Tag: june 2024
Changing Audiences Without Second-Guessing Every Challenge
Changing Audiences Without Second-Guessing Every Challenge
Transcript
So let’s jump straight into things, so that we don’t waste any more time.
As you probably know, today’s training is essentially the mindset piece to everything that Jo and the other coaches are stepping you through this month, when it comes to your buyer handbook, and looking at potentially changing, shifting, going up market with your ICP.
So, I actually spend a lot of the training portion of today which will just be the first fifteen minutes talking about anxiety.
And by anxiety I don’t necessarily mean clinical anxiety, but feelings of discomfort, of uncertainty, of not knowing.
Because of course when you are in the process of shifting or changing anything about your business, including who you serve and who you work with, there is a level of discomfort when you go about making changes.
Especially, and I think this is really an important point and worth noting, especially when you already have a business that is on some level successful, successful. It’s working for you on some level and I think that that is obviously true of everybody in this room and everybody in this program. You know, you’ve got something to lose. So I just wanted to acknowledge that as a starting point, and just remind you that, you know, as humans, we’re very motivated by loss aversion.
So that’s how we get into that mentality of better the devil you know. So even though you can be in a situation where you can see quite clearly that shifting to a new audience type or serving a new type of prospect will have really amazing potential benefits and wins for your business and where you wanna take things, it’s also unknown. Right? You don’t really know what challenges you’re gonna face until you’re doing it.
So there is a tendency to lean in towards what’s known and what’s comfortable even if it’s not ideal. So let me just start there.
Alright.
Let me share my screen.
Here we go.
And I’m just gonna pull up the worksheet which you all, should have, access to. If you don’t let me know, and I can get Sarah to, follow it follow-up with you.
Sorry. I’m at the bottom preparing last night. So I’m gonna start by, talking about something called the anxiety avoidance cycle. If you’ve been in therapy at all, any sort of anxiety related thing, this will probably look familiar.
But the basic concept is that when we are faced with some sort of situation or scenario that makes us feel anxious, if we then find a way to avoid facing that scenario or going through with that activity, whatever that might be, we get a really immediate wink and that we get immediate short term relief. Right? We can relax and say, I don’t need to deal with that today. You know, that might be future Kirsty’s problem.
I can just, you know, close that tab in my brain. Hooray.
The problem with that is that it actually then leads to long term anxiety growth. So if you do avoid something that makes you uncomfortable, the next time you’re faced with a similar or the same sort of challenge or anxiety, it’s actually going to be a bigger hill for you to climb because you haven’t had the experience of riding that wave of anxiety and getting through to the other side.
So a couple of important things to note about this cycle before I go ahead and contextualise it in business terms.
So, importantly, the experience of being anxious and doing the thing anyway and riding that wave is actually really beneficial even if you don’t get the desired outcome.
So as a really basic life example, when I was a little kid I was terrified of getting dumped by waves at the beach. We lived right near the beach so I was obviously exposed to this anxiety whenever there was a big swell in town. But I remember very clearly, second grade, I got invited to the cool girl’s birthday party. Her name was Tamara Prestwich.
It was at the beach. All the other girls were going into the sea. It was quite a big swell. Peer pressure.
I didn’t want to be the only one staying on the sand doing my usual avoidance tactic. So I went in and I got dumped pretty much straight away. It sucked but it also wasn’t as bad as I’ve been imagining all those years. Right?
So I broke that anxiety curve. I did the thing. The good outcome, which would have been to actually not get dumped by a wave, didn’t happen. But what happened was I got dumped, and I was like, oh, actually not as bad as I thought it would be.
So that obviously is a good example of, how to break this curve and how then you don’t actually have that long term anxiety growth because you’ve had that experience even if the good or planned outcome hasn’t happened. Right?
The other really important thing to note about this cycle too is that the avoidance portion of the program rarely looks as simple as, I I’m just not gonna do that. I feel too scared to do that. Right? Our mindsets are far more nuanced than that and will often present us with things that may on first glance actually look like a good reason to postpone doing the thing.
So to bring this into the realm of business and the realm of updating or going upmarket with your ICP, let’s say, you know, you’re thinking about connecting with a big fish prospect on LinkedIn, but maybe you decide, oh, no. I’m not gonna connect today because I wanna spend some time growing my followers first.
Now this could be a good thing. If you know for absolute certain that the person you’re working out to would not even consider having a conversation with you if you didn’t have above x number of followers, then maybe that is a reason to actually go, you know, spend sixty days building content, building engagement, building those sorts of things. But if that is something that you are assuming and if it is a hoop that you are setting for yourself to jump through, that’s actually avoidance. Right?
That’s you saying, oh, no. No. Let me go. You know, plan sixty days of content, And that is that immediate short term relief because sitting at your laptop or your computer in your office planning out content is probably a really comfortable, safe thing for you to be doing.
So that’s an example of how this cycle can come into play into business and specifically, come into play when you’re looking at, changing something about the people that you serve.
This page here is just a reminder, if it really resonates with you, feel free to print it out and stick it on your desk like a post it. But too often we interpret anxiety, discomfort, or challenge as a sign that we’re deficient or doing something wrong. But more often than not, these things are simply a sign that we’re in the process of pushing for more, different, or better. Right?
It’s a sign that we are in, the process of growing or stretching our comfort zone, which means that we are going to feel uncomfortable for a while while we’re doing that. So just a reminder because I think as I’ve said here, too often, our first thought is, oh, you know, I feel a bit nervous about this. It probably means I’m not ready or I shouldn’t be doing it. If you wait until you’re a hundred percent ready for anything in your business, you’ll be waiting a very long time.
Right? There’s always that little gap that you have to jump over when you do something for the first time and it’s always going to be a little bit uncomfortable, which is such a cruel cruel irony, but there it is.
So bringing this back to the topic at hand, whenever you’re faced with an anxiety or a challenge in your business, and of course this is relevant for all sorts of things not just for audience and ICP stuff but let’s focus on that today. There are two possible paths. Right? You can decide, I’m going to avoid that.
You know, I’m not going to do that thing today. I’m going to wait. You know, your clever brain will likely come up with some very good looking excuse to postpone. And I think one of the challenges, and I imagine something that we may talk about in the discussion period of this, will be how to discern whether something is actually an avoidance tactic or whether it is actually a good strategy.
What’s gonna happen then immediately after is you’re gonna feel relief, but then ultimately, you’re gonna stagnate. Right? Because if you’re not pushing for more, if you’re not trying different things, you’re gonna be getting the same results that you’re currently getting.
On the flip side of the coin, in the second path here, and obviously the one that I wanna encourage you down, you can actually accept the challenge, which will lead in the short term to discomfort. Right? It’s gonna be a bit of a bumpy ride, but then in the longer term, it’s going to lead to growth because you’ve tried new things, you’ve got new skills, you’ve reached out to new people, etcetera, etcetera. So I think it’s really important here when we’re looking at these two paths to just acknowledge that, you know, in the short term, the path of avoidance is way more appealing. Right? Because we’re gonna be happily plugging away in our comfort zones. We’re gonna feel relief that we haven’t had to do any big scary things.
Whereas if we do rise to the challenge, you know, and accept it, you know, we’re gonna be feeling probably quite nervous, you know, probably quite anxious, all of those things. But again, if you look one step further down both of these paths, it’s obvious that the path on the is the one that is going to get you much closer to the goals that you have for your business.
So I know that I’ve put these little examples here on the page, but just to, I guess, contextualize them further. So let’s say that you are thinking about pitching, an upmarket client, right, an upmarket version of your current ICP.
You’re ready to go, but then you start thinking, oh, what if they find out that I’ve never worked with the business as big as theirs before?
Avoidance in that case may look like, okay. Well, you know what? I’m actually just gonna wait until I’ve done x training or I’ve got x certification first. And, again, if you know beyond a threat of doubt that the person that you want to pitch or the business you wanna work with would not even consider a contractor unless they had a certain certification, then yes, this is what you need to do.
You need to go ahead and get that thing first. But if this is you putting up your own hurdles and your own roadblocks and just thinking, no. I’m gonna wait, and I’m gonna go do this thing first. You know, that is avoidance.
Again, there’s always gonna be that little uncomfortable leap that you have to make at some point. So if you do do that, then the feeling of relief might be, okay. Cool. Well, instead of spending the next two hours putting this awesome pitch together, I’m gonna Google courses for x thing.
Right? That’s quite a safe activity that you can indulge in for the rest of the afternoon.
On the other side of the coin, if you have that same anxiety, you know, what if they find out I’ve never worked with someone this big before, but you decide well you know what if they do find that out yeah I’m going to be upfront and own it but I’m also going to own the expertise and the USP that I bring to the table. I’m really clear on how I’m uniquely qualified to help serve this business and help them hit their own goals and I’m going to paint a really clear picture of that for them. And you know, and sure they might be the first client of this size that I’ve worked with but there’s always going to be a first client of that size no matter what I do whether it’s them or someone else.
That’s probably going to feel quite uncomfortable obviously for all sorts of different reasons.
But then even if you do make the pitch, it doesn’t go through, you know it doesn’t get accepted, you don’t land the project, you’re still going to experience some sort of growth from that process because you would have gone through the motions of doing the thing.
You would have built some confidence in that sort of interaction. You might have learned some things about, hey, well, that actually didn’t land so well with that type of client. So next time, I’m gonna you know, change or adjust that.
You might even learn in that process that, hey. I actually did need to get this sort of certification. So, you know, I’m gonna go and do that, then I’m gonna come back to them. So again, the growth may not look like winning the project and hitting the ideal goal. It might look a bit different to that.
Which brings me to my final point, which is all about adopting a growth mindset. So a growth mindset is something I spoke about, I think it might have been in our second or third mindset workshop, so quite a few months ago now.
I don’t actually know if it is on the Copies School Professional website. I’ll check that for you. But, basically, a growth mindset is, all about being open to the fact that, you know, going to do things and you’re going to learn things by failing essentially.
So a failure is not the end of the road, a failure or a falling short or not doing things perfectly is actually an opportunity, for you to grow a skill set, to grow a knowledge base, to grow confidence in yourself, all sorts of things.
So these prompts here are for you guys to use, whenever you’d like.
Actually, Sket, if you would like five or ten minutes to go through these now so that you have something concrete that you might wanna talk about with, just pop a one in the chat box.
Whereas if you would like to just go through these on your own at a later date and spend the rest of the session diving straight into the the coaching portion of things, Pop a two in the chat box so that I can just work out which path is better. I’m sorry. I’ve stopped sharing my screen because I don’t know how to look at my chat while I share it. Okay. Andrew two, Abby two.
Right.
Claire two.
Katie two.
K. Looks like it’s a two, I think.
Claire’s. I don’t know that we’ve met before.
No. No. Sorry. I was in such a fluster when I came in a minute late that I didn’t even realize.
I was also a minute late.
Perfect. Okay. Simple. You didn’t miss anything.
Welcome to the cruise. I love you to meet, and I’m excited to get to know you more and more.
Thank you so much.
No. My pleasure. So two as it is. So we will not go into that process there, but, for future reference, those reflective prompts are there for you so that you can really clearly identify what the challenge is that you’re currently facing or what the anxiety is that you’re currently up against, what the worst case scenario actually is if you go ahead and do the thing anyway, but you mess up or you don’t hit the mark.
And I think that’s a really important one too because often we can get so in our own heads and we can start because sorry. I always mispronounce this word.
Oh my god. Six AM before coffee.
Kitadas oh my god.
Kitadas castrifies.
Thank you, Claire.
Yes. Thank you. You are my savior. Yes.
So we can get our own head, and we can make things snowball and allow them to become bigger than they actually are. So being able to write something down there that’s really concrete can actually help narrow us in and keep us focused, and make the boogeyman, I guess, feel less scary.
The next question there is if that does actually come to pass, then what would I have gained? Right? And this is about flipping you into that growth mindset so that if the worst case scenario does actually happen, you don’t just curl up in a ball on your couch with a big bag of chips and watch some crappy TV. Right? You’re actually able to say, well, actually, things that have come out of this are x and y. And the last prompt there is how does that feed back into your big picture goals. Because I think if you can always see how every action you’re taking is actually bringing you closer to the business that you want to have, you’re going to be able to stay more motivated even when things do not go as planned.
Alright.
So those are there for you, whenever you are ready or needing them.
And let’s, on that note, jump straight into the coaching portion of the call today, and we can talk about anything that I’ve just gone over or anything else that is happening or not happening in your businesses. So, feel free. Who has something they would like to ask or share?
Andrew. It was a steady hand.
I was ready. Can you hear me okay?
Yeah. Perfect.
Okay. Cool.
Yeah. This is very timely for me.
I’m definitely dealing with a lot of indecision around next steps because as you said, like, I have kind of, you know, like, the current state of my business is is going, and and that’s all well and good. And so it doesn’t feel like I can just sort of, like, oh, you know, just try like, just trying something else without making it a full committed effort. It doesn’t seem like a good use of my time. And so the way that this the way that this kind of avoidance cycle manifests for me is that there’s just a lot of, paralysis and indecision. And so, you know, just to to give you an example of of what how that’s showing up in my life right now is, like, right now, I should be working on lead gen.
Just, like, very clear that that’s something that I should be working on right now.
But then my mind goes, okay. Well, in order to do that, I need to, like, figure out exactly what it is that I wanna offer people. And in order to know exactly what it is that I wanna offer people, have to figure out exactly what my business strategy is. And if I wanted to figure out what my business strategy is, then I need to figure out, like, exactly what I want my life to look like.
And then that’s where I kind of get stuck. And something as you were talking that I kind of realized is that I think I’m equally afraid. I’m I’m it’s not just the failure side that freaks me out. It’s also the success side.
Because if I succeed, then there’s also gonna be, like, more responsibility, more risk, more, you know, clients to keep track of? Is that what I want in, you know, in my life? And and so it it feels it’s kinda the term perfectionism doesn’t never really resonated with me, but I do think I deal with it. It’s I think the word perfect is not right, but it’s like there’s some sort of standard in my mind or ideal in my mind that I feel like things need to I need to have like, I I I need to feel a certain level of confidence in my business model and business strategy and my offer before I could do any of that stuff.
And Mhmm. I’ve just been spending a lot of time the past few months of just constantly thinking about, well, I could do things like this or I could do it like that, but I don’t know if I wanna do it that way. I don’t know if I wanna and so, you know, I I I move on some stuff, but then I I don’t move forward with anything meaningful because like, reaching out to people, doing actual lead gen. Sorry about the extra noise.
And so, yeah, I I find myself with just a lot of not moving forward because I have not made a decision.
Mhmm.
Yes. It sounds like you are drowning under the weight of a multitude of decisions. When you were talking about the path that your brain jacks you down, I was like, wow. You’re trying to define Yeah.
And I’m whole life. And I’m high high anxiety, like, long ago, diagnosed medicated therapy, whole deal. So, like, yeah, this is all driven by anxiety for me for sure.
Yep. Oh, you have such good insight into what’s going on for you, which is a really awesome place to start.
I so I I definitely understand that your business and where you wanna take it from what I’ve seen in the Slack group and in some of the other recordings. Like, you know, it is a big movement. Obviously, it does involve growing a team and all those sorts of things, more so than you currently have, although you’re on the past already doing that. So I definitely understand and appreciate that it feels like you can’t just test this thing. Right? You know you’ve sort of got to jump into the deep end in some way.
And at the same time, I wonder if it is possible to jump into the deep end in one way with, like, a test project in that area. So like as an example, I did that with an upmarket version of my client years ago, because I wasn’t sure, like the same reasons as you, I think, about how much I would actually enjoy that process and what it would mean to the responsibility and all those things about my life. I actually didn’t love it. Love working with that kind of client, and it did take a significant portion and chunk of time out of my business to actually do that test project with it.
But I was able to move on that I think because I just brought in the resources I needed for that project on a contract base, if that makes sense. Would something like that be a possibility for you just to get me moving and just to get you testing with real world data?
Yeah. Definitely. I mean, I I and and in a way, a current client that I have right now kind of is that test project, because they are kind of I’m not necessarily changing my ICP as much as I’m changing the way that I structure my end of things going from, like, freelance conversion copywriter to, like, landing page optimization agency or, or CRO agency.
And I think another part of this that I didn’t quite mention on the on the first part is that there’s also like, around the perfectionism thing is that there’s this constant, like like, in terms of trying to figure out my process, what I’m what kind of research am I gonna do versus what am I not gonna do? There’s constantly this battle of, like, oh, you know, like, that’s not really gonna be enough. I need to also add this thing and this thing in order to have enough research. Oh, but then if I add that, then, like, then I’m overcomplicating it.
So, yeah, it’s it’s also indecision about exactly what that process is gonna look like. And and this need to kind of always be looking over my not focusing on what I have in front of me and and committing to the decision, but also, like, always like, oh, is there some other better way? Is someone else doing this better? You know, what do I need to add to this?
What do I need to change?
So it’s a lot of that. A lot of the this endless tweaking or endless, endlessly considering all the possibilities instead of just making a decision, knowing that it’s not gonna be perfect, and committing to it.
Mhmm.
Yep. And does the idea of the the latter, like, I’ll make the decision and knowing it’s not gonna be perfect and knowing you’re gonna find out, you know, answers to those questions as you go, does that just make you incredibly uncomfortable?
I guess. Because I just keep I just kinda keep doing it, and I keep so when it’s time alright. Here’s this way that Joe showed us that we can, like, reach out to people, and it’s, like, straightforward. She’s done all the work for us.
There’s always my mind is always going, oh, no. Wait. But there’s this other thing I haven’t figured out yet. No.
I haven’t figured out the perfect process. I haven’t so I guess so. I guess that there’s I’m I’m not sure what it is that I’m afraid of is gonna happen.
Mhmm.
I don’t think that there’s a negative consequence. I think that there’s just this internal need to to feel like I have something so good that I can’t wait to share it with the world instead of right now where it’s like, oh, I have this thing, but I’m gonna hide it because I’m not sure about it yet.
Yeah. Gotcha. Gotcha.
It’s interesting, and I wonder if this perspective shift may help you.
I do genuinely think that the people that we work with actually have such an important role in us shaping our offers and our services so that they are something that is so exciting and so compelling and so compelling and so wonderful. And I think to deny them that opportunity to help us shape something into being is actually a bit selfish because there’s no way that I could create something in isolation in my mind even with all of my experience and all of my knowledge that would be as good as it could be without testing it on real humans, with real businesses, and being able to identify the gaps. So I wonder if here the reframe might be partly that, but also you’re really bloody good at being able to identify things that, you know, could help a process or things that are, you know, surplus as you’re doing the thing. So I wonder how much can you trust yourself to do that on the run versus doing that in isolation before you unleash a thing into the world. Does that make sense?
Yeah. I think so. It sounds like you’re kind of saying to on one, treat it kind of as an experiment, and two, to invite the clients kind of into the process of, of optimizing it into something better.
Yeah. That’s right. And that invitation doesn’t need to be formal. Right? It’s just that, you know, they’re like a a lab rat in in some ways. Right? And, you know, you won’t know how things are gonna play out until you actually have the chance to play them out in real time in the real world.
Yeah. Because I think you you’re definitely like, you’re right.
You’re stuck in that cycle, and I think you’re actually stuck in that cycle.
Yeah.
Yeah. You’re almost like washing machine. It feels like you’re kind of spinning spinning. And I and I feel like you’re at the point now where that anxiety curve has gotten bigger.
It’s like the, you know, the crest to get over to actually do the thing now almost feels insurmountable because your head’s so busy with all of these things. And the reality is, you know, there’s so many questions that you have that you will not be able to answer until you actually do the thing. So Yeah. You’ve just gotta you’ve just gotta get uncomfortable.
Yeah.
No Yeah.
No. That that definitely helps. I think and also the first part about starting smaller in terms of how I think about this, like, not thinking the whole business and the whole future, but thinking about just the next client. What does this business look like for the next client and and nothing else? That that’s helpful because that makes it less overwhelming and less it feels less permanent.
Awesome. What’s the next client?
What is this gonna look like for the next client? Yeah.
Yes. And what could that look like for you then? Because I’d love for you to have in your mind, okay, if you’re just thinking about it in that, like, just that piece, what’s this gonna look like for the next client? Like, just what what is that gonna look like for you in your process? Like, what’s gonna happen for you next? What things you actually gonna action and do?
Yeah. I think that what I need to do is I think I need to focus on, a lead gen activity and letting myself figure out the rest after I have someone on the hook because that’s that’s what worked in the very beginning of my business where where, you know, oh, yeah. Hey. I can help with your email, you know, project.
And then they’re like, okay. Great. And they sign on, and then I’m like, alright. Let me go open ten x emails for the first time.
Let’s do this. So yeah. So, I think that that that could work for me if I just shrink the whole thing down and just think of it as what is who who’s the next client and then figure out what’s what does it look like from there.
I love that. And I love that young if she’s still young, but younger Andrew energy of just like, oh, cool. I’ll book an email project, and then I’ll learn how to do it. I think that’s awesome.
No. He was he was young.
He was in his twenties.
He was young. He was a wise man. And carefree. Yeah. That’s that’s the The last the last thing I just wanna say to you, sorry, and then I’ll stop.
Please, please. Yeah. That’s remember that just because you do something one way once, you’re not locked into doing that again and again forever and ever. Like, you may try this thing and realize that for some reason, something about it or everything about it doesn’t work.
That’s okay. That’s great data to have because now you can build with that in mind. So, you know, I think as well as being overwhelmed by, like, all the things because the decision is feeling so big. Sorry.
I’ll just mute Katie. I think that’s oh, no. She’s on it. Thank you, Katie.
As well as being overwhelmed by that, I do wonder if you’re also like, that’s kinda where that perfectionism is coming in. Like, this idea that, like, you need to get it right first time and, like, you’re gonna be locked into doing it a certain way. Whereas it’s all just a data gathering process. Right? And you can only optimize what you already know.
So I don’t know if that helps, but take that with you if it does.
Yeah. No. It it it does. Thank you. I appreciate it, Christie. Thanks.
My pleasure. Alright. I think, Katie, did you have your hand up earlier, or did I imagine that?
I did, but I have to leave for my daycare run now. So I’m not gonna relinquish my spot. But I just wanted to say, like, everything Andrew asked was very similar to what I was gonna ask. I really struggle with that all or nothing thinking as well as, like, secret like, I always wanna get things in the right order. So it’s like, okay. Well, this would be the next step, but if I do it now, like, I can’t do that until I get all these other things in place. So, Chrissy, your resource that of win slash acceptance really made me feel personally attacked by the in a really helpful way.
And I think what you were just saying to Andrew about, like, thinking of it as doing a service to your clients to act before you’re ready is also really helpful. And if you have anything else to say around fear of success, I’m here for it because I definitely think that that holds fear of success of, like, getting into the room, but then messing it up and being exposed as a fraud is, like, a way bigger fear for me than failing, like, just not having the thing.
Yes. And thank you for bringing it up. Cassandra, sorry. I forgot to touch on your fear of success as well.
It’s, yeah, it’s a big one, isn’t it? Because I feel like the bigger you get and bigger being in a matter you’re working with for your clients, you’re earning more money, you’re more visible, right, you’re more out there, the more vulnerable you feel, right, because you’re more exposed, obviously. So if people disagree with what you’re doing, if someone, you know, God forbid, has had a bad experience with you, like, that can be out there and that is really confronting. But I think one of the threads that runs not just through this fear of success but also, sort of like the all or nothing mentality and having to have all the steps in exactly the right order is that I feel like both of you might be forgetting that you are very intelligent, adaptable, responsive human beings.
Right? You it’s not like you’re gonna have to make all these decisions in isolation and then you’re just gonna play them out no matter what happens. Right? You’ve got your businesses to the point that they’re both currently at by reading the room, by responding to things, by taking really strategic sound actions most of the time.
So I think it’s really important to keep those things in mind. And I always wonder if there might be space for a workshop on self trust, at some point because I feel like ultimately, you know, there’s so much that we can’t control about the world, you know, our clients and projects and all those things. But if we’re able to trust ourselves to make decisions in the moment when those challenges arise, then so much of that becomes so much easier.
I don’t know if any of that resonated with anyone.
That it’s funny because when Andrew was talking, I was thinking it was I just self trust was on my mind for both of us.
Mhmm. Yes.
Awesome.
Okay. And it’s sorry. What Andrew has written here. Trying to figure out the right order is eating a ton of time and mental bandwidth for me. Yep. Yep. So this ordering of things, and I think, again, that’s probably linked to perfectionism, the idea that we must have all our ducks in a row, and they must be perfectly in the right row in the right place at the right time, for us to even take the first step and to get off the ground.
You know, it’s a mindset block one hundred percent because it’s not how learning works. Right? Think about the most basic skills. Like, think about talking.
Like, you don’t all of a sudden one day just open your mouth. Start having full sentences with, like, multisyllabic words. Right? It’s it’s such a process, and you trip and you stumble, but you learn from all of those things.
So I think with that metaphor too, like, the other good thing to note is that you start talking because you’re ready to start. You’re motivated. You wanna do the thing. So maybe that applies here too for reaching and stretching and growing your businesses in all these exciting ways.
That may have just been a very random metaphor, but it’s what came to mind.
Yeah. Awesome. Is there anything else I can quickly talk to you about, Katie, before you go do the, day care drop off? Or, otherwise, we could always continue this in Slack as well.
I’m good. I’m gonna keep listening, but I won’t be able to wave anymore. But thank you, Kirsten. That was helpful.
All good. And, Claire, I think your hand was up next. Hello. Hi.
So, obviously, mostly, my question’s, like, so so much in the same zone, but it’s probably a little bit more linked to the, maybe not fear of success, but, like, the whole imposter syndrome side of things.
Mhmm.
So whenever I try to post something or write something, if I’m, like, writing just for an internal thing, working out a process, I can sit down and write. No problem. The moment I’m like, okay. Let’s come up with a LinkedIn post, my brain starts going, you know nothing.
Everyone else already knows this. It’s very obvious. It’s out there. You learned this by listening to someone else.
Why wouldn’t they listen to someone else? Why listen to you?
And I get myself into this, like, whirlwind. Even when I answer, like, things on calls, I’m like, they’re gonna know. They’re gonna know mid talk, and then I start stumbling.
If it doesn’t happen, I know I could be really great. But if, like, that anxiety kicks up, it just makes me ramble.
Yeah.
So I don’t know how to deal with that.
Do you have any tips?
Yeah. Sure. And, also, I don’t know if you noticed, but Andrew was definitely nodding there. So I just wanted to highlight that I feel like everything everyone shared so far is an experience that most people in the room have also had. So just know, one, it’s very normal.
Two, you’re in good company. And three, it’s not a sign that you’re not doing the right work and doing the right thing. Right? We all have those moments where we worry that what we have to share or what to say is not good enough, not new enough, not interesting enough, not valuable enough.
But I think we also all have those moments where we manage to wow a a client just by saying something that we think is quite middle of the road. And they’re like, I never knew this. And they’re like, look at me with my expertise.
So, I mean, obviously, that’s, something that can really help with that, but that’s not something that’s in your control. Right? So let’s not focus on that. We can’t control other people’s reactions. We can only control our actions and to some extent our feelings about those.
So I’m just wondering when you feel this imposter syndrome hit, is it always when you are sharing your own knowledge or your own skill set? Is it is it confined to that, or is it more broad?
Yeah. I think so.
Because it’s in my mind, it’s not my own knowledge. It’s, like, knowledge learned. Do you know what I mean? Like, I’ve acquired this knowledge from lots of other experts, lots of other people. It’s technically theirs. I’ve just learned it.
Mhmm.
Yeah. Sure. Which is the case, I think, for all of us in this room. Right? We haven’t all just spoken up one day and discovered the craft of copywriting on our own.
I think it’s important to remember that, yes, you know, everyone learns their expertise and their craft from somewhere. Right? It’s how education systems work. For example, you get a degree to be a doctor, like, you know, that’s a maybe an example that’s quite helpful to think about.
I think what’s important to remember is that you are going to always bring your own USP and your own uniqueness to the table. Right? There’s gonna be something about the way that you share that information that’s gonna resonate with the right people. There’s gonna be something about, you know, your experience of utilizing that information or using that skill that’s gonna be really appealing to the right people.
So I think it’s again of thinking about your niche, right, and who it is you’re actually speaking to, and how what you have to share is actually hyper relevant for them. Because I think if any of us broaden out, you know, the kind of content that we would share to a white audience, it’s going to be compelling for a whole group of people, right? We have to go narrow, think narrow, and think about how to actually, you know, resonate with that person. I think another thing that can help too in those moments of imposter syndrome, especially when you’re in the middle of a a call or a conversation with a prospect or a client, is just to remember that what you’re having is actually a conversation. Right? It’s a back and forth. So it’s not a show and tell necessarily.
You know, if you can just bring it back down to that human level, that can often relieve some of that anxiety of you feeling like you’re on show, of you feeling like you’re up on a stage of some sort. Because if you just think, hey, I’m just having a chat with Claire. Like, we’re just talking about this. They’ve asked a great question.
I know the answer. Here it is. That flow can actually help bring those levels of anxiety down so that you feel less watched and just more present in the moment. Because I think something that you also, shared when you were talking about that is that it’s almost like there’s this version of Claire that hovers above you and, like, watches and is aware of what you’re doing and is possibly judging or worrying for you.
Is that is that sort of the case?
Yeah. It’s like, oh, look. Now you’re rambling. Of course you are.
Yes. Yeah. Okay. So I think it would be very helpful if if we could find ways to stop that sort of dissociation happening and and having so much of your brain up there watching, judging what you’re doing because of course that’s taking you out of the present moment.
And of course would be impacting your ability to actually you know, show up confidently. You know, it would be imagine if there was an actual person behind you saying those things. Like, that would be so distracting. So it’s the same kind of concept.
So I think it might actually be good to work with anything that brings you into the present moment. So really focusing, on the person you’re speaking to, maybe even grounding yourself with some really subtle exercises. So, do you normally meet in person or on Zoom with your clients or prospects? On Zoom.
Awesome. So a really good grounding exercise because, obviously, on Zoom, no one can see your feet unless you have a very strange camera setup that I’ve not seen before.
Even just scrunching your toes into whatever floor you have underneath your desk and just noticing the sensation, noticing what it feels like, that’s a really good way just to bring you back into your body, so that you have less of those sort of out of body floating above or behind the shoulder kind of, moments. So even something as simple as that, I would love for you to try that and then report back in Slack and just let me know if something that simple can actually help bring you back into the present, into the conversation, and out of that nasty imposter syndrome.
Oh, well, that’s super helpful. Thank you.
My pleasure. Todd, I think I might have seen your hand before unless I also imagine that.
Well, first off, this is great. Great workshop.
I’ll be honest. The last couple of days for me, I’ve had, anxiety, and it’s actually coming to a group and talking about it about it. For me, it’s like, Andrew and I actually have a call scheduled for tomorrow. And for me, it’s the CRO side of it.
Like, am I making the right decision if I’m gonna go with the CRO side of it? I talked a little bit to Tina about it. I’ll be quite honest. I don’t have an issue with process.
I’ve got a nail down, dialed in process. I know that when it runs, it runs extremely well.
I’m closing out a project right now, and the process is so dialed. I’m like, I don’t even wanna go and do it because it’s gonna be easy. And it’s one of those things. I don’t have that, but I have the anxiety side of it, and it’s great to have the conversation about, like, okay. Is this gonna be the right thing?
Mhmm.
And, you know, I’ve got other client work in the background. But you made me think of something that’s kind of important, and I will impart this if I can.
Had a client in the past, and they are Canadian special forces. So they’ve shared conversations where they’ve if not to get too deep into it, where they’ve actually had their superiors over somebody they just killed in a war, or they’ve been on a spot in the world where their only contact the rest of the world is when a satellite passes over their head. And it goes back to the stoics. And one of the things that when you’re talking about self trust and everything, you just made me think of something, and I’m like, excuse my language, but I’m like, shit.
I forgot all about that. And it’s called the only thing you can control is your controllables. That’s it. That’s the only thing you can control is what you can control.
And for me, what I’m thinking a little bit more of is doing anything I can control in the day, you know, not tomorrow or what happened yesterday, but today, is just showing up and showing up and doing what you can in that day. And it might not be the win you want or the huge success you want, but just showing up in that day and just doing what you can in that day, that’s a controllable that you can control. That I don’t know. For me, I think those stack up, And I think the more they stack up, the less the other days can kinda stack, and you actually are standing over it more than it standing over you.
So that was just my comment. It just made me remember, like, control your controllables. And that’s that’s a tough thing to do for me, especially in the last couple of days. Because it’s like, oh, okay.
Where is this going? What am I gonna do? What is this going to look like? You know?
And and all these things. So that’s all. Just wanted to impart that. That’s just it’s a very important thing to do.
It’s just control your controllables. That’s it. It’s all you can do. Right?
So Hundred percent.
Thanks so much for sharing that, Todd. That’s so timely. And, yes, And like you say, just showing up every day and doing the thing, I think, can also help when things feel overwhelming. Right?
It’s like we’re not trying to plan and execute every single thing for the business that you wanna have two years from now. It’s about what little things can actually do today that day after day can add up. So I think if, yeah, looking if looking and thinking too broad is something that causes anxiety, then bringing it back into that. And, again, yeah, what you can control, so helpful.
So thanks for sharing. That’s awesome.
Anyone else have any questions, concerns?
Hello?
All good? Okay.
So I’m never sure how long to wait in case someone’s just been shy, but I feel like we might be all questioned out for this morning.
We’re all just anxious.
I know. You’re like, oh god. This workshop was, like, my avoidant part of my day. Now I have to actually go and do some work.
What is this? Well but thank you so much for showing up this morning. Thank you so much for sharing so openly and honestly. I think the more honest that we can all be about these feelings and doubts that we have, you know, the more we just feel like, oh, we’re in the right room and we’re doing the right things.
Right? Everyone here is in the right place doing the right things. And because you have those doubts, you know, it it doesn’t mean anything about your qualifications, or where you’re headed with your business whatsoever. It’s all part of being human, unfortunately.
So please feel free to reach out and continue any of these conversations in Slack. I would love that, or have a chat with Zoe about Zoe with Joe, sorry, about, doing a workshop on self doubt, and see where that might be able to fit in because it sounds like that might be a helpful one. Sorry. Self trust. Sorry. Sorry. My baby was awake every hour last night, so she’s functioning on bare minimum.
But, yes, I will see you all in Slack, and I’ll see you again on Zoom next month.
Bye, everyone.
Transcript
So let’s jump straight into things, so that we don’t waste any more time.
As you probably know, today’s training is essentially the mindset piece to everything that Jo and the other coaches are stepping you through this month, when it comes to your buyer handbook, and looking at potentially changing, shifting, going up market with your ICP.
So, I actually spend a lot of the training portion of today which will just be the first fifteen minutes talking about anxiety.
And by anxiety I don’t necessarily mean clinical anxiety, but feelings of discomfort, of uncertainty, of not knowing.
Because of course when you are in the process of shifting or changing anything about your business, including who you serve and who you work with, there is a level of discomfort when you go about making changes.
Especially, and I think this is really an important point and worth noting, especially when you already have a business that is on some level successful, successful. It’s working for you on some level and I think that that is obviously true of everybody in this room and everybody in this program. You know, you’ve got something to lose. So I just wanted to acknowledge that as a starting point, and just remind you that, you know, as humans, we’re very motivated by loss aversion.
So that’s how we get into that mentality of better the devil you know. So even though you can be in a situation where you can see quite clearly that shifting to a new audience type or serving a new type of prospect will have really amazing potential benefits and wins for your business and where you wanna take things, it’s also unknown. Right? You don’t really know what challenges you’re gonna face until you’re doing it.
So there is a tendency to lean in towards what’s known and what’s comfortable even if it’s not ideal. So let me just start there.
Alright.
Let me share my screen.
Here we go.
And I’m just gonna pull up the worksheet which you all, should have, access to. If you don’t let me know, and I can get Sarah to, follow it follow-up with you.
Sorry. I’m at the bottom preparing last night. So I’m gonna start by, talking about something called the anxiety avoidance cycle. If you’ve been in therapy at all, any sort of anxiety related thing, this will probably look familiar.
But the basic concept is that when we are faced with some sort of situation or scenario that makes us feel anxious, if we then find a way to avoid facing that scenario or going through with that activity, whatever that might be, we get a really immediate wink and that we get immediate short term relief. Right? We can relax and say, I don’t need to deal with that today. You know, that might be future Kirsty’s problem.
I can just, you know, close that tab in my brain. Hooray.
The problem with that is that it actually then leads to long term anxiety growth. So if you do avoid something that makes you uncomfortable, the next time you’re faced with a similar or the same sort of challenge or anxiety, it’s actually going to be a bigger hill for you to climb because you haven’t had the experience of riding that wave of anxiety and getting through to the other side.
So a couple of important things to note about this cycle before I go ahead and contextualise it in business terms.
So, importantly, the experience of being anxious and doing the thing anyway and riding that wave is actually really beneficial even if you don’t get the desired outcome.
So as a really basic life example, when I was a little kid I was terrified of getting dumped by waves at the beach. We lived right near the beach so I was obviously exposed to this anxiety whenever there was a big swell in town. But I remember very clearly, second grade, I got invited to the cool girl’s birthday party. Her name was Tamara Prestwich.
It was at the beach. All the other girls were going into the sea. It was quite a big swell. Peer pressure.
I didn’t want to be the only one staying on the sand doing my usual avoidance tactic. So I went in and I got dumped pretty much straight away. It sucked but it also wasn’t as bad as I’ve been imagining all those years. Right?
So I broke that anxiety curve. I did the thing. The good outcome, which would have been to actually not get dumped by a wave, didn’t happen. But what happened was I got dumped, and I was like, oh, actually not as bad as I thought it would be.
So that obviously is a good example of, how to break this curve and how then you don’t actually have that long term anxiety growth because you’ve had that experience even if the good or planned outcome hasn’t happened. Right?
The other really important thing to note about this cycle too is that the avoidance portion of the program rarely looks as simple as, I I’m just not gonna do that. I feel too scared to do that. Right? Our mindsets are far more nuanced than that and will often present us with things that may on first glance actually look like a good reason to postpone doing the thing.
So to bring this into the realm of business and the realm of updating or going upmarket with your ICP, let’s say, you know, you’re thinking about connecting with a big fish prospect on LinkedIn, but maybe you decide, oh, no. I’m not gonna connect today because I wanna spend some time growing my followers first.
Now this could be a good thing. If you know for absolute certain that the person you’re working out to would not even consider having a conversation with you if you didn’t have above x number of followers, then maybe that is a reason to actually go, you know, spend sixty days building content, building engagement, building those sorts of things. But if that is something that you are assuming and if it is a hoop that you are setting for yourself to jump through, that’s actually avoidance. Right?
That’s you saying, oh, no. No. Let me go. You know, plan sixty days of content, And that is that immediate short term relief because sitting at your laptop or your computer in your office planning out content is probably a really comfortable, safe thing for you to be doing.
So that’s an example of how this cycle can come into play into business and specifically, come into play when you’re looking at, changing something about the people that you serve.
This page here is just a reminder, if it really resonates with you, feel free to print it out and stick it on your desk like a post it. But too often we interpret anxiety, discomfort, or challenge as a sign that we’re deficient or doing something wrong. But more often than not, these things are simply a sign that we’re in the process of pushing for more, different, or better. Right?
It’s a sign that we are in, the process of growing or stretching our comfort zone, which means that we are going to feel uncomfortable for a while while we’re doing that. So just a reminder because I think as I’ve said here, too often, our first thought is, oh, you know, I feel a bit nervous about this. It probably means I’m not ready or I shouldn’t be doing it. If you wait until you’re a hundred percent ready for anything in your business, you’ll be waiting a very long time.
Right? There’s always that little gap that you have to jump over when you do something for the first time and it’s always going to be a little bit uncomfortable, which is such a cruel cruel irony, but there it is.
So bringing this back to the topic at hand, whenever you’re faced with an anxiety or a challenge in your business, and of course this is relevant for all sorts of things not just for audience and ICP stuff but let’s focus on that today. There are two possible paths. Right? You can decide, I’m going to avoid that.
You know, I’m not going to do that thing today. I’m going to wait. You know, your clever brain will likely come up with some very good looking excuse to postpone. And I think one of the challenges, and I imagine something that we may talk about in the discussion period of this, will be how to discern whether something is actually an avoidance tactic or whether it is actually a good strategy.
What’s gonna happen then immediately after is you’re gonna feel relief, but then ultimately, you’re gonna stagnate. Right? Because if you’re not pushing for more, if you’re not trying different things, you’re gonna be getting the same results that you’re currently getting.
On the flip side of the coin, in the second path here, and obviously the one that I wanna encourage you down, you can actually accept the challenge, which will lead in the short term to discomfort. Right? It’s gonna be a bit of a bumpy ride, but then in the longer term, it’s going to lead to growth because you’ve tried new things, you’ve got new skills, you’ve reached out to new people, etcetera, etcetera. So I think it’s really important here when we’re looking at these two paths to just acknowledge that, you know, in the short term, the path of avoidance is way more appealing. Right? Because we’re gonna be happily plugging away in our comfort zones. We’re gonna feel relief that we haven’t had to do any big scary things.
Whereas if we do rise to the challenge, you know, and accept it, you know, we’re gonna be feeling probably quite nervous, you know, probably quite anxious, all of those things. But again, if you look one step further down both of these paths, it’s obvious that the path on the is the one that is going to get you much closer to the goals that you have for your business.
So I know that I’ve put these little examples here on the page, but just to, I guess, contextualize them further. So let’s say that you are thinking about pitching, an upmarket client, right, an upmarket version of your current ICP.
You’re ready to go, but then you start thinking, oh, what if they find out that I’ve never worked with the business as big as theirs before?
Avoidance in that case may look like, okay. Well, you know what? I’m actually just gonna wait until I’ve done x training or I’ve got x certification first. And, again, if you know beyond a threat of doubt that the person that you want to pitch or the business you wanna work with would not even consider a contractor unless they had a certain certification, then yes, this is what you need to do.
You need to go ahead and get that thing first. But if this is you putting up your own hurdles and your own roadblocks and just thinking, no. I’m gonna wait, and I’m gonna go do this thing first. You know, that is avoidance.
Again, there’s always gonna be that little uncomfortable leap that you have to make at some point. So if you do do that, then the feeling of relief might be, okay. Cool. Well, instead of spending the next two hours putting this awesome pitch together, I’m gonna Google courses for x thing.
Right? That’s quite a safe activity that you can indulge in for the rest of the afternoon.
On the other side of the coin, if you have that same anxiety, you know, what if they find out I’ve never worked with someone this big before, but you decide well you know what if they do find that out yeah I’m going to be upfront and own it but I’m also going to own the expertise and the USP that I bring to the table. I’m really clear on how I’m uniquely qualified to help serve this business and help them hit their own goals and I’m going to paint a really clear picture of that for them. And you know, and sure they might be the first client of this size that I’ve worked with but there’s always going to be a first client of that size no matter what I do whether it’s them or someone else.
That’s probably going to feel quite uncomfortable obviously for all sorts of different reasons.
But then even if you do make the pitch, it doesn’t go through, you know it doesn’t get accepted, you don’t land the project, you’re still going to experience some sort of growth from that process because you would have gone through the motions of doing the thing.
You would have built some confidence in that sort of interaction. You might have learned some things about, hey, well, that actually didn’t land so well with that type of client. So next time, I’m gonna you know, change or adjust that.
You might even learn in that process that, hey. I actually did need to get this sort of certification. So, you know, I’m gonna go and do that, then I’m gonna come back to them. So again, the growth may not look like winning the project and hitting the ideal goal. It might look a bit different to that.
Which brings me to my final point, which is all about adopting a growth mindset. So a growth mindset is something I spoke about, I think it might have been in our second or third mindset workshop, so quite a few months ago now.
I don’t actually know if it is on the Copies School Professional website. I’ll check that for you. But, basically, a growth mindset is, all about being open to the fact that, you know, going to do things and you’re going to learn things by failing essentially.
So a failure is not the end of the road, a failure or a falling short or not doing things perfectly is actually an opportunity, for you to grow a skill set, to grow a knowledge base, to grow confidence in yourself, all sorts of things.
So these prompts here are for you guys to use, whenever you’d like.
Actually, Sket, if you would like five or ten minutes to go through these now so that you have something concrete that you might wanna talk about with, just pop a one in the chat box.
Whereas if you would like to just go through these on your own at a later date and spend the rest of the session diving straight into the the coaching portion of things, Pop a two in the chat box so that I can just work out which path is better. I’m sorry. I’ve stopped sharing my screen because I don’t know how to look at my chat while I share it. Okay. Andrew two, Abby two.
Right.
Claire two.
Katie two.
K. Looks like it’s a two, I think.
Claire’s. I don’t know that we’ve met before.
No. No. Sorry. I was in such a fluster when I came in a minute late that I didn’t even realize.
I was also a minute late.
Perfect. Okay. Simple. You didn’t miss anything.
Welcome to the cruise. I love you to meet, and I’m excited to get to know you more and more.
Thank you so much.
No. My pleasure. So two as it is. So we will not go into that process there, but, for future reference, those reflective prompts are there for you so that you can really clearly identify what the challenge is that you’re currently facing or what the anxiety is that you’re currently up against, what the worst case scenario actually is if you go ahead and do the thing anyway, but you mess up or you don’t hit the mark.
And I think that’s a really important one too because often we can get so in our own heads and we can start because sorry. I always mispronounce this word.
Oh my god. Six AM before coffee.
Kitadas oh my god.
Kitadas castrifies.
Thank you, Claire.
Yes. Thank you. You are my savior. Yes.
So we can get our own head, and we can make things snowball and allow them to become bigger than they actually are. So being able to write something down there that’s really concrete can actually help narrow us in and keep us focused, and make the boogeyman, I guess, feel less scary.
The next question there is if that does actually come to pass, then what would I have gained? Right? And this is about flipping you into that growth mindset so that if the worst case scenario does actually happen, you don’t just curl up in a ball on your couch with a big bag of chips and watch some crappy TV. Right? You’re actually able to say, well, actually, things that have come out of this are x and y. And the last prompt there is how does that feed back into your big picture goals. Because I think if you can always see how every action you’re taking is actually bringing you closer to the business that you want to have, you’re going to be able to stay more motivated even when things do not go as planned.
Alright.
So those are there for you, whenever you are ready or needing them.
And let’s, on that note, jump straight into the coaching portion of the call today, and we can talk about anything that I’ve just gone over or anything else that is happening or not happening in your businesses. So, feel free. Who has something they would like to ask or share?
Andrew. It was a steady hand.
I was ready. Can you hear me okay?
Yeah. Perfect.
Okay. Cool.
Yeah. This is very timely for me.
I’m definitely dealing with a lot of indecision around next steps because as you said, like, I have kind of, you know, like, the current state of my business is is going, and and that’s all well and good. And so it doesn’t feel like I can just sort of, like, oh, you know, just try like, just trying something else without making it a full committed effort. It doesn’t seem like a good use of my time. And so the way that this the way that this kind of avoidance cycle manifests for me is that there’s just a lot of, paralysis and indecision. And so, you know, just to to give you an example of of what how that’s showing up in my life right now is, like, right now, I should be working on lead gen.
Just, like, very clear that that’s something that I should be working on right now.
But then my mind goes, okay. Well, in order to do that, I need to, like, figure out exactly what it is that I wanna offer people. And in order to know exactly what it is that I wanna offer people, have to figure out exactly what my business strategy is. And if I wanted to figure out what my business strategy is, then I need to figure out, like, exactly what I want my life to look like.
And then that’s where I kind of get stuck. And something as you were talking that I kind of realized is that I think I’m equally afraid. I’m I’m it’s not just the failure side that freaks me out. It’s also the success side.
Because if I succeed, then there’s also gonna be, like, more responsibility, more risk, more, you know, clients to keep track of? Is that what I want in, you know, in my life? And and so it it feels it’s kinda the term perfectionism doesn’t never really resonated with me, but I do think I deal with it. It’s I think the word perfect is not right, but it’s like there’s some sort of standard in my mind or ideal in my mind that I feel like things need to I need to have like, I I I need to feel a certain level of confidence in my business model and business strategy and my offer before I could do any of that stuff.
And Mhmm. I’ve just been spending a lot of time the past few months of just constantly thinking about, well, I could do things like this or I could do it like that, but I don’t know if I wanna do it that way. I don’t know if I wanna and so, you know, I I I move on some stuff, but then I I don’t move forward with anything meaningful because like, reaching out to people, doing actual lead gen. Sorry about the extra noise.
And so, yeah, I I find myself with just a lot of not moving forward because I have not made a decision.
Mhmm.
Yes. It sounds like you are drowning under the weight of a multitude of decisions. When you were talking about the path that your brain jacks you down, I was like, wow. You’re trying to define Yeah.
And I’m whole life. And I’m high high anxiety, like, long ago, diagnosed medicated therapy, whole deal. So, like, yeah, this is all driven by anxiety for me for sure.
Yep. Oh, you have such good insight into what’s going on for you, which is a really awesome place to start.
I so I I definitely understand that your business and where you wanna take it from what I’ve seen in the Slack group and in some of the other recordings. Like, you know, it is a big movement. Obviously, it does involve growing a team and all those sorts of things, more so than you currently have, although you’re on the past already doing that. So I definitely understand and appreciate that it feels like you can’t just test this thing. Right? You know you’ve sort of got to jump into the deep end in some way.
And at the same time, I wonder if it is possible to jump into the deep end in one way with, like, a test project in that area. So like as an example, I did that with an upmarket version of my client years ago, because I wasn’t sure, like the same reasons as you, I think, about how much I would actually enjoy that process and what it would mean to the responsibility and all those things about my life. I actually didn’t love it. Love working with that kind of client, and it did take a significant portion and chunk of time out of my business to actually do that test project with it.
But I was able to move on that I think because I just brought in the resources I needed for that project on a contract base, if that makes sense. Would something like that be a possibility for you just to get me moving and just to get you testing with real world data?
Yeah. Definitely. I mean, I I and and in a way, a current client that I have right now kind of is that test project, because they are kind of I’m not necessarily changing my ICP as much as I’m changing the way that I structure my end of things going from, like, freelance conversion copywriter to, like, landing page optimization agency or, or CRO agency.
And I think another part of this that I didn’t quite mention on the on the first part is that there’s also like, around the perfectionism thing is that there’s this constant, like like, in terms of trying to figure out my process, what I’m what kind of research am I gonna do versus what am I not gonna do? There’s constantly this battle of, like, oh, you know, like, that’s not really gonna be enough. I need to also add this thing and this thing in order to have enough research. Oh, but then if I add that, then, like, then I’m overcomplicating it.
So, yeah, it’s it’s also indecision about exactly what that process is gonna look like. And and this need to kind of always be looking over my not focusing on what I have in front of me and and committing to the decision, but also, like, always like, oh, is there some other better way? Is someone else doing this better? You know, what do I need to add to this?
What do I need to change?
So it’s a lot of that. A lot of the this endless tweaking or endless, endlessly considering all the possibilities instead of just making a decision, knowing that it’s not gonna be perfect, and committing to it.
Mhmm.
Yep. And does the idea of the the latter, like, I’ll make the decision and knowing it’s not gonna be perfect and knowing you’re gonna find out, you know, answers to those questions as you go, does that just make you incredibly uncomfortable?
I guess. Because I just keep I just kinda keep doing it, and I keep so when it’s time alright. Here’s this way that Joe showed us that we can, like, reach out to people, and it’s, like, straightforward. She’s done all the work for us.
There’s always my mind is always going, oh, no. Wait. But there’s this other thing I haven’t figured out yet. No.
I haven’t figured out the perfect process. I haven’t so I guess so. I guess that there’s I’m I’m not sure what it is that I’m afraid of is gonna happen.
Mhmm.
I don’t think that there’s a negative consequence. I think that there’s just this internal need to to feel like I have something so good that I can’t wait to share it with the world instead of right now where it’s like, oh, I have this thing, but I’m gonna hide it because I’m not sure about it yet.
Yeah. Gotcha. Gotcha.
It’s interesting, and I wonder if this perspective shift may help you.
I do genuinely think that the people that we work with actually have such an important role in us shaping our offers and our services so that they are something that is so exciting and so compelling and so compelling and so wonderful. And I think to deny them that opportunity to help us shape something into being is actually a bit selfish because there’s no way that I could create something in isolation in my mind even with all of my experience and all of my knowledge that would be as good as it could be without testing it on real humans, with real businesses, and being able to identify the gaps. So I wonder if here the reframe might be partly that, but also you’re really bloody good at being able to identify things that, you know, could help a process or things that are, you know, surplus as you’re doing the thing. So I wonder how much can you trust yourself to do that on the run versus doing that in isolation before you unleash a thing into the world. Does that make sense?
Yeah. I think so. It sounds like you’re kind of saying to on one, treat it kind of as an experiment, and two, to invite the clients kind of into the process of, of optimizing it into something better.
Yeah. That’s right. And that invitation doesn’t need to be formal. Right? It’s just that, you know, they’re like a a lab rat in in some ways. Right? And, you know, you won’t know how things are gonna play out until you actually have the chance to play them out in real time in the real world.
Yeah. Because I think you you’re definitely like, you’re right.
You’re stuck in that cycle, and I think you’re actually stuck in that cycle.
Yeah.
Yeah. You’re almost like washing machine. It feels like you’re kind of spinning spinning. And I and I feel like you’re at the point now where that anxiety curve has gotten bigger.
It’s like the, you know, the crest to get over to actually do the thing now almost feels insurmountable because your head’s so busy with all of these things. And the reality is, you know, there’s so many questions that you have that you will not be able to answer until you actually do the thing. So Yeah. You’ve just gotta you’ve just gotta get uncomfortable.
Yeah.
No Yeah.
No. That that definitely helps. I think and also the first part about starting smaller in terms of how I think about this, like, not thinking the whole business and the whole future, but thinking about just the next client. What does this business look like for the next client and and nothing else? That that’s helpful because that makes it less overwhelming and less it feels less permanent.
Awesome. What’s the next client?
What is this gonna look like for the next client? Yeah.
Yes. And what could that look like for you then? Because I’d love for you to have in your mind, okay, if you’re just thinking about it in that, like, just that piece, what’s this gonna look like for the next client? Like, just what what is that gonna look like for you in your process? Like, what’s gonna happen for you next? What things you actually gonna action and do?
Yeah. I think that what I need to do is I think I need to focus on, a lead gen activity and letting myself figure out the rest after I have someone on the hook because that’s that’s what worked in the very beginning of my business where where, you know, oh, yeah. Hey. I can help with your email, you know, project.
And then they’re like, okay. Great. And they sign on, and then I’m like, alright. Let me go open ten x emails for the first time.
Let’s do this. So yeah. So, I think that that that could work for me if I just shrink the whole thing down and just think of it as what is who who’s the next client and then figure out what’s what does it look like from there.
I love that. And I love that young if she’s still young, but younger Andrew energy of just like, oh, cool. I’ll book an email project, and then I’ll learn how to do it. I think that’s awesome.
No. He was he was young.
He was in his twenties.
He was young. He was a wise man. And carefree. Yeah. That’s that’s the The last the last thing I just wanna say to you, sorry, and then I’ll stop.
Please, please. Yeah. That’s remember that just because you do something one way once, you’re not locked into doing that again and again forever and ever. Like, you may try this thing and realize that for some reason, something about it or everything about it doesn’t work.
That’s okay. That’s great data to have because now you can build with that in mind. So, you know, I think as well as being overwhelmed by, like, all the things because the decision is feeling so big. Sorry.
I’ll just mute Katie. I think that’s oh, no. She’s on it. Thank you, Katie.
As well as being overwhelmed by that, I do wonder if you’re also like, that’s kinda where that perfectionism is coming in. Like, this idea that, like, you need to get it right first time and, like, you’re gonna be locked into doing it a certain way. Whereas it’s all just a data gathering process. Right? And you can only optimize what you already know.
So I don’t know if that helps, but take that with you if it does.
Yeah. No. It it it does. Thank you. I appreciate it, Christie. Thanks.
My pleasure. Alright. I think, Katie, did you have your hand up earlier, or did I imagine that?
I did, but I have to leave for my daycare run now. So I’m not gonna relinquish my spot. But I just wanted to say, like, everything Andrew asked was very similar to what I was gonna ask. I really struggle with that all or nothing thinking as well as, like, secret like, I always wanna get things in the right order. So it’s like, okay. Well, this would be the next step, but if I do it now, like, I can’t do that until I get all these other things in place. So, Chrissy, your resource that of win slash acceptance really made me feel personally attacked by the in a really helpful way.
And I think what you were just saying to Andrew about, like, thinking of it as doing a service to your clients to act before you’re ready is also really helpful. And if you have anything else to say around fear of success, I’m here for it because I definitely think that that holds fear of success of, like, getting into the room, but then messing it up and being exposed as a fraud is, like, a way bigger fear for me than failing, like, just not having the thing.
