Category: Core Training

AI-assisted Content Calendar

AI-assisted Content Calendar

Transcript

We are kicking off challenge month. If you’re like, what’s challenge month? Uh-oh.You’re in trouble because it’s a lot. So challenge month is where, I am challenging you and myself to do three things every single day. Does anybody know what those three things are?


Yes. Most of the room does.


I’ll repeat them anyway.


For those who don’t, they are sending an email to your list. I don’t care how small or large your list is. Not segmenting it, just sending the damn thing.


LinkedIn post and, YouTube short slash Instagram reel, they’re really the same thing. And if you wanna throw it on TikTok too, god bless you. Go for it. Great.


Just make sure you do those four core things.


They don’t have to be in that order. That’s the order I’m gonna do them in. I might switch Instagram and LinkedIn around some days.


But that’s the objective every single day to build the habit to stop, I think, getting in our own way when it comes to what are what am I gonna even talk about? There’s nothing to say.


Just say things. Just do it. It’s worked for a lot of people. Just do it.


You’ll be fine. We’ll all be fine. Because don’t don’t say things you’ll regret. It’s all I’d recommend.


That’s really it. Other than that, get out there. Do it. If you don’t like how you look and you’re on camera, fuck it.


Whatever. If you love it, cool. Whatever. Most people don’t care as much as we think they care.


So get out there, start sharing things. That’s the challenge today.


And then for the training for this month, we will be, a little a little reactive, responsive. So as you’re going through and sharing what you’re doing every day, then we’re going to hear things like oh no this is happening or oh wow this is happening, and as we hear those things and you bring up questions and stuff like that then we’re able to come up with training that fits in, to help through those moments.


Okay so that’s the objective for the month at least five days a week.


You can do seven days a week if you really want to make sure you are in that habit. I’m gonna do five days a week and it starts today. So the objective is to create and schedule for the next day.


And I use Sprout Social because I have a lifetime free account because of work we’ve done for them, over the years. So I’m gonna use Sprout. Use whatever you want to use to schedule them. I don’t.


This is all agnostic. Use whatever you want to share with others if you’re like, I’m using this. Here’s why I love it. I’m using this.


I hate it. What would you recommend? Share that. This is a good time to participate with everybody else in the room because everybody’s doing the same thing.


Okay. So some things I wanna share with you and then I’ll share my screen and we’ll talk through today’s training.


The challenge itself as I already mentioned, breaks down in certain ways. I do have in the Copy School Pro, Google Calendar, you’ll see that there’s a forty five minute work block followed by a fifteen minute break. That is to avoid all of the heartache that comes on really hard days when you’re like, ugh, I just don’t want to. If you only have forty five minutes to write the email then just do it.


Then you can get up, walk around, get a coffee, clear your head, go outside, pick some weeds out of your garden, whatever, and then get back into it. Now if you’re in flow, you do you. Just do whatever it takes but I’m setting up the way that I’m going to do it. And that’s what’s in the calendar.


Okay.


You should probably expect to dedicate at least three hours a day. I know people are like what? Three hours? What? There’s twenty four in the day.


Who needs to sleep? Who said anything about sleeping? Not me. Alright, you we don’t know what the results are going to be this is an experiment and everybody’s participating and that’s just the way it is.


Alright, you are going to wish that you had started doing this sooner. You’ll dig in, it’ll be a slog, things won’t hit, no one will care and then someone will suddenly care or someone will care out of the gate and then nobody will care again later, that’s just the way it is. Just keep going and learn from it and do it with the expectation that this is the beginning of your new life. Like, this is how it’s gonna be.


That’s what I’m doing going into it. Like, okay. I should probably have been doing this forever. Because every time I do this stuff, it pays off.


And when I don’t, the old stuff keeps paying off but not as much as if I just kept kept at it. So, keep at it. Expect that this is the beginning of what you’re doing going forward and that’s it. Eventually, you’ll be like, okay.


I’m gonna batch my emails. I’m gonna batch my recordings. Great. You will figure that out as you go.


Don’t go into this saying, hold on. I’m just gonna figure this all out first and then maybe next month I’ll do it. No. We’re doing it this month, ugly, horrible, the worst way possible.


We’re just gonna sit down and do it. It. Okay. Now we’re going to get into the first thing that we need to do in order to make sure that we’re getting good work done and that is establishing where we’re at right now so we know where we’re growing to.


So let me share my screen and we will begin with the work. So the work that we’re doing today is day one, which is really day two of the month but day one of the challenge.


For the next ten minutes, I’m asking you to go into your CRM, to go into if you use, like, tally or type form to collect leads, to go into whatever you use to identify, new leads, how many calls were booked if that’s in Calendly or if you just, like, know that. Clients closed in the last thirty days. How many subscribers joined your list in the last thirty days? If you’re like, I don’t have a list, then there’s zero.


But by day thirty, we want people on there. Revenue from services sold in the last thirty days. Revenue from products because some of us have products that we’re selling. Daily site visitors, where are you at today?


What is the average? Go into Google Analytics.


It’s right there. You don’t even have to have special reports. You just go straight into Google Analytics. Select your website if you’re in multiple people’s, GA accounts for clients.


But just go to yours. Just see how many people came to your site overall. And if you choose a certain number, like, I know it breaks down into unique visitors and things like that. Whatever you do, just make sure that you write in, like, unique visitors three thousand or whatever.


And then on day thirty, you’ll also wanna use unique visitors so you don’t just, like, feel better or worse about it, but just keep that the same. How many LinkedIn followers you have today? This is easy. While I’m talking, you can pop over to LinkedIn and see how many followers you have.


Write it in. Instagram followers, same thing. YouTube views, I’m saying that instead of subscribers because views are way more important, than subscribers, which is pretty shocking, but it’s the way that their algorithm works. YouTube wants more people viewing.


They don’t give a crap about followers or subscribers.


So YouTube views is you can go into your reports. If you’re not on YouTube at all, then it’s zero and you will get started on YouTube today.


And then any other metrics that stand out for you, for your business in particular, you know uniquely what’s going on in your business and what you want to optimize or grow, so you can pop that in here. Now this is if you’ve done like McGhee does and you print out your worksheets and put them in binders, wonderful. You can just fill this in. Otherwise, open up a spreadsheet.


Put it in there. We’re gonna do that for the next now eight minutes. Okay? Hold on. There’s a chat.


Just making sure.


I’m recommending YouTube because that’s the place where, most businesses are today today finding people.


And so you I wouldn’t choose it over. I’d say in addition to. Just also do TikTok then because you’re already doing all these other things. So you might as well just throw that in there too and repurpose it. Cool. Alright.


You’ve got until twenty six minutes after the hours. Now that’s six minutes.


Okay.


If you didn’t get a chance to write everything in, just go in and do it. Do it in one of those fifteen minute breaks that you have, in your calendar for today. Okay. Let’s dig in.


June challenge. You will need a content plan. You’ll need one for every single day. What are you gonna be writing about?


Now we have talked in great detail about where content ideas come from, how to use AI for content ideas, all of the things. There is a lot inside CopySchool Pro in the replay area, so pop on in there, watch some old ones. If you’re not sure, they’re not old. They’re like a year at most old in most cases.


So go in there, get ideas from there if you don’t already have them. Now AI can do quite a lot.


I asked ChatGPT to put a topic calendar together. I don’t like it. This is the first draft, but at least it’s something. They do subject lines, don’t worry about it, but whatever.


Point is, you have ways easier than ever in history. There’s never been a better time to come up with ideas for what you can create content on. It’s also very difficult to make content that stands out. So that’s more the question.


Less, what should I talk about more? How do I make it interesting to people? That doesn’t mean a lot of editing or anything crazy. We can get into all of that stuff.


But you will need topics. If you don’t have topics, it’s going to be hard if every day you’re like, what should I talk about today? You will hate your life. So come up with topics upfront.


Use ChatGPT if it will help you. If you don’t like it, don’t use it. You can come up with it other ways.


A really simple approach is just to go over to YouTube directly. I know there’s, like, solutions that help with this. SparkToro is, of course, a great way to go about finding topics.


Exploding topics, Brian Dean’s, formerly Brian Dean’s, now SEM Rush’s tool is another great way to come up with topics, but obviously just play around with those. It’s not going to give you the perfect spreadsheet of, like, what you should write about or what you should talk about.


But when you are going to create shorts and reels, really simply head over to YouTube, go into the shorts area, and then just like search your keyword phrase, your topic, whatever it is, get granular or don’t, Doesn’t matter. You’ll come up with a lot of topics even if you’re just like copywriting or finding your message, you’ll come up with a lot. Oh, maybe not for finding your message. You’ll find out.


You’ll go there. You’ll find out. So then go into the shorts area. You’ll see on YouTube all of the different, like, as you’re scrolling down, there’s the big ones and shorts is all through the middle.


Just go in there and start opening in a new tab all of these new ones. Of course, in each of those tabs, more will get served up to you that’s related to what you’re watching so when you click on one video to watch it one short obviously you’ll see like five others that you wouldn’t have seen otherwise and so just use all of these to really basically audit or analyze what’s on the screen, what they’re doing. So, because it’s a short, you don’t have to worry about a thumbnail the same way as you do for, like, a full video. What’s that opening shot?


What does it look like? What’s the title?


What is your immediate reaction to it?


And try very very hard to step into your prospect’s shoes as well because I know that it can be really difficult, of course, when you see somebody talking about a subject you know well and you think they’re full of shit. At least that’s my reaction in most cases, like, ugh. But then every so often you’re like, You that was really good. So, be aware of your immediate reaction, but also try not to be too, everybody here is quite focused on advancing their skills, being the best and actually being the best at it.


So it can be hard to look at it as a beginner or as a person who, has a lot of other things going on and doesn’t care about what you do as much as they’re, like, just trying to solve a problem right now that’s why they’re watching these videos. So try to think about it the way they do as well. I know that that can absolutely be a challenge, but just try to. So I have your immediate reaction here.


Do your best to make sure you’re thinking of it the way your prospect is likely thinking of it. What is it about? What’s this freaking short about? In a word? In thirty words? I don’t care. Whatever will help you know what’s going on out there if you’re not already and I don’t think anybody here is actively doing YouTube stuff.


So then get out there and just, like, write down what it’s about. Why do you think it’s so watched? Like, if and you should be focusing on the ones that are quite watched just to be sure just to be clear in case that wasn’t clear. Two hundred and forty six thousand views, that kind of stuff. Look into those things.


It doesn’t mean that’s the right way to go forever, but for shorts, I would recommend that we at least start there.


Based on topic, why it’s so watched based on delivery. So maybe it’s like one solid shot and it never moves and you’re curious about that. What’s going on there? Or it’s heavily edited or or or the list goes on.


So like just look at it. What are you seeing? What are they doing? If you had to storyboard that if you were making that for yourself, what notes would you take away to make sure you could make that for yourself?


So very light reverse engineering just like just note it. Is there music? Is there not music? Is the music uppity?


Is it chill? What’s the vibe going on? And at what point did you get bored? Because most of us will get bored and that will, based on what I’ve been learning about YouTube, and we’re outsourcing that, but nonetheless, I on my understanding based on the training that I’ve taken, again, I’m outsourcing this so I can’t say this is what we’re doing, but you go through and you watch you watch drop offs, in your video analytics and then you, like, cut those parts out.


So where you get bored is an important thing to pay attention to, and that’s really it. So assessment goes in one column and your idea, any ideas that come out of that go in the next column. So if you the opening shot was like a weird face or something, maybe your idea is do a weird face. I don’t know.


That’s maybe a horrible idea. Doesn’t mean you’ll do everything that’s in your idea column, but get some ideas.


Businesses run on ideas. Write your ideas down. Okay. That’s your homework. That’s what you should do in order to get ready to start getting on YouTube, and the things that work on YouTube shorts are likely to work in Instagram, on in in, let me not stammer, in reels. So you should, come out of this with more than just an audit of what’s going on.


On YouTube, I will stop sharing. Any questions on this subject, on the challenge itself, on what you’re going to be working on? Abby, is your question about this stuff?


Yeah. I wanted to just share something I found out about YouTube that might be helpful. So, I was reading about, outlier videos. So that’s if yeah. If somebody’s got a small following, but one of their videos blew up.


So that’s, like, a good thing to do if you have a like, if you’re starting from scratch. But there’s a tool called vidIQ that you can use, and it will, pull up the outlier score so then you can reverse engineer those, which, yeah, is it’s good if, like, you’re starting from zero.


Nice. VidIQ. Awesome. Chatted that out. Thanks, Abby. Anybody else wanna share anything?


No? Nobody’s got any any ideas? Is everybody ready to go?


Cody, how are you feeling?


I’m feeling alright. I like I said, I was I’ve been working through Laurel Portis, like, ad ecosystems all about creating content. I think that’s important because she helps you break down, like, to solve micro problems for your audience instead of just posting, just to, like, post and say stuff. Because I know for me, I have been very consistent with content, and, it never I mean, not that it never led to results, but not the results that I would have expected to. So I think just, you know, maybe checking her out and checking out, like, how to, write like, solve micro problems for your audience would be helpful as well.


Yeah. Nice tip. Awesome.


Anyone else?


No?


Okay. Well, that’s the challenge.


As you do it, I invite you to pop into Slack and share what’s going on for you, any insights, anything that you’re learning, struggles, relief that you got through the first week.


And if you don’t post one day, just start again the next day. That is not an excuse maker. That’s not, oh, I’ll just do it tomorrow. Try to do it today. Put all of your effort into doing it today.If somehow it doesn’t happen, there you go. Oh, Abby just chatted over her a hundred pound bonus for every day you do it.Dig it. Love that too. Alright. Good. Rewards are good.Excellent. Okay.

Worksheet

AI-assisted Content Calendar

Worksheet

AI-assisted Content Calendar

 

Transcript

We are kicking off challenge month. If you’re like, what’s challenge month? Uh-oh.

You’re in trouble because it’s a lot. So challenge month is where, I am challenging you and myself to do three things every single day. Does anybody know what those three things are?

Yes. Most of the room does.

I’ll repeat them anyway.

For those who don’t, they are sending an email to your list. I don’t care how small or large your list is. Not segmenting it, just sending the damn thing.

LinkedIn post and, YouTube short slash Instagram reel, they’re really the same thing. And if you wanna throw it on TikTok too, god bless you. Go for it. Great.

Just make sure you do those four core things.

They don’t have to be in that order. That’s the order I’m gonna do them in. I might switch Instagram and LinkedIn around some days.

But that’s the objective every single day to build the habit to stop, I think, getting in our own way when it comes to what are what am I gonna even talk about? There’s nothing to say.

Just say things. Just do it. It’s worked for a lot of people. Just do it.

You’ll be fine. We’ll all be fine. Because don’t don’t say things you’ll regret. It’s all I’d recommend.

That’s really it. Other than that, get out there. Do it. If you don’t like how you look and you’re on camera, fuck it.

Whatever. If you love it, cool. Whatever. Most people don’t care as much as we think they care.

So get out there, start sharing things. That’s the challenge today.

And then for the training for this month, we will be, a little a little reactive, responsive. So as you’re going through and sharing what you’re doing every day, then we’re going to hear things like oh no this is happening or oh wow this is happening, and as we hear those things and you bring up questions and stuff like that then we’re able to come up with training that fits in, to help through those moments.

Okay so that’s the objective for the month at least five days a week.

You can do seven days a week if you really want to make sure you are in that habit. I’m gonna do five days a week and it starts today. So the objective is to create and schedule for the next day.

And I use Sprout Social because I have a lifetime free account because of work we’ve done for them, over the years. So I’m gonna use Sprout. Use whatever you want to use to schedule them. I don’t.

This is all agnostic. Use whatever you want to share with others if you’re like, I’m using this. Here’s why I love it. I’m using this.

I hate it. What would you recommend? Share that. This is a good time to participate with everybody else in the room because everybody’s doing the same thing.

Okay. So some things I wanna share with you and then I’ll share my screen and we’ll talk through today’s training.

The challenge itself as I already mentioned, breaks down in certain ways. I do have in the Copy School Pro, Google Calendar, you’ll see that there’s a forty five minute work block followed by a fifteen minute break. That is to avoid all of the heartache that comes on really hard days when you’re like, ugh, I just don’t want to. If you only have forty five minutes to write the email then just do it.

Then you can get up, walk around, get a coffee, clear your head, go outside, pick some weeds out of your garden, whatever, and then get back into it. Now if you’re in flow, you do you. Just do whatever it takes but I’m setting up the way that I’m going to do it. And that’s what’s in the calendar.

Okay.

You should probably expect to dedicate at least three hours a day. I know people are like what? Three hours? What? There’s twenty four in the day.

Who needs to sleep? Who said anything about sleeping? Not me. Alright, you we don’t know what the results are going to be this is an experiment and everybody’s participating and that’s just the way it is.

Alright, you are going to wish that you had started doing this sooner. You’ll dig in, it’ll be a slog, things won’t hit, no one will care and then someone will suddenly care or someone will care out of the gate and then nobody will care again later, that’s just the way it is. Just keep going and learn from it and do it with the expectation that this is the beginning of your new life. Like, this is how it’s gonna be.

That’s what I’m doing going into it. Like, okay. I should probably have been doing this forever. Because every time I do this stuff, it pays off.

And when I don’t, the old stuff keeps paying off but not as much as if I just kept kept at it. So, keep at it. Expect that this is the beginning of what you’re doing going forward and that’s it. Eventually, you’ll be like, okay.

I’m gonna batch my emails. I’m gonna batch my recordings. Great. You will figure that out as you go.

Don’t go into this saying, hold on. I’m just gonna figure this all out first and then maybe next month I’ll do it. No. We’re doing it this month, ugly, horrible, the worst way possible.

We’re just gonna sit down and do it. It. Okay. Now we’re going to get into the first thing that we need to do in order to make sure that we’re getting good work done and that is establishing where we’re at right now so we know where we’re growing to.

So let me share my screen and we will begin with the work. So the work that we’re doing today is day one, which is really day two of the month but day one of the challenge.

For the next ten minutes, I’m asking you to go into your CRM, to go into if you use, like, tally or type form to collect leads, to go into whatever you use to identify, new leads, how many calls were booked if that’s in Calendly or if you just, like, know that. Clients closed in the last thirty days. How many subscribers joined your list in the last thirty days? If you’re like, I don’t have a list, then there’s zero.

But by day thirty, we want people on there. Revenue from services sold in the last thirty days. Revenue from products because some of us have products that we’re selling. Daily site visitors, where are you at today?

What is the average? Go into Google Analytics.

It’s right there. You don’t even have to have special reports. You just go straight into Google Analytics. Select your website if you’re in multiple people’s, GA accounts for clients.

But just go to yours. Just see how many people came to your site overall. And if you choose a certain number, like, I know it breaks down into unique visitors and things like that. Whatever you do, just make sure that you write in, like, unique visitors three thousand or whatever.

And then on day thirty, you’ll also wanna use unique visitors so you don’t just, like, feel better or worse about it, but just keep that the same. How many LinkedIn followers you have today? This is easy. While I’m talking, you can pop over to LinkedIn and see how many followers you have.

Write it in. Instagram followers, same thing. YouTube views, I’m saying that instead of subscribers because views are way more important, than subscribers, which is pretty shocking, but it’s the way that their algorithm works. YouTube wants more people viewing.

They don’t give a crap about followers or subscribers.

So YouTube views is you can go into your reports. If you’re not on YouTube at all, then it’s zero and you will get started on YouTube today.

And then any other metrics that stand out for you, for your business in particular, you know uniquely what’s going on in your business and what you want to optimize or grow, so you can pop that in here. Now this is if you’ve done like McGhee does and you print out your worksheets and put them in binders, wonderful. You can just fill this in. Otherwise, open up a spreadsheet.

Put it in there. We’re gonna do that for the next now eight minutes. Okay? Hold on. There’s a chat.

Just making sure.

I’m recommending YouTube because that’s the place where, most businesses are today today finding people.

And so you I wouldn’t choose it over. I’d say in addition to. Just also do TikTok then because you’re already doing all these other things. So you might as well just throw that in there too and repurpose it. Cool. Alright.

You’ve got until twenty six minutes after the hours. Now that’s six minutes.

Okay.

If you didn’t get a chance to write everything in, just go in and do it. Do it in one of those fifteen minute breaks that you have, in your calendar for today. Okay. Let’s dig in.

June challenge. You will need a content plan. You’ll need one for every single day. What are you gonna be writing about?

Now we have talked in great detail about where content ideas come from, how to use AI for content ideas, all of the things. There is a lot inside CopySchool Pro in the replay area, so pop on in there, watch some old ones. If you’re not sure, they’re not old. They’re like a year at most old in most cases.

So go in there, get ideas from there if you don’t already have them. Now AI can do quite a lot.

I asked ChatGPT to put a topic calendar together. I don’t like it. This is the first draft, but at least it’s something. They do subject lines, don’t worry about it, but whatever.

Point is, you have ways easier than ever in history. There’s never been a better time to come up with ideas for what you can create content on. It’s also very difficult to make content that stands out. So that’s more the question.

Less, what should I talk about more? How do I make it interesting to people? That doesn’t mean a lot of editing or anything crazy. We can get into all of that stuff.

But you will need topics. If you don’t have topics, it’s going to be hard if every day you’re like, what should I talk about today? You will hate your life. So come up with topics upfront.

Use ChatGPT if it will help you. If you don’t like it, don’t use it. You can come up with it other ways.

A really simple approach is just to go over to YouTube directly. I know there’s, like, solutions that help with this. SparkToro is, of course, a great way to go about finding topics.

Exploding topics, Brian Dean’s, formerly Brian Dean’s, now SEM Rush’s tool is another great way to come up with topics, but obviously just play around with those. It’s not going to give you the perfect spreadsheet of, like, what you should write about or what you should talk about.

But when you are going to create shorts and reels, really simply head over to YouTube, go into the shorts area, and then just like search your keyword phrase, your topic, whatever it is, get granular or don’t, Doesn’t matter. You’ll come up with a lot of topics even if you’re just like copywriting or finding your message, you’ll come up with a lot. Oh, maybe not for finding your message. You’ll find out.

You’ll go there. You’ll find out. So then go into the shorts area. You’ll see on YouTube all of the different, like, as you’re scrolling down, there’s the big ones and shorts is all through the middle.

Just go in there and start opening in a new tab all of these new ones. Of course, in each of those tabs, more will get served up to you that’s related to what you’re watching so when you click on one video to watch it one short obviously you’ll see like five others that you wouldn’t have seen otherwise and so just use all of these to really basically audit or analyze what’s on the screen, what they’re doing. So, because it’s a short, you don’t have to worry about a thumbnail the same way as you do for, like, a full video. What’s that opening shot?

What does it look like? What’s the title?

What is your immediate reaction to it?

And try very very hard to step into your prospect’s shoes as well because I know that it can be really difficult, of course, when you see somebody talking about a subject you know well and you think they’re full of shit. At least that’s my reaction in most cases, like, ugh. But then every so often you’re like, You that was really good. So, be aware of your immediate reaction, but also try not to be too, everybody here is quite focused on advancing their skills, being the best and actually being the best at it.

So it can be hard to look at it as a beginner or as a person who, has a lot of other things going on and doesn’t care about what you do as much as they’re, like, just trying to solve a problem right now that’s why they’re watching these videos. So try to think about it the way they do as well. I know that that can absolutely be a challenge, but just try to. So I have your immediate reaction here.

Do your best to make sure you’re thinking of it the way your prospect is likely thinking of it. What is it about? What’s this freaking short about? In a word? In thirty words? I don’t care. Whatever will help you know what’s going on out there if you’re not already and I don’t think anybody here is actively doing YouTube stuff.

So then get out there and just, like, write down what it’s about. Why do you think it’s so watched? Like, if and you should be focusing on the ones that are quite watched just to be sure just to be clear in case that wasn’t clear. Two hundred and forty six thousand views, that kind of stuff. Look into those things.

It doesn’t mean that’s the right way to go forever, but for shorts, I would recommend that we at least start there.

Based on topic, why it’s so watched based on delivery. So maybe it’s like one solid shot and it never moves and you’re curious about that. What’s going on there? Or it’s heavily edited or or or the list goes on.

So like just look at it. What are you seeing? What are they doing? If you had to storyboard that if you were making that for yourself, what notes would you take away to make sure you could make that for yourself?

So very light reverse engineering just like just note it. Is there music? Is there not music? Is the music uppity?

Is it chill? What’s the vibe going on? And at what point did you get bored? Because most of us will get bored and that will, based on what I’ve been learning about YouTube, and we’re outsourcing that, but nonetheless, I on my understanding based on the training that I’ve taken, again, I’m outsourcing this so I can’t say this is what we’re doing, but you go through and you watch you watch drop offs, in your video analytics and then you, like, cut those parts out.

So where you get bored is an important thing to pay attention to, and that’s really it. So assessment goes in one column and your idea, any ideas that come out of that go in the next column. So if you the opening shot was like a weird face or something, maybe your idea is do a weird face. I don’t know.

That’s maybe a horrible idea. Doesn’t mean you’ll do everything that’s in your idea column, but get some ideas.

Businesses run on ideas. Write your ideas down. Okay. That’s your homework. That’s what you should do in order to get ready to start getting on YouTube, and the things that work on YouTube shorts are likely to work in Instagram, on in in, let me not stammer, in reels. So you should, come out of this with more than just an audit of what’s going on.

On YouTube, I will stop sharing. Any questions on this subject, on the challenge itself, on what you’re going to be working on? Abby, is your question about this stuff?

Yeah. I wanted to just share something I found out about YouTube that might be helpful. So, I was reading about, outlier videos. So that’s if yeah. If somebody’s got a small following, but one of their videos blew up.

So that’s, like, a good thing to do if you have a like, if you’re starting from scratch. But there’s a tool called vidIQ that you can use, and it will, pull up the outlier score so then you can reverse engineer those, which, yeah, is it’s good if, like, you’re starting from zero.

Nice. VidIQ. Awesome. Chatted that out. Thanks, Abby. Anybody else wanna share anything?

No? Nobody’s got any any ideas? Is everybody ready to go?

Cody, how are you feeling?

I’m feeling alright. I like I said, I was I’ve been working through Laurel Portis, like, ad ecosystems all about creating content. I think that’s important because she helps you break down, like, to solve micro problems for your audience instead of just posting, just to, like, post and say stuff. Because I know for me, I have been very consistent with content, and, it never I mean, not that it never led to results, but not the results that I would have expected to. So I think just, you know, maybe checking her out and checking out, like, how to, write like, solve micro problems for your audience would be helpful as well.

Yeah. Nice tip. Awesome.

Anyone else?

No?

Okay. Well, that’s the challenge.

As you do it, I invite you to pop into Slack and share what’s going on for you, any insights, anything that you’re learning, struggles, relief that you got through the first week.

And if you don’t post one day, just start again the next day. That is not an excuse maker. That’s not, oh, I’ll just do it tomorrow. Try to do it today. Put all of your effort into doing it today.

If somehow it doesn’t happen, there you go. Oh, Abby just chatted over her a hundred pound bonus for every day you do it.

Dig it. Love that too. Alright. Good. Rewards are good.

Excellent. Okay.

Brand Positioning

Brand Positioning with Kira Hug

Transcript

 

So we’re gonna focus on brand positioning,

talking about visuals and the visual side of it, but I can’t really talk about visuals without doing the deep work underneath because then it’s like then we’re just talking about colors and shapes, and it really doesn’t have any context or any meaning.

So before I dive in, because I’m gonna throw a lot at you, I would love to just get some feedback from all of you and ask a couple of questions just to kind of see where you’re at with your own branding, brand positioning.

So first question, when when it comes to your own positioning, what makes you feel stuck right now? Like, where are you the most tripped up?

Let me know.

Jump in.

Share.

Yes. I see people leaning forward, so just off go off mute and feel free to jump in and share. Johnson, I saw you I saw you leaning. Tell me.

I mean okay. Yeah. But it’s I feel like, can I say, it says one thing, and I kinda just wanna say, like, broadly gesture at everything?

Every oh, shoot.

Okay.

No.

I mean, it’s been there are bits I like about it, but, it it really needs, like, a an overhaul.

So, that’s why I wasn’t chiming in because I was like, I don’t really have one thing I can I can point to?

Is there, like, one thing that is most cringey that it just Yeah.

I mean yeah. I guess I guess my the the branding on my website is pretty, is is pretty basic and pretty minimal and pretty, I don’t think I’ve really touched it since I I put it up the the first time.

Okay. Alright. So, hopefully, we can come up with some ideas today. And because we do have a small group, we can really personalize some of this and come up with some ideas for you that you could weave into your current website, which would be cool, to just make sure that’s positioned well.

What about Stacy, Abby?

Anything that makes you cringe a little bit or, isn’t working, you don’t really know how to push through it? Anyone else who I didn’t see?

I don’t have anything particularly cringey right now. I have a I have a background in branding. So Oh, so you’re you’re like I mean, I’m just no. I don’t got this, but but I but I try to get past the cringy bits anyway.

Okay. Okay. Is there one area where as as, like, as someone who specializes in this, an area where you’re like, ugh, but I get in my own way here in this particular area when I’m working on my own positioning, like, overthinking it maybe?

No. I’m not an overthinker.

Okay.

More just, like, doing ten million things. And and, I mean, the one thing about my my brand right now is that I haven’t yeah. I mean, you know what goes into proper branding, and I haven’t had the time and energy to do a full, you know, full normal approach of what I would do if I were doing branding for a client to my own, to my own Yeah. Product that I’m, you know, building out right now.

Yeah. It’s more a time issue. Yeah. Yeah. I get that. I get that. What about you, Abby?

I know we’re gonna pull up your website. I’d like to pull up your website today.

Yeah. I mean, I I like my branding. I think the thing what I get kind of fed up with is just sharing the same kind of brand photos over and over again. Like, I just get bored seeing them and, like, putting them out there, because they’re, like, two years old now.

So just sharing your visuals repeatedly, you get tired of your own component? Like, everyone else looks the same.

Oh, like yeah. Like, I I get bored just yeah. Seeing my ones over and over, and I, like, worry that people are gonna be like, she’s sharing this, like, picture again.

Got it. Okay. Got it.

Great. Amazing. And so what we’re gonna do as a starting point is focus on elements of value and figure out what your customers value the most and how you’re sharing that through your brand. And going through this process could hopefully trigger an idea or two around what you can incorporate, not just in the visual side of your the brand, which we can touch on and that’s fun, but also in how you deliver your processes and how you create your customer experiences and the, typography and every element of the deliverables.

And so just kind of, like, weaving it throughout the entire business so that it’s a really cohesive experience for your clients based off the elements of value. Has anyone walked through this process in-depth before? Just raise your hand. You have?

Okay. Good. That one person hasn’t, so that’s great. Abby, you’ve done a deep dive through values.

I hired someone to, like, do my branding for me, and they kind of walked me through some of this stuff. But, I mean, I feel like everyone’s process is different, so I’m curious what you include in yours.

Yeah. And maybe also just to see if anything has shifted or if certain values that you can kind of, like, focus on a little bit more heavily in, your visuals and everything else. So very cool. Alright. So I’m gonna just stop sharing real quick, give you a worksheet, that you can jump into. I’ll just drop the link in the chat.

And we’re really going to be diving into this together.

So, you all are gonna be sharing a lot with me. And if you don’t want to, just jump off video and, I will not call on you. So feel free to make a copy of the worksheet.

This is the entire positioning process, we worked through in one of our programs called Serenity Now from Seinfeld, and it takes a month to go through it. So because we have fifty minutes, we’re gonna just focus on the first few sections, but you can work on it on your own time. And, as kind of a bonus gift for the people here and people catching this later, if you are working through it and you need you get stuck or need feedback, you can share it with me, and I’m happy to help you sort through it. If you’re like, I just brain dumped all my information in here, and I have no idea what threads to pull or, like, what’s good, what’s what it means.

You got my email address, and I love sorting through this with you. So we can continue that conversation because, obviously, this is a longer conversation than what we can do right now. So for the sake of today and, again, kind of focusing on the first major element, which is identifying elements of value, We’re gonna get started and focus on this section and see how far we get today. So I do need two readers. We’re gonna read through the section so, Johnson, I’m gonna call on you to start.

Sure. Just want me to read, read this up.

Yep. Right here.

And when you stop whenever you stop, I will call one of the person Alright.

Cool.

To jump in. It’s not that lengthy. It’s not that lengthy. I just wanna make sure No.

No. Sure. Sure. Sure. Here. Okay. Cool.

So time to get intentional about the elements that form your brand’s core value, which will set you apart from the competition and help you exceed your customers’ expectations.

Companies that performed well on multiple elements of value, the fundamental attributes that drive customer choice and loyalty, have more loyal customers than the competition.

Bain and Company’s twenty sixteen survey confirmed that.

The survey found that companies with high scores, eight or above, on four or more elements from at least fifty percent of respondents had significantly higher net promoter scores.

Do you want me to read the the Don’t worry about that part.

Just Okay. We all know what that means.

These these companies, such as Apple, Samsung, USAA, Tom’s, and Amazon had on average three times the NPS of companies with just one high score and twenty times the NPS of companies with none.

Basically, this means companies that score highly on several important elements of value get way better recommendations from customers compared to those that don’t. The survey also found that companies performing well on multiple elements of value grew revenue at a faster rate than others, indicating a strong correlation between delivering on multiple elements and achieving higher sustained revenue growth.

Companies that scored high on four or more elements had recent revenue growth four times greater than that of companies with only one high score.

It’s important to note that companies scoring high on emotional elements, those that evoke positive feelings like trust, belongingness, or excitement, tend to have a higher NPS on average than companies that perform well only on functional elements, those related tactical needs, like cost savings or convenience.

The broader appeal of smartphones stems from how they deliver multiple elements, including reduces effort, saves time, connects, integrates, variety, fun slash entertainment, provides access, and organizes.

Manufacturers of these products, Apple, Samsung, and LG, got some of the highest value ratings across all companies studied.

For now, please take your time to explore these the values below.

Amazing. Thank you for reading through that.

I mean, this is why we’re so addicted to our smartphones. Right? Because masterfully has we’ve been in all of these different values so that it’s nearly impossible to live and operate without it. And so we’re gonna think through and explore elements of value in your own business.

And this might be a little bit different even than, Abby, what you’ve done with your branding consultant and what I’ve done previously with other consultants I’ve worked with, because this is really customer led. And so I’ve often branded based off my values, which is definitely a good way to go. You can do that. But going through this process is slightly different because this is starting with the customer and doing that deep research to understand, okay.

Great that I value these things and we can definitely leave that into the messaging. But at a foundational level, what do my customers value? What do they need? What’s important to them and which you know, how does it align with my business?

Obviously, choosing different values that do work for your business so that it can serve you as well. So there is this chart. You have it in the worksheet, and you can look through it. Sometimes, you know, some of the terms, I think, are less clear than others, so I definitely would explore and check out the definitions of each value and reminding yourself, like, the emotional values are more powerful.

So we wanna make sure that we don’t ignore the emotional values when thinking about our own business and just focusing on many of the values that we focus on, right, which is about, oftentimes, like, reducing costs or reducing effort or saving time. I mean, how many messages do we share or, like, this will save you time and going a little bit deeper into the emotional side and even life changing value, which many of us do provide for our clients, and maybe even reaching the highest level of social impact and self transcendence depending on what you do or how you work with your clients. Like,

maybe that’s not really a portion of what we’re doing, but that is possible when you think about this from your client’s point of view. So what we’re gonna do is take a couple minutes and think through which five, we’re gonna start with five, values you want to embody in your business and why and come up with the reason why. And you can add all this information into the worksheet. We’re gonna do it right now.

And, again, this is more about knowing your customers, inside and out.

And, obviously, like, you all are, you know, advanced copywriters. You’ve done this work. You know what your customers and clients value, so you’re not starting from scratch. Otherwise, you would have to start with some interviews and do some surveying to understand what do they care about. But this might be something that needs to a refresher every quarter or every six months to understand what’s shifted in the marketplace. Like, I thought this is what they valued, and six months later, it’s actually shifted, which is happening faster and faster and faster now, as technology shifts. So take a couple minutes, go through the list, and maybe, you know, a couple pop out to you that are really clear because this is how you operate, this is what you’re already doing.

Maybe there are a couple values that you want to weave in because you know they’re important to your clients, and maybe you haven’t really been focusing on them and they aren’t showing up in your brand positioning, and this could be a good way to intentionally add them. So you could add more than five, but for the sake of today’s exercise, let’s just lean into five, and then we’re gonna kind of expand from now. So for now, just choose a five, add in why why you chose it.

It could be as simple as I talked to this client and they told me this is important to them. But whatever that is, add that in here.

So I’ll give you a couple minutes. Just, I’ll read them and have the chat box open. So when you are done, just drop me a note in the chat. Okay. We got a couple done, so let’s let’s share. And I’m curious to hear about the values you chose and, you know, why you chose those particular values.

So why don’t we kick off, Johnson, if you’re able to share?

Yeah. Sure.

So, the first one I chose was, make some money, because that’s a a primary motivator, for for my, my ideal customer.

And the second one is reduces effort because I think that, ideally, maybe there is upfront extra effort often, with the kind of consultancy work that I wanna be doing. But in the long run, the plan is that it it simplifies, which I kind of was also struggling to pick between, simplifies and reduces effort. But I kinda want a little bit of both.

The third was because this was the other thing is, we’re talking, not just product. Right? We’re talking brand as well.

Like, it’s it’s it’s it’s assets. It’s content. It’s everything. Right?

So, the third I chose was fun and entertainment because the Nice.

The, the the the brand that I wanna build is is is based heavily around storytelling.

Oh.

So the content that I’ve been was producing, leans into that quite heavily.

And then the the fourth was self actualization, because I think if I think very often the goals of my clients, you know, they are to to to to to to simplify or reduce effort to make more money.

And, if I can help them do that, I feel, that that’s that is bringing them closer towards, what they really, truly want to do. And then finally, I went for a I just want for the answers.

Social responsibility.

Nice.

Go on back.

Go on back.

The the the, system that I’m developing is one that I I’m hoping is gonna kind of introduce a more empathetic approach to, marketing and sales. So, that’s, that’s something else.

Amazing. That’s such a good range in those five. And, of course, you can always add more later, but I think, well, with those five, how do you feel?

Like, do you feel like you’ve, integrated most of them into your positioning in your business, or are you I need to focus on I think I’m in I think I’m in the pros process of I think, for sure, like, I’m hitting the first three.

Yeah. But but well, no. Maybe four. I mean, no. For sure four because, I mean, I’m helping clients make more money, and that is opening up doors for them.

But, yeah, maybe social, responsibility is, that’s the one to to to work towards.

Yeah. So that’d be might be one that you focus on more, not just in this exercise, but to build out in different parts of your business too, not just the build side. But, okay, where else can I read this into? The client experience, deliverables, products. So that’s really cool.

Great. And Abby or Stacy, would either of you wanna share? I’m taking notes so this we can kind of jump through the next step.

Abby, do you wanna start?

Yeah. Sure. I’m happy to share.

I kind of wanna switch out a bit after Harry Johnson’s day. So I’m gonna get rid of one. Okay.

So my first one is makes more money. Obviously, they wanna make money.

Simplifies because I think people feel like evergreen funnels can be really complicated, so we make it, like, really simple, easy for them.

Reduces anxiety. Like, the reason that I got into Evergreen Funnels is because I just see, like, the mental toll I’ve launching takes on my clients, and I really wanna reduce that anxiety just to make it more chill, bring in that predictable passive revenue.

And then I put self actualization because I want my client to be able to just have their course running, selling in the background so they can then speak on stages and do the the bigger things that they wanna do, but they can’t because they’re just, like, live launching all the time.

And then I didn’t have social responsibility, but then I added it because I thought, actually, yeah, I think, like, ethical marketing isn’t whatever that means. Like, I’m not an authority on it, but it is important to me to not be using kind of manipulative sales tactics and to kinda always be educating myself on what that means and how customers are responding to my copy.

So Oh, I love that. It’s such a great mix too. That’s I love it. Okay. Great. And, Stacy, do you wanna jump in and share?

I I didn’t use the five things.

I have my I have my own well, I have my own value framework. I have a thing it’s called the value code. It’s a book that I’m working on, and it’s about the types of value that your product or service provides.

So I worked on that, and I just made a, my I have a a software that does a value code profile based on things that you put in. And so I I ran that, and I’m still sorting through it to decide which ones I want to focus on, primarily.

Okay.

I can kinda I mean, I can kinda show you if you want to see.

But Yeah.

I mean, if if you can share a couple of them, it’d be helpful to know as we move to the next step. Or if you just kinda wanna do your own thing, that’s cool too.

I’m gonna probably just do my own thing. Okay.

Okay. Very cool. I’d love to hear more about that, a little bit later. Okay. So let’s move forward. Thank you for sharing values, and I love that, you know, you’re also kind of, Abby, changing them up too, as you think about them.

So did that, selected them. Now we’re going to integrate them, which is the fun part because this is where we get creative, And this is where there are endless opportunities to think about not only the visual side, but about all the other aspects that we typically don’t think about. So I love examples. So I do have two different examples in this workbook that you can look at that I’m not gonna read through in-depth.

But, some of the ideas are just, like, maybe not what you would do and not the name of what you would call it.

Like, you might not create a quality feedback loop and call it that, but they could just kind of inspire other ideas for you. And I know as I walk through this exercise for myself, I just got a ton of ideas, and I use a lot of different, I use Claude to come up with even more ideas, which is the amazing part about using some chatbots so that I can just continue to brainstorm. And so at this stage today, we are just brainstorming.

We’re not deciding on what is actually good or feasible or realistic.

We don’t have to make those decisions today. I think everything is possible, and we’re just gonna work from that mindset as we walk through these exercises. So the first one was for quality, which is a really good value to add. So that might be, like, the sixth value that we all have because I I know we all you know, that’s something we all value in this room.

And the other one that was kind of fun that may help you, Abby, is reduces anxiety and walking through. So you can check out those examples, right now and then later. And so what I want you to do is take a couple minutes, and there’s space for you down here to walk through your own. And so I would love you to fill out as much of this as you can and just kind of get creative if you want to use, whatever is your preferred AI chatbot.

Like, go for it to brainstorm if you’re feeling stuck.

We can also help you in a couple minutes if you are stuck on any of these areas. So the core areas to focus on, client experience, how you can integrate this into that, into your processes, your deliverables, potentially color palette.

I know a couple of you already have your color palette, so maybe, you know, you aren’t gonna touch it at this point. But if you don’t, that could be something to think about.

Fonts might be a little trickier to think about unless that comes naturally to you, so feel free to skip that one for now, but that’s something you could revisit in the future.

Logo design also, again, like, little more advanced.

So you can skip that one for now unless some ideas come to come to you as far as like, oh, yeah. This would be very, you know, kind of, more organic looking or be geometric based off value.

Packaging and collateral was kind of like if you were to send a gift, any ideas related to that. Imagery, anything that goes into your marketing tools on your website. Any images come to mind, you can add them here.

A little pop culture, that’s probably my favorite section where we can have the most fun is thinking through what pop culture references from any decade could fit into this value. And so, for example, if it was quality, like, the example was Beyonce came to mind, because she delivers consistently in an exceptional level.

What were some of the other pop Apple, for sure, for quality is a pop culture reference.

Wes Anderson films, like, this is a brainstorm, so anything’s possible, but that will be a fun area to expand upon because it may trigger an image idea or even just messaging that you could mirror or be inspired by, or just references in your own messaging, quotes, anything playful. So that’s the last section and oh, not the last section. Objects.

Objects that come to mind, other ideas can fit into this bucket.

If, again, it’s quality, maybe it’s like you’re thinking of this is more cliche, but, like, you’re thinking of a a Rolex or any type of images that, marble that feel really sturdy and strong and, like, they can last forever.

So let’s take a couple minutes and dive in. This is the creative portion, and I wanna see what you come up with. And if you’re open to sharing your website, we could even look at a couple of your websites to integrate some of your ideas into your website, which, Abby, because I have your website, we’re definitely gonna look at your website.

But, Johnson, we could do that with yours as well at your game.

So take some time.

Let me know when you’re done. There’s no rush. We got time for this.

I will sip some water as I’m waiting. And you don’t have to do all five because that’s pretty intense. So you can definitely do two or three.

If that feels intense, just do one. Once you finish the first integration for the first value, just let me know in the chat just so I can kinda see how we’re doing with timing. There’s no rush, but I just wanna make sure that, we at least can do one of them. Well, Abby, if you’ve done one, if you can do one more, that would be amazing.

Maybe, one that you feel like you haven’t fully brought into your brand and your website yet since we’re gonna look at your website, if there’s one that you feel like you haven’t fully pulled into it. Okay. Alright. Let’s just jump back in based off where we are, and, hopefully, you can continue working through this with the rest of the values.

So I’d love to hear what you came up with.

We’ll start with the first value.

Abby, do you wanna share?

Yeah. So, for reduced anxiety, as part of the client experience, I thought it’d be cool too. So Rai shared that he booked, like, a massage for one of his clients before in his last training, and I thought that would be really cool because I’ve sent, like, a spa package in the past for a live launch. But I think, actually, at the start of every Evergreen project, putting them in for a massage would be, like, a really nice way to be like, you control now. Like, I’ve got you.

Yeah. That’s so amazing. Especially if you’re booking it and not just gifting it. You know?

Like, you’re because if I have their address, I can Yeah.

And scheduling and get you know? Because the worst part is booking it for me.

Like, finding the time to book it. You can make it thing.

And then, also, I mean, I already send a welcome pack, but I’m sure there are things I can do to make it even more, like, anxiety reducing.

What do you include in that now?

I include a timeline of the project, a breakdown of what’s included, and then, like, instructions for the steps.

So, like, to a link to book the first call with me, the form and stuff, and then, like, a list of, like, use handy resource like, quick access to, like, that Google folder and, like, Calendly if they wanna book a call with me and Loom if they wanna send a video.

Okay. Good. So it’s, like, everything you need to know for the project. Got it.

Yeah. Just, like, trying to keep it in one place. Yeah. Cool.

What about other areas, like, the visual side of it, the images, anything pop up for you with pop culture, objects?

Not for like, so I think my my current, like, color path palette is quite chill. I thought, like, I could show, more, like, visuals of my process so it just feels more like they’re held. And then also actually showing and when our client testimonials okay. So that is actually showing that predictable revenue because I think that’s, like, the biggest kind of anxiety reducers actually knowing you can see that revenue coming in without the live launch.

Yeah. I mean yeah. Your colors are we we’ll get to them, but they feel, yeah, they feel like they are anxiety reducing and, they feel really good. Like, the vibe on your website feels really good. Okay. Great. Any other surprises maybe from that value or a different value as you were filling this out?

Yes. There was. Let me just look through.

Oh, yeah. So there are kind of a couple of questions I’ve been asking myself about running, like, my business, and one of those was is kind of how to include the optimization retainer. And I think if one of my core values is anxiety reduction, I think it it really makes sense to make sure that it is included in my signature offer at least, like, just those three months because then even if it doesn’t convert, they know that they’ve got that. So that kind of answered that question for me.

And then there’s also I I don’t wireframe because well, because, you know, I don’t want to. But I think, like, but I simplifying the process is one of my values, I think. Yeah. I I should really what I phrase to make it easy for the clients.

So, yeah, I kind of answered those two questions that have been in the back of my mind. So, yeah, I found found it really helpful. Thank you.

Oh, amazing. And then we can maybe, you know, also brainstorm ways. Are you maybe you’re already thinking about for the social responsibility part, like, how that could, show up in different areas. And so you can integrate that piece too. That’s what I’m hearing. Hey. Johnson, are you able to share?

I am able to share.

That was cool. I I liked I I listening to Abby talk about it, it’s it’s, it’s clicking more to me how this is, like, it’s beyond it is beyond branding or have beyond how I maybe, been thinking about running. Yeah.

Yeah. So, swinging client experience, I wrote, create, a fulfillment narrative discovery wherein we start projects by using the techniques from narrative setting to explore what success looks like for the client beyond this project.

That might end up affecting strategy or execution of the project, or even change the product goals altogether. But if nothing changes, great. We’ll know our clients’ needs better.

And then building off of that in terms of processes, use what we learn in that thing, to create a simple tailored road map that lays out exactly how the project is gonna support their largest goals if possible.

And then another process I was thinking about, which might be cool, would be to, on our side, create a larger map that identifies in the broadest possible strokes the steps the client might take to reach their big goal. If there’s something that we can help with, which I expect there often will be, line that up to present to the client at project close.

In terms of deliverables, I just wrote goal attached weekly reports. So just regular updates that are integrated and attached to the key metrics we’ve identified that support those big calls.

Color palette, use bright, loud, bold colors to inspire a sense of empowerment and daring.

Typography, I just wrote user confident font LOL.

I don’t really know anything about typography.

That’ll take a lot more time. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think it.

Logo design, create a logo that incorporates a sense of freedom of choice and joy, and then pop culture inspire. I didn’t really it wasn’t really like pop culture. It’s more just like, archetypes, I guess. But I was I wrote ethical rogues, wise trailblazers, and joyful trendsetters, which is more just like a general vibe, I guess.

Yeah. So yeah. That’s great.

What about any images or, objects? Anything that could show up in, on your website or in images?

I didn’t write anything down. I’ve that I’ve just I don’t know how Abby wrote too. I barely wrote one.

That’s okay. That’s okay. That was great. You came up with a lot so many great ideas in there. Very cool. Amazing.

Stacy, did you walk through it? Did you wanna share any ideas of integration?

I know you have great values that you dropped in each My, well, I’m I’m since I did since I inserted another step at the beginning, I am a little bit behind the execution part.

But what I did realize was, that I have, not given myself enough credit for all of the stuff that I’ve already integrated into what I’ve done.

And so that’s what I, I think I need to give myself a little grace because I’ve done more than I realized.

Yeah. Sometimes Sometimes it’s a good reminder just even to walk through this to be like, oh, I’ve already I’m already really embracing this value in my processes and my client delivery, and, like, it’s already happening. But this value over here, I have not integrated yet, and so I’ll pull it in. But that’s awesome.

Alright. Great job. And now final part of today’s session, we’re going to look at someone’s website.

Maybe we have time for two, and we’ll talk about how you could integrate some visuals and we’ll just come up we’ll just brainstorm.

Like Sarah said, this is an experiment. Just like gardening, this is an experiment.

So, Abby, I do have your website. Johnson, I was trying to find your website, and I can’t find it. So we can also look at yours if you want some help. I know Abby’s is in a good place.

Do you have a website I can look at?

I do.

I I it’s really I don’t I mean, I want you to look at it. I really also don’t want you to look at it, but I’m gonna say it’s it’s called, it’s hardworking words dot net.

So that is it. I, you know, I really am not, but this is my least. I’m not really haven’t really used it at all, so that’s my excuse.

That’s okay. We’re here to help you brainstorm and come up with ideas that can help you integrate do you wanna focus on self actualization as the value?

That’s true. Yeah.

I mean, it kind of fit. Yeah. I mean, the call is a phone forty volts. So, yeah, maybe that’s maybe that’s a bit.

Okay. Alright.

There’s no judgment here. Judgment free zone. So okay.

Cool.

I’m in the right spot. This looks like I’m in the right spot, Johnson.

That is. Yes, sir.

Okay. Okay. Amazing. Okay. So, as a group, we’re gonna come up with some ideas, for integration. And self actualization was one of the values, so let’s keep that in mind.

Also making money. So can consider all of these. Making money, reducing effort. I will add these to the chat in a second.

Fun entertainment.

And, John, so what does that what does that mean to you? What like, when you think of fun entertainment?

I think it it means a kind of, slightly, non not taking ourselves too seriously sort of approach to talking to our clients, and incorporating a lot of storytelling, and just having fun with it. Getting it as far away from, like, traditional b to b language as possible.

Amazing. Okay. We’ll do that.

Self actualization, which we just talked about a little bit. And so it sounds like helping your clients really feel free in their career and lives. Is that how you describe it?

Yeah. I think almost like empowered is maybe the words I would want to them to feel. A sense of, like, having having us on board means, they are gonna be able to do what they really care about, more easily, more quickly.

Yeah.

Okay. So we’ve got them in the chat. Just drop them in there, and we’re going to just come up with ideas of the group, and you can type them in the chat if you want or just share since it’s a small group. And just yeah.

We’ll just drop all the ideas as we think through them. So I have not seen this before. So I’m looking at it for the first time, And I think as a first reaction, the fun entertainment side could come straight from you. So I would love to see you as that entertainer, which I feel like you’re comfortable stepping into that role and showing up as the entertainer and embracing that in your images.

So, as a starting point, like, how can you show up as that entertainer, based off your style, whatever style that is?

Let’s see. Money.

I like the ever felt misunderstood to lean into the empathetic side of it. Johnson, can you talk a little bit more about the social responsibility and what you would like to kind of weave into messaging and images from that side?

Yeah. I mean, it’s it’s the the narrative selling this framework that I’m using that’s sort of based on narrative psychology.

It’s kind of a re it’s like a a a reframing of a a lot of what we do in copywriting already.

I think it comes at it from a more intuitive perspective.

And so part of the the thing that the part of the the sort of problem it aims to solve is, to make understanding your your your customers easier.

And so this website is maybe a year and a half before I even came up with that idea.

So it’s very little that is probably on the page beyond just kind of believing in empathetic, selling and and sort of, an empathetic approach to selling.

Yeah. But the narrative psychology framework, sounds so intriguing even just to I’m not sure all the pieces of that, but, like, if there’s a visual you could create to show the different components of that and and replace, you know or add it to this section of the copy. That seems like a really powerful visual that you could share.

That’s a great idea.

Also, the idea around the road maps you talked about, the different road maps that you would integrate into your client experience, if that could be something that, you show as a visual and also kind of layout in a time line, to show what that looks like or an example of it.

I think that could also become a secondary visual for you. So you have one or two you could choose from.

What’s cool about this is you already mentioned the bright colors and that that helps you lean into self actualization as a value. And so you’re already like, you’ve already done that. So you were already kind of channeling that with your initial color palette, and you could just add more to that. So that seems like that’s aligned.

What else?

Abby, Stacy, especially Stacy with your branding experience, what else do you think could integrate and use value.

Down.

Can you scroll down to the bit underneath that?

A bit more?

Oh, yeah. Oh, okay.

Yeah. I was gonna say, like, with the steps, you can, like, maybe, like, emphasize it even more. Like, it’s just, like, one, two, three.

So, like, because step one, they don’t need to yeah. Okay. Wait. Two of which you’ve already done.

Oh, okay. Okay. I get it. Yeah.

But, yeah, I would just emphasize maybe even more, like, the steps that it’s it’s like so it looks like a really effortless.

Yeah. This is all done on Squarespace. It was again, even those ticks, they’re still completely buggered.

It they were supposed to it was supposed to look pretty. It’s it was it was I need to hire a website. That’s the thing.

Did you do it yourself?

Yeah. Yeah. I did this. Yeah. That’s but that’s all, like, mid journey generated art as well.

So I really can just kind of, better than It’s better than what my idea what I did.

It was so bad. Bad. Oh my god.

No. I think it is good.

And then yeah. The images, like, that that I kinda like them. I like that painting, but they’re not fun. I think like like Kira said, if you’re sorry, that’s harsh.

No. No. It’s yeah.

It’s fine. I know.

Yeah. Like, I’d love to see you at the top because I think if I saw you and you, like, like, interfering in yeah. Then I’d be like because at the moment, it’s not, like, if I was kinda like an edgy fun brand, like, the kind of brands I think you wanna work with, like, this wouldn’t make me think, oh, he’s, like, he’s a super fun guy. Like like, he’s fun like our brand.

So, yeah, I just I just think a picture of you, like, with yeah. With I’ve been putting off getting, getting photos done, so that is Good.

Now you’re in Spain as well, so you can get, like, really good.

That’s true.

Yeah. And work through, like, the objects and think about the objects and textures and, different images and juxtaposition of objects together that would connect to your values. You know, that would help highlight, the different values you’ve chosen or even if you go with more than five, could weave in all of them together. And, working through the workbook I shared with you, you can also it’ll you’ll come up with a bunch of ideas in that workbook if you go through there. I mean, again, like, going back to the original, it’s you are doing the right things here with the images because the images are kind of freeing. The self actualization is is coming from this, you know, sunset image.

So that’s working. It’s just more the fun element is missing. So it’s almost like taking that freedom and just adding you on that beach having fun so we can see you and it there’s that entertainment side is there. But even the last section where you’re simplifying it, like, that’s also what you said you value, reducing effort, simplification. So I think anytime you can add those those check marks and really keep it just easy to follow, that’s going to send the right message to your ideal clients too that this is I simplify things. I keep it easy.

You don’t have to stress over that. So I think that you have the right elements. It’s just as you update it, you can just kind of take it to the next stage.

This is a really great it’s a really great start other than we just need more of you and probably more color to express self actualization.

I’m done.

My my main, comment is more reduced effort because I’m not seeing the reduced effort part in this page as much. And first of all, you’ve got hard working words up at the top, and then you’ve got something about more about working hard in that down.

It’s like hardworking words that work as hard as you do. You’re talking about hard work, hard work, hard work. So where’s the, you know, hardworking words so you don’t have to? You know what I’m saying? So there’s some ease, a sense of ease that’s missing for me.

And and so maybe I mean, I think that that that is even conveyed in your visuals. They look more like ease and peace, but, but there’s an incongruence there. That’s my my main comment.

Yeah. Great catch. Love it.

Yeah. That’s perfect. That’s it. Awesome. I’m not sure if you’re thinking of renaming it. So that’s that’s it.

Well, problem solved.

Yes. I know.

Oh, okay.

Thank you, Johnson, for sharing and, letting me put you on the spot there because I know that’s Oh, thank you, Karen.

Always fun to do.

Okay. So last thing before we jump, because I know we’re at time, is I just wanted to share the crazy madness that is this process. If you wanna continue on and do it hang on.

Here’s what it is, basically.

Oh, shit.

So if you wanna work through your x factor positioning statement, which the process will help trigger ideas, again, to go back to the visual side if that’s what you wanna focus on, walking through this process will come up help you generate a bunch of ideas. And so the idea is to end up with your x factor positioning statement with these different stacks, talent stack, niche stack, which you all if you’ve already dialed in, most of these stacks, it’s just putting them all together so you have product market fit. And so if you want to do that or you’re struggling with a particular area and it’s just not fitting, you can walk through each step and each stack in that worksheet.

So it’s all in there with some examples, and plenty of questions to trigger ideas for you and the process is in there so you can just do it on your own independently to walk away ideally with your own x factor positioning statement. Even if you have one, it might just be good to refresh it. And if you want to, I will share a link to this Miro board in the document too. If you want to take it up a notch because you’re an overachiever, you can have a positioning statement two point o which integrates your values and the work that you did today so that it’s all in one place, which is great to have it all in one place so you can have that template too.

So that’s, that’s what’s in the worksheet. And, again, I’m happy to look at your worksheet if you need feedback, if you want ideas for images. Like, as long as you do the work in there, it’s easy for me to go in and then pull ideas and kinda poke around and help you get unstuck. So that’s, definitely an option.

Like, maybe do it in the next six months.

Let’s not wait too long because I can get hit by a car. So but thank you for giving me your time, and, hopefully, it’s triggered an idea or two. And thank you for, sharing.

I really appreciate it.

Thank you, Karen. That was so helpful. It was really it’s really cool to meet you as well. I’ve I’ve listened to the the TCC a bunch, and we chatted a bit on LinkedIn. Yeah.

It’s good to finally meet you.

Yeah. Really nice to meet you, in sort of person.

Awesome. Good to see all of you, and, have fun. Reach out if you need any help. Thanks for having me.

Thank

Worksheet 

 

 

Transcript

 

So we’re gonna focus on brand positioning,

talking about visuals and the visual side of it, but I can’t really talk about visuals without doing the deep work underneath because then it’s like then we’re just talking about colors and shapes, and it really doesn’t have any context or any meaning.

So before I dive in, because I’m gonna throw a lot at you, I would love to just get some feedback from all of you and ask a couple of questions just to kind of see where you’re at with your own branding, brand positioning.

So first question, when when it comes to your own positioning, what makes you feel stuck right now? Like, where are you the most tripped up?

Let me know.

Jump in.

Share.

Yes. I see people leaning forward, so just off go off mute and feel free to jump in and share. Johnson, I saw you I saw you leaning. Tell me.

I mean okay. Yeah. But it’s I feel like, can I say, it says one thing, and I kinda just wanna say, like, broadly gesture at everything?

Every oh, shoot.

Okay.

No.

I mean, it’s been there are bits I like about it, but, it it really needs, like, a an overhaul.

So, that’s why I wasn’t chiming in because I was like, I don’t really have one thing I can I can point to?

Is there, like, one thing that is most cringey that it just Yeah.

I mean yeah. I guess I guess my the the branding on my website is pretty, is is pretty basic and pretty minimal and pretty, I don’t think I’ve really touched it since I I put it up the the first time.

Okay. Alright. So, hopefully, we can come up with some ideas today. And because we do have a small group, we can really personalize some of this and come up with some ideas for you that you could weave into your current website, which would be cool, to just make sure that’s positioned well.

What about Stacy, Abby?

Anything that makes you cringe a little bit or, isn’t working, you don’t really know how to push through it? Anyone else who I didn’t see?

I don’t have anything particularly cringey right now. I have a I have a background in branding. So Oh, so you’re you’re like I mean, I’m just no. I don’t got this, but but I but I try to get past the cringy bits anyway.

Okay. Okay. Is there one area where as as, like, as someone who specializes in this, an area where you’re like, ugh, but I get in my own way here in this particular area when I’m working on my own positioning, like, overthinking it maybe?

No. I’m not an overthinker.

Okay.

More just, like, doing ten million things. And and, I mean, the one thing about my my brand right now is that I haven’t yeah. I mean, you know what goes into proper branding, and I haven’t had the time and energy to do a full, you know, full normal approach of what I would do if I were doing branding for a client to my own, to my own Yeah. Product that I’m, you know, building out right now.

Yeah. It’s more a time issue. Yeah. Yeah. I get that. I get that. What about you, Abby?

I know we’re gonna pull up your website. I’d like to pull up your website today.

Yeah. I mean, I I like my branding. I think the thing what I get kind of fed up with is just sharing the same kind of brand photos over and over again. Like, I just get bored seeing them and, like, putting them out there, because they’re, like, two years old now.

So just sharing your visuals repeatedly, you get tired of your own component? Like, everyone else looks the same.

Oh, like yeah. Like, I I get bored just yeah. Seeing my ones over and over, and I, like, worry that people are gonna be like, she’s sharing this, like, picture again.

Got it. Okay. Got it.

Great. Amazing. And so what we’re gonna do as a starting point is focus on elements of value and figure out what your customers value the most and how you’re sharing that through your brand. And going through this process could hopefully trigger an idea or two around what you can incorporate, not just in the visual side of your the brand, which we can touch on and that’s fun, but also in how you deliver your processes and how you create your customer experiences and the, typography and every element of the deliverables.

And so just kind of, like, weaving it throughout the entire business so that it’s a really cohesive experience for your clients based off the elements of value. Has anyone walked through this process in-depth before? Just raise your hand. You have?

Okay. Good. That one person hasn’t, so that’s great. Abby, you’ve done a deep dive through values.

I hired someone to, like, do my branding for me, and they kind of walked me through some of this stuff. But, I mean, I feel like everyone’s process is different, so I’m curious what you include in yours.

Yeah. And maybe also just to see if anything has shifted or if certain values that you can kind of, like, focus on a little bit more heavily in, your visuals and everything else. So very cool. Alright. So I’m gonna just stop sharing real quick, give you a worksheet, that you can jump into. I’ll just drop the link in the chat.

And we’re really going to be diving into this together.

So, you all are gonna be sharing a lot with me. And if you don’t want to, just jump off video and, I will not call on you. So feel free to make a copy of the worksheet.

This is the entire positioning process, we worked through in one of our programs called Serenity Now from Seinfeld, and it takes a month to go through it. So because we have fifty minutes, we’re gonna just focus on the first few sections, but you can work on it on your own time. And, as kind of a bonus gift for the people here and people catching this later, if you are working through it and you need you get stuck or need feedback, you can share it with me, and I’m happy to help you sort through it. If you’re like, I just brain dumped all my information in here, and I have no idea what threads to pull or, like, what’s good, what’s what it means.

You got my email address, and I love sorting through this with you. So we can continue that conversation because, obviously, this is a longer conversation than what we can do right now. So for the sake of today and, again, kind of focusing on the first major element, which is identifying elements of value, We’re gonna get started and focus on this section and see how far we get today. So I do need two readers. We’re gonna read through the section so, Johnson, I’m gonna call on you to start.

Sure. Just want me to read, read this up.

Yep. Right here.

And when you stop whenever you stop, I will call one of the person Alright.

Cool.

To jump in. It’s not that lengthy. It’s not that lengthy. I just wanna make sure No.

No. Sure. Sure. Sure. Here. Okay. Cool.

So time to get intentional about the elements that form your brand’s core value, which will set you apart from the competition and help you exceed your customers’ expectations.

Companies that performed well on multiple elements of value, the fundamental attributes that drive customer choice and loyalty, have more loyal customers than the competition.

Bain and Company’s twenty sixteen survey confirmed that.

The survey found that companies with high scores, eight or above, on four or more elements from at least fifty percent of respondents had significantly higher net promoter scores.

Do you want me to read the the Don’t worry about that part.

Just Okay. We all know what that means.

These these companies, such as Apple, Samsung, USAA, Tom’s, and Amazon had on average three times the NPS of companies with just one high score and twenty times the NPS of companies with none.

Basically, this means companies that score highly on several important elements of value get way better recommendations from customers compared to those that don’t. The survey also found that companies performing well on multiple elements of value grew revenue at a faster rate than others, indicating a strong correlation between delivering on multiple elements and achieving higher sustained revenue growth.

Companies that scored high on four or more elements had recent revenue growth four times greater than that of companies with only one high score.

It’s important to note that companies scoring high on emotional elements, those that evoke positive feelings like trust, belongingness, or excitement, tend to have a higher NPS on average than companies that perform well only on functional elements, those related tactical needs, like cost savings or convenience.

The broader appeal of smartphones stems from how they deliver multiple elements, including reduces effort, saves time, connects, integrates, variety, fun slash entertainment, provides access, and organizes.

Manufacturers of these products, Apple, Samsung, and LG, got some of the highest value ratings across all companies studied.

For now, please take your time to explore these the values below.

Amazing. Thank you for reading through that.

I mean, this is why we’re so addicted to our smartphones. Right? Because masterfully has we’ve been in all of these different values so that it’s nearly impossible to live and operate without it. And so we’re gonna think through and explore elements of value in your own business.

And this might be a little bit different even than, Abby, what you’ve done with your branding consultant and what I’ve done previously with other consultants I’ve worked with, because this is really customer led. And so I’ve often branded based off my values, which is definitely a good way to go. You can do that. But going through this process is slightly different because this is starting with the customer and doing that deep research to understand, okay.

Great that I value these things and we can definitely leave that into the messaging. But at a foundational level, what do my customers value? What do they need? What’s important to them and which you know, how does it align with my business?

Obviously, choosing different values that do work for your business so that it can serve you as well. So there is this chart. You have it in the worksheet, and you can look through it. Sometimes, you know, some of the terms, I think, are less clear than others, so I definitely would explore and check out the definitions of each value and reminding yourself, like, the emotional values are more powerful.

So we wanna make sure that we don’t ignore the emotional values when thinking about our own business and just focusing on many of the values that we focus on, right, which is about, oftentimes, like, reducing costs or reducing effort or saving time. I mean, how many messages do we share or, like, this will save you time and going a little bit deeper into the emotional side and even life changing value, which many of us do provide for our clients, and maybe even reaching the highest level of social impact and self transcendence depending on what you do or how you work with your clients. Like,

maybe that’s not really a portion of what we’re doing, but that is possible when you think about this from your client’s point of view. So what we’re gonna do is take a couple minutes and think through which five, we’re gonna start with five, values you want to embody in your business and why and come up with the reason why. And you can add all this information into the worksheet. We’re gonna do it right now.

And, again, this is more about knowing your customers, inside and out.

And, obviously, like, you all are, you know, advanced copywriters. You’ve done this work. You know what your customers and clients value, so you’re not starting from scratch. Otherwise, you would have to start with some interviews and do some surveying to understand what do they care about. But this might be something that needs to a refresher every quarter or every six months to understand what’s shifted in the marketplace. Like, I thought this is what they valued, and six months later, it’s actually shifted, which is happening faster and faster and faster now, as technology shifts. So take a couple minutes, go through the list, and maybe, you know, a couple pop out to you that are really clear because this is how you operate, this is what you’re already doing.

Maybe there are a couple values that you want to weave in because you know they’re important to your clients, and maybe you haven’t really been focusing on them and they aren’t showing up in your brand positioning, and this could be a good way to intentionally add them. So you could add more than five, but for the sake of today’s exercise, let’s just lean into five, and then we’re gonna kind of expand from now. So for now, just choose a five, add in why why you chose it.

It could be as simple as I talked to this client and they told me this is important to them. But whatever that is, add that in here.

So I’ll give you a couple minutes. Just, I’ll read them and have the chat box open. So when you are done, just drop me a note in the chat. Okay. We got a couple done, so let’s let’s share. And I’m curious to hear about the values you chose and, you know, why you chose those particular values.

So why don’t we kick off, Johnson, if you’re able to share?

Yeah. Sure.

So, the first one I chose was, make some money, because that’s a a primary motivator, for for my, my ideal customer.

And the second one is reduces effort because I think that, ideally, maybe there is upfront extra effort often, with the kind of consultancy work that I wanna be doing. But in the long run, the plan is that it it simplifies, which I kind of was also struggling to pick between, simplifies and reduces effort. But I kinda want a little bit of both.

The third was because this was the other thing is, we’re talking, not just product. Right? We’re talking brand as well.

Like, it’s it’s it’s it’s assets. It’s content. It’s everything. Right?

So, the third I chose was fun and entertainment because the Nice.

The, the the the brand that I wanna build is is is based heavily around storytelling.

Oh.

So the content that I’ve been was producing, leans into that quite heavily.

And then the the fourth was self actualization, because I think if I think very often the goals of my clients, you know, they are to to to to to to simplify or reduce effort to make more money.

And, if I can help them do that, I feel, that that’s that is bringing them closer towards, what they really, truly want to do. And then finally, I went for a I just want for the answers.

Social responsibility.

Nice.

Go on back.

Go on back.

The the the, system that I’m developing is one that I I’m hoping is gonna kind of introduce a more empathetic approach to, marketing and sales. So, that’s, that’s something else.

Amazing. That’s such a good range in those five. And, of course, you can always add more later, but I think, well, with those five, how do you feel?

Like, do you feel like you’ve, integrated most of them into your positioning in your business, or are you I need to focus on I think I’m in I think I’m in the pros process of I think, for sure, like, I’m hitting the first three.

Yeah. But but well, no. Maybe four. I mean, no. For sure four because, I mean, I’m helping clients make more money, and that is opening up doors for them.

But, yeah, maybe social, responsibility is, that’s the one to to to work towards.

Yeah. So that’d be might be one that you focus on more, not just in this exercise, but to build out in different parts of your business too, not just the build side. But, okay, where else can I read this into? The client experience, deliverables, products. So that’s really cool.

Great. And Abby or Stacy, would either of you wanna share? I’m taking notes so this we can kind of jump through the next step.

Abby, do you wanna start?

Yeah. Sure. I’m happy to share.

I kind of wanna switch out a bit after Harry Johnson’s day. So I’m gonna get rid of one. Okay.

So my first one is makes more money. Obviously, they wanna make money.

Simplifies because I think people feel like evergreen funnels can be really complicated, so we make it, like, really simple, easy for them.

Reduces anxiety. Like, the reason that I got into Evergreen Funnels is because I just see, like, the mental toll I’ve launching takes on my clients, and I really wanna reduce that anxiety just to make it more chill, bring in that predictable passive revenue.

And then I put self actualization because I want my client to be able to just have their course running, selling in the background so they can then speak on stages and do the the bigger things that they wanna do, but they can’t because they’re just, like, live launching all the time.

And then I didn’t have social responsibility, but then I added it because I thought, actually, yeah, I think, like, ethical marketing isn’t whatever that means. Like, I’m not an authority on it, but it is important to me to not be using kind of manipulative sales tactics and to kinda always be educating myself on what that means and how customers are responding to my copy.

So Oh, I love that. It’s such a great mix too. That’s I love it. Okay. Great. And, Stacy, do you wanna jump in and share?

I I didn’t use the five things.

I have my I have my own well, I have my own value framework. I have a thing it’s called the value code. It’s a book that I’m working on, and it’s about the types of value that your product or service provides.

So I worked on that, and I just made a, my I have a a software that does a value code profile based on things that you put in. And so I I ran that, and I’m still sorting through it to decide which ones I want to focus on, primarily.

Okay.

I can kinda I mean, I can kinda show you if you want to see.

But Yeah.

I mean, if if you can share a couple of them, it’d be helpful to know as we move to the next step. Or if you just kinda wanna do your own thing, that’s cool too.

I’m gonna probably just do my own thing. Okay.

Okay. Very cool. I’d love to hear more about that, a little bit later. Okay. So let’s move forward. Thank you for sharing values, and I love that, you know, you’re also kind of, Abby, changing them up too, as you think about them.

So did that, selected them. Now we’re going to integrate them, which is the fun part because this is where we get creative, And this is where there are endless opportunities to think about not only the visual side, but about all the other aspects that we typically don’t think about. So I love examples. So I do have two different examples in this workbook that you can look at that I’m not gonna read through in-depth.

But, some of the ideas are just, like, maybe not what you would do and not the name of what you would call it.

Like, you might not create a quality feedback loop and call it that, but they could just kind of inspire other ideas for you. And I know as I walk through this exercise for myself, I just got a ton of ideas, and I use a lot of different, I use Claude to come up with even more ideas, which is the amazing part about using some chatbots so that I can just continue to brainstorm. And so at this stage today, we are just brainstorming.

We’re not deciding on what is actually good or feasible or realistic.

We don’t have to make those decisions today. I think everything is possible, and we’re just gonna work from that mindset as we walk through these exercises. So the first one was for quality, which is a really good value to add. So that might be, like, the sixth value that we all have because I I know we all you know, that’s something we all value in this room.

And the other one that was kind of fun that may help you, Abby, is reduces anxiety and walking through. So you can check out those examples, right now and then later. And so what I want you to do is take a couple minutes, and there’s space for you down here to walk through your own. And so I would love you to fill out as much of this as you can and just kind of get creative if you want to use, whatever is your preferred AI chatbot.

Like, go for it to brainstorm if you’re feeling stuck.

We can also help you in a couple minutes if you are stuck on any of these areas. So the core areas to focus on, client experience, how you can integrate this into that, into your processes, your deliverables, potentially color palette.

I know a couple of you already have your color palette, so maybe, you know, you aren’t gonna touch it at this point. But if you don’t, that could be something to think about.

Fonts might be a little trickier to think about unless that comes naturally to you, so feel free to skip that one for now, but that’s something you could revisit in the future.

Logo design also, again, like, little more advanced.

So you can skip that one for now unless some ideas come to come to you as far as like, oh, yeah. This would be very, you know, kind of, more organic looking or be geometric based off value.

Packaging and collateral was kind of like if you were to send a gift, any ideas related to that. Imagery, anything that goes into your marketing tools on your website. Any images come to mind, you can add them here.

A little pop culture, that’s probably my favorite section where we can have the most fun is thinking through what pop culture references from any decade could fit into this value. And so, for example, if it was quality, like, the example was Beyonce came to mind, because she delivers consistently in an exceptional level.

What were some of the other pop Apple, for sure, for quality is a pop culture reference.

Wes Anderson films, like, this is a brainstorm, so anything’s possible, but that will be a fun area to expand upon because it may trigger an image idea or even just messaging that you could mirror or be inspired by, or just references in your own messaging, quotes, anything playful. So that’s the last section and oh, not the last section. Objects.

Objects that come to mind, other ideas can fit into this bucket.

If, again, it’s quality, maybe it’s like you’re thinking of this is more cliche, but, like, you’re thinking of a a Rolex or any type of images that, marble that feel really sturdy and strong and, like, they can last forever.

So let’s take a couple minutes and dive in. This is the creative portion, and I wanna see what you come up with. And if you’re open to sharing your website, we could even look at a couple of your websites to integrate some of your ideas into your website, which, Abby, because I have your website, we’re definitely gonna look at your website.

But, Johnson, we could do that with yours as well at your game.

So take some time.

Let me know when you’re done. There’s no rush. We got time for this.

