TCC Podcast #303: All About Blockchain with Joel Bergeron

The people and stuff we mentioned on the show:

The Accelerator Waitlist
The Copywriter Think Tank
Kira’s website
Rob’s website
Joel’s Website
The Copywriter Club Facebook Group
The Copywriter Underground
Free month of Brain.FM

 

Full Transcript:

Rob Marsh:  Today’s episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast is a little different than usual in that our guest is Joel Bergeron, who is not only a copywriter but an expert in web 3.0 and blockchain technology, something that we have to admit we didn’t know much about before our interview. And maybe we still don’t know that much about it after the interview. We’ve spent a lot of time asking Joel about blockchain and the opportunities that are there for copywriters in this emerging industry. But how does a copywriter become an expert in blockchain? Joel’s path is a bit serendipitous, going from the military to international development and disaster Services, ultimately ending up where he is today, but we’ll let him tell you how he got there.

Kira Hug:  Before we jump into the interview with Joel, we’ve got an announcement. We have something coming up for you soon. On August 23rd, we’re hosting two different master classes, free master classes, and we are really excited to hopefully see you there. Rob, can you just kind of tease the subject matter that we’re going to be diving into?

Rob Marsh:  We call it Flip Switch, and it really is about finding leverage in your business. Anybody who’s taken a physics class in high school or whatever, you know there’s this idea that a lever can help you move really big weights. Well, we apply that to a few things in your business. And there are certain levers that you can use to make progress a lot faster. Of course, as a copywriter, you can try to figure out all of this stuff on your own. You can go through the process trying to figure out who your clients are, what kinds of things they need to buy or will buy, or how to price yourself so that they’ll say yes. You can figure that out on your own, or we can show you how to use these levers to do that in your business too. So check out the master classes coming up. I think it’s pretty good training.

Kira Hug:  Yeah, it’s great. So it’s August 23rd. If you have any interest, you can jump into the link in our show notes and check out all the information and reserve your spot. So we hope to see you there.

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

Joel Begeron:  I’m originally Canadian from a small town, a very, very small town. Very rough town. And so at that time, there weren’t many opportunities, and I didn’t really know what I wanted to do. So I joined the army actually. I always had this thing of wanting to help. And so, I was actually transferred to the military police, which was quite an interesting experience. And then I spent about three or four years in the military, and then this was during Iraq and Afghanistan, so I was a little bit uncomfortable with that obviously. And just what was happening, I just wasn’t comfortable. So I ended up getting out actually, because they kept asking me to go overseas, overseas, and you can only say no so many times before it affects you. So I ended up getting out.

And then, I went back to school for International Development and Globalization in Ottawa. So I guess that thing again of wanting to help, wanting to help change the world, wanting to do something great, I guess. And so international development was quite interesting. And then, I worked in the international development sphere in disaster services, disaster management for about five years, mostly in Asia. That was amazing as well. I was always traveling, really interesting work, but it was really I got emotionally and spiritually burnt out, to say the least. I think if I was to sum it all up, it would be, you have all these NGOs with big hearts and awesome ideas, but really deep down, it’s really like all NGOs are just bandaiding systematic problems. So it’s great that they’re doing that, but I just got really burnt out where “We can’t keep doing this forever. We have to actually fix the problems with society you hate.”

And so I ended up getting International Development. I was really lucky. I ended up getting hired randomly by a tech startup. I don’t know why they hired me. I think it was because of languages. I had no experience in that at all. And it was called BroadbandTV actually. I think I was the 18th or 20th hire. And then we ended up going to 400 globally in a year, bought by a huge European company. It was amazing. So because of that experience, when I applied to other tech roles or other things, I was able to get some great roles. So I basically spent about eight years in marketing and technology mostly. And I really, really enjoyed that.

However, I guess there are two big life events that kind of steered me into the copywriting side of things. The first one was, I was also getting a little bit burnt out from marketing because I feel like with marketing you’re doing everything for everyone, right? You’re not really great at one thing. You’re just trying to pull it all together for the company. And the goal post is always moving, right? So you might hit your target, and then there’s always a new target. There’s always a new sale. There’s always a new product. And so I wanted to become really good at something. I wanted a vocation, if that makes sense, like a true vocation. Working in sales in the technology sector and marketing, I was also doing a lot of writing, and I noticed that I could write all day and it didn’t drain me, and I really enjoyed writing sales materials. It was fantastic, writing sales pages for websites or website copy, those kinds of things. I didn’t even consider it copywriting. I was like, “Oh, this is part of my job,” right?

