Tag: joanna
Developing Your Diagnostic
Developing Your Diagnostic
Transcript
Today, as you saw in the worksheets, thanks for coming on camera. We’re gonna be talking about a diagnostic tool, and we’ll get into the details of that. As always, we’re gonna kick it off with some training And then, in today’s training though, we’ll be spending some time doing, like, work, based on the training. So expect to, you know, put aside twenty minutes at the end of this to start doing some thinking through what we’re talking about. And then we’ll do the usual AMA.
Always kick it off with a win, please, a win of any kind helps everybody stay motivated and see how many cool things there are to do out there. And then any any question you got, the more specific, the more context you can give the better.
Everybody good.
Good. Alright. We’re recording this. When you ask a question, please do come on camera wherever possible.
Please do be on camera so people can connect with you and see a smiling or whatever face you don’t have to smile no more. Whatever feels right is good. Okay. I am going to share my screen.
Alright. So this is this is cool. This is something that we’ve been working on for a little while.
For freelancing school as well as for people who are going to be joining, copy school pro. And that is a better way to diagnose what you need to work on because a lot of people are looking for road maps. Right? And that’s not just for students.
Your clients also want some form of roadmap. Like, what are you what what are we here for? Where are you gonna take me How do I know it’s the right thing to do? So this tool is a way and you’re gonna come up with your own today.
It’ll be the starting point for your own. This is a tool that helps you across every part of converting and delivering to people and also setting projects. So, You may have questions about this. I don’t think you’re gonna walk out of today’s session going.
I totally get it. I got the right one. It’s perfect. Everything’s amazing. This is gonna be the beginning of starting to think through something that you might work out over the course of the next month.
But here is the idea. So I’m on this.
Why does it say that’s page two? Everything says page two. It’s not. It’s actually four. Sorry.
Anyway, it doesn’t matter. But it’s the general diagnostic template. This page in your worksheet your workbook.
This is the idea here. Hopefully, you’re not on a very small screen.
The, again, the idea here is to figure out what the general three or four parts of what you deliver that is a solution to your client or student as you start to scale to teaching more to their problem what that what that is so you can then go in and say, here’s what you’re missing, here’s what you don’t have to work on, but here’s what do have to work on here is how we can work together. So, for example, I’m gonna show you first of all, like the end. What we’re working toward. Now this is our model. It’s currently called the Sunshine growth model because it looks a little bit like a this is multiple iterations on it that I’ve been playing with, but let me zoom in here and then we can talk specifically about what the hell it even is. Okay.
So someone comes to me and this is based on just years and years of coaching freelance copywriters and particular but also marketing consultants, etcetera.
Someone comes to me and they’re like, Joe, I’m, you know, I’ve plateaued. I would love to get to two hundred and fifty thousand dollars is the most common thing that people say. I’m at about a hundred. I wanna get to two fifty. What’s stopping me?
And so really what I’m hearing is like you’d like to get to about a grand a day of consistent income. And so that could be twenty days of the work month that works out to about two hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year or all the days, and that works out to about three hundred sixty thousand dollars a year. So that’s the problem that most people come to me trying to solve until they get to that and they’re like, okay. Now I wanna get to three million.
I got to three sixty. Now I wanna get to three point six. Let’s do that. And that would still come down to a lot of what we’re seeing here.
So this is how it breaks down and then I’m gonna show you how it draws out when we’re talking with people who are considering coming in to copy school professional, and then we’ll talk about what that means for you and for your new clients, leads when you’re having those lead conversations as well as how you deliver on something with clients So this is one way to do it, especially if you have felt scattered. If you felt like there, people come to you for all the things and you know know what to say no to. You never feel really good saying no.
People come to you and they’re all for the same general thing, but they have different problems within that same general thing. And your job is always like a little too custom. You don’t want it to always be custom because then it’s hard to offload things to people. You don’t have the leverage of like, here is how we do this work.
Go do it for me so I can mark up what you do, and get paid for not doing anything other than basically teaching you for you to deliver for me and then I then bill. Let me explain. Okay. So someone comes to me and says, Joe, basically, I wanna make a thousand dollars a day help Cool.
There are four actually five but four key parts that usually their work comes down to. So we can say okay. I can draw this out sharing my iPad as shown in the worksheet and I can say, okay, let’s talk through these four things, your skills, your authority, your money, and that means all things money. Money, not as leverage, but money as pricing.
Are you targeting the right audience? Do you have everything that you need? In order to make that money that you want to. Does your current audience only want to spend a thousand dollars on a single VIP day and then they’ll hit you up every six months for one.
You can’t build a business that way. Right? So and then we talked about leverage. And then what’s keeping you from all of those things too is also mindset mindset or copywriters.
Like for nobody else mindset is like such a challenge. It’s very hard. If you don’t have mindset issues and a lot of people here are working really well through any that you might have and maybe getting to a point where you don’t have mindset issues. Congratulations because that’s again and again. And I’ve said this before in Copyschool Pro. It’s such a big deal.
Getting your head right about your skills, about your authority, about a about your sense of scarcity and money out there. Who would pay me for this? And then leverage getting your head right about people, what it means to hire someone, what it means to document a creative process.
Okay. So we can draw this out. And that’s exactly what we want to do. And I’m going to switch over to, my iPad right away here and show you what we do and what you should be doing when you are going through a diagnosis of how to solve a problem with your clients or leads. Sorry.
Boop. Okay. Really simply what we do and what I’m suggesting that you do and my iPad’s been flipping around a lot today. So hopefully it doesn’t mess it up.
But we draw a circle. It’s allowed to be ugly. It doesn’t have to be perfect. And in the middle, we put our one thousand.
And we’re drawing this and sharing it with them and like talking them through it. Right? And then we have these parts that come out of there and we write in skills and sorry just going through this authority.
Money and leverage, then talk them through that. And this is what you’ll be doing with your own process Right?
So, like, okay. Here’s the problem we wanna solve. Here in the middle, it’s a thousand dollars a day. That’s what we’re aiming toward.
Here are the things that are keeping you pretty much. Think about this for your client. Your clients come to you and they say we want five hundred more paid conversions a month. So you put that in the middle.
Here. Five hundred more paid conversions a month. So you put like five hundred or you turn that into the dollar figure, like each conversion is worth ten dollars. So that’s five thousand.
Okay. Fine. So you put that in the middle and then you talk through the parts that are your process that are like critical to delivering five thousand dollars or those five hundred paid conversions a month. So they’re seeing, okay, you’re walking them through.
There’s skills. There’s authority. There’s money. There’s leverage. In in our case, probably not in yours.
Yours might be research and discovery.
And like the conversion copy writing process or something like that, right? Even if it’s for SAS brands, you might be like, okay, we have, you know, the five parts It’s more of a Pentagon shape and it’s got all five parts of pirate metrics. Let’s say. But let’s let’s focus on this. So here’s what I do.
Get the person who you’re talking to to also write this out. So say, hey, pick up a piece of paper. I want you to draw this with me. So you draw a circle just like this. Yours will be better than mine. I’m not an artist, etcetera.
Write these words from there. You write skills, you write authority, you write money, you write leverage. Great. Cool. Now all I want you to do is write this out and then we’re going to see how you’re doing on all of these points. So we have advanced skills you can sell. We have case studies and proof and we have advanced skills you can use.
So that’s like in this case it might be something more like advanced skills you can sell are am I really, really good at writing long form sales pages. Do I have case studies and proof for long form sales pages? And do I have advanced skills that I can use in my business like setting up a funnel for new leads so that I can sell them long form sales pages? Okay.
So write those down. Don’t do anything with them yet. And then you move on to the next one. Alright.
Next up is authority.
You’ve got your specialization or your niche, and you’ve got thought leadership.
My penmanship is shit. Don’t worry. And then you’ve got things like biz dev, which means everything to do with marketing, pipeline, etcetera. Cool. That’s how we start thinking through your authority.
When it comes to making money, do you have the right audience?
Do you have a standardized offer?
Maybe with a retainer option? Do you have, are you are you charging the right money for the thing that you deliver and the value that it is for your audience. And then we get into leverage and that is SOPs and documentation that is tools and process and that is people. Okay. So we walk them through this, getting them nodding along with us. They can ask questions as you go, and then comes the diagnosis.
This is where you go through and you have them identify if there are different ways to do this. There’s red, yellow, green is really common.
So anybody here yeah. Has probably gone through red, yellow, green. Some people have gone through red, yellow, green with us. So you go through and you say, okay.
On skills. If I was if I was bringing you into coffee school pro. Talk to me about are you red, are you yellow, are you green on advanced skills that you can sell? Do you feel really good about that.
And they can say like, well, I actually think I’m a pretty good copywriter. That’s not the problem. Great. So we’ll call that green.
How about proof? How are you on proof? Do you have good case studies? Yeah. I’ve got great case studies.
Okay. Cool. You’re good there. How about advanced skills you can use? What’s your funnel like?
If I don’t have a funnel okay cool then we’ll call that red and we’ll mark it as such. So you go through and you do that whole process with them and then by the end all you’re going to worry about are the things that are red. So if they’re not good at identifying where the red or yellow, that’s a sign that you probably shouldn’t work with them. If they’re like, we’re bringing on all of this.
Like, this, I’m perfect at all of this, and you’re like, Cool. You don’t need my help, peace, and get the hell out of the room. But if they’re decent at, like, identifying, like, You know, I thought we were green on that, but I think we might be yellow. And I thought we were yellow on that, but I think we might be red.
Then you can start identifying how you’ll work with them. So I’m read on skills I can use and thought leadership, and I’m read on Biz dev. I also don’t have any people. My tools are okay, but I don’t have a single SOP at all.
Great. So now we’re coming up with things where we can say, okay. We’re going to work on are these things. And then from there for your client, you can start saying okay.
We can talk through what we can do across all of these, areas of greatest opportunity build out a roadmap for what a project like that would look like, etcetera. Now this is possibly going to be hard to think through for you right now because this is focused on like coffee school pro. You, however, can do this exact thing for your clients as well, and you should be doing this for your clients. So now I’m going to go back to sharing the worksheet.
I’m just gonna zoom out here.
There.
So you can do the same thing for different stuff. Right? So here on this page, I’ve got a triangle shape that you might have for list offer copy. So let’s say you are working on, you’re in conversion copywriting and you sell sales pages.
That’s your thing. That’s what you wanna do. You wanna be perfect at it. You love it.
You’re gonna be amazing at it. Cool. You know it breaks down into list offer copy. Now the tricky thing with something like this is every part of this has to be something you can work on them with.
So if someone comes to you and says, I need a new sales page. I want it to make a hundred thousand dollars. You’re like, cool. Let’s talk.
Then you draw the triangle, you write lists, offer copy on there and you talk through lead age. Okay? Talk to me about your leads. How old are they?
How many fresh leads do you have? Are you red, green, or yellow on that? And then you color that in for whatever they are. Okay.
Now what about the quality of these leads? Where are they coming from? How are you finding them? Do they have the money?
What do you know about them? And they tell you that. Deliverability. Talk to me about how your emails are going right now.
Are people able to get to your sales page your emails, or is anything even happening there? Are you trying to drive people from Facebook, which is more about lead quality, straight to your sales page and they tell you if they’re red, yellow, or green on those things. You go around and do all of this and that can help you better diagnose not just the current project, but like a a bigger scale project that they’re buying into because they’re the ones who said I’m red on that. And if you can deliver on turning them from red to green, then it can go back through and do the the redo the diagnostic tool all the time, every at the end of each part of your project and be like, okay.
How are we feeling now about our lead age if that was a red and you got them there. Now they’re like, cool. Awesome job getting us to green. That’s amazing.
And you’ve got it documented for exactly what you have done for them.
But critically anything that’s showing in your diagnostic has to be something that you can do. Is where list offer copy can be a little bit tricky if you don’t do list stuff. If you’re like, I don’t attract leads, I can’t do anything for you. Then that’s a problem because they’re gonna walk away and go, oh, okay.
We have to go get some to take care of this, and then we’ll come back and talk to you later, which they might not do. They liked your diagnosis, great. But we wanna keep them here. So you would only break down your process.
This shape that you have into things that you will actually do. And that’s where if you are like, okay, I’m targeting SAS and they do care about pirate metric still, let’s say, not everybody that’s a lot of people have problem with it, but let’s just pretend. Okay. So you break down the five parts of pirate metrics, but you know you don’t do the first you don’t, you know, you don’t do the last one either.
So you would draw a triangle only for those three that you do. Okay. So your shape is dependent on the number of parts that you have here. A triangle is really easy and a circle is really easy.
You can draw a circle. You can break it up into four parts. We’re used seeing paragraphs. We’re used to seeing these sorts of shapes and our brains align with them.
Right? Like yes, if it’s a triangle, it’s a real thing. It’s kind of like rhyme is reason.
Same thing is here. So we could do research strategy writing and experimentation. This is the conversion copy writing process and then you get to say what parts are in here. So if you’re like all I do when it comes to research is jobs and new lead surveys.
I don’t wanna do anything else, then make it your two things. And you can say How are you all for job surveys? When’s the last time you did a jobs to be done, or interviews? When’s the last time you did a a jobs interview?
Set. And they’re like, we’ve never done one. I’m like, cool. You’re right on that new lead surveys.
How are you for that? And you can go through and walk them through this. And by the end, they’re like, shit, you’ve got a process. You have some way of helping me understand what my problem is in a way that nobody else ever has and you drew it for me, which is also a really interesting thing that only a pro is going to do.
I now know that I’m red on five things. I’m green on one thing. So that’s cool. I can take that back to my team and say, oh, we don’t have to worry about this.
Y’all, here are the five things we have to worry about. And when I hire you to do this work, we can then go back and say, okay. How are we now on this? Do you think we’re still red on this?
Are we yellow yet? And so on and so forth? This make sense to everybody?
Yeah.
Alright. Any questions about it?
Probably not yet. What I want you to do is hop into making your own for the people that you want to convert. So again, this is coming down to what’s your red thread or your one thing, what do you do, and try to think about what one thing you wanna sell more than anything.
If it’s like I just want fifty thousand dollar projects that that are like focused on x. I don’t know what that thing is. Or you know what it is. In some cases, I know what it is from talking with you, but for the whole group and anybody watching the replay, I don’t know what it is.
You know what it is. Try to know. If you don’t know, try to know, you’re allowed to build your future. This is what we’re doing.
So just like document the thing that you most wanna sell. I wanna sell fifty thousand dollar engagements that last two months and do these three things with this outcome. Okay, fine. Once you know that, then you can start to say what your process is to get there.
Now, process might not be the right word if you hear a process and you go, I don’t think it’s my process, you’re probably right. There are different ways to go about this. I wanna show you the end what it could look like, how it works, and then it’s up to you to come up with what that diagnostic is, and it can mean thinking through past calls you’ve had with clients and what they’ve shared with you or what you know you’re always delivering what you’re best at. But you definitely wanna think about your one thing and the only thing that you ever wanna sell if possible.
Okay?
Are you good to give this a shot for the next twenty minutes?
Yeah.
Just try it and then we’ll come back and share challenges you had with it or whatever Alright? Twenty minutes on the clock. I’m gonna stop recording. Thanks, Sarah.
Abby, if because it went so quickly, you need to share what you made. Let’s see it.
Okay. Right. Can you see my screen?
Just about yes.
Yeah. Is it tiny? Let me zoom in.
How’s that?
Cool?
Alright. Yes. We can see it. So just to be clear, all four parts of this you can deliver on.
Yeah. Including lead quality.
Yes.
Okay. But we have all the, yeah, part. Is it someone on your team or is it you?
It’s me. So I’m thinking, like, I’m thinking about my course here, but the course is basic. It’s it’s just the DIY version of my done for you offer.
So with the lead quality, the I do Facebook teach Facebook ad testing and then also, like, using thank you paid responses to make sure that you’re, like, bringing in the right people or that the messaging is resonating with the right people. So, yeah. Okay.
Awesome. Okay. So you walk them through this, and did you try, like, try it out because you had all this extra time? Like, did you try kind of pretending that you were walking a lead or even a prospective student through this model.
Yeah. Well, I was thinking, like, is this like your IP? Or are we free to chair this?
Yeah. Yeah. Oh, no. The idea is that now you go forward in you use it to close people and then deliver.
Yeah. Because I’ve I’ve been, like, running into a problem recently with my course where like, I wanna shift away from, like, the, kinda make money every day messaging and more towards, like, for people who have already tried it and failed, so a more kind of advanced training.
And I think, like, having something like this actually in the webinar would help kind of widen the out so that they can identify, like, all the areas that are gonna be, like, limiting their conversion. So, yeah, so it was, oh, that’s cool. I like it.
Awesome. Yeah. It is a sales tool, and also a, a way of measuring success as you go. Like a sense of progress when most of the time the way we measure these things is like, well, did I?
Is it done or isn’t it? And did I get sales or didn’t I or whatever that like bigger goal is? It’s like, well, no, there’s components along the way. And if we can make those all green, then you’re more likely to get that end goal that you’re looking for.
So, yeah, definitely use it in sales of any kind, webinars sales calls, all of it. Cool. Any questions for any, for Abby from anybody?
No? Alright. Fun. Cool. I will talk more about how to integrate this into the process and like modifying modifying offers and things as as we go.
Anybody else wanna share or chat about what didn’t work? What you’re still working on. Keep in mind, I’ve been working on this for a long time. And, like, I still have tweaks that I’m making and like, full on changes, like mindset was its own thing for a while, then I was like, no, mindset is across all of these things. So, I put it in the middle.
Johnson?
Yeah. I was wondering, because some of the things that I were down I I don’t have a process or a system for, but I I think that areas that I could cover, later as the product is fleshed out, or full of service. What do you have any advice for is that should I try and focus on stuff that I can just do right now or do a separate one that’s what I can do right now and one that’s more sort of future based?
Can it stand well without those parts that you don’t currently do well? Like how feasible is it to cut those parts out and have it still work?
Yeah. Sure. I could probably just merge them to together and do it more generalized because I’m kinda breaking things down maybe a little too far. Yeah. I could do that.
Yeah. If you can pull it, then you’ve you’ll confidently know you can deliver everything showing there. Right? So you wanna be able to obviously have a strong position of confidence in every call that you’re taking any webinar you might be running where you do this kind of thing.
So cut out what you can’t deliver yet, and then maybe just only add it back in when you’ve got somebody in your back pocket who can do that thing for you or when you can do it. Mhmm. Yeah. Cool.
Yeah. Okay. Cool. And then just make sure that the story comes together. Again, most people who you’re going to be showing this to don’t have a better sense for what you’re talking about than you do So whatever you show them is true.
It’s it’s like it’s not necessarily going to open up a whole bunch of skepticism.
So if you leave something off knowing eventually you’re gonna add that thing on, then that’s cool. Right? Cause they’re not thinking way you got this wrong, Johnson, you forgot about this point. Like, they’re thinking like, cool, cool, cool, cool. I’m red on this. Oh, I’m red. Yeah.
So that’s actually super helpful. Yeah. And she’s just like both of these exercises, this one and last week’s one. I found useful, not just for the lows itself, but also in sort of thinking about the areas, that I might be using these things in the future, just the red thread stuff and for developing a new, idea. So, anyway, it’d be cool. Thank you, anyway.
Big it. Love it. That’s cool. Wicked it. Anybody else wanna chat? But what they did.
Can I just ask Joe? Like, do you recommend right?
Do you recommend, the whole drawing it live or having the design. Like, I mean, I love I was also doing it in Canva, like, So bringing it on, bringing it with us, ready to show them, or, doing it on the call.
It’s more engaging when you have something to watch. Right? So if it’s like if you just bring up a model, then I’m reading through it while you’re talking.
If you bring up a blank sheet and you draw it and then you write a word, I’m engaged. Like, I’m waiting for what’s next. Right? So, and that’s what we really want is not for them to jump ahead and think they got it but for you to control that whole flow and then you say and now let’s talk about what you’re red and green on and then you color in red, color it, show them that thing. It’s for me, a horrible penmanship.
Everything’s a mess. But that’s not really the point. Right? They’re watching. They’re not saying like, so why don’t you pay better attention in grade three?
They were teaching you how to like make it look good. They’re just like going with it. Right? And like all they’re interested in is what am I red on?
Oh, what am I green on? Thank god. I’m green, but they’re watching the whole way. So, yes, long story short.
I do recommend that you draw it.
And I also recommend that I didn’t wanna make this like part of today’s session, but find someone in the room here to try this out with where their your perspective client and you hop on a call and you say talk me through this and they’re just pretending. So just like do some role playing then they can do the same for you and you can like work out the kinks of actually presenting it live and new ways to draw it and think about it. Yeah.
Cool.
Cool. Fine.
Anybody else?
I can share mine.
Cool. Yeah.
So typically what I do, even if I don’t have a drawing for it, is I start by looking at the campaign, figuring out which, what keywords they’re targeting, what their campaign looks like, whether it’s on Google or LinkedIn or Facebook, etcetera. And then figuring out what they need to prioritize. So if that’s landing pages, that’s landing pages, it might be the website, the homepage, it might be, the ads, so figuring out exactly what they need to optimize.
Then going through sales calls, sometimes that means going through like g two or Kaptura reviews, and then usually tools.
Sometimes users are testing, but definitely hotjar and Google Analytics. Then figuring out what the best framework is to use.
I I think that defining the persona would also be part of this, although I’m not sure that’s something I would be part of. That’s something I wouldn’t ask them about, because of that would determine, like, is this Are they targeting mid market? Are they targeting enterprise? Are they targeting medium businesses? And within those three categories, which, level of seniority.
But I guess that would fall under research, then actually writing, then usability testing meaning, like, validating the the copy and then finally AB testing.
Cool. It looks great. The only thing I would say is, there are some things on here that are big, like underwriting, you’ve got all those assets. And so if if it’s hard for them to identify what red, yellow, or green, then that’s kind of tricky. So what can you do here even if it comes down to combining strategy and research into one like thinking upfront, right? Like thinking or planning or something like that.
I would just encourage you to break up writing more.
So that because I might look at this and go like, okay. While I suck on CRO prioritization, I’m red on that. I’m green on tools. I’m green on VOC.
I’m probably wrong about being green on VOC, but I say that. Analytics. I don’t know. I have no idea.
Like, why don’t think about it that way? Maybe. Right? So I’m yellow there.
Writing. Well, I have a bunch of those. Let’s call it green.
And that’s the problem. Like, they they might have a bunch of things and think that’s okay.
It just that’s the only thing that stood out to me. That assets little piece of the pie is containing a lot. Can do something to open it up?
Well, the idea being that if they’re, like, the the asset that they would need would depend on what they’re prioritizing. So if their landing pages are leaking leads, then it would be landing pages. If they’re not driving off traffic at the top of the funnel, then it would be ads, And if their maybe their ads are not getting clicked on, then maybe it would be even higher. It would be more like brand awareness, social organic. Kind of work. That’s why I lumped them together.
That’s cool. And then I wonder though, then if you’re really To me, I’m envisioning a sort of triangle now. That’s more like leads or attract.
Convert and, like, retain or refer or revenue or something else. And then you could get into might be strategy in the I don’t know, but to me it feels like yeah. There’s something there, and I think what you’re saying is right. It might just need a different I don’t know. A different shape. Yeah.
I could do that. Because usually the question is, well, where are we leaking weeds or why aren’t we getting enough leaves? Why is our pipeline a mess?
Yeah. Great.
And the question is like, well, how do we figure that out? Because that’s not an easy question to answer.
Not. Not. But if you would dedicate a whole side of a triangle or whatever that final shape is, I don’t know, to leads then you can talk honestly about, like, okay, leads are red, but once we get them to convert them, we’re green on version and then we’re sucky on experimentation or whatever that other part is.
Yeah.
Okay. Yeah. That makes more sense.
Okay. Cool. Love it. That’s great.
Thanks Naomi. Anybody else wanna share or talk or share anything about what they just saw?
Can I share something?
Abby were you commenting?
Or I was just saying that it looked really nice.
Like, it looked it looked very, like, Yeah. Sounds good. Good job. Awesome.
Totally. Stacy, please go ahead.
I I have one that I wanna share that I didn’t do on the call today, but I did in the past. Okay. I just wanna share it because I want somebody to appreciate it.
Nice. It’s messy. Okay. It’s a scorecard.
It’s a scorecard, but the the thing the under and and I love the idea of using in this in a sales call, although everything I do in my universe is structured to avoid me ever have get on a call with anyone.
Okay.
So I set up my three things. I I created the ABCs of superior content, which are audio brand and craft. So those are the three things. And the audience part will, you know, that would involve the voice of customer and interviews, etcetera, understanding the audience, then brand has to do with brand voice, personality, and then Craft is the actual writing of content, which would be combining journalistic writing persuasions, storytelling with subject matter expertise.
So I go through and and and ask them six questions in each of in each of these three areas. So there’s eighteen questions altogether, and then it gives the gives the results in a scorecard and then I use score app, which is a good lead gen processing sort of follow-up thing. Yeah. So I just wanted share because because I’m proud of my scorecard.
That’s cool. I love it, and the ABC is a really nice thing to remember, obviously.
And it could go really nicely in a triangle and you could clearly, like, diagnose how am I on audience, how am I on brands, I don’t remember what the third one was. Sorry. And now it’s Craft. Craft.
That’s the actual writing. Yeah. And it does display. It displays it in that targeted, you know, thing where it scores them on each of the three areas in the in the report that it generates.
Nice. That’s cool. That’s great. Yeah. Even if they, like, diagnosed themselves and then went through the score.
Anyways, it’s cool. It’s cool. Yeah. Love it.
Cool. Anybody else?
We’re good. Okay. Work this out. I do recommend that you like start making it part of your process, you’ll be surprised at how engaging it is for people when they see it drawn out.
You’re talking through and asking them questions, especially if in sales calls, you struggle to like know what to say next. This is like a really clear way to look like you’re a freaking pro and have done this a million even if it’s like your first time doing it live. Just practice with other people in the room. If you don’t have anybody to practice with yet, chances are good.
Someone else doesn’t have anybody to practice with yet too. So, feel free to just chat right now and say, hey, does anybody wanna role play this with me?
And if not, go over in Slack and do it there too, and we’ll we’ll see what happens.
Cool.
Anybody have questions? We’ve got thirty minutes ish left. If you have to go, cool, respect your time. If you have questions to ground, Katie, do you have one?
Yeah. So I’m can you just speak a bit more to, like so we’ve established where they’re red and where they’re yellow and where they’re green?
Am I aiming to then put to, like, can you, take it into the pitch? So, like, am I aiming to put together one proposal that covers, like, first, we’re gonna address the red, and then we’re gonna talk about the yellow, or how do I go into turning that into an offer?
Exactly. Yes. So I think there’s lots of ways you can do it. Right? So whatever is triggering for you, like in your imagination, roll with that but the really yeah the thing that you wanna walk away with is now it’s not just, hey, I need a sales page, but it’s also, hey, I need to get better at this, this, this, and this.
Your project now got bigger. You’re also a consultant. That’s more strategic. Right? So you walk away from there going Here are the four things we need to work on before we even work on writing your sales page.
Let me take this away, put together, some ideas for you. You send me x, y, and z document that I need. So you said you’re strong on research. Send me some so I can look at it. And then we’re gonna hop on a call, and I’ll walk you through my plan for how we can hit all of these things you read on in x period of time that you’ve told me you want this off like the thing that’s in the center of it, the five hundred paid conversions added a month or whatever.
We wanna get there in three months time. But we have to make these red things all green. We’ve agreed on that. You agree that you’re red on these things. So now we’re gonna go forward. I’ll put the other and I’m gonna come back and talk you through that plan. That’s a really, like, clear way for you to now go off and run a project.
Does that make sense? Like here’s my project now and it’s informed not just by what you said you think you need but what I have diagnosed you as really needing.
Yeah. I mean, I see this is super useful because I think I mentioned on our last the last call that I made it to live, like, I just feel like my project ideas are always really big, and I struggle to break them down into components. So this feels really helpful for that.
I guess what I’m taking away from what you’ve just said is like it would be helpful for me to have a sense of the hierarchy of the lights for for lack of better words so that I know, like, if that’s red, obviously, we’re gonna do this first and, and, like, turning that then into a proposal?
Yeah. And it’s sort of a process. So I said the word process, but I know sometimes it won’t feel like a process. So if you’re like, but it’s not a process. Okay. Don’t make it a process. But to me, it is.
To me, it’s like, okay, if it’s list offer that’s an order in which things go. Right? The conversion copywriting process has parts to it.
And so that should also lead to a sort of hierarchy, right, where you’re like, well, we can do everything we want with copy. But if your list is a mess or the people coming to it or wrong. If you’re red on that, no. So we clearly have to solve the the left part of the triangle first, whatever that’s called. I don’t geometry.
But we solve that over there. We solve list.
Then once we’re red once we’re green on those things, then we’ll talk about off for that list. Okay? And then we’ll talk about copies. You can start to see a gantt chart forming of how that project could go.
Like we’re gonna nail list I can’t come up with that live on a call. That’s not your job to come up with it live on a call. Right? You’re like, I’m I’m gonna go away and think about this for you.
You come up with the things you’re gonna do for improved list quality and quantity in x period of time.
Put that on the gantt chart here. What’s we’re gonna do in week one, week two, week three. Then week three, we’re also gonna start working on offer and and week six will be ready to work on copies. Now, you have like this project mapped out.
You’ve also got a built in way to go back and optimize things, right? So you can say we got through list offer copy, the parts of the triangle, red turn to yellow on these things and yellow turn to green, but now let’s go back and do more to further optimize it. So you have the initial project, as well as a map in effect or a retainer to optimize for performance. Does that make sense, Katie, or is that too much?
It makes sense.
I feel like I’m gonna have to revisit my, like, the categories that I’ve throat to make sure that they have a clear Okay.
Flow from one to the next. Okay. Yeah. And know I was just thinking like, well, what if they’re like, well, I don’t wanna work on that first. I wanna work on, like, I don’t I don’t wanna work on my I just wanna work on my sales page or something. I guess then it’s a question of like, do you wanna work with them?
I would say that’s the question and then. If you know list is actually red and they’re like, I don’t care, write the copy.
That’s not what I do. I can the copy will never convert if your list is garbage. Sorry. We gotta nail that and that’s where you have to be able to work on list.
In this case, right? You have to say like, no. I’m gonna nail this for you, then you’re gonna have you might not even need to work on the copy. It might just be a list look.
We’re green across the board on coffee.
So but that’s yeah. You you’re not just diagnosing what they need but are they a good fit for you to work with? They should walk away from this going. Holy shit, Katie.
No one’s ever shown it to us this way. That was great. How do we start nailing through like I had no idea that’s how this worked. That’s like the objective.
And if they don’t do that, they’re probably gonna be pretty tough to work with.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah. Okay. I know it’s easy for me to say. Like, push away these people who don’t wanna do the first part of the process, but we all already know you. They’re not gonna be a good fit. Yeah.
Stacy, I know you have an AMA and then Abby.
So, my my question is about a project that I’m currently working on. I just did, message frameworks for this client often I work with enterprise companies. So I’m sort of a step removed from being able to get into benchmarking and AB testing and things like that because it’s also siloed off in big companies. In this particular instance, it’s a smaller company. They’re like a twenty million company, and my messaging framework meeting was with the whole c suite of, you know, so I had all four c level people.
So now we’re moving into actually doing a wireframe for the home page. And I’m working with that mostly with the CMO.
So they want to do an AB test against their current homepage with what I create. And so since I’m not used to sort of benchmarking before a project, I wanted to get some feedback on what I might be able to do as far as what what to ask for to establish some ben benchmarks and test against and any any tips about you know, that process because I know you do a lot having to do with the, with data, and it’s just something that I’m usually a step removed from.
Sure. So they are split testing though. Right?
They’re using Yes.
Optimizely or a tool like that.
They well, they they want AB test I haven’t talked to them about the mechanics of how they’re doing it, but I do know they want to split test, driving traffic and, you know, testing their current homepage against a new homepage that I’m writing the copy for.
Right. So understanding how the control is performing is Good. They should be telling you that, right? And then they’ll tell you the, metrics when they tell. Like, here’s here are the KPIs for this page.
It’s a homepage. So it’s likely you’ll need to document things like, amount of traffic coming to it, traffic sources, coming to it as well. If they’re using it as a landing page for Facebook ads and other things like that, It’s a problem. Right? Like, because the test at that point becomes less about a scientific test and more about like a game, where you’ve got traffic coming from weird sources that could have been brought in by any number of ads, etcetera. And they’re landing on this page. They’re so different.
That it’s almost like there are too many variables. I know it’s all in the variable of audience, but it’s so uncontrolled.
That your test is just going to feel fake. So understand where traffic is coming from. Try to get them on board with narrowing it down to their ideal audience. And I know that means organic traffic you can’t do anything about either, but people who are searching and landing on your homepage are likely not look you lose when we’re talking about business. This is SAS. This is a software company?
Or It’s, it is tech.
Yes. It’s it’s tech. So no Because it’s a CDN. It’s a it’s enterprise CDN.
Okay. Cool.
Good. So we can imagine that organic traffic that lands there. Is there by design in some way? So cool. What’s the traffic like that’s coming to it? How are they converting right now? So you need quantity of traffic than like a understanding a qualitative understanding of quality of traffic.
And then you need to know what that existing conversion rate is and what conversion rate means for them is likely going to be clicks. If it’s on the homepage, it’s probably clicks. The question is clicks to where?
We wanna drive sign ups to a a trial sign up for a free account.
Can they sign up for the free account from that page, or do they get driven to another page?
They can sign up on the homepage currently. And they, and and it’s not very focused and it can be much better than it is now.
Okay.
In other words, the homepage is not driving sign ups, and I think it could drive sign ups much more than it does.
Okay. Is there an email address field on the homepage?
That’s like start your trial?
Yes. There is.
Yes. There is. Oh, that’s an existing thing. Cool. You can optimize that. That’s great. So that would be probably number one.
It sounds like your number one goal is trial starts.
Trial starts. Yes.
Okay. So you need to document, know the the control and how it’s doing on trial start but also optimizely, we’ll know that too.
So you don’t you don’t have to write anything down if they’re using the right tool and if you’re all aligned on, what the objective is, like what, how are you going to measure it in a testing platform? You can set up multiple goals, and that’s trickiest part. You don’t want to set up too many goals. Home pages are hard though because things like bounce are gonna be an actual consideration on a homepage.
Try to keep them on task with What is the number one thing that this page is solving for? From a business perspective, why does the business invest money in this homepage. Why is this test a priority right now? And if it is, we wanna get trial starts as soon as they land there, then throw every other way of measuring the page out the door.
Don’t worry about bounce rate. We have to try scary things and some people are gonna bounce. And maybe they won’t. Maybe it’ll hold more people.
We’re not gonna worry about that. All we’re worried about is trial starts. So how does optimizely or whatever tool they use measure trial starts. What can you do in the tool?
Is it just like once they’ve clicked this button successfully or once they’ve landed on the next page is a common way to do that test. Are they landing on a confirmation page for like your trial is now started or landing an app? Which can also be tricky because there’s lots of different ways to land in at from a home page oftentimes. Point being, trial starts is what matters.
So document that Nothing else really matters if that’s your goal. There’s so many things to measure on a homepage. Try to control how much they’re thinking about. Does that help, Stacy?
Yes. Yes. That helps very much. And I will be re re listening to this recording to make sure I get all of that. Okay. Thank you.
DLDR is like trial starts is all that you’re gonna focus them on. Yeah. Cool.
Hey. Yeah. So I have kind of it’s like a mindset strategy question. I’m gonna try and articulate it as best as I can.
So I’m looking at, like, the prioritization matrix, and I’m trying to kind of, like, find my high reward low friction task and, like, the twenty percent of my efforts that generate eighty percent of, like, the revenue. And the things the thing that, like, does the most of me at is podcast, but then like, so speaking on the podcast, it’s it’s my kind of, like, high reward low friction, but then it’s, like, getting on the podcast, then it becomes kind of, like, the question of, like, likelihood of success as well, because it’s like a podcast could potentially be high reward, but then it’s like, I gonna even get on it? Like, how do I get on it? And it’s kind of like so how do you, like, balance thinking about those things, like, the how the how to get to the, like, high reward thing, like, in terms of is that did I yeah.
Yeah. I think so.
It means to me it sounds like it’s, like, of, like, leverage.
The first thing that comes to mind is, like, okay, who is trying to book you on there? Do you have a VA or assistant of some kind pitching for you.
I have a VA that, like, makes a list and that I pitch them.
Can you train the VA to pitch?
I I can. The reason I haven’t is because I posted in, like, the Slack about and, having, like, whether to have my B. I pitch, and then Christie said she wouldn’t even, like, look at, like, a podcast application if it was wasn’t sent by the person.
So that kind of Oh, no.
The video is pretending to be you.
Oh, okay. Yeah. Okay.
Yeah. They’re just they’re signed it. They’re sending from your email address a hundred percent. And it’s just like, hey, Abby here. Just a template that they then know how to modify because you’ve taught them. You took an hour to teach them how to do this thing well for you. And steal it from your email address, and that’s it.
Mhmm.
So it’s like thinking about, like, how to automate kind of the steps to the high reward stuff or, like, outsource, minimize friction.
Do you have an SOP for it that your VA can then be trained on? And then when you do, if getting on podcasts is a huge high value win for you, but it’s it’s a slog to get there. It’s a it’s a quantity game a lot of the time. Like how much as you put out there.
Then yeah, outsource that. Send that off. That’s a great thing for your VA to do. It doesn’t take specialized skills.
Not if they have your training, yeah, to do it. So I get the VA on it, but yeah, send from your email address or something that’s a good fake of your email address.
Like AP at instead of Abby at or whatever.
Mhmm.
Cool. Yeah. That makes so much sense. You make it sound so obvious. Of course.
Thank you.
No. No worries. Awesome. Anna.
Hey. I just had a question about the ebook I’m writing right now.
Love it.
So, I think I know the answer to this, but I wanna just confirm. It is fair game to quote any studies that are publicly out there. Right?
What about, like, screenshots of that’s because it’s on pricing page. So can I can I use screenshots or pricing pages that are out there in public right now? Or do I have to, like, seek permission?
Or I think Jessica wants to answer this.
I’m watching your face, Jessica. Oh, no.
I thought you did for, like, the folks that No.
I just I just wanna make sure everybody knows I’m engaged. I don’t Oh, yes. I do know the answer.
You guys publishing for us. So I thought like, oh, you probably have a good take on this.
Yeah.
Yeah. So in my experience, it’s what are you copying or screenshotting and is it proprietary?
So there are some cases where you’re not allowed to use an image without paying a fee for it.
But you usually know those things. Right? A screenshot of someone’s website is it’s a public thing as long as you cite, and I would recommend citing everything about it that it’s copyrighted by X company. The screenshot was taken on this date.
And that’s that’s cool. Then you can do that. It can also be actually a pretty useful way to start promoting your book when the time comes. When you’re like, Hey, I used your page as a great example in my book. It’s coming out. Do you wanna copy of it?
That kind of thing. Right? And then they might say like, oh, I didn’t realize people were just using screenshots of our website. What? And you might be like, oh, fuck.
But, that’s just the conversation that you have at that point, but it doesn’t have to be weird. I no one’s ever run any quotes that, like, when Ann Handley put me in her book, I didn’t find out till someone was like, Joe, you’re in Ann’s book. And same for product led growth. Nobody told me this was gonna happen.
But I would just ended up in there. And I wasn’t like, damn you, Ann. I was like send flowers to Ann. So it’s it’s it’s I wouldn’t worry about it just do what you can to cite where it came from. And wherever possible, only take screenshots of things where you’re gonna tell a good story about it. If it’s, like, a bad thing, mock up a version of it and just remove anything.
Actually, that was gonna be my my next question. So if I just mock up and make a random, like, I could take it a pricing page and and then play around with it on Photoshop and change it up completely. Just to use the bad example.
That’s obviously fine. Right? Because no one’s gonna know where it came from or yeah.
Yeah. And then the reader also likes you a little more. Right? You’re like, look, these are some bad things I’ve seen.
I’m not gonna call anybody out. Everybody means while you, the reader, you mean well. But here’s what are what people are doing wrong. And then you can show, like, mock ups, but not the thing.
Yeah.
Awesome.
Last question.
Does it matter how long the ebook is? So I I I thought I would wrap something up in, like, thirty pages.
Okay.
But it’s it looks like it’s gonna get to, like, seventy pages.
And I’m wondering, like, are people gonna read that or Who is your target?
K. Good question.
So c level execs that will Yeah. Because the whole idea is to build authority and and show that this is a comprehensive thing.
On pricing pages. Right? So someone who gets a hold of it, the impression I want them to get is like, oh, didn’t know there was so much to talk about when it came to Verizon pages. It seems like this person knows this thing.
A hundred percent. Yes. So I just chatted over the title of a book called write useful books, go read it through your kindle, read it right away.
It’s great, but it will make you identify who your target audience is and things like referral referrals that are built into their heads. So it’s gonna be really useful.
Read right useful books as you’re doing this.
Think about that target audience and think about where they’re reading it. I think I’ve talked about this before with April.
With obviously awesome. She was gonna get it traditionally published.
Sorry if I’m repeating it, but it’s really good advice. The traditional publisher was it needs to be sixty thousand words and she’s like, no, I can’t. And the reason was for her was, but I travel on planes and I read books on planes, like that’s when a lot of sea levels in their careers hop on. That’s when they that’s when they read books.
So if that’s the case, then how long is the average flight that a sea level is going to able to read your book. Three or four hours. So you have to make it start to finish in three to four hours, which is like I think it’s something like thirty thousand words at most, knowing that they’re just skimming a lot of it and just like rolling through it.
But, yeah, thirty thousand words, I think is what came out as like the ideal length for a c level to read a book.
Thousand words. Okay. I’ll keep that in mind.
Yeah. Cool. Awesome. Thanks.
And of course, we have love screenshots in there.
It’s gonna go a lot faster. It doesn’t mean you have to take up the whole flight though. Like, if they’re able to finish the book and start writing the email to you that’s like, loved your book, let’s talk. That’s a good thing.
Right? If they can get all that work done on the plane and then walk off and go. Awesome. What’s next?
You know?
Yeah. Got it.
Awesome. Love it. Read write useful books.
Okay. Anybody else?
I do have a couple like brainstorm questions. They’re very low. Like, you probably be like really are you asking me this, but I just wanted to get brain power because we have a lot of that in the room if that’s okay.
Yeah. We do. Yeah. We got eight minutes still. Let’s go.
Okay. I’m trying to think of which one Alright. I’ll go with the second question because I have a feeling your mindset has changed around this a little bit. So I kind of Soft launched my new newsletter called the holiday win and So what I’m wondering is you used to do a lot of free stuff to grow your list, but you’ve recently made comments about not doing that in the books and that. So I’m just wondering how are we feeling about that right now? Any suggestions?
About free content? To grow your email list. Yes.
Right. I mean, our free content’s just different now. Our free content that grows our email list is on Instagram, and with like many chat and boards. Right? That’s really it.
But still, they’re still free. It’s just it’s just different.
I know the the name makes me wanna watch a Hallmark movie though to be very clear.
No. The goal was to rip it off of the old movie.
So that’s Oh, cool.
That’s awesome. Good. Yeah.
Yeah. But give a give it away in your newsletter. The good thing of are you using Substack?
No. So you mentioned something about Substack and then I had to do research on what was the latest drama and then I was like dang it. So do I grow it on there or not?
Feels a little problematic.
Yeah. No. We’ve stopped using Substack too. Yeah.
But I thought if you were okay with it, No.
I saw the research or I looked it up after you mentioned it. You’re ruined my email strategy, Joe. Alright.
We’re ruined mine too.
So the so whatever alternative comes out for sub stack, that doesn’t allow Nazis to be the Nazis on there.
Is, hopefully the next thing to use then just because you can charge for your archives. And if you have good shit you’re giving out, you should be charging for the archive.
So that’s that. But your goal is to grow your list. And if your goal is to grow your list with quality leads, then free is obviously is the is the way to go. It’ll get more people on.
It’s just a question of how quality are those are those leads. But a lot of them are quality just because they’re looking for free out of the gate doesn’t mean they’re ever going to be looking for free. Just wanna make sure you’re not full of crap. Right?
So let’s try you for free and then pay you later.
Yeah. That’s my take. Does anybody else have thoughts on this?
Do you give stuff away free to grow your list? Any tips?
No one wants to talk about it.
I no. I mean, I already have any advice it’s an interesting question, but I I don’t know. I think, I think about the content itself being, yeah, engaging and teaching something. Maybe it’s just a hint of something and you’re not giving anything away. I mean, I’m thinking of the the email the the the the people I’ve subscribed to who I read. And it’s it’s supposed to be people who are into entertaining first.
Maybe, yeah, actually first. And then secondly, teach me stuff. Yeah. Yeah.
James Claire is three two one method, work really well, and there’s another copywriter who somehow I got on this list.
He does three two one for copywriting.
Three examples to something and then one tip or something like that. And it’s a good read.
So, I don’t know, food for thought as you think of the format as well for your newsletter.
Cool. Naomi.
So I want to get more into Go ahead podcast.
And so I was building a list of, podcasts that I thought were relevant And somebody mentioned to me that you that I could probably write a script and just outsource that, have somebody put that together and send an email to all those people. But I was I thought that would be too impersonal that they get a lot of they got a lot of mail looking for guests and that it would make a lot more sense to do it. Like, actually listening to the podcast and mentioning something relevant, So I was wondering what you thought about that. Is that something?
Yeah. Did you hop off for a bit on this call already?
Yeah. I had two during my meeting for the ending.
And then you hop back up. So Abby actually asked the same question, and it was about podcast pitching, how to make it personal, And so, really quick and it’s in the replay if you want more detail, but it really is, documents like a template.
For outreach to these podcasts, and then, teach your VA or somebody that is inexpensive to send these pitch emails from your email address. So it looks like it’s from Naomi. It’s written in the first person. Hi, etcetera.
And they all do the research too. So the VA listens to the podcast or reads the reviews or whatever the whatever the thing is that teach the VA to do and then they have a goal that you give them of like five pitches a day or whatever that goal is that you need for them to to get your name out there. But yeah, it’s an SOP. This is the leverage part of the big sunshine growth model. Of have that SOP with templates associated with it, and then teach a VA to do it. And just make it look personal by personalizing and sending it from naomi at.
Okay.
Great. Awesome. Thanks. Is there another question there?
Are we good? I have one more question. Sorry. It’s another brainstorm one. Okay. So I did do the the win is a hundred million offers.
I flushed out the whole seasonal sale holiday offer thing. So Next the sales page, right? So and now this. So my only thought is I really need to get more people see like going through this process so I can finesse it and I’m getting still a lot of email and I know a lot of that is authority related but to get some quicker like and I get a few seasonal sales and no door.
Yeah. Any suggestions about more of a fast approach to that part?
Like, you’re just trying to get people to test this out on?
Essentially.
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think it’s like you said on really no dollar offers. It’s formosa kind of solution here, I would do what he has said to do in that case. Do you have a system?
If you have system, then you post on LinkedIn and say, hey, I’m looking for five companies that meet this criteria to run through my system on the next holiday for free in exchange for me being able to daw to tell the world about this and to take examples away from it. That’s a third thing to do. But just make sure you have it as like system so that you’re not guessing your way through their holiday emails for free.
Yeah. Okay. Perfect. Thank you. I’ll do that.
Okay. Fine. Alright. Well, we’re at the end of our time. Thanks, everyone, for your great questions. Nobody shared a win, but I wasn’t gonna harp on that too much. It’s pretty mean about it.
My win is being in CSV. That is a win.
Okay. Awesome. The replay will be available later. Thanks y’all, and we will be following up more on this diagnostic tool as we chat more.
Okay? Okay. Thanks, though. Have a good one. Bye.Today, as you saw in the worksheets, thanks for coming on camera. We’re gonna be talking about a diagnostic tool, and we’ll get into the details of that. As always, we’re gonna kick it off with some training And then, in today’s training though, we’ll be spending some time doing, like, work, based on the training. So expect to, you know, put aside twenty minutes at the end of this to start doing some thinking through what we’re talking about. And then we’ll do the usual AMA.
Always kick it off with a win, please, a win of any kind helps everybody stay motivated and see how many cool things there are to do out there. And then any any question you got, the more specific, the more context you can give the better.
Everybody good.
Good. Alright. We’re recording this. When you ask a question, please do come on camera wherever possible.
Please do be on camera so people can connect with you and see a smiling or whatever face you don’t have to smile no more. Whatever feels right is good. Okay. I am going to share my screen.
Alright. So this is this is cool. This is something that we’ve been working on for a little while.
For freelancing school as well as for people who are going to be joining, copy school pro. And that is a better way to diagnose what you need to work on because a lot of people are looking for road maps. Right? And that’s not just for students.
Your clients also want some form of roadmap. Like, what are you what what are we here for? Where are you gonna take me How do I know it’s the right thing to do? So this tool is a way and you’re gonna come up with your own today.
It’ll be the starting point for your own. This is a tool that helps you across every part of converting and delivering to people and also setting projects. So, You may have questions about this. I don’t think you’re gonna walk out of today’s session going.
I totally get it. I got the right one. It’s perfect. Everything’s amazing. This is gonna be the beginning of starting to think through something that you might work out over the course of the next month.
But here is the idea. So I’m on this.
Why does it say that’s page two? Everything says page two. It’s not. It’s actually four. Sorry.
Anyway, it doesn’t matter. But it’s the general diagnostic template. This page in your worksheet your workbook.
This is the idea here. Hopefully, you’re not on a very small screen.
The, again, the idea here is to figure out what the general three or four parts of what you deliver that is a solution to your client or student as you start to scale to teaching more to their problem what that what that is so you can then go in and say, here’s what you’re missing, here’s what you don’t have to work on, but here’s what do have to work on here is how we can work together. So, for example, I’m gonna show you first of all, like the end. What we’re working toward. Now this is our model. It’s currently called the Sunshine growth model because it looks a little bit like a this is multiple iterations on it that I’ve been playing with, but let me zoom in here and then we can talk specifically about what the hell it even is. Okay.
So someone comes to me and this is based on just years and years of coaching freelance copywriters and particular but also marketing consultants, etcetera.
Someone comes to me and they’re like, Joe, I’m, you know, I’ve plateaued. I would love to get to two hundred and fifty thousand dollars is the most common thing that people say. I’m at about a hundred. I wanna get to two fifty. What’s stopping me?
And so really what I’m hearing is like you’d like to get to about a grand a day of consistent income. And so that could be twenty days of the work month that works out to about two hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year or all the days, and that works out to about three hundred sixty thousand dollars a year. So that’s the problem that most people come to me trying to solve until they get to that and they’re like, okay. Now I wanna get to three million.
I got to three sixty. Now I wanna get to three point six. Let’s do that. And that would still come down to a lot of what we’re seeing here.
So this is how it breaks down and then I’m gonna show you how it draws out when we’re talking with people who are considering coming in to copy school professional, and then we’ll talk about what that means for you and for your new clients, leads when you’re having those lead conversations as well as how you deliver on something with clients So this is one way to do it, especially if you have felt scattered. If you felt like there, people come to you for all the things and you know know what to say no to. You never feel really good saying no.
People come to you and they’re all for the same general thing, but they have different problems within that same general thing. And your job is always like a little too custom. You don’t want it to always be custom because then it’s hard to offload things to people. You don’t have the leverage of like, here is how we do this work.
Go do it for me so I can mark up what you do, and get paid for not doing anything other than basically teaching you for you to deliver for me and then I then bill. Let me explain. Okay. So someone comes to me and says, Joe, basically, I wanna make a thousand dollars a day help Cool.
There are four actually five but four key parts that usually their work comes down to. So we can say okay. I can draw this out sharing my iPad as shown in the worksheet and I can say, okay, let’s talk through these four things, your skills, your authority, your money, and that means all things money. Money, not as leverage, but money as pricing.
Are you targeting the right audience? Do you have everything that you need? In order to make that money that you want to. Does your current audience only want to spend a thousand dollars on a single VIP day and then they’ll hit you up every six months for one.
You can’t build a business that way. Right? So and then we talked about leverage. And then what’s keeping you from all of those things too is also mindset mindset or copywriters.
Like for nobody else mindset is like such a challenge. It’s very hard. If you don’t have mindset issues and a lot of people here are working really well through any that you might have and maybe getting to a point where you don’t have mindset issues. Congratulations because that’s again and again. And I’ve said this before in Copyschool Pro. It’s such a big deal.
Getting your head right about your skills, about your authority, about a about your sense of scarcity and money out there. Who would pay me for this? And then leverage getting your head right about people, what it means to hire someone, what it means to document a creative process.
Okay. So we can draw this out. And that’s exactly what we want to do. And I’m going to switch over to, my iPad right away here and show you what we do and what you should be doing when you are going through a diagnosis of how to solve a problem with your clients or leads. Sorry.
Boop. Okay. Really simply what we do and what I’m suggesting that you do and my iPad’s been flipping around a lot today. So hopefully it doesn’t mess it up.
But we draw a circle. It’s allowed to be ugly. It doesn’t have to be perfect. And in the middle, we put our one thousand.
And we’re drawing this and sharing it with them and like talking them through it. Right? And then we have these parts that come out of there and we write in skills and sorry just going through this authority.
Money and leverage, then talk them through that. And this is what you’ll be doing with your own process Right?
So, like, okay. Here’s the problem we wanna solve. Here in the middle, it’s a thousand dollars a day. That’s what we’re aiming toward.
Here are the things that are keeping you pretty much. Think about this for your client. Your clients come to you and they say we want five hundred more paid conversions a month. So you put that in the middle.
Here. Five hundred more paid conversions a month. So you put like five hundred or you turn that into the dollar figure, like each conversion is worth ten dollars. So that’s five thousand.
Okay. Fine. So you put that in the middle and then you talk through the parts that are your process that are like critical to delivering five thousand dollars or those five hundred paid conversions a month. So they’re seeing, okay, you’re walking them through.
There’s skills. There’s authority. There’s money. There’s leverage. In in our case, probably not in yours.
Yours might be research and discovery.
And like the conversion copy writing process or something like that, right? Even if it’s for SAS brands, you might be like, okay, we have, you know, the five parts It’s more of a Pentagon shape and it’s got all five parts of pirate metrics. Let’s say. But let’s let’s focus on this. So here’s what I do.
Get the person who you’re talking to to also write this out. So say, hey, pick up a piece of paper. I want you to draw this with me. So you draw a circle just like this. Yours will be better than mine. I’m not an artist, etcetera.
Write these words from there. You write skills, you write authority, you write money, you write leverage. Great. Cool. Now all I want you to do is write this out and then we’re going to see how you’re doing on all of these points. So we have advanced skills you can sell. We have case studies and proof and we have advanced skills you can use.
So that’s like in this case it might be something more like advanced skills you can sell are am I really, really good at writing long form sales pages. Do I have case studies and proof for long form sales pages? And do I have advanced skills that I can use in my business like setting up a funnel for new leads so that I can sell them long form sales pages? Okay.
So write those down. Don’t do anything with them yet. And then you move on to the next one. Alright.
Next up is authority.
You’ve got your specialization or your niche, and you’ve got thought leadership.
My penmanship is shit. Don’t worry. And then you’ve got things like biz dev, which means everything to do with marketing, pipeline, etcetera. Cool. That’s how we start thinking through your authority.
When it comes to making money, do you have the right audience?
Do you have a standardized offer?
Maybe with a retainer option? Do you have, are you are you charging the right money for the thing that you deliver and the value that it is for your audience. And then we get into leverage and that is SOPs and documentation that is tools and process and that is people. Okay. So we walk them through this, getting them nodding along with us. They can ask questions as you go, and then comes the diagnosis.
This is where you go through and you have them identify if there are different ways to do this. There’s red, yellow, green is really common.
So anybody here yeah. Has probably gone through red, yellow, green. Some people have gone through red, yellow, green with us. So you go through and you say, okay.
On skills. If I was if I was bringing you into coffee school pro. Talk to me about are you red, are you yellow, are you green on advanced skills that you can sell? Do you feel really good about that.
And they can say like, well, I actually think I’m a pretty good copywriter. That’s not the problem. Great. So we’ll call that green.
How about proof? How are you on proof? Do you have good case studies? Yeah. I’ve got great case studies.
Okay. Cool. You’re good there. How about advanced skills you can use? What’s your funnel like?
If I don’t have a funnel okay cool then we’ll call that red and we’ll mark it as such. So you go through and you do that whole process with them and then by the end all you’re going to worry about are the things that are red. So if they’re not good at identifying where the red or yellow, that’s a sign that you probably shouldn’t work with them. If they’re like, we’re bringing on all of this.
Like, this, I’m perfect at all of this, and you’re like, Cool. You don’t need my help, peace, and get the hell out of the room. But if they’re decent at, like, identifying, like, You know, I thought we were green on that, but I think we might be yellow. And I thought we were yellow on that, but I think we might be red.
Then you can start identifying how you’ll work with them. So I’m read on skills I can use and thought leadership, and I’m read on Biz dev. I also don’t have any people. My tools are okay, but I don’t have a single SOP at all.
Great. So now we’re coming up with things where we can say, okay. We’re going to work on are these things. And then from there for your client, you can start saying okay.
We can talk through what we can do across all of these, areas of greatest opportunity build out a roadmap for what a project like that would look like, etcetera. Now this is possibly going to be hard to think through for you right now because this is focused on like coffee school pro. You, however, can do this exact thing for your clients as well, and you should be doing this for your clients. So now I’m going to go back to sharing the worksheet.
I’m just gonna zoom out here.
There.
So you can do the same thing for different stuff. Right? So here on this page, I’ve got a triangle shape that you might have for list offer copy. So let’s say you are working on, you’re in conversion copywriting and you sell sales pages.
That’s your thing. That’s what you wanna do. You wanna be perfect at it. You love it.
You’re gonna be amazing at it. Cool. You know it breaks down into list offer copy. Now the tricky thing with something like this is every part of this has to be something you can work on them with.
So if someone comes to you and says, I need a new sales page. I want it to make a hundred thousand dollars. You’re like, cool. Let’s talk.
Then you draw the triangle, you write lists, offer copy on there and you talk through lead age. Okay? Talk to me about your leads. How old are they?
How many fresh leads do you have? Are you red, green, or yellow on that? And then you color that in for whatever they are. Okay.
Now what about the quality of these leads? Where are they coming from? How are you finding them? Do they have the money?
What do you know about them? And they tell you that. Deliverability. Talk to me about how your emails are going right now.
Are people able to get to your sales page your emails, or is anything even happening there? Are you trying to drive people from Facebook, which is more about lead quality, straight to your sales page and they tell you if they’re red, yellow, or green on those things. You go around and do all of this and that can help you better diagnose not just the current project, but like a a bigger scale project that they’re buying into because they’re the ones who said I’m red on that. And if you can deliver on turning them from red to green, then it can go back through and do the the redo the diagnostic tool all the time, every at the end of each part of your project and be like, okay.
How are we feeling now about our lead age if that was a red and you got them there. Now they’re like, cool. Awesome job getting us to green. That’s amazing.
And you’ve got it documented for exactly what you have done for them.
But critically anything that’s showing in your diagnostic has to be something that you can do. Is where list offer copy can be a little bit tricky if you don’t do list stuff. If you’re like, I don’t attract leads, I can’t do anything for you. Then that’s a problem because they’re gonna walk away and go, oh, okay.
We have to go get some to take care of this, and then we’ll come back and talk to you later, which they might not do. They liked your diagnosis, great. But we wanna keep them here. So you would only break down your process.
This shape that you have into things that you will actually do. And that’s where if you are like, okay, I’m targeting SAS and they do care about pirate metric still, let’s say, not everybody that’s a lot of people have problem with it, but let’s just pretend. Okay. So you break down the five parts of pirate metrics, but you know you don’t do the first you don’t, you know, you don’t do the last one either.
So you would draw a triangle only for those three that you do. Okay. So your shape is dependent on the number of parts that you have here. A triangle is really easy and a circle is really easy.
You can draw a circle. You can break it up into four parts. We’re used seeing paragraphs. We’re used to seeing these sorts of shapes and our brains align with them.
Right? Like yes, if it’s a triangle, it’s a real thing. It’s kind of like rhyme is reason.
Same thing is here. So we could do research strategy writing and experimentation. This is the conversion copy writing process and then you get to say what parts are in here. So if you’re like all I do when it comes to research is jobs and new lead surveys.
I don’t wanna do anything else, then make it your two things. And you can say How are you all for job surveys? When’s the last time you did a jobs to be done, or interviews? When’s the last time you did a a jobs interview?
Set. And they’re like, we’ve never done one. I’m like, cool. You’re right on that new lead surveys.
How are you for that? And you can go through and walk them through this. And by the end, they’re like, shit, you’ve got a process. You have some way of helping me understand what my problem is in a way that nobody else ever has and you drew it for me, which is also a really interesting thing that only a pro is going to do.
I now know that I’m red on five things. I’m green on one thing. So that’s cool. I can take that back to my team and say, oh, we don’t have to worry about this.
Y’all, here are the five things we have to worry about. And when I hire you to do this work, we can then go back and say, okay. How are we now on this? Do you think we’re still red on this?
Are we yellow yet? And so on and so forth? This make sense to everybody?
Yeah.
Alright. Any questions about it?
Probably not yet. What I want you to do is hop into making your own for the people that you want to convert. So again, this is coming down to what’s your red thread or your one thing, what do you do, and try to think about what one thing you wanna sell more than anything.
If it’s like I just want fifty thousand dollar projects that that are like focused on x. I don’t know what that thing is. Or you know what it is. In some cases, I know what it is from talking with you, but for the whole group and anybody watching the replay, I don’t know what it is.
You know what it is. Try to know. If you don’t know, try to know, you’re allowed to build your future. This is what we’re doing.
So just like document the thing that you most wanna sell. I wanna sell fifty thousand dollar engagements that last two months and do these three things with this outcome. Okay, fine. Once you know that, then you can start to say what your process is to get there.
Now, process might not be the right word if you hear a process and you go, I don’t think it’s my process, you’re probably right. There are different ways to go about this. I wanna show you the end what it could look like, how it works, and then it’s up to you to come up with what that diagnostic is, and it can mean thinking through past calls you’ve had with clients and what they’ve shared with you or what you know you’re always delivering what you’re best at. But you definitely wanna think about your one thing and the only thing that you ever wanna sell if possible.
Okay?
Are you good to give this a shot for the next twenty minutes?
Yeah.
Just try it and then we’ll come back and share challenges you had with it or whatever Alright? Twenty minutes on the clock. I’m gonna stop recording. Thanks, Sarah.
Abby, if because it went so quickly, you need to share what you made. Let’s see it.
Okay. Right. Can you see my screen?
Just about yes.
Yeah. Is it tiny? Let me zoom in.
How’s that?
Cool?
Alright. Yes. We can see it. So just to be clear, all four parts of this you can deliver on.
Yeah. Including lead quality.
Yes.
Okay. But we have all the, yeah, part. Is it someone on your team or is it you?
It’s me. So I’m thinking, like, I’m thinking about my course here, but the course is basic. It’s it’s just the DIY version of my done for you offer.
So with the lead quality, the I do Facebook teach Facebook ad testing and then also, like, using thank you paid responses to make sure that you’re, like, bringing in the right people or that the messaging is resonating with the right people. So, yeah. Okay.
Awesome. Okay. So you walk them through this, and did you try, like, try it out because you had all this extra time? Like, did you try kind of pretending that you were walking a lead or even a prospective student through this model.
Yeah. Well, I was thinking, like, is this like your IP? Or are we free to chair this?
Yeah. Yeah. Oh, no. The idea is that now you go forward in you use it to close people and then deliver.
