Episode #101 – Megan Macedo on Smashing Goals and Kicking Ass In Business By Being Yourself (develop the ultimate USP and much more)

It’s John McIntyre here, the auto responder guy, it’s time for episode 101 of the McMethod Marketing Podcast where you’ll discover how to get more customers with less effort on auto-pilot.  Today I’ll be talking to Megan Macedo about how people can be themselves in their marketing.  Basically it’s about being authentic, letting yourself go and being real.  And this sounds a bit fluffy and a bit woo woo but as lot a people find when they get more experience in the game, being yourself, and this applies to freelancers and consultants as to be with much bigger companies, be yourself.  You know, you look at a guy like Gary Vaynerchuk, sells wine, built quite a sizable company there and you can tell he’s just being himself.  As he’s getting on stage, he’s talking, you know, social media is the same, he’s just being himself. 

Obviously you want to be your best self and there’s a few things in there and you want to find out how you appeal to the market.  But there was an element where you have to learn to just relax in your own skin and be your own thing and this is also going to help with getting your own positioning and uniqueness said out there about you.  Instead of learning a bunch of strategies and tactics and then on dealing with it focus on the fundamentals which is what’s gonna fit you as a person, what’s gonna fit your personality and your unique set of who you are really.  So this is more or less stop basically trying to be someone you’re not.  Learn to be who you are and funnily enough it will actually help you in your business.  To get the show notes for this episode of the Email Marketing Podcast go to themcmethod.com/101.

Now a couple of things before we get into the episode with Megan today, number one: if you like, you know, you’ve probably been listening to this podcast, you know the benefits of email marketing.  You know you need to get more customers, you know you need to build a sales funnel but you just don’t have the time and you’d rather just hire someone to do it for you.  If that sounds like you then we should talk because this is what I do, you know, alongside the training that I sell on the podcast and all that stuff I actually work one-on-one with clients to set them up with, you know, also to sales funnels and email conversion campaigns.  Exactly the sort of stuff that I’m talking about on this podcast but to guests, I’ll do it for you personally, ok.  Now if you wanna learn a little more about that or you  wanna have a quick chat on Skype to see what it would look like in your business, shoot me, john@themcmethod.com and we’ll set up a time to have a quick chat. 

Now this week’s McMasters insight of the week is a really simple formula that I like to call the DAP Formula.  Great for sales letters, it’s good—go and do all your research, get your empathy down, understand who you’re trying to talk to and then it’s really simple, use this formula.  Number one: you describe the problem.  It’s like saying, “Well, are you overweight?”  You go, you’ve described the problem.  Next thing you agitate the problem.  So that’s where you go, “You overweight?  Man life sucks when you’re overweight, doesn’t it?  You know you can’t fit in airline seats and people laugh at you and smirk.  You know, it’s really hard to find clothes that you can fit into, life’s really tough, isn’t it?”  That’s rubbing salt in the wound, that’s agitating it.  And then number three is step three, so describe the problem, agitate it and then present your solution.  So you kinda go—so that’s where you might say you’ve—first you present the problem, describe the problem, are you overweight?  Then you agitate it, man, being overweight sucks.  Here’s why, you know, on one likes you, no one’s attracted to you, blah, blah, blah.  And then you present your solution, where you say, “What, that’s why I created the three step system to seven minute weight loss,” or something like that. 

It’s that’s simple and doubt you can go really deep into that formula but at the end of the day most—I think all marketing often comes back to that idea of the problem, rub some salt in the wound, give them the solution.  It’s that simple.  There’re also to ways like digging down into this.  But that’s the insight of the week for this week from McMasters and that’s actually—it actually comes from one of the videos there’s some one hour training session inside McMasters.  There’s a private training community on how to basically go—going deeper into this formula on how you can apply it in your business and generate more sales.  And this applies with emails, with sales pages, with the entire sales funnel as a whole, it all comes back to this.  Hitting the problem, rubbing salt in the wound, giving them your solution.  And doing that over and over and over and over again.  You’ll see what I mean if you watch this video inside McMasters.  So McMasters’ private training community, it’s at themcmethod.com top menu, there’s a link to McMasters, go check it out if you’re interested.  And that’s for people who wanna, you know, create their own email marketing themselves. 

