The Importance of a Writing Practice

Alyssa Burkus is our guest on the 341st episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. Alyssa is a thought leadership and content marketer. She started her business after being faced with asking life’s big questions after a chronic cancer prognosis but has defied the odds over and over again by building a business that works for her, her health, and her family. While we may not all be faced with life-threatening illnesses, we all face uncertainty and downsides. Alyssa shares the systems she has in place to look after what matters most. Here’s how the conversation goes: How her background in a global change consulting company has impacted her copywriting career.  Why she leaned into thought leadership and authority building as her area of specialization.  What really is thought leadership and how is it different from other forms of content marketing? Is all content marketing created equal? Tools to cope with uncertainty.  The importance of energy management for your personal and business life.  What AI doesn’t have on thought leadership. What’s Alyssa’s strategy for working with a new client on building their authority? How to strategically repurpose content.  Using the “plant and…” approach to pivoting.  How to create writing habits that stick as a writer.  Why it’s a good idea to have a place you can relearn information.  “Write it in your own words” is making a comeback.  How she sold out her first program with no list.  What can you modify in your products or services to make them stand out? The #1 question you need to ask yourself when creating a course.  Why you can’t hustle culture your way through business.  Morning routines vs morning windows… What’s the difference? Press play or check out the transcript below.   The people and stuff we mentioned on the  show: The Copywriter Think Tank Kira’s website Rob’s website Alyssa'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 does it mean to be a thought leader? What kind of content does a thought leader produce? And maybe the biggest question of all, once you've got good content that reflects your strategic thinking, how do you make sure that the world will even see it? Those are just three questions that we asked our guest for today's episode of The Copywriter Club podcast. Alyssa Burkus is a strategist, a copywriter, a member of the Think Tank and a thought partner for her clients, and she shared how she helps them build their audience with great thinking. We also talked about working through serious difficulties, what to do when change becomes a constant, how to pivot and creating a writing habit that will actually stick. This is an episode definitely worth listening to twice. Kira Hug:  Or maybe three times. Maybe four times. Before we get to the interview though, this podcast is sponsored by the Copywriter Think Tank. That is our mastermind for copywriters and other marketers who want to figure out the next phase of their business. Some things are working well in their business, but they want to figure out what comes next; they want to increase their revenue; they want to figure out new revenue streams, increase visibility and really figure out what their X factor looks like, so they can build a business around that. We actually have a retreat coming up in June. It's a virtual retreat on June 2nd and 3rd. So it's coming up fast, and if you want to participate in that, you can apply today to see if you're a good fit in the Copywriter Think Tank. We also have a retreat that we're really excited about coming up in September in London, and Rob and I are thrilled to have an excuse to fly to London and hang out with copywriters. It doesn't get better than that, does it, rob? Rob Marsh:  Does not get better than hanging out with copywriters in the UK. Kira Hug:  All right, so Rob, I have a quick question for you. You've been to many retreats that we've hosted and that you've been a part of. I wonder which one stands out as maybe a favorite retreat that you've participated in or have hosted and why? Rob Marsh:  Ooh, that's a really hard question to answer, because most of them are pretty good. Let me just speak in general. So I really like retreats where I come away with ideas that I can implement in my business; that is the thing that sets them apart. So, I've been to events where I'm excited, I'm jazzed up, and then I get home. It's like, "Well, how do I actually execute on that thing?" And for me, the ones that really set it apart is: Here's a tactic, here's exactly how you implement it, here are the steps and they really walk you through that. So that stuff makes a difference to me and it makes it feel more useful, gives me a pattern that I can follow to make sure that I'm making changes in my business and, hopefully, it makes my business grow or changes some way that I can reach new people, that kind of thing. So that's the stuff that makes the difference to me, and we've been in a couple of masterminds where we've had that. So a couple of Brian Kurtz's groups that we attended. He recently just ended his mastermind, but when we were in it, there were a few people like that where I just walked away. I'm like, "Wow, these are five ideas that I want to implement." And in the mastermind that you and I are in currently, that happens virtually every time, and I hope it's something that we deliver every time we have a Think Tank retreat as well. Kira Hug:  Yes. I thought you were going to say Barcelona. Barcelona. Rob Marsh:  Barcelona was a lot of fun for a lot of reasons, and that one actually had some really good takeaways. We talked very specifically about how you can charge for the value of content, which is something that a lot of people don't know how to do. We teach it in the accelerator, but it's one of those kinds of things where... These are the things that don't often get taught in the real world because they're kind of complex. They involve spreadsheets and multiple steps, and oftentimes you just have to be in the room to learn this stuff. Kira Hug:  We also played a very competitive game of foosball in the basement of that house in Barcelona. I was quite a fierce competitor. I don't think we played, Rob. I don't think you- Rob Marsh:  I did not play you. I've learned my lessons in playing you. If I lose, it's embarrassing. And if I win, it destroys our relationship, so. Kira Hug:  So if you're listening and you're interested in being a part of a mastermind that could help you figure out what's next in your business and not just give you ideas, but give you a plan and provide coaching not only from us, the two of us, but from a mindset coach, from a visibility coach, from a systems and growth coach, so you have all the coaching support you need to actually make the shift in your business, check out copywriterthinktank.com for more information. Okay, let's kick off our episode with Alyssa. Alyssa Burkus:  It is a long and windy path. I've been a reader and a writer for a long time, but didn't follow that as a career path initially. I didn't really realize or know how to make it a real job, and so I did the regular thing, or at least what the people around me were doing. I went to university and then I also did grad school and I took a corporate job at a global change consulting company; which I had done my undergrad in sociology, and so this felt like this giant leap forward, which was exciting. The work really involved the training and communications around large technology implementations for giant companies. So if you can imagine, the note from the CEO of a company about a new program was written by people like me, sort of corporate comms, but for specific change programs. I did that for a number of years and progressed and really enjoyed it, but the work was grueling. I was a newlywed at this point. I was on the road a lot. And so, I made the decision like a number of other people around me at the time, and I jumped from this giant global company into a startup. I was at a tech startup, I was employee #11, doing a mix of project work and also setting up their HR function for the first time, which was really fun. My partner was already working there. We were newlyweds. It was really a great decision, really exciting project. About a year into it, I was diagnosed for the first time with cancer, with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. So all this momentum that I was feeling around my career and life kind of ground to a halt. I had six months of chemo. And as I was going through this, our company was acquired by a giant technology company. And so, as I am kind of recovering, I'm stepping back into the world that I had thought I'd escaped and I was back into all the corporate things, and also trying to figure out what the new normal would be for my life. I was diagnosed with chronic cancer, so we knew that it would recur. I was given a prognosis that was, I guess, encouraging from the doctor's perspective, but worrisome from our perspective. And so having to make decisions, what do I do for my job? Do we have kids? Do we plan a vacation? Do we save for retirement? Heady things that were tricky at the time. But we just decided that we needed to act as if I would live a long time, that there would be a cure in my lifetime, and so we started doing regular people things again. We had a baby. But as I was in this big giant company, I was getting really restless. I'm not really cut out for big companies. And so I started my first company, Change Consulting Company, and made that transition into entrepreneur life,