TCC Podcast #251: Stepping into Your Own Voice with Laura Belgray

 

The people and stuff we mentioned on the show:

Kira’s website
Rob’s website
The Copywriter Club Facebook Group
The Copywriter Underground
Laura’s first episode
Laura’s website
Laura’s subject line resource

Full Transcript:

Rob:  A lot can change in three years. Heck, if the last year has taught us anything, it’s that things can change quickly, and they change faster than we think. Our guest for this episode is Laura Belgray, and Laura was on our podcast a little over three years ago. That was episode 15, where she talked about the kind of business that she had, and she talked about a lot of things that she wasn’t even interested in doing. Now, three years later, that’s all changed. She’s built the business that she said she didn’t want, and she loves it. So we’re going to get into the details of that change, and what Laura has done with her business. But first, let me introduce my co-host for today, copywriter and launch strategist, Brittany McBean. Welcome, Brittany.

Brittany:  Thanks, thanks for having me. I’ve told you that my life goal is to be Kira when I grow up, so now I’m just one step closer.

Rob:  Yeah, right, if Kira decides not to come back, you can just stay.

Brittany:  I’m taking her spot, watch out.

Rob:  Exactly. You’ve been warned Kira. I’m excited to have Brittany here to share her thoughts about what we chatted with Laura today. But before we get to that interview and to the things that we want to share, this is your weekly reminder that this episode of The Copywriter Club podcast is brought to you by The Copywriter Think Tank. That’s our mastermind for copywriters and marketers who are doing some pretty big things in their business, becoming better copywriters, creating products, maybe creating things like video shows, like what Brittany has on YouTube, podcasts, even building agencies, product companies. If you want to do something interesting like that in your business, and become the person that high-paying clients call because you’re the person that they know, that’s what we help copywriters do in the think tank. To learn more, visit copywriterthinktank.com so that we can chat about whether it’s a fit for you. Okay. So let’s jump into our interview with Laura Belgray, and find out more about her business and what’s changed.

Brittany:  What have you been doing since we spoke to you on episode 15? Four and a half years ago.

Laura:  Four and a half years ago, right. We just established that was 2017. And I mean so much, like my business was totally different then, which I guess we’ll get into, we can get into it right now, so back then we talked about copywriting for clients and that’s what I was doing and that’s all that I was doing. Now I don’t do that anymore, so my business looks totally different. I have a group program called Shrimp Club which runs for nine months of the year, we just wrapped round three, and it was amazing. I have a couple of courses, one of which I’m launching right now, it’s called Inbox Hero and one called Launch Hero. I love selling those. So, my business is all the kind of business that I said didn’t want to have, but now I have it and I’m so happy about it. So that’s pretty much what I’ve been doing.

Rob:  Let’s talk about that, because like you said, that’s not what you had planned on four years ago, but it is what you are today. So like why the change, what made you evolve to what you’ve got today?

Laura:  Yeah, it’s funny, I was just looking at the transcript for our first episode, episode 15, and it’s so funny. I see a lot of myself saying, well, I never want to have a team.

Brittany:  Did you say that?

Laura:  I did. I said, I don’t want a team. I know everybody says that that’s what it takes to get to the magical seven figure mark, which I would love to do. That’s what I was saying to you then, but I just don’t want a team and I don’t want that kind of business. Then I hired somebody in 2018, her name is Sandra, I don’t know if you know her, but Sandra Booker, she’s amazing and not available. I found her through Tarzan Kay.

Rob:  Yeah, a lot of people like Sandra, I’ve heard her name passed around quite a bit.

