Tag: thought leadership

Who influences Jo and where does she hang out?

Transcript

Well, it’s not it it’s more I think in focusing on more of Abby and Katie’s audience, maybe I’ll be able to figure out what to do with mine. So as we were speaking, I was thinking about how, you know, you can go into these Facebook groups like Abby does, and it’s like Amy Porterfield’s group four, blah blah blah. And maybe all those people start seeing you as the expert in something, and then they’d hire you. But the problem is is that we’re looking at more of an audience that’s, like you’re always saying, upstream or whatever.

So you wanna get in the room with whoever Amy Porterfield is masterminding with. Am I hearing that right? Yes. Yeah.

So then I was thinking about you.

Mhmm. And so I the only one I know about is that you’re in Shine Squad. Is that right?

Yeah. We have a Shine crew. Yep.

Okay.

That’s I don’t that’s not a mask.

I that might be, but it’s not as influential to me.

It’s mostly just like a bunch of friends who like, yeah.

Okay. No. It’s fine. I just I was just trying to think of so am I hearing this right?

Because I I can equate it in the unfortunately, I have some experience with, the Russell Brunson crew. What’s her name? ClickFunnels. And I know that they have, like, okay.

There’s a ClickFunnels community. Right? But then there’s the people who pay Uber amounts of money to be or and they also have really good businesses.

So I was trying to think of, like, okay. So what what are you in, Joe? What are what do you do? Whatever.

Because that, in my mind, would be where I if I were in there if I were Katie or Abby, that’s what I’d wanna be looking at. Right? Is that am I thinking this through that what you’re telling us about upstream and where we look? Exactly.

Yeah. So it would be who coaches me Yeah. Because they are likely to be something that I would listen to. In my case, it would also be what groups do I coach in because I don’t just coach in, like, for my own stuff.

Right? I work with Matt Lerner and System, and go in there and coach for all of his cohorts just one time, but, every time he runs it. So when I’m in there, Matt is an influencer for me. When Matt’s like, hey.

I just tried this. You should try it. I I will try it. Or this person’s awesome.

You should work with them. I will work with them.

My so so that would be, like, if someone was trying to target me and they were thinking who influences Joe. Yeah. My team influences me. My team can get a really quick yes for basically anything.

I’m watching you all. Don’t take advantage of that.

And, the programs I coach in mostly, although or that story that I’m coached in.

I don’t know about the person, more about the tactic. But if everybody else in the coaching program was like, oh, you should try so and so, I’d probably go follow that thread. Although so I’m in Tacky Moore’s training, coaching program. And if Tacky Moore said work with Jessica Noel, I would reach out to you. My other two coaches, I would pause on because they’re pretty bro y, and I don’t think any any they recommend would be a good culture fit for me.

But, yeah, that’s exactly what I’m talking about. So, yes, Jessica. Long story short.

No. No. No. I wanted you to go on about it. One, I’m hoping to help Katie and Abby somehow, and I selfishly the more you talk about it, then I can try and alright.

In the ecommerce industry, who is that, and what does it look like for them? And, you know, so that helps me get some clarity. And side note, Abby, I’m putting this on the record so it’s recorded. Amy Porterfield hired you via her own Facebook group.

That’s interesting, but how did that go for you, and is that really the ideal situation? I’d argue it’s not. I’m just saying.

So I wouldn’t use that as your your votes.

I’m calling Abby out because she goes back to that. And I I love Abby, and I think she’s amazing. And I think she deserves a hell of a lot more money than she gets and a lot less stress, so that’s why I’m putting it on the record, Abby.

Yes. That’s all. Yes. Comment.

Yes.

Understand.

Calling out the emergency resting rich face patrol. Yeah. No shit. Where’s your resting rich face?

That’s all you know.

It’s Yeah. She had to have known. She knows me well enough to know that if she put that comment there and I had an opportunity, I would say something. So she knows. Abby, you knew I’d say something, didn’t you?

Yes.

This is the problem is that the ideal clients that I think are ideal aren’t ideal. Yeah. Nope. I know. They’re usually in something far more boring, in my experience than you could fathom. So, like, the celebrities are not worth, working with because anybody will come by and work for super cheap for them.

But there’s, like, boring my favorite clients have been in the world’s most boring like, what they’re producing. You’re like, holy jeez.

But I I call that dorking for dollars.

Dorking. Yes. So true.

I love that. So true.

We’re, like, the Intuit’s of the world. Obviously, working for Intuit for five years, writing for accounting software.

Sounds boring. They take such good care of you. There’s so much good things there. GitPrime was my favorite client ever, and they were just, like, tech.

Like, how to tell if a developer is performing by hooking up your GitHub to this tool.

Like, holy shit. That’s never gonna make it onto the average freelancers like ICP, but boring goes a long way. Boring has a lot of money.

And also people working there who are at the top of their game because boring can afford, people at top of their game.

Worksheet

Four Hook-Finder Formulas

Table of Contents for an Ebook

Transcript

Regarding that, pricing page book, ebook, I have I almost have my split draft, but I have worked on a table of context. I’ve sort of worked backwards now in the sense that, like, maybe I spent too much time just writing stuff.

Okay.

And then I’m in the stage where I’m trying to figure out what the table of content should look like. So I landed on something, and I was wondering how to kinda get feedback on it. Should I share it on the channel or should I?

Throw it up right now. Let’s take a look at it. I don’t know how deep we’re gonna get it, but we can at least did you read useful books, Edmond?

I did. I did.

Okay. Perfect. Then you should be in decent shape with that one.

In decent shape. Yeah. I think the table of contents still need some work in terms of how you position the titles, but at least content wise, I’m just trying to get things that should be there.

Okay. I’ll share my screen.

Wait. How do you share again?

Download. I don’t know.

It depends on what Oh, there it goes.

You’re on. For me, it’s at the bottom.

Okay. Let me know if you guys can see my screen.

Okay.

This sounds nitpicky, and it’s the very first That’s fine.

No. That’s perfect. I I I want nitpicky, so this is good.

Well, why instead of the definitive guide? Okay. There’s a real question. We had to choose that.

So the reason I said, actually maybe it’s It’s a bit picky.

Yeah, you’re right. Because I I figured other people will be writing something on it as well. And saying the is coming off very authoritative and I’m not really an authority in the space.

