Strategies for Freelance Success: Leveraging Skills and Mentorship

A lot of copywriters want to expand their businesses beyond client work. But what does it take to do that? How do you come up with a new offer? And how  do you test whether your audience actually wants it? Ross O’Lochlainn is my guest for the 439th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. He shares what it takes to come up with and validate a new offer. We also talked about how he found his first clients (and idea that works today) and how A.I. is affecting marketing and a lot more. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.

Stuff to check out:

Ross’ Website
The Client Studio
How to Write Like a MoFo
10 Energizing Hook Frames
The Copywriter Club Facebook Group
The Copywriter Underground

Full Transcript:

Rob Marsh:  How do you go from copywriter or content writer to problem solver and irresistible offer maker for your clients? This is The Copywriter Club Podcast.

A lot of copywriters jump into client work with both feet, they find some success and create a business that makes money, but also find that it takes a lot of time they may have been hoping to use for non-work activities. Spending time with family. Having lunch with a friend. Or taking in a movie in the middle of the day. Serving clients is time-intensive whether you’re doing research, writing copy, managing the client relationship, or looking for and pitching your next client. And of course, there’s the bookkeeping and marketing and the other basic office stuff that takes up time. It’s pretty common that copywriters tell me they want to change up their business a bit so they have more time for the personal things they want to fit into their days. But the constant stream of client work makes it hard to fit in the other options like products for your niche or templatized services ready to buy off the shelf and easy to fulfill on.

And once you have an offer you want to make… how do you test whether it will work with your audience? How do you find the problems you can solve or the gains your potential clients want to get? On this episode you’re going to hear about a process that can help with that validation and how you identify not just the problem, but the kind of client you want to work with on these non-copy products.

My guest for this week is Ross O’Lochlainn. I met Ross a few years ago when he came to our Copywriter Club in Real Life Event in Brooklyn. Since then, Ross has built a pretty unique business where he works a few hours a day helping his clients solve big problems. Then he spends his free time training in Brazilian Ju Jitsu and spending time with his wife. Ross is a copywriter but he does far more than just write copy. He’s become an expert in client attraction, moving customers into high-paid coaching opportunities and like I said a moment ago, solving big marketing problems. From the outside, it appears to be a great business model, so I wanted to see how Ross built that business and what we can learn from his approach.

As we talked Ross also shared the idea that having a product is not enough. Having a lead magnet is not enough. There’s some alchemy to making the elements work together to generate a “lead with intent”. The intent here makes a ton of difference. Finding “perfect fit” prospects to join your email isn’t easy. And Ross shares how he does it. Oh, and we talk about A.I. in this one too.

You’ll want to listen to this episode right up to the closing credits. It’s a good one.

As usual, this episode is brought to you by The Copywriter Underground. This episode is all about creating a business that works for you and provides you with the time you need for the life you want to live. And The Underground is packed with resources to help you gain confidence and help your clients solve big problems like Ross does. From templates to get you started (including a legal document and a proven onboarding process) to workshops to help you build your authority, attract clients, create products and services your clients want to buy and more—The Underground is like a starter-kit for your business… or a complete business-in-a-box that you can almost plug and play. As questions come up, you also have access to monthly group coaching and regular feedback on your copy. I’ve been inside a lot of memberships, and The Underground is the best value for content writers and copywriters I’ve ever seen. You can learn more at thecopywriterclub.com/tcu

Ross, welcome to the podcast. It’s been a while since we talked in person. It was 2019, one of our live events. Catch me up on what’s going on and and how did you become—you’re so many things. I mean, copywriter, coach, mentor for so many. How did you get here?

Ross O’Lochlainn:  Yeah, it has been a while. We were just chatting about that before we hit record. um There was obviously a whole global disruption in between the live events that I haven’t really gone back to live events and since. Part of that is the last while here has been kind of building out my own little world of conversion engineering and just like growing our coaching program and helping folks, you know, want to grow their online, online businesses. That’s kind of the destination of kind of where we’re at. As you said, part of that is, you know, helping my clients who are in the education and coaching space.

And like I had them with, how would you describe it? Like it’s part creative director, part conversion consultant, part coach, it’s very much, hey, here’s a system that works. Obviously, you have to show up and be yourself for your marketing to resonate with the right people, right? Like you have to be your authentic self.

No system, I think, is perfectly like a paint inside the colors blueprint. So how do we take the principles of what we know is going to work, from all the data I’ve seen with my clients over the years being like a director of marketing and and CMO for people, like there’s clearly certain ways to offer coaching and programs and courses that work and other ways that don’t.

So how do we make that work for you? And with anyone that’s offering those sorts of services, there is kind of a, well, what’s the system and then how do I make it my own? and I think that’s really the magic that we kind of look to add for folks.

And how I ended up here is quite interestingly, I would say the exact process that I help people through right now. Right. Like you’ve all kind of got your own unique experience and strengths and skills and whatnot. And my story is—I used to be an engineer. I come from a long family of engineers and I kind of ended up in engineering because I have a math brain.

I enjoyed physics and chemistry. And when I was in secondary school—high school in the States—and you know the career counselors kind of just, oh, you’re good at that? Well, you should be an engineer because that’s the minimized risk option where you’ll definitely have career prospects.

And I kind of ended up in engineering just by default. Like my dad’s an engineer, of uncles and cousins. I then got a job at Intel and it was very obvious to me that I was not happy in a very corporate structured engineering environment, which with retrospect was very… um obvious because growing up I was also an artist. I was the guy who was hanging out with the the artists and the musicians and I used to draw and I loved like painting and but graphic design and and and all of the visual elements of that and and and writing for I would say writing sake like telling stories like the art side of things was always very meaningful to me and engineering had had none of that and and so i i was firmly in the world of not doing any business or marketing of any of that sort until i bumped into Ramit Sethi and Tim Ferris actually and they kind of back in and what was it 2010 2011 they were like running the game and everyone was talking about them and and whatnot. And they opened my eyes to the world of online marketing, digital marketing, what it could be.