Laura:  She’s very popular, very popular. Everybody tries to hire her and I think you can, for a little bit of consulting, possibly, and she has a mastermind that helps you with your tech stack and stuff like that, or that you can send your VA to. So, hiring Sandra, at first I didn’t really know what I wanted to do with her, but you know what, Tarzan wrote a Facebook post about her back in, I guess it was 2018 and said the magic words. She said, since I hired Sandra, I’ve been making so much more money. For me, that’s always a go that’s a yes. So I was like, tell me about this Sandra. I just jumped on the chance to hire her and did, and didn’t really know what we did. It took us a little while to find our groove, cause I didn’t really know what kind of work to give her. I was a little confused about it. She took on the scheduling of my clients, and in fact that summer my dad died that summer and she was just absolutely crucial, helping me reschedule things like taking things off my plate that I just did not have the wherewithal to handle. I was like, I need to be off the grid and not dealing with client stuff and I don’t want to explain to everybody what I’m going through right now, and have to deal with everyone’s kindnesses, and all of that. She did it for me, and I think that was the first time I was like, oh, thank God I have an assistant. She turned out to be my way more than an assistant and I refer to her as my manager, she’s an online business manager. She started clearing the way for me to create a lot more, to take on more, to take on projects, to actually build things, create things, rebrand and create mini-courses and sell mini-courses, and set them up with links. Then, all the integrations and things that I would have sat there researching all day and probably didn’t do it because of that. Also, client work got in the way. So, I think most copywriters go through this. They would like to scale or take on, at a certain point they say, you know what? I want to run. I want to have something on my own to sell. I sell for everybody else. I have the skills to use words that sell, and I’m doing it for everybody, but me, I want to create something. But then they have so much client work that they can’t get to their own work, which I’m sure is something that you can both relate to from when that was your whole world. So, I think taking on hiring Sandra and saying, okay, I can at least have some support, even if I don’t want a team, that changed everything. That set things in motion. Then a couple of, I’d say, mindset shifts that came to me, like visions, in that same year, 2017 when I talked to you, I think I had just realized that I was tired of being referred to as so-and-so’s copywriter, like people would call me Marie Forleo’s copywriter and that wasn’t even true. I was her writing partner and helped her with some copywriting, like scripting episodes, but I wasn’t her copywriter, she did her own copywriting. That made me uncomfortable, and always being called somebody’s secret weapon or, oh, you write copy for so-and-so, you’re the real deal. I’m like, no, I want to be defined as the real deal in my own right. I decided I wanted to be Laura (beep) Belgray. I didn’t want to be anybody’s anything. I didn’t want to be, Laura Marie’s copywriter, or Laura so-and-so’s copywriter. I wanted to be Laura (beep) Belgray, and I wanted to be a brand and a name in my own right, and I realized that that would require certain things. Like that would require making more of a mark with my output, with my content, and at that time I was really getting into emails, and it’s like, I would love to be paid just to write emails. I realized, well, if I want to be paid to write emails, I have to sell things in my emails and I have to write my emails consistently. So, I stepped that up. I started being more consistent with my emails writing once a week to start with, and then I hired a coach, Ron, I think this was in like 2018, maybe it was 2017. Now I’m losing track of time, as we do. He said, if you wave wave a magic wand over your business, what would that look like? At the time, I had mini-course or two on my site. I said, if everybody who signed up, who opted in to hear from me, to get my emails, bought my mini-course, that would be all the money I need. I would be rich, rich enough for me. He said, well, if you want more people to buy your mini-courses or to buy anything from you, then I think you should step up your emails from once a week to three days a week. It seemed like a lot, but he was like, I guarantee you, you triple your emails, you will at least double your sales. And he was right. I tried it for a month, and he was right. I saw to my sales more than double in that month. So I was like, this is the thing. This is the secret, right here, is volume, is interacting with people and creating output in volume, being prolific. So, I started doing that, and I started becoming more visible and making a push to be more visible because I knew that’s what it would take also. I wanted to be paid to be me, so I recognized that you don’t get paid to be you if people don’t know who you are. I started pitching to more podcasts, and doubling down on those efforts, and pitching to speak and getting articles doing guest posts for publications, like Business Insider, Forbes, Money, et cetera. That changed everything also.

Brittany:  Okay. I definitely want to talk about that in more detail, but to circled back to working with clients. It sounds like Sandra kind of cleared the space and started to help create this new business. Was that when you realized, I can make the pivot and I don’t have to write for clients, I can start to shift, or did that happen later? When did that happen?

Laura:  It happened a little later, I would say it took about a year. I hired Sandra in early 2018, and then it was in late 2019, I think the fall right after, or no, as I launched my new site, I rebranded my site and rebranded it in a way that made it clear I don’t take clients anymore. So, I think I announced it around then, launched my site in September of 2019. That was the official notice, like no more clients. I archived my rates and you can actually find them on my work with me page, but it makes it clear. These are no longer available, but if you’re looking …

Brittany:  There’s no button to click.

