TCC Podcast #256: Solving Big Marketing Problems with John Mulry

John Mulry (yes, you saw that right) joins us for the 256th episode of The Copywriter Club podcast. John is a direct marketing expert who was trained by Dan Kennedy. He’s the creator of Email Academy Pro and Expert Authority Formula. Currently, John’s the Director of Marketing for Todd Brown Marketing*. If you want to be seen as an expert in your field, this is the episode for you. Here’s how it goes down: The process of writing a book at supersonic speed. Bringing direct response marketing to different countries. Going from fitness expert to marketing master. How helping people can look different for everyone. Bridging the gap to help business owners connect on a deeper level with their audience. The key to being seen as the expert. How unplanned events and experiences can change your life immensely. Should every copywriter write a book? Finding joy in finding your first clients. The acquisition of new skills and how to accelerate your business. Do you need to be great at sales to be great at marketing? What it’s like being the Director of Marketing for Todd Brown. How to acquire new customers in a crowded market. Best practices for building a 3 part acquisition funnel. How to engineer your offer to get repeated stripe notifications. What is AOV and why it’s important for your funnel. The real job of copywriters. (Hint: it isn’t to write words.) Want to uplevel your marketing skills? Listen to the episode or read the transcript below. *Since recording John has transitioned into taking over as COO of Todd Browns Sister Company E5 Agency The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground E5 Nation Facebook Group  Full Transcript: Rob:  One of the things we love about being copywriters is that we're not just hired to make our client's words sound good, we're hired to solve problems. But here's the thing, clients don't always understand that that's what they're asking us to do. They come to us with projects and ask things like, "Can you write my website or can you help with a case study or a sales page?" What they're really asking for is help solving a bigger problem, help me sound professional or help me prove that I can do what I say I can do, or help me sell more products and make more money. The more we sell ourselves as experts in solving complex marketing problems, the more we're able to work with great clients and earn more money. Today's guest for The Copywriter Club Podcast is John Mulry. John is the Director of Marketing for MFA, that's Todd Brown's company, and he is focused on solving very complex marketing problems for Todd and for Todd's clients. And what he's shared in this interview may give you some ideas on how to do that for your own clients and in your own business. But before we get to our interview with John, good news, Kira is back. Hey, Kira. Kira:  Hi. Hey, Rob. Good to be back. Rob:  Yes. How have you been? It's been a while. Kira:  I've enjoyed the podcast interviews while I was away where every intro, I feel like you were like, "And Kira's still on maternity leave." I feel like towards the end it sounded like maybe there was a little bit more frustration in that over the last few episodes, but I'm back. Rob:  I don't think I was frustrated. If it sounded that way, I'm sorry then. Kira:  Maybe it was just to me. But yeah, I'm happy to be back on the podcast. I've had a fun time listening to other copywriters speak on the podcast and add their commentary and their thoughts. I think it's strengthened the podcast. So I feel like you don't really need me here. I'm just going to leave right now. I don't think you need me here at all. Rob:  We definitely had more than one person offer to take your place in the future should you decide to make maternity leave permanent? So who knows? Kira:  Tell me who they are, I will fight them. Rob:  Well, we'll see that for- Kira:  They'll hunt me down. Rob:  Yeah, exactly. Kira:  Rob, how do you feel like running the show over the last few months, I guess, what is your biggest takeaway from running the show, Sans, Kira and building the show in any way? Rob:  It's been fun. Obviously, I missed your insightful question asking when I'm doing interviews on my own, like the one that we're going to be doing here in just a second, it's just me and John talking. But it's also fun to get insights from other people beyond you and me. I think that you and I have said a lot of things, we kind of repeat ourselves sometimes. There's only so many ways that we think about niching or experiences that we have. And so it's been fun adding some additional voices and I think moving forward, that's something that we're going to continue to do. So it won't always be you and me jumping in here and making comments, but it might be you and someone else or me and someone else and sometimes it'll be you and me and we'll just see how it all kind of moves forward. So it'll be a lot of fun. Kira:  Okay. Sounds good. So let's jump in to all the serious stuff like this podcast is sponsored by the Copywriter Think Tank. That's our mastermind for copywriters and other marketers who want to do more in their businesses, maybe like creating a new revenue stream or stepping on stage or creating a new product, podcast, a video channel, maybe you want to build an agency or a product company, maybe you want to become the best known copywriter in your niche. High paying clients call because you're the name everyone in your industry knows. That's the kind of thing we help copywriters do in the Think Tank. To learn more, visit copywriterthinktank.com. Rob:  Okay. So as we usually do, let's take this episode off with John's story. It gets a little crazy at times. So I think you guys are going to like listening to what John has to share about becoming a marketing strategist. John:  It's a funny story as it all kind of stems from me being in a similar position that people be in when they start their own business, they start their own venture, side hustle or whatever it may be. So I had come back from a year in South America. So originally I was in the corporate finance world and maybe we can dive into South America in a bit, but I was originally in corporate finance and I completely hated it. And I was working the typical 9:00 to 5:00 for somebody else and it was just, I was miserable. I was depressed. I was miserable. I was drinking more often than not, and it was just that something had to happen. So I decided to head off to South America with my friend at the time who was in London. And the two of us went to South America and volunteered for the year and traveled around for a year. And while I was away over there, I changed an awful lot specifically from a health and fitness point of view. And I kind of made the decision that when I would eventually come back to Ireland that I was going to grow up my own in some way, shape or form. So when I got back to Ireland, I started putting plans into place to start my own fitness business and personal training business because I changed so much from a fitness point of view and a health point of view. And I had a big shift from unhealthy drinking the whole time to actually looking after myself and seeing the results from that. So I got qualified and everything else and did the courses in self-fund, then started my own business and quickly realized that it wasn't just a case of opening up the doors and people would flood in the door, you actually had to do stuff to get people in the door. And this was just completely new to me. I was sure because I was good at what I did and I got results and that's enough, but obviously we know that it's not. We have to do a lot more to get our names out there, to get people in the door and so on and so forth. So I started studying and looking into... Well, first of all, before I started studying, I started looking into different ways to market myself. And what I initially started doing was blogging. So it's just basically telling my story online. I started a really simple and ugly WordPress blog, just kind of blogging articles and stuff that was interesting to me and stuff like that. And while I was doing that, I started to kind of trying to find out how can I get more blog visitors, what can I do to get more people to the website and so on and so forth. I started kind of falling into this world of marketing. And from there, it kind of snowballed and got sucked into a lot of different areas. But specifically the idea of direct response marketing really hit home with me because if I do X, I will get Y. And Y may be a good result or a bad result, but at least I know what that result is. So then from there I came across a guy called Dan Kennedy, which I'm sure everybody is familiar with. And I just had enough of his very direct approach, no nonsense approach, no BS approach. And I started to listen to a lot what he was saying, but also started to do what he was saying to do as well, which I feel, and I'm sure you'll agree that so many people that they do listen to a lot of things and they do follow a lot of things, but the implementation side of things could sometimes let them down. One of the things that I learned from Dan initially was if you want to get results in your market, whether it's a local market or not, you need to stand out. And he himself, he used his books to stand out. So I was like, well, if it works for Dan, I'm going to create... Nobody in my market at the time locally had their own book or a tool that I could use to get clients for themselves. So I said, right, I'm going to start working on my own book. And I remember I arrived home one day from the office to Jess and Jess is a journalist, Jess is an amazing editor, amazing writer, and I said, "I'm going to write a book.