The Copywriter Club Podcast

Back by popular demand, Tepsii is in the house for the 76th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. If you’ve been following along at home you know that she was our guest once before (on our 27th episode), but Kira and Rob wanted to follow up and see how her business has changed in the past year. Here’s what we talked about: • how she got started as a copywriter, business coach, and entrepreneur • how she makes money in her business today • why she started working with her husband in her business and what he’s doing • why she wouldn’t recommend that others follow her path and what she thinks you should do instead • the systems (and tools) she uses to keep her business running smoothly • why she uses a checklist to move her clients through all the processes in her business • what she does with her membership community (and the mistakes she made) • why you shouldn’t launch “cheap” products just because your clients ask for them • the impact that depression had on her personally and in her business • the first steps to take to build a compelling personal brand • why she thinks the future of copywriting is offline, not online • why she talks about money with the entrepreneurs she coaches Plus don’t miss the moment when Rob accidentally calls Tepsii out on her personal brand and how reframing her beliefs around “rights” helped her share her political beliefs with her clients in an authentic way. If you want to hear this one, you’ve got to click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.   The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Tepsii’s first TCC Podcast H&M’s tone-deaf ad DIY The Law Selena Soo Trello Streak CMS Born to Convert Ramit Sethi Jeff Bezos Fabiola Giodani Tepsii.com Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity   Full Transcript: Kira: What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That’s what Rob and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast. Rob: You’re invited to join the club for episode 76 as we talk for a second time with a copywriter who only needs one name—Tepsii, about what’s happened in her business over the past year; the importance of business systems; why she created a paid community for heart-centered entrepreneurs; and her no-brainer tips for creating a premium brand. Kira: Tepsii, welcome! Welcome back! Rob: Hey, Tepsii. Tepsii: Thank you so much for having me; I can’t believe it’s seventy-six episodes. Congratulations! I feel so honored to be number seventy-six! Kira: Laughs. Rob: Seventy-six and twenty-seven! You were one of the first people who dared to join us when we first started out to talking with copywriters, so we’re excited to hear what’s happened since we last talked. But I think we want to start maybe with just a brief introduction to your story, for those who maybe haven’t heard episode number twenty-seven yet. Tepsii: So my story—when I came here, we talked a lot about how I started my business largely by accident, and how for me, you know, starting this business, I knew I wanted to “freedom lifestyle”. I knew I wanted a sense of connection with, you know, people around me who were like-minded, and I didn’t know exactly what that was going to look like, so I had some stumbles and some hiccups on the way to starting this online business. I was able to start by really saying “yes” to someone who saw talent in me, that I did not see myself. So, they just has this sense, this feeling, that I could be a good writer, a good copywriter, and they took a chance on me and, based on that chance, I have grown a business that has sustained me and my family for the past almost three years in March. And, it’s kind of come full circle with so many different things and skills that I’ve been able to lean into, so, starting with the copywriting, I moved into business coaching when people started asking me, you know, “Why is your business successful and why are you known? Can you help me as well?” So I moved into the business coaching, and I did that exclusively for a while, and I realized I missed the copywriting. I had a copywriting course that I was launching and teaching it, but I wanted the hands-on piece, and my goal this year is to build an agency, and to center and highlight other copywriters. And my biggest interest is getting messages out into the from people of color, because we’re seeing all this hiccups from these companies, like H&M. You know, they allowed a tee shirt to go out that said, “The coolest monkey in the jungle”, or something like that, and with a black kid, which is really tone-deaf, and so totally insensitive, and racist too. And these things are happening time and time again; there was a Dove ad last year, and so to me, this says we need more people of color represented in these spaces, sharing these m

We’re sneaking in an episode between 75 and 76 this week, because copywriter Allison Comotto is speaking at the The Copywriter Club In Real Life event this week and we wanted to introduce her before she takes the stage. She’s given us a sneak preview of her presentation and let’s just say we’re really looking forward to it. In this interview, Rob and Kira ask her about: • how she got hired as an in-house copywriter right out of college • the rigorous interview process she went through • what the day-to-day work is like as a new copywriter at Stansberry • her advice about how to “get the gig” and what not to do • the importance of having a mentor as you start your copy career • the difference between the various Agora companies • the biggest surprise she’s had since starting her job at Stansberry • how she’s taken on new responsibilities over the past 8 months • what her copywriting process looks like • the place that formulas and frameworks play in the Stansberry writing process • the big lesson about failure that she learned early on • how she finds the “big ideas” for her copy • the size of the opportunity for copywriters at Agora • what compensation looks like at Stansberry (she shares the numbers) As we were wrapping up our interview, Allison “went off script” and told us what she really thinks about living and working in Baltimore. And she shared an assignment for any listeners who might want work for Stansberry Research. Ready for this one? Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.   The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Stansberry Copy Bootcamp Stansberry Research Mike Palmer End of America Patrick Bove Agora Joe Schriefer Agora’s Recruiter Email: [email protected] Allison’s LinkedIn Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity   Full Transcript: Rob: What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That’s what Kira and I do every week at The Copywriter Club podcast. Kira: You’re invited to join the club for a special unnumbered episode, as we talk with in-house copywriter Allison Comotto about how she ended up working as a copywriter, landing a job at Stansberry Research, what she does on a daily basis, and whether the Agora companies really are the mecca of copywriting. Kira: Welcome Allison. Rob: Hey Allison! Allison: Hey, thanks for having me! Kira: It’s great to have you, Allison. So, let’s start with your story, and how you ended up as a copywriter. Allison: I mean, I know that a lot of people say that they kind of fall into a career, especially in something like copywriting, but I mean, there is really no other way to describe the way I kind of fell; it’s a very short, steep hill in me becoming a copywriter. I was a senior at Hopkins last spring, and I was in the thick of the senior-year job hunt, and I was a writing major. So my whole focus was in poetry, and professional writing, which definitely had more of a corporate feel. So I was writing everything from marketing plans to persuasive papers, that kind of thing. And then I did a minor in marketing communication, because I really like the creativity of marketing, how it is constantly evolving…it was really nice foil to all the liberal arts classes I was taking along with them. And as for general work experience, obviously it was limited because I was still in college, but it was all mostly in PR and communications, so I was a PR intern at a local ad agency. That was a very traditional PR, like, cold-calling small-newspapers across the country and getting hung up on. That kind of thing. And then I was a global communications intern for UnderArmor, which was kind of a fancy description of someone who packed up and sent dozens of pairs of shoes to important magazines, and other media outlets all over the world. So I liked PR a lot, and I think it’s a great field for someone who loves people like they do. But when you’re in PR, the story kind of arrives on your lap fully baked, and all that’s left to do it put it out. And I had a much greater interest in crafting the story myself, and this route all four years of college, and, even at these sort of more pigeon-holed internships, I found myself kind of hustling my way into what I realize now are more copy-oriented projects. I wrote blogs for Hopkins submissions; I wrote website copy for Under Armor’s B-to-B websites; kind of of whisked myself onto all the creatives at the ad agency I was working at, so, really anything I could do to take more ownership of that, more appealing storytelling component of marketing PR, that was what I wanted to do. And then sort of out of the blue, thanks to some sort of algorithm, I got an email from Glassdoor about the Stansberry Copywriter Boot-camp. I would strongly encourage anybody to Google that job desc

Copywriter Brit McGinnis steps out of the club’s Facebook group to join Rob and Kira for the 75th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. (Don’t look now but we’re three quarters of the way to 100.) We cover a lot of ground in this wide ranging interview, including: • how Brit went from journalism to virtual assistant to social media and copywriter • what her business looks like today (typical clients, typical projects) • why you might want to work as a virtual assistant • what you need to know BEFORE you start working with a virtual assistant • her thoughts on starting and growing a great online community • how to get the most out of our Facebook group • the rules of Facebook etiquette that she wishes everyone knew • what copywriters should do to step up their social media game • why we should be thinking about Pinterest more than we probably do • what’s going on with Facebook ads (the ad glut) • how her business has changed since joining The Copywriter Accelerator • what copywriters who are struggling with boundaries could be doing differently • why she stepped into her role as “the horror copywriter” • her advice to copywriters who are thinking about their personal brands • what we need to know about the cannabis market We also asked Brit about the mistakes she’s seen copywriters make in their careers—stuff you definitely don’t want to be doing. We say this a lot, but it’s yet another good one. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.   The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: BlackBow Communications Madmen The Copywriter Accelerator Twitter Kat Wells Brene Brown League of Legends Night Mind The ABCs of Cannibis Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity   Full Transcript: Rob: What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That’s what Kira and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast. Kira: You’re invited to join the club for episode 75 as we chat with copywriter Brit McGuiness about leaving journalism and embracing the strange; what she does for her social media clients; how to not suck at Pinterest; and why she owns two Texas Chainsaw Massacre t-shirts! Kira: Welcome Brit! Rob: Hey Brit! Brit: Hello; good morning. Welcome. Kira: Great to have you here as one of our team members, and the “face” in the Facebook community: the community manager! So we’re really excited, about to learn more about your strange life and Texas Chainsaw Massacre t-shirts! To start, Brit, can you just share your story? How did you end up creating Black Bow Communications? Brit: Absolutely, and first let me say I’m sorry for saying ‘welcome’ just now; I’m very excited to be here, so that just stumbled out! Kira: (Laughs). It’s okay! Rob: We’re so glad to be here on your podcast too, Brit. Kira: (Laughs.) Rob: That’s kind of awesome. Brit: (Laughs.) Well, I love working with podcasts and it’s always fun to see and hear the millions of different intros. In fact—segue—I ended up listening to podcasts all throughout college, and I actually started wanting to work in public radio. So, I took up a great internship there in my college, all the while working in journalism, and just wanting to learn and absorb everything I could about different kinds of media. The first copywriting-based thing I really took on was when I lived in Ireland for a little while in junior year of college. I worked with a media company that managed the content and social media for the Irish government, of all places. And I had this underlying conflict of, “Wow, I love creating content; I love being a journalist, but, I was also the person who would stay up late and play with HootSuite in my dorm room, so, it was always a question of how do I reconcile all of these different interests. And, I really only thought of copywriting as something I could do honestly when I started watching Mad Men in senior year of college. That was about peak Mad Men. And I watched that, and I’m like, “Oh, that’s kind of the perfect marriage of art and content and crunching numbers”, and all that, but I still didn’t work in advertising up until about three years ago. I’d spend a lot of time floating as a virtual assistant, and just again, basically trying to learn, trying to find what I wanted to do, all the while just trying to learn different disciplines because I wanted to give things a chance. I wanted to learn all these different things. So once I made the leap to copywriting, which was right around the time I joined The Copywriting Accelerator, oddly enough, I was ready and I had all these different cross-discipline skills. So it’s great, and I’m really happy to be a copywriter now, but I’ve had a very, very windy path. Rob: What does your typical client look like today, Brit, and what’s the typical thing you’re do

Copywriter and founder of The Content Bistro, Prerna Malik joins Kira and Rob for the 74th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. And we cover quite a bit of ground as we talk about… • how she became a freelance content writer (thanks to a family illness) • how she has grown her business despite living thousands of miles from her best clients • why she’s only invests in training that delivers a real ROI • the activities she spent time on to get her first several clients • how she went from $21,000 in 2011 to $200,000+ this year • how she thinks about the packages she offers (and how she prices them) • how she splits duties with her business partner (and husband) • what copywriters should be doing differently with social media • how she schedules her week to get things done (the hacks and systems she uses) • what she’ll be doing differently in 2018 • the advice she would offer to a “just-starting-out” copywriter, and • where she thinks copywriting will go in the future Note: Because Prerna lives in India, we weren’t able to use our usual recording software, so the sound has a few hiccups… we’re really sorry about that. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.   The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Content Bistro Art of Simple Launch Grow Joy Fearless Launching Mogul Mom AWAIhttp://www.awaionline.com/copywriting/p/ Mass Persuasion Method Copyhackers books 4-Hour Work Week Fully Loaded Launch Miers Briggs 7 Entrepreneurial Lessons Learned in Our 7th Year of Business Biz Bistro Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity   Full Transcript: Kira: What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That’s what Rob and I do every week at The Copywriter Club podcast. Rob: You’re invited to join the club for episode 74 as we talk with content specialist and copywriter Prerna Malik about creating high-performing content for clients like Amy Porterfield and Katrina Springer; what we need to know about social media copy; what she did to earn $200,000 in a single year; and what’s it like to work with your spouse every single day. Kira: Welcome, Prerna. Rob: Welcome, Prerna! Prerna: Hi! Thanks so much for having me here! Kira: It’s great to have you on the show, and a great place to start is with your story, and how did you end up running Content Bistro with your husband? Prerna: So, I blog; like a regular “mom” blog, it’s called The Mom Writes. And I started it in November of 2008 because I was a new mom. My daughter was nine months old, and while I love being with her, I also wanted something that was creatively stimulating and, you know, I used to read a lot of blogs when—you know—between feeding her and, you know, being with her and all that. So it just kind of started to so make sense to my sleep-deprived brain to, you know, start one! That blog…it started growing, and it led to me getting noticed by small businesses who then started reaching out and saying, you know, “Would you write for us?” That then led to things like social media gigs because, at that time I was super-active on Twitter. Now, I’m not so active, but yeah. I was super-active on Twitter, and then clients starting asking, “Okay, would you manage our social media for us”, you know? Especially Twitter. So I took a couple of courses to be sure that I knew what I was doing, and I started doing very part-time social media management and blogging for small businesses. And things were going okay, and I was you know, having a lot of fun; I was being able to stay at home with my daughter, and I had some creative work. And this was very part-time thing for me because my husband, Mayank, his full-time job was what was supporting us financially. So it was good. But then, around January of 2010, Mayank got really, really sick. He was in a lot of pain, and the doctors just couldn’t reach a clear diagnosis. We were just going from one doctor to the other. We were told we had everything from arthritis to TNJ to gout; it was really crazy, and it finally reached a stage where he was in so much pain that he couldn’t go to work. So, there we were—laughs—no job, no real income, and you know, our savings were getting, you know, not super-fast because of his medical bills. And I couldn’t go back to full-time work. I used to be a communication skills trainer with Dell, and before that with American Express, but I couldn’t because my daughter was real young and Mayank was in no shape to look after her. So, we needed to do something and, we often now look back and say that, you know, 2010 was the worst year of our life, and also the best year, because while we did struggle a lot, we also decided to start a business! Because that was clearly the smart thing to do, I guess…laughs. But honestly we realized tha

Wellness copywriter and online branding strategist Blair Badenhop recently made her way to our studio for episode 73 of The Copywriter Club Podcast. We were excited to talk to Blair because we’ve had a ring-side seat as she’s launched her new podcast and built her soon-to-launch course. In this interview, we asked her: • how Blair went from ad sales to non-profits to health coaching to copywriting • whether writing in the health and wellness space is really different from writing for other niches • how she helps her clients get clear on their positioning and branding with her discovery process • why Blair takes three hours to get to know her clients BEFORE she starts to work • what she did to create a steady flow of clients from the very start of her business • how she got herself to the top of Google for her main key word • the difference between “getting clients” and “making friends” • her thoughts about what copywriters should do to stand out online • the place red lipstick plays in her personal brand • her experiments with Pinterest and Instagram to grow her list • how other copywriters can use Instagram more effectively • how she gets it all done—social media, client work, her own course, a podcast and more • why she launched a podcast and the effect it’s had on her business We also asked, as we often do, about where she sees copywriting going in the coming months and why more people will start investing in it. It’s another info-packed episode. Please keep your arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times… and have fun! Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.   The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Sponsor: TCCinNYC Dress for Success Harper’s Bazaar Parsley Health Nitika Chopra Wellness Copywriter Blair on Instagram Blair on Pinterest Your Wellness Brand (coming soon) Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity   Full Transcript: Rob: What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That’s what Kira and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast. Kira: You’re invited to join the club for episode 73 as we chat with freelance copywriter Blair Badenhop about her path into copywriting, writing for clients in the health and wellness niche, creating a podcast and a course to reach her audience, and developing a brand that stands out from other copywriters. Kira: Welcome, Blair! Rob: Hey Blair. Blair: Hey, thank you guys so much for having me! Kira: It’s great to have you here. So, Blair, let’s start with your story: how did you end up running your own business? Blair: Oh man. It has been such a crazy, winding road to this point. It’s kind of funny to look back on. So, the reason I started was kind of by accident. I wound up losing my last full-time job and I got a severance package that kind of tided me over for four months and so I was like, okay! What do I want to do with my life? And I’d been working in the marketing department over at the Institute for Integrative Nutrition for three years and before that I worked for a non-profit called Dress for Success managing partnerships, and before that, I worked in magazines, most well-known would be Harper’s Bazaar as a sales assistant, learning all about sales and marketing. So I had this kind of like, marketing background and I had a lot of knowledge to leverage but I was really interested in utilizing my health coaching certification because I had gotten it from the Institute for Integrative Nutrition a few years before, so I was kind of like, you know, torn between these two things that I loved, so I started consulting as a way to make money and then I started to build my health coaching practice. And you know, I had no clue where I was going with anything. I was also still interviewing for other full-time positions at other wellness companies. And I kind of had to surrender, like, and just allow things to unfold the way they would, so I wound up getting a part-time position at Parsley Health as a health coach, where I worked two days a week and on the side of that, I started growing this consulting business, which started as like kind of a branding, strategy, social media strategy and support and content development… and soon I just started to you know, get asked by fellow, you know, friends in the wellness industry to help them with content development specifically. And that was really what i loved to do and I should mention that I’ve been a writer, personally, my whole life! And I’ve used my writing talent in all of my jobs and specifically copywriting, I learned a lot about when I was the head of a marketing department at Dress- ah, Institute for Integrative Nutrition. So, anyway, I was just kind of playing around with it, and then copywriting became the area that I was getting the mos

Got legal questions? We do! So we invited attorney and online legal expert Danielle Liss to join us for the 72nd episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. We’ve had this episode penciled in on our list for a long time—partly because we know so many copywriters have big questions about legal issues (and often don’t have the cash to ask an attorney for help). Hopefully this podcast answers a few of those questions. We talked to Danielle about: • how she went from working in construction law to helping online entrepreneurs with legal needs • the legal documents all copywriters need to have in place (her checklist) • what you need to know about choosing a business entity (in the U.S.) • the critical reason you want to choose an entity besides sole proprietor • what you need to know about contracts and why you should ALWAYS use them • what every contract you sign MUST have • should you include your contract with your proposal or keep them separate? • what could happen if you work without a contract (the nightmare scenario) • what you should do contract-wise on a second or third project with a client (think MSA) • why you probably don’t need to worry about changes to your contract • the three things you need to include in your website terms and conditions We also talked about what you should expect to pay for legal help and Danielle gave us the lowdown on copyrights—yes, copyright, not copywrite ; ) . She also gives a bit of counsel about when you can use ™, ®, or a service mark, and how to handle conflicts and breaches of contracts. This episode is loaded with need-to-know information that will help you protect your copywriting business. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.   The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Sponsor: TCC IRL Dubsado FitFluencial LegalZoom USPTO website Hashtag-legal.com Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity Full Transcript: Kira:What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That’s what Rob and I do every week at The Copywriter Club podcast. Rob: You’re invited to join the Club for episode 72 as we chat with attorney, marketing expert, and co-founder of Hashtag Legal, Danielle Liss, about what copywriters need to know when it comes to the law, choosing the right business entity, documents we need to protect ourselves, and avoiding the common mistakes online business owners make again and again. Kira: Welcome, Danielle! Rob: Hey Danielle. Danielle: Thank you so much for having me, I’m really excited to be here. Kira: Yeah, we’re excited to have you, and, we—we just need this conversation desperately! Even as I’m listening to the intro, I’m like, I need to know all of this! So, I’m really looking forward to it. Rob: It’s funny that it’s taken this long to get here too… Kira: I know! Rob: …because when we first started the podcast, we made a list of everybody we wanted to talk to, and one of the line items was an attorney. We wanted to talk to an attorney, and yeah. Now we’re seventy-two episodes in… Kira: Right! Rob: So it’s about time. Danielle: Well I am very glad to be the one to talk with everybody. Kira: Yes, great. So why don’t we start with your story, and I’m really curious how you ended up working in influencer marketing and ultimately creating Hashtag Legal. Danielle: Absolutely. When I graduated from law school, I went into litigation. And I live in Las Vegas, and I did a lot of construction law. Let’s just say that’s not exactly how my brain works. So, it was never a great fit because I just didn’t have the passion that I needed to spend all day fighting about drywall. And… Kira: Laughs. Danielle: And there are people who do; I love them for it, but it was not me. So I also started a blog in law school, and, I always had this sort of duel-life; I have my internet life where I was blogging all the time, and I had my work life, which just seemed, you know—get the joy from the blogging because I can’t get the joy from the litigation career that I have. And it turned into a speaking opportunity, because a friend of mine came to me when sponsored content was really in its infancy and said, “Can you read this contract for me?” I said “Of course,” and I read it, and it was horrible. And I said, “Oh my gosh, please don’t sign this!” She was like “You know you, you could probably speak at conferences and tell people about this type of thing”, and I said, “Really? People care about that?” and she said “Yeah!” And so a speaking career was born, but it still didn’t kind of work with the kind of work that i was doing and I wasn’t sure how to build a practice out of it at that stage. So because of my blogging background and because of the fact that I was doing a lot of speaking on influencer marketing, I ended up leaving and j