Then because I was a writer, even though I didn’t identify as a writer, I had the ability, clearly, because when I was in engineering classes, I was not the guy that was showing up to do extra hours in the lab. I was the guy that would barely show up to the lab. But then when it was a crew project and it was time to write the report, I would see what the guys had written. was like, God, engineers of the worst. Let me rewrite that, guys. And I would contribute in that sense.

I knew I could write. And then I learned that copywriting was earning money online with words, it was such a rabbit hole. And then a massive, I would say, and negative limiting belief journey of well, can I be a marketer? I didn’t go to university to be a marketer and all that kind of career transition, mental junk you go through when you’re first getting into freelancing.

And then the wide world of copywriting opened up and I started to gradually see over time that my unique ability is partly the engineer’s brain, right? Like seeing the big picture and, and the systems and how it works, but also understanding like humans and psychology and how people feel and talking to them and then writing and and including like, you know, expression of what you think is resonant and meaningful to others in order to get them to take action. And that’s that’s kind of, you can see the picture clearly, right? Like when you look back, but you know, where we kind of ended up was finding the path between what I definitely didn’t want.

And then what I did want, and then bumbling into all manner of, I would say, obstacles and, you know, little moments that I also didn’t want, like getting into the launch game. Like everyone kind of fetishizes the launch game in the copywriting space until you’re in it. And then you’re like, screw this. This is exhausting. Right. And realizing that’s not what I want. yeah. so yeah so that’s kind of the the the shorthand version of my entire life story and how we ended up with like being the part creative director system designer and then helping people kind of implement it and and make it their own one as they figure out their own

Rob Marsh: I love that you mentioned the dealing with the head trash around, you know, as you’re getting started out, how do you how do you be credible? How do you even know that you’re capable? And, you know, working through that, that’s something I think a lot of us struggle, even beyond the first couple of clients, you know, or as we switch niches sometimes, or as we add products, or we move on from one thing to the next, like it it feels like there’s a whole new set of head trash that we’ve got to get through that. Talk to me a little bit about how that went for you and how do you overcome that? Or what’s that process for working through those negative feedback things that keep us from moving forward?

Ross O’Lochlainn: It’s a really good question. I’m a big fan of Dan Sullivan. and I will share one of his ideas, which I now use as like my default way to think through this, which I didn’t have for many years, but which I now use as a really good guide because I look at all the capabilities I’ve built over time and it all followed this pattern. And the idea is what he calls the four Cs.

What he describes is entrepreneurs or anyone who’s trying to grow and develop, like what they all want is confidence. Like I want to feel confident that I can go do that thing. And what that really means is risk has been minimized. I can go do that and not feel exposed that I’m going to be paying some massive consequence socially, financially, emotionally…. that if it goes wrong, I’m screwed, right? Like that’s like none of us wants to feel insecure and not confident when we do a thing, but you can’t start at confidence, unfortunately, right? You have to go through that. That’s the fourth C in a series because to be confident, you have to have a capability, right? But you can’t, you don’t start with a capability, right? 

That means you need to put yourself in a situation where you don’t have the capability and you’re trying to build it. And that requires courage, which is the third C. And then even then, courage is hard to muster because it’s easy to not do the scary thing.

And so it all starts with a commitment. So you have to start with the commitment that I will build this capability and then you can make that commitment to yourself or publicly. ah And then from that commitment, you’ll draw the courage, which will put yourself in situations in order to to say, I am going to suck at this.

There’s no two ways about it. There’s no way you can build a capability without being incapable. Like it is by definition what is required. And It’s only after you’ve got the capability that you can be confident and then do it repeatedly. And so what I now do is I push myself at least once a year to say, well, what is the capability that I don’t have that I’m going to make a commitment to myself and others that I am going to go and acquire? Because I feel like if you’re able to take yourself through that process, it builds a different type of confidence. and that confidence is in your general capability.

Now I have such a marketing capability and that’s not me like blowing smoke and trying to pump my own ego, but because I have developed such a core skillset, like if there’s something I can’t do in marketing, I’m very confident I would be able to figure it out because I have all these adjacent skills that I can just go,

So how do YouTube ads work? Why do I know about ads that I can just retool to find the principles of how the nuance over here works? Which would be very different to me building a capability in skiing where I have no reference experience.

Rob Marsh:  Great.

Ross O’Lochlainn: You know what I mean? But I think at the macro level, if you look at your history of how you have managed to build capabilities over time, like most of us have a very strong track record of taking something on and being able to figure it out and then go do the thing.

And I think it just comes back to what is the commitment you’re making to yourself and do you want it enough? Because if you want it enough, then working through the fear with some courage is not an option. You have to do it, right? When I made this wish to be freelancing, I lost my job and my employment. And I was like, okay, well, I guess I have to make it work now.

Right? Like there’s no going back. I was in Canada at the time and I lost my working visa and I was like, okay, well, I literally cannot get a job in this country. I can’t be employed by anyone here. So I guess I’m going to have to figure out a way to make money with freelancing and charge clients in the States or Ireland or whatever. Right?

And if Immigration Canada is listening, that’s totally a story for marketing reasons. But point being, once there’s a commitment made that there’s no going back, then it’s just about acknowledging that you are going to bump into beliefs and fears and all sorts of negative self-talk, which are useful from a risk management perspective, but not useful from a big picture winning perspective. You know what I mean? Risks are there to be aware of and to be managed.

I don’t think it’s useful to see risk and then not move forward. Like fear should be a signpost to act cautiously, not to turn around and go the other way. You know what I mean?

Rob Marsh: Yeah. So working through that, how did you find your first client? Very first client. Well, what did that look like?

Ross O’Lochlainn: Oh yeah. Yeah. So I got my first client through Ramit Sethi’s Earn 1K program. And I, at the time, had started to learn some marketing, some Google ads at my company that I was working for, convinced them to buy me at Perry Marshall’s course, Perry Marshall Google ads course.

And then I had a client, my cousin actually, here locally in Montreal. He was running a residential electrician company. And I knew he was running Google ads. And I was like, Hey man, I think I could, I learned some of these cool, like tactical strategic tips from this crazy dude, Perry Marshall. Like, can I apply them for you? I’ll only charge you $20 an hour.

