done it.
- [05:55]
B
Yes, and I think it was the best decision. I mean, don't get me wrong. And I'm not here to tell any copywriter they shouldn't do writing work with clients anymore. Do what you enjoy and do what's like profitable, both from a monetary and like a time perspective. Like, where are you putting your time and where do you want to be? But for me personally, I just, I am resistant to responsibility and I like to create as much like flexibility, freedom in my day to day as possible. And I tend, the irony is I tend to fill that with other responsibilities, but they need to be self imposed instead of client is expecting something from me.
- [06:34]
A
Yeah, that makes sense. And also, I mean, the numbers don't work. Like everybody can't teach everybody how to do copywriting. Right? Like there have to be some people who love working with clients and that is a perfectly acceptable way to run a business. In fact, in some ways it's actually the easier business to run because there are millions of clients, there aren't always millions of copywriters who need teaching, coaching, that kind of thing.
- [06:57]
B
Do you know how many times I've actually said to my business partner Dale, like, would it just be easier if we took copywriting projects? Like, and we've had to retalk ourselves out of that because I know that that's not my work style, but it is in a lot of ways easier. And I think a lot of people don't tell you that when you get into selling courses, memberships, programs, it's like a whole different, different ballgame.
- [07:20]
A
So why'd you burn it all down? Why, why did you stop doing all of that stuff?
- [07:25]
B
Rob, if you saw my calendar a few years Ago, you. Well, you might have had one similarly in the past. I know you had your SaaS company and. And the responsibilities on my plate were taking away every ounce of my own personal time and freedom. And I thought on paper, it was what I wanted. Like, I had done copywriting on my own for quite some time, and I thought, oh, well, I'm getting enough inquiries. What you're supposed to do next is hire writers, right? So I hired writers, and I outsourced. And now, well, wait a second. You have a team. You need to prioritize team culture, and you need to be training them, and you need to create systems. And the business just kind of ballooned and ballooned and ballooned out. So I was keeping up as much as I possibly could. But I felt like I could never satisfy every area of the business. Like, I would have people waiting to hear back from me, team members that couldn't move forward with the work they were doing until I had 20, 30 minutes to sit down and give them feedback on something. But those 20 or 30 minutes, they didn't come by as often as they should have. I was trying to be everything to everyone. And at a certain point, I just realized, I can't do this anymore. Like, and I don't want to. Like, do I want to be sitting in this version of my business in five years? The. I ask myself that question on a very regular basis. I would say monthly, quarterly, even. Now, I've always asked myself, where do I want to be in three to five years from now and longer term? And that helps me continually reassess and readjust whatever version of the business I have now that isn't in alignment. And I just realized, no, I do not want to be a manager of a team. Like, that is. That's not what I signed up for. That's not what I thought this was. It looked a lot more glamorous when I saw other people running copywriting agencies. No, thank you. And so it kind of started the dismantling of the team, of referring more projects out versus saying yes to them. And that's a really, really hard thing to do, is to start to say no to good money that's coming into the business. And so I had to learn how to say no to that. I had to learn how to let go of people that I really loved working with, let go of copywriters that I didn't. And all of these were contractors, I should point out. I had to. I never had any employees again, didn't want the responsibility. But I had contractors who Felt like family in many ways.
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A
Right.
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B
And had to make the hard choice to do what I knew was most important for the business in the long run. And if you're a small business owner, I think what's most important for the business is going to be oftentimes what's going to keep you in the business. Like, I knew I wouldn't be running that business in five years. So if I wanted to keep it alive, if I wanted to keep revenue coming in, I needed to find a new way to structure it.
- [10:13]
A
So this idea of like a misalignment of what's happening in your business and the vision for the future is kind of interesting to me because it's sort of nebulous. It's not like you can say, okay, here are the five check marks that show you that you're not building the business that's going to serve you in the future. It's almost like drift, where you go from what you think you want and just slowly over time, it's becoming something that you don't want, but it never ever feels like you made a decision to make it different from where you were headed in the first place.
- [10:49]
B
Yeah, exactly. And it's kind of a mind warp like that. The way I like to talk about it is like Russian nesting dolls. Like you're constantly unboxing a new version of what you can see. And, and at the beginning you see whatever looks good on paper, whatever looks good in somebody else's business. You're getting further and further into it and, and doing the drift and realizing the truth that people don't like to tell you the truth of the hardships because they don't want to share that publicly. And so you're just having to have the lived experience teach you the lesson of what it's really like and realizing what you wanted is not actually what you want in the present moment.
- [11:26]
A
Was burnout part of this process too? Like did you find yourself hate hating the work or just like being so tired? Like, what did that feel like?
- [11:35]
B
I. I'm a very happy, bubbly, upbeat person. And when I noticed myself like snapping at my partner, when I noticed myself being like, I am so tired, I'm saying no to doing things I would normally want to do, be social, do activities. And my life began every single day at. Well, at this time I was actually living in Mauritius. The time difference was like 12, 15 hours to some of my clients. So I'm sitting down at 6:30 in the morning, taking my first call of the day, and I'm finishing at like 9pm at night, taking my last call of the day. And I just started to realize that was my life. That was my whole life. Every day it looked the same. I had no concept of time changing because all I knew was sitting there at that desk, seeing the same thing, living the same day, and being really, really stressed while I did it again, trying to be everything to everybody. So I was definitely burnt out. And I just knew I needed to make a change and not like a really cute girl, like, I don't want to be burnt out anymore change. Like, no, like I needed to make serious changes and never get myself in that same position again where I was just working around the clock and making money, but not happy making money. I wanted business to be fun.
