TCC Podcast #155: Leveling Up to Better Clients with Nigel Stevens

Marketing OG, Nigel Stevens, is our guest for the 155th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. Nigel is in the middle of a move from Asia to Spain and we caught him as he was packing his bags to talk about the business he's built, his experience in content marketing and SEO, and maybe most interesting... how to raise your prices and up level the clients you work with. Here's what we covered... •  how he turned an English degree into a position as the marketing OG •  why he left a cushy job in San Francisco to create his best job •  what it takes to build an agency from the ground up •  the early days… how he started finding clients and growing his leverage •  how he grew his confidence charging more money •  value based pricing and getting better referrals •  his discovery and proposal process and what he wants to learn •  how to build your portfolio of clients (most copywriters won’t do this) •  what’s working (and not working) right now in content marketing •  how he figures out what kind of content to create for clients •  what copywriters need to know about SEO (Nigel’s answer surprised us) •  how he helps clients understand the right approach to SEO content •  how he’s built his authority to engender trust with his clients •  the future of content marketing It's a good discussion that will get you thinking about the kind of business you're building and the next steps. To hear it, click the play button below, or download the episode to your favorite podcast player. Readers can scroll down for a full transcript.   The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Nigel’s website Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground   Full Transcript: Rob:   What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, the work processes, and their habits, then steal and 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 155 as we chat with marketing specialist, Nigel Stevens, about what it takes to build a marketing agency, what copywriters need to know about SEO, building authority, attracting, and working with really big clients, and what it's like to live and work in Barcelona. Kira:   Welcome, Nigel. Nigel: Thanks, great to be here. Kira:   Yeah, great to have you here, and we're going to see you in just a couple weeks in Barcelona because you will be presenting at our Think Tank retreat, so excited to meet you in person. Until then, we can get to hear all about your story today. So why don't you share your story and how you ended up as the marketing OG? Nigel: Yeah, so it's a little bit of a winding story as it tends to go. So, I got an English degree, got out of school, realized I had no idea what I wanted to do, somehow found my way into a job doing copywriting for this weird mattress startup that no longer exists anymore. And then, I got a job offer to be a SEO analyst, which I was exactly zero percent qualified to do. But I somehow got the job, and I went from being more of a kind of writer and qualitative marketer to then having to also pick up some quantitative skills, and then I had a couple more jobs, worked at BigCommerce for a while, e-commerce platform doing kind of a combination of SEO and content marketing. And then, after a little while there, I decided I kind of wanted to blow up my life. So, I left my job, moved to Thailand and then started taking on work. And it escalated quickly, one thing led to another. And now, I have a team, and we work with various SaaS clients and other companies. So that's the summary. Rob:   Yes, quick summary, but can we talk a little bit about at least this last section of your career, building an agency and what has taken to do that? I'm sure we can ask other questions about some of the stuff you've done earlier, but really curious, what does it take to build an agency that big companies are willing to work with? Nigel: Yeah, so I guess to... you got to put one foot in front of the other, and the first foot is you have to have a connection to something. So, when I'd left BigCommerce, they were still really interested in working with me, and that was my first thing. And then, through a couple people I knew there, someone hit me up and said, ‘Hey, do you want to help with this site?’ And I really didn't even know when I'd left my job, how much do I want to work anymore? I was sort of totally willing to do everything or nothing. I didn't really know. And then, I got an intro and started working on one thing. And then, as I got one more intro, I reached this little inflection point where I was like, ‘Okay, I've said yes to things because they're really cool opportunities, and if I want to say yes to anything else, my time does not scale linearly with these opportunities, so I'm going to have to get help.’ And that was a huge inflection point for me. And I think it's a really big decision that people have to make and decide what they want. Because on the one hand, you have a lot more to just... trade-offs are everything, right? You have ultimate flexibility when you work with yourself. Because you can say yes to things, you can say no to things, you're sort of... all the commitments you make are up to you. And then, when you bring on other people, it's sort of like you're raising the stakes a little bit. And, yeah, I feel like that's not the question you asked originally, but that's where I ended up. Kira:   Yeah, and I do want to hear more about your team and structure and growth, but first, I can't overlook you blowing up your life, in your own words. Blowing up your life, leaving your job, moving to Thailand, taking your cat, can you just tell us... let's just talk about that. Where were you living at the time? What did your life look like at that time? How did you decide... What was the impetus to decide that you wanted to leave? Just, what happened? Nigel: Yeah, so I was in San Francisco and everything was cool. I had a good job, it was comfortable, I liked the work I was doing. I worked with great people, and I knew that I had to leave because I had everything that should have been perfect on paper and I still wanted to leave. So I took that as a sign that, ‘Oh, there's just other stuff I want to do.’ And just everybody's sort of cut out for different things. I've talked to super talented people who I think could do way better than me for example as sort of building their own company or as consultants, but it's just not what they want. And it was just sort of something in the way I've constructed. I don't know. I just didn't want to be in an office every day and I didn't just want to just leave the job. One was practical purposes, I was in San Francisco, so if you leave your job in San Francisco, you have San Francisco run rate hanging over you. That's pretty scary. But I also just wanted to do something super random and put myself in a position where if I woke up without a job what would I do? And I didn't want to be in a position where I was financially forced to work, and then I could talk myself into having to do it. I just wanted to figure out that I did want to do it. So, the irony is I left my job sort of ready to be a hippie in the mountains in Thailand, and then ended up taking on way more work and running a company. But since I did it on my own terms, I never felt like, ‘Oh, I have to do this, I have to do this.’ I was like, ‘Oh, this is a cool opportunity, I could work on this,’ and ‘Oh, I want to keep doing this and saying yes. So, I guess I'd better get some more support with everything I'm doing.’ Rob:   Can you talk a little bit more about that? What was that transition like, and how did you start reaching out to or finding the clients you started doing even more work with? How did that all develop in the early days? Nigel: Yeah, so it really is sort of like building the foundation of a house where... having success is... whether you want to call it the agency or freelancer or consultant or whatever, it's your leveraging the trust that people have in you. And every project you can work on and have a success, you can then contribute to your narrative. And then, you have a stronger narrative, and you have more people that can speak to that narrative. At first I had this narrative of, ‘Oh, I worked at BigCommerce.’ And we did really cool things there. I think in a short period of time, we 8X'd their organic blog traffic. We were scaling it really quickly. And that was the first part of the story. But it's still in a company. I was working with a lot of other people, and I was a little less confident. And then, when I got a opportunity at another startup, and it was actually... I didn't have to make up a story. They had to raise money within four months and grow their traffic. And if they didn't do that, the company might've collapsed. And I came on with a friend of mine who sort of sourced the opportunity but didn't have time to work on it. And I worked on it with him, and that went well. And then, after that, I had the combination of those two stories. And then, sort of people I knew from both of those places were a lot more willing to recommend me. And then, when people came to them with opportunities, then they could say, ‘Oh, Nigel has done this at this place, and that at that place.’ And then, having done both of those, I went from being not very confident to like, ‘Oh, maybe I am okay and can do a decent job at this.’ And then, you do a third one, and it kind of just multiplies and multiplies like that. Kira:   Okay, so it sounds like clearly experience helps build confidence which helps really build a business. What else did you do around this time that really helped accelerate your business growth?