Yeah. Because I’ve I’ve been, like, running into a problem recently with my course where like, I wanna shift away from, like, the, kinda make money every day messaging and more towards, like, for people who have already tried it and failed, so a more kind of advanced training.
And I think, like, having something like this actually in the webinar would help kind of widen the out so that they can identify, like, all the areas that are gonna be, like, limiting their conversion. So, yeah, so it was, oh, that’s cool. I like it.
Awesome. Yeah. It is a sales tool, and also a, a way of measuring success as you go. Like a sense of progress when most of the time the way we measure these things is like, well, did I?
Is it done or isn’t it? And did I get sales or didn’t I or whatever that like bigger goal is? It’s like, well, no, there’s components along the way. And if we can make those all green, then you’re more likely to get that end goal that you’re looking for.
So, yeah, definitely use it in sales of any kind, webinars sales calls, all of it. Cool. Any questions for any, for Abby from anybody?
No? Alright. Fun. Cool. I will talk more about how to integrate this into the process and like modifying modifying offers and things as as we go.
Anybody else wanna share or chat about what didn’t work? What you’re still working on. Keep in mind, I’ve been working on this for a long time. And, like, I still have tweaks that I’m making and like, full on changes, like mindset was its own thing for a while, then I was like, no, mindset is across all of these things. So, I put it in the middle.
Johnson?
Yeah. I was wondering, because some of the things that I were down I I don’t have a process or a system for, but I I think that areas that I could cover, later as the product is fleshed out, or full of service. What do you have any advice for is that should I try and focus on stuff that I can just do right now or do a separate one that’s what I can do right now and one that’s more sort of future based?
Can it stand well without those parts that you don’t currently do well? Like how feasible is it to cut those parts out and have it still work?
Yeah. Sure. I could probably just merge them to together and do it more generalized because I’m kinda breaking things down maybe a little too far. Yeah. I could do that.
Yeah. If you can pull it, then you’ve you’ll confidently know you can deliver everything showing there. Right? So you wanna be able to obviously have a strong position of confidence in every call that you’re taking any webinar you might be running where you do this kind of thing.
So cut out what you can’t deliver yet, and then maybe just only add it back in when you’ve got somebody in your back pocket who can do that thing for you or when you can do it. Mhmm. Yeah. Cool.
Yeah. Okay. Cool. And then just make sure that the story comes together. Again, most people who you’re going to be showing this to don’t have a better sense for what you’re talking about than you do So whatever you show them is true.
It’s it’s like it’s not necessarily going to open up a whole bunch of skepticism.
So if you leave something off knowing eventually you’re gonna add that thing on, then that’s cool. Right? Cause they’re not thinking way you got this wrong, Johnson, you forgot about this point. Like, they’re thinking like, cool, cool, cool, cool. I’m red on this. Oh, I’m red. Yeah.
So that’s actually super helpful. Yeah. And she’s just like both of these exercises, this one and last week’s one. I found useful, not just for the lows itself, but also in sort of thinking about the areas, that I might be using these things in the future, just the red thread stuff and for developing a new, idea. So, anyway, it’d be cool. Thank you, anyway.
Big it. Love it. That’s cool. Wicked it. Anybody else wanna chat? But what they did.
Can I just ask Joe? Like, do you recommend right?
Do you recommend, the whole drawing it live or having the design. Like, I mean, I love I was also doing it in Canva, like, So bringing it on, bringing it with us, ready to show them, or, doing it on the call.
It’s more engaging when you have something to watch. Right? So if it’s like if you just bring up a model, then I’m reading through it while you’re talking.
If you bring up a blank sheet and you draw it and then you write a word, I’m engaged. Like, I’m waiting for what’s next. Right? So, and that’s what we really want is not for them to jump ahead and think they got it but for you to control that whole flow and then you say and now let’s talk about what you’re red and green on and then you color in red, color it, show them that thing. It’s for me, a horrible penmanship.
Everything’s a mess. But that’s not really the point. Right? They’re watching. They’re not saying like, so why don’t you pay better attention in grade three?
They were teaching you how to like make it look good. They’re just like going with it. Right? And like all they’re interested in is what am I red on?
Oh, what am I green on? Thank god. I’m green, but they’re watching the whole way. So, yes, long story short.
I do recommend that you draw it.
And I also recommend that I didn’t wanna make this like part of today’s session, but find someone in the room here to try this out with where their your perspective client and you hop on a call and you say talk me through this and they’re just pretending. So just like do some role playing then they can do the same for you and you can like work out the kinks of actually presenting it live and new ways to draw it and think about it. Yeah.
Cool.
Cool. Fine.
Anybody else?
I can share mine.
Cool. Yeah.
So typically what I do, even if I don’t have a drawing for it, is I start by looking at the campaign, figuring out which, what keywords they’re targeting, what their campaign looks like, whether it’s on Google or LinkedIn or Facebook, etcetera. And then figuring out what they need to prioritize. So if that’s landing pages, that’s landing pages, it might be the website, the homepage, it might be, the ads, so figuring out exactly what they need to optimize.
Then going through sales calls, sometimes that means going through like g two or Kaptura reviews, and then usually tools.
Sometimes users are testing, but definitely hotjar and Google Analytics. Then figuring out what the best framework is to use.
I I think that defining the persona would also be part of this, although I’m not sure that’s something I would be part of. That’s something I wouldn’t ask them about, because of that would determine, like, is this Are they targeting mid market? Are they targeting enterprise? Are they targeting medium businesses? And within those three categories, which, level of seniority.
But I guess that would fall under research, then actually writing, then usability testing meaning, like, validating the the copy and then finally AB testing.
Cool. It looks great. The only thing I would say is, there are some things on here that are big, like underwriting, you’ve got all those assets. And so if if it’s hard for them to identify what red, yellow, or green, then that’s kind of tricky. So what can you do here even if it comes down to combining strategy and research into one like thinking upfront, right? Like thinking or planning or something like that.
I would just encourage you to break up writing more.
So that because I might look at this and go like, okay. While I suck on CRO prioritization, I’m red on that. I’m green on tools. I’m green on VOC.
I’m probably wrong about being green on VOC, but I say that. Analytics. I don’t know. I have no idea.
Like, why don’t think about it that way? Maybe. Right? So I’m yellow there.
Writing. Well, I have a bunch of those. Let’s call it green.
And that’s the problem. Like, they they might have a bunch of things and think that’s okay.
It just that’s the only thing that stood out to me. That assets little piece of the pie is containing a lot. Can do something to open it up?
Well, the idea being that if they’re, like, the the asset that they would need would depend on what they’re prioritizing. So if their landing pages are leaking leads, then it would be landing pages. If they’re not driving off traffic at the top of the funnel, then it would be ads, And if their maybe their ads are not getting clicked on, then maybe it would be even higher. It would be more like brand awareness, social organic. Kind of work. That’s why I lumped them together.
That’s cool. And then I wonder though, then if you’re really To me, I’m envisioning a sort of triangle now. That’s more like leads or attract.
Convert and, like, retain or refer or revenue or something else. And then you could get into might be strategy in the I don’t know, but to me it feels like yeah. There’s something there, and I think what you’re saying is right. It might just need a different I don’t know. A different shape. Yeah.
I could do that. Because usually the question is, well, where are we leaking weeds or why aren’t we getting enough leaves? Why is our pipeline a mess?
Yeah. Great.
And the question is like, well, how do we figure that out? Because that’s not an easy question to answer.
Not. Not. But if you would dedicate a whole side of a triangle or whatever that final shape is, I don’t know, to leads then you can talk honestly about, like, okay, leads are red, but once we get them to convert them, we’re green on version and then we’re sucky on experimentation or whatever that other part is.
Yeah.
Okay. Yeah. That makes more sense.
Okay. Cool. Love it. That’s great.
Thanks Naomi. Anybody else wanna share or talk or share anything about what they just saw?
Can I share something?
Abby were you commenting?
Or I was just saying that it looked really nice.
Like, it looked it looked very, like, Yeah. Sounds good. Good job. Awesome.
Totally. Stacy, please go ahead.
I I have one that I wanna share that I didn’t do on the call today, but I did in the past. Okay. I just wanna share it because I want somebody to appreciate it.
Nice. It’s messy. Okay. It’s a scorecard.
It’s a scorecard, but the the thing the under and and I love the idea of using in this in a sales call, although everything I do in my universe is structured to avoid me ever have get on a call with anyone.
Okay.
So I set up my three things. I I created the ABCs of superior content, which are audio brand and craft. So those are the three things. And the audience part will, you know, that would involve the voice of customer and interviews, etcetera, understanding the audience, then brand has to do with brand voice, personality, and then Craft is the actual writing of content, which would be combining journalistic writing persuasions, storytelling with subject matter expertise.
So I go through and and and ask them six questions in each of in each of these three areas. So there’s eighteen questions altogether, and then it gives the gives the results in a scorecard and then I use score app, which is a good lead gen processing sort of follow-up thing. Yeah. So I just wanted share because because I’m proud of my scorecard.
That’s cool. I love it, and the ABC is a really nice thing to remember, obviously.
And it could go really nicely in a triangle and you could clearly, like, diagnose how am I on audience, how am I on brands, I don’t remember what the third one was. Sorry. And now it’s Craft. Craft.
That’s the actual writing. Yeah. And it does display. It displays it in that targeted, you know, thing where it scores them on each of the three areas in the in the report that it generates.
Nice. That’s cool. That’s great. Yeah. Even if they, like, diagnosed themselves and then went through the score.
Anyways, it’s cool. It’s cool. Yeah. Love it.
Cool. Anybody else?
We’re good. Okay. Work this out. I do recommend that you like start making it part of your process, you’ll be surprised at how engaging it is for people when they see it drawn out.
You’re talking through and asking them questions, especially if in sales calls, you struggle to like know what to say next. This is like a really clear way to look like you’re a freaking pro and have done this a million even if it’s like your first time doing it live. Just practice with other people in the room. If you don’t have anybody to practice with yet, chances are good.
Someone else doesn’t have anybody to practice with yet too. So, feel free to just chat right now and say, hey, does anybody wanna role play this with me?
And if not, go over in Slack and do it there too, and we’ll we’ll see what happens.
Cool.
Anybody have questions? We’ve got thirty minutes ish left. If you have to go, cool, respect your time. If you have questions to ground, Katie, do you have one?
Yeah. So I’m can you just speak a bit more to, like so we’ve established where they’re red and where they’re yellow and where they’re green?
Am I aiming to then put to, like, can you, take it into the pitch? So, like, am I aiming to put together one proposal that covers, like, first, we’re gonna address the red, and then we’re gonna talk about the yellow, or how do I go into turning that into an offer?
Exactly. Yes. So I think there’s lots of ways you can do it. Right? So whatever is triggering for you, like in your imagination, roll with that but the really yeah the thing that you wanna walk away with is now it’s not just, hey, I need a sales page, but it’s also, hey, I need to get better at this, this, this, and this.
Your project now got bigger. You’re also a consultant. That’s more strategic. Right? So you walk away from there going Here are the four things we need to work on before we even work on writing your sales page.
Let me take this away, put together, some ideas for you. You send me x, y, and z document that I need. So you said you’re strong on research. Send me some so I can look at it. And then we’re gonna hop on a call, and I’ll walk you through my plan for how we can hit all of these things you read on in x period of time that you’ve told me you want this off like the thing that’s in the center of it, the five hundred paid conversions added a month or whatever.
We wanna get there in three months time. But we have to make these red things all green. We’ve agreed on that. You agree that you’re red on these things. So now we’re gonna go forward. I’ll put the other and I’m gonna come back and talk you through that plan. That’s a really, like, clear way for you to now go off and run a project.
Does that make sense? Like here’s my project now and it’s informed not just by what you said you think you need but what I have diagnosed you as really needing.
Yeah. I mean, I see this is super useful because I think I mentioned on our last the last call that I made it to live, like, I just feel like my project ideas are always really big, and I struggle to break them down into components. So this feels really helpful for that.
I guess what I’m taking away from what you’ve just said is like it would be helpful for me to have a sense of the hierarchy of the lights for for lack of better words so that I know, like, if that’s red, obviously, we’re gonna do this first and, and, like, turning that then into a proposal?
Yeah. And it’s sort of a process. So I said the word process, but I know sometimes it won’t feel like a process. So if you’re like, but it’s not a process. Okay. Don’t make it a process. But to me, it is.
To me, it’s like, okay, if it’s list offer that’s an order in which things go. Right? The conversion copywriting process has parts to it.
And so that should also lead to a sort of hierarchy, right, where you’re like, well, we can do everything we want with copy. But if your list is a mess or the people coming to it or wrong. If you’re red on that, no. So we clearly have to solve the the left part of the triangle first, whatever that’s called. I don’t geometry.
But we solve that over there. We solve list.
Then once we’re red once we’re green on those things, then we’ll talk about off for that list. Okay? And then we’ll talk about copies. You can start to see a gantt chart forming of how that project could go.
Like we’re gonna nail list I can’t come up with that live on a call. That’s not your job to come up with it live on a call. Right? You’re like, I’m I’m gonna go away and think about this for you.
You come up with the things you’re gonna do for improved list quality and quantity in x period of time.
Put that on the gantt chart here. What’s we’re gonna do in week one, week two, week three. Then week three, we’re also gonna start working on offer and and week six will be ready to work on copies. Now, you have like this project mapped out.
You’ve also got a built in way to go back and optimize things, right? So you can say we got through list offer copy, the parts of the triangle, red turn to yellow on these things and yellow turn to green, but now let’s go back and do more to further optimize it. So you have the initial project, as well as a map in effect or a retainer to optimize for performance. Does that make sense, Katie, or is that too much?
It makes sense.
I feel like I’m gonna have to revisit my, like, the categories that I’ve throat to make sure that they have a clear Okay.
Flow from one to the next. Okay. Yeah. And know I was just thinking like, well, what if they’re like, well, I don’t wanna work on that first. I wanna work on, like, I don’t I don’t wanna work on my I just wanna work on my sales page or something. I guess then it’s a question of like, do you wanna work with them?
I would say that’s the question and then. If you know list is actually red and they’re like, I don’t care, write the copy.
That’s not what I do. I can the copy will never convert if your list is garbage. Sorry. We gotta nail that and that’s where you have to be able to work on list.
In this case, right? You have to say like, no. I’m gonna nail this for you, then you’re gonna have you might not even need to work on the copy. It might just be a list look.
We’re green across the board on coffee.
So but that’s yeah. You you’re not just diagnosing what they need but are they a good fit for you to work with? They should walk away from this going. Holy shit, Katie.
No one’s ever shown it to us this way. That was great. How do we start nailing through like I had no idea that’s how this worked. That’s like the objective.
And if they don’t do that, they’re probably gonna be pretty tough to work with.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah. Okay. I know it’s easy for me to say. Like, push away these people who don’t wanna do the first part of the process, but we all already know you. They’re not gonna be a good fit. Yeah.
Stacy, I know you have an AMA and then Abby.
So, my my question is about a project that I’m currently working on. I just did, message frameworks for this client often I work with enterprise companies. So I’m sort of a step removed from being able to get into benchmarking and AB testing and things like that because it’s also siloed off in big companies. In this particular instance, it’s a smaller company. They’re like a twenty million company, and my messaging framework meeting was with the whole c suite of, you know, so I had all four c level people.
So now we’re moving into actually doing a wireframe for the home page. And I’m working with that mostly with the CMO.
So they want to do an AB test against their current homepage with what I create. And so since I’m not used to sort of benchmarking before a project, I wanted to get some feedback on what I might be able to do as far as what what to ask for to establish some ben benchmarks and test against and any any tips about you know, that process because I know you do a lot having to do with the, with data, and it’s just something that I’m usually a step removed from.
Sure. So they are split testing though. Right?
They’re using Yes.
Optimizely or a tool like that.
They well, they they want AB test I haven’t talked to them about the mechanics of how they’re doing it, but I do know they want to split test, driving traffic and, you know, testing their current homepage against a new homepage that I’m writing the copy for.
Right. So understanding how the control is performing is Good. They should be telling you that, right? And then they’ll tell you the, metrics when they tell. Like, here’s here are the KPIs for this page.
It’s a homepage. So it’s likely you’ll need to document things like, amount of traffic coming to it, traffic sources, coming to it as well. If they’re using it as a landing page for Facebook ads and other things like that, It’s a problem. Right? Like, because the test at that point becomes less about a scientific test and more about like a game, where you’ve got traffic coming from weird sources that could have been brought in by any number of ads, etcetera. And they’re landing on this page. They’re so different.
That it’s almost like there are too many variables. I know it’s all in the variable of audience, but it’s so uncontrolled.
That your test is just going to feel fake. So understand where traffic is coming from. Try to get them on board with narrowing it down to their ideal audience. And I know that means organic traffic you can’t do anything about either, but people who are searching and landing on your homepage are likely not look you lose when we’re talking about business. This is SAS. This is a software company?
Or It’s, it is tech.
Yes. It’s it’s tech. So no Because it’s a CDN. It’s a it’s enterprise CDN.
Okay. Cool.
Good. So we can imagine that organic traffic that lands there. Is there by design in some way? So cool. What’s the traffic like that’s coming to it? How are they converting right now? So you need quantity of traffic than like a understanding a qualitative understanding of quality of traffic.
And then you need to know what that existing conversion rate is and what conversion rate means for them is likely going to be clicks. If it’s on the homepage, it’s probably clicks. The question is clicks to where?
We wanna drive sign ups to a a trial sign up for a free account.
Can they sign up for the free account from that page, or do they get driven to another page?
They can sign up on the homepage currently. And they, and and it’s not very focused and it can be much better than it is now.
Okay.
In other words, the homepage is not driving sign ups, and I think it could drive sign ups much more than it does.
Okay. Is there an email address field on the homepage?
That’s like start your trial?
Yes. There is.
Yes. There is. Oh, that’s an existing thing. Cool. You can optimize that. That’s great. So that would be probably number one.
It sounds like your number one goal is trial starts.
Trial starts. Yes.
Okay. So you need to document, know the the control and how it’s doing on trial start but also optimizely, we’ll know that too.
So you don’t you don’t have to write anything down if they’re using the right tool and if you’re all aligned on, what the objective is, like what, how are you going to measure it in a testing platform? You can set up multiple goals, and that’s trickiest part. You don’t want to set up too many goals. Home pages are hard though because things like bounce are gonna be an actual consideration on a homepage.
Try to keep them on task with What is the number one thing that this page is solving for? From a business perspective, why does the business invest money in this homepage. Why is this test a priority right now? And if it is, we wanna get trial starts as soon as they land there, then throw every other way of measuring the page out the door.
Don’t worry about bounce rate. We have to try scary things and some people are gonna bounce. And maybe they won’t. Maybe it’ll hold more people.
We’re not gonna worry about that. All we’re worried about is trial starts. So how does optimizely or whatever tool they use measure trial starts. What can you do in the tool?
Is it just like once they’ve clicked this button successfully or once they’ve landed on the next page is a common way to do that test. Are they landing on a confirmation page for like your trial is now started or landing an app? Which can also be tricky because there’s lots of different ways to land in at from a home page oftentimes. Point being, trial starts is what matters.
So document that Nothing else really matters if that’s your goal. There’s so many things to measure on a homepage. Try to control how much they’re thinking about. Does that help, Stacy?
Yes. Yes. That helps very much. And I will be re re listening to this recording to make sure I get all of that. Okay. Thank you.
DLDR is like trial starts is all that you’re gonna focus them on. Yeah. Cool.
Hey. Yeah. So I have kind of it’s like a mindset strategy question. I’m gonna try and articulate it as best as I can.
So I’m looking at, like, the prioritization matrix, and I’m trying to kind of, like, find my high reward low friction task and, like, the twenty percent of my efforts that generate eighty percent of, like, the revenue. And the things the thing that, like, does the most of me at is podcast, but then like, so speaking on the podcast, it’s it’s my kind of, like, high reward low friction, but then it’s, like, getting on the podcast, then it becomes kind of, like, the question of, like, likelihood of success as well, because it’s like a podcast could potentially be high reward, but then it’s like, I gonna even get on it? Like, how do I get on it? And it’s kind of like so how do you, like, balance thinking about those things, like, the how the how to get to the, like, high reward thing, like, in terms of is that did I yeah.
Yeah. I think so.
It means to me it sounds like it’s, like, of, like, leverage.
The first thing that comes to mind is, like, okay, who is trying to book you on there? Do you have a VA or assistant of some kind pitching for you.
I have a VA that, like, makes a list and that I pitch them.
Can you train the VA to pitch?
I I can. The reason I haven’t is because I posted in, like, the Slack about and, having, like, whether to have my B. I pitch, and then Christie said she wouldn’t even, like, look at, like, a podcast application if it was wasn’t sent by the person.
So that kind of Oh, no.
The video is pretending to be you.
Oh, okay. Yeah. Okay.
Yeah. They’re just they’re signed it. They’re sending from your email address a hundred percent. And it’s just like, hey, Abby here. Just a template that they then know how to modify because you’ve taught them. You took an hour to teach them how to do this thing well for you. And steal it from your email address, and that’s it.
Mhmm.
So it’s like thinking about, like, how to automate kind of the steps to the high reward stuff or, like, outsource, minimize friction.
Do you have an SOP for it that your VA can then be trained on? And then when you do, if getting on podcasts is a huge high value win for you, but it’s it’s a slog to get there. It’s a it’s a quantity game a lot of the time. Like how much as you put out there.
Then yeah, outsource that. Send that off. That’s a great thing for your VA to do. It doesn’t take specialized skills.
Not if they have your training, yeah, to do it. So I get the VA on it, but yeah, send from your email address or something that’s a good fake of your email address.
Like AP at instead of Abby at or whatever.
Mhmm.
Cool. Yeah. That makes so much sense. You make it sound so obvious. Of course.
Thank you.
No. No worries. Awesome. Anna.
Hey. I just had a question about the ebook I’m writing right now.
Love it.
So, I think I know the answer to this, but I wanna just confirm. It is fair game to quote any studies that are publicly out there. Right?
What about, like, screenshots of that’s because it’s on pricing page. So can I can I use screenshots or pricing pages that are out there in public right now? Or do I have to, like, seek permission?
Or I think Jessica wants to answer this.
I’m watching your face, Jessica. Oh, no.
I thought you did for, like, the folks that No.
I just I just wanna make sure everybody knows I’m engaged. I don’t Oh, yes. I do know the answer.
You guys publishing for us. So I thought like, oh, you probably have a good take on this.
Yeah.
Yeah. So in my experience, it’s what are you copying or screenshotting and is it proprietary?
So there are some cases where you’re not allowed to use an image without paying a fee for it.
But you usually know those things. Right? A screenshot of someone’s website is it’s a public thing as long as you cite, and I would recommend citing everything about it that it’s copyrighted by X company. The screenshot was taken on this date.
And that’s that’s cool. Then you can do that. It can also be actually a pretty useful way to start promoting your book when the time comes. When you’re like, Hey, I used your page as a great example in my book. It’s coming out. Do you wanna copy of it?
That kind of thing. Right? And then they might say like, oh, I didn’t realize people were just using screenshots of our website. What? And you might be like, oh, fuck.
But, that’s just the conversation that you have at that point, but it doesn’t have to be weird. I no one’s ever run any quotes that, like, when Ann Handley put me in her book, I didn’t find out till someone was like, Joe, you’re in Ann’s book. And same for product led growth. Nobody told me this was gonna happen.
But I would just ended up in there. And I wasn’t like, damn you, Ann. I was like send flowers to Ann. So it’s it’s it’s I wouldn’t worry about it just do what you can to cite where it came from. And wherever possible, only take screenshots of things where you’re gonna tell a good story about it. If it’s, like, a bad thing, mock up a version of it and just remove anything.
Actually, that was gonna be my my next question. So if I just mock up and make a random, like, I could take it a pricing page and and then play around with it on Photoshop and change it up completely. Just to use the bad example.
That’s obviously fine. Right? Because no one’s gonna know where it came from or yeah.
Yeah. And then the reader also likes you a little more. Right? You’re like, look, these are some bad things I’ve seen.
I’m not gonna call anybody out. Everybody means while you, the reader, you mean well. But here’s what are what people are doing wrong. And then you can show, like, mock ups, but not the thing.
Yeah.
Awesome.
Last question.
Does it matter how long the ebook is? So I I I thought I would wrap something up in, like, thirty pages.
Okay.
But it’s it looks like it’s gonna get to, like, seventy pages.
And I’m wondering, like, are people gonna read that or Who is your target?
K. Good question.
So c level execs that will Yeah. Because the whole idea is to build authority and and show that this is a comprehensive thing.
On pricing pages. Right? So someone who gets a hold of it, the impression I want them to get is like, oh, didn’t know there was so much to talk about when it came to Verizon pages. It seems like this person knows this thing.
A hundred percent. Yes. So I just chatted over the title of a book called write useful books, go read it through your kindle, read it right away.
It’s great, but it will make you identify who your target audience is and things like referral referrals that are built into their heads. So it’s gonna be really useful.
Read right useful books as you’re doing this.
Think about that target audience and think about where they’re reading it. I think I’ve talked about this before with April.
With obviously awesome. She was gonna get it traditionally published.
Sorry if I’m repeating it, but it’s really good advice. The traditional publisher was it needs to be sixty thousand words and she’s like, no, I can’t. And the reason was for her was, but I travel on planes and I read books on planes, like that’s when a lot of sea levels in their careers hop on. That’s when they that’s when they read books.
So if that’s the case, then how long is the average flight that a sea level is going to able to read your book. Three or four hours. So you have to make it start to finish in three to four hours, which is like I think it’s something like thirty thousand words at most, knowing that they’re just skimming a lot of it and just like rolling through it.
But, yeah, thirty thousand words, I think is what came out as like the ideal length for a c level to read a book.
Thousand words. Okay. I’ll keep that in mind.
Yeah. Cool. Awesome. Thanks.
And of course, we have love screenshots in there.
It’s gonna go a lot faster. It doesn’t mean you have to take up the whole flight though. Like, if they’re able to finish the book and start writing the email to you that’s like, loved your book, let’s talk. That’s a good thing.
Right? If they can get all that work done on the plane and then walk off and go. Awesome. What’s next?
You know?
Yeah. Got it.
Awesome. Love it. Read write useful books.
Okay. Anybody else?
I do have a couple like brainstorm questions. They’re very low. Like, you probably be like really are you asking me this, but I just wanted to get brain power because we have a lot of that in the room if that’s okay.
Yeah. We do. Yeah. We got eight minutes still. Let’s go.
Okay. I’m trying to think of which one Alright. I’ll go with the second question because I have a feeling your mindset has changed around this a little bit. So I kind of Soft launched my new newsletter called the holiday win and So what I’m wondering is you used to do a lot of free stuff to grow your list, but you’ve recently made comments about not doing that in the books and that. So I’m just wondering how are we feeling about that right now? Any suggestions?
About free content? To grow your email list. Yes.
Right. I mean, our free content’s just different now. Our free content that grows our email list is on Instagram, and with like many chat and boards. Right? That’s really it.
But still, they’re still free. It’s just it’s just different.
I know the the name makes me wanna watch a Hallmark movie though to be very clear.
No. The goal was to rip it off of the old movie.
So that’s Oh, cool.
That’s awesome. Good. Yeah.
Yeah. But give a give it away in your newsletter. The good thing of are you using Substack?
No. So you mentioned something about Substack and then I had to do research on what was the latest drama and then I was like dang it. So do I grow it on there or not?
Feels a little problematic.
Yeah. No. We’ve stopped using Substack too. Yeah.
But I thought if you were okay with it, No.
I saw the research or I looked it up after you mentioned it. You’re ruined my email strategy, Joe. Alright.
We’re ruined mine too.
So the so whatever alternative comes out for sub stack, that doesn’t allow Nazis to be the Nazis on there.
Is, hopefully the next thing to use then just because you can charge for your archives. And if you have good shit you’re giving out, you should be charging for the archive.
So that’s that. But your goal is to grow your list. And if your goal is to grow your list with quality leads, then free is obviously is the is the way to go. It’ll get more people on.
It’s just a question of how quality are those are those leads. But a lot of them are quality just because they’re looking for free out of the gate doesn’t mean they’re ever going to be looking for free. Just wanna make sure you’re not full of crap. Right?
So let’s try you for free and then pay you later.
Yeah. That’s my take. Does anybody else have thoughts on this?
Do you give stuff away free to grow your list? Any tips?
No one wants to talk about it.
I no. I mean, I already have any advice it’s an interesting question, but I I don’t know. I think, I think about the content itself being, yeah, engaging and teaching something. Maybe it’s just a hint of something and you’re not giving anything away. I mean, I’m thinking of the the email the the the the people I’ve subscribed to who I read. And it’s it’s supposed to be people who are into entertaining first.
Maybe, yeah, actually first. And then secondly, teach me stuff. Yeah. Yeah.
James Claire is three two one method, work really well, and there’s another copywriter who somehow I got on this list.
He does three two one for copywriting.
Three examples to something and then one tip or something like that. And it’s a good read.
So, I don’t know, food for thought as you think of the format as well for your newsletter.
Cool. Naomi.
So I want to get more into Go ahead podcast.
And so I was building a list of, podcasts that I thought were relevant And somebody mentioned to me that you that I could probably write a script and just outsource that, have somebody put that together and send an email to all those people. But I was I thought that would be too impersonal that they get a lot of they got a lot of mail looking for guests and that it would make a lot more sense to do it. Like, actually listening to the podcast and mentioning something relevant, So I was wondering what you thought about that. Is that something?
Yeah. Did you hop off for a bit on this call already?
Yeah. I had two during my meeting for the ending.
And then you hop back up. So Abby actually asked the same question, and it was about podcast pitching, how to make it personal, And so, really quick and it’s in the replay if you want more detail, but it really is, documents like a template.
For outreach to these podcasts, and then, teach your VA or somebody that is inexpensive to send these pitch emails from your email address. So it looks like it’s from Naomi. It’s written in the first person. Hi, etcetera.
And they all do the research too. So the VA listens to the podcast or reads the reviews or whatever the whatever the thing is that teach the VA to do and then they have a goal that you give them of like five pitches a day or whatever that goal is that you need for them to to get your name out there. But yeah, it’s an SOP. This is the leverage part of the big sunshine growth model. Of have that SOP with templates associated with it, and then teach a VA to do it. And just make it look personal by personalizing and sending it from naomi at.
Okay.
Great. Awesome. Thanks. Is there another question there?
Are we good? I have one more question. Sorry. It’s another brainstorm one. Okay. So I did do the the win is a hundred million offers.
I flushed out the whole seasonal sale holiday offer thing. So Next the sales page, right? So and now this. So my only thought is I really need to get more people see like going through this process so I can finesse it and I’m getting still a lot of email and I know a lot of that is authority related but to get some quicker like and I get a few seasonal sales and no door.
Yeah. Any suggestions about more of a fast approach to that part?
Like, you’re just trying to get people to test this out on?
Essentially.
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think it’s like you said on really no dollar offers. It’s formosa kind of solution here, I would do what he has said to do in that case. Do you have a system?
If you have system, then you post on LinkedIn and say, hey, I’m looking for five companies that meet this criteria to run through my system on the next holiday for free in exchange for me being able to daw to tell the world about this and to take examples away from it. That’s a third thing to do. But just make sure you have it as like system so that you’re not guessing your way through their holiday emails for free.
Yeah. Okay. Perfect. Thank you. I’ll do that.
Okay. Fine. Alright. Well, we’re at the end of our time. Thanks, everyone, for your great questions. Nobody shared a win, but I wasn’t gonna harp on that too much. It’s pretty mean about it.
My win is being in CSV. That is a win.
Okay. Awesome. The replay will be available later. Thanks y’all, and we will be following up more on this diagnostic tool as we chat more.
Okay? Okay. Thanks, though. Have a good one. Bye.
Worksheet
Worksheet
Transcript
Today, as you saw in the worksheets, thanks for coming on camera. We’re gonna be talking about a diagnostic tool, and we’ll get into the details of that. As always, we’re gonna kick it off with some training And then, in today’s training though, we’ll be spending some time doing, like, work, based on the training. So expect to, you know, put aside twenty minutes at the end of this to start doing some thinking through what we’re talking about. And then we’ll do the usual AMA.
Always kick it off with a win, please, a win of any kind helps everybody stay motivated and see how many cool things there are to do out there. And then any any question you got, the more specific, the more context you can give the better.
Everybody good.
Good. Alright. We’re recording this. When you ask a question, please do come on camera wherever possible.
Please do be on camera so people can connect with you and see a smiling or whatever face you don’t have to smile no more. Whatever feels right is good. Okay. I am going to share my screen.
Alright. So this is this is cool. This is something that we’ve been working on for a little while.
For freelancing school as well as for people who are going to be joining, copy school pro. And that is a better way to diagnose what you need to work on because a lot of people are looking for road maps. Right? And that’s not just for students.
Your clients also want some form of roadmap. Like, what are you what what are we here for? Where are you gonna take me How do I know it’s the right thing to do? So this tool is a way and you’re gonna come up with your own today.
It’ll be the starting point for your own. This is a tool that helps you across every part of converting and delivering to people and also setting projects. So, You may have questions about this. I don’t think you’re gonna walk out of today’s session going.
I totally get it. I got the right one. It’s perfect. Everything’s amazing. This is gonna be the beginning of starting to think through something that you might work out over the course of the next month.
But here is the idea. So I’m on this.
Why does it say that’s page two? Everything says page two. It’s not. It’s actually four. Sorry.
Anyway, it doesn’t matter. But it’s the general diagnostic template. This page in your worksheet your workbook.
This is the idea here. Hopefully, you’re not on a very small screen.
The, again, the idea here is to figure out what the general three or four parts of what you deliver that is a solution to your client or student as you start to scale to teaching more to their problem what that what that is so you can then go in and say, here’s what you’re missing, here’s what you don’t have to work on, but here’s what do have to work on here is how we can work together. So, for example, I’m gonna show you first of all, like the end. What we’re working toward. Now this is our model. It’s currently called the Sunshine growth model because it looks a little bit like a this is multiple iterations on it that I’ve been playing with, but let me zoom in here and then we can talk specifically about what the hell it even is. Okay.
So someone comes to me and this is based on just years and years of coaching freelance copywriters and particular but also marketing consultants, etcetera.
Someone comes to me and they’re like, Joe, I’m, you know, I’ve plateaued. I would love to get to two hundred and fifty thousand dollars is the most common thing that people say. I’m at about a hundred. I wanna get to two fifty. What’s stopping me?
And so really what I’m hearing is like you’d like to get to about a grand a day of consistent income. And so that could be twenty days of the work month that works out to about two hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year or all the days, and that works out to about three hundred sixty thousand dollars a year. So that’s the problem that most people come to me trying to solve until they get to that and they’re like, okay. Now I wanna get to three million.
I got to three sixty. Now I wanna get to three point six. Let’s do that. And that would still come down to a lot of what we’re seeing here.
So this is how it breaks down and then I’m gonna show you how it draws out when we’re talking with people who are considering coming in to copy school professional, and then we’ll talk about what that means for you and for your new clients, leads when you’re having those lead conversations as well as how you deliver on something with clients So this is one way to do it, especially if you have felt scattered. If you felt like there, people come to you for all the things and you know know what to say no to. You never feel really good saying no.
People come to you and they’re all for the same general thing, but they have different problems within that same general thing. And your job is always like a little too custom. You don’t want it to always be custom because then it’s hard to offload things to people. You don’t have the leverage of like, here is how we do this work.
Go do it for me so I can mark up what you do, and get paid for not doing anything other than basically teaching you for you to deliver for me and then I then bill. Let me explain. Okay. So someone comes to me and says, Joe, basically, I wanna make a thousand dollars a day help Cool.
There are four actually five but four key parts that usually their work comes down to. So we can say okay. I can draw this out sharing my iPad as shown in the worksheet and I can say, okay, let’s talk through these four things, your skills, your authority, your money, and that means all things money. Money, not as leverage, but money as pricing.
Are you targeting the right audience? Do you have everything that you need? In order to make that money that you want to. Does your current audience only want to spend a thousand dollars on a single VIP day and then they’ll hit you up every six months for one.
You can’t build a business that way. Right? So and then we talked about leverage. And then what’s keeping you from all of those things too is also mindset mindset or copywriters.
Like for nobody else mindset is like such a challenge. It’s very hard. If you don’t have mindset issues and a lot of people here are working really well through any that you might have and maybe getting to a point where you don’t have mindset issues. Congratulations because that’s again and again. And I’ve said this before in Copyschool Pro. It’s such a big deal.
Getting your head right about your skills, about your authority, about a about your sense of scarcity and money out there. Who would pay me for this? And then leverage getting your head right about people, what it means to hire someone, what it means to document a creative process.
Okay. So we can draw this out. And that’s exactly what we want to do. And I’m going to switch over to, my iPad right away here and show you what we do and what you should be doing when you are going through a diagnosis of how to solve a problem with your clients or leads. Sorry.
Boop. Okay. Really simply what we do and what I’m suggesting that you do and my iPad’s been flipping around a lot today. So hopefully it doesn’t mess it up.
But we draw a circle. It’s allowed to be ugly. It doesn’t have to be perfect. And in the middle, we put our one thousand.
And we’re drawing this and sharing it with them and like talking them through it. Right? And then we have these parts that come out of there and we write in skills and sorry just going through this authority.
Money and leverage, then talk them through that. And this is what you’ll be doing with your own process Right?
So, like, okay. Here’s the problem we wanna solve. Here in the middle, it’s a thousand dollars a day. That’s what we’re aiming toward.
Here are the things that are keeping you pretty much. Think about this for your client. Your clients come to you and they say we want five hundred more paid conversions a month. So you put that in the middle.
Here. Five hundred more paid conversions a month. So you put like five hundred or you turn that into the dollar figure, like each conversion is worth ten dollars. So that’s five thousand.
Okay. Fine. So you put that in the middle and then you talk through the parts that are your process that are like critical to delivering five thousand dollars or those five hundred paid conversions a month. So they’re seeing, okay, you’re walking them through.
There’s skills. There’s authority. There’s money. There’s leverage. In in our case, probably not in yours.
Yours might be research and discovery.
And like the conversion copy writing process or something like that, right? Even if it’s for SAS brands, you might be like, okay, we have, you know, the five parts It’s more of a Pentagon shape and it’s got all five parts of pirate metrics. Let’s say. But let’s let’s focus on this. So here’s what I do.
Get the person who you’re talking to to also write this out. So say, hey, pick up a piece of paper. I want you to draw this with me. So you draw a circle just like this. Yours will be better than mine. I’m not an artist, etcetera.
Write these words from there. You write skills, you write authority, you write money, you write leverage. Great. Cool. Now all I want you to do is write this out and then we’re going to see how you’re doing on all of these points. So we have advanced skills you can sell. We have case studies and proof and we have advanced skills you can use.
So that’s like in this case it might be something more like advanced skills you can sell are am I really, really good at writing long form sales pages. Do I have case studies and proof for long form sales pages? And do I have advanced skills that I can use in my business like setting up a funnel for new leads so that I can sell them long form sales pages? Okay.
So write those down. Don’t do anything with them yet. And then you move on to the next one. Alright.
Next up is authority.
You’ve got your specialization or your niche, and you’ve got thought leadership.
My penmanship is shit. Don’t worry. And then you’ve got things like biz dev, which means everything to do with marketing, pipeline, etcetera. Cool. That’s how we start thinking through your authority.
When it comes to making money, do you have the right audience?
Do you have a standardized offer?
Maybe with a retainer option? Do you have, are you are you charging the right money for the thing that you deliver and the value that it is for your audience. And then we get into leverage and that is SOPs and documentation that is tools and process and that is people. Okay. So we walk them through this, getting them nodding along with us. They can ask questions as you go, and then comes the diagnosis.
This is where you go through and you have them identify if there are different ways to do this. There’s red, yellow, green is really common.
So anybody here yeah. Has probably gone through red, yellow, green. Some people have gone through red, yellow, green with us. So you go through and you say, okay.
On skills. If I was if I was bringing you into coffee school pro. Talk to me about are you red, are you yellow, are you green on advanced skills that you can sell? Do you feel really good about that.
And they can say like, well, I actually think I’m a pretty good copywriter. That’s not the problem. Great. So we’ll call that green.
How about proof? How are you on proof? Do you have good case studies? Yeah. I’ve got great case studies.
Okay. Cool. You’re good there. How about advanced skills you can use? What’s your funnel like?
If I don’t have a funnel okay cool then we’ll call that red and we’ll mark it as such. So you go through and you do that whole process with them and then by the end all you’re going to worry about are the things that are red. So if they’re not good at identifying where the red or yellow, that’s a sign that you probably shouldn’t work with them. If they’re like, we’re bringing on all of this.
Like, this, I’m perfect at all of this, and you’re like, Cool. You don’t need my help, peace, and get the hell out of the room. But if they’re decent at, like, identifying, like, You know, I thought we were green on that, but I think we might be yellow. And I thought we were yellow on that, but I think we might be red.
Then you can start identifying how you’ll work with them. So I’m read on skills I can use and thought leadership, and I’m read on Biz dev. I also don’t have any people. My tools are okay, but I don’t have a single SOP at all.
Great. So now we’re coming up with things where we can say, okay. We’re going to work on are these things. And then from there for your client, you can start saying okay.
We can talk through what we can do across all of these, areas of greatest opportunity build out a roadmap for what a project like that would look like, etcetera. Now this is possibly going to be hard to think through for you right now because this is focused on like coffee school pro. You, however, can do this exact thing for your clients as well, and you should be doing this for your clients. So now I’m going to go back to sharing the worksheet.
I’m just gonna zoom out here.
There.
So you can do the same thing for different stuff. Right? So here on this page, I’ve got a triangle shape that you might have for list offer copy. So let’s say you are working on, you’re in conversion copywriting and you sell sales pages.
That’s your thing. That’s what you wanna do. You wanna be perfect at it. You love it.
You’re gonna be amazing at it. Cool. You know it breaks down into list offer copy. Now the tricky thing with something like this is every part of this has to be something you can work on them with.
So if someone comes to you and says, I need a new sales page. I want it to make a hundred thousand dollars. You’re like, cool. Let’s talk.
Then you draw the triangle, you write lists, offer copy on there and you talk through lead age. Okay? Talk to me about your leads. How old are they?
How many fresh leads do you have? Are you red, green, or yellow on that? And then you color that in for whatever they are. Okay.
Now what about the quality of these leads? Where are they coming from? How are you finding them? Do they have the money?
What do you know about them? And they tell you that. Deliverability. Talk to me about how your emails are going right now.
Are people able to get to your sales page your emails, or is anything even happening there? Are you trying to drive people from Facebook, which is more about lead quality, straight to your sales page and they tell you if they’re red, yellow, or green on those things. You go around and do all of this and that can help you better diagnose not just the current project, but like a a bigger scale project that they’re buying into because they’re the ones who said I’m red on that. And if you can deliver on turning them from red to green, then it can go back through and do the the redo the diagnostic tool all the time, every at the end of each part of your project and be like, okay.
How are we feeling now about our lead age if that was a red and you got them there. Now they’re like, cool. Awesome job getting us to green. That’s amazing.
And you’ve got it documented for exactly what you have done for them.
But critically anything that’s showing in your diagnostic has to be something that you can do. Is where list offer copy can be a little bit tricky if you don’t do list stuff. If you’re like, I don’t attract leads, I can’t do anything for you. Then that’s a problem because they’re gonna walk away and go, oh, okay.
We have to go get some to take care of this, and then we’ll come back and talk to you later, which they might not do. They liked your diagnosis, great. But we wanna keep them here. So you would only break down your process.
This shape that you have into things that you will actually do. And that’s where if you are like, okay, I’m targeting SAS and they do care about pirate metric still, let’s say, not everybody that’s a lot of people have problem with it, but let’s just pretend. Okay. So you break down the five parts of pirate metrics, but you know you don’t do the first you don’t, you know, you don’t do the last one either.
So you would draw a triangle only for those three that you do. Okay. So your shape is dependent on the number of parts that you have here. A triangle is really easy and a circle is really easy.
You can draw a circle. You can break it up into four parts. We’re used seeing paragraphs. We’re used to seeing these sorts of shapes and our brains align with them.
Right? Like yes, if it’s a triangle, it’s a real thing. It’s kind of like rhyme is reason.
Same thing is here. So we could do research strategy writing and experimentation. This is the conversion copy writing process and then you get to say what parts are in here. So if you’re like all I do when it comes to research is jobs and new lead surveys.
I don’t wanna do anything else, then make it your two things. And you can say How are you all for job surveys? When’s the last time you did a jobs to be done, or interviews? When’s the last time you did a a jobs interview?
Set. And they’re like, we’ve never done one. I’m like, cool. You’re right on that new lead surveys.
How are you for that? And you can go through and walk them through this. And by the end, they’re like, shit, you’ve got a process. You have some way of helping me understand what my problem is in a way that nobody else ever has and you drew it for me, which is also a really interesting thing that only a pro is going to do.
I now know that I’m red on five things. I’m green on one thing. So that’s cool. I can take that back to my team and say, oh, we don’t have to worry about this.
Y’all, here are the five things we have to worry about. And when I hire you to do this work, we can then go back and say, okay. How are we now on this? Do you think we’re still red on this?
Are we yellow yet? And so on and so forth? This make sense to everybody?
Yeah.
Alright. Any questions about it?
Probably not yet. What I want you to do is hop into making your own for the people that you want to convert. So again, this is coming down to what’s your red thread or your one thing, what do you do, and try to think about what one thing you wanna sell more than anything.
If it’s like I just want fifty thousand dollar projects that that are like focused on x. I don’t know what that thing is. Or you know what it is. In some cases, I know what it is from talking with you, but for the whole group and anybody watching the replay, I don’t know what it is.
You know what it is. Try to know. If you don’t know, try to know, you’re allowed to build your future. This is what we’re doing.
So just like document the thing that you most wanna sell. I wanna sell fifty thousand dollar engagements that last two months and do these three things with this outcome. Okay, fine. Once you know that, then you can start to say what your process is to get there.
Now, process might not be the right word if you hear a process and you go, I don’t think it’s my process, you’re probably right. There are different ways to go about this. I wanna show you the end what it could look like, how it works, and then it’s up to you to come up with what that diagnostic is, and it can mean thinking through past calls you’ve had with clients and what they’ve shared with you or what you know you’re always delivering what you’re best at. But you definitely wanna think about your one thing and the only thing that you ever wanna sell if possible.
Okay?
Are you good to give this a shot for the next twenty minutes?
Yeah.
Just try it and then we’ll come back and share challenges you had with it or whatever Alright? Twenty minutes on the clock. I’m gonna stop recording. Thanks, Sarah.
Abby, if because it went so quickly, you need to share what you made. Let’s see it.
Okay. Right. Can you see my screen?
Just about yes.
Yeah. Is it tiny? Let me zoom in.
How’s that?
Cool?
Alright. Yes. We can see it. So just to be clear, all four parts of this you can deliver on.
Yeah. Including lead quality.
Yes.
Okay. But we have all the, yeah, part. Is it someone on your team or is it you?
It’s me. So I’m thinking, like, I’m thinking about my course here, but the course is basic. It’s it’s just the DIY version of my done for you offer.
So with the lead quality, the I do Facebook teach Facebook ad testing and then also, like, using thank you paid responses to make sure that you’re, like, bringing in the right people or that the messaging is resonating with the right people. So, yeah. Okay.
Awesome. Okay. So you walk them through this, and did you try, like, try it out because you had all this extra time? Like, did you try kind of pretending that you were walking a lead or even a prospective student through this model.
Yeah. Well, I was thinking, like, is this like your IP? Or are we free to chair this?
Yeah. Yeah. Oh, no. The idea is that now you go forward in you use it to close people and then deliver.
Yeah. Because I’ve I’ve been, like, running into a problem recently with my course where like, I wanna shift away from, like, the, kinda make money every day messaging and more towards, like, for people who have already tried it and failed, so a more kind of advanced training.
And I think, like, having something like this actually in the webinar would help kind of widen the out so that they can identify, like, all the areas that are gonna be, like, limiting their conversion. So, yeah, so it was, oh, that’s cool. I like it.
Awesome. Yeah. It is a sales tool, and also a, a way of measuring success as you go. Like a sense of progress when most of the time the way we measure these things is like, well, did I?
Is it done or isn’t it? And did I get sales or didn’t I or whatever that like bigger goal is? It’s like, well, no, there’s components along the way. And if we can make those all green, then you’re more likely to get that end goal that you’re looking for.
So, yeah, definitely use it in sales of any kind, webinars sales calls, all of it. Cool. Any questions for any, for Abby from anybody?
No? Alright. Fun. Cool. I will talk more about how to integrate this into the process and like modifying modifying offers and things as as we go.
Anybody else wanna share or chat about what didn’t work? What you’re still working on. Keep in mind, I’ve been working on this for a long time. And, like, I still have tweaks that I’m making and like, full on changes, like mindset was its own thing for a while, then I was like, no, mindset is across all of these things. So, I put it in the middle.
Johnson?
Yeah. I was wondering, because some of the things that I were down I I don’t have a process or a system for, but I I think that areas that I could cover, later as the product is fleshed out, or full of service. What do you have any advice for is that should I try and focus on stuff that I can just do right now or do a separate one that’s what I can do right now and one that’s more sort of future based?
Can it stand well without those parts that you don’t currently do well? Like how feasible is it to cut those parts out and have it still work?
Yeah. Sure. I could probably just merge them to together and do it more generalized because I’m kinda breaking things down maybe a little too far. Yeah. I could do that.
Yeah. If you can pull it, then you’ve you’ll confidently know you can deliver everything showing there. Right? So you wanna be able to obviously have a strong position of confidence in every call that you’re taking any webinar you might be running where you do this kind of thing.
So cut out what you can’t deliver yet, and then maybe just only add it back in when you’ve got somebody in your back pocket who can do that thing for you or when you can do it. Mhmm. Yeah. Cool.
Yeah. Okay. Cool. And then just make sure that the story comes together. Again, most people who you’re going to be showing this to don’t have a better sense for what you’re talking about than you do So whatever you show them is true.
It’s it’s like it’s not necessarily going to open up a whole bunch of skepticism.
So if you leave something off knowing eventually you’re gonna add that thing on, then that’s cool. Right? Cause they’re not thinking way you got this wrong, Johnson, you forgot about this point. Like, they’re thinking like, cool, cool, cool, cool. I’m red on this. Oh, I’m red. Yeah.
So that’s actually super helpful. Yeah. And she’s just like both of these exercises, this one and last week’s one. I found useful, not just for the lows itself, but also in sort of thinking about the areas, that I might be using these things in the future, just the red thread stuff and for developing a new, idea. So, anyway, it’d be cool. Thank you, anyway.
Big it. Love it. That’s cool. Wicked it. Anybody else wanna chat? But what they did.
Can I just ask Joe? Like, do you recommend right?
Do you recommend, the whole drawing it live or having the design. Like, I mean, I love I was also doing it in Canva, like, So bringing it on, bringing it with us, ready to show them, or, doing it on the call.
It’s more engaging when you have something to watch. Right? So if it’s like if you just bring up a model, then I’m reading through it while you’re talking.
If you bring up a blank sheet and you draw it and then you write a word, I’m engaged. Like, I’m waiting for what’s next. Right? So, and that’s what we really want is not for them to jump ahead and think they got it but for you to control that whole flow and then you say and now let’s talk about what you’re red and green on and then you color in red, color it, show them that thing. It’s for me, a horrible penmanship.
Everything’s a mess. But that’s not really the point. Right? They’re watching. They’re not saying like, so why don’t you pay better attention in grade three?
They were teaching you how to like make it look good. They’re just like going with it. Right? And like all they’re interested in is what am I red on?
Oh, what am I green on? Thank god. I’m green, but they’re watching the whole way. So, yes, long story short.
I do recommend that you draw it.
And I also recommend that I didn’t wanna make this like part of today’s session, but find someone in the room here to try this out with where their your perspective client and you hop on a call and you say talk me through this and they’re just pretending. So just like do some role playing then they can do the same for you and you can like work out the kinks of actually presenting it live and new ways to draw it and think about it. Yeah.
Cool.
Cool. Fine.
Anybody else?
I can share mine.
Cool. Yeah.
So typically what I do, even if I don’t have a drawing for it, is I start by looking at the campaign, figuring out which, what keywords they’re targeting, what their campaign looks like, whether it’s on Google or LinkedIn or Facebook, etcetera. And then figuring out what they need to prioritize. So if that’s landing pages, that’s landing pages, it might be the website, the homepage, it might be, the ads, so figuring out exactly what they need to optimize.
Then going through sales calls, sometimes that means going through like g two or Kaptura reviews, and then usually tools.
Sometimes users are testing, but definitely hotjar and Google Analytics. Then figuring out what the best framework is to use.
I I think that defining the persona would also be part of this, although I’m not sure that’s something I would be part of. That’s something I wouldn’t ask them about, because of that would determine, like, is this Are they targeting mid market? Are they targeting enterprise? Are they targeting medium businesses? And within those three categories, which, level of seniority.
But I guess that would fall under research, then actually writing, then usability testing meaning, like, validating the the copy and then finally AB testing.
Cool. It looks great. The only thing I would say is, there are some things on here that are big, like underwriting, you’ve got all those assets. And so if if it’s hard for them to identify what red, yellow, or green, then that’s kind of tricky. So what can you do here even if it comes down to combining strategy and research into one like thinking upfront, right? Like thinking or planning or something like that.
I would just encourage you to break up writing more.
So that because I might look at this and go like, okay. While I suck on CRO prioritization, I’m red on that. I’m green on tools. I’m green on VOC.
I’m probably wrong about being green on VOC, but I say that. Analytics. I don’t know. I have no idea.
Like, why don’t think about it that way? Maybe. Right? So I’m yellow there.
Writing. Well, I have a bunch of those. Let’s call it green.
And that’s the problem. Like, they they might have a bunch of things and think that’s okay.
It just that’s the only thing that stood out to me. That assets little piece of the pie is containing a lot. Can do something to open it up?
Well, the idea being that if they’re, like, the the asset that they would need would depend on what they’re prioritizing. So if their landing pages are leaking leads, then it would be landing pages. If they’re not driving off traffic at the top of the funnel, then it would be ads, And if their maybe their ads are not getting clicked on, then maybe it would be even higher. It would be more like brand awareness, social organic. Kind of work. That’s why I lumped them together.
That’s cool. And then I wonder though, then if you’re really To me, I’m envisioning a sort of triangle now. That’s more like leads or attract.
Convert and, like, retain or refer or revenue or something else. And then you could get into might be strategy in the I don’t know, but to me it feels like yeah. There’s something there, and I think what you’re saying is right. It might just need a different I don’t know. A different shape. Yeah.
I could do that. Because usually the question is, well, where are we leaking weeds or why aren’t we getting enough leaves? Why is our pipeline a mess?
Yeah. Great.
And the question is like, well, how do we figure that out? Because that’s not an easy question to answer.
Not. Not. But if you would dedicate a whole side of a triangle or whatever that final shape is, I don’t know, to leads then you can talk honestly about, like, okay, leads are red, but once we get them to convert them, we’re green on version and then we’re sucky on experimentation or whatever that other part is.
Yeah.
Okay. Yeah. That makes more sense.
Okay. Cool. Love it. That’s great.
Thanks Naomi. Anybody else wanna share or talk or share anything about what they just saw?
Can I share something?
Abby were you commenting?
Or I was just saying that it looked really nice.
Like, it looked it looked very, like, Yeah. Sounds good. Good job. Awesome.
Totally. Stacy, please go ahead.
I I have one that I wanna share that I didn’t do on the call today, but I did in the past. Okay. I just wanna share it because I want somebody to appreciate it.
Nice. It’s messy. Okay. It’s a scorecard.
It’s a scorecard, but the the thing the under and and I love the idea of using in this in a sales call, although everything I do in my universe is structured to avoid me ever have get on a call with anyone.
Okay.
So I set up my three things. I I created the ABCs of superior content, which are audio brand and craft. So those are the three things. And the audience part will, you know, that would involve the voice of customer and interviews, etcetera, understanding the audience, then brand has to do with brand voice, personality, and then Craft is the actual writing of content, which would be combining journalistic writing persuasions, storytelling with subject matter expertise.
So I go through and and and ask them six questions in each of in each of these three areas. So there’s eighteen questions altogether, and then it gives the gives the results in a scorecard and then I use score app, which is a good lead gen processing sort of follow-up thing. Yeah. So I just wanted share because because I’m proud of my scorecard.
That’s cool. I love it, and the ABC is a really nice thing to remember, obviously.
And it could go really nicely in a triangle and you could clearly, like, diagnose how am I on audience, how am I on brands, I don’t remember what the third one was. Sorry. And now it’s Craft. Craft.
That’s the actual writing. Yeah. And it does display. It displays it in that targeted, you know, thing where it scores them on each of the three areas in the in the report that it generates.
Nice. That’s cool. That’s great. Yeah. Even if they, like, diagnosed themselves and then went through the score.
Anyways, it’s cool. It’s cool. Yeah. Love it.
Cool. Anybody else?
We’re good. Okay. Work this out. I do recommend that you like start making it part of your process, you’ll be surprised at how engaging it is for people when they see it drawn out.
You’re talking through and asking them questions, especially if in sales calls, you struggle to like know what to say next. This is like a really clear way to look like you’re a freaking pro and have done this a million even if it’s like your first time doing it live. Just practice with other people in the room. If you don’t have anybody to practice with yet, chances are good.
Someone else doesn’t have anybody to practice with yet too. So, feel free to just chat right now and say, hey, does anybody wanna role play this with me?
And if not, go over in Slack and do it there too, and we’ll we’ll see what happens.
Cool.
Anybody have questions? We’ve got thirty minutes ish left. If you have to go, cool, respect your time. If you have questions to ground, Katie, do you have one?
Yeah. So I’m can you just speak a bit more to, like so we’ve established where they’re red and where they’re yellow and where they’re green?
Am I aiming to then put to, like, can you, take it into the pitch? So, like, am I aiming to put together one proposal that covers, like, first, we’re gonna address the red, and then we’re gonna talk about the yellow, or how do I go into turning that into an offer?
Exactly. Yes. So I think there’s lots of ways you can do it. Right? So whatever is triggering for you, like in your imagination, roll with that but the really yeah the thing that you wanna walk away with is now it’s not just, hey, I need a sales page, but it’s also, hey, I need to get better at this, this, this, and this.
Your project now got bigger. You’re also a consultant. That’s more strategic. Right? So you walk away from there going Here are the four things we need to work on before we even work on writing your sales page.
Let me take this away, put together, some ideas for you. You send me x, y, and z document that I need. So you said you’re strong on research. Send me some so I can look at it. And then we’re gonna hop on a call, and I’ll walk you through my plan for how we can hit all of these things you read on in x period of time that you’ve told me you want this off like the thing that’s in the center of it, the five hundred paid conversions added a month or whatever.
We wanna get there in three months time. But we have to make these red things all green. We’ve agreed on that. You agree that you’re red on these things. So now we’re gonna go forward. I’ll put the other and I’m gonna come back and talk you through that plan. That’s a really, like, clear way for you to now go off and run a project.
Does that make sense? Like here’s my project now and it’s informed not just by what you said you think you need but what I have diagnosed you as really needing.
Yeah. I mean, I see this is super useful because I think I mentioned on our last the last call that I made it to live, like, I just feel like my project ideas are always really big, and I struggle to break them down into components. So this feels really helpful for that.
I guess what I’m taking away from what you’ve just said is like it would be helpful for me to have a sense of the hierarchy of the lights for for lack of better words so that I know, like, if that’s red, obviously, we’re gonna do this first and, and, like, turning that then into a proposal?
Yeah. And it’s sort of a process. So I said the word process, but I know sometimes it won’t feel like a process. So if you’re like, but it’s not a process. Okay. Don’t make it a process. But to me, it is.
To me, it’s like, okay, if it’s list offer that’s an order in which things go. Right? The conversion copywriting process has parts to it.
And so that should also lead to a sort of hierarchy, right, where you’re like, well, we can do everything we want with copy. But if your list is a mess or the people coming to it or wrong. If you’re red on that, no. So we clearly have to solve the the left part of the triangle first, whatever that’s called. I don’t geometry.
But we solve that over there. We solve list.
Then once we’re red once we’re green on those things, then we’ll talk about off for that list. Okay? And then we’ll talk about copies. You can start to see a gantt chart forming of how that project could go.
Like we’re gonna nail list I can’t come up with that live on a call. That’s not your job to come up with it live on a call. Right? You’re like, I’m I’m gonna go away and think about this for you.
You come up with the things you’re gonna do for improved list quality and quantity in x period of time.
Put that on the gantt chart here. What’s we’re gonna do in week one, week two, week three. Then week three, we’re also gonna start working on offer and and week six will be ready to work on copies. Now, you have like this project mapped out.
You’ve also got a built in way to go back and optimize things, right? So you can say we got through list offer copy, the parts of the triangle, red turn to yellow on these things and yellow turn to green, but now let’s go back and do more to further optimize it. So you have the initial project, as well as a map in effect or a retainer to optimize for performance. Does that make sense, Katie, or is that too much?
It makes sense.
I feel like I’m gonna have to revisit my, like, the categories that I’ve throat to make sure that they have a clear Okay.
Flow from one to the next. Okay. Yeah. And know I was just thinking like, well, what if they’re like, well, I don’t wanna work on that first. I wanna work on, like, I don’t I don’t wanna work on my I just wanna work on my sales page or something. I guess then it’s a question of like, do you wanna work with them?
I would say that’s the question and then. If you know list is actually red and they’re like, I don’t care, write the copy.
That’s not what I do. I can the copy will never convert if your list is garbage. Sorry. We gotta nail that and that’s where you have to be able to work on list.
In this case, right? You have to say like, no. I’m gonna nail this for you, then you’re gonna have you might not even need to work on the copy. It might just be a list look.
We’re green across the board on coffee.
So but that’s yeah. You you’re not just diagnosing what they need but are they a good fit for you to work with? They should walk away from this going. Holy shit, Katie.
No one’s ever shown it to us this way. That was great. How do we start nailing through like I had no idea that’s how this worked. That’s like the objective.
And if they don’t do that, they’re probably gonna be pretty tough to work with.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah. Okay. I know it’s easy for me to say. Like, push away these people who don’t wanna do the first part of the process, but we all already know you. They’re not gonna be a good fit. Yeah.
Stacy, I know you have an AMA and then Abby.
So, my my question is about a project that I’m currently working on. I just did, message frameworks for this client often I work with enterprise companies. So I’m sort of a step removed from being able to get into benchmarking and AB testing and things like that because it’s also siloed off in big companies. In this particular instance, it’s a smaller company. They’re like a twenty million company, and my messaging framework meeting was with the whole c suite of, you know, so I had all four c level people.
So now we’re moving into actually doing a wireframe for the home page. And I’m working with that mostly with the CMO.
So they want to do an AB test against their current homepage with what I create. And so since I’m not used to sort of benchmarking before a project, I wanted to get some feedback on what I might be able to do as far as what what to ask for to establish some ben benchmarks and test against and any any tips about you know, that process because I know you do a lot having to do with the, with data, and it’s just something that I’m usually a step removed from.
Sure. So they are split testing though. Right?
They’re using Yes.
Optimizely or a tool like that.
They well, they they want AB test I haven’t talked to them about the mechanics of how they’re doing it, but I do know they want to split test, driving traffic and, you know, testing their current homepage against a new homepage that I’m writing the copy for.
Right. So understanding how the control is performing is Good. They should be telling you that, right? And then they’ll tell you the, metrics when they tell. Like, here’s here are the KPIs for this page.
It’s a homepage. So it’s likely you’ll need to document things like, amount of traffic coming to it, traffic sources, coming to it as well. If they’re using it as a landing page for Facebook ads and other things like that, It’s a problem. Right? Like, because the test at that point becomes less about a scientific test and more about like a game, where you’ve got traffic coming from weird sources that could have been brought in by any number of ads, etcetera. And they’re landing on this page. They’re so different.