- [12:48]
A
This is going to be. This is going to sound like a weird question, but I want like, the idea to strike me. Like you said, the. The day never changed. And you were in Mauritius where there aren't really seasons in Mauritius. I wonder if that had any impact. Like, if, you know, if I'm here, you know, where I'm in Salt Lake City, I'm kind of doing the same thing. But around me things are changing, right? The seasons are changing. You know, kids are, you know, going through different, you know, levels of school or whatever. And I wonder if that impacts it as well. I don't, I don't know.
- [13:17]
B
I am really impressed that you picked up on that because we talked about it like those of us that lived in Mauritius together, and before Mauritius, I lived in Singapore, no seasons. And we would talk about this really, really weird area of times that existed around the equator where you could not measure it and everything was the same. It could be Christmas or it could be July and you, you, somebody could pay you a million dollars to tell you when it was. If they just plopped you in the middle of a calendar and you could not tell them. And I definitely think that that was part of it. Obviously the extreme working hours added to that.
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A
But yeah, I thought seasons were the worst part of it for sure.
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B
But yeah, it definitely did add to it. And now since we've moved to Barcelona and I actually look forward to the cold weather. I don't know, who am I now? This is crazy, but I'm really enjoying seasons and change and just living in the moment.
- [14:12]
A
Yeah, I guess it's just an interesting idea because I've always thought, oh, yeah, I want to live somewhere where I don't have to sh. Shovel the walks, you know, or, you know, I don't have to dread the coming of the cold season and the ice. And I'm always looking forward to spring. Wouldn't it be wonderful to live somewhere where it's always summer? And maybe it's not so wonderful for.
- [14:31]
B
A period of time, but not forever?
- [14:34]
A
Yeah, there you go. Okay. So as you were going through this process, then you realized you needed to do something different, like, mentally and also just like, thinking about your business, the strategies that you were thinking, okay, how do I change my business from what it is and realigning to something that was closer to what you wanted to have in five years. What did you do in that process?
- [14:56]
B
You know, I'm surprised I didn't actually pick up on this sooner. I knew that this on paper was what was happening with the business, but I didn't take it seriously enough, and I wish I would have. So at that point, I knew I needed to make a change, and I started making little changes, like saying. Saying no to what I could say no to. But that again, wasn't going to overhaul the business. So what I did was I sat down and I looked at current revenue streams and I assessed the numbers and from a financial perspective, looked at, okay, where's revenue coming in? Like, if the goal is to take. At that point, it wasn't to close the agency. I just wanted to reduce the capacity of the agency. So if I want to take fewer clients with the agency, so I'm responsible for less projects and less oversight with my writers, what is that going to look like in terms of how can I make up the missing revenue on the other side of the business? Our education platform, coaching programs, courses, et cetera. And this is what I realized. That side of the business was so, so, so much more profitable. And I really, I knew this, but I never, like, fully acknowledged it and said it out loud. It was so much more profitable. Obviously, profit margins for selling a course versus paying a writer to do a project, like, it's. It's very distinct. And the time spent required was very minimal. Yes, time in marketing, time in fulfillment, upgrading products, but it's not the same as onboarding a new client, as doing a big launch package, as staying up until midnight fixing something that your writers couldn't quite get right, but you didn't want it to go out to the clients until it was perfect. And I realized if I just focus my energy that I had been spending inside the fulfillment of the agency and put that on marketing and put that on fulfillment within programs and supporting more copywriters with their education, I could make the same amount of money and take a percentage of the projects I was currently taking. I think my goal was to reduce it by half at that time, something around that, like, take 30 to 50% of the projects I had previously been taking. And that was the light bulb moment.
- [17:08]
A
So let's talk about how you started building these offers then, because it's a very different business than going after clients and having to either pitch or to set up systems to bring clients into your business, whether you're doing that through social media or ads or some other way to bring clients to you, Although there are some similarities, because now you've got to bring potential buyers and customers to your programs. But how did you start structuring your offers so that you could sell them to a large group of people or so that they aren't taking, you know, the time that, you know, some of these other projects could take?
