TCC Podcast #302: Doing Whatever It Takes with Raven Douglas

The people and stuff we mentioned on the show:

How to Find Clients Workshop
The Accelerator Waitlist
The Copywriter Think Tank
Kira’s website
Rob’s website
Raven’s website
The Copywriter Club Facebook Group
The Copywriter Underground
Free month of Brain.FM

 

 

Full Transcript:

Rob Marsh:  From time to time, on this podcast, we’ve interviewed copywriters who seem to have a golden touch. They connect with the right clients, they start out charging more than what beginners charge, their niche, their brand, their work, it all just seems to work out. And then there are copywriters who work really hard to make things come together. They take chances that may not pay off, they struggle with low-paying projects, knowing that it’s just the first step on a long journey. Today’s guest on The Copywriter Club Podcast has more in common with that second group of copywriters than she does with the first. Copywriter brand strategist and direct response expert Raven Douglas has put in the hours, made the sacrifices and grown a business that might make a lot of other copywriters drool in envy. We first met her five years ago in Manhattan. So, this excellent interview has been a long time in coming and we think you’re not going to want to miss it.

Kira Hug:  But before we get to our interview with Raven, we have an ask for you if you listen to the show regularly, or actually, if this is your first time listening and you enjoy this episode, we would love for you to leave a review for the show. If you do review the show, we will share your review in an upcoming episode.

Rob Marsh:  Yeah. We like to share those reviews at the end of the show. Maybe you’ve stuck around long enough to hear a couple of them, but we’d love hearing what you think about the podcast and what our guests share. So, if you would just hop over to Apple Podcasts and click four or five stars, whatever you feel like it deserves, and then just leave a couple of words, your thoughts about your experience with the podcast, we would really appreciate it.

Kira Hug:  Yeah. I like how you did not give them the option of giving us a three-star or below.

Rob Marsh:  Yeah. Well, I mean, if they want to give us a one or two-star review, we could read those, too, but-

Kira Hug:  No, I don’t want to read those.

Rob Marsh:  Yeah. We’ll see what we get in.

Kira Hug:  Okay.

Rob Marsh:  All right. So, let’s get to our interview with Raven.

Raven Douglas:  I swindled my way in, I was an enterprising young college student and you had to do a year in the writing lab as an English major, anybody listening and who is writing copy will know that you don’t actually really need a degree to write copy. I chose English because I didn’t know what to do, but I knew I was always really good at English. I did my year in the writing lab. I was out with several people being college students be like, “Hey, can you still help me?” And what they really meant is, “Can you write it for me?” And then I said yes. And several of those people went on to graduate. I can now say that I have my degree safely, so they can’t take it from me. I wrote a lot of their papers, but they opened businesses. Then they came back to me and said, “Hey, could you write my brochure for my business? Could you write my website?” And I said yes, and hit the library to figure out how to do it on the back-end.

I found an old copy book by Bob Bly and I went, “Oh, I know what this is.” I was taking marketing 101 and we had just started talking about P.T. Barnum. And I said, “Oh, I know what this is.” And I wrote what I can now say is very bad copy a little over 10 years ago and I turned it into those first clients and they went, “Great, how much do we owe you?” And I got on Google. I said, “Oh, you can charge for this. Oh, you can really charge for this.” So, I did. And I figured, “Well, if I could do this for business owners that I know, I could probably go around and ask business owners that I don’t know if I could also do this for them.” So, I started developing that cold pitching muscle live. Then I figured out that there were these things called marketing agencies and they actually had them in small town Jackson, Mississippi. So, I started pitching them too and was like, “Hey, y’all got a little bit of that overflow. I work for free.” Yeah, that’s how I got started.

Rob Marsh:  I’d love to hear more about that pitching process that you built out. Obviously, the first couple of referrals come in, that’s where a lot of copywriters start. We know a few people, we do that work, but at some point we have to start building a pipeline of clients, right? How did you reach out to them? Do you even remember that first pitch that you would make and what were you asking for? What problem were you solving? How did that all come together?

