Category: Core Training

Authority Building

Authority Building

Transcript

So we’re working through the final parts of, like, what are you gonna own? And then how are you going to do that? So almost everybody has identified what they’re going to bone.

Those are they range from, there. I think I said it right.

Conversion comedy, which sounds like it’s still kind of up in the air. Esther Grace is sort of all in on sort of all in on GTM, go to market messaging for tech startups. Laura, you’ve got email marketing for social impact.

Jessica, you’ve got e commerce sales strategist and copywriter, Adnan. I know you’re here. We have you with, trial to paid conversion for SaaS. Is that accurate?

Yeah.

I was gonna ask you if if that’s still too broad or if I should really drill down on the pricing page element Yeah.

I think, you know, with today’s discussion will hopefully know better.

Okay.

Yeah. Okay. Cool. Sounds good. Yeah. So everybody might refine. There’s a little or you might feel really good about where you’ve landed.

After today’s session and then into, I think it’s next week or possibly the week after, but it’s Sarah’s next week.

Yeah. The next one, there’s two of them.

Christopher, you are doing message market fit for b to b sass.

Abby is day one evergreen for course creators.

Katie is Katie here.

No. No, Katie. That’s cool.

Katie has profitable signature offers, which is quite interesting. Shirley, has not identified hers yet. Shirley, are you here?

Shirley’s catching up from a very long vacation.

Taken at the beginning of this program.

So hopefully more there.

Caroline’s doing web copy for b to b SaaS companies undergoing repositioning.

Very specific.

Randall, landing pages for med tech companies.

Yeah.

Good?

Cool. Jillian. Working progress, Jillian. Where are you at?

I know you’re here.

I am here. Yes. I did I did post a comment. I’ll reply to you on Slack earlier.

Okay.

I didn’t need to see it.

Okay.

I was just saying, I know we were talking about pricing pages.

And I was like, oh, I’ve been using pricing pages, and then I saw that he chose, like, free to trial the trial to paid. Conversions and who had recommended that I go with like pricing pages in general.

So I was thinking like pricing pages in general, acquiring new users.

Nice.

I don’t know if that’s differentiated enough.

But Cool.

I love it.

Adnan, do you have any thoughts? A lot of people have similar things. Right? Like Monique is doing value propositions, but so is I mean, Christopher, you were also talking value propositions. I know Christopher just went off camera.

So and that’s cool.

Yeah. Right? Like, it’s a okay to do that.

And then we’ll just we’re fine things as we go. Yeah. Cool.

Alright. Good. Just wrapping this up before we move on.

Rita is focused on Brent and acquisition for one million plus course businesses.

Rita is not here. Is she No.

Change from five million. I thought it was ten, and then it was five, and now it’s one.

So maybe we’ll talk more about that Rita. If you’re watching the replay, let’s chat.

Johnson’s doing narrative selling for tech. Nolan, we have you as behavior driven marketing strategist for health and wellness companies.

Cool. Excellent.

And Monique’s value proposition for tech companies. Hannah is email strategist and copywriter for e commerce companies, and Stacy is founder of Hot Goss.

Dig it. Love it. Cool. So what do we do with that? How do we actually start owning these things?

Very obvious question, and that is, the beginning of a road map or a plan for what you’re going to do. So I know there’s been a lot of, like, interest in diving in and how do I execute? Like, what should I be doing right now? And I would just caution you, we wanna make sure we have our y down. That’s like why you’re here.

It’s not as simple, of course, as we know, it’s just jumping into execution. Or else we would all do it. Because in our jobs, we do execution. We do strategy for messaging as well, but we it comes down to it, we’re like the final step before published. We’re very used to executing as copywriters and people in messaging. So it’s a natural state. For you to want to execute.

But we have to back up. Right? So we’ve got what your why is, what you’re aiming for, and then what you’re going to do, where you’re going to do it. We’re going to talk about when you’re going to do it. And then eventually getting into how. So I’m gonna share my screen now. I chatted out a link for everybody over in Slack in the goals and red thread channel.

I will chat to you again. If you haven’t made a copy, please do so. Just have a sec here.

Cool.

So that should go to everyone. Nice.

If you haven’t made that please go ahead and make a copy of it. Now I am going to share my screen and we can talk about some work we’re going to do today in this session.

I’ll make this a little larger. So this is what we are working on.

Filling in is the same this is like an expanded view of that little document that I gave you a couple weeks ago. This is really getting into now that you’ve got, like, kind of a sense for what you might want to do to start executing on owning that thing. Now we wanna fill it out. Now we really wanna, like, break it down into to understanding truly what you’re going to do, and then looking for gaps in that, so not just gaps, but also too much stuff. So you can see we’re gonna get into this, but there’s a lot over here that you can do. And this is like scratching the surface of things that can be done. These are the most obvious things, which I think is where you should start, obvious equals also proven in a lot of cases.

So we’re gonna get into this. This will help you get into how to own that thing. But what you’ll wanna do is fill this in. Does someone have a question?

Okay. I heard just I heard name. I will own them whatever your thing is. I just read them all out. Bye. Then you’ll give it a deadline. You already had this in that sheet that you filled in earlier.

Deadline for it is be realistic with that deadline. It’s probably not going to be the end of twenty twenty four because owning a thing takes a lot of work. Now if you have a team, it might be easier to do that. If you don’t have a team, you are your team.

So it’s really important that you focus on setting a realistic deadline while also setting a deadline, that’s aggressive enough. I was watching this thing. Our morning news here, maybe your news does the same, but our morning news has something called a good for. A good for is like four minutes of fun stuff that’s going on online that makes you feel better about the world.

And one of them was this person who was based based jumping off this incredibly tall. I don’t I’ve had it on mute because I was working, but I looked up and they’re base jumping off this, like, massive building.

And it occurred to me that there are some really hard scary things that people do.

We’re not base jumping off giant buildings here. We’re doing non scary work. So if it does feel scary to you, I would encourage you to think of how much scarier it could be. What I want you to do is do scary things is check off the things on the sheet as we start filling it in that are scary to you.

If it comes easily, then you’ve probably already done it before or attempted to do it before, and yet you haven’t got the results that you’re looking for yet. Right? So it doesn’t mean don’t do it. But what I want you to think about as you start planning out how you’re going to become an authority in this is how to also do scary things.

Not just safe things definitely scary. It’s it’s not even going to be scary compared to how scary some things actually are. So push yourself We do have Kirsty, of course, as a mindset coach to help you through some of the really scary stuff. But I think we can also share in a lot of our stories as entrepreneurs, scary moments that you had to get through in order to get ahead.

It’s just it’s just part of the game So I want you to own your thing. Give it a deadline. Give yourself your why so you remember why you’re doing it. Fill that in just like you did last time, unless you it, then cool.

Then identify your audience. Who is that person that you’re trying to build authority in order to get in front of really simply put not a really they’re not like your one reader that’s gonna be some long detailed something. It’s really like CMO of fortune five hundred or whatever that thing might be. Pop that in here.

So I’m gonna go on mute. Take three minutes. It shouldn’t take longer than that to fill those fields in on your sheet. Cool.

Any questions?

K. It’s a working session. Go for it.

Alright. That is three minutes.

Good stuff. If you’re still filling it in, continue to do so while answer Katie’s question. Katie chatted, can you speak to how to approach this if we are switching audiences thinking bigger than our current audience. Sure. So who is who do you think your audience is, Katie?

Well, so I currently work with like coaches, consultants, and experts.

But we had talked about take taking profitable signature offers and expanding that to be, like, increasing lifetime customer value.

And I’m open to broadening that to a bigger audience but I guess, like, I mean, I currently have a newsletter, a core lead magnet that speaks to the profitable signature offers people, but I’m not I’m more speaking to, like, a mall business owner slash solopreneur.

I don’t know if that’s my audience going forward.

Yeah. Agreed. Totally. So yeah. But who do you think your is if it’s somebody who’s looking to increase customer lifetime value, they’re probably in e commerce unless you think they’re in SaaS. They’re e commerce.

No. I think they’re e commerce. I think that’s an easier transition for me than success.

Okay.

Who have have you worked with any e commerce yet?

No. Anybody outside of, like, courses are, of course, e commerce as well.

Okay. On courses, yes, but no pro nothing product.

Yeah. Totally. So I would say, I mean, rules for anybody who has worked with e commerce for me, I would say you’d probably be looking at like head of growth or CMO.

Those are gonna be the people who likely find you and bring you in.

And then they might not work directly with you from that point, but they’re the ones who are sitting on airplanes listening to audiobooks or reading them and trying to figure out big picture problems. Does CMO of e commerce company? Does that how does that sit with you?

Just to be speaking to them in my ebook, for example, or in my yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. Sure. Any concerns with that?

I mean, I guess for me, like, where I am generally to right now is, like, I can see the long term vision. I can see, like, how my current vision gets me through the next three months, but I’m having trouble with, like, how do I pivot my current q one plans to align with this, like, year out vision?

Yeah. And I would I mean, for me, and we might dig into that more when we actually do the digging in here. But if you are trying to target a new audience, what we’re trying to do here in Copyschool Pro is, focus on the big swing things, doing those things and doing them on repeat in order to become that authority much faster. So there’s gonna be a lot of crap that you can do, right?

And I’m not I say crap. It’s probably useful for, like, a really long game. But if you were saying, hey, I want to own this thing in order to get to a place where I make half a million dollars a year as a consultant without a team. Let’s say that’s your why.

If that were the case, it doesn’t you don’t have to necessarily slog away at stuff. You’re not starting from scratch is what I’m saying. If you’re switching audiences.

You are just now going to better know who your target is. Other people who already find you may continue to find you. Katie and may keep like hiring you and that can be okay as you shift toward a place where CMOs of insert company name here, start reaching out to you because they’ve seen some of your bigger swing initiatives. Does that make sense?

You’re not giving up what you already have. You’re just going to shift a bit and that might not even look like a big shift to the people who are currently in your audience.

Okay.

Yeah?

I’m just gonna trust that it will become clear as we go forward.

Okay. Cool. That’s for and I love hearing where it’s not clear because to me, of course, in my head, this feels clear.

And if it’s not for you or for anybody, just raise your hand and we can discuss.

Cool.

Okay. So just put your sorry. Go ahead.

Cool. Just put the thing in there. This is like just goal setting. Right? We’re just trying to identify a world that we want to build and live in. That’s it.

You do wanna make sure that people are then seeing your name a lot, and that’s where authority building comes in. It will likely come as no surprise to anybody who’s been in the ten x freelance copywriter yourself included Katie.

That this is a big focus on authority building. So people come to you.

Any questions on this part?

That I’ve just highlighted that hopefully you can see I’ve highlighted.

K. Yes, Stacy.

I don’t have so much a question as a a sort of a realization. Is that my so my red third thing rather than being me being known as the founder at Hot Goss, which is kind of the thing in the background, is gonna be Sassy being known as the ultimate AI sidekick for marketing pros. So that is where my focus is.

Okay. Cool. Alright. Well, update that. Nice.

Good.

Anyone else.

K. I know that it can seem like Well, we can’t just say we want a thing and then that’s it. Right. So what we’re doing here is just writing down an ideal state, and that can feel like that’s not how it works.

But it kind of is how it can work. So, oh, yeah, just kind of suspend disbelief, fill the thing in, and then we’ll start getting into how that works.

We’re actually gonna dig into right now. So there are three big sections here that I want you to work through for a couple minutes.

Before we dig into this part, which is where we’re going to spend the last of today’s session, and this is going to be a homework for you. Before next session. So this is this is gonna get into the how, but what we wanna do first is basically have a strong sense for, how you’re going to stack initiatives under you to elevate you. So what are those initiatives? There’s a lot here. It might not look like a lot, but there’s a lot here.

I have one space for other, which you would then fill in over here. So this is the field where you really tell yourself what this means to you across the board for all of these. Note to self description, name of the thing, price, whatever it is that you wanna put here, that’s fine. This is like for you.

This part is where we identify what you’re going to do to become an authority who can be a celebrity authority in your world.

Then how you’re going to promote it. So a lot of people jump really quickly to do I need an email list. You need things that will help you promote yourself.

That means your stuff as well as guest stuff, sponsorships, webinars that you do with partners, getting on stages, borrowing other people’s authority.

This is the promotion stuff.

This is the creation stuff. Anything you create here has to be promoted You create a little bit, you promote a lot. Create ten percent, promote ninety percent. That’s the thing to do.

So that means You can’t do that many of these things because you’re going to have to do a lot of these things, for every one of these that you add. But this is the stuff that we do need to start thinking through before we can get into how to promote it. I mean, you might be like, well, maybe I should do the promotion part first, and I’ll figure it out. Fine.

That’s cool. Whatever works for you. This is just like guidance, to help you build out a roadmap for what your life is going to look like, as you build this. Hold on.

Monique has a question. Can we look at an expert in residence type rules and incubators? Sure. That can be your other.

If that aligns with the authority that you want to build and the audience that needs to see you build that thing I’d also caution. We’re not we’re not getting into how much time it takes, although that was kind of what I was gonna do with this column I’m highlighting here, but I didn’t end up recommending that you worry about how much time it takes because it’s very hard to know, but just know that everything here takes time. So all all what time you have when you look at your calendar, and hopefully you’re blocking out work blocks and organizing your time If not, I know that we have some time management sessions coming up.

But just, like, keep that in mind that everything here takes time. Chris, do you have a question?

Yes. Actually, two questions. So the first one is, like, you know how much, especially in the creation stage, you know how much all the stuff, how how long all the stuff takes, how much energy takes. So I was wondering from your perspective, wearing our shoes, are is there, like, a max minimum amount of things that you would take in the creation stage, or you would say if you’re comfortable with it, just go away with as many as you want.

Yeah. I think that’s a great question in my experience. So I’ve highlighted and read two things that I think you can’t do without.

So you’ll wanna be chipping away at a book. You’ll wanna be chipping away at or arriving quickly at your on stage talk. So this is effectively for those who are in ten XFC. This is six and six on steroids. So six and six, the idea there was you do a bunch of research on a subject, and you know so much about it that you can then write one big piece and then supporting pieces and then push them out into the world all at about the same time in a six week period and very quickly have your name seen on the same subject again and again and again in a short period of time, and then you repeat that after a six week break. So you keep doing that, which sounds exhausting.

I know a lot of people were put off by it. It’s legit how to do it though.

So yeah, everything takes time. I would say you need to do this. You need to do this. You need to either do, I would say decide with these. I’ve got, that’s the newsletter, the podcast, a blog on your site. I wouldn’t really recommend that these days or a medium blog. That’s great.

If you’re going to do written stuff, then publish on medium. You’ll get better circulation.

Whatever you do here, you can think you can and should think about how I can repurpose it. So I think all of these work together. If you’re going to do one, do all of them, except for choosing between the blog because anything you write on your blog then becomes a podcast topic and a newsletter or topic and you just repackage what you’ve learned and what you’re sharing across those. So you’re not creating original scratch, original stuff from scratch all the time. You’re gonna say, okay, I’m gonna do a medium blog. That’s my home base. That’s where people go for everything.

Then they become a newsletter subscriber to hear about my behind the scenes of coming up with this blog post and the research I did. And then I’m gonna do a podcast that basically repeats everything I said in my blog, and then whoever I quote in my blog, I will interview on the podcast.

Cool. Those things all work together. Those are the core of how I’m going to build my authority. Does that help, Chris?

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I love especially the the fact that you separate the, like, YouTube rather than being them putting it in the creation. You put it in the in the promotion area, which is kind of like my idea that I started forming in these couple of days which was, like, having a podcast where doing interviews and repurposing the interviews on YouTube, so not doing original content on YouTube.

Yeah. And then the other the other question was, is there any is there any particular reason why you specify a sub stack newsletter, or can it be just, an newsletter or on any platform like ConvertKit?

Yeah. Absolutely. So ConvertKit luckily now does the thing where they recommend other ConvertKit newsletters just like Substack does. But that was Substack’s original. That was the beauty of it. I still think Substack is superior because it’s It’s a really known massively used solution.

Convertkit’s great.

Substack free, and it’s a way to monetize as well. ConvertKit, you’ll always be paying for ConvertKit is for building your email list for future promotion. A newsletter is not going to be a space where you end up promoting yourself. So a newsletter is useful content that you put out into the world that might be sponsored or you might have people pay you for that subscription.

But, like, for me, I’m never going to promote anything copy hackers. Copy schools never gonna here in my Money Words newsletter, unless it’s as like this episode, this newsletter is sponsored by Copies School. But it’s never gonna be used for that purpose. So it has to be separated.

If you decide to use ConvertKit as your newsletter, Then that’s cool. Just make sure your newsletter has a clear value prop, and that’s like a known value prop for your audience versus your list. Which is where you’ll promote everything that you’ve got.

Cool?

Yep. Yep. Thank you.

Does that help?

Any other questions on that?

No.

Beehive, great other examples. Like, I’m putting sub stack in here because it’s a known thing. I’m putting medium in here because it’s a known thing. If for some reason you believe that you should go in a different direction, cool.

Just all I would say is make sure that it’s that you’re getting the most leverage out of it that you possibly can. You need to borrow as much effort from other solutions as you can because there’s just one of you. Substack does a lot of promotion for you. Medium does a lot of promotion for you. If you do good work and that’s, of course, the underlying current for everything is, of course, your work has to be good. That goes without saying you wouldn’t be here if you’re wasn’t good, or you didn’t like aspire to have really, really good work. Okay?

Monique.

Hi.

Can you hear me?

Yes.

Hey, great. I’m just gonna call on screen. So that that question that you had, Chris was my question because The idea, you know, I had a theory and I wanted to know what you thought is if you did a newsletter and you kind of take the the idea, the same topic, but you kinda rework it. Do you have to, though? And I was wondering if you’re gonna have it under a sub stack And then it’s a article under medium. And then you can actually do LinkedIn newsletters. Can it not be the same newsletter in three different places?

And then you just post it on your blog?

Yeah. I would say maybe not the same. Because then there’s no reason to opt into a thing, and then you see your engagement go down. And that can be like a miss signal.

So you’re like, Okay. I’ve published something on I’ve published my newsletter. It’s dope. I’m not going to take it and paste in LinkedIn, but I might take part of it.

Like, here’s a really here’s my hook for my newsletter, and then I’m gonna paste it over in LinkedIn, and then in the comment or whatever, have a link to go, like, read the whole thing. Or in LinkedIn, it’s gonna be, like, one section of my newsletter.

The medium blog might be like a much bigger take. So when you think about this, like practically speaking, you’re gonna write an article on, Okay. X subject, let’s say, on remote controls. Let’s you’re gonna be an expert on remote controls.

You go and you do masses of research on the history of remote controls on on how fireplaces and televisions use remote control technology in different ways and you’ve got all of this stuff that you’re learning about remote controls. You can then talk about, by your place remote controls, in one LinkedIn post and, TV remote controls in your massive blog post, and you can write it a book on the complete history and future of remote controls. What you’re going to do is take the same topic and just spin it different ways. Show it in different ways, the history of the future of how AI is affecting this, how humans do that, all of this kind of stuff, you won’t duplicate you won’t copy paste, you’ll take parts, and then you’ll give a new angle or spin or interesting way of looking at that thing.

Does that make sense, Monique?

Yeah. Because I was thinking specifically a full articles. Like, LinkedIn has articles that you can post, and then it actually has a newsletter feature now Yeah. Two that I hadn’t realized. So I’m trying to think is it too much to be doing three let’s call it three separate articles slash blog. It’s like in the case of hub stat medium. And then I thought there was like a repurposing ability that could happen with some modifications to it.

I e changed the title changing some massaging of the content. It was just whether that’s futile or not, I guess, that was a strategy I was thinking of.

When it comes to time, that’s a good strategy. If you’re like, I just gotta get this stuff out the door, that’s cool. I know Matt learner, his if if you don’t subscribe to Matt learner, he runs a system. It’s not spelled quite that way.

I think he just removes the or something from it. But it’s all caps. Anyway, he is on, he’ll post on LinkedIn. He’ll send out his newsletter.

They’re both on the same thing, but they’re not a copy and paste of each other. So that allows him to spread the word of his newsletter on LinkedIn.

Yeah, and then there’s a side note of linked it. What I don’t want you to also do is what I don’t want you to solve for time because that’s a that’s a reality. What I don’t long for you to do is hit your wagon to one horse.

So LinkedIn LinkedIn is, is is like exploding ish right now, but it’s also repelling a lot of versus there’s a lot of crap on there.

And so it’s losing its reputation a little bit, at least that’s my experience. Maybe you’re seeing something else, but the world that I live in, at least, is like, LinkedIn. Like, there’s always like, oh, you saw that on LinkedIn. Oh, then, like, make sure you do your research on it because someone just copied that from somewhere else and pasted it. So just be careful that while you’re saving time, you’re not shooting yourself in the foot by only using one space unless you’re you’re such a big believer in that space, you would invest your actual dollars in stock for it.

Okay?

That’s such a good point. I think that’s the question. Like, where do you feel audiences living? It’s that goes back to We were having a conversation within the slack, is that just tech do tech founders where do they live or tech you know, CMOs, these days, because if it is shifting that way and you kinda lose sight of where it’s shifting to and you miss that opportunity, you can kinda become irrelevant based on the fact that you don’t quite know where they are.

Yeah. And that’s why That’s why book is in red.

They read books. They read books and they listen to books. And that’s like the reality. They’re on airplanes all the time. They’re in airports all the time. Even, like, I’m particularly now because there’s this big spike in work travel now that we’re post COVID.

So yeah, they’re not, they’re not necessarily on LinkedIn, not if they have real money to spend.

You have to, like, obviously, we want to go after people who have real money to spend a budget that where they say I need a life cycle marketer. I’ve got budget for it. I need a good one. And they’re ready to spend fifty k for you to come in and save their life cycle marketing before end of quarter.

That’s the there those people are not going on LinkedIn to solve that problem.

So I would keep that in mind. LinkedIn is good if you do have a lot of, if you get if you can build up a good following there, It’s good for pitching, speaking gigs. So you can say, hey, I’ve got a hundred thousand followers on LinkedIn.

Then as as an organizer of an events, like, cool. You’ll be sure to promote our event on your LinkedIn, and that can be good leverage there for you. But I wouldn’t say LinkedIn is necessarily the way to find your ideal clients. If you wanna do that, all ask and write a book.

Yeah.

Cool.

Which I know you’re working on, Monique, so that’s good. Yeah.

Book outline is its own because if I just say book, it’s never gonna make its way onto. It’ll just like keep spamming everything. So you gotta put book outline if you’re gonna do book and then you’ve got to put that together, on your q one, q two, whatever. Cool.

Who else had their hand up? Stacy, was it you?

It it was. I just was gonna say something to Monique about LinkedIn, and that is that that newsletters and articles on LinkedIn do not perform well. Generally speaking, you get much higher engagement on plain text posts.

That’s the if so if you if you’re writing long form content, which is you said you were gonna do, you can and you do a text based LinkedIn post related to that long form content, don’t link directly to it in the post self, put your link in the comments. That’s the best, strategy for using LinkedIn to get more mileage out of your long form then have a good, CTA in your long form to, you know, hopefully capture an email address there.

Dig it. Love it. Chris. Christopher.

Yeah. So, I just wanted the piece of advice, going back to the newsletter ConvertKit sub back thing, just because, basically, so my newsletter, I haven’t really used it as a, as a, like, a list that sell stuff too. So I’ve been using it for the past year or year and a half as a newsletter. Right?

So should I continue with that since they are used to getting a new, an email. It used to be daily, now it’s weekly. So should I just continue with that, or, sure, should I create a sub stack and then and invite all of them to on sub stack. It seems a bit, like, I don’t know, a bit of a clunky process.

Yeah. No. Not necessarily. Like, if you know what your what your current newsletters value proposition is and it works in the space that it’s in and you feel good about it, cool beans. Yeah.

So I I definitely I definitely have to Like, especially with this new positioning, I will have to, like, redefine the viable position and make it much, much better.

Like, right now, I think it sucks. It’s not really specific. So that’s one thing that I need to work on.

But k.

I yeah. The the I was was planning on refining it, and then it wasn’t.

Okay. Cool. I don’t know if that was my Internet or yours. You said something about it.

It was refining it, but then there was, can you just repeat what you Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. So I I was basically planning on refining the value proposition and kinda clarifying what I want to talk about and the format and the the frequency.

And then keep using ConvertKit.

Just because my subscribers are basically used as, like, to seeing it as a newsletter not just, like, at least to racial stuff.

Yeah. I mean, it depends.

My reaction, my initial reaction is if your list isn’t that big, just I them to move over to sub stack and subscribe to your newsletter there.

Just email them a couple times and say, look, I’ve figured out what my newsletter is about, and I figured out where should go to, and here’s where it should go. If you like it, come on over. I’m gonna be shutting this down in a couple weeks. Yeah.

It’s actually a pretty good idea because also a good way to, like, filter out people who basically sign may maybe sign up, signed up, like, three years ago or not a fit anymore, or maybe, like, my family, my friends, and people don’t really care about coffee.

So it’s a good way to prune out people, maybe, Cool.

Yeah.

Okay. Cool. Yeah. Give it some thought. Again, ConvertKit, you have to pay for. I know under a certain amount, you don’t have to, substack you can eventually get paid for. So it’s worth like thinking about that too.

Cool. Alright. Anything else?

So I want you to think in terms of q one all the way through q four, of course. So, q one calendar year, of course, I don’t know what your fiscal year is. We’ve got here Substack newsletter podcast blog, you’ve gotta talk, you’ve gotta book and a book outline. A TV or radio show, I know, Johnson was like, we’re not gonna pitch a radio or New Netflix, are we? Maybe.

My thought there is, look, there’s a world of master class and there are other tech companies that look at master class and go, why can’t we be master class for x? I would say just like Hey, if you’re good at being on camera or on the radio, who knows? So I’m not I wouldn’t not put this here because who knows? Maybe that’s the kind of thing where it doesn’t happen in your first in twenty twenty four, but maybe you end up loving yeah.

Exactly. For Remit’s Netflix show. I mean, maybe you end up loving something. Maybe your podcast takes off.

And you’re like, well, I don’t like writing content. I like talking. I like doing this part. So I’m gonna just, like, keep growing my podcast, and then I’m gonna pitch serious XM on my own channel or something?

Why not? Especially if you do put a book out there. So I don’t wanna take this off the table. And I also want you to think about that.

That’s how you really expand to, obviously, to real, like, celebrity authority status. When you can have TV in your global nav. So consider that. Doesn’t mean you have to plan for it.

Maybe you do. But these things that we have here, newsletter podcast blog, talk, outline for book and book Radio Show, those are the, the content you create in order to be an authority. So I want you to kind of think about these. I know that they’re all lumped together in one, but we’ve got authority building stuff as well as ways to monetize that because you need to make money.

So that’s your offer. That’s Katie when you I think you showed up late, and I was saying it’d be cool if Katie was here to talk about profitable signature offers. But what’s your like thing that you’re going to sell to make money. Webinars are also for making money.

Lead magnets are also for making money. Again, webinars and lead magnets are low. The funnel that you put together to have, to make money. Productise service is gonna be tied to maybe if you do one.

I haven’t done a product type service in a million years. You don’t need to do one. But if you want to, if you like, no, if you like love doing VIP weeks or VIP days or selling maybe if you wanna do an audit of profitable signature offers, then it might a lot of sense to have that, but is it directly tied to your authority, not to something else?

And then a core workshop if you want to go in to companies virtually or in person and teach their team to do a thing, then maybe that’s something for you to consider. So you might end up selecting a lot of these. The question is what quarter do you do those things in.

And this will be like a chicken and egg situation. The question will naturally come. Do I do stuff for my funnel first or do I do things that push people into a funnel given that my authority building efforts might, like, hit like lightning overnight or it might take a while. And I don’t have an answer for you on that. Ideally, you would do them simultaneously, but we do need to plan out your quarters. So it’s worth discussing and going into Slack and discussing as a crew, like where you want to put your energy and when.

And then you have a question.

If you’re fairly new to what you’re trying to own, can a book still be a good idea? Yes.

Nobody knows where you were before they hear your name. Like, nobody has a freaking clue. So if you decide to go out there and say, I own x now, and you do everything to make it look like shit. You own x, then now you own it.

And that’s just the way it works, and you just have to maintain it and, make you actually know your shit. But that’s all a doable thing. That’s a problem that journalists and writers have been solving since the beginning of time. Say yes.

I know everything about that, and then you go learn your butt off.

You won’t have the authority to say I’ve done blank for hundreds of companies.

Nope.

So is it just a messaging you’re playing with that you you just kinda play around that?

Yeah. No one knew Simon Sonic before his TED Talk. He didn’t work for Apple. He wasn’t out there determining why Apple was Apple.

He was just this guy who gave a good talk and everyone was like, shit.

Yeah. That’s a great way of looking at it. And then that’s it. So the limiting belief is that you need to have a lot of x that you don’t have in order to be the authority.

The absolute reality out there is you don’t. James clear. Did you know him for anything to do with habit building?

He he’s good at working out.

And then he was good at the habit of, like, writing regularly.

That’s enough. Now it’s these mister atomic habits.

So, yeah, I wouldn’t I wouldn’t worry too much about things that you’ve been told must be we can talk about TED Talks Monique. I wouldn’t be the one to talk to about them, but I know some people have done TEDXs I just don’t know if anybody here has.

Monique, what do you wanna talk about?

Or do you wanna talk about now or should we, like, Well, I was saying because I’ve seen some people who are promoting their services about, like, crafting their one thing.

Is in a lot of way aligned with the Ted the Ted Talk, and it’s that distillation of it, and then pitching Ted talks, and there’s the art of pitching Ted talks.

So, you know, it is an interesting exercise, even the work of pitching. I mean, they you they may or may not gravitate, but it could be just that way to hone your one thing.

Whether you got a tech talk out of it, it could be, worth the work. So I just thought I’d I’d share that because you kinda spark something with what you were saying about Simon and, James.

Yeah. Dig it. Love it. Yeah. Cool. I mean, that could be your thing. Maybe your note is TED Talk.

And then you just figure it out.

And that’s what this number is for.

Trying to pitch ten pitch ten talk one hundred times. I don’t know. Like, this is the thing where you can do the effort and the work is it worth it in the end when there’s other things, like, a newsletter that are day to day building credibility? That’s the question, I guess, is where we spend our time.

I think it is a question of if you don’t have any big swings on your plan, it’s not gonna work. You gotta have a big swing. That could be maybe a book is a big swing, maybe some sort of radio show. I mean, Joel Klettkey was CDC News’s tech guy.

For years. If he’d built his, authority in being a tech guy, he would have had perfect in. He just never used it. So there’s lots of things you can do that might surprise you how like they’re they don’t seem like low hanging fruit.

But they might actually be. So I would say they don’t they shouldn’t all be big swings because that might be deflating if you keep swinging and missing.

But one of them, at least one of them should be. And then that should light a fire. Everything else is like going through the motions potentially, like, yes, I’m building my authority. This is another day, another week of proving it etcetera, but I’m building up to that one big thing. Maybe your book is not gonna be published by you. Maybe you maybe you’re like, I want.

Random house to publish it. My goal is to see my book sold at airports.

That’s a big swing. That’s cool. That’s great. And if you’re like, and I wanna do it in twenty five. Don’t. That’s a nice big swing. Go for it, and then just make sure you have other things that, that you can achieve on a, like, more regular basis and actually see traction with.

Cool. So I know we’re getting at the end of our time.

I do want to so I want you to think about q one, particularly, how you’re going to on it. So fill in your note to self here again. This is like TED Talk and this might be random house book.

See it in airports in twenty twenty five. Cool. That’s your objective. Nice. I love it, and then you’re going to identify how and when with the reality being that if you are running a business and running a life simultaneously.

It’d be ideal to be twenty one years old for anybody in the room who who is, congratulations.

Most of us have real lives with, like, stuff pulling us in directions. So let’s be somewhat realistic. We’ll get better and better time management as we go and what to say yes to and what to say no to. Side note, buyback your time is a great book for things like that.

But think about the fact that you probably don’t have more than twenty hours a week. That’s, what is that? A hundred and twenty hours a quarter? Am I doing?

No. Two hundred and forty hours a quarter. Twenty hours a week, twelve weeks. Two hundred and forty hours.

I’m getting there.

So that’s not That’s a lot of time. If you have it for one project, it’s not a lot of time if you have it for six projects.

So choose wisely.

I wouldn’t try to write a book in q one, mostly because you will then need to do a lot of work around it. It’s probably good to do the book outline instead, and then put the actual book writing down the road.

In twenty twenty four.

And then we wanna think about your social stuff. So social isn’t the thing. It’s the way to promote the thing. It’s also eventually a way to get more people to say yes to all of this. Oh, sorry, all of this, to, hey, yeah, I’d love to have you as a guest on my podcast because you have a cool YouTube following or a cool LinkedIn following, or you can promote it to the twenty thousand people on your email list.

So we’re gonna think about these.

And these as well in q one. So you can see there’s a lot there’s a lot to do. The more you add down here the more you need to just be really careful with what you say you’re going to create in q one. Well, at the same time challenging yourself, to stretch because you will never have more time than you do now.

So now is the time to do these things. Once they all start working, you won’t have as much time, and you’ll be like, damn it. I wish I had started doing x sooner. So now’s the time to get started on that.

That’s your homework is to complete this and make a make a good dent in q one, which will likely also mean that you’ll have some notes peppered throughout the remaining quarters of twenty twenty four.

We’re going to review these kind of randomly in our next session, and then we’ll just do the rest of them like we’ll team up, we’ll do whatever it takes to kind of work through these. So that by the time January one rolls around, you have a very good sense for what your first quarter looks like, and you’re probably a little bit scared of it, which is good. What about building SEO website as organic and earned traffic SEO is long game.

