TCC Podcast #227: Writing Content with Jacob McMillen

On the 227th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, we’re joined by content writer Jacob McMillen, who as you'll see towards the end of the episode is an SEO master. Jacob shares his insights on writing great copy and running a content business. Through actively listening and really wanting to help others in his door-to-door sales job, he decided to take the world of copywriting for a spin. Having scaled to 6 figures, we talked about the stages of business as a freelancer and what it really takes to make it. What's more... he’s the #1 search result for “copywriter” on Google. We break down: •   how copywriting can be the good of sales without the ick •   how Jacob went from accounting student (who didn't want to be an accountant) to copy expert •   Jacob’s natural talent for connecting a solution to a problem •   the perfect lucrative combination of marketing •   how batting 5% is crushing the pitching game •   how persistence is necessary in the beginning •   how to get your ideal customer to agitate their own problems •   the ropes of reeling in clients during the early stages •   why putting your eggs in one basket can leave you scrambled •   how Jacob went from 3k months to 20k •   how pitches can be the bread and butter when in need •   how flirting with SEO paid off & created 30+ monthly leads •   how to stand out in 2021 as a new copywriter •   why not to compare yourself to other copywriters •   building a copywriting agency and how it’s not for everyone •   if flipping websites could be the new real estate? •   how new technology cannot replace copywriting geniuses If you’re ready to go from side-hustle to business owner, this episode is worth checking out. Grab a cup of coffee, hit play & start taking notes. The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Copywriter Think Tank Empire Flippers Jacob's Website Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground   Full Transcript: Kira:   This week we talked about the different stages of business as a freelancer with our guest, copywriter, and entrepreneur, Jacob McMillen. Jacob is currently the number one US search result for the search term copywriter, which means we should all team up and up our SEO game and challenge his number one spot. Rob:   We'll come back to Jacob's interview in just a moment, but first you should know that this interview is brought to you by The Copywriter Underground. That's our incredibly valuable membership for copywriters who are done figuring out things by themselves and want to surround themselves with an awesome community of copywriters. It includes our perfect proposal training, our persuasion course, our new sales course, plus more than 20 templates and dozens of presentations all designed to help you make progress in your business. You can learn more about it at thecopywriterunderground.com. Kira:   Now let's get to our conversation with Jacob. Jacob, we would love to just start with your story, a very detailed story of how you got into copywriting. Do not leave anything out. Jacob McMillen:   Okay. I think it's a relatively fun story. I think you have to start back when I got into sales and unlike a normal person, my start in sales was door to door sales in college. I got roped into doing it one summer. I needed a lot of money. It sounded a little ridiculous, but the numbers made sense to me. So I was like, I'm just going to do it. And I made enough to pay for three years of school in 16 weeks... Not 16 weeks, yes, 12 weeks. And I really enjoyed the sales process. I enjoyed sitting down with someone talking to them, hearing about their needs, connecting what they needed to the solutions I was selling. There were also a lot of things about direct sales that I hated. So after college, I graduated with an accounting degree. Only thing I knew was I'm not going into accounting. So I was like, what's next? Started to discover the online marketing world, SEO, stuff like that. And then I fell into copywriting and realized it was everything I loved about sales, minus everything I hated about sales. And I never really thought of myself as loving writing, but it would always come fairly easily. And once I started applying it and directions I actually cared about versus the writing you do in school, I realized I actually enjoyed it. So it just seemed like this great convergence of something that I was relatively talented at naturally, something I was learning to enjoy. And I quickly tapped into just how lucrative the demand was for it. And so, that's the perfect combination of things in terms of skillset to build your career around. So I just ran with it and yeah, started with blog writing and then went into landing pages. I just went full speed on the freelancing end of things, did that for a few years. I applied... I think doing that door to door sales job, my mentality towards sales was very volume-based, very hustle-based. I knew you got to knock on enough doors before you find someone who's going to say, yes, it's not about batting 90%. If you bat 5%, you're crushing it. And so, that helped me do pretty well in freelancing pretty quickly, did that for four, five years, and then started thinking, "Hey, wait a second, if all these people are paying me so much money for this writing, that must mean they're making more off of it. So I should try to make more off of it through my own businesses." So I started experimenting with that and building some side businesses and then that's... I still do freelancing work, but I've mostly started to transition into building some of these side businesses, including the one that I have through my website where I help other copywriters follow my freelancing path. And yeah, that's been the last, maybe three years that I've been doing some side businesses on that. And yeah, it all connects back to those original skills of writing and selling and been doing... Overall the career's now been about nine years and it's still a blast. I don't know if it's a mixture of luck or just progressively eliminating other options that I didn't like, but I'm super glad I found this career and that's where I am now. Rob:   Sweet. You maybe block out little chunks of that path and talk a little bit about them. Going back to the whole door-to-door sales gig, it's funny that you mentioned that because we've talked to quite a few copywriters who have had some door to door sales experience, or even retail sales experience, but a lot of people who learn how to do the sales thing one-on-one, however that was. So what was it about you that made you so good at it? Because so many people wash out after a week or two and can't do sales. Why did that work for you? And what were your biggest takeaways from that experience? Jacob McMillen:   Yeah, I think maybe the two biggest things, the first was the persistence. I think my first through my third week, maybe my fourth week, I had full on panic attacks every day from 11:00 AM to 12:00 PM. And most of it I think wasn't really around what was actually happening in the field. It was the fact that I knew I was committed to the full 12-week-period I was going to do this. And so I felt trapped, the day-to-day was tough and I knew I wasn't going to quit. And knowing I wasn't going to quit created these panic attacks, which is obviously a whole other side of things, but it was coming in just like pre-committing. I'm just one of those people who, if I commit to something, I do it. And so, if you go into something and your mentality is no matter what I'm figuring this out, you just tend to brute force your way past the things that trip up a lot of other people who are looking for an exit strategy. I think that was probably the first big piece. I don't know how healthy that is, but it is what it is. And then on the back end too, when it comes to the actual sales process, I actually didn't like... The people I was working with, the organization I was working in, they tracked the stats on everything. And my actual percentage of getting in and talking with people was very low. Not a lot of people would let me in the door to talk with them about what I was selling, but my close rate was through the roof. I think it came down mostly to just listening. Once we started, I knew what I needed to get to at some point, but instead of trying to rush to it or trying to sell, I just asked them good questions and let them sell themselves. Just sat back and listened and let them spend as long as they wanted to talk about the challenges they were feeling because I mean, as much as it's great to try to agitate the issues that people are dealing with, if they can do it themselves even better. That's the nice thing with direct sales. You can just ask the right question and let them spend 20 minutes agitating their own problems. And then it's just a matter of, if you're selling something that has a great product market fit, then it's just a matter of just very clearly showing how it's going to solve the things that they just spent 20, 30 minutes agitating. And so I wouldn't rush that. I would let it take its time. Part of the things I hated about sales was how emotionally invested I get in any particular conversation. I mean, it was a two-edged sword in the sense of people could feel that I really cared and that I was actually genuinely interested in the challenges they were facing and genuinely looking to see if what I was selling could help. And the upside of that is that, when you are able to communicate that authenticity and make people feel seen and their problems are real and important then they're more likely to purchase from you. Kira:   Maybe you already said this, Jacob, but what were you selling? Jacob McMillen:   Educational handbooks, the company was called Southwestern, and you might've heard of them,