The Copywriter Club Podcast

The publishing platform Medium's been around for years. But the company has made a few changes recently that might make you reconsider whether or not you should be writing on Medium. Our guest for the 419th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast is Thomas Smith. I asked Thomas to share some of the reasons Medium has become a place for readers to find great content as well as a place for writers to not just share their thoughts, but also to potentially earn a respectable income stream by posting thoughts there instead of social media or your own blog. Why Thomas? Well, he's earned more than $19,000 for a single post on the platform, and well over six figures over the past couple of years. So he knows a thing of two. And he shared it all on this episode. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.   Stuff to check out: Thomas's Thrive on Medium Course How to Find Clients 36-page Mini-book The FREE Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground   Full Transcript: Rob Marsh:  It’s been said so often that it’s almost become a meme… there’s this idea that successful millionaires… or maybe its billionaires, I can’t quite remember, but successful millionaires have on average seven different streams of income. They may have a salary or income from a business they own, they earn dividends on their investments, maybe they have income from property they own, and so on. And people share this idea with the intention that those of us who hear it will also think about ways to add different potential income streams to our businesses. But as a content writer or a copywriter, you may not have access to investment that pay dividends yet. Or property you can rent out. Or many of the other more traditional ways these very wealthy people earn money. But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t options for us. In fact, some of these options may be easier for you and me, than for the Jeff Bezos and Elon Musks of the world to capitalize on. Hi I’m Rob Marsh and on today’s episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, I talked with successful Medium writer, Thomas Smith. Thomas has been writing on and making good money with Medium. He recently released a course that shows how he does it. And I wanted to chat with him about the possibilities for content writers and copywriters to use Medium as a potential revenue source—especially for the kinds of writing we might want to do for ourselves instead of our clients. If you write for you… you may want to listen to this episode twice so you pick up on all the ideas Thomas shares about growing an audience and income stream using Medium. Before we get to that though… you hear me tell you about several resources that we’ve put together to help you build and grow a writing business. I’m going to quickly list a few of them here so you can get the help you need… we have a free facebook group called The Copywriter Club. You can find us on Facebook and request that we add you to the group where you’ll find seven years of threads about all kinds of copywriting and business questions. Obviously you know about this podcast. You’re listening to it right now and there are more than 400 interviews with successful copywriters and other experts in our backlist. Once you’ve listened to this episode, scroll through to find interviews with people like Seth Godin, Jay Abraham, Jereshia Hawk, Joanna Wiebe, Todd Brown, Kennedy and so many others. Honestly, it’s the best free library of copy, content and business ideas that you’ll find anywhere. And it’s at your fingertips. And right now you can get our free, 36 page mini-book called How to Find Clients when you go to thecopwriterclub.com/findaclient . I guarantee you’ll find at least one and probably 5-10 ideas you can use to find a client for your business. We’re here to help you build a business, so be sure to take advantage of all the free resources we’ve provided for you. And now, let’s go to our interview with Thomas Smith. Thomas, welcome to The Copywriter Club Podcast. I'd love to start with your story. How did you become a content consultant, a writer, creator, I mean, of your course, Thrive on Medium, which I should just mention right up front, it's a course not just about writing for Medium, but actually making a living from it. So how did you get there? Thomas Smith: Yeah, so my background is actually in AI, going way back to before it was a thing. I have a degree in cognitive science with a focus on AI from Johns Hopkins University. I was studying that kind of technology when it was literally on a whiteboard. You were drawing neural networks with a dry erase marker. So it's come a long way in the time since then, but that was my original background. And I'm also a professional photographer. So I combined those two interests. I launched a company that uses AI to help archives, understand what's in their archives, find photos in their big collections, get those out there for people to use. Been doing that since 2010. And along the way, I really learned how to kind of take those two interests of AI and photography and combine them in my own business, but also to explain them to people because AI is super confusing and photography is very technical. It's also creative. There's a lot of things that people have to understand in order to do both of those. So I kind of developed an expertise, I would say, in explaining those kinds of complex technologies in fairly simple terms and started to publish articles about photography and about AI. And originally I was just writing for publications in the photography space. I was writing for some bigger publications too, like IEEE Spectrum and that kind of thing. And I came along Medium, found Medium, this was in 2019. And I can go into a lot more detail about exactly how Medium works, but it just felt like it was going to be a great home for my writing where I could Basically