Laura:  Yeah, there is no button to click. If you really want to see what was there, there’s no button to click for buy now, but there’s a button to click if you want to see and treat it as a tourist destination and check out my old rates like it’s a museum.

Rob:  So Laura, I’m curious, when you made that shift, at what level of income had you already attained? This is a poorly phrased question, so I’m sorry, but where were you as far as the so-called automated income, the non-client income was versus your do-it-for-your-client income and how did that shift as you made the jump? Obviously you went from a hundred percent at one point to a hundred percent on the other, but what did that look like through the transition?

Laura:  Yeah, so my client income, up until that moment, the client income was pretty much all of it. And the mini-courses that I was selling, which was my 60 Minute Makeovers Copywriting Mini-Course, and one or two others that in about page builder that I have on my site. I think I have them all there now. I think I had three of them then, I think they started to make six figures. Maybe not quite that. They had been making $4,000 a month and went up to around $8,000 a month. When my coach suggested I start upping the email frequency, right? They started making at least close to six figures if not six figures, and the rest was entirely client income. Most of that was from online entrepreneurs, I had, I had really trickled off with the TV promos that I’d been writing. I used to have regular clients. It used to be a real blend. By this point, it was almost entirely online entrepreneurs, private clients. I was making a couple of hundred thousand, I guess. I don’t remember the exact number, but wasn’t making nearly as much as I wanted to. I think I told Ron when he asked like, wave a magic wand, what do you want your business? I said, I would also like to replace my income at some point and make even more. I think my goal was to make $500,000. That was my kind of pie-in-the-sky stretch goal. I was like, I don’t know where that money could come from, but that’s what I would like. So we started shifting things, and here’s another thing I said to him, I said in The Copy Cure, like we have launched The Copy Cure in a real way, taking it from evergreen to a real launch and beefed up the course, made way bigger and included this live component, which were two different things. One is live website and copy makeovers that I would, do not live but I would record them on screen, so them in real time. Then the other was called Live with Laura, and still is, I still do these things every time we launch. That’s where I just answer questions on the spot, and that is live. So I told Ron, I said, I love this part of The Copy Cure, where I am doing stuff live on the spot, like answering group questions, like answering people’s questions in a group format. He said, well, then that means you should have a group program, why wouldn’t you do that? And I was like, oh, is that what you do in a group program? And he was like, yeah. I’d always resisted the idea, I felt like everyone who had group programs or group coaching programs talked about holding space. I didn’t understand what that meant. I hated the term. I was like, I don’t know if I can do that. I also just didn’t picture myself doing it. I didn’t think of myself as that kind of leader. I never thought of myself as a leader. So that was a whole other thing. But, so he said, I think you should create a group program. So I created Shrimp Club, and he suggested what I should charge for it. I did not think I would be able to get anybody on board at that price. He was like, trust me. He just had a knack for knowing the right number to ask people and it worked and it filled. I loved it so much that I kept doing it. That makes up a significant portion of my income now, Shrimp Club does.

Brittany:  So, to go back again to kind of the transition, because we talk to so many copywriters who do realize along the way, I don’t want to write for clients anymore, and sometimes they’ve been doing it for two years, sometimes it’s more than that, but that’s hard for them to grasp. They usually don’t feel okay with even saying that out loud. Was it hard for you once you realized that, and rebranded, or was it easy at that point because you planned it out and you did it over time, and it was just a little bit easier to make that transition?