Copywriter and hypnotist Jesse Gernigin joins The Copywriter Club Podcast to talk with Kira and Rob about his freelance business, creating an online summit, and how knowing how to hypnotize people helps him know how to attract customers and sell more products. In this interview, we talk about: • how Jesse went from magician to hypnotist to copywriter • what it takes to bee a hypnotist • the #1 thing he did that made him a successful hypnotist • what he sent potential clients when he was cold contacting • how often he succeeded (and failed) when he was cold emailing and how he increased his chances of success • how Jesse works with clients to get them what they need (not just what they want) • what he did on Upwork to succeed • acting as a strategist in addition to working as a copywriter • what it takes to assemble an online summit and what has surprised him the most from putting on a summit And while talking about his summit, Jesse let us in on the tools he used to get his summit online and we asked him about the two best speakers he included in his summit. Finally Jesse told us what he thinks will happen to copywriting in the future. To get this one… click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.   The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Sponsor: The Copywriter Club In Real Life Geoff Ronning The Ultimate Sales Letter by Dan Kennedy Vander Meide Ramit Sethi Chase Jarvis Paige Poutiainen Danny Marguiles Joanna Wiebe Thrive Architect Rainmaker WordPress ConvertKit Teachable Vimeo Natalie McGuire Lianna Patch Hillary Weiss Entrepreneur on Fire Live Gold Rich Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity   Full Transcript: Rob: What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That’s what Kira and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast. Kira: You’re invited to join the club for episode 71 as we chat with copywriter, marketing consultant, and hypnotist Jesse Gernigin about trading his magic act for high paying copywriting gigs, how he finds and lands freelance clients, what goes on behind the scenes of an online summit, and how hypnotism helps him become a better copywriter! Kira: Welcome, Jesse! Jesse: Thank you guys so much for having me! It’s great to be here. Rob: It’s great to have you. Jesse: Yeah, it’s cool to talk with you guys on this end after having you both on my summit, so this is great! Kira: Yeah! So we’re going to talk about your summit in a bit; you’re a first hypnotist on the show! Jesse: Okay! Yeah. Rob: Yeah, we’re waiting for you to say something like “look into my eyes”—follow the watch… Kira: (laughs) Jesse: (laughs) Kira: I’m actually a little nervous now! I feel like you might hypnotize us and make us say something ridiculous. I don’t know. Jesse: No, no, no. (laughs) Kira: All right, Jesse, a good place to start is just with your story. You know, who are you? How did you get into copywriting? Especially with the magic background? Tell us a little more about your story. Jesse: Oh, this is funny. So we’re going to go back to the days of copywriting books—Dan Kennedy’s, I think 1993 book—The Ultimate Sales Letter. So, I graduated college in 2007, so I came out right at the heart of the recession, and nobody was hiring for anything I had a degree in. And I’d been a magician and a hypnotist, and I’d work, you know, shows and make five or six thousand dollars a year just doing it on the side. And my buddy told me, you should just do this full time until a job opens up! So I went out, found an agent, and I was a really great performer. I don’t like to toot my own horn, because I wasn’t necessarily more talented than anybody else, but I have a great personality, which is big as a freelancer, big as an entertainer. It makes up for a lot of shortcomings. So I got on with a couple agents and my whole process exploded! And I was making an extra fifteen thousand dollars or so a year, and since I had scholarships for college I didn’t have any debt. I didn’t live very well; I was getting by on maybe twenty two, twenty five thousand dollars a year, but because I had little debt, and I spent most of my time traveling for shows, I lived pretty well. I realized I wanted to grow my business and there was this big opportunity to become a successful entertainer because the market was just not served by quality entertainers. So I decided to market myself. I had a really great mentor—his name was Geoff Ronning, and he was this amazing stage hypnotist marketer. Which was funny, because he actually left the business too and he runs an online group, I think called Stealth Seminar? But at the time, Jeff was really big on direct response copywriting. And he mentored me to study Dan Kennedy. He told me, “Look. Right now, everyone is moving everything onl

Agora Financial Copy Chief (and copywriter) Joe Schriefer is our guest for the 70th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. Kira and Rob ask him all about what it’s like to work for Agora, how he landed his job there, how Agora’s writers are paid and a lot more. Specifically we cover: • how he “lucked” into a job he didn’t want with Agora • the best advice anyone ever gave him at Agora (and why he became a copywriter) • his process for finding ideas for promotions • how he knows when an idea is “big enough” to go with • how much time he spends researching versus writing • why he doesn’t ask his customers for ideas for his copy • his 7 step-by-step system for creating a brilliant sales letter • the most important question a copywriter should ask (but they never do) • how Agora Financial compensates their copywriters (they can make millions) • the three things he looks for when he hires a writer to work for Agora • how often Agora’s best copywriters write a successful package—it’s less than 50% • what his team does when a promotion underperforms • how quickly Agora is growing and why Joe needs more copywriters There’s a lot of solid advice in this one. Do. Not. Miss. It. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.   The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Sponsor: The Copywriter Club IRL Agora Financial Name Bank Bill Bonner Addison Wiggin Byron King Wayne Gretzky Block Chain Win Bigly by Scott Adams Top Gun Joe’s email: [email protected] Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity   Full Transcript: Rob: Hey everybody. Before we get into today’s podcast, we just want to tell you about our event that’s being held in New York City on February 15th and 16th, and we want to make sure that you have the opportunity to join us for this awesome, fun party. Kira, let’s talk a little bit about what’s going on at TCC In Real Life. Kira: So, we’re basically taking the podcast, and a lot of people that we interviewed on the podcast, and then we’re putting them all in a room—seventy-five people—and an amazing of line-up of top copywriters like Kim Krause Schwalm, Joanna Wiebe, Ry Schwartz, Laura Belgray, Brian Kurtz, Kevin Rogers, I can go on and on and on. You can find their names and the list of speakers on the event page, which Rob will give you. But I’ve never been in a room with all of these copywriters, online marketers before. And, beyond that, we’re covering these three pillars of copywriters: what it really takes from going from a copywriter who takes orders from clients, to going to a really great consultant who knows how to run a business. So the topics are diverse, but they’re covering basically the three pillars: the offer, the list, and the marketing strategy. Rob: Yeah, this is a copywriting conference, but it’s not the typical stuff that you read about copywriting, you know: “ten new ideas for headlines that pull”, those kinds of things. The people who are speaking have incredible information to share so, Kim Krause Schwalm, for instance is going to be talking about the way that she’s beat the controls that she’s run for companies like Agora and Boardroom; real-life lessons that going to be immediately applicable to the type of writing that we all do everyday. And Jason Henderson, who’s an expert at marketing acquisition and email, the topic of his speech is, three email copywriting secrets I discovered helping porn stars get tan in 1994. Like, you’re not going to find that kind of stuff anywhere else at any marketing conference, but the takeaways are real, it’s the stuff that we can use in our businesses everyday. And really, for me, it’s a huge part of why I’m excited to be there. Kira: And beyond the content, right—like new content our presenters are bringing in, new presentations they’ve never shared before—beyond that piece, there is a whole networking aspect. We’ve built this community; we’ve all helped build this community. And now we get to actually get to hang out in real life. And so, we’re really focused on the social aspect just as we’re focused on the content, and that’s why we’re really excited about a two-hour cocktail party on Friday night… Rob: Party!! Kira: …it’s so funny—it’s the final day, and the Agora companies are sponsoring this rooftop party. Again, open bar, for two hours. So, it’s a great way to really just meet new people in New York city with a fantastic view of Manhattan. So really the emphasis here is meeting your fellow copywriters and building some real friendships and hopefully creating some opportunities too for your business. Rob: And it’s not just the rooftop party; the first night, we’re putting together dinners where people can go to dinner together in, sort of, small groups, and chat and get to know each other. We have a killer “schwag bag” full of books and other things that our presenters have offered to share. The value or the schwag bag alon

Copywriter, marketing strategist, and CMO-for-Hire, Myrna Begnel joins us for our second episode of the week (our 69th overall) to talk about her copywriting business and how she became known as “the client whisperer” among the members of The Copywriter Think Tank. In this episode we cover: • how Myrna went from selling elevators to agency strategist to writing copy • what she learned from her career in sales that applies to copywriting • how you create a relationship with a client so your projects succeed • how to recreate the “sales conversation” on your sales page • the questions she asks to understand her client’s customer needs • what a discovery call with her looks like • how her processes help her repeat and scale her business • the “grandma’s house” approach to setting boundaries with clients • how to get started with processes, then how to improve them • the lessons she has taken from working with agencies inside and out • what it’s like to completely start over in business • why it’s important to focus on mindset and not just skillset We also asked Myrna about what her projects look like as a “CMO for hire” and how she packages her services, and charges a high price for them. Say this next line in your best stadium music voice: “Are you ready for this?” Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.   The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Sponsor: The Copywriter Club IRL Doberman Dan Amy Porterfield Artessa Marketing Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity   Full Transcript: Rob: What if you could hang out with seriously copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits, then steal an idea to inspire your own work? That’s what Kira and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast. Kira: You’re invited to join the club for episode 69 as we chat with copywriter and marketing consultant Myrna Begnel managing clients so they want to keep working with you, what we can learn from the agency world, how she has structured her business and her time to get more done, and what it’s like to start over after building a business with others. Kira: Welcome, Myrna! Rob: Hey, Myrna! Myrna: Hey, guys! Thanks for having me! Kira: Or should we call you Kitty? Myrna: Kitty! Yes. You can always call me Kitty. Rob: I’m not sure why I can’t get over that. It’s like, to me, you’re Myrna, and to Kira, you’re Kitty! I guess we’re just going to have to live with that. Kira: You know what, though? It fell apart, so Myrna joined our think-tank and I was trying to stick with Kitty and now you have become Myrna and I can’t go back to Kitty, so… I’m sticking with Myrna. Myrna: I know. You know, my high school friends all call me Myrna B. My maiden name was actually Beals, but… as if there are other Myrna’s, you know… Myrna A, Myrna Z… Rob: (laughs) Yeah, we have to make sure we don’t get you confused with Myrna D and Myrna J. Myrna: Yeah, exactly. When you have a unique name like mine, you know, you kind of got to overcome it. Rob: I love it. Kira: So, Myrna, let’s start with your story! How did you end up here, and I’m pointing at the spot where you’re sitting right now. Myrna: (laughs) Well, it’s kind of a convoluted story because I come into copywriting, a lot of the people that I know, they’ve always known they wanted to be a copywriter, they’ve had a very direct path into owning their own business and being a copywriter, and I think I come from a very convoluted path just based on my history. Probably my third career. So I started off selling elevators and escalators right out of college and I did that for 6 years. I was the first female sales manager in the company’s 150-year history. One of the things that—you know, I’m starting to date myself—we didn’t have digital back then. There was a very different way to sell and communicate. We had an internet to do email, but we didn’t have Word programs. We actually dictated sales and letters and proposals. So, it was back in the days of three-piece suits and you go to construction site in a business suit; skirts every day. And so, from that world though, one of the things about it is that you always were writing, you were always thinking, you were always communicating and there wasn’t this digital world to distract you from everything. There was always that writing in my background. I quit that and actually became a stay at home mom for a couple of years, which is a totally different switch. And I got really bored with that so I was always looking for, what was I going to do next? I went back to school and I got a Masters [degree] in writing. This is probably in my 30s. And totally shifted and started my own business and started a small freelance writing compan

Copywriter and calligrapher Ashlyn Carter joins Kira and Rob for the In 68th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast and wow, does she deliver. In just a couple of years, she’s built a six-figure business that is growing like crazy. In this interview, she shares: • how she went from agency consultant to PR publicist to freelance writer • what she learned from working with companies like Delta Airlines and Chick-Fil-A • the difference between working with corporate brands and personal brands • her struggle to do everything right, the repercussions, and how it led to the work she does today • the process she used to break away from the negative behaviors that tied her down • what happened when she chose a niche and had to fire some of her clients • how she had to adapt new processes as a business owner (as opposed to being a freelancer) • when she knew it was time to create a digital product • the questions she asks to keep her team focused on getting things done • how she organizes her time to get more done • her onboarding “magazine” that sets boundaries and outlines processes And as we often do, we also asked about a couple of her non-copywriting hobbies. She sold us why she does calligraphy in addition to working as a copywriter, and the lessons she learned from dancing that have made her a better copywriter. To hear Ashlyn tell it, click the play button below. Or scroll down to read the transcript.   The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Toggl PowerSheets Strengths Finder Rest by Alex Pang Jenna Kutcher James Wedmore Todd Herman’s 90 Day Year HoneyBook Amy Porterfield Anne Lamott Chuck Close Malcolm Gladwell AshlynWrites.com Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity   Full Transcript: The Copywriter Club Podcast is sponsored by Airstory, the writing platform for professional writers who want to get more done in half the time. Learn more at Airstory.co/club. Kira: What if you could hang out with seriously copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits, then steal an idea to inspire your own work? That’s what Rob and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast. Rob: You’re invited to join us episode 68 as we chat with copywriter Ashlyn Carter about what she learned managing crisis communications for brands like Delta and Chick-Fil-A, how choosing a niche has affected her business, the process she used to break her own negative behaviors, and how dancing has made her a better copywriter. Rob: Ashlyn, welcome! Ashlyn: Thank you so much! So excited to get to talk to y’all today. Rob: We’re excited to have you! Kira: I know, I know! All right, so, Ashlyn, I think a good place to start is with your story, of course, and how you ended up getting into copywriting! Ashlyn: Yes, so it turns out that if you chronologically file magazines under your bed growing up, you’re a shoe-in for a journalism major, so I went into college, like, no doubt what I wanted to be. I wanted to work in magazines. I wanted to do editorial stuff. So I was a print major in the journalism school in 2009, which, I’m sure all of us who work in this industry—that was a tough year for publications. So I promptly went back from my senior year, switched to the publications track, and knew that that’s what I wanted to do. Right out of college, I worked as a traveling consultant for a women’s organization. I worked the ultimate dream of working in—I grew up in Alabama so the big city of Atlanta is where I wanted to be—I wanted to work an agency life in Atlanta, so I did that! And was in agency for about four years all together and worked as a publicist as well for a chef and his slew of restaurants and then I moved on to working on my own! There are a lot of ups and downs and valleys but that, in a nutshell, is what happened. Rob: So I’m curious about your agency experience. The kind of clients that you were working on, the kinds of projects you did there… was it PR focused? Was it copy focused? Tell us a little bit more about that. Ashlyn: Yeah, that’s a great question. So, I look back on agency life and I loved it so much. It’s like an incubator of sorts and it teaches you so much. You know, I wasn’t there that long all together, but it was a full service firm, so we did everything in-house, from public relations and pitching to more marketing-driven campaigns to experiential events for our clients and also, being in Atlanta, I was primarily on the Delta Airlines account, Chick-Fil-A, those kind of brands—Coca Cola in-house. So those were what we were working on. And I did a lot of customer communication for Delta Airlines, so crisis communication there is really fun because you’re planning for things like, what if an airplane crashes? What are we going to do? What’s our game-plan? But also, high-value customer events, which was really fun planning those—I really enjoyed it. But m

For the 67th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, Kira and Rob sit down with copywriter and content specialist, Emma Siemasko to talk about her business, working with clients, and the advice she would give to someone just starting out as a copywriter. During our conversation we covered: • how a trip to South Korea launched her freelance writing career • Emma’s and Rob’s favorite poets—yeah, this one is a little different • what she learned working at a bad content marketing agency • the things she learned from starting her own business • what she did in those first few moments as a freelancer • how she landed her first few clients after going out on her own • her advice to copywriters who are just starting out • the mistakes she made in her first year that cost her a lot of time and energy • the boundaries she has set up to keep her client relationships working well • how her clients have reacted to the boundaries she set This isn’t the first time we’ve talked with Emma about boundaries—she’s really got this down. We also talked about how she packages case studies and sells them to her clients and the opportunities she sees in the future for copywriters. To hear this one, just click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.   The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Mary Oliver Sharron Olds Mira Gonzalas Billy Collins Another Reason I Don’t Keep a Gun in the House On Turning Ten OKCupid Frog2Prince.net Grasshopper Joanna Wiebe Maggie Patterson Roy Furr Stories by Emma The Worst Company I Ever Worked For Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity   Full Transcript: Rob: What if you could hang out with seriously copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits, then steal an idea to inspire your own work? That’s what Kira and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast. Kira: You’re invited to join us episode 67 as we chat with freelance copywriter and content creator Emma Siemasko about her decision to go out on her own, working with clients and setting clear boundaries, writing in the tech space and what she’ll be doing differently in the new year. Kira: Welcome, Emma! Rob: Hey Emma! Emma: Hi Rob and Kira, thanks for having me! Rob: We are thrilled to have you. Kira: (laughs) All right, Emma, a great place to start is, of course, with your story. So, how did you end up as a content writer and then business owner? Emma: Sure! So I have been writing in some capacity basically since I could read, so when I was in first grade, I was writing. Like, I wrote a story about how my grandmother died, which I got a lot of attention on because most six year olds weren’t writing about that… so I was doing some pretty heavy stuff as a little kid… but I went on to study creative writing in college where I specialized in poetry, and after I graduated I actually went and taught English in South Korea for one year. And the funny thing about that was, I was hired to teach, which I did a lot of, but the school where I worked also published their own English language textbooks and I quickly began doing most of the writing and virtually all of the editing for the textbooks because my boss recognized like, whoa, she’s like the best writer that we have, not to be totally braggy, but, so I actually kind of got my first taste of professional writing in South Korea, funnily enough. And when I came back, I worked for a content marketing agency for a little while. I started my own online dating consultancy and then I worked for about three years at a software as a service company and that’s how I got introduced to the tech space. And the company was acquired and I was like, I don’t really want to work for anybody else—I’d been hiring a lot of freelancers when I worked in-house, so I was like, I know that I can do this, so I made the decision to leave and that was you know, two and a half years ago, and so, here I am! Rob: Okay. We haven’t talked about poetry with anybody on the podcast. Kira: No! Rob: And so… I’m going to jump on this and say, what’s your favorite poem or who’s your favorite poet and what kind of poetry did you write? Emma: I feel, when I look back, what I wrote was like, super angsty, college-girl kind of stuff, not to pigeon hole myself too much, but like, I would be like, writing about like, I don’t know—sex on the beach or something ridiculous or like bragging about getting drunk and high in college… I shouldn’t diminish my work THAT much, but I feel like… Kira: Okay, now I want to read your work. Rob: Yeah, this is a little crazy. Emma: I also wrote a lot about—my poetry focused a lot on relationship when I was in college. I was like, trying to figure out how to have romantic relationships but I was also like super reflective on my relationships with my family and my friends so there was a lot of poetry about that as well. And

Copy Chief (and copywriter) Henry Bingaman is in the studio for the 66th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. And he showed up with plenty to share—including his formula for writing great sales copy. Kira and Rob took the opportunity to ask Henry about: • his path from fiction writer and flight attendant to copywriter and copy chief • not wanting to write for clients and creating his own product (and the lessons he learned) • how he landed his first client (and learned to write his first proposal) • the critical copywriting skill he learned as a flight attendant • what he does to connect with people at conferences • when you should feel like you’ve “made it” (hint: you’re probably not there yet) • what he teaches the copywriters he works with (and his role as copy chief) • how he writes leads that catch attention and shift a customer’s paradigm • the various copy blocks he includes in his sales pages • what he learned from breaking down Jedd Canty’s sales pages • what it takes to create a winning control • the collaboration process he goes through on every sales promotion • what separates the great copywriters from the good • learning from failure (and some of his biggest failures) Plus we talked about where Henry thinks copywriting is going in the future (it doesn’t look good for some freelancers), how his Cross Fit habit is related to copywriting, and what he is doing to improve his own writing. You won’t want to miss this one. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.   The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: AWAI Six Figure Copywriter Creative Writer’s Desk Wealthy Web Writer Rebecca Matter John Carlton Marcella Allison Boardroom Agora Parris Lampropolous David Deutch Mark Stockman Metabolic Living Jake Hoffberg Copy Chief Jedd Canty Clayton Makepeace Metabolic Renewal Scrivener Money Map Press Brian Kurtz Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity Full Transcript: Kira: What if you could hang out with seriously copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits, then steal an idea to inspire your own work? That’s what Rob and I do every week at the Copywriter Club Podcast. Rob: You’re invited to join the club for episode 66 as we chat with creative director and copy chief Henry Bingaman on working and writing in direct response, how much effort it takes to get a winning control, persuasion architecture, and applying systems thinking to the feedback process and how Crossfit makes him a better writer. Kira: Welcome, Henry! Henry: Hey! Nice to be here. Rob: Hey, we’re glad to have you. Kira: Yeah, so Henry, a great place to start is with your path. I know you have a squiggly path, so where did you start? And where are you today? Henry: My kind of life path is just following the next interesting thing in front of me. (laughs) So, when I graduated in 2007 with a degree in fiction writing, which isn’t really a good degree for a job (laughs)… When I graduated, I went online and there was a job opening for flight attendants at United Airline. So I applied and started flying professionally for about a year. I was an international flight attendant, which was a lot of fun but it paid about $20,000 a year, and I was working up in First Class serving people that paid $20,000 for their seat, so I was a little jealous maybe? (laughs) But I had this writing ability. I’d been writing since I was early high school, just stories and whatnot. My dad actually owned a supplement company when I was growing up. He’d bought the AWAI six figure program at one point and he just gave it to me, he never really did anything with it, so he gave it to me and said, “Here, here’s a way you might be able to make money.” So that’s how I kind of discovered copywriting, and then I started writing on the side while I was flying and figured out I could make more money writing, staying at home and writing emails for people than I could flying. So I pretty much quit my job and started copywriting. Rob: So what were some of those first assignments that you took on, on the side, and how did you get them? Henry: Well, it was interesting… the first thing I did, I actually didn’t want to write for clients at first, I created my own product. The whole big thing back then was create an e-book and sell it on ClickBank or wherever. Kira: Right. Henry: So I created a little e-book about flying; I think it was called the Insider’s Guide to Stress-free Flying, and tried to sell it. I found out a lot, doing that. Mostly that you should really test if there’s a market for your product before you make a product and sales letter for it… (laughs) Kira: (laughs) Henry: Because there wasn’t a market for it. Well, I did all that work and it never really sold. But that was really the first thing I did and then I started a creative writer’s desk, so I think it’s still online; it was Sit