Yes. And thank you for bringing it up. Cassandra, sorry. I forgot to touch on your fear of success as well.
It’s, yeah, it’s a big one, isn’t it? Because I feel like the bigger you get and bigger being in a matter you’re working with for your clients, you’re earning more money, you’re more visible, right, you’re more out there, the more vulnerable you feel, right, because you’re more exposed, obviously. So if people disagree with what you’re doing, if someone, you know, God forbid, has had a bad experience with you, like, that can be out there and that is really confronting. But I think one of the threads that runs not just through this fear of success but also, sort of like the all or nothing mentality and having to have all the steps in exactly the right order is that I feel like both of you might be forgetting that you are very intelligent, adaptable, responsive human beings.
Right? You it’s not like you’re gonna have to make all these decisions in isolation and then you’re just gonna play them out no matter what happens. Right? You’ve got your businesses to the point that they’re both currently at by reading the room, by responding to things, by taking really strategic sound actions most of the time.
So I think it’s really important to keep those things in mind. And I always wonder if there might be space for a workshop on self trust, at some point because I feel like ultimately, you know, there’s so much that we can’t control about the world, you know, our clients and projects and all those things. But if we’re able to trust ourselves to make decisions in the moment when those challenges arise, then so much of that becomes so much easier.
I don’t know if any of that resonated with anyone.
That it’s funny because when Andrew was talking, I was thinking it was I just self trust was on my mind for both of us.
Mhmm. Yes.
Awesome.
Okay. And it’s sorry. What Andrew has written here. Trying to figure out the right order is eating a ton of time and mental bandwidth for me. Yep. Yep. So this ordering of things, and I think, again, that’s probably linked to perfectionism, the idea that we must have all our ducks in a row, and they must be perfectly in the right row in the right place at the right time, for us to even take the first step and to get off the ground.
You know, it’s a mindset block one hundred percent because it’s not how learning works. Right? Think about the most basic skills. Like, think about talking.
Like, you don’t all of a sudden one day just open your mouth. Start having full sentences with, like, multisyllabic words. Right? It’s it’s such a process, and you trip and you stumble, but you learn from all of those things.
So I think with that metaphor too, like, the other good thing to note is that you start talking because you’re ready to start. You’re motivated. You wanna do the thing. So maybe that applies here too for reaching and stretching and growing your businesses in all these exciting ways.
That may have just been a very random metaphor, but it’s what came to mind.
Yeah. Awesome. Is there anything else I can quickly talk to you about, Katie, before you go do the, day care drop off? Or, otherwise, we could always continue this in Slack as well.
I’m good. I’m gonna keep listening, but I won’t be able to wave anymore. But thank you, Kirsten. That was helpful.
All good. And, Claire, I think your hand was up next. Hello. Hi.
So, obviously, mostly, my question’s, like, so so much in the same zone, but it’s probably a little bit more linked to the, maybe not fear of success, but, like, the whole imposter syndrome side of things.
Mhmm.
So whenever I try to post something or write something, if I’m, like, writing just for an internal thing, working out a process, I can sit down and write. No problem. The moment I’m like, okay. Let’s come up with a LinkedIn post, my brain starts going, you know nothing.
Everyone else already knows this. It’s very obvious. It’s out there. You learned this by listening to someone else.
Why wouldn’t they listen to someone else? Why listen to you?
And I get myself into this, like, whirlwind. Even when I answer, like, things on calls, I’m like, they’re gonna know. They’re gonna know mid talk, and then I start stumbling.
If it doesn’t happen, I know I could be really great. But if, like, that anxiety kicks up, it just makes me ramble.
Yeah.
So I don’t know how to deal with that.
Do you have any tips?
Yeah. Sure. And, also, I don’t know if you noticed, but Andrew was definitely nodding there. So I just wanted to highlight that I feel like everything everyone shared so far is an experience that most people in the room have also had. So just know, one, it’s very normal.
Two, you’re in good company. And three, it’s not a sign that you’re not doing the right work and doing the right thing. Right? We all have those moments where we worry that what we have to share or what to say is not good enough, not new enough, not interesting enough, not valuable enough.
But I think we also all have those moments where we manage to wow a a client just by saying something that we think is quite middle of the road. And they’re like, I never knew this. And they’re like, look at me with my expertise.
So, I mean, obviously, that’s, something that can really help with that, but that’s not something that’s in your control. Right? So let’s not focus on that. We can’t control other people’s reactions. We can only control our actions and to some extent our feelings about those.
So I’m just wondering when you feel this imposter syndrome hit, is it always when you are sharing your own knowledge or your own skill set? Is it is it confined to that, or is it more broad?
Yeah. I think so.
Because it’s in my mind, it’s not my own knowledge. It’s, like, knowledge learned. Do you know what I mean? Like, I’ve acquired this knowledge from lots of other experts, lots of other people. It’s technically theirs. I’ve just learned it.
Mhmm.
Yeah. Sure. Which is the case, I think, for all of us in this room. Right? We haven’t all just spoken up one day and discovered the craft of copywriting on our own.
I think it’s important to remember that, yes, you know, everyone learns their expertise and their craft from somewhere. Right? It’s how education systems work. For example, you get a degree to be a doctor, like, you know, that’s a maybe an example that’s quite helpful to think about.
I think what’s important to remember is that you are going to always bring your own USP and your own uniqueness to the table. Right? There’s gonna be something about the way that you share that information that’s gonna resonate with the right people. There’s gonna be something about, you know, your experience of utilizing that information or using that skill that’s gonna be really appealing to the right people.
So I think it’s again of thinking about your niche, right, and who it is you’re actually speaking to, and how what you have to share is actually hyper relevant for them. Because I think if any of us broaden out, you know, the kind of content that we would share to a white audience, it’s going to be compelling for a whole group of people, right? We have to go narrow, think narrow, and think about how to actually, you know, resonate with that person. I think another thing that can help too in those moments of imposter syndrome, especially when you’re in the middle of a a call or a conversation with a prospect or a client, is just to remember that what you’re having is actually a conversation. Right? It’s a back and forth. So it’s not a show and tell necessarily.
You know, if you can just bring it back down to that human level, that can often relieve some of that anxiety of you feeling like you’re on show, of you feeling like you’re up on a stage of some sort. Because if you just think, hey, I’m just having a chat with Claire. Like, we’re just talking about this. They’ve asked a great question.
I know the answer. Here it is. That flow can actually help bring those levels of anxiety down so that you feel less watched and just more present in the moment. Because I think something that you also, shared when you were talking about that is that it’s almost like there’s this version of Claire that hovers above you and, like, watches and is aware of what you’re doing and is possibly judging or worrying for you.
Is that is that sort of the case?
Yeah. It’s like, oh, look. Now you’re rambling. Of course you are.
Yes. Yeah. Okay. So I think it would be very helpful if if we could find ways to stop that sort of dissociation happening and and having so much of your brain up there watching, judging what you’re doing because of course that’s taking you out of the present moment.
And of course would be impacting your ability to actually you know, show up confidently. You know, it would be imagine if there was an actual person behind you saying those things. Like, that would be so distracting. So it’s the same kind of concept.
So I think it might actually be good to work with anything that brings you into the present moment. So really focusing, on the person you’re speaking to, maybe even grounding yourself with some really subtle exercises. So, do you normally meet in person or on Zoom with your clients or prospects? On Zoom.
Awesome. So a really good grounding exercise because, obviously, on Zoom, no one can see your feet unless you have a very strange camera setup that I’ve not seen before.
Even just scrunching your toes into whatever floor you have underneath your desk and just noticing the sensation, noticing what it feels like, that’s a really good way just to bring you back into your body, so that you have less of those sort of out of body floating above or behind the shoulder kind of, moments. So even something as simple as that, I would love for you to try that and then report back in Slack and just let me know if something that simple can actually help bring you back into the present, into the conversation, and out of that nasty imposter syndrome.
Oh, well, that’s super helpful. Thank you.
My pleasure. Todd, I think I might have seen your hand before unless I also imagine that.
Well, first off, this is great. Great workshop.
I’ll be honest. The last couple of days for me, I’ve had, anxiety, and it’s actually coming to a group and talking about it about it. For me, it’s like, Andrew and I actually have a call scheduled for tomorrow. And for me, it’s the CRO side of it.
Like, am I making the right decision if I’m gonna go with the CRO side of it? I talked a little bit to Tina about it. I’ll be quite honest. I don’t have an issue with process.
I’ve got a nail down, dialed in process. I know that when it runs, it runs extremely well.
I’m closing out a project right now, and the process is so dialed. I’m like, I don’t even wanna go and do it because it’s gonna be easy. And it’s one of those things. I don’t have that, but I have the anxiety side of it, and it’s great to have the conversation about, like, okay. Is this gonna be the right thing?
Mhmm.
And, you know, I’ve got other client work in the background. But you made me think of something that’s kind of important, and I will impart this if I can.
Had a client in the past, and they are Canadian special forces. So they’ve shared conversations where they’ve if not to get too deep into it, where they’ve actually had their superiors over somebody they just killed in a war, or they’ve been on a spot in the world where their only contact the rest of the world is when a satellite passes over their head. And it goes back to the stoics. And one of the things that when you’re talking about self trust and everything, you just made me think of something, and I’m like, excuse my language, but I’m like, shit.
I forgot all about that. And it’s called the only thing you can control is your controllables. That’s it. That’s the only thing you can control is what you can control.
And for me, what I’m thinking a little bit more of is doing anything I can control in the day, you know, not tomorrow or what happened yesterday, but today, is just showing up and showing up and doing what you can in that day. And it might not be the win you want or the huge success you want, but just showing up in that day and just doing what you can in that day, that’s a controllable that you can control. That I don’t know. For me, I think those stack up, And I think the more they stack up, the less the other days can kinda stack, and you actually are standing over it more than it standing over you.
So that was just my comment. It just made me remember, like, control your controllables. And that’s that’s a tough thing to do for me, especially in the last couple of days. Because it’s like, oh, okay.
Where is this going? What am I gonna do? What is this going to look like? You know?
And and all these things. So that’s all. Just wanted to impart that. That’s just it’s a very important thing to do.
It’s just control your controllables. That’s it. It’s all you can do. Right?
So Hundred percent.
Thanks so much for sharing that, Todd. That’s so timely. And, yes, And like you say, just showing up every day and doing the thing, I think, can also help when things feel overwhelming. Right?
It’s like we’re not trying to plan and execute every single thing for the business that you wanna have two years from now. It’s about what little things can actually do today that day after day can add up. So I think if, yeah, looking if looking and thinking too broad is something that causes anxiety, then bringing it back into that. And, again, yeah, what you can control, so helpful.
So thanks for sharing. That’s awesome.
Anyone else have any questions, concerns?
Hello?
All good? Okay.
So I’m never sure how long to wait in case someone’s just been shy, but I feel like we might be all questioned out for this morning.
We’re all just anxious.
I know. You’re like, oh god. This workshop was, like, my avoidant part of my day. Now I have to actually go and do some work.
What is this? Well but thank you so much for showing up this morning. Thank you so much for sharing so openly and honestly. I think the more honest that we can all be about these feelings and doubts that we have, you know, the more we just feel like, oh, we’re in the right room and we’re doing the right things.
Right? Everyone here is in the right place doing the right things. And because you have those doubts, you know, it it doesn’t mean anything about your qualifications, or where you’re headed with your business whatsoever. It’s all part of being human, unfortunately.
So please feel free to reach out and continue any of these conversations in Slack. I would love that, or have a chat with Zoe about Zoe with Joe, sorry, about, doing a workshop on self doubt, and see where that might be able to fit in because it sounds like that might be a helpful one. Sorry. Self trust. Sorry. Sorry. My baby was awake every hour last night, so she’s functioning on bare minimum.
But, yes, I will see you all in Slack, and I’ll see you again on Zoom next month.
Bye, everyone.
The Buyer Handbook: Researching ICPs
The Buyer Handbook: Researching ICPs
Transcript
Alright.
Y’all, I know you’re still filing in, but we have Ali here, Ali Bloom. I’ve have I ever said your full name? I’ve always said Ali Bloom. Is it Blum?
It’s Blum. Yeah.
It’s Blum.
I think we’re the only ones to pronounce it that way. The German pronunciation is Blum. I don’t know how my family did it this way, but here we are.
Got it. Okay. Cool. Well, so we’ve known each other forever.
Mhmm. It’s been a long time. Yeah. Yeah. Like, ten years maybe?
I was counting it earlier. Yeah.
Yikes. Spoke at, MicroConf at least one time together. Got to speak to them by each other at the speakers dinner. That was fun.
And Ali’s been working a lot on, gosh, all sorts of things. Do you wanna give a quick background on what you’ve been doing the last few years? Sure.
Yeah. So I took technical I met Joe and took Joe’s copy technical training too long ago. Like, really, truly close to a decade ago. Doesn’t the pandemic makes it seem like it was just a year or two ago.
And since then, I have worked in almost every department in a software company. So before copy, I did PR and content and marketing. And I said, I wanna get closer to the sale. Like, I gotta get closer.
So I kinda did copy, and I was like, write all these copy, did a lot of onboarding emails, and then started to feel like, well, I the product needs some help. Like, I gotta go fix the UX. So then I started going to UX, and then I started going to research. And I worked with Sofia Cantero, the founder of EnjoyHQ to because I was like, okay.
Actually, no. It’s not just me who needs to know it. Like, everyone needs to know the research and VOC. So how about I go mobilize VOC for all these people?
And so I got to help a lot of people get their repos set up and get into research and then research ops. And then, had a chance to go zero to one on a like, as a fractional, had a product last couple of years, which has been so cool.
And now I’m going back my I was pretty fractional pretty close to in house, and now I’m going back to, consultant helping people get buy in on VOC, jobs to be done, and research. Like, how do we actually do this CLG thing that that we talk about?
Yeah.
Dig it. Love it. So yes. It’s amazing. And I really love the progression of going from, like, focusing on copy to working so much in product to see where you can go with this career when you focus on, like, strategy, research, listening to customers.
Right? Like, there’s so much room out there. I think it’s really inspiring.
And so this month, we’re working on the buyer handbook, of course, in Coffee School Professional.
Part of that is really understanding your ICP.
And so we’ve been talking about ICPs a bit so far.
And now, yeah, I wanted to bring you in, Ali, just to, like, share how to do research for ourselves potentially for our own businesses as well as when clients when you’re working with a client, maybe they don’t know who they’re talking to. Yep.
Happens a lot.
They may not know they don’t know who they’re talking to.
Yeah.
Yes. Right? Perfect. So, I know we’ve only got an hour. We’ve got fifty five minutes left, so I would like to stop talking.
I’ll let you take over. Everybody, please get your notebooks ready. And, Ali, please take it away with helping us understand ICP research.
Woo hoo. Okay. Cool. Alright. Let’s see how good I can be at sharing my screen.
Let’s see. I have the browser open.
Okay.
I should have done this while you were talking. Would have been a much more dramatic event.
Oh, no. It’s good. Everyone’s having time to, like, get settled in too.
So it’s Yeah.
Okay.
There we go. Okay. Here we go. We go to present, and then we say presenter view, and then we say sent, and then we say share, and then audience window.
Perfect. Thank you. Okay. So you guys can see my screen?
We can see audience window. Yes.
Okay. Excellent. So I close this. You can see a nice Canva color palette here. Okay. Cool.
Wonderful.
Alrighty. So we’re gonna talk about how to research and mobilize an ICP that actually gets used. So I see so, so often that we do all this work, all this work to get our ICP, and then it just sits on a shelf or somebody’s, like, you know, worst case scenario, fighting us, questioning the fact that we would even do this. I’ve seen all kinds of ignoring of ICP or jobs to be on or any kind of customer development work ignored. So we’re gonna talk about how to bake that part in from the beginning and how to actually do some of the research.
So today, we’re gonna talk about how we can make an ICP useful, unignorable, mobilizable.
Didn’t tell me spell spell check didn’t say that was a fake word, so we’re going with it. How do you build a coalition around your ICP?
And then the five steps of which building a coalition is one of them to research and mobilize your ICP, and then what it kinda looks like when you’re done, what you kinda get out of that.
So before we get into that, I’m gonna ask you guys, why bother researching ICP? Why are we doing this?
Anybody? Go for it.
Internal buy in right from the beginning?
Yeah. On what?
On who the client is and helping them see their client in a different light.
Yeah. Why do we need that?
Because they don’t understand the client and what they’re building it for. And then by the time they build it, it’s not what the client actually wants.
And then what happens?
They don’t use the information that they have, and it just stops right there. So, their copy changes, that’s not what they wanted to say. They don’t know who they’re talking to, and products just die on the vine. Yeah.
The products die on the vine. Yes. So often, if we do not get this right, and it it goes through all these different departments, we don’t get right, things die on the vine. That is that is a really good way to put it. Cool. So that’s what we’re doing this for. That’s why that’s our urgent reason to care here.
So before we get into some of the ways to make it succeed, there’s two main ways that I wanna talk about the how we can avoid failing and how you just nix these. Like, just crush them off your you’re not worried about them anymore. The first one is building something that I call a static ICP. So you’ve probably seen these.
If you’ve been working in marketing any amount of time, it’s like a list of attributes, and it’s fixed. I call it static because it’s fixed in a moment in time. It’s just a a description of of what we’re doing of who the person looks like. And what I call a dynamic ICP is something that’s constantly evolving and also speaks to how your ICP progresses through time.
So to give you an example, we might say, okay. Here’s a regional small business. They’ve got annual volume, hundred million dollars, ten locations, two to three hundred employees. They sell office supplies.
We could maybe sell them, like, CRM. Like, they’ve got some sales. We could maybe sell them HR software. Like, we can, like, there’s hints about things they might need, their business.
They need business things. But if we know, like, actually who their ICP like, who we’re talking to and what their moment in time is, then we might know. So I don’t know how many of you guys have seen the American Office, but we know that there are many different characters with many different roles, many different sets of circumstances. They go through mergers.
They go through getting spun back off. They go through potential downsizing. They have cost cutting. They have all of these different scenarios, some of which, result in buying decisions.
And they don’t the important thing about this is that we’re also looking at the individual, like, not the the company as as a whole necessarily. We’re selling to the company, but we wanna also make sure we we we talk about the individual because people buy things, not companies.
So pothole number two. So pothole number one, making sure that we have, like, a it’s a more, dynamic. We know the storyline in time. Particle number two is thinking you only need to research your customers.
So do you have any idea who the other person the other people we need to research as they’re doing this project?
The client.
Okay. Client, customer, pretty, like, a good product.
Any other guesses? So it’s your coworkers. It’s your colleagues.
So you’re going through this process. You’re gonna be researching your customer, but you’re going to be researching them the you’re going to be building a a tool that’s going to be used by your colleagues. So you wanna make sure you don’t exclude them from the process.
So this is especially, it’s especially important no matter if you’re in house or if you’re a consultant.
But it’s especially important to keep in mind because so often we and I used to do this all the time, and it it often got me tripped up. We’re often hired for expertise. We say we’re gonna go do this thing. We go off, we do the thing, and then we come back and we say, I did the thing.
Here’s the ICP. And then that can kind of sit on a shelf. So we wanna make our ICP stick. So part of what we’re gonna be doing here is making sure that we get that, get that understand who we’re going to be getting that buy in from before we start.
So that brings us to our five steps here.
Yep. So the five steps that we’re going to research and, to learn to research and mobilize your ICP. First is building your ICP coalition.
So we’ll talk about how to do that. So making sure you know who the people are that are going to be in part of this. Then there is quant research, two types of qualitative research, leading indicator and lagging indicator, and then, share as you go steps. So this is kind of a step you do every step of the process, but it’s a really important thing to keep in mind.
So the first step, building your coalition.
So your colleagues are your ICP for your ICP project. If you’re doing jobs to be done, you wanna do your the jobs to be done on your clients, on your colleagues. You wanna know what circumstances they’re in. You wanna know their stage of awareness.
Right? Because if we come in and we say, let’s do an ICP to someone who doesn’t even know they need an ICP, they’re totally unaware, you’re we wanna avoid going from that unaware or that problem or stage to just like, hey. Be most aware. Have high intent.
Let’s just do this thing now. It’s a very, very hard jump to make in a single conversation. I haven’t been able to do it. Maybe your maybe your skills are better, but it’s really, really challenging.
So we wanna nurture people along those stages of awareness by understanding where they are.
So and why this matters? Okay. So miss Congeniality, Ocean’s eight. We wanna be less of this think of yourself less of this, like, lone wolf who’s like a like a genius and has it right, but is alienating everyone around them.
Miss Congeniality, Sandra Bullock plays a, FBI agent who goes undercover in a beauty pageant, and, she’s not taken seriously. She’s also really mean to all of her coworkers. She’s right. She saves the day, but barely with the help of her teammates.
Versus Ocean’s eight, she’s leading this coalition of people to do a heist. So she knows that she’s really good at planning the heist, but she’s gonna be bring in people who are really good at at safe cracking or, like, rebuilding jewelry. Fencing is a thing you need to know how to do if you’re in a heist. So we’re going to be working with other people. So we wanna make sure that we’re in a scenario where we’re setting ourselves up to have that pro social kind of collaborative, heist that we’re making we’re doing together.
I should think of a fun way to work in heist heist, jokes here. Okay. Cool. So this brings us to our first activity.
So, Sarah, I will take you up on that offer. If you could send that, doc out to everyone. So I have a coalition building workbook.
You guys are the ones getting to see it for, like you’re gonna be the first people to ever see it. I am so excited to hear what you think of it. There’s a lot more that I wanna add to it. But the way that I want you to think about it is these are the different things. These are the blanks to fill in as you’re going through to build your ice to research and mobilize your ICP.
So you should see in the first section, build your coalition, there should be a couple of different blocks, and it should say name, title. Some of the titles will be filled out, stage of awareness with respect to ICP, and a problem that they complain about.
So, for example, if you are working with a CEO and the CEO is just like, god. Our churn sucks. Our churn sucks.
Marketing can’t get it together. Product can’t get it together. Like, our churn sucks. That’s what they’re complaining about. They’re not complaining about not having ICP. They’re complaining churn sucks.
So I want you to, I have a couple there. You’re gonna wanna do this for, like, three to five people ideally, but for right now, I’m gonna put five minutes on a timer. I’m gonna invite you to think of like, to fill in the blanks that you can for one person.
So other people, you’re you’re gonna have three different people that you can invite in types of people to invite into your coalition.
Your champion, this is prompt someone who’s not terribly involved in the nitty gritty of the work. That’s the CEO most likely.
Your allies, these are people in other departments. You’re like, you’re you’re doing some of the work together and then your coconspirators.
This is your work bestie. This is who you’re gonna come in and be like, okay. I can’t can you believe this? Ding dong.
Like, that kind of person where you can have that kind of relationship where you can talk through how to actually do this. So five minutes on, I’m gonna ask you guys to, fill in one just the profile for just one coalition number. I’m gonna put five minutes on the clock, and then I’m gonna ask one of you to share and tell me about this person. And if it’s not if you’re, if you’re a consultant, you can do it for, like, your client point of contact.
Okay. That’s just about five minutes. Does anybody want how’s it going? And does anybody want to share a member of your coalition?
Anyone dare to?
I’ll dare. Okay. I was gonna call on you, Claire. You look like you might want to. That’s awesome.
Well, it’s like I’m so curious. I wanted a feedback.
Cool.
I have, for example, the director of marketing, who’s stage of awareness for ICP is probably about a five out of five because it’s their job.
Okay.
And they’re probably complaining about low conversions. Put all this effort to get leads in, and they’re not converting, and they’re complaining about it because it’s messing with their interests.
Okay. Is this a real director of marketing or a hypothetical director of marketing?
A hypothetical director of marketing.
Okay. If you were to, turn this to a real director of marketing you may have worked in in the past, what would you do to take that one level of one level more specific?
I don’t think I have worked with the real director of marketing, to be honest.
Okay.
Yeah. I’ve worked with the head of sales.
Okay.
She was kind of like a three out of five.
Okay.
And sort of at a loss, one between departments. Like, everyone’s going like, this is the thing that you should be focusing on. No. This is it. No. This is it.
So she was really struggling to know, like, what do I what am I telling my reps? What is the message that we’re putting through to people?
Yeah. And what were the specific go ahead.
I’m sorry. I’m just asking if that was the more specific Yeah.
A lot.
What were some of the consequences of not knowing what she could tell her reps about what kind of pitch to make?
I think it was more emotional than actual, like, real life consequences. So I think it was more just like, I need to prove results, prove myself, and I’m not sure that I’m going to.
So many things are changing. I’m confused. They’re confused. Like, we need a ground base.
Okay.
I’m not sure.
Yeah. I’m not sure what her internal conversations look like.
Okay. What kind of was she hitting her her quotas? Was her team hitting her quotas? Their quotas?
I actually don’t know. We mostly had a conversation about, like, what she’s seeing in customers at the moment.
It was more of like a discovery call for me to understand Okay.
What they’re hearing from their current customers. Cool. But yeah.
Cool. Okay.
Excellent. Anyone else wanna share theirs?
It’s a small group. There’s not much room for you guys to hide.
I’m I’m saying this to, like, try to give you an out if you don’t want to.
But Jessica, I know you’re on your, treadmill right now, but, is there anything that you this is a good chance to get some notes as you work through what you’re working on.
Any thoughts? Anything you wanna share? If you’re talking, you’re on mute. Just trying not to be called on.
You came off mute, Jessica.
No? Alright. Everyone’s shy today, Ally. Oh, Katie’s down. Katie, are you down?
I’m mute. Sorry. Okay. Yeah. But I got on problem agreement evidence. Could you clarify what you were looking for there?
Yeah. So this is where we’re going to find, this is something we’re coming to later. So this is great feedback for me of how to work out with this. So that’s research that you’ll get to find that you can say, okay.
I see you head of sales. I see you head of marketing. This problem’s real. I know I I found some evidence.
Like, I’m not I take your word for it, and I want to go track down some evidence. So what I do with these this is sort of the starting point, but what I ultimately like to do over time is keep a problem library. Anytime somebody complains about something, I write it down. And at first, I’m not trying to prove it.
I’m not trying to solve it. I’m just like, okay. Someone’s not meeting their quotas. Sales is about product and marketing.
Like, some there’s problems. I’m just gonna keep track of them, and I’ll add all that data as I go.
Any other questions?
So but the problem agreement is around you finding evidence that that problem exists and that the product that you’re selling, in this case, like, an ideal client profile, could solve that problem Exactly.
Yeah.
To support the need for what you want to sell. Okay.
Yeah. The key to getting your project to to be really, really popular is to position it as a solution to other people’s problems. So we wanna be the experts. I don’t know too much about Margaret Thatcher, except I know that she was a politician who was famous for knowing more than anyone else in the room. So you wanna show up to these rooms knowing more about that problems that other people are having than they do, and that’s looking for some of that evidence as you go. We’ll talk about the ways you can do that in a second.
But there’s also a second kind. So you’ll also see that there’s this quant research step as one of the next, channels. So this is the or one of the next blanks to fill in. So this is one of the other areas where we wanna be collecting a lot of data.
So this is the second step of looking for our ICP, and this is where we’re going to figure out how we can make sure that this is an ICP grounded in reality and an ICP grounded in what people actually do versus an ICP that’s maybe a flight of fancy as many many of them are. Now anybody here do we have you can say in the chat or not in the chat. Anybody here, like, Okay. Okay.
Four out of three people are bad at math, and I’m the fourth.
So Great.
Okay. Cool.
So I’m not either. I love having numbers. I want them. I need them. I crave them.
I don’t wanna make a decision without them. I am, like, very data driven, when I make decisions at work. Not at home. But at work, I’m very, very data driven.
However, I’m not a numbers person. A day when I have to go fight a dashboard tool is a bad, bad day. I know SQL. I would prefer not to have to write my own query.
So how do you what do you do with this? So you can say, like, alright. This is actually a good opportunity to really break down what we mean by quant and what we want our quant to do. So we’re really asking a question with our quant data.
How do you measure ideal? Like, when we say our ideal customer, what does that even mean? Like, how do we know that they’re ideal? What’s the type of, thing that they’re doing in our product?
So that might be activation metrics. It could be churn. It could be volume.
Some indicator that they are picking up what we’re putting down.
Are there any other, are there any other metrics that you guys use when you’re talking about ideal customer profile that, I might be missing here? I’m sure there’s many.
I mean, I feel I’m, like, less in the software space and more in coaching, but I think, like, success, like, they achieve the outcome that was promised in the in the original pitch.
Yeah. Did they actually get a benefit out of the product or the service? Yeah.
That’s a big one. What else?
Everyone’s being so quiet today. Everyone is shy. No.
We’re talking about key metrics. Correct? Really, what we’re looking at are key metrics. So you can really look at that for driving could be primary goals.
Could be driving revenue growth. It could be reducing costs. Would that be correct? So you could say, like, maybe one person wants to have cost savings, one person wants to increase conversion rates, one person wants more ARR, one person wants to have more MRR.
Would that be correct in what we’re looking at for metrics?
All of it. Yep. Yes.
Depending on the person and the ICP you’re interviewing. Correct?
Yeah. That’s a that’s exactly it. So we’re we’re going to want to see customers that are not going to cost us money to serve. So those higher margin, that’s a customer, that’s a one way to look at it. All the other ones that you outlined as well.
And sort of like what what you were saying, Claire, around that that person that’s head of sales had a really emotional component, they all there are some numbers they care about. So it’s we can figure out, okay, what are the numbers that they care about? And we can say, alright. Let’s point our lens. So like I said, I’m not a numbers person, but here’s how I use that as an opportunity to pull other people into my coalition.
So what I do is get really good at framing the questions that I wanna ask. Depending on how much time you guys have get to spend with data, the the opportunities are really endless for the queries and the questions you can come up with. And that is really a huge, huge part of the data work that that happens on data teams. So you can get really good at saying, this is the number I need to understand, and here’s how I need to understand it changing over time.
And then you can find a quant person either at your client, like, hey. Do you have a date person chartered data? Maybe it’s it’s gonna be somebody different at every at every type of company and say, hey. Can we pair on this?
Because I have some things that are really important to some of these these execs that I wanna figure out how it works. And then you can also use that as an opportunity to ask the data person, hey. You guys you you seen any numbers that we gotta pay attention to? Because those data people are probably getting ignored because they’re probably coming up with number after number after number presented in a very numerical kind of way with without the story, without connecting it to a problem.
So you can also help them and bring them into your.
Okay. So that’s it. Step two, quant data. You wanna know you wanna be looking at who has done things that indicate they are the the kind of customer you want to do that with again.
So the next question or the next step is, first of two qualitative research steps. And This is leading indicator qualitative research. So this is happening a little early on, in our relationship with the customer, and I call it the magic question email. I actually call it the magic question email automation. I don’t I left that word off here.
Okay. So I this is another thing that I learned from Joe ten years ago that still works.
So this magic question is, what’s going on in your world that led you to do the thing? And with every client that I work with, I set up a welcome email that has this question at the bottom. Then I pipe the replies to a folder and a qualitative research repository. I use EnjoyHQ.
And then over time, you have a single location with, I’m not exaggerating, I have one client. I think there’s, like, twenty five hundred responses in there right now. And one of the engineers on the team came to me and said, she reads every hour. Every day, she’ll go in and just read replies from an hour.
So when she goes into her product engineering meetings, she’s the Margaret Thatcher in that room because she knows whether or not something’s gonna fail or succeed before they even build it. Whether or not they listen to her, that’s we’ll come we’ll have a master class on that another time, but this is a really, the most powerful thing for building, again, that dynamic ICP. Right? So this is going to give you the answers to questions that pea or the data that people have.
Let me start that over.
Sending this out right after somebody has signed up to start using a product, that’s the moment of that high tension. That’s in that exact switch moment. That’s when they’re really heightened to say, I wanna make sure that I I’m doing something. Like, something has just changed that makes me actually wanna do this.
That energy is gonna be really high. You’re gonna wanna make sure that you capture as much of that as you can. So this is an email that I wrote for a company called Mural many, many moons ago. This is an example of the the type of formula that I use.
There’s a an introduction. I wrote it from CEO.
We had some VOC at the time from people saying Mural was a missing piece they were looking for, so we included it. We added some credibility around the different types of companies that we worked with. We said what’s gonna be coming next because Mural, like many whiteboard tools, blank slate. And at the time when we wrote this, this was not an established category. People did not know how to use these things. And then the one question.
So our activity now is to write your magic question emails. So you’ll scroll down, and you’ll see that’s one of we’re gonna skip quant because that’s not my, that’s gonna be different depending on where you are and because I hate it. And I love this. So we’re gonna go to a magic question email. I can just be so much more useful for you here than I can with the quant stuff. Make a good friend in quant is my quant advice. So, put another five minutes on, and I’ll invite you to write a first draft.
And then I’m gonna ask somebody to read their email if they want. If they’re too shy, then I’ll just go on to the next part. But anyway. Okay.
Sorry. Quick question. Who are we writing this email for? Like, to our ideal client? Good question.
Pick it to a new customer if you work at a for a pro a company where you work or for a client that you might have or maybe one that would that you had, in the past.
Okay. That’s just about five minutes. Does anybody have a first draft that they want to share?
Sure. I’ll go.
Alright.
Doing it. Jumping straight in. Full disclosure, it’s the end of my work day. My brain is fried.
It’s a first round.
No worries.
I’ve written it from, like, a really old client of mine that was super interesting to work with called Pave. So it’s, welcome to Pave name. I’m John, the CEO, and I just wanted to take this time to say we’re really excited to help you grow your newsletter’s revenue.
Pave is the new kid on the block, but thousands of independent newsletter creators have already used it to sell recurring sponsorship slots to big brands like Monday dot com, Masterwork Masterworks, and company Abe. You will find all the tools you need to monetize without spamming your readers with relevant ads. But before you get started, I have one quick question for you. What was going on in your world today that led you to sign up to Pave?
Just hit reply to this email and let me know.
Awesome.
Yeah. Cool. So it sounds like you had this new product in an established space that had already gotten a lot of success. I’m sorry.
You’re celebrating that, making it really exciting. Look at us. You’re or look at you. You’re joining this cool cool new kids club.
And and that’s a great question. Awesome.
I have a question about the question, though. Yeah.
I’ve used it before, and I found, like, people don’t respond to email as much as I’d hope if if there’s, like, a large user base.
So would you ever use, like, a segmenting link, you know, where you just have, like, two options?
So I would probably want to know a little bit more about the situation where you weren’t getting the responses, because I have I worked in one category where I I basically could not get anyone to reply to my emails, but I’ve not experienced that elsewhere.
I have experienced times where, somebody comes in and changes my magic question email and the responses go down for a little bit. So there’s a lot of different factors. But what I would say definitively is that I would leave this question open ended for as long as you can because we don’t know the finite number of reasons why people signed up yet. And the goal that or the the biggest, benefit of having this run continuously, build that repo, is that you get a repo a repository of voice of customer data, and that is part of your dynamic ICP.
So your your ICP is an artifact, but it’s also where your customers are talking, and they’re people. They’re humans. They say things. They complain.
They’re disgruntled. They’re happy. They’re sad. The way they talk about things also changes. Like, I’m sure you guys are seeing with with a lot of the AI things that are coming on, the way that somebody may have responded to this email two years ago, they may be talking about the same things, but in a very different language now compared to them.
So we wanna know that keeps us keeps us sharp with what folks are knowing. So I I don’t really use the segmenting, links unless I know definitively, unless I’ve already built, tested, and had my ICP working for a long period of time, and I I know it’s good, then I wanna start with open ended.
Got it. Okay. So you just send these all to, like, an inbox, where you can access them.
I’m guessing if they go straight to, say, the CEO’s inbox, he might not be active in pulling them to your Yeah.
So you’re gonna want there is some coordination that you’re gonna wanna do with the from name.
So you’ll see on that workbook, there’s a lot of different moving parts to this email. So the the copy is, like, that’s your first thing to get it going, but you’re gonna need to make sure that you have sign off from the person who’s going to be using their from name. Maybe you use a fake email address that’s from the real person and you send the CEO the best emails.
And your I use a qualitative research repository as my receptacle. So there’s a tool called EnjoyHQ, Dovetail, notably, Aurelius. There’s several of them several of them now. I send it all to a folder inside one of those tools.
Great. Okay.
Thank you.
There’s probably other ways to do it.
The only thing I like less than quant is figuring out how to use software. So there are ways to do it that or not this, but this is the one that works I have found that works the best and the easiest for me.
Cool.
Okay. I’m gonna keep going because we’re at step three, and I wanna make sure we get to get through everything. So thank you for sharing. This is awesome.
And like I said, you’re gonna generate tons and tons of responses. In almost every case, there are few limited ones where even tweaks won’t won’t help you too much. We can probably, we can still get other data points here. So step four.
So that leading indicator, you’re gonna say, like, they’re coming in. They they’re right in this switch moment. Then we’re gonna look at our lagging indicator. So this is where we’re going to talk to people who are already successful with us and kind of look back at how they made their decision.
So this is where we’ll do some jobs to be done documentary style interviews. So I chatted with Joe a little bit beforehand. I think you guys have some familiarity with it. Jobs to be Done is its entire own, master class series, so I’ll just hit some of the high notes here.
What I I use the jobs to be done, the job story artifact as the main artifact in an ICP. And the top of that artifact, you’re going to have a sentence that describes your customers, what we call their job story.
So their job story is when I am in a set of circumstances, give me a way to make some kind of progress so I can achieve some kind of outcome. And they’re all going to have this sort of story flow. Once upon a time, I was ahead of sales, and everyone was telling me all of these different things that I needed to do. And I couldn’t figure out who was on first, and I wasn’t meeting my quota. So I need a way to figure out how I can tell my team the single sales pitch to make or the couple of sales pitches to make So I can hit my quotas. I can hit my numbers. My team can all get their commissions.
Right? So we may have a job story come out something like that, and that’s what we’re we’re going to be driving towards here.
Lots of great resources on jobs to be done interviews if you haven’t done them before. I don’t have a a desi dedicated script I use for everyone. I mapped them out based on the category.
But I do have five questions here that I wanna share as an example of how to how to get good data.
First, I always wanna ask somebody about themselves and the role of the company. So much gold in there. I wanna know when they first signed up. I wanna know when they first started looking.
I wanna know what else they considered and what they liked about those other solutions. And I wanna know who else was involved in the decision. This will vary drastically. Like, I have one client.
There’s fifteen people involved in the decision. I’ve worked with others where it’s you’re selling to the buyer. Like, the buyer is the user.
So keep so there’s lots of ways to do it. The the important things to remember are how to, ask good questions to make make sure you get really good data and some just some do’s and don’ts.
I don’t know why I said just some do’s and don’ts, like diminutive as if it’s not, like, the the main takeaway for research. That was a weird thing I just did. So what you want to do is imagine you’re a detective or a documentarian. You are studying a thing that has already happened.
You want to know the moment when somebody switched, when they said, I can’t take it anymore. I gotta get something else, And that already happened. You wanna do that instead of imagining that you’re that they’re a fortune teller. Imagining you can say, like you you don’t wanna say, what would you do in the future?
Or do you think you would do this? Or blah blah blah blah blah. You wanna know what happened.
Another thing that you wanna do is focus on having questions that start with what, when, who, and how.
And there’s a lot of reasons for this, but there’s two main reasons to avoid why. Whether you are a student of linguistics linguistics, psychology, hostage negotiation, patriarchy, all of these systems as you study them, they will tell you to avoid the question why because it is very often accusatory, and it has this kind of accusatory note baked into it. So we wanna avoid it. The second reason is that it can be kind of hard to answer.
I like to give the example and I may have learned this one from Joe too. If we say, you know, why do you love your spouse? Oh, well, why do I love my spouse? Versus what do you love about your spouse?
Hopefully, there is a long, long list and you don’t stop talking until we shut you up. So we wanna make sure we’re asking these kinds of questions that are going to elicit good responses.
Do record the call. One thousand percent get consent and record the call. Do not trust your notes. This is one of the biggest beginner mistakes. I know you guys are learning all about VOC.
I also say if you’re talking to other people who have not done this, those low awareness colleagues of yours, make sure if they’re having calls, get them to record it. Expect it to take two to three months before the message really sinks in. Just keep just kinda keep reminding them. Hey. Thanks for the notes. Did you do you have a call? Whatever.
And then two other techniques I like to probe on general words. If someone says, well, it was just better, what does better mean? What about it was better, versus letting a throwaway word lie. You can’t use better in a in a headline.
That’s not gonna get you anywhere. And then recap and restate. So this is a great way to find, where you may have gotten it wrong and to elicit a response. So you may say, oh, okay.
I heard you say that you were, you had three different meetings in one day, and everybody gave you a different, thing they wanted you to sell.
Do I but you weren’t sure which of the people you should listen to. Do I have that right? And then your head of sales might say, well, actually, it was really the CEO told me to go talk to these people because the CEO didn’t know, and he wanted their opinions or whatever it is. So that gives you an opportunity to get someone to correct you while agreeing with you.
Do I do I have that right? Like, am I picking up what you’re putting down? You can say, oh, no. Not really.
It’s still, like, a kind of agreement type mechanism. Okay.
Step five.
Share as you go. So remember at the beginning, we talked about building our coalition. We talked about wanting to get that trust early on, bringing people in. And, someone I don’t remember who asked a question about this problem agreement evidence.
So you’re going to go through and do this research. You’re going to get evidence of other people’s problems, and you’re going to hear it. You’re gonna be able to share it with people. And And you know what you’re gonna get to say? You’re gonna get to say the three best words in the English language. It’s not I love you. It’s you were right.
Very, very few of us get to hear that in at home, at work, and you’re gonna get to hear that. Like, you’re gonna get to or people you’re working with will get to hear that from you, further endearing them to your cause. So I like to say you’re we’re doing less, like, launching the new iPhone. We’re not going off doing our engineering.
We would’ve built them. We would’ve given them a faster horse if we asked them what we wanted. We’re not doing that. We’re not up on stage.
We’re not separate. We’re a lot more Julia Child. Like, this is how I crack the eggs. Do you wanna taste some of this soup before I add add a little bit more salt in?
We are cooking together. We are involved in this. You’re the expert. You don’t wanna diminish your expertise, but you’re involving people, as you go.
And so there’s a lot of different ways that I like to do that.
My favorite, favorite, favorite thing is to take an interview that you’ve done, get a sixty to ninety second clip where somebody where the customer is talking about a pain point someone else cares about. So if I was working with this head of sales and I’m talking with a customer and that customer is like, you know, I thought you guys were, like, I thought you guys were a CRM, but then I started using you, and I couldn’t, like, I couldn’t do this one thing that is essential for CRMs.
Snip it, put it into the script audiogram, send it to the head of sales in a very casual, informal way. Hey. I heard remember that thing you were telling me the other day? Like, I just got off the phone with this customer. I think you’re gonna wanna hear this. And the reason for this, nobody wants to listen to an hour long interview. Nobody.
You we will do them only when we have an external or internal push to do so. I actually have this story of when I had there were some jobs to be done interviews sitting in the repo for a year that I knew I needed to listen to, but I didn’t listen to them until I found something in the data that said, oh, I gotta fix that. Where’s the data? Okay.
So and so did the research. I’m gonna go get it. So we need to give somebody a push. Ten hours of research, one hour of research, half hour call, this is a big ask.
But there is nobody who is going to hit say no to a sixty second clip that breaks up their day, gives them something really easy to listen to that says you were right.
So highly recommend it. Descript, there’s other tools. Descript is the I haven’t it’s the one to beat. So okay.
So you do all of this, and then what happens when you’re done? So you have all these steps. You’re building your coalition. You’re doing your quant research.
You’ve got your leading lagging indicators for qualitative research, and you’ve been sharing as you’re going.
So at the end, we’re not just getting a document, not just getting an artifact. So at the end, we’re getting a team of people who are bought in and want to see ICT succeed. Their awareness is higher. Their engagement with the work is higher. The how like, what’s in it for me? That’s a question that’s been answered answered months ago. They’re really they’re really with you there.
You’re getting a metrics informed ICP. So because you’ve been incorporating so much data in how you’re pursuing the people that you’re going to research, you’re going to get something that has a lot more data, like, grounding in data reality by the time you ship, and that’s gonna make so much of the work that comes later easier to ship.
So ICP, it’s not just an artifact. It’s something that can seem like, it’s an understanding. Like, it’s it’s not just a piece of paper that says this is who we sell to. It’s I know this is who we sell to, and I know what that’s like, and I know what it feels like. I have a qualia of it. So that that magic question email automation, that’s gonna keep building up your, database.
And then you’ll get that dynamic artifact ICP from your jobs research. And then most importantly, you’re gonna have a team of people who trust your ICP because they were a part of making it. It’s not just Thelma’s project. It’s Thelma and Louise’s ICP.
Everyone’s part of it now. It’s not just my thing. It’s our thing. So thus concludes your introductory crash course lesson, researching and mobilizing ICP.
Thank you so much. This was so fun.
What questions do you have?
I’ll start with you.
So good, Ali. Okay. Amazing.
I’m just so glad that I know that some people couldn’t make it today. I’m so glad that they’ll be able to watch this replay, and the documents you put together too. There’s just a lot of really good stuff here. Even things that are just like, are you saying lagging and leading indicator when you’re talking to a client?
Like, are you using the sorts of jargon? And I know it’s not just jargon. There’s so much more to it than what that. Yeah.
But when a CEO or CMO or anybody hears you use the right words, Your invoice gets paid. Right? You’re the person that knows what they’re doing. So Yeah.
I just love this for, like, introducing people more and more or, like, expanding on, the way that they already talk in organizations.
Yeah. So lots of good stuff here. Thank you, Ali. Yes. Does anybody have any questions for Ali today on ICP research? Or I want you to anything in particular to what we just saw?
No? How are we gonna go forward and use this? What do you think your clients would want to know from Ali if they were here?
That’s a different story. Yeah.
No? Are we good?
Yeah. I think there’s a lot to think about. Oh, Jessica is here. Okay. Jessica has, a question.
Feel free to play. Oh, Clara already asked her. That’s right. So, Jessica, come off mute.
Let’s hear your question. Normally, I would like a win first, but I feel like, I think, honestly, everybody is kind of, like, a little bit scared right now. Yeah. A lot.
Yeah. In a good way, though. Right? Like, there’s a lot of information downloaded on a very specific thing, that is so high value, and now they can go out and talk about this, but it’s, like, processing time.
That’s what I’m thinking of at least. Okay. So, yeah, that’s, Jessica, please.
Can you hear me okay?
Yes.
Okay. Sorry. I’m on the iPad again. Okay. So hi. Thank you so much. I I so I announced in our group last week that, I’ve shifted my business a lot.
So I’m moving away from freelance copywriting to building a book publishing agency. And so this has really shifted all the things because what normally I would go you know, all this focus on companies and, you know, teams and things like that, I’m starting to feel like it might focus a lot more on the thought leader themselves, and there may be a limited number of team involved if at all.
And so I guess I’m just kind of wondering what your thoughts are on how to really identify even the people I’m focused on even for step one. Because the one person that comes to mind for me is the person who wants to either write their book or get their book written and published and marketed and all that.
But I’m not sure, especially in the book writing stage, how much of their team will be involved. So I guess I’m again, all new. This is a very recent shift. So any insights you would have would just I’d really appreciate.
So you are you are starting a book publishing agency. Have you published any books yet, or you’re very, very early?
I’ve published books before, but since this shift in the agency in doing this, no. Not since then. K. We just closed the first.
You just closed your first Yes.
Project since shifting this bus to back to this. Yeah.
And if you had to describe the people who are the authors here, their thought leaders, and their team may or may not be involved in the authorship of the work that you publish?
Yes. I’m not I I haven’t encountered a situation where I would be working with the team, especially in the writing part of it.
Okay.
So your your an ICP can be an an individual.
Is there a reason why you’re feeling like you need to in include the your customer’s team or your client’s team?
No. I just in step one, when you had it broken down, I was like, okay. Well, obviously, the person we would be writing the book for, which is typically, like, the CEO, the founder, the person who wants to build up their authority, you know, that part.
But in terms of any other roles that might be involved, I’m not sure at this point, but if I were working on their marketing, then I could see team more involved. But I was just curious, you know, if yeah.
I was just trying to get any I know it’s a very niched, market I’m talking about.
But Okay.
Good. This is good good point of clarification.
So the people in that first section, like the CEO, your work desk, whoever it is, those are going to be people who are going to be part of the develop development of your ICP.
So when you are working, when you’re working on this agency, the people for you might be your editor in chief, whoever edits the books that come in, or maybe it’s the person who’s responsible for getting the manuscript from digital to paper form or working with the Amazon, some kind of coordination liaison. So you would be working internally with those folks. And then Yeah. If you need to be looking at your your client’s ICP, so the the ICP that they may have would more likely be for their readers if the product that they’re going to sell is a book.
So that would probably be how I would shift that. I it sounds like their team is probably not super significant here.
Yeah. That’s what I was thinking at first. Yeah. Okay. Perfect. Thank you. Sure.
Awesome. Yeah. It’s quite tricky when you’re figuring out something almost brand new. Like, in Jessica’s case, she has, of course, done lots of this work for other people before just over time, and now she’s, like, turning it into an agency.
But the people differ. You know? And it’s been years of doing this work, so, really tough to to figure out your I mean, this is a huge challenge. Right, Ally? Like, nobody easily lands on their ICP. Or do you know anybody who has?
No. No.
No. Just fully no. Yeah. Exactly.
I mean, maybe maybe maybe maybe people who had a very clear idea in mind before they started, like, the founder of American Girl Doll, I think, had the vision for that entire company, but those are so, so rare.
That’s true.
But I can tell you. Okay. So I’m actually doing jobs to be done research now on people who hire jobs to be done providers because I’m so curious about this. Yeah.
So, what I would say to you, Jessica, is I don’t I would go, like, do some interviews with people who’ve hired a publisher. Like, there’s the one that, what’s it called? I don’t know. Nine or two.
It’s I don’t know what it’s called. I think April Dunford used them.
Page two.
Page two. Okay. There’s a number. So I would go say, like, did you, you know, did you hire an publishing agency and do some interviews?
Find people who are making that switch to go from all just make an ebook or I’ll or, or, actually, I don’t even know what the switch they’re making it from. I shouldn’t make the assumption. I love this game. I’d love to guess what the research is gonna tell.
I am wrong. I’m right fifty percent of the time and way wrong fifty percent. So that that’s what I would probably do to to investigate that.
That’s so smart. I love it. Cool. Excellent. Ali, that was amazing. Thank you so much.
Where can people do you are you on Instagram people can, like, reach out if they have further questions or wanna learn more? Yeah.
Okay. So I’m on LinkedIn now. The other socials, not so much.
And I’m working now on getting a more detailed, like, building your coalition around buy in for jobs to be done, DOC, etcetera.
Yeah. Email, course and a more detailed workbook with a little bit more. So I don’t tell Joanna, but my email my business’s email is not really that great. So, so, anyway, I’m getting that all done. It’s alie blum dot com, and it should be done hopefully, hopefully, middle of August.
Okay. Alie bloom dot com. Well, pop that in there. Amazing. Cool. Thanks again so much.
Thank you.
Thanks from everybody, and we look for I look forward to seeing you again, hopefully, at some event we both planned at somehow. Yeah. Hopefully.
Me too. Yeah.
Cool. Alright. Thanks, everybody.
Have a good day.
Take care.
Thank you.
Bye. Bye.
Worksheet
Worksheet
Transcript
Alright.
Y’all, I know you’re still filing in, but we have Ali here, Ali Bloom. I’ve have I ever said your full name? I’ve always said Ali Bloom. Is it Blum?
It’s Blum. Yeah.
It’s Blum.
I think we’re the only ones to pronounce it that way. The German pronunciation is Blum. I don’t know how my family did it this way, but here we are.
Got it. Okay. Cool. Well, so we’ve known each other forever.
Mhmm. It’s been a long time. Yeah. Yeah. Like, ten years maybe?
I was counting it earlier. Yeah.
Yikes. Spoke at, MicroConf at least one time together. Got to speak to them by each other at the speakers dinner. That was fun.
And Ali’s been working a lot on, gosh, all sorts of things. Do you wanna give a quick background on what you’ve been doing the last few years? Sure.
Yeah. So I took technical I met Joe and took Joe’s copy technical training too long ago. Like, really, truly close to a decade ago. Doesn’t the pandemic makes it seem like it was just a year or two ago.
And since then, I have worked in almost every department in a software company. So before copy, I did PR and content and marketing. And I said, I wanna get closer to the sale. Like, I gotta get closer.
So I kinda did copy, and I was like, write all these copy, did a lot of onboarding emails, and then started to feel like, well, I the product needs some help. Like, I gotta go fix the UX. So then I started going to UX, and then I started going to research. And I worked with Sofia Cantero, the founder of EnjoyHQ to because I was like, okay.
Actually, no. It’s not just me who needs to know it. Like, everyone needs to know the research and VOC. So how about I go mobilize VOC for all these people?
And so I got to help a lot of people get their repos set up and get into research and then research ops. And then, had a chance to go zero to one on a like, as a fractional, had a product last couple of years, which has been so cool.
And now I’m going back my I was pretty fractional pretty close to in house, and now I’m going back to, consultant helping people get buy in on VOC, jobs to be done, and research. Like, how do we actually do this CLG thing that that we talk about?
Yeah.
Dig it. Love it. So yes. It’s amazing. And I really love the progression of going from, like, focusing on copy to working so much in product to see where you can go with this career when you focus on, like, strategy, research, listening to customers.
Right? Like, there’s so much room out there. I think it’s really inspiring.
And so this month, we’re working on the buyer handbook, of course, in Coffee School Professional.
Part of that is really understanding your ICP.
And so we’ve been talking about ICPs a bit so far.
And now, yeah, I wanted to bring you in, Ali, just to, like, share how to do research for ourselves potentially for our own businesses as well as when clients when you’re working with a client, maybe they don’t know who they’re talking to. Yep.
Happens a lot.
They may not know they don’t know who they’re talking to.
Yeah.
Yes. Right? Perfect. So, I know we’ve only got an hour. We’ve got fifty five minutes left, so I would like to stop talking.
I’ll let you take over. Everybody, please get your notebooks ready. And, Ali, please take it away with helping us understand ICP research.
Woo hoo. Okay. Cool. Alright. Let’s see how good I can be at sharing my screen.
Let’s see. I have the browser open.
Okay.
I should have done this while you were talking. Would have been a much more dramatic event.
Oh, no. It’s good. Everyone’s having time to, like, get settled in too.
So it’s Yeah.
Okay.
There we go. Okay. Here we go. We go to present, and then we say presenter view, and then we say sent, and then we say share, and then audience window.
Perfect. Thank you. Okay. So you guys can see my screen?
We can see audience window. Yes.
Okay. Excellent. So I close this. You can see a nice Canva color palette here. Okay. Cool.
Wonderful.
Alrighty. So we’re gonna talk about how to research and mobilize an ICP that actually gets used. So I see so, so often that we do all this work, all this work to get our ICP, and then it just sits on a shelf or somebody’s, like, you know, worst case scenario, fighting us, questioning the fact that we would even do this. I’ve seen all kinds of ignoring of ICP or jobs to be on or any kind of customer development work ignored. So we’re gonna talk about how to bake that part in from the beginning and how to actually do some of the research.
So today, we’re gonna talk about how we can make an ICP useful, unignorable, mobilizable.
Didn’t tell me spell spell check didn’t say that was a fake word, so we’re going with it. How do you build a coalition around your ICP?
And then the five steps of which building a coalition is one of them to research and mobilize your ICP, and then what it kinda looks like when you’re done, what you kinda get out of that.
So before we get into that, I’m gonna ask you guys, why bother researching ICP? Why are we doing this?
Anybody? Go for it.
Internal buy in right from the beginning?
Yeah. On what?
On who the client is and helping them see their client in a different light.
Yeah. Why do we need that?
Because they don’t understand the client and what they’re building it for. And then by the time they build it, it’s not what the client actually wants.
And then what happens?
They don’t use the information that they have, and it just stops right there. So, their copy changes, that’s not what they wanted to say. They don’t know who they’re talking to, and products just die on the vine. Yeah.
The products die on the vine. Yes. So often, if we do not get this right, and it it goes through all these different departments, we don’t get right, things die on the vine. That is that is a really good way to put it. Cool. So that’s what we’re doing this for. That’s why that’s our urgent reason to care here.
So before we get into some of the ways to make it succeed, there’s two main ways that I wanna talk about the how we can avoid failing and how you just nix these. Like, just crush them off your you’re not worried about them anymore. The first one is building something that I call a static ICP. So you’ve probably seen these.
If you’ve been working in marketing any amount of time, it’s like a list of attributes, and it’s fixed. I call it static because it’s fixed in a moment in time. It’s just a a description of of what we’re doing of who the person looks like. And what I call a dynamic ICP is something that’s constantly evolving and also speaks to how your ICP progresses through time.