Laura:  It was a challenging leap of faith, because I just didn’t know. I feel like I had enough of a cushion because I had The Copy Cure, that I knew we would launch. I knew I would be okay if nobody showed up to the party, but it still made me nervous. I’m like, people know me for this. They want me for this. This is really easy money in a way, except it wasn’t easy money. It was easy money in that I had my services up, people knew me, they came to the page. I didn’t have to do that much heavy-lifting to get clients. They were now coming to me, and also I had done these articles that sent people my way and established credibility and authority and made them want to book me at my rate. I kept raising my rates, and I finally raised my rate to a number where I thought, okay, maybe this will stop people from booking me. Which I know sounds so obnoxious and is goals, but I was like, if they do book me, I had to think of a number where they probably wouldn’t, and if they did book me, it would feel worth my while, because I started just dreading appointments on my calendar. That’s really what it came down to. I loved the client work when I was doing it. When I was talking to somebody and working on their copy and it was going well, I really enjoyed that, but I hated seeing their names on my calendar. It was like, oh God, I have a client meeting, could it get off my calendar? I wanted just blank space on my calendar. I wanted to run my day in a way more, I didn’t want to see like, oh gosh, I’ve got to get home by 2:00 PM and make sure I’m in front of the computer in time for this call. That’s the big reason I had to do it, and take that leap of faith and it paid off.

Rob:  So, you kind of mentioned this, as you were talking about this shift in your business, the mindset changes that you went through and what you believed about your business before and where it is today. Will you talk just a little bit more about that? Because I think maybe more than copy skills, or marketing skills, or anything else, it’s mindset that keeps us from making these changes. How was it that you were able to make the leap?

Laura:  It was pretty gradual, but I did recognize these three things. Let me take you back to, this is going to sound silly, but there was a productivity workshop that I attended in the beginning of 2017. It was in January during that time when you’re like, okay, I need a fresh start, I need to be a different person, and a productivity workshop really appealed to me. I was like, this better work and make me a productive human. The main exercise that we did in it, we were all sitting on the floor on those like kind of self-supporting-back yoga chairs. We had those composition notebooks in front of us, in different colors, mine was purple, and the person running it, Chris Winfield, who was doing these things at the time, and now does publicity, he had gave us a series of questions. I’ve learned that everybody does this exercise. Everyone has done it a million times, I guess it’s called The Painted Picture, but it was a future-pacing exercise where we had to picture ourselves in our ideal life in five years and write down, it’s a series of questions about five years from now, like what do you see yourself doing for work? What does a day look like for you? Where are you living? What does your home look like? What are you doing for fun? What is your mindset like? Of course I was like, oh God, I thought I was going to learn to be productive, but going through these questions and actually writing down the answers, like fine, what am I going to do? Sit here and just stare at the notebook while everyone writes? Actually writing down the answers that I saw in my mind forced me to reckon with what I really wanted, and get specific about it. Admitting those things to myself, seeing myself on stage telling stories from my life, and what else did I want? I guess I pictured a life, or a career that was kind of like Liz Gilbert’s, who wrote Eat Pray Love and many other things, she goes on stage and she tells stories about her life. She also kind of coaches people and helps them through stuff, but it’s mostly that and she doesn’t have to do anything instructional and she doesn’t have to take clients. So, I pictured a career kind of like that and nothing I wrote down included meet with clients from 2:00 PM to 3:00 PM. Nowhere in my ideal world were there clients. I understood in order to get this picture that I want, there are certain things that I have to do. One of them was writing more emails, because it did involve writing an email. I love writing emails. So, writing an email to my list, and then somehow the money comes out. That was the magic that I saw somehow. I knew what I had to do with that. I understood the steps that I had to take, and I think that was the real shift, was admitting to myself what I wanted and admitting what it was going to take to have that and also seeing that it was possible, even though I didn’t know all the steps. I didn’t know how to get all the way from here to there, but I saw some of the things that I had to start doing. And I started doing them, which was very unlike me because I was very much a tomorrow person or next year, or I can’t think of anything to say, or I don’t know what people want from me. This really started with writing the emails and coming up with a talk or two to pitch to stages and started starting to write guest posts for big publications, because I knew that was one way to accelerate everything.

Brittany:  Well, maybe we can dig deeper into that because you mentioned earlier, you wanted to be paid. You know, I want to be paid to be me. That comes up a lot. That sounds great, and so if we want to be paid just to be ourselves, what are some of those steps as far as visibility that we can take? Because also when I look back at you from outside perspective over the last five years, it feels like you were already doing those things, and so visible before 2017. So maybe there were steps that we just didn’t see, or you just upped it. I guess the question in the end is just, what can we do as copywriters to be more visible so that we can move into that space where we’re paid to be ourselves?

