TCC Podcast #296: How to Use the C.O.U.R.S.E Framework to Launch Your Offer with Grace Fortune

On the 296th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, Grace Fortune joins the show. Grace a copywriter and course strategist for copywriters who are looking to launch a digital product. She uses the C.O.U.R.S.E framework to guide her clients through the launch process, and in this episode she gives our audience an inside look at how it works. Here’s how the episode breaks down: Grace’s transition from virtual assistant to copywriter to course strategist. How she overcame her fear of calling herself a copywriter. How she used her virtual assistant experience to carry over into the launch and marketing world. Why she decided to start controlling the narrative and how it’s helped her grow her referral network. Grace’s ‘why’ for helping copywriters create offers. The C.O.U.R.S.E framework and how you can use it for your own offers. When should we launch a course or digital product? Is it ever too soon to launch a product? The importance of collecting the right data and knowing your target audience. The mistakes copywriters are making when it comes to creating and launching a digital product. Why we shouldn’t let tech get in the way of launching and overcoming the perfectionistic tech mindset. What Disney does well and how we can implement it into our business. How to keep up with client relationships and keep people coming back. How to create a better client experience – Is it as difficult as we think? The secret to better client communication and avoiding scope creep and sticking with boundaries. How to overcome burnout as a copywriter. The process of growing a microteam and communicating with your contractors. Check out the episode by hitting the play button or read the transcript below. The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: The Accelerator Waitlist The Copywriter Think Tank Kira’s website Rob’s website Grace's website  The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Free month of Brain.FM Episode 255 Episode 271   Full Transcript: Kira Hug:  A lot of copywriters help their clients sell courses. Some copywriters have created their own courses and still, others help their clients create courses to sell to their customers. If you do any of those activities in your business or want to do them in the future, you'll want to stick around for this episode. Our guest today is Copywriter Grace Fortune. Grace is a copywriter accelerator graduate, a Think Tank member, and an expert in course creation. In today's episode, she walks us through her process for creating a course and shares a ton of ideas you can use to build your own copywriting business. Rob Marsh:  There's some good stuff in this one, but first this episode is brought to you by the Copywriter Accelerator. That is our program that's designed to give you the blueprint, the structure, coaching, and some challenges and community that will help you put together the pieces of your business and really create something that will continue to grow in the future. If you've done programs like Copy School or RMBC, you've done copywriting training and you know what you are doing as a copywriter, but you need help building the business side of your business. This is the program for you. It will help you go from overwhelmed freelancer to a fully-booked business owner. And we're going to be launching it again, this coming August. If you want to be told about that program when we launch, make sure you get on the waitlist so that you're first to hear about the details. We'll link to the wait list in the show notes. Kira Hug:  Let's jump into our interview with Grace. Grace Fortune:  The way that I got started was actually a few years ago. I started out as a virtual assistant working for a friend of mine who owned her own virtual assistant business. So I went on as her executive assistant, and then I basically learned so much from her. I learned all the backend things on how to run a business, including working with some copywriter clients. Working as a virtual assistant, I actually learned about you guys from one of your alumni from the Think Tank, Chanti Zak. And I started following you guys, watching what you do. And it just, it really inspired me to want to become a copywriter on my own as well as the clients that we had worked with. But I found a big fear of mine was actually calling myself a copywriter. I felt like copywriter was for the term copywriter was for people who had already achieved success, not for people who were waiting in the wings to achieve success. So as you know, when I first came into your network and joined the accelerator program, I was afraid to call myself that. And Rob, I still remember you talking sense into me and telling me that it was okay to call myself a copywriter, even though I hadn't achieved the success levels of people like Tarzan Kay or Laura Belgray, or even you guys. Rob Marsh:  Yeah. So, well, I'm glad that what I said helped bridge that gap. I'm curious, what were you doing as a VA, Grace, and how as you made the shift, as you gradually started calling yourself a copywriter, how did what you do change? Grace Fortune:  Yeah. So I'm glad you asked that because as a virtual assistant, basically everything that I was doing for my clients that I loved involved the course launch base. So I worked with a financial advisor, in fact, I'm still working with him and he is also a coach for other financial advisors. So what I've done on the backend for him basically taught me the entire life cycle of a launch. So I was able to incorporate that into what I learned and what I'm still learning as a copywriter. So it was just like a really, really sweet marriage of everything that I had been doing and everything that I have enjoyed so far. Kira Hug:  And how did you make the pivot Grace? So once you're like, "Okay, I know I want to be a copywriter. I'm not quite ready to call myself that yet, but I'm going to start moving towards that type of business." What are some concrete steps you took? Grace Fortune:  The biggest thing was just starting to call myself a copywriter. I had joined last year's TCC and IRL. And one of the things I believe it was Eman Ismail, I did a presentation and she was talking about controlling the narrative and how people start talking about you. So that was a really, really big shift for me. But concrete steps were really the obvious, starting to convert over how I talk about myself on social media, and how I started talking about myself to my clients. So I really stopped talking about myself as a virtual assistant. I just started talking about myself in terms of copywriting and launch strategy. Rob Marsh:  Again, as you're making this shift and talking about things differently, did you make a change in how you found clients and what you were doing to get in front of the right people for a different kind of project? Grace Fortune:  Yeah, so a lot of my clients are basically referral-based. So my biggest client, the Financial Advisor, was never afraid to talk about me. And he also referred me over to his existing network and I helped them with their own course launches and started talking to copywriters even more than I was before. So really I became very passionate about helping other copywriters launch their own programs and courses. So that was the biggest thing for me is just talking to people more, getting in front of the people that I wanted to start working with. Kira Hug:  And Grace, so what does your business look like today? What type of offers? Do you have a team? Can you just talk about where you are today? Grace Fortune:  Yeah, I can. So I am still doing some work as a virtual assistant for that client I was just telling you about. But right now, my offers are specifically geared toward copywriters, that's where I'm pivoting my business to. So I've just been inspired by one of our alumni from the Think Tank, Grace Baldwin, who when I was in a hot seat on the last day, talking about how to convert my offers to make them more relevant to copywriters, she had mentioned and most people had agreed that my offers weren't really speaking to copywriters where they are in their journey. So my goal is to help copywriters who have not launched products or courses before to do that. So my newest offer, I guess I'll just give you kind of a rundown of how it works. So the idea is that you come to me, we have a strategy call with some homework from the copywriter and I come up with several ideas on how to launch these ideas for products that they could potentially launch based on their audience, where their strengths are. And then I analyze the data for them and then give them basically a big package where they have products that they could potentially launch. There are also templates for sales emails they could write, social media copy to help promote the course, landing pages, sales pages, all sorts of different templates that they can use. And there's also, and this is an area that I've found during my research that really a lot of copywriters need help with is the technical aspect of a launch. So like they could, it would have a technical item, how they could launch a product and say, "Good job, you're teachable or gum road." Once I analyze the data, whatever I think would be best for them, there would also be a marketing plan guide with funnel map samples that they could use, all sorts of different email templates for purchase confirmations, welcome sequences, and even how to relaunch it in the future. Kira Hug:  And I remember that hot seat because it was a month ago. So I should remember that hot seat was not that long ago. I remember that hot seat because you talked about the why behind your business. And that's something that we often overlook when we're talking about business and our offers.