The Copywriter Club Podcast

Do you struggle with impostor syndrome (or more accurately impostor complex)? Then you’re going to love this episode. Tanya Geisler stops by The Copywriter Club Podcast to talk with Rob and Kira all about why we struggle to believe in ourselves and our work. It’s an evolutionary behavior that’s designed to protect us, but in today’s modern world, often keeps us from doing our best and most important work. In this interview Tanya shares: •  the background on the “discovery” of impostor complex •  how it affects both men and women •  the three primary reasons we have impostor complex •  the 12 lies of the impostor complex •  the six behavioral traits we default to when we experience impostor complex Plus Tanya shares a simple “hack” for dealing with the impostor complex when it rears its ugly head. You’re going to want to listen to this one. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript. The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Sponsor: AirStory Tanya’s TED Talk Pauline Clance Suzanne Imes Secret Thoughts of Successful Women Neil Gaimon Amanda Palmer Meryl Streep Maya Angelou John Lennon Brene Brown Dunning Kruger Effect Liz Gilbert Chumba Wumba OpenSource.com Mean Girls Amy Cuddy Malcom Gladwell Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity Full Transcript: The Copywriter Club Podcast is sponsored by Airstory, the writing platform for professional writers who want to get more done in half the time. Learn more at Airstory.co/club. Rob: What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes, and their habits, then steal an 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 47 as we chat with leadership coach Tanya Geisler about the Imposter Syndrome and owning your authority, working with a coach, amplifying your voice, and how copywriters can deal with the comparison trap. Rob: Hey, Tanya. Hey, Kira. Kira: You’re welcome. Tanya: That’s so much for having me. Real excited to be here. Rob: We’re excited to have you here. Kira: Yeah. Tanya, you were recommended from one of our club members, Helen, who said that all the conversations in our club right now are ... Well, not all of them, but a lot of them are around feeling like an imposter, a lot of self-doubt, especially because we have a lot of new copywriters in our club. This is what you talk about day in and day out. So we’re really grateful that you’re here to kind of just address this challenge that we all are facing head on, and hopefully we can help some copywriters along the way. Tanya: May it be so. Kira: A good place to start is with your story. You know what, especially as I’ve heard you, I’ve heard your name in the past, watched your TED video, checked out your website, and you’ve stepped into your starring role, but I always wonder, when did you do that, and was it easy for you? Were you always in a starring role? Could you tell us your story? Tanya: I want to laugh. The first thing I want to do is laugh. Yeah, it was so easy. No, not much about this has been easy at all. It’s been tons of self-doubt, tons of, “What do I know? Who am I?” I talk about there are 12 lies that the Imposter Complex wants us to believe. And I believed them for probably the first ... Even if I put a name, a number on this, I worry that it’s going to trigger people, but really and truly for probably the first four to five years of my work as a leadership coach I was really coming up against the Imposter Complex, like huge. And what I started to recognize was this through line that was inhibiting me from stepping into my starring role. That wasn’t the language that I would’ve had back then, but the through line that was inhibiting me from being the fullest expression of the kind of coach leader that I wanted to be was very similar to the same through lines that were riveting through the experience of my clients. When somebody named the Imposter Complex, I swear to you it was like I heard the angels sing. It was this like, “Oh, it has a name.” It just really dialed things down for me in terms of my self-doubt, and it really then dialed up my sense of purpose and what I was here to help others and help others heal in themselves. Kira: Can we start with what exactly the Imposter Complex is? Tanya: Yes. I always start with a history lesson. The Imposter Phenomenon is the term coin termed by a clinical psychologist, Pauline Clance and Suzanne Imes back in 1978. So they were working with high-functioning, high-achieving women, as it happened, and they noticed that with these women, in spite of consistent and irrefutable data to the contrary, these women seemed incapable of internalizing their success. It didn’t matter what they had done; they would attribute anything that they had done spectacularly well to luck, or fluke, or timing, or having deceived somebody into thinking that they were actually smarter or more capable that they actually are. Failures, on the other than, they were more than able to internalize. So something went wrong, “That was all my fault.” This was the consistent piece that they kept seeing in all these women that they were working with. They were high-functioning, like I said, high-achieving women with strong values in mastery, integrity, and excellence. So I always start there. If you’re experiencing the Imposter Complex, then you are high-functioning, high-achieving with strong values of integrity, mastery, and excellence. That’s always the really good news. The other thing I always want to say when I start talking about this is that you often hear Imposter Complex as synonymous with Imposter Syndrome. Syndrome is actually not correct because that denotes a clinical diagnosis, and this is not a clinical diagnosis. This is an experience. It’s a phenomenon, and it is a complex. Rob: Dr. Rob and Dr. Kira diagnosing your internalized failures, right? Tanya, you mentioned that this is a big deal for women. What about men? Do men also have the complex, and what are the differences? Tanya: Yes. The short answer is men absolutely experience it. Most of the data points to women so far because that’s where the research in a very substantial way is started. Valerie Young continued the research with her books, Secret Thoughts of Successful Women. So once again, men absolutely experience it, but there’s a couple more things to it. One is that it’s actually bioevolutionary in context. We experience it as a way of preventing evolution from happening too quickly. So it shows up on the precipice of something new. The way men and women tend to deal with something new is very different. We have lots of information that points to men needing to feel about 60% prepared to take on the next task, whereas women need to have a much higher level of assurance to feel like they’re going to be able to do the task. So men are more likely ... I’m really being mindful of the language here because I could see it’s so black and white as I say it in that way. But men tend to be more like, “Okay, I don’t know everything, but I’m still going to go for it,” whereas women, the way we are raised, the way we are taught, the way we are socialized and conditioned is very different, and there are six behavioral traits that are coping mechanism that are more unique to women in that it ... And women identify people, I should say, as well that really further entrenches us in this imposter complex experience. I also want to say too that it’s men. It’s women. It actually doesn’t discriminate. It wants to make sure that you feel separate from everyone else. So if the center of the universe in your industry is the white male, the further you are from that identification, the more you’re going to feel it. So as a woman of color, you’re going to feel it more. If you’re not able-bodied, if you’re of a different class, if you’re a different ... So all of these contributes, so there’s this real intersectional piece too that we really need to be mindful of. So we talk about men. We talk about women. But the farther you are from that epicenter of the universe, your industry, or the experience, the more you’re going to feel it. Does that make sense? Rob: Yeah, totally makes sense. We should note that when we generalize across a gender, we’re talking about 3.5 billion people. And so everybody obviously is going to have a different level of experience and feel this in different ways. Tanya: Certainly, and I think it’s important here just to touch on what those behavioral traits are because so much of it speaks to the different kinds of conditioning that we show up with. Again, though, I really want to hold sacred that men absolutely experience this, like huge. And the strategies that we’re going to talk about apply to absolutely everyone. That’s the other good news. Rob: Before we get to the lies and the coping mechanisms, I want to ask, because obviously this is a natural phenomenon, there’s got to be like a genetic reason that we feel this. It’s protective in some way, or it’s defensive. So it’s great that it’s natural, but we also need to recognize that while it may hold us back, it also helps us in some ways, right? Tanya: Yep. It keeps us safe, has for lots of years. So, yes, it’s evolutionary and contact. So our job... And thanks for bringing that in because this isn’t about cutting it off, shutting it down, never experiencing it forever and ever, amen. It’s actually a really important part of the ways in which we have achieved excellence. The way that we keep striving and the way we keep pushing our own edges,

Because this is a short informational episode all about our upcoming mastermind group that we’re calling The Copywriter Think Tank, we’re not doing a transcript for this one. However, to find out more about The Think Tank and what we have planned you can go to www.copywriterthinktank.com and get on the notification list. Click to listen...