It’s it’s rarely going to pay off soon. It’s good, but, I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t even put SEO on my radar at all. Like, if you’re doing if you’re publishing good stuff, and you’ve got good links coming into your site, etcetera. Etcetera, then you’re already in good shape. Make good content and, in most cases, make also video content. In most cases, you’ll get rewarded.

Yeah, how specific should we be in the house sections? How specific do you need to be to know what you’re going to do and how. So if you’re like, I’m gonna get my podcast standing in twenty in q one, what does get it standing look like? What’s your objective?

And this this isn’t like month one month two month three or anything like that. It’s just three columns of how. You might have one how. It might be like, I’m gonna I’m gonna choose my podcast platform and create my content calendar for season one.

Which will begin in q three. So that in q two, I will be then inviting guests on and finding somebody to partner with to make this podcast outstanding, and start coming up with my promotional strategy in q two. Does that make sense? Get as specific as you need to so that you can act on it.

You could get more specific such that if you’re like, I’m actually need to hire a VA if I have real ambitions here and I’m ready to invest in myself, then if you were to hand this over to your VA, what would your could your VA act on it?

Don’t know that you have to get that granular, but that’s up to you on what you wanna do there.

Cool?

Is everybody totally unprepared to move forward? And that’s the joy of what we do.

Yeah, Good. You’ve got, I think, until next week to do this. Any last questions?

Any ideas, concerns? Yeah. Johnson.

Yeah.

I, you know, I hear a lot of advice about moving, moving, your audience onto a list that you own. And I think in most cases, that’s that’s an that’s often an email list. So would you be thinking about, across these, platforms kind of, funneling them all towards one location or just using each platform as it is to build authority?

I think that’s a good way to look at your funnel, as part of this. Right? So in an ideal world, yeah, you should drive people into from all the places, because this, like, promotion is largely top of funnel, unless it’s in your email list, so if that’s the case, then where are you driving them to in a perfect world? You would have a nurturing funnel set up, one that shoots people off who are potential clients and another that are potentially going to buy your book, etcetera, etcetera.

As you go. So ideally, you’d have a place to land them, and that would be the place.

Yeah. Does that help?

Yeah.

Cool. Okay. Thanks.

Cool. Anybody else?

So I am fairly new to all of you because it’s only been like six, seven months in the business.

So I’m just curious if my quarter one instead of putting in like a book or like can my quarter one goal be like, doing more projects. And because, at first, because when I started, I was like, okay, I’ll do one project a month, and that’s fine. But now that’s I’m in CSV. I’ve been doing more projects per month.

So is it okay for that? Like, I I I can push to whatever the learnings are in this quarter one, and then I can do more and more projects in quarter one so that I can talk more about my insights and what I’m learning in culture too. And then or maybe whatever I’m learning the behind the scenes goes into like a social media following, but not building a list or building.

Something there in Concord because I can’t manage client projects and something together.

Yeah. Well, that’s that’s the challenge, right, is, Like so that’s the objective of joining, like, a mastermind like this, right, is it’s it’s about doing the things that are bigger, more uncomfortable, and doing those in a safe space where you’ve got good coaching and mentorship along the way so that they pay off in big ways.

Doing more projects, everybody will still keep doing work. Like, that’s part of it. You’ve got twenty hours to do client work a week and twenty hours to do business development work a week. And this is business This is all was a good business.

So if you’ve got twenty hours, I would say you shouldn’t be planning to do more than twenty hours of client work.

A week, unless you wanna give up weekends and evenings.

And if that were the case, if you’re like, yeah, I can do that. Cool. Then I would say you just need to plan your day in such a way that the stuff that you would put off happens during the time of day that you have the most energy. So if you’re like I’m gonna do my client work no matter what. Of course, I am. They’re paying me.

But this biz dev stop is gonna kind of we’ll see if I get to it, then you should do the biz dev stuff when you have the most energy in the days that you actually do it. So it will mean look at calendar and say, okay, I’m gonna block off ten hours a day every day because I’m a bad ass hustler type, and that’s what I wanna do to take on lots of projects at the same let’s say. Okay. Cool.

So you’ve got ten hours a day. You’ve got the most energy first thing in the morning for two hours. Cool. That’s when you do your biz dev work that we’re talking about here.

The rest of the day, fill your boots, man, do whatever you wanna do.

But I’m not going to ever say, hey, yeah, take on more projects and don’t do the authority building stuff because that’s not gonna get you where you wanna be. It’s not unless your referral system is so dope, like it’s shockingly good in which case you could probably become an authority on referral systems.

But then, like, that’s what you need to think about Does that make sense?

Yeah. That that helps.

Okay. Cool. Anybody else?

What about, updating our website to reflect our one thing. Like, is that a priority and where should that fit into this? I know it’s not authority building, but it’s only there.

Brand. Yeah. For sure. So, I think update your LinkedIn profile, everywhere that you’re seen online, people should understand who you are and who you serve.

And like what the outcome is of that. Right? All of those things that we talk about on our website.

Websites are tricky things. I don’t teach them in anything that I do. I know Shane. I think Shane’s still here.

Yeah. Shane is like a really great template for authority builders.

So it might be worth just like talking to Shane before you do if you can do if you have a CMS set up, and you’re like, I just wanna change the headline on my homepage so people know what’s up. Cool. Go do that, like, right now, and then if you’re really thinking about, well, my website doesn’t actually reflect who I’m, like, what I’m building here, then, Shane, maybe that’s something you can do, like, a session on showing that does that make sense, Shane? Do you remember what I’m talking about?

Yeah. Like, align the all the the tactics you’ve talked about. Right? That’s basically yeah. For sure.

Yeah.

So quick updates. Yes. Big stuff.

I wouldn’t worry too much about your website. People will once they think you’re like the shit, they’ll walk over hot coals to get to you. They’ll, like, figure out, like, wait, is this the Gillian that I think I just read or heard on that podcast?

And as long as your homepage headline, does a good job of matching what you do. The rest of it, I wouldn’t prioritize too heavily. It’s like, it’s the kind of stuff that I do, like, when we’re watching TV at night and it’s just like you got your laptop open, just like quick stuff that you can, like, rattle off because you’re a copywriter.

Yeah. Alright. Cool. I know we’re at the end of our time, and I am late for my next meeting.

So, I’ll I’ll make note of homework, in case there’s any confusion whatsoever. Please do bring any of the questions you have to the group conversations so that we can tackle them for everybody because it’s probably true that if you’re wondering it, someone else is as well. Alright. Thanks, everybody.

Looking forward to our next meeting on this too. Have a good one. Bye.

Your One Thing

Your One Thing

Transcript

Today’s session is to go through and really do our best to nail down the general category at least of what you want to own.

What should be your thing. There are questions galore about this, and that’s good. If you have questions, bring them up, and we’ll actually start by tackling any questions you might have. And then we’ll see if those questions reveal that everybody needs to kind of like go off and work for a few minutes on their thing alone, then we’ll pause and we’ll take some time to do that. But if it’s like, no, let’s let’s workshop some then we’ll do that. So we’ll see how today goes based on what y’all are wondering.

I have found that when I’m having, DMs with people about this, about what they’re supposed to own or what they should own.

There are a lot of questions around, Hey, I don’t know anything about the thing that I wanna own, or I haven’t really done that much of what I want to own. And so I just wanna preface this with I get that it feels counterintuitive to say I own this now.

But that’s how people do it. It doesn’t mean you have to, but just know that that happens for anybody I’ve talked about this, if you were ever in, anybody here who was in ten x freelance copywriter or even still is. I have talked many times about, And there’s actually bonus videos, which I think you have access to. Pep Laya, who runs C XL and also Winter He came in as a special guest years ago to talk to our mastermind, and he’s told it like it was, which F is good at doing, and it, he said, like, I just decided one day I was going to be the person for Convergent Optimization.

And he had literally no background in it. And a year later, he’d spoken on, like, fifteen stages already about it. So if you feel like you have to wait until until until I keep hearing that word, it’s not I’m not ready yet. I have to wait until.

Would encourage you to just suspend that. You can go back to that way of thinking in six months.

If it’s like I it’s not working, then allow yourself to go back later. You don’t have to kibosh it entirely. But suspend disbelief. You’d be shocked, at how many people have just said this is my thing now, and then that’s their thing. And that’s, like, you just now you can focus to make your thing. If you say this is it, then you make it that. Now the challenge is, hey, There are already a lot of people in that space that can feel like, well, if I can’t own SEO copywriting because they’re so many people in SEO copywriting, which there aren’t, by the way.

Okay, fine.

That doesn’t mean you still can’t own it. Though, but we might wanna, like, work through your feelings that you have about that and the reality of the competition out there. So keep that in mind. Now who has questions about owning their own thing? Or, Ryan, Shane, if you want to tack anything on to what I’ve just set.

Okay.

Jessica, you raised your hand. Do you wanna go ahead and chat and say it?

Sure.

That’s alright. So I I did try a lot of options, Joe.

You know that I’ve done a lot of things.

But I inevitably kind of circled back around that.

Yeah.

Sorry.

Circle back around to something I was kind of going into a couple years ago, and so it doesn’t quite fit into one of the stages of conversion copywriting say, but so my idea was, I used to get I I was really into the idea of being the person that’s Well, sorry.

No. I just muted. Make sure you’re on mute if you’re not talking, please. Thanks. Go ahead.

So I kind of I guess I just wanted to be the person for seasonal and holiday sales.

Okay.

And promotions.

Okay. There’s a lot that goes into that.

So that’s why I was like, well, there, you know, it goes across the entire conversion copywriting process. And there’s all sorts of things you could dive into with that optimizing the offer, email strategy, I mean, all the things, right? But I I don’t know. I was I guess I was just hoping for feedback.

Yeah.

I mean okay. My notes, and then Shane and Ry, if you wanna add anything, My initial notes are that’s cool. One, because it would actually help you build a lifestyle that although you’ll be very busy from August to November, you’ll not be quite as busy the rest of the year. I mean, holidays happen obviously all the time. There’s always like a president’s day sale or something like that.

So I think it’s cool. You’re right that it covers everything, but you could work through that. I can say that I don’t know anybody who’s the go to person for seasonal sales or for, holiday based campaigns. That doesn’t mean they don’t exist.

But I if they exist, I haven’t heard of them, and I don’t know if others have. So it does feel like a space you could own. You don’t have it doesn’t mean you have to, like, know everything about email and everything about sales page or anything like that. You would have to know how to talk with your clients and coach them through understanding the difference between selling during Black Friday and selling the rest of the year.

Where your offer would probably be the thing that you’d be working more on, with clients and in a book you write or whatever that thing might be instead of doing a lot of customer research where it’s not evergreen, so you don’t really have to, like, you’ll have to, but you wouldn’t have to know that or be an expert in it.

Ry says seasonal sales, psychology.

Yeah.

You could sell out books on that pretty easily and give cool workshops at e commerce, events in particular.

I don’t think you’d be able to target SAS very well.

So you’d be kind of narrowing down to e commerce, but e commerce isn’t narrow. That’s really, really big. There there are a few e commerce companies out there. So you’d be fine. Ry or Shane, anything you wanna add?

Yeah. I hear a lot too, like, the I’m not an expert, but I think, like, that’s that’s one of the least things to worry about. You you can learn it.

It’s not just dive in, make mistakes, figure it out. You will learn it. I promise. I think for me, it was or what I’m saying is, like, find something you’re passionate about.

I think that’s probably one of the most important things. And, obviously, like, there’s demand, but you can that’s important as well. But I think you have to like what you’re you’re doing. Right?

That’s that’s key.

Yeah. Yeah.

I feel like, like, there’s so many expertise and knowledge gaps within these things that we we tend to think that everything’s figured out. Right? And there are so many gaps here, and there’s so much that is ownable within seasonal sales, right, from the offer creation side. I’ve seen so many different offer formats over the last few days.

Like Kajabi is hitting me up with, like, an upgrade to pro for two grand. Right? It’s not a cheap deal. Right?

And then it renews at, like, four thousand a year. Right? So there’s conversations to be had about how you actually optimize for LTV, right, within seasonal sales? Like, no one’s having that conversation.

And it’s such an important conversation because Add costs are crazy during Black Friday. Right? The cost to acquire a customer during Black Friday or seasonal sales could be higher than other times of the year. Right?

So it’s like there’s a whole blog post, right, or a whole block to have just around how to optimize for LTV while your cost to acquire customer is higher during a seasonal sale. Right? So there’s so much terrain that isn’t owned yet is also really freaking important. So, yeah, I love it.

Yeah. All I would say then is Jessica, if you don’t see any reason, if it doesn’t break easily, like the idea doesn’t break pretty easily when put under a little bit of pressure, such as this conversation, then tell yourself, okay, I own this now, and stop thinking of other things and don’t let other stuff in. Julian, did you wanna add to this conversation?

Okay.

So I had to do a follow-up question to what well, what you said initially Joe and then what Shane brought up because I totally get what you’re saying about, like, I haven’t done it yet, but you can just choose it.

And that makes total sense. And then, but then Shane mentioned, like, oh, pick something that, you know, you know, you’re gonna like doing. And I think that’s where I’m having to disconnect is, like, if I haven’t done it, how do I know that I’m gonna like doing it? And, like, what if I choose something? And then I’m like, I don’t actually doing this.

Yeah. So, yeah, I just wonder if you could speak to that, like, how to give a sense of whether you’re like it or not if you haven’t really done it.

Yeah.

I think that’s a good question.

And then we’ll we’ll go with Chris because you had your hand up after, before.

So I maybe someone else can dive in.

There are definitely moments when I don’t love conversion copywriting. And I’m like I mean, I’m a creative at heart. I’m not a salesperson, like, I’m creative.

And so I like sales. I have learned to like it. I learned to like it because I found things that I like about it.

But I don’t walk around going so glad I’m in sales.

I’ve always been a creative person. So creative copywriting is the thing that probably would have made more sense, except the world didn’t need more creative copywriting.

That’s all anybody was doing was creative copywriting.

So that’s why I didn’t do that.

I knew I would get gold stars from people, and I’m very gold star driven.

So I knew I’d get gold stars from clients if I was able come in and say, here’s how we’re going to increase your conversion rate just by changing your words. So I found the thing that I like about conversion copywriting. I need that reward from clients, and you don’t get that for creativity unless you’re gonna work at a big agency and get awards.

Which wasn’t in the cards either. I lived in Victoria, BC.

There’s no agency there. Now there is, but there wasn’t at the time.

Anybody else wanna wanna attack on or or add any new thought on, liking what you don’t do? Like, what if you don’t like it? Have you Any thoughts? Yeah. Rita.

I wanna know what Randall said. That was exactly what I was gonna bring up. If anyone has an experience from Newport.

And amazing, really, bright humor as well from these podcasty questions. There it is. So did they categorize you?

Cal Newport is, like, I love him.

I will fangirl that man, the end of the earth. But he talks about, which was something that, like, go find your path and do things. I don’t have, like, a huge passion around social ads. That’s not I didn’t, like, wake up one day and go, oh my god. Thanks for god. This is so amazing.

But I I paid attention along the road.

And I found out that when I love working with the people that I love working with, which to prevent it to figure out.

I like making really cool people. It happened to be a lot of just, like, seven and eight figure female founders of online businesses. I like making crap out of money, and we have a lot of fun. And we like talking about private jet problems.

And, like, all of these really crazy things, That fills me up. That’s fun. It’s challenging. I love the mastery of it.

I’m really driven by, like, mastery of things. And so for me, it hasn’t always been, like, I can get confident about anything if I decide to be. And that’s just because I get to get good at it. It’s interesting.

It’s kinda hard. I like doing hard things.

But for me, it’s been more about that. Is that, like, you could put me anywhere and I’ll figure it out. I I could be passing it by running with Donald. They’ll do it like a bad ass.

So, like, but I have that cultivated that makes it over the years. So I think it’s less about dropping into a thing, at least for me, Right? I’m I’m not gonna drop into a thing and be like, oh my god. I found the answer to the, you know, the magic of the universe.

I’m just gonna get really good at it. And then I just, like, keep paying attention for what feels good where I’m having fun, what feels easy, and then just keep iterating along the way. Because in the fourteen years, I’ve been in business I’ve done everything from web designs to JavaScript to analytics and data to etcetera. And it’s just been, like, this huge process of iteration over time.

Really paying attention to what I love and what feels easy. So that’s how I’ve now I’ve done the thing and Cal newport all day long. Amazing amazing beard at at that. I think tackling that in a different way than the, like, go in the woods, find your passion.

The angel can have this thing about it. That kind of thing. Like, I just found that a re his take really realistic and it it landed in my analytical mind really nicely.

I’ve done something, like, similar where we have, like, I feel I do affiliate marketing as well, and I’ve done some affiliate stuff. I’m like, I don’t, like, I like cats they’re great, but, I’d I don’t own a cat. I’m a dog person. I know Joe, you’re you’re a cat fan.

You don’t have to choose.

I have a dog right here right Okay.

I love dogs, but there’s more money in pets. You can there’s less competition. And I always find it helpful to sort of, like, what’s what’s my vision? What am I trying to achieve in life? Right? And then I link that to the broader picture, and that helps.

It’s for that little for you. And there’s other topics. Like, there’s there’s a lot of money to be made in, drones, but, like, drones? What you know, it’s it’s just a it’s a boring bland topic. So I don’t know if that helps anyone at all.

Yeah, I was gonna add something around the not liking what you do, because for me, my, like, thing actually emerged from really disliking something. So I like working with course creators.

So I assumed that meant I had to do live launches.

And I I hated them because I would get, like, sick every time I did a live launch because it was just so much fresher. And then that actually led me to create my evergreen process, day one evergreen.

So I think as well as, like, finding what you love, to find your thing actually, like, finding what you hate and what you don’t like can also inspire you to kind of, you know, like, I’ll hate something change something, make something better kind of vibe.

Making money tends to to make you like things more too. Right? If all of a sudden you’re making money from it, it’s a little easier to digest, I guess, or you can pay for that therapy, right, if you need it?

Like, no matter how much people pay with live launches, like, it just makes them so like, physically sick.

Like, I have to go and update them anymore.

That’s fair. That is fair.

She says that she’s in the middle of a lunch. Cool. Chris, did you wanna go ahead a question earlier?

Yeah.

It’s related to, like, the niche. Right? So I kind of narrowed down to one thing that I want to do message market feed for b to b SaaS. That’s what I actually think I want to do.

But when it comes to the niche, like b to b SaaS, b to c, how do you decide, how do you think about that? Is that something that comes with your one thing? Or is that something that you decide after you decided the one thing or or what?

Do you have one? Do you have to choose a niche? Sometimes you don’t.

And how can you maybe make that If you do have to, if you feel like you have to, instead of that you want to, some of us just want to. I’ve wanted to work with small startups.

Because I like them a lot.

April, Dunvard, wants to work with tech companies because she has always worked with big tech companies other people want to work with a certain kind of group. So there’s the who do you want to work with? And if you don’t want, to. Do you need to niche? You can specialize without meaching, especially if your specialization is narrower.

But that’s my take on it. Only niche if you have to or you really want to.

Anybody else? Yeah. I know Niching is like understood to be the thing to do. But I think we conflate meeching and specialization a lot into one thing, where a specialization is like, here’s what I really, really well.

And it does come up.

I was also thinking in terms of, if I am if I want to own, like, the message market fit should I be the b to b SaaS message market fit guy or the message market fit guy?

Then that’s I’d have the same answer as before.

Like, do you think you need to If you want.

Yeah.

Does it does it help? And are you worried that you’re gonna get somebody who’s like, I’m a course creator. Help me find message market fit. And you’ll be like, I don’t know how, or I don’t care about your business, that kind of thing.

Right? And if you’re like, yeah, there are groups that I don’t want to work with, then Yeah. Then narrow it down and say SaaS. And people always say B2B SaaS, and I struggle so hard to find B2C saaS.

Like, there’s not a lot of b to c SaaS.

I actually worked for one.

Campbell, what did you who did you work for? I work for, a us, there was basically, like, an Instagram, like, promotion thing and was selling, like, influencers or, She’s a business.

Just people on Instagram, but even just, like, normal people who would want to followers or likes.

Spray is always always a little at it.

But, yeah, I’m currently using one.

Are you?

I’m currently using what yeah. It’s a personal business.

I’m in a program where she teach my coach teaches communication. So this is an app called Utley and it helps, like, it it just helps me find the filler words.

It comes on meetings, records the meetings, and then points those Yeah.

Okay. Cool. Cool.

Got it. I’m working for one right now too.

Okay. Wow. It’s, like, everywhere. I guess I only work for b to b set. So it’s, like, it’s hard to imagine.

Okay. Cool. Well, then, fine.

Chris I love the box, Chris.

At it.

David Olgaly there. I’m just I’m staring at those amazing books behind you there.

I do have some feedback on that, the the Nashing down. So I’ll give you an example. We did just that eighty six years ago, where, we offered, GMV services for physicians. And we could have niched down to the different, like, primary care versus cosmetic, but we found it was about solving patient problems.

So by, you know, by just targeting physicians, whether it’s cosmetic or primary care, we could create systems around that. We didn’t have to change things up. But if you go to if if you’re b to c versus b to b, you can’t apply the same systems to both. I think that’s important as well.

Right? Cause you wanna automate as much as possible. Right in the end. So I would take that into consideration as well.

Yeah. A question I like to ask is, like, you know, which boardrooms are actively saying, oh, shit. We have a product market fit problem. Right?

Yeah. I was just thinking about that.

Where is that an active conversation. Right? And different ways to go about it. Right? It could be, you know, a sub niche thing.

Right? Or it can also be a product or company maturity thing, right, year zero to one Right? Or a repositioning once they realize they have a problem, you know, five years down the road and things have cooled off. So it’s like there could be a whole other industry to own of repositioning right or re product market bidding once you realize, oh, that wasn’t quite it.

We’ve kinda hit a ceiling here and nothing’s budging. So, yeah, just a different way to view it.

Oh, thanks.

Cool. Who was up next with another question? Hands go down, and that always sucks. Who was after Jillian before? Rita, your hand, was up, but was at to comment?

Okay. Rita, you were up, and then Elias.

Okay. So my question is it’s a little bit it’s a little alphabet, so this will be like a fun a fun thing to talk I have a thing, that is successful and lovely. And but it feels like a really complex thing to talk about. And so I always, if I’m in the right room with the right people, so this may not actually be a problem, it is never an issue to talk about because I’ll say, oh, I do this thing and they’re like, Excuse me.

You do what? Let’s talk about this more. So I know, like, when it lands with the right people, it’s good. And so essentially, like, I do social ads for customer acquisition.

Or my agency does, but it sounds really obnoxious. There’s a whole lovely group of people who is working right now doing some of the stuff.

And and we focus on that customer acquisition, like, bringing in new customers into online sourcing program businesses at break even or better. So we like to do break even funnels. Port note we don’t like to. We’re just really good at it and it’s like useful.

So that that is what we said, sir, then we do do all the launch and stuff as well, and all of the support that goes with from an online business and with programs and traders, but that’s not. Right? Like, that’s the other stuff.

But what we that’s really what we do specialize in, and I think I think it’s our special sauce too because it’s something that’s quite different than what a lot of social ad companies do.

And so it’s just it’s full of jargon y words, like customer acquisition.

Breakevens, things like that.

But when I say, like, Facebook ads and tunnels, right, that positions us in the Russell Brunkins of the world that positions us in, like, some other spaces that we don’t necessarily fit in.

Yeah. So I guess some thoughts, some questions, anything that would kind of help. Like, I’m just really looking to simplify that so that people really understand.

Or does it matter? Because when I’m in rooms with the people that understand that, they don’t have questions other than can we get on a call and talk about numbers?

Right?

So Yeah.

So what do they get excited about? Because break even doesn’t sound exciting. To me. What’s exciting?

Really? I can break it even. I get mad at ads all the time. I’m like, how can what am I doing here?

Like, I don’t understand the business model I don’t know why we keep running.

So that’s confusing.

But see, I think that’s why breakeven would be exciting because you’re like, could you imagine actually running out and not being the thumb because they actually bring you just as much money and or profit on the front end, and then you have all this luxury in the back end to sell your back end offers. Right? Because your front end’s actually paying for itself.

And so require a back end. Yeah.

So the, like, depending the vast majority. Yeah. I’ve got one client that doesn’t have a back end offer.

That’s fine, but most people, they need to have some sort of front end and then have like that basically whatever their main core offer is on the back end, for that to work well. And, yeah, because that’s true, breakeven isn’t cute.

Which is the part where they get excited though? Is it, like, at what point?

It is that. It’s usually like when we talk about, like, how can we actually design a system that builds brings customers onto your list and actually has them paid for while they land there because you’ve got it removes cash flow problems from the business, which is especially obviously quite trendy. From there right now, as people don’t want to, you know, outflow tens of thousands of dollars like out of your thing on lunches where everyone gets really ill putting out technically hundreds of thousands of dollars for some lunches and then they’re waiting for that to come back. So in this particular climate, kind of having something that cash flows within twenty four to forty eight hours, like when it’s working, obviously, like, this isn’t magic.

That when it’s when all the fun was set up and everything’s going, they actually get cash flow back into the business really quickly.

It’s really like, lovely for them. And then they also all the optimization and testing that happens to get people to then move into core offers and then few bigger offers in the back. And there’s just a lot more grace there because they don’t have all of this money and capital problems sitting out there and ask.

Stacy, do you have a question or do you have something to add to what reason?

I have I have a question. Yeah. What’s the common denominator between these clients?

They’re all part of the business or program and course creators.

Okay.

And so usually, like, a million plus in in revenue, like a lot of them around.

So they’ve already been in business for a few years and have a certain list or whatever. I mean, what yep. So given then, it seems like the thing to do. I don’t think that there’s a problem with using, insider language when you’re targeting an insider group of people. This is, you know, my my opinion, obviously, but because I think that that can filter out customers that are not best fit customers for you.

You you know, I I do something what I I mean, I call it engineering ejection. I want the people who are not a good fit for me to fall off. I don’t wanna deal with him at all because Right. Why? You know? That’s a waste of my time and energy and resources.

So, I think insider language can be a great way to do that. But if you add something to it, to to sort of couch that that’s the type of audience that you’re targeting, you know, that we work with with with, you know, course creators who are expert at blah blah, you know, show that you’re targeting someone who has expertise in paid social advertising.

In other words, the that you’re that that something to label them as insiders. I don’t know what those words are right now because I don’t have enough information, but did does that make sense at all?

Yeah. I think that makes sense when it comes to, like, the next step for me at least, which is, like, if Sounds to me, like, we’re still trying to figure out the part before that, which is like this break even or better idea ish.

Is that accurate Rita?

Yeah. It’s kind of the because I I agree with, like, Stacy, well, like, when it when I’m having a one on one conversation, when I’m, like, talking about that piece or, like, having a sales call or an accept call or what have you, that part’s really easy, right, to, like, because I’ve got a diagnostic thing that we go through and all of that stuff. Definitely, like and that’s exactly what we do is, like, we wanna screen out a lot of people, like, if someone hasn’t run ads before they’re usually not a really good fit for us, things like that. Like, I want them to have, like, experience the pain.

And I want people to hate ads a little bit. Like, those are usually people, that are fun to work with. And But then, like, that one step away from those people, right? Like, when we’re talking to, like, or do I even need to talk for general audience?

Most of the marketing that I’ve done has been a relationship marketing, like, really thoughtful relationship funnels, around, like, masterminds teaching in people’s groups, like things like that, audience aggregators of my ideal client.

So I’ve never done anything that would be like I don’t know. I usually get, like, you know, after someone’s mastermind. Right? They’re like, oh, I’m gonna do mastermind and they’re like, that’s where I get my people from.

There’s always been like the secret backdoor.

What I do requires an awful lot of trust as well. And so there’s a lot of trust transfer that comes with that, which has always made sales really easy for me.

We do that with Google ads. Like, there’s gonna be keywords that I know, just off the keyword, what’s the stage of awareness is. Right? And if it the more product aware or late late solution aware.

I know, hey, that’s that’s gonna be a quick win, but then the other ones we’re gonna have to nurture. So maybe like, I get it depends, right, on the stage of awareness and just tweak the copy based off that. Even if you want it, but then is it gonna take longer to qualify them get them to that point. Right?

Then you’re gonna have to have a whole system, so to speak, set up. Right?

So Uh-huh.

So we’re really talking about are we talking about profitable ad funnels or is there some what I am just and I’m and I’m trying to figure out, like, okay, what would your what’s your book about? Like, if you were to write a book, Rita, what is it about? What are you saying. Don’t worry about the work of it, but what is it about?

Good question.

I could try to come up from them, like, what would be the thing?

Like, potentially profitable ad funnel, Maybe.

It just it really feels hard to simplify all the things that, you know, we all do.

But but that’s really like the core of it. It’s just that people need new customers and we help them get those profitably. Like, that really is the core of it And when people are coming to us that, like, the big pain point is, like, I’ve tried to spend money on them. They’re expensive, which I think is relative.

Right? They’re only expensive if they don’t break they don’t make money, enough money. And when they do make money, they’re not expensive at all. So it’s you know, there there’s no pieces to it.

But they’re really just coming out of Vegas. I need more inflow. I need more awareness.

I need more leads. The back end of the business works. Like, we don’t work with people that don’t have a back end. Like, if they don’t have product market fit, if they don’t have really good sales records, like, if they don’t have really great customer service and excellent reviews, like, we don’t usually touch them.

They won’t let us see inside the course, all that kind of stuff. So that part is done, and we’re just really helping them leverage their time. These are usually people that have been like creating content forever and really want to, like, simplify that a bit. Right?

Take a little bit of the stress off themselves.

Are you helping them prove ROI?

Is that essentially what you’re doing? Do they have do they know their numbers going into it? And then you have a system to help like, they’re running ads, but they don’t know what’s working because they don’t have the system in place to prove ROI. And then you help them implement that?

Or I would say, like, rarely did I have that?

I think you’ve had, like, one. It’s amazing. Just so everybody knows.

Everybody knows.

A million dollar business. I’m like, who’s measuring what?

Nobody says? Nobody knows. Nobody knows anything in this world is crazy.

So illuminating. They’ll be like, it’s okay. And we can all be secretly a mess behind the scenes.

But but you help them set that up as well.

Like, yeah, like, we we we take care of all of, like, the measures of the funnel tracking so that they get really clear, transparency on it and also get, like, a level of competency and and control around being the well, the levers we’re pulling.

Right? This is how you identify constraints and attack them with different strategies and optimizations and things like that. So we’ve really We just they feel like a lot more empowered because it’s like this is what you do. This is how you fix it because obviously like there’s these things take maintenance all the time with optimization and testing.

So, yeah, like, lots of that, lots of measurement, and helping them understand how it all works. Because a lot of them just because, like, in the heyday of, like, course and program creators, the modules are still kinda there. But the the margins are so big that a lot of them didn’t even have to worry about it. Right?

They were just throwing money at lead gen. Like, it was just going out of style. And they just didn’t have the margins that they had to worry about that as much, and that’s definitely become something we’ve seen in the last couple of years where people are talking about that a lot more. That they actually they can’t just lead gen to lead gen.

They actually need to lead gen and prove it. Right? Because they just don’t have the cash flow that they used to. They’re not sensitive to it.

Yeah. Yeah. Like, they’re definitely, like, no one used to talk about cash flow on calls and now they’re now people are talking about that.

Because it’s getting more expensive advertising. They’re like, they could get away with it because of the high ticket item. And now they’re like, oh, what’s going on?

And they’re like See, I wouldn’t I see that as much.

I will I will always I will not I do it on platform CPMs and impression costs. I’m not necessarily more. Other than COVID Haiti, when we were all on our phones and it needs so many to make so much inventory, it was, like, ridiculous. Like, outside of those times, the CPMs, I was just, like, checking all the VPN this morning, right, for everybody and, like, even just good, like, Black Friday tomorrow, it’ll go up tomorrow. But relatively speaking to, like, pre covid or, like, last year?

No. No. Like, not not in our verticals anyway. Obviously, it’s a very small part of the internet, but Yeah.

So I guess, yeah. That’s that’s the like, how do we talk about this to people that might be a good fit as Shane like a little bit more problem aware potentially, a little bit earlier stage.

Because in the in the going out bigger and wider and talking to more people, I feel like we would need to be there, or do we just say like a whole tool around this, like, to be honest?

If that helps. Like, ROI Connector literally solving this problem with Google ads because no everybody’s advertising, but no one knows if they’re making money. And then so we take into account gross margin.

And that was our cell. Like, as soon as you you explain to them, like, the difference between, like, in our space, it’s cost per lead. It’s not cost per acquisition. You have to go a layer back.

And then you have to take into gross margin. Everyone optimizes their own return on ad spend. It’s not real ROI. And as soon as you, like, I would pull up the Google screen and say, they define this as ROI, but it’s not.

Like, you’re you could still lose money and then their eyes light up. Right? They’re like, oh, crap. And then then you sell them a solution.

Which is the tracking. Right? And then we book it up to Google ads. I find that works.

But then there’s pressure too. Right? Because then you gotta You gotta maintain that. Right? Is there any met something curious about, is there any metrics that, the clients responsible for, though?

Like, in our space, it’s it’s, closing ratio. Like, we can do everything right, but if their closing ratio is really crappy, they’re gonna lose money. So we have to work with them on consult of selling and help them build that up. Do you find anything similar in your space?