So How about what what the whole idea of this is to say I’m the authority.

True. Yeah.

For the way.

You know, when April talks like, when April talks about her career in her book, it seems like she’s already worked on so many clients before she wrote that book.

Well, she had. She’d worked on clients, but she didn’t have she doesn’t actually have a background in marketing.

She’s an engineer. Like, she doesn’t she didn’t have that. So, like, she’s a Waterloo engineer.

So, but that doesn’t, but she’s then she went and worked in tech companies and ended up doing sales and marketing.

But I mean, honestly, when you think about the number of people out like, you don’t have to don’t let I don’t have enough experience stop you. I mean, I you’ll know because there’ll be a wall. And if you’re pushing through the wall, faking your way through it, you’ll know. Yeah.

But otherwise, I wouldn’t like just write the book. Start by writing the book and then go from there. Look at and then honestly, I would challenge you to look at the vast majority of people who are out there, who how did James Clear become the habits guy? He doesn’t have a degree in habits, right?

Like that’s not his thing. He just formed good habits and then started writing about them, and became an authority on it and worked to be an authority on it.

So I wouldn’t like, yes, worry, but don’t it’s one of those balances. Right? Yes. You need to be authoritative, but you can also be learning things as you build that authority.

So the Noted. Definitive guide.

Okay. How to transform your most conversion critical asset into a powerhouse of results. Anybody have any notes so far on what you’re seeing?

I would put this in sentence case. This is really hard to read in title case.

And sentence case is usually seen as a little bit more professional, especially in SaaS companies. I don’t see that many SaaS SaaS companies that use title case.

I know it’s a pain in the ass to change, but that’s I typically think it’s much easier to read when it’s, when it’s that way.

Anybody anybody else? Jessica, what are you doing?

You’re reading I’m looking at my books going, I’m not sure I agree with that one.

I don’t I mean, it’s not the thing I would focus on as much, but I I don’t know. I I’m looking at my books going, I see a lot of the opposite or capitalize the whole thing, which is but I don’t know.

I guess I never really looked that close. So I I don’t know. And then that’s probably not the one I would I I disrespectfully, I guess, disagree on that one. But depends on the, I’m not the definitive person on that.

You’re a definitive person.

Yeah. I would say look at the books on your shelf, right, to figure that out. Who knows in the end of, like, the formatting, but three, I just looked at all had all caps.

So it’s like yeah.

But that’s still it’s a fair point. Naomi, we do want it to be a readable, book. But I I get, like, the title. And so alright. So we have SaaS pricing pages. The audience that you’re speaking to is whom, Adnan?

Where you speak? C level c level folks, who would be willing to we we’re looking to optimize or or increase their conversions from the bottom of funnel assets.

Okay. And when you went through and did the right useful book stuff, did you write out when he was like, make sure you know your audience, how they found your book, how they’re referring your book, you wrote all that stuff out? Or did you just read it?

Yeah. Yeah.

Okay.

You wrote it out?

No. I I I wrote all that stuff out. Good.

Okay. Good.

Yeah.

Work through that. That. Okay, cool.

Okay. So how to transform your most conversion critical asset. So your people are coming to this book. How do you think they’re finding your book?

How do they discover it?

So the okay. So I was thinking about distribution, as to, like, once I’ve written, how am I gonna distribute it? So I figured that, I guess, the the easiest thing for me to do, considering this will be an ebook, would be to distribute it through newsletters. So they’re landing on it through newsletters emailed to them.

Okay.

So do you mean, like, you’re sponsoring newsletters?

Or how are you getting into it? Okay. Okay.

Yeah. Yeah.

Okay.

So these are newsletters then that are already targeting tech That audience.

Leaders.

Okay.

Great.

But do they know that a SaaS pricing page is important?

Are they to me, it sounds like if you’re unless the newsletter is about pricing pages, what are the chances they know that? So so because we know that a lot of tech marketers don’t think about their pricing pages at all, like ever. They think about their home pages and all this other stuff, but not their their pricing pages like they should.

I wonder if there wouldn’t be an objection to the idea that it’s my most conversion critical asset.

Because I’m I’m not even thinking about it at all. I thought my onboarding sequence was, what are you talking about? What’s this pricing page thing? So that part for me, I would just say make sure that your audience is nodding with you from the beginning.

Or if they’re not nodding with you, they’re so surprised in a good way by what you’ve just already revealed to them. So if you want to reveal to them that their pricing page is, like, this powerhouse potentially powerhouse of results, feels like there’s a gap there between the headline and the subhead. For me, at least it does. In in the shoes of your audience, I feel like there would be a gap.

Yeah.

Can I also, I I have another thing to mention?

I I think that when it comes to SaaS pricing pages, you may wanna reconsider who your target audience is because SaaS companies grow incredibly fast.

And if they’re looking at their, like a website is a very complicated thing to update because you often need engineers and you need designers, so a lot of them are thinking, like, my homepage is a mess, the entire website is a mess. Like, there are so many things to do.

Pricing pay it by the time they’re ready to think of the pricing page, I feel like they’re in the, like, optimization stage. Like the rest of the website has more or less updated messaging, meaning, like, it reflects the actual product that they have. And so if they’re ready to optimize, you may be actually you may have more success if you’re targeting, like, a product marketing manager or a growth marketing manager because they’re gonna be thinking of, I am ready to take this to the next level. The website is more or less converting. Our campaigns are converting.

Now we’re ready to, like, give it a little boost. Because if you try to introduce the pricing page when their homepage was created four years ago and has none of the information is relevant, then it’s not going to hit quite as well.

I think it’s a good point.

Yeah.

So how how how do you how do you propose then? Do we ease into that?

Because like you said, Joanna, like, they’re probably not thinking about their pricing page being a problem yet.

Yeah. I mean and that could be a question like so you’re calling it the definitive guide to SaaS pricing pages. If you are a growth lead at a SaaS company, whether that is a fast growing or slow growing one because there’s the giant space in there before the hockey stick and that varies.

Regardless of it, there’s somebody who wants to grow revenue trial starts, conversions on the other side of the onboarding sequence. So depending where their how their pricing page changes or if they just simply have two, What are they looking for? Now it doesn’t mean that you’re wrong to have it be called the definitive guide to SaaS pricing pages.