For the 46th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, our friend, copywriter and comedian, Lianna Patch stops by to tell her story (she starts at the very beginning) about making copywriting her career. During the next 40ish minutes share also shares: •  Why she chose humor as her “hook” for copywriting clients •  her snarky answer to the dumbest question Rob has ever asked •  the enormously helpful life hack that would freak out AA •  how the rules of comedy can improve your copywriting •  how to be funny without being nasty •  what she did to land her first (and second and third) speaking engagements •  how she deals with projects that scare her And we cover a whole lot of other ground too. Like what brands are doing a good job with humorous copy and the advice she has for new copywriters. Plus, Lianna is the first guest to tell a joke on the podcast. As you’ve come to expect, this is another solid episode packed with ideas you can put to use in your business. To hear it, click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript. The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Sponsor: AirStory The Copywriter Mastermind Boxed Wine CTA Conference Lianna’s Sustainable E-Commerce Post Aaron Orendorf Unbounce New Orleans Entrepreneur Week Conversion World DeepDyve Amy Harrison Boomerang for Gmail Snapcopy.co James Turner Foot Cardigan Jennifer Havice Wistia Dropps PunchlineCopy 5 Ways to Be Funnier in Your Copy Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity Full Transcript: The Copywriter Club Podcast is sponsored by Airstory, the writing platform for professional writers who want to get more done in half the time. Learn more at Airstory.co/club. Kira: What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failure, their work processes, and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That’s what Rob and I do every week at the Copywriter Club Podcast. Rob: You’re invited to join the club for episode 46, as we chat with freelance copywriter, Lianna Patch about the challenges of leaving an agency job to strike out on her own, getting attention at conferences, her copy optimization service called Snap, and whether there’s a place for rubber chickens and whoopee cushions in copywriting. Kira: Hi, Liana. Hi, Rob. Rob: Hey, guys. Lianna: Hey. Kira: How’s it going? Lianna: Good. Thanks for having me. Kira: You’re welcome. I think a good place to start is just finding out if you were funny as a kid, and what you wanted to be when you grew up. I feel like that’s the question I want to know. Lianna: Oh, okay. Rob: Did you always have a buzzer in your hand for handshakes? And rattlesnake eggs to hand the kids at school? Lianna: I think I was the unintentionally funny kid. I still have this expression, like I still have serious resting bitch face. My parents used to call me Little Miss Thundercloud because my resting face. I would say things that I thought were very serious and they would laugh at me, and then I would go, “Don’t laugh.” So, it’s kind of like a 180 from there. Rob: Tell us your story. Lianna: My story? Well, my dad loved my mom very much and so after they had my brother they were like, “This one’s a dud. We should probably try again,” and then I was born. Fast forwarding to now, I’ve worked in a couple agency settings, it didn’t seem to stick. I was doing my own stuff on the side throughout, and then everything kind of gelled when I took the first Copywriter Mastermind with Joanna Wiebe and I started to figure out that I should pinpoint humor, and that I should focus just on copywriting because I had noticed that I was getting way too deep into editing, especially publications editing, and I hated it so much. But, then I looked at my work schedule and it was like, “All I’m doing is editing magazine and I’m not writing anything.” So, I sort of refocused, rebranded, and I’ve been writing fun, and funny stuff, and much more conversion copy oriented stuff since then. Rob: So, Lianna, you said that during the Mastermind you sort of figured out that you wanted to focus on humor. What was that process and why did you land on humor as opposed to something else? Lianna: I think there was some of that soul searching stuff that all of the online gurus are always telling you to. Like, “What do you love doing the most? What makes you happy? What doesn’t feel like work?” I had also just interviewed one of the people who runs the comedy theater here, that I eventually got involved in, and I had a good time chatting with him and then he said, “Why don’t you come take a class?” so, I did that and then i ended up taking all the classes and graduating from the Conservatory, and I’ve been doing improv, and sketch, and stand-up since then. It was like, “Okay, I’m already doing comedy in my life, why don’t I try to make my work more fun? Who says I’m not allowed to do that? Why isn’t anyone doing that?” There are people, for sure, already doing humor copy, but I thought there was a little bit more room for me to squeeze in. Kira: So what has the evolution been like for you to really create these services and almost like prove to the market that it’s important? I imagine it hasn’t been easy. Lianna:  I’m still figuring it out. When I think about where humor copy works best ... obviously when you’re right in the call to action it’s probably not a good place for humor because you don’t want to distract anybody, you want them to just click through, you don’t want to be clever over clear. But I think there’s a lot more room for humor in emails, obviously social posts, and lately I’ve been doing a lot more funny content. So, when people come to me for long form content, I make sure ahead of time that they’re okay with me being kind of weird and a little bit ... I think, not offensive, but occasionally a little bit borderline. One time I did a long form content piece that I worked so hard on and then I saw the edited draft and they had just cut out all my jokes. Kira: Oh, no! Lianna: Yeah, and I had checked with them ahead of time to make sure. It was like, “Did you come to me for my style?” And they were like, “Yes.” They came to me, so when I saw the final draft I was like, “Wait, what happened?” Now I try to make sure ahead of time that people know that they want me, they don’t want just regular old- Kira: Well, it’s all so obvious on your website. It should not be a surprise. Lianna: Yeah, hopefully. Rob: Anybody that lands on your website and then wants serious copy, there’s some serious understanding issues, right? Lianna: Exactly. Rob: Let me ask this question: What’s so wrong with boring copy? For 99% of copy out there is boring, or at least plain and simple. What’s wrong with that? Lianna: Boring inherently is terrible, isn’t it? Who’s like, “You know what I want to do? I want to read a really boring book. I want to watch the worst movie.” If you can make it better, why not? If there’s an opportunity to entertain along with educating and informing, and building a relationship, why not? I think there’s different ways to do it, you don’t have to be kind of obnoxious and absurd about it. But that’s my favorite way. You can be sweet and helpful and still lighthearted. There’s a lot of different ways to approach it, but all of them I think are better than just corporate robot copy. Kira: Yeah. Do you think that we are all funny in our own way? Or are there shades of gray? I feel like we almost put ourselves into these categories of like, “Lianna is funny, but I’m not funny so I can’t even approach this with a sense of humor.” Lianna: Oh, man. This is the question, “Is everybody funny? Can everybody be funny?” I think so because everybody laughs, right? Some people laugh more than others, everybody has a different sense of humor. But if you spend a couple weeks mindfully paying attention to what you find funny, and what makes you laugh, then you can start to find patterns in that and maybe emulate it, you know? Not everybody thinks the same things are funny but everybody has a sense of humor. I hope. God, I hope. Rob: If we were thinking, “Hey, The Copywriter Club website I pretty boring,” it’s just transcripts or whatever. Or my own personal website is maybe a little bit plain, it doesn’t bring out my personality. What sort of things could I do, or could Kira and I do, or another writer do to start to be funny in a way that’s natural? Lianna: Starting with that process of figuring out what is funny to you, that’s the good baseline. Then, looking at your favorite movies, and books, and podcasts, and comedians, and figuring out ... I know I’m just repeating myself, but what you find funny and then taking a risk. Take a calculated risk somewhere in the copy where you say something that is gonna be divisive, and see how people react. I’m sure that I get tons of people coming to my site who take one look at it and they’re like, “Nope. Not for me.” But then the people who do get in touch with me say things like, “I loved your website copy.” I finally added that question to my intake form. You know, “Why are you interested in working with me specifically?” It’s the last question on the intake form and most people who answer it say, “Because I like your website copy. Because you’re funny.” Someone wrote to me the other day and they’re like, “You seem warm and friendly, and it feels like you’re approachable.” And that is 100% what I’m trying to accomplish. So, I think you know just being you, which is the advice that everybody gets, “Just be you. Don’t be afraid to be yourself.” But, really, do. Make a joke that you think is funny. Be self indulgent and see who it attracts. Kira: It seems like there’s some confidence in there, too,