talk about these topics that I'm very passionate about and have a lot of real world experience in and explain them to people and kind of share how to, how to use AI and how to do photography and how to build a business. All the stuff I picked up along the way in a way that would be really helpful. And it turned into not only a successful kind of platform for me, but also something that helped me launch. a consulting component to my business, where now I'm not just doing photography and using AI and helping archives, but I'm actually helping other companies understand how to tell their story in that space, how to share what they're doing on Medium and on other platforms. It's turned into essentially a content consulting business. That's now almost the size of my core business with photography and AI. So Medium has been a huge piece of that, not only direct earnings on the platform, which I'll get into, but also the way it's helped me kind of add that onto my existing business. Rob Marsh: That's, yeah, that's amazing. So as I hear you talk about this, I'm curious, and maybe this is where we get into how Medium actually works, but why Medium over, say, my own blog or Substack or some other publishing platform where I can share what I write? What's so great about Medium? Thomas Smith: Yeah, so I think, you know, it probably makes sense to step back and talk just briefly about what Medium is. I think everybody's probably aware of it, especially if you're a writer, you've seen it, it's out there. But basically to break it down to the very basics, it's a subscription platform. So people pay $5 all the way up to around $15 a month. There's different levels that people subscribe at. And in exchange for that, they get access to all of the writing on the Medium platform. And a lot of it is behind this Medium paywall where you have to be a paying subscriber to have access to it. At the moment, Medium has about a million paying subscribers. They've grown tremendously over the last few years. They were around 750,000, uh, coming out of the core pandemic time when people were, you know, at their computers all the time, they've since grown even more dramatically up to around a million. So they're bringing in probably five to $7 million a month from these subscribers. And they basically send that back out, the majority of it back out to writers who contribute on the platform. And so what I really loved about it initially is that I was an AI expert. I was a photographer. I was working with archives. I had all this knowledge, but I didn't really know how to build an audience on a blog. I didn't know how to create Substack. I don't even think it was necessarily a thing at that time. It was, it was in its infancy, but you know, I was pitching these big name publications. I get a lot of stuff rejected. It was a lot of work just to keep pitching. Uh, I didn't know how to launch a blog and build an audience around a blog. And what appealed about Medium is if I went and just share really useful stuff that helped people based on my experience, Medium had this built in audience. of, you know, that time, probably 500,000 people. Now it's a million people. And if I've just shared stuff that was great, they would bring that audience to me and monetize it for me. And I could just focus on the writing and focus on being helpful. So I really love that element of it, that it didn't require the expertise and the work of building an audience. It just required writing great stuff that people found useful. Rob Marsh: Yeah, I like that too. I think one of the big challenges of getting the word out is having your audience. It's great to drop an email to your list, but if you've only got say a thousand people or maybe even 200 people on your list, that's the limit. Whereas there are platforms like Medium where you can get so much more exposure. Let's talk about how you do that then, because it's one thing to write something great, hit publish on Medium.

Want to write a book? There are plenty of experts who will tell you how. But Allison Fallon has an approach that's different from all the others—at least, that's how it felt to be. Allison is the guest for the 418th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast and when you hear what she shares about the process of writing, I think you'll agree, she does this a little differently—and it might just be the approach that works for you. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.   Stuff to check out: The Power of Writing it Down by Allison Fallon Write Your Story by Allison Fallon Indestructible by Allison Fallon Packing Light by Allison Fallon Allison's Website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Full Transcript: Rob Marsh: As a copywriter or a content writer or someone who is thinking about exploring these career paths, you’ve probably toyed with the idea of writing a book. Maybe you’ve got a great story that absolutely has to be told. Or perhaps you’ve heard that a book is the best business card and can open doors with clients who then hire you to write for them. Or maybe you’ve got a screenplay you work on for a few minutes after your client work is done. More likely… you’ve thought about one or more of those things, but haven’t yet put pen to paper, or fingers to keyboard. I’m always thinking of ideas for books, some of which I have started, others I’ve put away for later. And to help me as I process these ideas, I’ve read several books about writing books… how to do it, what to include, all that stuff. Recently I came across another book about writing books that was very different in its approach. It changed the way I think about writing… books and other things too. Hi, I’m Rob Marsh, and my guest for today’s episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast is author and book writing coach Allison Fallon. You’ll hear me say it in the interview, but Allison’s book, The Power of Writing It Down, felt