I will sip some water as I’m waiting. And you don’t have to do all five because that’s pretty intense. So you can definitely do two or three.

If that feels intense, just do one. Once you finish the first integration for the first value, just let me know in the chat just so I can kinda see how we’re doing with timing. There’s no rush, but I just wanna make sure that, we at least can do one of them. Well, Abby, if you’ve done one, if you can do one more, that would be amazing.

Maybe, one that you feel like you haven’t fully brought into your brand and your website yet since we’re gonna look at your website, if there’s one that you feel like you haven’t fully pulled into it. Okay. Alright. Let’s just jump back in based off where we are, and, hopefully, you can continue working through this with the rest of the values.

So I’d love to hear what you came up with.

We’ll start with the first value.

Abby, do you wanna share?

Yeah. So, for reduced anxiety, as part of the client experience, I thought it’d be cool too. So Rai shared that he booked, like, a massage for one of his clients before in his last training, and I thought that would be really cool because I’ve sent, like, a spa package in the past for a live launch. But I think, actually, at the start of every Evergreen project, putting them in for a massage would be, like, a really nice way to be like, you control now. Like, I’ve got you.

Yeah. That’s so amazing. Especially if you’re booking it and not just gifting it. You know?

Like, you’re because if I have their address, I can Yeah.

And scheduling and get you know? Because the worst part is booking it for me.

Like, finding the time to book it. You can make it thing.

And then, also, I mean, I already send a welcome pack, but I’m sure there are things I can do to make it even more, like, anxiety reducing.

What do you include in that now?

I include a timeline of the project, a breakdown of what’s included, and then, like, instructions for the steps.

So, like, to a link to book the first call with me, the form and stuff, and then, like, a list of, like, use handy resource like, quick access to, like, that Google folder and, like, Calendly if they wanna book a call with me and Loom if they wanna send a video.

Okay. Good. So it’s, like, everything you need to know for the project. Got it.

Yeah. Just, like, trying to keep it in one place. Yeah. Cool.

What about other areas, like, the visual side of it, the images, anything pop up for you with pop culture, objects?

Not for like, so I think my my current, like, color path palette is quite chill. I thought, like, I could show, more, like, visuals of my process so it just feels more like they’re held. And then also actually showing and when our client testimonials okay. So that is actually showing that predictable revenue because I think that’s, like, the biggest kind of anxiety reducers actually knowing you can see that revenue coming in without the live launch.

Yeah. I mean yeah. Your colors are we we’ll get to them, but they feel, yeah, they feel like they are anxiety reducing and, they feel really good. Like, the vibe on your website feels really good. Okay. Great. Any other surprises maybe from that value or a different value as you were filling this out?

Yes. There was. Let me just look through.

Oh, yeah. So there are kind of a couple of questions I’ve been asking myself about running, like, my business, and one of those was is kind of how to include the optimization retainer. And I think if one of my core values is anxiety reduction, I think it it really makes sense to make sure that it is included in my signature offer at least, like, just those three months because then even if it doesn’t convert, they know that they’ve got that. So that kind of answered that question for me.

And then there’s also I I don’t wireframe because well, because, you know, I don’t want to. But I think, like, but I simplifying the process is one of my values, I think. Yeah. I I should really what I phrase to make it easy for the clients.

So, yeah, I kind of answered those two questions that have been in the back of my mind. So, yeah, I found found it really helpful. Thank you.

Oh, amazing. And then we can maybe, you know, also brainstorm ways. Are you maybe you’re already thinking about for the social responsibility part, like, how that could, show up in different areas. And so you can integrate that piece too. That’s what I’m hearing. Hey. Johnson, are you able to share?

I am able to share.

That was cool. I I liked I I listening to Abby talk about it, it’s it’s, it’s clicking more to me how this is, like, it’s beyond it is beyond branding or have beyond how I maybe, been thinking about running. Yeah.

Yeah. So, swinging client experience, I wrote, create, a fulfillment narrative discovery wherein we start projects by using the techniques from narrative setting to explore what success looks like for the client beyond this project.

That might end up affecting strategy or execution of the project, or even change the product goals altogether. But if nothing changes, great. We’ll know our clients’ needs better.

And then building off of that in terms of processes, use what we learn in that thing, to create a simple tailored road map that lays out exactly how the project is gonna support their largest goals if possible.

And then another process I was thinking about, which might be cool, would be to, on our side, create a larger map that identifies in the broadest possible strokes the steps the client might take to reach their big goal. If there’s something that we can help with, which I expect there often will be, line that up to present to the client at project close.

In terms of deliverables, I just wrote goal attached weekly reports. So just regular updates that are integrated and attached to the key metrics we’ve identified that support those big calls.

Color palette, use bright, loud, bold colors to inspire a sense of empowerment and daring.

Typography, I just wrote user confident font LOL.

I don’t really know anything about typography.

That’ll take a lot more time. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think it.

Logo design, create a logo that incorporates a sense of freedom of choice and joy, and then pop culture inspire. I didn’t really it wasn’t really like pop culture. It’s more just like, archetypes, I guess. But I was I wrote ethical rogues, wise trailblazers, and joyful trendsetters, which is more just like a general vibe, I guess.

Yeah. So yeah. That’s great.

What about any images or, objects? Anything that could show up in, on your website or in images?

I didn’t write anything down. I’ve that I’ve just I don’t know how Abby wrote too. I barely wrote one.

That’s okay. That’s okay. That was great. You came up with a lot so many great ideas in there. Very cool. Amazing.

Stacy, did you walk through it? Did you wanna share any ideas of integration?

I know you have great values that you dropped in each My, well, I’m I’m since I did since I inserted another step at the beginning, I am a little bit behind the execution part.

But what I did realize was, that I have, not given myself enough credit for all of the stuff that I’ve already integrated into what I’ve done.

And so that’s what I, I think I need to give myself a little grace because I’ve done more than I realized.

Yeah. Sometimes Sometimes it’s a good reminder just even to walk through this to be like, oh, I’ve already I’m already really embracing this value in my processes and my client delivery, and, like, it’s already happening. But this value over here, I have not integrated yet, and so I’ll pull it in. But that’s awesome.

Alright. Great job. And now final part of today’s session, we’re going to look at someone’s website.

Maybe we have time for two, and we’ll talk about how you could integrate some visuals and we’ll just come up we’ll just brainstorm.

Like Sarah said, this is an experiment. Just like gardening, this is an experiment.

So, Abby, I do have your website. Johnson, I was trying to find your website, and I can’t find it. So we can also look at yours if you want some help. I know Abby’s is in a good place.

Do you have a website I can look at?

I do.

I I it’s really I don’t I mean, I want you to look at it. I really also don’t want you to look at it, but I’m gonna say it’s it’s called, it’s hardworking words dot net.

So that is it. I, you know, I really am not, but this is my least. I’m not really haven’t really used it at all, so that’s my excuse.

That’s okay. We’re here to help you brainstorm and come up with ideas that can help you integrate do you wanna focus on self actualization as the value?

That’s true. Yeah.

I mean, it kind of fit. Yeah. I mean, the call is a phone forty volts. So, yeah, maybe that’s maybe that’s a bit.

Okay. Alright.

There’s no judgment here. Judgment free zone. So okay.

Cool.

I’m in the right spot. This looks like I’m in the right spot, Johnson.

That is. Yes, sir.

Okay. Okay. Amazing. Okay. So, as a group, we’re gonna come up with some ideas, for integration. And self actualization was one of the values, so let’s keep that in mind.

Also making money. So can consider all of these. Making money, reducing effort. I will add these to the chat in a second.

Fun entertainment.

And, John, so what does that what does that mean to you? What like, when you think of fun entertainment?

I think it it means a kind of, slightly, non not taking ourselves too seriously sort of approach to talking to our clients, and incorporating a lot of storytelling, and just having fun with it. Getting it as far away from, like, traditional b to b language as possible.

Amazing. Okay. We’ll do that.

Self actualization, which we just talked about a little bit. And so it sounds like helping your clients really feel free in their career and lives. Is that how you describe it?

Yeah. I think almost like empowered is maybe the words I would want to them to feel. A sense of, like, having having us on board means, they are gonna be able to do what they really care about, more easily, more quickly.

Yeah.

Okay. So we’ve got them in the chat. Just drop them in there, and we’re going to just come up with ideas of the group, and you can type them in the chat if you want or just share since it’s a small group. And just yeah.

We’ll just drop all the ideas as we think through them. So I have not seen this before. So I’m looking at it for the first time, And I think as a first reaction, the fun entertainment side could come straight from you. So I would love to see you as that entertainer, which I feel like you’re comfortable stepping into that role and showing up as the entertainer and embracing that in your images.

So, as a starting point, like, how can you show up as that entertainer, based off your style, whatever style that is?

Let’s see. Money.

I like the ever felt misunderstood to lean into the empathetic side of it. Johnson, can you talk a little bit more about the social responsibility and what you would like to kind of weave into messaging and images from that side?

Yeah. I mean, it’s it’s the the narrative selling this framework that I’m using that’s sort of based on narrative psychology.

It’s kind of a re it’s like a a a reframing of a a lot of what we do in copywriting already.

I think it comes at it from a more intuitive perspective.

And so part of the the thing that the part of the the sort of problem it aims to solve is, to make understanding your your your customers easier.

And so this website is maybe a year and a half before I even came up with that idea.

So it’s very little that is probably on the page beyond just kind of believing in empathetic, selling and and sort of, an empathetic approach to selling.

Yeah. But the narrative psychology framework, sounds so intriguing even just to I’m not sure all the pieces of that, but, like, if there’s a visual you could create to show the different components of that and and replace, you know or add it to this section of the copy. That seems like a really powerful visual that you could share.

That’s a great idea.

Also, the idea around the road maps you talked about, the different road maps that you would integrate into your client experience, if that could be something that, you show as a visual and also kind of layout in a time line, to show what that looks like or an example of it.

I think that could also become a secondary visual for you. So you have one or two you could choose from.

What’s cool about this is you already mentioned the bright colors and that that helps you lean into self actualization as a value. And so you’re already like, you’ve already done that. So you were already kind of channeling that with your initial color palette, and you could just add more to that. So that seems like that’s aligned.

What else?

Abby, Stacy, especially Stacy with your branding experience, what else do you think could integrate and use value.

Down.

Can you scroll down to the bit underneath that?

A bit more?

Oh, yeah. Oh, okay.

Yeah. I was gonna say, like, with the steps, you can, like, maybe, like, emphasize it even more. Like, it’s just, like, one, two, three.

So, like, because step one, they don’t need to yeah. Okay. Wait. Two of which you’ve already done.

Oh, okay. Okay. I get it. Yeah.

But, yeah, I would just emphasize maybe even more, like, the steps that it’s it’s like so it looks like a really effortless.

Yeah. This is all done on Squarespace. It was again, even those ticks, they’re still completely buggered.

It they were supposed to it was supposed to look pretty. It’s it was it was I need to hire a website. That’s the thing.

Did you do it yourself?

Yeah. Yeah. I did this. Yeah. That’s but that’s all, like, mid journey generated art as well.

So I really can just kind of, better than It’s better than what my idea what I did.

It was so bad. Bad. Oh my god.

No. I think it is good.

And then yeah. The images, like, that that I kinda like them. I like that painting, but they’re not fun. I think like like Kira said, if you’re sorry, that’s harsh.

No. No. It’s yeah.

It’s fine. I know.

Yeah. Like, I’d love to see you at the top because I think if I saw you and you, like, like, interfering in yeah. Then I’d be like because at the moment, it’s not, like, if I was kinda like an edgy fun brand, like, the kind of brands I think you wanna work with, like, this wouldn’t make me think, oh, he’s, like, he’s a super fun guy. Like like, he’s fun like our brand.

So, yeah, I just I just think a picture of you, like, with yeah. With I’ve been putting off getting, getting photos done, so that is Good.

Now you’re in Spain as well, so you can get, like, really good.

That’s true.

Yeah. And work through, like, the objects and think about the objects and textures and, different images and juxtaposition of objects together that would connect to your values. You know, that would help highlight, the different values you’ve chosen or even if you go with more than five, could weave in all of them together. And, working through the workbook I shared with you, you can also it’ll you’ll come up with a bunch of ideas in that workbook if you go through there. I mean, again, like, going back to the original, it’s you are doing the right things here with the images because the images are kind of freeing. The self actualization is is coming from this, you know, sunset image.

So that’s working. It’s just more the fun element is missing. So it’s almost like taking that freedom and just adding you on that beach having fun so we can see you and it there’s that entertainment side is there. But even the last section where you’re simplifying it, like, that’s also what you said you value, reducing effort, simplification. So I think anytime you can add those those check marks and really keep it just easy to follow, that’s going to send the right message to your ideal clients too that this is I simplify things. I keep it easy.

You don’t have to stress over that. So I think that you have the right elements. It’s just as you update it, you can just kind of take it to the next stage.

This is a really great it’s a really great start other than we just need more of you and probably more color to express self actualization.

I’m done.

My my main, comment is more reduced effort because I’m not seeing the reduced effort part in this page as much. And first of all, you’ve got hard working words up at the top, and then you’ve got something about more about working hard in that down.

It’s like hardworking words that work as hard as you do. You’re talking about hard work, hard work, hard work. So where’s the, you know, hardworking words so you don’t have to? You know what I’m saying? So there’s some ease, a sense of ease that’s missing for me.

And and so maybe I mean, I think that that that is even conveyed in your visuals. They look more like ease and peace, but, but there’s an incongruence there. That’s my my main comment.

Yeah. Great catch. Love it.

Yeah. That’s perfect. That’s it. Awesome. I’m not sure if you’re thinking of renaming it. So that’s that’s it.

Well, problem solved.

Yes. I know.

Oh, okay.

Thank you, Johnson, for sharing and, letting me put you on the spot there because I know that’s Oh, thank you, Karen.

Always fun to do.

Okay. So last thing before we jump, because I know we’re at time, is I just wanted to share the crazy madness that is this process. If you wanna continue on and do it hang on.

Here’s what it is, basically.

Oh, shit.

So if you wanna work through your x factor positioning statement, which the process will help trigger ideas, again, to go back to the visual side if that’s what you wanna focus on, walking through this process will come up help you generate a bunch of ideas. And so the idea is to end up with your x factor positioning statement with these different stacks, talent stack, niche stack, which you all if you’ve already dialed in, most of these stacks, it’s just putting them all together so you have product market fit. And so if you want to do that or you’re struggling with a particular area and it’s just not fitting, you can walk through each step and each stack in that worksheet.

So it’s all in there with some examples, and plenty of questions to trigger ideas for you and the process is in there so you can just do it on your own independently to walk away ideally with your own x factor positioning statement. Even if you have one, it might just be good to refresh it. And if you want to, I will share a link to this Miro board in the document too. If you want to take it up a notch because you’re an overachiever, you can have a positioning statement two point o which integrates your values and the work that you did today so that it’s all in one place, which is great to have it all in one place so you can have that template too.

So that’s, that’s what’s in the worksheet. And, again, I’m happy to look at your worksheet if you need feedback, if you want ideas for images. Like, as long as you do the work in there, it’s easy for me to go in and then pull ideas and kinda poke around and help you get unstuck. So that’s, definitely an option.

Like, maybe do it in the next six months.

Let’s not wait too long because I can get hit by a car. So but thank you for giving me your time, and, hopefully, it’s triggered an idea or two. And thank you for, sharing.

I really appreciate it.

Thank you, Karen. That was so helpful. It was really it’s really cool to meet you as well. I’ve I’ve listened to the the TCC a bunch, and we chatted a bit on LinkedIn. Yeah.

It’s good to finally meet you.

Yeah. Really nice to meet you, in sort of person.

Awesome. Good to see all of you, and, have fun. Reach out if you need any help. Thanks for having me.

Thank

Watch Now

ON NOW: The Fundamentals of Conversion Rate Optimization

This training introduces core principles of Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO), emphasizing the importance of disciplined testing through A/B and multivariate testing, forming strong hypotheses based on triangulated data, and aligning test variations with meaningful business goals like increased clicks or conversions. Jo reminds CSPers that quick early wins are vital in optimization retainers, that CRO doesn’t need to be intimidating for curious minds, and that understanding testing mechanics—like statistical significance, traffic volume, and test duration—is key to meaningful results. 

 

Growth Lead

Drives lead generation, list growth, and community engagement through targeted, high-ROI activities and relationship building.

Copy Chief

Oversees messaging strategy and copy quality across channels. Responsible for persuasion frameworks, voice, and conversion copy tactics.

Senior Marketing Manager

Leads marketing strategy and campaign planning; responsible for demand generation, brand authority, and funnel execution.

Mindset Coach

Supports mental resilience, confidence building, and leadership development for founders and leaders.

Marketing Strategist

Creates audience targeting, multi-channel marketing strategies, and oversees campaign optimization.

Sales Lead

Owns sales process strategy, pipeline management, and client acquisition conversion tactics.

Product Lead

Responsible for product development, positioning, launches, and lifecycle optimization of offers.

Brand Voice / Public Relations / Authority Lead

Manages personal and company authority assets, PR outreach, and partnerships to boost credibility and visibility.

Operations Lead

Owns internal systems, project management, people operations, and scaling infrastructure for growth.

Struggling Moments For My Leads

Struggling Moments For My Leads

Transcript

So what I have done, is something really fun. I took our prospect call transcripts, prospects to turn into clients, and I’ve worked out the the struggling moment. But then and also, you know, like, the different elements of the struggling moment. But then I want you to look at those struggling moments and pick out the functional struggle, the emotional struggle, and, you know, the social struggle.

So you will if you haven’t opened up your workbooks, I would love for you to first do that so you can kind of go through the examples because those are, you know, those are examples.

But but I want you to look at the example so you can get an idea of what we are even talking about. So when I share my Google Doc with you, I want you to be able to kind of look at it and go, okay. And this would be the functional struggle, and this would be the emotion struggle.

So open up your workbooks. I’m gonna share screen.

And what we’re going to do is we’re going to look at the workbook first, and then I’m gonna share a Google Doc with y’all where you would go ahead and do this exercise real time.

Alright. Cool.

Let’s get started.

And first up okay. Alright. Choose.

Okay. Cool. So this is what the section I want you to look at. The struggling moment is the seat for innovation.

Just scroll past this page. I want you to look at the examples here. So client comes in. You’ll get on a call.

Client says, okay. I wanna launch copy.

But then, of course, being the professionals you are, you will probe. You will ask.

And what they usually come up with would be some would be a story like this. And I’ll share our clients’ stories on probing.

And then from this, what you wanna look at is the functional struggle. So, okay, measurable decline in performance, social struggle, you know, people kind you’re like people are looking at you and all of that. And what’s the push force or what’s the you know, if there’s an emotional struggle to it, what what does that look like?

The more important thing that you need to ask yourself is why do you wanna kind of look at all of these struggles? Like, what does this help you do?

And use that to then direct the sales conversation. At least that’s what I do. It works out really, really well. And when you look at when you start to kinda pull the thread of either one of these struggles or if possible, all three and just kind of bring it together, it becomes so much easier to close clients at twenty k, thirty k, fifty k, hundred k. Right?

I have used this repeatedly just to kind of take time to really understand what the troubling moment really is. Because when a client comes and says, oh, I need website copy, it’s there’s something else going on.

You know? Why do they need website copy? And it’s fascinating because and I’m actually you know, because I can see this play out in in myself as a a buyer or as a client too. So right now, for instance, we are in the midst of speaking with, you know, designers and branding experts and all of that because we’re looking at a rebrand for our business.

So why I said it’s fascinating is because on calls with with branding strategist or with designers and things like that, the moment someone asks me oh, because we go in saying, oh, we wanna rebrand. Right?

Very straightforward.

But the caliber of a professional, like, it instantly kind of goes up in my mind when someone, like, takes the time to, like, clean forward and ask, okay. But why now? What’s happening right now that you’re looking to rebrand?

It just kind of opens up a whole thing for both Mike and me on that call. And I can only imagine that, and I hope that those strategists who are asking these questions are actually gonna use it when they kind of put our proposal together, when they send our quote together because I know it makes a difference. I always use struggling moments when I present my proposal to clients, especially for custom codes, and something like if they’ve, like, not just bought a package of the site, but they’ve taken time to fill out a form, and they met me for a call, and we have to give them a custom code.

I will use all of this in the proposal to basically present why we’re offering them what we’re offering them and what you know? And then what you’re charging them really kind of it’s not I’m not gonna say it becomes irrelevant, especially when they’re when you’re looking at fifty k, seventy five k packages.

It’s by no means irrelevant, but they can see exactly why they need it. What is the job that your service would actually be doing for their business.

So unlike my usual sessions where I have, like, a really nice slide deck and I have, like, tactical things and all, this one is very hands on. I just want you to understand what a struggling moment really is and learn to identify that in your own calls. Because if you’re not doing that right now, that is something you wanna fix right away.

So with that, do you have any questions before I yeah?

I do.

You say you use this during the sales call. Do you find this out in that triage call?

And then when you present, you know, back to your proposal, that’s when you pull this in?

Yes. Okay. So it’s in the triage call.

Okay.

And yeah.

I will basically use this definitely in the proposal, but I also kinda bring it up when we kick off. So when we kick off and I recap what’s in the project and, you know, who’s gonna be involved in the the the day c and all of that, I do mention why we’re doing what we’re doing because what I found and this is also true side note, this is also true for things like social proof. What I found, you need to like, once you’ve sold a client, you’d they you kinda need to have these, like, little mini selling points all through the process.

That works really, really well. Again, that’s just something I do. You don’t have to do it, but it just works really well. I’ve noticed.

Okay. Cool. So I’m gonna stop sharing. You should have it. Like, if you oh, wait. That’s the appointment you’re looking for. Anyways, let’s And what I’m going to do is drop a Google doc that I have created.

Fail.

So these are all clients from prospect calls that I’ve transcribed, and then let me go on the blank. Commenter.

Copy link. Okay. Cool.

Dropping the link in chat.

Oh, Lisa, good question. So you get this in the first fifteen minute call and then begin to it in the length here. One did that did Michelle’s question answer your question as well?

Oh, sorry.

So I do this a little differently, but I don’t want y’all to kind of digress from the process that, you know, y’all are going through.

In your case, I would look at the kind of try and get this get this struggle, in the fifteen minute call and then, yes, dig into it in the length of your call. That said, how I exactly do it and what Michelle calls the triage call is, again, this is my way to get, is I just do one call, and then I do proposal.

Right?

And I’ve done this for pretty much every project, but y’all also need to remember.

It’s I’ve been doing this for a while now, so there’s probably that at play. But, Katie, yes. Sometimes.

Depends.

For instance, it depends on a couple of different factors. If there are multiple people involved in the project, for instance, we just especially the corporate clients. So there’s this huge group of schools that I’ve been working with since last year.

There are multiple people involved in it. I’ve done one project with them. I’m working on a second project with them.

So in that case, always present it on a call because there are everyone wants to be involved in it.

But if it’s someone who we’ve worked with in the past, if it’s someone who has come through a referral, if it’s someone who is already sold on us, a podcast host, I mean, for that happens a lot.

I will not present it on a call.

Breaking rules? Yes. Maybe. But it just that it’s been working.

Yes, Leasel. With corporate clients, yes. Definitely. You will have to do two calls. You may even have to do more depending on the scope of the project.

For projects upwards of seventy five thousand dollars, I have done as many as in fact, with this particular client. Okay. We’ve done okay.

Three three calls, with different stakeholders.

So because there have been changes to, oh, we wanna include this. Now we wanna you know? So yeah.

Corporate times are a whole different thing. I I really love the size of the project.

It just takes me too much time.

Okay. Cool.

You should have the Google Doc in the chat. Open it up. And what I want you to kind of look at and put down is go through the struggling moment and leave your comments or just make your own comments as like, unmute yourself and tell me what you think is the functional struggle, what do you think is the emotional struggle, what do you think is the social struggle. So this is gonna be a very different call here.

Usually, yes. Three calls seems hard.

But this is for the second project. So they’ve already worked with me once. And, yeah, perfect times are whole different days.

Y’all should have commenting access, so feel free to leave comments if you want to.

Alright. Anyone wants to volunteer for the first one?

Well, I guess since nobody else go ahead.

Go ahead.

And it’s early in the morning, so I don’t know.

So functional struggle will probably be Clients who were interested were weren’t, signing up?

Yeah. Okay. Because?

Oh, because timing was too short.

Perfect. Yeah. K. Absolutely. Absolutely. Okay. Cool. K. Emotional struggle? I guess it was about from the yeah.

Go ahead.

Headspace and timing to they weren’t in the right headspace, and there was too short of time for them to spend that nine ninety seven.

Yeah. Yeah. And when you’re reading this, you also wanna think about this from the client point of view. Right?

Like, how is the client feeling emotionally about this this struggle that they’re coming up against? Because that’s what you wanna kind of lean into and talk about it. Oh, so you’re feeling this because our students or our, you know, our prospects aren’t getting enough time to convert. Is that right?

You know? So Okay. Yeah. But you’re really, really, you know, dialed in into this. This is really good, Michelle.

Yeah. Okay.

The social struggle, that’s where I’m kinda lost.

Yeah. And that is where for social struggle, you will see that you will need to start reading between the lines.

Okay.

You will need to start kinda looking at, okay.

What are they worried about? Like, what’s the perception here that they’re worried about? Is it is it that they don’t want to they they feel like, oh, we are being we are being pushy versus being intentional? Is it more that, oh, you know, people are going to maybe see me differently or won’t respect me if I do this or if I don’t do this.

So you gotta kinda read between the lines. That is where that is where your skills as someone who is, like, tuned into how people think, come into play Okay. And where doing a little bit of probing will help. So that’s not very the the, the social struggle is not usually straightforward.

Forward.

But, for instance, in the second second, client’s case, I worked on their website probably earlier this year, and her her social struggle was a little more straightforward. So take a look at that and see if you can kind of pick the social struggle there. Okay.

Anyone else wants to kinda weigh in with the first one?

I had for the social struggle and sorry sorry I was late, so I will catch the replay to catch myself up if I missed something. But I put, whose job is it to notice this?

Like, because potential on the part of the speaker, there was confusion around, like, it was brought up by a team member.

They didn’t even know about it. So then if I’m on that call as a copywriter, I would be noticing, like, oh, they don’t.

Like, there was a role missing in the strategy behind the trial and, like, who’s gonna fix this problem.

Absolutely. Which is exactly what happened in this case as well, Katie, is one, there was no one looking at the fact that customer support is getting all these requests about, hey. Can I get more time?

Right? Like, it just came up during their they have, like, a stand up meeting or a catch up meeting, what they call it, and and really random. Not even like, oh, you know, here’s something. So which is what then led us to work on what we did for them were, like, behavior based sequences that, a, not only we give them, like, an extended trial, but then we had, like, oh, if they went ahead and logged in, then we have, like, a different sequence kicking in versus people who weren’t logging in, versus people who, you know, were logging in and watching an x number of lessons.

So it the social struggle was no one was really watching what was going on with this trial that they were thinking for all purposes as kind of doing well, because and and what was happening was they were leaving a lot of people, in terms of, like, oh, who could who could just just needed a few more days to be able to convert. So, like I said, you need to kind of read between the lines there and do a little more probing.

But what they came in saying was, oh, we wanna increase conversions. But the point is and what they initially thought was they had a lead flow problem. Like, oh, we need more people coming into the funnel so we can increase conversions. But what they actually had was a current conversion problem. Like, people were coming in but were not converting because of the lack of time. And, like, you know, Michelle said the feeling of being they were interested, but they didn’t have the headspace and the timing.

Thing was really felt too short for them.

Alright. Who wants to take number two?

These are yes. We weren’t giving them time or room to build, breathe, or build belief. That’s like so they didn’t really need a seven day trial. They needed what we went with was actually a fourteen day trial, and more emails.

So because if I just sold them a seven day trial, it would have worked.

The result of the of increasing the, trial period or the result of presenting them with a fourteen day file package? Conversion to paid upgrades. Oh, yeah. Okay. So it’s been ninety so then these are all fairly recent projects that have wrapped up. So this it’s gonna it we completed ninety days of the funnel, say, thirty first of March. So, they in ninety days, they’ve been able to almost, I would say, two point five x their conversions, but, again which is great.

However, what we are now testing out is if we shorten it to about nine days instead of fourteen days, would that create more of an urgency and increase conversion? So that’s what we gotta do in the optimization phase of it. My reasoning for this is I noticed that a lot of people wait till the very last day to convert. So I’m just kinda curious to see if you, like, go from seven from we went from seven to fourteen. So if you go from fourteen to nine or even ten, does that, you know, shorten the cycle while basically either increasing or keeping the conversions the same.

They are they’re they’re pretty happy, so they’re open to testing, which is a good thing.

Because we can always go back to fourteen if, say, the nine, ten day experiment does not work out.

Alright.

Functional struggle can’t explain too easily and in a way that shows value. Bit of imposter syndrome in the self as a creator. Yes. Then yes.

In fact, you’re it’s so cool that you brought up the imposter syndrome thing because the thing is she’s not a SaaS marketer. So this client, is really cool. She’s a really, really big affiliate marketer. She’s got, like, millions and millions of followers, on Instagram and TikTok. And, she created this tool, like I’m sorry. Her husband basically created this tool because she was really frustrated with the link in bio options available to her. So so that imposter syndrome in her is pretty real because she doesn’t think of herself as a SaaS founder.

She still thinks of herself as, an affiliate marketer who’s playing, a SaaS founder. So it’s so cool that you, kind of picked on that.

Potential loss of authority from lack of credit. Exactly. You know?

She felt like, oh, she because she’s concerned, you know, like an expert and she like, loads of an affiliate marketers look up to her. She felt like, oh, I would be they would be seeing me as less than or as per you know? So that was really, really yeah. It is. But it’s very hard, I think, when you are a creator or founder, and I guess most of you would kind of relate to it is because, like, people were approaching her about it, and she had a successful beta run and all of that, but it just kind of, you know, feel like, I don’t really know. And she came in saying, okay. I need copy for this website.

It’s interesting. I’ll tell you what we kind of sold her once we’ve kind of gone through this. But okay. Cool.

Anyone else wants to weigh in? Johnson, potential loss of authority. Yeah. Perfect. That is exactly like, that is the social, struggle here for sure.

Cool. Anyone have anything else to add?

Nope? Okay. So this is a classic case. The client comes in saying, you know, oh, I need better copy for my affiliate link in bio website so people understand what this tool does.

But the thing is she did not have any messaging created for this. Like, she just created the tool, got, like, a very, very basic one page kind of a sign up, and she felt like, okay. Let’s just change words on the website to, you know, make it clearer. But what we had to start with was and all of you know this, we had to start with going back and looking at, okay, what is it that you were saying?

How are people talking? So we had to start with all the research. We had to put together her complete message brand messaging guide, and then the website copy. But then we because of the imposter syndrome emotional struggle and, you know, wanting to explain the tool easily and that potential.

All of these struggles kinda came together because we did not want that experience to end when people signed up for the tool.

So I was able to show her that she also needed the staff onboarding emails. She needed, you know, nurture emails so that people would go ahead and use the tool and then, of course, win back emails for people who churn because it’s a subscription.

So it went from being, oh, I need copy from my home page to describe what people you know, describe what this tool does to being a huge project, because we kinda took the time to really understand what was going on, which is the whole purpose of this call is for you to start doing a little more digging to understand what is the struggle, what is the job that a prospect is actually hiring your service to do for them.

Where did they receive that? Nope.

So she was putting in all her money. Like, she’d made she’s yeah. So not VC backed, but her husband and she were both, and, Abby, it’s so funny because, you had a post in, in the Slack community that I saw later, so I didn’t get a chance to comment on it. But where you mentioned about having a call with a founder, and then the husband was on the second call and, you know, having to kind of do the I mean, it’s it’s exactly the same here.

So, she came to us through a referral, someone I’ve worked with in the past, and then she was like, yeah. Completely sold. I want all of it and then some. And then, you know, her husband, because he’s the one who created it and is also partly funding it, wanted to get on another call, and it was, you know, like, again, do the whole same thing, walking them through it again.

So, yeah, was it hard to expand the scope by that degree with the client? No. Simply because I knew the problem that she was wanting to solve was not just I needed to be clearer.

The problem was I need to look like the expert I really am. I wanna keep my standing as this really, really top affiliate marketer.

I want my app to present me the way the like, the affiliate marketing world sees me as.

So nope.

It wasn’t.

Yeah. Image is huge. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah.

Absolutely, Johnson. So because I spent the and this is the whole purpose of this call is, essentially, I want you to take the time to really dig into what is the struggle that your audience is looking to solve, your prospect is looking to solve, so it becomes easier for you to to sell them your standardized offers.

In my case, it’s more custom. So, I don’t have, like, a standardized offer other than fully loaded launch, which in any case is now going to get overhauled and retired. But, I’ve started catching this stuff on the fly, little because I’ve been doing this for a while now.

The more you’ll do it oh, one thing that I will recommend is we all use AI note takers.

I still make notes by hand. I do use an AI notetaker to kind of go over things that I may have forgotten, especially if I wanna, you know, in big package cases and things like that where we need to kind of sit down and hash out what, quote unquote, the deliverables are gonna look like. But I’ve started, like, kind of, like I make notes and then I draw lines to kind of talk about, okay, this is what the struggle really is or this is what they’re trying to solve. So, highly recommend doing that too. It just kind of trains your brain to to start picking these things.

Yes, Ali. Fully loaded launch is getting replaced with something even better.

But, yeah, I will share that soon.

It is iconic. I know.

But, yeah, it’s been a while now. So, it’s run its course, and we’ve been customizing it way, way more often, which means that we need to kind of, yep, expand the the package and change it up and all of that. So that was what happened. It is a federal party.

Yeah. Yeah. That’s a really good idea. Probably should do that.

Give it a going the way it probably served us well.

Awesome. Cool. Alright. Let’s look at number three. This is someone that we recently recently closed, like, as recent as, like, the contract’s just gone out to them. So yeah.

Oh, by the fun fact, because I did this session last month I I think I did the session last month.

This is someone whose podcast I appeared on.

And after the part like, she’s the she’s the podcast host, so that will come out later. So after the podcast, she ended up, like, wanting to know more, and then she filled out a form. And this is what we kind of know, basically.

We’ll be working together. So, again, for those of you who’ve not seen that session and who are wanting to turn podcasts into client opportunities, would highly recommend listen to that one. But for now, look at this and tell me mhmm. Functional struggle. Okay. And our data value of the offer.

Cannot sustain effort across every business area. Yep. Yep.

Yeah.

Okay.

Feel free to unmute yourself if you got things to add if you don’t wanna kind of okay. Jenny, are there specific questions you ask clients so they go beyond sharing the surface level problem?

This isn’t converting, for example, to help them share with you what the shrugging moment really is.

I generally start by asking, well, so okay. What’s on your mind? You know?

You filled out I recap what they filled out the form for. So you mentioned you’ve got a launch that’s not being well. But, really, tell me what’s on your mind.

Opens up a whole lot of conversation. It’s not my question, though. I would highly recommend if you’ve not read the coaching habit by Michael Banda Stanier. I have been using this what’s in your mind question, thanks to him, for years.

It’s worked really, really well. So, I think it was Pat Flynn who sent me that book, but anyways, years ago. But it’s a really good book. It’s called The Coach and Habit. If you don’t have it, get it, read it, use it.

Yes, Abby. Love that book. Yeah. Same thing. Yeah.

That’s okay. Liesl, you are participating.

Alright.

Couldn’t articulate value of the offer.

Hired people in the past that didn’t work out. Nailed it. Cannot sustain effort across every business area. This is a really big one. Yeah.

She just felt like, oh, I’m struggling to kind of, you know, delegate these critical marketing tasks and all that fearful of letting someone else do it. That is definitely the emotional struggle.

She felt really trapped in the founder operator stage where she knew she should be giving it up, but when she would, it won’t work out. And here’s the interesting thing. In the past, when someone would say, I’ve worked with copywriters before, and it’s never worked out. So it’d be like a huge red flag for me.

Right? Like, I know people say like, oh, red flag. And I would because I’d heard that, I would be like, oh, yeah. I’m not gonna be working with them.

Never gonna work out.

But sometimes I’ve found not sometimes right now. Most of the times. In fact, I have quite a few client, stories and testimonials talking about how in the past they’ve hired and it’s not worked out, mainly because people don’t follow process. So I I’m just sharing this from the point of view that if a client comes to you and says that, don’t let that scare you off.

Do your digging to find out, okay, what happened?

What did they do? Like, what was their process like and all of that? In this landscape, they had lots of data that, as copywriters, had not even touched. So this is like someone who runs a systems business, who teaches other fractional CMOs how to, set up systems and processes and also they’ve got loads of data. Right? They’ve not done anything with it.

And the people that you’d hired in the past didn’t touch it.

So they might as well just been guessing at the copy they were writing, which is why it wasn’t converting, which is why I knew that we could do so much with it. Point being, like, that’s, like, a side story to tell you. Sometimes when you sometimes something becomes like an industry thing. Oh, if someone says they’ve worked with someone and not like the experience, you should not work with them.

Do your own due diligence.

Yeah. Okay. Rizal, yeah, you were about to ask that. So I hope that answers your question about project boundaries.

Social struggle. If they’re a podcast host, they’re in front of a lot of people. Yes. And they’ve got she’s got, like, I think, close to thirteen million subscribers on YouTube or something like that.

So, yes, that is definitely a social struggle. It’s like, okay.

What kind of life it would be exactly that, you know, this is what I’m gonna be doing, which is something that she did, you know, say it’s not in this in the summary here is, like, I cannot see myself doing this all the time because they’re you know, she’s got other programs. She’s obviously doing the delivery as well along with the rest of her team, but she couldn’t be stuck in the cycle of writing that copy.

The other interesting thing in all of these cases I would like you and why I picked recent ones is because AI. Right? Like, all these smart in tune with the market founders all know about AI, all know about Checkatrade, all know about cloud.

None of them want to take the time to sit down and be the, you know, the prompter or the feeder of, like, hand holder for for LLMs. They do not have the time or the patience.

That is the audience you wanna look at.

Because, one thing I’m always queue again, this is something that I hear a lot in the industry, so that’s why, again, I’m bringing this up is, like, oh, no one’s hiring copywriters.

I don’t know.

So but kind of looking at what is it that people really need solved, and she could, for all purposes, use AI to write her emails for her.

But, yeah, she knows that she does not have the time or the patience. It just feels faster for her to do it herself or repurpose some of her past launch emails even though she knows they probably won’t do as well. But, yeah, that’s the alternative.

Okay. Cool. Anyone wants to weigh in on functional struggle, emotional struggle, social struggle?

Yeah. What kind of life this will be? That’s so true, Donaldson. Like, that is exactly, like and I think you probably even said this on the call. It’s like, I cannot imagine doing this, all of this year and next year. This is not sustainable.

Bernadette, would you say that loss of face is, like, the overarching theme of the social struggle, like, that that most of the time, it’s some kind of worry about loss of perceived status or authority?

Yeah. I would say that. Yeah. You know, fear of losing reputation as an expert, fear of feeling, that people won’t see you in that light that you you want them to see. That is definitely an overarching theme.

Other things that have come up in social struggle has been, you know, their their position as the founder.

They feel like again, it’s because it’s social, it’s kind of like, oh, you know, I’m not it’s been I’ve been doing this for, like, a few years. It just feels like I’m bringing it, and I want that to change.

So but, yeah, mainly, it’s a lot to do with their internal, you know, thoughts and feelings about how others would perceive it, which is the whole social element. Yeah.

Anything else? Any other questions?

Any other insights on any of these?

Okay. Cool.

Alright.

So those of you who are new, something that I tend to do in my calls is give you homework.

So I want you to pull a transcript of one of your prospect calls and put it together into a similar Google Doc like this and share what you think would be the functional, emotional, social struggle or the you know, what would what are you in your in your opinion there? And then share it with me, of course, the rest of the, you know, CSP crew. In fact, please tag me. I tend sometimes tend to miss notifications otherwise.

But, yeah, I would love for you all to do that.

Just kind of start building those muscles trying to pick what clients are really struggling with so you don’t again, this is a step closer to what’s going from being an order taker to someone who starts looking at, okay, what is it that they really need and, yeah, how can I help them? Okay. In this particular client’s case, because I realized I didn’t talk about this, So in her case, for instance, she came in saying that I need help writing evergreen emails. Right?

So easy for me to say, okay. Yeah. Excitingly evergreen would be perfect for you. But because I know she has a lot of data, because I knew that she also wants, you know, to get consistent sales, Instead of just selling her a package, what we’ve done is, of course, you’ll be doing all of her evergreen sequence, but then I’m also doing a quarterly retainer with her where I’m doing her flash sales and I’m doing her, I’m doing newsletters for, people who are not, you know, who went through the webinar but did not buy and flash sales for the larger audience.

So that’s a quarterly retailer. So instead of just being a one off package now, I have a ongoing thing with her for her to help her sell consistently beyond the Evergreen funnel as well.

So in every case in all these three cases, and this yeah. This is pretty much what we’ve seen over the last few years is understanding what an aspect is really, really struggling with helps you sell, be it, and close bigger packages.

Makes it easier for your in in your case, in all your cases because you are creating your standardized offers, and I want you to kinda focus on that.

You wanna start looking at, okay, how does our standardized how does my standardized offer help this client so that and once you start pulling at the struggle, you’ll find that it becomes that much easier for you to close that time because you’re not just saying, oh, I’m gonna be giving you a webinar funnel, or I’m gonna I’m gonna be giving you a website copy, or I’m gonna be giving you an evergreen funnel. No. You’re solving a much bigger problem than that.

Cool.

Alright. Yeah.

Katie, go ahead.

Okay. So I had I had this question before, but what you just said dovetail nicely into it. On on expanding the scope, So I did a preliminary like, of my standardized offer of the three back end funnels, I, sold the initial strategy as a stand like, basically, as a downsell on the sales call.

They said we’re not the whole thing.

I said, okay. Let’s just do the strategy.

While doing that road map, I identified that when it came to the back end offer, like, there was a lot of potential like, they didn’t have the core messaging dialed in for that back end offer enough to want to do the back end for that as well. So in the initial sales call, I had pitched the post sale profit system for both offers.

Mhmm. On the road map presentation call, I pitched post step profit system for the signature offer and then message optimization for the Mhmm. Back end offer.

Mhmm. But that felt like it because that hadn’t come up in the conversation before, it opened a can of worms that they weren’t expecting.

And so it was a muddier conversation because where I probably could have had a very clean clothes on, you know, just doing the back end sales, then we were also talking about an offer that they hadn’t considered that they needed. So it was something that I had spotted as a deeper need, but they weren’t thinking about that yet.

So I guess similar to the affiliate marketer Mhmm. Like, when you’re introducing when you see the deeper need, do you what is your sequencing, I guess, around, like, when you would bring something up like that? Or do you have any tips on how to bring that into the conversation without kind of throwing people, from what they expected?

I tied into the overall goal. Right? So what is again, going back to what was she trying to accomplish? She wanted that it people who bought her LinkedIn bio tool would feel confident and also, you know, continue to see her as the expert that she is when it comes to affiliate marketing.

And not having a proper onboarding nurture term sequence or win back sequence would mean that once they buy, there’s post purchase experience isn’t going to be great because they’re gonna be only getting either ordinary templated emails or maybe no email. Worse, you know, no emails at all. So in my proposal, essentially and I because I did not have another call with her. This was just a single call, close.

So in my proposal, I presented the custom package, and I explained my reasoning for including all of these emails as a you know, along with the exact kind of the same explanation that I just gave you is that since our goal is to a, b, and c, I recommend we have these emails in place.

And, oh, no. This is the affiliate marketer. And that is when her husband wanted to kind of get on a call and say ask, okay.

What would we be doing? What would be the purpose and all that?

So yeah. So I did do two calls with them.

One with her and then one with her and her husband.

So I would present it in the proposal. In your case, I feel I again, I don’t know, Mike, but, did you explain your reasoning?

Or Yes.

Yeah. And then and then because my presentation had, like, a very clear segue into and, like and then then this is where you sign, and then the call was, like, forty five minutes longer than I expected while we discussed my reasoning. So, that’s that’s kind of where I was like, oh, this could have gone better. Or maybe I should’ve, like, maybe I should’ve held off until the proposal, and then Mhmm. They’ll only introduce that offer once they had said yes to the initial offer. I could have introduced it Yeah.

As well add on or Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Again, I mean, there’s so much here, like, that we don’t really know about, like, the the time there. You know, what was said that they’re trying to solve and things like that. But, yeah, we’re kind of testing out to see whether you present your findings, but then based on your findings, you present your offer to them when you present your proposal.

Mhmm.

So if someone comes for you for something and you identify through your initial research that the deeper need is that they need something else, and that something else will allow you to deliver better what they said they needed, would that be a would that be a deal breaker for you?

If they were to say no Mhmm. Would that be a deal deal breaker for me?

There was a time when it would probably have been like, oh, hey. I know.

But the the level of business owners that I’m kinda working with right now, honestly, I let them know that, okay. Hey. This is what I can see happening if we are to do this, this, and this. At the same time, I understand that a business has other goals, marketing asset allocations, etcetera, etcetera. So if you want, we can push this for later. If you wanna do it on your own later, that’s also cool. But yeah.

Right now, it’s not.

In most cases, they’re willing to kind of park it as a project as a second project.

And if not I mean, again, I did my job of letting them know that this is what would make more of a difference to you. At the end of the day, it’s their business.

So I’m not yeah.

I’m not gonna kind of let myself get walk away from, say, a five figure project because of something that my goal is is, like, don’t let your ego play the game. Just keep focus on and focus on the data. Focus on what you’re investing to do. So yeah.

Because there’s a time where I play it. Yeah. No. I’m the expert here. I know what I’m saying.

I know this would make more of a difference. It would be a whole thing and, like, reach that level of maturity where I’m like, cool. I’ve set my peace, your business, your decision.

I thank you. I aspire to that level of maturity. Working on it.

Yeah. I had the same approach with hiding for my copy as well, but there was a time when I would say, nope.

Nope. Nope. No. No making any changes to my copy. It’s like every single line was based on research and stuff and stuff. Now, again, I explained my reasoning.

I let them know. But if they like, for instance, this affiliate marketer, she would have, like she had very specific things around certain words. Right? So I explained why, but she would be like, no.

Okay. But I feel like my ideal client would put it in. Like, okay. It’s again.

It’s your business.

Alright. Cool. Any other questions? That was those were really good questions, Katie.

Nope?

Okay. Cool.

Alright.

I I know there are ask you a quick question if there’s time.

Sure.

Sure. Yeah. I mean, I’m trying to think how to phrase it as a question. So because, basically, I’m just I’m having hiring pains at the moment.

Okay.

And it’s just making me feel really bad because, like, I didn’t like, the people I’m hiring, they’re just making me look bad to to the client because they keep making mistakes. And then when I’m trying to, like and then I’m having to quality control, and then it’s just taking longer. And I’ve just I feel like I’ve made quite a few bad hires. And I was just wondering if you’ve, like, experienced that or if it you know? Because I’m like, is it me, or is this just part of the learning curve?

It’s part of the learning curve, Abby. I’m sorry to hear that it’s happening. We’ve had our fair share of bad hires.

You know, we worked with, a lot. We we work with a lot of different contractors, which is right now, once we find a really good contractor, I, yeah, I hold on to them for dear life.

But, but it is part of the learning curve.

You may wanna take a look at things like, okay, your onboarding, your processes, and everything. But once you’ve done your own thing, there is which is exactly what I was talking about. You know, like, when people say, oh, we worked with a copywriter, and it wasn’t a great experience. Sometimes it really isn’t the client.

It is the copywriter. I’m sorry, but it’s it’s true. Right? So similarly, in your case, sometimes it’s not you.

It is the contractor. Right? So you need to kind of take a dispassionate look or have someone take a dispassionate look at your processes, your onboarding, your, you know, communication, and if there are no gaps, then it’s probably that person and you need to cut them loose.

So Yeah.

This is very popular, and I am obviously not the one who’s come up with it. But I believe in this for me. It’s like hire slow and fire fast. Fast. I would not Mhmm.

Hold on to someone who’s making us look bad in front of a client that is so, not them. Yeah.

Yeah.

I’ve just had I’ve had a bit of a streak of bad luck, and I don’t know if it’s first.

I think it’s just, like, the lack of care. Like, it really, like, baffles me how little some people care. Like, as I’d like the mistakes I make, and it’s like, how, you know, how what makes you think that’s okay? Like and I I just hate it because I’m, like, selling a, like, a a premium service. And then when the mistake it just makes me feel awful. Like, there’s so much stress, but and I’m struggling to see, like, the light at the end of the tunnel because it has been, like, four people in a row now.

But yeah, I for the same role?

Different roles, like the designer, web developer, and automation, email automation expert. It’s just every time, it’s just been the lack of care and attention to detail.

Yeah. Yeah. I totally relate.

And, again, like I said, really sorry. It is part of the learning curve.

It is hard. Are you hiring based on referrals?

I’m hiring from within the Copiacus community, and then people I’ve worked with before. So kind yeah. Like, I haven’t I haven’t received, like, a really good referral yet.

Someone that, like like, if if if it was someone that, like, someone I trusted vouch for, I think I’d have a better experience. But, yeah, that person just hasn’t kind of come up yet.

So Yeah.

That’s really unfortunate.

It is, things that I’ve worked in the past for us have been basically I’ve always hired on referral. I’ve always as much as possible.

Always hired and run with a couple of test projects and with very little margin for error, basically.

Mhmm.

And so test projects are really important. If you’re not doing test projects, that is something you may wanna add in.

We pay them for the project, but, yeah, kind of gives you an idea of how they, communicate and things like that.

And like like I said, the other thing is it’s kind of evaluating and seeing whether, whether our own processes have a gap somewhere and need need fine tuning.

But but also making it very clear when we hire them, like, things like, okay. Time lines are key, and we just don’t have any wiggle room around that. Like, things like okay. Anything that’s gonna be directly impacting the client.

Because at the end of the day, the buck stops with you. Right? Yeah. I mean, it’s your name.

It’s your brand. Your client does not care whether you’re working with someone else for research. If your editor is sick, that is not your client’s problem.

So those are things that like, making sure that everyone that we hire has the same value system as that when it comes to so having those conversations early on has really, really helped. Like, in the initial conversations, whether it’s been with our editor, whether it’s been with a person who worked for research.

Full disclosure, we’ve had a designer in the past we preferred who’s dropped the ball for our clients. Like, never again would I ever send another person their way. Like, I don’t care what happened.

But yeah. So point being, these are certain things that have worked well for us, but it is unfortunate there are like, it’s it’s hard to find good talent.

Yeah. Yeah. It’s just the the emotional problems I think of, like, when you’re letting go of that control for the first time, which is really scary anyway.

And then Yeah.

Yeah.

And then And then people drop the ball.

Yeah. What?

And then what you fear happens happens, and it’s just Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. I know. I know. Which is why when, like, the first few times we worked with people who went above and beyond, I was like, oh, yeah. This is amazing.

Mhmm.

Never gonna work with anyone else again.

But, yeah, Punez, I would say ask people for referrals, like, instead of, like, hiring like, when you say when you’re hiring from within the community, is it, like, do you say, okay.

I have an opening for this, or do you say, okay. I’m looking for this person. Do you have any referrals? And when people refer, do you ask, have they worked with them? What was their experience like?

Like, what’s that process look like?

Yeah. I mean, it was more just people, like because I was a coach in freelance school for a while, so I had a, like, contact with people on, like, Friday socials and stuff. So I’d spent quite a lot of time with this person, who I’m thinking of. So I felt good hiring them.

And then yeah. I don’t know. I think it’s just like, what I find with freelancers, I think, is they’re watching their profitability so much that it means they, like, don’t spend as long as they should on quality control.

Is Pardon Frozen? Is it just me? Yeah. Okay.

Well, it doesn’t look like she’s gonna unfreeze.

Yeah. I mean, I think we’re at time anyway.

Yeah. I gotta go.

I might wait. I’ll wait for her to come back. Bye, Michelle.

Bye.

Anyways, let’s just kind of wrap this up.

Abby, feel free to, like, if some like, let let us know if there’s, like, a specific role you’re looking to hire for or whatever. If, you know, anyone comes to mind, I will definitely share referrals.

But all of this to say, yeah, this is par for the course, unfortunate, but, yeah, you Everyone’s gone through this. It’s a rite of passage.

It’s all No. I think I needed to hear that. Thank you, Prana.

Yeah.

You’re welcome. Alright. Thank you so much, everybody. I hope you all had fun. I want to see some struggling moments, from your transcripts in Slack next week.

So please tag me, and I will set up scheduled reminders to check-in with you all otherwise. Alright. Thank you, everyone. Bye.

Worksheet

Take Action: Funnels & Goals (pp. 24 – 27) 

Worksheet

Take Action: Funnels & Goals (pp. 24 – 27) 

 

Transcript

So what I have done, is something really fun. I took our prospect call transcripts, prospects to turn into clients, and I’ve worked out the the struggling moment. But then and also, you know, like, the different elements of the struggling moment. But then I want you to look at those struggling moments and pick out the functional struggle, the emotional struggle, and, you know, the social struggle.

So you will if you haven’t opened up your workbooks, I would love for you to first do that so you can kind of go through the examples because those are, you know, those are examples.

But but I want you to look at the example so you can get an idea of what we are even talking about. So when I share my Google Doc with you, I want you to be able to kind of look at it and go, okay. And this would be the functional struggle, and this would be the emotion struggle.

So open up your workbooks. I’m gonna share screen.

And what we’re going to do is we’re going to look at the workbook first, and then I’m gonna share a Google Doc with y’all where you would go ahead and do this exercise real time.

Alright. Cool.

Let’s get started.

And first up okay. Alright. Choose.

Okay. Cool. So this is what the section I want you to look at. The struggling moment is the seat for innovation.

Just scroll past this page. I want you to look at the examples here. So client comes in. You’ll get on a call.

Client says, okay. I wanna launch copy.

But then, of course, being the professionals you are, you will probe. You will ask.

And what they usually come up with would be some would be a story like this. And I’ll share our clients’ stories on probing.

And then from this, what you wanna look at is the functional struggle. So, okay, measurable decline in performance, social struggle, you know, people kind you’re like people are looking at you and all of that. And what’s the push force or what’s the you know, if there’s an emotional struggle to it, what what does that look like?

The more important thing that you need to ask yourself is why do you wanna kind of look at all of these struggles? Like, what does this help you do?

And use that to then direct the sales conversation. At least that’s what I do. It works out really, really well. And when you look at when you start to kinda pull the thread of either one of these struggles or if possible, all three and just kind of bring it together, it becomes so much easier to close clients at twenty k, thirty k, fifty k, hundred k. Right?

I have used this repeatedly just to kind of take time to really understand what the troubling moment really is. Because when a client comes and says, oh, I need website copy, it’s there’s something else going on.

You know? Why do they need website copy? And it’s fascinating because and I’m actually you know, because I can see this play out in in myself as a a buyer or as a client too. So right now, for instance, we are in the midst of speaking with, you know, designers and branding experts and all of that because we’re looking at a rebrand for our business.

So why I said it’s fascinating is because on calls with with branding strategist or with designers and things like that, the moment someone asks me oh, because we go in saying, oh, we wanna rebrand. Right?

Very straightforward.

But the caliber of a professional, like, it instantly kind of goes up in my mind when someone, like, takes the time to, like, clean forward and ask, okay. But why now? What’s happening right now that you’re looking to rebrand?

It just kind of opens up a whole thing for both Mike and me on that call. And I can only imagine that, and I hope that those strategists who are asking these questions are actually gonna use it when they kind of put our proposal together, when they send our quote together because I know it makes a difference. I always use struggling moments when I present my proposal to clients, especially for custom codes, and something like if they’ve, like, not just bought a package of the site, but they’ve taken time to fill out a form, and they met me for a call, and we have to give them a custom code.

I will use all of this in the proposal to basically present why we’re offering them what we’re offering them and what you know? And then what you’re charging them really kind of it’s not I’m not gonna say it becomes irrelevant, especially when they’re when you’re looking at fifty k, seventy five k packages.

It’s by no means irrelevant, but they can see exactly why they need it. What is the job that your service would actually be doing for their business.

So unlike my usual sessions where I have, like, a really nice slide deck and I have, like, tactical things and all, this one is very hands on. I just want you to understand what a struggling moment really is and learn to identify that in your own calls. Because if you’re not doing that right now, that is something you wanna fix right away.

So with that, do you have any questions before I yeah?

I do.

You say you use this during the sales call. Do you find this out in that triage call?

And then when you present, you know, back to your proposal, that’s when you pull this in?

Yes. Okay. So it’s in the triage call.

Okay.

And yeah.

I will basically use this definitely in the proposal, but I also kinda bring it up when we kick off. So when we kick off and I recap what’s in the project and, you know, who’s gonna be involved in the the the day c and all of that, I do mention why we’re doing what we’re doing because what I found and this is also true side note, this is also true for things like social proof. What I found, you need to like, once you’ve sold a client, you’d they you kinda need to have these, like, little mini selling points all through the process.

That works really, really well. Again, that’s just something I do. You don’t have to do it, but it just works really well. I’ve noticed.

Okay. Cool. So I’m gonna stop sharing. You should have it. Like, if you oh, wait. That’s the appointment you’re looking for. Anyways, let’s And what I’m going to do is drop a Google doc that I have created.

Fail.

So these are all clients from prospect calls that I’ve transcribed, and then let me go on the blank. Commenter.

Copy link. Okay. Cool.

Dropping the link in chat.

Oh, Lisa, good question. So you get this in the first fifteen minute call and then begin to it in the length here. One did that did Michelle’s question answer your question as well?

Oh, sorry.

So I do this a little differently, but I don’t want y’all to kind of digress from the process that, you know, y’all are going through.

In your case, I would look at the kind of try and get this get this struggle, in the fifteen minute call and then, yes, dig into it in the length of your call. That said, how I exactly do it and what Michelle calls the triage call is, again, this is my way to get, is I just do one call, and then I do proposal.

Right?

And I’ve done this for pretty much every project, but y’all also need to remember.

It’s I’ve been doing this for a while now, so there’s probably that at play. But, Katie, yes. Sometimes.

Depends.

For instance, it depends on a couple of different factors. If there are multiple people involved in the project, for instance, we just especially the corporate clients. So there’s this huge group of schools that I’ve been working with since last year.

There are multiple people involved in it. I’ve done one project with them. I’m working on a second project with them.

So in that case, always present it on a call because there are everyone wants to be involved in it.

But if it’s someone who we’ve worked with in the past, if it’s someone who has come through a referral, if it’s someone who is already sold on us, a podcast host, I mean, for that happens a lot.

I will not present it on a call.

Breaking rules? Yes. Maybe. But it just that it’s been working.

Yes, Leasel. With corporate clients, yes. Definitely. You will have to do two calls. You may even have to do more depending on the scope of the project.

For projects upwards of seventy five thousand dollars, I have done as many as in fact, with this particular client. Okay. We’ve done okay.

Three three calls, with different stakeholders.

So because there have been changes to, oh, we wanna include this. Now we wanna you know? So yeah.

Corporate times are a whole different thing. I I really love the size of the project.

It just takes me too much time.

Okay. Cool.

You should have the Google Doc in the chat. Open it up. And what I want you to kind of look at and put down is go through the struggling moment and leave your comments or just make your own comments as like, unmute yourself and tell me what you think is the functional struggle, what do you think is the emotional struggle, what do you think is the social struggle. So this is gonna be a very different call here.

Usually, yes. Three calls seems hard.

But this is for the second project. So they’ve already worked with me once. And, yeah, perfect times are whole different days.

Y’all should have commenting access, so feel free to leave comments if you want to.

Alright. Anyone wants to volunteer for the first one?

Well, I guess since nobody else go ahead.

Go ahead.

And it’s early in the morning, so I don’t know.

So functional struggle will probably be Clients who were interested were weren’t, signing up?

Yeah. Okay. Because?

Oh, because timing was too short.

Perfect. Yeah. K. Absolutely. Absolutely. Okay. Cool. K. Emotional struggle? I guess it was about from the yeah.

Go ahead.

Headspace and timing to they weren’t in the right headspace, and there was too short of time for them to spend that nine ninety seven.

Yeah. Yeah. And when you’re reading this, you also wanna think about this from the client point of view. Right?

Like, how is the client feeling emotionally about this this struggle that they’re coming up against? Because that’s what you wanna kind of lean into and talk about it. Oh, so you’re feeling this because our students or our, you know, our prospects aren’t getting enough time to convert. Is that right?

You know? So Okay. Yeah. But you’re really, really, you know, dialed in into this. This is really good, Michelle.

Yeah. Okay.

The social struggle, that’s where I’m kinda lost.

Yeah. And that is where for social struggle, you will see that you will need to start reading between the lines.

Okay.

You will need to start kinda looking at, okay.

What are they worried about? Like, what’s the perception here that they’re worried about? Is it is it that they don’t want to they they feel like, oh, we are being we are being pushy versus being intentional? Is it more that, oh, you know, people are going to maybe see me differently or won’t respect me if I do this or if I don’t do this.

So you gotta kinda read between the lines. That is where that is where your skills as someone who is, like, tuned into how people think, come into play Okay. And where doing a little bit of probing will help. So that’s not very the the, the social struggle is not usually straightforward.

Forward.

But, for instance, in the second second, client’s case, I worked on their website probably earlier this year, and her her social struggle was a little more straightforward. So take a look at that and see if you can kind of pick the social struggle there. Okay.

Anyone else wants to kinda weigh in with the first one?

I had for the social struggle and sorry sorry I was late, so I will catch the replay to catch myself up if I missed something. But I put, whose job is it to notice this?

Like, because potential on the part of the speaker, there was confusion around, like, it was brought up by a team member.

They didn’t even know about it. So then if I’m on that call as a copywriter, I would be noticing, like, oh, they don’t.

Like, there was a role missing in the strategy behind the trial and, like, who’s gonna fix this problem.

Absolutely. Which is exactly what happened in this case as well, Katie, is one, there was no one looking at the fact that customer support is getting all these requests about, hey. Can I get more time?

Right? Like, it just came up during their they have, like, a stand up meeting or a catch up meeting, what they call it, and and really random. Not even like, oh, you know, here’s something. So which is what then led us to work on what we did for them were, like, behavior based sequences that, a, not only we give them, like, an extended trial, but then we had, like, oh, if they went ahead and logged in, then we have, like, a different sequence kicking in versus people who weren’t logging in, versus people who, you know, were logging in and watching an x number of lessons.

So it the social struggle was no one was really watching what was going on with this trial that they were thinking for all purposes as kind of doing well, because and and what was happening was they were leaving a lot of people, in terms of, like, oh, who could who could just just needed a few more days to be able to convert. So, like I said, you need to kind of read between the lines there and do a little more probing.

But what they came in saying was, oh, we wanna increase conversions. But the point is and what they initially thought was they had a lead flow problem. Like, oh, we need more people coming into the funnel so we can increase conversions. But what they actually had was a current conversion problem. Like, people were coming in but were not converting because of the lack of time. And, like, you know, Michelle said the feeling of being they were interested, but they didn’t have the headspace and the timing.

Thing was really felt too short for them.

Alright. Who wants to take number two?

These are yes. We weren’t giving them time or room to build, breathe, or build belief. That’s like so they didn’t really need a seven day trial. They needed what we went with was actually a fourteen day trial, and more emails.

So because if I just sold them a seven day trial, it would have worked.

The result of the of increasing the, trial period or the result of presenting them with a fourteen day file package? Conversion to paid upgrades. Oh, yeah. Okay. So it’s been ninety so then these are all fairly recent projects that have wrapped up. So this it’s gonna it we completed ninety days of the funnel, say, thirty first of March. So, they in ninety days, they’ve been able to almost, I would say, two point five x their conversions, but, again which is great.

However, what we are now testing out is if we shorten it to about nine days instead of fourteen days, would that create more of an urgency and increase conversion? So that’s what we gotta do in the optimization phase of it. My reasoning for this is I noticed that a lot of people wait till the very last day to convert. So I’m just kinda curious to see if you, like, go from seven from we went from seven to fourteen. So if you go from fourteen to nine or even ten, does that, you know, shorten the cycle while basically either increasing or keeping the conversions the same.

They are they’re they’re pretty happy, so they’re open to testing, which is a good thing.

Because we can always go back to fourteen if, say, the nine, ten day experiment does not work out.

Alright.

Functional struggle can’t explain too easily and in a way that shows value. Bit of imposter syndrome in the self as a creator. Yes. Then yes.

In fact, you’re it’s so cool that you brought up the imposter syndrome thing because the thing is she’s not a SaaS marketer. So this client, is really cool. She’s a really, really big affiliate marketer. She’s got, like, millions and millions of followers, on Instagram and TikTok. And, she created this tool, like I’m sorry. Her husband basically created this tool because she was really frustrated with the link in bio options available to her. So so that imposter syndrome in her is pretty real because she doesn’t think of herself as a SaaS founder.

She still thinks of herself as, an affiliate marketer who’s playing, a SaaS founder. So it’s so cool that you, kind of picked on that.

Potential loss of authority from lack of credit. Exactly. You know?

She felt like, oh, she because she’s concerned, you know, like an expert and she like, loads of an affiliate marketers look up to her. She felt like, oh, I would be they would be seeing me as less than or as per you know? So that was really, really yeah. It is. But it’s very hard, I think, when you are a creator or founder, and I guess most of you would kind of relate to it is because, like, people were approaching her about it, and she had a successful beta run and all of that, but it just kind of, you know, feel like, I don’t really know. And she came in saying, okay. I need copy for this website.

It’s interesting. I’ll tell you what we kind of sold her once we’ve kind of gone through this. But okay. Cool.

Anyone else wants to weigh in? Johnson, potential loss of authority. Yeah. Perfect. That is exactly like, that is the social, struggle here for sure.

Cool. Anyone have anything else to add?

Nope? Okay. So this is a classic case. The client comes in saying, you know, oh, I need better copy for my affiliate link in bio website so people understand what this tool does.

But the thing is she did not have any messaging created for this. Like, she just created the tool, got, like, a very, very basic one page kind of a sign up, and she felt like, okay. Let’s just change words on the website to, you know, make it clearer. But what we had to start with was and all of you know this, we had to start with going back and looking at, okay, what is it that you were saying?

How are people talking? So we had to start with all the research. We had to put together her complete message brand messaging guide, and then the website copy. But then we because of the imposter syndrome emotional struggle and, you know, wanting to explain the tool easily and that potential.

All of these struggles kinda came together because we did not want that experience to end when people signed up for the tool.

So I was able to show her that she also needed the staff onboarding emails. She needed, you know, nurture emails so that people would go ahead and use the tool and then, of course, win back emails for people who churn because it’s a subscription.

So it went from being, oh, I need copy from my home page to describe what people you know, describe what this tool does to being a huge project, because we kinda took the time to really understand what was going on, which is the whole purpose of this call is for you to start doing a little more digging to understand what is the struggle, what is the job that a prospect is actually hiring your service to do for them.

Where did they receive that? Nope.

So she was putting in all her money. Like, she’d made she’s yeah. So not VC backed, but her husband and she were both, and, Abby, it’s so funny because, you had a post in, in the Slack community that I saw later, so I didn’t get a chance to comment on it. But where you mentioned about having a call with a founder, and then the husband was on the second call and, you know, having to kind of do the I mean, it’s it’s exactly the same here.

So, she came to us through a referral, someone I’ve worked with in the past, and then she was like, yeah. Completely sold. I want all of it and then some. And then, you know, her husband, because he’s the one who created it and is also partly funding it, wanted to get on another call, and it was, you know, like, again, do the whole same thing, walking them through it again.

So, yeah, was it hard to expand the scope by that degree with the client? No. Simply because I knew the problem that she was wanting to solve was not just I needed to be clearer.

The problem was I need to look like the expert I really am. I wanna keep my standing as this really, really top affiliate marketer.

I want my app to present me the way the like, the affiliate marketing world sees me as.

So nope.

It wasn’t.

Yeah. Image is huge. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah.

Absolutely, Johnson. So because I spent the and this is the whole purpose of this call is, essentially, I want you to take the time to really dig into what is the struggle that your audience is looking to solve, your prospect is looking to solve, so it becomes easier for you to to sell them your standardized offers.

In my case, it’s more custom. So, I don’t have, like, a standardized offer other than fully loaded launch, which in any case is now going to get overhauled and retired. But, I’ve started catching this stuff on the fly, little because I’ve been doing this for a while now.

The more you’ll do it oh, one thing that I will recommend is we all use AI note takers.

I still make notes by hand. I do use an AI notetaker to kind of go over things that I may have forgotten, especially if I wanna, you know, in big package cases and things like that where we need to kind of sit down and hash out what, quote unquote, the deliverables are gonna look like. But I’ve started, like, kind of, like I make notes and then I draw lines to kind of talk about, okay, this is what the struggle really is or this is what they’re trying to solve. So, highly recommend doing that too. It just kind of trains your brain to to start picking these things.

Yes, Ali. Fully loaded launch is getting replaced with something even better.

But, yeah, I will share that soon.

It is iconic. I know.

But, yeah, it’s been a while now. So, it’s run its course, and we’ve been customizing it way, way more often, which means that we need to kind of, yep, expand the the package and change it up and all of that. So that was what happened. It is a federal party.

Yeah. Yeah. That’s a really good idea. Probably should do that.

Give it a going the way it probably served us well.

Awesome. Cool. Alright. Let’s look at number three. This is someone that we recently recently closed, like, as recent as, like, the contract’s just gone out to them. So yeah.

Oh, by the fun fact, because I did this session last month I I think I did the session last month.

This is someone whose podcast I appeared on.

And after the part like, she’s the she’s the podcast host, so that will come out later. So after the podcast, she ended up, like, wanting to know more, and then she filled out a form. And this is what we kind of know, basically.

We’ll be working together. So, again, for those of you who’ve not seen that session and who are wanting to turn podcasts into client opportunities, would highly recommend listen to that one. But for now, look at this and tell me mhmm. Functional struggle. Okay. And our data value of the offer.

Cannot sustain effort across every business area. Yep. Yep.

Yeah.

Okay.

Feel free to unmute yourself if you got things to add if you don’t wanna kind of okay. Jenny, are there specific questions you ask clients so they go beyond sharing the surface level problem?

This isn’t converting, for example, to help them share with you what the shrugging moment really is.

I generally start by asking, well, so okay. What’s on your mind? You know?

You filled out I recap what they filled out the form for. So you mentioned you’ve got a launch that’s not being well. But, really, tell me what’s on your mind.

Opens up a whole lot of conversation. It’s not my question, though. I would highly recommend if you’ve not read the coaching habit by Michael Banda Stanier. I have been using this what’s in your mind question, thanks to him, for years.

It’s worked really, really well. So, I think it was Pat Flynn who sent me that book, but anyways, years ago. But it’s a really good book. It’s called The Coach and Habit. If you don’t have it, get it, read it, use it.

Yes, Abby. Love that book. Yeah. Same thing. Yeah.

That’s okay. Liesl, you are participating.

Alright.

Couldn’t articulate value of the offer.

Hired people in the past that didn’t work out. Nailed it. Cannot sustain effort across every business area. This is a really big one. Yeah.

She just felt like, oh, I’m struggling to kind of, you know, delegate these critical marketing tasks and all that fearful of letting someone else do it. That is definitely the emotional struggle.

She felt really trapped in the founder operator stage where she knew she should be giving it up, but when she would, it won’t work out. And here’s the interesting thing. In the past, when someone would say, I’ve worked with copywriters before, and it’s never worked out. So it’d be like a huge red flag for me.

Right? Like, I know people say like, oh, red flag. And I would because I’d heard that, I would be like, oh, yeah. I’m not gonna be working with them.

Never gonna work out.

But sometimes I’ve found not sometimes right now. Most of the times. In fact, I have quite a few client, stories and testimonials talking about how in the past they’ve hired and it’s not worked out, mainly because people don’t follow process. So I I’m just sharing this from the point of view that if a client comes to you and says that, don’t let that scare you off.

Do your digging to find out, okay, what happened?

What did they do? Like, what was their process like and all of that? In this landscape, they had lots of data that, as copywriters, had not even touched. So this is like someone who runs a systems business, who teaches other fractional CMOs how to, set up systems and processes and also they’ve got loads of data. Right? They’ve not done anything with it.

And the people that you’d hired in the past didn’t touch it.

So they might as well just been guessing at the copy they were writing, which is why it wasn’t converting, which is why I knew that we could do so much with it. Point being, like, that’s, like, a side story to tell you. Sometimes when you sometimes something becomes like an industry thing. Oh, if someone says they’ve worked with someone and not like the experience, you should not work with them.

Do your own due diligence.

Yeah. Okay. Rizal, yeah, you were about to ask that. So I hope that answers your question about project boundaries.

Social struggle. If they’re a podcast host, they’re in front of a lot of people. Yes. And they’ve got she’s got, like, I think, close to thirteen million subscribers on YouTube or something like that.

So, yes, that is definitely a social struggle. It’s like, okay.

What kind of life it would be exactly that, you know, this is what I’m gonna be doing, which is something that she did, you know, say it’s not in this in the summary here is, like, I cannot see myself doing this all the time because they’re you know, she’s got other programs. She’s obviously doing the delivery as well along with the rest of her team, but she couldn’t be stuck in the cycle of writing that copy.

The other interesting thing in all of these cases I would like you and why I picked recent ones is because AI. Right? Like, all these smart in tune with the market founders all know about AI, all know about Checkatrade, all know about cloud.

None of them want to take the time to sit down and be the, you know, the prompter or the feeder of, like, hand holder for for LLMs. They do not have the time or the patience.

That is the audience you wanna look at.

Because, one thing I’m always queue again, this is something that I hear a lot in the industry, so that’s why, again, I’m bringing this up is, like, oh, no one’s hiring copywriters.

I don’t know.

So but kind of looking at what is it that people really need solved, and she could, for all purposes, use AI to write her emails for her.

But, yeah, she knows that she does not have the time or the patience. It just feels faster for her to do it herself or repurpose some of her past launch emails even though she knows they probably won’t do as well. But, yeah, that’s the alternative.

Okay. Cool. Anyone wants to weigh in on functional struggle, emotional struggle, social struggle?

Yeah. What kind of life this will be? That’s so true, Donaldson. Like, that is exactly, like and I think you probably even said this on the call. It’s like, I cannot imagine doing this, all of this year and next year. This is not sustainable.

Bernadette, would you say that loss of face is, like, the overarching theme of the social struggle, like, that that most of the time, it’s some kind of worry about loss of perceived status or authority?

Yeah. I would say that. Yeah. You know, fear of losing reputation as an expert, fear of feeling, that people won’t see you in that light that you you want them to see. That is definitely an overarching theme.

Other things that have come up in social struggle has been, you know, their their position as the founder.

They feel like again, it’s because it’s social, it’s kind of like, oh, you know, I’m not it’s been I’ve been doing this for, like, a few years. It just feels like I’m bringing it, and I want that to change.

So but, yeah, mainly, it’s a lot to do with their internal, you know, thoughts and feelings about how others would perceive it, which is the whole social element. Yeah.

Anything else? Any other questions?

Any other insights on any of these?

Okay. Cool.

Alright.

So those of you who are new, something that I tend to do in my calls is give you homework.

So I want you to pull a transcript of one of your prospect calls and put it together into a similar Google Doc like this and share what you think would be the functional, emotional, social struggle or the you know, what would what are you in your in your opinion there? And then share it with me, of course, the rest of the, you know, CSP crew. In fact, please tag me. I tend sometimes tend to miss notifications otherwise.

But, yeah, I would love for you all to do that.

Just kind of start building those muscles trying to pick what clients are really struggling with so you don’t again, this is a step closer to what’s going from being an order taker to someone who starts looking at, okay, what is it that they really need and, yeah, how can I help them? Okay. In this particular client’s case, because I realized I didn’t talk about this, So in her case, for instance, she came in saying that I need help writing evergreen emails. Right?

So easy for me to say, okay. Yeah. Excitingly evergreen would be perfect for you. But because I know she has a lot of data, because I knew that she also wants, you know, to get consistent sales, Instead of just selling her a package, what we’ve done is, of course, you’ll be doing all of her evergreen sequence, but then I’m also doing a quarterly retainer with her where I’m doing her flash sales and I’m doing her, I’m doing newsletters for, people who are not, you know, who went through the webinar but did not buy and flash sales for the larger audience.

So that’s a quarterly retailer. So instead of just being a one off package now, I have a ongoing thing with her for her to help her sell consistently beyond the Evergreen funnel as well.

So in every case in all these three cases, and this yeah. This is pretty much what we’ve seen over the last few years is understanding what an aspect is really, really struggling with helps you sell, be it, and close bigger packages.