- [17:44]
B
Well, the first thing I did was I looked at our most popular and profitable offer, Freedom Found Collective. This had been a general program for entrepreneurs and including copywriters, online service providers, and it was really focused generally on supporting wherever they were to help them get to the first hundred k or so a year in business. It was very broad. First thing we did, my partner and I, is we sat down and we do what we call big paper exercises. This is from our teaching days where we literally get, like, teacher flip chart paper markers, and we brainstorm and brain dump all the ideas of how we could take that program and make it more profitable and make it something like you mentioned, that isn't going to take all of our time, but can still be incredibly high quality for those that are inside of it. And we probably spent two weeks mapping out the next, like, iteration of what FFC would be. And that's actually what you see today. The program, we realized, needed to be much more niche than it was, and we needed to have a primary focus and a primary goal. All the basic things that we would tell our copywriting clients with their copy, right? Like, who is this for? What's the problem? Like, stop being generalized. So Freedom Found Collective got rebranded, restructured, curriculum remade into the program you see today, which teaches copywriters how to launch and scale their own digital products. All of that framework and curriculum was built off the back of me doing that with masterclasses and courses over the years prior. And the reason I chose to focus on FFC instead of really, like, nailing down and becoming the course girl and just selling all my masterclasses and courses is because I, I love to sit in the room with people. I love to talk one on one. I love to help people solve business problems. And I didn't want to just be marketing, you know, a course for 3, 99 or 9, 97 and never see people and focus more on the number of sales that I was getting versus, like the quality of the relationship and the mentoring that we could give. So still service based in a way, doing a program, but much less requirement to show up, write copy, and everything that goes along with project work. So that's kind of how it started and then continued to prioritize. Freedom found collective over the years. We take small group cohorts. Our goal is to fulfill in five hours a week or less. So very small group, usually three to five copywriters in a cohort. Very intimate. But this is for your more advanced, seasoned entrepreneur. And so later down the line, we started talking about how can we help and serve all the copywriters who aren't quite, quite ready for ffc. And that's what we've been working on over this last year.
- [20:35]
A
So let's say that I'm a copywriter. Maybe I've been doing it for a couple of years, and I've been listening to you talk about this change in your business, and I'm starting to think, well, maybe I should add a digital product or two so that I could at least explore that opportunity if it's more profitable. Maybe I have a couple of clients that I'd love to stop working with. Maybe I don't want to stop all clients, but I definitely want to make some changes in my business. Where would I start as far as creating something that I could launch and start to develop?
- [21:09]
B
Great question. The first thing that we recommend is waiting until you have enough experience. But I say this with the caveat of a lot of copywriters actually wait until too long. So I don't want you to hear this and immediately say, okay, Crystal says I need to wait. Like, nobody's gonna come tap you on the shoulder and anoint you, say you're promoted. And now you get to be like a course creator or pass on your knowledge via templates or whatnot. But like for ffc, for example, we have a requirement to make sure that you're seasoned enough so that your product is good. Right. We want to make sure that whatever you're creating is actually of high quality and going to produce results for whomever is buying it. And so the first thing you want to do is actually think, what is it that you feel incredibly confident about? What kind of work do you seem to get acknowledged for in your done for you projects that could potentially be replicated. So we have a lot of copywriters that create templates. These could be like templates to help their clients write a sales page or templates. We have a copywriter who's an interior designer and her whole template shop, she's been building it out every single quarter. She launches a new collection of templates with us. And hers are all backend templates for interior designers. Right. How to onboard your interior design clients, how to sell them, how to have like a welcome sequence and a lead magnet. That's because that's the work that she was doing with them that was really, really impactful. So I would say start thinking about what are you doing right now that clients are asking for that could be replicated in a one to many fashion or automated in some type of way.
- [22:50]
A
I'm really glad you mentioned the. You've got to have enough experience to be good, but don't wait too long because it, I mean, we've all seen this. You know, the person who has one home run and now they're out there teaching people how to hit baseballs so that, you know, you can hit a home run like I did. And the flip side of course is, you know, the, the people who've been doing this forever and could easily teach it. But you know, again, personality is maybe, you know, part of the driver, but we, we're not confident that, you know, that's something that, you know, we, we want to share. I'm not sure how to identify that sweet spot other than to say, you know, you need more than one success, maybe you probably need more than three or four successes before you've really got a pattern that you're able to teach. But I don't know, it's. I've seen, unfortunately, I have seen people with no experience, you know, launch programs and actually succeed. I don't think those programs are particularly good, but they're very good at selling them. Right. And then.
- [23:49]
B
Right.
- [23:50]
A
You know, there are other people who, you know, should have launched programs long ago that never do or they do, but, you know, are really timid about selling them and so they don't get the attention that they need. It's not really a question, just kind of an observation of this thing that happens out there.
- [24:05]
B
Oh, I agree. And my partner and I have talked about this a lot because we're like, how, how do we, this comes into our own conversation of how do we qualify just the handful of clients we want to work with in ffc, right. It becomes really nuanced. And I think that you said it just right about. You can have some people who sell something very timidly and maybe the product is amazing, but enough people don't hear about it or vice versa. And I think that it comes down to making sure that if you're going to get into creating a digital product and you're thinking, am I in the right time in my career to do this? You should also consider what it takes to sell it. So selling and having you use the words rob a successful product. Having a successful product I think takes, takes two parts. The first part is, can you sell it? Because if nobody has it in their hands, it's this is obviously not working. But the second part is what a lot of people miss. People who maybe had a one hit wonder kind of result, they use that, capitalize on that momentum to sell some sort of product or program. But then on the back end, the fulfillment is lacking. The education, transformation, none of it is there and mapped out. So yes, they sold it, but was the offer successful for customers? I think you need those two pieces. And if you're considering getting into creating a digital product, knowing that ahead of time and knowing what is the success criteria? The success criteria you're getting into is are you willing to sell it? Okay, great. If you're confident in what you do, you can learn the sales skills, worry about those later. You don't have to be a salesperson now. But then secondly, thinking about how can you, we call it success mapping. Can you success map for your customers to make sure they get a result?
