TCC Podcast #350: Set Yourself Up for Q3 Success with Rob Marsh and Kira Hug

350 episodes and over 1.5 million downloads later, Rob and Kira sit down to chat about... pitching (and phones?). From setting intentions for a new season to setting your business up for success in Q3, you'll walk away from this episode with ideas and actionable steps you can use right now  in your business. Catch up with Rob and Kira to find out: The sure-fire way to gain clients in Q3.  How Kira’s flip-phone project is going. Creating a theme for a new season.  What summer on this side of the globe means for Rob and Kira. What’s new with TCC this summer? The do’s and don’t’s of pitching and why copywriters need to focus on this instead.  Is your ego getting in the way of new clients? What business activities can help you come out of a slow season? How are copywriters getting paid right now? What’s new on the AI for Creative Entrepreneurs podcast? The people and stuff we mentioned on the  show: The Copywriter Underground Annual Membership --> Get P7 for Free The Copywriter Think Tank Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Free month of Brain.FM AI for Creative Entrepreneurs Podcast Full Transcript: Rob Marsh:  I am Rob Marsh. Kira Hug:  I am Kira Hug, and we are the host of the Copywriter Club podcast. We are the host who did not introduce ourselves for 350 episodes or at least 340 episodes. We did not ever introduce ourselves. Rob Marsh:  We fixed that. We're here. This is just a conversation between you and me, Kira and Rob, and hopefully if you're tuning into this episode, you're interested in some of the updates that we have coming up, but we also want to talk a little bit about what's going on in the economy and the industry and what's working for people right now. We'll get to that in just a minute as well. Kira, let's kick this off. I was talking to our team just the other day. We literally hit 80 degrees for maybe the second time this year a couple days ago, Summer finally started here. Let's just talk about our summer plans. What's going on with you this summer? Kira Hug:  Yeah, I will have some travel in July. I know you and I are both traveling in July and my travel includes actually staying within my state and staying at a couple cabins in Maine, in the woods and just having more of a rustic experience. I know you have a trip. I think the same week I'm gone. I don't even know where you're going. Rob Marsh:  My daughter is playing in Junior Olympics water polo tournament. We are going to turn that travel into a little bit of a beach vacation. We're going to spend a couple days at the beach, maybe check out an amusement park one day. My kids are older. The Disney Land, Disney World type thing doesn't really work for us anymore. Kira Hug:  That's so sad. Rob Marsh:  Rollercoasters are still fun and paying for overpriced amusement park food, we might do that one day, but I think we're going to spend a lot of time sitting with our toes in the sand listening to the waves crash on the beach because we don't get that here a whole lot in Salt Lake. Kira Hug:  Yeah, that'll be nice. It's really sad to think that they've already outgrown Disney like that. I don't know, that crushes me. Rob Marsh:  It happens, but it's good. Different things, different strokes for different times of life. It'll just be me, my daughters and my wife and I will be sitting on the beach reading, splashing around a little bit and having a good time. Kira Hug:  What is your vacation style. When you're on vacation, some people are really well planned and they have every moment planned, lots of activities. Some people just kick back and just want to chill on the sofa with the book. Rob Marsh:  I'm the chill. I do not love to go into it with tons of plans. I'm okay with a, "Hey, on Tuesday we're going to go to the beach. On Wednesday, we're going to go see the Angels play." Or whatever. I hate having everything scheduled out and I do not feel like every moment of a vacation needs to be doing something. The point of my vacations is to rest. I like to just lounge around and do nothing. How about you? Kira Hug:  So many questions about how to vacation properly because I think vacationing is hard. It takes me a while to get into vacation mode and by that time it's over. So do you just flip a switch and you're like, "Cool. I'm on vacation mode. Everything feels good." I really struggle with it. Rob Marsh:  I don't know. I'll still write emails while I'm on vacation. I have a really hard time stepping away from that stuff. Kira Hug:  You enjoy that. Rob Marsh:  Yeah, I enjoy it. It's okay. What's bad is when you're on vacation with another couple or another family or another person whose vacation style is not your style. We have some really good friends that we've spent several vacations with and they are active, they