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The Copywriter Club Podcast
Hosted by Rob Marsh · EN
Ideas and habits worth stealing from top copywriters.
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TCC Podcast #429: Drunk Business Advice with Kristin Kenny
Jan 7, 202500:59:39Summary readyWhat makes a good newsletter? How about “unfiltered stories and what we learn?” For this episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, I interviewed business strategist Kristin Kenzy, the writer of the Drunk Business Advice newsletter. Her formula for figuring out what makes a good story for sharing in email or newsletters is gold. As is her “accordion pitch” process. Don’t miss this one. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript. Stuff to check out: Kristin’s Newsletter The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Full Transcript: Rob Marsh: Okay before we get into our interview… long time listeners are probably wondering, what’s up with the new music? For the past five-ish years, we’ve been using a bit of music composed for us by Addison Rice. But after so many years, it just felt like it was time for a change. So the music is different for the new year and we’ll see if we can’t go another five years or so with this new mix. On top of that, you’ve probably noticed that I’ve been hosting the podcast for the past six months without my one-time co-host Kira Hug. Enough people have asked what’s up with that, that it’s probably time to let you all know what’s up. I mentioned this briefly on one of our throwback episodes, but to make sure you don’t miss it… I wish there was a juicy story here, or a controversy, a messy falling out worthy of the pages of People magazine, but there’s not. Last year Kira told me that after seven years working on The Copywriter Club, that this project just didn’t light her up like it used to, and she was ready for a different kind of challenge. So we worked to slowly move her out of her daily role at The Copywriter Club. Kira’s still officiallly—legally—a partner behind the scenes, but is no longer working on Copywriter Club projects. We’re still friends. There was no drama… just time for a change. At the time I considered ending the podcast, but whenever I mentioned ending the podcast to someone I trusted, they all said, “no, you can’t do that… this podcast is too important for writers who want a look into how other people are running their businesses.” And on top of that I really enjoy talking with copywriters and other marketing experts about this thing we all do. It’s still lighting me up and I’ve got some great guests coming in the next few weeks, so hopefully you’ll all stay tuned to see what’s coming next. I’m still committed to our original promise of sharing strategies and ideas you can steal and use in your own business. Speaking of great guests… my guest today is business strategist and story teller Kristin Kenzy. Kristin writes one of my favorite newsletters, Drunk Business Advice. In it, she combines interesting marketing take-aways with fantastic storytelling that makes me (and thousands of other readers) look forward to it each week. I wanted to talk with Kristin about her approach to finding and writing the stories she shares. The formula she uses to figure out if a story is worth telling is excellent and she walked me through during our interview. We also talked about why writers need to stop journaling and a better way to pitch prospects in person… something Kristin calls “accordian pitching”. It’s good stuff, so stay tuned to hear what she had to share. Before we jump into this interview, we’ve got some really great guest trainings lined up in The Copywriter Underground this month… one on building connections with prospects and clients without burning out on social media. If you’re like me and struggle to show up on social media consistently, this one will change your approach entirely. And a second training on landing a “real” in-house job—either part time or full time—if you are looking for something a little more stable than freelancing is. Ironicallly, copywriters are bad at telling our own career stories and this workshop will show you what to do if you want to land one of these so-called “real” jobs. Both of these workshops are exclusively available for members of The Copywriter Underground. If you want access to them plus more than 30 templates, 70 other workshops and trainings, and monthly coaching from me, you can learn more at thecopywriterclub.com/tcu. If you’ve been thinking about trying out The Underground, this month is the month to do it. Go to thecopywriterclub.com/tcu for more information. And now, let’s go to our interview with Kristin Kenzy. Rob Marsh: Welcome to The Copywriter Club Podcast. We always start with your story, but I’ve got to say, I’m hesitating to ask that because you’ve had so many experiences that I’ve read about in your newsletter. We could talk about your story for the entire podcast. So your version of how you got to where you are today, running your own newsletter and the businesses that you’ve been starting. Kristin Kenzy: Of course. Well, thank you, Rob, for having me. It’s really an honor to jump in here in the week between Christmas and New Year’s, where none of us know what day it is or what’s going on outside or where anything is in the world, to actually be a little centered and talk about writing and talk about business. So I’ll answer your question by just looking at the last couple of years, because the last couple of years is when I’ve become a writer. And I have a definition of a writer, right? A writer is someone that actually gets paid to write. So lots of people write. I have written throughout my entire life. A lot of us have written, have published, have done self-exploratory work through writing. But I only became a writer really in the last 18 months. And that is a result of having had 20 years of entrepreneurship experience. So as you mentioned, we can talk a lot about all of those different ventures that I’ve been a part of, but how that switched from being an entrepreneur to being really a writer or an entrepreneurial writer is getting hired by Trends by the Hustle. Trends was the premium subscription of the Hustle newsletter for about five years, and it was an entrepreneurship analytics publication. And they had had many editors, many writers, many analysts over the years, and they needed someone to take it over who actually wasn’t a writer. They wanted someone who viewed the world through the lens of entrepreneurship. So with zero editorial background, zero professional writing experience, I stepped into that role simply because they thought that I knew how to talk to that audience. And again, I looked at it as an exercise in clarity, an exercise in taking actual experiences, actual advice, actual data, and communicating it as effectively as possible to an audience that is really looking to be entertained while they’re reading it, but also they need to get something out of it. So that started my entire sort of writing journey, and I was the managing editor there for about a year. Decided to part ways with them just because The hustle and trends had been acquired by HubSpot, which is a big software conglomerate. And journalism and media and corporate America don’t blend super well. And I thought that there was just some cultural nuance there that wasn’t really jiving for me. But in that time, I had just fallen in love with editorial. I had met the coolest people that I’ve ever known before in my entire life, in my entire career, who were our writers and our analysts. The most incredible entrepreneurs who were part of our readership and part of our community. And I just said, this is what I want to do. And I felt that after having 20 years of business experience, I had earned the right to stop doing it and start talking about it and start teaching it. And so I made that big shift. I was, you know, a huge part of my career was in real estate development. And I like to say I retired my hard hat and adopted a laptop as my main business tool and made that shift into editorial. But again, I don’t look at any of this as a writer. I look at it as a person who has had experiences that I think can help others. and or entertain others, hopefully both. And that’s really the platform by which I’ve built my newsletter and all of the other editorial and community aspects of what I’m working on right now. Rob Marsh: So before we jump into a lot of that stuff, what’s really interesting with what you’ve shared so far is the fact that you weren’t a writer before you became a writer. And there are a lot of people who listen to this podcast who are starting writing businesses or have been writing for a little while. They’re looking for clients. that the challenge of how do I communicate now that I can do this thing, this writing thing. And you o...
