TCC Podcast #276: Changing Human Behavior, Creating a Minimum Viable Product, and Social Media Strategy with Esai Arasi

The people and stuff we mentioned on the show:

Kira’s website
Rob’s website
The Copywriter Club In Real Life Event
The Copywriter Club Facebook Group
The Copywriter Underground
Connect with Esai 
Esai’s episode on The Great Escape with Jacob Suckow
PrimalBranding
Principles of Marketing
Organizational Behavior
E-Myth
Episode 54
Episode 106
Jared’s website

Full Transcript:

Kira:  For many copywriters, social media is a necessary evil. Many of us dread showing up on social media, I am one of those people. But we also realize visibility on social media can be a game changer for our business. For the 276th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, we’re joined by Esai Arasi. Esai is a member of our Think Tank Mastermind, a copywriter and a social media strategist who helps copywriters, oftentimes copywriters who dread social media, and helps them navigate social media so they can stand out to premium clients. And today I am so excited to sit here with my co-host Jared MacDonald. So Jared, thanks for being here. I appreciate it.

Jared:  Thanks for having me, Kira. Always a pleasure.

Kira:  It’s been so long since we got to hang out. So, I’m glad you’re here today. And why don’t you just introduce yourself? Let us know who you are, what you do.

Jared:  Sure, sounds good. Yeah. So, it’s been a little while, but yeah, if we haven’t met, my name is Jared MacDonald and I’m a growth coach for one person service-based businesses, helping with a lot of different perspectives from sales to tech and just overall, just some of the challenges that I’ve found that come easy to me, but are pretty headache conducing for my friends in the service-based business space. And then on the client side, I do a lot of UX strategy, user experience strategy. So, customer journey mapping and customer research kind of main specialties there.

Kira:  And can you just share like the clients, the types of clients you typically work with?

Jared:  Yeah, yeah. They’ve… It’s ranged over the years, but largely enterprise. So kind of financial and eCommerce as well.

Kira:  Okay. And I feel like, Jared, you’re one of those people who just can do everything. So, anytime I have any type of problem, tech related, automation, active campaign, I just ask you or I refer people to you because you have all the answers to all types of tech questions. Do you feel like that’s fair?

Jared:  I mean, I feel like you’re way too kind first off, because I definitely don’t have all of the answers. But yeah, I mean, it’s just all about helping, all about serving and I think if I can help, I most certainly will.

Kira:  All right. So for today, before we jump into this conversation with our guest, this week’s sponsor is TCC IRL, ‘The Copywriter Club In Real Life’. So it’s our big event, which is taking place in person in Nashville, Tennessee, in March 28th through 30th. And it’s been a while since we all hung out in person. So we are excited to get together, hang out, bring together some incredible speakers. And you know Jared, you’ve been to our event, so maybe rather than me plugging it in reading this promo copy on the page, you could just share what was your experience like at TCC IRL?

Jared:  Yeah, I mean, it’s hard to sum it up, to sum up multiple years into just a quick kind of pitch. But I feel like it’s going to sound a lot like your promo copy, not because you paid me to say this, but just because I love you guys and love your event. Yeah I mean, I’ve been to just for perspective too, for anybody listening. I mean, I… Not anymore because of COVID, but I went to conferences, probably 12 to 14 conferences a year, all over the world. And Rob and Kira, not just because they’re my friends, but because it’s such an awesome event and it is literally the top three, if not the favorite event of mine of year. And the reason for that, I mean obviously the content is great, you will learn a lot.

But for me, what I love is just the people that are attracted to this event and the connections that you’ll make. And that’s kind of consistent for a lot of conferences, but I think this one in particular, I’ve told a lot of friends, I’ve told family about it. It’s the quality of the people. And every year I’ve gone, I’ve met new people and seen old friends and even if you don’t have that luxury, this is your first time going, I would highly, highly, highly recommend you go.

Kira:  Thanks Jared, for saying that. And of course I want to know, what would take us from number three to number one? But we can talk about that.