And he’s like, sure. And I did like five hours of work for him and I got a hundred bucks. And that was just mind blowing to me that I was able to charge for money on the side while working a full-time job because I had never done any official freelancing like that. Thinking back, I had done odd jobs as a kid, like you know clearing gardens and newspaper deliveries, but I had never done something like, what is a skill that I have that I can identify and sell to someone else and package?

And that was my first client. And then very quickly, I found another two or three people because I did a good job with him. He says, you know anyone else that needs Google Ads? And got a few more jobs, but yeah, just remembering that, and that was the first freelance client I got for sure.

Rob Marsh:  And that’s a little different from where you’re at today. What does your business look like today? Obviously, you’re not doing Google ads. Well, maybe you are doing some Google ads for your own business, but you’re not doing it for clients anymore. What does it look like?

Ross O’Lochlainn: Yeah, we do have clients that run Google Ads. I’m not the one doing it for them. So yeah, I kind of moved from a done-for-you services um approach, and then I kind of evolved into copywriting, not just Google Ads, but then I copywrite and offer and USP design.

And then I did a full-on done-for-you service for a number of clients who are just paid on results. And that was awesome. But that was very much an agency model that I really didn’t like.

But I did figure out a system that I found to be very effective with how to sell online courses and coaching programs without the launch model. And then I started my own coaching program, which is very much a done-with-you service. It’s not a… Hey, here’s the course and go do it. And it’s not like a mastermind where it’s a bunch of talking. It’s more, come on in. Ross would be your creative strategic director. Help you figure out what your growth project is. Give you the strategy. And then you’re going to collaborate on the messaging, the execution, like campaign design, the ad funnels, like all that stuff. And it’s very much done in a and a group format with calls and a community kind of forum access.

And then some hybrid kind of one-to-one where I meet with clients like every six to eight weeks and we figure out what the next project is. And then they go and ship that and we kind of do the execution in a group format where other people in the group can also kind of peer over their shoulder and give them input and they can do the same.

And yeah, folks come in and they work like for a year, a year or year or more. We have clients that are worth it now for like three or four years and they’re continuing. But it is very much, here’s a job, go and do it. And then we’ll interpret the data, see what the next marketing growth project is. And we just like to repeat that cycle over and over so they can hit the growth goals that they’re looking for.

Rob Marsh:  And you’re obviously charging more than $100 for the project.

Ross O’Lochlainn: Yes, yes, yes. So yeah, the fees we charge for the year, like and it ranges on the level of program and the type of client. and But like it’s anywhere from in our low-level program, people will pay like five grand a year up to a higher-level program, which is like 18, 20 grand for the year. And then there’s private clients who want a little more access, and then they’re obviously going to pay more than that is again.

But it is very much in that kind of ballpark of… Yeah, working with us for a year and it being around 18, 20 grand for the most part.

Rob Marsh:  So you do some pretty interesting things, I think, to get people into your wheelhouse. Before we started recording, I was telling you how much I admired the Black Friday special that you ran this last year where you were offering like five different programs for $200. And I was hovering over the buy button about 10 different times, messing with your page analytics as I kept pulling it up and reading through it. But you know obviously you’re doing you’ve got these kinds of programs as well at that entry level. I think some of them, How to Write Like a Mofo, Creative Studio, tell us about some of these programs.

Ross O’Lochlainn: Yeah. So I, I run a model that I’ve kind of developed for myself and and looked, like I’ve been in a lot of coaching programs, other people’s coaching programs. I’d been in like strategic coaches. I mentioned with Dan Sullivan, I found a way that I like to do things. and I call it the creative mofo model. Creative mofo being a creative motherf***er. Motherf***er not in the crude sense, but in the formidable, remarkable, like he’s a bad mofo, right? He is. He makes some creative stuff.

Like that’s the kind of aspirational outcome that I want for myself, but also from other people, right? Like it’s very much like he’s got something to say and like he’s got a way of doing things. And I find you can do that when you overlap your, I would say, artistic expression with your commercial production, right? like you It’s not just about slinging products. It’s about like, what is your, what have you got to say about this? I don’t mean art in the sense of, like pretty pictures. It’s more in the sense of like what’s real and meaningful and resonant about your profession and how you do things and what is the emotional reality and think if you can tie that into your work, it just instantly gives it a unique selling proposition. And most of the clients I work with, they don’t have that. And that’s often the reason why their stuff isn’t and is it working as well as they would like.

All of the products you mentioned are all born in what I call the client studio, where I am the creator for my own business. I look at my clients almost as a studio. They are the environment in which I’m going to create and they’re giving me the raw materials like their obstacles and their problems through which I create. These are my paints and my canvas. So I’m very much looking at like, well, what do they need? And then how do I use that as inspiration to create things the way I want to create them?

And so, how to write like a mofo was born out of the observation that a lot of my clients had big email lists, but they were not mailing regularly. And for me, like, the more you mail, the more you make, right? Like it’s an irrefutable law of marketing that the higher the email frequency, there’s just all sorts of downstream revenue and profile and branding benefits, but they were avoiding it because of reasons.

And so I was like, I’m going to solve this problem, right? And it was less about like, how do you write and I don’t know how to write an email. How do you write a good copy email? like It was far more about their relationship with the creative process. right like They were judging themselves or they didn’t have a good enough ideas to write about they’re writing about stuff that they’re not energized by.

And like I have a process and a system for the creative process through a lot of my experience with music production and also free writing and my time at Intel, actually, funnily enough. And I was like, I’m going to teach this system. And I created it for them. But the success of it, it also then led to a very obviously successful front end product where I could just sell that training. Now, it was created for the people in my coaching program.

And so I’m creating it as a training internally. But when you package things correctly, it’s very easy to then turn those individual trainings that are born out of the content curriculum in your coaching program and turn them into front-end products that you can advertise or that you can use to create customers. Like someone like yourself, you’re on my email list, right? You may purchase one thing here or there, and then that starts the cycle of, oh, that was really good.

