The Copywriter Club Podcast

I covered a lot of ideas in this episode with copywriter Grace Baldwin. We talked about product marketing, building an agency, conducting research (including one research technique you've never heard before) and the importance of community in growing your copywriting business. This is a good one. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.   Stuff to check out: Grace's Newsletter The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Research Mastery   Full Transcript: Rob Marsh: Hidden inside this podcast are a couple of ideas that will take your research game to another level… and I promise at least one of these you’ve never heard before.  This is The Copywriter Club Podcast. I’ve interviewed close to 350 different copywriters and close to another hundred or so other experts on this podcast over the past eight years. And you would think that by now, I’ve heard just about everything there is to learn or know about copywriting, research, persuasion, finding clients and the many other topics we talk about every week. Often the topics we cover are good reminders of things I already know but maybe don’t apply to my business the way I should. Other times I hear ideas that I have implemented and what we talk about is a confirmation that what I’m doing in my business is helpful to my clients. And yet, I am constantly surprised by new ideas, new ways to do old things, and new insights that guests share that have never occurred to me before. That happened as I was recording this episode. My guest today is my friend Grace Baldwin. Grace is a copywriter with a background in strategy and product development. She’s in the process of building her own design agency. Grace has constantly leveled up as she’s built her business, working with bigger clients, taking on bigger projects and helping to create more impact for the brands she works on. While we were talking, she shared one way she does brand voice research—something I have never heard other copywriters doing and something that has never occurred to me before… and yet it’s the kind of idea that may help you as you conduct research for your clients, especially if they are in early stages and don’t yet have a lot of customers to intervew or survey.  After hearing that, I shared my favorite research technique for getting a founder to share the features, benefits and other details about a product in a way that helps me capture these for my sales copy. If you want to hear either or both of these ideas, you’re going to have to listen to the rest of the podcast. Before we do that though, since one of the topics we touch on in this podcast is research, I want to share with you all of my research secrets… the 4:20+ research method that helps copywriters like you uncover the ideas and insights you need to write great sales copy. I’ve shared them all… more than twenty different techniques for capturing ideas, plus 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.  You can learn more about this unique resource at thecopywriterclub.com/researchmastery … research mastery is all one word. Check out thecopywriterclub.com/researchmastery. I’ll link to that in the show notes so you can easily find the link if you can’t type the URL into your browser right now… thecopywriterclub.com/researchmastery And now, my interview with Grace Baldwin. Hey, Grace,  Grace Baldwin: Hi Rob.  Rob Marsh: I am so excited to have you here, so let's let's start with your stories. You were in the think tank. We hung out so much together a few years ago, but it's been a little while. So catch me up and catch up our listeners. How did you get to be marketing consultant, copywriter for B to B, Tech brands, branding specialists, like all these things that you're doing, and now you're building an agency. Grace Baldwin: Yeah. So okay, the story starts kind of while I was still in school, so I kind of became a copywriter on accident, like everybody or like, I think most of the people that are on the show, right, never really imagined that this is kind of what life would look like. But when I was in high school, I would always really had fun writing like flyers, and, you know, I threw parties in my basement, and I loved writing the invitations. And then around my senior year of college, I kind of realized, Okay, wait, people will pay me to do this, which was amazing.  And then after school, I moved to Amsterdam and fell into the world of B to B technology. I started working in ed tech. Then I went to e-commerce tech, and then finally ended up in, like, in a space tech company, which was really interesting. And that's kind of when I came into Think Tank. I was working at a space tech company. I knew I always wanted to be freelance, and so I was really building the foundations through the Think Tank while I was still there, and then, since 2022 I've been out on my own, and now I'm building a branding agency. Rob Marsh: So let's talk about that. Because, yeah, building an agency. I mean, on the one hand, it's pretty easy to say, Oh yeah, I'm building an agency. On the other hand, there is so much work that goes into it. So yeah. Tell us about that. Grace Baldwin: Yeah, I tried starting to build an agency last year, and I kind of burned myself out on it because I didn't have any of the processes or anything in place. And to be fair, it's still a fairly new thing this time around, but this time, I have a co-founder who has some experience with building agencies and managing people, and so that's making a big difference. And we're working with, we're going to be working with a coach to help us avoid some of the big mistakes that I think I started to make last year when I was trying to do it by myself. Yeah, Rob Marsh: That makes a ton of sense. So who are you trying to serve? And like, What is the vision for the agency? What does that look like?  Grace Baldwin: Yeah. So the vision for the agency right now is to be really working with innovative technology companies. So and when I say innovative, I mean kind of like deep innovation. So my background is in space tech and in the energy industry as well. And we want to be working with companies that are supporting we're calling it planet tech, right? So within agriculture, within space, within Climate Technology, just people that are making really interesting solutions that are kind of what I like about beauty is like, it's kind of the back doors of the world, and I want to help them tell their stories.  Rob Marsh: I love that, and I love the idea of planet tech, that's just a really unique way to talk about it. Grace Baldwin: Yeah, we're kind of kicking around different names and everything right now, but that's kind of what we keep coming back to. Rob Marsh: Okay, I want to come back to this, but I want to kind of jump back to as you were getting started as a writer. Obviously, you had some in house experiences, but your goal was always to be freelance, and you were freelancing on the side. Tell us just how you launched that side of your business. You know, how you got started, how you found your first clients… Grace Baldwin: So the first clients, so I discovered the copywriter club, actually, when I was still in school, and I joined the free Facebook group then and listen, I binged every episode of this podcast. And maybe, maybe it wasn't when I was still in school, but was within the first year. And I've kind of found my first clients through these Facebook groups, and maybe not necessarily the copywriter club one, but through another writing Facebook group. And that's kind of how it all got started.  And then for two and a half, three years I was I ended up working in house, but I always had this. I was very tapped into the copywriting club community in the backs, in the back of things, and continued trying to build up a brand while I was doing it, which then helped when I got laid off, for sure.  Rob Marsh: And as far as like reaching out to clients, were you pitching clients individually? Were you posting content and clients were finding you like, how did that all work? Grace Baldwin: In the beginning, it was pitching and just connecting with people on, yeah, in these Facebook groups and just saying, hey, you know, I'm looking for work, anything I can help out with. And then eventually, eventually, when I got more serious about my business, I started posting content on, posting content on LinkedIn, and people were coming to me,  Rob Marsh: Yeah, I've seen a lot of your content on LinkedIn. You seem to be pretty, pretty good at the whole LinkedIn game. I mean, spill your secrets on that as well. Grace Baldwin: I don't really have any secrets. So whenever I have talked to Chris Collins about this too, but I say that the one of the best things about my business, and one of the worst things is that whenever I have an idea, I can put it on the internet, and that's kind of how I write content. Rob Marsh: So you're just like, oh, it's Tuesday morning. You're not thinking, I've got to get a post up. It's just whenever an idea occurs to you, you share it,  Grace Baldwin: Yeah, or whenever I see something that one of my clients is struggling with, and if I am able to see kind of a connective thread between what client is struggling with and what client B is struggling with. I'll post about my thoughts on it, not obviously naming my clients names, but just talking about the larger problem that I'm noticing or the different trends that I'm seeing across whatever is happening the different conversations that I'm having.