That it’s almost like there are too many variables. I know it’s all in the variable of audience, but it’s so uncontrolled.
That your test is just going to feel fake. So understand where traffic is coming from. Try to get them on board with narrowing it down to their ideal audience. And I know that means organic traffic you can’t do anything about either, but people who are searching and landing on your homepage are likely not look you lose when we’re talking about business. This is SAS. This is a software company?
Or It’s, it is tech.
Yes. It’s it’s tech. So no Because it’s a CDN. It’s a it’s enterprise CDN.
Okay. Cool.
Good. So we can imagine that organic traffic that lands there. Is there by design in some way? So cool. What’s the traffic like that’s coming to it? How are they converting right now? So you need quantity of traffic than like a understanding a qualitative understanding of quality of traffic.
And then you need to know what that existing conversion rate is and what conversion rate means for them is likely going to be clicks. If it’s on the homepage, it’s probably clicks. The question is clicks to where?
We wanna drive sign ups to a a trial sign up for a free account.
Can they sign up for the free account from that page, or do they get driven to another page?
They can sign up on the homepage currently. And they, and and it’s not very focused and it can be much better than it is now.
Okay.
In other words, the homepage is not driving sign ups, and I think it could drive sign ups much more than it does.
Okay. Is there an email address field on the homepage?
That’s like start your trial?
Yes. There is.
Yes. There is. Oh, that’s an existing thing. Cool. You can optimize that. That’s great. So that would be probably number one.
It sounds like your number one goal is trial starts.
Trial starts. Yes.
Okay. So you need to document, know the the control and how it’s doing on trial start but also optimizely, we’ll know that too.
So you don’t you don’t have to write anything down if they’re using the right tool and if you’re all aligned on, what the objective is, like what, how are you going to measure it in a testing platform? You can set up multiple goals, and that’s trickiest part. You don’t want to set up too many goals. Home pages are hard though because things like bounce are gonna be an actual consideration on a homepage.
Try to keep them on task with What is the number one thing that this page is solving for? From a business perspective, why does the business invest money in this homepage. Why is this test a priority right now? And if it is, we wanna get trial starts as soon as they land there, then throw every other way of measuring the page out the door.
Don’t worry about bounce rate. We have to try scary things and some people are gonna bounce. And maybe they won’t. Maybe it’ll hold more people.
We’re not gonna worry about that. All we’re worried about is trial starts. So how does optimizely or whatever tool they use measure trial starts. What can you do in the tool?
Is it just like once they’ve clicked this button successfully or once they’ve landed on the next page is a common way to do that test. Are they landing on a confirmation page for like your trial is now started or landing an app? Which can also be tricky because there’s lots of different ways to land in at from a home page oftentimes. Point being, trial starts is what matters.
So document that Nothing else really matters if that’s your goal. There’s so many things to measure on a homepage. Try to control how much they’re thinking about. Does that help, Stacy?
Yes. Yes. That helps very much. And I will be re re listening to this recording to make sure I get all of that. Okay. Thank you.
DLDR is like trial starts is all that you’re gonna focus them on. Yeah. Cool.
Hey. Yeah. So I have kind of it’s like a mindset strategy question. I’m gonna try and articulate it as best as I can.
So I’m looking at, like, the prioritization matrix, and I’m trying to kind of, like, find my high reward low friction task and, like, the twenty percent of my efforts that generate eighty percent of, like, the revenue. And the things the thing that, like, does the most of me at is podcast, but then like, so speaking on the podcast, it’s it’s my kind of, like, high reward low friction, but then it’s, like, getting on the podcast, then it becomes kind of, like, the question of, like, likelihood of success as well, because it’s like a podcast could potentially be high reward, but then it’s like, I gonna even get on it? Like, how do I get on it? And it’s kind of like so how do you, like, balance thinking about those things, like, the how the how to get to the, like, high reward thing, like, in terms of is that did I yeah.
Yeah. I think so.
It means to me it sounds like it’s, like, of, like, leverage.
The first thing that comes to mind is, like, okay, who is trying to book you on there? Do you have a VA or assistant of some kind pitching for you.
I have a VA that, like, makes a list and that I pitch them.
Can you train the VA to pitch?
I I can. The reason I haven’t is because I posted in, like, the Slack about and, having, like, whether to have my B. I pitch, and then Christie said she wouldn’t even, like, look at, like, a podcast application if it was wasn’t sent by the person.
So that kind of Oh, no.
The video is pretending to be you.
Oh, okay. Yeah. Okay.
Yeah. They’re just they’re signed it. They’re sending from your email address a hundred percent. And it’s just like, hey, Abby here. Just a template that they then know how to modify because you’ve taught them. You took an hour to teach them how to do this thing well for you. And steal it from your email address, and that’s it.
Mhmm.
So it’s like thinking about, like, how to automate kind of the steps to the high reward stuff or, like, outsource, minimize friction.
Do you have an SOP for it that your VA can then be trained on? And then when you do, if getting on podcasts is a huge high value win for you, but it’s it’s a slog to get there. It’s a it’s a quantity game a lot of the time. Like how much as you put out there.
Then yeah, outsource that. Send that off. That’s a great thing for your VA to do. It doesn’t take specialized skills.
Not if they have your training, yeah, to do it. So I get the VA on it, but yeah, send from your email address or something that’s a good fake of your email address.
Like AP at instead of Abby at or whatever.
Mhmm.
Cool. Yeah. That makes so much sense. You make it sound so obvious. Of course.
Thank you.
No. No worries. Awesome. Anna.
Hey. I just had a question about the ebook I’m writing right now.
Love it.
So, I think I know the answer to this, but I wanna just confirm. It is fair game to quote any studies that are publicly out there. Right?
What about, like, screenshots of that’s because it’s on pricing page. So can I can I use screenshots or pricing pages that are out there in public right now? Or do I have to, like, seek permission?
Or I think Jessica wants to answer this.
I’m watching your face, Jessica. Oh, no.
I thought you did for, like, the folks that No.
I just I just wanna make sure everybody knows I’m engaged. I don’t Oh, yes. I do know the answer.
You guys publishing for us. So I thought like, oh, you probably have a good take on this.
Yeah.
Yeah. So in my experience, it’s what are you copying or screenshotting and is it proprietary?
So there are some cases where you’re not allowed to use an image without paying a fee for it.
But you usually know those things. Right? A screenshot of someone’s website is it’s a public thing as long as you cite, and I would recommend citing everything about it that it’s copyrighted by X company. The screenshot was taken on this date.
And that’s that’s cool. Then you can do that. It can also be actually a pretty useful way to start promoting your book when the time comes. When you’re like, Hey, I used your page as a great example in my book. It’s coming out. Do you wanna copy of it?
That kind of thing. Right? And then they might say like, oh, I didn’t realize people were just using screenshots of our website. What? And you might be like, oh, fuck.
But, that’s just the conversation that you have at that point, but it doesn’t have to be weird. I no one’s ever run any quotes that, like, when Ann Handley put me in her book, I didn’t find out till someone was like, Joe, you’re in Ann’s book. And same for product led growth. Nobody told me this was gonna happen.
But I would just ended up in there. And I wasn’t like, damn you, Ann. I was like send flowers to Ann. So it’s it’s it’s I wouldn’t worry about it just do what you can to cite where it came from. And wherever possible, only take screenshots of things where you’re gonna tell a good story about it. If it’s, like, a bad thing, mock up a version of it and just remove anything.
Actually, that was gonna be my my next question. So if I just mock up and make a random, like, I could take it a pricing page and and then play around with it on Photoshop and change it up completely. Just to use the bad example.
That’s obviously fine. Right? Because no one’s gonna know where it came from or yeah.
Yeah. And then the reader also likes you a little more. Right? You’re like, look, these are some bad things I’ve seen.
I’m not gonna call anybody out. Everybody means while you, the reader, you mean well. But here’s what are what people are doing wrong. And then you can show, like, mock ups, but not the thing.
Yeah.
Awesome.
Last question.
Does it matter how long the ebook is? So I I I thought I would wrap something up in, like, thirty pages.
Okay.
But it’s it looks like it’s gonna get to, like, seventy pages.
And I’m wondering, like, are people gonna read that or Who is your target?
K. Good question.
So c level execs that will Yeah. Because the whole idea is to build authority and and show that this is a comprehensive thing.
On pricing pages. Right? So someone who gets a hold of it, the impression I want them to get is like, oh, didn’t know there was so much to talk about when it came to Verizon pages. It seems like this person knows this thing.
A hundred percent. Yes. So I just chatted over the title of a book called write useful books, go read it through your kindle, read it right away.
It’s great, but it will make you identify who your target audience is and things like referral referrals that are built into their heads. So it’s gonna be really useful.
Read right useful books as you’re doing this.
Think about that target audience and think about where they’re reading it. I think I’ve talked about this before with April.
With obviously awesome. She was gonna get it traditionally published.
Sorry if I’m repeating it, but it’s really good advice. The traditional publisher was it needs to be sixty thousand words and she’s like, no, I can’t. And the reason was for her was, but I travel on planes and I read books on planes, like that’s when a lot of sea levels in their careers hop on. That’s when they that’s when they read books.
So if that’s the case, then how long is the average flight that a sea level is going to able to read your book. Three or four hours. So you have to make it start to finish in three to four hours, which is like I think it’s something like thirty thousand words at most, knowing that they’re just skimming a lot of it and just like rolling through it.
But, yeah, thirty thousand words, I think is what came out as like the ideal length for a c level to read a book.
Thousand words. Okay. I’ll keep that in mind.
Yeah. Cool. Awesome. Thanks.
And of course, we have love screenshots in there.
It’s gonna go a lot faster. It doesn’t mean you have to take up the whole flight though. Like, if they’re able to finish the book and start writing the email to you that’s like, loved your book, let’s talk. That’s a good thing.
Right? If they can get all that work done on the plane and then walk off and go. Awesome. What’s next?
You know?
Yeah. Got it.
Awesome. Love it. Read write useful books.
Okay. Anybody else?
I do have a couple like brainstorm questions. They’re very low. Like, you probably be like really are you asking me this, but I just wanted to get brain power because we have a lot of that in the room if that’s okay.
Yeah. We do. Yeah. We got eight minutes still. Let’s go.
Okay. I’m trying to think of which one Alright. I’ll go with the second question because I have a feeling your mindset has changed around this a little bit. So I kind of Soft launched my new newsletter called the holiday win and So what I’m wondering is you used to do a lot of free stuff to grow your list, but you’ve recently made comments about not doing that in the books and that. So I’m just wondering how are we feeling about that right now? Any suggestions?
About free content? To grow your email list. Yes.
Right. I mean, our free content’s just different now. Our free content that grows our email list is on Instagram, and with like many chat and boards. Right? That’s really it.
But still, they’re still free. It’s just it’s just different.
I know the the name makes me wanna watch a Hallmark movie though to be very clear.
No. The goal was to rip it off of the old movie.
So that’s Oh, cool.
That’s awesome. Good. Yeah.
Yeah. But give a give it away in your newsletter. The good thing of are you using Substack?
No. So you mentioned something about Substack and then I had to do research on what was the latest drama and then I was like dang it. So do I grow it on there or not?
Feels a little problematic.
Yeah. No. We’ve stopped using Substack too. Yeah.
But I thought if you were okay with it, No.
I saw the research or I looked it up after you mentioned it. You’re ruined my email strategy, Joe. Alright.
We’re ruined mine too.
So the so whatever alternative comes out for sub stack, that doesn’t allow Nazis to be the Nazis on there.
Is, hopefully the next thing to use then just because you can charge for your archives. And if you have good shit you’re giving out, you should be charging for the archive.
So that’s that. But your goal is to grow your list. And if your goal is to grow your list with quality leads, then free is obviously is the is the way to go. It’ll get more people on.
It’s just a question of how quality are those are those leads. But a lot of them are quality just because they’re looking for free out of the gate doesn’t mean they’re ever going to be looking for free. Just wanna make sure you’re not full of crap. Right?
So let’s try you for free and then pay you later.
Yeah. That’s my take. Does anybody else have thoughts on this?
Do you give stuff away free to grow your list? Any tips?
No one wants to talk about it.
I no. I mean, I already have any advice it’s an interesting question, but I I don’t know. I think, I think about the content itself being, yeah, engaging and teaching something. Maybe it’s just a hint of something and you’re not giving anything away. I mean, I’m thinking of the the email the the the the people I’ve subscribed to who I read. And it’s it’s supposed to be people who are into entertaining first.
Maybe, yeah, actually first. And then secondly, teach me stuff. Yeah. Yeah.
James Claire is three two one method, work really well, and there’s another copywriter who somehow I got on this list.
He does three two one for copywriting.
Three examples to something and then one tip or something like that. And it’s a good read.
So, I don’t know, food for thought as you think of the format as well for your newsletter.
Cool. Naomi.
So I want to get more into Go ahead podcast.
And so I was building a list of, podcasts that I thought were relevant And somebody mentioned to me that you that I could probably write a script and just outsource that, have somebody put that together and send an email to all those people. But I was I thought that would be too impersonal that they get a lot of they got a lot of mail looking for guests and that it would make a lot more sense to do it. Like, actually listening to the podcast and mentioning something relevant, So I was wondering what you thought about that. Is that something?
Yeah. Did you hop off for a bit on this call already?
Yeah. I had two during my meeting for the ending.
And then you hop back up. So Abby actually asked the same question, and it was about podcast pitching, how to make it personal, And so, really quick and it’s in the replay if you want more detail, but it really is, documents like a template.
For outreach to these podcasts, and then, teach your VA or somebody that is inexpensive to send these pitch emails from your email address. So it looks like it’s from Naomi. It’s written in the first person. Hi, etcetera.
And they all do the research too. So the VA listens to the podcast or reads the reviews or whatever the whatever the thing is that teach the VA to do and then they have a goal that you give them of like five pitches a day or whatever that goal is that you need for them to to get your name out there. But yeah, it’s an SOP. This is the leverage part of the big sunshine growth model. Of have that SOP with templates associated with it, and then teach a VA to do it. And just make it look personal by personalizing and sending it from naomi at.
Okay.
Great. Awesome. Thanks. Is there another question there?
Are we good? I have one more question. Sorry. It’s another brainstorm one. Okay. So I did do the the win is a hundred million offers.
I flushed out the whole seasonal sale holiday offer thing. So Next the sales page, right? So and now this. So my only thought is I really need to get more people see like going through this process so I can finesse it and I’m getting still a lot of email and I know a lot of that is authority related but to get some quicker like and I get a few seasonal sales and no door.
Yeah. Any suggestions about more of a fast approach to that part?
Like, you’re just trying to get people to test this out on?
Essentially.
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think it’s like you said on really no dollar offers. It’s formosa kind of solution here, I would do what he has said to do in that case. Do you have a system?
If you have system, then you post on LinkedIn and say, hey, I’m looking for five companies that meet this criteria to run through my system on the next holiday for free in exchange for me being able to daw to tell the world about this and to take examples away from it. That’s a third thing to do. But just make sure you have it as like system so that you’re not guessing your way through their holiday emails for free.
Yeah. Okay. Perfect. Thank you. I’ll do that.
Okay. Fine. Alright. Well, we’re at the end of our time. Thanks, everyone, for your great questions. Nobody shared a win, but I wasn’t gonna harp on that too much. It’s pretty mean about it.
My win is being in CSV. That is a win.
Okay. Awesome. The replay will be available later. Thanks y’all, and we will be following up more on this diagnostic tool as we chat more.
Okay? Okay. Thanks, though. Have a good one. Bye.Today, as you saw in the worksheets, thanks for coming on camera. We’re gonna be talking about a diagnostic tool, and we’ll get into the details of that. As always, we’re gonna kick it off with some training And then, in today’s training though, we’ll be spending some time doing, like, work, based on the training. So expect to, you know, put aside twenty minutes at the end of this to start doing some thinking through what we’re talking about. And then we’ll do the usual AMA.
Always kick it off with a win, please, a win of any kind helps everybody stay motivated and see how many cool things there are to do out there. And then any any question you got, the more specific, the more context you can give the better.
Everybody good.
Good. Alright. We’re recording this. When you ask a question, please do come on camera wherever possible.
Please do be on camera so people can connect with you and see a smiling or whatever face you don’t have to smile no more. Whatever feels right is good. Okay. I am going to share my screen.
Alright. So this is this is cool. This is something that we’ve been working on for a little while.
For freelancing school as well as for people who are going to be joining, copy school pro. And that is a better way to diagnose what you need to work on because a lot of people are looking for road maps. Right? And that’s not just for students.
Your clients also want some form of roadmap. Like, what are you what what are we here for? Where are you gonna take me How do I know it’s the right thing to do? So this tool is a way and you’re gonna come up with your own today.
It’ll be the starting point for your own. This is a tool that helps you across every part of converting and delivering to people and also setting projects. So, You may have questions about this. I don’t think you’re gonna walk out of today’s session going.
I totally get it. I got the right one. It’s perfect. Everything’s amazing. This is gonna be the beginning of starting to think through something that you might work out over the course of the next month.
But here is the idea. So I’m on this.
Why does it say that’s page two? Everything says page two. It’s not. It’s actually four. Sorry.
Anyway, it doesn’t matter. But it’s the general diagnostic template. This page in your worksheet your workbook.
This is the idea here. Hopefully, you’re not on a very small screen.
The, again, the idea here is to figure out what the general three or four parts of what you deliver that is a solution to your client or student as you start to scale to teaching more to their problem what that what that is so you can then go in and say, here’s what you’re missing, here’s what you don’t have to work on, but here’s what do have to work on here is how we can work together. So, for example, I’m gonna show you first of all, like the end. What we’re working toward. Now this is our model. It’s currently called the Sunshine growth model because it looks a little bit like a this is multiple iterations on it that I’ve been playing with, but let me zoom in here and then we can talk specifically about what the hell it even is. Okay.
So someone comes to me and this is based on just years and years of coaching freelance copywriters and particular but also marketing consultants, etcetera.
Someone comes to me and they’re like, Joe, I’m, you know, I’ve plateaued. I would love to get to two hundred and fifty thousand dollars is the most common thing that people say. I’m at about a hundred. I wanna get to two fifty. What’s stopping me?
And so really what I’m hearing is like you’d like to get to about a grand a day of consistent income. And so that could be twenty days of the work month that works out to about two hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year or all the days, and that works out to about three hundred sixty thousand dollars a year. So that’s the problem that most people come to me trying to solve until they get to that and they’re like, okay. Now I wanna get to three million.
I got to three sixty. Now I wanna get to three point six. Let’s do that. And that would still come down to a lot of what we’re seeing here.
So this is how it breaks down and then I’m gonna show you how it draws out when we’re talking with people who are considering coming in to copy school professional, and then we’ll talk about what that means for you and for your new clients, leads when you’re having those lead conversations as well as how you deliver on something with clients So this is one way to do it, especially if you have felt scattered. If you felt like there, people come to you for all the things and you know know what to say no to. You never feel really good saying no.
People come to you and they’re all for the same general thing, but they have different problems within that same general thing. And your job is always like a little too custom. You don’t want it to always be custom because then it’s hard to offload things to people. You don’t have the leverage of like, here is how we do this work.
Go do it for me so I can mark up what you do, and get paid for not doing anything other than basically teaching you for you to deliver for me and then I then bill. Let me explain. Okay. So someone comes to me and says, Joe, basically, I wanna make a thousand dollars a day help Cool.
There are four actually five but four key parts that usually their work comes down to. So we can say okay. I can draw this out sharing my iPad as shown in the worksheet and I can say, okay, let’s talk through these four things, your skills, your authority, your money, and that means all things money. Money, not as leverage, but money as pricing.
Are you targeting the right audience? Do you have everything that you need? In order to make that money that you want to. Does your current audience only want to spend a thousand dollars on a single VIP day and then they’ll hit you up every six months for one.
You can’t build a business that way. Right? So and then we talked about leverage. And then what’s keeping you from all of those things too is also mindset mindset or copywriters.
Like for nobody else mindset is like such a challenge. It’s very hard. If you don’t have mindset issues and a lot of people here are working really well through any that you might have and maybe getting to a point where you don’t have mindset issues. Congratulations because that’s again and again. And I’ve said this before in Copyschool Pro. It’s such a big deal.
Getting your head right about your skills, about your authority, about a about your sense of scarcity and money out there. Who would pay me for this? And then leverage getting your head right about people, what it means to hire someone, what it means to document a creative process.
Okay. So we can draw this out. And that’s exactly what we want to do. And I’m going to switch over to, my iPad right away here and show you what we do and what you should be doing when you are going through a diagnosis of how to solve a problem with your clients or leads. Sorry.
Boop. Okay. Really simply what we do and what I’m suggesting that you do and my iPad’s been flipping around a lot today. So hopefully it doesn’t mess it up.
But we draw a circle. It’s allowed to be ugly. It doesn’t have to be perfect. And in the middle, we put our one thousand.
And we’re drawing this and sharing it with them and like talking them through it. Right? And then we have these parts that come out of there and we write in skills and sorry just going through this authority.
Money and leverage, then talk them through that. And this is what you’ll be doing with your own process Right?
So, like, okay. Here’s the problem we wanna solve. Here in the middle, it’s a thousand dollars a day. That’s what we’re aiming toward.
Here are the things that are keeping you pretty much. Think about this for your client. Your clients come to you and they say we want five hundred more paid conversions a month. So you put that in the middle.
Here. Five hundred more paid conversions a month. So you put like five hundred or you turn that into the dollar figure, like each conversion is worth ten dollars. So that’s five thousand.
Okay. Fine. So you put that in the middle and then you talk through the parts that are your process that are like critical to delivering five thousand dollars or those five hundred paid conversions a month. So they’re seeing, okay, you’re walking them through.
There’s skills. There’s authority. There’s money. There’s leverage. In in our case, probably not in yours.
Yours might be research and discovery.
And like the conversion copy writing process or something like that, right? Even if it’s for SAS brands, you might be like, okay, we have, you know, the five parts It’s more of a Pentagon shape and it’s got all five parts of pirate metrics. Let’s say. But let’s let’s focus on this. So here’s what I do.
Get the person who you’re talking to to also write this out. So say, hey, pick up a piece of paper. I want you to draw this with me. So you draw a circle just like this. Yours will be better than mine. I’m not an artist, etcetera.
Write these words from there. You write skills, you write authority, you write money, you write leverage. Great. Cool. Now all I want you to do is write this out and then we’re going to see how you’re doing on all of these points. So we have advanced skills you can sell. We have case studies and proof and we have advanced skills you can use.
So that’s like in this case it might be something more like advanced skills you can sell are am I really, really good at writing long form sales pages. Do I have case studies and proof for long form sales pages? And do I have advanced skills that I can use in my business like setting up a funnel for new leads so that I can sell them long form sales pages? Okay.
So write those down. Don’t do anything with them yet. And then you move on to the next one. Alright.
Next up is authority.
You’ve got your specialization or your niche, and you’ve got thought leadership.
My penmanship is shit. Don’t worry. And then you’ve got things like biz dev, which means everything to do with marketing, pipeline, etcetera. Cool. That’s how we start thinking through your authority.
When it comes to making money, do you have the right audience?
Do you have a standardized offer?
Maybe with a retainer option? Do you have, are you are you charging the right money for the thing that you deliver and the value that it is for your audience. And then we get into leverage and that is SOPs and documentation that is tools and process and that is people. Okay. So we walk them through this, getting them nodding along with us. They can ask questions as you go, and then comes the diagnosis.
This is where you go through and you have them identify if there are different ways to do this. There’s red, yellow, green is really common.
So anybody here yeah. Has probably gone through red, yellow, green. Some people have gone through red, yellow, green with us. So you go through and you say, okay.
On skills. If I was if I was bringing you into coffee school pro. Talk to me about are you red, are you yellow, are you green on advanced skills that you can sell? Do you feel really good about that.
And they can say like, well, I actually think I’m a pretty good copywriter. That’s not the problem. Great. So we’ll call that green.
How about proof? How are you on proof? Do you have good case studies? Yeah. I’ve got great case studies.
Okay. Cool. You’re good there. How about advanced skills you can use? What’s your funnel like?
If I don’t have a funnel okay cool then we’ll call that red and we’ll mark it as such. So you go through and you do that whole process with them and then by the end all you’re going to worry about are the things that are red. So if they’re not good at identifying where the red or yellow, that’s a sign that you probably shouldn’t work with them. If they’re like, we’re bringing on all of this.
Like, this, I’m perfect at all of this, and you’re like, Cool. You don’t need my help, peace, and get the hell out of the room. But if they’re decent at, like, identifying, like, You know, I thought we were green on that, but I think we might be yellow. And I thought we were yellow on that, but I think we might be red.
Then you can start identifying how you’ll work with them. So I’m read on skills I can use and thought leadership, and I’m read on Biz dev. I also don’t have any people. My tools are okay, but I don’t have a single SOP at all.
Great. So now we’re coming up with things where we can say, okay. We’re going to work on are these things. And then from there for your client, you can start saying okay.
We can talk through what we can do across all of these, areas of greatest opportunity build out a roadmap for what a project like that would look like, etcetera. Now this is possibly going to be hard to think through for you right now because this is focused on like coffee school pro. You, however, can do this exact thing for your clients as well, and you should be doing this for your clients. So now I’m going to go back to sharing the worksheet.
I’m just gonna zoom out here.
There.
So you can do the same thing for different stuff. Right? So here on this page, I’ve got a triangle shape that you might have for list offer copy. So let’s say you are working on, you’re in conversion copywriting and you sell sales pages.
That’s your thing. That’s what you wanna do. You wanna be perfect at it. You love it.
You’re gonna be amazing at it. Cool. You know it breaks down into list offer copy. Now the tricky thing with something like this is every part of this has to be something you can work on them with.
So if someone comes to you and says, I need a new sales page. I want it to make a hundred thousand dollars. You’re like, cool. Let’s talk.
Then you draw the triangle, you write lists, offer copy on there and you talk through lead age. Okay? Talk to me about your leads. How old are they?
How many fresh leads do you have? Are you red, green, or yellow on that? And then you color that in for whatever they are. Okay.
Now what about the quality of these leads? Where are they coming from? How are you finding them? Do they have the money?
What do you know about them? And they tell you that. Deliverability. Talk to me about how your emails are going right now.
Are people able to get to your sales page your emails, or is anything even happening there? Are you trying to drive people from Facebook, which is more about lead quality, straight to your sales page and they tell you if they’re red, yellow, or green on those things. You go around and do all of this and that can help you better diagnose not just the current project, but like a a bigger scale project that they’re buying into because they’re the ones who said I’m red on that. And if you can deliver on turning them from red to green, then it can go back through and do the the redo the diagnostic tool all the time, every at the end of each part of your project and be like, okay.
How are we feeling now about our lead age if that was a red and you got them there. Now they’re like, cool. Awesome job getting us to green. That’s amazing.
And you’ve got it documented for exactly what you have done for them.
But critically anything that’s showing in your diagnostic has to be something that you can do. Is where list offer copy can be a little bit tricky if you don’t do list stuff. If you’re like, I don’t attract leads, I can’t do anything for you. Then that’s a problem because they’re gonna walk away and go, oh, okay.
We have to go get some to take care of this, and then we’ll come back and talk to you later, which they might not do. They liked your diagnosis, great. But we wanna keep them here. So you would only break down your process.
This shape that you have into things that you will actually do. And that’s where if you are like, okay, I’m targeting SAS and they do care about pirate metric still, let’s say, not everybody that’s a lot of people have problem with it, but let’s just pretend. Okay. So you break down the five parts of pirate metrics, but you know you don’t do the first you don’t, you know, you don’t do the last one either.
So you would draw a triangle only for those three that you do. Okay. So your shape is dependent on the number of parts that you have here. A triangle is really easy and a circle is really easy.
You can draw a circle. You can break it up into four parts. We’re used seeing paragraphs. We’re used to seeing these sorts of shapes and our brains align with them.
Right? Like yes, if it’s a triangle, it’s a real thing. It’s kind of like rhyme is reason.
Same thing is here. So we could do research strategy writing and experimentation. This is the conversion copy writing process and then you get to say what parts are in here. So if you’re like all I do when it comes to research is jobs and new lead surveys.
I don’t wanna do anything else, then make it your two things. And you can say How are you all for job surveys? When’s the last time you did a jobs to be done, or interviews? When’s the last time you did a a jobs interview?
Set. And they’re like, we’ve never done one. I’m like, cool. You’re right on that new lead surveys.
How are you for that? And you can go through and walk them through this. And by the end, they’re like, shit, you’ve got a process. You have some way of helping me understand what my problem is in a way that nobody else ever has and you drew it for me, which is also a really interesting thing that only a pro is going to do.
I now know that I’m red on five things. I’m green on one thing. So that’s cool. I can take that back to my team and say, oh, we don’t have to worry about this.
Y’all, here are the five things we have to worry about. And when I hire you to do this work, we can then go back and say, okay. How are we now on this? Do you think we’re still red on this?
Are we yellow yet? And so on and so forth? This make sense to everybody?
Yeah.
Alright. Any questions about it?
Probably not yet. What I want you to do is hop into making your own for the people that you want to convert. So again, this is coming down to what’s your red thread or your one thing, what do you do, and try to think about what one thing you wanna sell more than anything.
If it’s like I just want fifty thousand dollar projects that that are like focused on x. I don’t know what that thing is. Or you know what it is. In some cases, I know what it is from talking with you, but for the whole group and anybody watching the replay, I don’t know what it is.
You know what it is. Try to know. If you don’t know, try to know, you’re allowed to build your future. This is what we’re doing.
So just like document the thing that you most wanna sell. I wanna sell fifty thousand dollar engagements that last two months and do these three things with this outcome. Okay, fine. Once you know that, then you can start to say what your process is to get there.
Now, process might not be the right word if you hear a process and you go, I don’t think it’s my process, you’re probably right. There are different ways to go about this. I wanna show you the end what it could look like, how it works, and then it’s up to you to come up with what that diagnostic is, and it can mean thinking through past calls you’ve had with clients and what they’ve shared with you or what you know you’re always delivering what you’re best at. But you definitely wanna think about your one thing and the only thing that you ever wanna sell if possible.
Okay?
Are you good to give this a shot for the next twenty minutes?
Yeah.
Just try it and then we’ll come back and share challenges you had with it or whatever Alright? Twenty minutes on the clock. I’m gonna stop recording. Thanks, Sarah.
Abby, if because it went so quickly, you need to share what you made. Let’s see it.
Okay. Right. Can you see my screen?
Just about yes.
Yeah. Is it tiny? Let me zoom in.
How’s that?
Cool?
Alright. Yes. We can see it. So just to be clear, all four parts of this you can deliver on.
Yeah. Including lead quality.
Yes.
Okay. But we have all the, yeah, part. Is it someone on your team or is it you?
It’s me. So I’m thinking, like, I’m thinking about my course here, but the course is basic. It’s it’s just the DIY version of my done for you offer.
So with the lead quality, the I do Facebook teach Facebook ad testing and then also, like, using thank you paid responses to make sure that you’re, like, bringing in the right people or that the messaging is resonating with the right people. So, yeah. Okay.
Awesome. Okay. So you walk them through this, and did you try, like, try it out because you had all this extra time? Like, did you try kind of pretending that you were walking a lead or even a prospective student through this model.
Yeah. Well, I was thinking, like, is this like your IP? Or are we free to chair this?
Yeah. Yeah. Oh, no. The idea is that now you go forward in you use it to close people and then deliver.
Yeah. Because I’ve I’ve been, like, running into a problem recently with my course where like, I wanna shift away from, like, the, kinda make money every day messaging and more towards, like, for people who have already tried it and failed, so a more kind of advanced training.
And I think, like, having something like this actually in the webinar would help kind of widen the out so that they can identify, like, all the areas that are gonna be, like, limiting their conversion. So, yeah, so it was, oh, that’s cool. I like it.
Awesome. Yeah. It is a sales tool, and also a, a way of measuring success as you go. Like a sense of progress when most of the time the way we measure these things is like, well, did I?
Is it done or isn’t it? And did I get sales or didn’t I or whatever that like bigger goal is? It’s like, well, no, there’s components along the way. And if we can make those all green, then you’re more likely to get that end goal that you’re looking for.
So, yeah, definitely use it in sales of any kind, webinars sales calls, all of it. Cool. Any questions for any, for Abby from anybody?
No? Alright. Fun. Cool. I will talk more about how to integrate this into the process and like modifying modifying offers and things as as we go.
Anybody else wanna share or chat about what didn’t work? What you’re still working on. Keep in mind, I’ve been working on this for a long time. And, like, I still have tweaks that I’m making and like, full on changes, like mindset was its own thing for a while, then I was like, no, mindset is across all of these things. So, I put it in the middle.
Johnson?
Yeah. I was wondering, because some of the things that I were down I I don’t have a process or a system for, but I I think that areas that I could cover, later as the product is fleshed out, or full of service. What do you have any advice for is that should I try and focus on stuff that I can just do right now or do a separate one that’s what I can do right now and one that’s more sort of future based?
Can it stand well without those parts that you don’t currently do well? Like how feasible is it to cut those parts out and have it still work?
Yeah. Sure. I could probably just merge them to together and do it more generalized because I’m kinda breaking things down maybe a little too far. Yeah. I could do that.
Yeah. If you can pull it, then you’ve you’ll confidently know you can deliver everything showing there. Right? So you wanna be able to obviously have a strong position of confidence in every call that you’re taking any webinar you might be running where you do this kind of thing.
So cut out what you can’t deliver yet, and then maybe just only add it back in when you’ve got somebody in your back pocket who can do that thing for you or when you can do it. Mhmm. Yeah. Cool.
Yeah. Okay. Cool. And then just make sure that the story comes together. Again, most people who you’re going to be showing this to don’t have a better sense for what you’re talking about than you do So whatever you show them is true.
It’s it’s like it’s not necessarily going to open up a whole bunch of skepticism.
So if you leave something off knowing eventually you’re gonna add that thing on, then that’s cool. Right? Cause they’re not thinking way you got this wrong, Johnson, you forgot about this point. Like, they’re thinking like, cool, cool, cool, cool. I’m red on this. Oh, I’m red. Yeah.
So that’s actually super helpful. Yeah. And she’s just like both of these exercises, this one and last week’s one. I found useful, not just for the lows itself, but also in sort of thinking about the areas, that I might be using these things in the future, just the red thread stuff and for developing a new, idea. So, anyway, it’d be cool. Thank you, anyway.
Big it. Love it. That’s cool. Wicked it. Anybody else wanna chat? But what they did.
Can I just ask Joe? Like, do you recommend right?
Do you recommend, the whole drawing it live or having the design. Like, I mean, I love I was also doing it in Canva, like, So bringing it on, bringing it with us, ready to show them, or, doing it on the call.
It’s more engaging when you have something to watch. Right? So if it’s like if you just bring up a model, then I’m reading through it while you’re talking.
If you bring up a blank sheet and you draw it and then you write a word, I’m engaged. Like, I’m waiting for what’s next. Right? So, and that’s what we really want is not for them to jump ahead and think they got it but for you to control that whole flow and then you say and now let’s talk about what you’re red and green on and then you color in red, color it, show them that thing. It’s for me, a horrible penmanship.
Everything’s a mess. But that’s not really the point. Right? They’re watching. They’re not saying like, so why don’t you pay better attention in grade three?
They were teaching you how to like make it look good. They’re just like going with it. Right? And like all they’re interested in is what am I red on?
Oh, what am I green on? Thank god. I’m green, but they’re watching the whole way. So, yes, long story short.
I do recommend that you draw it.
And I also recommend that I didn’t wanna make this like part of today’s session, but find someone in the room here to try this out with where their your perspective client and you hop on a call and you say talk me through this and they’re just pretending. So just like do some role playing then they can do the same for you and you can like work out the kinks of actually presenting it live and new ways to draw it and think about it. Yeah.
Cool.
Cool. Fine.
Anybody else?
I can share mine.
Cool. Yeah.
So typically what I do, even if I don’t have a drawing for it, is I start by looking at the campaign, figuring out which, what keywords they’re targeting, what their campaign looks like, whether it’s on Google or LinkedIn or Facebook, etcetera. And then figuring out what they need to prioritize. So if that’s landing pages, that’s landing pages, it might be the website, the homepage, it might be, the ads, so figuring out exactly what they need to optimize.
Then going through sales calls, sometimes that means going through like g two or Kaptura reviews, and then usually tools.
Sometimes users are testing, but definitely hotjar and Google Analytics. Then figuring out what the best framework is to use.
I I think that defining the persona would also be part of this, although I’m not sure that’s something I would be part of. That’s something I wouldn’t ask them about, because of that would determine, like, is this Are they targeting mid market? Are they targeting enterprise? Are they targeting medium businesses? And within those three categories, which, level of seniority.
But I guess that would fall under research, then actually writing, then usability testing meaning, like, validating the the copy and then finally AB testing.
Cool. It looks great. The only thing I would say is, there are some things on here that are big, like underwriting, you’ve got all those assets. And so if if it’s hard for them to identify what red, yellow, or green, then that’s kind of tricky. So what can you do here even if it comes down to combining strategy and research into one like thinking upfront, right? Like thinking or planning or something like that.
I would just encourage you to break up writing more.
So that because I might look at this and go like, okay. While I suck on CRO prioritization, I’m red on that. I’m green on tools. I’m green on VOC.
I’m probably wrong about being green on VOC, but I say that. Analytics. I don’t know. I have no idea.
Like, why don’t think about it that way? Maybe. Right? So I’m yellow there.
Writing. Well, I have a bunch of those. Let’s call it green.
And that’s the problem. Like, they they might have a bunch of things and think that’s okay.
It just that’s the only thing that stood out to me. That assets little piece of the pie is containing a lot. Can do something to open it up?
Well, the idea being that if they’re, like, the the asset that they would need would depend on what they’re prioritizing. So if their landing pages are leaking leads, then it would be landing pages. If they’re not driving off traffic at the top of the funnel, then it would be ads, And if their maybe their ads are not getting clicked on, then maybe it would be even higher. It would be more like brand awareness, social organic. Kind of work. That’s why I lumped them together.
That’s cool. And then I wonder though, then if you’re really To me, I’m envisioning a sort of triangle now. That’s more like leads or attract.
Convert and, like, retain or refer or revenue or something else. And then you could get into might be strategy in the I don’t know, but to me it feels like yeah. There’s something there, and I think what you’re saying is right. It might just need a different I don’t know. A different shape. Yeah.
I could do that. Because usually the question is, well, where are we leaking weeds or why aren’t we getting enough leaves? Why is our pipeline a mess?
Yeah. Great.
And the question is like, well, how do we figure that out? Because that’s not an easy question to answer.
Not. Not. But if you would dedicate a whole side of a triangle or whatever that final shape is, I don’t know, to leads then you can talk honestly about, like, okay, leads are red, but once we get them to convert them, we’re green on version and then we’re sucky on experimentation or whatever that other part is.
Yeah.
Okay. Yeah. That makes more sense.
Okay. Cool. Love it. That’s great.
Thanks Naomi. Anybody else wanna share or talk or share anything about what they just saw?
Can I share something?
Abby were you commenting?
Or I was just saying that it looked really nice.
Like, it looked it looked very, like, Yeah. Sounds good. Good job. Awesome.
Totally. Stacy, please go ahead.
I I have one that I wanna share that I didn’t do on the call today, but I did in the past. Okay. I just wanna share it because I want somebody to appreciate it.
Nice. It’s messy. Okay. It’s a scorecard.
It’s a scorecard, but the the thing the under and and I love the idea of using in this in a sales call, although everything I do in my universe is structured to avoid me ever have get on a call with anyone.
Okay.
So I set up my three things. I I created the ABCs of superior content, which are audio brand and craft. So those are the three things. And the audience part will, you know, that would involve the voice of customer and interviews, etcetera, understanding the audience, then brand has to do with brand voice, personality, and then Craft is the actual writing of content, which would be combining journalistic writing persuasions, storytelling with subject matter expertise.
So I go through and and and ask them six questions in each of in each of these three areas. So there’s eighteen questions altogether, and then it gives the gives the results in a scorecard and then I use score app, which is a good lead gen processing sort of follow-up thing. Yeah. So I just wanted share because because I’m proud of my scorecard.
That’s cool. I love it, and the ABC is a really nice thing to remember, obviously.
And it could go really nicely in a triangle and you could clearly, like, diagnose how am I on audience, how am I on brands, I don’t remember what the third one was. Sorry. And now it’s Craft. Craft.
That’s the actual writing. Yeah. And it does display. It displays it in that targeted, you know, thing where it scores them on each of the three areas in the in the report that it generates.
Nice. That’s cool. That’s great. Yeah. Even if they, like, diagnosed themselves and then went through the score.
Anyways, it’s cool. It’s cool. Yeah. Love it.
Cool. Anybody else?
We’re good. Okay. Work this out. I do recommend that you like start making it part of your process, you’ll be surprised at how engaging it is for people when they see it drawn out.
You’re talking through and asking them questions, especially if in sales calls, you struggle to like know what to say next. This is like a really clear way to look like you’re a freaking pro and have done this a million even if it’s like your first time doing it live. Just practice with other people in the room. If you don’t have anybody to practice with yet, chances are good.
Someone else doesn’t have anybody to practice with yet too. So, feel free to just chat right now and say, hey, does anybody wanna role play this with me?
And if not, go over in Slack and do it there too, and we’ll we’ll see what happens.
Cool.
Anybody have questions? We’ve got thirty minutes ish left. If you have to go, cool, respect your time. If you have questions to ground, Katie, do you have one?
Yeah. So I’m can you just speak a bit more to, like so we’ve established where they’re red and where they’re yellow and where they’re green?
Am I aiming to then put to, like, can you, take it into the pitch? So, like, am I aiming to put together one proposal that covers, like, first, we’re gonna address the red, and then we’re gonna talk about the yellow, or how do I go into turning that into an offer?
Exactly. Yes. So I think there’s lots of ways you can do it. Right? So whatever is triggering for you, like in your imagination, roll with that but the really yeah the thing that you wanna walk away with is now it’s not just, hey, I need a sales page, but it’s also, hey, I need to get better at this, this, this, and this.
Your project now got bigger. You’re also a consultant. That’s more strategic. Right? So you walk away from there going Here are the four things we need to work on before we even work on writing your sales page.
Let me take this away, put together, some ideas for you. You send me x, y, and z document that I need. So you said you’re strong on research. Send me some so I can look at it. And then we’re gonna hop on a call, and I’ll walk you through my plan for how we can hit all of these things you read on in x period of time that you’ve told me you want this off like the thing that’s in the center of it, the five hundred paid conversions added a month or whatever.
We wanna get there in three months time. But we have to make these red things all green. We’ve agreed on that. You agree that you’re red on these things. So now we’re gonna go forward. I’ll put the other and I’m gonna come back and talk you through that plan. That’s a really, like, clear way for you to now go off and run a project.
Does that make sense? Like here’s my project now and it’s informed not just by what you said you think you need but what I have diagnosed you as really needing.
Yeah. I mean, I see this is super useful because I think I mentioned on our last the last call that I made it to live, like, I just feel like my project ideas are always really big, and I struggle to break them down into components. So this feels really helpful for that.
I guess what I’m taking away from what you’ve just said is like it would be helpful for me to have a sense of the hierarchy of the lights for for lack of better words so that I know, like, if that’s red, obviously, we’re gonna do this first and, and, like, turning that then into a proposal?
Yeah. And it’s sort of a process. So I said the word process, but I know sometimes it won’t feel like a process. So if you’re like, but it’s not a process. Okay. Don’t make it a process. But to me, it is.
To me, it’s like, okay, if it’s list offer that’s an order in which things go. Right? The conversion copywriting process has parts to it.
And so that should also lead to a sort of hierarchy, right, where you’re like, well, we can do everything we want with copy. But if your list is a mess or the people coming to it or wrong. If you’re red on that, no. So we clearly have to solve the the left part of the triangle first, whatever that’s called. I don’t geometry.
But we solve that over there. We solve list.
Then once we’re red once we’re green on those things, then we’ll talk about off for that list. Okay? And then we’ll talk about copies. You can start to see a gantt chart forming of how that project could go.
Like we’re gonna nail list I can’t come up with that live on a call. That’s not your job to come up with it live on a call. Right? You’re like, I’m I’m gonna go away and think about this for you.
You come up with the things you’re gonna do for improved list quality and quantity in x period of time.
Put that on the gantt chart here. What’s we’re gonna do in week one, week two, week three. Then week three, we’re also gonna start working on offer and and week six will be ready to work on copies. Now, you have like this project mapped out.
You’ve also got a built in way to go back and optimize things, right? So you can say we got through list offer copy, the parts of the triangle, red turn to yellow on these things and yellow turn to green, but now let’s go back and do more to further optimize it. So you have the initial project, as well as a map in effect or a retainer to optimize for performance. Does that make sense, Katie, or is that too much?
It makes sense.
I feel like I’m gonna have to revisit my, like, the categories that I’ve throat to make sure that they have a clear Okay.
Flow from one to the next. Okay. Yeah. And know I was just thinking like, well, what if they’re like, well, I don’t wanna work on that first. I wanna work on, like, I don’t I don’t wanna work on my I just wanna work on my sales page or something. I guess then it’s a question of like, do you wanna work with them?
I would say that’s the question and then. If you know list is actually red and they’re like, I don’t care, write the copy.
That’s not what I do. I can the copy will never convert if your list is garbage. Sorry. We gotta nail that and that’s where you have to be able to work on list.
In this case, right? You have to say like, no. I’m gonna nail this for you, then you’re gonna have you might not even need to work on the copy. It might just be a list look.
We’re green across the board on coffee.
So but that’s yeah. You you’re not just diagnosing what they need but are they a good fit for you to work with? They should walk away from this going. Holy shit, Katie.
No one’s ever shown it to us this way. That was great. How do we start nailing through like I had no idea that’s how this worked. That’s like the objective.
And if they don’t do that, they’re probably gonna be pretty tough to work with.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah. Okay. I know it’s easy for me to say. Like, push away these people who don’t wanna do the first part of the process, but we all already know you. They’re not gonna be a good fit. Yeah.
Stacy, I know you have an AMA and then Abby.
So, my my question is about a project that I’m currently working on. I just did, message frameworks for this client often I work with enterprise companies. So I’m sort of a step removed from being able to get into benchmarking and AB testing and things like that because it’s also siloed off in big companies. In this particular instance, it’s a smaller company. They’re like a twenty million company, and my messaging framework meeting was with the whole c suite of, you know, so I had all four c level people.
So now we’re moving into actually doing a wireframe for the home page. And I’m working with that mostly with the CMO.
So they want to do an AB test against their current homepage with what I create. And so since I’m not used to sort of benchmarking before a project, I wanted to get some feedback on what I might be able to do as far as what what to ask for to establish some ben benchmarks and test against and any any tips about you know, that process because I know you do a lot having to do with the, with data, and it’s just something that I’m usually a step removed from.
Sure. So they are split testing though. Right?
They’re using Yes.
Optimizely or a tool like that.
They well, they they want AB test I haven’t talked to them about the mechanics of how they’re doing it, but I do know they want to split test, driving traffic and, you know, testing their current homepage against a new homepage that I’m writing the copy for.
Right. So understanding how the control is performing is Good. They should be telling you that, right? And then they’ll tell you the, metrics when they tell. Like, here’s here are the KPIs for this page.
It’s a homepage. So it’s likely you’ll need to document things like, amount of traffic coming to it, traffic sources, coming to it as well. If they’re using it as a landing page for Facebook ads and other things like that, It’s a problem. Right? Like, because the test at that point becomes less about a scientific test and more about like a game, where you’ve got traffic coming from weird sources that could have been brought in by any number of ads, etcetera. And they’re landing on this page. They’re so different.
That it’s almost like there are too many variables. I know it’s all in the variable of audience, but it’s so uncontrolled.
That your test is just going to feel fake. So understand where traffic is coming from. Try to get them on board with narrowing it down to their ideal audience. And I know that means organic traffic you can’t do anything about either, but people who are searching and landing on your homepage are likely not look you lose when we’re talking about business. This is SAS. This is a software company?
Or It’s, it is tech.
Yes. It’s it’s tech. So no Because it’s a CDN. It’s a it’s enterprise CDN.
Okay. Cool.
Good. So we can imagine that organic traffic that lands there. Is there by design in some way? So cool. What’s the traffic like that’s coming to it? How are they converting right now? So you need quantity of traffic than like a understanding a qualitative understanding of quality of traffic.
And then you need to know what that existing conversion rate is and what conversion rate means for them is likely going to be clicks. If it’s on the homepage, it’s probably clicks. The question is clicks to where?
We wanna drive sign ups to a a trial sign up for a free account.
Can they sign up for the free account from that page, or do they get driven to another page?
They can sign up on the homepage currently. And they, and and it’s not very focused and it can be much better than it is now.
Okay.
In other words, the homepage is not driving sign ups, and I think it could drive sign ups much more than it does.
Okay. Is there an email address field on the homepage?
That’s like start your trial?
Yes. There is.
Yes. There is. Oh, that’s an existing thing. Cool. You can optimize that. That’s great. So that would be probably number one.
It sounds like your number one goal is trial starts.
Trial starts. Yes.
Okay. So you need to document, know the the control and how it’s doing on trial start but also optimizely, we’ll know that too.
So you don’t you don’t have to write anything down if they’re using the right tool and if you’re all aligned on, what the objective is, like what, how are you going to measure it in a testing platform? You can set up multiple goals, and that’s trickiest part. You don’t want to set up too many goals. Home pages are hard though because things like bounce are gonna be an actual consideration on a homepage.
Try to keep them on task with What is the number one thing that this page is solving for? From a business perspective, why does the business invest money in this homepage. Why is this test a priority right now? And if it is, we wanna get trial starts as soon as they land there, then throw every other way of measuring the page out the door.
Don’t worry about bounce rate. We have to try scary things and some people are gonna bounce. And maybe they won’t. Maybe it’ll hold more people.
We’re not gonna worry about that. All we’re worried about is trial starts. So how does optimizely or whatever tool they use measure trial starts. What can you do in the tool?
Is it just like once they’ve clicked this button successfully or once they’ve landed on the next page is a common way to do that test. Are they landing on a confirmation page for like your trial is now started or landing an app? Which can also be tricky because there’s lots of different ways to land in at from a home page oftentimes. Point being, trial starts is what matters.
So document that Nothing else really matters if that’s your goal. There’s so many things to measure on a homepage. Try to control how much they’re thinking about. Does that help, Stacy?
Yes. Yes. That helps very much. And I will be re re listening to this recording to make sure I get all of that. Okay. Thank you.
DLDR is like trial starts is all that you’re gonna focus them on. Yeah. Cool.
Hey. Yeah. So I have kind of it’s like a mindset strategy question. I’m gonna try and articulate it as best as I can.
So I’m looking at, like, the prioritization matrix, and I’m trying to kind of, like, find my high reward low friction task and, like, the twenty percent of my efforts that generate eighty percent of, like, the revenue. And the things the thing that, like, does the most of me at is podcast, but then like, so speaking on the podcast, it’s it’s my kind of, like, high reward low friction, but then it’s, like, getting on the podcast, then it becomes kind of, like, the question of, like, likelihood of success as well, because it’s like a podcast could potentially be high reward, but then it’s like, I gonna even get on it? Like, how do I get on it? And it’s kind of like so how do you, like, balance thinking about those things, like, the how the how to get to the, like, high reward thing, like, in terms of is that did I yeah.
Yeah. I think so.
It means to me it sounds like it’s, like, of, like, leverage.
The first thing that comes to mind is, like, okay, who is trying to book you on there? Do you have a VA or assistant of some kind pitching for you.
I have a VA that, like, makes a list and that I pitch them.
Can you train the VA to pitch?
I I can. The reason I haven’t is because I posted in, like, the Slack about and, having, like, whether to have my B. I pitch, and then Christie said she wouldn’t even, like, look at, like, a podcast application if it was wasn’t sent by the person.
So that kind of Oh, no.
The video is pretending to be you.
Oh, okay. Yeah. Okay.
Yeah. They’re just they’re signed it. They’re sending from your email address a hundred percent. And it’s just like, hey, Abby here. Just a template that they then know how to modify because you’ve taught them. You took an hour to teach them how to do this thing well for you. And steal it from your email address, and that’s it.
Mhmm.
So it’s like thinking about, like, how to automate kind of the steps to the high reward stuff or, like, outsource, minimize friction.
Do you have an SOP for it that your VA can then be trained on? And then when you do, if getting on podcasts is a huge high value win for you, but it’s it’s a slog to get there. It’s a it’s a quantity game a lot of the time. Like how much as you put out there.
Then yeah, outsource that. Send that off. That’s a great thing for your VA to do. It doesn’t take specialized skills.
Not if they have your training, yeah, to do it. So I get the VA on it, but yeah, send from your email address or something that’s a good fake of your email address.
Like AP at instead of Abby at or whatever.
Mhmm.
Cool. Yeah. That makes so much sense. You make it sound so obvious. Of course.
Thank you.
No. No worries. Awesome. Anna.
Hey. I just had a question about the ebook I’m writing right now.
Love it.
So, I think I know the answer to this, but I wanna just confirm. It is fair game to quote any studies that are publicly out there. Right?
What about, like, screenshots of that’s because it’s on pricing page. So can I can I use screenshots or pricing pages that are out there in public right now? Or do I have to, like, seek permission?
Or I think Jessica wants to answer this.
I’m watching your face, Jessica. Oh, no.
I thought you did for, like, the folks that No.
I just I just wanna make sure everybody knows I’m engaged. I don’t Oh, yes. I do know the answer.
You guys publishing for us. So I thought like, oh, you probably have a good take on this.
Yeah.
Yeah. So in my experience, it’s what are you copying or screenshotting and is it proprietary?
So there are some cases where you’re not allowed to use an image without paying a fee for it.
But you usually know those things. Right? A screenshot of someone’s website is it’s a public thing as long as you cite, and I would recommend citing everything about it that it’s copyrighted by X company. The screenshot was taken on this date.
And that’s that’s cool. Then you can do that. It can also be actually a pretty useful way to start promoting your book when the time comes. When you’re like, Hey, I used your page as a great example in my book. It’s coming out. Do you wanna copy of it?
That kind of thing. Right? And then they might say like, oh, I didn’t realize people were just using screenshots of our website. What? And you might be like, oh, fuck.
But, that’s just the conversation that you have at that point, but it doesn’t have to be weird. I no one’s ever run any quotes that, like, when Ann Handley put me in her book, I didn’t find out till someone was like, Joe, you’re in Ann’s book. And same for product led growth. Nobody told me this was gonna happen.
But I would just ended up in there. And I wasn’t like, damn you, Ann. I was like send flowers to Ann. So it’s it’s it’s I wouldn’t worry about it just do what you can to cite where it came from. And wherever possible, only take screenshots of things where you’re gonna tell a good story about it. If it’s, like, a bad thing, mock up a version of it and just remove anything.
Actually, that was gonna be my my next question. So if I just mock up and make a random, like, I could take it a pricing page and and then play around with it on Photoshop and change it up completely. Just to use the bad example.
That’s obviously fine. Right? Because no one’s gonna know where it came from or yeah.
Yeah. And then the reader also likes you a little more. Right? You’re like, look, these are some bad things I’ve seen.
I’m not gonna call anybody out. Everybody means while you, the reader, you mean well. But here’s what are what people are doing wrong. And then you can show, like, mock ups, but not the thing.
Yeah.
Awesome.
Last question.
Does it matter how long the ebook is? So I I I thought I would wrap something up in, like, thirty pages.
Okay.
But it’s it looks like it’s gonna get to, like, seventy pages.
And I’m wondering, like, are people gonna read that or Who is your target?
K. Good question.
So c level execs that will Yeah. Because the whole idea is to build authority and and show that this is a comprehensive thing.
On pricing pages. Right? So someone who gets a hold of it, the impression I want them to get is like, oh, didn’t know there was so much to talk about when it came to Verizon pages. It seems like this person knows this thing.
A hundred percent. Yes. So I just chatted over the title of a book called write useful books, go read it through your kindle, read it right away.
It’s great, but it will make you identify who your target audience is and things like referral referrals that are built into their heads. So it’s gonna be really useful.
Read right useful books as you’re doing this.
Think about that target audience and think about where they’re reading it. I think I’ve talked about this before with April.
With obviously awesome. She was gonna get it traditionally published.
Sorry if I’m repeating it, but it’s really good advice. The traditional publisher was it needs to be sixty thousand words and she’s like, no, I can’t. And the reason was for her was, but I travel on planes and I read books on planes, like that’s when a lot of sea levels in their careers hop on. That’s when they that’s when they read books.
So if that’s the case, then how long is the average flight that a sea level is going to able to read your book. Three or four hours. So you have to make it start to finish in three to four hours, which is like I think it’s something like thirty thousand words at most, knowing that they’re just skimming a lot of it and just like rolling through it.
But, yeah, thirty thousand words, I think is what came out as like the ideal length for a c level to read a book.
Thousand words. Okay. I’ll keep that in mind.
Yeah. Cool. Awesome. Thanks.
And of course, we have love screenshots in there.
It’s gonna go a lot faster. It doesn’t mean you have to take up the whole flight though. Like, if they’re able to finish the book and start writing the email to you that’s like, loved your book, let’s talk. That’s a good thing.
Right? If they can get all that work done on the plane and then walk off and go. Awesome. What’s next?
You know?
Yeah. Got it.
Awesome. Love it. Read write useful books.
Okay. Anybody else?
I do have a couple like brainstorm questions. They’re very low. Like, you probably be like really are you asking me this, but I just wanted to get brain power because we have a lot of that in the room if that’s okay.
Yeah. We do. Yeah. We got eight minutes still. Let’s go.
Okay. I’m trying to think of which one Alright. I’ll go with the second question because I have a feeling your mindset has changed around this a little bit. So I kind of Soft launched my new newsletter called the holiday win and So what I’m wondering is you used to do a lot of free stuff to grow your list, but you’ve recently made comments about not doing that in the books and that. So I’m just wondering how are we feeling about that right now? Any suggestions?
About free content? To grow your email list. Yes.
Right. I mean, our free content’s just different now. Our free content that grows our email list is on Instagram, and with like many chat and boards. Right? That’s really it.
But still, they’re still free. It’s just it’s just different.
I know the the name makes me wanna watch a Hallmark movie though to be very clear.
No. The goal was to rip it off of the old movie.
So that’s Oh, cool.
That’s awesome. Good. Yeah.
Yeah. But give a give it away in your newsletter. The good thing of are you using Substack?
No. So you mentioned something about Substack and then I had to do research on what was the latest drama and then I was like dang it. So do I grow it on there or not?
Feels a little problematic.
Yeah. No. We’ve stopped using Substack too. Yeah.
But I thought if you were okay with it, No.
I saw the research or I looked it up after you mentioned it. You’re ruined my email strategy, Joe. Alright.
We’re ruined mine too.
So the so whatever alternative comes out for sub stack, that doesn’t allow Nazis to be the Nazis on there.
Is, hopefully the next thing to use then just because you can charge for your archives. And if you have good shit you’re giving out, you should be charging for the archive.
So that’s that. But your goal is to grow your list. And if your goal is to grow your list with quality leads, then free is obviously is the is the way to go. It’ll get more people on.
It’s just a question of how quality are those are those leads. But a lot of them are quality just because they’re looking for free out of the gate doesn’t mean they’re ever going to be looking for free. Just wanna make sure you’re not full of crap. Right?
So let’s try you for free and then pay you later.
Yeah. That’s my take. Does anybody else have thoughts on this?
Do you give stuff away free to grow your list? Any tips?
No one wants to talk about it.
I no. I mean, I already have any advice it’s an interesting question, but I I don’t know. I think, I think about the content itself being, yeah, engaging and teaching something. Maybe it’s just a hint of something and you’re not giving anything away. I mean, I’m thinking of the the email the the the the people I’ve subscribed to who I read. And it’s it’s supposed to be people who are into entertaining first.
Maybe, yeah, actually first. And then secondly, teach me stuff. Yeah. Yeah.
James Claire is three two one method, work really well, and there’s another copywriter who somehow I got on this list.
He does three two one for copywriting.
Three examples to something and then one tip or something like that. And it’s a good read.
So, I don’t know, food for thought as you think of the format as well for your newsletter.
Cool. Naomi.
So I want to get more into Go ahead podcast.
And so I was building a list of, podcasts that I thought were relevant And somebody mentioned to me that you that I could probably write a script and just outsource that, have somebody put that together and send an email to all those people. But I was I thought that would be too impersonal that they get a lot of they got a lot of mail looking for guests and that it would make a lot more sense to do it. Like, actually listening to the podcast and mentioning something relevant, So I was wondering what you thought about that. Is that something?
Yeah. Did you hop off for a bit on this call already?
Yeah. I had two during my meeting for the ending.
And then you hop back up. So Abby actually asked the same question, and it was about podcast pitching, how to make it personal, And so, really quick and it’s in the replay if you want more detail, but it really is, documents like a template.
For outreach to these podcasts, and then, teach your VA or somebody that is inexpensive to send these pitch emails from your email address. So it looks like it’s from Naomi. It’s written in the first person. Hi, etcetera.
And they all do the research too. So the VA listens to the podcast or reads the reviews or whatever the whatever the thing is that teach the VA to do and then they have a goal that you give them of like five pitches a day or whatever that goal is that you need for them to to get your name out there. But yeah, it’s an SOP. This is the leverage part of the big sunshine growth model. Of have that SOP with templates associated with it, and then teach a VA to do it. And just make it look personal by personalizing and sending it from naomi at.
Okay.
Great. Awesome. Thanks. Is there another question there?
Are we good? I have one more question. Sorry. It’s another brainstorm one. Okay. So I did do the the win is a hundred million offers.
I flushed out the whole seasonal sale holiday offer thing. So Next the sales page, right? So and now this. So my only thought is I really need to get more people see like going through this process so I can finesse it and I’m getting still a lot of email and I know a lot of that is authority related but to get some quicker like and I get a few seasonal sales and no door.
Yeah. Any suggestions about more of a fast approach to that part?
Like, you’re just trying to get people to test this out on?
Essentially.
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think it’s like you said on really no dollar offers. It’s formosa kind of solution here, I would do what he has said to do in that case. Do you have a system?
If you have system, then you post on LinkedIn and say, hey, I’m looking for five companies that meet this criteria to run through my system on the next holiday for free in exchange for me being able to daw to tell the world about this and to take examples away from it. That’s a third thing to do. But just make sure you have it as like system so that you’re not guessing your way through their holiday emails for free.
Yeah. Okay. Perfect. Thank you. I’ll do that.
Okay. Fine. Alright. Well, we’re at the end of our time. Thanks, everyone, for your great questions. Nobody shared a win, but I wasn’t gonna harp on that too much. It’s pretty mean about it.
My win is being in CSV. That is a win.
Okay. Awesome. The replay will be available later. Thanks y’all, and we will be following up more on this diagnostic tool as we chat more.
Okay? Okay. Thanks, though. Have a good one. Bye.
MTT Ladder-Prep Framework
Value Ladder Framework (MTT)
Transcript
So today’s topic is around value ladders. And like my favorite topics for these weekly sessions, it is something you can use for your business. And also for your clients.
So, something to really consider.
But we’re gonna dive in This is recording. So the replay, of course, will be available. If you can come on camera, please do so. Just so everybody can see you, feel connected, etcetera.
Okay. So today we’re we’re talking about something that is based on the value ladder. Now, most people are familiar with the value ladder, but it’s okay not to be. So I’m just gonna really briefly discuss the value ladder.
If you want to add anything more to it, to my really brief intro to it, then feel free to. This is a medium post on the value ladder. Click funnels is a really big advocate of the value ladder. Hold on.