And, number three, I’ve got one review to read out then we get into this interview with Megan.  Today’s review is from Sean Douglas, “Five stars, so much more than a cocky guy with his tongue hanging out.  Attention podcast listener, don’t be like me and make the almost fatal decision of passing up John’s podcast because he looks like a cocky guy with his tongue hanging out on his iTunes photo for the show,” that’s funny.  Yeah, I know what you’re saying, Sean, if I had to choose a show to listen to and knew nothing about the various podcasts out there on email marketing, John’s would be the last I would go with because of his pic.  That’s really—you know, it makes me laugh because I never thought someone would think that, I thought the pic was cool, you know.  Maybe I was wrong.  I hear yah, but let me save you the wasted time of searching through those losers and just tell you to look down the long list of interviews with world-class marketers and it will be enough to go to his website, themcmethod.com and buy his stuff, even before you listen to one show.  Sounds crazy?  Well you’re probably right but that’s what I did.”

Tell you what, first impressions can be powerful and you may still hesitate to listen despite what I just told you so don’t take my word for it.  Here’s what marketing legend Brian Kurtz has to say about joining episode 66 at 46 minutes in, “I can just tell by the way you ask questions and prepare for an interview that you’re someone that really gets all of this email auto responder marketing and that you really want to teach your audience about anything they need to know about email marketing.”  That’s from Brian Kurtz.  Now is the time to drop what you’re doing and listen to the McMethod Email Marketing Podcast.  Sean Douglas, “PS, thank you John for a terrific show and I sure hope I’ve reached rock star level for your show, I could really use a few groupies while listening.”  Sean, the groupies are on the way, I’ll put them in the mail for you this afternoon and they should arrive in 24 hours.  Thanks to this review, you are a legend, I love you, I’ve a huge grin on my face right now and there’s people looking at me weirdly because I’m in a quiet little café and I’m not meant to be smiling like this.  Anyway, that’s it for now, that’s it for that review.  Let’s get into this interview with Miss Megan Macedo. 

Hey it’s John McIntyre here, the auto responding guy.  I’m here with Megan Macedo, now Megan is another copywriter, another direct response marketer and she came to me via, once again, like some of the other guests I’ve interviewed for via, you know, somebody recommended her, Julian.  My man Julian, he’s probably be going to be listening to this at some point so hello Julian.  He basically pointed out that Megan’s been doing some really cool stuff and he’d heard like a teleclass or like a webinar that she’d done in the past on customer empathy and really understanding who you’re trying to talk to.  So go ahead, let’s get Megan on, let’s find out what she wants to talk about and let’s make a podcast and have some fun.  So I’ve got Megan here and it’s kinda cool little testimonial that she’s got on her site from Perry Marshall who’s a [inaudible 06:37] but also the testimonial says, “Megan is the Brené Brown of marketing,” and Brené Brown isn’t actually—she’s, I mean, she’s like a PhD researcher she’s got one of the most popular Ted Talk videos online of all time, not Ted access the real Ted and Gravity on vulnerability.  And, you know, she also wrote a book which is worth reading if you’re interested in shame and in man and woman, sounds a bit like ,you know, woo woo but it’s actually fascinating, the whole thing.  But that’s a different story. 

But anyway, Perry is saying that Megan is the Brené Brown of marketing and, you know, that’s actually funnily enough what we’re gonna talk about today, it’s not so much about the strategies and the tactics and, you know, another little trick you can plug into your business to make some more money.  I asked Megan what she wanted to talk about because I find that’s the best way to get a good topic, get some good content happening.  And as you’ll find out in a minute, we’re gonna talk about instead of the strategies, instead of the tactics it’s [inaudible 07:26] how to be vulnerable, how to kind of—instead of trying to like create a fake thing that you’re trying to put out there.  I’ll let her explain in a minute, but instead of you putting like a fake persona out there learn to be yourself, open up and create your own sort of persona.  Just be real.  Which sounds kind of scary and also a bit loose.  People need a framework but we’ll get into that in just a minute, Megan, how’re doing?