But is that what they’re looking for? Or are they really, like what’s and and so did you start by writing the title, or did you finish by writing the title?

So the title was already in my mind.

Yeah.

I hadn’t I hadn’t written it down. I I I I focused on the content first, and then I landed on that sort of title and the subtitle.

I feel like both of these together might be worth trying as a really strong subhead that it’s like it’s like explaining the value proposition of a SaaS pricing page for that growth focused person as the subhead.

But, like, what’s the bigger idea that they’re buying into?

Obviously, awesome as, like, the bigger idea. Right? You want to be so obviously awesome. You don’t have to talk about yourself at all. It’s just really clear.

So what’s the thing that this audience is looking for?

What’s the convergence. Of that. Yeah.

Does that make sense?

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So something around conversions, would you say?

Converting prospects, converting When you talk to people in this space, does anything surface that they’re saying?

Is there anything that’s, like like, for positioning? I wish people just understood what’s so awesome about us. Nobody seems to get what’s so awesome about us. And so are they saying anything like that for you?

Or, like I would look into that.

Yeah.

What are what’s that that you can hit? Or and if it’s not that kind of thing, it’s like the invisible sales machine, I think it was called, or the invisible selling machine, which is a we’re recording this, but it’s a garbage book about email marketing.

But it’s a really good title, like a really good title for the people it’s trying to attract.

So kinda just explore that. But if your if your title can be a bigger, more ambitious idea, I’d start going down that path. I know you’re calling it an ebook. We don’t want it to sound like a blog post.

Like, we want it to sound like it’s a meaty, insightful, like, look into this asset that you’ve been ignoring. That’s actually the site of conversions and ultimately revenue for your business. Like, you’ve gotta work on this thing, and the payoff is huge when you do. So I dig in there.

I would also keep in mind that for a lot of company a lot of SaaS companies right now, paid media spend is down.

And so you could use the angle of leakage, meaning if you’re spending ten thousand, thirty thousand, fifty thousand dollars a month on paid media, and you’re funneling all of your resources into the home page, then you’re really wasting a huge opportunity to convert people once they land. So it’s not only converting, it’s also, like, wasting a lot of your marketing spend because all of those high intent leads will go to the pricing page.

And, like, you just maybe you spent one hundred and fifty per lead, maybe you spent two hundred per lead. So I would say that, yeah, loss, loss aversion can be a stronger motivating factor than positive benefits. And for a marketer, wasting money is, is is very scary because there’s not that many of it. There’s not that much of it, and there’s a a lot of pressure on marketers these days. There always is, but especially right now.

Yeah. So I I found a good content on how it it’s worth more. It’s more of an it’s a better ROI to focus on optimization versus customer acquisition, which most companies tend to focus more on. So I actually found some good content on that as well.

Yeah. That’s, like, the whole premise of forget the funnel. Like, stop forcing people into the top of your funnel.

Cool. Awesome. Okay. So then we get into your title for the section is the anatomy of a pricing page. But what you’re really the opening, the hook is the most ignored marketing asset in the customer journey.

So that I think that’s really important, to bring your your reader on board with that out of the gates. Like, just make a strong case for pricing pages.

Why are they so ignored, etcetera.

Can we just see the high level, all the one, two, three, four for the actual or wait.

Sure. Yeah.

My monitors are overlapping in a funny way, so I’m missing the part over here. So understand your audience, leverage pricing psychology, design for user success. Okay.

So chapter six or section six being, like, the main meat of the Mhmm.

Okay.

I think there’s too much. I think there’s too much going on. And the messaging strategy part kinda threw me.

I get pricing pages, pricing tiers.

Yeah. Or do you think that that that six point one six dot one and six dot two should be just one thing as section six?

I think when you say messaging, you’re gonna throw people off.

Okay. That’s all.

I think that’s another it’s a follow-up book. That’s an appendix or something else that you put in there if it really matters. But if I’m looking at a pricing page, I should be thinking yes of my headline and stuff like that and everything that goes under the pricing table. But in most cases, the biggest opportunity is in, one, change your h one from pricing to something like that.

How to label those, what people are doing wrong, the examples, the tear downs that you can do in this of, like, existing pricing pages and what they’re getting wrong versus right, I don’t think you need to get into your message because that’s gonna be like, wait. What’s a stage of awareness? What?

Cut it.

I would. I’d cut it. Only add it in if it needs it afterward, but to me, it feels like you don’t need any of the messaging stuff.

Okay. So none of the rule of one, none of the okay.

Stick to the Say it lightly, but I don’t introduce things that are gonna be, like, just focus entirely on the rule of one.

Just focus on pricing pages. That’s it.

Everything else, they can they can book a consult with you to learn more about other things. Like, how but what but what about after I’m done the pricing page, the tiers, Still not working. What do I do? Then they they talk to you and do a workshop. Yeah.

So when you say that about messaging, do you also mean, like like, the the messaging inside the tier as well don’t talk about it as much?

Oh, no. I mean, like, if it’s gonna sound like the thing about a pricing page that’s so nice is it’s so focused on on action, on things that people do on, like, quick looking at information, and then clicking a thing. But it’s not like like a home page where you’re like, oh my gosh. What do we lead with?

Like, what do we say in what order and accept, like, when do we ask them to click? A pricing page is like, this is where the button is. That’s where they click. We either have a button there or we don’t.

If we don’t, it’s strategic. And if we do, it’s standard. It’s like the button goes here. So that’s kind of where it’s like, just focus them on the user experience stuff on persuasion architecture, and then layer in the importance of, like, how your copy and message are on the page. But don’t I would I would not get deeply into words.

Copy principles. Yeah. Okay.

Okay. I wouldn’t. Because I don’t think that’s that interesting, honestly. Not when you’re coming, you’re trying to figure out what’s going on with my pricing page. It might Okay. Be part b your headline, but that’s probably not it on a pricing page.

Yeah.

Okay. So it it was a lot bigger than this. I had to cut a lot of things Yeah.

To get to this.

Gonna cut some more. Is it is But but I think it’s I mean and we’ve got people in the room who write books like this all the time. Jessica, Abby, both have strong backgrounds in this. Any other notes for admin?