So to give you an example, we might say, okay. Here’s a regional small business. They’ve got annual volume, hundred million dollars, ten locations, two to three hundred employees. They sell office supplies.
We could maybe sell them, like, CRM. Like, they’ve got some sales. We could maybe sell them HR software. Like, we can, like, there’s hints about things they might need, their business.
They need business things. But if we know, like, actually who their ICP like, who we’re talking to and what their moment in time is, then we might know. So I don’t know how many of you guys have seen the American Office, but we know that there are many different characters with many different roles, many different sets of circumstances. They go through mergers.
They go through getting spun back off. They go through potential downsizing. They have cost cutting. They have all of these different scenarios, some of which, result in buying decisions.
And they don’t the important thing about this is that we’re also looking at the individual, like, not the the company as as a whole necessarily. We’re selling to the company, but we wanna also make sure we we we talk about the individual because people buy things, not companies.
So pothole number two. So pothole number one, making sure that we have, like, a it’s a more, dynamic. We know the storyline in time. Particle number two is thinking you only need to research your customers.
So do you have any idea who the other person the other people we need to research as they’re doing this project?
The client.
Okay. Client, customer, pretty, like, a good product.
Any other guesses? So it’s your coworkers. It’s your colleagues.
So you’re going through this process. You’re gonna be researching your customer, but you’re going to be researching them the you’re going to be building a a tool that’s going to be used by your colleagues. So you wanna make sure you don’t exclude them from the process.
So this is especially, it’s especially important no matter if you’re in house or if you’re a consultant.
But it’s especially important to keep in mind because so often we and I used to do this all the time, and it it often got me tripped up. We’re often hired for expertise. We say we’re gonna go do this thing. We go off, we do the thing, and then we come back and we say, I did the thing.
Here’s the ICP. And then that can kind of sit on a shelf. So we wanna make our ICP stick. So part of what we’re gonna be doing here is making sure that we get that, get that understand who we’re going to be getting that buy in from before we start.
So that brings us to our five steps here.
Yep. So the five steps that we’re going to research and, to learn to research and mobilize your ICP. First is building your ICP coalition.
So we’ll talk about how to do that. So making sure you know who the people are that are going to be in part of this. Then there is quant research, two types of qualitative research, leading indicator and lagging indicator, and then, share as you go steps. So this is kind of a step you do every step of the process, but it’s a really important thing to keep in mind.
So the first step, building your coalition.
So your colleagues are your ICP for your ICP project. If you’re doing jobs to be done, you wanna do your the jobs to be done on your clients, on your colleagues. You wanna know what circumstances they’re in. You wanna know their stage of awareness.
Right? Because if we come in and we say, let’s do an ICP to someone who doesn’t even know they need an ICP, they’re totally unaware, you’re we wanna avoid going from that unaware or that problem or stage to just like, hey. Be most aware. Have high intent.
Let’s just do this thing now. It’s a very, very hard jump to make in a single conversation. I haven’t been able to do it. Maybe your maybe your skills are better, but it’s really, really challenging.
So we wanna nurture people along those stages of awareness by understanding where they are.
So and why this matters? Okay. So miss Congeniality, Ocean’s eight. We wanna be less of this think of yourself less of this, like, lone wolf who’s like a like a genius and has it right, but is alienating everyone around them.
Miss Congeniality, Sandra Bullock plays a, FBI agent who goes undercover in a beauty pageant, and, she’s not taken seriously. She’s also really mean to all of her coworkers. She’s right. She saves the day, but barely with the help of her teammates.
Versus Ocean’s eight, she’s leading this coalition of people to do a heist. So she knows that she’s really good at planning the heist, but she’s gonna be bring in people who are really good at at safe cracking or, like, rebuilding jewelry. Fencing is a thing you need to know how to do if you’re in a heist. So we’re going to be working with other people. So we wanna make sure that we’re in a scenario where we’re setting ourselves up to have that pro social kind of collaborative, heist that we’re making we’re doing together.
I should think of a fun way to work in heist heist, jokes here. Okay. Cool. So this brings us to our first activity.
So, Sarah, I will take you up on that offer. If you could send that, doc out to everyone. So I have a coalition building workbook.
You guys are the ones getting to see it for, like you’re gonna be the first people to ever see it. I am so excited to hear what you think of it. There’s a lot more that I wanna add to it. But the way that I want you to think about it is these are the different things. These are the blanks to fill in as you’re going through to build your ice to research and mobilize your ICP.
So you should see in the first section, build your coalition, there should be a couple of different blocks, and it should say name, title. Some of the titles will be filled out, stage of awareness with respect to ICP, and a problem that they complain about.
So, for example, if you are working with a CEO and the CEO is just like, god. Our churn sucks. Our churn sucks.
Marketing can’t get it together. Product can’t get it together. Like, our churn sucks. That’s what they’re complaining about. They’re not complaining about not having ICP. They’re complaining churn sucks.
So I want you to, I have a couple there. You’re gonna wanna do this for, like, three to five people ideally, but for right now, I’m gonna put five minutes on a timer. I’m gonna invite you to think of like, to fill in the blanks that you can for one person.
So other people, you’re you’re gonna have three different people that you can invite in types of people to invite into your coalition.
Your champion, this is prompt someone who’s not terribly involved in the nitty gritty of the work. That’s the CEO most likely.
Your allies, these are people in other departments. You’re like, you’re you’re doing some of the work together and then your coconspirators.
This is your work bestie. This is who you’re gonna come in and be like, okay. I can’t can you believe this? Ding dong.
Like, that kind of person where you can have that kind of relationship where you can talk through how to actually do this. So five minutes on, I’m gonna ask you guys to, fill in one just the profile for just one coalition number. I’m gonna put five minutes on the clock, and then I’m gonna ask one of you to share and tell me about this person. And if it’s not if you’re, if you’re a consultant, you can do it for, like, your client point of contact.
Okay. That’s just about five minutes. Does anybody want how’s it going? And does anybody want to share a member of your coalition?
Anyone dare to?
I’ll dare. Okay. I was gonna call on you, Claire. You look like you might want to. That’s awesome.
Well, it’s like I’m so curious. I wanted a feedback.
Cool.
I have, for example, the director of marketing, who’s stage of awareness for ICP is probably about a five out of five because it’s their job.
Okay.
And they’re probably complaining about low conversions. Put all this effort to get leads in, and they’re not converting, and they’re complaining about it because it’s messing with their interests.
Okay. Is this a real director of marketing or a hypothetical director of marketing?
A hypothetical director of marketing.
Okay. If you were to, turn this to a real director of marketing you may have worked in in the past, what would you do to take that one level of one level more specific?
I don’t think I have worked with the real director of marketing, to be honest.
Okay.
Yeah. I’ve worked with the head of sales.
Okay.
She was kind of like a three out of five.
Okay.
And sort of at a loss, one between departments. Like, everyone’s going like, this is the thing that you should be focusing on. No. This is it. No. This is it.
So she was really struggling to know, like, what do I what am I telling my reps? What is the message that we’re putting through to people?
Yeah. And what were the specific go ahead.
I’m sorry. I’m just asking if that was the more specific Yeah.
A lot.
What were some of the consequences of not knowing what she could tell her reps about what kind of pitch to make?
I think it was more emotional than actual, like, real life consequences. So I think it was more just like, I need to prove results, prove myself, and I’m not sure that I’m going to.
So many things are changing. I’m confused. They’re confused. Like, we need a ground base.
Okay.
I’m not sure.
Yeah. I’m not sure what her internal conversations look like.
Okay. What kind of was she hitting her her quotas? Was her team hitting her quotas? Their quotas?
I actually don’t know. We mostly had a conversation about, like, what she’s seeing in customers at the moment.
It was more of like a discovery call for me to understand Okay.
What they’re hearing from their current customers. Cool. But yeah.
Cool. Okay.
Excellent. Anyone else wanna share theirs?
It’s a small group. There’s not much room for you guys to hide.
I’m I’m saying this to, like, try to give you an out if you don’t want to.
But Jessica, I know you’re on your, treadmill right now, but, is there anything that you this is a good chance to get some notes as you work through what you’re working on.
Any thoughts? Anything you wanna share? If you’re talking, you’re on mute. Just trying not to be called on.
You came off mute, Jessica.
No? Alright. Everyone’s shy today, Ally. Oh, Katie’s down. Katie, are you down?
I’m mute. Sorry. Okay. Yeah. But I got on problem agreement evidence. Could you clarify what you were looking for there?
Yeah. So this is where we’re going to find, this is something we’re coming to later. So this is great feedback for me of how to work out with this. So that’s research that you’ll get to find that you can say, okay.
I see you head of sales. I see you head of marketing. This problem’s real. I know I I found some evidence.
Like, I’m not I take your word for it, and I want to go track down some evidence. So what I do with these this is sort of the starting point, but what I ultimately like to do over time is keep a problem library. Anytime somebody complains about something, I write it down. And at first, I’m not trying to prove it.
I’m not trying to solve it. I’m just like, okay. Someone’s not meeting their quotas. Sales is about product and marketing.
Like, some there’s problems. I’m just gonna keep track of them, and I’ll add all that data as I go.
Any other questions?
So but the problem agreement is around you finding evidence that that problem exists and that the product that you’re selling, in this case, like, an ideal client profile, could solve that problem Exactly.
Yeah.
To support the need for what you want to sell. Okay.
Yeah. The key to getting your project to to be really, really popular is to position it as a solution to other people’s problems. So we wanna be the experts. I don’t know too much about Margaret Thatcher, except I know that she was a politician who was famous for knowing more than anyone else in the room. So you wanna show up to these rooms knowing more about that problems that other people are having than they do, and that’s looking for some of that evidence as you go. We’ll talk about the ways you can do that in a second.
But there’s also a second kind. So you’ll also see that there’s this quant research step as one of the next, channels. So this is the or one of the next blanks to fill in. So this is one of the other areas where we wanna be collecting a lot of data.
So this is the second step of looking for our ICP, and this is where we’re going to figure out how we can make sure that this is an ICP grounded in reality and an ICP grounded in what people actually do versus an ICP that’s maybe a flight of fancy as many many of them are. Now anybody here do we have you can say in the chat or not in the chat. Anybody here, like, Okay. Okay.
Four out of three people are bad at math, and I’m the fourth.
So Great.
Okay. Cool.
So I’m not either. I love having numbers. I want them. I need them. I crave them.
I don’t wanna make a decision without them. I am, like, very data driven, when I make decisions at work. Not at home. But at work, I’m very, very data driven.
However, I’m not a numbers person. A day when I have to go fight a dashboard tool is a bad, bad day. I know SQL. I would prefer not to have to write my own query.
So how do you what do you do with this? So you can say, like, alright. This is actually a good opportunity to really break down what we mean by quant and what we want our quant to do. So we’re really asking a question with our quant data.
How do you measure ideal? Like, when we say our ideal customer, what does that even mean? Like, how do we know that they’re ideal? What’s the type of, thing that they’re doing in our product?
So that might be activation metrics. It could be churn. It could be volume.
Some indicator that they are picking up what we’re putting down.
Are there any other, are there any other metrics that you guys use when you’re talking about ideal customer profile that, I might be missing here? I’m sure there’s many.
I mean, I feel I’m, like, less in the software space and more in coaching, but I think, like, success, like, they achieve the outcome that was promised in the in the original pitch.
Yeah. Did they actually get a benefit out of the product or the service? Yeah.
That’s a big one. What else?
Everyone’s being so quiet today. Everyone is shy. No.
We’re talking about key metrics. Correct? Really, what we’re looking at are key metrics. So you can really look at that for driving could be primary goals.
Could be driving revenue growth. It could be reducing costs. Would that be correct? So you could say, like, maybe one person wants to have cost savings, one person wants to increase conversion rates, one person wants more ARR, one person wants to have more MRR.
Would that be correct in what we’re looking at for metrics?
All of it. Yep. Yes.
Depending on the person and the ICP you’re interviewing. Correct?
Yeah. That’s a that’s exactly it. So we’re we’re going to want to see customers that are not going to cost us money to serve. So those higher margin, that’s a customer, that’s a one way to look at it. All the other ones that you outlined as well.
And sort of like what what you were saying, Claire, around that that person that’s head of sales had a really emotional component, they all there are some numbers they care about. So it’s we can figure out, okay, what are the numbers that they care about? And we can say, alright. Let’s point our lens. So like I said, I’m not a numbers person, but here’s how I use that as an opportunity to pull other people into my coalition.
So what I do is get really good at framing the questions that I wanna ask. Depending on how much time you guys have get to spend with data, the the opportunities are really endless for the queries and the questions you can come up with. And that is really a huge, huge part of the data work that that happens on data teams. So you can get really good at saying, this is the number I need to understand, and here’s how I need to understand it changing over time.
And then you can find a quant person either at your client, like, hey. Do you have a date person chartered data? Maybe it’s it’s gonna be somebody different at every at every type of company and say, hey. Can we pair on this?
Because I have some things that are really important to some of these these execs that I wanna figure out how it works. And then you can also use that as an opportunity to ask the data person, hey. You guys you you seen any numbers that we gotta pay attention to? Because those data people are probably getting ignored because they’re probably coming up with number after number after number presented in a very numerical kind of way with without the story, without connecting it to a problem.
So you can also help them and bring them into your.
Okay. So that’s it. Step two, quant data. You wanna know you wanna be looking at who has done things that indicate they are the the kind of customer you want to do that with again.
So the next question or the next step is, first of two qualitative research steps. And This is leading indicator qualitative research. So this is happening a little early on, in our relationship with the customer, and I call it the magic question email. I actually call it the magic question email automation. I don’t I left that word off here.
Okay. So I this is another thing that I learned from Joe ten years ago that still works.
So this magic question is, what’s going on in your world that led you to do the thing? And with every client that I work with, I set up a welcome email that has this question at the bottom. Then I pipe the replies to a folder and a qualitative research repository. I use EnjoyHQ.
And then over time, you have a single location with, I’m not exaggerating, I have one client. I think there’s, like, twenty five hundred responses in there right now. And one of the engineers on the team came to me and said, she reads every hour. Every day, she’ll go in and just read replies from an hour.
So when she goes into her product engineering meetings, she’s the Margaret Thatcher in that room because she knows whether or not something’s gonna fail or succeed before they even build it. Whether or not they listen to her, that’s we’ll come we’ll have a master class on that another time, but this is a really, the most powerful thing for building, again, that dynamic ICP. Right? So this is going to give you the answers to questions that pea or the data that people have.
Let me start that over.
Sending this out right after somebody has signed up to start using a product, that’s the moment of that high tension. That’s in that exact switch moment. That’s when they’re really heightened to say, I wanna make sure that I I’m doing something. Like, something has just changed that makes me actually wanna do this.
That energy is gonna be really high. You’re gonna wanna make sure that you capture as much of that as you can. So this is an email that I wrote for a company called Mural many, many moons ago. This is an example of the the type of formula that I use.
There’s a an introduction. I wrote it from CEO.
We had some VOC at the time from people saying Mural was a missing piece they were looking for, so we included it. We added some credibility around the different types of companies that we worked with. We said what’s gonna be coming next because Mural, like many whiteboard tools, blank slate. And at the time when we wrote this, this was not an established category. People did not know how to use these things. And then the one question.
So our activity now is to write your magic question emails. So you’ll scroll down, and you’ll see that’s one of we’re gonna skip quant because that’s not my, that’s gonna be different depending on where you are and because I hate it. And I love this. So we’re gonna go to a magic question email. I can just be so much more useful for you here than I can with the quant stuff. Make a good friend in quant is my quant advice. So, put another five minutes on, and I’ll invite you to write a first draft.
And then I’m gonna ask somebody to read their email if they want. If they’re too shy, then I’ll just go on to the next part. But anyway. Okay.
Sorry. Quick question. Who are we writing this email for? Like, to our ideal client? Good question.
Pick it to a new customer if you work at a for a pro a company where you work or for a client that you might have or maybe one that would that you had, in the past.
Okay. That’s just about five minutes. Does anybody have a first draft that they want to share?
Sure. I’ll go.
Alright.
Doing it. Jumping straight in. Full disclosure, it’s the end of my work day. My brain is fried.
It’s a first round.
No worries.
I’ve written it from, like, a really old client of mine that was super interesting to work with called Pave. So it’s, welcome to Pave name. I’m John, the CEO, and I just wanted to take this time to say we’re really excited to help you grow your newsletter’s revenue.
Pave is the new kid on the block, but thousands of independent newsletter creators have already used it to sell recurring sponsorship slots to big brands like Monday dot com, Masterwork Masterworks, and company Abe. You will find all the tools you need to monetize without spamming your readers with relevant ads. But before you get started, I have one quick question for you. What was going on in your world today that led you to sign up to Pave?
Just hit reply to this email and let me know.
Awesome.
Yeah. Cool. So it sounds like you had this new product in an established space that had already gotten a lot of success. I’m sorry.
You’re celebrating that, making it really exciting. Look at us. You’re or look at you. You’re joining this cool cool new kids club.
And and that’s a great question. Awesome.
I have a question about the question, though. Yeah.
I’ve used it before, and I found, like, people don’t respond to email as much as I’d hope if if there’s, like, a large user base.
So would you ever use, like, a segmenting link, you know, where you just have, like, two options?
So I would probably want to know a little bit more about the situation where you weren’t getting the responses, because I have I worked in one category where I I basically could not get anyone to reply to my emails, but I’ve not experienced that elsewhere.
I have experienced times where, somebody comes in and changes my magic question email and the responses go down for a little bit. So there’s a lot of different factors. But what I would say definitively is that I would leave this question open ended for as long as you can because we don’t know the finite number of reasons why people signed up yet. And the goal that or the the biggest, benefit of having this run continuously, build that repo, is that you get a repo a repository of voice of customer data, and that is part of your dynamic ICP.
So your your ICP is an artifact, but it’s also where your customers are talking, and they’re people. They’re humans. They say things. They complain.
They’re disgruntled. They’re happy. They’re sad. The way they talk about things also changes. Like, I’m sure you guys are seeing with with a lot of the AI things that are coming on, the way that somebody may have responded to this email two years ago, they may be talking about the same things, but in a very different language now compared to them.
So we wanna know that keeps us keeps us sharp with what folks are knowing. So I I don’t really use the segmenting, links unless I know definitively, unless I’ve already built, tested, and had my ICP working for a long period of time, and I I know it’s good, then I wanna start with open ended.
Got it. Okay. So you just send these all to, like, an inbox, where you can access them.
I’m guessing if they go straight to, say, the CEO’s inbox, he might not be active in pulling them to your Yeah.
So you’re gonna want there is some coordination that you’re gonna wanna do with the from name.
So you’ll see on that workbook, there’s a lot of different moving parts to this email. So the the copy is, like, that’s your first thing to get it going, but you’re gonna need to make sure that you have sign off from the person who’s going to be using their from name. Maybe you use a fake email address that’s from the real person and you send the CEO the best emails.
And your I use a qualitative research repository as my receptacle. So there’s a tool called EnjoyHQ, Dovetail, notably, Aurelius. There’s several of them several of them now. I send it all to a folder inside one of those tools.
Great. Okay.
Thank you.
There’s probably other ways to do it.
The only thing I like less than quant is figuring out how to use software. So there are ways to do it that or not this, but this is the one that works I have found that works the best and the easiest for me.
Cool.
Okay. I’m gonna keep going because we’re at step three, and I wanna make sure we get to get through everything. So thank you for sharing. This is awesome.
And like I said, you’re gonna generate tons and tons of responses. In almost every case, there are few limited ones where even tweaks won’t won’t help you too much. We can probably, we can still get other data points here. So step four.
So that leading indicator, you’re gonna say, like, they’re coming in. They they’re right in this switch moment. Then we’re gonna look at our lagging indicator. So this is where we’re going to talk to people who are already successful with us and kind of look back at how they made their decision.
So this is where we’ll do some jobs to be done documentary style interviews. So I chatted with Joe a little bit beforehand. I think you guys have some familiarity with it. Jobs to be Done is its entire own, master class series, so I’ll just hit some of the high notes here.
What I I use the jobs to be done, the job story artifact as the main artifact in an ICP. And the top of that artifact, you’re going to have a sentence that describes your customers, what we call their job story.
So their job story is when I am in a set of circumstances, give me a way to make some kind of progress so I can achieve some kind of outcome. And they’re all going to have this sort of story flow. Once upon a time, I was ahead of sales, and everyone was telling me all of these different things that I needed to do. And I couldn’t figure out who was on first, and I wasn’t meeting my quota. So I need a way to figure out how I can tell my team the single sales pitch to make or the couple of sales pitches to make So I can hit my quotas. I can hit my numbers. My team can all get their commissions.
Right? So we may have a job story come out something like that, and that’s what we’re we’re going to be driving towards here.
Lots of great resources on jobs to be done interviews if you haven’t done them before. I don’t have a a desi dedicated script I use for everyone. I mapped them out based on the category.
But I do have five questions here that I wanna share as an example of how to how to get good data.
First, I always wanna ask somebody about themselves and the role of the company. So much gold in there. I wanna know when they first signed up. I wanna know when they first started looking.
I wanna know what else they considered and what they liked about those other solutions. And I wanna know who else was involved in the decision. This will vary drastically. Like, I have one client.
There’s fifteen people involved in the decision. I’ve worked with others where it’s you’re selling to the buyer. Like, the buyer is the user.
So keep so there’s lots of ways to do it. The the important things to remember are how to, ask good questions to make make sure you get really good data and some just some do’s and don’ts.
I don’t know why I said just some do’s and don’ts, like diminutive as if it’s not, like, the the main takeaway for research. That was a weird thing I just did. So what you want to do is imagine you’re a detective or a documentarian. You are studying a thing that has already happened.
You want to know the moment when somebody switched, when they said, I can’t take it anymore. I gotta get something else, And that already happened. You wanna do that instead of imagining that you’re that they’re a fortune teller. Imagining you can say, like you you don’t wanna say, what would you do in the future?
Or do you think you would do this? Or blah blah blah blah blah. You wanna know what happened.
Another thing that you wanna do is focus on having questions that start with what, when, who, and how.
And there’s a lot of reasons for this, but there’s two main reasons to avoid why. Whether you are a student of linguistics linguistics, psychology, hostage negotiation, patriarchy, all of these systems as you study them, they will tell you to avoid the question why because it is very often accusatory, and it has this kind of accusatory note baked into it. So we wanna avoid it. The second reason is that it can be kind of hard to answer.
I like to give the example and I may have learned this one from Joe too. If we say, you know, why do you love your spouse? Oh, well, why do I love my spouse? Versus what do you love about your spouse?
Hopefully, there is a long, long list and you don’t stop talking until we shut you up. So we wanna make sure we’re asking these kinds of questions that are going to elicit good responses.
Do record the call. One thousand percent get consent and record the call. Do not trust your notes. This is one of the biggest beginner mistakes. I know you guys are learning all about VOC.
I also say if you’re talking to other people who have not done this, those low awareness colleagues of yours, make sure if they’re having calls, get them to record it. Expect it to take two to three months before the message really sinks in. Just keep just kinda keep reminding them. Hey. Thanks for the notes. Did you do you have a call? Whatever.
And then two other techniques I like to probe on general words. If someone says, well, it was just better, what does better mean? What about it was better, versus letting a throwaway word lie. You can’t use better in a in a headline.
That’s not gonna get you anywhere. And then recap and restate. So this is a great way to find, where you may have gotten it wrong and to elicit a response. So you may say, oh, okay.
I heard you say that you were, you had three different meetings in one day, and everybody gave you a different, thing they wanted you to sell.
Do I but you weren’t sure which of the people you should listen to. Do I have that right? And then your head of sales might say, well, actually, it was really the CEO told me to go talk to these people because the CEO didn’t know, and he wanted their opinions or whatever it is. So that gives you an opportunity to get someone to correct you while agreeing with you.
Do I do I have that right? Like, am I picking up what you’re putting down? You can say, oh, no. Not really.
It’s still, like, a kind of agreement type mechanism. Okay.
Step five.
Share as you go. So remember at the beginning, we talked about building our coalition. We talked about wanting to get that trust early on, bringing people in. And, someone I don’t remember who asked a question about this problem agreement evidence.
So you’re going to go through and do this research. You’re going to get evidence of other people’s problems, and you’re going to hear it. You’re gonna be able to share it with people. And And you know what you’re gonna get to say? You’re gonna get to say the three best words in the English language. It’s not I love you. It’s you were right.
Very, very few of us get to hear that in at home, at work, and you’re gonna get to hear that. Like, you’re gonna get to or people you’re working with will get to hear that from you, further endearing them to your cause. So I like to say you’re we’re doing less, like, launching the new iPhone. We’re not going off doing our engineering.
We would’ve built them. We would’ve given them a faster horse if we asked them what we wanted. We’re not doing that. We’re not up on stage.
We’re not separate. We’re a lot more Julia Child. Like, this is how I crack the eggs. Do you wanna taste some of this soup before I add add a little bit more salt in?
We are cooking together. We are involved in this. You’re the expert. You don’t wanna diminish your expertise, but you’re involving people, as you go.
And so there’s a lot of different ways that I like to do that.
My favorite, favorite, favorite thing is to take an interview that you’ve done, get a sixty to ninety second clip where somebody where the customer is talking about a pain point someone else cares about. So if I was working with this head of sales and I’m talking with a customer and that customer is like, you know, I thought you guys were, like, I thought you guys were a CRM, but then I started using you, and I couldn’t, like, I couldn’t do this one thing that is essential for CRMs.
Snip it, put it into the script audiogram, send it to the head of sales in a very casual, informal way. Hey. I heard remember that thing you were telling me the other day? Like, I just got off the phone with this customer. I think you’re gonna wanna hear this. And the reason for this, nobody wants to listen to an hour long interview. Nobody.
You we will do them only when we have an external or internal push to do so. I actually have this story of when I had there were some jobs to be done interviews sitting in the repo for a year that I knew I needed to listen to, but I didn’t listen to them until I found something in the data that said, oh, I gotta fix that. Where’s the data? Okay.
So and so did the research. I’m gonna go get it. So we need to give somebody a push. Ten hours of research, one hour of research, half hour call, this is a big ask.
But there is nobody who is going to hit say no to a sixty second clip that breaks up their day, gives them something really easy to listen to that says you were right.
So highly recommend it. Descript, there’s other tools. Descript is the I haven’t it’s the one to beat. So okay.
So you do all of this, and then what happens when you’re done? So you have all these steps. You’re building your coalition. You’re doing your quant research.
You’ve got your leading lagging indicators for qualitative research, and you’ve been sharing as you’re going.
So at the end, we’re not just getting a document, not just getting an artifact. So at the end, we’re getting a team of people who are bought in and want to see ICT succeed. Their awareness is higher. Their engagement with the work is higher. The how like, what’s in it for me? That’s a question that’s been answered answered months ago. They’re really they’re really with you there.
You’re getting a metrics informed ICP. So because you’ve been incorporating so much data in how you’re pursuing the people that you’re going to research, you’re going to get something that has a lot more data, like, grounding in data reality by the time you ship, and that’s gonna make so much of the work that comes later easier to ship.
So ICP, it’s not just an artifact. It’s something that can seem like, it’s an understanding. Like, it’s it’s not just a piece of paper that says this is who we sell to. It’s I know this is who we sell to, and I know what that’s like, and I know what it feels like. I have a qualia of it. So that that magic question email automation, that’s gonna keep building up your, database.
And then you’ll get that dynamic artifact ICP from your jobs research. And then most importantly, you’re gonna have a team of people who trust your ICP because they were a part of making it. It’s not just Thelma’s project. It’s Thelma and Louise’s ICP.
Everyone’s part of it now. It’s not just my thing. It’s our thing. So thus concludes your introductory crash course lesson, researching and mobilizing ICP.
Thank you so much. This was so fun.
What questions do you have?
I’ll start with you.
So good, Ali. Okay. Amazing.
I’m just so glad that I know that some people couldn’t make it today. I’m so glad that they’ll be able to watch this replay, and the documents you put together too. There’s just a lot of really good stuff here. Even things that are just like, are you saying lagging and leading indicator when you’re talking to a client?
Like, are you using the sorts of jargon? And I know it’s not just jargon. There’s so much more to it than what that. Yeah.
But when a CEO or CMO or anybody hears you use the right words, Your invoice gets paid. Right? You’re the person that knows what they’re doing. So Yeah.
I just love this for, like, introducing people more and more or, like, expanding on, the way that they already talk in organizations.
Yeah. So lots of good stuff here. Thank you, Ali. Yes. Does anybody have any questions for Ali today on ICP research? Or I want you to anything in particular to what we just saw?
No? How are we gonna go forward and use this? What do you think your clients would want to know from Ali if they were here?
That’s a different story. Yeah.
No? Are we good?
Yeah. I think there’s a lot to think about. Oh, Jessica is here. Okay. Jessica has, a question.
Feel free to play. Oh, Clara already asked her. That’s right. So, Jessica, come off mute.
Let’s hear your question. Normally, I would like a win first, but I feel like, I think, honestly, everybody is kind of, like, a little bit scared right now. Yeah. A lot.
Yeah. In a good way, though. Right? Like, there’s a lot of information downloaded on a very specific thing, that is so high value, and now they can go out and talk about this, but it’s, like, processing time.
That’s what I’m thinking of at least. Okay. So, yeah, that’s, Jessica, please.
Can you hear me okay?
Yes.
Okay. Sorry. I’m on the iPad again. Okay. So hi. Thank you so much. I I so I announced in our group last week that, I’ve shifted my business a lot.
So I’m moving away from freelance copywriting to building a book publishing agency. And so this has really shifted all the things because what normally I would go you know, all this focus on companies and, you know, teams and things like that, I’m starting to feel like it might focus a lot more on the thought leader themselves, and there may be a limited number of team involved if at all.
And so I guess I’m just kind of wondering what your thoughts are on how to really identify even the people I’m focused on even for step one. Because the one person that comes to mind for me is the person who wants to either write their book or get their book written and published and marketed and all that.
But I’m not sure, especially in the book writing stage, how much of their team will be involved. So I guess I’m again, all new. This is a very recent shift. So any insights you would have would just I’d really appreciate.
So you are you are starting a book publishing agency. Have you published any books yet, or you’re very, very early?
I’ve published books before, but since this shift in the agency in doing this, no. Not since then. K. We just closed the first.
You just closed your first Yes.
Project since shifting this bus to back to this. Yeah.
And if you had to describe the people who are the authors here, their thought leaders, and their team may or may not be involved in the authorship of the work that you publish?
Yes. I’m not I I haven’t encountered a situation where I would be working with the team, especially in the writing part of it.
Okay.
So your your an ICP can be an an individual.
Is there a reason why you’re feeling like you need to in include the your customer’s team or your client’s team?
No. I just in step one, when you had it broken down, I was like, okay. Well, obviously, the person we would be writing the book for, which is typically, like, the CEO, the founder, the person who wants to build up their authority, you know, that part.
But in terms of any other roles that might be involved, I’m not sure at this point, but if I were working on their marketing, then I could see team more involved. But I was just curious, you know, if yeah.
I was just trying to get any I know it’s a very niched, market I’m talking about.
But Okay.
Good. This is good good point of clarification.
So the people in that first section, like the CEO, your work desk, whoever it is, those are going to be people who are going to be part of the develop development of your ICP.
So when you are working, when you’re working on this agency, the people for you might be your editor in chief, whoever edits the books that come in, or maybe it’s the person who’s responsible for getting the manuscript from digital to paper form or working with the Amazon, some kind of coordination liaison. So you would be working internally with those folks. And then Yeah. If you need to be looking at your your client’s ICP, so the the ICP that they may have would more likely be for their readers if the product that they’re going to sell is a book.
So that would probably be how I would shift that. I it sounds like their team is probably not super significant here.
Yeah. That’s what I was thinking at first. Yeah. Okay. Perfect. Thank you. Sure.
Awesome. Yeah. It’s quite tricky when you’re figuring out something almost brand new. Like, in Jessica’s case, she has, of course, done lots of this work for other people before just over time, and now she’s, like, turning it into an agency.
But the people differ. You know? And it’s been years of doing this work, so, really tough to to figure out your I mean, this is a huge challenge. Right, Ally? Like, nobody easily lands on their ICP. Or do you know anybody who has?
No. No.
No. Just fully no. Yeah. Exactly.
I mean, maybe maybe maybe maybe people who had a very clear idea in mind before they started, like, the founder of American Girl Doll, I think, had the vision for that entire company, but those are so, so rare.
That’s true.
But I can tell you. Okay. So I’m actually doing jobs to be done research now on people who hire jobs to be done providers because I’m so curious about this. Yeah.
So, what I would say to you, Jessica, is I don’t I would go, like, do some interviews with people who’ve hired a publisher. Like, there’s the one that, what’s it called? I don’t know. Nine or two.
It’s I don’t know what it’s called. I think April Dunford used them.
Page two.
Page two. Okay. There’s a number. So I would go say, like, did you, you know, did you hire an publishing agency and do some interviews?
Find people who are making that switch to go from all just make an ebook or I’ll or, or, actually, I don’t even know what the switch they’re making it from. I shouldn’t make the assumption. I love this game. I’d love to guess what the research is gonna tell.
I am wrong. I’m right fifty percent of the time and way wrong fifty percent. So that that’s what I would probably do to to investigate that.
That’s so smart. I love it. Cool. Excellent. Ali, that was amazing. Thank you so much.
Where can people do you are you on Instagram people can, like, reach out if they have further questions or wanna learn more? Yeah.
Okay. So I’m on LinkedIn now. The other socials, not so much.
And I’m working now on getting a more detailed, like, building your coalition around buy in for jobs to be done, DOC, etcetera.
Yeah. Email, course and a more detailed workbook with a little bit more. So I don’t tell Joanna, but my email my business’s email is not really that great. So, so, anyway, I’m getting that all done. It’s alie blum dot com, and it should be done hopefully, hopefully, middle of August.
Okay. Alie bloom dot com. Well, pop that in there. Amazing. Cool. Thanks again so much.
Thank you.
Thanks from everybody, and we look for I look forward to seeing you again, hopefully, at some event we both planned at somehow. Yeah. Hopefully.
Me too. Yeah.
Cool. Alright. Thanks, everybody.
Have a good day.
Take care.
Thank you.
Bye. Bye.
Your Inner Authority (Part 3)
Your Inner Authority (Part 3)
Transcript
This is part three. Wrapping it up. And as I was, like, writing part three, I was trying to think of, like, the best trilogies in movie history.
Like I don’t know. What’s the best trilogy? Was, like, Batman a trilogy?
Yeah. That’s three. Yeah.
Pretty solid trilogy. Home Alone? Is that a trilogy?
Lord of the Rings.
Lord of the Rings, actually.
Lord of the Rings.
Yeah. That that is probably the best trilogy of all time. Yes. Agreed.
That’s where my mind went.
Yep.
Sweet. So, this is the third and final installment of DeepCraft and our authority, and this one’s all about how to use the scene, heard, felt framework to reveal pain, highlight natural urgency, and compel action. So as a recap, part one, which we did in February, there should be a replay somewhere, was all about deep voice of customer data, how to use three piercing questions to go beneath the surface and extract rich insight that your customers aren’t saying but want to say but don’t have the words to say, and you get to say them in your copy. Part two was shadow copy, how to balance virtuous and forbidden desire to elicit your prospects full range of the app. Yeah. I need this.
And then I think in April, we took a break and did something else, and now we’re wrapping up the trilogy. So recap. The inner authority is one who knows the prospect better than they know themselves, exposes, and illuminates that which the prospect is unable or unwilling to articulate or divulge, build stress and resonance through the whole damn, are you in my head phenomenon.
Four, make sure their one reader is fully fully seen, heard, felt on the page, or at least more seen and felt than any other competitor is willing or able to see them. So best way to make your prospect feel, seen, heard, and felt is to literally see, hear, and feel them.
So the mostly driven direct response copy will engage as many senses as they can to generate a reaction that moves a prospect towards action.
And we do this by painting scenes, like, literally seeing them, hearing, and feeling them in a very specific moment or type of moment that we’re gonna talk about in a second.
So before I get into all that, this is one of my all time favorite copy hacks. I guess I’ll call it a copy hack.
Especially if I’m getting tasked to write email email copy or ad copy on, like, a really short turnaround where, like, the client just, like, doesn’t care about due process or research. Right? Like, we need five emails and five ads by next week.
But, like, yeah, they they don’t care that it takes x amount of time to do research to the proper, like, mining and all this stuff. Like, they just need it done. So this is what I turned to because the research to generate this type of copy is minimal. It could be done in under an hour, and the results have gotten out of this kind of copy, especially on ads and sales emails that point to, pricing pages or application forms has been awesome. So, yeah, little hack if you have to write ads or emails on a really tight, timeline with kind of a minimum bible research phase.
So sensory dominance hierarchy. So I did a lot of, like, research on this and tried to find, like like, I’ve heard all, like, all these years. Right? Like, engage as many senses as you can and, like but which ones are the most important?
Like, not all senses, like yeah. Not all senses can be created equal. Like, people must be more dominant in a certain sense. And what I found, and I can’t find any sources.
Everyone just says this to be true. And, like, they’re quoting some, like, outdated journals that I’ve never heard of, but, essentially, comes down to seen, like, visual data seems to be the most universally strong and dominant sense followed by sound, so heard, and felt. So these are the three that I’m gonna focus on. Touch, taste, and smell, like, I’m very smell oriented, but for whatever reason, that ranks very low on the hierarchy.
So in my copy, I rarely talk about, like, the scent of a wafting candle in the next room, because yeah. I don’t know. Maybe I should talk more about scent and see who responds to scent. But seen, heard, and felt are the most dominant ones that I found in my research and that I tend to rely on most when it comes to writing copy.
So when when we talk about scene, I mean, literally, like, be seen. Like, where are they at? Place them as a character in a certain environment.
And, like, what they see, give a three hundred sixty degree view. Like, what are they seeing within that scene? What is the visual data that they are processing? So that could be facial cues from people in the room. That could be, like, what they’re seeing on a screen in front of them. It could be markups on a Google Doc if you’re a copywriter.
What is the visual data that they are processing and interpreting?
And with that, we get to see them and their experience. So this is where someone feels seen, when we actually see them where they’re at and see kind of through their eyes what they’re processing, what they’re interpreting, what they’re experiencing.
Next one is heard. So very similar. Like, what are the sounds in their environment? What are they processing auditorily?
So there’s that. And then there’s my favorite, which is their inner sound. Right? Their secret desires, their story making, their inner critic, like, just abusing them with nonsense all the time.
Like, what are they telling themselves? What are they hearing internally?
Then dialogue from key stakeholders. Right? What is their boss saying to them? What does their colleague saying to them?
What does their spouse saying to them? What does their child saying to them? What does their client saying to them? What is the dialogue that is being processed from the outside in?
This really makes good subject lines. I’m gonna show you that in a second in our example.
And when we do this, they get to feel heard in their experience. Right? So we get to mirror back what they’re hearing. We get to mirror back what their internal dialogue is as they interpret that environment, and then we mirror that back, and they get to feel heard almost in the same way as if they had shared that with a therapist.
And then felt is how they are reacting to the visual and the auditory data. Right? So they’re seeing stuff, they’re hearing stuff, and then they’re having an emotional or bodily or somatic reaction to it. So this could be feeling anxious, fearful, angry, sad, betrayed.
It could be somatic, feeling contracted, butterflies, burning with rage, and, essentially, what they are feeling in response to the visual and the auditory data. Is that clear? Like, I’m gonna stop for a second because I just, like, give a lot of information.
Cool.
Cool. Alright. So let’s move on.
Sweet. So your prospect is obviously seeing, hearing, and feeling in response to what they’re seeing and hearing a ton, right, a ton in their daily experience. So how do we choose the ones that are gonna be most effective in mirroring back in our copy? So what I what I essentially, like, bring this down to is moments of heightened receptivity or moment moments of highest tension, which I kinda be as interchangeably right now.
So a moment of heightened receptivity is a moment where your client or prospective client would be most receptive and most responsive to to an offer. So it’s where the stakes and the consequences associated with the problem or the gap are no longer bearable, no longer tolerable, and no longer avoidable. And it’s a very real moment. Right?
It’s a very real moment. Every prospect who has ever invested a good sum of money, right, has had a moment that triggered that purchase or triggered the need to seek a solution and overcome that problem. Almost universally, I haven’t found any case where this hasn’t been true, where there hasn’t been a moment that it could be anchored to where they decided this problem just can’t persist any longer or it’s reached this boiling point and something has to change. So this is a very real moment that your voice of customer and your voice of prospect data should be revealing.
So what I love about voice of prospect data and how I differentiate the two is voice of prospect data is the data you get before they’ve made the purchase. So they’re in that buying decision. They haven’t yet purchased and landed on, the post purchase. Thank you survey.
This isn’t an interview you do after the fact. This is them while they are considering that decision. So the classic, most obvious way to extract this is on a sales or demo call with a very simple opener. Right?
What was happening in your world? What was happening in your life that made you want to book this call? Right? And typically typically, a prospect at this point will give kind of, like, the placeholder that is the entry point to that moment of heightened receptivity, and a really good salesperson is gonna dig deep enough to really paint that picture.
Like, in part of where they were, what they were experiencing, and how that landed for them, and why that feels urgent and important. And I’m gonna walk you through an example, in just a second. So let’s get practical.
Step one is going to be to choose a moment a moment of heightened receptivity from your voice of prospect or your or your voice of customer data.
Step number two would be to take fifteen minutes to fill in that SHF data. So if you do audit sales calls, right, if you do audit demo calls, like, find that moment of heightened receptivity. Like, this is something you could be that could be done in client interviews that you’re relying on that. This is could be something that could be done in auditing sales calls. This is something I’ve even done in taking sales calls for a client. Like, when they had an overflow, I jumped on the phone to literally extract this data myself. So this is something you could get from a very from a variety of sources.
Once you have a moment of heightened receptivity, simply, like, unpack it on these three levels. Right? Like, during a moment of heightened receptivity, what are they seeing? What is in their visual field? What is the data they are interpreting visually?
During a moment of heightened receptivity, what are they hearing? What are the sounds? What is the inner dialogue? What is being said to them? And then finally, how are they reacting to that? So this is, like, a fifteen minute exercise to just really process the information coming out about my moment of heightened recitivy.
And then for that, we could craft an email or an ad.
So let’s look at an example.
Gonna get off this share.
So many windows, so many tabs.
Sweet.
Cool.
So this is one that I wrote for a client in the relationship space. So pulled I pulled the moment of heightened receptivity from the voice of prospect data extracted from a sales call. So this is a loose transcript from the sales call that I pulled it from.
So the salesperson essentially started, you know, what was happening in your life that made you wanna reach out, that made you wanna get on a call.
And this is pretty close to the verbatim that I heard from the conversation. So last night, I found found myself in bed watching Netflix on the iPad, and I effin’ hated it. I hated that I’m so resigned to intimacy even happening with my wife that this is just my routine, and I’ve accepted it and feel like there’s nothing else I can do to change at this point. Right?
So that puts us in a scene. Right? It gives us good data. And then a good salesperson or a good copywriter will ask for elaboration.
Right? So can you tell me more? Then the prospect got a little bit confused. He’s like, what do you mean?
Then the salesperson, like, can you be more specific? So this is a really good follow-up question to ask on sales calls, right, on, customer interviews. Just simple. Can you be more specific?
What were you watching? What was what happened as your wife walked into the room?
And then he elaborated. Like, I found this was funny. Like, I was watching Sons of Anarchy. I’ve never seen Sons of Anarchy, by the way. I don’t even know if it’s a good show.
And my wife came to What are you talking about?
Never seen it.
It’s a good show.
Yeah. I wanna see it now.
A good show. You should watch it. Yeah.
You could be on that. Right? I feel What?
Alright. Maybe.
I’m kidding.
Never seen it. I was watching scent of anarchy, and my wife came into the room, and I barely looked up. Like, very subtle data that communicates so much information about that pain. Right? And I don’t know why. I just felt like I didn’t wanna make eye contact and end up in a thing.
Salesperson, great question here. What kind of thing? Right? Like, what kind of thing? And that the conversation about where our marriage is going.
Is this for frequent conversation? Yeah. And it’s effing exhausting. Right? So this was all extracted in about a minute, a minute and a half of auditing a sales call.
Like, if you were writing an ad or an email for this client, do you think you can write something half decent with just this data?
Right?
Yeah. So other moments of heightened receptivity that I could draw from other emails and ads. Right? So, like, one thing I’ve noticed, there tends to be at least two or three or four, like, really strong moments of heightened receptivity, like, that come up in these types of calls.
Right? This is kind of like the late night argument version of it.
I audited a sales call, right, where he’s like, I downloaded the secret Tinder account, and I’m like, that’s a great subject line. I don’t know if it’s universally relatable, but you get so much good stuff out of just, like, auditing the first few minutes of a sales call. You don’t need to go through the full forty five minutes, hour long, hour and a half where they start getting into the offer specific details. Just hearing what motivated someone to get into a solution seeking state can give you all you need to craft really good emails and really good ads.
Step two, optional as we said. Right? Like, typically, once I have this data, I feel like I could just, like, go to the races and write. I don’t necessarily need to distill it into those three categories. But if you feel like that’s a useful part of your process, definitely take fifteen minutes, watch the scene in your mind’s eye, and just, like, fill in that extra commentary and, like, unpack, like, what are they seeing, what are they hearing, what are they feeling, And engage all three of those, within your email.
Step number three, craft it.
And this is what I love about, like, the what are they hearing, right, within the subject line. Like, where is this going? I think this got, like, one of the highest open rates this client got. Like, where is this going? It’s like those words that just anchor someone right in that scene.
And, yeah, I’ll do a quick read through, and you could just see how pretty much every line is mirroring back either the visual data, the auditory data, or the reaction and the emotional feeling as it relate as it relates to it. So at eight forty nine PM, it may have taken a double round of little blue truck, but you finally got kids to sleep. After a crazy ass day of working and child wrangling, you glance down at your iPhone clock anxiously debating whether you could squeeze whether you should squeeze out some cursory, check the box connection time with your wife or take solo comfort in a mini two episode max sense of anarchy binge vest, falling asleep to a chorus of Ron Perlman and one liners.
You offer Ron’s massive ass mug. He really has a big face. That’s what I noticed in my research. Like, the longest part of writing this email was, like, finding gifts, then realizing how big this man’s face was, and then, like, Googling Ron Perlman Young to see if he always had a big face or if, like, his face enlarged over time.
Manzo’s had a big face. What can you do?
Somehow, he triggered the less than rattling off the day stresses followed by a peck and a turn to the other side of bed that your connection time has become. Right? So all data here, right, of what they’re seeing. Two episode max, substance of anarchy, Ron Perlman, you know, his face, one liners. That’s, like, scene.
You glance down at your iPhone clock. That’s sight. That’s literally what they’re seeing. And then this is the reaction. Right? Anxiously debating whether you should squeeze out some cursory check the box connection time.
So, sight and then the feeling. Right?
We’re mixing in seen, heard, and felt.
Just as your nervous system self soothes to the iconic Netflix ta dum. So we have feeling and we have hearing.
The oak floors creak, that’s hearing. Your wife walks into the room, visual.
You don’t even need to see her face to know it ain’t good feeling. Right? So, like, one sentence, right, or, like, one line has a heard, a scene, NFL.
You barely look up. You know, the moment you do, you’re committing to an agonizing three hour where is this marriage going combo when you played out dozens of times over the last half decade of the guitar script. Then we go into the feeling each time running the same circuit of blame over unmet needs, frustration, over ongoing stagnancy, and errant tossing of emotional grenades over ancient wounds and resentments, or for you both concede to resolution via exhaustion, AKA a temporary peace treat until the next flare up. But this time, it somehow feels different, worse.
Instead of anger, you feel her sadness. Instead of fight, you feel failure, and part of you misses a version of one another that at least fought for your match to survive. It’s as if you’re each waiting for the other to deliver the final death blow, but you can’t say it. You can’t say anything.
You’re uncommitted in both directions, and you’ve been stuck hoping and waiting that your relationship would somehow just revive itself with itself, apply a defibrillator, but it hasn’t. Of course, it hasn’t. And now your wife with sadness in her eyes is asking you, where is this marriage going? Right?
So back to the herd and the same. If you don’t have an answer, that’s a problem. We should talk.
If you have an answer and it’s anything but a clear f, yeah, we’re heading into greater connection, deeper passionate, stronger commitment. That’s a problem. We should talk. If you’re holding so much blame, anger, and hostility that you don’t even want to offer her an answer because you can’t discern what’s even true for you anymore, That’s a problem you should talk. But most of all, if deep down, you know, she deserves the best of you, and there’s just been a wounded part of you unwilling to offer it, but you’re willing to do whatever it takes to step up, show up, and reignite what’s possible for you and your wife, then we got a spot on our account with your name on it. Right. So this is what’s possible, like, in just getting the moment of heightened receptivity.
Like, you don’t need Mattell’s data to write an email that has someone, like, fully seen, heard, and felt in a critical moment of heightened receptivity where they would do anything to solve it. So that’s what I got. Opening to questions, comments, feedback, and up your views if y’all have anything you want feedback on.
Yeah. I oh, go ahead.
I was gonna say, do you have, like, a specific order that you try to get them in?
Because it sounds like you try to rotate them.
Within the email itself?
I like to start I like to start with seen just because, like, it’s a really easy way to anchor them into it.
But other than that, it’s just kind of how I process and play out the scene as I write. But yeah.
Good question. I think starting with site tends to, like, anchor the scene really well.
Yeah. It’s kind of like a stupid comment, but I I’ve had, like, a question in my head for, like, years about because, like, your copy is very specific, and I kind of aim for that standard of, like, specificity.
But then sometimes I feel like my copy is too specific or, like and it’s not working. And I always wondered, like, what’s going on? But I think from doing that, I’ve kind of just sussed it. It’s like, you pick, like, a universal problem, and then you get specificity rather than just doing a specific problem because then it’s like then you can alienate people. If you pick universal problem and then get specific, like, you’re not gonna alienate people. I’m just very pleased I’ve just solved that because I’ve been like, what’s going on here for ages?
Wait. Are you doing that again, Harry? I’m not sure I followed that.
Okay. So, like, choose the universal the universal problem, like, the most common So if you’re, like, surveying mining or something and then you’ve got the problem that comes up the most and then get really specific within that problem rather than just going for, like, a specific problem.
Because then it can feel too specific and then the client could be like, oh, like, people don’t think this. But if you if you choose the general problem and then add specific details and it adds that, like, color and depth.
And it’s isn’t gonna make people think, oh, well because no one’s gonna be like, oh, I don’t watch Sons of Anarchy. That doesn’t, like, apply to me. But they might but if it’s a specific problem that they don’t feel, then you can alienate them. Does that make sense?
I think so.
I mean, why would explain it better?
I I think, like, the simplest way I could put it, right, is, like, any, like, any so the audience for this was, like, men in marriages. Right? And the main problem it fixes is, like, disconnection and numbness. Right?
So it’s like any man who is feeling disconnected and confused and not sure what to do will relate with the man in that scene, right, regardless of the specifics of it, regardless of whether or not he actually, like, sons of anarchy or not. Like, he knows what it’s like to like, there are some details he’ll pick up on. Right? Like, the averting the gaze.
Right? Averting the eye contact is not wanting to engage in that space or not knowing how to. So it’s like yeah. Essentially, he can see himself in that man’s shoes because they share the common ground of the core problem, if that makes sense.
I have another question.
Yep.
So I I think that filling in a lot of these details is possible in a more b to c space. But, again, like, for example, one of I think I brought up this copy a couple of times. This company I’m working with is called Novena. They do AI powered, health care.
Mhmm.
And they’re dealing with, like, health care organization.
Not like a doctor, a nurse, like an office, like the management organizations Mhmm.
Of health care providers.
Like, how do I go about filling in the sensory details in that kind of client when those kind of details are not things that you’ll find on a sales call? And it’s so far removed from my daily life. Like, where do I go without even starting to look for those kind of details?
Right. Like, who is the ultimate, like, decision maker?
Like, of Like, care management groups that, like, deal with health care regulations and, like, payers, insurance, things like that.
Like, they’re managing either hospitals, like, different hospitals and, like, hospital chain or, like, a bunch of, like, a a bunch of physicians that are part of, like, a physician care group.
Yep. Yeah. So, I mean, I’ll acknowledge. Right? Like, there are limitations. You probably can’t tell that same type of story in that context.
Most likely not. Right? Like, I think that you do run into challenges with clients being comfortable with a full on kind of, like, story and immersion into that kind of case.
Where there is where there is, like, clarity on what the, you know, the main purchaser, right, is experiencing as it relates to solving that problem. I think injecting some of those details is is useful. Right? Like, I don’t know what the specific experience is of a moment of heightened receptivity in that buying decision. But if you can even just, like, reflect on, like, what is the tipping point that moves them towards consideration here. Right? Like, is does something actually happen that triggers a we need to fix this or we need to seek a solution here?
Then you can bring that in. Right? Like, in a obviously tone down way, but there’s still probably a moment that triggers a buying decision, likely.
Yes. I think one of the issues, though, is in a lot of really complex b two b solutions, the person who has the pain point is not the person making the decision. So in this case, the doctor is the one feeling the pain because the pain point is they have a lot of patient records to read through before they see a patient. And they don’t have time to go through it all, and they don’t have the, they oftentimes miss important details. But the person buying it is the person managing those positions, and they might have been a position themselves at one point, but now they’re in more of an administrative role.
And so Right.
Yeah. Do they have, like, challenges in managing those positions or serving those positions, like, because of the physician stress? Does it kinda, like, bleed over?
Yeah. So it’s a lot about, like, making sure that they’re getting that they’re they’re having good care and a lot about, like, how they interact with insurance if they’re on more of a value based model, meaning that they’re being paid based on the outcome of the patient as opposed to, just a fixed amount, then they wanna make sure that they are going through all of these records and things like that.
Yeah.
So it’s a lot about being efficient and optimizing workflows and Mhmm. Avoiding time wastage.
Right. And they there’s a cost to them when the physicians are inefficient. Right? Like, some of that moves through. Yeah. So, like, they have yeah.
Patients aren’t being healed. Mhmm. Things like that. I mean, this is just one example, but I Mhmm. Like, it’s also relevant for lots of different examples.
Yeah. So, like, if you could identify, like, you know, the two or three biggest motivators. Right? Like, if it’s, like, inefficiency, for example, inefficiency or, like, reduction of quality of patient care. Right? That’s, like, two of them.
Mhmm.
And if you can almost highlight, like, two or three scenarios for each of those two that they would be hearing, seeing, and feeling, right, like, either as a complaint, right, or a lawsuit or a reduction of billings, like, whatever that translates to. Mhmm. I think that there’d be an opportunity to craft, like, tone down versions of this email around that. Right?
Mhmm. Like, especially if the buyer of this is in contact with the doctor or the physician and maybe the physician is communicating some of that stress to them, and they don’t have a solution to it, right, other than, like, keep going. Right? Like, do your best.
Right? Like, I don’t know how that plays out.
Mhmm. But I can only imagine there are stressful scenarios for both the buyer and the position they serve here. Right? And, like, just highlighting some of those without being too excessive in the scene painting, could go a long way.
Okay. Yeah. I mean, I definitely include those kind of elements. But, like, I wish I could include more sensory details, like, bring in what the office looks like or who they’re meeting with. And I just I am so far removed from that world.
I Mhmm.
Would be embarrassed to even venture a guess. Especially, like, I remember when I was working in house, like, I would collect these anecdotes, like, after over a long period of how like, over six to twelve months, you could collect a lot of anecdotes to sort of create that picture in your head.
Mhmm.
But, like, if you’re just going into a project, it’s hard to sort of absorb that in an organic way.
Yeah. Understandable.
Is there kind of, like, a standard system that they use, like, visually? Like, are things being processed through, like, you know, a common system? Like, where things are signaled as being inefficient or, like, how do they know something’s inefficient other than, like, the feeling of it?
Like, is it in the reduced billings and a report at the end of the month?
Like Yeah.
Yeah.
There would be issues with payments and Mhmm.
Doctors would be burned out. That’s a big one. Doctors would not wanna there there would be a lot of turnover.
So so, like, a missed payment, like, that’s where I would dig. Like, what is, like, what is the experience of a missed payment? Is, like, an is it an email notification from, like, x payment processor system? Like and they get that on their phone or they get that, like, at the office, and then they have to like, that would be a moment, for example.
Mhmm.
Yeah.
So yeah. Sometimes. So yeah. Obviously, like, obviously, like, familiarity and the more conversations you have with it, the easier it gets. And there are certain limitations when, like, you’re newer to that world and not a lot of people are interacting with you about these details, and there’s not a lot of opportunity to get them.
Mhmm.
But, yeah, where where you do have the ability to, like, ask those probing questions. Right? Like, so much can come out of it. Right?
Like, what does that what does inefficiency actually look like? What does that moment it signals to you? Right? Like, and have you feel in that moment.
Yeah. I love the idea of the notification on your phone. I just like, the client is also a marketer, and so Yep. They’re not as familiar with it.