This is the 45th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast and we're joined by online business expert Zach Spuckler. As you listen, you’ll see that Zach’s energy and enthusiasm is contagious—and it quickly becomes clear why we booked him for the show. Zach shares how he started his first business at age 12, started a food blog and a few other businesses before deciding he needed to work in a business that he loved. In the interview Zach talks about: •  how he knew it was time to do “something new” in his business •  how he built his “authority” as an expert (and what you should do to build yours) •  his process to ensure he focuses on the most important things first •  his approach to discipline and showing up every day •  what his idea of great copy is (we think it’s spot on), and •  how he uses funnels in his business Zach also shares his thoughts about what beginning copywriters can do to get their businesses off the ground and the massive difference a team and systems can make for your business. To hear it all, simply click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript. The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Sponsor: AirStory Heart Soul Hustle Amy Porterfield James Wedmore Jeff Bezos (Amazon) Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity Full Transcript: The Copywriter Club Podcast is sponsored by Airstory, the writing platform for professional writers who want to get more done in half the time. Learn more at Airstory.co/club. Rob: What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits then steal an 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 45 as we chat with online business strategist Zach Spuckler about starting a business from scratch with no list and no prospects, how to create Facebook ads and funnels that work, the critical part discipline plays in a successful business and how we can think bigger about our businesses. Rob: Hey Zach, Kira! Kira: How’s it going? Welcome Zach. Zach: Thanks for having me. Rob: Yeah, it’s great to have you here. Zach: I am excited to be here. Kira: Zach, I think a great place to start is with your story especially for people or copywriters who don’t know who you are and what you’re all about. Zach: Absolutely. So my story interestingly enough starts about 10 years ago when I was about 12 years old. The only reason I remember that it starts when I was 12 is I made my first dollar online and I had to use my dad’s social security number because I wasn’t actually old enough to get paid yet. So really he made my first dollar online. I just cashed the check and did the work so to speak. Over the last 10 years, I started and I’ve done everything online that you can imagine in terms of dabbling. I don’t have extensive knowledge of everything, but if you can make a buck doing it online, there’s a good chance I’ve tried it. Whether it’s website flipping. I did some affiliate marketing through Amazon for a while. I used to run some niche sites. I was in a direct sales company that I still get a tiny almost not worth mentioning commission check for most weeks. I’ve done food blogging and digital courses in the marketing space and out of the marketing space. I’ll fast forward to save time a little bit, but about a year and a half, two years ago, I was running a food blog. I kind of hit this wall where I loved my food blog so much. It was starting to generate revenue. People were coming to me asking me about how to get more reach on their blog. We’ve got Pinterest pins now that are up to 10,000, 20,000 re-pins. We were getting featured in some major publications in the food blogging space. It was all really fine and dandy but I started to kind of burnout. The best way I can explain it is if you’ve ever had a hobby that somebody offers to pay for and suddenly it becomes like no fun at all. A lot of us it’s like you’re really great at baking and then you decide that you’re going to sell your cupcakes and then suddenly you hate the kitchen. Well that kind of happened to me. Like quite literally I started to despise the kitchen. I didn’t like my food blog. I wrote this post that I was going to take a three month hiatus. I really went soul searching at that time if you will to say, “What really lights me up?” At that point, I’d been online so to speak for about seven and a half, eight years which is a really long time to be in an industry like this. Digital marketing and studying marketing and I said, “What has really been pushing me to keep going? Why am I even still here?” Because by all outside perspective, the food blog was going great. It was starting to earn money but I wasn’t happy. So what was I doing wrong? I really evaluated what had been making me so excited about the prospect of being online. I realized from day one it had been the marketing. With my niche sites, it had been studying SEO. In direct sales, it was being one of the first people in my downline to kind of dabble with Facebook ads to land prospects. When I was building out websites, it was getting really clear on creating up back link webs to drive traffic through websites and rank higher in Google. You can’t really do that anymore. It doesn’t work. I realize that learning all these intricate systems and strategies is what was really getting me excited. So fast forward to the start of my current company Heart, Soul and Hustle, we started it and you said something in the intro that I’d love to touch on which is like we started with no list, no massive success in the industry, no million dollar company to speak to, and my core vision was I know enough about marketing. I’ve made money in several spaces, industries, strategies. So I’m going to teach people what I know, how I know from where I am now. From day one, I’m just going to be really transparent about how I’m doing, what my results look like and people who naturally gravitate towards me will and people who think I’m not a big enough expert or I haven’t done it long enough or just don’t resonate with me fully, they’ll kind of repel away. So about two years ago, we launched our first digital course. It was on Periscope. I was doing Facebook ad management. I was getting about $1,000 a week in clients. We launched that course saying, “I can’t teach you much but I can teach you how I’ve been making $1,000 a week for a month.” That snowballed into our first six figure course. Then I got to talk more about my passion which is Facebook ads. We’ve released that course which I have to double check the stats but I believe that’s our second six figure course or it might be the third one. Then as people started to attract to me, we released another course on launching with five day challenges which is something that I just love. That has become our third six figure course. So we’ve got these courses out there. That kind of led me to where I am today where I’ve just always operated from let’s have fun. Let’s be transparent and now I get to do cool stuff like beyond podcasts and do launches and get paid to travel and all that good stuff. Rob: Zach, we’d definitely want to get into all of that. You mentioned the self-evaluation that you went through and asking yourself “What are the things that really lit you up?” Can you walk us through that process just a little bit more deeply? What were the questions you were asking yourself or what did that look like as you went through that process? I imagine a lot of people reached that same point in their business even copywriters. It’s like, “I don’t enjoy this anymore.” I’m just really curious what that evaluation really look like from your standpoint. Zach: The big thing was I just stepped back and said, “Clearly I’m not lit up or happy doing …” At the time, it was my food blog. For anybody listening, one post on the food blog is anywhere from a 12 to 20 hour commitment. That’s assuming you get the recipe down pretty quick. You have to photograph it and you have to develop the recipe. You have to taste test it. If you’re like really hard core which I was not but if you’re really hard core, you have taste testers and you seek out features. Then once you publish it, then the real work starts because you have to go out and you have to request features and submit your photos and create your pins. Basically, I was doing a lot of stuff that I was doing and I was saying, “What is the means to the end? Why am I doing this? What do I love?” Really, in this process, there’s things that kind of light you up. I think the best analogy is like people who love running which I still don’t get. I don’t get how you can love running, but I do like to run which is funny. I like to go out for a run. Like probably later in the day today I’ll go for a run. The prospect of running is not thrilling to me. I don’t think it’s thrilling to a lot of people, but then there’s those weirdos who love it. Hopefully, you’re not one of them and offended, but maybe you are. It’s cool. Like, what is it about running that I love? Well I like feeling good afterwards. I like getting outside. I like the feel of the sun on my face. It’s that same parallel in whatever you’re doing right now. You don’t hate everything you do. There are facets that you don’t like. It’s just like people who work a nine to five even. They’re like, “I don’t like my job. I don’t like my job.” I can’t tell you how many entrepreneurs I know who are like, “I feel so isolated.” I’m like, “Well you didn’t hate your job. You hated the work at your job but you love the sense of community. So you need to find a way to duplicate that in what you’re doing now.” That’s basically what I did. What is lighting me up?

Copywriter Abbey Woodcock stops by The Copywriter Club Podcast studio to share how she went from being a single mom and journalist struggling to make ends meet to a highly paid copywriter specializing in complex launch sequences. And she shares a few of the hard-won lessons along the way. Things like: •  when you should absolutely NOT buy that course or coaching program •  the #1 thing she learned working for Ramit Sethi •  how she writes sales pages that make customers think she is reading their minds •  the “table stakes” principle for delivering solid copy •  what she does to make sure she’s not the smartest person in the room (even if she is) •  the surprising thought Abbey has on every single project she works on •  why and how she set up systems for her business •  how you can get to the point where you can work on large launch projects, and •  the worst things she sees going on in the copywriting world today As we were wrapping up the interview, Abbey saved the best for last, sharing the story of how Ramit Sethi was willing to test her ideas—even though his gut said she was wrong and it would cost him thousands of dollars. You’ll want to hear this, and the rest of the interview. To do it, click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript. The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Sponsor: AirStory Brian Kurtz Ramit Sethi Narnia The controversial article PLF InfusionSoft Thebusinessofcopy.com Onlifeandwriting.com Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity Full Transcript: The Copywriter Club Podcast is sponsored by Airstory, the writing platform for professional writers who want to get more done in half the time. Learn more at Airstory.co/club. Kira: What if you could you hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That’s what Rob and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast. Rob: You’re invited to join the club for Episode 44, as we chat with copywriter Abbey Woodcock about her journey from struggling single mom to her place on the A-List. Creating systems for your copywriting business, finding the right voice for your clients, and what she thinks of the gurus who say you should sacrifice everything to invest in your business. Kira: Hi, Abbey. Hey, Rob. How’s it going? Abbey: Awesome. Rob: Hey, guys. Abbey: Super excited to be here. Kira: Welcome. Well, before we start recording, I think Rob mentioned that he’s been stalking you and aware of you for the past year. I really started paying attention to you when I met you in March at Bryan Kurtz’s Titans Master Class. You gave a presentation to the group about helping creatives build systems. Abbey: Right. Kira: Which was spoke to me as a creative who