Tag: strategy
Struggling Moments For My Leads
Struggling Moments For My Leads
Transcript
So what I have done, is something really fun. I took our prospect call transcripts, prospects to turn into clients, and I’ve worked out the the struggling moment. But then and also, you know, like, the different elements of the struggling moment. But then I want you to look at those struggling moments and pick out the functional struggle, the emotional struggle, and, you know, the social struggle.
So you will if you haven’t opened up your workbooks, I would love for you to first do that so you can kind of go through the examples because those are, you know, those are examples.
But but I want you to look at the example so you can get an idea of what we are even talking about. So when I share my Google Doc with you, I want you to be able to kind of look at it and go, okay. And this would be the functional struggle, and this would be the emotion struggle.
So open up your workbooks. I’m gonna share screen.
And what we’re going to do is we’re going to look at the workbook first, and then I’m gonna share a Google Doc with y’all where you would go ahead and do this exercise real time.
Alright. Cool.
Let’s get started.
And first up okay. Alright. Choose.
Okay. Cool. So this is what the section I want you to look at. The struggling moment is the seat for innovation.
Just scroll past this page. I want you to look at the examples here. So client comes in. You’ll get on a call.
Client says, okay. I wanna launch copy.
But then, of course, being the professionals you are, you will probe. You will ask.
And what they usually come up with would be some would be a story like this. And I’ll share our clients’ stories on probing.
And then from this, what you wanna look at is the functional struggle. So, okay, measurable decline in performance, social struggle, you know, people kind you’re like people are looking at you and all of that. And what’s the push force or what’s the you know, if there’s an emotional struggle to it, what what does that look like?
The more important thing that you need to ask yourself is why do you wanna kind of look at all of these struggles? Like, what does this help you do?
And use that to then direct the sales conversation. At least that’s what I do. It works out really, really well. And when you look at when you start to kinda pull the thread of either one of these struggles or if possible, all three and just kind of bring it together, it becomes so much easier to close clients at twenty k, thirty k, fifty k, hundred k. Right?
I have used this repeatedly just to kind of take time to really understand what the troubling moment really is. Because when a client comes and says, oh, I need website copy, it’s there’s something else going on.
You know? Why do they need website copy? And it’s fascinating because and I’m actually you know, because I can see this play out in in myself as a a buyer or as a client too. So right now, for instance, we are in the midst of speaking with, you know, designers and branding experts and all of that because we’re looking at a rebrand for our business.
So why I said it’s fascinating is because on calls with with branding strategist or with designers and things like that, the moment someone asks me oh, because we go in saying, oh, we wanna rebrand. Right?
Very straightforward.
But the caliber of a professional, like, it instantly kind of goes up in my mind when someone, like, takes the time to, like, clean forward and ask, okay. But why now? What’s happening right now that you’re looking to rebrand?
It just kind of opens up a whole thing for both Mike and me on that call. And I can only imagine that, and I hope that those strategists who are asking these questions are actually gonna use it when they kind of put our proposal together, when they send our quote together because I know it makes a difference. I always use struggling moments when I present my proposal to clients, especially for custom codes, and something like if they’ve, like, not just bought a package of the site, but they’ve taken time to fill out a form, and they met me for a call, and we have to give them a custom code.
I will use all of this in the proposal to basically present why we’re offering them what we’re offering them and what you know? And then what you’re charging them really kind of it’s not I’m not gonna say it becomes irrelevant, especially when they’re when you’re looking at fifty k, seventy five k packages.
It’s by no means irrelevant, but they can see exactly why they need it. What is the job that your service would actually be doing for their business.
So unlike my usual sessions where I have, like, a really nice slide deck and I have, like, tactical things and all, this one is very hands on. I just want you to understand what a struggling moment really is and learn to identify that in your own calls. Because if you’re not doing that right now, that is something you wanna fix right away.
So with that, do you have any questions before I yeah?
I do.
You say you use this during the sales call. Do you find this out in that triage call?
And then when you present, you know, back to your proposal, that’s when you pull this in?
Yes. Okay. So it’s in the triage call.
Okay.
And yeah.
I will basically use this definitely in the proposal, but I also kinda bring it up when we kick off. So when we kick off and I recap what’s in the project and, you know, who’s gonna be involved in the the the day c and all of that, I do mention why we’re doing what we’re doing because what I found and this is also true side note, this is also true for things like social proof. What I found, you need to like, once you’ve sold a client, you’d they you kinda need to have these, like, little mini selling points all through the process.
That works really, really well. Again, that’s just something I do. You don’t have to do it, but it just works really well. I’ve noticed.
Okay. Cool. So I’m gonna stop sharing. You should have it. Like, if you oh, wait. That’s the appointment you’re looking for. Anyways, let’s And what I’m going to do is drop a Google doc that I have created.
Fail.
So these are all clients from prospect calls that I’ve transcribed, and then let me go on the blank. Commenter.
Copy link. Okay. Cool.
Dropping the link in chat.
Oh, Lisa, good question. So you get this in the first fifteen minute call and then begin to it in the length here. One did that did Michelle’s question answer your question as well?
Oh, sorry.
So I do this a little differently, but I don’t want y’all to kind of digress from the process that, you know, y’all are going through.
In your case, I would look at the kind of try and get this get this struggle, in the fifteen minute call and then, yes, dig into it in the length of your call. That said, how I exactly do it and what Michelle calls the triage call is, again, this is my way to get, is I just do one call, and then I do proposal.
Right?
And I’ve done this for pretty much every project, but y’all also need to remember.
It’s I’ve been doing this for a while now, so there’s probably that at play. But, Katie, yes. Sometimes.
Depends.
For instance, it depends on a couple of different factors. If there are multiple people involved in the project, for instance, we just especially the corporate clients. So there’s this huge group of schools that I’ve been working with since last year.
There are multiple people involved in it. I’ve done one project with them. I’m working on a second project with them.
So in that case, always present it on a call because there are everyone wants to be involved in it.
But if it’s someone who we’ve worked with in the past, if it’s someone who has come through a referral, if it’s someone who is already sold on us, a podcast host, I mean, for that happens a lot.
I will not present it on a call.
Breaking rules? Yes. Maybe. But it just that it’s been working.
Yes, Leasel. With corporate clients, yes. Definitely. You will have to do two calls. You may even have to do more depending on the scope of the project.
For projects upwards of seventy five thousand dollars, I have done as many as in fact, with this particular client. Okay. We’ve done okay.
Three three calls, with different stakeholders.
So because there have been changes to, oh, we wanna include this. Now we wanna you know? So yeah.
Corporate times are a whole different thing. I I really love the size of the project.
It just takes me too much time.
Okay. Cool.
You should have the Google Doc in the chat. Open it up. And what I want you to kind of look at and put down is go through the struggling moment and leave your comments or just make your own comments as like, unmute yourself and tell me what you think is the functional struggle, what do you think is the emotional struggle, what do you think is the social struggle. So this is gonna be a very different call here.
Usually, yes. Three calls seems hard.
But this is for the second project. So they’ve already worked with me once. And, yeah, perfect times are whole different days.
Y’all should have commenting access, so feel free to leave comments if you want to.
Alright. Anyone wants to volunteer for the first one?
Well, I guess since nobody else go ahead.
Go ahead.
And it’s early in the morning, so I don’t know.
So functional struggle will probably be Clients who were interested were weren’t, signing up?
Yeah. Okay. Because?
Oh, because timing was too short.
Perfect. Yeah. K. Absolutely. Absolutely. Okay. Cool. K. Emotional struggle? I guess it was about from the yeah.
Go ahead.
Headspace and timing to they weren’t in the right headspace, and there was too short of time for them to spend that nine ninety seven.
Yeah. Yeah. And when you’re reading this, you also wanna think about this from the client point of view. Right?
Like, how is the client feeling emotionally about this this struggle that they’re coming up against? Because that’s what you wanna kind of lean into and talk about it. Oh, so you’re feeling this because our students or our, you know, our prospects aren’t getting enough time to convert. Is that right?
You know? So Okay. Yeah. But you’re really, really, you know, dialed in into this. This is really good, Michelle.
Yeah. Okay.
The social struggle, that’s where I’m kinda lost.
Yeah. And that is where for social struggle, you will see that you will need to start reading between the lines.
Okay.
You will need to start kinda looking at, okay.
What are they worried about? Like, what’s the perception here that they’re worried about? Is it is it that they don’t want to they they feel like, oh, we are being we are being pushy versus being intentional? Is it more that, oh, you know, people are going to maybe see me differently or won’t respect me if I do this or if I don’t do this.
So you gotta kinda read between the lines. That is where that is where your skills as someone who is, like, tuned into how people think, come into play Okay. And where doing a little bit of probing will help. So that’s not very the the, the social struggle is not usually straightforward.
Forward.
But, for instance, in the second second, client’s case, I worked on their website probably earlier this year, and her her social struggle was a little more straightforward. So take a look at that and see if you can kind of pick the social struggle there. Okay.
Anyone else wants to kinda weigh in with the first one?
I had for the social struggle and sorry sorry I was late, so I will catch the replay to catch myself up if I missed something. But I put, whose job is it to notice this?
Like, because potential on the part of the speaker, there was confusion around, like, it was brought up by a team member.
They didn’t even know about it. So then if I’m on that call as a copywriter, I would be noticing, like, oh, they don’t.
Like, there was a role missing in the strategy behind the trial and, like, who’s gonna fix this problem.
Absolutely. Which is exactly what happened in this case as well, Katie, is one, there was no one looking at the fact that customer support is getting all these requests about, hey. Can I get more time?
Right? Like, it just came up during their they have, like, a stand up meeting or a catch up meeting, what they call it, and and really random. Not even like, oh, you know, here’s something. So which is what then led us to work on what we did for them were, like, behavior based sequences that, a, not only we give them, like, an extended trial, but then we had, like, oh, if they went ahead and logged in, then we have, like, a different sequence kicking in versus people who weren’t logging in, versus people who, you know, were logging in and watching an x number of lessons.
So it the social struggle was no one was really watching what was going on with this trial that they were thinking for all purposes as kind of doing well, because and and what was happening was they were leaving a lot of people, in terms of, like, oh, who could who could just just needed a few more days to be able to convert. So, like I said, you need to kind of read between the lines there and do a little more probing.
But what they came in saying was, oh, we wanna increase conversions. But the point is and what they initially thought was they had a lead flow problem. Like, oh, we need more people coming into the funnel so we can increase conversions. But what they actually had was a current conversion problem. Like, people were coming in but were not converting because of the lack of time. And, like, you know, Michelle said the feeling of being they were interested, but they didn’t have the headspace and the timing.
Thing was really felt too short for them.
Alright. Who wants to take number two?
These are yes. We weren’t giving them time or room to build, breathe, or build belief. That’s like so they didn’t really need a seven day trial. They needed what we went with was actually a fourteen day trial, and more emails.
So because if I just sold them a seven day trial, it would have worked.
The result of the of increasing the, trial period or the result of presenting them with a fourteen day file package? Conversion to paid upgrades. Oh, yeah. Okay. So it’s been ninety so then these are all fairly recent projects that have wrapped up. So this it’s gonna it we completed ninety days of the funnel, say, thirty first of March. So, they in ninety days, they’ve been able to almost, I would say, two point five x their conversions, but, again which is great.
However, what we are now testing out is if we shorten it to about nine days instead of fourteen days, would that create more of an urgency and increase conversion? So that’s what we gotta do in the optimization phase of it. My reasoning for this is I noticed that a lot of people wait till the very last day to convert. So I’m just kinda curious to see if you, like, go from seven from we went from seven to fourteen. So if you go from fourteen to nine or even ten, does that, you know, shorten the cycle while basically either increasing or keeping the conversions the same.
They are they’re they’re pretty happy, so they’re open to testing, which is a good thing.
Because we can always go back to fourteen if, say, the nine, ten day experiment does not work out.
Alright.
Functional struggle can’t explain too easily and in a way that shows value. Bit of imposter syndrome in the self as a creator. Yes. Then yes.
In fact, you’re it’s so cool that you brought up the imposter syndrome thing because the thing is she’s not a SaaS marketer. So this client, is really cool. She’s a really, really big affiliate marketer. She’s got, like, millions and millions of followers, on Instagram and TikTok. And, she created this tool, like I’m sorry. Her husband basically created this tool because she was really frustrated with the link in bio options available to her. So so that imposter syndrome in her is pretty real because she doesn’t think of herself as a SaaS founder.
She still thinks of herself as, an affiliate marketer who’s playing, a SaaS founder. So it’s so cool that you, kind of picked on that.
Potential loss of authority from lack of credit. Exactly. You know?
She felt like, oh, she because she’s concerned, you know, like an expert and she like, loads of an affiliate marketers look up to her. She felt like, oh, I would be they would be seeing me as less than or as per you know? So that was really, really yeah. It is. But it’s very hard, I think, when you are a creator or founder, and I guess most of you would kind of relate to it is because, like, people were approaching her about it, and she had a successful beta run and all of that, but it just kind of, you know, feel like, I don’t really know. And she came in saying, okay. I need copy for this website.
It’s interesting. I’ll tell you what we kind of sold her once we’ve kind of gone through this. But okay. Cool.
Anyone else wants to weigh in? Johnson, potential loss of authority. Yeah. Perfect. That is exactly like, that is the social, struggle here for sure.
Cool. Anyone have anything else to add?
Nope? Okay. So this is a classic case. The client comes in saying, you know, oh, I need better copy for my affiliate link in bio website so people understand what this tool does.
But the thing is she did not have any messaging created for this. Like, she just created the tool, got, like, a very, very basic one page kind of a sign up, and she felt like, okay. Let’s just change words on the website to, you know, make it clearer. But what we had to start with was and all of you know this, we had to start with going back and looking at, okay, what is it that you were saying?
How are people talking? So we had to start with all the research. We had to put together her complete message brand messaging guide, and then the website copy. But then we because of the imposter syndrome emotional struggle and, you know, wanting to explain the tool easily and that potential.
All of these struggles kinda came together because we did not want that experience to end when people signed up for the tool.
So I was able to show her that she also needed the staff onboarding emails. She needed, you know, nurture emails so that people would go ahead and use the tool and then, of course, win back emails for people who churn because it’s a subscription.
So it went from being, oh, I need copy from my home page to describe what people you know, describe what this tool does to being a huge project, because we kinda took the time to really understand what was going on, which is the whole purpose of this call is for you to start doing a little more digging to understand what is the struggle, what is the job that a prospect is actually hiring your service to do for them.
Where did they receive that? Nope.
So she was putting in all her money. Like, she’d made she’s yeah. So not VC backed, but her husband and she were both, and, Abby, it’s so funny because, you had a post in, in the Slack community that I saw later, so I didn’t get a chance to comment on it. But where you mentioned about having a call with a founder, and then the husband was on the second call and, you know, having to kind of do the I mean, it’s it’s exactly the same here.
So, she came to us through a referral, someone I’ve worked with in the past, and then she was like, yeah. Completely sold. I want all of it and then some. And then, you know, her husband, because he’s the one who created it and is also partly funding it, wanted to get on another call, and it was, you know, like, again, do the whole same thing, walking them through it again.
So, yeah, was it hard to expand the scope by that degree with the client? No. Simply because I knew the problem that she was wanting to solve was not just I needed to be clearer.
The problem was I need to look like the expert I really am. I wanna keep my standing as this really, really top affiliate marketer.
I want my app to present me the way the like, the affiliate marketing world sees me as.
So nope.
It wasn’t.
Yeah. Image is huge. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah.
Absolutely, Johnson. So because I spent the and this is the whole purpose of this call is, essentially, I want you to take the time to really dig into what is the struggle that your audience is looking to solve, your prospect is looking to solve, so it becomes easier for you to to sell them your standardized offers.
In my case, it’s more custom. So, I don’t have, like, a standardized offer other than fully loaded launch, which in any case is now going to get overhauled and retired. But, I’ve started catching this stuff on the fly, little because I’ve been doing this for a while now.
The more you’ll do it oh, one thing that I will recommend is we all use AI note takers.
I still make notes by hand. I do use an AI notetaker to kind of go over things that I may have forgotten, especially if I wanna, you know, in big package cases and things like that where we need to kind of sit down and hash out what, quote unquote, the deliverables are gonna look like. But I’ve started, like, kind of, like I make notes and then I draw lines to kind of talk about, okay, this is what the struggle really is or this is what they’re trying to solve. So, highly recommend doing that too. It just kind of trains your brain to to start picking these things.
Yes, Ali. Fully loaded launch is getting replaced with something even better.
But, yeah, I will share that soon.
It is iconic. I know.
But, yeah, it’s been a while now. So, it’s run its course, and we’ve been customizing it way, way more often, which means that we need to kind of, yep, expand the the package and change it up and all of that. So that was what happened. It is a federal party.
Yeah. Yeah. That’s a really good idea. Probably should do that.
Give it a going the way it probably served us well.
Awesome. Cool. Alright. Let’s look at number three. This is someone that we recently recently closed, like, as recent as, like, the contract’s just gone out to them. So yeah.
Oh, by the fun fact, because I did this session last month I I think I did the session last month.
This is someone whose podcast I appeared on.
And after the part like, she’s the she’s the podcast host, so that will come out later. So after the podcast, she ended up, like, wanting to know more, and then she filled out a form. And this is what we kind of know, basically.
We’ll be working together. So, again, for those of you who’ve not seen that session and who are wanting to turn podcasts into client opportunities, would highly recommend listen to that one. But for now, look at this and tell me mhmm. Functional struggle. Okay. And our data value of the offer.
Cannot sustain effort across every business area. Yep. Yep.
Yeah.
Okay.
Feel free to unmute yourself if you got things to add if you don’t wanna kind of okay. Jenny, are there specific questions you ask clients so they go beyond sharing the surface level problem?
This isn’t converting, for example, to help them share with you what the shrugging moment really is.
I generally start by asking, well, so okay. What’s on your mind? You know?
You filled out I recap what they filled out the form for. So you mentioned you’ve got a launch that’s not being well. But, really, tell me what’s on your mind.
Opens up a whole lot of conversation. It’s not my question, though. I would highly recommend if you’ve not read the coaching habit by Michael Banda Stanier. I have been using this what’s in your mind question, thanks to him, for years.
It’s worked really, really well. So, I think it was Pat Flynn who sent me that book, but anyways, years ago. But it’s a really good book. It’s called The Coach and Habit. If you don’t have it, get it, read it, use it.
Yes, Abby. Love that book. Yeah. Same thing. Yeah.
That’s okay. Liesl, you are participating.
Alright.
Couldn’t articulate value of the offer.
Hired people in the past that didn’t work out. Nailed it. Cannot sustain effort across every business area. This is a really big one. Yeah.
She just felt like, oh, I’m struggling to kind of, you know, delegate these critical marketing tasks and all that fearful of letting someone else do it. That is definitely the emotional struggle.
She felt really trapped in the founder operator stage where she knew she should be giving it up, but when she would, it won’t work out. And here’s the interesting thing. In the past, when someone would say, I’ve worked with copywriters before, and it’s never worked out. So it’d be like a huge red flag for me.
Right? Like, I know people say like, oh, red flag. And I would because I’d heard that, I would be like, oh, yeah. I’m not gonna be working with them.
Never gonna work out.
But sometimes I’ve found not sometimes right now. Most of the times. In fact, I have quite a few client, stories and testimonials talking about how in the past they’ve hired and it’s not worked out, mainly because people don’t follow process. So I I’m just sharing this from the point of view that if a client comes to you and says that, don’t let that scare you off.
Do your digging to find out, okay, what happened?
What did they do? Like, what was their process like and all of that? In this landscape, they had lots of data that, as copywriters, had not even touched. So this is like someone who runs a systems business, who teaches other fractional CMOs how to, set up systems and processes and also they’ve got loads of data. Right? They’ve not done anything with it.
And the people that you’d hired in the past didn’t touch it.
So they might as well just been guessing at the copy they were writing, which is why it wasn’t converting, which is why I knew that we could do so much with it. Point being, like, that’s, like, a side story to tell you. Sometimes when you sometimes something becomes like an industry thing. Oh, if someone says they’ve worked with someone and not like the experience, you should not work with them.
Do your own due diligence.
Yeah. Okay. Rizal, yeah, you were about to ask that. So I hope that answers your question about project boundaries.
Social struggle. If they’re a podcast host, they’re in front of a lot of people. Yes. And they’ve got she’s got, like, I think, close to thirteen million subscribers on YouTube or something like that.
So, yes, that is definitely a social struggle. It’s like, okay.
What kind of life it would be exactly that, you know, this is what I’m gonna be doing, which is something that she did, you know, say it’s not in this in the summary here is, like, I cannot see myself doing this all the time because they’re you know, she’s got other programs. She’s obviously doing the delivery as well along with the rest of her team, but she couldn’t be stuck in the cycle of writing that copy.
The other interesting thing in all of these cases I would like you and why I picked recent ones is because AI. Right? Like, all these smart in tune with the market founders all know about AI, all know about Checkatrade, all know about cloud.
None of them want to take the time to sit down and be the, you know, the prompter or the feeder of, like, hand holder for for LLMs. They do not have the time or the patience.
That is the audience you wanna look at.
Because, one thing I’m always queue again, this is something that I hear a lot in the industry, so that’s why, again, I’m bringing this up is, like, oh, no one’s hiring copywriters.
I don’t know.
So but kind of looking at what is it that people really need solved, and she could, for all purposes, use AI to write her emails for her.
But, yeah, she knows that she does not have the time or the patience. It just feels faster for her to do it herself or repurpose some of her past launch emails even though she knows they probably won’t do as well. But, yeah, that’s the alternative.
Okay. Cool. Anyone wants to weigh in on functional struggle, emotional struggle, social struggle?
Yeah. What kind of life this will be? That’s so true, Donaldson. Like, that is exactly, like and I think you probably even said this on the call. It’s like, I cannot imagine doing this, all of this year and next year. This is not sustainable.
Bernadette, would you say that loss of face is, like, the overarching theme of the social struggle, like, that that most of the time, it’s some kind of worry about loss of perceived status or authority?
Yeah. I would say that. Yeah. You know, fear of losing reputation as an expert, fear of feeling, that people won’t see you in that light that you you want them to see. That is definitely an overarching theme.
Other things that have come up in social struggle has been, you know, their their position as the founder.
They feel like again, it’s because it’s social, it’s kind of like, oh, you know, I’m not it’s been I’ve been doing this for, like, a few years. It just feels like I’m bringing it, and I want that to change.
So but, yeah, mainly, it’s a lot to do with their internal, you know, thoughts and feelings about how others would perceive it, which is the whole social element. Yeah.
Anything else? Any other questions?
Any other insights on any of these?
Okay. Cool.
Alright.
So those of you who are new, something that I tend to do in my calls is give you homework.
So I want you to pull a transcript of one of your prospect calls and put it together into a similar Google Doc like this and share what you think would be the functional, emotional, social struggle or the you know, what would what are you in your in your opinion there? And then share it with me, of course, the rest of the, you know, CSP crew. In fact, please tag me. I tend sometimes tend to miss notifications otherwise.
But, yeah, I would love for you all to do that.
Just kind of start building those muscles trying to pick what clients are really struggling with so you don’t again, this is a step closer to what’s going from being an order taker to someone who starts looking at, okay, what is it that they really need and, yeah, how can I help them? Okay. In this particular client’s case, because I realized I didn’t talk about this, So in her case, for instance, she came in saying that I need help writing evergreen emails. Right?
So easy for me to say, okay. Yeah. Excitingly evergreen would be perfect for you. But because I know she has a lot of data, because I knew that she also wants, you know, to get consistent sales, Instead of just selling her a package, what we’ve done is, of course, you’ll be doing all of her evergreen sequence, but then I’m also doing a quarterly retainer with her where I’m doing her flash sales and I’m doing her, I’m doing newsletters for, people who are not, you know, who went through the webinar but did not buy and flash sales for the larger audience.
So that’s a quarterly retailer. So instead of just being a one off package now, I have a ongoing thing with her for her to help her sell consistently beyond the Evergreen funnel as well.
So in every case in all these three cases, and this yeah. This is pretty much what we’ve seen over the last few years is understanding what an aspect is really, really struggling with helps you sell, be it, and close bigger packages.
Makes it easier for your in in your case, in all your cases because you are creating your standardized offers, and I want you to kinda focus on that.
You wanna start looking at, okay, how does our standardized how does my standardized offer help this client so that and once you start pulling at the struggle, you’ll find that it becomes that much easier for you to close that time because you’re not just saying, oh, I’m gonna be giving you a webinar funnel, or I’m gonna I’m gonna be giving you a website copy, or I’m gonna be giving you an evergreen funnel. No. You’re solving a much bigger problem than that.
Cool.
Alright. Yeah.
Katie, go ahead.
Okay. So I had I had this question before, but what you just said dovetail nicely into it. On on expanding the scope, So I did a preliminary like, of my standardized offer of the three back end funnels, I, sold the initial strategy as a stand like, basically, as a downsell on the sales call.
They said we’re not the whole thing.
I said, okay. Let’s just do the strategy.
While doing that road map, I identified that when it came to the back end offer, like, there was a lot of potential like, they didn’t have the core messaging dialed in for that back end offer enough to want to do the back end for that as well. So in the initial sales call, I had pitched the post sale profit system for both offers.
Mhmm. On the road map presentation call, I pitched post step profit system for the signature offer and then message optimization for the Mhmm. Back end offer.
Mhmm. But that felt like it because that hadn’t come up in the conversation before, it opened a can of worms that they weren’t expecting.
And so it was a muddier conversation because where I probably could have had a very clean clothes on, you know, just doing the back end sales, then we were also talking about an offer that they hadn’t considered that they needed. So it was something that I had spotted as a deeper need, but they weren’t thinking about that yet.
So I guess similar to the affiliate marketer Mhmm. Like, when you’re introducing when you see the deeper need, do you what is your sequencing, I guess, around, like, when you would bring something up like that? Or do you have any tips on how to bring that into the conversation without kind of throwing people, from what they expected?
I tied into the overall goal. Right? So what is again, going back to what was she trying to accomplish? She wanted that it people who bought her LinkedIn bio tool would feel confident and also, you know, continue to see her as the expert that she is when it comes to affiliate marketing.
And not having a proper onboarding nurture term sequence or win back sequence would mean that once they buy, there’s post purchase experience isn’t going to be great because they’re gonna be only getting either ordinary templated emails or maybe no email. Worse, you know, no emails at all. So in my proposal, essentially and I because I did not have another call with her. This was just a single call, close.
So in my proposal, I presented the custom package, and I explained my reasoning for including all of these emails as a you know, along with the exact kind of the same explanation that I just gave you is that since our goal is to a, b, and c, I recommend we have these emails in place.
And, oh, no. This is the affiliate marketer. And that is when her husband wanted to kind of get on a call and say ask, okay.
What would we be doing? What would be the purpose and all that?
So yeah. So I did do two calls with them.
One with her and then one with her and her husband.
So I would present it in the proposal. In your case, I feel I again, I don’t know, Mike, but, did you explain your reasoning?
Or Yes.
Yeah. And then and then because my presentation had, like, a very clear segue into and, like and then then this is where you sign, and then the call was, like, forty five minutes longer than I expected while we discussed my reasoning. So, that’s that’s kind of where I was like, oh, this could have gone better. Or maybe I should’ve, like, maybe I should’ve held off until the proposal, and then Mhmm. They’ll only introduce that offer once they had said yes to the initial offer. I could have introduced it Yeah.
As well add on or Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. Again, I mean, there’s so much here, like, that we don’t really know about, like, the the time there. You know, what was said that they’re trying to solve and things like that. But, yeah, we’re kind of testing out to see whether you present your findings, but then based on your findings, you present your offer to them when you present your proposal.
Mhmm.
So if someone comes for you for something and you identify through your initial research that the deeper need is that they need something else, and that something else will allow you to deliver better what they said they needed, would that be a would that be a deal breaker for you?
If they were to say no Mhmm. Would that be a deal deal breaker for me?
There was a time when it would probably have been like, oh, hey. I know.
But the the level of business owners that I’m kinda working with right now, honestly, I let them know that, okay. Hey. This is what I can see happening if we are to do this, this, and this. At the same time, I understand that a business has other goals, marketing asset allocations, etcetera, etcetera. So if you want, we can push this for later. If you wanna do it on your own later, that’s also cool. But yeah.
Right now, it’s not.
In most cases, they’re willing to kind of park it as a project as a second project.
And if not I mean, again, I did my job of letting them know that this is what would make more of a difference to you. At the end of the day, it’s their business.
So I’m not yeah.
I’m not gonna kind of let myself get walk away from, say, a five figure project because of something that my goal is is, like, don’t let your ego play the game. Just keep focus on and focus on the data. Focus on what you’re investing to do. So yeah.
Because there’s a time where I play it. Yeah. No. I’m the expert here. I know what I’m saying.
I know this would make more of a difference. It would be a whole thing and, like, reach that level of maturity where I’m like, cool. I’ve set my peace, your business, your decision.
I thank you. I aspire to that level of maturity. Working on it.
Yeah. I had the same approach with hiding for my copy as well, but there was a time when I would say, nope.
Nope. Nope. No. No making any changes to my copy. It’s like every single line was based on research and stuff and stuff. Now, again, I explained my reasoning.
I let them know. But if they like, for instance, this affiliate marketer, she would have, like she had very specific things around certain words. Right? So I explained why, but she would be like, no.
Okay. But I feel like my ideal client would put it in. Like, okay. It’s again.
It’s your business.
Alright. Cool. Any other questions? That was those were really good questions, Katie.
Nope?
Okay. Cool.
Alright.
I I know there are ask you a quick question if there’s time.
Sure.
Sure. Yeah. I mean, I’m trying to think how to phrase it as a question. So because, basically, I’m just I’m having hiring pains at the moment.
Okay.
And it’s just making me feel really bad because, like, I didn’t like, the people I’m hiring, they’re just making me look bad to to the client because they keep making mistakes. And then when I’m trying to, like and then I’m having to quality control, and then it’s just taking longer. And I’ve just I feel like I’ve made quite a few bad hires. And I was just wondering if you’ve, like, experienced that or if it you know? Because I’m like, is it me, or is this just part of the learning curve?
It’s part of the learning curve, Abby. I’m sorry to hear that it’s happening. We’ve had our fair share of bad hires.
You know, we worked with, a lot. We we work with a lot of different contractors, which is right now, once we find a really good contractor, I, yeah, I hold on to them for dear life.
But, but it is part of the learning curve.
You may wanna take a look at things like, okay, your onboarding, your processes, and everything. But once you’ve done your own thing, there is which is exactly what I was talking about. You know, like, when people say, oh, we worked with a copywriter, and it wasn’t a great experience. Sometimes it really isn’t the client.
It is the copywriter. I’m sorry, but it’s it’s true. Right? So similarly, in your case, sometimes it’s not you.
It is the contractor. Right? So you need to kind of take a dispassionate look or have someone take a dispassionate look at your processes, your onboarding, your, you know, communication, and if there are no gaps, then it’s probably that person and you need to cut them loose.
So Yeah.
This is very popular, and I am obviously not the one who’s come up with it. But I believe in this for me. It’s like hire slow and fire fast. Fast. I would not Mhmm.
Hold on to someone who’s making us look bad in front of a client that is so, not them. Yeah.
Yeah.
I’ve just had I’ve had a bit of a streak of bad luck, and I don’t know if it’s first.
I think it’s just, like, the lack of care. Like, it really, like, baffles me how little some people care. Like, as I’d like the mistakes I make, and it’s like, how, you know, how what makes you think that’s okay? Like and I I just hate it because I’m, like, selling a, like, a a premium service. And then when the mistake it just makes me feel awful. Like, there’s so much stress, but and I’m struggling to see, like, the light at the end of the tunnel because it has been, like, four people in a row now.
But yeah, I for the same role?
Different roles, like the designer, web developer, and automation, email automation expert. It’s just every time, it’s just been the lack of care and attention to detail.
Yeah. Yeah. I totally relate.
And, again, like I said, really sorry. It is part of the learning curve.
It is hard. Are you hiring based on referrals?
I’m hiring from within the Copiacus community, and then people I’ve worked with before. So kind yeah. Like, I haven’t I haven’t received, like, a really good referral yet.
Someone that, like like, if if if it was someone that, like, someone I trusted vouch for, I think I’d have a better experience. But, yeah, that person just hasn’t kind of come up yet.
So Yeah.
That’s really unfortunate.
It is, things that I’ve worked in the past for us have been basically I’ve always hired on referral. I’ve always as much as possible.
Always hired and run with a couple of test projects and with very little margin for error, basically.
Mhmm.
And so test projects are really important. If you’re not doing test projects, that is something you may wanna add in.
We pay them for the project, but, yeah, kind of gives you an idea of how they, communicate and things like that.
And like like I said, the other thing is it’s kind of evaluating and seeing whether, whether our own processes have a gap somewhere and need need fine tuning.
But but also making it very clear when we hire them, like, things like, okay. Time lines are key, and we just don’t have any wiggle room around that. Like, things like okay. Anything that’s gonna be directly impacting the client.
Because at the end of the day, the buck stops with you. Right? Yeah. I mean, it’s your name.
It’s your brand. Your client does not care whether you’re working with someone else for research. If your editor is sick, that is not your client’s problem.
So those are things that like, making sure that everyone that we hire has the same value system as that when it comes to so having those conversations early on has really, really helped. Like, in the initial conversations, whether it’s been with our editor, whether it’s been with a person who worked for research.
Full disclosure, we’ve had a designer in the past we preferred who’s dropped the ball for our clients. Like, never again would I ever send another person their way. Like, I don’t care what happened.
But yeah. So point being, these are certain things that have worked well for us, but it is unfortunate there are like, it’s it’s hard to find good talent.
Yeah. Yeah. It’s just the the emotional problems I think of, like, when you’re letting go of that control for the first time, which is really scary anyway.
And then Yeah.
Yeah.
And then And then people drop the ball.
Yeah. What?
And then what you fear happens happens, and it’s just Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. I know. I know. Which is why when, like, the first few times we worked with people who went above and beyond, I was like, oh, yeah. This is amazing.
Mhmm.
Never gonna work with anyone else again.
But, yeah, Punez, I would say ask people for referrals, like, instead of, like, hiring like, when you say when you’re hiring from within the community, is it, like, do you say, okay.
I have an opening for this, or do you say, okay. I’m looking for this person. Do you have any referrals? And when people refer, do you ask, have they worked with them? What was their experience like?
Like, what’s that process look like?
Yeah. I mean, it was more just people, like because I was a coach in freelance school for a while, so I had a, like, contact with people on, like, Friday socials and stuff. So I’d spent quite a lot of time with this person, who I’m thinking of. So I felt good hiring them.
And then yeah. I don’t know. I think it’s just like, what I find with freelancers, I think, is they’re watching their profitability so much that it means they, like, don’t spend as long as they should on quality control.
Is Pardon Frozen? Is it just me? Yeah. Okay.
Well, it doesn’t look like she’s gonna unfreeze.
Yeah. I mean, I think we’re at time anyway.
Yeah. I gotta go.
I might wait. I’ll wait for her to come back. Bye, Michelle.
Bye.
Anyways, let’s just kind of wrap this up.
Abby, feel free to, like, if some like, let let us know if there’s, like, a specific role you’re looking to hire for or whatever. If, you know, anyone comes to mind, I will definitely share referrals.
But all of this to say, yeah, this is par for the course, unfortunate, but, yeah, you Everyone’s gone through this. It’s a rite of passage.
It’s all No. I think I needed to hear that. Thank you, Prana.
Yeah.
You’re welcome. Alright. Thank you so much, everybody. I hope you all had fun. I want to see some struggling moments, from your transcripts in Slack next week.
So please tag me, and I will set up scheduled reminders to check-in with you all otherwise. Alright. Thank you, everyone. Bye.
Worksheet
Take Action: Funnels & Goals (pp. 24 – 27)
Worksheet
Take Action: Funnels & Goals (pp. 24 – 27)
Transcript
So what I have done, is something really fun. I took our prospect call transcripts, prospects to turn into clients, and I’ve worked out the the struggling moment. But then and also, you know, like, the different elements of the struggling moment. But then I want you to look at those struggling moments and pick out the functional struggle, the emotional struggle, and, you know, the social struggle.
So you will if you haven’t opened up your workbooks, I would love for you to first do that so you can kind of go through the examples because those are, you know, those are examples.
But but I want you to look at the example so you can get an idea of what we are even talking about. So when I share my Google Doc with you, I want you to be able to kind of look at it and go, okay. And this would be the functional struggle, and this would be the emotion struggle.
So open up your workbooks. I’m gonna share screen.
And what we’re going to do is we’re going to look at the workbook first, and then I’m gonna share a Google Doc with y’all where you would go ahead and do this exercise real time.
Alright. Cool.
Let’s get started.
And first up okay. Alright. Choose.
Okay. Cool. So this is what the section I want you to look at. The struggling moment is the seat for innovation.
Just scroll past this page. I want you to look at the examples here. So client comes in. You’ll get on a call.
Client says, okay. I wanna launch copy.
But then, of course, being the professionals you are, you will probe. You will ask.
And what they usually come up with would be some would be a story like this. And I’ll share our clients’ stories on probing.
And then from this, what you wanna look at is the functional struggle. So, okay, measurable decline in performance, social struggle, you know, people kind you’re like people are looking at you and all of that. And what’s the push force or what’s the you know, if there’s an emotional struggle to it, what what does that look like?
The more important thing that you need to ask yourself is why do you wanna kind of look at all of these struggles? Like, what does this help you do?
And use that to then direct the sales conversation. At least that’s what I do. It works out really, really well. And when you look at when you start to kinda pull the thread of either one of these struggles or if possible, all three and just kind of bring it together, it becomes so much easier to close clients at twenty k, thirty k, fifty k, hundred k. Right?
I have used this repeatedly just to kind of take time to really understand what the troubling moment really is. Because when a client comes and says, oh, I need website copy, it’s there’s something else going on.
You know? Why do they need website copy? And it’s fascinating because and I’m actually you know, because I can see this play out in in myself as a a buyer or as a client too. So right now, for instance, we are in the midst of speaking with, you know, designers and branding experts and all of that because we’re looking at a rebrand for our business.
So why I said it’s fascinating is because on calls with with branding strategist or with designers and things like that, the moment someone asks me oh, because we go in saying, oh, we wanna rebrand. Right?
Very straightforward.
But the caliber of a professional, like, it instantly kind of goes up in my mind when someone, like, takes the time to, like, clean forward and ask, okay. But why now? What’s happening right now that you’re looking to rebrand?
It just kind of opens up a whole thing for both Mike and me on that call. And I can only imagine that, and I hope that those strategists who are asking these questions are actually gonna use it when they kind of put our proposal together, when they send our quote together because I know it makes a difference. I always use struggling moments when I present my proposal to clients, especially for custom codes, and something like if they’ve, like, not just bought a package of the site, but they’ve taken time to fill out a form, and they met me for a call, and we have to give them a custom code.
I will use all of this in the proposal to basically present why we’re offering them what we’re offering them and what you know? And then what you’re charging them really kind of it’s not I’m not gonna say it becomes irrelevant, especially when they’re when you’re looking at fifty k, seventy five k packages.
It’s by no means irrelevant, but they can see exactly why they need it. What is the job that your service would actually be doing for their business.
So unlike my usual sessions where I have, like, a really nice slide deck and I have, like, tactical things and all, this one is very hands on. I just want you to understand what a struggling moment really is and learn to identify that in your own calls. Because if you’re not doing that right now, that is something you wanna fix right away.
So with that, do you have any questions before I yeah?
I do.
You say you use this during the sales call. Do you find this out in that triage call?
And then when you present, you know, back to your proposal, that’s when you pull this in?
Yes. Okay. So it’s in the triage call.
Okay.
And yeah.
I will basically use this definitely in the proposal, but I also kinda bring it up when we kick off. So when we kick off and I recap what’s in the project and, you know, who’s gonna be involved in the the the day c and all of that, I do mention why we’re doing what we’re doing because what I found and this is also true side note, this is also true for things like social proof. What I found, you need to like, once you’ve sold a client, you’d they you kinda need to have these, like, little mini selling points all through the process.
That works really, really well. Again, that’s just something I do. You don’t have to do it, but it just works really well. I’ve noticed.
Okay. Cool. So I’m gonna stop sharing. You should have it. Like, if you oh, wait. That’s the appointment you’re looking for. Anyways, let’s And what I’m going to do is drop a Google doc that I have created.
Fail.
So these are all clients from prospect calls that I’ve transcribed, and then let me go on the blank. Commenter.
Copy link. Okay. Cool.
Dropping the link in chat.
Oh, Lisa, good question. So you get this in the first fifteen minute call and then begin to it in the length here. One did that did Michelle’s question answer your question as well?
Oh, sorry.
So I do this a little differently, but I don’t want y’all to kind of digress from the process that, you know, y’all are going through.
In your case, I would look at the kind of try and get this get this struggle, in the fifteen minute call and then, yes, dig into it in the length of your call. That said, how I exactly do it and what Michelle calls the triage call is, again, this is my way to get, is I just do one call, and then I do proposal.
Right?
And I’ve done this for pretty much every project, but y’all also need to remember.
It’s I’ve been doing this for a while now, so there’s probably that at play. But, Katie, yes. Sometimes.
Depends.
For instance, it depends on a couple of different factors. If there are multiple people involved in the project, for instance, we just especially the corporate clients. So there’s this huge group of schools that I’ve been working with since last year.
There are multiple people involved in it. I’ve done one project with them. I’m working on a second project with them.
So in that case, always present it on a call because there are everyone wants to be involved in it.
But if it’s someone who we’ve worked with in the past, if it’s someone who has come through a referral, if it’s someone who is already sold on us, a podcast host, I mean, for that happens a lot.
I will not present it on a call.
Breaking rules? Yes. Maybe. But it just that it’s been working.
Yes, Leasel. With corporate clients, yes. Definitely. You will have to do two calls. You may even have to do more depending on the scope of the project.
For projects upwards of seventy five thousand dollars, I have done as many as in fact, with this particular client. Okay. We’ve done okay.
Three three calls, with different stakeholders.
So because there have been changes to, oh, we wanna include this. Now we wanna you know? So yeah.
Corporate times are a whole different thing. I I really love the size of the project.
It just takes me too much time.
Okay. Cool.
You should have the Google Doc in the chat. Open it up. And what I want you to kind of look at and put down is go through the struggling moment and leave your comments or just make your own comments as like, unmute yourself and tell me what you think is the functional struggle, what do you think is the emotional struggle, what do you think is the social struggle. So this is gonna be a very different call here.
Usually, yes. Three calls seems hard.
But this is for the second project. So they’ve already worked with me once. And, yeah, perfect times are whole different days.
Y’all should have commenting access, so feel free to leave comments if you want to.
Alright. Anyone wants to volunteer for the first one?
Well, I guess since nobody else go ahead.
Go ahead.
And it’s early in the morning, so I don’t know.
So functional struggle will probably be Clients who were interested were weren’t, signing up?
Yeah. Okay. Because?
Oh, because timing was too short.
Perfect. Yeah. K. Absolutely. Absolutely. Okay. Cool. K. Emotional struggle? I guess it was about from the yeah.
Go ahead.
Headspace and timing to they weren’t in the right headspace, and there was too short of time for them to spend that nine ninety seven.
Yeah. Yeah. And when you’re reading this, you also wanna think about this from the client point of view. Right?
Like, how is the client feeling emotionally about this this struggle that they’re coming up against? Because that’s what you wanna kind of lean into and talk about it. Oh, so you’re feeling this because our students or our, you know, our prospects aren’t getting enough time to convert. Is that right?
You know? So Okay. Yeah. But you’re really, really, you know, dialed in into this. This is really good, Michelle.
Yeah. Okay.
The social struggle, that’s where I’m kinda lost.
Yeah. And that is where for social struggle, you will see that you will need to start reading between the lines.
Okay.
You will need to start kinda looking at, okay.
What are they worried about? Like, what’s the perception here that they’re worried about? Is it is it that they don’t want to they they feel like, oh, we are being we are being pushy versus being intentional? Is it more that, oh, you know, people are going to maybe see me differently or won’t respect me if I do this or if I don’t do this.
So you gotta kinda read between the lines. That is where that is where your skills as someone who is, like, tuned into how people think, come into play Okay. And where doing a little bit of probing will help. So that’s not very the the, the social struggle is not usually straightforward.
Forward.
But, for instance, in the second second, client’s case, I worked on their website probably earlier this year, and her her social struggle was a little more straightforward. So take a look at that and see if you can kind of pick the social struggle there. Okay.
Anyone else wants to kinda weigh in with the first one?
I had for the social struggle and sorry sorry I was late, so I will catch the replay to catch myself up if I missed something. But I put, whose job is it to notice this?
Like, because potential on the part of the speaker, there was confusion around, like, it was brought up by a team member.
They didn’t even know about it. So then if I’m on that call as a copywriter, I would be noticing, like, oh, they don’t.
Like, there was a role missing in the strategy behind the trial and, like, who’s gonna fix this problem.
Absolutely. Which is exactly what happened in this case as well, Katie, is one, there was no one looking at the fact that customer support is getting all these requests about, hey. Can I get more time?
Right? Like, it just came up during their they have, like, a stand up meeting or a catch up meeting, what they call it, and and really random. Not even like, oh, you know, here’s something. So which is what then led us to work on what we did for them were, like, behavior based sequences that, a, not only we give them, like, an extended trial, but then we had, like, oh, if they went ahead and logged in, then we have, like, a different sequence kicking in versus people who weren’t logging in, versus people who, you know, were logging in and watching an x number of lessons.
So it the social struggle was no one was really watching what was going on with this trial that they were thinking for all purposes as kind of doing well, because and and what was happening was they were leaving a lot of people, in terms of, like, oh, who could who could just just needed a few more days to be able to convert. So, like I said, you need to kind of read between the lines there and do a little more probing.
But what they came in saying was, oh, we wanna increase conversions. But the point is and what they initially thought was they had a lead flow problem. Like, oh, we need more people coming into the funnel so we can increase conversions. But what they actually had was a current conversion problem. Like, people were coming in but were not converting because of the lack of time. And, like, you know, Michelle said the feeling of being they were interested, but they didn’t have the headspace and the timing.
Thing was really felt too short for them.
Alright. Who wants to take number two?
These are yes. We weren’t giving them time or room to build, breathe, or build belief. That’s like so they didn’t really need a seven day trial. They needed what we went with was actually a fourteen day trial, and more emails.
So because if I just sold them a seven day trial, it would have worked.
The result of the of increasing the, trial period or the result of presenting them with a fourteen day file package? Conversion to paid upgrades. Oh, yeah. Okay. So it’s been ninety so then these are all fairly recent projects that have wrapped up. So this it’s gonna it we completed ninety days of the funnel, say, thirty first of March. So, they in ninety days, they’ve been able to almost, I would say, two point five x their conversions, but, again which is great.
However, what we are now testing out is if we shorten it to about nine days instead of fourteen days, would that create more of an urgency and increase conversion? So that’s what we gotta do in the optimization phase of it. My reasoning for this is I noticed that a lot of people wait till the very last day to convert. So I’m just kinda curious to see if you, like, go from seven from we went from seven to fourteen. So if you go from fourteen to nine or even ten, does that, you know, shorten the cycle while basically either increasing or keeping the conversions the same.
They are they’re they’re pretty happy, so they’re open to testing, which is a good thing.
Because we can always go back to fourteen if, say, the nine, ten day experiment does not work out.
Alright.
Functional struggle can’t explain too easily and in a way that shows value. Bit of imposter syndrome in the self as a creator. Yes. Then yes.
In fact, you’re it’s so cool that you brought up the imposter syndrome thing because the thing is she’s not a SaaS marketer. So this client, is really cool. She’s a really, really big affiliate marketer. She’s got, like, millions and millions of followers, on Instagram and TikTok. And, she created this tool, like I’m sorry. Her husband basically created this tool because she was really frustrated with the link in bio options available to her. So so that imposter syndrome in her is pretty real because she doesn’t think of herself as a SaaS founder.
She still thinks of herself as, an affiliate marketer who’s playing, a SaaS founder. So it’s so cool that you, kind of picked on that.
Potential loss of authority from lack of credit. Exactly. You know?
She felt like, oh, she because she’s concerned, you know, like an expert and she like, loads of an affiliate marketers look up to her. She felt like, oh, I would be they would be seeing me as less than or as per you know? So that was really, really yeah. It is. But it’s very hard, I think, when you are a creator or founder, and I guess most of you would kind of relate to it is because, like, people were approaching her about it, and she had a successful beta run and all of that, but it just kind of, you know, feel like, I don’t really know. And she came in saying, okay. I need copy for this website.
It’s interesting. I’ll tell you what we kind of sold her once we’ve kind of gone through this. But okay. Cool.
Anyone else wants to weigh in? Johnson, potential loss of authority. Yeah. Perfect. That is exactly like, that is the social, struggle here for sure.
Cool. Anyone have anything else to add?
Nope? Okay. So this is a classic case. The client comes in saying, you know, oh, I need better copy for my affiliate link in bio website so people understand what this tool does.
But the thing is she did not have any messaging created for this. Like, she just created the tool, got, like, a very, very basic one page kind of a sign up, and she felt like, okay. Let’s just change words on the website to, you know, make it clearer. But what we had to start with was and all of you know this, we had to start with going back and looking at, okay, what is it that you were saying?
How are people talking? So we had to start with all the research. We had to put together her complete message brand messaging guide, and then the website copy. But then we because of the imposter syndrome emotional struggle and, you know, wanting to explain the tool easily and that potential.
All of these struggles kinda came together because we did not want that experience to end when people signed up for the tool.
So I was able to show her that she also needed the staff onboarding emails. She needed, you know, nurture emails so that people would go ahead and use the tool and then, of course, win back emails for people who churn because it’s a subscription.
So it went from being, oh, I need copy from my home page to describe what people you know, describe what this tool does to being a huge project, because we kinda took the time to really understand what was going on, which is the whole purpose of this call is for you to start doing a little more digging to understand what is the struggle, what is the job that a prospect is actually hiring your service to do for them.