And Mhmm. These people are pretty high up in their career ladder, so they’re not, like, people who would be really readily available to just casually jump on a call. And customer success is not always willing to let you jump on a call with them. Right.
So but, like, I like that idea, but I feel like I might have to find other sources to sort of validate that kind of language.
Right.
Yeah. I would start with, like, what’s most within reach. I think, like, the visual would would be the easiest. Right?
Because you don’t really need to go too deep into their personal experience of how did you react to that. Like, you can kind of fill in the gaps. Right? Like, if they’re getting a notification of a missed payment or whatever, like, it’s a pretty universal experience of how that feels, right, to the end user.
So, yeah, just, like, get that data. Right? Like, are they checking it on their phone, on their lunch break, and that pings them? Like, does that warrant a conversation with, like, the office manager or the head phys like, I don’t know enough about that industry to fill in those gaps, but, yeah, I feel like, some light digging might yield some pretty cool results.
Okay.
Cool. Jessica, I see your hand up.
I was just getting in line for a copy review, if that’s okay.
Yeah. That’s cool.
For sure. Any other questions about the topic before we jump into Jessica’s review?
Sweet. I think that means you’re up.
Okay.
So, Ry, I don’t I don’t know, if you’ve heard, but I was kinda shifting. You know, I was focusing on seasonal sales, holiday sales?
Mhmm.
Yeah. Red thread. Okay. So as that kind of, was explored deeper, I redid my home page, all the things, then it kinda became more of a helping ecommerce brands on the either other side of the discount.
Like, once they’ve acquired a client through a discount, what do we do? Because we can’t may we can’t create loyalty with a discount. Right? Mhmm.
And so and then it kinda became, the phrase for my, hopefully, future podcast newsletters, ditch the discount. And not to say never do discounts, but be more strategic.
Mhmm.
And so but my big thing is I’d like to build, ideally, a more email funnel, SMS funnel, service package through, you know, the intensive Joe’s teaching, the standardized project and the retainer. So my goal is to create, like, the email program audit, and that’s what I’ve actually done for a couple brands now, and then retainer being the optimization, especially of their flows. So just so you kind of have context of what I’m kinda building now. And Abby kind of helped me through my home page website.
And, I just that’s what I wanna share. And, Naomi, by the way, I was just saying, I I believe that you’ve done interviews. I was just saying that that for me, when I was working at my my Utilizer, that was where I got all my stuff. I didn’t mean to say you weren’t doing it. That was that was just my comment. Okay. So, anyway, here’s my home page.
Yes, please feel free to be as brutal as whatever. But the ultimate I don’t know. We did, like, a fast rewrite, and I just I walked away going, well, it’s better than my seasonal sale focused version, but I still don’t think as I go through it. I’m like, do they know what I do? Do they know what the next step like, I’m I really stripped back. I took my services page off and all that, and I just really wanna focus on let’s optimize the home page, and then I’ll go from there. So that’s kind of what I’m looking for is help with making this better so that they know what I do and know the next step, which would be a call with me, essentially.
Cool. Alright.
Let’s go through it.
Sweet. DTC and ecommerce brands. I’ll read in my head so it’s not annoying.
If anyone has a comment as I go through this, feel free to just jump in.
Do you have a picture of yourself where you’re facing to the right? Because I feel like if you had well, I think number one, if this image was slightly larger, it might feel a little bit more balanced because I feel like there’s a lot of empty space here at the top.
Or maybe even if the text was on the left and the picture’s on the right.
Because I feel like having the text in the middle and the picture on the right feels a little bit imbalanced because the empty space on the left.
So that might help make it a little bit more like, fill up the space more.
Did you catch that, Jess?
I did. I’m just it’s cool. Yeah. I I appreciate that. Know that it’s not really, it’s funny that you bring that up because Abby and I Abby, was that not on the left side of the thing the person you’re like, And we were like, yeah.
It’s better than the central. But the problem also is me figuring out Squarespace and spacing. Because if you put this on a different size window or on a different, a different device, you will see something almost totally different. So, yeah, I know that, but it’s it’s not my priority right now.
But, yeah, I mean, it’s on the notes of things to do eventually. I’m sure.
Yeah. I mean, I think the text is fine in the middle. It just with the image. It might need a maybe maybe just leave the image off.
Yeah. Just a lot.
So it’s your, like, ideal client over five million?
Yeah. That was, that’s kind of what I found is that if they don’t make at least five million in annual revenue, it’s it’s not an ideal client who would invest in me.
Cool.
Jessica, this is I know, like, it’s really difficult because we’ve we’ve just kind of been guessing that, like, for a client over five million, like, do they still want more sales? Is that still, like, the thing that they want?
Like, it it seems like a really silly question, but I don’t know. I’m just wondering now with the like, you want more like, you need more sales. Like, is that is that still what they’re trying to to do?
Like As opposed to what?
Exactly. I don’t know. Like, to build more profit, more profitability. I don’t know.
Well, we said sales. I think you and I talked about changing it, but, I mean, ultimately, the biggest challenge with this group that I’ve interacted with and then done, of course, more research on is, that email channel specifically is not generating the revenue they feel it should Mhmm. And especially from the flows. Like, I’ve heard I’ve had a a client and then a couple leads and then just researched their where usually, they can’t this big shocker, their campaigns, they’re not too unhappy with their campaigns because guess what they lead with, a discount, or it’s a holiday or whatever.
But it’s their flows, their automation.
Leave it that then, like, rather than needing more sales? Because I guess if they need more sales, they can just, like, increase the ad spend if they’re at, like, five million or whatever. Maybe just maybe lead with, like, literally what you just said about the email flows. I don’t know.
And I know this is really annoying because I’ve we’ve been over the phase together, and I’m adding something new. But I just missed that bit about over the five million mark, and now I’m yeah. I don’t know. I’m just curious.
You might be able to talk about scaling because meeting sales means like, in my mind, that means, well, I’m desperate for sales where once you get to a certain point, it’s not that you desperately need them. It’s that you’re looking to put things on autopilot. You’re looking to make things more efficient. You’re looking to optimize things. So it’s wanting more scale wanting more sales, but wanting them, in a way that’s scalable.
No. I think that’s that that’s a great how does that hit with you, Ry? Because I definitely saw, the word scale, scaling, and the other versions of it in, VOC research.
Mhmm.
So why does that hit you with opening that as opposed to just generally the word sales?
Scaling is stronger than more sales, I think, for this audience, especially if you’re really targeting people who are already over five million, and they’re probably looking to scale sustainably.
Right? And the margins are a really big part of that, I’m guessing.
Like, would that be accurate?
Oh, yeah. Definitely. Yep.
I think so so that’s one way to lead in. Another way to lead in would be, like, obviously, like, this pain point. So it’s like, how strong is the pain point in their VOC of, like, the discounting? Is it something that they really, really hate and it’s a necessary evil, or is it something that you think they hate? Like, how much are they talking about, like, dreading discounting?
Oh, that’s a really good point.
Like, I know you hate discounts for them. Right? But how much are they like like let’s say, like, it’s Monday morning after their, like, Mother’s Day promotion. Right? Yeah. And they’re putting the numbers on the screen, like and it was, like, great sales volume, like, poor margins. Are they complaining about the margins there, or are they just happy with the volume?
Like So the meetings I’ve been in on, it’s celebrate celebrate the win of whatever was the latest promotion.
Mhmm.
And then it it almost in between the promotions is talking about retention.
So, like, we talk about cause. We talk about that a little bit maybe in the in betweens.
But when we’re talking about post sale Mhmm.
It’s pretty rare that I’m in on a Trevani a long time. It was pretty rare that you’d come off of a a promotion and go, oh, crap.
But how are we gonna keep these people? And, they were they didn’t seem to be obsessing about the discount. They were celebrating either the win or the not, I guess, the not.
Mhmm. Yeah.
I didn’t So yeah.
And it’s an important note. Right? Like Yeah. With that that retention, like and without, like, actually getting nondiscounted sales after that customer’s been acquired, like, they’re not gonna grow. Right?
Right.
One thing comes to mind is, like, a really kind of more of an unconventional format as a headline. Like, you could take it or leave it that might capture that. Right? It’s like what was it?
You know, great news. Like, great news. Our, yeah, great news. Our mother can’t mother to stay campaign crushed, you know, bringing in over x.
Bad news. Our margins were thinner than a next gen iPad. New app. Right?
Now we got now what what now what do we gotta do? Essentially, like, be the third one, which is, like, how do we increase our LTV? How do we retain them? How do we get repeat sales at higher margins? Right? Like, if that’s the scenario you fix of, like, they’re flush full of, like, new customers that have been discounted.
The margins are thin. They’re aware of it, and now they have this opportunity of needing to maximize, right, repeat purchases, nondiscounted purchases, and the email flows that support it. Like, I think that could be a really cool way to drop into the conversation.
So how would you because that’s always been a disconnect for me is making sure it’s really clear that when I talk about that, that I then is it clear? Or how do I make it clear that and the solution is your email and SMS marketing, not basically any like, I’m not gonna do ads. We’re not gonna talk. I’m not I’m not gonna do I’m not diving back into the ads. So is that how do I make sure that connection is clear?
I mean, it’s clear here.
Okay. Alright.
Mhmm. Okay. Good email strategy and conversion copy.
Email strategy and conversion copy. I mean, I maybe have SMS here, right, if that’s a big part of what you do and a big part of what they know they need.
Yeah. Okay.
SMS may mean more to them than conversion copy. I’m not sure.
Like Mhmm.
Good point.
That creates repeat customers so you can boost your revenue. Do you have, like, special IP names for your, like, email frameworks or your SMS flows?
Or No.
I did for my seasonal sales, but, no, I haven’t created something. But I that’s a great you’re right. I need that.
What would you do with it since you were thinking of it?
Oh, I mean, I would just, like, note that here. Right? Like, if you had a different term for email strategy or a different term for, like like, ex SMS type flow. Right? Like, your branded SMS flow. Right?
Okay.
Like, it would be too much of a mouthful to say, like, post discount purchase SMS flows. Right? Like, I don’t know. But I think, like, what I’m hearing you do, right, is, like, you maximize everything out of these discounted customers. Right? And you do that. So it is kind of like a post seasonal sale strategy.
Is that correct?
Yeah. It’s the, yes. Exact yeah. Either seasonal sale or some form of a promotion, but yeah.
So that moment of heightened for them really is, like, analyzing their seasonal sales data, being hyped about, you know, you know, the top line kind of meh about the margins and our team, let’s maximize it. Like, I would really enter the conversation there and then talk about how you fit into that post seasonal sales flow.
Okay. Yeah. Because it really anchors it to a very specific use case. Right? Like, you’ve had this win, now you have this opportunity. Right? Or you’ve had this win, this is what you sacrificed to get the win, but this is how you make it up and then some.
Okay.
Wait. Can I have a I have a question? How how focused are they on the margins?
Because I know, like like, if you’re I I don’t know anything about ecommerce, but I know in SaaS, like, there was a big, big shift when the market crashed when, like, twenty twenty one, the only thing anyone talked about was growth, and no one could possibly care about how much marketers were spending.
And now the only thing everyone cares about is profitability.
But if you had said like, if I were to say you should hire me because I’ll help you make your campaigns more efficient, like, no one would care.
But, like, if that’s the case, then it would be more help like, my strategy would be to go in and, like, introduce a little bit of doubt. Like, try to start by almost waking them up to the problem.
Like, what, like, you’re you’re celebrating these wins. That’s what you said. But there’s, like, a creeping doubt in the back of your mind that this growth is is not as profitable as it could be or this growth is happening only because, you’re putting a lot of money into it.
Is that clear? No? Yes?
I think I’m pausing before I respond because I’m thinking about what you just said. Yes. Profitability and, profit margins are important to ecommerce for sure. It’s also why I can’t work with certain brands because the the profit margins are just too too small.
So, yeah, I mean, that’s definitely a conversation.
At the top of their mind, or are they just, like, celebrating these wins and not thinking about the margins?
No. If there if there’s someone at the level that I’m speaking to, yeah, they’re paying attention to it.
Okay. Makes sense.
Do you have, like, data even if it’s, like, an estimate of, like, the average profit margin of your ideal client and, like, where they’d like to be? Or is it or does it vary too much from company to company?
I don’t think I have a no. I don’t have a well, obviously, I’m pausing. So, no, I don’t have that a solid statistic. But you’re that’s a good point.
Mhmm.
Yeah. I don’t think you need to define it. Right? I think, like, as as long as you call it out, right, like, you have a win of your volume, you have an l, right, and the margins you had to accept by discounting, and now you have an opportunity to make up for it and experience, like, true growth. Right? Mhmm. Yep.
So, like, I think that’s I think that’s the sales argument. Because when you really think about, like, what your ideal client is experiencing, like, what is true about them? They are experiencing a win in volume sales, right, from discounting, and they’re experiencing the need for, yeah. Exactly what you do. Right? More sales, nondiscounted.
K.
Cool.
Your email list isn’t responding to your discount heavy designed heavy emails.
So depending on what you do with the headline, right, like, it may change Oh, yeah.
The section. Yeah.
It’s yeah. It’s gonna change.
Mhmm. Cool.
But the tough part for me on that one is, that is directly from an ideal client. But yeah.
I mean, that’s why they invested so big. It was our email channel. We figured out the ads game. We’ve figured out the other stuff.
Our email channel is not generating the revenue it should, and we’re tired of leaning on our discounts and our image pretty images. And we wanna go and they were the ones who said, like, copy first. And, you know, so it was and it’s a nine figure plus business, pet meds. I mean, it was just that was from an ideal client is, like, guessing.
Yeah.
Yeah. So it depends on the conversation you wanna have. Right? Like, it depends on, like, how you wanna orient the sales conversation based on why you feel they would hire you.
Like, this definitely makes sense in a broader context.
And if we’re and if we’re gonna operate from, like, the conversation of, like, you’ve had a win, You accept it, and now now let’s make good on it. Then I would continue the conversation on you could agitate it. Right? That could be an option. Or you can move straight into, like, your process of of, like, you know, making good on what do we do after you’ve had a boatload of sales from your discounted push. Right? Yeah.
And then kind of bridge into Oh god.
Don’t worry. I hate that section. Hate that section.
Alright.
Well, we like, Farna’s whatever lesson, and I hate the intro of that.
Now now I can’t not read it. You understand?
It’s the first lines. But, hey. You’re here. I’m am here. Like, who the hell talk like that? I don’t talk like that. Like, stupid.
Am I right? Am I right? Yeah.
This is oh, painful. I can’t even stand you’re looking at it and recording this.
It’s on the record.
Jess wrote, am I right? Record.
Like, you should unlock a badge for the usage of am I right? Like, unlock a new level. Hey. Hey, Sam. Sam’s eyes. What is those eyes?
Like He has piercing eyes.
They’re Actually, when he’s not smiling.
How did you get a testimony from Sam? I didn’t know you had that.
The intensive.
Gotcha. Nice.
Thank you, Andrew, for the comment. I appreciate that.
Cool. Does that give you some enough insight for today, like, to work with and to consider?
Yeah. That’s fine. That’s great.
Thank you.
Awesome.
Thank you all. I appreciate it.
Cool. Cool.
Alright. We are at the hour. So if anyone has to jump off, that is totally cool. Does anyone have any questions or things they urgently needed reviewed?
If so, I’m happy to stick around. So, hi, Andrew.
Could I ask one Oh, oh, oh, you’re I thought you were waving goodbye.
Oh, sorry.
Yeah.
Can I ask one question? You need to keep it running on if not.
But, yeah. So, this is kind of touching back on what we were talking about before, and there was, I think Abby wrote in chat, you know, she wrote, this is why I hate writing for SaaS. How do how do you add dollar and d m l to optimizing workflows?
And so that’s, like, my whole, that’s, like, everything I work with is b to b SaaS and tends to be, like, really technical products, like, data heavy stuff where all the people buying it have, like, data in their title and stuff like that. Mhmm. And something that I struggle with is that as I’m researching the the client, like, all of their materials are written in this, like, very academic language. Everything is optimized, accelerate analytic productivity, this and that. And as I research, I find myself almost getting, like, sucked into that a little bit. And at some point, I go, oh, I get why they came up with this because this is, like, the most accurate summary of what it is. Right?
And they couldn’t they couldn’t find out what it wasn’t a human and specific way to say that that’s, like, completely accurate or something like that.
So I I guess I’m just wondering if you have any tips for how to, not drink the client my client’s Kool Aid. And and then the other thing is that the BOC is like that too because then they go, okay. We really wanna try to, like Mhmm. Like, even the voice of the customer is not always very human.
How to not drink the client’s Kool Aid. I mean, I’ve I’ve drank the client’s Kool Aid and then hated whatever and after the fact. It’s really convincing. Right? Because they’re so authoritative in their Kool Aid, and they’re serving a bit Kool Aid.
So I think, like, the most practical thing I could offer, right, is to not necessarily try to, like, rewrite every aspect of the offer and what it does in more human language, but, like, choose a very specific scenario in which the use case is, like, needed, like, when they know they have the problem. Right? So it’s like like, I mean, taking the example. I know, obviously, like, coaching is very different from SaaS.
Right? But, like, is there a moment when they their workflows were broken? Is there a moment when a project fell through the cracks? Like, if you’re selling project management software, right, it’s like, you know, what are they hearing?
Like, is this done yet? Like, question mark. Like, where is this? Question mark. Like, what is a product manager saying as a follow-up, and then what’s the oh, shit moment?
Right? So it’s like you’re not gonna be able to necessarily capture the entire marketing message, but can you capture a moment in which the software you’re selling would be a solve for it. Right? And just, like, see if that hits and if that resonates, especially on the email or the ad level.
Yeah. That that works. Yeah. That works. And I’ve seen it done well. So I yeah.
Yeah. The email and the ad level are, like, the easiest places to try to, like, weave this in and test it out. Obviously, obviously, landing pages and sales pages that are more static are more difficult.
So, yeah, I I like testing things out in email and ad scenarios where, like, yeah, you have a little bit more leeway.
Cool. Good job. Alright. Thank you.
Sorry to hear that.
Wait. Can I ask one more question, please?
Yeah. Of course.
I meant to ask this earlier, and I totally forgot. What I really like that you do, you do such a good job of coming up with, like, metaphors, And I forgot the one in the example.
Automatic or self operating defibrillator, I think, was Oh, yeah. Was when you Self self applied defibrillator.
Yeah.
And there was another one that you used. I don’t even remember the email. It was ages ago that I read it, and you used the phrase diabetic fruit fly to describe, like, a computer charger, like an old computer. And, like, that I don’t even remember what the rest of the email was about, but that phrase stuck with me. And I haven’t been able to come up with metaphors that are, like, kitschy like that, but, like, actually descriptive and not over the top.
I was wondering if you have, like, how you come up with those, if you have a process or Gosh.
Like, I I have a process for, like, not writing white noisy ones. Right? Like, I do have an aversion to, like, if I write a metaphor the first time and I’m like, I’ve seen that a million times before, like, I will, like, not include that intentionally.
How to come up with the good ones, like so there there’s an orientation towards, like I wanna put something on the page that no one’s read before, like, a combination or a string of words that no one’s read before, and there’s a really real strategic reason. Right? That is reader engagement. That’s some kind of, like, being tuned in to the message. And Right. So, like, how do I actually come up with them?
Just kinda like my brain works in a really strange way. It’s like, I don’t know why I’m thinking of diabetic fruit flies. I really don’t. Like, I’m concerned that my brain goes there.
I used to read so many screenplays, and, like, screenwriters get really crafty in describing scenes.
Like like and you could probably still find a lot of screen screenplays out there. Like and I wouldn’t read classic ones. I’d read the ones from, like, up and coming writers. Right?
Like, I think the blacklist is, like, a really good source for that. I don’t know if it still exists, but, like, yeah, that’s typically where I picked up, like, language patterning is because, like, they’re trying to impress agents. They’re trying to be interesting. They’re trying to be engaging.
Right? And they just come up with, like, really cool and interesting ways of saying things, and it just kind of repatterns, you know, how I think about things at least.
But, yeah, I’d say, like, there’s an intentional orientation around not being white noisy, not being boring, challenging certain ways of saying things. And sometimes that happens on the first pass. Sometimes that comes when I’m rereading it a second or third time and be like, this would be a cool way of saying that. So yeah.
I wish there was a formula. Maybe there is a formula, and I just haven’t discovered it yet.
Maybe I’ll try reading more screenplays.
Yeah.
Cool.
Struggle bus. Gosh. I’ve never talked about the struggle bus.
Ton every sales page for entrepreneurs. Yeah. It’s true.
Cool. Awesome. Any other, questions, comments, or we’re feeling good and complete for today?
Awesome. Well, thanks for your time, everybody. Catch you all soon. Take care.
Thanks, Roy. See you.
Bye,
Worksheet
Worksheet
Transcript
This is part three. Wrapping it up. And as I was, like, writing part three, I was trying to think of, like, the best trilogies in movie history.
Like I don’t know. What’s the best trilogy? Was, like, Batman a trilogy?
Yeah. That’s three. Yeah.
Pretty solid trilogy. Home Alone? Is that a trilogy?
Lord of the Rings.
Lord of the Rings, actually.
Lord of the Rings.
Yeah. That that is probably the best trilogy of all time. Yes. Agreed.
That’s where my mind went.
Yep.
Sweet. So, this is the third and final installment of DeepCraft and our authority, and this one’s all about how to use the scene, heard, felt framework to reveal pain, highlight natural urgency, and compel action. So as a recap, part one, which we did in February, there should be a replay somewhere, was all about deep voice of customer data, how to use three piercing questions to go beneath the surface and extract rich insight that your customers aren’t saying but want to say but don’t have the words to say, and you get to say them in your copy. Part two was shadow copy, how to balance virtuous and forbidden desire to elicit your prospects full range of the app. Yeah. I need this.
And then I think in April, we took a break and did something else, and now we’re wrapping up the trilogy. So recap. The inner authority is one who knows the prospect better than they know themselves, exposes, and illuminates that which the prospect is unable or unwilling to articulate or divulge, build stress and resonance through the whole damn, are you in my head phenomenon.
Four, make sure their one reader is fully fully seen, heard, felt on the page, or at least more seen and felt than any other competitor is willing or able to see them. So best way to make your prospect feel, seen, heard, and felt is to literally see, hear, and feel them.
So the mostly driven direct response copy will engage as many senses as they can to generate a reaction that moves a prospect towards action.
And we do this by painting scenes, like, literally seeing them, hearing, and feeling them in a very specific moment or type of moment that we’re gonna talk about in a second.
So before I get into all that, this is one of my all time favorite copy hacks. I guess I’ll call it a copy hack.
Especially if I’m getting tasked to write email email copy or ad copy on, like, a really short turnaround where, like, the client just, like, doesn’t care about due process or research. Right? Like, we need five emails and five ads by next week.
But, like, yeah, they they don’t care that it takes x amount of time to do research to the proper, like, mining and all this stuff. Like, they just need it done. So this is what I turned to because the research to generate this type of copy is minimal. It could be done in under an hour, and the results have gotten out of this kind of copy, especially on ads and sales emails that point to, pricing pages or application forms has been awesome. So, yeah, little hack if you have to write ads or emails on a really tight, timeline with kind of a minimum bible research phase.
So sensory dominance hierarchy. So I did a lot of, like, research on this and tried to find, like like, I’ve heard all, like, all these years. Right? Like, engage as many senses as you can and, like but which ones are the most important?
Like, not all senses, like yeah. Not all senses can be created equal. Like, people must be more dominant in a certain sense. And what I found, and I can’t find any sources.
Everyone just says this to be true. And, like, they’re quoting some, like, outdated journals that I’ve never heard of, but, essentially, comes down to seen, like, visual data seems to be the most universally strong and dominant sense followed by sound, so heard, and felt. So these are the three that I’m gonna focus on. Touch, taste, and smell, like, I’m very smell oriented, but for whatever reason, that ranks very low on the hierarchy.
So in my copy, I rarely talk about, like, the scent of a wafting candle in the next room, because yeah. I don’t know. Maybe I should talk more about scent and see who responds to scent. But seen, heard, and felt are the most dominant ones that I found in my research and that I tend to rely on most when it comes to writing copy.
So when when we talk about scene, I mean, literally, like, be seen. Like, where are they at? Place them as a character in a certain environment.
And, like, what they see, give a three hundred sixty degree view. Like, what are they seeing within that scene? What is the visual data that they are processing? So that could be facial cues from people in the room. That could be, like, what they’re seeing on a screen in front of them. It could be markups on a Google Doc if you’re a copywriter.
What is the visual data that they are processing and interpreting?
And with that, we get to see them and their experience. So this is where someone feels seen, when we actually see them where they’re at and see kind of through their eyes what they’re processing, what they’re interpreting, what they’re experiencing.
Next one is heard. So very similar. Like, what are the sounds in their environment? What are they processing auditorily?
So there’s that. And then there’s my favorite, which is their inner sound. Right? Their secret desires, their story making, their inner critic, like, just abusing them with nonsense all the time.
Like, what are they telling themselves? What are they hearing internally?
Then dialogue from key stakeholders. Right? What is their boss saying to them? What does their colleague saying to them?
What does their spouse saying to them? What does their child saying to them? What does their client saying to them? What is the dialogue that is being processed from the outside in?
This really makes good subject lines. I’m gonna show you that in a second in our example.
And when we do this, they get to feel heard in their experience. Right? So we get to mirror back what they’re hearing. We get to mirror back what their internal dialogue is as they interpret that environment, and then we mirror that back, and they get to feel heard almost in the same way as if they had shared that with a therapist.
And then felt is how they are reacting to the visual and the auditory data. Right? So they’re seeing stuff, they’re hearing stuff, and then they’re having an emotional or bodily or somatic reaction to it. So this could be feeling anxious, fearful, angry, sad, betrayed.
It could be somatic, feeling contracted, butterflies, burning with rage, and, essentially, what they are feeling in response to the visual and the auditory data. Is that clear? Like, I’m gonna stop for a second because I just, like, give a lot of information.
Cool.
Cool. Alright. So let’s move on.
Sweet. So your prospect is obviously seeing, hearing, and feeling in response to what they’re seeing and hearing a ton, right, a ton in their daily experience. So how do we choose the ones that are gonna be most effective in mirroring back in our copy? So what I what I essentially, like, bring this down to is moments of heightened receptivity or moment moments of highest tension, which I kinda be as interchangeably right now.
So a moment of heightened receptivity is a moment where your client or prospective client would be most receptive and most responsive to to an offer. So it’s where the stakes and the consequences associated with the problem or the gap are no longer bearable, no longer tolerable, and no longer avoidable. And it’s a very real moment. Right?
It’s a very real moment. Every prospect who has ever invested a good sum of money, right, has had a moment that triggered that purchase or triggered the need to seek a solution and overcome that problem. Almost universally, I haven’t found any case where this hasn’t been true, where there hasn’t been a moment that it could be anchored to where they decided this problem just can’t persist any longer or it’s reached this boiling point and something has to change. So this is a very real moment that your voice of customer and your voice of prospect data should be revealing.
So what I love about voice of prospect data and how I differentiate the two is voice of prospect data is the data you get before they’ve made the purchase. So they’re in that buying decision. They haven’t yet purchased and landed on, the post purchase. Thank you survey.
This isn’t an interview you do after the fact. This is them while they are considering that decision. So the classic, most obvious way to extract this is on a sales or demo call with a very simple opener. Right?
What was happening in your world? What was happening in your life that made you want to book this call? Right? And typically typically, a prospect at this point will give kind of, like, the placeholder that is the entry point to that moment of heightened receptivity, and a really good salesperson is gonna dig deep enough to really paint that picture.
Like, in part of where they were, what they were experiencing, and how that landed for them, and why that feels urgent and important. And I’m gonna walk you through an example, in just a second. So let’s get practical.
Step one is going to be to choose a moment a moment of heightened receptivity from your voice of prospect or your or your voice of customer data.
Step number two would be to take fifteen minutes to fill in that SHF data. So if you do audit sales calls, right, if you do audit demo calls, like, find that moment of heightened receptivity. Like, this is something you could be that could be done in client interviews that you’re relying on that. This is could be something that could be done in auditing sales calls. This is something I’ve even done in taking sales calls for a client. Like, when they had an overflow, I jumped on the phone to literally extract this data myself. So this is something you could get from a very from a variety of sources.
Once you have a moment of heightened receptivity, simply, like, unpack it on these three levels. Right? Like, during a moment of heightened receptivity, what are they seeing? What is in their visual field? What is the data they are interpreting visually?
During a moment of heightened receptivity, what are they hearing? What are the sounds? What is the inner dialogue? What is being said to them? And then finally, how are they reacting to that? So this is, like, a fifteen minute exercise to just really process the information coming out about my moment of heightened recitivy.
And then for that, we could craft an email or an ad.
So let’s look at an example.
Gonna get off this share.
So many windows, so many tabs.
Sweet.
Cool.
So this is one that I wrote for a client in the relationship space. So pulled I pulled the moment of heightened receptivity from the voice of prospect data extracted from a sales call. So this is a loose transcript from the sales call that I pulled it from.
So the salesperson essentially started, you know, what was happening in your life that made you wanna reach out, that made you wanna get on a call.
And this is pretty close to the verbatim that I heard from the conversation. So last night, I found found myself in bed watching Netflix on the iPad, and I effin’ hated it. I hated that I’m so resigned to intimacy even happening with my wife that this is just my routine, and I’ve accepted it and feel like there’s nothing else I can do to change at this point. Right?
So that puts us in a scene. Right? It gives us good data. And then a good salesperson or a good copywriter will ask for elaboration.
Right? So can you tell me more? Then the prospect got a little bit confused. He’s like, what do you mean?
Then the salesperson, like, can you be more specific? So this is a really good follow-up question to ask on sales calls, right, on, customer interviews. Just simple. Can you be more specific?
What were you watching? What was what happened as your wife walked into the room?
And then he elaborated. Like, I found this was funny. Like, I was watching Sons of Anarchy. I’ve never seen Sons of Anarchy, by the way. I don’t even know if it’s a good show.
And my wife came to What are you talking about?
Never seen it.
It’s a good show.
Yeah. I wanna see it now.
A good show. You should watch it. Yeah.
You could be on that. Right? I feel What?
Alright. Maybe.
I’m kidding.
Never seen it. I was watching scent of anarchy, and my wife came into the room, and I barely looked up. Like, very subtle data that communicates so much information about that pain. Right? And I don’t know why. I just felt like I didn’t wanna make eye contact and end up in a thing.
Salesperson, great question here. What kind of thing? Right? Like, what kind of thing? And that the conversation about where our marriage is going.
Is this for frequent conversation? Yeah. And it’s effing exhausting. Right? So this was all extracted in about a minute, a minute and a half of auditing a sales call.
Like, if you were writing an ad or an email for this client, do you think you can write something half decent with just this data?
Right?
Yeah. So other moments of heightened receptivity that I could draw from other emails and ads. Right? So, like, one thing I’ve noticed, there tends to be at least two or three or four, like, really strong moments of heightened receptivity, like, that come up in these types of calls.
Right? This is kind of like the late night argument version of it.
I audited a sales call, right, where he’s like, I downloaded the secret Tinder account, and I’m like, that’s a great subject line. I don’t know if it’s universally relatable, but you get so much good stuff out of just, like, auditing the first few minutes of a sales call. You don’t need to go through the full forty five minutes, hour long, hour and a half where they start getting into the offer specific details. Just hearing what motivated someone to get into a solution seeking state can give you all you need to craft really good emails and really good ads.
Step two, optional as we said. Right? Like, typically, once I have this data, I feel like I could just, like, go to the races and write. I don’t necessarily need to distill it into those three categories. But if you feel like that’s a useful part of your process, definitely take fifteen minutes, watch the scene in your mind’s eye, and just, like, fill in that extra commentary and, like, unpack, like, what are they seeing, what are they hearing, what are they feeling, And engage all three of those, within your email.
Step number three, craft it.
And this is what I love about, like, the what are they hearing, right, within the subject line. Like, where is this going? I think this got, like, one of the highest open rates this client got. Like, where is this going? It’s like those words that just anchor someone right in that scene.
And, yeah, I’ll do a quick read through, and you could just see how pretty much every line is mirroring back either the visual data, the auditory data, or the reaction and the emotional feeling as it relate as it relates to it. So at eight forty nine PM, it may have taken a double round of little blue truck, but you finally got kids to sleep. After a crazy ass day of working and child wrangling, you glance down at your iPhone clock anxiously debating whether you could squeeze whether you should squeeze out some cursory, check the box connection time with your wife or take solo comfort in a mini two episode max sense of anarchy binge vest, falling asleep to a chorus of Ron Perlman and one liners.
You offer Ron’s massive ass mug. He really has a big face. That’s what I noticed in my research. Like, the longest part of writing this email was, like, finding gifts, then realizing how big this man’s face was, and then, like, Googling Ron Perlman Young to see if he always had a big face or if, like, his face enlarged over time.
Manzo’s had a big face. What can you do?
Somehow, he triggered the less than rattling off the day stresses followed by a peck and a turn to the other side of bed that your connection time has become. Right? So all data here, right, of what they’re seeing. Two episode max, substance of anarchy, Ron Perlman, you know, his face, one liners. That’s, like, scene.
You glance down at your iPhone clock. That’s sight. That’s literally what they’re seeing. And then this is the reaction. Right? Anxiously debating whether you should squeeze out some cursory check the box connection time.
So, sight and then the feeling. Right?
We’re mixing in seen, heard, and felt.
Just as your nervous system self soothes to the iconic Netflix ta dum. So we have feeling and we have hearing.
The oak floors creak, that’s hearing. Your wife walks into the room, visual.
You don’t even need to see her face to know it ain’t good feeling. Right? So, like, one sentence, right, or, like, one line has a heard, a scene, NFL.
You barely look up. You know, the moment you do, you’re committing to an agonizing three hour where is this marriage going combo when you played out dozens of times over the last half decade of the guitar script. Then we go into the feeling each time running the same circuit of blame over unmet needs, frustration, over ongoing stagnancy, and errant tossing of emotional grenades over ancient wounds and resentments, or for you both concede to resolution via exhaustion, AKA a temporary peace treat until the next flare up. But this time, it somehow feels different, worse.
Instead of anger, you feel her sadness. Instead of fight, you feel failure, and part of you misses a version of one another that at least fought for your match to survive. It’s as if you’re each waiting for the other to deliver the final death blow, but you can’t say it. You can’t say anything.
You’re uncommitted in both directions, and you’ve been stuck hoping and waiting that your relationship would somehow just revive itself with itself, apply a defibrillator, but it hasn’t. Of course, it hasn’t. And now your wife with sadness in her eyes is asking you, where is this marriage going? Right?
So back to the herd and the same. If you don’t have an answer, that’s a problem. We should talk.
If you have an answer and it’s anything but a clear f, yeah, we’re heading into greater connection, deeper passionate, stronger commitment. That’s a problem. We should talk. If you’re holding so much blame, anger, and hostility that you don’t even want to offer her an answer because you can’t discern what’s even true for you anymore, That’s a problem you should talk. But most of all, if deep down, you know, she deserves the best of you, and there’s just been a wounded part of you unwilling to offer it, but you’re willing to do whatever it takes to step up, show up, and reignite what’s possible for you and your wife, then we got a spot on our account with your name on it. Right. So this is what’s possible, like, in just getting the moment of heightened receptivity.
Like, you don’t need Mattell’s data to write an email that has someone, like, fully seen, heard, and felt in a critical moment of heightened receptivity where they would do anything to solve it. So that’s what I got. Opening to questions, comments, feedback, and up your views if y’all have anything you want feedback on.
Yeah. I oh, go ahead.
I was gonna say, do you have, like, a specific order that you try to get them in?
Because it sounds like you try to rotate them.
Within the email itself?
I like to start I like to start with seen just because, like, it’s a really easy way to anchor them into it.
But other than that, it’s just kind of how I process and play out the scene as I write. But yeah.
Good question. I think starting with site tends to, like, anchor the scene really well.
Yeah. It’s kind of like a stupid comment, but I I’ve had, like, a question in my head for, like, years about because, like, your copy is very specific, and I kind of aim for that standard of, like, specificity.
But then sometimes I feel like my copy is too specific or, like and it’s not working. And I always wondered, like, what’s going on? But I think from doing that, I’ve kind of just sussed it. It’s like, you pick, like, a universal problem, and then you get specificity rather than just doing a specific problem because then it’s like then you can alienate people. If you pick universal problem and then get specific, like, you’re not gonna alienate people. I’m just very pleased I’ve just solved that because I’ve been like, what’s going on here for ages?
Wait. Are you doing that again, Harry? I’m not sure I followed that.
Okay. So, like, choose the universal the universal problem, like, the most common So if you’re, like, surveying mining or something and then you’ve got the problem that comes up the most and then get really specific within that problem rather than just going for, like, a specific problem.
Because then it can feel too specific and then the client could be like, oh, like, people don’t think this. But if you if you choose the general problem and then add specific details and it adds that, like, color and depth.
And it’s isn’t gonna make people think, oh, well because no one’s gonna be like, oh, I don’t watch Sons of Anarchy. That doesn’t, like, apply to me. But they might but if it’s a specific problem that they don’t feel, then you can alienate them. Does that make sense?
I think so.
I mean, why would explain it better?
I I think, like, the simplest way I could put it, right, is, like, any, like, any so the audience for this was, like, men in marriages. Right? And the main problem it fixes is, like, disconnection and numbness. Right?
So it’s like any man who is feeling disconnected and confused and not sure what to do will relate with the man in that scene, right, regardless of the specifics of it, regardless of whether or not he actually, like, sons of anarchy or not. Like, he knows what it’s like to like, there are some details he’ll pick up on. Right? Like, the averting the gaze.
Right? Averting the eye contact is not wanting to engage in that space or not knowing how to. So it’s like yeah. Essentially, he can see himself in that man’s shoes because they share the common ground of the core problem, if that makes sense.
I have another question.
Yep.
So I I think that filling in a lot of these details is possible in a more b to c space. But, again, like, for example, one of I think I brought up this copy a couple of times. This company I’m working with is called Novena. They do AI powered, health care.
Mhmm.
And they’re dealing with, like, health care organization.
Not like a doctor, a nurse, like an office, like the management organizations Mhmm.
Of health care providers.
Like, how do I go about filling in the sensory details in that kind of client when those kind of details are not things that you’ll find on a sales call? And it’s so far removed from my daily life. Like, where do I go without even starting to look for those kind of details?
Right. Like, who is the ultimate, like, decision maker?
Like, of Like, care management groups that, like, deal with health care regulations and, like, payers, insurance, things like that.
Like, they’re managing either hospitals, like, different hospitals and, like, hospital chain or, like, a bunch of, like, a a bunch of physicians that are part of, like, a physician care group.
Yep. Yeah. So, I mean, I’ll acknowledge. Right? Like, there are limitations. You probably can’t tell that same type of story in that context.
Most likely not. Right? Like, I think that you do run into challenges with clients being comfortable with a full on kind of, like, story and immersion into that kind of case.
Where there is where there is, like, clarity on what the, you know, the main purchaser, right, is experiencing as it relates to solving that problem. I think injecting some of those details is is useful. Right? Like, I don’t know what the specific experience is of a moment of heightened receptivity in that buying decision. But if you can even just, like, reflect on, like, what is the tipping point that moves them towards consideration here. Right? Like, is does something actually happen that triggers a we need to fix this or we need to seek a solution here?
Then you can bring that in. Right? Like, in a obviously tone down way, but there’s still probably a moment that triggers a buying decision, likely.
Yes. I think one of the issues, though, is in a lot of really complex b two b solutions, the person who has the pain point is not the person making the decision. So in this case, the doctor is the one feeling the pain because the pain point is they have a lot of patient records to read through before they see a patient. And they don’t have time to go through it all, and they don’t have the, they oftentimes miss important details. But the person buying it is the person managing those positions, and they might have been a position themselves at one point, but now they’re in more of an administrative role.
And so Right.
Yeah. Do they have, like, challenges in managing those positions or serving those positions, like, because of the physician stress? Does it kinda, like, bleed over?
Yeah. So it’s a lot about, like, making sure that they’re getting that they’re they’re having good care and a lot about, like, how they interact with insurance if they’re on more of a value based model, meaning that they’re being paid based on the outcome of the patient as opposed to, just a fixed amount, then they wanna make sure that they are going through all of these records and things like that.
Yeah.
So it’s a lot about being efficient and optimizing workflows and Mhmm. Avoiding time wastage.
Right. And they there’s a cost to them when the physicians are inefficient. Right? Like, some of that moves through. Yeah. So, like, they have yeah.
Patients aren’t being healed. Mhmm. Things like that. I mean, this is just one example, but I Mhmm. Like, it’s also relevant for lots of different examples.
Yeah. So, like, if you could identify, like, you know, the two or three biggest motivators. Right? Like, if it’s, like, inefficiency, for example, inefficiency or, like, reduction of quality of patient care. Right? That’s, like, two of them.
Mhmm.
And if you can almost highlight, like, two or three scenarios for each of those two that they would be hearing, seeing, and feeling, right, like, either as a complaint, right, or a lawsuit or a reduction of billings, like, whatever that translates to. Mhmm. I think that there’d be an opportunity to craft, like, tone down versions of this email around that. Right?
Mhmm. Like, especially if the buyer of this is in contact with the doctor or the physician and maybe the physician is communicating some of that stress to them, and they don’t have a solution to it, right, other than, like, keep going. Right? Like, do your best.
Right? Like, I don’t know how that plays out.
Mhmm. But I can only imagine there are stressful scenarios for both the buyer and the position they serve here. Right? And, like, just highlighting some of those without being too excessive in the scene painting, could go a long way.
Okay. Yeah. I mean, I definitely include those kind of elements. But, like, I wish I could include more sensory details, like, bring in what the office looks like or who they’re meeting with. And I just I am so far removed from that world.
I Mhmm.
Would be embarrassed to even venture a guess. Especially, like, I remember when I was working in house, like, I would collect these anecdotes, like, after over a long period of how like, over six to twelve months, you could collect a lot of anecdotes to sort of create that picture in your head.
Mhmm.
But, like, if you’re just going into a project, it’s hard to sort of absorb that in an organic way.
Yeah. Understandable.
Is there kind of, like, a standard system that they use, like, visually? Like, are things being processed through, like, you know, a common system? Like, where things are signaled as being inefficient or, like, how do they know something’s inefficient other than, like, the feeling of it?
Like, is it in the reduced billings and a report at the end of the month?
Like Yeah.
Yeah.
There would be issues with payments and Mhmm.
Doctors would be burned out. That’s a big one. Doctors would not wanna there there would be a lot of turnover.
So so, like, a missed payment, like, that’s where I would dig. Like, what is, like, what is the experience of a missed payment? Is, like, an is it an email notification from, like, x payment processor system? Like and they get that on their phone or they get that, like, at the office, and then they have to like, that would be a moment, for example.
Mhmm.
Yeah.
So yeah. Sometimes. So yeah. Obviously, like, obviously, like, familiarity and the more conversations you have with it, the easier it gets. And there are certain limitations when, like, you’re newer to that world and not a lot of people are interacting with you about these details, and there’s not a lot of opportunity to get them.
Mhmm.
But, yeah, where where you do have the ability to, like, ask those probing questions. Right? Like, so much can come out of it. Right?
Like, what does that what does inefficiency actually look like? What does that moment it signals to you? Right? Like, and have you feel in that moment.
Yeah. I love the idea of the notification on your phone. I just like, the client is also a marketer, and so Yep. They’re not as familiar with it.
And Mhmm. These people are pretty high up in their career ladder, so they’re not, like, people who would be really readily available to just casually jump on a call. And customer success is not always willing to let you jump on a call with them. Right.
So but, like, I like that idea, but I feel like I might have to find other sources to sort of validate that kind of language.
Right.
Yeah. I would start with, like, what’s most within reach. I think, like, the visual would would be the easiest. Right?
Because you don’t really need to go too deep into their personal experience of how did you react to that. Like, you can kind of fill in the gaps. Right? Like, if they’re getting a notification of a missed payment or whatever, like, it’s a pretty universal experience of how that feels, right, to the end user.
So, yeah, just, like, get that data. Right? Like, are they checking it on their phone, on their lunch break, and that pings them? Like, does that warrant a conversation with, like, the office manager or the head phys like, I don’t know enough about that industry to fill in those gaps, but, yeah, I feel like, some light digging might yield some pretty cool results.
Okay.
Cool. Jessica, I see your hand up.
I was just getting in line for a copy review, if that’s okay.
Yeah. That’s cool.
For sure. Any other questions about the topic before we jump into Jessica’s review?
Sweet. I think that means you’re up.
Okay.
So, Ry, I don’t I don’t know, if you’ve heard, but I was kinda shifting. You know, I was focusing on seasonal sales, holiday sales?
Mhmm.
Yeah. Red thread. Okay. So as that kind of, was explored deeper, I redid my home page, all the things, then it kinda became more of a helping ecommerce brands on the either other side of the discount.
Like, once they’ve acquired a client through a discount, what do we do? Because we can’t may we can’t create loyalty with a discount. Right? Mhmm.
And so and then it kinda became, the phrase for my, hopefully, future podcast newsletters, ditch the discount. And not to say never do discounts, but be more strategic.
Mhmm.
And so but my big thing is I’d like to build, ideally, a more email funnel, SMS funnel, service package through, you know, the intensive Joe’s teaching, the standardized project and the retainer. So my goal is to create, like, the email program audit, and that’s what I’ve actually done for a couple brands now, and then retainer being the optimization, especially of their flows. So just so you kind of have context of what I’m kinda building now. And Abby kind of helped me through my home page website.
And, I just that’s what I wanna share. And, Naomi, by the way, I was just saying, I I believe that you’ve done interviews. I was just saying that that for me, when I was working at my my Utilizer, that was where I got all my stuff. I didn’t mean to say you weren’t doing it. That was that was just my comment. Okay. So, anyway, here’s my home page.
Yes, please feel free to be as brutal as whatever. But the ultimate I don’t know. We did, like, a fast rewrite, and I just I walked away going, well, it’s better than my seasonal sale focused version, but I still don’t think as I go through it. I’m like, do they know what I do? Do they know what the next step like, I’m I really stripped back. I took my services page off and all that, and I just really wanna focus on let’s optimize the home page, and then I’ll go from there. So that’s kind of what I’m looking for is help with making this better so that they know what I do and know the next step, which would be a call with me, essentially.
Cool. Alright.
Let’s go through it.
Sweet. DTC and ecommerce brands. I’ll read in my head so it’s not annoying.
If anyone has a comment as I go through this, feel free to just jump in.
Do you have a picture of yourself where you’re facing to the right? Because I feel like if you had well, I think number one, if this image was slightly larger, it might feel a little bit more balanced because I feel like there’s a lot of empty space here at the top.
Or maybe even if the text was on the left and the picture’s on the right.
Because I feel like having the text in the middle and the picture on the right feels a little bit imbalanced because the empty space on the left.
So that might help make it a little bit more like, fill up the space more.
Did you catch that, Jess?
I did. I’m just it’s cool. Yeah. I I appreciate that. Know that it’s not really, it’s funny that you bring that up because Abby and I Abby, was that not on the left side of the thing the person you’re like, And we were like, yeah.
It’s better than the central. But the problem also is me figuring out Squarespace and spacing. Because if you put this on a different size window or on a different, a different device, you will see something almost totally different. So, yeah, I know that, but it’s it’s not my priority right now.
But, yeah, I mean, it’s on the notes of things to do eventually. I’m sure.
Yeah. I mean, I think the text is fine in the middle. It just with the image. It might need a maybe maybe just leave the image off.
Yeah. Just a lot.
So it’s your, like, ideal client over five million?
Yeah. That was, that’s kind of what I found is that if they don’t make at least five million in annual revenue, it’s it’s not an ideal client who would invest in me.
Cool.
Jessica, this is I know, like, it’s really difficult because we’ve we’ve just kind of been guessing that, like, for a client over five million, like, do they still want more sales? Is that still, like, the thing that they want?
Like, it it seems like a really silly question, but I don’t know. I’m just wondering now with the like, you want more like, you need more sales. Like, is that is that still what they’re trying to to do?
Like As opposed to what?
Exactly. I don’t know. Like, to build more profit, more profitability. I don’t know.
Well, we said sales. I think you and I talked about changing it, but, I mean, ultimately, the biggest challenge with this group that I’ve interacted with and then done, of course, more research on is, that email channel specifically is not generating the revenue they feel it should Mhmm. And especially from the flows. Like, I’ve heard I’ve had a a client and then a couple leads and then just researched their where usually, they can’t this big shocker, their campaigns, they’re not too unhappy with their campaigns because guess what they lead with, a discount, or it’s a holiday or whatever.
But it’s their flows, their automation.
Leave it that then, like, rather than needing more sales? Because I guess if they need more sales, they can just, like, increase the ad spend if they’re at, like, five million or whatever. Maybe just maybe lead with, like, literally what you just said about the email flows. I don’t know.
And I know this is really annoying because I’ve we’ve been over the phase together, and I’m adding something new. But I just missed that bit about over the five million mark, and now I’m yeah. I don’t know. I’m just curious.
You might be able to talk about scaling because meeting sales means like, in my mind, that means, well, I’m desperate for sales where once you get to a certain point, it’s not that you desperately need them. It’s that you’re looking to put things on autopilot. You’re looking to make things more efficient. You’re looking to optimize things. So it’s wanting more scale wanting more sales, but wanting them, in a way that’s scalable.
No. I think that’s that that’s a great how does that hit with you, Ry? Because I definitely saw, the word scale, scaling, and the other versions of it in, VOC research.
Mhmm.
So why does that hit you with opening that as opposed to just generally the word sales?
Scaling is stronger than more sales, I think, for this audience, especially if you’re really targeting people who are already over five million, and they’re probably looking to scale sustainably.
Right? And the margins are a really big part of that, I’m guessing.
Like, would that be accurate?
Oh, yeah. Definitely. Yep.
I think so so that’s one way to lead in. Another way to lead in would be, like, obviously, like, this pain point. So it’s like, how strong is the pain point in their VOC of, like, the discounting? Is it something that they really, really hate and it’s a necessary evil, or is it something that you think they hate? Like, how much are they talking about, like, dreading discounting?
Oh, that’s a really good point.
Like, I know you hate discounts for them. Right? But how much are they like like let’s say, like, it’s Monday morning after their, like, Mother’s Day promotion. Right? Yeah. And they’re putting the numbers on the screen, like and it was, like, great sales volume, like, poor margins. Are they complaining about the margins there, or are they just happy with the volume?
Like So the meetings I’ve been in on, it’s celebrate celebrate the win of whatever was the latest promotion.
Mhmm.
And then it it almost in between the promotions is talking about retention.
So, like, we talk about cause. We talk about that a little bit maybe in the in betweens.
But when we’re talking about post sale Mhmm.
It’s pretty rare that I’m in on a Trevani a long time. It was pretty rare that you’d come off of a a promotion and go, oh, crap.
But how are we gonna keep these people? And, they were they didn’t seem to be obsessing about the discount. They were celebrating either the win or the not, I guess, the not.
Mhmm. Yeah.
I didn’t So yeah.
And it’s an important note. Right? Like Yeah. With that that retention, like and without, like, actually getting nondiscounted sales after that customer’s been acquired, like, they’re not gonna grow. Right?
Right.
One thing comes to mind is, like, a really kind of more of an unconventional format as a headline. Like, you could take it or leave it that might capture that. Right? It’s like what was it?
You know, great news. Like, great news. Our, yeah, great news. Our mother can’t mother to stay campaign crushed, you know, bringing in over x.
Bad news. Our margins were thinner than a next gen iPad. New app. Right?
Now we got now what what now what do we gotta do? Essentially, like, be the third one, which is, like, how do we increase our LTV? How do we retain them? How do we get repeat sales at higher margins? Right? Like, if that’s the scenario you fix of, like, they’re flush full of, like, new customers that have been discounted.
The margins are thin. They’re aware of it, and now they have this opportunity of needing to maximize, right, repeat purchases, nondiscounted purchases, and the email flows that support it. Like, I think that could be a really cool way to drop into the conversation.
So how would you because that’s always been a disconnect for me is making sure it’s really clear that when I talk about that, that I then is it clear? Or how do I make it clear that and the solution is your email and SMS marketing, not basically any like, I’m not gonna do ads. We’re not gonna talk. I’m not I’m not gonna do I’m not diving back into the ads. So is that how do I make sure that connection is clear?
I mean, it’s clear here.
Okay. Alright.
Mhmm. Okay. Good email strategy and conversion copy.
Email strategy and conversion copy. I mean, I maybe have SMS here, right, if that’s a big part of what you do and a big part of what they know they need.
Yeah. Okay.
SMS may mean more to them than conversion copy. I’m not sure.
Like Mhmm.
Good point.
That creates repeat customers so you can boost your revenue. Do you have, like, special IP names for your, like, email frameworks or your SMS flows?
Or No.
I did for my seasonal sales, but, no, I haven’t created something. But I that’s a great you’re right. I need that.
What would you do with it since you were thinking of it?
Oh, I mean, I would just, like, note that here. Right? Like, if you had a different term for email strategy or a different term for, like like, ex SMS type flow. Right? Like, your branded SMS flow. Right?
Okay.
Like, it would be too much of a mouthful to say, like, post discount purchase SMS flows. Right? Like, I don’t know. But I think, like, what I’m hearing you do, right, is, like, you maximize everything out of these discounted customers. Right? And you do that. So it is kind of like a post seasonal sale strategy.
Is that correct?
Yeah. It’s the, yes. Exact yeah. Either seasonal sale or some form of a promotion, but yeah.
So that moment of heightened for them really is, like, analyzing their seasonal sales data, being hyped about, you know, you know, the top line kind of meh about the margins and our team, let’s maximize it. Like, I would really enter the conversation there and then talk about how you fit into that post seasonal sales flow.
Okay. Yeah. Because it really anchors it to a very specific use case. Right? Like, you’ve had this win, now you have this opportunity. Right? Or you’ve had this win, this is what you sacrificed to get the win, but this is how you make it up and then some.
Okay.
Wait. Can I have a I have a question? How how focused are they on the margins?
Because I know, like like, if you’re I I don’t know anything about ecommerce, but I know in SaaS, like, there was a big, big shift when the market crashed when, like, twenty twenty one, the only thing anyone talked about was growth, and no one could possibly care about how much marketers were spending.
And now the only thing everyone cares about is profitability.
But if you had said like, if I were to say you should hire me because I’ll help you make your campaigns more efficient, like, no one would care.
But, like, if that’s the case, then it would be more help like, my strategy would be to go in and, like, introduce a little bit of doubt. Like, try to start by almost waking them up to the problem.
Like, what, like, you’re you’re celebrating these wins. That’s what you said. But there’s, like, a creeping doubt in the back of your mind that this growth is is not as profitable as it could be or this growth is happening only because, you’re putting a lot of money into it.
Is that clear? No? Yes?
I think I’m pausing before I respond because I’m thinking about what you just said. Yes. Profitability and, profit margins are important to ecommerce for sure. It’s also why I can’t work with certain brands because the the profit margins are just too too small.
So, yeah, I mean, that’s definitely a conversation.
At the top of their mind, or are they just, like, celebrating these wins and not thinking about the margins?
No. If there if there’s someone at the level that I’m speaking to, yeah, they’re paying attention to it.
Okay. Makes sense.
Do you have, like, data even if it’s, like, an estimate of, like, the average profit margin of your ideal client and, like, where they’d like to be? Or is it or does it vary too much from company to company?
I don’t think I have a no. I don’t have a well, obviously, I’m pausing. So, no, I don’t have that a solid statistic. But you’re that’s a good point.
Mhmm.
Yeah. I don’t think you need to define it. Right? I think, like, as as long as you call it out, right, like, you have a win of your volume, you have an l, right, and the margins you had to accept by discounting, and now you have an opportunity to make up for it and experience, like, true growth. Right? Mhmm. Yep.
So, like, I think that’s I think that’s the sales argument. Because when you really think about, like, what your ideal client is experiencing, like, what is true about them? They are experiencing a win in volume sales, right, from discounting, and they’re experiencing the need for, yeah. Exactly what you do. Right? More sales, nondiscounted.
K.
Cool.
Your email list isn’t responding to your discount heavy designed heavy emails.
So depending on what you do with the headline, right, like, it may change Oh, yeah.
The section. Yeah.
It’s yeah. It’s gonna change.
Mhmm. Cool.
But the tough part for me on that one is, that is directly from an ideal client. But yeah.
I mean, that’s why they invested so big. It was our email channel. We figured out the ads game. We’ve figured out the other stuff.
Our email channel is not generating the revenue it should, and we’re tired of leaning on our discounts and our image pretty images. And we wanna go and they were the ones who said, like, copy first. And, you know, so it was and it’s a nine figure plus business, pet meds. I mean, it was just that was from an ideal client is, like, guessing.