SummaryTCC Podcast #428: Get More Done in 2025 with Dave Ruel
Dec 31, 202401:06:54Summary readyIn another throwback episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, we’re taking a deeper look at goal setting and a proven process to help you get more done in 2025. Dave Ruel, the author of Done by Noon, walks through his framework for setting goals (or intentions) and making sure they happen—before noon. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript. Stuff to check out: Done by Noon by Dave Ruel 4000 Weeks by Oliver Burkeman Get Dave’s workshop in The Copywriter Underground The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Full Transcript: Rob Marsh: If you’re listening to this episode as it goes live, today is the final day of 2024. Many of us are looking forward to the new year and new opportunities to grow and get things done. I’m not a big fan of resolutions. They tend to be good for a few weeks, but after 4 weeks are often forgotten. It’s even a cliche now to mention how full gyms are on February 1 compared to January 1st. The drop off shows how ineffective resolutions can be for most of us. So what does work? Well, the past year or two I’ve focused more on behaviors rather than goals or resolutions. That is, making time to exercise every morning without a goal to lose weight or compete in a marathon or bench press a certain weight. Making time to do something every day is something I can do. This applies to other goals as well, like time spent reading rather than having a goal to read 24 books a year. By scheduling time to read every day, I can reach the 24 books read without setting a goal. So that begs the question, how do you make sure you spend your time on the activities and behaviors that will get you closer to the person you want to be? A few years ago, we asked something similar of Dave Ruel, the author of Done by Noon. That book is one of my favorites when it comes to getting stuff done. My other favorite takes an almost completely opposite view of time management and getting stuff done and that’s Oliver Burkeman’s 4000 Weeks. I’ll link to both in the shownotes in case you want to check them out. For today’s episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, I went back into the archives to resurrect this mostly forgotten interview with Dave Ruel. And while he does talk about goals, he shares a framework for making sure your schedule includes plenty of time for the behaviors you want to implement into your life. If you’re looking to get more done in 2025, some of his ideas will help. Before I share what Dave told us, after this interview we realized that we wanted to go deeper with Dave and his system. So we recorded a workshop where he walks through everything what he shares during this interview… at an even deeper level. That workshop is one of the dozens of business focused trainings available right now in The Copywriter Underground. Coming up in January of 2025, we’ll be adding several more, including a workshop for copywriters who want to work either part time or full time with a client. My friend Jessica, who spent 2 decades as a recruiter for a creative talent agency will share why copywriters are so bad at resumes and cover letters and what they need to do differently if they want to land a so-called “real” job. And Esai Arasi will be sharing how to build relationships with prospects at scale, without burning out on social media. Both of these workshops are happening in January and are completely free for Copywriter Underground members. If you want them… along with the time management workshop from Dave Ruel, go to thecopywriterlcub.com/tcu now to join. And like last week, you’ll hear Kira Hug asking questions on this episode as it is a throwback to 2020 when she and I were co-hosting this podcast. Okay, with that let’s jump in with Dave Ruel as he tells us how he became an entrepreneur focused on sharing better time management strategies… ———— Dave Ruel: I’m going to go back to my days as a fitness athlete. This is pretty much when it all started. So, in the early 2000s, I was an amateur competitive bodybuilder. So, I was very obsessed with everything fitness, bodybuilding, muscle building, you name it. In 2007, I met a guy named Lee Hayward. We were fellow competitors on the regional circuit. So, we’ve known of each other within the local circuit, but I’ve never met Lee in person. I was traveling to his hometown to compete that weekend. So, Lee actually offered me to stay at his house that weekend. We only knew each other little bit, but I never knew what he was doing for a living. The first morning, he was having coffee. He’s like, “Well, I’m going to do some work. I’m going to answer a couple emails and then I should be done by noon. And then we can go work out.” I was like, “Yeah, it’s nice to be on vacation and have that schedule.” He’s like, “Well, it’s pretty much like the way we operate here.” I was like, “Really? What is it that you do?” He’s like, “Well, I have a bodybuilding website. I make a full living out of it and making six figures a year, working from home. My wife works with me.” I was like, “Well, okay, I need to understand how you do to that.” So, I quickly treated my passion for fitness to an obsession for business building, started studying direct response marketing, anything that had to do with online marketing. It was very limited at the time, because obviously, that’s in 2007. So, there was not that much going on when it comes to online businesses. Now, everything’s online. If you’re not online, you’re nowhere. But at the time, it was very different. So, I created my first business at that time. It was a website that I was sharing nutrition and cooking tips for bodybuilding and fat loss that was called the Muscle Group. The website is still on. We still sell digital products on that platform. From there, I emerged more on the publishing marketing agency. So, basically, other coaches and other experts saw what I was doing online. They wanted to do the same thing. So, I was like, “Okay, well you have an audience, I know how to monetize that.” Then we launched an agency that led me to invest in a company called BiOptimizers. So, that’s natural supplements company. We did full turnaround with that company, sold it in 2016. During that time, for me, becoming an entrepreneur, it’s like anything else, going to the gym once doesn’t make you an athlete. I feel the same thing with entrepreneurship. You have to do it in order to understand what it is. In the process, I did obviously all the mistakes in the books that most entrepreneurs make when it comes to managing their time, their energy, their attention. I build systems around my life in business in order to fix that and mostly inspiring by what I had learned in sports performance. I saw there’s too many weird similarities between both worlds. So, I started adapting that. Yeah. So, in 2016, I had the opportunity after I sold my last business to start coaching entrepreneurs. So, basically, entrepreneurs were coming to meet for the online business stuff that you’re talking about. Okay, I want to build an online business to have the freedom and yada, yada, yada, but what I realized that these entrepreneurs don’t need more tactics or strategies to gain more customers and convert more. What they needed really was a framework to help them operate as entrepreneurs. I started sharing my systems with them. The results spoke for themselves. This is how Effic was born. We’re going to share these techniques, these systems with everybody. Yeah, now a few years later, we don’t do coaching, but we have certifications now, where we certify basically various business coaches or consultants who want to use that with their clients. We have, obviously, the Effic planner, which is our best-selling tool. Rob Marsh: So, we’re definitely going to get into more of that, but I want to go back to the amateur bodybuilding phase of your career as you’re just starting out. I’m guessing that there are a lot of behaviors, a lot of things that you were doing as a bodybuilder that apply to how you ran your businesses or that even run your business today. Will you tell us a little bit about what you learned in that phase of your career that you apply to your business today? Dave Ruel: Yeah, a lot of timeless techniques that we have in… It’s not just bodybuilding. It’s really through sports performance in general. The thing that you need to have in order to become a good athlete or a good entrepreneur is discipline. The thing is that when I started training really and didn’t know that I was going to compete or anything like that, I did that just to transform myself, I realized the s...