more like therapy than another book about putting together your book chapters in a particluar order or writing scenes or character development. After reading it, I wanted to talk with Allison about her approach and what it means, particularly for writers who might be writing to a non-fiction audience. I think you’re going to like this interview. Before we jump in with Allion… Last week I mentioned our special free report called How to Find Clients. And I want to share that again because it features more than 20 different things you can do, starting right now, to find your ideal clients. It also shares the 4 mistakes you absolutely can’t afford to make when looking for clients—if you do, you are dead in the water… and it also shows you five things you need to do before you reach out to the people you want to work with IF you want them to say yes. This isn’t some dainty one page PDF you’ll forget about in a day or two… it’s 36 pages jam packed with ideas that either we’ve used in our own businesses or we’ve seen other successful copywriters use to grow theirs.  You can get your free report by going to thecopywiterclub.com/findaclient   that’s all one word. Thecopywriterclub.com/findaclient. Get your free report now. And with that, let's go to our interview with Allison… Allie, welcome to The Copywriter Club Podcast. I would love just to start with your story, and I know you've got a really great story, but how did you become an author, speaker, founder of Find Your Voice? Allison Fallon: Yeah, I have always wanted to be an author for as long as I can remember. I often tell a story about being in fourth grade, and that was the first time that I really realized that I had a teacher who pointed out a skill I had for storytelling. And I just remember feeling like, oh, I can like something and be good at something and be acknowledged for it. And so that kind of started the spark for wanting to tell stories and in a longer format, like writing a book. I just can, through my high school and college career was always very focused on that I would be a published author someday.  And then, you know, when I was in high school and college, I also had a lot of really well-meaning adults in my life who would say, that's a great thing that you want to be an author, but you also need a backup plan because writers don't make any money. And so I, at their advice, got a master's degree in teaching and started teaching in the public school system in Portland, Oregon, where I'm from, and taught for about three years. My plan was to teach and kind of do the writing thing on the side. I thought like, well, I have summers off, right? Like two months off every summer, which is a misnomer. I mean, for any teachers out there, like you're saints and you really don't get – you don't get that much time off in the summer. You're curriculum planning. You're, you know, especially as a new teacher, you're like setting up your classroom. Like there's so much to think about and do. And you're probably working a second job on the side because teachers also don't get paid very well.  And so when I realized my plan wasn't going to work very well, I took this giant leap, which I write about in my first book. My first book is called Packing Light. And I took this big leap out of the teaching profession to do the thing that I had been wanting to do forever, which was to write a book. So I didn't renew my contract for the following year. And I did kind of like a gimmicky, stunty sort of thing with a friend where we both quit our jobs. We sold all of our physical possessions. We packed our stuff into a Subaru Outback. And we spent almost a year traveling around the United States. We visited, we drove to all 48 states and then in the end flew to Alaska and Hawaii to kind of check those off the list and wrote a book about that called Packing Lights. So that was my first, you know, published, published work. That's how I became an author. And there's a lot more that I could say, but I'll stop there. What questions do you have about that? Rob Marsh: I mean, first of all, hitting all 50 states is an accomplishment in itself. Now I've got to go back and listen to that book, because that sounds fantastic. But I'm curious, because as a writer today, what are some of the specific skills from teaching that translate directly into writing? And part of the reason that I ask this is, our audience is copywriters, content writers. There are actually a ton of people who have been teachers who move into writing for all kinds of reasons. And maybe one of the reasons is because, you know, copywriting selling in a huge way is actually teaching. Allison Fallon: It is. Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, capturing an audience's attention, I will say, you know, as challenging as it can be to capture your audience's attention in a book, or if you're a copywriter, like in a sales sequence or something, it's easier than capturing the attention of seventh and eighth graders. So yeah, so I took some of the skills that I learned in that teaching profession, I suppose, and transferred them to writing. Although, I will say since my teaching stint was short, it was just under three years that I was teaching. I think there's a lot that I've learned as a writer that I could also maybe translate back to the classroom if I ever wanted to.  