Where did they receive that? Nope.
So she was putting in all her money. Like, she’d made she’s yeah. So not VC backed, but her husband and she were both, and, Abby, it’s so funny because, you had a post in, in the Slack community that I saw later, so I didn’t get a chance to comment on it. But where you mentioned about having a call with a founder, and then the husband was on the second call and, you know, having to kind of do the I mean, it’s it’s exactly the same here.
So, she came to us through a referral, someone I’ve worked with in the past, and then she was like, yeah. Completely sold. I want all of it and then some. And then, you know, her husband, because he’s the one who created it and is also partly funding it, wanted to get on another call, and it was, you know, like, again, do the whole same thing, walking them through it again.
So, yeah, was it hard to expand the scope by that degree with the client? No. Simply because I knew the problem that she was wanting to solve was not just I needed to be clearer.
The problem was I need to look like the expert I really am. I wanna keep my standing as this really, really top affiliate marketer.
I want my app to present me the way the like, the affiliate marketing world sees me as.
So nope.
It wasn’t.
Yeah. Image is huge. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah.
Absolutely, Johnson. So because I spent the and this is the whole purpose of this call is, essentially, I want you to take the time to really dig into what is the struggle that your audience is looking to solve, your prospect is looking to solve, so it becomes easier for you to to sell them your standardized offers.
In my case, it’s more custom. So, I don’t have, like, a standardized offer other than fully loaded launch, which in any case is now going to get overhauled and retired. But, I’ve started catching this stuff on the fly, little because I’ve been doing this for a while now.
The more you’ll do it oh, one thing that I will recommend is we all use AI note takers.
I still make notes by hand. I do use an AI notetaker to kind of go over things that I may have forgotten, especially if I wanna, you know, in big package cases and things like that where we need to kind of sit down and hash out what, quote unquote, the deliverables are gonna look like. But I’ve started, like, kind of, like I make notes and then I draw lines to kind of talk about, okay, this is what the struggle really is or this is what they’re trying to solve. So, highly recommend doing that too. It just kind of trains your brain to to start picking these things.
Yes, Ali. Fully loaded launch is getting replaced with something even better.
But, yeah, I will share that soon.
It is iconic. I know.
But, yeah, it’s been a while now. So, it’s run its course, and we’ve been customizing it way, way more often, which means that we need to kind of, yep, expand the the package and change it up and all of that. So that was what happened. It is a federal party.
Yeah. Yeah. That’s a really good idea. Probably should do that.
Give it a going the way it probably served us well.
Awesome. Cool. Alright. Let’s look at number three. This is someone that we recently recently closed, like, as recent as, like, the contract’s just gone out to them. So yeah.
Oh, by the fun fact, because I did this session last month I I think I did the session last month.
This is someone whose podcast I appeared on.
And after the part like, she’s the she’s the podcast host, so that will come out later. So after the podcast, she ended up, like, wanting to know more, and then she filled out a form. And this is what we kind of know, basically.
We’ll be working together. So, again, for those of you who’ve not seen that session and who are wanting to turn podcasts into client opportunities, would highly recommend listen to that one. But for now, look at this and tell me mhmm. Functional struggle. Okay. And our data value of the offer.
Cannot sustain effort across every business area. Yep. Yep.
Yeah.
Okay.
Feel free to unmute yourself if you got things to add if you don’t wanna kind of okay. Jenny, are there specific questions you ask clients so they go beyond sharing the surface level problem?
This isn’t converting, for example, to help them share with you what the shrugging moment really is.
I generally start by asking, well, so okay. What’s on your mind? You know?
You filled out I recap what they filled out the form for. So you mentioned you’ve got a launch that’s not being well. But, really, tell me what’s on your mind.
Opens up a whole lot of conversation. It’s not my question, though. I would highly recommend if you’ve not read the coaching habit by Michael Banda Stanier. I have been using this what’s in your mind question, thanks to him, for years.
It’s worked really, really well. So, I think it was Pat Flynn who sent me that book, but anyways, years ago. But it’s a really good book. It’s called The Coach and Habit. If you don’t have it, get it, read it, use it.
Yes, Abby. Love that book. Yeah. Same thing. Yeah.
That’s okay. Liesl, you are participating.
Alright.
Couldn’t articulate value of the offer.
Hired people in the past that didn’t work out. Nailed it. Cannot sustain effort across every business area. This is a really big one. Yeah.
She just felt like, oh, I’m struggling to kind of, you know, delegate these critical marketing tasks and all that fearful of letting someone else do it. That is definitely the emotional struggle.
She felt really trapped in the founder operator stage where she knew she should be giving it up, but when she would, it won’t work out. And here’s the interesting thing. In the past, when someone would say, I’ve worked with copywriters before, and it’s never worked out. So it’d be like a huge red flag for me.
Right? Like, I know people say like, oh, red flag. And I would because I’d heard that, I would be like, oh, yeah. I’m not gonna be working with them.
Never gonna work out.
But sometimes I’ve found not sometimes right now. Most of the times. In fact, I have quite a few client, stories and testimonials talking about how in the past they’ve hired and it’s not worked out, mainly because people don’t follow process. So I I’m just sharing this from the point of view that if a client comes to you and says that, don’t let that scare you off.
Do your digging to find out, okay, what happened?
What did they do? Like, what was their process like and all of that? In this landscape, they had lots of data that, as copywriters, had not even touched. So this is like someone who runs a systems business, who teaches other fractional CMOs how to, set up systems and processes and also they’ve got loads of data. Right? They’ve not done anything with it.
And the people that you’d hired in the past didn’t touch it.
So they might as well just been guessing at the copy they were writing, which is why it wasn’t converting, which is why I knew that we could do so much with it. Point being, like, that’s, like, a side story to tell you. Sometimes when you sometimes something becomes like an industry thing. Oh, if someone says they’ve worked with someone and not like the experience, you should not work with them.
Do your own due diligence.
Yeah. Okay. Rizal, yeah, you were about to ask that. So I hope that answers your question about project boundaries.
Social struggle. If they’re a podcast host, they’re in front of a lot of people. Yes. And they’ve got she’s got, like, I think, close to thirteen million subscribers on YouTube or something like that.
So, yes, that is definitely a social struggle. It’s like, okay.
What kind of life it would be exactly that, you know, this is what I’m gonna be doing, which is something that she did, you know, say it’s not in this in the summary here is, like, I cannot see myself doing this all the time because they’re you know, she’s got other programs. She’s obviously doing the delivery as well along with the rest of her team, but she couldn’t be stuck in the cycle of writing that copy.
The other interesting thing in all of these cases I would like you and why I picked recent ones is because AI. Right? Like, all these smart in tune with the market founders all know about AI, all know about Checkatrade, all know about cloud.
None of them want to take the time to sit down and be the, you know, the prompter or the feeder of, like, hand holder for for LLMs. They do not have the time or the patience.
That is the audience you wanna look at.
Because, one thing I’m always queue again, this is something that I hear a lot in the industry, so that’s why, again, I’m bringing this up is, like, oh, no one’s hiring copywriters.
I don’t know.
So but kind of looking at what is it that people really need solved, and she could, for all purposes, use AI to write her emails for her.
But, yeah, she knows that she does not have the time or the patience. It just feels faster for her to do it herself or repurpose some of her past launch emails even though she knows they probably won’t do as well. But, yeah, that’s the alternative.
Okay. Cool. Anyone wants to weigh in on functional struggle, emotional struggle, social struggle?
Yeah. What kind of life this will be? That’s so true, Donaldson. Like, that is exactly, like and I think you probably even said this on the call. It’s like, I cannot imagine doing this, all of this year and next year. This is not sustainable.
Bernadette, would you say that loss of face is, like, the overarching theme of the social struggle, like, that that most of the time, it’s some kind of worry about loss of perceived status or authority?
Yeah. I would say that. Yeah. You know, fear of losing reputation as an expert, fear of feeling, that people won’t see you in that light that you you want them to see. That is definitely an overarching theme.
Other things that have come up in social struggle has been, you know, their their position as the founder.
They feel like again, it’s because it’s social, it’s kind of like, oh, you know, I’m not it’s been I’ve been doing this for, like, a few years. It just feels like I’m bringing it, and I want that to change.
So but, yeah, mainly, it’s a lot to do with their internal, you know, thoughts and feelings about how others would perceive it, which is the whole social element. Yeah.
Anything else? Any other questions?
Any other insights on any of these?
Okay. Cool.
Alright.
So those of you who are new, something that I tend to do in my calls is give you homework.
So I want you to pull a transcript of one of your prospect calls and put it together into a similar Google Doc like this and share what you think would be the functional, emotional, social struggle or the you know, what would what are you in your in your opinion there? And then share it with me, of course, the rest of the, you know, CSP crew. In fact, please tag me. I tend sometimes tend to miss notifications otherwise.
But, yeah, I would love for you all to do that.
Just kind of start building those muscles trying to pick what clients are really struggling with so you don’t again, this is a step closer to what’s going from being an order taker to someone who starts looking at, okay, what is it that they really need and, yeah, how can I help them? Okay. In this particular client’s case, because I realized I didn’t talk about this, So in her case, for instance, she came in saying that I need help writing evergreen emails. Right?
So easy for me to say, okay. Yeah. Excitingly evergreen would be perfect for you. But because I know she has a lot of data, because I knew that she also wants, you know, to get consistent sales, Instead of just selling her a package, what we’ve done is, of course, you’ll be doing all of her evergreen sequence, but then I’m also doing a quarterly retainer with her where I’m doing her flash sales and I’m doing her, I’m doing newsletters for, people who are not, you know, who went through the webinar but did not buy and flash sales for the larger audience.
So that’s a quarterly retailer. So instead of just being a one off package now, I have a ongoing thing with her for her to help her sell consistently beyond the Evergreen funnel as well.
So in every case in all these three cases, and this yeah. This is pretty much what we’ve seen over the last few years is understanding what an aspect is really, really struggling with helps you sell, be it, and close bigger packages.
Makes it easier for your in in your case, in all your cases because you are creating your standardized offers, and I want you to kinda focus on that.
You wanna start looking at, okay, how does our standardized how does my standardized offer help this client so that and once you start pulling at the struggle, you’ll find that it becomes that much easier for you to close that time because you’re not just saying, oh, I’m gonna be giving you a webinar funnel, or I’m gonna I’m gonna be giving you a website copy, or I’m gonna be giving you an evergreen funnel. No. You’re solving a much bigger problem than that.
Cool.
Alright. Yeah.
Katie, go ahead.
Okay. So I had I had this question before, but what you just said dovetail nicely into it. On on expanding the scope, So I did a preliminary like, of my standardized offer of the three back end funnels, I, sold the initial strategy as a stand like, basically, as a downsell on the sales call.
They said we’re not the whole thing.
I said, okay. Let’s just do the strategy.
While doing that road map, I identified that when it came to the back end offer, like, there was a lot of potential like, they didn’t have the core messaging dialed in for that back end offer enough to want to do the back end for that as well. So in the initial sales call, I had pitched the post sale profit system for both offers.
Mhmm. On the road map presentation call, I pitched post step profit system for the signature offer and then message optimization for the Mhmm. Back end offer.
Mhmm. But that felt like it because that hadn’t come up in the conversation before, it opened a can of worms that they weren’t expecting.
And so it was a muddier conversation because where I probably could have had a very clean clothes on, you know, just doing the back end sales, then we were also talking about an offer that they hadn’t considered that they needed. So it was something that I had spotted as a deeper need, but they weren’t thinking about that yet.
So I guess similar to the affiliate marketer Mhmm. Like, when you’re introducing when you see the deeper need, do you what is your sequencing, I guess, around, like, when you would bring something up like that? Or do you have any tips on how to bring that into the conversation without kind of throwing people, from what they expected?
I tied into the overall goal. Right? So what is again, going back to what was she trying to accomplish? She wanted that it people who bought her LinkedIn bio tool would feel confident and also, you know, continue to see her as the expert that she is when it comes to affiliate marketing.
And not having a proper onboarding nurture term sequence or win back sequence would mean that once they buy, there’s post purchase experience isn’t going to be great because they’re gonna be only getting either ordinary templated emails or maybe no email. Worse, you know, no emails at all. So in my proposal, essentially and I because I did not have another call with her. This was just a single call, close.
So in my proposal, I presented the custom package, and I explained my reasoning for including all of these emails as a you know, along with the exact kind of the same explanation that I just gave you is that since our goal is to a, b, and c, I recommend we have these emails in place.
And, oh, no. This is the affiliate marketer. And that is when her husband wanted to kind of get on a call and say ask, okay.
What would we be doing? What would be the purpose and all that?
So yeah. So I did do two calls with them.
One with her and then one with her and her husband.
So I would present it in the proposal. In your case, I feel I again, I don’t know, Mike, but, did you explain your reasoning?
Or Yes.
Yeah. And then and then because my presentation had, like, a very clear segue into and, like and then then this is where you sign, and then the call was, like, forty five minutes longer than I expected while we discussed my reasoning. So, that’s that’s kind of where I was like, oh, this could have gone better. Or maybe I should’ve, like, maybe I should’ve held off until the proposal, and then Mhmm. They’ll only introduce that offer once they had said yes to the initial offer. I could have introduced it Yeah.
As well add on or Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. Again, I mean, there’s so much here, like, that we don’t really know about, like, the the time there. You know, what was said that they’re trying to solve and things like that. But, yeah, we’re kind of testing out to see whether you present your findings, but then based on your findings, you present your offer to them when you present your proposal.
Mhmm.
So if someone comes for you for something and you identify through your initial research that the deeper need is that they need something else, and that something else will allow you to deliver better what they said they needed, would that be a would that be a deal breaker for you?
If they were to say no Mhmm. Would that be a deal deal breaker for me?
There was a time when it would probably have been like, oh, hey. I know.
But the the level of business owners that I’m kinda working with right now, honestly, I let them know that, okay. Hey. This is what I can see happening if we are to do this, this, and this. At the same time, I understand that a business has other goals, marketing asset allocations, etcetera, etcetera. So if you want, we can push this for later. If you wanna do it on your own later, that’s also cool. But yeah.
Right now, it’s not.
In most cases, they’re willing to kind of park it as a project as a second project.
And if not I mean, again, I did my job of letting them know that this is what would make more of a difference to you. At the end of the day, it’s their business.
So I’m not yeah.
I’m not gonna kind of let myself get walk away from, say, a five figure project because of something that my goal is is, like, don’t let your ego play the game. Just keep focus on and focus on the data. Focus on what you’re investing to do. So yeah.
Because there’s a time where I play it. Yeah. No. I’m the expert here. I know what I’m saying.
I know this would make more of a difference. It would be a whole thing and, like, reach that level of maturity where I’m like, cool. I’ve set my peace, your business, your decision.
I thank you. I aspire to that level of maturity. Working on it.
Yeah. I had the same approach with hiding for my copy as well, but there was a time when I would say, nope.
Nope. Nope. No. No making any changes to my copy. It’s like every single line was based on research and stuff and stuff. Now, again, I explained my reasoning.
I let them know. But if they like, for instance, this affiliate marketer, she would have, like she had very specific things around certain words. Right? So I explained why, but she would be like, no.
Okay. But I feel like my ideal client would put it in. Like, okay. It’s again.
It’s your business.
Alright. Cool. Any other questions? That was those were really good questions, Katie.
Nope?
Okay. Cool.
Alright.
I I know there are ask you a quick question if there’s time.
Sure.
Sure. Yeah. I mean, I’m trying to think how to phrase it as a question. So because, basically, I’m just I’m having hiring pains at the moment.
Okay.
And it’s just making me feel really bad because, like, I didn’t like, the people I’m hiring, they’re just making me look bad to to the client because they keep making mistakes. And then when I’m trying to, like and then I’m having to quality control, and then it’s just taking longer. And I’ve just I feel like I’ve made quite a few bad hires. And I was just wondering if you’ve, like, experienced that or if it you know? Because I’m like, is it me, or is this just part of the learning curve?
It’s part of the learning curve, Abby. I’m sorry to hear that it’s happening. We’ve had our fair share of bad hires.
You know, we worked with, a lot. We we work with a lot of different contractors, which is right now, once we find a really good contractor, I, yeah, I hold on to them for dear life.
But, but it is part of the learning curve.
You may wanna take a look at things like, okay, your onboarding, your processes, and everything. But once you’ve done your own thing, there is which is exactly what I was talking about. You know, like, when people say, oh, we worked with a copywriter, and it wasn’t a great experience. Sometimes it really isn’t the client.
It is the copywriter. I’m sorry, but it’s it’s true. Right? So similarly, in your case, sometimes it’s not you.
It is the contractor. Right? So you need to kind of take a dispassionate look or have someone take a dispassionate look at your processes, your onboarding, your, you know, communication, and if there are no gaps, then it’s probably that person and you need to cut them loose.
So Yeah.
This is very popular, and I am obviously not the one who’s come up with it. But I believe in this for me. It’s like hire slow and fire fast. Fast. I would not Mhmm.
Hold on to someone who’s making us look bad in front of a client that is so, not them. Yeah.
Yeah.
I’ve just had I’ve had a bit of a streak of bad luck, and I don’t know if it’s first.
I think it’s just, like, the lack of care. Like, it really, like, baffles me how little some people care. Like, as I’d like the mistakes I make, and it’s like, how, you know, how what makes you think that’s okay? Like and I I just hate it because I’m, like, selling a, like, a a premium service. And then when the mistake it just makes me feel awful. Like, there’s so much stress, but and I’m struggling to see, like, the light at the end of the tunnel because it has been, like, four people in a row now.
But yeah, I for the same role?
Different roles, like the designer, web developer, and automation, email automation expert. It’s just every time, it’s just been the lack of care and attention to detail.
Yeah. Yeah. I totally relate.
And, again, like I said, really sorry. It is part of the learning curve.
It is hard. Are you hiring based on referrals?
I’m hiring from within the Copiacus community, and then people I’ve worked with before. So kind yeah. Like, I haven’t I haven’t received, like, a really good referral yet.
Someone that, like like, if if if it was someone that, like, someone I trusted vouch for, I think I’d have a better experience. But, yeah, that person just hasn’t kind of come up yet.
So Yeah.
That’s really unfortunate.
It is, things that I’ve worked in the past for us have been basically I’ve always hired on referral. I’ve always as much as possible.
Always hired and run with a couple of test projects and with very little margin for error, basically.
Mhmm.
And so test projects are really important. If you’re not doing test projects, that is something you may wanna add in.
We pay them for the project, but, yeah, kind of gives you an idea of how they, communicate and things like that.
And like like I said, the other thing is it’s kind of evaluating and seeing whether, whether our own processes have a gap somewhere and need need fine tuning.
But but also making it very clear when we hire them, like, things like, okay. Time lines are key, and we just don’t have any wiggle room around that. Like, things like okay. Anything that’s gonna be directly impacting the client.
Because at the end of the day, the buck stops with you. Right? Yeah. I mean, it’s your name.
It’s your brand. Your client does not care whether you’re working with someone else for research. If your editor is sick, that is not your client’s problem.
So those are things that like, making sure that everyone that we hire has the same value system as that when it comes to so having those conversations early on has really, really helped. Like, in the initial conversations, whether it’s been with our editor, whether it’s been with a person who worked for research.
Full disclosure, we’ve had a designer in the past we preferred who’s dropped the ball for our clients. Like, never again would I ever send another person their way. Like, I don’t care what happened.
But yeah. So point being, these are certain things that have worked well for us, but it is unfortunate there are like, it’s it’s hard to find good talent.
Yeah. Yeah. It’s just the the emotional problems I think of, like, when you’re letting go of that control for the first time, which is really scary anyway.
And then Yeah.
Yeah.
And then And then people drop the ball.
Yeah. What?
And then what you fear happens happens, and it’s just Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. I know. I know. Which is why when, like, the first few times we worked with people who went above and beyond, I was like, oh, yeah. This is amazing.
Mhmm.
Never gonna work with anyone else again.
But, yeah, Punez, I would say ask people for referrals, like, instead of, like, hiring like, when you say when you’re hiring from within the community, is it, like, do you say, okay.
I have an opening for this, or do you say, okay. I’m looking for this person. Do you have any referrals? And when people refer, do you ask, have they worked with them? What was their experience like?
Like, what’s that process look like?
Yeah. I mean, it was more just people, like because I was a coach in freelance school for a while, so I had a, like, contact with people on, like, Friday socials and stuff. So I’d spent quite a lot of time with this person, who I’m thinking of. So I felt good hiring them.
And then yeah. I don’t know. I think it’s just like, what I find with freelancers, I think, is they’re watching their profitability so much that it means they, like, don’t spend as long as they should on quality control.
Is Pardon Frozen? Is it just me? Yeah. Okay.
Well, it doesn’t look like she’s gonna unfreeze.
Yeah. I mean, I think we’re at time anyway.
Yeah. I gotta go.
I might wait. I’ll wait for her to come back. Bye, Michelle.
Bye.
Anyways, let’s just kind of wrap this up.
Abby, feel free to, like, if some like, let let us know if there’s, like, a specific role you’re looking to hire for or whatever. If, you know, anyone comes to mind, I will definitely share referrals.
But all of this to say, yeah, this is par for the course, unfortunate, but, yeah, you Everyone’s gone through this. It’s a rite of passage.
It’s all No. I think I needed to hear that. Thank you, Prana.
Yeah.
You’re welcome. Alright. Thank you so much, everybody. I hope you all had fun. I want to see some struggling moments, from your transcripts in Slack next week.
So please tag me, and I will set up scheduled reminders to check-in with you all otherwise. Alright. Thank you, everyone. Bye.
Repurposing Content: Create Once. Distribute Forever.
Repurposing Content: Create Once. Distribute Forever.
Transcript
Awesome.
Well, I’m stoked you’re here, Ross, because we your book was our book of the month last month. Cool. And then we brought it back this month so everybody could have a good refresher before you join us today. So did. I know. I’m excited too, and I know that we’ve only got a little time with you.
We’ve got an hour, which is great, but you’re gonna do some teaching, I think, for the first little bit, and then we’ll break it to q and a.
How’s that sound?
Let’s do it. I’m excited.
Where, but, is everyone at? To jump in the quick chat, I’d love to know, like, where everyone’s calling in from just in the chat, if you don’t mind. It’d be amazing.
While you’re doing that, Sarah, can you make a note?
Let’s go. I love it. That’s awesome.
Yeah. I think my note taker’s here. You can kick that out if it’s still here.
Okay.
Doesn’t need to be here. I don’t know why it follows me.
Oregon, I’ve yet to make it there, but I have plans.
Ontario. Let’s go Canada. I love it. Cool. Montreal.
Very cool. Awesome. So I’m super excited to be here. I’m going to say those familiar words that all of us have heard over the last little bit.
The team has told me I’ve got, like, twenty to kinda go through the presentation, and then from there, we’re gonna jump into some q and a.
I might talk fast because I have a lot of slides and I have a lot to try to get through, but I’m going to do my absolute best to wrap in twenty.
I am also very, nonprecious. So if at any point anyone has questions, feel free to cut me off and let me know if you want to, have a live jam session on anything that I talk about today.
And, yeah, let’s get into it. So I’m going to just check. Everyone can see my screen? Everything looks good? Cool. So if you’re all familiar with the book, then you know that my favorite four words are create once distribute forever.
This is something that I’m super passionate about. It’s something that I I care deeply about, especially because when I first got into the industry, I really if you put my website, raw simmons dot com, into way back time machine, you’ll see that I had, like, a Mad Men inspired website design. When I was in, university, the show Mad Men kinda was the the thing that made me want to get into advertising.
And Don Draper was which was, like, the the king of advertising in the show was kinda, like, one of the, like, people who I was like, oh, that’s cool. He’s doing things right. And then as the show gets on, I’m like, okay. His life’s a little chaotic.
That’s not for me. But beyond that, we have gone through a time that I have to apologize for. And I apologize because, like, a lot of gurus, a lot of marketers have preached at the top of their lungs for way too long that you just need to create blog posts, you just need to write blogs, and you will win. And our clients have listened, and they have believed them.
I was one of those googlers. Like, when I first got out of school, when I first got in the industry, I was going to events and I was preaching. All you have to do is blog. Just blog, blog, blog, and you will win.
You’ll be successful. You just have to blog. And I realized over time that that was a massive mistake. Right?
Like, I realized that that young no facial hair guy with not a single gray in his hair was was screaming at this top of his lungs. This idea of create more blog posts and the world will be yours was a massive mistake, mistake, because a lot of people listen. A lot of brands started to produce a ton of blog posts, and we see it today. They created blog post after blog post after blog post.
When they think about what their content marketing strategy is, they’re exclusively thinking in blog posts, and that’s all they do over and over again. And even today, like, I will talk to a client, and I’ll be like, what’s your content strategy? And then they’ll pull up their content calendar and say, this is it. Like, this is our strategy.
We just need to write more blog posts and create more content, and it’s gonna be a little bit of SEO, a little bit of how to, and they think that’s it.
I think that a very real correction needs to take place. And it’s not this correction. Like, a lot of people are out there saying, just think like a media company. Hey.
If you think like a media company, you’ll still be successful. Is it I don’t know about you, but, like, the newspapers in Canada aren’t doing so well. Like, the media companies that we wanna emulate are probably not the newspapers of the past. Right?
Like, those media companies are are laying people off left, right, and center. Like, it’s it’s a chaotic mess. So when I talk to folks, they’re always like, Ross, you said content marketing work. And the truth is it does.
But everybody forgot that content marketing is a two word industry. Like, it’s not just content, content, content. It’s about marketing the content. And going back to some of the principles that if you watch Mad Men, you’ll remember is, like, looking for insights, understanding your customers, understanding the pains, understanding their problems, and actually doing research before you write a blog post that is rooted in the customer’s experience, their pains, their problems, and, like, a deep empathy for what’s going on in their worlds.
And when we think about the media companies today, the way I like to think about it is brands like MasterClass. Like MasterClass is literally putting on a MasterClass for marketers in how to take content and distribute it everywhere. It’s creating an asset, which is a course, and then it’s taking that course and it’s turning it into a bunch of different assets that it can disperse in derivative content on channels like Instagram, on TikTok, on LinkedIn, on Twitter, on YouTube, on all of these different places. And that’s more like the way that a media company should think.
And I don’t want anyone to say and tweet, oh, Ross is saying that we shouldn’t blog and blogging is dead. No. That’s not what I’m saying at all. I’m saying that we need to create content and things that are worth distributing, and we shouldn’t exclusively think about content as blog posts.
Yes. I know I’m preaching to the choir. You folks already know that at the end of the day, the assets that you produce have to be good. I believe in the four e’s.
And if you’ve read the book, you’re familiar with them. It’s the concept that content that you produce needs to either educate people, you need to engage people, entertain them, or empower them. If you do these four things with any type of content, and it doesn’t have to be all four at once, but if you do these types of assets and you create these pieces of content, you won’t get met with crickets. You will have people who adore the content.
They’ll appreciate the value you’re bringing into the world. They’ll like it. They’ll share it. They’ll engage.
That’s the fundamentals. Right? But then you have to distribute it. We have to recognize that the buying process is forever changed.
It’s not linear anymore. It’s not just like pick up a phone and call. It is a complex mess, especially if you are selling to other businesses. Like, there’s a lot of complexity that goes into reaching and selling to these folks.
And because of that, you have to adapt. And it’s a model in the book that I talk about that we’ve used that foundation to go from myself as a single freelancer to be able to build out an agency, to build out this company that’s working with some of the top brands in the world by simply embracing a simple shift. When I was a freelancer, I was just like the one person shop. I was in that rabbit hole of just produce, produce, produce.
But then when I started to distribute my content in the channels where the c suite execs that I actually wanted to connect to and sell to were spending time, I started to get more and more opportunities. And it’s a strategy that I’ve used not only to get them as clients, but also to allow them to generate clients as well. So today, I’m gonna share with you some of the strategies and the techniques. It’s pretty cut and dry.
Like, if you’ve read the book, you get it. You need to create valuable assets, and then you need to be committed to repurposing those assets into different ways. We had a hundred thousand downloads of our podcast because of this exact model. I’ve done it with blog posts for years dating back to, like, two thousand and twenty two.
I would write a blog post that broke down how Monday was able to scale their growth. I then turned that into a thread on x. I then turned it into a podcast that talks about the same concept. I then would create a YouTube video about it.
If the content resonates, you need to double down. Some of you have probably created a piece in the last six months that really moved the needle for you, but you haven’t promoted it again. You’ve never shared it again. You’ve never gone back to it and thought, oh, I should share this on LinkedIn or anything like that.
And that’s a massive mistake. If the content worked in q one of twenty twenty four, it’s probably gonna work in q one twenty twenty five. But for some reason, we get on this hamster wheel of new, new, new, new, new instead of going back to our greatest hits and repurposing them and resharing them. There was a piece that I created called the unbundling of Excel, like, years ago, and I continued to build on that month that concept again and again.
I created the unbundling of g Suite. I created this piece on the unbundling of, I think it was, like, Kijiji, the version of, what’s it in the US? It’s not Kijiji. It’s they’ve got, like, Craigslist.
It’s the Craigslist. Like, that type of concept.
Those things are, like, a go to insight around content market fit. My market wants this content. Let’s give it to them and switch it up. And then I used it again with my book to make it a bestseller.
Like, the ideas that I’m going to share with you truly do resonate. It’s funny. In this real picture without the book, it’s my wife and she was pregnant with our first she went to the event that I gave when I first showed this slide, and she was not happy. But she was like, babe, what are you doing?
You really cut me out. But it’s okay. The book the belt made it, so we’re alright.
This is the model, folks. Research, creation, distribution, optimization.
It’s simple. It’s probably sounds like very one zero one and basic, but it’s truly a game changing mentality that I would encourage everyone embrace. Right? Research your audience to to understand where they’re spending time, what channels they’re on, what they’re doing when they’re there, how they’re interacting with one another, what content they actually care about.
Go out and create the content that they do want. It doesn’t matter if it’s long form blog post. It doesn’t matter if it’s an infographic, a webinar, a YouTube video, podcast. It doesn’t matter.
You just have to create things that they want.
Distribute it relentlessly, Facebook groups, LinkedIn groups, newsletters, subreddits, all of those things, and then optimize it so it doesn’t collect us. So I wanna get really tactical.
Reddit is one of my favorite channels. I talk about it a lot. Not a lot of people like it. Some of you are already like, I’m not listening to this guy.
He’s talking about Reddit. I get it. I get it. Reddit is a very controversial place, but I love Reddit.
And there’s a lot of signals that are showing why Reddit matters. You look at Starbucks. You look at TD. Like, there’s top brands that are now investing in Reddit because there’s an audience there.
This motto, create once, distribute forever, was kind of rooted in some of the insights that I got early on on Reddit back in two thousand and eighteen. And I’ll share with you some of the updates on how I’m approaching Reddit today, but also how I’m thinking about distribution. We worked with Unbounce, a few years back, and this was the actual way in which we approached it. Like, you can see, the difference between the page views.
They had a bunch of blog posts that we didn’t put a distribution engine around, and then they had some that we did. And the pieces that we shared generated ten times more page views than those that didn’t. And this is because of distribution, writing the LinkedIn post, writing the threads, distributing it into forms and communities. That is the playbook.
So if we’re going to think like a media company, that media company should be Disney because Disney does it better than anyone. Even today, even though Snow White flopped, it’s still doing it better than everyone today. They go live with their movies and they are everywhere. They have licensing deals.
They have comics. They send their actors in on podcast tours. They have music deals. They’re always on the front of Spotify.
They have magazines, comics everywhere. Like, even Bluey’s made by Disney. Like, it’s wild. Like, they have everything rolling for them.
And that is what we need to be thinking like. We go in with research at the front, where you go in and you start to understand where your audience is. One of my favorite things to do, and I would encourage you to do this yourself with some of your clients, take their domain, site colon their domain, go to Reddit, put it in the search bar, hit enter, and then you’re gonna sort the content by top posts. Something beautiful is gonna happen. It’s going to look at all of Reddit and it’s going to identify if they have published any content over the last few years that generated a lot of comments, upvotes, and engagement.
And if they do, you might notice that this was a piece that was published three years ago. But that piece that was published three years ago is still generating more engagement than anything else that they created. So why aren’t we promoting and rewriting and creating and optimizing that content that went viral back in the day? Right? You can find some ridiculous insights here. With HubSpot, for example, you see this is the top post from six years ago that they ever published.
And it’s talking about the story of Ben and Jerry and how they met because they were slow kids. That’s an insight. It’s an insight that their audience probably would care about the founding stories behind some businesses so they could build on that time and time again. And they did. They went out and they bought this site called The Hustle, which did exactly that. Reddit, a few years ago, surpassed Facebook to be the third most visited website in the US, but marketers are still fearful of it. Reddit is showing up more and more in the SERP and when it comes to SEO than ever before.
We use this tool called stat to kinda measure Reddit and how often it’s showing up against, like, top ten sites, like, especially in b two b where we talk to SaaS companies. Some of the most valuable pieces you can create are, like, listicle style content that is about alternative pages and comparison pages. You’ll notice that Reddit continues to move up. This screenshot was from a few months back. I checked this morning, and I didn’t get a chance to update it. I tried to, but I left it on my desktop.
Reddit now has surpassed g two and Capterra for all of these queries. Right? The reason why this is interesting is because people, brands, and businesses spend tens of thousands of dollars every month with g two, Capterra, TrustRadius, and all of those other review sites, but they spend zero on Reddit. Yet people are using Reddit to make decisions around what products they actually buy.
So Reddit is showing up for very valuable keywords, and nobody is talking about it. If you go into Reddit and you start to answer these threads with questions and insights like this, it is very valuable. I wrote this one comment in a Reddit in a sub in a thread on Reddit talking of where somebody was asking, like, what skills do I need to get into marketing? And I talked about data analysts.
It’s like content creation distribution, marketing automation, and CRM data. And, of course, I referenced my book, Create Once Distribute Forever, and I saw five book sales off of a two minute exercise of writing this. I’m fast on the keys. But, like, that was out of two minutes.
I sold five books and it’s like that opportunity that exists for all of you. I’m not gonna make this entire thing about Reddit, but I do have a few quick rundown on how this all works because this is the money right here. At the end of the day, the same content that you’ve produced in any other channel works in Reddit. You just have to format it for Reddit.
These all look like blog posts. They all look the same. It looks like a LinkedIn update. That’s right.
That kind of content works on Reddit just like it does everywhere else. Why? Because all of us are just walking chemicals and balls of emotions, and we all still respond well to the same fundamental things that our ancestors did hundreds of years ago when they were reading Aesop’s fables. Like, at the end of the day, we’re still just people.
And we consume content on different channels, but if it taps into the insights around why humans care, it’s educational, engaging, entertaining, or empowering, it’s going to resonate with folks. This is another example. This is in a boring industry like MSPs where somebody created a piece that broke down how to fire, rehire their salespeople, and lessons to learn. It probably looks just like a blog post.
Kind of a little bit different with the intro because it’s short and sweet, but at the end of the day, it’s still the same fundamentals, and that’s how it works. Folks, LLMs and ChatGPTs change in everything. You all probably know this. You see it every day.
You’re probably tired of hearing about AI. I get it. I know. But let’s be honest.
It’s scraping all of our content. Whether we like it or not, everything you’ve ever published, it’s pretty much impossible at this point to stop it from being scraped. But it’s estimated that by twenty twenty six, it’s going to run out of high quality content on the web to actually scrape and use to inform the back end of the LLMs.
All of the LLMs happen to have a partnership with this little nifty site called Reddit. So they are scraping Reddit to get insights around the things that they should be saying when somebody is asking ChatGPT a question.
Reddit is also officially, as of earlier this week, the second most popular website in the US. So we can ignore it, or we can say there’s something that we should tap into here. Here. Create once, distribute forever.
So Facebook, a lot of people sleep on Facebook as well. I think it’s a massive opportunity. I think it’s well slept on, especially in b two b. There are groups on Facebook with hundreds of thousands of people who care about things that you want to talk about.
You might not be targeting digital marketers. You might have a certain niche that you go after. Let’s say, for example, you’re targeting doctors or physicians or health care professionals, whatever it might be. I guarantee you there is a Facebook group where those people are spending time.
You can go into those groups or you could even acquire them. I have one website that I’ve been running for a very long time that is focused on plant based food. I found a plant based Facebook group. It was filled with, I think, over twenty thousand people or something.
And I was like, hey. I noticed this page hasn’t been active since twenty fifteen. Would you sell it to me? They said, yes.
It turned out they also had a website. I said, thank you so much. I said, hey. Do you mind going for a better price?
They offered it for three grand. I was like, that’s ten cents a like. This is insane. A hundred percent.
Let’s do this transaction. I buy the page. I put up five posts promoting a guide that was helping people learn how to transition it from meat into plant based, and it paid for itself. Made three grand in a matter of a couple weeks.
This is the type of opportunity that exists when you start to think about how to distribute your content. I’m not gonna lie to you. I don’t think it’s, like, on Facebook’s, like, like, terms and conditions that this is allowed. You gotta kinda just, like, DM and take care of your stuff without, like, Facebook interference.
But this is a real opportunity.
Create once, distribute forever.
If you are ever on a podcast, if your clients are ever on a podcast, massive opportunity as well to say, we will repurpose this podcast for you and turn it into LinkedIn content. LinkedIn is still the king of b two b. It’s still the place to be, in my opinion. Everyone loves their own channels, but I still think even if it’s boring, it’s the number one channel for for professionals.
Remixing podcast interview content into video content still does wonders. I’m in LinkedIn’s learning program. This is all purely within the friend group here, but LinkedIn’s all in on video folks. Like, I’m they’re like a hundred and ninety percent all in foot on the gas about video content. If you can get into video content, if you can help your clients understand video content, or if you’re just trying to build new revenue streams, try video content. I my nickname in high school was Shy Ross. I don’t like doing video stuff, but I do it because I know it works, and that’s the only reason why I do it.
Remix your text posts. So turn your text posts into carousels. Carousels are still engaging on LinkedIn. They’re called PDFs. I think no.
Slot are they called they’re not they can’t call them PDFs because that’s Adobe’s trademark.
They must call them files or something. I forget exactly what it’s called, but they don’t they stop calling them carousels.
If your client or you are producing long form content, extract the data from those resources and then share the data on its own and tell them to share that data as isolated posts and social media content. It’s a great way to approach it.
The other piece is blog posts. If you have blog posts, you should turn them into LinkedIn articles. Another key insight that we’ve recently found is that linkedin dot com is more likely to be scraped by the LLMs than any other site. So if you are republishing your articles on LinkedIn, you are more likely to influence Chat GPT to see your content, and it thinks it’s super high quality.
This isn’t like, I’m not saying it’s right because I’ve gotten some weird responses from Chat GPT where it’s read some article on linkedin dot com, and it was like researchers are suggesting. And then I click to see what it is, and it’s like some random person who’s probably living in their parents’ basement who’s not a researcher at all. So if you wanna add value to the Internet, which you probably all heard doing, use this just as a way to, like, help the LLMs. And I know that sounds weird.
You’re helping the LLMs, but they it would be good for all of us. Remix your podcast interviews. If you’re doing any of this type of content, I love using tools like Flowgen, which is like an AI tool that listens to your entire podcast, identifies the best moments, and then identifies for you how to chop them up. Descript is also a great tool for this.
The motto is simple. Create once, distribute forever. If you can get yourself featured into Substacks, local newsletters, reach out, make friends with people, people are very much afraid to ask for things. I am all for it.
If you see a newsletter and you’re like, I wish I was featured in there, reach out to the person and say, hey. I just wrote this piece. I think your audience might find it valuable. The worst thing they’re gonna say is no, and life continues.
You’re not gonna remember that five minutes later.
Good old fashioned Google search is a great way to find the newsletters that you can reach out to if you’re trying to connect with CTOs or whoever it is. Like, just go to Google, type it in, find those people, and reach out to them. Again, create once, distribute forever. You all probably already know this, but not all assets are created equally.
Like, there’s a whole bunch of different things that you can create. And as marketers, as storytellers, it’s important that we remember this and educate our clients on this so they’re not rooted in this idea that all you can do is create blog posts. You can share memes. You can do thought leadership pieces.
You can create SEO content. There’s so many more pieces that you can create, but you do have to distribute those assets after you publish them. This is the way most people approach it. They, like, press publish on a piece.
They launch it. They share it on the channels that they own, and then they let it collect dust. What I encourage you to do is to share your content relentlessly. Go out into paid go out into niche channels and see it.
Like, go into Slack communities. Go into Discord. Go into forums. Spread that content. Go into Reddit.
Repurpose your old with new. Re share the old post from two weeks ago. Again, you can hit that reshare button. Do not be afraid to republish your content.
And if you must blog, like I said, turn them into other assets. I have done this time and time again. A blog might live on raw simmons dot com. It will become a LinkedIn article, then I’ll create a YouTube video talking about the exact same concept.
Once that is done, I’ll embed that video into all of the pieces that was created because Google loves YouTube. And if Google notices that if there’s a YouTube video embedded in a blog post, it’s more likely to rank it because Google makes more money off of people watching YouTube videos because it’s a part of their business model. They bought it for a billion dollars. Like, they’re they want YouTube to win.
Plan this in advance, though. Right? Like, one of the things that I would recommend is that if you are working on a blog post, a great way to I don’t know if this is your offer or any of you offer blog posts creation for your clients. But if so, one of the nice things that gave us a nice bit of margins in myself when I was a freelancer, a nice differentiator, was I’m not just gonna give you a blog post, but I’m gonna write you a Twitter thread.
I’m gonna write you two LinkedIn status updates, and I’m gonna write one for your sales team too so they can share it as well. Clients loved it because it was value add and it was additional. And if you can incorporate that into your package and your offer around copy, it’s great. If you need a way to do it very quickly, there is a tool called distribution dot a I, shameless plug, that I’m working on that I built where you can actually upload your blog post, your YouTube videos, and it will analyze your content, take all of the best practices directly out of the book.
We use the book to train the LMM behind it to actually craft content in your voice, but following our best practices around distribution. So for example, I was on a YouTube on a video with a podcast interview with the folks over at HubSpot. I uploaded it to distribution dot ai. I selected LinkedIn, and it used best practices to kinda create a status update that I would be okay with sharing.
I shared it on x. Got over a thousand and some impressions. It’s going to go out in a few minutes on my LinkedIn account as well, and this is all happening behind the scenes thanks to this type of tool. But I do encourage you to find ways to use AI to repurpose your content because I know that the the best part of, like, the process is creating the material.
So if you can put all of your energy and time into creating something amazing and then you let AI help you repurpose and distribute it, I hope that it evaporates all of the excuses that so many people make around I don’t have time to create and distribute my content. Now it should be easier.
Anyone remember this ad back in the day about Burger King with the moldy burger? I know it’s lunchtime for some folks. My apologies. That wasn’t the ad.
I made those in mid journey, and that’s something else that I wanna call out real quickly. Like, the power and the ability to create real looking images is wild. We all know this, but here’s a quick rundown on how I recently did this. I went to ChatGPT.
I gave it a bunch of my top quotes where I talk about the things that marketers do. It gave us a bunch of different examples. I then uploaded that to Canva. I said, Canva, can you, like, take these and put them into this image?
I got this, Mad Men inspired. I was like, oh, this is cool, but I wish you had some melanin. It went out and it actually modified that and changed it, had some that looked like me. I was like, cool.
This is great. Even better. I just scheduled a few of those after twenty minutes of, like, using AI to kinda go through that workflow, and it gave us eighteen thousand impressions and thirty new followers in a matter of minutes, folks. This is a wild time to be alive.
This is another image. It has two thousand some views. I uploaded a picture of myself. I said, turn me into a cartoon, Archie style, and then add this text, and it did that again in the matter of seconds.
It’s a wild time. Again, check out the tool, distribution dot ai. The model is simple, and you’re probably already freaking out. Like, that was close to twenty minutes.
I didn’t quite do it, but where in the world do I start? That was so much, right, in such a fast amount of time. It’s simple. Go back to the beginning and start embracing research.
It is a new dawn and it is a new day. Like, I think with all of you, if you are with Joe, you probably already understand the fundamentals of great copy. You understand the fundamentals of great storytelling and messaging. Perfect.
That’s where I want all of your attention to be. Create ridiculously valuable content and stories that turn heads, make people say, that’s amazing. I love that. And then tap into AI to repurpose and distribute your stuff more efficiently.
Let the world see it. It is such a shame. Some of you have probably created a piece of content in the last two years that would have fundamentally changed the trajectory of your career if you promoted it, if you distribute it, and if you didn’t jump right into the next thing to create.
That’s the thing that I I actually get upset about. So I’m not gonna say I hate, but, like, that bugs me. So many people are, like, one piece away from having a fundamentally different life, but the only thing holding them back is that they don’t promote their work, and it’s mind blowing to me. The industry is in turmoil.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not here to just be all butterflies and lollipops. I know things are chaotic out there. Back in twenty nineteen, things were smooth and great, and now it’s chaotic mess with AI, with all this stuff, budgets getting slashed.
I feel you. I one hundred percent feel you. It’s a complete chaos over the last couple of years. But if you embrace this framework, I think you’ll be able to come out of it okay.
I think if you embrace this idea of putting marketing back into marketing, you’ve already read the book. So thank you for checking it out. You’ll be able to really win. So I’m rooting for all of you.
Let me know if you have any questions. Again, as I mentioned, that was super fast, but happy to chat, happy to jam on anything. Yes. I know.
You have to rewatch this slower than one x speed. My bad.
That’s awesome.
Cool.
Thanks, Ross. Everybody knows to put up their hand, raise their hand if they have questions, which Cody’s done.
If you don’t mind if we go in the order Let’s do it.
Raising their hand. Cool.
Cody. Awesome.
So thank you so much for that. That was really eye opening. Awesome. And you’re you’re right. Like, we do neglect the marketing part of the content creation. I’m so guilty of that.
So I was watching Neil Patel the other day, and he was talking about content. And he says to validate the offer on x because or not the offer, the idea.
Mhmm. And if it works performs well there, then make something bigger out of it. Do you agree with that concept?
I agree with the concept, but I don’t agree with the channel. So the reason why I don’t agree with the channel is because Neil’s huge on x. You might not be. If you are not huge on x and your people aren’t on x, then don’t be on x.
If your audience is moms, then you’re going on Pinterest. You’re going on Instagram. Like, you’re you have to know where your audience is before we start throwing out those types of concepts, in my opinion. If my audience is, like, the gamer world, I’m not going on x.
I’m going to Reddit. If my audience is my dad, I’m going on Facebook. Right? So you have to and I have to have an audience.
So, like, I don’t have a bunch of my dads on my Facebook. I have one. So it’s like I would have to go into a Facebook group with, like, sixty year olds so dads who love Mustangs. So I have to go into that group.
I have to join it, and then I have to create something for them and see how they engage with that. So you have to go where your audience is. I love the idea of testing on channels. For me, x was that for a very long time.
But I’ll be honest, I think a lot of the people who I typically would sell to have left x, not to have a political conversation, but, like, x isn’t as popular. I don’t see as much reach as I used to.
Mhmm. That’s why I would lean more to LinkedIn a bit. But Mhmm. The concept at the heart is true. A hundred percent. You have to get content market fit. But where those people are is dependent on your own channel, the type of content you’re creating, etcetera.
Instagram, like, think of, the up and coming wave of marketers. Like, my hypothesis today would be that the up and coming marketer is learning about marketing on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube.
I think that’s where they’re at. I I don’t think they’re on x. I think they’re on LinkedIn and they’re intimidated, so they’re not publishing. But I think they’re consuming content on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube, and they’re learning from the people who are on those channels.
Perfect. Okay.
Thank you.
I hope that’s helpful.
I know I get too passionate about this stuff and just No.
Yeah. I am too passionate.
Hope that was helpful.
You. Awesome. Michelle or Jess, you can do rock, paper, scissors, I guess.
I had a question on the testing in the book.
So when you’re testing on a channel, are you testing different content Yeah.
For your users at the time and kind of kinda like an AB test looking at one of the other?
So it’s a few different things that I like to test. So I like to put out, like, micro content to test a idea.
So, if an idea resonates with people and it has, like, a if it has a signal, which could be comments, for example, then I know that this is stirring people up. So I know that this is a type of dialogue that gets people talking, gets people going. If it if I’m testing for, like, retweets, that tells me that this is something that resonates with people and that they want other people to view as, like, something that they care about. So you’re what you’re testing for is, like, a lot of different things, and you’re trying to just understand your people.
So, you run it sometimes it’s AB testing, but sometimes it’s just like, let’s throw this out there to the world and see how they react, and then let’s go deeper if you start to see those signals. So for example, the whole concept of create once distribute forever started with a test. And it was a long time ago, but I put out a post on x. And I just said, like, the problem isn’t that we, can’t create great content.
It’s that we don’t distribute it. And the post went off, and I was like, that’s a signal. A few months back, it was a again, it was probably in two thousand and twenty. Two thousand and twenty, I gave my first talk on AI.
And I was talking about it, and I had a lineup afterwards. So it’s not it’s another test. I’d went from being the guy who always talked about SEO and distribution, then I was like, okay. Let’s talk about AI and try something different.
Nobody was talking about AI. I was like, let’s do this. And people were, like, lined up. I was like, this is something.
This is this is probably something. So you look for the and I gave a talk one day. I gave a talk that used a bunch of, like, investment analogies.
No lineup. People hated it. Nobody cared. It’s like, never doing that again.
So so you use the material. Once you put it out to the world to kind of get a gut check on the response, and the lower your barrier to test, the better. So, like, a quick one off post on social, not writing the full blog post and article, just sharing an image that you’ve been creating, that type of thing. So, yeah, the tests tend to be in in that more of that regard.
Okay. Another quick question, if I can.
You’re welcome.
You mentioned Discord. Have you been on that channel?
I have.
And have you seen any success with it?
Yes. But only in weird weird industries.