Raven Douglas:  That’s a great question. My memory’s kind of poor, I’m not going to lie. I think my first pitch was something along the lines of like, “Hey, would you like to have somebody write things for your business?” Because I didn’t quite connect yet that copy could bring businesses more sales, that was my purview. I was just like, “Hey, do you need things written for your business? Do you need a brochure written? Do you need your website updated? Do you even have a website?” And a lot of businesses at the time didn’t have websites or they didn’t have great ones. So, I just asked them, “I’ll write it and I’ll write it for free. And if you don’t like it, you don’t have to pay me. Could you just tell me what you think of it?” Several of them of course said yes, because that was a great deal for them.

Interestingly enough, a lot of people were either very honest or just very kind, because most people did pay me. But that was the first pitch for those businesses. Then a few businesses introduced me to other forms of copy. I got into direct mail that way, because they went, “Hey, we sent out these mailers and we were thinking of creating a new one. Would you want to give it a try?” And I said yes and I still had no idea what I was doing, but it was really interesting to cut my teeth with those pitches, because there were some people that just straight told me no, because I didn’t know how to sell it. I had no idea, again, what the value was, but it taught me very quickly to be like, “Oh, they need to say yes to me and I need to be able to articulate to them what this is going to do for them.”

So, once I figured that out based on what some other businesses graciously told me in feedback, it’s like, “Oh yeah, we got so many customers. They said they saw our direct mail ad. They loved it. These people visited our website and they wrote us to tell us how much they loved it.” So, that helped me understand like, “Oh, this is valuable and it brings customers in.” So, then I could sell it properly or at least better.

Kira Hug:  Okay. So, I want to get granular real quick. Because we talk frequently with copywriters about whether or not to sell for free or whether or not to give copy away for free, can you just speak to that and how it worked for you in more detail? How did you phrase it? How did it play out for you? Why it was worthwhile? Why maybe it didn’t work in some situations? For other copywriters who are just getting started and want to try that process out.

Raven Douglas:  Sure. How I phrased it was, because, again, I was still an enterprising young college student. So, this phrasing is probably going to be pretty rough, but how I phrased it was like, “Hey, I want to write for you. Do you have things for your business that you need written? That could be brochures, that could be websites, that could be anything that you need written. Even if it’s a letter to your customers, I will write it. And what’s best is I’ll do it for free. If you don’t like it, you don’t have to pay me. All I ask is that you give it a try and that you tell me what you think about it.” So, that was essentially my pitch, because the only thing I could think of at the time was that, “Oh, I have no idea what I’m doing. And if it’s going to cost them something, then they’ll probably say no.”

I also had no idea of pricing really at the time. So, I probably wouldn’t have even known what to really ask for. I should also say that when those people did pay me, they often asked on the backend, not on the front-end, “How much do you want?” So, there was very much a trust there, because for a lot of those local businesses, they also didn’t really know what copy was. A lot of them weren’t using marketing agencies. So, it was really great in that way. Obviously, we’re living in a bit of a different time, but there are still a lot of business owners that don’t know anything about copy. So, I think you can really position it, if you do decide to go the free route, to say like, “Oh, if you don’t like it, you don’t have to pay me. This is what I usually charge for this. But if you don’t like it, you don’t have to pay me.” I do think that’s still viable, especially for a lot of small businesses when you start cutting your teeth.

As for me, when I look back on it, I think it was the right choice for what I wanted to do, because I was brand spanking new and even I didn’t really have an understanding of what copywriting was, that you could really make a business out of it. I had never been introduced to a freelancer in my life. I had only ever known like, oh, you go to college and then you apply for a job. Like you go work for someone else in these big, anonymous figures-owned companies. And like, “I’ll never be able to do that.” And I didn’t know that until I met business owners who specifically approached me and then it clicked in my head maybe a year or so later, “Oh, if they could do that, then I could also run a business.”