Yeah. I I think chapter six, that’s the one I need to read through to see where you’re going with it to give you, I think, more specific advice. I don’t have a problem doing that, Adnan. If you would like that, I’d be happy to do that for you.

A little bit. Yeah. Just seeing kinda seeing top level is hard when I don’t I haven’t seen what you actually wrote.

I am I know that when you’re writing to that audience, like, because I used to work with that audience, you can’t they don’t you don’t write to them the way you would maybe a course creator. Right? Little less sexy kind of way. But I am kind of wondering if there’s a way to make it a little more enticing. Like, for example, one of the questions I had was when you titled chapter six craft your messaging strategy, do they if they were talking about all of those, the value prop and everything you have in that chapter, would they consider that messaging and messaging strategy? Is that what they call it?

That that’s something worth looking into that I should research. Yeah.

Yeah. Because, I mean, I don’t know. I just I’m and look. Limited here. I only worked with truly, like, one or two companies that were true SaaS and tech.

But, I just can’t see my engineer guys saying that, but they weren’t they were very traditional marketing, so maybe that’s why. But I would just look into that because for some reason, that was a red flag to me. Like, oh, I just want you to kinda say how to talk about, you know, how to talk on your pricing page, which is terrible. But you know what I mean?

I wanted a little more straightforward, but that might just be my personal.

But I was literally what I had literally what I had before, like, what to say in your pricing page. Yeah. And I’m like, that cannot be a title.

Like, that just I can.

I’ve look. I mean, it should be in alignment with what your ideal audience would say. Right? But for some reason, the the thing in my brain went off with messaging.

I was like, oh, that sounds very marketer speak. I’m I’m not I’m not sure. The guys I worked with wouldn’t have said that, but that’s just the guys I worked with. So yeah.

Anyway, something to research and just make sure because I do think for a lot of people, myself included, the word messaging is loaded. And and for me and I think for my and actually my old clients would have been very intimidated by that word, and I wouldn’t want a chapter where, that I started off with that. That’s my only thought when I saw your chapter six.

K. Thank you. That’s that’s very valuable insight.

Nice. Thanks, Jeff. Yeah. I think each chapter, just if you can zoom it in on one thing as much as possible.

And as you’re reading through, if ask yourself, like, could I write a book on this? And if the answer is yes, then it’s probably not zoomed in enough. I mean, I I’ve had to redo my entire outline for my book because I really like like, I had a chapter on sales pages, a chapter on webinars, and I’m like, this you can’t you can’t teach a sales page in a chapter. So completely pivoted.

Yeah. So just maybe being prepared to to do a lot of pivoting, and just zoom in as much as possible would be my advice.

Yeah. I mean, I think it’s worth noting that if you’re gonna talk about something, it needs to be at an when I was reading You’re a Badass at Making Money, I was a when I was reading You’re a Badass at Making Money. I was loving it. And then she got into really simple, like, basic stuff around list building and things. And I was like, oh, no.

Is this person basic? This whole time, have I been nodding along with someone who, like, doesn’t really know what she’s talking about?

So better for her not to mention that at all than to, like, just mention it in a way where you’re like, oh, no. Oh, it’s kinda crappy. So if you can’t dig into it, cut it. Unless somehow they need it.

Need it. Need it. Like, need it. Okay. Need it. Just gonna keep saying need it because that’s meaningful.

I really do think I look at six point one and six point two and I’m like, that’s the whole bunch. Like, there’s so much there.

Once you start adding in examples, what there’s jobs to be done in there. Like, there’s that’s like everything.

So just like Abby said.

Would you even mention jobs to be done other than just making a reference to it?

I mean, your audience probably knows about jobs whether they apply it or not. They know about it. So it’s like a good indication that, like, if I know about it, you know about it. We have something to talk about together. Right?

There’s like Yeah.

Like this in common, which can be good for likability.

But write the book, see if it works, if it if it feels, again, basic, then that’s what editing’s for.

Yeah.

Well, and then chapter these are, like, the last ones again. And now it probably feels like a lot.

Right.

Yeah.

Yeah. I I have for a second. I would be careful with the word messaging because in my mind, what I hear is more, like, fundamental product messaging. Like, how do we compare to our competitors? How do we pitch ourselves? What is our voice?

Like, a lot of those kind of things.

And those are the things that they probably would have figured out if they’re ready to optimize their pricing page. So it might be confusing for them because they’ll see it and they’ll, like, they’ll be like, wait. I think we already have messaging, or do we have to redo our messaging? That’s gonna take a long time. I’m gonna have to get lots of people on board, where if it’s just a pricing page, then they can move more quickly. They can optimize it with their own team without having to get lots of people in upper management and then give them a little time. So, like, it’s like in this title, you may just wanna pick a different, like, phrasing or copy or something that feels a little bit more small a little bit smaller and more specific in scope.

Okay.

Alright. You got notes to work with there, Adnan?

I do. I do. I do. The whole list of them. So, okay. Thank you so much.

Okay. Thank you. Thanks for sharing. Good job working on this. It’s amazing. Make it happen.

Yeah.

Worksheet

Week 8: The Radiating Thought Leader

Transcript

Alright, y’all. We are here on week eight of eight for the intensive.

So awesome that you’ve made it this far. So what we’re going to talk about here is basically the core of what I think every freelance copywriter and person who’s looking to make money today based on their expertise.

What they should be thinking about, and that is thought leadership, also known as authority, building your authority, becoming a thought leader.

But I like to think of it as this like radiating thought leader because the concept of a thought leader can feel kind of, hard to pin down. Like, what do you mean? Whereas, what I want you to think of is this sort of and this is tying back to the sunshine growth model, but I can’t help but attach the concept of light and brightness to thought leaders who people gravitate toward. People just like love.

And I don’t mean the whole world, but their tribe loves them. So I want you to think about yourself as a radiating thought leader where you radiate for one group that needs to see you. So they need they’re drawn to you, not not the whole world, but, like, a moth to a flame sort of idea. Who is who is your moth?

But you’re that’s just a silly idea. But you really are trying to, help the right people see you by sharing the right message. So a lot of times thought leadership, people go like, oh, you mean like Gary v. And maybe, but not really because Gary v is you know him just like you know Britney Brown.

