TCC Podcast #256: Solving Big Marketing Problems with John Mulry

The people and stuff we mentioned on the show:

Kira’s website
Rob’s website
The Copywriter Club Facebook Group
The Copywriter Underground
E5 Nation Facebook Group 

Full Transcript:

Rob:  One of the things we love about being copywriters is that we’re not just hired to make our client’s words sound good, we’re hired to solve problems. But here’s the thing, clients don’t always understand that that’s what they’re asking us to do. They come to us with projects and ask things like, “Can you write my website or can you help with a case study or a sales page?” What they’re really asking for is help solving a bigger problem, help me sound professional or help me prove that I can do what I say I can do, or help me sell more products and make more money. The more we sell ourselves as experts in solving complex marketing problems, the more we’re able to work with great clients and earn more money.

Today’s guest for The Copywriter Club Podcast is John Mulry. John is the Director of Marketing for MFA, that’s Todd Brown’s company, and he is focused on solving very complex marketing problems for Todd and for Todd’s clients. And what he’s shared in this interview may give you some ideas on how to do that for your own clients and in your own business. But before we get to our interview with John, good news, Kira is back. Hey, Kira.

Kira:  Hi. Hey, Rob. Good to be back.

Rob:  Yes. How have you been? It’s been a while.

Kira:  I’ve enjoyed the podcast interviews while I was away where every intro, I feel like you were like, “And Kira’s still on maternity leave.” I feel like towards the end it sounded like maybe there was a little bit more frustration in that over the last few episodes, but I’m back.

Rob:  I don’t think I was frustrated. If it sounded that way, I’m sorry then.

Kira:  Maybe it was just to me. But yeah, I’m happy to be back on the podcast. I’ve had a fun time listening to other copywriters speak on the podcast and add their commentary and their thoughts. I think it’s strengthened the podcast. So I feel like you don’t really need me here. I’m just going to leave right now. I don’t think you need me here at all.

Rob:  We definitely had more than one person offer to take your place in the future should you decide to make maternity leave permanent? So who knows?

Kira:  Tell me who they are, I will fight them.

Rob:  Well, we’ll see that for-

Kira:  They’ll hunt me down.

Rob:  Yeah, exactly.

Kira:  Rob, how do you feel like running the show over the last few months, I guess, what is your biggest takeaway from running the show, Sans, Kira and building the show in any way?

Rob:  It’s been fun. Obviously, I missed your insightful question asking when I’m doing interviews on my own, like the one that we’re going to be doing here in just a second, it’s just me and John talking. But it’s also fun to get insights from other people beyond you and me. I think that you and I have said a lot of things, we kind of repeat ourselves sometimes. There’s only so many ways that we think about niching or experiences that we have. And so it’s been fun adding some additional voices and I think moving forward, that’s something that we’re going to continue to do. So it won’t always be you and me jumping in here and making comments, but it might be you and someone else or me and someone else and sometimes it’ll be you and me and we’ll just see how it all kind of moves forward. So it’ll be a lot of fun.

Kira:  Okay. Sounds good. So let’s jump in to all the serious stuff like this podcast is sponsored by the Copywriter Think Tank. That’s our mastermind for copywriters and other marketers who want to do more in their businesses, maybe like creating a new revenue stream or stepping on stage or creating a new product, podcast, a video channel, maybe you want to build an agency or a product company, maybe you want to become the best known copywriter in your niche. High paying clients call because you’re the name everyone in your industry knows. That’s the kind of thing we help copywriters do in the Think Tank. To learn more, visit copywriterthinktank.com.

Rob:  Okay. So as we usually do, let’s take this episode off with John’s story. It gets a little crazy at times. So I think you guys are going to like listening to what John has to share about becoming a marketing strategist.

John:  It’s a funny story as it all kind of stems from me being in a similar position that people be in when they start their own business, they start their own venture, side hustle or whatever it may be. So I had come back from a year in South America. So originally I was in the corporate finance world and maybe we can dive into South America in a bit, but I was originally in corporate finance and I completely hated it. And I was working the typical 9:00 to 5:00 for somebody else and it was just, I was miserable. I was depressed. I was miserable. I was drinking more often than not, and it was just that something had to happen. So I decided to head off to South America with my friend at the time who was in London.