Megan Macedo: Pretty good, John, thank you very much for having me on.

John McIntyre: You know, it’s good to have you on the show.  Good to connect.  Now before we get into the topic for today, can you the listener a quick background on who you are, what you do and what you’re all about.

Megan Macedo: Yeah, sure.  I’m based in London in the UK and I run a marketing agency so we do consulting and copy and we build sales funnels and direct response web design.  But really what we do is, you’ve kind of touched on it, we help people be themselves when they’re marketing and get paid for who they are without a bunch of hype and gimmicks.

John McIntyre: That sounds crazy, this ‘just be yourself’.

Megan Macedo: [Laughing] It’s like Vegas [inaudible 08:26].

John McIntyre: Just be yourself, you know, smell some roses, you know.

Megan Macedo: Yeah, yeah.  But it’s like—I guess it kind of came from my partial journey because I, like a lot of marketers discovered direct response and just like went on an education binge and like learned everything I could.  And I was already doing web design so started applying what I was learning for clients and stuff like that.  And it got to the stage where I realized I know tons about direct response marketing and I know everything I should be doing, I’m doing it for a lot of clients but for some reason I’m just not really making it work for myself.  It was like I knew everything I should do but I was stuck and that’s when I kind of realized that it’s not about strategy and tactics, it’s not about all that stuff.  There is like more fundamental stuff that I hadn’t figured out which was like how to actually become prolific, how identify what my core philosophy was and how to like actually kind of like get the guts to put myself in my marketing.  Because it was like I had every excuse under the sun for not sending out an email.  And a lot of it’s fear driven, I think, and kind of like overwhelming confusion.  Because it’s like there’s so many things I could and should be doing but because I wasn’t starting from who I was and what was unique about my business.  It was impossible to choose what to start with so I ended up not really doing anything.

John McIntyre: Ok, ok.  Tell me about like—could we do this before, what I always like to do before getting to the nitty gritty of someone has to do to be themselves, which [inaudible 10:03] it’s funny once you get used to it you go, it is pretty [inaudible 10:07] just be yourself, there’s not much to it.  But why is it worthwhile doing this?  Like what’s the reward, what’s the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow for someone who figures out how to be themselves?

Megan Macedo: I think it’s all about energy and longevity so like if you are following [inaudible 10:21] and templates, that’s hard work because it’s like you’re kind of learning someone else’s system and you’re consciously having to work at it.  Whereas if you figure out how to be yourself and you’re marketing, it just becomes this really natural thing.  So like running out of ideas isn’t something that really happens, creative blocks aren’t an issue, it’s not a case of like, “I sat down today to do an hour of marketing and I just couldn’t think of anything to talk about,” like all that stuff goes away when you’re doing it in a natural way.  It’s kind of the difference between having a conversation with someone who you naturally get along with really well, you share a lot of things with in common, and having a conversation with someone who you just have absolutely nothing in common with, it’s like that’s really hard work.

John McIntyre: Yeah.

Megan Macedo: So it’s kind of like that, so and if you find a way to put yourself in your market and then it’s, you know, it’s the long game it’s like it’s never gonna run out.  That’s a long-term thing whereas if you’re trying to be something that you’re not really or trying to be something you don’t really care about, then that burns out eventually, that’s a short-term thing.

John McIntyre: Ok, ok.  It’s [inaudible 11:27] some people are gonna be like “Well, what about the money?”  Tell me about that, like is this just a strategy to kind of make yourself feel better and kind of get a bit more excited and not run out of ideas?  Or does this translate into revenue and sales?

Megan Macedo: It totally translates to—it’s not a case of be yourself in your market or apply strategies and tactics, it’s a case of be yourself in your market and then choose the strategies and tactics that work for you.  So there’s a thing and a film [addendum 11:57] called The Rule of Six, I can’t remember the guy’s name, but he worked as a film editor on like Apocalypse Now and a bunch of big films.  So he has this thing called The Rule of Six and he’s like the things that are important whenever you’re editing film together and the first two things that are most important is the story and the emotion of the scene.  But he says when you go to film school the things that they start teaching you about is all the technical stuff, like how to not break the line position in the room and all that kind of stuff. 