Right? Those are big thought leaders, have built big brands around themselves for masses of people, and that could be where you wanna go. So that’s why I say maybe. But that can also be really intimidating.

It’s a big scary thing to, like, to look at, like, how do I become the next Brene Brown? Some people will hear that and go, got it. I know exactly how to become the next Brene Brown. I’m so glad you even mentioned this, Joe.

Let’s go with it, which is amazing. Cool.

But then there’s the other vast majority of the world, which would be like, oh my gosh. I don’t even wanna, like, present in a webinar, and you want me to start publishing books and getting on stages?

So let’s back up from there. And side note, apologies. I am recording this and sharing this while being, quite under the weather, which you may be hearing in my voice.

I really can’t hear myself talking right now. So I don’t know. But here’s what we’re gonna do. This is, of course, the final week of the intensive freelancing.

We can see here that we haven’t we haven’t got rid of all the clouds on the sunshine growth model, and that was never going to be the objective here. The objective is to remove a lot of them, to start seeing how your business could shine through and really grow if you just keep addressing the points that are on the sunshine growth model.

And of course, if you’re continuing on in copy school professional, that is exactly what we work on. So that’s something to consider as you’re moving through the intense freelancing to these final moments of it, and deciding is is next up for you gonna be copy school pro? Do you qualify for it? We had to talk with your coach about that.

That is where the rest of the clouds lift. Okay. So what are we working on this week when we become a radiating thought leader? This, of course, builds on previous weeks.

In fact, although this is kind of, like, critical and foundational, you can’t really do this without having done all the work we already did before. And so, normally, you have this end of week, like, checklist of things you’ve done. This is end of program now. End of program, how it all comes together.

So it’s a bit of a Mad Lib situation here where what you’ll do at the end of this training, and after talking with me and other people in our Thursday session is you’ll go back in and you will complete this, which is basically a plan on a page for how you’re going to run your business. You can hand this off to anybody, and they can then understand what your business is about and how you’re getting there and why this is the way you’re doing it. So this is what you will fill in later. What I want you to do for now is start working through the next pages of this worksheet, which again are all around thought leadership.

Now I’m just gonna I’m gonna do something a bit different. I’m gonna give you a quick walk through of the worksheets that we’re getting into today, and then I’ll go back through and teach them one by one. And I’m gonna try to discipline myself because I know I love getting into it and really talking about something, as soon as I see it, but I’m gonna try to be disciplined and first walk you through. Okay.

So let’s start with this.

So there’s this concept of the message and the messenger. Are you the right messenger for the message? And that’s the same thing that’s really going on here is the thought you have and the leader to deliver it. Are you the right person to deliver this message?

Are you the leader and what is the thought? So the thought is whatever that thing is that’s going to we’re gonna call this in copy school pro. We read, one of the books that that’s on the agenda that you have to read at some point. It’s called, I think it’s Find or Finding Your Red Thread.

It’s really just red thread is what we talk about. And that’s a good book for you to read as you’re starting to think about this stuff, but I also don’t want this I don’t want your desire I don’t want you held up by, like, oh, I have to go read that book first. You don’t. It’s just it’s it’s a good way, reading that book is a good way to start, like, thinking about this stuff more strategically.

But the intensive is not about slowing down and, like, really, you know, chewing over something for an excessively long period of time. That’s not it at all. It is, hey. Go do this thing right now.

Go do it. Go do it. Go do it because Joe said go do it. So just go do it.

So that’s what you’re doing here.

But understanding that, of course, at every stage, we’re being very thoughtful. You have, you know, like, a one hour training session a week and then lots of time to put in thought, which might not sound like a lot, but we are talking about standing up a small business and making it profitable really quickly. So you don’t actually, in my experience, need to spend day and night, night and day working on all of the little minutia. So what not that thought leadership is little minutia either, so don’t take that the wrong way.

Ah, I already started doing the thing I said I wasn’t gonna do. I’m already walking you through this. I don’t mean to. We’re gonna go back and talk about the thought leader.

Just know that my point here was, that we’re gonna move through this fast. You’re going to determine this, what you’re gonna be a thought leader in pretty quickly. And that’s okay. Take comfort in the fact that that’s what most people do when they’re actually successful at something.

Then you think about things differently a little later on, and you’re always in thinking mode because you’re a CEO. Okay. So we’re gonna talk about that, and then we’re gonna have this thought about what a thought leader really does. Then we will get into your personas.

Now in week one, you’d worked on your ICP. That’s like the business level, your ICP, your ICA, whatever it is that you might call it. It’s the business you are trying to attract. Inside that business are personas you’re trying to attract. We worked on those last week. If you fell behind, now is the time to work through them and all you’re really gonna do is take some of the thinking that you started to do on them last week and flesh it out here. So we’re gonna have that we have, like, three personas, but you might have more personas.

Then we’re gonna get into your thought leadership plan itself. So this will mean, what are my personas interested in? Where are they consuming their media? And thus, where should I hang out and make media? Then we’re gonna talk about the how behind becoming this radiating thought leader. How what are you actually gonna put out into the world? What are you going to say?

And this will be all about what you will do versus what you won’t do. Then we’re gonna just finish off with some final thoughts as you end the intensive freelancing. So I’m not gonna get into that right now. I’m gonna go back to let’s scroll along right to the beginning here. To the one that I was already trying to talk about when I shouldn’t have been trying to talk about it. Okay. The thought and the leader.

What is the message that you are going to be radiating everywhere you show up?

So that’s the thinking that we’re going to do today. So just know that we’re gonna come back to this page. And then this is the part we’re not really going to dig into, but that I want to leave you with. It’s a thing that has I would I I don’t wanna say consume me, but in my own business for the last five, six months, I’ve been shifting, and getting so excited about the shift. But shifting a bit to, honestly, something that feels a bit more organic and, like, natural for where I am in my life, in my professional life, my career right now.

And with that, I’ve been thinking about, so what am I saying and why am I the one to say that thing? And, of course, we’re always thinking that as copywriters. Right? Like, why are you the brand to say x? And I want you to think about that for yourself.

What do people need to believe is true about you in order for them to believe the message that you’re sharing? So whatever that thing is that you’re going to be a thought leader on. Let’s say you’re going to be the person where your specialization is SaaS emails. Okay.

