TCC Podcast #372: The Road Ahead with Sean MacIntyre

Financial Copywriter Sean MacIntyre is our guest for the 372nd episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. We had the opportunity to hang out with Sean at the Copy Legends Lockdown Event and were intrigued by what he had to say about A.I., positioning yourself as an expert authority, and how to get better at copywriting. There's some great advice here that Sean shares from his mentors as well as direction on how to read a sales page so you learn from it. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript. The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Small Group Coaching The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Full Transcript: Rob Marsh:  You’ve heard the good and bad about the future of copywriting and content writing. AI is going to take all of our jobs. Or conversely, it’s the greatest opportunity ever to come along… at least for the copywriters ready to take advantage of the new technology. And then there’s the economy, which for many has felt like a recession—in spite of some positive broader economic markers… regardless the ups and downs of the business cycle means there’s a recession coming sometime in the future… whether that’s next year or five years from now. So how are you planning for this stuff? What are you doing to add new skills? And should you get a part time job to hold you over while you figure this all out? Hi, I’m Rob Marsh, one of the founders of The Copywriter Club. And on today’s episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, my co-founder, Kira Hug, and I interviewed financial copywriter Sean MacIntyre. We covered a lot of ground in this episode… we talked about AI and why it may not be the risk some people say it is AND what’s really happening as these technologies develop. We talked about how to protect yourself from a recession and the themes your copy should address to connect with readers in stressful economic times. We also talked about having ideas, how to read a promotion so you learn from it and become a better copywriter, and a lot more. You’ll definitely want to stick around for this episode. But first, this episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast is brought to you by The Copywriter Underground. It is truly the best membership for copywriters and content writers… let me just give you an idea of what you get for $87 a month… first there’s a monthly group coaching call with Kira and me where you can get answers to your questions, advice for overcoming any business or client or writing challenge you have. There are weekly copy critiques where we give you feedback on your copy or content. There are regular training sessions on different copy techniques and business practices designed to help you get better. And we’re adding a new monthly AI tool review where we share a new AI tool or a technique or prompt you can do with AI get more done. That’s on top of the massive library of training and templates. And the community is full of copywriters ready to help you with just about anything… including sharing leads from time to time. Find out more at thecopywriterclub.com/tcu And with that, let’s go to our interview with Sean. Kira Hug:   All right, Sean, let's kick off with your story. How did you end up as a copywriter? Sean MacIntyre:  Oh, well, I've been writing for money since about 2001. Thanks, mom. And so yeah, I did that to sort of fund my lifestyle at the time. Spent a few years homeless. And so I was actually going to school and writing and working a few jobs on the side there. Did that got one master's degree, then got another master's degree, ended up teaching for about seven years in there somewhere. Then around 2015 while I was actually, helping ghost writing books for business professors, I got a job at a little place called Palm Beach Research Group, which is now called Legacy Research Group in the Agora and MarketWise family of companies. And I got hired as a proofreader. And within three months, I was promoted to an assistant managing editor. Three months after that, I was promoted to a managing editor and actually bylining reports. And then a few months after that, Mark Ford asked me to be the head of the division, like his division of the company. And that's how I met Mark Ford (who is) Michael Masterson.  We broke off that company and hooked it up in 2017 with Agora Financial. I went up to Baltimore, met Joe Schrieffer, met everybody in that space. We hit it off extraordinarily well. We launched a business there. And so I studied under David Deutsch. I studied under Addison Wiggin. I studied under Joe Schrieffer. And so I was getting feedback and mentorship from all of them, including Mark Ford on my first long form direct response package. And then we launched November. And two weeks after we launched, Mark Ford, who we built the business around, said, I'm going to retire again for like his seventh time. And I was like, oh, well, that was a lot of work and a lot of moving around. Because at the time I was commuting between New York, where I was living with my ex-wife in Baltimore, doing that every single week. That was tough.  And so in January of 2018, two things happened. One, I was basically winding down the domestic side of that business, but I was still managing the international side. That's an important thing for later. And then all the fine folks at Agora Financial were just like, you seem like a pretty decent copywriter. Do you want to just keep writing for us? So I was like, sure. So I did. And then in 2019, I had my first million dollar launch. And then I had a couple more after that. I was doing a lot of webinar copy, but then I wrote a few very successful backends under the tutelage of Evaldo Albuquerque. And that was definitely my most successful promo to date. I think Evaldo gets 80% of the credit there. And then, you know, around the same time, the business that I was managing internationally, basically I started writing just content and copy for international affiliates, especially one in Japan, a business there that we had partnered with under the Mark Ford brand. And they kept asking me for content and I kept providing it and they kept asking for copy and I kept providing it. They translated into Japanese and that business grew to, oh, I want to say 10 million to 20 million somewhere in there.  Then around 2020, that business was so lucrative and making so much money that it just made sense for me to work for them most of the time. Since then, I've been doing that for the most part, managing that business, writing for that business. Every now and again, I'll take a freelance gig. I've written for Rob Booker. I've tried writing for International Living and stuff like that. I'll just take a freelance gig just to stay fresh, just to keep my hand in the game of long form direct response copy. But I'm still writing it. It's just, you know, going to international markets at the moment. Rob Marsh:  Okay, you covered a lot of ground. My first question is, you said you're homeless. Seriously homeless, like living on the streets homeless?  Sean MacIntyre:  No, I was like, I just didn't have a place. I was crashing on couches and living on a cot in my grandmother's office from about the age of 17 to 21. It was just bouncing around a lot of different places. I wasn't like destitute, addicted to crack cocaine, like, oh, God, help me. No, I just didn't have a whole lot of money and wasn't very interested in trying to get a place to rent. There was some dumpster diving, but I was never destitute. And in fact, a lot of the money that I was trying to save, I ended up using that to go live in Paris for six months. I toured around Europe. I was like the bougie version of homeless, not like, I had to pay to have all my teeth replaced homeless. Rob Marsh:  Sure. So how, how does that the bouncing around from place to place, how does that impact what you do today? Did that give you a skillset that maybe makes you able to see things that other people can't see or like, how does that play in your life today? Sean MacIntyre:  Well, I think the simplest answer to that is the fact that in this business, as you both surely know, it's very uncertain. And you have to be so comfortable with a lack of knowledge, the firm belief that what you're doing is right, even though, theoretically speaking, you don't know if things are going to work out. Every single piece of copy you put out into the world is a roll of the dice, certainly a skewed one, depending on how good you are. But one thing that I experienced at a very young age up until my mid twenties was just constant unending uncertainty. And I got really comfortable with being able to do things confidently, but still not really knowing what the outcome would be. Kira Hug:  I feel like uncertainty is a really good theme for 2023 and as we go into 2024 I know so many copywriters who listen to this show are feeling uncertain about what it means to be a copywriter today and in the future and so it sounds like you're really good at dealing with uncertainty. I guess my question is how would you as a copywriter and how would you recommend other copywriters deal with this odd time for many of us as AI is rapidly evolving and as the economy is feeling very tight and tricky… how do you think about day-to-day what should i focus on how do i grow and build? Sean MacIntyre:  I think the answer to your question is encapsulated and subsumed inside of your question, which is the best way to overcome a lot of the uncertainties that people are currently facing is to learn and to grow. A lot of people that are worried about AI are the people that are sort of in this muck and mire, this highly competitive area of copywriting where they're dealing with a lot of people where what they're producing is essentially commodified.  What do I mean by that? What I mean is that if your job is to churn out PPC ads, for example,