TCC Podcast #260: Getting to Know Us with Rob Marsh and Kira Hug

Mentors. You look up to them and admire how they can help you, but have you ever wondered… “who are they in real life?” For the 260th episode of The Copywriter Club podcast, Rob Marsh is the interviewee, and he shares answers ranging from lessons in business to his go-to self-care routine. Ready to check out the inner workings of Rob Marsh? How to navigate when business moves slower. The skill of generating big ideas. Is it innate? Analyzing your time and productivity. Are you trying to do too much? Does Rob ever struggle with writing copy? – Or is he a copy magician? The inside scoop on Rob’s best and worst clients. Raising teens and knowing when to run. The lessons you can learn from your parents and how it applies to your business. Rob’s self-care routine. What Rob hopes to do better in the next year. What is Rob Marsh’s X-factor? Rob’s advice for the introverted copywriter. Why you need to send yourself a check for 1 million dollars. Money mindset and unlearning things from childhood. How did Rob become a reading fiend? Breaking news: Rob the romantic?! One of the best business books Rob has read. Listen to the episode with your favorite earbuds or read the transcript with your favorite eyes. The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground The Road Less Stupid Ready, Fire, Aim Full Transcript: Kira:  Hi Rob. Rob:  This is uncomfortable, I have to admit, to have you interviewing me. Obviously, we've done, I don't know, 200 and almost 70 episodes of this podcast and got to admit, I don't love being interviewed on my own podcast for some reason. Kira:  Yeah, well, it's almost like you don't trust me. Rob:  Maybe that's what it is. That's probably what it is. Wow, 28 seconds in and we've nailed it. We know exactly what's the problem here. Kira:  I mean, we've had five years together in business and 270 episodes, but you still don't trust me. I don't know what else I have to do. Rob:  Yes, I'm going to have to think about that. That's a question I don't think I can answer right now. Kira:  All right, so today's going to be fun, fun for me, not fun for Rob. We decided to, well, we didn't decide, I think I decided that I was going to interview you. Rob:  No, you decided. This was not a mutual decision. Kira:  Yes, just like our underwater pool photoshoot a couple of years ago. So, today, we are going to get to know Rob better. And I'm asking questions based off what I would like to know about you, Rob. And so, you can share some of your wisdom with us, and also, just some personal tidbits here and there just so we can get to know the real Rob Marsh a little bit better. Rob:  And I think, if anybody's listening, they're like, "Wait a second, I think I'd rather get to know the real Kira Hug better 10 episodes," we'll be back and we're going to do this all the other way around. Kira:  I will be sick, sick that day. It'll be out sick. Rob:  Yeah. Kira:  No. Rob:  Trust who is the question now. Kira:  Let's kick it off with, okay, let's just start with some easy questions. We've been building TCC together over the last five years. So, I'm just curious, what are some of the big lessons you've learned from building this specific business? Rob:  Yeah, when you told me you're going to ask me this, I'm still kind of trying to figure out what are the biggest lessons. I think, I mean, there's so many. But I think number one is when you build a business like this, and The Copywriter Club is different from you building a copywriting business or me building my copywriting business. Obviously, we're doing a lot of things together. And we're doing a lot of things that we probably couldn't do on our own. And so, number one lesson, I think, is just having a partner allows you to do more because you can focus on different areas of the business. You can play to your strengths. And hopefully, you and I have partners that make up for some of our weaknesses. So, it's not all strengths and nobody's covering the weaknesses. But I think number one is that I could not have done this without you as my partner. I'm not sure if you could have done it without me. I won't presume to know the answer to that. But having a partner allows us to get more done. And so, that's maybe number one lesson. Number two lesson is that this should have been obvious, because this is always a business lesson. But things go slower than you want them to for all kinds of different reasons. Things always take longer than maybe we planned for or that we hope for. And so, yeah, just knowing that things sometimes have gone slower than what either one of us have wanted is a big takeaway. And maybe number three, we started out doing it all ourselves. And we did the podcast on our own. We built the first crappy website on our own. We were reaching out to people trying to make connections. We