just sucks at systems. With your business partner, you’ve figured out how to make it work. I know we’re going to dive into that and a lot of other things, our topics today. To start, Abbey, let’s start with your story. I know you mentioned that it’s not a rags to riches story. But let’s dive into how you got into copywriting. Abbey: Yeah. Sure. I always say that my copywriting journey started in seventh grade because I wrote a 30-page letter to a boy in seventh grade to ask him to the school dance. That was my first long-form fields letter. Rob: Did it convert? Abbey: No. No, zero convert on that one. Kira: 30 pages? Abbey: Yeah, 30 pages. Kira: 30 pages were necessary, okay. Got it. Rob: That gives a little bit of context for what we’re going to ask about Ramit and what you’ve done for him, because 30 pages is short for some of the stuff he does. Abbey: Yeah. Absolutely, I was prepping many years ago for that job. Then I graduated high school, which was exciting. My goal was to actually go into journalism. I did that, but the thing about being a reporter is it’s very long hours and very little pay. Right out of college I got a job as a production editor and a reporter for a newspaper. That is the story that you guys had read. At that time in my life, I had no money. I had two really young children. My two children are 15 months apart. They were both under two years old. Kira: Oh my gosh. Abbey: It was a really tough time financially for me. I was working crazy hours and trying to figure out all this, being a new mom. It was really difficult for a while. We’re talking having rent payments not happen and services shut off, cell phone and cable and all that. After that I went into corporate marketing. Not because I wanted to be a marketing director necessarily, but it was better pay and better hours. I had to prioritize with my family. That’s how I discovered this whole world of copywriting, was through working in marketing and I discovered that copywriting was what I really loved to do. About two years after that is when I discovered this whole online world that we seem to find ourselves in, Narnia as I call it and ended up on Ramit Sethi’s team being a copywriter. That’s my story, and after a couple years with Ramit I went freelance and that’s where I am now. Rob: That’s awesome. I definitely want to hear more about your experiences with Ramit because I think so many of us are familiar with the long emails and the incredibly long sales pages that he uses to sell his product. Before we do that, I want to jump to this blog post or article that you wrote recently about investing in your business. You went off, you got a little energized about people who suggest that if you’re not investing in your business and spending thousands of dollars on courses or coaching or training, that you aren’t serious about what you’re doing. Can we talk a little bit about that and the message you were trying to send with that? Abbey: Absolutely. Rob: Flag in the mountainside or whatever you call it. Abbey: It kind of turned into that. I wrote it on a whim after I saw a Facebook comment on one of the ... Having these mini Facebook, free Facebook groups for the launches has turned into this trend and I saw one of these big launches has turned into this trend and I saw one of these big launches that was happening and I was looking at the comments in the Facebook group. I always am curious at how the support team is answering questions in the Facebook group. Really, it’s like watching customer service chat live, right? Kira: Right. Abbey: I saw one of these comments that somebody had said along the lines of, “I really can’t afford this course, it’s $2,000.” The support staff was like, “Well, you can’t afford not to invest.” We all know the rigamarole of, “Use your credit card.” And “We have payment plans.” I realized after working with a variety of different types of people. I’m a launch junkie, so I watch all these launches really closely. I don’t think a lot of people understand what it’s really like to broke. There’s a time to invest $2,000 in your business. I’m not saying anything about that you shouldn’t take $2,000 courses or that $2,000 courses re too expensive. In the last year in my business, I’ve spent over $25,000 on courses and Master Minds and events, but I’m at the place where I can do that now. 10 years ago, the story I was telling you about when I was a newspaper reporter just figuring out how to start a business or what I wanted to do. Investing $2,000 would have crippled me. Number one, I didn’t have $2,000, but if I maxed out my credit card that was the only thing I had if the car broke down or if the kids got sick. It just really upset me that people put this pressure on other people that, “You need to invest in yourself.” While I agree with that, it comes in stages. You have to take baby steps if that’s where you are in your life, that you’re not in a place where you have $2,000 that you can invest in your business, that’s okay. People need to understand. We as copywriters and marketers need to understand that the hard sell is not always appropriate. Sometimes it’s bad for your customer. It’s bad for your business. It puts everybody in a really uncomfortable position. I wrote this post and it turned into this. I don’t want to say it went viral, because it wasn’t that crazy. Kira: It kind of did. Abbey: It’s definitely the most popular, most commented post that I’d ever had because I think so many people related to it. I think the people at the top with these successful businesses doing these multimillion dollar launches, some of them have really lost touch to what it’s like to not have $100 in your bank account for example. Rob: What we saw in our group in the comments. There were a few people who were like, “Right on. This is perfect.” Then it seemed like there were a few people out there saying, “It’s not okay to charge anything, people should be giving this away for free.” That’s not what she was saying. Kira: Did they say that? I missed that comment. Rob: There were one or two people who are thinking these people who sell things for $2,000 or more are ripping us all off and really not thinking, “Well, no, that’s not exactly right. That’s not the message.” Abbey: No. That was unique to your group actually. I had a lot of comments and emails about that about, “Yeah. You’re right. These people that are selling $2,000 courses are unethical. You should always have a $97 product.” I’m like, no. We’re in Bryan Kurtz’s group together. I invested $15,000 into that group and I’ve gotten 10X ROI on that.” Having a $10,000 product or a $2,000 product is not a bad thing. It’s just understanding who you’re marketing that $2,000 product to, because the person that should be purchasing a $2,000 product is not the person whose cable is going to get shut off next month if they don’t pay the bill or whose rent is two months behind.

Former professional basketball player and current email copywriter, Big Jason Henderson, joins Rob and Kira for the 43rd episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. Jason shares how he went from Australian basketball star to highly paid email copywriter and in the process talks about: •  the too-easy-to-believe advice for writing great emails •  how he keeps his emails personal by writing to “one” person •  the recommended number of links that should go in every email (jk) • the tools he uses to track clicks and revenue •  his go-to writing formula for emails •  what it means to sell the click vs. sell the product •  which is the better motivator—the carrot or the stick •  why there’s no such thing as an email expert, and •  how he manages stress and overwork (when he doesn’t sleep for two days) Another eye-opening episode packed with lots of lessons, tactics and strategies you can use in your own copywriting business. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript. The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Sponsor: AirStory MECLabs Marketing Sherpa Email Summit Gary Halbert Caleb O Dowd Scott Haines Revolution Golf Clicky Email Response Warrior Course Clayton Makepeace Dr. Flint McGlaughlin Tepsii Arman Morin Seminar GKIC (Dan Kennedy’s events) Ryan Deiss Russel Brunson Tony Flores John Carlton’s Simple Writing System Samuel Markowitz Amit Suneja UFC Parris Lampropolous David Deutsch Shortcutcopywritingsecrets.com Tim Ferris Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity Full Transcript: The Copywriter Club Podcast is sponsored by Airstory, the writing platform for professional writers who want to get more done in half the time. Learn more at Airstory.co/club. Rob: What if you can hang out with seriously talented copy writers and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work, that’s what Kira and I do every week and The Copywriter Club Podcast. Kira: You’re invited to join the club for episode 43 as we chat with email copywriter big Jason Henderson about what he has learned about sending more than a billion emails, creating high performance email funnels, the things you should do with email that the experts tell you not to do, and why your value proposition is the most important element for increasing conversation. Rob: Hi Kira. Hi Jason. Jason: Hi, good to be here. Kira: Great to have you Jason. Jason: Thanks for having me. Rob: Jason, I think we really want to start with your story, but before we get into that, I got to know how big are you? Jason: I’m only about 6'11". Rob: Okay, so not that big then. Kira: Not that big. That’s nothing. Rob: Yeah, why don’t we start with your story. You’re famous for email, tell us how you got started as an email copywriter? Jason: In 1996, I was playing professional basketball in Australia, and it was really laid back so I had plenty of free time and the local universities let me go into their computer labs, so I was just going around and I started with Acl and local businesses, and I started doing email and e-commerce back then. Little did I know, that e-commerce was going to be huge, I should have stuck with it. Yeah, I just started with that and I became ... Have you heard of the about.com brand? Rob: Yes. Jason: So back then, they were the mining company and I was the exercise guy. So they basically worked with us to drive as much traffic as possible, so they were teaching us about building email lists, writing articles, attracting free traffic, and for email all they said was, “You know it’s like having a one on one conversation, so if you can do that, then you can write an email.” And that’s basically all I knew. I was like, “Yeah, I can do that.” I think that’s an advantage for me starting way back then in 1996 because all I had was that one simple statement, it’s like having a one on one conversation, versus a lot of people today, they’re met with a lot of BS and like don’t do this, you can’t do that, and this doesn’t work when basically people are projecting their failures and what they can’t do on everybody else. Like, if I can’t