Jared:  I thought you were going to say, “Of course I want to pay you later.” But no, I’m just kidding. I didn’t receive any compensation for-

Kira:  That too, that too. All right. So, thank you and if you’re listening and you have any interest in this event, head over to thecopywriterclub.com/tccirl-2022 and we’ll link to it in the show notes, so you can check out the event. Now, let’s jump into the interview with Esai.

Esai:  I think the first time I ever wrote something, I was probably eight. And I can’t remember a time when I haven’t been writing stories, poems and a lot of really embarrassing stuff that my parents still kept. But I never thought I would actually become a copywriter. What I thought I would become is a trainer. Somebody that helped people, helped people change, helped people become better versions of themselves and that’s what I did at my corporate job for almost, actually almost a decade. The story of how I have become a copywriter from that, it’s very interesting and it’s not at all a typical story of how somebody starts a business. But, I’m really glad I got here because I feel like everything that I’ve learned, reading books, writing stories, becoming a trainer, learning, researching experiential learning and behavioral change, everything has tied in so beautifully with what I do today.

Rob:  So, tell us more about that. As a trainer, what were the things that you did and how that applies to what you do as a copywriter?

Esai:  So, I was actually incredibly lucky to work with some really good managers who prioritize employee wellbeing and prioritize training, which helped me focus on not just creating this cookie cutter training, but actually designing programs that helped people change their behavior. So that was the first mandate I got. One of the first jobs that I held as a trainer and the first things we worked on, is how do we get high school kids to change the way they behave. A part of that, and I’ve talked about this in many different platforms, is how do we get high school boys, especially seniors to stop vandalizing the school and instead, whenever they have free time, get them to read books. And that’s felt like, such a lofty goal when they actually first told me that this is what they wanted, that I wasn’t sure how we are going to do it. But we started from the basics, right?

So, we talk about when we don’t want people to change their behavior. A lot of old school thinking comes in and this actually ties in with the way we have these cassette tactics, right? We always think we can treasure people, we can scare people into doing something we want them to do. Unfortunately, that’s… In my experience as a trainer, it works in the short term, yes. But it’s not sustainable and it often implodes or explodes in the worst way possible. So, one of the things I learned was the only way you can help people change their behavior, you can help people, help people become better is number one, understanding what they want. Go back to basics and talk to them and like to understand what they need, understand what they want, understand what they believe. And once you have a good understanding, once you understand them, then you create an environment which helps them change that belief.

And once a belief is changed and the change in action is very, very easy to affect. So one of the things that we did for when we wanted high school boys to start trading books was number one, we looked… We completely overhauled the kind of books the library was stocking. So we bought a bunch of Goosebumps, we bought a lot of thrillers and Whodunit mysteries, and Michael’s Brighton and sci-fi, and we also stocked a lot of comic books. Because, comic books are still legitimate. It’s still legitimate literature. Sometimes, I lead, I… There was a period when I read a lot more comic books than books even. So, we stopped all of that, because we remove the judgment of what constitutes reading a book. It’s not always your Charles Dickens and your Jane Austen. So when you want somebody to foster a reading habit, then you have to understand what they like and do that.

So that was the basic, because nobody thought to do that. Because everybody was thinking increase supervision, make it mandatory and all of that, which was not working. So second thing we did was, we looked at okay, what would motivate? What would motivate them? How can we make this a practice of reading long term?, is when we implemented a credit system. So every book they read, they got a few credits which they can spend towards something. And these are kids who are coming from extremely impoverished communities. So they did not have to, did not have access to a lot of things, including stuff like footballs, like really good quality footballs. Because these are jocks who are interested in primary sports. So we set a very high goal of, you have to have like 300 credits to be able to buy that football, where each book will give you two to five credits based on the kind of book you were reading.