In this jam-packed 65th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, Kira and Rob talk with author and ghostwriter Laura Hanly about book writing and publishing. We met Laura a few months ago and after grilling her over breakfast, knew she’d be a great addition to the show. In this discussion we cover: • how she became a book writer and publishing consultant • what you need to think about before you write your book • Laura’s thoughts on who exactly needs to have a book—if you are in a commodified service business, the answer is “yes” • who needs to be on your book writing team and who should be your early readers • what a realistic timeline for writing a book looks like • price ranges and what she does to charge $40,000 per book project • what you need to do to promote your book • common mistakes writers make when they write their book • the differences between self publishing and traditional publishing • how to publish with Amazon Create Space and KDP • the design options to consider when you’re ready to publish your book • how to find clients as a ghost writer of books • whether you should get a byline with the books you ghost write • the mistakes she sees over and over on book projects We also asked about the rates she charged when she first started out (they were way too low), the mistakes businesses make when they “do” content marketing, who is doing content well today, and what to keep in mind when promoting your content. Ready for this? Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.   The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Telling Your Brand Story (Rob’s book) The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck (Mark Manson’s rudely titled book) The Martian (Andy Weir’s book) Gary V Ramit Sethi Digital Marketer CreateSpace 99designs Laurahanly.com Content that Converts Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity Full Transcript: Kira: What if you could hang out with seriously copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits, then steal an idea to inspire your own work? That’s what Rob and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast. Rob: You’re invited to join the club for episode 65 as we chat with author and book consultant Laura Hanly about the process of writing a good book, how to choose between self-publishing and a formal publisher, what it takes to write a bestseller, and the tactics, strategies, and systems for promoting your content. Kira: Welcome, Laura! Rob: Welcome! Laura: Thank you so much! Very exciting to chat with you guys. Rob: I want to jump in and just say that we met at a mastermind event, and you and I, I think, had the opportunity to sit down at breakfast and for about 45 minutes or so, you sort of walked me through a lot of the process of writing a book and as we were chatting, it was one of those things where like, “Laura, we got to have you on the podcast!” Because there are a lot of people who listen to us that need to know the things that you know! So we are really excited to have you here. Laura: Yeah, I think it’s a big opportunity for a lot of people at the moment so I’m excited to talk about it. Rob: Cool! Well, why don’t we start with your story? Where did you come from; how did you start doing what you’re doing? Laura: So, I grew up in Sydney in Australia. I studied writing and publishing at university and worked at a big publishing house there in Australia for a few years. And I think about 2011, the industry really started downsizing and they weren’t kind of learning the lessons that we had all seen go down in the music industry in terms of, you know, adapting to the new technologies that were becoming available, and I thought, mmmm, I really need to get myself organized and become a bit more independent. So I moved online, sort of started learning copywriting and internet marketing and direct response and all that kind of thing, which was great for a couple of years, and basically started offering content marketing services to ecommerce companies and B2B consultants. And one day, somebody asked if I would be willing to try and write a book with him. Having come out of the publishing industry, I thought, you know, I’ve got a fairly good handle on that process, so we’ll give it a go, and over the last couple of years, that’s become the main thing that I’m doing so at this point, I advise on content strategy for some people, but my main thing is helping people write books about their businesses. Kira: So let’s talk about what that actually looks like when you work with a client. Because to me, it sounds so daunting and huge! Where do you start with your client when they’ve hired you to write a book with them? Laura: So a lot of people really feel overwhelmed by this process of writing a book and I completely understand that because it is a big undertaking, especially if you’re still running a business day to day, or you know, if

For the 64th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, Kira and Rob bring copywriter Paige Poutiainen into the studio to talk about how she’s grown her business from Upwork to online funnel specialist. It’s a great conversation in which, Paige talks about: • becoming a copywriter because she doesn’t speak Finnish well • how she has succeeded working with clients found on Upwork • why she shifted from content to conversion copy to funnel strategist • what she’s doing to avoid funnel fatigue for her clients • why creating a funnel is a bit like dating • her basic process for creating a funnel for her clients • what she does to make sure her funnels are set up to succeed from the beginning • what had made the biggest difference in her business this year • why she is using video more and more in her business And as we often do, we asked Paige what she thinks other copywriters are missing out on (her answer covers stuff like owning a niche). Plus we asked what she’s learned living in Finland for the past five years (while working with clients in the USA). It’s a great way to kick off your new year. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.   The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: The Copywriter Accelerator The Copywriter Think Tank Danny Marguiles Freelance to Win Joanna Wiebe Hillary Wiess Funnel Fatigue article The Copywriter Club newsletter No BS Pricing Strategy by Dan Kennedy TheImpactCopywriter.com Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity   Full Transcript: The Copywriter Club Podcast is sponsored by Airstory, the writing platform for professional writers who want to get more done in half the time. Learn more at Airstory.co/club. Kira: What if you could hang out with seriously copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits, then steal an idea to inspire your own work? That’s what Rob and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast. Rob: You’re invited to join the club for episode 64, as we chat with copywriter and funnel specialist Paige Poutiainen about finding success on Upwork, building effective marketing funnels using video to build a reputation, and what she’s done to accelerate her business over the past year. Kira: Paige, welcome! Paige: Hi, thanks for having me. Rob: Hey Paige! Kira: We’re so excited to have you! So we met Paige in the first beta round of our Accelerator program and now you’re in the think tank, so we get extra, extra time to get to know you, and also to see how you’ve grown your business over the last year. I think a good place is just with your story and how did you end up as a copywriter? Paige: Yeah, that’s a good question! I think I was writing copy or content you know, starting at age twelve. I started blogging. That’s what I would do—I was a nerdy child. And you know, other kids are outside playing or doing whatever and I was upstairs, like, blogging about boys that I liked and all this kind of stuff teenagers go through. And I’ve had several blogs over the years, just kind of as a hobbyist kind of thing. And then, when I was in grad school, I got a job as a content marketer, but my official title was CMO. I was NOT qualified to be a CMO, but you know how startups do those fancy titles and stuff. So I was doing like, blogs, general content there, and I actually had to do like landing pages and opt-in pages, so that’s where I first dipped my toes in copywriting. Then, you know, for several reasons, I didn’t enjoy that kind of working setup, it didn’t work for me, and because I was living in Finland—and I do not speak Finnish well—it is sometimes difficult to get a job, so that pressure to find work kind of pushed me into the freelancing. I had heard of Upwork, I had done some research, and you know, it was the meeting points—or, that was the catalyst. Those pressures from me deciding to leave my job, having not any other options available, I was like I have to do something. So I started on Upwork. I took Danny’s course, the Freelance to Win course. I started writing content, e-books mostly, and then I decided that sales copy was really where the money was at, I mean, that’s not why I stayed there but that was what kind of attracted me me to sales copywriting. I actually enjoyed being really close to the sale, so you know, doing the emails and the landing pages because for me, it was like the most strategic place to be, and I’ve got a strategy brain, so yeah! So now I’m here. So I moved into sales copywriting and started learning more about it and slowly kind of made the transition into funnels! Rob: So let’s go back, Paige, to when you were just starting out on UpWork. We interviewed Danny for a previous episode of the podcast, and got his take on how to succeed there. There are a lot of people in the club that I think try to go to Upwork, and fail—they can’t make it work, they’re finding ridiculously di

This one is a bit of a holiday gift for you all… so many good ideas and a fantastic guest! For the 63rd episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, Kira and Rob talk with Margo Aaron, a copywriter and psychological researcher with an impressive range of experience and know-how. During our conversation, Margo shared: • how she went from academic researcher to copywriter • the importance of psychology in copywriting (and life) • why you need to listen to people don’t say in addition to what they do say • what to ask for to get good feedback • how copywriters can use the skill of listening and use it to their advantage • how she built a business that she hated—and stopped taking clients • Product Founder Fit—what it is and why it’s important • how to learn the stuff that isn’t written down • why we are all so scarred of breaking the copywriting rules • what copywriters do that drive her crazy • where the money is in marketing (the answer isn’t your list) We also asked her about what goes on in the altMBA, but while most of the content and assignments are secret, she shares just enough to whet our appetites. She also talks a bit about how to write an email that people actually want to read, the future of copywriting—it will become more important than ever—and a few strategies for communicating more clearly with your clients. Want to hear it (or read it)? Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.   The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Margo’s website Honest Selling Secrets for a Dishonest Man The Arena Work Week Lunch Jeff Walker altMBA Hillary’s Post on What’s Not Working @margoarron Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity   Full Transcript: Rob: What if you could hang out with seriously copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits, then steal an idea to inspire your own work? That’s what Kira and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast. Kira: You’re invited to join the club for episode sixty three as we chat with psychological researcher, strategic planner and copywriter Margo Aaron, about changing the world and making a profit, what copywriter’s absolutely must know about psychology, what it’s like to hang out with Seth Godin in his altMBA program and how to learn the stuff that isn’t written down. Kira: Welcome, Margo! Rob: Welcome. Margo: Thanks you guys, happy to be here. Kira: Great to have you here! Rob: We are so excited! Kira: I secretly want to be friends with you, so by the end of this need to be friends. Margo: I’m in. I’m in. Kira: When are we getting coffee? Or tequila? Rob: Margo, you came to our attention because somebody posted your website in The Copywriter Club Facebook group and immediately there were like forty comments about how great your website was. And literally within a couple minutes people were saying we’ve got to have Margo on the podcast! Got to have Margo on the podcast! So we reached out and made it happen. Tell us how you got to the point where everybody wants to know about you! Where did you come from? Margo: (laughs) Honestly, when you find that out let me know. I have you all deceived! The short version is I sort of fell into marketing and copywriting by accident. I started my career as you said as a psychological researcher: I was working in a lab for depression-anxiety patients and you guys, had I known then what I know now the amount of people we could have helped—you can’t even imagine. I didn’t know it at the time but it was kind of my first introduction to funnels because I was the person on the phone… like, I was in charge of what’s called recruitment and screening so it’s effectively tofu and mofu, like I have to get people in the door and then I had to qualify them for different studies and around that time I realised how there was a huge disconnect between what we know and what we do. And I was frustrated with how limited our exposure was as a clinic, like we weren’t really able to help people the way I wanted to be able to help people and I was really really obsessed with this question of how do you get people to care? And I went to graduate school and in the middle of graduate school I realized that the academic life really wasn’t for me and I got introduced to this world of online business, which I’d never heard about before and in fact would have been very embarrassing for an academic to even associate themselves with… but I was fascinated by how effective it was and you guys know as copywriters, I mean, it’s effectively just psychology and so I sort of went down this dark hole of learning about direct response copywriting. And a mentor at the time told me that I had skills and whatever was called market research and I’d never heard of that before and so I took a job as a market researcher… Ended up working in-house in a marketing agency for a few years before

For the 62nd episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, Kira and Rob brought former screenwriter, movie producer and copywriter Jamie Jensen into the studio to talk all about her copy business. She shares the good and the bad and why she decided to shut down her agency just as it was really taking off. We also talked about: • how her dad unknowingly put her on the path to copywriting as a kid • why she left Hollywood to make her own movie, then jumped to copywriting • what she did early on to attract clients to her business (her no-strategy strategy) • how she developed a unique brand voice (Hollywood helped) • the systems and processes she used to connect with her customers • the place honesty and enthusiasm plays in attracting clients to her • why she decided to grow a micro-agency instead of staying a sole proprietor • the challenges the come with running an agency—she shares the dark side We also asked Jamie about what she’s doing today, the course she just created and launched, and her one word tip for course creators. Lots of laughter in this one and some painful lessons. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript. The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Sponsor: AirStory Hannah Has a Ho Phase Uncage Your Business Heather Dominick Story School Your Hot Copy Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity Full Transcript: The Copywriter Club Podcast is sponsored by Airstory, the writing platform for professional writers who want to get more done in half the time. Learn more at Airstory.co/club. Kira: What if you can hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits. Then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work. That’s what Rob and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast. Rob: You’re invited to join the club for episode 62 as we chat with copywriter, filmmaker, and storyteller Jamie Jensen, about going from Hollywood to hot copy, the importance of storytelling when it comes to writing copy with personality, working with a team of writers, the ins and outs of creating courses, and how making a movie made her a better copywriter. Kira: Jamie, welcome! Jamie: Thank you! Thank you so much for having me! Rob: It’s great to have you, yes! Kira: Yeah! You were on our list early on as someone that we wanted on the show and it’s nice to have a fellow New Yorker on the show, as well! So a great place to start is, you know, you went from Hollywood to hot copy. So we want to know, how did you even get into copywriting? Jamie: Sure! Well, what’s interesting is for me, for my story, is that my dad was an entrepreneur, so I actually grew up with a lot of like, copywriting things around me already, meaning, not just like, from the sales perspective of reading books about sales and marketing and all of that stuff, like, they were always around the house because my dad was marketing his own business, and doing things like buying domain names up and coming up with catchy things that he wanted to trademark for his business. And even like, direct mail was still a big thing then, so I would even help him like, review mailers that he was sending out to his physical mailing list, because that was a thing, you know? And so I actually grew up exposed to a lot of that to begin with, and the way that I made the transition from Hollywood to hot copy was I had made a film. So you know, I left Hollywood, I’d kind of had enough, came back to New York City where I’m from, and my producing partner and I decided at the time that we were going to just make our own film. So I had already written the script and she had been working on it as a producer and we decided like, you know what? Forget guys, by the way, because at this point we had both had a lot of negative experiences with men in the entertainment industry; we were like, we’re going to shoot this movie—no offense, Rob— Rob: Well, I was going to say, it’s not like men in the entertainment industry have a bad name or anything… Jamie: I mean… no! They’re so respectful to women! Have you watched the news lately? (laughs) It’s so great! So, we were like we’re going to make our movie ourselves, we’re going to have a fully female crew, it’s going to be amazing, so we did and that was amazing. And ultimately, it ended up being digitally distributed, so we got a digital distribution deal with one of the digital distribution companies and that really taught me a lot about like, digital marketing and you know, we had started working with this one consultant… who… I don’t think that it was very helpful actually, when we worked with them, but we just had to figure so much out about like, okay, well, we’re going to be on iTunes, and what does that mean, and how do we launch? Just all of the things that come with like, launching a piece of content digitally that weren’t things that

Welcome to episode 61 of The Copywriter Club Podcast. Today Kira Hug and Rob Marsh talk with freelance copywriter Alaura Weaver about how she’s grown her business, often working at night to get things done. During our discussion, we covered: • how she went from acting to sales to copywriting • how theater and acting has made her a better copywriter • what she did early on to get her first clients and her advice to new copywriters • how she saw herself as a business owner, not a freelancer • her thoughts about seeing customers as humans, not consumers and living your message • how copywriters can live their own message and values • how to develop buyer personas and why you should use them • how she gets to know the customers she is profiling • the trap of writing for everybody and reaching nobody • how she sells her clients on creating Avatars as part of her projects Plus we also asked Alaura about how often you should create new customer profile, what she’s doing to share how you can define your own customer personas and how she juggles family, course creation, and business and makes it all work. Want this one in your ear buds? Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript. The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Sponsor: AirStory Textbroker Neil Patel Joanna Wiebe The storytelling post on CH Hillary’s coaching post Xtensio Alaura’s website @wordweaverfree Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity Full Transcript: The Copywriter Club Podcast is sponsored by Airstory, the writing platform for professional writers who want to get more done in half the time. Learn more at Airstory.co/club. Rob: What if you can hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits. Then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work. That’s what Kira and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast. Kira: You’re invited to join the club for episode 61 as we chat with freelance copywriter and storyteller, Alaura Weaver, about how she became a copywriter, creating customer personas, and her course about them, juggling work and family, and various other products, and making business personal. Welcome Alaura. Rob: Welcome Alaura! Alaura: Hi! Thank you! Kira: Great to have you here, so I think a great place to start is with your story. As a storyteller, can you tell us your story? Alaura: So, it’s really ironic is that my verbal, like, speaking storytelling skills are a little bit off, which is why I like writing. But, I’ll tell you how I started. I’ve actually started in the theater. I was a child actress and, that’s what I thought I was going to do my entire life. I was on the stage, I literally grew up on the stage. Kira: Wow. Alaura: And I went to the Baltimore School for the Arts for high school. I majored in theater in undergrad and got my graduate degree in acting. So, it was kind of like, that was my path; I was going to be a professional actress. I focused on the creation of original works, so I did have that writing element in there. But, life is a lot harder—laugh—than your dreams, right? You know, the reality is most actors are unemployed for the majority of their careers, and I had to find a way to pay back those student loans and pay bills and be an adult. And so I got into sales. I got into business-to-business sales. One of my first jobs was actually on inside sales for a start-up, and I liked that environment a lot, of that small team, that kind of feisty, scrappy team, building and growing that business, and it felt like a good place to be. But then I got an offer to start selling, advertising for the Yellow Book.—Laughs—If you remember…do you remember the Yellow Book? Rob: Let your fingers do the walking, absolutely. Alaura: So you can guess how, um—clears throat—old I am….but yeah, unfortunately I got into Yellow Page sales, advertising sales, just as smart phones were starting to take off. And it was also right as the economic crisis happened. So, there was like a—this, terrible, perfect storm of economic downturn for small business owners who were the majority of my clients. And then of course, on how people find information about doing business with people, Google—you know, Google was king, but actually Google, on a local level, hadn’t really taken off, until right as, like, 2008. You know, just as Facebook was happening and more people were talking about things on a local level, and so I got a lot of pushback and I had to kind of fight through and learn how to sell. And then, I fortunately got a better job as everything was falling down, and then, I got married and got pregnant, and had to kind of had to re-evaluate everything. So, I decided I wanted to stay home with my child. I was actually given the opportunity by the company that I worked with to stay home and work from home, but, that was a pilot program, they’d

For the 60th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, Kira and Rob opted not to invite a guest on the show and instead take your questions and give our off-the-cuff, no-preparation answers. We don’t claim to have all the answers, but we did our best with what we have. We talked about: • where we got our first clients (and where we get some of our clients today) • why relationships are so critical especially for freelancers who never leave the house • how copywriting has changed since we both got started and what that means to you • what we expected The Copywriter Club to become when we first started out • how we keep all the plates spinning (Rob has dropped a couple) • what comes first the club or clients (don’t let our clients see this) Plus we also talked about where we find the most satisfaction in our work and our thoughts on LinkedIn and Medium and which one is best for sharing your work. We don’t have a guest to carry us on this one, but to hear everything we shared, click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript. The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Sponsor: AirStory Hillary Weiss Laura Belgray The 50th episode Ry Schwartz The Copywriter Accelerator Joanna Wiebe Michal Eisikowitz Luke Traser Momo Price Serial CrimeTown Tim Ferriss Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity Full Transcript: The Copywriter Club Podcast is sponsored by Airstory, the writing platform for professional writers who want to get more done in half the time. Learn more at Airstory.co/club. Kira: What if you can hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits. Then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work. That’s what Rob and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast. Rob: You’re invited to join the club for episode 60 as we answer your questions about copywriting, fitting it all in, choosing a niche, our processes and what we find most rewarding in our businesses. Hey, Kira. Kira: Hey, Rob. How’s it going? Rob: It is going awesome. Mostly awesome, how about yourself? Kira: Is it really awesome, Rob? Is it really? You just told me you woke up at 5 a.m. to workout and so… Rob: That’s correct. Kira: You’re feeling good? Rob: I am feeling good. I was up a little late doing client work where I think we’re going to talk about that here in a second when we ask, answer a couple of questions and you were doing the same. Kira: Yeah, we were both emailing each other at midnight while working in client work so that’s how I spin, but yeah. Rob: Exactly. Kira: I’m excited to answer some questions. For this special 60th episode, we asked the club members in the Facebook Group, what questions you have for us and we have a nice range of questions we can tackle here, but I feel like we should say that normally, we like to prep. We are preppers and think through our responses and even type them out. Today, we are not doing that. We are going to wing it. Rob: That’s right. Kira: I don’t wing things well so this will be interesting. Rob: It’s all of the cuffs so it’s not sugarcoated. We’re going to tell you the truth, but it may not be quite as well thought out as it might have been otherwise so. Kira: Right, this will not be poetic today. Okay, so why don’t we jump into the first question. Rob, you can choose. Rob: Yeah, so I’m actually going to choose Heath asked a couple questions and I think these area good questions that a lot of people in the club are thinking about. This is the first one. How did you get your first clients when you’re starting out? Kira: Okay, well, first I want to say shout out to Heath. I love Heath. He always makes me smile in the group. My first few clients, I was at Ace working at a startup, actionablebooks.com as the marketing director and I’ve been there for a couple of years. While I was working there, you know you did everything in a startup. I was writing a lot of copy and so at that point, some of the consultants I was working with asked me to work with them and they offered to pay me to write copy for their websites as they were growing their businesses and that’s kind of when I clued into this and a couple of them said, “Why don’t you start your own copywriting business? You know you clearly have this entrepreneurial drive. This could be something that make sense for you” and so that was the light bulb moment for me. Rob: My very first copy assignment was from a friend that I had met, I don’t remember how I met her but she was doing freelance copyrighting. She had an assignment and asked me to help out on and I did that. I thought this is interesting. I can make money writing. It hadn’t really occurred to me before. It should have, but for whatever reason, I just hadn’t considered that as an option. I was planning on going to law school at the time, and then I got a job in house writing copy and spent about four years