If you want to write more persuasive copy, you need better insights from your research. But how do you get them? Sarah Levinger is my guest for the 448th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast and we talked about research insights, trend spotting, how A.I. can distort your research analysis, and how to make your copy more persuasive. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.   Stuff to check out: Sarah's Twitter Sarah's Community Tether Insights The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground   Full Transcript: Rob Marsh: Can psychology help you capture and hold the attention of your readers… then sell more of your products to your customers? This is The Copywriter Club Podcast. On last week’s episode of the podcast, we talked about buyer psychology and how to use it to sell your products and services. It’s a great interview and I recommend you don’t miss it. This week’s episode is a kind of part 2 to that interview. In addition to specific persuasion techniques, today we’re going to go deep on research and discovering insights that a good copywriter can build a sales argument. If you want to use the techniques we talked about last week, what we talk about in this interview will give you the baseline insights to make them so much more effective. My guest today is Sarah Levinger, founder of Tether, a research insights platform that helps uncover emotional, behavioral, and identity-driven insights so marketers can connect on a deeper, more human level with their customers. And she uses A.I. to augment the process. Sarah walks through the process and framework she created for finding the kinds of insights that resonates with customers. She categorizes comments and research data by emotion, which leads to a better set of avatars and marketing ideas based on emotion rather than taglines or words that get a little tired as prospects see them over and over in your ads and other marketing.  Then Sarah goes even deeper than feelings to uncover beliefs—she talks about why in this interview. I think you’re going to like what she has to share about that. Sarah also mentioned something about A.I. that I hadn’t considered before that kind of shifted the way I’m thinking about using tools like Claude and ChatGPT to analyze data. If you don’t understand this change, if you use A.I. in your research or analysis process, your copy will probably not connect as well you expect. Before we get to my interview with Sarah, this episode is brought to you by The Copywriter Underground. If you haven’t jumped in to see what the Underground includes, now is the time. It’s guaranteed, which means you can join and if you don’t find the resources you need to grow your business, just let us know and we’ll refund your money. The Underground includes more than 70 different workshops—and accompanying playbooks to help you gain the skills and strategies you need to build your business. This week we’re adding another expert workshop all about how to create the perfect for you copywriter website. If your website doesn’t stand out or doesn’t help you land clients, you’ll definitely want to join us. The Playbooks make it easy to find quick solutions to the challenges you face in your business everything from finding clients, conducting sales calls, using A.I., building authority on LinkedIn or YouTube or Pinterest, and dozens of other workshops. You also get dozens of templates including a legal agreement you can use with your clients, monthly coaching, regular copy and funnel critiques, and more. You can learn more and join today by visiting thecopywriterclub.com/tcu.  And now, my interview with Sarah Levinger… Sarah, welcome to the podcast. Before we hit record, I told you I've been wanting to have you on for quite a while. I've been following your stuff online. The way you talk about persuasion psychology, it just rings my bell. So I'm so glad to have you here. But before we get into all of this stuff, how did you get to where you are, where you're basically, you know, this marketing consultant to DDC companies using psychology to help, you know, increase responses, all of that kind of stuff. How did you get here? Sarah Levinger: Oh, gosh, that's that I don't even know that the journey that I've taken to get there has been a really interesting one, and I really do think I landed here on purpose at this particular time. So I started in marketing when I was 21, really, really young. I went to school to be an equine scientist. I wanted to be a vet for horses. I thought I wanted to be an equine scientist and go be like an equine vet. And then I found out very quickly, I don't like blood, but I don't like needles. This is not for me. So during that first, like, college year, I took a course in InDesign. Does anybody remember what InDesign was? I miss that platform so much. Oh my gosh. I really, really enjoyed designing in there. So that was, like an elective that I took, and I just got so hooked. I was like, This is so fun, like, I love the art side of this.  So I moved back home. I was up in Wyoming for a minute, and then I moved back home with my parents. Went back to college for graphic design, and I had a professor in my second semester of college who was like, you know, if you're good at this and you really enjoy doing design or marketing or art or whatever it is, you don't have to have a degree. You can just go work. And I was like, what I don't have to pay for college? Great. I don't like college anyway. So here we go. So I quit college, and then I basically just, like, freelance for the next 10 years straight. And it was interesting, because this was, like, it, I mean, this was 2010 2011 so it was right at the start of YouTube being a thing. Tutorials online were just barely beginning to like, blow up. So there wasn't really a whole lot of information on how to market or how to do things online in the digital space. So I had to go to the library of all places and just check out a bunch of books to learn how to do all this stuff. So I would go and check out books on like WordPress websites and Amazon, FBA, how to copyright, how to do all the sorts of stuff. And next to that section was this giant, like, I don't even know, old textbook section on early childhood development and neuroscience, psychology and consumer behavior, stuff that was like, nobody has touched this book in years. But it was so interesting. So I kept checking those. But that just because they were, like, fascinating to me. And then I did that for like, 10 years straight. I just devoured information on how people work.  