I just wanna make sure that my audio is okay.
Good. Okay. Good. So the value ladder is really just a way to keep people coming back for that neck level of value from your organization, which usually translates into money.
And that can mean different things for different businesses. So value ladders are really common in, you know, training businesses, online, like courses, mastermind, stuff like that, and mastermind is at the top of those value ladders, but they can also be used for other things.
Ecommerce can do this to add incredible value to their customer base. If you, I’ve mentioned the book Super Consumers before, It’s a really great study overall in the whole idea of a value ladder for e commerce, really, and how to get people all over the place, to, to keep coming back and buying from you, not just buying more sweaters from your e commerce shop. But more of, like, let’s take you to the next tier of being an engaged shopper and admirer advocate of fan of our brand. So, although it can feel like a value ladder is all about let’s just, you know, get more money out of your existing customer base, sell them more expensive stuff.
That’s not necessarily what it’s about. Some people I think, like, click funnels might know if that’s to click funnels a little bit might often, you know, put out this narrative that can make it feel that way, but it really is how much, like, what do you wanna what how do you wanna use this? SAS can use this for upgrading people through it if you think of something like Stripe, which could move a business owner through a value ladder and a developer a different value ladder, bringing them further into this world of loving strike. That’s what we’re really trying to do with the value ladder.
Give more value. You charge more for it, of course. But those people who really want more, are ready for it. Now, one of the tricky things is, and what we’re gonna be talking about today is how do you prepare people for that value ladder.
How do you get your customers to even know about this stuff? I know copy hackers has struggled with this a bit over the years. Abby, I think you mentioned that at some point, you said you found copy hackers through, like, social media. You found one course and then you didn’t even know the other courses existed or something like that.
And I think that’s like, it happens. It happens to all of us. We at Copy Acres didn’t have an intentional value ladder for a very long time, much to the dismay of our ad agency. It was like you need a value ladder because ads are too expensive.
So it but it can tough. Right? Like, how do you share out your value ladder with people before they’re actually maybe even ready for the thing on that ladder. When you have the tripwire, which is usually the bottom of this value ladder, and you wanna get them into the seven dollar ebook or and then up to the ninety nine dollar a month community all the way up to the top tier, your mastermind or whatever that might be, how do you let them know that something’s coming next that they should be prepared for? And that can be a valuable thing to do. So that’s what we’re talking about today.
This ladder prep idea. It’s kind of ladder hype to get people hyped for what’s next, but hype sounds so hypey it doesn’t have to be. It’s really just like seeding, the idea that there is going to become a moment. There’s going to come a moment when you’re going to want more from us. Here’s when that moment is, and here’s what you can expect to do in that moment. So if you’re already familiar with this sort of approach, well done.
And if you’re not cool, we’re gonna walk through it. Now, this is meant for your confirmation page. If you’re going script a video, oftentimes for a confirmation page, or just the copy on the confirmation page. If, like, there’s not a video or even if there is a video, and also email copy again when someone has just become a customer of some form.
So they’ve downloaded your lead magnet or they’ve gone through different part of the value ladder, you know as the marketer, Hey, we’ve got this next thing in store for you. And this is the moment at which because it’s a seduce a seducible moment, this is a great moment to start seeding what comes next and how to know when the time comes to go to that next thing. So the value ladder is off to the left here. The m t t framework goes match.
Trigger teas. Okay? Trigger and teas can be interchanged. Sometimes you teas and then you tell them what the trigger is, Sometimes you tell them what the trigger is and then you tease that next thing. But let me walk you through this. So this is the value ladder kinda going in reverse starting with the cheapest thing here, and then we’re moving all the way up to the more expensive thing. This is based on a value ladder that Paul on our team just went through for, Evergreen webinar funnel training.
So I’m just taking exactly what, that layout was, like the value ladder for them. This have made up. But we can imagine how this might go. Right?
So we start with the free thing, the lead magnet. You wanna write this for your own value ladder or for your client’s value ladder, and this could keep going. Right? This is just an example.
It could go down seven rows or whatever. However, many items there are in that value ladder. So we start with this zero dollar thing just to get their email address. Then, of course, there’s a tripwire.
It’s usually called a tripwire. If that’s unfamiliar language, it’s the cheap thing.
Then comes a starter product or service. And then some intermediate or even sometimes this is the top tier. This is where it ends. It doesn’t have to end here, but it might. Right? So this is the basic value ladder.
Cool. What do you do with that? Not everybody needs to move up the value ladder. Some people are ready to jump the top of it, but we’re just trying to solve for how do we get people to start thinking about the next thing they should buy from us.
Not Ken. But should. We’re going to tell them that should moment. This is the moment at which you should be switching over to whatever that other thing is.
So we write this out. First, we match. So when they download the thing, when they just downloaded the lead magnet, then we match on the confirmation page and or on the confirmation email where we’re sending them the thing. Hey, you’ve just snagged a free copy of the No pitch webinar template we’ve used for some of our highest converting webinars.
Cool. We’re matching exactly where they are, staying enthusiastic with them. It’s a good moment. You’ve done a good thing.
This is fantastic. And then we want to trigger, in some cases, t’s, but usually it’s easiest to just start with the trigger, which is telling them what that trigger moment is going to be in their lives that will be a signal to them that it’s time to think of what’s next. So, hey, you’ve just done this thing. Cool.
Awesome. You’re great. Once you’ve filled in that template and used it just once, you’ll be ready for the next step in generating six or even seven figures with your webinar. This is the trigger.
Once you have filled in that template and used it just once. I know as a user that I have or have not done that thing, if I never fill in that template, I’m not really gonna be a good fit, unless I’m so ready that I’ll go around and look and start emailing you to say like, hey, how do I just get into your training?
And then comes the tease. That next step will be our thirty minute workshop. That’s this thing on how to run a webinar that is sure. Oops, sorry typo, to convert even if it’s second webinar ever.
But for now, and then you go back and tell them what to do now, head on into that template, use it, and then I’ll hear from you after you’re done with it. Or then you can send me an email when you’re all done, whatever call to action you might wanna do if you wanna do one. That’s really it. This tease is for the next thing in the value ladder.
So every time we see that tease, it’ll be for what’s coming up. And if there is nothing else coming up, then there is this for the final one, you just leave these two blank. So again, tripwire is, hey, so cool. You’re in our workshop on how to run a webinar that converts.
Fantastic for businesses like yours because it does all these great cool things that you already thought it was gonna do. We’re just matching that. Now we’re reversing it a bit for the teas and trigger. And said, we’re saying, and if you’re anything like me, you’re so pumped about this workshop that you’re already thinking about what’s next.
So we’re teasing something’s going to come next. And I will tell you all about that, but the trigger before you can unlock the incredible next stage, here is what needs to happen first. You need to see the slide. This is just a fascination that looks like this.
And then you, like, show them the slide. Some it’s a fascination. Right? It’s something for them to watch for.
When they’re actually going through it. That’s when you’ll know you’re ready. But for now, just focus on attending, putting this into your calendar or whatever that calls might be. Is this making sense?
Can you see how this works?
Can you see the value in seeding that next step? Or customers. Does that make sense?
Cool. Alright. So this is what you’ll do. You don’t have to do it today. It’s not like a thing we need to do But it is something that you should do if you are thinking about your value ladder for yourself or if you have clients who come to you and either speak the language of we have a value ladder, how do we move people through it, or they’re doing ads of any kind.
If they’re spending money on They probably have some top tier or higher tier thing to get people into. They might not come to you and say, like, Hey, let’s do something to walk people through our value ladder, but they come to you and go like, we’re spending so much money on ads. How do we get people to convert and how do we get our new our existing customers to do more with us. Right?
We’re sending emails and it’s like they don’t even know whatever, whatever, whatever. But they’re coming to you with revenue challenges, and they find that they’re also spending money upfront to acquire leads and retargeting to try to get those customers back. A really easy win is hey, I’m gonna script some confirmation page videos for you. I think you can hop on your phone with these scripts and report them.
Cool. We’ll do some emails as well. And then you’re already moving them along a path of being able to open especially if they have a sales team of any kind being able to open up those conversations with people without having to do, like, an excessive amount of work or even old work around opening conversations.
Okay. So that is the long and the short of it. Any questions? Anybody?
Do you feel like you could use this?
Yeah, I feel like it’s what I’ve been needing because, like, I think I shared my problem last week where I’ve got my five hundred dollar course and then nothing really happens after that.
I guess my kind of my thought is that, so in my course, I I teach the copywriting, the conversion piece. But I don’t I don’t teach how to, like, drive traffic to so kind of thinking about your lesson from last week as well with the quadrant. So that’s kind of in order to get them to, like, six figures, seven figures, the point where they could afford to hire me.
That bit needs solving. I I’ve never wanted to solve that piece because it doesn’t excite me or interest me, and it’s not what I’m an expert in.
But I feel like for the value center letter to work, I need do I need to solve that? Would that be a case of bringing someone in to teach it or any thoughts?
In I mean, in this case, it’s like how how important is the traffic part to your process. If it is important then That it’s not important to my process, but it is for them to get the results.
Right? Because even if their conversion rates are there, they’re not getting people in.
If they’re not getting people into their evergreen funnel.
Yeah.
To me, I mean, it feels like, oof, overkill, but I think I’d be lying to you if I said if it’s important to your process, you don’t need to of course, it is.
If it’s if it’s not your process, but in order to get people in, they’re never able to do anything. It’s like, but at the same time, you can consult on that. Just like in conversion rate optimization. Someone brings a CRO agency in and says, Hey, we need this funnel to convert better or this journey or whatever.
The CRO agency is only there to worry about that funnel. Then the company has to go, oh, crap. We need to get more trapped. In here because we can’t run a test with five people coming through this every day.
So I would consider for you, although it is an important input doesn’t have to be part of your process.
And then just cut it out if it doesn’t have to be. If it has to be, then I would say, yes. You have to find a way to solve those traffic challenges, which could just be having a really great VA that you can reach out to when you need to, who’s good at basic ads and, and, like, demand generation stuff.
I know that’s not great, but either find a way to pull it out of your process or, yeah, you’re right. You have to solve that problem.
Yeah. Okay. Thanks, Jared.
Yeah. What do you think about that?
Yeah. I mean, it was kinda like, I like my course as it is, and I don’t wanna change it, but it is, yeah, I mean, I do is a problem that used to be solved. And it’s also, like, in my kind of why didn’t you buy emails. It’s it’s been coming up that people are like, I don’t does this do I have to, like, post on social media every day to get this to work?
So, I mean, I have been thinking about bringing in, like, an art specialist to do just stay hour, like, master class or something in the course or in half an hour one or something. So I think this is kind of confirmed that probably is makes my sense if the next step is for them to hire me because then they really need to be making good money with the system. So Totally. Yes.
Yeah. Yep. That makes good sense. I don’t know if anybody else has any other thoughts on that, but, yeah, seems smart. Seems like the way to go.
Yeah.
Thank you.
Thanks, Abby. Anyone else? Any notes or thoughts on the MTP?
Framework and value ladders at all.
Are you using value ladders with your clients?
Nobody is.
Abby is the one person. I know it can be tough for SaaS and things like that, but I would like encourage you SaaS and software and tech. They have lead magnets. They have free trials. They have free tiers, and then they have more tiers to to get you up to that next level.
So it’s important to also bring that to tech as well. It feels really easy to dismiss it as if tech is some entity unto itself that no other business has ever matched or felt like comes close to, and that’s just like, not true. Like, not true at all. Once you actually get into these businesses, they’re they’re all money making endeavors, just with different ways there. Okay. Cool.
Sassy. Oh, that’s cool. That’s awesome, Stacy. Yeah. Nice.
Oh, sorry. For those who are watching the replays, Daisy just chatted out that Sassy, her, AI solution creates value ladder ideas. Very nice. Love it.
Alright. Any other questions or thoughts or anything you wanna discuss today? Business stuff. Yeah, Katie.
Can I just ask Joe, so you mentioned confirmation page and confirmation emails?
Is there any where like, I love this framework. I can definitely see myself using it for myself and for clients. So, like, I could also see it maybe like, two thirds of the way through the program that you’re kind of teasing, like, what the next program could be, is there anywhere else that you think you might be able to do the match teas trigger?
Yeah. No. I think that’s awesome. The one that I just wanted to focus on is that we use, which is those confirmation pages.
Yeah. So I’m sure there are lots of great ways to use it wherever you know someone should be getting ready for that next step or thinking about it. I think that’s a great call to use it in app or throughout training. Yeah. Nice.
And do you think the video component is, I just saw Stacy’s nurture email sequences suggestion think that’s really good to end. How heavily would you weight the video component versus just having that call on the confirmation page.
Yeah. I I wouldn’t. I I mean, I think a video is, if it looks like a quick easy thing to interact with, and you’re already feeling good about that brand and you know the person that you’re looking at, then you’ll be more likely to hit play on the thing and then actually pay attention, especially if, you know, captions are on.
But yeah, I we just do video all the time with this now, and for a little while now. So it really, I would just say test it out. Just try different things, try it in different places. Yeah.
I’m not sure how much people I don’t know. I don’t know about the written side of it at all. But the video Oh, okay. Yeah, is doing good things for us.
Yeah. I think.
Sure. Fun.
Alright. Anybody else?
Jessica?
I just asked about my specific offers for your feedback. Is that okay? Yeah. Love it.
Absolutely. Okay. So I guess when I’m looking at this, where I get tripped up. The first the first steps are fine.
I think of checklists, blueprint, that kind of thing. And then once the book is done, the book or a webinar, a paid webinar, you know, something like that. I think where after that where I’ve struggled with the client part, like, I don’t have client projects enough to validate the the higher tiers. So, for example, I start going okay.
Is the starter service for seasonal sales? Would that be more of a?
Audit, I’ve never had anyone ask me for that. However, I have had to do last minute seasonal sale campaigns with like the bare bones kind of promo, which would not be the top tier kind of service that I would like to do ideally. So there’s like that question with that level. And then my my other question with a higher tier service where I get to do their seasonal sale either full calendar year with everything that I’d wanna do before and after the promo.
And then eventually, like you had mentioned when I brought up the agency idea, doing their seasonal sale campaigns and everything, but then doing all the nurturing and all that in between.
So that’s where I it’s the higher tier stuff, I guess, where I’m I’m like, I’m not sure how to break this down.
Yeah. And I wonder about, like, for the value tier for you, if it’s like, if you wanna think about the ladder going up, Right? And it’s a staircase in the drawings. I don’t understand.
But, nonetheless, it could be so you’ve got the tripwire as your book or workshop or whatever, and then you’d have done with you likely done with you as an offering than done for you. But then I wonder if, like, one of the top tier ones And it depends on where you wanna take your business. I just don’t know that you’d break it down into the different products going up the ladder, like, the different services. I mean, like, packages.
But rather one tier is all of those packages, whatever package it might be, but you sell them into it.
You, like, seed that. Right? And then is the next tier if it’s done with you, done for you, and then that next one which could be teacher team or, like, fractional copy chief or something that’s more, like, this different level of service rather than different kind of, like, product or delivery. Does that make sense?
Yeah. I like that. Yeah. And I get actually people asking for that lately. So Oh, I’m sure.
Yeah.
Yeah. I think it was all the honestly. I think that copy hacker’s copy chaffing. I’ve suddenly, over the weekend, had an influx in hay, are you still copy chaffing?
So that’s awesome. Oh, okay. Okay. That’s interesting. Okay. That gives me some food for thought.
Thank you.
Yeah. I would just think about like getting to that place where the top part of it, the top tier on your ladder is something that, leverages your time better where you just get more money for your brain, which might sound silly. But that’s kind of what it comes down to.
Yeah. Yeah. Cool. Cool. Thank you. Bye. Yeah. Totally.
Anybody else have anything they’re working on? Bless you, Abby.
It’s that time of year seasonal allergies.
Yeah.
Alright. Cool. Well, if you don’t, that’s a okay. We can wrap up early. I do wanna talk about something else that, the coaches and I are gonna be meeting Sarah and the other coaches and myself this afternoon.
We have a new we’ve been holding off on bringing anybody else into Coffee School Pro.
We’re gonna be following a slightly different process less, bringing people in this whole, like, sixty day intensive out of the gate to people to a place where they’re making, much better money faster with better leads.
So That will be happening. We’re gonna run our first one at the beginning of April.
I would encourage all of you to participate in it. If you can, you have to, but we’re gonna be talking through a lot of, we’re gonna be introducing processes and vocabulary that new people coming in to Copyschool Pro will be using. So they’ll be talking about these processes. They’ll be thinking in this sort of different way that we’ll be teaching in, this accelerator, which is we’re calling it the intensive, mostly because we just own that domain. So we’re, like, post called the tenths of freelancer because I couldn’t come up with a name.
We’ll see. That might change.
So yeah, I would encourage you if you want to, if something that’s you’re struggling with is thinking through ways to make, it’s this thousand dollar a day promise, really, are you able to make thirty thousand dollars a month. If that’s not already happening for you, then I’d encourage you to take this.
And it’s included obviously with your, existing rates. It’s gonna be in addition to the existing CSP training. So it will mean like a lot of of paying attention to lots of different training going on at once, which I know is a lot and might feel overwhelming. And I’m sorry I don’t mean for it to be that way, but I think it’ll be good for, for our for anybody who well, for all of you because we’ll all need to talk the same way going forward. So we’ll share more about that going forward. But just know that it’s gonna start around April second. That’s a Tuesday.
And then we’ll, Yeah. Well, I’ll share more before that, but just kind of like put it on your radar. Cool.
Cool. That’ll be, of course, that’s okay.
Sorry.
I told I don’t wanna, like, hog your time.
Yeah, it’s, like, about a client.
So that’s all. I did wanna share a win about this client because it’s pretty cool.
So, yeah, I help them live large in January, and then took them on to the Evergreen Robin off on all. And it’s, like, the first time I’ve kind of got to properly implement day one at Evergreen. And we increased the conversion rates from five percent to seven percent going evergreen. So they’re now making, and it’s a, twelve hundred dollar course. So that’s exciting. They’re making lots of money.
But I I want to offer an optimization piece, and I’ve kind of I had set this up before.
But I’ve never I’ve never really, like, pushed it. I guess probably because I don’t feel good about the offer.
I don’t really know, like, what to charge and how to kind of set boundaries around it. What I was thinking it would be would just be to make sure I’m tracking conversions each week. And then when left, like, outstand spikes or anything or, the ultimate, like, page drops or just kind of keeping the copy like, fresh every few months, that kind of thing, like implementing survey responses.
And I was I was gonna charge like, the package I had was, like, two thousand dollars.
I don’t know if that, like, it made sense for my audience if, like, I don’t know. I’m just it’s difficult to increase price and figure out.
So you increase their conversion rate by almost fifty percent going from five percent to seven percent.
Right? That’s an almost fifty percent lift on that paid conversions.
Can I ask what you charge for that project?
Yeah, I charged fifteen thousand for the launch and then, five thousand to Evergreen. Okay. So it’s twenty.
Twenty k all in.
They made five hundred ninety thousand dollars on the launch, and then now they’re making, like, five thousand dollars a day. So they can afford it. Right?
No.
I think it’s gonna let you answer this panel by itself.
Yeah. If you already know, a good general rule of thumb is for performance retainers if you had a project up front.
Tried to get the performance retainer to be fifty percent of that project. So if it was twenty thousand upfront, ten thousand dollars a month to retain you to optimize this thing, for a minimum of six months.
Now I know that can seem you know, five times larger than what you had in mind. But this is a real business that has seen you get real results.
And it’s the right place to start.
So I would not do it for less than two thousand dollars. I mean, most people who most businesses when you say two thousand dollars, like, they think they’re not gonna get any of your time. Right? Like, what are you gonna do for two thousand bucks?
Like, literally, what are you gonna like, how much time do I buy of yours for that? Whereas ten thousand, I expect, okay, I would expect that I will get some form of return. You’ll report on it, and you’ll make sure that we’re happy every month. And that’s what you would deliver anyway.
Right? Like you’re going. To do those things.
So what would stop you other than what’s going on in your head? So probably just what’s going on in your head. What would stop you from feeling good about ten thousand? What would have to happen for you to feel good about ten thousand a month for a minimum of six months?
I don’t like I just I can’t get my head around charging that, like, at all. That just seems so much.
I guess, like, if I if there was proof that what I was doing was actually, like, doubling their ROI every month, then it’ll be different. But I I mean, especially because it’s, like, the first time I’d be doing this package, it just feels I don’t know. Like, I just I just, like, Did did you say the make in five go date? Yes.
But it’s yeah.
Stacy, I sent me this is it’s fair for you to pause on this, but I think, you know, That’s why you’re here. Right? Like, just I it’s not as easy as saying. Just push through it, but the reality really is. You’ve already delivered well for them.
There are if unless they’re an unreasonable group of people No.
They’re so great. Yeah. Okay. Then they just sort of pay me to do everything for them, but that’s, like, I don’t wanna, like, over stretch. I don’t know.
No. I would if I were you, I’d put together a quick, like, ten point max checklist of what that performance retainer package would look like So what are the things that they’d need to get that you would do? So I so when you say, I’ll refresh coffee every three months or whatever. Like, obviously, you wouldn’t message it that way.
But, like, that is a thing. So you’ll be looking at, like, just just quickly jot down ten things that you’ll do in the month for them. And each one of those is definitely worth a thousand bucks each. I would put money on each one of those being worth a thousand dollars each.
And if it’s somehow in your brain not, then maybe it doesn’t belong on the list, or maybe you just need to skip past the part that says this this is two.
People don’t pay money for this. I think you’re letting maybe some historical stuff in there about, like, people not paying money for things influence your future, which is there. That’s what we all do. Right?
But why wouldn’t they if they’re making five thousand dollars a day, if they are I’m assuming they’re running it like a business, not like a cash machine. If they’re taking money out, then you can’t do anything about that. But if they’re reinvesting because they see this incredible future of being able to pay themselves, a million or two million dollars a year, which you can help sell them on that future for them, then they’d be absolute fools not to do this. Right?
There’s did you see that Hermozy Instagram Hermozy where he’s like the I talked about this already. It’s really compelling, and I’ve seen people knock it off, and it’s really embarrassing.
This he shows you, like, his keys to his hummer. And he says, you know, it’s two hundred thousand dollar car.
If I were to say, I’m gonna give it to you for thirty thousand dollars. Go get thirty thousand dollars cash, and you can have this, go look at this on Instagram. He’s very good at storytelling.
You’d be out of your mind not to go find thirty dollars. Right? But you have but now you have to believe that the outcome is really worth it. So they just need to believe that what they’re investing in is worth the two hundred thousand dollars that, you know, that you want to have in order for a sixty thousand dollar investment to be worth it.
Do you believe you can make two hundred thousand dollars in additional revenue for them with this performance?
You go in believing that, write it on a piece of sticky note all over. Put it every freaking where. So you can only see a little bit of yourself when you’re in the Zoom call, and that’s like, you can you can make them two hundred thousand dollars.
They would be out of their minds not to pay you sixty thousand dollars for that. The obvious next ROI is there. So I don’t know if they’re helpful for you, like, me to showed it, you liked it.
No. If you need it, please.
Yeah.
I mean, because the other thing is, say they buy ski, they They since they started working with me, they hit million and they wanna hit ten million, like, in the next couple of years to sell. They have the courses like, they have the audience. They just, like and they’re having me right. Like, I’m the only copywriter they’re working with, so I encourage, like, there’s so much money there.
I just I’m just figuring out how to, like, tap it, and it’s kind of like, I feel almost like when I’m pitching them stuff, even though they’re saying yes, like, it’s just it just feels like, like, taking too much of their money, but, like, I guess that’s just a Can I offer another another perspective?
It’s also, like, it’s not just the time. It It’s also the money that they’re paying you. It’s also the fact that to find somebody else is a huge pain in the butt. Like, I have people that I work with, right, like my accountant, and, like, I’m not super happy with him.
I could, like, have some, like, like, I wish things were better. I’d like to have to go find somebody else and teach him all about my business and, like, do all of that work. Like, that’s a huge headache. Like you’re saving them the trouble of having to find somebody else to do that for them.
Mhmm. They’re just huge.
Yeah. Mhmm. Good point.
Yeah.
I think the money is just waiting there. Yeah. And it’s just a matter of You know, I didn’t go to this Thursday session with Kirsty on mindset, where it is about thinking bigger and really, like, get into it. I would I would. I I they’ve already invested twenty thousand dollars.
They’ve already invested fifty thousand dollars.
Like, since October. Like, I know the buddy’s there.
It’s just Alright. You know, that’s tough.
You’re done. I’m cutting you off. Okay. It’s obvious. No. No. I’m just kidding.
No. No. Please. I hope everyone enjoyed my episode of Abby’s got money mindset issues.
That’s awesome.
No. I mean, I think we can talk about how to go about.
Pitching this to them in a way that feels good if that’s getting in your way. But I think even just knowing that if the rule is about half of what the project was worth is what that particular is worth, then you can take comfort in the fact that it’s a rule. And if you don’t follow that rule, then you’re breaking the rule.
Do you wanna be that person Abby? No.
No. I I need to start projecting my money share on to my clients, like, ASAP. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. Thank you for letting me.
Awesome. I wanna hear how it goes now.
Thank you.
Then once you got that first ten k retainer out of the way, that’s your new low. And now you now you keep going above it. So be scared of what’s next. Not this moment.
I mean, I am.
Awesome. Awesome. Thanks, Abby. Naomi. Do you have a question and a win to kick it off?
A win.
I reached out to Louis do you know Louis Grenier from, everyone hates marketer? So I reached out to him and he said I could write and emailed in his list.
That’s exciting. I’ve never done that before.
Oh, nice. What do you get to make the email about? What’s it for?
So I have this interesting hierarchy that I created based on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs that correlates with different levels of seniority in companies and different levels of seniority in different sized companies.
And sort of tweaking copy based on those psychological needs.
So that it still sounds very professional still sounds very polished, but it hits on those deeper needs, that people people are really thinking about.
Okay. I love it. Cool. I can’t wait to see that. Yeah.
That was exciting.
Yeah. Awesome.
So okay. So in in more and more often, I have people asking me if I can work on their social content, which is not something that I have a ton of experience in. My background is more in demand gen, but because there’s so many big changes happening right now for Google and for meta, these traditional demand gen is just not working as well as it used to, furrow. A lot of B2B companies.
If you’ve heard of Chris Walker, he’s really, really a big voice in this, in this space, like cutting a lot of the ad spend and putting that more into organic content. And so it’s been really easy for me either to charge a lot for, like, charge a lot on retainer for, for social content. And to just suggest it to people, like, say, you know, because they, they know that if they’re not publishing on LinkedIn, it looks bad. It it gives people the sense that they don’t have something going on. So it’s really easy for me to suggest to them, you know, you really, you really have to start posting.
But I’m wondering if this is profitable because it involves a lot of time throughout the week. It’s not something that you can, like, always do on one day because if it’s a B2B company, you have to talk to R and D, you have to talk to product, you have to talk to sales. You have to constantly be in the loop. What are the new features?
What are customers saying? What’s our story? It’s like, quite an intensive thing, and there has to be design involved. And it’s like my Canvas skills are not so great that be doing these things on my own.
Like, I do need help from a designer.
But it’s like there’s huge demand for it and I’m starting to get good at it. So I’m wondering if this is something profitable or it’s just a huge time suck and I should try to limit it.
Do you see it fitting into Your future, three years from now, do you see wanting to do that still? If it wasn’t for the money, three years from now, what’d you wanna do?
Social copywriting.
I mean, it’s not It’s not what I find most interesting, but I’m also factoring in the, like, the market changes and there’s sometimes there’s demand for one thing and sometimes there’s demand for other things. That’s what I’m concerned about.
Okay. I just wonder because obviously as you build thought leadership out there.
People are going to come to you for the thing that you’re building thought leadership around. And as that happens, it’s just really a question of if you’re not gonna build any thought leadership around social, then it wouldn’t make sense to do it even though it seems like a good opportunity. And that’s purely because you’ll need to start standardizing the ways that you do this, put together you know, SOPs. Think about, is there a future where you offload this to, you know, a contractor who could do the work for you?
And give you leverage. Right? If we’re talking about how to get to really good money, you do, you need sources of leverage.
So it’s hard put those things together, those things being SOPs and all of everything that goes with documentation, And the people that you then train on it, if that’s down the road for you, it’s hard to do that if you’re flipping between lots of different things that people want you to do. If you were like, I really see this as a cool opportunity. I like doing it. I know how to do it well. I could see being able to bring in a good business with this and potentially train somebody or a few people to take over the work so I don’t have to, then they’d be like, cool. That sounds like something to explore.
If it’s not, then it’s not something to explore.
I think what’s what’s causing me to hesitate is that it’s so top of funnel that unless you have amazing attribution tools, which I mean, come on.
Not even really all that good. Like, if you have the money to buy six cents, like, You can yeah.
You probably have plenty of people to manage it in house.
Like, it’s so top of funnel And it’s so hard to track that I’m hesitant as to how much money companies would be willing to invest in it. I’m wondering how scalable it is. It’s fine. It’s enjoyable.
But if you combine the fact that it’s time intensive on a daily basis because you have to keep it up in order for for for the to get more and more attention, and the fact that it’s harder to link it to revenue makes it a bad deal, even though I have lots of people all the time asking for it. Where like if I’m doing a landing page, I can see all the numbers. I can see exactly, like, if I know how much an MQL is worth or an opportunity is worth, it’s really, really easy. For me to measure how much value I’m bringing to the table in a way that social content you just can’t even if you have amazing measuring tools.
Yeah. Now this is the kind of thing where it might make more sense for you to say no to the opportunity, but to have an affiliate or referral link that you can use to send that over to, someone else who does the work really well. So To me, it sounds like it’s an opportunity, like, to make money. People are just kinda throwing it at you, and that’s the thing that you have to, like, pause on. It’s so hard to. Like, it’s always gonna be hard to.
But you can still use that moment if you identify by anybody who is good at this work. And then there, I’d never know how to say her name. Aside.
Abby just chatted that over. Then you can maybe put together a referral program with aside to start making passive revenue off of sending referrals her way.
I would think about something more like that. I agree you don’t wanna give up these opportunities. It’s hard to.
But you also can’t let it distract you from the business that you wanna build unless unless it’s lit something in you and you’re like, this would be amazing.
And then you have to get strategic about whether that’s your new business. It doesn’t sound like it is. So if it’s not, can you just send it over to somebody else and make twenty percent off of it?
What do you think of that?
I guess I’m also hesitant because I people are just not telling me that they need help with the kind of stuff that I have been training on for the past several years. Like, they’re just not running Google campaigns at the same rate. I mean, Google it like, why is Google laying off so many people? Because their platform is not it’s not making money. Right? Like these things are all connected. So I’m wondering like I’m hesitant to refer them because I’m thinking, well, marketing is changing really, really fast, and maybe it’s going to look different, and I have to keep up with the times.
So I am not like a huge advocate of making decisions from a position of, like, fear of what could come.
And I’m not saying that you’re fearful or afraid, but there is that, like, uncertainty of the unknown.
And that’s part of, like, being a business owner, is the solution to shift, to offer something different Maybe it is. There are actually absolutely times when that is. If email shut down tomorrow, if nobody was allowed to send emails anymore, then you’d you’d need to shift and you would have been happy to have started shifting earlier when looked like things were changing. So to you, right now, it looks like things are changing for demand gen when it comes to like Google ads as like top of as as the entry point or re entry point into a funnel.
If you really do believe that, and you feel at peace with shifting to social. You feel like I I could make this cool. I could I could like I could make it so valuable that even though it’s top of funnel, clients will line up and pay me good money for it. And even though I can’t attribute, real revenue to it, they’ll still be willing to pay me and I can keep raising my rates.
But if it’s out of fear and just kind of like, this isn’t working right now, but this might be working. Then I would I’d pause before making any sort of decision on that. What is keeping your business? Is it just that Google is in a little bit of trouble right now?
Google’s like a huge business though. They’re chances are very good. They’re going to get the ship righted. Right?
They’re not gonna let their enormous business go down just because of some changing behaviors out there and AI being way better than Google is.
But, I don’t know. I mean, I I can see, you know, I can see your expression. I can see. I can hear what you’re saying. To me, I would only do social media if one, it lights you up in some way. You gotta be able to get out of bed every day and be at least eighty percent of the way to happy with the job that you’re doing.
And two, can you can you really turn it into something where you can standardize?
Higher people and just be the overseeing person who generates money from those people. Because like you said, social’s a quantity game. Right? They’re gonna be putting a lot of posts out there.
And you don’t you don’t wanna be the one doing all of that work.
Yeah. Yeah. Do you think that’s something I could offload to somebody?
Do you want to? Is that a business you wanna build?
I feel like I would have to be doing a lot of work with the freelancers or with whoever whichever contractors I hire in order to, like, explain the story and explain the concept, and there would be so much go between that it wouldn’t be worth it. So if I can pitch it as, like, one of the clients I’m working with now were we’re not getting a lot of customers, but we’re getting a lot of investors liking our posts, and which is a good thing because they’re going there potentially interested in raising more money.
So if I can pitch it that way, then it is a lot it it is worth it, right? Because that could be, like, fifty million dollars for the next row, fifty million, probably close to sixty, seventy million.
So if I can pitch it that way, I do think it’s worth a lot more.
But it’s not something that I can outsource. So it would have to be I guess for the right companies.
Can I ask the question, Naomi? Just like on the topic of today’s training, is there a way that you can have this be the intro offer and then fit it into your value ladder. So, like, they come to you for the social content, but then through that interaction, you do some educating on what they really need is, like, what you actually wanna do? Does it work as an like, fit in the door for you?
It sort of worked the reverse. Like, they may come to me for one ad, but they don’t need, like, twenty ads. They just need, like, three to four ads, and I’m like, you guys aren’t posting on LinkedIn. Like, I could easily take care of that for you.
Okay.
Yeah.
Well, then I think, I mean, then I think Joe’s asked all the right questions around, like, if you want to do it.
Yeah.
Okay.
I mean, Yeah.
And it might feel like you can’t hand this off to people. But, I mean, we’re talking about building a high value business where you get good money out of it, and it makes really good consistent money So the general rule is, like, you build people, people build business. So your job isn’t actually to build the business.
If you think of it as a business that has a future state where you’re gonna make five million dollars a year, If that’s the business you’re building, you can’t make five million dollars a year as a one person shop, even if you wrote a best seller and it stayed up top of the New York Times for three years. Like, James cleared not to do everything by himself either. Right? So you you have to To get to five million, let’s say that’s your goal because why the hell not?
To get there, you’re gonna need people. To get to three hundred thousand, you’ll still need a little bit of people. So, like, the gap is not that weird. It’s full of people in there.
So I would say if you can find a way to standardize things like I know it feels like everything is custom.
But maybe sixty percent can be standardized and you can get people to do that for cheap and you train them on it, you make sure that you’ve spent two full days in one week just getting them ready to go on this. Testing them, putting them through it, and then you hand them the work. And then you make money on top of that. That can be a good path if it’s always you doing the work and it’s social media too, which it you’ll probably burn out on it one because it doesn’t it’s not why you got into this.
So you’ll burn out on lack of interest and on a lack of time. And it might even turn into a lack of money, if the market, you know, if more people start doing it, not saying that’s gonna be true.
But Right.
Okay. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. I could see doing something, like, We do one post related to statistics and one post related to, like, overcoming objections and one post related to this. And Like, there’s a a certain tone and, yeah, I could see that.
You can theme those weeks out for them and make that part of your process. Sorry. We’re gonna be talking more about theming your social media as well, to make it easier to to do stuff there. And so, yeah, that’s if you think, hey, it might be able to be standardized, and I would give it a shot.
I know it’s late for you, but, like, maybe sometime this week, you put a block together to see, like, how could I standardize social media posting or creation of these things for VA. So maybe it means you need to hire one VA who can write captions and another who can use Canva, and you just oversee the two of them. But then you have to, of course, budget that and make sure that you can charge accordingly and that you really do have a pipeline full of people, at least three people you can easily convert tomorrow on x amount for a social media package that’s, like, more of a retainer. So you have that nice recurring revenue.
Yeah. Okay.
Yeah. Yeah.
Cool. Probably also lots of room for AI. Yeah. No shit Katie says in chat. Yeah. Totally.
I’m sure Stacy is giving that a thumbs up too for the writing stuff.
Cool. Naomi, how are you feeling about that?
I feel like it needs a lot of ironing out.
But if I could I guess, like, I could hire a contractor, like, when I’m charging sorry, I’m just gonna use checkout because it’s easier for me. If I’m charging ten, fifteen thousand checkout a month, and I can hire somebody for five thousand checkout.
That’s one half to one third of what I’m making, and then I can manage the, like, working with clients and setting the ideas for the week and editing, then it would dramatically reduce the amount time that I’m working, and I can still make sure that their brand story comes through and that the right messaging points are coming through. And that we’re actually talking about the right technology and the right features, and that I’m not just pulling things out of thin air, that might be profitable.
So I can see that working. It would still be more days a week than I would like.
But I can see it being scalable. If I can come up with, okay, we’re doing one post every two weeks on a new article that comes out, one post on overcoming actions, one post on benefits, one post on interesting statistics, depending on who we’re trying to convert something to that effect.
Yeah. Awesome. Katie, were you gonna add something?
No. I have a kind of related question just on subcontracting if it’s okay.
Okay. Cool. Yeah. Thanks, Naomi. If you have a win by chance to share Katie?
I have a new well, so we we talked to before about the agency for steps.
And I’ve sold my first project where I bundled in design. So I am project managing, and I’m, like, leaving with the designer. So it’s that’s exciting.
Amazing. Yeah.
But I’m not, like, I’m not making isn’t with the caveat because I’m not late. I didn’t I didn’t mark up the design.
Hence my question now is, like, so the agency first steps that I did, I put out, like, a call for collaborators who work with a similar audience. And now I have thirty people who, like, filled out my form, have a mix of designers, tech, like tech experts, OBMs, other copywriters, So that was kind of my, like, seeding the agency, like, getting interested people to come out of the woodwork.
But I’m I don’t know how to make money off of it. Like, I don’t I’m like, okay. So, like, I know that I could refer out to these people, and, like, it’s great to have this you know, network for to refer my clients to. But I’m kind of stuck on, like, you know, even when you were giving Naomi about whether or not she wants to work with an agency because they’re limited in how much they can pay. I’m now, like, I’m, like, well, how do I make this profitable while also being like an appealing person to work with for these people who fill like, who come out to who’ve shown up for it.
Yeah. So I would are the people that are currently subcontracting for you, are they charging a reduced rate to you or their standard rate?
That they charge them.
So currently, they haven’t, like, I ask people to share their signature offer, like, what the main thing that they do and if they have a date And everybody has shared their standard prices so far, but I did kind of, like, leave the door open, like, I’ll be in touch with, like, So the people that I like, I wanna reach back out to and, like, open the conversation about what it would look like to white label their services but I just I didn’t like, basically, I’ve been leaving them hanging now for over a week because I didn’t know what I was gonna go with in terms of my next offer.
So you’ve got designers as subcontractors who else.
What I really need is, like, OBMs who will take the emails. I might even put them into the email marketing platform, like, set up the automations for me, help people clean up their tags and stuff like that, or also because I’ve been pitching these, like, post sale sequences for people to you know, set up the triggers within the program and the conditional, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, like so design, obviously, like, for front end stuff and then back end implementation.
Okay. Cool. Yeah.
Okay.
You won’t make money as an agency if you don’t control those expenses. Yeah. And that’s just the reality of it for every single agency.
And that’s why it can be, you know, very hard to hire the person you really want to hire.
So markups are a thing.
Definitely.
You’re not marking up at all right now.
No. I mean, but, like, This one, I was kind of like, okay, this is like a training wheels project, and then I’ll look from now on. It is definitely gonna be marked up. So And it’s a project for return.
This is a project.
Okay. Is there room because it sounds like its performance base starts measurable? You can sell it into a retainer afterward?
Yeah. I’ll probably okay. Cool. Yeah. I would encourage that.
What were you gonna say before I cut you off? Sorry.
Oh, well, just this is the one where I I did pitch her. I gave her the option of taking the performance based, but then she she was just like it’s just easier for me to know, like, what I’m gonna pay upfront. So she we went with that. Yeah.
And you can still do an upfront, like, a flat rate. Regardless of how it performs. It’s just your job as part for this retainer is to keep measuring and reporting on how it’s going. So especially if you’re doing email, like Yeah. What, like, my gosh.
So So when it comes to the subcontractors, you need to start by figuring out what profit you need for this to work. So that means you come to the contractor with the budget that you have for it, and they have to decide if they can do it for that low cost.
And it should be low. It should be, like, much lower than they would charge if they were to go out into the world because, obviously, You’re doing all the work. Right? Like, it’s all on you. Every bit of this is actually on you.
So because they could flake out on you. There’s too much risk. So you’ve got to get their rates way down, uncomfortably. But a lot of people are like, well, at least I didn’t have to sell. Like, I didn’t have to go get a client, so that’s okay.
That’s a that’s, like, step one is to gather a budget to get you to profit ability? How how much do you have to charge clients for this to work? How hard do you need to work to get them into a retainer? Like, is it really important for your business?
I would say, yes, it is. And it’s also a no brainer too for that retainer retainer again being a flat rate but you keep measuring every month how you’re doing and how it’s affecting the business. So that they see the value, but they’re always paying the same amount. So really obvious one, you start off with a project for twenty thousand dollars, then you move into a ten thousand dollar a month retainer, adjust those prices.
However, you see fit.
But if you were doing a twenty thousand dollar project with two subcontractors in there and your time in there as well, let’s say this works out over a six week or eight week period, I you wouldn’t wanna spend with those two subcontractors.
They don’t get more than five thousand dollars. Right? Like, got twenty thousand. Two of them take up half of your of your revenue already and leaving you with only thousand for your time for all of the client management you have to do for you continuing to build the business going forward you need at least ten thousand dollars for you. So five thousand would become, like, that’s the top end of what I can pay for this person to work with me for eight weeks. So twenty five hundred bucks a month for them to get these things done.
But if you know that, then Good. The number is based on the number that you need for this to be a viable agency for you. Does that make sense?
Yes. I just I feel like I guess that is assuming, certain level of standard in the projects that we’re doing, whereas I haven’t got that far yet in terms of like like, right now it’s just me being, like, okay, on the call instead of saying, like, and introduce you to somebody who does that being, like, I have a some, you know, I have somebody who can do that. So it hasn’t been, like, I don’t really have a standardized offer yet. So figuring out, like, the numbers is a is has been more hypothetical. But I can see I can see what you mean about, like, starting with the profitability, but, like, starting with a profitability versus starting with somebody else’s price.
Total that’s exactly it. It will be hypothetical too. It’ll feel uncomfortable. Like, isn’t there an easier, better k.
Have you read I would encourage you this won’t help you figure out what to pay people, but, pricing creativity by Blair ends is a good book for this.
Again, it won’t give you that, but it’ll help you just create context around making those decisions for what you pay the subcontractors, how you talk with them about their value and what they need to contribute. Like, it’s not gonna help you manage them. But you’ll be a better, armed, I think, to have a good conversation with them about prices that will feel low to them and should. If it doesn’t feel low to them, there’s probably a bit of a problem there.
But they get to work with you and all of the extra benefits of that.
Yeah, I know it’s hypothetical. It doesn’t feel as grounded as it ought to. Once you start getting into it and see what the market will bear, for new clients coming in and contractors being paid and what that gap is and how profitable you can be in there.
Then that’ll help a lot, but you just gotta start throwing numbers out, sadly.
Okay. Okay. Thank you. I would not pay more than fifty percent of the total budget on subcontractors.
Okay. Okay?
Yeah. Are you near that right now or not at all?
No. Not even co I mean, I charge fifteen k and the designer is gonna charge She’s doing, like, a show it template plus customization. She so I think her package is four k, and it involves she’ll put the email to convert kit and hook up convert kit to the site. So, like, I feel like that’s a good package for me to be pointing people to, and I just need to have a conversation with this designer about, like, bundling it into my package. Yeah.
And I’ve had a conversation with this designer in the past, like, she offered to make me an affiliate for her So, obviously, she’s comfortable, you know, knocking the price down for for ease of sale So I feel like that’s a good first relationship to build out.
Yeah. That’s awesome. Yeah. I know it’s tough.
Tough. But yeah. There is money on the other side of it. It’s just agencies at the beginning don’t feel profitable.
Until you hit that point, then it’s like, oh, there’s money here. Yeah.
Looking forward to that point. Yeah.
Alright. I’m gonna let you know it’s there. It will happen.
Cool. Okay. Thank you. Thanks, Katie. Anybody else?
On that same point, I’m wondering, like, how much time do you have to invest in training subcontractors at the beginning? Because, like, if I’m thinking of all the people that I’ve worked with, like, I would hire ninety seven percent of them. And like, because I don’t like the way that they write. I don’t think that they’re conversion focused, and they were my colleagues, obviously. So I wasn’t training them, but, like, if I take that kind of person and think like, how would I train them? Like, it would be a challenge, especially if they, especially if they had some experience because they are like stuck in their ways. They have like a way of doing it.
Yes and no. Right? So I think it’s one thing to keep in mind that’s hard for a lot of us to keep in mind is, like, it’s like, you’re the boss though. Like, you don’t have to start from a point of you’re okay.
I’m okay. Like, You’re the boss. So you get to say, here’s the standard of performance that I expect. I will train you on the standard.
I will give you the SOPs checklist. I’ll give you all the tools you need. I’m here to support you as well. We’ll have regular I promise transparency and communication with you all the time.
In exchange for that, here’s what I expect. This is this is the standard. Are we agreed on this as the standard? Here’s how we get to that standard.
Are we agreed on that as well? But that’s like, you’re you get to train them. You get to put them into that position of being able to be valuable for you so that they’re not an expense. Of course, in any way, they’re like a real asset.
So You do have to train them. You have to be ready with everything that they need to be successful in their job.
But then you get to say this is where you have to be. And then if they don’t perform to that level, then you get to have a hard conversation with them.
And you don’t it’s it is. It’s hard to find people. You have to lower your expectations and the only way to help raise those expectations. And it’s like a shoving.
Like, it’s it’s not light work. It’s like, well, you’re really working to get those expectations up across the board. Is to make sure that you’re modeling the exact behavior that you want people to follow, and that you are training them really openly and, like, allowing room for them to mess up once on a thing. Can’t mess up twice on the same thing, but again, have those that open communication with them.
But nobody walks in ready to go. Nobody ever. Even if you went and worked somewhere, you would still even though you’re at the top performance for what you do, you would still have to go and integrate into a new organization with new ways of working, maybe they do OKRs, maybe you like OKRs, and they don’t do them. Right?
There’s always gonna things that you’ll have to figure out and same is true for them. So have that empathy, but the more time you put into them, the more you’ll get out of it. And that’s why it can be so valuable to hire rather than to use hire as soon as you can if you’re building an agency.
Instead of I know a lot of people succeed with VA’s.
But if we’re talking about for important work that you’re gonna be setting down and training somebody on for hours and hours and hours, then you don’t really want them to leave. Right? You wanna, like, get them in and keep them. And that’s why a lot of agencies start with, really cheap, brand new people, like fifty thousand dollar salaries right out of school because you’re gonna be doing all sorts of training. And that’s it. And then that leaves you good room to also increase their salary as they perform well and make them wanna stay with you longer.
But yeah, I don’t know how helpful that is on the subject, but yes to training.
And if you can If you see this as an agency you’re building, can you bring in somebody to be on staff sooner than later? Colin Junior, Yeah.
And at what at what point, like, what revenue point would you consider taking somebody on? And roughly how much time would you assume? Like, Is this gonna be two weeks? Is this gonna be three months?
Like For an agency, I’d take them on immediately in a second, do you think it’s time to hire?
Do it. You just pay yourself less. It sucks. But, like, you eat ramen for a little bit and not the good stuff.
And, you’ve you’ve got them on and I have seen people who are driven. If you’re in this room, you are very likely to rise to the occasion. You’re going to find the money to pay them and yourself. And that means you’ll be taking on interesting projects.
You’ll be telling yourself I can’t go into this meeting and take less than ten thousand dollars for this retainer. I I I can’t afford it. So I need to go in there and be really good at selling them on this ten thousand dollar a month retainer. Then the next month, once you hire another person, now your retainer is a twenty dollars a month, and you have to make it work.
And you do. So if you weren’t building an agency, then there’s different ways to think about hiring, but you are, you will need people without question. So I think you need to hire, hire now. For cheap, especially if you’re gonna need to put a lot of time into them because you actually do have more time now than you’ll have over the next three years.
And then after the three years, then you’ll have more time again. But that’s when you’re at the three million mark and you have to build a leadership team at that point anyway.
Yeah. Ironing.
It’s not fun, arming so hard.
But do now. There are juniors out there who are ready to go. Just want a chance and some money, please. I just also want some money.
Cool. Any other questions or thoughts on that? On anything.
No?
No.
Sorry. I have a lot of questions. If somebody else wanted something else to say.
Would you, in terms of prioritization, I find that the thing I struggle with most is finding designers, because I can’t, like, I can’t write something without having it designed. It just won’t perform. And I need a designer that I can work with, because I need a designer that knows something about UX and will listen to me when I have suggestions.
Would it be more reasonable to hire a designer first, or should I continue to search for freelance designers that I can partner with? Because I haven’t I haven’t looked so much, but I’ve found that it’s hard to find people number one that are talented and work in the same projects that I do and number two that are available and cooperative.
Sorry. That was a service delivery.
So my I have to get into my office so badly.
Sorry. I lost track of the question I had an answer. Oh, the design stuff. Yes. Of course.
I’ve been watching Nicole here. Nicole is our designer and social media person on our team.
And so I’m sure she’s had lots opinions over the course of this meeting. I don’t know Nicole if you do have anything to add. I can say because I don’t wanna put you on the spot. Or do you want do you have something to add?
Not much to add necessarily, but it’s it’s I can understand, like, it’s hard to hire anybody. Like, designers aren’t no different than any other position, I would assume.
But I find that, a lot of designers, like, undersell themselves, and So that’s why it’s so much, like, you might find it is that much harder to, like, say, like, go on upwork because you might find an excellent designer, and they’re only charging, like, you know, fifteen dollars an hour for their work, which is silly. But sometimes, yes, that’s how it goes because there’s an oversaturation. So I can see how that would be difficult but I do find that, like, whenever back when I was freelancing, like, I did, like, being given a test project. Was really, really helpful.
And the people who are willing to do the test project, I find will be willing to learn more things and they’d probably be more of an asset to you.
Yeah. Good call. Totally.
Yeah.
And we found Nicole with a LinkedIn job posting.
So designers are looking at job openings as well, just like everybody else.
It’s hard to find them maybe in your network, but they are you post job opening, and you’ll get a lot of applicants, put them through a test, and just treat it like, you know, I mean, you’re hiring for your business. So this is the way it is. Yeah. If you think you need to bring a designer on full time because it’s part of how you sell what you do, then a job hosting together.
If it’s only a small part of what you do, like, you’re like, well, I always use them at the very end, but I give them all the direction.
And I just need them to make sure that they’re implementing what I say, then that might be something where you could find a really good VA. Like, time, etcetera dot com is who we use and so far so good.
And that if if it is a small amount of work, then a VA could do it. If it’s gonna be a lot, you see a recurring need for it, do a job posting for a a designer. Yeah.
Yeah. It’s more like if I wanna take on somebody to do social work, like there needs to be design, And a lot of times smaller companies just don’t have the design in house, or if they do have the design in house, either they’re a new first they’re a new because obviously you need to keep the product, like, you need to have design for the product, or they have if they have a marketing designer, there’s only one marketing designer, and they have like one hundred thousand things on their plate, and social is the very, very bottom of the list. So I’m left using Canva, even for large companies that have millions of dollars in funding.
So that’s why I’m wondering, like, if I’m gonna hire somebody, maybe it would make more sense to hire a designer before I hire a contractor.
It sounds like it. Yeah. It sounds like if it’s if it’s a big enough pain for you, and it’s really getting in the way of delivering.
Higher one. Yeah. You can think about different ways to hire them, but of the really good things about hiring people is it lights fire under your butt to make more money. You gotta make payroll. So you gotta do it. I would If it’s it sounds to me like that is the first hire that you need, you’ll probably need to have, like, someone else in your back pocket.
Shortly thereafter to, help, actually help you create those assets outside of designing them.
Some sort of content strategist or a copyright or whatever that person is.
But, yeah, hire them and, like, as a full timer.
And then but but make sure you put a plan together for how you’re going to make money and be profitable.
So don’t wing it, but it probably starts by just, like, doubling your rates right now and then watching all the training you can on how do how to sell better, like, sell like a freaking champ, not that you can’t, but it does not hurt. Sales is gonna be, like, your best friend as you build out your agency.
Yeah. Mhmm.
That makes sense. Oh. And do you have a sense until the point where I do feel comfortable to hire, maybe you could help. I have no idea what a designer should earn.
Like per project, per hour, no clue whatsoever.
Like I value it. I just don’t know how much is worth to pay for it.
I I mean, it totally depends where they are, but if it doesn’t matter where they are to you, then I’d put the salary low.
People always think that they need to put their salary really high, and it’s I not actually found that a higher salary brings in like, at the same level of higher candidate. It’s just often it’s someone who wishes they couldn’t earn that much money.
I know they’re like, no, man. No. And you find really good candidates at the lower salary as well. So don’t don’t lead with it has to be a high salary.
If they can work anywhere, that’s a benefit. If you can add in extra perks, like give them Fridays off. Just do it. Just out of the gate.
Just do it. Then these are the perks that will attract stay at home parents who have a design background.
And then you don’t have to worry about the salary being bananas.
But I wouldn’t know what that salary is. It completely depends. If they’re junior, if they’re right out of school, I know that you can, like, do a glass door to see what salaries there are. I don’t know how much I would rely on that though.
I mean, the number that comes to mind for me is fifty thousand. It’s not a lot of money at all, but it’s a good junior salary.
And it leaves you room to bonus them based on performance. If they do a killer job, you can give them a really nice bonus, then they’re like, wow, that’s cool. Also to increase their salary as well. Like six months later, if they prove that they’re amazing and you are like relieved of so much of the crap you’ve had to do so that you can go bring in more clients and hire more.
They’re really proving their value to you, then you can increase their salary. Course, you don’t have to wait to do it. You can do that at any point, but I wouldn’t start. I don’t know.
I don’t know what fifty thousand if fifty thousand is too low in today’s market or what, but start there and see what you get. You want juniors, right? You basically do. You want them to be able to use the tools and have a good design eye.
But you’re gonna have to teach them so much.
Yeah. Okay. Interesting. Thank you.
Alright. Cool. Cool.
Anybody else in the remaining eight minutes?
No? Good talk about all of this hiring stuff today. It makes me excited for everybody. It’s so cool.
Wicked. Okay. Well, then let’s wrap up. Thank you very much. Don’t forget. To attend the Thursday session thinking bigger.
K? And we’ll chat with you all online. See you later. Have a good one. Have a good week.
Worksheet
Worksheet
Transcript
So today’s topic is around value ladders. And like my favorite topics for these weekly sessions, it is something you can use for your business. And also for your clients.
So, something to really consider.
But we’re gonna dive in This is recording. So the replay, of course, will be available. If you can come on camera, please do so. Just so everybody can see you, feel connected, etcetera.
Okay. So today we’re we’re talking about something that is based on the value ladder. Now, most people are familiar with the value ladder, but it’s okay not to be. So I’m just gonna really briefly discuss the value ladder.
If you want to add anything more to it, to my really brief intro to it, then feel free to. This is a medium post on the value ladder. Click funnels is a really big advocate of the value ladder. Hold on.
I just wanna make sure that my audio is okay.
Good. Okay. Good. So the value ladder is really just a way to keep people coming back for that neck level of value from your organization, which usually translates into money.
And that can mean different things for different businesses. So value ladders are really common in, you know, training businesses, online, like courses, mastermind, stuff like that, and mastermind is at the top of those value ladders, but they can also be used for other things.
Ecommerce can do this to add incredible value to their customer base. If you, I’ve mentioned the book Super Consumers before, It’s a really great study overall in the whole idea of a value ladder for e commerce, really, and how to get people all over the place, to, to keep coming back and buying from you, not just buying more sweaters from your e commerce shop. But more of, like, let’s take you to the next tier of being an engaged shopper and admirer advocate of fan of our brand. So, although it can feel like a value ladder is all about let’s just, you know, get more money out of your existing customer base, sell them more expensive stuff.
That’s not necessarily what it’s about. Some people I think, like, click funnels might know if that’s to click funnels a little bit might often, you know, put out this narrative that can make it feel that way, but it really is how much, like, what do you wanna what how do you wanna use this? SAS can use this for upgrading people through it if you think of something like Stripe, which could move a business owner through a value ladder and a developer a different value ladder, bringing them further into this world of loving strike. That’s what we’re really trying to do with the value ladder.
Give more value. You charge more for it, of course. But those people who really want more, are ready for it. Now, one of the tricky things is, and what we’re gonna be talking about today is how do you prepare people for that value ladder.
How do you get your customers to even know about this stuff? I know copy hackers has struggled with this a bit over the years. Abby, I think you mentioned that at some point, you said you found copy hackers through, like, social media. You found one course and then you didn’t even know the other courses existed or something like that.
And I think that’s like, it happens. It happens to all of us. We at Copy Acres didn’t have an intentional value ladder for a very long time, much to the dismay of our ad agency. It was like you need a value ladder because ads are too expensive.
So it but it can tough. Right? Like, how do you share out your value ladder with people before they’re actually maybe even ready for the thing on that ladder. When you have the tripwire, which is usually the bottom of this value ladder, and you wanna get them into the seven dollar ebook or and then up to the ninety nine dollar a month community all the way up to the top tier, your mastermind or whatever that might be, how do you let them know that something’s coming next that they should be prepared for? And that can be a valuable thing to do. So that’s what we’re talking about today.
This ladder prep idea. It’s kind of ladder hype to get people hyped for what’s next, but hype sounds so hypey it doesn’t have to be. It’s really just like seeding, the idea that there is going to become a moment. There’s going to come a moment when you’re going to want more from us. Here’s when that moment is, and here’s what you can expect to do in that moment. So if you’re already familiar with this sort of approach, well done.
And if you’re not cool, we’re gonna walk through it. Now, this is meant for your confirmation page. If you’re going script a video, oftentimes for a confirmation page, or just the copy on the confirmation page. If, like, there’s not a video or even if there is a video, and also email copy again when someone has just become a customer of some form.
So they’ve downloaded your lead magnet or they’ve gone through different part of the value ladder, you know as the marketer, Hey, we’ve got this next thing in store for you. And this is the moment at which because it’s a seduce a seducible moment, this is a great moment to start seeding what comes next and how to know when the time comes to go to that next thing. So the value ladder is off to the left here. The m t t framework goes match.
Trigger teas. Okay? Trigger and teas can be interchanged. Sometimes you teas and then you tell them what the trigger is, Sometimes you tell them what the trigger is and then you tease that next thing. But let me walk you through this. So this is the value ladder kinda going in reverse starting with the cheapest thing here, and then we’re moving all the way up to the more expensive thing. This is based on a value ladder that Paul on our team just went through for, Evergreen webinar funnel training.
So I’m just taking exactly what, that layout was, like the value ladder for them. This have made up. But we can imagine how this might go. Right?
So we start with the free thing, the lead magnet. You wanna write this for your own value ladder or for your client’s value ladder, and this could keep going. Right? This is just an example.
It could go down seven rows or whatever. However, many items there are in that value ladder. So we start with this zero dollar thing just to get their email address. Then, of course, there’s a tripwire.
It’s usually called a tripwire. If that’s unfamiliar language, it’s the cheap thing.
Then comes a starter product or service. And then some intermediate or even sometimes this is the top tier. This is where it ends. It doesn’t have to end here, but it might. Right? So this is the basic value ladder.
Cool. What do you do with that? Not everybody needs to move up the value ladder. Some people are ready to jump the top of it, but we’re just trying to solve for how do we get people to start thinking about the next thing they should buy from us.
Not Ken. But should. We’re going to tell them that should moment. This is the moment at which you should be switching over to whatever that other thing is.
So we write this out. First, we match. So when they download the thing, when they just downloaded the lead magnet, then we match on the confirmation page and or on the confirmation email where we’re sending them the thing. Hey, you’ve just snagged a free copy of the No pitch webinar template we’ve used for some of our highest converting webinars.
Cool. We’re matching exactly where they are, staying enthusiastic with them. It’s a good moment. You’ve done a good thing.
This is fantastic. And then we want to trigger, in some cases, t’s, but usually it’s easiest to just start with the trigger, which is telling them what that trigger moment is going to be in their lives that will be a signal to them that it’s time to think of what’s next. So, hey, you’ve just done this thing. Cool.
Awesome. You’re great. Once you’ve filled in that template and used it just once, you’ll be ready for the next step in generating six or even seven figures with your webinar. This is the trigger.
Once you have filled in that template and used it just once. I know as a user that I have or have not done that thing, if I never fill in that template, I’m not really gonna be a good fit, unless I’m so ready that I’ll go around and look and start emailing you to say like, hey, how do I just get into your training?
And then comes the tease. That next step will be our thirty minute workshop. That’s this thing on how to run a webinar that is sure. Oops, sorry typo, to convert even if it’s second webinar ever.
But for now, and then you go back and tell them what to do now, head on into that template, use it, and then I’ll hear from you after you’re done with it. Or then you can send me an email when you’re all done, whatever call to action you might wanna do if you wanna do one. That’s really it. This tease is for the next thing in the value ladder.
So every time we see that tease, it’ll be for what’s coming up. And if there is nothing else coming up, then there is this for the final one, you just leave these two blank. So again, tripwire is, hey, so cool. You’re in our workshop on how to run a webinar that converts.
Fantastic for businesses like yours because it does all these great cool things that you already thought it was gonna do. We’re just matching that. Now we’re reversing it a bit for the teas and trigger. And said, we’re saying, and if you’re anything like me, you’re so pumped about this workshop that you’re already thinking about what’s next.
So we’re teasing something’s going to come next. And I will tell you all about that, but the trigger before you can unlock the incredible next stage, here is what needs to happen first. You need to see the slide. This is just a fascination that looks like this.
And then you, like, show them the slide. Some it’s a fascination. Right? It’s something for them to watch for.
When they’re actually going through it. That’s when you’ll know you’re ready. But for now, just focus on attending, putting this into your calendar or whatever that calls might be. Is this making sense?
Can you see how this works?
Can you see the value in seeding that next step? Or customers. Does that make sense?
Cool. Alright. So this is what you’ll do. You don’t have to do it today. It’s not like a thing we need to do But it is something that you should do if you are thinking about your value ladder for yourself or if you have clients who come to you and either speak the language of we have a value ladder, how do we move people through it, or they’re doing ads of any kind.
If they’re spending money on They probably have some top tier or higher tier thing to get people into. They might not come to you and say, like, Hey, let’s do something to walk people through our value ladder, but they come to you and go like, we’re spending so much money on ads. How do we get people to convert and how do we get our new our existing customers to do more with us. Right?
We’re sending emails and it’s like they don’t even know whatever, whatever, whatever. But they’re coming to you with revenue challenges, and they find that they’re also spending money upfront to acquire leads and retargeting to try to get those customers back. A really easy win is hey, I’m gonna script some confirmation page videos for you. I think you can hop on your phone with these scripts and report them.
Cool. We’ll do some emails as well. And then you’re already moving them along a path of being able to open especially if they have a sales team of any kind being able to open up those conversations with people without having to do, like, an excessive amount of work or even old work around opening conversations.
Okay. So that is the long and the short of it. Any questions? Anybody?