SummaryTCC Podcast #427: Mastering Copywriting with Jason Rutkowski
Dec 24, 202401:01:49Summary readyBecoming a great copywriter is not easy. But there are things you can do that 99% of other writers will not invest the time to accomplish. In the 427th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, we talked with copywriter Jason Rutkowski about the process of mastering copy, how to find a mentor, and all the effort that goes into the process of becoming great. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript. Stuff to check out: Parris’ Book List The Single Best Way to Get Clients On Writing Well by William Zinsser The Brilliance Breakthrough by Eugene Schwartz The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Full Transcript: Rob Marsh: It’s the holidays and if this year is like most of our past years, that means fewer of our regular listeners are tuning in for the next week or two. So instead of bringing on a new guest you won’t have the opportunity to listen to and learn from, I’ve gone into the archive to uncover an excellent old episode that you probably missed. And if you did hear it back when it aired a few years ago, you might have forgotten it. But honestly, this is one of our best interviews about mastery and the process of becoming an in-demand copywriter. The guest for this episode is Jason Rutkowski. At the time we interviewed him, Jason was writing for some of the top financial and health clients. So he’s got a lot of great, timeless advice. You’ll also hear Kira in this episode. Long time listeners will know Kira is a co-founder of The Copywriter Club and until the middle of this year, my co-host for The Copywriter Club Podcast. Some of you have been asking, where she went? Earlier this year, Kira shared that after seven years of building The Copywriter Club, she was interested in pursuing some other challenges. So while she’s still offically a partner behind the scenes, she hasn’t been actively involved in the podcast and our programs for the past six months. Everything’s fine. There was no messy break-up… and who knows, if the right opportunity presents itself, we may work on something together again. We’ll see. So, while you’ll hear Kira’s voice, she is still working on other stuff for now. One more thing before we get to the interview, you’ve heard me talking about The Copywriter Accelerator Fast Track and that in the coming weeks it will be retired forever. This is the proven business building program used by hundreds of copywriters to start and grow their businesses. Many used it to create six figure businesses. A few have earned seven figures since completing the program. And I know it will work for you too. But time is running out to get the strategies, insights and ideas we share in this business-building program. So go to thecopywriterclub.com/fasttrack now to learn more—and if its a fit for you, join so you can build a successful copywriting business for yourself. And now, enjoy this throwback interview with Jason Rutkowski. Hey Jason. Kira Hug: Welcome Jason. Jason Rutkowski: Hey Kira, hey Rob. Kira Hug: How’s it going? Glad you’re here. Jason Rutkowski: Oh no, I’m excited. I haven’t done one of these in a while, so I was excited to do it with you. Rob Marsh: Definitely took a little time to get our schedules aligned. We’ve been trying to make this happen for a little while, because we know a little bit about you and where you write and we think it’ll be a great conversation, so we’re glad to have you here. Jason Rutkowski: Yeah, definitely. Kira Hug: All right, so let’s kick this off. Jason, how did you end up as a copywriter? Jason Rutkowski: Okay, I’ll give you the quick story about this. I was 19. I just finished my freshman year of college. I got an internship at a normal 9-to-5 job. And I realized I hated it. I was like, oh man. I saw all these people who worked in an office, you know, 30, 40 years; I’m like, is this really going to be my life? And also at the same exact time, I was on the internet one day and I found an internet marketing forum. And I was like, what’s an internet marketing forum? I don’t know. So I go on it and I see all these guys, like ‘Yeah I just made 200 grand this year, 500 grand this year. I work from home; I’m sitting at my desk all day.’ I’m like what? How is that even possible? So I started getting really into it. And then I learned about traffic drivers and marketing and product creation and all these things. And I was really confused. And I was like 19, 20 years old. So I heard about copywriting, but I didn’t decide to be a freelance copywriter right away. I was like, you know what I’m going to do, I’m going to create my own products; I’m going to do Google Adwords; and I’m going to drive traffic. I’m going to do the whole thing, like from start to finish. And I horribly failed. You know, I was going to school full-time, and then I was doing this part-time, and I was just failing and failing. And then after a couple of years of that, I decided, okay this isn’t working. I’m just going to do copywriting because I think this is what I like most. I don’t like doing all this other technical stuff, marketing stuff. I’m just going to do copywriting. So, from then on out, I just picked a niche. I was like I’ll just write in health. And from then on out I just started growing a business. Rob Marsh: So, I’m interested in what some of those failures looked like. What were the products that you were creating and why were they failing? Jason Rutkowski: Oh. I mean, the why is a lot of reasons. The products I was creating, I created kind of an … E-books were a big thing back then. Back then you could just write an e-book and like sell it and people would buy it. So I created one for anxiety, which I actually went through a lot in the beginning of my life. And I also created a few for some, like headaches solutions and kind of like different health things. And I put, I don’t know, these 150, 200-page books together with just some random info, that I thought was good, but then the whole process of, you know I was trying to organic SEO, trying to target the right keyword. I was in college so I had very little money to actually spend on driving traffic, paid traffic. And I was just doing a lot of things wrong. It was a lot of small marketing things that you don’t know, don’t you know it? Like how to do the SEO right, how to do the traffic right. How to do the delivery right. How to build your list. Like, doing a lot of bad stuff with building my list. A lot of mistakes; it was just like, I was just some teenage kid and I didn’t know what I was doing. But I did learn a lot, and I also learned through the process that what I really liked doing the most was the copywriting. So I just decided to give up the whole build my own business thing and do the copywriting thing instead. Rob Marsh: So what did that look like in the first stages? How did you connect with your first client, and why did you choose the niche that you chose? Jason Rutkowski: Oh, back then that was me doing my own stuff. In terms of the freelance copywriting, I started on the freelance websites, which I don’t know if it is a good way to do it anymore. But, you know, it was like these cheap little jobs on like Elance and Guru and … Like, I don’t know if that stuff was even worth it. I mean, I guess it paid me some money, and it gave me some actual samples I could send to people. But I didn’t really get any good long term clients out of that. I didn’t start getting good long term clients until I decided, and...