If I had tried to start a business without pitching for free, I wouldn’t have known what to do and I would’ve run into the ground very quickly and I probably would’ve never gone back. I would’ve just gone to work for someone straight out, because, again, I didn’t know anything about pricing. I didn’t know much about marketing. I was barely getting into cold pitching. I had no idea how to sell myself and I had to learn those things. Since I had to learn those things and learn copy skills at the same time, free pitching was the best option for me.

Rob Marsh:  So, one more question about that, as they came back to you at the end and said, “Okay, yeah, how much should we pay you?” Or whatever. I know you didn’t have a great idea of how much to ask for, but just so I have a baseline, what were those projects? What did they involve and about how much were you getting for those first few projects? Was it just a few hundred dollars? Was it more than that?

Raven Douglas:  Sure. Actually, in one case, it was less than that. I am very unashamed to say. I think the very first project I charged something like $55, because it was a brochure. I was just like, “Oh, it’s just a piece of paper.” It’s one of those threefold brochures that they were handing out to people. And I had no idea like, “Oh, this person’s going to print a bunch of them and hand them out to a bunch of people and that’s really valuable.” So, they were like, “Yeah, what are you charging?” And I was like, “Oh, just 50 something.” And then the website, when the next client asked me, “What do I owe you for the website?” That’s when I got on Google and I think I saw at the time it was maybe three or $4,000 was the first thing I came across. And I was like, “I can’t charge that much. There’s no way I could charge that much.” So, I charged them $700 for their website.

Kira Hug:  That is how much I charge for my first website, $700.

Raven Douglas:  My world.

Kira Hug:  Okay. So, can you catch us up from when you’re just getting started out to now? I mean, doesn’t have to be all the details, but just, I want to understand the context of where you are today.

Raven Douglas:  So, to begin with, I will say that this is probably controversial for a lot of copywriters. I did not niche down. I did not for a long time. And when I say a long time, June made 10 years that I’ve been doing this and I can’t believe it’s been that long. And I didn’t niche down for maybe seven of those 10 years. So, I really pitched to everybody that I could find, took every single project, scoured the internet. The way that I did some cold pitching. It was a bit of a dance because I was pitching people who were already looking for copywriters. I would get on the job postings and I went, “Oh, they’re looking for a copywriter for a job. I don’t know if I can do this job for real yet, but they probably could just take me for some contract work, that’ll work.”

So, I wrote for everything from HVAC systems to crawl spaces, which are really gross by the way. I wrote for a lot of retail, because I was a store manager at the time. Then I started writing for education, because I was a teacher. And I just took all of those things and I never said no to anything. I found a niche in the beauty space many, many years later, especially in the natural hair and skincare spaces. They were great to me. I loved them. I did that for a number of years before I swapped into personal development and then eventually tech and eCommerce.

So, within that, I did just about top to bottom of funnel for direct response. I’d also done some brand copy, because of course I’d always ask agencies for work and there were a lot of brand agencies who were cranking out, because we know the grind. So, they always needed help. I wrote so many different types of copy until one day I sat down and went like, “All right, I think I could really make a business out of this. How do I do that in a way that I actually enjoy it?” Actually, TCC In Real Life was a big part of helping me do that.

Rob Marsh:  I’m curious, as you were jumping from niche to niche, occasionally, as you do the work, you’re like, “Ah, I don’t love the niche. Let me try something else.” Or was it just this, “Hey, work is coming in. I want to play with everything.” And then when you did decide to niche down, what was the thing that made you say, “I’m going to give up the other stuff and lean into this?”

Raven Douglas:  It was a little bit of both. So, some of the things were, hey, I don’t love the work. Particularly when it came to the personal growth and development space, I’m forever closed to the personal growth and development space as of this stage, in my copy career. Shout out to everybody who loves it. For me, I really found on the other side of it that I didn’t like the niche at all. It felt very, for me, the direct response and personal growth development felt very intangible. What’s interesting is I usually say like, “As long as I can understand something, I don’t have to necessarily believe in it or agree with it. But as long as it’s not ethically or morally against what I believe, as long as we’re not lying to people, as long as we’re not falsely advertising. And I understand it, even the audience, I can write it, even if I don’t agree with it.”