Yeah.
Yeah. So it depends on the conversation you wanna have. Right? Like, it depends on, like, how you wanna orient the sales conversation based on why you feel they would hire you.
Like, this definitely makes sense in a broader context.
And if we’re and if we’re gonna operate from, like, the conversation of, like, you’ve had a win, You accept it, and now now let’s make good on it. Then I would continue the conversation on you could agitate it. Right? That could be an option. Or you can move straight into, like, your process of of, like, you know, making good on what do we do after you’ve had a boatload of sales from your discounted push. Right? Yeah.
And then kind of bridge into Oh god.
Don’t worry. I hate that section. Hate that section.
Alright.
Well, we like, Farna’s whatever lesson, and I hate the intro of that.
Now now I can’t not read it. You understand?
It’s the first lines. But, hey. You’re here. I’m am here. Like, who the hell talk like that? I don’t talk like that. Like, stupid.
Am I right? Am I right? Yeah.
This is oh, painful. I can’t even stand you’re looking at it and recording this.
It’s on the record.
Jess wrote, am I right? Record.
Like, you should unlock a badge for the usage of am I right? Like, unlock a new level. Hey. Hey, Sam. Sam’s eyes. What is those eyes?
Like He has piercing eyes.
They’re Actually, when he’s not smiling.
How did you get a testimony from Sam? I didn’t know you had that.
The intensive.
Gotcha. Nice.
Thank you, Andrew, for the comment. I appreciate that.
Cool. Does that give you some enough insight for today, like, to work with and to consider?
Yeah. That’s fine. That’s great.
Thank you.
Awesome.
Thank you all. I appreciate it.
Cool. Cool.
Alright. We are at the hour. So if anyone has to jump off, that is totally cool. Does anyone have any questions or things they urgently needed reviewed?
If so, I’m happy to stick around. So, hi, Andrew.
Could I ask one Oh, oh, oh, you’re I thought you were waving goodbye.
Oh, sorry.
Yeah.
Can I ask one question? You need to keep it running on if not.
But, yeah. So, this is kind of touching back on what we were talking about before, and there was, I think Abby wrote in chat, you know, she wrote, this is why I hate writing for SaaS. How do how do you add dollar and d m l to optimizing workflows?
And so that’s, like, my whole, that’s, like, everything I work with is b to b SaaS and tends to be, like, really technical products, like, data heavy stuff where all the people buying it have, like, data in their title and stuff like that. Mhmm. And something that I struggle with is that as I’m researching the the client, like, all of their materials are written in this, like, very academic language. Everything is optimized, accelerate analytic productivity, this and that. And as I research, I find myself almost getting, like, sucked into that a little bit. And at some point, I go, oh, I get why they came up with this because this is, like, the most accurate summary of what it is. Right?
And they couldn’t they couldn’t find out what it wasn’t a human and specific way to say that that’s, like, completely accurate or something like that.
So I I guess I’m just wondering if you have any tips for how to, not drink the client my client’s Kool Aid. And and then the other thing is that the BOC is like that too because then they go, okay. We really wanna try to, like Mhmm. Like, even the voice of the customer is not always very human.
How to not drink the client’s Kool Aid. I mean, I’ve I’ve drank the client’s Kool Aid and then hated whatever and after the fact. It’s really convincing. Right? Because they’re so authoritative in their Kool Aid, and they’re serving a bit Kool Aid.
So I think, like, the most practical thing I could offer, right, is to not necessarily try to, like, rewrite every aspect of the offer and what it does in more human language, but, like, choose a very specific scenario in which the use case is, like, needed, like, when they know they have the problem. Right? So it’s like like, I mean, taking the example. I know, obviously, like, coaching is very different from SaaS.
Right? But, like, is there a moment when they their workflows were broken? Is there a moment when a project fell through the cracks? Like, if you’re selling project management software, right, it’s like, you know, what are they hearing?
Like, is this done yet? Like, question mark. Like, where is this? Question mark. Like, what is a product manager saying as a follow-up, and then what’s the oh, shit moment?
Right? So it’s like you’re not gonna be able to necessarily capture the entire marketing message, but can you capture a moment in which the software you’re selling would be a solve for it. Right? And just, like, see if that hits and if that resonates, especially on the email or the ad level.
Yeah. That that works. Yeah. That works. And I’ve seen it done well. So I yeah.
Yeah. The email and the ad level are, like, the easiest places to try to, like, weave this in and test it out. Obviously, obviously, landing pages and sales pages that are more static are more difficult.
So, yeah, I I like testing things out in email and ad scenarios where, like, yeah, you have a little bit more leeway.
Cool. Good job. Alright. Thank you.
Sorry to hear that.
Wait. Can I ask one more question, please?
Yeah. Of course.
I meant to ask this earlier, and I totally forgot. What I really like that you do, you do such a good job of coming up with, like, metaphors, And I forgot the one in the example.
Automatic or self operating defibrillator, I think, was Oh, yeah. Was when you Self self applied defibrillator.
Yeah.
And there was another one that you used. I don’t even remember the email. It was ages ago that I read it, and you used the phrase diabetic fruit fly to describe, like, a computer charger, like an old computer. And, like, that I don’t even remember what the rest of the email was about, but that phrase stuck with me. And I haven’t been able to come up with metaphors that are, like, kitschy like that, but, like, actually descriptive and not over the top.
I was wondering if you have, like, how you come up with those, if you have a process or Gosh.
Like, I I have a process for, like, not writing white noisy ones. Right? Like, I do have an aversion to, like, if I write a metaphor the first time and I’m like, I’ve seen that a million times before, like, I will, like, not include that intentionally.
How to come up with the good ones, like so there there’s an orientation towards, like I wanna put something on the page that no one’s read before, like, a combination or a string of words that no one’s read before, and there’s a really real strategic reason. Right? That is reader engagement. That’s some kind of, like, being tuned in to the message. And Right. So, like, how do I actually come up with them?
Just kinda like my brain works in a really strange way. It’s like, I don’t know why I’m thinking of diabetic fruit flies. I really don’t. Like, I’m concerned that my brain goes there.
I used to read so many screenplays, and, like, screenwriters get really crafty in describing scenes.
Like like and you could probably still find a lot of screen screenplays out there. Like and I wouldn’t read classic ones. I’d read the ones from, like, up and coming writers. Right?
Like, I think the blacklist is, like, a really good source for that. I don’t know if it still exists, but, like, yeah, that’s typically where I picked up, like, language patterning is because, like, they’re trying to impress agents. They’re trying to be interesting. They’re trying to be engaging.
Right? And they just come up with, like, really cool and interesting ways of saying things, and it just kind of repatterns, you know, how I think about things at least.
But, yeah, I’d say, like, there’s an intentional orientation around not being white noisy, not being boring, challenging certain ways of saying things. And sometimes that happens on the first pass. Sometimes that comes when I’m rereading it a second or third time and be like, this would be a cool way of saying that. So yeah.
I wish there was a formula. Maybe there is a formula, and I just haven’t discovered it yet.
Maybe I’ll try reading more screenplays.
Yeah.
Cool.
Struggle bus. Gosh. I’ve never talked about the struggle bus.
Ton every sales page for entrepreneurs. Yeah. It’s true.
Cool. Awesome. Any other, questions, comments, or we’re feeling good and complete for today?
Awesome. Well, thanks for your time, everybody. Catch you all soon. Take care.
Thanks, Roy. See you.
Bye,
The People at My ICP
The Buyer Handbook: The People at My ICP
Transcript
Yep.
Let’s dig into the actual training. So I shared the worksheet out in Slack. If you need it, please go to the Copy School Pro Slack group, and you will find the worksheet in the events area.
So this month, we’re trying out themes for the month in Coffee School Pro. The idea for this month is to get you really crystal clear on, all things ICP and persona. And when I say ICP, for those who are maybe watching the replay from other places, you might say I c a.
We say I c p, which in my brain, I was just like internal client. No.
Ideal client profile is what that is. I was going to share the inverted pyramid, but I didn’t want to overwhelm us with all talks of, like, market audience, and all of, like, the parts of the inverted pyramid, but there is one out there if you want. And what I don’t love about the inverted pyramid is it finishes at the bottom with persona.
So if you can imagine, there’s a world where there’s this inverted pyramid, and it has, like, market at the top and then, like, kind of target market. Then ICP, that’s the type of business that you’re really trying to target, and everybody here that I know of is trying to target a business of some kind.
So you’ve got the business, and then you have persona at the bottom of this inverted pyramid. But the challenge is that it looks like it’s one thing that it looks like you should have one, persona and that it’s small when in fact, most of us are gonna have three, maybe four different personas, the people that we are trying to reach out to in organizations, and that’s what I wanna talk about today.
Hi, Abby. Welcome. Just saw you show up.
Cool. So I’m going to share my screen. And, Abby, you just got here, so know that this worksheet is over in, in Slack. So you can get that there. If you would like to, please do. I would like you to work on the the free drawing area that we get into later. You can just do it on a piece of paper that you have.
So all this month, we’re working on this buyer handbook idea. Who are the people you are trying to sell to? That’s the persona you’re trying to connect with.
And then, where do they work? So getting really clear on that. And when your clients come to you and say, can you help us write for this segment? You can be really clear on that too. So between Perna and Rai teaching about, like, what to do for the copywriting side of things, research, etcetera, for your clients, And then myself and Shane helping you with, the stuff to do for your own business.
You should come out of this with a really rounded, education. Some of it reminder stuff, some of it brand new stuff by the end of June.
Book of the month. Does anybody remember what the book of the month is?
I don’t.
I will look, and we will share it with you.
So watch for that. Okay. So we wanna talk with the people at our ICP. Our ICP, again, ideal client’s profile, personas fit in neatly underneath that Challenger sale. Thank you, Jessica.
So the Challenger sale.
There. One second.
The Challenger sale got some bookmarks in it.
The reason that we want to read this is because everything to do with our buyer is in the sunshine growth model under the money side of things. So it can feel administrative. It can feel extra, but it’s really, really critical to get this stuff right if you’re going to make more money. You may make some changes to your ICP. You may add a new persona. Maybe you don’t even have personas at this point. That expect some of that to be kind of stirred up, some changes that you might make to make sure you’re attracting people who value what you do and have money to spend on it as well.
So the great thing about a persona is that it helps you visualize the person that you’re talking to, the person who’s consuming your content on social media or wherever that might be in your email list, and the people that you’re going to be working with internally as well.
Personas and jobs to be done are often talked about in, like, conflict with each other, but every persona has a job to be done, at least one. Right? So you can use everything you might know already about jobs to be done.
You can use that alongside personas. So if you have any resistance in your mind, if you’re like, oh, I’m pure jobs, I don’t wanna hear about it, don’t worry about it. You can do both. You can both follow persona stuff and job stuff.
Okay? By the end of this month, we have shifted some things around so that Shane is working toward, ideally, being able to say, now that you’ve got all these insights into your buyer, into who you’re trying to target and how to get in front of them, what’s what they’re looking for, etcetera, you can, like, have AI put together your buyer handbook for you. So this is all building up to something, then you can hand that handbook off to anybody that you might hire and yourself. You can, of course, reference it.
So keep that in mind, and it’s always gonna be a work in progress.
Okay.
Your ICP, it could be useful to have a representative brand. If you’re watching this, open up your workbook now. This is where you’re going to be writing some stuff in, this worksheet.
So does anybody have a representative brand for their ICP?
Johnson, Katie, Jessica, Stacy, Abby?
No?
Like, a brand that would be the most ideal version of it.
I I do, but then I worked with that brand, and now I’m looking for a new one because they were not ideal. Yeah.
Hey. Okay.
Johnson, you put up your hand a bit on that. No?
Okay. Yeah. It can be useful too. Some people start with that representative brand, and it’s it doesn’t have to be a dream brand either.
It can be a brand you already worked with. So if there’s someone who stands out to you, it’s usually better to start with the brand you already have worked with so that you can really clearly fill this part out. Now this isn’t, like, from any sort of book putting together your ICP. This is what I find useful in understanding, the organization that I’m talking to.
For us, we’re often talking to, very two very different ICPs. So for copy hackers, we have at least two ICPs. One of them is a very small business. One person with, like, a VA or two, obviously, all the freelancers that we work with.
And then there’s this other ICP that is extraordinarily large organizations that have copy teams in them and creative teams. So we have two different ones with different personas in each, which is not recommended. It’s not gonna make your life any easier. So do choose one that you can target well with your offer.
And then this is really like, it feels, maybe administrative, but if you haven’t written down what industry they’re in, where they’re located, that doesn’t have to be, like, down to a city. Right? It doesn’t have to be just for this brand. So if you’re like, my ICP is Facebook.
Well, let’s say Meta. So my ICP is Meta. Their industry is tech slash social media slash advertising.
Their location is they’re in Palo Alto. Last I knew of the Facebook headquarters.
You don’t have to go into that. So it doesn’t have to go that far. You don’t have to say Palo Alto. You can just say they’re in the UK or North America slash Canada, whatever you wanna put there.
So the representative brand does not necessarily dictate everything that goes under here. It’s really just shorthand for the kind of brand you’re looking for. So if it is Meta, you might say, okay. Well, I want I want the company I work with to have, like, five thousand plus employees.
Meta has far more than that. But then at least, you know, if the organization has fewer than five thousand employees, they’re probably not a good fit for me. And you can be really, like, dedicated to your ICP, and you should be because the more narrow you are with that, the more you commit to that, the less guesswork you really have to do so you can identify what their revenue is. This is annual revenue.
This is the department that they’ll that you’ll likely be working with, the one that reaches out to you most commonly. So if you’re like, it’s always creative services or it’s always their growth team, or they’re likely to have, like, a sales pod that reaches out to me, then you write down that department and that becomes can you imagine how you would use that then? If you know that it’s always going to be a sales pod at, a large organization of five thousand people in tech that reaches out to you. Now you can really clearly figure out how to use LinkedIn sales navigator to get in front of more of them.
You can do a little voice of customer research and open up tons of information that’s just for them. So you can do far less work and still have it look like you’re a freaking genius because you’re focusing on this narrow group, which can be scary, but there’s only one of you. So if it’s like, but there’s only five thousand peep groups in the total addressable market. How am I ever gonna get rich?
You will. Don’t worry about it. It’s good. Like, you’re one person. You’re not a team of five thousand.
That would be a scarier proposition. There’s one of you. Most of the time, you’re you can’t go too narrow as long as you’re choosing people who have money and value what you do. If they don’t value what you do, no matter what, you’re never going to make any money.
If they don’t have money, no matter what you do, you’re never going to make any money. So that’s, like, pretty important.
Is this all clear and making sense and not weird?
Okay.
Do they have a creative team? Who’s on their creative team? And what’s important to answer here is if you are like, I only work with coaches, and there’s usually the coach plus their admin person who turns into a bit of a partner for them, and they use freelancers, that’s okay. Just write down here that their creative team is made up of freelance designers, freelance, freelance copywriters, maybe that you wouldn’t you you would even put in there any AI they use to, like, sub in for a creative person.
You also wanna put the tools that they use for your specialization or for things related to your specialization.
Canva could be one.
If they do wireframing, let’s say, in their tools they use for your specialization, if you’re in email, that’s your specialization.
What’s their CRM most likely to be? What is the what are the tools that they’re using? Again, that way you can say, hey.
Coach struggling with ActiveCampaign and segmenting in there. And, obviously, the the more you know about this, the easier it is to create content, which is what we are always, always going to be actually talking about when we’re talking about growing our businesses. There’s always an element of, okay, but what are you gonna put out into the world so that people know that.
What’s their budget?
Be honest about their budget for the kind of work that you do. Not their budget overall, but their budget for the kind of work that you do. If you don’t know, this is where it’s great to look at your past clients and better understand what their budget has been. If you’re like, I don’t want anymore, like, my past clients. Fair. Totally fair.
Now is the time where you are resourceful. Then you go out and you do the hard work of saying, how can I get my ideas, the persona at my ICP? We’ll get into personas next.
To sit down and talk to me about what their budget is and be honest with me. Like, I have to get that information or else I won’t know if they can afford my services. So you have to get that information. How can you go get it? Be resourceful about getting an answer to that important question. You’re the CEO.
CEO has to answer these important questions. You can’t just pretend they don’t exist. Right? So how do you find the budget? How do you find out what their budget is? How are they solving their copy struggles today?
I but I’ll be saying struggles more than problems going forward. I had a really good talk with Bob Mastat, this retreat I was just at from jobs.
And, yeah, struggles, just know going forward. I mean, problems, but struggles are typically we’ll talk more about that.
But it’s struggles slash problems.
And then time to close. How long does it take for them to say yes to you from the point that they feel that early problem slash struggle, through to getting on a call with you and everything else that happens so that you cannot be frustrated when this stuff takes time. Some the larger the organization, the more time it’s likely to take for them to say yes to you. And if you’re like, well, I need to close a client by the end of the month, they take three months to make a decision.
Now you know what your time is to close. And it’s critical to be really honest about these things or it’s very difficult to move forward if you’re, one, guessing. I think it probably takes, like, a month. If you don’t know, you really have to get on a call with that persona that you’re more likely to get honest information from.
Find a way to get on a call with them. Any questions about this for the ICP side of things?
Does everybody already have this sorted out?
Clearly, in a way you could hand it off to somebody.
Why haven’t you? Can I ask? And it could just be because, like, busyness, but I’m really curious. Yeah.
Me? Yeah. Katie. Yeah.
Because I am still lost in this model of, like, do I just change industries completely, or, like, am I looking at talking to a higher level person in the industry I’m already in?
Mhmm. Okay.
So, like, is it worth trying to figure out who this is, like, in the coaching space, or do I wanna just be like, you know, if it Joanna says to go to SAS, like, do that and, and dive in?
Yeah. I wonder about, like so I say SaaS because it’s easier, in everything that I’ve seen, but but I’ve also never built a brand in a different space. I’ve never been the one people go to when they’re a coach.
I’ve been asked, you know, a copywriter by all of the big coaches out there, but it’s never been understood to be me. That would be that one. Whenever, like, Joe, can you write this? Because I think they know damn well. Like, I don’t know what I what?
So can you do anything with coaches? How what I really mean is can you find a group that talks to each other so you can get easy referrals, that has ongoing work to do, and that thinks of themselves as a business? Part of the problem with a lot of coaches is that they follow this launch idea, which makes it hard for you to think of it as a business. It’s not until you cross over to Evergreen that in my experience, people seem to understand.
Now I’m a business. Now I’m making regular recurring revenue, not I just did a three million dollar launch, and I’m gonna take three months to freaking decompress because that was so much work.
But is there a way to go upmarket, Katie, for you? Is there an upmarket version of your audience?
Yeah. I definitely think that there is. I just think that, like I think I mentioned this before. It’s kind of like the further up you go, the more people are just teaching, like like, kind of the higher market you go, the less I wanna work with them.
Like Okay.
It’s more then I feel like it gets really and just, like, not the ethos that I wanna be in. Yeah. So, like, I’m in this program with lots of coaches at the, like, multi six to seven figure level, and I see them.
Like, so when I I used to feel like I knew who this ICP was, but then, like, working on the standardized offer, like, wanting to have some like, wanting to have something in that model Yeah.
I don’t think that that, like, ICA that I had previously mapped out wouldn’t necessarily go for the, like, optimization package, and that’s where I’m still, like, trying to marry this altogether.
Yeah. That’s fair.
I have a call booked with Rai, actually. I booked a one along with him for his insight into this market specifically to try and get this nailed down by the end of the week.
So that’s like Oh, damn. Why am I am, like, trying to figure it out.
Nice. Good deadline. I love it. Okay. Cool. So that makes sense. You’re actively working through it, and you’ll know more, hopefully, after talking with Rai.
Okay. Okay. Cool. Thanks, Katie. Anybody else wanna share what’s holding them back from pinpointing a little more, at least, their ICP?
I can, share something. I, I I told you I brought someone on recently, and, this person is someone who I want to take on, this portion of work that we’re doing at the moment with a client who works in ERP solutions Okay. Like NetSuite.
These consultancies, he’s, you know, he he runs a consultancy.
They the the the kind of the smallest versions have a revenue of about half a mil, and it goes all the way up to sort of fifteen to twenty mil before they start to really scale up. And what this client that I work with is, a great client, really, dedicated, but struggles with lead gen. Basically, it’s kind of just running running the business is taking everything. So we’ve developed an offer, sort of following a good chunk of what we’ve been doing, where I’m gonna be pitching, essentially kind of authority building, on LinkedIn, and Reddit because a good chunk of these customers are there, plus maybe a little bit of, lead gen, and sort of pitching it at a sort of ten k initialization and then an ongoing five k retainer.
But this is brand new. We’ve sort of been working day and night to put this together and build the pitch and kind of get into the direct selling sort of direct response, sorry, techniques to to really, like, sell it to this client. And then it was only, like, a week or two ago, we were like, oh, we should also, of course, prepare the like, we’ve developed a whole product now. We should start to look at, like, who else we could sell this to, because the might say no.
And, so we’ve we’ve got a good idea. We know the industry. We know the location. We know the revenue.
We know the employees, the department.
I guess we know the creative team. It’s freelancers.
Budget is trickier to figure out because they hire consultants, on a sort of ad hoc basis to complete their projects.
And I guess the the reason why we don’t have this all filled out is because, I don’t know the level of detail to go into yet.
Okay.
Because it’s new. Right? So that’s because it’s new. Yeah.
Yeah. So, this is a side note. Curious, though, about this pitch that you’re building.
Do you feel like it’s going to be something you can easily replicate for others?
So the whole as we built out this process, we’ve been building basically, we built the whole, service out of soaps. So, as as much as is possible, I will not be involved at all, and this other person will take over so that I can focus on, doing life cycle emails. And but this will be a, sort of a source of revenue for the business, an opportunity to to train this this person to a sort of management position.
So it’s a sort of long it’s sort of like a little bit of upfront work to get some long term distance out of the business.
Okay. Makes sense.
Cool.
So work in progress. Once you have this pitch done, you’ll have a little data. No. One data point is not, like, good.
But it’s better ish than nothing.
So it might be worth at least starting to to fill this in. But right now, you have a general idea of some of these points.
Sure. And I guess the one question I maybe had was if you so I know it’s in ERP solutions.
But to be honest, because of the nature of the service, there’s no real reason why it couldn’t be in, you know, any industry as long as the the company had a motivated founder who wanted to build a personal brand or, you know, and understood the the significance of that. Do you have any, do you have any advice on sort of thinking, laterally across industries for this kind of I know it’s a very sort of different.
No.
Well, that’s simply because I was just thinking so wait. I I now as a total side note. So wait. You want to help people who are in organizations build their personal brand?
Yeah. Well, to general yeah. To build their authority, to to, yeah, to build their their their company’s brand and their own personal brand.
So it’s sideways.
I actually have a lead for you then. They’ll send along to you. Someone just reached out to me for exactly that. So, anyway, I’ll send that to you, and that could be another data point for you to at least get in on a conversation with the what, the why, and all that kind of stuff to help fill this in. So that’s why I got distracted there and couldn’t answer your question because I was like, that’d be cool if I can solve that ask.
Okay. So yours so repeat your question then, please.
I’ve got the words from it, but not how it all goes together.
So so just how to think about I’m you know, I’m I’m basing this on the industry that that this this plan is in because we now I now know it very well. I mean, it works for them. But, you know, reasonably, with maybe a little bit more preparation upfront, we could do this for any industry.
Yeah.
So, do you have any advice about sort of thinking, laterally to move, you know, across industry or or just advice on maybe industries that are likely to have a a wealth of companies that are sort of in the, I I don’t know, one mil to fifteen mil revenue range, small ish teams and motivated founders.
Yeah. So many.
Definitely. Let me let me give some thought to that. I can say if that’s something you wanna do, if you wanna say, hey, founders, I can help you build your brand that is you’re ready to write a book. I assume all of those sorts of things will fit under that. Yep. Yeah.
Then just know that there’s a large market for this. There are a lot of people, a lot of founders who are doing exactly that. But it’s probably worth at minimum starting with one industry still. I would say it’s definitely worth that because then you can say, okay.
If it’s a founder and they’re making so much money, then you can start looking for the influencers, and that would, like, get into, the personas. So they might not even be at that ICP. So I would think of something like, if you’re trying to target those people, then we’d wanna get more into, like, figure out who the influencers are because there’s the SaaS Academy that’s filled with founders who are ready to build their brand. There’s, Matt Lerner with System, and that’s just in, like those are two groups that have founders who are highly motivated to do what it takes to get out into the world so that people use their solution the way that Jason Fried and DHH did for base camp.
So no, but there’s lots there, and let me give it some more thought.
Cool. That’d be amazing. Thank you.
Awesome. Thanks.
Anybody else have anything about ICPs before we move on?
Okay. So when it comes to your ICP, the inverted pyramid, as I mentioned at the start of this call, the inverted pyramid has, like, ICP, and then at the bottom is persona.
That, to me, visually, doesn’t leave enough room for the many personas that might be under there, and this, to me, feels more like pillars. But I I hate old school business diagrams with pillars. I just have a strong aversion to them from my day that Intuit. So I didn’t want this to look like a pillar.
But this is really a question of who are you targeting. So we need to fill in your ideal client profile, which just, like, take everything here and write a statement. Now if you’ve done the intensive freelancing, you’ve already done this work. You’ve already got this figured out. You know already that you will be refining the personas and a little bit of your ICP, but you should have that down, pretty well. Now the personas are, of course, the people at the ICP, typically, that are going to be the ones that you are targeting in your marketing.
But I don’t want you to stop there. And I know this can start to feel like a really big exercise, but if we only ever think about the people that we are targeting with our marketing, then we miss the point of all of the decision makers internally, and other people who help them make a decision. So when you’re thinking of personas, I would like you to think about what I just said to Johnson.
Who are the bigger influencers and make a persona out of one of those key influencers that might be they have a coach. They have an executive coach in Johnson’s case. Right? There’s an executive coach. They’re trying to make them better.
If you were to message toward executive coaches for these founders, then they could be a really good, opportunity for you. Right? But they don’t technically work at the ICP.
If you’re working with really small businesses, maybe they’re highly profitable, very small businesses, it could be the partner of the person who runs that business. So they’re like, the James clears of the world. They’re, like, super well known for one thing. They’re not planning on building a big business out, and their partner or, someone that they trust really closely.
Again, that could be an executive coach. It could be the partner that they have in life. It could be, a person in that they met in a mastermind who they call up all the time for help. So James Clear could say, hey, Nathan Barry.
Let’s hop on a call and talk through this. So one of your personas could be the Nathan Barry’s of the world.
So that would be something to consider. So I don’t just want you to think about only about the personas that you are likely to talk to directly on the path to getting a client, but do start there. Start with the people that you or the person usually that you are likely to, who is usually your point of contact or the one who kicks off working together.
So a good way to go about that, I have found and this is like a blank page for you to fill this in. I’d like you to take just five minutes to basically map out whatever that looks like for your org chart with personas and influencers. Now this org chart doesn’t have lines between it, because it’s really unnecessary. Grower, nobody. No. You can’t eat that plant. Nobody.
You’ve got the so in this case, I have VP of marketing, life cycle lead, and senior copy likely to be people that I connect with directly. The senior copywriter finds me and follows me, and this is if I was working on life cycle as my specialization. That’s the example here. This isn’t for me.
This is for an example of a freelancer who’s working on life cycle. So who’s your primary point of contact? This is the person who’s likely to work with you directly throughout. So the senior copywriter may find you online and start in their meetings with their manager, life cycle lead in this case, let’s say.
They’re in these meetings, and they’re like, hey. I’m really still struggling with x.
But I’ve started following, Abby, and I’m learning this cool stuff. And I wonder if there’s any way we can bring her into the org to help us with why.
And then that person would be the one who actually reaches out to you. Like, okay. Maybe just connect me with them or send me their email address, send me their website, and I’ll look into it. So the life cycle lead could be the actual person who reaches out to you, but your advocate internally might have been the senior copywriter or in other cases, other people.
But this is the example. Right? So if you know, generally, some people watching the replay of this will have been working with an organization or, like, sorry, an ICP for a long time, and they can more clearly document the I say org chart, it really means, like, influencer chart.
They can more easily document that because they’ve set they can say like, I can say for a SaaS company who wants to bring me in to rewrite their website and then optimize it. I know exactly who that point of contact is. I know who the influencer was that like, the advocate who first said we should go with this person. I know where they found me. I generally know when they found me, and I know who has to agree to this, who I have to really impress in order to get them to say yes, to say yes to a large amount of money. So I would know that a senior designer is gonna be involved.
Always brand managers are somehow involved. I gotta get them to believe that I understand brand at the same time I understand CRO. The CFO is gonna be the one approving usually going over budget because almost nobody comes to me and says, like, perfect. That’s exactly what I was hoping you would say.
It’s usually like, shit. Let’s see what we can do. So I have so these are lighter boxes here. These are the people, the CFO, the brand manager, the senior designer, those are people who are likely to come up a lot in meetings and in Google Docs.
So I want you to take five minutes to figure out the key personas that you will be typically talking with, that will find you, that will email you, that will follow you on social and DM you, and then the people who influence them.
Five minutes just to knock it out. Is that cool? Can we do this?
Hopefully, it’s a good useful exercise. I will be quiet until ten forty when I will be noisy again.
How’d we do?
Anybody want to share or talk through what you put down on the page?
Yeah. I I felt like like looking back at my past clients, so, like, seven figure course creators, I think I’m struggling to think of the time where it wasn’t the CEO that reached out to me and kind of approved the work. Like, I’ve maybe once had, like, an ad strategist come to me, but, otherwise, it’s it’s always gonna be the CEO.
And then where I’m struggling there is that like, with printing out content and stuff because it’s like I’m just skeptical whether, like, a CEO is gonna kind of watch my webinar or anything.
Yeah. Do they so then it’s good to look out at influencers. Right? If it’s difficult to get them directly, who influences them? Do they have a coach?
I guess so. Yes. Probably. Yeah. Probably. Yeah. If they’re doing seven figures, they probably have a coach because a coach probably targeted them at some point and sold themselves to them.
That’s at least been my experience is having coaches reach out, probably why I have three of them. And then, if you were to find that they have a coach or they’re part of a mastermind, have you experienced that at all that they’re part of a mastermind or they’re coached?
Yeah. I mean, I this is something I’ve been thinking about for years because it seems like such a strategic way to market, but I just I’ve not found, like, those masterminds.
Okay.
Yeah. I would say the next thing, you you just need to identify who first has introduced them to you or could introduce them to you, where has is the better one, but could is still an opportunity.
How do they find you? Who says at Usually Facebook groups. Facebook groups.
Yeah.
Or, like, LinkedIn.
But it’s always the, like, the founder that that reaches out, not a member of the group.
Figure or six figure? Yeah. Yeah. Seven figures. And they’re involved in Facebook groups that aren’t run by a coach.
Sometimes it’s their Facebook group.
Oh, okay. So what can be all so I don’t know if anybody else has any thoughts, but we know that they don’t summon us from the air. Right? We are not genies out of a lamp. We have to come from somewhere. They have to find us somewhere. They have to build a belief in us somehow.
Our job is to write down the path and figure out, like, who on that path is is the person that’s most likely to open the door for us.
So I would encourage you to really dig into it, Abby. If it’s always a Facebook group that they run, then that’s just good to know. Then you can say, okay. The CEO is always my number one persona. They’re the one I’m gonna reach out to all the time.
And if they find me in a Facebook group, then that’s not about this at all. That’s just gonna be marketing that further fleshes out your, both your ICP and your persona because they’re obviously hiring the Facebook group to do something for them slash for their business. So that’s just good to know.
Is it what you think the future ideal client looks like? Do you think it’ll be the same sort of experience, or do you have reason to believe the next group that you target the or sorry, the next group that, should be hiring you that they will find you the same way.
I mean, I don’t know. I think this is the trouble is, like, I find it, like, I find the ideal avatar exercises really hard because it it’s like, well, if I’m not kind of engaging with them already, like, how do I know what they like, who they are or what they want and how to speak to them?
Yeah. You have to speak to them. That is actually the work of it. It’d be nice if there was an easier way.
But the easier way is ultimately, usually, the harder way anyway if you like. Yeah. Buy insights somehow.
You’ll probably eventually end up having to go back to, you know, I actually do have to just get on a call and talk with them.
And how do you do that?
Oh, you gotta find them. That’s LinkedIn sales navigator. Try to find them. Yeah. And then DM them and offer them a really compelling offer to get on a call with you so you can pick their brain and get that advice that you need.
But that will be that’s the work.
What are sorry to Jen. What are some of those compelling offers just, you know, for fun?
What what their currency? Like, what moves them? If you know that you’re working with heart centered people, you could say, hey. So you have to ask yourself, what is this call worth to me potentially?
Is this a thousand dollar call for me? Would I pay a thousand bucks to get information out of them? If I knew I was paying a thousand dollars, then what questions would I ask? So you probably have better questions because you’re like, I’m gonna get the most of this thousand bucks, for an hour.
On their end, they’re like, holy. An hour is a long time for me to tell you how to target people like me, so you better make it worth a thousand bucks to me. So let’s say, you know that your ideal your persona, the one you are trying to reach out to, loves dogs, then you can say, okay. My offer is I’ll make a thousand dollar donation to the soy, I think it’s pronounced soy, s o I, dog foundation on your behalf if you get on this call with me for an hour and really get honest with me about this sort of thing. That could be a great offer, but not everybody will have the same offer because everybody is moved by different things.
So I would say the more you know about that person so research them on LinkedIn. Follow every other thing that you can. This is a this is, like, critical work. Right? This is how you potentially shape a multimillion dollar business.
I was talking to my team about this earlier, and I’m not saying this about you at all, but the money that we have to put up to start an online business is so minor compared to a florist. I wanna start a flower shop. There’s so much friction, so much money that has to go into that. This is this is the kind of thing where you have such an advantage over, like, a florist. You make more money than they ever will as well.
But this is the investment. This is like filling out the lease and spending money on leasing the space.
This is that hard cost for you. Find a thousand bucks. Do the hard research of figuring out who you need to talk to at what organization, what they need to hear from you in order to say yes hopping on a call with you.
Do that work, and you could have literally millions of dollars in value there. Don’t do the work. Have you guys seen that that that diagram of the easy life versus the hard life?
It’s like you I’ll I’ll find the diagram and send it to you. It’s like you ask easy questions, and your life it’s easy until you have to climb back. I’ll show you the diagram. It’ll make a lot of sense, but it’s the hard work.
You’re doing the hard thing. You’re valuing it the way you expect to be valued as well, by giving it a thousand bucks or whatever that is. And then, just make sure make sure you make the most of it. Does that all make sense?
A hundred percent. That makes perfect sense because I wanna do this for, life cycle emails too. That is my next job. Yeah. So that’s, mega super duper helpful. Thank you, Jeff.
Cool. Awesome. Abby, how are you?
Yeah. I’m just thinking, like so if I was gonna do five interviews and be like, okay. I’ll donate five thousand dollars for those five.
If, like, they’re the wrong people, then I’m gonna be like, like, really on time.
That’ll be a giant waste of money. Yeah. I mean, it’s good you donated. It’s not a waste, but for you, they’ve you that’s why you have to make sure it’s the right person. So the best you can do is start with one.
So who is the purse so if you actually believe that it is the CEO who reaches out to you Mhmm.
Then you need to find the CEO of this seven figure training business and really make sure that that they’re the one.
And that’s good. That’s the thing. But just do one first. Don’t book five of these things out of the gate because you might find that although the CEO has reached out to you in the past, just like in this diagram, life cycle lead is likely to reach out to me, not the senior copywriter, but senior copywriter was the one who found me.
So you need to first talk to the CEO who you hypothesize is the person and ask them as a question. Like, really dig into it. Don’t take the first answer. Don’t even take the seventh answer.
Like, dig deep into how they found you, and we’re willing to take that leap to hop on a call with you. You could find out that someone they listen to mentioned looking for a copywriter in a podcast. I don’t know what it is. You don’t know what it is, but you’ll find out when you do that first interview.
Just do them one at a time. Give yourself time to synthesize what you learn so that you can ask better questions the next time and make sure you’re talking with the right person. By the time you reach number five, you know you’ve spoken with the right person slash people.
Yeah. Don’t book five out of the gate. Okay. Just a point. Okay. Cool. Awesome.
How’s everybody else feeling, Katie? How are you doing?
Yeah. I mean, the personas, like, was clear for, I feel like, my current slash, like, slightly art market ICA, like, CEO, CMO, whether it’s fractional or, like, some kind of marketing person in house, then they typically have a VA or an OBM who does, like, the CRM management.
Then I’ve I’ve dealt with, like, the social media manager, if you remember that issue on the call, and the designer. And then I know that I’ve been recommended by, like, a content strategist. Mhmm.
I know a big one for me and, like, Abby, maybe this is helpful for you, but, like, I’ve had kind of two big rounds of clients come through a coach who has hired me and then recommended me within their masterminds.
So, like, one client who’s probably responsible for, like, forty percent of the business I’ve had, she uses my freebies in her group programs as resources, and then people come to me through that. But, like, that’s, you know, that’s a market that I’m, like, moving beyond, but it has so now I’m like, okay. How do I get in, like, the next level mastermind to have that same kind of effect? Yes. And that’s where I guess yeah. Sorry.
Go. Keep going.
Well, this is just, like Yeah.
That I mean, that’s, like, great, and I love that. And the idea of, like, something like, okay. Marketing, like, road to pursue is, like, teaching in more mastermind like, group, guest teaching in more programs.
But then I just I’m like, I have my my existing of, like, stuff that I’ve created and trainings that I’m ready to do, but I don’t know if any of that is relevant to who I wanna be speaking to now.
And I think I’m having this bigger, like, identity crisis around, like, do I really leave behind everything that I’ve created up till now, or, like, should I really just be doing a better job of marketing everything that I’ve already created?
Yeah.
It’s a tough call. Right? Sometimes the answer is yes. You do have to cut ties with everything that you’ve done in order to move on to what’s next.
Sometimes that’s really, really the true thing, and it’s the hard thing. But it doesn’t have to be. Right? You possibly could do you think people who value what you do and can afford your services are in are are somewhere in this audience you already have access to?
Well, I don’t know if you remember when you looked over my, like, visibility funnels offer idea, but, like, my stretch audience was still way below who you were telling me to go for. So it’s like maybe.
Yeah. Yeah.
I can tell you that I know it can I know it’s scary? I get that it’s totally scary. If it helps, we at CopyHackers are making hard cuts in our audience.
Very hard cuts, intentionally. And it means like, okay. We built this really great, solid seven figure with lots of profit business with this one group, but they’re not the future for us. They’re not what’s next.
And it’s hard to it’s technically difficult to say goodbye to that audience.
But how else are we gonna grow? You know? How else are we going to we’re going to have the business that we envision as a team going forward, if we just we have to let them go. And for us, it’s actually been exciting that Alex Catani is on the scene now because she’s serving a lot of, like, brand new freelancers, and I’m so happy to say, like, go learn from Alex.
Don’t don’t don’t hang out here. I don’t have anything for you. I and I do have things for them. I have lots of things for them, but that’s not the future.
So just know that it is a hard decision a lot of us has to have to make, to say no to a certain audience in order to open ourselves up for what’s next. And it’s risky, but that’s the business that we’re in. It’s all about reward for risk and sometimes getting a punch in the face for taking the risk too. And that’s just, like, the freaking joys of what we’ve signed up for.
So I don’t know. If you’re struggling to believe that the people who can afford you and value you are in your current audience without having to shake them off entirely because it’s scary too. And, potentially, scary also means, like, costly because you’re you’re saying no to things.
What can you do to mitigate that risk?
How can you and I just Mhmm. Oh, I’m so bad at this part of it because my gut is always just just just jump into the next pond, both feet in, just jump.
And not a lot of people want to, but when you dip your toe, I don’t know that you get the same rewards versus jumping all in.
But I also am extremely comfortable with risk.
Yeah.
I feel like I have, I have a retainer client and, like, payment plan that cover my bills for, like, the next four months.
Okay.
So I’m kind of like, okay. That’s, like, that’s there. So I do have this space to be doing this work. It’s just, yeah, like, that feeling of I’m because I know that, like, the the work that I get in three months is based on the marketing that I’m doing now. So, like, am I gonna drive off a cliff in into which when, you know, if that when that payment plan ends and that retainer offer is over, like, will there be anything left to to pick up?
Yeah.
Anyway, I’m I’m I’m I can do, like, mindset work around that, but, yeah, that’s where I’m at with the full audience shift.
Okay. Yeah, I get it. I mean, I think that’s huge that you’re even considering making the shift.
It’s also a really nice sign that you’ve got a cushion right now, for the next couple of months at least. So is there ever gonna be a safer time to make this call? Like, it feels like with the cushion, you’re covered, sounds like, for the next four months.
This could be the best time in your business history to really make this call.
It’s just you have to make the call, which is so challenging.
Not as fun as we want it to be.
Always fun when you look back later, like, oh, it was the best call ever.
But in the moment, stuff.
Okay. Thanks, Katie. Have you talked to Kirsty about any mindset stuff around making that change?
Not lately. But I feel like I’m in the so the other program that I’m in with all these coaches is very mindset focused.
So, like, I do a lot of stuff around that. It’s just the it’s more the practical like, what Johnson was asking about, like, actually getting in front of people Yeah.
Like, where to find them and how to figure out who actually has the budget and the priorities.
Have you used LinkedIn sales navigator? Like, have you given it a shot?
No. I don’t I’m not on LinkedIn at all.
My yeah. We’re I’m I’ve been very focused on, like, SEO and blogging Yeah. Which I know is, like, also on my on my little website. It probably gets little traffic. But that’s where like, other than direct referrals, that’s where most of my people come from.
Interesting.
Yeah. If you’re wondering about I would just say, like, go put together a quick LinkedIn profile. Say yes to the ninety seven bucks for LinkedIn sales navigator and just see if you can start.
What I find is useful with Sales Navigator is even if you don’t do anything with it right away, you can at least say, cool. There is a market out there. Cool. There are like, you could find that there are five thousand coaches, and then you can start narrowing down with their filters a bit more to the point where potentially you could reach out to a few of them and say, can I pick your brain? I’m trying to figure this stuff out. Yeah. Cool.
And, of course, you’ve got the group that you’re in, which probably has some of these coaches you can also just Mhmm.
Ask. Yeah. Okay. Cool, Katie. Johnson?
Yep. So, I because I’ve missed a few things. I remember seeing someone else and talk about SaaS navigator. Have you you’ve have you covered you’ve covered that in something somewhere?
Lightly. We covered it a few weeks ago. I think it was in CSP.
Really lightly, the new copy school professional dot com.
Sarah, I know we just talked about it this morning.
Tina, maybe you know the answer. Wait. Sarah’s coming on screen.
When Why you hate me?
Why do you gotta hate me on this?
When will Johnson have access to?
I don’t know. When is Johnson gonna work on it? Just kidding.
Johnson would I wanna say by the end I’d wanna say by the end of this week.
Okay. So then you’ll be able to answer.
I’ve been snacking on working on, the CSP website. That’s my bad.
Yeah. Thank you for finally admitting that.
It’s it’s about time.
Awesome. Yeah. By the end of this week, we’ll have a link so it’s already invitation.
Awesome. Oh, there we go. Stacy says it was April twenty second. Thanks, Stacy.
So you can go back through some close to that.
I’m not sure on the exact date, but around then.
Okay. Wicked. Thank you.
Okay. So we have about fifteen minutes, because I actually have unfortunately, someone booked a meeting immediately at quarter after instead of thirty after, thirty past. So my bad.
Worksheet
Worksheet
Transcript
Yep.
Let’s dig into the actual training. So I shared the worksheet out in Slack. If you need it, please go to the Copy School Pro Slack group, and you will find the worksheet in the events area.
So this month, we’re trying out themes for the month in Coffee School Pro. The idea for this month is to get you really crystal clear on, all things ICP and persona. And when I say ICP, for those who are maybe watching the replay from other places, you might say I c a.
We say I c p, which in my brain, I was just like internal client. No.
Ideal client profile is what that is. I was going to share the inverted pyramid, but I didn’t want to overwhelm us with all talks of, like, market audience, and all of, like, the parts of the inverted pyramid, but there is one out there if you want. And what I don’t love about the inverted pyramid is it finishes at the bottom with persona.
So if you can imagine, there’s a world where there’s this inverted pyramid, and it has, like, market at the top and then, like, kind of target market. Then ICP, that’s the type of business that you’re really trying to target, and everybody here that I know of is trying to target a business of some kind.
So you’ve got the business, and then you have persona at the bottom of this inverted pyramid. But the challenge is that it looks like it’s one thing that it looks like you should have one, persona and that it’s small when in fact, most of us are gonna have three, maybe four different personas, the people that we are trying to reach out to in organizations, and that’s what I wanna talk about today.
Hi, Abby. Welcome. Just saw you show up.
Cool. So I’m going to share my screen. And, Abby, you just got here, so know that this worksheet is over in, in Slack. So you can get that there. If you would like to, please do. I would like you to work on the the free drawing area that we get into later. You can just do it on a piece of paper that you have.
So all this month, we’re working on this buyer handbook idea. Who are the people you are trying to sell to? That’s the persona you’re trying to connect with.
And then, where do they work? So getting really clear on that. And when your clients come to you and say, can you help us write for this segment? You can be really clear on that too. So between Perna and Rai teaching about, like, what to do for the copywriting side of things, research, etcetera, for your clients, And then myself and Shane helping you with, the stuff to do for your own business.
You should come out of this with a really rounded, education. Some of it reminder stuff, some of it brand new stuff by the end of June.
Book of the month. Does anybody remember what the book of the month is?
I don’t.
I will look, and we will share it with you.
So watch for that. Okay. So we wanna talk with the people at our ICP. Our ICP, again, ideal client’s profile, personas fit in neatly underneath that Challenger sale. Thank you, Jessica.
So the Challenger sale.
There. One second.
The Challenger sale got some bookmarks in it.
The reason that we want to read this is because everything to do with our buyer is in the sunshine growth model under the money side of things. So it can feel administrative. It can feel extra, but it’s really, really critical to get this stuff right if you’re going to make more money. You may make some changes to your ICP. You may add a new persona. Maybe you don’t even have personas at this point. That expect some of that to be kind of stirred up, some changes that you might make to make sure you’re attracting people who value what you do and have money to spend on it as well.
So the great thing about a persona is that it helps you visualize the person that you’re talking to, the person who’s consuming your content on social media or wherever that might be in your email list, and the people that you’re going to be working with internally as well.
Personas and jobs to be done are often talked about in, like, conflict with each other, but every persona has a job to be done, at least one. Right? So you can use everything you might know already about jobs to be done.
You can use that alongside personas. So if you have any resistance in your mind, if you’re like, oh, I’m pure jobs, I don’t wanna hear about it, don’t worry about it. You can do both. You can both follow persona stuff and job stuff.
Okay? By the end of this month, we have shifted some things around so that Shane is working toward, ideally, being able to say, now that you’ve got all these insights into your buyer, into who you’re trying to target and how to get in front of them, what’s what they’re looking for, etcetera, you can, like, have AI put together your buyer handbook for you. So this is all building up to something, then you can hand that handbook off to anybody that you might hire and yourself. You can, of course, reference it.
So keep that in mind, and it’s always gonna be a work in progress.
Okay.
Your ICP, it could be useful to have a representative brand. If you’re watching this, open up your workbook now. This is where you’re going to be writing some stuff in, this worksheet.
So does anybody have a representative brand for their ICP?
Johnson, Katie, Jessica, Stacy, Abby?
No?
Like, a brand that would be the most ideal version of it.
I I do, but then I worked with that brand, and now I’m looking for a new one because they were not ideal. Yeah.
Hey. Okay.
Johnson, you put up your hand a bit on that. No?
Okay. Yeah. It can be useful too. Some people start with that representative brand, and it’s it doesn’t have to be a dream brand either.
It can be a brand you already worked with. So if there’s someone who stands out to you, it’s usually better to start with the brand you already have worked with so that you can really clearly fill this part out. Now this isn’t, like, from any sort of book putting together your ICP. This is what I find useful in understanding, the organization that I’m talking to.
For us, we’re often talking to, very two very different ICPs. So for copy hackers, we have at least two ICPs. One of them is a very small business. One person with, like, a VA or two, obviously, all the freelancers that we work with.
And then there’s this other ICP that is extraordinarily large organizations that have copy teams in them and creative teams. So we have two different ones with different personas in each, which is not recommended. It’s not gonna make your life any easier. So do choose one that you can target well with your offer.
And then this is really like, it feels, maybe administrative, but if you haven’t written down what industry they’re in, where they’re located, that doesn’t have to be, like, down to a city. Right? It doesn’t have to be just for this brand. So if you’re like, my ICP is Facebook.
Well, let’s say Meta. So my ICP is Meta. Their industry is tech slash social media slash advertising.
Their location is they’re in Palo Alto. Last I knew of the Facebook headquarters.
You don’t have to go into that. So it doesn’t have to go that far. You don’t have to say Palo Alto. You can just say they’re in the UK or North America slash Canada, whatever you wanna put there.
So the representative brand does not necessarily dictate everything that goes under here. It’s really just shorthand for the kind of brand you’re looking for. So if it is Meta, you might say, okay. Well, I want I want the company I work with to have, like, five thousand plus employees.
Meta has far more than that. But then at least, you know, if the organization has fewer than five thousand employees, they’re probably not a good fit for me. And you can be really, like, dedicated to your ICP, and you should be because the more narrow you are with that, the more you commit to that, the less guesswork you really have to do so you can identify what their revenue is. This is annual revenue.
This is the department that they’ll that you’ll likely be working with, the one that reaches out to you most commonly. So if you’re like, it’s always creative services or it’s always their growth team, or they’re likely to have, like, a sales pod that reaches out to me, then you write down that department and that becomes can you imagine how you would use that then? If you know that it’s always going to be a sales pod at, a large organization of five thousand people in tech that reaches out to you. Now you can really clearly figure out how to use LinkedIn sales navigator to get in front of more of them.
You can do a little voice of customer research and open up tons of information that’s just for them. So you can do far less work and still have it look like you’re a freaking genius because you’re focusing on this narrow group, which can be scary, but there’s only one of you. So if it’s like, but there’s only five thousand peep groups in the total addressable market. How am I ever gonna get rich?
You will. Don’t worry about it. It’s good. Like, you’re one person. You’re not a team of five thousand.
That would be a scarier proposition. There’s one of you. Most of the time, you’re you can’t go too narrow as long as you’re choosing people who have money and value what you do. If they don’t value what you do, no matter what, you’re never going to make any money.
If they don’t have money, no matter what you do, you’re never going to make any money. So that’s, like, pretty important.
Is this all clear and making sense and not weird?
Okay.
Do they have a creative team? Who’s on their creative team? And what’s important to answer here is if you are like, I only work with coaches, and there’s usually the coach plus their admin person who turns into a bit of a partner for them, and they use freelancers, that’s okay. Just write down here that their creative team is made up of freelance designers, freelance, freelance copywriters, maybe that you wouldn’t you you would even put in there any AI they use to, like, sub in for a creative person.
You also wanna put the tools that they use for your specialization or for things related to your specialization.
Canva could be one.
If they do wireframing, let’s say, in their tools they use for your specialization, if you’re in email, that’s your specialization.
What’s their CRM most likely to be? What is the what are the tools that they’re using? Again, that way you can say, hey.
Coach struggling with ActiveCampaign and segmenting in there. And, obviously, the the more you know about this, the easier it is to create content, which is what we are always, always going to be actually talking about when we’re talking about growing our businesses. There’s always an element of, okay, but what are you gonna put out into the world so that people know that.
What’s their budget?
Be honest about their budget for the kind of work that you do. Not their budget overall, but their budget for the kind of work that you do. If you don’t know, this is where it’s great to look at your past clients and better understand what their budget has been. If you’re like, I don’t want anymore, like, my past clients. Fair. Totally fair.
Now is the time where you are resourceful. Then you go out and you do the hard work of saying, how can I get my ideas, the persona at my ICP? We’ll get into personas next.
To sit down and talk to me about what their budget is and be honest with me. Like, I have to get that information or else I won’t know if they can afford my services. So you have to get that information. How can you go get it? Be resourceful about getting an answer to that important question. You’re the CEO.
CEO has to answer these important questions. You can’t just pretend they don’t exist. Right? So how do you find the budget? How do you find out what their budget is? How are they solving their copy struggles today?
I but I’ll be saying struggles more than problems going forward. I had a really good talk with Bob Mastat, this retreat I was just at from jobs.
And, yeah, struggles, just know going forward. I mean, problems, but struggles are typically we’ll talk more about that.
But it’s struggles slash problems.
And then time to close. How long does it take for them to say yes to you from the point that they feel that early problem slash struggle, through to getting on a call with you and everything else that happens so that you cannot be frustrated when this stuff takes time. Some the larger the organization, the more time it’s likely to take for them to say yes to you. And if you’re like, well, I need to close a client by the end of the month, they take three months to make a decision.
Now you know what your time is to close. And it’s critical to be really honest about these things or it’s very difficult to move forward if you’re, one, guessing. I think it probably takes, like, a month. If you don’t know, you really have to get on a call with that persona that you’re more likely to get honest information from.
Find a way to get on a call with them. Any questions about this for the ICP side of things?
Does everybody already have this sorted out?
Clearly, in a way you could hand it off to somebody.
Why haven’t you? Can I ask? And it could just be because, like, busyness, but I’m really curious. Yeah.
Me? Yeah. Katie. Yeah.
Because I am still lost in this model of, like, do I just change industries completely, or, like, am I looking at talking to a higher level person in the industry I’m already in?
Mhmm. Okay.
So, like, is it worth trying to figure out who this is, like, in the coaching space, or do I wanna just be like, you know, if it Joanna says to go to SAS, like, do that and, and dive in?
Yeah. I wonder about, like so I say SaaS because it’s easier, in everything that I’ve seen, but but I’ve also never built a brand in a different space. I’ve never been the one people go to when they’re a coach.
I’ve been asked, you know, a copywriter by all of the big coaches out there, but it’s never been understood to be me. That would be that one. Whenever, like, Joe, can you write this? Because I think they know damn well. Like, I don’t know what I what?
So can you do anything with coaches? How what I really mean is can you find a group that talks to each other so you can get easy referrals, that has ongoing work to do, and that thinks of themselves as a business? Part of the problem with a lot of coaches is that they follow this launch idea, which makes it hard for you to think of it as a business. It’s not until you cross over to Evergreen that in my experience, people seem to understand.
Now I’m a business. Now I’m making regular recurring revenue, not I just did a three million dollar launch, and I’m gonna take three months to freaking decompress because that was so much work.
But is there a way to go upmarket, Katie, for you? Is there an upmarket version of your audience?
Yeah. I definitely think that there is. I just think that, like I think I mentioned this before. It’s kind of like the further up you go, the more people are just teaching, like like, kind of the higher market you go, the less I wanna work with them.
Like Okay.
It’s more then I feel like it gets really and just, like, not the ethos that I wanna be in. Yeah. So, like, I’m in this program with lots of coaches at the, like, multi six to seven figure level, and I see them.
Like, so when I I used to feel like I knew who this ICP was, but then, like, working on the standardized offer, like, wanting to have some like, wanting to have something in that model Yeah.
I don’t think that that, like, ICA that I had previously mapped out wouldn’t necessarily go for the, like, optimization package, and that’s where I’m still, like, trying to marry this altogether.
Yeah. That’s fair.
I have a call booked with Rai, actually. I booked a one along with him for his insight into this market specifically to try and get this nailed down by the end of the week.
So that’s like Oh, damn. Why am I am, like, trying to figure it out.
Nice. Good deadline. I love it. Okay. Cool. So that makes sense. You’re actively working through it, and you’ll know more, hopefully, after talking with Rai.
Okay. Okay. Cool. Thanks, Katie. Anybody else wanna share what’s holding them back from pinpointing a little more, at least, their ICP?
I can, share something. I, I I told you I brought someone on recently, and, this person is someone who I want to take on, this portion of work that we’re doing at the moment with a client who works in ERP solutions Okay. Like NetSuite.
These consultancies, he’s, you know, he he runs a consultancy.
They the the the kind of the smallest versions have a revenue of about half a mil, and it goes all the way up to sort of fifteen to twenty mil before they start to really scale up. And what this client that I work with is, a great client, really, dedicated, but struggles with lead gen. Basically, it’s kind of just running running the business is taking everything. So we’ve developed an offer, sort of following a good chunk of what we’ve been doing, where I’m gonna be pitching, essentially kind of authority building, on LinkedIn, and Reddit because a good chunk of these customers are there, plus maybe a little bit of, lead gen, and sort of pitching it at a sort of ten k initialization and then an ongoing five k retainer.
But this is brand new. We’ve sort of been working day and night to put this together and build the pitch and kind of get into the direct selling sort of direct response, sorry, techniques to to really, like, sell it to this client. And then it was only, like, a week or two ago, we were like, oh, we should also, of course, prepare the like, we’ve developed a whole product now. We should start to look at, like, who else we could sell this to, because the might say no.