So it’s like he has that stuff on his list but they’re like five and six, story and emotion is what they maybe talked to you about an hour in film school but that’s the thing that really makes the difference.  So it’s the same thing, it’s like being yourself in your marketing and figuring out what your core message is and all that kind of stuff.  Like that is the stuff that no one really teaches you because it’s hard to teach, it’s a little bit ethereal, it sounds a little bit woo woo but that’s the stuff that is the most fundamental important stuff.  It’s like the top 20% of if we’re gaining 80/20 on it.  So it’s not a case of, “Just do that and forget about everything else,” it’s like get clear on that and then drill down to, “Ok, now I have a filter from which I can choose which proven strategies and tactics will work for me and my business.  So it’s a case of you don’t have to run around like a headless chicken looking at every shiny object, learning every new strategy and tactic.  You have a filter where you can see something, you come along and you’re like, “Is that relevant to me or is that not relevant to me?”  So you just pick and choose what’s gonna work for you.

John McIntyre: Right, right.  To be like, you know, everyone’s personality is a car—would you say is a Ferrari and what is this—everyone’s personality is as cool as a sports car and then the fuel is the strategies and the tactics that they’re gonna use because you can’t—some cars take diesel some take gas, natural gas and some take, you know, petrol or fuel and the difference tactics and strategies they’re the different fuels that you can put into a car but really without the fuel you’re not going anywhere.  So you can’t just be personality, but without the car the fuel’s absolutely useless so you really need that [calf 14:02] and if you are being yourself, probably much more likely to have the Ferrari.  Whereas if you’re just a carbon copy of someone else then you’re probably just a Honda Civic, you know, there’s millions of them out on the road, whereas if you’re being yourself you’re like one of a kind, you know—

Megan Macedo: Yeah.

John McIntyre: Or if you’re trying to be one of, you know, there’s a hundred of you out there somewhere in the world.

Megan Macedo: Yeah, exactly.  And I think that you’ve touched on a huge thing because it’s like having an unshakeable USP on being unique is something that people obsess over and they think it’s like something that they engineer and make up but it’s not, it’s something that you uncover.  If you look at all of the, you know, anybody who think like has a really awesome USP and it’s really allowed them to rise up to the top of their game.  It stands from everything about them, it’s who they are as a person, what their experiences have been, their values and voice, all of that stuff and then the reason it’s so strong is because it’s like virtually impossible to knock-off someone’s entire life experience so, you know, it’s impossible for competitors to come along and steal your USP.

John McIntyre: Yeah.  I mean, the good thing to it is like it’s a bit like a reputation where—you can’t steal a reputation off someone.  If they’ve got a reputation for something well they’ve got a reputation for it and it’s unique because it’s their reputation.  To steal a reputation you’d have to steal their entire history which you can’t steal someone’s history.  And so it’s interesting from that angle too.

Megan Macedo: Yeah, yeah definitely.

John McIntyre: And one thing I think someone’s gonna be wondering about here is this is great for a personal brand sort of business where you have a, you know, small business owner where there’s a face at the front and that kind of thing.  And I bet you someone’s gonna be sitting here go on look, “This works for small players, what if you’re a big company, you know, what if we get a team, what if it’s even a corporate company, does this personality stuff even work for those kind of companies?

Megan Macedo: Yeah, it definitely does.  I mean we have clients who have, you know, they have teams and it’s not—so there’s someone who acts as the face of the marketing and it doesn’t really matter who that person is, they don’t have to be the—

John McIntryre: Does it have to be a real person?