And there were a bunch of other things. So, everything actually worked together so beautifully that in a couple of months the boys had just read everything the school library had, and they had to go out and buy more books. To date, that’s my most successful behavioral change program. That’s when I realized, and copywriters know this, there are content writers, there are people like for any price range who can just write content, right?, who can write words to fill up your website. But really good copy, copy that actually helps you achieve your goal, that’s premium. That takes years to master. Even then it takes a long time to research and implement the right way, but it gets resolved. It’s a same thing that I found with training. It starts with research, it starts with understanding who you’re trying to help and then it all fits together.

And if you are… If it’s not helping that person, if it’s not built into what you do, no matter how good you are it’s not going to work. It’s all about keeping that end person in mind and working towards that. And that’s what I got to do for almost decade in my training. Year after year, I researched more and more into how training programs work, how adults learned, how people change human psychology. Most people hate change, right? So, how do we help them? Even those who want the change, cannot. We want to work out, we want to lose weight, but we can’t stop eating junk food. So there’s a lot of stuff in there. So, if you want to change that behavior, I spent a decade researching how do you do that. What are the exact steps disposed into helping somebody change their behavior? And that’s pretty much what I did then and that’s luckily helping me really, really well in my current role as a copywriter as well.

Rob:  Yeah. I love this idea. Obviously, as copywriters we are trying to get people to change their behavior in some way and hopefully it’s in a way that positively impacts their life in some way like, using a new product, or hiring a coach, whatever the thing might be. So, you mentioned specifically understanding where the person is, their world view, what’s their motivation and what’s currently going on, and then also providing positive inducements or incentives for them to do something different. Is there anything else that you would think of through that persuasion process that’s worth mentioning?

Esai:  One other thing that I would say is the process that you’re implementing, the process itself has to be fun. That’s the piece a lot of us miss. And thank you for asking this, Rob, because even when we are talking, it’s often very easy to overlook this piece. Anything that’s fun, it’s easier to do. And this is talked about in a book called Flow, right? Where you talk about, if you want somebody to do something, there are two ways you can approach it. One, you make it easy. But there are so many easy things that people don’t do because it’s just boring. A lot of people don’t like folding laundry, I’m one of them. Like I cannot, it’s just something I cannot do. Like, I would die before being forced to do laundry and fold clothes. It’s just, I cannot. It’s incredibly boring for me.

And the way that I solved it is, I cannot watch Netflix unless I’m folding, right? Unless I’m folding clothes. So now, I’ve added a layer of fun to that activity, so now I’m able to do it. So making the change easy is one part of it, which is a part a lot of people understand that they do it well. The more difficult part is to making it fun and that’s the part we struggle with. That’s one of the reasons I love quiz funnels so much. The quizzes are fun. Implementing a PDF that you’ve given me as a date packet is difficult because I have to read it, understand it, change my habits, implement it and then see results.

But quizzes, I can. It’s fun to take and I immediately get results and I love them. So you need to implement both of these. It has to be a degree of easy, but you can’t always make things completely easy for your clients. And again, even if you’re there, there are a lot of easy things that our clients and customers and prospects don’t do. So you also need to make it fun, so people will do the difficult things that you’re asking them to do.

Rob:  Okay, yeah. This is fantastic. The first seven minutes of chatting with you here, like masterclass on how do we get people to change behavior? So, that’s fantastic. Let’s go back to the switch then, from when you were a trainer to just starting out as a copywriter. What did you do to get your copywriting business started?

Esai:  Rob, in fact, I did not start out as a copywriter. I did… I actually started out after my training and then I had to quit my job because of a bunch of personal reasons. I realized I didn’t want to start over in another company and have to prove myself all over again. Then, I decided I wanted to start a… I wanted to freelance as a career coach because I’ve been in HR, I’ve been in training, I can help people find placements. And I was doing that and I realized, I know how to do training well, I know how to do HR well, but I don’t know how to sell, like grow my business. I don’t know how to market it, I don’t know how to get clients. That’s when I started learning. I discovered the school Online World. It started with Sunny Lenarduzzi’s YouTube, where I tried to figure out how to, how do I get clients with YouTube?