But personal growth and development was the first time that I was like, “Yeah, no, this is not going to work for me long term.” There were other things, like HVAC systems, that I said, “Oh, this isn’t interesting to me.” I could keep writing it. I just don’t really enjoy it. It’s kind of boring. Then there were other things that, like when I got into the beauty space, I was like, “Wow, this is so easy, because these are things that I already do. I really enjoy this.” When I got into the tech space, ironically enough, it wasn’t just because it was so easy, it was because I was like, “Wow, tech is really boring. It sounds very boring. I would like to change that. I wonder if tech could not be boring, because people, humans are using technology, but they sound like these big, giant corporations that no one can really connect to.”

Then eCommerce, it’s a gauntlet, it was and still is a gauntlet because there are so many sales that come up for the holidays. So, there are these huge campaigns, email sequence after email sequence and offer after offer and then all the updates for the websites. But I found joy in that probably because I’m a shopaholic. So, I said like, “Okay, I don’t like these things and I do like these things and this is how it gets started.” Like I said, beauty caught my eye, because I was like, “Wow, this is so easy. I love it. I could do this in my sleep.” A couple of days I did do it very sleep-deprived. So, yeah.

Kira Hug:  I’m wondering when you felt like you figured this out as a business owner, because we’re talking about the beginning of your journey and pitching, but was there a moment or even just a specific year where you’re like, “Okay, I can do this. I can do this long term. I understand what goes into running a business now.”

Raven Douglas:  Yes. So, I was a teacher. Back in 2017, it was my last year teaching. I was starting to get more work than I could handle while I was also teaching because teaching is a job and a half. Truly, I don’t know how people who teach and have kids do both, because it’s just the job never stops. There’s all the lesson planning and all the grading and all the remediation and tutoring lessons that you have to have. So, you don’t actually get a planning period. Then all the calling parents that can’t happen during the school day. So, it has to happen after the school day. Just it’s a never-ending thing. I remember coming home so exhausted every single day. At that time, I technically, it’s going to sound really grueling, had four jobs.

So, when I first started teaching, I was a pizza delivery driver, a delivery driver for Domino’s, and I was still running something like a business and I was teaching. Then I stopped driving for Domino’s after a year. Have so many stories about that, most of them are not good. And I started tutoring for Sylvan Learning Center. One year, I was also a STEM competition coach, helping kids build robots. And I was still teaching and I was still writing. After a year, I stopped coaching STEM, because it was a program where you had to rotate out, but I was still tutoring and I was still teaching. Tutoring didn’t take up that much time. But teaching did. I started having to turn down more work and I thought to myself like, “Actually, it’s not that bad and I think I could make more money doing this than I could teach it,” because I was teaching in Mississippi, where teachers already get paid the pits. They get paid below the pits, somewhere near the pits of hell if you’re teaching in Mississippi.

When I did the math, I think after taxes, I was bringing home, if I didn’t count my writing income, I was bringing home less than $25,000 a year, even working all that time. I was like, “This is literally below the poverty line and I’m having to turn down work now.” If I do it this way, I could probably decide what I want to do, when I want to do it. I think I’m going to make this a full-time thing, so I did. The caveat is I had no idea how to make it a full-time thing. So, it was a real struggle from June, let’s see, the euphoria wore off maybe toward the end of June 2017 until January 2018 is when things were pretty dire. I was like, “All right, you got to make something shake.” And I had been researching TCC and I chose TCC.

Rob Marsh:  Well, I guess it was right after that we met you, because you came to New York and… I think there’s a story here, we’ve talked a little bit about this, how you got there. You just mentioned that TCC and the IRL, the actual in-person event that we held, was a part of this change. But tell us about that struggle to get to the event and then just connecting with other copywriters there, the people who were there, what was that impact on your business?