Megan Macedo: It does have to be a real person because it’s like if you’re not using a real person you’re into the realm of you’re trying to fake it, you’re trying to make it up and it becomes incredibly.  So we have clients who the business owner is the face of the marketing but they don’t write any other copy.  They just sit down with someone, maybe like once a year and the person will ask the questions they need to get the material for the stories and stuff like that.  So it doesn’t matter the size of the company, and I actually, in the past, tried to convince one or two big—like really big corporates to try it.  I haven’t and successfully convinced anyone yet but would totally work.  Because, you know, people are always buying from other people, there’s always a name in the company that they know and that, you know, I think in marketing people forget sometimes what we’re doing.  We’re trying to form real relationships so there’s always a human being on the other end and there’s always a human being on the business end so that’s all really what we’re talking about.

John McIntyre: Yep, yep.  I like it, I like it.  Let’s get into the nitty gritty then.  How does this actually happen?  So this is like, I mean, you can tell someone who’s really awkward and socially incapable to hey man, just be yourself go talk to that girl, you know, go talk to that boy.  But it’s not as simple as that, it’s not as simple as just relaxing and being yourself especially when you haven’t done it before and you don’t know how to do it.  So there’s a certain art to bringing this out and getting comfortable with so do you have a process that you follow?

Megan Macedo: Yeah, so there’s like an in depth process that we probably don’t have time to go through but I can give you the nutshell and it’s actually not as—it’s more scientific probably than you might think and it’s not as daunting as you might think because it’s not about unbridled self-disclosure, it’s about understanding who you are and who your customer is.  So it’s about—the best way to explain it is probably to go back to like marketing basics which is we all know that people buy from people they know, like and trust and the marketing community is massively obsessed with the ‘know’ part of it.  Like how do they know about you?  Traffic and traffic’s like this easy and vulnerable thing so everybody’s obsessed with traffic.  But the ‘like’ and ‘trust’ part is where it gets vulnerable because you have to share who you are.  So how do you get people to like you?  Well people like people who are either like how they are or like how they aspire to be.  So you have to show your customers that you are both like them and like how the aspire to be.  And in this realm, you’re kind of getting to a stage where like you have to view your marketing as art.  It’s like, I think, a big problem that a lot of business owners and marketers have is that they still—even if they’re completely onboard with marketing, they believe in it, they do a lot of it, still somewhere at the back of their mind there’s this belief that like marketing’s a little bit dirty.  It’s like, “Well, I don’t wanna to bombard them, I don’t wanna hassle them, I don’t wanna send too many emails, I don’t wanna put too many messages out there. 

John McIntyre: Yeah.

Megan Macedo: But you have to flip it around, you have to elevate your marketing in your mind because, as I said, what we’re doing is we’re forming real relationships and so when I say you have to think of your marketing as art it’s like your ideal clients are going through their day, every single day and they’re reading a bunch of stuff and they’re watching a bunch of stuff.  And the reason that people read the books they read or the articles online or the emails or watch the films and TV that they watch is for exactly the same reasons as they will end up liking you.  It’s either they see something in those books or in those films, they see characters that remind them of how they are or how they aspire to be. 

So if you view your marketing messages in that same way then it’s like, you know, when Vince Gilligan is writing Breaking Bad he wasn’t thinking, “Should I write another episode?  I don’t know, I don’t wanna annoy them, I don’t wanna bombard them.”  In fact he knows that people are on the edge of their seat waiting to consume more of his stuff.  So you have to get to the stage where that’s how you’re approaching your market.  So the way you do that is you start with the customer first, so we’re not talking about just like machine gun self-disclosure of like, “I’m gonna put myself out there, put myself out there,” start with who your customer is.  So if you think about a Venn diagram, you have three circles.  One is you and you’re made up of all your life experiences, your values and beliefs, your hopes dreams and fears, basically how you see the world.  And then the second circle is your ideal customer, their values and beliefs, their life experiences, all that stuff.  And the intersection point between the two is what I call the Empathy Zone.  So this zone is where you draw your marketing messages from, it’s where your USP comes from, this is where all of the being yourself stuff comes from. 

John McIntyre: Yeah.