For the 59th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, in-house copywriter and creator of The Headline Project, Justin Blackman, is in the house to share how writing 100 headlines a day for 100 days changed his writing and his business. (We recorded this one a couple of months ago and are just getting around to publishing it now—apologies Justin.) In this episode Justin shares: • his path from sports and field marketer to copywriter • what his job as an in-house copywriter involves from one day to the next • why he started a side gig as an outlet for his creativity • how Shel Silverstein helped launch his first side gig—try, fly or walk away • why more copywriters should consider in-house gigs instead of freelancing • what in-house copywriters can expect to make (yep, we asked this question) • what made Justin decide to write 100 headlines in 100 days • some of the “tricks” he used for brainstorming to stay prolific • how his “creativity muscle” grew as he did the work every day • how he found motivation from the people he said he couldn’t do it • how the Headline Project has helped him grow his business and list Plus we asked Justin how in the world he balances his work along with his side projects with his family duties, and we asked his advice on what copywriters should do to move their own businesses forward. To hear his answers, click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.   The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: The Copywriter Accelerator PT Barnum Bill Veeck Lianna Patch Copyhackers Shel Silverstein Hippo’s Hope The Headline Project Laura Belgray Tackle Your Tagline cheatsheet Joel Klettke PrettyFlyCopy.com Justin’s Twitter Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity   Full Transcript: Rob: What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes, and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That’s what Kira and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast. Kira: You’re invited to join the Club for episode 59, as we talk with copywriter Justin Blackman about his journey from marketing manager for companies like Red Bull and Five Hour Energy to copywriter and content manager, what it’s like as an in-house copywriter, balancing in-house work with freelance work and a family, and what he’s learned from his 100 day headline project. Kira: Justin, welcome! Justin: Hi! Kira: Thanks for being here. We’ve had a chance to get to know you better in The Copywriter Club and The Copywriter Accelerator and I think it’d be really fun to just start with your story and maybe parts of your story that we don’t know, specifically how you went from sports marketing to content creator to copywriter. So, can you share that path with us? Justin: Yeah! It’s kinda one of these paths that seemed obvious to everyone but me. I went to U Mass for sports marketing, mostly because I wanted to work for the New York Rangers, which was pretty “high school” of me but I had a good time there and learned a lot. The biggest change was that I had one professor there that talked about P.T. Barnum and Bill Veeck, who was a baseball promoter—he owned the Chicago White Sox and the Cleveland Indians—and really, focused more on big-time promotion and making the game fun. And these guys didn’t sit in the skybox, they were down in the cheap seats with the bleacher creatures and just having fun and talking to the people. So, I realized pretty quickly that as much as I love sports marketing, it was more the marketing side that I liked, and that branched me into field marketing. And field marketing is essentially a fancy way of saying “consumer sampling”. So, anytime you go somewhere and they’re handing out different promotional items—could be drinks, or Chapstick, or anything if you’re going to a concert or even just walking through the street and they’re handing out different items, that’s field marketing. I was super fortunate to land jobs with companies that understood field marketing for the right reasons. It wasn’t just about getting people to try out your product, it was really more about getting the chance to explain your product to people. So, I worked for Plymouth for a bit and that was geared toward running shoes. We went to long distance runners and marathons and really got a chance to spend a lot of time talking about the products with people. And I just knew that that’s what I really wanted to do. I love talking to people, I love getting the feedback, I love just finding ways and hooks to talk to people. That would end up leading to Red Bull, which is pretty much the ultimate field marketer in the entire world. Absolutely amazing brand, fantastic product, and they didn’t just hire college kids to go out and hand out cans and I know that that’s what it can look like from the outside, and they actually do a little bit more of

For the 58th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, Kira Hug and Rob Marsh sit down to talk with financial copywriter, Jake Hoffberg about all kinds of things related to writing copy in the financial niche, including: • his first exposure to direct response and how he got into internet marketing • how he was rejected by every division of Agora but one before he landed his first project • the terrible cold email pitch template he used (we share it, don’t use it) • his contrarian “I want to make money” path to copywriting • the kinds of projects he willingly took on just to get started • how he leveraged his new relationships into more jobs and more clients • the real value that copywriters provide their clients (it’s not writing copy) • the process for pitching new ideas and getting the next project, and • how to double your income in 6 months Plus we also asked for his thoughts about getting royalties, which clients will pay them, and how to structure royalties the right way and he shared the advice he give other writers about how to get into financial copywriting… hint: don’t think you should start at the top. All that and more is in this money-packed episode (not literally). To hear it all, click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript. The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Sponsor: AirStory Eban Pagan Jeff Walker Agora Financial Motley Fool Dent Research Sale of a Lifetime Freelance Financial Copywriter Group JakeHoffberg.com Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity Full Transcript: The Copywriter Club Podcast is sponsored by Airstory, the writing platform for professional writers who want to get more done in half the time. Learn more at Airstory.co/club. Rob: What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes, and their habits, then steal and idea or two to inspire your own work? That’s what Kira and I do every week at the Copywriter Club Podcast. Kira: You’re invited to join the Club for episode 58, as we chat with financial copywriter Jake Hoffberg about his path to becoming a copywriter and choosing the financial niche, writing long-form sales pages and VSLs, what a new writer should do today to break into financial copywriting, and advertising to the affluent. — Rob: Welcome, Jake! Jake: Thank you for having me! Kira: Yeah, it’s great to have you here. Rob: We’re excited to learn a little bit more about you and your niche and how it all came about, which is probably a good place to start. Let’s talk about your story and how you became a copywriter. Jake: Sure. So, I guess the story probably actually starts in 2008… 2009… and I had a copy of Eban Pagan’s Get Altitude Training—I forget how I got it, but I did—and that was really my first exposure to direct response. This whole world of people that were making money on the internet and running these virtual businesses and putting boards together and getting paid and I just—I thought that was fascinating. I was in direct sales at the time and I was knocking on doors and doing it the hard way and man, it was just so awesome sounding. So I probably spent the next five, six, seven years on and off trying to get into internet marketing and figure out how to run an info-product business and kinda went down that rabbit hole for a long time and tried a lot of things that did not work over the years. This is all while I was doing sales, and switched sales jobs a couple times, and think it was two years ago—something like that—it was July of 2015—I was running a consulting business and I had that moment that everyone has at some point in their life where they’re just like, F it! I’m done with this! I’m tired of this crap! And I had a not so friendly conversation with my boss, who was my only client at the time and I was making good money and I basically fired myself after that conversation. I had some cash saved away and I was like, all right! I’ll figure something out and I don’t want to go back and do sales; I don’t want to get a 9-5 job or do any of that stuff so I just need to figure this stuff out. I knew firsthand how hard it was just to run a business and how hard it was to try and build websites and all this other stuff, and so somewhere along the way it just clicked where, okay… I can sell, and it’s made me basically employable for every company ever because I can do that, so if I can just figure out just the sales part on the internet, and I can just learn that, I can just get paid to do that, and I don’t have to mess around with all this website building or any of this nonsense. I can just start there. That was how I figured out that copywriting was a real thing. That there are people that make lots of money and all they do is write copy and they don’t do anything else. I thought, that sounds really good! Let’s try that! You know, I bo

In the 57th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, Kira and Rob talk with Heather Dominick who coined the term, highly sensitive entrepreneur—a name for business owners who are more sensitive to the demands of start-up and freelance work. During our conversation, we asked her: • what a “highly sensitive entrepreneur is” and whether it’s a weakness we need to overcome • how to know if you were born highly sensitive—20% of us are • whether there’s something wrong with Rob who is highly insensitive • what being highly sensitive means (and the superpowers HSEs have) • a few questions you can ask yourself to find out if you’re an HSE • how to work (or live) with someone who is highly sensitive • how to approach work (and life) as a highly sensitive entrepreneur • the importance of processes and systems to support your work as a HSE, and • how to network as an HSE. We also asked Heather about the similarities between HSEs and introverts (they’re not the same thing) and how her business has changed since she started approaching things as an HSE. This discussion is a little different from our typical episode but shines a light on a personality type that many copywriters deal with regularly. To listen, click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript. The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Sponsor: AirStory Ali Brown’s Glambition Radio Quiet by Susan Cane HSE Quiz Heather’s Website Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity Full Transcript: The Copywriter Club Podcast is sponsored by Airstory, the writing platform for professional writers who want to get more done in half the time. Learn more at Airstory.co/club. Rob: What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes, and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That’s what Kira and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast. Kira: You’re invited to join the Club for episode 57, as we chat with business coach and founder of the highly sensitive entrepreneur movement, Heather Dominick, about how personality traits affect business success, what it means to be highly sensitive, how to deal with the sensitive people in our lives, and what this all means for copywriters. Kira: Heather, welcome! Rob: Welcome Heather. Heather: Thank you so much. So happy to be here. So happy to be here with both of you! Kira: Well, when I first heard of you, it was on Ali Brown’s Glambition Radio interview with you. I was on vacation and somehow randomly stumbled upon that particular interview and I remember being like, oh my goodness! This is me! I had no idea that this was a thing and it was kind of like finding out from Susan Cane that I was an introvert a couple of years back when I was like, oh this makes sense! This all makes sense! And then I forced my husband to listen to the interview again so that he would understand why I am the way I am and so ever since then, I knew that we needed you on this show to really help communicate what this is all about to highly sensitive copywriters and copywriters that maybe aren’t as highly sensitive as well. Heather: Fantastic! I love that so much. Did your husband listen to the interview that I did with Ali Brown? Did that help? Kira: It did help. I feel like this is already a couple of months ago, I feel like it’s something that maybe we need to revisit every once in awhile just to be like okay, remember why – this is why I’m doing this this way? So it doesn’t fade away. And I think a great place to start is with your story – just, how you discovered that you’re a highly sensitive person and entrepreneur? Heather: Sure! Absolutely. I’m so happy to share. Well, I would say first that I’m in my 14th year of being self-employed and in the first half of my self-employment career, I had no idea that I was highly sensitive at all. I didn’t even really know what that term was or what it meant and so, the first half – the first seven or so years of being self-employed – I was able to create some significant success in my business. I had brought my business across the million dollar mark at that point and it came at a very high cost. I found myself absolutely, completely overwhelmed, overworked, and over-exhausted. And at that time, I was working with a mentor who I’ve come to understand was mismatched for my highly sensitive nature, and you know, she really pushed her clients to create more and the amount of income that her clients were generating was very important to her and what I’ve come to understand since is that that plugged right into what I now have coined and referred to as one of the HSE coping mechanisms, the coping mechanism of pushing, which was definitely my coping mechanism of choice. What that means is that a person who’s highly sensitive will choose a coping mechanism unconsciously to deal with their

Personal branding expert and talented designer, Sarah Ancalmo Ashman is the guest for the 56th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. She shared with Kira and Rob (and you) how she became a brand expert—she started out as an ad agency designer working with personalities like Madonna, Jimmy Fallon and the rock group, RadioHead. In the podcast she talks about: • how she developed her unique design style and why she chose branding as her discipline • the first steps she took when she started her own agency • what branding is and why it is so important to have a strong brand • some of the more important elements that make up your brand • how to identify what make you (and your brand) unique • what you need to know or work on before you engage a designer • why copywriters shouldn’t shape their brand around their clients • her contrarian advice on which formulas you should use for your brand • how to create a brand for yourself when you don’t have the budget to work with a designer (hint: don’t use fiverr) Rob and Kira also ask Sarah about the things that smart copywriters are starting to do with their brands, where copywriters who want to work in branding can get started and the the text books she recommends you should read if you want to learn branding. To hear it all, click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript. The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Sponsor: AirStory Sarah Ashman, Public Persona Sarah’s Pinterest MirrorBrand B School Bluffworks Lacy Boggs Ash Ambirge Building a Story Brand The Brand Gap Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity Full Transcript: The Copywriter Club Podcast is sponsored by Airstory, the writing platform for professional writers who want to get more done in half the time. Learn more at Airstory.co/club. Kira: What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes, and their habits, then steal and idea or two to inspire your own work? That’s what Rob and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast. Rob: You’re invited to join the Club for episode 56, as we chat with branding expert and designer Sarah Ancalmo Ashman about working with entrepreneurs and creatives to create jaw-dropping brands, developing a brand strategy, how copywriters should approach their own brand development, and whether having a nice logo is enough. Kira: Hi Sarah! Rob: Hey Sarah. Sarah: Hello, thanks for having me! Kira: Thanks for being here. I think – I have such a big crush on you because you’ve worked with me on my website and my brand and that’s been one of the best investments I’ve made in my business so I’m glad we can finally have you on the show you can share your knowledge and expertise with everyone at large. I think a great place to start though, is with your story! How did you end up running your creative studio? Sarah: As always, a meandering path, right? My background is actually in, you know, big brand advertising and you know, design studios in New York. And I worked doing that for about ten years and realized that the projects that resonated with me actually the most, were the ones that involved an individual. Clients that were sort of an individual that we were centering a brand around. I found that there were a lot of opportunities to bring out stories and you know, just really focus on their personality and what differentiates them as an individual. And so what I ended up doing was starting to kind of put my feelers out… and started to work with individuals, primarily entrepreneurs, who were either starting their business or wanting to uplevel, and applying some of the same techniques that I used to develop brands for the Fortune 500 for these private clients. And that ended up being viable enough for me to be able to kind of jump ship from the corporate space, if you will, and you know, start to do that on my own. In 2012, I officially birthed, if you will, a public persona! Rob: Sarah, your background includes some fashion work as well, and it seems to me like that might be reflected in a lot of the things that you do. How has that impacted how you look at brands as opposed to, you know, what a lot of other branding experts are out there doing? From my perspective, it seems like you have a very distinctive visual approach to what you do. Sarah: Yeah! It’s funny; I think a lot of that comes from directing, concepting and directing, these large scale photo shoots for commercial productions. And like you said, for a lot of fashion brands. And so, you know, I really love to see that transformation of this “ordinary” person, which in some cases was a celebrity or a model, and see them really transform into this sort of larger than life character on the screen. And I think that’s exactly what I sort of brought with me to the table, so to speak, with my clients. Just really being able to you kn

Paid search expert (and copywriter club member) Amy Hebdon joins Kira and Rob for the 55th episode of the podcast to talk about search marketing, the tools and skills you need to do it right, best practices for testing and messaging, and whether copywriters can drive quality leads for their own businesses with paid search. Here’s what we cover: • how Amy went from inexperienced copywriter to web designer to paid search consultant • what paid search is and the various places you can participate in it • why copywriters need to know about paid search, keywords, ads and landing pages • how writing for search is different from typical ad writing • when you should write for Google and when you should write for people (you can do both) • why you should work backwards from your landing page before writing your ads • why traffic and clicks are a terrible metric in paid search • best practices for testing ads so you get better insights, and • the tools Amy uses to monitor her accounts and ads We also talked about what copywriters can do to attract clients who understand search (and want to work with a paid search specialist), how copywriters might use paid search to drive traffic to their own sites, and where the opportunities are for paid search today. Don’t miss Amy’s straight-forward perspective on the future of paid search and why there needs to be more collaboration than ever in this area in 2018. To hear hear it all, click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript. The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Sponsor: AirStory Amy Hebdon, Paid Search Magic Find Amy on Twitter AdWords Adsense Joanna Wiebe Unbounce Leadpages Supermetrics DuckDuckGo Indeed Upwork Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity Full Transcript: The Copywriter Club Podcast is sponsored by Airstory, the writing platform for professional writers who want to get more done in half the time. Learn more at Airstory.co/club. Kira: What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes, and their habits, then steal and idea or two to inspire your own work? That’s what Rob and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast. Rob: You’re invited to join the Club for episode 55 as we talk with paid search expert Amy Hebdon about search marketing, the tools and skills you need to do it right, best practices for testing and messaging, and whether copywriters can drive quality leads for their own businesses with paid search. Kira: Amy, welcome. Amy: Hi! Good to be on here. Kira: Yeah, thanks for hanging out with us today. I think a great place for us to start is with your story and how you got into paid search. Amy: Sure! So, I am one of those people who always wanted to work in advertising. It’s been my dream career, basically, since I was seven, and I majored in marketing communications in school and I spent the next several years temping, trying to find jobs. At the time, I was living in the Bay area and it was right around the time of the dot com bust, so I wasn’t able to find anyone who wanted to hire a brand new copywriter with no experience. I ended up a few years later… I got a job in New York as a web designer, so I was going to work every day basically hoping that wasn’t the day that I got fired because really, my web design skills were not that great. I was not that good at coding and I had all these design challenges that I had no idea how to solve. Looking back, I don’t think they actually would’ve fired me, like I think it was fine for what their clients needed, but it was really stressful for me to not know what I was doing and not really know how to do a good job with that. Working in this little design agency… it was a really cramped office space and the woman who sat behind me – there was no space between our chairs. So, every time she even stood up, she would bump me and it was really uncomfortable. She was doing adwords and digital marketing and one day, she had gone to this conference, about web marketing, I think. And she had come back and management had asked her to give a report on what she had learned and during her presentation, they asked her what click through rate was, and she wasn’t able to explain it. She didn’t know what it was. Which, it’s pretty essential if you’re doing digital marketing to even have a basic understanding of click through rate… so they fired her immediately after that and they offered me her job. I was kind of in heaven because I was discovering adwords, which it turned out I really loved, and I was able to move in my chair because there wasn’t someone sitting behind me. I think I would’ve liked anything that got me out of doing web design… but I really took to paid search and to adwords, just with how much accountability there was. At the time, Google didn’t even own an analytics tool yet. There was

Copywriter Chanti Zak (aka Chantelle Zakariasen aka the Queen of Quiz Funnels) joins us for the 54th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. Chanti started her career as a food blogger, racking up more than 50,000 regular visitors and a big email list before transitioning to copywriting for coaches and other wellness-based businesses. During our interview, she tells us about: • how she went from moderately successful food blogger to in-demand copywriter • the biggest differences between blogging and copywriting • quiz funnels—what they are and what they do • how a quiz can segment an audience—and they don’t even realize it’s happening • how she’s packaged her services to be appealing to different kinds of clients • how she pitches and cold emails clients successfully • what she does to make her emails stand out and get a response • how she batches her pitches to use her time more effectively • website shame and what she did to overcome it, and • the three things she invested in to upgrade her web presence We also asked her what she would do differently if she had to start over and where she thinks copywriting is headed (hint: interactivity seems to be a big thing these days). Plus we wanted to hear more about her stay in India before she started writing and how that experience has impacted the way she approaches her business today. To hear what she told us, click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript. The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Sponsor: The Copywriter Accelerator Chanti’s food blog Cosmopolitan Buzzfeed Pinterest Ryan LeVesque ChantelleZakariasen.com WordPress ChantiZak.com Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity Full Transcript: Kira: The Copywriter Club Podcast is sponsored by The Copywriter Accelerator a three-month program with six core business components designed to help new copywriters lay their foundation for a successful business. Rob: Participants receive in-depth training, coaching, and feedback from us, which means you get access to us in a private community. Registration is now open and the early bird rate ends on October 27th. Learn more at TheCopywriterAccelerator.com. Kira: What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes, and their habits then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That’s what Rob and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast. Rob: You’re invited to join the club for Episode 54 as we talk with copywriter and quiz funnel expert, Chanti Zak, about creating quizzes that hook potential customers, and to make them want to share going from in-house writer to freelance and finding clients fast, pitching podcasts, and how studying yoga in India has made her a better copywriter. Kira: Chanti, welcome. Chanti: Thank you for having me. I feel so honored. Rob: It’s awesome to have you here. Kira: Yes-yes, so I think a great place to start is with your story. How did you end up becoming a copywriter? Chanti: Well, I started a food blog randomly enough. I had this paleo food blog when my son was a newborn baby, and I really quickly grew it to like 50,000 unique visitors per month, and I was getting featured on like Cosmopolitan and BuzzFeed and all of these really big publications, so from there this whole online world opened up to me and I started getting writing work as a direct result of my food blog, so what I did is I used it as a portfolio of sorts, and that’s sort of how I started freelance writing and copywriting. Rob: I’m really curious you started a blog and grew to like 50,000 people. Kira: That’s a big deal. Rob: Yeah, that’s a dream that a lot of bloggers have been working for years to do. How did you do that? What did you do to grow? Chanti: Well, I think it’s easier with food than it is with a lot of more niche topics because everybody’s got to eat and food it’s like this innate human desire we all want delicious things, so I basically just picked up a camera and started photographing recipes that I would make, and I’ve always been really into nutrition and natural health and I studied that for a long time, so I would sort of weave that in and write on those topics, and then basically it took off. I think one of the main reasons was because of Pinterest. Everything on Pinterest was just going viral like this one muffin recipe to me is really simple and this basic recipe had like 100,000 shares. Rob: Wow. Chanti: Yeah. Kira: Okay, I want that recipe because simple is ideal for me right now. Chanti: Yes. Kira: Are you still blogging on that blog? What happened to it? Chanti: No, I basically like just let it go and surrendered because I didn’t have time for it eventually, and I wasn’t really making money off of the blog directly, like I think to make money off a blog 50,000 visitors sounds like a lot of traffic, but you need more like 500,000 and upwards of that

Ryan Johnson, Head Copywriter at IWT (short for I Will Teach, Ramit Sethi’s company) steps up to the microphone with Kira and Rob for the 53rd episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. This interview covers a lot of ground, including: • how after a grueling interview in his car, Ryan failed to get a job with IWT only to get hired a few months later (never give up) • how to get inside the head of your client so you can speak with his or her voice • his process for laying out all the moving pieces of a launch, and • how he maps emotions to his launch plans so customers can’t wait to respond • the 7 deadly email funnel sins • two reasons to use long-form sales pages • the “leap stacking” technique he uses to help his writers uplevel their skill (and what doesn’t work when trying to improve) Plus Ryan shares the “copy levers” that Gary Bencivenga used to get better at his craft, how he avoids writer’s block, and the one thing he would do if he had to start his career all over. Lots of good stuff packed into this episode. To hear it, click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript. The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Sponsor: AirStory Ramit Sethi The Briefcase Technique Jay Abraham IWT AIDA Gary Bencivenga Abbey Woodcock Justin Blackman The Headline Project Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity Full Transcript: The Copywriter Club Podcast is sponsored by Airstory, the writing platform for professional writers who want to get more done in half the time. Learn more at Airstory.co/club. Rob: What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits, and then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That’s what Kira and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast. Kira: You’re invited to join the club for episode 53 as we chat with in house copywriter, Ryan Johnson, about he became a copywriter and landed a job writing for Ramit Sethi, how he tackles a massive launch, capturing the voice of your client, and how long it takes him to write a 50 plus page sales letter. Ryan, welcome. Rob: Yes, welcome Ryan. Ryan: Thank you for having me. Glad to be here. Kira: Yeah, it’s great to have your here, and I think a great place to start is just with your story of how did you end up becoming a copywriter? Ryan: It was kind of a circular process to copywriting. I didn’t even know what copywriting was at the very beginning. My original interests were in film and creative writing, which led me into a delightful career waiting tables. After a few years of that, my first real job was in instructional design, and I was editing textbooks, and building training programs. I actually ended up designing an associates degree in business. I packaged and edited textbooks on business, and economics, and entrepreneurship before I realized that doing that was with no experience was totally crazy. But it was a good baseline. But while I was doing this, I can still remember. I was in the middle of editing this 500 page textbook on economics, which is about as exciting as it sounds, and my wife was working as a creative copywriter, and she was getting paid much, much more than me to edit this glossy one page ad. It looked like so much fun and so much easier than what I was doing. I’m like, “I’m doing something wrong, ‘cause there’s clearly a cap on where I am, and there’s no clap over here.” So shortly after I figured out how I could transition into marketing, into copywriting. It’s been a race every since. Rob: You’re working as an in house copywriter, but what does that look like today? What is the day to day … How do you spend your time? What are you working on? Those kinds of things. Ryan: Yeah, so with Ramit at IWT / Growth Lab, I am the head of the sales team and the editorial teams. I oversee all of the in-house copywriters in all these different facets, all the material that we produce. All the blog posts, emails, sales pages, up sale pages, all the little copy that you don’t think about, but ties all this stuff together. Rob: And how did you connect with Ramit? Ryan: I was a longtime reader, I’ve been with Ramit for over six years now. But back in the very beginning, I was just reading his blog, and he had an advertisement for a case study writer, just a freelance position a few hours a week, and I applied for it. It was the most grueling application that I had been through. There was multiple rounds of tests I had to go through, samples I had to do, interviews. Actually, I took the interview, I took it on a lunch break at work, it was in the middle of the summer. I’m in my car, it’s 100 degrees, and I’m just roasting in the car. And he asked me, “Hey, give me an example of somebody that’s doing copywriting well, content marketing well.” And my mind totally blanked, and I knew instantly, I just lost this, it’s over. And sure e