Makes it easier for your in in your case, in all your cases because you are creating your standardized offers, and I want you to kinda focus on that.

You wanna start looking at, okay, how does our standardized how does my standardized offer help this client so that and once you start pulling at the struggle, you’ll find that it becomes that much easier for you to close that time because you’re not just saying, oh, I’m gonna be giving you a webinar funnel, or I’m gonna I’m gonna be giving you a website copy, or I’m gonna be giving you an evergreen funnel. No. You’re solving a much bigger problem than that.

Cool.

Alright. Yeah.

Katie, go ahead.

Okay. So I had I had this question before, but what you just said dovetail nicely into it. On on expanding the scope, So I did a preliminary like, of my standardized offer of the three back end funnels, I, sold the initial strategy as a stand like, basically, as a downsell on the sales call.

They said we’re not the whole thing.

I said, okay. Let’s just do the strategy.

While doing that road map, I identified that when it came to the back end offer, like, there was a lot of potential like, they didn’t have the core messaging dialed in for that back end offer enough to want to do the back end for that as well. So in the initial sales call, I had pitched the post sale profit system for both offers.

Mhmm. On the road map presentation call, I pitched post step profit system for the signature offer and then message optimization for the Mhmm. Back end offer.

Mhmm. But that felt like it because that hadn’t come up in the conversation before, it opened a can of worms that they weren’t expecting.

And so it was a muddier conversation because where I probably could have had a very clean clothes on, you know, just doing the back end sales, then we were also talking about an offer that they hadn’t considered that they needed. So it was something that I had spotted as a deeper need, but they weren’t thinking about that yet.

So I guess similar to the affiliate marketer Mhmm. Like, when you’re introducing when you see the deeper need, do you what is your sequencing, I guess, around, like, when you would bring something up like that? Or do you have any tips on how to bring that into the conversation without kind of throwing people, from what they expected?

I tied into the overall goal. Right? So what is again, going back to what was she trying to accomplish? She wanted that it people who bought her LinkedIn bio tool would feel confident and also, you know, continue to see her as the expert that she is when it comes to affiliate marketing.

And not having a proper onboarding nurture term sequence or win back sequence would mean that once they buy, there’s post purchase experience isn’t going to be great because they’re gonna be only getting either ordinary templated emails or maybe no email. Worse, you know, no emails at all. So in my proposal, essentially and I because I did not have another call with her. This was just a single call, close.

So in my proposal, I presented the custom package, and I explained my reasoning for including all of these emails as a you know, along with the exact kind of the same explanation that I just gave you is that since our goal is to a, b, and c, I recommend we have these emails in place.

And, oh, no. This is the affiliate marketer. And that is when her husband wanted to kind of get on a call and say ask, okay.

What would we be doing? What would be the purpose and all that?

So yeah. So I did do two calls with them.

One with her and then one with her and her husband.

So I would present it in the proposal. In your case, I feel I again, I don’t know, Mike, but, did you explain your reasoning?

Or Yes.

Yeah. And then and then because my presentation had, like, a very clear segue into and, like and then then this is where you sign, and then the call was, like, forty five minutes longer than I expected while we discussed my reasoning. So, that’s that’s kind of where I was like, oh, this could have gone better. Or maybe I should’ve, like, maybe I should’ve held off until the proposal, and then Mhmm. They’ll only introduce that offer once they had said yes to the initial offer. I could have introduced it Yeah.

As well add on or Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Again, I mean, there’s so much here, like, that we don’t really know about, like, the the time there. You know, what was said that they’re trying to solve and things like that. But, yeah, we’re kind of testing out to see whether you present your findings, but then based on your findings, you present your offer to them when you present your proposal.

Mhmm.

So if someone comes for you for something and you identify through your initial research that the deeper need is that they need something else, and that something else will allow you to deliver better what they said they needed, would that be a would that be a deal breaker for you?

If they were to say no Mhmm. Would that be a deal deal breaker for me?

There was a time when it would probably have been like, oh, hey. I know.

But the the level of business owners that I’m kinda working with right now, honestly, I let them know that, okay. Hey. This is what I can see happening if we are to do this, this, and this. At the same time, I understand that a business has other goals, marketing asset allocations, etcetera, etcetera. So if you want, we can push this for later. If you wanna do it on your own later, that’s also cool. But yeah.

Right now, it’s not.

In most cases, they’re willing to kind of park it as a project as a second project.

And if not I mean, again, I did my job of letting them know that this is what would make more of a difference to you. At the end of the day, it’s their business.

So I’m not yeah.

I’m not gonna kind of let myself get walk away from, say, a five figure project because of something that my goal is is, like, don’t let your ego play the game. Just keep focus on and focus on the data. Focus on what you’re investing to do. So yeah.

Because there’s a time where I play it. Yeah. No. I’m the expert here. I know what I’m saying.

I know this would make more of a difference. It would be a whole thing and, like, reach that level of maturity where I’m like, cool. I’ve set my peace, your business, your decision.

I thank you. I aspire to that level of maturity. Working on it.

Yeah. I had the same approach with hiding for my copy as well, but there was a time when I would say, nope.

Nope. Nope. No. No making any changes to my copy. It’s like every single line was based on research and stuff and stuff. Now, again, I explained my reasoning.

I let them know. But if they like, for instance, this affiliate marketer, she would have, like she had very specific things around certain words. Right? So I explained why, but she would be like, no.

Okay. But I feel like my ideal client would put it in. Like, okay. It’s again.

It’s your business.

Alright. Cool. Any other questions? That was those were really good questions, Katie.

Nope?

Okay. Cool.

Alright.

I I know there are ask you a quick question if there’s time.

Sure.

Sure. Yeah. I mean, I’m trying to think how to phrase it as a question. So because, basically, I’m just I’m having hiring pains at the moment.

Okay.

And it’s just making me feel really bad because, like, I didn’t like, the people I’m hiring, they’re just making me look bad to to the client because they keep making mistakes. And then when I’m trying to, like and then I’m having to quality control, and then it’s just taking longer. And I’ve just I feel like I’ve made quite a few bad hires. And I was just wondering if you’ve, like, experienced that or if it you know? Because I’m like, is it me, or is this just part of the learning curve?

It’s part of the learning curve, Abby. I’m sorry to hear that it’s happening. We’ve had our fair share of bad hires.

You know, we worked with, a lot. We we work with a lot of different contractors, which is right now, once we find a really good contractor, I, yeah, I hold on to them for dear life.

But, but it is part of the learning curve.

You may wanna take a look at things like, okay, your onboarding, your processes, and everything. But once you’ve done your own thing, there is which is exactly what I was talking about. You know, like, when people say, oh, we worked with a copywriter, and it wasn’t a great experience. Sometimes it really isn’t the client.

It is the copywriter. I’m sorry, but it’s it’s true. Right? So similarly, in your case, sometimes it’s not you.

It is the contractor. Right? So you need to kind of take a dispassionate look or have someone take a dispassionate look at your processes, your onboarding, your, you know, communication, and if there are no gaps, then it’s probably that person and you need to cut them loose.

So Yeah.

This is very popular, and I am obviously not the one who’s come up with it. But I believe in this for me. It’s like hire slow and fire fast. Fast. I would not Mhmm.

Hold on to someone who’s making us look bad in front of a client that is so, not them. Yeah.

Yeah.

I’ve just had I’ve had a bit of a streak of bad luck, and I don’t know if it’s first.

I think it’s just, like, the lack of care. Like, it really, like, baffles me how little some people care. Like, as I’d like the mistakes I make, and it’s like, how, you know, how what makes you think that’s okay? Like and I I just hate it because I’m, like, selling a, like, a a premium service. And then when the mistake it just makes me feel awful. Like, there’s so much stress, but and I’m struggling to see, like, the light at the end of the tunnel because it has been, like, four people in a row now.

But yeah, I for the same role?

Different roles, like the designer, web developer, and automation, email automation expert. It’s just every time, it’s just been the lack of care and attention to detail.

Yeah. Yeah. I totally relate.

And, again, like I said, really sorry. It is part of the learning curve.

It is hard. Are you hiring based on referrals?

I’m hiring from within the Copiacus community, and then people I’ve worked with before. So kind yeah. Like, I haven’t I haven’t received, like, a really good referral yet.

Someone that, like like, if if if it was someone that, like, someone I trusted vouch for, I think I’d have a better experience. But, yeah, that person just hasn’t kind of come up yet.

So Yeah.

That’s really unfortunate.

It is, things that I’ve worked in the past for us have been basically I’ve always hired on referral. I’ve always as much as possible.

Always hired and run with a couple of test projects and with very little margin for error, basically.

Mhmm.

And so test projects are really important. If you’re not doing test projects, that is something you may wanna add in.

We pay them for the project, but, yeah, kind of gives you an idea of how they, communicate and things like that.

And like like I said, the other thing is it’s kind of evaluating and seeing whether, whether our own processes have a gap somewhere and need need fine tuning.

But but also making it very clear when we hire them, like, things like, okay. Time lines are key, and we just don’t have any wiggle room around that. Like, things like okay. Anything that’s gonna be directly impacting the client.

Because at the end of the day, the buck stops with you. Right? Yeah. I mean, it’s your name.

It’s your brand. Your client does not care whether you’re working with someone else for research. If your editor is sick, that is not your client’s problem.

So those are things that like, making sure that everyone that we hire has the same value system as that when it comes to so having those conversations early on has really, really helped. Like, in the initial conversations, whether it’s been with our editor, whether it’s been with a person who worked for research.

Full disclosure, we’ve had a designer in the past we preferred who’s dropped the ball for our clients. Like, never again would I ever send another person their way. Like, I don’t care what happened.

But yeah. So point being, these are certain things that have worked well for us, but it is unfortunate there are like, it’s it’s hard to find good talent.

Yeah. Yeah. It’s just the the emotional problems I think of, like, when you’re letting go of that control for the first time, which is really scary anyway.

And then Yeah.

Yeah.

And then And then people drop the ball.

Yeah. What?

And then what you fear happens happens, and it’s just Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. I know. I know. Which is why when, like, the first few times we worked with people who went above and beyond, I was like, oh, yeah. This is amazing.

Mhmm.

Never gonna work with anyone else again.

But, yeah, Punez, I would say ask people for referrals, like, instead of, like, hiring like, when you say when you’re hiring from within the community, is it, like, do you say, okay.

I have an opening for this, or do you say, okay. I’m looking for this person. Do you have any referrals? And when people refer, do you ask, have they worked with them? What was their experience like?

Like, what’s that process look like?

Yeah. I mean, it was more just people, like because I was a coach in freelance school for a while, so I had a, like, contact with people on, like, Friday socials and stuff. So I’d spent quite a lot of time with this person, who I’m thinking of. So I felt good hiring them.

And then yeah. I don’t know. I think it’s just like, what I find with freelancers, I think, is they’re watching their profitability so much that it means they, like, don’t spend as long as they should on quality control.

Is Pardon Frozen? Is it just me? Yeah. Okay.

Well, it doesn’t look like she’s gonna unfreeze.

Yeah. I mean, I think we’re at time anyway.

Yeah. I gotta go.

I might wait. I’ll wait for her to come back. Bye, Michelle.

Bye.

Anyways, let’s just kind of wrap this up.

Abby, feel free to, like, if some like, let let us know if there’s, like, a specific role you’re looking to hire for or whatever. If, you know, anyone comes to mind, I will definitely share referrals.

But all of this to say, yeah, this is par for the course, unfortunate, but, yeah, you Everyone’s gone through this. It’s a rite of passage.

It’s all No. I think I needed to hear that. Thank you, Prana.

Yeah.

You’re welcome. Alright. Thank you so much, everybody. I hope you all had fun. I want to see some struggling moments, from your transcripts in Slack next week.

So please tag me, and I will set up scheduled reminders to check-in with you all otherwise. Alright. Thank you, everyone. Bye.

Repurposing Content: Create Once. Distribute Forever.

Repurposing Content: Create Once. Distribute Forever.

Transcript

Awesome.

Well, I’m stoked you’re here, Ross, because we your book was our book of the month last month. Cool. And then we brought it back this month so everybody could have a good refresher before you join us today. So did. I know. I’m excited too, and I know that we’ve only got a little time with you.

We’ve got an hour, which is great, but you’re gonna do some teaching, I think, for the first little bit, and then we’ll break it to q and a.

How’s that sound?

Let’s do it. I’m excited.

Where, but, is everyone at? To jump in the quick chat, I’d love to know, like, where everyone’s calling in from just in the chat, if you don’t mind. It’d be amazing.

While you’re doing that, Sarah, can you make a note?

Let’s go. I love it. That’s awesome.

Yeah. I think my note taker’s here. You can kick that out if it’s still here.

Okay.

Doesn’t need to be here. I don’t know why it follows me.

Oregon, I’ve yet to make it there, but I have plans.

Ontario. Let’s go Canada. I love it. Cool. Montreal.

Very cool. Awesome. So I’m super excited to be here. I’m going to say those familiar words that all of us have heard over the last little bit.

The team has told me I’ve got, like, twenty to kinda go through the presentation, and then from there, we’re gonna jump into some q and a.

I might talk fast because I have a lot of slides and I have a lot to try to get through, but I’m going to do my absolute best to wrap in twenty.

I am also very, nonprecious. So if at any point anyone has questions, feel free to cut me off and let me know if you want to, have a live jam session on anything that I talk about today.

And, yeah, let’s get into it. So I’m going to just check. Everyone can see my screen? Everything looks good? Cool. So if you’re all familiar with the book, then you know that my favorite four words are create once distribute forever.

This is something that I’m super passionate about. It’s something that I I care deeply about, especially because when I first got into the industry, I really if you put my website, raw simmons dot com, into way back time machine, you’ll see that I had, like, a Mad Men inspired website design. When I was in, university, the show Mad Men kinda was the the thing that made me want to get into advertising.

And Don Draper was which was, like, the the king of advertising in the show was kinda, like, one of the, like, people who I was like, oh, that’s cool. He’s doing things right. And then as the show gets on, I’m like, okay. His life’s a little chaotic.

That’s not for me. But beyond that, we have gone through a time that I have to apologize for. And I apologize because, like, a lot of gurus, a lot of marketers have preached at the top of their lungs for way too long that you just need to create blog posts, you just need to write blogs, and you will win. And our clients have listened, and they have believed them.

I was one of those googlers. Like, when I first got out of school, when I first got in the industry, I was going to events and I was preaching. All you have to do is blog. Just blog, blog, blog, and you will win.

You’ll be successful. You just have to blog. And I realized over time that that was a massive mistake. Right?

Like, I realized that that young no facial hair guy with not a single gray in his hair was was screaming at this top of his lungs. This idea of create more blog posts and the world will be yours was a massive mistake, mistake, because a lot of people listen. A lot of brands started to produce a ton of blog posts, and we see it today. They created blog post after blog post after blog post.

When they think about what their content marketing strategy is, they’re exclusively thinking in blog posts, and that’s all they do over and over again. And even today, like, I will talk to a client, and I’ll be like, what’s your content strategy? And then they’ll pull up their content calendar and say, this is it. Like, this is our strategy.

We just need to write more blog posts and create more content, and it’s gonna be a little bit of SEO, a little bit of how to, and they think that’s it.

I think that a very real correction needs to take place. And it’s not this correction. Like, a lot of people are out there saying, just think like a media company. Hey.

If you think like a media company, you’ll still be successful. Is it I don’t know about you, but, like, the newspapers in Canada aren’t doing so well. Like, the media companies that we wanna emulate are probably not the newspapers of the past. Right?

Like, those media companies are are laying people off left, right, and center. Like, it’s it’s a chaotic mess. So when I talk to folks, they’re always like, Ross, you said content marketing work. And the truth is it does.

But everybody forgot that content marketing is a two word industry. Like, it’s not just content, content, content. It’s about marketing the content. And going back to some of the principles that if you watch Mad Men, you’ll remember is, like, looking for insights, understanding your customers, understanding the pains, understanding their problems, and actually doing research before you write a blog post that is rooted in the customer’s experience, their pains, their problems, and, like, a deep empathy for what’s going on in their worlds.

And when we think about the media companies today, the way I like to think about it is brands like MasterClass. Like MasterClass is literally putting on a MasterClass for marketers in how to take content and distribute it everywhere. It’s creating an asset, which is a course, and then it’s taking that course and it’s turning it into a bunch of different assets that it can disperse in derivative content on channels like Instagram, on TikTok, on LinkedIn, on Twitter, on YouTube, on all of these different places. And that’s more like the way that a media company should think.

And I don’t want anyone to say and tweet, oh, Ross is saying that we shouldn’t blog and blogging is dead. No. That’s not what I’m saying at all. I’m saying that we need to create content and things that are worth distributing, and we shouldn’t exclusively think about content as blog posts.

Yes. I know I’m preaching to the choir. You folks already know that at the end of the day, the assets that you produce have to be good. I believe in the four e’s.

And if you’ve read the book, you’re familiar with them. It’s the concept that content that you produce needs to either educate people, you need to engage people, entertain them, or empower them. If you do these four things with any type of content, and it doesn’t have to be all four at once, but if you do these types of assets and you create these pieces of content, you won’t get met with crickets. You will have people who adore the content.

They’ll appreciate the value you’re bringing into the world. They’ll like it. They’ll share it. They’ll engage.

That’s the fundamentals. Right? But then you have to distribute it. We have to recognize that the buying process is forever changed.

It’s not linear anymore. It’s not just like pick up a phone and call. It is a complex mess, especially if you are selling to other businesses. Like, there’s a lot of complexity that goes into reaching and selling to these folks.

And because of that, you have to adapt. And it’s a model in the book that I talk about that we’ve used that foundation to go from myself as a single freelancer to be able to build out an agency, to build out this company that’s working with some of the top brands in the world by simply embracing a simple shift. When I was a freelancer, I was just like the one person shop. I was in that rabbit hole of just produce, produce, produce.

But then when I started to distribute my content in the channels where the c suite execs that I actually wanted to connect to and sell to were spending time, I started to get more and more opportunities. And it’s a strategy that I’ve used not only to get them as clients, but also to allow them to generate clients as well. So today, I’m gonna share with you some of the strategies and the techniques. It’s pretty cut and dry.

Like, if you’ve read the book, you get it. You need to create valuable assets, and then you need to be committed to repurposing those assets into different ways. We had a hundred thousand downloads of our podcast because of this exact model. I’ve done it with blog posts for years dating back to, like, two thousand and twenty two.

I would write a blog post that broke down how Monday was able to scale their growth. I then turned that into a thread on x. I then turned it into a podcast that talks about the same concept. I then would create a YouTube video about it.

If the content resonates, you need to double down. Some of you have probably created a piece in the last six months that really moved the needle for you, but you haven’t promoted it again. You’ve never shared it again. You’ve never gone back to it and thought, oh, I should share this on LinkedIn or anything like that.

And that’s a massive mistake. If the content worked in q one of twenty twenty four, it’s probably gonna work in q one twenty twenty five. But for some reason, we get on this hamster wheel of new, new, new, new, new instead of going back to our greatest hits and repurposing them and resharing them. There was a piece that I created called the unbundling of Excel, like, years ago, and I continued to build on that month that concept again and again.

I created the unbundling of g Suite. I created this piece on the unbundling of, I think it was, like, Kijiji, the version of, what’s it in the US? It’s not Kijiji. It’s they’ve got, like, Craigslist.

It’s the Craigslist. Like, that type of concept.

Those things are, like, a go to insight around content market fit. My market wants this content. Let’s give it to them and switch it up. And then I used it again with my book to make it a bestseller.

Like, the ideas that I’m going to share with you truly do resonate. It’s funny. In this real picture without the book, it’s my wife and she was pregnant with our first she went to the event that I gave when I first showed this slide, and she was not happy. But she was like, babe, what are you doing?

You really cut me out. But it’s okay. The book the belt made it, so we’re alright.

This is the model, folks. Research, creation, distribution, optimization.

It’s simple. It’s probably sounds like very one zero one and basic, but it’s truly a game changing mentality that I would encourage everyone embrace. Right? Research your audience to to understand where they’re spending time, what channels they’re on, what they’re doing when they’re there, how they’re interacting with one another, what content they actually care about.

Go out and create the content that they do want. It doesn’t matter if it’s long form blog post. It doesn’t matter if it’s an infographic, a webinar, a YouTube video, podcast. It doesn’t matter.

You just have to create things that they want.

Distribute it relentlessly, Facebook groups, LinkedIn groups, newsletters, subreddits, all of those things, and then optimize it so it doesn’t collect us. So I wanna get really tactical.

Reddit is one of my favorite channels. I talk about it a lot. Not a lot of people like it. Some of you are already like, I’m not listening to this guy.

He’s talking about Reddit. I get it. I get it. Reddit is a very controversial place, but I love Reddit.

And there’s a lot of signals that are showing why Reddit matters. You look at Starbucks. You look at TD. Like, there’s top brands that are now investing in Reddit because there’s an audience there.

This motto, create once, distribute forever, was kind of rooted in some of the insights that I got early on on Reddit back in two thousand and eighteen. And I’ll share with you some of the updates on how I’m approaching Reddit today, but also how I’m thinking about distribution. We worked with Unbounce, a few years back, and this was the actual way in which we approached it. Like, you can see, the difference between the page views.

They had a bunch of blog posts that we didn’t put a distribution engine around, and then they had some that we did. And the pieces that we shared generated ten times more page views than those that didn’t. And this is because of distribution, writing the LinkedIn post, writing the threads, distributing it into forms and communities. That is the playbook.

So if we’re going to think like a media company, that media company should be Disney because Disney does it better than anyone. Even today, even though Snow White flopped, it’s still doing it better than everyone today. They go live with their movies and they are everywhere. They have licensing deals.

They have comics. They send their actors in on podcast tours. They have music deals. They’re always on the front of Spotify.

They have magazines, comics everywhere. Like, even Bluey’s made by Disney. Like, it’s wild. Like, they have everything rolling for them.

And that is what we need to be thinking like. We go in with research at the front, where you go in and you start to understand where your audience is. One of my favorite things to do, and I would encourage you to do this yourself with some of your clients, take their domain, site colon their domain, go to Reddit, put it in the search bar, hit enter, and then you’re gonna sort the content by top posts. Something beautiful is gonna happen. It’s going to look at all of Reddit and it’s going to identify if they have published any content over the last few years that generated a lot of comments, upvotes, and engagement.

And if they do, you might notice that this was a piece that was published three years ago. But that piece that was published three years ago is still generating more engagement than anything else that they created. So why aren’t we promoting and rewriting and creating and optimizing that content that went viral back in the day? Right? You can find some ridiculous insights here. With HubSpot, for example, you see this is the top post from six years ago that they ever published.

And it’s talking about the story of Ben and Jerry and how they met because they were slow kids. That’s an insight. It’s an insight that their audience probably would care about the founding stories behind some businesses so they could build on that time and time again. And they did. They went out and they bought this site called The Hustle, which did exactly that. Reddit, a few years ago, surpassed Facebook to be the third most visited website in the US, but marketers are still fearful of it. Reddit is showing up more and more in the SERP and when it comes to SEO than ever before.

We use this tool called stat to kinda measure Reddit and how often it’s showing up against, like, top ten sites, like, especially in b two b where we talk to SaaS companies. Some of the most valuable pieces you can create are, like, listicle style content that is about alternative pages and comparison pages. You’ll notice that Reddit continues to move up. This screenshot was from a few months back. I checked this morning, and I didn’t get a chance to update it. I tried to, but I left it on my desktop.

Reddit now has surpassed g two and Capterra for all of these queries. Right? The reason why this is interesting is because people, brands, and businesses spend tens of thousands of dollars every month with g two, Capterra, TrustRadius, and all of those other review sites, but they spend zero on Reddit. Yet people are using Reddit to make decisions around what products they actually buy.

So Reddit is showing up for very valuable keywords, and nobody is talking about it. If you go into Reddit and you start to answer these threads with questions and insights like this, it is very valuable. I wrote this one comment in a Reddit in a sub in a thread on Reddit talking of where somebody was asking, like, what skills do I need to get into marketing? And I talked about data analysts.

It’s like content creation distribution, marketing automation, and CRM data. And, of course, I referenced my book, Create Once Distribute Forever, and I saw five book sales off of a two minute exercise of writing this. I’m fast on the keys. But, like, that was out of two minutes.

I sold five books and it’s like that opportunity that exists for all of you. I’m not gonna make this entire thing about Reddit, but I do have a few quick rundown on how this all works because this is the money right here. At the end of the day, the same content that you’ve produced in any other channel works in Reddit. You just have to format it for Reddit.

These all look like blog posts. They all look the same. It looks like a LinkedIn update. That’s right.

That kind of content works on Reddit just like it does everywhere else. Why? Because all of us are just walking chemicals and balls of emotions, and we all still respond well to the same fundamental things that our ancestors did hundreds of years ago when they were reading Aesop’s fables. Like, at the end of the day, we’re still just people.

And we consume content on different channels, but if it taps into the insights around why humans care, it’s educational, engaging, entertaining, or empowering, it’s going to resonate with folks. This is another example. This is in a boring industry like MSPs where somebody created a piece that broke down how to fire, rehire their salespeople, and lessons to learn. It probably looks just like a blog post.

Kind of a little bit different with the intro because it’s short and sweet, but at the end of the day, it’s still the same fundamentals, and that’s how it works. Folks, LLMs and ChatGPTs change in everything. You all probably know this. You see it every day.

You’re probably tired of hearing about AI. I get it. I know. But let’s be honest.

It’s scraping all of our content. Whether we like it or not, everything you’ve ever published, it’s pretty much impossible at this point to stop it from being scraped. But it’s estimated that by twenty twenty six, it’s going to run out of high quality content on the web to actually scrape and use to inform the back end of the LLMs.

All of the LLMs happen to have a partnership with this little nifty site called Reddit. So they are scraping Reddit to get insights around the things that they should be saying when somebody is asking ChatGPT a question.

Reddit is also officially, as of earlier this week, the second most popular website in the US. So we can ignore it, or we can say there’s something that we should tap into here. Here. Create once, distribute forever.

So Facebook, a lot of people sleep on Facebook as well. I think it’s a massive opportunity. I think it’s well slept on, especially in b two b. There are groups on Facebook with hundreds of thousands of people who care about things that you want to talk about.

You might not be targeting digital marketers. You might have a certain niche that you go after. Let’s say, for example, you’re targeting doctors or physicians or health care professionals, whatever it might be. I guarantee you there is a Facebook group where those people are spending time.

You can go into those groups or you could even acquire them. I have one website that I’ve been running for a very long time that is focused on plant based food. I found a plant based Facebook group. It was filled with, I think, over twenty thousand people or something.

And I was like, hey. I noticed this page hasn’t been active since twenty fifteen. Would you sell it to me? They said, yes.

It turned out they also had a website. I said, thank you so much. I said, hey. Do you mind going for a better price?

They offered it for three grand. I was like, that’s ten cents a like. This is insane. A hundred percent.

Let’s do this transaction. I buy the page. I put up five posts promoting a guide that was helping people learn how to transition it from meat into plant based, and it paid for itself. Made three grand in a matter of a couple weeks.

This is the type of opportunity that exists when you start to think about how to distribute your content. I’m not gonna lie to you. I don’t think it’s, like, on Facebook’s, like, like, terms and conditions that this is allowed. You gotta kinda just, like, DM and take care of your stuff without, like, Facebook interference.

But this is a real opportunity.

Create once, distribute forever.

If you are ever on a podcast, if your clients are ever on a podcast, massive opportunity as well to say, we will repurpose this podcast for you and turn it into LinkedIn content. LinkedIn is still the king of b two b. It’s still the place to be, in my opinion. Everyone loves their own channels, but I still think even if it’s boring, it’s the number one channel for for professionals.

Remixing podcast interview content into video content still does wonders. I’m in LinkedIn’s learning program. This is all purely within the friend group here, but LinkedIn’s all in on video folks. Like, I’m they’re like a hundred and ninety percent all in foot on the gas about video content. If you can get into video content, if you can help your clients understand video content, or if you’re just trying to build new revenue streams, try video content. I my nickname in high school was Shy Ross. I don’t like doing video stuff, but I do it because I know it works, and that’s the only reason why I do it.

Remix your text posts. So turn your text posts into carousels. Carousels are still engaging on LinkedIn. They’re called PDFs. I think no.

Slot are they called they’re not they can’t call them PDFs because that’s Adobe’s trademark.

They must call them files or something. I forget exactly what it’s called, but they don’t they stop calling them carousels.

If your client or you are producing long form content, extract the data from those resources and then share the data on its own and tell them to share that data as isolated posts and social media content. It’s a great way to approach it.

The other piece is blog posts. If you have blog posts, you should turn them into LinkedIn articles. Another key insight that we’ve recently found is that linkedin dot com is more likely to be scraped by the LLMs than any other site. So if you are republishing your articles on LinkedIn, you are more likely to influence Chat GPT to see your content, and it thinks it’s super high quality.

This isn’t like, I’m not saying it’s right because I’ve gotten some weird responses from Chat GPT where it’s read some article on linkedin dot com, and it was like researchers are suggesting. And then I click to see what it is, and it’s like some random person who’s probably living in their parents’ basement who’s not a researcher at all. So if you wanna add value to the Internet, which you probably all heard doing, use this just as a way to, like, help the LLMs. And I know that sounds weird.

You’re helping the LLMs, but they it would be good for all of us. Remix your podcast interviews. If you’re doing any of this type of content, I love using tools like Flowgen, which is like an AI tool that listens to your entire podcast, identifies the best moments, and then identifies for you how to chop them up. Descript is also a great tool for this.

The motto is simple. Create once, distribute forever. If you can get yourself featured into Substacks, local newsletters, reach out, make friends with people, people are very much afraid to ask for things. I am all for it.

If you see a newsletter and you’re like, I wish I was featured in there, reach out to the person and say, hey. I just wrote this piece. I think your audience might find it valuable. The worst thing they’re gonna say is no, and life continues.

You’re not gonna remember that five minutes later.

Good old fashioned Google search is a great way to find the newsletters that you can reach out to if you’re trying to connect with CTOs or whoever it is. Like, just go to Google, type it in, find those people, and reach out to them. Again, create once, distribute forever. You all probably already know this, but not all assets are created equally.

Like, there’s a whole bunch of different things that you can create. And as marketers, as storytellers, it’s important that we remember this and educate our clients on this so they’re not rooted in this idea that all you can do is create blog posts. You can share memes. You can do thought leadership pieces.

You can create SEO content. There’s so many more pieces that you can create, but you do have to distribute those assets after you publish them. This is the way most people approach it. They, like, press publish on a piece.

They launch it. They share it on the channels that they own, and then they let it collect dust. What I encourage you to do is to share your content relentlessly. Go out into paid go out into niche channels and see it.

Like, go into Slack communities. Go into Discord. Go into forums. Spread that content. Go into Reddit.

Repurpose your old with new. Re share the old post from two weeks ago. Again, you can hit that reshare button. Do not be afraid to republish your content.

And if you must blog, like I said, turn them into other assets. I have done this time and time again. A blog might live on raw simmons dot com. It will become a LinkedIn article, then I’ll create a YouTube video talking about the exact same concept.

Once that is done, I’ll embed that video into all of the pieces that was created because Google loves YouTube. And if Google notices that if there’s a YouTube video embedded in a blog post, it’s more likely to rank it because Google makes more money off of people watching YouTube videos because it’s a part of their business model. They bought it for a billion dollars. Like, they’re they want YouTube to win.

Plan this in advance, though. Right? Like, one of the things that I would recommend is that if you are working on a blog post, a great way to I don’t know if this is your offer or any of you offer blog posts creation for your clients. But if so, one of the nice things that gave us a nice bit of margins in myself when I was a freelancer, a nice differentiator, was I’m not just gonna give you a blog post, but I’m gonna write you a Twitter thread.

I’m gonna write you two LinkedIn status updates, and I’m gonna write one for your sales team too so they can share it as well. Clients loved it because it was value add and it was additional. And if you can incorporate that into your package and your offer around copy, it’s great. If you need a way to do it very quickly, there is a tool called distribution dot a I, shameless plug, that I’m working on that I built where you can actually upload your blog post, your YouTube videos, and it will analyze your content, take all of the best practices directly out of the book.

We use the book to train the LMM behind it to actually craft content in your voice, but following our best practices around distribution. So for example, I was on a YouTube on a video with a podcast interview with the folks over at HubSpot. I uploaded it to distribution dot ai. I selected LinkedIn, and it used best practices to kinda create a status update that I would be okay with sharing.

I shared it on x. Got over a thousand and some impressions. It’s going to go out in a few minutes on my LinkedIn account as well, and this is all happening behind the scenes thanks to this type of tool. But I do encourage you to find ways to use AI to repurpose your content because I know that the the best part of, like, the process is creating the material.

So if you can put all of your energy and time into creating something amazing and then you let AI help you repurpose and distribute it, I hope that it evaporates all of the excuses that so many people make around I don’t have time to create and distribute my content. Now it should be easier.

Anyone remember this ad back in the day about Burger King with the moldy burger? I know it’s lunchtime for some folks. My apologies. That wasn’t the ad.

I made those in mid journey, and that’s something else that I wanna call out real quickly. Like, the power and the ability to create real looking images is wild. We all know this, but here’s a quick rundown on how I recently did this. I went to ChatGPT.

I gave it a bunch of my top quotes where I talk about the things that marketers do. It gave us a bunch of different examples. I then uploaded that to Canva. I said, Canva, can you, like, take these and put them into this image?

I got this, Mad Men inspired. I was like, oh, this is cool, but I wish you had some melanin. It went out and it actually modified that and changed it, had some that looked like me. I was like, cool.

This is great. Even better. I just scheduled a few of those after twenty minutes of, like, using AI to kinda go through that workflow, and it gave us eighteen thousand impressions and thirty new followers in a matter of minutes, folks. This is a wild time to be alive.

This is another image. It has two thousand some views. I uploaded a picture of myself. I said, turn me into a cartoon, Archie style, and then add this text, and it did that again in the matter of seconds.

It’s a wild time. Again, check out the tool, distribution dot ai. The model is simple, and you’re probably already freaking out. Like, that was close to twenty minutes.

I didn’t quite do it, but where in the world do I start? That was so much, right, in such a fast amount of time. It’s simple. Go back to the beginning and start embracing research.

It is a new dawn and it is a new day. Like, I think with all of you, if you are with Joe, you probably already understand the fundamentals of great copy. You understand the fundamentals of great storytelling and messaging. Perfect.

That’s where I want all of your attention to be. Create ridiculously valuable content and stories that turn heads, make people say, that’s amazing. I love that. And then tap into AI to repurpose and distribute your stuff more efficiently.

Let the world see it. It is such a shame. Some of you have probably created a piece of content in the last two years that would have fundamentally changed the trajectory of your career if you promoted it, if you distribute it, and if you didn’t jump right into the next thing to create.

That’s the thing that I I actually get upset about. So I’m not gonna say I hate, but, like, that bugs me. So many people are, like, one piece away from having a fundamentally different life, but the only thing holding them back is that they don’t promote their work, and it’s mind blowing to me. The industry is in turmoil.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not here to just be all butterflies and lollipops. I know things are chaotic out there. Back in twenty nineteen, things were smooth and great, and now it’s chaotic mess with AI, with all this stuff, budgets getting slashed.

I feel you. I one hundred percent feel you. It’s a complete chaos over the last couple of years. But if you embrace this framework, I think you’ll be able to come out of it okay.

I think if you embrace this idea of putting marketing back into marketing, you’ve already read the book. So thank you for checking it out. You’ll be able to really win. So I’m rooting for all of you.

Let me know if you have any questions. Again, as I mentioned, that was super fast, but happy to chat, happy to jam on anything. Yes. I know.

You have to rewatch this slower than one x speed. My bad.

That’s awesome.

Cool.

Thanks, Ross. Everybody knows to put up their hand, raise their hand if they have questions, which Cody’s done.

If you don’t mind if we go in the order Let’s do it.

Raising their hand. Cool.

Cody. Awesome.

So thank you so much for that. That was really eye opening. Awesome. And you’re you’re right. Like, we do neglect the marketing part of the content creation. I’m so guilty of that.

So I was watching Neil Patel the other day, and he was talking about content. And he says to validate the offer on x because or not the offer, the idea.

Mhmm. And if it works performs well there, then make something bigger out of it. Do you agree with that concept?

I agree with the concept, but I don’t agree with the channel. So the reason why I don’t agree with the channel is because Neil’s huge on x. You might not be. If you are not huge on x and your people aren’t on x, then don’t be on x.

If your audience is moms, then you’re going on Pinterest. You’re going on Instagram. Like, you’re you have to know where your audience is before we start throwing out those types of concepts, in my opinion. If my audience is, like, the gamer world, I’m not going on x.

I’m going to Reddit. If my audience is my dad, I’m going on Facebook. Right? So you have to and I have to have an audience.

So, like, I don’t have a bunch of my dads on my Facebook. I have one. So it’s like I would have to go into a Facebook group with, like, sixty year olds so dads who love Mustangs. So I have to go into that group.

I have to join it, and then I have to create something for them and see how they engage with that. So you have to go where your audience is. I love the idea of testing on channels. For me, x was that for a very long time.

But I’ll be honest, I think a lot of the people who I typically would sell to have left x, not to have a political conversation, but, like, x isn’t as popular. I don’t see as much reach as I used to.

Mhmm. That’s why I would lean more to LinkedIn a bit. But Mhmm. The concept at the heart is true. A hundred percent. You have to get content market fit. But where those people are is dependent on your own channel, the type of content you’re creating, etcetera.

Instagram, like, think of, the up and coming wave of marketers. Like, my hypothesis today would be that the up and coming marketer is learning about marketing on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube.

I think that’s where they’re at. I I don’t think they’re on x. I think they’re on LinkedIn and they’re intimidated, so they’re not publishing. But I think they’re consuming content on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube, and they’re learning from the people who are on those channels.

Perfect. Okay.

Thank you.

I hope that’s helpful.

I know I get too passionate about this stuff and just No.

Yeah. I am too passionate.

Hope that was helpful.

You. Awesome. Michelle or Jess, you can do rock, paper, scissors, I guess.

I had a question on the testing in the book.

So when you’re testing on a channel, are you testing different content Yeah.

For your users at the time and kind of kinda like an AB test looking at one of the other?

So it’s a few different things that I like to test. So I like to put out, like, micro content to test a idea.

So, if an idea resonates with people and it has, like, a if it has a signal, which could be comments, for example, then I know that this is stirring people up. So I know that this is a type of dialogue that gets people talking, gets people going. If it if I’m testing for, like, retweets, that tells me that this is something that resonates with people and that they want other people to view as, like, something that they care about. So you’re what you’re testing for is, like, a lot of different things, and you’re trying to just understand your people.

So, you run it sometimes it’s AB testing, but sometimes it’s just like, let’s throw this out there to the world and see how they react, and then let’s go deeper if you start to see those signals. So for example, the whole concept of create once distribute forever started with a test. And it was a long time ago, but I put out a post on x. And I just said, like, the problem isn’t that we, can’t create great content.

It’s that we don’t distribute it. And the post went off, and I was like, that’s a signal. A few months back, it was a again, it was probably in two thousand and twenty. Two thousand and twenty, I gave my first talk on AI.

And I was talking about it, and I had a lineup afterwards. So it’s not it’s another test. I’d went from being the guy who always talked about SEO and distribution, then I was like, okay. Let’s talk about AI and try something different.

Nobody was talking about AI. I was like, let’s do this. And people were, like, lined up. I was like, this is something.

This is this is probably something. So you look for the and I gave a talk one day. I gave a talk that used a bunch of, like, investment analogies.

No lineup. People hated it. Nobody cared. It’s like, never doing that again.

So so you use the material. Once you put it out to the world to kind of get a gut check on the response, and the lower your barrier to test, the better. So, like, a quick one off post on social, not writing the full blog post and article, just sharing an image that you’ve been creating, that type of thing. So, yeah, the tests tend to be in in that more of that regard.

Okay. Another quick question, if I can.

You’re welcome.

You mentioned Discord. Have you been on that channel?

I have.

And have you seen any success with it?

Yes. But only in weird weird industries.

So seen a lot of success with it in crypto. I’ve seen a lot of success with it in, like, DeFi, and I’ve seen a lot of success with it in, like, the that very technical engineering space. So, like, we work with clients who might be building the the back end of the Internet, so to speak, like the, so let’s say you’re playing a video game and you’re streaming, and it’s like, I’m streaming with some playing against somebody in Spain. We need to make sure there’s no lag.

So we have found discords where the engineers who, like, think about this stuff are spending time, and then we’ll see that content in there on behalf of our clients, and that stuff goes wild. Crypto is all Discord. I don’t Yeah. That’s if anyone’s in that world and you’re not thinking about Discord, you’re missing out on a massive play because that’s them.

And that’s why I was going back to that Neil Patel thing. It’s like, x isn’t gonna tell you what Discord will tell you in that type of a a community. So it’s important.

But yes.

Thank you.

No problem. Jess, over to you.

Cool.

This has been so awesome.

I’m super interested in talking more about Reddit. Cool. I have two questions about it. The first one is, would you recommend that your username has something to do, like, with your business?

Cool. Great question. So if you are talking about you, as in Jess, and you are, like, a person who happens to have a business, then no. I would say just go in as Jess or Jay Haney or whatever. Like, I operate on Reddit as r simmons or simmons with a zed. I’ve got two accounts.

And I do that intentionally because if you go into a subreddit and you have your brand associated with you, there are two they’ve already got the spidey senses going. They’re gonna ban you. They’re gonna block you. They’re gonna get rid of you.

Bye, Felicia. You’re over here. However, if you were doing it for a client and they are a professional business who has, like, a proper incorporation and, like, you don’t know it’s a it’s like a marketing manager, that person would be better served as being, Joe from Copy Hackers. Right?

Because they are a, representative of that brand, and you don’t want that individual to then leave and that account no longer be valuable to you. So the way I recommend it is if you are the founder and you’re on Reddit, use your name. You won’t get blocked. You won’t get banned.

However, if it is an employee of the organization, then it should be Ross from McDonald’s, Ross from Esso, whatever it might be. Like, you need to have that type of a because you don’t want that employee to think this is their thing that they can just run forever, and they’re forever branded as that individual. It’s a corporate asset. In the flip side of that, you should also have a brand one.

So for the brand itself, it should have its own channel. So your client should have their own username. If any of your clients today don’t even have their own subreddit, that’s a quick win that you should give them. Hey.

I noticed that there’s no subreddit that you own. Go and create your subreddit because if somebody else creates it, Reddit will not give you that back. It doesn’t matter if you have the trademark. It’s a community.

So a community is not privy to the trademark rights. A username would be so you could get their username, but you can’t get their subreddit. Some of you are thinking what in the world are the difference? Username is what you log into, kind of like a Facebook profile or a x profile.

The community is like a Facebook group on Reddit that is, like, public for people to join, and there’s a lot of them. If you create them, you become what is called a mod, and a mod has powers to kinda control what conversations go on within it. If your brands and your clients don’t have their own subreddit and somebody else controls the conversation within it, it can get really, really ugly, really messy, really quick.

Okay. That’s such a good point. I didn’t even think about creating a subreddit, like your own server. That’s so smart.

Okay.

So my next question is, do you also try to comment on other things that aren’t just you putting up posts about, you know Yeah.

Different content and all that kind of stuff. So when people dive in, it seems more like they’re legit. Yeah.

Exactly. So you try to balance it. You try to have a little bit of content. You try to have the majority associated with your industry and your space. But, like, during the Fantasy Football season, I’ll comment on football stuff because I don’t want someone to be like, oh, he’s only here to promote his work, so I’ll leave comments in other places. The other day, I put up a post, and I was just, like, breaking down the best pizza shops in my city.

And I did my actual I did the methodology. I’ve went to New York subreddit, and I sorted the content by top posts. The top post in New York was about the best pizza shops in New York.

I was like, I can do that, but for Halifax.

Looked at it, studied it, analyzed how they wrote it, what their style was. I did the exact same thing, but in Halifax, and I submitted it to the Halifax subreddit, made it to the front page of Reddit. Somebody gave me this thing called gold on Reddit because they were so grateful that I reviewed all of these pizza shops. It’s like, it works. It works. It’s as if I know what I’m talking about.

Yeah. So go into other things as well. Even if it’s just for the fun of it. I just I love this.

I love this stuff. So most people have normal lives, and they don’t wanna do it for fun, but I do it for fun. I’m just like, this is crazy. It it still works.

But yeah.

Oh, I mean, okay. This has made me actually excited about context. So you said LinkedIn. It’s like, what? But, like, I love Reddit.

So Cool. Cool.

This is sweet.

Yeah.

I love that.

That’s awesome.

Thank you.

No worries. Hey, Katie.

Hey. So first of all, I found your book on the Kobo store, and I was like, wow. What distribution win? I’m so glad that it was here.

Oh, good. Love it.

It’s funny.

I tried to, like, spread it across all of the stores because I know not everyone likes everyone. So I was like, let’s get this spread out. I love that. Thank you for checking it out.

Thank you.

Okay. I would like to ask a follow-up question about Reddit, and then, my original question was something else.

So as an agency, would you recommend that I create my own subreddit for my brand? Like, at what level does creating your own subreddit start to pay off?

Yeah. I would create it just to make sure that nobody else creates it, and then you always have it. You don’t need to, like, manage your subreddit and, like, actively post. You could. One benefit that I think would be there is to repost if you if your agency has a blog, reposting your blog post to your own subreddit, to me, is a smart move because the LLMs are scraper Reddit. So that could help you.

If you are like, the only successful service companies that I have seen on Reddit are ones that you don’t really want to kinda they’re not successful. They’re huge, but it’s huge because they have a huge team, and people are talking about how to get, like, promotions and stuff. Like, Accenture, they have a huge subreddit.

They didn’t create it, and it’s a Gong show. Like, it’s crazy. Like, people are there sharing salaries and stuff. Like, people are talking about whether or not they should how to apply for interviews.

It’s it’s chaos. So I would get it just to own it and make sure that you have it, and then seed your blog code intent into that community. But I would show up as you in, like depending on your audience. Like, there’s a there’s a bunch of mind if I just go rogue a little and show my screen?

Cool. So, like, like, there’s subreddits like this, social media marketing. I don’t know if that’s anyone’s audience, but, like, there’s a hundred and sixty seven thousand people who are in this subreddit.

What I like to do is sort the content by top posts. I would go in here. I would say this year. And then what I’m going to find right here look at this.

Stop creating content nobody watched. This is this is the memo of distribution. So, I would review all of this, and I’d be like, okay. What are people caring about?

Is organic social media growth dead? And then this was ten months ago. You could literally go in next month and create a piece that’s talking about I tried to understand if organic social was dead. Here’s what I found.

And you create that piece, and it’s going to probably generate as much conversation as this.

These are the types of things that I look at to better understand what I should be giving a subreddit.

This type of thing. So, like, my experience with Blaze dot ai. I’m sure you all of you have used a social media tool at some point or some type of asset. If you created a post for this community where you give a quick honest review on it, that’s gonna be gold.

That’s kind of the way that I would be thinking about going into that type of a space.

Like, for that one leads into my follow-up question if I can, Russ Russ about, like, when it comes to a call to action, we’re creating this content, like, especially on my blog is very focused on driving calls.

Yep.

So if I’m creating a post on Reddit, like, what kind of call to action I know Reddit’s particularly touchy, but, Yeah.

Yeah. What are your best practices for, like, revamping our call to action based on channel?

Great question. So on what I like to do is you you wanna so there’s rules on every subreddit. Some of them say you can’t have a link.

Link. What I like to do is have the call to action to say, like, if you’re interested, do a quick Google search for, like, create once distribute forever, which was in my screenshot. That gets them to my book. Or I’ll be like, if you found this valuable, send me a DM, and I’d be happy to send you something.

And then my DMs blow up. Like, I get tons of DMs from people. They are people. Like, that’s what we all have to remember.

It’s not just, like, pixels on the other end. These are humans.

And they will DM you, and they’ll ask you, hey.

Can I get this resource? Can I get this asset? Tell me a little bit more.

So I like to use those types of call to actions already. Another great call to action already is just simply say, like let me see if I can show you real quickly here.

On Reddit, you have the ability to, like, include links on your profile.

So you can have here it is. I don’t have one on this profile, but you can add add a description. So, like, you can put your domain here, in the description of your account. So when people do click on you, which they will, to see, like, what’s this person all about, they’ll click on that, they’ll see your domain, and then they’ll transition over to your actual account. So, leave your links in your bio kinda like on an Instagram or LinkedIn, that type of thing, and they’ll go find it.

Yeah. And you’ll be surprised how off like, some of my posts from two thousand eighteen still get me DMs from people saying, hey. I wanna check-in. Like, does this strategy on Instagram still work? Because I created a post years ago on, like, how we grew an account from fifteen to a hundred and fifty thousand followers, and then people loved it.

And they’re still right asking, do these strategies work? And the answer is no. They don’t. Instagram’s algorithm has gotten way smarter than it used to be back in the day.

But, yeah, like, you’ll the the ROI is lasting.

Jessica or Joe?

I got here first, Jessica.

Thanks, Ross. No one else had their hand up, so I jumped in.

I have three questions. I’m gonna try to keep them short, though. First one is, we’ve talked a lot about, like, organic promotion of your content.

I’m particularly interested in advertising on Reddit. Is it worth it? It wasn’t years ago. Is it today?

Only the remarketing. And don’t tell Reddit I said it. Okay. The only way that I see it working right now is remarketing.

So the people don’t give enough information to do very targeted advertising. So the people who are subscribed to marketing are like, who knows who it is? But the people who visit your website and who visit a specific page on your website are one hundred percent the person who has that intent. So if you install the Reddit pixel and you do remarketing and they happen to go on this site called Reddit, which is the second most popular site in the world, so they’re probably there, and you show up, Great.

That’s what you want. So I see ROI in the remarketing efforts. If you have an email list and you’re trying to get those people back in, you can do that on Reddit too. So uploading a remarketing and look alike style audience like play, that works ridiculously well on Reddit.

Cold amongst friends.

Done it. But I might have a LinkedIn post tomorrow saying that you should.

Awesome.

Question two was around high and this was one that I had before before you presented today. So, it could be that, like, your solution, your distribution AI, I think, is what I have saved in my tab, can do the job, but I’ve been wondering about hiring people. So we’ve had content creators over the years, but we haven’t had any real success with repurposing content, asking somebody to come in and repurpose. We’ve so much content. We’ve always had so much, and there’s always more, but we never repurpose it.

Thoughts on hiring someone to do this. Agencies haven’t worked for us.

Yeah. It’s not easy to do.

The it can work, but it’s it’s not easy to do. Like, you have to you have to hire someone who really gets content.

And if they don’t really get content and understand that, then it’s it’s tough. You have to hire I have found that you have to hire for the channel. It’s like the the skill sets tend to be channel exclusive. So if you’re, like, you’re the LinkedIn person, they can become excellent at LinkedIn and repackage and repurpose for LinkedIn, and that can become their day to day.

And that tends to go well. But the moment you say I also want you to be on threads and x and YouTube Yeah. The the it gets a little bit tricky. However, I do think with AI, it makes things a lot better, and I think you can put people through some training to get them closer now to be able to do a holistic effort.

But it is definitely a difficult role. I think, if you have a social media marketer, like, my perspective is that’s the best person to train on this stuff. It’s like somebody who understands social, get them to be trained and taught this effort. Yeah. Or, again, we’re trying to fix it, fix the problem with distribution dot AI. So, like, upload your content there and see how that does and give all the feedback and things like that. But, yeah, when you have a plethora of content, being able to repurpose it is the is the is the play, I find.

Yeah. And I’ve tried other AI solutions for it and, like, garbage. Like, nothing.

Never there.

No. Never there. Okay. I know. Jessica, I’m sorry. My question might actually be something that Jessica cares about too, given your background, Jess, but I’m wondering about your book title.

Yes.

The people in the room are writing books. A lot of people here are writing books.

Coming up with the title is horrible.

So hard. So hard.

And I know that you’ve you’ve repeated the thing through the title throughout the model is great ones to appear. So I love that, the way you kept doing that in your talk.

Thoughts on the title and how to get there?

Yeah. It was tough. Yeah.

And everyone had opinions on other titles that we should use, like how to do x, y, and z, ten x distribution, like all of these things. And then I was like, well, this is something that I’d be comfortable saying over and over again. Like, my advice would be to find something that you’re comfortable having very closely associated with your brand and your name for a very long time.

And that and then, like, how can you make it alluring to make somebody see it and be like, I get it. That’s that taps into the problem.

That’s what I wanted. I didn’t want to be so on your nose. And even though it the topics like how great creators spread their ideas and you can too, no one remembers that.

Absolutely. No one remembers that. But they do remember create once distribute forever. So my advice would be try to be punchy, try to make it memorable.

I think it’s good to, like I think there’s a there is value in doing somewhat of what people are doing, but I wanted to, like, go against it. Like, ten x distribution probably would have been a hit, and it would have resonated. All that type of stuff. Like, people care. Like, it it works.

But if you can put something together that’s a little bit more unique and out there and, like, sticks to your brand, I would say do that too.

Cool. Thanks so much, Ross.

Are you running another?

I have just signed my contract. Let’s go. Let’s go. So Congrats. Yeah. And tomorrow is the talk about the title, which is a nightmare.

Yeah. Fair. Thanks, Ross.

That’s cool. Yeah. Hi, Jessica.

Hi. Thank you so much. I actually really like the subtitle that I was trying to play with subtitles based off of yours, Ross, so I like it.

Oh, I love it. Thank you. Thank you.

Yeah. Okay. So this is actually transition as well because mine is related to books as well. I was just wondering, whether it’s based off of what you’re doing with your book or what you’ve seen out there. But I’m just curious how your model or method changes, or is it pretty much the same when you’re working with a book and distributing from that?

Yeah. The book launch was wild. It was fun.

It didn’t change. It was the same philosophy.

It just got aggressive. It just got really aggressive. Like, take everything that I’ve talked about, and it’s kind of like a chill experience of distribution. And then when the book happens, you have to ramp up to complete shamelessness and complete living the value of distribution and being relentless with it.

That was the the goal for, like, the month leading up to it. Every day, there’s going to be multiple social media posts about it. Every day, I’m sending an email to, like, get people excited about what’s to come. Every day, I’m on my Instagram sharing a story.

I’m on every podcast that it will take me to talk about it. I’m sending books to people to get them to read it. And even if they don’t read it, I’m asking them to write me an email or a quote about it.

You’re just ramping up to make it a hit.

That’s it. Like, you just go you just put in the headphones, drink a lot more coffee, and for a short period of time, you just sprint to be aggressive with the launch. That was my approach. The one thing that I wish I would have done, and it’s exactly what I just said, I wish I would have taken no other meetings, no other calls, had nothing else on my plate.

I wish I was a hundred percent. Clients are good. I’m not taking care of clients. I’m not taking care of team.

I am exclusively focused on the book.

I feel like that would have been better for my mental health, and I feel like it would have been better for the book.

So my advice is if you are getting up to a book launch date, allow it to be all encompassing, but also be ready to, like, focus there.

Because what I wish I would have done is, like, written long like, I would have documented the entire process of what I was doing to make the book a success because it would have went so well with this concept. So if I would have been every day, like, recording a video, alright. It’s day thirty. We’re thirty days out and then twenty nine, twenty eight, twenty seven. Like, people would have loved that. But the video would have actually been me talking with clients and going on stage and speaking at events, which all would have been good, but, like, I would have stayed so focused if I could go back in time.

The next one. There will be another.

Cool. Thank you. And, actually, I’ve heard a lot of authors say that very, I wish I had just dropped everything else. I don’t know. It seems like maybe it’s the unrealistic dream to just drop everything else and focus only on the book. So you’re not alone at least.

That’s fair.

That’s fair.

Thank you.

No problem at all.

I think that’s it with three minutes to spare largely because you talk so fast, which is That’s fair.

That is fair. What’s the book title? What you have to answer this. So where are you what what are you thinking? Do you have a Oh. Direction?

Oh. Oh, it’s a nightmare.

Is it?

So they I can’t even.

So it’s currently called I don’t know. And when you say you’re you have people to say it all the time. I kinda can.

The original okay. There are three. I’ll just fire through them. Y’all can just react.

The first you’re gonna hate them. Everybody hates my titles.

The first one is called now build a customer, and that’s on you’ve built a product. Okay. What if you were to approach creating customers the way you do a product, so engineering your message? So So that’s now build a customer, which my publisher and everybody I talk to hates. Copy selling is the other one. And then the third one is the revenue factory.

Oh. I got it. Interesting.

I just These are all three are they all the same book, though?

Well, the first one is it would have a different intro chapters. K. Cool. Chapters are different. Yeah.

Cool. Very cool.

I love it. Any initial thoughts, y’all?

Now that I know that Abby’s put it to a vote.

Abby.

It’s kind of like when your friends tell you their kids’ names. Oh, did I lose everyone?

No. We’re here. Oh.

Oh, sorry. It’s like when your friend I believe that the I’m going to treat this like when my friends tell me their kids’ names. I love all of them, Joanne.

They’re so good.

They’re so good. All of them. I know.

There you go.

I’m, looking forward to the conversation that I have with my publisher about it. So Good luck.

I do like credit. They are good.

But yeah.

Yeah. I yeah. I think the revenue factor is interesting, but you have to be ready to talk about revenue all the time.

I know. I know. I just don’t wanna talk about I’ve talked about copywriting for ten thousand years.

And that’s what the book is about.

Fair.

They’re just, like, a lot a lot.

Yeah. There’s so much jam on it.

Yeah. Oh, don’t open the door there.

I’ve got Bob and April on a not Bob messed up and April Dunford on a nonstop thread. They’re like, stop talking to us about this. I’m like, not until we find it.

I don’t blame you. That’s awesome.

Anytime. Nonstop.

That’s cool. I like that.

Thank you.

Thank you all. I hope, you all got some value out of this. If you didn’t, don’t tell me. I have thin skin.

I’m kidding. But no. I would love any feedback if you have any thoughts or questions. If you try distribution dot ai, let me know.

I really would appreciate any feedback that you have. If we’re not connected on LinkedIn, just send me a note. Let’s connect and say that you were at the Covey school. Of course, that would be great.

And then, yeah, I’d love to stay in touch, but appreciate you all. Thanks for the time, and see you on the Internet.

Appreciate you.

Thanks, Ross.

Thank you.

Thanks, everyone. Bye.

Resources

Foundation Marketing

Ross Simmonds – LinkedIn 

Worksheet 

 

 

Transcript

Awesome.

Well, I’m stoked you’re here, Ross, because we your book was our book of the month last month. Cool. And then we brought it back this month so everybody could have a good refresher before you join us today. So did. I know. I’m excited too, and I know that we’ve only got a little time with you.

We’ve got an hour, which is great, but you’re gonna do some teaching, I think, for the first little bit, and then we’ll break it to q and a.

How’s that sound?

Let’s do it. I’m excited.

Where, but, is everyone at? To jump in the quick chat, I’d love to know, like, where everyone’s calling in from just in the chat, if you don’t mind. It’d be amazing.

While you’re doing that, Sarah, can you make a note?

Let’s go. I love it. That’s awesome.

Yeah. I think my note taker’s here. You can kick that out if it’s still here.

Okay.

Doesn’t need to be here. I don’t know why it follows me.

Oregon, I’ve yet to make it there, but I have plans.

Ontario. Let’s go Canada. I love it. Cool. Montreal.

Very cool. Awesome. So I’m super excited to be here. I’m going to say those familiar words that all of us have heard over the last little bit.

The team has told me I’ve got, like, twenty to kinda go through the presentation, and then from there, we’re gonna jump into some q and a.

I might talk fast because I have a lot of slides and I have a lot to try to get through, but I’m going to do my absolute best to wrap in twenty.

I am also very, nonprecious. So if at any point anyone has questions, feel free to cut me off and let me know if you want to, have a live jam session on anything that I talk about today.

And, yeah, let’s get into it. So I’m going to just check. Everyone can see my screen? Everything looks good? Cool. So if you’re all familiar with the book, then you know that my favorite four words are create once distribute forever.

This is something that I’m super passionate about. It’s something that I I care deeply about, especially because when I first got into the industry, I really if you put my website, raw simmons dot com, into way back time machine, you’ll see that I had, like, a Mad Men inspired website design. When I was in, university, the show Mad Men kinda was the the thing that made me want to get into advertising.

And Don Draper was which was, like, the the king of advertising in the show was kinda, like, one of the, like, people who I was like, oh, that’s cool. He’s doing things right. And then as the show gets on, I’m like, okay. His life’s a little chaotic.

That’s not for me. But beyond that, we have gone through a time that I have to apologize for. And I apologize because, like, a lot of gurus, a lot of marketers have preached at the top of their lungs for way too long that you just need to create blog posts, you just need to write blogs, and you will win. And our clients have listened, and they have believed them.

I was one of those googlers. Like, when I first got out of school, when I first got in the industry, I was going to events and I was preaching. All you have to do is blog. Just blog, blog, blog, and you will win.

You’ll be successful. You just have to blog. And I realized over time that that was a massive mistake. Right?

Like, I realized that that young no facial hair guy with not a single gray in his hair was was screaming at this top of his lungs. This idea of create more blog posts and the world will be yours was a massive mistake, mistake, because a lot of people listen. A lot of brands started to produce a ton of blog posts, and we see it today. They created blog post after blog post after blog post.

When they think about what their content marketing strategy is, they’re exclusively thinking in blog posts, and that’s all they do over and over again. And even today, like, I will talk to a client, and I’ll be like, what’s your content strategy? And then they’ll pull up their content calendar and say, this is it. Like, this is our strategy.

We just need to write more blog posts and create more content, and it’s gonna be a little bit of SEO, a little bit of how to, and they think that’s it.

I think that a very real correction needs to take place. And it’s not this correction. Like, a lot of people are out there saying, just think like a media company. Hey.

If you think like a media company, you’ll still be successful. Is it I don’t know about you, but, like, the newspapers in Canada aren’t doing so well. Like, the media companies that we wanna emulate are probably not the newspapers of the past. Right?

Like, those media companies are are laying people off left, right, and center. Like, it’s it’s a chaotic mess. So when I talk to folks, they’re always like, Ross, you said content marketing work. And the truth is it does.

But everybody forgot that content marketing is a two word industry. Like, it’s not just content, content, content. It’s about marketing the content. And going back to some of the principles that if you watch Mad Men, you’ll remember is, like, looking for insights, understanding your customers, understanding the pains, understanding their problems, and actually doing research before you write a blog post that is rooted in the customer’s experience, their pains, their problems, and, like, a deep empathy for what’s going on in their worlds.

And when we think about the media companies today, the way I like to think about it is brands like MasterClass. Like MasterClass is literally putting on a MasterClass for marketers in how to take content and distribute it everywhere. It’s creating an asset, which is a course, and then it’s taking that course and it’s turning it into a bunch of different assets that it can disperse in derivative content on channels like Instagram, on TikTok, on LinkedIn, on Twitter, on YouTube, on all of these different places. And that’s more like the way that a media company should think.

And I don’t want anyone to say and tweet, oh, Ross is saying that we shouldn’t blog and blogging is dead. No. That’s not what I’m saying at all. I’m saying that we need to create content and things that are worth distributing, and we shouldn’t exclusively think about content as blog posts.

Yes. I know I’m preaching to the choir. You folks already know that at the end of the day, the assets that you produce have to be good. I believe in the four e’s.

And if you’ve read the book, you’re familiar with them. It’s the concept that content that you produce needs to either educate people, you need to engage people, entertain them, or empower them. If you do these four things with any type of content, and it doesn’t have to be all four at once, but if you do these types of assets and you create these pieces of content, you won’t get met with crickets. You will have people who adore the content.

They’ll appreciate the value you’re bringing into the world. They’ll like it. They’ll share it. They’ll engage.

That’s the fundamentals. Right? But then you have to distribute it. We have to recognize that the buying process is forever changed.

It’s not linear anymore. It’s not just like pick up a phone and call. It is a complex mess, especially if you are selling to other businesses. Like, there’s a lot of complexity that goes into reaching and selling to these folks.

And because of that, you have to adapt. And it’s a model in the book that I talk about that we’ve used that foundation to go from myself as a single freelancer to be able to build out an agency, to build out this company that’s working with some of the top brands in the world by simply embracing a simple shift. When I was a freelancer, I was just like the one person shop. I was in that rabbit hole of just produce, produce, produce.

But then when I started to distribute my content in the channels where the c suite execs that I actually wanted to connect to and sell to were spending time, I started to get more and more opportunities. And it’s a strategy that I’ve used not only to get them as clients, but also to allow them to generate clients as well. So today, I’m gonna share with you some of the strategies and the techniques. It’s pretty cut and dry.

Like, if you’ve read the book, you get it. You need to create valuable assets, and then you need to be committed to repurposing those assets into different ways. We had a hundred thousand downloads of our podcast because of this exact model. I’ve done it with blog posts for years dating back to, like, two thousand and twenty two.

I would write a blog post that broke down how Monday was able to scale their growth. I then turned that into a thread on x. I then turned it into a podcast that talks about the same concept. I then would create a YouTube video about it.

If the content resonates, you need to double down. Some of you have probably created a piece in the last six months that really moved the needle for you, but you haven’t promoted it again. You’ve never shared it again. You’ve never gone back to it and thought, oh, I should share this on LinkedIn or anything like that.

And that’s a massive mistake. If the content worked in q one of twenty twenty four, it’s probably gonna work in q one twenty twenty five. But for some reason, we get on this hamster wheel of new, new, new, new, new instead of going back to our greatest hits and repurposing them and resharing them. There was a piece that I created called the unbundling of Excel, like, years ago, and I continued to build on that month that concept again and again.

I created the unbundling of g Suite. I created this piece on the unbundling of, I think it was, like, Kijiji, the version of, what’s it in the US? It’s not Kijiji. It’s they’ve got, like, Craigslist.

It’s the Craigslist. Like, that type of concept.

Those things are, like, a go to insight around content market fit. My market wants this content. Let’s give it to them and switch it up. And then I used it again with my book to make it a bestseller.

Like, the ideas that I’m going to share with you truly do resonate. It’s funny. In this real picture without the book, it’s my wife and she was pregnant with our first she went to the event that I gave when I first showed this slide, and she was not happy. But she was like, babe, what are you doing?

You really cut me out. But it’s okay. The book the belt made it, so we’re alright.

This is the model, folks. Research, creation, distribution, optimization.

It’s simple. It’s probably sounds like very one zero one and basic, but it’s truly a game changing mentality that I would encourage everyone embrace. Right? Research your audience to to understand where they’re spending time, what channels they’re on, what they’re doing when they’re there, how they’re interacting with one another, what content they actually care about.

Go out and create the content that they do want. It doesn’t matter if it’s long form blog post. It doesn’t matter if it’s an infographic, a webinar, a YouTube video, podcast. It doesn’t matter.

You just have to create things that they want.

Distribute it relentlessly, Facebook groups, LinkedIn groups, newsletters, subreddits, all of those things, and then optimize it so it doesn’t collect us. So I wanna get really tactical.

Reddit is one of my favorite channels. I talk about it a lot. Not a lot of people like it. Some of you are already like, I’m not listening to this guy.

He’s talking about Reddit. I get it. I get it. Reddit is a very controversial place, but I love Reddit.

And there’s a lot of signals that are showing why Reddit matters. You look at Starbucks. You look at TD. Like, there’s top brands that are now investing in Reddit because there’s an audience there.

This motto, create once, distribute forever, was kind of rooted in some of the insights that I got early on on Reddit back in two thousand and eighteen. And I’ll share with you some of the updates on how I’m approaching Reddit today, but also how I’m thinking about distribution. We worked with Unbounce, a few years back, and this was the actual way in which we approached it. Like, you can see, the difference between the page views.

They had a bunch of blog posts that we didn’t put a distribution engine around, and then they had some that we did. And the pieces that we shared generated ten times more page views than those that didn’t. And this is because of distribution, writing the LinkedIn post, writing the threads, distributing it into forms and communities. That is the playbook.

So if we’re going to think like a media company, that media company should be Disney because Disney does it better than anyone. Even today, even though Snow White flopped, it’s still doing it better than everyone today. They go live with their movies and they are everywhere. They have licensing deals.

They have comics. They send their actors in on podcast tours. They have music deals. They’re always on the front of Spotify.

They have magazines, comics everywhere. Like, even Bluey’s made by Disney. Like, it’s wild. Like, they have everything rolling for them.

And that is what we need to be thinking like. We go in with research at the front, where you go in and you start to understand where your audience is. One of my favorite things to do, and I would encourage you to do this yourself with some of your clients, take their domain, site colon their domain, go to Reddit, put it in the search bar, hit enter, and then you’re gonna sort the content by top posts. Something beautiful is gonna happen. It’s going to look at all of Reddit and it’s going to identify if they have published any content over the last few years that generated a lot of comments, upvotes, and engagement.

And if they do, you might notice that this was a piece that was published three years ago. But that piece that was published three years ago is still generating more engagement than anything else that they created. So why aren’t we promoting and rewriting and creating and optimizing that content that went viral back in the day? Right? You can find some ridiculous insights here. With HubSpot, for example, you see this is the top post from six years ago that they ever published.

And it’s talking about the story of Ben and Jerry and how they met because they were slow kids. That’s an insight. It’s an insight that their audience probably would care about the founding stories behind some businesses so they could build on that time and time again. And they did. They went out and they bought this site called The Hustle, which did exactly that. Reddit, a few years ago, surpassed Facebook to be the third most visited website in the US, but marketers are still fearful of it. Reddit is showing up more and more in the SERP and when it comes to SEO than ever before.

We use this tool called stat to kinda measure Reddit and how often it’s showing up against, like, top ten sites, like, especially in b two b where we talk to SaaS companies. Some of the most valuable pieces you can create are, like, listicle style content that is about alternative pages and comparison pages. You’ll notice that Reddit continues to move up. This screenshot was from a few months back. I checked this morning, and I didn’t get a chance to update it. I tried to, but I left it on my desktop.

Reddit now has surpassed g two and Capterra for all of these queries. Right? The reason why this is interesting is because people, brands, and businesses spend tens of thousands of dollars every month with g two, Capterra, TrustRadius, and all of those other review sites, but they spend zero on Reddit. Yet people are using Reddit to make decisions around what products they actually buy.

So Reddit is showing up for very valuable keywords, and nobody is talking about it. If you go into Reddit and you start to answer these threads with questions and insights like this, it is very valuable. I wrote this one comment in a Reddit in a sub in a thread on Reddit talking of where somebody was asking, like, what skills do I need to get into marketing? And I talked about data analysts.

It’s like content creation distribution, marketing automation, and CRM data. And, of course, I referenced my book, Create Once Distribute Forever, and I saw five book sales off of a two minute exercise of writing this. I’m fast on the keys. But, like, that was out of two minutes.

I sold five books and it’s like that opportunity that exists for all of you. I’m not gonna make this entire thing about Reddit, but I do have a few quick rundown on how this all works because this is the money right here. At the end of the day, the same content that you’ve produced in any other channel works in Reddit. You just have to format it for Reddit.

These all look like blog posts. They all look the same. It looks like a LinkedIn update. That’s right.

That kind of content works on Reddit just like it does everywhere else. Why? Because all of us are just walking chemicals and balls of emotions, and we all still respond well to the same fundamental things that our ancestors did hundreds of years ago when they were reading Aesop’s fables. Like, at the end of the day, we’re still just people.

And we consume content on different channels, but if it taps into the insights around why humans care, it’s educational, engaging, entertaining, or empowering, it’s going to resonate with folks. This is another example. This is in a boring industry like MSPs where somebody created a piece that broke down how to fire, rehire their salespeople, and lessons to learn. It probably looks just like a blog post.

Kind of a little bit different with the intro because it’s short and sweet, but at the end of the day, it’s still the same fundamentals, and that’s how it works. Folks, LLMs and ChatGPTs change in everything. You all probably know this. You see it every day.

You’re probably tired of hearing about AI. I get it. I know. But let’s be honest.

It’s scraping all of our content. Whether we like it or not, everything you’ve ever published, it’s pretty much impossible at this point to stop it from being scraped. But it’s estimated that by twenty twenty six, it’s going to run out of high quality content on the web to actually scrape and use to inform the back end of the LLMs.

All of the LLMs happen to have a partnership with this little nifty site called Reddit. So they are scraping Reddit to get insights around the things that they should be saying when somebody is asking ChatGPT a question.

Reddit is also officially, as of earlier this week, the second most popular website in the US. So we can ignore it, or we can say there’s something that we should tap into here. Here. Create once, distribute forever.

So Facebook, a lot of people sleep on Facebook as well. I think it’s a massive opportunity. I think it’s well slept on, especially in b two b. There are groups on Facebook with hundreds of thousands of people who care about things that you want to talk about.

You might not be targeting digital marketers. You might have a certain niche that you go after. Let’s say, for example, you’re targeting doctors or physicians or health care professionals, whatever it might be. I guarantee you there is a Facebook group where those people are spending time.

You can go into those groups or you could even acquire them. I have one website that I’ve been running for a very long time that is focused on plant based food. I found a plant based Facebook group. It was filled with, I think, over twenty thousand people or something.

And I was like, hey. I noticed this page hasn’t been active since twenty fifteen. Would you sell it to me? They said, yes.

It turned out they also had a website. I said, thank you so much. I said, hey. Do you mind going for a better price?

They offered it for three grand. I was like, that’s ten cents a like. This is insane. A hundred percent.

Let’s do this transaction. I buy the page. I put up five posts promoting a guide that was helping people learn how to transition it from meat into plant based, and it paid for itself. Made three grand in a matter of a couple weeks.

This is the type of opportunity that exists when you start to think about how to distribute your content. I’m not gonna lie to you. I don’t think it’s, like, on Facebook’s, like, like, terms and conditions that this is allowed. You gotta kinda just, like, DM and take care of your stuff without, like, Facebook interference.

But this is a real opportunity.

Create once, distribute forever.

If you are ever on a podcast, if your clients are ever on a podcast, massive opportunity as well to say, we will repurpose this podcast for you and turn it into LinkedIn content. LinkedIn is still the king of b two b. It’s still the place to be, in my opinion. Everyone loves their own channels, but I still think even if it’s boring, it’s the number one channel for for professionals.

Remixing podcast interview content into video content still does wonders. I’m in LinkedIn’s learning program. This is all purely within the friend group here, but LinkedIn’s all in on video folks. Like, I’m they’re like a hundred and ninety percent all in foot on the gas about video content. If you can get into video content, if you can help your clients understand video content, or if you’re just trying to build new revenue streams, try video content. I my nickname in high school was Shy Ross. I don’t like doing video stuff, but I do it because I know it works, and that’s the only reason why I do it.

Remix your text posts. So turn your text posts into carousels. Carousels are still engaging on LinkedIn. They’re called PDFs. I think no.

Slot are they called they’re not they can’t call them PDFs because that’s Adobe’s trademark.

They must call them files or something. I forget exactly what it’s called, but they don’t they stop calling them carousels.

If your client or you are producing long form content, extract the data from those resources and then share the data on its own and tell them to share that data as isolated posts and social media content. It’s a great way to approach it.

The other piece is blog posts. If you have blog posts, you should turn them into LinkedIn articles. Another key insight that we’ve recently found is that linkedin dot com is more likely to be scraped by the LLMs than any other site. So if you are republishing your articles on LinkedIn, you are more likely to influence Chat GPT to see your content, and it thinks it’s super high quality.

This isn’t like, I’m not saying it’s right because I’ve gotten some weird responses from Chat GPT where it’s read some article on linkedin dot com, and it was like researchers are suggesting. And then I click to see what it is, and it’s like some random person who’s probably living in their parents’ basement who’s not a researcher at all. So if you wanna add value to the Internet, which you probably all heard doing, use this just as a way to, like, help the LLMs. And I know that sounds weird.

You’re helping the LLMs, but they it would be good for all of us. Remix your podcast interviews. If you’re doing any of this type of content, I love using tools like Flowgen, which is like an AI tool that listens to your entire podcast, identifies the best moments, and then identifies for you how to chop them up. Descript is also a great tool for this.

The motto is simple. Create once, distribute forever. If you can get yourself featured into Substacks, local newsletters, reach out, make friends with people, people are very much afraid to ask for things. I am all for it.

If you see a newsletter and you’re like, I wish I was featured in there, reach out to the person and say, hey. I just wrote this piece. I think your audience might find it valuable. The worst thing they’re gonna say is no, and life continues.

You’re not gonna remember that five minutes later.

Good old fashioned Google search is a great way to find the newsletters that you can reach out to if you’re trying to connect with CTOs or whoever it is. Like, just go to Google, type it in, find those people, and reach out to them. Again, create once, distribute forever. You all probably already know this, but not all assets are created equally.