It started there and led to Amy Porterfield. It led to Prerna, who’s a copywriter from India and I didn’t think somebody from India could actually break into that role and actually do that. And from then on, it led to a lot of different things which finally led to me meeting you and Kira and working with you guys in the Think Tank. But initially it started that way and the more I tried to build my business, I realized that the most fun I was having was implementing these market strategies, was in doing SEO and especially in copy writing. So again, in all of these courses that I was taking, I was seeing much better results than everybody else implementing those. So people started hiring me saying that, “Can you write my emails? You were saying to have an act for doing that, can you help me write my YouTube video script?”

And that’s when I made the switch. I realized this part was so much more fun and I love writing. I couldn’t believe somebody would pay me money. This is what… This happened when I started training, because I couldn’t believe somebody would pay me to train. And I couldn’t believe somebody would actually pay me to write. So, the first few times… And you wouldn’t believe it, the first time I wrote an entire launch sequence for a client and she’s still using it to the state, because I’m still on her email list and I still get those emails. I wrote 11 email launch sequence for $600. And at that time for me it felt like, “Oh my God, somebody’s paying me this much money to do this job.” And at that time it was quite a bit for me, because it was proof of concept that I have a skill that’s valued.

Rob:  So, why do you think it is that you were able to get so much more out of the training that you were taking or get so many great results as opposed to the other people who were taking the same kind training?

Esai:  There are actually multiple reasons for that and one thing, and… This is going to fly directly in the face of everything that we commonly talk about in the online space. First is, doing an actual full-time MBA has a ton of value. There’s a lot of success that I have that I can directly track back to the training I received in my full-time MBA. I used to be deathly scared of public speaking. I couldn’t get up on stage. Like I would shake, I would stutter and I couldn’t get more than 10 words out on the stage. MBA completely cured me of that. Because we would do two to three presentations every week, and you got on stage and spoke so much that it completely cured me of that fear. And the second thing is, there’s so many basics. So there’s so much basics and foundational training that I received in my MBA that helped me a lot in implementing.

For instance, in a lot of the programs we talk about your ideal audience, your ideal client, right? And we have… Most courses give you the set of questionnaire, they give you this framework and to tell you how to identify who your ideal audience is. And I know the best Courses have it and that’s where they start. And I know we do that in the Think Tank, I know we have that in the accelerator as well, and it’s very foundational work. But because I had already done MBA, I had already done deep work into segmentation, psychographic segmentation, what are the different types of segmentation, what does it look like and all of that. And because I already had that background, it was very easy for me to understand the foundation on which the principles, the framework of ICA was built on.

And I think… Jacob and I actually go very in depth into this, on his podcast that we recorded last month, where we actually go deep into how we are now implementing strategies without a lot of times understanding the foundation on which it is built, right? So that really helped me, that was one part. The second part… The second reason I think I saw so much more success is I do not… I like implementing things fast, I like testing things. When somebody says this, somebody gives me a topic or a project, I like to create a minimum viable version of that and to quickly test it. And I always create that MVP and because I’m testing, and iterating, and building on top of it, sometimes the thing that I’m putting out, it looks like it needs a little bit of polish. But very, very quickly and it looks like a lot sooner than everybody else, it looks like I have something really good. And that did not happen by absent.

It is a lot more work to build an MVP and iterate it. It’s easier to wait for it to be perfect and just put that out there. But I think it’s these two things that really help me stand out, because MBA gave me the foundation and it gave me the training to do the grant work, to work on something until it looks good. It actually is different and it works.

Rob:  Okay. So before we go any further, you mentioned your podcast interview with Jacob Suckow. We’ll link to that in the show notes, if anybody wants to listen to that discussion. So, just leaving that there. And then as far as these things that set you apart, obviously an MBA isn’t something that, if you don’t have an MBA you can just go out and have that tomorrow, Right? But the MVP part is that quick implementation. So do you have any tips for, how do we approach that? As we’re learning things in a course or we’re learning things from a mentor, how do you quickly put it into action so that you’re proving the concept and getting something out of it?