Megan Macedo: So a big mistake that a lot of people make is they hear like, “Oh you should just be yourself in your marketing,” and they go out and they just start writing stories about themselves and they’re pulling from like the entire circle [inaudible 21:15] is them and two things happen.  One is it can turn off a lot of your potential clients because you’re over-sharing and you’ve gone to zones that aren’t relevant to them.  The second thing is it can feel kind of vulnerable and it can feel kind of, “Oh, this is uncomfortable I don’t know if I want to do this.”

John McIntyre: Yeah.

Megan Macedo: So what they don’t get is that you tell your stories and you show yourself, but really what you’re doing is you’re telling your customers their own stories.

John McIntyre: What do you mean by that?

Megan Macedo: So you you’re pulling from the empathy zone which means you’re identifying something in your ideal customer.  So you’re like, “Ok, well I know that my customers have a lot of fear around this area and so like something I might write about is I know that a lot of business owners out there, just because of the nature of what they do and their [inaudible 22:05] all have this kind of fear of—they feel a little bit like a fraud sometimes, they feel a little bit like an imposter.  They’re always like maybe just like one or two steps ahead of their clients and they fear the day that a client comes along and asks them to do something that they don’t know how to do.  So I know, ok my clients have a kind of weak spot around this, so what I’ll do is I won’t tell a story about a client feeling like that.  I’ll be like, “Ok, when’s the time that I felt like that, when’s the time that I was afraid of being found out or I felt like an imposter?”  So I’m telling a story from my own life but really I’m reading down a page from their diary.

John McIntyre: It’s interesting because one thing that’s going on here is it like the story is not the important part, it’s the emotion that happening.  So when you tell a story about the time that you [fear 22:55] or the time you were scared of saying something, that kind of thing.  What it does is while—I mean this is how we all communicate, is when you’re telling that story, yeah you’re telling it and they’re hearing your story about you.  But they’re imagining the story, you know, we all imagine ourselves in a story.  So if you tell a story like that, they’re putting themselves in those shoes and imagining the same thing happening to them.  Just like when we go to the movies the reason the movie’s interesting is because we’re living through the actors on the screen. 

Megan Macedo: Vicariously?

John McIntyre: Vicariously!  That sells.  I can’t believe I couldn’t think of that, I want to be a writer. 

Megan Macedo: [Laughing]

John McIntyre: But yes, so living vicariously through the actors on a screen that’s what’s happening when you tell that story. 

Megan Macedo: Yeah, so it’s exactly the same thing in your marketing and you should think of it in those terms.  You should think like you’re writing a mini movie, every email you write is like a mini movie so you have to be sure and ok, “Well how can I let them live vicariously through me?  Not just to see how their life as it is but also how they aspire to be?”  So I like tell—so usually what I do is I’ll tell a story that relates the emotion.  So it’s like I’ve identified, “Ok, they feel like fraud and these scenarios, I’m gonna tell a story of a time when I felt like a fraud.”  And then the resolution at the end is usually kind of—it’s not like it’s cheesy but everything’s great but it’s usually like a positive affirmation of their identity in a way.  So it’s kind of like saying, “Yeah, this stuff happens.  I’m sure you felt like this before and if you’re in business, if you’re an entrepreneur you’re out at the edge, you’re a leader, you have to go into these rounds.”  And this is just like sometimes it’s hard, sometimes it doesn’t feel good but this is part of the game, this is who we are, this is what we signed up for.

John McIntyre: It’s funny, one thing I really think it’s kind of interesting is like when people think about like being themselves it’s kind of like we think it’s something you can’t script out, you know you can’t turn into a formula because it’s unique and it sounds like sketchy.  But one way I think about it and the way this makes a lot of sense is when I’m gonna write an email or when we write a sales letter, yeah it’s about, you know, you think about the benefits and the [hooks 25:02] and all that kind of thing.  But when it comes to the story you’re absolutely right on this idea that the story has to be told, like I can’t just tell any random story, the story has to be something that’s gonna resonate with the person on the other end and they’re thinking, “Man, this person gets me, it makes so much sense.  I wanna be…”  You know they wanna be you or they’re thinking, “This guy’s just like me, he understands exactly what I’m going through,” yeah.