And the two of us went to South America and volunteered for the year and traveled around for a year. And while I was away over there, I changed an awful lot specifically from a health and fitness point of view. And I kind of made the decision that when I would eventually come back to Ireland that I was going to grow up my own in some way, shape or form. So when I got back to Ireland, I started putting plans into place to start my own fitness business and personal training business because I changed so much from a fitness point of view and a health point of view. And I had a big shift from unhealthy drinking the whole time to actually looking after myself and seeing the results from that. So I got qualified and everything else and did the courses in self-fund, then started my own business and quickly realized that it wasn’t just a case of opening up the doors and people would flood in the door, you actually had to do stuff to get people in the door. And this was just completely new to me.

I was sure because I was good at what I did and I got results and that’s enough, but obviously we know that it’s not. We have to do a lot more to get our names out there, to get people in the door and so on and so forth. So I started studying and looking into… Well, first of all, before I started studying, I started looking into different ways to market myself. And what I initially started doing was blogging. So it’s just basically telling my story online. I started a really simple and ugly WordPress blog, just kind of blogging articles and stuff that was interesting to me and stuff like that. And while I was doing that, I started to kind of trying to find out how can I get more blog visitors, what can I do to get more people to the website and so on and so forth. I started kind of falling into this world of marketing.

And from there, it kind of snowballed and got sucked into a lot of different areas. But specifically the idea of direct response marketing really hit home with me because if I do X, I will get Y. And Y may be a good result or a bad result, but at least I know what that result is. So then from there I came across a guy called Dan Kennedy, which I’m sure everybody is familiar with. And I just had enough of his very direct approach, no nonsense approach, no BS approach. And I started to listen to a lot what he was saying, but also started to do what he was saying to do as well, which I feel, and I’m sure you’ll agree that so many people that they do listen to a lot of things and they do follow a lot of things, but the implementation side of things could sometimes let them down.

One of the things that I learned from Dan initially was if you want to get results in your market, whether it’s a local market or not, you need to stand out. And he himself, he used his books to stand out. So I was like, well, if it works for Dan, I’m going to create… Nobody in my market at the time locally had their own book or a tool that I could use to get clients for themselves. So I said, right, I’m going to start working on my own book. And I remember I arrived home one day from the office to Jess and Jess is a journalist, Jess is an amazing editor, amazing writer, and I said, “I’m going to write a book.” And it was never on the radar at all and she was like, “What?”

I was like, “Yeah, I’m going to have it done by the end of the month.” And she was like, “What?” And so I locked myself in and I just started documenting everything that I went through and the lessons that I had learned and so on and so forth. And then I had this rough manuscript and I was like, well, I really want to do the best I can with this. So it was like, well, I’ve learned so much from Dan, I wonder, would he be interested in hearing about this and hearing about what I’ve been doing, learning from his stuff. So I’d sent emails to the [email protected], emails to Dan. And it was like, well, Dan doesn’t take emails, you have to send faxes. So I got the fax number after doing a bit of digging. I was faxing his assistant and not getting responses.

I sent a couple of letters and didn’t get any responses. So then I was like, okay, well, I need to be creative. I need to stand out like Dan says. So I got my manuscript printed up. And I also went to a local place where I was living in Galway to do kind of a heritage and to do meanings of names and surnames and stuff like that. So obviously Kennedy was an Irish surname. So I got up and scrolled up with the meaning of the surname Kennedy and it actually stems from the first king of Ireland, like his heritage stems from there. So I got that scrolled up and I FedEx my manuscript and the scroll of Kennedy directly to… Who I told was Dan, but it was actually his assistant and his assistant then passed it on to him.

And I think within a week I had a rushed FedEx letter back to me saying, “You’ve got my attention now, Mr. Mulry.” And it was from Dan. And eventually what happened is then they invited me over to Texas to meet GKIC and meet the team. And we had like discussions of what we were doing. And eventually I partnered with GKIC to start bringing direct response marketing to Ireland because while this was happening, I started to realize that as I was getting more clients and getting really good at getting clients, I was actually more excited about getting the clients than I was actually servicing the clients from a fitness point of view. And that’s when I realized that my true passion wasn’t necessarily the fitness, my true passion was helping people still, but actually helping people true marketing, helping people get better results for their own businesses and for their own marketing.