Like, there’s a whole bunch of different things that you can create. And as marketers, as storytellers, it’s important that we remember this and educate our clients on this so they’re not rooted in this idea that all you can do is create blog posts. You can share memes. You can do thought leadership pieces.

You can create SEO content. There’s so many more pieces that you can create, but you do have to distribute those assets after you publish them. This is the way most people approach it. They, like, press publish on a piece.

They launch it. They share it on the channels that they own, and then they let it collect dust. What I encourage you to do is to share your content relentlessly. Go out into paid go out into niche channels and see it.

Like, go into Slack communities. Go into Discord. Go into forums. Spread that content. Go into Reddit.

Repurpose your old with new. Re share the old post from two weeks ago. Again, you can hit that reshare button. Do not be afraid to republish your content.

And if you must blog, like I said, turn them into other assets. I have done this time and time again. A blog might live on raw simmons dot com. It will become a LinkedIn article, then I’ll create a YouTube video talking about the exact same concept.

Once that is done, I’ll embed that video into all of the pieces that was created because Google loves YouTube. And if Google notices that if there’s a YouTube video embedded in a blog post, it’s more likely to rank it because Google makes more money off of people watching YouTube videos because it’s a part of their business model. They bought it for a billion dollars. Like, they’re they want YouTube to win.

Plan this in advance, though. Right? Like, one of the things that I would recommend is that if you are working on a blog post, a great way to I don’t know if this is your offer or any of you offer blog posts creation for your clients. But if so, one of the nice things that gave us a nice bit of margins in myself when I was a freelancer, a nice differentiator, was I’m not just gonna give you a blog post, but I’m gonna write you a Twitter thread.

I’m gonna write you two LinkedIn status updates, and I’m gonna write one for your sales team too so they can share it as well. Clients loved it because it was value add and it was additional. And if you can incorporate that into your package and your offer around copy, it’s great. If you need a way to do it very quickly, there is a tool called distribution dot a I, shameless plug, that I’m working on that I built where you can actually upload your blog post, your YouTube videos, and it will analyze your content, take all of the best practices directly out of the book.

We use the book to train the LMM behind it to actually craft content in your voice, but following our best practices around distribution. So for example, I was on a YouTube on a video with a podcast interview with the folks over at HubSpot. I uploaded it to distribution dot ai. I selected LinkedIn, and it used best practices to kinda create a status update that I would be okay with sharing.

I shared it on x. Got over a thousand and some impressions. It’s going to go out in a few minutes on my LinkedIn account as well, and this is all happening behind the scenes thanks to this type of tool. But I do encourage you to find ways to use AI to repurpose your content because I know that the the best part of, like, the process is creating the material.

So if you can put all of your energy and time into creating something amazing and then you let AI help you repurpose and distribute it, I hope that it evaporates all of the excuses that so many people make around I don’t have time to create and distribute my content. Now it should be easier.

Anyone remember this ad back in the day about Burger King with the moldy burger? I know it’s lunchtime for some folks. My apologies. That wasn’t the ad.

I made those in mid journey, and that’s something else that I wanna call out real quickly. Like, the power and the ability to create real looking images is wild. We all know this, but here’s a quick rundown on how I recently did this. I went to ChatGPT.

I gave it a bunch of my top quotes where I talk about the things that marketers do. It gave us a bunch of different examples. I then uploaded that to Canva. I said, Canva, can you, like, take these and put them into this image?

I got this, Mad Men inspired. I was like, oh, this is cool, but I wish you had some melanin. It went out and it actually modified that and changed it, had some that looked like me. I was like, cool.

This is great. Even better. I just scheduled a few of those after twenty minutes of, like, using AI to kinda go through that workflow, and it gave us eighteen thousand impressions and thirty new followers in a matter of minutes, folks. This is a wild time to be alive.

This is another image. It has two thousand some views. I uploaded a picture of myself. I said, turn me into a cartoon, Archie style, and then add this text, and it did that again in the matter of seconds.

It’s a wild time. Again, check out the tool, distribution dot ai. The model is simple, and you’re probably already freaking out. Like, that was close to twenty minutes.

I didn’t quite do it, but where in the world do I start? That was so much, right, in such a fast amount of time. It’s simple. Go back to the beginning and start embracing research.

It is a new dawn and it is a new day. Like, I think with all of you, if you are with Joe, you probably already understand the fundamentals of great copy. You understand the fundamentals of great storytelling and messaging. Perfect.

That’s where I want all of your attention to be. Create ridiculously valuable content and stories that turn heads, make people say, that’s amazing. I love that. And then tap into AI to repurpose and distribute your stuff more efficiently.

Let the world see it. It is such a shame. Some of you have probably created a piece of content in the last two years that would have fundamentally changed the trajectory of your career if you promoted it, if you distribute it, and if you didn’t jump right into the next thing to create.

That’s the thing that I I actually get upset about. So I’m not gonna say I hate, but, like, that bugs me. So many people are, like, one piece away from having a fundamentally different life, but the only thing holding them back is that they don’t promote their work, and it’s mind blowing to me. The industry is in turmoil.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not here to just be all butterflies and lollipops. I know things are chaotic out there. Back in twenty nineteen, things were smooth and great, and now it’s chaotic mess with AI, with all this stuff, budgets getting slashed.

I feel you. I one hundred percent feel you. It’s a complete chaos over the last couple of years. But if you embrace this framework, I think you’ll be able to come out of it okay.

I think if you embrace this idea of putting marketing back into marketing, you’ve already read the book. So thank you for checking it out. You’ll be able to really win. So I’m rooting for all of you.

Let me know if you have any questions. Again, as I mentioned, that was super fast, but happy to chat, happy to jam on anything. Yes. I know.

You have to rewatch this slower than one x speed. My bad.

That’s awesome.

Cool.

Thanks, Ross. Everybody knows to put up their hand, raise their hand if they have questions, which Cody’s done.

If you don’t mind if we go in the order Let’s do it.

Raising their hand. Cool.

Cody. Awesome.

So thank you so much for that. That was really eye opening. Awesome. And you’re you’re right. Like, we do neglect the marketing part of the content creation. I’m so guilty of that.

So I was watching Neil Patel the other day, and he was talking about content. And he says to validate the offer on x because or not the offer, the idea.

Mhmm. And if it works performs well there, then make something bigger out of it. Do you agree with that concept?

I agree with the concept, but I don’t agree with the channel. So the reason why I don’t agree with the channel is because Neil’s huge on x. You might not be. If you are not huge on x and your people aren’t on x, then don’t be on x.

If your audience is moms, then you’re going on Pinterest. You’re going on Instagram. Like, you’re you have to know where your audience is before we start throwing out those types of concepts, in my opinion. If my audience is, like, the gamer world, I’m not going on x.

I’m going to Reddit. If my audience is my dad, I’m going on Facebook. Right? So you have to and I have to have an audience.

So, like, I don’t have a bunch of my dads on my Facebook. I have one. So it’s like I would have to go into a Facebook group with, like, sixty year olds so dads who love Mustangs. So I have to go into that group.

I have to join it, and then I have to create something for them and see how they engage with that. So you have to go where your audience is. I love the idea of testing on channels. For me, x was that for a very long time.

But I’ll be honest, I think a lot of the people who I typically would sell to have left x, not to have a political conversation, but, like, x isn’t as popular. I don’t see as much reach as I used to.

Mhmm. That’s why I would lean more to LinkedIn a bit. But Mhmm. The concept at the heart is true. A hundred percent. You have to get content market fit. But where those people are is dependent on your own channel, the type of content you’re creating, etcetera.

Instagram, like, think of, the up and coming wave of marketers. Like, my hypothesis today would be that the up and coming marketer is learning about marketing on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube.

I think that’s where they’re at. I I don’t think they’re on x. I think they’re on LinkedIn and they’re intimidated, so they’re not publishing. But I think they’re consuming content on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube, and they’re learning from the people who are on those channels.

Perfect. Okay.

Thank you.

I hope that’s helpful.

I know I get too passionate about this stuff and just No.

Yeah. I am too passionate.

Hope that was helpful.

You. Awesome. Michelle or Jess, you can do rock, paper, scissors, I guess.

I had a question on the testing in the book.

So when you’re testing on a channel, are you testing different content Yeah.

For your users at the time and kind of kinda like an AB test looking at one of the other?

So it’s a few different things that I like to test. So I like to put out, like, micro content to test a idea.

So, if an idea resonates with people and it has, like, a if it has a signal, which could be comments, for example, then I know that this is stirring people up. So I know that this is a type of dialogue that gets people talking, gets people going. If it if I’m testing for, like, retweets, that tells me that this is something that resonates with people and that they want other people to view as, like, something that they care about. So you’re what you’re testing for is, like, a lot of different things, and you’re trying to just understand your people.

So, you run it sometimes it’s AB testing, but sometimes it’s just like, let’s throw this out there to the world and see how they react, and then let’s go deeper if you start to see those signals. So for example, the whole concept of create once distribute forever started with a test. And it was a long time ago, but I put out a post on x. And I just said, like, the problem isn’t that we, can’t create great content.

It’s that we don’t distribute it. And the post went off, and I was like, that’s a signal. A few months back, it was a again, it was probably in two thousand and twenty. Two thousand and twenty, I gave my first talk on AI.

And I was talking about it, and I had a lineup afterwards. So it’s not it’s another test. I’d went from being the guy who always talked about SEO and distribution, then I was like, okay. Let’s talk about AI and try something different.

Nobody was talking about AI. I was like, let’s do this. And people were, like, lined up. I was like, this is something.

This is this is probably something. So you look for the and I gave a talk one day. I gave a talk that used a bunch of, like, investment analogies.

No lineup. People hated it. Nobody cared. It’s like, never doing that again.

So so you use the material. Once you put it out to the world to kind of get a gut check on the response, and the lower your barrier to test, the better. So, like, a quick one off post on social, not writing the full blog post and article, just sharing an image that you’ve been creating, that type of thing. So, yeah, the tests tend to be in in that more of that regard.

Okay. Another quick question, if I can.

You’re welcome.

You mentioned Discord. Have you been on that channel?

I have.

And have you seen any success with it?

Yes. But only in weird weird industries.

So seen a lot of success with it in crypto. I’ve seen a lot of success with it in, like, DeFi, and I’ve seen a lot of success with it in, like, the that very technical engineering space. So, like, we work with clients who might be building the the back end of the Internet, so to speak, like the, so let’s say you’re playing a video game and you’re streaming, and it’s like, I’m streaming with some playing against somebody in Spain. We need to make sure there’s no lag.

So we have found discords where the engineers who, like, think about this stuff are spending time, and then we’ll see that content in there on behalf of our clients, and that stuff goes wild. Crypto is all Discord. I don’t Yeah. That’s if anyone’s in that world and you’re not thinking about Discord, you’re missing out on a massive play because that’s them.

And that’s why I was going back to that Neil Patel thing. It’s like, x isn’t gonna tell you what Discord will tell you in that type of a a community. So it’s important.

But yes.

Thank you.

No problem. Jess, over to you.

Cool.

This has been so awesome.

I’m super interested in talking more about Reddit. Cool. I have two questions about it. The first one is, would you recommend that your username has something to do, like, with your business?

Cool. Great question. So if you are talking about you, as in Jess, and you are, like, a person who happens to have a business, then no. I would say just go in as Jess or Jay Haney or whatever. Like, I operate on Reddit as r simmons or simmons with a zed. I’ve got two accounts.

And I do that intentionally because if you go into a subreddit and you have your brand associated with you, there are two they’ve already got the spidey senses going. They’re gonna ban you. They’re gonna block you. They’re gonna get rid of you.

Bye, Felicia. You’re over here. However, if you were doing it for a client and they are a professional business who has, like, a proper incorporation and, like, you don’t know it’s a it’s like a marketing manager, that person would be better served as being, Joe from Copy Hackers. Right?

Because they are a, representative of that brand, and you don’t want that individual to then leave and that account no longer be valuable to you. So the way I recommend it is if you are the founder and you’re on Reddit, use your name. You won’t get blocked. You won’t get banned.

However, if it is an employee of the organization, then it should be Ross from McDonald’s, Ross from Esso, whatever it might be. Like, you need to have that type of a because you don’t want that employee to think this is their thing that they can just run forever, and they’re forever branded as that individual. It’s a corporate asset. In the flip side of that, you should also have a brand one.

So for the brand itself, it should have its own channel. So your client should have their own username. If any of your clients today don’t even have their own subreddit, that’s a quick win that you should give them. Hey.

I noticed that there’s no subreddit that you own. Go and create your subreddit because if somebody else creates it, Reddit will not give you that back. It doesn’t matter if you have the trademark. It’s a community.

So a community is not privy to the trademark rights. A username would be so you could get their username, but you can’t get their subreddit. Some of you are thinking what in the world are the difference? Username is what you log into, kind of like a Facebook profile or a x profile.

The community is like a Facebook group on Reddit that is, like, public for people to join, and there’s a lot of them. If you create them, you become what is called a mod, and a mod has powers to kinda control what conversations go on within it. If your brands and your clients don’t have their own subreddit and somebody else controls the conversation within it, it can get really, really ugly, really messy, really quick.

Okay. That’s such a good point. I didn’t even think about creating a subreddit, like your own server. That’s so smart.

Okay.

So my next question is, do you also try to comment on other things that aren’t just you putting up posts about, you know Yeah.

Different content and all that kind of stuff. So when people dive in, it seems more like they’re legit. Yeah.

Exactly. So you try to balance it. You try to have a little bit of content. You try to have the majority associated with your industry and your space. But, like, during the Fantasy Football season, I’ll comment on football stuff because I don’t want someone to be like, oh, he’s only here to promote his work, so I’ll leave comments in other places. The other day, I put up a post, and I was just, like, breaking down the best pizza shops in my city.

And I did my actual I did the methodology. I’ve went to New York subreddit, and I sorted the content by top posts. The top post in New York was about the best pizza shops in New York.

I was like, I can do that, but for Halifax.

Looked at it, studied it, analyzed how they wrote it, what their style was. I did the exact same thing, but in Halifax, and I submitted it to the Halifax subreddit, made it to the front page of Reddit. Somebody gave me this thing called gold on Reddit because they were so grateful that I reviewed all of these pizza shops. It’s like, it works. It works. It’s as if I know what I’m talking about.

Yeah. So go into other things as well. Even if it’s just for the fun of it. I just I love this.

I love this stuff. So most people have normal lives, and they don’t wanna do it for fun, but I do it for fun. I’m just like, this is crazy. It it still works.

But yeah.

Oh, I mean, okay. This has made me actually excited about context. So you said LinkedIn. It’s like, what? But, like, I love Reddit.

So Cool. Cool.

This is sweet.

Yeah.

I love that.

That’s awesome.

Thank you.

No worries. Hey, Katie.

Hey. So first of all, I found your book on the Kobo store, and I was like, wow. What distribution win? I’m so glad that it was here.

Oh, good. Love it.

It’s funny.

I tried to, like, spread it across all of the stores because I know not everyone likes everyone. So I was like, let’s get this spread out. I love that. Thank you for checking it out.

Thank you.

Okay. I would like to ask a follow-up question about Reddit, and then, my original question was something else.

So as an agency, would you recommend that I create my own subreddit for my brand? Like, at what level does creating your own subreddit start to pay off?

Yeah. I would create it just to make sure that nobody else creates it, and then you always have it. You don’t need to, like, manage your subreddit and, like, actively post. You could. One benefit that I think would be there is to repost if you if your agency has a blog, reposting your blog post to your own subreddit, to me, is a smart move because the LLMs are scraper Reddit. So that could help you.

If you are like, the only successful service companies that I have seen on Reddit are ones that you don’t really want to kinda they’re not successful. They’re huge, but it’s huge because they have a huge team, and people are talking about how to get, like, promotions and stuff. Like, Accenture, they have a huge subreddit.

They didn’t create it, and it’s a Gong show. Like, it’s crazy. Like, people are there sharing salaries and stuff. Like, people are talking about whether or not they should how to apply for interviews.

It’s it’s chaos. So I would get it just to own it and make sure that you have it, and then seed your blog code intent into that community. But I would show up as you in, like depending on your audience. Like, there’s a there’s a bunch of mind if I just go rogue a little and show my screen?

Cool. So, like, like, there’s subreddits like this, social media marketing. I don’t know if that’s anyone’s audience, but, like, there’s a hundred and sixty seven thousand people who are in this subreddit.

What I like to do is sort the content by top posts. I would go in here. I would say this year. And then what I’m going to find right here look at this.

Stop creating content nobody watched. This is this is the memo of distribution. So, I would review all of this, and I’d be like, okay. What are people caring about?

Is organic social media growth dead? And then this was ten months ago. You could literally go in next month and create a piece that’s talking about I tried to understand if organic social was dead. Here’s what I found.

And you create that piece, and it’s going to probably generate as much conversation as this.

These are the types of things that I look at to better understand what I should be giving a subreddit.

This type of thing. So, like, my experience with Blaze dot ai. I’m sure you all of you have used a social media tool at some point or some type of asset. If you created a post for this community where you give a quick honest review on it, that’s gonna be gold.

That’s kind of the way that I would be thinking about going into that type of a space.

Like, for that one leads into my follow-up question if I can, Russ Russ about, like, when it comes to a call to action, we’re creating this content, like, especially on my blog is very focused on driving calls.

Yep.

So if I’m creating a post on Reddit, like, what kind of call to action I know Reddit’s particularly touchy, but, Yeah.

Yeah. What are your best practices for, like, revamping our call to action based on channel?

Great question. So on what I like to do is you you wanna so there’s rules on every subreddit. Some of them say you can’t have a link.

Link. What I like to do is have the call to action to say, like, if you’re interested, do a quick Google search for, like, create once distribute forever, which was in my screenshot. That gets them to my book. Or I’ll be like, if you found this valuable, send me a DM, and I’d be happy to send you something.

And then my DMs blow up. Like, I get tons of DMs from people. They are people. Like, that’s what we all have to remember.

It’s not just, like, pixels on the other end. These are humans.

And they will DM you, and they’ll ask you, hey.

Can I get this resource? Can I get this asset? Tell me a little bit more.

So I like to use those types of call to actions already. Another great call to action already is just simply say, like let me see if I can show you real quickly here.

On Reddit, you have the ability to, like, include links on your profile.

So you can have here it is. I don’t have one on this profile, but you can add add a description. So, like, you can put your domain here, in the description of your account. So when people do click on you, which they will, to see, like, what’s this person all about, they’ll click on that, they’ll see your domain, and then they’ll transition over to your actual account. So, leave your links in your bio kinda like on an Instagram or LinkedIn, that type of thing, and they’ll go find it.

Yeah. And you’ll be surprised how off like, some of my posts from two thousand eighteen still get me DMs from people saying, hey. I wanna check-in. Like, does this strategy on Instagram still work? Because I created a post years ago on, like, how we grew an account from fifteen to a hundred and fifty thousand followers, and then people loved it.

And they’re still right asking, do these strategies work? And the answer is no. They don’t. Instagram’s algorithm has gotten way smarter than it used to be back in the day.

But, yeah, like, you’ll the the ROI is lasting.

Jessica or Joe?

I got here first, Jessica.

Thanks, Ross. No one else had their hand up, so I jumped in.

I have three questions. I’m gonna try to keep them short, though. First one is, we’ve talked a lot about, like, organic promotion of your content.

I’m particularly interested in advertising on Reddit. Is it worth it? It wasn’t years ago. Is it today?

Only the remarketing. And don’t tell Reddit I said it. Okay. The only way that I see it working right now is remarketing.

So the people don’t give enough information to do very targeted advertising. So the people who are subscribed to marketing are like, who knows who it is? But the people who visit your website and who visit a specific page on your website are one hundred percent the person who has that intent. So if you install the Reddit pixel and you do remarketing and they happen to go on this site called Reddit, which is the second most popular site in the world, so they’re probably there, and you show up, Great.

That’s what you want. So I see ROI in the remarketing efforts. If you have an email list and you’re trying to get those people back in, you can do that on Reddit too. So uploading a remarketing and look alike style audience like play, that works ridiculously well on Reddit.

Cold amongst friends.

Done it. But I might have a LinkedIn post tomorrow saying that you should.

Awesome.

Question two was around high and this was one that I had before before you presented today. So, it could be that, like, your solution, your distribution AI, I think, is what I have saved in my tab, can do the job, but I’ve been wondering about hiring people. So we’ve had content creators over the years, but we haven’t had any real success with repurposing content, asking somebody to come in and repurpose. We’ve so much content. We’ve always had so much, and there’s always more, but we never repurpose it.

Thoughts on hiring someone to do this. Agencies haven’t worked for us.

Yeah. It’s not easy to do.

The it can work, but it’s it’s not easy to do. Like, you have to you have to hire someone who really gets content.

And if they don’t really get content and understand that, then it’s it’s tough. You have to hire I have found that you have to hire for the channel. It’s like the the skill sets tend to be channel exclusive. So if you’re, like, you’re the LinkedIn person, they can become excellent at LinkedIn and repackage and repurpose for LinkedIn, and that can become their day to day.

And that tends to go well. But the moment you say I also want you to be on threads and x and YouTube Yeah. The the it gets a little bit tricky. However, I do think with AI, it makes things a lot better, and I think you can put people through some training to get them closer now to be able to do a holistic effort.

But it is definitely a difficult role. I think, if you have a social media marketer, like, my perspective is that’s the best person to train on this stuff. It’s like somebody who understands social, get them to be trained and taught this effort. Yeah. Or, again, we’re trying to fix it, fix the problem with distribution dot AI. So, like, upload your content there and see how that does and give all the feedback and things like that. But, yeah, when you have a plethora of content, being able to repurpose it is the is the is the play, I find.

Yeah. And I’ve tried other AI solutions for it and, like, garbage. Like, nothing.

Never there.

No. Never there. Okay. I know. Jessica, I’m sorry. My question might actually be something that Jessica cares about too, given your background, Jess, but I’m wondering about your book title.

Yes.

The people in the room are writing books. A lot of people here are writing books.

Coming up with the title is horrible.

So hard. So hard.

And I know that you’ve you’ve repeated the thing through the title throughout the model is great ones to appear. So I love that, the way you kept doing that in your talk.

Thoughts on the title and how to get there?

Yeah. It was tough. Yeah.

And everyone had opinions on other titles that we should use, like how to do x, y, and z, ten x distribution, like all of these things. And then I was like, well, this is something that I’d be comfortable saying over and over again. Like, my advice would be to find something that you’re comfortable having very closely associated with your brand and your name for a very long time.

And that and then, like, how can you make it alluring to make somebody see it and be like, I get it. That’s that taps into the problem.

That’s what I wanted. I didn’t want to be so on your nose. And even though it the topics like how great creators spread their ideas and you can too, no one remembers that.

Absolutely. No one remembers that. But they do remember create once distribute forever. So my advice would be try to be punchy, try to make it memorable.

I think it’s good to, like I think there’s a there is value in doing somewhat of what people are doing, but I wanted to, like, go against it. Like, ten x distribution probably would have been a hit, and it would have resonated. All that type of stuff. Like, people care. Like, it it works.

But if you can put something together that’s a little bit more unique and out there and, like, sticks to your brand, I would say do that too.

Cool. Thanks so much, Ross.

Are you running another?

I have just signed my contract. Let’s go. Let’s go. So Congrats. Yeah. And tomorrow is the talk about the title, which is a nightmare.

Yeah. Fair. Thanks, Ross.

That’s cool. Yeah. Hi, Jessica.

Hi. Thank you so much. I actually really like the subtitle that I was trying to play with subtitles based off of yours, Ross, so I like it.

Oh, I love it. Thank you. Thank you.

Yeah. Okay. So this is actually transition as well because mine is related to books as well. I was just wondering, whether it’s based off of what you’re doing with your book or what you’ve seen out there. But I’m just curious how your model or method changes, or is it pretty much the same when you’re working with a book and distributing from that?

Yeah. The book launch was wild. It was fun.

It didn’t change. It was the same philosophy.

It just got aggressive. It just got really aggressive. Like, take everything that I’ve talked about, and it’s kind of like a chill experience of distribution. And then when the book happens, you have to ramp up to complete shamelessness and complete living the value of distribution and being relentless with it.

That was the the goal for, like, the month leading up to it. Every day, there’s going to be multiple social media posts about it. Every day, I’m sending an email to, like, get people excited about what’s to come. Every day, I’m on my Instagram sharing a story.

I’m on every podcast that it will take me to talk about it. I’m sending books to people to get them to read it. And even if they don’t read it, I’m asking them to write me an email or a quote about it.

You’re just ramping up to make it a hit.

That’s it. Like, you just go you just put in the headphones, drink a lot more coffee, and for a short period of time, you just sprint to be aggressive with the launch. That was my approach. The one thing that I wish I would have done, and it’s exactly what I just said, I wish I would have taken no other meetings, no other calls, had nothing else on my plate.

I wish I was a hundred percent. Clients are good. I’m not taking care of clients. I’m not taking care of team.

I am exclusively focused on the book.

I feel like that would have been better for my mental health, and I feel like it would have been better for the book.

So my advice is if you are getting up to a book launch date, allow it to be all encompassing, but also be ready to, like, focus there.

Because what I wish I would have done is, like, written long like, I would have documented the entire process of what I was doing to make the book a success because it would have went so well with this concept. So if I would have been every day, like, recording a video, alright. It’s day thirty. We’re thirty days out and then twenty nine, twenty eight, twenty seven. Like, people would have loved that. But the video would have actually been me talking with clients and going on stage and speaking at events, which all would have been good, but, like, I would have stayed so focused if I could go back in time.

The next one. There will be another.

Cool. Thank you. And, actually, I’ve heard a lot of authors say that very, I wish I had just dropped everything else. I don’t know. It seems like maybe it’s the unrealistic dream to just drop everything else and focus only on the book. So you’re not alone at least.

That’s fair.

That’s fair.

Thank you.

No problem at all.

I think that’s it with three minutes to spare largely because you talk so fast, which is That’s fair.

That is fair. What’s the book title? What you have to answer this. So where are you what what are you thinking? Do you have a Oh. Direction?

Oh. Oh, it’s a nightmare.

Is it?

So they I can’t even.

So it’s currently called I don’t know. And when you say you’re you have people to say it all the time. I kinda can.

The original okay. There are three. I’ll just fire through them. Y’all can just react.

The first you’re gonna hate them. Everybody hates my titles.

The first one is called now build a customer, and that’s on you’ve built a product. Okay. What if you were to approach creating customers the way you do a product, so engineering your message? So So that’s now build a customer, which my publisher and everybody I talk to hates. Copy selling is the other one. And then the third one is the revenue factory.

Oh. I got it. Interesting.

I just These are all three are they all the same book, though?

Well, the first one is it would have a different intro chapters. K. Cool. Chapters are different. Yeah.

Cool. Very cool.

I love it. Any initial thoughts, y’all?

Now that I know that Abby’s put it to a vote.

Abby.

It’s kind of like when your friends tell you their kids’ names. Oh, did I lose everyone?

No. We’re here. Oh.

Oh, sorry. It’s like when your friend I believe that the I’m going to treat this like when my friends tell me their kids’ names. I love all of them, Joanne.

They’re so good.

They’re so good. All of them. I know.

There you go.

I’m, looking forward to the conversation that I have with my publisher about it. So Good luck.

I do like credit. They are good.

But yeah.

Yeah. I yeah. I think the revenue factor is interesting, but you have to be ready to talk about revenue all the time.

I know. I know. I just don’t wanna talk about I’ve talked about copywriting for ten thousand years.

And that’s what the book is about.

Fair.

They’re just, like, a lot a lot.

Yeah. There’s so much jam on it.

Yeah. Oh, don’t open the door there.

I’ve got Bob and April on a not Bob messed up and April Dunford on a nonstop thread. They’re like, stop talking to us about this. I’m like, not until we find it.

I don’t blame you. That’s awesome.

Anytime. Nonstop.

That’s cool. I like that.

Thank you.

Thank you all. I hope, you all got some value out of this. If you didn’t, don’t tell me. I have thin skin.

I’m kidding. But no. I would love any feedback if you have any thoughts or questions. If you try distribution dot ai, let me know.

I really would appreciate any feedback that you have. If we’re not connected on LinkedIn, just send me a note. Let’s connect and say that you were at the Covey school. Of course, that would be great.

And then, yeah, I’d love to stay in touch, but appreciate you all. Thanks for the time, and see you on the Internet.

Appreciate you.

Thanks, Ross.

Thank you.

Thanks, everyone. Bye.

Bold Differentiation: Building a Strong Personal Brand

Bold Differentiation: Building a Strong Personal Brand

Transcript

Okeydoke. Alright. Welcome, y’all. Welcome to March. This is chaos month in, Copy School Pro, and we’re gonna start off, as we should, with the Cosmo quiz.

So this I don’t know if you had a chance to look at it, but this is my poor printout of it. Today, we’re gonna begin with the differentiation Cosmo quiz. It is in the document that was sent to you. Does anybody not have a copy of that?

It’s in your inbox.

I will show it to you as well quickly in case you’re like, what’s she even talking about?

This.

Okay. So this is what we’re talking about. It we’re here right now. For the next two weeks, we’re gonna get a little heavy on who are you and what do you sound like out there, because I’ve seen a lot of people being held back.

I don’t know what to post about. I don’t know what to say. There’s no traction. No one cares.

So let’s, like, push it. Let’s, like, make them care. Like, force them to care what’s what’s gonna happen. People will notice you.

Okay. That’s the idea.

So we’re gonna start with this really it’s a Cosmo quiz because it’s you’ll know. Anybody ever done a Cosmo or a Glamour quiz?

Yeah. Okay. Some of us are I did a lot of them as a teen, and I was always like, oh, you can game this so easily.

Sure. Fine. But just don’t then. So all you wanna do, we’re gonna take a little bit of time. You’ll choose one from each of these sections, and this is for you.

So you’ll it’s identifying you. So it’s in the first person, and if it’s in the second person, it’s you saying that to another person. So you’ll just choose one from each. Just go through and, like, tally it up on a piece of paper if you haven’t printed it off.

And then we’re going to tally up our points at the end. But don’t jump ahead and do that. We’re gonna take five minutes for this part, and then we’ll worry about tallies after. Okay? Five minutes. I’m gonna do it too.

Okay. Is everyone done?

No? Oh, okay. One more minute.

Okay. Let’s call it done. Now you go through, and this is very scientific and accurate, by the way. You go through and you’ll tally up the number of a’s, b’s, c’s, and d’s that you’ve got and pop them in here.

Do that right now and just, like, put up just, like, thumbs up or something so I know you’re done.

K. Abby and Andrew are done.

I missed you.

Jess is done.

And Stacy and Katie.

Cody.

Loving the blazer, Cody. Side note.

So Liesl’s gonna be a little bit late.

Jessica Johnson and Britney, we are waiting on you.

Okay. Since Jessica Johnson and Britney are off oh, Jessica said she’s done.

Great. Johnson, Britney, I’m assuming you’re on track or you’re busy doing something else, while we’re going through. So we’re going to move through to the point where we get our Cosmo quiz assessment.

More a’s than anything else. This is what’s up. More b’s than anything else. That’s what’s up. More c’s or d’s.

If these are true for you, if you got more c’s or d’s and nobody has to confess anything, I recommend that you go oh, good. You guys both done. I recommend that you go back through and do the assessment as a brand that you know of and admire. And I really do mean like a personality brand, like a person, and not necessarily like a like J. Crew. Like, J. Crew would get c’s across the board.

More like Gary v or anything like that. And you can start to better understand, some of the positives of kind of standing out and doing more. Does anybody wanna talk about a reaction you have to having completed this super important cosmo quiz?

Abby? Yeah.

I mean, I said it in the chat. I think the trouble is that it just, like, cycles too much. So, like yeah. I think one of my problems, and I’m not alone, and this group in having this is that some days, it’s like, yeah, like, I feel like I’m crushing it. And then other days, it’s like, I’m an absolute garbage person, and I shouldn’t be talking about copywriting because I suck so hard.

Yeah.

Okay. And others feel the same way, and that’s sort of the problem. Right? If you’re uncertain, then your brand reads as uncertain as well.

So it’s like a matter of pushing it, which is that question about, like, delusion that I had.

This I’m so I’m delusional of my self belief.

I think that that’s an important thing to be as, like, nutty as it may sound.

Don’t it’s just just like, if you’re gonna get out there and people are going to know your brand, it can’t be wishy washy. Right? Like, we can’t be.

We have to really say something. So that was the fun exercise to get us thinking about, and I do recommend that you go through it and retake the quiz as, again, Gary Vee or any of these other brands out there, that you know by name.

Now I wanna move on to getting a bit more real. So what I know is really common for copywriters, in particular, is, like, a tendency toward introversion and shyness, which isn’t really real because a lot of us think a lot of ourselves and think, no. I’m I’m actually pretty badass, and if more people knew that, like, dope.

But there’s also a sense of retreating into yourself.

So I want the the objective today is not just to sit here and be exactly who we are today. Otherwise, we wouldn’t take training. We wouldn’t wanna get better at anything. We would just, like, not show up. Like, ever, we wouldn’t even sign up for training like this and to have somebody encourage you, coach you to do more.

I know for a fact that the thing that is keeping most people when you have struggles in getting leads, it’s because nobody knows who you are. They might have heard of you once, but then they forgot about you. You gotta keep showing up. Your brand has to keep showing up.

So we wanna wake up your brand. Everybody can do this. We do this. I work on this with my coach.

We work on this stuff all the time. It’s it’s an always in progress challenge.

Okay. But what I would love you to do is take some time now to start working through this, and I’m gonna walk through these as we go. I’m not gonna give you, like, a ton of time to write in your answers. If you’ve already done the worksheet, then you already have your answers in there, and you might want to refine them a bit.

But I wanna be really clear. In order to be a world class brand, which is what your clients need to believe that you are, especially as you raise your rates, you have to have this shit locked down. You have to know in the whole world, I’m the absolute best at. When you if any of you already do hang around with people who are uber successful, they absolutely talk about themselves in ways that horrify the little like, for me, growing up in the nineties when, like, shoegazing was how you showed you were cool, when you were like, it was cool not to try, and it was, like, really lame to, like, talk yourself up.

So for me, I have, like, an allergic reaction to hearing this, but I know that it’s critical. I know that when x person says, oh, there’s nobody in the world that’s better than me at this, and that’s why Google hires me all the time, or they just don’t really support it. It just is.

You have to believe. You have to believe. You have to find a way to get there. You have to believe within the whole world.

Nobody, nobody in this room, nobody in any room is better than you at this thing. So start with and I want you to go bigger, like like, really knock through and make yourself feel like like your ego’s too big now. Like, calm down. Don’t, though.

Write it in the least calm down way possible. In the whole world, I am the absolute add in expletives if you want to. Best at what? Write it in now.

Write it anywhere now.

Don’t think forever about it. Just what’s your fucking thing? Just write it down.

When you read it back, you need to know it sounds delusional.

Then you’re probably on the right track.

K? Why do people not just love you, but, like, want to be you? Why?

Write that in next.

And if it includes that your hair looks dope on a regular basis, that is fine. That shouldn’t be the whole thing, but that can be a thing. List it out. List out all your awesome if you want to or just focus on one thing.

Also, don’t list out lots of things you’re good at. Just the one core thing that you’re good at and then other things that make you feel good about yourself.

K.

Alright. Now I had to do this animal kingdom exercise a couple times over the last year and a half, where gorillas and peacocks were, floated.

I recommend that you think about which which animal you are in the animal kingdom. And if you’re not sure, just choose a fucking badass animal. Something really even if it’s badass because it’s the cutest thing you’ve ever seen in your life, but it has to be it can’t be a worm. Abby. It can’t be a worm. It has to be something, yeah, that you can stand behind and that I would say if you’re not sure that people have a feeling about.

So in the animal kingdom, what are you?

Be a child about it. Don’t be smart about it. Don’t be too clever.

Just be a kid.

Okay? Alright. Now everybody who was like, sometimes I’m this, sometimes I’m that, this line is for you. When you have a twinge of self doubt, when something gets in your way, sometimes it’s a whole day of it, sometimes it’s just a just a blip.

What do you remember? What do you tell yourself? What is your motto? What is your thing to get you through?

You may already have it. If you don’t, homework is to go find it.

So what is that thing that you tell yourself when you have doubt about being that animal, about why people love you, about what your thing really is?

Nice, Britney. Nice.

Okay?

And that brings us to the last one, moat building, which is really what everybody AI taught us. You have got to build a moat around who you are, your skills, what you bring to the table, a moat that a bot cannot get through. So how are you building not just a moat, but a super fucking wide brand moat?

What are you doing? What is your thing? How are you making that moat happen?

Moe equals nobody can touch you.

It it shouldn’t probably isn’t a point of, differentiation. That’s like that’s that’s just what got the castle standing, but rather what’s the thing around you where you have to be increasingly widening it, adding new moats beyond the moat so nobody can drop a bridge and, like, hit your castle and destroy you. The moat that keeps you being Katie Peacock.

Untouchable. What keeps you untouchable? And if it doesn’t exist yet, that’s why it says I’m building because it probably doesn’t exist yet.

Okay. Alright.

Does anybody wanna share any of their answers? You don’t share all of them. Anything stand out for you that you feel like cool.

Otherwise, I’ll call on you.

Britney’s come on camera. Is that volunteering? Okay. Britney, let’s hear it.

It’s my sorry for not being able to get on earlier.

Oh, no worries.

So these are basic, but in the whole world, I’m the absolute best at seeing the real problem under the noise.

K.

People love me because I elevate every space, and I see the need and show up without asking.

In the animal kingdom, it’s funny, like, in my house, we have this joke, like, be a fucking tiger.

Okay. Because the spiritual meaning of that is intuitive, senses truth, grounded, leadership can be, you you know, silent, but then also can has power when needed.

Love. But, like, then also I’m like, I have a I kinda like the fox too. Like, good mane, clever, smart, like, gets the job done with few resources sometimes.

Yes.

So when I have a twinge of doubt, I remember sometimes a fox can be a fucking tiger.

So it’s just kinda like the world is our oyster. Right? Like, we can be who we need to be for the moment.

When we encompass kind of, like, that essence, like, the deep down essence.

And then the moat one, I don’t totally understand, but I guess for me, something as I have been building in the last six months, I just have to a, this is like a practical thing, but just, like, keep my reserves healthy so that I’m with. Meaning, like, everything I’ve read about negotiation is that the moment you go into, like, neediness, you lose. And so how do I blinkslate and just with or without you, this is happening.

So, like, a a reserve working on my daily value, like like, I’m just gonna be clear about what I offer and, just a radical commitment to to offering value, I guess, is my moat. But it’s too vague, I know, but I’m working on it.

Cool. And that’s a good thing to work on. Right? Like, I’ve been thinking about our moat for a couple years and have only just kinda got to a place where I’m like, I think this is I think it’s these things.

But the moat might actually be somewhat, like, a even a channel sometimes. Like, what’s the space you’re going to own completely so that anybody who’s, like so nobody can can touch you there. So it’s too late for anybody else who tries to get in, and that could be a book, could be a series of books. Right?

Those sorts of things. That that doesn’t mean it has to be that, though. So I would just, like, keep letting your brain work on, how do I build a moat? What does my moat look like?

How do I make sure that the fortress really is protected, not just by me and my skills, but by everything I’ve done with the channels around me to prevent anybody from coming and taking share from me.

So give it thought.

It doesn’t have to answer it immediately.

Yeah.

What do you think about, so I did some cold calling last week for, like I have a a smaller digital marketing thing, and it went it actually went great. And the feedback that I’m getting is people actually want to talk to the person. They don’t want your setter. They don’t want your salesperson.

They want the person. And so for me, that also plays into mode. Like, hey. Like, when when you’re working with our team, like, at the end of the day, if you need me, like, here’s my cell phone.

So I feel like that’s motive, but also finite. So I’m going you know? Yeah. The resources around your time are finite, but I do like like, just call me directly.

Like, let’s cut the fuss. You know?

Totally.

I that’s great. That’s awesome. And that’s something to think about and, like, figure out how that fits into a bigger brand strategy, having access to you. What does that mean?

In order for someone to want to have access to you, they need to have put you on some level of authority based pedestal. Doesn’t mean that’s always true, but it’s probably true that to get more people and if they care about talking to the person, I need to be the person. So going back through and revisiting everything on here to make sure that you’re, like, nailing it across the board, And then it’s a matter of, I think, then come with other questions around okay. But, like, I don’t scale.

Okay. Well, if you don’t scale, a lot of experts don’t scale, and they raise their rates accordingly. And you only call people who are very likely to be an absolute good fit because you have to choose the right people to call. But I think that’s cool.

I’m so glad that your cold calling went well.

Yeah. It was wild, actually. It was encouraging, and, and I I also was surprised that I had kind of a script, but, actually, people really just, like, almost want one sentence. It’s like the script got condensed to so much shorter than I thought.

But Amazing.

Nice open loop too because everyone’s like, what was the sentence? Tell me the sentence.

But that’s cool. That’s your IP. You have that? Good. That’s awesome. Okay. Also, I love show up without asking.

I wrote that down and circled it. I think if you can live that value, we show up without asking. It’s interesting.

So cool. Any other feedback for Britney?

No? Awesome. Thanks, Britney. Anybody else wanna share?

Anybody else feel anyone if you’re like, I don’t know about this part. Also, like, throw it out there. We can give you some some notes, some encouragement.

I do. You both?

Okay. So I’m struggling with, like, the whole in the whole world I’m the absolute best at.

I have life cycle marketing or, like, decoding human behavior and trust so that SaaS brands can have the life cycle marketing that runs smoothly. I don’t know. But I feel like the thing that I’m best at is seeing life cycle marketing in everything. And so, like, all different patterns of, like, marketing or life. And so I can see how it fits together. And so I can see how their people can then smoothly go through the funnel. But that’s a lot of words.

It’s a lot. And it’s, like, it’s not something that somebody would say about you Yeah. Yet. Right?

Because it’s it’s just not. Right. So what is it? Like, when you think about I’m not gonna name names, but think about somebody who has so much undeserved ego.

I think we all know who.

There’s many of them, but so much shocking amounts of self confidence in spite of everything.

That it it it drives their success in, like, stunning ways.

We can say a thing about each of those people. Any of those people that come to mind for you, you can say they’re really good at this. They’re they’re, like, not just really good that they’re they dominate that thing. Even if they’re not actually the best at it in the in the whole world. So if there’s a sense of I’m going back to nineteen eighties, Donald Trump. We’re not talking about current. Nineteen eighties Donald Trump, the art of the deal.

Everybody, he built a great moat with that. So I’m gonna I’m going to elevate my brand from being the New York guy who has buildings to being, like, the art of the deal guy globally.

Great moat.

In the world, it was assumed that he was the absolute best at putting deals together.

Didn’t really matter if it was true.

The point was not, let’s be let’s be rational. Let’s have proof for everything that we do. All the stuff that the rest of us actually do take seriously. Like, no. I have to be able to stand behind it. I have to prove it, though.

Throw that out for a while and just just be, like, really egotistical.

With that in mind, Liezl, can you, like, embarrass yourself with with how ridiculous your state like, I would push it really hard. If it’s finding patterns, then whatever that might be, k. Now make it, like, make us feel weird about your level of absolute, unordered self confidence there.

I’m trying to think. I don’t know. Okay.

I’m the absolute best at making life cycle marketing work. Doesn’t matter if, like, what where the market is going.

It doesn’t matter if there’s AI. It doesn’t matter if email goes away. I’m the absolute best. I’m making life cycle marketing work no matter the platform and no matter the medium, I guess, or market. Getting there.

I don’t know.

I think it’s getting there. Oh, we’re not gonna get there right now. But I think that it’s a good exercise to go forward, keep pushing on that, sharing them in Slack, or just, like, just, like, push it like, just talk it through with yourself, with your partner, like, whatever it takes, to get there. And then that’s who you are, and everything you say has to just be part of that.

Yeah? Awesome.

Yeah. Push it. Push it push it.

Cody says, mine’s a bit obnoxious, so I’ll share it. Can you come off mute and say it, Cody?

Sure.

So I put, I was using Chat GPT to help me since it knows me so well, and now I had a time limit. But, so it says an unmatched ability to sniff out hidden profit, optimizing shit so ruthlessly that every dollar in ad spend works harder. While everyone is guessing, I’m engineering conversions with the precision of a master strategist.

Nice. Badass. Great.

Cool. Optimizing shit so ruthlessly that every dollar in ad spend, I would just change works harder to some. I know. It this is a little weak. Yeah. No. But the start of it was so, like like, punchy in the face kind of, like, woah.

And then it was, like, works harder. So just fix that part. I know. I know.

I I caught it too.

But yeah. Yeah. That’s cool. Awesome.

Britney, what were you saying about can we give, Leisel examples using life cycle marketing? Is there anything you wanted to add there?

Britney’s busy. Okay.

But if anybody has any examples, okay, throwing it out to the group for Liesl, then, please, go back to that. Cool. Abby says I wanna be the absolute best at selling, period.

I am the absolute best at selling, period.

Yes.

Present tense. You’re already there. No one’s there’s no certification coming. There’s no stamp of approval coming.

You’re just there. Okay. Anybody else any other shares?

If it makes you feel uncomfortable, that’s good.

Okay.

I’ll share.

It feels the reason that it feels uncomfortable is because you literally taught me this, and so I’m like, can we just remove you from, like, people?

Remove. Let’s let’s just pretend you don’t exist. Okay. Cool.

So in the whole world, I’m the absolute best at life cycle email strategy. When I talk to people who think they know anything about, life cycle email strategy, they realize they need to sit down and listen because they don’t actually know anything.

So that’s that’s that.

K. In the animal kingdom okay. I don’t know why this popped into my head, but I picked a moose.

Okay. And yeah. It’s very Canadian.

Yeah. What came to me after was it’s because they’re elusive. They’re rare. Everybody’s always like, I want to see a moose in real life.

Oh.

People stop when they’re around. Like, you literally have to stop your car. If you see a moose, you’re like, oh my god. I need to stop. You’ve heard of a moose, and you’re like, oh, damn. But then when you see one, you’re like, oh, fuck. Like, I actually had no idea.

And then when I have a twinge of self doubt, I remember that there’s a white dude spouting shit on LinkedIn who doesn’t know anything, who’s acting more confident than you and making more money than you, and so that needs to change.

And then I’m building a super wide brand moat with the state of report that I’m doing, so the state of free trial onboarding sequences in twenty twenty five.

Nice. And I just decided this weekend, I’m gonna start a YouTube channel as well.

Okay.

Build that moat. Yep. Amazing. Okay. Wait. Why do people fucking love you?

Because I’m really smart and great at business, and people always think that I’m really cool.

Okay. Dig it.

And I like that. Cool.

Excellent.

Awesome. Good.

Okay.

Alright. Britney says you have Riz. Awesome. I said Riz in front of my nephew, and he nearly died. He was like, now That word’s dead.

Okay.

Jessica’s up on the absolute best at coaching people through writing and publishing their book. Try harder, Jessica.

Excellent.

Okay.

Wonderful.

Let’s Stacy, are you going to share yours?

Yes. I’m going to because it’s so weak that I need to share it so I can make it better.

Okay. Let’s do it.

I mean, it’s just it’s the the kernels of it are there, but hearing the oomph of the other ones was just like, oh my god. This is so weak.

So the the best in the world is I’m I’m doing this about my, about my software.

So Yeah.

It’s I I built the absolute best AI for marketing that creates the most value with the least amount of effort, which is Okay. Objectively true. It just doesn’t have enough oomph.

And people fucking love me because I speak my mind. I’m successful, laid back, can figure out anything. I’ve I’ve done I’ve lived a thousand lifetimes already.

I I don’t know. I guess they think I’m a cool person.

My animal kingdom is an albino Siberian tiger because it wasn’t enough to just be a tiger. It had to be a very, very rare thing, and the Siberian tiger is, like, the apex predator. So, that’s why I picked all of those, along with the tiger, spiritual aspects too. So it’s a complete package.

When I have a twinge of self doubt, I remember I’m Stacy Moore.

That’s so Oh, nice.

That’s baller.

I mean and that is really true.

So that part, I feel good about, the the strength of that one.

The moat, I don’t have anything strong there.

I just you know, the the the AI of choice for the best marketers in the world is is what I wrote.

So open to feedback.

Okay. Feedback.

Room. Everyone here knows how it’s supposed to sound, but we’re aiming for Nice, Abby. Awesome. K. Notes for Stacy.

Let’s start with in the whole world and the absolute best at.

Does anybody remember it?

I was expecting more because No.

Because it’s totally not memorable.

It was it was to do with your AI.

But, Stacy, I feel like we can always trust you to bring, like, the kind of Apex confidence. So I was expecting you to just be like, in the whole world, I’m the best at everything.

That’s funny.

I think that’s the problem.

Right? It was not memorable, and it’s not in keeping with what we know of you, Stacy, which yeah.

Anybody else have any notes to help Stacy out here?

We’re pushing it.

Questions for Stacy to help her?

Cody, Abby, looks like you’re both thinking.

Yeah. I was I was thought of one, but then I was like, it’s still not good enough. But, like, turning, like, chatbots or AI bots into, like, your world like, world class copywriter, like, something around that. Maybe. I don’t know. Because it’s like you make the AI, like, the the best copywriter, like, they could ever work with.

But it’s not enough.

Like, the easiest blank in the least amount of effort.

So that’s just like marketing talk. Right? But, like, what do those things like how do you make it obnoxious now so that we’re pushing it in the right direction?

I don’t know. I mean, I make AI that can do your job better than you so you can so you can wow your clients. I mean, it’s really the thing. You know? But it can’t because it has to have the people, but but that’s the, you know, the gist of it.

But it’s not a cop it’s not copywriting AI. It’s just it it’s writing is one thing. It’s strategy research writing. It’s so much more than copywriting.

Yeah. That’s one component. I’m looking at the at the comments.

Yeah.

So that’s fair. So if we get rid of copywriting, but then there’s the question, okay. Do your job better than you is nice. It’s obnoxious, but it’s also terrifying.

Yeah. It is. It it is, and it’s not it’s not the ethos of what I’m doing too, but but something in that direction that actually fits is Yeah. You know, is a good thing to think about.

Exactly. I would just think about that. Going in that direction of, okay.

So if do your job better than you is sticky, it’s just not what’s your dream. Who wished if you’ve always wished you could clone yourself Yeah.

You know?

But, like, you know, it’s not that it’s not that either because I don’t want I don’t want people to think it’s like an AI clone of yourself because it’s not that either.

Yeah. Yeah. I would just work on how do you make the do your job better than you fit now with what you really believe in?

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Because it’s it’s something that we can we can see it now. We can, like, understand it and, like, feel slightly threatened by it and, like, wanna react to it. And that’s, like, what we’re going for. Right? A reaction to our brand.

Hopefully, the right reaction, but some people will find will be angry with us.

Okay. Alright. Thanks everyone for sharing. Your next objective, your homework is to do something super lame, which I do recommend.

I’ve actually got mine on order. This is my little little dude, is to create a visual of that animal.

Really bring it to life with AI and then get can put it in Canva and go get it shipped to you and put it next to your computer. And when you’re not sure who you are and what you do and why people do care, not just should care, but do care, then you could look at that.

That is it. Go through, revisit this.

Make sure you got a brand, a good brand that you stand behind. Alright. Next week, we will be talking about this as there’ll be a part two. Basically, it requires that you have done the work from this week to move forward in week two.

Those are the only two parts of chaos month that, like, work together. Okay.

Now we’re in that part of the day where we have q and a. You have a question. Please raise your hand.

We’ll start with what should we start with? Not a win.

Your goal for the month of March, a measurable goal. It can’t be qualitative. It has to be quantitative. What do you what is your goal? Target for March for March. Abby, you’re up first, so now you have you’re on the spot to come up with it immediately.

Just close another client, I think.

Put a number on that. One one client. One client at? What’s their value?

Oh, at fifty with an optimization retainer.

You already are doing that every single month. That’s Yeah.

So I wanna keep doing it. I wanna keep doing it.

I’m like lose momentum. Keep going.

I’m waiting for the, like, the the you know, when you think you’ve got it all figured out, and then the dip comes, you’re like, I didn’t have it figured out.

It’s all okay.

Alright.

Okay. So, yeah, my question is when someone comes to me and they don’t want, like, my standardized offer as it is, I don’t know what to do. Like, I will drop my prices. I will panic. Like, I just it’s a massive blind spot for me. So I got I got this email. I’m gonna pop it in the chat if that’s okay.

Okay.

So they want a sales page revision and an evergreen sales email series.

And I just don’t know what to do with that because I can’t be like, well, you need they want evergreen. It’s fifty k.

And I can’t be like, I I’m not gonna put it in VIP week. Like, I’d love to still close them at, like, twenty, thirty k, but I don’t know.

Dot what is happening here? Questions galore. Okay. Where did this email come from?

Like, is this, we’re reaching out to you first email or has it Yeah.

This was a, a lady someone filled in my, like, I want to work with you form.

Okay. So you haven’t spoken with them yet?

I booked a call for Friday, and I Okay. Wanted to check-in first because otherwise, I’ll just close, like, something stupid.

What makes you believe that this lead knows and is right about what they want?

Like, everybody has an idea. Like, you go to the mall and you’re like, I want new jeans, but then you, like, try on not jeans and they’re dope. And you’re like, never mind. I want these, and maybe I also want new jeans.

We don’t know. We just think we know. Right? And so I mean, extremely successful is, like, confident.

Right.

So you have looked into their brand, and it’s an extremely successful brand.

Well, she said her freebie is extremely successful.

Because it’s got forty thousand downloads?

Well, it it says a revision of our extremely successful free or free freebie, with sixty seven five percent over forty thousand.

Do you do you believe these numbers?

Do you believe that they have a seventy five percent open rate across nine emails? Yeah. You do?

Yeah. I get that because it’s a Everybody here.

By email eight, you’ve still got a seventy five percent open rate?

No. Across the emails. Like, it averages around that.

I have worked in email a long ass time, and that is suspicious to me. I’m like, hold on. Let’s open up. Show me show me your like, let’s go into your CRM right now.

So it’s not that, Abby. And I’m not like but I would look at this and go like, thank you for believing you know what you need. That’s that’s great. You’ve given some thought to this. Awesome.

Now you throw that part out and you back the conversation into the actual conversation that you always have. Get on the call. Thank you. I saw everything. I saw, like, your list. It’s a great grocery list. Let’s talk right now, though, instead about, like, what’s going on in your business right now.

Why are we talking today? If it’s because they need a sales page revision, they’ve come to the wrong place. You’re not a sales page revisionist. That’s not if they’re looking for that, they can find that anywhere online. There’s, like, a million people who will do that. So why did they come to you? What’s going on in their business?

Why you? Why now? Always those same questions.

So I would just back up.

There’s still a prospect for the project, aren’t they? Sales page revision, the it’s for an evergreen flow?

Yeah. So they want an evergreen funnel. They just don’t need the whole thing. So they say.

The course is older.

We haven’t really done much with it since the launch, but it’s core content for us, and I want it to be a bigger part of our environment.

So so what are we hearing? What do you hear when you hear that? Like, really quick reaction to reading that. Forget about just even I want it to be a bigger part of our environment.

That they they want an evergreen sales funnel that works.

Yeah. They want what does it I would like okay. So they their problem internally, they’re thinking and I think they meant ecosystem, but they said environment. I don’t know what that means.

But I would dig into that. Like, what do you mean a bigger part of, like, this world that you’re creating for your product lineup, I assume?

Get them to, like I’d start there. Talk to me about what’s going on with this.

And then looking at your ballpark project budget, we’re probably about halfway in between a VIP week and a full funnel because we have at least some of the assets already.

No. I think this is, like for me, Abby, I look at this, and I just get them into your standardized offer. Like, that’s your objective.

This is fine that they think they want these things, but the more they start talking Mhmm. Because you’re asking all of the questions you would ask anybody who it doesn’t even matter what they put in their intake form. Fine. Fine.

Great. Cool. It’s not that you ignore it, but you really don’t have to think that much about it. Find the parts that are their obvious, like, openings in a sales conversation.

Now we want it to be a bigger part of our environment. There again, I don’t know what that word means. You’ve done all of these things.

You’ve had success with this freebie.

Why are they coming to you right now for an evergreen funnel, though?

That’d be my like, that’s the question.

And what’s stopping them? Have they done a webinar before? Because you largely just do evergreen webinar funnels, don’t you, Abby? Yeah. Yeah. So I’m looking at that going, like, have you tried a webinar funnel before?

How did that go? Oh, you didn’t? Why not? The usual, like, sales questions. I wouldn’t worry about a single thing that they’ve said in there, But, like, pull on the obvious, for me, it for me, it feels like, wow. This is a good lead purely because they’ve given you so much information. They’ve told you things that are pretty revealing about the place that they’re at in their business.

They care about this or they wouldn’t have told you this much. They’ve looked through your offers, so they’re doing all of the good research that’s like buying signals.

But they wanna believe they’re a VIP week, which you have to get off your site. And maybe you’d be a full funnel, but they have some of the assets already. So all you have to do is move them from where they are toward, oh, we do need a full funnel. It doesn’t matter that some of the assets are ready already. Every funnel you start with, as far as they know, already has assets ready.

Mhmm.

It’s got nothing to do with adjusting price because you’re not doing some assets. That’s always the case. They’re not hiring you for assets. They’re not hiring you for what’s there to fill in the gaps. They’re hiring you for a high performing evergreen funnel.

That’s it.

Would you would you do the diagnostic then for something like this so I can show them, like, they’re not as in the green as they think?

Probably.

If I would do it in advance just to make sure, like, is this going to make me look better or worse when it’s done? If it’s a good diagnostic, it should always make you look better in the end.

But this is a different sort of scenario. So, yeah, I would try the diagnostic out first, make sure it works, walk them through it. Yeah. I don’t I guess I’m just wondering.

I think that more of it has to do, Abby, with you once again need to, like, look at your your your brand, who you are.

There’s no modifying your price. Why would you suddenly modify?

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. That’s helpful. Yeah.

And I don’t mean to if it’s coming off harsh, I don’t mean to No.

No. But I need it.

Yes. It’s fifty thousand doll that’s what your rate is fifty thousand dollars. If I walk into Louis Vuitton and I want a twenty thousand dollar bag, but I don’t need the handle that comes with it because I have my own handle. Nobody’s like, oh, then it’s only eighteen thousand.

The price is the price no matter what. That’s it’s just the price. It’s Fifty thousand dollars. That is the thing.

Let me walk you through how I get results for people with this funnel. Talk about your results, always your results, what you do, how great it works. Suddenly, they’re able to find fifty thousand, and those assets that exist don’t really matter. For this old course, they haven’t invested in, and they know that there’s money hiding in it.

You’re gonna unhide that money with your process.

Mhmm. That’s a really helpful mindset, chef. Thank you. By the way, they they said they wanted someone whose copy hackers trained.

Yeah. They did.

Just kidding. Just kidding. That’s awesome. Look. Everybody’s got your back here too, Abby. You already I think you do know.

It’s a mindset thing. Just practice.

Yeah.

Okay. Thanks, everyone.

Thanks, Debbie.

Job, Abby. Jess, what’s your measurable target, goal, whatever it might be, for March?

So my goal is to finish opting into the hundred free trials. So I’m at fifty four right now.

And this is as part of your bigger study?

Yes.

Excellent.

Yes.

So you’re gonna finish so you’ve got forty six more that you need to do this month.

Yeah. I can pretty much opt into if I like, in three hours because I’m taking, like, screenshots and stuff of things. Yeah. I can do, like, twelve in three hours.

It’s there’s a lot. There’s a lot. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Good.

Nice. So yeah.

So my question is when we first talked about this, you were saying to release this in partnership radar or find out who I reach it reach out to to, like, do this with?

What what would you recommend that I do at this time?

Yeah. Definitely. I think, I think what’s important to know is that behind the scenes at these organizations in their content teams, across all their teams. There’s boardrooms, breakout rooms that have whiteboards in them. And on those whiteboards, they write names of people that they would love to bring in. This happens all the time. So if a content team is sitting around brainstorming and they’re like, we need new we need some some sort of we need something in q three that’s all about life cycle emails.

Who do we know that can create some life cycle email report for us? Let’s say. Now we don’t know that that’s what they’re thinking. You have to make them think that with your marketing to begin with, and your job is to get your name on that board. So how do you get your name on the board?

What do you have to do to get seen by the people who are writing names on boards?

Do you have any ideas?

I mean, create content that they would see.

Promote content that you probably already have, but okay. Yes.

Yeah. I don’t have a ton of content, but I am starting to make it more regularly.

And it’s been really I actually have been having, like, a lot of fun with it, which is good.

Yeah.

Which is why the YouTube channel because I’m like, I think if I had more space to talk about things than, like, a three to five minute reel, then, yeah, it’ll just it’ll be really good.

So, so then we have to figure out how to get it in front of them.

Yeah.

K. So that’s a whole question.

There’s tools. Right? Like, we can go back through and look through LinkedIn sales navigator and other tools like that.

Unfortunately, you can’t target ads directly at people on LinkedIn, which I think is a major miss, but whatever. Mhmm. I get that is creepy. So, okay, there’s that. But then there’s, like, forming relationships as well. Mhmm. How do you figure out let’s say it takes three months to kind of ramp up a bit of a relationship, let’s say.

So you have to start now Mhmm.

In order to be on their radar at in the mid at the end of q two.

So how can who are the people that you need to form that relationship with? Let’s go into LinkedIn sales navigator, find everybody at HubSpot who and and other HubSpot like, businesses because a lot of them have shared little private Slack groups that they’re in together. So head of content at Intercom knows head of content at HubSpot. If their their influencers are talking about you, even lightly, they they reshare a post you did in that Slack group that they’re all in together or WhatsApp or whatever the thing might be.

Good. Now your name is circulating. So it’s like in sales navigator who’s a senior content strategist who is like a content acquisition, editor. If there’s one of those out there, that’s a no brainer to just flat out pitch them on that.

But find who they are, make a list in LinkedIn sales navigator, save them as a list. Great. And now you start to do your account based marketing approach, but in this case, it’s not selling a service. It’s selling you as you, expert.

They need to know. Does that mean you have to get on some podcast? You use SparkToro a bit to see what they’re reading, what they’re thinking about, where they’re doing that?

Yeah.

But when it comes down to it, it could also just be like, that’s a lot of plates spinning. You could also just, like, target one person. Say like Mhmm. Okay. Every week, twice a week, I’m going to do something. Do x thing for that person. And you might get so targeted that you just send them a gift.

Say, I have something cool for you. I don’t know how to get in front of you, so I’m sending you these donuts. I hope this is your address.

Whatever that might be, and they’re not used to getting those things. Right? They’re just a lowly content person. So there’s lots of ways around it. Direct might be the cheapest way.

Cool.

Yeah. Okay. Yep.

It’s gonna be really high value. I think that they just don’t yeah. I know it’s hard to start doing that that work, but yeah. Anyway, I’m excited for you. Okay.

Yeah. And well and just like some of these things that I’m finding are literally blowing my mind. Yeah.

I can’t wait to have a hundred and, like, break it all down. It’s like it’s so crazy.

So part two to the question is I’ve been trying to also collect other state of reports so that I kind of can break them down and see what people are including in these. So I have a couple, and I was just wondering if anybody or, Joe, if you know of any good ones that you read recently that you’re like, this was absolutely amazing. Like, Calendly has one on, like, the state of meetings and things like that. So, yeah, does that can anybody think of any reports?

CB Insights always does good state of reports, but they have their whole insights team now. Like, they’ve turned into just this giant research body, but they’ll, they’re good to look at CB Insights. Anybody else? Unbound, Sandra says maybe.

Experian. Yeah. Experian, Gartner. Amazing.

Yeah. Amazing.

Yeah.

Cool. Thank you.

Awesome. Okay. Good?

Cool. Thank you.

Thanks, Jess. Alright. Liezl. Measurable goal for March.

Yeah. Okay. So I have a couple. I wanna land two calls by the end of this week, at least. Okay.

And then schedule two workshops by the end of this month, but I’m hoping, like, by the end of next week as well. Nice. I just don’t know how heady of a thing it is.

Okay. Got this. I do.

My question is, so I created my diagnostic flywheel over the weekend. Great. And I I would like feedback on it if possible. It’s on my Notion board. Do you want me to just share my screen or how?

Share that screen. Let’s take a look. Anybody who has done a diagnostic or worked through it, it’s a great time to get your notes as well.

Let me know if you can see that.

Then.

Do you like it? Yeah. Okay. Good. It took me eight hours. So, you know, if I have to do it over again, that’s okay. I’ll just cry.

But it’s patterned after after, like, the product led growth flywheel because the people already really recognize that and really love that in the industry.

So that’s what I did. I want to do, like, these the same color as this or whatever, but these are the three breakdowns.

These are the phases.

These are the questions I ask Yeah.

Etcetera.

Right.

Just look at do you think my question is, do you think that this will give me the desired result of having them say, oh my gosh. We need to work with you right now.

Can you scroll back up to the flywheel?

Yep.

So when I complete this, what happens? So you walk me through it. Where does it start?

It starts, on analyze right here.

K. So retention.

Mhmm. Team insights behavior tracking. Then Then we move and that’s where we do, like, a red, yellow, green or a scoring of some kind on each of those? Okay.

Yep. So I was asking them yeah. So I’m part of a a life cycle marketing Slack group. And so a lot of these are panned after what people are who are experts in the field doing this every day actually ask in the Slack book or a group all the time. So these are things that help them also if I suggest.

Can I walk away with once this is done? Once I’ve gone through the diagnostic in your workshop, what do I what’s what’s changed for me?

You know where you need to improve. You know what you need to improve without knowing the how. So you could go do it yourself, but you feel just enough overwhelm and friction from it to say, you know what? I will have to do so much research to even figure out how to fill these little gaps or how to find this that I don’t want to. I wanna hire a lease.

K. And then I have, like, these pitch like, workshop pitches that me and Chad GPT came up with.

Okay.

But Yeah.

I think, like, the outcome so if I’m thinking about it as, like, okay. You’re so who’s someone that you would pitch this to? Not the person, but a brand.

I’m trying to think. Chili Piper comes to mind, but their sales led. Okay.

Let’s say Chili Piper.

We pretend. Yeah.

Cool. So Chili Piper, in their audience, there are a lot of people who should be hiring you. Okay. So you tell Chili Piper, hey. I’ve got this great diagnostic. You You don’t say it that way. That will help your users be better users of Chili Piper because they will know what to work on using Chili Piper?

Yeah. I’ll help them use Chili Piper faster.

Chili Piper is, like a intake form where they can just fill it out and get calls real fast from from people.

So yeah. Yeah.

So complete this and see to help your users take action faster so you can get more people through the funnel. And I know what they’re struggling with particularly. That’s why I chose Chili Piper.

But Yeah.

That’s really so cool. So I mean, it looks good.

The yellow, I think, maybe on the screen, the yellow is messing with my brain a bit. It looks like a rectangle. There’s something going on there. It might just be me. But the yellow is a little bit muted and, like, like, there’s a weirdness for me. But other than that, everything is really clear.

Yeah. I mean, I think if you can start, just pitch it to Yeah. People today. See what comes back.

Okay. So just pitch the flywheel, like, not even necessarily, like, a workshop.

No. The workshop. No. Don’t get me wrong.

You are Yeah.

Okay.

For two workshops scheduled this month.

They could both happen today. You could be done target met today. How do you do that?

It wouldn’t just be, hey. Look at this diagnostic.

Nobody knows what the fuck to do.

Right? So what I would frame it differently. Yeah. I would say, hey. Like, depending on what they’re struggling with, I can help you figure out where you’re where to begin or, not even that.

Yeah.

What to work on and what doesn’t need to work on.

Those guys are really big business question. What do I work on and what don’t I need to work on? Yeah.

But do I wanna get more targeted than that? Sorry.

My brain is like Yeah.

Well, it’s not gonna be that’s not like maybe it is. Maybe you do a single line pitch to a couple people that’s like, do your users need to know what to work on versus what not to be better users of Chili Piper?

Yeah. To watch this video or whatever. I don’t that’s not it. Yeah. But Right. Need to see I think you need to give a sample of who you are and Yeah.

What this diagnostic is all about by recording, not a custom one for every every brand. Just do one recording. The email can be custom. You’re just trying to knock through these things.

But do a video.

Put it on the landing page that has information about you, what makes you great, who’s trusted you before, why the right to trust you, what a workshop would look like, who you’ve presented for before. Just, like, really pull it out of the woodwork. Like, whatever Yeah. Anything.

Anything that you’ve done that’s remotely, like, oh, yeah. I somewhat indirectly consulted with that group. Cool. Right.

And then just walk through one section. So I’m just gonna give you a taste of what they will see in the workshop. And if you don’t love it, then you’re not gonna love the whole thing. But if you’re intrigued, if you think your audience will be intrigued, if they are struggling to know what to work on versus what not to work on, and that is possibly making them not as great a user of Chili Piper, then you can bring me in for this workshop.

I will run this thing for free, and I’ll promote it with my etcetera etcetera. But just show them, like, one part of it. Like, we’re gonna start with the analyzed part. Here’s how the workshop would run.

Here’s what this diagnostic is about. Walk them through it just like you would. And then Yeah. That’s it.

Call to action. Ping me. We can get this booked in this quarter.

Whatever it might be. Yeah.

But do you intend today?

K. I will.

You did the homework this weekend. Good job.

I did it. Thanks. Thanks. It worked hard. Thank you.

Cool. Any notes? Any other notes for Liesl other than Jess loves it?

Great. Thank you, Jess. Cool.

Alright. Andrew. Looks like last but not least, Andrew.

Hello. Hello.

Hello. Hello.

Mhmm. My, my measurable goal is that I will close one new retainer client this month.

Nice.

And that’s already on track. My question is around so this came up while we were doing the exercise around, like, what are you what are you the absolute best at, or what are you going to be the absolute best at? And something that has become clear to me is that, like, the the copywriting part, is probably not where, like, I’m the you know, I I right now, I’m working on a project with a partner.

Like, she’s a better copywriter than I am. She’s better at the, like, the research and all of that, and that’s that’s fine. That’s cool. That’s why I brought her in.

Yeah. And so where I sort of see myself wanting to move is, like, I and and as I was writing this out, it’s like, I want my thing to be around, like, finding the most valuable opportunities. So, you know, I work with b to b SaaS clients mostly on websites and landing pages. And so, like, the way I think of what I kinda wanna be known for is that it’s like, I’m gonna be the one who’s the best at, like, prioritizing the work that needs to be done of sort of, like, figuring out what you can ignore and where you’re gonna get the most bang for your buck and Mhmm.

Kind of, like, the most valuable opportunities.

And I guess, one, I’m wondering if that, like, is kind of a I guess I’m looking for, like, validation on that. And then I guess the second part is, like, I guess I you know, I’m starting to think more about, like, developing more CRO specific skills and, like, do I go down the route of, like, getting all the way in on, like, GA four and things like that that I’m, like, not super used to, or is that, like, a total waste of my time and, like, all of that kind of thing. So, like, I’d love it if I could be the kind of person who comes in. I look at everything holistically, and it’s like, here’s your number one spot.

Here’s number two. Here’s number three. Here’s how we can test this. And Mhmm. I chose an eagle because part of it is I don’t wanna be I’m, like, I’m above the little stuff.

And, like, and, like, I’m not going after seeds and worms.

Like, I’m going after like, give me an animal that’s, like, bigger than me.

Totally.

Yep. So, yeah, just just just that’s kinda where I am right now.

Okay. Cool. That’s fun.

I love that you’re getting there and that you’re seeing that.

Yeah. I wrote down we find and or something. I wrote down projects that crush.

I feel like there’s a lot of value in being that’s why people spend so much money on a direct response mailer, because it’s it’s going to crush, and it’s completely different from everything else you’re doing in marketing. It’s a pretty sure thing, and it costs a lot of money. But, like, you dedicate resources to that.

I don’t think so I think it’s great that you’re like, we’re gonna I I don’t mess around with piddly stuff. Good. Nobody in this room should either, and it’s good to position yourself as like, no. That’s not for me.

I don’t do that. It’s great that some someone else can work on your about page. It’s not gonna be the thing that’s going to explode your business. Like, let’s work on the thing that really will.

Otherwise, I’m I’m not of use to you. Great. And then what was the second part?

You had something else.

Oh, you had the No.

I said I said I I had the animal. I also said g a four, and you made a face.

Oh, yeah. No. So it reminded me when I was an early, like, a just starting out as a copywriter a year in, we worked I wrote copy for this, wealth investment fund guy.

And he had when you signed on with him, he he had a network of people who were great at things. Maybe I’ve told this before.

So if you need an estate lawyer, he doesn’t do a state law. He’s not an estate lawyer, but he knows a good one, and they’re part of his ecosystem, and you get private access to them. So that’s something to consider with things like GA four. You don’t wanna become a GA four expert. You don’t wanna go into that world full stop. It’s messy. It’s hard.

It’s hard all around, but you know it’s important. So who do you know that is good at that and that you can swap in and out of your team as needed? They don’t have to be full time. They’re just somebody that you bring in to work on a project upfront. That’s why I had Nicole Luke, who I worked with at Intuit. She’s an analytics, like, mastermind. Like, she’s freaking brilliant.

She didn’t wanna have a full time job, so I would just hire her to consult, come in for a couple hours. She’d build sad little amounts that I never talked her out of because I wasn’t her coach.

But you can go out and find those people and have them as, like, a secret private resource exclusively for clients.

And then you don’t have to know it. You just have to know who does know it and bring them in.

That helps. So and can I just ask so something that I kind of struggle with with this idea of, like, oh, I’m not, like I don’t know what my one thing is is, like, I wanna kind of have, like, a thing that I can pour a lot of, like that I can really, like, spend time on? Like, I carve out time every week to just work on developing this skill. Yes. And I’m trying to figure out what that is. I don’t know if there’s anything you can do to kinda, like I don’t know. Any guidance you can give to help me figure out what that is, but I don’t that’s a tough question.

I can keep, like, workshopping it with you as you bring new ideas. And I think that you’ve got something, though, with, like as a starting point. People don’t wanna work on low value stuff, and so much marketing feels like chaos. We’re all just guessing at everything.

We’re only doing this because we’re supposed to do it. No one really gave that much thought to it. And then a CEO or a CMO gets, like, annoyed. It’s like, can we just do something that’s gonna move the needle, please?

Like, I’m tired of posting comments on Reddit. What can we do? And you’re the guy who answers that.

I love that.

I think you just have to keep working it and then bring your ideas back, and we’ll get there.

I think it’s the big swing thing. I think that there’s something around that.

It’s the big swing doing business.

Swing, though. Right? Like a mailer. Like, it’s an eight part lumpy mailer kit. I’m not saying you do that.

I’m saying, like, that is a clear different tactic that nobody saw coming. Someone learned about it or they do it every year, and it always is, like, brings in incredible results. It’s a big swing because it’s so different from everyday marketing.

It’s not digital marketing. It’s old school. It’s like, it makes everybody feel uncomfortable in the room because we’re so used to, like, more ad spend, more emails.

So, yeah, I think that if you can figure out what big swing, how to revise that to get to a place where it’s like, it’s not just try something like a big swing homepage.

It’s like, what is it?

I don’t know.

You’ll get there.

K. That’s helpful. Thank you.

Cool. Awesome. Thanks. Alright. Y’all, we’re at the end of our time.

We’re either over if you have it in your calendar for sixty minutes or under if you have it in your calendar for ninety. It goes both ways.

But that’s it. No more questions in the room. So thank y’all. We will see you on Thursday for Ryze. Very cool session.

And, then, otherwise, we’ll see you next week for part two of you are a media brand. Alright.

Have a good one.

Bye. Thanks.

Worksheet 

Bold Differentiation

Worksheet 

Bold Differentiation

 

Transcript

Okeydoke. Alright. Welcome, y’all. Welcome to March. This is chaos month in, Copy School Pro, and we’re gonna start off, as we should, with the Cosmo quiz.

So this I don’t know if you had a chance to look at it, but this is my poor printout of it. Today, we’re gonna begin with the differentiation Cosmo quiz. It is in the document that was sent to you. Does anybody not have a copy of that?

It’s in your inbox.

I will show it to you as well quickly in case you’re like, what’s she even talking about?

This.

Okay. So this is what we’re talking about. It we’re here right now. For the next two weeks, we’re gonna get a little heavy on who are you and what do you sound like out there, because I’ve seen a lot of people being held back.

I don’t know what to post about. I don’t know what to say. There’s no traction. No one cares.

So let’s, like, push it. Let’s, like, make them care. Like, force them to care what’s what’s gonna happen. People will notice you.