And, so we’ve we’ve got a good idea. We know the industry. We know the location. We know the revenue.
We know the employees, the department.
I guess we know the creative team. It’s freelancers.
Budget is trickier to figure out because they hire consultants, on a sort of ad hoc basis to complete their projects.
And I guess the the reason why we don’t have this all filled out is because, I don’t know the level of detail to go into yet.
Okay.
Because it’s new. Right? So that’s because it’s new. Yeah.
Yeah. So, this is a side note. Curious, though, about this pitch that you’re building.
Do you feel like it’s going to be something you can easily replicate for others?
So the whole as we built out this process, we’ve been building basically, we built the whole, service out of soaps. So, as as much as is possible, I will not be involved at all, and this other person will take over so that I can focus on, doing life cycle emails. And but this will be a, sort of a source of revenue for the business, an opportunity to to train this this person to a sort of management position.
So it’s a sort of long it’s sort of like a little bit of upfront work to get some long term distance out of the business.
Okay. Makes sense.
Cool.
So work in progress. Once you have this pitch done, you’ll have a little data. No. One data point is not, like, good.
But it’s better ish than nothing.
So it might be worth at least starting to to fill this in. But right now, you have a general idea of some of these points.
Sure. And I guess the one question I maybe had was if you so I know it’s in ERP solutions.
But to be honest, because of the nature of the service, there’s no real reason why it couldn’t be in, you know, any industry as long as the the company had a motivated founder who wanted to build a personal brand or, you know, and understood the the significance of that. Do you have any, do you have any advice on sort of thinking, laterally across industries for this kind of I know it’s a very sort of different.
No.
Well, that’s simply because I was just thinking so wait. I I now as a total side note. So wait. You want to help people who are in organizations build their personal brand?
Yeah. Well, to general yeah. To build their authority, to to, yeah, to build their their their company’s brand and their own personal brand.
So it’s sideways.
I actually have a lead for you then. They’ll send along to you. Someone just reached out to me for exactly that. So, anyway, I’ll send that to you, and that could be another data point for you to at least get in on a conversation with the what, the why, and all that kind of stuff to help fill this in. So that’s why I got distracted there and couldn’t answer your question because I was like, that’d be cool if I can solve that ask.
Okay. So yours so repeat your question then, please.
I’ve got the words from it, but not how it all goes together.
So so just how to think about I’m you know, I’m I’m basing this on the industry that that this this plan is in because we now I now know it very well. I mean, it works for them. But, you know, reasonably, with maybe a little bit more preparation upfront, we could do this for any industry.
Yeah.
So, do you have any advice about sort of thinking, laterally to move, you know, across industry or or just advice on maybe industries that are likely to have a a wealth of companies that are sort of in the, I I don’t know, one mil to fifteen mil revenue range, small ish teams and motivated founders.
Yeah. So many.
Definitely. Let me let me give some thought to that. I can say if that’s something you wanna do, if you wanna say, hey, founders, I can help you build your brand that is you’re ready to write a book. I assume all of those sorts of things will fit under that. Yep. Yeah.
Then just know that there’s a large market for this. There are a lot of people, a lot of founders who are doing exactly that. But it’s probably worth at minimum starting with one industry still. I would say it’s definitely worth that because then you can say, okay.
If it’s a founder and they’re making so much money, then you can start looking for the influencers, and that would, like, get into, the personas. So they might not even be at that ICP. So I would think of something like, if you’re trying to target those people, then we’d wanna get more into, like, figure out who the influencers are because there’s the SaaS Academy that’s filled with founders who are ready to build their brand. There’s, Matt Lerner with System, and that’s just in, like those are two groups that have founders who are highly motivated to do what it takes to get out into the world so that people use their solution the way that Jason Fried and DHH did for base camp.
So no, but there’s lots there, and let me give it some more thought.
Cool. That’d be amazing. Thank you.
Awesome. Thanks.
Anybody else have anything about ICPs before we move on?
Okay. So when it comes to your ICP, the inverted pyramid, as I mentioned at the start of this call, the inverted pyramid has, like, ICP, and then at the bottom is persona.
That, to me, visually, doesn’t leave enough room for the many personas that might be under there, and this, to me, feels more like pillars. But I I hate old school business diagrams with pillars. I just have a strong aversion to them from my day that Intuit. So I didn’t want this to look like a pillar.
But this is really a question of who are you targeting. So we need to fill in your ideal client profile, which just, like, take everything here and write a statement. Now if you’ve done the intensive freelancing, you’ve already done this work. You’ve already got this figured out. You know already that you will be refining the personas and a little bit of your ICP, but you should have that down, pretty well. Now the personas are, of course, the people at the ICP, typically, that are going to be the ones that you are targeting in your marketing.
But I don’t want you to stop there. And I know this can start to feel like a really big exercise, but if we only ever think about the people that we are targeting with our marketing, then we miss the point of all of the decision makers internally, and other people who help them make a decision. So when you’re thinking of personas, I would like you to think about what I just said to Johnson.
Who are the bigger influencers and make a persona out of one of those key influencers that might be they have a coach. They have an executive coach in Johnson’s case. Right? There’s an executive coach. They’re trying to make them better.
If you were to message toward executive coaches for these founders, then they could be a really good, opportunity for you. Right? But they don’t technically work at the ICP.
If you’re working with really small businesses, maybe they’re highly profitable, very small businesses, it could be the partner of the person who runs that business. So they’re like, the James clears of the world. They’re, like, super well known for one thing. They’re not planning on building a big business out, and their partner or, someone that they trust really closely.
Again, that could be an executive coach. It could be the partner that they have in life. It could be, a person in that they met in a mastermind who they call up all the time for help. So James Clear could say, hey, Nathan Barry.
Let’s hop on a call and talk through this. So one of your personas could be the Nathan Barry’s of the world.
So that would be something to consider. So I don’t just want you to think about only about the personas that you are likely to talk to directly on the path to getting a client, but do start there. Start with the people that you or the person usually that you are likely to, who is usually your point of contact or the one who kicks off working together.
So a good way to go about that, I have found and this is like a blank page for you to fill this in. I’d like you to take just five minutes to basically map out whatever that looks like for your org chart with personas and influencers. Now this org chart doesn’t have lines between it, because it’s really unnecessary. Grower, nobody. No. You can’t eat that plant. Nobody.
You’ve got the so in this case, I have VP of marketing, life cycle lead, and senior copy likely to be people that I connect with directly. The senior copywriter finds me and follows me, and this is if I was working on life cycle as my specialization. That’s the example here. This isn’t for me.
This is for an example of a freelancer who’s working on life cycle. So who’s your primary point of contact? This is the person who’s likely to work with you directly throughout. So the senior copywriter may find you online and start in their meetings with their manager, life cycle lead in this case, let’s say.
They’re in these meetings, and they’re like, hey. I’m really still struggling with x.
But I’ve started following, Abby, and I’m learning this cool stuff. And I wonder if there’s any way we can bring her into the org to help us with why.
And then that person would be the one who actually reaches out to you. Like, okay. Maybe just connect me with them or send me their email address, send me their website, and I’ll look into it. So the life cycle lead could be the actual person who reaches out to you, but your advocate internally might have been the senior copywriter or in other cases, other people.
But this is the example. Right? So if you know, generally, some people watching the replay of this will have been working with an organization or, like, sorry, an ICP for a long time, and they can more clearly document the I say org chart, it really means, like, influencer chart.
They can more easily document that because they’ve set they can say like, I can say for a SaaS company who wants to bring me in to rewrite their website and then optimize it. I know exactly who that point of contact is. I know who the influencer was that like, the advocate who first said we should go with this person. I know where they found me. I generally know when they found me, and I know who has to agree to this, who I have to really impress in order to get them to say yes, to say yes to a large amount of money. So I would know that a senior designer is gonna be involved.
Always brand managers are somehow involved. I gotta get them to believe that I understand brand at the same time I understand CRO. The CFO is gonna be the one approving usually going over budget because almost nobody comes to me and says, like, perfect. That’s exactly what I was hoping you would say.
It’s usually like, shit. Let’s see what we can do. So I have so these are lighter boxes here. These are the people, the CFO, the brand manager, the senior designer, those are people who are likely to come up a lot in meetings and in Google Docs.
So I want you to take five minutes to figure out the key personas that you will be typically talking with, that will find you, that will email you, that will follow you on social and DM you, and then the people who influence them.
Five minutes just to knock it out. Is that cool? Can we do this?
Hopefully, it’s a good useful exercise. I will be quiet until ten forty when I will be noisy again.
How’d we do?
Anybody want to share or talk through what you put down on the page?
Yeah. I I felt like like looking back at my past clients, so, like, seven figure course creators, I think I’m struggling to think of the time where it wasn’t the CEO that reached out to me and kind of approved the work. Like, I’ve maybe once had, like, an ad strategist come to me, but, otherwise, it’s it’s always gonna be the CEO.
And then where I’m struggling there is that like, with printing out content and stuff because it’s like I’m just skeptical whether, like, a CEO is gonna kind of watch my webinar or anything.
Yeah. Do they so then it’s good to look out at influencers. Right? If it’s difficult to get them directly, who influences them? Do they have a coach?
I guess so. Yes. Probably. Yeah. Probably. Yeah. If they’re doing seven figures, they probably have a coach because a coach probably targeted them at some point and sold themselves to them.
That’s at least been my experience is having coaches reach out, probably why I have three of them. And then, if you were to find that they have a coach or they’re part of a mastermind, have you experienced that at all that they’re part of a mastermind or they’re coached?
Yeah. I mean, I this is something I’ve been thinking about for years because it seems like such a strategic way to market, but I just I’ve not found, like, those masterminds.
Okay.
Yeah. I would say the next thing, you you just need to identify who first has introduced them to you or could introduce them to you, where has is the better one, but could is still an opportunity.
How do they find you? Who says at Usually Facebook groups. Facebook groups.
Yeah.
Or, like, LinkedIn.
But it’s always the, like, the founder that that reaches out, not a member of the group.
Figure or six figure? Yeah. Yeah. Seven figures. And they’re involved in Facebook groups that aren’t run by a coach.
Sometimes it’s their Facebook group.
Oh, okay. So what can be all so I don’t know if anybody else has any thoughts, but we know that they don’t summon us from the air. Right? We are not genies out of a lamp. We have to come from somewhere. They have to find us somewhere. They have to build a belief in us somehow.
Our job is to write down the path and figure out, like, who on that path is is the person that’s most likely to open the door for us.
So I would encourage you to really dig into it, Abby. If it’s always a Facebook group that they run, then that’s just good to know. Then you can say, okay. The CEO is always my number one persona. They’re the one I’m gonna reach out to all the time.
And if they find me in a Facebook group, then that’s not about this at all. That’s just gonna be marketing that further fleshes out your, both your ICP and your persona because they’re obviously hiring the Facebook group to do something for them slash for their business. So that’s just good to know.
Is it what you think the future ideal client looks like? Do you think it’ll be the same sort of experience, or do you have reason to believe the next group that you target the or sorry, the next group that, should be hiring you that they will find you the same way.
I mean, I don’t know. I think this is the trouble is, like, I find it, like, I find the ideal avatar exercises really hard because it it’s like, well, if I’m not kind of engaging with them already, like, how do I know what they like, who they are or what they want and how to speak to them?
Yeah. You have to speak to them. That is actually the work of it. It’d be nice if there was an easier way.
But the easier way is ultimately, usually, the harder way anyway if you like. Yeah. Buy insights somehow.
You’ll probably eventually end up having to go back to, you know, I actually do have to just get on a call and talk with them.
And how do you do that?
Oh, you gotta find them. That’s LinkedIn sales navigator. Try to find them. Yeah. And then DM them and offer them a really compelling offer to get on a call with you so you can pick their brain and get that advice that you need.
But that will be that’s the work.
What are sorry to Jen. What are some of those compelling offers just, you know, for fun?
What what their currency? Like, what moves them? If you know that you’re working with heart centered people, you could say, hey. So you have to ask yourself, what is this call worth to me potentially?
Is this a thousand dollar call for me? Would I pay a thousand bucks to get information out of them? If I knew I was paying a thousand dollars, then what questions would I ask? So you probably have better questions because you’re like, I’m gonna get the most of this thousand bucks, for an hour.
On their end, they’re like, holy. An hour is a long time for me to tell you how to target people like me, so you better make it worth a thousand bucks to me. So let’s say, you know that your ideal your persona, the one you are trying to reach out to, loves dogs, then you can say, okay. My offer is I’ll make a thousand dollar donation to the soy, I think it’s pronounced soy, s o I, dog foundation on your behalf if you get on this call with me for an hour and really get honest with me about this sort of thing. That could be a great offer, but not everybody will have the same offer because everybody is moved by different things.
So I would say the more you know about that person so research them on LinkedIn. Follow every other thing that you can. This is a this is, like, critical work. Right? This is how you potentially shape a multimillion dollar business.
I was talking to my team about this earlier, and I’m not saying this about you at all, but the money that we have to put up to start an online business is so minor compared to a florist. I wanna start a flower shop. There’s so much friction, so much money that has to go into that. This is this is the kind of thing where you have such an advantage over, like, a florist. You make more money than they ever will as well.
But this is the investment. This is like filling out the lease and spending money on leasing the space.
This is that hard cost for you. Find a thousand bucks. Do the hard research of figuring out who you need to talk to at what organization, what they need to hear from you in order to say yes hopping on a call with you.
Do that work, and you could have literally millions of dollars in value there. Don’t do the work. Have you guys seen that that that diagram of the easy life versus the hard life?
It’s like you I’ll I’ll find the diagram and send it to you. It’s like you ask easy questions, and your life it’s easy until you have to climb back. I’ll show you the diagram. It’ll make a lot of sense, but it’s the hard work.
You’re doing the hard thing. You’re valuing it the way you expect to be valued as well, by giving it a thousand bucks or whatever that is. And then, just make sure make sure you make the most of it. Does that all make sense?
A hundred percent. That makes perfect sense because I wanna do this for, life cycle emails too. That is my next job. Yeah. So that’s, mega super duper helpful. Thank you, Jeff.
Cool. Awesome. Abby, how are you?
Yeah. I’m just thinking, like so if I was gonna do five interviews and be like, okay. I’ll donate five thousand dollars for those five.
If, like, they’re the wrong people, then I’m gonna be like, like, really on time.
That’ll be a giant waste of money. Yeah. I mean, it’s good you donated. It’s not a waste, but for you, they’ve you that’s why you have to make sure it’s the right person. So the best you can do is start with one.
So who is the purse so if you actually believe that it is the CEO who reaches out to you Mhmm.
Then you need to find the CEO of this seven figure training business and really make sure that that they’re the one.
And that’s good. That’s the thing. But just do one first. Don’t book five of these things out of the gate because you might find that although the CEO has reached out to you in the past, just like in this diagram, life cycle lead is likely to reach out to me, not the senior copywriter, but senior copywriter was the one who found me.
So you need to first talk to the CEO who you hypothesize is the person and ask them as a question. Like, really dig into it. Don’t take the first answer. Don’t even take the seventh answer.
Like, dig deep into how they found you, and we’re willing to take that leap to hop on a call with you. You could find out that someone they listen to mentioned looking for a copywriter in a podcast. I don’t know what it is. You don’t know what it is, but you’ll find out when you do that first interview.
Just do them one at a time. Give yourself time to synthesize what you learn so that you can ask better questions the next time and make sure you’re talking with the right person. By the time you reach number five, you know you’ve spoken with the right person slash people.
Yeah. Don’t book five out of the gate. Okay. Just a point. Okay. Cool. Awesome.
How’s everybody else feeling, Katie? How are you doing?
Yeah. I mean, the personas, like, was clear for, I feel like, my current slash, like, slightly art market ICA, like, CEO, CMO, whether it’s fractional or, like, some kind of marketing person in house, then they typically have a VA or an OBM who does, like, the CRM management.
Then I’ve I’ve dealt with, like, the social media manager, if you remember that issue on the call, and the designer. And then I know that I’ve been recommended by, like, a content strategist. Mhmm.
I know a big one for me and, like, Abby, maybe this is helpful for you, but, like, I’ve had kind of two big rounds of clients come through a coach who has hired me and then recommended me within their masterminds.
So, like, one client who’s probably responsible for, like, forty percent of the business I’ve had, she uses my freebies in her group programs as resources, and then people come to me through that. But, like, that’s, you know, that’s a market that I’m, like, moving beyond, but it has so now I’m like, okay. How do I get in, like, the next level mastermind to have that same kind of effect? Yes. And that’s where I guess yeah. Sorry.
Go. Keep going.
Well, this is just, like Yeah.
That I mean, that’s, like, great, and I love that. And the idea of, like, something like, okay. Marketing, like, road to pursue is, like, teaching in more mastermind like, group, guest teaching in more programs.
But then I just I’m like, I have my my existing of, like, stuff that I’ve created and trainings that I’m ready to do, but I don’t know if any of that is relevant to who I wanna be speaking to now.
And I think I’m having this bigger, like, identity crisis around, like, do I really leave behind everything that I’ve created up till now, or, like, should I really just be doing a better job of marketing everything that I’ve already created?
Yeah.
It’s a tough call. Right? Sometimes the answer is yes. You do have to cut ties with everything that you’ve done in order to move on to what’s next.
Sometimes that’s really, really the true thing, and it’s the hard thing. But it doesn’t have to be. Right? You possibly could do you think people who value what you do and can afford your services are in are are somewhere in this audience you already have access to?
Well, I don’t know if you remember when you looked over my, like, visibility funnels offer idea, but, like, my stretch audience was still way below who you were telling me to go for. So it’s like maybe.
Yeah. Yeah.
I can tell you that I know it can I know it’s scary? I get that it’s totally scary. If it helps, we at CopyHackers are making hard cuts in our audience.
Very hard cuts, intentionally. And it means like, okay. We built this really great, solid seven figure with lots of profit business with this one group, but they’re not the future for us. They’re not what’s next.
And it’s hard to it’s technically difficult to say goodbye to that audience.
But how else are we gonna grow? You know? How else are we going to we’re going to have the business that we envision as a team going forward, if we just we have to let them go. And for us, it’s actually been exciting that Alex Catani is on the scene now because she’s serving a lot of, like, brand new freelancers, and I’m so happy to say, like, go learn from Alex.
Don’t don’t don’t hang out here. I don’t have anything for you. I and I do have things for them. I have lots of things for them, but that’s not the future.
So just know that it is a hard decision a lot of us has to have to make, to say no to a certain audience in order to open ourselves up for what’s next. And it’s risky, but that’s the business that we’re in. It’s all about reward for risk and sometimes getting a punch in the face for taking the risk too. And that’s just, like, the freaking joys of what we’ve signed up for.
So I don’t know. If you’re struggling to believe that the people who can afford you and value you are in your current audience without having to shake them off entirely because it’s scary too. And, potentially, scary also means, like, costly because you’re you’re saying no to things.
What can you do to mitigate that risk?
How can you and I just Mhmm. Oh, I’m so bad at this part of it because my gut is always just just just jump into the next pond, both feet in, just jump.
And not a lot of people want to, but when you dip your toe, I don’t know that you get the same rewards versus jumping all in.
But I also am extremely comfortable with risk.
Yeah.
I feel like I have, I have a retainer client and, like, payment plan that cover my bills for, like, the next four months.
Okay.
So I’m kind of like, okay. That’s, like, that’s there. So I do have this space to be doing this work. It’s just, yeah, like, that feeling of I’m because I know that, like, the the work that I get in three months is based on the marketing that I’m doing now. So, like, am I gonna drive off a cliff in into which when, you know, if that when that payment plan ends and that retainer offer is over, like, will there be anything left to to pick up?
Yeah.
Anyway, I’m I’m I’m I can do, like, mindset work around that, but, yeah, that’s where I’m at with the full audience shift.
Okay. Yeah, I get it. I mean, I think that’s huge that you’re even considering making the shift.
It’s also a really nice sign that you’ve got a cushion right now, for the next couple of months at least. So is there ever gonna be a safer time to make this call? Like, it feels like with the cushion, you’re covered, sounds like, for the next four months.
This could be the best time in your business history to really make this call.
It’s just you have to make the call, which is so challenging.
Not as fun as we want it to be.
Always fun when you look back later, like, oh, it was the best call ever.
But in the moment, stuff.
Okay. Thanks, Katie. Have you talked to Kirsty about any mindset stuff around making that change?
Not lately. But I feel like I’m in the so the other program that I’m in with all these coaches is very mindset focused.
So, like, I do a lot of stuff around that. It’s just the it’s more the practical like, what Johnson was asking about, like, actually getting in front of people Yeah.
Like, where to find them and how to figure out who actually has the budget and the priorities.
Have you used LinkedIn sales navigator? Like, have you given it a shot?
No. I don’t I’m not on LinkedIn at all.
My yeah. We’re I’m I’ve been very focused on, like, SEO and blogging Yeah. Which I know is, like, also on my on my little website. It probably gets little traffic. But that’s where like, other than direct referrals, that’s where most of my people come from.
Interesting.
Yeah. If you’re wondering about I would just say, like, go put together a quick LinkedIn profile. Say yes to the ninety seven bucks for LinkedIn sales navigator and just see if you can start.
What I find is useful with Sales Navigator is even if you don’t do anything with it right away, you can at least say, cool. There is a market out there. Cool. There are like, you could find that there are five thousand coaches, and then you can start narrowing down with their filters a bit more to the point where potentially you could reach out to a few of them and say, can I pick your brain? I’m trying to figure this stuff out. Yeah. Cool.
And, of course, you’ve got the group that you’re in, which probably has some of these coaches you can also just Mhmm.
Ask. Yeah. Okay. Cool, Katie. Johnson?
Yep. So, I because I’ve missed a few things. I remember seeing someone else and talk about SaaS navigator. Have you you’ve have you covered you’ve covered that in something somewhere?
Lightly. We covered it a few weeks ago. I think it was in CSP.
Really lightly, the new copy school professional dot com.
Sarah, I know we just talked about it this morning.
Tina, maybe you know the answer. Wait. Sarah’s coming on screen.
When Why you hate me?
Why do you gotta hate me on this?
When will Johnson have access to?
I don’t know. When is Johnson gonna work on it? Just kidding.
Johnson would I wanna say by the end I’d wanna say by the end of this week.
Okay. So then you’ll be able to answer.
I’ve been snacking on working on, the CSP website. That’s my bad.
Yeah. Thank you for finally admitting that.
It’s it’s about time.
Awesome. Yeah. By the end of this week, we’ll have a link so it’s already invitation.
Awesome. Oh, there we go. Stacy says it was April twenty second. Thanks, Stacy.
So you can go back through some close to that.
I’m not sure on the exact date, but around then.
Okay. Wicked. Thank you.
Okay. So we have about fifteen minutes, because I actually have unfortunately, someone booked a meeting immediately at quarter after instead of thirty after, thirty past. So my bad.
Building Your Authority Site
How to Build Your Authority Site
Transcript
So today, we’re gonna go over how to, build your authority site. We use this process, not just for, well, you can use this process for yourself, but we also use it for clients, and you can you can apply this across, different niches.
So I think if your member’s telling me this, like, fifteen years ago, Joanna, when I took the I think it was the the freelancer, the hundred thousand dollar freelancer, whereas really, like, the the main goals of your site is you wanna grow your list, you wanna sell your stuff, and then you you sell your other other people’s stuff. I remember when you said that to me, it just it really hit home and that’s, of course, it’s it’s true.
And that also may ultimately leads to the the top three things that that or the top three goals that we make sure all of our authority sites, achieve. First one is it needs to drive leads and sales. Second, it needs to build authority and trust. And the third thing is it needs to get remembered and shared, which I I know Joanna touched, on that the last meeting that we had. Now the metrics we used to measure success. We make sure that all of these are aligned to the goals that I I just discussed.
A lot of these are, super important. The the big ones are your customer lifetime value, your list growth rate, your lead conversion rate. A lot of these metrics if you move the needle even five percent, you’re gonna see a a lot of growth. So, we tend to focus on these. Now what we’ll do with these metrics is we’ll actually create a scorecard, and we’ll monitor them either weekly or monthly depending on on which ones.
More importantly, the is you wanna make sure that again that these are aligned to your goals.
I suggest you stick with the top three, but if for whatever reason, your your client or yourself, you wanna achieve something else, just make sure you can prove success or measure success.
So we’ll get into, the first step is really defining on what you want your site to achieve, what your the goals are, we’ll get into this actual process that we use to create the site.
It starts with identifying your most profitable customer. Now, what we suggest doing is you wanna identify the four percent of your customers that generates sixty four percent of your revenue.
We do that. What we do is we look at our customer list and we use lifetime value as the metric and then also repeat purchases or the number of purchases that people have made. And what we do is we we take that, we segment, and then from that, we’ll we’ll discover the four percent, and that’s who we’ll start with first.
Then we’ll use that list, and we’ll we’ll sort of pick and choose the next customer to start with, and then we’ll work through it one at a time. Basically, targeting a specific niche or market, and then moving on to the next.
The next stage is once you’ve identified your your your ideal prospect, you have them sorted, then you wanna conduct center interviews and and surveys and interviews.
We start by interviewing the customers, you know, your typical sort of what challenges you’re facing, you know, how’s our product help to your favorite features, a lot of these questions, and and I do have a copy of the, I think we have, like, fifty. No, I’ve actually over a hundred questions now.
Of different ways that you can ask them, and different, they’re all organized by stages of awareness, but I’ll share this with you at the end. And essentially, what you’re looking for is not just understand the problem, understand that obviously the outcome they want or the solution, but also These are questions that are gonna help you uncover your your value prop, your USB.
A lot of these questions, like, why which specific features did you like or or what made you choose us over the competition, you’re gonna get all of that stuff from these interviews, and that’s what you’re really gonna start using to create your USB and value prop.
So the next person you need to interview is you. So you need to interview yourself. This is all the stuff that we’re going through the, copy hackers as well. Books, success stories, case studies, your podcast, events, everything about you, your origin story, which, I’m gonna do another session on this.
And, your origin story is all a bit of creating trust. It’s it’s, hey, you understand the problem and, you know, they they can relate to you. You’re likable, and you’ll do that early on. So we’ll cover another session on that.
And, of course, your USB and your unique mechanism, you’ll get your USB from the customer surveys. Your unique mechanism, is once you know what or you have a better idea on why they chose you, then you can hammer out the details. That’s really the how it works. So that’s the part that you’re gonna focus on yourself.
Now once you have all this information, the second step you need to do is you need to analyze the the results. Okay? So what you’re really doing here is you’re you’re looking you’re looking for themes. I use AI for this.
AI is really good at this where they can identify common themes you you really wanna get in the mind. You understand. You wanna understand why they tick. You know, what’s the specific problem they wanna solve?
What specific outcome?
You wanna understand their their top hesitations because then you can draft a guarantee to address those.
So really, you’ll find some really cool stuff from this. I is probably one of my favorite parts, to be honest.
And we’ll show you we have tools at the end as well, which we’ll give you access to, and that’ll help you sort of categorize in segment.
Then what we do from that, and this is the the fun part I enjoy as well is we create an avatar. Now, and again, I’ll give you the templates at the end. We just don’t create your typical avatar with as, you know, your demographics, like, psychographics. What we do is and I got this from you, Joanna, is we this is almost like two point o version of the rule of one, or your one reader. So it’s not just understanding, their problem and concerns. But it’s also listing, you know, hey, these are the hesitations aligning a guarantee to that, figuring out what are what what hard offers are gonna resonate with them, what soft offers are gonna are gonna resonate with them. And then this is where you start filling in your USPS, your value prop, and all the other stuff as well.
And again, you’re gonna use this from the the survey data that you’ve, you, you, got from before. Now, the trick on this as well is you’ll have your most profitable customer. You wanna take that customer and you also wanna create an avatar avatar by stages of awareness if you can.
And then you wanna repeat that for each of your, your avatars moving forward as well. Next step that we do is we create a sitemap.
These are the core pages on your site that, we find, it’s a good start anyways. There’s your homepage. Which will break down in a second because your homepage really tells a great story, and it’s organized by the stages of awareness.
There’s your about page, which is your origin story. There’s your process, which is how it works. And that’s it’s it’s your USB, but it also includes the the secret sauce, you know, the that how your solution, you know, achieves consistent results better than the competition. And that’s really how you’re gonna outline it step by step.
Success stories, of course, your work with me, which is your services, product type services, your your courses, whatever you wanna offer, books, blog, consult, contact, media, resources, speaking, connect, and then your typical four zero four, thank you and and FAQ pages with a a guarantee as well. I like this section right here because it’s it’s almost like, you wanna address their hesitations and concerns. A lot of people overlook the purpose of the FAQ page. So you wanna you definitely wanna test that out as well if you can.
A little tip, insider tip on this is If you are in a city, let’s say you have a productized services on, web design, and you have a system where you can put this really cool package together for clients, and you can productize it, and you’re in a in a city, say you’re in Toronto, what you wanna do is you wanna create a city page, that’s this Toronto web design, but don’t put it on your main navigation. Just put it in your HTML site map. Because then what’s gonna happen is it’s still gonna get linked to the rest of the pages. You’re gonna link to use, but then it’s also gonna, it’ll rank, but then you can also link to it from your GMB profile.
So then it’s just an added sort of boost that you can get more traffic and sales from it as well. I’ll be doing a session on that on how to set that up. And and show you, how to create that city page. And the cool thing is with the city page, it’s actually, organized by, not only stages of awareness, but it uses ADA.
It’s pretty cool how everything aligns up on it.
Next is your homepage. So this is where we start, we start with this. And remember, we’re we’re creating the home page and we’re using all of the data that you’ve collected from your surveys, your avatar so you can start telling great story because you know exactly who you’re writing for. That’s that’s what’s key about this.
These are the main components of the of the the home page, and I’ll give you a, wireframe split. I I’ll use the terms spid draft and wireframe at the end that you can use. And, it contains only sections. So you have your header with Hero Shot, UV, your email opt in, which is above the fold, your compelling, story, which is your origin story. Credibility and social proof, your work with me, which are your services page, your speaking, your programs, your content preview, which is, of course, is your blog, your your podcast social connect and then, of course, your footer, which is your you wanna end with a strong CTA.
Now here’s how each of them kinda tells a story. So you’re starting with the header, your hero shot, UVP.
Really, this is the first impression. It’s it’s what’s gonna grab their attention gonna explain what you do who it’s for and the big benefit. You know, we this is your, you know, why why choose me versus the competition. So you’re really setting the stage at this point.
There’s a couple of examples that I’ve included. You know, I help entrepreneurs, build and grow profitable platforms, very clear.
Build your business, build your wealth, live your dream. It’s clear. I love this one.
This is like a two point o. You know, welcome to the the Fitfather project.
It’s, I think that he he nails it really well.
Second is you’re featured in. These are your your media logos across, you know, right off the bat. This is gonna create that credibility. It’s gonna show like, hey, I can trust them. Like, what they’re saying is true.
A couple of examples, this is like kind of a what most people do, it works. It’s kind of okay.
This is a better example of it as featured in trusted by. Again, I love this version. I think it’s like two point o. It just it hits you.
So you don’t have fun with this, but you’re you’re really saying, hey, like, I not only understand you, but what I’m what I’m saying is true. You can trust what I’m saying.
Next part is your email opt in, so your you’re placing this next, it’s really that, like, the way to say, Hey, you know, like, get to know me a bit more. You know, you’re you’re in you’re giving that option right away. You’re hinting at that value. Hey, there’s more to come.
Here’s a couple of examples of your, your email. There’s million. There’s a the urban monk seven day reboot, get started now. Just, you know, it’s not much.
It’s just a way to collect your email and and, and get them into, or or start the the process anyways. Here’s your origin, your your hook. This is the part I love. This is your origin story.
On your homepage, you’re just gonna literally just create a little snippet and link to your orange and story page. And that’s really how that homepage is aligned as well. You notice that each section, it is correlates to the navigation as well. So that’s what you’re you’re doing.
You’re just linking to each one. A couple of examples of origin stories.
Here, here’s another one, how I got here. It’s pretty, you know, the these are revealing to the are, you know, he’s talking about his PTSD.
Just when I thought I was on top of the world, she’s, you know, she’s gonna go into, you know, what, her problems and She’s really trying to relate to people. It’s like, hey, they understand me. They get me, which is which is really cool. Here’s another one, the truth you may not know about me, and it’s it’s his about page.
And that’s these are gonna be your about about us page. Some people call it origin story, but I just call it about us. Here’s another one, Sharpen. He’s he’s a good guy, Sharpen, actually, I’ve met him a few times.
He’s pretty good training. Credibility, media logos. That’s the next step. This is just to, you know, we’re building on those initial crust, the credibility signals.
We’re deepening that trust.
We’re we’re starting to get into our expertise, you know, the the the impact, the solution that we offer.
Here’s a couple of examples as well.
We’re getting into best selling books, like, you know, the and and that’s the psychology here is your you’re thinking, hey, well, this, you know, you see someone with these best selling books. They must know their stuff, right? And that’s really the point of, of, publishing your book is you’re creating out authority in their eyes, and it’s just gonna make you a hell of a lot easier selling your products and services. Then we’re getting in a social proof this is the praise your photos.
Hey, if it worked for for them, it can work for me too type stuff.
Here’s a couple of great examples for Tony Robbins everyone knows Tony Robbins, your typical testimonials, then we’re getting into your work with me.
Now that they trust you, they believe what you’re telling is true. They think the solution is for them. Now you’re gonna start introducing what you do, right, and it can be anything from services, to coaching.
It really depends on on what you’re offering. Then you get into for our clients, obviously, it’s their services they offer. There’s a lot of spaces in cosmetic, so we would get into the cosmetic services they would offer.
Here’s the content preview. This is this is really about like establishing further and giving a taste of, you know, what what what they can learn by by, following you. So you here’s your library, your podcast library, learn from me. Here’s my blog. Then you’re getting your social connections.
This is cool. It’s just like, hey, you know, connect with me. You know, here’s here’s the value I bring. It’s your your making that introduction for them to to reach out, then you have your footer, which of course ends in a strong CTA, and you’re just reinforcing that again.
Couple examples as well. A lot of people don’t put the, they’re they’re called actions in these CAAs. You wanna be in the footer, you wanna make sure you do that.
And you can do this yourself. That’s the process we use for the home page. We do have a, a site map and sorry, spit draft and wireframe, which will will give you not just for the home page, but it’s all of the pages of the site.
How we do it is, again, I learned this from Joanna, is we we start with what we wanna say, and then what we do is we overlay proven copywriting formulas on top of that, and then you have a pretty compelling site, which is, which is gonna rank and sell and convert and do really well.
We’ll provide you with all of these tools at the end. So don’t worry about that. I’ll I’ll give you access to everything.
What I wanted to talk today was to to show you a concept of how this works and really using your using your the the data that you get from your surveys and and how you can use it, and not just just to show it’s not. It doesn’t have to be complicated, and how you can craft the UVP for your homepage yourself.
These are questions and I’ll I, I just went over, but I’ll share with them with you as well. So now and I’ll use ourself as an example. So we, we’re launching a product, and it’s called or a service called WP Total Care. And, we’ve been offering WordPress support for our clients now for a couple of years. So we wanna it’s worked really well. So we wanna take this a bit further. So we analyze our list, our current customers, and we thought it was small business owners with a WordPress website specifically with woocommerce.
And we analyzed this list, and we actually discovered it’s not It’s actually, brand agencies. They’re the four percent of customers that generate sixty four percent of our revenue. So after analyzing that, we just literally put, you know, brand agency. Then we we asked them the the specific problem, and and we wanted to know the outcome that they wanted.
And for them, it was, they’re because they they’re a brand agency, they do they’re clients, they’ll help their client with their branding, and it often ends up leading to online or digital media, often like a website or whatnot. So what they would do in the past is they would reach out to freelancers or they would work with freelancers and the problem is the the inconsistent results, you know, the the freelancers just disappear on them sometimes. So That was the main challenge they were they were dealing with. The specific result, they wanted they just wanted a reliable partner they can count on.
We we did speak to them a little bit more. We wanted to dig into the ultimate benefit, and it was like, yeah, they wanted to rely reliable partner, but in the end, it was so they could grow their business because they realized there’s this big opportunity they didn’t have the the means in house or they didn’t they didn’t want to invest in someone, in house so they really wanted that partner to help them grow and take their agency to the next level.
That, of course, led us to the the promise, and this is where we really we asked them, you know, what why did you choose us over the competition? And there’s a few things that stood out for them. The first one was we specialize in WordPress. Our developers have contributed to the core.
So that’s just gonna lend our expertise. And the big one was is we have a white label option where, they can they’ll use our services. Their clients don’t know because they’re white labeling, but the plugin that we they can use in the back end of their website. They can engage and speak to clients, and they can manage their client’s website through that.
So that was something the competition doesn’t offer, and those were, you know, the top three reasons people chose us. So, of course, that’s our promise.
The proof was up to us, and and that’s just when we’re doing the interviews. We’re just gonna, hey, you know, do you mind if we we we interview, you know, so we can we can tell your story, and we can share your story. So we’re gonna use those. We’re gonna use demos.
We have a lot of, we have a lot of examples of before and after where we’ve optimized websites, especially with Google’s web vitals as far as page based paid speed and and whatnot. So these are pretty powerful, and we can use those to really validate and and and show or prove what we’re saying is true, as far as our our promise. Right? And one thing I wanna touch on this is the the promise is really about, the promise is your, you wanna switch to unique benefits because there’s, like, there’s three types of benefits.
The first type of benefit is the benefit that your customers don’t care about avoid them. Second type of benefit are these are your price of entry benefits. So these are the benefits that they expect to see when they go to your site. So you need to have those.
It’s, like, the minimum that your prospect expects. Then there’s their point of difference benefits, and these are the benefits that you’re gonna use to beat your competitors.
So when we interviewed our clients, we discovered, you know, the minimum requirements, the minimum we need to to sort of play the game. And then, of course, we we discovered the the point of difference benefits to win the game. That’s the way I like to look at it.
And then, of course, the proposition, these are the products that, they wanted to see. You know, the this is a really telling question as well. And we have a lot of these. There’s different ways to phrase it.
But when you’re creating your offers, let your customers or, your leads, let them tell you the type of offers that you wanna create.
So just, you know, asking these types of questions and that they’ll tell you.
Then once you have all of your answers from the interviews, you’re literally just gonna, you know, here is their their frustrated, you know, agencies, quality. Right? They’re they’re they’re they’re frustrated with quality from freelancer. So all you’re doing literally is you’re taking that and you’re you’re popping it in. That’s it. And then once that’s done, you’re just gonna take this formula and then you’ll rewrite the formula, easy peasy.
And test this stuff. There’s different formulas that you can use. You can test them. You can rotate them. Make sure that you’re your visual here, your image is it shows the transformation or the outcome that they wanna achieve. And then, of course, you’re just highlighting your your point of different benefits under here, which I just told you about, as well. We specialize in WordPress where, we contribute to the core, we white label a plugin, and then, of course, you’re just ending it with another formula is to get the desired result that they want.
So it all plays together. The your you’re identifying just a recap. You’re identifying your ideal prospect. You’re and your ideal prospect you’re gonna start with is your most profitable. You’re getting into the mind of that that customer, you’re doing that by interviewing, you’re understanding the problem, the challenges, the frustrations, the outcome, not just that, but also their hesitations and concerns. And you’re asking all this stuff so you can really meet it head on, especially with, you know, if you if you discover that one of their concerns is that, you know, you don’t have a level of expertise in WordPress, well, you’re gonna guarantee that you do. You wanna align that as much as possible.
And you’re taking that survey data, and then you’re analyzing it, and then you’re using it in your copy, and you’re using it to create your website. And and that’s what’s really powerful about it. And then you’re just once once you have and you understand it, you’re just using proven copywriting formulas and frameworks, and that’s it. And then you’re just making sure everything follows, tells a story or, has a, yeah, tells tells a great story, and It’s, yeah, it’s a lot of fun. And then you get into your split testing and your, your testing and everything else.
Any questions so far?
Yeah. I have two.
Yeah. For sure.
The the first one? So with the stuff, like, around your IDel avatar, what would you recommend if you’re in a position where You don’t really know.
You haven’t worked yet with your ID levator. Like, you have an idea of them, like you’ve outpriced your current client, so you wanna sub new ones, but you can’t interview them because you’ve not worked with them before. Like, where would you recommend you start?
I can show you what we did. So we did, So we we, we scraped all of our competitors, when we first started doing it. Here, I’ll show you, am I still sharing my screen? Yeah.
I am. Okay. So we had, this what we did. So we went out and and just scraped all our competitor reviews and and we analyzed everything.
Right? And we we looked for, their USB, everything a to z. So that that’s what I would suggest doing. Is pretty telling as well.
Like, we we go pretty heavy into analyzing our competitors. We we we do everything from sign up for consultations we wanna know their sales funnel, their strengths, their weaknesses, because ultimately, you you wanna you wanna match them and then you wanna beat them. Right? And you you do that by understanding them and also listening to your customers as well.
That’s what I would suggest doing.
Okay. Thank you.
Who are your competitors, by the way? Do you know?
Not really because, like, I don’t know that my competitors are like copywriters. They’re more like coaches, or con consoled like So, yeah, I’m not I’m not sure of any any other copywriters, like, in my space.
Yeah. We go pretty deep. Like, you can you you’ll find them out, like, a good a good approach to do is, we use data to sort of figure who who is our competition, and then we we get into Once you know who they are and it kinda leads to the next one, like you can figure out their entire marketing strategy. It’s it’s pretty straightforward once you know who they are. And then that, like I said, that’s gonna lead to another competitor, another competitor, and then you just focus on the top twenty percent. That you know are dominating the market, and then that that’s where you start laying your recipe.
Mhmm. That makes sense. Thanks. And, yeah, the other question is just a silly little one.
For, like, having the logos underneath the, like, trusted by, do you need permission to do that? Like, assuming there’s nothing in the ended ending NDA that says against it? Like, do you still need to ask to include the logo on your page?
Not that we had, in Slack, someone we had, we talked about that as well.
Oh, really?
I used them.
Like, it’s not it’s if it’s if it’s legit, of course, I don’t unless there’s, like, an NDA or something.
Okay. Agreed. We use them and others use ours without ever asking. So Yeah.
I I’d never asked you, Joe, but It’d be good.
Cool. Thank you.
Yeah. No problem.
Anyone else? Any other shy folk who are off camera?
Shade, where did four percent and sixty four percent come from?
So it’s the eighty twenty rule. I don’t know if you heard about that. So twenty percent of your customers will eighty percent of your revenue. So what you’re doing is you’re taking that twenty percent and you’re applying the same formula again.
So you’re looking at your the twenty percent the twenty percent of that that generate eighty is zero sixty four. That’s where it comes from. So it’s just another layer. So a lot of people just start with that’s good enough.
But if you wanna get ultra specific, and the goal here is, like, to is to define your most profitable customer. And that’s, like, the you do that by analyzing your list and you use lifetime value as the metric. That’s what key that’s what’s key. And then, and once you know that, then you just you sort and you you pick one at a time.
Dominate that. Move on to the next.
Well, thank you.
Yeah. No problem.
I had a question. If we’re, like, redefining our offer or our niche, and we kind of try and we’re kind of trying to get something up would you recommend, like, still starting out to build out the authorities site with all the pages or sticking to, like, a one page site where we can collect leads before building out the fuller version?
We’ll start growing your list. Like, you don’t want to put it up right away. Like, don’t I wouldn’t wait until your site is, like, completely done. Right? Anything is good enough.
But that’s, like, you’re you’re saying before you do all the interviews and all that other stuff, like, before you Yeah. Put up what you have. Of course. Like, this is a process.
It’s not it’s, ideally, you wanna start with this, but you may have, you may have a site up. And you’re gonna go in and you’re gonna, you know, you’re not gonna tear it down. You may or may not, but it’s, is a process. Right?
You may start with a page.
You may say, hey, I’m gonna I’m gonna write my origin story, and then you you add that. You update your your Vode OS page. Right?
Okay. That’s helpful.
Shane, can I ask a visuals question?
Sure.
So I noticed I went to a lot of agency competitors.
I think who might be my competitors, and I noticed that a lot of them don’t do the person in the hero section. A lot of them don’t really have a whole lot of any noticeable imagery in the hero section really.
And I’m just wondering, like, I don’t have a photo shoot. I’m not scheduling one right now. I really don’t want to spend the money on it frankly.
At least not for a little while. What When it comes to the imagery, especially in the hero section, but even I guess going down the page in the home on the home page, any recommendations because I’m kind of at a loss. It gets me spiraling. That’s stupid.
I always see this. It’s either the person you know, like Joe has on hers or the agency competition like I said doesn’t seem to go by that. They didn’t have very little. So I’m just kind of struggling to figure out what’s the right image. Should I spend the money and go do something or I don’t know what’s your recommendation on all that stuff?
Don’t know. It depends. Like, it could be you could go stage as awareness and focus on, like, the outcome that they want. It depends on the industry too, right, on the space, like, or before and after. I’m gonna show the outcome gonna show that before and after. If they’re if they’re product aware they know the results, I’m gonna focus on why they need to choose me. Right?
That’s what I would start with. It’s not I don’t think there’s, like, everyone says there’s best practices, but I’ve we’ve done, like, testing, especially with Google ads and what we thought worked wouldn’t is complete opposite. Right? So, you know, I don’t unless Joe, I don’t know what your thoughts are on that, but I don’t think, you know, start with the basics, like, include your and just, maybe focus on the outcome, right, the solution they’re looking for.
Okay. Thanks.
Any other Everyone’s so quiet.
I mean, I will have to end this question. If your community’s there. So if no one has any more, I was wondering if you could talk a bit about, like, the types of guarantees you would offer as a service provider.
It depends on yeah.
So the the guarantees are gonna be, you’re gonna offer your guarantees to address their concerns, right, that your guarantee has to have a purpose, a goal, and your guarantee is literally to address their hesitations. Right? If they say they’re worried about this. You’re gonna offer a guarantee that, you know, that says, Hey, you don’t need to worry about it. That’s what it is.
But if they’re worried about results, like that seems to be the main thing, but it’s like, I can’t offer a guarantee around results.
What type of results?
Like, are they like well, I suppose actually this probably comes down to me targeting the wrong people.
Like, yeah, they just wanna know that they’ll that it will convert. But then I think that’s probably more where I’m talking people who with less money, who care more. So Yeah. I kind of answered my question.
No. Like, they’re they’re worried about results that they’re not gonna achieve the results sort of thing?
Yeah. Like, they just wanna know the copy’s gonna convert. Like, that that’s the hesitation. It’s like, can you make me more money?
So you can also guarantee something. Like, a guarantee is like, yeah, hey, it’s not just about results, but you can guarantee, so how I would answer that is is, like, I’ll show you what I would do, and then you can you can see there’s different ways to approach it I would show so say you’re a client, right, and let me open this up.
So I would say I would say to you, so I’ll pretend you’re the client. You’d say, well, how do you know you guys can see the screen?
Okay. So you’d say, well, how do you guarantee results? And I’d say, well, this is how I would address it. I’d say, well, you know, you’re working with us because we focus on on results.
You know, we we measure campaign success by ROI, and that really answers the question. Did you make money? And we we manage it around true ROI, not return on ad spend. So we take in account gross margin.
And you’re a business owner, so you’re thinking, okay. Good. This guy knows gross margin. He’s speaking my language.
And I would say, okay. Well, let’s say you work with us and we’re gonna launch a Facebook campaign. And then, like, yeah, we sent a thousand visitors and then would say we have it cost you ten thousand, right, to hire us. This is what you’re talking about is your conversion rate and say that your conversion rate is three percent.
That’s your landing page or your sales page that is gonna convert. This is how many customers, turn in, sorry, leads turn into customers. This is lifetime value. You’ll have to work with that with the client, and then let’s say it’s like sixty five percent margin.
So what I would say is while you’re hiring me for this metric, right? You’re hiring me because because most come in at around three percent. We’re gonna use that as a baseline, but we’re gonna have a control then, and we’re gonna work to increase that. So over time, you know, we can get that, say, from three to five percent and then watch your ROI.
It’s just gonna explode. But more importantly, what I wanna talk to you of it is I wanna make sure, you know, we don’t know how many your close, sales you’re closing yet. You know, if you’re only in most close around thirty percent, but like, hey, you know, you’re hiring me, we’re gonna work with you unconsulted at selling. We’re gonna put this at thirty five percent and watch your ROI.
It’s gonna explode.
Right? And so, and then we’re gonna talk about lifetime value, where we’re gonna do an upsell or something on the thank you page, and we’re gonna increase this by a hundred and watch the ROI.
So I’ve never what I’ve done is I’ve answered your questions. Like, I positioned myself as an authority. I’ve spoke his language, but I really promise nothing. I’d promise him that or her that we’re gonna have a control, and we’re gonna try to beat the control. Right? But I’m using my expertise to reinforce, like, hey, we’re all about results too. You see the subtle difference.
And that’s that’s the approach that we take. And it works really well because no other agencies talk like that. I can promise you. Like, no or marketers, direct response, direct response marketer would. But, a lot of, or copywriters, they won’t. But that’s that’s the language, that’s how I would approach it. So it’s a guarantee without you know, without a guarantee in a sense, if that makes sense.
Yeah. No. That’s good. Thank you.
No worries.
If I can just jump on that question Sure.
So you just walked through is what I walked a prospect through yesterday.
Good for you.
And it was it was good, but now that I now that I see you walk through it again, I realized I made some mistakes because my guarantee was more tying myself into a guarantee.
It okay if I share my screen and just show you Yeah.
Of course. Okay. Cool.
Okay.
So because the project is primarily just email marketing, So I didn’t include all those other aspects. So I just kind of took their list size, their profit margin, their average order value and their average orders per month. And I kind this is the so they’re currently doing nothing with email. So my guarantee in quote was, like, I’ll increase that zero, percent of revenue being attributed to email to twenty percent.
And by doing that, they’ll get a one hundred and forty additional, orders per month and this will equate to this amount in sales revenue and then profit. And then that was how I calculated the ROI. So for the ROI, just removed a monthly retainer fee. I gave them I did five six as a monthly retainer fee for that.
So I kind of tied myself into that percentage of additional revenue, like additional, email revenue, and I’m just wondering if that is dangerous as a guarantee to give.
Yeah.
I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t give that because you’re being ultra specific great. You’re guaranteeing, like, you’re guaranteeing the process. You’re guaranteeing you’re guaranteeing that, you know, you’re gonna do your job, you’re gonna do it well. And it’s like you have that level of expertise and that means that you’re gonna have a control. You’re gonna work towards beating it, and you’re gonna apply, like, proven frameworks, formulas, that’s that’s your guarantee. Right?
You you can say, like, you can, hey, imagine getting this and you can paint that picture and get them excited.
Right? Because that’s your ultimate goal. Like, if you’re not if you’re not increasing if you have a control and you’re not beating it, constantly, you’re not doing testing and stuff, then it the client’s gonna pick up on it. I would pitch that, but it is a subtle difference, though.
Right? You’re you’re pitching you. You’re pitching and you’re you’re using the results, like imagine, hey, and you’re building that excitement. But you’re letting them know it’s a process.
It’s built into into conversion copywriting. Right?
Yeah. I also gave, like, a timeline. Like, there’ll be some setup, there’ll be some setup time in month one. Month two. We’re just pull putting out the emails, so we’re still setting it up. So that guarantee was more of, like, ninety one twenty days from now. So that was kind of how I gave myself some room, but that’s still kind of dangerous.
I’ll say. Yeah. Just be careful on that. Like, you you wanna you’re gonna benchmark everything first.
And then you’re, obviously, you’re gonna benchmark because you need to show that you, you, you have to show success, right? But don’t don’t promise anything far as, you know, actual numbers. That’s that’s tricky to get into. Right?
I wouldn’t and then just promise, like, the the process, the how you’re gonna get in there, you’re gonna you’re gonna have these benchmarks. You have your controls, and you’re gonna work to beat them, and this is how. And then the how is conversion copywriting, right, the interviews, the the, voice of customer, all that stuff.
Okay. So if I can ask, what would you advise I do at this point? Because I’m having another call with them to, like, close the deal.
So kind of how do I back myself away from it, but still offering some kind some kind of Well, this it’s the subtle approach.
Like, just say like, did you say you’re gonna get I don’t know. Did you say you’re gonna get these exact these numbers.
Like, you’re gonna I guarantee within six months, you’re gonna have So it was a three month timeline for at least ten percent of revenue starting to come from email because they have a big list and the list is warm and they’re all How much revenue are they making now?
Like, do you know that?
As a company as a whole?
No. From the from that. Like, if you what is the the current yeah.
They’re they’re barely doing anything with email right now. But sometimes they send offers to the list and it convert and they convert. So that was what I was thinking.
Oh, I’ll be How big is their list?
Ninety k.
Oh, I don’t know. It should I don’t wanna say I I don’t know. I’d that kind of stuff, like, it’s I’ve I’ve been burnt on that. Like, it’s like you you think and it just I always pitch the process, like, see if you can you can sort of if you promise them already, like, see if you can dumb it down a bit maybe and just say, hey, you know, here’s here’s the benchmark. Here’s what we’re gonna start with. I’m gonna apply these. I’m gonna do this to try to get it to this, and this is hopefully what we can expect.
You know, but reminding them, hey, this is a process. Right? You can’t you can’t guarantee your but that’s the beauty of your process is you have a control and then you always work to beat it. Right?
That’s the way I would position it.
Okay.
Sounds good. Thank you. Yeah.
That’s a tough one. Like, it’s not, Right? I’ve been burned. I’ve back when I started my career, like, way back when I I learned a hard lesson from that. Just not to, not to.
Thank you. Yeah. No worries.
Any other Any questions on the process on the on building the site, using VOC, the survey data, Anything along that lines? On do we’re doing this for your your clients as well. This is also a service that you can offer to clients.
A lot of those pages, you’re just switching it up. Right?
They’ll have certification. We do this a lot for, for our clients.
Shane, if I can ask a question sorry. That’s, kind of adjacent to Abby’s question about, like, dumping audiences.
Like, so I did a competitor’s content analysis, but like what Abby was saying, I find that a lot of people making similar promises to what I’m claiming I can do are Like, it’s not just apples to apples with other copywriters. It is other digital marketing agencies.
It is coaches. And now, obviously, I’m getting, like, mega targeted with ads for everybody who does anything close to what I do.
So I just I guess, like, do you have any tips for narrowing down the competitors that you choose for that analysis or because obviously we only see the front end. We don’t know how successful that they’re they actually are or what kind of market where they have, or which ones we want to be comparing ourselves to and differentiating ourselves from.
Well, what do you it’s like, what are you defining us? For us, it’s revenue, right, market share.
What you can do for market share is you can look at their brand terms. Usually, phrases that people, brand term is not just the their name or their business name, but also the products that they sell. And you can gauge that as popularity. That’s that’s an option.
What else? If if you’re looking at revenue, there’s social shares. You can see how how popular the content is as well. That’s what we do. But you’ll find that once especially look at Google ads if they do spend a lot on Google ads, especially especially Google ads, not so much Facebook, but look at Google ads, and if they’re if they’re advertising, they usually know their stuff and then look at people also advertising within that space and then you’re gonna start to see patterns, right?
Especially in a competitor space, like if they’re paying six, twelve bucks a click, they’re they’re making sure it’s laser focused. Right? Yeah. That’s what we do.
Yeah, it just it it takes a while, but you’ll find it it it kinda leads one to another. Right? And then you do have to beat them though. You have to analyze them and you have to figure out, hey, like, you there there is your price of entry.
That that’s what, like, your prospect expects the the they come to your site. You have to meet this minimum requirement or they won’t consider you as an option.
You have to have that. And, give me an example. We had a executive health clinics. So there are certain people, these are private clinics in Canada, So there’s certain things that they expect a private clinic to have to even consider them.
Then you have to look at the competition. You say, okay, what’s something I can offer that’s gonna beat them? That still resonates with my ideal prospects. Something they want, how can I set myself apart because you need the apples to oranges compared person, right?
And if you’re in coaching selling products, that’s what’s going through their mind. Like, either saying, okay, I trust what you’re saying is true, and their product aware. I I trust what you’re saying is true. I I wanna believe what you’re saying is true, but like why should I choose you over the titian.
Why should I choose you over this coach? You know, why is your solution different or how can your solution help me solve my problem better than them? And that’s where you can differentiate yourself with, like, your USB.
But it’s not just your USB. It’s like how it works, like, how your secret sauce, your coaching program, how it helps them solve their problem. Like, it’s the secret that you’ve discovered that helps them solve their problem and get the outcome consistently better than everyone else.
And that’s something that’s pretty powerful and that’s that’s what you can use to separate yourself. That’s what we do.
And then you have that distinction. Right? You have your point of difference, your point of entry, your USB to sort of sum it up and then you use your credibility boosters. All the stuff like Joanna certification, your testimonials and stuff, you’ll use that to kinda support your your your u s p, like your apples to oranges. Does that make sense?