I’ll check out another thing. And then you know six months later, you’re like, you know maybe Ross can help me with this problem I’ve got. I should look at his coaching program, right? And so I don’t sell the courses or the courses you see me sell. I’m less offering those as a means to generate revenue, if that makes sense. like I’m not selling courses to make money. like I’m not going to shake my fist or turn my nose up at the revenue they generate, but they’re very much a means to like… bring people in my audience closer into my world and center so that they want to step into my studio itself, right? And actually work with me and collaborate with me in there because that’s the place that all the solutions and the strategies and the products that you’re seeing are born from.

It’s me co-creating that stuff by working in the trenches with my people like week after week and seeing, oh, wow, like they were really interested in how I use workshop tickets to create customers and turn those into products. I should turn that into a training and then sell that externally. Does that make sense?

Rob Marsh:  That makes total sense. Yeah. And as you’re talking about it, ah obviously you’ve done a lot around offer development, but this is one part of creating a killer offer. It’s not enough to have a webinar or a workshop. Obviously there’s a lot of other stuff that goes into an offer. So how do you think about offers as you sit down, think ah either this thing that I have would make a good offer or part of a good offer, or I need to create a new offer. What’s your process that you go through for that?

Ross O’Lochlainn: This is a really good question. The word offer—so I’m going to dissect what we mean by offer so my answer will make sense.

Because you hear a lot like, you have to have one offer. And I’m like, you can’t grow a business with one offer. You can certainly have one primary product and you want to have a good offer for your primary product and you don’t want to have like a gazillion primary products because then you just confuse yourself.

But like a lead magnet is an offer. A webinar is an offer. Those are free offers. Or you can do a paid workshop, which is an offer. And so you want to have many offers. But what you don’t want to have is overhead around managing all of these things and not being clear about how you use these how you promote these things in order to achieve your big objectives like my big objective is i’ve got one primary product which is called the chamber and i just want 43 people in it that’s it so everything i’m doing is intended to bring people into the chamber and that’s like when it’s full it’s it’s full we’re at like 30 right now right so the the way I think about it is an offer is a combination of a promise, a product, and a proposition. The promise being like, what do I get out of this? The product being like, well, what is it and how does it work?

And then the proposition is like the terms. What’s the deal? Is it free? Is there a guarantee? Do I have to pay? How long is it going to take? the terms of the exchange. And so for most people, what they don’t have is one primary product within the compelling expression of the offer for why they would want to join that.

And that’s usually down to the fact that the promise isn’t clear, right? Like, what do I get out of joining your program? and that’s one of the main things I help a lot of people with. And that’s usually about making it concrete and specific. Like if I join this thing, what outcome will I get in what timeframe and in what sense? Like what will and will not happen when I’m in that future state? Like, am I going to have to sell on the phone?

Am I going to have to use launches or do I not want that? Will you help me get to 20K a month without using a sales call funnel? Like that’s a clear promise. That’s a clear promise And so once you’ve got the main thing defined, then I’m always looking for, well, what are the smaller offers I can make that are like small things along the way? Like, for example, maybe you want to be more consistent with your writing because you know, if I just wrote more, I would make more money, right? And so what you’re looking for and what you’re thinking about is, man, if I could just get three emails a day, sorry, three emails a week out, like things would be so much better. like that’s ah That’s a great observation for someone who’s helping that type of client to see and say, I can create a mini training on that or a product on that that might be part of my larger program, but where I solve one discrete problem that is part of the overall problem set.

Like if you’re If you’re helping a group of clients, it’s often going to be a problem set that you’re solving across time, not just one individual problem. And so I’m always looking for what are my people needing help with? Where are they falling down? And how are they thinking about the problem? And then if I can create a product to solve that, does it generate interest with the other people in my group? Because if I’m solving a problem with you, Rob, for example, and I mentioned it to everyone else in the group and no one is interested in it, like if it’s not even interesting in passing the people in my studio, the chances of it going to be competing to people who are like that outside the studio low.

But if there’s interest in it, then I’ll offer it externally to my email list and… If it does a good job of creating customers and then those customers turn into clients, then I know I’ve got a promotional tool in order to generate more interest from my email list or I’ve got something I can advertise, right? Like the big lead magnet that’s been very successful for me is like a template for an offer doc that I help people use to sell without like sales calls and launches.

That worked very well on paid traffic, not because I’m some sort of genius who’s like, I’m going to knock this paid traffic funnel out of the park, but because the people in my studio, it’s what I help them with day in and day out. And when I gave this training on how to create these offer docs on my email list, people lapped it up and then a large and large number, well, a large percentage, relatively speaking, and of them came in and wanted to become a client in the program.

So that gave me tons of insight to be like, this is an offer I should advertise externally. Like if it’s working to convert people in my audience into customers and clients, the chances of it working to code traffic is much higher. But I think where people fall down is that it’s too much guessing and not enough like observation of what people are already asking for that you can then promote, if that makes sense.

Rob Marsh:  Makes total sense. I imagine there may be some people listening thinking, oh, I’d like to do this. I’m going to create my first offer, but I don’t have a group to test it with. Where would you recommend they start sharing that offer to get the feedback that says yes or no, this is a great product?

Ross O’Lochlainn: Yeah, totally. So how like the client studio model is one that I’ve mentioned. And there’s kind of two parts to it. The first is like a studio is like a space, right? Like it’s the group where you have people and they can hang out.

But it’s also a more of an abstract concept where you use your clients as a studio? And so you don’t need a group to start applying the principle of observing a client that you would like to work with or have more of and asking what is the problem that is frustrating them that they would like a solution to, or what is a problem that they would like be excited to solve or a pain they’d be excited to turn into again?

And how can I have that one person solve that one thing? I think people in the, when they’re trying to get their first offer out, they kind of look at the, after picture of people who’ve been in the game for a long time and think they need to replicate that.

Like, for example, you could look at me and go, oh, he has all these courses and trainings. That’s what I need to create. But they don’t see that all those started with me, even though I have a group, getting on a call with one person and going, so Rob, like you should be writing more emails. Why are you not writing more emails? What’s the obstacles you’re experiencing? And then like co-creating that with one person and getting the process, like working with just simple Google Docs and some instructions.

And then taking those Google Docs and going to someone else and say, you have the same problem. Do you want to solve this? So try this. I have this process. Does this work for you? Because all of these offers and whatnot, they’re just productized processes. And then they may be packaged as a course or a video training to get leverage.

