TCC Podcast #452: Surviving an Economic Downturn with Topaz Hooper

What do you do when the worst happens in business? Are you prepared? In this episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, I spoke with copywriter Topaz Hooper about the steps you should be taking now to prepare for an economic downturn. The ideas we talk about here are good business practices even if the economy booms. But they become more important when things are uncertain. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.   Stuff to check out: American Copywriter Co. Topaz's new Instagram The first interview with Topaz The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Research Mastery   Full Transcript: Rob Marsh: Are you prepared for the worst in your business… economic downturns, recessions, the loss of clients and ongoing projects? If not, this episode is for you. This is The Copywriter Club Podcast. In today’s episode I’m catching up with Topaz Hooper who was a guest on the show several years ago. Topaz’s business has followed the trend that so many copywriters and other freelancers followed through the pandemic and afterwards. Most of us saw a nice bump in clients and revenues but then things started to change and she’s had to reinvent her business to adjust to the changes. We’ll get into that in the interview. Topaz also happens to be the second American expat who is living and working in The Netherlands that I’ve had on the podcast over the past couple of weeks. That wasn’t intentional, but maybe this was a hint that more of us could be living overseas and working with clients here in the states. I don’t know. The big topic we covered in this podcast is how to survive in a recession. We are not in a recession—at least as far as the general business cycle goes—at the moment, but there have been some difficult economic events that have scared a few people and caused them to predict that a recession is somewhere out there on the horizon. We are not predicting a recession, but we are talking about how to be prepared for it if it happens to come… maybe this year, maybe next, but certainly at some point in the future. But beyond the general economic environment, there have been micro effects in the copywriting world… things like A.I. taking on a lot of work, especially at the lower end of the spectrum. And some industries, finance and tech come to mind, have suffered their own downturns with layoffs and clients cancelling projects. So while these haven’t shown up in the overall macro-environment, what you see happening in your niche may be close to a what an actual recession might feel like. If you’ve felt that, you’ll want to listen to this whole episode. One more thing I want to mention, I talked about this topic—preparing for a recession—at The Copywriter Club In Real Life in 2020… that was right before the last mini-recession happened. Topaz and I talk about some of those ideas on this episode, but you can go even deeper with them in an article written by Anna Hetzel. I’ll link to that article in the show notes if you want to check it out. It’s worth reading. Before we jump into our interview, this is probably the last time I’ll mention this for a while but I want to share with you all of my research secrets… especially my 4:20+ research method that helps copywriters like you uncover the ideas and insights you need to write great sales copy. It’s part of Research Mastery which also includes more than twenty different techniques for capturing ideas, all of the questions I use to learn more about my client, their product, their customers and their competitors as well as the documents you need to capture your research and several tutorials on how to use A.I. to speed up your processes and even help with your research itself.  There’s a bonus on using Airtable to collect and sort your data and more… You can learn more about this unique resource at thecopywriterclub.com/researchmastery… research mastery is all one word. Check it out now at thecopywriterclub.