SummaryTCC Podcast #426: The Way to Better Content with Heather Parady
Dec 17, 202400:55:14Summary readyThe world is drowning in content—most of it bad. So when a creator is doing something different, something that really stands out and challenges the rest of us to up our game, we pay attention. That’s why Content Strategist Heather Parady is our guest for the 426th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. Heather shared her unique approach to content creation and lays out a roadmap for anyone else who wants to up their content game. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript. Stuff we mentioned to check out: The Copywriter Accelerator Fast Track Save the Cat by Blake Snyder Heather’s Website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Full Transcript: Rob Marsh: Content is everywhere. Almost every business knows that content is one avenue that helps prospects discover and connect with them. I’m not telling you anything new here, most copywriters work with clients who need this kind of content whether it’s on social media, regular emails, videos, workshop and webinar content. We even use it ourselves. So when I discover someone who is making cotent that stands out or is even a little bit different, I pay attention. And today’s guest on The Copywriter Club Podcast fits that description. Hi I’m Rob Marsh and today I’m speaking with Content Strategist, Heather Parady. I’ve been watching Heather’s content for a while now and I am impressed. She connects ideas from interviews and books and all kinds of other sources to create short video content that grabs attention and teaches with a story, almost always gives me something to think about. This is one of my favorite interviews this year and I think you’re not only going to enjoy it, but you’ll have a bunch of takeaways to apply to your own business and content creation. Before we jump in, as we wrap up the year I need to let you know that The Copywriter Accelerator as it is today is going away forever. This is the proven business building program used by hundreds of copywriters to start and grow their businesses. And I guarantee it will work for you too. But to get the eight modules, eight blueprints, the bonuses and the coaching calls that go along with it… you need to opt in now. And if you decide to join the Accelerator now, you’ll get absolutely free, the program I am working on behind the scenes that will replace it. I don’t even have a name for the new thing, just know that it will be worth it. And if you don’t agree, you’ll get your money back. Go to thecopywriterclub.com/fasttrack for details now. And with that, let’s go to our interview with Heather Parady. Heather, welcome to the podcast. I, I’m thrilled to be here. You know, as we were just talking before we started recording, I’m a big fan of yours. I would love to start with your story and how you got to where you are building this list, this following that you have, you know, video producer, all of the things. Yeah. How did you get there? Heather Parady: Well, first of all, thanks for having me on. I was listening to your show and I’m just really impressed with the quality of guests and the topics and how thorough you guys are and professional. It’s just really, really valuable, valuable show that I look forward to continually listening to now. I was a therapist, you know, I went to school to sit in rooms with people and hear their problems and sort it out. psychology of trying to figure out why we are the way that we are. And I’ve always been kind of like a helper. You know, I think through and through, that’s really who I am. So it’s funny because a lot of people are kind of coming to me for like the media side of stuff. They’re like, video editing and all this stuff. And I’m like, that’s something that I’m learning how to do. It’s not something that I’ve been doing all along. What I’ve been doing all along is sitting with people and reading books on Adler and Carl Jung and stuff like that. So I’m Kind of a mental health therapist turned media person. Short story is, at some point, I really just fell into the world of personal development and the online space. Probably about 10 years ago, and I was just really drawn to this idea that you could create something from nothing and reinvent your life and all the possibilities there. And I really loved the freedom, the idea, which is funny because I work now so hard and so long, so I’m laughing at the whole freedom thing. This idea that you can make your own path especially i was pregnant at the time of my first daughter and really torn with going into the workforce and wanting to be with her and so forth so i’m very reluctantly very reluctantly i. Turn down a whole bunch of therapy jobs and we moved perfect jobs. and cried and talked to hours and hours to my husband, bless his heart, and said, I think I want to build something online and figure out my voice here. It has been so messy, Rob. I started off podcast editing, I started off, I did photography, I managed people’s calendars, I did everything and anything. And what I didn’t know then is skill stacking, how valuable that was, because now, you know, I know a little bit about all the little nuances of online business. And eventually, eventually I ended up in media and video and I just found something that really worked for me and I’ve gone headfirst into it. Rob Marsh: I’ve followed your videos. I love what you’re doing. And I definitely want to, you know, talk about your whole approach to storytelling and the way you set all of that up. But first, I think you’ve touched on something that, you know, in 420 plus episodes of the podcast, we really haven’t talked a lot about and that is the mental side of marketing. Can we talk just a little bit about that? Because what you bring to this as a therapist, I think makes your voice different from everybody else that I see on YouTube, talking about video and getting yourself in front of people. And the way you’re taking a step back and say, wait a second, there’s, there’s actually some human stuff that has to happen before we even talk camera lighting equipment. Yeah. Yeah. What’s your philosophy there? Heather Parady: Yeah. I know my tendency is when I came into this conversation as more of a helper and a feeler. I mean, I cry every freaking day, just deeply empathic and stuff. I was thinking, oh man, that’s a weakness in this media space. I have just really doubled down on what a freaking strength it is to have folks who aren’t naturally bent towards media getting into media and really showing the humanity because folks are so burnout with the salesman type vibe and strong calls to action and feeling like they’re being scammed. And there’s looking for somebody who’s human. So, you know, I really would encourage folks to understand that people aren’t looking for highly produced stuff. They’re looking for honest content, honest, honest, honest, even if it’s just your freaking cell phone and it’s bad lighting or whatever. There’s stuff like that stuff’s important and you can work on it, but it’s not what people are looking for. And you said something a minute ago, Rob, you mentioned in over the 400 something episodes, I noticed that when I was listening to your show is like 400 episodes. What a rare rarity nowadays for someone to get that far along in podcasting. And so Reps is the name of the game. I have done hundreds, probably thousands of videos at this point. You can go to my TikTok and scroll to the bottom. It’s humiliating. Some of the first ones I did. Terrible, terrible, terrible. We’re so afraid, though, to look like a beginner to people. We want to come out of the gates looking like Mr. Beast or Brene Brown or whatever your person is. And it doesn’t work like that. You have to be willing to look like a beginner in front of people and own it. And here’s the thing at the end of the day. No one is watching you anyway. We have this illusion that so many people are watching us. I have a pretty good following now, and I put out a lot of content, and to this day, my friends, my family, and all that are like, what do you do? Huh? What? you know, and then they miss so much because people are busy, they’re consumed. And you know, the spotlight effect in psychology, we all think that we have the spotlight on us. And when you kind of get past the insecurity, and you really do want people to pay attention, you realize they weren’t paying attention all along, because it’s really hard to get people to pay attention. It’s very hard. So I know it’s, it’s, um...