That was really, really the catalyst for me to really decide. I was about 37, when I just decided, “Yes, I want to do copywriting. I want to do it full-time. I want to become a great writer. It’s going to take some time. It’s going to take lots of stuff, but I want to focus and really have that true vocation.” So that’s what steered me into copywriting. And I dove into it head first like I do everything. So I read all the books. I took as many courses as I could. I joined the Think Tank. Yay. And yeah, it’s been really fantastic.

And then I guess the second life event that kind of ties into that would be, at the time that I was working in technology, I also was working in Bali, Indonesia. This guy kept pestering me at the co-working space I was working at to come to this event, this meet-up at night. And I was like, “Ah, he’s so annoying.” He kept asking me every day, “Something about Bitcoin. Something about Bitcoin.” And I was like, “Fine. I’ll go to your thing,” right? And so I went to this evening event, and I watched two Indonesian farmers be able to pay each other for the rice crop who had never had a bank account. And I just knew at that moment, my mind was blown, that this technology was going to change the world.

And so this was way back, I think, 2015. So just when things were starting really, really early. I think Bitcoin’s price was like $20. We used to play poker with Bitcoins. Like six or seven Bitcoins to buy in. Yeah, it was intense. And so after that event, I volunteered, I joined associations, I read all the books I could. And then, because of my marketing and writing experience, I got hired by what you call blockchain of web 3.0 technology companies. And I held three senior roles on that. And that brings me to today. I think it’s like the Fast and Furious part of my story, but yeah, between the blockchain, crypto, web 3.0 stuff, and I guess the wanting to have a true vocation, those were just super important to me.

Rob Marsh:  Lots to cover. Let’s come back to… I started to jot down a few questions, but I want to go back to what you were doing when you were doing disaster management, and we can kind of step forward through your career. I’m curious. Some of the stuff that you were doing or dealing with, I mean, share maybe an experience from that. But more importantly, what are the lessons that you took from those experiences that apply to marketing and copywriting and what you’re doing today?

Joel Begeron:  I think in those roles when there’s a disaster or something wrong, people get really raw and really real really quickly, right? There’s no facade. There’s no such thing, right? And so spending that time really authentically directly with people like that over those years I guess just really got me in tune with emotions, I guess. And so for me, when I write or when I start copywriting, I always think like, what’s the emotion, right? What’s the main emotion that’s driving this piece of copy? And so I think that was a really good example of how it affected my copies or marketing as well.

I guess the second part of that would be that NGOs don’t have any money. And so often, they’re like, “Hey, Joe, I heard you know how to build websites,” or “I heard you know how to note this.” And so, I ended up doing a lot of that for them during that time. And so I learned a lot from just doing it myself, right? Because they lack resources, they lack people; they lack money. And so, I ended up wearing all of the hats. It was great and I learned a lot as well.

Kira Hug:  Yeah. I’m curious about your time in the military police. Last night, I had a dream that I became a police officer. It’s the only time I’ve ever had any connection to being a police officer. It’s very exciting. I’m curious how that experience changed you if it did change you.

Rob Marsh:  Well, and how like Jack Reacher is it really? Because we all know Jack Reacher’s a military cop, right?

Joel Begeron:  Let’s see. I would say that… I can say this. Being from a small town and I was kind of from a rough family, I’m not really close to my family at all, so my self-esteem back then was really low. All I wanted to do was get out of my town. I didn’t care about anything else. I didn’t really have any plans or dreams. I just wanted out of my town. And so I actually did join the military police first. I just joined the infantry so I became a regular soldier. And I did that for about a year, the first year. And then that year, the army… How can I explain this? The army is like an elastic band. It takes you and stretches you way out to places that you never thought you could go. And sure, you come back a little bit, but you always know, like, “I can push myself a little harder. I can run a little longer.” And that was really, really important. And then I guess the confidence thing of like, “Wow, I’m in charge of 10 people’s lives” or really dangerous equipment or really interesting situations.

And so in the military, you also do intelligence testing or sort of like vocational testing. And so I did those tests. And that was when they wanted to transfer me to a military place for whatever reason. And so I ended up doing school for that and doing courses. And so that was the transition into the military piece for me. During those courses… How do I say this? I also thought I was stupid, because in high school, or I should say all school, I was just not there. I was checked out, bored, small-town school rough. I just thought I was stupid. I just assumed that. And then when I started taking those courses in the military and was top of my class, I was like, “Oh, I’m not stupid. I just need to be interested in this topic or I need to try or those kinds of things.”

So I think those two things happen often. I could be on a run with five people, and someone they’re starting to quit. And I’m like I can see it in their eyes they’ve got an extra kilometer in them, but in the army you just know you can do that extra. And so those two things really helped me in sort of pushing boundaries, trying to always do better, I guess. And just the self-confidence thing was a huge confidence boost for me. Learning about leadership, going to leadership school, being in charge of people, being in charge of people’s welfare, that was a really, really big catalyst for me just personally.