So seen a lot of success with it in crypto. I’ve seen a lot of success with it in, like, DeFi, and I’ve seen a lot of success with it in, like, the that very technical engineering space. So, like, we work with clients who might be building the the back end of the Internet, so to speak, like the, so let’s say you’re playing a video game and you’re streaming, and it’s like, I’m streaming with some playing against somebody in Spain. We need to make sure there’s no lag.
So we have found discords where the engineers who, like, think about this stuff are spending time, and then we’ll see that content in there on behalf of our clients, and that stuff goes wild. Crypto is all Discord. I don’t Yeah. That’s if anyone’s in that world and you’re not thinking about Discord, you’re missing out on a massive play because that’s them.
And that’s why I was going back to that Neil Patel thing. It’s like, x isn’t gonna tell you what Discord will tell you in that type of a a community. So it’s important.
But yes.
Thank you.
No problem. Jess, over to you.
Cool.
This has been so awesome.
I’m super interested in talking more about Reddit. Cool. I have two questions about it. The first one is, would you recommend that your username has something to do, like, with your business?
Cool. Great question. So if you are talking about you, as in Jess, and you are, like, a person who happens to have a business, then no. I would say just go in as Jess or Jay Haney or whatever. Like, I operate on Reddit as r simmons or simmons with a zed. I’ve got two accounts.
And I do that intentionally because if you go into a subreddit and you have your brand associated with you, there are two they’ve already got the spidey senses going. They’re gonna ban you. They’re gonna block you. They’re gonna get rid of you.
Bye, Felicia. You’re over here. However, if you were doing it for a client and they are a professional business who has, like, a proper incorporation and, like, you don’t know it’s a it’s like a marketing manager, that person would be better served as being, Joe from Copy Hackers. Right?
Because they are a, representative of that brand, and you don’t want that individual to then leave and that account no longer be valuable to you. So the way I recommend it is if you are the founder and you’re on Reddit, use your name. You won’t get blocked. You won’t get banned.
However, if it is an employee of the organization, then it should be Ross from McDonald’s, Ross from Esso, whatever it might be. Like, you need to have that type of a because you don’t want that employee to think this is their thing that they can just run forever, and they’re forever branded as that individual. It’s a corporate asset. In the flip side of that, you should also have a brand one.
So for the brand itself, it should have its own channel. So your client should have their own username. If any of your clients today don’t even have their own subreddit, that’s a quick win that you should give them. Hey.
I noticed that there’s no subreddit that you own. Go and create your subreddit because if somebody else creates it, Reddit will not give you that back. It doesn’t matter if you have the trademark. It’s a community.
So a community is not privy to the trademark rights. A username would be so you could get their username, but you can’t get their subreddit. Some of you are thinking what in the world are the difference? Username is what you log into, kind of like a Facebook profile or a x profile.
The community is like a Facebook group on Reddit that is, like, public for people to join, and there’s a lot of them. If you create them, you become what is called a mod, and a mod has powers to kinda control what conversations go on within it. If your brands and your clients don’t have their own subreddit and somebody else controls the conversation within it, it can get really, really ugly, really messy, really quick.
Okay. That’s such a good point. I didn’t even think about creating a subreddit, like your own server. That’s so smart.
Okay.
So my next question is, do you also try to comment on other things that aren’t just you putting up posts about, you know Yeah.
Different content and all that kind of stuff. So when people dive in, it seems more like they’re legit. Yeah.
Exactly. So you try to balance it. You try to have a little bit of content. You try to have the majority associated with your industry and your space. But, like, during the Fantasy Football season, I’ll comment on football stuff because I don’t want someone to be like, oh, he’s only here to promote his work, so I’ll leave comments in other places. The other day, I put up a post, and I was just, like, breaking down the best pizza shops in my city.
And I did my actual I did the methodology. I’ve went to New York subreddit, and I sorted the content by top posts. The top post in New York was about the best pizza shops in New York.
I was like, I can do that, but for Halifax.
Looked at it, studied it, analyzed how they wrote it, what their style was. I did the exact same thing, but in Halifax, and I submitted it to the Halifax subreddit, made it to the front page of Reddit. Somebody gave me this thing called gold on Reddit because they were so grateful that I reviewed all of these pizza shops. It’s like, it works. It works. It’s as if I know what I’m talking about.
Yeah. So go into other things as well. Even if it’s just for the fun of it. I just I love this.
I love this stuff. So most people have normal lives, and they don’t wanna do it for fun, but I do it for fun. I’m just like, this is crazy. It it still works.
But yeah.
Oh, I mean, okay. This has made me actually excited about context. So you said LinkedIn. It’s like, what? But, like, I love Reddit.
So Cool. Cool.
This is sweet.
Yeah.
I love that.
That’s awesome.
Thank you.
No worries. Hey, Katie.
Hey. So first of all, I found your book on the Kobo store, and I was like, wow. What distribution win? I’m so glad that it was here.
Oh, good. Love it.
It’s funny.
I tried to, like, spread it across all of the stores because I know not everyone likes everyone. So I was like, let’s get this spread out. I love that. Thank you for checking it out.
Thank you.
Okay. I would like to ask a follow-up question about Reddit, and then, my original question was something else.
So as an agency, would you recommend that I create my own subreddit for my brand? Like, at what level does creating your own subreddit start to pay off?
Yeah. I would create it just to make sure that nobody else creates it, and then you always have it. You don’t need to, like, manage your subreddit and, like, actively post. You could. One benefit that I think would be there is to repost if you if your agency has a blog, reposting your blog post to your own subreddit, to me, is a smart move because the LLMs are scraper Reddit. So that could help you.
If you are like, the only successful service companies that I have seen on Reddit are ones that you don’t really want to kinda they’re not successful. They’re huge, but it’s huge because they have a huge team, and people are talking about how to get, like, promotions and stuff. Like, Accenture, they have a huge subreddit.
They didn’t create it, and it’s a Gong show. Like, it’s crazy. Like, people are there sharing salaries and stuff. Like, people are talking about whether or not they should how to apply for interviews.
It’s it’s chaos. So I would get it just to own it and make sure that you have it, and then seed your blog code intent into that community. But I would show up as you in, like depending on your audience. Like, there’s a there’s a bunch of mind if I just go rogue a little and show my screen?
Cool. So, like, like, there’s subreddits like this, social media marketing. I don’t know if that’s anyone’s audience, but, like, there’s a hundred and sixty seven thousand people who are in this subreddit.
What I like to do is sort the content by top posts. I would go in here. I would say this year. And then what I’m going to find right here look at this.
Stop creating content nobody watched. This is this is the memo of distribution. So, I would review all of this, and I’d be like, okay. What are people caring about?
Is organic social media growth dead? And then this was ten months ago. You could literally go in next month and create a piece that’s talking about I tried to understand if organic social was dead. Here’s what I found.
And you create that piece, and it’s going to probably generate as much conversation as this.
These are the types of things that I look at to better understand what I should be giving a subreddit.
This type of thing. So, like, my experience with Blaze dot ai. I’m sure you all of you have used a social media tool at some point or some type of asset. If you created a post for this community where you give a quick honest review on it, that’s gonna be gold.
That’s kind of the way that I would be thinking about going into that type of a space.
Like, for that one leads into my follow-up question if I can, Russ Russ about, like, when it comes to a call to action, we’re creating this content, like, especially on my blog is very focused on driving calls.
Yep.
So if I’m creating a post on Reddit, like, what kind of call to action I know Reddit’s particularly touchy, but, Yeah.
Yeah. What are your best practices for, like, revamping our call to action based on channel?
Great question. So on what I like to do is you you wanna so there’s rules on every subreddit. Some of them say you can’t have a link.
Link. What I like to do is have the call to action to say, like, if you’re interested, do a quick Google search for, like, create once distribute forever, which was in my screenshot. That gets them to my book. Or I’ll be like, if you found this valuable, send me a DM, and I’d be happy to send you something.
And then my DMs blow up. Like, I get tons of DMs from people. They are people. Like, that’s what we all have to remember.
It’s not just, like, pixels on the other end. These are humans.
And they will DM you, and they’ll ask you, hey.
Can I get this resource? Can I get this asset? Tell me a little bit more.
So I like to use those types of call to actions already. Another great call to action already is just simply say, like let me see if I can show you real quickly here.
On Reddit, you have the ability to, like, include links on your profile.
So you can have here it is. I don’t have one on this profile, but you can add add a description. So, like, you can put your domain here, in the description of your account. So when people do click on you, which they will, to see, like, what’s this person all about, they’ll click on that, they’ll see your domain, and then they’ll transition over to your actual account. So, leave your links in your bio kinda like on an Instagram or LinkedIn, that type of thing, and they’ll go find it.
Yeah. And you’ll be surprised how off like, some of my posts from two thousand eighteen still get me DMs from people saying, hey. I wanna check-in. Like, does this strategy on Instagram still work? Because I created a post years ago on, like, how we grew an account from fifteen to a hundred and fifty thousand followers, and then people loved it.
And they’re still right asking, do these strategies work? And the answer is no. They don’t. Instagram’s algorithm has gotten way smarter than it used to be back in the day.
But, yeah, like, you’ll the the ROI is lasting.
Jessica or Joe?
I got here first, Jessica.
Thanks, Ross. No one else had their hand up, so I jumped in.
I have three questions. I’m gonna try to keep them short, though. First one is, we’ve talked a lot about, like, organic promotion of your content.
I’m particularly interested in advertising on Reddit. Is it worth it? It wasn’t years ago. Is it today?
Only the remarketing. And don’t tell Reddit I said it. Okay. The only way that I see it working right now is remarketing.
So the people don’t give enough information to do very targeted advertising. So the people who are subscribed to marketing are like, who knows who it is? But the people who visit your website and who visit a specific page on your website are one hundred percent the person who has that intent. So if you install the Reddit pixel and you do remarketing and they happen to go on this site called Reddit, which is the second most popular site in the world, so they’re probably there, and you show up, Great.
That’s what you want. So I see ROI in the remarketing efforts. If you have an email list and you’re trying to get those people back in, you can do that on Reddit too. So uploading a remarketing and look alike style audience like play, that works ridiculously well on Reddit.
Cold amongst friends.
Done it. But I might have a LinkedIn post tomorrow saying that you should.
Awesome.
Question two was around high and this was one that I had before before you presented today. So, it could be that, like, your solution, your distribution AI, I think, is what I have saved in my tab, can do the job, but I’ve been wondering about hiring people. So we’ve had content creators over the years, but we haven’t had any real success with repurposing content, asking somebody to come in and repurpose. We’ve so much content. We’ve always had so much, and there’s always more, but we never repurpose it.
Thoughts on hiring someone to do this. Agencies haven’t worked for us.
Yeah. It’s not easy to do.
The it can work, but it’s it’s not easy to do. Like, you have to you have to hire someone who really gets content.
And if they don’t really get content and understand that, then it’s it’s tough. You have to hire I have found that you have to hire for the channel. It’s like the the skill sets tend to be channel exclusive. So if you’re, like, you’re the LinkedIn person, they can become excellent at LinkedIn and repackage and repurpose for LinkedIn, and that can become their day to day.
And that tends to go well. But the moment you say I also want you to be on threads and x and YouTube Yeah. The the it gets a little bit tricky. However, I do think with AI, it makes things a lot better, and I think you can put people through some training to get them closer now to be able to do a holistic effort.
But it is definitely a difficult role. I think, if you have a social media marketer, like, my perspective is that’s the best person to train on this stuff. It’s like somebody who understands social, get them to be trained and taught this effort. Yeah. Or, again, we’re trying to fix it, fix the problem with distribution dot AI. So, like, upload your content there and see how that does and give all the feedback and things like that. But, yeah, when you have a plethora of content, being able to repurpose it is the is the is the play, I find.
Yeah. And I’ve tried other AI solutions for it and, like, garbage. Like, nothing.
Never there.
No. Never there. Okay. I know. Jessica, I’m sorry. My question might actually be something that Jessica cares about too, given your background, Jess, but I’m wondering about your book title.
Yes.
The people in the room are writing books. A lot of people here are writing books.
Coming up with the title is horrible.
So hard. So hard.
And I know that you’ve you’ve repeated the thing through the title throughout the model is great ones to appear. So I love that, the way you kept doing that in your talk.
Thoughts on the title and how to get there?
Yeah. It was tough. Yeah.
And everyone had opinions on other titles that we should use, like how to do x, y, and z, ten x distribution, like all of these things. And then I was like, well, this is something that I’d be comfortable saying over and over again. Like, my advice would be to find something that you’re comfortable having very closely associated with your brand and your name for a very long time.
And that and then, like, how can you make it alluring to make somebody see it and be like, I get it. That’s that taps into the problem.
That’s what I wanted. I didn’t want to be so on your nose. And even though it the topics like how great creators spread their ideas and you can too, no one remembers that.
Absolutely. No one remembers that. But they do remember create once distribute forever. So my advice would be try to be punchy, try to make it memorable.
I think it’s good to, like I think there’s a there is value in doing somewhat of what people are doing, but I wanted to, like, go against it. Like, ten x distribution probably would have been a hit, and it would have resonated. All that type of stuff. Like, people care. Like, it it works.
But if you can put something together that’s a little bit more unique and out there and, like, sticks to your brand, I would say do that too.
Cool. Thanks so much, Ross.
Are you running another?
I have just signed my contract. Let’s go. Let’s go. So Congrats. Yeah. And tomorrow is the talk about the title, which is a nightmare.
Yeah. Fair. Thanks, Ross.
That’s cool. Yeah. Hi, Jessica.
Hi. Thank you so much. I actually really like the subtitle that I was trying to play with subtitles based off of yours, Ross, so I like it.
Oh, I love it. Thank you. Thank you.
Yeah. Okay. So this is actually transition as well because mine is related to books as well. I was just wondering, whether it’s based off of what you’re doing with your book or what you’ve seen out there. But I’m just curious how your model or method changes, or is it pretty much the same when you’re working with a book and distributing from that?
Yeah. The book launch was wild. It was fun.
It didn’t change. It was the same philosophy.
It just got aggressive. It just got really aggressive. Like, take everything that I’ve talked about, and it’s kind of like a chill experience of distribution. And then when the book happens, you have to ramp up to complete shamelessness and complete living the value of distribution and being relentless with it.
That was the the goal for, like, the month leading up to it. Every day, there’s going to be multiple social media posts about it. Every day, I’m sending an email to, like, get people excited about what’s to come. Every day, I’m on my Instagram sharing a story.
I’m on every podcast that it will take me to talk about it. I’m sending books to people to get them to read it. And even if they don’t read it, I’m asking them to write me an email or a quote about it.
You’re just ramping up to make it a hit.
That’s it. Like, you just go you just put in the headphones, drink a lot more coffee, and for a short period of time, you just sprint to be aggressive with the launch. That was my approach. The one thing that I wish I would have done, and it’s exactly what I just said, I wish I would have taken no other meetings, no other calls, had nothing else on my plate.
I wish I was a hundred percent. Clients are good. I’m not taking care of clients. I’m not taking care of team.
I am exclusively focused on the book.
I feel like that would have been better for my mental health, and I feel like it would have been better for the book.
So my advice is if you are getting up to a book launch date, allow it to be all encompassing, but also be ready to, like, focus there.
Because what I wish I would have done is, like, written long like, I would have documented the entire process of what I was doing to make the book a success because it would have went so well with this concept. So if I would have been every day, like, recording a video, alright. It’s day thirty. We’re thirty days out and then twenty nine, twenty eight, twenty seven. Like, people would have loved that. But the video would have actually been me talking with clients and going on stage and speaking at events, which all would have been good, but, like, I would have stayed so focused if I could go back in time.
The next one. There will be another.
Cool. Thank you. And, actually, I’ve heard a lot of authors say that very, I wish I had just dropped everything else. I don’t know. It seems like maybe it’s the unrealistic dream to just drop everything else and focus only on the book. So you’re not alone at least.
That’s fair.
That’s fair.
Thank you.
No problem at all.
I think that’s it with three minutes to spare largely because you talk so fast, which is That’s fair.
That is fair. What’s the book title? What you have to answer this. So where are you what what are you thinking? Do you have a Oh. Direction?
Oh. Oh, it’s a nightmare.
Is it?
So they I can’t even.
So it’s currently called I don’t know. And when you say you’re you have people to say it all the time. I kinda can.
The original okay. There are three. I’ll just fire through them. Y’all can just react.
The first you’re gonna hate them. Everybody hates my titles.
The first one is called now build a customer, and that’s on you’ve built a product. Okay. What if you were to approach creating customers the way you do a product, so engineering your message? So So that’s now build a customer, which my publisher and everybody I talk to hates. Copy selling is the other one. And then the third one is the revenue factory.
Oh. I got it. Interesting.
I just These are all three are they all the same book, though?
Well, the first one is it would have a different intro chapters. K. Cool. Chapters are different. Yeah.
Cool. Very cool.
I love it. Any initial thoughts, y’all?
Now that I know that Abby’s put it to a vote.
Abby.
It’s kind of like when your friends tell you their kids’ names. Oh, did I lose everyone?
No. We’re here. Oh.
Oh, sorry. It’s like when your friend I believe that the I’m going to treat this like when my friends tell me their kids’ names. I love all of them, Joanne.
They’re so good.
They’re so good. All of them. I know.
There you go.
I’m, looking forward to the conversation that I have with my publisher about it. So Good luck.
I do like credit. They are good.
But yeah.
Yeah. I yeah. I think the revenue factor is interesting, but you have to be ready to talk about revenue all the time.
I know. I know. I just don’t wanna talk about I’ve talked about copywriting for ten thousand years.
And that’s what the book is about.
Fair.
They’re just, like, a lot a lot.
Yeah. There’s so much jam on it.
Yeah. Oh, don’t open the door there.
I’ve got Bob and April on a not Bob messed up and April Dunford on a nonstop thread. They’re like, stop talking to us about this. I’m like, not until we find it.
I don’t blame you. That’s awesome.
Anytime. Nonstop.
That’s cool. I like that.
Thank you.
Thank you all. I hope, you all got some value out of this. If you didn’t, don’t tell me. I have thin skin.
I’m kidding. But no. I would love any feedback if you have any thoughts or questions. If you try distribution dot ai, let me know.
I really would appreciate any feedback that you have. If we’re not connected on LinkedIn, just send me a note. Let’s connect and say that you were at the Covey school. Of course, that would be great.
And then, yeah, I’d love to stay in touch, but appreciate you all. Thanks for the time, and see you on the Internet.
Appreciate you.
Thanks, Ross.
Thank you.
Thanks, everyone. Bye.
Worksheet
Transcript
Awesome.
Well, I’m stoked you’re here, Ross, because we your book was our book of the month last month. Cool. And then we brought it back this month so everybody could have a good refresher before you join us today. So did. I know. I’m excited too, and I know that we’ve only got a little time with you.
We’ve got an hour, which is great, but you’re gonna do some teaching, I think, for the first little bit, and then we’ll break it to q and a.
How’s that sound?
Let’s do it. I’m excited.
Where, but, is everyone at? To jump in the quick chat, I’d love to know, like, where everyone’s calling in from just in the chat, if you don’t mind. It’d be amazing.
While you’re doing that, Sarah, can you make a note?
Let’s go. I love it. That’s awesome.
Yeah. I think my note taker’s here. You can kick that out if it’s still here.
Okay.
Doesn’t need to be here. I don’t know why it follows me.
Oregon, I’ve yet to make it there, but I have plans.
Ontario. Let’s go Canada. I love it. Cool. Montreal.
Very cool. Awesome. So I’m super excited to be here. I’m going to say those familiar words that all of us have heard over the last little bit.
The team has told me I’ve got, like, twenty to kinda go through the presentation, and then from there, we’re gonna jump into some q and a.
I might talk fast because I have a lot of slides and I have a lot to try to get through, but I’m going to do my absolute best to wrap in twenty.
I am also very, nonprecious. So if at any point anyone has questions, feel free to cut me off and let me know if you want to, have a live jam session on anything that I talk about today.
And, yeah, let’s get into it. So I’m going to just check. Everyone can see my screen? Everything looks good? Cool. So if you’re all familiar with the book, then you know that my favorite four words are create once distribute forever.
This is something that I’m super passionate about. It’s something that I I care deeply about, especially because when I first got into the industry, I really if you put my website, raw simmons dot com, into way back time machine, you’ll see that I had, like, a Mad Men inspired website design. When I was in, university, the show Mad Men kinda was the the thing that made me want to get into advertising.
And Don Draper was which was, like, the the king of advertising in the show was kinda, like, one of the, like, people who I was like, oh, that’s cool. He’s doing things right. And then as the show gets on, I’m like, okay. His life’s a little chaotic.
That’s not for me. But beyond that, we have gone through a time that I have to apologize for. And I apologize because, like, a lot of gurus, a lot of marketers have preached at the top of their lungs for way too long that you just need to create blog posts, you just need to write blogs, and you will win. And our clients have listened, and they have believed them.
I was one of those googlers. Like, when I first got out of school, when I first got in the industry, I was going to events and I was preaching. All you have to do is blog. Just blog, blog, blog, and you will win.
You’ll be successful. You just have to blog. And I realized over time that that was a massive mistake. Right?
Like, I realized that that young no facial hair guy with not a single gray in his hair was was screaming at this top of his lungs. This idea of create more blog posts and the world will be yours was a massive mistake, mistake, because a lot of people listen. A lot of brands started to produce a ton of blog posts, and we see it today. They created blog post after blog post after blog post.
When they think about what their content marketing strategy is, they’re exclusively thinking in blog posts, and that’s all they do over and over again. And even today, like, I will talk to a client, and I’ll be like, what’s your content strategy? And then they’ll pull up their content calendar and say, this is it. Like, this is our strategy.
We just need to write more blog posts and create more content, and it’s gonna be a little bit of SEO, a little bit of how to, and they think that’s it.
I think that a very real correction needs to take place. And it’s not this correction. Like, a lot of people are out there saying, just think like a media company. Hey.
If you think like a media company, you’ll still be successful. Is it I don’t know about you, but, like, the newspapers in Canada aren’t doing so well. Like, the media companies that we wanna emulate are probably not the newspapers of the past. Right?
Like, those media companies are are laying people off left, right, and center. Like, it’s it’s a chaotic mess. So when I talk to folks, they’re always like, Ross, you said content marketing work. And the truth is it does.
But everybody forgot that content marketing is a two word industry. Like, it’s not just content, content, content. It’s about marketing the content. And going back to some of the principles that if you watch Mad Men, you’ll remember is, like, looking for insights, understanding your customers, understanding the pains, understanding their problems, and actually doing research before you write a blog post that is rooted in the customer’s experience, their pains, their problems, and, like, a deep empathy for what’s going on in their worlds.
And when we think about the media companies today, the way I like to think about it is brands like MasterClass. Like MasterClass is literally putting on a MasterClass for marketers in how to take content and distribute it everywhere. It’s creating an asset, which is a course, and then it’s taking that course and it’s turning it into a bunch of different assets that it can disperse in derivative content on channels like Instagram, on TikTok, on LinkedIn, on Twitter, on YouTube, on all of these different places. And that’s more like the way that a media company should think.
And I don’t want anyone to say and tweet, oh, Ross is saying that we shouldn’t blog and blogging is dead. No. That’s not what I’m saying at all. I’m saying that we need to create content and things that are worth distributing, and we shouldn’t exclusively think about content as blog posts.
Yes. I know I’m preaching to the choir. You folks already know that at the end of the day, the assets that you produce have to be good. I believe in the four e’s.
And if you’ve read the book, you’re familiar with them. It’s the concept that content that you produce needs to either educate people, you need to engage people, entertain them, or empower them. If you do these four things with any type of content, and it doesn’t have to be all four at once, but if you do these types of assets and you create these pieces of content, you won’t get met with crickets. You will have people who adore the content.
They’ll appreciate the value you’re bringing into the world. They’ll like it. They’ll share it. They’ll engage.
That’s the fundamentals. Right? But then you have to distribute it. We have to recognize that the buying process is forever changed.
It’s not linear anymore. It’s not just like pick up a phone and call. It is a complex mess, especially if you are selling to other businesses. Like, there’s a lot of complexity that goes into reaching and selling to these folks.
And because of that, you have to adapt. And it’s a model in the book that I talk about that we’ve used that foundation to go from myself as a single freelancer to be able to build out an agency, to build out this company that’s working with some of the top brands in the world by simply embracing a simple shift. When I was a freelancer, I was just like the one person shop. I was in that rabbit hole of just produce, produce, produce.
But then when I started to distribute my content in the channels where the c suite execs that I actually wanted to connect to and sell to were spending time, I started to get more and more opportunities. And it’s a strategy that I’ve used not only to get them as clients, but also to allow them to generate clients as well. So today, I’m gonna share with you some of the strategies and the techniques. It’s pretty cut and dry.
Like, if you’ve read the book, you get it. You need to create valuable assets, and then you need to be committed to repurposing those assets into different ways. We had a hundred thousand downloads of our podcast because of this exact model. I’ve done it with blog posts for years dating back to, like, two thousand and twenty two.
I would write a blog post that broke down how Monday was able to scale their growth. I then turned that into a thread on x. I then turned it into a podcast that talks about the same concept. I then would create a YouTube video about it.
If the content resonates, you need to double down. Some of you have probably created a piece in the last six months that really moved the needle for you, but you haven’t promoted it again. You’ve never shared it again. You’ve never gone back to it and thought, oh, I should share this on LinkedIn or anything like that.
And that’s a massive mistake. If the content worked in q one of twenty twenty four, it’s probably gonna work in q one twenty twenty five. But for some reason, we get on this hamster wheel of new, new, new, new, new instead of going back to our greatest hits and repurposing them and resharing them. There was a piece that I created called the unbundling of Excel, like, years ago, and I continued to build on that month that concept again and again.
I created the unbundling of g Suite. I created this piece on the unbundling of, I think it was, like, Kijiji, the version of, what’s it in the US? It’s not Kijiji. It’s they’ve got, like, Craigslist.
It’s the Craigslist. Like, that type of concept.
Those things are, like, a go to insight around content market fit. My market wants this content. Let’s give it to them and switch it up. And then I used it again with my book to make it a bestseller.
Like, the ideas that I’m going to share with you truly do resonate. It’s funny. In this real picture without the book, it’s my wife and she was pregnant with our first she went to the event that I gave when I first showed this slide, and she was not happy. But she was like, babe, what are you doing?
You really cut me out. But it’s okay. The book the belt made it, so we’re alright.
This is the model, folks. Research, creation, distribution, optimization.
It’s simple. It’s probably sounds like very one zero one and basic, but it’s truly a game changing mentality that I would encourage everyone embrace. Right? Research your audience to to understand where they’re spending time, what channels they’re on, what they’re doing when they’re there, how they’re interacting with one another, what content they actually care about.
Go out and create the content that they do want. It doesn’t matter if it’s long form blog post. It doesn’t matter if it’s an infographic, a webinar, a YouTube video, podcast. It doesn’t matter.
You just have to create things that they want.
Distribute it relentlessly, Facebook groups, LinkedIn groups, newsletters, subreddits, all of those things, and then optimize it so it doesn’t collect us. So I wanna get really tactical.
Reddit is one of my favorite channels. I talk about it a lot. Not a lot of people like it. Some of you are already like, I’m not listening to this guy.
He’s talking about Reddit. I get it. I get it. Reddit is a very controversial place, but I love Reddit.
And there’s a lot of signals that are showing why Reddit matters. You look at Starbucks. You look at TD. Like, there’s top brands that are now investing in Reddit because there’s an audience there.
This motto, create once, distribute forever, was kind of rooted in some of the insights that I got early on on Reddit back in two thousand and eighteen. And I’ll share with you some of the updates on how I’m approaching Reddit today, but also how I’m thinking about distribution. We worked with Unbounce, a few years back, and this was the actual way in which we approached it. Like, you can see, the difference between the page views.
They had a bunch of blog posts that we didn’t put a distribution engine around, and then they had some that we did. And the pieces that we shared generated ten times more page views than those that didn’t. And this is because of distribution, writing the LinkedIn post, writing the threads, distributing it into forms and communities. That is the playbook.
So if we’re going to think like a media company, that media company should be Disney because Disney does it better than anyone. Even today, even though Snow White flopped, it’s still doing it better than everyone today. They go live with their movies and they are everywhere. They have licensing deals.
They have comics. They send their actors in on podcast tours. They have music deals. They’re always on the front of Spotify.
They have magazines, comics everywhere. Like, even Bluey’s made by Disney. Like, it’s wild. Like, they have everything rolling for them.
And that is what we need to be thinking like. We go in with research at the front, where you go in and you start to understand where your audience is. One of my favorite things to do, and I would encourage you to do this yourself with some of your clients, take their domain, site colon their domain, go to Reddit, put it in the search bar, hit enter, and then you’re gonna sort the content by top posts. Something beautiful is gonna happen. It’s going to look at all of Reddit and it’s going to identify if they have published any content over the last few years that generated a lot of comments, upvotes, and engagement.
And if they do, you might notice that this was a piece that was published three years ago. But that piece that was published three years ago is still generating more engagement than anything else that they created. So why aren’t we promoting and rewriting and creating and optimizing that content that went viral back in the day? Right? You can find some ridiculous insights here. With HubSpot, for example, you see this is the top post from six years ago that they ever published.
And it’s talking about the story of Ben and Jerry and how they met because they were slow kids. That’s an insight. It’s an insight that their audience probably would care about the founding stories behind some businesses so they could build on that time and time again. And they did. They went out and they bought this site called The Hustle, which did exactly that. Reddit, a few years ago, surpassed Facebook to be the third most visited website in the US, but marketers are still fearful of it. Reddit is showing up more and more in the SERP and when it comes to SEO than ever before.
We use this tool called stat to kinda measure Reddit and how often it’s showing up against, like, top ten sites, like, especially in b two b where we talk to SaaS companies. Some of the most valuable pieces you can create are, like, listicle style content that is about alternative pages and comparison pages. You’ll notice that Reddit continues to move up. This screenshot was from a few months back. I checked this morning, and I didn’t get a chance to update it. I tried to, but I left it on my desktop.
Reddit now has surpassed g two and Capterra for all of these queries. Right? The reason why this is interesting is because people, brands, and businesses spend tens of thousands of dollars every month with g two, Capterra, TrustRadius, and all of those other review sites, but they spend zero on Reddit. Yet people are using Reddit to make decisions around what products they actually buy.
So Reddit is showing up for very valuable keywords, and nobody is talking about it. If you go into Reddit and you start to answer these threads with questions and insights like this, it is very valuable. I wrote this one comment in a Reddit in a sub in a thread on Reddit talking of where somebody was asking, like, what skills do I need to get into marketing? And I talked about data analysts.
It’s like content creation distribution, marketing automation, and CRM data. And, of course, I referenced my book, Create Once Distribute Forever, and I saw five book sales off of a two minute exercise of writing this. I’m fast on the keys. But, like, that was out of two minutes.
I sold five books and it’s like that opportunity that exists for all of you. I’m not gonna make this entire thing about Reddit, but I do have a few quick rundown on how this all works because this is the money right here. At the end of the day, the same content that you’ve produced in any other channel works in Reddit. You just have to format it for Reddit.
These all look like blog posts. They all look the same. It looks like a LinkedIn update. That’s right.
That kind of content works on Reddit just like it does everywhere else. Why? Because all of us are just walking chemicals and balls of emotions, and we all still respond well to the same fundamental things that our ancestors did hundreds of years ago when they were reading Aesop’s fables. Like, at the end of the day, we’re still just people.
And we consume content on different channels, but if it taps into the insights around why humans care, it’s educational, engaging, entertaining, or empowering, it’s going to resonate with folks. This is another example. This is in a boring industry like MSPs where somebody created a piece that broke down how to fire, rehire their salespeople, and lessons to learn. It probably looks just like a blog post.
Kind of a little bit different with the intro because it’s short and sweet, but at the end of the day, it’s still the same fundamentals, and that’s how it works. Folks, LLMs and ChatGPTs change in everything. You all probably know this. You see it every day.
You’re probably tired of hearing about AI. I get it. I know. But let’s be honest.
It’s scraping all of our content. Whether we like it or not, everything you’ve ever published, it’s pretty much impossible at this point to stop it from being scraped. But it’s estimated that by twenty twenty six, it’s going to run out of high quality content on the web to actually scrape and use to inform the back end of the LLMs.
All of the LLMs happen to have a partnership with this little nifty site called Reddit. So they are scraping Reddit to get insights around the things that they should be saying when somebody is asking ChatGPT a question.
Reddit is also officially, as of earlier this week, the second most popular website in the US. So we can ignore it, or we can say there’s something that we should tap into here. Here. Create once, distribute forever.
So Facebook, a lot of people sleep on Facebook as well. I think it’s a massive opportunity. I think it’s well slept on, especially in b two b. There are groups on Facebook with hundreds of thousands of people who care about things that you want to talk about.
You might not be targeting digital marketers. You might have a certain niche that you go after. Let’s say, for example, you’re targeting doctors or physicians or health care professionals, whatever it might be. I guarantee you there is a Facebook group where those people are spending time.
You can go into those groups or you could even acquire them. I have one website that I’ve been running for a very long time that is focused on plant based food. I found a plant based Facebook group. It was filled with, I think, over twenty thousand people or something.
And I was like, hey. I noticed this page hasn’t been active since twenty fifteen. Would you sell it to me? They said, yes.
It turned out they also had a website. I said, thank you so much. I said, hey. Do you mind going for a better price?
They offered it for three grand. I was like, that’s ten cents a like. This is insane. A hundred percent.
Let’s do this transaction. I buy the page. I put up five posts promoting a guide that was helping people learn how to transition it from meat into plant based, and it paid for itself. Made three grand in a matter of a couple weeks.
This is the type of opportunity that exists when you start to think about how to distribute your content. I’m not gonna lie to you. I don’t think it’s, like, on Facebook’s, like, like, terms and conditions that this is allowed. You gotta kinda just, like, DM and take care of your stuff without, like, Facebook interference.
But this is a real opportunity.
Create once, distribute forever.
If you are ever on a podcast, if your clients are ever on a podcast, massive opportunity as well to say, we will repurpose this podcast for you and turn it into LinkedIn content. LinkedIn is still the king of b two b. It’s still the place to be, in my opinion. Everyone loves their own channels, but I still think even if it’s boring, it’s the number one channel for for professionals.
Remixing podcast interview content into video content still does wonders. I’m in LinkedIn’s learning program. This is all purely within the friend group here, but LinkedIn’s all in on video folks. Like, I’m they’re like a hundred and ninety percent all in foot on the gas about video content. If you can get into video content, if you can help your clients understand video content, or if you’re just trying to build new revenue streams, try video content. I my nickname in high school was Shy Ross. I don’t like doing video stuff, but I do it because I know it works, and that’s the only reason why I do it.
Remix your text posts. So turn your text posts into carousels. Carousels are still engaging on LinkedIn. They’re called PDFs. I think no.
Slot are they called they’re not they can’t call them PDFs because that’s Adobe’s trademark.
They must call them files or something. I forget exactly what it’s called, but they don’t they stop calling them carousels.
If your client or you are producing long form content, extract the data from those resources and then share the data on its own and tell them to share that data as isolated posts and social media content. It’s a great way to approach it.
The other piece is blog posts. If you have blog posts, you should turn them into LinkedIn articles. Another key insight that we’ve recently found is that linkedin dot com is more likely to be scraped by the LLMs than any other site. So if you are republishing your articles on LinkedIn, you are more likely to influence Chat GPT to see your content, and it thinks it’s super high quality.
This isn’t like, I’m not saying it’s right because I’ve gotten some weird responses from Chat GPT where it’s read some article on linkedin dot com, and it was like researchers are suggesting. And then I click to see what it is, and it’s like some random person who’s probably living in their parents’ basement who’s not a researcher at all. So if you wanna add value to the Internet, which you probably all heard doing, use this just as a way to, like, help the LLMs. And I know that sounds weird.
You’re helping the LLMs, but they it would be good for all of us. Remix your podcast interviews. If you’re doing any of this type of content, I love using tools like Flowgen, which is like an AI tool that listens to your entire podcast, identifies the best moments, and then identifies for you how to chop them up. Descript is also a great tool for this.
The motto is simple. Create once, distribute forever. If you can get yourself featured into Substacks, local newsletters, reach out, make friends with people, people are very much afraid to ask for things. I am all for it.
If you see a newsletter and you’re like, I wish I was featured in there, reach out to the person and say, hey. I just wrote this piece. I think your audience might find it valuable. The worst thing they’re gonna say is no, and life continues.
You’re not gonna remember that five minutes later.
Good old fashioned Google search is a great way to find the newsletters that you can reach out to if you’re trying to connect with CTOs or whoever it is. Like, just go to Google, type it in, find those people, and reach out to them. Again, create once, distribute forever. You all probably already know this, but not all assets are created equally.
Like, there’s a whole bunch of different things that you can create. And as marketers, as storytellers, it’s important that we remember this and educate our clients on this so they’re not rooted in this idea that all you can do is create blog posts. You can share memes. You can do thought leadership pieces.
You can create SEO content. There’s so many more pieces that you can create, but you do have to distribute those assets after you publish them. This is the way most people approach it. They, like, press publish on a piece.
They launch it. They share it on the channels that they own, and then they let it collect dust. What I encourage you to do is to share your content relentlessly. Go out into paid go out into niche channels and see it.
Like, go into Slack communities. Go into Discord. Go into forums. Spread that content. Go into Reddit.
Repurpose your old with new. Re share the old post from two weeks ago. Again, you can hit that reshare button. Do not be afraid to republish your content.
And if you must blog, like I said, turn them into other assets. I have done this time and time again. A blog might live on raw simmons dot com. It will become a LinkedIn article, then I’ll create a YouTube video talking about the exact same concept.
Once that is done, I’ll embed that video into all of the pieces that was created because Google loves YouTube. And if Google notices that if there’s a YouTube video embedded in a blog post, it’s more likely to rank it because Google makes more money off of people watching YouTube videos because it’s a part of their business model. They bought it for a billion dollars. Like, they’re they want YouTube to win.
Plan this in advance, though. Right? Like, one of the things that I would recommend is that if you are working on a blog post, a great way to I don’t know if this is your offer or any of you offer blog posts creation for your clients. But if so, one of the nice things that gave us a nice bit of margins in myself when I was a freelancer, a nice differentiator, was I’m not just gonna give you a blog post, but I’m gonna write you a Twitter thread.
I’m gonna write you two LinkedIn status updates, and I’m gonna write one for your sales team too so they can share it as well. Clients loved it because it was value add and it was additional. And if you can incorporate that into your package and your offer around copy, it’s great. If you need a way to do it very quickly, there is a tool called distribution dot a I, shameless plug, that I’m working on that I built where you can actually upload your blog post, your YouTube videos, and it will analyze your content, take all of the best practices directly out of the book.
We use the book to train the LMM behind it to actually craft content in your voice, but following our best practices around distribution. So for example, I was on a YouTube on a video with a podcast interview with the folks over at HubSpot. I uploaded it to distribution dot ai. I selected LinkedIn, and it used best practices to kinda create a status update that I would be okay with sharing.
I shared it on x. Got over a thousand and some impressions. It’s going to go out in a few minutes on my LinkedIn account as well, and this is all happening behind the scenes thanks to this type of tool. But I do encourage you to find ways to use AI to repurpose your content because I know that the the best part of, like, the process is creating the material.
So if you can put all of your energy and time into creating something amazing and then you let AI help you repurpose and distribute it, I hope that it evaporates all of the excuses that so many people make around I don’t have time to create and distribute my content. Now it should be easier.
Anyone remember this ad back in the day about Burger King with the moldy burger? I know it’s lunchtime for some folks. My apologies. That wasn’t the ad.
I made those in mid journey, and that’s something else that I wanna call out real quickly. Like, the power and the ability to create real looking images is wild. We all know this, but here’s a quick rundown on how I recently did this. I went to ChatGPT.
I gave it a bunch of my top quotes where I talk about the things that marketers do. It gave us a bunch of different examples. I then uploaded that to Canva. I said, Canva, can you, like, take these and put them into this image?
I got this, Mad Men inspired. I was like, oh, this is cool, but I wish you had some melanin. It went out and it actually modified that and changed it, had some that looked like me. I was like, cool.
This is great. Even better. I just scheduled a few of those after twenty minutes of, like, using AI to kinda go through that workflow, and it gave us eighteen thousand impressions and thirty new followers in a matter of minutes, folks. This is a wild time to be alive.
This is another image. It has two thousand some views. I uploaded a picture of myself. I said, turn me into a cartoon, Archie style, and then add this text, and it did that again in the matter of seconds.
It’s a wild time. Again, check out the tool, distribution dot ai. The model is simple, and you’re probably already freaking out. Like, that was close to twenty minutes.
I didn’t quite do it, but where in the world do I start? That was so much, right, in such a fast amount of time. It’s simple. Go back to the beginning and start embracing research.
It is a new dawn and it is a new day. Like, I think with all of you, if you are with Joe, you probably already understand the fundamentals of great copy. You understand the fundamentals of great storytelling and messaging. Perfect.
That’s where I want all of your attention to be. Create ridiculously valuable content and stories that turn heads, make people say, that’s amazing. I love that. And then tap into AI to repurpose and distribute your stuff more efficiently.
Let the world see it. It is such a shame. Some of you have probably created a piece of content in the last two years that would have fundamentally changed the trajectory of your career if you promoted it, if you distribute it, and if you didn’t jump right into the next thing to create.
That’s the thing that I I actually get upset about. So I’m not gonna say I hate, but, like, that bugs me. So many people are, like, one piece away from having a fundamentally different life, but the only thing holding them back is that they don’t promote their work, and it’s mind blowing to me. The industry is in turmoil.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not here to just be all butterflies and lollipops. I know things are chaotic out there. Back in twenty nineteen, things were smooth and great, and now it’s chaotic mess with AI, with all this stuff, budgets getting slashed.
I feel you. I one hundred percent feel you. It’s a complete chaos over the last couple of years. But if you embrace this framework, I think you’ll be able to come out of it okay.
I think if you embrace this idea of putting marketing back into marketing, you’ve already read the book. So thank you for checking it out. You’ll be able to really win. So I’m rooting for all of you.
Let me know if you have any questions. Again, as I mentioned, that was super fast, but happy to chat, happy to jam on anything. Yes. I know.
You have to rewatch this slower than one x speed. My bad.
That’s awesome.
Cool.
Thanks, Ross. Everybody knows to put up their hand, raise their hand if they have questions, which Cody’s done.
If you don’t mind if we go in the order Let’s do it.
Raising their hand. Cool.
Cody. Awesome.
So thank you so much for that. That was really eye opening. Awesome. And you’re you’re right. Like, we do neglect the marketing part of the content creation. I’m so guilty of that.
So I was watching Neil Patel the other day, and he was talking about content. And he says to validate the offer on x because or not the offer, the idea.
Mhmm. And if it works performs well there, then make something bigger out of it. Do you agree with that concept?
I agree with the concept, but I don’t agree with the channel. So the reason why I don’t agree with the channel is because Neil’s huge on x. You might not be. If you are not huge on x and your people aren’t on x, then don’t be on x.
If your audience is moms, then you’re going on Pinterest. You’re going on Instagram. Like, you’re you have to know where your audience is before we start throwing out those types of concepts, in my opinion. If my audience is, like, the gamer world, I’m not going on x.
I’m going to Reddit. If my audience is my dad, I’m going on Facebook. Right? So you have to and I have to have an audience.
So, like, I don’t have a bunch of my dads on my Facebook. I have one. So it’s like I would have to go into a Facebook group with, like, sixty year olds so dads who love Mustangs. So I have to go into that group.
I have to join it, and then I have to create something for them and see how they engage with that. So you have to go where your audience is. I love the idea of testing on channels. For me, x was that for a very long time.
But I’ll be honest, I think a lot of the people who I typically would sell to have left x, not to have a political conversation, but, like, x isn’t as popular. I don’t see as much reach as I used to.
Mhmm. That’s why I would lean more to LinkedIn a bit. But Mhmm. The concept at the heart is true. A hundred percent. You have to get content market fit. But where those people are is dependent on your own channel, the type of content you’re creating, etcetera.
Instagram, like, think of, the up and coming wave of marketers. Like, my hypothesis today would be that the up and coming marketer is learning about marketing on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube.
I think that’s where they’re at. I I don’t think they’re on x. I think they’re on LinkedIn and they’re intimidated, so they’re not publishing. But I think they’re consuming content on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube, and they’re learning from the people who are on those channels.
Perfect. Okay.
Thank you.
I hope that’s helpful.
I know I get too passionate about this stuff and just No.
Yeah. I am too passionate.
Hope that was helpful.
You. Awesome. Michelle or Jess, you can do rock, paper, scissors, I guess.
I had a question on the testing in the book.
So when you’re testing on a channel, are you testing different content Yeah.
For your users at the time and kind of kinda like an AB test looking at one of the other?
So it’s a few different things that I like to test. So I like to put out, like, micro content to test a idea.
So, if an idea resonates with people and it has, like, a if it has a signal, which could be comments, for example, then I know that this is stirring people up. So I know that this is a type of dialogue that gets people talking, gets people going. If it if I’m testing for, like, retweets, that tells me that this is something that resonates with people and that they want other people to view as, like, something that they care about. So you’re what you’re testing for is, like, a lot of different things, and you’re trying to just understand your people.
So, you run it sometimes it’s AB testing, but sometimes it’s just like, let’s throw this out there to the world and see how they react, and then let’s go deeper if you start to see those signals. So for example, the whole concept of create once distribute forever started with a test. And it was a long time ago, but I put out a post on x. And I just said, like, the problem isn’t that we, can’t create great content.
It’s that we don’t distribute it. And the post went off, and I was like, that’s a signal. A few months back, it was a again, it was probably in two thousand and twenty. Two thousand and twenty, I gave my first talk on AI.
And I was talking about it, and I had a lineup afterwards. So it’s not it’s another test. I’d went from being the guy who always talked about SEO and distribution, then I was like, okay. Let’s talk about AI and try something different.
Nobody was talking about AI. I was like, let’s do this. And people were, like, lined up. I was like, this is something.
This is this is probably something. So you look for the and I gave a talk one day. I gave a talk that used a bunch of, like, investment analogies.
No lineup. People hated it. Nobody cared. It’s like, never doing that again.
So so you use the material. Once you put it out to the world to kind of get a gut check on the response, and the lower your barrier to test, the better. So, like, a quick one off post on social, not writing the full blog post and article, just sharing an image that you’ve been creating, that type of thing. So, yeah, the tests tend to be in in that more of that regard.
Okay. Another quick question, if I can.
You’re welcome.
You mentioned Discord. Have you been on that channel?
I have.
And have you seen any success with it?
Yes. But only in weird weird industries.
So seen a lot of success with it in crypto. I’ve seen a lot of success with it in, like, DeFi, and I’ve seen a lot of success with it in, like, the that very technical engineering space. So, like, we work with clients who might be building the the back end of the Internet, so to speak, like the, so let’s say you’re playing a video game and you’re streaming, and it’s like, I’m streaming with some playing against somebody in Spain. We need to make sure there’s no lag.
So we have found discords where the engineers who, like, think about this stuff are spending time, and then we’ll see that content in there on behalf of our clients, and that stuff goes wild. Crypto is all Discord. I don’t Yeah. That’s if anyone’s in that world and you’re not thinking about Discord, you’re missing out on a massive play because that’s them.
And that’s why I was going back to that Neil Patel thing. It’s like, x isn’t gonna tell you what Discord will tell you in that type of a a community. So it’s important.
But yes.
Thank you.
No problem. Jess, over to you.
Cool.
This has been so awesome.
I’m super interested in talking more about Reddit. Cool. I have two questions about it. The first one is, would you recommend that your username has something to do, like, with your business?
Cool. Great question. So if you are talking about you, as in Jess, and you are, like, a person who happens to have a business, then no. I would say just go in as Jess or Jay Haney or whatever. Like, I operate on Reddit as r simmons or simmons with a zed. I’ve got two accounts.
And I do that intentionally because if you go into a subreddit and you have your brand associated with you, there are two they’ve already got the spidey senses going. They’re gonna ban you. They’re gonna block you. They’re gonna get rid of you.
Bye, Felicia. You’re over here. However, if you were doing it for a client and they are a professional business who has, like, a proper incorporation and, like, you don’t know it’s a it’s like a marketing manager, that person would be better served as being, Joe from Copy Hackers. Right?
Because they are a, representative of that brand, and you don’t want that individual to then leave and that account no longer be valuable to you. So the way I recommend it is if you are the founder and you’re on Reddit, use your name. You won’t get blocked. You won’t get banned.
However, if it is an employee of the organization, then it should be Ross from McDonald’s, Ross from Esso, whatever it might be. Like, you need to have that type of a because you don’t want that employee to think this is their thing that they can just run forever, and they’re forever branded as that individual. It’s a corporate asset. In the flip side of that, you should also have a brand one.
So for the brand itself, it should have its own channel. So your client should have their own username. If any of your clients today don’t even have their own subreddit, that’s a quick win that you should give them. Hey.
I noticed that there’s no subreddit that you own. Go and create your subreddit because if somebody else creates it, Reddit will not give you that back. It doesn’t matter if you have the trademark. It’s a community.
So a community is not privy to the trademark rights. A username would be so you could get their username, but you can’t get their subreddit. Some of you are thinking what in the world are the difference? Username is what you log into, kind of like a Facebook profile or a x profile.
The community is like a Facebook group on Reddit that is, like, public for people to join, and there’s a lot of them. If you create them, you become what is called a mod, and a mod has powers to kinda control what conversations go on within it. If your brands and your clients don’t have their own subreddit and somebody else controls the conversation within it, it can get really, really ugly, really messy, really quick.
Okay. That’s such a good point. I didn’t even think about creating a subreddit, like your own server. That’s so smart.
Okay.
So my next question is, do you also try to comment on other things that aren’t just you putting up posts about, you know Yeah.
Different content and all that kind of stuff. So when people dive in, it seems more like they’re legit. Yeah.
Exactly. So you try to balance it. You try to have a little bit of content. You try to have the majority associated with your industry and your space. But, like, during the Fantasy Football season, I’ll comment on football stuff because I don’t want someone to be like, oh, he’s only here to promote his work, so I’ll leave comments in other places. The other day, I put up a post, and I was just, like, breaking down the best pizza shops in my city.