SummaryTCC Podcast #425: What You Should Know about Facebook Ads with Kwadwo Sampany-Kessie
Dec 10, 202400:58:05Summary readyWondering how copywriters could be using Facebook and Instagram ads to grow their business? Our guest for the 425th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast is Kwadwo Sampany-Kessie. Kwadwo had to reinvent his business during the pandemic. And today he helps businesses grow with ads on Meta. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript. Stuff to check out: The Accelerator FastTrack The Art of Online Business Podcast The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Full Transcript: Rob Marsh: Facebook ads. Copywriters write them. Some copywriters run them. All of us see and click on them. And yet, most of us don’t have a deep understanding of how to use them for our clients or our own businesses. It’s not a skill you can easily pick up by listening to a podcast, but we can get a deeper understanding of them with the help of an expert. Hi I’m Rob Marsh and on today’s episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, my guest is Facebook Ads Manager Kwadwo Sampany-Kessie. Kwadwo’s business collapsed during the pandemic and he had to create an entirely new means for supporting his family. So he began a business helping others use Facebook to promote their products. That’s not all we talked about. Kwadwo talked about the value of learning a new language and how that can change your perspective on the world. And the challenges of starting over. I think you’re going to like this episode. Before we get to that… I’ve been telling you about The Copywriter Accelerator FastTrack— that’s our business foundations program used by more than 350 copywriters to start, build and scale their own writing business. Graduates include six-figure writers like Justin Blackman, Kirsty Fanton, Michal Eisik, Dani Paige, Krystal Church and hundreds of others. The only way to get the business changing strategies and proven ideas we share in The Accelerator is with the Fast Track edition. And it will be going away sometime in the new year. So if you’ve been thinking of joining the accelerator, this is just about your last chance to get that game-changing program. I’m working on a new program that will replace it… something that will be more concise and immediately applicable. It’s too soon to reveal the details but if you join The Accelerator FastTrack before we launch this new program, you’ll get The Accelerator and free access to the new program when it launches. That includes all of the content, the 8 modules and blueprints and several bonuses that will help you find and land the high-paying clients you want. If you get started with the FastTrack now, when the new year is here you’ll be ready with a steady flow of clients and a signature service you’re proud to offer them. Visit thecopywriterclub.com/fasttrack to learn more today. And now, let’s go to our interview with Kwadwo… Kwadwo welcome to the podcast. I’m excited. First of all, as I said, as we were starting to chat just to meet you, but also to have you on to tell us your story, how you became a Facebook ads manager, a strategy partner, host of a very popular podcast. How did you get here? Kwadwo: Let’s go back to when I was sitting in Beijing, China, the capital of China, with my wife at a Mediterranean restaurant. And we were enjoying our hummus and naan and we’re sitting and we’re overlooking like a popular shopping strip. And so we’re chatting and just relating about China life because I’ve lived there for 12 years. And the next thing that happened was It’s very typical for me, but my wife had never experienced before. And so a couple of tables down, there’s two Russian girls. They had spotted me, and they had started giggling like they saw somebody famous. And the thing is, I was famous, and I’ll go into that in a moment. they made their way over to the table and, you know, say, excuse me, introduce themselves and wanted to take a selfie with me. So I introduced them to my wife and then did the selfie thing and they went away. And my wife was like, wow, you weren’t joking. Like this happens. People recognize you as the elementary Chinese guy. And elementary Chinese was my prior business that got decimated by the pandemic where I taught Mandarin Chinese. I’m going to go into the story a little bit, but I taught Mandarin Chinese to expats, expatriates, people who are not Chinese, but living and working professionally in China. And that was going quite well. I have this desire now as a Facebook ad manager, and I’m skipping forward, but we’ll get back to that previous business and what happened and why I’m not doing that anymore. But I have the desire to help people run their ads profitably and not make the mistakes that I made back then that got me famous for that previous business, but did not fill up my courses with a bunch of students who were the right fit for me to serve. And so here’s what happened. I was basically on the Hollywood B-lister level of fame. Conservatively, three out of ten people, expats, in China would recognize me on the street. And that happened because one timing, it’s some sort of success that usually has to do with like luck and chance. And so one was timing. I was showing ads at a time in China, a market that’s walled off. So like all of the good social media, you know, the YouTubes, the Pinterest, the Twitters, X now, Facebook and Instagram, you can’t access in China without a VPN, virtual private network that helps you tunnel under what they call the great firewall of China to keep out all the Western influence. And so I was showing Facebook ads for that business in China and getting my funny videos about speaking Chinese were showing up for super cheap all over everyone, at least the expats, like iPhones and Android devices. And that grew my Instagram account. I don’t know, 27, almost 30,000 folks like back in 2017, 2018, which is not a huge account, but decent. And lots of people knew me, but because Instagram is all about showing your ads. And this is why I say, constantly do not boost your post. Instagram loves it. I know you’ve seen it on your Instagram, right? This post is reaching more people than usual. Let’s go ahead and show it to more. Hit that boost button now. And it’s like, don’t do it. Don’t do it. They want to show your post to people who like to interact. But if only all of our Instagram followers or even 80% of them, 70% I’ll take that turned into customers. What happened was is since I have two kids and my wife and I like to speak foreign languages to our kids, I was speaking Mandarin to them. Their nanny in China was speaking Mandarin to them. My wife speaks fluent Spanish. We decided to take a vacation to Mexico and it happens to be on January 13th, 2020. And so a couple of weeks after that, people start looking at us sideways and saying, uh, where did you say you came from again? And we’re like, uh, we’ve been out of China for 14 days. We’re good to go. And then we were quarantining in Mexico. We extended our Airbnb into like a three month long-term stay because why not? It’s Mexico, chips and guac everywhere. A bit less so during the quarantine and then China shut down their border. So. And I think they gave us seven days to fly back. And well, who wants to buy one-way tickets with less than seven day notice for four people? And because my business was incorporated in China at the time, teaching Chinese, and our visas were tied to that business, we ended up not being able to return to China, having to get our cell phones, hop on FaceTime, because we’re Apple users, and get rid of everything in our apartment when our apartment lease was up. And so imagine four, four bedrooms of stuff, some good friends going over there and we got reunited with six luggages later on. And that was how the previous business ended. And the current, I guess the genesis of the current business where I, I coach and help with funnel strategy for online course creators and I run their Facebook and Instagram ads. That’s how that started. Rob Marsh: That is nuts. Just the being locked out of your home, your place, everything. That’s crazy. Kwadwo: Yeah. I think it technically was a midlife crisis. Hopefully I live longer than the half life that I had lived up to that point. Rob Marsh: It might be your first midlife crisis. I hope to never have one nearly as bad as that. Before we talk about, you know, Facebook and the things you’re doing in your business, let’s talk about learning lan...