do it, no one can. But I didn’t have that, so I was using personal images, and writing very personal conversational emails. And then in 2006, I came upon MECLABS and MarketingSherpa and that was huge because I’d heard a lot of IM crowd talking about them but when I went and visited MECLABS and MarketingSherpa, I found they weren’t really practicing what they preached. So this last April, was my 12th year going to the MECLABS MarketingSherpa email summit in Las Vegas. I’ve spoken there twice, I’ve taken their email messaging value proposition development, landing page optimization, and online testing certifications probably about eight times each. So that’s where I’ve gotten a lot of my email knowledge, email ideas, and just ability to come into scenarios where companies have done the same promo over and over again for years and it’s stagnating. It’s kind of like an old control that’s getting a little stale, it’s not doing like it used to, and I’ve been able to come in and with different lenses be able to see what other email marketers can’t see. Kira: Okay. So let’s start with the question, some of the copywriters are probably wondering what are most of us doing wrong when it comes to writing an email? Jason: You’re focusing more on the words. You’re focusing on being an email copywriter and not a salesman in print, I would say. Gary Halbert used to say all the time that it’s about what you say, not how you say it. I look at some of my old emails where people are just besides themselves about the results and just the personal conversational tone, and I look back and I’m just, wow that’s ... And as far as like a prose and like “writer” it’s not very good. I was just interviewing [inaudible 00:04:15] one of Gary Halbert’s best protégés and he was remarking about Scott Haines who Gary Halbert called his best student, and he’s like, “Man, I look at Scott’s letters and they’re not impressive, it’s not pretty. But he would go for the jugular, very simple plain english, fourth grade level.” So I think that’s the biggest key right there. Rob: I think a lot of people will say about Gary’s writing too because a lot of the letters that he wrote, they’re not real pretty, they’re very basic and very plain, but well-thought out. Scott, one of the things that you mentioned is that people don’t understand that you’re trying to be a salesman in print in your emails. And then you also said that it’s a one on one conversation. And I think a lot of people might be thinking, how do I square those. We don’t often think of sales as that kind of an intimate conversation especially when you’re pitching to large group. What do you think about that? Jason: What I do is I just project them on mine, there is someone across from me depending on the niche. Sometimes it’s this guy with a beard and he is a redneck, and he’s got a beer in his hand. Other times it’s the guy with the really nice custom made silk suit, and we’re at a boardroom. And other times I’m in the kitchen, I’m sitting on a bar stool with my elbows on a counter and there is a middle aged woman talking to me as she is cooking lunch. Kira: So Jason, to back up, before you have these images, what does your process look like before you can even envision these people that you’re writing to? Before you even start the writing portion, what does that really research stage look like for you? Jason: It’s similar to long period sales letters, you’re interviewing the product expert with the owner. I have find that if there’s partners, that it’s the silent partner that usually has the best info. The lower level employees have really good info sometimes. And one of the first things I always ask is, I want to know if someone replies to an email, where does it go, and I want to see them. If they say, “Okay, we can get you the last week’s.” I’m like, “No, I want to see everything.” Yeah, it’s either a help desk or it’s a regular email with the inbox. I always want to see it, I find that’s some of the best gold right there. And depending on the niche and the products personal blogs, depending on if it’s health related, or something where there is a lot of pain and suffering. Like, I was doing some work for how to protégé and anxiety, and I found some amazing personal blogs where it’s just wailing and gnashing their teeth and talking about their issues. Typically, those types of blogs tend to gravitate towards other people with the same problems. So you got not only the blog writer writing about some amazing language and just writing emails for you, but then you got people replying and commenting they have the same problem. So it’s just amazing to get a lot of fear, pain, anxiety, and issues that you can use for your emails. And then also I find depending on the niche is professional articles because a lot of the time you have these professional writers for either offline publications that are online, or just strictly online publications. And they’ve done a ton of research, they’ve written some amazing articles ... Like I was writing for Survival and this writer basically went out and interviewed this survival proper fundamentalist and he was saying all kinds of crazy stuff like, you know it’s a fact that after seven days both women and children will turn to prostitution. Rob: What? I can’t wait to find a link for that in the show. Jason: So it’s just like gold like stuff like that and really good language even if you’re not familiar with the market. Revolution golf, like I’ve never golfed before and I’ve never taken a lesson,

In the 42nd episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, Kira and Rob talk with Casey Slaughter Stanton about his career path and how he found his way into marketing by pushing a lawn mower. Today he runs his own marketing and tech business, and focuses on what he calls “functional marketing”. During our conversation, we asked Casey about his approach to business and working with customers. He shared: •  How you can sell more by selling to only one person •  How empathetic guessing can help you connect better with your customers •  The DOS formula and how it helps him understand his client’s business •  His approach to creating proposal clients can’t say “no” to •  How to qualify potential clients so you only work with the right ones •  What he learned working with Gary Bencivenga and Ted Nicolas (he didn’t know who they were at the time), and •  The “head, heart, and home” questions he asks about each of his clients This one is less about copywriting and more about selling your client on your services and expertise. If you struggle to land more than half of the clients who you talk to about a project, this is a must-listen episode. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript. The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Sponsor: AirStory Tony Robbins Tech Guys Who Get Marketing Dr. Marshall Rosenburg Genius Network Joe Polish KOLBE Dan Sullivan StrengthsFinder Gary Bencivenga Ted Nicholas Peter Diamandis Abundance: The Future is Better than You Think Bold: How to Go Big, Create Wealth and Impact the World 10X Talks Strategic Coach Titans of Direct Response Brian Kurtz Parris Lampropolous CaseyStanton.com The Proposal Template Casey shared at Titans Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity Full Transcript: The Copywriter Club Podcast is sponsored by Airstory, the writing platform for professional writers who want to get more done in half the time. Learn more at Airstory.co/club. Kira: What if you can hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts? Ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work. That’s what Rob and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast. Rob: You’re invited to join the club for episode 42 as we chat with Casey Slaughter Stanton about how single proprietors like copywriters can better market themselves, improving the sales process, creating client proposals that clients say yes to, and what he calls city dating. Kira: Hey, Casey. Hey, Rob. How is it going? Rob: Guys. Casey: Hey, great. Great, great to be on, you all. Kira: Casey, a really great place to start would be with your story and since most of our audience has not heard of you before so let’s start there. Casey: Sure. Back in 2008 I graduated from Michigan State University with a Bachelor’s degree in Environmental Policy. When I say graduated, I just did the air quotes because I had to plead to my native American music professor to actually give me a D minus in the class and I think he gave me a D. He even threw me a bone there so I graduated somehow. I was pretty shocked and I hit the workforce and I was looking for jobs immediately after school thinking that I could get into a sales role. What I found was that unemployment was a real big issue and I watch the unemployment stats go from 5% to 6 to 7 to 8 to 9. While I was still looking for a job, they topped out at 10.5% and I was screwed because I had no real experience in anything and environment policy. It kind of meant I could only work in lancing and I just couldn’t survive there. What I was forced to do was move back home with my parents and I took the basement over and picked up a job mowing lawns and spent a whole summer on the back of a lawn mower trying to figure out what I was going to do. Lucky for me I was able to grab a couple Tony Robbins tapes from the library. I found a bunch of resources online and just started listening and learning and just overloading my brain with different ideas and seeing what was out there. I was mowing lawns at a guy’s place, his name was Dave and he had this beautiful house and he just really was like living the good life. Every time I saw him he was like having a Mai Tai or like a tea out on his deck overlooking the bay. I asked him one day. I said, “Hey, Dave, how did you do it? How did you get to be so successful that you could afford a place like this?” He said, “Well, Casey, I invented a product and got it patented and I have a group of distributors that sell it.” I said, “I want to do it, man. I want to live this life.” He said, “You can buy some of the products and you can go ahead and sell them.” I said, “Could you front me? I’m a little short on cash.” He said, “No, I can’t.” A few weeks later I’d saved enough money up and I bought ten products of his and went door to door and I sold a couple and I made more money that first day of selling door to door in less time than I did in a week of mowing the lawns. I knew that selling was something that I was just naturally good at. Being a millennial and growing up with the internet, I said to myself like, “There’s got to be an easier way than going door to door.” I looked online and I talked to one of my dad’s friends who was in marketing and he said, “Oh, that’s marketing. You’re doing sales and if you want to multiply that, that’s marketing.” That definition of marketing and salesmanship multiply really fit in here. That’s where I got started in marketing and started selling products online, finding