Now, I didn't tell anybody that I had this information or I knew anything about this for decades, until I kind of accidentally fell into paid advertising right before COVID hit in 2019 I had a newborn and a two year old at home, and I was like, I'm gonna die, like I have to talk to somebody. So I got on Twitter, and I just started chatting with people in the industry who were also doing media buying at the time, and then it just kind of exploded, mostly because I think I hit it just at the right time, the right place. This is why I kind of like alluded to that earlier. Sometimes your journey leads you to just the right time, the right place. At the time, when I was on Twitter, I thought I was going to be the last one talking about it, but I ended up being one of the first to talk about how you can apply psychology to add specifically when it comes to messaging, and see amazing drastic results. And I, I guess people just kind of really grabbed onto it and just ran with it because I grew a following. You know, within a year, I had probably about five to 10,000 followers, and I was starting to, like, get good business and drag good leads. And I was like, this is fun. This is a good role for me. So fast forward to now. I've kind of created, like, the perfect job for Sarah, where I get to study humans all day long, and I get to focus primarily on marketing and messaging. So, yeah, it's been a journey.  Rob Marsh: It's a cool journey. So, and what you've built today is called Tether, and tell me how you're doing that, like I've seen the products that you offer. I've seen how you talk about some of the stuff. But in the copywriting world, the content writing world, there's a lot of research, but, and we're all talking about like, how do you do research, or whatever, but oftentimes there's a little bit of a disconnect between getting the research done and actually being able to apply it. And I think you're bridging this gap a little bit.  Sarah Levinger: I'm trying my hardest. Yes, it's really interesting, because I think everybody kind of understands what research is, why it's important. A lot of people understand how to do it. And then there's then there's many, many people out there, I think, that do it very, very well. They're adept at it. Then there's this, like, very, like you said, big gap between the people who have the information and the people who need to use it. And that, I think, has always kind of existed in business in general. We understand that we need to go after a specific customer type, or a specific person, and then there's a big gap, and then there's all the people who talk to that specific person and draw them into the business. So when I started to do paid advertising, I fell in love with it, mostly because I was able to take what I was learning on the psychology side, tactically, put it into an ad, and then see results within maybe four hours, sometimes less. Within 30 minutes, I could tell whether it worked or not. So it was much faster way of testing the messaging that I wanted to test. But that in between, Spot kind of became where, I guess, the sweet spot for Sarah kind of started to kind of morph. I guess so Tether came out of a lot of requests, honestly, from my customers and. Asking me, I would go in and I would run their media,

When it comes to getting customers to buy more, it helps to have psychology working for you. So I invited buyer psychologist, Katelyn Bourgoin, to chat with me about the marketing tactics that truly make a difference when it comes to getting customer to open their wallets. This is a great discussion that covers insights like Jobs to Be Done, Trigger Events, and the deep psychology that engages customers and keeps them coming back for more. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.   Stuff to check out: Katelyn’s Newsletter Wallet Opening Words

Tara Zirker, a Facebook Ads Strategist and founder of the Successful Ads Club, shares her expertise in using Facebook ads to grow copywriting businesses. She reveals how copywriters can attract quality clients with a modest budget, sometimes as little as $10 a day. The conversation delves into the importance of targeting specific niches while mastering ad strategies. Tara emphasizes the integration of AI and analytics to optimize campaigns, providing a roadmap for success in a competitive market by highlighting audience pain points and crafting compelling ads.

In a world where A.I. can write all of the words for free, what is a copywriter to do? What tools should they adopt and how should they approach artificial intelligence? I invited Petter Magnusson, the creator of PurposeWrite, to join me on The Copywriter Club Podcast to discuss these questions and talk through how copywriters can use tools like his to serve our clients better. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.   Stuff to check out: Petter on LinkedIn PurposeWrite (sign up for a free trial) The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Full Transcript: Rob Marsh: It’s been three years since ChatGPT launched and changed the world. So what does A.I. mean for copywriting today? This is The Copywriter Club Podcast. When OpenA.I. released the first version of ChatGPT to the public, what had been a quiet conversation about artificial intelligence happening mostly behind the scenes suddenly burst into our collective consciousness. Writers and creators in particular were suddenly aware that at least at some level, these large language models could do some of the work we were being hired to do. Many of us dove into these tools to see what they could do. We launched a short-lived podcast that talked about how A.I. was impacting so many different ways of working, certainly within marketing, but also in many other industries. You can find the 20+ episodes of that podcast on The Copywriter Club website. Since that time, the dust has settled a bit. The A.I. tools have gotten a bit better. Image creation tools are significantly better. Writing tools have also improved, but it remains true today that the best copywriters seem to be able to use them to get the best outputs… if you want good copy, copy that captures attention and converts readers into buyers, it helps a lot to have a copywriter guide the inputs and rework the outputs you get from the A.I. model of your choice. Another thing we’ve seen in over the past couple of years is that while tools like ChatGPT and Claude get most of the headlines, lots of other tools have added components of artificial intelligence to improve their products, speed up useage, and make applications more sticky. At the same time we’ve seen the launch of job-specific A.I. tools that do one thing… like writing emails, or writing articles at speeds humans simply can’t match. So when it comes to A.I., where are we headed next? What tools will we be using to get better results? And how helpful is it to have a user or prompt engineer or copywriter who really knows what they’re doing versus just playing around to see what they can get a model to do? I asked Petter Magnusson, the developer of PurposeWrite to talk a bit about A.I., the tool he’s built, and also the broader environment of artificial intelligence and where he sees us going from here. And because whatever happens with A.I. will have a big impact on copywriters, this is a topic I may come back to in the coming weeks. This whole industry is fascinating. The speed of change is a bit scary.  