Because the majority of my clients actually that I’d naturally attracted with my own messaging and my own marketing, they were all professionals. They were all self-employed people in my local area. And I was charging a premium, which was higher prices than everybody else. And from there it was like, well, it’s a natural progression. So when I launched the first book, Your Elephant’s Under Threat, that’s when I made that transition. And about six months later, Dan and I kind of launched the official direct response marketing in GKIC brand in Ireland and everything kind of just snowballed from there then.

Rob:  Okay. Yeah. That’s an amazing story. And I know you sort of, especially the year in South America, you kind of glossed over a lot of the experience that you had there. You wrote about it in your book obviously, and so if anybody picks up the book, they’ll get that. But let’s go back to that before we come back to all of the marketing stuff. You’re going from stressed out working in corporate finance to then coming home and being a fitness expert, obviously amazing transition. What are just a couple of the highlights from that year that made you come to that realization like I’m doing the wrong thing and this is what I want to do moving forward?

John:  The big thing really for me is that the main piece is where we’re volunteering. Initially we were volunteering in Ecuador in like an animal refuge, basically just in the middle of the jungle, essentially just mining monkeys and playing with monkeys and playing with different animals and making sure they were safe and then they’ll be released into the wild. But then the second place where we volunteered was in a place called Pisco in Peru. And Pisco was destroyed by an earthquake two years before we had arrived. And one of the local guys there set up this volunteer center called Pisco Saved From Terrorists. And essentially what it was, it was just helping the locals get back on their feet because so many of the locals had lost their families, they had lost their homes, they had lost their livelihoods and everything else.

So we came across this place and we said we’d love to go volunteering there. And underway down to… We had just finished doing the Inca Trail, so we just finished doing the Inca Trail and underway from Cusco, which was the nearest place to the Inca Trail to Pisco, we were getting a bus, I think it was going to be… I can’t remember exactly what it was mostly going to be, say like a 16 hour post-flight maybe, maybe more, maybe slightly less and my backpack underway got stolen. So everything I’d owned was stolen. So all I had left was my phone, my passport and my wallet, everything else that I’d built up and brought with me the previous, I think it was there about three months at this stage, was just completely gone. And when I arrived to Pisco, that night we just kind of settled in the place where we were going to volunteer.

And the next morning we had to stand up and introduce ourselves and tell something interesting about ourselves. So I stood up and said, “Hi, my name is John. And I’m from Ireland. And everything I own was stolen yesterday.” And everyone kind of just went, “What?” And from there, after the breakfast and everything else, I was shown to where we were going to be sleeping and what we’re going to be doing initially. And everybody just started to come around. Someone gave me a backpack and everybody started donating pieces of clothing, pieces of stuff to help me. Like literally, I didn’t have a two-person in that bad thing. And that initial kindness from strangers was just huge to me. And then we were supposed to stay a week, we ended up staying, I think, 12 weeks initially. We went back again eventually, but 12 weeks initially.

And just seeing people who literally had nothing, like these people who their lives were absolutely destroyed smiling every single day, being happy to see us help them every single day, that kind of a reward that I was getting and it might sound a little bit selfish, but you couldn’t put a price on that feeling that you get when you help someone that truly, truly needed it. And it wasn’t about money because there was no exchange of money.

It wasn’t about money at all, whereas previously I was very much into finance world, I was like, I want to work in this place initially to build up some experience. And I move to London and do investment banking and make loads of money and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. The typical kind of finance thinking. Whereas over there, it was just like money never entered my mind at all. It was all helping people and that just kind of snowballed and snowballed and snowballed when I was over there. That was probably one of the main experiences that I had along with some crazy stuff that happened as well. But initially, seeing people who were so happy yet they had absolutely nothing really, really hit home with me. And it hit hard and it definitely affected me in the best way possible.