And I did my actual I did the methodology. I’ve went to New York subreddit, and I sorted the content by top posts. The top post in New York was about the best pizza shops in New York.
I was like, I can do that, but for Halifax.
Looked at it, studied it, analyzed how they wrote it, what their style was. I did the exact same thing, but in Halifax, and I submitted it to the Halifax subreddit, made it to the front page of Reddit. Somebody gave me this thing called gold on Reddit because they were so grateful that I reviewed all of these pizza shops. It’s like, it works. It works. It’s as if I know what I’m talking about.
Yeah. So go into other things as well. Even if it’s just for the fun of it. I just I love this.
I love this stuff. So most people have normal lives, and they don’t wanna do it for fun, but I do it for fun. I’m just like, this is crazy. It it still works.
But yeah.
Oh, I mean, okay. This has made me actually excited about context. So you said LinkedIn. It’s like, what? But, like, I love Reddit.
So Cool. Cool.
This is sweet.
Yeah.
I love that.
That’s awesome.
Thank you.
No worries. Hey, Katie.
Hey. So first of all, I found your book on the Kobo store, and I was like, wow. What distribution win? I’m so glad that it was here.
Oh, good. Love it.
It’s funny.
I tried to, like, spread it across all of the stores because I know not everyone likes everyone. So I was like, let’s get this spread out. I love that. Thank you for checking it out.
Thank you.
Okay. I would like to ask a follow-up question about Reddit, and then, my original question was something else.
So as an agency, would you recommend that I create my own subreddit for my brand? Like, at what level does creating your own subreddit start to pay off?
Yeah. I would create it just to make sure that nobody else creates it, and then you always have it. You don’t need to, like, manage your subreddit and, like, actively post. You could. One benefit that I think would be there is to repost if you if your agency has a blog, reposting your blog post to your own subreddit, to me, is a smart move because the LLMs are scraper Reddit. So that could help you.
If you are like, the only successful service companies that I have seen on Reddit are ones that you don’t really want to kinda they’re not successful. They’re huge, but it’s huge because they have a huge team, and people are talking about how to get, like, promotions and stuff. Like, Accenture, they have a huge subreddit.
They didn’t create it, and it’s a Gong show. Like, it’s crazy. Like, people are there sharing salaries and stuff. Like, people are talking about whether or not they should how to apply for interviews.
It’s it’s chaos. So I would get it just to own it and make sure that you have it, and then seed your blog code intent into that community. But I would show up as you in, like depending on your audience. Like, there’s a there’s a bunch of mind if I just go rogue a little and show my screen?
Cool. So, like, like, there’s subreddits like this, social media marketing. I don’t know if that’s anyone’s audience, but, like, there’s a hundred and sixty seven thousand people who are in this subreddit.
What I like to do is sort the content by top posts. I would go in here. I would say this year. And then what I’m going to find right here look at this.
Stop creating content nobody watched. This is this is the memo of distribution. So, I would review all of this, and I’d be like, okay. What are people caring about?
Is organic social media growth dead? And then this was ten months ago. You could literally go in next month and create a piece that’s talking about I tried to understand if organic social was dead. Here’s what I found.
And you create that piece, and it’s going to probably generate as much conversation as this.
These are the types of things that I look at to better understand what I should be giving a subreddit.
This type of thing. So, like, my experience with Blaze dot ai. I’m sure you all of you have used a social media tool at some point or some type of asset. If you created a post for this community where you give a quick honest review on it, that’s gonna be gold.
That’s kind of the way that I would be thinking about going into that type of a space.
Like, for that one leads into my follow-up question if I can, Russ Russ about, like, when it comes to a call to action, we’re creating this content, like, especially on my blog is very focused on driving calls.
Yep.
So if I’m creating a post on Reddit, like, what kind of call to action I know Reddit’s particularly touchy, but, Yeah.
Yeah. What are your best practices for, like, revamping our call to action based on channel?
Great question. So on what I like to do is you you wanna so there’s rules on every subreddit. Some of them say you can’t have a link.
Link. What I like to do is have the call to action to say, like, if you’re interested, do a quick Google search for, like, create once distribute forever, which was in my screenshot. That gets them to my book. Or I’ll be like, if you found this valuable, send me a DM, and I’d be happy to send you something.
And then my DMs blow up. Like, I get tons of DMs from people. They are people. Like, that’s what we all have to remember.
It’s not just, like, pixels on the other end. These are humans.
And they will DM you, and they’ll ask you, hey.
Can I get this resource? Can I get this asset? Tell me a little bit more.
So I like to use those types of call to actions already. Another great call to action already is just simply say, like let me see if I can show you real quickly here.
On Reddit, you have the ability to, like, include links on your profile.
So you can have here it is. I don’t have one on this profile, but you can add add a description. So, like, you can put your domain here, in the description of your account. So when people do click on you, which they will, to see, like, what’s this person all about, they’ll click on that, they’ll see your domain, and then they’ll transition over to your actual account. So, leave your links in your bio kinda like on an Instagram or LinkedIn, that type of thing, and they’ll go find it.
Yeah. And you’ll be surprised how off like, some of my posts from two thousand eighteen still get me DMs from people saying, hey. I wanna check-in. Like, does this strategy on Instagram still work? Because I created a post years ago on, like, how we grew an account from fifteen to a hundred and fifty thousand followers, and then people loved it.
And they’re still right asking, do these strategies work? And the answer is no. They don’t. Instagram’s algorithm has gotten way smarter than it used to be back in the day.
But, yeah, like, you’ll the the ROI is lasting.
Jessica or Joe?
I got here first, Jessica.
Thanks, Ross. No one else had their hand up, so I jumped in.
I have three questions. I’m gonna try to keep them short, though. First one is, we’ve talked a lot about, like, organic promotion of your content.
I’m particularly interested in advertising on Reddit. Is it worth it? It wasn’t years ago. Is it today?
Only the remarketing. And don’t tell Reddit I said it. Okay. The only way that I see it working right now is remarketing.
So the people don’t give enough information to do very targeted advertising. So the people who are subscribed to marketing are like, who knows who it is? But the people who visit your website and who visit a specific page on your website are one hundred percent the person who has that intent. So if you install the Reddit pixel and you do remarketing and they happen to go on this site called Reddit, which is the second most popular site in the world, so they’re probably there, and you show up, Great.
That’s what you want. So I see ROI in the remarketing efforts. If you have an email list and you’re trying to get those people back in, you can do that on Reddit too. So uploading a remarketing and look alike style audience like play, that works ridiculously well on Reddit.
Cold amongst friends.
Done it. But I might have a LinkedIn post tomorrow saying that you should.
Awesome.
Question two was around high and this was one that I had before before you presented today. So, it could be that, like, your solution, your distribution AI, I think, is what I have saved in my tab, can do the job, but I’ve been wondering about hiring people. So we’ve had content creators over the years, but we haven’t had any real success with repurposing content, asking somebody to come in and repurpose. We’ve so much content. We’ve always had so much, and there’s always more, but we never repurpose it.
Thoughts on hiring someone to do this. Agencies haven’t worked for us.
Yeah. It’s not easy to do.
The it can work, but it’s it’s not easy to do. Like, you have to you have to hire someone who really gets content.
And if they don’t really get content and understand that, then it’s it’s tough. You have to hire I have found that you have to hire for the channel. It’s like the the skill sets tend to be channel exclusive. So if you’re, like, you’re the LinkedIn person, they can become excellent at LinkedIn and repackage and repurpose for LinkedIn, and that can become their day to day.
And that tends to go well. But the moment you say I also want you to be on threads and x and YouTube Yeah. The the it gets a little bit tricky. However, I do think with AI, it makes things a lot better, and I think you can put people through some training to get them closer now to be able to do a holistic effort.
But it is definitely a difficult role. I think, if you have a social media marketer, like, my perspective is that’s the best person to train on this stuff. It’s like somebody who understands social, get them to be trained and taught this effort. Yeah. Or, again, we’re trying to fix it, fix the problem with distribution dot AI. So, like, upload your content there and see how that does and give all the feedback and things like that. But, yeah, when you have a plethora of content, being able to repurpose it is the is the is the play, I find.
Yeah. And I’ve tried other AI solutions for it and, like, garbage. Like, nothing.
Never there.
No. Never there. Okay. I know. Jessica, I’m sorry. My question might actually be something that Jessica cares about too, given your background, Jess, but I’m wondering about your book title.
Yes.
The people in the room are writing books. A lot of people here are writing books.
Coming up with the title is horrible.
So hard. So hard.
And I know that you’ve you’ve repeated the thing through the title throughout the model is great ones to appear. So I love that, the way you kept doing that in your talk.
Thoughts on the title and how to get there?
Yeah. It was tough. Yeah.
And everyone had opinions on other titles that we should use, like how to do x, y, and z, ten x distribution, like all of these things. And then I was like, well, this is something that I’d be comfortable saying over and over again. Like, my advice would be to find something that you’re comfortable having very closely associated with your brand and your name for a very long time.
And that and then, like, how can you make it alluring to make somebody see it and be like, I get it. That’s that taps into the problem.
That’s what I wanted. I didn’t want to be so on your nose. And even though it the topics like how great creators spread their ideas and you can too, no one remembers that.
Absolutely. No one remembers that. But they do remember create once distribute forever. So my advice would be try to be punchy, try to make it memorable.
I think it’s good to, like I think there’s a there is value in doing somewhat of what people are doing, but I wanted to, like, go against it. Like, ten x distribution probably would have been a hit, and it would have resonated. All that type of stuff. Like, people care. Like, it it works.
But if you can put something together that’s a little bit more unique and out there and, like, sticks to your brand, I would say do that too.
Cool. Thanks so much, Ross.
Are you running another?
I have just signed my contract. Let’s go. Let’s go. So Congrats. Yeah. And tomorrow is the talk about the title, which is a nightmare.
Yeah. Fair. Thanks, Ross.
That’s cool. Yeah. Hi, Jessica.
Hi. Thank you so much. I actually really like the subtitle that I was trying to play with subtitles based off of yours, Ross, so I like it.
Oh, I love it. Thank you. Thank you.
Yeah. Okay. So this is actually transition as well because mine is related to books as well. I was just wondering, whether it’s based off of what you’re doing with your book or what you’ve seen out there. But I’m just curious how your model or method changes, or is it pretty much the same when you’re working with a book and distributing from that?
Yeah. The book launch was wild. It was fun.
It didn’t change. It was the same philosophy.
It just got aggressive. It just got really aggressive. Like, take everything that I’ve talked about, and it’s kind of like a chill experience of distribution. And then when the book happens, you have to ramp up to complete shamelessness and complete living the value of distribution and being relentless with it.
That was the the goal for, like, the month leading up to it. Every day, there’s going to be multiple social media posts about it. Every day, I’m sending an email to, like, get people excited about what’s to come. Every day, I’m on my Instagram sharing a story.
I’m on every podcast that it will take me to talk about it. I’m sending books to people to get them to read it. And even if they don’t read it, I’m asking them to write me an email or a quote about it.
You’re just ramping up to make it a hit.
That’s it. Like, you just go you just put in the headphones, drink a lot more coffee, and for a short period of time, you just sprint to be aggressive with the launch. That was my approach. The one thing that I wish I would have done, and it’s exactly what I just said, I wish I would have taken no other meetings, no other calls, had nothing else on my plate.
I wish I was a hundred percent. Clients are good. I’m not taking care of clients. I’m not taking care of team.
I am exclusively focused on the book.
I feel like that would have been better for my mental health, and I feel like it would have been better for the book.
So my advice is if you are getting up to a book launch date, allow it to be all encompassing, but also be ready to, like, focus there.
Because what I wish I would have done is, like, written long like, I would have documented the entire process of what I was doing to make the book a success because it would have went so well with this concept. So if I would have been every day, like, recording a video, alright. It’s day thirty. We’re thirty days out and then twenty nine, twenty eight, twenty seven. Like, people would have loved that. But the video would have actually been me talking with clients and going on stage and speaking at events, which all would have been good, but, like, I would have stayed so focused if I could go back in time.
The next one. There will be another.
Cool. Thank you. And, actually, I’ve heard a lot of authors say that very, I wish I had just dropped everything else. I don’t know. It seems like maybe it’s the unrealistic dream to just drop everything else and focus only on the book. So you’re not alone at least.
That’s fair.
That’s fair.
Thank you.
No problem at all.
I think that’s it with three minutes to spare largely because you talk so fast, which is That’s fair.
That is fair. What’s the book title? What you have to answer this. So where are you what what are you thinking? Do you have a Oh. Direction?
Oh. Oh, it’s a nightmare.
Is it?
So they I can’t even.
So it’s currently called I don’t know. And when you say you’re you have people to say it all the time. I kinda can.
The original okay. There are three. I’ll just fire through them. Y’all can just react.
The first you’re gonna hate them. Everybody hates my titles.
The first one is called now build a customer, and that’s on you’ve built a product. Okay. What if you were to approach creating customers the way you do a product, so engineering your message? So So that’s now build a customer, which my publisher and everybody I talk to hates. Copy selling is the other one. And then the third one is the revenue factory.
Oh. I got it. Interesting.
I just These are all three are they all the same book, though?
Well, the first one is it would have a different intro chapters. K. Cool. Chapters are different. Yeah.
Cool. Very cool.
I love it. Any initial thoughts, y’all?
Now that I know that Abby’s put it to a vote.
Abby.
It’s kind of like when your friends tell you their kids’ names. Oh, did I lose everyone?
No. We’re here. Oh.
Oh, sorry. It’s like when your friend I believe that the I’m going to treat this like when my friends tell me their kids’ names. I love all of them, Joanne.
They’re so good.
They’re so good. All of them. I know.
There you go.
I’m, looking forward to the conversation that I have with my publisher about it. So Good luck.
I do like credit. They are good.
But yeah.
Yeah. I yeah. I think the revenue factor is interesting, but you have to be ready to talk about revenue all the time.
I know. I know. I just don’t wanna talk about I’ve talked about copywriting for ten thousand years.
And that’s what the book is about.
Fair.
They’re just, like, a lot a lot.
Yeah. There’s so much jam on it.
Yeah. Oh, don’t open the door there.
I’ve got Bob and April on a not Bob messed up and April Dunford on a nonstop thread. They’re like, stop talking to us about this. I’m like, not until we find it.
I don’t blame you. That’s awesome.
Anytime. Nonstop.
That’s cool. I like that.
Thank you.
Thank you all. I hope, you all got some value out of this. If you didn’t, don’t tell me. I have thin skin.
I’m kidding. But no. I would love any feedback if you have any thoughts or questions. If you try distribution dot ai, let me know.
I really would appreciate any feedback that you have. If we’re not connected on LinkedIn, just send me a note. Let’s connect and say that you were at the Covey school. Of course, that would be great.
And then, yeah, I’d love to stay in touch, but appreciate you all. Thanks for the time, and see you on the Internet.
Appreciate you.
Thanks, Ross.
Thank you.
Thanks, everyone. Bye.
Beginning to Coach the Conversion for New Leads / Subs
Beginning to Coach the Conversion for New Leads / Subs
Transcript
Sweet. Alright. We’re gonna dive in. So this is, like, our first call post all that glorious goal setting we did back in December.
December. Yeah. How is that for everybody? Any, like, lingering questions from the goal setting marathon?
Anything to share there?
I think it was good because now, you know, how everyone’s, oh, New Year’s resolutions. You know? I’ve already had it all set, and I’m just rolling right into it.
So Sweet.
Amazing. Beautiful.
My mind is racing.
I know the feeling.
Cool. Sweet. Alright. Let’s dive in. I’m gonna pull up this keynote.
Gosh. You take, like, ten days off from Zoom calls, and you get so rusty, and you forget where the share button is. It’s like relearning tech.
There we go.
Sweet. Before I kick it, who here has taken either ten x launches or ten x sales pages before?
Sweet. We got a few hands up. Sweet. Alright. So definitely not a prerequisite, but, good to know.
So this is our first session of January. It’s gonna be all about engaging and nurturing new leads. This one is all about how to do so with what is affectionately known as the coaching of the conversion method and a very specific confirmation email template that y’all, may have already seen it in the workbook. If not, we’ll see momentarily.
So super, super brief coaching the conversion primer. This is something I’ve typically taught in, like, you know, hour long plus sessions. So this is the two minute version of it. But, essentially, it goes like this.
The version of your prospect who opted in to your funnel, to your lead magnet, to whatever it is that brought them into your ecosystem is not the same version that says yes to your core offer. Right? And there are a series of milestones, which may come in the form of certain beliefs that they now have, certain states, things they now feel, whether that is feeling encouraged, empowered, optimistic, certain awarenesses, things they are aware of now that they weren’t aware of a few minutes ago or a few weeks a few weeks ago and certain micro actions that they’ve taken. And all these things are needed to bridge what I call a pre customer, someone who comes into your ecosystem into a customer, someone who is a natural yes to your thing and your marketing and the messaging structures you use within it are essentially tools to bridge the gap via a process that we call coaching the conversion.
I said we call coaching the conversion, but I’m really speak for myself.
One second.
Do not eat almond before a call. Those things get stuck in, like I’m just gonna call it the tracheal cavity cavity tracheal cavity as if I’ve taken premed classes, which I haven’t. I don’t know. I think I totally made up made that up. The tracheal cavity.
Cool. So I have an unreasonable completely unreasonable because it’s impossible, but it’s an unreasonable belief that every lead who enters a conversion ecosystem, aka funnel, should convert. Like, I always get surprised. I’m like, why isn’t everyone who’s coming into this funnel converting?
It makes no sense to me. So I have this unreasonable belief that everyone who comes into our funnel, especially if we’ve done our job in targeting that top of funnel effectively, targeting people who actually have that moment of high ascension, that problem we’re talking about, people who truly desire that solution we’re talking about, I have this unreasonable belief that absolutely everybody should convert, and I get, like, almost insulted when one person doesn’t buy. And one on one sales tells us that, yeah, we should raise our standards. Thirty to sixty percent should be expected.
Right? This is what a typical one on one salesperson will convert out of warm leads. Right?
So that is a far cry from, I don’t know, the one to three percent that, you know, automated funnels or non one on one sales funnels produce that.
So this is a classic case of aim for ten x, right, and be cool with two to three x of typical conversion rates. Right? And this is essentially where the whole coaching to conversion method was birthed from, was me listening to a ton of recordings from one on one salespeople converting at upwards of fifty percent and being like, dang. Wouldn’t it be cool if we could do that at scale? Like, why should we be settling for one to three percent when people who are in these dynamic one on one scenarios with the same type of leads that our marketing is attracting are closing at thirty, fifty, sixty percent.
So coaching the conversion, it plays out across different assets, different types of funnels.
Ten x launches was the first course we released on it, which essentially coached the conversion through a launch. Someone enters your launch. They go through the prelaunch. They go through the actual launch. The cart closed, and we’re coaching different states, awarenesses, beliefs throughout that.
Ten x sales pages, which you all have access to, coaches the conversion vertically. Right? Pre customer, someone who lands on your page, sees the hero section. Customer, someone who gets to the end of it, clicks buy now. Right? So that is coaching the conversion vertically.
Sales conversation, that’s another type of ecosystem. Engineering the enrollment is another course that teaches that. So coaching the conversion plays out across multiple different types of ecosystems, but they all involve the same process of digging into the very basic stuff. Right?
Where are they now? Pre customer. And as a marketer, you get to decide this to some extent through your targeting, which I think is an amazing thing. We get to define our pre customer.
How cool is that? Where do they need to be for a yes to be natural? Right? This is our customer.
This is our voice of customer research. What were those final states, those final awarenesses? What was the energy? What was the feeling of someone who said yes?
Right? What did they believe before they said yes? So we get to actually reverse engineer this. And how can I facilitate that transformation at scale?
And none of this is guesswork. Right? We have the data on the anatomy of what a customer is. We get to target who our pre customer is.
Right? And, therefore, we get to make certain hypotheses of what that transformation is and attempt to do it at scale. So coaching the conversion with new leads, fresh leads via email, I’d venture to say, is one of the most important conversion contacts. And your confirmation slash welcome email will nearly almost always be the most highly opened email, like, out of all the emails in your system.
Like, you could go into your ActiveCampaign. That first email that gets sent is typically the one that’s gonna have the highest open rate, except for the ones with the click baity subject lines that, you know I don’t know. I’ve seen some pretty good click baity emails in my time. But, yeah, you’re gonna get a lot of eyeballs on this, a lot of attention and awareness on this one.
Definitely a lot more in email one than email number two, so it’s it’s gotta pull its weight. It’s gotta earn its real estate in your funnel. It will also set the tone of your relationship with your prospect. It’s typically where they decide if you’re gonna be the friend zoned person, the person who puts out great content that they love, the person who sends great newsletters but they never actually buy from, or the person who gets fiercely compensated.
So this is really a big tone setter in that regard.
Alright. Some high level principles when it comes to coaching, the conversion, and a confirmation email. So the more specific and intent based the opt in, the easier it is to coach the next step. And I’ll give you some really clear examples.
So if someone opts in for a workshop called how to make ten k per month as a freelancer in twenty twenty five, that’s excellent. Right? You know their goal. You know what they’re signing up for.
Versus a lead magnet on things every copywriter should know about selling. That’s great. That’s kind of mid. That’s middle ground.
Versus the best copywriter newsletter ever. Right? Vague, general, broad. You have no way of knowing who that pre customer is when they opt in for that.
Right?
So in my experience, a paid low ticket opt in, even if it’s a workshop that costs five dollars, will always almost always signal stronger intent and commitment than a free webinar or a free report. That’s why I love, love, love, love, love implementing and working with paid low ticket workshops.
Even things that people have typically used for free, I love just making it paid. It helps us clearly define who that pre customer is when someone actually takes out their credit card to even exchange five bucks.
One thing I will note, after years of trying to get people to acknowledge this fact, right, it is almost impossible to coach the conversion off of a general newsletter opt in. Right? Like, it can’t be done. There are too many assumptions and stretches you’re making on a general newsletter opt in.
So before you do that, you definitely need to segment that list, segment those leads, get them to raise their hand, and define themselves as as a certain type of pre customer. Right? So we do have templates for that. I think I taught this inside, CSP early in twenty twenty four.
But you could definitely look for the coffee date email template. That’s a really good one for segmenting your list and getting general opt ins to define themselves as something more specific where you can then coach the conversion in a more intentional and direct way.
And this is the biggest principle.
Essentially, the better your top of funnel targeting is, especially via ad creative. If you’re ad creative, if your Instagram reels, if your LinkedIn post could speak so specifically, right, to that top of funnel avatar, the more conversion milestones will heart will have already been met. So a conversion milestone, for example, is someone having a moment of high attention. Right? Being aware of a moment that they no longer want to experience with respects to that problem.
Another milestone is them being aware of certain solutions. Another milestone is them having tried certain things that haven’t worked. Right?
The more you can meet someone who’s already gone through that, the less you actually have to coach, the less steps within that journey that your marketing is responsible to lead them through. And it is really expensive and really time consuming to lead someone through an entire journey. Right? So the biggest hack you can give yourself is to begin that journey, begin that pre customer journey a little further down that line. Right? And your top of funnel targeting, the ad creative, the LinkedIn post, the Instagram reel is essentially what makes your copy have to work less hard down the line.
So your tofu targeting, in a perfect world, this is the first thing I would audit right before I write any email sequence for anybody. Right? Is are we making sure that we are bringing the right people into this funnel? And by right people, not just meaning people who have this problem, but people who are aware of it.
Right? I’m aware, moment of high tension, things that they absolutely no longer want to experience again in their lifetimes, that they have a known and desired outcome and resonate with what I call the moment of heightened pleasure. They know what success looks like, and they’re committed to it because they have that frustration and confusion within that gap. So this is all super basic, but it’s all worth returning to when it comes to our top of funnel targeting.
Right? The more of these boxes we could check off and the more intense these things are true for the people we’re targeting, the less hard our copy is gonna have to work. So when this is true, when we’ve checked these boxes, when our top of funnel marketing is dialed in, then your confirmation email can coach what I call the big three. But before we get into that, few quick rules more than ever.
Forget everything you’ve learned about nurturing in twenty twenty fourteen when the world moves slower and meta algorithms didn’t show your prospect ads for your competitors three minutes later. So this is a thing now more than ever. Now that the algorithms for ad platforms are getting so smart and so dialed in, Essentially, if someone opts in to your lead magnet, opts into your workshop, they’re going to be getting ads for your competitors a few minutes later on their feeds. Right?
So this is permission to move faster than you would otherwise. Right? Most marketers think they need to warm up cold leads, quote, unquote, when in reality, if they’ve targeted their top of funnel properly, they need to keep warm leads hot and use that fire to coach progress towards a solution. So always on the side of assuming movement and readiness and siding with speed.
Once again, time delay stagnancy is your enemy, especially when your prospect, your leads are gonna be getting presented other options, other solutions from your competitors literally within seconds or minutes. So unless your primary goal is to build a media company or a newsletter or an influencer brand, do not lead with your backstory. Email one shouldn’t just be, you know, an introduction about you. It shouldn’t just be authority content that is disconnected to the problem that the top of funnel piece or content or ad suggested that they have.
Right? So a very easy hack here to kinda balance the two. I love putting any authority content, whether it’s, like, books you’ve written or podcasts you’ve appeared on, or any other type of, like, backstory stuff you have in your email signature. That way you have, like, the passive credibility and authority content that they could just kind of, like, click through if they truly desire that.
But once they enter your funnel, if you’ve done your targeting right, you’re really trying to establish movement towards that end state.
So the big three, you can think of this big three as a source code, right, where you can use any tactic, any strategy, any messaging structure within your arsenal to coach them. It’s essentially these are three milestones, three states that you get to coach, and you get to use the tools available to you. You get to get creative about how you structure emails as long as they’re establishing these three. So the first one is coaching relevance because these are a few of the questions your prospect is gonna ask immediately, whether they’re consciously asking themselves this in their head or they are subconsciously making sure there’s a match here. Right? Am I in the right spot?
Is this message mirroring back my exact moment of highest tension that I want to escape? Is this relevant?
Is this message mirroring back the moment of heightened pleasure or moment of highest pleasure I want to achieve?
Is this message meeting me in what I’ve already done, tried, and failed at? And is this message pointing to an offer, opportunity, or next step that gives me new hope? Right? So if you get a yes to all five of these, you have coached relevance, and you need to coach this right off the bat. Do not waste time. Do not send out any other messaging, propping yourself up as an authority, positioning your brand until you’ve coached relevance.
Next is resonance. Right? Do they resonate with you, with your assessment of them, with your diagnosis of the problem, with your unique solution, and with your understanding and empathy of the entire situational gestalt? So one of the things I love to do in my marketing is talking about the stakes involved, the second degree effects of the main problem, right, the secret fears that they have around it. So really get dimensional about how problems appear in people’s lives, right, and get resonance around what you are mirroring back to them. And then the most important is coaching response ability, their ability to respond, their willingness to respond.
Making a purchase, saying yes, is an action. That is a response. Right? If we could get them to start taking microactions right away, ascending in the intimacy between what you’re doing, right, and them.
Right? So that could look like watching a paid workshop that they just bought. Right? That could mean engaging in a direct message or an Instagram chat or taking an assessment via score app or interact or a quiz or replying to a personal video message or replying to the email or booking call.
Essentially, what we are coaching on that very first email is can we get them to take that next action with us. Right? Not later, not on email number two when open rates have gone down anywhere between thirty thirty to fifty percent, but can we get can we get that next monumental action right here on the first email? So this is a little bit of extra theory.
This is something I created, like, a few years ago in a program that was called automated in intimacy. I can’t use that anymore because AI has totally taken on different dimensions. But, essentially, we’re trying to move people to this top right quadrant. Right?
The majority of sales happen as touch points ascend in intimacy and dynamism. Right? So we have a lot of marketing that exists in the bottom left quadrant. This is static.
It’s a one way dialogue. Right? And it’s impersonal. It’s one to many. But the more we move to that top right, the more we see higher and higher conversion rates.
Right? So this is just a little bit of an extra framework to see if you can get that next touch point to be more intimate than their initial one. Can you get any form of two way dialogue, dynamic dialogue?
And, essentially, that is one way to coach the conversion via greater intimacy.
So let’s put it all together. This is called the perfect confirmation email template, and it’s really simple. It’s, like, two hundred and fifty words that incorporates all this, you know, sciency stuff. It’s not even sciency.
I don’t even know what to call it. But, yeah, this is what incorporates everything we just talked about. So step one is to confirm and celebrate the opt in action or the event, right, to just mirroring back the action they just took. So this is one I wrote recently for a paid workshop paid workshop opt in.
That’s right. Cool. So hey. And then I blanked out the name. My team just nudged me to let me know you claimed a spot in the Art Money Power workshop.
Right? So just mirroring back what they just did. Now we have this whole section on coaching relevancy, which probably means so that’s a really good segue into this section for coaching relevancy.
That like the five hundred plus others who’ve said, hell yes, and now we mirror back. Right? Who they are. You’re an established fine artist who wants to sell more art pieces in twenty twenty five at higher prices.
That has you proving all dem doubters wrong as you sign a lease for that industrial loft with the exposed brick. Right? Little moment of highest pleasure there. It also means that you’re probably so effing done with trying to prove yourself to the leeches of the industry.
So moment of highest tension stuff. The agents who don’t return your calls. The art galleries who take a crazy cut and return your untold pieces with nasty stains and, oh my god, are there someone’s greasy ass fingerprints. Right?
Real moment of highest tension information we get from our voice of customer data. The art contest judged by other grad school burnouts who probably chat GPT their feedback without even looking because what they wrote makes no effing sense, and all the other disempowering ways the pick me, choose me, love me art industry has robbed you of your profits and your power.
So after reading this, like, section of maybe a hundred and a hundred and fifty words, right, there is zero chance anyone reading this would find this would essentially not know whether this was relevant for them. It’s either gonna be hyper relevant, like hyper agreement, or very clear that this isn’t for them. Right? So this is about coaching relevancy.
Next, coaching resonance. So a lot of this will have already established some resonance, but we wanna create even more resonance right around the new way of doing things. So if you caught yourself nodding, then you probably also be beyond stoked to learn and apply the same direct to customer luxury strategies that my students are using to attract kind collectors, cut out the middleman, and cash five bigger checks on the regular while finally knowing they’ve made it. Right?
So resonance around their end goal, resonance around the method for doing it. And then we coach responsibility, encouraging that next step, that next ascension on that paid spectrum or that paid, framework that we just went through. Now here’s the deal. If you close this email, then that dream remains just that, a dream.
Fun to pay and should be to live. But if this whole combo feels hyper relevant and you’re committed to making twenty twin twenty twenty five a living master masterpiece, then I highly recommend that you, one, watch the art money power workshop right away. So that is one form of coaching responsibility. And then the next, DM me power on Instagram to kick start your seventy two hour hybrid coaching and get a little unannounced bonus gift.
Trust me. You’ll love it. So I love adding a little bit of a teaser, a little unexpected gift for them taking an action that has sent them on the intimacy scale. So this is one tactic if you’re doing any form of evergreen workshops, evergreen webinars that I absolutely love.
So on the page or the workshop, one of the bonuses is called hybrid coaching. Right? So we acknowledge that this is prerecorded.
And because they can’t answer questions live, part of it the bonus they get is they get seventy two hours of q and a and hybrid coaching with this person and her team. Right? So this is a way to engage that level of intimacy and real time coaching even within an evergreen workshop.
I’m crazy passionate about helping fine artists like you reclaim their power, dignity, and profit from traditional art establishment as long as you’re all in, I’m all in with you. Cool. So that is the template. Really simple, and it’s pulling a lot of weight in relatively little words.
And, yeah, this is where we really take advantage of the fact that this first email is going to be the most opened, and we get right to the point. We coach relevancy. We coach resonance, and this is really our main goal. Our main goal is to initiate that one on one chat right off the bat, to not waste time with that because we know that if we can get a lead to engage one on one with this coach and with her team, that the likelihood of that lead converting and moving to that final conversion is gonna be that much higher.
Cool. I think that’s all we got. So I’m gonna stop my share and open the floor for any questions, any, brainstorms you all wanna have about how you might apply this in your own business for your own funnels or for funnels you’re working on per client.
Right. Where can I find the workbook?
Did you get a did you get a copy of it in your email yet?
I didn’t even look at my email. I have to see. Yeah.
It’s possible it got sent out. If not, Okay. And I could probably let me see if I can just download a copy.
No. Message me on Slack if you can access it, and I should be able to, drop a file for you. Cool.
Sure.
No problem. Cody.
Okay. So with that template you just showed us, is that supposed to be in this workbook, or is that somewhere else?
That is supposed to be in the workbook. Yeah.
Okay. Because I’m looking at the workbook, and I don’t see it in here.
Alright. So it’s possible that an updated version just didn’t get updated, like, while the crew was on holiday break.
But Alright.
What I can definitely do is, yeah, I’ll download it, copy of it, and I’ll send it to you over on Slack.
Awesome. Thanks.
Cool. Jess?
Okay. I love this. One of the things that I’ve been noodling on while you were talking was, with the diagnostic.
Mhmm.
And so if you were running, like, a group diagnostic, and let’s say you’re running it as, like, a webinar, you know, you start collecting sign ups, like, a week out or something. What would you recommend that you put in the, like, the responsibility of, like, here’s what I need you to do? Like, what’s that action that you would recommend that we prompt them with?
Right. So if they’ve already opted in for a webinar, that would go through that. Right?
Mhmm.
That’s a good question. Right? So, like, if there is an assessment, like, a self assessment that they could go through beforehand, like, essentially, you could take parts of what you go through on that webinar and just give them a faster self assessment version of it, right, of, like Mhmm. If this is something that you just got their attention with, because it’s you’re doing this live, right, the webinar?
Yeah.
Right.
So one thing you wanna defend against on live webinars, right, is, like, people being really aware and really kind of, like, motivated to solve it in the moment they sign up, and then there’s this gap and this lag and life happens. Right? So, essentially, it’s kind of like a skip the line type thing. Right? It’s like, take this assess take this assessment here. If you see your own gaps and wanna talk about it, like, send over your results.
So, yeah, it’s like, take this assessment, and let me know, like, where you scored, where you noticed that you’re a little weaker. Right? And we can kick start that conversation sooner.
I like that. And because one of the things I think that was really impactful for me when I did Jo’s assessment thing was, like, her walking through it and explaining it all. And I feel like, especially with the diagnostic, I don’t know that it would have and, obviously, I don’t have, like, the assessment, but I feel like the the walking it through and explaining it, it would almost have to be, like, instead of showing up live to the webinar, here’s a recording of me, like, walking you through it, and then why would they show up live.
So I’m wondering if what are your thoughts on asking for, like, a DM or a reply to be like, what is, like, your experience with x, y, and zed problem to, a, get some, like, VOC, but then to also open up that conversation, like, in the upper quadrant there of, like, the sales quadrant that you shared.
Yeah. I think it’s a great idea. I think anything you could do to get that one on one conversation right away from that moment of I’ll I’ll call it a moment of heightened receptivity. Right?
They just saw your webinar landing page. It resonated. They’re like, yes to this. They signed up.
You’re top of mind in that moment. If they’re able to take that next action to ascend in the intimacy scale right there and then, like, even if it’s a button on your landing page around, like, you know, send me a quick DM, like, letting me know what inspired. Like, there’s the surveys we have sometimes on landing pages of, like, what inspired you to do this thing. I prefer, like, just a bun.
Like, tell me. Right, at this stage of our business when we’re making those sales. Like, that doesn’t need to go through SurveyMonkey. Like, just send that straight to my inbox so that we can have that conversation now.
There’s this, it’s, like, so stupid symbol, and it works so well. I can’t remember who coined it, but it’s like I think it was, like, called the non webinar webinar or the webinar that doesn’t matter. And it was, like, someone who is running webinar funnels just for the purpose of starting DM conversations, and it’s almost like the webinar itself didn’t even matter. Right?
And, of course, it did matter. There was a legit webinar there. But the whole purpose was, like, sign up for the webinar. You know you have someone who is resonating with the messaging around the webinar, and then just get them into that one on one conversation right away.
Right? Like, what inspired you to join? Right? Like, where do you think you might be weak when it comes to this?
Right? And get into that exploratory conversation.
And that person had more conversions happening from people who didn’t even see the webinar. Right? It was just a right? So don’t insist on just because we’ve crafted these, like, amazing webinars and workshops with all the right diagnostics, like, don’t insist on that being the only way someone could come to work with you. Right? Mhmm. Like yeah.
Okay. Cool. Thank you. And I have another question, but I’ll let Joseph go. And if there’s time, I’ll ask another.
For sure.
Thanks, Joseph.
Go for it, Joseph.
Ryan, that was awesome.
So how like, what does planning your marketing like, your funnel automation look like now? Like, considering what you like like like you said, you know, like, your training has completely changed.
And today, you showed us that, like, that initial first email.
Mhmm. But I guess what does, like, what does planning the automation look like like for you now? Or, like, do or does the workbook cover that?
So it doesn’t go deeper than this template. So Okay. I mean, I could go through kinda, like, what my basic funnels look like. Right? Or we could make it more specific to something you’re working on. Do you have a preference on that?
Or do you wanna just, like For now, if you can just skip the sketch of, like, what your kind of basic information is now because I don’t have something specific at the moment.
Yeah. So, yeah, I tell you, a lot of it still comes back to this concept of automated intimacy that was the theme of a program I created a few years ago. And it’s essentially you have your emails, which are I call them, like, marketing scaffolding. Right?
They’re gonna do what they do. Right? But I can’t assume that my email sequence is going to coach that whole conversion. Right?
Like, you can’t assume someone’s gonna open up every email. Right? And, like, in twenty fifteen, people would say, like, in email number one, I’m gonna coach this belief. In email two, this one.
In email three, I’m gonna give them the FAQ. Right? And there’s this, like, weird assumption that someone’s actually reading through everything lit in a linear order. Right?
So, essentially, what my marketing looks like right now is the first forty eight hours are when I’m really trying to get that ascension right into a one on one conversation.
There’s been a big shift from, once again, like, free webinars and free lead magnets to paid even if it’s, like, really low ticket and essentially trying to get that first contact via myself one on one or someone on my team one on one to talk to that lead within the first day or two, even in a very, like, general wanna make sure you have everything set up. Right?
And the quicker I could get engaged in a real dynamic conversation, essentially, the better. So another way this is done, lead scoring used to be a really big piece part of this. It still is for clients who have a lot bigger lead flow.
But on a kind of, like, five to seven day automated sequence or even a live launch, right, I’m definitely scoring certain actions they’re taking even if it’s just email opens. And once they cross a certain threshold, definitely taking that as a signal of intent and once again reaching out dynamically. Right? Saying, hey.
Notice that you’ve probably been, you know, watching this workshop or taking this action. Just wanna make sure you’re all set up. Let me know if you have any questions. Right?
So it’s essentially letting your marketing coach the conversion to whatever degree it can and then injecting those personal reach outs just at strategic touch points. And that’s just gonna look differently depending on what your bandwidth is, what your team looks like, what your lead flow looks like, but there’s always gonna be a way to at least make sure that your most high intent leads don’t get left to just the automated funnel. Does that make sense at a high level?
That does. Thank you. Yeah. If if the leads obviously, we want all these leads to convert. Mhmm. They should, as you said. If they don’t, what do you do with them after that forty eight hours?
Yeah. So there’s still, of course, like my sequences don’t just end at forty eight hours. Right? Usually, like, the evergreen funnels, when I’m trying to get them to take that next action, will be that standard five, seven, ten days, right, and different emails that have different angles, right, different approaches, you know, your typical, here are the questions other people who said yes asked, right, certain closing emails, certain urgency emails. So all that still plays out.
I’m just not relying on that to do all the work. Right? I’m really establishing as much one on one contact throughout that as possible.
Yeah. That’s awesome. Thanks so much, man. Appreciate it. Cool.
Yeah. My pleasure.
And I think I had the same same crib. Is that one, like, that collapses? Not crib. Sorry. Like, Ben.
It is. Yeah. Yeah. This is Yeah. This is the opposite. It’s also currently the, like, the bedroom for the baby right now.
Nice.
So I remember, like Yeah. My kid never actually used it except for one day when, like, I came home from work, and he used that plus, like, everything else he could find to barricade the doors and not let me in. So that was fun.
Marquette, man. Yikes.
Totally. Cool. Any other questions on this topic or any other topic?
Go ahead, Jess. You go first.
No. What he asked was my question, so that’s perfect.
I was just gonna say, what are the rest of the emails that come after that, and how are we thinking about them now versus what everybody was taught in twenty fourteen?
So Right.
Yeah. So So it’s always, like, assuming readiness and speed and movement is really kind of, like, the biggest change I’ve made in my own sequences even between now and twenty twenty. Right? It’s, like, just erring on the side of speed, not necessarily presumptuous.
Like, I’m not being obnoxious about it saying, like, you know, buy now, buy now, buy now. Right? But, like, assuming that I am meeting someone who is resourced and willing and desiring to move forward. Right?
So yeah.
And then, of course, like, the whole coaching of the conversion framework continues to play out. Right? It’s like, what can I assume about this person, right, who hasn’t taken that next action yet? Right?
And how can I coach them in that? So that’s essentially the sequence I would write after the main sales sequence is someone who said yes to this ad, right, opted in, opened up emails here, right, but didn’t take that action. What can I assume about them here? Right?
And that could be a form of a second chance email sequence. Right? Like, meeting them either in price objection, cost objection, time objection, you know, whatever it is. So yeah.
Like, I think one of one of the subject lines, like, yeah, one of the subject lines that worked really well, and I just keep reusing it because it’s so, like, multi multi usage, multipurpose is, like, you know, not a now thing, question mark. Right? Like, essentially taking that verbatim of, like, why someone wouldn’t take action now. Right?
And essentially reminding them, like, well, when I coach someone who thinks that this is not a now thing, I need to get them into the awareness that this being a later thing is more costly. Right? That it’s more of a now thing than they realize. Right?
That it won’t be as costly or time intensive to implement as they think. Right? So it’s essentially always where are they at now? Where are they at now?
Where are they at now? And how can I coach them through it?
I have a question.
What are the show up rates for webinars for, paid versus nonpaid?
So very broadly general general generally speaking.
Gosh. Like, I hesitate to even give, like, a standard, because it so depends on your relationship with the audience. Obviously, people who are coming from a warm list, whether it’s your, like, Instagram and people have been following you forever, or a cold Facebook ad, it’s gonna have totally different numbers. But you do wanna aim for somewhere into, like, twenty five to thirty percent for nonpaid.
That could be lower if it’s people, like, fresh off of a Facebook ad for sure.
And paid so paid, let me see. The last one we ran about, like, fifty to sixty percent if it was and that was at just ten bucks. It’s like a ten dollar workshop, and that literally doubled that conversion rate, right, of people showing up for it.
Yeah. And yeah. Anyway, I just I I love paid workshops now. I’ll just say that.
I love to say that. Yeah. Yeah. And what I love about the paid workshop model is versus the free workshop model.
So if on the free workshop model, you reach out with a one on one message, it feels more intrusive. Whereas on the paid, if it’s framed as a bonus, right, hybrid coaching, now it feels more valuable, and it is more valuable. So Yeah.
Wow. That’s awesome.
Yeah. Yep.
Thank you. My pleasure.
What an amazing book collection. I think you have at least two hundred and forty two there. Like, I’m just doing some rough math.
This is just one room, not including my Kindle stuff. I’m I’m a voracious reader.
Nice. Cool. Britney, I see your hand up.
Yeah.
Could you speak to what your favorite tech is right now to build your funnels? Are you building them yourself? Are you working with corporate clients who have their teams that you’re, you know, just then offloading the copy to? I’d kinda just like to know what people are using. What’s the what’s their favorite?
Yeah. Good question. Like, for any type of funnel in particular?
Not necessarily.
Mhmm.
Smaller clients who still like to essentially, like, do a lot of things themselves, simpler text stacks.
A lot of people have migrated off of ActiveCampaign onto, like, GoHighLevel and Kajabi and stuff like that.
Let me see. What are people using right now? Like I mean, it’s so varied.
HubSpot, I’ve always loved that for essentially, like, getting to the pipelines, getting just really clear tracking and really clear, notes on every lead that enters that system. That’s been phenomenal.
Typically, I don’t love managing HubSpot stuff myself.
But, yeah, most clients who have a good tech wizard on their team, amazing.
Let me see. What else?
Webinars have just like webinars are so varied. I like Zoom webinars personally. It just feels more familiar, less Internet marketing y marketing y. Yes.
Email marketing, I mean, ActiveCampaign, still use that quite a bit.
But, yeah, I don’t know. Yeah. It’s a mix.
Yeah. How are you happy with Go HighLevel when you use it? I mean, is anyone using HighLevel right now?
And I’m using it for some of my brands.
Yeah. Like, for the price point, I like it.
I have a really I mean, I’ll say I have a really good, like, Go high level designer automation person, so that really helps.
One of my, like, biggest complaints about it was, like, you know how, like, every page builder, like, makes you feel like, oh, that’s a Go high level page. Oh, that’s a ClickFunnels page. Like, that’s always been my biggest objection.
But, with a good designer, you’re definitely able to get, like, pages up to spec. So, like yeah. What I’ve been able to do with GoHighLevel is essentially, like, take pages that have been, like, custom built on WordPress or whatever, like, beautiful pages, and just tell my GoHighLevel person, like, can you recreate this, like, as close as possible? And that has been, like, an amazing hack.
So, yeah, I like it. Go high level has worked. I haven’t had too many, like, problems with it, and it’s definitely gotten the job done. But I also know other people who have complained about it being, like, unreliable or wonky, at times, but I just haven’t really, yeah, I haven’t really kind of fallen into that problem yet myself.
For clients that are, you know, doing around twenty million a year, so they’re kind of not like a small start up or Mhmm. Whatever. I guess, what tech would you recommend for them if they’re not already if they don’t already have, like, an in house thing?
Oh, for what kind of marketing?
Like, a utilities provider, multifamily. So, essentially, they would be targeting managers of multifamily who are in charge of utility billing.
Okay.
I mean, at that level, probably something like HubSpot, probably something really robust.
I definitely wouldn’t mess around with, like, a go high level at that level Go high level at that level.
No. I wouldn’t I wouldn’t yeah. Yep.
Mhmm.
Thanks.
Of course.
I also have clients, like, totally different space. Right? But, like, even in that, like, eight figure range, like, I have clients who literally work with GoHighLevel and Instagram. Right?
And that’s their entire tech stack. So, yeah, it really depends on, like, where are your leads coming from, what that sales process is, what those, like, sales cycles are, and how much information needs to be, like, collected, gathered, stored, and acted upon throughout that cycle. So that’s probably the bigger determinant than, strictly revenue levels. But yeah.
I’m just finding that I I’m having good success finding the client. I have a strong understanding of the strategy, but then the tech, like, it just all goes to hell. So I’m just trying to figure out, like, how to what do I need to learn about that aspect so that I can be more Mhmm. Throughout the whole process, you know, because it’s like, you don’t delay and just the strategy doesn’t matter. Right?
To what degree do you feel like you need to be taking ownership of the tech and the tech choices?
I guess that’s sort of what I’m trying to figure out. Like, I have my my clients right now are sort of all the way from very small startup to that twenty million ish a year in revenue. And so I’m just trying to figure out how to standardize an offer that I can feel great about without Mhmm. Stress of things not working.
Yeah. Totally.
In general, like, do you consider yourself, like, pretty techie? Do you enjoy learning different systems and implementing on that level?
I don’t love it, but I’m facing the facts. Right? Like, I like being competent. So, yeah, I would prefer to stay in strategy messaging word land all day long.
Mhmm. Mhmm.
But I just think the more you know, it’s just I’d like to be fluid.
Totally.
I mean, there are a lot of people who, like, obviously thrive as automation experts that love working in those systems. Right?
These are good friends to have nearby for sure.
I could certainly see possibilities, right, of your product as services and your offerings having with tech support and implementation and without. Right?
And the ones with having collaborations, having a certain partner that fulfills on that might help keep you in the zone of what you’re really good at, because it could take a lot of energy and a lot of time and a lot of, like, learning and messing around time to get, quote, unquote, masterful at these systems. Right? And these systems, of course, change from client to client, so it might be a inevitable game.
Collaborating, and that’s where I’m suffering a little bit is because I thought anyway, I just need to make a switch with the person I’m collaborating with probably. Because I don’t wanna do it, but I need to know enough about it that I’m Mhmm.
Yeah. For sure.
Makes sense. What Well, let me know if ever there’s, like, any systems you’re looking for, like, a certain, tech collaborator on, because I know, you know, I know a lot of people who work with IKEA or ActiveCampaign or GoHighLevel.
But, yeah, keep me posted for sure.
Cool. Joseph.
I’m back. If, and if so, yeah, my my question is, how do you how are you optimizing your funnel these days?
And if it’s easier to just, like, send me to a resource that you have, like Mhmm.
That’s totally cool too.
But but yeah. Because you mentioned, like, you are once someone doesn’t, like if they don’t necessarily act on the offer right away, you know, like, you’re still selling them. You’re dropping them into your flow. You’re still testing different angles and things. So how are you yeah. What is optimizing your funnel look like for you?
Yeah. That’s a really good question.
Oh, so many different, like, competing ideologies around this. One thing that I’ll always ask first is you know? I I run a lot of, like, cold traffic from, like, ads, and I’ll always look back at that ad level of, like, am I targeting someone who is definitely problem aware, definitely motivated, and seeking a solution? Right? So those are the first questions I’ll ask myself, and sometimes I’ll so the annoying thing there is sometimes, like, the ad creatives that are less direct in that languaging will perform better and get lower CPLs than the ones that are, like, really hard and direct about, like, this is what you’re facing and very, like, presumptive of that.
But the ones that are looser perform less well down funnel. Right? So one of the places I’ll optimize is essentially, like, if I know that I have something here. Right?