Okay. That’s the idea.

So we’re gonna start with this really it’s a Cosmo quiz because it’s you’ll know. Anybody ever done a Cosmo or a Glamour quiz?

Yeah. Okay. Some of us are I did a lot of them as a teen, and I was always like, oh, you can game this so easily.

Sure. Fine. But just don’t then. So all you wanna do, we’re gonna take a little bit of time. You’ll choose one from each of these sections, and this is for you.

So you’ll it’s identifying you. So it’s in the first person, and if it’s in the second person, it’s you saying that to another person. So you’ll just choose one from each. Just go through and, like, tally it up on a piece of paper if you haven’t printed it off.

And then we’re going to tally up our points at the end. But don’t jump ahead and do that. We’re gonna take five minutes for this part, and then we’ll worry about tallies after. Okay? Five minutes. I’m gonna do it too.

Okay. Is everyone done?

No? Oh, okay. One more minute.

Okay. Let’s call it done. Now you go through, and this is very scientific and accurate, by the way. You go through and you’ll tally up the number of a’s, b’s, c’s, and d’s that you’ve got and pop them in here.

Do that right now and just, like, put up just, like, thumbs up or something so I know you’re done.

K. Abby and Andrew are done.

I missed you.

Jess is done.

And Stacy and Katie.

Cody.

Loving the blazer, Cody. Side note.

So Liesl’s gonna be a little bit late.

Jessica Johnson and Britney, we are waiting on you.

Okay. Since Jessica Johnson and Britney are off oh, Jessica said she’s done.

Great. Johnson, Britney, I’m assuming you’re on track or you’re busy doing something else, while we’re going through. So we’re going to move through to the point where we get our Cosmo quiz assessment.

More a’s than anything else. This is what’s up. More b’s than anything else. That’s what’s up. More c’s or d’s.

If these are true for you, if you got more c’s or d’s and nobody has to confess anything, I recommend that you go oh, good. You guys both done. I recommend that you go back through and do the assessment as a brand that you know of and admire. And I really do mean like a personality brand, like a person, and not necessarily like a like J. Crew. Like, J. Crew would get c’s across the board.

More like Gary v or anything like that. And you can start to better understand, some of the positives of kind of standing out and doing more. Does anybody wanna talk about a reaction you have to having completed this super important cosmo quiz?

Abby? Yeah.

I mean, I said it in the chat. I think the trouble is that it just, like, cycles too much. So, like yeah. I think one of my problems, and I’m not alone, and this group in having this is that some days, it’s like, yeah, like, I feel like I’m crushing it. And then other days, it’s like, I’m an absolute garbage person, and I shouldn’t be talking about copywriting because I suck so hard.

Yeah.

Okay. And others feel the same way, and that’s sort of the problem. Right? If you’re uncertain, then your brand reads as uncertain as well.

So it’s like a matter of pushing it, which is that question about, like, delusion that I had.

This I’m so I’m delusional of my self belief.

I think that that’s an important thing to be as, like, nutty as it may sound.

Don’t it’s just just like, if you’re gonna get out there and people are going to know your brand, it can’t be wishy washy. Right? Like, we can’t be.

We have to really say something. So that was the fun exercise to get us thinking about, and I do recommend that you go through it and retake the quiz as, again, Gary Vee or any of these other brands out there, that you know by name.

Now I wanna move on to getting a bit more real. So what I know is really common for copywriters, in particular, is, like, a tendency toward introversion and shyness, which isn’t really real because a lot of us think a lot of ourselves and think, no. I’m I’m actually pretty badass, and if more people knew that, like, dope.

But there’s also a sense of retreating into yourself.

So I want the the objective today is not just to sit here and be exactly who we are today. Otherwise, we wouldn’t take training. We wouldn’t wanna get better at anything. We would just, like, not show up. Like, ever, we wouldn’t even sign up for training like this and to have somebody encourage you, coach you to do more.

I know for a fact that the thing that is keeping most people when you have struggles in getting leads, it’s because nobody knows who you are. They might have heard of you once, but then they forgot about you. You gotta keep showing up. Your brand has to keep showing up.

So we wanna wake up your brand. Everybody can do this. We do this. I work on this with my coach.

We work on this stuff all the time. It’s it’s an always in progress challenge.

Okay. But what I would love you to do is take some time now to start working through this, and I’m gonna walk through these as we go. I’m not gonna give you, like, a ton of time to write in your answers. If you’ve already done the worksheet, then you already have your answers in there, and you might want to refine them a bit.

But I wanna be really clear. In order to be a world class brand, which is what your clients need to believe that you are, especially as you raise your rates, you have to have this shit locked down. You have to know in the whole world, I’m the absolute best at. When you if any of you already do hang around with people who are uber successful, they absolutely talk about themselves in ways that horrify the little like, for me, growing up in the nineties when, like, shoegazing was how you showed you were cool, when you were like, it was cool not to try, and it was, like, really lame to, like, talk yourself up.

So for me, I have, like, an allergic reaction to hearing this, but I know that it’s critical. I know that when x person says, oh, there’s nobody in the world that’s better than me at this, and that’s why Google hires me all the time, or they just don’t really support it. It just is.

You have to believe. You have to believe. You have to find a way to get there. You have to believe within the whole world.

Nobody, nobody in this room, nobody in any room is better than you at this thing. So start with and I want you to go bigger, like like, really knock through and make yourself feel like like your ego’s too big now. Like, calm down. Don’t, though.

Write it in the least calm down way possible. In the whole world, I am the absolute add in expletives if you want to. Best at what? Write it in now.

Write it anywhere now.

Don’t think forever about it. Just what’s your fucking thing? Just write it down.

When you read it back, you need to know it sounds delusional.

Then you’re probably on the right track.

K? Why do people not just love you, but, like, want to be you? Why?

Write that in next.

And if it includes that your hair looks dope on a regular basis, that is fine. That shouldn’t be the whole thing, but that can be a thing. List it out. List out all your awesome if you want to or just focus on one thing.

Also, don’t list out lots of things you’re good at. Just the one core thing that you’re good at and then other things that make you feel good about yourself.

K.

Alright. Now I had to do this animal kingdom exercise a couple times over the last year and a half, where gorillas and peacocks were, floated.

I recommend that you think about which which animal you are in the animal kingdom. And if you’re not sure, just choose a fucking badass animal. Something really even if it’s badass because it’s the cutest thing you’ve ever seen in your life, but it has to be it can’t be a worm. Abby. It can’t be a worm. It has to be something, yeah, that you can stand behind and that I would say if you’re not sure that people have a feeling about.

So in the animal kingdom, what are you?

Be a child about it. Don’t be smart about it. Don’t be too clever.

Just be a kid.

Okay? Alright. Now everybody who was like, sometimes I’m this, sometimes I’m that, this line is for you. When you have a twinge of self doubt, when something gets in your way, sometimes it’s a whole day of it, sometimes it’s just a just a blip.

What do you remember? What do you tell yourself? What is your motto? What is your thing to get you through?

You may already have it. If you don’t, homework is to go find it.

So what is that thing that you tell yourself when you have doubt about being that animal, about why people love you, about what your thing really is?

Nice, Britney. Nice.

Okay?

And that brings us to the last one, moat building, which is really what everybody AI taught us. You have got to build a moat around who you are, your skills, what you bring to the table, a moat that a bot cannot get through. So how are you building not just a moat, but a super fucking wide brand moat?

What are you doing? What is your thing? How are you making that moat happen?

Moe equals nobody can touch you.

It it shouldn’t probably isn’t a point of, differentiation. That’s like that’s that’s just what got the castle standing, but rather what’s the thing around you where you have to be increasingly widening it, adding new moats beyond the moat so nobody can drop a bridge and, like, hit your castle and destroy you. The moat that keeps you being Katie Peacock.

Untouchable. What keeps you untouchable? And if it doesn’t exist yet, that’s why it says I’m building because it probably doesn’t exist yet.

Okay. Alright.

Does anybody wanna share any of their answers? You don’t share all of them. Anything stand out for you that you feel like cool.

Otherwise, I’ll call on you.

Britney’s come on camera. Is that volunteering? Okay. Britney, let’s hear it.

It’s my sorry for not being able to get on earlier.

Oh, no worries.

So these are basic, but in the whole world, I’m the absolute best at seeing the real problem under the noise.

K.

People love me because I elevate every space, and I see the need and show up without asking.

In the animal kingdom, it’s funny, like, in my house, we have this joke, like, be a fucking tiger.

Okay. Because the spiritual meaning of that is intuitive, senses truth, grounded, leadership can be, you you know, silent, but then also can has power when needed.

Love. But, like, then also I’m like, I have a I kinda like the fox too. Like, good mane, clever, smart, like, gets the job done with few resources sometimes.

Yes.

So when I have a twinge of doubt, I remember sometimes a fox can be a fucking tiger.

So it’s just kinda like the world is our oyster. Right? Like, we can be who we need to be for the moment.

When we encompass kind of, like, that essence, like, the deep down essence.

And then the moat one, I don’t totally understand, but I guess for me, something as I have been building in the last six months, I just have to a, this is like a practical thing, but just, like, keep my reserves healthy so that I’m with. Meaning, like, everything I’ve read about negotiation is that the moment you go into, like, neediness, you lose. And so how do I blinkslate and just with or without you, this is happening.

So, like, a a reserve working on my daily value, like like, I’m just gonna be clear about what I offer and, just a radical commitment to to offering value, I guess, is my moat. But it’s too vague, I know, but I’m working on it.

Cool. And that’s a good thing to work on. Right? Like, I’ve been thinking about our moat for a couple years and have only just kinda got to a place where I’m like, I think this is I think it’s these things.

But the moat might actually be somewhat, like, a even a channel sometimes. Like, what’s the space you’re going to own completely so that anybody who’s, like so nobody can can touch you there. So it’s too late for anybody else who tries to get in, and that could be a book, could be a series of books. Right?

Those sorts of things. That that doesn’t mean it has to be that, though. So I would just, like, keep letting your brain work on, how do I build a moat? What does my moat look like?

How do I make sure that the fortress really is protected, not just by me and my skills, but by everything I’ve done with the channels around me to prevent anybody from coming and taking share from me.

So give it thought.

It doesn’t have to answer it immediately.

Yeah.

What do you think about, so I did some cold calling last week for, like I have a a smaller digital marketing thing, and it went it actually went great. And the feedback that I’m getting is people actually want to talk to the person. They don’t want your setter. They don’t want your salesperson.

They want the person. And so for me, that also plays into mode. Like, hey. Like, when when you’re working with our team, like, at the end of the day, if you need me, like, here’s my cell phone.

So I feel like that’s motive, but also finite. So I’m going you know? Yeah. The resources around your time are finite, but I do like like, just call me directly.

Like, let’s cut the fuss. You know?

Totally.

I that’s great. That’s awesome. And that’s something to think about and, like, figure out how that fits into a bigger brand strategy, having access to you. What does that mean?

In order for someone to want to have access to you, they need to have put you on some level of authority based pedestal. Doesn’t mean that’s always true, but it’s probably true that to get more people and if they care about talking to the person, I need to be the person. So going back through and revisiting everything on here to make sure that you’re, like, nailing it across the board, And then it’s a matter of, I think, then come with other questions around okay. But, like, I don’t scale.

Okay. Well, if you don’t scale, a lot of experts don’t scale, and they raise their rates accordingly. And you only call people who are very likely to be an absolute good fit because you have to choose the right people to call. But I think that’s cool.

I’m so glad that your cold calling went well.

Yeah. It was wild, actually. It was encouraging, and, and I I also was surprised that I had kind of a script, but, actually, people really just, like, almost want one sentence. It’s like the script got condensed to so much shorter than I thought.

But Amazing.

Nice open loop too because everyone’s like, what was the sentence? Tell me the sentence.

But that’s cool. That’s your IP. You have that? Good. That’s awesome. Okay. Also, I love show up without asking.

I wrote that down and circled it. I think if you can live that value, we show up without asking. It’s interesting.

So cool. Any other feedback for Britney?

No? Awesome. Thanks, Britney. Anybody else wanna share?

Anybody else feel anyone if you’re like, I don’t know about this part. Also, like, throw it out there. We can give you some some notes, some encouragement.

I do. You both?

Okay. So I’m struggling with, like, the whole in the whole world I’m the absolute best at.

I have life cycle marketing or, like, decoding human behavior and trust so that SaaS brands can have the life cycle marketing that runs smoothly. I don’t know. But I feel like the thing that I’m best at is seeing life cycle marketing in everything. And so, like, all different patterns of, like, marketing or life. And so I can see how it fits together. And so I can see how their people can then smoothly go through the funnel. But that’s a lot of words.

It’s a lot. And it’s, like, it’s not something that somebody would say about you Yeah. Yet. Right?

Because it’s it’s just not. Right. So what is it? Like, when you think about I’m not gonna name names, but think about somebody who has so much undeserved ego.

I think we all know who.

There’s many of them, but so much shocking amounts of self confidence in spite of everything.

That it it it drives their success in, like, stunning ways.

We can say a thing about each of those people. Any of those people that come to mind for you, you can say they’re really good at this. They’re they’re, like, not just really good that they’re they dominate that thing. Even if they’re not actually the best at it in the in the whole world. So if there’s a sense of I’m going back to nineteen eighties, Donald Trump. We’re not talking about current. Nineteen eighties Donald Trump, the art of the deal.

Everybody, he built a great moat with that. So I’m gonna I’m going to elevate my brand from being the New York guy who has buildings to being, like, the art of the deal guy globally.

Great moat.

In the world, it was assumed that he was the absolute best at putting deals together.

Didn’t really matter if it was true.

The point was not, let’s be let’s be rational. Let’s have proof for everything that we do. All the stuff that the rest of us actually do take seriously. Like, no. I have to be able to stand behind it. I have to prove it, though.

Throw that out for a while and just just be, like, really egotistical.

With that in mind, Liezl, can you, like, embarrass yourself with with how ridiculous your state like, I would push it really hard. If it’s finding patterns, then whatever that might be, k. Now make it, like, make us feel weird about your level of absolute, unordered self confidence there.

I’m trying to think. I don’t know. Okay.

I’m the absolute best at making life cycle marketing work. Doesn’t matter if, like, what where the market is going.

It doesn’t matter if there’s AI. It doesn’t matter if email goes away. I’m the absolute best. I’m making life cycle marketing work no matter the platform and no matter the medium, I guess, or market. Getting there.

I don’t know.

I think it’s getting there. Oh, we’re not gonna get there right now. But I think that it’s a good exercise to go forward, keep pushing on that, sharing them in Slack, or just, like, just, like, push it like, just talk it through with yourself, with your partner, like, whatever it takes, to get there. And then that’s who you are, and everything you say has to just be part of that.

Yeah? Awesome.

Yeah. Push it. Push it push it.

Cody says, mine’s a bit obnoxious, so I’ll share it. Can you come off mute and say it, Cody?

Sure.

So I put, I was using Chat GPT to help me since it knows me so well, and now I had a time limit. But, so it says an unmatched ability to sniff out hidden profit, optimizing shit so ruthlessly that every dollar in ad spend works harder. While everyone is guessing, I’m engineering conversions with the precision of a master strategist.

Nice. Badass. Great.

Cool. Optimizing shit so ruthlessly that every dollar in ad spend, I would just change works harder to some. I know. It this is a little weak. Yeah. No. But the start of it was so, like like, punchy in the face kind of, like, woah.

And then it was, like, works harder. So just fix that part. I know. I know.

I I caught it too.

But yeah. Yeah. That’s cool. Awesome.

Britney, what were you saying about can we give, Leisel examples using life cycle marketing? Is there anything you wanted to add there?

Britney’s busy. Okay.

But if anybody has any examples, okay, throwing it out to the group for Liesl, then, please, go back to that. Cool. Abby says I wanna be the absolute best at selling, period.

I am the absolute best at selling, period.

Yes.

Present tense. You’re already there. No one’s there’s no certification coming. There’s no stamp of approval coming.

You’re just there. Okay. Anybody else any other shares?

If it makes you feel uncomfortable, that’s good.

Okay.

I’ll share.

It feels the reason that it feels uncomfortable is because you literally taught me this, and so I’m like, can we just remove you from, like, people?

Remove. Let’s let’s just pretend you don’t exist. Okay. Cool.

So in the whole world, I’m the absolute best at life cycle email strategy. When I talk to people who think they know anything about, life cycle email strategy, they realize they need to sit down and listen because they don’t actually know anything.

So that’s that’s that.

K. In the animal kingdom okay. I don’t know why this popped into my head, but I picked a moose.

Okay. And yeah. It’s very Canadian.

Yeah. What came to me after was it’s because they’re elusive. They’re rare. Everybody’s always like, I want to see a moose in real life.

Oh.

People stop when they’re around. Like, you literally have to stop your car. If you see a moose, you’re like, oh my god. I need to stop. You’ve heard of a moose, and you’re like, oh, damn. But then when you see one, you’re like, oh, fuck. Like, I actually had no idea.

And then when I have a twinge of self doubt, I remember that there’s a white dude spouting shit on LinkedIn who doesn’t know anything, who’s acting more confident than you and making more money than you, and so that needs to change.

And then I’m building a super wide brand moat with the state of report that I’m doing, so the state of free trial onboarding sequences in twenty twenty five.

Nice. And I just decided this weekend, I’m gonna start a YouTube channel as well.

Okay.

Build that moat. Yep. Amazing. Okay. Wait. Why do people fucking love you?

Because I’m really smart and great at business, and people always think that I’m really cool.

Okay. Dig it.

And I like that. Cool.

Excellent.

Awesome. Good.

Okay.

Alright. Britney says you have Riz. Awesome. I said Riz in front of my nephew, and he nearly died. He was like, now That word’s dead.

Okay.

Jessica’s up on the absolute best at coaching people through writing and publishing their book. Try harder, Jessica.

Excellent.

Okay.

Wonderful.

Let’s Stacy, are you going to share yours?

Yes. I’m going to because it’s so weak that I need to share it so I can make it better.

Okay. Let’s do it.

I mean, it’s just it’s the the kernels of it are there, but hearing the oomph of the other ones was just like, oh my god. This is so weak.

So the the best in the world is I’m I’m doing this about my, about my software.

So Yeah.

It’s I I built the absolute best AI for marketing that creates the most value with the least amount of effort, which is Okay. Objectively true. It just doesn’t have enough oomph.

And people fucking love me because I speak my mind. I’m successful, laid back, can figure out anything. I’ve I’ve done I’ve lived a thousand lifetimes already.

I I don’t know. I guess they think I’m a cool person.

My animal kingdom is an albino Siberian tiger because it wasn’t enough to just be a tiger. It had to be a very, very rare thing, and the Siberian tiger is, like, the apex predator. So, that’s why I picked all of those, along with the tiger, spiritual aspects too. So it’s a complete package.

When I have a twinge of self doubt, I remember I’m Stacy Moore.

That’s so Oh, nice.

That’s baller.

I mean and that is really true.

So that part, I feel good about, the the strength of that one.

The moat, I don’t have anything strong there.

I just you know, the the the AI of choice for the best marketers in the world is is what I wrote.

So open to feedback.

Okay. Feedback.

Room. Everyone here knows how it’s supposed to sound, but we’re aiming for Nice, Abby. Awesome. K. Notes for Stacy.

Let’s start with in the whole world and the absolute best at.

Does anybody remember it?

I was expecting more because No.

Because it’s totally not memorable.

It was it was to do with your AI.

But, Stacy, I feel like we can always trust you to bring, like, the kind of Apex confidence. So I was expecting you to just be like, in the whole world, I’m the best at everything.

That’s funny.

I think that’s the problem.

Right? It was not memorable, and it’s not in keeping with what we know of you, Stacy, which yeah.

Anybody else have any notes to help Stacy out here?

We’re pushing it.

Questions for Stacy to help her?

Cody, Abby, looks like you’re both thinking.

Yeah. I was I was thought of one, but then I was like, it’s still not good enough. But, like, turning, like, chatbots or AI bots into, like, your world like, world class copywriter, like, something around that. Maybe. I don’t know. Because it’s like you make the AI, like, the the best copywriter, like, they could ever work with.

But it’s not enough.

Like, the easiest blank in the least amount of effort.

So that’s just like marketing talk. Right? But, like, what do those things like how do you make it obnoxious now so that we’re pushing it in the right direction?

I don’t know. I mean, I make AI that can do your job better than you so you can so you can wow your clients. I mean, it’s really the thing. You know? But it can’t because it has to have the people, but but that’s the, you know, the gist of it.

But it’s not a cop it’s not copywriting AI. It’s just it it’s writing is one thing. It’s strategy research writing. It’s so much more than copywriting.

Yeah. That’s one component. I’m looking at the at the comments.

Yeah.

So that’s fair. So if we get rid of copywriting, but then there’s the question, okay. Do your job better than you is nice. It’s obnoxious, but it’s also terrifying.

Yeah. It is. It it is, and it’s not it’s not the ethos of what I’m doing too, but but something in that direction that actually fits is Yeah. You know, is a good thing to think about.

Exactly. I would just think about that. Going in that direction of, okay.

So if do your job better than you is sticky, it’s just not what’s your dream. Who wished if you’ve always wished you could clone yourself Yeah.

You know?

But, like, you know, it’s not that it’s not that either because I don’t want I don’t want people to think it’s like an AI clone of yourself because it’s not that either.

Yeah. Yeah. I would just work on how do you make the do your job better than you fit now with what you really believe in?

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Because it’s it’s something that we can we can see it now. We can, like, understand it and, like, feel slightly threatened by it and, like, wanna react to it. And that’s, like, what we’re going for. Right? A reaction to our brand.

Hopefully, the right reaction, but some people will find will be angry with us.

Okay. Alright. Thanks everyone for sharing. Your next objective, your homework is to do something super lame, which I do recommend.

I’ve actually got mine on order. This is my little little dude, is to create a visual of that animal.

Really bring it to life with AI and then get can put it in Canva and go get it shipped to you and put it next to your computer. And when you’re not sure who you are and what you do and why people do care, not just should care, but do care, then you could look at that.

That is it. Go through, revisit this.

Make sure you got a brand, a good brand that you stand behind. Alright. Next week, we will be talking about this as there’ll be a part two. Basically, it requires that you have done the work from this week to move forward in week two.

Those are the only two parts of chaos month that, like, work together. Okay.

Now we’re in that part of the day where we have q and a. You have a question. Please raise your hand.

We’ll start with what should we start with? Not a win.

Your goal for the month of March, a measurable goal. It can’t be qualitative. It has to be quantitative. What do you what is your goal? Target for March for March. Abby, you’re up first, so now you have you’re on the spot to come up with it immediately.

Just close another client, I think.

Put a number on that. One one client. One client at? What’s their value?

Oh, at fifty with an optimization retainer.

You already are doing that every single month. That’s Yeah.

So I wanna keep doing it. I wanna keep doing it.

I’m like lose momentum. Keep going.

I’m waiting for the, like, the the you know, when you think you’ve got it all figured out, and then the dip comes, you’re like, I didn’t have it figured out.

It’s all okay.

Alright.

Okay. So, yeah, my question is when someone comes to me and they don’t want, like, my standardized offer as it is, I don’t know what to do. Like, I will drop my prices. I will panic. Like, I just it’s a massive blind spot for me. So I got I got this email. I’m gonna pop it in the chat if that’s okay.

Okay.

So they want a sales page revision and an evergreen sales email series.

And I just don’t know what to do with that because I can’t be like, well, you need they want evergreen. It’s fifty k.

And I can’t be like, I I’m not gonna put it in VIP week. Like, I’d love to still close them at, like, twenty, thirty k, but I don’t know.

Dot what is happening here? Questions galore. Okay. Where did this email come from?

Like, is this, we’re reaching out to you first email or has it Yeah.

This was a, a lady someone filled in my, like, I want to work with you form.

Okay. So you haven’t spoken with them yet?

I booked a call for Friday, and I Okay. Wanted to check-in first because otherwise, I’ll just close, like, something stupid.

What makes you believe that this lead knows and is right about what they want?

Like, everybody has an idea. Like, you go to the mall and you’re like, I want new jeans, but then you, like, try on not jeans and they’re dope. And you’re like, never mind. I want these, and maybe I also want new jeans.

We don’t know. We just think we know. Right? And so I mean, extremely successful is, like, confident.

Right.

So you have looked into their brand, and it’s an extremely successful brand.

Well, she said her freebie is extremely successful.

Because it’s got forty thousand downloads?

Well, it it says a revision of our extremely successful free or free freebie, with sixty seven five percent over forty thousand.

Do you do you believe these numbers?

Do you believe that they have a seventy five percent open rate across nine emails? Yeah. You do?

Yeah. I get that because it’s a Everybody here.

By email eight, you’ve still got a seventy five percent open rate?

No. Across the emails. Like, it averages around that.

I have worked in email a long ass time, and that is suspicious to me. I’m like, hold on. Let’s open up. Show me show me your like, let’s go into your CRM right now.

So it’s not that, Abby. And I’m not like but I would look at this and go like, thank you for believing you know what you need. That’s that’s great. You’ve given some thought to this. Awesome.

Now you throw that part out and you back the conversation into the actual conversation that you always have. Get on the call. Thank you. I saw everything. I saw, like, your list. It’s a great grocery list. Let’s talk right now, though, instead about, like, what’s going on in your business right now.

Why are we talking today? If it’s because they need a sales page revision, they’ve come to the wrong place. You’re not a sales page revisionist. That’s not if they’re looking for that, they can find that anywhere online. There’s, like, a million people who will do that. So why did they come to you? What’s going on in their business?

Why you? Why now? Always those same questions.

So I would just back up.

There’s still a prospect for the project, aren’t they? Sales page revision, the it’s for an evergreen flow?

Yeah. So they want an evergreen funnel. They just don’t need the whole thing. So they say.

The course is older.

We haven’t really done much with it since the launch, but it’s core content for us, and I want it to be a bigger part of our environment.

So so what are we hearing? What do you hear when you hear that? Like, really quick reaction to reading that. Forget about just even I want it to be a bigger part of our environment.

That they they want an evergreen sales funnel that works.

Yeah. They want what does it I would like okay. So they their problem internally, they’re thinking and I think they meant ecosystem, but they said environment. I don’t know what that means.

But I would dig into that. Like, what do you mean a bigger part of, like, this world that you’re creating for your product lineup, I assume?

Get them to, like I’d start there. Talk to me about what’s going on with this.

And then looking at your ballpark project budget, we’re probably about halfway in between a VIP week and a full funnel because we have at least some of the assets already.

No. I think this is, like for me, Abby, I look at this, and I just get them into your standardized offer. Like, that’s your objective.

This is fine that they think they want these things, but the more they start talking Mhmm. Because you’re asking all of the questions you would ask anybody who it doesn’t even matter what they put in their intake form. Fine. Fine.

Great. Cool. It’s not that you ignore it, but you really don’t have to think that much about it. Find the parts that are their obvious, like, openings in a sales conversation.

Now we want it to be a bigger part of our environment. There again, I don’t know what that word means. You’ve done all of these things.

You’ve had success with this freebie.

Why are they coming to you right now for an evergreen funnel, though?

That’d be my like, that’s the question.

And what’s stopping them? Have they done a webinar before? Because you largely just do evergreen webinar funnels, don’t you, Abby? Yeah. Yeah. So I’m looking at that going, like, have you tried a webinar funnel before?

How did that go? Oh, you didn’t? Why not? The usual, like, sales questions. I wouldn’t worry about a single thing that they’ve said in there, But, like, pull on the obvious, for me, it for me, it feels like, wow. This is a good lead purely because they’ve given you so much information. They’ve told you things that are pretty revealing about the place that they’re at in their business.

They care about this or they wouldn’t have told you this much. They’ve looked through your offers, so they’re doing all of the good research that’s like buying signals.

But they wanna believe they’re a VIP week, which you have to get off your site. And maybe you’d be a full funnel, but they have some of the assets already. So all you have to do is move them from where they are toward, oh, we do need a full funnel. It doesn’t matter that some of the assets are ready already. Every funnel you start with, as far as they know, already has assets ready.

Mhmm.

It’s got nothing to do with adjusting price because you’re not doing some assets. That’s always the case. They’re not hiring you for assets. They’re not hiring you for what’s there to fill in the gaps. They’re hiring you for a high performing evergreen funnel.

That’s it.

Would you would you do the diagnostic then for something like this so I can show them, like, they’re not as in the green as they think?

Probably.

If I would do it in advance just to make sure, like, is this going to make me look better or worse when it’s done? If it’s a good diagnostic, it should always make you look better in the end.

But this is a different sort of scenario. So, yeah, I would try the diagnostic out first, make sure it works, walk them through it. Yeah. I don’t I guess I’m just wondering.

I think that more of it has to do, Abby, with you once again need to, like, look at your your your brand, who you are.

There’s no modifying your price. Why would you suddenly modify?

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. That’s helpful. Yeah.

And I don’t mean to if it’s coming off harsh, I don’t mean to No.

No. But I need it.

Yes. It’s fifty thousand doll that’s what your rate is fifty thousand dollars. If I walk into Louis Vuitton and I want a twenty thousand dollar bag, but I don’t need the handle that comes with it because I have my own handle. Nobody’s like, oh, then it’s only eighteen thousand.

The price is the price no matter what. That’s it’s just the price. It’s Fifty thousand dollars. That is the thing.

Let me walk you through how I get results for people with this funnel. Talk about your results, always your results, what you do, how great it works. Suddenly, they’re able to find fifty thousand, and those assets that exist don’t really matter. For this old course, they haven’t invested in, and they know that there’s money hiding in it.

You’re gonna unhide that money with your process.

Mhmm. That’s a really helpful mindset, chef. Thank you. By the way, they they said they wanted someone whose copy hackers trained.

Yeah. They did.

Just kidding. Just kidding. That’s awesome. Look. Everybody’s got your back here too, Abby. You already I think you do know.

It’s a mindset thing. Just practice.

Yeah.

Okay. Thanks, everyone.

Thanks, Debbie.

Job, Abby. Jess, what’s your measurable target, goal, whatever it might be, for March?

So my goal is to finish opting into the hundred free trials. So I’m at fifty four right now.

And this is as part of your bigger study?

Yes.

Excellent.

Yes.

So you’re gonna finish so you’ve got forty six more that you need to do this month.

Yeah. I can pretty much opt into if I like, in three hours because I’m taking, like, screenshots and stuff of things. Yeah. I can do, like, twelve in three hours.

It’s there’s a lot. There’s a lot. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Good.

Nice. So yeah.

So my question is when we first talked about this, you were saying to release this in partnership radar or find out who I reach it reach out to to, like, do this with?

What what would you recommend that I do at this time?

Yeah. Definitely. I think, I think what’s important to know is that behind the scenes at these organizations in their content teams, across all their teams. There’s boardrooms, breakout rooms that have whiteboards in them. And on those whiteboards, they write names of people that they would love to bring in. This happens all the time. So if a content team is sitting around brainstorming and they’re like, we need new we need some some sort of we need something in q three that’s all about life cycle emails.

Who do we know that can create some life cycle email report for us? Let’s say. Now we don’t know that that’s what they’re thinking. You have to make them think that with your marketing to begin with, and your job is to get your name on that board. So how do you get your name on the board?

What do you have to do to get seen by the people who are writing names on boards?

Do you have any ideas?

I mean, create content that they would see.

Promote content that you probably already have, but okay. Yes.

Yeah. I don’t have a ton of content, but I am starting to make it more regularly.

And it’s been really I actually have been having, like, a lot of fun with it, which is good.

Yeah.

Which is why the YouTube channel because I’m like, I think if I had more space to talk about things than, like, a three to five minute reel, then, yeah, it’ll just it’ll be really good.

So, so then we have to figure out how to get it in front of them.

Yeah.

K. So that’s a whole question.

There’s tools. Right? Like, we can go back through and look through LinkedIn sales navigator and other tools like that.

Unfortunately, you can’t target ads directly at people on LinkedIn, which I think is a major miss, but whatever. Mhmm. I get that is creepy. So, okay, there’s that. But then there’s, like, forming relationships as well. Mhmm. How do you figure out let’s say it takes three months to kind of ramp up a bit of a relationship, let’s say.

So you have to start now Mhmm.

In order to be on their radar at in the mid at the end of q two.

So how can who are the people that you need to form that relationship with? Let’s go into LinkedIn sales navigator, find everybody at HubSpot who and and other HubSpot like, businesses because a lot of them have shared little private Slack groups that they’re in together. So head of content at Intercom knows head of content at HubSpot. If their their influencers are talking about you, even lightly, they they reshare a post you did in that Slack group that they’re all in together or WhatsApp or whatever the thing might be.

Good. Now your name is circulating. So it’s like in sales navigator who’s a senior content strategist who is like a content acquisition, editor. If there’s one of those out there, that’s a no brainer to just flat out pitch them on that.

But find who they are, make a list in LinkedIn sales navigator, save them as a list. Great. And now you start to do your account based marketing approach, but in this case, it’s not selling a service. It’s selling you as you, expert.

They need to know. Does that mean you have to get on some podcast? You use SparkToro a bit to see what they’re reading, what they’re thinking about, where they’re doing that?

Yeah.

But when it comes down to it, it could also just be like, that’s a lot of plates spinning. You could also just, like, target one person. Say like Mhmm. Okay. Every week, twice a week, I’m going to do something. Do x thing for that person. And you might get so targeted that you just send them a gift.

Say, I have something cool for you. I don’t know how to get in front of you, so I’m sending you these donuts. I hope this is your address.

Whatever that might be, and they’re not used to getting those things. Right? They’re just a lowly content person. So there’s lots of ways around it. Direct might be the cheapest way.

Cool.

Yeah. Okay. Yep.

It’s gonna be really high value. I think that they just don’t yeah. I know it’s hard to start doing that that work, but yeah. Anyway, I’m excited for you. Okay.

Yeah. And well and just like some of these things that I’m finding are literally blowing my mind. Yeah.

I can’t wait to have a hundred and, like, break it all down. It’s like it’s so crazy.

So part two to the question is I’ve been trying to also collect other state of reports so that I kind of can break them down and see what people are including in these. So I have a couple, and I was just wondering if anybody or, Joe, if you know of any good ones that you read recently that you’re like, this was absolutely amazing. Like, Calendly has one on, like, the state of meetings and things like that. So, yeah, does that can anybody think of any reports?

CB Insights always does good state of reports, but they have their whole insights team now. Like, they’ve turned into just this giant research body, but they’ll, they’re good to look at CB Insights. Anybody else? Unbound, Sandra says maybe.

Experian. Yeah. Experian, Gartner. Amazing.

Yeah. Amazing.

Yeah.

Cool. Thank you.

Awesome. Okay. Good?

Cool. Thank you.

Thanks, Jess. Alright. Liezl. Measurable goal for March.

Yeah. Okay. So I have a couple. I wanna land two calls by the end of this week, at least. Okay.

And then schedule two workshops by the end of this month, but I’m hoping, like, by the end of next week as well. Nice. I just don’t know how heady of a thing it is.

Okay. Got this. I do.

My question is, so I created my diagnostic flywheel over the weekend. Great. And I I would like feedback on it if possible. It’s on my Notion board. Do you want me to just share my screen or how?

Share that screen. Let’s take a look. Anybody who has done a diagnostic or worked through it, it’s a great time to get your notes as well.

Let me know if you can see that.

Then.

Do you like it? Yeah. Okay. Good. It took me eight hours. So, you know, if I have to do it over again, that’s okay. I’ll just cry.

But it’s patterned after after, like, the product led growth flywheel because the people already really recognize that and really love that in the industry.

So that’s what I did. I want to do, like, these the same color as this or whatever, but these are the three breakdowns.

These are the phases.

These are the questions I ask Yeah.

Etcetera.

Right.

Just look at do you think my question is, do you think that this will give me the desired result of having them say, oh my gosh. We need to work with you right now.

Can you scroll back up to the flywheel?

Yep.

So when I complete this, what happens? So you walk me through it. Where does it start?

It starts, on analyze right here.

K. So retention.

Mhmm. Team insights behavior tracking. Then Then we move and that’s where we do, like, a red, yellow, green or a scoring of some kind on each of those? Okay.

Yep. So I was asking them yeah. So I’m part of a a life cycle marketing Slack group. And so a lot of these are panned after what people are who are experts in the field doing this every day actually ask in the Slack book or a group all the time. So these are things that help them also if I suggest.

Can I walk away with once this is done? Once I’ve gone through the diagnostic in your workshop, what do I what’s what’s changed for me?

You know where you need to improve. You know what you need to improve without knowing the how. So you could go do it yourself, but you feel just enough overwhelm and friction from it to say, you know what? I will have to do so much research to even figure out how to fill these little gaps or how to find this that I don’t want to. I wanna hire a lease.

K. And then I have, like, these pitch like, workshop pitches that me and Chad GPT came up with.

Okay.

But Yeah.

I think, like, the outcome so if I’m thinking about it as, like, okay. You’re so who’s someone that you would pitch this to? Not the person, but a brand.

I’m trying to think. Chili Piper comes to mind, but their sales led. Okay.

Let’s say Chili Piper.

We pretend. Yeah.

Cool. So Chili Piper, in their audience, there are a lot of people who should be hiring you. Okay. So you tell Chili Piper, hey. I’ve got this great diagnostic. You You don’t say it that way. That will help your users be better users of Chili Piper because they will know what to work on using Chili Piper?

Yeah. I’ll help them use Chili Piper faster.

Chili Piper is, like a intake form where they can just fill it out and get calls real fast from from people.

So yeah. Yeah.

So complete this and see to help your users take action faster so you can get more people through the funnel. And I know what they’re struggling with particularly. That’s why I chose Chili Piper.

But Yeah.

That’s really so cool. So I mean, it looks good.

The yellow, I think, maybe on the screen, the yellow is messing with my brain a bit. It looks like a rectangle. There’s something going on there. It might just be me. But the yellow is a little bit muted and, like, like, there’s a weirdness for me. But other than that, everything is really clear.

Yeah. I mean, I think if you can start, just pitch it to Yeah. People today. See what comes back.

Okay. So just pitch the flywheel, like, not even necessarily, like, a workshop.

No. The workshop. No. Don’t get me wrong.

You are Yeah.

Okay.

For two workshops scheduled this month.

They could both happen today. You could be done target met today. How do you do that?

It wouldn’t just be, hey. Look at this diagnostic.

Nobody knows what the fuck to do.

Right? So what I would frame it differently. Yeah. I would say, hey. Like, depending on what they’re struggling with, I can help you figure out where you’re where to begin or, not even that.

Yeah.

What to work on and what doesn’t need to work on.

Those guys are really big business question. What do I work on and what don’t I need to work on? Yeah.

But do I wanna get more targeted than that? Sorry.

My brain is like Yeah.

Well, it’s not gonna be that’s not like maybe it is. Maybe you do a single line pitch to a couple people that’s like, do your users need to know what to work on versus what not to be better users of Chili Piper?

Yeah. To watch this video or whatever. I don’t that’s not it. Yeah. But Right. Need to see I think you need to give a sample of who you are and Yeah.

What this diagnostic is all about by recording, not a custom one for every every brand. Just do one recording. The email can be custom. You’re just trying to knock through these things.

But do a video.

Put it on the landing page that has information about you, what makes you great, who’s trusted you before, why the right to trust you, what a workshop would look like, who you’ve presented for before. Just, like, really pull it out of the woodwork. Like, whatever Yeah. Anything.

Anything that you’ve done that’s remotely, like, oh, yeah. I somewhat indirectly consulted with that group. Cool. Right.

And then just walk through one section. So I’m just gonna give you a taste of what they will see in the workshop. And if you don’t love it, then you’re not gonna love the whole thing. But if you’re intrigued, if you think your audience will be intrigued, if they are struggling to know what to work on versus what not to work on, and that is possibly making them not as great a user of Chili Piper, then you can bring me in for this workshop.

I will run this thing for free, and I’ll promote it with my etcetera etcetera. But just show them, like, one part of it. Like, we’re gonna start with the analyzed part. Here’s how the workshop would run.

Here’s what this diagnostic is about. Walk them through it just like you would. And then Yeah. That’s it.

Call to action. Ping me. We can get this booked in this quarter.

Whatever it might be. Yeah.

But do you intend today?

K. I will.

You did the homework this weekend. Good job.

I did it. Thanks. Thanks. It worked hard. Thank you.

Cool. Any notes? Any other notes for Liesl other than Jess loves it?

Great. Thank you, Jess. Cool.

Alright. Andrew. Looks like last but not least, Andrew.

Hello. Hello.

Hello. Hello.

Mhmm. My, my measurable goal is that I will close one new retainer client this month.

Nice.

And that’s already on track. My question is around so this came up while we were doing the exercise around, like, what are you what are you the absolute best at, or what are you going to be the absolute best at? And something that has become clear to me is that, like, the the copywriting part, is probably not where, like, I’m the you know, I I right now, I’m working on a project with a partner.

Like, she’s a better copywriter than I am. She’s better at the, like, the research and all of that, and that’s that’s fine. That’s cool. That’s why I brought her in.

Yeah. And so where I sort of see myself wanting to move is, like, I and and as I was writing this out, it’s like, I want my thing to be around, like, finding the most valuable opportunities. So, you know, I work with b to b SaaS clients mostly on websites and landing pages. And so, like, the way I think of what I kinda wanna be known for is that it’s like, I’m gonna be the one who’s the best at, like, prioritizing the work that needs to be done of sort of, like, figuring out what you can ignore and where you’re gonna get the most bang for your buck and Mhmm.

Kind of, like, the most valuable opportunities.

And I guess, one, I’m wondering if that, like, is kind of a I guess I’m looking for, like, validation on that. And then I guess the second part is, like, I guess I you know, I’m starting to think more about, like, developing more CRO specific skills and, like, do I go down the route of, like, getting all the way in on, like, GA four and things like that that I’m, like, not super used to, or is that, like, a total waste of my time and, like, all of that kind of thing. So, like, I’d love it if I could be the kind of person who comes in. I look at everything holistically, and it’s like, here’s your number one spot.

Here’s number two. Here’s number three. Here’s how we can test this. And Mhmm. I chose an eagle because part of it is I don’t wanna be I’m, like, I’m above the little stuff.

And, like, and, like, I’m not going after seeds and worms.

Like, I’m going after like, give me an animal that’s, like, bigger than me.

Totally.

Yep. So, yeah, just just just that’s kinda where I am right now.

Okay. Cool. That’s fun.

I love that you’re getting there and that you’re seeing that.

Yeah. I wrote down we find and or something. I wrote down projects that crush.

I feel like there’s a lot of value in being that’s why people spend so much money on a direct response mailer, because it’s it’s going to crush, and it’s completely different from everything else you’re doing in marketing. It’s a pretty sure thing, and it costs a lot of money. But, like, you dedicate resources to that.

I don’t think so I think it’s great that you’re like, we’re gonna I I don’t mess around with piddly stuff. Good. Nobody in this room should either, and it’s good to position yourself as like, no. That’s not for me.

I don’t do that. It’s great that some someone else can work on your about page. It’s not gonna be the thing that’s going to explode your business. Like, let’s work on the thing that really will.

Otherwise, I’m I’m not of use to you. Great. And then what was the second part?

You had something else.

Oh, you had the No.

I said I said I I had the animal. I also said g a four, and you made a face.

Oh, yeah. No. So it reminded me when I was an early, like, a just starting out as a copywriter a year in, we worked I wrote copy for this, wealth investment fund guy.

And he had when you signed on with him, he he had a network of people who were great at things. Maybe I’ve told this before.

So if you need an estate lawyer, he doesn’t do a state law. He’s not an estate lawyer, but he knows a good one, and they’re part of his ecosystem, and you get private access to them. So that’s something to consider with things like GA four. You don’t wanna become a GA four expert. You don’t wanna go into that world full stop. It’s messy. It’s hard.

It’s hard all around, but you know it’s important. So who do you know that is good at that and that you can swap in and out of your team as needed? They don’t have to be full time. They’re just somebody that you bring in to work on a project upfront. That’s why I had Nicole Luke, who I worked with at Intuit. She’s an analytics, like, mastermind. Like, she’s freaking brilliant.

She didn’t wanna have a full time job, so I would just hire her to consult, come in for a couple hours. She’d build sad little amounts that I never talked her out of because I wasn’t her coach.

But you can go out and find those people and have them as, like, a secret private resource exclusively for clients.

And then you don’t have to know it. You just have to know who does know it and bring them in.

That helps. So and can I just ask so something that I kind of struggle with with this idea of, like, oh, I’m not, like I don’t know what my one thing is is, like, I wanna kind of have, like, a thing that I can pour a lot of, like that I can really, like, spend time on? Like, I carve out time every week to just work on developing this skill. Yes. And I’m trying to figure out what that is. I don’t know if there’s anything you can do to kinda, like I don’t know. Any guidance you can give to help me figure out what that is, but I don’t that’s a tough question.

I can keep, like, workshopping it with you as you bring new ideas. And I think that you’ve got something, though, with, like as a starting point. People don’t wanna work on low value stuff, and so much marketing feels like chaos. We’re all just guessing at everything.

We’re only doing this because we’re supposed to do it. No one really gave that much thought to it. And then a CEO or a CMO gets, like, annoyed. It’s like, can we just do something that’s gonna move the needle, please?

Like, I’m tired of posting comments on Reddit. What can we do? And you’re the guy who answers that.

I love that.

I think you just have to keep working it and then bring your ideas back, and we’ll get there.

I think it’s the big swing thing. I think that there’s something around that.

It’s the big swing doing business.

Swing, though. Right? Like a mailer. Like, it’s an eight part lumpy mailer kit. I’m not saying you do that.

I’m saying, like, that is a clear different tactic that nobody saw coming. Someone learned about it or they do it every year, and it always is, like, brings in incredible results. It’s a big swing because it’s so different from everyday marketing.

It’s not digital marketing. It’s old school. It’s like, it makes everybody feel uncomfortable in the room because we’re so used to, like, more ad spend, more emails.

So, yeah, I think that if you can figure out what big swing, how to revise that to get to a place where it’s like, it’s not just try something like a big swing homepage.

It’s like, what is it?

I don’t know.

You’ll get there.

K. That’s helpful. Thank you.

Cool. Awesome. Thanks. Alright. Y’all, we’re at the end of our time.

We’re either over if you have it in your calendar for sixty minutes or under if you have it in your calendar for ninety. It goes both ways.

But that’s it. No more questions in the room. So thank y’all. We will see you on Thursday for Ryze. Very cool session.

And, then, otherwise, we’ll see you next week for part two of you are a media brand. Alright.

Have a good one.

Bye. Thanks.

Evergreen Webinar Funnels

Evergreen Webinar Funnels

Transcript

Okay. Fab. Okay. So, yeah, we’re looking at evergreen must haves when generating leads to the non demand webinar. So just to start, like, why webinars? Webinars are literally the gold standard for high quality lead gen.

They’re the closest thing that you can get to having a one to one sales call because they can actually see you. You can talk to them.

They’re committing to spending time with you. It’s not like a checklist that they can very easily download and have a look at. They’re actually when they sign up, they’re thinking, okay. I’m gonna spend forty five minutes with this person. So they tend to be a high quality lead because they’ve made that commitment.

Obviously, everyone knows here that I work with course creators, workshops still in b to b and SaaS, whatever industry you’re working in. Ninety one percent of b to b professionals say that webinars are their third type of content, and companies report that twenty to forty percent of webinar attendees become qualified leads and within the sales pipeline, which is pretty high. Like, if you think any other type of content, if you’re putting it out there, you’d expect maybe, like, two percent, to become leads.

Okay. Cool. So when it yeah. When it comes to webinars, I really believe that on demand is the way to go.

Why? Well, because then you can you can literally have it running twenty four seven as a way to generate leads. Whereas if you’re doing it live, obviously, there’s only so many times you can do it. And if even if you are like, I’m gonna do it every week, that’s likely gonna lead to burnout. Like, there are a lot of things that we’re juggling. Whereas if you just have it on demand, it can sell for you.

It’s also but it’s not just for us. It’s also for the clients, the people we’re selling to because when it’s on demand, they can actually fit it into their schedule. So if the live times don’t work for them, they can just watch it. I mean, I do I really do feel like in, you know, twenty twenty five is on demand is what people expect. Like, if you wanted to watch a show on Netflix and they were like, you have to schedule it. Do you wanna watch it, like, Tuesday at seven or Wednesday at nine? It’s just not how we’re used to consuming content.

It means that they can literally get the value the moment that they need it. They don’t have to wait till you’re next doing a live webinar. And, also, actually, on demand have higher opt in and watch rates, which really surprises people because I think people think with the urgency of live webinars, more people show up. But more and more webinar platforms are releasing, that’s not the case. Like, e webinar, for example, I think it was something like, sixty five percent watch it when it’s on demand versus forty percent live.

And seventy five percent when given the option will always choose on demand.

Okay. Cool. So you’ve decided that you wanna oh, you’ve decided that you wanna do a webinar, then you’re you’re writing your opt in page.

Obviously, you know, we’ve done a lot of training on how to write a good opt in page.

The challenge with Evergreen is you need to you need to keep it hyper relevant to what’s going on in your customer’s life now. So if you teach without tailoring to what’s happening, you come across as irrelevant. So your opt in page should really be tailored to the most recent information that you have about your ICP.

Oh, just like a warning, my GIF use gets more and more, like, unhinged as it goes through.

Just a heads up.

Okay. So you should really be updating your ICP profile every three to six months.

So your ICP might not change, but the world that your the world has changed. The world that they operate in has changed. So you need to have up to date information about how they’re handling the new challenges, the new opportunities that that exist that didn’t six months ago.

So as an example, so for my online course, I target course grades who have been in the game for a little while but haven’t cracked thirty thousand dollars a month. They all wanna make a thousand dollars a day.

So in twenty twenty three, all of my customer feedback and interviews were revealing that their primary pain point was that they were really exhausted by the burnout and the lack of predictability associated with live launches. This was, I think, a time when everyone was being told everywhere, you need to live launch. You’ve got a live launch. It’s the way.

It’s the way. It’s the way. And that was all my messaging was around that. However, in twenty twenty four and towards the end of twenty twenty four more, there were just so so many more courses and workshops around going evergreen.

And I found that it their primary pain point had actually changed. People yes. They were still motivated by it not doing live launches, but it was actually that they tried going evergreen with the urgency powered system and live webinar format that lots of people are teaching that were really big in twenty twenty three, twenty twenty four, and it wasn’t converting. So even though my ICP has stayed the same, the primary pain point has changed.

So as an example of, like, what this would look like in terms of optimization, like, just a simple shift on the opt in page, everything’s the same. Still course creator desired outcome’s the same, but the pain point shifted from live launching to the kind of the eye roll around adding a countdown timer to make sales.

And you you also wanna send signals, just little little ones that this wasn’t recorded two years ago. So just something so easy that literally takes two minutes that you can just schedule yourself to do once every three months. Just put it in your calendar, take five minutes, and just add something that’s going on now. Like, for example, you know, when you when you have, like, the here’s what you’ll discover in the webinar, just mentioning something current. So the election, the TV show that everybody’s watching, just anything that signals, okay, what you’re getting is it’s relevant to now. It’s happening now because especially if you’re targeting founders or teams or founders, they don’t wanna waste time watching a webinar that literally, like, is not in day. It has nothing to do with their business now.

Okay. So a quick checklist I go through to see if my opt in page has ever been ready. So you you need to obviously make sure you remove any specific dates that are more than three months old.

Any cultural references, to events or media need to be released in the last six months. Any longer than that, and it’s gonna feel stale.

You need to mention at least one challenge that the ICP is facing right now that your offer can solve. So it feels it has to feel tailored. It has to feel specific, especially within every webinar. Like, obviously, with all webinars, but particularly evergreen.

I like to add a specific detail.

You know, I I know, like, when you’re doing in to be to be SaaS, like, the tone’s often a bit different, but just something like color with a hot cocoa and watch this forty minute webinar versus, like, grab a nice latte. So it’s saying, you know, summer, is how this is now. And make sure you you’re updating your best and latest testimonials and features, and they they’re they’re prominent. So if you have a really cool testimonial, that you you got last month, but you haven’t touched your opt in page for a year, they’re gonna be missing that. So just make sure that you are you are regularly adding new social proof.

Okay. Cool. Alright. So that’s you’ve got your awesome page. They’ve grabbed the webinar. What happens next?

So first of all, you wanna set up your strategic thank you page.

So you don’t actually want to redirect people straight to the webinar. You wanna add your thank you page.

I I’m done ad about this for a while because there’s the, there’s the added friction of not taking them straight to the webinar, but, actually, you know, they’ve already committed. And, you know, as we know from Coffee School that the thank you page is such a valuable opportunity to get to get feedback from your audience, to to, give them a survey, and they’re much more likely to respond to that because, it’s a sad useful moment. They’ve just given it you’ve just given them something. So on your thank you page, you wanna reinforce the value that they signed up to receive.

You wanna include social proof, smart to your testimonials, your logo, so you’re just continuing to reinforce that you are the go to person on the thing that you’re, that you’re gonna do for them, and then include a one a one question survey. And then when you do have your webinar button, just make sure it’s so big and juicy, like, obnoxiously unmissable, so that you’re not by including thank you page, you’re not reducing the chance of them finding finding the webinar.

Okay. So I’m a little bit obsessed with my Thank You page survey. So I love I love Jay’s question, the what was going on in your life that brought you here today. And I think that’s a really great question to ask especially as you’re when you first start running it because you can really see, like, if there’s a match between, who you’re trying to attract and who you’re attracting. If people are saying they’re here to solve a problem that you’re like, actually, it’s a bit what I’m trying to solve is a bit high level than that, then you know that your opt in message isn’t connecting with them.

But as as you as it goes on, you might find that there’s specific gaps in your research or things that you just love to know about your ICP, especially related to, again, what’s going on in the world right now. So as an example, something I might do, like, every six months is just say, like, hey. What is, like, the what are the new challenges for course creators this year? And it might be things like ChatGPT and people creating courses with that.

It could, you know, it could be anything. So I get that as the the idea. But then the thing is with ChatGPT is it doesn’t obviously prioritize voice of customer. So then I would take that idea and use it to craft a a survey question.

So let’s say, like, what are your biggest concerns around AI right now? What are you currently doing to close your customer’s talent gaps? So you’re taking that opportunity, when you are likely to get better responses because it’s a thank you page, to collect that that voice of customer.

Okay. So exercise.

I think it’s it’s in your workbook.

I actually I’m not sure what page (pp. 41 – 49 of the Agency Workbook). I don’t know if Sarah does. But we’re gonna take just maybe four minutes to have a think about a couple of things that you wish you knew about your ICP or that you you need to know for segmentation and then what question you could ask them to gain those hyper relevant insights.

Does anyone wanna share my questions?

Please.

I will.

I’ll share my questions, but I do not have a, answer yet.

Like, I don’t have the question to ask them yet. Okay. Okay. So I have what makes your okay.

Hold on.

So, basically, one of my questions is just to it just I’m curious about what makes my ICP hesitant to invest in advertorials and sales pages. Like, maybe they’re maybe they have ideas that, it costs way too much or that it’s gonna be hard to implement that they have to like, there’s, like, hoops they have to jump through to get these things set up or something. You know? And then the other question I had was, what they what they think that the advertorials or sales page will do for their business, like, in their own words.

Mhmm. Mhmm. Yeah. I mean, with the first one, you could just ask, like, why haven’t you invested in this already?

That would probably reveal the hesitations. And then the second one yeah. I think, like, I mean, even the what was going on in your life of what you hit today would probably answer that, to be honest.

Yeah. Yeah. The second one?

Yeah. Yeah. Because it’s like or or you could just ask just on the nose. What what was it again? What what are you hoping to achieve with?

It the question was, what do they think that sales pages and advertorials will do for their business, like, in in their home? Yeah.

Yeah. Cool. Yeah. Good ones. Claire?

Sorry. I was just writing down one.

It was very useful.

Okay. So I have two, and I’m kinda struggling between which one is more important.

So the first one is one that I’ve been struggling with a lot in, SaaS. It’s either your product led or your sales led. One of the two. You’ve either got a free trial or you’ve got a demo to book. And I’m really struggling to figure out who the hell I’m trying to target because sales led is complicated, but product led is less value per customer. So my question was gonna be, are you product led or sales led? Like, what’s your model currently?

Yeah. I I think with that sorry. I say, like, it does have a multiple choice. And then when you’re when you’re, that will help you segment, obviously, if you you multiple choice and you could connect it to your emails. But then when you’re when you’re tracking that, are booking calls and closing because then you can obviously see, like, which yeah. Which one’s more valuable for you.

Okay. So that adds segmentation. And then the other one I wanted to ask is, what makes email a valuable marketing channel for you?

Just like oh, getting into the head of a CMO is so different to everyone else because they’re seeing, like, this massive picture where it’s like, I’ve only ever seen this tiny little one.

But I don’t know if that’s too broad. It’s gonna like, if it’s gonna just net me one word answers that aren’t actually useful.

Well, just try it. I mean, that’s a great thing about thank you based surveys. I think, you know, as copywriters, we optimize everything. We’re always changing things, but then our thank you based survey, we just kind of, like, leave it for, like, three years and don’t really look at the responses. But, actually, if you change them every three months and take that and and test and see how you can get the best responses, that can make all the other optimization a lot easier.

That’s really helpful. Okay. Thank you.

Thank you, Claire.

No. No. Thank you.

Johnson?

Hey.

So, I’m talking to series b SaaS founders, and, I’m still I’m I’m doing some sort of product refinement. So I’ve been wanting to know what commonalities are, amongst, like, where their story, outwardly is falling flat to customers. So the question for that would be, what do you wish your audience would, quotation marks, get about you, your company or your product?

And I also kinda wanna know what the, like, story like, I so sort of around storytelling, what would a dream state look like?

So that I can use that in copy.

And for that, it was what do you wish was gossip about you or your company, which I feel could be maybe in could generate some interesting POC.

So those two Yeah.

That was a really good question.

I mean I’m gonna Any advice?

Go back and make a note. Or they no. No. No. I love them both. I was actually thinking, yeah, I’m gonna, yeah, take a note.

Maybe That’s fine.

That’s fine. Great. Okay. Cool.

Thanks, Johnson.

No worries.

Okay. Cool. Alright. Let’s let’s move on. So you’ve got your thank you based survey.

The next step is then you you’ve got your landing page where you wanna embed your webinar.

So you really don’t need fancy webinar software. I’m seeing more and more that watch rates and conversion rates are higher when you just embed a webinar on a landing page versus doing, like, easy webinar where you where you schedule. Again, like, it just it doesn’t feel it like, it makes sense to me because it doesn’t feel natural to schedule a time when you you’d rather

you schedule things on your your own calendar rather than kind of meeting someone, choosing prompt options. And, also, especially if you’re selling b two b and CEOs, like, they use if they wanna watch something, they know to schedule it into their calendar.

So, yeah, you don’t need banks to webinar software. You can use a free tool like Wistia or Vimeo. Just make sure it’s one that you can track watch rates because that’s really helpful to see where people are dropping off.

And then, yeah, literally, you just embed it on the landing page or remove any other script distractions like your menu bar.

If you are using a tool like Wistia, it has an option to make a button appear, taking them to your Calendly or your checkout page. So when you’re pitching, they can straight away click that.

I just asked ChatGPT. Like, that’s probably my favorite use of ChatGPT. It’s be like, I have a tech thing. Like, how do I do it? So just say this is the what tool do you recommend? Can I do this? How do I do it?

Okay.

Cool. So, yeah, you’ve you’ve they’ve opted into your webinar. You’ve given them the webinar. Now you wanna send us a sale sequence. So your welcome sequence, your your open rates are never gonna be that high. This is when you’re gonna see fifty, sixty percent open rate. So I know that this is a kind of a wider conversation, but I love selling in the welcome sequence.

Yes. Give them value. Give them case studies, all that good stuff, but, like, sell the shiitake mushrooms out of your offer.

And then add conversation starting touch points. So, yes, it’s all automated, but you could also just add these these opportunities for them to reach out to you and to gain more feedback. So there are four that I love including, Jason Lemora again. I just love that. Okay.

So for the FAQ email, which, you know, is a is a standard, in in the sales sequence, I love to actually just turn that into, like, an all day q and a, and it’s like, I there is actually a humor on the other end that is gonna answer your questions if you have them. Because getting those questions are so, so helpful because they tell you what isn’t clear about your offer, so that you can then go and add that into into your webinar or wherever. And it also gives you the opportunity to to answer these questions, to address those objections, and to get them on a call, which leads us to our second one, call me. I can’t remember where I saw this. It was years ago. It might it might have been Tarzan, but who who said that one of our highest performing subject lines was was call me.

And literally just giving them your mobile number and saying, you know, if you wanna talk this through, just give me a ring. And that just really, again, takes away from this idea that it’s this automated thing, that it’s just running, there’s no person because what faster way to be like, no. I’m a real I’m a real person than to actually give them your mobile number. And if they spontaneously wanna call you, they don’t have to then book on your Calendly. You can you can take that call and you can sell them. Whether you whether you want that, that’s another question, but it is an interesting touch point you to consider to have as an option.

And then three days after your sequence ends, just asking them straight up up like, hey. What kept you from calling?

So this is a great opportunity to collect objections hesitations. Like, what is it that that that stop them that from thinking, yep. This is the solution for me.

And then, obviously, then you can preempt those objections elsewhere in your sales funnel.

It’s also an opportunity to open up the conversation by their if they’re like, oh, I really like this idea, but, you know, it’s just low down on the priority list because we’re focusing on x. And then you could say, cool that you’re focusing on x, but, you know, did you know? And then you can reopen that conversation with them.

And then finally, Jo’s nine word email, that she taught last year. I thought the nine times twenty three lesson. So every twenty three days, sending a nine word email just asking the question like, are you still struggling to?

Is email marketing still on your, your, like, draw your drawing board for this year? Just a question to, yeah, open it back up. Cody?

I just am curious if anyone has ever called you.

Oh, I don’t do that. I would not do.

Okay. Okay. Got it. No.

I like I love the idea. I’m just way too, like like, won’t don’t like answering calls. But, yeah, if I’ve done it for clients and they have. Yes.

Nice.

Yeah. It’s like, I like having it as an option. And if I really needed like, if I was getting desperate for to close leads, I would add it in there because it is a really good one. But, like, fortunately, I don’t have to at the moment. I can keep keep my space.

So are you just doing the all day q and a and then also the nine word email then?

So you’re just taking the And the Yeah. And then what kept you from calling? Yeah. And I the all day q and a has been really helpful.

Like, I think eighty percent of the time when people ask a question, I end up closing them because they’re just you just get to go straight into that objection, and they’re already gonna be relatively high intent to send that. But then, yeah, when I’m I put them all in a spreadsheet, and I’m like, okay. Loads of people are asking, whether a webinar template is included, and I haven’t. So I obviously haven’t included that.

I mean, obviously, this is for my online course, but the same applies for generating clients. Yeah. Okay. Thanks.

Cool. Yeah. Any questions?

I would love to know, Abby. Like, you talk about using the welcome sequence to sell the offer. How much time do you spend on or, like, how many emails do you send getting people to watch the webinar versus just kind of assuming that they’re watching the webinar and then focusing on selling the offer?

These days, I don’t, like, keep selling the webinar. I mean, it’s something, you know, you can add down the line. You can segment you based on, okay, people that didn’t send the webinar, maybe send them, like, three emails. I’m reminding them. But, yeah, I just focus on talking about the value and kind of coaching the same things that were in the webinar.

And then if they’re curious, they’ll go back and watch it. Otherwise, they’ll just book a call anyway. It’s more about, like, getting them on the email list.

Like, obviously, it’s great if they watch your webinar, but, like, it’s not the end of the world. If they don’t, you can still sell them on that sequence.

Okay. So deliver the webinar and then, basically just assume that they’ve watched it from next day?

Yeah. So send the confirmation email and then start. Yeah. Start selling. And then it when I do the, like, what kept you from buying, I try to take the the kind of the principle with your thank you page, like the law of reciprocation.

And so I redeliver that webinar. Say, if you wanna watch it again or if you didn’t missed it, here it is. And then that also just, like it helps me get more responses, but it gives them another opportunity.

Okay. Thank you.

Thanks. Claire?

Hey. So I this is so timely. I’ve got right up on my list launch Evergreen webinar for January and, like, we’re in the last week. So I recorded it today.

But I wanted to ask two two questions around it, really. The first one is about the actual webinar itself. I had planned for it to be, like, kind of not live. Like, it doesn’t feel live. It’s actually a training video, not like a live video. Is that okay, or is it gonna put people off?

Oh, yeah. No. No. No. No. Like, it’s on demand. Like, the only time people would expect to be live was just this, like, weird boom that kind of happened in twenty twenty where live webinars were a thing.

But if you think about every other form of content you consume, like Netflix, Amazon Prime, YouTube, like, you always watch it on demand. So, like, I don’t see yeah. And peep no. I’ve never had, I’m I’m always very upfront.

And I think as well because especially, like, if we’re targeting people that are marketers and know about marketing, they know about these Abrigam webinar funnels that pretend that they’re live, and they don’t like that because it’s deceptive. You don’t wanna start a relationship deceiving them. So actually being super upfront about the fact that it’s on demand, plays in your favor and helps to build trust.

Got it. Okay. So on demand workshop. Yeah. I feel like I’m dealing with a weird audience because I’ve done marketing for Abbott for, developers before, and they’re, like, super anti any kind of marketing marketing.

Like, it feels like marketing. They’re like, woah. You’re coming on too strong. And now although I’m trying to do it towards marketers, I’m like, oh, wait.

They’re kind of the same because they’re just so overwhelmed with so much marketing stuff. Okay. Cool. That’s my first question.

The other question is more around the technicalities of setting it up. So I am not even worried about, like, the email side of things because I’ll worry about that if I actually manage to send a human to watch it.

When I set up the initial landing page, in your experience, is it important to have, like, a long one? Or do you think that here’s a form, here’s a headline, here’s a subject, just like Gong actually sets up their, webinars like that. And then there’s, like, a logo box kind of underneath it, and that’s pretty much it.

Is that sufficient in your book?

Yeah. I mean, it’s a very, like, it depends question. I’d say it’s probably, like, how urgent is the problem? Like, if it’s really urgent, like, it’s a the the blood gushing problem, then, you know, it’s it tends to be enough to just say, like, you know, had you’ve got the headline.

This is problem solved. This is for you, and here’s what’s in it. Like, maybe a bit of social proof. If it’s a kind of higher level problem that you need to coach them towards, you might have a bit of a longer form page opt in.

But yeah. Okay.

Got it. Alright. So the just to clarify, I understand. The landing page takes you to is a form, like, enter your email and name kinda thing. That takes you to a thank you page with another survey, answer my wonderful question, which is probably gonna be, do you do a trial or not? And then the third page, when once they click submit button or whatever it is, the third page is directly the embedded video with, like, a book now kind of, another form I suppose, some kind, whether it’s Calendly or whatever underneath.

Yeah. Also, they would click, they click watch now to take into the webinar, so it’s just like that instant gratification feel.

And then, yeah, have a button pop up that they click it, takes them to the checkout form, or takes them to the Calendly if they need to speak with you first. But, ideally, you want that to pop up later on in the pitch because, you know, if it’s a big juicy button, like, you’re gonna get curiosity clicks, so you wanna wait till they’re a bit more sold on working with you.

Okay. Got it. I’ve got, like, I’ve planned for I can take this out. So but I’ve planned for mid webinar to say, essentially, my first I’ve added a step to my, little circle framework. I’ve added, like, a triangle. It’s like a instant like, this is what to do with your demo or confirmation email kind of framework, and I called it the hello hook.

But I’ve said in the middle of that section, essentially, I’m actually doing this kind of audit for three companies a week. If you want help with this, check out the form below, and I’ll see if I’ve got a slot for you.

Is that okay?

I mean, like, just with all these things, we’ve just gotta test it.

Right? Like, you know, we all we all know that really. Like, I I could tell you, like, one way, I need but but you’d still be like, I think I need to test it. Like, if yes.

Yeah. People filling in that form? If you can get this pop up at that exact moment, that would look cool. That would look baller as well.

So I did yeah. If you could do that.

Yeah. Getting them to take action mid webinar.

Yeah. It’s an interesting idea. Just try it.

Yeah.

I saw it in the YouTube video, and I was like, oh, actually and then at the end, he kind of reiterated, and I was like, oh, yeah.

Now I’m gonna do it. Yeah. Okay. Cool. I’ll check it out. Thank you.

No. Thank you. Cody?

Yeah. I was curious if you have, like, a specific time limit, like, how long that these should be. Have you seen, like, any time limit that’s more successful than others? Or yeah.

I think, like, there’s an element of again, it depends on your audience. I mean, my audience course creators, I know that they expect, like, an hour long webinar. That’s what everyone’s doing. That’s they they will spend an hour if it’s really they know it’s gonna be valuable to their business. So the formula I tend to use is, forty minutes teaching with a full twenty minutes pitching.

So rather than just rushing through the pitch at the end, actually doing a very, very tailored pitch.

So, yeah, an hour, but then if you’re you’re like, if you find that your, audience, like, you know, they’ve they’ve they’ve got an attention span of, like, twenty minutes, and then they have to move on to the next thing, then you know that it’s gonna be a twenty minute webinar.

Yeah. Okay. Thank you.

Cool. Katie?

So I know you asked a question in the group recently about, like, ads to your webinar.

I would just love to know, I guess, kinda, like, where you’ve landed on running ads to your webinars, if you have any tips on running ads for our webinars, or generally, like, about driving traffic. What should we keep in mind about driving people to the Evergreen webinar?

Yeah. I think I think ads are a good idea. I mean, webinar leads are more expensive than, like, a PDF lead. At the moment on Facebook, what I’m seeing is kind of seven to twelve dollars. I know it’s more in LinkedIn, but they tend to be I’m hearing more and more good things about doing running ads on LinkedIn. Like, I’m definitely gonna be looking into that.

But, yeah, I think I think to begin with, like, it’s helpful to run ads to get that traffic, basically. Like, just run it. Just take take the chance. See what happens.

Like, expect nothing to happen. Like, put a thousand in and expect nothing to happen, but you’re gonna get voice of customer. You’re gonna get feedback. You’re gonna get a feel for whether this is worth continuing, see if you booked any calls.

So yeah. I mean, like, organic, it’s just it’s just slow, isn’t it?

Like, I I am gonna be running ads. Yeah.

I’m tired of just, like, yeah, trying to trying to do social.

Did you decide about the Pinterest course?

No. I didn’t. That got, like, that got bumped out.

Fair enough.

Yeah. I’m I’m more like YouTube.

Okay. Thank you.

Cool.

Yeah. Anyone else?

I don’t like Joey’s not here for asking me anything, so I don’t

I have I have questions for dates.

I mean, I can go on. Please.

Alright. Ads.

I have been scared of ads for so long because, like, I don’t know.

Twelve dollars for, like, a chance kinda feels like entering the lottery, but I But it’s not one chance, is it?

Because they’re on your enroll list. So it’s like Oh.

Three hundred sixty five chances a year. Like, every time you send an email, it’s a chance.

Yeah. Okay. Cool.

And have you found that, pain focused messaging or outcome focused messaging, Yeah.

I mean, what’s more burning their desire or their problem? Like, you know, for so for what I teach, the message like, when I did my competitor analysis, the message that all of these evergreen people are teaching is you can make so much money. Like, you can make sales every day, and people need to hear that. That message does need to be on on a page because it’s the expectation.

But that because everyone’s been burned. Like, literally, everyone who’s bought my course, so it’s become a client, has been burned. They also need to hear, like, yeah. You don’t just, like, set up deadline funnel and then suddenly, like, you’re on vacation and your Thrive card just won’t stop, like, pinging.

Like, they need to hear, like, yes. It’s a process.

Yeah. It you know, it it’s not immediate. Like, you need to optimize, but here’s what we’re gonna do about it. So I think a competitive analysis can really help with that question.

So, like, what what what do people need here that isn’t being said? Is that pain related, or is it desired outcome related? Like, do they need to know be woken up to the opportunity, or do they need to, like, show that that do they need to hear that their pain is not unusual, that it is like, it’s fine. That’s the story, but there is a way out of it, and you acknowledge that.

And you’re not gonna just promise them, like, the world.

That makes so much sense. I’ve been talking to a lot of marketers, lately, and the recurring theme I keep hearing is, like, I don’t wanna clutter up someone else’s inbox. My inbox is so full. I don’t wanna fuck up someone else’s.

So, yeah, I think that probably needs to be on the page and, you know, more crucial raising.

Yeah. And then do an AB test, like, test test desired outcome versus problem and see.

What do you use for AB testing, by the way? Do you have, like, online in pages? Sorry. Not for ads.

Okay. So I I use lead pages, but I did have a call with Jo. Like, when I did my ISP interview with her, she was like, yeah. I wouldn’t sign up to a webinar that’s on lead pages.

So it’s on my list to change that, but, like, you know, it’s like if you’ve got WordPress or something, it’s simple. I need to just figure it out. Like, that’s my next thing to ask ChatGPT is how do you do, like, a AB test on a Squarespace landing page? Like, these aren’t impossible questions anymore, which is which is great.

Okay. Awesome. Thank you.

Workbook

List Building and Lead Nurturing, pp. 36 – 43 (in-house)

List Building and Lead Nurturing, pp. 41 – 48 (agencies)

Workbook

List Building and Lead Nurturing (in-house)

List Building and Lead Nurturing (agencies)

Transcript

Okay. Fab. Okay. So, yeah, we’re looking at evergreen must haves when generating leads to the non demand webinar. So just to start, like, why webinars? Webinars are literally the gold standard for high quality lead gen.

They’re the closest thing that you can get to having a one to one sales call because they can actually see you. You can talk to them.

They’re committing to spending time with you. It’s not like a checklist that they can very easily download and have a look at. They’re actually when they sign up, they’re thinking, okay. I’m gonna spend forty five minutes with this person. So they tend to be a high quality lead because they’ve made that commitment.

Obviously, everyone knows here that I work with course creators, workshops still in b to b and SaaS, whatever industry you’re working in. Ninety one percent of b to b professionals say that webinars are their third type of content, and companies report that twenty to forty percent of webinar attendees become qualified leads and within the sales pipeline, which is pretty high. Like, if you think any other type of content, if you’re putting it out there, you’d expect maybe, like, two percent, to become leads.

Okay. Cool. So when it yeah. When it comes to webinars, I really believe that on demand is the way to go.

Why? Well, because then you can you can literally have it running twenty four seven as a way to generate leads. Whereas if you’re doing it live, obviously, there’s only so many times you can do it. And if even if you are like, I’m gonna do it every week, that’s likely gonna lead to burnout. Like, there are a lot of things that we’re juggling. Whereas if you just have it on demand, it can sell for you.

It’s also but it’s not just for us. It’s also for the clients, the people we’re selling to because when it’s on demand, they can actually fit it into their schedule. So if the live times don’t work for them, they can just watch it. I mean, I do I really do feel like in, you know, twenty twenty five is on demand is what people expect. Like, if you wanted to watch a show on Netflix and they were like, you have to schedule it. Do you wanna watch it, like, Tuesday at seven or Wednesday at nine? It’s just not how we’re used to consuming content.

It means that they can literally get the value the moment that they need it. They don’t have to wait till you’re next doing a live webinar. And, also, actually, on demand have higher opt in and watch rates, which really surprises people because I think people think with the urgency of live webinars, more people show up. But more and more webinar platforms are releasing, that’s not the case. Like, e webinar, for example, I think it was something like, sixty five percent watch it when it’s on demand versus forty percent live.

And seventy five percent when given the option will always choose on demand.

Okay. Cool. So you’ve decided that you wanna oh, you’ve decided that you wanna do a webinar, then you’re you’re writing your opt in page.

Obviously, you know, we’ve done a lot of training on how to write a good opt in page.

The challenge with Evergreen is you need to you need to keep it hyper relevant to what’s going on in your customer’s life now. So if you teach without tailoring to what’s happening, you come across as irrelevant. So your opt in page should really be tailored to the most recent information that you have about your ICP.

Oh, just like a warning, my GIF use gets more and more, like, unhinged as it goes through.

Just a heads up.

Okay. So you should really be updating your ICP profile every three to six months.

So your ICP might not change, but the world that your the world has changed. The world that they operate in has changed. So you need to have up to date information about how they’re handling the new challenges, the new opportunities that that exist that didn’t six months ago.

So as an example, so for my online course, I target course grades who have been in the game for a little while but haven’t cracked thirty thousand dollars a month. They all wanna make a thousand dollars a day.

So in twenty twenty three, all of my customer feedback and interviews were revealing that their primary pain point was that they were really exhausted by the burnout and the lack of predictability associated with live launches. This was, I think, a time when everyone was being told everywhere, you need to live launch. You’ve got a live launch. It’s the way.