But at the end of the day, it’s a solution. It’s a solution that someone who wants to solve the problem will find compelling. And you got to just start with ah who’s the person?

What’s the problem? Can I solve the problem? And do I have a documented, repeatable process that I could share with someone else so that they could also solve the problem with or without me?

And I think that’s the easiest place to start is… asking which clients would I like to replicate or which clients would I like in a group and and starting that process by just engaging with an individual.

Rob Marsh:  And then as we do that, we’ve got our offer where you know we know that it’s been tested. We’re putting it out there. We’re even writing the authentic emails that we touched base on. Is that enough to get conversions on autopilot? Or do I need to be thinking through other things, other pieces of marketing or places that I need to be showing up or doing in order for this to become you know the stream of leads that then allows me to make additional offers or move people up funnel, all all of that.

Ross O’Lochlainn: How I tend to think about it is I want to know why personally, and for anyone that I think wants to shortcut the route to success, you want to work from the market and offer back, right? So a lot of people want to generate the leads first and then figure out the offer. and that can work, but I think what’s more useful is if you’re figuring out the individual and the offer and just getting that validated and then looking to build the audience around that.

If you want what we call automatic conversions, like you, you need to be definitely getting a stream of new leads coming in that you can make the offer to. Now, most of my sales don’t come from my new leads. like we had 18 people join one of our programs like last week. like When you look at when those people joined my email list, like I just sent five emails to my list. I sent them a doc and we had 18 people join.

And some of those people were in my world for like a week. They had just opted into an email funnel like seven to 10 days ago. um Some people were on my list for two years, right? And so when they came on my list, I don’t really care. I’m more interested in how many of them buy and are they going to continue to pay me. Like my automatic revenue isn’t coming from new core sales. It’s coming from a recurring revenue within the programs that I’m getting people coming coming into So, if you want people to be buying like ah a training automatically, like yeah you can run a cold traffic funnel and that’s great. But my perception is the big asset is, are you getting emails? Are you getting email addresses that you can nurture over time and make offers to over time so they can buy whenever you’re ready or whenever they’re ready, I should say. And i that comes down to Who are you looking for and what are they interested in so that they are going to have a level of intent to solve the problem that your main offer solves?

Right. So if the offer is, for example, I had people write more frequently so they can make more money, like maybe the lead magnet then needs to be, you know, appealing to that psychology of like, how do I sit down and actually build a writing habit?

If that’s your primary offer. Oftentimes, people will generate leads, but they don’t because the lead magnet they’re using doesn’t signal intent to solve the problem that you solve in your main program. So having the offer is definitely not going to be enough for automatic conversions.

But when I’m thinking about automatic conversions, it’s more, how can I get some sales for my new leads to pay for all the lead gen that I want to do so that I’ve actually got an audience that I can make offers to over time, right? Like that, that’s really the win is having two groups, like your internal client group and a group of people that are kind of in your email following and because then you’ve got the ability to make offers and collect more data. But the mistake I think a lot of people make is generating leads without an intent, if that makes sense.

Rob Marsh:  Yeah, totally makes sense. That also has me thinking about then the nurturing process. You know, as you you get all these people on your list, are you thinking about the program the next program that you’re going to be selling? Are you thinking about the things that brought them to the list in the first place? Or are you just waking up thinking, I’ve got to get out an email today and these are the three ideas that I have?

Ross O’Lochlainn: Yeah, so like the way I think about nurturing, I think about even misinterpreting the concept of nurturing, right? like they think when it comes to nurturing, it’s about getting people who are small fish into your world and then making small offers to them, hoping that they’ll be ready for the big offer. Like I’m not, I think that’s a flawed mistake.

I think what you want to be doing is getting perfect fit people for your main program to come into your email list. And then the purpose of what you’re doing with your emails and offers is demonstrating your capability and character so that they see you as someone who can help them now. right like i’m I’m looking for advanced… people who have already in the game of, you know, having a program and whatnot, and they have some emails and an asset, and they’re just looking for a way that works better for them.

I’m not looking to get someone who hasn’t got a course or coaching program ever, and then show them how to launch a course and coaching program so that they can then use my main system. It’s too many, it’s too many steps.

So that’s the first thing when it comes to it is making sure that the people you’re putting in are the sort your list or the sort of people that will hire you and can hire you or your program or course like today, not they need to transform in order to be buyers. Then once I have that, I’m assuming those people are in my audience, right? And so, of course, my audience is not going to 100% be full of those people.

But the reality is 80% of my email list is never going to give me a penny. I’m not trying to speak to everyone on my email list. What I’m doing is I’m looking at the people who are in my studio And I’m looking at what they’re dealing with.

And I’m talking about what I’m doing with them. And what I’m offering to my email list are the solutions I’m creating for them, right? Because if I am constantly talking about the context that they’re in and creating solutions for the context that they’re in by definition, it’s going to appeal to the contexts of people who are in that same context outside the paid space, if that makes sense, right? Like if someone is at a million dollars and they’re sick of selling on the phone, as an example, and they’re looking for a way to solve that, and I solve that solution, and then I say, here’s how to get off the phone without dropping your revenue before me below a million dollars,

Anyone that’s in my email audience that wants that same thing, like will go, oh my God, that’s perfect. Right. And so like when you were saying like, oh, I saw Ross’s offer, it was so compelling.

Like the reason for that is because it’s been created in the forge of working along people like you and it’s addressing the problems that someone like you who’s running a business like you do, face, right? It just seems so tight and relevant that the desire is quite high. But if someone’s like a brand noob, like they’re to look at my stuff and go, ah, this doesn’t really seem what I’m looking for. And that’s and that’s by design. So what I am talking about today is just directly informed by talking about what’s happening inside the studio and the solutions I’m creating for those people.

Rob Marsh:  Yeah, definitely makes sense. I want to change the conversation just a little bit. You mentioned the names of several mentors. Dan Sullivan was one, a few of the people you worked with early on, Ramit Sethi and ah others. How do you look at mentorship for yourself? Now, I mean, you’re already, you’re a mentor for other business owners, for copywriters, for offer owners, but how do you sharpen your own skills and choose who to work with next?