If I’ve gotten sales, right, and I’ve gone through an exercise of what is true about the people who said yes, essentially creating, like, an anatomy of a buyer. Not a hypothesis, but these are my actuals. These are people who bought. I will reverse engineer who they are and put that top of funnel, right, and just try to get more people into there.
So that’s typically it’s like I tend to optimize back at the top always. I don’t mess around a lot on the in betweens until I’ve really optimized my top funnel to make sure I’m getting the right people in that even give me right data and not false negatives. Right? Like, if my sales page is converting at sub one percent, but I don’t even have the right people coming in on it, then my sales page isn’t actually converting at one percent.
Right? And I’ve seen way too many people spend a lot of time trying to, like, you know, change the headline, change the price point, change, like, everything about their sales page when, like, yeah. Most of the time, it’s a targeting targeting thing, in my view, at least. That’s, that’s one perspective out of one perspective out of possibly many.
But, yeah.
Oh, that makes sense. That makes a lot of sense.
Mhmm.
Yeah. I know, like, during a freelance intensive optimization came up a little bit, and one of the things Joe was talking about was, like like, you know, cut one one possible rule of thumb is starting at the, you know, closest to the actual conversion and, like, working backwards from there. But what you’re saying makes a lot of sense too, certainly, especially for ad campaigns.
Mhmm.
But, yeah, that’s that’s helpful. Thanks.
Yeah. No problem. Like, I’ve seen the same sales page convert at sub one percent, convert at, you know, three to five percent just by changing targeting. Right? So it’s like Wow. I know.
Yeah. It’s like and it makes total sense. Right? It’s like Yeah. Like, in the real world, like, you know, if you just have the wrong people walking into your store, you could have the best salespeople there.
Right? You could have, like, the best displays, the best everything. And yeah, so just dialing in the precision on those top of funnel ads, paying a getting a little less concerned about your CPLs, especially at the beginning, like your cost per leads. Like, a lot of, like, people will optimize for lower CPLs, right, which makes sense because you don’t wanna see so many dollars, like, flying out the window there.
But, yeah, I’d say, like, the place I have the most fun optimizing is just that ad creative, that ad copy. Right? Making it so direct, so clear, so like, it’s either gonna be hyper relevant or hyper irrelevant. But it gives me the confidence that everyone coming into that ecosystem is ready for a conversation about it, right, has this problem that I’m so specifically and presumptively talking about, right, and is so ready to move forward.
So, yeah, that’s my hack for that.
Yeah. I love that. That’s awesome.
Cool.
Yeah. Dane Kennedy used to say that all the time. The first step was the market.
Yeah.
You know, he says the market, the message match.
Right? He always says the first step is the market.
He said it with a better mustache too, I think. Like, list offer copy. Indeed. It always comes back down to, like, these fundamentals at the end of the day.
But, yeah, what I love about, like, list when it comes to, quote, unquote, cold traffic. Right? And I don’t like, cold is such a vague term, but, like, yeah, you get to choose your list, right, essentially with ads.
You don’t get to choose your list with a general newsletter. You don’t really get to choose your list with a website. Right? People, you know, find you in different ways. But you get to choose your list with ads based on, you know, your ad creative. So, yeah, it’s fun.
Cool. Cool. Are we complete for today?
Sweet. Britney, I love your, cupboard handles. I don’t know why they’re catching my eye.
Thanks. Random thing.
I think, restoration, maybe.
Sounds good.
Yeah. Is that your is that your office, Britney? Yeah.
I hope it’s nice.
Nice.
Thanks. Hope everyone’s having a good New Year. Appreciate the support.
Yeah. Appreciate y’all showing up for this one on January second. Fun little crew. And, yeah, have an amazing rest of the week, and I’ll catch you soon.
Thanks.
Thanks so much, Ryan.
No problem. Bye.
You guys.
Transcript
Sweet. Alright. We’re gonna dive in. So this is, like, our first call post all that glorious goal setting we did back in December.
December. Yeah. How is that for everybody? Any, like, lingering questions from the goal setting marathon?
Anything to share there?
I think it was good because now, you know, how everyone’s, oh, New Year’s resolutions. You know? I’ve already had it all set, and I’m just rolling right into it.
So Sweet.
Amazing. Beautiful.
My mind is racing.
I know the feeling.
Cool. Sweet. Alright. Let’s dive in. I’m gonna pull up this keynote.
Gosh. You take, like, ten days off from Zoom calls, and you get so rusty, and you forget where the share button is. It’s like relearning tech.
There we go.
Sweet. Before I kick it, who here has taken either ten x launches or ten x sales pages before?
Sweet. We got a few hands up. Sweet. Alright. So definitely not a prerequisite, but, good to know.
So this is our first session of January. It’s gonna be all about engaging and nurturing new leads. This one is all about how to do so with what is affectionately known as the coaching of the conversion method and a very specific confirmation email template that y’all, may have already seen it in the workbook. If not, we’ll see momentarily.
So super, super brief coaching the conversion primer. This is something I’ve typically taught in, like, you know, hour long plus sessions. So this is the two minute version of it. But, essentially, it goes like this.
The version of your prospect who opted in to your funnel, to your lead magnet, to whatever it is that brought them into your ecosystem is not the same version that says yes to your core offer. Right? And there are a series of milestones, which may come in the form of certain beliefs that they now have, certain states, things they now feel, whether that is feeling encouraged, empowered, optimistic, certain awarenesses, things they are aware of now that they weren’t aware of a few minutes ago or a few weeks a few weeks ago and certain micro actions that they’ve taken. And all these things are needed to bridge what I call a pre customer, someone who comes into your ecosystem into a customer, someone who is a natural yes to your thing and your marketing and the messaging structures you use within it are essentially tools to bridge the gap via a process that we call coaching the conversion.
I said we call coaching the conversion, but I’m really speak for myself.
One second.
Do not eat almond before a call. Those things get stuck in, like I’m just gonna call it the tracheal cavity cavity tracheal cavity as if I’ve taken premed classes, which I haven’t. I don’t know. I think I totally made up made that up. The tracheal cavity.
Cool. So I have an unreasonable completely unreasonable because it’s impossible, but it’s an unreasonable belief that every lead who enters a conversion ecosystem, aka funnel, should convert. Like, I always get surprised. I’m like, why isn’t everyone who’s coming into this funnel converting?
It makes no sense to me. So I have this unreasonable belief that everyone who comes into our funnel, especially if we’ve done our job in targeting that top of funnel effectively, targeting people who actually have that moment of high ascension, that problem we’re talking about, people who truly desire that solution we’re talking about, I have this unreasonable belief that absolutely everybody should convert, and I get, like, almost insulted when one person doesn’t buy. And one on one sales tells us that, yeah, we should raise our standards. Thirty to sixty percent should be expected.
Right? This is what a typical one on one salesperson will convert out of warm leads. Right?
So that is a far cry from, I don’t know, the one to three percent that, you know, automated funnels or non one on one sales funnels produce that.
So this is a classic case of aim for ten x, right, and be cool with two to three x of typical conversion rates. Right? And this is essentially where the whole coaching to conversion method was birthed from, was me listening to a ton of recordings from one on one salespeople converting at upwards of fifty percent and being like, dang. Wouldn’t it be cool if we could do that at scale? Like, why should we be settling for one to three percent when people who are in these dynamic one on one scenarios with the same type of leads that our marketing is attracting are closing at thirty, fifty, sixty percent.
So coaching the conversion, it plays out across different assets, different types of funnels.
Ten x launches was the first course we released on it, which essentially coached the conversion through a launch. Someone enters your launch. They go through the prelaunch. They go through the actual launch. The cart closed, and we’re coaching different states, awarenesses, beliefs throughout that.
Ten x sales pages, which you all have access to, coaches the conversion vertically. Right? Pre customer, someone who lands on your page, sees the hero section. Customer, someone who gets to the end of it, clicks buy now. Right? So that is coaching the conversion vertically.
Sales conversation, that’s another type of ecosystem. Engineering the enrollment is another course that teaches that. So coaching the conversion plays out across multiple different types of ecosystems, but they all involve the same process of digging into the very basic stuff. Right?
Where are they now? Pre customer. And as a marketer, you get to decide this to some extent through your targeting, which I think is an amazing thing. We get to define our pre customer.
How cool is that? Where do they need to be for a yes to be natural? Right? This is our customer.
This is our voice of customer research. What were those final states, those final awarenesses? What was the energy? What was the feeling of someone who said yes?
Right? What did they believe before they said yes? So we get to actually reverse engineer this. And how can I facilitate that transformation at scale?
And none of this is guesswork. Right? We have the data on the anatomy of what a customer is. We get to target who our pre customer is.
Right? And, therefore, we get to make certain hypotheses of what that transformation is and attempt to do it at scale. So coaching the conversion with new leads, fresh leads via email, I’d venture to say, is one of the most important conversion contacts. And your confirmation slash welcome email will nearly almost always be the most highly opened email, like, out of all the emails in your system.
Like, you could go into your ActiveCampaign. That first email that gets sent is typically the one that’s gonna have the highest open rate, except for the ones with the click baity subject lines that, you know I don’t know. I’ve seen some pretty good click baity emails in my time. But, yeah, you’re gonna get a lot of eyeballs on this, a lot of attention and awareness on this one.
Definitely a lot more in email one than email number two, so it’s it’s gotta pull its weight. It’s gotta earn its real estate in your funnel. It will also set the tone of your relationship with your prospect. It’s typically where they decide if you’re gonna be the friend zoned person, the person who puts out great content that they love, the person who sends great newsletters but they never actually buy from, or the person who gets fiercely compensated.
So this is really a big tone setter in that regard.
Alright. Some high level principles when it comes to coaching, the conversion, and a confirmation email. So the more specific and intent based the opt in, the easier it is to coach the next step. And I’ll give you some really clear examples.
So if someone opts in for a workshop called how to make ten k per month as a freelancer in twenty twenty five, that’s excellent. Right? You know their goal. You know what they’re signing up for.
Versus a lead magnet on things every copywriter should know about selling. That’s great. That’s kind of mid. That’s middle ground.
Versus the best copywriter newsletter ever. Right? Vague, general, broad. You have no way of knowing who that pre customer is when they opt in for that.
Right?
So in my experience, a paid low ticket opt in, even if it’s a workshop that costs five dollars, will always almost always signal stronger intent and commitment than a free webinar or a free report. That’s why I love, love, love, love, love implementing and working with paid low ticket workshops.
Even things that people have typically used for free, I love just making it paid. It helps us clearly define who that pre customer is when someone actually takes out their credit card to even exchange five bucks.
One thing I will note, after years of trying to get people to acknowledge this fact, right, it is almost impossible to coach the conversion off of a general newsletter opt in. Right? Like, it can’t be done. There are too many assumptions and stretches you’re making on a general newsletter opt in.
So before you do that, you definitely need to segment that list, segment those leads, get them to raise their hand, and define themselves as as a certain type of pre customer. Right? So we do have templates for that. I think I taught this inside, CSP early in twenty twenty four.
But you could definitely look for the coffee date email template. That’s a really good one for segmenting your list and getting general opt ins to define themselves as something more specific where you can then coach the conversion in a more intentional and direct way.
And this is the biggest principle.
Essentially, the better your top of funnel targeting is, especially via ad creative. If you’re ad creative, if your Instagram reels, if your LinkedIn post could speak so specifically, right, to that top of funnel avatar, the more conversion milestones will heart will have already been met. So a conversion milestone, for example, is someone having a moment of high attention. Right? Being aware of a moment that they no longer want to experience with respects to that problem.
Another milestone is them being aware of certain solutions. Another milestone is them having tried certain things that haven’t worked. Right?
The more you can meet someone who’s already gone through that, the less you actually have to coach, the less steps within that journey that your marketing is responsible to lead them through. And it is really expensive and really time consuming to lead someone through an entire journey. Right? So the biggest hack you can give yourself is to begin that journey, begin that pre customer journey a little further down that line. Right? And your top of funnel targeting, the ad creative, the LinkedIn post, the Instagram reel is essentially what makes your copy have to work less hard down the line.
So your tofu targeting, in a perfect world, this is the first thing I would audit right before I write any email sequence for anybody. Right? Is are we making sure that we are bringing the right people into this funnel? And by right people, not just meaning people who have this problem, but people who are aware of it.
Right? I’m aware, moment of high tension, things that they absolutely no longer want to experience again in their lifetimes, that they have a known and desired outcome and resonate with what I call the moment of heightened pleasure. They know what success looks like, and they’re committed to it because they have that frustration and confusion within that gap. So this is all super basic, but it’s all worth returning to when it comes to our top of funnel targeting.
Right? The more of these boxes we could check off and the more intense these things are true for the people we’re targeting, the less hard our copy is gonna have to work. So when this is true, when we’ve checked these boxes, when our top of funnel marketing is dialed in, then your confirmation email can coach what I call the big three. But before we get into that, few quick rules more than ever.
Forget everything you’ve learned about nurturing in twenty twenty fourteen when the world moves slower and meta algorithms didn’t show your prospect ads for your competitors three minutes later. So this is a thing now more than ever. Now that the algorithms for ad platforms are getting so smart and so dialed in, Essentially, if someone opts in to your lead magnet, opts into your workshop, they’re going to be getting ads for your competitors a few minutes later on their feeds. Right?
So this is permission to move faster than you would otherwise. Right? Most marketers think they need to warm up cold leads, quote, unquote, when in reality, if they’ve targeted their top of funnel properly, they need to keep warm leads hot and use that fire to coach progress towards a solution. So always on the side of assuming movement and readiness and siding with speed.
Once again, time delay stagnancy is your enemy, especially when your prospect, your leads are gonna be getting presented other options, other solutions from your competitors literally within seconds or minutes. So unless your primary goal is to build a media company or a newsletter or an influencer brand, do not lead with your backstory. Email one shouldn’t just be, you know, an introduction about you. It shouldn’t just be authority content that is disconnected to the problem that the top of funnel piece or content or ad suggested that they have.
Right? So a very easy hack here to kinda balance the two. I love putting any authority content, whether it’s, like, books you’ve written or podcasts you’ve appeared on, or any other type of, like, backstory stuff you have in your email signature. That way you have, like, the passive credibility and authority content that they could just kind of, like, click through if they truly desire that.
But once they enter your funnel, if you’ve done your targeting right, you’re really trying to establish movement towards that end state.
So the big three, you can think of this big three as a source code, right, where you can use any tactic, any strategy, any messaging structure within your arsenal to coach them. It’s essentially these are three milestones, three states that you get to coach, and you get to use the tools available to you. You get to get creative about how you structure emails as long as they’re establishing these three. So the first one is coaching relevance because these are a few of the questions your prospect is gonna ask immediately, whether they’re consciously asking themselves this in their head or they are subconsciously making sure there’s a match here. Right? Am I in the right spot?
Is this message mirroring back my exact moment of highest tension that I want to escape? Is this relevant?
Is this message mirroring back the moment of heightened pleasure or moment of highest pleasure I want to achieve?
Is this message meeting me in what I’ve already done, tried, and failed at? And is this message pointing to an offer, opportunity, or next step that gives me new hope? Right? So if you get a yes to all five of these, you have coached relevance, and you need to coach this right off the bat. Do not waste time. Do not send out any other messaging, propping yourself up as an authority, positioning your brand until you’ve coached relevance.
Next is resonance. Right? Do they resonate with you, with your assessment of them, with your diagnosis of the problem, with your unique solution, and with your understanding and empathy of the entire situational gestalt? So one of the things I love to do in my marketing is talking about the stakes involved, the second degree effects of the main problem, right, the secret fears that they have around it. So really get dimensional about how problems appear in people’s lives, right, and get resonance around what you are mirroring back to them. And then the most important is coaching response ability, their ability to respond, their willingness to respond.
Making a purchase, saying yes, is an action. That is a response. Right? If we could get them to start taking microactions right away, ascending in the intimacy between what you’re doing, right, and them.
Right? So that could look like watching a paid workshop that they just bought. Right? That could mean engaging in a direct message or an Instagram chat or taking an assessment via score app or interact or a quiz or replying to a personal video message or replying to the email or booking call.
Essentially, what we are coaching on that very first email is can we get them to take that next action with us. Right? Not later, not on email number two when open rates have gone down anywhere between thirty thirty to fifty percent, but can we get can we get that next monumental action right here on the first email? So this is a little bit of extra theory.
This is something I created, like, a few years ago in a program that was called automated in intimacy. I can’t use that anymore because AI has totally taken on different dimensions. But, essentially, we’re trying to move people to this top right quadrant. Right?
The majority of sales happen as touch points ascend in intimacy and dynamism. Right? So we have a lot of marketing that exists in the bottom left quadrant. This is static.
It’s a one way dialogue. Right? And it’s impersonal. It’s one to many. But the more we move to that top right, the more we see higher and higher conversion rates.
Right? So this is just a little bit of an extra framework to see if you can get that next touch point to be more intimate than their initial one. Can you get any form of two way dialogue, dynamic dialogue?
And, essentially, that is one way to coach the conversion via greater intimacy.
So let’s put it all together. This is called the perfect confirmation email template, and it’s really simple. It’s, like, two hundred and fifty words that incorporates all this, you know, sciency stuff. It’s not even sciency.
I don’t even know what to call it. But, yeah, this is what incorporates everything we just talked about. So step one is to confirm and celebrate the opt in action or the event, right, to just mirroring back the action they just took. So this is one I wrote recently for a paid workshop paid workshop opt in.
That’s right. Cool. So hey. And then I blanked out the name. My team just nudged me to let me know you claimed a spot in the Art Money Power workshop.
Right? So just mirroring back what they just did. Now we have this whole section on coaching relevancy, which probably means so that’s a really good segue into this section for coaching relevancy.
That like the five hundred plus others who’ve said, hell yes, and now we mirror back. Right? Who they are. You’re an established fine artist who wants to sell more art pieces in twenty twenty five at higher prices.
That has you proving all dem doubters wrong as you sign a lease for that industrial loft with the exposed brick. Right? Little moment of highest pleasure there. It also means that you’re probably so effing done with trying to prove yourself to the leeches of the industry.
So moment of highest tension stuff. The agents who don’t return your calls. The art galleries who take a crazy cut and return your untold pieces with nasty stains and, oh my god, are there someone’s greasy ass fingerprints. Right?
Real moment of highest tension information we get from our voice of customer data. The art contest judged by other grad school burnouts who probably chat GPT their feedback without even looking because what they wrote makes no effing sense, and all the other disempowering ways the pick me, choose me, love me art industry has robbed you of your profits and your power.
So after reading this, like, section of maybe a hundred and a hundred and fifty words, right, there is zero chance anyone reading this would find this would essentially not know whether this was relevant for them. It’s either gonna be hyper relevant, like hyper agreement, or very clear that this isn’t for them. Right? So this is about coaching relevancy.
Next, coaching resonance. So a lot of this will have already established some resonance, but we wanna create even more resonance right around the new way of doing things. So if you caught yourself nodding, then you probably also be beyond stoked to learn and apply the same direct to customer luxury strategies that my students are using to attract kind collectors, cut out the middleman, and cash five bigger checks on the regular while finally knowing they’ve made it. Right?
So resonance around their end goal, resonance around the method for doing it. And then we coach responsibility, encouraging that next step, that next ascension on that paid spectrum or that paid, framework that we just went through. Now here’s the deal. If you close this email, then that dream remains just that, a dream.
Fun to pay and should be to live. But if this whole combo feels hyper relevant and you’re committed to making twenty twin twenty twenty five a living master masterpiece, then I highly recommend that you, one, watch the art money power workshop right away. So that is one form of coaching responsibility. And then the next, DM me power on Instagram to kick start your seventy two hour hybrid coaching and get a little unannounced bonus gift.
Trust me. You’ll love it. So I love adding a little bit of a teaser, a little unexpected gift for them taking an action that has sent them on the intimacy scale. So this is one tactic if you’re doing any form of evergreen workshops, evergreen webinars that I absolutely love.
So on the page or the workshop, one of the bonuses is called hybrid coaching. Right? So we acknowledge that this is prerecorded.
And because they can’t answer questions live, part of it the bonus they get is they get seventy two hours of q and a and hybrid coaching with this person and her team. Right? So this is a way to engage that level of intimacy and real time coaching even within an evergreen workshop.
I’m crazy passionate about helping fine artists like you reclaim their power, dignity, and profit from traditional art establishment as long as you’re all in, I’m all in with you. Cool. So that is the template. Really simple, and it’s pulling a lot of weight in relatively little words.
And, yeah, this is where we really take advantage of the fact that this first email is going to be the most opened, and we get right to the point. We coach relevancy. We coach resonance, and this is really our main goal. Our main goal is to initiate that one on one chat right off the bat, to not waste time with that because we know that if we can get a lead to engage one on one with this coach and with her team, that the likelihood of that lead converting and moving to that final conversion is gonna be that much higher.
Cool. I think that’s all we got. So I’m gonna stop my share and open the floor for any questions, any, brainstorms you all wanna have about how you might apply this in your own business for your own funnels or for funnels you’re working on per client.
Right. Where can I find the workbook?
Did you get a did you get a copy of it in your email yet?
I didn’t even look at my email. I have to see. Yeah.
It’s possible it got sent out. If not, Okay. And I could probably let me see if I can just download a copy.
No. Message me on Slack if you can access it, and I should be able to, drop a file for you. Cool.
Sure.
No problem. Cody.
Okay. So with that template you just showed us, is that supposed to be in this workbook, or is that somewhere else?
That is supposed to be in the workbook. Yeah.
Okay. Because I’m looking at the workbook, and I don’t see it in here.
Alright. So it’s possible that an updated version just didn’t get updated, like, while the crew was on holiday break.
But Alright.
What I can definitely do is, yeah, I’ll download it, copy of it, and I’ll send it to you over on Slack.
Awesome. Thanks.
Cool. Jess?
Okay. I love this. One of the things that I’ve been noodling on while you were talking was, with the diagnostic.
Mhmm.
And so if you were running, like, a group diagnostic, and let’s say you’re running it as, like, a webinar, you know, you start collecting sign ups, like, a week out or something. What would you recommend that you put in the, like, the responsibility of, like, here’s what I need you to do? Like, what’s that action that you would recommend that we prompt them with?
Right. So if they’ve already opted in for a webinar, that would go through that. Right?
Mhmm.
That’s a good question. Right? So, like, if there is an assessment, like, a self assessment that they could go through beforehand, like, essentially, you could take parts of what you go through on that webinar and just give them a faster self assessment version of it, right, of, like Mhmm. If this is something that you just got their attention with, because it’s you’re doing this live, right, the webinar?
Yeah.
Right.
So one thing you wanna defend against on live webinars, right, is, like, people being really aware and really kind of, like, motivated to solve it in the moment they sign up, and then there’s this gap and this lag and life happens. Right? So, essentially, it’s kind of like a skip the line type thing. Right? It’s like, take this assess take this assessment here. If you see your own gaps and wanna talk about it, like, send over your results.
So, yeah, it’s like, take this assessment, and let me know, like, where you scored, where you noticed that you’re a little weaker. Right? And we can kick start that conversation sooner.
I like that. And because one of the things I think that was really impactful for me when I did Jo’s assessment thing was, like, her walking through it and explaining it all. And I feel like, especially with the diagnostic, I don’t know that it would have and, obviously, I don’t have, like, the assessment, but I feel like the the walking it through and explaining it, it would almost have to be, like, instead of showing up live to the webinar, here’s a recording of me, like, walking you through it, and then why would they show up live.
So I’m wondering if what are your thoughts on asking for, like, a DM or a reply to be like, what is, like, your experience with x, y, and zed problem to, a, get some, like, VOC, but then to also open up that conversation, like, in the upper quadrant there of, like, the sales quadrant that you shared.
Yeah. I think it’s a great idea. I think anything you could do to get that one on one conversation right away from that moment of I’ll I’ll call it a moment of heightened receptivity. Right?
They just saw your webinar landing page. It resonated. They’re like, yes to this. They signed up.
You’re top of mind in that moment. If they’re able to take that next action to ascend in the intimacy scale right there and then, like, even if it’s a button on your landing page around, like, you know, send me a quick DM, like, letting me know what inspired. Like, there’s the surveys we have sometimes on landing pages of, like, what inspired you to do this thing. I prefer, like, just a bun.
Like, tell me. Right, at this stage of our business when we’re making those sales. Like, that doesn’t need to go through SurveyMonkey. Like, just send that straight to my inbox so that we can have that conversation now.
There’s this, it’s, like, so stupid symbol, and it works so well. I can’t remember who coined it, but it’s like I think it was, like, called the non webinar webinar or the webinar that doesn’t matter. And it was, like, someone who is running webinar funnels just for the purpose of starting DM conversations, and it’s almost like the webinar itself didn’t even matter. Right?
And, of course, it did matter. There was a legit webinar there. But the whole purpose was, like, sign up for the webinar. You know you have someone who is resonating with the messaging around the webinar, and then just get them into that one on one conversation right away.
Right? Like, what inspired you to join? Right? Like, where do you think you might be weak when it comes to this?
Right? And get into that exploratory conversation.
And that person had more conversions happening from people who didn’t even see the webinar. Right? It was just a right? So don’t insist on just because we’ve crafted these, like, amazing webinars and workshops with all the right diagnostics, like, don’t insist on that being the only way someone could come to work with you. Right? Mhmm. Like yeah.
Okay. Cool. Thank you. And I have another question, but I’ll let Joseph go. And if there’s time, I’ll ask another.
For sure.
Thanks, Joseph.
Go for it, Joseph.
Ryan, that was awesome.
So how like, what does planning your marketing like, your funnel automation look like now? Like, considering what you like like like you said, you know, like, your training has completely changed.
And today, you showed us that, like, that initial first email.
Mhmm. But I guess what does, like, what does planning the automation look like like for you now? Or, like, do or does the workbook cover that?
So it doesn’t go deeper than this template. So Okay. I mean, I could go through kinda, like, what my basic funnels look like. Right? Or we could make it more specific to something you’re working on. Do you have a preference on that?
Or do you wanna just, like For now, if you can just skip the sketch of, like, what your kind of basic information is now because I don’t have something specific at the moment.
Yeah. So, yeah, I tell you, a lot of it still comes back to this concept of automated intimacy that was the theme of a program I created a few years ago. And it’s essentially you have your emails, which are I call them, like, marketing scaffolding. Right?
They’re gonna do what they do. Right? But I can’t assume that my email sequence is going to coach that whole conversion. Right?
Like, you can’t assume someone’s gonna open up every email. Right? And, like, in twenty fifteen, people would say, like, in email number one, I’m gonna coach this belief. In email two, this one.
In email three, I’m gonna give them the FAQ. Right? And there’s this, like, weird assumption that someone’s actually reading through everything lit in a linear order. Right?
So, essentially, what my marketing looks like right now is the first forty eight hours are when I’m really trying to get that ascension right into a one on one conversation.
There’s been a big shift from, once again, like, free webinars and free lead magnets to paid even if it’s, like, really low ticket and essentially trying to get that first contact via myself one on one or someone on my team one on one to talk to that lead within the first day or two, even in a very, like, general wanna make sure you have everything set up. Right?
And the quicker I could get engaged in a real dynamic conversation, essentially, the better. So another way this is done, lead scoring used to be a really big piece part of this. It still is for clients who have a lot bigger lead flow.
But on a kind of, like, five to seven day automated sequence or even a live launch, right, I’m definitely scoring certain actions they’re taking even if it’s just email opens. And once they cross a certain threshold, definitely taking that as a signal of intent and once again reaching out dynamically. Right? Saying, hey.
Notice that you’ve probably been, you know, watching this workshop or taking this action. Just wanna make sure you’re all set up. Let me know if you have any questions. Right?
So it’s essentially letting your marketing coach the conversion to whatever degree it can and then injecting those personal reach outs just at strategic touch points. And that’s just gonna look differently depending on what your bandwidth is, what your team looks like, what your lead flow looks like, but there’s always gonna be a way to at least make sure that your most high intent leads don’t get left to just the automated funnel. Does that make sense at a high level?
That does. Thank you. Yeah. If if the leads obviously, we want all these leads to convert. Mhmm. They should, as you said. If they don’t, what do you do with them after that forty eight hours?
Yeah. So there’s still, of course, like my sequences don’t just end at forty eight hours. Right? Usually, like, the evergreen funnels, when I’m trying to get them to take that next action, will be that standard five, seven, ten days, right, and different emails that have different angles, right, different approaches, you know, your typical, here are the questions other people who said yes asked, right, certain closing emails, certain urgency emails. So all that still plays out.
I’m just not relying on that to do all the work. Right? I’m really establishing as much one on one contact throughout that as possible.
Yeah. That’s awesome. Thanks so much, man. Appreciate it. Cool.
Yeah. My pleasure.
And I think I had the same same crib. Is that one, like, that collapses? Not crib. Sorry. Like, Ben.
It is. Yeah. Yeah. This is Yeah. This is the opposite. It’s also currently the, like, the bedroom for the baby right now.
Nice.
So I remember, like Yeah. My kid never actually used it except for one day when, like, I came home from work, and he used that plus, like, everything else he could find to barricade the doors and not let me in. So that was fun.
Marquette, man. Yikes.
Totally. Cool. Any other questions on this topic or any other topic?
Go ahead, Jess. You go first.
No. What he asked was my question, so that’s perfect.
I was just gonna say, what are the rest of the emails that come after that, and how are we thinking about them now versus what everybody was taught in twenty fourteen?
So Right.
Yeah. So So it’s always, like, assuming readiness and speed and movement is really kind of, like, the biggest change I’ve made in my own sequences even between now and twenty twenty. Right? It’s, like, just erring on the side of speed, not necessarily presumptuous.
Like, I’m not being obnoxious about it saying, like, you know, buy now, buy now, buy now. Right? But, like, assuming that I am meeting someone who is resourced and willing and desiring to move forward. Right?
So yeah.
And then, of course, like, the whole coaching of the conversion framework continues to play out. Right? It’s like, what can I assume about this person, right, who hasn’t taken that next action yet? Right?
And how can I coach them in that? So that’s essentially the sequence I would write after the main sales sequence is someone who said yes to this ad, right, opted in, opened up emails here, right, but didn’t take that action. What can I assume about them here? Right?
And that could be a form of a second chance email sequence. Right? Like, meeting them either in price objection, cost objection, time objection, you know, whatever it is. So yeah.
Like, I think one of one of the subject lines, like, yeah, one of the subject lines that worked really well, and I just keep reusing it because it’s so, like, multi multi usage, multipurpose is, like, you know, not a now thing, question mark. Right? Like, essentially taking that verbatim of, like, why someone wouldn’t take action now. Right?
And essentially reminding them, like, well, when I coach someone who thinks that this is not a now thing, I need to get them into the awareness that this being a later thing is more costly. Right? That it’s more of a now thing than they realize. Right?
That it won’t be as costly or time intensive to implement as they think. Right? So it’s essentially always where are they at now? Where are they at now?
Where are they at now? And how can I coach them through it?
I have a question.
What are the show up rates for webinars for, paid versus nonpaid?
So very broadly general general generally speaking.
Gosh. Like, I hesitate to even give, like, a standard, because it so depends on your relationship with the audience. Obviously, people who are coming from a warm list, whether it’s your, like, Instagram and people have been following you forever, or a cold Facebook ad, it’s gonna have totally different numbers. But you do wanna aim for somewhere into, like, twenty five to thirty percent for nonpaid.
That could be lower if it’s people, like, fresh off of a Facebook ad for sure.
And paid so paid, let me see. The last one we ran about, like, fifty to sixty percent if it was and that was at just ten bucks. It’s like a ten dollar workshop, and that literally doubled that conversion rate, right, of people showing up for it.
Yeah. And yeah. Anyway, I just I I love paid workshops now. I’ll just say that.
I love to say that. Yeah. Yeah. And what I love about the paid workshop model is versus the free workshop model.
So if on the free workshop model, you reach out with a one on one message, it feels more intrusive. Whereas on the paid, if it’s framed as a bonus, right, hybrid coaching, now it feels more valuable, and it is more valuable. So Yeah.
Wow. That’s awesome.
Yeah. Yep.
Thank you. My pleasure.
What an amazing book collection. I think you have at least two hundred and forty two there. Like, I’m just doing some rough math.
This is just one room, not including my Kindle stuff. I’m I’m a voracious reader.
Nice. Cool. Britney, I see your hand up.
Yeah.
Could you speak to what your favorite tech is right now to build your funnels? Are you building them yourself? Are you working with corporate clients who have their teams that you’re, you know, just then offloading the copy to? I’d kinda just like to know what people are using. What’s the what’s their favorite?
Yeah. Good question. Like, for any type of funnel in particular?
Not necessarily.
Mhmm.
Smaller clients who still like to essentially, like, do a lot of things themselves, simpler text stacks.
A lot of people have migrated off of ActiveCampaign onto, like, GoHighLevel and Kajabi and stuff like that.
Let me see. What are people using right now? Like I mean, it’s so varied.
HubSpot, I’ve always loved that for essentially, like, getting to the pipelines, getting just really clear tracking and really clear, notes on every lead that enters that system. That’s been phenomenal.
Typically, I don’t love managing HubSpot stuff myself.
But, yeah, most clients who have a good tech wizard on their team, amazing.
Let me see. What else?
Webinars have just like webinars are so varied. I like Zoom webinars personally. It just feels more familiar, less Internet marketing y marketing y. Yes.
Email marketing, I mean, ActiveCampaign, still use that quite a bit.
But, yeah, I don’t know. Yeah. It’s a mix.
Yeah. How are you happy with Go HighLevel when you use it? I mean, is anyone using HighLevel right now?
And I’m using it for some of my brands.
Yeah. Like, for the price point, I like it.
I have a really I mean, I’ll say I have a really good, like, Go high level designer automation person, so that really helps.
One of my, like, biggest complaints about it was, like, you know how, like, every page builder, like, makes you feel like, oh, that’s a Go high level page. Oh, that’s a ClickFunnels page. Like, that’s always been my biggest objection.
But, with a good designer, you’re definitely able to get, like, pages up to spec. So, like yeah. What I’ve been able to do with GoHighLevel is essentially, like, take pages that have been, like, custom built on WordPress or whatever, like, beautiful pages, and just tell my GoHighLevel person, like, can you recreate this, like, as close as possible? And that has been, like, an amazing hack.
So, yeah, I like it. Go high level has worked. I haven’t had too many, like, problems with it, and it’s definitely gotten the job done. But I also know other people who have complained about it being, like, unreliable or wonky, at times, but I just haven’t really, yeah, I haven’t really kind of fallen into that problem yet myself.
For clients that are, you know, doing around twenty million a year, so they’re kind of not like a small start up or Mhmm. Whatever. I guess, what tech would you recommend for them if they’re not already if they don’t already have, like, an in house thing?
Oh, for what kind of marketing?
Like, a utilities provider, multifamily. So, essentially, they would be targeting managers of multifamily who are in charge of utility billing.
Okay.
I mean, at that level, probably something like HubSpot, probably something really robust.
I definitely wouldn’t mess around with, like, a go high level at that level Go high level at that level.
No. I wouldn’t I wouldn’t yeah. Yep.
Mhmm.
Thanks.
Of course.
I also have clients, like, totally different space. Right? But, like, even in that, like, eight figure range, like, I have clients who literally work with GoHighLevel and Instagram. Right?
And that’s their entire tech stack. So, yeah, it really depends on, like, where are your leads coming from, what that sales process is, what those, like, sales cycles are, and how much information needs to be, like, collected, gathered, stored, and acted upon throughout that cycle. So that’s probably the bigger determinant than, strictly revenue levels. But yeah.
I’m just finding that I I’m having good success finding the client. I have a strong understanding of the strategy, but then the tech, like, it just all goes to hell. So I’m just trying to figure out, like, how to what do I need to learn about that aspect so that I can be more Mhmm. Throughout the whole process, you know, because it’s like, you don’t delay and just the strategy doesn’t matter. Right?
To what degree do you feel like you need to be taking ownership of the tech and the tech choices?
I guess that’s sort of what I’m trying to figure out. Like, I have my my clients right now are sort of all the way from very small startup to that twenty million ish a year in revenue. And so I’m just trying to figure out how to standardize an offer that I can feel great about without Mhmm. Stress of things not working.
Yeah. Totally.
In general, like, do you consider yourself, like, pretty techie? Do you enjoy learning different systems and implementing on that level?
I don’t love it, but I’m facing the facts. Right? Like, I like being competent. So, yeah, I would prefer to stay in strategy messaging word land all day long.
Mhmm. Mhmm.
But I just think the more you know, it’s just I’d like to be fluid.
Totally.
I mean, there are a lot of people who, like, obviously thrive as automation experts that love working in those systems. Right?
These are good friends to have nearby for sure.
I could certainly see possibilities, right, of your product as services and your offerings having with tech support and implementation and without. Right?
And the ones with having collaborations, having a certain partner that fulfills on that might help keep you in the zone of what you’re really good at, because it could take a lot of energy and a lot of time and a lot of, like, learning and messing around time to get, quote, unquote, masterful at these systems. Right? And these systems, of course, change from client to client, so it might be a inevitable game.
Collaborating, and that’s where I’m suffering a little bit is because I thought anyway, I just need to make a switch with the person I’m collaborating with probably. Because I don’t wanna do it, but I need to know enough about it that I’m Mhmm.
Yeah. For sure.
Makes sense. What Well, let me know if ever there’s, like, any systems you’re looking for, like, a certain, tech collaborator on, because I know, you know, I know a lot of people who work with IKEA or ActiveCampaign or GoHighLevel.
But, yeah, keep me posted for sure.
Cool. Joseph.
I’m back. If, and if so, yeah, my my question is, how do you how are you optimizing your funnel these days?
And if it’s easier to just, like, send me to a resource that you have, like Mhmm.
That’s totally cool too.
But but yeah. Because you mentioned, like, you are once someone doesn’t, like if they don’t necessarily act on the offer right away, you know, like, you’re still selling them. You’re dropping them into your flow. You’re still testing different angles and things. So how are you yeah. What is optimizing your funnel look like for you?
Yeah. That’s a really good question.
Oh, so many different, like, competing ideologies around this. One thing that I’ll always ask first is you know? I I run a lot of, like, cold traffic from, like, ads, and I’ll always look back at that ad level of, like, am I targeting someone who is definitely problem aware, definitely motivated, and seeking a solution? Right? So those are the first questions I’ll ask myself, and sometimes I’ll so the annoying thing there is sometimes, like, the ad creatives that are less direct in that languaging will perform better and get lower CPLs than the ones that are, like, really hard and direct about, like, this is what you’re facing and very, like, presumptive of that.
But the ones that are looser perform less well down funnel. Right? So one of the places I’ll optimize is essentially, like, if I know that I have something here. Right?
If I’ve gotten sales, right, and I’ve gone through an exercise of what is true about the people who said yes, essentially creating, like, an anatomy of a buyer. Not a hypothesis, but these are my actuals. These are people who bought. I will reverse engineer who they are and put that top of funnel, right, and just try to get more people into there.
So that’s typically it’s like I tend to optimize back at the top always. I don’t mess around a lot on the in betweens until I’ve really optimized my top funnel to make sure I’m getting the right people in that even give me right data and not false negatives. Right? Like, if my sales page is converting at sub one percent, but I don’t even have the right people coming in on it, then my sales page isn’t actually converting at one percent.
Right? And I’ve seen way too many people spend a lot of time trying to, like, you know, change the headline, change the price point, change, like, everything about their sales page when, like, yeah. Most of the time, it’s a targeting targeting thing, in my view, at least. That’s, that’s one perspective out of one perspective out of possibly many.
But, yeah.
Oh, that makes sense. That makes a lot of sense.
Mhmm.
Yeah. I know, like, during a freelance intensive optimization came up a little bit, and one of the things Joe was talking about was, like like, you know, cut one one possible rule of thumb is starting at the, you know, closest to the actual conversion and, like, working backwards from there. But what you’re saying makes a lot of sense too, certainly, especially for ad campaigns.
Mhmm.
But, yeah, that’s that’s helpful. Thanks.
Yeah. No problem. Like, I’ve seen the same sales page convert at sub one percent, convert at, you know, three to five percent just by changing targeting. Right? So it’s like Wow. I know.
Yeah. It’s like and it makes total sense. Right? It’s like Yeah. Like, in the real world, like, you know, if you just have the wrong people walking into your store, you could have the best salespeople there.
Right? You could have, like, the best displays, the best everything. And yeah, so just dialing in the precision on those top of funnel ads, paying a getting a little less concerned about your CPLs, especially at the beginning, like your cost per leads. Like, a lot of, like, people will optimize for lower CPLs, right, which makes sense because you don’t wanna see so many dollars, like, flying out the window there.
But, yeah, I’d say, like, the place I have the most fun optimizing is just that ad creative, that ad copy. Right? Making it so direct, so clear, so like, it’s either gonna be hyper relevant or hyper irrelevant. But it gives me the confidence that everyone coming into that ecosystem is ready for a conversation about it, right, has this problem that I’m so specifically and presumptively talking about, right, and is so ready to move forward.
So, yeah, that’s my hack for that.
Yeah. I love that. That’s awesome.
Cool.
Yeah. Dane Kennedy used to say that all the time. The first step was the market.
Yeah.
You know, he says the market, the message match.
Right? He always says the first step is the market.
He said it with a better mustache too, I think. Like, list offer copy. Indeed. It always comes back down to, like, these fundamentals at the end of the day.
But, yeah, what I love about, like, list when it comes to, quote, unquote, cold traffic. Right? And I don’t like, cold is such a vague term, but, like, yeah, you get to choose your list, right, essentially with ads.
You don’t get to choose your list with a general newsletter. You don’t really get to choose your list with a website. Right? People, you know, find you in different ways. But you get to choose your list with ads based on, you know, your ad creative. So, yeah, it’s fun.
Cool. Cool. Are we complete for today?
Sweet. Britney, I love your, cupboard handles. I don’t know why they’re catching my eye.
Thanks. Random thing.
I think, restoration, maybe.
Sounds good.
Yeah. Is that your is that your office, Britney? Yeah.
I hope it’s nice.
Nice.
Thanks. Hope everyone’s having a good New Year. Appreciate the support.
Yeah. Appreciate y’all showing up for this one on January second. Fun little crew. And, yeah, have an amazing rest of the week, and I’ll catch you soon.
Thanks.
Thanks so much, Ryan.
No problem. Bye.
You guys.
The Buyer Handbook: Find and Attract Your Ideal Buyers
The Buyer Handbook: Find and Attract Your Ideal Buyers
Transcript
Excellent. Okay. So we have a few more people joining. Of course, this is recording, but this is our Copy School Pro call of the week. This week, we are talking continuing on with our final week, actually, of the buyer handbook.
Next week, as you’ll see in the Coffee School Pro training area very soon, next week, we will have a whole new theme starting, and that one for the month of July is under the sunshine growth model.
When you look at the skills part of the sunshine growth model and the skills that you use, those are used to grow your business, like administrative stuff or things like list building and social followers. That’s what we’re doing next month is all about list building, and getting more social followers where social can be the best path toward building your list today. But we’ll talk more about that all next starting next week. We’re gonna get started on Instagram.
We’re gonna get into gamifying list building, with Shane. We’ll do a webinar, like, how to create a waking up to the problem webinar that you can present to other people’s audiences. I’ll be running that. So if you are wondering how to get in front of other audiences, like what we’re gonna talk about today, then this will be useful for you.
So there’s a lot coming up in July. Watch for all of that. Two lessons a week as usual.
And then this week this week oh, yeah. This week, we have Shane wrapping up, our, buyer handbook month with using AI to create your business’ actual buyer handbook. So that should be fun and exciting.
Alright.
It’s a bit of a working session today. We’ll be doing some actual work, which I hope is good for everybody in the room. And, yeah, there will, of course, be a replay, and there is the worksheet. So if you can open up the worksheet that we that Sarah sent out over the weekend that has the buyer handbook, find and attract your ideal buyers. I’m about to share my screen.
This is, of course, a really this is a fundamental topic, finding people who will buy the stuff that you’ve got, pretty important.
We we we need to do that. That’s just how life works. Now, hopefully, they’ll find you right back, but you still need to show up conveniently where they are. So that’s what we’re gonna talk about here today. Let me just go into presentation mode.
If you haven’t watched other sessions from the month of June on the buyer handbook, go back through the Coffee School Pro training area and pick up some more stuff there where we’re talking about ICPs, personas, personas underneath your ICP, all of that kind of stuff that, is critical to understanding who you’re talking to and if they’re the right person to talk to right now. And, of course, they will talk about where they are. So this is going to be very useful for you. If you wanna find out where your ICPs are, you will need to have your laptop open in front of you to do this work.
If not, your phone might be okay, but we’re gonna go into a tool, today. And maybe you already have access to that tool. And if you do, awesome. And if you don’t, that’s okay. They have a free thing that you can use today.
And then after this, you’re going to be ready to start pitching brands, not people.
Brands on partnering to share your content. Now there are people at the brands, but what people often talk about for freelancers with cold pitching is go cold pitch a potential client. And there’s nothing technically wrong with that, except it doesn’t scale very well. It takes a lot of work to do it, and we would all rather people just come to us.
So we’re gonna borrow the authority of other brands, which I talk about all the time, because that’s how I got here. So if not for me, absolutely latching on to the authority of other brands, way back in the beginning, I would not have the business that I have today. Not at all. And I’m very happy with the business I have today.
And so I can say, and I think a lot of people who look back at their growth or their lack of growth will be able to look at the network that they tapped into or did not tap into early on. So for me, Hacker News was a big part of it. So that’s community. What community can and should you participate in right now? We’re gonna work on finding those communities today.
It would be better if you’d started working in that community five years ago. Of course, it would everything better if we’d started doing any of this stuff five years ago, but we didn’t. So we’re going to do it today and not let any of the crap in because this crap always comes in. Oh, there’s no way in. It’s saturated, etcetera, etcetera. Shush.
We’re just gonna do the work. Just do the work and don’t think about it.
I also partnered with brands.
Unbounce was just starting out. HubSpot was still small enough that people weren’t necessarily that familiar with everything HubSpot could do. It wasn’t ubiquitous like it is today when I was starting out. Leadpages was like a whole different thing at the time, and Wistia was two dudes.
That was it. So but we partnered with them early on, and now their brands have grown. Our brands have grown and been able to, like, carry on. Our brand has grown and been able to carry on with it.
So I borrowed their authority. You need to do the same because there is an a early version of Wistia out there right now. There’s an early version of Unbounce out there right now.
Partner with them. They have as much hustle as anybody else had twelve, fifteen years ago, they are people to, partner with. So we’re gonna talk about who those, like, hidden gems are, and that’s really the goal today. When you find where your people are at, then we want you to put a webinar, which you’ll probably call a workshop, in front of them as soon as humanly possible.
And you’re going to force it to snowball. You’re not going to sit there and go, okay, I wonder if this is gonna work. You are going to make it work because that is how we get shit done. That’s what separates us here. We will force the snowball effect. Okay. So how do we even get started?
We’re gonna find people online using SparkToro. Has anybody used SparkToro before?
Yes. Cool. Are you using it now?
Good. It’s very easy to start and cancel, start and cancel. That’s actually you know, anybody who’s worked with them knows that’s a an actual challenge for them. As you use it, get everything you need out of it, and then you cancel, but you might come back four months later and use it all over again. So it’s a bit of a a different subscription model. But will you use SparkToro, in order to find out where people are, obviously, that’s what SparkToro does. It helps you find out what they’re talking about, etcetera.
But oftentimes when you’re using SparkToro and I’m just gonna open this up, over to the side as I move Zoom around. When you’re using SparkToro, it’s often defined, like, keywords and things like that.
Not keywords for social necessarily, what brand should I be looking up?
Just mine. And so I’m what brand should I be looking up? Just mine. And so I’m going to recommend that you look up a complementor. So instead of a competitor, this is someone who is like a competitor, but they’re more complimentary. So for us, ConvertKit or Kit might be a complimenter for us because we share a similar audience of digital creators, but we want to find a group that has more traffic, ideally, significantly more traffic than we get.
So for me, I might look up convertkit dot com, or I might look at other complementors. April Dunford and I have similar audiences in some ways. It depends on what I’m trying to sell. In other ways, we have very different audiences.
So that might be somebody that I look up to see, what because we can’t look up ourselves. Right? If you’re if you have a brand new website or you’ve got, like, five people coming a day to your website, you can’t really use SparkToro or yourself to get a sense of it. So we need to go and basically get a sense of the audience that our complementors or even full on competitors have.
So if you’re like, okay. I’m serving this market, but I know that this other brand is huge and they’re serving the same market I am. We’re just gonna use this over here in SparkToro. So you should now be seeing the SparkToro interface where you wanna go to the tab audience research.
What I recommend is right now, while I’m chattering, if you’re not using SparkToro, start an account right now. It’s free. You just, like, go to SparkToro dot com, use your Gmail or whatever to create an account quickly, get in there because we’re going to go to the audience research tab and this there’s all sorts of things.
Claire, did you work with Jia and Claire on SparkToro stuff?
Sorry. Muted. I have someone on the tab. Yes. I did. Okay.
Wait back to before two point o.
You would know, of course, more than I I’ve used for Arturo on and off, but I’m not, like, a power user of it. So, Claire, if you have anything to add, please do feel free to at any point or anybody who uses this and and has something to add here, please please do.
What we wanna do today is start by listing out three brands, ideally, the dot com version, like, the actual website that gets the audience you wish you could get. Now that could a really obvious one is some sort of software Software made for different audiences. So if you’re like, I want to work primarily with nonprofits, then you’d go look you should know what software people who are at nonprofits use. If you were like, I only work with real estate developers, then you’ll know or or realtors. And you might say, like, okay. Realtors use follow-up boss. So I’m going to look up follow-up boss and see what comes up.
And that’s what I’ll use to get started here on filling this in.
We have to wait for it to load, so we’re gonna do that. While that’s happening, make sure you’ve started your SparkToro account and start thinking of these people. So you have to first first know who your ideal audience is and then what they trust. So I don’t have a part on here for your ideal audience because you already know that That’s, like, very introductory basic stuff.