Rob:  You mentioned other crazy stuff. I mean, obviously getting your backpack stolen is pretty crazy, but, I mean, one more crazy thing with what stands out to you there?

John:  There was a period of time in like, obviously I did Ayahuasca in the middle of the Amazon jungle and that had a massive impact on me as well. If I cannot say… I’ll mention two crazy things because I think they’ll be good. So definitely the Ayahuasca experience was surreal and I’d never taken the psychedelic drugs or anything like that before. I did a little bit of crazy things, but in my own time with a lot of alcohol and stuff like that, but never took any kind of psychedelics around my time in the Amazon jungle. We arrived in a place called Iquitos, which if my facts are correct, it’s the one of the largest cities in the world that you can only get there via a plane or a boat.

And we took a three day riverboat to get there. And it was amazing going up the Amazon river for three days and sleeping in a hammock with about five or 600 people underneath the boat. And it was just like all… I think we were the only foreigners there. It was about six of us. And all the rest were just locals traveling to Iquitos to go to work and stuff like that. And you’d get three meals a day. You’d get kind of like a sloppy porridge in the morning. You’d get a sloppy stew in the afternoon. And you’d maybe get like kind of crushed up plantings, which are kind of like the mannas of the evening and maybe a bit of fruit or something like that. So there was no kind of like a flash dining or anything like that.

But once we got to Iquitos, we went on to look for somewhere to do this Ayahuasca. So we found these guys and they kind of seemed dodgy. And that whole thing seems dodgy if you go with the course you should have. But we said we give them the money anyways and they put us in this kind of a cabin, and they made us drink this black stuff from a plastic bottle. And they gave us each a roll of toilet paper, and then they left. And then within about an hour, every one of us were getting sick. And every one of us were using the toilet paper.

I won’t say exactly what we were doing, but we were using the toilet paper, enough said, and it was horrible. It was just horrible. We were like, this is just horrible. So after a few hours, we went back to where we were staying. And we’re like, surely that wasn’t what was supposed to be. It was just a horrible, horrible experience. So when we met a local and we explained to him what happened, and he was like, “Oh yeah, you got scammed.” I mean, if you want to genuinely do the Ayahuasca experience, I’ll show you where you can do it. So he brought us to another guy and the next day we got to kind of like a mini half canoe, half boat. And we went up like really kind of slim rivers on the Amazon. And we eventually got to this little kind of what was essentially a mini village or a village or a town in the middle of nowhere.

And we met the guy that was going to help us do Ayahuasca. And it was the chairman and we met him and first of all, he brought us through the jungle and he showed us the jungle and he showed us where he’s going to be getting the Ayahuasca from a particular tree and he’s going to be mixing it with something else. And it was a real experience. And then that evening we did the actual Ayahuasca of ritual and it was completely different.

It was an actual ritual where we were all around in a circle. We all tasted a little bit and went around and we had some more, then we had different experiences. And then we got back into our canoe, went back to where the guide was living and we all kind of just had our experiences. And my experience was so on point. It was essentially me… My whole experience was so many things that happened at night, but the crux of it was essentially me constantly trying to grab things, but constantly not being just say that much away from being able to grab it or further away, not being able to reach what I wanted to reach.

And the meaning I took from that right or wrong was that I was trying to reach for things that weren’t for me. I was trying to grab on to things that weren’t for me and I needed to change something because what I was reaching for wasn’t meant for me, I needed to just start going after things that were meant for me. And that shift in thinking, that shift in perspective afterwards was huge because that helped me change my direction, helped me take what I’ve learned from the volunteering and helping people to maybe this is what my focus should be. Maybe I should focus less on trying to help myself and more on helping others. And so that was definitely a surreal experience. And the second one, which for time purposes, I’ll tell it as quickly as I can was this seven day period in Brazil where it was just mayhem.

In seven days, I got essentially kind of kidnapped, but not really kidnapped. I got beaten by the most corrupt policemen in Brazil and threatened with deportation. And I got air rescued by a helicopter in Rio, in the Corporate Cabana beach. In a period of a book fight seven days, it was just surreal. I mean, I’ll probably write a book and just-

Rob:  I was going to say that should be its own book. That sounds like a thriller right there. And if I remember right, because I read the first book, you barely mentioned that in your book, if I remember right.