- [25:50]
A
And then the other piece of this too, you kind of touched on this. But the temptation here is to think, well, I'm a copywriter or I'm a designer or I'm the thing that I do, so I'm going to sell my processes to other copywriters. And they're not necessarily thinking about the fact that the niche is actually the place where there's more demand. So if you've been working with interior designers and you've got templates that you've been using for a variety of clients, selling those into other or to other interior designers is such a much easier way to find success than selling to other marketers who are literally surrounded by, you know, dozens and dozens of offers and other people wanting to do the same thing. So just being really aware of who your audience is and where success is found. When I look across, you know, the copywriters that I know who have built scalable offers Almost all, probably 90% of the most successful of them are not selling to copywriters or even to other marketers. They're selling into a niche. They're selling to, you know, roofers or plumbers or people building websites for H vac companies or, you know, whatever. The thing is, they're going into their niches.
- [27:07]
B
Yeah. And I think that that's where some copywriters get deterred because they don't realize that. And they say, oh, but I don't want to teach people copywriting that already know about copywriting. And then who am I to teach to other copywriters? No, you don't need to do any of that. That's a really good point. And there are so many niches out there that are begging for help. And I also think in, in the time of AI, it's such an opportunity to say, hey, you guys have AI, you probably don't know exactly how to utilize it. Right. And. Or, you know, the output isn't exactly what it should be. And we see a lot of copywriters creating products that are bridging that gap between, okay, you don't want to pay for done for you work or retainer or whatnot, but you're willing to teach your team or you're willing to train yourself and use a tool that Maybe it's custom GPTs and a course or templates that combine like what AI can do and what it can't right now to fill that gap. So there's lots of opportunity in the niche. I love that you pointed that out.
- [28:04]
A
So, okay, let's say I've figured it out. I have a product that I want to launch. I'm going to launch it into my niche. So I'm not necessarily, you know, teaching something to people who should already know this stuff, but it will be new. It's definitely needed. At least I think it's needed. How do I go about validating that offer so that, you know, I know next time I try to launch it, you know, I'm not trying to, you know, do all of this work all over again? I know it's going to work. You know, there's a demand for it, all of that. In fact, you.
- [28:34]
B
Yes.
- [28:35]
A
You've done this with some of your products many times. Yeah. That you've launched. So how do we validate that?
- [28:41]
B
Yeah. Okay. So I can use our most recent as a case study. So at the beginning of this year, Dale and I had another program that we were trying to figure out how we wanted to recreate it as A course. The curriculum was really great. It was called Copywriter Camp, and it helped copywriters land higher paying, better clients. And we knew we didn't want to run it live anymore, but there was so much good stuff in there, and we had requests to do something with it. And so this was all born out of that. And it's actually a very, very different thing to Copywriter Camp now. But what we thought was, what if we can take that curriculum and we can cultivate a community that has access to it. For as long as I have been in business, I wanted to have community. Community, not necessarily my own, but community where I felt like I really new people, where there was like depth to conversations, where people could be open and vulnerable and say what wasn't working in their business and not feel like they had to show face or have a wall up or their guard up. And so I've kind of put the idea on the back burner. And every year I've revisited it, like, what if I built a community? What would that look like? And the course idea for Copywriter Camp kind of came to a head with the community urge that I had to build this year at the beginning of 2025. And so once we figured out how we would merge those two together, and the focus was all going to be around community, but allowing people to have access to the curriculum that they needed, we thought, how can we launch it? How can we get the people in the door who are going to cultivate those deep connections who are going to make this a really, really valuable room? Because as you know, running a community, it's only as good as the people who are inside of it. And there's only so much that you can do as a facilitator. Right? So what I decided to do was actually use our debut launch system. This is exactly what we teach inside of Freedom Found Collective to our clients, one of it, which last week she closed her first debut launch herself and made over 10k with her founding members. I used the same exact system that she used to launch Juno. And I can kind of walk you through the numbers and give you the behind the scenes of conversion rates or whatever you want to get into and how we did that. But essentially the debut launch method is a waitlist method. So instead of doing one big launch and feeling like you have to have bells and whistles and energy and maybe burn out in the process, we actually just want to validate the offer idea. Like you said, we want to make sure that people want it. People are willing to pay for it because people saying that they'll pay and people actually paying are two very, very different things. And then a really, really tight knit group of people who are invested in the concept of the offer, the transformation you're promising and are willing to give you feedback so you can iterate make it better before you go and publicly launch again later.
- [31:40]
A
So yeah, let's, let's talk some specific numbers because I think this is important. You know, being able to sell one or two may not actually validate, although maybe, maybe it does validate, you know. And so as you're looking at it, you know, what would you need to see to say yes, there's demand in our community, it's more than, it's probably more than one sale, but it doesn't need to be 50 sales. Right. And then, and then how do you start looking at pricing as well and saying okay, did we underprice, do we overprice? You know, maybe that impacted, you know, some of the, the people who decided to join or not to join.