You’re gonna be a thought leader on win back, I don’t know, win back emails for SaaS, for enterprise level SaaS. Let’s say okay. So this is this is where you’re specializing. Your thought leadership is in is is hidden in there, is buried in there.

Right? Like, what’s your unique point of view on this thing? You identify that your unique point of view is that every shit everything should include, the color colors in it. You’re you’re the color person for SaaS emails.

Why aren’t you tapping into color more? This is obviously all just made up. So why aren’t you tapping into color more?

And then from that point on, you might be like, okay. Well, why am I the person to deliver this message on enterprise SaaS emails that must include color?

So if color were important now this seems really obvious and hard to apply in other places, but just roll with it.

If color were important to my message, then chances are good I would wear certain colors, on, like, my clothing or my hair accessories or whatever else it might be. I don’t know. But, like, you’re you have to express why you are the brand. You are the person to share that message.

So just know we’re gonna go back to that. That’s what you want to, like, finish with as you’re about to get into this page. Okay? So now let’s dig into the core of the training.

It may be difficult if you haven’t ever considered yourself a thought leader before or if you’re really early in your thought leadership or if you are a thought leader but you haven’t really recognized that you are. You didn’t know that people looked at you this way. And now you’re starting to see that and go like, oh, I might be a thought leader, or I might be well on the path toward becoming a thought leader. What does that even mean? Which is a very good, humble question to ask.

A great way to look at thought leaders is that they are educators.

So you’re a teacher first. That doesn’t mean you have to teach how. It doesn’t mean you’re even teaching, but it does mean you are there to educate your market on something that you care deeply about, where you and that’s really I think it’s super important that people miss.

I know I’m telling you, hey. Just choose a specialization.

But I’m saying that because I’m a pragmatist, and I truly believe that if you say I’m gonna become the expert on writing copy for for snakes, for companies that that sell products to care for your pet snake. That’s gonna be my thing. If you were to choose that out of the clear blue sky, you could then become the person who cares deeply about that because you are curious. I’m always assuming that you lead with your curiosity because you’re a copywriter. And before you were a copywriter, you were either a writer of some kind or a storyteller of some kind that is most typically what drives people here. And salespeople are also storytellers, by the way. Psychologists are also storytellers.

People who understand worlds and how people make decisions in those worlds and how those people are really characters. So understanding all that, you’re already a curious person, which means you’re looking for things.

You’re digging into things because you care and in order to care. So you are an educator who steps up, says I’m gonna own this thing, and then owns it. And I mean, owns it. And if you have a hard time understanding what I mean by caring or by owning, if these feel like they’re too vague or, like, you want, like, examples. If it’s not really clear to you, then let’s talk. There are so many examples out there, but what I really wanna make sure we do is not just bog you down with, here’s how you can be like Blair Enns, or here’s how you can be like David c Baker or Bob Mesta or anybody.

I don’t that’s not I don’t want you to say I’m the April Dunford of my space. I want you to be the you of your space because you care deeply about the thing. Whether you just decided to do that thing or not, you can train yourself to care deeply about it. Okay? I know it feels like I’m spending a lot of time on this, but we are talking about you kicking off the part of your career that could last five, ten, twenty years where you are the person who owns x thing, who becomes a multimillionaire because they own that thing. And the way that you do it is by finding how you will care about what you have chosen, how you will care about it so deeply. And if I’m saying this and you’re going, like, I don’t think I can care about it that deeply, then now is the time to modify your specialization and in turn your standardized offer and your retainer offer and maybe even your audience to the point where it is something you can care about.

I truly believe that writers can care about basically anything.

Journalists learn to care about whatever the freaking subject is that they’re writing about. So we need you to care so much that you make every other leader out there care too. And I mean real leaders, and that’s gonna be more of when we’re talking about in copy school professional about going up market, staying up market, attracting people who are up market. We are gonna be talking about leaders.

That doesn’t mean that you will only ever talk to the CEO, but I mean people who identify as leaders. Those are the people who will get promoted. Those are the people who will advocate to bring you in no matter what the budget is because they are leaders. We will talk more about that, but just know that leaders attract leaders.

Leaders hang around with leaders. That’s the way naturally things tend to go, so that’s what we wanna work on. Okay? Okay.

So say it. Thought leaders are educators who step up and own something they care deeply about. They care so much, they make every other leader care too. Alright? Now what we’re gonna do is we’re gonna take all of this, like, wonderful feeling stuff and bring it back to the hands on pen on paper stuff, where you’ll go through all three of your personas and think about their media diets and really document their media diets. That is what they consume and where they consume it.

So each of the personas that you worked on last week, that’s in week seven. Again, if you didn’t work on those in week seven, now is the time to do that catch up work. You can do that. It won’t actually take that long.

These personas won’t be perfect, but they should be close to good. No business is working with a perfect persona. That is the goal of all of this big data out there, but it is impossible to get down to the perfect persona. If only because people are always changing, and every time you add in a new message or you say something different, the same thing you’ve been saying but saying it differently or you say it in a different space, suddenly the people around you, the people listening change a little bit.

So just know that they’re not going to be perfect.

Don’t let perfect get in the way. What you wanna do is have your persona in here. You already decided last week who the persona is. You describe them.

You identify if they’re on LinkedIn or Instagram or both. And what you wanna do here is really dig in to, everything that they’re, looking for online when it comes to their business. And it doesn’t have to be the business they own, it’s the business they work at or it’s the business they own. So what are the books they read on that subject?

What are the events they attend? What are the pod cast they listen to? What are the online spaces, that they frequent in order to consume media on things that will help them be better at their job? So I want you just to write down those books, those events, etcetera.

You can also use this, like, blank space. You don’t have to stop there, but I don’t think you need to say exactly what they’re searching for. That’s, like, keyword stuff. That’s voice of customer research stuff.

That’s not anything that you have to come up with right here and now. You already have from week seven, you have a message map for each persona. So don’t worry too much about that. You already did good foundational work there.

And as you go and research and learn more from your customers slash clients, as you do that, you’ll then flesh out more of that message map. So we’re really saying with the message map from week seven, Now you need to say, okay. If these are the messages that they need to hear and I know that this persona is on Instagram, and they like the one page marketing plan, I think that’s a book. Or they like whatever books they might like, you’re writing them down, you’re writing down the events they attend, then you can start making sense of what matters to them and where you need to communicate this message that that you have and where you’ll be that thought leader.