John:  Yeah. So essentially what happened, it was we had friends from home, from Ireland that we went to Brazil to meet and myself and the guy I was volunteering with because we were doing so much volunteering, we weren’t doing a lot of drinking. But these friends that we met were essentially our drinking buddies from back home. So we went on a major bender and unfortunately myself and my friend, Kranchis, we got extremely, extremely drunk. And our friends that we met just kind of disappeared and left us in the middle of nowhere. And we didn’t know what was going on. So we held down a taxi and we said to the taxi in our broken Spanish, obviously Brazilian speak Portuguese and we said what we thought was bring us to our hotel and when we get to the hotel we’ll give you the money to pay for the cab.

And he took that up as we’re not paying for the cab, screw you. So he drove us to a police station and he obviously told them that these guys are trying to skip the cab or whatever the case is and we were arrested. We were put into separate cells and we were beaten on the hour every hour until the next morning. And we were then brought to a doctor who signed off on the wounds that we had, which were pretty serious that were inflicted on us before they actually picked us up. And then we were brought to Rio de Janeiro Airport handcuffed together, dragged to the airport to be threatened with deportation. And then eventually the Kanady, what I can only assume is like a higher up police, like national police, we were in their offices and we were explaining what happened and they were so apologetic. They were like, this is a complete like Ferris and this should have never happened.

And they were so nice to us and someone came to us was like, “Look, you’re not going to be deported. We’re going to sort this out.” But essentially what happened in the end was they said was like, at the end of the day, it’s your word against the police’s word and you’re not going to win. So we have to do what we have to do, but we’re trying to be as fair as possible to you. And the fairest thing we can do is give you seven days to leave Brazil and you have to leave Brazil. And if they ever come back to Brazil, you have to pay a fine. And we’re so sorry about that but that’s just the way it is. So we went back to where we were staying in Corporate Cabana, and Kranchis said, “I’m going up to Sugarloaf Mountain.” And I was like, “The last thing I want to see in the Sugarloaf Mountain, I’m going to go down to the beach.”

And I went down to the beach. I said, I’m going to go into the water and just kind of clear my head and I’m not a good swimmer. And I didn’t notice, but the waves in Corporate Cabana Beach are ridiculously dangerous and smaller little currents can suck you out. And that’s exactly what happened to me. I was in water up to barely past my ankles and the next thing I was in water that was way above my head. And I didn’t know what was going on. And a surfer came over to me, which kind of shows you how far I was taken out and he gave me a surfboard and he started signaled to the lifeguards.

Two lifeguards came out and they couldn’t bring me in because the waves were so tough. So one of them left and the other guy stayed with me signaling for a helicopter. And about 40 minutes later, a helicopter came with a big fishing net, scooped me out of the water and then dropped me on the side of the beach. And the guy just goes, “You’re okay?” And I was like, “Yeah, I’m okay.” And he’s like, “Okay, we’ll see you, bye.” And then just took off and I had to do a walk of shame from where they dropped me back to the hotel with loads and loads of people just cheering me and cheering me. And it was very, very embarrassing, but it was also… Like looking back now, it was just so surreal and so crazy. And it does make for one good story as well, but it was a crazy experience.

Rob:  You need to have grandkids just so you can tell these stories to them because they’re kind of nuts. Okay. So we could talk I’m guessing for hours about that experience. Well, let’s get back to the marketing stuff that’s kind of where we’d like to focus. You came back, you started focusing on growing. I mean, building your own authority, not just with Dan, but you’ve done other things as well. I know you’ve got several book funnels that you used at certain points to bring in clients. We talked just a little bit more about how what you were doing to get noticed and to build your authority as a marketing expert.

John:  So the two things that I really kind of focused on was massive value upfront regardless of what happens. So regardless of if I get to sell or if I don’t get to sell, if I get a client, if I don’t get a client. And then from there, for me, it was about acquisition. And then essentia. So I used teams like digital products, like say so if it’s a digital course or something like that on something like Facebook ads, or if it’s a book or physical books or a combination of digital products and low price, low end or not low end, but low price front-end offers like a free plus shipping book or a book. And then from there, I’d send a certain percentage of those people into clients.