During our conversation, I had a realization. In the past copywriters charged for the things we delivered… the words. Officially we sold blog posts or sales pages or emails or some other copy, but it was the words that clients expected to get. But now that ChatGPT can produce the words pretty much for free, we need to move up the value chain and sell the process, the strategy, the analysis, and the ideas. And bringing that to the A.I. model you use will make the outputs there so much better. Any way… I think this is a discussion you’ll enjoy. Before we get to my interview with Petter, this episode is brought to you by The Copywriter Underground. Unless you are hitting the 30 second skip button when you get to this point of the show, you are no doubt familiar with The Copywriter Underground. I talk about it every week. The Underground includes more than 70 different workshops—and accompanying playbooks to help you gain the skills and strategies you need to build your business. The Playbooks make it easy to find quick solutions to the challenges you face in your business everything from finding clients, conducting sales calls, using A.I., building authority on LinkedIn or YouTube or Pinterest, and dozens of other workshops. You also get dozens of templates including a legal agreement you can use with your clients, monthly coaching, regular copy and funnel critiques, and more. You can learn more by visiting thecopywriterclub.com/tcu. And now, my interview with Petter Magnusson… Petter, welcome to the podcast. I am really interested in your journey. How did you go from, i think, photographer, content creator, and now you founded an AI company all about writing How did you get here? Petter Magnusson: First of all, thanks for having me. I've been like, to be honest, I have discovered your pod fairly recently, but I have listened in and I really like what you do. So I'm going to be stuck in here for a long time listening. Rob Marsh: Thank you. Petter Magnusson: There’s a bunch of episodes. So yeah, it's so much, so many I want to listen to. So I'm surely going to do that. Yeah, so I have a bit of a weird mixed history. So I started as a, I don't know if you youll probably You will edit this, you I guess. Rob Marsh: Of course, well if yeah we can always cut it down or or sometimes we just like to hear the story. Petter Magnusson: My background is a bit long story, I started out as ah as a programmer, actually, a long time ago. And then I started studying physics and I studied physics engineering. Then I went to Japan for for my work in advanced laser physics kind of thing. And then I stumbled into sales for that laser company doing sales. And that led me into marketing where I became marketing manager for an IT company in Sweden. And we did extremely well. We happened to sell modems at the time that internet exploded. My boss still thinks that I had magic hands or something because he became super rich from that. And and he still thinks I was had a part of it. So anyway, so I did that. And then I started getting really interested in photography. And... I was having reached some of my life goals, to be honest, at the early 30s. I thought, ah, I want to change direction. So then I just bailed out. I applied for art school in Norway and I got in i as I took a bachelor in in art ah photography. And then I went to to do master's degree also in Sweden in yeah photo and film. So then I was like a ah photo artist actually exhibiting in galleries and stuff like that. Classic art, you know, career. Until I got a little bit angry with that world in a way, because it's not as it's not as free as you may think. You know, I used to think that art is free. But in the art world, to survive, you have to be fairly political. You have to know certain people, you have to network, and you need to make pieces about the right topics if you want to get the scholarships and the exhibitions. And, you know, that might be all fine, but then I saw how people are were adapting to that, and that like goes against everything that art is for me. So that kind of got me, yeah. Rob Marsh: Yeah. Petter Magnusson: And then I thought, well, I might as well go commercial. so so So I did that. as so I went into commercial photography and and filmmaking. And now I have a small production company in Stockholm, and we're doing corporate stuff mostly. So a lot of B2B topics. And that's when I started to see what what kind of led into PurposeWrite. I have a lot of I see exactly the same. I saw the same happening in visual content as in copywriting, I think. People come to me and they were like, hey, video is hyped. We want to make a film or or something. And I'm like, OK, great. Why do you want to make a film? And they're like, it's hip or something. And I'm like, OK, who's going to see this film? I don't know. Everyone. and i'm like okay you know So I had to start you know the journey with them to like, okay, let's find out if if you actually should make a film and who should watch it. What is your target audience and you know pain points and and interests and stuff like that. So that was kind of a struggle sometimes to make people understand that, yeah, of course I can just make a film for you, but that will make not make you happy or or the viewers or anyone. so And then we started… producing some text content too, and and especially for ourselves. And I think the trigger point came because I was trying to hire a guy that was not very good at writing, to be honest. Oh, maybe you should edit this out in case he listens to this. But anyway, ah yeah, I came across that that was going to do some some writing for us. And then I saw the same pattern in text. And I think that's what triggered me. like Because he would produce content pieces that had no direction, no purpose, no, you know, not thinking about who's going to read this and why are writing it? And and why are they going to read this? Everything like that. And that got me started that, okay, this is this is exactly the same problem. But and And then at that at that time, AI came along, you know, ChatGPT and everything. So I started playing with that and put that tool ah to work by kind of turning the process around. Because when you normally when you use ChatGPT, you write a prompt um and that will do something for you. And I could see the same problem there. Like, you know, generic content just exploding on LinkedIn and platforms like that. um I'm mainly talking content now because that's the the area that I'm familiar with. But people are are mindlessly prompting stuff and they get something that looks pretty good. I mean, AI writes pretty good. Layout is nice with nice headlines and stuff. So yeah, on the surface, all is always fine, but it's really horrible. It's got no no value, you know.