We do for the selling piece. Like, if they, like, we have some people that do sales, some people that don’t, and they just, like, straight through off a one time sales page. And so we do the opt like, we do all the funnel optimizations that they add touch. So if there’s any, you know, any sales pages upsell, the email sequences, all of that kind of stuff.

We work on improving that because most of them don’t have a very mature most of them don’t even have an experimentation.

Program within their businesses let alone a mature one. So they usually do that really poorly, so we come in and help them with that. So we’re basically kind of iterating more profit into the business. For them over time. And then we have we just we have referral partners for, for selling and things like that. We don’t hang out there, but we do send people off there for for folks that are having struggles with that on their teams.

Sounds like a cool you guys sounds like a really cool service.

You’re offering us a lot of value.

We decided it’s fun.

Yeah. Exactly. Design it’s fun, and then it is.

We decided it’s fun. Well, there’s endless challenges. To it. Right? And and it fits, like, my natural tendencies are, like, I used to be a social worker before I is it this?

I don’t know how that’ll happen. But the, like, I love the relationship part of things, but then I also went to university for data analytics and microbiology and all sciencey stuff. So it’s like the data and the people and the, you know, all of the empathy, all, like, it’s just like this neat little combo of, like, way my brain was made to work, and it just happens to work really well for ads and marketing.

So Isn’t it funny when you show people positive marketing or why they get happy?

It’s so crazy.

But it’s so rare.

You’re like, really That’s why.

I played because it’s like a white plate.

It’s mind blowing in.

Think about like Well, in fact, should be able to run a spreadsheet for people and just show them really simply, like, inputs here, outputs here, understanding, like, all of that stuff.

And then to go, oh, this isn’t actually that hard. And then and then being able to, like, empower them to focus on the, like, the things they have the most control over because certain things like CPMs, Right? While we have some limited control over that, we we don’t ultimately, you know, control audience and auction and all those things. So it’s it’s really cool to be able to say, like, let’s focus here. This is where you actually most impact.

And Yeah.

Yeah.

Mark, good for you. Take it for you.

We’re going, like, ten million though. That’s a, like, that’s a broad stroke. Ten million.

Like, you work with the life coach school.

No.

We do. Yeah. I work with work with school. Yeah.

I don’t know where I saw as you were talking.

I was listening. Don’t get me wrong, but, like, you had front end acquisition as a line. I’m trying to think of, like, and once you’re a LinkedIn profile, and the line is paid social marketing funnels customer acquisition. So I feel like I don’t know. And I noticed in the interest of time, is there would owning front end acquisition for ten million dollar course businesses work or training businesses or coaching businesses or whatever that thing is? Let’s break it. Does it not work at all, Rita?

No. It does, like, most of our our best humans, like, the often start with them between one and three million and then, like, our core group is between ten and twenty or ten and fifty, pardon me, million.

You can say profitable, friends hand acquisition profitable, whatever.

I love profitable. I love profitable.

Okay. That gets me something to work with. I don’t wanna get her on more. I’ll need to go in the woods and quietly have some thought. Yeah.

Okay. Good.

Thank you, everybody.

If anybody else also, it’s mastermindy time. So while my dog barks in the background at the mailman, Feel free to chime in and chat with anything that you’re thinking that can help Rita or anyone. Elias, do you wanna go next?

Yeah. If anybody doesn’t wanna follow-up on Reader’s reach out as question.

Oh, yeah. I’d love to.

Go for it.

Alright. So, my question is kind of a follow-up on what Chris asked about, you know, choosing a nation. Making it our own. So, my question is, what exactly is expected of us when we select an issue?

Let’s say we we figure out that this is this is what we we we like the most in the conversion governing process. And then we find out that there are dozens of other copywriters doing the exact same thing. So, how do Are we expected to, you know, bring something unique in that in that specific niche as well? Because so what happened today is, me and Chris, we hopped on a call today, and we both realized that both of our, thing is message market fit.

So you’re both interested in, you know, nailing that. So then that got me thinking.

Is it is it expected of us that alright. Now that I’ve I know that message market spin is my thing. I’m expected to, you know, give it a spin that nobody else ever has.

Not necessarily. I mean, the spin is kind of you and what you bring there. Like, they are buying into you and likability and all of those persuasive back or does that go on?

It’s it’s kind of like, you know, competition’s good. It means that someone else is doing marketing for you. And, like, you can, you can leverage that too.

So I think, like, so a lot of people are doing it. I didn’t invent the work behind conversion copywriting, direct response, copywriters have done everything that I do since forever. It’s just we added a little more VOC.

If there is something we changed, it’s that, and then we just plunked it over in the tech world, which doesn’t use direct response, like it should still to this day, sadly.

So, no. You don’t have to it doesn’t have to be unique.

It’s good if more people are trying to do similar things. It’s good for marketing. It’s easier to get that. And it probably means that the world is looking for those things. The reason that you’ve landed on message market fit because the world is frustrated with message to market fit. If that’s not the reason, then it’s worth unpacking.

But I’m gonna guess here that that’s the reason. The uniqueness is how you go about it, and that might You can start by just saying, I own this. So what if Chris owns it too? I own this.

And then figure out how you own it and be a thought leader. And as you do that, you’ll very likely stumble upon your way of doing it. It’ll be some research you come across changes something with how you’re thinking. And now you’re like, whoa, I need to add this to my process or whoa, I actually, like, this is a more narrow view of message mark could fit.

And this is what I’m finding that I’m owing as you go. So competition is good. Don’t worry about it. Yeah.

You know, it’s the process. Right? It’s it’s your it’s how you solve their problem. It’s like, do your conversion copywriting is there’s a there’s a three step process. Right? It’s a proven process. Is it three or five now?

I think we’ve added to right?

Seven now?

The seven? No. Is this still three?

The core is three.

Okay.

Yes.

But I’ve seen people try to change that and build off that, but everyone reverts like, even when people call conversion copywriting, it’s still no. Like, it’s a three step process. Here’s what you do, and people try to change it. But that’s an opportunity, like, even if it’s competitive, like, say Chris Christopher’s in there.

It’s like, what’s he doing? No. Here’s my process, my five step or three step, and it’s gonna get better results than the competition. Right?

Because then it’s like an apples to oranges comparison, if that helps.

Yeah. Yeah.

And make it into a nice graphic and do all the other stuff.

And how you bring into life in your authority building. Do you have a more engaging newsletter that talks to certain people in different ways? When you get on a podcast, how do people hear you? Like, it’ll turn into because we’re all individual personalities. Your personality matters who you show up as is gonna be a big part of why people choose to listen to you eventually buy your book, invite you on stages, things like that. Yeah.

Correct me, if I’m wrong, you know, it’s like market sophistication as well. Right? If you focus on all of these credibility boosters and trust, like, everyone has it, like, as seen on and you know, recommended by, but it’s that’s an opportunity for you to sell your process and then leverage all of this trust and, like, ability to reinforce that. Right, why it’s better than the competition. That’s your opportunity. Right?

That’s what I would do.

Yeah. Agreed.

Yeah. Cool.

Alright.

Johnson’s note taker just told us there’s only a few minutes left in this meeting. I can go over for those who are stuck So don’t worry about it if you’re like, I need to talk more about this.

Any other questions?

Who would like to oh, wait. Esther Grace, go ahead and then we’ll do Stacy, and then Randall.

I just had one question.

So how much should the products or productize services or services you want to sell in the future, influence what we choose or sort of one thing. Like, if someone is deciding to be a messaging expert, for instance, that already kind of boxes it into. You kind of have to work with the companies one on one to figure out their messaging.

So that’s just one thought I wanted to ask you.

I wouldn’t worry too much about that yet.

That’s, like, it’s it’s quite execution level. So try to stay strategy level for now, so up. What what am I going to own? And then out of that, you’ll start to be able to shape what that is, but I wouldn’t let execution influence strategy start with the strategy, the the the what you’re going to own, then you can get into how that is brought to life in your marketing and in the products that you sell. Is that help, Esther Grace?

Yes. That helps. Yeah.

It it will mean that. I mean, in a lot of cases, like so for me, I don’t look at product type services as, like, strategic offerings. I’m like, practice services are a really great way to grab some cash when you want cash. Or if you’re like, hey, I only wanna work like, a week in the summer, like, at for the four summer months, I’m gonna put in a max of a week of, like, working with clients.

So I might sell a VIP week. But that’s not strategic. That’s just like reacting to what I want in life. It’s not going to shape a roadmap necessarily.

A recommendations report, if you’re a messaging analyst, you are gonna have a hard time escaping, delivering messaging reports. Like, you’re gonna have to do it versus being someone who comes in and focuses only on editing. They’ll never have to worry about a recommendations report. They’ll just, like, do the work.

So but think about that later. Unless, it’s so critical to you that you never do a messaging recommendations report, in which case I’d say, well, then don’t do message strategy. Like, you won’t want to be involved in that. But you’ll already know if you, like, hate doing something, And I think that will, like, automatically filter up the things that would require that you do that.

And if it doesn’t, we’ll we’ll get there. But mean, I think that’s that’ll be an edge case. Stacy?

Yes. Okay.

I wanted to say something instead of I’ve just been sitting and commenting on everybody else and not talked about myself. So, I am not, don’t have my thoughts super well organized, so I’m gonna ramble a little bit. But my primary goal right now is has to do with my software company, which I definitely know that I want to make that the software, the Eai software for marketing professionals.

Okay.

So that I’m absolutely certain of. When I’m kind of not certain of is how I’m gonna interweave doing that with maintaining my my personal brand.

I do I’m the thing that I’m known for is doing all the things. I’m a polymath, so I I am an ex expert in many things. I have I have tons of authority in multiple areas. I have tons of original intellectual property, frameworks, I have written a book.

I’ve, you know, got lots of marquee clients great reviews, all all that stuff. I already have, like, the, you know, celebrity status thing, but because I am a polymath and do many different things. I’ve never been known for one thing other than doing all the things. Okay.

So my my client My personal client lifetime value is, you know, six to seven figures per client.

In tech, minimum project size is usually a hundred thousand. Right now, I’ve the the for the past year, I’ve been mostly focusing on my software. And then I’ll do, like, a twenty or thirty thousand dollar copywriting or digital project every month or other month kind of interspersed with that. So I already have everything all productized standardized pricing for my copywriting services.

All that stuff. So I I guess I’m just wondering, you know, do I can I can I say both things at once, or do I just need to focus on being the software company or marketing festivals for now while I’m growing that? And I should mention also that my my litmus test for the company was I started it just with, like, ten people were the first customers. And I said, okay.

If I can get this to a hundred people paying a hundred bucks a month while it’s in beta with no marketing and no giving them anything for referring other people simply by word-of-mouth because people are telling other people because they really love it. Then I know that I have something here, and that’s where I am now. So I’ve just hit a a hundred customers. So I have ten thou ten k MRR right now.

My next goal is to get to a hundred k MRR. So that’s where I am open to whatever anybody wants to say.

To celebrate Good for you.

Yeah. That is. That’s amazing.

That is awesome.

Awesome for yourself in particular.

Good for you.

I will share this story with you and, hopefully, it will tell you what my answer for that question is then we can go around and share.

I’ve probably told this before because I’ll never forget this. I was in a mastermind with Nathan Berry, founder of ConvertKit, before when ConvertKit was in its earliest stages.

He was known for his, book called Authority, and, he was a designer. He did, like, design stuff.

So we knew each other for a couple years. And we were in this mastermind, and he had just launched ConvertKit. It was maybe a year old. It wasn’t making any money wasn’t promoting it yet.

And we were sitting around in this little, like, session in Las Vegas, the mastermind participants, And someone said to him, Nathan, when are you gonna launch your authority course next? And he said, I’m never launching it again. And we’re all like, what are you talking about? It pulls in, like, a hundred grand every time you do it?

What are you talking about? Of course, you’re going to? And he said, no, I’m all in on ConvertKit.

And now it’s worth nearly a billion dollars.

I don’t think you can do more than one thing at a time successfully.

You you can’t Elon Musk maybe.

But then it fucks with you clearly.

So you can’t do more than one thing without being absolute wild exception. Now Stacy, you might be an absolute wild exception. I wouldn’t wanna put my money on being the absolute wild exception though.

I would say if Well, I will say I I am an exception in to to some degree.

And and I have founded or cofounded nine companies.

So just to, you know, six, seven, and and eight figure just everything you said, and I think that’s wonderful.

I’m saying the people who get the most out of the thing focus on the thing. So if you can afford to and, obviously, Nathan had to go through a lot of, hey, ups and challenges along the way. He’s like, I wish I had taken out a loan back when I was making a hundred grand every time I did a launch because now I could use that loan, but the bank give me a loan because I have this freaking startup and they don’t think that ten thousand MRR is anything to write home about. So I get there will be a hard times.

But you ask the question for a reason. I think your resistance is that you’re a polymath, and you have seen success with doing lots of things. You’re like, why can’t I keep doing lots of things. And the world will tell you whether you can or whether you can, but you asked the question, and I think that’s a big part of it.

I think a part of you knows you’re going to have to focus or something has to change that’s not having to do directly with focusing. If I were you, you have money in the bank and you can afford it and you’ve got good signals that your software is bad ass and we’re in an age of AI.

The only thing stopping you is that you’re good at lots of things, and that could be the stumbling point. Yeah.

And my and my personal, my real, you know, underlying goal is that I do wanna I’ve never I haven’t built a nine figure business yet, so that’s my my thing that I wanna do. So Yeah.

Are you involved in these other businesses, or have you sort of delegated it off, created your system?

That that’s been over a number of years. I I don’t there’s one that I’m still loosely involved with, but I’m not active in the company. So, no. I don’t have any demands on my time for any of those other things.

Yeah. Sounds like you and I. I’m I’m in the same boat, like, a bunch of different stuff going. Like, I lucked out in a lot of way where I just I created systems and delegated and and stepped back.

But it’s tough. Right? I think is, like, we’re in our heart. We’re entrepreneurs. Right? And we we have bright and shiny.

See opportunity. We go after it, but that’s the trap. Right? Lack of focus as well.

Right? So I’ve been there. I hear you.

Cool. Alright. Who was up next? A Randall, you were up next. Yeah.

Thanks. So I am going to, pick landing pages. I guess, persuasion for landing pages.

Right.

And I’m working my way through, ten x again.

And, I so I guess and the other things I’m working on are, are the persuasion, big biography that, Vry helped me put together. So you know, getting the background work on that. I guess one of the things I’d be looking for somebody else is also thinking landing pages is, a copy buddy for the letter from the second module.

So if anybody remembers that exercise, I think, What did you you had a different name for it, but you took the letter from admin at Find Network?

Yeah. Exactly. Yep. The letter. Yeah.

Yeah. So, yeah, I guess the challenge for me is that I am still full time, with this start up. And I I think I can you know, put together my framework, make some tweaks and do some more landing page work for this company for now. And then it’s just a matter of timing and what I decide to do in twenty twenty four.

But, but I’m thinking that, you know, I I guess I go from being an employee to a contractor with this company as I’m building more clients or perhaps even before. So I’m I’m in position to, Yeah. Build that authority. That’s gonna be difficult to do, you know, while working for, the start of what dare I say, some whimsical moments from leadership.

Yeah. Yeah. That’s cool.

And as we go, it might be like, is this a situation where you can own the entirety of persuasive landing pages, or is it like persuasive landing pages for x, x grade or whatever that I mean.

I’m thinking tech for now, but, Yeah.

That’s The early stage, is it like series b?

Do you have, like, do you is there a group you like to I like series b? I like working with series be tech companies. That’s why I mentioned them.

There’s just something different going on there. So it might be worth just, like, thinking through.

Yeah.

Because the problem is Nice. There’s a lot of work for me to do still, but That’s cool though.

And you were looking for a copy buddy, someone to review your letter?

Yes.

If somebody else is thinking about landing pages, that’d that’d be great or if somebody just wants to take a look.

You know, different case.

So, yeah, copy feedback.

Alright.

Is it paid or organic traffic?

What’s that?

Is it paid or organic traffic like landing pages?

Well, this is relatively new for me. So, I’m I’m I’m an aspiring monomath unlike Stasis.

Abby, did you put up your hand to look at the letter? Oh, wait. Sorry. You’re just on mute. Sorry.

Sorry. I said I’d be really happy to go over it. I’m pretty harsh.

Nice.

That’s great.

That’s great. I’ve got a a deep masochistic street. So that sounds great.

Yeah.

I’d be I’d be I’d be really happy to go over it.

Give me give me a week, Abby, but that’s awesome. Thank you.

Excellent. Sweet. Thanks. Okay. Cool. Thanks, Randall.

Alafaya ish.

I think that’s right. Isn’t it? No.

It’s Olivia. Oh, yeah. Okay. Okay. I think it’ll be easier easier for you because my nine my name like, all these script apps transcribe visit Olivia.

So it’s very similar to you guys.

It sounds like Olivia. Okay. Okay. That helps. Yeah. Thanks.

So I just wanted to get, like, all your great greens on what I’ve been thinking and what what what I think the setback is.

So as I mentioned earlier, I want to own humor copywriting.

And for now, I wanna get started with the funnels and course creator space.

Now what I, like, the last time the questions Stacy asked is, like, how how do you communicate the end benefit? And then I I I read something really interesting with stick with me is when humor fades away when someone is exposed to the joke, like, more than one time. And I was thinking it’s this similar with messaging. Like, when when the ten k dream was launched, like, everybody wanted that. But now, it it seems like a red flags.

Like, maybe someone would be genuine, but whenever we see someone saying, oh, I’ll, like, make you ten k in a month or so. Unless that person has public civil rights of your authority, it seems like a red flag now because everyone seems to be talking about that.

So I I kind of am thinking that I want to use humor in a way to say that whatever messaging you’ve been sharing, it will it will it will stand out because it will not be set in a in a it will be set in a different way. I wanna add an example to that in the chat.

Okay. Great. I read that to myself. Sorry.

No problem. So the idea is, like, Like, then can I, like, own it? My question is, is it is it that big that I can go and say, okay. Like, can I make an entire business out of saying that?

Okay. I’m and then what are what are people who say that? Okay. My business is a US business, and I cannot like, how do I tackle that objection?

Because humor doesn’t only mean that, okay, I cannot work with serious business. It actually just means that we have a different take on what you’ve been saying till date.

Oh, sorry.

No. No. And something that I, like, I I love comedy, and, I think this is a a really cool area to go into.

But way back when I was, like, researching about the psychology of comedy and something that came up, and it just feels relevant to what you were saying.

Is that, a key component of comedy is, and and what makes something funny is surprise. It’s it’s it’s the setup, and and the punch line is a surprise. It’s it’s leading in one direction, and then it goes another, and that tickles our brains and makes us stuff. So if you, you know, you you’re talking about how do you position it as something that, companies need, I mean, it’s it’s and and it makes you stand out.

I mean, that’s exactly what comedy does. It it’s a surprising way of presenting something, that people haven’t expected. So if you and there’s, I mean, I think there’s studies out there that that support this. So there’s a there’s a ton of content you could you could put out there around that that helps your leads understand why comedy would help you, help them make more money?

Is is that what it’s about making? Is that the ultimate goal, like, using comedy in your copy is gonna lead to more conversions and that’s gonna lead to more sales. That’s the is it? Okay.

Yes. That is and and to my surprise, like, I was going through some reports recently, and it said that ninety five percent of consumers ask brands to be funny but only five percent of brands meet that need.

So there’s, like, the this nine sorry.

Data to support this? Like, to support it? Yes.

Yes. Yes.

And, like, there there are people reporting more sales through humor, and there are also reports on that. I’ve actually included one of one of the reports in my retread as well. So I know there is a huge gap But I’m just curious that why aren’t brands doing that? Like, if there’s so much need, like, what’s what’s stopping them and Are there any objections? Like, are people saying I need that? Versus they don’t need that, but they just see say that they need that?

Like They don’t know.

Marketers aren’t funny though. Like, marketers aren’t funny, and most brands aren’t funny, and people reviewing copy aren’t funny. So it’s, like, it’s clear why it’s not getting out there. When you try to be funny, it usually backfires on you or falls flat.

And everyone’s, like, that was awkward. So I think that’s part of it. But I do think further what John said, I don’t know that funny has to be the thing because it’s scary. Because you’re like, but will it fall?

Like, everything. There’s a reason most of us will never get on stage until a joke.

It’s intimidating.

So it’s one thing to say, okay. You can outsource that to me. But I feel like the surprising angle is potentially more interesting, more evergreen, bigger opportunities to scale that with cool companies and it might also force you outside of just comedy. Leanna Patch has been a comedy copywriter for several years and maybe more to come, but it does feel like to me, I’m like, well, the surprising there’s also other ways to be surprising that’s still emotional.

Like, the surprise of a tearful email, not saying that, not saying melodrama or anything, but, like, there are there are lots of ways to be surprising that you could help companies explore for those who are like, humor’s not our gem. Like, we’re saved the children.

We’re not going to be using humor at any point, obviously. And you could say, well, they’re not my audience then, but this is just an example.

Is there another way to be surprising that you could unlock for them because that could be interesting. And secondly, I will add before I let others talk because I’m talking to a blue star. Doesn’t need to convert. When we think about the whole part, the whole process of building a customer through marketing, The pieces you add on to make that customer come to life to transition a person into a customer.

Emotion happens along there and it doesn’t have to be the final step. It can be at different parts in that. It can be top of funnel. It can be middle, and sure it can be bottom.

But I wouldn’t be in a rush to tie it to conversion. It’s a happy outcome if you get a conversion.

But I don’t know that you have to focus on that sort of growth. It could be growth really nicely at top of funnel as well.

But I don’t enjoy top of funnel. I’ve tried that, and I really love the sales part. I’m good at that. Like, I’m good when it comes to money and making money.

This is I I’ve yet to test if humor helps there. Like, I’ve not worked like, I’m currently working on the sales page, and I will be testing it on that. To see how well it lands.

But when when I was going through some of Liana’s work, and I was just, like, her recent, ecom project, And what I’ve realized is humor doesn’t necessarily need to be jokes and copy. It just needs to be, like, you know, some elements and fragments of comedy. And sometimes it’s not even funny. It’s just how well it because as the more I’m studying comedy, I’m seeing how well aligned it is with conversion copy principles.

It just adds that screen writing part, like, I think, which even why it does, like, it it it just adds to that. And screenwriting has humor in it.

In some forms.

So I’ll share some very brief experience here, because I love infusing comedy. And also the resistance points that I anticipate and or have heard over the years, right, is like it’s too much of a departure from our brand voice. Right? And the second you start trying to infiltrate such a sacred thing that feels so static there’s naturally gonna be resistance.

And I know you just had, like, you’re not into top funnel. I’ve had so much fun infusing comedy Top funnel, which are isolated tests. Right? Like, you’re gonna get very little pushback of saying can we test this ad set.

Right? And I remember the best performing comedy piece I wrote was so isolatable. It was like a two minute or Yeah. We created three versions of it.

Sixty seconds, ninety seconds or two minutes, and it was a total spoof on the whole, like, my father was a farmer and a father before he. Right? And it was, like, a riff on one of those, like, old school commercials before that industry. Right?

And it was their best performing ad for months. And, of course, it’s tied to ROI, right, because you’re measuring all the metrics from that ad set.

So isolatable. Right? They don’t need to change their brand voice, their tone, all the things.

Another place to test if that’s very isolatable. Right? Like, emails. Right? I think, like, over our launches, like, even with Joe, right, we’ve had a few that were, like, outliers from the traditional copy Hackard’s voice. Right? And it was easy enough to just put it in there without changing the tone of everything.

So that would be my recommendation to overcome resistance is just have them in isolatable areas where it doesn’t feel like it takes over the brand voice as a whole?

And what are your thoughts on, like, working with brands who has like, poo pourri is coming to my exam my my mind who have some sort of, like, fun element included, and then because what I, in my research, like, currently last week, ever since I’ve been thinking about re threat, is that human writers are very scarce.

Because half of them are taken by television. And then, like, in marketing, why actually that that gap is there as Joe mentioned? Because The very scarce, and I’m not saying I’m great at it. I also be learning at it as I’ll build the expertise, but it’s just I’m inclined towards it.

So I’m just thinking, will there be a very small market if I only target brands that are already fun?

I mean, smaller, right, than if you were able to create, like, state or test for brands that were, like, humor curious. Right? You definitely don’t wanna have, like, you know, companies that are gonna have folded arm refusal every time you bring it up. Right? They’re to be some degree of openness for that sales cycle to even be worth your time.

But yeah, like e comm startups could be really interesting. Right? When you look at the track record of companies that launched brand off of bunny videos, one of my good friends, like, launched an eight figure ecomm brand. I think it was, like, twenty sixteen dollar dollar shave club, dollar something club and, like, yeah, dollar dollar beard club.

Sorry. It was the spoof on dollar shave club, so dollar beard club. Right? And that started with a funny video.

Right? Like, there was no brand. Nothing. They shot this video. It went viral because it was funny.

And then they’re like, oh, fuck. We have a fulfillment problem. Like, how am I gonna get all this, like, beard oil to people?

So, yeah, I think, like, where are people gonna be most open to the conversation? I think ecomm startups, right, you said, like, poopery? Was that the name of it?

Poopery. Yeah.

Squatty potty. Right? Like, all these e com startups, like, exploded, right, off of funny. Yeah. Exactly.

But let let’s take it easy on all these. We’ve named two. So there are not that many brands out there that are willing to go all in on comedy, which is, again, for me, that’s a that’s a pause.

I I would pause before saying, I’m the comedy copywriter.

I think that this is the kind of thing where you scale back and say, like, what’s the, but what is it? Like, either what’s really good about comedy and then figure that out.

Or what’s like the outcome of comedy? Are you relatable brands?

Are you a emotion? Like, what else is it? I vote I I wouldn’t if I were I wouldn’t go all in on comedy. I would find a way to make comedy what you deliver, but not call it that.

I wanna add something. Can I?

Every yeah, please.

If you suppose you want to own conversion comedy, first of all, you have the issue of proving that that’s a viable thing. Right? So I think what you have is an opportunity to AB test something with comedy and something without comedy and see if, in fact, the comedy does give it a lift in which case, then you have data, and you don’t have to worry about overcoming your resistance problem as much anymore because you can say you know, here’s what I did, and here’s the results. You know?

Exactly. Like, a a wrench and say, okay. Like, let’s define the data though. Right? You can, you can if you increase conversion rate doesn’t mean you’re gonna increase sales. Right? Like, are you at what level are you gonna show, like Right.

Well, it has to be a well structured test, not not one structured to prove your point.

And Yeah.

Has with bias built in.

Sure.

I would even suggest, like, maybe just don’t don’t worry about this stuff. Don’t AB Tessa. I think of like Laura Belgrade and she never calls herself a funny copywriter, but she’s funny and people read her work. And she said, I think in her the six figure book, she’s like, when people see your copy and they love it, they all hire you because they want to overlap yourself. So maybe you don’t need like, say I’m a funny copywriter, maybe, like, take Joe’s advice, take a step back, but just be funny and those brands come to you. Like, you don’t need to start that conversation. Like, they will want you to write like you write yourself for them.

Yeah.

Because I think Sorry.

No. Go ahead.

Well, I was just gonna say Go ahead.

No. Let’s let Johnson go and then you can go.

I was just gonna say it’s I think we kind of touched upon it. It’s it seems like comedy is, it’s the same, problem with comedy for brands as it is for real people.

It is super high risk and potentially high reward, but the the the damage you you could potentially inflict to, to, to perception of a brand.

If you make a go out there and you do a funny campaign and everyone thinks it’s absolutely lame.

You’re you’re gonna be, that that’s a really risky proposition. Whereas, I think, like, what Joe was saying earlier, you know, there’s something broader there. There’s something with a with a with a broader appeal and and something that’s much safer. If you can tie it into, I don’t know. Yeah. Like the psychology of, catching people’s attention. I mean, yeah, you could do that with humor, but you like Joe said, you could also do that with emotional storytelling, and I’m sure there’s a bunch of other things.

Okay. No.

I I I I love what you all said.

Okay.

Go for it.

So, so I I love what Abby said, but I’m just thinking that if, like, Laura, since she has this huge prime, but to in order to stand out, don’t I need, like, word to describe it. Like, if I just go and say, I’m a conversion operator for course creators, don’t I just blend in the crowd verse versus if I say, I’m a conversion command director for course creators who plans in the conversion principles or uses the frameworks of comedy, not necessarily, like, have humor or a scotty, then there’s more chance for me to get notice.

You you need something to own. It’s absolutely true. We’re just saying rethink comedy as the word.

So it might be like surprise driven conversion be writing or unexpected or something like that where the idea is you’re going to unlock new growth for people by having unexpected ways of messaging x where unexpected could be funny. And maybe that’s your default, and that’s like what you actually do focus on. But people don’t need to hear that.

Personality, I think, and then good point, it might be not quite enough because personality sounds like you’re gonna come in and just do brand voice or something like that.

But that could be it too. But I would say explore something, like, kind of mind map comedy. So you put comedy in the middle and you just start, like, shooting off different words around it and see what, like, might fly, try out different ones in your LinkedIn profile in that line under your name, just whatever it is, if it’s personality driven conversion copywriting or the world’s most surprising conversion copywriting or whatever that is that you want to do. Yeah.

There’s a whole industry on this. I’m noticing, like, there’s proven humor frameworks and formulas that people use. I didn’t realize that.

Yeah. Yeah. Cool. Cool.

Okay. So work on that and then let us know everybody who we will talk do after this. But, thanks for those who are sticking on as well.

We have Abby then Adnan.

Cool. So yeah, I feel like this is a very Joe question as you dealt with this in your business. But so, yeah, my thing is they wanna ever agree I love it. I believe in it. Like, I totally wanna, like, make it the solution, of course, Grace is you want passive income.

But My audience is just all copywriters. Like, it’s like ninety percent copywriters, and I know, like, because, you know, I’ve did where I get featured is, like, copy hackers in the copywriters club and I’m probably doing, like, the world authority building. But I feel like I have this audience there and so many people are resting me for coaching. I’m like, Maybe I should be monetizing this, but then I don’t wanna distract myself on day one evergreen because I am so passionate about it and I really believe in it.

So, yeah, how do you Like, I guess this is maybe this is more an execution question, but how do you navigate it when, like, the the distraction thing, like, do you just stick with your thing? Or do you are you like, okay. I can have two things? I mean, that just feels greedy, but do you have any advice?

Like, I have some advice.

Yes.

We we do have that situation.

I would say, why are you publishing on copy hackers? Why are you doing things for copywriters if you don’t want to copywriters.

So there’s that to consider, but it’s like, well, because I did it. So it’s happened. Okay. Fine.

Have something you can serve to audiences.

You can. It’s just harder, and you’ll probably have to hire people in there even if it’s like VAs and stuff like that to handle it.

If copywriters are already finding you, One, do you like working with copywriters?

Okay. Good. So they don’t take energy from you. They give energy to you. Okay. Good. So that’s good.

So kind of table that. And then there’s the evergreen side of things, if you had to choose. Copywriters or evergreen course businesses?

I think it’s, like, two c two, like, cake of pizza. Like, Bye. I mean I have to choose.

Yeah. I guess.

I have to, but today, you know, ultimately, they wanna agree because I do believe, like, the copywriters will find me anyway.

Like, copywriters still buy my course.

I just I feel like there’s this opportunity there. And I’m like, I have this audience and I’m not monetizing it. And should I monetize it, or should I just focus on my thing?

Or both. Right? Like, you can. Depends how you monetize it. It depends what your calendar looks like. Depends, you know, what your priorities are on a day to day basis.

So if you were like, okay, every Monday is my day to work with copywriters, that’s it. That could be a way to approach it. Right? Like, it’s really tack ago.

Like, it’s way down at execution rather than strategy. Like, Monday is when I post on LinkedIn to copywriters, and I take my three copywriters that I coach, and we have sessions together. And that’s my Monday, and I’ve monetized it because I’m coaching these copywriters on that day. The rest of the week is focused on Evergreen course business stuff.

And that’s where you wouldn’t any longer publish anything on copy hackers, unless it’s talking to Evergreen Course creators, which wouldn’t make sense.

But then you start, like, focusing on writing the book on Evergreen courses. And I would say that’s where, like you say, the copywriters will find you. They do. They just find you. So Yeah. You can serve both, but you’ll need to make one a priority.

Yeah. Yeah.

I think that that’s answers there, and I’ll just leave it there and take that on board. Thank you.

Okay. Cool. Thanks, Adna.

Know we’re pastime, so I’ll I’ll try to be quick.

So I I’ve tried to work through things that I have done and I like to do. So and I’ve narrowed it down, and maybe you can tell me, like, if I’m just all over the place here, but SaaS emails, SaaS web copy and UX. So these are three things. And then I listed a bunch of things that I can kind of offer or would like to offer.

So am I being too broad too broad here or should or or should we be more specific into like, hey, I do SaaS pricing pages for web for websites or like If you say I do SaaS pricing pages, it’s really easy to own that and to master it too. Like, Okay.

Easy.

And I say easy not you can do it in ten hours. I say easy. You can take the next two years to do it and be masterful by the end of it. And over that time, share things and prove your expertise as you go. Right? So that’s easy compared to trying to be all SaaS, which could take your entire lifetime.

So that’s the easy option.

Okay. Is that something you wanna do? Because honestly, I did this certification program for SaaS copywriters and pricing pages.

Somehow, nobody came out of it caring about pricing pages. And I’m like, they’re the most interesting thing in SaaS in my opinion.

Like, what I’m actually working on handing that.

That’s the those samples for for the certifications.

So Oh, good.

I think page is one of the things that I was like, hey, this is something I I like to do. So Yeah.