So I would give away my books for free, people just had to pay the shipping and handling. And then from there when I send out my books, what I was doing initially was I would send out my books and everyone who bought it would get a signed copy of the book and a letter personalized to them. And that worked extremely well. So say for example what I used to do is I used… Because it was just myself and my business, I didn’t have a massive team, and part of my USP at the time was that when you work with me, you don’t get my team of agencies, you don’t get my hired help, you get me and my expertise and my knowledge on your business as if we’re partners.

So I didn’t need a lot of clients to run the business that I wanted to run, I would have a certain amount of clients and then I would essentially stop my marketing to a point. Now, not completely, but I would essentially stop my marketing. And if a client project finished or if a client left for some reason, I would essentially run some ads to drive some book buyers. And I knew that out of every 100 books that I would give away, what I was doing on the backend, that I would generate a certain amount of consultations. And I knew from there, the base, how I was doing those consultations and who I was attracting that I would more often than not get a handful of clients out of that, which would help me bring myself back up to where I wanted to be for my client book level, if that make sense.

Rob:  Yeah, totally makes sense. So if I were going to copy that kind of an approach to marketing, the key is offering big value up front. So that is the book or that is the training or something like that or would you do something even beyond that before somebody is actually purchasing a product from you?

John:  I kind of still did a lot of blogging from like writing essentially content marketing and then driving to the book. But then as I started just getting more and more aggressive with my advertising, obviously, essentially using ads to drive people to my books or I also did… So at the time as well while I was expanding my network and expanding my market, I did a few online launches with some different marketers. So I launched some of my programs to affiliate launches and stuff like that, which obviously brought in a decent amount of leads and buyers, which I then went on to various coaching programs and client programs from there.

But essentially what I was doing was value upfront and making your front end sale, so like acquiring a customer. And then what made me different from just sending them to your backend offer was I went heavy on the personalization. So I would have on day when they got the book, the book was signed to them. So when Rob gets the book, Rob gets the books saying, “Hey, Rob, thanks so much for getting the book. Check out page 53, I think it would be relevant for your business.” And then that creates a connection that just can’t be created by a fulfillment company. So it took a lot of extra work, but when you’re not looking for thousands of clients, that work is well work put in because a potential client to me was worth many thousands and if they stayed for a long, long time it was worth tens of that.

So it was well worth to me in my mind putting in the extra effort to get the extra reward. And I think that’s something that so many people these days, because of automation, because of digital marketing is so easy and we can automate so many different things. People want to remove the personal from their business when essentially people do business with people, not an automation or a responder, they do with the person who’s sending it. So why not bridge that gap was my ticket.

Rob:  As you created all of these funnels, was there a particular topic that tended to resonate more with clients than others? I know you had a book before Your Elephant’s Under Attack book, which tells your story and basics of direct marketing. I know you did a book with Dan Kennedy on direct response marketing, you did a book on authority basically writing books. I think there’s at least one or two others out there, which of those resonated the most with the audience that you’re trying to attract?

John:  Some of them work better than others and some of them were done for different reasons than the other. So say for example, the book on authority and everything else, that book was specifically created to feed people into my expert’s authority formula like online course. So that was the only reason I was serious because I didn’t want to go out and sell like a $1000, $2,000 course straight up. I wanted to feed the pipeline further by giving a condensed version of essentially what was in the course away on a free plus shipping and then I send them up if that was relevant.

The Your Elephant’s Under Threat was probably in terms of building a connection with people, that probably brought in the most connection because it was so personal and it was so kind of unique to me versus like there are many books out there on say email marketing, there are many books out there on building authority and so on and so forth and direct response marketing, whereas the Your Elephant’s Under Threat was more personal, which probably drew for more connection, which meant a lot more clients coming from that I’d say.