Raven Douglas:  Struggle was correct and the impact was immense. So, actually, that’s when I had just started to really think about niching down into beauty. I had a client for whom, and this is the first time I got the most polite FU feedback ever. The very first draft that I turned in, the client said, “Oh, Raven, I realized, I forgot to ask if you’d ever done this kind of work before.”

Rob Marsh:  This is such great feedback.

Kira Hug:  Oh wow.

Raven Douglas:  Such great feedback. I was like, “Oh my gosh.” So, that was a really rusty project and it was like very rocky, really struggled out way through, we made it. But the client, I think, was not super impressed with the journey to get there. They didn’t pay me for over a month. In a last ditch effort, I sent an invoice because I’d seen TCCIRL’s tickets and I knew that I wanted to go. I was also in my last month at my apartment, because I was getting ready to move in with my friend, whose husband was being deployed. They positioned it in such a way to try and give me the grace to save face like, “Oh, I don’t want her in this big house alone.” But the truth is, I didn’t know how to run a business, so I didn’t have steady business coming in. So I was not going to be able to afford my rent, which was only $600, by the way.

So, when that client paid that invoice, which, I was shocked, because it was probably the fourth or fifth time that I had sent it. I bought my TCCIRL ticket before I paid my rent and then I paid my rent and then I figured, “Oh no, how am I going to get from Jackson, Mississippi to New York City during Valentine’s Day weekend?” And the plane ticket was 900 bucks. I didn’t have that.

Kira Hug:  Oh my gosh. Geez.

Raven Douglas:  Yeah. Yeah. The plane ticket was 900 bucks round trip. I didn’t have that. So, I took a Greyhound bus, 28 hours, and I wore three layers of clothes. Then, because I didn’t really, really know how to work the New York Subway, I actually had a meeting with a potential client that did turn into a client later just before the conference started. But I got off at Port Authority and I walked 14 blocks and then I changed into heels just outside of their door and had that first meeting. But I got there and I slept on a friend of a friend’s couch, because I also could not afford the hotel Bowery, which was a wonderful boutique hotel, which is too expensive for me. So, literally a friend from high school that I hadn’t spoken to in years, her best friend let me sleep on their couch in Brooklyn. So, I took the train over every day to the conference.

But when I got there, I got into this room of people and I was like, “Oh my gosh, there are all these people that are just like me, but they are so much better at this thing than me. They actually make real living from this. This is where I’m supposed to be.” So, in terms of the people that I met there, amazing folks, obviously some of the heavyweights that most people listening to this will probably know, Kevin Rogers, Marcella Allen, Kim Krause Schwalm, Amy Posner. Many of whom I saw at the last TCCIRL this year. Obviously, I also met you all. I met Hillary Weiss, who is still a hoot, I’m on her email list. Laura Belgray. There were so many people that I was like, “Oh wow, this is amazing. And I need to figure out how to do what they do.”

The conference was exactly that, bless you both, it was the art of running a copy business really and not just writing copy, because I think you all have really honed in on that niche of like, there are so many programs that teach you how to write copy, running a business is where a lot of copywriters fail. Because the number one question for so many of us is still like, “Oh, how do I get clients?” It’s, “Do you have any more of those? Could I get a couple?” So, yeah, TCC taught me how to do that and it was Amy Posner’s sales script, actually, that is the same version of that script that I used today that helped me land my biggest deal at the time, which was $5,000 about two weeks after TCC. After that, my trajectory was straight up, my close rate shot up to something like 83%. After that, my business just grew and it almost outgrew me. So, thank you both for that.

Kira Hug:  Yeah. And because you teased it, I was going to ask, which talks really helped you the most. Because there were so many great ones, because you mentioned Amy, can you share just a highlight of the script, since you’re using it today, it worked for you, someone listening is like, “That sounds great. I want to use that. I want to do what Raven’s doing and Amy shared.”