Justin Wise, a business consultant and founder of Simple Business, shares his insights on creating simplicity in entrepreneurship. He discusses the dangers of complexity that lead to burnout and emphasizes the need for differentiation. Justin highlights the value of understanding your unique strengths and the importance of effective content strategy focused on 'why' instead of 'how.' He also explores how AI can enhance writing processes and offers essential tips for building a self-sustaining business through focused content and streamlined efforts.

Want your copy to stand out and get notice? Communication Specialist Sam Horn is my guest for the 443rd episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. Sam talks about how to take "regular" ideas and make them "pop". If you want to get noticed by potential clients, or want to help your clients get noticed by their customers, this episode is for you. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript. Stuff to check out: Sam's LinkedIn Pop!: Create the Perfect Pitch, Title and Tagline for Anything by Sam Horn Tongue Fu by Sam Horn The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Full Transcript: Rob Marsh: Want your copy to get noticed and remembered? There are a couple of simple tricks that will help you do that. This is The Copywriter Club Podcast. The ability to help your clients get noticed and remembered is one of the main things they pay you for. And to find clients in the first place, you need to be able to get prospects to notice and remember you. If you can’t do this one thing… you really can’t help them with anything else because they never engage with you. There are lots of psychological techniques that help people notice you… or help people remember you… or make people want to engage with you. So what are they? I asked communication specialist Sam Horn to walk through some of these techniques. Sam is the author of the book Pop: Create the Perfect Pitch, Title, and Tagline for Anything. She walked me through a bunch of the tricks she uses to coin new phrases so her readers raise their eyebrows. One of the things you’ll notice as you listen is that Sam uses these techniques as she talks with me… you’ll hear rhymes, juxtapositions, cliches, and patterns that demonstrate exactly what she is sharing as we talk. The ideas and insights we discuss go well beyond typical persuasion techniques like urgency and scarcity to create a more fun, human, and interesting connection between the ideas you write about and your audience. This is a different sort of interview… because Sam actually workshops an idea for a presentation I am planning on offering to listeners of this podcast. As she goes through the ideas I share with her, you’ll notice she starts throwing out ideas and insights I might use when I’m ready to share my presentation. It demonstrates the insights she shares—especially her advice to show the shift as we communicate what we sell. Near the end of the interview, Sam walked me through the questions she asks as she starts writing a book—and she’s written a bunch of them. If you’re thinking of writing a book yourself, some of these questions may be useful for you. I think you’ll like what Sam has to share. Before we get to my interview with Sam, this episode is brought to you by The Copywriter Underground. Unless you are hitting the 30 second skip button when you get to this point of the show, you are no doubt familiar with The Copywriter Underground. I talk about it every week. The Underground includes more than 70 different workshops—and accompanying playbooks to help you gain the skills and strategies you need to build your business. The Playbooks make it easy to find quick solutions to the challenges you face in your business everything from finding clients, conducting sales calls, using A.I., building authority on LinkedIn YouTube or Pinterest, and dozens of other workshops. You also get dozens of templates, including a legal agreement you can use with your clients, monthly coaching, regular copy and funnel critiques, and more. You can learn more by visiting thecopywriterclub.com/tcu. And now, my interview with Sam Horn… Sam, welcome to the copywriter club podcast. I would, I mean, I'm thrilled to have you here. You know, author of nine books, everything about language and communication. But before we get into all of that stuff. I would like to know how you got here. How did you become an author, speaker coach, I guess, an intrigue expert, and all of the other things that people have called you.  Sam Horn: Okay, so how about I'll go two places with that. Sound good? We'll, we'll start with the original origin story. Okay? Because I think our originality is in our origin story. So I grew up in a small town, more horses than people, and I was, like, elected as valedictorian of my class. A small town, big deal, right? So I put together my little graduation speech, and I shared it with my dad, who ran Future Farmers of America for the state of California. And you may know they understood speaking was very important. So I asked for his feedback, and he said, it's an okay talk. He said, You just didn't say anything I hadn't heard before. It was the little bird leaving the nest homily, you know? And I said, But dad, there's nothing original under the sun. And he says, of course there is. He said, You know what the definition of original is, if we haven't heard it before. And you know, Rob, I at a very early age, I realized that if I'm going to ask people for their valuable time, mind and dime, it is my responsibility to create and craft something that they haven't seen or heard before. Rob Marsh:Okay, so that was origin number one, what's origin number two.  Sam Horn: Origin number two. You may know that I helped start and run the Maui Writers Conference. Writers digest said it was the best writers conference in the world, and we did something that was unprecedented at the time. You could jump the chain of command. You could pitch your screenplay to Ron Howard. You could pitch your novel. People to the head of Simon and Schuster. I mean, that had never been done before. And after the first round, a woman came out with tears in her eyes. And I went over, I said, are you okay? She said, I just saw my dream go down the drain. And I said, what happened? She said, I put my 300-page manuscript on the table. The agent took one look at it and said, I can't read all that, tell me in 60 seconds what it's about and why someone would want to read it. And I talked with Bob Loomis, who was senior VP of Random House that night, and I said, Bob, I'm seeing a lot of people's dreams go down the drain today. What's going on? And he said, Sam, we've seen 1000s of proposals. We make up our mind in the first 60 seconds whether something is commercially viable. And Rob that next day, I stood in the back and I watched the pitch sessions, and I could predict who is getting a deal without hearing a word being said. Guess how  Rob Marsh: I've got to guess that it's in the look of the face of the person they were pitching—they were interested in something.  Sam Horn: It gets really specific, the eyebrows. Because see, like, if we're telling someone our idea, if we're proposing something, if we're pitching our book or whatever, if the decision makers eyebrows like, crunch up your eyebrows right now. Don't you feel confused? Right? Confused, or like I've got to look into this deeper, maybe, or I don't understand exactly. You know what's going on here. Get you know that happens rarely, however. You know today's attention span, right? If people don't get it, they're gone, right? So if people's eyebrows are knit, furrowed, crunched up. It means they don't get it and are confused. People don't say yes. Now if their eyebrows don't move, it means they're unmoved, or they've had Botox. Now, lift your eyebrows, if you would. Ah, do you feel intrigued? Curious? Like you want to know more. You know, I became a woman on a mission. I founded the entry agency. Because if we want other people to care about what we care about, we've got to turn info obesity into the eyebrow test.  