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.