Rob:  Yeah. So if I were to copy of that in my business, going personal would probably be a pretty good way to do that. Okay. Let’s talk about your process for writing books. You mentioned to me when we were talking a couple months ago that you kind of have a way where you get a book done very quickly. Obviously you wrote your first book in less than a month, but if I remember correctly, you were telling me you could actually do it in a weekend or so. Tell us about that process and how you produce. I mean, these aren’t necessarily just skinny books 70 or 80 pages, sometimes they’re two or 300 pages, how do you produce that in so little time?

John:  Yeah. So the first one was very much blunt force and that’s what I actually called it was just the Blunt Force Method, whereas you’re essentially locking yourself away if you have the capacity just to get it done. And not everybody can do that. Not everybody has the focus to do it. And to be honest, I don’t even know if I’d have to focus myself to do it now to just kind of lock myself away for that length of time. But back then, I had no other option. I had no other idea. It was my only thing I was focusing on because I was kind of just starting out and I didn’t have as many commitments as I might have now. But then in terms of my process for getting a book done extremely fast, it’s essentially what we do is we would take some of your best content that’s not in a book format, not in written format.

So say for example, I had a two hour kind of marketing masterclass that I had, which is like obviously two hours, 120 minutes. When you actually transcribe something like that and actually like say transcribing will be the first stage, you end up with about 150 pages of like a lot of jumbled kind of stuff. So it’s obviously it’s all over the place. So essentially what we do is say like for my book, The Truth Say, I had a two hour masterclass and I had lots of other supplemental training. So what I did is essentially was I took some of my video content, took some of my video material that I had and an older material that I had and I essentially fleshed those out into the book and it could be done relatively quickly.

I mean, the initial part of the truth, when I initially got it done out where it was, I think it was 109 pages and then I fleshed that out with lots of extra training, lots of extra content into something like I think it’s 160 pages. And there was very little editing. Obviously I didn’t do the editing. It’s not something that would be recommended to do yourself, but it can be done essentially really quickly.

If you’ve ever done a webinar, I know, Rob, you’ve done plenty of webinars, if you’ve done multiple webinars on say one core topic but different angles from each, you can take that content and you can get it transcribed, lightly edited, and you essentially have their book because if people attend your webinar and they love your webinar and they like your content and I say, if it’s like evergreen content and it’s not stuff that can be outdated, if they like it in a webinar, they’re going to love it in a book because it’s essentially a different format for them to consume it, which you can add to it, you can add commentary to it. You can have an introduction to it and so many to it and essentially you get a book done very quickly that’s high quality, high content, and people love it.

Rob:  And then the next step, once you’ve written it, you’ve got it edited and published obviously there are tools for setting up a funnel to make sure that you’re getting into the right hands, running ads to it. But if that were something that somebody wanted to try out, any other expert tips that you would just throw out in addition to getting the book actually written?

John:  Yeah. What I did was when I’m going through this process of say, for example, we’ll take you for example, so say if you have a couple of webinars on persuasion and offense copy and things like that and stuff that you’re just a magician at. So say you take them and you know that you’re going to be putting together something around the whole persuasion, around the whole, say, copywriting angle, so then you know that that’s kind of what the topic is going to be focused around. So then what I would do then is I would run book cover tests. So I would run ads, say, with two book covers and I would say, “Tell me which one of these covers you like best.” So I would have a rough working title. So it might be the persuasion into a new economy fragment and say it might be your working title.

And then I would have two radically different book covers. And to be honest, neither of them maybe the finish one, it doesn’t really matter. And what do we do? We do an ad with the two images saying, “Which one of these book covers do you like best? I’m releasing a brand new book on persuasion and I’m looking for help from the public, click here and tell me which ones you like.” So they would be brought over to a page where they can vote on which book is best and then say, “Well, if you’d like a free copy in advance, put your name and email and address in here.” So then on they’d opt in.

They’d vote first, then they would opt in and then on the thank you page, I’d let them know, well, if you were to buy a book or get a book on persuasion, what else would you like to have in it? And this is on a thank you page. And then they would tell me what they would like to see in the book. And I would just go through that, kind of bring it together and make sure the bulk of what gets repeated from people is included in the book. So then I know when I do release it to the public, I’m giving the public what they want on top of like what I think they might want.

