How to Use the Enneagram to Craft Your Messaging

Kate Hollis is our guest on the 345th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. Kate is a copywriter and sales strategist whose alter ego is a librarian, but her skillset doesn’t stop there. Fueled by curiosity, she’s also on track to become a certified Enneagram practitioner. With her “hummingbird” mindset, she emphasizes the value of leading a curiosity-driven life, and how it can lead to a more fulfilling life and business. Here’s how the conversation goes: What’s the bus metaphor and how does it apply to business? Kate’s path to copywriting and owning a business. Why creating connections with others will help you become a better copywriter.  How to create an identity outside of your business.  Is simple messaging underrated? How to build your intellectual and emotional muscles. What is the Enneagram?  How books will help you become a more compassionate salesperson.  The benefits of using the Enneagram in your messaging and how it’ll benefit your ideal audience.  How the Enneagram can influence your sales funnels.  The do’s and don’ts of the Enneagram.  Could you be holding yourself back from essential growth? Tune into the episode below or by reading the transcript.   The people and stuff we mentioned on the  show: The Copywriter Think Tank Kira’s website Rob’s website Kate's website  The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Free month of Brain.FM AI for Creative Entrepreneurs Podcast Full Transcript: Rob Marsh:  What is it about personality tests that draws us to them? From Myers-Briggs and StrengthsFinder to DiSC and the Enneagram and lots more besides those, humans tend to be attracted to tests and quizzes that promise to reveal something about ourselves and the people around us. Maybe it's our innate curiosity that drives this behavior. I don't know. But our guest for today's episode of The Copywriter Club podcast is copywriter and strategist Kate Hollis. And Kate is a certified Enneagram coach who uses that test a little differently than most other people do, as a way to think about positioning your offers. To hear how she does it, you're going to have to stay tuned. Kate also talked a bit about the books that she's read and how to stay curious as a creative. There's a lot to learn from her in this episode, so stay tuned. Kira Hug:  We also talk about poop in this episode, which Rob did not include in the intro, but I think it's the first time that we've ever talked about that. Rob Marsh:  Barely. It gets mentioned. Let's be honest. We didn't talk about it, mentioned it. Kira Hug:  It's the first time we've ever mentioned it on the podcast. Rob Marsh:  I think so. Kira Hug:  So I think it deserves some attention. Also, this podcast is sponsored by The Copywriter Think Tank, which is our mastermind, and I'm going to do something that you're not supposed to do as a copywriter. We're supposed to talk about benefits, but I'm going to talk about features today and everything that's included in the Think Tank. So I'm going to run through it, and Rob, let me know if I'm missing anything. These are the features you get when you join our Think Tank mastermind, which is phenomenal. You get access to our upcoming virtual retreat that is coming up really soon on June 1st and 2nd. It's not too late. You could actually be a part of that amazing virtual retreat that we put together with at least like eight different speakers talking about a variety of topics, talking about how to use AI in a project from start to finish. What other topics do we have covered, Rob, in the retreat? Rob Marsh:  Talking about things like email deliverability, finding clients and how you do that when your business has been going relatively well and then suddenly you hit a tough patch. There's just such a wide range. I don't have the list in front of me, unfortunately. Otherwise, I could join you in pimping up some of these speakers that we've got lined up. Kira Hug:  Well, you're talking about profit margins. I'm going to talk about my tips for running a business in summer of 2023, what's working today, what's no longer working, and so that's the retreat and that's coming up and you will definitely want to jump into that retreat. Here's what else you get when you join us in the Think Tank. Other features, you get a one-hour vision setting session with the two of us where we force you to think really big even though it feels uncomfortable about your business. So the two of us sit down with you for that kickoff session followed by separate focus mapping sessions where I build a map with you so that you have a three-month growth plan and every time we hit three months, we sit down and rebuild it or continue to add on what you've already built. So you always have a plan and know what to focus on and know what you can put on the back burner and what you don't have to worry about. You also get quarterly one-on-one checking calls with the two of us or whichever one you want to reach out to, Rob, me, either one of us. You also get weekly group check-in calls with our Think Tank crew who they're incredible and you get weekly access to them, and I'm on every single Tuesday check-in call so that you can get support. You can just feel like you're not alone doing this entire thing by yourself. You get three retreats throughout the entire year. We're really excited about the fall retreat. Rob, are you excited about the fall retreat? Rob Marsh:  I'm always excited about going to London. It's my favorite city in the world, and so yeah, I'm very stoked. Kira Hug:  I'm stoked for the pub crawl that we will also do in London while we're there, and I will drag you out beyond midnight for that. We also include monthly strategic group coaching sessions where Rob and I host hot seats and talk through business problems every single month. We have a mindset coach, Linda Perry, who comes in to support us with mindset and give you the support you need there. We also dig into systems and all the automations in your business so you can get access to our systems coach Johnny Stellar, who is truly stellar. And you have 24/7 Slack access to all of us. There are more features, but those are the highlights. We'll talk about benefits in a future episode, but often we're just asked what actually do you get in the Mastermind? And that is the list. Those are the features. So if you are interested in shifting your business, creating a new revenue stream, boosting your revenue over the remainder of the year and into 2024, you can check out The Copywriter Think Tank and learn more at CopywriterThinkTank.com. Let's get into our episode with Kate. How did you end up as a conversion copywriter? Kate Hollis:  Very unexpectedly and in the way that I think a lot of professional copywriters do. I just remember having this conversation with one of my managers from when I was in the corporate world where she was asking what my goals were for 5, 10 years, and I just said something along the lines of, "Well, I just want to do work that's interesting and challenging." And she said something along the lines of, "You really need to be driving the bus." I had this moment where I was like, I want to be riding the bus and looking out the window, and it was just so easy to fall into this rhetoric. I think that the bus metaphor is very appropriate for my career history because I've done a lot of really fascinating eclectic jobs. I graduated from college when the economy was really, really low, and so opportunities were limited, so I had to be really creative and flexible. So my first job after graduating with a degree in history and professional writing was working in historic preservation. So I managed community outreach programs and tax credits and grants for old homes in the Boston area, which was really interesting, but not what I wanted to do enough to get a Master's degree to continue. And then I ended up in the startup world working for a chocolate factory, and it was super small when I started and it scaled 10 times in size in the three years that I was there. I wore a lot of different hats. I wrapped chocolate bars, I did customer service, and then eventually I did marketing, trade shows, events and ultimately ended up in human resources, which was the bulk of my career for a decade. I went into the nonprofit world working for a health and human services organization, doing HR for their employees. And then I went big corporate and I did HR for a global footwear brand. I had some detours in academia. I had this idea that I was going to get a PhD in rhetoric and composition, started that, realized it wasn't what I wanted, worked part-time at a wine shop, loved that. And then when I was in corporate, I just burned out really hard. I went back to work when my son was eight weeks old, I had postpartum depression and it was just like a recipe for a disaster. I made it a year and then just took some time. I tried to get into HR consulting. I didn't really get much traction, so I hired an amazing life coach who saw that I was a really good writer and she was doing a launch. And as one of her clients, I was able to participate in this program as part of my coaching package with her. And she sent me the sales page and I was like, "Um, can I change some things on this?" And she's like, "Yeah, absolutely, go for it," and so I pretty much rewrote her sales page and she sold out the event within a day. She's like, "You're onto something," and so from there, it was just for the first six months of my business, I was kind of like a best-kept secret where I didn't have a website. I worked exclusively by word of mouth doing sales pages, and I realized that I was good at it and I really liked it. The rest is history.