Introduction

Copywriter Justin Goff is the guest for the 370th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. He typically works 3-4 hours a day on his business, so Kira and Rob asked about that and what he does to ensure work doesn't creep into the rest of his day. Actually we talked about a lot more than that. To hear what Justin shared, click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.   Full Transcript: Rob Marsh: Most of us have a dream of reaching that level in our business where we call all the shots. We’ve got a little bit of money saved, so we’re not dependent on the feast and famine cycle. And we’ve created a business where we only work 3-4 hours a day… when we want. As I said, for most copywriters and content creators, this is still a dream. But there are more than a handful of copywriters who have achieved this. It is do-able. And given the rewards, it’s a goal worth pursuing. Hi, I’m Rob Marsh, one of the founders of The Copywriter Club. And on today’s episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, my co-founder, Kira Hug, and I interviewed copywriter and entrepreneur Justin Goff. Justin is one of those copywriters who has reached that place in his business where he calls the shots. So we brought him on the show to talk about that… what he does while he’s working, what he does while he’s not working, and how he keeps it all going. If you share the dream of working a few hours a day and really taking control of your time, you’ll want to stick around for this interview. But first, this episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast is brought to you by The Copywriter Underground. It is truly the best membership for copywriters and content writers… let me just give you an idea of what you get for $87 a month… first there’s a monthly group coaching call with Kira and me where you can get answers to your questions, advice for overcoming any business or client or writing challenge you have. There are weekly copy critiques where we give you feedback on your copy or content. There are regular training sessions on different copy techniques and business practices designed to help you get better. And we’re adding a new monthly AI tool review where we share a new AI tool or a technique or prompt you can do with AI get more done. That’s on top of the massive library of training and templates. And the community is full of copywriters ready to help you with just about anything… including sharing leads from time to time. Find out more at thecopywriterclub.com/tcu And with that, let’s go to our interview with Justin. Kira Hug:  Justin, in one of your emails, I think it was from June, maybe it was from June, you kicked off the email and you said that recently there was a thread in a certain Facebook group with people saying that you had quit copywriting or retired or that you had sold all your possessions and moved to Peru. And in this particular email, you wanted to clear the air. And so it was a really fun email where you talked a little bit about what you're doing today in business and life. So maybe that's a good place to start. Did you move to Peru or what are you doing now?  Rob Marsh:  Retirement looks good on you, Justin.  Justin Goff:  Yeah, that was funny. So I actually sent a Peru email on April Fool's Day that I was going to move to Peru and be a shaman. So apparently some people did not catch the April Fool's joke on that.  Kira Hug:  They didn't know what day it was.  Justin Goff:  Yeah, even though it was very clearly April Fool's. But yeah, so for the people listening that don't know me, I used to run a copy coaching program called Copy Accelerator with Stefan Georgi. Uh, I ran that from 2019 to 2022. And then last summer, uh, Stefan and I parted ways. I sold my share of the company to him. Um, and I was kinda just trying to figure out what I wanted to do. Um, luckily I I've, I've been through this before where I'd sold a company. Cause I previously sold a company in 2017, which was my supplement company. Um, and after that one, I actually took an entire year off, which was great. Um, also, surprisingly a lot harder than you would think. You would think not having to work would be really easy, but it took me probably a good two months to actually be okay with not working. I just felt like I just kept waking up every day at seven o'clock and get on the computer and I'm like, I know I'm supposed to be here.  Rob Marsh:  Sitting at your desk from eight to five, yeah, nothing to do. The culture is strong.  