But you’re also building your list as well and then those people, when the book goes live, we would not just send them to book and say, “Thanks very much.” We would send them the book and then offer them a chance to move on to the next stage, maybe getting a strategy session or getting access to a product if it was completely digital or whatever the case may be, which you’re building an early bird list is what I would call it ahead of time, but you’re also getting valuable feedback from people so you do know what you’re putting into it is the stuff that you should be putting into it.

Rob:  Okay. I like that. I’m definitely stealing that for my next book there’s no doubt about that. So let’s break in here and talk a little bit about a few things that John mentioned so far. Kira, it’s been so long since you’ve been on the podcast as a host or co-host, so let’s start with you. What jumped out at you?

Kira:  I was bummed that I was not there for this particular interview with John. I was really looking forward to it. So I’m glad I could at least listen to it and add some commentary. To start with, he had crazy stories to the point where I was listening and I had a couple WTF moments where I was like, what? How is this possible? How did this happen to this man? And that hasn’t happened in a lot of our podcasts interviews. I think it’s just not the content we usually focus on in marketing. But the kidnapping, that definitely stood out to me. And then after being kidnapped, being pulled out by a tide in the water and almost drowning in the water and being helicoptered to the shoreline, I mean, it was just stuff that was so bizarre and opposite of marketing. I guess we could always draw connection to marketing, but it was fascinating. And really I was loving, especially at the beginning of this interview and I wanted to hear more of the crazy stories.

Rob:  Yeah. John writes about some of those in his book, Your Elephant’s Under Threat, which I misspoke a couple of times, and shares a little bit of that stuff. But you and I have talked a lot about travel and we’ve talked with guests who have traveled and done copywriting as they’ve gone through that location independent kind of thing. We don’t hear stories like this very often. Usually they’re all, I didn’t get great Wifi or I struggled to connect with a client because of the time zones or whatever. And so it’s kind of interesting to hear these different kinds of stories there. It sort of reminds me Rachel Pilcher who was in our think tank a year or two ago and she travels full time as a copywriter and runs her business on the road. And she’s always sharing fun stories and things in her Twitter feed. And so it’s fun to hear the weird side of travel as well.

Kira:  Yeah. It definitely makes me want to start traveling again. As you and I have discussed, we both miss traveling and I know many copywriters do. And so yeah, it definitely triggers that travel bug in me.

Rob:  It’s time to go. Yeah. So one other thing, this isn’t really a talking point necessarily, but I find it really interesting how many people that we talked to or that become copywriters marketers tend to come from the fitness industry. The people like John, Todd Brown himself, we interviewed Dave Ruelle on the podcast a while ago and he’s from that industry, Ryan Lee, they’re just… And then in the broader marketing space guys like Russell Brunson and Matt Furey and a lot. So there’s something about running a fitness business, I think, that forces people to figure out marketing. So there’s a bunch of fitness people that are in our industry and learn it and then put those ideas to work for other clients. And it’s just kind of an interesting thing that kind of stood out to me as I was listening to John.

Kira:  Yeah. I mean, it’s such a competitive space that I think you have to understand the marketing principles and stay up to date and cutting edge on that in order to have a successful business in that space. So it makes sense that it bleeds over into the marketing world.

Rob:  Yeah. And then this other, the really big thing that stood out to me is John started talking about finding clients and whatever is this thing that you and I have talked about a little bit, but maybe not so much on the podcast. And that is your first job as a copywriter running your own business isn’t necessarily getting your website put up. It’s not even necessarily choosing a niche or choosing your products or whatever, it’s making a sale, it’s connecting with a client that you can solve a problem for and figuring out that process so you can do it over and over. And all of the other things, packages, websites, pitching strategies, all of those kinds of things help you do that but the most important thing any of us does is connect with the client and sell a solution to a problem that they have.

Kira:  Yeah. I actually was just having a conversation with a copywriter right before this in our think tank about the same thing. And her most critical need right now is to get clients, to get work, to get that steady income. And so we just prioritize what’s most important. I think it’s really easy to get lost in all t