Like, it’s the site of conversion. I know what it’s crazy to meet. And then there’s the customer, the visitor facing versus the actual customer, like there’s two different ones that you can work with. Anyway, there’s so much you could do there.

I would say if you can focus on one thing because there are a lot of SaaS copywriters out there. I don’t think there are enough of them, and I definitely don’t think there are enough great ones out there, but there are a lot of SaaS copywriters out there. So I would focus on a thing. If it’s SaaS, I would go more narrow than that and identify, like, which are the ones you like writing, and then which are the ones that people struggle with.

The most. And by people, I do mean your ideal client. So if it’s like sprout social, I wanna work with sprout social or companies that are fifty million to five hundred million a year, which is really big range, but still, then you’d see, like, what are the emails that they struggle with the most. And then you could easily, I think, focus in on just getting really good at those emails.

Don’t even know what they are, but if you could find that out and work on it and then just build authority on that.

That’s it. That’s like, job’s done, boss. You have a whole business now.

Do you think it it it it will take away from my focus if if I was to say, okay.

Let’s say SaaS pricing pages and just onboarding emails for, I don’t know, trial to pay it or or or like retention emails.

Connect the two. So if you’re like, I like pricing pages and I like emails, do they naturally fit together in a way where then the the two puzzle pieces click together become a new thing and you name that new thing.

Okay. Okay.

Does that make sense?

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Because, I mean, if you’re in that free to sorry, trial to paid, you’re gonna end up landing on that pricing page anyways.

Yeah. Okay. Exactly.

Yep.

Thank you.

Yeah. Totally. Cool. Fun. Yeah. Excited. I just want someone to own pricing pages already. Jillian.

That’s so funny. I just did the pricing pages course this week and I was like, this is so and I put that to my my list too. Like, I was like, oh, maybe I’ll just do pricing pages. I see a question. Like, I was like, can you just own, like, something like a page or a deliverable or something.

So that yeah. It’s fine that you brought that up, but there was another one I wanted to ask you about because I’ve I did the same thing that Adnan just mentioned is, like, what are the things that I’ve done? What do I like doing? And I’m kinda broke down possibilities from there.

So I had my deliverables that was one, but then I also have about research, and I’ve really only done customer interviews because that doesn’t surveys haven’t made sense for the clients I’ve worked with. And I like that, but then I was trying to think about how to narrow that down. And it came across I didn’t even know about this, but I wanted to get your thoughts on, like, lost customer interviews or lost customer now.

Oh, cool.

Is that a thing? Because I just haven’t heard I had never even heard of that and I was like, oh, I was trying to think of like a more specific angle than just customer interviews, which everyone does.

Yeah.

So I don’t know. Why is your thoughts on that? Are people doing that?

Is that, like, what’s I don’t know.

If people are doing it, they’re not making noise about it.

So is that because it’s not valuable, or is it What what got you excited when you heard about it?

I think just because I never hear anyone talking about it and I’m like, oh, this seems like it could be like another piece that’s maybe missing.

But I don’t know because I don’t have much experience in that space.

Yeah.

I’m thinking about, like, focusing more on SaaS. I’ve only worked with a few SaaS companies, but I’m thinking of making that more my foot, like, my checking out my focus. So I’ve been trying to research. So I don’t know that much about SaaS that I haven’t worked in it. So I’ve just been doing some research, but don’t know, like, what really makes sense for them.

Yeah. Shane, what were you gonna say to Jillian?

No. I love that. I think that’s super that’s exactly the way to think. I think that’s brilliant. I like it personally.

Yeah. Yeah. It’s really so okay. And then if we try to break it, like, how is it possibly a bad idea?

Outside of that you haven’t done it, that’s fine. That’s totally fine. You’ll learn how you’ll you can find.

What’s bad is I would say one, a assumption that people might make, a business might make is we lost them because they’re a bad fit. So I don’t wanna know anything about them anyway. They’re a bad fit.

Do you have to overcome that?

Which you can do, with thought leadership. Anybody else have ways to break this idea.

Yeah. Use that data to especially when you’re getting into paid traffic, use that data to to not target. Right? You need to know who you’re targeting versus who you’re not. That’s that’s an angle you can go with it.

Okay.

So let’s support it here.

Ways to do, webinar negative webinar survey.

Or interview. Like, sorry, write a webinar negative web so people who left negative webinar reviews, and she turned it into a whole email So the thing if it’s about the, like, you you ask that if they want to lose it, maybe there could be something that could be talked about there.

Anyone else? I think go explore it, Jilliam. Yeah.

I think that’s the the product team is gonna be excited about that. You know? That’s who that’s who cares about that. Is more than marketing? It’s the product team.

And product has more money than marketing. So that’s good.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You can close more projects for more money.

It looks like Chris says he does SAS cancellation interview surveys sometimes.

Harder to get them to provide feedback, but really cool.

Yeah, curious to hear.

Yeah.

Maybe I’ll follow-up with Chris about that.

Yeah. The harder it is, the more you can charge as long as it’s, like, high value. Like, what are they going to get out of learning about these lost customers.

Right.

Yeah.

Yeah. And like would it be I guess that would kind of move me away from copy would just be more like recommendation. It’d be more like findings and recommendations. Would that be what would come out of that?

Or I guess would it be copy recommendations too?

Don’t necessarily I mean, what do you you can go as far as you want to. Yeah. So if you wanna stop at just making recommendations, you can you can do that. Yeah. Just be more consultative rather than, which is, again, a good thing execution just never makes as much money as consulting strategy.

Yeah. I like it. Thanks for yeah.

You could even be the person who, like, finds, like, turns all the negative stuff into gold, like, find all their bad reviews and all, but just find, like, everything that’s bad about the company and find ways to turn that into value.

Cool. Awesome.

Anybody else have anything? I know we’re thirty minutes over. Anything in order to get you to a place where you can say here’s what I’m going to own.

We’re good. Okay.

So Very helpful.

Good. Wonderful.

So I will post just in general, in our general channel, in the Slack group, I’ll, post where to add in your one thing, just like declare it, state it, it’s your thing. And then we can start digging more into that stuff as we move into December.

Cool.

Alright y’all. Cool. If you have any questions, pop them in slack as always. I don’t think we have any more sessions this week.

But, yeah, we’ll we’ll follow-up more next week. And I want you to feel really good about what you’ve landed on So if you’re leaving this session still unclear or if, like, a couple days passed and you’re like, I don’t know. Don’t keep that to yourself. Bring it out and we can we can work through it with you. Okay?

Alright. Thanks, everyone.

Have a good rest of your day.

Bye, everyone.

Bye.

Your Inner Authority (Part I)

Your Inner Authority (Part I)

Transcript

The inner authority, this is gonna be a three part what I would call a deep craft series, on writing copy that builds trust compels sales, sales, and, create some of those holy f. It’s like they read my mind moments. This has been, like, the feedback I’ve loved most in my copy career, Like, it’s not even necessarily, like, the raw numbers and the data. I just love it when this feedback comes back. It’s, like, that you read my mind, like, are you literally, like, spying on me? Type of feedback.

And why I’ve always loved that feedback is it makes me feel like I’ve really done my job from both an art and a science perspective. Right? So, like, the data is the hard data. Right?

Like, we get our voice voice of customer data. It’s there. It’s on a spreadsheet. We analyze it.

We review it. We rank it.

But the art part is where I’ve loved, living in in the copy world, like, going deeper. Like, what is this VOC trying to say, or what would they say if they felt totally fully expressed. Right?

And that’s what we’re gonna talk about today is, like, more of the art side. So we’re gonna get our data, but we’re also gonna go deeper and see what it is pointing to that isn’t necessarily fully expressed because I feel like that’s where, like, we get those really golden moments that most other copywriters just wouldn’t, right, because it requires a bit of artful leap to pierce, beneath that surface. So that’s gonna be today, but it’s going to be part of a three series. So part one, today, deep BOC, three Pearson queues to go beneath the surface.

Those questions are in the workbook, and we’ll review them today. And the kind of copy or insights that they yield, in March, I’m excited about this one. I haven’t taught this one. Anywhere yet.

So I call it shadow copy, and it’s essentially how to balance both the virtuous slash acceptable as well as the forbidden slash not acceptable, but equally motivating desires to elicit your prospects full range of FES, I need this, how to see them fully in their full spectrum of desires and motivators, and some very specific and nuanced languaging to, yeah, to accomplish that. So that’s gonna be in March. I’m really excited about that. And an April full spectrum sensing to bring your copy to life really, bringing those five senses into play, weaving them together to create just a much more embodied experience instead of just a fully intellectual, mental experience of your copy.

So, yeah, I’m really excited about this three part series.

And then a little definition, you know, the inner authority. That is one who I would define as someone who knows the prospect better than they know themselves. We’ve probably all heard that before, exposes and illuminates that which the prospect is unable or unwilling to divulge our or articulate themselves. Now this is the one that I feel like there’s so much opportunity to dive deeper in. Right? So focus in on that one exposes and illuminates that which the prospect is either unable meaning they’re unaware of it.

These are still things that are less conscious to them or unwilling, right, meaning that there’s still some form of shame or embarrassment around divulging it. So there’s a lot of opportunity to see our prospect fully in places that they don’t even see themselves or they don’t wanna see themselves.

And then, of course, through that, builds stress and resonance through the damn r u in my head phenomenon, which is a very real phenomenon. And I’ve experienced it many times myself as a reader, and it usually does have me pulling up my credit card because damn they get me, and now they got my money. So there we go. So one bias I’ve encountered It was the no one gets me bias.

So in my experience, this isn’t hard data I haven’t done. You know, grabbed school level studies on this, but, it’s appeared quite a bit over the last ten years of doing this, is that most people have a bias towards believing that no one can or would fully get them their anxieties and their desires. So what I’ve seen in VOC is that in people’s, expression, whether it’s, you know, interviews or surveys, they’ll express things in a way that they feel the person asking would understand and not necessarily their fully uncensored cathartic mindblurred version of it. So typically, in that scenario, like and maybe you can even think back to when you filled out surveys yourself or participated in interviews, One typically favors being understood and accepted, especially if they don’t have a close relationship with that person, they favor being understood and accepted and approved of more than feeling fully and authentically expressed.

Now this isn’t universal. There’s some people who right off the bat, like, they just seize that opportunity to just, like, say all the things, but typically, and I do this myself, if I’m responding to a survey, and I look at my output of it, you know, even that typical question of, you know, what motivated you to buy today?

I’m orienting around inputting an answer that I feel Joe or whoever’s on the other side of that survey would approve of. I’m looking to be approved through my VOC.

More so than fully expressed. Does anyone else have that experience on either side of DOC?

Cool. Suite.

So there’s this bias at play.

And in my view, this creates an extra special moment of trust like ability and connection when those inner experiences, the ones that they’re not necessarily able to fully share or express actually do end up being mirrored back. On the page.

So why this matters is simple. Right? The more fully your prospect is mirrored on the page, with their quirks, with how things appear, with how things manifest.

The more they feel like what you have, aka the offer was crafted specifically for them. This is just a basic phenomenon of conversion psychology.

So the big idea here is that a problem which can sometimes be shared, but in the VOC are revealed in it or a desired outcome are really just the top level descriptors for an entire situational gestalt. So this web of secondary effects, consequences, and aspects of the lived experience that never quite make it into the VOC expression.

So people don’t respond, meaning run away or run towards the placeholder of a problem or desire as much as they respond to all the underlying elements of it, meaning the experiences, meaning the narratives, that are encoded within it. And we’re gonna make this really practical and real in a moment. I’m aware that there’s a lot of big words here. And what do they all mean? So example one, VOC for copy school, right, may read like this.

I joined because I want to feel more confident in my in house senior copywriting position that I landed three months ago. I feel like my CMO is starting to question my skills. Right? So that is a typical type of VOC response we may receive for copy school, and it’s cool. To me like that would be a good input. Nothing wrong with it.

This points to a problem that we could identify as an in house copyright or not feeling confident when submitting copy to the CMO. Right? Very clean, very simple. That’s the problem that we could put a label to, and the desire that I pick up out of this is to feel like she’s got this, right, and she has job security.

Now I could certainly write a decent, you know, email, like based based off this. I can build a big idea out of this.

I can write and structure a sales page out of this.

But to me, the richness, the richness, there’s like rich connective moments on the page of, wow, they get me better than any other coach or program that I’ve read. Is when I look at the whole situational gestalt when I dig deeper into it. So what does all this problem, desire, and BOC actually point to as an experience?

It might look like this, a stomach clench before hitting share on the Google Doc, panicking five minutes later as anonymous lager enters the doc. Anonymous liger still exists in the Google world? I used to get a lot of anonymous lagers on my Google Docs, and they used to freak me out. That’s from, like, Napoleon Dynamite.

Right? Liggers? Sweet. Cool. Great movie. Gosh.

Why did I just do that? I just did a Napoleon Dynamite impression.

She knows damn well that the slagger is anything but anonymous. So anxiously refreshing her inbox, waiting for what she hopes, will be the you nailed it seal of approval, that bracing herself for a list of biting comments indicating that she most certainly did not nail it, and thinking it’s time to update her LinkedIn profile, worrying that the life style upgrades she made when she landed the job. New condo and Elise Nissan Rogue were premature, and that she’s one email away from being in a financially vulnerable spot along with the shame of having to live back with your parents. So, like,

there’s this whole interconnected web of narratives people tell themselves, right, of the consequences of the stakes, and the gestalt goes into all these connected pieces and brings that into the copy. Right? And just makes it feel more real and, like, their the totality of their experience. The actual underlying experience of their problem is mirrored back.

So that’s why the situational gestalt is for me, and I love taking pieces of VOC and writing the corresponding gestalt. And to me, that’s where the art piece comes in. Right? This isn’t going to be shared in your VOC data.

Right? Very few people are gonna offer up this kind of information, in a survey or in an interview.

And to me, it’s one of the most enjoyable and fascinating fascinating parts of my job to take a piece and be like, what does this person really want to say? But can’t say, right, or are necessarily aware of.

So just based on this situational gestalt, like, just as a practical exercise. Right? Like, how easy would it be to think of three to five cross sets or email subjects, right, just from this paragraph here? Right?

To me, this is where, like, email subject lines just write themselves. Right? So anonymous lager has entered the doc. That could be a subject line.

POV, you just hit share on that ten k word sales page, how you feel in, right, seeking new opportunities. You’ll wanna use an incognito browser for this. So all these sticky curiosity driven, subject lines, just kinda write themselves from the situational gestalt. And that is typically where I get my emails from.

My email hooks tend to come once I actually do this brief exercise. Right? And it is a brief exercise. It takes maybe, like, five minutes.

Right? Like, five minutes to just take this piece of EOC, know the problem, know the desire, and just create the scene of how that’s actually playing out and presenting as a mental narrative and as an emotional and a bodied experience.

Sweet.

Example too. So this one from one of my own programs. So engineering the enrollment is a ethical sales training, and a VOC I once got was. I joined engineering the enrollment because I loathe taking sales costs. And I think they actually capped, like, all caps loathed I feel like captain awkward and need the whole morning just to prepare.

It totally derails my day.

So very simple problem, hates running sales calls, feels awkward and unconfident and losing money because of it. Right? So kind of level one would be just mirroring this back, right, awkward, unconfident losing money because of it. And that would be great. But to me, there’s opportunity to go deeper to be the inner authority and actually show the totality of that situational So I’m gonna share how that actually played out.

And I think I got five minutes.

Sweet. So the entire lead of the sales page was essentially a result of that exercise.

So using words like we get it and to be great, segues into that experience.

This is back when NFTs were huge. So everyone in their mutant AP NFT wants to skip the salesy stuff out bringing life to into revenue and their coaching or consulting biz, prom is once you take in that ethical, I don’t wanna be sleazy asshole stance, what the heck is next. So this is where, essentially all that situational gestalt stuff appears on the page. So for most it means winging it on sales calls, going with the blow, and somehow trusting that if it’s aligned, clients will magically say yes and pump your Let’s start a homestead in Aureka fund with a major cash windfall.

I’m off for dreams, but I’m even more, but I’m more for the practical strategies techniques frameworks that bring up to life and the truth is after the branded photoshoots of you staring off into the under like the second coming of Plato, weekly Facebook Labs and stories where you drop us in bombs like Tony Robbins two point o, pixel perfect funnel pages, filled with golden pineapples and espresso mugs, running the ads, webinars, and email campaigns at perk of beers and open hearts, all roads lead to the call.

Right? This was purely from the distillation of that. It’s nine fifty eight AM. You have a sales call at ten AM.

How do you feel nervous excited? Hit with stomach knots and a sudden shortness of breath while your bladder urges you to go for one last tingle. So this is the, like, section of the page that like, a bunch of buyers pointed to, like, oh my god. That’s me.

Like, how did you know that I nervous pee two minutes before a sales call? And I’m like, I know because I dug deeper. That’s what awkward people do because I’m an awkward person. I get it.

So this is the kind of copy that comes from that exercise. No one’s going to offer this information. Like, maybe, like, one in a hundred people will be honest about this, about, like, this is what awkward looks like for me.

But they’re not gonna divulge stuff like this, like burning incense, Chantay mantras, and rocking out to, like, hite me up playlist on Spotify before the sales call. This is the stuff that we get to paint that fuller picture. We get to take that placeholder problem, right, of a feeling awkward, not feeling confident, and ask ourselves, what would someone who doesn’t feel confident who feels awkward actually do? How do they express their awkwardness in real life in a way that we can actually mirror back to them?

So, yeah, that’s really kinda where it comes from and how it plays out.

Let me hop back into the screen.

Sweet.

So practical application.

And it’s an invitation. Right? If you can work this into your process of your high quality VOC data, right, choose just choose one input. Like choose one high quality input of like, this is a solid answer. Right? This is a solid piece of data.

And just see what happens when you run it through these three questions.

So question one is, like, the avoider. Right? What is this person really afraid of, why, and what might happen. Right? So what are they avoiding? What parts of the problem or that situational gestalt?

Just feel a little bit too spiky and uncomfortable and anxiety provoking for them to go into. Right? So what are they avoiding? What is this person really afraid of why and what might happen?

See what comes out when you run a piece of BOC data through that. Next would be the emitter. What would a person who shared this VOC also be feeling, but perhaps be too embarrassed or ashamed to be fully conscious or transparent about? And why. Right? So this is really the beneath the surface stuff that they may not even be aware that they’re omitting.

And the third one is the contextualizer. So this is probably my favorite, the one that leads to, like, just the most interesting copy, I would say, is, like, how does all this actually appear in the three-dimensional five senses world. Right? So not just as an idea, but how does this actually play out? How does this actually look And, yeah, I’d I’d say, like, this is the question that has really brought in the richest, most engaging type of copy.

But all of them definitely play their role, and it takes like an extra three or minutes, to run a piece of BOC data through any of these questions.

And just see what happens.

So, another phenomenon, right, people want to and simultaneously don’t want to be seen in their cringe. Right? I hate being seen seen in my cringe, and I love being seen in my cringe because it feels liberating at the same time. So it’s liberating if we can lay it out for them.

And there’s nuance here. Right? Lay it out for them. Be shame it playfully. You’ll notice that a lot of the copy. I write or maybe you won’t notice this. If you don’t read by copy, and I’m not assuming you do.

But I tend to be strategically playful when I bring up cringe. Right? I certainly don’t use an accusatory tone. I certainly don’t shame on top of the shame or shame their shameful ideas about themselves.

But there’s a liberating quality when you can lay it out for them. Right? And there’s kind of that cringe element to it, but you’re also de shaming it and being playful and being, strategically light about it. All within orientation towards we see you, that’s cool and here’s your way out.

Right? It’s like, that’s cool. Didn’t you know that everybody, you know? He’s two minutes before sales call.

It’s not just you. It’s cool. Happens to all the awkward people. I’m one of them.

I’m one of you. So, yeah, it’s like, taking the cringe, allowing them to feel liberated. And, okay, it’s not just me. Certainly not shaming them for it.

Right, bringing lightheartedness to it, and having that be inclusive in what your offer helps solve.

So that is really how the offer gets connected to the totality of their experience, not just the placeholder parts that they don’t necessarily feel the strongest level of emotional connection to.

So in short, if you can mirror back the VOC verbatim, So in short, you can mirror back the VOC verbatim and or you can mirror back the ten x magnified version of the v POC with what I call the clogged dirty pours and the chapped lips the puss and the cringe and offer some industrial grade venture and exfoliant.

I remember, like, one of my, like, first childhood memories is, like, Like department stores used to have, like, the cosmetic sessions. I guess I still do. And I used to, like, go with my mom and she, like, do her makeup thing and, like, they’d have those, like, really big magnified mirrors. And I remember, like, looking at my face as, like, an eight year old and being, like, mesmerized by all the weird shit that is on, like, a face.

And, anyway, and, like, the cosmetic person is like, what did she say? She said something that, like, really stuck. She’s like, I don’t remember what she said so I don’t wanna misquote her. But, yeah, all that cringe, all that weird stuff that gets revealed when we magnify it, to me, that makes a difference between, like, copy that makes sense, right, and makes a sales argument and copy that digs deeper and really, pulls in.

So many of these more nuanced emotional elements most other offers or most other copy just wouldn’t. So it could be a huge difference maker, and it’s a lot of fun to just write copy that connects on that level.

Alright. I’m three minutes over. I’m gonna shut up. Open to questions, comments, discussion, copy reviews, and any experiences in looking at yourself in a magnified cosmetic mirror, which I don’t recommend. It’s not fun. But, yeah, there we go. Laura’s yours.

I have a question. So where where’s your favorite place to, like, get that kind of voice of customer if, people aren’t don’t give it up and kind of surveys and stuff.

Yeah.

So so so the exercise I do, right, is like I get those survey results, and then I run it through my own questions and make make my own leaps, right, of what I see.

Okay.

Yeah. So it’s like, what else would this person what is this person not divulging? Right? And you kinda have the breadcrumbs. Right? So that’s why I, like, work with your what you would consider to be your high quality BOC, where there’s enough information to kinda bread crumb you to what that experience may look like.

But, yeah, this is really kind of how I enrich the current VOC data.

My favorite technique, right, would be recorded sales calls. That’s always been like a great source because sometimes good salespeople, right, are really good at extracting some of those situational gestalt elements. Right? Not all salespeople, but, certainly when I was doing sales calls.

Right? It’s like the typical question of, like, what does actually look like? Like, and what does that mean to you? Right?

So they they kinda pure steeper into the experience.

Mhmm.

But on survey results, typically, yeah, I’ll kinda run that exercise myself and just ask, what is this person not divulging? What would they be too ashamed of? What are they holding back on? And just kinda let my own imagination and attunement.

And it’s not such an an imaginary exercise. Like, if you’ve been in that avatar if you’ve been in the data. Mhmm.

You start building out a profile of who this customer is.

Right?

Mhmm.

So, yeah, that’s, that’s how I go about it.

Cool. Thanks. And I had a, just another kind of comment as well. Yeah, I thought it was interesting what we we said kind of when you know the person that you’re, like, leaving the survey the way you’ll leave the responses because I’ve I recently started running, like, cold ads to my course, and I’ve noticed my the server responses are so much more useful now. Because before I think it was mostly people who kind of knew me inside freelancing school and stuff. So they’re kind of like, oh, I joined because, like, I like your stuff or whatever, but as interesting, like, getting those more authentic responses because they don’t know me so don’t give a shit what I think.

Exactly. Yeah. Great point. Cool. Monique, I see a hand up.

Alright.

I’m just gonna jump off and then that was awesome, by the way. I think, the context of yours plus, Joe did the high problem outcome.

Mhmm. Yep.

Are the can’t recall.

But, like, this notion of, like, you give you give great outcomes of, like, the standard way of which you would appear, to see copy being written, and then you elaborate the high so it’s a high class problem. So then you just enrich it with, like, the, as she said, wearing diamond slippers type level of success that comes from, the work that’s being, you know, or the the effort that you put in when you when you arrive at the solution of x. So I on that note, I’m not sure if you saw it. Can you share a little version of how you do a bit of that and a bit of what you just the cringe in in a version of of flow.

Oh, so how I would integrate that with Joe’s high class problem? Yeah.

I know it, like I think I’ve I’ve done it.

So, like, immediately, like, what came to mind was I had a template or I have a template. I think it’s in seven figure emails or of the non problem problem.

That dive specifically into that and just kind of like the languaging of how I portray it. So do y’all have access to some figure emails somewhere? Don’t know where it would be, but, check out the non problem problem. Yeah.

So it’s a non problem problem. And that’s where you’re saying you integrate kind of the cringe with a high. And then that so you you contextualize with the this is how you are Yep. Situation like your problem. You add the cringe and then you slowly say here’s the, you know, the outcome of the typical, like, good outcome. And then you add it at the dot, at as a solution idea of the high class problem or the?

Yeah. I believe so. It’s been a it’s been a few years now, and, like, it may not be layered in that specific way.

But I recall it does have that contrast element, right, between, like, the current cringe and then the hyper specificity around kind of that high cost problem and how that would appear in their life. So even with that, right, like getting so specific in that situational gestalt, right, is something that, like, I’ve done a ton of, right, of how success actually looks like. Right? And, like, that’s yielded copy.

Like, that’s, like, weird and it makes sense and it resonates because, like, you know, so so much copy will will say, like, you’ll make more money. Right? Like, that’s a typical desire. Right?

And, like, I think going through this exercise, right, of, like, people’s desires, it’s like, why do you want more money? Right? Like, and I’ve asked that on sales calls. Like, why do you wanna make a hundred thousand dollars a year?

Why do you wanna make two hundred? Why do you wanna double your income? Right? Like, what are you actually gonna do with that?

Right? And that’s where you get a copy, like, a down payment and a house in my city that’s really expensive. Right? Or I think the best, like, the best piece I ever received back was something like, like, being able to upgrade for peanut butter to almond butter without my boyfriend, like, judging me for it.

Right? And, like, that works its way onto the page. Right? So Yeah.

This exercise really kinda like works in all directions to, like, really get into how that situation manifests.

Beyond just like the surface level languaging.

Cool. That that’s cool. Thanks.

Cool. Of course.

Naomi okay.

So the question that I have is whenever I try to use this, I work for very technical software products. And whenever I try to use this technique, I always hear one of these responses. It’s either well, we don’t know that that’s true about our customers. Or maybe it’s true about one of our personas, but we have like six personas, or I hear this is too negative. We don’t want this to negatively affect our brand.

Shape.

Or this is just too, like, offbeat off the wall. We want something a little bit more corporate. And so Like, when I can get it in there, it works really, really well. But most of the time, it’s like a very, very watered down version, especially because, like, if you’re running Madads or LinkedIn ads, you have like seven words to put on a tagline and a hundred and fifty characters for the introduction. So, what do you do to combat those that kind of feedback.

Yeah.

There’s certainly the element of, like, picking my battles. Like, I’ve worked with clients too where it’s, like, they’re so adamant about the tone being what the tone is. Right?

And yeah, like, I I tend to be really cautious about trying to push back against things that feel so unpushable or unmovable for the client.

Right? So it’s like, you know, if that’s what they’re insisting, it is. Right? I’m going to kinda work within those margins, right, and kinda be okay with that.

You said that, like, when you have used those techniques, like, you’ve gotten really good results. I think that, like, that certainly gives you the opportunity for it to, like, point to those results. Like, with that client of, like, did we look at the response rate on this message, right, did we look at the open then to clicks on this email? Right?

Like, do we have a bit more leeway to take a chance on this type of copy, even if it’s to a segment of the list, right, can we segment the list appropriately. Can we send can we AB test? Right? Can we send half the list this email and the other half this email, right, to just start, safely testing the waters of expanding how messaging could look like.

So I’d say, like, safe tests would be how I would go about it Right? Like, a, like, making sure there’s openness. Right? I’m not going to, like, force a door that doesn’t wanna budge, right, to some degree.

And that’s just something I have to live with. But other than that, it’s like, how can we create, you know, I call them like risk free tests. Right? Like, take segments of the list, even that haven’t been responsive.

Right? Can we even look at a segment of the list that hasn’t opened up an email in thirty days, right, and are essentially non active. Right? It’s like, what do you have to lose with that segment of the list?

So, yeah, I’d say, like, test it out with low risk, yeah, low risks, low risk segments of the list and to see if can kinda prove results there in a low risk environment for your client.

Makes sense.

Cool. Alright. Any other questions or should we get to some copy reviews. Alright. I think Abby are up.

I’m feeling kind of shy now.

Oh, no.

I feel like it’s so boring, get better at what you just showed us.

Oh, okay. I’ll just send it over.

So for context, this is for new bookkeepers that are desperate for experience.

They feel they just don’t feel confident enough to take on clients. They’re coming here from a five day challenge to give them thirty days of kind of on the job experience in five days. And, they In the interviews, one of the things that just kept coming up is they just they don’t like reading. They don’t retain information from that.

They like numbers. So with that in mind, I I try to keep the kind of everything that goes above solution as short as possible. And so yeah. Cool.

Oh, it’s a long form sales page. So, oh, shoot. Yeah.

So maybe if you could just read up to, like, the introducing or, like, obviously, we’re not gonna have time to go through with it.

Yeah. It’s all good. We got, like, twenty five minutes, so we could probably cover a good chunk.

I sent you a request for access.

Yeah.

I’m gonna make it so everyone can review Perfect.

Although, I’ve just given you added access if if you wanna, like, make it amazing for me.

Sweet. I’m gonna share my screen if that’s okay.

Yeah. Perfect.

Sweet.

Alright. You got an anonymous loris. I don’t know what a loris is. Is that a real animal or a mythical creature?

Cammals area. I know that much.

That’s me, I think.

Alright.

Cool. Alright. So kick imposter syndrome to the curb. You have your timer, to the ambitious bookkeeper itching to take on new clients. Be their own boss and make fantastic money from the comfort of home. It’s a good dog whistle there, build your money, making confidence, and the fast and easy QBO Jim, the hands on training academy for bookkeepers who love to learn by doing not spectating. So this is in response to kind of, like, that piece of data you had?

Yes. And the the I mean, I know, like, learn is usually a friction word and I tend to avoid it, but they seem like really excited by this idea of learning it’s something that kind of exclusively empowers them. So that’s why that’s for now.

That’s cool. And the fast and easy QBO gym. QBO gym is the program, I guess.

Fast and easy QBO gym is the program.

Okay.

The fast and easy QBO gym, the fast and easy QBO gym. Okay. It’s like I don’t know. It could just be me. I had, like, just mental, like, friction just, like, saying that out loud in my head.

And that A kind of ironic.

Yeah. Busted easy.

The fast and easy QBO gym. And, I mean, that’s the name of the thing. Right? So Yeah.

Yeah. Cool.

You’ve your basic QBO skills down. Maybe you’ve even gotten your certification.

What does QBO stand for?

QuickBooks.

Right. So they would know that. Right?

Like Oh, yeah.

They would know that. Perfect.

Yeah. That you’re gonna take on. Glad so you can multiply your income and make, but keeping your full time gig.

Yeah. I wonder now I’m thinking if maybe I I can be a bit more like creative there, like, based on what you’ve just kind of shared out of it or more BOC.

Mhmm. I don’t know.

Let’s see. So so just so remind me briefly, or all of us, like, where they are in their career right now.

They’re pretty new, so they might have the I think a lot of them are like door dashing and things doing, and they’re all they’ve started bookkeeping on the side. They’ve got this certification, but they’re just nervous to get clients because they are worried that they’re gonna mess it up.

I see. Cool. So they’re kinda, like, doing side hustles right now and, like, gig economy stuff and cool.

Yeah. Yep.

Yeah. I mean, like, to the degree of confidence you have to, like, be inclusive of the things they’d be leaving behind, like, that would resonate so well in the lead. Right? Like, if you know that, like, their door dashers and Uber drivers and just, like, nervous to take their first few gigs. Like, that feels it feels riskier and it feels more of a resonant when it lands. Right?

Could you also say something about, like, all of the frustrating things that happen when you’re working minimum wage jobs, like people not tipping you or getting angry that you’re late or yelling at you for not cooking something right or whatever it is that people have to suffer through when they’re door dashing.

Yeah. I mean, I think I think by this like, it’s just because I’m concerned about length. I feel like by this point, they already know they want to kind of I’m not selling them on becoming a bookkeeper. Like, I they already want that.

I’m selling them under confidence to make more money with it and actually take on clients.

Hey, Abby.

Thought here, like, I think just as an insight, bookkeepers are really hard to come by right now, and like there’s a shortage in the market.

And I’m not sure if this resonates at all, but it’s almost giving them the confidence of saying you’ve got these skills that are in demand. You’re almost doing a disservice by not starting.

Mhmm.

Something to that effect, you know, almost pumping them up saying like there is demand. You just gotta get out there and get started and, you know, be the superhero that saves it, you know, like, you know, small business from their own pain of living in receipt and bookkeeping hell.

Like Mhmm. Something to that effect could really resonate and kinda get out of your way.

Yeah. I mean, I I think that’s a good idea. I’m just finding because it’s kinda like, wanna plant them up and not plant them up so much that they don’t need to join the gym. Mhmm. Right. They join the gym to get the confidence.

Yep.

So the gym is like It’s about It’s I think it’s like templates process step by steps, like the how tos, the you know, but it’s it’s not so much about the how tos.

It’s more actually, but what they’re gonna do is practice doing it. So it would be like when you copy writing, like writing copy every day, like inside a program, that kind of thing. So then you you know you can do it when you work for a client. Could you’ve done it? Like a dozen times in the program.

Yeah.

I think, like The practice before you play kind of mentality.

Like, you know, I thought this analogy was really interesting. I thought, the NFL, they see themselves practicing all week for the play, right, the the day. Like, NBA, they play more games and they do practice. Like, it’s kinda that get your hundred reps in. Is that what the idea of a course is? Mhmm.

Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, that’s pretty powerful.

I think there’s an opportunity right here. And do I really know what I’m doing?

To really substantiate that, like, the moments they get caught feeling like I don’t know how to do this or I don’t know if I’m doing this right. Like, mirror back to three or four things where they encounter that. Right? So, like, the copyright version is, like, when I hit share on the Google Doc, very real moment. That I know whether or not I feel confident or non confident in that moment. Right? So what are, like, the three or four very real moments where they get hit with those, like, clammy hands as you call them.

Did you call them clammy hands, or did I make that up? Oh, yeah. Let’s go climbing. Sweet.

Yeah. So bring them to those, like, three or four specific moments in a really efficient efficient manner that you don’t need to, like, elaborate or unpack them in detail, but just let them see themselves in that cringe for a second. Right?

Yeah. I think the moment of the moment of price tension is, like, when they get asked, do you have experience? And they Yep. They’re stuck in that need experience to get a job? But call get in trouble with that experience.

Yep. So being caught in that loop. Mhmm.

And then it could like bring back Right.

Like, it feels safer to continue just, like, driving an Uber. Right? Like, they’re less vulnerable in those situations.

So, yeah, it’s like this is a really vulnerable sentiment. Right? Do I know what I’m doing? Right?

And the things that they’re currently doing for income are likely less vulnerable, but also less profitable. So I think, like, that could be a theme that gets explored here is, like, maybe I should just continue doing x because at least I know how to do that. Right? At least I know how to deliver a DoorDash.

I don’t know if that’s the right usage of the word. Do you deliver a DoorDash? I’ve never door dashed.

Yeah. So I think that could be a really good opportunity to kind of also loop in that status quo that feels safer to some degree.

Mhmm.

Cool.

Did they offer, after the work you know, sort of a credential that says, you know, got my one hundred hours of practice in so to speak.

So, like, that They actually have, which is really cool is they have, like, their own database, kind of like Upwork, where based on activity in the gym.

So if you complete lots of training exercises, then you’ll rank higher, so clients can hire you.

That’s cool.

I’m gonna I mean, because it’s a five day challenge, like, they’re gonna I’m doing it so they received, like, a workout plan on the last day of the challenge. And then that I’m gonna go really hard on, like, the books match and, like, the hundred that kind of thing. So by by this point, they should have a good idea of it.

Yeah. Yeah. And it’s sort of like if they have a badge or they’re in there as a vera verified embedded, like, all that kind of the confidence of not being ready. From someone else.

Mhmm.

Yeah. Yeah. So it’s like they, yeah, they can actually get clients from this.

That could be pretty powerful. It gets a straight shot shortcut to practicing in in clients.

Yeah. No. It’s it’s awesome. It’s just the thing is because they haven’t built it out fully, like it’s lower down the page. But once they’ve built it out fully and they’ve got lots of clients and that I’m gonna just be like, okay. Let’s just read you the page and put that right at the top because that’s such a huge benefit.

Yeah. I agree. I didn’t see that, and I think you’re right.

Fifty nine dollars a month, cancel anytime. I think it’s really easy to, like, anchor the value of that to what the like, average new client retainer would be?

Like Yeah.

And I don’t know what that number is.

Like, I don’t know what the average, like, I think it’s, like, five hundred a month.

So, yeah.

Right. So it’s, like, bring it back. Like, do you feel, like, with the confidence in your skills, right, and the client getting scripts and all that, you could get one client that could pay literally one client for one month to pay or in higher yearly membership.

Right?

Yeah. Yeah. That’s true. And it’s also, like, something I haven’t done is compared to the cost of, like, an actual gym. I don’t know which most people do and then don’t actually use it.

So not that I want people to join, but not use it, but, you know, like Right.

By the way, is this a choose sign of marketplace? Like, could could the other side of this be you know, you find great vetted, thinking about myself and people who need, bookkeepers, but they’re hard to come by.

I’m working on that phone on it. This is the B2C and then the B2B.

Keep them posted. I’d love to share it. There’s a big need.

Yeah. No. I need one as well.

This is so interesting to me that, like, this is, like, the main driver. Right?

Because it’s I know.

Like, I was like, there’s gotta be something deeper here, like, or it’s like, because I did with their other final, and it was just, like, more money more money more everyone’s like, I want six figures. And this time, it was just like they were desperate for for experience, and they actually said, like, I would pay someone to just give me an internship so that I can, like, learn how to do this stuff and feel more confident.

So Yeah.

Yeah. It’s wild. Like, I would have never guessed that the main driver, and I guess that’s why we do research.

Yeah. Because it’s all it looks like just full of friction to me, but it’s not like that this is what they want.

We love to learn by doing not spectating. Yeah. Cool.

Sweet.

And, like, Yes.

Silly question, but, like, the word imposter syndrome, like, that’s familiar enough to this market.

Yeah. That came up, like, about fifty times. In the VOC research. Yeah.

Awesome.

Yeah.

You already do this well, like, based on my scan, but, like, Like, this has taken it deeper. Like, what are the consequences of imposter syndrome? Right?

Yeah.

It’s like Yeah. You know, and I think, like, And I think this comes down to, like, just about every certification. Right? So, like, in two thousand eight or two thousand nine, I got, like, my personal training certification, I didn’t know what I want to do with my life.

Right? And, like, I wasn’t confident enough to, like, use it and then, like, within six months, it just becomes something you did, right, and just, like, never used. So I think, like, creating the urgency that, like, there’s kind of, best before date. Right?

It’s like Yeah. And I wish there was, like, an actual stat to back this up, where it’s, like, you know, ninety eight percent of people who don’t use their certification with the real clients within six months and of never using it. Right?

Just, like, really ground it. Right? Cause they have kind of this, like, they’ve recently invested in it. I’m guessing there was, like, a time and money investment in getting certified.

Right?

So there’s still definitely in this, like, sunk cost bias where they wanna make good on that. Right? They want it to work out. They don’t want the embarrassment or the name being out. That was just something I did and wasn’t committed enough and onto the next thing. So I’d say, like, you know, this is the moment they get to really choose of whether or not they’re going to have, like, this flexible, profitable career or not. Right?

And that’s the real risk in saying no to this is that Mhmm.

You know, is that like a morrow, it doesn’t become easier.

Right, to get into this. Right? And by next month, you’re probably, you know, even so even further removed that, like, getting back into it is harder. So Yeah. I think there could be an argument there.

Just really, like, not stopping at imposter syndrome, but unpacking kind of, like, the real cost of that.

Mhmm.

Yeah. Yeah. I agree. Like, it lacks a bit of urgency.

And with it being, like, worrying about the length, because, like, on one hand, like, because I always say to clients, like, yeah. Well, if people, like, engage with it, they’re gonna read every word. But then with this audience, I’ve genuinely, like, I don’t think they will because they Yeah. Just hate reading. So I’m like, oh, I mean, they’ll I guess some of this that could include as well in the video that they’ll get.

Yep. Are you writing, the emails or the apps that drive to this?

Yeah. I’m doing the whole final.

Sweet. Yeah. So I mean, there could be opportunity to, like, have an email specifically to, like, imposter syndrome and what it really means. Right? Like, Yeah.

Mhmm.

I’m sure I can get a start as well on they’re not using your certification or something.

Ask chat Yeah.

There you go. Did you ever get a certification that you didn’t use, or did your client? Like, there could be a good story there.

Mhmm.

Yeah, so so I would I wouldn’t bloat the sales page, especially if you’ve had the feedback like that.

You know, they’re adverse to reading. But you can certainly, like, dive deeper and unpack some of those topics and email copy and the ad copy. So yeah.

Oh, thank you. Really helpful.

Yeah. Good stuff. Doing final scan.

Oh, just by the time I I didn’t catch it.

I don’t know if it’s included or not, but, like, did you talk about any of, like, the awkwardness or pain points around marketing themselves, or does it all tie into the just not being confident?

Yeah. No. There is definitely awkwardness at the end. What someone said, they get they get like actual pins and needles.

Yeah. You love the awkward voice of customer. That’s how I can tell when you’ve written an email, like one of Joe’s emails because it’s, like, they’re really awkward specific voice of customer is the right group way.

Oh, yeah. The cringe. Yeah.

Yep.

I’ll tell you some cringe, some personal cringe. My, my dear, my dear mother, but I think she bought, like, twenty copies of both my books. And started distributing it to my entire family, and that’s cringe.

That’s cringe. I’m I’m not going to a family event ever again. Like, just can’t.

Right. I love that. I don’t I as a mom, how is that cringe? I would totally do that.

Oh, yeah. I mean, it’s it’s like the ultimate mom move. I’m not, like, dismissing it. And, like, I cringe like, I’m awkward enough at family events. Right? And now, like, my uncle Jerry, right, is gonna be, like, asking me about, like, my work in the men’s space and I just don’t wanna go there. I don’t know.

Yep.

Anyway, I got a giveaway on Instagram, and my mom commented, oh, I could really use this for my new product.

Yeah. Oh, thank you for that. That was helpful.

But I’m I’m totally gonna do that, like, with my son one day. Like, I’m just gonna buy all of his thing and distribute it to the entire village, right, and, anyway.

Cool. Any other question to rapid fire stuff in these last seven minutes, or are we good to call today?

Can I share a few of the tag lines that I’m working on?

Of course. Yeah. Please.

Okay. It’s just like ten or twelve tag lines, so it should be easier to where it’s less time consuming.

Awesome.

A few fun ideas.

So this is compliance software. If you need to make your website accessible comp accessibility compliant, user way is one of the top solutions.

Again, very like corporate brand.

And this is I wasn’t able to listen to sales calls, who’s more of a self-service product.

Sure.

I was looking through g two, and g two had some interesting, comments.

So I was working with some of those.

Mhmm.

And again, this is an idea where you don’t wanna scare them into saying, like, you’re gonna be sued for millions of dollars if you don’t fix this website.

Of course.

But that would be like an interesting thing to say.

So they wanna they’re worried about lawsuits. They wanna help people who are disabled, and they wanna check compliance off the list without pulling away our indirect resources or knowing a lot of technical knowledge.

So And these are specifically for ads going to cold audiences, I guess?

Yeah. These are, for, like, Facebook LinkedIn etcetera. And the goal is to drive more people to search for user way dot com on Google. So it’s very top of funnel.

Got it.

Like, this would be, like, hyper specific in the world of soccer.

Yeah. Yeah. That one that one jumped out.

Like this one just jumped out, like, right away. My eyes went there.

So, like, I’m always looking for more like that.

And and even your your own languaging, like, as you were describing this, like, checking it off the list, I feel like that’s what they wanna do is, like, just have it checked off the list so they can move on. Right?

Is it, like, Do do the companies that, that buy the software have someone dedicated to the role of compliance, or that’s just No.

Definitely. Right. It’s it’s super super complicated to do compliance, and it would take dozens of R and D members that are devoted to building software.

Right.

So it’s where the non techies, that was another phrase that they used.

Yep.

So the hyper specificity of this works really, really well.

Like, does the word accessibility jump out to this target audience, or could this could these, like, more generalized ones land a little flatter.

Like I was just throwing things down on the page.

Yeah.

The technical imperative is w c a g compliance, but It’s not quite as sexy.

Everything you need for compliance and much more. I think, like, the outcome they want, right, is not having to worry about it. And having that taken care of as quickly as possible. I’m guessing. Right?

I mean, some of them did actually want to help.

The, people who are blind or people who Okay.

Are color blind and can’t really read the website. Like, for sure, there was an altruistic motive.

And there were people who are concerned that they’re gonna get a big lawsuit because they’re a huge, huge company.

I would say there were three three goals there.

Yeah.

So, like, the bottom bullet is how I typically insert VOS see data because that would go in, like, the introductory line above the ad.

And usually, that’s not as well read. So I can usually stick it in there and get away with it.

Right. Yep.

As opposed to the banner, which is much more visible.

Mhmm.

You mentioned those three goals.

Does your client have any data around, like, which of those goals was, like, the primary, like, decision driver, like, for paying customers?

I mean, it depends on if you’re talking about, like, a small commerce website or like a marketing agency building websites for clients or if you’re talking about a massive enterprise company.

Right.

Like, there’s so many different personas. Are you talking to the decision maker? Are you talking to the champion. Like, it’s it’s there are a lot of stakeholders and personas involved. That’s what makes it hard to get to hyperspecimen.

For sure. Yeah.

You can use a few different approaches for different apps.

Yep. I mean, this one bakes in, like, everything in a really efficient way. Right? Like, it points to the worry and the fear of non clients, and it points to the simplicity of it having solved. Like, I love even just, like, the wording of this is, like, this here points to like, usefulness and speed, right, even the way, like, of your word efficiency and how that communicates it.

Yeah.

I got that piece of study on their website, so I can look through those, see if I can find any of the good nuggets.

Cool.

Accessibility in one click as well. I could point to ease to, like, ease and speed, which I like.

And, ultimately, it’s not about what I like. It’s about what they respond to, but I feel like, if, like, the main emotion that noncompliant have is, like, worry and anxiety.

Right? Like, people typically wanna get out of worry and anxiety as fast as possible. So it’s like, I love the dynamic and a lot of a few of these headlines point to it specifically of, like, you know, stress and anxiety and simplicity and speed to solution. Right?

Like, that’s a really good dynamic to filter some of these through. Right? For both, like, the ones that could really work well for testing and also, like, how to optimize it. It’s like, point to the stress and anxiety and point to the speed of solution, if that makes sense.

Okay.

Yeah.

I’m trying to come up with more like those.

As someone who uses user way and recommends it, I always just say it’s the easiest accessibility solution. It is it’s the easiest way to implement accessibility on a website.

Yeah. That’s what a lot of the reviews said.

An accessibility in one click is the one that was the most resonant with me of that list.

The fifteen thousand violations I mean, it depends on if you’re if you’re going for the people that are, you know, they’re they’re a corporate, bigger company, and they have to worry about meticulously handing handling every little thing, they’re gonna care more about details.

But if it’s general, you know, like, a a marketing agency that’s managing hundreds of websites for their clients or a WordPress shop or whatever, they want they want to check that accessibility box as quickly and easily as possible.

Yeah. Okay. Well, I’ll I’ll keep that in mind, and I’ll probably give the client, like, one option for each, major persona.

Yeah. That’s good languaging there as well. Check the accessibility box as quickly as possible. Right?

Like, there’s something within that. It’s like they wanna be compliant and they want it to be, like, fast and easy. Right? So I think just working with that theme, could yield some pretty good pretty good iterations.

Cool. Thank you. Cool.

Thanks for sharing.

Alright. We feeling good and complete for today.

Yes. Solid, solid. Well, I appreciate y’all hanging out for the hour, and, we’ll be in touch soon.

Cool. Take care, everyone.

Thank you so much. Bye.

Worksheet

Deep Craft 1

Worksheet

Deep Craft 1

Transcript

The inner authority, this is gonna be a three part what I would call a deep craft series, on writing copy that builds trust compels sales, sales, and, create some of those holy f. It’s like they read my mind moments. This has been, like, the feedback I’ve loved most in my copy career, Like, it’s not even necessarily, like, the raw numbers and the data. I just love it when this feedback comes back. It’s, like, that you read my mind, like, are you literally, like, spying on me? Type of feedback.

And why I’ve always loved that feedback is it makes me feel like I’ve really done my job from both an art and a science perspective. Right? So, like, the data is the hard data. Right?

Like, we get our voice voice of customer data. It’s there. It’s on a spreadsheet. We analyze it.

We review it. We rank it.

But the art part is where I’ve loved, living in in the copy world, like, going deeper. Like, what is this VOC trying to say, or what would they say if they felt totally fully expressed. Right?

And that’s what we’re gonna talk about today is, like, more of the art side. So we’re gonna get our data, but we’re also gonna go deeper and see what it is pointing to that isn’t necessarily fully expressed because I feel like that’s where, like, we get those really golden moments that most other copywriters just wouldn’t, right, because it requires a bit of artful leap to pierce, beneath that surface. So that’s gonna be today, but it’s going to be part of a three series. So part one, today, deep BOC, three Pearson queues to go beneath the surface.

Those questions are in the workbook, and we’ll review them today. And the kind of copy or insights that they yield, in March, I’m excited about this one. I haven’t taught this one. Anywhere yet.

So I call it shadow copy, and it’s essentially how to balance both the virtuous slash acceptable as well as the forbidden slash not acceptable, but equally motivating desires to elicit your prospects full range of FES, I need this, how to see them fully in their full spectrum of desires and motivators, and some very specific and nuanced languaging to, yeah, to accomplish that. So that’s gonna be in March. I’m really excited about that. And an April full spectrum sensing to bring your copy to life really, bringing those five senses into play, weaving them together to create just a much more embodied experience instead of just a fully intellectual, mental experience of your copy.

So, yeah, I’m really excited about this three part series.

And then a little definition, you know, the inner authority. That is one who I would define as someone who knows the prospect better than they know themselves. We’ve probably all heard that before, exposes and illuminates that which the prospect is unable or unwilling to divulge our or articulate themselves. Now this is the one that I feel like there’s so much opportunity to dive deeper in. Right? So focus in on that one exposes and illuminates that which the prospect is either unable meaning they’re unaware of it.

These are still things that are less conscious to them or unwilling, right, meaning that there’s still some form of shame or embarrassment around divulging it. So there’s a lot of opportunity to see our prospect fully in places that they don’t even see themselves or they don’t wanna see themselves.

And then, of course, through that, builds stress and resonance through the damn r u in my head phenomenon, which is a very real phenomenon. And I’ve experienced it many times myself as a reader, and it usually does have me pulling up my credit card because damn they get me, and now they got my money. So there we go. So one bias I’ve encountered It was the no one gets me bias.

So in my experience, this isn’t hard data I haven’t done. You know, grabbed school level studies on this, but, it’s appeared quite a bit over the last ten years of doing this, is that most people have a bias towards believing that no one can or would fully get them their anxieties and their desires. So what I’ve seen in VOC is that in people’s, expression, whether it’s, you know, interviews or surveys, they’ll express things in a way that they feel the person asking would understand and not necessarily their fully uncensored cathartic mindblurred version of it. So typically, in that scenario, like and maybe you can even think back to when you filled out surveys yourself or participated in interviews, One typically favors being understood and accepted, especially if they don’t have a close relationship with that person, they favor being understood and accepted and approved of more than feeling fully and authentically expressed.

Now this isn’t universal. There’s some people who right off the bat, like, they just seize that opportunity to just, like, say all the things, but typically, and I do this myself, if I’m responding to a survey, and I look at my output of it, you know, even that typical question of, you know, what motivated you to buy today?

I’m orienting around inputting an answer that I feel Joe or whoever’s on the other side of that survey would approve of. I’m looking to be approved through my VOC.

More so than fully expressed. Does anyone else have that experience on either side of DOC?

Cool. Suite.

So there’s this bias at play.

And in my view, this creates an extra special moment of trust like ability and connection when those inner experiences, the ones that they’re not necessarily able to fully share or express actually do end up being mirrored back. On the page.

So why this matters is simple. Right? The more fully your prospect is mirrored on the page, with their quirks, with how things appear, with how things manifest.

The more they feel like what you have, aka the offer was crafted specifically for them. This is just a basic phenomenon of conversion psychology.

So the big idea here is that a problem which can sometimes be shared, but in the VOC are revealed in it or a desired outcome are really just the top level descriptors for an entire situational gestalt. So this web of secondary effects, consequences, and aspects of the lived experience that never quite make it into the VOC expression.

So people don’t respond, meaning run away or run towards the placeholder of a problem or desire as much as they respond to all the underlying elements of it, meaning the experiences, meaning the narratives, that are encoded within it. And we’re gonna make this really practical and real in a moment. I’m aware that there’s a lot of big words here. And what do they all mean? So example one, VOC for copy school, right, may read like this.

I joined because I want to feel more confident in my in house senior copywriting position that I landed three months ago. I feel like my CMO is starting to question my skills. Right? So that is a typical type of VOC response we may receive for copy school, and it’s cool. To me like that would be a good input. Nothing wrong with it.

This points to a problem that we could identify as an in house copyright or not feeling confident when submitting copy to the CMO. Right? Very clean, very simple. That’s the problem that we could put a label to, and the desire that I pick up out of this is to feel like she’s got this, right, and she has job security.

Now I could certainly write a decent, you know, email, like based based off this. I can build a big idea out of this.

I can write and structure a sales page out of this.

But to me, the richness, the richness, there’s like rich connective moments on the page of, wow, they get me better than any other coach or program that I’ve read. Is when I look at the whole situational gestalt when I dig deeper into it. So what does all this problem, desire, and BOC actually point to as an experience?

It might look like this, a stomach clench before hitting share on the Google Doc, panicking five minutes later as anonymous lager enters the doc. Anonymous liger still exists in the Google world? I used to get a lot of anonymous lagers on my Google Docs, and they used to freak me out. That’s from, like, Napoleon Dynamite.

Right? Liggers? Sweet. Cool. Great movie. Gosh.

Why did I just do that? I just did a Napoleon Dynamite impression.

She knows damn well that the slagger is anything but anonymous. So anxiously refreshing her inbox, waiting for what she hopes, will be the you nailed it seal of approval, that bracing herself for a list of biting comments indicating that she most certainly did not nail it, and thinking it’s time to update her LinkedIn profile, worrying that the life style upgrades she made when she landed the job. New condo and Elise Nissan Rogue were premature, and that she’s one email away from being in a financially vulnerable spot along with the shame of having to live back with your parents. So, like,

there’s this whole interconnected web of narratives people tell themselves, right, of the consequences of the stakes, and the gestalt goes into all these connected pieces and brings that into the copy. Right? And just makes it feel more real and, like, their the totality of their experience. The actual underlying experience of their problem is mirrored back.

So that’s why the situational gestalt is for me, and I love taking pieces of VOC and writing the corresponding gestalt. And to me, that’s where the art piece comes in. Right? This isn’t going to be shared in your VOC data.

Right? Very few people are gonna offer up this kind of information, in a survey or in an interview.

And to me, it’s one of the most enjoyable and fascinating fascinating parts of my job to take a piece and be like, what does this person really want to say? But can’t say, right, or are necessarily aware of.

So just based on this situational gestalt, like, just as a practical exercise. Right? Like, how easy would it be to think of three to five cross sets or email subjects, right, just from this paragraph here? Right?

To me, this is where, like, email subject lines just write themselves. Right? So anonymous lager has entered the doc. That could be a subject line.

POV, you just hit share on that ten k word sales page, how you feel in, right, seeking new opportunities. You’ll wanna use an incognito browser for this. So all these sticky curiosity driven, subject lines, just kinda write themselves from the situational gestalt. And that is typically where I get my emails from.

My email hooks tend to come once I actually do this brief exercise. Right? And it is a brief exercise. It takes maybe, like, five minutes.

Right? Like, five minutes to just take this piece of EOC, know the problem, know the desire, and just create the scene of how that’s actually playing out and presenting as a mental narrative and as an emotional and a bodied experience.

Sweet.

Example too. So this one from one of my own programs. So engineering the enrollment is a ethical sales training, and a VOC I once got was. I joined engineering the enrollment because I loathe taking sales costs. And I think they actually capped, like, all caps loathed I feel like captain awkward and need the whole morning just to prepare.

It totally derails my day.

So very simple problem, hates running sales calls, feels awkward and unconfident and losing money because of it. Right? So kind of level one would be just mirroring this back, right, awkward, unconfident losing money because of it. And that would be great. But to me, there’s opportunity to go deeper to be the inner authority and actually show the totality of that situational So I’m gonna share how that actually played out.

And I think I got five minutes.

Sweet. So the entire lead of the sales page was essentially a result of that exercise.

So using words like we get it and to be great, segues into that experience.

This is back when NFTs were huge. So everyone in their mutant AP NFT wants to skip the salesy stuff out bringing life to into revenue and their coaching or consulting biz, prom is once you take in that ethical, I don’t wanna be sleazy asshole stance, what the heck is next. So this is where, essentially all that situational gestalt stuff appears on the page. So for most it means winging it on sales calls, going with the blow, and somehow trusting that if it’s aligned, clients will magically say yes and pump your Let’s start a homestead in Aureka fund with a major cash windfall.

I’m off for dreams, but I’m even more, but I’m more for the practical strategies techniques frameworks that bring up to life and the truth is after the branded photoshoots of you staring off into the under like the second coming of Plato, weekly Facebook Labs and stories where you drop us in bombs like Tony Robbins two point o, pixel perfect funnel pages, filled with golden pineapples and espresso mugs, running the ads, webinars, and email campaigns at perk of beers and open hearts, all roads lead to the call.

Right? This was purely from the distillation of that. It’s nine fifty eight AM. You have a sales call at ten AM.

How do you feel nervous excited? Hit with stomach knots and a sudden shortness of breath while your bladder urges you to go for one last tingle. So this is the, like, section of the page that like, a bunch of buyers pointed to, like, oh my god. That’s me.

Like, how did you know that I nervous pee two minutes before a sales call? And I’m like, I know because I dug deeper. That’s what awkward people do because I’m an awkward person. I get it.

So this is the kind of copy that comes from that exercise. No one’s going to offer this information. Like, maybe, like, one in a hundred people will be honest about this, about, like, this is what awkward looks like for me.

But they’re not gonna divulge stuff like this, like burning incense, Chantay mantras, and rocking out to, like, hite me up playlist on Spotify before the sales call. This is the stuff that we get to paint that fuller picture. We get to take that placeholder problem, right, of a feeling awkward, not feeling confident, and ask ourselves, what would someone who doesn’t feel confident who feels awkward actually do? How do they express their awkwardness in real life in a way that we can actually mirror back to them?

So, yeah, that’s really kinda where it comes from and how it plays out.

Let me hop back into the screen.

Sweet.

So practical application.

And it’s an invitation. Right? If you can work this into your process of your high quality VOC data, right, choose just choose one input. Like choose one high quality input of like, this is a solid answer. Right? This is a solid piece of data.

And just see what happens when you run it through these three questions.

So question one is, like, the avoider. Right? What is this person really afraid of, why, and what might happen. Right? So what are they avoiding? What parts of the problem or that situational gestalt?

Just feel a little bit too spiky and uncomfortable and anxiety provoking for them to go into. Right? So what are they avoiding? What is this person really afraid of why and what might happen?

See what comes out when you run a piece of BOC data through that. Next would be the emitter. What would a person who shared this VOC also be feeling, but perhaps be too embarrassed or ashamed to be fully conscious or transparent about? And why. Right? So this is really the beneath the surface stuff that they may not even be aware that they’re omitting.

And the third one is the contextualizer. So this is probably my favorite, the one that leads to, like, just the most interesting copy, I would say, is, like, how does all this actually appear in the three-dimensional five senses world. Right? So not just as an idea, but how does this actually play out? How does this actually look And, yeah, I’d I’d say, like, this is the question that has really brought in the richest, most engaging type of copy.

But all of them definitely play their role, and it takes like an extra three or minutes, to run a piece of BOC data through any of these questions.

And just see what happens.

So, another phenomenon, right, people want to and simultaneously don’t want to be seen in their cringe. Right? I hate being seen seen in my cringe, and I love being seen in my cringe because it feels liberating at the same time. So it’s liberating if we can lay it out for them.

And there’s nuance here. Right? Lay it out for them. Be shame it playfully. You’ll notice that a lot of the copy. I write or maybe you won’t notice this. If you don’t read by copy, and I’m not assuming you do.

But I tend to be strategically playful when I bring up cringe. Right? I certainly don’t use an accusatory tone. I certainly don’t shame on top of the shame or shame their shameful ideas about themselves.

But there’s a liberating quality when you can lay it out for them. Right? And there’s kind of that cringe element to it, but you’re also de shaming it and being playful and being, strategically light about it. All within orientation towards we see you, that’s cool and here’s your way out.

Right? It’s like, that’s cool. Didn’t you know that everybody, you know? He’s two minutes before sales call.

It’s not just you. It’s cool. Happens to all the awkward people. I’m one of them.

I’m one of you. So, yeah, it’s like, taking the cringe, allowing them to feel liberated. And, okay, it’s not just me. Certainly not shaming them for it.

Right, bringing lightheartedness to it, and having that be inclusive in what your offer helps solve.

So that is really how the offer gets connected to the totality of their experience, not just the placeholder parts that they don’t necessarily feel the strongest level of emotional connection to.

So in short, if you can mirror back the VOC verbatim, So in short, you can mirror back the VOC verbatim and or you can mirror back the ten x magnified version of the v POC with what I call the clogged dirty pours and the chapped lips the puss and the cringe and offer some industrial grade venture and exfoliant.

I remember, like, one of my, like, first childhood memories is, like, Like department stores used to have, like, the cosmetic sessions. I guess I still do. And I used to, like, go with my mom and she, like, do her makeup thing and, like, they’d have those, like, really big magnified mirrors. And I remember, like, looking at my face as, like, an eight year old and being, like, mesmerized by all the weird shit that is on, like, a face.

And, anyway, and, like, the cosmetic person is like, what did she say? She said something that, like, really stuck. She’s like, I don’t remember what she said so I don’t wanna misquote her. But, yeah, all that cringe, all that weird stuff that gets revealed when we magnify it, to me, that makes a difference between, like, copy that makes sense, right, and makes a sales argument and copy that digs deeper and really, pulls in.

So many of these more nuanced emotional elements most other offers or most other copy just wouldn’t. So it could be a huge difference maker, and it’s a lot of fun to just write copy that connects on that level.

Alright. I’m three minutes over. I’m gonna shut up. Open to questions, comments, discussion, copy reviews, and any experiences in looking at yourself in a magnified cosmetic mirror, which I don’t recommend. It’s not fun. But, yeah, there we go. Laura’s yours.

I have a question. So where where’s your favorite place to, like, get that kind of voice of customer if, people aren’t don’t give it up and kind of surveys and stuff.

Yeah.

So so so the exercise I do, right, is like I get those survey results, and then I run it through my own questions and make make my own leaps, right, of what I see.

Okay.

Yeah. So it’s like, what else would this person what is this person not divulging? Right? And you kinda have the breadcrumbs. Right? So that’s why I, like, work with your what you would consider to be your high quality BOC, where there’s enough information to kinda bread crumb you to what that experience may look like.

But, yeah, this is really kind of how I enrich the current VOC data.

My favorite technique, right, would be recorded sales calls. That’s always been like a great source because sometimes good salespeople, right, are really good at extracting some of those situational gestalt elements. Right? Not all salespeople, but, certainly when I was doing sales calls.

Right? It’s like the typical question of, like, what does actually look like? Like, and what does that mean to you? Right?

So they they kinda pure steeper into the experience.

Mhmm.

But on survey results, typically, yeah, I’ll kinda run that exercise myself and just ask, what is this person not divulging? What would they be too ashamed of? What are they holding back on? And just kinda let my own imagination and attunement.

And it’s not such an an imaginary exercise. Like, if you’ve been in that avatar if you’ve been in the data. Mhmm.

You start building out a profile of who this customer is.

Right?

Mhmm.

So, yeah, that’s, that’s how I go about it.

Cool. Thanks. And I had a, just another kind of comment as well. Yeah, I thought it was interesting what we we said kind of when you know the person that you’re, like, leaving the survey the way you’ll leave the responses because I’ve I recently started running, like, cold ads to my course, and I’ve noticed my the server responses are so much more useful now. Because before I think it was mostly people who kind of knew me inside freelancing school and stuff. So they’re kind of like, oh, I joined because, like, I like your stuff or whatever, but as interesting, like, getting those more authentic responses because they don’t know me so don’t give a shit what I think.

Exactly. Yeah. Great point. Cool. Monique, I see a hand up.

Alright.

I’m just gonna jump off and then that was awesome, by the way. I think, the context of yours plus, Joe did the high problem outcome.

Mhmm. Yep.

Are the can’t recall.

But, like, this notion of, like, you give you give great outcomes of, like, the standard way of which you would appear, to see copy being written, and then you elaborate the high so it’s a high class problem. So then you just enrich it with, like, the, as she said, wearing diamond slippers type level of success that comes from, the work that’s being, you know, or the the effort that you put in when you when you arrive at the solution of x. So I on that note, I’m not sure if you saw it. Can you share a little version of how you do a bit of that and a bit of what you just the cringe in in a version of of flow.

Oh, so how I would integrate that with Joe’s high class problem? Yeah.

I know it, like I think I’ve I’ve done it.

So, like, immediately, like, what came to mind was I had a template or I have a template. I think it’s in seven figure emails or of the non problem problem.

That dive specifically into that and just kind of like the languaging of how I portray it. So do y’all have access to some figure emails somewhere? Don’t know where it would be, but, check out the non problem problem. Yeah.

So it’s a non problem problem. And that’s where you’re saying you integrate kind of the cringe with a high. And then that so you you contextualize with the this is how you are Yep. Situation like your problem. You add the cringe and then you slowly say here’s the, you know, the outcome of the typical, like, good outcome. And then you add it at the dot, at as a solution idea of the high class problem or the?

Yeah. I believe so. It’s been a it’s been a few years now, and, like, it may not be layered in that specific way.

But I recall it does have that contrast element, right, between, like, the current cringe and then the hyper specificity around kind of that high cost problem and how that would appear in their life. So even with that, right, like getting so specific in that situational gestalt, right, is something that, like, I’ve done a ton of, right, of how success actually looks like. Right? And, like, that’s yielded copy.

Like, that’s, like, weird and it makes sense and it resonates because, like, you know, so so much copy will will say, like, you’ll make more money. Right? Like, that’s a typical desire. Right?