Laura:  That’s funny that you saw me that way. I felt like I was hiding a little bit, I knew that I had a name, I knew I had made a name as a copywriter for other people, but I didn’t feel like I was really known in any capacity or for my own writing. I would say that the steps for me would be to start pitching to publications, start looking at what kind of publications publish the sort of article you would want to write. It doesn’t have to be big article you would want to write and it doesn’t have to be big publications. Also, it could be blog posts.. Not blog posts blogs. I don’t know, if do you guys have a blog for you, publish people.

Rob:  We do.

Laura:  You do. Okay. So I’m probably getting you into hot water now, but pitch to Rob and Kira!

Kira:  That’s great. We’re always looking for good content.

Rob:

Yeah. There’s even a page on our site that tells people the kind of content we will publish. So yeah.

Laura:  That’s perfect. I have to look into that because I think that you guys are a great first step. Anyone listening to this, they understand the kind of thing, the kind of topics that you talk about and what you might be looking for and they can look there, you make it so easy and clear. I think that pitching to publications and sites like that, any place that’s looking for content, and everyone’s looking for content, I’m not. People pitched to me sometimes like, Hey, can I write a blog post for your site? I am like, no, that’s not. That’s not what this is but for most big sites that trade in content, that are like magazines, they are desperate for content. So if, people love when you write something for a known publication, one that your friends like and read, they’re really impressed. So if, you share something like, oh, yay. I’m so excited. This is up. It’s live and it’s on this site that I’ve always wanted to write for. I love these people. I love Robin, Kira and I’m so excited that they’ve published my piece and, will you share it? You get, you share it and you get people to share it and, it brings you this halo of authority and credibility. If you develop so much authority from putting your content out there from writing with authority. So, I think that is a great place to start building that visibility and flog it. You have a piece that comes out, put it everywhere, share it everywhere that you possibly can and get everyone to share it, and let them know how exciting it is for you, and tell them why you want them to share it and, give them swipe copy to share it and make it easy for them because you know, when somebody shares something from their friends, like a post and they do it, wordlessly they just slap it up there, press post. Nobody likes it. Nobody shares it. Nobody looks at it. You’ve got to give a reason why you like it and what it means. Or maybe you pull out something that you love about it and, in the caption or in the comment, in the post itself and so if you give people, swipe copy for that, they will use it and it makes it really easy for them to share your stuff, and post and then people see you everywhere and they say, oh my you’re killing it and, then that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy because they see you as killing it and then they want to work with you and, buy from you and then you are killing it. So that’s my advice. I think if you want to build a reputation, build a name for yourself in a brand, which is necessary. If you want to shift out of being a server, just solely a service entrepreneur. If you need to build a brand and a name for yourself, you want to do that. Start there.

Rob:  So Laura, you have published content in some pretty big websites, not just recently, but I think over the last three or four years, business insider, fast company, and I’ve seen your stuff there was there, one of those that sort of was the big step forward. You know, the first article that just suddenly now you’ve got all the attention or now that you started making more money or more notoriety and what was it? How did you get it?

Laura:  It was the first one that I did. It was for business insider and, the title was I make $950 an hour writing from my couch. Here’s my best advice if you want to work from home.

Rob:  I remember that and we’ll link to it in the show notes. So, I remember that article. It’s Great.

Laura:  Thank you. That was a milestone for me and I had help with, from Selena Sui. She and I are friends and, I did some work for her and, she helped me get into business insider. We just brainstormed a couple of topics and, I didn’t know what they would want. I still have trouble coming up with things that they would want to hear from me and she’s genius at it. So she helped me come up with that and we pitched it and, they wanted it. Pretty much just as, give them the bullet points and everything and, I’ve learned everything about pitching from her pretty much and my friend, Susie Moore, who’s also an expert at this. I’m great. So we submitted it, they published it and I had no idea what kind of effect it would have. It was exciting. I knew it would be exciting to have my name in a publication and my article, but I had no idea how much people would talk about it and, be excited about it and share it. That one just had all the magic ingredients, a big number and something about the format of the title just made people click on it and, forward it to like their niece who is just out of college. So, I got like over a thousand opt-ins on that first day that doesn’t usually happen. It was pretty amazing and that really helped build my list, obviously that’s a big number of opt-ins to get in a day. It got me hooked on doing more.