Megan Macedo: Yeah, totally.  And most people or the bad copywriters will stop, they’ll do that but they’ll stop at a really kind of superficial level.  So they’ll stop at the problem that the product solves, so it’ll be like, you know, “Ok, what problem has this product solved?  Ok, I’ll share with it, I’ll tell a story that demonstrates that I also had this problem and now it’s solved.”  But the really good ones dive deep down into the psyche of the customer.  So it’s almost like, you know, the customer comes, we’ll read the sales page and they’ll watch a video whatever and they’ll come away being like, “I don’t really know why I like that guy but there’s something right with him, I trust him.”  So it’s like—you almost like, because that’s something that I hear a lot from people as well.  It’s like, “You know I sell, I’ve a client who sells natural slate, it’s like I sell natural slate.  How many times can I write an email about natural slate?”  And it’s like—

John McIntyre: [Inaudible 26:20] what?

Megan Macedo: Natural slate, you know like for slate roofs?

John McIntyre: Oh, slate, like a slate roof.  Ok, ok, ok.  I didn’t know what you’re saying slate, natural slate.

Megan Macedo: My accent.  So he’s like, “How many emails can I write about slate?  Like people who need don’t care that badly about slate.”  But it’s like you can, you know, when you’re doing your marketing this way you can almost ignore what you sell in a lot of ways which is like incredibly freeing.  Whenever it comes they’ll have them gather your emails so I can stop because you’re connecting with your customer at an upper level.  So you know like whenever I’m talking to clients, whenever I’m writing emails about you feel like a fraud I’m not talking about marketing, I’m not talking about websites but they read the story and by the end of it they’re like, “I wanna buy, what are you selling?  I wanna talk to you, you know, it’s like you get me.”

John McIntyre: Yeah.  It’s interesting because like for the empathy to work the empathy has to, you know, really is that story.  It’s not enough to be like, “Well he’s a phrase that’s in my head.”  But it’s that, you know, I know it.  And it works, this is the funny thing, it works that you’re the copy writer and like I’m a copy writer and I know it, it works on me when I land on a page.  Because I have, unless I was completely desireless, of course it’s gonna work.  Because if I’m going through the day thinking, you know, I’ve got low energy and I’ve been eating too much bread and I didn’t want to get out of bed this morning, I couldn’t make it to the gym.  And then someone told a story about how that exact same thing happens it would be like, “Holy shit.  There’d be like whoa, whoa this guy is like exactly—he just nailed it right there.”

Megan Macedo: Yeah, yeah.  Totally.  And if they talked about the emotion of, you know, I didn’t want to get out of bed this morning then go to the gym and I felt like a complete piece of garbage.  And they describe that kind of like this real emotion that you experience then you’re completely sold.  You’re like, ok, it’s like they’ve been inside your head. 

John McIntyre: It’s incredible.  So I’m curious then, I’m gonna call you out on it.  What’s the story about you then that you share when it comes to this kind of stuff?

Megan Macedo: Wow, there’s been so many.  Ok, so something—I don’t know if I’ve ever written about this but from a copywriting perspective I definitely went through a phase where I was writing— I was a copywriter I was writing copy for clients and, you know, clients would ask questions, why’re you doing this, why’re doing that?  And I still—so outwardly I had the kind of [inaudible 28:45] like, “Ah, I know exactly what I’m doing,” and yes, you ask me questions I’ll tell you the answers, I’m talking to clients on the phone it’s like whatever their question was I had an answer because I had to have an answer.  But really behind the scenes I was like frantically, anytime I saw a new product about copywriting or book that I hadn’t read I felt like I just had like this tension and this kind of like massive sense of scarcity that like, “I have no idea what I’m doing here, look at all this stuff that I haven’t learned about copy writing.  And maybe the answers that I’m giving clients are not right.”  And I always had this like fear of other copywriters seeing my copy.  Because it was like, “Oh my God if they see my copy maybe they’ll see that, you know, it’s like oh no actually this is not good copy.” 