SummaryTCC Podcast #424: How I Built Immediate Credibility with Meg Kendall
Dec 2, 202400:48:09Summary readyA lot of copywriters need a way to attract prospects… but more than that, they need to do it in a way that immediately communicates that they’re the expert—an advisor clients can trust. In the 424th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, I spoke with copywriter Meg Kendall about creating an industry report that does this perfectly. If you want to stand out from all the other copywriters who depend on lead magnets and social posts to get clients, you need to listen to this episode. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript. Stuff to check out: Meg’s Website The Copywriter Accelerator Fast Track The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Full Transcript: Rob Marsh: One of the biggest challenges copywriters face… actually it’s not just copywriters, it’s freelancers of every kind… one of the big challenges we all face is getting noticed. But more than that, getting noticed in a way that builds trust with the clients you want to work with. Just about everyone has a lead magnet… or an email list… or content on social media… all with the intent of making a connection to prospects and potential clients. If you don’t have those you should. They’re table stakes for creating a successful business. But because everyone has them, you have to do more than these to stand out. One way to stand out is to write an eye-opening industry report that immediately sets you up as the expert in the field. It’s more than a download, it’s a shortcut to interviewing potential clients, establishing relationships with them, and demonstrating your ability. Hi I’m Rob Marsh and on today’s episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, my guest is copywriter Meg Kendall. Meg followed this exact path to connect with several potential clients in her niche. She’ll be sharing exactly how she did it in this interview. Before we get to that… you’ve heard of The Copywriter Accelerator program. That’s our business foundations program used by more than 350 copywriters to start, build and scale their own writing business. Graduates include six-figure writers like Justin Blackman, Kirsty Fanton, Michal Eisik, Dani Paige, Krystal Church, and today’s podcast guest, Meg Kendall. We no longer run that program live… the only way to get the business changing strategies and proven ideas we share in The Accelerator is with the Fast Track edition. And as I mentioned on this show last week, even that will be going away sometime in the new year. So if you’ve been thinking of joining the accelerator, time is running out. What will replace it? It’s too soon to reveal the details but if you join the accelerator fast track before we launch this new program, you’ll get early access to both the accelerator and the new program. Until then, you get all of the content, the 8 modules and blueprints and several bonuses that are included in The Accelerator Fast Track. And when we launch the new program sometime next year, you’ll get that updated program too. Don’t wait to work on your business so when the new year is here you have a steady flow of clients and a signature service you’re proud to offer them. Visit thecopywriterclub.com/fasttrack to learn more today. And now, let’s go to our interview with Meg Kendall. Hey Meg, welcome to The Copywriter Club Podcast. Let’s start with your story. I’ve been watching you build your business now for a couple of years. I think it’s a good one. Meg Kendall: All right. Yeah. I feel like my story is kind of similar to a lot of other copywriters and that it’s very winding and maybe a lot of the backstory is fairly irrelevant to what I do now. So I had a fairly long career in hospitality. I worked as a server and a bartender for about 10 years, and it was pretty hard to leave. At some points, I wasn’t sure I would ever leave. And then I finally broke out, and that was via going back to school for the millionth time, it feels like. Really, it was the fourth time that I finally got my undergraduate degree, and that was in botany. And I lean on that a lot today because most of my clients are… So I work in climate tech, so they’re all very focused on the science behind climate change. just like very technical topics, et cetera, stuff like that. So they love that I have a botany degree. From there, I moved to New York city for a job, completely irrelevant to botany. I moved there as the technical term is an orientation and mobility specialist, but nobody knows what that is. So I’ll tell you, I was a travel instructor for visually impaired students in the Bronx and New York city. So that was a really interesting time period of my life. And I’m only telling it because it’s relevant to switching my way to copywriting. Yeah, so I was in New York City. So many big changes in such a short amount of time. I moved to New York City with my husband, left that 10-year-long hospitality career, became pregnant with my now two-and-a-half-year-old daughter pretty much like a week after we got to New York City, which wasn’t in the plan, but was a happy accident. Yeah, really, really hated my job in the Bronx. It’s just, they didn’t paint an accurate picture of what the job was going to be like. And I found that out pretty quickly, but I was there at this job and I was pregnant and I had great health insurance and I couldn’t leave my nice health insurance job in New York City to go bartend pregnant in New York city. Right. So all that’s going on. And so two years past that I do this, like I’m, you know, I’m crying in the hallways at my job. It’s sad, but it’s fine. Like I’m getting through it. And then I have Charlie and I’m like, how do I get out of this? How do I get back to my roots and get back to doing something that I love doing and, like, never have to go back to this place again? It’s funny because I didn’t think about it while – I did think about it while I was pregnant, but I didn’t try to actively work my way out of it. And it wasn’t until Charlie was born that I was like, oh, I can’t go back there. Like, I just can’t do it. It’s not going to happen. So I remember that once upon a time I was going to earn an English degree, but everyone’s an English degree major, but everyone scared me out of it because there’s no way you can make a living as a writer. Like you’ll have to, you know, you know, the same old trope. No one thinks you can make any money writing for a living. I’m sure most of the people listening to this podcast have heard that same cliche throughout their careers. I found myself in someone’s marketing funnel. I think it was The Comprehensive Copywriting Academy. And that’s how I discovered copywriting. I didn’t even know what it was. And I just really went all in on it immediately with my little five-day-old baby. And yeah, took it from there. And things have snowballed since then. I think when I first learned of you guys, I was learning like, oh, it’s a good idea to niche. Now, I think it was you that told me. I was like, I’m going to niche down to B2B SaaS. And you were like, that’s not niching. I was like, OK. Yeah, I guess you’re right. Because I was so new to everything. I didn’t really have any concept of the scope and what was possible and just how far niched you could get. And yeah, I came, I’d always wanted to work in sustainability, but I think I had the same, the same problem with sustainability as I did with writing. Like I’m like, either you work in a job that you love and you don’t make any money or you can make money and work, work in a job that you don’t love very much. So I’d always, I’d never achieved a job in sustainability. And then through copywriting, I discovered climate tech, which marries these two worlds of lbeing able to have a lucrative career working with like fancy technologies that are moving the world forward, but also doing something good for the world and the world of sustainability. So it seemed like a pretty perfect match right away. Rob Marsh: Yeah. I want to go back to you being a bartender. I was a bartender before I started copywriting. Not for 10 years. I did it for maybe a year and a half, two years or so. But were there things that you take from that experience of working with people daily, trying to keep them happy, that basically translates to copywriting today? Meg Kendal...