But the biggest thing that I did, when I published Packing Light, And it hit the market, you know, as an author, a first time author, like you don't have any idea what to expect. And so I went into it very blind. The book did really well. Like it's sold, I think it's sold somewhere around 30,000 copies now at this point. So it did well. It made the publisher happy, you know, it bought out my advance, all of those things that you want it to do. And what was shocking for me is that even though it sold really well and everyone's like, yay, and I'm getting all these pats on the back, it wasn't generating an income for me. And so I was like, oh, maybe all these adults were right who told me you can never make money as a writer. So I was like, I'm going to have to pivot and figure out, even though I was living really lean at the time, I was living like in a $500—I think I was paying like $500 a month for like a tiny 500 square foot apartment in the city. And I was literally sleeping on a mattress on the floor. I was living very, very lean. And I can remember going to Trader Joe's and spending like $30 for the week on my groceries. And still, whatever royalty checks I was getting just weren't even, you know, they couldn't support my life. And so I was like, I'm going to have to figure out a way to generate revenue.  And that was really how I got into coaching and teaching other authors. And that's where The Power of Writing It Down, the book that you read, that's where that was born from and where Write Your Story, my most recent book, was born out of that experience because I pivoted to use my curriculum development skills to start teaching other people who also wanted to write books how to do that. Rob Marsh: So let's talk about The Power of Writing it Down. Before we started recording, I mentioned that this book is unlike any other book about writing books that I've ever read. And I've read a bunch of them. There are plenty of books on how to write a business book, how to write fiction, all of that. This felt, in a lot of ways, like therapy to me. And I don't know if that was intentional, but talk a little bit about that book and why you wrote it. Allison Fallon: Well, my dad's a therapist. So I kind of wonder sometimes if the therapy element of the way that I teach writing comes from just growing up in that environment. So that's, I've definitely, you know, like gotten a little bit of that from him. But also, This is born out of my personal experience because the evolution was that I wrote Packing Light.  It came out. I realized, oh, this is not going to pay my bills.

In the 417th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, I spoke with case study copywriter Dana Owens... and of course we talked in depth about writing case studies. But as we talked, Dana shared her connection secret for getting plenty of leads for the work she wants to do. It's a great idea that any copywriter can borrow and use to grow their own business. But to get it, you're going to have to listen. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.   Stuff to check out: Dana's Tools for Case Study Writers The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground   Full Transcript: Rob Marsh: One of the client finding ideas I like to talk about is making connections with other service providers. Instead of thinking of other copywriters as the competition, think of them as business associates who can support you in all kinds of ways including by sharing leads. I’ve mentioned more than once that copywriters have shared leads with me that have resulted in more than six figures worth of business over the years. With results like that, of course you should connect with other copywriters and content writers. But there may be an even better group to connect with when it comes to getting clients. It’s just one of the things we cover on this episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. Hi, I’m Rob Marsh, and my guest for this episode is case study copywriter Dana Owens. We covered a lot of ground in this interview including how Dana kind of stumbled on this perfect partner for leads in her busines. If you write case studies it’s a connection idea you can steal and use today. But if you write any other kind of copy, you can use this idea as well, you’ll just have to figure out who your perfect connection partner is. So stick around to hear more about it. Before we jump in with Dana… It’s been a little while since I’ve mentioned our special report called How to Find Clients that features more than 20 different things you can do, starting right now, to find your ideal clients. It also shares the 4 mistakes you absolutely can’t afford to make when looking for clients—if you do, you are dead in the water… and it also shows you five things you need to do before you reach out to the people you want to work with IF you want them to say yes. This isn’t some dainty one page PDF you’ll forget about in a day or two… it’s 36 pages jam packed with ideas that either we’ve used in our own businesses or we’ve seen other successful copywriters use to grow theirs.  You can get your free report by going to thecopywiterclub.com/findaclient   that’s all one word. Get your free report now. And with that, let's go to our interview with Dana… Hey Dana, it is so great to see you. Welcome to The Copywriter Club Podcast. You know how this goes because you've been part of The Copywriter Club world for a long time, but let's start with your story. How did you become a copywriter? Dana Owens: Well, first of all, I'm so excited to be here. I actually learned that copywriting was a real thing from the Copywriter Club podcast. Seven years ago, I remember taking a road trip with my husband. And that was like back in the day where I had to connect his iPad to the car through a USB cord. And I had like 10 episodes of The Copywriter Club Podcast downloaded. And throughout the road trip, we listened to the episodes. And that's when I realized copywriting could be like a real career and a real business. And that's when he also learned it. So the fact that I'm talking to you today is just like, I don't know, a funny, funny, full circle moment. Rob Marsh: So that's amazing. Dana Owens: Yeah. But I started, um, I got involved in copywriting. Like I wish I would have started so much earlier than I did, but I graduated with a journalism degree and became a journalist for one year. Um, I went to work for a local, I'm from Michigan. So it was like a local small town paper and was the police reporter