TCC Podcast #200: The Courage to Do the Extraordinary with Mike Kim

It’s time to celebrate… we’ve reached episode 200 of The Copywriter Club Podcast. This episode marks a tweak to our format and an update to the music we use. And to help us celebrate the changes—and our anniversary—we invited copywriter and marketing consultant Mike Kim to share his story and what he’s learned over the last several years of his career. Here’s a recap of what we covered: •   how he went from marketer to blogger to copywriter •   the importance of professional-grade production—spoiler: it’s not •   the #1 thing you need in your content to get traction •   simplifiers vs. multipliers (and where Mike, Rob and Kira fit in) •   what he did to find his first clients and what he did next •   the present-negative/future positive reason why he left a high-paying CMO role •   the impact copywriting had on sales (when he was a CMO) •   what Mike would do differently if he had to start over •   his personal “code” for investing in coaching, courses and contractors •   the big risks Mike has taken throughout his career (and the results) •   why confidence is a sucker’s game and what you need instead •   Mike’s “made it” moment where he realized things would be fine •   the role mindset has played in his success—particularly his thoughts about money •   Mike’s advice for raising your prices today—he calls it scope-creep insurance •   his experience at TCCIRL as a speaker and attendee •   the one thing he attributes his success to—this might not surprise you •   his prediction for what will happen in the marketing world in the future Mike is a phenomenal copywriter (and human) and this interview is one you won’t want to miss. To hear it, click the button below. Or subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher… and soon on Spotify. And if you prefer reading, scroll down for a full transcript. The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: The Copywriter Accelerator Michael Hyatt AWAI Jeff Walker Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill The Big Leap by Gay Hendricks Business Brilliant by Lewis Schiff Mike's website Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Intro Outro Full transcript: Kira:   What does it take to stand out like a snow lynx in a bowling alley and get noticed in today's crowded marketplace. Okay, assuming you're already a good writer and you can serve your clients well, which we can assume because you're listening to this show, how do you actually get people to see that you're extraordinary or extra, extraordinary? If you want it to be extraordinary, you can't do the things ordinary people do. We know this. So you need to take the type of risks others refuse to take. You need to think and act differently from everyone else. Today on the 200th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, which we're celebrating with lots of Coke Zero, barbecue chips, and peanut butter cheesecake. Rob:   So good. Kira:   We're speaking with one of my D.C. neighbors and new friends, Mike Kim. Mike is much more than a copywriter. He's a former CMO and current podcaster, coach, public speaker, and brand strategist. But maybe, most important of all, Mike is the kind of person who takes the type of risks that can launch an extraordinary career. Rob:   We'll get to all of that in a moment. But first we need to tell you that this episode is brought to you by The Copywriter Accelerator. The Accelerator is a 16-week business growth program designed to help copywriters figure out not only what makes them extraordinary, but also how to be the kind of business or how to run the kind of business that can scale and attract the right clients. This isn't a course, something that you buy and forget in your downloads folder. It's a program that you work through with other students as you master your business mindset, your X factor, your signature package as you price and create processes, work on client management, even branding and getting in front of the right clients. If you're ready to stop dabbling and get serious about building a copywriting business that's set up to grow, go to thecopywriteraccelerator.com for more details. Kira:   I first connected with Mike shockingly on a podcast. After five minutes of prepping for my big interview with Mike Kim, I knew we'd be buds. We both lived in D.C. We both played basketball back in the day, and we're both kind of tall. So obviously, a perfect recipe for friendship. So Mike and I hit it off, and I invited him to attend TCC In Real Life in San Diego. He took me up on the offer and flew out to the West Coast for the event, and I'm really glad I invited him because we didn't see what was about to happen next. Rob:   Even though he only showed up as a guest, Mike ended up being the first speaker at TCC IRL, which we've started calling the last event held in America. As coronavirus started spreading across the country, a few of our speakers canceled