SummaryTCC Podcast #423: Copy, Originality and A.I. with Jon Gillham
Nov 26, 202400:42:43Summary readyFor the 423rd episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, we’re checking in on the progress A.I. has made over the past year with Jon Gillham, founder of Originality.AI. We talked about how originality helps protect writers from false accusations of plagiarism and checks facts (unlike ChatGPT and Gemini), plus some of the risks that A.I. poses to the world of content creation. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript. Stuff to check out: Get the AI Bullet Writing Prompt Originality.AI The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Full Transcript: Rob Marsh: Almost two years ago, we realized that A.I. was not just a new idea that copywriters and content writers needed to pay attention to, rather it was a game-changing technology that would impact almost everything writers do. The number of new tools and features that include use A.I. to deliver their benefits is in the thousands. That’s a big part of why we launched the A.I. for Creative Entrepreneurs Podcast last year. You can find more than 20 conversations about A.I. on that podcast. But as A.I. has become almost commonplace, we stepped away from doing so many interviews about artificial intelligence and just how it is changing our industry. But I’m thinking it’s about time we checked in on how the tech has changed over the past few months and what copywriters should be using it for… if they aren’t already doing it. Hi I’m Rob Marsh and on today’s episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, my guest is Jon Gillham, the founder of Originality.AI. This tool is the most accurate A.I. detector available today. What’s more in addition to checking for content created by A.I., it’s a fact checker—something tools like Gemini and ChatGPT have struggled with, it checks for plagiarism, and will help protect you against clients and others who might claim your writing isn’t original. We talked about how they do it and the risks A.I. continues to pose for writers on this episode, so stay tuned. Before we get to that… last summer we ran the last ever live cohort of The Copywriter Accelerator program. Since then, the only way to get the business building insights and strategies that we shared with more than 350 copywriters over the past seven years was to join the Fast Track version of the accelerator at thecopywriterclub.com/fasttrack. But I’ve been working on an updated version of that program and it too will go away soon. So if you’ve been thinking of joining the accelerator, time is running out. What’s coming next? It’s too soon to reveal what I’ve been working on, but if you join the accelerator fast track before we launch it, you’ll get early access to the new program, absolutely free. Until then, you get all of the content, the 8 modules and blueprints and several bonuses that are included in The Accelerator Fast Track. And when we launch the new program sometime next year, you’ll get that updated program too. Don’t wait to work on your business so when the new year is here you have a steady flow of clients and a signature service you’re proud to offer them. Visit thecopywriterclub.com/fasttrack to learn more today. And now, let’s go to our interview with Jon Gillham. Hey, John, welcome to The Copywriter Club Podcast. We’d like to start with your story. So how did you become the founder of Originality AI, and I guess also the co-founder of AdBank and Motion Invest and Content Refined? You’ve done a lot of this company starting thing. Jon Gillham: Yeah, it’s been a journey. Yeah, so my background was as a mechanical engineer, did that in school, and then I always knew that I wanted to get back to my hometown and started some sort of online projects. A lot of those projects all had sort of a central theme around creating content that would rank in Google, get traffic, and monetize that, whether that was an e-commerce site, a software business. And then at one point, we built up some extra capacity within the team that I had of writers that we were working with, and then started selling at extra capacity. So built up a content marketing agency, sold it, and then had seen the wave of generative AI coming. look to build a solution to try and help provide transparency between writers and agencies and, and clients. And that’s where originality came from. Rob Marsh: So as far as most people’s experience with AI, it really started about two years ago when, you know, ChatGPT went live and suddenly everybody was like, oh my gosh, this is not what we were expecting, or it’s come along a lot faster. But you’ve been doing this a lot longer than that. Tell us, you know, basically, how did you get interested in AI and get started with creating these kinds of tools? Jon Gillham: Yeah, so I totally agree. I think a lot of people sort of assume everything on the internet that predated Chat GPT was human generated. But the reality is that there was other tools that predated Chat GPT. Specifically, there’s the GPT-3 that got released by OpenAI in 2020, and then sort of from GPT-2 2020, and then From that, there were many writing tools that were built off the back of it, so tools like jasper.ai. And we were, at one point, one of the heaviest users of Jasper, where we had a writing service where we transparently used AI content, but stalled that content for a lot less than the human-generated content in another part of the content agency. And so that was where we really started to see that the efficiency lift that came from using AI and then, you know, who who gets to capture that efficiency if is it, you know, the writer that copies and pastes out of chat to BT that then displaces a writer that did hard work on their own. And that was sort of where, where we first started playing with AI. And then yeah, using it extensively within our content marketing agency. Rob Marsh: So before we go really deep on AI and the stuff that you’ve done, I’m interested, as a founder, as a co-founder, just what are some of the biggest challenges that you have faced as you’ve started your businesses? Again, we’re talking to an audience of people who are running their own businesses, most of them. So I’m just curious how you’ve been able to succeed where so many others tend to fail. Jon Gillham: I mean, there’s certainly failures in there. So they’re not all successes. So I think the common theme is when we’re solving it, the common themes on when there’s success is probably two core things. One, that resolving a problem that is meaningful and adding sort of significant value by helping to solve whatever that problem is, is one. And the second piece is when there’s been a really good team around that project, when the co-founders on it are great, when the initial hires are really, really good. Those are probably the two key things that have seemingly been the common traits when the projects have gone well, and there’s certainly projects that haven’t gone well, lots of failures in there as well. Rob Marsh: Interesting you say that. I worked at a startup a decade or two ago. the CEO that came in to run it. It was a fun environment, really great place to work. We had a successful exit, sold off to HP. And I remember the CEO saying, if you’re lucky, you get to have an experience like this sometime in your career where you put together a great team, you’ve got a great product, you have this great experience. And then he said, and then you spend the rest of your life trying to replicate that at the next company or the company after. And there’s a lot of truth to that. Jon Gillham: There’s a lot of truth. In a lot of our weekly meetings at the All Hands right now, we’re saying, like, you know, these are currently the good old days. So, like, enjoy them because we’re going to be looking back at this, like, hopefully we will be fortunate to be lucky enough to be looking back at these days as the good old days, because it is a lot of fun right now. And I think, yeah, I certainly echo what he was saying in terms of, yeah, it doesn’t, a lot of things need to go right to line up with sort of a, all the pieces to be in that sort of like a scaling stage of a company. Rob Marsh: Okay, so let’s talk about Originality...