And, like, I think going through this exercise, right, of, like, people’s desires, it’s like, why do you want more money? Right? Like, and I’ve asked that on sales calls. Like, why do you wanna make a hundred thousand dollars a year?

Why do you wanna make two hundred? Why do you wanna double your income? Right? Like, what are you actually gonna do with that?

Right? And that’s where you get a copy, like, a down payment and a house in my city that’s really expensive. Right? Or I think the best, like, the best piece I ever received back was something like, like, being able to upgrade for peanut butter to almond butter without my boyfriend, like, judging me for it.

Right? And, like, that works its way onto the page. Right? So Yeah.

This exercise really kinda like works in all directions to, like, really get into how that situation manifests.

Beyond just like the surface level languaging.

Cool. That that’s cool. Thanks.

Cool. Of course.

Naomi okay.

So the question that I have is whenever I try to use this, I work for very technical software products. And whenever I try to use this technique, I always hear one of these responses. It’s either well, we don’t know that that’s true about our customers. Or maybe it’s true about one of our personas, but we have like six personas, or I hear this is too negative. We don’t want this to negatively affect our brand.

Shape.

Or this is just too, like, offbeat off the wall. We want something a little bit more corporate. And so Like, when I can get it in there, it works really, really well. But most of the time, it’s like a very, very watered down version, especially because, like, if you’re running Madads or LinkedIn ads, you have like seven words to put on a tagline and a hundred and fifty characters for the introduction. So, what do you do to combat those that kind of feedback.

Yeah.

There’s certainly the element of, like, picking my battles. Like, I’ve worked with clients too where it’s, like, they’re so adamant about the tone being what the tone is. Right?

And yeah, like, I I tend to be really cautious about trying to push back against things that feel so unpushable or unmovable for the client.

Right? So it’s like, you know, if that’s what they’re insisting, it is. Right? I’m going to kinda work within those margins, right, and kinda be okay with that.

You said that, like, when you have used those techniques, like, you’ve gotten really good results. I think that, like, that certainly gives you the opportunity for it to, like, point to those results. Like, with that client of, like, did we look at the response rate on this message, right, did we look at the open then to clicks on this email? Right?

Like, do we have a bit more leeway to take a chance on this type of copy, even if it’s to a segment of the list, right, can we segment the list appropriately. Can we send can we AB test? Right? Can we send half the list this email and the other half this email, right, to just start, safely testing the waters of expanding how messaging could look like.

So I’d say, like, safe tests would be how I would go about it Right? Like, a, like, making sure there’s openness. Right? I’m not going to, like, force a door that doesn’t wanna budge, right, to some degree.

And that’s just something I have to live with. But other than that, it’s like, how can we create, you know, I call them like risk free tests. Right? Like, take segments of the list, even that haven’t been responsive.

Right? Can we even look at a segment of the list that hasn’t opened up an email in thirty days, right, and are essentially non active. Right? It’s like, what do you have to lose with that segment of the list?

So, yeah, I’d say, like, test it out with low risk, yeah, low risks, low risk segments of the list and to see if can kinda prove results there in a low risk environment for your client.

Makes sense.

Cool. Alright. Any other questions or should we get to some copy reviews. Alright. I think Abby are up.

I’m feeling kind of shy now.

Oh, no.

I feel like it’s so boring, get better at what you just showed us.

Oh, okay. I’ll just send it over.

So for context, this is for new bookkeepers that are desperate for experience.

They feel they just don’t feel confident enough to take on clients. They’re coming here from a five day challenge to give them thirty days of kind of on the job experience in five days. And, they In the interviews, one of the things that just kept coming up is they just they don’t like reading. They don’t retain information from that.

They like numbers. So with that in mind, I I try to keep the kind of everything that goes above solution as short as possible. And so yeah. Cool.

Oh, it’s a long form sales page. So, oh, shoot. Yeah.

So maybe if you could just read up to, like, the introducing or, like, obviously, we’re not gonna have time to go through with it.

Yeah. It’s all good. We got, like, twenty five minutes, so we could probably cover a good chunk.

I sent you a request for access.

Yeah.

I’m gonna make it so everyone can review Perfect.

Although, I’ve just given you added access if if you wanna, like, make it amazing for me.

Sweet. I’m gonna share my screen if that’s okay.

Yeah. Perfect.

Sweet.

Alright. You got an anonymous loris. I don’t know what a loris is. Is that a real animal or a mythical creature?

Cammals area. I know that much.

That’s me, I think.

Alright.

Cool. Alright. So kick imposter syndrome to the curb. You have your timer, to the ambitious bookkeeper itching to take on new clients. Be their own boss and make fantastic money from the comfort of home. It’s a good dog whistle there, build your money, making confidence, and the fast and easy QBO Jim, the hands on training academy for bookkeepers who love to learn by doing not spectating. So this is in response to kind of, like, that piece of data you had?

Yes. And the the I mean, I know, like, learn is usually a friction word and I tend to avoid it, but they seem like really excited by this idea of learning it’s something that kind of exclusively empowers them. So that’s why that’s for now.

That’s cool. And the fast and easy QBO gym. QBO gym is the program, I guess.

Fast and easy QBO gym is the program.

Okay.

The fast and easy QBO gym, the fast and easy QBO gym. Okay. It’s like I don’t know. It could just be me. I had, like, just mental, like, friction just, like, saying that out loud in my head.

And that A kind of ironic.

Yeah. Busted easy.

The fast and easy QBO gym. And, I mean, that’s the name of the thing. Right? So Yeah.

Yeah. Cool.

You’ve your basic QBO skills down. Maybe you’ve even gotten your certification.

What does QBO stand for?

QuickBooks.

Right. So they would know that. Right?

Like Oh, yeah.

They would know that. Perfect.

Yeah. That you’re gonna take on. Glad so you can multiply your income and make, but keeping your full time gig.

Yeah. I wonder now I’m thinking if maybe I I can be a bit more like creative there, like, based on what you’ve just kind of shared out of it or more BOC.

Mhmm. I don’t know.

Let’s see. So so just so remind me briefly, or all of us, like, where they are in their career right now.

They’re pretty new, so they might have the I think a lot of them are like door dashing and things doing, and they’re all they’ve started bookkeeping on the side. They’ve got this certification, but they’re just nervous to get clients because they are worried that they’re gonna mess it up.

I see. Cool. So they’re kinda, like, doing side hustles right now and, like, gig economy stuff and cool.

Yeah. Yep.

Yeah. I mean, like, to the degree of confidence you have to, like, be inclusive of the things they’d be leaving behind, like, that would resonate so well in the lead. Right? Like, if you know that, like, their door dashers and Uber drivers and just, like, nervous to take their first few gigs. Like, that feels it feels riskier and it feels more of a resonant when it lands. Right?

Could you also say something about, like, all of the frustrating things that happen when you’re working minimum wage jobs, like people not tipping you or getting angry that you’re late or yelling at you for not cooking something right or whatever it is that people have to suffer through when they’re door dashing.

Yeah. I mean, I think I think by this like, it’s just because I’m concerned about length. I feel like by this point, they already know they want to kind of I’m not selling them on becoming a bookkeeper. Like, I they already want that.

I’m selling them under confidence to make more money with it and actually take on clients.

Hey, Abby.

Thought here, like, I think just as an insight, bookkeepers are really hard to come by right now, and like there’s a shortage in the market.

And I’m not sure if this resonates at all, but it’s almost giving them the confidence of saying you’ve got these skills that are in demand. You’re almost doing a disservice by not starting.

Mhmm.

Something to that effect, you know, almost pumping them up saying like there is demand. You just gotta get out there and get started and, you know, be the superhero that saves it, you know, like, you know, small business from their own pain of living in receipt and bookkeeping hell.

Like Mhmm. Something to that effect could really resonate and kinda get out of your way.

Yeah. I mean, I I think that’s a good idea. I’m just finding because it’s kinda like, wanna plant them up and not plant them up so much that they don’t need to join the gym. Mhmm. Right. They join the gym to get the confidence.

Yep.

So the gym is like It’s about It’s I think it’s like templates process step by steps, like the how tos, the you know, but it’s it’s not so much about the how tos.

It’s more actually, but what they’re gonna do is practice doing it. So it would be like when you copy writing, like writing copy every day, like inside a program, that kind of thing. So then you you know you can do it when you work for a client. Could you’ve done it? Like a dozen times in the program.

Yeah.

I think, like The practice before you play kind of mentality.

Like, you know, I thought this analogy was really interesting. I thought, the NFL, they see themselves practicing all week for the play, right, the the day. Like, NBA, they play more games and they do practice. Like, it’s kinda that get your hundred reps in. Is that what the idea of a course is? Mhmm.

Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, that’s pretty powerful.

I think there’s an opportunity right here. And do I really know what I’m doing?

To really substantiate that, like, the moments they get caught feeling like I don’t know how to do this or I don’t know if I’m doing this right. Like, mirror back to three or four things where they encounter that. Right? So, like, the copyright version is, like, when I hit share on the Google Doc, very real moment. That I know whether or not I feel confident or non confident in that moment. Right? So what are, like, the three or four very real moments where they get hit with those, like, clammy hands as you call them.

Did you call them clammy hands, or did I make that up? Oh, yeah. Let’s go climbing. Sweet.

Yeah. So bring them to those, like, three or four specific moments in a really efficient efficient manner that you don’t need to, like, elaborate or unpack them in detail, but just let them see themselves in that cringe for a second. Right?

Yeah. I think the moment of the moment of price tension is, like, when they get asked, do you have experience? And they Yep. They’re stuck in that need experience to get a job? But call get in trouble with that experience.

Yep. So being caught in that loop. Mhmm.

And then it could like bring back Right.

Like, it feels safer to continue just, like, driving an Uber. Right? Like, they’re less vulnerable in those situations.

So, yeah, it’s like this is a really vulnerable sentiment. Right? Do I know what I’m doing? Right?

And the things that they’re currently doing for income are likely less vulnerable, but also less profitable. So I think, like, that could be a theme that gets explored here is, like, maybe I should just continue doing x because at least I know how to do that. Right? At least I know how to deliver a DoorDash.

I don’t know if that’s the right usage of the word. Do you deliver a DoorDash? I’ve never door dashed.

Yeah. So I think that could be a really good opportunity to kind of also loop in that status quo that feels safer to some degree.

Mhmm.

Cool.

Did they offer, after the work you know, sort of a credential that says, you know, got my one hundred hours of practice in so to speak.

So, like, that They actually have, which is really cool is they have, like, their own database, kind of like Upwork, where based on activity in the gym.

So if you complete lots of training exercises, then you’ll rank higher, so clients can hire you.

That’s cool.

I’m gonna I mean, because it’s a five day challenge, like, they’re gonna I’m doing it so they received, like, a workout plan on the last day of the challenge. And then that I’m gonna go really hard on, like, the books match and, like, the hundred that kind of thing. So by by this point, they should have a good idea of it.

Yeah. Yeah. And it’s sort of like if they have a badge or they’re in there as a vera verified embedded, like, all that kind of the confidence of not being ready. From someone else.

Mhmm.

Yeah. Yeah. So it’s like they, yeah, they can actually get clients from this.

That could be pretty powerful. It gets a straight shot shortcut to practicing in in clients.

Yeah. No. It’s it’s awesome. It’s just the thing is because they haven’t built it out fully, like it’s lower down the page. But once they’ve built it out fully and they’ve got lots of clients and that I’m gonna just be like, okay. Let’s just read you the page and put that right at the top because that’s such a huge benefit.

Yeah. I agree. I didn’t see that, and I think you’re right.

Fifty nine dollars a month, cancel anytime. I think it’s really easy to, like, anchor the value of that to what the like, average new client retainer would be?

Like Yeah.

And I don’t know what that number is.

Like, I don’t know what the average, like, I think it’s, like, five hundred a month.

So, yeah.

Right. So it’s, like, bring it back. Like, do you feel, like, with the confidence in your skills, right, and the client getting scripts and all that, you could get one client that could pay literally one client for one month to pay or in higher yearly membership.

Right?

Yeah. Yeah. That’s true. And it’s also, like, something I haven’t done is compared to the cost of, like, an actual gym. I don’t know which most people do and then don’t actually use it.

So not that I want people to join, but not use it, but, you know, like Right.

By the way, is this a choose sign of marketplace? Like, could could the other side of this be you know, you find great vetted, thinking about myself and people who need, bookkeepers, but they’re hard to come by.

I’m working on that phone on it. This is the B2C and then the B2B.

Keep them posted. I’d love to share it. There’s a big need.

Yeah. No. I need one as well.

This is so interesting to me that, like, this is, like, the main driver. Right?

Because it’s I know.

Like, I was like, there’s gotta be something deeper here, like, or it’s like, because I did with their other final, and it was just, like, more money more money more everyone’s like, I want six figures. And this time, it was just like they were desperate for for experience, and they actually said, like, I would pay someone to just give me an internship so that I can, like, learn how to do this stuff and feel more confident.

So Yeah.

Yeah. It’s wild. Like, I would have never guessed that the main driver, and I guess that’s why we do research.

Yeah. Because it’s all it looks like just full of friction to me, but it’s not like that this is what they want.

We love to learn by doing not spectating. Yeah. Cool.

Sweet.

And, like, Yes.

Silly question, but, like, the word imposter syndrome, like, that’s familiar enough to this market.

Yeah. That came up, like, about fifty times. In the VOC research. Yeah.

Awesome.

Yeah.

You already do this well, like, based on my scan, but, like, Like, this has taken it deeper. Like, what are the consequences of imposter syndrome? Right?

Yeah.

It’s like Yeah. You know, and I think, like, And I think this comes down to, like, just about every certification. Right? So, like, in two thousand eight or two thousand nine, I got, like, my personal training certification, I didn’t know what I want to do with my life.

Right? And, like, I wasn’t confident enough to, like, use it and then, like, within six months, it just becomes something you did, right, and just, like, never used. So I think, like, creating the urgency that, like, there’s kind of, best before date. Right?

It’s like Yeah. And I wish there was, like, an actual stat to back this up, where it’s, like, you know, ninety eight percent of people who don’t use their certification with the real clients within six months and of never using it. Right?

Just, like, really ground it. Right? Cause they have kind of this, like, they’ve recently invested in it. I’m guessing there was, like, a time and money investment in getting certified.

Right?

So there’s still definitely in this, like, sunk cost bias where they wanna make good on that. Right? They want it to work out. They don’t want the embarrassment or the name being out. That was just something I did and wasn’t committed enough and onto the next thing. So I’d say, like, you know, this is the moment they get to really choose of whether or not they’re going to have, like, this flexible, profitable career or not. Right?

And that’s the real risk in saying no to this is that Mhmm.

You know, is that like a morrow, it doesn’t become easier.

Right, to get into this. Right? And by next month, you’re probably, you know, even so even further removed that, like, getting back into it is harder. So Yeah. I think there could be an argument there.

Just really, like, not stopping at imposter syndrome, but unpacking kind of, like, the real cost of that.

Mhmm.

Yeah. Yeah. I agree. Like, it lacks a bit of urgency.

And with it being, like, worrying about the length, because, like, on one hand, like, because I always say to clients, like, yeah. Well, if people, like, engage with it, they’re gonna read every word. But then with this audience, I’ve genuinely, like, I don’t think they will because they Yeah. Just hate reading. So I’m like, oh, I mean, they’ll I guess some of this that could include as well in the video that they’ll get.

Yep. Are you writing, the emails or the apps that drive to this?

Yeah. I’m doing the whole final.

Sweet. Yeah. So I mean, there could be opportunity to, like, have an email specifically to, like, imposter syndrome and what it really means. Right? Like, Yeah.

Mhmm.

I’m sure I can get a start as well on they’re not using your certification or something.

Ask chat Yeah.

There you go. Did you ever get a certification that you didn’t use, or did your client? Like, there could be a good story there.

Mhmm.

Yeah, so so I would I wouldn’t bloat the sales page, especially if you’ve had the feedback like that.

You know, they’re adverse to reading. But you can certainly, like, dive deeper and unpack some of those topics and email copy and the ad copy. So yeah.

Oh, thank you. Really helpful.

Yeah. Good stuff. Doing final scan.

Oh, just by the time I I didn’t catch it.

I don’t know if it’s included or not, but, like, did you talk about any of, like, the awkwardness or pain points around marketing themselves, or does it all tie into the just not being confident?

Yeah. No. There is definitely awkwardness at the end. What someone said, they get they get like actual pins and needles.

Yeah. You love the awkward voice of customer. That’s how I can tell when you’ve written an email, like one of Joe’s emails because it’s, like, they’re really awkward specific voice of customer is the right group way.

Oh, yeah. The cringe. Yeah.

Yep.

I’ll tell you some cringe, some personal cringe. My, my dear, my dear mother, but I think she bought, like, twenty copies of both my books. And started distributing it to my entire family, and that’s cringe.

That’s cringe. I’m I’m not going to a family event ever again. Like, just can’t.

Right. I love that. I don’t I as a mom, how is that cringe? I would totally do that.

Oh, yeah. I mean, it’s it’s like the ultimate mom move. I’m not, like, dismissing it. And, like, I cringe like, I’m awkward enough at family events. Right? And now, like, my uncle Jerry, right, is gonna be, like, asking me about, like, my work in the men’s space and I just don’t wanna go there. I don’t know.

Yep.

Anyway, I got a giveaway on Instagram, and my mom commented, oh, I could really use this for my new product.

Yeah. Oh, thank you for that. That was helpful.

But I’m I’m totally gonna do that, like, with my son one day. Like, I’m just gonna buy all of his thing and distribute it to the entire village, right, and, anyway.

Cool. Any other question to rapid fire stuff in these last seven minutes, or are we good to call today?

Can I share a few of the tag lines that I’m working on?

Of course. Yeah. Please.

Okay. It’s just like ten or twelve tag lines, so it should be easier to where it’s less time consuming.

Awesome.

A few fun ideas.

So this is compliance software. If you need to make your website accessible comp accessibility compliant, user way is one of the top solutions.

Again, very like corporate brand.

And this is I wasn’t able to listen to sales calls, who’s more of a self-service product.

Sure.

I was looking through g two, and g two had some interesting, comments.

So I was working with some of those.

Mhmm.

And again, this is an idea where you don’t wanna scare them into saying, like, you’re gonna be sued for millions of dollars if you don’t fix this website.

Of course.

But that would be like an interesting thing to say.

So they wanna they’re worried about lawsuits. They wanna help people who are disabled, and they wanna check compliance off the list without pulling away our indirect resources or knowing a lot of technical knowledge.

So And these are specifically for ads going to cold audiences, I guess?

Yeah. These are, for, like, Facebook LinkedIn etcetera. And the goal is to drive more people to search for user way dot com on Google. So it’s very top of funnel.

Got it.

Like, this would be, like, hyper specific in the world of soccer.

Yeah. Yeah. That one that one jumped out.

Like this one just jumped out, like, right away. My eyes went there.

So, like, I’m always looking for more like that.

And and even your your own languaging, like, as you were describing this, like, checking it off the list, I feel like that’s what they wanna do is, like, just have it checked off the list so they can move on. Right?

Is it, like, Do do the companies that, that buy the software have someone dedicated to the role of compliance, or that’s just No.

Definitely. Right. It’s it’s super super complicated to do compliance, and it would take dozens of R and D members that are devoted to building software.

Right.

So it’s where the non techies, that was another phrase that they used.

Yep.

So the hyper specificity of this works really, really well.

Like, does the word accessibility jump out to this target audience, or could this could these, like, more generalized ones land a little flatter.

Like I was just throwing things down on the page.

Yeah.

The technical imperative is w c a g compliance, but It’s not quite as sexy.

Everything you need for compliance and much more. I think, like, the outcome they want, right, is not having to worry about it. And having that taken care of as quickly as possible. I’m guessing. Right?

I mean, some of them did actually want to help.

The, people who are blind or people who Okay.

Are color blind and can’t really read the website. Like, for sure, there was an altruistic motive.

And there were people who are concerned that they’re gonna get a big lawsuit because they’re a huge, huge company.

I would say there were three three goals there.

Yeah.

So, like, the bottom bullet is how I typically insert VOS see data because that would go in, like, the introductory line above the ad.

And usually, that’s not as well read. So I can usually stick it in there and get away with it.

Right. Yep.

As opposed to the banner, which is much more visible.

Mhmm.

You mentioned those three goals.

Does your client have any data around, like, which of those goals was, like, the primary, like, decision driver, like, for paying customers?

I mean, it depends on if you’re talking about, like, a small commerce website or like a marketing agency building websites for clients or if you’re talking about a massive enterprise company.

Right.

Like, there’s so many different personas. Are you talking to the decision maker? Are you talking to the champion. Like, it’s it’s there are a lot of stakeholders and personas involved. That’s what makes it hard to get to hyperspecimen.

For sure. Yeah.

You can use a few different approaches for different apps.

Yep. I mean, this one bakes in, like, everything in a really efficient way. Right? Like, it points to the worry and the fear of non clients, and it points to the simplicity of it having solved. Like, I love even just, like, the wording of this is, like, this here points to like, usefulness and speed, right, even the way, like, of your word efficiency and how that communicates it.

Yeah.

I got that piece of study on their website, so I can look through those, see if I can find any of the good nuggets.

Cool.

Accessibility in one click as well. I could point to ease to, like, ease and speed, which I like.

And, ultimately, it’s not about what I like. It’s about what they respond to, but I feel like, if, like, the main emotion that noncompliant have is, like, worry and anxiety.

Right? Like, people typically wanna get out of worry and anxiety as fast as possible. So it’s like, I love the dynamic and a lot of a few of these headlines point to it specifically of, like, you know, stress and anxiety and simplicity and speed to solution. Right?

Like, that’s a really good dynamic to filter some of these through. Right? For both, like, the ones that could really work well for testing and also, like, how to optimize it. It’s like, point to the stress and anxiety and point to the speed of solution, if that makes sense.

Okay.

Yeah.

I’m trying to come up with more like those.

As someone who uses user way and recommends it, I always just say it’s the easiest accessibility solution. It is it’s the easiest way to implement accessibility on a website.

Yeah. That’s what a lot of the reviews said.

An accessibility in one click is the one that was the most resonant with me of that list.

The fifteen thousand violations I mean, it depends on if you’re if you’re going for the people that are, you know, they’re they’re a corporate, bigger company, and they have to worry about meticulously handing handling every little thing, they’re gonna care more about details.

But if it’s general, you know, like, a a marketing agency that’s managing hundreds of websites for their clients or a WordPress shop or whatever, they want they want to check that accessibility box as quickly and easily as possible.

Yeah. Okay. Well, I’ll I’ll keep that in mind, and I’ll probably give the client, like, one option for each, major persona.

Yeah. That’s good languaging there as well. Check the accessibility box as quickly as possible. Right?

Like, there’s something within that. It’s like they wanna be compliant and they want it to be, like, fast and easy. Right? So I think just working with that theme, could yield some pretty good pretty good iterations.

Cool. Thank you. Cool.

Thanks for sharing.

Alright. We feeling good and complete for today.

Yes. Solid, solid. Well, I appreciate y’all hanging out for the hour, and, we’ll be in touch soon.

Cool. Take care, everyone.

Thank you so much. Bye.

The Instagram Posting Calendar

The Instagram Posting Calendar

Transcript

My Wonderful.

Alright.

Howdy. Howdy. Howdy. Howdy.

Cool. People are joining. I’m gonna let that happen and get a little adjusted here.

Cool beans.

Good.

Okay. How’s everybody doing?

Having a good start of week so far?

Wow. Everybody hates Monday. Okay. That’s fair.

No prob alright. Alright.

Yeah. Full on hate of Monday. Nobody even reacted other than Sarah.

This is bananas.

Okay. Alright.

I’m gonna I gave a thumbs up.

Okay. Okay. Good. I missed it somehow.

I’m I’m just I just rolled out of bed, so, you know, I’m not quite all here yet.

What time zone are you in?

It’s ten, but I’m kind of a night owl. So I I go to bed really late, and I get up nine ish. Oh, okay. I’m having my morning coffee right now.

Oh, that’s good. I am the opposite. I’m asleep.

Why I never I never make, Verona’s groups because they’re I’m still sleeping.

Yeah.

Alright.

Well, cool.

Awesome. So today, you are here for the one session that I would not have paid any attention to years ago at my own peril. So I don’t have a whole bunch of regrets in, my business, but not getting started on social media sooner is is one.

As Nicole, who’s our social media lead, like, drinks her coffee feeling perfectly confident in her role. She’s like, Joe needs me. True.

So it’s a thing that my team has tried to get me on board with before.

Years ago, Mike was doing this big YouTube initiative, and I was like, no. It’s not leading to anything blah blah blah. Shut it down, and now it’s fully his job.

It’s like all YouTube, almost all the time. Nicole is our full time social media lead focusing entirely on Instagram.

And, yeah, these are things that I learned a little late. So I wanted to this is important for a lot of reasons. I’ve told you already that we have this, like, intensive starting in April, for new people who are looking to get, on track with having a much more, lucrative freelancing business.

And in that, we’ll be teaching a framework that, a model, basically, that then leads people to need to use social media a lot more. So today, we’re gonna focus on Instagram, because it’s really critical for the things that we’re going to teach going forward.

There’s a lot that if you’re not on Instagram, it’s really gonna be a struggle, some of the training that we have going forward, and you’ll be like, oh, I wish that I had done something. So just start today. If you’re already on Instagram, cool. If you’re not, honestly, I hope you heed my advice.

I really regret not being on Instagram earlier. So, I would strongly encourage you even more than building your list at this point, getting on Instagram is a pretty big deal. So we’re gonna talk today about, your Instagram posting calendar because one of the biggest challenges that I know I had and that people have is, well, what would I like, what would I even share? Like, Instagram is this visual medium, and I’m a writer.

What am I gonna talk about other than here’s how you should be writing copy, and do I really want to teach how to do things on social media? Like, is that how is that gonna work for me in getting clients? So a lot of good questions come up. And if you have any questions about using Instagram or frustrations or anything that you want to share, chat them out. We can start talking about those or just, like, come off mute and share anything that you might want to about hesitation around using Instagram. But we’re gonna dig in and come off at any point, by the way. And I will eventually hear you talking over myself in case I don’t see you.

But do come off and feel free to share anything as we’re going. I am gonna dive right in to sharing the, the worksheet that we have prepared for today.

Okay.

Again, for those who just joined, I was saying that not getting on Instagram sooner is, one of my business regrets, and I really, really, really encourage you to take it seriously starting now. Don’t worry about how many followers you do or do not have. We’ve got, what, eighteen thousand followers. It’s not a huge following at all, but it’s good. It’s good and only bound to pay off further.

So we can get into more of that, and we will get into more of those things as we move on in our training.

Just because we’re focusing on Instagram doesn’t mean that other social spaces aren’t important. As I mentioned, Mike owns YouTube for us. LinkedIn is currently not a big thing for us. We have lots of followers on there, etcetera, but, we’ll talk about LinkedIn as we move forward, and we’ll be using LinkedIn more for sales reasons going forward.

But just put aside any, like, oh, I just wanna work on LinkedIn, or I just wanna do Pinterest or something.

Let’s just focus on Instagram. Also, Nicole was doing, Pinterest stuff for us, and the results very quickly were, like, not there. So, we paused on that in case you’ve thought about, like, other things that you could be spending more time on. If you’re gonna make, you know, quote posts for Instagram, then you might as well make them for Pinterest too, but but you really don’t wanna spread yourself too thin.

Just keep that in mind. Okay. So this little framework, this little model showing to the side here is like our sunshine growth model. It looks like a sun.

That’s why it’s called that.

And we’ll be getting into that in the intensive freelancing.

If you choose to participate in that, it’s included for you anyway. So, it’ll be really good to participate in that if you want to starting in April. More about that in Slack soon. Okay. But this is really critical now because, Meta has recently, and this may not be news to some of you and it will be to others, has added features to Instagram that are purely for business purposes.

So not at all for personal fun stuff, but just for business. Knowing that and then seeing what they’ve added as we go, we’ll get into more and more of that. It’s a really it’s it’s clearly their future strategy is more around making sure businesses are using Instagram as much as possible, and there are a lot of cool solutions out there that make that even easier. And I’m not just talking about schedulers, but way better stuff.

Again, as I mentioned, for some of the things that we’re gonna talk about going forward in CSP, you will need to have an Instagram account. If you don’t, you’re just gonna, like, skip that week. And then the next month, you’ll skip another week.

And, eventually, I think you’ll see that there’s a need for this and have to go back and retake those lessons. So you might as well just start right now.

Like building a list, building a social following is something that probably should have started yesterday, but definitely not tomorrow. Not continue don’t continue bumping it down the line like I did.

And I’ve heard this a lot. So some of the challenges or reasons not to use Instagram are like, well, my audience isn’t on there.

I only speak to, you know, enterprise level businesses, and they’re not on Instagram. And it’s like, well, you’re not going after the business account because you’re gonna talk to the social media person there.

It’s definitely I mean, the data shows that Instagram is filled with CMOs.

A lot of CMOs, forty seven percent of CMOs in America are women, and half of people on Instagram are also women. That doesn’t mean that half of the women on there are CMOs or anything weird like that, obviously.

But just know that with so many more women becoming CMOs and so many women who are CMO aged on Instagram, it’s a really good opportunity that feels silly to disregard just because your mom has an account on there.

So and even if it’s not your mom, it’s it’s a big opportunity.

People who are not targeting people that you might be targeting are all over that. People who are targeting your ideal are also all over Instagram, so get your butt on there.

One of the things also that stands out as an objection to getting on Instagram is, I don’t have a designer, Joe. And, like, I I can’t I’m not a designer. Now some of you actually are designers.

But if you’re not, I’m not. And before I had somebody, on my team who could design things for me, I used, creative market a lot. Creative market is a very good solution. You can go here, to get a whole bunch of templates. You have to pay for them, but it’s, like, nine dollars to download, like, an incredible amount of Canva templates for Instagram. So don’t let that stop you, from moving forward with some really cool stuff. Okay.

So the thing that we’re trying to solve today is not, hey. Do Instagram overall, but you should get on Instagram. You should keep on Instagram if you’re already on there.

And then we need to figure out what goes on your Instagram. So we’ve spoken already in Coffee School Professional about your red thread, your one thing, whatever, like, you basically specialize in and own or working towards owning, obviously, that’s a really good starting point for the content that you’re going to put on Instagram. But, like, where do you go with that? So a good, a good practice is to theme as much as you can, especially if you plan on handing this work over to a VA, which is a very good idea for a lot of you to do given that a lot of VAs are already skilled in, if not coming up with ideas for Instagram, in taking your Canva templates, putting in stuff that you tell them to, and then scheduling that in Sprout Social or whatever tool you might use. So but what they need is direction on what it should be about. So a good rule of thumb or not a rule of thumb, actually, a a good practice is to theme as much as you can.

Theming goes a long way. This is not my recommendation. This is my coach recommended this to us, one of my coaches, which is to theme your, year. So each month of the year, go through thinking about your example, like, your thing that you own and theme it. So you can say in the month of January, you’re gonna focus on for me, I would focus on specializing.

February could be a month that’s focused on tools. That doesn’t mean you only ever get to talk about tools. You can still say on Valentine’s Day in February, something else, But this will at least help you set up a plan for what you will talk about, generally speaking, each month. So if you’re like, okay. I need quotes. If you go to your VA and say, quote post as we actually know at copywriters quote post do pretty well.

So if you’re like, look, VA, in April, we’re gonna do systems training on Instagram.

Can you go and pull, you know, thirty quotes for me on systems, on systems for freelancing, systems for business, on why systems are important, on why nobody likes a system until they get a system, etcetera, etcetera, or do whatever you wanna do with AI to generate stuff like that.

But then at least you’ve got something to hand them. Right? You can say here’s what to do, and they can go forward and do that. Without a theme, you’re just like, I don’t know.

Copy?

So we want to, theme our months. There’s a worksheet in here for you.

And within each of those months then, you will need a subtopic.

So, obviously, a subtopic for, like, systems is is really, really dry. But if we were to do, like, November geek systems are important, by the way, but also quite dry. Geeking out on research, then week by week, you might have your different subtopics on research. Like, week one is gonna be all about serving.

Week two is all about interviewing. Week three and so on and so forth. Right? So we can write those out.

And now even further, we know or our VA knows what to talk about in those months or in those weeks. Sorry. Months overall.

So what I would like you to do is before we move on, I’d like to pause and have you go through and just for the next six minutes, just jot out just from April through to the end of December what those themes might be for your business to post about on Instagram.

Okay?

Doable?

Alright. Cool. Six minutes, then we’ll come off mute.

This.

Cool. Cool. Sorry if you have to click a button again to agree to stay in the meeting.

We’re gonna do the subtopics as well because I don’t want to kind of just start the work and then bail on it.

But I what I wanna talk about before we get into the subtopics, unless you already started, which is cool, is that there are so many kinds of content you can put out there. It’s really like, bananas to me to think of all the different formats in which you can share a message so that it doesn’t if you’re like, oh, this is tiresome, which is my thinking on a lot of stuff. It’s like, how how what else how else do we say this? And sometimes it’s just say it in a different format.

Right? So it could be the same message shared in lots of different ways. But what I would like you to do is not necessarily use this right now, but really kind of just scan this if you didn’t already when you got the worksheet earlier. If you haven’t had a chance to look through it, now is a good time to look at the very many kinds of things you can share and then, of course, the format that you’ll share them in.

We do have Nicole here from our team. If you have specific questions, I didn’t tell her that I’d be offering her services to you today.

I’m not necessarily. But, if you have questions because I don’t do the posting, so it’s not like I’m part of the creation of the content, but I don’t I don’t know what happens. Like, I don’t do anything after that. I send we have a drop box where I drop a bunch of stuff, like videos I’ve recorded or photos or whatever.