Ross O’Lochlainn: Yeah, that’s a really good question. So I think paying for access and help from the people who are already asked where you want to be is just one of the biggest life hacks ever and like Kevin Rogers was a guy I worked with for years. He’s awesome. Through Kevin Rogers, I found Dean Jackson. ah Kevin gave me the advice many years ago. Very relevant for copywriters, right? Would you get into the copywriting game? You’re surrounded by people who are able to make ideas compelling and feel like you’ve got massive FOMO, that you’re not engaging with this idea, right?

The issue is that it’s actually quite distracting. And there’s so many different ways of making it work that like if you try to do them all, you kind of end up Frankensteining it. And so he gave me the advice. He’s like, pick one person and make that person your guy. And for Kevin, he chose John Carlton. And if you look at Kevin’s copy and how he speaks and whatnot, very influenced by John and like he doesn’t hide that.

He’s obviously got his own very distinct and amazing voice. And so for me, I picked Dean Jackson. Dean Jackson’s my guy. He’s the master at which I am eternally and looking to refine my ideas against. I’ve been to, I don’t know how many of these breakthrough blueprints in Toronto, in Florida—for people who don’t know Dean, he does like a three-day come and I’ll strategize with you across his core philosophy, which is called the A-Profit Activators—and he does like amazing small three-day small room events with like eight to 12 people.

And I’ve been to 10 of those in Florida, Toronto, London, and Australia… Where else? There’s probably more, but… I will never stop learning from Dean and Dean will always be like a mentor to me. And I then dimensionalize my understanding of Dean. So another guy that you, if you look at him and and you compare his work to Dean, you can see Dean’s fingerprints all over it is a guy called Taki Moore, who’s huge in the coaching space.

And she he’s like 10 years ahead of me. And then Dean is like 10 years ahead of Taki. And as soon as I kind of discovered Tacky’s world and I was moving into the coaching space, I was like, I got to get a guy in this guy’s world.

How do I understand Dean’s stuff better through how Taki applies it? And Taki’s got a superpower of being able to take ideas and and and clarify them and simplify them and then make them actionable. And once I got into his world and saw how he did that with Dean’s stuff, it gave me a whole understanding and appreciation of Dean’s philosophies and then how I can modify and take those principles and and and do the same.

And so I think going deep on someone that you know is really able to steer you towards the future that you want to go to. I think that Dean calls it the buy and hold strategy, right? Like I will always be in Dean’s world.

And similarly, like I’ve been in Strategic Coach for many, many years. Similarly, because Dan Sullivan’s world has had a huge influence on Dean. Dan is Dean’s mentor. And I’m like, well, it’s good enough for Dean, it’s good enough for me. So I spent four years there. I’ll go back. I still use their concepts to this day. And so like, this is very much stuff that you have to feel.

I feel like if you’re trying to pick your person, like whose stuff just feels right to you. And that like, you get a sense of like, this is the person who’s clearly a master that i can understand I can spend time with and go deep with because I feel like the breath is important, I would say in developing your skill, but it’s not as important as as depth for my my personal experience and and finding the few people that you can go deep with and then finding different dimensions for that ah is super important. And then looking for other people who resonate with that, like my current coach, I did not discover him through Dean.

But looking at how he shows up and the strategies he teaches, they’re very complementary with all the stuff I’ve learned through Dean. And so I’m like, yes, this guy’s exactly where I want to be in five years. i want to spend more time learning what he does and how he makes it work from him so I can absorb and make it my own as well, but also get his guidance and help on on that front.

Rob Marsh:  Two things I’m taking away from what you’re saying here. One is this is a very deliberate process and it’s not the kind of thing where you just hop on somebody’s list and you’re all in. Like you’re really thinking about, you’re starting to apply, you’re testing things out as you move into somebody’s world. But the second piece that is really obvious as you start talking about the different ah people that you’ve connected with is the relationships that open up when you get into somebody’s world, whether it’s in their programs or whether it’s other people who are participating or even just, you know, talking about them. Those relationships are pretty critical when it comes to building skills and new things in your business.

Ross O’Lochlainn: For sure. Like you could say it’s deliberate. It’s also like the decision to choose Dean was deliberate. I don’t want to say Ross has this perfectly defined mentorship strategy. I’ve never even thought of it right from the perspective until you asked me the question.

Buy and hold would be how I articulate it and seeing what I’ve seen. But I think the, the, the, and the Yes, finding the right people is huge. And once you find the right people and you’re clear about what you want, then it becomes more obvious what is and is not the right decision and which person is and is not the right person to engage with. Right.

I think that. There’s a difference between this is a good idea and pursuing this is going to get me where I want to go. And I would say the part that I was clear on is like where am I trying to get to and what kind of marketing do I want to do and what beliefs do I have about what it should and should not be done, that I’m very clear on.

And then when you’re kind of operating from that frame, then the choices kind of become… more obvious where it’s not like a deliberate map out, but looking back, you can see, oh yeah, that’s why I went through those things. Those were the obvious steps because I was clear later on what I was trying to create, if that makes sense.

Rob Marsh:  Yeah, makes a lot of sense. Another topic shift, AI. Obviously changing marketing and copywriting in really big ways. I actually had a call with somebody this morning who was ah talking about how scared she was about the future with AI and and even you know recent things that have been happening. How are you looking at AI and using it in your business?

Ross O’Lochlainn: I’ve been using AI, and A little before the curve, like obviously you blew up with ChatGPT, right? I had kind of experimented with it. Prior to the explosion of ChatGPT, I was actually using AI much more for like images, like tools like mid-journey. like I was just fascinated that it could create these two like these images.

So now it’s just like so standard. So it’s funny how quickly people’s expectations of what’s normal change. But… but the use of AI is something that I have strong opinions about. I think it’s going to only be a massive benefit for most humans.