Do you feel like you could use this?
Yeah, I feel like it’s what I’ve been needing because, like, I think I shared my problem last week where I’ve got my five hundred dollar course and then nothing really happens after that.
I guess my kind of my thought is that, so in my course, I I teach the copywriting, the conversion piece. But I don’t I don’t teach how to, like, drive traffic to so kind of thinking about your lesson from last week as well with the quadrant. So that’s kind of in order to get them to, like, six figures, seven figures, the point where they could afford to hire me.
That bit needs solving. I I’ve never wanted to solve that piece because it doesn’t excite me or interest me, and it’s not what I’m an expert in.
But I feel like for the value center letter to work, I need do I need to solve that? Would that be a case of bringing someone in to teach it or any thoughts?
In I mean, in this case, it’s like how how important is the traffic part to your process. If it is important then That it’s not important to my process, but it is for them to get the results.
Right? Because even if their conversion rates are there, they’re not getting people in.
If they’re not getting people into their evergreen funnel.
Yeah.
To me, I mean, it feels like, oof, overkill, but I think I’d be lying to you if I said if it’s important to your process, you don’t need to of course, it is.
If it’s if it’s not your process, but in order to get people in, they’re never able to do anything. It’s like, but at the same time, you can consult on that. Just like in conversion rate optimization. Someone brings a CRO agency in and says, Hey, we need this funnel to convert better or this journey or whatever.
The CRO agency is only there to worry about that funnel. Then the company has to go, oh, crap. We need to get more trapped. In here because we can’t run a test with five people coming through this every day.
So I would consider for you, although it is an important input doesn’t have to be part of your process.
And then just cut it out if it doesn’t have to be. If it has to be, then I would say, yes. You have to find a way to solve those traffic challenges, which could just be having a really great VA that you can reach out to when you need to, who’s good at basic ads and, and, like, demand generation stuff.
I know that’s not great, but either find a way to pull it out of your process or, yeah, you’re right. You have to solve that problem.
Yeah. Okay. Thanks, Jared.
Yeah. What do you think about that?
Yeah. I mean, it was kinda like, I like my course as it is, and I don’t wanna change it, but it is, yeah, I mean, I do is a problem that used to be solved. And it’s also, like, in my kind of why didn’t you buy emails. It’s it’s been coming up that people are like, I don’t does this do I have to, like, post on social media every day to get this to work?
So, I mean, I have been thinking about bringing in, like, an art specialist to do just stay hour, like, master class or something in the course or in half an hour one or something. So I think this is kind of confirmed that probably is makes my sense if the next step is for them to hire me because then they really need to be making good money with the system. So Totally. Yes.
Yeah. Yep. That makes good sense. I don’t know if anybody else has any other thoughts on that, but, yeah, seems smart. Seems like the way to go.
Yeah.
Thank you.
Thanks, Abby. Anyone else? Any notes or thoughts on the MTP?
Framework and value ladders at all.
Are you using value ladders with your clients?
Nobody is.
Abby is the one person. I know it can be tough for SaaS and things like that, but I would like encourage you SaaS and software and tech. They have lead magnets. They have free trials. They have free tiers, and then they have more tiers to to get you up to that next level.
So it’s important to also bring that to tech as well. It feels really easy to dismiss it as if tech is some entity unto itself that no other business has ever matched or felt like comes close to, and that’s just like, not true. Like, not true at all. Once you actually get into these businesses, they’re they’re all money making endeavors, just with different ways there. Okay. Cool.
Sassy. Oh, that’s cool. That’s awesome, Stacy. Yeah. Nice.
Oh, sorry. For those who are watching the replays, Daisy just chatted out that Sassy, her, AI solution creates value ladder ideas. Very nice. Love it.
Alright. Any other questions or thoughts or anything you wanna discuss today? Business stuff. Yeah, Katie.
Can I just ask Joe, so you mentioned confirmation page and confirmation emails?
Is there any where like, I love this framework. I can definitely see myself using it for myself and for clients. So, like, I could also see it maybe like, two thirds of the way through the program that you’re kind of teasing, like, what the next program could be, is there anywhere else that you think you might be able to do the match teas trigger?
Yeah. No. I think that’s awesome. The one that I just wanted to focus on is that we use, which is those confirmation pages.
Yeah. So I’m sure there are lots of great ways to use it wherever you know someone should be getting ready for that next step or thinking about it. I think that’s a great call to use it in app or throughout training. Yeah. Nice.
And do you think the video component is, I just saw Stacy’s nurture email sequences suggestion think that’s really good to end. How heavily would you weight the video component versus just having that call on the confirmation page.
Yeah. I I wouldn’t. I I mean, I think a video is, if it looks like a quick easy thing to interact with, and you’re already feeling good about that brand and you know the person that you’re looking at, then you’ll be more likely to hit play on the thing and then actually pay attention, especially if, you know, captions are on.
But yeah, I we just do video all the time with this now, and for a little while now. So it really, I would just say test it out. Just try different things, try it in different places. Yeah.
I’m not sure how much people I don’t know. I don’t know about the written side of it at all. But the video Oh, okay. Yeah, is doing good things for us.
Yeah. I think.
Sure. Fun.
Alright. Anybody else?
Jessica?
I just asked about my specific offers for your feedback. Is that okay? Yeah. Love it.
Absolutely. Okay. So I guess when I’m looking at this, where I get tripped up. The first the first steps are fine.
I think of checklists, blueprint, that kind of thing. And then once the book is done, the book or a webinar, a paid webinar, you know, something like that. I think where after that where I’ve struggled with the client part, like, I don’t have client projects enough to validate the the higher tiers. So, for example, I start going okay.
Is the starter service for seasonal sales? Would that be more of a?
Audit, I’ve never had anyone ask me for that. However, I have had to do last minute seasonal sale campaigns with like the bare bones kind of promo, which would not be the top tier kind of service that I would like to do ideally. So there’s like that question with that level. And then my my other question with a higher tier service where I get to do their seasonal sale either full calendar year with everything that I’d wanna do before and after the promo.
And then eventually, like you had mentioned when I brought up the agency idea, doing their seasonal sale campaigns and everything, but then doing all the nurturing and all that in between.
So that’s where I it’s the higher tier stuff, I guess, where I’m I’m like, I’m not sure how to break this down.
Yeah. And I wonder about, like, for the value tier for you, if it’s like, if you wanna think about the ladder going up, Right? And it’s a staircase in the drawings. I don’t understand.
But, nonetheless, it could be so you’ve got the tripwire as your book or workshop or whatever, and then you’d have done with you likely done with you as an offering than done for you. But then I wonder if, like, one of the top tier ones And it depends on where you wanna take your business. I just don’t know that you’d break it down into the different products going up the ladder, like, the different services. I mean, like, packages.
But rather one tier is all of those packages, whatever package it might be, but you sell them into it.
You, like, seed that. Right? And then is the next tier if it’s done with you, done for you, and then that next one which could be teacher team or, like, fractional copy chief or something that’s more, like, this different level of service rather than different kind of, like, product or delivery. Does that make sense?
Yeah. I like that. Yeah. And I get actually people asking for that lately. So Oh, I’m sure.
Yeah.
Yeah. I think it was all the honestly. I think that copy hacker’s copy chaffing. I’ve suddenly, over the weekend, had an influx in hay, are you still copy chaffing?
So that’s awesome. Oh, okay. Okay. That’s interesting. Okay. That gives me some food for thought.
Thank you.
Yeah. I would just think about like getting to that place where the top part of it, the top tier on your ladder is something that, leverages your time better where you just get more money for your brain, which might sound silly. But that’s kind of what it comes down to.
Yeah. Yeah. Cool. Cool. Thank you. Bye. Yeah. Totally.
Anybody else have anything they’re working on? Bless you, Abby.
It’s that time of year seasonal allergies.
Yeah.
Alright. Cool. Well, if you don’t, that’s a okay. We can wrap up early. I do wanna talk about something else that, the coaches and I are gonna be meeting Sarah and the other coaches and myself this afternoon.
We have a new we’ve been holding off on bringing anybody else into Coffee School Pro.
We’re gonna be following a slightly different process less, bringing people in this whole, like, sixty day intensive out of the gate to people to a place where they’re making, much better money faster with better leads.
So That will be happening. We’re gonna run our first one at the beginning of April.
I would encourage all of you to participate in it. If you can, you have to, but we’re gonna be talking through a lot of, we’re gonna be introducing processes and vocabulary that new people coming in to Copyschool Pro will be using. So they’ll be talking about these processes. They’ll be thinking in this sort of different way that we’ll be teaching in, this accelerator, which is we’re calling it the intensive, mostly because we just own that domain. So we’re, like, post called the tenths of freelancer because I couldn’t come up with a name.
We’ll see. That might change.
So yeah, I would encourage you if you want to, if something that’s you’re struggling with is thinking through ways to make, it’s this thousand dollar a day promise, really, are you able to make thirty thousand dollars a month. If that’s not already happening for you, then I’d encourage you to take this.
And it’s included obviously with your, existing rates. It’s gonna be in addition to the existing CSP training. So it will mean like a lot of of paying attention to lots of different training going on at once, which I know is a lot and might feel overwhelming. And I’m sorry I don’t mean for it to be that way, but I think it’ll be good for, for our for anybody who well, for all of you because we’ll all need to talk the same way going forward. So we’ll share more about that going forward. But just know that it’s gonna start around April second. That’s a Tuesday.
And then we’ll, Yeah. Well, I’ll share more before that, but just kind of like put it on your radar. Cool.
Cool. That’ll be, of course, that’s okay.
Sorry.
I told I don’t wanna, like, hog your time.
Yeah, it’s, like, about a client.
So that’s all. I did wanna share a win about this client because it’s pretty cool.
So, yeah, I help them live large in January, and then took them on to the Evergreen Robin off on all. And it’s, like, the first time I’ve kind of got to properly implement day one at Evergreen. And we increased the conversion rates from five percent to seven percent going evergreen. So they’re now making, and it’s a, twelve hundred dollar course. So that’s exciting. They’re making lots of money.
But I I want to offer an optimization piece, and I’ve kind of I had set this up before.
But I’ve never I’ve never really, like, pushed it. I guess probably because I don’t feel good about the offer.
I don’t really know, like, what to charge and how to kind of set boundaries around it. What I was thinking it would be would just be to make sure I’m tracking conversions each week. And then when left, like, outstand spikes or anything or, the ultimate, like, page drops or just kind of keeping the copy like, fresh every few months, that kind of thing, like implementing survey responses.
And I was I was gonna charge like, the package I had was, like, two thousand dollars.
I don’t know if that, like, it made sense for my audience if, like, I don’t know. I’m just it’s difficult to increase price and figure out.
So you increase their conversion rate by almost fifty percent going from five percent to seven percent.
Right? That’s an almost fifty percent lift on that paid conversions.
Can I ask what you charge for that project?
Yeah, I charged fifteen thousand for the launch and then, five thousand to Evergreen. Okay. So it’s twenty.
Twenty k all in.
They made five hundred ninety thousand dollars on the launch, and then now they’re making, like, five thousand dollars a day. So they can afford it. Right?
No.
I think it’s gonna let you answer this panel by itself.
Yeah. If you already know, a good general rule of thumb is for performance retainers if you had a project up front.
Tried to get the performance retainer to be fifty percent of that project. So if it was twenty thousand upfront, ten thousand dollars a month to retain you to optimize this thing, for a minimum of six months.
Now I know that can seem you know, five times larger than what you had in mind. But this is a real business that has seen you get real results.
And it’s the right place to start.
So I would not do it for less than two thousand dollars. I mean, most people who most businesses when you say two thousand dollars, like, they think they’re not gonna get any of your time. Right? Like, what are you gonna do for two thousand bucks?
Like, literally, what are you gonna like, how much time do I buy of yours for that? Whereas ten thousand, I expect, okay, I would expect that I will get some form of return. You’ll report on it, and you’ll make sure that we’re happy every month. And that’s what you would deliver anyway.
Right? Like you’re going. To do those things.
So what would stop you other than what’s going on in your head? So probably just what’s going on in your head. What would stop you from feeling good about ten thousand? What would have to happen for you to feel good about ten thousand a month for a minimum of six months?
I don’t like I just I can’t get my head around charging that, like, at all. That just seems so much.
I guess, like, if I if there was proof that what I was doing was actually, like, doubling their ROI every month, then it’ll be different. But I I mean, especially because it’s, like, the first time I’d be doing this package, it just feels I don’t know. Like, I just I just, like, Did did you say the make in five go date? Yes.
But it’s yeah.
Stacy, I sent me this is it’s fair for you to pause on this, but I think, you know, That’s why you’re here. Right? Like, just I it’s not as easy as saying. Just push through it, but the reality really is. You’ve already delivered well for them.
There are if unless they’re an unreasonable group of people No.
They’re so great. Yeah. Okay. Then they just sort of pay me to do everything for them, but that’s, like, I don’t wanna, like, over stretch. I don’t know.
No. I would if I were you, I’d put together a quick, like, ten point max checklist of what that performance retainer package would look like So what are the things that they’d need to get that you would do? So I so when you say, I’ll refresh coffee every three months or whatever. Like, obviously, you wouldn’t message it that way.
But, like, that is a thing. So you’ll be looking at, like, just just quickly jot down ten things that you’ll do in the month for them. And each one of those is definitely worth a thousand bucks each. I would put money on each one of those being worth a thousand dollars each.
And if it’s somehow in your brain not, then maybe it doesn’t belong on the list, or maybe you just need to skip past the part that says this this is two.
People don’t pay money for this. I think you’re letting maybe some historical stuff in there about, like, people not paying money for things influence your future, which is there. That’s what we all do. Right?
But why wouldn’t they if they’re making five thousand dollars a day, if they are I’m assuming they’re running it like a business, not like a cash machine. If they’re taking money out, then you can’t do anything about that. But if they’re reinvesting because they see this incredible future of being able to pay themselves, a million or two million dollars a year, which you can help sell them on that future for them, then they’d be absolute fools not to do this. Right?
There’s did you see that Hermozy Instagram Hermozy where he’s like the I talked about this already. It’s really compelling, and I’ve seen people knock it off, and it’s really embarrassing.
This he shows you, like, his keys to his hummer. And he says, you know, it’s two hundred thousand dollar car.
If I were to say, I’m gonna give it to you for thirty thousand dollars. Go get thirty thousand dollars cash, and you can have this, go look at this on Instagram. He’s very good at storytelling.
You’d be out of your mind not to go find thirty dollars. Right? But you have but now you have to believe that the outcome is really worth it. So they just need to believe that what they’re investing in is worth the two hundred thousand dollars that, you know, that you want to have in order for a sixty thousand dollar investment to be worth it.
Do you believe you can make two hundred thousand dollars in additional revenue for them with this performance?
You go in believing that, write it on a piece of sticky note all over. Put it every freaking where. So you can only see a little bit of yourself when you’re in the Zoom call, and that’s like, you can you can make them two hundred thousand dollars.
They would be out of their minds not to pay you sixty thousand dollars for that. The obvious next ROI is there. So I don’t know if they’re helpful for you, like, me to showed it, you liked it.
No. If you need it, please.
Yeah.
I mean, because the other thing is, say they buy ski, they They since they started working with me, they hit million and they wanna hit ten million, like, in the next couple of years to sell. They have the courses like, they have the audience. They just, like and they’re having me right. Like, I’m the only copywriter they’re working with, so I encourage, like, there’s so much money there.
I just I’m just figuring out how to, like, tap it, and it’s kind of like, I feel almost like when I’m pitching them stuff, even though they’re saying yes, like, it’s just it just feels like, like, taking too much of their money, but, like, I guess that’s just a Can I offer another another perspective?
It’s also, like, it’s not just the time. It It’s also the money that they’re paying you. It’s also the fact that to find somebody else is a huge pain in the butt. Like, I have people that I work with, right, like my accountant, and, like, I’m not super happy with him.
I could, like, have some, like, like, I wish things were better. I’d like to have to go find somebody else and teach him all about my business and, like, do all of that work. Like, that’s a huge headache. Like you’re saving them the trouble of having to find somebody else to do that for them.
Mhmm. They’re just huge.
Yeah. Mhmm. Good point.
Yeah.
I think the money is just waiting there. Yeah. And it’s just a matter of You know, I didn’t go to this Thursday session with Kirsty on mindset, where it is about thinking bigger and really, like, get into it. I would I would. I I they’ve already invested twenty thousand dollars.
They’ve already invested fifty thousand dollars.
Like, since October. Like, I know the buddy’s there.
It’s just Alright. You know, that’s tough.
You’re done. I’m cutting you off. Okay. It’s obvious. No. No. I’m just kidding.
No. No. Please. I hope everyone enjoyed my episode of Abby’s got money mindset issues.
That’s awesome.
No. I mean, I think we can talk about how to go about.
Pitching this to them in a way that feels good if that’s getting in your way. But I think even just knowing that if the rule is about half of what the project was worth is what that particular is worth, then you can take comfort in the fact that it’s a rule. And if you don’t follow that rule, then you’re breaking the rule.
Do you wanna be that person Abby? No.
No. I I need to start projecting my money share on to my clients, like, ASAP. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. Thank you for letting me.
Awesome. I wanna hear how it goes now.
Thank you.
Then once you got that first ten k retainer out of the way, that’s your new low. And now you now you keep going above it. So be scared of what’s next. Not this moment.
I mean, I am.
Awesome. Awesome. Thanks, Abby. Naomi. Do you have a question and a win to kick it off?
A win.
I reached out to Louis do you know Louis Grenier from, everyone hates marketer? So I reached out to him and he said I could write and emailed in his list.
That’s exciting. I’ve never done that before.
Oh, nice. What do you get to make the email about? What’s it for?
So I have this interesting hierarchy that I created based on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs that correlates with different levels of seniority in companies and different levels of seniority in different sized companies.
And sort of tweaking copy based on those psychological needs.
So that it still sounds very professional still sounds very polished, but it hits on those deeper needs, that people people are really thinking about.
Okay. I love it. Cool. I can’t wait to see that. Yeah.
That was exciting.
Yeah. Awesome.
So okay. So in in more and more often, I have people asking me if I can work on their social content, which is not something that I have a ton of experience in. My background is more in demand gen, but because there’s so many big changes happening right now for Google and for meta, these traditional demand gen is just not working as well as it used to, furrow. A lot of B2B companies.
If you’ve heard of Chris Walker, he’s really, really a big voice in this, in this space, like cutting a lot of the ad spend and putting that more into organic content. And so it’s been really easy for me either to charge a lot for, like, charge a lot on retainer for, for social content. And to just suggest it to people, like, say, you know, because they, they know that if they’re not publishing on LinkedIn, it looks bad. It it gives people the sense that they don’t have something going on. So it’s really easy for me to suggest to them, you know, you really, you really have to start posting.
But I’m wondering if this is profitable because it involves a lot of time throughout the week. It’s not something that you can, like, always do on one day because if it’s a B2B company, you have to talk to R and D, you have to talk to product, you have to talk to sales. You have to constantly be in the loop. What are the new features?
What are customers saying? What’s our story? It’s like, quite an intensive thing, and there has to be design involved. And it’s like my Canvas skills are not so great that be doing these things on my own.
Like, I do need help from a designer.
But it’s like there’s huge demand for it and I’m starting to get good at it. So I’m wondering if this is something profitable or it’s just a huge time suck and I should try to limit it.
Do you see it fitting into Your future, three years from now, do you see wanting to do that still? If it wasn’t for the money, three years from now, what’d you wanna do?
Social copywriting.
I mean, it’s not It’s not what I find most interesting, but I’m also factoring in the, like, the market changes and there’s sometimes there’s demand for one thing and sometimes there’s demand for other things. That’s what I’m concerned about.
Okay. I just wonder because obviously as you build thought leadership out there.
People are going to come to you for the thing that you’re building thought leadership around. And as that happens, it’s just really a question of if you’re not gonna build any thought leadership around social, then it wouldn’t make sense to do it even though it seems like a good opportunity. And that’s purely because you’ll need to start standardizing the ways that you do this, put together you know, SOPs. Think about, is there a future where you offload this to, you know, a contractor who could do the work for you?
And give you leverage. Right? If we’re talking about how to get to really good money, you do, you need sources of leverage.
So it’s hard put those things together, those things being SOPs and all of everything that goes with documentation, And the people that you then train on it, if that’s down the road for you, it’s hard to do that if you’re flipping between lots of different things that people want you to do. If you were like, I really see this as a cool opportunity. I like doing it. I know how to do it well. I could see being able to bring in a good business with this and potentially train somebody or a few people to take over the work so I don’t have to, then they’d be like, cool. That sounds like something to explore.
If it’s not, then it’s not something to explore.
I think what’s what’s causing me to hesitate is that it’s so top of funnel that unless you have amazing attribution tools, which I mean, come on.
Not even really all that good. Like, if you have the money to buy six cents, like, You can yeah.
You probably have plenty of people to manage it in house.
Like, it’s so top of funnel And it’s so hard to track that I’m hesitant as to how much money companies would be willing to invest in it. I’m wondering how scalable it is. It’s fine. It’s enjoyable.
But if you combine the fact that it’s time intensive on a daily basis because you have to keep it up in order for for for the to get more and more attention, and the fact that it’s harder to link it to revenue makes it a bad deal, even though I have lots of people all the time asking for it. Where like if I’m doing a landing page, I can see all the numbers. I can see exactly, like, if I know how much an MQL is worth or an opportunity is worth, it’s really, really easy. For me to measure how much value I’m bringing to the table in a way that social content you just can’t even if you have amazing measuring tools.
Yeah. Now this is the kind of thing where it might make more sense for you to say no to the opportunity, but to have an affiliate or referral link that you can use to send that over to, someone else who does the work really well. So To me, it sounds like it’s an opportunity, like, to make money. People are just kinda throwing it at you, and that’s the thing that you have to, like, pause on. It’s so hard to. Like, it’s always gonna be hard to.
But you can still use that moment if you identify by anybody who is good at this work. And then there, I’d never know how to say her name. Aside.
Abby just chatted that over. Then you can maybe put together a referral program with aside to start making passive revenue off of sending referrals her way.
I would think about something more like that. I agree you don’t wanna give up these opportunities. It’s hard to.
But you also can’t let it distract you from the business that you wanna build unless unless it’s lit something in you and you’re like, this would be amazing.
And then you have to get strategic about whether that’s your new business. It doesn’t sound like it is. So if it’s not, can you just send it over to somebody else and make twenty percent off of it?
What do you think of that?
I guess I’m also hesitant because I people are just not telling me that they need help with the kind of stuff that I have been training on for the past several years. Like, they’re just not running Google campaigns at the same rate. I mean, Google it like, why is Google laying off so many people? Because their platform is not it’s not making money. Right? Like these things are all connected. So I’m wondering like I’m hesitant to refer them because I’m thinking, well, marketing is changing really, really fast, and maybe it’s going to look different, and I have to keep up with the times.
So I am not like a huge advocate of making decisions from a position of, like, fear of what could come.
And I’m not saying that you’re fearful or afraid, but there is that, like, uncertainty of the unknown.
And that’s part of, like, being a business owner, is the solution to shift, to offer something different Maybe it is. There are actually absolutely times when that is. If email shut down tomorrow, if nobody was allowed to send emails anymore, then you’d you’d need to shift and you would have been happy to have started shifting earlier when looked like things were changing. So to you, right now, it looks like things are changing for demand gen when it comes to like Google ads as like top of as as the entry point or re entry point into a funnel.
If you really do believe that, and you feel at peace with shifting to social. You feel like I I could make this cool. I could I could like I could make it so valuable that even though it’s top of funnel, clients will line up and pay me good money for it. And even though I can’t attribute, real revenue to it, they’ll still be willing to pay me and I can keep raising my rates.
But if it’s out of fear and just kind of like, this isn’t working right now, but this might be working. Then I would I’d pause before making any sort of decision on that. What is keeping your business? Is it just that Google is in a little bit of trouble right now?
Google’s like a huge business though. They’re chances are very good. They’re going to get the ship righted. Right?
They’re not gonna let their enormous business go down just because of some changing behaviors out there and AI being way better than Google is.
But, I don’t know. I mean, I I can see, you know, I can see your expression. I can see. I can hear what you’re saying. To me, I would only do social media if one, it lights you up in some way. You gotta be able to get out of bed every day and be at least eighty percent of the way to happy with the job that you’re doing.
And two, can you can you really turn it into something where you can standardize?
Higher people and just be the overseeing person who generates money from those people. Because like you said, social’s a quantity game. Right? They’re gonna be putting a lot of posts out there.
And you don’t you don’t wanna be the one doing all of that work.
Yeah. Yeah. Do you think that’s something I could offload to somebody?
Do you want to? Is that a business you wanna build?
I feel like I would have to be doing a lot of work with the freelancers or with whoever whichever contractors I hire in order to, like, explain the story and explain the concept, and there would be so much go between that it wouldn’t be worth it. So if I can pitch it as, like, one of the clients I’m working with now were we’re not getting a lot of customers, but we’re getting a lot of investors liking our posts, and which is a good thing because they’re going there potentially interested in raising more money.
So if I can pitch it that way, then it is a lot it it is worth it, right? Because that could be, like, fifty million dollars for the next row, fifty million, probably close to sixty, seventy million.
So if I can pitch it that way, I do think it’s worth a lot more.
But it’s not something that I can outsource. So it would have to be I guess for the right companies.
Can I ask the question, Naomi? Just like on the topic of today’s training, is there a way that you can have this be the intro offer and then fit it into your value ladder. So, like, they come to you for the social content, but then through that interaction, you do some educating on what they really need is, like, what you actually wanna do? Does it work as an like, fit in the door for you?
It sort of worked the reverse. Like, they may come to me for one ad, but they don’t need, like, twenty ads. They just need, like, three to four ads, and I’m like, you guys aren’t posting on LinkedIn. Like, I could easily take care of that for you.
Okay.
Yeah.
Well, then I think, I mean, then I think Joe’s asked all the right questions around, like, if you want to do it.
Yeah.
Okay.
I mean, Yeah.
And it might feel like you can’t hand this off to people. But, I mean, we’re talking about building a high value business where you get good money out of it, and it makes really good consistent money So the general rule is, like, you build people, people build business. So your job isn’t actually to build the business.
If you think of it as a business that has a future state where you’re gonna make five million dollars a year, If that’s the business you’re building, you can’t make five million dollars a year as a one person shop, even if you wrote a best seller and it stayed up top of the New York Times for three years. Like, James cleared not to do everything by himself either. Right? So you you have to To get to five million, let’s say that’s your goal because why the hell not?
To get there, you’re gonna need people. To get to three hundred thousand, you’ll still need a little bit of people. So, like, the gap is not that weird. It’s full of people in there.
So I would say if you can find a way to standardize things like I know it feels like everything is custom.
But maybe sixty percent can be standardized and you can get people to do that for cheap and you train them on it, you make sure that you’ve spent two full days in one week just getting them ready to go on this. Testing them, putting them through it, and then you hand them the work. And then you make money on top of that. That can be a good path if it’s always you doing the work and it’s social media too, which it you’ll probably burn out on it one because it doesn’t it’s not why you got into this.
So you’ll burn out on lack of interest and on a lack of time. And it might even turn into a lack of money, if the market, you know, if more people start doing it, not saying that’s gonna be true.
But Right.
Okay. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. I could see doing something, like, We do one post related to statistics and one post related to, like, overcoming objections and one post related to this. And Like, there’s a a certain tone and, yeah, I could see that.
You can theme those weeks out for them and make that part of your process. Sorry. We’re gonna be talking more about theming your social media as well, to make it easier to to do stuff there. And so, yeah, that’s if you think, hey, it might be able to be standardized, and I would give it a shot.
I know it’s late for you, but, like, maybe sometime this week, you put a block together to see, like, how could I standardize social media posting or creation of these things for VA. So maybe it means you need to hire one VA who can write captions and another who can use Canva, and you just oversee the two of them. But then you have to, of course, budget that and make sure that you can charge accordingly and that you really do have a pipeline full of people, at least three people you can easily convert tomorrow on x amount for a social media package that’s, like, more of a retainer. So you have that nice recurring revenue.
Yeah. Okay.
Yeah. Yeah.
Cool. Probably also lots of room for AI. Yeah. No shit Katie says in chat. Yeah. Totally.
I’m sure Stacy is giving that a thumbs up too for the writing stuff.
Cool. Naomi, how are you feeling about that?
I feel like it needs a lot of ironing out.
But if I could I guess, like, I could hire a contractor, like, when I’m charging sorry, I’m just gonna use checkout because it’s easier for me. If I’m charging ten, fifteen thousand checkout a month, and I can hire somebody for five thousand checkout.
That’s one half to one third of what I’m making, and then I can manage the, like, working with clients and setting the ideas for the week and editing, then it would dramatically reduce the amount time that I’m working, and I can still make sure that their brand story comes through and that the right messaging points are coming through. And that we’re actually talking about the right technology and the right features, and that I’m not just pulling things out of thin air, that might be profitable.
So I can see that working. It would still be more days a week than I would like.
But I can see it being scalable. If I can come up with, okay, we’re doing one post every two weeks on a new article that comes out, one post on overcoming actions, one post on benefits, one post on interesting statistics, depending on who we’re trying to convert something to that effect.
Yeah. Awesome. Katie, were you gonna add something?
No. I have a kind of related question just on subcontracting if it’s okay.
Okay. Cool. Yeah. Thanks, Naomi. If you have a win by chance to share Katie?
I have a new well, so we we talked to before about the agency for steps.
And I’ve sold my first project where I bundled in design. So I am project managing, and I’m, like, leaving with the designer. So it’s that’s exciting.
Amazing. Yeah.
But I’m not, like, I’m not making isn’t with the caveat because I’m not late. I didn’t I didn’t mark up the design.
Hence my question now is, like, so the agency first steps that I did, I put out, like, a call for collaborators who work with a similar audience. And now I have thirty people who, like, filled out my form, have a mix of designers, tech, like tech experts, OBMs, other copywriters, So that was kind of my, like, seeding the agency, like, getting interested people to come out of the woodwork.
But I’m I don’t know how to make money off of it. Like, I don’t I’m like, okay. So, like, I know that I could refer out to these people, and, like, it’s great to have this you know, network for to refer my clients to. But I’m kind of stuck on, like, you know, even when you were giving Naomi about whether or not she wants to work with an agency because they’re limited in how much they can pay. I’m now, like, I’m, like, well, how do I make this profitable while also being like an appealing person to work with for these people who fill like, who come out to who’ve shown up for it.
Yeah. So I would are the people that are currently subcontracting for you, are they charging a reduced rate to you or their standard rate?
That they charge them.
So currently, they haven’t, like, I ask people to share their signature offer, like, what the main thing that they do and if they have a date And everybody has shared their standard prices so far, but I did kind of, like, leave the door open, like, I’ll be in touch with, like, So the people that I like, I wanna reach back out to and, like, open the conversation about what it would look like to white label their services but I just I didn’t like, basically, I’ve been leaving them hanging now for over a week because I didn’t know what I was gonna go with in terms of my next offer.
So you’ve got designers as subcontractors who else.
What I really need is, like, OBMs who will take the emails. I might even put them into the email marketing platform, like, set up the automations for me, help people clean up their tags and stuff like that, or also because I’ve been pitching these, like, post sale sequences for people to you know, set up the triggers within the program and the conditional, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, like so design, obviously, like, for front end stuff and then back end implementation.
Okay. Cool. Yeah.
Okay.
You won’t make money as an agency if you don’t control those expenses. Yeah. And that’s just the reality of it for every single agency.
And that’s why it can be, you know, very hard to hire the person you really want to hire.
So markups are a thing.
Definitely.
You’re not marking up at all right now.
No. I mean, but, like, This one, I was kind of like, okay, this is like a training wheels project, and then I’ll look from now on. It is definitely gonna be marked up. So And it’s a project for return.
This is a project.
Okay. Is there room because it sounds like its performance base starts measurable? You can sell it into a retainer afterward?
Yeah. I’ll probably okay. Cool. Yeah. I would encourage that.
What were you gonna say before I cut you off? Sorry.
Oh, well, just this is the one where I I did pitch her. I gave her the option of taking the performance based, but then she she was just like it’s just easier for me to know, like, what I’m gonna pay upfront. So she we went with that. Yeah.
And you can still do an upfront, like, a flat rate. Regardless of how it performs. It’s just your job as part for this retainer is to keep measuring and reporting on how it’s going. So especially if you’re doing email, like Yeah. What, like, my gosh.
So So when it comes to the subcontractors, you need to start by figuring out what profit you need for this to work. So that means you come to the contractor with the budget that you have for it, and they have to decide if they can do it for that low cost.
And it should be low. It should be, like, much lower than they would charge if they were to go out into the world because, obviously, You’re doing all the work. Right? Like, it’s all on you. Every bit of this is actually on you.
So because they could flake out on you. There’s too much risk. So you’ve got to get their rates way down, uncomfortably. But a lot of people are like, well, at least I didn’t have to sell. Like, I didn’t have to go get a client, so that’s okay.
That’s a that’s, like, step one is to gather a budget to get you to profit ability? How how much do you have to charge clients for this to work? How hard do you need to work to get them into a retainer? Like, is it really important for your business?
I would say, yes, it is. And it’s also a no brainer too for that retainer retainer again being a flat rate but you keep measuring every month how you’re doing and how it’s affecting the business. So that they see the value, but they’re always paying the same amount. So really obvious one, you start off with a project for twenty thousand dollars, then you move into a ten thousand dollar a month retainer, adjust those prices.
However, you see fit.
But if you were doing a twenty thousand dollar project with two subcontractors in there and your time in there as well, let’s say this works out over a six week or eight week period, I you wouldn’t wanna spend with those two subcontractors.
They don’t get more than five thousand dollars. Right? Like, got twenty thousand. Two of them take up half of your of your revenue already and leaving you with only thousand for your time for all of the client management you have to do for you continuing to build the business going forward you need at least ten thousand dollars for you. So five thousand would become, like, that’s the top end of what I can pay for this person to work with me for eight weeks. So twenty five hundred bucks a month for them to get these things done.
But if you know that, then Good. The number is based on the number that you need for this to be a viable agency for you. Does that make sense?
Yes. I just I feel like I guess that is assuming, certain level of standard in the projects that we’re doing, whereas I haven’t got that far yet in terms of like like, right now it’s just me being, like, okay, on the call instead of saying, like, and introduce you to somebody who does that being, like, I have a some, you know, I have somebody who can do that. So it hasn’t been, like, I don’t really have a standardized offer yet. So figuring out, like, the numbers is a is has been more hypothetical. But I can see I can see what you mean about, like, starting with the profitability, but, like, starting with a profitability versus starting with somebody else’s price.
Total that’s exactly it. It will be hypothetical too. It’ll feel uncomfortable. Like, isn’t there an easier, better k.
Have you read I would encourage you this won’t help you figure out what to pay people, but, pricing creativity by Blair ends is a good book for this.
Again, it won’t give you that, but it’ll help you just create context around making those decisions for what you pay the subcontractors, how you talk with them about their value and what they need to contribute. Like, it’s not gonna help you manage them. But you’ll be a better, armed, I think, to have a good conversation with them about prices that will feel low to them and should. If it doesn’t feel low to them, there’s probably a bit of a problem there.
But they get to work with you and all of the extra benefits of that.
Yeah, I know it’s hypothetical. It doesn’t feel as grounded as it ought to. Once you start getting into it and see what the market will bear, for new clients coming in and contractors being paid and what that gap is and how profitable you can be in there.
Then that’ll help a lot, but you just gotta start throwing numbers out, sadly.
Okay. Okay. Thank you. I would not pay more than fifty percent of the total budget on subcontractors.
Okay. Okay?
Yeah. Are you near that right now or not at all?
No. Not even co I mean, I charge fifteen k and the designer is gonna charge She’s doing, like, a show it template plus customization. She so I think her package is four k, and it involves she’ll put the email to convert kit and hook up convert kit to the site. So, like, I feel like that’s a good package for me to be pointing people to, and I just need to have a conversation with this designer about, like, bundling it into my package. Yeah.
And I’ve had a conversation with this designer in the past, like, she offered to make me an affiliate for her So, obviously, she’s comfortable, you know, knocking the price down for for ease of sale So I feel like that’s a good first relationship to build out.
Yeah. That’s awesome. Yeah. I know it’s tough.
Tough. But yeah. There is money on the other side of it. It’s just agencies at the beginning don’t feel profitable.
Until you hit that point, then it’s like, oh, there’s money here. Yeah.
Looking forward to that point. Yeah.
Alright. I’m gonna let you know it’s there. It will happen.
Cool. Okay. Thank you. Thanks, Katie. Anybody else?
On that same point, I’m wondering, like, how much time do you have to invest in training subcontractors at the beginning? Because, like, if I’m thinking of all the people that I’ve worked with, like, I would hire ninety seven percent of them. And like, because I don’t like the way that they write. I don’t think that they’re conversion focused, and they were my colleagues, obviously. So I wasn’t training them, but, like, if I take that kind of person and think like, how would I train them? Like, it would be a challenge, especially if they, especially if they had some experience because they are like stuck in their ways. They have like a way of doing it.
Yes and no. Right? So I think it’s one thing to keep in mind that’s hard for a lot of us to keep in mind is, like, it’s like, you’re the boss though. Like, you don’t have to start from a point of you’re okay.
I’m okay. Like, You’re the boss. So you get to say, here’s the standard of performance that I expect. I will train you on the standard.
I will give you the SOPs checklist. I’ll give you all the tools you need. I’m here to support you as well. We’ll have regular I promise transparency and communication with you all the time.
In exchange for that, here’s what I expect. This is this is the standard. Are we agreed on this as the standard? Here’s how we get to that standard.
Are we agreed on that as well? But that’s like, you’re you get to train them. You get to put them into that position of being able to be valuable for you so that they’re not an expense. Of course, in any way, they’re like a real asset.
So You do have to train them. You have to be ready with everything that they need to be successful in their job.
But then you get to say this is where you have to be. And then if they don’t perform to that level, then you get to have a hard conversation with them.
And you don’t it’s it is. It’s hard to find people. You have to lower your expectations and the only way to help raise those expectations. And it’s like a shoving.
Like, it’s it’s not light work. It’s like, well, you’re really working to get those expectations up across the board. Is to make sure that you’re modeling the exact behavior that you want people to follow, and that you are training them really openly and, like, allowing room for them to mess up once on a thing. Can’t mess up twice on the same thing, but again, have those that open communication with them.
But nobody walks in ready to go. Nobody ever. Even if you went and worked somewhere, you would still even though you’re at the top performance for what you do, you would still have to go and integrate into a new organization with new ways of working, maybe they do OKRs, maybe you like OKRs, and they don’t do them. Right?
There’s always gonna things that you’ll have to figure out and same is true for them. So have that empathy, but the more time you put into them, the more you’ll get out of it. And that’s why it can be so valuable to hire rather than to use hire as soon as you can if you’re building an agency.
Instead of I know a lot of people succeed with VA’s.
But if we’re talking about for important work that you’re gonna be setting down and training somebody on for hours and hours and hours, then you don’t really want them to leave. Right? You wanna, like, get them in and keep them. And that’s why a lot of agencies start with, really cheap, brand new people, like fifty thousand dollar salaries right out of school because you’re gonna be doing all sorts of training. And that’s it. And then that leaves you good room to also increase their salary as they perform well and make them wanna stay with you longer.
But yeah, I don’t know how helpful that is on the subject, but yes to training.
And if you can If you see this as an agency you’re building, can you bring in somebody to be on staff sooner than later? Colin Junior, Yeah.
And at what at what point, like, what revenue point would you consider taking somebody on? And roughly how much time would you assume? Like, Is this gonna be two weeks? Is this gonna be three months?
Like For an agency, I’d take them on immediately in a second, do you think it’s time to hire?
Do it. You just pay yourself less. It sucks. But, like, you eat ramen for a little bit and not the good stuff.
And, you’ve you’ve got them on and I have seen people who are driven. If you’re in this room, you are very likely to rise to the occasion. You’re going to find the money to pay them and yourself. And that means you’ll be taking on interesting projects.
You’ll be telling yourself I can’t go into this meeting and take less than ten thousand dollars for this retainer. I I I can’t afford it. So I need to go in there and be really good at selling them on this ten thousand dollar a month retainer. Then the next month, once you hire another person, now your retainer is a twenty dollars a month, and you have to make it work.
And you do. So if you weren’t building an agency, then there’s different ways to think about hiring, but you are, you will need people without question. So I think you need to hire, hire now. For cheap, especially if you’re gonna need to put a lot of time into them because you actually do have more time now than you’ll have over the next three years.
And then after the three years, then you’ll have more time again. But that’s when you’re at the three million mark and you have to build a leadership team at that point anyway.
Yeah. Ironing.
It’s not fun, arming so hard.
But do now. There are juniors out there who are ready to go. Just want a chance and some money, please. I just also want some money.
Cool. Any other questions or thoughts on that? On anything.
No?
No.
Sorry. I have a lot of questions. If somebody else wanted something else to say.
Would you, in terms of prioritization, I find that the thing I struggle with most is finding designers, because I can’t, like, I can’t write something without having it designed. It just won’t perform. And I need a designer that I can work with, because I need a designer that knows something about UX and will listen to me when I have suggestions.
Would it be more reasonable to hire a designer first, or should I continue to search for freelance designers that I can partner with? Because I haven’t I haven’t looked so much, but I’ve found that it’s hard to find people number one that are talented and work in the same projects that I do and number two that are available and cooperative.
Sorry. That was a service delivery.
So my I have to get into my office so badly.
Sorry. I lost track of the question I had an answer. Oh, the design stuff. Yes. Of course.
I’ve been watching Nicole here. Nicole is our designer and social media person on our team.
And so I’m sure she’s had lots opinions over the course of this meeting. I don’t know Nicole if you do have anything to add. I can say because I don’t wanna put you on the spot. Or do you want do you have something to add?
Not much to add necessarily, but it’s it’s I can understand, like, it’s hard to hire anybody. Like, designers aren’t no different than any other position, I would assume.
But I find that, a lot of designers, like, undersell themselves, and So that’s why it’s so much, like, you might find it is that much harder to, like, say, like, go on upwork because you might find an excellent designer, and they’re only charging, like, you know, fifteen dollars an hour for their work, which is silly. But sometimes, yes, that’s how it goes because there’s an oversaturation. So I can see how that would be difficult but I do find that, like, whenever back when I was freelancing, like, I did, like, being given a test project. Was really, really helpful.
And the people who are willing to do the test project, I find will be willing to learn more things and they’d probably be more of an asset to you.
Yeah. Good call. Totally.
Yeah.
And we found Nicole with a LinkedIn job posting.
So designers are looking at job openings as well, just like everybody else.
It’s hard to find them maybe in your network, but they are you post job opening, and you’ll get a lot of applicants, put them through a test, and just treat it like, you know, I mean, you’re hiring for your business. So this is the way it is. Yeah. If you think you need to bring a designer on full time because it’s part of how you sell what you do, then a job hosting together.
If it’s only a small part of what you do, like, you’re like, well, I always use them at the very end, but I give them all the direction.
And I just need them to make sure that they’re implementing what I say, then that might be something where you could find a really good VA. Like, time, etcetera dot com is who we use and so far so good.
And that if if it is a small amount of work, then a VA could do it. If it’s gonna be a lot, you see a recurring need for it, do a job posting for a a designer. Yeah.
Yeah. It’s more like if I wanna take on somebody to do social work, like there needs to be design, And a lot of times smaller companies just don’t have the design in house, or if they do have the design in house, either they’re a new first they’re a new because obviously you need to keep the product, like, you need to have design for the product, or they have if they have a marketing designer, there’s only one marketing designer, and they have like one hundred thousand things on their plate, and social is the very, very bottom of the list. So I’m left using Canva, even for large companies that have millions of dollars in funding.
So that’s why I’m wondering, like, if I’m gonna hire somebody, maybe it would make more sense to hire a designer before I hire a contractor.
It sounds like it. Yeah. It sounds like if it’s if it’s a big enough pain for you, and it’s really getting in the way of delivering.
Higher one. Yeah. You can think about different ways to hire them, but of the really good things about hiring people is it lights fire under your butt to make more money. You gotta make payroll. So you gotta do it. I would If it’s it sounds to me like that is the first hire that you need, you’ll probably need to have, like, someone else in your back pocket.
Shortly thereafter to, help, actually help you create those assets outside of designing them.
Some sort of content strategist or a copyright or whatever that person is.
But, yeah, hire them and, like, as a full timer.
And then but but make sure you put a plan together for how you’re going to make money and be profitable.
So don’t wing it, but it probably starts by just, like, doubling your rates right now and then watching all the training you can on how do how to sell better, like, sell like a freaking champ, not that you can’t, but it does not hurt. Sales is gonna be, like, your best friend as you build out your agency.
Yeah. Mhmm.
That makes sense. Oh. And do you have a sense until the point where I do feel comfortable to hire, maybe you could help. I have no idea what a designer should earn.
Like per project, per hour, no clue whatsoever.
Like I value it. I just don’t know how much is worth to pay for it.
I I mean, it totally depends where they are, but if it doesn’t matter where they are to you, then I’d put the salary low.
People always think that they need to put their salary really high, and it’s I not actually found that a higher salary brings in like, at the same level of higher candidate. It’s just often it’s someone who wishes they couldn’t earn that much money.
I know they’re like, no, man. No. And you find really good candidates at the lower salary as well. So don’t don’t lead with it has to be a high salary.
If they can work anywhere, that’s a benefit. If you can add in extra perks, like give them Fridays off. Just do it. Just out of the gate.
Just do it. Then these are the perks that will attract stay at home parents who have a design background.
And then you don’t have to worry about the salary being bananas.
But I wouldn’t know what that salary is. It completely depends. If they’re junior, if they’re right out of school, I know that you can, like, do a glass door to see what salaries there are. I don’t know how much I would rely on that though.
I mean, the number that comes to mind for me is fifty thousand. It’s not a lot of money at all, but it’s a good junior salary.
And it leaves you room to bonus them based on performance. If they do a killer job, you can give them a really nice bonus, then they’re like, wow, that’s cool. Also to increase their salary as well. Like six months later, if they prove that they’re amazing and you are like relieved of so much of the crap you’ve had to do so that you can go bring in more clients and hire more.
They’re really proving their value to you, then you can increase their salary. Course, you don’t have to wait to do it. You can do that at any point, but I wouldn’t start. I don’t know.
I don’t know what fifty thousand if fifty thousand is too low in today’s market or what, but start there and see what you get. You want juniors, right? You basically do. You want them to be able to use the tools and have a good design eye.
But you’re gonna have to teach them so much.
Yeah. Okay. Interesting. Thank you.
Alright. Cool. Cool.
Anybody else in the remaining eight minutes?
No? Good talk about all of this hiring stuff today. It makes me excited for everybody. It’s so cool.
Wicked. Okay. Well, then let’s wrap up. Thank you very much. Don’t forget. To attend the Thursday session thinking bigger.
K? And we’ll chat with you all online. See you later. Have a good one. Have a good week.
Your 9-Word Evergreen Email Automation
Your 9-Word Evergreen Email Automation
Transcript
As everybody’s moving into, like, the next tier of growing your business, getting those all the other things that we’re talking about here in Copy School Pro.
Moving from looking for leads to making sure you have qualified leads and making sure you get more and more of them in. And then what do you do with those that don’t convert, what do you do with the email list that you’re building in some way, whether you’re like, I don’t really build one, Joe, or you’re like, well, I’ve put in got three hundred people on the list or I’ve got thirty thousand people on my list or whatever it is. If you’re not building a list of some kind, what’s stopping you? Not gonna get into the list building today, but what we are going to talk about is the fact that a lot of leads aren’t ready for you when you present an offer to them, or they sign up and they’re like, they join your list, and they’re not quite sure.
What they want or when they’re gonna need it, etcetera, etcetera. There’s all sorts of confusion. People don’t ghost you or say no to you simply because they’re always gonna say no to you. So we are talking about opens. When you have people who are on your list in some way.
It’s good to keep them engaged. So this is a trick. That I learned, a technique, a way to do that. Really straightforward. Everybody has heard of the nine word email.
Yeah. So if you haven’t Google it, it’s the nine word email.
But that’s a really that’s a way to reengage or reactivate somebody who has, you know, gone silent, on you a lead, and that could be a lead in any form. Right? So if you are selling courses or thinking of it, if you are taking clients, if you’re doing both, all of all of these people who you’re trying to reach out to or they reach out to you and these things don’t come together. We want to use something like the nine word email. So here’s the thing that we are doing today. I will switch over and share my screen and talk you through this really basic simple thing that we can all do. I actually Lindsay on my team is setting ours up.
So we can always ask Lindsay hard questions if we want to. Just kidding she’s still working on it. But I I love it and I wanted to share it with you the second I put my own together.
So here is the idea.
Over the course of a year, you drip out across every twenty three days across a year, you drip out in your email platform, active campaign ConvertKit, whatever you’re using. You set up an automation, and you could do this also in many chat as well. So if you’re like, I’m not really building my list, but I’m over on Instagram. I’m doing cool stuff over there. You can set up the exact same thing in Instagram so people who follow you can get this and Lindsay also does those for us. So she can maybe speak more to that. To what you would do in manychat, but here is the point.
You can both do this for yourself and sell this as something you do for clients. So if you’re like, you just wanna make some quick cash get another product type service or, like, you have, a client who is, who has, like, sales team or people that are involved in selling, including. They might have someone called an opener.
A setter, that’s usually an appointment setter, a warmer and a closer. So these are the sorts of roles that you might encounter or the terminology you might hear from client who needs something like this. We’re talking about opens here, opens including reactivation.
So what we do is we write sixteen. You just brain dump sixteen nine word email. They don’t have to be exactly nine words, but they are in the like great tradition of are you still looking for apps? So the nine word email I’m pretty sure it goes, are you still looking for such as, are you still looking for a hand with your website?
Are you still looking for, more conversions in your launches? Are you still looking for then whatever the thing is that you offer. Right? So are you still looking for new clients?
Are you still looking for x y z?
We go through and we brainstorm a variety of those and you can do that for yourself just again and again for one thing. If it is, like, I just wanna reopen conversations every twenty three days, automatically on the subject of me working for you. Okay. Fine.
Then you bring That’s all you’re selling. If you’re like, Joe, I’m fully on services. I don’t do other things. Cool.
Fine. That’s great. You’re going to brainstorm sixteen nine word emails, write them out, and then you schedule them in your solution every twenty three days. And that over the course of a year, a little bit over a year, that will drip out this ongoing engagement with books.
Does this make sense?
Okay. So you can do this for if you’re beyond plan at work and you want to diversify the way that you’re generating revenue if you’re doing webinars. If you have evergreen webinars, obviously, in particular, if you do the same webinar every two weeks live, which, by the way, a lot of people actually do. So don’t feel weird.
If you feel weird about evergreen webinars, if you thought about doing a webinar and you’re like, I don’t wanna evergreen it, but I also don’t know, should I be delivering it live all the time? Yeah. You can do that. It’s fine.
Demo of bookings and demo could mean anything. It could mean how you help a person’s team if you’re doing copykeeping services or something like that.
Consult calls and that’s where it’s a setter where you’re going to book an appointment. So, that’s the goal is to set that appointment. If you have a PDF or a book giveaway, that could be the subject of an email, any IRL events that you might do, and this might not be happening right now, but it’s good to think about as you grow. What you would kind of like replace certain emails with along the way.
If you have a podcast, book and guess on that podcast, if you have a course to sell, opening the conversation. These aren’t closers, and they’re not necessarily setters either. These are open or reopen conversations with people who could become your smart client.
Workshops, product history services, really the list goes on. So this is what you’re going to do for the next fifteen minutes, sixteen minutes to give you one minute fur. I’m gonna quickly show you what ours looks like, and these are just some of the emails that I’ve drafted out for, Lindsey.
Knowing that we have a little bit of complexity, that you shouldn’t normally really have to worry about if you have one thing you’re trying to get done or a one audience you’re trying to speak to. We have general everybody, and then we have freelancers, which are very they need very different messages than startup founder needs and then an in a then an in house copywriter needs, etcetera. So we wanna find out quickly out of the gate, hey, are you still freelancing? Is twenty three days after a person opt in to our general list.
They’ll get an email that has subject line freelancing question mark in order to try to move only people who are freelancing to open this, and then they’ll reply. Again, this is an open. This is not something where you’ll necessarily have another, message that follows absolutely in your platform, although you could. Right?
You could do all sorts of triggers in active campaign. In many chat where if somebody does something, then x happens. But the best the simplest way to go about this is to write the email, the nine word email that is just, hey, are you still blank? That’s it.
And don’t worry about setting up anything that follows twenty three days later, the next one goes out. I’m running a workshop on. This is for an evergreen webinar that Paul is working on right now on our team. Would you like join us.
They answer yes. The conversation is opened and that’s where you take over. This is manual work, but it’s also sell by chats, right? It’s it’s getting you into this world of selling with conversations that happen by email.
Or on Instagram or even on your website if you decide that you’re going to do this in like, messenger or something else and there are other tools we’re gonna talk about as we go through Coffee School Pro. Okay. We’re gonna give you sixteen minutes to write your own sixteen nine word emails. The fastest way to actually make sure you implement this is to go into your convert kit or active campaign or whatever, and write the automation right in there.
You don’t have to activate it if you’re like, oh, these suck. Just put the basics in there, twenty three day wait between each, and get it done. K? You’ll have till half past.
Do you have any questions before you go?
No?
Good? Yeah. Cool. Just crazy. Yeah.
Abby. Unlike I’m worried about unsubscribes with this. Like, is there a reason why I just shouldn’t be worried about that?
I I mean, it’s twenty three days in, in most cases, they’re already close to disengaged or disengaged anyway. So it’s just to get them back on board. If they, unsubscribe, that’s kind of a blessing. I know a lot of you love subscribers, but, yeah, I’m not saying don’t start this on day one, but twenty three days later is, yeah, three weeks of just hanging out.
Okay. Cool. Thanks.
Cool. Sure. Good question. Anyone else?
No?
Alright. Exactly sixteen minutes until we have to be done. Alright. I’ll be here if you have questions.
That is Daniel.
We finished. We get stuff done.
We not finished. Need more time. Jessica, how’d you do?
Good. I mean, I didn’t put it in my ESP yet, so I’ll hold off on that. But I did give me actually an interesting brainstorm in potential future webinars, workshops, things that I might wanna do. So it was good.
That’s cool. That’s good. It’s a good outcome. Anyone else wanna share what they experienced in doing those sixteen emails Okay. Johnson says it really helped identify easy opportunities in my options for Outreach.
Yeah. So these are obviously the little systems that you set up. As you go, and most people don’t. So if you do, well done.
If you walk away and you don’t end up setting this up, keep that in mind in twenty three days when someone could be replying to something and instead you haven’t reached up to them. So set it up. Go to the work. It’s really easy work.
So get her done. Alright. Now we open the floor for any questions anybody this week about any of the training or anything in your business, client management, all of that kind of stuff, As usual, please be on camera for this part and before you dive in, share a win. And that can be a win of any kind. As long as it’s something cool that you’re happy about, that’s hopefully a result of some of the work that you’re doing to grow your business make more money, get happy in your business, all that stuff. So does anybody have any questions today?
Okay. So that’s my win.
I think the biggest win for me this week was, client feedback that I received yesterday where I had sent a sequence, an email sequence and and they replied that it was perfect. The perfect balance of exactly what they were looking for. That was great because I don’t love revisions, so that was great.
No. No one likes revisions. Okay. Cool. Nice win. Good job.
Thank you. Okay. So here’s my question. It’s actually going back a couple weeks ago where we I I I asked the questions. That kinda he said to bring on a call. Never managed to make your life, so I’m asking now.
I’ll remind you where it was. You mentioned that the email agency boxcar does like think he says something like fifty, sixty k, even like two hundred and fifty k projects.
So I’m kinda toying with the idea of building out into an email, a ecomm email agency.
And I’d love to, like, hear I know that you do typically more SaaS, but I’d love to hear more about what does that project look like, know that you said an ever more retainer style and retainer agreements, but I’m just curious on how, like, the basics of how you set them up. And what kind of clients I’m looking for these type of projects?
Yes. I love it. Okay. So I’m just gonna document this of the basics.
Of these projects and the kinds of clients for it. Cool.
And let me know if I don’t hit any of those for you or you want further third because it’s a great question. And everybody here, everybody and everybody who joins, and everybody decided to start an email performance agency I firmly believe there would still not be enough.
People out there doing this work. Email is tricky. It’s a skill set that almost nobody internally has.
If you do have that skill set, you’ve probably been scooped up by somebody who has massive margins, like a coach that sells huge masterminds.
So they could afford to scoop you up Otherwise, we’re looking at companies that have so much writing on email, and so little in house talent on this stuff and I mean across the board in house talent. So attribution is hard enough for every business. And I mean when I mean business, I’m all we’re copy School Pro or not at freelancing School, I’m talking about real businesses with real money to spend not that one little shop that’s got one person who works of times.
Businesses that have cash and see more on the horizon if only and the if only in this case is we don’t know if em, emails are working.
We don’t know what the freaking benchmarks should be. Like, how should they performing, is this good?
The list goes on, and that’s just like the strategy side of it. They’re bringing in consultants in CRO. Almost every one of them will have some sort of CRO agency that they’re working with, who they hope can do the work of optimizing emails.
Never works largely because Email is the specialized skill set and the tools are not things that you just wake up and know, right? You need training on these tools as Lindsey on my team knows, she was doing both of them implementation for a boxcar, and you’ll have to have it doesn’t. You can train on it. You can learn it, but a CRO agency isn’t doing that.
Now, some will have some people in those CRO agencies who care about email, but that doesn’t mean that they’re going to be great at it. So email, skill sets are hard to come by. Email is direct response for modern marketers. It’s what we do, but just like printers, like print was tough for marketers thirty years ago and beyond past that.
Digital direct response is also like this mystery. Right? So There’s huge opportunity attached to it and they know that, but nobody can handle it. So what do you do?
It’s a lot like SEO. So when I when we had our CH agency, before it switched over to Boxgar. I was always frustrated because no matter what we did, it would end up coming down to how long does it take to to write a landing page? That sort of thing where you’d end up on retainer still selling hours because in those end month reviews, they look at the work you did.
And unless you’re a CRO agency, you’re not measured on performance the same way. Email, is really good to get measured on performance just like SEO. So I when we were at CH Agency, I was like, how do we just have a model that’s like SEOs have where they just get to say, oh, here are some things I did this month and look at the results. Like now you’re here on SERPS for this keyword and that’s like they could do that in twenty minutes or they could do it in twenty hours and it was really just like on performance.
It’s very hard for most things that copywriters do to be measured on ongoing performance, but email is one of those things. So With email, the basics of these projects are you are a brand that has an email platform already in place. You probably have about three of them. So most of them will have a sales team working using HubSpot.
If they’re in SAS, they might also have intercom.
They’ll have tools like Mandrill that will send, non marketing transactional emails. And then they’ll have another platform as well, like e commerce, they’ll have Playvio, and everybody else just has whatever spud e commerce is really big on klaviyo. So if you are gonna work with e commerce, get good at klaviyo. That should be your number one goal is get that certification in there right away, know how it works, so you can go in and be smart about it, too.
You will need to implement. Nobody in freelancing school wants to do this. I’ve brought this up in freelancing school and they’re like, uh-uh, I don’t implement. You are shooting yourself in the foot.
You are absolutely like you if you implement, you can measure if someone else implements, they’re measuring and they’re looking out for themselves. So you will guarantee someone else implementing your stuff is gonna implement it wrong, even if you QA it, and then they’ll say, oh, that didn’t work. And suddenly they’re in there editing your emails.
Hard pass. You are in control and the more in control you are, the higher the rates you can charge. If you’re a doer, your rates go down. If you’re a strategic you’re a partner, if you’re somebody who’s like in the tool, you are high value.
You’re so high value. The CEO knows your name. That’s a really important thing. Okay. So you have access to the tool.
They give you access to the tool. They’ll probably have to pay for another license for you.
That’s that’s that’s part of the game. Of course, you have to. Oh, yes, you have to give me access to the tool full access. No question about it, and your job is to make sure they feel confident in you so that they will do that, and that means you have to know.
You have to be like, you know, I know. Don’t worry. I’m never gonna hit publish or send on something, like, I’ve been down this road before. They have to trust you.
Right? So cool. And you have to make sure you don’t ever hit send on something. It’s actually not ready to go.
So you have access to the tool. You are involved and you put a road map together upfront. So the earlier conversations story for anybody who doesn’t give a shit about email You’re gonna get a download on everything email.
But you go into this knowing what the roadmap is. So for us we would, go through and have one or two hour session with the client with the key stakeholders. So everybody involved in email gonna be a lot of marketers, people in product, and some SDPs and stuff like that.
You’re gonna have that meeting with them, say walk me through the what you’ve already got out there. Let’s screen share, show me inside intercom.
Show me inside Playvio. I need to see this thing. Walk me through what that is. What’s that?
What’s that that asking questions, making notes, reporting things, then you put a roadmap together. This is just a gantt chart where you’re like, here on the far left column, these are all of the sequences you have, and these are the ones that you need, and these are the ones that are top priority, so obviously organized in the right way. Then you have months along the top. And all you’re going to do is fill in, we’re doing plan on this one.
Planning planning planning planning planning planning as you go down and then execution execution execution execution next to it. Just gantt chart stuff and measurement.
And optimization.
So by the time you’re done this freaking gantt chart, you have got two years of emails mapped out. They’re like, holy shit. It’s a lot of work. Are we sure we need to do this?
There might be some reprioritization that happens at that time. But what they see is wow, there’s a lot here. Now you have to make sure that they also see the value of that. So if you can, in that gantt chart, put in in the row for the item, whatever that sequence is that you’re gonna work on, whether it exists or doesn’t obviously you need some sort of it’s better if it does exist or you’re gonna optimize.
You can say this is currently performing at x percent conversion, paid conversion. Ideally, they this is close to money. So go with paid conversions.
Or if you’re dealing with somebody who has like show up, and stuff like that, whatever the case is, however they’re measuring it, whatever matters to them, show that there, and then talk them through what thirty percent lift over the course of six months. If you can optimize that flow over six months, what that could look like. And then they can start to associate money with it because you’re gonna have to get to the point. Where you say, Hey.
This is a lot of work over a lot of time. Lots of specialized skills in there and here’s my rate for that. So then you say what the overall project rate is divided up month by month. That can turn into a retainer or it can turn into a project with an end date.
A lot of companies will start with a project with an end date. And then go okay. We have so many more needs. Like, we’ve been talking about this internally, and then they show you this giant.
List.
And so the project, depending on how many emails you’re gonna get done in what amount time. So you do it does still come down to the work you’re going to do, but they’re not you might make a subject line change rather than a full rewrite, right? Like you’re solving for opens. Clicks conversions on the other page, etcetera. Right? So that’s how your performance is going, how you’re working on things when you’re optimizing for performance.
And that’s fine. That’s cool. That’s great. That’s good to not have to do massive swings all the time. You just need to figure out what you’re going to charge. So right now, I’m I’m not actively involved in boxcar at all, but we have other people who’ve come to us who are friends for, quote unquote help because they’re kind of desperate.
Because there are a lot of businesses that need this. And they’re in at twenty, thirty thousand dollars a month, just to get one sequence planned and another sequence written. So I’m just subcontracting this out to two freelancers I’ve got who went through the email intensive that we did last November.
Not this last one. The one before that, one does planning and the other does execution on it. They work together. They chat together.
But This is a cool tech company and they’re like, we have a four month project on this because I was like, I can’t be here. I’ve got work. I’ve got my own stuff.
And they’re desperate. They’re like throwing money at these people to stick around to come work for them obviously. The biggest one. It’s like, hey, can you work for me?