Raven Douglas:  Yes. So, interestingly enough, I think it’s a lot like a sales letter in that respect. There’s the intro and when you get to the problem, for example, you let them tell you the problem. Then you give a bit of expository about you. So, you’re just like, “Okay, so tell me a bit more about your project.” They do, because people love to talk about problems. We love to complain. So, they’ll tell you exactly what’s wrong and why they need it. Now, if someone’s very, very savvy and they’ve worked with a bunch of copywriters before, then, of course, make sure you’re paying attention, take copious notes if you can listen and write at the same time, because they’ll really expect you to know. But especially if you’re getting started with smaller businesses or startups, a lot of times they’ve not worked with copywriters and that really works to your advantage.

A lot of people are probably thinking, “Well, no, I want to work with people who are educated and not.” And it depends on the kind of clients that you want to take. For me, in where I was at the time, people who had never worked with copywriters was easy. Because that way all I had to do was introduce copy as a solution, because I already knew copy was great and they already had an inkling that it might be, but they weren’t really sure. And that was why they were on the call with me. At least that’s how I framed it in my head. So, you start with the problem, then you give a bit of an intro of who you are and you intro what the solution can be through who you are. You tell them about your story in brief, and then you use their problems to actively build the solution as you’re talking to them.

Now, that piece is a bit more difficult and does take time to hone that skill. I personally recommend practicing with your friends and family, anybody who listens to you, even hopping on Zoom and recording yourself with that script to say like, “Okay, so here’s what I heard about your problem. You are looking for this, this and this. I would suggest.” And then you start building out your deliverables from there and you explain to them what those deliverables are. “I would suggest this deliverable to address this and here’s why. I would suggest this to address this and here’s why.” And you don’t get to pricing until the very end of the call, because I know that a lot of people think like, “Oh, what are they going to do?” And freak about pricing. But you structure it that way because you’ve already given them a chance to describe their problem.

You’ve told who you are and introduced the solution. Your solution, as you go in depth, nails bit by bit exactly how you are going to solve their problem. This is why this is the solution. So, by the time it’s over, you ask them like, “Okay, this is the part of the call where I really like to discuss what a lot of people consider the elephant in the room. I want to talk about price, because I don’t believe in people getting things that they don’t like and paying for them. I also don’t believe in pricing being a surprise. I love to build custom packages. So, let’s talk quotes.” If you’re unable to do that on the call, because I know that pricing is still a very intimidating thing for copywriters. You say like, “Okay, now that we’ve gotten through this, I would love to take a day or two to write up a proposal.” And you give a quote range, no matter what you do, if you’re able to absolutely think of a number for that price in your head on the call or if you’re not, you still give a quote range.

So, that way it doesn’t lock you in. You give the bottom of your quote range, and this is definitely what I learned from Amy, the bottom of your quote range being what you absolutely would feel comfortable with to do the work. The top of your quote range is whatever your dream pricing would be. Usually, when you sit down to do the proposal, it falls somewhere within that range. So, when they get the proposal, the prospect doesn’t feel surprised, because you already told them it was going to fall within there. And as long as it’s not at the very max, they usually feel like they’ve gotten a deal, so that you’ve got some psychology working there for you, too.

Raven Douglas:  You also don’t feel gypped. You haven’t undercut yourself because you’ve done the work, but you didn’t lock yourself into a price upfront, so you had a chance to explore it. Then you asked them if they have any other follow-up questions, so they feel good about it. For those people who are fact-finders, they have a chance to ask you more questions while you’re on the call and you tell them the deadline when you’ll send the proposal. You’ve usually gotten a yes on the call, so it’s just a matter of them going through the proposal and signing it. That’s the method that has worked for me until this day.

Kira Hug:  All right. So, Rob, I want to dig into this part of the conversation with you, but before we do that, I’m just curious, did you ever write papers for your classmates like Raven?

