TCC Podcast #76: Building an Authentic Personal Brand with Tepsii

Back by popular demand, Tepsii is in the house for the 76th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. If you’ve been following along at home you know that she was our guest once before (on our 27th episode), but Kira and Rob wanted to follow up and see how her business has changed in the past year. Here's what we talked about: •  how she got started as a copywriter, business coach, and entrepreneur •  how she makes money in her business today •  why she started working with her husband in her business and what he’s doing •  why she wouldn’t recommend that others follow her path and what she thinks you should do instead •  the systems (and tools) she uses to keep her business running smoothly •  why she uses a checklist to move her clients through all the processes in her business •  what she does with her membership community (and the mistakes she made) •  why you shouldn’t launch “cheap” products just because your clients ask for them •  the impact that depression had on her personally and in her business •  the first steps to take to build a compelling personal brand •  why she thinks the future of copywriting is offline, not online •  why she talks about money with the entrepreneurs she coaches Plus don’t miss the moment when Rob accidentally calls Tepsii out on her personal brand and how reframing her beliefs around “rights” helped her share her political beliefs with her clients in an authentic way. If you want to hear this one, you’ve got to click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.   The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Tepsii’s first TCC Podcast H&M’s tone-deaf ad DIY The Law Selena Soo Trello Streak CMS Born to Convert Ramit Sethi Jeff Bezos Fabiola Giodani Tepsii.com Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity   Full Transcript: Kira: What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That’s what Rob and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast. Rob: You’re invited to join the club for episode 76 as we talk for a second time with a copywriter who only needs one name—Tepsii, about what’s happened in her business over the past year; the importance of business systems; why she created a paid community for heart-centered entrepreneurs; and her no-brainer tips for creating a premium brand. Kira: Tepsii, welcome! Welcome back! Rob: Hey, Tepsii. Tepsii: Thank you so much for having me; I can’t believe it’s seventy-six episodes. Congratulations! I feel so honored to be number seventy-six! Kira: Laughs. Rob: Seventy-six and twenty-seven! You were one of the first people who dared to join us when we first started out to talking with copywriters, so we’re excited to hear what’s happened since we last talked. But I think we want to start maybe with just a brief introduction to your story, for those who maybe haven’t heard episode number twenty-seven yet. Tepsii: So my story—when I came here, we talked a lot about how I started my business largely by accident, and how for me, you know, starting this business, I knew I wanted to “freedom lifestyle”. I knew I wanted a sense of connection with, you know, people around me who were like-minded, and I didn’t know exactly what that was going to look like, so I had some stumbles and some hiccups on the way to starting this online business. I was able to start by really saying “yes” to someone who saw talent in me, that I did not see myself. So, they just has this sense, this feeling, that I could be a good writer, a good copywriter, and they took a chance on me and, based on that chance, I have grown a business that has sustained me and my family for the past almost three years in March. And, it’s kind of come full circle with so many different things and skills that I’ve been able to lean into, so, starting with the copywriting, I moved into business coaching when people started asking me, you know, “Why is your business successful and why are you known? Can you help me as well?” So I moved into the business coaching, and I did that exclusively for a while, and I realized I missed the copywriting. I had a copywriting course that I was launching and teaching it, but I wanted the hands-on piece, and my goal this year is to build an agency, and to center and highlight other copywriters. And my biggest interest is getting messages out into the from people of color, because we’re seeing all this hiccups from these companies, like H&M. You know, they allowed a tee shirt to go out that said, “The coolest monkey in the jungle”, or something like that, and with a black kid, which is really tone-deaf, and so totally insensitive, and racist too. And these things are happening time and time again; there was a Dove ad last year, and so to me, this says we need more people of color represented in these spaces, sharing these messages, and being the ones to really filter the messages so that we can have copywriting as more of a tool of understanding, and, you know, the whole point of communication is to share meaning. And so I want that meaning to be something that impacts people positively, so...that’s kind of where I come from, where I’ve been. I hope that’s a good synopsis. I’m based in South Africa: Pretoria, South Africa, and I was raised in the U.S. So, my lens is really an interesting one to look through when we talk about what’s going on in the world right now, and I’m so excited to be here on this podcast. Kira: Yeah, and Tepsii, you’re last interview was one of my favorites, and a favorite for a lot of our listeners and mostly because you were so open and just shared lessons learned, and some of the really hard lessons from starting your business from scratch. So can you just share where you are today as far as structurally, what does your business look like? Like, how are you making your money today? Tepsii: So, my money today comes in a variety of different ways. I have recurring payments from my mastermind, and so the mastermind has people who enroll for twelve weeks at a time. We meet weekly, usually it’s rolling enrollment, so, I get a chunk of money from those people, and what I didn’t like at first was that I allowed people to do a payment plan over, like, twelve months for something that was $5,000 and I thought at first, “Oh my gosh, these payments are going to take forever,” you know, it’s not going to feel like I have real money. But when, you know, different things are happening, and I have these payments come through, it’s so awesome; it’s like “Oh my gosh, Christmas!” Because, I have these recurring payments. So I have a chunk of my business in that way; we have a chunk of business that comes from the copywriting; people have found me really easily through me not even trying. I don’t know much about SEO, I’ve never been really an SEO copywriter, but I’ve got a lot of clients emailing me saying, “I searched for ‘female copywriter’, and you came up. I checked out your work, and I hired you.” So, I am doing copywriting, probably like two-thirds of my business comes from the recurring payments from membership community and from my mastermind, and then one-third comes from copywriting. And, the mastermind—the membership community—is something that I’m...we’re going to talk about later. And something that I might be shutting down and restarting. I don’t know; things are always shifting and I think that’s important to remember as...if you’re working in your business and you’re feeling bad, or something, you know, is coming up for you, because you don’t know exactly where you’re going at the current moment, it happens to all of us. Even people who’ve been around for a little while. Rob: And, I might be mistake, but I think you and Mr. Tepsii have added some systems training to your business as well that he does some teaching for, is that correct? Tepsii: Yes, so he—out of necessity—well, I don’t know. I just kind of like held a—laughs—a gun to his head and I was like, “Listen, you’re going to learn online marketing dude.” And... Kira: Laughs. Tepsii: Laughs. …so he was totally interested in the beginning. But when he saw, like... He likes technical things, and so he learned how to make websites, and he learned graphics, and he learned Facebook advertising, and funnels, and all these things. And he was doing them for me, and they were working, right? I’m having these launches, and they were successful; people are watching going, “How are you doing all this?” And I was like, “I’m doing all of it because of Mr. Tepsii. And so, he’s a lawyer by trade, so he has a business called DIY The Law. And he sells a course, a legal course, and he does trademark and intellectual property for entrepreneurs through that, and then, because he just loved the systems side, we also launched that, which is sort of a plus for the people who joined my mastermind, or my membership community, because those systems pieces are the ones that are toughest for creative entrepreneurs. My mind certainly doesn’t think in terms of systems, and his mind does. He kind of breaks things down logically. So, very natural for him to offer that; as well as we created some WordPress templates, like, website templates for sales pages, about pages, home pages...all the pages you need on your website, and it’s cool because when somebody purchases it, they can get, kind of, the framework that I do copywriting, and they can DIY their copywriting, and DIY their website. And so he created that as well in conjunction with a partner I have, who’s based in India. So, those systems pieces? So necessary. I don’t know where my business would be without him and the systems piece. So, that’s where a lot of us.... because we don’t have systems, we don’t know what we’re doing,