- [32:15]
B
Yeah, so it really depends on the offer in terms of what the goal is for how many founding or beta customers or members that you want to have. With Juno in our goal Is to get 20 people. But that, that's also because we knew we had enough people in our audience, enough past clients and customers that would be interested. If you're just starting out, for example, we recommend our copywriters aim for 5 to 10 depending on what the product is itself. So 5 if it's going to be a little bit more expensive and it might not just be expensive from a monetary perspective, but expensive from time cost. What does it take that person if it's like a 12 week program and even if the promise is amazing, if they have to sit down and put a lot of work in, you're going to get lower conversions typically from, from a smaller audience until you build up more trust and social proof that yes, it, it is going to be transformative at the end. So we started with 20 as our goal and when coming onto price point I think it's really important to, to first talk about how, how we positioned it so that then the price point makes sense. And I would recommend using this pricing strategy. I'm going to share with those that are thinking about scalable offers, but also those of you doing done for you and you have retainer clients. This pricing strategy is really, really good. So a little background and context. Juno, the premise of it, while it had the curriculum, I mentioned before that that really isn't something we shine much of a spotlight on at all. What it became was a community for women in copyw industry who think bigger and. Or who want to think bigger. So I'm talking ambitious goals, having really big dreams for what you want to do with your business and your life. And you didn't quite feel like there was anywhere where people were talking. Like that forward focus vision that we mentioned earlier. It was like, where do you want to wake up in five years? Like, what does your house look like? What do you. What does your life feel like? And so we created Juno more around the people inside. And so the, the sale, the validation for us was a lot of it was coming from, can we get the people to say yes? Right? This is all built around women and connection and community and people with similar aligned goals and ethos. Like, we wanted to make sure that we could actually attract those people, bring them in, put them in a room together. And that was the validation, not just the sale. So the goal was 20 people. And what we did was we started with a wait list launch. So I sent emails to our main list list about the wait list and nurtured them. And I always ended every email with something like, hey, it's all going to start on the waitlist for Juno. I didn't really tell them much about what Juno was at the moment. I was still figuring it out. I think I learned what Juno was through writing the sales emails about Juno, to be honest with you, and kind of started to embody that feeling of, who is this woman who's going to come into this community? And the messaging really centered all around the identity of a Juno woman. And so we validated the offer with the right people coming in by selling it using identity, which you can use with any type of offer. You don't have to be like, trying to bring women into something specific for them. But whoever you're selling to, if you're selling to people who own a dog, right? If you're selling to people who are practitioners, like, imagine how you can talk to them about the future version of them or their practice. That's the same thing I was doing here with Juno. So really centering around what the Juno identity is. And women who are ambitious, women who are prioritizing collaboration over competition, who want to be in proximity of interesting conversations of people who are going to challenge the way they're thinking about their business. That was the whole messaging behind the emails that I was sending. And what that meant was that we started attracting women who reflected that identity or wanted to. Right. So the validation for Us came when we started to realize we had the right women coming in to the room. And we launched just from a wait list. It had about 55 people, give or take a few. I don't remember the exact number. So we brought in 55 people to the waitlist. We launched only to them. And I sent a lot of private invitations, too. If people were past clients and I knew them on the list, I sent them a personal invite. Hey, I see you're on the wait list. I would love for you to be in this room. You're the perfect person to be in this room. And when they started saying yes, I knew that I was validating the idea already. There's trust built, of course, because they know me, but that's all you need. You just need some validation that people are interested in what you have to sell. We ended up closing with 22 people, so we got two over our goal. And that was enough for us to say, okay, we're really onto something here. We've done this privately to a small wait list. How can we now replicate. This is the next phase is how do you replicate getting the right students, the right customers, the right clients into whatever it is that you're selling so that you can continue to be more and more profitable going forward?
- [37:23]
A
It's also interesting to me the way you're talking about this. Rather than talking about, oh, it's the community or you get all of this stuff, you're talking about the identity of the person inside, which is. I mean, it's not an original way to look at things, but it's also not common that people really start with the identity or lead with the kind of person as opposed to the thing you're gonna learn or the results you're going to get. So, I mean, that's different.
- [37:51]
B
I agree. And honestly, this is different to how I've sold before. Like, when I sell ffc, I'm not talking so much about the identity of the person, although now I am, because we've seen how successful it was with our Juno line. But I knew with this, I didn't want it to just be like. Like we have a vault of resources. There are step by step trainings, we have coaching calls. I didn't want the focus to be on that because I knew that that's what every other community has too. It's not a differentiator. So I found talking about the identity to be a huge differentiator. And it, it also. The biggest benefit I think has been, and the way I sold Juno trained the members inside of Juno to then be the perfect members for Juno. Right. So it's like you, you're this person now or you want to become this person. Then when women step inside, they're embodying that. Like I go into the group and there, there somebody's posted a question in the community. There are 12 quality answers in there before I even go in and get a chance to give a response. And people sharing resources and network and all the things that I had hoped. But the only reason that they're doing that is because I use the identity as a rhetoric, because the identity of a quote unquote, Juno woman is somebody who values collaboration over competition. So then they lead with that behavior inside. So I think that this, this now should be a model that I'm using in everything that I'm selling. And, and for those of you listening, even if you're selling done for you work, how can you attract the right clients and how can you then, then replicate the behavior of your favorite clients in future clients? Right? How can you train them and qualify them and bring them into a partnership together? And I think it starts with like, really talking about who it is that they are.
- [39:40]
A
Yeah, I like that. I'm gonna have to think a little bit more about how to apply that in my own business. But there's, there's a really big idea there that I think has tentacles into all kinds of, of things that we do do.
- [39:51]
B
Yes.