So that’s true for all three of the personas. And again, you might have two personas, you might have one, you might have four. This is work that you did last week. Okay?

So you’ll wanna fill that in for each of those and then that will help you get your own thought leadership plan together. So this is gonna be a really cool plan on a page as well, where you’ll have the events that you plan to speak at, and then how you’ll get their attention, the podcast you’ll speak on, and how you’ll get the podcast creator or organizer, scheduler, producer, whatever, their attention, books you’ll write, and how you’ll get your books in front of those people.

Okay. Now keep in mind that this is a plan.

Some things that seem easy will be hard. Some things that seem hard will be easy. You might find that, wow, ChatGPT really helps you outline that book you were planning on writing three years from now. You can outline the thing this summer and have a really good draft of it ready to go by December, which means you could self publish it in early twenty twenty five, and then you would need a promotion plan for it.

Okay. That’s kinda cool. So that would open up doors for getting on stages, getting on podcasts, having more to share on Instagram, having more of these, like, examples that can come out. Or you might be like, hey.

I think getting on podcasts will be super easy, and then you find that the only podcast you wanna get on is Lenny’s podcast, and it’s beyond difficult to get on there. So just know that, like, don’t choose things. Don’t put things on here based on how hard or easy you’ll think you think that they may be. Put the right things on here, and then it’s up to you and with us, of course, in training and as you move forward in Copy School Pro, it’s then then it’s the job to figure out how.

Okay. How am I gonna get that done? You are gonna CEO this by coming up with the vision. You are coming up with how you’re going to get your business out in front of people who will pay you ten thousand dollars upfront and then five thousand dollars a month thereafter, who will help you become the millionaire that you are putting in the work to be.

You’ll figure that part out. You honestly really will figure that part out. And when you think, oh, no. I have to do this by myself, You don’t remember you are in this program. And when you stick with copy school professional, you get to keep having other people help you through these things. Okay?

So keep that in mind. And then down below, I want you to choose one, not two, not three, not four. I know. I know. I know for a fact. Some of you are going to ask me in the Thursday call.

Joe, I know you said just to choose one, but I really think I should do two do two. Nope. One.

One. Do one and do it well. We are here to focus. The best advice I can give you is to focus. So do that.

Focus. Choose one. Now the one you choose, there’s many ways to go about choosing it.

A newsletter is great if you love writing, if you like writing regularly, if you have a unique point of view that you haven’t determined or are working on determining as part of your radiating thought leadership plan.

Do you have something to say every week? Do you have new research that you’re doing every week? That can be really fantastic for a newsletter. Same is true for Medium. It’s a question of whether you wanna build a list or just have, like, this audience on Medium.

Both will help you in lots of different ways, but choose one if you’re great at the writing side of content, of sharing your thoughts.

And let’s say you’re not. Let’s say you’re tired of that. Let’s say you write so much already for your job that you can’t imagine continuing to write after you’re not getting paid, quote, unquote, paid to write anymore. Now, naturally, you are getting paid to do all of this work. It’s just the pay isn’t directly tied to the work. It’s an outcome of doing the work, and you will see that paying off immediately and down the road now and forever. So just keep that in mind.

So that’s the writing part. Then there’s the other ones that you can choose from again. These are four options. You’re choosing one of the four, not one of each of the two sides. Then you you have to you you get to sorry. Choose to establish an event.

Honestly, this could be a really cool IRL event where if you’re like, I love being around people. I am a good networker.

I never knew this was true about me, but I really do. I love traveling. If I could say my job, my content creation job is that I go around, and I promote this on LinkedIn and Instagram, but I go around and I host meetups or copywriting sessions or business brainstorms in different locations every two months, and I get to travel the world and do this thing, or, hey, I was already gonna travel the world. I might as well make this my branded event, then that could be a cool thing for you to do where you could build a lot of thought leadership. It would be more work than anything else you could possibly do, but it could be really good work. And then I also have established a podcast. So if you’re great on video, on audio as well, then a podcast is good.

It will lead you down the path of saying, well, do I also need post my videos to YouTube? When I do the podcast, do I have to have, videos, or can I just do audio? You’ll have all sorts of questions about how you format the podcast.

There are many. I personally have avoided a podcast all my life. Don’t want it. But I get that other people do, and it’s what they like to do. I have seen far too many podcasts die.

Just die sad deaths where no one’s even at the funeral. I have seen that far too often. A lot of great content just poof, gone.

So you can. I’m not trying to talk you out of it, but I would say have passion for the podcast before you jump into it. Okay. So that’s gonna be your thought leadership plan.

This isn’t a content plan. This isn’t like, here’s my calendar for how I go forward in CopySchool Pro. We do talk about that. You can put that together or start to do that on your own as well, but just know that that’s on the other side of finishing the intensive.

So now now when it comes down to okay. I’ve got this message map. I’m starting to put together my thought leadership plan. I know what my persona is, where they’re hanging out, what they read, what they gravitate toward. I know that they read.

That’s like, this is all really good stuff to know.

What am I gonna tell them? What do I do next?

Here are some advice along with your message map. What I want you to keep in mind is that you are very likely as a copywriter to teach people how because you are often in an execution level role. And as such, we know how to do this hard thing. People love hearing the how. They adore it, but they will not hire you. They will buy your course to learn more from you, but they won’t hire you to do the work.

Now I have a big asterisk next to that because I have been hired repeatedly and sought out repeatedly after having taught the how. But what I can say is, I have many friends who do similar things. We all met on stages, backstage at speaker events, and there’s like a really great network that you’ll form as you do more of the speaking stuff, which hopefully will come up for you. What I can say is these wonderful people have got more work offers, bigger companies well, it depends depends, but more of the bigger companies, giant projects, giant workshops, easier money out of the same audience I was presenting in front of when they did not get into the how.

What you want to do is wake your audience up to the problem when you’re out there creating content. You wanna teach what you do, not how you do it. You wanna teach what you think, not not the how behind actually executing on that thought. Why you think that way?

Where you help? Hey, UX team, you should invite me into your project when you have these problems in this part of the customer journey.

That’s a when to hire you. That’s where you help. This is what you want to do. You don’t wanna say, hey, UX team.