Tell Rand what did you say? Oh, got it. Fine. To pedal faster?
Is he in a race right now? Is he, like, biking somewhere, Andrew?
Or Andrew?
Are you chatting to us? Oh, he’s powering the sparktor.
I got it. I didn’t get that. Okay.
Now I got it.
I was slow. It’s my damn slow. Yeah. It’s taking a while to load up. Is it slow is it slow for everybody?
No? For some? Okay.
So we’ll just set that aside, and I will walk through what our objective is, like, what we’re going to do along the way. So if you can list out those three to five groups, you’re going to enter and repeat this process for those three to five different groups in here. For follow-up, boss, really?
Okay. So we’ll go through a creative free SparkToro account, go to audience research, search the website or domain of a complementor, then we’re going to fill this in for for, like, three to five of those groups. Knowing that as just happened here, sometimes, Barktoro won’t have enough data for it. So just keep that in mind, and then just repeat. Then afterward, we’re going to save this and downloaded data because you can export data on, SparkToro from SparkToro to wherever. This is the kind of thing that you’ll want to share with your VA as you move forward or just have for yourself as you, like, get deeper and deeper into building your business.
Knowing more about who and where they are is everything. It’s the thing that keeps people from growing is I don’t know how to get in front of my audience because I don’t know where they are. What are they paying attention to? And then everybody gravitates to the exact same people.
Well, all Chorus creators want to get or or follow Amy Porterfield. Okay. Great. But what software are they using?
What plug ins for that software are available? What Chrome extensions are they using? Can you partner with those smaller groups in order to get some traction? Because everybody can’t go around pitching Amy Porterfield, and her audience gets fatigued too versus the smaller companies that are out there that are gaining traction and would love to help an x to have an expert like you come in and teach their audience.
This is a big thing. Unbounce wanted me to come in and teach their audience to be better at making landing pages because it’s good for Unbounce. Same was true for Leadpages. Same was true for ConvertKit.
All of these different groups early on want you to come train their audience, and the good thing is you want to do that too. You wanna be an authority in front of them, so we need to find out where they are. So we’re gonna use SparkToro to find out where your buyers are. It might not be your audience.
Now if your audience if your website gets a lot of traffic, then this is gonna be really directly applicable for you. Like, oh, this is where my audience is coming from. That’s cool to know. What you’ll really wanna focus on, though, are not, like, the top accounts, but the hidden gems.
So you’ll see when you do oh, now they do have stuff. You’ll see when you go through here that, they have these bigger accounts, like, how are you going to pitch Realtor magazine?
Instead, you’ll probably wanna look at some hidden gems. Now they don’t have any hidden gems here, so that would be a thing where I’d have to then go do another search. But what I want to do is not just focus on all of these giant places to pitch, but where are my buyers going? What websites are they visiting is step one.
So we wanna write in the websites that they visit based on what you’re seeing here. Focus only on the ones that where you can actually answer. I can guest here, or I can advertise here. If it’s not an option, although this is a column that I have on the worksheet, if you can’t do anything with this, like, if you’re like, well, I can’t do anything with Keller Williams.
Like, it’s a giant broker brand. What what might I do? That’s too hard for me to conceive of putting a web webinar together. I mean, maybe maybe it’s a ten x that’s worth it more than, like, something else that could feel like a two x.
But try to be, like, realistic because you could list out all the websites they visit that are huge names. And then you think, okay. I can guess here. And if you get no’s across the board, you’re going to not feel good about it. So we wanna be able to get you wins in here. So maybe put some big websites in alongside some smaller websites in.
Don’t underestimate the power of directly advertising in some of these spaces. That doesn’t mean you go to their advertised page, but there are ways to get in. We’re not gonna talk about those today.
But you can, in some cases, advertise where they’re at, and that’s gonna get more real as we get into newsletters and podcasts that look more like sponsorships.
Then you’ll go through and look at their, YouTube channels. This is really straightforward stuff. Right? Like, you just go through and use SparkToro, but document what you’re learning so that you’re not just like, oh, yeah.
Cool. I’m gonna, like, probably hit home lights. We’ll write it down. Write it down and then say, okay.
I can guess here. Because at the end of this, we’re gonna go through and make an actual plan for what you will do over the next ninety days. This will feel like, big work, but it’s useful work to do. It’s where your buyers are at right now.
Like they’re sitting there right now.
So we want to go get them. So we’ll go through and look at YouTube channels that they watch. There are a lot of columns here. Websites are a little trickier, so I didn’t put that many or a lot of rows.
Sorry. I didn’t put that many rows in here because a website could feel like, what do I even do with the website? What we’re really saying is the brand behind the website. A YouTube channel is far more specific.
If you know that they’re all going to let’s see where they’re going. HomeLight. Okay. So HomeLight is really popular as a YouTube channel, I guess, for people in the realtor space.
So you could write in home light, and then you could figure out what am I going to do with this. Go look. Go look into what HomeLight is doing on YouTube. Is there anything you could do there?
It might just be as simple as I can try to advertise. I can put a video together for these people. I can try to figure something out. Can you guest there?
You’d have to watch and see. Like, do they have podcasts that are also video that they post there? Can you try to pitch them on getting on that? If you can and if it’s a big enough swing, it’s going to be worth your time.
If it’s a small swing, then you have to make sure it’s a really scalable thing. And that’s, like, put one workshop together, which we’ll be talking about next month, that you can then pitch and you keep repeating that workshop in all of these smaller places. It’s a twenty minute workshop. The leads come directly to you, not to them, etcetera. We’ll get into that next month.
But first of all, you need to know where you’re gonna pitch it. Otherwise, when you put the webinar together next month, you’ll be like, well, what the hell do I do with this thing now? So this is that work.
Every second page in this workbook is for you to make notes to self. So if you haven’t printed this off and started going through it, I recommend you do. If you don’t print it off, if you just, like, go through and mark up the PDF, absolutely cool too. But some people will look at this table and do nothing with it.
Go like, oh, yeah. Cool. Good lesson. And move on. I don’t want you to be that person.
You’re here right now. Do the thing.
Add notes to self. Add notes for a VA if you’ve got one.
What are you thinking right now about the Homelight YouTube channel? What are you thinking? Write down your notes as they come up. If I’m chattering, turn the volume down on me. You can come back and watch the replay later if you’re actually doing work and I’m talking through your work. I’m good with you muting me. I just can’t mute myself because other people have to still do the work.
Continuing on. Oh, Claire. Yes.
Sorry to interrupt.
I I can build a list on Airtable. So I’ve got I’ve got a list of, like, fifty websites.
Sorry. Eight hundred websites, actually. Fifty YouTube channels and a bunch of subreddits that I kind of narrowed down. The subreddits were actually easiest to narrow down to my OCD.
Yes. Yes. They’re also obviously the easiest to, like, research and post on. But when it comes to YouTube and websites and I’m looking at, like, big brands, like, let’s say Crazy Egg, for example.
They do SaaS. They do analytics. People who are interested in that are probably interested in what I do. Mhmm.
But, wow, how do I begin to, like, even start narrowing down all of the different sites and also, like, figure out if they allow advertising. Because a lot of places have stopped having, like, a guest posts available page because they get crazy. Right. So yeah.
So, yeah, any advice on that?
That’s where I I firmly believe that if you can run a workshop that gets recorded and played and that brand then puts it on their YouTube. It comes up as a search result when your name is searched.
That’s what we wanna do. I would focus entirely on what is an audience.
It could be Crazy Egg if you’re subscribed. So step one, make sure you’re actually subscribed to that brand’s newsletter or email list, however that comes in. If that means you have to get a free, a free user account, free trial account, then do it. Do it and start, like, looking through.
Does Crazy Egg ever invite people to workshops?
Like and if they do, have a look at it because you might be like, Kajabi invites a lot of people to workshops, but then they’re also affiliates for all of those workshops. So you have to sell something in the workshop. So that’s not gonna be a good fit because Kajabi would be like, no. Because you’re not selling anything at the end, and so we’re not gonna make any affiliate revenue off of this.
Okay, fine. So the more you know about what they’re doing to create content and share content for their audience, the better. So that would be step one. And then then the challenge is not a guest blog post because a lot of people are not publishing guest blog posts right now.
Written content is not what it was.
So what can you do? Can you get in front of their Instagram audience somehow?
Can you I would really, really put all my eggs honestly in the basket of workshop, workshop, workshop.
They’re going to do live events of some kind. I mean, live online events.
Any brand that is scrappy enough to try to break in right now that has a little bit of money to spend is teaching their users to be better users. It’s just like a really classic playbook for getting your SaaS brand out there.
So if you if you can say, okay. I’m really clear on who my ICP is on the persona under that that this group does watch workshops.
Workshops get a bad rap. No one watches a webinar. No people people don’t watch low value stuff. But if it’s coming from a brand that they trust, then they’re more likely to watch it.
So I will watch all the webinars that Gong dot IO puts out, because they teach good stuff about sales calls and all of the stuff that matters to me. They’re not putting crap out there. I don’t get three tips for running a sales call. I get, like, here’s how to do multithreading four zero one, which is really valuable.
Right? So you do need a workshop.
It needs to be the right value level for the audience you’re trying to attract that will wake them up to their problem. So not thirteen copywriting tips, obviously, but something more strategic, something that where five people who attend reach out to you immediately, not some other thing, which, again, we’ll talk about next month when we talk about the workshop that you should be getting out there. But, Claire, as a long answer to your question, focus on getting that workshop together and then finding the right group based on what you know about how they’re creating content and promoting it to pitch because Crazy Egg might not be the way to go.
Does that make sense?
Got it. Super helpful. Yes.
I love that you have that giant air table.
That’s great. Oh, yeah.
Yeah. Like, pay for it. It’s so expensive as software.
So I might as well use this.
Yeah. Totally.
Yeah. The tricky thing about, like, lists of eight hundred is, like, where do you start? Right? So that’s very tricky. And that’s why I frankly like limiting it to, like, only the size of this worksheet.
If you can take that table you already have all filled in and start, like, limiting your options, putting those constraints around it. You’re only allowed twelve podcasts that they listen to only right in twelve then. Every this is ninety days. This isn’t the rest of your life. This is the next ninety days. What are you going to do? Where are you gonna pitch?
So same as these for podcasts. They listen to make notes to self subreddits that they frequent.
And that might not be where you create content, but you can get involved in conversations, obviously.
Any notes to self there, social accounts that they follow, these are gonna be hidden gems, not the big ones necessarily, but not tiny ones either. So you wanna look through and make sure and next month, we’ll talk more about Instagram followers and stuff like that.
But keep in mind, when I say buyers throughout this, I don’t just mean ICP. So not just that ideal client profile, but the persona under it. So you might say, people who are in a marketing capacity are your persona, and a lot of them are women. So they may be on x social space versus other groups.
So what I want you to do is not discount. I’ve had people discount. Oh, nobody’s on social. None of my the people that I’m trying to reach are on social.
And I’m like, that’s Europe to lunch. Of course, they’re on social. We’re all on some form of social unless you’ve actively chosen not to be, and then chances are good you’re not in digital marketing because you you gotta be on social if you’re in digital marketing. And if you’re hearing this and going, but I’m not on social and I’m in digital marketing, get on social.
It’s time. You have to. You have to. If I have to, you have to. Because I have to, and I’m not always happy about it.
Then we wanna get into keywords and topics. This is just not so that you’re creating content that is keyword rich or keyword targeted necessarily.
But when it comes time as we get deeper and deeper into the work, this isn’t just it’s not none of the work we do is siloed. Right? It feels like it because it’s a rectangular document, and it effectively looks like a silo. But it’s not.
This is all gonna work together. So you might not use trending keywords you can post about right now. But since you’re in SparkToro and it will share with you what some of those trending keywords are, you can see all the keywords. Obviously, it’s Rand.
Document them because that could be stuff that you can pitch content about. If it’s trending in particular, you can then adjust your workshop or webinars that the title is more about that trending keyword, but it’s still actually about the same thing. And this would just be a trending keyword that’s related to what you do. So if you’re like, oh, none of these keywords are related to what I do, that’s okay.
Just put a strike through it so that you know you did the work and nothing was there or do an NA or whatever, but I just don’t want it to look blank. I find that frustrating when things are blank. Maybe you don’t. Okay.
Now this is gonna wrapping up this conversation here. I know that we can’t do all the work because SparkToro is being a slow little bunny.
But go off and do it afterward, please. It’s on your business. Your business wants you to. That’s why you’re part of Coffee School Pro. So make sure that you do it.
Hacker News was where I started. I swear by finding a community and being of value to it before you try to take anything out of it. So add to the bank. Keep adding to the bank, and then later, you can start withdrawing.
Start now. If you don’t have a community that you’re part of, start now. It’s time to. Got it. And it could pay off a lot faster than, like, I wasn’t using Hacker News for a thing. I was just interested in what people were doing on Hacker News, like, cool, fun startup ideas and stuff like that. It’s, like, scrappy atmosphere.
So I want you to know what your Hacker News is.
I found that if you go on Reddit, you can find a lot of good communities talked about on Reddit. So go on there immediately.
Most of us are on Reddit for some things anyway, just for fun even. If you can go on Reddit and search something as simple like where are marketers hanging out? And you’ll see all sorts of responses. You can just Google Reddit and then that search phrase or whatever you want to look or, you’ll find them.
They’re listed there. Slack group. You need a couple Slack groups that you could request to join. So, ideally, they won’t just be open to everybody.
If there are a hundred and twenty thousand people in there, don’t do it. Don’t you go into that Slack group. That is going to be a waste of your time.
So Slack groups that are limited or private membership or even that are, like, you have to pay the cost of the monthly Slack charge, like, eight bucks a month plus two dollars for the administrative person who has to take care of all of this, that’s going to narrow the number of people who are in that Slack group, and that’s good for you. You don’t want a hundred and twenty thousand people in a Slack group, in a Discord, in in bigger communities maybe.
You you really do wanna focus on a concentrated group of professionals.
So if that means joining the paid product led growth Slack group, if there’s a way to do that without taking the course, I don’t recommend the course. But if you can do that, cool. Because now you’re in a product led growth Slack community, and everybody in there is concerned about product led growth. And most of them are just actively in start ups or tech companies that are using product led growth.
If that’s your ideal audience, it only makes good sense for you to participate in that group. Adding value, not taking it out, not saying, hey. I’ll do that for you. Wait until people are like, woah.
Wait. You’re a SaaS copywriter, and you do the research?
I had no idea that’s true for you. Can we talk? That’s exciting. That’s better. That’s good. So find a Slack group.
Discord, particularly if you work with tech in any way. There’s going to be a bunch of nerds who said no to Slack and yes to Discord.
So go check out Discords as well, which, of course, Reddit is also very good for nerds. So you can find all the Discord groups on Reddit too.
Clearly, I am more targeted at tech and SaaS companies than I am health and wellness and other groups like that. However, you can apply the same rules to finding same stuff for health and wellness. And if you’re like, Reddit doesn’t work for that, well, then something else, the health and wellness equivalent of Reddit.
Be resourceful. Figure that part out. The point is you need to walk away with at least one really solid Slack group for that your ideal audience is in so that you can start participating and adding value, answering questions, posting useful resources, all of those sorts of things that make you a useful part of that community. And then when it’s time for you to, like, withdraw a little from the bank, you got lots of credit there.
You got lots that you can do there. So go ahead and make sure you’re brainstorming based on everything you’re seeing on SparkToro, based on the idea of participating in a Slack group. What are you going to do? Can you come up with a brand that you could partner with?
Can you come up with three brands that you could partner with? And I mean, Unbounce thirteen years ago, Wistia twelve years ago, those sorts of groups.
Who are they today?
Can you find a way to partner with them? Where are they showing up? Where are their heads of growth showing up? Or where are the CEOs slash CMO slash cheap garbage take routers? Like, they’re doing everything.
Where are they right now? Where are they consuming content? Where are they hoping to find that next great idea?
Get in front of them. But you need to brainstorm this stuff, move through it, and then start to figure out, okay.
If it’s x brand, whoever it is, if it’s boards, let’s say words is up and coming. They’re doing lots of cool stuff. They’ve got lots and lots of users, but they really wanna scale. Boards could be my audience.
What webinar could I pitch to boards? What would make the users of boards better users of boards? Maybe it’s around x. And if it doesn’t make sense to it, you’re like, oh, no.
They need me to, like, help them write social posts and stuff. Forget it. Not boards. Next.
Cool. Eliminate things. That’s a big part of, like, finding the gold is washing away everything else until you get to the gold. Right?
So put a whole bunch of stuff in there and then start figuring out what to do. That’s the point of brainstorming. One page should not be enough. If you can do it all in one page, that was like a brain drizzle.
We wanna go on full storm, really stormy stuff, lots of stuff. And then that’ll help you get down to a ninety day attraction plan, which is free. It’s free and loose because all of this is there to tighten up your ideas where you can be. Now once you’ve got a brainstorm in place, what are you going to do over the next ninety days?
That’s July, August, September. Or if you’re watching the replay, whatever month you’re in, plus two more after that. What are you going to do for that, for the next ninety days? Are you going to pitch?
First, you have to put that webinar idea together pretty loosely because you wanna get it approved before you start actually going out and putting a full workshop together only to find out that nobody wants the damn thing. So what are you going to do to try to get out there? Keep in mind that next month we have full training on more stuff around using social media and getting your workshop in front of other audiences.
Any questions on this really quick run through of finding your buyer?
Thoughts or concerns?
No?
Andrew’s thinking.
Okay.
That is the training for today.
Do you have any questions about it, or are we ready to move on? Oh, I just saw your thing about the joke. Are we ready to move on, to the AMA part of today’s call? Good. Yes.
Alright.
Cool.
Let’s do that then. So as usual, if you have any questions, please start by, sharing your win, win of the week. Jessica has put up her hand. So what win do you have to share with us first? And if you could I know, Jess, you’re on your treadmill, I think, so you probably don’t want to come on camera.
But feel free to. It’s also encouraging.
Yeah. Share your win. Ask your question. And if you want everybody in the room to weigh in, please be sure to open it up to everyone. Otherwise, I’ll just jump in. Jessica?
Thank you. Sorry. I’m in the dark right now, actually, so that’s why I’m not on camera.
You can hear me alright? Yes. Okay. Perfect. So my win is leads into my question.
So I thought on Friday, my win was, I don’t know if people saw, but I’ve been doing the big pivot back to books. And that’s great. I feel really, really solid about that.
And I was in the middle when I made the shift. I was in the middle of a VIP client potentially hiring me for a optimization retainer for their ecommerce emails. So I was in the middle of that conversation when this shift kind of happened, but it was kinda looking that good, I guess.
Also a client who’s not ideal, so it was a very stupid choice anyway.
The win was on Friday, I kind of thought that I made it clear that this was not going to move forward via an email. I tried in a meeting. It didn’t work out. I made it clear in the email. I’ve since gotten a so I felt really good.
The winners, I felt really good because I was like, yes.
All in on books. Let’s go.
But since then, I’ve gotten a reply, and it’s kind of become clear that this it’s a fractional CMO. She would really like to work with me, but she’s really it’s, like, it’s becoming the classic thing you always coach Joe about when they can’t afford you and the things they want. And it’s like, a guarantee and promises and when can we see results or whatever. And so, of course, I stupidly used in my email response finally to just really cut this off. I I said that I I kind of attributed it to her need for guarantees and promise of results in the first like, by month two even though month one was spent on strategy. We need to analyze your data. We need to look at all the things, whatever.
So, anyway, my point is is basically, I need to now cut this off completely, and I’ve really just made a freaking mess of it. And, I don’t know. She she wrote me this long email trying to justify I misunderstood, and we can continue working. I just want clarity around the promises and the potential results and all that, and it’s just a mess. I’ve made a mess of this, and I need to get out of it.
Okay. So you’re trying to get out of it while preserving the relationship?
Yeah. I mean I mean, at least at least in a I know we’re not gonna work together in the future, but I don’t wanna be an asshole.
Oh, you came to the wrong place. Just kidding. Sorry.
It might be a bit of just kidding.
Okay. So what do we so this person had enough time to write you a long email instead of just saying, hey. Can we hop on a call? You’d already hopped on a call before, Jessica?
Yes.
Last week, I tried to hop I did hop on a call with her to say, look.
I this isn’t, you know, whatever. And I’m I know it’s a growth area. I I need to work on this, but I did I was like, oh, okay. Yeah. We can work out a and stupid. It was my fault.
So you were saying we can work something out?
It was more like I defaulted to okay.
I wouldn’t say we work yes. Sure. Let’s go with that. Yeah.
It’s okay.
I’m gonna need No.
No. No. No. No. No. No. It’s hard to say no, especially if you haven’t practiced saying no.
So I think that’s completely fair.
But now you have to practice saying no. So, it’s awkward. It is. Even when you practice at it, it’s still awkward because you have to let them down.
But one way that I would recommend going about it is saying, like, hey. Something’s changed for me. I’ve actually been running two different service businesses, and the other one is taking off big time. So I need to now reprioritize my efforts on that one because it’s a service, and I am the service provider. So I can’t move forward with you on the ecommerce side of things. And that’s absolutely true. And how could she argue with that?
No. She really can’t. I think it’s I think it was just my yeah. I I should have led with that. I’m kicking myself. I should have led with that.
That’s okay. I mean, I think you’re do so, like, so what? You’re not honestly, she’ll be over it within a minute.
I’m moving on, so I wouldn’t I wouldn’t overthink it. I think it’s nice that you’re worrying about it. Just tell her the fact in a nice way, and then she’s released to go look for someone else instead of waiting around hoping that it might work out with you.
Yeah. Okay. Good? Thank you. That’s cool. It still feels like garbage. But Yeah.
It does. Lots of the things will feel like garbage as you grow.
That’s why you have to make a lot of money to make up for when you feel shitty. Yeah.
Yeah. You’re right. Okay. I’ll add that to the list, become millionaire faster than I wanted to be Exactly.
So because of this. I like that. I like that. Except it needs a deadline. Okay.
Alright. Cool. Awesome, Jessica. Good luck. Thanks. Thanks.
Johnson, what’s your win?
Hey.
So a win, for this weekend is related to the question is that, I developed, three to four more outlines for various products within narrative selling to follow the sort of land and expand model that you, were talking about. And, it actually came fairly easily once I was kinda looking at it from that perspective, and it’s quite exciting.
So my question is that I’ve, I have this this this new idea for a for a product wise, a service based product, that I’m calling the founder’s narrative, as a sort of standardized offer with the authority building offer that you’ve seen in in that document as the, sort of upsell and then ongoing retainer.
So the the founders product is basically to help founders, find their story and and message, like, a kind of a well, a few elements of it, but but but a key story that is sort of their why, their, their meaning, behind their sort of their mission, and then, signifier stories that can be reframed in in multiple ways to convey various, aspects of, their their product.
And then there’s some other stuff about how to tell stories and how to adjust them for various audiences.
So my question is, does that sound like a good pairing and a good choice for the land and expand?
And, also, do you have any thoughts about the the document that you placed on?
Yes. The document. Thanks.
Yes. So so the idea with the founder’s narrative for land and expand is you’re brought in to work on the founders narrative, and then you work through other departments?
Yeah. Sort of to to look for founders who are keen to be out there, get in front of people, talk about, their stuff, which I I feel like won’t be hard to find, and, and to give them a framework to do that that that they, that that helps, helps them resonate with their target audience, basically.
Okay. Cool.
Let me open the doc then. Okay. So if you feel good about that as your land and expand, that’s cool. The only question I have around expand is if it’s a founder’s narrative, how big is the ICP that you’re going after?
How many employees does it have?
Well, I guess somewhere between sort of ten and fifty is a very sort of rough number. I’m imagining around, twenty to thirty, probably on on average, in this sort of, in that sort of range.
Do you think there’s a do you think it’s it might be too small?
Well, there’s just not much room to expand there. Where land and expand when you’re, like, talking about going up market is I mean, you still can.
You would just land in c suite and then expand to marketing might want the product narrative, I guess.
Yeah. I’ve got something for for marketing and sales as well.
So it was sort of like get the founders on board, make them love us, and then it felt like it would be an easier sell to the rest of the the teams.
Yeah.
And maybe that’s so in looking over your pricing, the thing about the founder’s narrative and, like, it’s cool and, like, I don’t know.
It feels like there’s it’s got legs because it’s a lot like positioning, but for the founder, which is cool.
So you could definitely, like, piggyback off of a lot of what April Dunford’s done. Like, if April did it, you should do it.
So that’s worth considering.
I guess I just wonder about the retainer side of it.
April also doesn’t have a retainer model for hers. However, there is this, like, there is more of a land and expand, which might be more of the retainer for you, where you would instead start with the founder’s narrative as the thing that you’re standing up, impress the crap out of the founder with that, and then say, okay. You know, we can do the same thing for your products, or we can do the same thing for your different groups, like the sales team or whatever. You’d have to figure that out. When I look through your document, the part that’s tricky is, like, the the execution y stuff, like monthly lead magnet development, it feels like forcing the issue, in order to get that easier performance based retainer in there or performance driven retainer in there.
So I would for you, I would say, okay. This week, I’m going to pause thinking about my business as stand up offer followed by retainer and instead think of my business as fully land and expand. Okay. That’s all I’m going to do. If I were to do that, what would expand look like? So land is the templated thing that then gets applied to different departments.
For that to work, what did my what would my ICP need to look like? What would they need to believe?
What would need to be their struggles right now? Because you have to solve those by repeating this thing across everywhere, which is doable. But I would put aside anything that has to do with, execution.
I’d keep it at the strategic level, and you can always recommend other people to execute. Yeah. I know. Right?
Johnson, you just graduated from executing. Well done.
That’s awesome.
My word. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. There’s a win for me. I was having a conversation with my, teammate where we were discussing, like, just how much I want to move away from delivery, of execution of products, and onto consulting.
Yeah. Cool. So And if you’re down for traveling too, the only side note is that if you’re going to go in and impress founders, they often need to see you in real life.
So you have to travel.
Fair.
And if I was willing to, sorry to hold the mic. But if I was willing to, switch up because, again, like, I feel like there’s a lot of ways I could apply these ideas, and there’s a lot of ways I could go with it.
If I wanted to look at a more sort of enterprise y level of the really upmarket, sort of land and expand.
Do you have any thoughts about, just the maybe the land product?
The problem is I really like the idea of the founder’s narrative.
I feel like it reminds me of this is so stupid.
It reminds me of on Friends when Jennifer Aniston says something about apartment pants to her, boss, who’s like, now I want apartment pants. They’re not even a thing, but it’s such a good, like, idea. Like, you could sell it.
So she’s like, let’s invent apartment pants.
And that’s the same kind of thing here. Like, the founder’s narrative just sounds really good. You know, you can see that founders would be like, I want a narrative. I need a narrative.
Get me a narrative. I want this, just like apartment pants. So now you just have to figure out what the founder’s narrative is. Stacy just said leaders narrative, potentially.
Yeah. Right?
I think that there’s if it’s blank narrative, you’ve got a big idea there that although people have been saying narrative, it’s kind of like story brand. It’s blank brand. But your blank narrative But then you just you gotta be ready to go all in and, like, own narrative. And I think that’s cool. I think that’s great and strategic and potentially expensive.
But, yeah, you do have to rethink that. Maybe it is leaders’ enter leaders’ narrative.
Maybe. Yeah. I love that. Yeah.
I I love that, Stacy.
Thank you.
And, okay, just one other tiny, tiny, tiny thing, because I feel like you will know the answer to this. I have this, as far as, like, coming out with this idea and talking about it and being this, thought leader, and creating all of the content, I have this fear that someone is going to take the the developed idea as far as it’s developed right now and then run with it faster than I can, and rename it, rebrand it into something else.
Is that, not stupid, but, like, is that something worth worrying about?
Yeah. Except you’re gonna do it better. You’re going to stay with it. People will steal your ideas all day.
So many. But they’re also lazy and quickly bored because they don’t have their own ideas. So I would say, like, don’t worry about it. They’ll come in.
They’ll swoop in. They’ll try to steal it.
The more you can’t. So that’s the worrying side of it. You can protect it as well. You can’t protect it from some parts of the world.
But once you’ve trademarked the thing, you’re good. You’re pretty good from there. People will still try to knock you off, but there was actually a story that Bob from Rewired Group was telling me a couple of weeks. I think it was Bob was saying, that one of his friends has, like, this big IP.
And someone from, like, McKinsey came to his friend and said, like, oh, we love your, we love or no. It was Blair Ends, maybe. I mean, we love your, blah blah blah product, the program, the framework. We use it across we’ve been using it across our x y z clients.
He sent them an invoice for his consulting fees on that because it’s his protected IP, and you cannot teach it. And so he got paid, like, three million dollars or something because this guy from McKinsey didn’t know better than to keep it to himself.
There was legal shit involved. Not that it wasn’t just like, oh, we’ll pay this invoice. Like, there was stuff. But that said, write a book about it.
Knock that thing out. You can do a better edition once it gets traction. Like, second edition is actually good. Like, well written.
First one is just great ideas. Document your framework. Own the title, trademark what you can, and then no people will steal it. And you just have to push through and be better at it.
Don’t switch to something else. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, it will happen.
Alright.
It’s just the way it is.
Okay. Okay. Alright. That’s helpful. Thank you, Joe.
Sure. I look forward to reading the book in a couple months.
Yes.
Yes. Good. Awesome.
Deadline’s next ninety days.
Got it.
Oh, good. I hope so. Andrew, what is your win?
Hey. Can you hear me okay? Yeah.
Cool.
My win is that, I gay I did a, redid a client’s, land paid search landing page, maybe that they started testing about six weeks ago. And as of today, they they’ve a little bit lower traffic, so we’re using eighty percent as, significance. And as of today, I have a winner, at about twenty eight percent increase Nice. At eighty percent significance.
So, you know, not Getting there.
You know? Yeah. Amazon is not, you know, not gonna count that as a win, but it’s been consistently leading, and the copy from before was really bad. So I’m pretty confident that it’s that it’s true, but there’s some some reality behind the those numbers. So that’s exciting. That definitely lights me up. I like that stuff.
I love that. Cool. Nice work.
Yeah. That’s a big that that that’s the stuff that really lights me up is checking, like, to go into the, into Optimizely and be like, winning.
Anyway, so my my main question is that what I’ve noticed is that the companies that I tend to have the most success with, are companies that are, like, doing fairly well. Like, let’s say, they’re already at, you know, maybe fifty million, a hundred million, but have obviously bad copy on their website. Like, you can go in, and it’s usually, like, a problem, and it’s just, like, way too technical. Like, you know, clients that like, I have a client who’s running a headline. It’s, like, accelerate analytic productivity, and it’s, like, okay. What?
So what I’m so I’m kind of wondering, like, is that, like, a reasonable strategy to sort of look for companies that are, like, succeeding despite bad copy? Because I just I just feel, like, a lot more confident going into those situations where it’s, like, I can just look at their website and just know that I’m gonna be able to make it better.
Guess the question is I would look at their team. Why is the copy bad?
It’s because it’s use often because they’re having their product marketers write it, and their product marketers are really smart, but they’re very technical and write in a sort of academic tone, and nobody really knows. Like, when I come in and start talking, like, copy hacker stuff, their minds are exploding.
Yeah. Cool.
I love hearing that.
No. I’m sorry. I’m just kidding. Thank you.
Thank you for Okay.
Can you are you willing to pick a fight with product marketers writing copy? Would you write a headline ever that says product marketers can’t write copy?
Yeah. I’ll take some whack with that as a former product marketer.
But yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
I’m sure a lot of them would be like, yeah.
No. That shouldn’t be my job in the first fucking place, by the way.
Yeah. Doing a very respectful way.
Well, that’s the thing. In a if the real challenge is, can you put a banner up that says product marketers can’t or shouldn’t write copy?
But you have like, if you can stand behind that, if you could put it on a T shirt, then you might be on to something.
Right? Because then then you can go out to these groups and or they’ll come to you and they’ll see, like, oh, this person understands that product marketers, maybe the word is shouldn’t. But what you need to know when figuring out if this is what’s keeping them from writing good copy, if it’s not just bureaucracy, if it’s not just dilution of things as more features are added, If it’s really product marketers are writing this stuff and they shouldn’t, that may need to be the fight that you pick. And if that’s the fight that you pick, you have to be willing to fight that fight.
And that really does mean you have to pick a fight. You have to say product marketers shouldn’t write copy, and it’s everywhere. And that doesn’t mean that’s going to be your tagline, but you have to be willing to do that. Like, your head has to get right with that, with the big statement, whatever that big statement is.
So I think, yes, if you’re willing to stand behind it and really say something.
Yeah. Otherwise, there’s no point.
Yeah. I mean, I think I would as maybe a question of when I back in when I need to start doing internal interviews with the people I just called out.
Hey. You guys are so smart. Love what you do. But, I mean, honestly, that’s part of the problem.
Right? Is that they they know the product too well. They don’t have any objectivity. They’ve learned it in a kind of academic way.
And so they’re just disconnected from how people are going to buy, you know, I mean, you you send them to copy school, then sure, they can do it.
But if they haven’t done that yet, then they’re just not the people who should be writing your conversion focus Exactly.
Conversion copy. Yeah.
So as long as you have the support for that, then I think but you just have to be willing to say it. You have to go on LinkedIn and say it, and then support it with everything that you just said. If not just LinkedIn, I actually whatever. But I know everybody else likes, like, LinkedIn.
Go wherever you’re going online and and say the thing, and then support it like you just did. And they will buy in. They’ll agree with you. That’s just the way it is. Yeah. And some won’t, and that’s good. Some shouldn’t.
Yeah.
Okay? Then we can pipe it. Cool. Thank you. Sure. Awesome.
Thank you. Claire, what’s your win?
Hey. Well, I just completed my win, which was narrowing my Reddit parse my Reddit, like where is the subreddit? So where is the subreddits?
Sorry. It’s late for me.
My YouTube and my website’s down. Also under forty. So each of them is under forty, which is a good start. And I’ve got some, like, moonshots in there and some, like, realistic ones.
Interestingly, I don’t know if anyone else is targeting b to b SaaS, but here’s quick fun insight.
Everyone’s YouTube channel, like, if you are targeting people who, like, follow April Dunford, for example, are interested in product led growth, those brands’ YouTube channels, crap.
Like, as far as the scale of YouTube goes, like, their view count is pretty low, and their cadence is pretty low as well Okay.
Which is really interesting. What’s the opportunity there when you know that? What do you think the opportunity is then?
Well, Crazy Egg hasn’t posted a video in three years. But three weeks ago, they posted a video, and I’m like, oh, does that mean Coming back. That they’re trying to do something? Does that mean that some marketer in there has gone like, crap, guys.
We really need to work on our, you know, stuff.
And some executive has gone, yeah. Find people.
Yes. Totally. And you, like, miraculously show up at the right time.
Right time, right place.
Love it. So nice.
That’s the one thing.
Cool.
Okay. So I you told me a while ago to name, what I’ve been working on, which is onboarding flows. So I’m gonna say, like, broadly this this is for everyone, by the way. Broadly, this flow, will include include emails at its most basic.
It’s more complicated. It will take someone from free to paid. So that means the in app prompts the sign up page for when you, like, click the, sign up button or stop for free, that page, and even the pricing page in future. That’s like the expanded version.
It’s, like, comprehensive.
So I’ve got a few options that I’ve narrowed it down to. Two of them were like, oh my god. Like, that might work moments.
And two of them were chat GPT moments. So the premise being that onboarding flows, typically, most people understand them as like a linear path. Right? And my fight that I’m picking is that, no. It’s not a linear path.
It is very much, and this is my latest one, like a pinball machine. Right? So the user, like, drops it, and then they get, like, knocked all over. Maybe get close to converting, visiting a pricing page, and then nope back to product experience.
Yeah.
So, the pinball onboarding machine, TM was one idea.
The pinball what? Onboarding machine. Onboarding machine. Okay. Okay. Yeah. Interesting.
And then my brand name is Coby Ireland. I had, like, a little wobble about whether or not I need to change that and ultimately decided that the effort of changing it probably wouldn’t be worth the payoff.
But bucket list onboarding was another kind of concept where the user has to go through, like, a bucket list of things that they need to check. Basically, points k.
In order to actually activate.
K.
That was the one.
And then the other two are Japanese. I love Japan. Obsessed.
Also, my audience is fairly, like, interested being nerds and all.
So the one is pretty classic. Kaizen is a Japanese philosophy of continuous small improvements Yep. Which has three kind of main principles of involvement of everyone. So that would be like sales, customer success, etcetera. Standardization of the practice that would be more about the optimizing side and the process. That would be the process of confiding someone.
K.
There were two other Japanese words that I thought could be could work with onboarding flow or activation flow. The one was, which means to wake up something dormant, and kumiki, which is the Japanese woodwork. I don’t know if you guys know about it, but they very carefully cut, their wood so it slots together. Like, their houses are built with no nails they used to be.
The workmanship is extremely precise so that everything, the whole big picture just slots together.
Yeah.
Those old ideas. Anyone any of them feels sticky? I was driving myself.
Anybody wanna chime in?
I have thoughts.
I would just on the on the Japanese words, I would caution against that right now because of the whole issues with cultural appropriation and things like that. So I don’t know that I would want to latch onto another culture’s term for, you know, for commercial gain.
That’s something that I would be beware of. I I love the pinball concept, and I think you have a lot of potential with that.
You know, pinball pinball onboarding, don’t tilt, you know, get the high score or all the kinds of things. I mean, there’s a lot you could do with that. It’s kinda it’s fun and and memorable.
Just my my take.
Cool feedback.
Anybody else have a note for Claire on this?
So I like the I like that pinball is a known thing. For me, pinball means chaos, though. Like, it flies everywhere.
So I wonder if there’s, like if you could dig into pinball the way you dug into these Japanese terms.
What are the little toggle guys called? What are the what are the parts called?
And I would, like, try or what’s, like, the outcome or the sound when you when you land it? Like, what’s the like, when the the ball goes in the hole? Whatever hole that is. What are the I would dig more into that famous pinball players even, in the past and stuff like that simply because I like the analogy.
I like metaphor. I like I like that it’s pinball.
I don’t love the visual chaos of things going everywhere, Right.
Because you’re not going to bring chaos. It might be that things are popping all over the place.
But, yeah, what’s the oak? What’s the I dig into it because I think there’s something there. And maybe it’s just me. Maybe I’m the only one who thinks chaos with that word.
So there’s that to consider, but I like it. It’s it’s a thing. It’s a known thing. I know what it is.
I could talk about it. It’s pinball.
When it comes to the Japanese stuff, I didn’t see it the same way that Stacy does, but I think it’s valid and worth considering, of course.
The Kanuki one seemed most interesting simply because Kaizen, I feel like a lot of tech companies were talking Kaizen, like, seven years ago or somewhere in there. Yeah.
Although I really like that the model has, like, those three parts that you could, like, model out, no share, use as your diagnostic, and things like that.
But the visual of the Kanuki is nice. I think it was Kanuki is what you said. Kanuki? Kanuki?
It’s with an m, but pretty close. Okay.
I don’t know it.
But that could be interesting and also, like, ownable and still in the the area of Kaizen and everything that we learned from Toyota and all of these other great brands that are extremely efficient.
So, yeah, those are my thoughts. I like where you’re going, and I love that you’re giving it a name. Oh my gosh. Yes to naming things. Yes.
But naming is extremely difficult while we’re on the subject. So yeah. Yeah. And pinball dot I o is twenty five thousand US dollars to buy.
Mhmm. Interested in really going in on that and only getting an I o out of it while we’re on the subject. So, yeah. Johnson, do you have to add do you want me to add anything here for Claire?
Oh, mine’s, that’s, well, it’s, like, related to knitting, but, I don’t you I I don’t wanna cut off the phone. Claire.
K. Claire, is that helping at all? Like yeah. Yeah. Load it also over in the Slack group for those who weren’t here today.
Yeah. Cool. Awesome. In the CSP part, not just in the intensive because it’s a CSP.
Okay. Perfect. Cool. Cool. Awesome. Thanks, Claire.
Johnson, you’re back.
I’m just getting in all the questions I should have gotten in Do it.
Over the last excellent. Yes. On naming things, right, which you just mentioned.
So you might remember, I my sort of and, Stacy, I would love your feedback on this too if you’re willing.
The the name I came up for my idea was narrative selling. And that was gonna be sort of the overarching concept. And now we’ve got, like, founders narrative and company narrative and product narrative and narrative selling itself as, like, its own sort of subdivision, of it. But I’m just wondering if you have any thoughts on how narrative selling as a as the overarching, sort of as the forget the final, as the jobs to be done, like, does that make sense as a, as a name, or is there maybe a different direction I should think about?
Stacy, do you wanna share your thoughts since you were invited?
I mean, I’ve as a name for you mean, like, a brandable name for your Yep. It’s too generic to be a brandable name, I think, because, I mean, there’s already there’s so many people talking about narrative selling already. It’s just a thing. You know? I mean, I Sassy writes sales narratives.
It it’s just, you know, lots of people are doing narrative selling and talking about narrative selling. So I would find another brandable name that you can own and figure out, you know I mean, and make that narrative selling could be what it is, but I would I wouldn’t necessarily call it that unless you’re and with you’re talking about that as a product. Do you know what I mean?
Yeah. Yeah. Sure.
I mean, I I maybe I’m not I’m probably not in the same circles as you, but, do they call it narrative selling as, like, the the that combination of words, or is there just talk about narrative and selling as, like, a sort of Well, like, I mean, like, StoryBrand has a whole thing on, you know, selling with story, and there’s a whole they have a whole course in that.
And I’m I’m very, very involved in story because I’ve, you know, ingested, like, pretty much everything having to do with story. I have all the, you know, all the books and all the things because I’ve been a StoryBrand I’ve been a StoryBrand certified guide for six years, and, about thirty percent of the StoryBrand certified guides use my software.
So I’m very, very steeply involved in story.
So, I would just you you know, if you want something brandable, I would just say that narrative selling is a generic term. That’s that’s all I’m saying.
Cool.
That’s a thing. It’s a valid thing. And if you can talk about narrative selling, that’s fine to talk about it. But if it’s if you’re looking for a brandable term, I don’t think that you’re gonna have success with that as a brandable term.
Got it. That’s really helpful, Stacy. Thank you. I didn’t know that you, you’ve worked so much with story branding.
That’s cool. I will we have to do a coffee meet soon, actually. I meant to message you. Sorry.
Okay. Jo, do you have any thoughts?
Yeah. I mean, I feel like, okay. Cool. So totally fair on maybe narrative selling, but I still think there’s room there.
I honestly do. I think, it doesn’t have to be that. I like I really like the founder’s narrative. People have been talking about storytelling and narrative for all time, and no one’s ever nailed it.
Like, there’s still you walk away even with StoryBrand. We get all people that copy hackers coming over from StoryBrand because they’re like, well but I can’t actually, like, write the stuff. Like, I can put it mapped very well, and that’s great. But, like, now my clients need the next step, and I can’t do that.
And that’s fair. It’s fine to stay higher level. That’s fine. It just means I think that it leaves what it’s speaking to is that there’s room in the market for more gap filling.
I I every time you say you talk about this, Johnson, I think of The Message and the Messenger, which is a book that I would write if it made sense for me too.
What what I keep seeing from brands is right now, they don’t know there’s a mismatch between what they’re saying and who they are, and they’re publicly demonstrating that on social media, trying to be something that the brand isn’t, But that’s because a brand has a hard time being authentic, but a person can be authentic. Like, a person can be real. And so a founder wants to be the right messenger for his brands or her brands or their brands message. So so to me, it feels like there’s an opportunity opening up, thanks to social media largely, where the messenger needs to have the right message, and it has to come together. It has to work.
And that’s where the founder’s narrative is interesting.
To me, I would try to break it, though. I think that we should always try to break the things before we invest. So how could that be broken? Maybe it does get confused with StoryBrand.
Maybe it gets confused somehow with Rem’s book Lost and Founder somehow.
You don’t you don’t know. Right? But you just, like, start trying to break it. And then, okay, if we can break it, now let’s rebuild it stronger and better so it can’t be, which could be trying to break it for me would be like, okay.
If the founder’s narrative is my land, my expand has to be getting into other parts of the organization.
So what are those called? Is it like, we were talking about, is it product narrative? Uh-uh. Not great.
Is it the sales narrative also not really meaty?
So play around with that. You’re I think there’s something there. I would also, like, try to work through how Simon Sinek got to start with why. Because we are talking about something strategic here. We are talking about something that would attract a lot of c levels if they heard it, if they saw you on stage or heard you on a podcast.
It would feed their ego, honestly, to have their own narrative created by some great person from England with an accent. Like, there’s a lot there, honestly, as this I know that sounds stupid, but I think it would sell extremely well.
Interesting.
So what is the name?
If it’s not the founder’s narrative, stay in that vicinity, though, and see Well, I I do like that.
Yeah. I mean, I, like, I do like the founder’s narrative as a, as a name for this particular product.
And I I’m just I I feel like I I keep kind of asking this thing. It’s like, is this the right umbrella to put my these ideas under? Because I know that once this is done and I invest it and I buy the websites and, like, that’s it. It’s locked in. And I just kind of wanna I know names are maybe the least important part in many ways of Okay. You know? Oh.
They’re both not important and entirely everything.
So, yeah, if you get it right, it doesn’t matter. If you get it wrong, you’re screwed.
Right. I mean, I think founders narrative is is great. I really like that one. I think that’s strong and that the the the thing that I don’t like about that is that it doesn’t bring you into the enterprise market, which is why you can have founders narrative for the smaller companies and leaders narrative for the enterprise companies. And for the for the enterprise companies, leaders narrative is great because every enterprise wants to harness their workforce to help them establish thought leadership.
So if you’re if you’re going into an enterprise and helping them establish thought leadership across the enterprise by teaching them a process of the leader’s narrative and then empowering everybody to share the same story, you can make a fortune doing this.
So I did have an idea that I’ve called the organizational narrative, which was a sort of internal look at the narratives that are at play sort of strategically within the organization where there’s conflicting, perceptions essentially about, well, the stories, the the narratives that exist within the company, of what teams are doing, of what C suite wants and does.
And that was a that was a sort of next the next sort of one I wanted to start fleshing out a little bit.
Yeah. So cool. Okay.
I mean, it sounds like You’re separating it from the human element then, though.
You’re breaking up the organizational narrative. That’s like the people are what matter when you’re telling stories. Right? So the if you you you make the leaders narrative align with the organizational priorities, and then you have happy people who have their own story that they get to share that’s aligned with the organization.
Does that make sense? What do you think, Joanna? Yeah.
I fully agree. Yeah. Organizational narrative bored me immediately, and it’s, it’s it’s probably because it’s missing people. Yeah. Yeah. Cool.
Alright. Okay.
And think about the job that they’re actually hiring this to do. It might feel like they’re hiring it. They’re hiring this service to do, so a a job inter I would say they’re hiring it for they’re likely going to wanna come out of this, feeling better about themselves. It’ll be a personal job they’re really hiring it for, feeling valuable, feeling, of course, like they can can perform better and go out into the world and really understand their message.
But but so if you know it’s about you’re gonna have people making people based decisions, name it in a way where it’s, like, gotta have it.
This thing, the leadership story deck, there’s a guy, David Hutchins. His book is, The Circle of the Nine Muses. He has this great deck of cards, and it’s all about stories. And it’s the stories that individual people can tell, and it breaks it down into this whole framework of, like, when to use what story for what. It’s really fantastic. I think if you checked it out, it would be a a good, thing for sparking ideas for creating your own thing. But he goes in and does workshops, and it it becomes, actually a personal transformation for the attendees.
It’s it’s about them transforming themselves by learning to tell these stories and to to do it through work. So that’s a that’s another thing to think about. Think about the people, the people.
Alright.
Okay. That’s really helpful. Thank you.
And so narrative selling maybe as an umbrella term is not, possibly not the the best way to go, but something narrative was narrative something, maybe still to keep these all under a similar sort of, format.
Yeah. I think so. Yeah.
Alright. Thank you so much, guys. This was incredibly helpful. That was, like, a little bit of a electricity for me there. Thank you.
Good. I, I love it.
Okay. Excellent. Good stuff. Alright. Thanks, y’all. Thanks for hanging on, and see you later. Have a good one.
Thanks, Stacy. Thanks, Jared.
Bye.
Worksheet
Worksheet
Transcript
Excellent. Okay. So we have a few more people joining. Of course, this is recording, but this is our Copy School Pro call of the week. This week, we are talking continuing on with our final week, actually, of the buyer handbook.
Next week, as you’ll see in the Coffee School Pro training area very soon, next week, we will have a whole new theme starting, and that one for the month of July is under the sunshine growth model.
When you look at the skills part of the sunshine growth model and the skills that you use, those are used to grow your business, like administrative stuff or things like list building and social followers. That’s what we’re doing next month is all about list building, and getting more social followers where social can be the best path toward building your list today. But we’ll talk more about that all next starting next week. We’re gonna get started on Instagram.
We’re gonna get into gamifying list building, with Shane. We’ll do a webinar, like, how to create a waking up to the problem webinar that you can present to other people’s audiences. I’ll be running that. So if you are wondering how to get in front of other audiences, like what we’re gonna talk about today, then this will be useful for you.
So there’s a lot coming up in July. Watch for all of that. Two lessons a week as usual.
And then this week this week oh, yeah. This week, we have Shane wrapping up, our, buyer handbook month with using AI to create your business’ actual buyer handbook. So that should be fun and exciting.
Alright.
It’s a bit of a working session today. We’ll be doing some actual work, which I hope is good for everybody in the room. And, yeah, there will, of course, be a replay, and there is the worksheet. So if you can open up the worksheet that we that Sarah sent out over the weekend that has the buyer handbook, find and attract your ideal buyers. I’m about to share my screen.
This is, of course, a really this is a fundamental topic, finding people who will buy the stuff that you’ve got, pretty important.
We we we need to do that. That’s just how life works. Now, hopefully, they’ll find you right back, but you still need to show up conveniently where they are. So that’s what we’re gonna talk about here today. Let me just go into presentation mode.