local clients, doing copywriting in marketing and technology implementation for them. I ran that for a few years. Met up with a guy named Mike Cline who has a business Tech Guys Who Get Marketing, it’s kind of a collective of technologist and marketers and copywriters and designers. We all work together to support clients. I was working with them, became the chief marketing officer there and later went on to become a marketing professor at Tulane University. Again, with a Bachelor’s of Science in Environmental Policy, I was teaching at a business school, marketing. All of my education has been through spending time in other people’s businesses and learning about what they do and how they do it and just taking that in creatively applying it to different places. Rob: Casey, what you’re doing now then is a lot more than just selling a couple of products, right? Casey: What I’ve done is I’ve created my own strategy in marketing which I call functional marketing and functional sales and functional teams. It’s the trifecta of what I’ve had the most experience in and the things that I found that really move the needle in the business the most. Functional marketing looks at a business at large and says, “What happened in the past? What assets do you have? What marketing campaigns worked and didn’t work? What assets do you have? What mailing lists? What favorites are owed to you? What’s your unique ability to use a strategic coach term?” Really figuring out the history of a business and then from that I say, “Okay, where do we want to be in 90 days or two years?” They give me ideas and then I help them get more solidified goals and then I lay out strategies in different marketing tests that are more holistic in the business to help them achieve the results that they want in 90 days and in two years. I work really with clients for 90 days at a time and we just keep going and going. In two years, we aim to hit that two-year goal. That’s the approach that I take and I need technologist and that’s the Tech Guys Who Get Marketing team. I can pull in the techs there and project managers so they can support me in places that I’m incredibly weak. I don’t want to be a good project manager, I want to be the best marketing strategist and that’s what having a team of other people allows me to do. Kira: Casey, I want to get into functional marketing and your business but before that, I want to go back to when you were selling door to door. I want to know what made you that great sales person. What did you have at that stage? What can you advise us to do because we’re all selling whether or not door to door selling through online copy, what can we do better? Casey: Great question. Ultimately, sales is a one to one human interaction and it’s about understanding who you’re talking to and fitting the product or service to them and not trying to say to a huge crowd of people, “This is the one product for you.” What I like to do is to sell individually and whenever I sell face to face, if I sell on a sales call I just had a big sales call before this call and it was me talking to one person or if I’m going to sell a product online I’m still only selling to one person. It may be that there’s a multitude of those people. There might be hundreds or thousands or tens of thousands of those prospects that are online that might see the offer but I’m still just selling to the one individual at a time. I don’t like to use you guys or group people together. I’d like to look at what makes people unique and different. I’m confident that that’s the thing that has made me so successful in sales is identifying who the person is, making empathy guesses and that’s the idea that comes from Dr. Marshall Rosenberg and his work on Nonviolent Communication. He says taking guess like an empathetic guess on how the person’s feeling and why they’re feeling that way and really clue into that and then talk through their experience in the world and how your product or service can solve that problem. I think that that’s just made a huge difference in me being connected to the person and that necessitates that we as marketers, copywriters,

Copy Chief Kevin Rogers is in the club for a special inbetween-isode. This is a rare, second episode this week and it’s a good one. Kevin shares his journey from high school drop out with ambitions of stocking shelves at the grocery store to highly paid copywriter, then chief of his own community for copywriters and other business owners. Here’s a sample of what we covered: •  How Kevin landed his first job (and had to create writing samples first) •  His “go with your gut” principle for writing good copy •  How relationships propelled his career forward and the “mentee mindset” •  His four-part joke formula for creating stellar sales hooks •  The three rules Kevin follows when he gives a speech (and the results) •  What it takes to be an expert in something (and why most writers should have a “bat signal” talent) •  John Carlton’s Pro Code, and •  What really makes Kevin angry Plus we got the details on Kevin’s upcoming event in St. Petersburg called Copy Chief Live. It sounds like an amazing event that anyone who writes copy that gets conversions might want to check out. One more thing: it looks like Kevin may have set a new record for links on his show notes page. And it’s easily the funniest list we’ve ever published (at least until we get to Carrot Top. That guy’s not funny). Check them all out. And don’t forget to click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript. Most of the people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Sponsor: AirStory George Carlin Rodney Dangerfield Jerry Seinfeld Sam Kinison Bill Hicks Jim Breuer Billy Gardell Star Search Ed McMahon Carrot Top John Carlton Gary Halbert Gary Bencivenga CA Magazine Nothing in Common Vin Montelo Copy Chief Clayton Makepeace Daniel Levis Carline Anglade Cole Rachel Rofé Ryan Lee Dean Jackson Nicole Piper Todd Brown Ryan Levesque James Schramko Ben Johnson Ross O’Lochlainn Jody Raynsford Wardee Harmon Parris Lampropolous Joe Schriefer Marcella Allison Henry Bingaman Copy Chief Live PI4MM.com Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity Full Transcript: The Copywriter Club Podcast is sponsored by Airstory, the writing platform for professional writers who want to get more done in half the time. Learn more at Airstory.co/club. Kira: What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes, and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That’s what Rob and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast. Rob: You’re invited to join the club for this special in-between-i-sode as we chat with copywriter and copy chief, Kevin Rogers, about his journey from standup comedian to highly sought after copywriter. The joke formula that became his secret for writing great hooks, mentoring other copywriters, and a special event he is putting together this Fall. Kira: Hey Kevin. Hey Rob. How’s it going? Rob: Hey guys. Kevin: Hey. Rob: Kevin, it’s great to have you here. Kevin: Man, it’s great to be here with you guys. Appreciate you having me. This will be a lot of fun. Rob: Yeah, we’ve actually had you on our list for a while, Kevin. Wanted to talk to you. You’ve got a lot of stuff going on, but let’s jump in maybe and start with your story, where you came from and how you got into copywriting? Kevin: It felt like a miracle when I found copywriting. It was like lightning striking twice in the best way in your life because I spent 10 years as a standup comedian and that was such a miracle thing to experience. A high school dropout, just had no direction. I was restless and I really hated, at one point, showing up to school every day. It just felt stupid. I don’t know what ... This isn’t for me. I wasn’t going to pursue college, and I just thought it was so much cooler to work at my job stocking shelves at grocery stores like, “If I could do this all day, I’d have it made.” Rob: Aim high. Kevin: Yeah, that’s right. Quickly came to the reality that it’d be good to have something going on in life. “I don’t know what I’ll do.” Was funny enough, I was really good, I understood comedy and I loved getting laughs. My mother inspired that when I was a kid. She was my biggest ... As mom’s are supposed to do, they love when you’re funny. I always had some kind of bit working, and she would, when friends would come over to the house, she would have me do my latest bit, be like an impression or I’d be wearing my little cowboy outfit and I’d do a Western accent. They were all stoned because it was the 70s and so they were a great audience, and I was killing. It really embedded in me at a young age that, “Wow, this feels good. I like this whole laughing stuff.” It was perfect timing because in the 80s, all the HBO comedy specials started coming out. They always had Carlin and some people like that doing their yearly specials, but I don’t know if you remember Rob. Kira, you may be a little younger for this, but I’m 47. I don’t know your age, Rob, but in the 80s these great specials were coming out, these Dangerfield, Rodney Dangerfield specials, and it was the first time anybody had seen Jerry Seinfeld and Sam Kinison, and Bill Hicks, all these amazing comics. We just soaked those things up and recorded them with our VCRs, and wore those tapes out. I could do everybody’s act from those specials, so we’d go to parties and everybody would have me request all these different bits. What was interesting was, obviously I loved getting the laughs but I found two things. One was I started to really dissect why people were laughing and more importantly why they weren’t laughing sometimes. I’d realized, “Oh, you know what? I tried to follow that Seinfeld thing with that Kinison thing and that’s not going to work.” I was always dissecting, reverse engineering the science behind getting laughs. The other thing I learned was, it was much more exciting when something spontaneous would happen in the moment, rather than just sort of repeating other people’s material so that got me excited about potentially writing my own stuff and really just being in the moment with comedy. That’s how that started and basically on a dare, did an open mic and was hooked. That was it. It was three minutes that changed my life. It was supposed to be five, and I told the owner, “Five minutes? I need like 20.” My first time up there, they’re like, “You’re an idiot.” I get up there and I’m like, “Goodnight.” It was like three minutes, but I came off stage a changed man and that was it. Fortunate to get the house emcee gig in that club. Didn’t realize at the time how valuable stage time was and so I was doing eight shows a night after four months of starting and did that for like a year, which was incredible. Made lifelong friendships there with guys like Jim Brewer who you might know from Saturday Night Live. Rob: Yeah. Kira: Oh wow. Kevin: Yeah. That was his own club. Billy Gardell used to come there and he’s still one