Rob Marsh:  No. No, I didn’t. And it’s funny, when she’s talking about that, I used to work in a business where we created logos for different small businesses and there was a competitor or two who were doing the same thing and they were charging nothing or whatever. And I kind of got the sense that it was actually a paper mill and they were using this logo business as a front to make the business look kosher and real, whatever, and it was actually doing all this illegal plagiarizing. Anyway, No shame that Raven was the one that everybody called on to help with those papers. But nobody ever saw my writing in college worth hiring me to do it for them.

Kira Hug:  I know, I feel bummed that no one asked me to write their paper for them. I feel like I wasn’t as impressive as I should have been, I wish people would’ve asked me to do it.

Rob Marsh:  Yeah. It’s one of those things, right? One of the things that I want to point out from this interview, and we talked a little bit about this, but Raven talked about how she started taking on free work at the beginning of her business. I know there are a lot of copywriters who say, “You should never do this, never give away your work for free.” I think there’s definitely an idea there that’s worth thinking about. Yeah, of course, we create value. So, of course, we want to make sure that we’re getting paid for what we do. However, and we’ve mentioned this in a few places, cash is not the only way that you can get paid. Sometimes the experience of working with a client, sometimes a testimonial or a case study, or the opportunity to leverage what you’re doing for a client for free into the next paying job is actually worth taking that opportunity.

So, if you’re listening and you’re thinking, “I’m a beginning copywriter, I don’t even know where to get started. I don’t know how to charge. I’m not sure about any of that stuff, but I know I could do something for free for somebody.” If you can get one of those other things out of it, testimonial, case study, opportunity for more work, experience. That’s okay. And you can take that project. I think you want to make sure that you don’t do free work more than just a couple of times though, before you’re really taking advantage of the things that you’re getting for that. So, worth pointing out. Obviously, Raven did that in her business and look where it’s gotten her.

Kira Hug:  Yeah, there is no right way to get started. I mean, we’ve interviewed hundreds of copywriters now and everyone has a different way in, and I think my takeaway from all of it and hearing Raven talk about it is just like, there is no one way. I love that she had this guarantee. I mean, it’s really just a strong guarantee that Raven created to get started that she’d give her copy away for free if they don’t like it. It was a brilliant approach to getting started and, as she talked about it, I mean, it’s not like Raven has regrets about giving anything away for free. It propelled her and helped her move forward. So, I think it’s a smart way to opt-in if it clicks for you.

Rob Marsh:  I think there can occasionally be an upside to that, too, when you leave it up to your client to say what the value of your copy was. Occasionally, not always, but occasionally they’ll come back and pay you more than you might have even asked for, especially when you’re just starting out. So, if you’re willing to try it out, go for it, but obviously, if you can get a client to pay even $50, $55 for a first project, whatever that ends up being, take the money, for sure.

Kira Hug:  Yeah. Raven sold her first package for $55. It was the brochure. I like the way she talked about it, she said she only sold it for $55 because she thought it was just a piece of paper. Now, she realizes that it’s not just a piece of paper, it’s a sales tool and it could reach thousands of people over time and create thousands of dollars, maybe more value for the client. So, I know a lot of this conversation was around articulating the value and I think it’s okay to borrow, borrow that messaging from other copywriters.

I mean, that’s why we created this podcast, so we could have these conversations and talk about the value of what we all create as copywriters, because sometimes we need to borrow that language from someone who has a little bit more experience in order to articulate the value, especially if we still aren’t sure and we’re figuring it out, and that’s okay. You’re not stealing someone else’s promise. You’re just talking about what value there is in what we do as copywriters. You can start doing that at any stage. You don’t have to wait until you have 10 clients that you’ve worked with.

Rob Marsh:  Yeah, I agree. So, Kira, what did you think about Raven’s hesitancy to choose a niche? Obviously, we talk a lot about the power of niching and how helpful it can be in connecting with the right clients, in charging more for your work, but clearly it’s not the right path for everyone.