If you haven’t watched other sessions from the month of June on the buyer handbook, go back through the Coffee School Pro training area and pick up some more stuff there where we’re talking about ICPs, personas, personas underneath your ICP, all of that kind of stuff that, is critical to understanding who you’re talking to and if they’re the right person to talk to right now. And, of course, they will talk about where they are. So this is going to be very useful for you. If you wanna find out where your ICPs are, you will need to have your laptop open in front of you to do this work.
If not, your phone might be okay, but we’re gonna go into a tool, today. And maybe you already have access to that tool. And if you do, awesome. And if you don’t, that’s okay. They have a free thing that you can use today.
And then after this, you’re going to be ready to start pitching brands, not people.
Brands on partnering to share your content. Now there are people at the brands, but what people often talk about for freelancers with cold pitching is go cold pitch a potential client. And there’s nothing technically wrong with that, except it doesn’t scale very well. It takes a lot of work to do it, and we would all rather people just come to us.
So we’re gonna borrow the authority of other brands, which I talk about all the time, because that’s how I got here. So if not for me, absolutely latching on to the authority of other brands, way back in the beginning, I would not have the business that I have today. Not at all. And I’m very happy with the business I have today.
And so I can say, and I think a lot of people who look back at their growth or their lack of growth will be able to look at the network that they tapped into or did not tap into early on. So for me, Hacker News was a big part of it. So that’s community. What community can and should you participate in right now? We’re gonna work on finding those communities today.
It would be better if you’d started working in that community five years ago. Of course, it would everything better if we’d started doing any of this stuff five years ago, but we didn’t. So we’re going to do it today and not let any of the crap in because this crap always comes in. Oh, there’s no way in. It’s saturated, etcetera, etcetera. Shush.
We’re just gonna do the work. Just do the work and don’t think about it.
I also partnered with brands.
Unbounce was just starting out. HubSpot was still small enough that people weren’t necessarily that familiar with everything HubSpot could do. It wasn’t ubiquitous like it is today when I was starting out. Leadpages was like a whole different thing at the time, and Wistia was two dudes.
That was it. So but we partnered with them early on, and now their brands have grown. Our brands have grown and been able to, like, carry on. Our brand has grown and been able to carry on with it.
So I borrowed their authority. You need to do the same because there is an a early version of Wistia out there right now. There’s an early version of Unbounce out there right now.
Partner with them. They have as much hustle as anybody else had twelve, fifteen years ago, they are people to, partner with. So we’re gonna talk about who those, like, hidden gems are, and that’s really the goal today. When you find where your people are at, then we want you to put a webinar, which you’ll probably call a workshop, in front of them as soon as humanly possible.
And you’re going to force it to snowball. You’re not going to sit there and go, okay, I wonder if this is gonna work. You are going to make it work because that is how we get shit done. That’s what separates us here. We will force the snowball effect. Okay. So how do we even get started?
We’re gonna find people online using SparkToro. Has anybody used SparkToro before?
Yes. Cool. Are you using it now?
Good. It’s very easy to start and cancel, start and cancel. That’s actually you know, anybody who’s worked with them knows that’s a an actual challenge for them. As you use it, get everything you need out of it, and then you cancel, but you might come back four months later and use it all over again. So it’s a bit of a a different subscription model. But will you use SparkToro, in order to find out where people are, obviously, that’s what SparkToro does. It helps you find out what they’re talking about, etcetera.
But oftentimes when you’re using SparkToro and I’m just gonna open this up, over to the side as I move Zoom around. When you’re using SparkToro, it’s often defined, like, keywords and things like that.
Not keywords for social necessarily, what brand should I be looking up?
Just mine. And so I’m what brand should I be looking up? Just mine. And so I’m going to recommend that you look up a complementor. So instead of a competitor, this is someone who is like a competitor, but they’re more complimentary. So for us, ConvertKit or Kit might be a complimenter for us because we share a similar audience of digital creators, but we want to find a group that has more traffic, ideally, significantly more traffic than we get.
So for me, I might look up convertkit dot com, or I might look at other complementors. April Dunford and I have similar audiences in some ways. It depends on what I’m trying to sell. In other ways, we have very different audiences.
So that might be somebody that I look up to see, what because we can’t look up ourselves. Right? If you’re if you have a brand new website or you’ve got, like, five people coming a day to your website, you can’t really use SparkToro or yourself to get a sense of it. So we need to go and basically get a sense of the audience that our complementors or even full on competitors have.
So if you’re like, okay. I’m serving this market, but I know that this other brand is huge and they’re serving the same market I am. We’re just gonna use this over here in SparkToro. So you should now be seeing the SparkToro interface where you wanna go to the tab audience research.
What I recommend is right now, while I’m chattering, if you’re not using SparkToro, start an account right now. It’s free. You just, like, go to SparkToro dot com, use your Gmail or whatever to create an account quickly, get in there because we’re going to go to the audience research tab and this there’s all sorts of things.
Claire, did you work with Jia and Claire on SparkToro stuff?
Sorry. Muted. I have someone on the tab. Yes. I did. Okay.
Wait back to before two point o.
You would know, of course, more than I I’ve used for Arturo on and off, but I’m not, like, a power user of it. So, Claire, if you have anything to add, please do feel free to at any point or anybody who uses this and and has something to add here, please please do.
What we wanna do today is start by listing out three brands, ideally, the dot com version, like, the actual website that gets the audience you wish you could get. Now that could a really obvious one is some sort of software Software made for different audiences. So if you’re like, I want to work primarily with nonprofits, then you’d go look you should know what software people who are at nonprofits use. If you were like, I only work with real estate developers, then you’ll know or or realtors. And you might say, like, okay. Realtors use follow-up boss. So I’m going to look up follow-up boss and see what comes up.
And that’s what I’ll use to get started here on filling this in.
We have to wait for it to load, so we’re gonna do that. While that’s happening, make sure you’ve started your SparkToro account and start thinking of these people. So you have to first first know who your ideal audience is and then what they trust. So I don’t have a part on here for your ideal audience because you already know that That’s, like, very introductory basic stuff.
Tell Rand what did you say? Oh, got it. Fine. To pedal faster?
Is he in a race right now? Is he, like, biking somewhere, Andrew?
Or Andrew?
Are you chatting to us? Oh, he’s powering the sparktor.
I got it. I didn’t get that. Okay.
Now I got it.
I was slow. It’s my damn slow. Yeah. It’s taking a while to load up. Is it slow is it slow for everybody?
No? For some? Okay.
So we’ll just set that aside, and I will walk through what our objective is, like, what we’re going to do along the way. So if you can list out those three to five groups, you’re going to enter and repeat this process for those three to five different groups in here. For follow-up, boss, really?
Okay. So we’ll go through a creative free SparkToro account, go to audience research, search the website or domain of a complementor, then we’re going to fill this in for for, like, three to five of those groups. Knowing that as just happened here, sometimes, Barktoro won’t have enough data for it. So just keep that in mind, and then just repeat. Then afterward, we’re going to save this and downloaded data because you can export data on, SparkToro from SparkToro to wherever. This is the kind of thing that you’ll want to share with your VA as you move forward or just have for yourself as you, like, get deeper and deeper into building your business.
Knowing more about who and where they are is everything. It’s the thing that keeps people from growing is I don’t know how to get in front of my audience because I don’t know where they are. What are they paying attention to? And then everybody gravitates to the exact same people.
Well, all Chorus creators want to get or or follow Amy Porterfield. Okay. Great. But what software are they using?
What plug ins for that software are available? What Chrome extensions are they using? Can you partner with those smaller groups in order to get some traction? Because everybody can’t go around pitching Amy Porterfield, and her audience gets fatigued too versus the smaller companies that are out there that are gaining traction and would love to help an x to have an expert like you come in and teach their audience.
This is a big thing. Unbounce wanted me to come in and teach their audience to be better at making landing pages because it’s good for Unbounce. Same was true for Leadpages. Same was true for ConvertKit.
All of these different groups early on want you to come train their audience, and the good thing is you want to do that too. You wanna be an authority in front of them, so we need to find out where they are. So we’re gonna use SparkToro to find out where your buyers are. It might not be your audience.
Now if your audience if your website gets a lot of traffic, then this is gonna be really directly applicable for you. Like, oh, this is where my audience is coming from. That’s cool to know. What you’ll really wanna focus on, though, are not, like, the top accounts, but the hidden gems.
So you’ll see when you do oh, now they do have stuff. You’ll see when you go through here that, they have these bigger accounts, like, how are you going to pitch Realtor magazine?
Instead, you’ll probably wanna look at some hidden gems. Now they don’t have any hidden gems here, so that would be a thing where I’d have to then go do another search. But what I want to do is not just focus on all of these giant places to pitch, but where are my buyers going? What websites are they visiting is step one.
So we wanna write in the websites that they visit based on what you’re seeing here. Focus only on the ones that where you can actually answer. I can guest here, or I can advertise here. If it’s not an option, although this is a column that I have on the worksheet, if you can’t do anything with this, like, if you’re like, well, I can’t do anything with Keller Williams.
Like, it’s a giant broker brand. What what might I do? That’s too hard for me to conceive of putting a web webinar together. I mean, maybe maybe it’s a ten x that’s worth it more than, like, something else that could feel like a two x.
But try to be, like, realistic because you could list out all the websites they visit that are huge names. And then you think, okay. I can guess here. And if you get no’s across the board, you’re going to not feel good about it. So we wanna be able to get you wins in here. So maybe put some big websites in alongside some smaller websites in.
Don’t underestimate the power of directly advertising in some of these spaces. That doesn’t mean you go to their advertised page, but there are ways to get in. We’re not gonna talk about those today.
But you can, in some cases, advertise where they’re at, and that’s gonna get more real as we get into newsletters and podcasts that look more like sponsorships.
Then you’ll go through and look at their, YouTube channels. This is really straightforward stuff. Right? Like, you just go through and use SparkToro, but document what you’re learning so that you’re not just like, oh, yeah.
Cool. I’m gonna, like, probably hit home lights. We’ll write it down. Write it down and then say, okay.
I can guess here. Because at the end of this, we’re gonna go through and make an actual plan for what you will do over the next ninety days. This will feel like, big work, but it’s useful work to do. It’s where your buyers are at right now.
Like they’re sitting there right now.
So we want to go get them. So we’ll go through and look at YouTube channels that they watch. There are a lot of columns here. Websites are a little trickier, so I didn’t put that many or a lot of rows.
Sorry. I didn’t put that many rows in here because a website could feel like, what do I even do with the website? What we’re really saying is the brand behind the website. A YouTube channel is far more specific.
If you know that they’re all going to let’s see where they’re going. HomeLight. Okay. So HomeLight is really popular as a YouTube channel, I guess, for people in the realtor space.
So you could write in home light, and then you could figure out what am I going to do with this. Go look. Go look into what HomeLight is doing on YouTube. Is there anything you could do there?
It might just be as simple as I can try to advertise. I can put a video together for these people. I can try to figure something out. Can you guest there?
You’d have to watch and see. Like, do they have podcasts that are also video that they post there? Can you try to pitch them on getting on that? If you can and if it’s a big enough swing, it’s going to be worth your time.
If it’s a small swing, then you have to make sure it’s a really scalable thing. And that’s, like, put one workshop together, which we’ll be talking about next month, that you can then pitch and you keep repeating that workshop in all of these smaller places. It’s a twenty minute workshop. The leads come directly to you, not to them, etcetera. We’ll get into that next month.
But first of all, you need to know where you’re gonna pitch it. Otherwise, when you put the webinar together next month, you’ll be like, well, what the hell do I do with this thing now? So this is that work.
Every second page in this workbook is for you to make notes to self. So if you haven’t printed this off and started going through it, I recommend you do. If you don’t print it off, if you just, like, go through and mark up the PDF, absolutely cool too. But some people will look at this table and do nothing with it.
Go like, oh, yeah. Cool. Good lesson. And move on. I don’t want you to be that person.
You’re here right now. Do the thing.
Add notes to self. Add notes for a VA if you’ve got one.
What are you thinking right now about the Homelight YouTube channel? What are you thinking? Write down your notes as they come up. If I’m chattering, turn the volume down on me. You can come back and watch the replay later if you’re actually doing work and I’m talking through your work. I’m good with you muting me. I just can’t mute myself because other people have to still do the work.
Continuing on. Oh, Claire. Yes.
Sorry to interrupt.
I I can build a list on Airtable. So I’ve got I’ve got a list of, like, fifty websites.
Sorry. Eight hundred websites, actually. Fifty YouTube channels and a bunch of subreddits that I kind of narrowed down. The subreddits were actually easiest to narrow down to my OCD.
Yes. Yes. They’re also obviously the easiest to, like, research and post on. But when it comes to YouTube and websites and I’m looking at, like, big brands, like, let’s say Crazy Egg, for example.
They do SaaS. They do analytics. People who are interested in that are probably interested in what I do. Mhmm.
But, wow, how do I begin to, like, even start narrowing down all of the different sites and also, like, figure out if they allow advertising. Because a lot of places have stopped having, like, a guest posts available page because they get crazy. Right. So yeah.
So, yeah, any advice on that?
That’s where I I firmly believe that if you can run a workshop that gets recorded and played and that brand then puts it on their YouTube. It comes up as a search result when your name is searched.
That’s what we wanna do. I would focus entirely on what is an audience.
It could be Crazy Egg if you’re subscribed. So step one, make sure you’re actually subscribed to that brand’s newsletter or email list, however that comes in. If that means you have to get a free, a free user account, free trial account, then do it. Do it and start, like, looking through.
Does Crazy Egg ever invite people to workshops?
Like and if they do, have a look at it because you might be like, Kajabi invites a lot of people to workshops, but then they’re also affiliates for all of those workshops. So you have to sell something in the workshop. So that’s not gonna be a good fit because Kajabi would be like, no. Because you’re not selling anything at the end, and so we’re not gonna make any affiliate revenue off of this.
Okay, fine. So the more you know about what they’re doing to create content and share content for their audience, the better. So that would be step one. And then then the challenge is not a guest blog post because a lot of people are not publishing guest blog posts right now.
Written content is not what it was.
So what can you do? Can you get in front of their Instagram audience somehow?
Can you I would really, really put all my eggs honestly in the basket of workshop, workshop, workshop.
They’re going to do live events of some kind. I mean, live online events.
Any brand that is scrappy enough to try to break in right now that has a little bit of money to spend is teaching their users to be better users. It’s just like a really classic playbook for getting your SaaS brand out there.
So if you if you can say, okay. I’m really clear on who my ICP is on the persona under that that this group does watch workshops.
Workshops get a bad rap. No one watches a webinar. No people people don’t watch low value stuff. But if it’s coming from a brand that they trust, then they’re more likely to watch it.
So I will watch all the webinars that Gong dot IO puts out, because they teach good stuff about sales calls and all of the stuff that matters to me. They’re not putting crap out there. I don’t get three tips for running a sales call. I get, like, here’s how to do multithreading four zero one, which is really valuable.
Right? So you do need a workshop.
It needs to be the right value level for the audience you’re trying to attract that will wake them up to their problem. So not thirteen copywriting tips, obviously, but something more strategic, something that where five people who attend reach out to you immediately, not some other thing, which, again, we’ll talk about next month when we talk about the workshop that you should be getting out there. But, Claire, as a long answer to your question, focus on getting that workshop together and then finding the right group based on what you know about how they’re creating content and promoting it to pitch because Crazy Egg might not be the way to go.
Does that make sense?
Got it. Super helpful. Yes.
I love that you have that giant air table.
That’s great. Oh, yeah.
Yeah. Like, pay for it. It’s so expensive as software.
So I might as well use this.
Yeah. Totally.
Yeah. The tricky thing about, like, lists of eight hundred is, like, where do you start? Right? So that’s very tricky. And that’s why I frankly like limiting it to, like, only the size of this worksheet.
If you can take that table you already have all filled in and start, like, limiting your options, putting those constraints around it. You’re only allowed twelve podcasts that they listen to only right in twelve then. Every this is ninety days. This isn’t the rest of your life. This is the next ninety days. What are you going to do? Where are you gonna pitch?
So same as these for podcasts. They listen to make notes to self subreddits that they frequent.
And that might not be where you create content, but you can get involved in conversations, obviously.
Any notes to self there, social accounts that they follow, these are gonna be hidden gems, not the big ones necessarily, but not tiny ones either. So you wanna look through and make sure and next month, we’ll talk more about Instagram followers and stuff like that.
But keep in mind, when I say buyers throughout this, I don’t just mean ICP. So not just that ideal client profile, but the persona under it. So you might say, people who are in a marketing capacity are your persona, and a lot of them are women. So they may be on x social space versus other groups.
So what I want you to do is not discount. I’ve had people discount. Oh, nobody’s on social. None of my the people that I’m trying to reach are on social.
And I’m like, that’s Europe to lunch. Of course, they’re on social. We’re all on some form of social unless you’ve actively chosen not to be, and then chances are good you’re not in digital marketing because you you gotta be on social if you’re in digital marketing. And if you’re hearing this and going, but I’m not on social and I’m in digital marketing, get on social.
It’s time. You have to. You have to. If I have to, you have to. Because I have to, and I’m not always happy about it.
Then we wanna get into keywords and topics. This is just not so that you’re creating content that is keyword rich or keyword targeted necessarily.
But when it comes time as we get deeper and deeper into the work, this isn’t just it’s not none of the work we do is siloed. Right? It feels like it because it’s a rectangular document, and it effectively looks like a silo. But it’s not.
This is all gonna work together. So you might not use trending keywords you can post about right now. But since you’re in SparkToro and it will share with you what some of those trending keywords are, you can see all the keywords. Obviously, it’s Rand.
Document them because that could be stuff that you can pitch content about. If it’s trending in particular, you can then adjust your workshop or webinars that the title is more about that trending keyword, but it’s still actually about the same thing. And this would just be a trending keyword that’s related to what you do. So if you’re like, oh, none of these keywords are related to what I do, that’s okay.
Just put a strike through it so that you know you did the work and nothing was there or do an NA or whatever, but I just don’t want it to look blank. I find that frustrating when things are blank. Maybe you don’t. Okay.
Now this is gonna wrapping up this conversation here. I know that we can’t do all the work because SparkToro is being a slow little bunny.
But go off and do it afterward, please. It’s on your business. Your business wants you to. That’s why you’re part of Coffee School Pro. So make sure that you do it.
Hacker News was where I started. I swear by finding a community and being of value to it before you try to take anything out of it. So add to the bank. Keep adding to the bank, and then later, you can start withdrawing.
Start now. If you don’t have a community that you’re part of, start now. It’s time to. Got it. And it could pay off a lot faster than, like, I wasn’t using Hacker News for a thing. I was just interested in what people were doing on Hacker News, like, cool, fun startup ideas and stuff like that. It’s, like, scrappy atmosphere.
So I want you to know what your Hacker News is.
I found that if you go on Reddit, you can find a lot of good communities talked about on Reddit. So go on there immediately.
Most of us are on Reddit for some things anyway, just for fun even. If you can go on Reddit and search something as simple like where are marketers hanging out? And you’ll see all sorts of responses. You can just Google Reddit and then that search phrase or whatever you want to look or, you’ll find them.
They’re listed there. Slack group. You need a couple Slack groups that you could request to join. So, ideally, they won’t just be open to everybody.
If there are a hundred and twenty thousand people in there, don’t do it. Don’t you go into that Slack group. That is going to be a waste of your time.
So Slack groups that are limited or private membership or even that are, like, you have to pay the cost of the monthly Slack charge, like, eight bucks a month plus two dollars for the administrative person who has to take care of all of this, that’s going to narrow the number of people who are in that Slack group, and that’s good for you. You don’t want a hundred and twenty thousand people in a Slack group, in a Discord, in in bigger communities maybe.
You you really do wanna focus on a concentrated group of professionals.
So if that means joining the paid product led growth Slack group, if there’s a way to do that without taking the course, I don’t recommend the course. But if you can do that, cool. Because now you’re in a product led growth Slack community, and everybody in there is concerned about product led growth. And most of them are just actively in start ups or tech companies that are using product led growth.
If that’s your ideal audience, it only makes good sense for you to participate in that group. Adding value, not taking it out, not saying, hey. I’ll do that for you. Wait until people are like, woah.
Wait. You’re a SaaS copywriter, and you do the research?
I had no idea that’s true for you. Can we talk? That’s exciting. That’s better. That’s good. So find a Slack group.
Discord, particularly if you work with tech in any way. There’s going to be a bunch of nerds who said no to Slack and yes to Discord.
So go check out Discords as well, which, of course, Reddit is also very good for nerds. So you can find all the Discord groups on Reddit too.
Clearly, I am more targeted at tech and SaaS companies than I am health and wellness and other groups like that. However, you can apply the same rules to finding same stuff for health and wellness. And if you’re like, Reddit doesn’t work for that, well, then something else, the health and wellness equivalent of Reddit.
Be resourceful. Figure that part out. The point is you need to walk away with at least one really solid Slack group for that your ideal audience is in so that you can start participating and adding value, answering questions, posting useful resources, all of those sorts of things that make you a useful part of that community. And then when it’s time for you to, like, withdraw a little from the bank, you got lots of credit there.
You got lots that you can do there. So go ahead and make sure you’re brainstorming based on everything you’re seeing on SparkToro, based on the idea of participating in a Slack group. What are you going to do? Can you come up with a brand that you could partner with?
Can you come up with three brands that you could partner with? And I mean, Unbounce thirteen years ago, Wistia twelve years ago, those sorts of groups.
Who are they today?
Can you find a way to partner with them? Where are they showing up? Where are their heads of growth showing up? Or where are the CEOs slash CMO slash cheap garbage take routers? Like, they’re doing everything.
Where are they right now? Where are they consuming content? Where are they hoping to find that next great idea?
Get in front of them. But you need to brainstorm this stuff, move through it, and then start to figure out, okay.
If it’s x brand, whoever it is, if it’s boards, let’s say words is up and coming. They’re doing lots of cool stuff. They’ve got lots and lots of users, but they really wanna scale. Boards could be my audience.
What webinar could I pitch to boards? What would make the users of boards better users of boards? Maybe it’s around x. And if it doesn’t make sense to it, you’re like, oh, no.
They need me to, like, help them write social posts and stuff. Forget it. Not boards. Next.
Cool. Eliminate things. That’s a big part of, like, finding the gold is washing away everything else until you get to the gold. Right?
So put a whole bunch of stuff in there and then start figuring out what to do. That’s the point of brainstorming. One page should not be enough. If you can do it all in one page, that was like a brain drizzle.
We wanna go on full storm, really stormy stuff, lots of stuff. And then that’ll help you get down to a ninety day attraction plan, which is free. It’s free and loose because all of this is there to tighten up your ideas where you can be. Now once you’ve got a brainstorm in place, what are you going to do over the next ninety days?
That’s July, August, September. Or if you’re watching the replay, whatever month you’re in, plus two more after that. What are you going to do for that, for the next ninety days? Are you going to pitch?
First, you have to put that webinar idea together pretty loosely because you wanna get it approved before you start actually going out and putting a full workshop together only to find out that nobody wants the damn thing. So what are you going to do to try to get out there? Keep in mind that next month we have full training on more stuff around using social media and getting your workshop in front of other audiences.
Any questions on this really quick run through of finding your buyer?
Thoughts or concerns?
No?
Andrew’s thinking.
Okay.
That is the training for today.
Do you have any questions about it, or are we ready to move on? Oh, I just saw your thing about the joke. Are we ready to move on, to the AMA part of today’s call? Good. Yes.
Alright.
Cool.
Let’s do that then. So as usual, if you have any questions, please start by, sharing your win, win of the week. Jessica has put up her hand. So what win do you have to share with us first? And if you could I know, Jess, you’re on your treadmill, I think, so you probably don’t want to come on camera.
But feel free to. It’s also encouraging.
Yeah. Share your win. Ask your question. And if you want everybody in the room to weigh in, please be sure to open it up to everyone. Otherwise, I’ll just jump in. Jessica?
Thank you. Sorry. I’m in the dark right now, actually, so that’s why I’m not on camera.
You can hear me alright? Yes. Okay. Perfect. So my win is leads into my question.
So I thought on Friday, my win was, I don’t know if people saw, but I’ve been doing the big pivot back to books. And that’s great. I feel really, really solid about that.
And I was in the middle when I made the shift. I was in the middle of a VIP client potentially hiring me for a optimization retainer for their ecommerce emails. So I was in the middle of that conversation when this shift kind of happened, but it was kinda looking that good, I guess.
Also a client who’s not ideal, so it was a very stupid choice anyway.
The win was on Friday, I kind of thought that I made it clear that this was not going to move forward via an email. I tried in a meeting. It didn’t work out. I made it clear in the email. I’ve since gotten a so I felt really good.
The winners, I felt really good because I was like, yes.
All in on books. Let’s go.
But since then, I’ve gotten a reply, and it’s kind of become clear that this it’s a fractional CMO. She would really like to work with me, but she’s really it’s, like, it’s becoming the classic thing you always coach Joe about when they can’t afford you and the things they want. And it’s like, a guarantee and promises and when can we see results or whatever. And so, of course, I stupidly used in my email response finally to just really cut this off. I I said that I I kind of attributed it to her need for guarantees and promise of results in the first like, by month two even though month one was spent on strategy. We need to analyze your data. We need to look at all the things, whatever.
So, anyway, my point is is basically, I need to now cut this off completely, and I’ve really just made a freaking mess of it. And, I don’t know. She she wrote me this long email trying to justify I misunderstood, and we can continue working. I just want clarity around the promises and the potential results and all that, and it’s just a mess. I’ve made a mess of this, and I need to get out of it.
Okay. So you’re trying to get out of it while preserving the relationship?
Yeah. I mean I mean, at least at least in a I know we’re not gonna work together in the future, but I don’t wanna be an asshole.
Oh, you came to the wrong place. Just kidding. Sorry.
It might be a bit of just kidding.
Okay. So what do we so this person had enough time to write you a long email instead of just saying, hey. Can we hop on a call? You’d already hopped on a call before, Jessica?
Yes.
Last week, I tried to hop I did hop on a call with her to say, look.
I this isn’t, you know, whatever. And I’m I know it’s a growth area. I I need to work on this, but I did I was like, oh, okay. Yeah. We can work out a and stupid. It was my fault.
So you were saying we can work something out?
It was more like I defaulted to okay.
I wouldn’t say we work yes. Sure. Let’s go with that. Yeah.
It’s okay.
I’m gonna need No.
No. No. No. No. No. No. It’s hard to say no, especially if you haven’t practiced saying no.
So I think that’s completely fair.
But now you have to practice saying no. So, it’s awkward. It is. Even when you practice at it, it’s still awkward because you have to let them down.
But one way that I would recommend going about it is saying, like, hey. Something’s changed for me. I’ve actually been running two different service businesses, and the other one is taking off big time. So I need to now reprioritize my efforts on that one because it’s a service, and I am the service provider. So I can’t move forward with you on the ecommerce side of things. And that’s absolutely true. And how could she argue with that?
No. She really can’t. I think it’s I think it was just my yeah. I I should have led with that. I’m kicking myself. I should have led with that.
That’s okay. I mean, I think you’re do so, like, so what? You’re not honestly, she’ll be over it within a minute.
I’m moving on, so I wouldn’t I wouldn’t overthink it. I think it’s nice that you’re worrying about it. Just tell her the fact in a nice way, and then she’s released to go look for someone else instead of waiting around hoping that it might work out with you.
Yeah. Okay. Good? Thank you. That’s cool. It still feels like garbage. But Yeah.
It does. Lots of the things will feel like garbage as you grow.
That’s why you have to make a lot of money to make up for when you feel shitty. Yeah.
Yeah. You’re right. Okay. I’ll add that to the list, become millionaire faster than I wanted to be Exactly.
So because of this. I like that. I like that. Except it needs a deadline. Okay.
Alright. Cool. Awesome, Jessica. Good luck. Thanks. Thanks.
Johnson, what’s your win?
Hey.
So a win, for this weekend is related to the question is that, I developed, three to four more outlines for various products within narrative selling to follow the sort of land and expand model that you, were talking about. And, it actually came fairly easily once I was kinda looking at it from that perspective, and it’s quite exciting.
So my question is that I’ve, I have this this this new idea for a for a product wise, a service based product, that I’m calling the founder’s narrative, as a sort of standardized offer with the authority building offer that you’ve seen in in that document as the, sort of upsell and then ongoing retainer.
So the the founders product is basically to help founders, find their story and and message, like, a kind of a well, a few elements of it, but but but a key story that is sort of their why, their, their meaning, behind their sort of their mission, and then, signifier stories that can be reframed in in multiple ways to convey various, aspects of, their their product.
And then there’s some other stuff about how to tell stories and how to adjust them for various audiences.
So my question is, does that sound like a good pairing and a good choice for the land and expand?
And, also, do you have any thoughts about the the document that you placed on?
Yes. The document. Thanks.
Yes. So so the idea with the founder’s narrative for land and expand is you’re brought in to work on the founders narrative, and then you work through other departments?
Yeah. Sort of to to look for founders who are keen to be out there, get in front of people, talk about, their stuff, which I I feel like won’t be hard to find, and, and to give them a framework to do that that that they, that that helps, helps them resonate with their target audience, basically.
Okay. Cool.
Let me open the doc then. Okay. So if you feel good about that as your land and expand, that’s cool. The only question I have around expand is if it’s a founder’s narrative, how big is the ICP that you’re going after?
How many employees does it have?
Well, I guess somewhere between sort of ten and fifty is a very sort of rough number. I’m imagining around, twenty to thirty, probably on on average, in this sort of, in that sort of range.
Do you think there’s a do you think it’s it might be too small?
Well, there’s just not much room to expand there. Where land and expand when you’re, like, talking about going up market is I mean, you still can.
You would just land in c suite and then expand to marketing might want the product narrative, I guess.
Yeah. I’ve got something for for marketing and sales as well.
So it was sort of like get the founders on board, make them love us, and then it felt like it would be an easier sell to the rest of the the teams.
Yeah.
And maybe that’s so in looking over your pricing, the thing about the founder’s narrative and, like, it’s cool and, like, I don’t know.
It feels like there’s it’s got legs because it’s a lot like positioning, but for the founder, which is cool.
So you could definitely, like, piggyback off of a lot of what April Dunford’s done. Like, if April did it, you should do it.
So that’s worth considering.
I guess I just wonder about the retainer side of it.
April also doesn’t have a retainer model for hers. However, there is this, like, there is more of a land and expand, which might be more of the retainer for you, where you would instead start with the founder’s narrative as the thing that you’re standing up, impress the crap out of the founder with that, and then say, okay. You know, we can do the same thing for your products, or we can do the same thing for your different groups, like the sales team or whatever. You’d have to figure that out. When I look through your document, the part that’s tricky is, like, the the execution y stuff, like monthly lead magnet development, it feels like forcing the issue, in order to get that easier performance based retainer in there or performance driven retainer in there.
So I would for you, I would say, okay. This week, I’m going to pause thinking about my business as stand up offer followed by retainer and instead think of my business as fully land and expand. Okay. That’s all I’m going to do. If I were to do that, what would expand look like? So land is the templated thing that then gets applied to different departments.
For that to work, what did my what would my ICP need to look like? What would they need to believe?
What would need to be their struggles right now? Because you have to solve those by repeating this thing across everywhere, which is doable. But I would put aside anything that has to do with, execution.
I’d keep it at the strategic level, and you can always recommend other people to execute. Yeah. I know. Right?
Johnson, you just graduated from executing. Well done.
That’s awesome.
My word. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. There’s a win for me. I was having a conversation with my, teammate where we were discussing, like, just how much I want to move away from delivery, of execution of products, and onto consulting.
Yeah. Cool. So And if you’re down for traveling too, the only side note is that if you’re going to go in and impress founders, they often need to see you in real life.
So you have to travel.
Fair.
And if I was willing to, sorry to hold the mic. But if I was willing to, switch up because, again, like, I feel like there’s a lot of ways I could apply these ideas, and there’s a lot of ways I could go with it.
If I wanted to look at a more sort of enterprise y level of the really upmarket, sort of land and expand.
Do you have any thoughts about, just the maybe the land product?
The problem is I really like the idea of the founder’s narrative.
I feel like it reminds me of this is so stupid.
It reminds me of on Friends when Jennifer Aniston says something about apartment pants to her, boss, who’s like, now I want apartment pants. They’re not even a thing, but it’s such a good, like, idea. Like, you could sell it.
So she’s like, let’s invent apartment pants.
And that’s the same kind of thing here. Like, the founder’s narrative just sounds really good. You know, you can see that founders would be like, I want a narrative. I need a narrative.
Get me a narrative. I want this, just like apartment pants. So now you just have to figure out what the founder’s narrative is. Stacy just said leaders narrative, potentially.
Yeah. Right?
I think that there’s if it’s blank narrative, you’ve got a big idea there that although people have been saying narrative, it’s kind of like story brand. It’s blank brand. But your blank narrative But then you just you gotta be ready to go all in and, like, own narrative. And I think that’s cool. I think that’s great and strategic and potentially expensive.
But, yeah, you do have to rethink that. Maybe it is leaders’ enter leaders’ narrative.
Maybe. Yeah. I love that. Yeah.
I I love that, Stacy.
Thank you.
And, okay, just one other tiny, tiny, tiny thing, because I feel like you will know the answer to this. I have this, as far as, like, coming out with this idea and talking about it and being this, thought leader, and creating all of the content, I have this fear that someone is going to take the the developed idea as far as it’s developed right now and then run with it faster than I can, and rename it, rebrand it into something else.
Is that, not stupid, but, like, is that something worth worrying about?
Yeah. Except you’re gonna do it better. You’re going to stay with it. People will steal your ideas all day.
So many. But they’re also lazy and quickly bored because they don’t have their own ideas. So I would say, like, don’t worry about it. They’ll come in.
They’ll swoop in. They’ll try to steal it.
The more you can’t. So that’s the worrying side of it. You can protect it as well. You can’t protect it from some parts of the world.
But once you’ve trademarked the thing, you’re good. You’re pretty good from there. People will still try to knock you off, but there was actually a story that Bob from Rewired Group was telling me a couple of weeks. I think it was Bob was saying, that one of his friends has, like, this big IP.
And someone from, like, McKinsey came to his friend and said, like, oh, we love your, we love or no. It was Blair Ends, maybe. I mean, we love your, blah blah blah product, the program, the framework. We use it across we’ve been using it across our x y z clients.
He sent them an invoice for his consulting fees on that because it’s his protected IP, and you cannot teach it. And so he got paid, like, three million dollars or something because this guy from McKinsey didn’t know better than to keep it to himself.
There was legal shit involved. Not that it wasn’t just like, oh, we’ll pay this invoice. Like, there was stuff. But that said, write a book about it.
Knock that thing out. You can do a better edition once it gets traction. Like, second edition is actually good. Like, well written.
First one is just great ideas. Document your framework. Own the title, trademark what you can, and then no people will steal it. And you just have to push through and be better at it.
Don’t switch to something else. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, it will happen.
Alright.
It’s just the way it is.
Okay. Okay. Alright. That’s helpful. Thank you, Joe.
Sure. I look forward to reading the book in a couple months.
Yes.
Yes. Good. Awesome.
Deadline’s next ninety days.
Got it.
Oh, good. I hope so. Andrew, what is your win?
Hey. Can you hear me okay? Yeah.
Cool.
My win is that, I gay I did a, redid a client’s, land paid search landing page, maybe that they started testing about six weeks ago. And as of today, they they’ve a little bit lower traffic, so we’re using eighty percent as, significance. And as of today, I have a winner, at about twenty eight percent increase Nice. At eighty percent significance.
So, you know, not Getting there.
You know? Yeah. Amazon is not, you know, not gonna count that as a win, but it’s been consistently leading, and the copy from before was really bad. So I’m pretty confident that it’s that it’s true, but there’s some some reality behind the those numbers. So that’s exciting. That definitely lights me up. I like that stuff.
I love that. Cool. Nice work.
Yeah. That’s a big that that that’s the stuff that really lights me up is checking, like, to go into the, into Optimizely and be like, winning.
Anyway, so my my main question is that what I’ve noticed is that the companies that I tend to have the most success with, are companies that are, like, doing fairly well. Like, let’s say, they’re already at, you know, maybe fifty million, a hundred million, but have obviously bad copy on their website. Like, you can go in, and it’s usually, like, a problem, and it’s just, like, way too technical. Like, you know, clients that like, I have a client who’s running a headline. It’s, like, accelerate analytic productivity, and it’s, like, okay. What?
So what I’m so I’m kind of wondering, like, is that, like, a reasonable strategy to sort of look for companies that are, like, succeeding despite bad copy? Because I just I just feel, like, a lot more confident going into those situations where it’s, like, I can just look at their website and just know that I’m gonna be able to make it better.
Guess the question is I would look at their team. Why is the copy bad?
It’s because it’s use often because they’re having their product marketers write it, and their product marketers are really smart, but they’re very technical and write in a sort of academic tone, and nobody really knows. Like, when I come in and start talking, like, copy hacker stuff, their minds are exploding.
Yeah. Cool.
I love hearing that.
No. I’m sorry. I’m just kidding. Thank you.
Thank you for Okay.
Can you are you willing to pick a fight with product marketers writing copy? Would you write a headline ever that says product marketers can’t write copy?
Yeah. I’ll take some whack with that as a former product marketer.
But yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
I’m sure a lot of them would be like, yeah.
No. That shouldn’t be my job in the first fucking place, by the way.
Yeah. Doing a very respectful way.
Well, that’s the thing. In a if the real challenge is, can you put a banner up that says product marketers can’t or shouldn’t write copy?
But you have like, if you can stand behind that, if you could put it on a T shirt, then you might be on to something.
Right? Because then then you can go out to these groups and or they’ll come to you and they’ll see, like, oh, this person understands that product marketers, maybe the word is shouldn’t. But what you need to know when figuring out if this is what’s keeping them from writing good copy, if it’s not just bureaucracy, if it’s not just dilution of things as more features are added, If it’s really product marketers are writing this stuff and they shouldn’t, that may need to be the fight that you pick. And if that’s the fight that you pick, you have to be willing to fight that fight.
And that really does mean you have to pick a fight. You have to say product marketers shouldn’t write copy, and it’s everywhere. And that doesn’t mean that’s going to be your tagline, but you have to be willing to do that. Like, your head has to get right with that, with the big statement, whatever that big statement is.
So I think, yes, if you’re willing to stand behind it and really say something.
Yeah. Otherwise, there’s no point.
Yeah. I mean, I think I would as maybe a question of when I back in when I need to start doing internal interviews with the people I just called out.
Hey. You guys are so smart. Love what you do. But, I mean, honestly, that’s part of the problem.
Right? Is that they they know the product too well. They don’t have any objectivity. They’ve learned it in a kind of academic way.
And so they’re just disconnected from how people are going to buy, you know, I mean, you you send them to copy school, then sure, they can do it.
But if they haven’t done that yet, then they’re just not the people who should be writing your conversion focus Exactly.
Conversion copy. Yeah.
So as long as you have the support for that, then I think but you just have to be willing to say it. You have to go on LinkedIn and say it, and then support it with everything that you just said. If not just LinkedIn, I actually whatever. But I know everybody else likes, like, LinkedIn.
Go wherever you’re going online and and say the thing, and then support it like you just did. And they will buy in. They’ll agree with you. That’s just the way it is. Yeah. And some won’t, and that’s good. Some shouldn’t.
Yeah.
Okay? Then we can pipe it. Cool. Thank you. Sure. Awesome.
Thank you. Claire, what’s your win?
Hey. Well, I just completed my win, which was narrowing my Reddit parse my Reddit, like where is the subreddit? So where is the subreddits?
Sorry. It’s late for me.
My YouTube and my website’s down. Also under forty. So each of them is under forty, which is a good start. And I’ve got some, like, moonshots in there and some, like, realistic ones.
Interestingly, I don’t know if anyone else is targeting b to b SaaS, but here’s quick fun insight.
Everyone’s YouTube channel, like, if you are targeting people who, like, follow April Dunford, for example, are interested in product led growth, those brands’ YouTube channels, crap.
Like, as far as the scale of YouTube goes, like, their view count is pretty low, and their cadence is pretty low as well Okay.
Which is really interesting. What’s the opportunity there when you know that? What do you think the opportunity is then?
Well, Crazy Egg hasn’t posted a video in three years. But three weeks ago, they posted a video, and I’m like, oh, does that mean Coming back. That they’re trying to do something? Does that mean that some marketer in there has gone like, crap, guys.
We really need to work on our, you know, stuff.
And some executive has gone, yeah. Find people.
Yes. Totally. And you, like, miraculously show up at the right time.
Right time, right place.
Love it. So nice.
That’s the one thing.
Cool.
Okay. So I you told me a while ago to name, what I’ve been working on, which is onboarding flows. So I’m gonna say, like, broadly this this is for everyone, by the way. Broadly, this flow, will include include emails at its most basic.
It’s more complicated. It will take someone from free to paid. So that means the in app prompts the sign up page for when you, like, click the, sign up button or stop for free, that page, and even the pricing page in future. That’s like the expanded version.
It’s, like, comprehensive.
So I’ve got a few options that I’ve narrowed it down to. Two of them were like, oh my god. Like, that might work moments.
And two of them were chat GPT moments. So the premise being that onboarding flows, typically, most people understand them as like a linear path. Right? And my fight that I’m picking is that, no. It’s not a linear path.
It is very much, and this is my latest one, like a pinball machine. Right? So the user, like, drops it, and then they get, like, knocked all over. Maybe get close to converting, visiting a pricing page, and then nope back to product experience.
Yeah.
So, the pinball onboarding machine, TM was one idea.
The pinball what? Onboarding machine. Onboarding machine. Okay. Okay. Yeah. Interesting.
And then my brand name is Coby Ireland. I had, like, a little wobble about whether or not I need to change that and ultimately decided that the effort of changing it probably wouldn’t be worth the payoff.
But bucket list onboarding was another kind of concept where the user has to go through, like, a bucket list of things that they need to check. Basically, points k.
In order to actually activate.
K.
That was the one.
And then the other two are Japanese. I love Japan. Obsessed.
Also, my audience is fairly, like, interested being nerds and all.
So the one is pretty classic. Kaizen is a Japanese philosophy of continuous small improvements Yep. Which has three kind of main principles of involvement of everyone. So that would be like sales, customer success, etcetera. Standardization of the practice that would be more about the optimizing side and the process. That would be the process of confiding someone.
K.
There were two other Japanese words that I thought could be could work with onboarding flow or activation flow. The one was, which means to wake up something dormant, and kumiki, which is the Japanese woodwork. I don’t know if you guys know about it, but they very carefully cut, their wood so it slots together. Like, their houses are built with no nails they used to be.
The workmanship is extremely precise so that everything, the whole big picture just slots together.
Yeah.
Those old ideas. Anyone any of them feels sticky? I was driving myself.
Anybody wanna chime in?
I have thoughts.
I would just on the on the Japanese words, I would caution against that right now because of the whole issues with cultural appropriation and things like that. So I don’t know that I would want to latch onto another culture’s term for, you know, for commercial gain.
That’s something that I would be beware of. I I love the pinball concept, and I think you have a lot of potential with that.
You know, pinball pinball onboarding, don’t tilt, you know, get the high score or all the kinds of things. I mean, there’s a lot you could do with that. It’s kinda it’s fun and and memorable.
Just my my take.
Cool feedback.
Anybody else have a note for Claire on this?
So I like the I like that pinball is a known thing. For me, pinball means chaos, though. Like, it flies everywhere.
So I wonder if there’s, like if you could dig into pinball the way you dug into these Japanese terms.
What are the little toggle guys called? What are the what are the parts called?
And I would, like, try or what’s, like, the outcome or the sound when you when you land it? Like, what’s the like, when the the ball goes in the hole? Whatever hole that is. What are the I would dig more into that famous pinball players even, in the past and stuff like that simply because I like the analogy.
I like metaphor. I like I like that it’s pinball.
I don’t love the visual chaos of things going everywhere, Right.
Because you’re not going to bring chaos. It might be that things are popping all over the place.
But, yeah, what’s the oak? What’s the I dig into it because I think there’s something there. And maybe it’s just me. Maybe I’m the only one who thinks chaos with that word.
So there’s that to consider, but I like it. It’s it’s a thing. It’s a known thing. I know what it is.
I could talk about it. It’s pinball.
When it comes to the Japanese stuff, I didn’t see it the same way that Stacy does, but I think it’s valid and worth considering, of course.
The Kanuki one seemed most interesting simply because Kaizen, I feel like a lot of tech companies were talking Kaizen, like, seven years ago or somewhere in there. Yeah.
Although I really like that the model has, like, those three parts that you could, like, model out, no share, use as your diagnostic, and things like that.
But the visual of the Kanuki is nice. I think it was Kanuki is what you said. Kanuki? Kanuki?
It’s with an m, but pretty close. Okay.
I don’t know it.
But that could be interesting and also, like, ownable and still in the the area of Kaizen and everything that we learned from Toyota and all of these other great brands that are extremely efficient.
So, yeah, those are my thoughts. I like where you’re going, and I love that you’re giving it a name. Oh my gosh. Yes to naming things. Yes.
But naming is extremely difficult while we’re on the subject. So yeah. Yeah. And pinball dot I o is twenty five thousand US dollars to buy.
Mhmm. Interested in really going in on that and only getting an I o out of it while we’re on the subject. So, yeah. Johnson, do you have to add do you want me to add anything here for Claire?
Oh, mine’s, that’s, well, it’s, like, related to knitting, but, I don’t you I I don’t wanna cut off the phone. Claire.
K. Claire, is that helping at all? Like yeah. Yeah. Load it also over in the Slack group for those who weren’t here today.
Yeah. Cool. Awesome. In the CSP part, not just in the intensive because it’s a CSP.
Okay. Perfect. Cool. Cool. Awesome. Thanks, Claire.
Johnson, you’re back.
I’m just getting in all the questions I should have gotten in Do it.
Over the last excellent. Yes. On naming things, right, which you just mentioned.
So you might remember, I my sort of and, Stacy, I would love your feedback on this too if you’re willing.
The the name I came up for my idea was narrative selling. And that was gonna be sort of the overarching concept. And now we’ve got, like, founders narrative and company narrative and product narrative and narrative selling itself as, like, its own sort of subdivision, of it. But I’m just wondering if you have any thoughts on how narrative selling as a as the overarching, sort of as the forget the final, as the jobs to be done, like, does that make sense as a, as a name, or is there maybe a different direction I should think about?
Stacy, do you wanna share your thoughts since you were invited?
I mean, I’ve as a name for you mean, like, a brandable name for your Yep. It’s too generic to be a brandable name, I think, because, I mean, there’s already there’s so many people talking about narrative selling already. It’s just a thing. You know? I mean, I Sassy writes sales narratives.
It it’s just, you know, lots of people are doing narrative selling and talking about narrative selling. So I would find another brandable name that you can own and figure out, you know I mean, and make that narrative selling could be what it is, but I would I wouldn’t necessarily call it that unless you’re and with you’re talking about that as a product. Do you know what I mean?
Yeah. Yeah. Sure.
I mean, I I maybe I’m not I’m probably not in the same circles as you, but, do they call it narrative selling as, like, the the that combination of words, or is there just talk about narrative and selling as, like, a sort of Well, like, I mean, like, StoryBrand has a whole thing on, you know, selling with story, and there’s a whole they have a whole course in that.
And I’m I’m very, very involved in story because I’ve, you know, ingested, like, pretty much everything having to do with story. I have all the, you know, all the books and all the things because I’ve been a StoryBrand I’ve been a StoryBrand certified guide for six years, and, about thirty percent of the StoryBrand certified guides use my software.
So I’m very, very steeply involved in story.
So, I would just you you know, if you want something brandable, I would just say that narrative selling is a generic term. That’s that’s all I’m saying.
Cool.
That’s a thing. It’s a valid thing. And if you can talk about narrative selling, that’s fine to talk about it. But if it’s if you’re looking for a brandable term, I don’t think that you’re gonna have success with that as a brandable term.
Got it. That’s really helpful, Stacy. Thank you. I didn’t know that you, you’ve worked so much with story branding.
That’s cool. I will we have to do a coffee meet soon, actually. I meant to message you. Sorry.
Okay. Jo, do you have any thoughts?
Yeah. I mean, I feel like, okay. Cool. So totally fair on maybe narrative selling, but I still think there’s room there.
I honestly do. I think, it doesn’t have to be that. I like I really like the founder’s narrative. People have been talking about storytelling and narrative for all time, and no one’s ever nailed it.
Like, there’s still you walk away even with StoryBrand. We get all people that copy hackers coming over from StoryBrand because they’re like, well but I can’t actually, like, write the stuff. Like, I can put it mapped very well, and that’s great. But, like, now my clients need the next step, and I can’t do that.
And that’s fair. It’s fine to stay higher level. That’s fine. It just means I think that it leaves what it’s speaking to is that there’s room in the market for more gap filling.
I I every time you say you talk about this, Johnson, I think of The Message and the Messenger, which is a book that I would write if it made sense for me too.
What what I keep seeing from brands is right now, they don’t know there’s a mismatch between what they’re saying and who they are, and they’re publicly demonstrating that on social media, trying to be something that the brand isn’t, But that’s because a brand has a hard time being authentic, but a person can be authentic. Like, a person can be real. And so a founder wants to be the right messenger for his brands or her brands or their brands message. So so to me, it feels like there’s an opportunity opening up, thanks to social media largely, where the messenger needs to have the right message, and it has to come together. It has to work.
And that’s where the founder’s narrative is interesting.
To me, I would try to break it, though. I think that we should always try to break the things before we invest. So how could that be broken? Maybe it does get confused with StoryBrand.
Maybe it gets confused somehow with Rem’s book Lost and Founder somehow.
You don’t you don’t know. Right? But you just, like, start trying to break it. And then, okay, if we can break it, now let’s rebuild it stronger and better so it can’t be, which could be trying to break it for me would be like, okay.
If the founder’s narrative is my land, my expand has to be getting into other parts of the organization.
So what are those called? Is it like, we were talking about, is it product narrative? Uh-uh. Not great.