want to be doing things all the time, and I'm just like, "Wow, let's just sit down and-" Kira Hug:  That sounds awful. Rob Marsh:  "... Grab some food and sit down and just talk and hang out." Matching up with people. Well, and I'm sure there are partnerships, marriages where the spouses have different styles, so there's spouse there. My wife and I both relaxing. You have a hard time relaxing, but you are a relaxing vacationer. Kira Hug:  When I relax, it takes me a couple days. Once I get into that mode, it's hard to ramp up and get back into the work mode. My vacation is not truly a vacation at this stage in my life, really. It's family time. I would say it's better described as family time, which is important. Having time off from work to be with my family is very important, but it doesn't feel like vacation. It still is work, it's just a different type of work and I'm okay with that. I'm not complaining. It's just the reality of going into it. When I go into it, I'm like, oh, I'm going to be able to read five books this week, then I'm disappointed because the reality is I can't do that with a toddler and two kids. But if I go into it and I'm just like, "I just want to hang out with them and have fun." Then it's going to be a more positive experience. There's a lot of reframing I have to do around vacation so that it just feels really good. That's not to say there aren't moments where I can go on a run and have some alone time, which is really important to me. I think it's just thinking through what the purpose is, what do you need to get out of it and making sure you're realistic. Rob Marsh:  Yeah, I agree. I agree. Once you get back from vacation or before you leave, what's going on this summer? Kira Hug:  Still working on the flip phone project. That's still going strong. I don't know what strong means with that, but there's still a flip phone. I'm still living life. Actually, right now I'm living life phone free because I've already told you, but Homer broke my phone. I went from having my flip phone, which I love to having no phone, and I'm also kind of loving that. I've been reluctant to get my new phone. That's been really nice and I'm going to continue with that project through the summer. Rob Marsh:  We need to talk about the negative side of that too, because you got lost because you didn't have GPS. Kira Hug:  I got lost because I took one wrong turn, which you could say GPS would've helped me prevent that, and that's legit but also I've had GPS and still taking wrong turns. It's just missing it in that moment for one second. So you could argue that I would never miss a single turn if I had GPS, and that is fair. I would say what I learned from that was I should have left 20 minutes earlier. That's it. There are downsides. There are definitely downsides. Communication is trickier with a lot of people in my life. I know it's trickier with our team because they can't always reach me, but there are a lot of upsides for our mental health, happiness, presence. I feel lighter, I feel better. I'm just trying to figure out the whole thing. Anyway, that will continue and I'll hopefully have more time to write about it. I think the whole purpose of it is around learning and reflection, and I haven't been able to write about it as much. That's a goal for the summer. What else is important to you when you think about this summer? Do you have specific goals or anything that's really important to focus on? Rob Marsh:  I'm not getting rid of my phone, so that's not a project for me. Kira Hug:  You'll never do that. Rob Marsh:  I will say this, I absolutely love summer, it's my favorite season, but I love summer mornings. We've talked many times about how I get up early to go to run or to lift or whatever, but having the sun up early means that when I get back from exercising, which it's light outside, when I'm doing that at five o'clock in the morning here, I've got time to sit on my porch and read. Before anybody else is up around my house, I don't have little kids, so they're not getting up early. I've got older teenagers. Kira Hug:  They're sleeping in. Rob Marsh:  Sometimes they're not up before noon some days just because that's what young adults do. They like to relax when they don't have commitments in school and work or whatever. Mornings are absolutely golden. I'm just enjoying that. I actually, I sit down to do work earlier in the summertime, which is maybe counterintuitive. You'd think, oh, it's not early, relax a little bit more. But because it's light, because it gets so much done in the mornings by 7:00, 7:30. I'm like, okay, let's just get started on what's going on today. So it's kind of nice and I absolutely love summer. It's my favorite season. Kira Hug:  Yeah. Well, do you have a theme? Rob Marsh:  Okay. Summer summer's the theme. Kira Hug:  Fun. Summer fun.