Esai:  Oh, for sure. And I would actually like to add Rob, that for me it was an MBA, but now… For me it was an MBA in 2008, right? When there was no social media, the way it is now, right? So at that time, MBA was the only resource. Now, MBA is not the only resource. Everything that I learned in my MBA, we can learn but by reading the right books. So today when somebody talks about branding, I tell them to go back and read Al Ries, read Jack Trout, read primer branding and if you want to learn marketing, go back and read Philip Kotler. There are a bunch of other books that you should also read, but you should definitely also read Principles of Marketing by Philip Kotler. If you want to learn human behavior, write… Read organizational behavior by Stephen Robbins.

These are foundational books and these guys are the founding fathers in their field for a reason. And this will ground you in the basics of what you need to learn. And you definitely need to know the ICA framework and all of that, but this foundation will make you much, give you much stronger understanding. So, even if you don’t have an MBA does not mean you can’t have all of this knowledge. The knowledge is freely available now more than ever, just make sure you are going to the source. When you’re learning something, go back to the source, try and understand what principles is this built on?, where is the original research?, who was the original creator of this psychological principle? Try and go back as close to the original source as possible and you’re a hundred percent good to go. That’s what I do for a lot of marketing now, because my MBA was just… It was very… It was a decade ago, right? And going back and reading those books and they’re so incredibly relevant even today. So, I just wanted to touch on that.

Rob:  Yeah, I think that’s a really good point. We’ll link to the books that you specifically mentioned. But you’re right. You don’t need to spend $90,000 on an MBA or whatever cost, wherever you are, for whatever the program is. You can teach yourself. But having said that, there’s still a little bit of time involved in that. And so yeah, let’s jump to, what are the things that you do to prove the concept and to do that fast implementation?

Esai:  So, one of the things I do, anytime that I don’t want to implement something… And this is what I did when I started as a freelancer, when I decided that I don’t want to pick, I don’t want to start, I don’t want to be a career coach, I actually can get into marketing and I started out as a freelancer. So one of the things I did was, when I approached clients I told them, “I’m from India and I am new. So, I would work for you for like low.” I started at $10 an hour. I told you that’s how much I would charge you. But, I’m also going to learn on the job and implement this. And I found clients who still respected me for my honesty, and they were completely okay with me learning and implementing things. And what I did was any time that you are trying to do something, one of the things we do is… Let’s say you want to start, you want to launch a course, right? You want to launch a digital product.

And we’ve seen some of them do this, do it really well in a Think Tank. And Ash did it fantastically with her prelaunch content, Grace Baldwin, she’s doing it… Doing her group boring and she’s doing the MVP version of it now. Kristen Macintyre is doing her MVP version of her VIP, demystifying VIP packages for copywriters. So what would do is, instead of getting hung up on the tech and all the things that you don’t know, right? Just focus on what is it that you do know. What is it that you do really well? So when I’m trying to implement something, I don’t… I do have the habit of, and I think all copywriters have this in common, we try to go deep on that subject because we want to low… We want to learn and know everything there is to it.

And that’s just our insatiable curiosity and that’s what makes us great copywriters. But even as you’re doing that, start immediately taking an action. So, for email… And this is easy to say, difficult to implement. I struggled with this in some areas as well. I still haven’t launched my… At the time we are speaking, I haven’t started sending out weekly emails. But, my goal is by the time this airs, it would be up and I would be… It’s slated for a weekend. I’m going to start sending them out. But it… Everybody struggles with that. And this is easy advice to give, but launch in a way that’s simple. And that’s what I’m going to do.

My emails are not going to be these perfect weekly emails, but I’m going to make sure that anybody who signs up sees value. So what I’m going to do is, because I read a book a week and it just… I constantly learned so much and I have systems in place to make sure what I’m learning stays on top of mind. I’m going to share that in an email and my email is not going to be very wordy, it’s going to be quickly, what am I reading?, what have I learnt?, and how can copywriters implement that at their business? So anybody signing up for my emails, it’s going to take them two minutes to read my email. They’re still going to get something very valuable and actionable, and it’s going to be easy for me to implement as well.