It’s the way. It’s the way. And that was all my messaging was around that. However, in twenty twenty four and towards the end of twenty twenty four more, there were just so so many more courses and workshops around going evergreen.

And I found that it their primary pain point had actually changed. People yes. They were still motivated by it not doing live launches, but it was actually that they tried going evergreen with the urgency powered system and live webinar format that lots of people are teaching that were really big in twenty twenty three, twenty twenty four, and it wasn’t converting. So even though my ICP has stayed the same, the primary pain point has changed.

So as an example of, like, what this would look like in terms of optimization, like, just a simple shift on the opt in page, everything’s the same. Still course creator desired outcome’s the same, but the pain point shifted from live launching to the kind of the eye roll around adding a countdown timer to make sales.

And you you also wanna send signals, just little little ones that this wasn’t recorded two years ago. So just something so easy that literally takes two minutes that you can just schedule yourself to do once every three months. Just put it in your calendar, take five minutes, and just add something that’s going on now. Like, for example, you know, when you when you have, like, the here’s what you’ll discover in the webinar, just mentioning something current. So the election, the TV show that everybody’s watching, just anything that signals, okay, what you’re getting is it’s relevant to now. It’s happening now because especially if you’re targeting founders or teams or founders, they don’t wanna waste time watching a webinar that literally, like, is not in day. It has nothing to do with their business now.

Okay. So a quick checklist I go through to see if my opt in page has ever been ready. So you you need to obviously make sure you remove any specific dates that are more than three months old.

Any cultural references, to events or media need to be released in the last six months. Any longer than that, and it’s gonna feel stale.

You need to mention at least one challenge that the ICP is facing right now that your offer can solve. So it feels it has to feel tailored. It has to feel specific, especially within every webinar. Like, obviously, with all webinars, but particularly evergreen.

I like to add a specific detail.

You know, I I know, like, when you’re doing in to be to be SaaS, like, the tone’s often a bit different, but just something like color with a hot cocoa and watch this forty minute webinar versus, like, grab a nice latte. So it’s saying, you know, summer, is how this is now. And make sure you you’re updating your best and latest testimonials and features, and they they’re they’re prominent. So if you have a really cool testimonial, that you you got last month, but you haven’t touched your opt in page for a year, they’re gonna be missing that. So just make sure that you are you are regularly adding new social proof.

Okay. Cool. Alright. So that’s you’ve got your awesome page. They’ve grabbed the webinar. What happens next?

So first of all, you wanna set up your strategic thank you page.

So you don’t actually want to redirect people straight to the webinar. You wanna add your thank you page.

I I’m done ad about this for a while because there’s the, there’s the added friction of not taking them straight to the webinar, but, actually, you know, they’ve already committed. And, you know, as we know from Coffee School that the thank you page is such a valuable opportunity to get to get feedback from your audience, to to, give them a survey, and they’re much more likely to respond to that because, it’s a sad useful moment. They’ve just given it you’ve just given them something. So on your thank you page, you wanna reinforce the value that they signed up to receive.

You wanna include social proof, smart to your testimonials, your logo, so you’re just continuing to reinforce that you are the go to person on the thing that you’re, that you’re gonna do for them, and then include a one a one question survey. And then when you do have your webinar button, just make sure it’s so big and juicy, like, obnoxiously unmissable, so that you’re not by including thank you page, you’re not reducing the chance of them finding finding the webinar.

Okay. So I’m a little bit obsessed with my Thank You page survey. So I love I love Jay’s question, the what was going on in your life that brought you here today. And I think that’s a really great question to ask especially as you’re when you first start running it because you can really see, like, if there’s a match between, who you’re trying to attract and who you’re attracting. If people are saying they’re here to solve a problem that you’re like, actually, it’s a bit what I’m trying to solve is a bit high level than that, then you know that your opt in message isn’t connecting with them.

But as as you as it goes on, you might find that there’s specific gaps in your research or things that you just love to know about your ICP, especially related to, again, what’s going on in the world right now. So as an example, something I might do, like, every six months is just say, like, hey. What is, like, the what are the new challenges for course creators this year? And it might be things like ChatGPT and people creating courses with that.

It could, you know, it could be anything. So I get that as the the idea. But then the thing is with ChatGPT is it doesn’t obviously prioritize voice of customer. So then I would take that idea and use it to craft a a survey question.

So let’s say, like, what are your biggest concerns around AI right now? What are you currently doing to close your customer’s talent gaps? So you’re taking that opportunity, when you are likely to get better responses because it’s a thank you page, to collect that that voice of customer.

Okay. So exercise.

I think it’s it’s in your workbook.

I actually I’m not sure what page. I don’t know if Sarah does (pp. 41 – 49 of the Agency Workbook). But we’re gonna take just maybe four minutes to have a think about a couple of things that you wish you knew about your ICP or that you you need to know for segmentation and then what question you could ask them to gain those hyper relevant insights.

Does anyone wanna share my questions?

Please.

I will.

I’ll share my questions, but I do not have a, answer yet.

Like, I don’t have the question to ask them yet. Okay. Okay. So I have what makes your okay.

Hold on.

So, basically, one of my questions is just to it just I’m curious about what makes my ICP hesitant to invest in advertorials and sales pages. Like, maybe they’re maybe they have ideas that, it costs way too much or that it’s gonna be hard to implement that they have to like, there’s, like, hoops they have to jump through to get these things set up or something. You know? And then the other question I had was, what they what they think that the advertorials or sales page will do for their business, like, in their own words.

Mhmm. Mhmm. Yeah. I mean, with the first one, you could just ask, like, why haven’t you invested in this already?

That would probably reveal the hesitations. And then the second one yeah. I think, like, I mean, even the what was going on in your life of what you hit today would probably answer that, to be honest.

Yeah. Yeah. The second one?

Yeah. Yeah. Because it’s like or or you could just ask just on the nose. What what was it again? What what are you hoping to achieve with?

It the question was, what do they think that sales pages and advertorials will do for their business, like, in in their home? Yeah.

Yeah. Cool. Yeah. Good ones. Claire?

Sorry. I was just writing down one.

It was very useful.

Okay. So I have two, and I’m kinda struggling between which one is more important.

So the first one is one that I’ve been struggling with a lot in, SaaS. It’s either your product led or your sales led. One of the two. You’ve either got a free trial or you’ve got a demo to book. And I’m really struggling to figure out who the hell I’m trying to target because sales led is complicated, but product led is less value per customer. So my question was gonna be, are you product led or sales led? Like, what’s your model currently?

Yeah. I I think with that sorry. I say, like, it does have a multiple choice. And then when you’re when you’re, that will help you segment, obviously, if you you multiple choice and you could connect it to your emails. But then when you’re when you’re tracking that, are booking calls and closing because then you can obviously see, like, which yeah. Which one’s more valuable for you.

Okay. So that adds segmentation. And then the other one I wanted to ask is, what makes email a valuable marketing channel for you?

Just like oh, getting into the head of a CMO is so different to everyone else because they’re seeing, like, this massive picture where it’s like, I’ve only ever seen this tiny little one.

But I don’t know if that’s too broad. It’s gonna like, if it’s gonna just net me one word answers that aren’t actually useful.

Well, just try it. I mean, that’s a great thing about thank you based surveys. I think, you know, as copywriters, we optimize everything. We’re always changing things, but then our thank you based survey, we just kind of, like, leave it for, like, three years and don’t really look at the responses. But, actually, if you change them every three months and take that and and test and see how you can get the best responses, that can make all the other optimization a lot easier.

That’s really helpful. Okay. Thank you.

Thank you, Claire.

No. No. Thank you.

Johnson?

Hey.

So, I’m talking to series b SaaS founders, and, I’m still I’m I’m doing some sort of product refinement. So I’ve been wanting to know what commonalities are, amongst, like, where their story, outwardly is falling flat to customers. So the question for that would be, what do you wish your audience would, quotation marks, get about you, your company or your product?

And I also kinda wanna know what the, like, story like, I so sort of around storytelling, what would a dream state look like?

So that I can use that in copy.

And for that, it was what do you wish was gossip about you or your company, which I feel could be maybe in could generate some interesting POC.

So those two Yeah.

That was a really good question.

I mean I’m gonna Any advice?

Go back and make a note. Or they no. No. No. I love them both. I was actually thinking, yeah, I’m gonna, yeah, take a note.

Maybe That’s fine.

That’s fine. Great. Okay. Cool.

Thanks, Johnson.

No worries.

Okay. Cool. Alright. Let’s let’s move on. So you’ve got your thank you based survey.

The next step is then you you’ve got your landing page where you wanna embed your webinar.

So you really don’t need fancy webinar software. I’m seeing more and more that watch rates and conversion rates are higher when you just embed a webinar on a landing page versus doing, like, easy webinar where you where you schedule. Again, like, it just it doesn’t feel it like, it makes sense to me because it doesn’t feel natural to schedule a time when you you’d rather

you schedule things on your your own calendar rather than kind of meeting someone, choosing prompt options. And, also, especially if you’re selling b two b and CEOs, like, they use if they wanna watch something, they know to schedule it into their calendar.

So, yeah, you don’t need banks to webinar software. You can use a free tool like Wistia or Vimeo. Just make sure it’s one that you can track watch rates because that’s really helpful to see where people are dropping off.

And then, yeah, literally, you just embed it on the landing page or remove any other script distractions like your menu bar.

If you are using a tool like Wistia, it has an option to make a button appear, taking them to your Calendly or your checkout page. So when you’re pitching, they can straight away click that.

I just asked ChatGPT. Like, that’s probably my favorite use of ChatGPT. It’s be like, I have a tech thing. Like, how do I do it? So just say this is the what tool do you recommend? Can I do this? How do I do it?

Okay.

Cool. So, yeah, you’ve you’ve they’ve opted into your webinar. You’ve given them the webinar. Now you wanna send us a sale sequence. So your welcome sequence, your your open rates are never gonna be that high. This is when you’re gonna see fifty, sixty percent open rate. So I know that this is a kind of a wider conversation, but I love selling in the welcome sequence.

Yes. Give them value. Give them case studies, all that good stuff, but, like, sell the shiitake mushrooms out of your offer.

And then add conversation starting touch points. So, yes, it’s all automated, but you could also just add these these opportunities for them to reach out to you and to gain more feedback. So there are four that I love including, Jason Lemora again. I just love that. Okay.

So for the FAQ email, which, you know, is a is a standard, in in the sales sequence, I love to actually just turn that into, like, an all day q and a, and it’s like, I there is actually a humor on the other end that is gonna answer your questions if you have them. Because getting those questions are so, so helpful because they tell you what isn’t clear about your offer, so that you can then go and add that into into your webinar or wherever. And it also gives you the opportunity to to answer these questions, to address those objections, and to get them on a call, which leads us to our second one, call me. I can’t remember where I saw this. It was years ago. It might it might have been Tarzan, but who who said that one of our highest performing subject lines was was call me.

And literally just giving them your mobile number and saying, you know, if you wanna talk this through, just give me a ring. And that just really, again, takes away from this idea that it’s this automated thing, that it’s just running, there’s no person because what faster way to be like, no. I’m a real I’m a real person than to actually give them your mobile number. And if they spontaneously wanna call you, they don’t have to then book on your Calendly. You can you can take that call and you can sell them. Whether you whether you want that, that’s another question, but it is an interesting touch point you to consider to have as an option.

And then three days after your sequence ends, just asking them straight up up like, hey. What kept you from calling?

So this is a great opportunity to collect objections hesitations. Like, what is it that that that stop them that from thinking, yep. This is the solution for me.

And then, obviously, then you can preempt those objections elsewhere in your sales funnel.

It’s also an opportunity to open up the conversation by their if they’re like, oh, I really like this idea, but, you know, it’s just low down on the priority list because we’re focusing on x. And then you could say, cool that you’re focusing on x, but, you know, did you know? And then you can reopen that conversation with them.

And then finally, Jo’s nine word email, that she taught last year. I thought the nine times twenty three lesson. So every twenty three days, sending a nine word email just asking the question like, are you still struggling to?

Is email marketing still on your, your, like, draw your drawing board for this year? Just a question to, yeah, open it back up. Cody?

I just am curious if anyone has ever called you.

Oh, I don’t do that. I would not do.

Okay. Okay. Got it. No.

I like I love the idea. I’m just way too, like like, won’t don’t like answering calls. But, yeah, if I’ve done it for clients and they have. Yes.

Nice.

Yeah. It’s like, I like having it as an option. And if I really needed like, if I was getting desperate for to close leads, I would add it in there because it is a really good one. But, like, fortunately, I don’t have to at the moment. I can keep keep my space.

So are you just doing the all day q and a and then also the nine word email then?

So you’re just taking the And the Yeah. And then what kept you from calling? Yeah. And I the all day q and a has been really helpful.

Like, I think eighty percent of the time when people ask a question, I end up closing them because they’re just you just get to go straight into that objection, and they’re already gonna be relatively high intent to send that. But then, yeah, when I’m I put them all in a spreadsheet, and I’m like, okay. Loads of people are asking, whether a webinar template is included, and I haven’t. So I obviously haven’t included that.

I mean, obviously, this is for my online course, but the same applies for generating clients. Yeah. Okay. Thanks.

Cool. Yeah. Any questions?

I would love to know, Abby. Like, you talk about using the welcome sequence to sell the offer. How much time do you spend on or, like, how many emails do you send getting people to watch the webinar versus just kind of assuming that they’re watching the webinar and then focusing on selling the offer?

These days, I don’t, like, keep selling the webinar. I mean, it’s something, you know, you can add down the line. You can segment you based on, okay, people that didn’t send the webinar, maybe send them, like, three emails. I’m reminding them. But, yeah, I just focus on talking about the value and kind of coaching the same things that were in the webinar.

And then if they’re curious, they’ll go back and watch it. Otherwise, they’ll just book a call anyway. It’s more about, like, getting them on the email list.

Like, obviously, it’s great if they watch your webinar, but, like, it’s not the end of the world. If they don’t, you can still sell them on that sequence.

Okay. So deliver the webinar and then, basically just assume that they’ve watched it from next day?

Yeah. So send the confirmation email and then start. Yeah. Start selling. And then it when I do the, like, what kept you from buying, I try to take the the kind of the principle with your thank you page, like the law of reciprocation.

And so I redeliver that webinar. Say, if you wanna watch it again or if you didn’t missed it, here it is. And then that also just, like it helps me get more responses, but it gives them another opportunity.

Okay. Thank you.

Thanks. Claire?

Hey. So I this is so timely. I’ve got right up on my list launch Evergreen webinar for January and, like, we’re in the last week. So I recorded it today.

But I wanted to ask two two questions around it, really. The first one is about the actual webinar itself. I had planned for it to be, like, kind of not live. Like, it doesn’t feel live. It’s actually a training video, not like a live video. Is that okay, or is it gonna put people off?

Oh, yeah. No. No. No. No. Like, it’s on demand. Like, the only time people would expect to be live was just this, like, weird boom that kind of happened in twenty twenty where live webinars were a thing.

But if you think about every other form of content you consume, like Netflix, Amazon Prime, YouTube, like, you always watch it on demand. So, like, I don’t see yeah. And peep no. I’ve never had, I’m I’m always very upfront.

And I think as well because especially, like, if we’re targeting people that are marketers and know about marketing, they know about these Abrigam webinar funnels that pretend that they’re live, and they don’t like that because it’s deceptive. You don’t wanna start a relationship deceiving them. So actually being super upfront about the fact that it’s on demand, plays in your favor and helps to build trust.

Got it. Okay. So on demand workshop. Yeah. I feel like I’m dealing with a weird audience because I’ve done marketing for Abbott for, developers before, and they’re, like, super anti any kind of marketing marketing.

Like, it feels like marketing. They’re like, woah. You’re coming on too strong. And now although I’m trying to do it towards marketers, I’m like, oh, wait.

They’re kind of the same because they’re just so overwhelmed with so much marketing stuff. Okay. Cool. That’s my first question.

The other question is more around the technicalities of setting it up. So I am not even worried about, like, the email side of things because I’ll worry about that if I actually manage to send a human to watch it.

When I set up the initial landing page, in your experience, is it important to have, like, a long one? Or do you think that here’s a form, here’s a headline, here’s a subject, just like Gong actually sets up their, webinars like that. And then there’s, like, a logo box kind of underneath it, and that’s pretty much it.

Is that sufficient in your book?

Yeah. I mean, it’s a very, like, it depends question. I’d say it’s probably, like, how urgent is the problem? Like, if it’s really urgent, like, it’s a the the blood gushing problem, then, you know, it’s it tends to be enough to just say, like, you know, had you’ve got the headline.

This is problem solved. This is for you, and here’s what’s in it. Like, maybe a bit of social proof. If it’s a kind of higher level problem that you need to coach them towards, you might have a bit of a longer form page opt in.

But yeah. Okay.

Got it. Alright. So the just to clarify, I understand. The landing page takes you to is a form, like, enter your email and name kinda thing. That takes you to a thank you page with another survey, answer my wonderful question, which is probably gonna be, do you do a trial or not? And then the third page, when once they click submit button or whatever it is, the third page is directly the embedded video with, like, a book now kind of, another form I suppose, some kind, whether it’s Calendly or whatever underneath.

Yeah. Also, they would click, they click watch now to take into the webinar, so it’s just like that instant gratification feel.

And then, yeah, have a button pop up that they click it, takes them to the checkout form, or takes them to the Calendly if they need to speak with you first. But, ideally, you want that to pop up later on in the pitch because, you know, if it’s a big juicy button, like, you’re gonna get curiosity clicks, so you wanna wait till they’re a bit more sold on working with you.

Okay. Got it. I’ve got, like, I’ve planned for I can take this out. So but I’ve planned for mid webinar to say, essentially, my first I’ve added a step to my, little circle framework. I’ve added, like, a triangle. It’s like a instant like, this is what to do with your demo or confirmation email kind of framework, and I called it the hello hook.

But I’ve said in the middle of that section, essentially, I’m actually doing this kind of audit for three companies a week. If you want help with this, check out the form below, and I’ll see if I’ve got a slot for you.

Is that okay?

I mean, like, just with all these things, we’ve just gotta test it.

Right? Like, you know, we all we all know that really. Like, I I could tell you, like, one way, I need but but you’d still be like, I think I need to test it. Like, if yes.

Yeah. People filling in that form? If you can get this pop up at that exact moment, that would look cool. That would look baller as well.

So I did yeah. If you could do that.

Yeah. Getting them to take action mid webinar.

Yeah. It’s an interesting idea. Just try it.

Yeah.

I saw it in the YouTube video, and I was like, oh, actually and then at the end, he kind of reiterated, and I was like, oh, yeah.

Now I’m gonna do it. Yeah. Okay. Cool. I’ll check it out. Thank you.

No. Thank you. Cody?

Yeah. I was curious if you have, like, a specific time limit, like, how long that these should be. Have you seen, like, any time limit that’s more successful than others? Or yeah.

I think, like, there’s an element of again, it depends on your audience. I mean, my audience course creators, I know that they expect, like, an hour long webinar. That’s what everyone’s doing. That’s they they will spend an hour if it’s really they know it’s gonna be valuable to their business. So the formula I tend to use is, forty minutes teaching with a full twenty minutes pitching.

So rather than just rushing through the pitch at the end, actually doing a very, very tailored pitch.

So, yeah, an hour, but then if you’re you’re like, if you find that your, audience, like, you know, they’ve they’ve they’ve got an attention span of, like, twenty minutes, and then they have to move on to the next thing, then you know that it’s gonna be a twenty minute webinar.

Yeah. Okay. Thank you.

Cool. Katie?

So I know you asked a question in the group recently about, like, ads to your webinar.

I would just love to know, I guess, kinda, like, where you’ve landed on running ads to your webinars, if you have any tips on running ads for our webinars, or generally, like, about driving traffic. What should we keep in mind about driving people to the Evergreen webinar?

Yeah. I think I think ads are a good idea. I mean, webinar leads are more expensive than, like, a PDF lead. At the moment on Facebook, what I’m seeing is kind of seven to twelve dollars. I know it’s more in LinkedIn, but they tend to be I’m hearing more and more good things about doing running ads on LinkedIn. Like, I’m definitely gonna be looking into that.

But, yeah, I think I think to begin with, like, it’s helpful to run ads to get that traffic, basically. Like, just run it. Just take take the chance. See what happens.

Like, expect nothing to happen. Like, put a thousand in and expect nothing to happen, but you’re gonna get voice of customer. You’re gonna get feedback. You’re gonna get a feel for whether this is worth continuing, see if you booked any calls.

So yeah. I mean, like, organic, it’s just it’s just slow, isn’t it?

Like, I I am gonna be running ads. Yeah.

I’m tired of just, like, yeah, trying to trying to do social.

Did you decide about the Pinterest course?

No. I didn’t. That got, like, that got bumped out.

Fair enough.

Yeah. I’m I’m more like YouTube.

Okay. Thank you.

Cool.

Yeah. Anyone else?

I don’t like Joey’s not here for asking me anything, so I don’t

I have I have questions for dates.

I mean, I can go on. Please.

Alright. Ads.

I have been scared of ads for so long because, like, I don’t know.

Twelve dollars for, like, a chance kinda feels like entering the lottery, but I But it’s not one chance, is it?

Because they’re on your enroll list. So it’s like Oh.

Three hundred sixty five chances a year. Like, every time you send an email, it’s a chance.

Yeah. Okay. Cool.

And have you found that, pain focused messaging or outcome focused messaging, Yeah.

I mean, what’s more burning their desire or their problem? Like, you know, for so for what I teach, the message like, when I did my competitor analysis, the message that all of these evergreen people are teaching is you can make so much money. Like, you can make sales every day, and people need to hear that. That message does need to be on on a page because it’s the expectation.

But that because everyone’s been burned. Like, literally, everyone who’s bought my course, so it’s become a client, has been burned. They also need to hear, like, yeah. You don’t just, like, set up deadline funnel and then suddenly, like, you’re on vacation and your Thrive card just won’t stop, like, pinging.

Like, they need to hear, like, yes. It’s a process.

Yeah. It you know, it it’s not immediate. Like, you need to optimize, but here’s what we’re gonna do about it. So I think a competitive analysis can really help with that question.

So, like, what what what do people need here that isn’t being said? Is that pain related, or is it desired outcome related? Like, do they need to know be woken up to the opportunity, or do they need to, like, show that that do they need to hear that their pain is not unusual, that it is like, it’s fine. That’s the story, but there is a way out of it, and you acknowledge that.

And you’re not gonna just promise them, like, the world.

That makes so much sense. I’ve been talking to a lot of marketers, lately, and the recurring theme I keep hearing is, like, I don’t wanna clutter up someone else’s inbox. My inbox is so full. I don’t wanna fuck up someone else’s.

So, yeah, I think that probably needs to be on the page and, you know, more crucial raising.

Yeah. And then do an AB test, like, test test desired outcome versus problem and see.

What do you use for AB testing, by the way? Do you have, like, online in pages? Sorry. Not for ads.

Okay. So I I use lead pages, but I did have a call with Jo. Like, when I did my ISP interview with her, she was like, yeah. I wouldn’t sign up to a webinar that’s on lead pages.

So it’s on my list to change that, but, like, you know, it’s like if you’ve got WordPress or something, it’s simple. I need to just figure it out. Like, that’s my next thing to ask ChatGPT is how do you do, like, a AB test on a Squarespace landing page? Like, these aren’t impossible questions anymore, which is which is great.

Okay. Awesome. Thank you.

Beginning to Coach the Conversion for New Leads / Subs

Beginning to Coach the Conversion for New Leads / Subs

Transcript

Sweet. Alright. We’re gonna dive in. So this is, like, our first call post all that glorious goal setting we did back in December.

December. Yeah. How is that for everybody? Any, like, lingering questions from the goal setting marathon?

Anything to share there?

I think it was good because now, you know, how everyone’s, oh, New Year’s resolutions. You know? I’ve already had it all set, and I’m just rolling right into it.

So Sweet.

Amazing. Beautiful.

My mind is racing.

I know the feeling.

Cool. Sweet. Alright. Let’s dive in. I’m gonna pull up this keynote.

Gosh. You take, like, ten days off from Zoom calls, and you get so rusty, and you forget where the share button is. It’s like relearning tech.

There we go.

Sweet. Before I kick it, who here has taken either ten x launches or ten x sales pages before?

Sweet. We got a few hands up. Sweet. Alright. So definitely not a prerequisite, but, good to know.

So this is our first session of January. It’s gonna be all about engaging and nurturing new leads. This one is all about how to do so with what is affectionately known as the coaching of the conversion method and a very specific confirmation email template that y’all, may have already seen it in the workbook. If not, we’ll see momentarily.

So super, super brief coaching the conversion primer. This is something I’ve typically taught in, like, you know, hour long plus sessions. So this is the two minute version of it. But, essentially, it goes like this.

The version of your prospect who opted in to your funnel, to your lead magnet, to whatever it is that brought them into your ecosystem is not the same version that says yes to your core offer. Right? And there are a series of milestones, which may come in the form of certain beliefs that they now have, certain states, things they now feel, whether that is feeling encouraged, empowered, optimistic, certain awarenesses, things they are aware of now that they weren’t aware of a few minutes ago or a few weeks a few weeks ago and certain micro actions that they’ve taken. And all these things are needed to bridge what I call a pre customer, someone who comes into your ecosystem into a customer, someone who is a natural yes to your thing and your marketing and the messaging structures you use within it are essentially tools to bridge the gap via a process that we call coaching the conversion.

I said we call coaching the conversion, but I’m really speak for myself.

One second.

Do not eat almond before a call. Those things get stuck in, like I’m just gonna call it the tracheal cavity cavity tracheal cavity as if I’ve taken premed classes, which I haven’t. I don’t know. I think I totally made up made that up. The tracheal cavity.

Cool. So I have an unreasonable completely unreasonable because it’s impossible, but it’s an unreasonable belief that every lead who enters a conversion ecosystem, aka funnel, should convert. Like, I always get surprised. I’m like, why isn’t everyone who’s coming into this funnel converting?

It makes no sense to me. So I have this unreasonable belief that everyone who comes into our funnel, especially if we’ve done our job in targeting that top of funnel effectively, targeting people who actually have that moment of high ascension, that problem we’re talking about, people who truly desire that solution we’re talking about, I have this unreasonable belief that absolutely everybody should convert, and I get, like, almost insulted when one person doesn’t buy. And one on one sales tells us that, yeah, we should raise our standards. Thirty to sixty percent should be expected.

Right? This is what a typical one on one salesperson will convert out of warm leads. Right?

So that is a far cry from, I don’t know, the one to three percent that, you know, automated funnels or non one on one sales funnels produce that.

So this is a classic case of aim for ten x, right, and be cool with two to three x of typical conversion rates. Right? And this is essentially where the whole coaching to conversion method was birthed from, was me listening to a ton of recordings from one on one salespeople converting at upwards of fifty percent and being like, dang. Wouldn’t it be cool if we could do that at scale? Like, why should we be settling for one to three percent when people who are in these dynamic one on one scenarios with the same type of leads that our marketing is attracting are closing at thirty, fifty, sixty percent.

So coaching the conversion, it plays out across different assets, different types of funnels.

Ten x launches was the first course we released on it, which essentially coached the conversion through a launch. Someone enters your launch. They go through the prelaunch. They go through the actual launch. The cart closed, and we’re coaching different states, awarenesses, beliefs throughout that.

Ten x sales pages, which you all have access to, coaches the conversion vertically. Right? Pre customer, someone who lands on your page, sees the hero section. Customer, someone who gets to the end of it, clicks buy now. Right? So that is coaching the conversion vertically.

Sales conversation, that’s another type of ecosystem. Engineering the enrollment is another course that teaches that. So coaching the conversion plays out across multiple different types of ecosystems, but they all involve the same process of digging into the very basic stuff. Right?

Where are they now? Pre customer. And as a marketer, you get to decide this to some extent through your targeting, which I think is an amazing thing. We get to define our pre customer.

How cool is that? Where do they need to be for a yes to be natural? Right? This is our customer.

This is our voice of customer research. What were those final states, those final awarenesses? What was the energy? What was the feeling of someone who said yes?

Right? What did they believe before they said yes? So we get to actually reverse engineer this. And how can I facilitate that transformation at scale?

And none of this is guesswork. Right? We have the data on the anatomy of what a customer is. We get to target who our pre customer is.

Right? And, therefore, we get to make certain hypotheses of what that transformation is and attempt to do it at scale. So coaching the conversion with new leads, fresh leads via email, I’d venture to say, is one of the most important conversion contacts. And your confirmation slash welcome email will nearly almost always be the most highly opened email, like, out of all the emails in your system.

Like, you could go into your ActiveCampaign. That first email that gets sent is typically the one that’s gonna have the highest open rate, except for the ones with the click baity subject lines that, you know I don’t know. I’ve seen some pretty good click baity emails in my time. But, yeah, you’re gonna get a lot of eyeballs on this, a lot of attention and awareness on this one.

Definitely a lot more in email one than email number two, so it’s it’s gotta pull its weight. It’s gotta earn its real estate in your funnel. It will also set the tone of your relationship with your prospect. It’s typically where they decide if you’re gonna be the friend zoned person, the person who puts out great content that they love, the person who sends great newsletters but they never actually buy from, or the person who gets fiercely compensated.

So this is really a big tone setter in that regard.

Alright. Some high level principles when it comes to coaching, the conversion, and a confirmation email. So the more specific and intent based the opt in, the easier it is to coach the next step. And I’ll give you some really clear examples.

So if someone opts in for a workshop called how to make ten k per month as a freelancer in twenty twenty five, that’s excellent. Right? You know their goal. You know what they’re signing up for.

Versus a lead magnet on things every copywriter should know about selling. That’s great. That’s kind of mid. That’s middle ground.

Versus the best copywriter newsletter ever. Right? Vague, general, broad. You have no way of knowing who that pre customer is when they opt in for that.

Right?

So in my experience, a paid low ticket opt in, even if it’s a workshop that costs five dollars, will always almost always signal stronger intent and commitment than a free webinar or a free report. That’s why I love, love, love, love, love implementing and working with paid low ticket workshops.

Even things that people have typically used for free, I love just making it paid. It helps us clearly define who that pre customer is when someone actually takes out their credit card to even exchange five bucks.

One thing I will note, after years of trying to get people to acknowledge this fact, right, it is almost impossible to coach the conversion off of a general newsletter opt in. Right? Like, it can’t be done. There are too many assumptions and stretches you’re making on a general newsletter opt in.

So before you do that, you definitely need to segment that list, segment those leads, get them to raise their hand, and define themselves as as a certain type of pre customer. Right? So we do have templates for that. I think I taught this inside, CSP early in twenty twenty four.

But you could definitely look for the coffee date email template. That’s a really good one for segmenting your list and getting general opt ins to define themselves as something more specific where you can then coach the conversion in a more intentional and direct way.

And this is the biggest principle.

Essentially, the better your top of funnel targeting is, especially via ad creative. If you’re ad creative, if your Instagram reels, if your LinkedIn post could speak so specifically, right, to that top of funnel avatar, the more conversion milestones will heart will have already been met. So a conversion milestone, for example, is someone having a moment of high attention. Right? Being aware of a moment that they no longer want to experience with respects to that problem.

Another milestone is them being aware of certain solutions. Another milestone is them having tried certain things that haven’t worked. Right?

The more you can meet someone who’s already gone through that, the less you actually have to coach, the less steps within that journey that your marketing is responsible to lead them through. And it is really expensive and really time consuming to lead someone through an entire journey. Right? So the biggest hack you can give yourself is to begin that journey, begin that pre customer journey a little further down that line. Right? And your top of funnel targeting, the ad creative, the LinkedIn post, the Instagram reel is essentially what makes your copy have to work less hard down the line.

So your tofu targeting, in a perfect world, this is the first thing I would audit right before I write any email sequence for anybody. Right? Is are we making sure that we are bringing the right people into this funnel? And by right people, not just meaning people who have this problem, but people who are aware of it.

Right? I’m aware, moment of high tension, things that they absolutely no longer want to experience again in their lifetimes, that they have a known and desired outcome and resonate with what I call the moment of heightened pleasure. They know what success looks like, and they’re committed to it because they have that frustration and confusion within that gap. So this is all super basic, but it’s all worth returning to when it comes to our top of funnel targeting.

Right? The more of these boxes we could check off and the more intense these things are true for the people we’re targeting, the less hard our copy is gonna have to work. So when this is true, when we’ve checked these boxes, when our top of funnel marketing is dialed in, then your confirmation email can coach what I call the big three. But before we get into that, few quick rules more than ever.

Forget everything you’ve learned about nurturing in twenty twenty fourteen when the world moves slower and meta algorithms didn’t show your prospect ads for your competitors three minutes later. So this is a thing now more than ever. Now that the algorithms for ad platforms are getting so smart and so dialed in, Essentially, if someone opts in to your lead magnet, opts into your workshop, they’re going to be getting ads for your competitors a few minutes later on their feeds. Right?

So this is permission to move faster than you would otherwise. Right? Most marketers think they need to warm up cold leads, quote, unquote, when in reality, if they’ve targeted their top of funnel properly, they need to keep warm leads hot and use that fire to coach progress towards a solution. So always on the side of assuming movement and readiness and siding with speed.

Once again, time delay stagnancy is your enemy, especially when your prospect, your leads are gonna be getting presented other options, other solutions from your competitors literally within seconds or minutes. So unless your primary goal is to build a media company or a newsletter or an influencer brand, do not lead with your backstory. Email one shouldn’t just be, you know, an introduction about you. It shouldn’t just be authority content that is disconnected to the problem that the top of funnel piece or content or ad suggested that they have.

Right? So a very easy hack here to kinda balance the two. I love putting any authority content, whether it’s, like, books you’ve written or podcasts you’ve appeared on, or any other type of, like, backstory stuff you have in your email signature. That way you have, like, the passive credibility and authority content that they could just kind of, like, click through if they truly desire that.

But once they enter your funnel, if you’ve done your targeting right, you’re really trying to establish movement towards that end state.

So the big three, you can think of this big three as a source code, right, where you can use any tactic, any strategy, any messaging structure within your arsenal to coach them. It’s essentially these are three milestones, three states that you get to coach, and you get to use the tools available to you. You get to get creative about how you structure emails as long as they’re establishing these three. So the first one is coaching relevance because these are a few of the questions your prospect is gonna ask immediately, whether they’re consciously asking themselves this in their head or they are subconsciously making sure there’s a match here. Right? Am I in the right spot?

Is this message mirroring back my exact moment of highest tension that I want to escape? Is this relevant?

Is this message mirroring back the moment of heightened pleasure or moment of highest pleasure I want to achieve?

Is this message meeting me in what I’ve already done, tried, and failed at? And is this message pointing to an offer, opportunity, or next step that gives me new hope? Right? So if you get a yes to all five of these, you have coached relevance, and you need to coach this right off the bat. Do not waste time. Do not send out any other messaging, propping yourself up as an authority, positioning your brand until you’ve coached relevance.

Next is resonance. Right? Do they resonate with you, with your assessment of them, with your diagnosis of the problem, with your unique solution, and with your understanding and empathy of the entire situational gestalt? So one of the things I love to do in my marketing is talking about the stakes involved, the second degree effects of the main problem, right, the secret fears that they have around it. So really get dimensional about how problems appear in people’s lives, right, and get resonance around what you are mirroring back to them. And then the most important is coaching response ability, their ability to respond, their willingness to respond.

Making a purchase, saying yes, is an action. That is a response. Right? If we could get them to start taking microactions right away, ascending in the intimacy between what you’re doing, right, and them.

Right? So that could look like watching a paid workshop that they just bought. Right? That could mean engaging in a direct message or an Instagram chat or taking an assessment via score app or interact or a quiz or replying to a personal video message or replying to the email or booking call.

Essentially, what we are coaching on that very first email is can we get them to take that next action with us. Right? Not later, not on email number two when open rates have gone down anywhere between thirty thirty to fifty percent, but can we get can we get that next monumental action right here on the first email? So this is a little bit of extra theory.

This is something I created, like, a few years ago in a program that was called automated in intimacy. I can’t use that anymore because AI has totally taken on different dimensions. But, essentially, we’re trying to move people to this top right quadrant. Right?

The majority of sales happen as touch points ascend in intimacy and dynamism. Right? So we have a lot of marketing that exists in the bottom left quadrant. This is static.

It’s a one way dialogue. Right? And it’s impersonal. It’s one to many. But the more we move to that top right, the more we see higher and higher conversion rates.

Right? So this is just a little bit of an extra framework to see if you can get that next touch point to be more intimate than their initial one. Can you get any form of two way dialogue, dynamic dialogue?

And, essentially, that is one way to coach the conversion via greater intimacy.

So let’s put it all together. This is called the perfect confirmation email template, and it’s really simple. It’s, like, two hundred and fifty words that incorporates all this, you know, sciency stuff. It’s not even sciency.

I don’t even know what to call it. But, yeah, this is what incorporates everything we just talked about. So step one is to confirm and celebrate the opt in action or the event, right, to just mirroring back the action they just took. So this is one I wrote recently for a paid workshop paid workshop opt in.

That’s right. Cool. So hey. And then I blanked out the name. My team just nudged me to let me know you claimed a spot in the Art Money Power workshop.

Right? So just mirroring back what they just did. Now we have this whole section on coaching relevancy, which probably means so that’s a really good segue into this section for coaching relevancy.

That like the five hundred plus others who’ve said, hell yes, and now we mirror back. Right? Who they are. You’re an established fine artist who wants to sell more art pieces in twenty twenty five at higher prices.

That has you proving all dem doubters wrong as you sign a lease for that industrial loft with the exposed brick. Right? Little moment of highest pleasure there. It also means that you’re probably so effing done with trying to prove yourself to the leeches of the industry.

So moment of highest tension stuff. The agents who don’t return your calls. The art galleries who take a crazy cut and return your untold pieces with nasty stains and, oh my god, are there someone’s greasy ass fingerprints. Right?

Real moment of highest tension information we get from our voice of customer data. The art contest judged by other grad school burnouts who probably chat GPT their feedback without even looking because what they wrote makes no effing sense, and all the other disempowering ways the pick me, choose me, love me art industry has robbed you of your profits and your power.

So after reading this, like, section of maybe a hundred and a hundred and fifty words, right, there is zero chance anyone reading this would find this would essentially not know whether this was relevant for them. It’s either gonna be hyper relevant, like hyper agreement, or very clear that this isn’t for them. Right? So this is about coaching relevancy.

Next, coaching resonance. So a lot of this will have already established some resonance, but we wanna create even more resonance right around the new way of doing things. So if you caught yourself nodding, then you probably also be beyond stoked to learn and apply the same direct to customer luxury strategies that my students are using to attract kind collectors, cut out the middleman, and cash five bigger checks on the regular while finally knowing they’ve made it. Right?

So resonance around their end goal, resonance around the method for doing it. And then we coach responsibility, encouraging that next step, that next ascension on that paid spectrum or that paid, framework that we just went through. Now here’s the deal. If you close this email, then that dream remains just that, a dream.

Fun to pay and should be to live. But if this whole combo feels hyper relevant and you’re committed to making twenty twin twenty twenty five a living master masterpiece, then I highly recommend that you, one, watch the art money power workshop right away. So that is one form of coaching responsibility. And then the next, DM me power on Instagram to kick start your seventy two hour hybrid coaching and get a little unannounced bonus gift.

Trust me. You’ll love it. So I love adding a little bit of a teaser, a little unexpected gift for them taking an action that has sent them on the intimacy scale. So this is one tactic if you’re doing any form of evergreen workshops, evergreen webinars that I absolutely love.

So on the page or the workshop, one of the bonuses is called hybrid coaching. Right? So we acknowledge that this is prerecorded.

And because they can’t answer questions live, part of it the bonus they get is they get seventy two hours of q and a and hybrid coaching with this person and her team. Right? So this is a way to engage that level of intimacy and real time coaching even within an evergreen workshop.

I’m crazy passionate about helping fine artists like you reclaim their power, dignity, and profit from traditional art establishment as long as you’re all in, I’m all in with you. Cool. So that is the template. Really simple, and it’s pulling a lot of weight in relatively little words.

And, yeah, this is where we really take advantage of the fact that this first email is going to be the most opened, and we get right to the point. We coach relevancy. We coach resonance, and this is really our main goal. Our main goal is to initiate that one on one chat right off the bat, to not waste time with that because we know that if we can get a lead to engage one on one with this coach and with her team, that the likelihood of that lead converting and moving to that final conversion is gonna be that much higher.

Cool. I think that’s all we got. So I’m gonna stop my share and open the floor for any questions, any, brainstorms you all wanna have about how you might apply this in your own business for your own funnels or for funnels you’re working on per client.

Right. Where can I find the workbook?

Did you get a did you get a copy of it in your email yet?

I didn’t even look at my email. I have to see. Yeah.

It’s possible it got sent out. If not, Okay. And I could probably let me see if I can just download a copy.

No. Message me on Slack if you can access it, and I should be able to, drop a file for you. Cool.

Sure.

No problem. Cody.

Okay. So with that template you just showed us, is that supposed to be in this workbook, or is that somewhere else?

That is supposed to be in the workbook. Yeah.

Okay. Because I’m looking at the workbook, and I don’t see it in here.

Alright. So it’s possible that an updated version just didn’t get updated, like, while the crew was on holiday break.

But Alright.

What I can definitely do is, yeah, I’ll download it, copy of it, and I’ll send it to you over on Slack.

Awesome. Thanks.

Cool. Jess?

Okay. I love this. One of the things that I’ve been noodling on while you were talking was, with the diagnostic.

Mhmm.

And so if you were running, like, a group diagnostic, and let’s say you’re running it as, like, a webinar, you know, you start collecting sign ups, like, a week out or something. What would you recommend that you put in the, like, the responsibility of, like, here’s what I need you to do? Like, what’s that action that you would recommend that we prompt them with?

Right. So if they’ve already opted in for a webinar, that would go through that. Right?

Mhmm.

That’s a good question. Right? So, like, if there is an assessment, like, a self assessment that they could go through beforehand, like, essentially, you could take parts of what you go through on that webinar and just give them a faster self assessment version of it, right, of, like Mhmm. If this is something that you just got their attention with, because it’s you’re doing this live, right, the webinar?

Yeah.

Right.

So one thing you wanna defend against on live webinars, right, is, like, people being really aware and really kind of, like, motivated to solve it in the moment they sign up, and then there’s this gap and this lag and life happens. Right? So, essentially, it’s kind of like a skip the line type thing. Right? It’s like, take this assess take this assessment here. If you see your own gaps and wanna talk about it, like, send over your results.

So, yeah, it’s like, take this assessment, and let me know, like, where you scored, where you noticed that you’re a little weaker. Right? And we can kick start that conversation sooner.

I like that. And because one of the things I think that was really impactful for me when I did Jo’s assessment thing was, like, her walking through it and explaining it all. And I feel like, especially with the diagnostic, I don’t know that it would have and, obviously, I don’t have, like, the assessment, but I feel like the the walking it through and explaining it, it would almost have to be, like, instead of showing up live to the webinar, here’s a recording of me, like, walking you through it, and then why would they show up live.

So I’m wondering if what are your thoughts on asking for, like, a DM or a reply to be like, what is, like, your experience with x, y, and zed problem to, a, get some, like, VOC, but then to also open up that conversation, like, in the upper quadrant there of, like, the sales quadrant that you shared.

Yeah. I think it’s a great idea. I think anything you could do to get that one on one conversation right away from that moment of I’ll I’ll call it a moment of heightened receptivity. Right?

They just saw your webinar landing page. It resonated. They’re like, yes to this. They signed up.

You’re top of mind in that moment. If they’re able to take that next action to ascend in the intimacy scale right there and then, like, even if it’s a button on your landing page around, like, you know, send me a quick DM, like, letting me know what inspired. Like, there’s the surveys we have sometimes on landing pages of, like, what inspired you to do this thing. I prefer, like, just a bun.

Like, tell me. Right, at this stage of our business when we’re making those sales. Like, that doesn’t need to go through SurveyMonkey. Like, just send that straight to my inbox so that we can have that conversation now.

There’s this, it’s, like, so stupid symbol, and it works so well. I can’t remember who coined it, but it’s like I think it was, like, called the non webinar webinar or the webinar that doesn’t matter. And it was, like, someone who is running webinar funnels just for the purpose of starting DM conversations, and it’s almost like the webinar itself didn’t even matter. Right?

And, of course, it did matter. There was a legit webinar there. But the whole purpose was, like, sign up for the webinar. You know you have someone who is resonating with the messaging around the webinar, and then just get them into that one on one conversation right away.

Right? Like, what inspired you to join? Right? Like, where do you think you might be weak when it comes to this?

Right? And get into that exploratory conversation.

And that person had more conversions happening from people who didn’t even see the webinar. Right? It was just a right? So don’t insist on just because we’ve crafted these, like, amazing webinars and workshops with all the right diagnostics, like, don’t insist on that being the only way someone could come to work with you. Right? Mhmm. Like yeah.

Okay. Cool. Thank you. And I have another question, but I’ll let Joseph go. And if there’s time, I’ll ask another.

For sure.

Thanks, Joseph.

Go for it, Joseph.

Ryan, that was awesome.

So how like, what does planning your marketing like, your funnel automation look like now? Like, considering what you like like like you said, you know, like, your training has completely changed.

And today, you showed us that, like, that initial first email.

Mhmm. But I guess what does, like, what does planning the automation look like like for you now? Or, like, do or does the workbook cover that?

So it doesn’t go deeper than this template. So Okay. I mean, I could go through kinda, like, what my basic funnels look like. Right? Or we could make it more specific to something you’re working on. Do you have a preference on that?

Or do you wanna just, like For now, if you can just skip the sketch of, like, what your kind of basic information is now because I don’t have something specific at the moment.

Yeah. So, yeah, I tell you, a lot of it still comes back to this concept of automated intimacy that was the theme of a program I created a few years ago. And it’s essentially you have your emails, which are I call them, like, marketing scaffolding. Right?

They’re gonna do what they do. Right? But I can’t assume that my email sequence is going to coach that whole conversion. Right?

Like, you can’t assume someone’s gonna open up every email. Right? And, like, in twenty fifteen, people would say, like, in email number one, I’m gonna coach this belief. In email two, this one.

In email three, I’m gonna give them the FAQ. Right? And there’s this, like, weird assumption that someone’s actually reading through everything lit in a linear order. Right?

So, essentially, what my marketing looks like right now is the first forty eight hours are when I’m really trying to get that ascension right into a one on one conversation.

There’s been a big shift from, once again, like, free webinars and free lead magnets to paid even if it’s, like, really low ticket and essentially trying to get that first contact via myself one on one or someone on my team one on one to talk to that lead within the first day or two, even in a very, like, general wanna make sure you have everything set up. Right?

And the quicker I could get engaged in a real dynamic conversation, essentially, the better. So another way this is done, lead scoring used to be a really big piece part of this. It still is for clients who have a lot bigger lead flow.

But on a kind of, like, five to seven day automated sequence or even a live launch, right, I’m definitely scoring certain actions they’re taking even if it’s just email opens. And once they cross a certain threshold, definitely taking that as a signal of intent and once again reaching out dynamically. Right? Saying, hey.

Notice that you’ve probably been, you know, watching this workshop or taking this action. Just wanna make sure you’re all set up. Let me know if you have any questions. Right?

So it’s essentially letting your marketing coach the conversion to whatever degree it can and then injecting those personal reach outs just at strategic touch points. And that’s just gonna look differently depending on what your bandwidth is, what your team looks like, what your lead flow looks like, but there’s always gonna be a way to at least make sure that your most high intent leads don’t get left to just the automated funnel. Does that make sense at a high level?

That does. Thank you. Yeah. If if the leads obviously, we want all these leads to convert. Mhmm. They should, as you said. If they don’t, what do you do with them after that forty eight hours?

Yeah. So there’s still, of course, like my sequences don’t just end at forty eight hours. Right? Usually, like, the evergreen funnels, when I’m trying to get them to take that next action, will be that standard five, seven, ten days, right, and different emails that have different angles, right, different approaches, you know, your typical, here are the questions other people who said yes asked, right, certain closing emails, certain urgency emails. So all that still plays out.

I’m just not relying on that to do all the work. Right? I’m really establishing as much one on one contact throughout that as possible.

Yeah. That’s awesome. Thanks so much, man. Appreciate it. Cool.

Yeah. My pleasure.

And I think I had the same same crib. Is that one, like, that collapses? Not crib. Sorry. Like, Ben.

It is. Yeah. Yeah. This is Yeah. This is the opposite. It’s also currently the, like, the bedroom for the baby right now.

Nice.

So I remember, like Yeah. My kid never actually used it except for one day when, like, I came home from work, and he used that plus, like, everything else he could find to barricade the doors and not let me in. So that was fun.

Marquette, man. Yikes.

Totally. Cool. Any other questions on this topic or any other topic?

Go ahead, Jess. You go first.

No. What he asked was my question, so that’s perfect.

I was just gonna say, what are the rest of the emails that come after that, and how are we thinking about them now versus what everybody was taught in twenty fourteen?

So Right.

Yeah. So So it’s always, like, assuming readiness and speed and movement is really kind of, like, the biggest change I’ve made in my own sequences even between now and twenty twenty. Right? It’s, like, just erring on the side of speed, not necessarily presumptuous.

Like, I’m not being obnoxious about it saying, like, you know, buy now, buy now, buy now. Right? But, like, assuming that I am meeting someone who is resourced and willing and desiring to move forward. Right?

So yeah.

And then, of course, like, the whole coaching of the conversion framework continues to play out. Right? It’s like, what can I assume about this person, right, who hasn’t taken that next action yet? Right?

And how can I coach them in that? So that’s essentially the sequence I would write after the main sales sequence is someone who said yes to this ad, right, opted in, opened up emails here, right, but didn’t take that action. What can I assume about them here? Right?

And that could be a form of a second chance email sequence. Right? Like, meeting them either in price objection, cost objection, time objection, you know, whatever it is. So yeah.

Like, I think one of one of the subject lines, like, yeah, one of the subject lines that worked really well, and I just keep reusing it because it’s so, like, multi multi usage, multipurpose is, like, you know, not a now thing, question mark. Right? Like, essentially taking that verbatim of, like, why someone wouldn’t take action now. Right?

And essentially reminding them, like, well, when I coach someone who thinks that this is not a now thing, I need to get them into the awareness that this being a later thing is more costly. Right? That it’s more of a now thing than they realize. Right?

That it won’t be as costly or time intensive to implement as they think. Right? So it’s essentially always where are they at now? Where are they at now?

Where are they at now? And how can I coach them through it?

I have a question.

What are the show up rates for webinars for, paid versus nonpaid?

So very broadly general general generally speaking.

Gosh. Like, I hesitate to even give, like, a standard, because it so depends on your relationship with the audience. Obviously, people who are coming from a warm list, whether it’s your, like, Instagram and people have been following you forever, or a cold Facebook ad, it’s gonna have totally different numbers. But you do wanna aim for somewhere into, like, twenty five to thirty percent for nonpaid.

That could be lower if it’s people, like, fresh off of a Facebook ad for sure.

And paid so paid, let me see. The last one we ran about, like, fifty to sixty percent if it was and that was at just ten bucks. It’s like a ten dollar workshop, and that literally doubled that conversion rate, right, of people showing up for it.

Yeah. And yeah. Anyway, I just I I love paid workshops now. I’ll just say that.

I love to say that. Yeah. Yeah. And what I love about the paid workshop model is versus the free workshop model.

So if on the free workshop model, you reach out with a one on one message, it feels more intrusive. Whereas on the paid, if it’s framed as a bonus, right, hybrid coaching, now it feels more valuable, and it is more valuable. So Yeah.

Wow. That’s awesome.

Yeah. Yep.

Thank you. My pleasure.

What an amazing book collection. I think you have at least two hundred and forty two there. Like, I’m just doing some rough math.

This is just one room, not including my Kindle stuff. I’m I’m a voracious reader.

Nice. Cool. Britney, I see your hand up.

Yeah.

Could you speak to what your favorite tech is right now to build your funnels? Are you building them yourself? Are you working with corporate clients who have their teams that you’re, you know, just then offloading the copy to? I’d kinda just like to know what people are using. What’s the what’s their favorite?

Yeah. Good question. Like, for any type of funnel in particular?

Not necessarily.

Mhmm.

Smaller clients who still like to essentially, like, do a lot of things themselves, simpler text stacks.

A lot of people have migrated off of ActiveCampaign onto, like, GoHighLevel and Kajabi and stuff like that.

Let me see. What are people using right now? Like I mean, it’s so varied.

HubSpot, I’ve always loved that for essentially, like, getting to the pipelines, getting just really clear tracking and really clear, notes on every lead that enters that system. That’s been phenomenal.

Typically, I don’t love managing HubSpot stuff myself.

But, yeah, most clients who have a good tech wizard on their team, amazing.

Let me see. What else?

Webinars have just like webinars are so varied. I like Zoom webinars personally. It just feels more familiar, less Internet marketing y marketing y. Yes.

Email marketing, I mean, ActiveCampaign, still use that quite a bit.

But, yeah, I don’t know. Yeah. It’s a mix.

Yeah. How are you happy with Go HighLevel when you use it? I mean, is anyone using HighLevel right now?

And I’m using it for some of my brands.

Yeah. Like, for the price point, I like it.

I have a really I mean, I’ll say I have a really good, like, Go high level designer automation person, so that really helps.

One of my, like, biggest complaints about it was, like, you know how, like, every page builder, like, makes you feel like, oh, that’s a Go high level page. Oh, that’s a ClickFunnels page. Like, that’s always been my biggest objection.

But, with a good designer, you’re definitely able to get, like, pages up to spec. So, like yeah. What I’ve been able to do with GoHighLevel is essentially, like, take pages that have been, like, custom built on WordPress or whatever, like, beautiful pages, and just tell my GoHighLevel person, like, can you recreate this, like, as close as possible? And that has been, like, an amazing hack.

So, yeah, I like it. Go high level has worked. I haven’t had too many, like, problems with it, and it’s definitely gotten the job done. But I also know other people who have complained about it being, like, unreliable or wonky, at times, but I just haven’t really, yeah, I haven’t really kind of fallen into that problem yet myself.

For clients that are, you know, doing around twenty million a year, so they’re kind of not like a small start up or Mhmm. Whatever. I guess, what tech would you recommend for them if they’re not already if they don’t already have, like, an in house thing?

Oh, for what kind of marketing?

Like, a utilities provider, multifamily. So, essentially, they would be targeting managers of multifamily who are in charge of utility billing.

Okay.

I mean, at that level, probably something like HubSpot, probably something really robust.

I definitely wouldn’t mess around with, like, a go high level at that level Go high level at that level.

No. I wouldn’t I wouldn’t yeah. Yep.

Mhmm.

Thanks.

Of course.

I also have clients, like, totally different space. Right? But, like, even in that, like, eight figure range, like, I have clients who literally work with GoHighLevel and Instagram. Right?

And that’s their entire tech stack. So, yeah, it really depends on, like, where are your leads coming from, what that sales process is, what those, like, sales cycles are, and how much information needs to be, like, collected, gathered, stored, and acted upon throughout that cycle. So that’s probably the bigger determinant than, strictly revenue levels. But yeah.

I’m just finding that I I’m having good success finding the client. I have a strong understanding of the strategy, but then the tech, like, it just all goes to hell. So I’m just trying to figure out, like, how to what do I need to learn about that aspect so that I can be more Mhmm. Throughout the whole process, you know, because it’s like, you don’t delay and just the strategy doesn’t matter. Right?

To what degree do you feel like you need to be taking ownership of the tech and the tech choices?

I guess that’s sort of what I’m trying to figure out. Like, I have my my clients right now are sort of all the way from very small startup to that twenty million ish a year in revenue. And so I’m just trying to figure out how to standardize an offer that I can feel great about without Mhmm. Stress of things not working.

Yeah. Totally.

In general, like, do you consider yourself, like, pretty techie? Do you enjoy learning different systems and implementing on that level?

I don’t love it, but I’m facing the facts. Right? Like, I like being competent. So, yeah, I would prefer to stay in strategy messaging word land all day long.

Mhmm. Mhmm.

But I just think the more you know, it’s just I’d like to be fluid.

Totally.

I mean, there are a lot of people who, like, obviously thrive as automation experts that love working in those systems. Right?

These are good friends to have nearby for sure.

I could certainly see possibilities, right, of your product as services and your offerings having with tech support and implementation and without. Right?

And the ones with having collaborations, having a certain partner that fulfills on that might help keep you in the zone of what you’re really good at, because it could take a lot of energy and a lot of time and a lot of, like, learning and messing around time to get, quote, unquote, masterful at these systems. Right? And these systems, of course, change from client to client, so it might be a inevitable game.

Collaborating, and that’s where I’m suffering a little bit is because I thought anyway, I just need to make a switch with the person I’m collaborating with probably. Because I don’t wanna do it, but I need to know enough about it that I’m Mhmm.

Yeah. For sure.

Makes sense. What Well, let me know if ever there’s, like, any systems you’re looking for, like, a certain, tech collaborator on, because I know, you know, I know a lot of people who work with IKEA or ActiveCampaign or GoHighLevel.

But, yeah, keep me posted for sure.

Cool. Joseph.

I’m back. If, and if so, yeah, my my question is, how do you how are you optimizing your funnel these days?

And if it’s easier to just, like, send me to a resource that you have, like Mhmm.

That’s totally cool too.

But but yeah. Because you mentioned, like, you are once someone doesn’t, like if they don’t necessarily act on the offer right away, you know, like, you’re still selling them. You’re dropping them into your flow. You’re still testing different angles and things. So how are you yeah. What is optimizing your funnel look like for you?

Yeah. That’s a really good question.

Oh, so many different, like, competing ideologies around this. One thing that I’ll always ask first is you know? I I run a lot of, like, cold traffic from, like, ads, and I’ll always look back at that ad level of, like, am I targeting someone who is definitely problem aware, definitely motivated, and seeking a solution? Right? So those are the first questions I’ll ask myself, and sometimes I’ll so the annoying thing there is sometimes, like, the ad creatives that are less direct in that languaging will perform better and get lower CPLs than the ones that are, like, really hard and direct about, like, this is what you’re facing and very, like, presumptive of that.

But the ones that are looser perform less well down funnel. Right? So one of the places I’ll optimize is essentially, like, if I know that I have something here. Right?

If I’ve gotten sales, right, and I’ve gone through an exercise of what is true about the people who said yes, essentially creating, like, an anatomy of a buyer. Not a hypothesis, but these are my actuals. These are people who bought. I will reverse engineer who they are and put that top of funnel, right, and just try to get more people into there.

So that’s typically it’s like I tend to optimize back at the top always. I don’t mess around a lot on the in betweens until I’ve really optimized my top funnel to make sure I’m getting the right people in that even give me right data and not false negatives. Right? Like, if my sales page is converting at sub one percent, but I don’t even have the right people coming in on it, then my sales page isn’t actually converting at one percent.

Right? And I’ve seen way too many people spend a lot of time trying to, like, you know, change the headline, change the price point, change, like, everything about their sales page when, like, yeah. Most of the time, it’s a targeting targeting thing, in my view, at least. That’s, that’s one perspective out of one perspective out of possibly many.

But, yeah.

Oh, that makes sense. That makes a lot of sense.

Mhmm.

Yeah. I know, like, during a freelance intensive optimization came up a little bit, and one of the things Joe was talking about was, like like, you know, cut one one possible rule of thumb is starting at the, you know, closest to the actual conversion and, like, working backwards from there. But what you’re saying makes a lot of sense too, certainly, especially for ad campaigns.

Mhmm.

But, yeah, that’s that’s helpful. Thanks.

Yeah. No problem. Like, I’ve seen the same sales page convert at sub one percent, convert at, you know, three to five percent just by changing targeting. Right? So it’s like Wow. I know.

Yeah. It’s like and it makes total sense. Right? It’s like Yeah. Like, in the real world, like, you know, if you just have the wrong people walking into your store, you could have the best salespeople there.

Right? You could have, like, the best displays, the best everything. And yeah, so just dialing in the precision on those top of funnel ads, paying a getting a little less concerned about your CPLs, especially at the beginning, like your cost per leads. Like, a lot of, like, people will optimize for lower CPLs, right, which makes sense because you don’t wanna see so many dollars, like, flying out the window there.

But, yeah, I’d say, like, the place I have the most fun optimizing is just that ad creative, that ad copy. Right? Making it so direct, so clear, so like, it’s either gonna be hyper relevant or hyper irrelevant. But it gives me the confidence that everyone coming into that ecosystem is ready for a conversation about it, right, has this problem that I’m so specifically and presumptively talking about, right, and is so ready to move forward.

So, yeah, that’s my hack for that.

Yeah. I love that. That’s awesome.

Cool.

Yeah. Dane Kennedy used to say that all the time. The first step was the market.

Yeah.

You know, he says the market, the message match.

Right? He always says the first step is the market.

He said it with a better mustache too, I think. Like, list offer copy. Indeed. It always comes back down to, like, these fundamentals at the end of the day.

But, yeah, what I love about, like, list when it comes to, quote, unquote, cold traffic. Right? And I don’t like, cold is such a vague term, but, like, yeah, you get to choose your list, right, essentially with ads.

You don’t get to choose your list with a general newsletter. You don’t really get to choose your list with a website. Right? People, you know, find you in different ways. But you get to choose your list with ads based on, you know, your ad creative. So, yeah, it’s fun.

Cool. Cool. Are we complete for today?

Sweet. Britney, I love your, cupboard handles. I don’t know why they’re catching my eye.

Thanks. Random thing.

I think, restoration, maybe.

Sounds good.

Yeah. Is that your is that your office, Britney? Yeah.

I hope it’s nice.

Nice.

Thanks. Hope everyone’s having a good New Year. Appreciate the support.

Yeah. Appreciate y’all showing up for this one on January second. Fun little crew. And, yeah, have an amazing rest of the week, and I’ll catch you soon.

Thanks.

Thanks so much, Ryan.

No problem. Bye.

You guys.

Workbook

List Building and Lead Nurturing (printer friendly)

Workbook

List Building and Lead Nurturing (printer friendly)

Transcript

Sweet. Alright. We’re gonna dive in. So this is, like, our first call post all that glorious goal setting we did back in December.

December. Yeah. How is that for everybody? Any, like, lingering questions from the goal setting marathon?

Anything to share there?

I think it was good because now, you know, how everyone’s, oh, New Year’s resolutions. You know? I’ve already had it all set, and I’m just rolling right into it.

So Sweet.

Amazing. Beautiful.

My mind is racing.

I know the feeling.

Cool. Sweet. Alright. Let’s dive in. I’m gonna pull up this keynote.

Gosh. You take, like, ten days off from Zoom calls, and you get so rusty, and you forget where the share button is. It’s like relearning tech.

There we go.

Sweet. Before I kick it, who here has taken either ten x launches or ten x sales pages before?

Sweet. We got a few hands up. Sweet. Alright. So definitely not a prerequisite, but, good to know.

So this is our first session of January. It’s gonna be all about engaging and nurturing new leads. This one is all about how to do so with what is affectionately known as the coaching of the conversion method and a very specific confirmation email template that y’all, may have already seen it in the workbook. If not, we’ll see momentarily.

So super, super brief coaching the conversion primer. This is something I’ve typically taught in, like, you know, hour long plus sessions. So this is the two minute version of it. But, essentially, it goes like this.

The version of your prospect who opted in to your funnel, to your lead magnet, to whatever it is that brought them into your ecosystem is not the same version that says yes to your core offer. Right? And there are a series of milestones, which may come in the form of certain beliefs that they now have, certain states, things they now feel, whether that is feeling encouraged, empowered, optimistic, certain awarenesses, things they are aware of now that they weren’t aware of a few minutes ago or a few weeks a few weeks ago and certain micro actions that they’ve taken. And all these things are needed to bridge what I call a pre customer, someone who comes into your ecosystem into a customer, someone who is a natural yes to your thing and your marketing and the messaging structures you use within it are essentially tools to bridge the gap via a process that we call coaching the conversion.

I said we call coaching the conversion, but I’m really speak for myself.

One second.

Do not eat almond before a call. Those things get stuck in, like I’m just gonna call it the tracheal cavity cavity tracheal cavity as if I’ve taken premed classes, which I haven’t. I don’t know. I think I totally made up made that up. The tracheal cavity.

Cool. So I have an unreasonable completely unreasonable because it’s impossible, but it’s an unreasonable belief that every lead who enters a conversion ecosystem, aka funnel, should convert. Like, I always get surprised. I’m like, why isn’t everyone who’s coming into this funnel converting?

It makes no sense to me. So I have this unreasonable belief that everyone who comes into our funnel, especially if we’ve done our job in targeting that top of funnel effectively, targeting people who actually have that moment of high ascension, that problem we’re talking about, people who truly desire that solution we’re talking about, I have this unreasonable belief that absolutely everybody should convert, and I get, like, almost insulted when one person doesn’t buy. And one on one sales tells us that, yeah, we should raise our standards. Thirty to sixty percent should be expected.

Right? This is what a typical one on one salesperson will convert out of warm leads. Right?

So that is a far cry from, I don’t know, the one to three percent that, you know, automated funnels or non one on one sales funnels produce that.

So this is a classic case of aim for ten x, right, and be cool with two to three x of typical conversion rates. Right? And this is essentially where the whole coaching to conversion method was birthed from, was me listening to a ton of recordings from one on one salespeople converting at upwards of fifty percent and being like, dang. Wouldn’t it be cool if we could do that at scale? Like, why should we be settling for one to three percent when people who are in these dynamic one on one scenarios with the same type of leads that our marketing is attracting are closing at thirty, fifty, sixty percent.

So coaching the conversion, it plays out across different assets, different types of funnels.

Ten x launches was the first course we released on it, which essentially coached the conversion through a launch. Someone enters your launch. They go through the prelaunch. They go through the actual launch. The cart closed, and we’re coaching different states, awarenesses, beliefs throughout that.

Ten x sales pages, which you all have access to, coaches the conversion vertically. Right? Pre customer, someone who lands on your page, sees the hero section. Customer, someone who gets to the end of it, clicks buy now. Right? So that is coaching the conversion vertically.

Sales conversation, that’s another type of ecosystem. Engineering the enrollment is another course that teaches that. So coaching the conversion plays out across multiple different types of ecosystems, but they all involve the same process of digging into the very basic stuff. Right?

Where are they now? Pre customer. And as a marketer, you get to decide this to some extent through your targeting, which I think is an amazing thing. We get to define our pre customer.

How cool is that? Where do they need to be for a yes to be natural? Right? This is our customer.

This is our voice of customer research. What were those final states, those final awarenesses? What was the energy? What was the feeling of someone who said yes?

Right? What did they believe before they said yes? So we get to actually reverse engineer this. And how can I facilitate that transformation at scale?

And none of this is guesswork. Right? We have the data on the anatomy of what a customer is. We get to target who our pre customer is.

Right? And, therefore, we get to make certain hypotheses of what that transformation is and attempt to do it at scale. So coaching the conversion with new leads, fresh leads via email, I’d venture to say, is one of the most important conversion contacts. And your confirmation slash welcome email will nearly almost always be the most highly opened email, like, out of all the emails in your system.

Like, you could go into your ActiveCampaign. That first email that gets sent is typically the one that’s gonna have the highest open rate, except for the ones with the click baity subject lines that, you know I don’t know. I’ve seen some pretty good click baity emails in my time. But, yeah, you’re gonna get a lot of eyeballs on this, a lot of attention and awareness on this one.

Definitely a lot more in email one than email number two, so it’s it’s gotta pull its weight. It’s gotta earn its real estate in your funnel. It will also set the tone of your relationship with your prospect. It’s typically where they decide if you’re gonna be the friend zoned person, the person who puts out great content that they love, the person who sends great newsletters but they never actually buy from, or the person who gets fiercely compensated.

So this is really a big tone setter in that regard.

Alright. Some high level principles when it comes to coaching, the conversion, and a confirmation email. So the more specific and intent based the opt in, the easier it is to coach the next step. And I’ll give you some really clear examples.

So if someone opts in for a workshop called how to make ten k per month as a freelancer in twenty twenty five, that’s excellent. Right? You know their goal. You know what they’re signing up for.

Versus a lead magnet on things every copywriter should know about selling. That’s great. That’s kind of mid. That’s middle ground.

Versus the best copywriter newsletter ever. Right? Vague, general, broad. You have no way of knowing who that pre customer is when they opt in for that.

Right?

So in my experience, a paid low ticket opt in, even if it’s a workshop that costs five dollars, will always almost always signal stronger intent and commitment than a free webinar or a free report. That’s why I love, love, love, love, love implementing and working with paid low ticket workshops.

Even things that people have typically used for free, I love just making it paid. It helps us clearly define who that pre customer is when someone actually takes out their credit card to even exchange five bucks.

One thing I will note, after years of trying to get people to acknowledge this fact, right, it is almost impossible to coach the conversion off of a general newsletter opt in. Right? Like, it can’t be done. There are too many assumptions and stretches you’re making on a general newsletter opt in.

So before you do that, you definitely need to segment that list, segment those leads, get them to raise their hand, and define themselves as as a certain type of pre customer. Right? So we do have templates for that. I think I taught this inside, CSP early in twenty twenty four.

But you could definitely look for the coffee date email template. That’s a really good one for segmenting your list and getting general opt ins to define themselves as something more specific where you can then coach the conversion in a more intentional and direct way.

And this is the biggest principle.

Essentially, the better your top of funnel targeting is, especially via ad creative. If you’re ad creative, if your Instagram reels, if your LinkedIn post could speak so specifically, right, to that top of funnel avatar, the more conversion milestones will heart will have already been met. So a conversion milestone, for example, is someone having a moment of high attention. Right? Being aware of a moment that they no longer want to experience with respects to that problem.

Another milestone is them being aware of certain solutions. Another milestone is them having tried certain things that haven’t worked. Right?

The more you can meet someone who’s already gone through that, the less you actually have to coach, the less steps within that journey that your marketing is responsible to lead them through. And it is really expensive and really time consuming to lead someone through an entire journey. Right? So the biggest hack you can give yourself is to begin that journey, begin that pre customer journey a little further down that line. Right? And your top of funnel targeting, the ad creative, the LinkedIn post, the Instagram reel is essentially what makes your copy have to work less hard down the line.

So your tofu targeting, in a perfect world, this is the first thing I would audit right before I write any email sequence for anybody. Right? Is are we making sure that we are bringing the right people into this funnel? And by right people, not just meaning people who have this problem, but people who are aware of it.

Right? I’m aware, moment of high tension, things that they absolutely no longer want to experience again in their lifetimes, that they have a known and desired outcome and resonate with what I call the moment of heightened pleasure. They know what success looks like, and they’re committed to it because they have that frustration and confusion within that gap. So this is all super basic, but it’s all worth returning to when it comes to our top of funnel targeting.

Right? The more of these boxes we could check off and the more intense these things are true for the people we’re targeting, the less hard our copy is gonna have to work. So when this is true, when we’ve checked these boxes, when our top of funnel marketing is dialed in, then your confirmation email can coach what I call the big three. But before we get into that, few quick rules more than ever.

Forget everything you’ve learned about nurturing in twenty twenty fourteen when the world moves slower and meta algorithms didn’t show your prospect ads for your competitors three minutes later. So this is a thing now more than ever. Now that the algorithms for ad platforms are getting so smart and so dialed in, Essentially, if someone opts in to your lead magnet, opts into your workshop, they’re going to be getting ads for your competitors a few minutes later on their feeds. Right?

So this is permission to move faster than you would otherwise. Right? Most marketers think they need to warm up cold leads, quote, unquote, when in reality, if they’ve targeted their top of funnel properly, they need to keep warm leads hot and use that fire to coach progress towards a solution. So always on the side of assuming movement and readiness and siding with speed.

Once again, time delay stagnancy is your enemy, especially when your prospect, your leads are gonna be getting presented other options, other solutions from your competitors literally within seconds or minutes. So unless your primary goal is to build a media company or a newsletter or an influencer brand, do not lead with your backstory. Email one shouldn’t just be, you know, an introduction about you. It shouldn’t just be authority content that is disconnected to the problem that the top of funnel piece or content or ad suggested that they have.

Right? So a very easy hack here to kinda balance the two. I love putting any authority content, whether it’s, like, books you’ve written or podcasts you’ve appeared on, or any other type of, like, backstory stuff you have in your email signature. That way you have, like, the passive credibility and authority content that they could just kind of, like, click through if they truly desire that.

But once they enter your funnel, if you’ve done your targeting right, you’re really trying to establish movement towards that end state.

So the big three, you can think of this big three as a source code, right, where you can use any tactic, any strategy, any messaging structure within your arsenal to coach them. It’s essentially these are three milestones, three states that you get to coach, and you get to use the tools available to you. You get to get creative about how you structure emails as long as they’re establishing these three. So the first one is coaching relevance because these are a few of the questions your prospect is gonna ask immediately, whether they’re consciously asking themselves this in their head or they are subconsciously making sure there’s a match here. Right? Am I in the right spot?

Is this message mirroring back my exact moment of highest tension that I want to escape? Is this relevant?

Is this message mirroring back the moment of heightened pleasure or moment of highest pleasure I want to achieve?

Is this message meeting me in what I’ve already done, tried, and failed at? And is this message pointing to an offer, opportunity, or next step that gives me new hope? Right? So if you get a yes to all five of these, you have coached relevance, and you need to coach this right off the bat. Do not waste time. Do not send out any other messaging, propping yourself up as an authority, positioning your brand until you’ve coached relevance.

Next is resonance. Right? Do they resonate with you, with your assessment of them, with your diagnosis of the problem, with your unique solution, and with your understanding and empathy of the entire situational gestalt? So one of the things I love to do in my marketing is talking about the stakes involved, the second degree effects of the main problem, right, the secret fears that they have around it. So really get dimensional about how problems appear in people’s lives, right, and get resonance around what you are mirroring back to them. And then the most important is coaching response ability, their ability to respond, their willingness to respond.

Making a purchase, saying yes, is an action. That is a response. Right? If we could get them to start taking microactions right away, ascending in the intimacy between what you’re doing, right, and them.

Right? So that could look like watching a paid workshop that they just bought. Right? That could mean engaging in a direct message or an Instagram chat or taking an assessment via score app or interact or a quiz or replying to a personal video message or replying to the email or booking call.

Essentially, what we are coaching on that very first email is can we get them to take that next action with us. Right? Not later, not on email number two when open rates have gone down anywhere between thirty thirty to fifty percent, but can we get can we get that next monumental action right here on the first email? So this is a little bit of extra theory.

This is something I created, like, a few years ago in a program that was called automated in intimacy. I can’t use that anymore because AI has totally taken on different dimensions. But, essentially, we’re trying to move people to this top right quadrant. Right?

The majority of sales happen as touch points ascend in intimacy and dynamism. Right? So we have a lot of marketing that exists in the bottom left quadrant. This is static.

It’s a one way dialogue. Right? And it’s impersonal. It’s one to many. But the more we move to that top right, the more we see higher and higher conversion rates.

Right? So this is just a little bit of an extra framework to see if you can get that next touch point to be more intimate than their initial one. Can you get any form of two way dialogue, dynamic dialogue?

And, essentially, that is one way to coach the conversion via greater intimacy.

So let’s put it all together. This is called the perfect confirmation email template, and it’s really simple. It’s, like, two hundred and fifty words that incorporates all this, you know, sciency stuff. It’s not even sciency.

I don’t even know what to call it. But, yeah, this is what incorporates everything we just talked about. So step one is to confirm and celebrate the opt in action or the event, right, to just mirroring back the action they just took. So this is one I wrote recently for a paid workshop paid workshop opt in.

That’s right. Cool. So hey. And then I blanked out the name. My team just nudged me to let me know you claimed a spot in the Art Money Power workshop.

Right? So just mirroring back what they just did. Now we have this whole section on coaching relevancy, which probably means so that’s a really good segue into this section for coaching relevancy.

That like the five hundred plus others who’ve said, hell yes, and now we mirror back. Right? Who they are. You’re an established fine artist who wants to sell more art pieces in twenty twenty five at higher prices.

That has you proving all dem doubters wrong as you sign a lease for that industrial loft with the exposed brick. Right? Little moment of highest pleasure there. It also means that you’re probably so effing done with trying to prove yourself to the leeches of the industry.

So moment of highest tension stuff. The agents who don’t return your calls. The art galleries who take a crazy cut and return your untold pieces with nasty stains and, oh my god, are there someone’s greasy ass fingerprints. Right?