- [39:52]
A
Another thing that I think this is all dependent on, you know, if you're going to launch your own offer and scale it, and you've kind of mentioned this a little bit, but you need a way to sell it, and your way is through your list, I suppose, you know, you can also do it through ads or social media or that way. But let's talk a little bit about how you build your list and, and you know, the, the growth that you've seen over time. Because when you launch a product today, you're not starting at zero with no audience. You've got a list, you've got people who are reading what you're sending out every day. So, yeah, what's your philosophy there and what are you doing to continue to grow your list?
- [40:32]
B
Okay, well, I mean, my philosophy is like, thank f. I have a list. Oh my gosh, the list. Okay, so let me talk to you about this because the whole last year, ish, ish. I've pretty much only shown up for my email list. And you know, back in the day, it was like me, me rocking social media. Very, very present, very Visible. And while I still go on Instagram, a little bit LinkedIn, a little bit here and there, like, I've been living in the zone of just having a nice, warm, nurtured email list. So I can't stress enough the importance of that to any copywriter listening and especially to the copywriters who are listening and thinking, well, I don't have a list Crystal. And to that I would say today is the day you're starting your email list because we all started with, with zero, as you said. And now having one means that every time I sell something, I have people that are there, they've built trust and are interested in what we're creating together. So currently, as I said, I've taken like a year off of social. We moved from Mauritius to Spain. I had a back injury and honestly I just didn't feel like doing it. So I took a pause. And actually September, this is the first month in which I am prioritizing getting more visible again on social. That is usually the number one way I grow. My email list is social media. Well, actually, maybe that's tied. I might actually, I need to look at the numbers. It might be number one or it might be tied with the second strategy that I always use, which is hosting events or collaborating in events with others that have a similar audience to me and not, not specifically like really huge bundles that have 20 people. And, and you're getting added to everybody's email list if you're a participant, but more so curated smaller group events. It might be a summit, it might be another talk of some kind. I host the Copywriter Collection giveaway once or twice a year and I bring together just like six or eight copywriters who have a quality product as you've participated in the past. And thank you so much because what you did was give away an actual product that you charge for for free. Free. And you have to have the link to like the secret shopping page. And then you can just go and shop and get these amazing courses and templates and whatnot. Doing something like that adds a lot of quality subscribers to my list. Because I don't add. This is like we're getting layers deep in the strategy here. But I don't add everybody to my list. If you remember the setup of the Copywriter Collection, the way that I do that is I give people the choice to go and choose which item from which person they want. They don't get added to everybody's list by default. I think it's a, it's, it's messy. For your list and slightly unethical. And so I prioritize making sure I could get the right people on. And that is probably tied with my social media strategy is hosting events, participating in events, and then just being visible on social and having lead magnets. People really want to get, get.
- [43:37]
A
Yeah. And then, so that's how you're building that. And then as far as like messaging and how often you reach out to your list, what you're doing with your emails, you're not necessarily selling something in every single email, but you're not not selling either. You know, it's always leading to something. It's very similar to my approach to email when, when I'm sending things out. So. Yeah, how do you approach that? Do you, you know, have the list of ideas that you're going to share this week or this month? Do you sit down and think, oh, I've got an email, I've got to write. I got to come up with something. What did I do yesterday? Like, what's your approach?
- [44:11]
B
I mean, honestly, Rob, sometimes it's that sometimes I'm like, oh, no, haven't sent an email in like two weeks. I should do something about that. Usually I try to be more organized and typically I like to have a Runway of like 8ish weeks. If I'm very organized, it'll be 8 to 12 weeks of Runway to whatever I want to promote, promote next. Is that Freedom Found Collective? Is it Juno? Is it a course? I know where I'm going. And so very similarly to you, I'll send emails over that period of time that'll kind of go through the phases of awareness. Right. Problem aware. Then you continue nurturing people. We're talking about desires and future pacing and solution. And that's, that's if I'm being a good email marketer. That's what I do.
- [44:59]
A
But I'll tell you, that ideal happens maybe once or twice a year.
- [45:04]
B
Thank you. Yes, you said it. Okay, so the, that's the ideal. But, like, what I'm really doing is I'm looking usually shorter term and I'm saying, okay, what's happening in the next six weeks? 8 to 12 is like my ideal timeline. And if you're going to launch something, give yourself more time. But these days I launch with a shorter timeframe and I can, I could get away with it sometimes because I've built that trust with, with the list and I sit down and I think about the identity piece and storytelling. Like, I, I enjoy telling stories. I enjoy reading people's emails that have great stories in them. And so I'm always working on becoming a better copywriter myself and just playing around with emails and seeing what hits, what doesn't hit. Honestly, some of the emails that I think people are going to think are way too long or way too, are like way too off topic are the emails that get like the most replies anyway. So I'm just having fun on a regular basis and continuing to be a student myself and see as our business evolves, as our list evolves with us in their own businesses, like, what do they want to hear at all stages?
- [46:13]
A
Something that's happened since the last time we talked is the emergence of AI. ChatGPT copywriters freaking out that it's taking work away from us, which it probably has some of that lower level work for sure. I feel like we're seeing a pendulum swing back where a lot of companies are starting to hire copywriters to fix the mistakes they've been making with AI over the last year or two. How are you using AI in your business?