Is it the sales narrative also not really meaty?
So play around with that. You’re I think there’s something there. I would also, like, try to work through how Simon Sinek got to start with why. Because we are talking about something strategic here. We are talking about something that would attract a lot of c levels if they heard it, if they saw you on stage or heard you on a podcast.
It would feed their ego, honestly, to have their own narrative created by some great person from England with an accent. Like, there’s a lot there, honestly, as this I know that sounds stupid, but I think it would sell extremely well.
Interesting.
So what is the name?
If it’s not the founder’s narrative, stay in that vicinity, though, and see Well, I I do like that.
Yeah. I mean, I, like, I do like the founder’s narrative as a, as a name for this particular product.
And I I’m just I I feel like I I keep kind of asking this thing. It’s like, is this the right umbrella to put my these ideas under? Because I know that once this is done and I invest it and I buy the websites and, like, that’s it. It’s locked in. And I just kind of wanna I know names are maybe the least important part in many ways of Okay. You know? Oh.
They’re both not important and entirely everything.
So, yeah, if you get it right, it doesn’t matter. If you get it wrong, you’re screwed.
Right. I mean, I think founders narrative is is great. I really like that one. I think that’s strong and that the the the thing that I don’t like about that is that it doesn’t bring you into the enterprise market, which is why you can have founders narrative for the smaller companies and leaders narrative for the enterprise companies. And for the for the enterprise companies, leaders narrative is great because every enterprise wants to harness their workforce to help them establish thought leadership.
So if you’re if you’re going into an enterprise and helping them establish thought leadership across the enterprise by teaching them a process of the leader’s narrative and then empowering everybody to share the same story, you can make a fortune doing this.
So I did have an idea that I’ve called the organizational narrative, which was a sort of internal look at the narratives that are at play sort of strategically within the organization where there’s conflicting, perceptions essentially about, well, the stories, the the narratives that exist within the company, of what teams are doing, of what C suite wants and does.
And that was a that was a sort of next the next sort of one I wanted to start fleshing out a little bit.
Yeah. So cool. Okay.
I mean, it sounds like You’re separating it from the human element then, though.
You’re breaking up the organizational narrative. That’s like the people are what matter when you’re telling stories. Right? So the if you you you make the leaders narrative align with the organizational priorities, and then you have happy people who have their own story that they get to share that’s aligned with the organization.
Does that make sense? What do you think, Joanna? Yeah.
I fully agree. Yeah. Organizational narrative bored me immediately, and it’s, it’s it’s probably because it’s missing people. Yeah. Yeah. Cool.
Alright. Okay.
And think about the job that they’re actually hiring this to do. It might feel like they’re hiring it. They’re hiring this service to do, so a a job inter I would say they’re hiring it for they’re likely going to wanna come out of this, feeling better about themselves. It’ll be a personal job they’re really hiring it for, feeling valuable, feeling, of course, like they can can perform better and go out into the world and really understand their message.
But but so if you know it’s about you’re gonna have people making people based decisions, name it in a way where it’s, like, gotta have it.
This thing, the leadership story deck, there’s a guy, David Hutchins. His book is, The Circle of the Nine Muses. He has this great deck of cards, and it’s all about stories. And it’s the stories that individual people can tell, and it breaks it down into this whole framework of, like, when to use what story for what. It’s really fantastic. I think if you checked it out, it would be a a good, thing for sparking ideas for creating your own thing. But he goes in and does workshops, and it it becomes, actually a personal transformation for the attendees.
It’s it’s about them transforming themselves by learning to tell these stories and to to do it through work. So that’s a that’s another thing to think about. Think about the people, the people.
Alright.
Okay. That’s really helpful. Thank you.
And so narrative selling maybe as an umbrella term is not, possibly not the the best way to go, but something narrative was narrative something, maybe still to keep these all under a similar sort of, format.
Yeah. I think so. Yeah.
Alright. Thank you so much, guys. This was incredibly helpful. That was, like, a little bit of a electricity for me there. Thank you.
Good. I, I love it.
Okay. Excellent. Good stuff. Alright. Thanks, y’all. Thanks for hanging on, and see you later. Have a good one.
Thanks, Stacy. Thanks, Jared.
Bye.
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.
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.
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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.
4x Your Course Sales with A Relationship Focused Waitlist Strategy
4x Your Course Sales with a Relationship Focused Waitlist Strategy
Transcript
Alright. Over the next training minutes, my goal is to help you create a waitlist page, like, understand the secret to creating a weightless page that attracts you perfect student.
This is personally, this is a strategy that I’ve tested out extensively for our clients, with waitlists. And, of course, then the kind of emails to send to those waitlists, and then, you know, what kind of copy to include on those emails. I’ll also walk you through a quick recipe for, for one of those kind of emails. We will try and see how much you can done in twenty minutes. That would be fun.
Okay. So the to create a wait list page, and I know all of you should have worksheets with this.
Apparently, should I come through to the worksheets? I don’t know. You’ll complete you should complete the after the session. In this case, I would want you to complete them after the session.
And feel free to to tag me if you have questions if you’re working on a wait list, project for a client or for yourself, I would love to see what you come up with, and I would love to get feedback on that, as well. So even after the session, feel free to ping me, in Slack, tag me, and all of that. Alright. The SMS recipe is essentially what kind of goes against the grain when it comes to weightless pages.
Most ways wake us pages that I saw, and this is the niches that I run images essentially, coaches, course creators, authors, and membership side owners. Like, these are the four type of audiences, like that across different niches that I’ve written weightless pages for. And when I was doing my research, what I found was weightless pages were either essentially placeholders or like often pages, you know, like really short name, email address. I have to be the first to know when my book releases those kind of pages, and that’s Probably that’s great that works well for them.
I don’t know. I haven’t, you know, I don’t have the data on that. But what we realized is that if we are running ads to a waitlist page or even from social media organically sending people to a waitlist page. Our goal is that it needs to speak to the ideal student or the ideal reader and it needs to move them from unaware or maybe brand aware to most aware with intent to buy.
There is no point in putting up a way to this page when your highest conversions don’t end up coming from there. So for me, that was the goal going in, and this was the that I kinda came up with was that it needs to speak to our ideal students. So we need to structure it in a way that has their struggles. It’s obviously based on voice customer, it has social proof, it has all of the conversion mechanisms that we would use in a in a regular sales page.
Right? And it needs to move them from unaware to most aware, and then sell them on the signing up to the wait list. So we need to kind of make it worked there a while to sign up to the wait list, and that is where, you know, the next part of the training, which is, you know, the emails come in. You can sell them on signing up to the wait list by, yes, incentivizing them, letting them know, hey, you’ll get the lowest price.
But what if, and wonderful client comes to you and says, okay, I do not want to give a discount.
Right? So because that has happened with me where I’ve had clients and, you know, I authors, especially say, you know, yeah, we can give, like, I don’t wanna we’re not gonna give, like, a discount in the book. DLMS for, like, say, ten books or something like that. But, or I’m not gonna discount the course.
So your wait list page needs to incentivize people to sign up to the wait list because they will be viewing from you regularly, and that is where the emails kick in.
One of the things that I want you to know is that waiters pages don’t have to be long form sales pages.
They’re not, you know, they’re not going to be like eight thousand, thirteen thousand word sales pages. They are going to be shorter than that. Think of them as somewhere, but we, long form opt in page and a short sales page.
What I look at is essentially this, is it’s speaking to the ideal student are we using voice of customer to guide the structure of the page talking about what they will get? Is it moving them from most aware, which means that I need to have, most unaware, like, from unaware to most aware, which means I need to have a bio section and social proof as well. Right? I need to have credibility markers in there. And then is it incentivizing them? Is it selling them on signing up to the wait list? As long as it’s taking all of those wear golden, which is why I don’t have a rinsing repeat kind of a framework.
For this, but these are the three things that I look for. Is it doesn’t speak to a writing student? Is it moving them across the stages of awareness?
And is it selling them on signing up to the wait list?
Once they sign up to the wait list, the emails kick in.
You can complete, like okay. Then test it for yourself, but I have multiple times just use the emails that people will be getting as the incentive for signing up to the wait list.
Why? Because there are two kinds of emails that you wanna send.
This one is the one that people love the most. These are the ones that tend to do really, really well. And again, continuing to move our reader across the stages of awareness and getting them really excited about what’s coming there next. Behind the scenes, they come along for the right email is what I call this.
This is like a friendly introduction. You know, you and then you segue into the right behind launching or creating what course, the bug, whatever. So behind the scenes, the previews, any frustrations, you know, bloopers, highlight reels, a lesson or a chapter, those work really, really well. They’re really easy to write as well.
Especially when you’re writing them for clients, you know, then it makes it really easy to do that, because you would wanna work with them closely for this, but it pretty much on, like, a weekly basis. And and so you would meet with them. You would get to know what’s going on with the launch and then basis that, you know, you would wanna write. The email for them.
The second one is something that you could kind of, you know, almost use what I call my not yet for sales newsletters. For this, this is the TGI Fridays recipe. I don’t know how many of you remember TGI Fridays. I’m like totally dating myself here, but basically, the Fridays here Yeah.
At the FBRs or Fridays where you could send out an email any day of the week. Essentially, you’re sending out one email a week here.
And this works really well for evergreen funnels.
This is also the email that kind of inspired to nurture yourselves newsletter.
I would call it almost a package that I’ve, you know, clients have really, really loved and seen great results with. So with the TGI Friday’s recipe, essentially, you’re sending out a weekly email to the list, letting them know, you know, it could be an idea. It could be, again, it could be something behind the scenes as well, but point is with come along for the right email.
These could just be, you know, you could, like, if you if the wait list is, like, a few months long, This could just be a monthly email. This does not have to be a weekly email. When the wage period isn’t that long, It’s almost like a pre launch thing, which is when these work way better.
For this email, what I find invited why I kind of enjoy writing this email more is because I can write this ahead of time, and I don’t have to do, like, weekly calls. We’re applying to find out what’s going on behind the scenes or, you know, what’s the latest with the, you know, what’s happening with the course prep and and all of that. Is because I can just kind of use introduction, which is based in, you know, in Beijing blur. It could be a short story.
Bonus tip for anyone who’s working with clients here.
When you are onboarding your clients, when you’re kicking off a copy project, You want to ask your clients if they have a story wall. I I call it a story wall. You could call it a story bank. You could call it whatever you want to.
And if they don’t, then you wanna start that off for them. So this really when you’re writing these kind of newsletters emails because those emails need stories. Stories work really well for these.
You segue. So from the introduction, you segue into the insights. So what was your insight from that story, the anecdote, the facts, etcetera, etcetera. These are this is just example, if I’m not gonna read through them, you’ll have the slides. You could look at the slides for the examples to see how it kind of all ties together because I, again, wanna be mindful of the time here.
And then you’ll be into the information you wanna share here with them. Now, This is important. The information that you would share would connect to the book, the membership, or the course that you’re talking about.
Why? Because again, remember, these are very close to emails. And then you wanna implement them. Now implementing could be as simple as signing taking the next step with signing up for your webinar.
So you treat these more like pre launch. Implementation could be tagging you on Instagram. So you’re building that relatability, building that rapport with them. Implementation could be to pre enroll in your course, you know, so you if you have an early, early bird.
Implementation doesn’t always mean that they need to go back, print out worksheet right on their takeaways. That’s an implementation just means they need to take some sort of an action.
Besides these two kind of emails, these are some other, copy ideas that I’ve used for course created specifically when it comes to their latest email strategy.
So problem solving content. Again, You speak to your student. Right? So you know what the problems are and you get them some solutions and and, yes, you share how they can make the solutions. We don’t wanna do the what and the why and keep the how gated here, which is really popular in the online world.
And the reason I don’t do that, you know, I’ve been fortunate that our my clients have been on board with this is because when you share the how, your audience has really, really good aha moments, and they realize that their problem is much bigger. You’re solving a very you know, a very high level problem for them here, but they know that the problem goes much bigger. And and that is when they start to see that they need to work with you in order to kind of, you know, not get stuck once they’ve moved past you. Will there be people who will just take that one or two house that you give them and run with it?
Yes. But those were probably not the ideal people to begin within the first place. So You wanna look again, we’re speaking to that one person in these emails who would be perfect for whatever offer it is that you’re selling. Comparative analysis content, comparison tables are your friends here.
I have used them denseively on sales pages, on emails, like, everywhere possible. Like, probably the only page I haven’t used it is like an ten page, but, maybe I should try that out one day. But, point is comparative analysis goes a long way because your audience is considering alternatives.
It’s really important you go ahead and address the conversation that they’re already having in their head about, okay, should I go for this or should go for that by helping them, you know, weigh the pros and cons and reduce that decision over a little bit. Either which way is whatever decision they make, it’s a decision. So that’s really important that we, you know, we can, we help them see how you fill the gaps or, you know, how are you different? Maybe you’re a good different for them.
Maybe you’re not so good different for them. Either which ways, it’s up to us to do, to help them make that decision. And then walk the top content. So this is, this is essentially value you know, where you show value alignment.
For example, Heather Elon, who’s a who’s been a long term client of ours, what she did was she made it very clear on her opt in page. I basically wrote the opt in page for her, but she and she was on board with it by being very clear that people will be invited to join her course.
Why? Because, again, we were speaking to astrologers.
These are not marketers. They do not know how fattles work. These are like obvious regular people who Yeah. It would be very skeptical of just kinda buying something on the, someone they’ve been watching on YouTube, but so we made it very clear about what’s gonna happened next, we reiterated the fact on, you know, in the follow-up emails as well. So people were coming in eyes wide open, and they will know, like, Oh, here’s a free master class, and now here’s what you’re gonna need to buy to keep moving forward. Point is If your clients have an audience that a is not very marketing savvy, B is or has been burned badly in the past by poor experiences, and or You have a brand that is known for a very high commitment to values, integrity, transparency, You know, it may be a good idea to have some walk the talk content in your waitlist email strategy.
Alright. I think we are very good on time.
Yep. That’s it.
Let’s talk about how are you gonna use wait. Let’s see your programs or services, and I don’t know why my Jeff is frozen. But anyways, go forth and wait list await to your users. Okay. Cool. Questions. And then you can do copy reviews.
What do you consider to be a or for you for you personally, like a good benchmark to aim for for a waitlist.
I’m sorry.
What do I consider to be a a good bed benchmark for a conversion rate for your wait list when you’re launching.
Well, that’s a very good question. So I have seen and this is a how I set benchmarks, Abby, is based on what the client has seen so far from a launch. If they’ve used a rate list, then from that rate list. And if they’ve not used a rate list, then what’s been highest conversion software. And then I go ahead and set benchmarks.
Having said that.
The range that we’ve seen for weightless conversions have has gone anywhere from, I would say, thirteen percent to and almost twenty five percent.
Because I’m gonna hazard a guess. It’s probably more than that, but talking to twenty five percent, which been really, really good because and this is probably just my audience, my clients, sometimes, like, I work with a lot of audiences that are very skeptical. I do work with marketers as well, but I do also work. I do work with audiences that are that have a high resistance to being sold to. I think homesteaders, like, right now, just before this call, I had a call with a client of ours who has a homesteading business. Homesteaders.
Sorry. I just want to similarly, astrologers or crafters or, you know, so It could just be me, but I yeah. That’s what we’ve seen. I would say, thirteen to twenty five percent has been what I’ve seen the waitlists.
Okay. Thank you. Okay.
Any other questions?
I’m curious, permit, like, I’ve seen I’ve seen a lot of wait lists that are just like the sales page, but with the wait list button instead. So I’m curious when you said about, like, having you’re selling them on being on the wait list, which I totally understand, but I wonder, like, how much are you also selling them on the offer like, would you say it’s an exception where there’s kind of two things that you’re selling them on, or how do you how do you prioritize, there?
Yeah.
And I’ve done the same, you know, like with, in fact, with our own brand, the wait list we had was basically the sales page with with the opt in form, you know, just switched out. And my reason for that was essentially because One Ray to sell is Hi, Gosh. And I don’t have, like, a huge number of people I’m looking to get into it. So it just kinda makes more sense from you. Have, like, a way to list of people who know exactly what the offer is and exactly who I am, etcetera, etcetera. So it just made sense for us to do that plus interest of time, did not have the time.
To hire myself to write, from scratch, wait list page, honestly.
But point being, For our clients, though, I have seen that, yes, we do let them know that the offer is what the offer is. And what it’s going to be. The thing I should tell you, Katie, is that when you’re selling a client, on using a waitlist. It’s a good idea to do that, like, say, eight weeks or twelve weeks, you know, like, before the launch.
Like, they’re building a waitlist, three months before they’re launching the offer. So all the details of the offer sometimes are not even hashed out yet. Which means that they have an idea. Sometimes they may not even, you know, know what the final pricing is going to be on hold.
So we don’t really sell all of that. We just talk about what the outcome and the benefits are going to be of the of the program and that they can get a behind the scenes look at how it’s, you know, especially if it’s like a first time launch, even if it’s a relaunch, they can get a behind the scenes look because I’ve what I’ve found is that people really like behind the scenes look, at least on the niches that I’ve worked in.
So, Katie or mute, I think. Sorry.
Let’s focus on, like, how many calls you’ll get or what the bonuses will be and more focus on big picture outcomes benefits and behind the scenes.
Exactly. And then just because what you said about the eight to twelve week timeline, would you consider this a good package to sell, like, your clients just closed a launch in the, like, we’ve done our post launch debrief and now Let me set you up with a wait list.
Yes.
One hundred percent. Yeah. Yeah. That is a this is something that I’ve done again multiple times. I love you calls because of that because not only you can you sell people on a way to this package as the next step, but also the nudged for news, sales newsletters, you know, where especially, you know, when, like, you, Abby, and this is something that you could, if you’re not doing it already, essentially, is, like, where for my clients at least when we implemented their evergreen funnel and it’s running and things like that when we do the I do a debrief with them, either sixty days or ninety days after, implementation, and that is when we have the discussion about the initiative for sales and sales.
Thanks. So yeah.
Right now.
Did someone else start speaking or was it you? No. No. That was me. I was just gonna say that.
Yeah. I have another waitlist question.
What do you think is a good discount? Because I’ve just done this with a client we finished up, but one of the the challenges I run into was I wanna we wanna give a good discount for the wait list, but also, like, if these are the highest intent prospects, we don’t wanna, like, undersell them. So what you how do you kind of navigate binding that sweet spot? Do you have any thoughts on, like, what a good discount is to reward the loyalty without understanding?
So, generally, I found like twenty to thirty percent works well. This is something we’ve we’ve tested out.
Having said that with certain offers, we’ve not done any discounts. Where but we’ve given them, I did this with another homesteading client of ours, where we gave them a fireside chat with the founders off the membership site. You know, again, you need to kinda look at your audience. This audience loved it because the founders are homesteaders.
They’re very well known. So, you know, they really enjoyed the whole it’s a zoom chat with the whole image of a first like chat where you get to ask them your questions about your about your homesteading struggles, etcetera, etcetera. So that worked really well, when we did, we we opened up the launch for the membership site to the wait list stores. So that’s, you know, so you could start at options that are not a discount because those tend to work well as long as they’re kind of tailored, but twenty to thirty percent just works really, really well.
Again, depends on what the offer is.
If it’s if it’s like, say, a membership, which is like twenty nine dollars a month or something like that, you know, then maybe nineteen dollars a month would be just fine as a wait list Right? Yeah. But, if it’s if it’s a three thousand dollars or four thousand dollars, it kinda depends on ultimately offers, right, then all of a sudden paying a thirty percent off for your legacy.
So I think we did three fifty.
Yeah.
So that’s that’s just fine.
Yeah.
Thanks, right now. You’re welcome.
Okay. I have a I have a consult booked with someone who is exactly the kind of consult that I find, like, always gets me into trouble in that She doesn’t say exactly what she wants. She just has an offer and is looking for ideas of what the best next thing to do it.
And I find that these are calls where, like, I get overwhelmed with all of the all of the ideas that I have, and I end up just saying all of those ideas, but then they just go do those ideas because I can’t figure out, like, I I don’t know like, ultimately the time of the call is over, and I haven’t actually sold them anything.
So I would just love if you have, like, I know you said you don’t. You never get strategy away for free. I have she’s looking for, like, this offer selling which funnels to implement next.
I have a funnel strategy session offer.
What do you hold back? Like, I don’t know. I guess just like, do you have tips on not on, like, selling them, like showing that you know what you’re talking about enough to be the person they choose without Yeah. Saying all of the thoughts out loud. In that initial conversation.
Here is her answer to so it’s a course around how to develop a concept for a TV show and sell it in Hollywood.
I can share this is the why do you want a call with me blurb that she shared?
Okay. I need help with sales strategy for an automated course. I’m looking for someone to look at the product I’ve built and help you figure out how to automate funnels sell a smaller package item from revenue, how to automate and convert for high ticket course as well, handing out campaigns and marketing, writing and adapting copy, building funnel pages in writing, adapting email notes or sequences.
Okay.
So this is where I find on, like, it’s one thing if somebody comes to me and they’re like, I need copy.
Like, I can I have a flow, but, where it’s where it there’s, like, so many questions around Okay? What do we do? So alright.
So let’s do this. Right? We have a few minutes.
Let’s see if he can race through this.
Alright.
So, Katie, you’re the client. We’re gonna call you, Katie, Alright. So you can’t do any so guys need help. Yeah.
Yeah. Oh, do you wanna switch roles? We could do that too. No. Okay.
I would much rather be the client.
Okay. Cool. We can do that. Okay. So alright. So you said I need help with sales strategy.
So I’m gonna say okay. Alright. Hi, Katie. Thank you so much for reaching out. I’m for sharing details that you need help with sales strategy for your course.
Tell me a little about it. Like, when have you, you know, you said it’s an automated course Have you launched it before? Have has it been running on automated mode for a while?
I’ll walk you through it.
In the December of twenty twenty three.
That went pretty well.
We Things. I’ve been in business for a while, but things have just really picked up lately. And now I really want to take advantage of some of the opportunities I know are out there.
Excellent. Alright.
And who’s your audience for this course?
Riders who have not yet had a show acquired, in Hollywood or who are hoping to get their show acquired before they go through the whole they they write a bunch of episodes.
They wanna have the idea and then pitch immediately from there.
Excellent. And, So you launched this course and, you know, your audience’s writers have not booked, book to show in Hollywood. It sounds like you’ve got all of that dialed in. How did the, you know, how’s the automated funnel been running so far?
Right now, I have a wait list page up.
Okay. Alright.
And that nothing else is happening on the other end.
Okay. Cool. And what are your goals from this? Like, what do you hope to do? Like, why reach out to me, why did you wanna work with me?
I feel like I have proof of concept, based on the results of our last launch, And so I know that I am leaving money on the table by not by not, having some systems selling this on the back end.
I hear you. Yeah. No. That makes sense. Talk to me a little about here. You said you have a smaller package item, and you wanna automate and convert for high ticket courses as well. So do you have ideas for this, or would you like to work through this with me?
We so I’ve seen it being done successfully and I would like to add that to our offer suite, but we don’t currently have a small to good item ready to go.
Fair enough. Great. And how many students do you currently have in your in your course?
Thirty five.
Cool. Alright. That’s a really good start. Okay. So, Katie, I’m gonna walk you through my process, and then I can tell you how we could work together.
Right? Which is when I walk them through my process and then tell them that it could sign up for a either a profitably or session, which is basically our offer optimization session, or in your case, that would be like a strategy session, or they could sign up for a full launch copy thing. Usually, I tell them for if it’s the first time client, I tell them to go for the strategy session because I wanna get a feel of how whether I would like to work with them or not, and also basically get paid to create the strategies for them.
And if they’re they’re like, no. We wanna do the whole thing. Fine, buddy.
Okay. So, basically, the call, like, I’m not gonna guide you looking at, okay, let’s look at what are the different options here. You may wanna give them a few ideas But again, when you’re giving a few ideas, what I would probably do is, like, I give ideas like, okay.
So Katie, you know what I’m thinking? This makes total sense. I haven’t taken a look at your course, but I’m guessing there are parts of it that we could pull out, and that could become your local offer, which means that you wouldn’t really have to create anything new or what we can do is and again, I’ll need to take a look at your course and understand your audience better for this. What we could do is maybe add a few elements to it to make it the high ticket offer and have the self paced version, which is what you currently have as the, you know, as the one that’s running on Evergreen or even the no ticket offer, so to speak. But I would know more, once I dig deep and take a look.
Add all of the data.
And so she says, okay, I wanna take you up on the strategy session.
I was thinking, like, I have a funnel strategy session, but that’s more for people who want to do it, like, DIY done with you.
She clearly wants from her intake form done for you. So I was thinking of what I call like my golden opportunity audit, which is essentially, like, I go through, like, dig into the offer, look at her existing list, and what sequences she has, like, many offers resources and then would provide, like, a recommendations report essentially of where she could go.
And I was thinking of saying that if we did that, I would roll fifty percent of that investment into her done for you package.
And how much is that? The golden opportunity thing?
Oh, I was planning to put it at seventeen hundred.
You could do that if it’s already part of your process.
Like, profitably or just offer optimization that we pulled out of our process, essentially. So if someone were to if someone were to buy that and say six months later, come back to us, would not roll it over. But if someone were to buy it and because that has happened in the past, where people have taken this, taken that, and then, like, right after we send them that, they’re like, okay, let’s do the whole thing.
Which makes sense. So, yes, you could totally do that.
Would you do half or would you do all of it?
Ours is fourteen ninety seven. Katie, we’d end up doing all of it.
Okay. Into the full fully loaded launch?
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. I did. I did like a launch strategy session that was nine nine seven, and then I did all of that for a, like, ten k launch package.
Well, I was just thinking about the seventeen hundred. If that ends up being, like, more than fifteen percent out of yeah. I guess it would depend on what the what the final Yeah. Because it would be. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. You wanna take a look at that because, again, remember, for for us, most of our fully loaded launch packages are upwards of twenty five k at this point.
So that fourteen ninety seven is like an easy absorb. Yeah.
Yeah. Plus it’s I mean, I would have done that in any case. Right? I mean, so and I’m not having to do that. So it just kinda makes sense. So, so yeah. Okay.
Okay.
I had so I’m just curious. Would you go that fast or was that for for us?
Oh, gosh. No.
That’s for us because it’s like it. We’re over time. Perfect.
Okay. Good. So my main takeaway is show that you understand what they’re talking about. Ask smart questions, but don’t share the ideas on the call. The ideas come on the in the deliverable.
Yeah.
Yeah. You unless you walk in with a really clear idea, like, you know exactly. In this case, you know, in this particular case, she needs to start with strategy. Like, she needs to get really good on her offer suite and what she needs to sell. Sometimes it will be someone comes to you for a sales page and then when you talking to them, you realize that, no, you don’t need just a sales page you need like the whole of the bank, which is when you do wanna give them the idea so that they can see how the pieces fit together But, but yeah, in this case, this is like a straight shipment. Like, this is this is pure strategy. Yeah.
Yeah. Okay. Okay. I’ll let you know if it goes. It’s a one. So it’s an hour an hour away.
Okay. I’m gonna be in bed. Thank you. Are showing up. Yeah. And, the recording should be in, Slack Cooper usually ends.
That’s it. Thank you.
Bye. Bye, Jessica. Hey, Ralph.
Transcript
Alright. Over the next training minutes, my goal is to help you create a waitlist page, like, understand the secret to creating a weightless page that attracts you perfect student.
This is personally, this is a strategy that I’ve tested out extensively for our clients, with waitlists. And, of course, then the kind of emails to send to those waitlists, and then, you know, what kind of copy to include on those emails. I’ll also walk you through a quick recipe for, for one of those kind of emails. We will try and see how much you can done in twenty minutes. That would be fun.
Okay. So the to create a wait list page, and I know all of you should have worksheets with this.
Apparently, should I come through to the worksheets? I don’t know. You’ll complete you should complete the after the session. In this case, I would want you to complete them after the session.
And feel free to to tag me if you have questions if you’re working on a wait list, project for a client or for yourself, I would love to see what you come up with, and I would love to get feedback on that, as well. So even after the session, feel free to ping me, in Slack, tag me, and all of that. Alright. The SMS recipe is essentially what kind of goes against the grain when it comes to weightless pages.
Most ways wake us pages that I saw, and this is the niches that I run images essentially, coaches, course creators, authors, and membership side owners. Like, these are the four type of audiences, like that across different niches that I’ve written weightless pages for. And when I was doing my research, what I found was weightless pages were either essentially placeholders or like often pages, you know, like really short name, email address. I have to be the first to know when my book releases those kind of pages, and that’s Probably that’s great that works well for them.
I don’t know. I haven’t, you know, I don’t have the data on that. But what we realized is that if we are running ads to a waitlist page or even from social media organically sending people to a waitlist page. Our goal is that it needs to speak to the ideal student or the ideal reader and it needs to move them from unaware or maybe brand aware to most aware with intent to buy.
There is no point in putting up a way to this page when your highest conversions don’t end up coming from there. So for me, that was the goal going in, and this was the that I kinda came up with was that it needs to speak to our ideal students. So we need to structure it in a way that has their struggles. It’s obviously based on voice customer, it has social proof, it has all of the conversion mechanisms that we would use in a in a regular sales page.
Right? And it needs to move them from unaware to most aware, and then sell them on the signing up to the wait list. So we need to kind of make it worked there a while to sign up to the wait list, and that is where, you know, the next part of the training, which is, you know, the emails come in. You can sell them on signing up to the wait list by, yes, incentivizing them, letting them know, hey, you’ll get the lowest price.
But what if, and wonderful client comes to you and says, okay, I do not want to give a discount.
Right? So because that has happened with me where I’ve had clients and, you know, I authors, especially say, you know, yeah, we can give, like, I don’t wanna we’re not gonna give, like, a discount in the book. DLMS for, like, say, ten books or something like that. But, or I’m not gonna discount the course.
So your wait list page needs to incentivize people to sign up to the wait list because they will be viewing from you regularly, and that is where the emails kick in.
One of the things that I want you to know is that waiters pages don’t have to be long form sales pages.
They’re not, you know, they’re not going to be like eight thousand, thirteen thousand word sales pages. They are going to be shorter than that. Think of them as somewhere, but we, long form opt in page and a short sales page.
What I look at is essentially this, is it’s speaking to the ideal student are we using voice of customer to guide the structure of the page talking about what they will get? Is it moving them from most aware, which means that I need to have, most unaware, like, from unaware to most aware, which means I need to have a bio section and social proof as well. Right? I need to have credibility markers in there. And then is it incentivizing them? Is it selling them on signing up to the wait list? As long as it’s taking all of those wear golden, which is why I don’t have a rinsing repeat kind of a framework.
For this, but these are the three things that I look for. Is it doesn’t speak to a writing student? Is it moving them across the stages of awareness?
And is it selling them on signing up to the wait list?
Once they sign up to the wait list, the emails kick in.
You can complete, like okay. Then test it for yourself, but I have multiple times just use the emails that people will be getting as the incentive for signing up to the wait list.
Why? Because there are two kinds of emails that you wanna send.
This one is the one that people love the most. These are the ones that tend to do really, really well. And again, continuing to move our reader across the stages of awareness and getting them really excited about what’s coming there next. Behind the scenes, they come along for the right email is what I call this.
This is like a friendly introduction. You know, you and then you segue into the right behind launching or creating what course, the bug, whatever. So behind the scenes, the previews, any frustrations, you know, bloopers, highlight reels, a lesson or a chapter, those work really, really well. They’re really easy to write as well.
Especially when you’re writing them for clients, you know, then it makes it really easy to do that, because you would wanna work with them closely for this, but it pretty much on, like, a weekly basis. And and so you would meet with them. You would get to know what’s going on with the launch and then basis that, you know, you would wanna write. The email for them.
The second one is something that you could kind of, you know, almost use what I call my not yet for sales newsletters. For this, this is the TGI Fridays recipe. I don’t know how many of you remember TGI Fridays. I’m like totally dating myself here, but basically, the Fridays here Yeah.
At the FBRs or Fridays where you could send out an email any day of the week. Essentially, you’re sending out one email a week here.
And this works really well for evergreen funnels.
This is also the email that kind of inspired to nurture yourselves newsletter.
I would call it almost a package that I’ve, you know, clients have really, really loved and seen great results with. So with the TGI Friday’s recipe, essentially, you’re sending out a weekly email to the list, letting them know, you know, it could be an idea. It could be, again, it could be something behind the scenes as well, but point is with come along for the right email.
These could just be, you know, you could, like, if you if the wait list is, like, a few months long, This could just be a monthly email. This does not have to be a weekly email. When the wage period isn’t that long, It’s almost like a pre launch thing, which is when these work way better.
For this email, what I find invited why I kind of enjoy writing this email more is because I can write this ahead of time, and I don’t have to do, like, weekly calls. We’re applying to find out what’s going on behind the scenes or, you know, what’s the latest with the, you know, what’s happening with the course prep and and all of that. Is because I can just kind of use introduction, which is based in, you know, in Beijing blur. It could be a short story.
Bonus tip for anyone who’s working with clients here.
When you are onboarding your clients, when you’re kicking off a copy project, You want to ask your clients if they have a story wall. I I call it a story wall. You could call it a story bank. You could call it whatever you want to.
And if they don’t, then you wanna start that off for them. So this really when you’re writing these kind of newsletters emails because those emails need stories. Stories work really well for these.
You segue. So from the introduction, you segue into the insights. So what was your insight from that story, the anecdote, the facts, etcetera, etcetera. These are this is just example, if I’m not gonna read through them, you’ll have the slides. You could look at the slides for the examples to see how it kind of all ties together because I, again, wanna be mindful of the time here.
And then you’ll be into the information you wanna share here with them. Now, This is important. The information that you would share would connect to the book, the membership, or the course that you’re talking about.
Why? Because again, remember, these are very close to emails. And then you wanna implement them. Now implementing could be as simple as signing taking the next step with signing up for your webinar.
So you treat these more like pre launch. Implementation could be tagging you on Instagram. So you’re building that relatability, building that rapport with them. Implementation could be to pre enroll in your course, you know, so you if you have an early, early bird.
Implementation doesn’t always mean that they need to go back, print out worksheet right on their takeaways. That’s an implementation just means they need to take some sort of an action.
Besides these two kind of emails, these are some other, copy ideas that I’ve used for course created specifically when it comes to their latest email strategy.
So problem solving content. Again, You speak to your student. Right? So you know what the problems are and you get them some solutions and and, yes, you share how they can make the solutions. We don’t wanna do the what and the why and keep the how gated here, which is really popular in the online world.
And the reason I don’t do that, you know, I’ve been fortunate that our my clients have been on board with this is because when you share the how, your audience has really, really good aha moments, and they realize that their problem is much bigger. You’re solving a very you know, a very high level problem for them here, but they know that the problem goes much bigger. And and that is when they start to see that they need to work with you in order to kind of, you know, not get stuck once they’ve moved past you. Will there be people who will just take that one or two house that you give them and run with it?
Yes. But those were probably not the ideal people to begin within the first place. So You wanna look again, we’re speaking to that one person in these emails who would be perfect for whatever offer it is that you’re selling. Comparative analysis content, comparison tables are your friends here.
I have used them denseively on sales pages, on emails, like, everywhere possible. Like, probably the only page I haven’t used it is like an ten page, but, maybe I should try that out one day. But, point is comparative analysis goes a long way because your audience is considering alternatives.
It’s really important you go ahead and address the conversation that they’re already having in their head about, okay, should I go for this or should go for that by helping them, you know, weigh the pros and cons and reduce that decision over a little bit. Either which way is whatever decision they make, it’s a decision. So that’s really important that we, you know, we can, we help them see how you fill the gaps or, you know, how are you different? Maybe you’re a good different for them.
Maybe you’re not so good different for them. Either which ways, it’s up to us to do, to help them make that decision. And then walk the top content. So this is, this is essentially value you know, where you show value alignment.
For example, Heather Elon, who’s a who’s been a long term client of ours, what she did was she made it very clear on her opt in page. I basically wrote the opt in page for her, but she and she was on board with it by being very clear that people will be invited to join her course.
Why? Because, again, we were speaking to astrologers.
These are not marketers. They do not know how fattles work. These are like obvious regular people who Yeah. It would be very skeptical of just kinda buying something on the, someone they’ve been watching on YouTube, but so we made it very clear about what’s gonna happened next, we reiterated the fact on, you know, in the follow-up emails as well. So people were coming in eyes wide open, and they will know, like, Oh, here’s a free master class, and now here’s what you’re gonna need to buy to keep moving forward. Point is If your clients have an audience that a is not very marketing savvy, B is or has been burned badly in the past by poor experiences, and or You have a brand that is known for a very high commitment to values, integrity, transparency, You know, it may be a good idea to have some walk the talk content in your waitlist email strategy.
Alright. I think we are very good on time.
Yep. That’s it.
Let’s talk about how are you gonna use wait. Let’s see your programs or services, and I don’t know why my Jeff is frozen. But anyways, go forth and wait list await to your users. Okay. Cool. Questions. And then you can do copy reviews.
What do you consider to be a or for you for you personally, like a good benchmark to aim for for a waitlist.
I’m sorry.
What do I consider to be a a good bed benchmark for a conversion rate for your wait list when you’re launching.
Well, that’s a very good question. So I have seen and this is a how I set benchmarks, Abby, is based on what the client has seen so far from a launch. If they’ve used a rate list, then from that rate list. And if they’ve not used a rate list, then what’s been highest conversion software. And then I go ahead and set benchmarks.
Having said that.
The range that we’ve seen for weightless conversions have has gone anywhere from, I would say, thirteen percent to and almost twenty five percent.
Because I’m gonna hazard a guess. It’s probably more than that, but talking to twenty five percent, which been really, really good because and this is probably just my audience, my clients, sometimes, like, I work with a lot of audiences that are very skeptical. I do work with marketers as well, but I do also work. I do work with audiences that are that have a high resistance to being sold to. I think homesteaders, like, right now, just before this call, I had a call with a client of ours who has a homesteading business. Homesteaders.
Sorry. I just want to similarly, astrologers or crafters or, you know, so It could just be me, but I yeah. That’s what we’ve seen. I would say, thirteen to twenty five percent has been what I’ve seen the waitlists.
Okay. Thank you. Okay.
Any other questions?
I’m curious, permit, like, I’ve seen I’ve seen a lot of wait lists that are just like the sales page, but with the wait list button instead. So I’m curious when you said about, like, having you’re selling them on being on the wait list, which I totally understand, but I wonder, like, how much are you also selling them on the offer like, would you say it’s an exception where there’s kind of two things that you’re selling them on, or how do you how do you prioritize, there?
Yeah.
And I’ve done the same, you know, like with, in fact, with our own brand, the wait list we had was basically the sales page with with the opt in form, you know, just switched out. And my reason for that was essentially because One Ray to sell is Hi, Gosh. And I don’t have, like, a huge number of people I’m looking to get into it. So it just kinda makes more sense from you. Have, like, a way to list of people who know exactly what the offer is and exactly who I am, etcetera, etcetera. So it just made sense for us to do that plus interest of time, did not have the time.
To hire myself to write, from scratch, wait list page, honestly.
But point being, For our clients, though, I have seen that, yes, we do let them know that the offer is what the offer is. And what it’s going to be. The thing I should tell you, Katie, is that when you’re selling a client, on using a waitlist. It’s a good idea to do that, like, say, eight weeks or twelve weeks, you know, like, before the launch.
Like, they’re building a waitlist, three months before they’re launching the offer. So all the details of the offer sometimes are not even hashed out yet. Which means that they have an idea. Sometimes they may not even, you know, know what the final pricing is going to be on hold.
So we don’t really sell all of that. We just talk about what the outcome and the benefits are going to be of the of the program and that they can get a behind the scenes look at how it’s, you know, especially if it’s like a first time launch, even if it’s a relaunch, they can get a behind the scenes look because I’ve what I’ve found is that people really like behind the scenes look, at least on the niches that I’ve worked in.
So, Katie or mute, I think. Sorry.
Let’s focus on, like, how many calls you’ll get or what the bonuses will be and more focus on big picture outcomes benefits and behind the scenes.
Exactly. And then just because what you said about the eight to twelve week timeline, would you consider this a good package to sell, like, your clients just closed a launch in the, like, we’ve done our post launch debrief and now Let me set you up with a wait list.
Yes.
One hundred percent. Yeah. Yeah. That is a this is something that I’ve done again multiple times. I love you calls because of that because not only you can you sell people on a way to this package as the next step, but also the nudged for news, sales newsletters, you know, where especially, you know, when, like, you, Abby, and this is something that you could, if you’re not doing it already, essentially, is, like, where for my clients at least when we implemented their evergreen funnel and it’s running and things like that when we do the I do a debrief with them, either sixty days or ninety days after, implementation, and that is when we have the discussion about the initiative for sales and sales.
Thanks. So yeah.
Right now.
Did someone else start speaking or was it you? No. No. That was me. I was just gonna say that.
Yeah. I have another waitlist question.
What do you think is a good discount? Because I’ve just done this with a client we finished up, but one of the the challenges I run into was I wanna we wanna give a good discount for the wait list, but also, like, if these are the highest intent prospects, we don’t wanna, like, undersell them. So what you how do you kind of navigate binding that sweet spot? Do you have any thoughts on, like, what a good discount is to reward the loyalty without understanding?
So, generally, I found like twenty to thirty percent works well. This is something we’ve we’ve tested out.
Having said that with certain offers, we’ve not done any discounts. Where but we’ve given them, I did this with another homesteading client of ours, where we gave them a fireside chat with the founders off the membership site. You know, again, you need to kinda look at your audience. This audience loved it because the founders are homesteaders.
They’re very well known. So, you know, they really enjoyed the whole it’s a zoom chat with the whole image of a first like chat where you get to ask them your questions about your about your homesteading struggles, etcetera, etcetera. So that worked really well, when we did, we we opened up the launch for the membership site to the wait list stores. So that’s, you know, so you could start at options that are not a discount because those tend to work well as long as they’re kind of tailored, but twenty to thirty percent just works really, really well.
Again, depends on what the offer is.
If it’s if it’s like, say, a membership, which is like twenty nine dollars a month or something like that, you know, then maybe nineteen dollars a month would be just fine as a wait list Right? Yeah. But, if it’s if it’s a three thousand dollars or four thousand dollars, it kinda depends on ultimately offers, right, then all of a sudden paying a thirty percent off for your legacy.
So I think we did three fifty.
Yeah.
So that’s that’s just fine.
Yeah.
Thanks, right now. You’re welcome.
Okay. I have a I have a consult booked with someone who is exactly the kind of consult that I find, like, always gets me into trouble in that She doesn’t say exactly what she wants. She just has an offer and is looking for ideas of what the best next thing to do it.
And I find that these are calls where, like, I get overwhelmed with all of the all of the ideas that I have, and I end up just saying all of those ideas, but then they just go do those ideas because I can’t figure out, like, I I don’t know like, ultimately the time of the call is over, and I haven’t actually sold them anything.
So I would just love if you have, like, I know you said you don’t. You never get strategy away for free. I have she’s looking for, like, this offer selling which funnels to implement next.
I have a funnel strategy session offer.
What do you hold back? Like, I don’t know. I guess just like, do you have tips on not on, like, selling them, like showing that you know what you’re talking about enough to be the person they choose without Yeah. Saying all of the thoughts out loud. In that initial conversation.
Here is her answer to so it’s a course around how to develop a concept for a TV show and sell it in Hollywood.
I can share this is the why do you want a call with me blurb that she shared?
Okay. I need help with sales strategy for an automated course. I’m looking for someone to look at the product I’ve built and help you figure out how to automate funnels sell a smaller package item from revenue, how to automate and convert for high ticket course as well, handing out campaigns and marketing, writing and adapting copy, building funnel pages in writing, adapting email notes or sequences.
Okay.
So this is where I find on, like, it’s one thing if somebody comes to me and they’re like, I need copy.
Like, I can I have a flow, but, where it’s where it there’s, like, so many questions around Okay? What do we do? So alright.
So let’s do this. Right? We have a few minutes.
Let’s see if he can race through this.
Alright.
So, Katie, you’re the client. We’re gonna call you, Katie, Alright. So you can’t do any so guys need help. Yeah.
Yeah. Oh, do you wanna switch roles? We could do that too. No. Okay.
I would much rather be the client.
Okay. Cool. We can do that. Okay. So alright. So you said I need help with sales strategy.
So I’m gonna say okay. Alright. Hi, Katie. Thank you so much for reaching out. I’m for sharing details that you need help with sales strategy for your course.
Tell me a little about it. Like, when have you, you know, you said it’s an automated course Have you launched it before? Have has it been running on automated mode for a while?
I’ll walk you through it.
In the December of twenty twenty three.
That went pretty well.
We Things. I’ve been in business for a while, but things have just really picked up lately. And now I really want to take advantage of some of the opportunities I know are out there.
Excellent. Alright.
And who’s your audience for this course?
Riders who have not yet had a show acquired, in Hollywood or who are hoping to get their show acquired before they go through the whole they they write a bunch of episodes.
They wanna have the idea and then pitch immediately from there.
Excellent. And, So you launched this course and, you know, your audience’s writers have not booked, book to show in Hollywood. It sounds like you’ve got all of that dialed in. How did the, you know, how’s the automated funnel been running so far?
Right now, I have a wait list page up.
Okay. Alright.
And that nothing else is happening on the other end.
Okay. Cool. And what are your goals from this? Like, what do you hope to do? Like, why reach out to me, why did you wanna work with me?
I feel like I have proof of concept, based on the results of our last launch, And so I know that I am leaving money on the table by not by not, having some systems selling this on the back end.
I hear you. Yeah. No. That makes sense. Talk to me a little about here. You said you have a smaller package item, and you wanna automate and convert for high ticket courses as well. So do you have ideas for this, or would you like to work through this with me?
We so I’ve seen it being done successfully and I would like to add that to our offer suite, but we don’t currently have a small to good item ready to go.
Fair enough. Great. And how many students do you currently have in your in your course?
Thirty five.
Cool. Alright. That’s a really good start. Okay. So, Katie, I’m gonna walk you through my process, and then I can tell you how we could work together.
Right? Which is when I walk them through my process and then tell them that it could sign up for a either a profitably or session, which is basically our offer optimization session, or in your case, that would be like a strategy session, or they could sign up for a full launch copy thing. Usually, I tell them for if it’s the first time client, I tell them to go for the strategy session because I wanna get a feel of how whether I would like to work with them or not, and also basically get paid to create the strategies for them.
And if they’re they’re like, no. We wanna do the whole thing. Fine, buddy.
Okay. So, basically, the call, like, I’m not gonna guide you looking at, okay, let’s look at what are the different options here. You may wanna give them a few ideas But again, when you’re giving a few ideas, what I would probably do is, like, I give ideas like, okay.
So Katie, you know what I’m thinking? This makes total sense. I haven’t taken a look at your course, but I’m guessing there are parts of it that we could pull out, and that could become your local offer, which means that you wouldn’t really have to create anything new or what we can do is and again, I’ll need to take a look at your course and understand your audience better for this. What we could do is maybe add a few elements to it to make it the high ticket offer and have the self paced version, which is what you currently have as the, you know, as the one that’s running on Evergreen or even the no ticket offer, so to speak. But I would know more, once I dig deep and take a look.
Add all of the data.
And so she says, okay, I wanna take you up on the strategy session.
I was thinking, like, I have a funnel strategy session, but that’s more for people who want to do it, like, DIY done with you.
She clearly wants from her intake form done for you. So I was thinking of what I call like my golden opportunity audit, which is essentially, like, I go through, like, dig into the offer, look at her existing list, and what sequences she has, like, many offers resources and then would provide, like, a recommendations report essentially of where she could go.
And I was thinking of saying that if we did that, I would roll fifty percent of that investment into her done for you package.
And how much is that? The golden opportunity thing?
Oh, I was planning to put it at seventeen hundred.
You could do that if it’s already part of your process.
Like, profitably or just offer optimization that we pulled out of our process, essentially. So if someone were to if someone were to buy that and say six months later, come back to us, would not roll it over. But if someone were to buy it and because that has happened in the past, where people have taken this, taken that, and then, like, right after we send them that, they’re like, okay, let’s do the whole thing.
Which makes sense. So, yes, you could totally do that.
Would you do half or would you do all of it?
Ours is fourteen ninety seven. Katie, we’d end up doing all of it.
Okay. Into the full fully loaded launch?
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. I did. I did like a launch strategy session that was nine nine seven, and then I did all of that for a, like, ten k launch package.
Well, I was just thinking about the seventeen hundred. If that ends up being, like, more than fifteen percent out of yeah. I guess it would depend on what the what the final Yeah. Because it would be. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. You wanna take a look at that because, again, remember, for for us, most of our fully loaded launch packages are upwards of twenty five k at this point.
So that fourteen ninety seven is like an easy absorb. Yeah.
Yeah. Plus it’s I mean, I would have done that in any case. Right? I mean, so and I’m not having to do that. So it just kinda makes sense. So, so yeah. Okay.
Okay.
I had so I’m just curious. Would you go that fast or was that for for us?
Oh, gosh. No.
That’s for us because it’s like it. We’re over time. Perfect.
Okay. Good. So my main takeaway is show that you understand what they’re talking about. Ask smart questions, but don’t share the ideas on the call. The ideas come on the in the deliverable.
Yeah.
Yeah. You unless you walk in with a really clear idea, like, you know exactly. In this case, you know, in this particular case, she needs to start with strategy. Like, she needs to get really good on her offer suite and what she needs to sell. Sometimes it will be someone comes to you for a sales page and then when you talking to them, you realize that, no, you don’t need just a sales page you need like the whole of the bank, which is when you do wanna give them the idea so that they can see how the pieces fit together But, but yeah, in this case, this is like a straight shipment. Like, this is this is pure strategy. Yeah.
Yeah. Okay. Okay. I’ll let you know if it goes. It’s a one. So it’s an hour an hour away.
Okay. I’m gonna be in bed. Thank you. Are showing up. Yeah. And, the recording should be in, Slack Cooper usually ends.
That’s it. Thank you.
Bye. Bye, Jessica. Hey, Ralph.