Kira:  You mentioned leadership and that you didn’t see yourself as a leader because prior to creating your own group program. So what helped you work through that? Especially again, for all of us who might not see ourselves that way and we think we can’t do that new thing because we’re not quite holding space for others the way that everyone else seems to.

Laura:  Yeah. I really did not like there’s so much talk about leadership and stepping into that leadership role that you’re meant to have being the leader. You’re meant to be that never rang true for me or appealed to me really, because I don’t even, if I have a dinner party, I don’t even like telling people when or where to sit. I’ve had a friend come up to me, my rehearsal dinner for my wedding. My friend came up to me. She’s like, do you want people to sit down? and, where would you like them to sit? I just don’t like that role. I don’t like. I never wanted to be a counselor. So, I didn’t think of myself in that way and I think for one thing, having my Italy retreat, which you guys and I have talked about before, and I started doing in 2016, doing that showed me people actually will sit there, and listen to me, and look to me for leadership and so that was kind of okay, just then do responding to that need. Okay, I’ll be a leader. You want me to be a leader? I will lead you and then when I recognized with my coach, Ron’s helped that I really loved doing quiet QnA’s and helping people live. I think it just knowing that’s what a group program was and that’s really what leading was, helped me become a leader and creating shrimp club. I learned by doing so creating shrimp club. I wasn’t like, okay, I’m now I’m going to lead. Let’s see who signs up for this and then understanding that they saw me that way, they reflected it back to me, you are a leader, thank you for being a mentor and, okay, I guess I’m actually good at that and it is something that I can do and I liked it. So.

Rob:  It seems like one of the places where you own your leadership or step into that role for lack of a better word is in your emails and in your emails, I think stand out, maybe there are a few people who do really good emails. You’re definitely one of them, but what is it that you do when you sit down to write an email? How do you get the magic from your brain into your fingers or into the keyboard so that it’s engaging when people open them and it’s not just something that I can click through this one because I know Laura is going to mention from club, or I know she’s going to mention this. The thing that she’s always selling to me, your emails never come across like that. So tell us about your email writing process?

Laura:  Thank you. So sometimes the magic doesn’t come right away. It doesn’t flow through my fingertips. I’ve always loved that idea of channeling the muse that it comes through your head and, then works its way through your fingertips and lots of keyboard, and that sometimes actually does happen when I know what I’m going to write about. I know the story I want to write and then sometimes I’ll sit there for like an hour, starting the email over and over, wondering what I want to talk about that day, that doesn’t usually happen when I know the call to action. When I know, I have to promote Inbox Hero today. I got to write another email for it. I will probably try to make that as short as possible and just give it a little twist, and then it usually turns into something longer just on its own, because the one thing that I’ll mention just back from getting my nails done, if I say something that’s rare, but just back from getting my nails done and then I’ll end up having something to say about getting my nails done and it turns into a whole story. Sometimes I’ll sit down and have a story to tell, and that’s usually where the magic really happens. I really have to write about the argument that I had last night with my husband about dinner, which kind of pasta we were having and him arguing for those short curly ones, which I hate, when I want long and windy and just [laughter].

Rob:  I am with you Laura, long and winding beats macaroni type stuff every day. Yeah.

Laura:  I knew who my friend is here. Sorry, Kira, we’re not going to talk pasta. We can talk politics, but not pasta. So just those mundane little moments in life that I find, I find so many of them noteworthy and worth putting down into an email. I think that’s where the magic happens and one benefit of, writing so frequently is that I can go deep on the small things. So I don’t have what I call writers blob rather than writer’s block. I think it’s more writers blob when you have too many things to say, and you don’t know where to start and you don’t know which one and, you think it has to be epic and, you don’t have that as much when you’re writing every other day, three days a week because you’ve already covered everything and now you’re looking for a little things where you can go deep and not make it too long also and, then connecting that to some sort of a lesson or thing to meaning in some way, they used to write emails and blog posts that were just a story with no real point. It was just so funny, and so that happened, write back and tell if it’s ever happened to you, which is okay sometimes. But I realize people respond more when there is some sort of meaning, when you arc it to meaning some kind of point take away or call to action if you have one handy that day, sometimes we don’t have a real call to action. Although, now it looks like because of this new apple privacy thing, changing how it going to be able to track our open rates as well. I think the new thing is going to be getting people to click on something in every email so that you can at least measure your click-throughs. So I think that’s going to be something that we’re all finding ways to do is like weave a story together with some kind of clip that something that they want to click on. That’s going to be the new, the new trick and challenge of writing emails, but that’s where the magic comes from, I think is writing in volume being prolific, the frequency and the ability to go deep on something really small, like mundane little quotidian moments.