- [46:38]
B
You know what? I feel like I'm that pendulum who was like, I need to learn this. I need to get on board and adapt. Everybody's talking about it and I've done this a few times where I've gotten into, okay, I'm going to try to use AI. Maybe it can help me write a newsletter quicker. I can tell it. I can tell it said story and it can help craft it. I can do the finishing touch, polish it up. And I've gone through several phases of trying to make that work and then coming out of it and trying to fix the mistakes. And what I've, what I've realized now is that it's still not as good as us, Rob. It's still as good, thank goodness, because we still have jobs. So while I am still using it within my business, I'm using a lot less to actually support writing. I might have it polish something or edit something for me, but I feel like the voice is always lost a little bit and it always sounds a little bit AI voice. And so I tend to leave those tasks to myself. I'm using AI for a lot of other things within the business, like editing podcast episodes, for example, or I love strategizing launch ideas. Ideas. I will sit down with Dale. We will map out an entire launch idea and strategy and then we'll give it to ChatGPT and say, what don't we see what is going to. And I always love asking this question before AI as well, but use it with AI. It's so helpful is if I woke up on the day after launch, right? Closed cart has happened. What will I wish I had done? What will I wish I had seen? And so I asked those questions to ChatGPT and BAM. All of a sudden, new ideas, things that I haven't tapped into, ways that I can connect with potential leads or clients. And those are more of the conversations I'm facilitating with it versus help me write my copy. Because that's just it. It's just not good enough right now, in my opinion.
- [48:35]
A
Yeah, I actually just finished listening to a book called More Everything Faster. I don't know if you've hear.
- [48:42]
B
No, but I love the title.
- [48:44]
A
Well, part, I mean, it's kind of about the singularity and then it talks about AI. There's all kinds of stuff, you know, about billionaires and traveling to Mars. And I mean, it covers a lot of sort of tech dreams. It was one of those things where it kind of reset some of my worries around AI and its ability to really move forward, not just because of the limits on power, but literally the limits on information. You know, the, the limits on, you know, microchips and how, you know, we've kind of run up against the barriers of Moore's Law. And anyway, it's a really interesting read or listen, if you, if you find us somewhere.
- [49:23]
B
More Everything Faster.
- [49:24]
A
More Everything Faster as it's called. And yeah, it's, it's like I said, it's kind of reset my thinking around AI and how quickly it's going to progress us. Now again, nobody knows anything about the future, so I could be totally wrong. You know, maybe I was wrong yesterday when I thought it, you know, it's the end, or it's eventually going to be the end. Maybe I'm wrong today, but I still see a place for not just, not just copywriters, but thinkers who are solving problems using the tools that are out there, but, you know, have to be able to understand how humans work. And right now, machines, they're not there. And I don't know that they'll ever get there.
- [50:06]
B
Yeah, I agree. And I, I think you said something so perfectly here about thinkers. Right? If you can be a thinker, if you can solve problems, you're going to be fine. That's the way I see it too. I think copywriters right now who are adapting in how they're positioning themselves, AKA I'm not just going to write your copy. I am a strategist in one way or another, and I will help you solve a problem that you and or your team don't know how to solve on your own, and that AI can't help you on your own. I think if you're positioning yourself like that, as that thinker, problem solver, and strategist, you're much more likely to stay in the game and probably grow your business. Like, I think you'll be more profitable because of AI and because you can position yourself as somebody to come in and maybe work with it or maybe clean up the messes, as you mentioned.
- [50:58]
A
So you were one of the earlier participants in the Copywriter Accelerator, our program, that really don't sell it much anymore. Every once in a while, somebody will find kind of a hidden page and get access, you know, to. To the back end.
- [51:12]
B
I didn't know you don't sell it anymore.
- [51:14]
A
Yeah, I haven't sold it. Haven't sold it in over a year. And I'm just curious, like, as you again, it's been a long time since you were in there, like six or seven years ago. But I'm curious if there are still things from that program that you're using in your business today, like how. How did it impact what you're doing, doing today? I don't. I'm not necessarily asking for a testimonial. I'm genuinely curious, like, about the lasting power of those ideas that we covered.
- [51:40]
B
Yes, well, I'm happy to talk about them. So. Okay, let, like, let me set the stage for you. 2019. I'm still a teacher, so I don't know if you knew this, but like. Like, I count. Like, the beginning of my business is shortly after I was in the accelerator because I. In the. I took the accelerator when I was like, I need to figure out what I don't know. And I don't know anything right now. Now I was a teacher. I just quit. I knew I wanted to be a copywriter, and I found the accelerator and the number one. I honestly. Look, I know you said you weren't looking for a testimonial. I think I skipped a lot of time in the learning process, in the hardship process, because of the accelerator. Because what you guys taught me from the very beginning was business skills. And you. I remember you saying multiple times, like, you need to think like a business owner, not a freelancer, right? Not a solo copywriter. You need to think like a business owner. And I think there was a benefit to me being in the program at that stage of my journey, before I'd ever had a client, before I knew a niche, before I knew Anything really about copywriting other than some Udemy course information. Because I knew that there were other people in the room and I saw them who they. They'd been in their business for a little bit and they were having to learn for the first time. Oh, oh. I need to change my mindset from freelancer to business owner. And so I think that that put me ahead of the curve already. So thank you for that because as you see, I've focused a lot of my business too, not just copywriting. And I think that that set me up with a really, really strong foundation with that mindset. And just in terms of, like, how. How are you positioning yourself in front of clients? You're not a freelancer taking gigs like an employee. How are you, like, in your own autonomy, in your own ownership over what you do and the skills that you're developing and learning, how are you operating as a business? This and that had so many little other tangents that went with it, like operating as a business owner. And that changed the way that I just thought about everything from the business from that point onward.
