TCC Podcast #383: The Non-Negotiables with Joanna Wiebe

Success in business isn't easy. But finding success requires you to do things you may not love—like creating relationships with potential customers daily, working on your business (not your client's) every day, or even going all in on a daily writing habit. In the 383rd episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, Kira and Rob spoke with copyhackers Joanna Wiebe who says these (and several other daily activities) are her non-negotiables. They happen every day—no matter what. If creating your own daily non-negotiable is all you get out of this episode, it will be well worth your time, but there is so much more. So check it out... Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript. Stuff you should check out: The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Full Transcript: Rob Marsh: It’s been more than seven years since we last chatted with today’s guest on the podcast. In the meantime, she just keeps growing her business. This time around we asked her about the ins and outs of working with family members, building authority, and doing what she calls the daily non-negotiables. Hi, I’m Rob Marsh, one of the founders of The Copywriter Club. And on today’s episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, Kira Hug, and I interviewed copywriter and founder of CopyHackers Joanna Wiebe. Many of you know that Kira and I met in one of Jo’s programs. So we owe a lot to her. But just as importantly, Joanna is one of those online personalities who is just plain generous with her help and advice. And that’s likely a big part of why she’s been so successful. As usual, we think you’re going to want to stick around for this one. But first, this episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast is brought to you by The Copywriter Underground. I’ve told you about the benefits you get as a member. We’ve been working hard on how to make The Underground even more useful and helpful to the copywriters and content writers who are members… if you listened to last week’s episode with Csaba Borzasi, you heard him mention the scorecard he uses to close 100% of his prospects on sales calls. We didn’t have a lot of time to discuss what the scorecard includes or how he uses it, but Csaba agreed to share all of that with the members of The Copywriter Underground. That presentation happens later this week and will be available in the Underground for a limited time. If you’d like to learn how to close 100% of your prospects on sales calls—by the way, that’s not a guarantee, but you will see how Csaba does it—you need to be IN the copywriter underground, which you can do by visiting thecopywriterclub.com/tcu. And Csaba’s presentation isn’t the only upcoming exclusive we’ll be adding in the underground. We’ll have more to tell you about in the coming weeks.  thecopywriterclub.com/tcu. Now to our interview with Jo… Kira Hug: All right, I'm gonna kick this off. You know, we're kicking off 2024, feeling mostly good so far, right? But when we look back at 2023, it's hard to not avoid the mammoth changes that took place in the writing space and the impact on the writers that we all know, and how difficult it was for many writers. Not all writers, some writers had great years, but for many, they struggled. And so, I would love to hear from you and your perspective on just like what are these shifts that you saw and what is working today that we should pay attention to in the writers that are more successful? Joanna Wiebe: Yeah. Rob Marsh: That'll only take an hour to answer. Kira Hug: I can't ask that in the last 10 minutes. Rob Marsh: Yeah, we'll just let you go for an hour. We'll end the episode and we'll just have you come back another time for everybody else's questions. Kira Hug: We have you for the next four hours, right? Joanna Wiebe: Yeah, no, absolutely. And I want to hear what y'all have to say about this too. I can say my take. I know 2023 started off super scary for everybody, right? I mean, 2022, November, December was when people started flipping because of chat GPT. What was so funny, wasn't it funny? I was watching, I think it was John Oliver, his HBO show he does once a Sunday, whatever it's called. And they were talking about AI. And they were cutting to clips of this expert on AI who was saying what was going to change. And he's like, so this will impact copywriters and lawyers. And the second he said it, I was like, OK, wait. Suddenly, people know what copywriting is?  