But yeah, that’s how it goes. So you can see at x amount per month, times even just four months. That’s already a really big project and we’re only doing one sequence a month. One’s planning.
The other is executing, and then once the plan is signed off on at the end of the month, then the person executes on the plan that got signed off on and we keep going forward like that. And that’s not even getting into optimization because I told them I’m not going to optimize. I can’t stick around for this. But the the opportunity here, I can’t say it enough.
This is it. This is this sort of thing every business needs. They’ve got masses of users and subscribers that are just sitting there and nothing’s happening to them. And anybody who’s a CEO or CFO is like, what are they doing there?
How do we get them out of there? And that’s where you come in. And nobody in the organization knows how. Nobody knows how.
The CMO was like, I’m pretty sure we can do this. Like, how do we do this? So you get the CMO to buy into it and then you go from there. I don’t know if that helps.
Tech companies are really obvious low hanging fruit, while large, e commerce, like where the product is expensive such as mattress brands and, other, like, hardware.
Those are because they have big margins, there’s a lots that they can win, that they don’t have to pay because ads aren’t working for them anymore, either. Right? Ads are really expensive, etcetera, etcetera.
Email is still a wonderful opportunity, so they’re happy to reallocate budget toward email. Does that help?
Yeah. That was hugely helpful. Especially, appreciated how you broke down what a twenty k month looks like and how you broke it down into, like, planning execution. One coming up. That was really helpful. Thank you.
Awesome. Good. I really want everybody. You can find a way to do performance like measure what you’ve done.
The retainer is like endless, and it’s just it’s exactly what CRO agencies do. It’s exactly what SEO agencies do. We’re just doing it for email in particular.
Yeah. Cool. Awesome. Good luck. Thank you. Sounds great. Follow-up questions for that.
Yeah.
So what you were saying about how it’s a very specific skill set So if you were to advise like a fresh freelancer, maybe fresh out of college or high school, and they decide they wanted to specialize in email and get that skill set, what would you advise them?
Yeah.
Follow everybody. This is like anything that you ever want to specialize in, one, it’s a good thing that you’ve identified.
One thing to specialize in. That’s one of the hardest things that copywriters have to do is, like, what’s what am I gonna do? That I could do, like, everything needs to be written. This, this, the someone has to write the product packaging for that, like, everything.
So you decide on email and then you follow everybody who talks about email, but I mean in smart ways. I don’t mean they took one person’s course and now they’re gonna teach the world on it, but some people can do that and it goes very, very well. They actually care and think about it. So go out there and do the leg work to find out who knows their shit. Usually, they’re not talking very loudly because they’re so busy working on the stuff.
So keep that in mind.
I don’t know what you would read because most of the books on email marketing. Does anybody have a good one? I found that they’re like garbage, like, like, hot garbage.
Jess is looking at her bookshelf.
There was that one that Ryan Dice wrote oh, oh, oh, oh, no offense.
That’s not to Ryan dice, but it was so fucking bad. It was so bad. It was so basic and like this isn’t going to help anybody do anything.
So yeah. Go out and find that. We added triggered email stuff to ten x emails because of this master of seasonal sales, the emails tracked there. All so good.
And then just, like, keep a good swipe. Practice everything. Do what you’re already doing. Estergrace when it comes to like auditing what people are, saying go teach because teaching helps you learn the thing too. Obviously teaching from the position that you’re in not.
I’m an expert, but hey, I’m learning all this really cool shit about this.
Go to certifications for ships and gigs with Clavio and intercom and all of those popular tools, the ones that your prospects are going to use first. Right? Obviously, if you’re gonna work with SAS or if your friend is gonna work with SAS or this person who’s newly out of college, then use the solutions that SaaS uses. If you’re gonna work with e commerce, Clay a no brainer, braise is good in both cases, but start by just like documenting, just like massively learning everything and then start practicing.
And you can practice on your own email list. You don’t have to have somebody else’s email list to son. You’ll want that, but you don’t have to start there. Jessica, is this on the same topic?
Building off of it a little bit out. It’s similar.
Okay. I apologize to anyone who does not care about this because it’s still about this though.
My oh, my win. This opening myself for judgment.
I committed to taking my dogs twice a week to doggy daycare so that I could just and I already feel better. It hasn’t even happened yet.
That’s awesome. I know we have a dog walker come by two days a week. Just to, like, just go wear them out a bit. Like, they need to relax so that we don’t have to do it. Yeah. Smart. Good.
So I guess mine’s very specific. So related to this email thing though, I I too one of the big services that I’d like to offer is you know, I don’t know, email list management, the retainer, everything you just discussed. But the unique angle, I believe, is my seasonal sales into that and of course a big part of that is sales emails. And so what I’m kind of wondering is right now with slashing out my offers and all that I’m looking at seasonal sales campaigns and all that as one major offer and then the email ongoing stuff. But does that make I guess I’m just looking for any.
What are your immediate thoughts when I tell you that, I guess?
Yeah. I think that the retainer easily in your case could be I’m here for all of your seasonal sales emails because these e commerce brands that we’re talking about are they live on a seasonal calendar. Right? So I’m sure you’ve experienced this where they’re like, it’s president’s day.
Here is a pair of boots. For freaking president’s day? Like, what does that matter? But it’s like it matters.
So that I would do that, but I would just say, like, I’ll be or right hand when it comes to all of these seasonal sales emails that you’re writing. The problem is that it’s not performance space in that case, right? Like because you’re not doing president’s day last year versus this year, necessarily, unless you do, unless it does turn into this ongoing thing and then you can say, but it won’t be optimization like optimizing and automation. Of course.
Yeah. Yeah. But I still think it’s great and in demand. Yeah.
Great. Thanks. Awesome. Abby.
I have two questions. Should I discuss one or can I?
Yeah. But you have to say your win first.
Oh, my win. As as not like a big one, but I pre sold twenty five copies of my book, so I’m happy with that.
That’s amazing.
Very good. Yeah. So my question, so I have an Evergreen webinar funnel running for my course, and I’ve been running out I’ve got. So now I have about two hundred people that have been through the funnel, and I’ve realized that I’ve no plan of, like, what to do with them, the ones that did buy.
Like, I’m sending out get my week my biweekly newsletter. They’re gonna get some nigh word emails now, but I don’t know whether I should be like, because I see other course creators invite people back into the funnel, but it kind of, like, it’s like they said the same emails that it kind of makes the whole thing feel a bit, like, fake because it’s, like, makes the urgency feel fake because it’s, like, a but I use deadline for it. Yeah. And so I’m yeah.
I I don’t know.
Like, I just don’t know what to be doing with those people.
Did you ask them why they didn’t move forward?
Yeah.
What was the reason?
Like price.
They’re most mostly just like or saying, yeah, the the timing’s not right. Yeah.
So that’s either true or it’s not true.
And that’s the thing. If it is true, then that means that your audience is wrong, and I wouldn’t bother trying with them again. If price is really the objection, and it it can actually, but some people do not have any money.
They wanna learn from you, but they they can’t afford it. And those are good people to get out of your brain so they’re good to not try to reengage necessarily. I know that can sound harsh. Like, I’ve told you twice in today’s session to cut your list down. And you’re like, that’s my list. I’ve worked at it. So I get it.
But I would strongly encourage you to not think about the people who can’t afford your solution.
So that doesn’t mean that that they’re truly that that’s really the objection. And maybe there’s another way that you but I don’t it’s like, well, I could put together a cheap or something. Do you really need to spend your time or resources on building something for people who can’t afford what you’ve got.
Well, I think I think they can’t I don’t think it’s like they can’t afford it. I think it’s more like they’ve already spent their budget that month or they’ve, like, enrolled in other courses recently.
So they’re like, oh, I can’t it’s more like a timing thing, which makes as I’m saying that I’m thinking, maybe then I should give them another opportunity to buy If it’s a timing thing.
Yeah.
So it’s the first thing I stand over.
Does that if it’s a timing thing though, then there is. Are definitely. You can re engage them. That’s what that automation that we just set up today is for, bring them back. Eventually, it might be the right time for them, engage them in other ways.
It it depends on how far you wanna go with it and how much opportunity you do think is there because there’s so many different ways you could go, right? I would recommend you read the book super consumers.
It’s got good tricks on, like, quick, like, but but it takes it takes resources. So it’s like, have an IRl together for some, and then people have to fly in. Right? Like, it but but there are good ideas in there. So check that out.
What is a customer worth to you? If they convert, what’s their value?
It’s only, like, five hundred dollars. Sorry.
And that’s five hundred after you and everybody on your team has been paid. Wow. No.
Not like yeah. Once I take out, like, the tech stack and stuff, like, probably about Well, it depends how many I’m selling. So let’s say, like, like, I think my final cost, like, a hundred and fifty to run.
So Okay.
So you’re making three fifty? Is that what I heard?
Yeah. But then on the sale after that would be five hundred.
Okay. So for the lifetime value is then more in the eight hundred realm, like, once you get them in, even if it costs to acquire them I’m I’m really just trying to understand. No. No.
So no.
My lifetime value for these is like five hundred, like, unless they’re gonna hire me later, which I haven’t seen happen yet. But the the idea is hope that they’ll start making some money and then be able to afford to hire me, but it’s two early days. Yeah. So let’s just say the lifetime value is five hundred.
Yeah. Okay. Yeah.
And do you have a webinar already or a workshop that sells them?
Yeah. I have the Evergreen webinar. Yeah. Then the problem is if they go through and don’t buy. It’s like, what do I do with them?
Yeah. I know. So if the timing is wrong, then the automation sequence is one way to get them back on board, right, that then the sixteen by twenty three thing. Yeah.
Other ways then are right? Just like leave them on your general list. I just for me, I’m like, don’t pay too much attention to them if they’ve got these objections that you really can control unless there is something you can do to where timing is the problem.
What can you do to get rid of that problem. So how are you going to make yourself available when the time is no longer a problem? Can you book with them? Like, can you hop on a call with them in some way so that you can better, like, place yourself in their calendar I’m just one, I wouldn’t worry about the pricing people.
Two, if timing is a thing and you don’t wanna put them back through an evergreen funnel, then you have to figure out how you’re gonna get in front of them at the right time. And the evergreen funnel is the way typically of course to go. If it’s not right for them because they’ve been through it already, then I would just throw them on your general list and keep nurturing them old school and See if you can do some cross channel stuff. Also, I mean, my concern is people can always it’s very rare for timing to be a real thing too unless they’re multiple decision makers.
But sounds like there’s probably one decision maker here. They just didn’t get off their butt and do it.
Yeah. I mean, I think I think, like, to be honest, the more I think about it, the more like the nine word emails is probably enough to just because if they just say, yeah, I still want, like, want to, then I can just say, oh, I can, you know, I’m happy to, like, honor the discount for them. Like Yeah. Totally.
Yeah. Okay. Sorry. After all. I know your training that you did initially. It was so good.
That’s good.
That’s good.
I did have one other quick question if that’s all. Alright?
With so my evergreen final that I would have been final, like, bills cost my feedback into it. So that’s, like, the kind of the the USPS.
And part of that is thank you page surveys.
I originally, so I started using your question, the what was going on in your life. I wanted to find my own. I experimented with others. No question is as good. So I’m using that. I am I’m, like, giving you credit. Like I’m saying, this is Friday.
We’ve purchased a good day.
The I’m like, should I really be because it is quite an important part. Should I really be having my own question if I wanna really be like an authority in this? But I can’t think of a better question. Like, you know, I’ve I’ve tested lots of things. Like, so, yeah, what do you do you think it’s It’s a legitimate concern, or should I just keep on being like this is Joe’s question?
I would just stick with the question, but that would make think the thank you page entirely. So, what we’ve done with our thank you page is we go back and forth. We have surveys sometimes like a thank you page survey, the one question.
That you’re talking about and other times it is just skip skip ahead and book a call with us. Right? So you get the ebook, you wanna learn how to make five thousand dollars a month. And so you land on this on the page, the confirmation page, and instead of getting the ebook right away, it’s like, Hey, do you wanna skip the line?
And like, we could just hop on a call and talk through this and that’s gonna be a sales call. Right? So thank you pages across the board. You can just embed your calendly so if you’re like I’m not sure.
So what I’m hearing is you want to change the question because of a thought leadership thing. For you.
Yeah.
Great with it. Whatever. But if if what we’re really tapping into is you kinda don’t wanna use that question for whatever reason. Whatever reason. Whatever the reason is.
I do. I do.
Okay. Well then, what I would say is go back and forth. Yeah.
For when you know, switch between, I’m going to collect data, and I’m going to allow people to book an appointment with But it is more because I’m teaching it because I’m saying because I’m because in my course, I say, like, set up a thank you page survey, and this is the question that I use that Joanna Weeb taught me. So it’s like, I am I like I mean, I guess I’m I don’t know if I’m, like, asking permission here or what, like Oh, no.
Claire and Gia teach this too. Like, it’s yeah. I talk about all the time because I’ve tested a billion different ways, and that’s It’s just the best life. Yeah. It’s just it’s just going to help you find those that voice of customer. So just use it.
Just use it. Yeah. I did I’m thinking, like, based on what you said, what I could do is teach kind of like different thank you pages you can use depending on what you want. So if you want to voice your customers that question, if you wanna find out how people are landing on your page, use like a different question.
Like, that kind of thing. If you want, like, one to ones, then book a call. So yeah. Okay.
Anyway, yeah. Sorry. I don’t wanna hog your time. Thank you.
Cool. Thanks, Abby. Naomi. Thanks for waiting. You gotta win?
Alright. What about the win? I don’t have one at the top of my mind.
You will post an instance later.
I interestingly enough. Oh, okay. I have one. Okay. Good. So I was working on a landing page, and I met with the, I met with the marketer, meaning the guy who runs the Google campaigns, And I found out that he’s running three campaigns, and the guy who runs the business told me that he’s only running one.
And so if you work on Google campaigns, you know that but you really need a new landing page for every campaign to make sure at the very least that it matches the keywords. If not also the intent, the length of the page, etcetera. So I sent an email saying, you know, you really should have a different landing page for this other campaign because the people searching for this have a slightly different mindset. And so I just added that to the bill. So that was an extra, extra sale there, and that was really easy.
So, yeah, so that’s the win.
I am pretty sure I’ve asked this before, but I haven’t gotten a great answer anywhere. I’m gonna ask it again because email came up.
For the vast majority of the companies I work with, they might have a newsletter, but the newsletter is very content focused. And if they’re running these very traditional b to b ad campaigns, which most companies still are, they’re promoting white papers. And if they’re doing content syndication, which I know, everyone hates. They’re still, like, promoting learning papers, and so they get all of these leads.
And a lot of times if somebody reaches out to them, like, okay. You could always, like, retarget them if you’re tracking properly. But if somebody reaches out to them by email, it’s really the SDR or the BDR stop. To to contact them, to start building that relationship, because a lot of these things are very relationships focused.
But they typically these BDRs and SDRs, if they have hundreds of leads coming in, and they’re also getting leads from trade shows they don’t and they also have like regular leads coming up signing up for a demo that they have to set up discovery calls with. They don’t have the time to contact all those people. And if they are contacting them, usually it’s a very generic email, or it’s like a email sequence that happens like two weeks after the lead already drops in the CRM. So I’ve brought up the idea having nurturing sequences, which are really very different from newsletters. Newsletters and nurturing sequences have very different goals, but the pushback that I always get is This feels too sales y. This is too impersonal.
We need people to we need our sales team to reach out to them personally but the sales team is not reaching out to them and they don’t have the time. But I get this feedback over and over again from very technical b to b products, and to some degree, there is some legitimacy to that because a lot of times the sales funnel looks very different whether it’s different decision makers in the buying, like, if it’s the champion versus the decision maker versus person holding the budget or his different solutions or whatever it is, it it would actually be difficult to write a nurturing sequence and to segment a list that effectively when you have when you’re not doing it as large of a scale. So, I’m gonna ask again. Do you have any thoughts on how email would be effective here? Because there definitely is a lot of opportunity.
Yeah.
I mean, and this is the thing. I haven’t when I’ve worked with very technical large companies selling into enterprises with multi threading with all of the bananas stuff that happens in large sales organizations. I mean, like people who There’s one who, moves you from your mainframe to mainframe in the cloud Like, people still have mainframes out there. And to get moved off your mainframe is like a multi million dollar project, but like business, banks, communication, like telecom companies are on mainframes in a lot of cases still.
So these are even people who no matter the size and the complexity of the project and everything, they’re still emailing. They’re still doing it. They reach out to me as they can you help us with these emails So I’m I guess I’m a little confused as to why why your these clients or prospects don’t want to use email and saying it’s sales y is only once they’ve seen a thing. So what’s stopping them from using email in the first place?
It’s not that they’re not using email. It’s that they’re using email either the the sales reps, like, the AEs are using email, and sending personal email to them, like nine word each.
Sorry. I mean, like, why aren’t they using the nurturing sequence that you mentioned? Like, what’s really getting in their way there?
I would say number one, being able to segment people, like, right, the the less information you ask for when you ask for a white paper, the more people are gonna convert. So Of course, you’re especially if it’s like LinkedIn. Right? Like, you ask for, like, automatic information and half of that is probably LinkedIn guessing. So, like, if you have such little information because you want to get those leads in, then what kind of how much can you segment that list? And if you can’t segment the list, can your emails really be specific enough to be effective?
Okay. So their hearing, I need to segment. That’s a lot of work. We’re not gonna do that upfront on the form because it’ll surprise conversions.
And that means that we go into this with this big dump of people that are just a generic dump of people to us. And if you want to come in, and send emails to them with segmentation, we can’t because it’s too much work. Is it work?
Is it the function?
It’s work that a person could do but work like if they went and looked to figure out who the hell that is on LinkedIn, but I’m not sure how easy it would do. It would be to do in HubSpot or whatever email tool you’re using.
Yeah. And like you can say, I guess, so if their objection to it, one of their objections or starting one that makes it a nonstarter for conversation is we don’t have segmentation. Then take segmentation out, don’t segment then. And I know you need it, what do you need it to be specific, but I’m snow company actually segments.
Like we’re talking about a best practice is to segment. The reality is lasting. Everybody blasts. And that’s like what we’re really dealing with out there because these aren’t smart marketers when it comes to email.
Right? So if we always start from a place of, I know hundred times more about email marketing than you do. I have empathy you don’t say that. How do you know that?
Right? I have empathy for you and the sadness of what you don’t yet know could happen for your business. So what’s my easiest way to get you to start down the path of what email could do for your business because a newsletter is already a form of nurturing.
You have the sales team that is waiting too late before they reach out. So a potentially warm lead has gone cold, and now you have to, like, heat them up again. Why would you wait on that? So if you can talk them through and really and understand like, why are you waiting on that?
Like, maybe there’s an easier soul. Maybe it’s just like, oh, we should just tell our reps sooner. But if it’s like, no, that two week window has to pass and you’re like, well, let’s do something about that two week window. When’s the last time you want to be nurtured when you’re ready for something.
So there’s gonna be people that you’re just playing missing out on. Right? Can we agree on that? And if they can’t agree on that, you’re never gonna get someone But if you they can agree that, yeah, there’s definitely people who reach out and are ready to start the conversation at least.
Are ready to open the sales conversation from day one, then all you need is to sell them on a series of opener emails to like get them in, get them to set an appointment with a rep, get them warmed up on all of this stuff, so that they’re more likely to show up when a rep reaches out in two weeks and says, hey, you specifically you. I know everything about you and let’s hop on a call. They’re already nurtured there. So to me, it sounds like they think it has to be really hard work.
If you make it clear that it’s easy work, and you’ve done this before, and you can totally do this with very little effort from them. And the result is when an SDR reaches out there’s a real lead there. I mean, even the SDRs would get on board with that, right, that they could have good warm leads.
But in terms of actually writing the email, like if you have a use case, let’s say you have a use case for marketing and you have a use case for for product or product marketing and you have a use case for sales and maybe like one other one other department. And on top of that, you have the decision maker, you have a champion and maybe the person involves the purse strings or like somebody else in upper management. Like, what would be your approach in writing nurturing emails to all of those different that’s a that’s a lot of people.
It’s a lot of people.
What do you know about them? Do you know what white paper they downloaded? Or do they just get dumped into a single list?
No. You probably would know what white paper. I mean, it was the Right.
So let me start. And start there. Right? Like, as simple as are you still looking for a subject of white paper?
And then that’s like a way for them to at least hit apply to the email and go, yeah, remind me what that was, and then the SDR has a warm, like, contact that they can do something with. So if you’re able to do that with a single email and then if it doesn’t work, x period of time passes, and something else about the white paper, Hey, did you see this like complimentary video that supports what’s on page three? Go to page three and here’s the video or something. Right?
Like all we’re really doing is using email. If if there is an SDR, email’s job is to either get them to start a conversation or to move towards setting an appointment and then showing up for the appointment. So show up sequences and all those kinds of things that go along with that. So there’s already quite a things you can sell into a sales team.
But yeah, that’s I mean, it doesn’t have to be a long email. It can be a short one that’s just tapping into the thing that they showed interest in. No one reads a white paper. So you can just start like engaging them on, hey, do you wanna skip the line and like instead of reading the white paper, we could just talk about what you’re going through, and that’s an email that you can send. Yeah.
So so because these kind of short emails I would associate, like, those are the kind of emails that I typically assume SDR’s should send or BDRs are are supposed to be sending good, you know, the type the kind where they, like, make a typo in the subject line on purpose. So you would just automate those.
Yeah.
I mean, you can’t it depends on what you’re solving. If you’re typically solving for that two week gap, then, yeah, all you’re doing is Instead of nothing, you’re sending emails that look like an SDR sent them. That’s it. You’re just scheduling those up and that’s easy peasy. If you’re solving for something else, then you might need a different solution. But in this case, yeah.
I don’t think it has to be more complicated than that. It hasn’t been. You charged like it is, but it’s not actually more complicated than you knowing to send those emails that are about x and that respect the reader’s time and just try to get them into a conversation with an SDR.
So you wouldn’t provide more of something more engaging, something a little bit longer, more marketing oriented, you would stick with the more sales short and quick approach?
It I would only go to marketing messaging if your client is using SQLs and MQs. Like, if they’re measuring the quality of the lead. If a a certain number of ignores, reduces them down to more getting qualified lead instead of a sales qualified lead, once they’re no longer sales qualified. Okay.
But it really comes down to sales qualified and more qualified. If they’re marketing qualified lead, they get marketing emails, and that’s to get them back to a place of showing interest again and then if they’re sales qualified, they get sales emails. That’s it. Does that make sense?
Yes. I mean, I’m doing a dirty word. It’s like a four letter word in twenty twenty four.
And q l and SQL?
Oh, yeah. Everyone hates on q l’s. And q l’s are out. No one’s measuring on q l’s anymore.
Not in my world.
That’s for sure.
Or or not.
Yeah. Maybe.
For people who come talking to us. So but whatever the case is, whatever they’re calling it, there is a point at which marketing no longer is qualified to be the one talking exclusively them, whatever you wanna call it. But there’s lead scoring of some kind going on. Anybody with the sales team has lead scoring going on. If the lead is ready to be sold to, then they can have short quick emails that are there to get you to open a conversation.
If not, Then there’s the question of do we do a marketing message, like that’s a bit longer and softer more remote that kind of thing. What else do we do there? Yeah.
Okay. Interesting.
Yeah. That’s yeah. That’s what we’re seeing.
Cool. Cool.
Alright.
Anybody else? Now that my dogs have plumbed There’s a moment of peace in the house.
I’ve got a question.
Motion.
Wait.
So my win is kind of related to my question. I have a cousin who, works at a a unicorn startup.
As, head of product design, but he’s also, sort of assisting the CEO.
And He was telling me about the the internal state, which is like kind of crazy that their marketing team is like two two, graduates from from Uni.
Absent.
And the co founder who’s now gone was like a sales crazy dude who, kind of wanted to shut down marketing and just have sales.
And, yeah, it was, a shit show, apparently. So he’s out and things are better. And, he was, anyway, and he was telling me about the problems. And, obviously, I, as casually as possible, mentioned that I could If I had some time, maybe I have a glance at the website and just do a quick, a quick run through. So I did that. I sent it to him and he ended up, circulating it internally in, like, thirty people saw it, and then I guess they changed pretty much everything on their homepage. It was tons better.
Then nothing really came of it, but two weeks or a week ago, my cousin reached out and basically said, might have some work. Can we help in a call? So we did, and he needs three landing pages, homepage, potentially like a, a a voice guide and, like, I mean, honestly, like, there’s everything here. I mean, email alone.
But so, I don’t know, I sent a proposal over with some really, big scary numbers in it for me.
And, he forwarded it over to the CEO because they basically said he basically said, they need numbers before they could bring in the CEO.
So So I just recorded a Loom and and, and then decided to include, I’m sorry for anyone. This won’t make sense to some people, but the the narrative selling thing So I I pitched I kind of not pitched it, but, kind of infused it throughout the whole thing.
Just as casually as possible. And so I think it’s gonna I don’t know, but my my cousin said he he he loved it and forwarded it over to the CEO. So I’m waiting to hear back. And, that’s kind of the weird.
It’s just like to get the opportunity is great. And kinda crazy. But Love it. The the question is, do you because obviously, I think there’s really good opportunity here to, to help them because probably everything is I mean, their homepage before was, like, crazy bad.
So I think there’s just a massive opportunity here to to get some good numbers maybe. And then, obviously, make lots and lots and lots of content. So, I also was just wondering is, is there any what advice? Just broadly speaking.
What advice would you have for me in this situation? Thanks.
Okay. Advice for which part, like, for getting it closed?
Yeah. For just, like, bulk. If we hop on a call, I’m gonna, yes, but maybe as well just kind of I was thinking more broadly how to maximize, the opportunity for Of course.
Yeah. They’re based in the UK.
Yeah, Irish thumb.
Oh, they’re Irish? Okay. Oh.
Yeah.
Do I know who they are, probably?
Maybe.
I mean, Let us know who they are?
Yeah. I I mean, I could say yeah. Sure. It’s, Wayflyer, e commerce funding.
Oh, no. Okay. Oh, that’s cool. I thought it was somebody else, but that’s cool.
Okay. Awesome. So The reason I asked if they’re in the UK, is simply or not in America is really what it comes down to, is the ways of selling into different cultures.
So if you were over here, I would have recommended a, something slightly more, assertive on on it on the subjects. Just more of, like, let’s get, like, let’s do this thing kind of thing.
So it’s it’s tough because take what I say with a green really what I’m just gonna say. Like, try to modify it and apply it for what you know about your market, and the people that you’re serving there and how they react. To selling, which is really serving, but it’s called selling. Okay. Fine.
Yeah, because already I’m Did you find out what their budget is before you voted?
No. But I told but I had a quick call with my cousin and I said, I I pointed some rough numbers, and he was like, yep. That all sounds fine. So then I, maybe inflated them a little.
Has he ever signed off on a project like this Yeah.
Yeah.
He’s I think he’s he’s fallen into a kind of, second in command sort of thing to the to the CEO because he’s this guy, I don’t know, he sounds like he needs help. But So so, yes, he’s he’s kind of overseeing a bunch of stuff that probably isn’t in his role, typically.
Okay. So he is a good person to say this is the right price?
Yes. Or at least this is the right price.
Okay. So it’s gone. It’s been handed up to the CEO. When did that happen?
On Friday. I I think he’s seen it now. He also saw the tear down, which was I didn’t intend for anyone else to see, but my cousin size four of it and was it all. So they’re gonna know they’re gonna kind of look, and I also did quite a, like, exhaustive head, just because I kind of wanted to, obviously, show off a bit. Yeah.
So yeah. So he’s seeing that he’s maybe sitting on it now, the proposal.
So yeah.
Cool. So I mean obviously early on it would have been better not to do free work for them because now you’ve slightly devalued it. It doesn’t mean that that’s always true because people hire people on spec work all the time. Like agencies fight against each other on spec. So it happens. It’s just I would try not to do that in the future. See what happens if next time you charge instead of giving your cousin something.
See what happens if you I really was just, expecting him to just look at it and be like, cool.
I need to hire you. But instead it got he sent he sent it around. So that was not intended.
Cool. Yeah.
Either way, what they take out of free, they’ll still circulate it if they love it. So, there’s just that. I would just keep that in mind for everybody. Right?
Try not to do free anything unless you have such a strong reason to believe that that’s the only way forward. And I would imagine with your cousin, there was another way forward. I know Natitism can feel like tricky. Like, how do I get a credit card?
But yeah, so going forward, so you’ve shown internally that like you’ve proven to people that you offer a value. Don’t know if they knew your name don’t know, like, the thing that got shared around, did it have your name attached to it, or did they just know there was this smart person who sent this around?
This is the latter, I guess.
Okay. So there was a smart person who sent this around. Not this is Johnson spink. This is his work.
No. Well, no. No. Probably just this is Juts. Someone Jut has I don’t actually know how he presents it.
Yeah. It would just be yeah. And so even if you do send around, like, a loo or something again, just make sure you, in some way, brand it so it’s clear.
David, I mean, everything was branded with my my logo.
I finished on the end with my LinkedIn, my website, all of the the email and everything.
That’s what I’m wondering because obviously the CEO makes a decision, but makes a decision that is influenced by people around. Often on their own. Right? But they’re still gonna be if someone’s like, oh, that was so cool.
We’re still winning from what Johnson sent us. Like, when are we bringing this guy in? That’s obviously what you’re looking for. Right?
So as long as you’re He did actually say that everyone, talked about it for a bunch.
For a while. So I think it had an impact.
Okay.
So I think I I might my so I guess my my so I I think I know where your my assumption is I’m coming in there.
As an authority, like, to some degree?
My question with all of this understood is how do you, like, I I’m I’m not I don’t have visibility into it. So what is the gap that we need to close? Between the CEO looking at that and you getting on a call with the CEO?
Well, I don’t know if there’s anything, now because the the things off, he’s looking at it. And as far as I know, it’s it’s on it’s on trajectory, you know.
So really more, it’s about what happens when we when he says, okay. Let’s let’s talk to this guy. And how do I make sure that that’s, that’s that’s the last. That’s the only la the the last touch point.
Is it is the proposal high enough that it does require a call or is it something where the CEO will just sign off on it. Do you think based on conversations with your with your cousin, etcetera?
I think he’ll, yeah. I mean, I think he can sign off on it.
But it yeah. I think I I don’t imagine you’d have to consult anyone or not.
With me.
You mean with me? Yeah.
No. Maybe not. No. No. You could do that without hopping on a call. And I did say, at the end, I was like, we can hop on a call, and we can talk more about this.
Or if you just wanna look in my time because this is a big project, you can I’ll send over a statement at work, and you’ve got seventy two hours too. To sign that.
Okay. So did you already give him that, or would you later save by seventy two hours spent? Debbie have a deadline No. No.
No. I he has an option now between shoot choosing between statement of work straight away and signing it, locking in by time, or hopping on a call first?
Is there a deadline? What does he know about when he has to make this decision?
No. It is not a deadline.
K.
Cool.
Tricky because he’s a CEO, he’s busy, unless he’s prioritizing this, the team already made some changes based on it. Right? So he’s already got some hopefully winning copy and maybe less urgency around it. So what I would do if I were you is try to find a way to make sure a fire is lit under his butt. And now I know it’s like, well, it’s too late to put a deadline in there.
But What can you do going forward? Make sure you do have that. Like, hey, I can talk to you on Monday or Tuesday.
After that, if we can’t lock this in, it’s gonna be not until June make it really uncomfortable. And then if he still doesn’t move on it, it was a hard sell anyway.
So just keep that in mind that failure is okay.
Just put those deadlines in there for him. He needs to feel the pressure to move on this, and that’s why I asked what the team is the team pushing him. Your cousin is gonna have a hard time because of mephitin them. These might feel a little bit weird about it.
Right? So it doesn’t mean he will, but it might be like, oh, I can’t push too hard. So you need like a groundswell. You need people internally.
What can you do? Do you follow any of them on LinkedIn? Is there anything you can do to like seed conversation with the people who are going to influence the CEO moving on it. If by end of day tomorrow you haven’t heard from the CEO, what can you do with those people who fell in love with your ideas?
I would reach I would find a way to like what they say on LinkedIn or just like reach out to them and go like, Hey, were you one of the people who saw what I sent around or something? Right? But just started start a conversation there to try to get more people working on your behalf.
That’s what I would do at least if there’s if a deadline passes, it would also follow-up.
Were you directly connected with the CEO?
No.
Next time. Yeah. It’s I mean, or can you reach out on LinkedIn?
Does I don’t know culturally if that’s, like, weird to do it, like, in your Probably probably a little probably a little weird.
It is something that that might help this whole thing was kind of like, I need numbers before I can, like, bring him into this conversation kind of thing. So it was kind of a, gay gay keeper position, if I would like.
So I guess So you didn’t get to do a lot of the things that we want to do when we’re selling into.
No. And I didn’t I mean, I didn’t wanna he he just wanted numbers. So I was like, I sweated it for a day.
I was like, oh, it’s just not that first.
Yeah. I’m sorry. I mean, but I I think that it I I did at least. I mean, I, you know, I pointed out the the the the problems. And I and I stated, I mean, several different ways, but several times that they’re losing revenue. Like, kind of as we speak. Like, revenue is being a lot potentially, like, a lot of revenue.
And and this is a and that’s which I think is more is the the the the growing sense in the company. So I think it’s reflecting what is happening internally at least.
Naomi?
Could I, yeah, could I potentially step in? I, recently did a project, helping a startup rewrite a lot of their web copy because they had developed, like, a new it introduced AI so they needed new AI messaging.
And they broke it down into several different batches. So they started with, like, the main plan pages, the home page.
And or the main product pages, the homepage, and the plans page, and then they had broken it down into other areas of the website that, like, would be nice to update, but not critical. Could you start with, like, the pages that will bring the biggest uplift and the fastest quick win, make sure to go into Google Analytics, measure their conversion rate, measure time on page, all of those good metrics. And then when you’re done, show them how much it improved, and then it’ll be much easier for them to go on to the other pages because, like, when it comes to website copy, there are some mailer elements besides you. Right? Because you have to have the designer. You’re going to change the out the layout of the page, and you’re gonna have to have the developer, and it’s gonna be a huge headache for them. So if you can sort of reduce the scope of that project, you might be able to get in and and once they see how great the project is, it might be easier to continue.
Yeah. That’s that’s good advice. I I did, you know, I explained the price. I gave them a price per landing page and a price per home page.
So I quoted that together as a bundle, and I, you know, I I did the whole, being able to I reduced the scope and I reduced the cost. So, they’ve got that as an option. If they want to pick just one page here, I mean, that’s, that’s, I think that’s pretty straightforward.
Like, leap for them, but I didn’t mention it. I mean, I wouldn’t, I guess, I wouldn’t want to. But Yeah. I want them to buy. I want them to buy the whole picture.
Yeah. And every once that wins quickly though. Right? Yeah. It’s it’s a very good point about getting that win quickly. It will get by in. I know we’re at the end of our time for those you have to leave.
Talk to the CEO, everybody who’s still here.
Pop on call with the CEO, don’t they want numbers? Oh, just tell me what it costs. If they’re a CEO, they are used to being on a lot of calls. They’re used to prioritizing the right things if they care about money, which they do because their CEO, they want to be on a call.
They’re used to it. They’re not scared marketing managers who don’t know what to do with their time, they know. So you don’t your response if you get shut down, you will only get better at having them like actually hear you and say yes. So I’m saying like, no, let’s hop on a call.
I’d love chat with you. I wanna meet the person who built this school company. I wanna talk to you about what I can do for you and I wanna make sure what I have in mind aligns with what you have in mind. You’ve got the vision for this.
So get on the call. Do what it takes don’t let your cousin say, oh, no. I’ll just do this. Like, no, no, man.
Like, I can really help here. So get me on that call. Trust me. I will make you look good.
And that’s it. Then you show up on the call. You make the cousin look like a freaking genius for being related to you and knowing to bring you in, and the CEO gets to talk with you. And that’s good.
If you didn’t, just don’t worry about the things that you might be worried about, hop on a call you’ll close the CEO on the call if only because you had the freaking guts to say, no, I really wanna hop on a call you. Like that goes a long way. CEO’s wanna solve problems and they want it done yesterday.
So don’t be afraid of them.
Alright. Yeah. Thank you, Jared. Thanks.
To get on that call. Yeah. Good luck.
Thank you. Thanks.
Awesome. Cool. I know we’re at the end of our time, Esther Grace. Do you have a quick question?
Yes, please. If you don’t mind.
Sure. Let’s do it.
Okay. So it’s Sorry?
Nope. I was just saying to everybody else if you have to go. It’s not weird.
So I I have a lead or I had a lead was just like the perfect client.
They have a massive list. They’re not doing anything with email. They were very responsive. Like, they just wanted to hand everything off to me the expert to handle it for them.
We went through the proposal process. They agreed to the contract. They agreed to everything. And then and that was when I shared my win in the channel.
And after I sent over the contract and the invoice, they did reply for, like, a week. I followed up, didn’t hear anything, and then they sent me an email saying, they’re not comfortable with me being international, like living abroad.
So they would prefer if we worked on a smaller project to build the relationship first. So I offered them a smaller project included, like, a hundred and one different ways to make things easier for them, and then they just haven’t replied. I did the nine word email follow-up last week. No reply, no response, nothing, and I just feel so bad.
Yeah. Let’s back up then, to a few things. So out of the gate, Where did they think you were? Like, is that a legit concern?
Or yeah.
So right now I’m in Nigeria. I moved from the US, in December last year. I told them this on a call when we were talking and they’re like, oh, where are you based? And I’ve talked about how is how I moved to Nigeria, and they were like, oh, cool. That was it. But I don’t know where this came.
It’s a little tricky. Right? Like what a client tells you I mean, that that teaches you, like, tells you a bunch of things about them, but also about the reality of the world and fears of I don’t know. Whatever countries, I don’t know anything about what happens there.
Right? So There’s times when you I mean, I think that’s why some people just have US mailing addresses easiest thing when I worked for conversion rate experts. They had a San Francisco office and a New York office. They didn’t have office in San Francisco or New York, they have mailing.
They had a post office box there. So just like have a US location if only to look international.
So consider that if it’s an objection that you’ll ever have to come up against in the future, you know who you are We always have to think about who is trying to hire us and how afraid people are of making the wrong call when it comes to spending money. So consider that US based location on the bottom of your website along with it.
And that’s it. You can be on vacation abroad right now. If it’s anything weird, just I wouldn’t tell somebody or I’m from Canada if I thought it was gonna be weird for them. When the truth comes out about how horrible Canadians really are, then no one will wanna hire me. So, there’s that to consider. But Two. How did you follow-up with them?
So I followed up when the when I got the response, I followed with, an email detailing, like, what the smaller project could include, and then did some more, like, sales eat things in there, like, some tactics how it’s good for them.
And then I also added it like PS if they wanted to hop on call to chat through those details.
And then after that one, a couple of days later, I think a week later, then I followed up with the nine word email. So that was last week.
Are you using the word follow-up?
No. Just checking. Yeah.
Good. It’s always worth checking in to make that’s not happening.
Yeah, I mean, sometimes you lose, I don’t think that had to happen here. I think you might be dealing with people who got shy about the whole thing, and that sometimes happens. That doesn’t mean that that’s absolutely true either, but be, hey, you’re in a place we didn’t know you’re in. To me is like, it’s weird.
What’s going on there? There’s also, like, people get excited. Now you quoted them on that first call where they got excited. You told them what you charged.
Right?
So that wasn’t the first call. So I first, Okay.
So the first call, I Oh, sorry, Esther Grace.
Just to be clear, I also needed some time. Before you gave them the proposal or the amount, they knew the price.
No. They did not. That’s that’s it.
That’s it. And then there are I mean, I think it’s one thing they didn’t know the price so you can’t watch proposal boot camp. Watch it and watch it again. If it’s not like clicking, you have got to make sure that the client knows what your fees are, the vicinity of them.
They don’t have to have the exact quote, but it’s an actual waste of time for you. And look what it does. Now you feel dejected. Now you feel like, oh, Greg.
I lost them. You didn’t. You’re too expensive for them. That’s okay to be too expensive for them.
You’re going to be too expensive for a lot of people along the way.
So but you have to bring up your price or it’s not like it’s not a real thing. You’re going to have to bring it up eventually.
You gotta bring it up before they see it on a proposal or an estimate or in writing. You bring it up talking with them. So a project like this, generally, I mean, the last project I did with, like, this was, I think it came in around ninety five hundred, give or take, How does that sit with your budget? And then they’re like, oh, ninety five. And you can see because you’re on Zoom together.
You can see. Their reaction. So they’re like, oh, okay. Well, it’s more than we thought.
And you can see how crazy you’ve scared they are of how much more than they thought it is or if they’re like, Okay. You know, and, obviously, there’s reactions. Right? And there’s nuances.
That’s why you all wanna be on camera. So you can watch and you control your expression too because this is game face.
But you gotta you gotta do that. Never send a proposal over even a bullet point proposal in an email, don’t do anything until you have spoken about what it costs.
Yeah. So I just wanted to mention. So the structure I used was a little different since it was my first, pitch for this particular offer. I decided to do, like, a hundred percent performance basis.
So on the first call, so since this email, I was like, okay, we’ll only do performance just because I wanted I had never done anything like that before. I was like, let me just test it out with this potential client. So that was what I told them on the first call that it’ll be performance based. So we’ll have another call to talk through, like, the strategy for them.
So I did, like, a free audit just because I know I’m not supposed to do free audits, but just because it was I want you to watch this replay back, and you can pick out all of the things that I don’t need say to you right now.
Esther grace, don’t make life so hard for yourself.
Charge projects out of the gate. Once you have a bunch of email experience under your belt, then you can build a performance based email marketing agency, and you can do a bad ass job a bit. But to get there, you need to first have a bunch of experience.
It’s good to have ambition. I freaking love the ambition.
But you’re shooting yourself in the foot, hundred percent by a bunch of the things that you did that are like, well, I’m gonna go out and try it on my own. That’s what happens. You’re guessing, and you’re like short you’re trying to shortcut things. Just do it the easy way.
Just make it a proposal for a project, the thing that they said they wanted, tell them it’s gonna cost this much. Here’s when it starts. Here’s when it ends Here’s what you’ll know by the end if it performed well. If you want from that point on to have me continue to optimize it, we can pass that bridge when we get there.
Go into every call with an oh hell’s no. Right? Just like we talk about a proposal boot camp. It starts with no. No. I can’t do this How can I make the project smaller for you? What?
Your time is more valuable and when you make these modifications for people, you’re saying got nothing but time. And if you have nothing but time, that means nobody’s hiring you. And so I don’t have to hire you either.
Play hard to get.
Be hard to get. This is all a fucking game all the time. Be hard to get. Make them want to hire you.
Be open and honest about what you’re charging so that they can actually opt in and say, yes, I do want this from you. How soon can we get started. And don’t worry about giving things away for free. You don’t actually have to with real businesses.
You don’t have to give things away for free.
Mister Grace.
You gotta make this up to us. You gotta find a way to make sure that you don’t put our hearts through this again.
Just follow, go watch proposal boot camp. Hang out in ten accepting you still and then freelance some schools lack. As well as here, right? But it’s critical that you don’t just make up the rules. It’s not gonna work. It might work but man the bloodshed along the way. It’s just not worth it.
Keep it simple. Alright y’all. Thanks everybody for staying on and asking questions.
Yeah. So we’ll see you in Slack. We have, of course, another session on Thursday.
Go set up your sixteen by twenty three automation. If you didn’t finish it today, that’s fair, but make sure you do it.
And good luck with all of your and projects and things that you’re working on, and we’ll see you in slot.
Cool. Thanks for all.
Bye. Have a good day.
Worksheet
Worksheet
Transcript
As everybody’s moving into, like, the next tier of growing your business, getting those all the other things that we’re talking about here in Copy School Pro.
Moving from looking for leads to making sure you have qualified leads and making sure you get more and more of them in. And then what do you do with those that don’t convert, what do you do with the email list that you’re building in some way, whether you’re like, I don’t really build one, Joe, or you’re like, well, I’ve put in got three hundred people on the list or I’ve got thirty thousand people on my list or whatever it is. If you’re not building a list of some kind, what’s stopping you? Not gonna get into the list building today, but what we are going to talk about is the fact that a lot of leads aren’t ready for you when you present an offer to them, or they sign up and they’re like, they join your list, and they’re not quite sure.
What they want or when they’re gonna need it, etcetera, etcetera. There’s all sorts of confusion. People don’t ghost you or say no to you simply because they’re always gonna say no to you. So we are talking about opens. When you have people who are on your list in some way.
It’s good to keep them engaged. So this is a trick. That I learned, a technique, a way to do that. Really straightforward. Everybody has heard of the nine word email.
Yeah. So if you haven’t Google it, it’s the nine word email.
But that’s a really that’s a way to reengage or reactivate somebody who has, you know, gone silent, on you a lead, and that could be a lead in any form. Right? So if you are selling courses or thinking of it, if you are taking clients, if you’re doing both, all of all of these people who you’re trying to reach out to or they reach out to you and these things don’t come together. We want to use something like the nine word email. So here’s the thing that we are doing today. I will switch over and share my screen and talk you through this really basic simple thing that we can all do. I actually Lindsay on my team is setting ours up.
So we can always ask Lindsay hard questions if we want to. Just kidding she’s still working on it. But I I love it and I wanted to share it with you the second I put my own together.
So here is the idea.
Over the course of a year, you drip out across every twenty three days across a year, you drip out in your email platform, active campaign ConvertKit, whatever you’re using. You set up an automation, and you could do this also in many chat as well. So if you’re like, I’m not really building my list, but I’m over on Instagram. I’m doing cool stuff over there. You can set up the exact same thing in Instagram so people who follow you can get this and Lindsay also does those for us. So she can maybe speak more to that. To what you would do in manychat, but here is the point.
You can both do this for yourself and sell this as something you do for clients. So if you’re like, you just wanna make some quick cash get another product type service or, like, you have, a client who is, who has, like, sales team or people that are involved in selling, including. They might have someone called an opener.
A setter, that’s usually an appointment setter, a warmer and a closer. So these are the sorts of roles that you might encounter or the terminology you might hear from client who needs something like this. We’re talking about opens here, opens including reactivation.
So what we do is we write sixteen. You just brain dump sixteen nine word email. They don’t have to be exactly nine words, but they are in the like great tradition of are you still looking for apps? So the nine word email I’m pretty sure it goes, are you still looking for such as, are you still looking for a hand with your website?
Are you still looking for, more conversions in your launches? Are you still looking for then whatever the thing is that you offer. Right? So are you still looking for new clients?
Are you still looking for x y z?
We go through and we brainstorm a variety of those and you can do that for yourself just again and again for one thing. If it is, like, I just wanna reopen conversations every twenty three days, automatically on the subject of me working for you. Okay. Fine.
Then you bring That’s all you’re selling. If you’re like, Joe, I’m fully on services. I don’t do other things. Cool.
Fine. That’s great. You’re going to brainstorm sixteen nine word emails, write them out, and then you schedule them in your solution every twenty three days. And that over the course of a year, a little bit over a year, that will drip out this ongoing engagement with books.
Does this make sense?
Okay. So you can do this for if you’re beyond plan at work and you want to diversify the way that you’re generating revenue if you’re doing webinars. If you have evergreen webinars, obviously, in particular, if you do the same webinar every two weeks live, which, by the way, a lot of people actually do. So don’t feel weird.
If you feel weird about evergreen webinars, if you thought about doing a webinar and you’re like, I don’t wanna evergreen it, but I also don’t know, should I be delivering it live all the time? Yeah. You can do that. It’s fine.
Demo of bookings and demo could mean anything. It could mean how you help a person’s team if you’re doing copykeeping services or something like that.
Consult calls and that’s where it’s a setter where you’re going to book an appointment. So, that’s the goal is to set that appointment. If you have a PDF or a book giveaway, that could be the subject of an email, any IRL events that you might do, and this might not be happening right now, but it’s good to think about as you grow. What you would kind of like replace certain emails with along the way.
If you have a podcast, book and guess on that podcast, if you have a course to sell, opening the conversation. These aren’t closers, and they’re not necessarily setters either. These are open or reopen conversations with people who could become your smart client.
Workshops, product history services, really the list goes on. So this is what you’re going to do for the next fifteen minutes, sixteen minutes to give you one minute fur. I’m gonna quickly show you what ours looks like, and these are just some of the emails that I’ve drafted out for, Lindsey.
Knowing that we have a little bit of complexity, that you shouldn’t normally really have to worry about if you have one thing you’re trying to get done or a one audience you’re trying to speak to. We have general everybody, and then we have freelancers, which are very they need very different messages than startup founder needs and then an in a then an in house copywriter needs, etcetera. So we wanna find out quickly out of the gate, hey, are you still freelancing? Is twenty three days after a person opt in to our general list.
They’ll get an email that has subject line freelancing question mark in order to try to move only people who are freelancing to open this, and then they’ll reply. Again, this is an open. This is not something where you’ll necessarily have another, message that follows absolutely in your platform, although you could. Right?
You could do all sorts of triggers in active campaign. In many chat where if somebody does something, then x happens. But the best the simplest way to go about this is to write the email, the nine word email that is just, hey, are you still blank? That’s it.
And don’t worry about setting up anything that follows twenty three days later, the next one goes out. I’m running a workshop on. This is for an evergreen webinar that Paul is working on right now on our team. Would you like join us.
They answer yes. The conversation is opened and that’s where you take over. This is manual work, but it’s also sell by chats, right? It’s it’s getting you into this world of selling with conversations that happen by email.
Or on Instagram or even on your website if you decide that you’re going to do this in like, messenger or something else and there are other tools we’re gonna talk about as we go through Coffee School Pro. Okay. We’re gonna give you sixteen minutes to write your own sixteen nine word emails. The fastest way to actually make sure you implement this is to go into your convert kit or active campaign or whatever, and write the automation right in there.
You don’t have to activate it if you’re like, oh, these suck. Just put the basics in there, twenty three day wait between each, and get it done. K? You’ll have till half past.
Do you have any questions before you go?
No?
Good? Yeah. Cool. Just crazy. Yeah.
Abby. Unlike I’m worried about unsubscribes with this. Like, is there a reason why I just shouldn’t be worried about that?
I I mean, it’s twenty three days in, in most cases, they’re already close to disengaged or disengaged anyway. So it’s just to get them back on board. If they, unsubscribe, that’s kind of a blessing. I know a lot of you love subscribers, but, yeah, I’m not saying don’t start this on day one, but twenty three days later is, yeah, three weeks of just hanging out.
Okay. Cool. Thanks.
Cool. Sure. Good question. Anyone else?
No?
Alright. Exactly sixteen minutes until we have to be done. Alright. I’ll be here if you have questions.
That is Daniel.
We finished. We get stuff done.
We not finished. Need more time. Jessica, how’d you do?
Good. I mean, I didn’t put it in my ESP yet, so I’ll hold off on that. But I did give me actually an interesting brainstorm in potential future webinars, workshops, things that I might wanna do. So it was good.
That’s cool. That’s good. It’s a good outcome. Anyone else wanna share what they experienced in doing those sixteen emails Okay. Johnson says it really helped identify easy opportunities in my options for Outreach.
Yeah. So these are obviously the little systems that you set up. As you go, and most people don’t. So if you do, well done.
If you walk away and you don’t end up setting this up, keep that in mind in twenty three days when someone could be replying to something and instead you haven’t reached up to them. So set it up. Go to the work. It’s really easy work.
So get her done. Alright. Now we open the floor for any questions anybody this week about any of the training or anything in your business, client management, all of that kind of stuff, As usual, please be on camera for this part and before you dive in, share a win. And that can be a win of any kind. As long as it’s something cool that you’re happy about, that’s hopefully a result of some of the work that you’re doing to grow your business make more money, get happy in your business, all that stuff. So does anybody have any questions today?
Okay. So that’s my win.
I think the biggest win for me this week was, client feedback that I received yesterday where I had sent a sequence, an email sequence and and they replied that it was perfect. The perfect balance of exactly what they were looking for. That was great because I don’t love revisions, so that was great.
No. No one likes revisions. Okay. Cool. Nice win. Good job.
Thank you. Okay. So here’s my question. It’s actually going back a couple weeks ago where we I I I asked the questions. That kinda he said to bring on a call. Never managed to make your life, so I’m asking now.
I’ll remind you where it was. You mentioned that the email agency boxcar does like think he says something like fifty, sixty k, even like two hundred and fifty k projects.
So I’m kinda toying with the idea of building out into an email, a ecomm email agency.
And I’d love to, like, hear I know that you do typically more SaaS, but I’d love to hear more about what does that project look like, know that you said an ever more retainer style and retainer agreements, but I’m just curious on how, like, the basics of how you set them up. And what kind of clients I’m looking for these type of projects?
Yes. I love it. Okay. So I’m just gonna document this of the basics.
Of these projects and the kinds of clients for it. Cool.
And let me know if I don’t hit any of those for you or you want further third because it’s a great question. And everybody here, everybody and everybody who joins, and everybody decided to start an email performance agency I firmly believe there would still not be enough.
People out there doing this work. Email is tricky. It’s a skill set that almost nobody internally has.
If you do have that skill set, you’ve probably been scooped up by somebody who has massive margins, like a coach that sells huge masterminds.
So they could afford to scoop you up Otherwise, we’re looking at companies that have so much writing on email, and so little in house talent on this stuff and I mean across the board in house talent. So attribution is hard enough for every business. And I mean when I mean business, I’m all we’re copy School Pro or not at freelancing School, I’m talking about real businesses with real money to spend not that one little shop that’s got one person who works of times.
Businesses that have cash and see more on the horizon if only and the if only in this case is we don’t know if em, emails are working.
We don’t know what the freaking benchmarks should be. Like, how should they performing, is this good?
The list goes on, and that’s just like the strategy side of it. They’re bringing in consultants in CRO. Almost every one of them will have some sort of CRO agency that they’re working with, who they hope can do the work of optimizing emails.
Never works largely because Email is the specialized skill set and the tools are not things that you just wake up and know, right? You need training on these tools as Lindsey on my team knows, she was doing both of them implementation for a boxcar, and you’ll have to have it doesn’t. You can train on it. You can learn it, but a CRO agency isn’t doing that.
Now, some will have some people in those CRO agencies who care about email, but that doesn’t mean that they’re going to be great at it. So email, skill sets are hard to come by. Email is direct response for modern marketers. It’s what we do, but just like printers, like print was tough for marketers thirty years ago and beyond past that.
Digital direct response is also like this mystery. Right? So There’s huge opportunity attached to it and they know that, but nobody can handle it. So what do you do?
It’s a lot like SEO. So when I when we had our CH agency, before it switched over to Boxgar. I was always frustrated because no matter what we did, it would end up coming down to how long does it take to to write a landing page? That sort of thing where you’d end up on retainer still selling hours because in those end month reviews, they look at the work you did.
And unless you’re a CRO agency, you’re not measured on performance the same way. Email, is really good to get measured on performance just like SEO. So I when we were at CH Agency, I was like, how do we just have a model that’s like SEOs have where they just get to say, oh, here are some things I did this month and look at the results. Like now you’re here on SERPS for this keyword and that’s like they could do that in twenty minutes or they could do it in twenty hours and it was really just like on performance.
It’s very hard for most things that copywriters do to be measured on ongoing performance, but email is one of those things. So With email, the basics of these projects are you are a brand that has an email platform already in place. You probably have about three of them. So most of them will have a sales team working using HubSpot.
If they’re in SAS, they might also have intercom.
They’ll have tools like Mandrill that will send, non marketing transactional emails. And then they’ll have another platform as well, like e commerce, they’ll have Playvio, and everybody else just has whatever spud e commerce is really big on klaviyo. So if you are gonna work with e commerce, get good at klaviyo. That should be your number one goal is get that certification in there right away, know how it works, so you can go in and be smart about it, too.
You will need to implement. Nobody in freelancing school wants to do this. I’ve brought this up in freelancing school and they’re like, uh-uh, I don’t implement. You are shooting yourself in the foot.
You are absolutely like you if you implement, you can measure if someone else implements, they’re measuring and they’re looking out for themselves. So you will guarantee someone else implementing your stuff is gonna implement it wrong, even if you QA it, and then they’ll say, oh, that didn’t work. And suddenly they’re in there editing your emails.
Hard pass. You are in control and the more in control you are, the higher the rates you can charge. If you’re a doer, your rates go down. If you’re a strategic you’re a partner, if you’re somebody who’s like in the tool, you are high value.
You’re so high value. The CEO knows your name. That’s a really important thing. Okay. So you have access to the tool.
They give you access to the tool. They’ll probably have to pay for another license for you.
That’s that’s that’s part of the game. Of course, you have to. Oh, yes, you have to give me access to the tool full access. No question about it, and your job is to make sure they feel confident in you so that they will do that, and that means you have to know.
You have to be like, you know, I know. Don’t worry. I’m never gonna hit publish or send on something, like, I’ve been down this road before. They have to trust you.
Right? So cool. And you have to make sure you don’t ever hit send on something. It’s actually not ready to go.
So you have access to the tool. You are involved and you put a road map together upfront. So the earlier conversations story for anybody who doesn’t give a shit about email You’re gonna get a download on everything email.
But you go into this knowing what the roadmap is. So for us we would, go through and have one or two hour session with the client with the key stakeholders. So everybody involved in email gonna be a lot of marketers, people in product, and some SDPs and stuff like that.
You’re gonna have that meeting with them, say walk me through the what you’ve already got out there. Let’s screen share, show me inside intercom.
Show me inside Playvio. I need to see this thing. Walk me through what that is. What’s that?
What’s that that asking questions, making notes, reporting things, then you put a roadmap together. This is just a gantt chart where you’re like, here on the far left column, these are all of the sequences you have, and these are the ones that you need, and these are the ones that are top priority, so obviously organized in the right way. Then you have months along the top. And all you’re going to do is fill in, we’re doing plan on this one.
Planning planning planning planning planning planning as you go down and then execution execution execution execution next to it. Just gantt chart stuff and measurement.
And optimization.
So by the time you’re done this freaking gantt chart, you have got two years of emails mapped out. They’re like, holy shit. It’s a lot of work. Are we sure we need to do this?
There might be some reprioritization that happens at that time. But what they see is wow, there’s a lot here. Now you have to make sure that they also see the value of that. So if you can, in that gantt chart, put in in the row for the item, whatever that sequence is that you’re gonna work on, whether it exists or doesn’t obviously you need some sort of it’s better if it does exist or you’re gonna optimize.
You can say this is currently performing at x percent conversion, paid conversion. Ideally, they this is close to money. So go with paid conversions.
Or if you’re dealing with somebody who has like show up, and stuff like that, whatever the case is, however they’re measuring it, whatever matters to them, show that there, and then talk them through what thirty percent lift over the course of six months. If you can optimize that flow over six months, what that could look like. And then they can start to associate money with it because you’re gonna have to get to the point. Where you say, Hey.
This is a lot of work over a lot of time. Lots of specialized skills in there and here’s my rate for that. So then you say what the overall project rate is divided up month by month. That can turn into a retainer or it can turn into a project with an end date.
A lot of companies will start with a project with an end date. And then go okay. We have so many more needs. Like, we’ve been talking about this internally, and then they show you this giant.
List.
And so the project, depending on how many emails you’re gonna get done in what amount time. So you do it does still come down to the work you’re going to do, but they’re not you might make a subject line change rather than a full rewrite, right? Like you’re solving for opens. Clicks conversions on the other page, etcetera. Right? So that’s how your performance is going, how you’re working on things when you’re optimizing for performance.
And that’s fine. That’s cool. That’s great. That’s good to not have to do massive swings all the time. You just need to figure out what you’re going to charge. So right now, I’m I’m not actively involved in boxcar at all, but we have other people who’ve come to us who are friends for, quote unquote help because they’re kind of desperate.
Because there are a lot of businesses that need this. And they’re in at twenty, thirty thousand dollars a month, just to get one sequence planned and another sequence written. So I’m just subcontracting this out to two freelancers I’ve got who went through the email intensive that we did last November.
Not this last one. The one before that, one does planning and the other does execution on it. They work together. They chat together.
But This is a cool tech company and they’re like, we have a four month project on this because I was like, I can’t be here. I’ve got work. I’ve got my own stuff.
And they’re desperate. They’re like throwing money at these people to stick around to come work for them obviously. The biggest one. It’s like, hey, can you work for me?
But yeah, that’s how it goes. So you can see at x amount per month, times even just four months. That’s already a really big project and we’re only doing one sequence a month. One’s planning.
The other is executing, and then once the plan is signed off on at the end of the month, then the person executes on the plan that got signed off on and we keep going forward like that. And that’s not even getting into optimization because I told them I’m not going to optimize. I can’t stick around for this. But the the opportunity here, I can’t say it enough.
This is it. This is this sort of thing every business needs. They’ve got masses of users and subscribers that are just sitting there and nothing’s happening to them. And anybody who’s a CEO or CFO is like, what are they doing there?
How do we get them out of there? And that’s where you come in. And nobody in the organization knows how. Nobody knows how.
The CMO was like, I’m pretty sure we can do this. Like, how do we do this? So you get the CMO to buy into it and then you go from there. I don’t know if that helps.
Tech companies are really obvious low hanging fruit, while large, e commerce, like where the product is expensive such as mattress brands and, other, like, hardware.
Those are because they have big margins, there’s a lots that they can win, that they don’t have to pay because ads aren’t working for them anymore, either. Right? Ads are really expensive, etcetera, etcetera.
Email is still a wonderful opportunity, so they’re happy to reallocate budget toward email. Does that help?
Yeah. That was hugely helpful. Especially, appreciated how you broke down what a twenty k month looks like and how you broke it down into, like, planning execution. One coming up. That was really helpful. Thank you.
Awesome. Good. I really want everybody. You can find a way to do performance like measure what you’ve done.
The retainer is like endless, and it’s just it’s exactly what CRO agencies do. It’s exactly what SEO agencies do. We’re just doing it for email in particular.
Yeah. Cool. Awesome. Good luck. Thank you. Sounds great. Follow-up questions for that.
Yeah.
So what you were saying about how it’s a very specific skill set So if you were to advise like a fresh freelancer, maybe fresh out of college or high school, and they decide they wanted to specialize in email and get that skill set, what would you advise them?
Yeah.
Follow everybody. This is like anything that you ever want to specialize in, one, it’s a good thing that you’ve identified.
One thing to specialize in. That’s one of the hardest things that copywriters have to do is, like, what’s what am I gonna do? That I could do, like, everything needs to be written. This, this, the someone has to write the product packaging for that, like, everything.
So you decide on email and then you follow everybody who talks about email, but I mean in smart ways. I don’t mean they took one person’s course and now they’re gonna teach the world on it, but some people can do that and it goes very, very well. They actually care and think about it. So go out there and do the leg work to find out who knows their shit. Usually, they’re not talking very loudly because they’re so busy working on the stuff.
So keep that in mind.
I don’t know what you would read because most of the books on email marketing. Does anybody have a good one? I found that they’re like garbage, like, like, hot garbage.
Jess is looking at her bookshelf.
There was that one that Ryan Dice wrote oh, oh, oh, oh, no offense.
That’s not to Ryan dice, but it was so fucking bad. It was so bad. It was so basic and like this isn’t going to help anybody do anything.
So yeah. Go out and find that. We added triggered email stuff to ten x emails because of this master of seasonal sales, the emails tracked there. All so good.
And then just, like, keep a good swipe. Practice everything. Do what you’re already doing. Estergrace when it comes to like auditing what people are, saying go teach because teaching helps you learn the thing too. Obviously teaching from the position that you’re in not.
I’m an expert, but hey, I’m learning all this really cool shit about this.