And, we have a channel for social media stuff in Slack, and then we also have, like, Google Sheets of ongoing quotes and other things that we might wanna add to social media. And then we have this mechanism, which is important, which is at the start of every week, Nicole and I have a meeting about what’s coming up that week. And then at the end of the week, Nicole shares out results in Slack so that everybody can see them. And that’s a mechanism that, Chris, the CEO of Wistia, shared with me that he did that, and I loved this.

Just really straightforward. Like, I know we don’t wanna have more meetings in our lives, but we kinda have to have some more meetings in our lives. So if you do have a VA or somebody else on your team who’s gonna be posting for you, then it’s really good to have a meeting with them at least once a week to just see that you’re on the same page with the content that’s being shared with the message, with how it’s written, especially if you’re getting a VA to do it, and they might not be a copywriter or have the same sense of what’s important that you do.

And this having something like this sheet showing on the screen right now is also useful because then they can come up with more ideas, and you can also say, like, oh, man. We also have a content meeting at the end of the week. Just a side note as I’m looking through this, because a lot of what you’re going to do throughout the week is content you can share. It just doesn’t feel like it.

Right? So snippets from client calls can be, something that you share out. Obviously, not the part where the client is talking, but where you are. There can be really good stuff hidden in all of the work that you’ve been doing all week long, but your VA or the person working with you on social media won’t know know anything about it if you don’t share it with them.

So we actually have another meeting, which I was just mentioning, on Fridays where the team gets together, and it’s called, get content out of jail or something like that. And we have a worksheet, that or a spreadsheet where we all throughout the week type in things for meetings like this meeting. Like, Joe, there was that moment when, Katie asked you this question and you had this answer.

That should be shared on social media, your answer. And so it’s a mechanism, like, another mechanism to make sure that we’re getting the most out of the existing content we have. So it’s not always a matter of sitting down for a block of time and just, like, recording yourself talking. That’s good too. But there’s lots of places where content is, like, hiding, content you could share. So refer to that sheet and start, like, coming up with ideas.

What I would like you to do for just three minutes, if you haven’t already, is get into assigning a subtopic for the month of April.

Okay?

Week by week. Cool. Cool.

Alright.

Cool. So with that, I’m going to speak to this last part, but that’s really a, like, a homework for you to do going forward.

The last part is a, weekly calendar where you’d put in what the week is, what your subtopic is. And then, again, this is if you struggle to come up with what, to post about. If you already have this, obviously, as I’ve mentioned, you’re good.

But here are some these are actually really common themes, so it might be possibly too common going forward. Again, this is something that my, coach shared with us.

But, actually, some of these are shifted around. So I I tried to get a little more creative than just sharing exactly what my coach said for us to do. Motivation Monday, so that could be, like, where you’re just talking to your audience about something to be motivating for them. Trending topics, Tuesdays, results, Wednesdays, those are case studies, other things basically that you’ve done to prove out results.

Thorough Thursdays is going long on something, going deep on a topic, really digging into it, in a in a quite thorough way, and then q and a or ask me anything or FAQs, Fridays.

Those are just ways you can come up with content.

And then, again, the more you’re assigning this for somebody else to do, the more you can say, okay. I know I have to make some, q and a videos for you for Friday, so I’ll get those to you on Tuesday. And really does better work with them so that you stay on track and actually get results out of the work that you’re doing. Obviously, we’re not talking here about measuring how things are going. That’s not the subject for today’s training. What we just wanna do is make sure that we’re starting to get to a place where you are posting and then going back over later and making sure that it’s working, and your frequency is working, and the topics you’re sharing are working for the goal that you have in mind. So these are worksheets that you would fill in weekly, like the week before, or have them all ready to go well in advance depending on how you like to organize your time.

So that’s all I want to share with you for Instagram posting today. But what I really can’t emphasize enough is how important it is to get started now or to keep going if you’ve been doing it and, like, you’ve been sporadic about it or you just maybe you like, it’s easy to give up. I find it easy to go, like, well, forget it. There’s only one of me and there’s just not enough time, but worth it.

Try to find a way to sneak it in. Try to find things that are gonna shorten shorten the time for you to actually get that stuff out there. Don’t force yourself to post five times a day if you can’t even post once a day. Just start with once a day, and then go from there.

Okay.

Any questions or thoughts on this? How are we feeling about Instagram or our businesses?

Yeah. Katie.

Okay. I just wanna share, like, this is really well timed for me because I the last couple weeks have been playing this game with myself where I’m trying to get, like it’s, like, twenty five points on Instagram every week, and, like, a reel is, like, three points. A story is one point. I’m trying to, like I’m, like, going for volume.

Yeah.

But, yeah, gamifying it a little bit.

So if anybody is with me on trying to, like, get more out there, then that’s the strategy I’m Okay.

Tell me more about this game. I because I love it. How does it work? What do you do?

Like, what is the scoring system?

It’s literally, like, three for reals, two for stories, two, like, two well, two for post one and then one for, like, minute that I talk. I do a lot of when I go pick up my kids from day care, I do, like, talking head story. That’s my easiest one.

Reels are the hardest because I hate video editing.

And, this is really interesting, this what you’ve just shared because I have started doing all of my Instagram myself again because I found that it was, like, way too much back and forth with my VA. Yeah. She’s, like, not a design person or a copy person. So, yeah, this is me, like, taking back the reins from Instagram and trying to just see how much faster I can ship things than, like, putting a big strategy behind it, and making it, like, a bigger thing than I think it needs to be.

Okay.

So and the game does the game exist to make it so that you want to do this stuff?

Oh, sorry. No. Go ahead.

I track, like, micro wins in my paper diary, and that’s where I just give myself points.

Okay. There’s no I mean, the question about what’s your prize, I’m like, oh, yeah. I should probably give myself a reward of some kind, but I haven’t been doing that so far.

Oh, now you get to come up with a a prize.

That’s fun. It’s awesome.

Cool. Who else wants to get in with Katie and make a game out of it?

I love this. Yeah. I don’t know. I think anytime we can have a game involved, then you’re just like, competition’s on.

You gotta do it. No? No. Fun. Anyway, I love that, Katie. Good job. And I know that it can feel like a lot, to have to put together these systems, like SOPs to document all this stuff, all the work upfront, in order to hand it off to a VA, but it is the leverage that will help.

Right? So if you can get to a place where you can document this the work and have some themes, have templates in place that are like, don’t mess with this, especially, like, if you buy something on Creative Market and say, this is how it’s gonna look for the next three months, just use these templates, then that might be something because, obviously, there’s lots of ways to spend your time, and social media is important.

It’s just not gonna be, obviously, forever the most important thing for you to do. Has anybody read the E Myth Revisited yet?

Read it. Yes.

Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. I’m not done the I scanned it years ago, but a lot fell out of my head. And, I’ve been listening to the audiobook, like, while I was painting this wall and, when I’m just, like, getting dinner ready and stuff like that.

That’s really interesting, when it comes to systems and the smart way to get yourself out of working in your business and more on your business, which is obviously the goal for basically everybody. Yeah. The E Myth Revisited. It’s a horrible title. I have no idea what he was thinking.

There’s no E Myth, and I don’t know about revisiting it. So it it’s very odd, But behind that horrible title is is a very it’s a good book. It’s a good book for a small business, especially if you find yourself expanding only to shrink because something got hard because the VA sucked at that or whatever that thing might be. And so you’re like, oh, I’ll just do it myself.

Oh, okay. I’m gonna grow. No. I’m just gonna do it myself.

It’s it’s really good at coaching you through that. And so yeah. Have a look.

Okay.

Anybody else working on Instagram? Anybody wanna share anything they’re doing on Instagram, Abby? Yeah.

Yeah. Instagram is, like, the debate of my life at the moment. As I said, I’m trying to grow my following on that, and I’m just finding it really hard. I wonder if you have any tips around visibility because I I’ve had, I think I mentioned. So I have my VA basically repurposing my LinkedIn content, and then I make some videos and stuff. So we’ve been posting every day ish for about three months, and I’ve gained maybe, like, a hundred followers, and no no results.

So, yeah, do you have any tips, like, getting in front of the right people? Like, using hashtags? Like, do I need to be engaging with accounts?

What’s the yeah.

I think there’s probably a lot that, like, Nicole and even Mike could say about getting putting content out there that people like. I if, Nicole or Mike, you wanna think about anything you’d wanna share there.

Come in here real quick if you’d like, Joe.

Yeah. So I just wanna before you jump in, I just wanna preface it with sometimes getting a lot of followers isn’t the point. Okay. Go ahead, Mike. Sorry. Thanks.

Yeah. It’s funny because, like, this is a a bit of an aesthetics we’re talking I’m coming from a YouTube perspective, but, like, I’m going through a a course right now called channel jump start for YouTube, which is kind of like done run by Daryl Eaves, who’s like mister beast’s data guy when it comes to YouTube. So he’s a YouTube guy. Right?

And the one thing that came away is a really big He doesn’t even care about subscribers. He cares about, like, who active viewers are. So I know Instagram, YouTube, not quite the same thing. But one technique that’s being done for the research side for us is we’re actually doing what’s called a dummy account.

And we what we do is we actually I’ve created a YouTube channel or a YouTube account that’s, like, not even I don’t touch anything, but I only make sure I go and watch the stuff that’s really hyper relevant to my niche. And then what’s happening is the algorithm’s gonna start suggesting that stuff to me, and then you take the the cues from that to say, okay. Here’s how people, like, edit it. Here’s the topics.

Here’s how the sort of thing. I don’t know if that would come across for Instagram, but it feels like something that could probably work where you actually created a separate Instagram account where you you’re just really hyper focused about only looking at stuff that’s, like, really relevant to your niche and then seeing if the algorithm will start suggesting more stuff to you, and you can take cues from that as, like, okay. How are people talking? Like, what’s the stuff that’s getting engagements?

What are people reacting to? And what’s the structure of it? Because just like copywriters with a a framework, you kinda break it down and figure out what the, what framework these creators are using.

Because most of them are playing you know, you start seeing the same stuff over and over again Mhmm.

And maybe not necessarily in a bad sense. But if the two things to look out for there is just, like, is it getting lots of attention and is getting lots of recent attention, I think is what you wanna look at. Because if something’s got a million views from, like, three years ago, it’s probably not relevant now. But, like, stuff that’s, like, hot and fresh right now, that’s probably where you wanna be looking.

So is it enough to just think, like, if I create better content, better relevant, likable content is gonna get seen? Is that kind of Yeah.

I’m just gonna kinda jump in here if that’s okay, Mike.

Yeah. So, I think with Instagram, like, it is a quantity game, but it is still quality over quantity, if that makes sense.

Like, if you’re just putting out whatever things that you haven’t really spent any time on or haven’t really thought through, it’s not going to get a ton of engagement, because people can kinda see through that. Like, people are looking for quality on there.

But, one thing that I find kinda helpful is going through kinda like what Mike’s saying is going to, like, the really popular accounts, like, in your niche or in your specialization and searching through their account, like, within the last few months and finding, like, the reels that have the most views, the you know, anything that has a lot of comments, lot of likes, and things like that. And then just kinda take you’re not stealing their content, but you kinda take it as inspiration for your own. And it’s like, hey. What did they do that did so well, and how can I kind of make that my own?

And then it kinda makes your strategy a little bit easier too because you’re not constantly just trying to come up with ideas out of nowhere.

So Mhmm.

Yeah. That’s helpful. Oh, sorry.

Go ahead, Adam, please.

Yeah.

No. I was just gonna say yeah. Because I feel like my content’s good quality, but it’s kind of boring. Like, I don’t feel like the hooks are good enough, and I don’t, yeah, maybe, like, that would help kind of, yeah, watching their videos and stuff and seeing, like, how other people are hooking people in because I just feel like I’m kind of sharing good stuff, but, like, no one cares.

I think you’ll notice too, especially when it comes to, like, video content, like reels, YouTube shorts, that sort of thing, like, hook becomes so important because, you know, they have the option to swipe away so quick. So you have Mhmm. Like, the three seconds to really get speak directly to what they’re actually interested in and then deliver on it.

It’s so hard. So it’s, like, legit so hard.

And we will get into like, the more we’re out there trying different things, we’ll be sharing those here, including, like, rules that we’ve developed for editing videos, and things like that so that the pacing is really good, because that’s obviously important. Right? But it’s like, if you don’t have rules set out, like, a basic checklist of this must be true as we move through a video, then you’re you’re just not gonna do it. Right?

But it’s as simple as just often as simple for me to say. Nicole and Mike are like, hold on. But it’s as simple as just putting together that list of, like, what are some of the rules we have? Like, every three seconds, the scene has to change, things like that.

Right? That can get people watching. But, again, Abby, I wouldn’t worry too much about all of the followers. Like, the one of one coach I have that I didn’t find on social, though, I found through other memes.

He has very low following, like, given the size of his business, but it’s just for him, not about that. It’s like he just wants one good follower that he can then connect with and close.

And so I know it can be frustrating, especially since number of followers is a bit of a signal to the world.

Yeah. That’s oh, you’re a big deal or you’re not, but I wouldn’t worry, honestly, too much about that.

Yeah. I think because the purpose in my head of doing Instagram is because I wanna get invited to podcast, and I want I want people to reach out to me. So I feel like all the while I have, like, a tiny following. Like, it’s like not only do I not look like a big deal, but I look like I’ve I’ve been in business for five minutes, which isn’t true. Yeah. So that’s kind of my, like, thinking with the with the followers.

Yeah. Makes sense. I mean, yeah, it does.

And it’s been like I know for Nicole, we have an objective for her by end of twenty twenty four for how many followers she needs to have. But as we go, that could change because it could become very clear that number of followers, again, not that important. It’s important, but what is something else that would matter for a podcast for somebody on podcast to invite you? What are some other things that need to be true that you could actually solve?

Yeah. I feel like once I get to a thousand, I’ll stop worrying about it. I just feel all the while is under a thousand. It’s just too small.

Yeah.

Well, it’s I’ll take it.

Comment.

Yeah. Well, no. We will because, again, every new follower is an opportunity. Mhmm. So yeah.

I can second that. I don’t manage an Instagram account for myself, but I manage an Instagram account for one of my clients. We have a thousand followers, and I get messages all the time. It’s a very niche industry.

It’s, commercial beekeepers. Not everyone who reaches out to us is relevant. But, yeah, I get messages all the time from beekeepers all over the world. Mhmm.

And then the other thing I’ll say is it took a lot of experimentation.

I to be perfectly honest, I really hate social media. So I came in knowing almost nothing about it. But it was my first client, and I I need to get started.

And we did a lot of experimentation, and we got very, very little engagement. And then all of a sudden, I posted, like, a video that one of our one of the people from r and d took with his cell phones of putting queen bees in boxes, and it was, like, forty five seconds and that was it. And it got fourteen thousand views. And it was, like, no high quality production, just, like, an interesting an interest like, a tiny little element of a larger research study with very little context, but it was authentic and it was interesting, and people liked it. So, like, I would say a lot of experimentation will get you there because you can’t always predict what people will like and what people won’t like.

Mhmm. Yeah.

Cool. Thank you.

I love that. And I second an interest in beekeeping.

Yeah. Can you drop the account in the chat? I wanna I wanna see.

Local gardening center has a beekeeping class coming up, and I’m like, I might wanna learn about bees. Could be I don’t wanna keep them, but I wanna make sure I’m not killing them for starters.

Interesting. Okay. Cool. Yeah. So and, like, I’m I also I know nothing about social media, hence, taking so freaking long to do anything about it. It wasn’t until my friend, Jia, was like, Joe, get on social media. And I was like, oh, it’d probably be on social media.

And then we both Mike and Nicole went on, and that became their core focus.

But I didn’t and that’s why I don’t like, we have I’m learning a lot and hopefully sharing the good stuff as we go and then the things to avoid as we go. But, yeah, one of the bigger takeaways for me so far in the last year of finally taking this more seriously is don’t worry so much about followers. Like, Mike, like you’ve said, worry more about, like, are they watching or a lot of people watching your stuff rather than that. So can you make it more interesting?

And then you can, of course, pin the really popular ones to the top of your Instagram page. Right? And that’s that’s maybe even a better signal for people who would book you on a podcast. If you have, like, three really core videos or whatever that have lots and lots of views, then that can look really good to that person who’s gonna book you versus lots of followers, which which could mean nothing.

You can buy followers.

Although This could also be a good opportunity to, see where to find good content.

Like I said, if you got, like, a an account with a thousand followers, but they got a video that had fourteen thousand views, that’s a pretty good signal that the content is really resonating with people because it’s reaching outside of their own grasp. And like I said, if someone has a thousand followers, who knows how many of those are actually active followers too? Because a lot of people subscribe and then just don’t see stuff. Right? So, I mean, like, it’s yeah. When thinking about your content, just try to find the stuff that’s, like, really performing well outside of what their actual, sphere of influence is, and then that should be able to take some good cues from that.

Yeah. Thank you. Can I ask a follow-up question, Jo? Or does anyone else wanna jump in? Because I’ve asked a few.

No one put their hand up. Go for it, Abby.

Yeah. I guess it’s kind of, like, maybe a mindset question. So when I’ve been looking at other accounts to see what content I like, like, I obviously like yours. But I think what what I like about yours is it’s it’s very divisive, and you just you speak with such authority.

And I I struggle to do that or to take kind of hot takes or be edgy because my kind of it I’ve kind of just approached my content, I guess, more with, like, curiosity and being like, oh, one thing that I’ve tried that’s quite cool, but it’s not it’s not hooky. It’s not punchy. It’s not divisive. And I’m just still kinda like, well, who am I to really talk with authority about this stuff when and, I mean, who who is anyone really?

Because it’s like with marketing, it’s just every you know, everything goes. It’s all just bullshit.

Honestly, I mean, I do think a good point that you need to keep in mind is who is anyone, really?

Like, I don’t know.

It’s like, really. Like, I think of one person in particular who I am now like, you are so full of shit. You don’t know, like, what?

But man, does he speak with authority, and so many people buy into and it’s like, he’s a good dude, etcetera, etcetera, but so full of shit.

Seriously taking something that one person told him, and you find the source and go like Mhmm. Fucking stole that from that guy and didn’t cite him either. And now you’re acting like it’s your idea. It’s so annoying to watch, but it does speak to, like, who is anyone anyway. This guy, you don’t have to be him to do it right. Right? But but I think a good takeaway from knowing that some people are full of shit is you’re not full of shit.

So why people should find you. They should find you. Right? Like, it’s better for them if they find you than if they find the people who are full of shit. But the ones who are full of it are out there chirping up a storm. No one can stop them.

Meanwhile, you’re being reasonable and thinking, well, why should I say that? And should I say it that way? And they’re just like, and everyone’s loving it.

So I don’t know. To me, I’m like and it it’s not gonna click immediately, but I think this is maybe gonna start you down the path of appreciating that you have good stuff to say. I said I said the s h I t word a few times there.

But, but, yeah, nobody like, some people are really, really smart, know a lot of things, and they’re typically the one you find way far down the road after you’ve sorted through all the nonsense of people who are just full of crap.

So the more you can share yourself more loudly I know it doesn’t mean you have to be divisive or divisive, however you wanna pronounce it.

But what can you say and then boost? Spend a little money to boost that thing, to get people to maybe ignore the one who is full of crap and listen to you. And I do think that a good person to follow, who I do not think is full of crap, is Alex Hormozi. If you’re gonna do stuff on Instagram, just be the you, the Alex Hormozi of your world.

Honestly, I think, like, we can all just freaking copy the best. He’s not full of crap. In my experience, who knows? But doesn’t seem full of crap. So I don’t know if that’s helpful to you. Like, just, like, borrow his confidence and just do it.

Yeah. I mean, it’s Right? Like, you don’t have to be anything different. You can still be Abby being that. Right?

Yeah. But Abby isn’t getting engagement. Like, it’s not you know, I don’t think I just don’t think my approach is is engaging.

Like, I’m I’m not engaging the way I’m showing up on social media. Mhmm. Like, there’s gotta be another part of me that I can channel.

Yeah.

Because, I mean, it’s not like I care so much about course creators thinking, like, I’m full of shit. It’s more like, I don’t want, like, you or Prana to, like, roll your eyes at something I put out there. Like, that’s more the fear.

Oh, no. Don’t worry about that. Not to roll my eyes. Honestly, it’s, I was in a session, book writing session, and I we posted about this on Instagram.

I was in a book writing session with Donald Miller from StoryBrand who has published fiction. I didn’t know that.

And he was saying that you wanna make sure you don’t do anything.

Basically, you have this whole spiel a spiel about don’t humiliate yourself. Don’t embarrass yourself.

Important people are gonna be reading your book, so make sure you have created something that’s that they wouldn’t think is dumb or something. And I was like, but that’s where, like, scared writing comes from. Then you write really contained stuff. Like, Gertrude Stein didn’t give a shit what you thought about her. And then everyone was like, I love Gertrude Stein, because she was reading the craziest stuff. Like, that’s not a sentence. That’s not even a book.

But she didn’t care about that. And I think, like, don’t care about that. Don’t care about what I might think or might think. Honestly, don’t care about it.

Tarzan k doesn’t give a shit what I think about her stuff because I’ve rolled my eyes a million times at that shit, but I respect what she’s doing. I think you can do the same thing too. I would not don’t let people in there. Don’t let me or Verna or anybody else in there at all, please.

It’s just gonna hold you up.

Can I can I also offer a suggestion? Because I’ve been reading a lot of content, Abby, and I think it’s really good. But I think that, sometimes you write a lot, and you may wanna, like, experiment with different, like, styles. Like, maybe it’s not a controversial thing. Maybe it’s just, like, formatting, like trying sometimes do something a little bit shorter or, like, playing with shorter sentences or just because, sometimes it’s it’s hard to read a lot on social media. Like, it might be you may not have to be a personality that you’re not if you’re not a very controversial, outspoken person, if that’s not natural to you.

Like, may maybe maybe that’ll help, but it it may be, like, there might be things in writing that could help people actually get through the the message.

Because you have a lot of interesting things to say, but it’s just a lot of content.

As long as they I mean, it’s it’s good content.

I just think that for like, if you broke it down into several posts Yeah. Then Usually, I write, like, blog posts as on LinkedIn.

Yeah. No. That’s that’s really helpful feedback.

Well, that’s a good thing too because if you got a giant piece of pillar content, you can turn that into so many pieces of micro content too. Right?

Are you familiar with, Gary Vaynerchuk’s sixty four pieces of content strategy or whatever?

Oh, I’ve heard of it, but not for a while. I’ll check that out.

Yeah. The big basis is you just have like, he usually says, like, you take a big podcast or something like that. Right? And then you just keep going.

One thing is a reel. One thing is a quote post. One thing is a little video snippet. And so from you know, it’s not about reinventing the wheel now.

So if if you already got these nice long pieces of content, then you can just turn these into so many pieces of micro content that speak and fiddle on those gaps.

Mhmm. Yeah.

Oh, this has been so helpful.

Abby, Stacy asked, and I wanna know too. What’s your, insta what’s your Instagram?

It’s at AC content. Follow for follow.

Love it. Okay. Hold on. I’m looking at that. Talk amongst yourselves.

I’ll put it in the chat.

There’s, one thing I did kinda wanna mention, that can be kinda helpful for getting engaged is kind of coming up with just, like, your own little engagement group. So you can have, like, a group chat on Instagram, and then every time you post, you just post in that group chat saying, hey. I just posted. And then everybody commits to liking the post, leaving a comment, and then sharing it on their story or whatever.

And then you just kinda keep doing that, every time you post. There’s just, like, a small group of, like, no more than ten people, but that can help your reach a lot.

I know it’s worked for other people. So just a suggestion.

Yeah. Katie, Jessica, Caroline, anyone who’s doing Instagram.

No. I have a question. Can I ask a follow-up question about that, Nicole? Sure.

So I heard someone recently talk about these again again because this was big back when I was doing my first online business in network marketing. Like, that was the thing. You create a pod, you know, whatever. But what I was wondering was, how does that jive with the, training the algorithm?

Like, for example, I’m not really a course creator that right now, I suppose. That ab that would hire Abby right now. Right? But then and we’re all kind of copywriters.

We’re in different niches. So how does that because I don’t know. I just all I know is eventually, ecommerce people. And I would imagine other people feel that too.

So how does the pod does there is there an impact? Does it just don’t worry, focus on the engagement? What do you think about that?

Yeah. That’s a good question. So the algorithm is kind of funny like that because everybody has their own personal algorithm. So whatever’s coming up on your feed is the stuff that you’re just interested in.

And so, like, yes, if you are liking other people’s content and their course creators, then, yes, you’re going to end up seeing more of that on your feed. Yeah. But it’s not going to help, like or it’s not going to hurt, say a bunch of course creators are liking your content, but, ecommerce people are as well. It’s not going to make less ecommerce people see your content just because course creators are liking it and stuff, if that makes any sense.

No. It makes sense. Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

Cool. So, like, I wouldn’t worry about that. Like, I think it’s good to just get general engagement off the like, right off the bat. And then that way, push it to other people who are interested in it as well.

Okay. Cool. Thanks. Yep.

I have a question for somebody who knows more about Instagram algorithm because based on what what I understand, you wanna have one audience that you focus on. And that’s one thing I’d like, I just noticed on on Abby’s, profile. She’s got two completely different audiences that are labeled in the, you know, sell more courses with day one evergreen or become a nomad copywriter, which would seem to be, you know, a splitting of attention there. And would it be a good idea for her to have one focus instead of having two different things with different audiences?

Yeah. My BA told me to do that.

Oh, but that’s a good question. Because at one point, Joe, wouldn’t you have kind of had that? Because you kind of have you have multiple audiences, freelancers, and then the not, I guess, everybody else. But right? You have that.

Yeah. But we have had to make a call on who we want to target. Okay. Yeah. So we really Yeah. Refined that. That’s pretty recent, though.

So yeah. But it’s Yeah. Fair.

It’s a fair I found that just targeting, like, a specific like, we’re targeting, freelancers who are, like, wanting to grow their business and, like, take the next step.

Like, that’s our main target, and it’s, like, a certain caliber as well.

We end up getting other people, of course, like, as you will, but, like, it’s just like it’s just like copywriting when you’re writing for one reader. Like, you’re thinking Instagram account’s the same way.

So it’s like, yes. Some of our content speaks to a broader audience, but for the most part, like, when we’re thinking about it, we are just targeting just one.

Yeah.

It is worth thinking about too in terms of strategy because, like, if all the stuff, AI algorithms, all these things, it still comes down to people.

So, I mean, like, if you think about who if you have a really hammered down avatar, like, not just like, oh, I’m going after twenty five to thirty five year old women that want this if I’m going after Lisa. Lisa’s twenty seven. She’s a grad student. She did this.

She did this. She did this. She likes to watch when she’s not online, she’s reading this book. She’s playing this sport.

Like, if you start figuring out who that one person is and your content speaks to that one person, you’re gonna probably start resonating more. Because I think if you like I say, if you spread too thin, one risk you do have is, like, if it doesn’t serve that person for what they signed up for off the value prop of the content they maybe followed you for and then they get something different, it might send them to feel like, yeah, they’re not really, feeling it the same way as if, you kinda keep consistently messaging to that person. So I think that’s one thing that it is one thing to consider, I’d say.

You can also, like, base it on different channels. Like, when I’m posting on LinkedIn, I’m a lot of times, I’m talking to investors more so than, like, beekeepers or growers for this specific account.

But it also can depend on the time of year. Like, when it’s sales season, I might talk to the customer. And when they’re trying to raise a a round, might talk to investors. Like, there is some room for flexibility either on different channels or different times of the year based on your priorities.

Can I just add, we’re not talking really about what to share, on social media right now, but I I think a good rule of thumb is not to share how, if you can help it? We’ve had to pull way back on sharing how, and, so far, it’s been useful to do that.

Leave the how for when they hire you or buy your product or whatever that might be. But try to shift away from from teaching how to write copy, how to plan something, Abby, in your case, how to do day one evergreen, more about why you should, where you should, when you should, all of that kind of stuff, what to do, but not how to do it. So I think that can be useful to keep in mind, especially if you’re finding that a lot of copywriters are following you. Jessica, for you, they’re often, like, if you have how content, copywriters will follow you, for sure. So try to shift away from that, then you might get fewer of the wrong people. Yeah.

Transcript

My Wonderful.

Alright.

Howdy. Howdy. Howdy. Howdy.

Cool. People are joining. I’m gonna let that happen and get a little adjusted here.

Cool beans.

Good.

Okay. How’s everybody doing?

Having a good start of week so far?

Wow. Everybody hates Monday. Okay. That’s fair.

No prob alright. Alright.

Yeah. Full on hate of Monday. Nobody even reacted other than Sarah.

This is bananas.

Okay. Alright.

I’m gonna I gave a thumbs up.

Okay. Okay. Good. I missed it somehow.

I’m I’m just I just rolled out of bed, so, you know, I’m not quite all here yet.

What time zone are you in?

It’s ten, but I’m kind of a night owl. So I I go to bed really late, and I get up nine ish. Oh, okay. I’m having my morning coffee right now.

Oh, that’s good. I am the opposite. I’m asleep.

Why I never I never make, Verona’s groups because they’re I’m still sleeping.

Yeah.

Alright.

Well, cool.

Awesome. So today, you are here for the one session that I would not have paid any attention to years ago at my own peril. So I don’t have a whole bunch of regrets in, my business, but not getting started on social media sooner is is one.

As Nicole, who’s our social media lead, like, drinks her coffee feeling perfectly confident in her role. She’s like, Joe needs me. True.

So it’s a thing that my team has tried to get me on board with before.

Years ago, Mike was doing this big YouTube initiative, and I was like, no. It’s not leading to anything blah blah blah. Shut it down, and now it’s fully his job.

It’s like all YouTube, almost all the time. Nicole is our full time social media lead focusing entirely on Instagram.

And, yeah, these are things that I learned a little late. So I wanted to this is important for a lot of reasons. I’ve told you already that we have this, like, intensive starting in April, for new people who are looking to get, on track with having a much more, lucrative freelancing business.

And in that, we’ll be teaching a framework that, a model, basically, that then leads people to need to use social media a lot more. So today, we’re gonna focus on Instagram, because it’s really critical for the things that we’re going to teach going forward.

There’s a lot that if you’re not on Instagram, it’s really gonna be a struggle, some of the training that we have going forward, and you’ll be like, oh, I wish that I had done something. So just start today. If you’re already on Instagram, cool. If you’re not, honestly, I hope you heed my advice.

I really regret not being on Instagram earlier. So, I would strongly encourage you even more than building your list at this point, getting on Instagram is a pretty big deal. So we’re gonna talk today about, your Instagram posting calendar because one of the biggest challenges that I know I had and that people have is, well, what would I like, what would I even share? Like, Instagram is this visual medium, and I’m a writer.

What am I gonna talk about other than here’s how you should be writing copy, and do I really want to teach how to do things on social media? Like, is that how is that gonna work for me in getting clients? So a lot of good questions come up. And if you have any questions about using Instagram or frustrations or anything that you want to share, chat them out. We can start talking about those or just, like, come off mute and share anything that you might want to about hesitation around using Instagram. But we’re gonna dig in and come off at any point, by the way. And I will eventually hear you talking over myself in case I don’t see you.

But do come off and feel free to share anything as we’re going. I am gonna dive right in to sharing the, the worksheet that we have prepared for today.

Okay.

Again, for those who just joined, I was saying that not getting on Instagram sooner is, one of my business regrets, and I really, really, really encourage you to take it seriously starting now. Don’t worry about how many followers you do or do not have. We’ve got, what, eighteen thousand followers. It’s not a huge following at all, but it’s good. It’s good and only bound to pay off further.

So we can get into more of that, and we will get into more of those things as we move on in our training.

Just because we’re focusing on Instagram doesn’t mean that other social spaces aren’t important. As I mentioned, Mike owns YouTube for us. LinkedIn is currently not a big thing for us. We have lots of followers on there, etcetera, but, we’ll talk about LinkedIn as we move forward, and we’ll be using LinkedIn more for sales reasons going forward.

But just put aside any, like, oh, I just wanna work on LinkedIn, or I just wanna do Pinterest or something.

Let’s just focus on Instagram. Also, Nicole was doing, Pinterest stuff for us, and the results very quickly were, like, not there. So, we paused on that in case you’ve thought about, like, other things that you could be spending more time on. If you’re gonna make, you know, quote posts for Instagram, then you might as well make them for Pinterest too, but but you really don’t wanna spread yourself too thin.

Just keep that in mind. Okay. So this little framework, this little model showing to the side here is like our sunshine growth model. It looks like a sun.

That’s why it’s called that.

And we’ll be getting into that in the intensive freelancing.

If you choose to participate in that, it’s included for you anyway. So, it’ll be really good to participate in that if you want to starting in April. More about that in Slack soon. Okay. But this is really critical now because, Meta has recently, and this may not be news to some of you and it will be to others, has added features to Instagram that are purely for business purposes.

So not at all for personal fun stuff, but just for business. Knowing that and then seeing what they’ve added as we go, we’ll get into more and more of that. It’s a really it’s it’s clearly their future strategy is more around making sure businesses are using Instagram as much as possible, and there are a lot of cool solutions out there that make that even easier. And I’m not just talking about schedulers, but way better stuff.

Again, as I mentioned, for some of the things that we’re gonna talk about going forward in CSP, you will need to have an Instagram account. If you don’t, you’re just gonna, like, skip that week. And then the next month, you’ll skip another week.