of my best friends. It was just an amazing run and I did about 10 years professionally, about 7 years straight on the road, and started wanting to do other stuff. Went in the gym, I had to make the really tough choice to stop because frankly I didn’t know anything about business or marketing and I was of the mindset that success just happened to people. I didn’t realize that you could engineer such a thing. I didn’t see it happening for me in stand up because I just never clicked with the important people. I felt like they were part of this other culture that I wasn’t welcome in. Some of it was self-destructive, like I threw a star search addition in front of Ed McMahon because I hated what he said in the beginning, which is, “Tonight we might find the next Carrot Top.” I was like, “Yeah. Like hell we will. Not during my five minutes we won’t.” Broke every rule and went up and swore, and did my set but I wanted to kill the room. All these comics were going up and not being themselves and it was really annoying me. I was like, “Screw that. I do this for the moment and I want to kill the room. These people came here and look at them. They’re showered. I want to kill this room,” and so that was always my role, just kill the room, so that was it. I got out when I wasn’t getting any signals that somebody was going to come with their magic wand and give me this amazing career. Glad I did because it forced me to go legit, doing air quotes, and did a lot of oddball jobs. I was a bellman, I was a bartender and that led me to copywriting in a strange way. Ultimately that’s when I discovered it, but I’m sure you guys and everybody listening, you just feel like, “What is this?” I used to tingle. I still get chills thinking about when I first discovered copywriting and started to understand it, and started reading Carlton and Halbert and Bencivenga and just going, “This is magic. I can’t believe this has existed all along and I never knew about it,” and just became obsessed. Rob: I totally relate to that. I remember seeing ads in a CA magazine, targeted advertising agencies, but they were by Wall Street Journal and they profiled all of these great writers and designers. I remember reading these ads and thinking, “Wait a minute. You can do this?” Like the light bulb moment. I’m like, “This is... Yeah, I want to do this. This is for me.” Kevin: I remember the first time I ever thought it would be an amazing thing to do creative work like that. I was already doing standup but standup is a very individual art. Standups are terrible improvers, in actual improve, like part of a team because we’re just looking ... We all want the punch lines and so there’s no... Rob: Not a team player. Kevin: Yeah. No reciprocity, no yes/and. It’s just, “Look at me!” It’s just like everybody is trying to get there faster,

Author, coach and career change expert, Jenny Blake, joins Rob and Kira in The Copywriter Club Podcast studio this week to talk about why she organizes her book shelf by color : ). We also talk about her book, Pivot: The Only Move that Matters is Your Next One. But this isn’t just a pitch for Jenny’s book. She walked us through the process but also talked about: •  How to figure out your strengths then determine where you want to be a year from now •  How to scan the horizon for opportunities, people, and skills that might take you to the next level •  How to experiment with your pivots to eliminate risk and find things that work •  How to deal with your inner CFO who says, “you’re out of your mind” to try something new or different •  The “Do, Drop or Delegate” formula for staying engaged in your work •  Why you should create scalable streams of income as part of your business, and •  How to build a platform so you get noticed If you’re thinking about changing careers to become a copywriter, or want to explore a new niche, or simply want to make sure you’re on the right career track, this episode is a must listen. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript. The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Sponsor: AirStory Life After College Pivot Pivot Method Tool Kit Momentum Actionable Communications SquareSpace She Can Coterie Powerbars Stand Out by Dorie Clark Harvard Business Review Fast Company Forbes Huffington Post Medium Book Yourself Solid by Michael Port David Moldawer Ramit Sethi Marie Forleo Daily Rituals by Mason Currey Delegation Ninja (use the code TCC to save $100 or just click here) Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity Full Transcript: The Copywriter Club Podcast is sponsored by Airstory, the writing platform for professional writers who want to get more done in half the time. Learn more at Airstory.co/club. Rob: What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits, then steal an 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 41, as we chat with author and career strategist Jenny Blake about her Pivot Method and what it means for copywriters and others who might be wondering what’s next, leaving Google to start her own business, dealing with burnout, and whether she really organizes the books on her shelf by color, not subject. Rob: Hey, Kira. Hey, Jenny. Kira: Hello. Jenny: Hey, thank you so much for having me. Yes, indeed, I organize by color, but I will tell you, I know where every book is because the color imprint stays in my mind. It’s really easy to zoom in, like, “Oh, yeah, that was a red book, it’s over here.” It’s not as confusing as you might think. Rob: I think a lot of writers, if they go to your website, they’re going to see the video or the pictures that you’ve got of your bookshelf. That’s one of the first things, I’m like, “Oh my gosh, all of the white books are together.” Kira: I know. I love it. Rob: “All of the green books are together.” Jenny: Oh, yeah. Rob: It makes me laugh. Jenny: The funny thing is I’ve honed this thing over three or four years of living in the same apartment, so I’ll be watching TV and I’m like, “Oh, that book needs to move one slot to the left.” What you see, it’s like my bonsai tree. I just get to prune at it every single day. What you don’t see is the back of this Ikea shelf is all the reject books that don’t have a pretty color. Rob: That is too funny. Jenny, I think a lot of our listeners may not know who you are, have seen your work. You’ve got a fantastic book that we definitely want to talk about, but maybe you could start by just telling us a little bit about your story. Jenny: The best place I like to start is that I felt like I was losing my mind every few years, that I worked at a startup for two years, I took a leave of absence from school. Then I moved over to Google. The career conversation I regret the most is the one I never had, and it was to tell the founder at the startup that I was getting bored and, I didn’t have the language for it at the time, but hitting a plateau or a pivot point. I moved over to Google, and I was at Google five-and-a-half years doing AdWords, began then later coaching and career development. Half way through my time there, I wanted to leave. I certainly thought something was wrong with me, like, “If I can’t be happy at Google, I’ll never be happy anywhere. I must be one of those entitled millennials that the media keeps talking about.” But at the same time, while I was there I trained over 1,000 people. I was there as the company grew from 6,000 to 36,000. I saw how many people were struggling with this question of what’s next. I started a blog, the Life After College website, in 2005. That’s ancient in internet dog years at this point. That was my side hustle that, in 2011 when my first book was coming out, I decided to do an unpaid leave, go do a book tour, self-funded book tour, and ultimately made the choice not to go back to Google. I thought there again, “Okay, this is the hardest career decision I’m going to have to make, but I’ve got to try. I’ll forever regret not going all-in and giving my own business a chance.” And, as you mentioned in the intro, I was burning out. I was doing too much. Google is really intense all day, all week, and then my blog and book on nights and weekends. Then, sure enough, two years into running my own business, once again I was wondering what’s next. I had become known on podcasts as the girl who left things, the girl who left college, the girl who left Google. I felt like I couldn’t escape. Even when I was at Google, when I would tell people I worked there, it was, “What’s it like? What’s the culture like? Can you submit my résumé?” Then, as soon as I left, on all these podcasts, “What was Google like? Talk to us about Google.” I felt like, “Who am I? What is next for me? What am I moving toward, not just away from? What can I create a movement around? How can I create a bigger impact?” As I wrestled with those questions, I paused most of my business activities. I was having a personal apocalypse year. I don’t know if either of you have had one of those, where everything that can go wrong will, starting with a breakup pretty much on January 1st. Kira: Oh, man. Jenny: Yeah. Now my business bank account dwindled all the way down to zero, to the point where, as recently as 2014, January, I didn’t know how I was going to pay the rent in two weeks. At that point, the question isn’t the lofty, “What would you do if you knew you wouldn’t fail?” but, “What do you do when your back is up against the wall?” I had to figure this out. Otherwise, I was going to have to fold my business or move out of New York, and neither of which I wanted to do. The last few years now have been dedicated to exploring, how do we get better at answering this question, “What’s next?” How do we be more resilient in the face of change? What is this movement that’s happening where ... As I mentioned, I thought I was the only one. I thought I was going crazy and I was destined to never be happy. As I started researching Pivot, I found that everyone’s going through this more often. We’re not just granted two times in our life a mid-life crisis and a quarter-life crisis in order to search this existential questioning of who we are and what’s most important. We’re all, especially anybody listening to a podcast like yours, questioning, “Am I learning and growing?” every few years we’re going to be cycling through those questions. As I worked on the book, I adopted the motto, “If change is the only constant, let’s get better at it,” and that’s been my focus, is helping us all accept career change as normal, not beat ourselves up over it, and have a process to move through it more easily, whether we’re self-employed or we work for someone else or a combination of both. I’m happy to say that now I’ve been running my business over six years, and in the first four months of this year I’ve earned more than the last three years combined. The things that I’ve been studying and talking about are working. Kira: Wow. Jenny: I feel much calmer, even though I still have no clue what’s next, really. I feel so much calmer going through the process. Kira: Wow. There’s a lot we want to dig into here. If we could back up, before Pivot, when you just started your own business and you had left Google, how did you start your own business? What did you do to get it going and to rev up the engine in those early days? I’d also love to hear about what wasn’t working, because you mentioned that your bank account dwindled down. Something was working and something wasn’t working. I’m sure that would be relevant to the new copywriters who are just launching their businesses. Jenny: Well, that’s very Pivoty of you as well, because Pivot is all about focusing on what is working. The biggest mistake I made when I was running my own business was focusing so much on what I didn’t want, what I didn’t know, what I didn’t have. It’s very easy when we’re self-employed to have that fear of, “I don’t want to go broke. Okay, well, I don’t want these nightmare clients. Okay, well, I don’t want this.” None of that moves it forward. It wasn’t until I started to look at what was working. How did I already get clients? What kind of clients did I like the best? What was already bringing in income, like my book, my speaking engagements? Even if I didn’t want to talk about life after college for the rest of my life, I had activities that were working, and now I just needed to shift to them. There’s the idea of a pivot as well,