kind of cobbled together the first version of the Accelerator. And I think getting the business to the point where we grew past that where we couldn't DIY everything, we had to have a team and we had to get help, whether it was from VAs, whether it's from other people to help with marketing or even from mentors, I think, has been a big takeaway. I have never reached out to mentors in my freelance business before, before you and I had ... Right before we met, and so we've been a lot better as we built this business together and doing that. So, maybe those are three pretty big takeaways from this experience that I'm sure that there are more if I had even more time to think about it. Kira:  Yeah, I sent Rob the questions like 20 minutes before this interview. I should have given you some more prep time, but I appreciate you rolling with it. So, can you give an example of what moves slower than you were expecting? I'd love to hear some examples. Rob:  Yeah, I mean, I think in some ways everything moves slower. Because once you have an idea, you're like me in this way. This is one place where I'm not sure that we make up for each other's weaknesses. But we're both pretty focused on ideas. And wouldn't it be nice if we had this. And so, oftentimes, we'll come up with an idea is like, "Hey, maybe we should have a beginning copy course," or "Maybe we should have a program that does this particular thing." And we'll both agree, yeah, that's a great idea. But then the execution portion of it takes a lot more time or effort, or it's because it doesn't fit one of our top priorities for what we want to accomplish in doing the business, falls to the wayside. So, there's those kinds of things that we've got a lot of good ideas, it'd be great if they could just all happen now. But for all kinds of reasons, they don't happen now. And the best of them happen over time is you, me, our team as we build them. But a lot of times, I mean, there's still a huge list of ideas that we've had that we still haven't had time to even begin to tackle. So, 10 years from now, maybe The Copywriter Club is going to be this amazing collection of resources and trainings and all that stuff well beyond what we already have. And that's going to be an awesome day. But it may take us 10 years to get everything out of the idealist we've got. Kira:  I think I might be in my 80s by the time we finished the list. But that's a really good point. I think you and I complement each other really well and our strengths and weaknesses. But you're right, one area where we don't is we both are ideas people, as probably many of the listeners are as well. And so, you and I just send voice memos with tons of ideas. And they kind of drop. And now, we have a team. So, that's been really helpful. But see, Rob, we have more in common than we realize. This is great. This is so good. Rob:  There you go. And I mean, in all honesty, though, that's one of the things that make some of our programs so good is because you and I are both really good at ideas and identifying opportunities, those kinds of things that when people come to us and ask us for help, that's one place where we both shine, I think. And because you and I also come at life from two different places, we actually provide a pretty broad variety of ideas. It's like you could think about it in this way. And your approach is going to be maybe a little bit different from my experience and my approach. And so, being able to produce a lot of ideas for the copywriters that we work for, I think, makes that time that we were able to spend with them more effective. Kira:  That I think you just identified part of our x-factor that you and I have struggled to figure out, even though we help other people figure out their x-factor, the idea generation, so yeah, that's great. And I'm going to jump around to some like later questions, too, just to keep it kind of fun. So, Rob, I like to know what your favorite carnival food is. Rob:  Carnival food. Wow, it's been a long time since I've been at a carnival. It would probably be a churro or maybe a deep fry ... I don't know that I've ever had this at a carnival. But like how about a deep-fried Mars bar. It's definitely Carnival-esque. And they're quite good. I'm not talking about the American Mars bar. I'm talking about the UK Mars bar. So, it's basically deep fried Milky Way, but so good. Kira:  Is that a thing? I'm sure it's a thing. Rob:  Oh, yeah, it's definitely a thing. There's a fish and chip shop in Scotland that claims to be the originator or the place where it was invented. And it's quite good. Kira:  Okay, that's what we need at the next TCC IRL. That's the desert that we need. So, Rob, let's talk about where you struggle the most. Let's talk about your weaknesses. What do you struggle with the most in your business and in copywriting? So, let's talk about both. Rob:  So,