Yeah. Yeah.
So yep.
Being of, like, that’s that’s essentially where you’re going in for the differentiation.
Bingo. That’s that’s the good way, especially, like, if you’re in a coaching, that’s a level three market sophistication. And what that means is, like, people don’t respond to benefits anymore. They’ve heard it all.
The only thing they respond to and it’s getting to, but they respond to how it works. They wanna know why your solution is better than the competition, then they want to dig in because they want to learn it, right? You’re selling them a process, you’re selling them a secret, a results recipe, whatever you want to call it. That does x y z better than everyone else, and you need to sell them on that, but that’s going to create your apples to oranges.
A lot of your competitors will use like everyone Hammers home like reviews testimonials and stuff, that stuff is important. Yes. But you’re using that to reinforce your your your USB. There’s a subtle difference, but it’s really powerful.
Like, you’re using, you know, these credibility boosters to say, yeah, what they’re saying is true. Her solution is better than the competition. There’s a big difference, right, and then it’s reinforcing it. So that’s what I would do if you’re looking for that apples to oranges comparison.
Said, does that help?
Yep. Yeah.
Did do you have it unique? Like, have you have you thought of it? Like, how are how are you separating yourself from the competition? Like, what what angle have you taken?
Like, which angle am I not taking more? I think more about choosing like, I do on my talk about my process. So I have like, you know, immersion, creation, refinement is like my three step process, and I talk a lot about was of customer research in my marketing because I found, like, when I had that messaging, a lot of my competition was more about, like, speaking your troops, you know, and I was like, no, boo. Don’t, like, it’s not about your voice. It’s about your your market’s voice.
But I feel like yeah. I’m looking for what that needs to be now based on ongoing conversations about what my, one thing is gonna be.
Yeah. Like, why it’s if you can’t if I asked you right now, why should I choose you over the competition?
Can you, and that’s that’s the question, right?
And it’s like, and it depends on what you’re coming to me for.
Like, I that’s where so I’m I’m still in the mud about, like, what the offer is going to be. So I feel like I don’t know how to differentiate I’m, like, is it the dumpster you call energy? Is it the, like, something else?
So Let’s see what you’re saying.
So you don’t you’re you start you’re trying to finalize your offer. And then once you know your offer, what the the what, then you’re gonna then you can get into the sorta, I see what you’re saying.
We we do have, like, the the list that we’re sending you, I’ll share the screen and show you on his guys on it as well. We do have, some really good questions broken down by stages of awareness that will help you discover that stuff. And you can send where are we here?
Yeah. But also, I’m gonna send I’m gonna send all the the tools. But basically, those there’s ton. There’s over a hundred and they’re they’re different questions asked by different influencers in the space, and some of them are really good to discover the stuff that you should be, selling, right, to to create your offers as well. Maybe use that as a guide to get started.
Okay. Thank you.
If that helps.
Yeah. And if I may I might I have, like, the results of my competitors’ content audit in a spreadsheet. So I’d love to share that in the group if you wouldn’t mind, like, if you see an where you’re like, oh, there’s com then deems coming out.
Have you, have you analyzed, like, have you looked at what their USB is?
Like, do you know what their, have you, have you learned anything, like, looked for any patterns, or I, no, I don’t say that.
I don’t think there’s like one trend that I could take away. It was just like while there are so many people coming at this from different angles, that I feel like we’re all constantly the same thing. So where am I gonna go in my approach.
And who, like, describe your ideal prospect, like, in and and that was part of the exercise as well. Like, describe them in one or two sentences. Like, who who are they? What’s what’s their problem? What’s their frustration? What’s the outcome they want?
I would say established business owners in the online space. So usually course, coaches or experts who have a coaching program.
Who wanna go from, like, low six figures to multi six and seven figures with a signature offer you know, and they want their launches to feel easier and they want more consistent sales coming in everyone. So generating that monthly recurring revenue.
Absolutely.
They reached a plateau where they’re just not their signature offer isn’t they want to take it to the next level sort of thing? Okay. So that’s good. So now you, like, you’re you’re laser focused, right?
You’re focused on on a specific audience, like within a you know the income, the revenue that they’re generating from their offer. So that that’s a great start. I just figure, like, what how can you what so your offer is gonna help them, increase revenue. It’s it’s gonna help them get to the next level of benchmark of revenue that you’re you’re gonna whatever that is.
Right? Like, how does it how do you help them solve that? How do you help them get the outcome? And that, have you figured that out like your process?
No. Well, because that’s the thing. It’s like, which so far I’ve just been doing I’ve been, like, specializing Everybody I work with has a signature offer, but I have done all kinds of different things for them.
Like, the sales page, the launch emails, the I got you.
So I’m like, what is my best? I know the who, but, like, what is my best call for for that audience.
Is it more the how? Is your is the is it should just switch that maybe to how? Like, you know, you know the problem, you know the outcome, and now you have to craft an offer to help them achieve that outcome. And that that that is gonna position you or separate you from the competition. Right?
So if they want to, you know, what is what is the how that I feel confident I can deliver on? Like, what’s the how, you know, So what so what’s the exact outcome?
Like, in one sentence, what’s the exact outcome they want? In one sentence, if you can.
Doesn’t be perfect, but, like Oh, I’m gonna just so here, because I’m gonna use the words she banned me from using, which I’m, like, profitable signature offer.
Right? The to be to be getting back to, like, taking home more money from their existing launches, their existing offers.
Add more to their plate.
Okay. So that they’ve reached a plateau, you’re gonna help them get to the next level, whatever that is. Now you need to now you need to tell me and that’s your secret sauce. That that’s your u s p.
Like that or it’s a common it’s a combination of how it works how specifically that’s your offer, how specifically are you gonna help them achieve that? Because you have a secret you have a secret sauce that you’ve discovered and you’re gonna work with them and you this secret recipe that you have will help them consistently get the results and they don’t know it. You know it and you’re gonna share it with them. And that’s why you’re gonna create that.
I would say, like, stronger core messaging, like, doing the voice customer research and doing this, like, groundwork and then using that to inform their overall core messaging.
Sure.
Then updating the sales page based on that core messaging, making sure that they have audience attraction mechanisms in place so that they’re attracting an audience that’s gonna want that ultimate offer.
And then what I have currently been calling, like, golden opportunities, but it’s essentially like strategic sequences that upsell, like, upsell cross sells systematized, like, behavior based sequences on the back end to increase the lifetime value of existing customers.
Yeah. Like build on, it’s the that’s just build on that. Like, what you’re creating is your offer, right, and you’re explaining to me how it works with the ultimate goal of of if it’s to increase increase ROI, like, if what it you’re and you’re aligning a metric or a certain lifetime value, you’re aligning a metric to that. It’s very clear and just build that out.
That’s that’s how you’re gonna create the separation and then use your, use your social proof and your credibility booster to say, hey, yeah, what she’s saying is true. This stuff does work. And that’s what you’re gonna sell. You’re selling you’re selling a system.
Right? That’s the apples to oranges. So it sounds like you have a good idea, but that’s the fun of figuring it out. Right?
Like, it’s like if we have GMB as a product type service, so our secret sauce is, like, we go into Google’s web vitals and how, you know, every component of your GMB page, I’m gonna do a session on this. Every component of the GMB page, you know, we use proven copywriting formulas, your Citi page. We use a proven copywriting formula that’s guaranteed not only rank organically in Google, but when people go to the site, it’s gonna convert. And then we set up this.
So we’re we’re telling story and we’re saying, Hey, hire us over the competition. We have a proven process with secret sauce that’s going to get you the consistent results you want. This is why you need to work with us. And it’s like the secret, right?
Or what do they know that? I don’t know. And that’s that’s one of the tricks for product type service as well. Right?
You’re just you’re taking that offer and you’re you’re turning into something great. You ever seen that those shows, how it works on TV? Remember those TV shows? That’s that’s exactly what it is.
Just think in that way. You know, it does this, does this, does this, and it helps them get better than anyone else. And that’s that’s how you really can, beat the, the that’s what I do. That’s that’s how you beat the competition to put a spin on it.
Does that help? Does that make sense?
Or Oh, even just talking through it has helped a lot.
So thank you.
Yeah. No. No. It’s, and that’s, yeah, put it up to, like, competitors. It’s always good to get a second eye on it.
I can look at it from a SEO like perspective and I can tell you, I’m happy to look at it and say, hey, definitely put it up so then everyone can benefit from it, but we’ll look at especially keyword data and Google ads. It tells a lot and you can use Google trends. Tells it all, we can look at their brand terms. Brand terms are great because it’s really gonna tell you, the popularity of their their products and services.
Right?
And especially their coaching programs, you can get a good idea on on, the popularity just by that alone, right, and Google tells you all stuff. And then you can do trends and you can compare it to everybody.
Yeah. So, yeah, put that up. I’m happy to do that.
Any other, any other questions?
No. Okay.
Or any, yeah, true.
Really quick question.
Do you do you recommend, like, having our certifications and badges on the site?
Because, like, Like I’ve always just had them because it assuming it improves credibility, but then I’m also like, do my clients like care that I’m a certified conversion copywriter like, oh, does it just make me look more amateur?
They they care about themself. Right? They don’t they they just wanna, like, ultimately, they care about them and it just, yeah, it helps, but use those to reinforce what you’re saying. Right?
It’s not the end all. Like, it’s not it’s it doesn’t is it is it gonna help? Yeah. Like, is it gonna help to have a logo from Joanna saying like, hey, you know, she’s certified of course.
It’s it’s just gonna say what you’re saying is true. Right? But you’re gonna use that. What we talked about earlier is, like, kinda reinforce your your system, your secret sauce.
Right? That’s the way to use those. Those are like tools to to really support, your messaging. That’s the way I use them.
Right? Like, your credibility booster is gonna build authority and trust your social proof is gonna it’s it’s gotta prove what you’re saying and true. Those are numbers backing it up.
That’s that’s the way we use them. So, yeah, use them. Of course. What are you worried about looking amateur with them? Like, in what way?
I don’t know. It just feels a bit like, hey. I’ve, like, done a training. I don’t know.
Do you know what I mean or is it just do?
Like, I’ve had this conversation with a few people, but is it time to take them all? Like No.
You’re okay. So you gotta you gotta your copywriter. Your your director’s you’re you’re a copywriter. You gotta spin that. So you’re not certified, Joanna.
You’re you’re trained in the the most advanced copywriting technique on the planet. Joanne is considered one of the top copywriters in the world right now. You were personally trained by her. You know her like her like that’s the way to to say it.
That’s not training. Right? These are these are your secret weapons, your secret sauce that you can help them You know, you know, this stuff. That’s the way to position it.
Don’t position yourself as a we’re all students, but you use them to build your authority. Right?
Yeah. That’s such a good point.
Yeah. Like, say, like, we, Google Google ads, like, we work in the EMR. So she’s she handles our our Google ad stuff. She’s top three percent in, Google ads in the world.
Right? And she puts up her Google ad certification, right? And she’s she says, here’s the certification. This is part of the reason why on top three.
Because I take I took all this training. I stay up to date. You know, I look at current trends and I know my stuff. Right?
These are all the books I’ve read in a year. You know, I read hundreds of books just to It changes. It evolves all the time. And she does that because she knew one of the one of the issues clients have is Google ads changes on a dime so fast.
Right? So she’s like, hey, don’t worry. I know this stuff. This is I I look at all the training I got.
So she’s using that to reinforce her messaging. Right? That’s the way to look at it. And try to incorporate it that way.
Sell yourself.
Right? That’s the it’s it’s all it’s all useful.
Boom. Cheers.
Yeah. For sure. What is there a logo that’s like specific one that you’re worried about though to put up?
No. Just like my copy Acres ones. I was just like, is it?
Hobby Acres. Of course.
Join is like if it it’s, of course.
I just I think it’s because, like, because I’ve got my testimony from Joe, and then I’ve got her, like, the featured in, and then I’ve got the training as well. And I’m, like, is this just making it look like I’m just like all copy hackers? Like, do I need to kind of get out of that umbrella a bit and have like, different certifications, because then it’s like, I’m trained by her but also, like, work from her. And it’s like, I don’t know. We’re just and a power note about it.
Build on it. Like, we do there’s a we work with some, especially in, like, the b to c space, like, where we have a results page and, like, half the page is, like, is credibility and we we paste that stuff. Right? Everything from, like, organizations, and it just everything helps.
Right? It’s like that, wow. Okay. This person knows their stuff. Not a an issue, but yeah, put that stuff up.
Just just make it if you can try to make it, try to connect it to something, right, to reinforce your messaging in some way. If you can. But, yeah, copy hackers, that’s a huge one. For sure.
Okay. Yeah. I I think I need to just put, like, a cross head above it that Most of them. Yeah.
Thank you. How did copy hackers has how is it? How does it help you get results for your clients?
Woah. It’s yeah. It’s like the conversion stuff, isn’t it?
Like, there is the the method, but I guess it could, like You network daily with some of the best copywriters on the planet.
So if you have a problem that a client needs to solve, you think you could jump in on the Slack channel and ask a question?
You have access literally to some of the and that’s that’s you see how you positioned it, and it’s true. It’s not just a logo. It’s like it’s what they have access to, what you have access to. It’s just acquired knowledge, right? And that’s the value in this stuff, and that’s the way to position it. This group.
Right? You know what I say? It’s big bucks to do you they couldn’t just go in and ask Joanna or someone question. No.
You have to you you pay them big bucks. Right? You can that’s the whole point of it. Right?
Does that make sense?
And I I mean, yeah, like, I have wondered about that.
Like, about whether I can kind of say that, like, because I’m offering like, but I’m offering like a consultation package at the moment and it’s new And I was thinking, like, can I throw in, like, that I have access to, like, some of the world’s best copywriters?
Or is that No.
You think that’s It’s true.
You’re part of you’re part of the the the the copy hackers pro community and you have a private invite only Slack channel. And in that channel, you always share tips and advice and you work together and you work with some of the best copywriters in the world. Which I’m saying that. Of course you can.
That that that’s a huge and that is your that’s you started to, that’s one of your USPs. It’s one. You can have you can have ten of them, but that’s you’ve just said it. And let’s let’s so now you’re saying, hey, I have access to not I wouldn’t say access, but you’re part of this private community invite only and then you you gauge what we talked about early results.
You you it’s a proven process where it’s built off of control, and you measure success by ROI, and it’s you’re you’re promising something but you’re not. So right away, that’s what we do. I just beat the competition on two usps. You can’t touch me on that.
Right? And especially the one that we talked about with the ROI agencies don’t talk like that. They don’t they don’t understand the concept. And then if and then if someone does beat me or match me, then I get in the consultative selling, say, don’t worry.
We’re gonna work with you because we know the sales close ratio is what has a major impact on your business. So we’re gonna we’re gonna take that sales close ratio from thirty to this. And then someone else matches me, then I’m gonna talk about, hey, we use proven copywriting formulas. We’re gonna increase that lifetime value with some upsells.
So it’s like you’re always you’re always beating the competition in a step ahead, but you’re you’re creating tons of value for yourself. Right? Does that make sense?
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah.
So to piggyback on this real quick, Shane, do you see this is like making a claim about having access to this kind of ongoing skill development? And then you use the certifications as like a trust builder after next. You’re gonna wait here it that way?
Or Yeah.
Like, say, what I would say is, and and I do say it. Like, what are you? I’m a I’m a copy hacker pro coach. You know, we we we have a private community.
Like, you’re you’re stating the obvious. Like, I wouldn’t say it’s like be careful how you say it. Right? But that’s that’s a fact, right?
You have and that’s a lot of value for clients, right, especially when you hear invite only private access, exclusive. They love that stuff, right? And it’s true. We we help each other.
We work with we do work with some of the best operators in the world. There’s there’s no reason why you can’t say that. It’s true.
Right? And it just it just one more thing to add that. It’s like your u s p. Right? It’s not the tell all, but you’re using that to reinforce. That’s what I do. I don’t see an issue with it.
Yeah. Makes sense. Yeah. Does that does that answer your your question?
Yes. Yeah. And it’s like it’s always there’s so much, and it’s like you sell yourself. Like like David Olegov said, if you can’t sell yourself, you can’t sell clients, and there’s there’s opportunity.
Everything you do, there’s an opportunity a way to position it that sells, right? And it’s it’s done tactfully and it’s true. You don’t lie, but like there’s so much there’s all of these masterminds that people are part but then they don’t mention it. And it’s not a mastermind.
This is an exclusive group of some of the best trained experts in the world, and you’re staying up to date on the lay industries because the industry changes on a dime and as an as a specialist, you know, you need to stay on top of that, you know, and and not and then you back that up with you know, the certifications, and this is why you’re getting the certifications. So, you know, and it’s it’s pretty powerful stuff, but you’re telling a story. Right? And then you’re you’re using that all of that to reinforce your your messaging, your, what I call your, like, your secret sauce, your secret recipe, We do that with GMB all the time.
Right? Or, like I said, our product type service. Right? We have certification I’ve never heard of.
Like, I’ve, they don’t they don’t know. It’s probably, but it’s I’m part of forms, I’m part of communities. I’ll join up to, there’s one I wanna say it, but I’ll join up to this one community which is really well known in the GMB space, and it’s like fifty bucks a month, but I I’ll pay the fifty dollars a month because it it’s really well known, and it’s a credibility booster. It reinforces and it helps us sell.
Right? It’s so there’s that’s the way to position the stuff. Right? There’s opportunity with it.
Does that help?
Yeah. It’s awesome. Yeah.
Any other, Any other questions? Anything?
This is more of a comment. Sure.
I think we know you as the process guy, but I think you might need to be.
I think you’ve, in my mind, you’re now also, how to sell yourself. Like, you’re really you might be able to teach a course on how to sell yourself because you make it sound so easy and convincing. You know, when you talk, I’m like, nodding alone. Yeah.
I’m like, that’s so true. That’s and then, that makes total sense. And then I walk away. I’m like, okay.
I don’t feel as confident anymore. And I what was he saying again, but you have when you’re talking, In the moment, it’s so convincing. Like, yeah, what you say is true and it sounds it’s not made up. It sounds good. It’s not made up.
I don’t know. Anyways, all I’m saying is I feel like maybe there’s an opportunity for you to teach course on how to sell yourself?
Yeah, we did. It’s consulted. We had consulted it. So thank you. Thank you, by the way.
But as we, we started PR and then it went in the consultative selling. And consultative selling is really like direct response. Like, a lot of this stuff comes from, you know, Joanna said to me, study direct response.
That is the the the holy grail. Right? And it’s it’s all about eliciting a response. You want them to take action to do something.
And to to to get them to take action to do something you need to understand them. It’s getting in their mind of the customer. It’s that simple. And once you know the problem and solution, their hesitations and concerns, and you draft a guarantee.
Good luck. And then you create a USB, like, to solve their problem and you show this as a secret sauce, why wouldn’t they choose you?
Well, when you talk about it, it sounds so obvious, and it makes a lot of sense.
But I just I don’t have that same confidence when I walk away.
From this session.
I don’t know if that makes sense.
Yeah. But we can I can help him with that? It’s like, it’s not, yeah, the thing with this, like, director.
You’re talking this up and you’re talking our experience, I’m like, yeah, that totally makes sense. That is exactly right.
And then somehow I lose it from, like, it’s like because there’s a lot going on.
Right? There’s there’s so many moving parts. Like, when I was in the space, it took me it wasn’t until, like, three, five years till I, like, when I first took Joanna’s training, like, it’s, like, fifteen years ago, I didn’t know I was, like, I would I would take the training session and be, like, what the hell? Like, it’s, like, I was like, I I remember going to training saying, like, this is so complicated.
Like, you have to almost be like a scientist just to understand that stuff. And then eventually, it starts to click. And then eventually you understand the stages of awareness. And then you understand stages of awareness are all about, you know, what does the customer already know?
It’s that simple. And then then you think, oh, they already know. That’s okay. I I can answer that question.
And once you know what they already know, now you can start selling them. Right? And it’s like and then you see patterns. Like, for sales, we use Joanna’s question all the time.
Like, you know, what brought you here today? Shut up and listen. They’re gonna tell you the stage of awareness. And if they’re like solution aware, they’re gonna say, you know what?
I’m considering different problem, different solutions. I’m considering you but I’m also not sure if I want this procedure or not, you’re like, okay, solution aware. So you’re not gonna hammer home why you’re different. You’re gonna sell the solution.
But definitely gonna say, you know, I’m comparing you. I’m sold on what you guys are doing. Comparing you to this clinic. Okay.
Your your product order. So I’m gonna sell our USB. Why are we different? Why should you choose Oz?
If they’re most aware. You know what, Evan? Yeah, I’m convinced to go with you guys. I’m just trying to find like a date.
I’m looking for my schedule. What they’re really saying is I want a discount. Hey, we have a limit, we have a date opening up next week. You’ll save three grand.
Can you make it young problem, right? So that by asking, by understanding those stages, you can start crafting messages, right?
And then you can start to see patterns in it as well. That’s what that’s what I would start anyways. Like, are you familiar with the stages of awareness? How they work?
Yeah. Yeah. So I learned like study that. There’s a good book I’ll post on the the Slack channel.
And it goes in the after I read that book, it really hit home. And they break he breaks it down in in detail on how to use it as well. And start with that foundation, and then things will start to and then just to understand, you’re just in the business of selling problems. You’re not in the business of, of selling you or solutions.
You, you solve problems. And then and then your your job is to is to figure out and show them how your solution solves the problem better than anyone else. And that’s your, that’s your secret sauce, your u s p, right? That’s it.
And then that’s the fun part, this, the, how it works, the, the secret recipe, the thing you’ve discovered. And then and then you’ll find you’ll just put a different spin on it and someone will beat you and then you’ll put a different spin on it and you’ll put a different spin. Right? I think there’s like five different versions of the rule of one out there.
I know. But when you explain it, it does sound so easy and obvious.
No. But it’s but it is.
It’s kinda like just focus on those I love the confidence.
No. But it’s but focus on the on this on a it’s a simple pros. Like, even the process I just explained to you, what did I say? All you need to do is you need to figure out who your most profitable customer is.
You need to interview them. You need to once you understand them, you create a profile and avatar, so you can target them. You include demographic cycle graphic because you can use the demographic for campaign data like Facebook, use a psychographic to get into their mind and sell them. Then once you know that, you just create your USB because now you know the problem.
You create your solution. And then you just you you make sure that that solution beats the competition, but you’ve analyzed the competition because now you know what they’re all saying. So you make sure you’re saying the same thing except you’re going a layer above that and you’re beating them with your USB. And because you spoke to them, you know exactly what to say because your customers are gonna tell you.
Right? Simple things like, you know, what what features did you like best? Shut up and listen. They’re telling you why they chose you right?
And those those are those start building on your USB, and then one of those features may be the secret sauce that you get into how it works.
Right, and then you start building layers. That’s it. And then you use a couple of key metrics, like the metrics I showed you on the calculator, there’s only like four there’s three metrics. There’s conversion rate on your your thing. I’ll show you show you quickly as well.
And this is a good one as well to get into. Like remember this as because don’t get focused on. You can see the screen.
There’s only a couple of metrics that move. And as a business owner, just this is like remember what I’m telling you. And when you talk to a client, special a business owner, this is how you sell them. K.
There’s only a couple of of metrics that move the needle in your business. And if you increase any of them five percent, you see explosive ROI. Okay? The first one is your conversion rate.
This is your sales page, your landing page. This is what they hire you for to bring that in. Right? So if you increase this by another five say say you put this to ten percent, Watch how much more you make the client.
A lot of money.
Okay. The next one is your close ratio. This is and this is where agencies fail. They’ll send tons of leads, qualified leads.
But if those leads don’t book, what’s the point? And that’s where agencies fail, but business owners know this is a problem. They’ll say, well, everyone promises leads and you say, well, we’re gonna measure this ratio. And this is this is this is important because this is your close ratio.
And we’re going to apply consultative selling. We’re going to put this to fifty percent, and they’re all they’re all between twenty and thirty percent, by the way. That’s just you can count on that. We’re going to put this to fifty percent.
Look at their ROI. And then they also understand lifetime value and you’re how do you increase lifetime value? We know this stuff. You, you put a order on the thank you page.
Opsol, right? And you increase that even by another one hundred bucks explodes and then this is the secret sauce. This is agent part businesses will know what you’re talking about here is everyone puts this as a hundred percent. Right?
This is your your profit. So everyone uses this metric, but that’s not ROI. That’s return on ad spend. Even Google gets it wrong.
So you’re telling them, listen. Your lifetime value is two thousand two hundred. I know not all that is profit. And they’re like, yeah, exactly.
That’s my gross margin. Exactly. So let’s put you in and there are these remember these numbers, these are the same across the board. Okay?
Your gross margin is around sixty, sixty five percent. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe fifty between yeah. Exactly.
It is. Okay. Great. So we’re gonna put you at sixty percent. I like to be a little conservative.
Let’s put you at, say, forty percent. K? And Now I know your net profit is gonna come around say like twenty, twenty five percent. Those are that’s available information as across the board.
Those are pretty standard numbers. And now the business owner is going, oh my gosh. They totally get my business. They understand me.
Right? And this this is what I just showed you as direct response, you’re showing results, you’re showing value, right, but you’re selling this is part of our USB. This is one of our secret sauces. Right?
We’ve now it works every single time. Does that make sense? Like, it’s how it all works together?
Yes. Just learn those things. It’s it’s not complicated. Conversionary close ratio, lifetime value, done. Those are the only metrics that matter in the business.
Nothing else matters, right? And as long as you’re driving qualified traffic, this matter. You control these, and it’s, it’s so simple and so easy. And then work with them on this, this, this, this, and you’ll notice that when you get businesses busy, because then you you start flooding them, then it’s always an operational issue.
They start to break down because they can’t handle the volume, right, and then their profit margin searches and then you have to work with them to build that up. But that’s when you get into, Hey, I want I want a percentage of sales.
Right? So a lot of clients that we what they used to be clients, but now we we do profit sharing, right? But make no mistake. I know the numbers because the first conversation you need to have with a client, the very first conversation is what’s your lifetime value?
What is your sales close ratio? What is your conversion rate? What is your cost per lead? What’s your your your cost per acquisition?
Right? Because if you don’t have those conversations, you can’t advertise and don’t count on Google to tell you. Google’s system is optimized around cost per lead. Sorry, cost per acquisition.
In your space, in our space, it’s actually cost per lead. You have to go back a layer, but Google doesn’t tell you that. Right? Don’t even measure six that you can import your your ROI into Google ads.
You can do that stuff, but Google that’s like hidden secrets that a lot of people don’t know. Right? There’s another USB, We know this stuff, right? So that we work with clients.
So when we do Google ads, we we measure success by ROI. True, did you actually make money and we link it to the CRM. So I wish I could show you. We have a client who has, this one, our u s p.
So we have a, CRM, So what we figured out is we take lifetime value. So when their patient closes, what we do is we we use Google as API and now we know the exact keyword that that close so we can tie revenue to that keyword. See how powerful that is? And then we can use that metric inside of Google ads to start optimizing campaigns.
That’s data driven. There’s our other that’s another USB, why you should choose us, and you keep on building on that.
Make sense?
Yes.
Yeah.
I just wanted to mention, I really love this method of selling because it makes it feel more logical. Like, look at the numbers.
Like, if you’re turning away from these numbers, then you’re actually making an illogical decision So I really like this method. Yeah.
I’ve never met a client who put me in front of an agency, put me in front of a if if I put me in front of a client, client, like, who works with an agency, you go through this, they’re gonna sign up with you. We still have a client Joe sent to us fifteen years ago. Right? And it’s not that we’re, like, super great at what we do is because we know the numbers, and we just, like, I don’t I don’t even like Google ads, it just once you once you know and you tell Google, I only want you to optimize campaigns based off of revenue using first click attribution to the original channel.
You you can’t lose, like, you you you’ll make money. Right? And then it’s just monitoring those metrics and going and just don’t over complicate but I didn’t invent this stuff. This is like stuff that was talked about in the forties and fifties.
This is direct response, pure and simple. It’s that, it’s that easy. Joe put me onto that, and study that art, study, and then you’ll start to see the patterns, and you’ll see how simple it is. Understanding a problem, offering the solution to solve that problem, separating yourself from the competition, monitoring these metrics, growing your list, selling to that list, sorting by lifetime value, most aware audience, that all that is is is the people, there’s two types of most aware.
There’s there’s the the the people who are on the fence, they wanna purchase with you. Maybe they were they were recommended by a friend or something. They’re convinced you’re the solution. They’re most aware.
They just need a discount. And the other most aware is that they’re on your list they’ve purchased from you previously. Find out who they are, segment by that. Those are your repeat purchases.
Those are your most of our audience, and then just hit them with discounts. That’s it. Where’s the thing on this? Do you see this right here?
I don’t know if you see my screen. Do you see this?
So this is brilliant. So this is like how simple it is. This is from IBuy direct. I purchased these, glasses, I buy direct, and every month I get a card offering a discount.
I’m most aware. I am their most aware audience I’ve purchased. They’ve segmented because I know I’ve made multiple purchases and every month I get it to a card. Hey, purchase again.
We’re thinking of you. Thirty percent off, forty percent off. That’s it. That’s all it has to be.
But there’s so much opportunity in that, right, because no one’s doing this anymore, but it’s as simple as that. That’s direct response.
Make sense?
Yeah. My takeaway oh, sorry, Esther. No.
No. Go ahead, Carla.
My personal takeaway from all of this is let the facts and the data speak for themselves. You know, don’t go down by, you know, I think that my problem is I kinda let myself I just, you know, I get in the way. Like, I just step away and focus on the facts. Like, I think it things are simple to you because you strip everything away and it comes down to the data and the facts. And so to you, it’s very crystal clear.
The benefits and the, you know, what we’re offering. But I think so many times, I, you know, my emotions get involved in my you know, my insecurities or whatever. Like, I bring all that in, I question, bring in all these questions that maybe, I’m making complicating things for myself.
I I work with copywriters because I’m not, like, technically, I’m not a copywriter. I’m a direct response marketer, and copywriters are much better. Like, I understand the psychology behind it. But there’s also there’s the it goes a layer deeper, but I focus on the basics and it’s not.
Some people it’s it’s just that you strip everything down as much as possible and you fold it works for us and it, other people like to be more creative. I’m not I’m not creative. I’m far from it. Like, I’m I just it’s not in my it’s not in my DNA. Right?
But it’s just, I know a lot of copy readers are, but, yeah, it just focus direct response as much as possible, study direct response as much as possible. I think you’ll you’ll like it. It’s all based on data. It’s really straightforward, right?
And then just strip it down and simplify.
It’s fine. When you think about it, all the stuff you can do? Yeah.
I love it.
And then you’ll start making money for yourself, and then you’ll realize, holy crap. Why why why am I not why am I doing this for other people? Right? And then then you get into the real fun stuff. And then it’s all about, you know, yeah, and then it’s about enjoying enjoying life. Right?
But I’ve screwed up a lot of times. Like, I’ve I’ve lost over a million dollars. So I’m not I’m not like trust me. I’ve learned I’ve made a lot of mistakes.
I opened up a clinic in LA, literally, I lost from that six hundred thousand. Right? I learned from my mistakes and it’s not I don’t know But that’s the beauty of of the process of direct response, even Joe’s process, you know, testing and learning that’s built into it. It’s baked into it.
Right? Everything you do is an experiment and you go into it, you build your landing page. You you don’t know if that’s gonna convert. Like, it tells us that should be, you know, long form landing pages convert.
That’s not true all the time. I know for a fact that we’ve put up pages and and like a paragraph converted more. It’s like, how the hell is this happening? Or an image we thought would work is it didn’t, or we were messaging was to a product of our audience, but it would they didn’t but then we put up a discount and everyone purchased.
You’re like, this doesn’t make sense. But now you have a control and you can get in there. You can start figuring it out. Right?
It’s not it’s not perfect, but that gives us to I screw up, I fail every day, right? Every single day, I wake up, I make mistakes.
You know, but what you’re feeling is normal. Don’t I feel that way. I hate, presentations. I don’t like presentations. I hate it. I’m I’m logical. I’m not creative.
Right? And I’m I’m what we call visionary. I’m not an integrator. Right? I have teams and I delegate all this stuff to them.
So it’s it’s very uncomfortable for me to do. Right? Because that’s that’s the way I’m just I’m wired.
But you so what I’m saying is those feelings you’re feeling normal.
Right? It’s completely normal. Right? It’s just everyone everyone thinks that.
Make sense?
Yeah. Yeah. Like, it’s, especially with my team, I hear that all the time. So it is tough, like, it does hit me, like, to hear it because I, it’s and a lot of people feel that in the space.
A lot of people think like impostor syndrome, you know, I don’t look like I’m not an expert. People are gonna think I’m an expert. I don’t know my stuff. Like all of that is completely normal and even people who are in the space who are experts and influencers, they all feel the same.
They’ll journal, they’ll have coaches to deal with those emotions, and that’s the trick. It’s like once you understand that everyone feels the same way, and everyone like, I don’t know. I’ll put you on a secret. I don’t know if you guys have noticed on the the slack channels.
I leave spelling mistakes on purpose. And I I do that intentionally because I’m dealing with, like, with, like, you you take those emotions and then you you make them work for you. And eventually you start building this, like, this wall where it doesn’t matter, and then you realize the world doesn’t care. Like, people that really don’t care.
Has anyone noticed those spelling mistakes I make?
See? Like, it’s like, no what, nobody cares. And it’s like, but I used it ten years ago, I would be so petrified and it’s, but it’s building in that stuff. Right? Like I said before, it’s a bit out there. But, like, I’ve gone to a grocery store, laid in the middle of the grocery store to see what people would do. People walked over me.
They don’t care.
I know it’s a bit out there in Farfetch.
It’s a bit wonky, but it just puts it in a perspective, right? But that’s why people get coached They they work with coaches like Joe said. The coaches aren’t teaching you the practical stuff. They’re teaching you how to deal with all these all these these feelings that what you have are normal. Everyone feels. Imposter syndrome, I think, is the biggest thing students deal with. Right?
But it’s normal. Just remember that Do it anyways. That’s the model. Right?
Yeah.
Anyway, sorry to go off on that. It’s during topic of mine.
Any other, yep?
What resources you would recommend to, like, start off learning direct response.
David Olegle, the one of the legends, the tons. Like, there’s, yeah, there’s tons of books. I’ll I’ll put up a bunch of options.
Yeah, but see, the USP is based off of this one’s scientific advertising.
That’s the whole USB concept where it came out. All, like, all of this stuff that were, like, the direct response, the rule of one. All of this stuff is is it’s just it’s been around for like the forties and fifties and just people are building on it they’re putting like the digital spin on it, but much smarter people figured this out way before. Like they would launch million dollar campaigns with paper.
They didn’t have, like, Excel back then. Right? So they had to simplify it. So one of the rules was you just you assign lifetime value to the original channel, such a simple concept, but today marketers think attribution, this that you have to have that.
That’s not true. Oh, you just need first and last. Use lifetime value, your attribution.
Second click, that’s gonna tell you which campaigns are closing. And then or your first click is gonna tell you as long as you link lifetime dot, like, it’s it’s so simple that we like to complicate stuff, right? We like to have all these different models and then Google says, Now you need AI. You need AI to do that. Yeah. It depends.
As long as you’re tracking ROI to the original channel and you’re using revenue then then it matters, But like how many people, if you guys know clients are using Google ads, I can guarantee that they’re using data driven, but here’s the here’s the messed up part. I don’t know. I’m sharing my screen. Right? So let’s say I send the they’re spending all this money and it’s a ten percent close ratio, right? And everyone’s thinking, oh, this campaign’s doing really well, and Google’s optimizing around this threshold because it’s sending you a hundred delays. Here’s the problem.
Only one of them or zero have booked. The client’s losing money, but Google doesn’t know that because you haven’t closed the loop. So Google’s optimizing around this. That’s what data driven is.
You have to pick the metric. It’s scary.
And everyone’s running around thinking everything’s working for them. It’s not because they’re not closing anything. They’re all shitty leads. I’ve experienced that.
Right? So Google’s optimizing for shitty leads because they’re not they’re not optimized running metrics that matter. Right? So imagine if you’re pumping you know, all of this money.
Now you’re getting into this and say you’re five, like, this I’ve seen this. Like, we did a Facebook campaign which on paper was really well. We generate thousands of leads. Guess what?
None unbooked.
Right? And every business owner you talk to, like, I I I literally, like, fired a client one time. I said, like, I’m not they’re like, we want you to do Facebook advertising. I’m not doing Facebook.
Why? Because I know it doesn’t work. Well, why do you know? And they I’m like, because those are vanity metrics, right?
But it doesn’t, it doesn’t, I don’t like Facebook anyways. It’s it’s like a long term play, but anyway, that’s a totally different story.
Sorry to rant.
No problem. That was really helpful.
Yeah. Thank you. But have fun with it. Right? Like, I’ll I’ll give you some resources on it.
Like Joe’s training, obviously. That that’s peer direct response as peer, computers are copywriting. That’s amazing training. Like that that studying, that’s where I started my training.
And then like Joe said, she mentioned to me as well. Study response, the Grates, your David will hold these.
And you’ll notice, it’s it’s pretty straight. They all preach the same stuff, right? And then just, and then you’ll start to you’ll start to see a pattern and give it a couple of years, but it’ll sink in, right? Then you’ll start looking at stuff and saying, oh, that’s this stage of awareness.
Oh, this is stage of awareness, and then you’ll get mail. It’s like, oh, sign up for everything like every I get so many letters and it does my swipe file. Right? It’s you everywhere you go, go to a national enquirer and sign up for all those little things at the end.
Those are direct response marketers. They know their stuff. And then watch what they send you and step back and start analyzing it. Right?
All of those place. What’s another one? Like, what’s another one like inquire? All those book, look at those those full page ads.
They’re making money can guarantee it. Those that’s a lot of money to be put in there. They know what they’re doing. That’s peer direct response and see what they see what they sense, see what they do and learn. Right? I love doing that, so.
Cool?
Very cool. Thank you.
Yeah. No problem. Any, any any other questions or Okay. Yeah. So hope that, yeah, I hope it was helpful. I look forward. Put up the anything anyone wants me to look at.
Like, put it up in the channel and, Oh, do we get a I do have a question.
Do we get a, do we get the competitive analysis template? Will you be sharing that?
I can. If you want, did you wanna copy of it?
I mean, yes, if you don’t mind.
Of course. No. Of course. Any, the competitor analysis, anything else.
I’m gonna share the, let me show the oh, yeah. Actually, this is a good one. Let me show you guys because, you know, Joe talks about your spit draft and wire for me and whatnot, and when you’re doing your, when you’re creating your pages. So this is what to do.
Do do do do bear with me while I open it here.
And then the survey data, you know the training on that where you take your survey data, you put it in your messaging, and then you take you apply proven copywriting formulas after that?
Yes.
Okay. So that is the so that the concept that we went over will share the whole wireframe with you.
But we have, all of the pages mapped out. And then it’s just really the, the what versus the, the how. And then you just focus on what you wanna say. If it’s yours.
Yeah. I’ll take it out for you later, but it’s a whole, it’s a whole sequence that, anyways, I’ll share it with you. I thought I could find it I’ll share all this with you. I’ll share the competitor research.
I’ll, what else? The, this bit draft and wireframe, the survey questions, that we have. So we analyzed all of the, every copywriter known. We we they all have questions that they ask and then there’s also story frameworks.
So we have the we can pile this massive list of questions that are designed to get a a response from different people. And then you can pick and choose which ones you want, and you can ask those. We’ll send those as well.
Okay. Great.
And then just having fun with it. Right? And, but anything else, anything else you want me to look at on the forms? Like, yeah, put it up, and we can, Happy to look at it too. Oh, we’ll send our, the UVP, sorry, the avatar that we use as well.
Okay?
Thanks, James.
Okay. Thanks, everybody.
Bye. Bye bye.
Worksheet
Worksheet
Transcript
So today, we’re gonna go over how to, build your authority site. We use this process, not just for, well, you can use this process for yourself, but we also use it for clients, and you can you can apply this across, different niches.
So I think if your member’s telling me this, like, fifteen years ago, Joanna, when I took the I think it was the the freelancer, the hundred thousand dollar freelancer, whereas really, like, the the main goals of your site is you wanna grow your list, you wanna sell your stuff, and then you you sell your other other people’s stuff. I remember when you said that to me, it just it really hit home and that’s, of course, it’s it’s true.
And that also may ultimately leads to the the top three things that that or the top three goals that we make sure all of our authority sites, achieve. First one is it needs to drive leads and sales. Second, it needs to build authority and trust. And the third thing is it needs to get remembered and shared, which I I know Joanna touched, on that the last meeting that we had. Now the metrics we used to measure success. We make sure that all of these are aligned to the goals that I I just discussed.
A lot of these are, super important. The the big ones are your customer lifetime value, your list growth rate, your lead conversion rate. A lot of these metrics if you move the needle even five percent, you’re gonna see a a lot of growth. So, we tend to focus on these. Now what we’ll do with these metrics is we’ll actually create a scorecard, and we’ll monitor them either weekly or monthly depending on on which ones.
More importantly, the is you wanna make sure that again that these are aligned to your goals.
I suggest you stick with the top three, but if for whatever reason, your your client or yourself, you wanna achieve something else, just make sure you can prove success or measure success.
So we’ll get into, the first step is really defining on what you want your site to achieve, what your the goals are, we’ll get into this actual process that we use to create the site.
It starts with identifying your most profitable customer. Now, what we suggest doing is you wanna identify the four percent of your customers that generates sixty four percent of your revenue.
We do that. What we do is we look at our customer list and we use lifetime value as the metric and then also repeat purchases or the number of purchases that people have made. And what we do is we we take that, we segment, and then from that, we’ll we’ll discover the four percent, and that’s who we’ll start with first.
Then we’ll use that list, and we’ll we’ll sort of pick and choose the next customer to start with, and then we’ll work through it one at a time. Basically, targeting a specific niche or market, and then moving on to the next.
The next stage is once you’ve identified your your your ideal prospect, you have them sorted, then you wanna conduct center interviews and and surveys and interviews.
We start by interviewing the customers, you know, your typical sort of what challenges you’re facing, you know, how’s our product help to your favorite features, a lot of these questions, and and I do have a copy of the, I think we have, like, fifty. No, I’ve actually over a hundred questions now.
Of different ways that you can ask them, and different, they’re all organized by stages of awareness, but I’ll share this with you at the end. And essentially, what you’re looking for is not just understand the problem, understand that obviously the outcome they want or the solution, but also These are questions that are gonna help you uncover your your value prop, your USB.
A lot of these questions, like, why which specific features did you like or or what made you choose us over the competition, you’re gonna get all of that stuff from these interviews, and that’s what you’re really gonna start using to create your USB and value prop.
So the next person you need to interview is you. So you need to interview yourself. This is all the stuff that we’re going through the, copy hackers as well. Books, success stories, case studies, your podcast, events, everything about you, your origin story, which, I’m gonna do another session on this.
And, your origin story is all a bit of creating trust. It’s it’s, hey, you understand the problem and, you know, they they can relate to you. You’re likable, and you’ll do that early on. So we’ll cover another session on that.
And, of course, your USB and your unique mechanism, you’ll get your USB from the customer surveys. Your unique mechanism, is once you know what or you have a better idea on why they chose you, then you can hammer out the details. That’s really the how it works. So that’s the part that you’re gonna focus on yourself.
Now once you have all this information, the second step you need to do is you need to analyze the the results. Okay? So what you’re really doing here is you’re you’re looking you’re looking for themes. I use AI for this.
AI is really good at this where they can identify common themes you you really wanna get in the mind. You understand. You wanna understand why they tick. You know, what’s the specific problem they wanna solve?
What specific outcome?
You wanna understand their their top hesitations because then you can draft a guarantee to address those.
So really, you’ll find some really cool stuff from this. I is probably one of my favorite parts, to be honest.
And we’ll show you we have tools at the end as well, which we’ll give you access to, and that’ll help you sort of categorize in segment.
Then what we do from that, and this is the the fun part I enjoy as well is we create an avatar. Now, and again, I’ll give you the templates at the end. We just don’t create your typical avatar with as, you know, your demographics, like, psychographics. What we do is and I got this from you, Joanna, is we this is almost like two point o version of the rule of one, or your one reader. So it’s not just understanding, their problem and concerns. But it’s also listing, you know, hey, these are the hesitations aligning a guarantee to that, figuring out what are what what hard offers are gonna resonate with them, what soft offers are gonna are gonna resonate with them. And then this is where you start filling in your USPS, your value prop, and all the other stuff as well.
And again, you’re gonna use this from the the survey data that you’ve, you, you, got from before. Now, the trick on this as well is you’ll have your most profitable customer. You wanna take that customer and you also wanna create an avatar avatar by stages of awareness if you can.
And then you wanna repeat that for each of your, your avatars moving forward as well. Next step that we do is we create a sitemap.
These are the core pages on your site that, we find, it’s a good start anyways. There’s your homepage. Which will break down in a second because your homepage really tells a great story, and it’s organized by the stages of awareness.
There’s your about page, which is your origin story. There’s your process, which is how it works. And that’s it’s it’s your USB, but it also includes the the secret sauce, you know, the that how your solution, you know, achieves consistent results better than the competition. And that’s really how you’re gonna outline it step by step.
Success stories, of course, your work with me, which is your services, product type services, your your courses, whatever you wanna offer, books, blog, consult, contact, media, resources, speaking, connect, and then your typical four zero four, thank you and and FAQ pages with a a guarantee as well. I like this section right here because it’s it’s almost like, you wanna address their hesitations and concerns. A lot of people overlook the purpose of the FAQ page. So you wanna you definitely wanna test that out as well if you can.
A little tip, insider tip on this is If you are in a city, let’s say you have a productized services on, web design, and you have a system where you can put this really cool package together for clients, and you can productize it, and you’re in a in a city, say you’re in Toronto, what you wanna do is you wanna create a city page, that’s this Toronto web design, but don’t put it on your main navigation. Just put it in your HTML site map. Because then what’s gonna happen is it’s still gonna get linked to the rest of the pages. You’re gonna link to use, but then it’s also gonna, it’ll rank, but then you can also link to it from your GMB profile.
So then it’s just an added sort of boost that you can get more traffic and sales from it as well. I’ll be doing a session on that on how to set that up. And and show you, how to create that city page. And the cool thing is with the city page, it’s actually, organized by, not only stages of awareness, but it uses ADA.
It’s pretty cool how everything aligns up on it.
Next is your homepage. So this is where we start, we start with this. And remember, we’re we’re creating the home page and we’re using all of the data that you’ve collected from your surveys, your avatar so you can start telling great story because you know exactly who you’re writing for. That’s that’s what’s key about this.
These are the main components of the of the the home page, and I’ll give you a, wireframe split. I I’ll use the terms spid draft and wireframe at the end that you can use. And, it contains only sections. So you have your header with Hero Shot, UV, your email opt in, which is above the fold, your compelling, story, which is your origin story. Credibility and social proof, your work with me, which are your services page, your speaking, your programs, your content preview, which is, of course, is your blog, your your podcast social connect and then, of course, your footer, which is your you wanna end with a strong CTA.
Now here’s how each of them kinda tells a story. So you’re starting with the header, your hero shot, UVP.
Really, this is the first impression. It’s it’s what’s gonna grab their attention gonna explain what you do who it’s for and the big benefit. You know, we this is your, you know, why why choose me versus the competition. So you’re really setting the stage at this point.
There’s a couple of examples that I’ve included. You know, I help entrepreneurs, build and grow profitable platforms, very clear.
Build your business, build your wealth, live your dream. It’s clear. I love this one.
This is like a two point o. You know, welcome to the the Fitfather project.
It’s, I think that he he nails it really well.
Second is you’re featured in. These are your your media logos across, you know, right off the bat. This is gonna create that credibility. It’s gonna show like, hey, I can trust them. Like, what they’re saying is true.
A couple of examples, this is like kind of a what most people do, it works. It’s kind of okay.
This is a better example of it as featured in trusted by. Again, I love this version. I think it’s like two point o. It just it hits you.
So you don’t have fun with this, but you’re you’re really saying, hey, like, I not only understand you, but what I’m what I’m saying is true. You can trust what I’m saying.
Next part is your email opt in, so your you’re placing this next, it’s really that, like, the way to say, Hey, you know, like, get to know me a bit more. You know, you’re you’re in you’re giving that option right away. You’re hinting at that value. Hey, there’s more to come.
Here’s a couple of examples of your, your email. There’s million. There’s a the urban monk seven day reboot, get started now. Just, you know, it’s not much.
It’s just a way to collect your email and and, and get them into, or or start the the process anyways. Here’s your origin, your your hook. This is the part I love. This is your origin story.
On your homepage, you’re just gonna literally just create a little snippet and link to your orange and story page. And that’s really how that homepage is aligned as well. You notice that each section, it is correlates to the navigation as well. So that’s what you’re you’re doing.
You’re just linking to each one. A couple of examples of origin stories.
Here, here’s another one, how I got here. It’s pretty, you know, the these are revealing to the are, you know, he’s talking about his PTSD.
Just when I thought I was on top of the world, she’s, you know, she’s gonna go into, you know, what, her problems and She’s really trying to relate to people. It’s like, hey, they understand me. They get me, which is which is really cool. Here’s another one, the truth you may not know about me, and it’s it’s his about page.
And that’s these are gonna be your about about us page. Some people call it origin story, but I just call it about us. Here’s another one, Sharpen. He’s he’s a good guy, Sharpen, actually, I’ve met him a few times.
He’s pretty good training. Credibility, media logos. That’s the next step. This is just to, you know, we’re building on those initial crust, the credibility signals.
We’re deepening that trust.
We’re we’re starting to get into our expertise, you know, the the the impact, the solution that we offer.
Here’s a couple of examples as well.
We’re getting into best selling books, like, you know, the and and that’s the psychology here is your you’re thinking, hey, well, this, you know, you see someone with these best selling books. They must know their stuff, right? And that’s really the point of, of, publishing your book is you’re creating out authority in their eyes, and it’s just gonna make you a hell of a lot easier selling your products and services. Then we’re getting in a social proof this is the praise your photos.
Hey, if it worked for for them, it can work for me too type stuff.
Here’s a couple of great examples for Tony Robbins everyone knows Tony Robbins, your typical testimonials, then we’re getting into your work with me.
Now that they trust you, they believe what you’re telling is true. They think the solution is for them. Now you’re gonna start introducing what you do, right, and it can be anything from services, to coaching.
It really depends on on what you’re offering. Then you get into for our clients, obviously, it’s their services they offer. There’s a lot of spaces in cosmetic, so we would get into the cosmetic services they would offer.
Here’s the content preview. This is this is really about like establishing further and giving a taste of, you know, what what what they can learn by by, following you. So you here’s your library, your podcast library, learn from me. Here’s my blog. Then you’re getting your social connections.
This is cool. It’s just like, hey, you know, connect with me. You know, here’s here’s the value I bring. It’s your your making that introduction for them to to reach out, then you have your footer, which of course ends in a strong CTA, and you’re just reinforcing that again.
Couple examples as well. A lot of people don’t put the, they’re they’re called actions in these CAAs. You wanna be in the footer, you wanna make sure you do that.
And you can do this yourself. That’s the process we use for the home page. We do have a, a site map and sorry, spit draft and wireframe, which will will give you not just for the home page, but it’s all of the pages of the site.
How we do it is, again, I learned this from Joanna, is we we start with what we wanna say, and then what we do is we overlay proven copywriting formulas on top of that, and then you have a pretty compelling site, which is, which is gonna rank and sell and convert and do really well.
We’ll provide you with all of these tools at the end. So don’t worry about that. I’ll I’ll give you access to everything.
What I wanted to talk today was to to show you a concept of how this works and really using your using your the the data that you get from your surveys and and how you can use it, and not just just to show it’s not. It doesn’t have to be complicated, and how you can craft the UVP for your homepage yourself.
These are questions and I’ll I, I just went over, but I’ll share with them with you as well. So now and I’ll use ourself as an example. So we, we’re launching a product, and it’s called or a service called WP Total Care. And, we’ve been offering WordPress support for our clients now for a couple of years. So we wanna it’s worked really well. So we wanna take this a bit further. So we analyze our list, our current customers, and we thought it was small business owners with a WordPress website specifically with woocommerce.
And we analyzed this list, and we actually discovered it’s not It’s actually, brand agencies. They’re the four percent of customers that generate sixty four percent of our revenue. So after analyzing that, we just literally put, you know, brand agency. Then we we asked them the the specific problem, and and we wanted to know the outcome that they wanted.
And for them, it was, they’re because they they’re a brand agency, they do they’re clients, they’ll help their client with their branding, and it often ends up leading to online or digital media, often like a website or whatnot. So what they would do in the past is they would reach out to freelancers or they would work with freelancers and the problem is the the inconsistent results, you know, the the freelancers just disappear on them sometimes. So That was the main challenge they were they were dealing with. The specific result, they wanted they just wanted a reliable partner they can count on.
We we did speak to them a little bit more. We wanted to dig into the ultimate benefit, and it was like, yeah, they wanted to rely reliable partner, but in the end, it was so they could grow their business because they realized there’s this big opportunity they didn’t have the the means in house or they didn’t they didn’t want to invest in someone, in house so they really wanted that partner to help them grow and take their agency to the next level.
That, of course, led us to the the promise, and this is where we really we asked them, you know, what why did you choose us over the competition? And there’s a few things that stood out for them. The first one was we specialize in WordPress. Our developers have contributed to the core.
So that’s just gonna lend our expertise. And the big one was is we have a white label option where, they can they’ll use our services. Their clients don’t know because they’re white labeling, but the plugin that we they can use in the back end of their website. They can engage and speak to clients, and they can manage their client’s website through that.
So that was something the competition doesn’t offer, and those were, you know, the top three reasons people chose us. So, of course, that’s our promise.
The proof was up to us, and and that’s just when we’re doing the interviews. We’re just gonna, hey, you know, do you mind if we we we interview, you know, so we can we can tell your story, and we can share your story. So we’re gonna use those. We’re gonna use demos.
We have a lot of, we have a lot of examples of before and after where we’ve optimized websites, especially with Google’s web vitals as far as page based paid speed and and whatnot. So these are pretty powerful, and we can use those to really validate and and and show or prove what we’re saying is true, as far as our our promise. Right? And one thing I wanna touch on this is the the promise is really about, the promise is your, you wanna switch to unique benefits because there’s, like, there’s three types of benefits.
The first type of benefit is the benefit that your customers don’t care about avoid them. Second type of benefit are these are your price of entry benefits. So these are the benefits that they expect to see when they go to your site. So you need to have those.
It’s, like, the minimum that your prospect expects. Then there’s their point of difference benefits, and these are the benefits that you’re gonna use to beat your competitors.
So when we interviewed our clients, we discovered, you know, the minimum requirements, the minimum we need to to sort of play the game. And then, of course, we we discovered the the point of difference benefits to win the game. That’s the way I like to look at it.
And then, of course, the proposition, these are the products that, they wanted to see. You know, the this is a really telling question as well. And we have a lot of these. There’s different ways to phrase it.
But when you’re creating your offers, let your customers or, your leads, let them tell you the type of offers that you wanna create.
So just, you know, asking these types of questions and that they’ll tell you.
Then once you have all of your answers from the interviews, you’re literally just gonna, you know, here is their their frustrated, you know, agencies, quality. Right? They’re they’re they’re they’re frustrated with quality from freelancer. So all you’re doing literally is you’re taking that and you’re you’re popping it in. That’s it. And then once that’s done, you’re just gonna take this formula and then you’ll rewrite the formula, easy peasy.
And test this stuff. There’s different formulas that you can use. You can test them. You can rotate them. Make sure that you’re your visual here, your image is it shows the transformation or the outcome that they wanna achieve. And then, of course, you’re just highlighting your your point of different benefits under here, which I just told you about, as well. We specialize in WordPress where, we contribute to the core, we white label a plugin, and then, of course, you’re just ending it with another formula is to get the desired result that they want.
So it all plays together. The your you’re identifying just a recap. You’re identifying your ideal prospect. You’re and your ideal prospect you’re gonna start with is your most profitable. You’re getting into the mind of that that customer, you’re doing that by interviewing, you’re understanding the problem, the challenges, the frustrations, the outcome, not just that, but also their hesitations and concerns. And you’re asking all this stuff so you can really meet it head on, especially with, you know, if you if you discover that one of their concerns is that, you know, you don’t have a level of expertise in WordPress, well, you’re gonna guarantee that you do. You wanna align that as much as possible.
And you’re taking that survey data, and then you’re analyzing it, and then you’re using it in your copy, and you’re using it to create your website. And and that’s what’s really powerful about it. And then you’re just once once you have and you understand it, you’re just using proven copywriting formulas and frameworks, and that’s it. And then you’re just making sure everything follows, tells a story or, has a, yeah, tells tells a great story, and It’s, yeah, it’s a lot of fun. And then you get into your split testing and your, your testing and everything else.