For all of these years, no one's had a clue what we do. And suddenly, it's all like, everybody knows what we do. And this is going to be replaced. So I was annoyed by that. But I think that kind of set the tone, like hearing those sorts of things set the tone for a lot of people. And I get it. It was like, It was a get on board, you know, befriend the bear before it eats you and then be a slave to the bear, which is scary and no one wants to do that. Writers already feel so insecure. Everybody already thought they could do our job. So to have this extra layer of like, oh, no, really, you don't have a job anymore. I know it turned off a lot of people who were already kind of spazzing because COVID had hurt everybody so badly, right? Like you're in mental recovery from COVID, then this news that your job is being taken away. And then everybody who's been working for software companies, sees all of those layoffs. So yeah, super tough year. And I think that it's one of those years for me where I'm like, yeah, some people didn't make it through. And God bless them and everybody who did make it through God bless us all. Because it's tough. It's obviously a tough go like that, simplifying it dramatically. The people who stayed are what I'm seeing at least are the people who've stayed and been successful about it. We're never doing the work that AI does. Anyway, they like, and by that, I don't I mean, I think what we've seen is AI can take your research and help you analyze it. So that's good using it as an assistant, which we've all heard, but like, so few people actually do, you know, use chat GPT as their or whatever tool, you can say Jasper, but everybody just uses chat GPT. So yeah, it's those who are able to, use it to make their work better and not be scared or intimidated by it. But that was really hard to come by, right? Like even saying that now, I know people are going to hear that and go like, sure. Like, oh, brother, it's so easy for you to say, just use it. But what if I'm a junior copywriter? Like a junior copywriter who doesn't know how to do what even chat GPT can do.  So those are the ones who, it's hard to admit it, but if you were junior and you didn't take this job very seriously, if you conflate content and copy, you probably had a really hard year and were thinking about leaving or you left. And so the ones that fit the question are like, what's working for those who stuck it out and are surviving now and are seeing their businesses grow. Like the people I'm seeing businesses, freelancing services, taking off in ways that we didn't before and so like it's just to me it's like it's the staying power one take your craft seriously so seriously that it's a no-brainer that I should hire you even if you use AI even if my company uses AI anybody who uses AI knows like wait is this good? Am I allowed to use this? Is this accurate? Is this even right? So if you took your job seriously and you took AI, seriously, not as a threat, but as an opportunity, and you stayed the course, those seem to be the people who are succeeding.  I know it feels like a place of privilege to say that, right? Like, how do you stay the course if you're not making money? How do you take the job seriously if you're still really new at learning it, and juniors aren't getting the same level of employment that more strategic, senior, conversion focused, or even just brand and creative and like big picture thinking focused copywriters are able to make. But I would say those things. Take the job seriously. Take AI seriously. Stick around. That's what I saw working. Rob Marsh: Yeah, I think that's all smart. And I'm not disagreeing with you at all, but to me, AI feels like it was a smaller threat than the economy overall, especially in the SaaS and tech space where there were so many layoffs. There were so many changes in marketing budgets. And while, of course, AI has had an impact just like you described, I think that AI is getting blamed for a lot of the other stuff that's happening in marketing.  The other thing, and we haven't necessarily talked about this, but something that's happened over the last year, I'm sure you've seen it—everybody I know has seen it—our inboxes are flooded with the offers, I can find you 30 different potential calls… clients… whatever. I've helped somebody add $40,000 a month to their job. And because that outreach thing has happened (and a big part of that is AI too) I think the way that we have traditionally done outreach and found clients and direct messaged, that kind of stuff has slowed way down as impactful as well. And so it feels like, it's AI's fault, but a lot of it's just the economy and the way people are marketing, too. I don't know. We could have an argument about this. Kira Hug: Let's just blame AI. Let's just blame it. Use AI as a punching bag. It's more fun. Joanna Wiebe: I like having a villain. A villain is good and identifiable. Yes. So I hear you. So for me, the economy, yes, it's been hurting a lot of people. Then there's the other side of like, you know, what's really going on with layoffs? Is it just like a really good chance to scale back on, you know, there's an NPR show about this, people talk about this, the possibility that the layoffs are like, well, I have a bloated team, and it's hard for me to get rid of them. But if the economy is bad, and if Salesforce just laid off 10% of their staff, then I can lay off 10% of mine too. And, and it's not like,