Real moment of highest tension information we get from our voice of customer data. The art contest judged by other grad school burnouts who probably chat GPT their feedback without even looking because what they wrote makes no effing sense, and all the other disempowering ways the pick me, choose me, love me art industry has robbed you of your profits and your power.

So after reading this, like, section of maybe a hundred and a hundred and fifty words, right, there is zero chance anyone reading this would find this would essentially not know whether this was relevant for them. It’s either gonna be hyper relevant, like hyper agreement, or very clear that this isn’t for them. Right? So this is about coaching relevancy.

Next, coaching resonance. So a lot of this will have already established some resonance, but we wanna create even more resonance right around the new way of doing things. So if you caught yourself nodding, then you probably also be beyond stoked to learn and apply the same direct to customer luxury strategies that my students are using to attract kind collectors, cut out the middleman, and cash five bigger checks on the regular while finally knowing they’ve made it. Right?

So resonance around their end goal, resonance around the method for doing it. And then we coach responsibility, encouraging that next step, that next ascension on that paid spectrum or that paid, framework that we just went through. Now here’s the deal. If you close this email, then that dream remains just that, a dream.

Fun to pay and should be to live. But if this whole combo feels hyper relevant and you’re committed to making twenty twin twenty twenty five a living master masterpiece, then I highly recommend that you, one, watch the art money power workshop right away. So that is one form of coaching responsibility. And then the next, DM me power on Instagram to kick start your seventy two hour hybrid coaching and get a little unannounced bonus gift.

Trust me. You’ll love it. So I love adding a little bit of a teaser, a little unexpected gift for them taking an action that has sent them on the intimacy scale. So this is one tactic if you’re doing any form of evergreen workshops, evergreen webinars that I absolutely love.

So on the page or the workshop, one of the bonuses is called hybrid coaching. Right? So we acknowledge that this is prerecorded.

And because they can’t answer questions live, part of it the bonus they get is they get seventy two hours of q and a and hybrid coaching with this person and her team. Right? So this is a way to engage that level of intimacy and real time coaching even within an evergreen workshop.

I’m crazy passionate about helping fine artists like you reclaim their power, dignity, and profit from traditional art establishment as long as you’re all in, I’m all in with you. Cool. So that is the template. Really simple, and it’s pulling a lot of weight in relatively little words.

And, yeah, this is where we really take advantage of the fact that this first email is going to be the most opened, and we get right to the point. We coach relevancy. We coach resonance, and this is really our main goal. Our main goal is to initiate that one on one chat right off the bat, to not waste time with that because we know that if we can get a lead to engage one on one with this coach and with her team, that the likelihood of that lead converting and moving to that final conversion is gonna be that much higher.

Cool. I think that’s all we got. So I’m gonna stop my share and open the floor for any questions, any, brainstorms you all wanna have about how you might apply this in your own business for your own funnels or for funnels you’re working on per client.

Right. Where can I find the workbook?

Did you get a did you get a copy of it in your email yet?

I didn’t even look at my email. I have to see. Yeah.

It’s possible it got sent out. If not, Okay. And I could probably let me see if I can just download a copy.

No. Message me on Slack if you can access it, and I should be able to, drop a file for you. Cool.

Sure.

No problem. Cody.

Okay. So with that template you just showed us, is that supposed to be in this workbook, or is that somewhere else?

That is supposed to be in the workbook. Yeah.

Okay. Because I’m looking at the workbook, and I don’t see it in here.

Alright. So it’s possible that an updated version just didn’t get updated, like, while the crew was on holiday break.

But Alright.

What I can definitely do is, yeah, I’ll download it, copy of it, and I’ll send it to you over on Slack.

Awesome. Thanks.

Cool. Jess?

Okay. I love this. One of the things that I’ve been noodling on while you were talking was, with the diagnostic.

Mhmm.

And so if you were running, like, a group diagnostic, and let’s say you’re running it as, like, a webinar, you know, you start collecting sign ups, like, a week out or something. What would you recommend that you put in the, like, the responsibility of, like, here’s what I need you to do? Like, what’s that action that you would recommend that we prompt them with?

Right. So if they’ve already opted in for a webinar, that would go through that. Right?

Mhmm.

That’s a good question. Right? So, like, if there is an assessment, like, a self assessment that they could go through beforehand, like, essentially, you could take parts of what you go through on that webinar and just give them a faster self assessment version of it, right, of, like Mhmm. If this is something that you just got their attention with, because it’s you’re doing this live, right, the webinar?

Yeah.

Right.

So one thing you wanna defend against on live webinars, right, is, like, people being really aware and really kind of, like, motivated to solve it in the moment they sign up, and then there’s this gap and this lag and life happens. Right? So, essentially, it’s kind of like a skip the line type thing. Right? It’s like, take this assess take this assessment here. If you see your own gaps and wanna talk about it, like, send over your results.

So, yeah, it’s like, take this assessment, and let me know, like, where you scored, where you noticed that you’re a little weaker. Right? And we can kick start that conversation sooner.

I like that. And because one of the things I think that was really impactful for me when I did Jo’s assessment thing was, like, her walking through it and explaining it all. And I feel like, especially with the diagnostic, I don’t know that it would have and, obviously, I don’t have, like, the assessment, but I feel like the the walking it through and explaining it, it would almost have to be, like, instead of showing up live to the webinar, here’s a recording of me, like, walking you through it, and then why would they show up live.

So I’m wondering if what are your thoughts on asking for, like, a DM or a reply to be like, what is, like, your experience with x, y, and zed problem to, a, get some, like, VOC, but then to also open up that conversation, like, in the upper quadrant there of, like, the sales quadrant that you shared.

Yeah. I think it’s a great idea. I think anything you could do to get that one on one conversation right away from that moment of I’ll I’ll call it a moment of heightened receptivity. Right?

They just saw your webinar landing page. It resonated. They’re like, yes to this. They signed up.

You’re top of mind in that moment. If they’re able to take that next action to ascend in the intimacy scale right there and then, like, even if it’s a button on your landing page around, like, you know, send me a quick DM, like, letting me know what inspired. Like, there’s the surveys we have sometimes on landing pages of, like, what inspired you to do this thing. I prefer, like, just a bun.

Like, tell me. Right, at this stage of our business when we’re making those sales. Like, that doesn’t need to go through SurveyMonkey. Like, just send that straight to my inbox so that we can have that conversation now.

There’s this, it’s, like, so stupid symbol, and it works so well. I can’t remember who coined it, but it’s like I think it was, like, called the non webinar webinar or the webinar that doesn’t matter. And it was, like, someone who is running webinar funnels just for the purpose of starting DM conversations, and it’s almost like the webinar itself didn’t even matter. Right?

And, of course, it did matter. There was a legit webinar there. But the whole purpose was, like, sign up for the webinar. You know you have someone who is resonating with the messaging around the webinar, and then just get them into that one on one conversation right away.

Right? Like, what inspired you to join? Right? Like, where do you think you might be weak when it comes to this?

Right? And get into that exploratory conversation.

And that person had more conversions happening from people who didn’t even see the webinar. Right? It was just a right? So don’t insist on just because we’ve crafted these, like, amazing webinars and workshops with all the right diagnostics, like, don’t insist on that being the only way someone could come to work with you. Right? Mhmm. Like yeah.

Okay. Cool. Thank you. And I have another question, but I’ll let Joseph go. And if there’s time, I’ll ask another.

For sure.

Thanks, Joseph.

Go for it, Joseph.

Ryan, that was awesome.

So how like, what does planning your marketing like, your funnel automation look like now? Like, considering what you like like like you said, you know, like, your training has completely changed.

And today, you showed us that, like, that initial first email.

Mhmm. But I guess what does, like, what does planning the automation look like like for you now? Or, like, do or does the workbook cover that?

So it doesn’t go deeper than this template. So Okay. I mean, I could go through kinda, like, what my basic funnels look like. Right? Or we could make it more specific to something you’re working on. Do you have a preference on that?

Or do you wanna just, like For now, if you can just skip the sketch of, like, what your kind of basic information is now because I don’t have something specific at the moment.

Yeah. So, yeah, I tell you, a lot of it still comes back to this concept of automated intimacy that was the theme of a program I created a few years ago. And it’s essentially you have your emails, which are I call them, like, marketing scaffolding. Right?

They’re gonna do what they do. Right? But I can’t assume that my email sequence is going to coach that whole conversion. Right?

Like, you can’t assume someone’s gonna open up every email. Right? And, like, in twenty fifteen, people would say, like, in email number one, I’m gonna coach this belief. In email two, this one.

In email three, I’m gonna give them the FAQ. Right? And there’s this, like, weird assumption that someone’s actually reading through everything lit in a linear order. Right?

So, essentially, what my marketing looks like right now is the first forty eight hours are when I’m really trying to get that ascension right into a one on one conversation.

There’s been a big shift from, once again, like, free webinars and free lead magnets to paid even if it’s, like, really low ticket and essentially trying to get that first contact via myself one on one or someone on my team one on one to talk to that lead within the first day or two, even in a very, like, general wanna make sure you have everything set up. Right?

And the quicker I could get engaged in a real dynamic conversation, essentially, the better. So another way this is done, lead scoring used to be a really big piece part of this. It still is for clients who have a lot bigger lead flow.

But on a kind of, like, five to seven day automated sequence or even a live launch, right, I’m definitely scoring certain actions they’re taking even if it’s just email opens. And once they cross a certain threshold, definitely taking that as a signal of intent and once again reaching out dynamically. Right? Saying, hey.

Notice that you’ve probably been, you know, watching this workshop or taking this action. Just wanna make sure you’re all set up. Let me know if you have any questions. Right?

So it’s essentially letting your marketing coach the conversion to whatever degree it can and then injecting those personal reach outs just at strategic touch points. And that’s just gonna look differently depending on what your bandwidth is, what your team looks like, what your lead flow looks like, but there’s always gonna be a way to at least make sure that your most high intent leads don’t get left to just the automated funnel. Does that make sense at a high level?

That does. Thank you. Yeah. If if the leads obviously, we want all these leads to convert. Mhmm. They should, as you said. If they don’t, what do you do with them after that forty eight hours?

Yeah. So there’s still, of course, like my sequences don’t just end at forty eight hours. Right? Usually, like, the evergreen funnels, when I’m trying to get them to take that next action, will be that standard five, seven, ten days, right, and different emails that have different angles, right, different approaches, you know, your typical, here are the questions other people who said yes asked, right, certain closing emails, certain urgency emails. So all that still plays out.

I’m just not relying on that to do all the work. Right? I’m really establishing as much one on one contact throughout that as possible.

Yeah. That’s awesome. Thanks so much, man. Appreciate it. Cool.

Yeah. My pleasure.

And I think I had the same same crib. Is that one, like, that collapses? Not crib. Sorry. Like, Ben.

It is. Yeah. Yeah. This is Yeah. This is the opposite. It’s also currently the, like, the bedroom for the baby right now.

Nice.

So I remember, like Yeah. My kid never actually used it except for one day when, like, I came home from work, and he used that plus, like, everything else he could find to barricade the doors and not let me in. So that was fun.

Marquette, man. Yikes.

Totally. Cool. Any other questions on this topic or any other topic?

Go ahead, Jess. You go first.

No. What he asked was my question, so that’s perfect.

I was just gonna say, what are the rest of the emails that come after that, and how are we thinking about them now versus what everybody was taught in twenty fourteen?

So Right.

Yeah. So So it’s always, like, assuming readiness and speed and movement is really kind of, like, the biggest change I’ve made in my own sequences even between now and twenty twenty. Right? It’s, like, just erring on the side of speed, not necessarily presumptuous.

Like, I’m not being obnoxious about it saying, like, you know, buy now, buy now, buy now. Right? But, like, assuming that I am meeting someone who is resourced and willing and desiring to move forward. Right?

So yeah.

And then, of course, like, the whole coaching of the conversion framework continues to play out. Right? It’s like, what can I assume about this person, right, who hasn’t taken that next action yet? Right?

And how can I coach them in that? So that’s essentially the sequence I would write after the main sales sequence is someone who said yes to this ad, right, opted in, opened up emails here, right, but didn’t take that action. What can I assume about them here? Right?

And that could be a form of a second chance email sequence. Right? Like, meeting them either in price objection, cost objection, time objection, you know, whatever it is. So yeah.

Like, I think one of one of the subject lines, like, yeah, one of the subject lines that worked really well, and I just keep reusing it because it’s so, like, multi multi usage, multipurpose is, like, you know, not a now thing, question mark. Right? Like, essentially taking that verbatim of, like, why someone wouldn’t take action now. Right?

And essentially reminding them, like, well, when I coach someone who thinks that this is not a now thing, I need to get them into the awareness that this being a later thing is more costly. Right? That it’s more of a now thing than they realize. Right?

That it won’t be as costly or time intensive to implement as they think. Right? So it’s essentially always where are they at now? Where are they at now?

Where are they at now? And how can I coach them through it?

I have a question.

What are the show up rates for webinars for, paid versus nonpaid?

So very broadly general general generally speaking.

Gosh. Like, I hesitate to even give, like, a standard, because it so depends on your relationship with the audience. Obviously, people who are coming from a warm list, whether it’s your, like, Instagram and people have been following you forever, or a cold Facebook ad, it’s gonna have totally different numbers. But you do wanna aim for somewhere into, like, twenty five to thirty percent for nonpaid.

That could be lower if it’s people, like, fresh off of a Facebook ad for sure.

And paid so paid, let me see. The last one we ran about, like, fifty to sixty percent if it was and that was at just ten bucks. It’s like a ten dollar workshop, and that literally doubled that conversion rate, right, of people showing up for it.

Yeah. And yeah. Anyway, I just I I love paid workshops now. I’ll just say that.

I love to say that. Yeah. Yeah. And what I love about the paid workshop model is versus the free workshop model.

So if on the free workshop model, you reach out with a one on one message, it feels more intrusive. Whereas on the paid, if it’s framed as a bonus, right, hybrid coaching, now it feels more valuable, and it is more valuable. So Yeah.

Wow. That’s awesome.

Yeah. Yep.

Thank you. My pleasure.

What an amazing book collection. I think you have at least two hundred and forty two there. Like, I’m just doing some rough math.

This is just one room, not including my Kindle stuff. I’m I’m a voracious reader.

Nice. Cool. Britney, I see your hand up.

Yeah.

Could you speak to what your favorite tech is right now to build your funnels? Are you building them yourself? Are you working with corporate clients who have their teams that you’re, you know, just then offloading the copy to? I’d kinda just like to know what people are using. What’s the what’s their favorite?

Yeah. Good question. Like, for any type of funnel in particular?

Not necessarily.

Mhmm.

Smaller clients who still like to essentially, like, do a lot of things themselves, simpler text stacks.

A lot of people have migrated off of ActiveCampaign onto, like, GoHighLevel and Kajabi and stuff like that.

Let me see. What are people using right now? Like I mean, it’s so varied.

HubSpot, I’ve always loved that for essentially, like, getting to the pipelines, getting just really clear tracking and really clear, notes on every lead that enters that system. That’s been phenomenal.

Typically, I don’t love managing HubSpot stuff myself.

But, yeah, most clients who have a good tech wizard on their team, amazing.

Let me see. What else?

Webinars have just like webinars are so varied. I like Zoom webinars personally. It just feels more familiar, less Internet marketing y marketing y. Yes.

Email marketing, I mean, ActiveCampaign, still use that quite a bit.

But, yeah, I don’t know. Yeah. It’s a mix.

Yeah. How are you happy with Go HighLevel when you use it? I mean, is anyone using HighLevel right now?

And I’m using it for some of my brands.

Yeah. Like, for the price point, I like it.

I have a really I mean, I’ll say I have a really good, like, Go high level designer automation person, so that really helps.

One of my, like, biggest complaints about it was, like, you know how, like, every page builder, like, makes you feel like, oh, that’s a Go high level page. Oh, that’s a ClickFunnels page. Like, that’s always been my biggest objection.

But, with a good designer, you’re definitely able to get, like, pages up to spec. So, like yeah. What I’ve been able to do with GoHighLevel is essentially, like, take pages that have been, like, custom built on WordPress or whatever, like, beautiful pages, and just tell my GoHighLevel person, like, can you recreate this, like, as close as possible? And that has been, like, an amazing hack.

So, yeah, I like it. Go high level has worked. I haven’t had too many, like, problems with it, and it’s definitely gotten the job done. But I also know other people who have complained about it being, like, unreliable or wonky, at times, but I just haven’t really, yeah, I haven’t really kind of fallen into that problem yet myself.

For clients that are, you know, doing around twenty million a year, so they’re kind of not like a small start up or Mhmm. Whatever. I guess, what tech would you recommend for them if they’re not already if they don’t already have, like, an in house thing?

Oh, for what kind of marketing?

Like, a utilities provider, multifamily. So, essentially, they would be targeting managers of multifamily who are in charge of utility billing.

Okay.

I mean, at that level, probably something like HubSpot, probably something really robust.

I definitely wouldn’t mess around with, like, a go high level at that level Go high level at that level.

No. I wouldn’t I wouldn’t yeah. Yep.

Mhmm.

Thanks.

Of course.

I also have clients, like, totally different space. Right? But, like, even in that, like, eight figure range, like, I have clients who literally work with GoHighLevel and Instagram. Right?

And that’s their entire tech stack. So, yeah, it really depends on, like, where are your leads coming from, what that sales process is, what those, like, sales cycles are, and how much information needs to be, like, collected, gathered, stored, and acted upon throughout that cycle. So that’s probably the bigger determinant than, strictly revenue levels. But yeah.

I’m just finding that I I’m having good success finding the client. I have a strong understanding of the strategy, but then the tech, like, it just all goes to hell. So I’m just trying to figure out, like, how to what do I need to learn about that aspect so that I can be more Mhmm. Throughout the whole process, you know, because it’s like, you don’t delay and just the strategy doesn’t matter. Right?

To what degree do you feel like you need to be taking ownership of the tech and the tech choices?

I guess that’s sort of what I’m trying to figure out. Like, I have my my clients right now are sort of all the way from very small startup to that twenty million ish a year in revenue. And so I’m just trying to figure out how to standardize an offer that I can feel great about without Mhmm. Stress of things not working.

Yeah. Totally.

In general, like, do you consider yourself, like, pretty techie? Do you enjoy learning different systems and implementing on that level?

I don’t love it, but I’m facing the facts. Right? Like, I like being competent. So, yeah, I would prefer to stay in strategy messaging word land all day long.

Mhmm. Mhmm.

But I just think the more you know, it’s just I’d like to be fluid.

Totally.

I mean, there are a lot of people who, like, obviously thrive as automation experts that love working in those systems. Right?

These are good friends to have nearby for sure.

I could certainly see possibilities, right, of your product as services and your offerings having with tech support and implementation and without. Right?

And the ones with having collaborations, having a certain partner that fulfills on that might help keep you in the zone of what you’re really good at, because it could take a lot of energy and a lot of time and a lot of, like, learning and messing around time to get, quote, unquote, masterful at these systems. Right? And these systems, of course, change from client to client, so it might be a inevitable game.

Collaborating, and that’s where I’m suffering a little bit is because I thought anyway, I just need to make a switch with the person I’m collaborating with probably. Because I don’t wanna do it, but I need to know enough about it that I’m Mhmm.

Yeah. For sure.

Makes sense. What Well, let me know if ever there’s, like, any systems you’re looking for, like, a certain, tech collaborator on, because I know, you know, I know a lot of people who work with IKEA or ActiveCampaign or GoHighLevel.

But, yeah, keep me posted for sure.

Cool. Joseph.

I’m back. If, and if so, yeah, my my question is, how do you how are you optimizing your funnel these days?

And if it’s easier to just, like, send me to a resource that you have, like Mhmm.

That’s totally cool too.

But but yeah. Because you mentioned, like, you are once someone doesn’t, like if they don’t necessarily act on the offer right away, you know, like, you’re still selling them. You’re dropping them into your flow. You’re still testing different angles and things. So how are you yeah. What is optimizing your funnel look like for you?

Yeah. That’s a really good question.

Oh, so many different, like, competing ideologies around this. One thing that I’ll always ask first is you know? I I run a lot of, like, cold traffic from, like, ads, and I’ll always look back at that ad level of, like, am I targeting someone who is definitely problem aware, definitely motivated, and seeking a solution? Right? So those are the first questions I’ll ask myself, and sometimes I’ll so the annoying thing there is sometimes, like, the ad creatives that are less direct in that languaging will perform better and get lower CPLs than the ones that are, like, really hard and direct about, like, this is what you’re facing and very, like, presumptive of that.

But the ones that are looser perform less well down funnel. Right? So one of the places I’ll optimize is essentially, like, if I know that I have something here. Right?

If I’ve gotten sales, right, and I’ve gone through an exercise of what is true about the people who said yes, essentially creating, like, an anatomy of a buyer. Not a hypothesis, but these are my actuals. These are people who bought. I will reverse engineer who they are and put that top of funnel, right, and just try to get more people into there.

So that’s typically it’s like I tend to optimize back at the top always. I don’t mess around a lot on the in betweens until I’ve really optimized my top funnel to make sure I’m getting the right people in that even give me right data and not false negatives. Right? Like, if my sales page is converting at sub one percent, but I don’t even have the right people coming in on it, then my sales page isn’t actually converting at one percent.

Right? And I’ve seen way too many people spend a lot of time trying to, like, you know, change the headline, change the price point, change, like, everything about their sales page when, like, yeah. Most of the time, it’s a targeting targeting thing, in my view, at least. That’s, that’s one perspective out of one perspective out of possibly many.

But, yeah.

Oh, that makes sense. That makes a lot of sense.

Mhmm.

Yeah. I know, like, during a freelance intensive optimization came up a little bit, and one of the things Joe was talking about was, like like, you know, cut one one possible rule of thumb is starting at the, you know, closest to the actual conversion and, like, working backwards from there. But what you’re saying makes a lot of sense too, certainly, especially for ad campaigns.

Mhmm.

But, yeah, that’s that’s helpful. Thanks.

Yeah. No problem. Like, I’ve seen the same sales page convert at sub one percent, convert at, you know, three to five percent just by changing targeting. Right? So it’s like Wow. I know.

Yeah. It’s like and it makes total sense. Right? It’s like Yeah. Like, in the real world, like, you know, if you just have the wrong people walking into your store, you could have the best salespeople there.

Right? You could have, like, the best displays, the best everything. And yeah, so just dialing in the precision on those top of funnel ads, paying a getting a little less concerned about your CPLs, especially at the beginning, like your cost per leads. Like, a lot of, like, people will optimize for lower CPLs, right, which makes sense because you don’t wanna see so many dollars, like, flying out the window there.

But, yeah, I’d say, like, the place I have the most fun optimizing is just that ad creative, that ad copy. Right? Making it so direct, so clear, so like, it’s either gonna be hyper relevant or hyper irrelevant. But it gives me the confidence that everyone coming into that ecosystem is ready for a conversation about it, right, has this problem that I’m so specifically and presumptively talking about, right, and is so ready to move forward.

So, yeah, that’s my hack for that.

Yeah. I love that. That’s awesome.

Cool.

Yeah. Dane Kennedy used to say that all the time. The first step was the market.

Yeah.

You know, he says the market, the message match.

Right? He always says the first step is the market.

He said it with a better mustache too, I think. Like, list offer copy. Indeed. It always comes back down to, like, these fundamentals at the end of the day.

But, yeah, what I love about, like, list when it comes to, quote, unquote, cold traffic. Right? And I don’t like, cold is such a vague term, but, like, yeah, you get to choose your list, right, essentially with ads.

You don’t get to choose your list with a general newsletter. You don’t really get to choose your list with a website. Right? People, you know, find you in different ways. But you get to choose your list with ads based on, you know, your ad creative. So, yeah, it’s fun.

Cool. Cool. Are we complete for today?

Sweet. Britney, I love your, cupboard handles. I don’t know why they’re catching my eye.

Thanks. Random thing.

I think, restoration, maybe.

Sounds good.

Yeah. Is that your is that your office, Britney? Yeah.

I hope it’s nice.

Nice.

Thanks. Hope everyone’s having a good New Year. Appreciate the support.

Yeah. Appreciate y’all showing up for this one on January second. Fun little crew. And, yeah, have an amazing rest of the week, and I’ll catch you soon.

Thanks.

Thanks so much, Ryan.

No problem. Bye.

You guys.

Q1 Goal Setting

Q1 Goal Setting

Transcript

Uum, alright we’re gonna dive in. I’m going to share the delightful, beautiful workbook, which I duplicated so that I could put my own unhinged thoughts on it without disturbing the master workbook.

So let’s do that.

Cool. Cool.

There we go. There we go.

Sweet.

Alright. Unhinged time.

This reminded me of, like, literally my first copywriting project ever in, like, twenty eleven, twenty twelve, and I had to write for this, like, fundraiser event that was, like, based on Mad Men.

And I needed to, like, write copy for this local event fundraiser.

And, I think, like, my tagline was something like, going mad never felt so good and something, like, really funny like that.

So going unhinged never felt so good. That doesn’t have the same ring to it. But y’all get the idea. So thirteen years later, we’re going mad. So big unhinged ideas.

I love these two books, and they synergize so well. Synergy. Synergy. Synergy. There’s a weird ass get on the word synergy.

But to go well together, vivid vision really encapsulates a lot of what, I had been doing unconsciously for a while. So I was, like, the master of a lifeless goals. Like, I started setting goals, like, a while ago, and they’d be on Google Doc, and they would be the things that I thought would have meaning. There would be missions and visions on there that I thought had meaning, and there was no, like, juice to it.

So, yeah, I think a mission and a vision must connect to a series, a multitude of real and enjoyable, fully charged moments that are trackable, realizable, real, and you could reflect back and say, holy fuck. That happened, and this felt amazing. And I really want you to be able to think about what those moments are in copy. I call those moments of heightened pleasure.

Right? These are real observable moments when the thing you want to achieve is achieved. Right?

And it’s not just this check mark, but this, oh, like, heart expanding, like, body vibrating holy fuck moment.

And I want y’all to be available to those holy fuck moments, and that may mean being less available for your holy fuck moments.

I know I still have somehow holy fuck no moments in my life, and it was very uncomfortable, initially setting boundaries on those fuck no moments. But, yeah, setting boundaries on your fuck no moment will appeal you to those fuck yeah moments.

So, one thing I will encourage you to lean into are what o what are those textures, those data points, and feeling points of that vivid vision manifested? What is actually happening in your reality? What are you going on the wind channel in Slack and being like, oh, I’m you’ll never guess what just happened, dot dot dot, and let us celebrate you in that with all these emojis, the raising emojis.

Income goals. Right? So I was initially the king of not caring about money until this. Right?

I’d be like, I’m good. I just enjoy my Starbucks and my apartment, and that’s enough. Right? So I was the king of saying, well, as long as I have enough or decent living, I’m good.

Right? And then I started connecting income goals to actual lifestyle moments that they would empower, and I’m gonna talk about those in a second.

And, yeah, I made myself available for those just by leaning into what those income goals actually represented. So, bonus points. I found a lot of similarities between Vivid Vision and this old school book from, like, I don’t know, like, the fifties or sixties, one of those, like, initial manifesting books, Feelings the Secret by Neville Goddard.

Not inventory reading. Just a little side note. It’s written in very antiquated language, but some really good stuff about seeing that end result, not just, like, in your mind, but actually feeling it. What does it feel like in your body when that thing happens?

How does that actually feel in your body when you get an email from Tony Robbins saying, do you wanna speak on my stage? And you’re like, no. I don’t, but I really do.

How does that feel? So lean into those realities as if they are already happening. Make yourself available for it. Make your nervous system available to it.

Train your nervous nervous system for these ten x moments that may initially have some contraction. Right? It may initially be an edge, but begin attuning you to what’s possible and leaning on the support here. Right?

And in your own, yeah, in your own daily life to get that support to expand. Because I think this container is about expanding and not about the play it safe goals. These are about the unhinged, slightly scary. Yes.

They’re initially gonna create contraction and fever in the body, and that is expected, and we could work with that. Those types of goals. Cool?

Sweet.

Ten x is easier than two x. Another one I’ve loved.

Big takeaways here is just, like, being in that fierce protection and advocacy of your vivid vision. You choose ten x, you are excluding so much bullshit. Right? And this is something that was so uncomfortable as a recovering people pleaser.

I remember my first year full time freelancing probably made somewhere around, like, I don’t know, forty to fifty k working with the local piano repair shop, the local massage studio. Right? All these local people that became friends. Right?

And then in my own ten x year, literal ten x year. Oh, gosh. It required so many noes. Like, nope.

Sorry. I don’t do that anymore. Right? Can’t do it. Right? Can’t make that exception.

So, yeah, I think being in fierce protection, right, of your vivid vision, like, falling in love with that vivid vision, treating it as you would a child or a pet or a dog or a cat or just something you really love and making it less personal. Right? Not not just your personal boundaries, but, like, go to bat for this vision that you get to nurture and bridge into reality. So fierce protect of it.

Awkward convos are always going to feel better than self betrayal when you give a yes, and then you essentially have that stinging, sensation in your gut of, like, did I say yes? Right? And you’re begrudgingly doing something you don’t wanna do. Yeah.

Let’s just not do those anymore. Let’s just, like, get rid of all of those in your life.

And, yeah, to me, that’s required for that ten x.

Ten x innovation. So this is such a dear topic to me. I feel like, yeah, I feel like a big part of my career has been on the innovation side. Essentially, right from the beginning, having that question of, like, what is the five minute mile for what I’m doing?

What is the five minute mile for, an email launch sequence? What is the five minute mile for a SaaS onboarding? What is the five minute mile for, an ecom product page being launched to market for the first time? Right?

So what are these moonshots? What are these five minute miles in the thing you do, and what can you do in your thing, right, with every new project that I call paid r and d? Right? What needs to be true for you to literally set the standard for what that thing looks like in your space.

Right? And that’s gonna require some testing. So I call that paid r and d, at least one thing you’re doing on every new project to try to push that needle a little bit further. So I’m gonna have more to share about this in twenty twenty five.

It’s a concept I’m still practicing. Literally just wrote, an ecom supplement product page that I strategically tried just two new things, two new things that I’ve never done before, never seen done before. So take all the best practices, you add one or two things with a clear hypothesis of this might work. Right?

Let’s test this out in this scenario.

So I’m gonna share more on that because this page I just wrote is converting at, like, thirteen percent, like, thirteen percent conversion, and that’s not on, like, an insignificant amount of clicks. So really exciting stuff to share there. But in your own projects, just test one new thing. Like, what is one new thing that if this works, I have something that no one else has.

Right? There’s the innovation piece. You’re either competing on innovation, like having a thing, a proven method, or extreme per tease is the other side of it. Like, being just so freaking good.

Right? Like, that that is what allows you to charge ten x. Right? But I think it’s a lot easier, predictable, and faster of a path to innovate in your space.

So, those are my little quick book summaries. I think, like, the little last motivating line is, like, so much can change in a year if you Right? Like, I’ve had years of massive growth, and then I’ve had years of just, like, hold forward and integrate what happened and optimize it. But those, like, explosive, like, eight to ten x years, gosh. Those aren’t the ones I look back on right now and be like, that year changed freaking everything. Like, these are life trajectory changing years, and we get to create if we’re ready for them, if we’re available for them. So that is my little recap there.

The can you imagine exercise, I’d love for us to be able to spend some time here. Right? This tracks back to what are these tangible moments, right, where this vision, where this ten x vision comes to life when you could be like, damn. That just happened.

When you could go on that Slack channel, that wind channel, and be like, this just happened. Right? So for me, right, like, my big thing, when I ten x wasn’t about income goals. I couldn’t just say I won half a million dollars a year for the hell of it.

I had to connect those to things that mattered, and these matterful things happened, and they were amazing. Right? So it was like, for me, that time I was at the Scandinavian Spa in the middle of the day, right, when it’s empty except for retirees, like, talking about retiree shit, and just making one k, right, from an automated course sale, like, it’s another day and it’s no big deal. Right?

Like, that was one of my, like, nervous system exhale. Right? This is what I want to be living. That’s what my ten x lifestyle looked like at the time in, I guess this was, like, twenty sixteen, twenty seventeen.

Twenty fifteen, I almost died from a stroke. So that was my year of, like, no. I’m just gonna radically chill, right, and enjoy that and enjoy what this big bump in income empowers me to do.

Another fun income goal that turned into a tangible reality that actually had a lot of, like, excitement in it. I don’t know why this motivated it, motivated me the way it did.

But one of my goals was to have enough cash saved up in reserve in my business checking account that just having it in a I think it was, like, a five percent high interest account could pay my monthly expenses. Like, how cool is that when your, interest on what is in your biz account could pay expenses. And granted, I wasn’t in a crazy scale mode. Right? That was, like, with a VA and some software, but still, like, that just made my life feel so light and exciting.

So that is an income goal baked into a tangible thing that just feels really light on my system.

What else? Right? So I was never a big, event person.

You know, typical introvert, extreme introvert. Right? But what I loved to do was, like, I loved to go deep with the clients I had. Right?

So that meant traveling. It meant getting on location. It meant doing VIP days. It meant, visiting their teams and then extending those trips for two to three days for chill time.

Right? So that might look like hikes and going to the beach. And I remember one year, I was in, like, Encinitas or Carlsbad, like, three times that year. Right?

And, like, there’s these gardens by a place called Swami Beach. Right? So it’s like the Yogananda Gardens or something and just beautiful gardens overlooking the ocean. And I’m like, I found my up there on the for the third time that year, and that was one of my, like, ah, I made it moments.

Right? This is becoming routine. Like, just taking a chill decompressing day after a client VIP day and staring up in the ocean.

So, and then you get to also have, like, guilt free, like, pride in some of your goals. Right? So, like, one of my, like, kinks when I first ten x was, like, walking into the bank. Right?

Like, I didn’t even have Stripe in my first year. Like, I would literally ask clients to send checks in the mail. Right? And I would show up to the bank teller with, like, these five figure checks, and they would have no freaking idea what I did.

And, Brendon, that’s kind of just, like, enjoyable sense of weird pride in that.

So, yeah, I’d love for us all to just take some time right now, like, lean into what these vivid ten x moments look like for you. Right? They are undoubtedly connected to growth goals, and especially growth and income and growth in mindset and within your capacity to lean into that because there is going to be some edge. So this is your time to write a few of these down.

Right? Maybe even just, like, one really clear, oof, I don’t know if I should say that goal. Right? One that kinda scares you to say out loud, and then maybe we’ll say it out loud because that’s what we do.

So I’m gonna stop my share.

Any questions about this exercise before we get going, or should I, like, queue up some music that y’all may or may not enjoy while we take a few minutes?

Get unhinged.

Oh, I was not expecting espresso for some reason. I thought I made something else. That hit me harder. Cool.

Alright. I’m gonna play some music. I’ve never been known as, like, the best party DJ. I’ve always been the person, like, they replace after one song, but that’s all good.

And we’ll give it about five minutes. And then how many people are on this call? We got close to twenty.

So, yeah, I think that’s gonna be enough time for at least one minute one minute each to declare that out loud. So we’re gonna do five minutes now, and then everyone gets to share and declare their big, unhinged, wild, feels scary to say aloud goal, or the year.

Cool.

Alright.

Cool. Welcome back, everyone.

So, I would love to hear everybody’s unhinged goal. Right? And I think it would be amazing for everyone to hear everyone’s unhinged goal.

That way, a, we know what it is. And, b, if you wanna add a little extra flavor, a little extra juice to it as someone is sharing it, I dare you, right, to just see them fully in that success, see them as fully capable, see them as fully in the realization of that, and celebrate them in that. Right? I think that would be an enjoyable, fun, and lovely thing to do. So, first one up, I think we’ve got about sixty to ninety seconds, each. So yeah.

Cool. Cody, you’re up.

Alright. So this year, I will, write and publish a best selling book, that will lead to speaking gigs, high profile collaborations, and media features.

My book will be the go to manual for growth marketers and ecom leaders, when it comes to scaling their business, with a funnel for specifically cold traffic, and it will establish me as a top authority in the space.

Love it. What is one defining moment where you will know you’re in the achievement of that?

I would say when the book is published because then I know that I actually followed through what I said I was gonna do.

Okay. Love it. Thanks for sharing, Cody. Next person up.

Okay. I’ll go.

Mine is I host a Greek vacation for ten days with my entire family in the UK and in South Africa.

We’ve got a yacht moored outside, private shifts, and plenty of exciting activities planned like hiking, snorkeling, and, of course, eating.

Love it. What are you eating?

Oh my god. Like, everything.

I I’ve never been to Greece, so whatever they eat.

Beautiful. Cool. Well, taste those flavors and taste the entire moment. Love it. Cool. Next up.

My moment is I’m on a Teams meeting with my bookkeeper who I think thinks I’m a little bit crazy, and he’s telling me that he has never seen a client’s finances transform as dramatically as mine have in the last twelve months, and then point out that I should probably buy a company car or something because, otherwise, I’m gonna have to be in a different tax bracket.

That is amazing. Yes.

And that car the car is a little, Volkswagen Cabriolet convertible.

Oh, so good. Yeah. I love it.

Like, you least unhinged car you could buy.

I mean, I’ve I’ve had it on my vision board since I was, like, seventeen.

So Oh, okay.

Alright. Fair enough.

Yeah.

I mean, it was like the cool dream car.

Love it.

Is Andrew up?

Is that me?

I think so.

Cool.

My moment is when the prospect says yes to my proposal for a ten thousand dollar monthly consulting retainer, and I and I almost feel kind of, like, guilty because it’s like it feels like, oh, that’s not enough. Like, I’m not let me just read what I wrote instead of trying to improvise. I can’t believe how little work I’ll actually have to do relative to the amount that I’m getting paid because they’re paying for my thinking, not for my time or effort. And I guess, a moment in that might be, like, telling my wife about, like, you know, that I got that signed and, like, oh my god. I’m not gonna have to do nearly as much work as I’ve done to make, you know, half that money in the past or something.

I love that. What I love about what you just shared is, like, you included feeling guilty in your vision and your goal, which is true to what that would look like for you right now. Right? So I think so I think, like, that’s amazing.

Like, lean into that. Lean into moments that, right now, feel like they might induce a little bit of, like, guilt. Right? So cool.

Awesome. Okay. So mine is finding the perfect home for my family, and being able to call up our real estate agent when we, like, signed it and just put an offer in right away and close within, like, a month.

And it’s, like, the perfect house for a family, so it’s in the city, which is more pricey than we would otherwise or normally choose, I guess.

And it’s, like, in a great school district.

It’s near family. It’s got everything for the kids, and then it’s just also a an amazing house to where we can just set up shop for the foreseeable future.

Mhmm. I love that.

Does that moment feel most realized to you, like, when you sign for the house, when you get the house, or even when you make the decision and, like, reach out to an agent and say, like, I’m available for this now?

But probably, like, when I reach out to the agent and say, k. I can close on it. Like, we can we can put it down today. Like, we’re ready today. And then, like, the final walk through as the papers are, like, being signed.

Yeah. I love that. Yeah. Keep, like, inviting, like, the energies from those two moments because they feel, like, really expansive and life giving. Cool.

Yeah. Thank you.

Okay.

I actually started this, exercise yesterday. So the ImagineWall is the house that I want in three years.

So it sits, in the mountains of the Blues.

We’re in the Grand Oregon, so we’re right at the base of the Blue Mountains. It’s gonna be lakeside. There is a lake up there.

Five acres of wooded beauty.

Very large pond with a huge wrap around porch.

The back, back porch is really large outdoor living space with its own fireplace looking out over the lake. So it’s a perfect spot for morning coffee or eating wine or whiskey.

Are we invited? Can we have the first IRL there?

We can. Yeah. So but the the goal for this is to pay seventy five percent cash from the business.

Amazing.

Beautiful. Well, I’m officially imagining us sitting around your fire, like, being like, look at all this land. And Yeah. Inevitably someone starts wolf howling because they can and then everyone does.

Yeah. This is a perfect perfect place for it.

Yeah. Who in this group kicks off the wolf howling? Like, who is most likely to initiate wolf howling?

There you go.

Abby put up her hand, and I was gonna say Abby. So I think it’s Abby.

I’m usually the last one to join the wolf howling. I’m like, fine. I’ll do it. Anyway cool. Amazing. Thanks, Michelle.

I guess I’m, I am so inspired by this book. I’ll tell you what.

My my big audacious goal for this year is one million dollars worth of revenue in my, copywriting agency with three copywriters, two VAs with my standardized offer going from ten k to twenty k to thirty k, and then the other half being the monthly retainers.

Amazing. Yeah. What is, like, that moment when that is all realized? Right? Do you see yourself kind of, like, celebrating with that team, have two copywriters, like, sharing that revenue?

As a matter of fact, this weekend, I interviewed my first, copywriter.

Cool. And I don’t even know how I’m gonna get to the million yet, but I’ve already interviewed my first copywriter.

So Amazing.

Beautiful. Well, we’re here for it.

Abby?

I haven’t sat in on a Rise session before, and I find it very uncomfortable to wait for the next person. So my apologies. Right?

I was going to get cold on. Sorry. Yeah.

I read the wolf sweating.

Just waiting for this Lean into that, Joe.

I was like, should I be talking? Yeah. I read the wolf howling because it’s been, like, really stormy. Like and I live by the beach.

I keep going down to the beach, throwing pebbles into the sea and then manifesting and then genuinely, like, howling because it’s so stormy that no one can hear. But, anyway, my visualization would be it. I’m sitting with my friends at the pub, and I’m like, guys, like, I I kind of, like, feel like I just won a lottery because my course has just, like, taken off. And I’ve paid off my mortgage.

I’ve just booked a holiday to Orlando, and I just I I don’t need all this money. Like, does anyone want, like, a their deposit for a house? Because, like, this is I I just don’t need this this much and then just, like, help my friends get houses and go to Orlando.

That’s amazing. Help your friend get help your friends get houses.

Like, that’s a personal It is so expensive in the UK.

Like, it’s so hard to get on the property ladder, and it’s just getting, like, worse and worse. So that’s like, I would love to just get all my friends’, houses.

I love that. Amazing. That is definitely, like, wolf howling worthy. So yeah. You all, like, exit the pub and start howling. Right?

So Why would we need to exit the pub?

That’s true. It is a pub.

Cool. Next up.

No one else has a hand up.

Alright.

Let’s see. Anyone who hasn’t shared yet who is willing and ready and available to be that.

Even if you didn’t even write anything down, like, what comes to mind right now? Something that just feels badass and unhinged.

Right.

I I see Joe scanning the squares. She’s like, who? Who?

I might be the only one with my hand up.

Oh, there it is.

I’ll go.

Sorry. I’m I admit I’m multitasking.

But one thing I would love to do is hire my partner and pay him life changing a life changing salary because he’s also very limited in his skill set and the jobs that are available to him. So that would be awesome. That would mean a lot and pay a very high rate.

Amazing. How about that? Joe, do you wanna go? Joe? Sarah? Do you know?

Mostly because I haven’t got it sorted out Mhmm.

At all. I don’t have a can you imagine? I’m sorry. I don’t.

I’m thinking about it still. I just don’t.

Cool. Well, we got time. So I wanna, like, pose another question for, like, a real rapid fire round.

And this one, I want everybody to be able to say. But, like, what is the fuck no that you are no longer available for? Right? And, like, you could put that in a number of, like, projects under x amount. Right?

That could be work that you’ve been doing just because it’s familiar and safe, or it could be, like, a certain, like, boundary, like, on your health. Like, I no longer do this. Right?

But, yeah, what is, like, when fuck no that you are no longer available for and that you are willing to be seen in your lack of availability for?

Social media management.

Cool. Done with that. Yep.

I’m trying to move out of being, doing, like, big projects that are built around copy and trying to be moved more into, like, CRO consultant kind of things. So in the process of stepping away from some of the projects when people come around and say, hey. We have fifteen pages of web copy that we need to do.

Trying to turn those into consulting, retainers or passing them off to the many talented copywriters I know.

I don’t wanna work with clients who make me cry, and I just wanna work with people who think have amazing and are lucky to have me. Mhmm.

Makes you cry.

This is horrible. Men from Florida.

I thought you were gonna say it.

Every client, every, like, client I work with, he’s a man from Florida. It’s just horrible to me.

I think you’ve identified the trend. So yeah, so, like, you need to have your, like, man from Florida rate and, yeah, just automatically charge a hundred k for men for men from Florida.

Yeah. I could look at that.

And then your goal is to make them cry first. So yeah.

Cool.

Florida man. Make stop copywriter cry.

Is that what that says? Oh, for no good reason.

That’s good, Andrew.

Because that’s like a thing.

Right? If you search Florida, man?

That’s a thing. Yeah.

Yeah.

I love that, and it works.

It’s hilarious.

Right. Does it have to be a work client thing?

Because I do have kind of a money goal wrapped in a thing I won’t do anymore, which is can print.

I do not want to fly in coach ever again ever. I don’t know. And the problem is that I speaking of Florida, I have to fly down to see my daughter a lot to a small airport, and, unfortunately, like, it’s the only option. There is no first class or business class, but at that’s kinda I’m done with coach and flying anything other than business or first class.

Nice. Wow. That.

Love that.

I’m leaning leaning into an edge here and flying coach with a family to Florida next month. So You’re awesome. Wish me luck. Yeah. Yeah.

I am.

Because, I know sometimes you gotta get a little uncomfortable.

That’s my version of a cold plunge.

Let’s keep it going.

I would so rather spend that whole time in a cold plunge than on that plane. Gotcha.

Oh gosh.

But I hate flying, so there’s that.

I like what she said. I have first class travel in my contracts. Boom.

My fuck no is the last minute jobs where the clients or potential clients try to, like, negotiate and price even though you know that it’s going to get them a ton more money and going to cost your weekend.

Mhmm.

No more of that.

For me, no more one on one coaching.

Good. Boundary?

For me, it’s it’s just, like, twelve hour days. Like, I can do a ten hour. That’s fine. But if there’s deadline, it goes over to twelve. It’s just so soul destroying, so be my fuck up. Yeah.

Yeah. How many twelve hour days do you reckon you had this year?

Quite a few year. Yeah. I have this I think I’ve been, like, up and down. So I’m not making up for the downs with, like, a crazy amount of work. And then because I’ve expanded all of my energy for the week in one day, I’m down again.

It’s just but, I’m slowly getting out of it, I think.

Yeah.

That could be a really radical boundary to hold, right, in terms of also the efficiencies you create, and the leverage you create as well.

So, yeah, I’d even like oh, what does Joe have to say here?

K. Oh, I totally do.

That’s fair.

That’s fair.

Alright.

Cool. Who’s that?

Boundaries are fun. Like, anyone can take a second too. Like, like, go for seconds or thirds.

I don’t have a a a fuck now, but my goal is, to create a billion dollar company by myself.

I love it.

I ain’t unhinged. That’s so small.

Love it. Yeah.

It’s so big.

That’s wild.

I mean, I’ve created, like you know, personally, the biggest company is, like, twenty million, and I’ve helped clients get acquired for a hundred million, you know, or or more.

But I wanna do a billion dollar company by myself. Mhmm.

Yeah. What’s the why? Yourself? Why is that an important part of it? Can I ask?

Because it’s just I I just do so many things, and I just wanna show that one person can do all the all the things and that this is possible. And it’s especially possible. I mean, I I’ve one, I’ve been working toward this for a while, but it’s even more possible now with with AI too.

Love it.

What’s, like, the most satisfying part of that achievement to you? Like, is it like, I think Abby mentioned, like, a Forbes article. Like, is it when someone says, how the hell did you do that? Like, can you actually give that spiel, or is it the financial element?

Or No.

I think it’s just I’ve done so much internal work around my goals and things. And my primary motivation that comes down underneath everything is it’s just who I am, and I thought it would be cool. And that’s really why I do pretty much everything that I do. I mean, like, I’ve I Joe always says she does it because she likes she likes sort of winning. She’s her her her motivator is a competition thing, like a personal best. For me, it’s just like, I thought it would be cool. That’s it.

I love that.

I know that’s not you know, there’s no big big motive behind it other than it’s just what I feel like I’m supposed to do.

Very cool.

Yeah. I wanna have to, like, block SamCart from sending me emails because I just, like, keep getting so many sales things. And it’s like, oh my god. It actually is really annoying. That thing, of course, created to say, like, oh, like, I just I have to turn the note based on because it’s so noisy. Like, I want I want to experience that. That’s awesome.

Yeah.

My fuck no is that I’m not gonna overthink things because I have a tendency to do that, and then it, like, slows me down. And then I’m spending a lot more time doing the things that shouldn’t take as long as they are. And so I will be instead just saying this is good enough and rolling with it.

Nice. What’s, like, one area you find yourself overthinking quite a bit?

What was that?

What what’s, like, one area you find yourself overthinking more than others?

Oh, definitely the copy and writing and, like, I get stuck on, like, is this the best way to say this?

You know? And it’s really, it doesn’t have to be that big of a deal. Like, you’re gonna put it out there and you’re gonna test it anyway. Mhmm. And instead of getting stuck on it, you can just refine it later. You know?

Totally. Cool.

Right. I know we still have fifteen minutes left. Do we wanna maybe open the floor for any other questions that are related or unrelated to today’s training?

Most definitely. There. Yeah.

Cool. Cool.

Jessica.

I don’t really I’m struggling for, like, a big goal that I’m envisioning vividly other than and maybe this is just because of Thanksgiving. But we went to the Green Bay Packer game for Thanksgiving. And I like being the person who, when you look at me, you would not expect to be in places like first class or the clubhouse or wherever. So I just basically want more experiences like that where people would not I can totally tell. They just look at me and they’re like, really? You, first class?

Like, something like that. I don’t know why. I don’t really care what other people think, but I find it very amusing, the looks on their faces. So it’s, like, the only money related goal I can really think of that I want more of this year’s, like, going to a football game or a basketball game or a concert or an airplane and having great seats. And you know what I mean?

Yeah. That’s super satisfying too. Right? And I’m glad you can own that without feeling guilty about it. Like, that’s really good.

I have no shame. I don’t care.

That’s shameless cheese head. Yeah.

Pretty much.

Cool. Andrew.

Yeah. Cool.

Okay. Okay. A little vulnerable here for a moment. But, I guess I something that I struggle with a lot is that I have, a lot of inner tension, between, you know, having ambition and and what I, you know, like, the stuff that I wrote down for what, you know, what can I imagine?

And, also, like, a lot of, feelings of kind of, like, avoidance and resistance and dread of, like, not wanting, like, responsive more responsibility, not wanting more complexity, not wanting, you know, more stress, all these things. And some of that has to do with, like, physical and mental health issues that, I that are chronic for me and that I struggle with. But I guess I’m just wondering if you have any kind of tips on how to maybe get out of my own way on this sensor, how to kind of balance the, you know, wanting all these things that we talk about with also, you know, not, I don’t know, with with, yeah, balancing the the laziness with the ambition, I guess, or the openings with the ambition.

Yeah. That’s an awesome question. I’m sure everyone here could give a really rich answer to it. I’ll give mine, and then if anyone cares to chime in, they can.

For me, like and I’ll answer this in a same way similar way like I do with my copy. The best way to overcome is to include. Right? So, like, I used to have a vision that, like, you know, the most successful version of myself has his shit together.

Right? And that there was no room for laziness or procrastination or lack of ambition or these peaks and peaks and valleys. Right? Like, and I still go through peaks and valleys.

Like, there are some weeks when I feel on fire and I make declarations and form relationships where, like, a week later, I’m like, well, fuck. I just wanna chill. I want none of this. Right?

So, there’s space for that, and I think, like, we get to create these visions that are forgiving of our humanness and allowing of them. So I think, like, for me personally, there was this, like, one, like, noticing my trend lines. Right? Noticing that when this happens, I’ll contract, I’ll pull back, or I’ll want to.

Right?

And then when I say yes, sometimes I’ll be like, well, shit. I’m gonna be discovered now or I’m biting off more than I could chew or all these narratives. And that just became inclusive of the process, not something I resisted. And, of course, there’s the inner work where I was doing right on unwinding those. Right? From the mindset work to the emotional clearing work to the what is really kind of like the root of driving this.

But, you know, as far as I’ve been able to observe, no one has totally overhauled their nervous system and belief system and trauma in weeks or months. Right? And I think that there’s a certain permission you give yourself to, like, this is in in my vision of this success. Right? It’s not overcome this and then that. That makes sense?

Definitely. Yes. Thank you. That’s helpful.

Cool. Of course.

I guess it’s my turn. To just to add to what you just said, Ryan, I like to call it emotional margin. You know? Some space for myself for those those peaks and valleys. That’s how that’s how I, handle it. But, quick question. Recommendation on a payment provider.

Recommendation on a payment provider for what specifically?

For any payments, you know, through is it would it be Stripe?

Would it be Apple? And who would it what would it be?

I mean, Stripe is super reliable and easy and integrates with just about everything. And, yeah, like, that’s always an easy default.

The fees could get annoying for sure.

I tend to like Wise, especially being in Canada, working with US clients, getting paid in US. Wise as though it’s been, like, super reliable and doesn’t need up too many fees. So my own stack on that is Stripe and Wise, essentially.

Yeah.

I’m just hearing a lot of negativity about Stripe lately about how they shut down accounts now. They’re not sure about the transactions, and the customer service isn’t what it could be.

There’s definitely yeah. I’ve definitely picked up on the rumblings on that.

I haven’t encountered any issues myself. Knock on wood. I don’t know if this desk is real wood or imitation wood, but I knocked out in any way.

It’s always good to kind of, like, have in the back of your mind what a backup is.

You know, I think, like, one thing that I proactively do on all my payment processors, and I used to do with PayPal, right, is I wouldn’t leave cash in there longer than I need to. Right? So I would move it out, like, right away so that if ever things do go wrong with the pros processor, like, funds aren’t locked in.

But yeah.

Like, what, like, are there any specific concerns around, like, Stripe, sorry, with your particular business? Like, things you’ve observed with, like, other providers in a similar space or yeah.

Well, I’m just looking at, this this deal where they might shut me down because they’re unfamiliar with my transactions.

Transaction, they shut me down until they can investigate. Number two would be the fees.

Mhmm.

Number three would be the lack of customer service.

Right.

Do they have a phone or just do I have to go through a chat?

And Yep.

Joe raises a really good point here. Right? Like, I hate Wes for paying for things.

Hate, right, with a extended AAA, like a triple a hate rating, but love Stripe. Right? So, like, there I mean, that’s one really good reason. Right?

Like, make it easy on client make it easy for clients to pay you. Right? Don’t add friction to getting paid. That’s one of the reasons I’ve background Stripe as well.

I’ll, like, you know, with a little bit of guilt, ask about why sometimes. Do you do you use why it’s right? And, like, just go back to Stripe. But, yeah, make it easy for clients to pay you.

Yes, there are some alternatives to Stripe that a lot of people have been talking about online as well.

Can’t remember the name of it right now, but there is a big exodus from Stripe to another that is, you know, apparently more friendly for those in the online space. But, I could try to find that and ping you, if I could recall that provider.

Cool. We got Abby and Misal.

Hey. Yeah. So this might be a bit of an amateur question, but it’s just a gap in my knowledge.

When you had a call with a prospect and they were interested and then you have to follow-up, should you be, like, re reselling to them, or should you just be like, hey. You haven’t, like, booked that follow-up call yet?

Like Oh, I mean, it all depends on, like, the context of the first call, right, and what we’re following up about.

Yeah.

Like, if they seemed like like it was kind of like a yes, like a soft yes, and then you’re gonna pick up. I’m laughing because Jo knows what I’m talking about. If you’re, like, following up, having a second call to talk about it, but they haven’t put that. Like, should you be, like, reselling or just, like, reminding them?

Yeah.

I mean, my goal is to get, like, some form of commitment on that first call.

Mostly because, like and I’d imagine the same is true for you. Right? When you’re gonna take on a project, you really need to make it within a time line, and you don’t have much time to waste yourself.

I think, like, kind of having that attitude of, like, we gotta get started and move on this, is certainly helpful.

If a second call is necessary, like, it’s usually just to, like, revisit some specific points of the proposal, right, that they wanted to get back to me on. Right? Like, if there was something that they had to double check with someone, but once again, you want decision makers on the call as much as possible.

So there’s, like, an element of objection handling on the first call. Right? Like, if you’re sensing, like, tentativeness, right, there, what I used to do, right, like, is for my to ease my own discomfort, I’d I’d get off the call, right, and try to, you know, push that to another call because I I was uncomfortable myself. Right?

But if I’m sensing hesitation and, you know, everything’s laid out, we’ve gone over the numbers, we’ve gone over the scope, we’ve gone over the outcomes that we’d be seeking. Right? And I’m asking for commitment there. Right? I’m saying that I’m usually saying, like, you know, if y’all can greenlight this right now, I’d love to get started this afternoon or tomorrow with my intake process. Like, I really move the intake and the project kickoff as soon as possible, and then try to get that commitment right away.

So if they want another call, should you try and get them to, like, ideally book it, like, on that first call? Totally. Yeah. Okay.

Okay. Absolutely. And it should be ASAP. Like, there shouldn’t there should be as minimal gap between those calls as possible.

So, like, I would certainly like, if there are legit areas to look at, right, and concerns and people to talk to you, whatever, like, I would book that time with them on the spot. Like, pull out your calendar. I’ll pull out mine. I’m I’ll send you an invite.

Right? Like, and get that verbal commitment. Like, does that sound good with you? Yes. Right?

Like, people aren’t gonna ghost on things that they’ve given verbal commitments to most of the time, unless they’re really avoiding you, right, and unless there’s really an objection that they don’t wanna tell you.

But yeah.

Okay. Thank you, Roy.

Of course.

I would add, having very little insight into what’s going on, that if it happens over the Black Friday weekend, they might just be busy with Black Friday sales, maybe, hypothetically speaking.

But what if they also had messaged you to say you shouldn’t have followed up?

Yeah. There’s that. That’s them nudging you. Like, Abby, we closed this.

And then they might have got busy with Black Friday.

Okay. Gotcha. I’m really red.

Cool.

My question is, where do you keep your Can You Imagine wall? Do you, like, read it every day? Like, what do you do with it so that you can keep it fresh in your brain?

Good question. So I used to have, like, a board, like, literal post its with a few of those.

Right now, these because I I’m more digital. I have a doc that I review, but it’s a short doc. Like, it’s got, like, five or six of those moments, and I don’t just read it mentally. Like, I read one, and I immerse myself in that moment.

Right? I actually get as much satisfaction as I can out of it as if it’s real right now without feeling like, gosh. Why isn’t this here yet? So, yeah, I, like, indulge in those moments as if they’re here now, if that makes sense.

You do it daily? Do you have, like, I don’t know, monthly? Like, do you have a ritual for that at all?

I used to do it, like, nightly, back when, like, my nights are more predictable. But, no, I think, like, weekly is better than ninety nine point nine nine percent of the world. Right? So, like, whatever cadence feels available to you without you feeling like, I didn’t do it without it feeling like a chore. Right? Because it should feel like a pleasure to, like, essentially, like, time travel to these realities, right, and experience them, like, in full joy as if they’re here now. So yeah.

And app recommendation, Envision app that Katie is using upon Stacy’s recommendation. Cool.

Can I ask a real quick question? Sorry. I know we’re on time.

Yep. Yeah. Okay.

And if anyone needs to hop off, no worries. But yeah. Totally.

Thank you. So in terms of visualizing and goal setting, when I first opened the goal setting document, I, like, panicked because I set a lot of goals this year that I didn’t achieve. And I’m like, do I really need to set more goals that I’m not going to achieve again next year? And I started writing a post on the mindset Slack group and realized that, no. Actually, it hasn’t been that bad of a year. It’s just that I haven’t achieved the undeniable glittering success that I wanted.

But in terms of, like, visualizing these, amazing goals, I feel kind of apprehensive to give in to, like, the dream, so to speak.

Mhmm.

I I feel like the advice is just to go bravely into that dark, beautiful night, but I’m still scared. So do you have, I guess, any advice for that?

Yeah. So I I feel like I know where you’re coming from on this. Right? And, like, I had goals and dreams and these outcomes that would feel like out of reach and scary and blah blah blah. Right? And, like, one thing I found to be surprisingly effective is, like, having elements of normal within them so they’re not so and only grandiose.

Right? So it’s like maybe wearing the same clothes I’m wearing right now, right, in that vision. So you’re kind of bridging familiar land with adventurous land. Right? So it’s like maybe in that, reality in Greece, right, your hair is still red?

Pink? Pinkish red? Right?

Red on the screen.

Right? Like, get yes. As weird as it sounds. Right? Like, if that pinkish red hair feels safe and you, right, like, bring that with you into that reality. Bring elements of your current reality that feel comfort giving, if that makes sense, so that it’s not an abandonment of all the things that feel safe and lovely, and trading that for crazy big adventures. Like, bring the moments with you.

That’s really helpful. Thank you so much.

Cool.

Awesome. Well, we are three minutes over.

So I think now’s a good time to wrap. Does anyone have anything like burning that they didn’t get to share or ask, or does everyone feel good and complete?

I have one quick question about the workbook.

Do we have a color PDF as well? I got only the black and white PDF, and then the Canva one is view only.

We can get you a downloaded version of the color one for sure. It’s just I’ve I didn’t want to print that off. And then my binder, I’m like, I don’t know.

So no. But we can absolutely get you that, Tina.

Cool. Thank you.

Cool. Happy just got two leads during this call. Look at that.

That’s like thought I’d be manifested it.

Like, what the hell? Girl. You did.

There’s so much talking about manifesting. I love it. Yeah.

And actually, you just checked my email, and I was like, what the hell?

This is a magical portal.

I’m telling y’all, if you sit on this call for another ten hours week.

Yeah. Time very well spent. It’s an ROI. That’s all. Yeah.

Beautiful. Cool. Thanks, Jeff. Go ahead.

Thank you for walking everyone through the first part of the workbook.

We have the second part coming up, this Thursday as well. It’s in the calendar the the days to have, like, like, the pages, to look in. That’s pages nine to nineteen.

That will require some reflection on how twenty twenty four went for you, what worked, what didn’t work, things like that. So I’d spend some time before that session just kind of reflecting on like, for example, Claire, you said you had goals that you made this year and you didn’t hit them, and that makes it difficult to set future goals because, like, I I I feel that, and I hope that that doesn’t continue to get in your way. I I get where you’re coming from, though. But, yeah, just reflect a little bit. So because there’s several pages there, nine to nineteen, it’s gonna be a big undertaking.

The more you arrive with some ideas already filled in, probably, the better. Okay?

Cool. Cool. Well, thank you everybody for sharing so openly, and I feel like I know everyone’s twenty twenty five, a lot better already. So excited to see unhinged goals come to reality and fill that win channel. Right? That win channel is gonna be so freaking cool this year.

Workbook for December

Goal-setting workbook 

 

Worksheet

Goal-setting workbook

Transcript

Uum, alright we’re gonna dive in. I’m going to share the delightful, beautiful workbook, which I duplicated so that I could put my own unhinged thoughts on it without disturbing the master workbook.

So let’s do that.

Cool. Cool.

There we go. There we go.

Sweet.

Alright. Unhinged time.

This reminded me of, like, literally my first copywriting project ever in, like, twenty eleven, twenty twelve, and I had to write for this, like, fundraiser event that was, like, based on Mad Men.

And I needed to, like, write copy for this local event fundraiser.

And, I think, like, my tagline was something like, going mad never felt so good and something, like, really funny like that.

So going unhinged never felt so good. That doesn’t have the same ring to it. But y’all get the idea. So thirteen years later, we’re going mad. So big unhinged ideas.

I love these two books, and they synergize so well. Synergy. Synergy. Synergy. There’s a weird ass get on the word synergy.

But to go well together, vivid vision really encapsulates a lot of what, I had been doing unconsciously for a while. So I was, like, the master of a lifeless goals. Like, I started setting goals, like, a while ago, and they’d be on Google Doc, and they would be the things that I thought would have meaning. There would be missions and visions on there that I thought had meaning, and there was no, like, juice to it.

So, yeah, I think a mission and a vision must connect to a series, a multitude of real and enjoyable, fully charged moments that are trackable, realizable, real, and you could reflect back and say, holy fuck. That happened, and this felt amazing. And I really want you to be able to think about what those moments are in copy. I call those moments of heightened pleasure.

Right? These are real observable moments when the thing you want to achieve is achieved. Right?

And it’s not just this check mark, but this, oh, like, heart expanding, like, body vibrating holy fuck moment.

And I want y’all to be available to those holy fuck moments, and that may mean being less available for your holy fuck moments.

I know I still have somehow holy fuck no moments in my life, and it was very uncomfortable, initially setting boundaries on those fuck no moments. But, yeah, setting boundaries on your fuck no moment will appeal you to those fuck yeah moments.

So, one thing I will encourage you to lean into are what o what are those textures, those data points, and feeling points of that vivid vision manifested? What is actually happening in your reality? What are you going on the wind channel in Slack and being like, oh, I’m you’ll never guess what just happened, dot dot dot, and let us celebrate you in that with all these emojis, the raising emojis.

Income goals. Right? So I was initially the king of not caring about money until this. Right?

I’d be like, I’m good. I just enjoy my Starbucks and my apartment, and that’s enough. Right? So I was the king of saying, well, as long as I have enough or decent living, I’m good.

Right? And then I started connecting income goals to actual lifestyle moments that they would empower, and I’m gonna talk about those in a second.

And, yeah, I made myself available for those just by leaning into what those income goals actually represented. So, bonus points. I found a lot of similarities between Vivid Vision and this old school book from, like, I don’t know, like, the fifties or sixties, one of those, like, initial manifesting books, Feelings the Secret by Neville Goddard.

Not inventory reading. Just a little side note. It’s written in very antiquated language, but some really good stuff about seeing that end result, not just, like, in your mind, but actually feeling it. What does it feel like in your body when that thing happens?

How does that actually feel in your body when you get an email from Tony Robbins saying, do you wanna speak on my stage? And you’re like, no. I don’t, but I really do.

How does that feel? So lean into those realities as if they are already happening. Make yourself available for it. Make your nervous system available to it.

Train your nervous nervous system for these ten x moments that may initially have some contraction. Right? It may initially be an edge, but begin attuning you to what’s possible and leaning on the support here. Right?

And in your own, yeah, in your own daily life to get that support to expand. Because I think this container is about expanding and not about the play it safe goals. These are about the unhinged, slightly scary. Yes.

They’re initially gonna create contraction and fever in the body, and that is expected, and we could work with that. Those types of goals. Cool?

Sweet.

Ten x is easier than two x. Another one I’ve loved.

Big takeaways here is just, like, being in that fierce protection and advocacy of your vivid vision. You choose ten x, you are excluding so much bullshit. Right? And this is something that was so uncomfortable as a recovering people pleaser.

I remember my first year full time freelancing probably made somewhere around, like, I don’t know, forty to fifty k working with the local piano repair shop, the local massage studio. Right? All these local people that became friends. Right?

And then in my own ten x year, literal ten x year. Oh, gosh. It required so many noes. Like, nope.

Sorry. I don’t do that anymore. Right? Can’t do it. Right? Can’t make that exception.

So, yeah, I think being in fierce protection, right, of your vivid vision, like, falling in love with that vivid vision, treating it as you would a child or a pet or a dog or a cat or just something you really love and making it less personal. Right? Not not just your personal boundaries, but, like, go to bat for this vision that you get to nurture and bridge into reality. So fierce protect of it.

Awkward convos are always going to feel better than self betrayal when you give a yes, and then you essentially have that stinging, sensation in your gut of, like, did I say yes? Right? And you’re begrudgingly doing something you don’t wanna do. Yeah.

Let’s just not do those anymore. Let’s just, like, get rid of all of those in your life.

And, yeah, to me, that’s required for that ten x.

Ten x innovation. So this is such a dear topic to me. I feel like, yeah, I feel like a big part of my career has been on the innovation side. Essentially, right from the beginning, having that question of, like, what is the five minute mile for what I’m doing?

What is the five minute mile for, an email launch sequence? What is the five minute mile for a SaaS onboarding? What is the five minute mile for, an ecom product page being launched to market for the first time? Right?

So what are these moonshots? What are these five minute miles in the thing you do, and what can you do in your thing, right, with every new project that I call paid r and d? Right? What needs to be true for you to literally set the standard for what that thing looks like in your space.

Right? And that’s gonna require some testing. So I call that paid r and d, at least one thing you’re doing on every new project to try to push that needle a little bit further. So I’m gonna have more to share about this in twenty twenty five.

It’s a concept I’m still practicing. Literally just wrote, an ecom supplement product page that I strategically tried just two new things, two new things that I’ve never done before, never seen done before. So take all the best practices, you add one or two things with a clear hypothesis of this might work. Right?

Let’s test this out in this scenario.

So I’m gonna share more on that because this page I just wrote is converting at, like, thirteen percent, like, thirteen percent conversion, and that’s not on, like, an insignificant amount of clicks. So really exciting stuff to share there. But in your own projects, just test one new thing. Like, what is one new thing that if this works, I have something that no one else has.

Right? There’s the innovation piece. You’re either competing on innovation, like having a thing, a proven method, or extreme per tease is the other side of it. Like, being just so freaking good.

Right? Like, that that is what allows you to charge ten x. Right? But I think it’s a lot easier, predictable, and faster of a path to innovate in your space.

So, those are my little quick book summaries. I think, like, the little last motivating line is, like, so much can change in a year if you Right? Like, I’ve had years of massive growth, and then I’ve had years of just, like, hold forward and integrate what happened and optimize it. But those, like, explosive, like, eight to ten x years, gosh. Those aren’t the ones I look back on right now and be like, that year changed freaking everything. Like, these are life trajectory changing years, and we get to create if we’re ready for them, if we’re available for them. So that is my little recap there.

The can you imagine exercise, I’d love for us to be able to spend some time here. Right? This tracks back to what are these tangible moments, right, where this vision, where this ten x vision comes to life when you could be like, damn. That just happened.

When you could go on that Slack channel, that wind channel, and be like, this just happened. Right? So for me, right, like, my big thing, when I ten x wasn’t about income goals. I couldn’t just say I won half a million dollars a year for the hell of it.

I had to connect those to things that mattered, and these matterful things happened, and they were amazing. Right? So it was like, for me, that time I was at the Scandinavian Spa in the middle of the day, right, when it’s empty except for retirees, like, talking about retiree shit, and just making one k, right, from an automated course sale, like, it’s another day and it’s no big deal. Right?

Like, that was one of my, like, nervous system exhale. Right? This is what I want to be living. That’s what my ten x lifestyle looked like at the time in, I guess this was, like, twenty sixteen, twenty seventeen.

Twenty fifteen, I almost died from a stroke. So that was my year of, like, no. I’m just gonna radically chill, right, and enjoy that and enjoy what this big bump in income empowers me to do.

Another fun income goal that turned into a tangible reality that actually had a lot of, like, excitement in it. I don’t know why this motivated it, motivated me the way it did.

But one of my goals was to have enough cash saved up in reserve in my business checking account that just having it in a I think it was, like, a five percent high interest account could pay my monthly expenses. Like, how cool is that when your, interest on what is in your biz account could pay expenses. And granted, I wasn’t in a crazy scale mode. Right? That was, like, with a VA and some software, but still, like, that just made my life feel so light and exciting.

So that is an income goal baked into a tangible thing that just feels really light on my system.

What else? Right? So I was never a big, event person.

You know, typical introvert, extreme introvert. Right? But what I loved to do was, like, I loved to go deep with the clients I had. Right?

So that meant traveling. It meant getting on location. It meant doing VIP days. It meant, visiting their teams and then extending those trips for two to three days for chill time.

Right? So that might look like hikes and going to the beach. And I remember one year, I was in, like, Encinitas or Carlsbad, like, three times that year. Right?

And, like, there’s these gardens by a place called Swami Beach. Right? So it’s like the Yogananda Gardens or something and just beautiful gardens overlooking the ocean. And I’m like, I found my up there on the for the third time that year, and that was one of my, like, ah, I made it moments.

Right? This is becoming routine. Like, just taking a chill decompressing day after a client VIP day and staring up in the ocean.

So, and then you get to also have, like, guilt free, like, pride in some of your goals. Right? So, like, one of my, like, kinks when I first ten x was, like, walking into the bank. Right?

Like, I didn’t even have Stripe in my first year. Like, I would literally ask clients to send checks in the mail. Right? And I would show up to the bank teller with, like, these five figure checks, and they would have no freaking idea what I did.

And, Brendon, that’s kind of just, like, enjoyable sense of weird pride in that.

So, yeah, I’d love for us all to just take some time right now, like, lean into what these vivid ten x moments look like for you. Right? They are undoubtedly connected to growth goals, and especially growth and income and growth in mindset and within your capacity to lean into that because there is going to be some edge. So this is your time to write a few of these down.

Right? Maybe even just, like, one really clear, oof, I don’t know if I should say that goal. Right? One that kinda scares you to say out loud, and then maybe we’ll say it out loud because that’s what we do.

So I’m gonna stop my share.

Any questions about this exercise before we get going, or should I, like, queue up some music that y’all may or may not enjoy while we take a few minutes?

Get unhinged.

Oh, I was not expecting espresso for some reason. I thought I made something else. That hit me harder. Cool.

Alright. I’m gonna play some music. I’ve never been known as, like, the best party DJ. I’ve always been the person, like, they replace after one song, but that’s all good.

And we’ll give it about five minutes. And then how many people are on this call? We got close to twenty.

So, yeah, I think that’s gonna be enough time for at least one minute one minute each to declare that out loud. So we’re gonna do five minutes now, and then everyone gets to share and declare their big, unhinged, wild, feels scary to say aloud goal, or the year.

Cool.

Alright.

Cool. Welcome back, everyone.

So, I would love to hear everybody’s unhinged goal. Right? And I think it would be amazing for everyone to hear everyone’s unhinged goal.

That way, a, we know what it is. And, b, if you wanna add a little extra flavor, a little extra juice to it as someone is sharing it, I dare you, right, to just see them fully in that success, see them as fully capable, see them as fully in the realization of that, and celebrate them in that. Right? I think that would be an enjoyable, fun, and lovely thing to do. So, first one up, I think we’ve got about sixty to ninety seconds, each. So yeah.

Cool. Cody, you’re up.

Alright. So this year, I will, write and publish a best selling book, that will lead to speaking gigs, high profile collaborations, and media features.

My book will be the go to manual for growth marketers and ecom leaders, when it comes to scaling their business, with a funnel for specifically cold traffic, and it will establish me as a top authority in the space.

Love it. What is one defining moment where you will know you’re in the achievement of that?

I would say when the book is published because then I know that I actually followed through what I said I was gonna do.

Okay. Love it. Thanks for sharing, Cody. Next person up.

Okay. I’ll go.

Mine is I host a Greek vacation for ten days with my entire family in the UK and in South Africa.

We’ve got a yacht moored outside, private shifts, and plenty of exciting activities planned like hiking, snorkeling, and, of course, eating.

Love it. What are you eating?

Oh my god. Like, everything.

I I’ve never been to Greece, so whatever they eat.

Beautiful. Cool. Well, taste those flavors and taste the entire moment. Love it. Cool. Next up.

My moment is I’m on a Teams meeting with my bookkeeper who I think thinks I’m a little bit crazy, and he’s telling me that he has never seen a client’s finances transform as dramatically as mine have in the last twelve months, and then point out that I should probably buy a company car or something because, otherwise, I’m gonna have to be in a different tax bracket.

That is amazing. Yes.

And that car the car is a little, Volkswagen Cabriolet convertible.

Oh, so good. Yeah. I love it.

Like, you least unhinged car you could buy.

I mean, I’ve I’ve had it on my vision board since I was, like, seventeen.

So Oh, okay.

Alright. Fair enough.

Yeah.

I mean, it was like the cool dream car.

Love it.

Is Andrew up?

Is that me?

I think so.

Cool.

My moment is when the prospect says yes to my proposal for a ten thousand dollar monthly consulting retainer, and I and I almost feel kind of, like, guilty because it’s like it feels like, oh, that’s not enough. Like, I’m not let me just read what I wrote instead of trying to improvise. I can’t believe how little work I’ll actually have to do relative to the amount that I’m getting paid because they’re paying for my thinking, not for my time or effort. And I guess, a moment in that might be, like, telling my wife about, like, you know, that I got that signed and, like, oh my god. I’m not gonna have to do nearly as much work as I’ve done to make, you know, half that money in the past or something.

I love that. What I love about what you just shared is, like, you included feeling guilty in your vision and your goal, which is true to what that would look like for you right now. Right? So I think so I think, like, that’s amazing.

Like, lean into that. Lean into moments that, right now, feel like they might induce a little bit of, like, guilt. Right? So cool.

Awesome. Okay. So mine is finding the perfect home for my family, and being able to call up our real estate agent when we, like, signed it and just put an offer in right away and close within, like, a month.