into the police beat. I was so naive. I mean, I had my trusty journalism degree, but had no idea what I was doing. And it was kind of a bust that first year there. I have a lot of funny stories, but I realized I did not like journalism because basically, especially as a police reporter, all I was doing was reporting on bad news. And so I'm an optimist. I wanted to report on only good news. And I was like, Dana, you are so naive. Like, how are you ever going to get a job just reporting on good news? But what I learned through that job is that I loved interviewing people. So I took that. And then I actually went, I moved to Chicago and I started to work as a creative writer for an advertising company, just a little teeny advertising company. And, um, that's where I kind of started to figure out that copywriting was actually a thing. Although it took me another, I mean, so several years to actually start to, um, start doing copywriting formally. and start to really turn my attention directly onto writing for sales and marketing. So I got my start indirectly through an entrance through journalism and advertising. But it was really when I had had my kids and was like, I'm looking for just a little something to do on the side that I was contacted by an old boss of mine who really was the one that pulled me into copywriting. And that was, gosh, 10 years ago. It's only grown and grown and grown since there. Rob Marsh: So what kind of work were you doing in the agency, in the small ad company that you were working for as a writer? What were you writing? Dana Owens: I was primarily, this sounds so boring now, but I was primarily writing like website copy, but really product descriptions for, they were a professional photography company. And so every single thing that I was writing about had to do with some type of professional photography equipment. And that was, again, just so not for me. I'm super creative, and I want to be exploring big ideas and positioning things in a picture-particular way. And it was definitely not a position that I was going to be able to stick with long term, but it really did set the foundation for the work that I do today. But that was it. There was no way I was going to be a pro at professional photography equipment, but I started learning about the sales and marketing world in that way. So it was beneficial. Rob Marsh: Yeah. Especially when we talk about high-end equipment, you know, that you have in the, the, you know, the world of photography, like everything looks the same. Obviously it's not the same. And so being able to sell one product over another does become a, I mean, that's a skill and being able to identify how they're different and who they're for, I think could be incredibly useful. Dana Owens: Well, it, it, that is a really good point. And also it was so highly technical because the people that the audience that I was writing for, they understood the differences between the brands of all of these different lenses and all of these different light boxes. And they understood the outputs and all of this technical stuff. And so I really had to learn it myself and it was so boring to me at the time, but what it has really translated for me. in, you know, when I started in the areas of copywriting that I was really interested in was how to take technical information or complex information or even jargon from that that was well known, you know, in one industry and how to make it more palatable and understandable to different audiences. So now that you've brought me back to those days, like it's it the connection is very clear that, you know, Having to specialize in an industry like I did for that amount of time, I think it was like four years I worked in that job, it really did start to build that skill of being able to communicate things, communicate complicated ideas and technical ideas in a way that people liked to consume it. So that was helpful. Rob Marsh: Yeah, I had a similar experience early on in my career. I worked for a day planner company, imagine writing about day planners for four years. It's like, OK, well, this year's edition of the day planner is blue as opposed to black, or this edition of the day planner has quotes. And yet it's that repetition actually polishes your ability to connect with an audience and figure out what it is that they need to know about in order to buy. So, yeah, those It feels boring. It feels repetitive, but it also develops a really important skill set for copywriters. Dana Owens: It totally does. And I think, you know, I was like new out of college. Rright out of college, I had gone and I worked at the newspaper and on the police beat for a year. And then I moved from Michigan to Chicago. And then I had for four years, this job writing about professional photography equipment. And like, I think those intro jobs, those getting started and like, figuring things out on your own. I mean, sometimes you're like, Oh my gosh, I can't wait to get out of this job. But I haven't had, I look back on those experiences as absolutely critical, like building blocks for what I've been able to create today. And so, you know, earlier on in my career, I'd look back and be like, Oh gosh, I hated that job. But now I look back and I'm like, I'm really thankful for that job because it was tough to get through. And I didn't want to go in there most days, but there was a purpose to it. So it was all good, you know? Rob Marsh: Yeah, it's a good place to learn the basics. So you started kind of your side gig when you had your kids and an old boss reached out to you. Like, talk a little bit about that process, because again, this is, I mean, you know this from experience. This is one of those things where copywriters have a difficult time figuring out where do I get clients for my side gig? How do I create these relationships that turn into work? So yeah, how did that work for you? Dana Owens: Well, it's kind of funny.