Here is how to solve this problem at this part in the UX journey. Instead, you help them identify their problems, and then you give them insights into the fact that you do solve those problems, but you don’t get into how. This takes discipline. This is very hard.

I have a course business. I have a coaching business. I can get into the how when it comes to copywriting because it’s it’s actually very good for selling courses to people who want those skills. It’s, again, not great for selling to people who want to pay forty, fifty thousand dollars for a project or who have twenty thousand dollars ready to go a month to get somebody in to make a certain funnel perform better or whatever that might be.

Now, again, I might even sell more courses if I did not teach the how so much. So just keep that in mind. Okay?

Easy on the how. As in, if you’re like, well, give me a formula, Joe. For every nine what, who, when, where, why is you teach, then you can teach one how. And I want it to be so choice.

I want it to be the best how you’ve ever figured out, and it needs to be yours. What I don’t wanna see is anybody teaching things that I taught and, like, hey, Here’s how you optimize a pricing page. If you just take what you learn from someone else and put it out there, you’re not really doing the thought leaders. You’re not really you’re not at all doing the thought leadership work that you need to do.

Okay? So if you’re gonna teach the how, make sure it’s a unique how that you have discovered. Alright.

Now what I want you to do here on this page is write out what you will educate your ICP, which includes, of course, those personas on. And that again, use your message map here. This is all gonna be, like, what part of one giant binder, right, where you can look at it and go, like, here’s what I’m teaching.

Here’s why I’m doing it because these are the things that my persona cares about. Here’s where I’m teaching it because that’s where my persona ear is. Here’s the format in which I’ll teach it because that’s how my my audience consumes content.

That’s what you’re working on here. So if it feels repetitive, welcome to freaking business. Like, things need to be repeated repeatedly. It’s bananas.

So what you wanna do here is say, this is what I’m gonna educate my ICP on. This is where you should know what your specialization is, and you’ll be saying, like, okay. You know your specialization. You know your your message map for your personas.

You know where you’re gonna talk, etcetera, etcetera, based on all the work that you’ve done up until this page, up until this page. What you’ll do and what you will not teach them on. I will avoid teaching them on my favorite headline formulas. Instead, I will teach them on why why a headline is the most important thing, on what happens when a headline goes wrong, on when in my process I would think about writing a headline on how to build a swipe file.

That’s a how, but it’s for building a swipe file So that might be the one how out of, like, the nine things that are what, when, who, where, etcetera. This is your one how and that’s how to build a swipe file. Not how to write a headline.

Just keep I know that’s hard. I know that can be very tricky, or maybe it’s easy for you and it’s just hard for me. But this is where you wanna write that down. Okay?

That will then bring you to a place where you are ready to go back and say, okay. I understand where I’m gonna pitch myself, what I’m going to write, how’s what’s going to be about, why that’s important to my persona, why that’s the right thing for my persona, is it something I care about, what is the thought that I am sharing as a specialist with a unique point of view, which is again all work that we’ve been working on throughout the entirety of the intensive.

What is this message that you are going to radiate as you show up all over the place where your persona’s hanging out consuming information that helps them with their job, and sometimes just consuming information then as a side bonus, they get help with their job. And then why are you the person for that?

Why you? What do you maybe need to modify in your brand, in you and how you appear on camera, in you and how you talk?

Do you need to start developing parts or, like, an entirely new alter ego that’s you dialed up to be the right person to express this thought, believably.

Okay. That’s where you’ll finish, then you’ll finish the whole week out by going back to the first page and filling in the Mad Libs. Now what I want you to do here is figure out your priorities for the next sixty days. My hope is that you’ve come through this, and you’re finishing this week off.

You’re finishing the whole program off, and you’re ready to move on. You’re like, okay. I have got this part nailed. Or if not nailed, I’m at eighty five percent and the remaining fifteen percent I trust in myself and in Joe and the coaching team that we can figure this out together.

I’m good. But now I wanna start making some freaking sales on this stuff. I am ready to get out there, talk my butt off, attract the right audience to me, and start making money. With that in mind, let’s assume you’re moving on to Copy School Professional.

Let’s assume you qualify for it and that you yourself are ready to move forward for into it, which if you qualify, I would say you should. Just like as your coach, you should take the leap and do the thing that’s going to get you the results that you’re looking for rather than backing off, rather than stepping back and going, let me give it some thought by myself over here in this corner where nothing productive has ever really consistently happened.

Let’s stay here where you can be productive in the company of people who will make you feel uncomfortable with all of the challenges that they are putting upon you, but that you can get through with their help. By them, I mean us. That’s me. So here are the priorities for the next sixty days on your own or with your coach. If you haven’t had your call with your coach yet, or if you wanna have one more call and just say, like, hey.

Joe said I could have one more call with you before I go into CoffeeSchool Pro. This is what you will do. You will circle the areas on the sunshine growth model that need the most immediate attention.

Don’t include what you’ve already worked on. So I don’t wanna see any of this specialization stuff. You’ve worked your butt off on specialization. You’ve worked your butt off on the standardized offer.

What you might need to work your butt off now on is around pricing and sales, which is what this is. This is actually an old version of the, sunshine growth model. This is pricing and sales now. You might need to work a lot of marketing, biz dev, and pipeline.

You’ve only just started on thought leadership. You might need to do some work there. Mindset, people, advanced skills you use like list building, like posting to social media, knowing more about what to do there. Sell by chat.

I don’t want to see audience or niche. You’ve worked on that standardized offer. You’ve worked on that specialization. You’ve worked on that.

The other ones, though, yes to continuing to work your butt off on. Make notes here for what those things might be, and then I hope to see you, one, in our Thursday session to discuss this, and two, in copy school pro, assuming you are absolutely ready to move on with us. It’s been a delight.

I’m sorry I had to deliver this while sick, but I also could not not deliver this. I needed to deliver this. It is week eight. So here you are. Thank you so much. I can’t wait to hear from you about how this is going. I know that there are some things that are big changes.

That’s part of the job. You are CEO ing right now, and changes happen when you CEO.

So congratulations on promoting yourself to this cool new level. Now let’s go make you the money so that you can pay yourself like a CEO.

Resources

Week 8 Workbook

Resources

Week 8 Worksheet