Any questions so far?
Yeah. I have two.
Yeah. For sure.
The the first one? So with the stuff, like, around your IDel avatar, what would you recommend if you’re in a position where You don’t really know.
You haven’t worked yet with your ID levator. Like, you have an idea of them, like you’ve outpriced your current client, so you wanna sub new ones, but you can’t interview them because you’ve not worked with them before. Like, where would you recommend you start?
I can show you what we did. So we did, So we we, we scraped all of our competitors, when we first started doing it. Here, I’ll show you, am I still sharing my screen? Yeah.
I am. Okay. So we had, this what we did. So we went out and and just scraped all our competitor reviews and and we analyzed everything.
Right? And we we looked for, their USB, everything a to z. So that that’s what I would suggest doing. Is pretty telling as well.
Like, we we go pretty heavy into analyzing our competitors. We we we do everything from sign up for consultations we wanna know their sales funnel, their strengths, their weaknesses, because ultimately, you you wanna you wanna match them and then you wanna beat them. Right? And you you do that by understanding them and also listening to your customers as well.
That’s what I would suggest doing.
Okay. Thank you.
Who are your competitors, by the way? Do you know?
Not really because, like, I don’t know that my competitors are like copywriters. They’re more like coaches, or con consoled like So, yeah, I’m not I’m not sure of any any other copywriters, like, in my space.
Yeah. We go pretty deep. Like, you can you you’ll find them out, like, a good a good approach to do is, we use data to sort of figure who who is our competition, and then we we get into Once you know who they are and it kinda leads to the next one, like you can figure out their entire marketing strategy. It’s it’s pretty straightforward once you know who they are. And then that, like I said, that’s gonna lead to another competitor, another competitor, and then you just focus on the top twenty percent. That you know are dominating the market, and then that that’s where you start laying your recipe.
Mhmm. That makes sense. Thanks. And, yeah, the other question is just a silly little one.
For, like, having the logos underneath the, like, trusted by, do you need permission to do that? Like, assuming there’s nothing in the ended ending NDA that says against it? Like, do you still need to ask to include the logo on your page?
Not that we had, in Slack, someone we had, we talked about that as well.
Oh, really?
I used them.
Like, it’s not it’s if it’s if it’s legit, of course, I don’t unless there’s, like, an NDA or something.
Okay. Agreed. We use them and others use ours without ever asking. So Yeah.
I I’d never asked you, Joe, but It’d be good.
Cool. Thank you.
Yeah. No problem.
Anyone else? Any other shy folk who are off camera?
Shade, where did four percent and sixty four percent come from?
So it’s the eighty twenty rule. I don’t know if you heard about that. So twenty percent of your customers will eighty percent of your revenue. So what you’re doing is you’re taking that twenty percent and you’re applying the same formula again.
So you’re looking at your the twenty percent the twenty percent of that that generate eighty is zero sixty four. That’s where it comes from. So it’s just another layer. So a lot of people just start with that’s good enough.
But if you wanna get ultra specific, and the goal here is, like, to is to define your most profitable customer. And that’s, like, the you do that by analyzing your list and you use lifetime value as the metric. That’s what key that’s what’s key. And then, and once you know that, then you just you sort and you you pick one at a time.
Dominate that. Move on to the next.
Well, thank you.
Yeah. No problem.
I had a question. If we’re, like, redefining our offer or our niche, and we kind of try and we’re kind of trying to get something up would you recommend, like, still starting out to build out the authorities site with all the pages or sticking to, like, a one page site where we can collect leads before building out the fuller version?
We’ll start growing your list. Like, you don’t want to put it up right away. Like, don’t I wouldn’t wait until your site is, like, completely done. Right? Anything is good enough.
But that’s, like, you’re you’re saying before you do all the interviews and all that other stuff, like, before you Yeah. Put up what you have. Of course. Like, this is a process.
It’s not it’s, ideally, you wanna start with this, but you may have, you may have a site up. And you’re gonna go in and you’re gonna, you know, you’re not gonna tear it down. You may or may not, but it’s, is a process. Right?
You may start with a page.
You may say, hey, I’m gonna I’m gonna write my origin story, and then you you add that. You update your your Vode OS page. Right?
Okay. That’s helpful.
Shane, can I ask a visuals question?
Sure.
So I noticed I went to a lot of agency competitors.
I think who might be my competitors, and I noticed that a lot of them don’t do the person in the hero section. A lot of them don’t really have a whole lot of any noticeable imagery in the hero section really.
And I’m just wondering, like, I don’t have a photo shoot. I’m not scheduling one right now. I really don’t want to spend the money on it frankly.
At least not for a little while. What When it comes to the imagery, especially in the hero section, but even I guess going down the page in the home on the home page, any recommendations because I’m kind of at a loss. It gets me spiraling. That’s stupid.
I always see this. It’s either the person you know, like Joe has on hers or the agency competition like I said doesn’t seem to go by that. They didn’t have very little. So I’m just kind of struggling to figure out what’s the right image. Should I spend the money and go do something or I don’t know what’s your recommendation on all that stuff?
Don’t know. It depends. Like, it could be you could go stage as awareness and focus on, like, the outcome that they want. It depends on the industry too, right, on the space, like, or before and after. I’m gonna show the outcome gonna show that before and after. If they’re if they’re product aware they know the results, I’m gonna focus on why they need to choose me. Right?
That’s what I would start with. It’s not I don’t think there’s, like, everyone says there’s best practices, but I’ve we’ve done, like, testing, especially with Google ads and what we thought worked wouldn’t is complete opposite. Right? So, you know, I don’t unless Joe, I don’t know what your thoughts are on that, but I don’t think, you know, start with the basics, like, include your and just, maybe focus on the outcome, right, the solution they’re looking for.
Okay. Thanks.
Any other Everyone’s so quiet.
I mean, I will have to end this question. If your community’s there. So if no one has any more, I was wondering if you could talk a bit about, like, the types of guarantees you would offer as a service provider.
It depends on yeah.
So the the guarantees are gonna be, you’re gonna offer your guarantees to address their concerns, right, that your guarantee has to have a purpose, a goal, and your guarantee is literally to address their hesitations. Right? If they say they’re worried about this. You’re gonna offer a guarantee that, you know, that says, Hey, you don’t need to worry about it. That’s what it is.
But if they’re worried about results, like that seems to be the main thing, but it’s like, I can’t offer a guarantee around results.
What type of results?
Like, are they like well, I suppose actually this probably comes down to me targeting the wrong people.
Like, yeah, they just wanna know that they’ll that it will convert. But then I think that’s probably more where I’m talking people who with less money, who care more. So Yeah. I kind of answered my question.
No. Like, they’re they’re worried about results that they’re not gonna achieve the results sort of thing?
Yeah. Like, they just wanna know the copy’s gonna convert. Like, that that’s the hesitation. It’s like, can you make me more money?
So you can also guarantee something. Like, a guarantee is like, yeah, hey, it’s not just about results, but you can guarantee, so how I would answer that is is, like, I’ll show you what I would do, and then you can you can see there’s different ways to approach it I would show so say you’re a client, right, and let me open this up.
So I would say I would say to you, so I’ll pretend you’re the client. You’d say, well, how do you know you guys can see the screen?
Okay. So you’d say, well, how do you guarantee results? And I’d say, well, this is how I would address it. I’d say, well, you know, you’re working with us because we focus on on results.
You know, we we measure campaign success by ROI, and that really answers the question. Did you make money? And we we manage it around true ROI, not return on ad spend. So we take in account gross margin.
And you’re a business owner, so you’re thinking, okay. Good. This guy knows gross margin. He’s speaking my language.
And I would say, okay. Well, let’s say you work with us and we’re gonna launch a Facebook campaign. And then, like, yeah, we sent a thousand visitors and then would say we have it cost you ten thousand, right, to hire us. This is what you’re talking about is your conversion rate and say that your conversion rate is three percent.
That’s your landing page or your sales page that is gonna convert. This is how many customers, turn in, sorry, leads turn into customers. This is lifetime value. You’ll have to work with that with the client, and then let’s say it’s like sixty five percent margin.
So what I would say is while you’re hiring me for this metric, right? You’re hiring me because because most come in at around three percent. We’re gonna use that as a baseline, but we’re gonna have a control then, and we’re gonna work to increase that. So over time, you know, we can get that, say, from three to five percent and then watch your ROI.
It’s just gonna explode. But more importantly, what I wanna talk to you of it is I wanna make sure, you know, we don’t know how many your close, sales you’re closing yet. You know, if you’re only in most close around thirty percent, but like, hey, you know, you’re hiring me, we’re gonna work with you unconsulted at selling. We’re gonna put this at thirty five percent and watch your ROI.
It’s gonna explode.
Right? And so, and then we’re gonna talk about lifetime value, where we’re gonna do an upsell or something on the thank you page, and we’re gonna increase this by a hundred and watch the ROI.
So I’ve never what I’ve done is I’ve answered your questions. Like, I positioned myself as an authority. I’ve spoke his language, but I really promise nothing. I’d promise him that or her that we’re gonna have a control, and we’re gonna try to beat the control. Right? But I’m using my expertise to reinforce, like, hey, we’re all about results too. You see the subtle difference.
And that’s that’s the approach that we take. And it works really well because no other agencies talk like that. I can promise you. Like, no or marketers, direct response, direct response marketer would. But, a lot of, or copywriters, they won’t. But that’s that’s the language, that’s how I would approach it. So it’s a guarantee without you know, without a guarantee in a sense, if that makes sense.
Yeah. No. That’s good. Thank you.
No worries.
If I can just jump on that question Sure.
So you just walked through is what I walked a prospect through yesterday.
Good for you.
And it was it was good, but now that I now that I see you walk through it again, I realized I made some mistakes because my guarantee was more tying myself into a guarantee.
It okay if I share my screen and just show you Yeah.
Of course. Okay. Cool.
Okay.
So because the project is primarily just email marketing, So I didn’t include all those other aspects. So I just kind of took their list size, their profit margin, their average order value and their average orders per month. And I kind this is the so they’re currently doing nothing with email. So my guarantee in quote was, like, I’ll increase that zero, percent of revenue being attributed to email to twenty percent.
And by doing that, they’ll get a one hundred and forty additional, orders per month and this will equate to this amount in sales revenue and then profit. And then that was how I calculated the ROI. So for the ROI, just removed a monthly retainer fee. I gave them I did five six as a monthly retainer fee for that.
So I kind of tied myself into that percentage of additional revenue, like additional, email revenue, and I’m just wondering if that is dangerous as a guarantee to give.
Yeah.
I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t give that because you’re being ultra specific great. You’re guaranteeing, like, you’re guaranteeing the process. You’re guaranteeing you’re guaranteeing that, you know, you’re gonna do your job, you’re gonna do it well. And it’s like you have that level of expertise and that means that you’re gonna have a control. You’re gonna work towards beating it, and you’re gonna apply, like, proven frameworks, formulas, that’s that’s your guarantee. Right?
You you can say, like, you can, hey, imagine getting this and you can paint that picture and get them excited.
Right? Because that’s your ultimate goal. Like, if you’re not if you’re not increasing if you have a control and you’re not beating it, constantly, you’re not doing testing and stuff, then it the client’s gonna pick up on it. I would pitch that, but it is a subtle difference, though.
Right? You’re you’re pitching you. You’re pitching and you’re you’re using the results, like imagine, hey, and you’re building that excitement. But you’re letting them know it’s a process.
It’s built into into conversion copywriting. Right?
Yeah. I also gave, like, a timeline. Like, there’ll be some setup, there’ll be some setup time in month one. Month two. We’re just pull putting out the emails, so we’re still setting it up. So that guarantee was more of, like, ninety one twenty days from now. So that was kind of how I gave myself some room, but that’s still kind of dangerous.
I’ll say. Yeah. Just be careful on that. Like, you you wanna you’re gonna benchmark everything first.
And then you’re, obviously, you’re gonna benchmark because you need to show that you, you, you have to show success, right? But don’t don’t promise anything far as, you know, actual numbers. That’s that’s tricky to get into. Right?
I wouldn’t and then just promise, like, the the process, the how you’re gonna get in there, you’re gonna you’re gonna have these benchmarks. You have your controls, and you’re gonna work to beat them, and this is how. And then the how is conversion copywriting, right, the interviews, the the, voice of customer, all that stuff.
Okay. So if I can ask, what would you advise I do at this point? Because I’m having another call with them to, like, close the deal.
So kind of how do I back myself away from it, but still offering some kind some kind of Well, this it’s the subtle approach.
Like, just say like, did you say you’re gonna get I don’t know. Did you say you’re gonna get these exact these numbers.
Like, you’re gonna I guarantee within six months, you’re gonna have So it was a three month timeline for at least ten percent of revenue starting to come from email because they have a big list and the list is warm and they’re all How much revenue are they making now?
Like, do you know that?
As a company as a whole?
No. From the from that. Like, if you what is the the current yeah.
They’re they’re barely doing anything with email right now. But sometimes they send offers to the list and it convert and they convert. So that was what I was thinking.
Oh, I’ll be How big is their list?
Ninety k.
Oh, I don’t know. It should I don’t wanna say I I don’t know. I’d that kind of stuff, like, it’s I’ve I’ve been burnt on that. Like, it’s like you you think and it just I always pitch the process, like, see if you can you can sort of if you promise them already, like, see if you can dumb it down a bit maybe and just say, hey, you know, here’s here’s the benchmark. Here’s what we’re gonna start with. I’m gonna apply these. I’m gonna do this to try to get it to this, and this is hopefully what we can expect.
You know, but reminding them, hey, this is a process. Right? You can’t you can’t guarantee your but that’s the beauty of your process is you have a control and then you always work to beat it. Right?
That’s the way I would position it.
Okay.
Sounds good. Thank you. Yeah.
That’s a tough one. Like, it’s not, Right? I’ve been burned. I’ve back when I started my career, like, way back when I I learned a hard lesson from that. Just not to, not to.
Thank you. Yeah. No worries.
Any other Any questions on the process on the on building the site, using VOC, the survey data, Anything along that lines? On do we’re doing this for your your clients as well. This is also a service that you can offer to clients.
A lot of those pages, you’re just switching it up. Right?
They’ll have certification. We do this a lot for, for our clients.
Shane, if I can ask a question sorry. That’s, kind of adjacent to Abby’s question about, like, dumping audiences.
Like, so I did a competitor’s content analysis, but like what Abby was saying, I find that a lot of people making similar promises to what I’m claiming I can do are Like, it’s not just apples to apples with other copywriters. It is other digital marketing agencies.
It is coaches. And now, obviously, I’m getting, like, mega targeted with ads for everybody who does anything close to what I do.
So I just I guess, like, do you have any tips for narrowing down the competitors that you choose for that analysis or because obviously we only see the front end. We don’t know how successful that they’re they actually are or what kind of market where they have, or which ones we want to be comparing ourselves to and differentiating ourselves from.
Well, what do you it’s like, what are you defining us? For us, it’s revenue, right, market share.
What you can do for market share is you can look at their brand terms. Usually, phrases that people, brand term is not just the their name or their business name, but also the products that they sell. And you can gauge that as popularity. That’s that’s an option.
What else? If if you’re looking at revenue, there’s social shares. You can see how how popular the content is as well. That’s what we do. But you’ll find that once especially look at Google ads if they do spend a lot on Google ads, especially especially Google ads, not so much Facebook, but look at Google ads, and if they’re if they’re advertising, they usually know their stuff and then look at people also advertising within that space and then you’re gonna start to see patterns, right?
Especially in a competitor space, like if they’re paying six, twelve bucks a click, they’re they’re making sure it’s laser focused. Right? Yeah. That’s what we do.
Yeah, it just it it takes a while, but you’ll find it it it kinda leads one to another. Right? And then you do have to beat them though. You have to analyze them and you have to figure out, hey, like, you there there is your price of entry.
That that’s what, like, your prospect expects the the they come to your site. You have to meet this minimum requirement or they won’t consider you as an option.
You have to have that. And, give me an example. We had a executive health clinics. So there are certain people, these are private clinics in Canada, So there’s certain things that they expect a private clinic to have to even consider them.
Then you have to look at the competition. You say, okay, what’s something I can offer that’s gonna beat them? That still resonates with my ideal prospects. Something they want, how can I set myself apart because you need the apples to oranges compared person, right?
And if you’re in coaching selling products, that’s what’s going through their mind. Like, either saying, okay, I trust what you’re saying is true, and their product aware. I I trust what you’re saying is true. I I wanna believe what you’re saying is true, but like why should I choose you over the titian.
Why should I choose you over this coach? You know, why is your solution different or how can your solution help me solve my problem better than them? And that’s where you can differentiate yourself with, like, your USB.
But it’s not just your USB. It’s like how it works, like, how your secret sauce, your coaching program, how it helps them solve their problem. Like, it’s the secret that you’ve discovered that helps them solve their problem and get the outcome consistently better than everyone else.
And that’s something that’s pretty powerful and that’s that’s what you can use to separate yourself. That’s what we do.
And then you have that distinction. Right? You have your point of difference, your point of entry, your USB to sort of sum it up and then you use your credibility boosters. All the stuff like Joanna certification, your testimonials and stuff, you’ll use that to kinda support your your your u s p, like your apples to oranges. Does that make sense?
Yeah. Yeah.
So yep.
Being of, like, that’s that’s essentially where you’re going in for the differentiation.
Bingo. That’s that’s the good way, especially, like, if you’re in a coaching, that’s a level three market sophistication. And what that means is, like, people don’t respond to benefits anymore. They’ve heard it all.
The only thing they respond to and it’s getting to, but they respond to how it works. They wanna know why your solution is better than the competition, then they want to dig in because they want to learn it, right? You’re selling them a process, you’re selling them a secret, a results recipe, whatever you want to call it. That does x y z better than everyone else, and you need to sell them on that, but that’s going to create your apples to oranges.
A lot of your competitors will use like everyone Hammers home like reviews testimonials and stuff, that stuff is important. Yes. But you’re using that to reinforce your your your USB. There’s a subtle difference, but it’s really powerful.
Like, you’re using, you know, these credibility boosters to say, yeah, what they’re saying is true. Her solution is better than the competition. There’s a big difference, right, and then it’s reinforcing it. So that’s what I would do if you’re looking for that apples to oranges comparison.
Said, does that help?
Yep. Yeah.
Did do you have it unique? Like, have you have you thought of it? Like, how are how are you separating yourself from the competition? Like, what what angle have you taken?
Like, which angle am I not taking more? I think more about choosing like, I do on my talk about my process. So I have like, you know, immersion, creation, refinement is like my three step process, and I talk a lot about was of customer research in my marketing because I found, like, when I had that messaging, a lot of my competition was more about, like, speaking your troops, you know, and I was like, no, boo. Don’t, like, it’s not about your voice. It’s about your your market’s voice.
But I feel like yeah. I’m looking for what that needs to be now based on ongoing conversations about what my, one thing is gonna be.
Yeah. Like, why it’s if you can’t if I asked you right now, why should I choose you over the competition?
Can you, and that’s that’s the question, right?
And it’s like, and it depends on what you’re coming to me for.
Like, I that’s where so I’m I’m still in the mud about, like, what the offer is going to be. So I feel like I don’t know how to differentiate I’m, like, is it the dumpster you call energy? Is it the, like, something else?
So Let’s see what you’re saying.
So you don’t you’re you start you’re trying to finalize your offer. And then once you know your offer, what the the what, then you’re gonna then you can get into the sorta, I see what you’re saying.
We we do have, like, the the list that we’re sending you, I’ll share the screen and show you on his guys on it as well. We do have, some really good questions broken down by stages of awareness that will help you discover that stuff. And you can send where are we here?
Yeah. But also, I’m gonna send I’m gonna send all the the tools. But basically, those there’s ton. There’s over a hundred and they’re they’re different questions asked by different influencers in the space, and some of them are really good to discover the stuff that you should be, selling, right, to to create your offers as well. Maybe use that as a guide to get started.
Okay. Thank you.
If that helps.
Yeah. And if I may I might I have, like, the results of my competitors’ content audit in a spreadsheet. So I’d love to share that in the group if you wouldn’t mind, like, if you see an where you’re like, oh, there’s com then deems coming out.
Have you, have you analyzed, like, have you looked at what their USB is?
Like, do you know what their, have you, have you learned anything, like, looked for any patterns, or I, no, I don’t say that.
I don’t think there’s like one trend that I could take away. It was just like while there are so many people coming at this from different angles, that I feel like we’re all constantly the same thing. So where am I gonna go in my approach.
And who, like, describe your ideal prospect, like, in and and that was part of the exercise as well. Like, describe them in one or two sentences. Like, who who are they? What’s what’s their problem? What’s their frustration? What’s the outcome they want?
I would say established business owners in the online space. So usually course, coaches or experts who have a coaching program.
Who wanna go from, like, low six figures to multi six and seven figures with a signature offer you know, and they want their launches to feel easier and they want more consistent sales coming in everyone. So generating that monthly recurring revenue.
Absolutely.
They reached a plateau where they’re just not their signature offer isn’t they want to take it to the next level sort of thing? Okay. So that’s good. So now you, like, you’re you’re laser focused, right?
You’re focused on on a specific audience, like within a you know the income, the revenue that they’re generating from their offer. So that that’s a great start. I just figure, like, what how can you what so your offer is gonna help them, increase revenue. It’s it’s gonna help them get to the next level of benchmark of revenue that you’re you’re gonna whatever that is.
Right? Like, how does it how do you help them solve that? How do you help them get the outcome? And that, have you figured that out like your process?
No. Well, because that’s the thing. It’s like, which so far I’ve just been doing I’ve been, like, specializing Everybody I work with has a signature offer, but I have done all kinds of different things for them.
Like, the sales page, the launch emails, the I got you.
So I’m like, what is my best? I know the who, but, like, what is my best call for for that audience.
Is it more the how? Is your is the is it should just switch that maybe to how? Like, you know, you know the problem, you know the outcome, and now you have to craft an offer to help them achieve that outcome. And that that that is gonna position you or separate you from the competition. Right?
So if they want to, you know, what is what is the how that I feel confident I can deliver on? Like, what’s the how, you know, So what so what’s the exact outcome?
Like, in one sentence, what’s the exact outcome they want? In one sentence, if you can.
Doesn’t be perfect, but, like Oh, I’m gonna just so here, because I’m gonna use the words she banned me from using, which I’m, like, profitable signature offer.
Right? The to be to be getting back to, like, taking home more money from their existing launches, their existing offers.
Add more to their plate.
Okay. So that they’ve reached a plateau, you’re gonna help them get to the next level, whatever that is. Now you need to now you need to tell me and that’s your secret sauce. That that’s your u s p.
Like that or it’s a common it’s a combination of how it works how specifically that’s your offer, how specifically are you gonna help them achieve that? Because you have a secret you have a secret sauce that you’ve discovered and you’re gonna work with them and you this secret recipe that you have will help them consistently get the results and they don’t know it. You know it and you’re gonna share it with them. And that’s why you’re gonna create that.
I would say, like, stronger core messaging, like, doing the voice customer research and doing this, like, groundwork and then using that to inform their overall core messaging.
Sure.
Then updating the sales page based on that core messaging, making sure that they have audience attraction mechanisms in place so that they’re attracting an audience that’s gonna want that ultimate offer.
And then what I have currently been calling, like, golden opportunities, but it’s essentially like strategic sequences that upsell, like, upsell cross sells systematized, like, behavior based sequences on the back end to increase the lifetime value of existing customers.
Yeah. Like build on, it’s the that’s just build on that. Like, what you’re creating is your offer, right, and you’re explaining to me how it works with the ultimate goal of of if it’s to increase increase ROI, like, if what it you’re and you’re aligning a metric or a certain lifetime value, you’re aligning a metric to that. It’s very clear and just build that out.
That’s that’s how you’re gonna create the separation and then use your, use your social proof and your credibility booster to say, hey, yeah, what she’s saying is true. This stuff does work. And that’s what you’re gonna sell. You’re selling you’re selling a system.
Right? That’s the apples to oranges. So it sounds like you have a good idea, but that’s the fun of figuring it out. Right?
Like, it’s like if we have GMB as a product type service, so our secret sauce is, like, we go into Google’s web vitals and how, you know, every component of your GMB page, I’m gonna do a session on this. Every component of the GMB page, you know, we use proven copywriting formulas, your Citi page. We use a proven copywriting formula that’s guaranteed not only rank organically in Google, but when people go to the site, it’s gonna convert. And then we set up this.
So we’re we’re telling story and we’re saying, Hey, hire us over the competition. We have a proven process with secret sauce that’s going to get you the consistent results you want. This is why you need to work with us. And it’s like the secret, right?
Or what do they know that? I don’t know. And that’s that’s one of the tricks for product type service as well. Right?
You’re just you’re taking that offer and you’re you’re turning into something great. You ever seen that those shows, how it works on TV? Remember those TV shows? That’s that’s exactly what it is.
Just think in that way. You know, it does this, does this, does this, and it helps them get better than anyone else. And that’s that’s how you really can, beat the, the that’s what I do. That’s that’s how you beat the competition to put a spin on it.
Does that help? Does that make sense?
Or Oh, even just talking through it has helped a lot.
So thank you.
Yeah. No. No. It’s, and that’s, yeah, put it up to, like, competitors. It’s always good to get a second eye on it.
I can look at it from a SEO like perspective and I can tell you, I’m happy to look at it and say, hey, definitely put it up so then everyone can benefit from it, but we’ll look at especially keyword data and Google ads. It tells a lot and you can use Google trends. Tells it all, we can look at their brand terms. Brand terms are great because it’s really gonna tell you, the popularity of their their products and services.
Right?
And especially their coaching programs, you can get a good idea on on, the popularity just by that alone, right, and Google tells you all stuff. And then you can do trends and you can compare it to everybody.
Yeah. So, yeah, put that up. I’m happy to do that.
Any other, any other questions?
No. Okay.
Or any, yeah, true.
Really quick question.
Do you do you recommend, like, having our certifications and badges on the site?
Because, like, Like I’ve always just had them because it assuming it improves credibility, but then I’m also like, do my clients like care that I’m a certified conversion copywriter like, oh, does it just make me look more amateur?
They they care about themself. Right? They don’t they they just wanna, like, ultimately, they care about them and it just, yeah, it helps, but use those to reinforce what you’re saying. Right?
It’s not the end all. Like, it’s not it’s it doesn’t is it is it gonna help? Yeah. Like, is it gonna help to have a logo from Joanna saying like, hey, you know, she’s certified of course.
It’s it’s just gonna say what you’re saying is true. Right? But you’re gonna use that. What we talked about earlier is, like, kinda reinforce your your system, your secret sauce.
Right? That’s the way to use those. Those are like tools to to really support, your messaging. That’s the way I use them.
Right? Like, your credibility booster is gonna build authority and trust your social proof is gonna it’s it’s gotta prove what you’re saying and true. Those are numbers backing it up.
That’s that’s the way we use them. So, yeah, use them. Of course. What are you worried about looking amateur with them? Like, in what way?
I don’t know. It just feels a bit like, hey. I’ve, like, done a training. I don’t know.
Do you know what I mean or is it just do?
Like, I’ve had this conversation with a few people, but is it time to take them all? Like No.
You’re okay. So you gotta you gotta your copywriter. Your your director’s you’re you’re a copywriter. You gotta spin that. So you’re not certified, Joanna.
You’re you’re trained in the the most advanced copywriting technique on the planet. Joanne is considered one of the top copywriters in the world right now. You were personally trained by her. You know her like her like that’s the way to to say it.
That’s not training. Right? These are these are your secret weapons, your secret sauce that you can help them You know, you know, this stuff. That’s the way to position it.
Don’t position yourself as a we’re all students, but you use them to build your authority. Right?
Yeah. That’s such a good point.
Yeah. Like, say, like, we, Google Google ads, like, we work in the EMR. So she’s she handles our our Google ad stuff. She’s top three percent in, Google ads in the world.
Right? And she puts up her Google ad certification, right? And she’s she says, here’s the certification. This is part of the reason why on top three.
Because I take I took all this training. I stay up to date. You know, I look at current trends and I know my stuff. Right?
These are all the books I’ve read in a year. You know, I read hundreds of books just to It changes. It evolves all the time. And she does that because she knew one of the one of the issues clients have is Google ads changes on a dime so fast.
Right? So she’s like, hey, don’t worry. I know this stuff. This is I I look at all the training I got.
So she’s using that to reinforce her messaging. Right? That’s the way to look at it. And try to incorporate it that way.
Sell yourself.
Right? That’s the it’s it’s all it’s all useful.
Boom. Cheers.
Yeah. For sure. What is there a logo that’s like specific one that you’re worried about though to put up?
No. Just like my copy Acres ones. I was just like, is it?
Hobby Acres. Of course.
Join is like if it it’s, of course.
I just I think it’s because, like, because I’ve got my testimony from Joe, and then I’ve got her, like, the featured in, and then I’ve got the training as well. And I’m, like, is this just making it look like I’m just like all copy hackers? Like, do I need to kind of get out of that umbrella a bit and have like, different certifications, because then it’s like, I’m trained by her but also, like, work from her. And it’s like, I don’t know. We’re just and a power note about it.
Build on it. Like, we do there’s a we work with some, especially in, like, the b to c space, like, where we have a results page and, like, half the page is, like, is credibility and we we paste that stuff. Right? Everything from, like, organizations, and it just everything helps.
Right? It’s like that, wow. Okay. This person knows their stuff. Not a an issue, but yeah, put that stuff up.
Just just make it if you can try to make it, try to connect it to something, right, to reinforce your messaging in some way. If you can. But, yeah, copy hackers, that’s a huge one. For sure.
Okay. Yeah. I I think I need to just put, like, a cross head above it that Most of them. Yeah.
Thank you. How did copy hackers has how is it? How does it help you get results for your clients?
Woah. It’s yeah. It’s like the conversion stuff, isn’t it?
Like, there is the the method, but I guess it could, like You network daily with some of the best copywriters on the planet.
So if you have a problem that a client needs to solve, you think you could jump in on the Slack channel and ask a question?
You have access literally to some of the and that’s that’s you see how you positioned it, and it’s true. It’s not just a logo. It’s like it’s what they have access to, what you have access to. It’s just acquired knowledge, right? And that’s the value in this stuff, and that’s the way to position it. This group.
Right? You know what I say? It’s big bucks to do you they couldn’t just go in and ask Joanna or someone question. No.
You have to you you pay them big bucks. Right? You can that’s the whole point of it. Right?
Does that make sense?
And I I mean, yeah, like, I have wondered about that.
Like, about whether I can kind of say that, like, because I’m offering like, but I’m offering like a consultation package at the moment and it’s new And I was thinking, like, can I throw in, like, that I have access to, like, some of the world’s best copywriters?
Or is that No.
You think that’s It’s true.
You’re part of you’re part of the the the the copy hackers pro community and you have a private invite only Slack channel. And in that channel, you always share tips and advice and you work together and you work with some of the best copywriters in the world. Which I’m saying that. Of course you can.
That that that’s a huge and that is your that’s you started to, that’s one of your USPs. It’s one. You can have you can have ten of them, but that’s you’ve just said it. And let’s let’s so now you’re saying, hey, I have access to not I wouldn’t say access, but you’re part of this private community invite only and then you you gauge what we talked about early results.
You you it’s a proven process where it’s built off of control, and you measure success by ROI, and it’s you’re you’re promising something but you’re not. So right away, that’s what we do. I just beat the competition on two usps. You can’t touch me on that.
Right? And especially the one that we talked about with the ROI agencies don’t talk like that. They don’t they don’t understand the concept. And then if and then if someone does beat me or match me, then I get in the consultative selling, say, don’t worry.
We’re gonna work with you because we know the sales close ratio is what has a major impact on your business. So we’re gonna we’re gonna take that sales close ratio from thirty to this. And then someone else matches me, then I’m gonna talk about, hey, we use proven copywriting formulas. We’re gonna increase that lifetime value with some upsells.
So it’s like you’re always you’re always beating the competition in a step ahead, but you’re you’re creating tons of value for yourself. Right? Does that make sense?
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah.
So to piggyback on this real quick, Shane, do you see this is like making a claim about having access to this kind of ongoing skill development? And then you use the certifications as like a trust builder after next. You’re gonna wait here it that way?
Or Yeah.
Like, say, what I would say is, and and I do say it. Like, what are you? I’m a I’m a copy hacker pro coach. You know, we we we have a private community.
Like, you’re you’re stating the obvious. Like, I wouldn’t say it’s like be careful how you say it. Right? But that’s that’s a fact, right?
You have and that’s a lot of value for clients, right, especially when you hear invite only private access, exclusive. They love that stuff, right? And it’s true. We we help each other.
We work with we do work with some of the best operators in the world. There’s there’s no reason why you can’t say that. It’s true.
Right? And it just it just one more thing to add that. It’s like your u s p. Right? It’s not the tell all, but you’re using that to reinforce. That’s what I do. I don’t see an issue with it.
Yeah. Makes sense. Yeah. Does that does that answer your your question?
Yes. Yeah. And it’s like it’s always there’s so much, and it’s like you sell yourself. Like like David Olegov said, if you can’t sell yourself, you can’t sell clients, and there’s there’s opportunity.
Everything you do, there’s an opportunity a way to position it that sells, right? And it’s it’s done tactfully and it’s true. You don’t lie, but like there’s so much there’s all of these masterminds that people are part but then they don’t mention it. And it’s not a mastermind.
This is an exclusive group of some of the best trained experts in the world, and you’re staying up to date on the lay industries because the industry changes on a dime and as an as a specialist, you know, you need to stay on top of that, you know, and and not and then you back that up with you know, the certifications, and this is why you’re getting the certifications. So, you know, and it’s it’s pretty powerful stuff, but you’re telling a story. Right? And then you’re you’re using that all of that to reinforce your your messaging, your, what I call your, like, your secret sauce, your secret recipe, We do that with GMB all the time.
Right? Or, like I said, our product type service. Right? We have certification I’ve never heard of.
Like, I’ve, they don’t they don’t know. It’s probably, but it’s I’m part of forms, I’m part of communities. I’ll join up to, there’s one I wanna say it, but I’ll join up to this one community which is really well known in the GMB space, and it’s like fifty bucks a month, but I I’ll pay the fifty dollars a month because it it’s really well known, and it’s a credibility booster. It reinforces and it helps us sell.
Right? It’s so there’s that’s the way to position the stuff. Right? There’s opportunity with it.
Does that help?
Yeah. It’s awesome. Yeah.
Any other, Any other questions? Anything?
This is more of a comment. Sure.
I think we know you as the process guy, but I think you might need to be.
I think you’ve, in my mind, you’re now also, how to sell yourself. Like, you’re really you might be able to teach a course on how to sell yourself because you make it sound so easy and convincing. You know, when you talk, I’m like, nodding alone. Yeah.
I’m like, that’s so true. That’s and then, that makes total sense. And then I walk away. I’m like, okay.
I don’t feel as confident anymore. And I what was he saying again, but you have when you’re talking, In the moment, it’s so convincing. Like, yeah, what you say is true and it sounds it’s not made up. It sounds good. It’s not made up.
I don’t know. Anyways, all I’m saying is I feel like maybe there’s an opportunity for you to teach course on how to sell yourself?
Yeah, we did. It’s consulted. We had consulted it. So thank you. Thank you, by the way.
But as we, we started PR and then it went in the consultative selling. And consultative selling is really like direct response. Like, a lot of this stuff comes from, you know, Joanna said to me, study direct response.
That is the the the holy grail. Right? And it’s it’s all about eliciting a response. You want them to take action to do something.
And to to to get them to take action to do something you need to understand them. It’s getting in their mind of the customer. It’s that simple. And once you know the problem and solution, their hesitations and concerns, and you draft a guarantee.
Good luck. And then you create a USB, like, to solve their problem and you show this as a secret sauce, why wouldn’t they choose you?
Well, when you talk about it, it sounds so obvious, and it makes a lot of sense.
But I just I don’t have that same confidence when I walk away.
From this session.
I don’t know if that makes sense.
Yeah. But we can I can help him with that? It’s like, it’s not, yeah, the thing with this, like, director.
You’re talking this up and you’re talking our experience, I’m like, yeah, that totally makes sense. That is exactly right.
And then somehow I lose it from, like, it’s like because there’s a lot going on.
Right? There’s there’s so many moving parts. Like, when I was in the space, it took me it wasn’t until, like, three, five years till I, like, when I first took Joanna’s training, like, it’s, like, fifteen years ago, I didn’t know I was, like, I would I would take the training session and be, like, what the hell? Like, it’s, like, I was like, I I remember going to training saying, like, this is so complicated.
Like, you have to almost be like a scientist just to understand that stuff. And then eventually, it starts to click. And then eventually you understand the stages of awareness. And then you understand stages of awareness are all about, you know, what does the customer already know?
It’s that simple. And then then you think, oh, they already know. That’s okay. I I can answer that question.
And once you know what they already know, now you can start selling them. Right? And it’s like and then you see patterns. Like, for sales, we use Joanna’s question all the time.
Like, you know, what brought you here today? Shut up and listen. They’re gonna tell you the stage of awareness. And if they’re like solution aware, they’re gonna say, you know what?
I’m considering different problem, different solutions. I’m considering you but I’m also not sure if I want this procedure or not, you’re like, okay, solution aware. So you’re not gonna hammer home why you’re different. You’re gonna sell the solution.
But definitely gonna say, you know, I’m comparing you. I’m sold on what you guys are doing. Comparing you to this clinic. Okay.
Your your product order. So I’m gonna sell our USB. Why are we different? Why should you choose Oz?
If they’re most aware. You know what, Evan? Yeah, I’m convinced to go with you guys. I’m just trying to find like a date.
I’m looking for my schedule. What they’re really saying is I want a discount. Hey, we have a limit, we have a date opening up next week. You’ll save three grand.
Can you make it young problem, right? So that by asking, by understanding those stages, you can start crafting messages, right?
And then you can start to see patterns in it as well. That’s what that’s what I would start anyways. Like, are you familiar with the stages of awareness? How they work?
Yeah. Yeah. So I learned like study that. There’s a good book I’ll post on the the Slack channel.
And it goes in the after I read that book, it really hit home. And they break he breaks it down in in detail on how to use it as well. And start with that foundation, and then things will start to and then just to understand, you’re just in the business of selling problems. You’re not in the business of, of selling you or solutions.
You, you solve problems. And then and then your your job is to is to figure out and show them how your solution solves the problem better than anyone else. And that’s your, that’s your secret sauce, your u s p, right? That’s it.
And then that’s the fun part, this, the, how it works, the, the secret recipe, the thing you’ve discovered. And then and then you’ll find you’ll just put a different spin on it and someone will beat you and then you’ll put a different spin on it and you’ll put a different spin. Right? I think there’s like five different versions of the rule of one out there.
I know. But when you explain it, it does sound so easy and obvious.
No. But it’s but it is.
It’s kinda like just focus on those I love the confidence.
No. But it’s but focus on the on this on a it’s a simple pros. Like, even the process I just explained to you, what did I say? All you need to do is you need to figure out who your most profitable customer is.
You need to interview them. You need to once you understand them, you create a profile and avatar, so you can target them. You include demographic cycle graphic because you can use the demographic for campaign data like Facebook, use a psychographic to get into their mind and sell them. Then once you know that, you just create your USB because now you know the problem.
You create your solution. And then you just you you make sure that that solution beats the competition, but you’ve analyzed the competition because now you know what they’re all saying. So you make sure you’re saying the same thing except you’re going a layer above that and you’re beating them with your USB. And because you spoke to them, you know exactly what to say because your customers are gonna tell you.
Right? Simple things like, you know, what what features did you like best? Shut up and listen. They’re telling you why they chose you right?
And those those are those start building on your USB, and then one of those features may be the secret sauce that you get into how it works.
Right, and then you start building layers. That’s it. And then you use a couple of key metrics, like the metrics I showed you on the calculator, there’s only like four there’s three metrics. There’s conversion rate on your your thing. I’ll show you show you quickly as well.
And this is a good one as well to get into. Like remember this as because don’t get focused on. You can see the screen.
There’s only a couple of metrics that move. And as a business owner, just this is like remember what I’m telling you. And when you talk to a client, special a business owner, this is how you sell them. K.
There’s only a couple of of metrics that move the needle in your business. And if you increase any of them five percent, you see explosive ROI. Okay? The first one is your conversion rate.
This is your sales page, your landing page. This is what they hire you for to bring that in. Right? So if you increase this by another five say say you put this to ten percent, Watch how much more you make the client.
A lot of money.
Okay. The next one is your close ratio. This is and this is where agencies fail. They’ll send tons of leads, qualified leads.
But if those leads don’t book, what’s the point? And that’s where agencies fail, but business owners know this is a problem. They’ll say, well, everyone promises leads and you say, well, we’re gonna measure this ratio. And this is this is this is important because this is your close ratio.
And we’re going to apply consultative selling. We’re going to put this to fifty percent, and they’re all they’re all between twenty and thirty percent, by the way. That’s just you can count on that. We’re going to put this to fifty percent.
Look at their ROI. And then they also understand lifetime value and you’re how do you increase lifetime value? We know this stuff. You, you put a order on the thank you page.
Opsol, right? And you increase that even by another one hundred bucks explodes and then this is the secret sauce. This is agent part businesses will know what you’re talking about here is everyone puts this as a hundred percent. Right?
This is your your profit. So everyone uses this metric, but that’s not ROI. That’s return on ad spend. Even Google gets it wrong.
So you’re telling them, listen. Your lifetime value is two thousand two hundred. I know not all that is profit. And they’re like, yeah, exactly.
That’s my gross margin. Exactly. So let’s put you in and there are these remember these numbers, these are the same across the board. Okay?
Your gross margin is around sixty, sixty five percent. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe fifty between yeah. Exactly.
It is. Okay. Great. So we’re gonna put you at sixty percent. I like to be a little conservative.
Let’s put you at, say, forty percent. K? And Now I know your net profit is gonna come around say like twenty, twenty five percent. Those are that’s available information as across the board.
Those are pretty standard numbers. And now the business owner is going, oh my gosh. They totally get my business. They understand me.
Right? And this this is what I just showed you as direct response, you’re showing results, you’re showing value, right, but you’re selling this is part of our USB. This is one of our secret sauces. Right?
We’ve now it works every single time. Does that make sense? Like, it’s how it all works together?
Yes. Just learn those things. It’s it’s not complicated. Conversionary close ratio, lifetime value, done. Those are the only metrics that matter in the business.
Nothing else matters, right? And as long as you’re driving qualified traffic, this matter. You control these, and it’s, it’s so simple and so easy. And then work with them on this, this, this, this, and you’ll notice that when you get businesses busy, because then you you start flooding them, then it’s always an operational issue.
They start to break down because they can’t handle the volume, right, and then their profit margin searches and then you have to work with them to build that up. But that’s when you get into, Hey, I want I want a percentage of sales.
Right? So a lot of clients that we what they used to be clients, but now we we do profit sharing, right? But make no mistake. I know the numbers because the first conversation you need to have with a client, the very first conversation is what’s your lifetime value?
What is your sales close ratio? What is your conversion rate? What is your cost per lead? What’s your your your cost per acquisition?
Right? Because if you don’t have those conversations, you can’t advertise and don’t count on Google to tell you. Google’s system is optimized around cost per lead. Sorry, cost per acquisition.
In your space, in our space, it’s actually cost per lead. You have to go back a layer, but Google doesn’t tell you that. Right? Don’t even measure six that you can import your your ROI into Google ads.
You can do that stuff, but Google that’s like hidden secrets that a lot of people don’t know. Right? There’s another USB, We know this stuff, right? So that we work with clients.
So when we do Google ads, we we measure success by ROI. True, did you actually make money and we link it to the CRM. So I wish I could show you. We have a client who has, this one, our u s p.
So we have a, CRM, So what we figured out is we take lifetime value. So when their patient closes, what we do is we we use Google as API and now we know the exact keyword that that close so we can tie revenue to that keyword. See how powerful that is? And then we can use that metric inside of Google ads to start optimizing campaigns.
That’s data driven. There’s our other that’s another USB, why you should choose us, and you keep on building on that.
Make sense?
Yes.
Yeah.
I just wanted to mention, I really love this method of selling because it makes it feel more logical. Like, look at the numbers.
Like, if you’re turning away from these numbers, then you’re actually making an illogical decision So I really like this method. Yeah.
I’ve never met a client who put me in front of an agency, put me in front of a if if I put me in front of a client, client, like, who works with an agency, you go through this, they’re gonna sign up with you. We still have a client Joe sent to us fifteen years ago. Right? And it’s not that we’re, like, super great at what we do is because we know the numbers, and we just, like, I don’t I don’t even like Google ads, it just once you once you know and you tell Google, I only want you to optimize campaigns based off of revenue using first click attribution to the original channel.
You you can’t lose, like, you you you’ll make money. Right? And then it’s just monitoring those metrics and going and just don’t over complicate but I didn’t invent this stuff. This is like stuff that was talked about in the forties and fifties.
This is direct response, pure and simple. It’s that, it’s that easy. Joe put me onto that, and study that art, study, and then you’ll start to see the patterns, and you’ll see how simple it is. Understanding a problem, offering the solution to solve that problem, separating yourself from the competition, monitoring these metrics, growing your list, selling to that list, sorting by lifetime value, most aware audience, that all that is is is the people, there’s two types of most aware.
There’s there’s the the the people who are on the fence, they wanna purchase with you. Maybe they were they were recommended by a friend or something. They’re convinced you’re the solution. They’re most aware.
They just need a discount. And the other most aware is that they’re on your list they’ve purchased from you previously. Find out who they are, segment by that. Those are your repeat purchases.
Those are your most of our audience, and then just hit them with discounts. That’s it. Where’s the thing on this? Do you see this right here?
I don’t know if you see my screen. Do you see this?
So this is brilliant. So this is like how simple it is. This is from IBuy direct. I purchased these, glasses, I buy direct, and every month I get a card offering a discount.
I’m most aware. I am their most aware audience I’ve purchased. They’ve segmented because I know I’ve made multiple purchases and every month I get it to a card. Hey, purchase again.
We’re thinking of you. Thirty percent off, forty percent off. That’s it. That’s all it has to be.
But there’s so much opportunity in that, right, because no one’s doing this anymore, but it’s as simple as that. That’s direct response.
Make sense?
Yeah. My takeaway oh, sorry, Esther. No.
No. Go ahead, Carla.
My personal takeaway from all of this is let the facts and the data speak for themselves. You know, don’t go down by, you know, I think that my problem is I kinda let myself I just, you know, I get in the way. Like, I just step away and focus on the facts. Like, I think it things are simple to you because you strip everything away and it comes down to the data and the facts. And so to you, it’s very crystal clear.
The benefits and the, you know, what we’re offering. But I think so many times, I, you know, my emotions get involved in my you know, my insecurities or whatever. Like, I bring all that in, I question, bring in all these questions that maybe, I’m making complicating things for myself.
I I work with copywriters because I’m not, like, technically, I’m not a copywriter. I’m a direct response marketer, and copywriters are much better. Like, I understand the psychology behind it. But there’s also there’s the it goes a layer deeper, but I focus on the basics and it’s not.
Some people it’s it’s just that you strip everything down as much as possible and you fold it works for us and it, other people like to be more creative. I’m not I’m not creative. I’m far from it. Like, I’m I just it’s not in my it’s not in my DNA. Right?
But it’s just, I know a lot of copy readers are, but, yeah, it just focus direct response as much as possible, study direct response as much as possible. I think you’ll you’ll like it. It’s all based on data. It’s really straightforward, right?
And then just strip it down and simplify.
It’s fine. When you think about it, all the stuff you can do? Yeah.
I love it.
And then you’ll start making money for yourself, and then you’ll realize, holy crap. Why why why am I not why am I doing this for other people? Right? And then then you get into the real fun stuff. And then it’s all about, you know, yeah, and then it’s about enjoying enjoying life. Right?
But I’ve screwed up a lot of times. Like, I’ve I’ve lost over a million dollars. So I’m not I’m not like trust me. I’ve learned I’ve made a lot of mistakes.
I opened up a clinic in LA, literally, I lost from that six hundred thousand. Right? I learned from my mistakes and it’s not I don’t know But that’s the beauty of of the process of direct response, even Joe’s process, you know, testing and learning that’s built into it. It’s baked into it.
Right? Everything you do is an experiment and you go into it, you build your landing page. You you don’t know if that’s gonna convert. Like, it tells us that should be, you know, long form landing pages convert.
That’s not true all the time. I know for a fact that we’ve put up pages and and like a paragraph converted more. It’s like, how the hell is this happening? Or an image we thought would work is it didn’t, or we were messaging was to a product of our audience, but it would they didn’t but then we put up a discount and everyone purchased.
You’re like, this doesn’t make sense. But now you have a control and you can get in there. You can start figuring it out. Right?
It’s not it’s not perfect, but that gives us to I screw up, I fail every day, right? Every single day, I wake up, I make mistakes.
You know, but what you’re feeling is normal. Don’t I feel that way. I hate, presentations. I don’t like presentations. I hate it. I’m I’m logical. I’m not creative.
Right? And I’m I’m what we call visionary. I’m not an integrator. Right? I have teams and I delegate all this stuff to them.
So it’s it’s very uncomfortable for me to do. Right? Because that’s that’s the way I’m just I’m wired.
But you so what I’m saying is those feelings you’re feeling normal.
Right? It’s completely normal. Right? It’s just everyone everyone thinks that.
Make sense?
Yeah. Yeah. Like, it’s, especially with my team, I hear that all the time. So it is tough, like, it does hit me, like, to hear it because I, it’s and a lot of people feel that in the space.
A lot of people think like impostor syndrome, you know, I don’t look like I’m not an expert. People are gonna think I’m an expert. I don’t know my stuff. Like all of that is completely normal and even people who are in the space who are experts and influencers, they all feel the same.
They’ll journal, they’ll have coaches to deal with those emotions, and that’s the trick. It’s like once you understand that everyone feels the same way, and everyone like, I don’t know. I’ll put you on a secret. I don’t know if you guys have noticed on the the slack channels.
I leave spelling mistakes on purpose. And I I do that intentionally because I’m dealing with, like, with, like, you you take those emotions and then you you make them work for you. And eventually you start building this, like, this wall where it doesn’t matter, and then you realize the world doesn’t care. Like, people that really don’t care.
Has anyone noticed those spelling mistakes I make?
See? Like, it’s like, no what, nobody cares. And it’s like, but I used it ten years ago, I would be so petrified and it’s, but it’s building in that stuff. Right? Like I said before, it’s a bit out there. But, like, I’ve gone to a grocery store, laid in the middle of the grocery store to see what people would do. People walked over me.
They don’t care.
I know it’s a bit out there in Farfetch.
It’s a bit wonky, but it just puts it in a perspective, right? But that’s why people get coached They they work with coaches like Joe said. The coaches aren’t teaching you the practical stuff. They’re teaching you how to deal with all these all these these feelings that what you have are normal. Everyone feels. Imposter syndrome, I think, is the biggest thing students deal with. Right?
But it’s normal. Just remember that Do it anyways. That’s the model. Right?
Yeah.
Anyway, sorry to go off on that. It’s during topic of mine.
Any other, yep?
What resources you would recommend to, like, start off learning direct response.
David Olegle, the one of the legends, the tons. Like, there’s, yeah, there’s tons of books. I’ll I’ll put up a bunch of options.
Yeah, but see, the USP is based off of this one’s scientific advertising.
That’s the whole USB concept where it came out. All, like, all of this stuff that were, like, the direct response, the rule of one. All of this stuff is is it’s just it’s been around for like the forties and fifties and just people are building on it they’re putting like the digital spin on it, but much smarter people figured this out way before. Like they would launch million dollar campaigns with paper.
They didn’t have, like, Excel back then. Right? So they had to simplify it. So one of the rules was you just you assign lifetime value to the original channel, such a simple concept, but today marketers think attribution, this that you have to have that.
That’s not true. Oh, you just need first and last. Use lifetime value, your attribution.
Second click, that’s gonna tell you which campaigns are closing. And then or your first click is gonna tell you as long as you link lifetime dot, like, it’s it’s so simple that we like to complicate stuff, right? We like to have all these different models and then Google says, Now you need AI. You need AI to do that. Yeah. It depends.
As long as you’re tracking ROI to the original channel and you’re using revenue then then it matters, But like how many people, if you guys know clients are using Google ads, I can guarantee that they’re using data driven, but here’s the here’s the messed up part. I don’t know. I’m sharing my screen. Right? So let’s say I send the they’re spending all this money and it’s a ten percent close ratio, right? And everyone’s thinking, oh, this campaign’s doing really well, and Google’s optimizing around this threshold because it’s sending you a hundred delays. Here’s the problem.
Only one of them or zero have booked. The client’s losing money, but Google doesn’t know that because you haven’t closed the loop. So Google’s optimizing around this. That’s what data driven is.
You have to pick the metric. It’s scary.
And everyone’s running around thinking everything’s working for them. It’s not because they’re not closing anything. They’re all shitty leads. I’ve experienced that.
Right? So Google’s optimizing for shitty leads because they’re not they’re not optimized running metrics that matter. Right? So imagine if you’re pumping you know, all of this money.
Now you’re getting into this and say you’re five, like, this I’ve seen this. Like, we did a Facebook campaign which on paper was really well. We generate thousands of leads. Guess what?
None unbooked.
Right? And every business owner you talk to, like, I I I literally, like, fired a client one time. I said, like, I’m not they’re like, we want you to do Facebook advertising. I’m not doing Facebook.
Why? Because I know it doesn’t work. Well, why do you know? And they I’m like, because those are vanity metrics, right?
But it doesn’t, it doesn’t, I don’t like Facebook anyways. It’s it’s like a long term play, but anyway, that’s a totally different story.
Sorry to rant.
No problem. That was really helpful.
Yeah. Thank you. But have fun with it. Right? Like, I’ll I’ll give you some resources on it.
Like Joe’s training, obviously. That that’s peer direct response as peer, computers are copywriting. That’s amazing training. Like that that studying, that’s where I started my training.
And then like Joe said, she mentioned to me as well. Study response, the Grates, your David will hold these.
And you’ll notice, it’s it’s pretty straight. They all preach the same stuff, right? And then just, and then you’ll start to you’ll start to see a pattern and give it a couple of years, but it’ll sink in, right? Then you’ll start looking at stuff and saying, oh, that’s this stage of awareness.
Oh, this is stage of awareness, and then you’ll get mail. It’s like, oh, sign up for everything like every I get so many letters and it does my swipe file. Right? It’s you everywhere you go, go to a national enquirer and sign up for all those little things at the end.
Those are direct response marketers. They know their stuff. And then watch what they send you and step back and start analyzing it. Right?
All of those place. What’s another one? Like, what’s another one like inquire? All those book, look at those those full page ads.
They’re making money can guarantee it. Those that’s a lot of money to be put in there. They know what they’re doing. That’s peer direct response and see what they see what they sense, see what they do and learn. Right? I love doing that, so.
Cool?
Very cool. Thank you.
Yeah. No problem. Any, any any other questions or Okay. Yeah. So hope that, yeah, I hope it was helpful. I look forward. Put up the anything anyone wants me to look at.
Like, put it up in the channel and, Oh, do we get a I do have a question.
Do we get a, do we get the competitive analysis template? Will you be sharing that?
I can. If you want, did you wanna copy of it?
I mean, yes, if you don’t mind.
Of course. No. Of course. Any, the competitor analysis, anything else.
I’m gonna share the, let me show the oh, yeah. Actually, this is a good one. Let me show you guys because, you know, Joe talks about your spit draft and wire for me and whatnot, and when you’re doing your, when you’re creating your pages. So this is what to do.
Do do do do bear with me while I open it here.
And then the survey data, you know the training on that where you take your survey data, you put it in your messaging, and then you take you apply proven copywriting formulas after that?
Yes.
Okay. So that is the so that the concept that we went over will share the whole wireframe with you.
But we have, all of the pages mapped out. And then it’s just really the, the what versus the, the how. And then you just focus on what you wanna say. If it’s yours.
Yeah. I’ll take it out for you later, but it’s a whole, it’s a whole sequence that, anyways, I’ll share it with you. I thought I could find it I’ll share all this with you. I’ll share the competitor research.
I’ll, what else? The, this bit draft and wireframe, the survey questions, that we have. So we analyzed all of the, every copywriter known. We we they all have questions that they ask and then there’s also story frameworks.
So we have the we can pile this massive list of questions that are designed to get a a response from different people. And then you can pick and choose which ones you want, and you can ask those. We’ll send those as well.
Okay. Great.
And then just having fun with it. Right? And, but anything else, anything else you want me to look at on the forms? Like, yeah, put it up, and we can, Happy to look at it too. Oh, we’ll send our, the UVP, sorry, the avatar that we use as well.
Okay?
Thanks, James.
Okay. Thanks, everybody.
Bye. Bye bye.