So, this is an MVP. And I will probably layer a lot more strategy on top of it. Little bit later, I’ll segment my list, I’ll send customized book recommendation, I will send customized weekly emails, all of that. But I’m not going to get hung up on all of that. Right now it’s only about how can I focus on what I enjoy and what I do really well, and how can I get that out there. I think if you make that your focus and you implement that in everything that you’re trying to do, you would find that there’s so much you will learn by taking action, way more than you could have in taking courses.

Right? And I wanted to talk about this especially in our Think Tank as well. Rob if you see, a lot of the things that we are talking about in the Think Tank is not that different from the accelerator, if you think about it, right? We are all still working on a framework, we’re just doing it at a much higher and the focus is actually on implementation. Because while the implementation looks very easy when you’re learning the concept, it’s really not. With every step of implementation comes a new level of learning, requires a new level of support and guidance and mentoring.

That’s what we get in the Think Tank and that’s what we pay much more for than a course, because that’s the challenging part. So you… And the only way to do that is to take action. That’s something I struggle with, but that’s something… Even while I struggle with it, that’s something I continue to hold at the core of what I do and in the way that I work with my clients as well. Implement, learn, implement, learn, implement. That’s a thing.

Rob:  Okay, so as you go through that process, this is fantastic, clearly part of the learning process though, is that not everything works. And so as you’re trying out ideas and things fail, how do you deal with that? Or how do you reset your expectations? How do you change up whatever the thing is that you’re creating in order to iterate it towards a success?

Esai:  The one way to do that is to go into it expecting to fail. And we have such aversion a lot of times because the way we are brought up in our schools, because failing is wrong, passing is good. We have a ton of aversion towards failing. But what you should do instead is look at every time you fail, you learn something and that is something you could never have learned if you had gotten it right at the first place. There are so many people who breeze through a bunch of things at the lower levels. And then after they hit the ceiling they struggle because we didn’t learn the lessons, we didn’t build up the stamina of failure at those early stages because we breeze past through those.

And I’m doing that now because my business grows so quickly, I’m at that stage where now I have to face a lot more failures because I’m trying to build out a team. I’m trying to scale my agency. I’m meeting that ceiling where I have to fail over and over. And it’s because I built that up much earlier in my business, I’m able to fail and still do well.

So, the way to do that is when something is not working, the most important thing is if you are working with multiple stakeholders, talk to people. Talk to people with the curiosity of what happened. What happened, what did not work? Why did it not work? And remove judgment, judging others, or judging yourself, remove all judgment and approach it with a sense of curiosity. What didn’t work? And you can only do that when you go in expecting to fail.

And failure is a very good thing, as long as you follow up with checking, what went wrong, identifying what went wrong and just tweak it and make it better. And again, the next time going there with failure and I love Peter Thiel talks about this, how he wanted to invest in a company, but he wasn’t very sure because the founders were very hesitant. They didn’t have very firm answers for anything he asked. And they were very like, yeah, we are trying this. We’re not sure. We’re still testing this and this. So he didn’t feel very confident. So he actually passed on that investment. The founders, then the company they founded was Uber. Uber is so internationally successful, but those founders, they went in saying that, “No, not sure we think this will not work, so we’re testing it.” So they went in expecting to fail and because they failed and tested so many times the success is there for us to see.

So that’s what I would recommend to approach it with curiosity. When you remove judgment, every stakeholder, whether it’s a client, a VA or an employee or your audience, everybody. When you remove judgment and when you remove emotions from that equation and only have curiosity, then everybody will be willing to give you the information that you need to make sure it goes better the next time.

Rob:  Yeah, it’s the good approach to it. I can’t remember who it was that said it, but the idea that it’s not failure, if you learn from it, you basically … it’s an experience and an experiment, an experience, a challenge. But as long as you’re able to take something from it, it’s not failure.