during the week prior to the event, but we were still moving forward with the event because canceling it at the time didn't make sense to us either. So we were wondering how we were going to even kick off the event after losing our keynote speaker and a couple of others, and that's when Kira checked in and with Mike. Kira:   I asked him, "Hey, Mike. Could you possibly keynote at TCC IRL?" Literally a day before the event, and Mike says, "Yes." He's thrilled to speak on our stage, and he'll pull together his presentation within 24 hours. When his time came to grace the stage, he totally rocked it. I knew he was a seasoned speaker beforehand, but he was even better than I imagined. Not only funny, but full of wisdom and business advice that our room needed to hear. Then he didn't stop there. Mike hung out with us the entire event and even stayed out pretty late in the morning with us as we had our final social time before the world would shut down. It would have been easy for Mike to turn us down or even not fly out to San Diego with uncertainty looming in the air, but he took a risk on us, and he showed up and stepped up. That to me is extraordinary. Rob:   Yeah. Mike has a habit of saying yes to the right opportunities and doing the things that help him stand out from the crowd. So let's go to our interview with Mike Kim. Kira:   Let's start with how you ended up as a copywriter. For people who don't know you and never heard of you, how did you get into copywriting? Mike:   So, I always kind of had a knack, I guess, for writing, and I didn't discover copywriting until after I made the decision to start a blog. So I bought into this blogging/platform building program, and there was a module taught by this guy, who we all know, Ray Edwards on copywriting. That was like the first time I'd really ever heard of copywriting as a profession or even really as a concept. I remember watching this really budget video from him, and he was teaching this stuff, and I was like, "Oh, I get it." All of a sudden, I just bought like 10 books on copywriting, and I studied it, and I loved it, and I realized I've known this my whole life. I just didn't know what to call it. That's really how I got started. While I was building my platform, my blog, I quickly realized how important writing was to it because there's not a single thing that you can do in that industry without writing. That's really how I got started. I discovered it, and I was like, "Oh, that's what I've been doing all these years, writing album covers and stuff like that, liner notes. Oh, that's copywriting. Oh, cool." And I got it. Rob:   I want to ask about something, this is maybe something a little bit weird to pick up on, but you called the video that you're watching a budget video, and I'm guessing that it was probably like kind of recorded off the cuff. It wasn't professionally done. The reason that jumped out at me is because you look at what Ray does today. That's definitely not his brand, and yet, however long ago it was, that's what he was doing, and I think a lot of us wait way too long until we're perfect at the thing that we're trying to do to launch, and most of our mentors didn't do that. They didn't wait. They launched. Maybe you've probably seen something like that in your own career, I would imagine. Mike:   Oh yeah, I didn't record my first professionally shot videos in a studio until a year ago. So for seven years, I just recorded videos off my MacBook camera, and I did entire launches using that camera. I think, Rob, this goes back to copyright. If you just have a really good copy and really good content, it keeps people engaged, and they get value from the video, and that was it. Yeah. So I'm not a big tech/app/gearhead kind of guy. I'm just like, use what you have. The simpler your tools, the more likely you're going to use them, and I still kind of follow that till this day. Rob:   So can I ask a follow-up to that then? If it's not the production, what is it about what you need to bring to your video or to your audio or to the content you're creating in order to help gain traction? Mike:   I think that it just needs to be very easily understood. So it's been said that there are two types of multipliers. I don't know if you guys have heard this, but one type is a simplifier, and the other is a multiplier. I am 1000% a simplifier. Right? So when I teach content, I'm just like, "How do I make this so easy that I don't need notes to teach?" I feel like if I need notes to teach content on a video or even from stage, then I'm probably making it too complex, too convoluted, too meaty, and especially on the format of video these days with people's attention spans. I think it's been proven that the longest an average adult will watch a video is seven minutes. That's the average. So you're going to have people who are way more than that, and you're going to have people who are way less than that. But this comes from a friend who's an educator.