Rob Marsh: Okay, so let's, let's talk a bit about that, because this is not just so I'm thinking about this in two different ways. Number one, copywriters and content writers are working for clients, and the work that we do has to get the attention of their customers. Whatever we put out there has to get attention, otherwise it doesn't work. But maybe even more importantly, before that can happen, copywriters and content writers have to get the attention of their prospects and their future clients, and if that doesn't happen, they never get to write anything. So how do we do it? How do we get attention?  Sam Horn: Well, as you know, there's a whole book pop, and my book got your attention on that. So here are a few specific techniques. And by the way, rob your audience is copywriters. I hope they have 10 and paper right now, because we're going to jump right in and I'm going to share techniques that have helped my clients, you know, get millions in contracts, deals, etc. So grab your pen and paper and… Rob Marsh: I'm just going to underline that… you mentioned, Pop your book. Before we started recording, I said, I think this is one of the better books the writers ought to be using. It's not really about writing so much as it's about how to make your words pop, literally, the title of the book. So if you haven't got it, we'll link to it in the show notes. Make sure you pick up a copy. But yeah, let's talk about some of those ideas.  Sam Horn: Good. Well, let's talk about how content writers and copywriters have two bosses, right? First, their decision maker, right, to get their attention and their favorable attention. Oh, I am here. Oh, that's clever. Oh, yes, that will work. And then it needs to drive business, right? It needs to actually drive traffic to the store or registrations for the whatever. So I'll give you a quick example of how we do this. Is that I believe, don't repeat cliches, rearrange cliches, right? So whatever the topic or the product or the demographic is, we can just start writing down what do people know is true about this? What do they believe about this? You can just go to the cliche dictionary and put in what are cliches around this, right? But we're not content to be common, because George Washington Carver said,

What's the best way to learn copywriting? Could it be hand-writing sales pages and other great copy from expert copywriters like Mel Martin and Gary Bencivenga? My guest for this episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast is Derek Johanson, the writer who created CopyHour, a program designed to help you learn to write by hand-copying great copy. We also talked about getting affiliates, mentoring, and a lot more. If you want to improve your copywriting skills, be sure to listen to this episode (and click here to learn about the CopyHour program). Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript. Stuff to check out: The CopyHour Course Gary Bencivenga's Olive Oil Sales Page The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Full Transcript: Rob Marsh: What’s the best way to learn copywriting? Would it surprise you that handwriting great copy is possibly the most successful technique? This is The Copywriter Club Podcast. There must be something like a thousand different courses for copywriters to learn how to write copy. And probably another thousand more that talk about content—as if it’s a separate skill set. And there are probably an additional thousand more free videos in places like YouTube that promise to teach you the skills you need to succeed as a copywriter. With that many choices out there, you would think the world would be crammed full of phenomenally skilled copywriters, but it’s not. This should tell us that not all courses or workshops that promise to teach writers how to write copy and content actually work. So what does work? Is there a course out there that many copywriters talk about or recommend when it comes to writing engaging sales or conversion copy? And it turns out there is. One course recommended by people like Dan Ferrari, Chris Orzechowski, Elise Savaki, and hundreds of others is called CopyHour. Unlike many other courses, CopyHour focuses on handwriting great copy. Does that really work? I asked Derek Johanson, the writer who created CopyHour to be my guest for this episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast to answer questions like… why does hand-writing teach copy structure and pacing where other methods don’t appear to have the same level of success?  We talked about the genesis and evolution of the CopyHour program and what it includes… things like writing great offers, writing headlines and bullets, and how Derek has improved the course over time. Now I want to be upfront about something… I came to this interview as a bit of a skeptic when it comes to hand-writing copy. I’m all in on studying good examples of emails, sales pages, and other good copy. In fact, I have a swipe file with more than 500 different sales pages that I’ve saved to study… those swipes are part of The Copywriter Underground… But handwriting? I wasn’t so sure… I think Derek may have changed my mind. And if you’re a skeptic on this topic, you may want to hear what he says about the science of handwriting and learning. If you’re convinced by the end of this episode that you want to know more, you can go to thecopywriterclub.com/copyhour to find out more about Derek’s course. It’s open for new members the week this episode goes live, so check it out today… thecopywriterclub.com/copyhour Before we get to my interview with Derek, this episode is brought to you by The Copywriter Underground. You’ve heard me talk about how we’ve recently rebuilt The Underground dashboard to make finding the ideas and insights you need easier. But as I started recreating this new dashboard, it occurred to me that no one has time to watch more than 70 different workshops—even for those workshops that help you gain the skills and strategies you need to build your business. So I’ve taken more than 30 of those workshops on finding clients, having sales calls, using A.I., building authority on LinkedIn, and dozens of others… and I’ve created playbooks that break down the ideas in the workshops into easy-to-follow steps. Each playbook is 3-5 pages long. You can read through one and implement the ideas in minutes. And then if you want more detail, you can watch the accompanying workshop. Each playbook even includes a checklist so you don’t miss any steps and can ensure you get things done. I’m working on completing playbooks for all of the workshops and training inside The Underground. They should all be ready by the end of April. You can get the first 30 or so right now by visiting thecopywriterclub.com/tcu. And now, my interview with Derek Johanson… Derek, welcome to the podcast. I'm thrilled to have you here. Before we hit record, I was mentioning you know, you're you're talked about by everyone. Your program is relatively well known. But before we get into all of that, I'm curious: how did you get from the beginning of your career to where you are now, where you are literally on the lips of so many copywriters around the world? Derek Johanson: Wow. Do you want