Esai:  Yeah. And I love … There’s a quote in Gray’s Anatomy, and I think this will resonate with a lot of my clients as well. Where Meredith Gray, she says, “Failure is what progress looks like.” That there’s no other statement that has hit me that hard. Because progress is that. Progress is a journey. That means the journey is just one failure after another. That’s the way to success. And it’s the only way to succeed. If you’re only succeeding, which means not living up your potential.

Kira:  Okay. Let’s jump in here and talk about what stood out the most to you, Jared. So as you listened to the interview, what stood out?

Jared:  Yeah, I mean, there was a lot, honestly the folding laundry comment kind of hit me right in the feels, but in all seriousness though, I think just awesome what she’s doing with in her history of kind of teaching young boys kind of how to read and that kind of resonated just because reading has been such a big part of my life as well. And just even when I was a young kid to nowadays, so I think there was a lot there. And then just talking about habits and behavioral change, I think that’s definitely something that we as marketers, copywriters, definitely zero in on. So I think there’s a lot we could unpack there and yeah. And just what she shared about kind of initially not knowing how to sell or kind of grow her business or not really know how to market it in the beginning. I think that’s a common thing that a lot of people can relate to.

Kira:  Yeah. Behavior change. I mean, even as she was talking about taking these boys from, I believe she mentioned vandalizing school to enjoying and reading books regularly. It sounds like such a huge transformation and she was able to do it. That stood out to me too. And I was thinking about how I’m trying to help my kids learn how to read, not learn how to read, learn how to love reading. They know how to read. They understand how to read. They have required reading at school, but how do we take them from feeling like reading is a chore to loving it? I’m not always sure how to do it, but I’m working on some ideas right now. And so it was fun to hear her talk about it because I’m actually doing the same thing as far as… She mentioned filling the library for these students with books that actually interest them, like comic books and other more exciting thrillers and starting there to create that incentive and to line up their interest with the books.

And so that’s been a big change for me. I’m like, “Well, let me find books that actually interest my kids, rather than just giving them what I think interest them and seeing if that works.” And then she also mentioned the reward and having that point system to lead to the prize, which I believe was a football. And so I’m all about rewards in the reward system too. So it’s been working for my kids so far, but again, I’m at the beginning stages of this behavior change for them. So just listening to that, I was like, “I feel like I’m on the right track. And it’s really cool to know this works.” And it’s also great to know that this is something we can do as copywriters for our clients and we can do and learn and improve in this area. So Jared, has this worked into your client work at all or into your personal life?

Jared:  Yeah, I’d answer both. As you were saying that, what stuck out to me is just how the lightning rod that is cast, or the connection that blows up when you, or I guess the person you know, in this case, your kids is reading something or learning so that they’re really interested in. And that comes with obviously knowing them and you as their mom is going to be… You are going to know them pretty well and get to know their interests. But when you tied into kind of a work context of kind of knowing your audience and that’s a cliche. I’m almost cringing saying it. Just because it’s everywhere without any practical kind of tips and we’re happy to go there. And I think Esai even talks about that, but I think just, it’s amazing.

I mean, even from my own personal experience of in school, not really enjoying some of the topics, dare I say. And then once getting out and reading articles and books on psychology and marketing and human behavior and these things that became really interesting to me, it’s amazing how that kind of childhood reading addiction almost. And it’s with its downfalls. That’s something that I definitely would love to talk about, but I think getting back to the application of what you’re reading, but I just think it’s been nice to kind of see how obviously there was a massive interest for reading for me growing up, but then later on in life finding things that I really was interested in that related to my work, I couldn’t stop consuming.

And I think with that, it’s really important to apply what you’re consuming and not kind of go down the full-time student route, obviously readers are leaders and we’ve heard all the terms, but I think it’s really important and beneficial to make sure that we’re applying I guess kind of factoring that into kind of counting the cost of what you’re going to learn, whether it’s a course or a book, like, do you have time to apply it before you buy the book?

