TCC Podcast #79: Learning while Getting Things Done with James Turner

Copywriter James Turner is our guest for the 79th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. We’ve known James for a few years now, so we’ve been saving up questions to ask him for a while. Here’s just a sample of what we covered... •  how James went from an English teacher in Japan to copywriter in Canada •  the jobs he took on as he started out in his career and what’s changed since •  his thoughts about retainers—the good and the bad •  his book ghostwriting experiment and what that involves •  why undercharging for work doesn’t serve you or your clients well •  how James gets more done with Pomodoros (and other tricks) •  “The power of asking” and how it got James a new business •  how automation can change your copywriting business •  why he started a podcast and the impact on his business •  how he networks (and his advice to copywriters who need to do more of it) James is the kind of copywriter we can all learn something from. Make sure you download this one to your favorite podcast app, or click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.   The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Hillary Weiss Laura Hanly Pomodoro Technique SNAP Copy Lianna Patch The Copy & Design Brew Podcast Oli Gardner (Unbounce) TCC IRL Business of Software ConversionXL CTAConf Turner Creative The other James Turner Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity   Full Transcript: Rob: 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 Kira and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast. Kira: You’re invited to join the club for episode 79, as we talk with freelance copywriter James Turner about ghostwriting a book, running a micro-agency like SNAP Copy, why he started a podcast, and what’s he’s learned from it, and what he’s done to manage his done and get everything done. Rob: Hey James! Kira: Welcome! James: Hello! Thanks for having me. Rob: Yeah, we’re glad that you’re here, finally! I mean again, another person that we should’ve talked to months ago; you’ve been on our radar, been in our circle of friends forever, and it’s about time you got here. So, thanks. James: Yeah. It’s a pleasure. I’m glad we waited; I have more things to say. Kira: Laughs. James: If you asked me a week ago, it would’ve been a mistake. Kira: Laughs. Rob: Laughs. James: Life moves fast! Kira: James, let’s start with your story. How’d you end up as a copywriter? James: So, I’ve been thinking about how to tell that story quickly. Long story short, I went from having an English degree to teaching English in Japan to working in HR at an English school in Japan, to being instructional designer in Fredericton, New Brunswick—little Fredericton, New Brunswick—to becoming a copywriter. That’s the story arc. The reason I specifically want to talk about the HR thing is because that was the first time I really, truly used words to their full power, I suppose, like in a persuasive way. If I may go a little bit into the story of that...? Rob: Please do. James: So we worked for this big school in Japan, this sort of conversational English school. My wife and I, we moved there; we lived in Japan for three and a half years. And, I was brought into the, sort of, the personal coordinator role in my last year there. They were sort of shaking up the top level foreign part of the company. Everyone above us was Japanese, so it was like a big Japanese company with all kinds of different arms of business, and the English school we were sort of at the top of...our column, if you will, our business arm. And, the morale was really crappy because the people before us had not done a good job internal communications, essentially. Like, it came down to sort of personality stuff, but at the end of the day, it was all a matter of how people were spoken to, typically in emails and that was basically what I did for the company. I mean I was myself, and I was friends with a bunch of teachers because I’d been there for a couple years, but in essence, I’d rewrote all of the sort of internal stuff, and most of the teachers were spread out over a long, large area—so we had about a hundred teachers going to forty-five different schools. So, the only real interaction they had with the company... and, so, you know, I think of these, like, now as a copywriter, I think that you know, we were all customers, in a way, you know? We had to buy into wanting to work there, to showing up and like representing the school in a positive way, and the only real interaction that we had with a company on a day-to-day basis was through these internal communications, and it made a big difference. Kira: So James, what did your first few copy jobs look like, beyond this role in HR, you know? Communicating and trying to keep the morale up. When you really jumped into copywriting, what types of jobs were you taking? James: My very, very first one was a product description job, and it was for a high-end whiskey decanter e-commerce store. And I got to describe...I think, fifty, or maybe thirty; no, maybe fifty...different whiskey decanters. It was a lot of fun! Laughs. Had a lot of fun with that job. There were three different brands, so I had this taxonomical sort of, you know, this brand gets this one line of intro sentence, and then, expands from there. And then they all had whimsical names, and...it was a lot of fun. That was my very first copy job. First client that I got, I should say, through the Copyhackers website. Rob: So tell us about your business today, the kinds of stuff that you work on, the projects that you take. What’s happened since those first couple of jobs that you took on? James: Well, I mean the main thing is, I have set a minimum, which those...that job would not be over, I suppose. So now, I try to do more strategic jobs that are...writing copy is not the only thing that’s involved, you know? I don’t love just writing what someone tells me to write, so it’s nice to sort of have some sway in whether that is the thing to write in the first place. I sort of pitch myself as someone who does emails and landing pages. Kira: So how did you get from where you were—writing product descriptions and taking your first few jobs—to a place now where it sounds like you’re kind of more of a consultant role, right, working on strategy and taking bigger projects, which we can get into. How do you get from there to here? Is there an easy way, or is it just time and experience, and just, kind of pounding the pavement? James: Yeah! Well, I think the biggest influxes of knowledge came through Joanna Wiebe’s various courses. Basically it got to the point where I’d read enough and learned enough about email marketing as a holistic thing, not just individual emails, that if I was hired to write a bunch of emails, I would take a step back and question whether this was the appropriate number or the right use of this particular type of email marketing, or you, how, you know, you ask a client, like, “How are you segmenting your list?” and they’re like, “What?” Laughs. And then you realize that... There comes a point, if you do enough learning, where you realize that you know more than you think you know. And that’s the point where you realize you have more to offer than just doing what people think they want. Rob: Interesting. So, the clients that you work with today, is it mostly conversion-oriented stuff, or is there a big mix of projects you take on? James: I’m still a bit of a mix. I like it that way. I’ve resisted obviously wise course of choosing a niche, or niche, as you like to say on here. Kira: Laughs. James: So yeah, I’d say it’s still a mix. Conversion....Persuasive writing. Kira: Right. James: I don’t do blog posts; I don’t like content where it’s just content for the sake of building authority. I like things that drive towards a point. So, in that sense I suppose it’s more conversion-oriented. Kira: And is it typically...I think you had a retainer client, maybe you have more than one retainer client...or is it one-off projects, or huge projects... Retainer clients, is it a mix of all of the above? James: It’s a mix, yeah. I went through a phase where I was like, “Retainers is the way to go!” Kira: Right! I remember that! James: Laughs. In the end, I didn’t like it as much. I much prefer a series of $2- to $10,000 jobs. You know? It keeps me on my toes; it gives me flexibility; it allows me to take time off, kind off, ad hoc. Not that a retainer can’t, but you have to be more planned. But yeah. I’ve swung over that way, and I’ve come back, and I think that I prefer this. Kira: Laughs. Rob: Can we go a little deeper on that? Because, I think a lot of writers think, “Hey, retainers? That’s the gold mine; I have monthly income coming in.” Let’s talk about the good and the bad: why you wanted retainers at first, and why you moved away from them, you know. What were the things that you really didn’t like about the retainer projects? James: Well, like, for one thing, they’re just this surface level. I’m naturally curious; I want to try new things; I want to do different things, and I think I—at some level—got a little bored just writing, sort of, the same thing, writing for the same product, writing for the same group of customers. Like, I really enjoy digging into the customer research, and, not that you only get to do it once, but, you can’t really justify continued research with the same retainer client unless they’ve got a huge business, or are trying something new all the time. So, stagnation, I suppose, is one thing. Another thing I felt was just it takes up a chunk of your time,