Go to certifications for ships and gigs with Clavio and intercom and all of those popular tools, the ones that your prospects are going to use first. Right? Obviously, if you’re gonna work with SAS or if your friend is gonna work with SAS or this person who’s newly out of college, then use the solutions that SaaS uses. If you’re gonna work with e commerce, Clay a no brainer, braise is good in both cases, but start by just like documenting, just like massively learning everything and then start practicing.
And you can practice on your own email list. You don’t have to have somebody else’s email list to son. You’ll want that, but you don’t have to start there. Jessica, is this on the same topic?
Building off of it a little bit out. It’s similar.
Okay. I apologize to anyone who does not care about this because it’s still about this though.
My oh, my win. This opening myself for judgment.
I committed to taking my dogs twice a week to doggy daycare so that I could just and I already feel better. It hasn’t even happened yet.
That’s awesome. I know we have a dog walker come by two days a week. Just to, like, just go wear them out a bit. Like, they need to relax so that we don’t have to do it. Yeah. Smart. Good.
So I guess mine’s very specific. So related to this email thing though, I I too one of the big services that I’d like to offer is you know, I don’t know, email list management, the retainer, everything you just discussed. But the unique angle, I believe, is my seasonal sales into that and of course a big part of that is sales emails. And so what I’m kind of wondering is right now with slashing out my offers and all that I’m looking at seasonal sales campaigns and all that as one major offer and then the email ongoing stuff. But does that make I guess I’m just looking for any.
What are your immediate thoughts when I tell you that, I guess?
Yeah. I think that the retainer easily in your case could be I’m here for all of your seasonal sales emails because these e commerce brands that we’re talking about are they live on a seasonal calendar. Right? So I’m sure you’ve experienced this where they’re like, it’s president’s day.
Here is a pair of boots. For freaking president’s day? Like, what does that matter? But it’s like it matters.
So that I would do that, but I would just say, like, I’ll be or right hand when it comes to all of these seasonal sales emails that you’re writing. The problem is that it’s not performance space in that case, right? Like because you’re not doing president’s day last year versus this year, necessarily, unless you do, unless it does turn into this ongoing thing and then you can say, but it won’t be optimization like optimizing and automation. Of course.
Yeah. Yeah. But I still think it’s great and in demand. Yeah.
Great. Thanks. Awesome. Abby.
I have two questions. Should I discuss one or can I?
Yeah. But you have to say your win first.
Oh, my win. As as not like a big one, but I pre sold twenty five copies of my book, so I’m happy with that.
That’s amazing.
Very good. Yeah. So my question, so I have an Evergreen webinar funnel running for my course, and I’ve been running out I’ve got. So now I have about two hundred people that have been through the funnel, and I’ve realized that I’ve no plan of, like, what to do with them, the ones that did buy.
Like, I’m sending out get my week my biweekly newsletter. They’re gonna get some nigh word emails now, but I don’t know whether I should be like, because I see other course creators invite people back into the funnel, but it kind of, like, it’s like they said the same emails that it kind of makes the whole thing feel a bit, like, fake because it’s, like, makes the urgency feel fake because it’s, like, a but I use deadline for it. Yeah. And so I’m yeah.
I I don’t know.
Like, I just don’t know what to be doing with those people.
Did you ask them why they didn’t move forward?
Yeah.
What was the reason?
Like price.
They’re most mostly just like or saying, yeah, the the timing’s not right. Yeah.
So that’s either true or it’s not true.
And that’s the thing. If it is true, then that means that your audience is wrong, and I wouldn’t bother trying with them again. If price is really the objection, and it it can actually, but some people do not have any money.
They wanna learn from you, but they they can’t afford it. And those are good people to get out of your brain so they’re good to not try to reengage necessarily. I know that can sound harsh. Like, I’ve told you twice in today’s session to cut your list down. And you’re like, that’s my list. I’ve worked at it. So I get it.
But I would strongly encourage you to not think about the people who can’t afford your solution.
So that doesn’t mean that that they’re truly that that’s really the objection. And maybe there’s another way that you but I don’t it’s like, well, I could put together a cheap or something. Do you really need to spend your time or resources on building something for people who can’t afford what you’ve got.
Well, I think I think they can’t I don’t think it’s like they can’t afford it. I think it’s more like they’ve already spent their budget that month or they’ve, like, enrolled in other courses recently.
So they’re like, oh, I can’t it’s more like a timing thing, which makes as I’m saying that I’m thinking, maybe then I should give them another opportunity to buy If it’s a timing thing.
Yeah.
So it’s the first thing I stand over.
Does that if it’s a timing thing though, then there is. Are definitely. You can re engage them. That’s what that automation that we just set up today is for, bring them back. Eventually, it might be the right time for them, engage them in other ways.
It it depends on how far you wanna go with it and how much opportunity you do think is there because there’s so many different ways you could go, right? I would recommend you read the book super consumers.
It’s got good tricks on, like, quick, like, but but it takes it takes resources. So it’s like, have an IRl together for some, and then people have to fly in. Right? Like, it but but there are good ideas in there. So check that out.
What is a customer worth to you? If they convert, what’s their value?
It’s only, like, five hundred dollars. Sorry.
And that’s five hundred after you and everybody on your team has been paid. Wow. No.
Not like yeah. Once I take out, like, the tech stack and stuff, like, probably about Well, it depends how many I’m selling. So let’s say, like, like, I think my final cost, like, a hundred and fifty to run.
So Okay.
So you’re making three fifty? Is that what I heard?
Yeah. But then on the sale after that would be five hundred.
Okay. So for the lifetime value is then more in the eight hundred realm, like, once you get them in, even if it costs to acquire them I’m I’m really just trying to understand. No. No.
So no.
My lifetime value for these is like five hundred, like, unless they’re gonna hire me later, which I haven’t seen happen yet. But the the idea is hope that they’ll start making some money and then be able to afford to hire me, but it’s two early days. Yeah. So let’s just say the lifetime value is five hundred.
Yeah. Okay. Yeah.
And do you have a webinar already or a workshop that sells them?
Yeah. I have the Evergreen webinar. Yeah. Then the problem is if they go through and don’t buy. It’s like, what do I do with them?
Yeah. I know. So if the timing is wrong, then the automation sequence is one way to get them back on board, right, that then the sixteen by twenty three thing. Yeah.
Other ways then are right? Just like leave them on your general list. I just for me, I’m like, don’t pay too much attention to them if they’ve got these objections that you really can control unless there is something you can do to where timing is the problem.
What can you do to get rid of that problem. So how are you going to make yourself available when the time is no longer a problem? Can you book with them? Like, can you hop on a call with them in some way so that you can better, like, place yourself in their calendar I’m just one, I wouldn’t worry about the pricing people.
Two, if timing is a thing and you don’t wanna put them back through an evergreen funnel, then you have to figure out how you’re gonna get in front of them at the right time. And the evergreen funnel is the way typically of course to go. If it’s not right for them because they’ve been through it already, then I would just throw them on your general list and keep nurturing them old school and See if you can do some cross channel stuff. Also, I mean, my concern is people can always it’s very rare for timing to be a real thing too unless they’re multiple decision makers.
But sounds like there’s probably one decision maker here. They just didn’t get off their butt and do it.
Yeah. I mean, I think I think, like, to be honest, the more I think about it, the more like the nine word emails is probably enough to just because if they just say, yeah, I still want, like, want to, then I can just say, oh, I can, you know, I’m happy to, like, honor the discount for them. Like Yeah. Totally.
Yeah. Okay. Sorry. After all. I know your training that you did initially. It was so good.
That’s good.
That’s good.
I did have one other quick question if that’s all. Alright?
With so my evergreen final that I would have been final, like, bills cost my feedback into it. So that’s, like, the kind of the the USPS.
And part of that is thank you page surveys.
I originally, so I started using your question, the what was going on in your life. I wanted to find my own. I experimented with others. No question is as good. So I’m using that. I am I’m, like, giving you credit. Like I’m saying, this is Friday.
We’ve purchased a good day.
The I’m like, should I really be because it is quite an important part. Should I really be having my own question if I wanna really be like an authority in this? But I can’t think of a better question. Like, you know, I’ve I’ve tested lots of things. Like, so, yeah, what do you do you think it’s It’s a legitimate concern, or should I just keep on being like this is Joe’s question?
I would just stick with the question, but that would make think the thank you page entirely. So, what we’ve done with our thank you page is we go back and forth. We have surveys sometimes like a thank you page survey, the one question.
That you’re talking about and other times it is just skip skip ahead and book a call with us. Right? So you get the ebook, you wanna learn how to make five thousand dollars a month. And so you land on this on the page, the confirmation page, and instead of getting the ebook right away, it’s like, Hey, do you wanna skip the line?
And like, we could just hop on a call and talk through this and that’s gonna be a sales call. Right? So thank you pages across the board. You can just embed your calendly so if you’re like I’m not sure.
So what I’m hearing is you want to change the question because of a thought leadership thing. For you.
Yeah.
Great with it. Whatever. But if if what we’re really tapping into is you kinda don’t wanna use that question for whatever reason. Whatever reason. Whatever the reason is.
I do. I do.
Okay. Well then, what I would say is go back and forth. Yeah.
For when you know, switch between, I’m going to collect data, and I’m going to allow people to book an appointment with But it is more because I’m teaching it because I’m saying because I’m because in my course, I say, like, set up a thank you page survey, and this is the question that I use that Joanna Weeb taught me. So it’s like, I am I like I mean, I guess I’m I don’t know if I’m, like, asking permission here or what, like Oh, no.
Claire and Gia teach this too. Like, it’s yeah. I talk about all the time because I’ve tested a billion different ways, and that’s It’s just the best life. Yeah. It’s just it’s just going to help you find those that voice of customer. So just use it.
Just use it. Yeah. I did I’m thinking, like, based on what you said, what I could do is teach kind of like different thank you pages you can use depending on what you want. So if you want to voice your customers that question, if you wanna find out how people are landing on your page, use like a different question.
Like, that kind of thing. If you want, like, one to ones, then book a call. So yeah. Okay.
Anyway, yeah. Sorry. I don’t wanna hog your time. Thank you.
Cool. Thanks, Abby. Naomi. Thanks for waiting. You gotta win?
Alright. What about the win? I don’t have one at the top of my mind.
You will post an instance later.
I interestingly enough. Oh, okay. I have one. Okay. Good. So I was working on a landing page, and I met with the, I met with the marketer, meaning the guy who runs the Google campaigns, And I found out that he’s running three campaigns, and the guy who runs the business told me that he’s only running one.
And so if you work on Google campaigns, you know that but you really need a new landing page for every campaign to make sure at the very least that it matches the keywords. If not also the intent, the length of the page, etcetera. So I sent an email saying, you know, you really should have a different landing page for this other campaign because the people searching for this have a slightly different mindset. And so I just added that to the bill. So that was an extra, extra sale there, and that was really easy.
So, yeah, so that’s the win.
I am pretty sure I’ve asked this before, but I haven’t gotten a great answer anywhere. I’m gonna ask it again because email came up.
For the vast majority of the companies I work with, they might have a newsletter, but the newsletter is very content focused. And if they’re running these very traditional b to b ad campaigns, which most companies still are, they’re promoting white papers. And if they’re doing content syndication, which I know, everyone hates. They’re still, like, promoting learning papers, and so they get all of these leads.
And a lot of times if somebody reaches out to them, like, okay. You could always, like, retarget them if you’re tracking properly. But if somebody reaches out to them by email, it’s really the SDR or the BDR stop. To to contact them, to start building that relationship, because a lot of these things are very relationships focused.
But they typically these BDRs and SDRs, if they have hundreds of leads coming in, and they’re also getting leads from trade shows they don’t and they also have like regular leads coming up signing up for a demo that they have to set up discovery calls with. They don’t have the time to contact all those people. And if they are contacting them, usually it’s a very generic email, or it’s like a email sequence that happens like two weeks after the lead already drops in the CRM. So I’ve brought up the idea having nurturing sequences, which are really very different from newsletters. Newsletters and nurturing sequences have very different goals, but the pushback that I always get is This feels too sales y. This is too impersonal.
We need people to we need our sales team to reach out to them personally but the sales team is not reaching out to them and they don’t have the time. But I get this feedback over and over again from very technical b to b products, and to some degree, there is some legitimacy to that because a lot of times the sales funnel looks very different whether it’s different decision makers in the buying, like, if it’s the champion versus the decision maker versus person holding the budget or his different solutions or whatever it is, it it would actually be difficult to write a nurturing sequence and to segment a list that effectively when you have when you’re not doing it as large of a scale. So, I’m gonna ask again. Do you have any thoughts on how email would be effective here? Because there definitely is a lot of opportunity.
Yeah.
I mean, and this is the thing. I haven’t when I’ve worked with very technical large companies selling into enterprises with multi threading with all of the bananas stuff that happens in large sales organizations. I mean, like people who There’s one who, moves you from your mainframe to mainframe in the cloud Like, people still have mainframes out there. And to get moved off your mainframe is like a multi million dollar project, but like business, banks, communication, like telecom companies are on mainframes in a lot of cases still.
So these are even people who no matter the size and the complexity of the project and everything, they’re still emailing. They’re still doing it. They reach out to me as they can you help us with these emails So I’m I guess I’m a little confused as to why why your these clients or prospects don’t want to use email and saying it’s sales y is only once they’ve seen a thing. So what’s stopping them from using email in the first place?
It’s not that they’re not using email. It’s that they’re using email either the the sales reps, like, the AEs are using email, and sending personal email to them, like nine word each.
Sorry. I mean, like, why aren’t they using the nurturing sequence that you mentioned? Like, what’s really getting in their way there?
I would say number one, being able to segment people, like, right, the the less information you ask for when you ask for a white paper, the more people are gonna convert. So Of course, you’re especially if it’s like LinkedIn. Right? Like, you ask for, like, automatic information and half of that is probably LinkedIn guessing. So, like, if you have such little information because you want to get those leads in, then what kind of how much can you segment that list? And if you can’t segment the list, can your emails really be specific enough to be effective?
Okay. So their hearing, I need to segment. That’s a lot of work. We’re not gonna do that upfront on the form because it’ll surprise conversions.
And that means that we go into this with this big dump of people that are just a generic dump of people to us. And if you want to come in, and send emails to them with segmentation, we can’t because it’s too much work. Is it work?
Is it the function?
It’s work that a person could do but work like if they went and looked to figure out who the hell that is on LinkedIn, but I’m not sure how easy it would do. It would be to do in HubSpot or whatever email tool you’re using.
Yeah. And like you can say, I guess, so if their objection to it, one of their objections or starting one that makes it a nonstarter for conversation is we don’t have segmentation. Then take segmentation out, don’t segment then. And I know you need it, what do you need it to be specific, but I’m snow company actually segments.
Like we’re talking about a best practice is to segment. The reality is lasting. Everybody blasts. And that’s like what we’re really dealing with out there because these aren’t smart marketers when it comes to email.
Right? So if we always start from a place of, I know hundred times more about email marketing than you do. I have empathy you don’t say that. How do you know that?
Right? I have empathy for you and the sadness of what you don’t yet know could happen for your business. So what’s my easiest way to get you to start down the path of what email could do for your business because a newsletter is already a form of nurturing.
You have the sales team that is waiting too late before they reach out. So a potentially warm lead has gone cold, and now you have to, like, heat them up again. Why would you wait on that? So if you can talk them through and really and understand like, why are you waiting on that?
Like, maybe there’s an easier soul. Maybe it’s just like, oh, we should just tell our reps sooner. But if it’s like, no, that two week window has to pass and you’re like, well, let’s do something about that two week window. When’s the last time you want to be nurtured when you’re ready for something.
So there’s gonna be people that you’re just playing missing out on. Right? Can we agree on that? And if they can’t agree on that, you’re never gonna get someone But if you they can agree that, yeah, there’s definitely people who reach out and are ready to start the conversation at least.
Are ready to open the sales conversation from day one, then all you need is to sell them on a series of opener emails to like get them in, get them to set an appointment with a rep, get them warmed up on all of this stuff, so that they’re more likely to show up when a rep reaches out in two weeks and says, hey, you specifically you. I know everything about you and let’s hop on a call. They’re already nurtured there. So to me, it sounds like they think it has to be really hard work.
If you make it clear that it’s easy work, and you’ve done this before, and you can totally do this with very little effort from them. And the result is when an SDR reaches out there’s a real lead there. I mean, even the SDRs would get on board with that, right, that they could have good warm leads.
But in terms of actually writing the email, like if you have a use case, let’s say you have a use case for marketing and you have a use case for for product or product marketing and you have a use case for sales and maybe like one other one other department. And on top of that, you have the decision maker, you have a champion and maybe the person involves the purse strings or like somebody else in upper management. Like, what would be your approach in writing nurturing emails to all of those different that’s a that’s a lot of people.
It’s a lot of people.
What do you know about them? Do you know what white paper they downloaded? Or do they just get dumped into a single list?
No. You probably would know what white paper. I mean, it was the Right.
So let me start. And start there. Right? Like, as simple as are you still looking for a subject of white paper?
And then that’s like a way for them to at least hit apply to the email and go, yeah, remind me what that was, and then the SDR has a warm, like, contact that they can do something with. So if you’re able to do that with a single email and then if it doesn’t work, x period of time passes, and something else about the white paper, Hey, did you see this like complimentary video that supports what’s on page three? Go to page three and here’s the video or something. Right?
Like all we’re really doing is using email. If if there is an SDR, email’s job is to either get them to start a conversation or to move towards setting an appointment and then showing up for the appointment. So show up sequences and all those kinds of things that go along with that. So there’s already quite a things you can sell into a sales team.
But yeah, that’s I mean, it doesn’t have to be a long email. It can be a short one that’s just tapping into the thing that they showed interest in. No one reads a white paper. So you can just start like engaging them on, hey, do you wanna skip the line and like instead of reading the white paper, we could just talk about what you’re going through, and that’s an email that you can send. Yeah.
So so because these kind of short emails I would associate, like, those are the kind of emails that I typically assume SDR’s should send or BDRs are are supposed to be sending good, you know, the type the kind where they, like, make a typo in the subject line on purpose. So you would just automate those.
Yeah.
I mean, you can’t it depends on what you’re solving. If you’re typically solving for that two week gap, then, yeah, all you’re doing is Instead of nothing, you’re sending emails that look like an SDR sent them. That’s it. You’re just scheduling those up and that’s easy peasy. If you’re solving for something else, then you might need a different solution. But in this case, yeah.
I don’t think it has to be more complicated than that. It hasn’t been. You charged like it is, but it’s not actually more complicated than you knowing to send those emails that are about x and that respect the reader’s time and just try to get them into a conversation with an SDR.
So you wouldn’t provide more of something more engaging, something a little bit longer, more marketing oriented, you would stick with the more sales short and quick approach?
It I would only go to marketing messaging if your client is using SQLs and MQs. Like, if they’re measuring the quality of the lead. If a a certain number of ignores, reduces them down to more getting qualified lead instead of a sales qualified lead, once they’re no longer sales qualified. Okay.
But it really comes down to sales qualified and more qualified. If they’re marketing qualified lead, they get marketing emails, and that’s to get them back to a place of showing interest again and then if they’re sales qualified, they get sales emails. That’s it. Does that make sense?
Yes. I mean, I’m doing a dirty word. It’s like a four letter word in twenty twenty four.
And q l and SQL?
Oh, yeah. Everyone hates on q l’s. And q l’s are out. No one’s measuring on q l’s anymore.
Not in my world.
That’s for sure.
Or or not.
Yeah. Maybe.
For people who come talking to us. So but whatever the case is, whatever they’re calling it, there is a point at which marketing no longer is qualified to be the one talking exclusively them, whatever you wanna call it. But there’s lead scoring of some kind going on. Anybody with the sales team has lead scoring going on. If the lead is ready to be sold to, then they can have short quick emails that are there to get you to open a conversation.
If not, Then there’s the question of do we do a marketing message, like that’s a bit longer and softer more remote that kind of thing. What else do we do there? Yeah.
Okay. Interesting.
Yeah. That’s yeah. That’s what we’re seeing.
Cool. Cool.
Alright.
Anybody else? Now that my dogs have plumbed There’s a moment of peace in the house.
I’ve got a question.
Motion.
Wait.
So my win is kind of related to my question. I have a cousin who, works at a a unicorn startup.
As, head of product design, but he’s also, sort of assisting the CEO.
And He was telling me about the the internal state, which is like kind of crazy that their marketing team is like two two, graduates from from Uni.
Absent.
And the co founder who’s now gone was like a sales crazy dude who, kind of wanted to shut down marketing and just have sales.
And, yeah, it was, a shit show, apparently. So he’s out and things are better. And, he was, anyway, and he was telling me about the problems. And, obviously, I, as casually as possible, mentioned that I could If I had some time, maybe I have a glance at the website and just do a quick, a quick run through. So I did that. I sent it to him and he ended up, circulating it internally in, like, thirty people saw it, and then I guess they changed pretty much everything on their homepage. It was tons better.
Then nothing really came of it, but two weeks or a week ago, my cousin reached out and basically said, might have some work. Can we help in a call? So we did, and he needs three landing pages, homepage, potentially like a, a a voice guide and, like, I mean, honestly, like, there’s everything here. I mean, email alone.
But so, I don’t know, I sent a proposal over with some really, big scary numbers in it for me.
And, he forwarded it over to the CEO because they basically said he basically said, they need numbers before they could bring in the CEO.
So So I just recorded a Loom and and, and then decided to include, I’m sorry for anyone. This won’t make sense to some people, but the the narrative selling thing So I I pitched I kind of not pitched it, but, kind of infused it throughout the whole thing.
Just as casually as possible. And so I think it’s gonna I don’t know, but my my cousin said he he he loved it and forwarded it over to the CEO. So I’m waiting to hear back. And, that’s kind of the weird.
It’s just like to get the opportunity is great. And kinda crazy. But Love it. The the question is, do you because obviously, I think there’s really good opportunity here to, to help them because probably everything is I mean, their homepage before was, like, crazy bad.
So I think there’s just a massive opportunity here to to get some good numbers maybe. And then, obviously, make lots and lots and lots of content. So, I also was just wondering is, is there any what advice? Just broadly speaking.
What advice would you have for me in this situation? Thanks.
Okay. Advice for which part, like, for getting it closed?
Yeah. For just, like, bulk. If we hop on a call, I’m gonna, yes, but maybe as well just kind of I was thinking more broadly how to maximize, the opportunity for Of course.
Yeah. They’re based in the UK.
Yeah, Irish thumb.
Oh, they’re Irish? Okay. Oh.
Yeah.
Do I know who they are, probably?
Maybe.
I mean, Let us know who they are?
Yeah. I I mean, I could say yeah. Sure. It’s, Wayflyer, e commerce funding.
Oh, no. Okay. Oh, that’s cool. I thought it was somebody else, but that’s cool.
Okay. Awesome. So The reason I asked if they’re in the UK, is simply or not in America is really what it comes down to, is the ways of selling into different cultures.
So if you were over here, I would have recommended a, something slightly more, assertive on on it on the subjects. Just more of, like, let’s get, like, let’s do this thing kind of thing.
So it’s it’s tough because take what I say with a green really what I’m just gonna say. Like, try to modify it and apply it for what you know about your market, and the people that you’re serving there and how they react. To selling, which is really serving, but it’s called selling. Okay. Fine.
Yeah, because already I’m Did you find out what their budget is before you voted?
No. But I told but I had a quick call with my cousin and I said, I I pointed some rough numbers, and he was like, yep. That all sounds fine. So then I, maybe inflated them a little.
Has he ever signed off on a project like this Yeah.
Yeah.
He’s I think he’s he’s fallen into a kind of, second in command sort of thing to the to the CEO because he’s this guy, I don’t know, he sounds like he needs help. But So so, yes, he’s he’s kind of overseeing a bunch of stuff that probably isn’t in his role, typically.
Okay. So he is a good person to say this is the right price?
Yes. Or at least this is the right price.
Okay. So it’s gone. It’s been handed up to the CEO. When did that happen?
On Friday. I I think he’s seen it now. He also saw the tear down, which was I didn’t intend for anyone else to see, but my cousin size four of it and was it all. So they’re gonna know they’re gonna kind of look, and I also did quite a, like, exhaustive head, just because I kind of wanted to, obviously, show off a bit. Yeah.
So yeah. So he’s seeing that he’s maybe sitting on it now, the proposal.
So yeah.
Cool. So I mean obviously early on it would have been better not to do free work for them because now you’ve slightly devalued it. It doesn’t mean that that’s always true because people hire people on spec work all the time. Like agencies fight against each other on spec. So it happens. It’s just I would try not to do that in the future. See what happens if next time you charge instead of giving your cousin something.
See what happens if you I really was just, expecting him to just look at it and be like, cool.
I need to hire you. But instead it got he sent he sent it around. So that was not intended.
Cool. Yeah.
Either way, what they take out of free, they’ll still circulate it if they love it. So, there’s just that. I would just keep that in mind for everybody. Right?
Try not to do free anything unless you have such a strong reason to believe that that’s the only way forward. And I would imagine with your cousin, there was another way forward. I know Natitism can feel like tricky. Like, how do I get a credit card?
But yeah, so going forward, so you’ve shown internally that like you’ve proven to people that you offer a value. Don’t know if they knew your name don’t know, like, the thing that got shared around, did it have your name attached to it, or did they just know there was this smart person who sent this around?
This is the latter, I guess.
Okay. So there was a smart person who sent this around. Not this is Johnson spink. This is his work.
No. Well, no. No. Probably just this is Juts. Someone Jut has I don’t actually know how he presents it.
Yeah. It would just be yeah. And so even if you do send around, like, a loo or something again, just make sure you, in some way, brand it so it’s clear.
David, I mean, everything was branded with my my logo.
I finished on the end with my LinkedIn, my website, all of the the email and everything.
That’s what I’m wondering because obviously the CEO makes a decision, but makes a decision that is influenced by people around. Often on their own. Right? But they’re still gonna be if someone’s like, oh, that was so cool.
We’re still winning from what Johnson sent us. Like, when are we bringing this guy in? That’s obviously what you’re looking for. Right?
So as long as you’re He did actually say that everyone, talked about it for a bunch.
For a while. So I think it had an impact.
Okay.
So I think I I might my so I guess my my so I I think I know where your my assumption is I’m coming in there.
As an authority, like, to some degree?
My question with all of this understood is how do you, like, I I’m I’m not I don’t have visibility into it. So what is the gap that we need to close? Between the CEO looking at that and you getting on a call with the CEO?
Well, I don’t know if there’s anything, now because the the things off, he’s looking at it. And as far as I know, it’s it’s on it’s on trajectory, you know.
So really more, it’s about what happens when we when he says, okay. Let’s let’s talk to this guy. And how do I make sure that that’s, that’s that’s the last. That’s the only la the the last touch point.
Is it is the proposal high enough that it does require a call or is it something where the CEO will just sign off on it. Do you think based on conversations with your with your cousin, etcetera?
I think he’ll, yeah. I mean, I think he can sign off on it.
But it yeah. I think I I don’t imagine you’d have to consult anyone or not.
With me.
You mean with me? Yeah.
No. Maybe not. No. No. You could do that without hopping on a call. And I did say, at the end, I was like, we can hop on a call, and we can talk more about this.
Or if you just wanna look in my time because this is a big project, you can I’ll send over a statement at work, and you’ve got seventy two hours too. To sign that.
Okay. So did you already give him that, or would you later save by seventy two hours spent? Debbie have a deadline No. No.
No. I he has an option now between shoot choosing between statement of work straight away and signing it, locking in by time, or hopping on a call first?
Is there a deadline? What does he know about when he has to make this decision?
No. It is not a deadline.
K.
Cool.
Tricky because he’s a CEO, he’s busy, unless he’s prioritizing this, the team already made some changes based on it. Right? So he’s already got some hopefully winning copy and maybe less urgency around it. So what I would do if I were you is try to find a way to make sure a fire is lit under his butt. And now I know it’s like, well, it’s too late to put a deadline in there.
But What can you do going forward? Make sure you do have that. Like, hey, I can talk to you on Monday or Tuesday.
After that, if we can’t lock this in, it’s gonna be not until June make it really uncomfortable. And then if he still doesn’t move on it, it was a hard sell anyway.
So just keep that in mind that failure is okay.
Just put those deadlines in there for him. He needs to feel the pressure to move on this, and that’s why I asked what the team is the team pushing him. Your cousin is gonna have a hard time because of mephitin them. These might feel a little bit weird about it.
Right? So it doesn’t mean he will, but it might be like, oh, I can’t push too hard. So you need like a groundswell. You need people internally.
What can you do? Do you follow any of them on LinkedIn? Is there anything you can do to like seed conversation with the people who are going to influence the CEO moving on it. If by end of day tomorrow you haven’t heard from the CEO, what can you do with those people who fell in love with your ideas?
I would reach I would find a way to like what they say on LinkedIn or just like reach out to them and go like, Hey, were you one of the people who saw what I sent around or something? Right? But just started start a conversation there to try to get more people working on your behalf.
That’s what I would do at least if there’s if a deadline passes, it would also follow-up.
Were you directly connected with the CEO?
No.
Next time. Yeah. It’s I mean, or can you reach out on LinkedIn?
Does I don’t know culturally if that’s, like, weird to do it, like, in your Probably probably a little probably a little weird.
It is something that that might help this whole thing was kind of like, I need numbers before I can, like, bring him into this conversation kind of thing. So it was kind of a, gay gay keeper position, if I would like.
So I guess So you didn’t get to do a lot of the things that we want to do when we’re selling into.
No. And I didn’t I mean, I didn’t wanna he he just wanted numbers. So I was like, I sweated it for a day.
I was like, oh, it’s just not that first.
Yeah. I’m sorry. I mean, but I I think that it I I did at least. I mean, I, you know, I pointed out the the the the problems. And I and I stated, I mean, several different ways, but several times that they’re losing revenue. Like, kind of as we speak. Like, revenue is being a lot potentially, like, a lot of revenue.
And and this is a and that’s which I think is more is the the the the growing sense in the company. So I think it’s reflecting what is happening internally at least.
Naomi?
Could I, yeah, could I potentially step in? I, recently did a project, helping a startup rewrite a lot of their web copy because they had developed, like, a new it introduced AI so they needed new AI messaging.
And they broke it down into several different batches. So they started with, like, the main plan pages, the home page.
And or the main product pages, the homepage, and the plans page, and then they had broken it down into other areas of the website that, like, would be nice to update, but not critical. Could you start with, like, the pages that will bring the biggest uplift and the fastest quick win, make sure to go into Google Analytics, measure their conversion rate, measure time on page, all of those good metrics. And then when you’re done, show them how much it improved, and then it’ll be much easier for them to go on to the other pages because, like, when it comes to website copy, there are some mailer elements besides you. Right? Because you have to have the designer. You’re going to change the out the layout of the page, and you’re gonna have to have the developer, and it’s gonna be a huge headache for them. So if you can sort of reduce the scope of that project, you might be able to get in and and once they see how great the project is, it might be easier to continue.
Yeah. That’s that’s good advice. I I did, you know, I explained the price. I gave them a price per landing page and a price per home page.
So I quoted that together as a bundle, and I, you know, I I did the whole, being able to I reduced the scope and I reduced the cost. So, they’ve got that as an option. If they want to pick just one page here, I mean, that’s, that’s, I think that’s pretty straightforward.
Like, leap for them, but I didn’t mention it. I mean, I wouldn’t, I guess, I wouldn’t want to. But Yeah. I want them to buy. I want them to buy the whole picture.
Yeah. And every once that wins quickly though. Right? Yeah. It’s it’s a very good point about getting that win quickly. It will get by in. I know we’re at the end of our time for those you have to leave.
Talk to the CEO, everybody who’s still here.
Pop on call with the CEO, don’t they want numbers? Oh, just tell me what it costs. If they’re a CEO, they are used to being on a lot of calls. They’re used to prioritizing the right things if they care about money, which they do because their CEO, they want to be on a call.
They’re used to it. They’re not scared marketing managers who don’t know what to do with their time, they know. So you don’t your response if you get shut down, you will only get better at having them like actually hear you and say yes. So I’m saying like, no, let’s hop on a call.
I’d love chat with you. I wanna meet the person who built this school company. I wanna talk to you about what I can do for you and I wanna make sure what I have in mind aligns with what you have in mind. You’ve got the vision for this.
So get on the call. Do what it takes don’t let your cousin say, oh, no. I’ll just do this. Like, no, no, man.
Like, I can really help here. So get me on that call. Trust me. I will make you look good.
And that’s it. Then you show up on the call. You make the cousin look like a freaking genius for being related to you and knowing to bring you in, and the CEO gets to talk with you. And that’s good.
If you didn’t, just don’t worry about the things that you might be worried about, hop on a call you’ll close the CEO on the call if only because you had the freaking guts to say, no, I really wanna hop on a call you. Like that goes a long way. CEO’s wanna solve problems and they want it done yesterday.
So don’t be afraid of them.
Alright. Yeah. Thank you, Jared. Thanks.
To get on that call. Yeah. Good luck.
Thank you. Thanks.
Awesome. Cool. I know we’re at the end of our time, Esther Grace. Do you have a quick question?
Yes, please. If you don’t mind.
Sure. Let’s do it.
Okay. So it’s Sorry?
Nope. I was just saying to everybody else if you have to go. It’s not weird.
So I I have a lead or I had a lead was just like the perfect client.
They have a massive list. They’re not doing anything with email. They were very responsive. Like, they just wanted to hand everything off to me the expert to handle it for them.
We went through the proposal process. They agreed to the contract. They agreed to everything. And then and that was when I shared my win in the channel.
And after I sent over the contract and the invoice, they did reply for, like, a week. I followed up, didn’t hear anything, and then they sent me an email saying, they’re not comfortable with me being international, like living abroad.
So they would prefer if we worked on a smaller project to build the relationship first. So I offered them a smaller project included, like, a hundred and one different ways to make things easier for them, and then they just haven’t replied. I did the nine word email follow-up last week. No reply, no response, nothing, and I just feel so bad.
Yeah. Let’s back up then, to a few things. So out of the gate, Where did they think you were? Like, is that a legit concern?
Or yeah.
So right now I’m in Nigeria. I moved from the US, in December last year. I told them this on a call when we were talking and they’re like, oh, where are you based? And I’ve talked about how is how I moved to Nigeria, and they were like, oh, cool. That was it. But I don’t know where this came.
It’s a little tricky. Right? Like what a client tells you I mean, that that teaches you, like, tells you a bunch of things about them, but also about the reality of the world and fears of I don’t know. Whatever countries, I don’t know anything about what happens there.
Right? So There’s times when you I mean, I think that’s why some people just have US mailing addresses easiest thing when I worked for conversion rate experts. They had a San Francisco office and a New York office. They didn’t have office in San Francisco or New York, they have mailing.
They had a post office box there. So just like have a US location if only to look international.
So consider that if it’s an objection that you’ll ever have to come up against in the future, you know who you are We always have to think about who is trying to hire us and how afraid people are of making the wrong call when it comes to spending money. So consider that US based location on the bottom of your website along with it.
And that’s it. You can be on vacation abroad right now. If it’s anything weird, just I wouldn’t tell somebody or I’m from Canada if I thought it was gonna be weird for them. When the truth comes out about how horrible Canadians really are, then no one will wanna hire me. So, there’s that to consider. But Two. How did you follow-up with them?
So I followed up when the when I got the response, I followed with, an email detailing, like, what the smaller project could include, and then did some more, like, sales eat things in there, like, some tactics how it’s good for them.
And then I also added it like PS if they wanted to hop on call to chat through those details.
And then after that one, a couple of days later, I think a week later, then I followed up with the nine word email. So that was last week.
Are you using the word follow-up?
No. Just checking. Yeah.
Good. It’s always worth checking in to make that’s not happening.
Yeah, I mean, sometimes you lose, I don’t think that had to happen here. I think you might be dealing with people who got shy about the whole thing, and that sometimes happens. That doesn’t mean that that’s absolutely true either, but be, hey, you’re in a place we didn’t know you’re in. To me is like, it’s weird.
What’s going on there? There’s also, like, people get excited. Now you quoted them on that first call where they got excited. You told them what you charged.
Right?
So that wasn’t the first call. So I first, Okay.
So the first call, I Oh, sorry, Esther Grace.
Just to be clear, I also needed some time. Before you gave them the proposal or the amount, they knew the price.
No. They did not. That’s that’s it.
That’s it. And then there are I mean, I think it’s one thing they didn’t know the price so you can’t watch proposal boot camp. Watch it and watch it again. If it’s not like clicking, you have got to make sure that the client knows what your fees are, the vicinity of them.
They don’t have to have the exact quote, but it’s an actual waste of time for you. And look what it does. Now you feel dejected. Now you feel like, oh, Greg.
I lost them. You didn’t. You’re too expensive for them. That’s okay to be too expensive for them.
You’re going to be too expensive for a lot of people along the way.
So but you have to bring up your price or it’s not like it’s not a real thing. You’re going to have to bring it up eventually.
You gotta bring it up before they see it on a proposal or an estimate or in writing. You bring it up talking with them. So a project like this, generally, I mean, the last project I did with, like, this was, I think it came in around ninety five hundred, give or take, How does that sit with your budget? And then they’re like, oh, ninety five. And you can see because you’re on Zoom together.
You can see. Their reaction. So they’re like, oh, okay. Well, it’s more than we thought.
And you can see how crazy you’ve scared they are of how much more than they thought it is or if they’re like, Okay. You know, and, obviously, there’s reactions. Right? And there’s nuances.
That’s why you all wanna be on camera. So you can watch and you control your expression too because this is game face.
But you gotta you gotta do that. Never send a proposal over even a bullet point proposal in an email, don’t do anything until you have spoken about what it costs.
Yeah. So I just wanted to mention. So the structure I used was a little different since it was my first, pitch for this particular offer. I decided to do, like, a hundred percent performance basis.
So on the first call, so since this email, I was like, okay, we’ll only do performance just because I wanted I had never done anything like that before. I was like, let me just test it out with this potential client. So that was what I told them on the first call that it’ll be performance based. So we’ll have another call to talk through, like, the strategy for them.
So I did, like, a free audit just because I know I’m not supposed to do free audits, but just because it was I want you to watch this replay back, and you can pick out all of the things that I don’t need say to you right now.
Esther grace, don’t make life so hard for yourself.
Charge projects out of the gate. Once you have a bunch of email experience under your belt, then you can build a performance based email marketing agency, and you can do a bad ass job a bit. But to get there, you need to first have a bunch of experience.
It’s good to have ambition. I freaking love the ambition.
But you’re shooting yourself in the foot, hundred percent by a bunch of the things that you did that are like, well, I’m gonna go out and try it on my own. That’s what happens. You’re guessing, and you’re like short you’re trying to shortcut things. Just do it the easy way.
Just make it a proposal for a project, the thing that they said they wanted, tell them it’s gonna cost this much. Here’s when it starts. Here’s when it ends Here’s what you’ll know by the end if it performed well. If you want from that point on to have me continue to optimize it, we can pass that bridge when we get there.
Go into every call with an oh hell’s no. Right? Just like we talk about a proposal boot camp. It starts with no. No. I can’t do this How can I make the project smaller for you? What?
Your time is more valuable and when you make these modifications for people, you’re saying got nothing but time. And if you have nothing but time, that means nobody’s hiring you. And so I don’t have to hire you either.
Play hard to get.
Be hard to get. This is all a fucking game all the time. Be hard to get. Make them want to hire you.
Be open and honest about what you’re charging so that they can actually opt in and say, yes, I do want this from you. How soon can we get started. And don’t worry about giving things away for free. You don’t actually have to with real businesses.
You don’t have to give things away for free.
Mister Grace.
You gotta make this up to us. You gotta find a way to make sure that you don’t put our hearts through this again.
Just follow, go watch proposal boot camp. Hang out in ten accepting you still and then freelance some schools lack. As well as here, right? But it’s critical that you don’t just make up the rules. It’s not gonna work. It might work but man the bloodshed along the way. It’s just not worth it.
Keep it simple. Alright y’all. Thanks everybody for staying on and asking questions.
Yeah. So we’ll see you in Slack. We have, of course, another session on Thursday.
Go set up your sixteen by twenty three automation. If you didn’t finish it today, that’s fair, but make sure you do it.
And good luck with all of your and projects and things that you’re working on, and we’ll see you in slot.
Cool. Thanks for all.
Bye. Have a good day.
Sell by Chat: Open With Boards When You’re Bored
Sell by Chat: Open With Boards When You're Bored
Transcript
Alright. We’re going to dive in.
I know a few people have DM’d to say they’ll be showing up a little late today, so I’m just gonna roll with it.
Cool. We also have more training this afternoon for, the intensive. So there’s a bunch of stuff on, deck today for Copy School Pro. Today, we are finally talking about something I’ve been hinting at for the last little bit, and that is sell by chat.
Sell by chat, there’s a lot we can say to get into that. When we worked on the sixteen by twenty three lesson a little bit ago, part of that was part of sell by chat where you’re trying to open conversations, especially in that case after they’ve gone, a little bit cold or we just haven’t heard from people in a while. And maybe on their end, it’s still warm, but on your end, it’s feeling a little cold.
So today, though, we’re going to talk about brand new followers and how to open conversations with them so that you can nurture them to a close. Now we’re gonna talk all the way through closing them, in the framework I’m gonna walk you through today.
But you won’t always close them as easily or quickly as is shown here. So we’re gonna walk through, like, these nine parts, but that could happen over a six week period. So or eight weeks or one week or one hour. It can vary.
Right? It depends on who you’re talking to and what they’re looking for. So and it also helps to have a lot of practice with this stuff too. So keep that in mind.
As a reminder, we are diving in, questions. You’ll come off mute for any questions you’d like to ask. If you would like to be on camera, that’s perfect and highly encouraged so people can see each other, say, hey. Get to know each other’s faces.
After this walk through, we’re going to have a q and a session. That’s an ask me anything. It can be directly tied to what we’re talking about today, or it can get into other questions you have as a freelancer looking to make more money with happy clients.
Make sure when you ask a question, you always start with a win, a win of any kind. We just wanna focus on things that are good and getting better because it can be very challenging, to work for yourself. And, it’s easy to focus on some of the harder stuff when there’s a lot of good stuff happening too. Alright.
I am going to start sharing my screen. You will soon first, you’re gonna see the Zoom background, then you’re gonna see my calendar, and now we’re going to see that. That’s what we’re looking for. This is our, worksheet for today.
Moving a few more things around.
Alright. Cool. So, again, this is sell by chat where the idea is that you have one on one conversations with people in order to get them to buy, just like old school salespeople have always done, except we’re doing it over the phone and in some cases then, of course, leading to having conversations like this over Zoom.
But the idea here for today is to start opening conversations manually on your phone. In, the intensive freelancing, next week, we’re getting into a bunch of social stuff, including ManyChat.
So we’ll talk more about that later. Today, we are talking about a tool that is very, very easy to use. We have a person who’s just joined our team to do sell by chat as her full job, and that really just means opening conversations with new followers and nurturing them to do something. So she is on her phone all the time, and whenever we get a new follower, she immediately pings them and starts working through what we’re gonna talk through today.
This works for LinkedIn as well. So if you’re like, I don’t do Instagram. One, strongly consider starting on it, slash just do it. And then two, it’s okay because it also works for LinkedIn.
It works everywhere that people can connect with you. Where it doesn’t work, yet is, like, YouTube because that’s there’s just no mechanism there to start, like, one on one conversations with people. Maybe Google has a plan for that. I don’t know.
But it does make us think twice about spending too much of our resources on YouTube, and I’d encourage you to have the same kind of thought when you’re trying to figure out where your Instagram or, sorry, where your social focus should be for us. It’s currently Instagram, and here’s why. What we’re gonna talk through today is why.
So this is called open with boards when you’re bored because boards is a tool. I’m going to show you the tool. It is a tool that replaces your keyboard. So when you’re actually in Instagram or WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger or wherever you may be, where people are following you or chatting with you, it actually just replaces your keyboard.
So you go in and someone has started a conversation here. That’s our chat person just did that. You hit to reply to the message, and then you can hit the little globe icon below to get you into something called boards. You can see that here showing a little bit in there.
Oh, my my phone’s a little dirty.
But this showing on the screen is what that brings up. So if I click boards, and it’s a whole process to walk you through that, but I actually have put a page together for you to see in today’s, document so you can go into what boards really does.
We have you’ll have just basically really quick, conversations with people that are ready to go. So here’s an example.
When somebody is following us is a new as a new follower, our person, her name’s Maddie, our person who, opens a conversation with them goes into boards. They see this. You can see that there are multiple boards off to the side here. We can talk through those if you’d like to, and I’m happy to.
But what they’re going to start with is this one under board for freelancing school and copy school professional candidates is what we’ve called it. So, basically, any freelancer who reaches out to us, we default to believing everybody’s a freelancer. You’ll default to believing whatever it is that you believe, and we’ll get into that for your clients. But they’ve got new leads as a folder. That’s a folder you can go into where there’s all sorts of stuff in there. Then they have warm or good leads, like, oh, we’ve started to move along in the conversation.
And there’s also hot leads, people who are ready to go, and it’s time to just, like, hop on a call and have a conversation. Now those are folders to go into, but this is where she starts very often with this. First name, last name. So Joanna Weeb exclamation point.
That’s the first thing. She hits that on her keyboard. She replaces it with first name, last name. Boards isn’t quite that smart yet to do that.
So she has to manually do that, but she always knows that’s what it is. Then the second one, thanks for commenting on my post. She hits enter after that. Always hitting enter.
Always hitting enter. Really quick, snappy messages, and then appreciate it. That’s how she opens up a lot of conversations. There are other ways to open up conversations like, hi.
Thanks for the follow and support. How did you stumble across my stuff?
And, hey. Are you here for the bids, or do you have a freelancing goal? Those are the three most common ways that we open a conversation.
Those three with first name, last name, and then these followed by those other two that I just showed you. We’re playing with different ones all the time. I’m not gonna get too deeply into that. We can talk about it later.
What I wanna do is just show you what boards is and why I say you should be on boards when you’re bored. Because when you’re standing in a line, when you’re sitting in front of whatever you’re watching at night, when you’re even just on a treadmill and you have a choice. You can stare at a screen in front of you that has, like, some sports recap on it at the gym when you’re like, I really don’t care. And if you’re not listening to an audiobook or even if you are and you’ve heard it a million times, you can hop on your phone and be welcoming new followers on LinkedIn, again, on Facebook, wherever this thing may be that you’re actually focusing.
When you’re bored, that’s a signal for you to hop on your phone and start interacting with the people who follow you. So we’re gonna get into why and how that works. But the idea is, of course, to open conversations with prospects that we can close. Now this is working happening with people selling packages to clients, by which I mean, it can happen for you very, very easily.
One of the coaching programs I’m in, this is a bit of an ex like, a out of control, results. But after nurturing a lead for a couple months, this one person, not the coach, one of the students in this group coaching program, was able to close a twenty million dollar project. It was a long sales cycle. Don’t get me wrong.
And all sorts of stuff. And I say you’re gonna close a twenty million dollar project. What I’m saying is even the most ridiculously large projects are, like, waiting to be closed to open, nurture, and close just with people who are on Instagram.
That’s it. Really straightforward stuff. You can can close twenty thousand dollar projects this way. You can close two hundred dollar like, let’s hop on a call right now and have a quick back and forth to get through your strategy or whatever it might be. You could close all sorts of things on these calls.
You should, of course, obviously be focus focusing on your specialized project. That’s what you’re trying to get everybody into. But if you have a first thing such as let’s hop on a call, we’ll brainstorm some ideas, here’s a link to buy my time and book my time, etcetera. Cool.
Cool. Cool. That’s what we’re talking about. That’s what we’re thinking about. So I know a lot of people who here use Instagram, chat on Instagram, or, like, good idea, but it’s not for me.
Try it. Try it. It’s working for us, and I recommend that you get cracking on it. So you wanna install boards on your phone and, of course, in your browser because you can do stuff with that. I’ve got it up here in my browser.
You’re basically using it to replace your keyboard. That’s it. And only when you need to replace your keyboard with prewritten tests.
Always be on your phone. You already are. So now do work on it. So you can open with all new followers or commenters as soon as possible and nurture them night and day.
Boards and something called ManyChat work really well together. You’re going to want to use both. We’ll talk about ManyChat later. Boards is the quickest way to just get going.
I already said, hit send after every thought, every sentence, no paragraphs. Right? Like, you’re a teenager, just get in there and go, and show engagement and responsiveness. So you might start with scripted stuff, and then you wanna make sure you’re listening to them and having a conversation with them without falling into the friend zone.
This is really critical. When you are somebody who is an expert in the thing that you do, even when it feels like you’re really accessible and, like, oh, wow. Johnson’s on the other side of this chat. I can’t believe I’m talking to the copywriter that I wanna hire.
I wanna, like, chat with Johnson about, like, where he lives and what he’s doing and how business is going for him. And you have to be careful not to fall into that friend zone because you’re not here to just, like, hey. Let’s hang and talk about shit. You’re here to actually move them through getting you on board with, like, on hiring you.
Okay? So here’s how we do that.
Nine parts as I promised.
Open a conversation. We’re talking about opens with boards. Qualify that person. Are are they right for you?
Are they a good fit? If they’re not, you’re allowed to just bring that conversation to a close. You don’t owe anybody anything. Just make sure that you’re closing it off.
Right? Like, in a nice way. Like, wow. That’s so cool. And then just leave it.
Convert to call is the third and final step. In most cases, you’ll want to convert to call. Everybody in Coffee School Pro should be trying to get somebody on a call so they can have a good conversation with them. Alright.
So that’s the basic. Those are the three steps that we’re working through. Then under each of those, in this order, first, we want to appear to them. Right?
So that’s that thing where, hey. Thanks for the follow. How’d you stumble on my stuff? Or the other one I showed you, which is first, last, Joanna Weeb, Johnson’s Bank.
Who else we have here? Jessica Noel, whatever it could be. Thanks for commenting on my post. Appreciate it.
Then they reply, and then you have an engaging moment.
This is the open this is where you know something about them. So if you see if you go look at them, you see, oh, they’re VP of marketing at Audio Technica. Okay. Cool.
Audio Technica is cool. I have your mic or something.
How long have you been there? Whatever that could be, but you’re really just starting to open a conversation that’s not about them as necessarily people, but rather as business people. So you’re in business. They’re in business.
You’re going to talk about business. They’re probably not following you for shits and giggles. Right? They’re probably following you because they liked something you had to share about your area of expertise, and they’re like, that’s very interesting.
I wanna know more. So you’re allowed to start talking with them about that stuff. And I wouldn’t even say you should prequalify anyone at this point.
Everybody who comes into your Instagram gets these messages.
Now if it comes down to this and they haven’t replied to your appear, if you’ve said, like, hey. Thanks for commenting or, hey. Thanks for the follow. Appreciate it. And they don’t say anything back to you, you don’t have to continue on. Like, you can just stop there. And if they come back with something like, totally, hey.
What supplements do you use? And you can tell they’re about to, like, try to sell you supplements. You can just, like, casually fail on that conversation so you don’t have to go here, but we’re assuming things are actually going along well. You’re not attracting people who just want to sell you supplements.
So you can move forward with that. So just, like, connect with them. It could be as simple as love your Instagram, or how long have you been in email marketing or both. Right?
We’re just trying to really advance the conversation toward where we want them to go, which is getting on a phone call with you. Then this is an important one, and this I learned from one of my coaches. We didn’t even realize we were doing it, and then we felt really good that we were doing it.
We didn’t even realize we were doing it, and then we felt really good that we were doing it. And ours was, are you an in house, copywriter, or are you freelance?
So this is where are you x or y so that they just reply with one of the two things, and you wanna know what that thing is so that you can take the conversation to the next part, which is qualifying them. So if it’s this, that, do you have an email team, or do you use freelancers?
Do you run email, or do you have a VP of life cycle? Whatever that could be. Right? And I’m saying email here, but whatever your example is for your situation, the point is, this is the point at which we give them a this or that.
Are you this or are you that? Do you want this or do you want that? Whatever it could be. Right?
Then we’ve opened the conversation. We’ve got them talking about work.
Don’t worry if you’re like, oh, no. They’re gonna know that I’m trying to sell them.
Yeah.
It’s okay. It’s okay when you go on to a you go into a store and someone wants to help you get something.
We can’t assume everybody’s a browser, and we can’t assume that you’re going to serve everybody who’s here to browse and just, like, hang up. You’re allowed to sell. So if anything’s getting in the way for you here where you’re like, it feels inauthentic because I’m pretending to show interest, and what I really wanna do is just make money off them. One, just actually show interest then. Like, just be interested.
And then from there, don’t worry. Don’t worry too much with how it’s coming off. You’re still learning this stuff. You’ll get to a place where you feel, like, really good about this conversation that’s getting them what they want.
If you are sharing your specialization and your thought leadership and who you are on Instagram or wherever you do this, then they’re responding to that. So you’ve already established good things that make them want to follow you or comment on your stuff. You’re allowed to take it to the next level. You’re allowed to assume that they’re ready for some level of project engagement with you.
Okay.
Qualifying comes. Next, this is where we want to identify the gap. So this, that, and the gap are two really important parts in here that you wanna be careful not to just kind of, like, glaze over. The gap is where they are able to identify this is what I want, but this is what’s happening, and they can see there’s a gap.
I want to make twenty thousand dollars a month. I’m making eight thousand dollars a month. So there’s a twelve thousand dollar gap in there. Do I have a plan to get to close that gap?
If it’s due more of the same, is it can I reasonably expect to close that gap? So, no, we wanna make sure that they’re acknowledging the gap between what they have and what they want. How are your emails selling right now? Where would you like them to be?
Ask both of those in the same line. How are your ads performing right now, and how do you wish they would perform? What’s your cost to acquire a customer right now? What do you wish it would be, or what do you believe it should be?
Those sorts of things. Okay? So we’re trying to establish and this is, again, going to be tied to your specialization, the thing that you do, the offer that you are trying to eventually get them to say yes to. You’re qualifying them. If they’re like, oh, well, we don’t really do emails.
Oh, cool. And then you bail. Right? So just know that that’s what we’re working through.
Then comes the obstacle. So and this is like there’s different ways you can go through from this point on. I like the obstacle. So here’s the gap, and then what’s getting in the way.
So what’s getting in the way of your emails performing you or what’s getting in the way of you going from eight thousand dollars to twenty thousand dollars? What have you tried so far? And that’s where they start self diagnosing the problem. Well, I’m not really sure.
I’ve read all these books, or I bought this book and haven’t read it. Have you thought of reading the book? Those kinds of things. Like, you can talk through, and they’re like, well, I just don’t believe it’s the book.
I think what I really need to do is x, and I just wish I had somebody I could talk to about this or whatever it could be. Right? And then we can get into offering the help. That’s interesting.
I’ve got some ideas. Do you wanna talk?
And very quickly, moving that to a call. Very quickly. As soon as we get into offering help, we’re offer help might actually need to be over in the convert to call side of things because you’re ready there to start moving them to hopping on a call with you. And in this situation, you do need to be ready to have your like, to be ready to hop on.
You’re already on your phone because you’re Instagramming them. So you might as well call. Right? Just hop on a phone call with them.
Great. What’s your best number? How can I reach you? Are you free right now? And if they’re like, oh, no.
I’m at work right now. I can’t talk right now. Like, I have a meeting I’m going into. No worries.
Let me get you my calendar link. Or if they’re like, here’s my number score. You’ve done very, very well. Excellent.
Get on that freaking call where you can close them there. But what we wanna do in a lot of cases, they’ll be like, I’m busy, because they’re scared to get on a call with you.
And that’s where you’re like, no worries. Let me get you my calendar link. Here is my Calendly, and then you wait.
Hey. Did that work for you? Did that link work for you? And you wait for them to reply with, yeah.
I got it. Or, yep. I could actually, I couldn’t find any time that works for me. And then you can go further.
Okay? If there’s well, what time does work for you? Are you free in thirty minutes? Are you free tomorrow at two PM?
I’m in Pacific time. Where are you at? So you’re just now working to get them to say yes to a call.
That’s the whole thing. It happens on social media, in DMs, privately, but that’s really the objective. That’s all you’re working toward. So what you can do with this is brainstorm your own opens, your own qualifying questions, and that’s, like, all of the stuff, the gap.
Start writing all that stuff down and then converting, of course. I have this under advanced because it’s pretty advanced for most freelancers to start doing this, but the actual techniques are really, really simple. Go into boards. Start setting these up as really basic.
Like, you’ve got them all right here. All three of these. So first, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine. You can just put numbers on them and just be ready to hit those numbers.
Right? That’s it. That’s the whole thing. It’s one more great way where if you are putting content out into the world, you deserve to do something with that.
You don’t just put it out there and, like, hope everybody’s really happy with you because you can’t pay bills with happiness. What you want to do is make sure that you are converting, converting them to a call, and then we can talk more about what happens in those calls. That’s where you’ll have diagnostic and other things that we’ve talked about already. Cool?
Cool. There’s chat here. Who chatted well? Oh, good. Thank you.
Questions.
Where are you at?
You ready to go? Ready to do it?
Scared to do it? I’m not, back on, I’m not running my socials again yet, but this, this is really and I’m is it next week we’re gonna do ManyChat?
Next week in, the intensive freelancing, we’ll be talking about ManyChat and showing it, but not, doing, like, an intensive training on it because it’s, like, really deep. Although, I will direct you to training on it. Yeah.
Okay. Cool. Yeah. But no. This is, this is amazing and exciting. I’m just not I’m not on socials back on yet, but, it’s really cool.
Cool. Awesome. Jessica, Caroline, anything to add?
I have a question if that’s alright.
Well, as I do it.
Okay. So I don’t I always get myself in these predicaments.
But, as you were speaking, I was like, gosh. You would I I have a right in Maine, you know, my company’s name as an Instagram face, all the things. Right? But then when I started my newsletter, I named it the holiday win because I wanted it to be really clear that it was about seasonal and holiday sales.
So then I got all the socials related to that. And now sitting here going, okay. Where am I building a brand? So I was just wondering with this because I’m assuming it’s all through one, you know, like, one account in Instagram or something.
You know? So I was just curious what your thoughts were on that.
Yeah. I mean, there’s definitely no point in spreading yourself thin, unless you have, like, a massive team of multiple people who can run your social. I would just just merge it or just choose, like, what to do there.
But you gotta choose one. There’s gotta be just one account.
Can’t be both, which might mean giving up everybody from right in Maine. Just, like, posting on there, like, hey. I’m moving over to this now, and here’s why.
And then you can do a bunch of stuff on here’s why you’re focusing, and that will help move them over and under and help them understand why they should follow you over at the holiday win.
Okay. Alright. Thank you. Yeah.
I would make it content, though.
Like, it’s cool that you’re making this business decision, and you can be really transparent with that and, like, share it on social. Okay.
Cool. Awesome.
Worksheet
Worksheet
Transcript
Alright. We’re going to dive in.
I know a few people have DM’d to say they’ll be showing up a little late today, so I’m just gonna roll with it.
Cool. We also have more training this afternoon for, the intensive. So there’s a bunch of stuff on, deck today for Copy School Pro. Today, we are finally talking about something I’ve been hinting at for the last little bit, and that is sell by chat.
Sell by chat, there’s a lot we can say to get into that. When we worked on the sixteen by twenty three lesson a little bit ago, part of that was part of sell by chat where you’re trying to open conversations, especially in that case after they’ve gone, a little bit cold or we just haven’t heard from people in a while. And maybe on their end, it’s still warm, but on your end, it’s feeling a little cold.
So today, though, we’re going to talk about brand new followers and how to open conversations with them so that you can nurture them to a close. Now we’re gonna talk all the way through closing them, in the framework I’m gonna walk you through today.
But you won’t always close them as easily or quickly as is shown here. So we’re gonna walk through, like, these nine parts, but that could happen over a six week period. So or eight weeks or one week or one hour. It can vary.
Right? It depends on who you’re talking to and what they’re looking for. So and it also helps to have a lot of practice with this stuff too. So keep that in mind.
As a reminder, we are diving in, questions. You’ll come off mute for any questions you’d like to ask. If you would like to be on camera, that’s perfect and highly encouraged so people can see each other, say, hey. Get to know each other’s faces.
After this walk through, we’re going to have a q and a session. That’s an ask me anything. It can be directly tied to what we’re talking about today, or it can get into other questions you have as a freelancer looking to make more money with happy clients.
Make sure when you ask a question, you always start with a win, a win of any kind. We just wanna focus on things that are good and getting better because it can be very challenging, to work for yourself. And, it’s easy to focus on some of the harder stuff when there’s a lot of good stuff happening too. Alright.
I am going to start sharing my screen. You will soon first, you’re gonna see the Zoom background, then you’re gonna see my calendar, and now we’re going to see that. That’s what we’re looking for. This is our, worksheet for today.
Moving a few more things around.
Alright. Cool. So, again, this is sell by chat where the idea is that you have one on one conversations with people in order to get them to buy, just like old school salespeople have always done, except we’re doing it over the phone and in some cases then, of course, leading to having conversations like this over Zoom.
But the idea here for today is to start opening conversations manually on your phone. In, the intensive freelancing, next week, we’re getting into a bunch of social stuff, including ManyChat.
So we’ll talk more about that later. Today, we are talking about a tool that is very, very easy to use. We have a person who’s just joined our team to do sell by chat as her full job, and that really just means opening conversations with new followers and nurturing them to do something. So she is on her phone all the time, and whenever we get a new follower, she immediately pings them and starts working through what we’re gonna talk through today.
This works for LinkedIn as well. So if you’re like, I don’t do Instagram. One, strongly consider starting on it, slash just do it. And then two, it’s okay because it also works for LinkedIn.
It works everywhere that people can connect with you. Where it doesn’t work, yet is, like, YouTube because that’s there’s just no mechanism there to start, like, one on one conversations with people. Maybe Google has a plan for that. I don’t know.
But it does make us think twice about spending too much of our resources on YouTube, and I’d encourage you to have the same kind of thought when you’re trying to figure out where your Instagram or, sorry, where your social focus should be for us. It’s currently Instagram, and here’s why. What we’re gonna talk through today is why.
So this is called open with boards when you’re bored because boards is a tool. I’m going to show you the tool. It is a tool that replaces your keyboard. So when you’re actually in Instagram or WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger or wherever you may be, where people are following you or chatting with you, it actually just replaces your keyboard.
So you go in and someone has started a conversation here. That’s our chat person just did that. You hit to reply to the message, and then you can hit the little globe icon below to get you into something called boards. You can see that here showing a little bit in there.
Oh, my my phone’s a little dirty.
But this showing on the screen is what that brings up. So if I click boards, and it’s a whole process to walk you through that, but I actually have put a page together for you to see in today’s, document so you can go into what boards really does.
We have you’ll have just basically really quick, conversations with people that are ready to go. So here’s an example.
When somebody is following us is a new as a new follower, our person, her name’s Maddie, our person who, opens a conversation with them goes into boards. They see this. You can see that there are multiple boards off to the side here. We can talk through those if you’d like to, and I’m happy to.
But what they’re going to start with is this one under board for freelancing school and copy school professional candidates is what we’ve called it. So, basically, any freelancer who reaches out to us, we default to believing everybody’s a freelancer. You’ll default to believing whatever it is that you believe, and we’ll get into that for your clients. But they’ve got new leads as a folder. That’s a folder you can go into where there’s all sorts of stuff in there. Then they have warm or good leads, like, oh, we’ve started to move along in the conversation.
And there’s also hot leads, people who are ready to go, and it’s time to just, like, hop on a call and have a conversation. Now those are folders to go into, but this is where she starts very often with this. First name, last name. So Joanna Weeb exclamation point.
That’s the first thing. She hits that on her keyboard. She replaces it with first name, last name. Boards isn’t quite that smart yet to do that.