Or before you buy the course, do you have the time to apply it? Not just consume it, but to actually take the time to let it marinate and let it permeate and then apply it.

Kira:  Yeah. I’m glad you mentioned that because you know, she also talked about her MBA in this conversation and she mentioned these weren’t her exact words that you could be simply pursue your own MBA and just read the foundational books and continue to read. And I know Esai is such a voracious reader. And I think about that often, many copywriters we chat with consider going back to school at different times. And I just wonder could we pursue our own MBA or own just any type of degree by just reading and just reading voraciously and adding multiple books to our bookshelf every week. Is that something that we can do?

I tend to think that the benefit of doing it within a school and I mean, oftentimes paying for it, is that you feel that pressure to complete it and to apply it. And you may not feel that same pressure if you’re doing it on your own and you aren’t necessarily, you don’t have any skin in the game, but what do you think as someone who loves to read, how do you view the learning capacity through books and how you build it into your schedule, so that does happen and you do apply it?

Jared:  Yeah. Building into your schedule is key and kind of having that open time to be able to not feel guilty doing it. I think sometimes when the hustle and bustle of whether it’s personal life or work life or both, and they converge and you’re feeling almost guilty to kind of take half an hour or an hour and read part of a book. But I think it’s just also really important to just be… You never know what you’re learning in the moment. So I think it’s important to really document… You don’t have to obviously write the whole book again, but, or the article, but I think just really kind of keeping whether it’s in Notion or paper or Evernote or whatever you use the tech isn’t really important. I think it’s just more so you never know what you’re learning in the moment that could help you.

And I think even looking at my career back in the day, like 15 years ago, you know what I was doing, I’d have no, I’d absolutely no clue that it would help me with what I’m doing today, but it did. And I just think always learning is such an important, especially in this kind of thought leadership or kind of knowledge work space.

I think it’s just so important to always be learning and always refining your craft in both application as well as knowledge. But I think it’s just, you might never know what you’re consuming and it… And at the time is how it’s going to affect you down the road. And I think it’s just so important to cross pollinate and is the term I love to use, not that I’m an avid horticulturist or anything, but just being able to cross pollinate and kind of read books and disciplines and kind of diversity of thought that you wouldn’t normally. And I think that’s kind of where you can become really dangerous is when you aren’t reading all of the bestsellers necessarily that everyone’s reading and being able to read some of those, but then also kind of reading other books that might pique your interest and be able to kind of apply some of those learnings and start to form your own kind of knowledge web.

Kira:  Well, you mentioned that and it brings back all my memories of just different conversations we’ve had. You’ve shared your notes in Notion, I’ve seen your Notion. And so I know that you take a ton of notes when you learn something new or you’re watching a training, or you’re reading a book. Can you just share a little bit more about that process for you? Because you’re not just taking a couple bullets, writing a couple bullets like I do, you have extensive notes. Do you have a process you go through when you read a book or is it just something like you figure it out book to book training to training?

Jared:  Yeah. Great question. I’m surprised that you’re right. We’ve, we’ve had some calls in the past and you’ve seen my Notion and I’m surprised you’re still living to tell about it. So that’s good. Because I feel like you can’t have an entirely clean, it’s going to be a little messy, embrace the messy, as one of my friends would say, but yeah, I think it’s important to kind of just brain dump what’s in your head.

And I think the process or process as some of us up in Canada say, it’s evolved over time. And I think one gentleman that follows Tiago or Tiago Forte and his process of like progressive summarization and that can be a time consuming endeavor, but it’s essentially where you take… There’s a great book called How to take great notes, as well. And basically taking a summary and as you’re listening, whether it’s audiobook or paper book or whichever it is, logging all your notes and then going back and another great tool is Readwise, which can sync all of your notes from like a Kindle or actually has like an OCR scanner and now we’re really getting into the weeds. So you you can cut me off Kira, you can