Justin Goff:  Yeah, it was, it was actually really eyeopening. Um, so this time around I had a better idea of kind of what to expect and I took kind of, I didn't know what, what I was actually going to do, but I was like, I'm gonna take a couple months off. Uh, I may fully retire. I may set my retire, um, after about three or four months, I kind of got bored and realized more like a, just a scaled back version of what I was doing is more what I wanted instead of like walking away completely. So yeah, since then I've been really focusing on trying to figure out how can I do the things I really want to do in my business? I feel like one of the hardest things for me is cause like when I was running the coaching program, I mean, we had 200, 250 members. There's so much stuff going on live events with 400 people. I got so far away from doing all the creative and copy and marketing stuff that I love to do. And I had to do it. a ton of like ops and processes and stuff and helping with building the team. Not just like, not my zone of genius whatsoever. I just, it's like grunt work to me. And I like every day I'm waking up and I'm like, Oh God, like I got to do more of this process stuff. Like not, not my kind of thing at all. So my thought around kind of the new stuff was what can I really do and stay focused on the stuff that I really love, which is really like the creativity of writing copy, uh, creating new products and then really deep mentorship, which is kind of one of my main philosophies of kind of the impact I want to have with the people that buy my products and do, I don't know, retreats with me or clients that I work with, stuff like that. So that was kind of what I set out to do. Um, and I really just focused on, like I said, the leverage is kind of the biggest thing focusing on how can I continue to make the kind of money I may, I want to make without. working 10 or 12 hours a day and without kind of burning myself out again and doing a bunch of crap that I don't want to do. So for me, that was really focusing on my email list mostly. Um, so email is great because there is kind of infinite leverage in it. Like if you can make $10,000 a month with a 3000 person email list, if you grow that list to 25,000 people. You could probably make $50,000 a month or a hundred thousand dollars a month. Um, so that's kind of been, my big focus is really growing my email list because that just simply puts more people into the trainings that I do, the courses I do, mentorship stuff that I do. All of that. So that's been a big focus of mine and then really putting boundaries and kind of fences on my kind of work time. We were talking about this before, like. It's so easy as a entrepreneur to just hop back on the computer and continue to work. Anytime I have a free moment, that's just my go-to. It's literally just a natural habit where I'm like, oh, pop on, check my emails, or pop on and work on some copy or outline something that I'm working on. So for me, I realized in terms of actually cutting back on the hours, I had to get really serious about filling that time with other stuff. No, I, for a lot of people, that's probably not as hard. Like if you got a spouse and three kids running around and they're involved in multiple sports and stuff like that, like filling your time is obviously not a hard thing. Mine was actually a lot harder because I am not married. I don't have kids. I don't have dog running around. It's just me. So, um, that's been, that's been really eyeopening to me though. But I would say one of the, one of the big things I've gotten really used to is just kind of living a slower life. Um, So getting up a little later, taking more time to actually eat, uh, getting dinner, like with friends or grabbing lunch with friends, which are things like before I would always just kind of like Sean and be like, no, I don't got time for that. Um, and yeah, just kinda, I would say just having a little slower day and then fill in that with other stuff that like yesterday I went for a walk for an hour and a half. Um, that's something that. Previously, when like copy accelerator was running full go was just not really an option. Uh, it was kind of an option when I got everything done and when I officially closed stuff for the day at seven o'clock or whatever. But, um, yeah, so that's kind of been my whole outlook since then.    Rob Marsh:  So I have a feeling there's a lot of people who are listening who are thinking, wow, great life. Wish that were me. We should probably be really clear. You've hustled for a decade to get where you are. Two decades. Yeah. Okay. Two decades. Yeah. Certainly I've had some fortuitous things happen, but I mean, you've worked your tail off to do it. And we did, we've recorded a previous podcast with you. The people should go back and listen to some of the stuff that you shared in that podcast about the company that you sold and, and, you know, how you build your list and all of that stuff. So I just want to, you know, be clear, like, you know, you, you weren't born with a silver spoon in your mouth at all, even though things have turned out relatively well from you or for you since then.  Justin Goff:  All right. So yeah, I started in affiliate marketing. I didn't even really know, I didn't even know what copywriting was. And I would say those first, I don't know, like five years, like I was like just barely scraping by.