When we launched The Copywriter Club Podcast, we made a list of copywriters we wanted to interview and the guest for episode 51, David Garfinkel, was at the top. Known as the World’s Greatest Copywriting Coach, David is a world-class copywriter who regularly consults with clients like Agora Financial and GKIC along with several high-level copywriters to help improve the performance of their copy. During our interview, David talked about: • how he got his start as a copywriter • a “this will only work for me” method for finding your first project • the story behind his $40 million dollar sales letter • the mistakes he made as he was just starting his business • how he made the shift to coaching and what he does as a coach • the three things to look for in a copy coach • how to overcome objections with your copy • what mistakes he sees over and over again that you will want to avoid • the importance of “relevant credentials” when making any sale • when you should start coaching other writers • the two or three things to go from good to great as a writer Plus David talked about what his business looks like today and he shared details about the breakout hit song he wrote for the urology department at the University of California’s Centennial celebration. (This is stuff he hasn’t even shared on his own podcast.) To hear it, you need to click the play button below, or scroll down to read a full transcript. The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Sponsor: AirStory McGraw Hill World News Gary Halbert’s Newsletter Aaron Sorkin Barbara (Bloch) Stanny Jay Conrad Levinson Jim Camp KOLBE Copy Chief Breakthrough Copywriting Garfinkelcoaching.com Kevin Rogers Scientific Advertising The Billion Dollar Copywriter Peak by Anders Erickson Agora Financial Fast, Effective Copy Homespun.com David’s Facebook Page The Copywriters Podcast Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity Full Transcript: The Copywriter Club Podcast is sponsored by Airstory, the writing platform for professional writers who want to get more done in half the time. Learn more at Airstory.co/club. Kira: What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That’s what Rob and I do every week at the Copywriter Club Podcast. Rob: You’re invited to join the club for episode 52 as we chat with the man who has been called the world’s greatest copywriting coach, David Garfinkel, about the lessons he’s learned coaching and working with so many copywriters, what it takes to be truly great as a copywriter, how his life away from copywriting makes him a better writer, and how to do an effective copy critique. Kira: David, welcome. David: Thank you. I’m glad to be here. Rob: Yeah, we’re excited to have you. Kira: It’s an honor to have you. Yeah, this is the highlight of my day. David: I know I’ve been looking forward to this for a while now. Kira: I feel like every time I think of you, David, I think of the beach because I listen to episode 13, Why Customers Buy, while I was running on the beach on vacation last month. I’m just happy anytime I hear your voice because it takes me back. David: Yeah. I think you mentioned that in an email to me. Which beach? Because I’m about six blocks from the Pacific Beach in San Francisco. Kira: Oh, this was Myrtle Beach. David: Oh. Yeah, I went there when I was in high school. I grew up in Maryland. We went there in the spring break or something. It was a very nice beach. Kira: Yeah, it was great. Rob: A great place to do some running, some copywriting learning. Kira: Exactly, yeah. David: Well, everyone has their own use for the beach. I think that’s a good one, frankly. Rob: Yeah, exactly. David, we really like to start a lot of our episodes with a story, your backstory, how you came into copywriting. Tell us where you came from. David: Well, I had been a business journalist. My last corporate job was as the San Francisco bureau chief for McGraw-Hill World News, which is like an internal news service for McGraw-Hill’s business and trade magazines, and it came time to leave. I was doing well, but I wasn’t happy. I knew if I wasn’t happy, I was going to find a way to screw it up. It’d probably be better just to leave. I was wandering around looking for what to do and had a lot of false starts. I co-authored a book and then I created a little audio program called Referral Magic: 17 Ways to Let Your Clients Do Your Selling, and I didn’t have the skills to sell it. I was, believe it or not, teaching public speaking at the time. My business partner got one of Gary Halbert’s newsletters as a six-month gift subscription. I remember looking at the first issue. He said, “Davis, this isn’t for me, but it might be for you.” I looked at it, I said, “What in the world is he doing? I don’t know what he’s doi

Direct response copywriter and video sales letter expert, Valentina Volcinschi, is in the house for episode 51 of The Copywriter Club Podcast. Kira and Rob ask her about how she became a direct response copywriter and how she developed her skills—she’s written a ton of successful promotions including one that pulled in $7 million in 5 months and saved a company that was headed toward bankruptcy. She also talks about… • how musician Jack White landed her a job in direct response • the “secret” 1000-page book that helped launch her career • how she injects emotion into her copy • her “puzzle structure” for sales pages • how to get started working in the survival niche • the biggest differences between sales pages and VSLs • the EPW writing process that you probably use but don’t know it • how she researches for her assignments Plus Valentina goes deep on how feeling your customer’s pain can make all the difference in a sales message and how she entertains with her copy (she looks for wacky characters). We also asked her what she charges for sales pages, emails and VSLS and her advice for new direct response copywriters. As usual, lots of good ideas and advice. Click the play button below to listen, or scroll down for a full transcript. The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Sponsor: AirStory Jack White Madonna The Ultimate Desktop Copy Coach (no longer available) Ry Schwartz Daniel Sanchez Copy School Ben Settle Valentina’s website Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity Full Transcript: The Copywriter Club Podcast is sponsored by Airstory, the writing platform for professional writers who want to get more done in half the time. Learn more at Airstory.co/club. Rob: What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That’s what Kira and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast. Kira: You’re invited to join the club for episode 51 as we chat with copywriter Valentina Volcinschi about entertaining your customers with your copy, writing with emotion, video sales letters, and what it takes to break through in hypercompetitive markets like survival, health, and sass. Rob: Hey, Kira. Hey, Valentina. Valentina: Hi, guys. How you doing? Kira: Welcome. Thanks for joining us. Valentina: Thank you for inviting me. Kira: A good place to start, Valentina, is just with your story, how you ended up as a direct response copywriter working on VSLs and even in the survival market. How did you get there? Valentina: Well, it’s quite a funny story because I actually owe my debut in direct response copywriting to Jack White from The White Stripes and The Dead Weather. Rob: Okay. This sounds like a good story. Valentina: Yeah, kind of. I started as an agency copywriter. I worked at a local agency for a couple of years, but then I had to switch cities. I moved to another city, so I had to look for a job. I found an internship as a direct response copywriter and I was like, “What is that? I had never heard about that before.” I read about it. I found it very interesting and I thought that is a very good opportunity to learn something new. What I did was apply to that copywriting internship. What I didn’t know was that the person in charge of the applications was the secretary of the company. What she did was check every single person who applied on Facebook to see if they have the same taste in music as her because she had no girls on the team. There are only guys and no one there to, I don’t know, share a common interest with her. She looked at my Facebook page and she saw that I had liked Jack White’s page. She was like, “This girl, I want this girl on my team.” Yes. She went to her boss and she oversold me on the whole thing. When I went to the interview, the guy was so excited to talk to me. I felt like I was Madonna. He was like, “Oh my god. I heard so many wonderful things about you.” I was a rookie copywriter who had no idea what direct response copywriting was, but I got the internship. I didn’t know that they worked with a certain niche, which was survival. I was used to work in an agency where you just worked on whatever account the agency got. I was very surprised that my first copy project was for an info product, an eBook called Survive Apocalypse. I thought it was a joke. I was absolutely convinced it was a test, the kind of test that you get in copywriting interviews here they say, “Imagine we’re in the desert and you’re selling sand to me.” I was absolutely convinced it was one of those tests, like Survive Apocalypse was ridiculous, but then I got an email from my boss with the eBook Survive Apocalypse and another book that was called The Ultimate Desktop Copy Coach by Clayton Makepeace. If you’re not familiar with that book, it’s a great book for direct response copywrite

For our 50th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, we’re doing things a little differently. Actually, quite a bit differently. We’ve flipped the microphone and invited Ry Schwartz back for another visit—but this time to ask questions of copywriters Kira Hug and Rob Marsh (your humble hosts for all the other episodes). Ry does his best to get the goods from us. In the process we cover… • Rob’s advice on how to have a happy marriage (obviously he hasn’t had to give it a lot of thought) • how copywriting applies to marriage • the nicest thing anyone has ever said to Kira • what Rob and Kira would look for if they were hiring a “copy cub” • what they do to learn new things every day • the music they listen to (or don’t) when they write—you may be surprised • what Kira and Rob would do right now if they had to rebuild their businesses from scratch • what they’ve learned as they created a coaching program • what they would do if they couldn’t be copywriters any more Plus what they think is the most important thing for copywriters to do today, Ry’s better-than-expected-but-still-bad Irish accent, a few music clips and more. If you like 80s hip hop, Disney mermaids and great copywriting advice, you’ll want to click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript. The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Sponsor: AirStory Narcos Chuck Taylors James Wedmore The Voice Hillary Weiss It’s Tricky (Run DMC) I Love You (Climax Blue’s Band) The Things You Never Remember (Dave Brubeck ) Genie in a Bottle (Christina Aguilera) Hips Don’t Lie (Shakira) Ry’s announcement episode Rob’s book The Copywriter Think Tank Tanya Geisler on the Imposter Complex The Copywriter Accelerator Rick Steeves Under Pressure (David Bowie and Queen) The Little Mermaid Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity Full Transcript: The Copywriter Club Podcast is sponsored by Airstory, the writing platform for professional writers who want to get more done in half the time. Learn more at Airstory.co/club. Ry: Hi, all right. I’m interviewing you guys today, that’s fun. Kira: I’m a little nervous. Ry: A little nervous? I have some good questions here, I watched Narcos all weekend, so I have a lot of drug-related questions. Kira: Oh, my god. Ry: Yeah, it’s just where my brain is going. This almost blends perfectly well with my first question, but we haven’t done the actual intro yet. I’m going to do it in a British accent. What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits, then stealing an idea or two to inspire your own work, that’s what I get to do today at The Copywriter Club Podcast. I also get to put on a terrible Irish accent and I’m doing it because we are flipping the microphone, that’s an awkward thing to say; but we’re turning the microphone on the other side of the virtual table. I get to ask Rob and Kira the awkward questions about life, business, copywriting, and all the amazing things in between. Thanks for letting me do this and thanks for being on your own show, guys. Rob: Yeah, you haven’t even told us who you are yet. Kira: We’re just supposed to know after that brilliant accent. Ry: I’m a ghost, I think we should only reveal it at the end, to see if people could guess who this has been the entire team. Kira: That’s a good taste. Ry: Hint, it is Rob’s younger self coming back. Rob: Much better looking, much smarter, younger self. Yes. Ry: Yes, who initially turned older Rob on to wearing Chuck Taylors, so it’s is not old Rob, yet. Yes, thanks for being here. That’s an awkward transition. I don’t know how you guys do segues so much better than I just did. But, we will start off by talking about Kira’s wedding anniversary because that is currently happening. So, talk to us about the last six years. Kira: Oh my gosh. Ry: I mean, we’re starting off light. If you could write a headline for the last six years, what would it be? Kira: Oh my lord, my armpits are sweating. I feel like I’m in the hot seat, it’s terrifying. Ry: This is like an underhand soft pitch. This is the warm up round. Kira: This is a bad idea. Whoever came up with this idea, very bad. Yeah, I’m happy to have hit my six year anniversary with my beloved, so. We had a great weekend and just reflecting. I feel like with the start of the school year, and the fall, and change of seasons. I don’t know I’m feeling this change within my business and within my life of just kind of wanting to figure out where I’m going next. So, this conversation comes at a good time. Ry: Amazing. Rob, if you were to give Kira any amount of advice, being married for twenty plus years now- Kira: I like that. Ry: What would that be? Rob: Man, that is… Kira: Yeah, Rob. Come on. Rob: So, this is a little bit unfair, because when we have guests on the podcast, we actually prep them with questions. We actually se

For the 49th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, Sean D’Souza is here to talk about about the psychological tactics that get people to respond to your sales message. Kira and Rob go deep with Sean asking about how he started his business and what he wants from it today. Sean talks about: • how he got into copywriting, then out, then back in. • how a short presentation inspired by Jay Abraham inspired The Brain Audit • the seven “red bags” of The Brain Audit and how they work together • the questions he asks when creating a sales page • the “x-ray vision” problem that books and courses suffer from • why teaching is the best kind of selling • how to establish yourself as an expert • what kind of testimonials you should have on your sales pages (would you believe they should be 1500 words?) • and more… Perhaps most importantly for overworked copywriters, we asked Sean how he manages to take three months of vacation every year and how his morning routine helps him maintain his energy and effectiveness. These are ideas we need to try. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript. The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Sponsor: AirStory Leo Burnett Psychotactics Good to Great by Jim Collins Jay Abraham The Brain Audit 5000 BC Superman Article Writing Course Six questions for testimonials Mixergy interview Michael Phelps Bob Bowman The Three Month Vacation Podcast Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity Full Transcript: The Copywriter Club Podcast is sponsored by Airstory, the writing platform for professional writers who want to get more done in half the time. Learn more at Airstory.co/club. Rob: What if you could hangout with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That’s what Kira and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast. Kira: You’re invited to join the club for Episode 49 as we chat with author, speaker, cartoonist, and copywriter Sean D’Souza about psychological triggers that get customers to say yes, creating brand fanatics, how to become an expert in any field, and why he takes so much time off to recharge. Welcome, Sean. Thanks for joining us. Rob: Hey, Sean. Sean: It’s a pleasure to speak to both of you. Kira: Well, we’ve love to start with your story. How did you end up as a copywriter and a business owner? Sean: I always wanted to be a copywriter. When I was in university, that’s what I wanted to do. I had this goal, when I was going to be 30, I was going to be in this agency. I was going to be creative director of that agency. So it was very clear to me, which is why in university when I was studying accounting and stuff, my grades started to go down for the first time in my life. As soon as I left university, I went to Leo Burnett, which is the … I lived in Mumbai, India, and the kind of branch of Leo Burnett that was there. I went and spoke to the creative director, and she said, “You know you’re just a cartoonist. You’re not a copywriter.” I said, “Yes, I know that, but here’s what I’ll do. I’ll work with you a month and at the end of the month, you decide whether you want me to stay, and then you pay me. Or you know if I don’t like you after a month, then I’ll leave.” So it was pretty brash, but they took me on and that was the start of working with several advertising agencies. We’re going back now to 1995, I think, so it’s a long time ago. So I worked in a couple of agencies, and then, at some point, I started thinking, “Well, this is not what I want to do,” and I went back to cartooning. At that point, I was drawing cartoons for these magazines, but also for these organizations. What I found was their copy was really bad, and that my cartoons were getting kind of mutilated or defaced or destroyed because of their bad copy. That’s when I got back into copywriting and I started enjoying myself. I didn’t think I would enjoy myself as much as just drawing cartoons, but I started enjoying myself. Then, once again, I just started doing that for a living, and I left the country. I left India and I came to New Zealand in the year 2000. At that point, I had no interest in copywriting. I had no interest in anything, but cartooning again. So it’s been pretty much a rollercoaster ride before we started up with Psychotactics. Kira: Why did you leave copywriting twice? It sounds like twice, or maybe more than that, and go back to cartooning. Was it burnout or were you just kind of tired of it and wanted a change? What triggered those changes for you? Sean: I always follow the things that make me happy and I’ve always had that deep within me. That I need to do the things that make me happy, not that makes everybody else happy. In the first agency, I just jumped ships really. I just went to the second job because it paid more. But in the second agenc

Copywriter Marcella Allison is the only person who has “cubbed” for the biggest names in copywriting including Parris Lampropolous, Clayton Makepeace, David Deutch and Mark Ford. And she’s learned a lot along the way. Marcella stopped by our virtual studio to chat with Rob and Kira about: • how she got started as a copywriter (twice) • whether copywriters can develop a talent for writing about complex things • how an unexpected kiss from Marty Edelston transformed her career • the importance of mentorship in building your career in copywriting • the top lessons she learned from two of her mentors • how to effectively use the feedback you get from a mentor, and • the lesson David Deutch accidentally taught her about ego. Plus, Marcella shares the “beginning painter” learning trick she recommends if you want to break into a copywriting niche. This episode is another good one you won’t want to miss. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript. Most of the people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Sponsor: AirStory Ry Schwartz Brian Kurtz F&W Publications Schaeffer’s Investment Research Money Map Press David Deutch Parris Lampropolous Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain AWAI Agora Financial Kevin Addington Bottomline Lori Haller Marty Edelston Mark Ford Clayton Makepeace Stansbury Research Chris Alsop Advanced Bionutritionals John Carlton’s Simple Copywriting System Kevin Rogers Ask Method Product Launch Formula Early to Rise Hay House Natural Health Sherpa Titanides.com Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity Full Transcript: The Copywriter Club Podcast is sponsored by Airstory, the writing platform for professional writers who want to get more done in half the time. Learn more at Airstory.co/club. Kira: What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That’s what Rob and I do every week at the Copywriter Club Podcast. Rob: You’re invited to join the club for episode 48 as we chat with freelance copywriter Marcella Allison about how she became a copywriter working with A list mentors like Parris Lampropoulos and David Deutsch and her secret for landing a steady stream of clients without a website. Kira: Marcella, welcome. Marcella: Hi, guys. I’m going to be notorious for that now. Like everyone’s going to be like, “I can’t believe she doesn’t have her own website.” You guys are going to hear about that. Rob: You’re actually not our first guest that didn’t have a website. Marcella: Oh good. Rob: At least until they got on the podcast. Ry Schwartz is a copywriter in the internet space, didn’t have a website last year when we talked to him. He does now finally so maybe this will be the spark that gets you a website, Marcella. Kira: Or maybe you just don’t need it because you’re that good. Marcella: I don’t know about that. Kira: Marcella, I think a good place to start is we had met at our titans masterclass, Brian Kurtz’s group and you were my advocate during the hot seat session and I think you were the best. I forget if we called it an advocate. Basically, you were representing my needs and you were the best one there. So I oh you big time and I’m excited to dig more into how you got into copywriting and hear more about your experiences so far. So I think a good place to start is with just your story. How did you end getting into copywriting? Marcella: Well, one thing, I have to I’ve a big shout out to Brian Kurtz because I have to say the reason I was a good advocate was I had trial by fire at his titans event being an advocate for 30 people that day. Kira: That makes sense. Marcella: I did have a bit of practice. I did have a bit of practice. Kira: I did not know that. That makes sense. Marcella: That’s a whole another podcast story, believe me. So really, I had two entry points into direct response copywriting and it’s kind of come back around full circle which is very funny. So when I graduated from college in 1987, there were no jobs for love nor money as my mother would say because we’re right in the middle of the recession and I had an English degree which was even harder to find a job. Since then, we’ve kind of come around to the idea that we’re sort of these nice, well-rounded humanitarian people. But back then nobody knew what do with an English degree. So my first job was actually running a book club that was called The Graphic Artists Book Club for F&W Publications in Cincinnati back in 1987 and I wrote the little blurbs, these were book clubs where you got a little bulletin each month and it would tell you about the books and you would get a book auto-shipped to you every month. Even though it was called The Graphic Artists Book Club like we had maybe one or two books on doing graphic design on your computer, this was before any of these