And, eventually, I think you’ll see that there’s a need for this and have to go back and retake those lessons. So you might as well just start right now.

Like building a list, building a social following is something that probably should have started yesterday, but definitely not tomorrow. Not continue don’t continue bumping it down the line like I did.

And I’ve heard this a lot. So some of the challenges or reasons not to use Instagram are like, well, my audience isn’t on there.

I only speak to, you know, enterprise level businesses, and they’re not on Instagram. And it’s like, well, you’re not going after the business account because you’re gonna talk to the social media person there.

It’s definitely I mean, the data shows that Instagram is filled with CMOs.

A lot of CMOs, forty seven percent of CMOs in America are women, and half of people on Instagram are also women. That doesn’t mean that half of the women on there are CMOs or anything weird like that, obviously.

But just know that with so many more women becoming CMOs and so many women who are CMO aged on Instagram, it’s a really good opportunity that feels silly to disregard just because your mom has an account on there.

So and even if it’s not your mom, it’s it’s a big opportunity.

People who are not targeting people that you might be targeting are all over that. People who are targeting your ideal are also all over Instagram, so get your butt on there.

One of the things also that stands out as an objection to getting on Instagram is, I don’t have a designer, Joe. And, like, I I can’t I’m not a designer. Now some of you actually are designers.

But if you’re not, I’m not. And before I had somebody, on my team who could design things for me, I used, creative market a lot. Creative market is a very good solution. You can go here, to get a whole bunch of templates. You have to pay for them, but it’s, like, nine dollars to download, like, an incredible amount of Canva templates for Instagram. So don’t let that stop you, from moving forward with some really cool stuff. Okay.

So the thing that we’re trying to solve today is not, hey. Do Instagram overall, but you should get on Instagram. You should keep on Instagram if you’re already on there.

And then we need to figure out what goes on your Instagram. So we’ve spoken already in Coffee School Professional about your red thread, your one thing, whatever, like, you basically specialize in and own or working towards owning, obviously, that’s a really good starting point for the content that you’re going to put on Instagram. But, like, where do you go with that? So a good, a good practice is to theme as much as you can, especially if you plan on handing this work over to a VA, which is a very good idea for a lot of you to do given that a lot of VAs are already skilled in, if not coming up with ideas for Instagram, in taking your Canva templates, putting in stuff that you tell them to, and then scheduling that in Sprout Social or whatever tool you might use. So but what they need is direction on what it should be about. So a good rule of thumb or not a rule of thumb, actually, a a good practice is to theme as much as you can.

Theming goes a long way. This is not my recommendation. This is my coach recommended this to us, one of my coaches, which is to theme your, year. So each month of the year, go through thinking about your example, like, your thing that you own and theme it. So you can say in the month of January, you’re gonna focus on for me, I would focus on specializing.

February could be a month that’s focused on tools. That doesn’t mean you only ever get to talk about tools. You can still say on Valentine’s Day in February, something else, But this will at least help you set up a plan for what you will talk about, generally speaking, each month. So if you’re like, okay. I need quotes. If you go to your VA and say, quote post as we actually know at copywriters quote post do pretty well.

So if you’re like, look, VA, in April, we’re gonna do systems training on Instagram.

Can you go and pull, you know, thirty quotes for me on systems, on systems for freelancing, systems for business, on why systems are important, on why nobody likes a system until they get a system, etcetera, etcetera, or do whatever you wanna do with AI to generate stuff like that.

But then at least you’ve got something to hand them. Right? You can say here’s what to do, and they can go forward and do that. Without a theme, you’re just like, I don’t know.

Copy?

So we want to, theme our months. There’s a worksheet in here for you.

And within each of those months then, you will need a subtopic.

So, obviously, a subtopic for, like, systems is is really, really dry. But if we were to do, like, November geek systems are important, by the way, but also quite dry. Geeking out on research, then week by week, you might have your different subtopics on research. Like, week one is gonna be all about serving.

Week two is all about interviewing. Week three and so on and so forth. Right? So we can write those out.

And now even further, we know or our VA knows what to talk about in those months or in those weeks. Sorry. Months overall.

So what I would like you to do is before we move on, I’d like to pause and have you go through and just for the next six minutes, just jot out just from April through to the end of December what those themes might be for your business to post about on Instagram.

Okay?

Doable?

Alright. Cool. Six minutes, then we’ll come off mute.

This.

Cool. Cool. Sorry if you have to click a button again to agree to stay in the meeting.

We’re gonna do the subtopics as well because I don’t want to kind of just start the work and then bail on it.

But I what I wanna talk about before we get into the subtopics, unless you already started, which is cool, is that there are so many kinds of content you can put out there. It’s really like, bananas to me to think of all the different formats in which you can share a message so that it doesn’t if you’re like, oh, this is tiresome, which is my thinking on a lot of stuff. It’s like, how how what else how else do we say this? And sometimes it’s just say it in a different format.

Right? So it could be the same message shared in lots of different ways. But what I would like you to do is not necessarily use this right now, but really kind of just scan this if you didn’t already when you got the worksheet earlier. If you haven’t had a chance to look through it, now is a good time to look at the very many kinds of things you can share and then, of course, the format that you’ll share them in.

We do have Nicole here from our team. If you have specific questions, I didn’t tell her that I’d be offering her services to you today.

I’m not necessarily. But, if you have questions because I don’t do the posting, so it’s not like I’m part of the creation of the content, but I don’t I don’t know what happens. Like, I don’t do anything after that. I send we have a drop box where I drop a bunch of stuff, like videos I’ve recorded or photos or whatever.

And, we have a channel for social media stuff in Slack, and then we also have, like, Google Sheets of ongoing quotes and other things that we might wanna add to social media. And then we have this mechanism, which is important, which is at the start of every week, Nicole and I have a meeting about what’s coming up that week. And then at the end of the week, Nicole shares out results in Slack so that everybody can see them. And that’s a mechanism that, Chris, the CEO of Wistia, shared with me that he did that, and I loved this.

Just really straightforward. Like, I know we don’t wanna have more meetings in our lives, but we kinda have to have some more meetings in our lives. So if you do have a VA or somebody else on your team who’s gonna be posting for you, then it’s really good to have a meeting with them at least once a week to just see that you’re on the same page with the content that’s being shared with the message, with how it’s written, especially if you’re getting a VA to do it, and they might not be a copywriter or have the same sense of what’s important that you do.

And this having something like this sheet showing on the screen right now is also useful because then they can come up with more ideas, and you can also say, like, oh, man. We also have a content meeting at the end of the week. Just a side note as I’m looking through this, because a lot of what you’re going to do throughout the week is content you can share. It just doesn’t feel like it.

Right? So snippets from client calls can be, something that you share out. Obviously, not the part where the client is talking, but where you are. There can be really good stuff hidden in all of the work that you’ve been doing all week long, but your VA or the person working with you on social media won’t know know anything about it if you don’t share it with them.

So we actually have another meeting, which I was just mentioning, on Fridays where the team gets together, and it’s called, get content out of jail or something like that. And we have a worksheet, that or a spreadsheet where we all throughout the week type in things for meetings like this meeting. Like, Joe, there was that moment when, Katie asked you this question and you had this answer.

That should be shared on social media, your answer. And so it’s a mechanism, like, another mechanism to make sure that we’re getting the most out of the existing content we have. So it’s not always a matter of sitting down for a block of time and just, like, recording yourself talking. That’s good too. But there’s lots of places where content is, like, hiding, content you could share. So refer to that sheet and start, like, coming up with ideas.

What I would like you to do for just three minutes, if you haven’t already, is get into assigning a subtopic for the month of April.

Okay?

Week by week. Cool. Cool.

Alright.

Cool. So with that, I’m going to speak to this last part, but that’s really a, like, a homework for you to do going forward.

The last part is a, weekly calendar where you’d put in what the week is, what your subtopic is. And then, again, this is if you struggle to come up with what, to post about. If you already have this, obviously, as I’ve mentioned, you’re good.

But here are some these are actually really common themes, so it might be possibly too common going forward. Again, this is something that my, coach shared with us.

But, actually, some of these are shifted around. So I I tried to get a little more creative than just sharing exactly what my coach said for us to do. Motivation Monday, so that could be, like, where you’re just talking to your audience about something to be motivating for them. Trending topics, Tuesdays, results, Wednesdays, those are case studies, other things basically that you’ve done to prove out results.

Thorough Thursdays is going long on something, going deep on a topic, really digging into it, in a in a quite thorough way, and then q and a or ask me anything or FAQs, Fridays.

Those are just ways you can come up with content.

And then, again, the more you’re assigning this for somebody else to do, the more you can say, okay. I know I have to make some, q and a videos for you for Friday, so I’ll get those to you on Tuesday. And really does better work with them so that you stay on track and actually get results out of the work that you’re doing. Obviously, we’re not talking here about measuring how things are going. That’s not the subject for today’s training. What we just wanna do is make sure that we’re starting to get to a place where you are posting and then going back over later and making sure that it’s working, and your frequency is working, and the topics you’re sharing are working for the goal that you have in mind. So these are worksheets that you would fill in weekly, like the week before, or have them all ready to go well in advance depending on how you like to organize your time.

So that’s all I want to share with you for Instagram posting today. But what I really can’t emphasize enough is how important it is to get started now or to keep going if you’ve been doing it and, like, you’ve been sporadic about it or you just maybe you like, it’s easy to give up. I find it easy to go, like, well, forget it. There’s only one of me and there’s just not enough time, but worth it.

Try to find a way to sneak it in. Try to find things that are gonna shorten shorten the time for you to actually get that stuff out there. Don’t force yourself to post five times a day if you can’t even post once a day. Just start with once a day, and then go from there.

Okay.

Any questions or thoughts on this? How are we feeling about Instagram or our businesses?

Yeah. Katie.

Okay. I just wanna share, like, this is really well timed for me because I the last couple weeks have been playing this game with myself where I’m trying to get, like it’s, like, twenty five points on Instagram every week, and, like, a reel is, like, three points. A story is one point. I’m trying to, like I’m, like, going for volume.

Yeah.

But, yeah, gamifying it a little bit.

So if anybody is with me on trying to, like, get more out there, then that’s the strategy I’m Okay.

Tell me more about this game. I because I love it. How does it work? What do you do?

Like, what is the scoring system?

It’s literally, like, three for reals, two for stories, two, like, two well, two for post one and then one for, like, minute that I talk. I do a lot of when I go pick up my kids from day care, I do, like, talking head story. That’s my easiest one.

Reels are the hardest because I hate video editing.

And, this is really interesting, this what you’ve just shared because I have started doing all of my Instagram myself again because I found that it was, like, way too much back and forth with my VA. Yeah. She’s, like, not a design person or a copy person. So, yeah, this is me, like, taking back the reins from Instagram and trying to just see how much faster I can ship things than, like, putting a big strategy behind it, and making it, like, a bigger thing than I think it needs to be.

Okay.

So and the game does the game exist to make it so that you want to do this stuff?

Oh, sorry. No. Go ahead.

I track, like, micro wins in my paper diary, and that’s where I just give myself points.

Okay. There’s no I mean, the question about what’s your prize, I’m like, oh, yeah. I should probably give myself a reward of some kind, but I haven’t been doing that so far.

Oh, now you get to come up with a a prize.

That’s fun. It’s awesome.

Cool. Who else wants to get in with Katie and make a game out of it?

I love this. Yeah. I don’t know. I think anytime we can have a game involved, then you’re just like, competition’s on.

You gotta do it. No? No. Fun. Anyway, I love that, Katie. Good job. And I know that it can feel like a lot, to have to put together these systems, like SOPs to document all this stuff, all the work upfront, in order to hand it off to a VA, but it is the leverage that will help.

Right? So if you can get to a place where you can document this the work and have some themes, have templates in place that are like, don’t mess with this, especially, like, if you buy something on Creative Market and say, this is how it’s gonna look for the next three months, just use these templates, then that might be something because, obviously, there’s lots of ways to spend your time, and social media is important.

It’s just not gonna be, obviously, forever the most important thing for you to do. Has anybody read the E Myth Revisited yet?

Read it. Yes.

Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. I’m not done the I scanned it years ago, but a lot fell out of my head. And, I’ve been listening to the audiobook, like, while I was painting this wall and, when I’m just, like, getting dinner ready and stuff like that.

That’s really interesting, when it comes to systems and the smart way to get yourself out of working in your business and more on your business, which is obviously the goal for basically everybody. Yeah. The E Myth Revisited. It’s a horrible title. I have no idea what he was thinking.

There’s no E Myth, and I don’t know about revisiting it. So it it’s very odd, But behind that horrible title is is a very it’s a good book. It’s a good book for a small business, especially if you find yourself expanding only to shrink because something got hard because the VA sucked at that or whatever that thing might be. And so you’re like, oh, I’ll just do it myself.

Oh, okay. I’m gonna grow. No. I’m just gonna do it myself.

It’s it’s really good at coaching you through that. And so yeah. Have a look.

Okay.

Anybody else working on Instagram? Anybody wanna share anything they’re doing on Instagram, Abby? Yeah.

Yeah. Instagram is, like, the debate of my life at the moment. As I said, I’m trying to grow my following on that, and I’m just finding it really hard. I wonder if you have any tips around visibility because I I’ve had, I think I mentioned. So I have my VA basically repurposing my LinkedIn content, and then I make some videos and stuff. So we’ve been posting every day ish for about three months, and I’ve gained maybe, like, a hundred followers, and no no results.

So, yeah, do you have any tips, like, getting in front of the right people? Like, using hashtags? Like, do I need to be engaging with accounts?

What’s the yeah.

I think there’s probably a lot that, like, Nicole and even Mike could say about getting putting content out there that people like. I if, Nicole or Mike, you wanna think about anything you’d wanna share there.

Come in here real quick if you’d like, Joe.

Yeah. So I just wanna before you jump in, I just wanna preface it with sometimes getting a lot of followers isn’t the point. Okay. Go ahead, Mike. Sorry. Thanks.

Yeah. It’s funny because, like, this is a a bit of an aesthetics we’re talking I’m coming from a YouTube perspective, but, like, I’m going through a a course right now called channel jump start for YouTube, which is kind of like done run by Daryl Eaves, who’s like mister beast’s data guy when it comes to YouTube. So he’s a YouTube guy. Right?

And the one thing that came away is a really big He doesn’t even care about subscribers. He cares about, like, who active viewers are. So I know Instagram, YouTube, not quite the same thing. But one technique that’s being done for the research side for us is we’re actually doing what’s called a dummy account.

And we what we do is we actually I’ve created a YouTube channel or a YouTube account that’s, like, not even I don’t touch anything, but I only make sure I go and watch the stuff that’s really hyper relevant to my niche. And then what’s happening is the algorithm’s gonna start suggesting that stuff to me, and then you take the the cues from that to say, okay. Here’s how people, like, edit it. Here’s the topics.

Here’s how the sort of thing. I don’t know if that would come across for Instagram, but it feels like something that could probably work where you actually created a separate Instagram account where you you’re just really hyper focused about only looking at stuff that’s, like, really relevant to your niche and then seeing if the algorithm will start suggesting more stuff to you, and you can take cues from that as, like, okay. How are people talking? Like, what’s the stuff that’s getting engagements?

What are people reacting to? And what’s the structure of it? Because just like copywriters with a a framework, you kinda break it down and figure out what the, what framework these creators are using.

Because most of them are playing you know, you start seeing the same stuff over and over again Mhmm.

And maybe not necessarily in a bad sense. But if the two things to look out for there is just, like, is it getting lots of attention and is getting lots of recent attention, I think is what you wanna look at. Because if something’s got a million views from, like, three years ago, it’s probably not relevant now. But, like, stuff that’s, like, hot and fresh right now, that’s probably where you wanna be looking.

So is it enough to just think, like, if I create better content, better relevant, likable content is gonna get seen? Is that kind of Yeah.

I’m just gonna kinda jump in here if that’s okay, Mike.

Yeah. So, I think with Instagram, like, it is a quantity game, but it is still quality over quantity, if that makes sense.

Like, if you’re just putting out whatever things that you haven’t really spent any time on or haven’t really thought through, it’s not going to get a ton of engagement, because people can kinda see through that. Like, people are looking for quality on there.

But, one thing that I find kinda helpful is going through kinda like what Mike’s saying is going to, like, the really popular accounts, like, in your niche or in your specialization and searching through their account, like, within the last few months and finding, like, the reels that have the most views, the you know, anything that has a lot of comments, lot of likes, and things like that. And then just kinda take you’re not stealing their content, but you kinda take it as inspiration for your own. And it’s like, hey. What did they do that did so well, and how can I kind of make that my own?

And then it kinda makes your strategy a little bit easier too because you’re not constantly just trying to come up with ideas out of nowhere.

So Mhmm.

Yeah. That’s helpful. Oh, sorry.

Go ahead, Adam, please.

Yeah.

No. I was just gonna say yeah. Because I feel like my content’s good quality, but it’s kind of boring. Like, I don’t feel like the hooks are good enough, and I don’t, yeah, maybe, like, that would help kind of, yeah, watching their videos and stuff and seeing, like, how other people are hooking people in because I just feel like I’m kind of sharing good stuff, but, like, no one cares.

I think you’ll notice too, especially when it comes to, like, video content, like reels, YouTube shorts, that sort of thing, like, hook becomes so important because, you know, they have the option to swipe away so quick. So you have Mhmm. Like, the three seconds to really get speak directly to what they’re actually interested in and then deliver on it.

It’s so hard. So it’s, like, legit so hard.

And we will get into like, the more we’re out there trying different things, we’ll be sharing those here, including, like, rules that we’ve developed for editing videos, and things like that so that the pacing is really good, because that’s obviously important. Right? But it’s like, if you don’t have rules set out, like, a basic checklist of this must be true as we move through a video, then you’re you’re just not gonna do it. Right?

But it’s as simple as just often as simple for me to say. Nicole and Mike are like, hold on. But it’s as simple as just putting together that list of, like, what are some of the rules we have? Like, every three seconds, the scene has to change, things like that.

Right? That can get people watching. But, again, Abby, I wouldn’t worry too much about all of the followers. Like, the one of one coach I have that I didn’t find on social, though, I found through other memes.

He has very low following, like, given the size of his business, but it’s just for him, not about that. It’s like he just wants one good follower that he can then connect with and close.

And so I know it can be frustrating, especially since number of followers is a bit of a signal to the world.

Yeah. That’s oh, you’re a big deal or you’re not, but I wouldn’t worry, honestly, too much about that.

Yeah. I think because the purpose in my head of doing Instagram is because I wanna get invited to podcast, and I want I want people to reach out to me. So I feel like all the while I have, like, a tiny following. Like, it’s like not only do I not look like a big deal, but I look like I’ve I’ve been in business for five minutes, which isn’t true. Yeah. So that’s kind of my, like, thinking with the with the followers.

Yeah. Makes sense. I mean, yeah, it does.

And it’s been like I know for Nicole, we have an objective for her by end of twenty twenty four for how many followers she needs to have. But as we go, that could change because it could become very clear that number of followers, again, not that important. It’s important, but what is something else that would matter for a podcast for somebody on podcast to invite you? What are some other things that need to be true that you could actually solve?

Yeah. I feel like once I get to a thousand, I’ll stop worrying about it. I just feel all the while is under a thousand. It’s just too small.

Yeah.

Well, it’s I’ll take it.

Comment.

Yeah. Well, no. We will because, again, every new follower is an opportunity. Mhmm. So yeah.

I can second that. I don’t manage an Instagram account for myself, but I manage an Instagram account for one of my clients. We have a thousand followers, and I get messages all the time. It’s a very niche industry.

It’s, commercial beekeepers. Not everyone who reaches out to us is relevant. But, yeah, I get messages all the time from beekeepers all over the world. Mhmm.

And then the other thing I’ll say is it took a lot of experimentation.

I to be perfectly honest, I really hate social media. So I came in knowing almost nothing about it. But it was my first client, and I I need to get started.

And we did a lot of experimentation, and we got very, very little engagement. And then all of a sudden, I posted, like, a video that one of our one of the people from r and d took with his cell phones of putting queen bees in boxes, and it was, like, forty five seconds and that was it. And it got fourteen thousand views. And it was, like, no high quality production, just, like, an interesting an interest like, a tiny little element of a larger research study with very little context, but it was authentic and it was interesting, and people liked it. So, like, I would say a lot of experimentation will get you there because you can’t always predict what people will like and what people won’t like.

Mhmm. Yeah.

Cool. Thank you.

I love that. And I second an interest in beekeeping.

Yeah. Can you drop the account in the chat? I wanna I wanna see.

Local gardening center has a beekeeping class coming up, and I’m like, I might wanna learn about bees. Could be I don’t wanna keep them, but I wanna make sure I’m not killing them for starters.

Interesting. Okay. Cool. Yeah. So and, like, I’m I also I know nothing about social media, hence, taking so freaking long to do anything about it. It wasn’t until my friend, Jia, was like, Joe, get on social media. And I was like, oh, it’d probably be on social media.

And then we both Mike and Nicole went on, and that became their core focus.

But I didn’t and that’s why I don’t like, we have I’m learning a lot and hopefully sharing the good stuff as we go and then the things to avoid as we go. But, yeah, one of the bigger takeaways for me so far in the last year of finally taking this more seriously is don’t worry so much about followers. Like, Mike, like you’ve said, worry more about, like, are they watching or a lot of people watching your stuff rather than that. So can you make it more interesting?

And then you can, of course, pin the really popular ones to the top of your Instagram page. Right? And that’s that’s maybe even a better signal for people who would book you on a podcast. If you have, like, three really core videos or whatever that have lots and lots of views, then that can look really good to that person who’s gonna book you versus lots of followers, which which could mean nothing.

You can buy followers.

Although This could also be a good opportunity to, see where to find good content.

Like I said, if you got, like, a an account with a thousand followers, but they got a video that had fourteen thousand views, that’s a pretty good signal that the content is really resonating with people because it’s reaching outside of their own grasp. And like I said, if someone has a thousand followers, who knows how many of those are actually active followers too? Because a lot of people subscribe and then just don’t see stuff. Right? So, I mean, like, it’s yeah. When thinking about your content, just try to find the stuff that’s, like, really performing well outside of what their actual, sphere of influence is, and then that should be able to take some good cues from that.

Yeah. Thank you. Can I ask a follow-up question, Jo? Or does anyone else wanna jump in? Because I’ve asked a few.

No one put their hand up. Go for it, Abby.

Yeah. I guess it’s kind of, like, maybe a mindset question. So when I’ve been looking at other accounts to see what content I like, like, I obviously like yours. But I think what what I like about yours is it’s it’s very divisive, and you just you speak with such authority.

And I I struggle to do that or to take kind of hot takes or be edgy because my kind of it I’ve kind of just approached my content, I guess, more with, like, curiosity and being like, oh, one thing that I’ve tried that’s quite cool, but it’s not it’s not hooky. It’s not punchy. It’s not divisive. And I’m just still kinda like, well, who am I to really talk with authority about this stuff when and, I mean, who who is anyone really?

Because it’s like with marketing, it’s just every you know, everything goes. It’s all just bullshit.

Honestly, I mean, I do think a good point that you need to keep in mind is who is anyone, really?

Like, I don’t know.

It’s like, really. Like, I think of one person in particular who I am now like, you are so full of shit. You don’t know, like, what?

But man, does he speak with authority, and so many people buy into and it’s like, he’s a good dude, etcetera, etcetera, but so full of shit.

Seriously taking something that one person told him, and you find the source and go like Mhmm. Fucking stole that from that guy and didn’t cite him either. And now you’re acting like it’s your idea. It’s so annoying to watch, but it does speak to, like, who is anyone anyway. This guy, you don’t have to be him to do it right. Right? But but I think a good takeaway from knowing that some people are full of shit is you’re not full of shit.

So why people should find you. They should find you. Right? Like, it’s better for them if they find you than if they find the people who are full of shit. But the ones who are full of it are out there chirping up a storm. No one can stop them.

Meanwhile, you’re being reasonable and thinking, well, why should I say that? And should I say it that way? And they’re just like, and everyone’s loving it.

So I don’t know. To me, I’m like and it it’s not gonna click immediately, but I think this is maybe gonna start you down the path of appreciating that you have good stuff to say. I said I said the s h I t word a few times there.

But, but, yeah, nobody like, some people are really, really smart, know a lot of things, and they’re typically the one you find way far down the road after you’ve sorted through all the nonsense of people who are just full of crap.

So the more you can share yourself more loudly I know it doesn’t mean you have to be divisive or divisive, however you wanna pronounce it.

But what can you say and then boost? Spend a little money to boost that thing, to get people to maybe ignore the one who is full of crap and listen to you. And I do think that a good person to follow, who I do not think is full of crap, is Alex Hormozi. If you’re gonna do stuff on Instagram, just be the you, the Alex Hormozi of your world.

Honestly, I think, like, we can all just freaking copy the best. He’s not full of crap. In my experience, who knows? But doesn’t seem full of crap. So I don’t know if that’s helpful to you. Like, just, like, borrow his confidence and just do it.

Yeah. I mean, it’s Right? Like, you don’t have to be anything different. You can still be Abby being that. Right?

Yeah. But Abby isn’t getting engagement. Like, it’s not you know, I don’t think I just don’t think my approach is is engaging.

Like, I’m I’m not engaging the way I’m showing up on social media. Mhmm. Like, there’s gotta be another part of me that I can channel.

Yeah.

Because, I mean, it’s not like I care so much about course creators thinking, like, I’m full of shit. It’s more like, I don’t want, like, you or Prana to, like, roll your eyes at something I put out there. Like, that’s more the fear.

Oh, no. Don’t worry about that. Not to roll my eyes. Honestly, it’s, I was in a session, book writing session, and I we posted about this on Instagram.

I was in a book writing session with Donald Miller from StoryBrand who has published fiction. I didn’t know that.

And he was saying that you wanna make sure you don’t do anything.

Basically, you have this whole spiel a spiel about don’t humiliate yourself. Don’t embarrass yourself.

Important people are gonna be reading your book, so make sure you have created something that’s that they wouldn’t think is dumb or something. And I was like, but that’s where, like, scared writing comes from. Then you write really contained stuff. Like, Gertrude Stein didn’t give a shit what you thought about her. And then everyone was like, I love Gertrude Stein, because she was reading the craziest stuff. Like, that’s not a sentence. That’s not even a book.

But she didn’t care about that. And I think, like, don’t care about that. Don’t care about what I might think or might think. Honestly, don’t care about it.

Tarzan k doesn’t give a shit what I think about her stuff because I’ve rolled my eyes a million times at that shit, but I respect what she’s doing. I think you can do the same thing too. I would not don’t let people in there. Don’t let me or Verna or anybody else in there at all, please.

It’s just gonna hold you up.

Can I can I also offer a suggestion? Because I’ve been reading a lot of content, Abby, and I think it’s really good. But I think that, sometimes you write a lot, and you may wanna, like, experiment with different, like, styles. Like, maybe it’s not a controversial thing. Maybe it’s just, like, formatting, like trying sometimes do something a little bit shorter or, like, playing with shorter sentences or just because, sometimes it’s it’s hard to read a lot on social media. Like, it might be you may not have to be a personality that you’re not if you’re not a very controversial, outspoken person, if that’s not natural to you.

Like, may maybe maybe that’ll help, but it it may be, like, there might be things in writing that could help people actually get through the the message.

Because you have a lot of interesting things to say, but it’s just a lot of content.

As long as they I mean, it’s it’s good content.

I just think that for like, if you broke it down into several posts Yeah. Then Usually, I write, like, blog posts as on LinkedIn.

Yeah. No. That’s that’s really helpful feedback.

Well, that’s a good thing too because if you got a giant piece of pillar content, you can turn that into so many pieces of micro content too. Right?

Are you familiar with, Gary Vaynerchuk’s sixty four pieces of content strategy or whatever?

Oh, I’ve heard of it, but not for a while. I’ll check that out.

Yeah. The big basis is you just have like, he usually says, like, you take a big podcast or something like that. Right? And then you just keep going.

One thing is a reel. One thing is a quote post. One thing is a little video snippet. And so from you know, it’s not about reinventing the wheel now.

So if if you already got these nice long pieces of content, then you can just turn these into so many pieces of micro content that speak and fiddle on those gaps.

Mhmm. Yeah.

Oh, this has been so helpful.

Abby, Stacy asked, and I wanna know too. What’s your, insta what’s your Instagram?

It’s at AC content. Follow for follow.

Love it. Okay. Hold on. I’m looking at that. Talk amongst yourselves.

I’ll put it in the chat.

There’s, one thing I did kinda wanna mention, that can be kinda helpful for getting engaged is kind of coming up with just, like, your own little engagement group. So you can have, like, a group chat on Instagram, and then every time you post, you just post in that group chat saying, hey. I just posted. And then everybody commits to liking the post, leaving a comment, and then sharing it on their story or whatever.

And then you just kinda keep doing that, every time you post. There’s just, like, a small group of, like, no more than ten people, but that can help your reach a lot.

I know it’s worked for other people. So just a suggestion.

Yeah. Katie, Jessica, Caroline, anyone who’s doing Instagram.

No. I have a question. Can I ask a follow-up question about that, Nicole? Sure.

So I heard someone recently talk about these again again because this was big back when I was doing my first online business in network marketing. Like, that was the thing. You create a pod, you know, whatever. But what I was wondering was, how does that jive with the, training the algorithm?

Like, for example, I’m not really a course creator that right now, I suppose. That ab that would hire Abby right now. Right? But then and we’re all kind of copywriters.

We’re in different niches. So how does that because I don’t know. I just all I know is eventually, ecommerce people. And I would imagine other people feel that too.

So how does the pod does there is there an impact? Does it just don’t worry, focus on the engagement? What do you think about that?

Yeah. That’s a good question. So the algorithm is kind of funny like that because everybody has their own personal algorithm. So whatever’s coming up on your feed is the stuff that you’re just interested in.

And so, like, yes, if you are liking other people’s content and their course creators, then, yes, you’re going to end up seeing more of that on your feed. Yeah. But it’s not going to help, like or it’s not going to hurt, say a bunch of course creators are liking your content, but, ecommerce people are as well. It’s not going to make less ecommerce people see your content just because course creators are liking it and stuff, if that makes any sense.

No. It makes sense. Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

Cool. So, like, I wouldn’t worry about that. Like, I think it’s good to just get general engagement off the like, right off the bat. And then that way, push it to other people who are interested in it as well.

Okay. Cool. Thanks. Yep.

I have a question for somebody who knows more about Instagram algorithm because based on what what I understand, you wanna have one audience that you focus on. And that’s one thing I’d like, I just noticed on on Abby’s, profile. She’s got two completely different audiences that are labeled in the, you know, sell more courses with day one evergreen or become a nomad copywriter, which would seem to be, you know, a splitting of attention there. And would it be a good idea for her to have one focus instead of having two different things with different audiences?

Yeah. My BA told me to do that.

Oh, but that’s a good question. Because at one point, Joe, wouldn’t you have kind of had that? Because you kind of have you have multiple audiences, freelancers, and then the not, I guess, everybody else. But right? You have that.

Yeah. But we have had to make a call on who we want to target. Okay. Yeah. So we really Yeah. Refined that. That’s pretty recent, though.

So yeah. But it’s Yeah. Fair.

It’s a fair I found that just targeting, like, a specific like, we’re targeting, freelancers who are, like, wanting to grow their business and, like, take the next step.

Like, that’s our main target, and it’s, like, a certain caliber as well.

We end up getting other people, of course, like, as you will, but, like, it’s just like it’s just like copywriting when you’re writing for one reader. Like, you’re thinking Instagram account’s the same way.

So it’s like, yes. Some of our content speaks to a broader audience, but for the most part, like, when we’re thinking about it, we are just targeting just one.

Yeah.

It is worth thinking about too in terms of strategy because, like, if all the stuff, AI algorithms, all these things, it still comes down to people.

So, I mean, like, if you think about who if you have a really hammered down avatar, like, not just like, oh, I’m going after twenty five to thirty five year old women that want this if I’m going after Lisa. Lisa’s twenty seven. She’s a grad student. She did this.

She did this. She did this. She likes to watch when she’s not online, she’s reading this book. She’s playing this sport.

Like, if you start figuring out who that one person is and your content speaks to that one person, you’re gonna probably start resonating more. Because I think if you like I say, if you spread too thin, one risk you do have is, like, if it doesn’t serve that person for what they signed up for off the value prop of the content they maybe followed you for and then they get something different, it might send them to feel like, yeah, they’re not really, feeling it the same way as if, you kinda keep consistently messaging to that person. So I think that’s one thing that it is one thing to consider, I’d say.

You can also, like, base it on different channels. Like, when I’m posting on LinkedIn, I’m a lot of times, I’m talking to investors more so than, like, beekeepers or growers for this specific account.

But it also can depend on the time of year. Like, when it’s sales season, I might talk to the customer. And when they’re trying to raise a a round, might talk to investors. Like, there is some room for flexibility either on different channels or different times of the year based on your priorities.

Can I just add, we’re not talking really about what to share, on social media right now, but I I think a good rule of thumb is not to share how, if you can help it? We’ve had to pull way back on sharing how, and, so far, it’s been useful to do that.

Leave the how for when they hire you or buy your product or whatever that might be. But try to shift away from from teaching how to write copy, how to plan something, Abby, in your case, how to do day one evergreen, more about why you should, where you should, when you should, all of that kind of stuff, what to do, but not how to do it. So I think that can be useful to keep in mind, especially if you’re finding that a lot of copywriters are following you. Jessica, for you, they’re often, like, if you have how content, copywriters will follow you, for sure. So try to shift away from that, then you might get fewer of the wrong people. Yeah.