In this engaging conversation, Blair Sharp, a content creator, part-time psychometrist, and author of the Hey Freelancer newsletter, shares her journey of balancing multiple roles. She discusses the importance of having a financial runway when starting a business and her strategies for maintaining stability while freelancing. Blair also delves into her personal evolution, exploring themes of sobriety and authenticity in writing. Her insights on empathy and connecting with audiences provide valuable lessons for aspiring writers.

Join A-List copywriter David Deutsch as he shares his insights on the often-overlooked art of copythinking. Discover how strategic thinking can enhance emotional copywriting and spark big ideas. David emphasizes the importance of storytelling, breaking down the barriers of difficult topics like life insurance. He also discusses the need for iteration in crafting compelling headlines and the critical role of curiosity in addressing client needs. Prepare to transform your copywriting approach with fresh perspectives and strategies!

In this episode, content strategist Sarah Hopkinson shares her journey from linguistics to crafting impactful content strategies for podcasters. She reveals the concept of being a 'content archaeologist' and explains how to unearth deeper client needs beyond standard blog posts. Sarah discusses transforming podcast archives into engaging lead magnets and emphasizes the importance of personalized pitches for client acquisition. Her insights on merging creativity with strategic content repurposing make for an inspiring listen for writers looking to stand out.

Standing out and getting noticed is hard in a world with more than a million people calling themselves copywriters and content writers. Posting on social media, writing for LinkedIn, or even creating content for Google or Pinterest—all of those things work. But who wouldn't love to be featured in the Wall Street Journal or Business Insider? You get positive press and a high-value link to your site for SEO. Sign us up. But hold on... it's not as easy as you might think. My guest for the 413th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast is Gloria Chou, a self-made PR specialist. And in this interview she spells out how you can attract those high value press placements to help grow your business. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.   Stuff to check out: Gloria's website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground   Full Transcript: Rob Marsh:  As you think about your copywriting or content writing business and all the things you need to do to get yourself out there and in front of your ideal clients… there are a lot of options. There’s social media with its various options from TikTok and Instagram to LinkedIn and Twitter and more. You can create a YouTube channel or a podcast. You can show up at events or in groups in places like Facebook. You can start your own groups using tools like Telegram, Skool, Circle, and of course Facebook. You can ask your existing clients to introduce you to their network and build a business on referrals. I even know one writer who had his car wrapped with a vinyl cover that advertised his work and contact information.  And honestly, those are just the most popular options—except maybe that car wrap. That might be a little more rare. One of the most effective ways to get yourself out there is to be featured in a major publication or possibly on TV using PR. That kind of exposure comes with instant credibility and potentially, a massive audience of potential clients. What would an article in The Wall Street Journal or Business Insider do for your clients attraction efforts? I’m guessing it wouldn’t hurt. And if you’re like a couple of copywriters I know, it could instantly double or triple your business almost overnight. Hi, I’m Rob Marsh, and on today’s episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, I interviewed former television producer and diplomat and current PR guru expert and unofficial hype woman for dozens of small businesses, Gloria Chou. Gloria’s approach to getting PR is a bit different from other experts who talk about it and definitely worth learning about. What she shares in this interview could be just the thing you need to land the publicity you need to take the next step in your business. So stay tuned to hear what she had to share. Before we jump in with Gloria… You only have a couple of days until the next guest expert workshop happening in The Copywriter Underground. I’ve shared a lot of details about what The Underground includes on past episodes, so let me just say this. Unlike a lot of other memberships and groups, the underground is designed to make things easy. There aren’t dozens of modules to watch or complicated hoops to jump through. Just the focused insights and ideas you need to grow your business from wherever you are today to that goal you want to reach. We make building a copywriting business do-able.  