Do you struggle with impostor syndrome (or more accurately impostor complex)? Then you’re going to love this episode. Tanya Geisler stops by The Copywriter Club Podcast to talk with Rob and Kira all about why we struggle to believe in ourselves and our work. It’s an evolutionary behavior that’s designed to protect us, but in today’s modern world, often keeps us from doing our best and most important work. In this interview Tanya shares: • the background on the “discovery” of impostor complex • how it affects both men and women • the three primary reasons we have impostor complex • the 12 lies of the impostor complex • the six behavioral traits we default to when we experience impostor complex Plus Tanya shares a simple “hack” for dealing with the impostor complex when it rears its ugly head. You’re going to want to listen to this one. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript. The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Sponsor: AirStory Tanya’s TED Talk Pauline Clance Suzanne Imes Secret Thoughts of Successful Women Neil Gaimon Amanda Palmer Meryl Streep Maya Angelou John Lennon Brene Brown Dunning Kruger Effect Liz Gilbert Chumba Wumba OpenSource.com Mean Girls Amy Cuddy Malcom Gladwell Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity Full Transcript: The Copywriter Club Podcast is sponsored by Airstory, the writing platform for professional writers who want to get more done in half the time. Learn more at Airstory.co/club. Rob: What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes, and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work. That’s what Kira and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast. Kira: You’re invited to join the club for Episode 47 as we chat with leadership coach Tanya Geisler about the Imposter Syndrome and owning your authority, working with a coach, amplifying your voice, and how copywriters can deal with the comparison trap. Rob: Hey, Tanya. Hey, Kira. Kira: You’re welcome. Tanya: That’s so much for having me. Real excited to be here. Rob: We’re excited to have you here. Kira: Yeah. Tanya, you were recommended from one of our club members, Helen, who said that all the conversations in our club right now are … Well, not all of them, but a lot of them are around feeling like an imposter, a lot of self-doubt, especially because we have a lot of new copywriters in our club. This is what you talk about day in and day out. So we’re really grateful that you’re here to kind of just address this challenge that we all are facing head on, and hopefully we can help some copywriters along the way. Tanya: May it be so. Kira: A good place to start is with your story. You know what, especially as I’ve heard you, I’ve heard your name in the past, watched your TED video, checked out your website, and you’ve stepped into your starring role, but I always wonder, when did you do that, and was it easy for you? Were you always in a starring role? Could you tell us your story? Tanya: I want to laugh. The first thing I want to do is laugh. Yeah, it was so easy. No, not much about this has been easy at all. It’s been tons of self-doubt, tons of, “What do I know? Who am I?” I talk about there are 12 lies that the Imposter Complex wants us to believe. And I believed them for probably the first … Even if I put a name, a number on this, I worry that it’s going to trigger people, but really and truly for probably the first four to five years of my work as a leadership coach I was really coming up against the Imposter Complex, like huge. And what I started to recognize was this through line that was inhibiting me from stepping into my starring role. That wasn’t the language that I would’ve had back then, but the through line that was inhibiting me from being the fullest expression of the kind of coach leader that I wanted to be was very similar to the same through lines that were riveting through the experience of my clients. When somebody named the Imposter Complex, I swear to you it was like I heard the angels sing. It was this like, “Oh, it has a name.” It just really dialed things down for me in terms of my self-doubt, and it really then dialed up my sense of purpose and what I was here to help others and help others heal in themselves. Kira: Can we start with what exactly the Imposter Complex is? Tanya: Yes. I always start with a history lesson. The Imposter Phenomenon is the term coin termed by a clinical psychologist, Pauline Clance and Suzanne Imes back in 1978. So they were working with high-functioning, high-achieving women, as it happened, and they noticed that with these women, in spite of consistent and irrefutable data to the contrary, these women seemed incapable of internalizing their success. It didn’t matter what they had done; they would attribute anything that they had done spectacularly

Because this is a short informational episode all about our upcoming mastermind group that we’re calling The Copywriter Think Tank, we’re not doing a transcript for this one. However, to find out more about The Think Tank and what we have planned you can go to www.copywriterthinktank.com and get on the notification list. Click to listen…

For the 46th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, our friend, copywriter and comedian, Lianna Patch stops by to tell her story (she starts at the very beginning) about making copywriting her career. During the next 40ish minutes share also shares: • Why she chose humor as her “hook” for copywriting clients • her snarky answer to the dumbest question Rob has ever asked • the enormously helpful life hack that would freak out AA • how the rules of comedy can improve your copywriting • how to be funny without being nasty • what she did to land her first (and second and third) speaking engagements • how she deals with projects that scare her And we cover a whole lot of other ground too. Like what brands are doing a good job with humorous copy and the advice she has for new copywriters. Plus, Lianna is the first guest to tell a joke on the podcast. As you’ve come to expect, this is another solid episode packed with ideas you can put to use in your business. To hear it, click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript. The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Sponsor: AirStory The Copywriter Mastermind Boxed Wine CTA Conference Lianna’s Sustainable E-Commerce Post Aaron Orendorf Unbounce New Orleans Entrepreneur Week Conversion World DeepDyve Amy Harrison Boomerang for Gmail Snapcopy.co James Turner Foot Cardigan Jennifer Havice Wistia Dropps PunchlineCopy 5 Ways to Be Funnier in Your Copy Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity Full Transcript: The Copywriter Club Podcast is sponsored by Airstory, the writing platform for professional writers who want to get more done in half the time. Learn more at Airstory.co/club. Kira: What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failure, their work processes, and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That’s what Rob and I do every week at the Copywriter Club Podcast. Rob: You’re invited to join the club for episode 46, as we chat with freelance copywriter, Lianna Patch about the challenges of leaving an agency job to strike out on her own, getting attention at conferences, her copy optimization service called Snap, and whether there’s a place for rubber chickens and whoopee cushions in copywriting. Kira: Hi, Liana. Hi, Rob. Rob: Hey, guys. Lianna: Hey. Kira: How’s it going? Lianna: Good. Thanks for having me. Kira: You’re welcome. I think a good place to start is just finding out if you were funny as a kid, and what you wanted to be when you grew up. I feel like that’s the question I want to know. Lianna: Oh, okay. Rob: Did you always have a buzzer in your hand for handshakes? And rattlesnake eggs to hand the kids at school? Lianna: I think I was the unintentionally funny kid. I still have this expression, like I still have serious resting bitch face. My parents used to call me Little Miss Thundercloud because my resting face. I would say things that I thought were very serious and they would laugh at me, and then I would go, “Don’t laugh.” So, it’s kind of like a 180 from there. Rob: Tell us your story. Lianna: My story? Well, my dad loved my mom very much and so after they had my brother they were like, “This one’s a dud. We should probably try again,” and then I was born. Fast forwarding to now, I’ve worked in a couple agency settings, it didn’t seem to stick. I was doing my own stuff on the side throughout, and then everything kind of gelled when I took the first Copywriter Mastermind with Joanna Wiebe and I started to figure out that I should pinpoint humor, and that I should focus just on copywriting because I had noticed that I was getting way too deep into editing, especially publications editing, and I hated it so much. But, then I looked at my work schedule and it was like, “All I’m doing is editing magazine and I’m not writing anything.” So, I sort of refocused, rebranded, and I’ve been writing fun, and funny stuff, and much more conversion copy oriented stuff since then. Rob: So, Lianna, you said that during the Mastermind you sort of figured out that you wanted to focus on humor. What was that process and why did you land on humor as opposed to something else? Lianna: I think there was some of that soul searching stuff that all of the online gurus are always telling you to. Like, “What do you love doing the most? What makes you happy? What doesn’t feel like work?” I had also just interviewed one of the people who runs the comedy theater here, that I eventually got involved in, and I had a good time chatting with him and then he said, “Why don’t you come take a class?” so, I did that and then i ended up taking all the classes and graduating from the Conservatory, and I’ve been doing improv, and sketch, and stand-up since then. It was like, “Okay, I’m already doing comedy in my life, why don’t I try to make my work more fun? Who says I’m not allowed to do that? Why isn’t anyone

This is the 45th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast and we’re joined by online business expert Zach Spuckler. As you listen, you’ll see that Zach’s energy and enthusiasm is contagious—and it quickly becomes clear why we booked him for the show. Zach shares how he started his first business at age 12, started a food blog and a few other businesses before deciding he needed to work in a business that he loved. In the interview Zach talks about: • how he knew it was time to do “something new” in his business • how he built his “authority” as an expert (and what you should do to build yours) • his process to ensure he focuses on the most important things first • his approach to discipline and showing up every day • what his idea of great copy is (we think it’s spot on), and • how he uses funnels in his business Zach also shares his thoughts about what beginning copywriters can do to get their businesses off the ground and the massive difference a team and systems can make for your business. To hear it all, simply click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript. The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Sponsor: AirStory Heart Soul Hustle Amy Porterfield James Wedmore Jeff Bezos (Amazon) Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity Full Transcript: The Copywriter Club Podcast is sponsored by Airstory, the writing platform for professional writers who want to get more done in half the time. Learn more at Airstory.co/club. Rob: What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That’s what Kira and I do every week at the Copywriter Club Podcast. Kira: You’re invited to join the club for episode 45 as we chat with online business strategist Zach Spuckler about starting a business from scratch with no list and no prospects, how to create Facebook ads and funnels that work, the critical part discipline plays in a successful business and how we can think bigger about our businesses. Rob: Hey Zach, Kira! Kira: How’s it going? Welcome Zach. Zach: Thanks for having me. Rob: Yeah, it’s great to have you here. Zach: I am excited to be here. Kira: Zach, I think a great place to start is with your story especially for people or copywriters who don’t know who you are and what you’re all about. Zach: Absolutely. So my story interestingly enough starts about 10 years ago when I was about 12 years old. The only reason I remember that it starts when I was 12 is I made my first dollar online and I had to use my dad’s social security number because I wasn’t actually old enough to get paid yet. So really he made my first dollar online. I just cashed the check and did the work so to speak. Over the last 10 years, I started and I’ve done everything online that you can imagine in terms of dabbling. I don’t have extensive knowledge of everything, but if you can make a buck doing it online, there’s a good chance I’ve tried it. Whether it’s website flipping. I did some affiliate marketing through Amazon for a while. I used to run some niche sites. I was in a direct sales company that I still get a tiny almost not worth mentioning commission check for most weeks. I’ve done food blogging and digital courses in the marketing space and out of the marketing space. I’ll fast forward to save time a little bit, but about a year and a half, two years ago, I was running a food blog. I kind of hit this wall where I loved my food blog so much. It was starting to generate revenue. People were coming to me asking me about how to get more reach on their blog. We’ve got Pinterest pins now that are up to 10,000, 20,000 re-pins. We were getting featured in some major publications in the food blogging space. It was all really fine and dandy but I started to kind of burnout. The best way I can explain it is if you’ve ever had a hobby that somebody offers to pay for and suddenly it becomes like no fun at all. A lot of us it’s like you’re really great at baking and then you decide that you’re going to sell your cupcakes and then suddenly you hate the kitchen. Well that kind of happened to me. Like quite literally I started to despise the kitchen. I didn’t like my food blog. I wrote this post that I was going to take a three month hiatus. I really went soul searching at that time if you will to say, “What really lights me up?” At that point, I’d been online so to speak for about seven and a half, eight years which is a really long time to be in an industry like this. Digital marketing and studying marketing and I said, “What has really been pushing me to keep going? Why am I even still here?” Because by all outside perspective, the food blog was going great. It was starting to earn money but I wasn’t happy. So what was I doing wrong? I really evaluated what had been making me so excited about the prospect of

Copywriter Abbey Woodcock stops by The Copywriter Club Podcast studio to share how she went from being a single mom and journalist struggling to make ends meet to a highly paid copywriter specializing in complex launch sequences. And she shares a few of the hard-won lessons along the way. Things like: • when you should absolutely NOT buy that course or coaching program • the #1 thing she learned working for Ramit Sethi • how she writes sales pages that make customers think she is reading their minds • the “table stakes” principle for delivering solid copy • what she does to make sure she’s not the smartest person in the room (even if she is) • the surprising thought Abbey has on every single project she works on • why and how she set up systems for her business • how you can get to the point where you can work on large launch projects, and • the worst things she sees going on in the copywriting world today As we were wrapping up the interview, Abbey saved the best for last, sharing the story of how Ramit Sethi was willing to test her ideas—even though his gut said she was wrong and it would cost him thousands of dollars. You’ll want to hear this, and the rest of the interview. To do it, click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript. The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Sponsor: AirStory Brian Kurtz Ramit Sethi Narnia The controversial article PLF InfusionSoft Thebusinessofcopy.com Onlifeandwriting.com Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity Full Transcript: The Copywriter Club Podcast is sponsored by Airstory, the writing platform for professional writers who want to get more done in half the time. Learn more at Airstory.co/club. Kira: What if you could you hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That’s what Rob and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast. Rob: You’re invited to join the club for Episode 44, as we chat with copywriter Abbey Woodcock about her journey from struggling single mom to her place on the A-List. Creating systems for your copywriting business, finding the right voice for your clients, and what she thinks of the gurus who say you should sacrifice everything to invest in your business. Kira: Hi, Abbey. Hey, Rob. How’s it going? Abbey: Awesome. Rob: Hey, guys. Abbey: Super excited to be here. Kira: Welcome. Well, before we start recording, I think Rob mentioned that he’s been stalking you and aware of you for the past year. I really started paying attention to you when I met you in March at Bryan Kurtz’s Titans Master Class. You gave a presentation to the group about helping creatives build systems. Abbey: Right. Kira: Which was spoke to me as a creative who just sucks at systems. With your business partner, you’ve figured out how to make it work. I know we’re going to dive into that and a lot of other things, our topics today. To start, Abbey, let’s start with your story. I know you mentioned that it’s not a rags to riches story. But let’s dive into how you got into copywriting. Abbey: Yeah. Sure. I always say that my copywriting journey started in seventh grade because I wrote a 30-page letter to a boy in seventh grade to ask him to the school dance. That was my first long-form fields letter. Rob: Did it convert? Abbey: No. No, zero convert on that one. Kira: 30 pages? Abbey: Yeah, 30 pages. Kira: 30 pages were necessary, okay. Got it. Rob: That gives a little bit of context for what we’re going to ask about Ramit and what you’ve done for him, because 30 pages is short for some of the stuff he does. Abbey: Yeah. Absolutely, I was prepping many years ago for that job. Then I graduated high school, which was exciting. My goal was to actually go into journalism. I did that, but the thing about being a reporter is it’s very long hours and very little pay. Right out of college I got a job as a production editor and a reporter for a newspaper. That is the story that you guys had read. At that time in my life, I had no money. I had two really young children. My two children are 15 months apart. They were both under two years old. Kira: Oh my gosh. Abbey: It was a really tough time financially for me. I was working crazy hours and trying to figure out all this, being a new mom. It was really difficult for a while. We’re talking having rent payments not happen and services shut off, cell phone and cable and all that. After that I went into corporate marketing. Not because I wanted to be a marketing director necessarily, but it was better pay and better hours. I had to prioritize with my family. That’s how I discovered this whole world of copywriting, was through working in marketing and I discovered that copywriting was what I really loved to do. About two years after that is when I discovered this whole online world that we seem to fin

Former professional basketball player and current email copywriter, Big Jason Henderson, joins Rob and Kira for the 43rd episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. Jason shares how he went from Australian basketball star to highly paid email copywriter and in the process talks about: • the too-easy-to-believe advice for writing great emails • how he keeps his emails personal by writing to “one” person • the recommended number of links that should go in every email (jk) • the tools he uses to track clicks and revenue • his go-to writing formula for emails • what it means to sell the click vs. sell the product • which is the better motivator—the carrot or the stick • why there’s no such thing as an email expert, and • how he manages stress and overwork (when he doesn’t sleep for two days) Another eye-opening episode packed with lots of lessons, tactics and strategies you can use in your own copywriting business. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript. The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Sponsor: AirStory MECLabs Marketing Sherpa Email Summit Gary Halbert Caleb O Dowd Scott Haines Revolution Golf Clicky Email Response Warrior Course Clayton Makepeace Dr. Flint McGlaughlin Tepsii Arman Morin Seminar GKIC (Dan Kennedy’s events) Ryan Deiss Russel Brunson Tony Flores John Carlton’s Simple Writing System Samuel Markowitz Amit Suneja UFC Parris Lampropolous David Deutsch Shortcutcopywritingsecrets.com Tim Ferris Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity Full Transcript: The Copywriter Club Podcast is sponsored by Airstory, the writing platform for professional writers who want to get more done in half the time. Learn more at Airstory.co/club. Rob: What if you can hang out with seriously talented copy writers and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work, that’s what Kira and I do every week and The Copywriter Club Podcast. Kira: You’re invited to join the club for episode 43 as we chat with email copywriter big Jason Henderson about what he has learned about sending more than a billion emails, creating high performance email funnels, the things you should do with email that the experts tell you not to do, and why your value proposition is the most important element for increasing conversation. Rob: Hi Kira. Hi Jason. Jason: Hi, good to be here. Kira: Great to have you Jason. Jason: Thanks for having me. Rob: Jason, I think we really want to start with your story, but before we get into that, I got to know how big are you? Jason: I’m only about 6’11”. Rob: Okay, so not that big then. Kira: Not that big. That’s nothing. Rob: Yeah, why don’t we start with your story. You’re famous for email, tell us how you got started as an email copywriter? Jason: In 1996, I was playing professional basketball in Australia, and it was really laid back so I had plenty of free time and the local universities let me go into their computer labs, so I was just going around and I started with Acl and local businesses, and I started doing email and e-commerce back then. Little did I know, that e-commerce was going to be huge, I should have stuck with it. Yeah, I just started with that and I became … Have you heard of the about.com brand? Rob: Yes. Jason: So back then, they were the mining company and I was the exercise guy. So they basically worked with us to drive as much traffic as possible, so they were teaching us about building email lists, writing articles, attracting free traffic, and for email all they said was, “You know it’s like having a one on one conversation, so if you can do that, then you can write an email.” And that’s basically all I knew. I was like, “Yeah, I can do that.” I think that’s an advantage for me starting way back then in 1996 because all I had was that one simple statement, it’s like having a one on one conversation, versus a lot of people today, they’re met with a lot of BS and like don’t do this, you can’t do that, and this doesn’t work when basically people are projecting their failures and what they can’t do on everybody else. Like, if I can’t do it, no one can. But I didn’t have that, so I was using personal images, and writing very personal conversational emails. And then in 2006, I came upon MECLABS and MarketingSherpa and that was huge because I’d heard a lot of IM crowd talking about them but when I went and visited MECLABS and MarketingSherpa, I found they weren’t really practicing what they preached. So this last April, was my 12th year going to the MECLABS MarketingSherpa email summit in Las Vegas. I’ve spoken there twice, I’ve taken their email messaging value proposition development, landing page optimization, and online testing certifications probably about eight times each. So that’s where I’ve gotten a lot of my email knowledge, email ideas, and just ability to come into sce

In the 42nd episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, Kira and Rob talk with Casey Slaughter Stanton about his career path and how he found his way into marketing by pushing a lawn mower. Today he runs his own marketing and tech business, and focuses on what he calls “functional marketing”. During our conversation, we asked Casey about his approach to business and working with customers. He shared: • How you can sell more by selling to only one person • How empathetic guessing can help you connect better with your customers • The DOS formula and how it helps him understand his client’s business • His approach to creating proposal clients can’t say “no” to • How to qualify potential clients so you only work with the right ones • What he learned working with Gary Bencivenga and Ted Nicolas (he didn’t know who they were at the time), and • The “head, heart, and home” questions he asks about each of his clients This one is less about copywriting and more about selling your client on your services and expertise. If you struggle to land more than half of the clients who you talk to about a project, this is a must-listen episode. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript. The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Sponsor: AirStory Tony Robbins Tech Guys Who Get Marketing Dr. Marshall Rosenburg Genius Network Joe Polish KOLBE Dan Sullivan StrengthsFinder Gary Bencivenga Ted Nicholas Peter Diamandis Abundance: The Future is Better than You Think Bold: How to Go Big, Create Wealth and Impact the World 10X Talks Strategic Coach Titans of Direct Response Brian Kurtz Parris Lampropolous CaseyStanton.com The Proposal Template Casey shared at Titans Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity Full Transcript: The Copywriter Club Podcast is sponsored by Airstory, the writing platform for professional writers who want to get more done in half the time. Learn more at Airstory.co/club. Kira: What if you can hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts? Ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work. That’s what Rob and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast. Rob: You’re invited to join the club for episode 42 as we chat with Casey Slaughter Stanton about how single proprietors like copywriters can better market themselves, improving the sales process, creating client proposals that clients say yes to, and what he calls city dating. Kira: Hey, Casey. Hey, Rob. How is it going? Rob: Guys. Casey: Hey, great. Great, great to be on, you all. Kira: Casey, a really great place to start would be with your story and since most of our audience has not heard of you before so let’s start there. Casey: Sure. Back in 2008 I graduated from Michigan State University with a Bachelor’s degree in Environmental Policy. When I say graduated, I just did the air quotes because I had to plead to my native American music professor to actually give me a D minus in the class and I think he gave me a D. He even threw me a bone there so I graduated somehow. I was pretty shocked and I hit the workforce and I was looking for jobs immediately after school thinking that I could get into a sales role. What I found was that unemployment was a real big issue and I watch the unemployment stats go from 5% to 6 to 7 to 8 to 9. While I was still looking for a job, they topped out at 10.5% and I was screwed because I had no real experience in anything and environment policy. It kind of meant I could only work in lancing and I just couldn’t survive there. What I was forced to do was move back home with my parents and I took the basement over and picked up a job mowing lawns and spent a whole summer on the back of a lawn mower trying to figure out what I was going to do. Lucky for me I was able to grab a couple Tony Robbins tapes from the library. I found a bunch of resources online and just started listening and learning and just overloading my brain with different ideas and seeing what was out there. I was mowing lawns at a guy’s place, his name was Dave and he had this beautiful house and he just really was like living the good life. Every time I saw him he was like having a Mai Tai or like a tea out on his deck overlooking the bay. I asked him one day. I said, “Hey, Dave, how did you do it? How did you get to be so successful that you could afford a place like this?” He said, “Well, Casey, I invented a product and got it patented and I have a group of distributors that sell it.” I said, “I want to do it, man. I want to live this life.” He said, “You can buy some of the products and you can go ahead and sell them.” I said, “Could you front me? I’m a little short on cash.” He said, “No, I can’t.” A few weeks later I’d saved enough money up and I bought ten products of his and went door to door and I sold a couple and I made more money that first day of selling door to