And it’s, like, the perfect house for a family, so it’s in the city, which is more pricey than we would otherwise or normally choose, I guess.

And it’s, like, in a great school district.

It’s near family. It’s got everything for the kids, and then it’s just also a an amazing house to where we can just set up shop for the foreseeable future.

Mhmm. I love that.

Does that moment feel most realized to you, like, when you sign for the house, when you get the house, or even when you make the decision and, like, reach out to an agent and say, like, I’m available for this now?

But probably, like, when I reach out to the agent and say, k. I can close on it. Like, we can we can put it down today. Like, we’re ready today. And then, like, the final walk through as the papers are, like, being signed.

Yeah. I love that. Yeah. Keep, like, inviting, like, the energies from those two moments because they feel, like, really expansive and life giving. Cool.

Yeah. Thank you.

Okay.

I actually started this, exercise yesterday. So the ImagineWall is the house that I want in three years.

So it sits, in the mountains of the Blues.

We’re in the Grand Oregon, so we’re right at the base of the Blue Mountains. It’s gonna be lakeside. There is a lake up there.

Five acres of wooded beauty.

Very large pond with a huge wrap around porch.

The back, back porch is really large outdoor living space with its own fireplace looking out over the lake. So it’s a perfect spot for morning coffee or eating wine or whiskey.

Are we invited? Can we have the first IRL there?

We can. Yeah. So but the the goal for this is to pay seventy five percent cash from the business.

Amazing.

Beautiful. Well, I’m officially imagining us sitting around your fire, like, being like, look at all this land. And Yeah. Inevitably someone starts wolf howling because they can and then everyone does.

Yeah. This is a perfect perfect place for it.

Yeah. Who in this group kicks off the wolf howling? Like, who is most likely to initiate wolf howling?

There you go.

Abby put up her hand, and I was gonna say Abby. So I think it’s Abby.

I’m usually the last one to join the wolf howling. I’m like, fine. I’ll do it. Anyway cool. Amazing. Thanks, Michelle.

I guess I’m, I am so inspired by this book. I’ll tell you what.

My my big audacious goal for this year is one million dollars worth of revenue in my, copywriting agency with three copywriters, two VAs with my standardized offer going from ten k to twenty k to thirty k, and then the other half being the monthly retainers.

Amazing. Yeah. What is, like, that moment when that is all realized? Right? Do you see yourself kind of, like, celebrating with that team, have two copywriters, like, sharing that revenue?

As a matter of fact, this weekend, I interviewed my first, copywriter.

Cool. And I don’t even know how I’m gonna get to the million yet, but I’ve already interviewed my first copywriter.

So Amazing.

Beautiful. Well, we’re here for it.

Abby?

I haven’t sat in on a Rise session before, and I find it very uncomfortable to wait for the next person. So my apologies. Right?

I was going to get cold on. Sorry. Yeah.

I read the wolf sweating.

Just waiting for this Lean into that, Joe.

I was like, should I be talking? Yeah. I read the wolf howling because it’s been, like, really stormy. Like and I live by the beach.

I keep going down to the beach, throwing pebbles into the sea and then manifesting and then genuinely, like, howling because it’s so stormy that no one can hear. But, anyway, my visualization would be it. I’m sitting with my friends at the pub, and I’m like, guys, like, I I kind of, like, feel like I just won a lottery because my course has just, like, taken off. And I’ve paid off my mortgage.

I’ve just booked a holiday to Orlando, and I just I I don’t need all this money. Like, does anyone want, like, a their deposit for a house? Because, like, this is I I just don’t need this this much and then just, like, help my friends get houses and go to Orlando.

That’s amazing. Help your friend get help your friends get houses.

Like, that’s a personal It is so expensive in the UK.

Like, it’s so hard to get on the property ladder, and it’s just getting, like, worse and worse. So that’s like, I would love to just get all my friends’, houses.

I love that. Amazing. That is definitely, like, wolf howling worthy. So yeah. You all, like, exit the pub and start howling. Right?

So Why would we need to exit the pub?

That’s true. It is a pub.

Cool. Next up.

No one else has a hand up.

Alright.

Let’s see. Anyone who hasn’t shared yet who is willing and ready and available to be that.

Even if you didn’t even write anything down, like, what comes to mind right now? Something that just feels badass and unhinged.

Right.

I I see Joe scanning the squares. She’s like, who? Who?

I might be the only one with my hand up.

Oh, there it is.

I’ll go.

Sorry. I’m I admit I’m multitasking.

But one thing I would love to do is hire my partner and pay him life changing a life changing salary because he’s also very limited in his skill set and the jobs that are available to him. So that would be awesome. That would mean a lot and pay a very high rate.

Amazing. How about that? Joe, do you wanna go? Joe? Sarah? Do you know?

Mostly because I haven’t got it sorted out Mhmm.

At all. I don’t have a can you imagine? I’m sorry. I don’t.

I’m thinking about it still. I just don’t.

Cool. Well, we got time. So I wanna, like, pose another question for, like, a real rapid fire round.

And this one, I want everybody to be able to say. But, like, what is the fuck no that you are no longer available for? Right? And, like, you could put that in a number of, like, projects under x amount. Right?

That could be work that you’ve been doing just because it’s familiar and safe, or it could be, like, a certain, like, boundary, like, on your health. Like, I no longer do this. Right?

But, yeah, what is, like, when fuck no that you are no longer available for and that you are willing to be seen in your lack of availability for?

Social media management.

Cool. Done with that. Yep.

I’m trying to move out of being, doing, like, big projects that are built around copy and trying to be moved more into, like, CRO consultant kind of things. So in the process of stepping away from some of the projects when people come around and say, hey. We have fifteen pages of web copy that we need to do.

Trying to turn those into consulting, retainers or passing them off to the many talented copywriters I know.

I don’t wanna work with clients who make me cry, and I just wanna work with people who think have amazing and are lucky to have me. Mhmm.

Makes you cry.

This is horrible. Men from Florida.

I thought you were gonna say it.

Every client, every, like, client I work with, he’s a man from Florida. It’s just horrible to me.

I think you’ve identified the trend. So yeah, so, like, you need to have your, like, man from Florida rate and, yeah, just automatically charge a hundred k for men for men from Florida.

Yeah. I could look at that.

And then your goal is to make them cry first. So yeah.

Cool.

Florida man. Make stop copywriter cry.

Is that what that says? Oh, for no good reason.

That’s good, Andrew.

Because that’s like a thing.

Right? If you search Florida, man?

That’s a thing. Yeah.

Yeah.

I love that, and it works.

It’s hilarious.

Right. Does it have to be a work client thing?

Because I do have kind of a money goal wrapped in a thing I won’t do anymore, which is can print.

I do not want to fly in coach ever again ever. I don’t know. And the problem is that I speaking of Florida, I have to fly down to see my daughter a lot to a small airport, and, unfortunately, like, it’s the only option. There is no first class or business class, but at that’s kinda I’m done with coach and flying anything other than business or first class.

Nice. Wow. That.

Love that.

I’m leaning leaning into an edge here and flying coach with a family to Florida next month. So You’re awesome. Wish me luck. Yeah. Yeah.

I am.

Because, I know sometimes you gotta get a little uncomfortable.

That’s my version of a cold plunge.

Let’s keep it going.

I would so rather spend that whole time in a cold plunge than on that plane. Gotcha.

Oh gosh.

But I hate flying, so there’s that.

I like what she said. I have first class travel in my contracts. Boom.

My fuck no is the last minute jobs where the clients or potential clients try to, like, negotiate and price even though you know that it’s going to get them a ton more money and going to cost your weekend.

Mhmm.

No more of that.

For me, no more one on one coaching.

Good. Boundary?

For me, it’s it’s just, like, twelve hour days. Like, I can do a ten hour. That’s fine. But if there’s deadline, it goes over to twelve. It’s just so soul destroying, so be my fuck up. Yeah.

Yeah. How many twelve hour days do you reckon you had this year?

Quite a few year. Yeah. I have this I think I’ve been, like, up and down. So I’m not making up for the downs with, like, a crazy amount of work. And then because I’ve expanded all of my energy for the week in one day, I’m down again.

It’s just but, I’m slowly getting out of it, I think.

Yeah.

That could be a really radical boundary to hold, right, in terms of also the efficiencies you create, and the leverage you create as well.

So, yeah, I’d even like oh, what does Joe have to say here?

K. Oh, I totally do.

That’s fair.

That’s fair.

Alright.

Cool. Who’s that?

Boundaries are fun. Like, anyone can take a second too. Like, like, go for seconds or thirds.

I don’t have a a a fuck now, but my goal is, to create a billion dollar company by myself.

I love it.

I ain’t unhinged. That’s so small.

Love it. Yeah.

It’s so big.

That’s wild.

I mean, I’ve created, like you know, personally, the biggest company is, like, twenty million, and I’ve helped clients get acquired for a hundred million, you know, or or more.

But I wanna do a billion dollar company by myself. Mhmm.

Yeah. What’s the why? Yourself? Why is that an important part of it? Can I ask?

Because it’s just I I just do so many things, and I just wanna show that one person can do all the all the things and that this is possible. And it’s especially possible. I mean, I I’ve one, I’ve been working toward this for a while, but it’s even more possible now with with AI too.

Love it.

What’s, like, the most satisfying part of that achievement to you? Like, is it like, I think Abby mentioned, like, a Forbes article. Like, is it when someone says, how the hell did you do that? Like, can you actually give that spiel, or is it the financial element?

Or No.

I think it’s just I’ve done so much internal work around my goals and things. And my primary motivation that comes down underneath everything is it’s just who I am, and I thought it would be cool. And that’s really why I do pretty much everything that I do. I mean, like, I’ve I Joe always says she does it because she likes she likes sort of winning. She’s her her her motivator is a competition thing, like a personal best. For me, it’s just like, I thought it would be cool. That’s it.

I love that.

I know that’s not you know, there’s no big big motive behind it other than it’s just what I feel like I’m supposed to do.

Very cool.

Yeah. I wanna have to, like, block SamCart from sending me emails because I just, like, keep getting so many sales things. And it’s like, oh my god. It actually is really annoying. That thing, of course, created to say, like, oh, like, I just I have to turn the note based on because it’s so noisy. Like, I want I want to experience that. That’s awesome.

Yeah.

My fuck no is that I’m not gonna overthink things because I have a tendency to do that, and then it, like, slows me down. And then I’m spending a lot more time doing the things that shouldn’t take as long as they are. And so I will be instead just saying this is good enough and rolling with it.

Nice. What’s, like, one area you find yourself overthinking quite a bit?

What was that?

What what’s, like, one area you find yourself overthinking more than others?

Oh, definitely the copy and writing and, like, I get stuck on, like, is this the best way to say this?

You know? And it’s really, it doesn’t have to be that big of a deal. Like, you’re gonna put it out there and you’re gonna test it anyway. Mhmm. And instead of getting stuck on it, you can just refine it later. You know?

Totally. Cool.

Right. I know we still have fifteen minutes left. Do we wanna maybe open the floor for any other questions that are related or unrelated to today’s training?

Most definitely. There. Yeah.

Cool. Cool.

Jessica.

I don’t really I’m struggling for, like, a big goal that I’m envisioning vividly other than and maybe this is just because of Thanksgiving. But we went to the Green Bay Packer game for Thanksgiving. And I like being the person who, when you look at me, you would not expect to be in places like first class or the clubhouse or wherever. So I just basically want more experiences like that where people would not I can totally tell. They just look at me and they’re like, really? You, first class?

Like, something like that. I don’t know why. I don’t really care what other people think, but I find it very amusing, the looks on their faces. So it’s, like, the only money related goal I can really think of that I want more of this year’s, like, going to a football game or a basketball game or a concert or an airplane and having great seats. And you know what I mean?

Yeah. That’s super satisfying too. Right? And I’m glad you can own that without feeling guilty about it. Like, that’s really good.

I have no shame. I don’t care.

That’s shameless cheese head. Yeah.

Pretty much.

Cool. Andrew.

Yeah. Cool.

Okay. Okay. A little vulnerable here for a moment. But, I guess I something that I struggle with a lot is that I have, a lot of inner tension, between, you know, having ambition and and what I, you know, like, the stuff that I wrote down for what, you know, what can I imagine?

And, also, like, a lot of, feelings of kind of, like, avoidance and resistance and dread of, like, not wanting, like, responsive more responsibility, not wanting more complexity, not wanting, you know, more stress, all these things. And some of that has to do with, like, physical and mental health issues that, I that are chronic for me and that I struggle with. But I guess I’m just wondering if you have any kind of tips on how to maybe get out of my own way on this sensor, how to kind of balance the, you know, wanting all these things that we talk about with also, you know, not, I don’t know, with with, yeah, balancing the the laziness with the ambition, I guess, or the openings with the ambition.

Yeah. That’s an awesome question. I’m sure everyone here could give a really rich answer to it. I’ll give mine, and then if anyone cares to chime in, they can.

For me, like and I’ll answer this in a same way similar way like I do with my copy. The best way to overcome is to include. Right? So, like, I used to have a vision that, like, you know, the most successful version of myself has his shit together.

Right? And that there was no room for laziness or procrastination or lack of ambition or these peaks and peaks and valleys. Right? Like, and I still go through peaks and valleys.

Like, there are some weeks when I feel on fire and I make declarations and form relationships where, like, a week later, I’m like, well, fuck. I just wanna chill. I want none of this. Right?

So, there’s space for that, and I think, like, we get to create these visions that are forgiving of our humanness and allowing of them. So I think, like, for me personally, there was this, like, one, like, noticing my trend lines. Right? Noticing that when this happens, I’ll contract, I’ll pull back, or I’ll want to.

Right?

And then when I say yes, sometimes I’ll be like, well, shit. I’m gonna be discovered now or I’m biting off more than I could chew or all these narratives. And that just became inclusive of the process, not something I resisted. And, of course, there’s the inner work where I was doing right on unwinding those. Right? From the mindset work to the emotional clearing work to the what is really kind of like the root of driving this.

But, you know, as far as I’ve been able to observe, no one has totally overhauled their nervous system and belief system and trauma in weeks or months. Right? And I think that there’s a certain permission you give yourself to, like, this is in in my vision of this success. Right? It’s not overcome this and then that. That makes sense?

Definitely. Yes. Thank you. That’s helpful.

Cool. Of course.

I guess it’s my turn. To just to add to what you just said, Ryan, I like to call it emotional margin. You know? Some space for myself for those those peaks and valleys. That’s how that’s how I, handle it. But, quick question. Recommendation on a payment provider.

Recommendation on a payment provider for what specifically?

For any payments, you know, through is it would it be Stripe?

Would it be Apple? And who would it what would it be?

I mean, Stripe is super reliable and easy and integrates with just about everything. And, yeah, like, that’s always an easy default.

The fees could get annoying for sure.

I tend to like Wise, especially being in Canada, working with US clients, getting paid in US. Wise as though it’s been, like, super reliable and doesn’t need up too many fees. So my own stack on that is Stripe and Wise, essentially.

Yeah.

I’m just hearing a lot of negativity about Stripe lately about how they shut down accounts now. They’re not sure about the transactions, and the customer service isn’t what it could be.

There’s definitely yeah. I’ve definitely picked up on the rumblings on that.

I haven’t encountered any issues myself. Knock on wood. I don’t know if this desk is real wood or imitation wood, but I knocked out in any way.

It’s always good to kind of, like, have in the back of your mind what a backup is.

You know, I think, like, one thing that I proactively do on all my payment processors, and I used to do with PayPal, right, is I wouldn’t leave cash in there longer than I need to. Right? So I would move it out, like, right away so that if ever things do go wrong with the pros processor, like, funds aren’t locked in.

But yeah.

Like, what, like, are there any specific concerns around, like, Stripe, sorry, with your particular business? Like, things you’ve observed with, like, other providers in a similar space or yeah.

Well, I’m just looking at, this this deal where they might shut me down because they’re unfamiliar with my transactions.

Transaction, they shut me down until they can investigate. Number two would be the fees.

Mhmm.

Number three would be the lack of customer service.

Right.

Do they have a phone or just do I have to go through a chat?

And Yep.

Joe raises a really good point here. Right? Like, I hate Wes for paying for things.

Hate, right, with a extended AAA, like a triple a hate rating, but love Stripe. Right? So, like, there I mean, that’s one really good reason. Right?

Like, make it easy on client make it easy for clients to pay you. Right? Don’t add friction to getting paid. That’s one of the reasons I’ve background Stripe as well.

I’ll, like, you know, with a little bit of guilt, ask about why sometimes. Do you do you use why it’s right? And, like, just go back to Stripe. But, yeah, make it easy for clients to pay you.

Yes, there are some alternatives to Stripe that a lot of people have been talking about online as well.

Can’t remember the name of it right now, but there is a big exodus from Stripe to another that is, you know, apparently more friendly for those in the online space. But, I could try to find that and ping you, if I could recall that provider.

Cool. We got Abby and Misal.

Hey. Yeah. So this might be a bit of an amateur question, but it’s just a gap in my knowledge.

When you had a call with a prospect and they were interested and then you have to follow-up, should you be, like, re reselling to them, or should you just be like, hey. You haven’t, like, booked that follow-up call yet?

Like Oh, I mean, it all depends on, like, the context of the first call, right, and what we’re following up about.

Yeah.

Like, if they seemed like like it was kind of like a yes, like a soft yes, and then you’re gonna pick up. I’m laughing because Jo knows what I’m talking about. If you’re, like, following up, having a second call to talk about it, but they haven’t put that. Like, should you be, like, reselling or just, like, reminding them?

Yeah.

I mean, my goal is to get, like, some form of commitment on that first call.

Mostly because, like and I’d imagine the same is true for you. Right? When you’re gonna take on a project, you really need to make it within a time line, and you don’t have much time to waste yourself.

I think, like, kind of having that attitude of, like, we gotta get started and move on this, is certainly helpful.

If a second call is necessary, like, it’s usually just to, like, revisit some specific points of the proposal, right, that they wanted to get back to me on. Right? Like, if there was something that they had to double check with someone, but once again, you want decision makers on the call as much as possible.

So there’s, like, an element of objection handling on the first call. Right? Like, if you’re sensing, like, tentativeness, right, there, what I used to do, right, like, is for my to ease my own discomfort, I’d I’d get off the call, right, and try to, you know, push that to another call because I I was uncomfortable myself. Right?

But if I’m sensing hesitation and, you know, everything’s laid out, we’ve gone over the numbers, we’ve gone over the scope, we’ve gone over the outcomes that we’d be seeking. Right? And I’m asking for commitment there. Right? I’m saying that I’m usually saying, like, you know, if y’all can greenlight this right now, I’d love to get started this afternoon or tomorrow with my intake process. Like, I really move the intake and the project kickoff as soon as possible, and then try to get that commitment right away.

So if they want another call, should you try and get them to, like, ideally book it, like, on that first call? Totally. Yeah. Okay.

Okay. Absolutely. And it should be ASAP. Like, there shouldn’t there should be as minimal gap between those calls as possible.

So, like, I would certainly like, if there are legit areas to look at, right, and concerns and people to talk to you, whatever, like, I would book that time with them on the spot. Like, pull out your calendar. I’ll pull out mine. I’m I’ll send you an invite.

Right? Like, and get that verbal commitment. Like, does that sound good with you? Yes. Right?

Like, people aren’t gonna ghost on things that they’ve given verbal commitments to most of the time, unless they’re really avoiding you, right, and unless there’s really an objection that they don’t wanna tell you.

But yeah.

Okay. Thank you, Roy.

Of course.

I would add, having very little insight into what’s going on, that if it happens over the Black Friday weekend, they might just be busy with Black Friday sales, maybe, hypothetically speaking.

But what if they also had messaged you to say you shouldn’t have followed up?

Yeah. There’s that. That’s them nudging you. Like, Abby, we closed this.

And then they might have got busy with Black Friday.

Okay. Gotcha. I’m really red.

Cool.

My question is, where do you keep your Can You Imagine wall? Do you, like, read it every day? Like, what do you do with it so that you can keep it fresh in your brain?

Good question. So I used to have, like, a board, like, literal post its with a few of those.

Right now, these because I I’m more digital. I have a doc that I review, but it’s a short doc. Like, it’s got, like, five or six of those moments, and I don’t just read it mentally. Like, I read one, and I immerse myself in that moment.

Right? I actually get as much satisfaction as I can out of it as if it’s real right now without feeling like, gosh. Why isn’t this here yet? So, yeah, I, like, indulge in those moments as if they’re here now, if that makes sense.

You do it daily? Do you have, like, I don’t know, monthly? Like, do you have a ritual for that at all?

I used to do it, like, nightly, back when, like, my nights are more predictable. But, no, I think, like, weekly is better than ninety nine point nine nine percent of the world. Right? So, like, whatever cadence feels available to you without you feeling like, I didn’t do it without it feeling like a chore. Right? Because it should feel like a pleasure to, like, essentially, like, time travel to these realities, right, and experience them, like, in full joy as if they’re here now. So yeah.

And app recommendation, Envision app that Katie is using upon Stacy’s recommendation. Cool.

Can I ask a real quick question? Sorry. I know we’re on time.

Yep. Yeah. Okay.

And if anyone needs to hop off, no worries. But yeah. Totally.

Thank you. So in terms of visualizing and goal setting, when I first opened the goal setting document, I, like, panicked because I set a lot of goals this year that I didn’t achieve. And I’m like, do I really need to set more goals that I’m not going to achieve again next year? And I started writing a post on the mindset Slack group and realized that, no. Actually, it hasn’t been that bad of a year. It’s just that I haven’t achieved the undeniable glittering success that I wanted.

But in terms of, like, visualizing these, amazing goals, I feel kind of apprehensive to give in to, like, the dream, so to speak.

Mhmm.

I I feel like the advice is just to go bravely into that dark, beautiful night, but I’m still scared. So do you have, I guess, any advice for that?

Yeah. So I I feel like I know where you’re coming from on this. Right? And, like, I had goals and dreams and these outcomes that would feel like out of reach and scary and blah blah blah. Right? And, like, one thing I found to be surprisingly effective is, like, having elements of normal within them so they’re not so and only grandiose.

Right? So it’s like maybe wearing the same clothes I’m wearing right now, right, in that vision. So you’re kind of bridging familiar land with adventurous land. Right? So it’s like maybe in that, reality in Greece, right, your hair is still red?

Pink? Pinkish red? Right?

Red on the screen.

Right? Like, get yes. As weird as it sounds. Right? Like, if that pinkish red hair feels safe and you, right, like, bring that with you into that reality. Bring elements of your current reality that feel comfort giving, if that makes sense, so that it’s not an abandonment of all the things that feel safe and lovely, and trading that for crazy big adventures. Like, bring the moments with you.

That’s really helpful. Thank you so much.

Cool.

Awesome. Well, we are three minutes over.

So I think now’s a good time to wrap. Does anyone have anything like burning that they didn’t get to share or ask, or does everyone feel good and complete?

I have one quick question about the workbook.

Do we have a color PDF as well? I got only the black and white PDF, and then the Canva one is view only.

We can get you a downloaded version of the color one for sure. It’s just I’ve I didn’t want to print that off. And then my binder, I’m like, I don’t know.

So no. But we can absolutely get you that, Tina.

Cool. Thank you.

Cool. Happy just got two leads during this call. Look at that.

That’s like thought I’d be manifested it.

Like, what the hell? Girl. You did.

There’s so much talking about manifesting. I love it. Yeah.

And actually, you just checked my email, and I was like, what the hell?

This is a magical portal.

I’m telling y’all, if you sit on this call for another ten hours week.

Yeah. Time very well spent. It’s an ROI. That’s all. Yeah.

Beautiful. Cool. Thanks, Jeff. Go ahead.

Thank you for walking everyone through the first part of the workbook.

We have the second part coming up, this Thursday as well. It’s in the calendar the the days to have, like, like, the pages, to look in. That’s pages nine to nineteen.

That will require some reflection on how twenty twenty four went for you, what worked, what didn’t work, things like that. So I’d spend some time before that session just kind of reflecting on like, for example, Claire, you said you had goals that you made this year and you didn’t hit them, and that makes it difficult to set future goals because, like, I I I feel that, and I hope that that doesn’t continue to get in your way. I I get where you’re coming from, though. But, yeah, just reflect a little bit. So because there’s several pages there, nine to nineteen, it’s gonna be a big undertaking.

The more you arrive with some ideas already filled in, probably, the better. Okay?

Cool. Cool. Well, thank you everybody for sharing so openly, and I feel like I know everyone’s twenty twenty five, a lot better already. So excited to see unhinged goals come to reality and fill that win channel. Right? That win channel is gonna be so freaking cool this year.

Make Your Product a No-Brainer for Your ICP

Direct Comparisons: Make Your Product a No-Brainer for Your ICP

Transcript

Anyway, here we are with plan b. What’s going to happen here is I will be, sharing all the hows, the what’s, the whys, all the theories, some examples of how to leverage direct comparisons in your copy.

And if you have any questions on anything I share here today, if you want some help or a second set of eyes on how you’ve applied this to some copy you’re working on at the moment, or if you wanted to even talk about how we could take this practice from the world of copywriting and apply it to, for example, your sales calls, please just tag me in Slack and let me know. I would absolutely love to work through this kind of stuff with you. So don’t be shy in reaching out if you would like some help or some support. That’s exactly what I’m here for. Okay. On that note, let’s dive into the meat, of the workshop. Let me share my screen with you.

So as you know, today’s session is all about how to leverage direct comparisons to make your offer a really easy yes for your ideal prospect.

So very much building on this month’s theme of straight line copywriting.

Now the best place to start with this stuff is to really highlight the fact that when it comes to decision making, our brains absolutely love comparisons.

Why? Well, quite simply it’s because they allow us to assign value to the options that are in front of us and therefore make a really informed decision.

They help appease the rational part of our brain. If you’ve ever read Thinking Fast and Thinking Slow, you’ll know that, we typically make decisions, relating to all sorts of things, including what to purchase based on the rational part and the emotional part of our brain. So there are two different systems at play. Comparisons really appeal to that rational part of your prospect’s brain. Because what they allow us to do very easily is have a justification for why we’ve made the purchasing decision. And importantly, it’s one that your prospect can really easily share with others in their life.

So if the offer that you’re writing copy for is something where your prospect will need to justify their decision to perhaps their boss or their team, maybe their spouse, maybe their friends, maybe their peers, This tactic and this approach of leveraging direct comparisons is actually incredibly beneficial because it gives people the data which they can easily use for that purpose. Right? They feel really confident in sharing why they chose this offer above, other options on the market or why they think this will actually work when perhaps previous purchases in the same realm have not delivered the outcome that they were after. So keep that in mind, as we move forward from here.

Now, of course, we’ll be talking about how direct comparisons apply to the kind of offers that you’re writing copy for. But I think just to get you in the headspace of getting a feel for or realising how these things come into play in everyday life.

We want you here for a minute to think about the bread aisle at your local supermarket.

Now, depending on where you are in the world and how big your city or your town is, your supermarket bread section may not look like this.

The one up the road from me here in Sydney absolutely does. I would say it’s probably even larger than this. There must be close to a hundred different options at least, of bread. Now if you are to leave this recording and go and ask your housemate, your partner, your kid if they’re old enough, hey like what what kind of bread do you choose when you go to the supermarket and can you tell me why?

I guarantee you they are going to have a list of factors in there that are comparative. So that are comparing their bread of choice to other options that are there on the shelf. So for example, and it’s quite sad that I know this much detail about my husband, but I know that whenever he goes to the supermarket, the loaf that he chooses is always just the generic supermarket brand wholemeal bread. And I know that he chooses that because he likes it.

It has more fiber than white bread, right? He’s healthier moves things along, I guess.

And also he likes it because it has less, of those, like, seedy or grainy bits compared to, the whole grain bread. Also, I know that he likes it because of the size of the slices and the way that they fit into our oldest kids lunchbox.

So as I’m talking through this, I mean, yes, those are no pedantic things to be thinking about, but that’s how he justifies his decision. That’s how he has watched the place of knowing that that is his top choice of life. Now, of course, the reasons that you have or the reasons that the people in your life might have for their particular choice of bread are going to be different because different things matter to different people.

The point is that if you drill down enough into someone’s choice of bread, you will get to a point where they are able to articulate why they choose it in relation to other options. So how they think their choice of loaf is different and better than other things that they could have chosen instead.

So the point that I’m trying to make here is that value is relative, right? So it only exists in relation to other options and it’s also subjective. So what matters to me is going to be different to what matters to you in most cases.

So this means that we’re better able to illustrate the value of an offer when we actively compare it to options instead of talking about it in isolation, honing in on the aspects that actually matter to our ideal prospect, right, rather than trying to prove some sort of global superiority.

So two really important points here. Right? We need to compare options to other available alternatives, right, in order to help someone understand in a really concrete, aidable way why something is a different and better option for them given what they value in the thing that we’re talking about.

Now it’s really important that when you are leveraging direct comparisons in your copy, you are really focused on what actually matters for your ideal prospect. If you try and take this a step above and go sort of a step higher and you try to prove some sort of global superiority, like, well, this is simply just the best offer on the market for anyone, you’re going to get tripped up. Because of course, the thing that makes your offer the best fit for your ideal prospect is going to make it not the best fit for the people who aren’t your ideal prospect. Right?

And that’s good. That’s why niches exist. That’s why specificity sells. Right? I also think there is a mindset hurdle that you would also come up against if you were to try and prove that your offer is just absolutely the best flat out regardless of who it’s serving.

So really stick to what the data tells you about your ideal prospect, what they care about, and how your offer responds to that, or how your offer serves those things, those points of difference.

So on that note, if you are not already asking this question in your voice of customer research, start.

How does insert your offer compared to other insert the category of your offer things you’ve tried or thought about trying before? So for example, how does CopySchool Professional compare to other copywriting masterminds you’ve tried or thought about trying before?

How does ConvertKit or KIP I think they are now calling it compare to other email marketing platforms you’ve tried or thought about trying before?

Asking this question alone will get you such rich data and will get you all the information you need to actually go ahead and make really effective comparisons in your copy. It will unearth who your competitors are and also how your offer is different and better in the ways that matter who your ideal prospect. So this question unearth some absolute gold. So if you’re not already asking it, again, please start folding it into your research process.

If you’re looking at this and you’re thinking, oh, that doesn’t quite fit with the project I’m working on, because I know that my ideal prospect hasn’t actually invested in a solution, for this problem or this challenge or to work towards this outcome before, this question may serve you better. What stopped you from getting help with this kind of thing before? So what this will do is help you pinpoint and uncover objections or perceived faults or flaws with available offers that ideally your offer can speak to. Right? You can say, oh, well, actually, you know, you might be worried about x. Here’s what our offer does in that respect that is different and better. So what you’re doing here is making a really clear case for your offer in a great fit in all the ways that matter.

Now I wanna show you a real world example of what this looks like, so you can see how easy and how powerful it is in copy.

So what you’re looking at here, is a spreadsheet I’ve just exported from one of my type forms, a bunch of responses to this question, which is one that has existed historically in my feedback form for a copywriting course that I’ve recently retired.

So don’t worry. I’m not trying to sell you on this. It’s just, it’s just a really good example of direct comparisons. And I think because we are mostly copywriters in here, it might be helpful because you probably know some of these competitors. Right? And certainly you will know copy school.

So as you can see here, the question I ask in the survey is how did it compare to other copywriting courses you’ve taken. Right? So I’m asking about how this offer compared to other offers in the same category.

So you can probably already see that even where there are no competitors mentioned or where there are no direct comparisons drawn, There’s some really juicy, voice of customer here that I can obviously leverage to help someone offer through testimonials. So even the second response here, like brain camp is the only copywriting course you need. That’s a very powerful headline to be able to leverage somewhere. It’s a very powerful point of social proof. And often, you know, down here, you know, Braincamp is where I’m with the best copywriting course I’ve ever taken.

I did something strange there. There we go. Sorry.

So just also to highlight that as well as giving you all the data you need to make the comparisons really actively in your copy between your offer and other available alternatives, this question can also yield just some super powerful social proof that will really help position and sell your offer in a really effective way.

Now what I’ve done here, as you can probably see, every time someone has mentioned a competitor or a competing offer, I have put that in orange.

You know, you can see Sarah Turner’s Right Away to Freedom, copy school comes up a few times. Kate Toon, copy hackers.

I think there’s also some reference to the copywriter think sorry. The copywriter club think tank, yeah, Accelerator. I think Tarzan gets mentioned somewhere in here as well.

So, you know, a lot of big names, but also a lot of clarity for me on who or what else my ideal prospect is considering or has tried before when it comes to investing money towards this goal or towards solving the problem or not feeling like they are a really confident effective copywriter.

So that information is incredibly useful because it gives me those direct comparison points that I can leverage.

The pieces of, these feedback, snippets that are in green, the ways in which these prospects or these customers have identified Braincamp as being a better, more appealing option for them. Now again, I’m not focused here on trying to prove that Braincamp is the best copywriting course ever. I’m really using this question to understand what matters to my ideal prospect and how Braincamp is a best fit option for them. Because I know without a doubt that there are many, many, many people for whom Braincamp would not be the best fit.

And that’s great. I don’t want to attract them to the offer. I actually want to weed them out by highlighting these points so I can draw the right people in We’ll let the other people off the book. Right?

If it’s not the best fit for them, it doesn’t serve either of us for them to actually come in and join the program.

So as you can perhaps see, a lot of the pieces in green make the same points. So more holistic human centric understanding of copywriting, more focused on sales psychology, much more human centered.

There is also a lot of reference to the fact, that, for example, the Slack chat in workshops was so intimate and every question I had got answered.

The intimacy and attention afforded by the small group nature of this course blew away every other copywriting course I’ve taken. So a lot of the points are really similar, which is great, right? When you start seeing those patterns in your voice of customer data, you know you are hitting on something.

So I won’t spend much more time going through this raw data here. What I really want you to take away from having a quick squeeze at this spreadsheet, I mean, look at so many responses here, is that, this simple question gives you all the information you need. Right? It’s then so easy to take this and put it into copy and put it in a format that is incredibly easy for your prospects mind to grab a hold of and pull into their decision making process. So if you’re wondering, okay, what does that look like?

My favorite way to illustrate how an offer is different and better is by writing copy into a comparison table.

Very simple, very effective.

So I’ll have a I’ll do a quick, little scroll of this section of Brain Camp sales page.

I know there are a lot of other copywriting courses out there on the interwebs. Your time is precious and money doesn’t grow on trees. So chances are you’re wondering why you should invest in this one. This handy little table is here to help. Now as you can see, even with this headline, I’m being very direct and very upfront about the fact that, yeah, I’m sure you’re looking at other options or maybe you’ve bought other copywriting courses before and you’ve been underwhelmed by, you know, what’s been waiting for you inside or the kind of results they’ve helped you achieve. I’m addressing the elephant in the room head on, because if I don’t, I can’t effectively talk to or demonstrate how this offer is different and better for the ideal prospect. So don’t be afraid to be really direct.

It’s a much more powerful tactic if you are able to just be really matter of fact and straight to the point.

Now as you can see here, one column here is devoted to other courses, and these points are all pulled from that data in terms of what people found disappointing or lacking about some of the other courses they had tried before.

This column on the right here is all the ways in which Braincamp is different and better on those points. So I put in here all the bits that matter based on that voice of customer research, and they’re all here as direct points of comparison. So for example, you would have seen, in that spreadsheet that I showed you a minute ago that there was quite a bit of, feedback on the fact that the intimate nature of the course was really valuable. So of course, there’s a point in here about that. So other courses have ginormous cohorts, little opportunity for one to one attention.

Brain camp has just twenty five spots up for grabs. By the end of week, we’ll know each other’s names and niches. By the end of week twelve, we’ll probably have matching hats. If you want to need one to one attention, all you need to do is hit me up in Slack, send me a copy for critique, or ask me a question during one of our live workshops.

Of course, I could read all of these out to you. Let me just pick another one just for reference. So, I think one of the other points I called out when I was going through those responses, in the Google Sheet were that people liked the deeper psychological approach, the human centered approach. So other courses teach basic psychological concepts like loss aversion and anchoring.

These are great, by the way, but they can only get you so far. Braincamp takes a deeper applied approach to psychology to give you a genuine edge on your competition.

So this table is really just regurgitating all that voice of customer in a really organized way so that my prospect can read this and have a really direct component of comparison for each hesitation they may have based on their prior experience of this kind or this category of offer. So as you can see, it makes the mental processing incredibly easy, right? Everything is here for this person. This column on the right is basically the justification that they can pass on to anyone else in their lives who they feel needs to hear it.

It also, of course, as I mentioned, helps, really appease the rational part of their decision making process.

Now importantly, whenever you do make these comparisons in your copy, you need to prove them right away. If you don’t, you’re simply seeing your prospect to trust what you say. If you’re able to prove the points as you make them, you’re closing that tap. Right. There’s no question then in your prospect’s mind about whether this is actually a legitimate claim.

They can see that these claims are being backed up by real life human beings.

In this case, because I have all that beautiful data from asking that question in my feedback form after the course is complete.

I’ve gone with testimonials. Right? And the testimonials that I’ve chosen to feature here speak directly to the points that I’m making above, and speak directly to those comparisons. Right? So people can see that there are other people who’ve been through this course, who ideally they know. Right? I’m also strategic here about who I’m featuring.

You can also do that too. So, for Braincamp in particular, given the most, commonly referenced competitor was Coffee School, I have picked people here who are possibly well known in that Coffee School realm. So we’ve got Kenny Williamson, we’ve got Nick Moors, we’ve got Christine Noriano, and also Amisha. So, you can also be strategic with that. Right? Because with your social proof, if your ideal prospect knows off or already knows likes and trust to some extent or maybe looks up to the person whose proof you’re featuring, that helps that proof land even more powerfully.

Anyway, that’s a bit of a side note. I could talk about social proof all day long.

But just remember that whenever you’re making these claims about how your offer is different and better for your ideal prospect, you are able to back them up with some sort of proof.

Now, of course, all that delicious data about how Braincamp is different and better for the right prospect, deserved more airtime than simply being on one portion of the sales page. So I had an email. This is from my twenty twenty launch of the offer. If you’d like to see, the full email, just let me know. As you can see it, it lives in my Google Drive so I can very easily share the link with you.

Bold subject line, something I would never say about my own offer, but something that, the voice of customer data says for me. So from a mindset perspective, it makes it so much easier for me to lead with this information. And again, it’s not that I think Braincamp is or was, you know, the top tier copywriting course in the whole world. It’s just that for a certain type of prospect, it was the best fit offer.

So that is what this email is all about. I won’t read it all, but I’ll read the first little bit just so you get the gist. One of the questions I ask people when they finish Braincamp is how did it compare to other copywriting courses you’ve taken? Which is a great question to ask when your office is in a crowded market because competition breeds comparison and being able to address it directly frees people up to say, okay.

Yep. This is what I need or, ah, okay. This isn’t the right option.

So with that in mind, here are twelve different answers to that question quite literally copy pasted in all their unedited glory. I really wanted to screenshot them to make them even more legitimate, but the text got really teeny tiny so I’m rolling with plan b. This first one is from copywriter Amy Williamson.

So I know I’m like a total fan girl and all, but this is at the very least equal with copy school. Probably it’s better to be honest. Don’t tell Queen Weid. Kirsty, if you haven’t heard of copy school, don’t worry. I hadn’t either until a couple of years ago. It’s pretty much the gold standard of copywriting courses. Which means my imposter syndrome and I had a real fun time with that one.

Here’s another one from email copywriter Megan Baird. Well, the testimonial from the beta round of better than copy school was living over my head the whole time. Can’t say that she was wrong. It’s also completely different from any other copywriting course. I’ve taken a lot of them. I think the biggest difference was that it was neither skill only like copy school or biz only like accelerator. It was also like an added bonus that all of the site copywriting skill you taught could also be applied to my own business.

Brain camp was also a lot less copy paste in a good way. I admit that I’ve watched other courses at one point two five times speed and then relied on the templates or swipe.

That so did not work at Braincamp. I’ve already rewatched all the videos just to absorb more info. Probably because on the first round of watching, it just kept sparking ideas to my own business. So second watch was more how to apply this to my work.

Oh, and it felt more like a mastermind than a course. The size of the group plus the quality of the ladies. Well, that sounds bad. Plus how flexible you were with helping us out.

Never been in a course like that before. Just the fact that the same group of us kept showing up to every zone call that really says something.

Now I won’t keep reading, but as you can see, what I’ve done here is literally copy pasted people’s responses to that question, and I have highlighted, the competing offers so that if someone is in the position of deciding between copy school and Braincamp or between the copywriter club accelerator and Braincamp or between one of Tarzan’s courses and Braincamp, they can go to the piece that feels relevant and they can hear from someone just like them. Right? That is where your social proof is most powerful.

Now, I’ve also included lots of answers to this question, because, again, when it comes to social proof, the more you have, the more powerfully you can actually make the point. Right? There’s there just becomes such a small amount of room for any doubt that what you’re saying is true.

So a couple of side notes there on social proof. But again, the thing that I’m really doing here is really directly comparing the offer to other available options and highlighting all the ways it’s different and better for my ideal prospect. Right? I’m doing the hard work for them of having to think through and compare.

Oh, what about this option? What about that option? Would this actually be better for me? Here’s some hard data from people who’ve already done the course, who have maybe also done the other things that you’ve invested in or thought about investing in, and here’s what they have to say.

So just wanted to show you that as another way to illustrate how powerful this can be.

This email absolutely triggered a waterfall of sales, for Braincamp when I sent it. It was incredibly powerful stuff.

I wanted to also show you another example, of some copy I wrote for a client. It’d be good few years ago now.

But what you’re looking at here is, the client sales page. This was Amber McHugh, who if you work with coaches, you know, you’re familiar with.

This was for her mastermind, called Freshly Implemented.

This was what her sales page looked like before I worked with her.

Also a hot tip if you’re not already screenshotting or recording copy assets that you’re about to work on before you actually optimize them, start doing it. It’s so powerful to have the fors and afters. Quick side note. Over. Okay. So as you can see here, her previous copywriter had, realized that it was important to talk about how this offer is different and better than others that her ideal prospect might have tried before.

The way that they’ve done it isn’t as powerful as it could be. So this is why I wanna show you how you can optimize this information. Right? So this section here, what makes Freshly Implemented so different?

I know that you’ve done a lot of classes and courses in the past and you are dubious to add on another one. There is one thing you need to know. This isn’t a class. I’m not here to give you a bunch of advice you don’t need or add to your to do list.

You’ve been buying get it done mugs and filling up notebooks full of ideas and action steps for years. Now is the time to bring those business ideas and dreams to life. Let me show you how to get it done with these four areas of focus. Time plus strategy plus accountability plus implementation.

Now I won’t read the details, in here, but as you can see, there’s a little call out box for each one of those points of difference.

And for the record, like, these things, the time, the strategy, the accountability, and the implementation were definitely things that came through in the voice of customer data in terms of how freshly implemented was different and better, in terms of other courses or masterminds they tried for their businesses previously.

But as you can see, the the way that this these points are presented is it’s not actually done in direct comparison.

Right? They’re talking about features in a way that is not anchored against anything else. So what they’re really doing here is leaving a lot of space for the prospect to have to do their own mental arithmetic. Right? To join the dots between how this compares to other things they’ve tried or thought about trying before.

Even the formatting of this copy is not optimized. Right? We think about the comparison table I showed you for the Braincamp sales page, that really just takes a mental load off your prospect. Right? You present present it to them in a really easily digestible format.

All they need to do is repeat across the bullet points. This does not do that. Right? So the comparison here is weaker even though copywriter here has actually been able to really identify the pieces of the puzzle that matter. The way they’re talking about them and communicating them isn’t as effective as it could be.

For comparison, here is the point of the bit of the sales page, after I rewrote it that tackles that same piece of the puzzle.

What makes Freshly Implemented different and better than all the other masterminds out there? Girl, I’m so glad you asked. Other online programs, the alternative.

Give you a bunch of ideas and frameworks focusing on the what rather than the how. Freshly implemented for smart CEOs like you focuses strongly on implementation, helping you find the best approach for your current challenge and supporting you as you put it into action, sticking firmly by your side until you get it right.

Other online programs keep the face of the program locked up behind closed doors, only granting you access through pre recorded trainings and the occasional Facebook live.

Freshly Implemented offers one to one on the fly access to me and my amazing fresh mentors So you get true coaching and consulting. This comes to you through back pocket TLCs, open studio hours, speed masterminding and a text me when you need me policy.

Seriously, I give you my phone number right from the get go. Now I won’t keep reading, but hopefully, you can already see how much more powerful this information is when the comparisons are made directly. Right? When they’re called out as they are, honing in on still the same things that matter. Right? But just making the information, a lot more easily digestible for the prospect reading through this page.

Again, scrolling all the way down. I mean, there’s lots of points here. And, again, these were all, given to me through asking that same simple question, in, the voice of customer surveys. And also I got some other richer data through doing, the voice of customer interviews.

But it’s so easy to get a handle on this stuff. The copy pretty much writes itself.

It’s just knowing what to do with it and not being shy about getting quite bold with it. Right? Really spelling out how your offer is different and better for the right person.

Again, there’s proof, to back these points up right underneath the comparison table so that all great information above is not there on a trust basis. Like trust these claims because I’m making them, these claims are then immediately after being proven through testimonials.

So, for example, this first one here before Fresh, I just invested twenty thousand in a membership in a mentorship program that completely disappointed me.

This then goes on to talk about, the results she got out of being inside of freshly implemented.

So that you can see, you know, this person has actually invested in some of these other options before and not got results, but with Fresh that that story was different.

There are a few more testimonials there that I won’t go into, but just want you to see that I’m improving these points as I’m making them so that those comparisons aren’t just hearsay for your prospect. They’re real. Right? They’re being proven.

That tab is being closed. There’s no room for doubts and hesitations. And again, you’re moving closely in that straight line towards your prospect saying yes to your offer.

Okay.

The final little side note that I wanted to leave you with was that comparisons also help us make sense of the world, which is a handy fact to keep in mind if your prospect is new to your kind or category of offer or if your offer is a brand new concept.

So again, as a really everyday example, I won’t talk about, the bread aisle again, but, a few weeks ago, I think it was now my oldest who’s three, he asked me what a donkey was. What’s a donkey?

He’s never seen a donkey before. I think maybe it was in a book that we were reading or a puzzle we were doing. I can’t remember. Anyway, the way I answered his question was taking something he already knew and talking about comparison points.

So he knows what a horse is. He’s seen a horse before. He’s been reading about horses in all sorts of books for many years. So I said, oh, donkeys are a bit like a horse, but they’re smaller, and they’ve got much bigger ears.

Now I’m sure there’s probably a better explanation out there about what a donkey is, but that was good enough for him. And it allowed him to really understand what a donkey was in some concrete terms because it took what he already knew and built on that knowledge using really simple comparisons.

So I mean, you’re probably not going to be using comparisons to explain what a donkey is in your copy. But of course, there may be a case where you are selling a mastermind to an audience of people who, for whatever reason, have never come across the term mastermind before. They don’t know what it is, but maybe they know what an online course is. If that’s the case, you can use comparisons to help build out their understanding to the point where they feel confident about the shape and the value of the offer they’re opting into.

It may also be for example that you’re dealing with an audience who doesn’t know what a custom GPT is, right? I’m sure that’s probably a much more probable scenario than someone who doesn’t know what a mastermind is. So again, taking what someone already knows and expanding that knowledge with the magic of comparisons.

So to put it another way, probably more succinctly because I wrote this rather than said it, the best approach here is to scaffold between what your prospect already understands and what they need to know to understand the value of the offer. So it’s just a really effective way to give someone a concrete understanding that again, they can share with other people if they need to. If they feel the need to justify their purchasing decision. If they want someone else to buy into the fact that they’re excited about buying this offer from you or from your client.

So just a really good thing to keep in mind.

Okay. The last thing that I want to just quickly touch on, before I end this workshop is the worksheet.

So you should already have access to this. If you don’t, I guess, let me know.

But what I have here are just some prompts for you. You may not need these, but just in case this helps you organize your data and organize your thoughts, lean into this. So four questions here for you. What other relevant or related offers has your ideal prospect tried or thought about trying before? Again, you can get this information from asking that one simple question in your voice of customer research.

If that for whatever reason is not available to you, some internet sleuthing would also allow you to do the same job.

Reddit is a great place where you might find, depending on what your offer is, some threads about it or its category of offer. So you can see what people are talking about and what things they have considered or tried before and how those stack up.

How did they miss the mark either in practice or in how they were perceived by your prospect? Again, that magic question in your voice of customer research will give you this data. This is just being able to organize it right into something that you can then very easily turn into copy.

How is your or your clients offer different and ideally better in relation to those points? Make each comparison as direct and specific as you can. So again, don’t be afraid to be really ballsy with this and lean on that voice of customer data, right? It is so much easier, to be able to share something someone else has said then and also also, we see more effective, than just to try and sift through your own brain and come up with the justifications and reasons and answers to this question here.

Finally, how can you prove some or all of those points of wealth? In the examples I’ve shared with you today, in both cases, that was via testimonials.

But, of course, there are other ways. So for example, let’s say you are selling a client’s online course and they have some sort of platform where, you can, you know, post questions and get support. And something that comes through in your research or in your feedback about that program is that that space is far more engaged and supportive, than other similar spaces they’ve been in before. So a way to prove that, in lieu of or in addition to testimonials would be, if you have permission from the people in the screenshot to take a screenshot of people asking for questions or asking for support within that space and getting really good, really quick, really valuable responses, right, from either other people in that space or from the person who actually heads up the program. That’s a really good way to prove that point.

If you are trying to prove how much the UX of your app, for example, or your client’s app, is better than the other available apps that do a similar thing, it might be that, you have a demo or a video that walks someone through all those different things so they can see exactly how easy it is, to click through and, you know, achieve a certain thing, create a task, whatever that might look like. So there are different ways that you can prove points. The important thing is that you do it so that you are not asking your prospect to trust you as you say all the ways your offer is different and better for them. But you are demonstrating that the points that you are making are true and that they’ve come from the people who are in the know.

Okay.

That is it. Like I mentioned at the start, if you have any questions or if you want a second set of eyes on maybe a comparison table that you’re going to now go and write into your sales pages or an email that you’re going to send, whatever that might look like, please just reach out, tag me in Slack, and I would absolutely love to help you.

It’s such an easy and effective technique to leverage in your copy.

So yeah, I just hope you go forth and start using it ASAP. I would love to hear how it goes. I would love to hear about the results you get. Okay.

That’s it for me.

I will see you in Slack. Bye.

Worksheet

Leveraging Direct Comparisons

Worksheet

Leveraging direct comparisons

Transcript

Hey, everyone. Very quickly before I dive into the content of the workshop, I just wanted to apologize for having to cancel last week’s workshop at such short notice.
Unfortunately, we had a very poorly timed stomach bug come through our families. So it was just, not a situation in which I could have fronted up for an hour on Zoom. Anyway, here we are with plan b. What’s going to happen here is I will be, sharing all the hows, the what’s, the whys, all the theories, some examples of how to leverage direct comparisons in your copy.
And if you have any questions on anything I share here today, if you want some help or a second set of eyes on how you’ve applied this to some copy you’re working on at the moment, or if you wanted to even talk about how we could take this practice from the world of copywriting and apply it to, for example, your sales calls, please just tag me in Slack and let me know. I would absolutely love to work through this kind of stuff with you. So don’t be shy in reaching out if you would like some help or some support. That’s exactly what I’m here for. Okay. On that note, let’s dive into the meat, of the workshop. Let me share my screen with you.
So as you know, today’s session is all about how to leverage direct comparisons to make your offer a really easy yes for your ideal prospect.
So very much building on this month’s theme of straight line copywriting.
Now the best place to start with this stuff is to really highlight the fact that when it comes to decision making, our brains absolutely love comparisons.
Why? Well, quite simply it’s because they allow us to assign value to the options that are in front of us and therefore make a really informed decision.
They help appease the rational part of our brain. If you’ve ever read Thinking Fast and Thinking Slow, you’ll know that, we typically make decisions, relating to all sorts of things, including what to purchase based on the rational part and the emotional part of our brain. So there are two different systems at play. Comparisons really appeal to that rational part of your prospect’s brain. Because what they allow us to do very easily is have a justification for why we’ve made the purchasing decision. And importantly, it’s one that your prospect can really easily share with others in their life.
So if the offer that you’re writing copy for is something where your prospect will need to justify their decision to perhaps their boss or their team, maybe their spouse, maybe their friends, maybe their peers, This tactic and this approach of leveraging direct comparisons is actually incredibly beneficial because it gives people the data which they can easily use for that purpose. Right? They feel really confident in sharing why they chose this offer above, other options on the market or why they think this will actually work when perhaps previous purchases in the same realm have not delivered the outcome that they were after. So keep that in mind, as we move forward from here.
Now, of course, we’ll be talking about how direct comparisons apply to the kind of offers that you’re writing copy for. But I think just to get you in the headspace of getting a feel for or realising how these things come into play in everyday life.
We want you here for a minute to think about the bread aisle at your local supermarket.
Now, depending on where you are in the world and how big your city or your town is, your supermarket bread section may not look like this.
The one up the road from me here in Sydney absolutely does. I would say it’s probably even larger than this. There must be close to a hundred different options at least, of bread. Now if you are to leave this recording and go and ask your housemate, your partner, your kid if they’re old enough, hey like what what kind of bread do you choose when you go to the supermarket and can you tell me why?
I guarantee you they are going to have a list of factors in there that are comparative. So that are comparing their bread of choice to other options that are there on the shelf. So for example, and it’s quite sad that I know this much detail about my husband, but I know that whenever he goes to the supermarket, the loaf that he chooses is always just the generic supermarket brand wholemeal bread. And I know that he chooses that because he likes it.
It has more fiber than white bread, right? He’s healthier moves things along, I guess.
And also he likes it because it has less, of those, like, seedy or grainy bits compared to, the whole grain bread. Also, I know that he likes it because of the size of the slices and the way that they fit into our oldest kids lunchbox.
So as I’m talking through this, I mean, yes, those are no pedantic things to be thinking about, but that’s how he justifies his decision. That’s how he has watched the place of knowing that that is his top choice of life. Now, of course, the reasons that you have or the reasons that the people in your life might have for their particular choice of bread are going to be different because different things matter to different people.
The point is that if you drill down enough into someone’s choice of bread, you will get to a point where they are able to articulate why they choose it in relation to other options. So how they think their choice of loaf is different and better than other things that they could have chosen instead.
So the point that I’m trying to make here is that value is relative, right? So it only exists in relation to other options and it’s also subjective. So what matters to me is going to be different to what matters to you in most cases.
So this means that we’re better able to illustrate the value of an offer when we actively compare it to options instead of talking about it in isolation, honing in on the aspects that actually matter to our ideal prospect, right, rather than trying to prove some sort of global superiority.
So two really important points here. Right? We need to compare options to other available alternatives, right, in order to help someone understand in a really concrete, aidable way why something is a different and better option for them given what they value in the thing that we’re talking about.
Now it’s really important that when you are leveraging direct comparisons in your copy, you are really focused on what actually matters for your ideal prospect. If you try and take this a step above and go sort of a step higher and you try to prove some sort of global superiority, like, well, this is simply just the best offer on the market for anyone, you’re going to get tripped up. Because of course, the thing that makes your offer the best fit for your ideal prospect is going to make it not the best fit for the people who aren’t your ideal prospect. Right?
And that’s good. That’s why niches exist. That’s why specificity sells. Right? I also think there is a mindset hurdle that you would also come up against if you were to try and prove that your offer is just absolutely the best flat out regardless of who it’s serving.
So really stick to what the data tells you about your ideal prospect, what they care about, and how your offer responds to that, or how your offer serves those things, those points of difference.
So on that note, if you are not already asking this question in your voice of customer research, start.
How does insert your offer compared to other insert the category of your offer things you’ve tried or thought about trying before? So for example, how does CopySchool Professional compare to other copywriting masterminds you’ve tried or thought about trying before?
How does ConvertKit or KIP I think they are now calling it compare to other email marketing platforms you’ve tried or thought about trying before?
Asking this question alone will get you such rich data and will get you all the information you need to actually go ahead and make really effective comparisons in your copy. It will unearth who your competitors are and also how your offer is different and better in the ways that matter who your ideal prospect. So this question unearth some absolute gold. So if you’re not already asking it, again, please start folding it into your research process.
If you’re looking at this and you’re thinking, oh, that doesn’t quite fit with the project I’m working on, because I know that my ideal prospect hasn’t actually invested in a solution, for this problem or this challenge or to work towards this outcome before, this question may serve you better. What stopped you from getting help with this kind of thing before? So what this will do is help you pinpoint and uncover objections or perceived faults or flaws with available offers that ideally your offer can speak to. Right? You can say, oh, well, actually, you know, you might be worried about x. Here’s what our offer does in that respect that is different and better. So what you’re doing here is making a really clear case for your offer in a great fit in all the ways that matter.
Now I wanna show you a real world example of what this looks like, so you can see how easy and how powerful it is in copy.
So what you’re looking at here, is a spreadsheet I’ve just exported from one of my type forms, a bunch of responses to this question, which is one that has existed historically in my feedback form for a copywriting course that I’ve recently retired.
So don’t worry. I’m not trying to sell you on this. It’s just, it’s just a really good example of direct comparisons. And I think because we are mostly copywriters in here, it might be helpful because you probably know some of these competitors. Right? And certainly you will know copy school.
So as you can see here, the question I ask in the survey is how did it compare to other copywriting courses you’ve taken. Right? So I’m asking about how this offer compared to other offers in the same category.
So you can probably already see that even where there are no competitors mentioned or where there are no direct comparisons drawn, There’s some really juicy, voice of customer here that I can obviously leverage to help someone offer through testimonials. So even the second response here, like brain camp is the only copywriting course you need. That’s a very powerful headline to be able to leverage somewhere. It’s a very powerful point of social proof. And often, you know, down here, you know, Braincamp is where I’m with the best copywriting course I’ve ever taken.
I did something strange there. There we go. Sorry.
So just also to highlight that as well as giving you all the data you need to make the comparisons really actively in your copy between your offer and other available alternatives, this question can also yield just some super powerful social proof that will really help position and sell your offer in a really effective way.
Now what I’ve done here, as you can probably see, every time someone has mentioned a competitor or a competing offer, I have put that in orange.
You know, you can see Sarah Turner’s Right Away to Freedom, copy school comes up a few times. Kate Toon, copy hackers.
I think there’s also some reference to the copywriter think sorry. The copywriter club think tank, yeah, Accelerator. I think Tarzan gets mentioned somewhere in here as well.
So, you know, a lot of big names, but also a lot of clarity for me on who or what else my ideal prospect is considering or has tried before when it comes to investing money towards this goal or towards solving the problem or not feeling like they are a really confident effective copywriter.
So that information is incredibly useful because it gives me those direct comparison points that I can leverage.
The pieces of, these feedback, snippets that are in green, the ways in which these prospects or these customers have identified Braincamp as being a better, more appealing option for them. Now again, I’m not focused here on trying to prove that Braincamp is the best copywriting course ever. I’m really using this question to understand what matters to my ideal prospect and how Braincamp is a best fit option for them. Because I know without a doubt that there are many, many, many people for whom Braincamp would not be the best fit.
And that’s great. I don’t want to attract them to the offer. I actually want to weed them out by highlighting these points so I can draw the right people in We’ll let the other people off the book. Right?
If it’s not the best fit for them, it doesn’t serve either of us for them to actually come in and join the program.
So as you can perhaps see, a lot of the pieces in green make the same points. So more holistic human centric understanding of copywriting, more focused on sales psychology, much more human centered.
There is also a lot of reference to the fact, that, for example, the Slack chat in workshops was so intimate and every question I had got answered.
The intimacy and attention afforded by the small group nature of this course blew away every other copywriting course I’ve taken. So a lot of the points are really similar, which is great, right? When you start seeing those patterns in your voice of customer data, you know you are hitting on something.
So I won’t spend much more time going through this raw data here. What I really want you to take away from having a quick squeeze at this spreadsheet, I mean, look at so many responses here, is that, this simple question gives you all the information you need. Right? It’s then so easy to take this and put it into copy and put it in a format that is incredibly easy for your prospects mind to grab a hold of and pull into their decision making process. So if you’re wondering, okay, what does that look like?
My favorite way to illustrate how an offer is different and better is by writing copy into a comparison table.
Very simple, very effective.
So I’ll have a I’ll do a quick, little scroll of this section of Brain Camp sales page.
I know there are a lot of other copywriting courses out there on the interwebs. Your time is precious and money doesn’t grow on trees. So chances are you’re wondering why you should invest in this one. This handy little table is here to help. Now as you can see, even with this headline, I’m being very direct and very upfront about the fact that, yeah, I’m sure you’re looking at other options or maybe you’ve bought other copywriting courses before and you’ve been underwhelmed by, you know, what’s been waiting for you inside or the kind of results they’ve helped you achieve. I’m addressing the elephant in the room head on, because if I don’t, I can’t effectively talk to or demonstrate how this offer is different and better for the ideal prospect. So don’t be afraid to be really direct.
It’s a much more powerful tactic if you are able to just be really matter of fact and straight to the point.
Now as you can see here, one column here is devoted to other courses, and these points are all pulled from that data in terms of what people found disappointing or lacking about some of the other courses they had tried before.
This column on the right here is all the ways in which Braincamp is different and better on those points. So I put in here all the bits that matter based on that voice of customer research, and they’re all here as direct points of comparison. So for example, you would have seen, in that spreadsheet that I showed you a minute ago that there was quite a bit of, feedback on the fact that the intimate nature of the course was really valuable. So of course, there’s a point in here about that. So other courses have ginormous cohorts, little opportunity for one to one attention.
Brain camp has just twenty five spots up for grabs. By the end of week, we’ll know each other’s names and niches. By the end of week twelve, we’ll probably have matching hats. If you want to need one to one attention, all you need to do is hit me up in Slack, send me a copy for critique, or ask me a question during one of our live workshops.
Of course, I could read all of these out to you. Let me just pick another one just for reference. So, I think one of the other points I called out when I was going through those responses, in the Google Sheet were that people liked the deeper psychological approach, the human centered approach. So other courses teach basic psychological concepts like loss aversion and anchoring.
These are great, by the way, but they can only get you so far. Braincamp takes a deeper applied approach to psychology to give you a genuine edge on your competition.
So this table is really just regurgitating all that voice of customer in a really organized way so that my prospect can read this and have a really direct component of comparison for each hesitation they may have based on their prior experience of this kind or this category of offer. So as you can see, it makes the mental processing incredibly easy, right? Everything is here for this person. This column on the right is basically the justification that they can pass on to anyone else in their lives who they feel needs to hear it.
It also, of course, as I mentioned, helps, really appease the rational part of their decision making process.
Now importantly, whenever you do make these comparisons in your copy, you need to prove them right away. If you don’t, you’re simply seeing your prospect to trust what you say. If you’re able to prove the points as you make them, you’re closing that tap. Right. There’s no question then in your prospect’s mind about whether this is actually a legitimate claim.
They can see that these claims are being backed up by real life human beings.
In this case, because I have all that beautiful data from asking that question in my feedback form after the course is complete.
I’ve gone with testimonials. Right? And the testimonials that I’ve chosen to feature here speak directly to the points that I’m making above, and speak directly to those comparisons. Right? So people can see that there are other people who’ve been through this course, who ideally they know. Right? I’m also strategic here about who I’m featuring.
You can also do that too. So, for Braincamp in particular, given the most, commonly referenced competitor was Coffee School, I have picked people here who are possibly well known in that Coffee School realm. So we’ve got Kenny Williamson, we’ve got Nick Moors, we’ve got Christine Noriano, and also Amisha. So, you can also be strategic with that. Right? Because with your social proof, if your ideal prospect knows off or already knows likes and trust to some extent or maybe looks up to the person whose proof you’re featuring, that helps that proof land even more powerfully.
Anyway, that’s a bit of a side note. I could talk about social proof all day long.
But just remember that whenever you’re making these claims about how your offer is different and better for your ideal prospect, you are able to back them up with some sort of proof.
Now, of course, all that delicious data about how Braincamp is different and better for the right prospect, deserved more airtime than simply being on one portion of the sales page. So I had an email. This is from my twenty twenty launch of the offer. If you’d like to see, the full email, just let me know. As you can see it, it lives in my Google Drive so I can very easily share the link with you.
Bold subject line, something I would never say about my own offer, but something that, the voice of customer data says for me. So from a mindset perspective, it makes it so much easier for me to lead with this information. And again, it’s not that I think Braincamp is or was, you know, the top tier copywriting course in the whole world. It’s just that for a certain type of prospect, it was the best fit offer.
So that is what this email is all about. I won’t read it all, but I’ll read the first little bit just so you get the gist. One of the questions I ask people when they finish Braincamp is how did it compare to other copywriting courses you’ve taken? Which is a great question to ask when your office is in a crowded market because competition breeds comparison and being able to address it directly frees people up to say, okay.
Yep. This is what I need or, ah, okay. This isn’t the right option.
So with that in mind, here are twelve different answers to that question quite literally copy pasted in all their unedited glory. I really wanted to screenshot them to make them even more legitimate, but the text got really teeny tiny so I’m rolling with plan b. This first one is from copywriter Amy Williamson.
So I know I’m like a total fan girl and all, but this is at the very least equal with copy school. Probably it’s better to be honest. Don’t tell Queen Weid. Kirsty, if you haven’t heard of copy school, don’t worry. I hadn’t either until a couple of years ago. It’s pretty much the gold standard of copywriting courses. Which means my imposter syndrome and I had a real fun time with that one.
Here’s another one from email copywriter Megan Baird. Well, the testimonial from the beta round of better than copy school was living over my head the whole time. Can’t say that she was wrong. It’s also completely different from any other copywriting course. I’ve taken a lot of them. I think the biggest difference was that it was neither skill only like copy school or biz only like accelerator. It was also like an added bonus that all of the site copywriting skill you taught could also be applied to my own business.
Brain camp was also a lot less copy paste in a good way. I admit that I’ve watched other courses at one point two five times speed and then relied on the templates or swipe.
That so did not work at Braincamp. I’ve already rewatched all the videos just to absorb more info. Probably because on the first round of watching, it just kept sparking ideas to my own business. So second watch was more how to apply this to my work.
Oh, and it felt more like a mastermind than a course. The size of the group plus the quality of the ladies. Well, that sounds bad. Plus how flexible you were with helping us out.
Never been in a course like that before. Just the fact that the same group of us kept showing up to every zone call that really says something.
Now I won’t keep reading, but as you can see, what I’ve done here is literally copy pasted people’s responses to that question, and I have highlighted, the competing offers so that if someone is in the position of deciding between copy school and Braincamp or between the copywriter club accelerator and Braincamp or between one of Tarzan’s courses and Braincamp, they can go to the piece that feels relevant and they can hear from someone just like them. Right? That is where your social proof is most powerful.
Now, I’ve also included lots of answers to this question, because, again, when it comes to social proof, the more you have, the more powerfully you can actually make the point. Right? There’s there just becomes such a small amount of room for any doubt that what you’re saying is true.
So a couple of side notes there on social proof. But again, the thing that I’m really doing here is really directly comparing the offer to other available options and highlighting all the ways it’s different and better for my ideal prospect. Right? I’m doing the hard work for them of having to think through and compare.
Oh, what about this option? What about that option? Would this actually be better for me? Here’s some hard data from people who’ve already done the course, who have maybe also done the other things that you’ve invested in or thought about investing in, and here’s what they have to say.
So just wanted to show you that as another way to illustrate how powerful this can be.
This email absolutely triggered a waterfall of sales, for Braincamp when I sent it. It was incredibly powerful stuff.
I wanted to also show you another example, of some copy I wrote for a client. It’d be good few years ago now.
But what you’re looking at here is, the client sales page. This was Amber McHugh, who if you work with coaches, you know, you’re familiar with.
This was for her mastermind, called Freshly Implemented.
This was what her sales page looked like before I worked with her.
Also a hot tip if you’re not already screenshotting or recording copy assets that you’re about to work on before you actually optimize them, start doing it. It’s so powerful to have the fors and afters. Quick side note. Over. Okay. So as you can see here, her previous copywriter had, realized that it was important to talk about how this offer is different and better than others that her ideal prospect might have tried before.
The way that they’ve done it isn’t as powerful as it could be. So this is why I wanna show you how you can optimize this information. Right? So this section here, what makes Freshly Implemented so different?
I know that you’ve done a lot of classes and courses in the past and you are dubious to add on another one. There is one thing you need to know. This isn’t a class. I’m not here to give you a bunch of advice you don’t need or add to your to do list.
You’ve been buying get it done mugs and filling up notebooks full of ideas and action steps for years. Now is the time to bring those business ideas and dreams to life. Let me show you how to get it done with these four areas of focus. Time plus strategy plus accountability plus implementation.
Now I won’t read the details, in here, but as you can see, there’s a little call out box for each one of those points of difference.
And for the record, like, these things, the time, the strategy, the accountability, and the implementation were definitely things that came through in the voice of customer data in terms of how freshly implemented was different and better, in terms of other courses or masterminds they tried for their businesses previously.
But as you can see, the the way that this these points are presented is it’s not actually done in direct comparison.
Right? They’re talking about features in a way that is not anchored against anything else. So what they’re really doing here is leaving a lot of space for the prospect to have to do their own mental arithmetic. Right? To join the dots between how this compares to other things they’ve tried or thought about trying before.
Even the formatting of this copy is not optimized. Right? We think about the comparison table I showed you for the Braincamp sales page, that really just takes a mental load off your prospect. Right? You present present it to them in a really easily digestible format.
All they need to do is repeat across the bullet points. This does not do that. Right? So the comparison here is weaker even though copywriter here has actually been able to really identify the pieces of the puzzle that matter. The way they’re talking about them and communicating them isn’t as effective as it could be.
For comparison, here is the point of the bit of the sales page, after I rewrote it that tackles that same piece of the puzzle.
What makes Freshly Implemented different and better than all the other masterminds out there? Girl, I’m so glad you asked. Other online programs, the alternative.
Give you a bunch of ideas and frameworks focusing on the what rather than the how. Freshly implemented for smart CEOs like you focuses strongly on implementation, helping you find the best approach for your current challenge and supporting you as you put it into action, sticking firmly by your side until you get it right.
Other online programs keep the face of the program locked up behind closed doors, only granting you access through pre recorded trainings and the occasional Facebook live.
Freshly Implemented offers one to one on the fly access to me and my amazing fresh mentors So you get true coaching and consulting. This comes to you through back pocket TLCs, open studio hours, speed masterminding and a text me when you need me policy.
Seriously, I give you my phone number right from the get go. Now I won’t keep reading, but hopefully, you can already see how much more powerful this information is when the comparisons are made directly. Right? When they’re called out as they are, honing in on still the same things that matter. Right? But just making the information, a lot more easily digestible for the prospect reading through this page.
Again, scrolling all the way down. I mean, there’s lots of points here. And, again, these were all, given to me through asking that same simple question, in, the voice of customer surveys. And also I got some other richer data through doing, the voice of customer interviews.
But it’s so easy to get a handle on this stuff. The copy pretty much writes itself.
It’s just knowing what to do with it and not being shy about getting quite bold with it. Right? Really spelling out how your offer is different and better for the right person.
Again, there’s proof, to back these points up right underneath the comparison table so that all great information above is not there on a trust basis. Like trust these claims because I’m making them, these claims are then immediately after being proven through testimonials.
So, for example, this first one here before Fresh, I just invested twenty thousand in a membership in a mentorship program that completely disappointed me.
This then goes on to talk about, the results she got out of being inside of freshly implemented.
So that you can see, you know, this person has actually invested in some of these other options before and not got results, but with Fresh that that story was different.
There are a few more testimonials there that I won’t go into, but just want you to see that I’m improving these points as I’m making them so that those comparisons aren’t just hearsay for your prospect. They’re real. Right? They’re being proven.
That tab is being closed. There’s no room for doubts and hesitations. And again, you’re moving closely in that straight line towards your prospect saying yes to your offer.
Okay.
The final little side note that I wanted to leave you with was that comparisons also help us make sense of the world, which is a handy fact to keep in mind if your prospect is new to your kind or category of offer or if your offer is a brand new concept.
So again, as a really everyday example, I won’t talk about, the bread aisle again, but, a few weeks ago, I think it was now my oldest who’s three, he asked me what a donkey was. What’s a donkey?
He’s never seen a donkey before. I think maybe it was in a book that we were reading or a puzzle we were doing. I can’t remember. Anyway, the way I answered his question was taking something he already knew and talking about comparison points.
So he knows what a horse is. He’s seen a horse before. He’s been reading about horses in all sorts of books for many years. So I said, oh, donkeys are a bit like a horse, but they’re smaller, and they’ve got much bigger ears.
Now I’m sure there’s probably a better explanation out there about what a donkey is, but that was good enough for him. And it allowed him to really understand what a donkey was in some concrete terms because it took what he already knew and built on that knowledge using really simple comparisons.
So I mean, you’re probably not going to be using comparisons to explain what a donkey is in your copy. But of course, there may be a case where you are selling a mastermind to an audience of people who, for whatever reason, have never come across the term mastermind before. They don’t know what it is, but maybe they know what an online course is. If that’s the case, you can use comparisons to help build out their understanding to the point where they feel confident about the shape and the value of the offer they’re opting into.
It may also be for example that you’re dealing with an audience who doesn’t know what a custom GPT is, right? I’m sure that’s probably a much more probable scenario than someone who doesn’t know what a mastermind is. So again, taking what someone already knows and expanding that knowledge with the magic of comparisons.
So to put it another way, probably more succinctly because I wrote this rather than said it, the best approach here is to scaffold between what your prospect already understands and what they need to know to understand the value of the offer. So it’s just a really effective way to give someone a concrete understanding that again, they can share with other people if they need to. If they feel the need to justify their purchasing decision. If they want someone else to buy into the fact that they’re excited about buying this offer from you or from your client.
So just a really good thing to keep in mind.
Okay. The last thing that I want to just quickly touch on, before I end this workshop is the worksheet.
So you should already have access to this. If you don’t, I guess, let me know.
But what I have here are just some prompts for you. You may not need these, but just in case this helps you organize your data and organize your thoughts, lean into this. So four questions here for you. What other relevant or related offers has your ideal prospect tried or thought about trying before? Again, you can get this information from asking that one simple question in your voice of customer research.
If that for whatever reason is not available to you, some internet sleuthing would also allow you to do the same job.
Reddit is a great place where you might find, depending on what your offer is, some threads about it or its category of offer. So you can see what people are talking about and what things they have considered or tried before and how those stack up.
How did they miss the mark either in practice or in how they were perceived by your prospect? Again, that magic question in your voice of customer research will give you this data. This is just being able to organize it right into something that you can then very easily turn into copy.
How is your or your clients offer different and ideally better in relation to those points? Make each comparison as direct and specific as you can. So again, don’t be afraid to be really ballsy with this and lean on that voice of customer data, right? It is so much easier, to be able to share something someone else has said then and also also, we see more effective, than just to try and sift through your own brain and come up with the justifications and reasons and answers to this question here.
Finally, how can you prove some or all of those points of wealth? In the examples I’ve shared with you today, in both cases, that was via testimonials.
But, of course, there are other ways. So for example, let’s say you are selling a client’s online course and they have some sort of platform where, you can, you know, post questions and get support. And something that comes through in your research or in your feedback about that program is that that space is far more engaged and supportive, than other similar spaces they’ve been in before. So a way to prove that, in lieu of or in addition to testimonials would be, if you have permission from the people in the screenshot to take a screenshot of people asking for questions or asking for support within that space and getting really good, really quick, really valuable responses, right, from either other people in that space or from the person who actually heads up the program. That’s a really good way to prove that point.
If you are trying to prove how much the UX of your app, for example, or your client’s app, is better than the other available apps that do a similar thing, it might be that, you have a demo or a video that walks someone through all those different things so they can see exactly how easy it is, to click through and, you know, achieve a certain thing, create a task, whatever that might look like. So there are different ways that you can prove points. The important thing is that you do it so that you are not asking your prospect to trust you as you say all the ways your offer is different and better for them. But you are demonstrating that the points that you are making are true and that they’ve come from the people who are in the know.
Okay.
That is it. Like I mentioned at the start, if you have any questions or if you want a second set of eyes on maybe a comparison table that you’re going to now go and write into your sales pages or an email that you’re going to send, whatever that might look like, please just reach out, tag me in Slack, and I would absolutely love to help you.
It’s such an easy and effective technique to leverage in your copy.
So yeah, I just hope you go forth and start using it ASAP. I would love to hear how it goes. I would love to hear about the results you get. Okay.
That’s it for me.
I will see you in Slack. Bye.

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