Kira:  So should Robin and I start writing three emails a week? Is that kind of like –

Rob:  Nobody’s more mundane than me here. So let’s break in here and talk a little bit about some of the things that Laura has been talking about in the interview. First of all, I’m going to ask you, Brittany, what stood out to you? What just rings interesting or true, as you hear Laura talking about her business.

Brittany:  Oh man. So much, I think, I first heard the word copywriting as an actual job, and started to stay in the industry around 2019 and Laura’s name of course floated to the top because she’s a name that you hear when you start looking at the copywriting industry and, she was just this mega figure, right? I loved her, and so what surprised me is, I was brand new and I was here’s this expert, I just sort of learned from, and I’m listening to this podcast and she has been an expert writer for a long time. She’s had a career in writing, but all of the things that I was so intrigued that she was doing, she was starting around that time and like you said, in the intro, it just shocks me how quickly things can change in this online industry and how exciting that is.

Rob:  Yeah. She went from no team to decide, I don’t want a team. I don’t want any of that and I totally relate to that. In my life, before I came back to copywriting, I was in charge of a division at Hewlett Packard and ended up having to lay people off. I’ve got that always going on in the back of my head where I don’t want ever anybody to be reliant on me and, so I have total hesitancy to have a team and so I get that. I don’t want a team, but then sometimes to grow, to do the things we want to do in our business, it requires a team and so I love that she made that shift. But the thing that stood out to me, she’s talking about Sandra and this team that she’s building, that she’s not just bringing on employees or contractors. She’s really bringing in somebody, who’s acting like a partner, somebody who’s solving problems in her business and that’s the kind of team that I think really can help you grow and to make a difference. There’s one thing to bring in a VA and of course we should know our businesses are right for that. We should definitely do that but finding somebody who treats your business like it’s their business is I think a massive.

Laura:  Yeah and it’s so interesting because I found that the same as I’ve heard in my team and I remember saying to you guys, a year or so ago, I don’t want a team. I don’t want to be a manager. I have said that so many times, I don’t want to hire a team. I don’t want to manage people. It’s not something I’m skilled at. It’s not something I’m good at and, now I have a team of one full-time employee. So myself and another person are on payroll and, then three other contractors and, I don’t manage a single person and it’s wonderful, and I have heard so many copywriters, express this, I don’t want to grow, I don’t want to hire a team. I’m not ready to hire a team and it may not be right for some people. But I do wonder if there’s this misunderstanding around what it means and for me, especially my three, they’re not my three contracts, the three contractors who work inside of the business, each one of those women own their own business and they are CEOs of their own business, and they tell me what days they have off. You know what I mean? They have these boundaries around their business and, I actually love that because they are like the boss in their specialty and in their field, and they get to bring that expertise to my business and, I don’t have to manage them. It’s really quite lovely and it’s not what I expected when I started growing my team.

Rob:  I think, I love what you’ve done in your business and you’ve got people, who you know, take on that partnership role. They want to help you grow because they can grow and it helps you free up time for your own projects. Just what Laura is talking about. You know having, Sondra take on all of this other stuff that’s going on in her business means that now if she wants to, she can sit down and write a book this week, work on her book or do whatever and that’s so important. Not just for growing a business, but for enjoying the thing that we do.

Laura:  Yeah. One of my students inside my program asked me, because I just started teaching a course this year for the first time. They really want to do copywriting business and have products. Do you need a team to do that? And I said, I did, maybe there are other people who don’t, I could not start creating education until the copywriter, the copywriting, client side of my business was a well-oiled machine and those clients were being served at maximum at high quality and I needed a team to free up my time to do that. Not everybody does, I Sure did.