Kira Hug:  Well, I mean, she did end up choosing a niche and then she pivoted four times maybe, and I’m sure she will continue to pivot. That’s what we all do. So, I think for me, it was just more a reminder of we’re never stuck with a niche and I think that takes some pressure off. I feel like a lot of the pushback against niching down is because it’s like, “Oh, I don’t want to be stuck with one thing forever.” But it’s a long journey and there’s going to be many different pivots. I think the pivots are coming faster and faster in our career path. So, I just remind myself of that when I feel a little bit stuck that it’s okay and I’m probably going to pivot three or four more times over the next 10 years and that’s just part of the process.

Rob Marsh:  Yeah. It makes me wonder what is the next pivot? What’s the business that’s going to be the next thing that you or I lean into in our own businesses?

Kira Hug:  Oh, well, I wonder what that would be?

Rob Marsh:  That’s a good question. Yeah. I don’t know. I don’t know. It’s out there. Maybe waste management. Maybe… No, I have no idea. I have no idea.

Raven Douglas:  I’ll do me, you do you. I think the pivoting is the exciting part. So, I’m glad that Raven shared that. To me, that’s what makes what we do as business owners and entrepreneurs really exciting. It’s not just finding a path and sticking to one path. It’s the evolution. It’s that the market’s changing, the world’s changing and the people, the business owners I admire the most and are the ones who can pivot and just swerve and they’re more resilient and they can bounce back. And they pay attention to the market. They pay attention to what’s happening with their clients. Those are the entrepreneurs I want to be more like, because those are the ones that last. So, that’s Raven. That’s Raven.

Rob Marsh:  This is something that we see happening all the time in the Think Tank, The Accelerator, In our programs, copywriters lean into some of the things that they’re focused on, they want to work on and then sometimes they discover, “Oh, this isn’t the best fit. Let’s lean out and figure out what is the next thing?” And it is a process that hopefully lasts for our entire careers and keeps everything interesting.

Kira Hug:  Yep, exactly. I just really loved Raven’s story. I’m glad that she shared her IRL story for our first big event in 2018. It was so fun to meet Raven there. I didn’t know her back story and that she traveled from Mississippi, because we met her for the first time. So, to hear the story of how much time she put into traveling and making that trip, how much effort, energy, to be there and be in the room. So, it’s just one of my favorite IRL stories. It’s just really inspiring. It also shows you what Raven was willing to invest in her business and career, and I’m glad that it paid off. That was a contributor to what she’s done in her business.

Rob Marsh:  Yeah. I agree. I didn’t know that that was going on in the background that first time that we met Raven either. The takeaway for me from that story, as I think about my own situation, is what am I willing to do? What lengths am I willing to go to in order to realize my dreams? Whatever that goal is, whether it’s a personal goal, whether it’s a business goal, whether it’s something else, it’s like, “Am I willing to take the risk, hop on the bus, not knowing what the exact sleeping arrangements would be, or having to wear four outfits, so that I’ve got something to wear each day at the conference?” It’s such an amazing willingness to invest in herself and just that confidence that she was going to make it work. I really admire that about Raven. And I think there are probably hundreds of people listening, talking who may ask themselves the same question, “What am I willing to invest? What risks am I willing to take in order to realize my dreams?” That’s a good question.

Kira Hug:  Yeah. I like that way of looking at it. It’s the risk, what risk am I willing to take? And then also, yeah, what am I willing to sacrifice? For Raven, it was time, it was comfort. It could be many different things. So, at every stage in the business, there’s always a sacrifice of some sort and just thinking through what is that for me today? And am I willing to make that sacrifice? Is it worth it? And being intentional about it? I really like that approach.

Rob Marsh:  I agree. Let’s get back to our interview with Raven and find out a little bit more about what she’s charging for her copy projects, as well as talk about some of the sales process stuff. As we’re talking about pricing, I’d love to add another bookend to your pricing. We