Copy Chief Kevin Rogers is in the club for a special inbetween-isode. This is a rare, second episode this week and it’s a good one. Kevin shares his journey from high school drop out with ambitions of stocking shelves at the grocery store to highly paid copywriter, then chief of his own community for copywriters and other business owners. Here’s a sample of what we covered: • How Kevin landed his first job (and had to create writing samples first) • His “go with your gut” principle for writing good copy • How relationships propelled his career forward and the “mentee mindset” • His four-part joke formula for creating stellar sales hooks • The three rules Kevin follows when he gives a speech (and the results) • What it takes to be an expert in something (and why most writers should have a “bat signal” talent) • John Carlton’s Pro Code, and • What really makes Kevin angry Plus we got the details on Kevin’s upcoming event in St. Petersburg called Copy Chief Live. It sounds like an amazing event that anyone who writes copy that gets conversions might want to check out. One more thing: it looks like Kevin may have set a new record for links on his show notes page. And it’s easily the funniest list we’ve ever published (at least until we get to Carrot Top. That guy’s not funny). Check them all out. And don’t forget to click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript. Most of the people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Sponsor: AirStory George Carlin Rodney Dangerfield Jerry Seinfeld Sam Kinison Bill Hicks Jim Breuer Billy Gardell Star Search Ed McMahon Carrot Top John Carlton Gary Halbert Gary Bencivenga CA Magazine Nothing in Common Vin Montelo Copy Chief Clayton Makepeace Daniel Levis Carline Anglade Cole Rachel Rofé Ryan Lee Dean Jackson Nicole Piper Todd Brown Ryan Levesque James Schramko Ben Johnson Ross O’Lochlainn Jody Raynsford Wardee Harmon Parris Lampropolous Joe Schriefer Marcella Allison Henry Bingaman Copy Chief Live PI4MM.com Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity Full Transcript: The Copywriter Club Podcast is sponsored by Airstory, the writing platform for professional writers who want to get more done in half the time. Learn more at Airstory.co/club. Kira: What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes, and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That’s what Rob and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast. Rob: You’re invited to join the club for this special in-between-i-sode as we chat with copywriter and copy chief, Kevin Rogers, about his journey from standup comedian to highly sought after copywriter. The joke formula that became his secret for writing great hooks, mentoring other copywriters, and a special event he is putting together this Fall. Kira: Hey Kevin. Hey Rob. How’s it going? Rob: Hey guys. Kevin: Hey. Rob: Kevin, it’s great to have you here. Kevin: Man, it’s great to be here with you guys. Appreciate you having me. This will be a lot of fun. Rob: Yeah, we’ve actually had you on our list for a while, Kevin. Wanted to talk to you. You’ve got a lot of stuff going on, but let’s jump in maybe and start with your story, where you came from and how you got into copywriting? Kevin: It felt like a miracle when I found copywriting. It was like lightning striking twice in the best way in your life because I spent 10 years as a standup comedian and that was such a miracle thing to experience. A high school dropout, just had no direction. I was restless and I really hated, at one point, showing up to school every day. It just felt stupid. I don’t know what … This isn’t for me. I wasn’t going to pursue college, and I just thought it was so much cooler to work at my job stocking shelves at grocery stores like, “If I could do this all day, I’d have it made.” Rob: Aim high. Kevin: Yeah, that’s right. Quickly came to the reality that it’d be good to have something going on in life. “I don’t know what I’ll do.” Was funny enough, I was really good, I understood comedy and I loved getting laughs. My mother inspired that when I was a kid. She was my biggest … As mom’s are supposed to do, they love when you’re funny. I always had some kind of bit working, and she would, when friends would come over to the house, she would have me do my latest bit, be like an impression or I’d be wearing my little cowboy outfit and I’d do a Western accent. They were all stoned because it was the 70s and so they were a great audience, and I was killing. It really embedded in me at a young age that, “Wow, this feels good. I like this whole laughing stuff.” It was perfect timing because in the 80s, all the HBO comedy specials started coming out. They always had Carlin and some people like that doing their yearly specials, but I don’t know if you remember Rob. Kira, you may be a little younger fo

Author, coach and career change expert, Jenny Blake, joins Rob and Kira in The Copywriter Club Podcast studio this week to talk about why she organizes her book shelf by color : ). We also talk about her book, Pivot: The Only Move that Matters is Your Next One. But this isn’t just a pitch for Jenny’s book. She walked us through the process but also talked about: • How to figure out your strengths then determine where you want to be a year from now • How to scan the horizon for opportunities, people, and skills that might take you to the next level • How to experiment with your pivots to eliminate risk and find things that work • How to deal with your inner CFO who says, “you’re out of your mind” to try something new or different • The “Do, Drop or Delegate” formula for staying engaged in your work • Why you should create scalable streams of income as part of your business, and • How to build a platform so you get noticed If you’re thinking about changing careers to become a copywriter, or want to explore a new niche, or simply want to make sure you’re on the right career track, this episode is a must listen. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript. The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Sponsor: AirStory Life After College Pivot Pivot Method Tool Kit Momentum Actionable Communications SquareSpace She Can Coterie Powerbars Stand Out by Dorie Clark Harvard Business Review Fast Company Forbes Huffington Post Medium Book Yourself Solid by Michael Port David Moldawer Ramit Sethi Marie Forleo Daily Rituals by Mason Currey Delegation Ninja (use the code TCC to save $100 or just click here) Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity Full Transcript: The Copywriter Club Podcast is sponsored by Airstory, the writing platform for professional writers who want to get more done in half the time. Learn more at Airstory.co/club. Rob: What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That’s what Kira and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast. Kira: You’re invited to join the Club for episode 41, as we chat with author and career strategist Jenny Blake about her Pivot Method and what it means for copywriters and others who might be wondering what’s next, leaving Google to start her own business, dealing with burnout, and whether she really organizes the books on her shelf by color, not subject. Rob: Hey, Kira. Hey, Jenny. Kira: Hello. Jenny: Hey, thank you so much for having me. Yes, indeed, I organize by color, but I will tell you, I know where every book is because the color imprint stays in my mind. It’s really easy to zoom in, like, “Oh, yeah, that was a red book, it’s over here.” It’s not as confusing as you might think. Rob: I think a lot of writers, if they go to your website, they’re going to see the video or the pictures that you’ve got of your bookshelf. That’s one of the first things, I’m like, “Oh my gosh, all of the white books are together.” Kira: I know. I love it. Rob: “All of the green books are together.” Jenny: Oh, yeah. Rob: It makes me laugh. Jenny: The funny thing is I’ve honed this thing over three or four years of living in the same apartment, so I’ll be watching TV and I’m like, “Oh, that book needs to move one slot to the left.” What you see, it’s like my bonsai tree. I just get to prune at it every single day. What you don’t see is the back of this Ikea shelf is all the reject books that don’t have a pretty color. Rob: That is too funny. Jenny, I think a lot of our listeners may not know who you are, have seen your work. You’ve got a fantastic book that we definitely want to talk about, but maybe you could start by just telling us a little bit about your story. Jenny: The best place I like to start is that I felt like I was losing my mind every few years, that I worked at a startup for two years, I took a leave of absence from school. Then I moved over to Google. The career conversation I regret the most is the one I never had, and it was to tell the founder at the startup that I was getting bored and, I didn’t have the language for it at the time, but hitting a plateau or a pivot point. I moved over to Google, and I was at Google five-and-a-half years doing AdWords, began then later coaching and career development. Half way through my time there, I wanted to leave. I certainly thought something was wrong with me, like, “If I can’t be happy at Google, I’ll never be happy anywhere. I must be one of those entitled millennials that the media keeps talking about.” But at the same time, while I was there I trained over 1,000 people. I was there as the company grew from 6,000 to 36,000. I saw how many people were struggling with this question of what’s next. I started a blog, the Life After College website, in 2005. That’s ancient in in

Kim Krause Schwalm joins Rob and Kira to share her thoughts and advice about copywriting. She also talks about how she went from successful marketing director to control-beating copywriter in less than two years. It’s a great story. Along the way she shared her thoughts about: • climbing the copywriter ladder (and why it’s so lucrative) • how to stay in control of your writing process • the copywriting lessons she (re)learned from Parris Lampropolous and Clayton Makepeace • the one thing all A-list copywriters have in common • and why you might not want Kim to make your next lasagna It’s another great interview and look into how a fantastic copywriter runs her business. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript. The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Sponsor: AirStory Clayton Makepeace interview with Kim Boardroom Gary Bencivenga Jim Rutz Healthy Directions Ted Nicholas Kim’s L.A. Bootcamp David Deutsch Brian Kurtz Clayton Makepeace Parris Lampropolous Advanced Bionutritionals The Girls Club KimSchwalm.com TheMarketingSuperPower.com Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity Full Transcript: The Copywriter Club Podcast is sponsored by Airstory, the writing platform for professional writers who want to get more done in half the time. Learn more at Airstory.co/club. Kira: What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That’s what Rob and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast. Rob: You’re invited to join the club for episode 40 as we chat with A-list copywriter Kim Krause Schwalm about writing effective direct response controls, what steps other writers can take now to get a control beater, writing in the health and finance niches, and her ongoing efforts to help other women succeed in the business. Kira: Hi, Kim. Hi, Rob. Welcome. Rob: Kira, Kim. It’s good to talk to you guys. Kim: Hey, it’s great to be here. Rob: Kim, we are so excited to have you here, partly because I’ve known about you for several years. I think I remember reading an interview that Clayton Makepeace did with you a number of years ago, and I’ve followed your career and I know Kira and you have connected recently as well. We’re thrilled to be able to talk with you, but I think where we’d really like to get started is just your story, how you got into copywriting. Kim: I didn’t know copywriting existed as a profession until I was working in marketing for a major publishing company called Philips Publishing. I don’t know if you’ve heard of it, but for many years it was considered one of the powerhouse direct response marketing companies. In fact, it was bigger than Agora at the time. It was up there with Boardroom and Rodale and other major companies in terms of working with the very top-level copywriters, the ones that we all consider legends like Gary Bencivenga, Jim Rutz, Clayton Makepeace, et cetera. I went to work for them back in 1992, which seems like an eternity ago. I actually had had marketing management and brand management experiences with other companies. I had an MBA in marketing and I was just full-bore marketing, but I always could write copy. It was always one of the many hats I wore in different jobs. It was the same story at Philips, but at Philips it was one of these things that was really valued because so much of their business was built on strong copy. A lot of my different roles, I would write copy as well as direct marketing efforts. I ended up, after being there just a short while, I was asked to help them launch their supplement business, to promote supplements formulated by Dr. Julian Whitaker. I helped launch and run that company, which is called Healthy Directions, and you may have heard of it, and grew that to a $23 million business within three years. Worked in some other parts of the company, but after a while I realized I’ve always enjoyed copywriting, seeing the kind of lifestyle and income potential that the A-level freelance copywriters enjoyed, and that’s when I became intrigued about it. When I was pregnant with my first child I started thinking about it even more. Went back to work after having him and then after about six or seven months decided to take the leap and become a freelance copywriter. That was about 19 years ago. Kira: Wow. When you took that leap, what did it look like immediately? Did you have jobs, gigs, lined up or were you starting from scratch? Kim: I had really the best possible situation. There was a supplement company in my area. I knew the person who owned it. He hired me into a retainer arrangement, which was going to guarantee me basically about 90% of my salary that I was leaving, but it was only going to take about half of my time. Kira: Wow. Kim: I was able to bring on other clients. This is why I was able t

Copywriter and cold emailing specialist, Jorden Roper, joins Kira and Rob in The Copywriter Club Podcast studio for the 39th episode. Jorden is a three time college dropout who lost her job (the same day her husband lost his job at the same company) and managed to find several freelance clients within a month. She shares how she did it, and how she used cold emailing to find clients plus: • How you can do cold emailing that lands clients on day one • The cold emailing formula she used to grow her business • How she used Pinterest to brainstorm her brand • How to be fearless as you “put yourself out there” • How she uses Youtube to attract a different audience to her blog • How much work she put into creating and launching her course • The biggest mistake she sees new writers making today This one is packed with useful information and ideas any writer, beginner or expert, can use to grow and improve their business. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript. The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Sponsor: AirStory Craig’s List Problogger Job Board Limeleads Pinterest Jorden’s video about haters on Youtube Writing Revolt Blog Cold Emailing Course Mariah Coz’s Launch Your Signature Course Maggie Patterson Jorden’s FB Community Jorden on Twitter Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity Full Transcript: The Copywriter Club Podcast is sponsored by Airstory, the writing platform for professional writers who want to get more done in half the time. Learn more at Airstory.co/club. Rob: What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters, and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work. That’s what Kira and I do every week at the Copywriter Club Podcast. Kira: You’re invited to join the club for episode 39 as we chat with copywriter Jorden Roper about getting fired from bad jobs, and finding copywriting to pay the bills, using YouTube for brand building and outreach, what she has done differently from other copywriters to get an edge, and how copywriters can find great clients with cold emailing. Rob: Hey, Kira. Hey, Jorden. Jorden: Hey, guys. Kira: Hello. Welcome, Jorden. Jorden: Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. Rob: Yeah. It’s about time. We’ve been trying to get you on the podcast for a little while. It’s time you got here. Jorden: Yes, I’m so excited to be here. Thank you so much. Rob: Jorden, I think maybe we should start with your story. I know you’ve shared this a lot with your list, but a lot of our listeners probably haven’t heard it. You went through a time in your life when you were going through different jobs and landed where you are. Tell us about that. Jorden: Well, before I started my freelance writing business, pretty much right before, I had been working at this full-time job at a marketing agency. I was doing some writing there. It was very stressful. It was a super toxic work environment. I know a lot of people who are probably trying to break into freelance writing can relate to that, like just going to work every day, sitting in your car in the morning, and just wanting to scream or cry or whatever before you walk up to the office. That’s kind of the situation that I was in. I ended up getting fired from that job. Just a few months before that actually, my husband started working at the same job. When his contract ended, they decided to just let me go, too. Kira: What? Jorden: Yeah, we’re both out of work on the same day. Kira: Oh, no. Jorden: We walk out of the office together like, “Oh my God. What are we going to do? This is insane.” It was very stressful. Actually, I had some other stuff going on at the time, too, just within … I think within the same week before this happened, I found out that I had an early stage skin cancer on my leg. It was just one of those when it rains, it pours type situations. It was extremely stressful, but ultimately I’m very thankful for it just because I had been wanting to start freelance writing for a while before that. Getting fired gave me that little push I needed to just say, “You know what, I’m just going to go all in and make this happen.” Kira: Wow. You walk out the doors, you’re fired, and you’re like … How do you go from there to launching a business? Did it take a couple of months, or did you get a client immediately? Jorden: I landed my first clients pretty quickly. I mean, I think, just for a couple of days, my husband and I were both just kind of in this shocked, like “Oh my God. What are we going to do?” state where we were just kind of thinking about our next steps. After that, I had been reading about freelancing for a while, and I had been already thinking like, “You know, I want to make an escape plan and like get out of this job like soon for sure,” so I knew a little bit about what I needed to do. I started pret

Copywriter Jessica Manuszak joins Kira and Rob to talk all things copy for the 38th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. Jessica specializes in capturing the unique voice of her clients. In this interview, Jessica opens up and shares the details of how she’s grown her business over the past couple of years, including… (we added the ellipsis for her benefit—you’ll see why). • How she became the top-performing salesperson with absurd scripts • The “mixtape” secret for writing in her client’s voice • Her process for naming products and services • How she “justifies her copy” cuts down on edits by using Google Docs • A step-by-step rundown of her process working with clients • How she really landed several “big name” clients—she says it was luck : ( • The thing she hates most that other copywriters keep doing Lots of good ideas and information from a successful copywriter who hasn’t been in the game for decades, but is doing well nonetheless. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript. The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Sponsor: AirStory Ash Ambirge The Middle Finger Project The Little Mermaid Spotify Scrabble Dictionary Saved by the Bell Acuity Typeform World’s Best Boss Mug Neil Gaiman AAA Dove The Copywriter Club Email Lianna Patch Marian Schembari VerveandVigour.com Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity Full Transcript: The Copywriter Club Podcast is sponsored by Airstory, the writing platform for professional writers who want to get more done in half the time. Learn more at Airstory.co/club. Kira: What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes, and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That’s what Rob and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast. Rob: You’re invited to join the club for episode 38, as we chat with copywriter Jessica Manuszak about her career journey, from working in government to growing her own agency, landing and working with big name clients, finding confidence, and what she sees as the biggest opportunities for copywriters today. Kira: Hi, Jess. Hi, Rob. How’s it going? Rob: Hey guys. Jessica: Oh, hi. I’m good, thanks. Kira: Welcome to the show, Jess. We’ve been waiting. We’ve been waiting for you. Jessica: Oh man. I’m so ready. Kira: So, I think a good place to start, Jess, is just how you ended up in copywriting, especially from government finance. Jessica: It’s funny because it was a completely natural and completely unnatural transition. Right out of college, I went into telemarketing, selling like skeezy online degrees to people who didn’t need them. I was talking to like 74-year-old women, being like, “No, but engineering would really help you with your goals.” It was not good news. But that was the first time … Rob: I can think of a couple of degrees I might want to get, actually. Kira: I know. Jessica: Right, I think we can do that. Kira: Are you still selling? Jessica: Yeah, I’ll hook you up … underwater basket weaving. But that was actually the first time I ever realized how powerful personality can be when you’re selling something. Because everyone else was like, “Oh hello, Jane. Would you like to purchase this degree program?” I was leaving them voicemails, it was like, “Jane, this is Jane from the future and I’m so glad you got that degree,” just like … Kira: Did you really? Jessica: Well, yeah. Kira: Did you really leave those messages? Jessica: Mm-hmm (affirmative), 100 percent. Kira: Wow. Jessica: I actually was the top performing salesperson on my floor while I worked there because of those like just off-the-wall, absurd scripts. So I left that, went to work for a school district, where I was managing a multi-million dollar bond project. Spent a lot of time with rich, White dudes for a while … and that was a learning experience. My boss at the time made a comment on one of my emails that I had sent to another staff member, saying that I had too much personality. He was like, “It’s very funny. It’s very funny. You’re very funny, but you know this is just … it’s not professional.” I knew then that something had to change. So, I had been following Ash Ambirge for awhile, with The Middle Finger Project and House of Moxie, and I knew that she was my people. Over the course of a month, I actually taught myself how to build websites, basic ones not great ones. So, I built a one-pager about why she should hire me and tweeted her the link. She was not hiring at the time. She emailed me back, later that night, and was like, “Oh my God, I’m crying, like yes, let’s do this!” The rest is history. I put in my notice at my job, worked for Ash for a few years, and then transitioned into my own agency, after she had mentored me and showed me the ropes. Rob: Jess, that’s really cool. You mentioned a couple of times personality, and I think if any

Copywriter and business strategist, Maggie Patterson joins The Copywriter Club Podcast to talk about growing a sustainable consulting business. This is actually the second time Maggie has joined us to chat, but sadly, the first recordings are lost to history. In this second go-round (which just might be better than the lost episode), Kira and Rob get the low down on: • Exactly what it takes to grow a sustainable copywriting business • The three things you need before you can teach a skill or build a course • How to find undiscovered opportunities in your business today • What it takes to move your business to the next level • How to build a platform and position yourself the right way • How to get more done (especially when you’re busy) • How to deal with clients (the good and the bad) • The one thing copywriters can do to improve their businesses today • The secret to getting referrals from your clients Maggie lets loose and shares it all in this episode. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript. The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Sponsor: AirStory Maggie’s website The Service Business Success Show Brittany Becher Scoop Industries The conflict resolution resource Maggie mentioned but didn’t talk about Basecamp CXL article on process posted by Rob Joanna Wiebe Jamba Juice Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity Full Transcript: The Copywriter Club Podcast is sponsored by Airstory, the writing platform for professional writers who want to get more done in half the time. Learn more at Airstory.co/club. Kira: What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes, and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That’s what Rob and I do every week at the Copywriter Club podcast. Rob: You’re invited to join the club for episode 37 as we chat with copywriter and entrepreneur Maggie Patterson about getting referrals, building a business and merging it with her partner’s business, productize services, why you shouldn’t create a course, and how we can up our game as copywriters. Kira: Hey, Rob. Hey, Maggie. Maggie: Hey, guys. Kira: How’s it going? Rob: Kira, Maggie. Maggie: I’m excited to be here. Kira: Welcome back. We did record an episode with Maggie, and it was incredible, and it was lost. Lost somewhere in a hole, so this is going to be even better, because Maggie is even more fired up this time, right? Maggie: I don’t know if that’s possible, but we’ll see what I can do. Kira: I think a great place to start, Maggie, is you recently put out a show on your podcast, the Service Business Success Show, and I believe it was episode 53 of your show. You were talking about why being a practitioner matters. That was one of my favorite shows that you put out, and I know you were fired up. I want to hear what was the catalyst for even creating that show, and maybe you can just give some backstory for people who didn’t listen to that show. Maggie: Essentially, the premise of that show was … I love this question, by the way, because this is one of my most favorite topics. The premise of it was really that so many times, we want to cut ahead, and we just want this seven bajillion dollar business, and we don’t actually want to do the work. The reality is for us to build a sustainable business, we need to have mastery. We have to have real skills. For us to be relevant and to be able to grow to those next stages of potentially, one day, maybe in the future of having an online course, you need to be really, really good at what you do to be in touch with it. I think I see so many people teaching that aren’t doing anymore, and they’re disconnected. They’re giving advice that is not relevant, or you know what, one even worse, they’ve never actually done it themselves. It’s something their coach taught them, and now they’re teaching it to other people. There’s just so much flimsiness out there. It makes me crazy. Rob: Yeah. I see this over and over. I’m not going to name any names. I’m sure people can identify people, but it’s almost like a guru or so-called guru does something once. Maybe they built an email list using Pinterest, or they offer a product and they build a sales page, and then suddenly everything is all about how do you do list building and how do you do sales pages. They’re selling courses about the thing that they’ve done once for their own business. They’ve never done it for anybody else’s business. Who knows if it’s replicable. It drives me crazy. Maggie: Here’s the thing that gets me about it is as a practitioner, as someone who’s been doing this a fairly long time is I’ve seen so many different scenarios and mutations of how things will go. The market changes so fast when you’re working online. The reality is is that at the end of the day, it’s really hard for you to teach or give anyone coun