My biggest fear was like maybe I’m making like really obvious small mistakes.  Because it’s like as you learn to become a copywriter you [spot 29:47] like certain language and it’s like, “Oh God, why are they talking about, what are they saying?”  It’s simple things like don’t say price say investment and it’s like maybe there are things like that that I don’t know that other copywriters are looking at.  And, you know, saying like, “Oh my God she’s not a good copywriter,” and like I’d spoken to clients where they’d be like, “Oh, I spoke to this copywriter and he said this other guy who I thought was good is rubbish,” and it was like, “Oh God, maybe this is happening about me.”  And it was all entirely in my head but it was like there was a period of time where I just couldn’t shake that sense of [inaudible 30:26] and that sense of like I don’t know if I’m any good.  And I think that all copywriters go through that because it’s only natural.  And also when you live in a world where there’s like a new copywriting product that comes out every 30 seconds, you physically can’t digest everything.

John McIntyre: Yeah.

Megan Macedo: So you’re getting over that kind of [inaudible 30:49] so it’s a huge thing for me and that happened at the time when I went and did the Be Yourself marketing stuff because really what was going on was I was trying to be all things to all men and it was like I was trying to be an expert in every tiny little aspect of copywriting and it was like, “You know what?  That’s not who I am and that’s not what I wanna do.”  And it’s like when you go into being yourself you get this like kind of confidence that comes with it.  Where it’s like this is my area, this is what I do, this is what I’m good at, this is what is naturally a great fit for me.  And you have this new kind of confidence and also it gives you permission to be like, “Oh that thing over there, that’s not really my area, let me put you in touch with someone who’d be better to write copy in that niche or whatever it is.

John McIntyre: Yeah, yeah.  Nice.  Ok, ok.  So then what happened?  Was there a turning point where you—because I think this is really interesting, this is really relevant.  What was the turning point that triggered like to going from the scarcity thinking to, you know, “I’ve got this.”  Was there a single moment when it sort of clicked or was like a very gradual process that will, you know, confidence that built over time?

Megan Macedo: It was kind of a gradual thing but the moment where it solidified was I did a day’s consulting with Perry Marshall, he came to London a few years ago and he hot seated me.  And this was what I kind of wanted to work on where I was like, “Oh God, I feel like my business is doing one thing but I really care about another thing and there is an overlap but I haven’t quite made it all work yet.  And so we talked through it for the day and didn’t come away with anything like crystal clear, ok this is what I should do, but I had more clarity in my head like where I wanted to go.  But I decided, soon as I’d spent all that money on the consulting, then I should at least do something.  So Perry had kind of flippantly suggested that I should do a 30 in 30, 30 emails in 30 days. 

So it’s like, ok I’ll do this 30 in 30 and I didn’t really have an outcome for it, it’s just like oh, I’ll start putting myself in [inaudible 32:58] it’ll just be a way to make sure that I do something with the stuff I’ve learned.  And that 30 in 30, I think you can still get on my website, I call it 30 days of self disclosure and that was where I started putting myself into my marketing and basically kind of practicing what I had been quietly preaching.  And that was when—when I did that and I started to see the response it was getting from my list, that was like whenever it kind of like clicked.  Then it was like ok—like the sense of confidence came from there.  It was like, ok this is the thing, this works, I don’t need to worry about it I just need to go with it.

John McIntyre: Nice.  Yeah, I can see it on your website right here.  That’s very cool.  So we’re right on time here but it sounds like one of the best ways for someone to—next steps for someone to go check out would be this course.  But if people want to learn more about you or about the self-disclosure thing or even about this general idea of being vulnerable, where’s the best place for them to do that?

Megan Macedo: So the best place to go, we made a lot of film at the Amber last year which kind of sums it all up, it’s like 12 minutes long, you can see it on meganmacedo.com/b-yourself.

John McIntyre: Great.  What I’ll do is I’ll have a link to that in the show notes at the mcmethod.com.  I just found the video here, so this looks interesting.  A film about one business owner’s journey from entrepreneurial blog and personal crisis to freedom fulfilling marketing that matters.  Very cool.  Megan, thanks for coming on the show.

Megan Macedo: Thanks for having me, John, it’s been fun.