So she has to manually do that, but she always knows that’s what it is. Then the second one, thanks for commenting on my post. She hits enter after that. Always hitting enter.
Always hitting enter. Really quick, snappy messages, and then appreciate it. That’s how she opens up a lot of conversations. There are other ways to open up conversations like, hi.
Thanks for the follow and support. How did you stumble across my stuff?
And, hey. Are you here for the bids, or do you have a freelancing goal? Those are the three most common ways that we open a conversation.
Those three with first name, last name, and then these followed by those other two that I just showed you. We’re playing with different ones all the time. I’m not gonna get too deeply into that. We can talk about it later.
What I wanna do is just show you what boards is and why I say you should be on boards when you’re bored. Because when you’re standing in a line, when you’re sitting in front of whatever you’re watching at night, when you’re even just on a treadmill and you have a choice. You can stare at a screen in front of you that has, like, some sports recap on it at the gym when you’re like, I really don’t care. And if you’re not listening to an audiobook or even if you are and you’ve heard it a million times, you can hop on your phone and be welcoming new followers on LinkedIn, again, on Facebook, wherever this thing may be that you’re actually focusing.
When you’re bored, that’s a signal for you to hop on your phone and start interacting with the people who follow you. So we’re gonna get into why and how that works. But the idea is, of course, to open conversations with prospects that we can close. Now this is working happening with people selling packages to clients, by which I mean, it can happen for you very, very easily.
One of the coaching programs I’m in, this is a bit of an ex like, a out of control, results. But after nurturing a lead for a couple months, this one person, not the coach, one of the students in this group coaching program, was able to close a twenty million dollar project. It was a long sales cycle. Don’t get me wrong.
And all sorts of stuff. And I say you’re gonna close a twenty million dollar project. What I’m saying is even the most ridiculously large projects are, like, waiting to be closed to open, nurture, and close just with people who are on Instagram.
That’s it. Really straightforward stuff. You can can close twenty thousand dollar projects this way. You can close two hundred dollar like, let’s hop on a call right now and have a quick back and forth to get through your strategy or whatever it might be. You could close all sorts of things on these calls.
You should, of course, obviously be focus focusing on your specialized project. That’s what you’re trying to get everybody into. But if you have a first thing such as let’s hop on a call, we’ll brainstorm some ideas, here’s a link to buy my time and book my time, etcetera. Cool.
Cool. Cool. That’s what we’re talking about. That’s what we’re thinking about. So I know a lot of people who here use Instagram, chat on Instagram, or, like, good idea, but it’s not for me.
Try it. Try it. It’s working for us, and I recommend that you get cracking on it. So you wanna install boards on your phone and, of course, in your browser because you can do stuff with that. I’ve got it up here in my browser.
You’re basically using it to replace your keyboard. That’s it. And only when you need to replace your keyboard with prewritten tests.
Always be on your phone. You already are. So now do work on it. So you can open with all new followers or commenters as soon as possible and nurture them night and day.
Boards and something called ManyChat work really well together. You’re going to want to use both. We’ll talk about ManyChat later. Boards is the quickest way to just get going.
I already said, hit send after every thought, every sentence, no paragraphs. Right? Like, you’re a teenager, just get in there and go, and show engagement and responsiveness. So you might start with scripted stuff, and then you wanna make sure you’re listening to them and having a conversation with them without falling into the friend zone.
This is really critical. When you are somebody who is an expert in the thing that you do, even when it feels like you’re really accessible and, like, oh, wow. Johnson’s on the other side of this chat. I can’t believe I’m talking to the copywriter that I wanna hire.
I wanna, like, chat with Johnson about, like, where he lives and what he’s doing and how business is going for him. And you have to be careful not to fall into that friend zone because you’re not here to just, like, hey. Let’s hang and talk about shit. You’re here to actually move them through getting you on board with, like, on hiring you.
Okay? So here’s how we do that.
Nine parts as I promised.
Open a conversation. We’re talking about opens with boards. Qualify that person. Are are they right for you?
Are they a good fit? If they’re not, you’re allowed to just bring that conversation to a close. You don’t owe anybody anything. Just make sure that you’re closing it off.
Right? Like, in a nice way. Like, wow. That’s so cool. And then just leave it.
Convert to call is the third and final step. In most cases, you’ll want to convert to call. Everybody in Coffee School Pro should be trying to get somebody on a call so they can have a good conversation with them. Alright.
So that’s the basic. Those are the three steps that we’re working through. Then under each of those, in this order, first, we want to appear to them. Right?
So that’s that thing where, hey. Thanks for the follow. How’d you stumble on my stuff? Or the other one I showed you, which is first, last, Joanna Weeb, Johnson’s Bank.
Who else we have here? Jessica Noel, whatever it could be. Thanks for commenting on my post. Appreciate it.
Then they reply, and then you have an engaging moment.
This is the open this is where you know something about them. So if you see if you go look at them, you see, oh, they’re VP of marketing at Audio Technica. Okay. Cool.
Audio Technica is cool. I have your mic or something.
How long have you been there? Whatever that could be, but you’re really just starting to open a conversation that’s not about them as necessarily people, but rather as business people. So you’re in business. They’re in business.
You’re going to talk about business. They’re probably not following you for shits and giggles. Right? They’re probably following you because they liked something you had to share about your area of expertise, and they’re like, that’s very interesting.
I wanna know more. So you’re allowed to start talking with them about that stuff. And I wouldn’t even say you should prequalify anyone at this point.
Everybody who comes into your Instagram gets these messages.
Now if it comes down to this and they haven’t replied to your appear, if you’ve said, like, hey. Thanks for commenting or, hey. Thanks for the follow. Appreciate it. And they don’t say anything back to you, you don’t have to continue on. Like, you can just stop there. And if they come back with something like, totally, hey.
What supplements do you use? And you can tell they’re about to, like, try to sell you supplements. You can just, like, casually fail on that conversation so you don’t have to go here, but we’re assuming things are actually going along well. You’re not attracting people who just want to sell you supplements.
So you can move forward with that. So just, like, connect with them. It could be as simple as love your Instagram, or how long have you been in email marketing or both. Right?
We’re just trying to really advance the conversation toward where we want them to go, which is getting on a phone call with you. Then this is an important one, and this I learned from one of my coaches. We didn’t even realize we were doing it, and then we felt really good that we were doing it.
We didn’t even realize we were doing it, and then we felt really good that we were doing it. And ours was, are you an in house, copywriter, or are you freelance?
So this is where are you x or y so that they just reply with one of the two things, and you wanna know what that thing is so that you can take the conversation to the next part, which is qualifying them. So if it’s this, that, do you have an email team, or do you use freelancers?
Do you run email, or do you have a VP of life cycle? Whatever that could be. Right? And I’m saying email here, but whatever your example is for your situation, the point is, this is the point at which we give them a this or that.
Are you this or are you that? Do you want this or do you want that? Whatever it could be. Right?
Then we’ve opened the conversation. We’ve got them talking about work.
Don’t worry if you’re like, oh, no. They’re gonna know that I’m trying to sell them.
Yeah.
It’s okay. It’s okay when you go on to a you go into a store and someone wants to help you get something.
We can’t assume everybody’s a browser, and we can’t assume that you’re going to serve everybody who’s here to browse and just, like, hang up. You’re allowed to sell. So if anything’s getting in the way for you here where you’re like, it feels inauthentic because I’m pretending to show interest, and what I really wanna do is just make money off them. One, just actually show interest then. Like, just be interested.
And then from there, don’t worry. Don’t worry too much with how it’s coming off. You’re still learning this stuff. You’ll get to a place where you feel, like, really good about this conversation that’s getting them what they want.
If you are sharing your specialization and your thought leadership and who you are on Instagram or wherever you do this, then they’re responding to that. So you’ve already established good things that make them want to follow you or comment on your stuff. You’re allowed to take it to the next level. You’re allowed to assume that they’re ready for some level of project engagement with you.
Okay.
Qualifying comes. Next, this is where we want to identify the gap. So this, that, and the gap are two really important parts in here that you wanna be careful not to just kind of, like, glaze over. The gap is where they are able to identify this is what I want, but this is what’s happening, and they can see there’s a gap.
I want to make twenty thousand dollars a month. I’m making eight thousand dollars a month. So there’s a twelve thousand dollar gap in there. Do I have a plan to get to close that gap?
If it’s due more of the same, is it can I reasonably expect to close that gap? So, no, we wanna make sure that they’re acknowledging the gap between what they have and what they want. How are your emails selling right now? Where would you like them to be?
Ask both of those in the same line. How are your ads performing right now, and how do you wish they would perform? What’s your cost to acquire a customer right now? What do you wish it would be, or what do you believe it should be?
Those sorts of things. Okay? So we’re trying to establish and this is, again, going to be tied to your specialization, the thing that you do, the offer that you are trying to eventually get them to say yes to. You’re qualifying them. If they’re like, oh, well, we don’t really do emails.
Oh, cool. And then you bail. Right? So just know that that’s what we’re working through.
Then comes the obstacle. So and this is like there’s different ways you can go through from this point on. I like the obstacle. So here’s the gap, and then what’s getting in the way.
So what’s getting in the way of your emails performing you or what’s getting in the way of you going from eight thousand dollars to twenty thousand dollars? What have you tried so far? And that’s where they start self diagnosing the problem. Well, I’m not really sure.
I’ve read all these books, or I bought this book and haven’t read it. Have you thought of reading the book? Those kinds of things. Like, you can talk through, and they’re like, well, I just don’t believe it’s the book.
I think what I really need to do is x, and I just wish I had somebody I could talk to about this or whatever it could be. Right? And then we can get into offering the help. That’s interesting.
I’ve got some ideas. Do you wanna talk?
And very quickly, moving that to a call. Very quickly. As soon as we get into offering help, we’re offer help might actually need to be over in the convert to call side of things because you’re ready there to start moving them to hopping on a call with you. And in this situation, you do need to be ready to have your like, to be ready to hop on.
You’re already on your phone because you’re Instagramming them. So you might as well call. Right? Just hop on a phone call with them.
Great. What’s your best number? How can I reach you? Are you free right now? And if they’re like, oh, no.
I’m at work right now. I can’t talk right now. Like, I have a meeting I’m going into. No worries.
Let me get you my calendar link. Or if they’re like, here’s my number score. You’ve done very, very well. Excellent.
Get on that freaking call where you can close them there. But what we wanna do in a lot of cases, they’ll be like, I’m busy, because they’re scared to get on a call with you.
And that’s where you’re like, no worries. Let me get you my calendar link. Here is my Calendly, and then you wait.
Hey. Did that work for you? Did that link work for you? And you wait for them to reply with, yeah.
I got it. Or, yep. I could actually, I couldn’t find any time that works for me. And then you can go further.
Okay? If there’s well, what time does work for you? Are you free in thirty minutes? Are you free tomorrow at two PM?
I’m in Pacific time. Where are you at? So you’re just now working to get them to say yes to a call.
That’s the whole thing. It happens on social media, in DMs, privately, but that’s really the objective. That’s all you’re working toward. So what you can do with this is brainstorm your own opens, your own qualifying questions, and that’s, like, all of the stuff, the gap.
Start writing all that stuff down and then converting, of course. I have this under advanced because it’s pretty advanced for most freelancers to start doing this, but the actual techniques are really, really simple. Go into boards. Start setting these up as really basic.
Like, you’ve got them all right here. All three of these. So first, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine. You can just put numbers on them and just be ready to hit those numbers.
Right? That’s it. That’s the whole thing. It’s one more great way where if you are putting content out into the world, you deserve to do something with that.
You don’t just put it out there and, like, hope everybody’s really happy with you because you can’t pay bills with happiness. What you want to do is make sure that you are converting, converting them to a call, and then we can talk more about what happens in those calls. That’s where you’ll have diagnostic and other things that we’ve talked about already. Cool?
Cool. There’s chat here. Who chatted well? Oh, good. Thank you.
Questions.
Where are you at?
You ready to go? Ready to do it?
Scared to do it? I’m not, back on, I’m not running my socials again yet, but this, this is really and I’m is it next week we’re gonna do ManyChat?
Next week in, the intensive freelancing, we’ll be talking about ManyChat and showing it, but not, doing, like, an intensive training on it because it’s, like, really deep. Although, I will direct you to training on it. Yeah.
Okay. Cool. Yeah. But no. This is, this is amazing and exciting. I’m just not I’m not on socials back on yet, but, it’s really cool.
Cool. Awesome. Jessica, Caroline, anything to add?
I have a question if that’s alright.
Well, as I do it.
Okay. So I don’t I always get myself in these predicaments.
But, as you were speaking, I was like, gosh. You would I I have a right in Maine, you know, my company’s name as an Instagram face, all the things. Right? But then when I started my newsletter, I named it the holiday win because I wanted it to be really clear that it was about seasonal and holiday sales.
So then I got all the socials related to that. And now sitting here going, okay. Where am I building a brand? So I was just wondering with this because I’m assuming it’s all through one, you know, like, one account in Instagram or something.
You know? So I was just curious what your thoughts were on that.
Yeah. I mean, there’s definitely no point in spreading yourself thin, unless you have, like, a massive team of multiple people who can run your social. I would just just merge it or just choose, like, what to do there.
But you gotta choose one. There’s gotta be just one account.
Can’t be both, which might mean giving up everybody from right in Maine. Just, like, posting on there, like, hey. I’m moving over to this now, and here’s why.
And then you can do a bunch of stuff on here’s why you’re focusing, and that will help move them over and under and help them understand why they should follow you over at the holiday win.
Okay. Alright. Thank you. Yeah.
I would make it content, though.
Like, it’s cool that you’re making this business decision, and you can be really transparent with that and, like, share it on social. Okay.
Cool. Awesome.
Your Opportunity in Their New Job
Your Opportunity in Their New Job
Transcript
Hello, everybody. Good day.
Awesome.
Hi, y’all.
Howdy.
Got Stacy back in the house. Nice.
Alright. Welcome. Happy start of week.
Cool. Today, for Coffee School Pro, one, we’re recording this, so that’s always good to know. Two people are still filing in, so feel free to get settled, grab your water, tea, pens, notepads, all the things that you use.
And, yeah, we are talking today about, doing cold outreach ish the right way.
So, obviously not obviously, but for me, a big thing that I like to avoid is cold oatmeal. Oh, oatmeal? Oatmeal. Also cold oatmeal.
Cold outreach.
But now that I mentioned it, let’s talk for a second about cold oatmeal. Oatmeal because, raised on it, disgusting.
But for cold outreach, I typically say do not do cold outreach. However, a lot of people still do. So with that in mind, I don’t care to talk too much about cold email templates or any of that stuff, but rather, if we’re talking about email, we’re talking list, offer, copy, always, always, always. So list is the number one thing there. So today, what I wanted to share is how to use insights into what your ideal prospect is going through, when they’re looking for a solution like yours to actually attract them. So, I’m going to share my screen, and we’ll dive right in, for everybody who is wondering while we’re still sitting here.
Before I share my screen, we do have also the intensive training later today. I just wanna make that clear. Okay. So you already received this worksheet, but here we go. You should be seeing my screen. Let me know if it ends up looking weird because I just went into full view. Okay.
Cool.
What we have identified again and again and again is people reach out to us with budget when they take on a new role. So either they’ve been promoted internally or they’ve taken a new job somewhere else, and that was a promotion for them.
When people take on a new job, they have new excitement around the opportunities.
They have new goals. And usually, they have to prove themselves to a board or just to their boss or both. Right? So they are looking to kill it, and that is a huge opportunity. They typically reach out to us when they’re new VP marketing, new VP growth, new CMO, whatever that might be at all sorts of organizations, and say, hey.
I just joined this team. I have a great big team, but none of them have the skills we need in, and it’s usually, because they’re reaching out to me in copywriting. Right? So there might be other things that they would reach out for as well.
But for us, I’ve we’ve seen again and again that they come to us when they’re in a new role, and they’re looking around going, oh my gosh. I have to get these massive results. I’ve promised them. I know we can do it, but I I don’t think this team is gonna get me there.
They’re thinking about letting a few people go. It’s pretty common when a new leader comes in.
And then they’re thinking, well, we can’t let everybody go. And we’re also gonna need some level of skills, so they look to freelancers.
So they might have certain people that they do let go, and this is just the reality of what businesses are going through that I think a lot of us have seen.
So they’re ready to let go of some people. They don’t wanna kill the culture, though, so they can’t let go of everybody.
And sometimes some copywriters make the cuts. Right, because they’re execution focused. They’re not getting in the way of better strategies, better vision. So a lot of, like, the more, top, manager types end up being let go, which puts more work on the new VP marketing or whatever it is or CMO.
So they are in a moment of great pain because their team isn’t performing well, and they are also looking at things very optimistically, which is a great moment at which to start talking to them. So LinkedIn sales navigator is a tool that I strongly recommend any service provider start using. And this is true if you are also planning on doing coaching depending on what your goal looks like down the road. If you wanna go in and run workshops for organizations, whatever it is, LinkedIn sales navigator is ninety seven dollars a month, and it is worth it.
So in the intensive freelancing, we show the, total addressable market calculator.
This is a much better version of that. They won’t tell you if the market is right for you, but it will give you access to people.
So I have it open in another tab. We can look through it, but I really recommend that you just go in there, start your free trial of, LinkedIn Sales Navigator.
If you’re already on LinkedIn premium for business purposes, then you have to, like, talk to support to actually switch. It’s weird. It’s a whole thing. But don’t worry about it. Just do that.
And the reason that it’s so critical here is, as you can see, over on the side in the navigator itself, this is where you can search for leads or accounts. So we can take a look at that if you would like to, but you can’t break it. So just, like, look around, like, start your trial, and then just look around. But they have recent activities.
And when you’re putting your ICP together, one of the things that I’m hearing from a good number of people in Copy School Pro is, I want them to have a series a, series b, series c, whatever. So this is funding events in the past twelve months. You can also search by that. So in the past twelve months is a big span.
Nonetheless, that’s a really good way to filter it. So what we wanna do is identify a trigger that drives most of your best leads to reach out to you. For me, for our agency slash agencies in the past, we have seen senior leadership changes as that trigger. So for us, it’s like, holy. This is a really great space to start looking, for where we can do cold outreach.
Funding events is also a big deal. It has been for us too, not as much for Boxcar.
That was really driven by, like, oh, no. My team can’t do email.
But when we were doing CH agency, which was, like, general conversion copywriting services on retainer, series b, series c was really common. So you need to do your research to identify when people look for you knowing that the research is, hey. What was going on in your life when you came looking for me? Tada.
Research done. So it’s really just a matter of, like, always being a copywriter, always following the processes and using the same surveys that we tell our clients to use, we use them as well. And when you can do that, you can figure that out. And, of course, it doesn’t have to be a survey because it’s a client, it’s a lead, you’re gonna talk to them on a call.
Then once you identify that trigger, and if you don’t know what it is, it’s probably either senior leadership change or funding event.
Once you’ve done that, go into LinkedIn sales navigator, choose between lead or account. You can do both. You can start searching through. You can see that just up at the top here in these, like, two tabs.
You want to this is the process.
Go through. Take a look. You don’t have to message directly in LinkedIn, and I would say try to avoid messaging directly in LinkedIn because it’s such a nightmare in there. Everybody you’re trying to reach is trying to avoid LinkedIn because there’s so much spam.
So many people are using this very affordable tool to spam the hell out of CMOs all over the place. So what you wanna do instead is save them to a list.
Save the people who come up to a list and then export that list because you are doing targeted cold outreach. You’re not trying to target or trying to, speak to three hundred, five hundred, a thousand people a day. If you were doing that, we’d have to talk about a whole other process for how to email them. But all you wanna do, you can go through.
We can see in this this case alone, there’s fifty six thousand results for, like, a really common, obviously, very common, search. So not the search itself, but, like, one to ten people in the United States, and they’re in financial services. Like, there’s just there’s a lot of companies. Right?
So but we’re not worried about that. You wanna get more narrow with your ICP so that you come up with three hundred and fifty results or something like that. Then you select all, and you save them to a list, and then you export that list or you use tools to have them automatically go to a list as you find new things.
If you were going to do this at massive scale, then you wouldn’t wanna send emails from your own email address.
But if you’re not doing this where you’re you’re not sending three hundred messages a day, you’re not even sending twenty a day. You might send five a day, one day of the week. On the one day, you have, like, two hours set aside to do outreach to your ideal leads.
So you don’t necessarily have to worry as much about, oh, no. I’m gonna look like I’m spamming them. Secondly, if you are worried like, oh, no. Someone’s gonna complain about this because I didn’t ask to reach out to them.
You can use other tools like QuickMail is a good service because it has an unsubscribe link in it. But a a simpler way to go about this is if the company has a contact and I learned this from somebody else. I didn’t know this at all. I learned this from the coaching class I was in.
If somebody has a website with contact us on it, and you can contact you can fill in a form or there’s an email address that handles a lot of one to one email interactions that you might be doing. So that’s like the can spam workaround, is they already have their email address publicly available in some way even if it’s behind a form. Okay? So keep that in mind.
But we’re not going to abuse this. We’re going to narrow our audience down, put them all in a list, export that list, or just go through and, like, one by one, pull their email addresses from sales navigator. I think it’s easier to just export to a list and then use that list to start tracking your contact with them. Send five emails a week or whatever feels right for you.
If you have a VA who can do this and you’re like, I wanna make my VA send this out to them, send emails to these great fits every day. Okay. Just, like, be chill about that because you don’t want to, end up, getting complaints really against your email address. The alternative is that you can, again, set up something like copy hackers dot I o instead of copy hackers dot com.
You send from that email address and they reply to your actual email address. So you send from joe at copy hackers dot io. But the reply to if you’re going through quick mail in particular, the reply to or quick mailer and alternative like it. The reply to is joe at copy hackers dot com so that you’re starting that conversation together with them.
Okay? So the point here is we wanna use LinkedIn sales navigator to take the trigger moment that we know people have that gets them looking for us in our services and then export a nice compact perfect fit little list and start reaching out to them directly.
So we’ve put some emails in here that you can start with. These are not proven templates, but I guarantee most of the templates you’ve used in your life are also not proven templates. This is a good starting point, and I’m gonna walk you through why it is. Keep that subject line boring.
You do not wanna sound like you’re a marketer. So this could be something like, email campaign or something. Right? Very boring.
Not marketing y at all. Then you, of course, want to say how you found this person. I saw you on LinkedIn, and I thought I’d connect by email and introduce myself.
You don’t have to say why. You don’t have to say LinkedIn is full of crap. There’s like, that’s fine. You can talk about that in later conversations, and then get into it.
The reason why. Reason is I optimize emails for businesses like Canva. And here’s what I’ve noticed. When marketers change jobs, they acquire a whole new team, and that team does not always have the email expertise to move the needle.
So these new VPs and CMOs reach out to me. We high five, then I come in and take care of emails so they can work on the five hundred million other things on their new role list. I noticed you just changed jobs, smiley face, winky face.
Congratulations. And, also, what if you let me help? I know we’re just connecting for the first time here, and perhaps your new team is totally slaying email. But if you’ve got fifteen minutes to talk candidly about your email program, I may be able to help you hit your, lead nurturing, conversion, whatever goals this quarter or next. I do this literally all the time. It’s all I do and can share results, case studies, etcetera.
I’m free today and tomorrow morning. Should or could we get a call on the books?
That’s it.
It’s long. It’s not it’s not a little tiny one. Hopefully, you’ve reached out in a good way to the right fit person at a moment that makes sense for them. And because it’s one to one and because you know that they have just changed jobs, you know it’s relevant.
You’re not pretending that you’re old friends. You’re not doing anything weird that a lot of cold emails like to do.
You were just trying to talk to people who actually care about this thing. So there’s that. Then you’ll have a follow-up that does not say follow-up in the subject line, putting something out there for them. Like, I have gone through, your the three emails that y’all send when a trial starts.
Can I fire that your way? Wait for them to reply and say yes so that you actually give that good signal that, yes, there’s a conversation happening here. And if it still doesn’t work, then do another follow-up. Still keeping it boring, still not saying following up.
That’s more about getting them into top of funnel stuff. Hopefully, they say yes, at this point, but that’s the whole idea. Start with some trigger, a real reason for you to be in their lives right now. You’re going to make their lives easier.
And because you’ve got examples to show, you’re gonna make them look better as well.
Okay. That’s what we wanna do. Any questions? Any thoughts? Any concerns? Can you believe I’m actually talking about reaching out cold?
I can’t. But it it’s it’s good. It’s a good thing. Sales navigator is good, and it’s fantastic that there’s this great way to, find people who are ready for you.
Thoughts?
Concerns?
Ready to go?
See any value in it? What are you gonna do?
Does anybody use Sales Navigator before?
Okay. So what do you think when you see it?
Nothing?
It’s not a solution worth it?
No. I like I like that there’s the insider info on a change. I didn’t I had no idea you could find that kind of information. I’m not surprised, I guess.
But, so I like that you’re coming in at a really important pain point in all likelihood, so that’s really exciting as compared to, frankly, all the other cold emailing that I’ve participated in. So I think it’s definitely worth it. And I will give it a try. I’ll commit to doing it in the next like, this week and next week and report back what happens.
Cool. Good. Awesome. Fantastic.
Thanks, Jessica. Anybody else?
Maybe you’re too inundated with leads as it is.
You’re like, I don’t need that. I don’t need the hassle of more people who wanna pay me.
Alright. Well, take it. Work with it. Use it. If you don’t have leads or the leads aren’t as good as you want them to be and you’re like, what should I do?
I will point you to this lesson. So use this. Go do this. Cool? Alright. Let us open the floor to any questions you may have today.
As always, please preface it with a win. It can be a win of any kind.
That’s cool. Let’s focus on wins, and then we can solve problems as well.
Anybody have anything you wanna bring up today in workshop or get help?
Jessica, go ahead.
Is it alright if I ask a question about standardized project measuring? Okay. So I after going through the standardized project and the retainer and then kind of, like, a lot of things, the page where I’m sitting there going, I don’t know. Maybe I’m overthinking it.
But you know this page where you’re talking Yes. About at each step, like, okay. So what are you measuring and that you and the client? Okay.
So where I’m the audit is where I’m sitting there going, wait. So how does this work with an audit? So for example, I’m, step one okay. So the, turning a list of recently acquired seasonal sale customers into So if I’m starting that off with an audit, and the first stage of that audit is let’s look at the last five to seven holiday seasonal campaigns.
Whatever the structure is of them, let’s audit through those and look at where people drop off, the the structure of the campaign, all the things. So that’s, like, step one.
And then I’m and then it says, so how can I easily agree to measure step one?
And I’m like, how am I measuring step one if I’m auditing their campaigns and looking at the behaviors of the of the leads and customers, and then just wanna get a sense of how they run their campaigns.
Yeah.
I I don’t know.
I’m struggling to figure out what I agree with the clients on how to what are we measuring in that part. You know what I mean? Okay.
So this for your standardized offer, you have on that worksheet, you have where it says step one, you have audit, which is the whole project. No.
No.
So no. So I just wanted to back up to that.
Big umbrella big umbrella standardized is audit. But then step one is actually, like, mapping out their last five to seven campaigns and kinda seeing how they’re structured and what was kind of the behaviors you know, major data points across, I guess.
Yep. Okay. So you need to figure out how to measure that?
Well, yeah, when it’s on the sheet, when it’s talking about how you and the clients will measure that step Mhmm.
I’m just kinda sitting there going, how are we measuring me looking at their campaigns?
What are you looking for is really the thing. Because what we’re trying to do is get to a place where we can say, once you go on retainer, you are going to be optimizing based on what came out of this audit. So what do you optimize? You optimize for, like, a number.
What’s the number? Is the number related to leads, or is the number related to money? So in this case or is it both, or is it none, which is important? And I mentioned that in that lesson.
Right? Because if if your process is research and discovery, writing, writing, writing, and editing, and then, experimentation, the measurement doesn’t happen in the first part. You’re not gonna measure leads or, money out of research and discovery, so you wouldn’t check anything off. So in this case, you might say nothing, but I would say it’s probably both.
So, with a greater focus on the revenue or the money generated because that’s what you’re working with. So you are auditing this. You’re mapping it out. Right?
So there’s five to seven email campaigns that you map out to look for opportunities, etcetera. What are the opportunities around? Are they around, here’s how you can get more people through, like, reducing unsubscribe, so that would be the leads metric, or are you doing this around getting more people to buy or both. Right?
So for me, I’d probably check off both and say we’re gonna in the mapping, I’m gonna look at where people drop off and, and how where the money is or isn’t happening.
And I think your client would expect the same, I would imagine. This is what we’re really trying to do is make sure the client understands that this is a valuable part of it, which is why research and discovery is so hard to sell clients on because they’re like, well, there’s no money attached to it. There’s no leads attached to it when it’s all that it’s for. It’s those things. Right? But it’s hard to get the client to buy in, so you have to make sure that whatever you’re measuring it by the client agrees, that is a valuable thing.
Does that make sense?
Yes.
Yeah. Okay.
Do you agree that it could be leads and money, or what are you thinking?
No. That makes I was gonna say I think it is both. So, yes, that makes total sense.
I think so this is where, again, I look at the standardized project versus the next step, the actual automation or optimization, because some of it would be opportunities in future seasonal sale campaigns. Right? Like Sure. Being able to create a second mini campaign within the holiday sale itself, that’s technically during.
You know? Yeah. But on the other hand, optimizing a welcome sequence or creating one or whatever that you know, whatever. That’s a whole separate thing, but that’s post seasonal sale or at least purchase.
Totally. So, that’s where I just I don’t know.
With all the different parts, I get into my head too much, so I appreciate the clarity.
Yes. Okay. Cool. And just know that, like, exactly what you’re doing almost exactly what you’re doing is how Voxcar started with Glowforge. Glowforge came in for fifth like, a fifty thousand dollar audit of their existing emails, and that then produced ongoing retainer work out of that to optimize at I think it was twenty five a month.
So it’s the same thing. It’s exactly the same thing as what you’re talking about. They didn’t have really good automation sculling. They were just, like, firing away at people, like, buy it on discount. It’s president’s day. It’s boxing day. It’s it’s it’s it’s.
So, yeah, so what you’re doing is right. You are on the right track, I would say. Okay. You’re just your yours is just differently positioned because it’s about seasonal.
Okay. Alright. Cool. Thank you so much.
Awesome. Yay. Cool. Anybody else? We’re good.
I have a quick question.
Yeah.
You’ve mentioned, many times email life cycle and the opportunity there. Is there any kind of a, sort of a mind map or or overview or something of, like, all the different aspects of email life cycle?
Oh, dear god.
That’s actually exactly what, my friend Tara, who’s CMO at Bitly and has brought us in for it, but it’s really just some subcontractors I have. And then I meet with Tara, to talk about it. That’s what she wants. She’s like, snow for the rest because it’s an ongoing forever engagement.
I don’t think it’ll ever end. And she wants exactly that. Like, is there a map so that we can put, like, an overlay on it and say we’ve got these ones, but we need these ones. And this is old version.
We need new version.
It’s a desired thing. I haven’t seen it.
She just asked for it, like, ten days ago, and I brought it to the people, the subcontractors that I have on this, and they left. They thought that was hilarious to map out this entire thing, but that’s our objective stuff this. And then you zoom in, and it’ll that’s like this little thing is actually a huge thing too.
Are you working with the Yeah.
I started mapping it out because I’m adding a whole bunch of email functionality to my software.
And so that’s what I was looking for was a was a map. So I I mean, I’m building something that Good.
You know, maybe we can we can, you know Yeah.
Collaborate and communicate around that.
Totally.
Hundred percent. Yeah. Yeah. No. It’s a desirable thing. Definitely. Yeah. Cool.
Okay. Anybody else? Caroline, how’s business? What’s going on with you?
I feel stuck.
Okay. Good. What’s up?
I don’t really know what to do.
And that’s is that because of the tension between your background as a designer and your interest in copy, or what where what’s the stuff if you wanna share it?
And then add in, to that, I would add in limited experience.
Okay. So I’m struggling to find to land on my one thing.
Okay. Where are you hovering right now? What feels like maybe?
I don’t, I was entertaining landing pages.
Yeah. Good.
And then, had a conversation with someone who suggested I look at pricing pages.
Okay.
Yeah. I don’t know. I really don’t know.
Yeah.
I think landing pages. Agreed. If you’re entertaining that, right, if you’re like, just someone point me in the direction, which sometimes I just like that. I’m like, someone just tell me exactly what to do, and I’ll at least try doing that thing.
So if you’re looking for that, landing pages are great to standardize, and they are great to optimize as well. So it makes for a good, project plus retainer.
So you could start there. Now there are a great variety of landing pages, which is good because if you start as, like, I’m the landing page person, which others have tried to do, and then they give up on it. And I don’t think they give up on it because the opportunity isn’t there. It’s there.
I think they give up on it because they give up on it. And, you know, people do that. They just, like, swap in and out, and try a bunch of other things.
I do have some specific questions around landing pages. So, you know, the big question is who is gonna pay ten k for for a landing page? So is it, you know, what should I be looking for in an ideal client?
People who are spending a lot of money on ads will pay a lot of money to optimize their landing page.
And I would say probably landing pages. So Mhmm. People who are doing that, if they’re driving, a lot of businesses still drive ads to their home page.
What?
So you can go and I forget. What’s the direct URL to use? Does anybody know maybe you know Nicole for finding Facebook ads for brands.
It’s like facebook dot com slash ads slash Just Google Facebook Ad Explorer.
And Is that all it is?
If you if you Google it, I because they change it.
It They do. Because I had it bookmarked, and then it didn’t work anymore. And I was like, this is annoying.
But it’s good. So you can go and see. I mean, there’s lots of insights into people who are spending. I think even LinkedIn sales navigator is another good place to go.
But you can you can strongly hypothesize that if they’re using Facebook ads. So go find the ad explorer like Stacy just said.
Search the brand and use LinkedIn sales navigator. So start with sales navigator. Say this is the size of company I’m looking for. This is the industry I wanna work in.
Get a shortlist there and then go over to Facebook to the ads, see what ads they’re using. If they don’t have any going right now thank you so much, Nicole. If they don’t have any going right now, they’re probably not a good fit. Move on and just keep searching different ones.
But if they have a history of ads always on, then you can see, well, where are they landing them? Some just use the built in. So you’ll have to just go through and do that work. But if they’re spending money on ads, then it’s very likely that they care about where they’re landing people, and that is your opportunity.
And that’s where you can start reaching out and having targeted cold, outreach. That’s or even warm. If you if you are already connected on LinkedIn, then you can say we’re connected on LinkedIn, but I wanted to bring the conversation over here because I wanted to talk to you about your landing page.
And that I would go with that and, like, stick with it. It is a good opportunity. You already know all about design and copywriting. So for you to sell that should be pretty straightforward stuff.
And I know the number ten thousand keeps throwing people, but it’s, like, a very common budget. Like, there’s not a lot of people who are putting budgets together and putting two thousand dollars as a line item. Like, they’re they people have budget. Like, there’s money out there.
Some don’t, but that’s okay. Then you move on to the next one who can afford you. Someone else can afford you at ten thousand easily. And then when you get results, it’s it’s like honest, it’s a no brainer. So if that if it throws you, just just I think just suspend disbelief and go, well, if it doesn’t work, I’ll go get mad at Joe in my next session. I’ll take it. I’ll take it, and we’ll talk.
Do you do you recommend that I get very familiar with Facebook ads or Google Ads?
You don’t have to I mean, yes. So if you’re like, okay. They’re gonna drive ads to a landing page, then I need to be able to talk about that experience because they’ll probably be like, oh, that landing page is working great. Can you also work on ads for us? And you’ll have to know if your standardized offer is ads plus landing page Mhmm. Or not.
But usually, they have a whole team doing ads or they have, like, a freelancer that they’re already working with who is just, like, chugging out just a bunch of ad copy, or they’re just using AI for it. So what you I would say you would need to know is the mechanics of ads so that you understand the process, but you don’t have to work on the ads.
Okay. Yeah. So you’ll want the mechanics of ads. You’ll also wanna understand the mechanics of emails, like, what happens after they become a lead.
So but that doesn’t mean you have to know. You just have to be able to, like, talk a good game, which is really just put a cheat sheet of terms together. And just, like, have it on your screen. Like, what’s the ROAS on that? And then you wait and see.
That’s really I mean, I’m joking, but I would you don’t have to know everything. You just have to start going down that path because you are the landing page expert at that point.
Okay.
Yeah.
I would try to go can that you can use too if you’re one once you figure out what your, what your, you know, sort of niches are that you wanna target or if you have a certain type of company.
Use a separate browser like Chrome Canary or something, and just go in there and search, like, buying intent or hiring intent terms on Google for those types of companies.
Click through to their landing pages, and you’ll just get cookie with all of the the companies that, you know, that are in your market. And the if you just see who’s retargeting you and all the kinds of things, you’re gonna just get ads only from potential clients.
Interesting. Just keep that as a a separate, a separate browser. Don’t you know? Okay. Apart from what you’re what you use as your regular browser. And to to make sure it’s clean, you know, either if you normally use Safari, use Chrome. If you normally use Chrome, get Chrome Canary or get Opera or whatever the case may be, but just something entirely separate and use it only for that purpose.
Thank you. That’s a neat little trick.
Mhmm. Oh, and Abby has one. They have thousands of likes on their attic. It’s a sign they put some money into it. Yeah. Cool. Nice.
Nice. How are you feeling about that? I know it’s a really quick conversation, but how are you feeling, Caroline?
Better.
Okay. Good. What’s your next what action are you gonna take?
What are you gonna do to start feeling even better?
Good question.
I need to think about that.
Okay.
So, yeah, try to work through if I were you, my next step would be just go on LinkedIn sales navigator, play around with, what kind of company would I like to work with? And, like, here’s how many people were just, like, start playing with it, and then open the Facebook ads library as well. And just start making a short list of people that you could reach out to. That’s it’s tactical.
You can do it without much guessing. You get feedback throughout because the tool will tell you things. So it’s better than just, like, staring at a page or anything that can feel like I’m in this alone. I’m doing this alone.
Also because you’re not, then we can talk about things. Okay? Okay.
Alright.
Cool. Can use this, the segments report in Sassy too to give you some ideas, Caroline.
Oh, okay. Nice. Thanks. We’ll need a walk through of Sassy at some point, Stacy.
It’s pretty awesome. Nice.
Okay. I will.
Okay. Fun. Awesome.
Excellent. Alright. Anything else, anybody, or should we wrap up?
Got the intensive freelancing happening in a couple hours. We’ll be talking about sales funnels there. So I think that’ll be relevant for you, Caroline.
Yeah. Cool.
Alright. Great. Good stuff.
Thank you.
Thanks, everybody. We’ll see you soon. Have a good one. Bye.
Worksheet
Your opportunity in Their New Job
Transcript
Hello, everybody. Good day.
Awesome.
Hi, y’all.
Howdy.
Got Stacy back in the house. Nice.
Alright. Welcome. Happy start of week.
Cool. Today, for Coffee School Pro, one, we’re recording this, so that’s always good to know. Two people are still filing in, so feel free to get settled, grab your water, tea, pens, notepads, all the things that you use.
And, yeah, we are talking today about, doing cold outreach ish the right way.
So, obviously not obviously, but for me, a big thing that I like to avoid is cold oatmeal. Oh, oatmeal? Oatmeal. Also cold oatmeal.
Cold outreach.
But now that I mentioned it, let’s talk for a second about cold oatmeal. Oatmeal because, raised on it, disgusting.
But for cold outreach, I typically say do not do cold outreach. However, a lot of people still do. So with that in mind, I don’t care to talk too much about cold email templates or any of that stuff, but rather, if we’re talking about email, we’re talking list, offer, copy, always, always, always. So list is the number one thing there. So today, what I wanted to share is how to use insights into what your ideal prospect is going through, when they’re looking for a solution like yours to actually attract them. So, I’m going to share my screen, and we’ll dive right in, for everybody who is wondering while we’re still sitting here.
Before I share my screen, we do have also the intensive training later today. I just wanna make that clear. Okay. So you already received this worksheet, but here we go. You should be seeing my screen. Let me know if it ends up looking weird because I just went into full view. Okay.
Cool.
What we have identified again and again and again is people reach out to us with budget when they take on a new role. So either they’ve been promoted internally or they’ve taken a new job somewhere else, and that was a promotion for them.
When people take on a new job, they have new excitement around the opportunities.
They have new goals. And usually, they have to prove themselves to a board or just to their boss or both. Right? So they are looking to kill it, and that is a huge opportunity. They typically reach out to us when they’re new VP marketing, new VP growth, new CMO, whatever that might be at all sorts of organizations, and say, hey.
I just joined this team. I have a great big team, but none of them have the skills we need in, and it’s usually, because they’re reaching out to me in copywriting. Right? So there might be other things that they would reach out for as well.
But for us, I’ve we’ve seen again and again that they come to us when they’re in a new role, and they’re looking around going, oh my gosh. I have to get these massive results. I’ve promised them. I know we can do it, but I I don’t think this team is gonna get me there.
They’re thinking about letting a few people go. It’s pretty common when a new leader comes in.
And then they’re thinking, well, we can’t let everybody go. And we’re also gonna need some level of skills, so they look to freelancers.
So they might have certain people that they do let go, and this is just the reality of what businesses are going through that I think a lot of us have seen.
So they’re ready to let go of some people. They don’t wanna kill the culture, though, so they can’t let go of everybody.
And sometimes some copywriters make the cuts. Right, because they’re execution focused. They’re not getting in the way of better strategies, better vision. So a lot of, like, the more, top, manager types end up being let go, which puts more work on the new VP marketing or whatever it is or CMO.
So they are in a moment of great pain because their team isn’t performing well, and they are also looking at things very optimistically, which is a great moment at which to start talking to them. So LinkedIn sales navigator is a tool that I strongly recommend any service provider start using. And this is true if you are also planning on doing coaching depending on what your goal looks like down the road. If you wanna go in and run workshops for organizations, whatever it is, LinkedIn sales navigator is ninety seven dollars a month, and it is worth it.
So in the intensive freelancing, we show the, total addressable market calculator.
This is a much better version of that. They won’t tell you if the market is right for you, but it will give you access to people.
So I have it open in another tab. We can look through it, but I really recommend that you just go in there, start your free trial of, LinkedIn Sales Navigator.
If you’re already on LinkedIn premium for business purposes, then you have to, like, talk to support to actually switch. It’s weird. It’s a whole thing. But don’t worry about it. Just do that.
And the reason that it’s so critical here is, as you can see, over on the side in the navigator itself, this is where you can search for leads or accounts. So we can take a look at that if you would like to, but you can’t break it. So just, like, look around, like, start your trial, and then just look around. But they have recent activities.
And when you’re putting your ICP together, one of the things that I’m hearing from a good number of people in Copy School Pro is, I want them to have a series a, series b, series c, whatever. So this is funding events in the past twelve months. You can also search by that. So in the past twelve months is a big span.
Nonetheless, that’s a really good way to filter it. So what we wanna do is identify a trigger that drives most of your best leads to reach out to you. For me, for our agency slash agencies in the past, we have seen senior leadership changes as that trigger. So for us, it’s like, holy. This is a really great space to start looking, for where we can do cold outreach.
Funding events is also a big deal. It has been for us too, not as much for Boxcar.
That was really driven by, like, oh, no. My team can’t do email.
But when we were doing CH agency, which was, like, general conversion copywriting services on retainer, series b, series c was really common. So you need to do your research to identify when people look for you knowing that the research is, hey. What was going on in your life when you came looking for me? Tada.
Research done. So it’s really just a matter of, like, always being a copywriter, always following the processes and using the same surveys that we tell our clients to use, we use them as well. And when you can do that, you can figure that out. And, of course, it doesn’t have to be a survey because it’s a client, it’s a lead, you’re gonna talk to them on a call.
Then once you identify that trigger, and if you don’t know what it is, it’s probably either senior leadership change or funding event.
Once you’ve done that, go into LinkedIn sales navigator, choose between lead or account. You can do both. You can start searching through. You can see that just up at the top here in these, like, two tabs.
You want to this is the process.
Go through. Take a look. You don’t have to message directly in LinkedIn, and I would say try to avoid messaging directly in LinkedIn because it’s such a nightmare in there. Everybody you’re trying to reach is trying to avoid LinkedIn because there’s so much spam.
So many people are using this very affordable tool to spam the hell out of CMOs all over the place. So what you wanna do instead is save them to a list.
Save the people who come up to a list and then export that list because you are doing targeted cold outreach. You’re not trying to target or trying to, speak to three hundred, five hundred, a thousand people a day. If you were doing that, we’d have to talk about a whole other process for how to email them. But all you wanna do, you can go through.
We can see in this this case alone, there’s fifty six thousand results for, like, a really common, obviously, very common, search. So not the search itself, but, like, one to ten people in the United States, and they’re in financial services. Like, there’s just there’s a lot of companies. Right?
So but we’re not worried about that. You wanna get more narrow with your ICP so that you come up with three hundred and fifty results or something like that. Then you select all, and you save them to a list, and then you export that list or you use tools to have them automatically go to a list as you find new things.
If you were going to do this at massive scale, then you wouldn’t wanna send emails from your own email address.
But if you’re not doing this where you’re you’re not sending three hundred messages a day, you’re not even sending twenty a day. You might send five a day, one day of the week. On the one day, you have, like, two hours set aside to do outreach to your ideal leads.
So you don’t necessarily have to worry as much about, oh, no. I’m gonna look like I’m spamming them. Secondly, if you are worried like, oh, no. Someone’s gonna complain about this because I didn’t ask to reach out to them.
You can use other tools like QuickMail is a good service because it has an unsubscribe link in it. But a a simpler way to go about this is if the company has a contact and I learned this from somebody else. I didn’t know this at all. I learned this from the coaching class I was in.
If somebody has a website with contact us on it, and you can contact you can fill in a form or there’s an email address that handles a lot of one to one email interactions that you might be doing. So that’s like the can spam workaround, is they already have their email address publicly available in some way even if it’s behind a form. Okay? So keep that in mind.
But we’re not going to abuse this. We’re going to narrow our audience down, put them all in a list, export that list, or just go through and, like, one by one, pull their email addresses from sales navigator. I think it’s easier to just export to a list and then use that list to start tracking your contact with them. Send five emails a week or whatever feels right for you.
If you have a VA who can do this and you’re like, I wanna make my VA send this out to them, send emails to these great fits every day. Okay. Just, like, be chill about that because you don’t want to, end up, getting complaints really against your email address. The alternative is that you can, again, set up something like copy hackers dot I o instead of copy hackers dot com.
You send from that email address and they reply to your actual email address. So you send from joe at copy hackers dot io. But the reply to if you’re going through quick mail in particular, the reply to or quick mailer and alternative like it. The reply to is joe at copy hackers dot com so that you’re starting that conversation together with them.
Okay? So the point here is we wanna use LinkedIn sales navigator to take the trigger moment that we know people have that gets them looking for us in our services and then export a nice compact perfect fit little list and start reaching out to them directly.
So we’ve put some emails in here that you can start with. These are not proven templates, but I guarantee most of the templates you’ve used in your life are also not proven templates. This is a good starting point, and I’m gonna walk you through why it is. Keep that subject line boring.
You do not wanna sound like you’re a marketer. So this could be something like, email campaign or something. Right? Very boring.
Not marketing y at all. Then you, of course, want to say how you found this person. I saw you on LinkedIn, and I thought I’d connect by email and introduce myself.
You don’t have to say why. You don’t have to say LinkedIn is full of crap. There’s like, that’s fine. You can talk about that in later conversations, and then get into it.
The reason why. Reason is I optimize emails for businesses like Canva. And here’s what I’ve noticed. When marketers change jobs, they acquire a whole new team, and that team does not always have the email expertise to move the needle.
So these new VPs and CMOs reach out to me. We high five, then I come in and take care of emails so they can work on the five hundred million other things on their new role list. I noticed you just changed jobs, smiley face, winky face.
Congratulations. And, also, what if you let me help? I know we’re just connecting for the first time here, and perhaps your new team is totally slaying email. But if you’ve got fifteen minutes to talk candidly about your email program, I may be able to help you hit your, lead nurturing, conversion, whatever goals this quarter or next. I do this literally all the time. It’s all I do and can share results, case studies, etcetera.
I’m free today and tomorrow morning. Should or could we get a call on the books?
That’s it.
It’s long. It’s not it’s not a little tiny one. Hopefully, you’ve reached out in a good way to the right fit person at a moment that makes sense for them. And because it’s one to one and because you know that they have just changed jobs, you know it’s relevant.
You’re not pretending that you’re old friends. You’re not doing anything weird that a lot of cold emails like to do.
You were just trying to talk to people who actually care about this thing. So there’s that. Then you’ll have a follow-up that does not say follow-up in the subject line, putting something out there for them. Like, I have gone through, your the three emails that y’all send when a trial starts.
Can I fire that your way? Wait for them to reply and say yes so that you actually give that good signal that, yes, there’s a conversation happening here. And if it still doesn’t work, then do another follow-up. Still keeping it boring, still not saying following up.
That’s more about getting them into top of funnel stuff. Hopefully, they say yes, at this point, but that’s the whole idea. Start with some trigger, a real reason for you to be in their lives right now. You’re going to make their lives easier.
And because you’ve got examples to show, you’re gonna make them look better as well.
Okay. That’s what we wanna do. Any questions? Any thoughts? Any concerns? Can you believe I’m actually talking about reaching out cold?
I can’t. But it it’s it’s good. It’s a good thing. Sales navigator is good, and it’s fantastic that there’s this great way to, find people who are ready for you.
Thoughts?
Concerns?
Ready to go?
See any value in it? What are you gonna do?
Does anybody use Sales Navigator before?
Okay. So what do you think when you see it?
Nothing?
It’s not a solution worth it?
No. I like I like that there’s the insider info on a change. I didn’t I had no idea you could find that kind of information. I’m not surprised, I guess.
But, so I like that you’re coming in at a really important pain point in all likelihood, so that’s really exciting as compared to, frankly, all the other cold emailing that I’ve participated in. So I think it’s definitely worth it. And I will give it a try. I’ll commit to doing it in the next like, this week and next week and report back what happens.
Cool. Good. Awesome. Fantastic.
Thanks, Jessica. Anybody else?
Maybe you’re too inundated with leads as it is.
You’re like, I don’t need that. I don’t need the hassle of more people who wanna pay me.
Alright. Well, take it. Work with it. Use it. If you don’t have leads or the leads aren’t as good as you want them to be and you’re like, what should I do?
I will point you to this lesson. So use this. Go do this. Cool? Alright. Let us open the floor to any questions you may have today.
As always, please preface it with a win. It can be a win of any kind.
That’s cool. Let’s focus on wins, and then we can solve problems as well.
Anybody have anything you wanna bring up today in workshop or get help?
Jessica, go ahead.
Is it alright if I ask a question about standardized project measuring? Okay. So I after going through the standardized project and the retainer and then kind of, like, a lot of things, the page where I’m sitting there going, I don’t know. Maybe I’m overthinking it.
But you know this page where you’re talking Yes. About at each step, like, okay. So what are you measuring and that you and the client? Okay.
So where I’m the audit is where I’m sitting there going, wait. So how does this work with an audit? So for example, I’m, step one okay. So the, turning a list of recently acquired seasonal sale customers into So if I’m starting that off with an audit, and the first stage of that audit is let’s look at the last five to seven holiday seasonal campaigns.
Whatever the structure is of them, let’s audit through those and look at where people drop off, the the structure of the campaign, all the things. So that’s, like, step one.
And then I’m and then it says, so how can I easily agree to measure step one?
And I’m like, how am I measuring step one if I’m auditing their campaigns and looking at the behaviors of the of the leads and customers, and then just wanna get a sense of how they run their campaigns.
Yeah.
I I don’t know.
I’m struggling to figure out what I agree with the clients on how to what are we measuring in that part. You know what I mean? Okay.
So this for your standardized offer, you have on that worksheet, you have where it says step one, you have audit, which is the whole project. No.
No.
So no. So I just wanted to back up to that.
Big umbrella big umbrella standardized is audit. But then step one is actually, like, mapping out their last five to seven campaigns and kinda seeing how they’re structured and what was kind of the behaviors you know, major data points across, I guess.
Yep. Okay. So you need to figure out how to measure that?
Well, yeah, when it’s on the sheet, when it’s talking about how you and the clients will measure that step Mhmm.
I’m just kinda sitting there going, how are we measuring me looking at their campaigns?
What are you looking for is really the thing. Because what we’re trying to do is get to a place where we can say, once you go on retainer, you are going to be optimizing based on what came out of this audit. So what do you optimize? You optimize for, like, a number.
What’s the number? Is the number related to leads, or is the number related to money? So in this case or is it both, or is it none, which is important? And I mentioned that in that lesson.
Right? Because if if your process is research and discovery, writing, writing, writing, and editing, and then, experimentation, the measurement doesn’t happen in the first part. You’re not gonna measure leads or, money out of research and discovery, so you wouldn’t check anything off. So in this case, you might say nothing, but I would say it’s probably both.
So, with a greater focus on the revenue or the money generated because that’s what you’re working with. So you are auditing this. You’re mapping it out. Right?
So there’s five to seven email campaigns that you map out to look for opportunities, etcetera. What are the opportunities around? Are they around, here’s how you can get more people through, like, reducing unsubscribe, so that would be the leads metric, or are you doing this around getting more people to buy or both. Right?
So for me, I’d probably check off both and say we’re gonna in the mapping, I’m gonna look at where people drop off and, and how where the money is or isn’t happening.
And I think your client would expect the same, I would imagine. This is what we’re really trying to do is make sure the client understands that this is a valuable part of it, which is why research and discovery is so hard to sell clients on because they’re like, well, there’s no money attached to it. There’s no leads attached to it when it’s all that it’s for. It’s those things. Right? But it’s hard to get the client to buy in, so you have to make sure that whatever you’re measuring it by the client agrees, that is a valuable thing.
Does that make sense?
Yes.
Yeah. Okay.
Do you agree that it could be leads and money, or what are you thinking?
No. That makes I was gonna say I think it is both. So, yes, that makes total sense.
I think so this is where, again, I look at the standardized project versus the next step, the actual automation or optimization, because some of it would be opportunities in future seasonal sale campaigns. Right? Like Sure. Being able to create a second mini campaign within the holiday sale itself, that’s technically during.
You know? Yeah. But on the other hand, optimizing a welcome sequence or creating one or whatever that you know, whatever. That’s a whole separate thing, but that’s post seasonal sale or at least purchase.
Totally. So, that’s where I just I don’t know.
With all the different parts, I get into my head too much, so I appreciate the clarity.
Yes. Okay. Cool. And just know that, like, exactly what you’re doing almost exactly what you’re doing is how Voxcar started with Glowforge. Glowforge came in for fifth like, a fifty thousand dollar audit of their existing emails, and that then produced ongoing retainer work out of that to optimize at I think it was twenty five a month.
So it’s the same thing. It’s exactly the same thing as what you’re talking about. They didn’t have really good automation sculling. They were just, like, firing away at people, like, buy it on discount. It’s president’s day. It’s boxing day. It’s it’s it’s it’s.
So, yeah, so what you’re doing is right. You are on the right track, I would say. Okay. You’re just your yours is just differently positioned because it’s about seasonal.
Okay. Alright. Cool. Thank you so much.
Awesome. Yay. Cool. Anybody else? We’re good.
I have a quick question.
Yeah.
You’ve mentioned, many times email life cycle and the opportunity there. Is there any kind of a, sort of a mind map or or overview or something of, like, all the different aspects of email life cycle?
Oh, dear god.
That’s actually exactly what, my friend Tara, who’s CMO at Bitly and has brought us in for it, but it’s really just some subcontractors I have. And then I meet with Tara, to talk about it. That’s what she wants. She’s like, snow for the rest because it’s an ongoing forever engagement.
I don’t think it’ll ever end. And she wants exactly that. Like, is there a map so that we can put, like, an overlay on it and say we’ve got these ones, but we need these ones. And this is old version.
We need new version.
It’s a desired thing. I haven’t seen it.
She just asked for it, like, ten days ago, and I brought it to the people, the subcontractors that I have on this, and they left. They thought that was hilarious to map out this entire thing, but that’s our objective stuff this. And then you zoom in, and it’ll that’s like this little thing is actually a huge thing too.
Are you working with the Yeah.
I started mapping it out because I’m adding a whole bunch of email functionality to my software.
And so that’s what I was looking for was a was a map. So I I mean, I’m building something that Good.
You know, maybe we can we can, you know Yeah.
Collaborate and communicate around that.
Totally.
Hundred percent. Yeah. Yeah. No. It’s a desirable thing. Definitely. Yeah. Cool.
Okay. Anybody else? Caroline, how’s business? What’s going on with you?
I feel stuck.
Okay. Good. What’s up?
I don’t really know what to do.
And that’s is that because of the tension between your background as a designer and your interest in copy, or what where what’s the stuff if you wanna share it?
And then add in, to that, I would add in limited experience.
Okay. So I’m struggling to find to land on my one thing.
Okay. Where are you hovering right now? What feels like maybe?
I don’t, I was entertaining landing pages.
Yeah. Good.
And then, had a conversation with someone who suggested I look at pricing pages.
Okay.
Yeah. I don’t know. I really don’t know.
Yeah.
I think landing pages. Agreed. If you’re entertaining that, right, if you’re like, just someone point me in the direction, which sometimes I just like that. I’m like, someone just tell me exactly what to do, and I’ll at least try doing that thing.
So if you’re looking for that, landing pages are great to standardize, and they are great to optimize as well. So it makes for a good, project plus retainer.
So you could start there. Now there are a great variety of landing pages, which is good because if you start as, like, I’m the landing page person, which others have tried to do, and then they give up on it. And I don’t think they give up on it because the opportunity isn’t there. It’s there.
I think they give up on it because they give up on it. And, you know, people do that. They just, like, swap in and out, and try a bunch of other things.
I do have some specific questions around landing pages. So, you know, the big question is who is gonna pay ten k for for a landing page? So is it, you know, what should I be looking for in an ideal client?
People who are spending a lot of money on ads will pay a lot of money to optimize their landing page.
And I would say probably landing pages. So Mhmm. People who are doing that, if they’re driving, a lot of businesses still drive ads to their home page.
What?
So you can go and I forget. What’s the direct URL to use? Does anybody know maybe you know Nicole for finding Facebook ads for brands.
It’s like facebook dot com slash ads slash Just Google Facebook Ad Explorer.
And Is that all it is?
If you if you Google it, I because they change it.
It They do. Because I had it bookmarked, and then it didn’t work anymore. And I was like, this is annoying.
But it’s good. So you can go and see. I mean, there’s lots of insights into people who are spending. I think even LinkedIn sales navigator is another good place to go.
But you can you can strongly hypothesize that if they’re using Facebook ads. So go find the ad explorer like Stacy just said.
Search the brand and use LinkedIn sales navigator. So start with sales navigator. Say this is the size of company I’m looking for. This is the industry I wanna work in.
Get a shortlist there and then go over to Facebook to the ads, see what ads they’re using. If they don’t have any going right now thank you so much, Nicole. If they don’t have any going right now, they’re probably not a good fit. Move on and just keep searching different ones.
But if they have a history of ads always on, then you can see, well, where are they landing them? Some just use the built in. So you’ll have to just go through and do that work. But if they’re spending money on ads, then it’s very likely that they care about where they’re landing people, and that is your opportunity.
And that’s where you can start reaching out and having targeted cold, outreach. That’s or even warm. If you if you are already connected on LinkedIn, then you can say we’re connected on LinkedIn, but I wanted to bring the conversation over here because I wanted to talk to you about your landing page.
And that I would go with that and, like, stick with it. It is a good opportunity. You already know all about design and copywriting. So for you to sell that should be pretty straightforward stuff.
And I know the number ten thousand keeps throwing people, but it’s, like, a very common budget. Like, there’s not a lot of people who are putting budgets together and putting two thousand dollars as a line item. Like, they’re they people have budget. Like, there’s money out there.
Some don’t, but that’s okay. Then you move on to the next one who can afford you. Someone else can afford you at ten thousand easily. And then when you get results, it’s it’s like honest, it’s a no brainer. So if that if it throws you, just just I think just suspend disbelief and go, well, if it doesn’t work, I’ll go get mad at Joe in my next session. I’ll take it. I’ll take it, and we’ll talk.
Do you do you recommend that I get very familiar with Facebook ads or Google Ads?
You don’t have to I mean, yes. So if you’re like, okay. They’re gonna drive ads to a landing page, then I need to be able to talk about that experience because they’ll probably be like, oh, that landing page is working great. Can you also work on ads for us? And you’ll have to know if your standardized offer is ads plus landing page Mhmm. Or not.
But usually, they have a whole team doing ads or they have, like, a freelancer that they’re already working with who is just, like, chugging out just a bunch of ad copy, or they’re just using AI for it. So what you I would say you would need to know is the mechanics of ads so that you understand the process, but you don’t have to work on the ads.
Okay. Yeah. So you’ll want the mechanics of ads. You’ll also wanna understand the mechanics of emails, like, what happens after they become a lead.
So but that doesn’t mean you have to know. You just have to be able to, like, talk a good game, which is really just put a cheat sheet of terms together. And just, like, have it on your screen. Like, what’s the ROAS on that? And then you wait and see.
That’s really I mean, I’m joking, but I would you don’t have to know everything. You just have to start going down that path because you are the landing page expert at that point.
Okay.
Yeah.
I would try to go can that you can use too if you’re one once you figure out what your, what your, you know, sort of niches are that you wanna target or if you have a certain type of company.
Use a separate browser like Chrome Canary or something, and just go in there and search, like, buying intent or hiring intent terms on Google for those types of companies.
Click through to their landing pages, and you’ll just get cookie with all of the the companies that, you know, that are in your market. And the if you just see who’s retargeting you and all the kinds of things, you’re gonna just get ads only from potential clients.
Interesting. Just keep that as a a separate, a separate browser. Don’t you know? Okay. Apart from what you’re what you use as your regular browser. And to to make sure it’s clean, you know, either if you normally use Safari, use Chrome. If you normally use Chrome, get Chrome Canary or get Opera or whatever the case may be, but just something entirely separate and use it only for that purpose.
Thank you. That’s a neat little trick.
Mhmm. Oh, and Abby has one. They have thousands of likes on their attic. It’s a sign they put some money into it. Yeah. Cool. Nice.
Nice. How are you feeling about that? I know it’s a really quick conversation, but how are you feeling, Caroline?
Better.
Okay. Good. What’s your next what action are you gonna take?
What are you gonna do to start feeling even better?
Good question.
I need to think about that.
Okay.
So, yeah, try to work through if I were you, my next step would be just go on LinkedIn sales navigator, play around with, what kind of company would I like to work with? And, like, here’s how many people were just, like, start playing with it, and then open the Facebook ads library as well. And just start making a short list of people that you could reach out to. That’s it’s tactical.
You can do it without much guessing. You get feedback throughout because the tool will tell you things. So it’s better than just, like, staring at a page or anything that can feel like I’m in this alone. I’m doing this alone.
Also because you’re not, then we can talk about things. Okay? Okay.
Alright.
Cool. Can use this, the segments report in Sassy too to give you some ideas, Caroline.
Oh, okay. Nice. Thanks. We’ll need a walk through of Sassy at some point, Stacy.
It’s pretty awesome. Nice.
Okay. I will.
Okay. Fun. Awesome.
Excellent. Alright. Anything else, anybody, or should we wrap up?
Got the intensive freelancing happening in a couple hours. We’ll be talking about sales funnels there. So I think that’ll be relevant for you, Caroline.
Yeah. Cool.
Alright. Great. Good stuff.
Thank you.
Thanks, everybody. We’ll see you soon. Have a good one. Bye.
Worksheet
Your opportunity in Their New Job
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.
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.
Worksheet
Worksheet
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.