What Am I Willing to Do?

Raven Douglas is our guest for the 302nd episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. Raven is a Conversion Copywriter who focuses on the user experience for her clients’ businesses. In this episode, we walk through Raven’s beginning stages as a copywriter and the moves she made to go from $55 dollar projects to $37k. Here’s how the conversation goes: How Raven became the go-to writer for her peers and how it paved the way for her copywriting career. Her cold pitch method and why she took on free work. Educating business owners on copy and how it helps their business. First website prices… You gotta start somewhere. Getting a feel for different niches and playing around with different writing styles. How a 28 hour bus ride to TCCIRL in NYC was the pivotal moment that turned Raven’s dream into a reality. The sales script Raven uses to quote prices and close sales calls. How Raven negotiated a $37 project without diminishing her value. The guarantee Raven used in the beginning of her career and how it helped her close more clients and boost her confidence. The intake and vetting process Raven uses to find out the nitty gritty details of client results. Ethical selling – How Raven declines projects and shifts gears into consultation calls. How to set a consultation call and how to set expectations. Money mindset and pitching high-ticket services. Humanizing CEOs – Why we need to reframe our perception of CEOs. Living the digital nomad life – How’s it possible as a copywriter? Tune into the episode or read the transcript below. The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: How to Find Clients Workshop The Accelerator Waitlist The Copywriter Think Tank Kira’s website Rob’s website Raven's website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Free month of Brain.FM     Full Transcript: Rob Marsh:  From time to time, on this podcast, we've interviewed copywriters who seem to have a golden touch. They connect with the right clients, they start out charging more than what beginners charge, their niche, their brand, their work, it all just seems to work out. And then there are copywriters who work really hard to make things come together. They take chances that may not pay off, they struggle with low-paying projects, knowing that it's just the first step on a long journey. Today's guest on The Copywriter Club Podcast has more in common with that second group of copywriters than she does with the first. Copywriter brand strategist and direct response expert Raven Douglas has put in the hours, made the sacrifices and grown a business that might make a lot of other copywriters drool in envy. We first met her five years ago in Manhattan. So, this excellent interview has been a long time in coming and we think you're not going to want to miss it. Kira Hug:  But before we get to our interview with Raven, we have an ask for you if you listen to the show regularly, or actually, if this is your first time listening and you enjoy this episode, we would love for you to leave a review for the show. If you do review the show, we will share your review in an upcoming episode. Rob Marsh:  Yeah. We like to share those reviews at the end of the show. Maybe you've stuck around long enough to hear a couple of them, but we'd love hearing what you think about the podcast and what our guests share. So, if you would just hop over to Apple Podcasts and click four or five stars, whatever you feel like it deserves, and then just leave a couple of words, your thoughts about your experience with the podcast, we would really appreciate it. Kira Hug:  Yeah. I like how you did not give them the option of giving us a three-star or below. Rob Marsh:  Yeah. Well, I mean, if they want to give us a one or two-star review, we could read those, too, but- Kira Hug:  No, I don't want to read those. Rob Marsh:  Yeah. We'll see what we get in. Kira Hug:  Okay. Rob Marsh:  All right. So, let's get to our interview with Raven. Raven Douglas:  I swindled my way in, I was an enterprising young college student and you had to do a year in the writing lab as an English major, anybody listening and who is writing copy will know that you don't actually really need a degree to write copy. I chose English because I didn't know what to do, but I knew I was always really good at English. I did my year in the writing lab. I was out with several people being college students be like, "Hey, can you still help me?" And what they really meant is, "Can you write it for me?" And then I said yes. And several of those people went on to graduate. I can now say that I have my degree safely, so they can't take it from me. I wrote a lot of their papers, but they opened businesses. Then they came back to me and said, "Hey, could you write my brochure for my business? Could you write my website?" And I said yes, and hit the library to figure out how to do it on the back-end. I found an old copy book by Bob Bly and I went, "Oh, I know what this is." I was taking marketing 101 and we had just started talking about P.T. Barnum. And I said, "Oh, I know what this is." And I wrote what I can now say is very bad copy a little over 10 years ago and I turned it into those first clients and they went, "Great, how much do we owe you?" And I got on Google. I said, "Oh, you can charge for this. Oh, you can really charge for this." So, I did. And I figured, "Well, if I could do this for business owners that I know, I could probably go around and ask business owners that I don't know if I could also do this for them." So, I started developing that cold pitching muscle live. Then I figured out that there were these things called marketing agencies and they actually had them in small town Jackson, Mississippi. So, I started pitching them too and was like, "Hey, y'all got a little bit of that overflow. I work for free." Yeah, that's how I got started. Rob Marsh:  I'd love to hear more about that pitching process that you built out. Obviously, the first couple of referrals come in, that's where a lot of copywriters start. We know a few people, we do that work, but at some point we have to start building a pipeline of clients, right? How did you reach out to them? Do you even remember that first pitch that you would make and what were you asking for? What problem were you solving? How did that all come together? Raven Douglas:  That's a great question. My memory's kind of poor, I'm not going to lie. I think my first pitch was something along the lines of like, "Hey, would you like to have somebody write things for your business?" Because I didn't quite connect yet that copy could bring businesses more sales, that was my purview. I was just like, "Hey, do you need things written for your business? Do you need a brochure written? Do you need your website updated? Do you even have a website?" And a lot of businesses at the time didn't have websites or they didn't have great ones. So, I just asked them, "I'll write it and I'll write it for free. And if you don't like it, you don't have to pay me. Could you just tell me what you think of it?" Several of them of course said yes, because that was a great deal for them. Interestingly enough, a lot of people were either very honest or just very kind, because most people did pay me. But that was the first pitch for those businesses. Then a few businesses introduced me to other forms of copy. I got into direct mail that way, because they went, "Hey, we sent out these mailers and we were thinking of creating a new one. Would you want to give it a try?" And I said yes and I still had no idea what I was doing, but it was really interesting to cut my teeth with those pitches, because there were some people that just straight told me no, because I didn't know how to sell it. I had no idea, again, what the value was, but it taught me very quickly to be like, "Oh, they need to say yes to me and I need to be able to articulate to them what this is going to do for them." So, once I figured that out based on what some other businesses graciously told me in feedback, it's like, "Oh yeah, we got so many customers. They said they saw our direct mail ad. They loved it. These people visited our website and they wrote us to tell us how much they loved it." So, that helped me understand like, "Oh, this is valuable and it brings customers in." So, then I could sell it properly or at least better. Kira Hug:  Okay. So, I want to get granular real quick. Because we talk frequently with copywriters about whether or not to sell for free or whether or not to give copy away for free, can you just speak to that and how it worked for you in more detail? How did you phrase it? How did it play out for you? Why it was worthwhile? Why maybe it didn't work in some situations? For other copywriters who are just getting started and want to try that process out. Raven Douglas:  Sure. How I phrased it was, because, again, I was still an enterprising young college student. So, this phrasing is probably going to be pretty rough, but how I phrased it was like, "Hey, I want to write for you. Do you have things for your business that you need written? That could be brochures, that could be websites, that could be anything that you need written. Even if it's a letter to your customers, I will write it. And what's best is I'll do it for free. If you don't like it, you don't have to pay me. All I ask is that you give it a try and that you tell me what you think about it." So, that was essentially my pitch, because the only thing I could think of at the time was that, "Oh, I have no idea what I'm doing. And if it's going to cost them something, then they'll probably say no." I also had no idea of pricing really at the time. So, I probably wouldn't have even known what to really ask for.