So I mentioned the training coming this week. It’s with Pinterest Marketing expert Heather Farris. She’s going to  show you how to use Pinterest to drive leads to your business. And how just one or two posts, can send new clients your way for years after you post on that platform. It’s a workshop that could add a bunch of new clients and thousands of dollars in new revenue to your existing business. And you can do it in about 30 minutes a week. To get access to Heather’s Pinterest secrets, you’ve got to be a member of The Copywriter Underground, which you can do at thecopywriterclub.com/tcu. And now, let's go to our interview with Gloria… Gloria, welcome to the Copyrighted Club podcast. Tell us, please, how did you become a PR guru and I guess the unofficial hype woman for dozens of small businesses? Gloria Chou: Thank you so much for having me, Rob. Yeah, so I always say like my alter ego, if I wasn't doing this, I'm like that person like at a concert, let's say a hip hop concert, that's like hyping the crowd up before the main guy comes on. I just love to see people win. And, you know, I was always a person that was like connecting my friends to different opportunities. But funny thing is, is that I've actually never worked a day in my life in PR, never worked in an agency, whether it's marketing or PR, I actually used to be a US diplomat. So I had a very non-traditional path to becoming what I am today. And I just started picking up the phone and cold calling after I got my first PR gig. Because again, I never worked in PR, so I didn't have contacts. And from just literally, I kid you not, cold calling the operator at the New York Times, starting from the operator, and perfecting that pitch so many times after being rejected, of course, even more times, I picked up on patterns of like, okay, this is what an editor wants or this is how I can write an email to a journalist who doesn't know me, who actually will respond and say, tell me more. And so I've kind of been able to kind of hack it and I come up with my proprietary pitching method that now I teach everybody called the CPR method. So that's kind of the long and short of it is crazy career transition, cold calling, and kind of always been an industry outsider. And so now I teach other people how to hack their own PR. Rob Marsh: So I'm really curious how somebody goes from the idea of being a diplomat, which I know it's probably not as sexy as what it seems like, you know, the James Bond movies or the Netflix specials or whatever, but diplomat PR is a pretty different career change. So what sparked that? Gloria Chou: So I grew up bilingual, bicultural, I'm Chinese-American, and I studied abroad in South Africa. And so I've always been interested in just having a very international life. And so I thought, OK, well, maybe my niche is in diplomacy or something to do with international relations, which is what I studied in school. I ended up getting a scholarship. I ended up, you know being fast-tracked to the Foreign Service and I quickly realized that there are two types of people in the world people who like to stay in the boundaries and kind of just do what they're told and people who are More creative and visionaries and like to kind of just learn by getting into the fire.  So I'm the latter type I am NOT the type that's just like okay let's just do this because this is the way it's always been done and so I realized that even though the career was incredible, right? I got to travel, I had the most amazing benefits, still do miss those benefits, that ultimately was not aligned for my personality. And there was also a part of me that wanted to just work with women of color, you know, which is like people like me. And so with all of that, I decided to leave that career and kind of have a midlife crisis, I guess, if you will, give up this very, you know, prestigious quote unquote career and kind of restart my life. And so that's kind of what I did. And slowly and slowly I started to get tiny little PR gigs.  I remember the first PR gig I got was my friend who was taking a sabbatical from diplomacy. And he's like, yeah, I'm working for this FinTech startup. We haven't really raised money. We don't have any budget. But sure, like if you can get them on CNBC and Wall Street Journal and New York Times, like they'll pay you like 250 bucks per feature, which is like not a lot, right? And no one really does No PR agency will do that. They don't give you any guarantees.  I had to start from the bottom, so I was like, sure. And so I had no idea what AI, fintech, anything was. And I just started looking at Excel spreadsheets and sitting with their engineers and figuring out, what is the story here and how can I pitch it to the press? And I think just from doing that over and over and over again, I have this skill of finding out what is the storyline that's really relevant from something that maybe is very complex or maybe not as interesting, and how do we make it interesting to the media? And then I didn't have any contacts. So what did I do? I had to literally Google the operator and start cold calling. And so I think it's the combination of getting rejected, cold calling and doing it over and over that now has built my business to what it is, which is a really untraditional way of doing PR and giving that power back to the people, which is me saying, you don't need to hire an agency. You own your own story. You're the best advocate for your business. Now, how can you just pitch in a way that is proven to get that person on the other side to respond? So that's really kind of what I've built with my PR community. Rob Marsh: That makes sense. I think a lot of small business people are thinking, okay, well, I'm putting stuff on Instagram or I've posted on my blog. That's PR. Tell us why that's not actually PR and what we should maybe be doing, some of the things we should be doing differently. Gloria Chou: Well, you know this better than anyone, as CEOs, it's all about how can we work smarter and not harder? How can we move from the $10 an hour tasks, which we can delegate and automate, social media, customer service, making reels, writing captions, how can we move from those $10 an hour tasks to the $10,000 an hour things that actually builds an asset for your business.  So when I think about social media, it is not an SEO asset. It's not SEO friendly. It doesn't build your SEO. You don't own your social media. It can be hacked, banned, restricted at any point. So for me, it's not an asset, right?

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