the long version or the short version? Rob Marsh: We've got an hour. So you tell me how much time we should use up in your story. Derek Johanson:  Yeah. So, I mean, I can take you back to the very, beginning, oh, man. I got started online about 1516, years ago. And when I first got started, I was bouncing all around to different countries. Actually, I graduated from UCLA and kind of got out of school and was working in the music industry. I wanted to, I wanted to be in the music industry. I wanted to play music actually. But I'm going to tell you the long version, because I don't really know how to short version, yeah, we might need more than an app. I don't know. So I wanted to work in the music industry. And I got out of college, and. And immediately got a job and started working for a small publishing company. And really had one of those moments where, I read The 4 Hour Work Week, and my brain just got destroyed by the possibility of traveling the world and working. I had traveled quite a bit before that, and I was like, Oh, my God, if I can make that work, I can do this, or if I can make that work, that I'll be set right. If I can make $1,000 a month and live in Thailand, I will be golden. So that book destroyed my life. And then from there, I worked for about eight or nine months at that company, and I started looking around and looking at my bosses, who were all in their 50s, and nobody seemed happy. And I was like, You know what, this is where I'm headed if I don't get out of here. So I saved up all my money or saved as much money as I possibly could. I shared a bedroom with my best friend at the time, and I actually had a mattress that whenever our landlord would come over, I had to shove into the closet because we weren't supposed to have that many people in the house or in the room. So basically, I just saved every dollar I could and I quit, then started traveling. I went down through Panama, Costa Rica, Colombia, and Argentina, and all along the way, I was working with one of my other friends. We were just trying to figure out how we're gonna make money as we're going. So my first foray was into affiliate marketing. So I set up some blogs. I had a blog on acne. I had a blog on dating—just setting up kind of weird, random little websites, and started to actually make some money with those. And what I really didn't understand at the time is what I was doing, and when I say a little bit of money, I really mean a little bit of money. What I didn't realize was that I was actually doing copywriting. And so fast forward a little bit. I came back to the States, and I met a guy in Thailand that I became fast friends with. He had a publishing company or wanted to start a publishing company. We called it dangerous publishing. We were trying to find "how-to" experts in various fields. We had an acting coach. We had a yoga instructor, like he was like a yoga master for yoga instructors, and a few other small clients, some in kind of on the business side, biz, op stuff. And so I traveled to Philadelphia, where he lived at the time. After we met in Thailand, he came back to where he was from, which was Philly. We started working together, building this publishing company. And then about, let's see. About six months into that, we get a knock on our loft. We had this loft in Philadelphia, and my wife is in the other room right now, and she's laughing because she was there. And we get a knock on our door in the morning. On a Saturday morning, I hear and then I hear keys jiggling, and our landlord runs into the house—I have problem with landlords. I'm just realizing, as I'm telling you the story—he runs into the apartment and he's like, "David, where's my money?" And at that time, I had no idea that there were any problems at all, but it turns out my then-business partner was funneling money from our business bank account into his own personal account to pay down a DUI. I'm from San Diego. I live in San Diego. I was on the East Coast in Philly, 3000 miles from home, and I was still young at the time, like 24-25 in that range, and decided that this was not somebody that I wanted to be in business with. And so from there, I left that business, I basically dumped all of the money that I had into that business, and then I took a couple of clients that I had or that we had from that business. I started working with them and trying to help them grow and doing all of the online business activities and marketing activities that we'v all heard of. So setting up a blog. I was running Facebook ads, building landing pages, and writing sales pages. I wrote some VSLs and we actually started publishing some books on Kindle with a few different people. And so I realized that I was copywriting, right? Everything that I was doing, I hadn't really figured that out. Up until that point. I had read some stuff by Carlton. I knew that. I knew what copywriting was,

Yes, you write. But when it comes to marketing, you can do a lot more than that. Today, clients are looking for help from specialists like copywriters who bring more to the table. In this episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, I spoke with Emily Reagan about how writers can offer additional services and expertise to their clients. Emily helps virtual assistants step up into a more helpful role as Marketing Assistants, and it's something we think more copywriters need to consider. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.   Stuff we mentioned: Atomic Habits Emily’s Podcast Emily’s Instagram The Authority Framework The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground   Full Transcript: Rob Marsh:  You’re a copywriter, but you can do other marketing stuff like design or email systems. Is there a need for that? This is The Copywriter Club Podcast. As a copywriter, you probably have a hand in all kinds of marketing activities—everything from the overall marketing strategy to brainstorming lead magnets, to creating and posting content, or writing and managing ads, to figuring out which email systems will help increase engagement and purchases… you probably already do a lot of this stuff. What’s more, a lot of clients want smaller, more nimble teams these days, and that means working with people who can do more of the tasks they used to depend on an entire team to get done. Some people taking on these expanded roles call themselves marketing assistants. Whether that title works for you or not isn’t important. What really matters is that there is a growing need for writers of all kinds to take on this larger, more inclusive role and contribute more, often using A.I. to bring it all together. My guest for this episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast is Emily Reagan. Emily started out offering marketing support especially related to Facebook ads, but she expanded beyond that to include copywriting and other marketing services. And she’s spent the past couple of years helping others do the same thing. We talked about the importance of adding additional marketing services to your copywriting business to make yourself more valuable—maybe even indispensable—for your clients. It’s yet another way to stand out from all the other writers out there who don’t offer clients anything extra. While we talked, Emily also shared a lot of details about her business—she works with clients and helps other writers grow their marketing skills. As she tells it, her business grew serendipitously… going from one thing to the next as it made sense. It’s not exactly a path that others can follow, but it is a strategy for finding your own path to the work you love doing. I think you’re going to like this