I think there are a lot of negative consequences. from a societal tyrannical AI detection and censorship level. But also I will say, and again, I don’t want to get into a politics discussion. Like what I, what I didn’t have on my bingo card was like AI being used by the Doge crew to go in and analyze massive data sets to reveal whole bunch of like, corruption right like i think the narrative was very much going to be ai would be used to oppress people and then the first major societal shift is looking at to like read through these massive omnibus bills so politicians can’t hide stuff in there like all this hide stuff in volumes of information problem and that was used to hide corruption it’s kind of gone now and so i i have no idea how it’s going to play out in the macro, but I think there’s a lot of fear mongering around it.

And what I’ve observed is there’s so many benefits also, right? And so it’s certainly going to be transformational, but like, is it all going to be roses? Like, I don’t think so.

Now, my overarching perception on this is that what’s happening now in like thought work and copywriting and and and and creative work is the same thing that happened to automobile manufacturing in the seventies and the sixties, when they started bringing in these robots, right? Like humans have not been replaced from the manufacturing process, but what was clearly illustrated was like the value of a human is not like picking something up and putting it over here and pressing a button. Like a robot can do that way better and way faster and way more efficiently.

And I think what people are starting to see in the creative space is that the typing of the words is not actually the value and the creation of the pixels is not actually the value, right?

And I think what we’re going to start seeing is very much but what does it mean to be human? And how do you need to use these tools for your own benefit?

Personally speaking, I don’t use AI to do my writing, but I use it in my writing. I’m not trying to get AI to write the ad or the page, although occasionally I can, you just write me a paragraph description here for this low value thing I’m giving to my wife backstage in a project plan or whatever. But personally for our marketing, I’ve put a 100% human guarantee on everything that we do. Meaning if you ever see a digital video of me or an image that looks photo realistic, or if you see words from me, that is always going to be me. I’m never going to use AI to create a sock puppet image of myself or a video of myself where it wasn’t actually me there.

And if you see the words in an email, like a human wrote those words or at least… Like, you know, there might be a couple of sentences in there that were generated by AI, but the whole thing wasn’t like, write me an email and boom, I send it. Because I feel like we’re going to enter, and we’ve already started to enter a world where people are just not going to be able to trust digital media anymore.

And the two principles of all marketing is trustability, right? Like just like your email copy doesn’t matter if your deliverability sucks, your videos and all this other stuff doesn’t matter what the content of it is. If the person doesn’t trust, this is actually a real human trying to communicate with me. And so that’s why I put the 100% human guarantee on it because I’m like, if people start to feel like this is just some robo churned out thing and I’m not stepping into the real world, like they’re going to tune it out. So that’s why I kind of went in that direction. But at the same time, I just started using OpenAZI, the ChatGBT Pro, $200 month version that a new thing called deep research where it spends 20 minutes researching a topic. That thing is incredible. Like I don’t think thought workers can go back to the way it was. What has happened is a thought calculator, like a calculator to help you do thought work has been invented.

And just like engineers can never go back to the back chair to calculators, a life without calculators and spreadsheets, like you’re just not going to be able to operate without it at a certain level, but  having worked with a lot of clients, right? I’m also very clear that clients do not want to do the work themselves. They don’t even know what they want.

So to think that this is going to be like, the client is not going to have someone to take responsibility of outcomes who can then run the robot is just like, that’s just devoid from the reality of what clients want and operate. So I feel like it’s on everyone to integrate it into your process,

But I am emphasizing that you should treat it as a creativity and quality enhancer, not as a cost reduction technology. Like I think I’m in the video game industry, you’re seeing a lot of software companies trying to use AI and generative AI as cost reduction. And it’s just a lot of pushback on it because it’s just leading to shittier quality products.

And I think I think what will… Who will succeed will be the individuals who enhance their output and creativity for the benefit of the audience, not the benefit of their pocket, if that makes sense.

Rob Marsh: I love your idea of the 100% human created. going to borrow that. I think that one of the real opportunities, i already think it’s emerging now, but ah one of the real opportunities in the world of AI is going to be that humanness and the trust that you’re actually talking to a real person and not to a machine.

There’s going to be, I think, additional value added to those kinds of relationships that we haven’t had in the past because, you know, the poor quality discussions, you know, with say a ah call center or whatever, they were still human to human, maybe backed up by scripts or whatever else. That’s no longer the case. And I think that the future is going to be ah ah a big chunk of the future will be written around how we actually have real relationships with real people.

Ross O’Lochlainn: Totally. Totally. My human guarantee was born out of the fact that there was a guy that I was following and he was at the bleeding edge of all this stuff. And and and he was expressing and showing how the AI tools work. And he had these videos on his Twitter. And they were like small little one, two minute talking head videos. And I would watch them regularly. And I quite enjoyed them.

And then he revealed that for the last six months, that actually hasn’t been me. That’s been ah that’s been an AI. I kind of trained the bot. And then it’s just been doing it And I felt i said like such an idiot.

I felt duped.

Rob Marsh: Yeah, snookered, right?

Ross O’Lochlainn: Yeah, and then I haven’t watched one of his videos since. And I was like, holy shit, like that’s how people are going to feel. And then I incorrectly predicted that AI was going to be a huge controversy in the recent political election.

And it wasn’t quite used as deceptive as it was because I don’t think it was currently at the quality where it is, it’s not totally indistinguishable. But it was used, there were a couple of political ads where it was like parody and they were using the other person’s voice. But what I also observed was how many people on both sides were making false claims that the other side had generated images. Like you were seeing the Trump crowd going, look, the Kamala crowds are fake. And then you looked into it and they were real.

They wanted to project their reality onto it. And when they wanted to discount it as not real, like, and probably a scam, they were very easy to do that. And I think that’s why, like, if I think about what can I trust, like, I will always trust people the the Joe Rogan podcast being published on the verified Joe Rogan podcast channel on Spotify or the or the and the, like if something is published on CNN’s official channel, like I trust that they are putting live reporters on there. So like verified sources, you’re going to be able to assume and trust, yeah, that’s that’s that’s a real world a real world human. But all these cold sources, untrusted sources, like you’re just not going to be able to believe anything. Or do it with a massive grain of salt.

Rob Marsh:  Yeah, we already see both sides of so many issues have their own set of facts and it’s so hard to verify what’s real, what’s not. So I think that that’s going to be a huge opportunity.