- [53:44]
A
And what's next for you? Where are you going from where you are now? You've got a couple of programs that are operating that you. You're kind of in that launch every once in a while or come back and promote them every once in a while. But do you have anything big on the horizon? What's going on?
- [53:57]
B
On the biggest thing now that we have validated Juno and we have the most incredible group of women in, and we've secretly let a few others in here and there without really telling people about it, but people who we know would be really, really good, valuable members in the community and get a lot from it, too. Now that we have our founding members, we have 26 women inside right now. That's the next big thing, is we want to make Juno the number one female copywriting community out there in this space. And I want to give women a safe space that they can come be vulnerable about what's not working, be vulnerable about the really, really big, audacious dreams that they think somebody might laugh at. Because I promise you, if you have that dream, somebody else does too, or maybe one even bigger. And they're going to push you to actually dream, like, your absolute biggest. So that's my number one focus goal, that's what I am most enthusiastic and excited about every single day, is how do we continue to cultivate this amazing group of women and bring them together? Because they're just. They're just in there like winning together. They're doing in real life meetups, they're bringing their kids to meet each other. Like, it's been a whirlwind over the past six months to see how they've really embodied everything that we had planned for the group. And so my goal is to do them justice and to say, okay, I told you, this is what the program, this is what the community is going to be. I'm here and I'm going to work to make that happen. So it's not going to be an endlessly growing community. We're going to have a cap on the number of members and when we find that sweet spot, that's where we're going to stop it. So right now, that's the biggest focus, is getting the right women into this group to continue to get the most out of it.
- [55:45]
A
It's been fun catching up with you, Crystal. If somebody's been listening and they're like, okay, I want to be in Crystal's world. I want to read what she's sharing in her email. And, and your emails are a lot of fun. I mean, you share about some of your travel experiences, some of the stuff that you're doing, but you're also teaching business skills as well. But where should somebody go to learn more about you, your world, your programs, that kind of stuff?
- [56:09]
B
Yes. I just started a brand new version of our newsletter so you can come along for the ride. At crystalchurch.com forward/copyclassroom, you can join the Copy Classroom newsletter. It's really the behind the business look like I'm going to be sharing in real time, like what are the things that we have done to be successful? What are the things that we have done to fail in many ways? So it's going to be a lot of fun and lots of travel and behind the business scenes there you can see the Copy classroom and then you can come and hang out with me on Instagram, Hrystal K R Y S T L E Church or I'm also on LinkedIn now. This is new for me. So on LinkedIn, Crystal Church, Crystal Church, Crystal Church everywhere. I don't know, there aren't a lot.
- [56:57]
A
Of Crystal Churches out there.
- [56:58]
B
I don't know the LinkedIn thing. So you can find me over there. But the newsletter is the best place to be a part of the world, see what's going on and I'm going to share stuff there that I'm not sharing anywhere else.
- [57:09]
A
Awesome. Thanks for joining me and chatting about what you're doing. It's been Fun catching up.
- [57:14]
B
Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate you so much.
- [57:23]
A
Thanks Crystal, for talking through how your business has changed and what you're working on in the future. As we mentioned when we talked, the kind of offer that Crystal has and that we've been talking through is best for copywriters who've been in the trenches and have more than a couple of successes under their belt. You have to be able to deliver results for your customers. If you're just starting out, if you've got a couple of wins under your belt, it's not, not yet time to create these kinds of offers. But if you've been doing it for a while, this might be right for you. I've seen way too many self appointed gurus launch their products too early before they had the experience to coach other people through their the process or the success that they saw. And if you've got the experience, of course try out what Krystal and I talked about. But if you've only been doing this a year or two, you're going to need more experience before launching your own products. And I don't think that I can repeat this enough. But the best product you can create and launch is not for other writers. It's for other marketers in the niche that you serve who want some of the same skills that you may have, or marketers who don't want to hire you every single time they need an email or a launch sequence so you can provide them with a proven template or other strategies that they can use on their own. And there are so many ways to provide these sorts of resources and templates and offers and strategies. One more thing that I want to reiterate from our discussion is the idea of targeting an identity rather than other demographic information. I like this idea a lot. Obviously I mentioned that as we were talking, but it may be difficult to build a target market on places like the Meta Network or Google Ads Network centered on an identity. But when searching for clients or customers, thinking about their identity rather than say their buying behavior or their age or some other similar characteristic could be a powerful differentiator. It's definitely something we're thinking about. When Crystal said that the way she sold her program trained her clients how to be the kinds of members she wanted in her program, that actually rang a bell for me. And you could do something similar if you know the kind of person you want to work with. Don't forget to check out Research Mastery, the proven research program that will help you write better, copy and sell more. You can find out more about it at thecopywriterclub.com researchmaster mastery that's the end of this episode of the Copywriter Club podcast. If you like what you've heard, please share it with someone you know. And if you don't know another writer or freelancer you can share it with, visit Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever it is that you listen to your favorite podcasts and leave a review. I really appreciate it. If you haven't left a review before, now's the time. I promise when you share the Copywriter Club podcast, your friends will thank you. I thank you, and I'll see you next week.