Ken McCarthy, also known as the “World’s Most Secretive Copywriter” and “Mr. Internet,” is the guest for this episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, jammed full of great advice for any copywriter who wants to grow beyond simply writing for clients. Ken may be the only guy who can talk about speed reading, the origins of the internet, Johnny Rotten, making soup, Tested Advertising Methods, and of course, copywriting—and have it all make sense in the end. Listen and learn: • how Ken become the “world’s most secretive copywriter” • what you have to do to “get good” at copywriting • Ken’s recommendation about how to grow your business beyond copy • the “stone soup” method for creating a product • how to avoid the “me too” trap—perhaps the biggest mistake people make online today • the marketing secret Ken learned from a punk rock drummer • the books he recommends to give you an unfair advantage over the other copywriters Told you it was jam packed with good stuff. It’s all here in episode 36. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript. The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Sponsor: AirStory Ben Settle Eugene Schwartz Tim Ferriss AIDA Mark Graham Mark Andreessen Jim Clark Ted Nicholas The link to Ken’s interviews (updated) System Secrets Martin Atkins Nine Inch Nails Johnny Rotten Scientific Advertising Tested Advertising Methods The Robert Collier Letter Book Gary Halbert Ken’s Copy Clinic My Life in Advertising Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity Full Transcript: The Copywriter Club Podcast is sponsored by Airstory, the writing platform for professional writers who want to get more done in half the time. Learn more at Airstory.co/club. Kira: What if you can hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That’s what Rob and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast. Rob: You’re invited to join the club for episode 36 as we chat with Ken McCarthy, who’s been called the world’s most secretive seven-figure copywriter, about how he has built his business from internet pioneer to where he is today, the most common mistakes writers and other business owners are making online, the books and courses he says will give our listeners a competitive advantage over other writers, and whatever else comes up as we talk. Kira: Hey, Rob. Hey, Ken, how’s it going? Ken: Hey, good. Rob: Ken, welcome to the podcast. Ken: Thank you very much, glad to be here. Rob: We’re excited to talk with you. You’ve got a wide range of experience, and I think we could probably go on for hours and hours, but since our time’s a little bit limited, let’s start with your story, where you came from and how you became the most secretive copywriter in the world. Ken: That’s a really interesting headline or tagline. That was written actually by Ben Settle. He wrote it for me, and he’s a great copywriter, and it was written to actually promote a copywriting info marketing course that I have. He wrote it based on having taken the course. Rather than me write the letter, one of my students wrote the sales letter based on what he learned from me. Now that being said, Ben was already a really good copywriter when I met him. I didn’t teach him everything he knows. He was already really good, but the letter that he wrote was based on the learnings that he got from the course. Anyway, that’s how I became the most secretive seven-figure copywriter. It’s fairly accurate. In fact, it’s exactly accurate. Very few people think of me as a copywriter, which shows how good my copy is. They just think I’m this guy who does things, but it’s all driven by copy. I wouldn’t have been able to accomplish anything without my ability to write copy, I mean, nothing. That’s the secret part of me, and then the seven-figures thing is the businesses that I’ve operated, my own businesses, they have generated way into the seven-figures. I guess it’s probably, gross is certainly eight, low eight, but eight nonetheless, and it’s all come from copy. I don’t know if I’m the world’s most secretive. There might be someone even more secretive than me, but yeah, that’s me. I always like to write. That’s sort of on one side of the equation. I just read a lot. I always wrote a lot starting at a really young age, and that cannot hurt. If you want to be a copywriter, it behooves you to notice that part of copywriting is writing. It’s right there in the world. The more you write the better. I was talking with somebody the other day about finding one’s voice in writing, and he made a really interesting point. You find your voice when you stop saying all this tilted, unnatural stuff that you think people want to hear and you start writing what you actually feel and think. The more you write the closer you’re going to get to being able

Copywriter (and photographer) Misha Hettie is in the Copywriter Club studio to talk copy and Facebook Live this week. Kira and Rob asked Misha about her business and she shared a ton of great advice, including her thoughts on: • the importance of branding yourself as a copywriter (and not looking like everyone else) • how she became a “brand story evangelist” • what beginners should do to get started on Facebook Live • what is the biggest mistake people make on Facebook Live • her “big rock method” for creating content for Facebook • her “don’t-miss-it” advice to everyone seeking balance in their lives As usual, there’s a ton of great information in this episode. If you’ve ever thought about using video in your business, this is don’t miss advice. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript. The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Sponsor: AirStory Misha’s website Misha’s about page Silicone Valley Title Generator Joanna Wiebe Todd Herman 13 Reasons Why Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity Full Transcript: The Copywriter Club Podcast is sponsored by Airstory, the writing platform for professional writers who want to get more done in half the time. Learn more at Airstory.co/club. Rob: What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about the successes and failures, their work processes and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That’s was Kira and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast. Kira: You’re invited to join the Club for Episode 35, as we chat with copywriter Misha Heady about using social media in her copywriting business, and what other writers could be doing better there. Juggling her time as a parent, writer, photographer and coach, how Facebook Live has impacted her business and spending an afternoon taking photos of Rob and me in San Antonio. Rob: Hey Misha. Kira: Hello Misha. Misha: Hey guys, how are you? Rob: We’re great, how are you? Kira: Thanks. Misha: Yeah, I’m okay. I’m having a bit of a morning here, and I don’t know if you can her my dog in the background, but I apologize if you could. Rob: We did hear a little bit but I think was might be able with cut most of that out. Misha: Okay, I’m sorry. I swear to God. She’s like, “Oh, you’re on a call, let me go freak out about something. Kira: It’s okay. I think it’s been one of those days for all three of us, which means this is going to be a great conversation. Rob: Exactly. Misha: Yeah. Kira: So, Misha, let’s start with, you know, where you come from. Because you are this multi-talented, creative, big personality, you’ve played a really big role in the copywriter club, so where did you come from. What were you doing before you were in the club as a copywriter? Misha: Well, Kira, when a man and a woman love each other very, very much … okay, JK, terrible, terrible joke. So, where do I come from? I used to be a nine-to-fiver, like most people, and one day I lost my job, and I was like, I got to figure this out. It’s actually a longer story than that, but that’s, you know, the gist of it. And in that last position, I had been using a lot of social media tools to kind of grow people’s knowledge of our gallery. It was a tile gallery. This is like way back in the day when Flicker was like the hottest thing around. To grow people’s knowledge of our gallery, and at the same time I was studying photography more, so that is basically the short story of how I became and entrepreneur, because it’s not a very poetic story, but it’s the truth. Rob: Walk us this step-by-step. So, you lost your job, and then suddenly you weren’t a writer/photographer, whatever. As for as setting up your business, tell us more about that process. Misha: Oh, no. It was literally that next day. No, just kidding. The seedy underbelly of the story is that I was actually five months pregnant, and they closed the showroom that I was working in. And, as a dude you don’t know this, but when you are five months pregnant, like visibly pregnant, no one wants to hire you, like with a ten-foot pole. So I was in this position of, I need to make money for my family, and no one wants to hire me, so what am I going to do? It took some time to figure it out, because I was afraid to make that leap from steady paycheck to working for myself. I thank the great State of Texas for the jucy unemployment checks. That was very helpful at the time. Literally, the day I was in labor with my daughter, I bought my first domain name, and I went from there. I figured it out. Threw together same pricing packages for photography and started taking clients when my daughter was about six weeks old. Kira: You started with photography, and then how did you make your way into the copywriting world and really kind of specialize as a communicator, a strategic communicator? Misha: I wish I had really cool stories about this. I wish there

LA copywriter, actor, rapper, and comedian, Jason Pickar, is in the club for the 34th episode of the podcast. This episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast comes with a warning label (for mentions of a controlled substances that are still illegal in most states). Jason’s an energetic writer with a portfolio full of engaging (and award-winning) work for his clients. In addition to his career path, Rob and Kira asked him about: • How to get on the stage at The Price is Right (and meet Drew Carey) • How Jason landed his first job (then another and another) in the ad agency world • His creative process—an idea he stole from improv • His “machine gun approach” to making sure his ideas get picked by the client • Writing 100 headlines in an hour • Why companies do “branding” • How he stays creative, and • How comedy and improv strengthen his copywriting Jason’s agency experience is different from most of the copywriters we’ve interviewed for the show. So load up your iPod (or other listening device) and pull out your notebook. This one’s a good one. You can also click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript. The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Sponsor: AirStory The Price is Right Jason on the Price is Right Deutch Drew Carey McCann Erickson MRM TribalDDB ShaveEverywhere.com BodyGroom Monologues Break Media (now Defy Media) Weber Shandwick BrandCenter The Creative Circus Miami Ad School Bookshop LA AdHouse AgencySpy Gilmore Girls Jason’s Twitter Jason’s Instagram Jason’s Facebook Freewordsfree.com Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity Full Transcript: The Copywriter Club Podcast is sponsored by Airstory, the writing platform for professional writers who want to get more done in half the time. Learn more at Airstory.co/club. Kira: What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes, and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work. That’s what Rob and I do every week at the Copywriter Club podcast. Rob: You’re invited to join the club for Episode 34, as a chat with copywriter Jason Pickar about writing for television, working on brands like Dr. Pepper with Madison Avenue ad agencies, how acting and comedy inform his writing, and how to get on the game show The Price Is Right. Kira: Hey Rob, hey Jason, how’s it going? Rob: Hey guys. Jason: Hey. It’s going great. Good intro. I’m down with that intro. Rob: Yeah, let’s get to it. Jason: Yeah. Kira: Okay. All right. So I think, Jason, a great place to start is with The Price Is Right. First of all, everyone needs to watch the video of you on that show. I just watched it before jumping on here. It’s ridiculous, and Jason’s ridiculous, and it’s hilarious. How did you get on the show, and what was the catalyst for even jumping into that arena? Jason: You know what? That is a very appropriate question, because I appeared on The Price Is Right on the same day that I picked up my severance check from an old agency I worked at, Deutsch. The catalyst was, quite literally, that whole thing had kind of fallen apart. The creative directors, I’d gone through four of them. Finally, we landed on one. My art director had left. It wasn’t the right fit, so we parted ways after two and a half, three years or so. Then I was at home, just watching TV. I was like, “Oh, man, I’ve always loved The Price Is Right. I’m living in Los Angeles, there’s no reason I can’t go on The Price Is Right.” So I went online, I got a ticket. You go to the studio at, like, 5:00 a.m. Hours and hours and hours before you’re even supposed to be there. I was, like, the second one in line. The key is to just have extremely high energy, be extremely friendly. In the line, they put a couple ringers in there. They’re like, a friendly old woman who is actually kind of notifying the producers who’s good to be on TV, and things like that. Rob: Wait, wait, wait. I’ve got to interrupt here, because, “Really? They do?” Jason: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Not that early… Rob: How did you know that? Jason: … but later in the day. Because you go online, and you go to articles, “How to Get on The Price Is Right,” and they mention that. I wouldn’t mention it if I hadn’t had a really nice conversation with this older, African American woman, and she had kind of implied that I would definitely be on the show. Basically, everyone waits in line, and then they let you in the CBS studios, and you keep waiting in line. You start filling out paperwork. Then they give you a name tag with your name written on it in the very special The Price Is Right way, and then everyone meets in groups of six, with the producer. You talk to a producer for 30 seconds to a minute, and they ask you some questions. Then that’s when they decide fully whether you’re going to be on the show or not. Rob: So you’re meeting with the producer.

Our first guest to make an encore appearance on the club podcast is Canadian copywriter, Ry Schwartz, who just flew in from Costa Rica in time to talk with Rob and Kira about: • the new “product” Ry is launching soon with his girlfriend • using masterminds to meet potential clients • how he deals with “freak out” • how he vets clients (sometimes he asks them to sing with him) • how he conducts his R&D (and what client work has to do with it) • what he does to get people to take “uncomfortable action” • how he invoices for “giving a damn” • what he would do today if he had to start over from scratch There’s so much good stuff in this episode that we’ve already listened to it three times before we released it. Don’t miss all the great advice Ry has to share. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript. The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Sponsor: AirStory Copy School Joanna Wiebe Marc Angelo Capalla Superhero Academy The Wonder Twins The Babysitters Club Futurism High Existence The other Ry Schwartz podcast Marian Schembari Carpool Karoke Sam Woods TGIFridays Amy Porterfield Tarzan Kay Gabby Bernstein Jeff Walker Ryan Levesque Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity Full Transcript: The Copywriter Club Podcast is sponsored by Airstory, the writing platform for professional writers who want to get more done in half the time. Learn more at Airstory.co/club. Rob: What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That’s what Kira and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast. Kira: You’re invited to join the club for Episode 33 as we chat with copywriter Ry Schwartz about what he would do if he had to start over from scratch, how he thinks through email sequences, how to focus when you’re freaking out, and vetting new clients. Joins conversation in progress… Kira: Well, maybe we can start there. We’re not doing an official intro, I don’t think. I want to hear more about your travels and where you’ve been and why you’ve been traveling and what you’ve been doing off the radar. Ry: Yes. Yes, so I’ve been really on the road since mid-February. I’ve been location-independent for three or four years right now. I never really took advantage. I get very romantic about the idea of travel, but in practical terms, I can’t leave my house without packing for Cliff Bars, just because I have this intense fear of starvation. It really took a lot to pull the trigger on that, but it’s something that my girlfriend, Sue, and I were talking about for two years, just even considering relocating to Costa Rica for the winter, because who wants to be in Montreal in the winter? Then yeah, I finally pulled the trigger. I surprised her with this three-week trip, part of it at this mastermind. A few of the things are already taken care of for us and we don’t have to pack too many Cliff Bars. Yeah, we ventured down there in mid-February. It was initially supposed to be on the backend, at the end of the launch I was doing with the Copy Hackers. We were going to launch Copy School. I was going to create my new program within in, and then we were just going to celebrate with this three-week cathartic release in the jungle. As luck would have it, our launch dates got pushed back. I was actually in the jungle trying to get any kind of Wi-Fi possible in any location possible in order to write emails for the launch and just work with that pivot. God bless Joanna for being patient with that. I’m like, “I literally am in the middle of the jungle. There is no Wi-Fi present. The only Wi-Fi providers are three hours away and they really don’t give a crap about my product launch right now.” Yeah, that was part of the adventure was working on that and getting things lined up while also enjoying and submitting to the jungle experience and being present to that. That was super wild. To make matters even crazier, and this is where the story really takes some interesting turns, is our first live webinars to launch our new program were literally scheduled for the day we were getting back from Costa Rica, so all the work was there. Three days before we are scheduled to come back, my girlfriend starts not feeling so well. She’s going to hit me when listens to this. Kira: Oh, boy. Ry: I’m so getting in trouble, but … Okay. Maybe she won’t listen to this. I’ll just make sure she doesn’t listen to it. This is super, super intimate information here, but yeah, she starts throwing up wildly, not your typical I ate too much at that buffet kind of throwing up, like the nasty stuff. Yeah, I was like, “I don’t know, maybe she caught some foreign jungle virus and she’ll be fine because immune systems are awesome and we’ll be okay,” but it just kept persisting. At this point, I got to add to th

This is a special “in-between-isode” with details about our new program for new(ish) copywriters called The Copywriter Accelerator. It’s all here: who it’s for (and who it’s not for), what we’re going to cover, the bonuses you’ll get, how much it costs and details about the 90-day money-back guarantee. For more details, check out www.thecopywriteraccelerator.com. Click the play button below. The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: The Copywriter Accelerator Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Sorry, no transcript for this show.  

Copywriter Sarah Grear stops by the clubhouse to share how she’s built a successful copywriting business over the past five years. Sarah’s clients include course creators and entrepreneurs about to launch their products. As usual, Rob and Kira ask questions to pull back the curtain and reveal the tactics and ideas that have made her successful, including: • The two-year process she used to identify her niche • How she slowly priced herself out of doing websites (and what she charges now) • Why she does “live edits” with her clients • How she creates a copywriting experience for the people she works with • What she did to land a speaking gig at Rick Mulready’s event and Social Media Week • How she used networking to get 80% of her clients when she was just getting started • Why she created a $1000 course and lowered the price since it launched • How she takes four months off a year (and doesn’t lose clients or revenue). We say this a lot, but this is another must-listen episode for anyone who wants to grow a successful writing business. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript. The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Sponsor: AirStory The Copywriter Accelerator The Well-fed Writer The Law of Attraction Rick Mulready Pat Flynn Amy Porterfield James Wedmore Social Media Week Copy Camp Maggie Patterson Streak Sarah’s Giving Page 826LA Sarah’s website Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity Full Transcript: The Copywriter Club Podcast is sponsored by Airstory, the writing platform for professional writers who want to get more done in half the time. Learn more at Airstory.co/club. Rob:Before we get to this week’s interview, we want to tell you about The Copywriter Accelerator, a new 12-week program designed to help newish copywriters get serious about their business. This isn’t a copywriting clinic. Instead, we’ll work with you to improve the business side of your business, things like your onboarding process, choosing a niche, building a brand, and being a smarter business owner. This isn’t a video course. It’s hands-on training with personal access to both Kira and me. To learn more, go to thecopywriteraccelerator.com. Now, on to the show. Kira: What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes, and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That’s what Rob and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast. Rob: You’re invited to join the club for episode 32 as we chat with freelance copywriter, Sarah Grear about writing for healers and creative souls, how she landed a speaking gig at Social Media Week, working with her coach and a team, and taking branding vacations. Kira: Hey, Rob. Hey, Sarah. Sarah: Hey, guys. I love it. Rob: Hey, Sarah. Sarah: I’m so excited. Rob: We’re excited to have you. Kira: I think Sarah, a great place to start, and this what I’m actually really curious to know, where did you come from? What were you doing before you started your copywriting venture? Sarah: Cool. Yeah. I totally want to share my story with you. Before I do that, I just really quickly want to acknowledge both you and Rob for putting together this amazing podcasting group. I just want to say when I first started getting my copywriting business going, I actually, the number one referral source for my business was other copywriters, and I don’t think that gets talked about enough, so part of the way I build my business is what you guys are creating, so I’m just so grateful for communities like this, and I just wanted to say thank you for that. Rob: Thank you. That’s nice of you to say. Sarah: Yeah. Totally. The way I got started in copywriting and where I came from, I actually went to art school. I promise this will all make sense in a minute, but I went to art school. I got my degree in ceramics, and I did all types of art like … Kira: Wow. Sarah: Yeah, pretty much everything under the rainbow I got my hands into. One of the things that happened was I actually read the book, The Well-Fed Writer by Peter Bowerman. When I read that book, I started to fall in love with the whole online marketing world and I was already doing some travel blogging, so I was telling stories online, and then I realized, “Oh, if I pivot this, I could actually start telling other people’s stories and get paid for it handsomely”, so I was like, “Yeah. I’m game for that.” When I found out that I could do the online writing, I shifted to copywriting and just really fell in love with and became addicted to the whole marketing world as it does, and since then, I’ve just been building relationships with people, building relationships with my clients, and my business has grown from giving a lot of value to people along the way. Rob: That’s really interesting, so you’ve actually got a pretty specific niche of people that you tar

Kate Toon joins The Copywriter Club Podcast for episode 31—all the way from Australia. She co-hosts Hot Copy, which we’ve jokingly referred to as “the second best copywriter” podcast. She casually throws out words like “scuppered” and “rubbish” and “bloomin’” as she talks with Rob and Kira about: • the backdoor she opened to land a copywriter job at Ogilvy • the “agency” skills she learned that she applies in her freelance work every day • why freelancing is so much harder than working at an agency • why creating products isn’t the path to easy street you might think it is • how she created products and courses—all while working for her clients • why she’s taking a year off from reading blog posts and articles And there’s much more in this episode to tickle your ears. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript. The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Sponsor: AirStory Ogilvy Mad Men The Clever Copywriting School Kate’s SEO Course Rand Fishkin Mustache wax Hootsuite Zencastr Moz Neil Patel QuickSprout Oprah Winfrey Netflix Crazy Ex-Girlfriend This American Life Ira Glass The Sydney Morning Herald The Misfit Entrepreneur (Kate’s Book) Kate’s website Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity Full Transcript: The Copywriter Club Podcast is sponsored by Airstory, the writing platform for professional writers who want to get more done in half the time. Learn more at Airstory.co/club. Rob: What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That’s what Kira and I do every week at the Copywriter Club Podcast. Kira: You’re invited to join the Club for Episode 31 as we chat with copywriter SEO expert and misfit entrepreneur, Kate Tune about creating three successful businesses without a plan, SEO copywriting, running a podcast and writing conference and how to rock a hula hoop. Rob: Hey Kira, hey Kate. Kate: Hello. Kira: Hey Rob, hey Kate, thanks for being here. Kate: Thank you for that lovely intro. Rob: We try to change it up with every guest and you’ve called yourself the misfit entrepreneur so we thought, yeah it was appropriate. Kate: Thanks, yeah. And you managed to drop the hula hooping in, as well which is awesome. Rob: Exactly. Kira: Well Kate, I think a great place to start is with how you became an SEO copywriter consultant and then we can talk about your job as a chatline operator later. Kate: Yeah, so I probably went a fairly traditional route. I’m not sure everybody’s route to copywriting is so different, isn’t it? So, I went to university and did an utterly pointless degree in history, Roman history or something like, can’t remember. And then I left and I desperately wanted to be a magazine journalist but I had racked up so much debt at university that I had to get a real job as a, pretty much a secretary. Then I worked in various jobs, in events, in publishing and eventually got hired by this weird agency that was building something called websites, way back. I’m showing my age, now. I worked there for a few years and then I moved over to Australia and managed to get a job at Ogilvy, which is a big advertising agency in America and also it’s over here in Australia, as well. From there I transitioned into being a copywriter and worked on lots of big brands, global brands and kind of hated it, kind of didn’t like the agency life and as I got older, it got harder. Then eventually I got with child and could no longer be an agency copywriter because you have to work like 70 hours a day. So I gave it all up and became a freelance copywriter. Whoo hoo! That was a potted history. Rob: Let’s unpack that jus a little bit. We talk quite a bit with copywriters who are doing freelance stuff but we haven’t talked to a whole lot of agency copywriters. Tell us about working in an agency and maybe even, what it takes for a copywriter to get a job at an agency. Kate: Look, I think it’s, I don’t think it’s easy. I think my route was very indirect. When I first started out, that was, you know, I was like, “Wow, I’d like to work for an advertising agency.” And I did get a job in an agency in London. Again, as a receptionist. So I had to go in as kind of like a non-creative person. But if you’ve seen Mad Men, not everybody gets to move from reception to being a copywriter. Rob: Only the best. Kate: Only the best. I was literally that character, I’ve forgotten her name now. But, so and then I left and then with Ogilvy, I just was in the right place at the right time. Australia was a little bit behind the eight ball with digital and advertising and my little experience counted a lot so I kind of got in at the ground level but again, as a producer, so I was actually managing projects. And then after a couple of years, I actually took about a 60% pay cut to be a copywriter.