Kim Krause Schwalm joins Rob and Kira to share her thoughts and advice about copywriting. She also talks about how she went from successful marketing director to control-beating copywriter in less than two years. It’s a great story. Along the way she shared her thoughts about: •  climbing the copywriter ladder (and why it’s so lucrative) •  how to stay in control of your writing process •  the copywriting lessons she (re)learned from Parris Lampropolous and Clayton Makepeace • the one thing all A-list copywriters have in common • and why you might not want Kim to make your next lasagna It’s another great interview and look into how a fantastic copywriter runs her business. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript. The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Sponsor: AirStory Clayton Makepeace interview with Kim Boardroom Gary Bencivenga Jim Rutz Healthy Directions Ted Nicholas Kim’s L.A. Bootcamp David Deutsch Brian Kurtz Clayton Makepeace Parris Lampropolous Advanced Bionutritionals The Girls Club KimSchwalm.com TheMarketingSuperPower.com Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity Full Transcript: The Copywriter Club Podcast is sponsored by Airstory, the writing platform for professional writers who want to get more done in half the time. Learn more at Airstory.co/club. Kira: What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That’s what Rob and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast. Rob: You’re invited to join the club for episode 40 as we chat with A-list copywriter Kim Krause Schwalm about writing effective direct response controls, what steps other writers can take now to get a control beater, writing in the health and finance niches, and her ongoing efforts to help other women succeed in the business. Kira: Hi, Kim. Hi, Rob. Welcome. Rob: Kira, Kim. It’s good to talk to you guys. Kim: Hey, it’s great to be here. Rob: Kim, we are so excited to have you here, partly because I’ve known about you for several years. I think I remember reading an interview that Clayton Makepeace did with you a number of years ago, and I’ve followed your career and I know Kira and you have connected recently as well. We’re thrilled to be able to talk with you, but I think where we’d really like to get started is just your story, how you got into copywriting. Kim: I didn’t know copywriting existed as a profession until I was working in marketing for a major publishing company called Philips Publishing. I don’t know if you’ve heard of it, but for many years it was considered one of the powerhouse direct response marketing companies. In fact, it was bigger than Agora at the time. It was up there with Boardroom and Rodale and other major companies in terms of working with the very top-level copywriters, the ones that we all consider legends like Gary Bencivenga, Jim Rutz, Clayton Makepeace, et cetera. I went to work for them back in 1992, which seems like an eternity ago. I actually had had marketing management and brand management experiences with other companies. I had an MBA in marketing and I was just full-bore marketing, but I always could write copy. It was always one of the many hats I wore in different jobs. It was the same story at Philips, but at Philips it was one of these things that was really valued because so much of their business was built on strong copy. A lot of my different roles, I would write copy as well as direct marketing efforts. I ended up, after being there just a short while, I was asked to help them launch their supplement business, to promote supplements formulated by Dr. Julian Whitaker. I helped launch and run that company, which is called Healthy Directions, and you may have heard of it, and grew that to a $23 million business within three years. Worked in some other parts of the company, but after a while I realized I’ve always enjoyed copywriting, seeing the kind of lifestyle and income potential that the A-level freelance copywriters enjoyed, and that’s when I became intrigued about it. When I was pregnant with my first child I started thinking about it even more. Went back to work after having him and then after about six or seven months decided to take the leap and become a freelance copywriter. That was about 19 years ago. Kira: Wow. When you took that leap, what did it look like immediately? Did you have jobs, gigs, lined up or were you starting from scratch? Kim: I had really the best possible situation. There was a supplement company in my area. I knew the person who owned it. He hired me into a retainer arrangement, which was going to guarantee me basically about 90% of my salary that I was leaving, but it was only going to take about half of my time. Kira: Wow. Kim: I was able to bring on other clients. This is why I was able to walk out of a $100,000-a-year salary job in 1998 and keep my full-time nanny and just start full speed. Had my one client. He referred me to a few others, and before I knew it, the first year I made 50% more. Kira: Wow. Rob: Wow. Did you start out with immediate successes from the stuff that you were writing? Did you have immediate control beaters, or did you take time to learn the business and figure out what you were doing in order to get to that level? Kim: Definitely the latter. I mean, like anyone, I had to climb the copywriting ladder from the bottom. I did not start off writing those 24-page magalogs with royalty potential that I knew I eventually wanted to get to. I had never written something like that as an in-house marketing person. The type of things that I was good at or had experience with were inserts that rode along with newsletters or other types of back-end mailings. Smaller type promotions, renewal inserts for publishers, that kind of thing. That’s how I mostly filled my schedule. For the supplement client I was working with I was doing more than just copywriting. I was also doing marketing consulting, but I was writing catalog copy. I was writing renewals. I was writing all sorts of smaller type things for other clients, including the company that I left, which is, P.S., always stay on good terms if you do take the leap and leave a company ... After I’d been out for about a year or so they became by far my biggest client. Yeah, I had to write a lot of smaller ... It was all flat fee the first couple years. I eventually was able to convince one of my clients, who was ... He had a very small company promoting videos and books and that kind of thing, and he was actually writing his own direct mail letters. They were actually pretty good. He actually studied with Ted Nicholas, was one of his students. His copy wasn’t bad at all. It was quite good. What I did was I convinced this client, after I’d been working with him for maybe a year or so, that “Hey, maybe you should try a magalog. They’re really working well in the health space, and you’ve never done one, and I can write one for you, and blah blah blah.” I convinced him to let me write my first magalog, which he paid me actually a decent amount of money. It’s a fraction of what I charge now, but I got paid to write it. There was no royalty or anything, but it was like, “Hey, I’m going to do this and I’m going to get my first real sample as a magalog.” I wrote it for him. I probably should pull it out. I haven’t looked at it probably in ten years. It would probably make me shudder to look at it, but it wasn’t terrible. I think it did okay for him. More importantly, I had a printed magalog control that I could show somebody. Sure enough, I don’t know how ... It was maybe a few months later or ... I got a call from a supplement company down in Florida that somebody had referred me to, and he asked, “Hey, have you written magalogs? Can I see a sample? What do you charge?” I sent him the sample. I asked for actually a pretty comparable going rate. It was not rock bottom by any means. It was about triple what I had charged to write this first one, and it had royalty potential. He hired me to write a supplement magalog. That’s basically how I got that door opened. Rob: From the launch of your career as a copywriter until that point, it sounds like that was about eight years? Kim: No, I would say ... I’d have to go back and look at my timeline, but I would say that was just probably a few ... Just within the first two years. Kira: Kim, I would love to hear more about the copywriter ladder, because it’s such a great visual and I think ... Especially for new copywriters. They can’t totally see all of the rungs that they need to climb in order to successfully climb this ladder the way you have. Can you just explain how it works and why it works? Yeah, let’s just start there. Kim: It’s just like any kind of career. You’re not going to just jump out of college, “I’ve got my bachelor’s degree,” and someone’s not going to hire you for a $100,000 a year director of marketing job. You’re going to have to start maybe as a marketing assistant and do a bunch of schlep work and then you’re going to maybe, hopefully, soon get promoted to marketing manager, et cetera. We’re all familiar with the concept of climbing the corporate ladder. It’s kind of the same thing with copy. It’s a really challenging assignment to write a longform promo. A lot of people ... Probably not everybody in your audience, but a lot of people out there keep hearing about all the huge opportunity with royalties and with this type of longform copy, which is ... It’s all true. There’s definitely a lot of opportunity. The reason why there’s so much opportunity, and the reason why it’s lucrative, is because very few people can really do it well.