Ross O’Lochlainn: Totally. A hundred percent. And I think what you will also see is you are going to see an emergent technology of AI where, where you will be able to verify that it is not influenced by either political side. And then, you’d be able to like get it to go, hey, can you actually genuinely fact check this for me? Right. Like not one of the political style fact checking, but can you spend 10 minutes just researching multiple sources and come back and report on the biases of this piece? And like, I would never spend the time to do that. Like part of the reason marketers as well get away with like, propaganda and whatnot is because they rely on the sensational headline, but they’ve kind of like tweaked it. And then like the detail is in below, but people don’t spend the time digging through the information because they just, they don’t, they don’t care enough.

But when you have a tool like this, that will do the digging and you don’t have to invest the time, I think it will start to reveal the truth of things much more. And I think you’re going to see that play out in politics, but also in marketing, right? I don’t want to be staring too much into politics. I see a big overlap in marketing and politics all the time. 

Rob Marsh:  I think there’s a huge opportunity for identifying the truth or the falsity in claims and marketing with AI.

Ross O’Lochlainn: Sure. A hundred percent. And so I think what you’ll start to see as we see the second order of this play out, like you’re ah you’re already seeing it now, right? Where like Google ads are slowly going away because we’re all searching in chat GPT, right? And so now how do you get your product found in that environment should you be relying on Google searches? Like I even find myself now asking, GPT, can you find me good, well-reviewed products now that I’ve kind of done my research with you and I kind of know what I’m looking for? like Can you go find products?

And so I think what you’re going to start seeing is total transparency from a business perspective. like If you want to be found and… and and Like if people are going to have the robot saying, could you like research Rob’s mastermind for me? Like it’s now upon you to not only have an amazing product, but to make sure that should someone want to research it, that they are deployed their bot in this case, that it’s out there.

Rob Marsh: It’s out there.

Ross O’Lochlainn: Right. And I think that’s, I think that’s good in some ways. I think privacy and whatnot will take a further hit. But I think for sure you know, the people who are worth working with would be, it’d be much more obvious for sure.

Rob Marsh:  Fingers crossed and that it’s that and not the total opposite. where we may still be at a crossroads here.

Ross O’Lochlainn:  Yes.

Rob Marsh:  Ross, this has been awesome. Just getting a look inside your business and the way that you look at marketing and doing this for your clients. If somebody has been listening and they’re like, okay, I’ve got to know more about Ross. I’ve got to get into his world. I know you’ve got a couple of different things that might appeal to our listeners. right ah yeah the How to write like a mofo, lead refinery, you know a couple of things. Where should people go to get into your world?

Ross O’Lochlainn: Yeah. So I’ll send a link through. There’s one tool I think because I know there’s a lot of writers listening to this. If you’re interested—How to Write like a MoFo—I have a tool. A big part of that is like, how do you engage your writing with high energy? Because I find that most of the time people don’t do the writing because it’s a very emotionally painful experience because they’re not energized by the idea that they’re writing about.

So I have a tool called 10 Energizing and Entertaining Hook Frames, which is a technique I’ve got for how do you come up with base ideas from your life and then turn those into things that are energizing for you to talk about.

I’ll send that link through to you. You can check the show notes for it and Apart from that, if you’re interested in the idea of the client studio, ah you could go to conversionengineering.co/client-studio. And that’ll give you a look there. If you’re looking for opt-in to download and watch a video about it. I will send through a link for that as well.

And that will kind of give you a guide about how the model works and a kind of a walkthrough video of it. But those would be the best places to check it out. ah The website is conversionengineering.co, but if you want to, check out how to write like a mofo, check out the hook frame tool, and if you want to check out the client studio, I’ll give a link for that to download the guide and the walkthrough.

Rob Marsh:  We’ll have both of them linked in the show notes. I’ve watched that video and it’s a great walkthrough. Like it’s one of the things that’s kind of said, yep, I’ve got to pay more attention to what Ross is doing. So yeah, check that out. If what we’ve been talking about today appeals to you. Thanks again, Ross, for your time. I really appreciate it. I’m looking forward to sharing this with our audience.

Ross O’Lochlainn: My pleasure, Rob. Yeah, it was a pleasure. It was a jam. Thank you.

Rob Marsh:  Thanks to Ross for explaining how his business works. It’s a model that I think a lot of copywriters could use to work on bigger problems with the clients in their niche—though the kinds of clients you need to attract have to be able to do the work you strategize with them or pay you a high amount to get it done for them.

I want to point out that what Ross shared about how he got his first client is a process that still works today… and even if you have worked with a client or two, is worth trying out if you’re struggling to land your own clients right now. He bought a course and learned a skill then looked for a prospect in his warm network—a friend who needed the help of someone with the skill he was learning. After offering to help his friend, he leveraged that project win into several more clients. Each new client was an opportunity for another win and a new case study or testimonial or referral to leverage to land yet another client. There’s no magic here, just learning, applying skills to solve a problem, then using that to find the next opportunity. If you’ve struggled to find clients recently, this process will almost certainly work for you. You could do this with social media ads, email sequences, webinar creation, and so many other skills that clients need help with. All of these are copy problems, but clients aren’t always looking for copywriters to fix them. They’re looking for ad specialists, or webinar specialists or email specialists. If you position yourself as fixing a problem, it will help you connect with the clients you can help the most.

What Ross shared about his mentors rings true with me. Finding a coach or mentor who you resonates with is important. Have they built what you want to build? Have they done the thing you want to do? Have they helped others do what they say they can do? If you answer those questions with a yes and you resonate with the person, then find a way into their world. At first it may be enough to join their email list or listen to their podcast or watch their Youtube channel, but ultimately you should join one of their paid programs—like a membership—so you can interface directly with the mentor you’ve chosen. Show up. Do the work. Finish the course. Ask questions about the content. And let the mentor get to know you as you learn from them. As Ross said, you do this by feel, but in order to feel who you can go deep with, requires showing up and opting in.

Of course you can do that with Ross or with dozens of the other experts we’ve had on the podcast. And of course, if you resonate with what you hear on this podcast, you should check out our membership, The Copywriter Underground, where you can build relationships with the other members and me. I’d love to see you inside. Check out thecopywriterclub.com/tcu for more information.