SummaryTCC Podcast #422: Starting and Growing a Business with Megan Smyth
Nov 19, 202400:39:37Summary readyStarting and growing a copywriting business isn’t easy. So when we find a writer who seems to have figured it out, it’s worth taking a closer look to see what’s going on. So for the 422nd episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, I asked Megan Smyth to share more about her business and podcast and how she’s gotten so many things right as she’s grown. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript. Stuff to check out: The Copywriter Accelerator Fast Track Megan’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Full Transcript: Rob Marsh: One of the things I love most about what I do at The Copywriter Club is the opportunity I have to see copywriters grow in so many different ways. They get better at writing. They build and develop amazing businesses that support the lifestyle they want—sometimes that’s something as dramatic as a full-time, six-figure business and other times it’s a part-time gig that helps pay some of the bills. And for copywriters who already have a business, it’s fun to watch them change and update the way they market themselves, create products, and find their ideal clients. Honestly, it’s a big part of why I do what I do. Hi I’m Rob Marsh and on today’s episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, I talked with copywriter and launch consultant, Megan Smyth. As you’ll hear during this interview, Megan is one of those copywriters who has made big changes to her business over the past couple of years. Megan’s a pre-med student turned copywriter and the business she’s created will inspire anyone who is just starting out or is ready to make a change—heck, I’m inspired by the progress she’s made. So stick around and listen to what Megan has to share about how she did it. Just a quick note… on this episode, we’ll mention The Copywriter Accelerator program that helped jump start Megan’s business and brand creation. That program is no longer available—at least in the format that Megan participated. However, we’ve taken all of the content, the 8 modules and blueprints and several bonuses and repurposed them into what we’ve called The Accelerator Fast Track. This version is designed to help you get results even faster. If, as you listen to us discuss that program, you are interested in how it might help you and your business, simply visit thecopywriterclub.com/fasttrack to learn more. And now, let’s go to our interview with Megan Smyth. Megan, welcome to the podcast. Tell us how you got started. How’d you become a copywriter, a course creator, now doing some coaching as well? You’ve come a long way. Megan Smyth: Yeah, doing all the things. Well, first of all, thank you for having me. I’m very excited to be here. It’s an honor to be on this show. It’s one of the very first podcasts I started listening to on this journey. So, you know, if we’re talking about how I got started, very first copywriting and business podcast I ever listened to was yours. And I’ve learned so much from you and Kira. But yeah, so to kick it back, I did not grow up dreaming of being a copywriter. I’ve yet to meet anyone that even knows what that was at a young age. My plan was to be a doctor. So I studied pre-med in university, and I realized about halfway through that something was just not right. I was enjoying it, but not as much as my friends around me in the program. And I was sort of on this fast track to success. It seemed like I had it all figured out. I was in this great program. I was applying for early admission to med school and all these things. And there was just this voice in the back of my head that was like, this is not it. Something’s not right. And so when all of my friends in the program were writing the MCAT over the summer, I took the summer off and I booked a one-way ticket to Thailand. And that was sort of my escape plan. Rather than tell everyone that I was having these doubts, I just left the country for three months. 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 t...
SummaryTCC Podcast #421: The Course Corrector with Maya Stojkovich
Nov 12, 202400:52:58Summary readyWhat does it take to create a course that delivers on its promise and ensures that students get through all of the material? On the 421st episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, copywriter and course corrector, Maya Stojkovich, shares her COURSE framework for creating and fixing the programs experts sell in order to get results. There’s a ton of crossover with copywriting sales messages, so grab your headphones and let’s get to it. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript. Stuff to check out: The Course Corrector The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Full Transcript: Rob Marsh: Why are so many course creators failing when it comes to selling their courses? Or worse, they do sell their courses or memberships or workshops, but the people who buy them don’t finish them. I’ve certainly bought my share of courses with the full intention that I was going to complete the training and the assignments, and they’re still waiting there months… sometimes years later. What’s up with that? Hi I’m Rob Marsh and on today’s episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, I talked with copywriter and course corrector, Maya Stojkovich. Maya is one half of the partership behind the Course Corrector—a program designed to help course creators fix the things that keep course buyers from finishing the work and getting the result they want. The other half of this partnership is Linda Perry who has been on the podcast several times before. On this episode, Maya shared the formula for making sure a course will deliver the promised result and keep students engaged. And smart copywriters will notice some big similarities between what she shared and what we often put into a winning sales message. So stay tuned. Just a quick plug… this episode is sponsored by The Copywriter Underground… the only membership for copywriters focused on helping you build your business skills—the skills that help you attract clients, create services they want to buy, price them effectively, and run a business that’s fully booked and profitable. Does it reallly make a difference? Yes it does. Members tell us its the best investment they’ve ever made in themselves. The training resources, templates, critiques and community are game changers. And you can find out more… even try it risk free for thirty days at thecopywriterclub.com/tcu And now, let’s go to our interview with Maya Stojkovich. Transcript underway…
SummaryTCC Podcast #420: Fast Email List Growth with Leticia Collins
Nov 5, 202400:55:50Summary readyMarketing consultant, Leticia Collins is our guest for the 420th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. She’s an expert in community-based email list growth, so it’s no wonder she added 4300 people to her list in less than a week. Want to know how she did it? Then this episode is for you. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript. Stuff to check out: Leticia’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Full Transcript: The money is in the list, or that’s what we’re told. And before you can work on getting some of that money out of the list and into your business, you need a list. If your list is small, you need a bigger list. If your list is full of the wrong people, you need to find the right people. As a business owner, one of your big challenges is your list. And knowing that, would you like to hear how you can add hundreds, maybe even thousands of qualified names to your email list in as little as a week? Hi I’m Rob Marsh and on today’s episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, I talked with marketing strategist Leticia Collins. Tish is a successful marketer who has worked hard to grow her list. And in this interview, she shared how she added 4,300 subscribers to her email list in one week. And triped her revenue in the process. If you want to grow an email list full of potential clients for your business, this episode is for you. Before we get to that though… you hear me tell you about several resources that we’ve put together to help you build and grow a writing business. I’m going to quickly list a few of them here so you can get the help you need… we have a free facebook group called The Copywriter Club. You can find us on Facebook and request that we add you to the group where you’ll find seven years of threads about all kinds of copywriting and business questions. Obviously you know about this podcast. You’re listening to it right now and there are more than 400 interviews with successful copywriters and other experts in our backlist. Once you’ve listened to this episode, scroll through to find interviews with people like Seth Godin, Jay Abraham, Jereshia Hawk, Joanna Wiebe, Todd Brown, Kennedy and so many others. Honestly, it’s the best free library of copy, content and business ideas that you’ll find anywhere. And it’s at your fingertips. Take a minute now to subscribe on your favorite podcast player so you don’t miss another episode. And right now you can get our free, 36 page mini-book called How to Find Clients when you go to thecopywriterclub.com/findaclient . I guarantee you’ll find at least one and probably 5-10 ideas you can use to find a client for your business. We’re here to help you build a business, so be sure to take advantage of all the free resources we’ve provided for you. And now, let’s go to our interview with Tish Collins. Welcome to the podcast, Tish. I want to start with the question we always start with, which is how did you become a content creator, a digital marketing strategist, business mentor, all of the things? Leticia Collins: Hi, well firstly thank you so much for having me on, it’s so lovely to be here. And I got started in business, I started my business back in 2019 and I never really saw myself becoming a business owner at all, I kind of fell into it. It started when I went to university, I studied journalism and creative writing and one of our assignments, one of the very first assignments was for us to start a blog. I had always wanted to do that. So I was really excited about it. I started my blog and it was going to be like a portfolio for when I became a journalist. Obviously that didn’t happen. Um, but what did happen is I began to grow my blog. I grew my Instagram. I started working with brands and I kind of started my first business that way. And then after a few years I began to get some questions about how I was getting paid to work with brands and growing my Instagram so fast. 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 c...
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