discussion. As usual, this episode is brought to you by The Copywriter Underground. You’ve heard me talk about how we’ve recently rebuilt The Underground dashboard to make it easier to find the ideas and insights you need. But as I started recreating this new dashboard, it occurred to me that no one has time to watch more than 70 different workshops—even for those workshops that help you gain the skills and strategies you need to build your business. So I’ve taken more than 30 of those workshops on finding clients, having sales calls, using A.I., building authority on LinkedIn, and dozens of others… and I’ve created playbooks that break down the ideas in the workshops into easy-to-follow steps. Each playbook is 3-5 pages long. You can read through one and implement the ideas in minutes. And then if you want more detail, you can watch the accompanying workshop. Each playbook even includes a checklist so you don’t miss any steps and can make sure you get things done. I’m working on completing playbooks for all of the workshops and training inside The Underground. They should all be ready by the end of April. You can get the first 30 or so right now by visiting thecopywriterclub.com/tcu. And now, my interview with Emily Reagan… Hey Emily, welcome to the podcast. And let's, let's just start out by saying this is a long time coming. The last time we saw each other, it's like five years ago. And I don't know why we haven't had you on sooner than the now, but I'm glad you're here now that you're here. Yeah, tell us. Tell us your story. How did you become a copywriter? Emily Reagan: Yeah, it's been five years in the making. The last time you and I were together was right when the pandemic was happening in 2020, so it's a completely different time. And my business has changed a lot since I showed up to your conference in real life. But you know how business owners, especially the online ones, are running around like crazy, trying to wear all the hats, do all the things, and keep all the marketing and all the gardens happy? I am the person who started training the marketing assistant to help within that marketing department. It started because I was a military wife for 20 years, had this hodgepodge of journalism and PR jobs, and was just lucky to find a job only to move a year or two later. And it kind of all came together beautifully in the online space, and then I just started teaching my friends how to do it. So when I went to your conference, I wasn't officially calling myself a copywriter, but I was still finding myself doing that work. Had I known about it back in 2007 when I was freelancing my first press releases, I would have just gone all into Copyright. Marketing, but I didn't know what I didn't know. So yeah, now I train virtual assistants to be in the marketing department, because marketing, it's more fun, it's creative, it's flexible, it pays more. And that's where I'm happy. I love that, and I'm really glad we started here because so many copywriters in The Copywriter Club. People who listen to this podcast start out as VAs, and they come to that realization, wait a second, I'm doing way more here than just being an assistant. And the cream always rises. I mean, "Assistant" never would have appealed to me, so I've really struggled with my own marketing. I'm like, do I use the title: virtual assistant? Because that's the SEO word, but it's so much more. And I think the term virtual assistant is just really getting kind of dumbed down. When I get into my Kia Carnival, and I see the little button for a virtual assistant, I'm thinking of AI. And so this job title has evolved since I even started, you know, training people four years ago, and that's why I kind of went all in with the idea of a marketing assistant, because there's just so many options online, and then you start adding different skills like copy or customer service or podcasting content marketing, and you've just created a whole different type of unique specialization for yourself. So it's really fun to see how it all comes together online. Rob Marsh: So let's talk about being a marketing assistant. You just kind of listed off a bunch of the things that they might do. But let's, let's go a little bit deeper with this idea, because I really like it. I think that there's space maybe for a lot of people who have been vas, but they feel like they're doing more, but maybe they're not ready yet to call themselves a copywriter or a designer or a CMO or whatever the next thing is, there's kind of the space out there. So how do you define that marketing assistant? Emily Reagan: Yeah, and especially getting confusing when you see AI can help. You're seeing things being delegated and outsourced overseas for super cheap. So you know, all businesses have six main departments. We have operations, customer service, HR, finances, you know, accounting, product development, and then we have marketing and sales. And so this marketing, I think, where a lot of business owners get it wrong is they're trying to find a virtual assistant to do everything and save their business by Thursday and launch and video edit, you know. And so, really drilling down into what department I am in and what kind of results I am going after? A lot of us hold ourselves back, thinking we need a four-year marketing degree, and those kinds of days are a little bit over. Rob Marsh: So, if I wanted to maybe step into that newer role, do I need to know how to write copy and also use Canva and edit video for the person that I might be working with in order to get things onto reels or YouTube? What are the things that I need in my skill wheelhouse in order to be able to, you know, start calling myself a marketing assistant? Emily Reagan: I think you need to combine, like, complimentary skills, for sure. And what's interesting is, in my course, I am teaching, I say, I, you know, I'm teaching you how to grow an audience online and help your clients sell to that audience, right? And so we're nurturing, and we're selling, we're converting. And so that's kind of the role of the marketing assistant, is, which channels are we driving traffic? Like, how are we nurturing them? How are you getting them on the list? Which algorithms like, like, what? Right? So that's a little bit of the game. But in my course, I teach the tech, I teach the strategy, and I'm always saying and complimenting you. The next thing is copy. You have to learn how to sell with words. So I think anytime you can add copy to a specific or niche or even general marketing, you know, service, you are going to be sitting pretty. You'll you'll have, you know, more career flexibility. You know, easier retention with clients because clients really want that long-term help. I mean, I don't know about you, but in the online space, I'm seeing a lot of teams simplifying, streamlining, and condensing. We don't all want 20 employees in our business anymore. We're looking more at profits. The online space is changing. So if we can find someone who can offer a little bit higher value, you know, they can also, you know, charge more too. So it's figuring out,

Allison Evelyn, a talented ghostwriter and copywriter, shares her journey from traditional projects to ghostwriting for business leaders. She dives into the vast opportunities beyond books, highlighting the importance of capturing authentic voices and personal storytelling. Allison discusses the shift from short-form writing to longer projects, emphasizing collaboration and deeper connections. She also touches on embracing one's own voice as a ghostwriter and the supportive role of AI in storytelling. Tune in for inspiring insights and practical advice!