Rob:  Yeah. Teams. I’ve also changed my approach to, been hesitant. We have a team that is awesome. The things that they enable us to do in our business, the things that they take on, the cure and I can do different things. In fact, I doubt, Kira would be able to take a maternity leave if we didn’t have this team in place, there’s no way I could do everything that we do together without them to help out.

Laura:  Yeah. Yeah. Because you’re building something bigger than you, and when it’s bigger than you, then you can step out of it. I’m doing this podcast on vacation. I am in folly beach, Charleston, South Carolina, and I have not worked all week and, my clients are still being served. My students are still being served because the business is bigger than me and that’s actually less stressful than I thought it would be.

Rob:  Okay. So let’s talk about some other things, I don’t know that there’s a lot to discuss here, but one of the things that jumped out at me that when Laura was talking about how she increased the frequency of her emails, is that the advice she got three times your emails, you’re going to double yourselves and I saw a question about this just a few weeks ago in the copywriter club, Facebook group, people are like, how often should I mail my list? And, I don’t know that there’s a right number or wrong number. Some people mail every day, some people mail once a week. But the idea that if you depend on your list for money, for selling the thing that you do, mailing more is the way that you increase the money that’s coming in, and I just think that’s, it’s worth repeating, and Kira committed us to writing to our list three times a week, as we were talking, we’ll see if that actually happens or not. But, it’s something that maybe we should be doing just a little bit more often, not just in our business, but a lot of copywriters should be talking to their lists.

Laura:  Yeah and she even said, Hey, when you email your list more frequently, expect your open rate to go down, and your unsubscribe rate to go up and, your revenue to go up and, who the heck cares about your unsubscribe rate? If there are more zeros in your bank account, and so far or so often we’re stressing, what’s my open rate. Did it go down? What’s apple doing? And there’re these changes and all of a sudden people unsubscribed and, if that’s affecting your revenue, then it’s sort of troubleshooting. But if it’s done, then keep doing what you’re doing, who cares about those numbers.

Rob:  Exactly and if you’re doing it for your clients, if you’re helping your clients email their lists, lots of times we hear people who are in the middle of a launch. I’ve mailed my list five times this week. I can’t do it again and I guess the question is, why not? If they’re on their list because they want to hear from you, as long as you’re sharing something, that’s valuable. If you’re promoting a product that they need, we should be doing it until at least until the sales go away, until the reason, we’re communicating is done.

Kira:  And one thing Laura does so well, I remember when I first joined her email list in her welcome sequence, I don’t remember which email it was and, I sound like a total stalker right now, but I remember in one of the first few, and it was clearly automated. Because it came in rapid succession, but it said, Hey, just to let you know, I sell things on my email list. If you were on my email list, you’re going to get sales emails and if you don’t want them, you can hop off now, and if you don’t want them later, you can hit an opt-out just for that promotion and she’s so good at that, giving people that opt out and every time she’s about to do a promotion, if you don’t want to hear about B-School, click this, great, we won’t talk to you about or whatever and, I think that she just gets that consent and always gives people a quick way out and, never pretend like she’s not doing anything but selling on her email and, I think that’s really great when it’s on the table, then everybody knows what they’re signing up for.

Rob:  Yeah. Her emails are great. I every once in a while, I’ll go through my inbox and it’s like mass on subscribe, from 20 to 30 lists that I’m on and, you recollect, I think Laura’s might be the only list that I’ve never unsubscribed from. Her stories are so good and, maybe it’s because I like a kid of the eighties and I remember some of the stuff that she’s talking about in the clubs, in New York, those kinds of things, the stories all resonate with me. So maybe that’s the reason, but she’s such a good writer, such a good storyteller. Yeah. It’s, it’s an approach that’s worth emulating for the way that we all talk to our lists.

Laura:  For sure and email launches are where it’s at. when was the last time you saw Laura Belgray do a webinar and, webinars are fine if you enjoy them. But I had a mini course sitting in my Kajabi account, that I had never even talked about once in my entire life that, I sent out one email and one PS to my email, two weeks ago, I made $5,000. Like, like email is where it’s at. You know what I mean? If you love doing webinars, if you love big launches, cool. Do it. You like all the tech and, you have all the support or you could just email your list weekly with just fun anecdotal thing, because until you have something to sell them, then sell them that thing and make money. I’ve clients who have