Rob Marsh:  Let’s also talk just a little bit about some of the marketing roles that you held, the catalyst to getting into marketing, and the kinds of things that you were doing there. The thing that I love hearing about your whole career, Joel, is it’s kind of serendipitous. It’s really broad. You’ve obviously had a lot of experience, which is awesome if you’re going to be a copywriter. But yeah, what were you doing in the marketing roles? What were you building, creating? And even maybe how did each role connect to the next one?

Joel Begeron:  The first thing was I got hired by an international school in Vancouver. It was the last family-run international ESL school in BC or mostly in Canada, I should say. When I took on their marketing, it was crazy because we were going against big, huge conglomerate schools, right? With 300 chains around the world like Berlitz. So we would go to a conference, and these guys would say, “Oh, we’re going to fly you guys…” For sales, they would come in with a helicopter and fly them out and go skiing. And I would come from the family-run school going, “Oh, well we made muffins,” kind of thing. And so it just wasn’t the same. And so it was like David and Goliath, right? It was just that I learned a lot about just measuring. I think you can’t improve what you don’t measure. And so I really learned about metrics and KPIs in that role because you’re doing marketing in multiple languages, right? You’re doing Korean, Japanese. Those were all of our markets, right? So you have to be great in all of them.

So I would say that in that role, I just learned how to manage multiple campaigns, how to track all of that data and then what to do with that data so you could compare let’s say, Japan versus Korea, these kinds of things, or which campaign is bringing you the most amount of students or leads and these kinds of things. And so that was huge. That was a really interesting role.

Kira Hug:  You mentioned a couple of times when you were showing your story about burnout, and that’s definitely part of your story, and then we’re also talking about how to push harder and kind of do that extra. So how does that translate to business? How do we know when we can push harder or when we actually need to pause and slow down? Because I think it can be confusing, and there are all these different messages around both.

Joel Begeron:  Yeah. That’s super interesting. There’s a quote I like, “Life is a culmination of your intention and attention.” So why you do things, your intention? And then your attention, what you pay attention to every day, right? And so, for me, the intention is really important, right? So, for example, you could say, “I want to push myself harder so that I can close this month and get all those students. And it’ll be really great, and we’ll celebrate, and all will be great.” Or the opposite of that, or another intention would be like, “Oh, I’ve got to keep my job. My boss is on me. I’m totally…” Fear-based intention, right? And so those two things are completely, completely different. And I think it always reminds me to just remember, like, “What’s my intention here? Why am I doing this? What’s my why?”

And I think once you know that, then you can establish whether you should push or not and whether you shouldn’t. Because I think a lot of my burnout was just doing things because I thought I should, as opposed to what I wanted deep down or what I would want inside. And I always did that 150%, I guess because I was always the underdog growing up. So I always thought that I had to put in those extra hours or extra effort and things like that. And unfortunately, it was rewarding. So it was kind of like bad training, right? Every company was like, “Oh great. You’re awesome. Here’s some more work,” and those kinds of things. So, yeah.

Rob Marsh:  So while we’re still walking through some of the career path stuff, Joel, you mentioned a couple of places where you’ve been. You’ve kind of done the nomad thing. Canada, Asia. Talk a little bit about that as well. Why did you go from place to place? What was the draw to not staying home and where are you now?

Joel Begeron:  Yeah, great question. I guess that ties into burnout too, was I just realized that because I have that people-pleasing and overdelivering problem that I needed to work for myself. And so this was back in the day before people worked remotely. It was just the start of the digital nomad movement, like the concept that you could do your job or start a business and work from wherever you wanted. And so that’s what I did. I really focused on building a lifestyle business, right? And so that enabled me to travel, experience different things. And of course, it was very useful too, I guess, because you also had a community, right? The digital nomad community was quite strong. Everyone has the same issues, the same challenges. You show up to a place and there was a co-working space and automatically you have a hundred friends. So yeah, I think that was the big catalyst for me, just the idea of I can work for myself on my own terms and travel as well.

Kira Hug:  Yeah. I know as you’re talking about your story too, it sounds like you know or at least you knew the times where you needed to pivot and look elsewhere and make that change. And it sounds like you’re just really connected to your principles and knowing when this no longer works for me and I’m out. Is that something that just comes easily to you or is that challenging for you to make those decisions and pivot along the way?

Joel Begeron:  I would say one of the issues with life is sometimes it takes a long period for you to realize your loops or realize your behavior patterns, right? Once isn’t a pattern. Once it’s random, right? But then when it’s happened three or four times, like when you hit 30, and you’re like, “Hmm, this problem has happened a few times.” And then I was like, “Well, the only common denominator is me. So I’m probably at least part of the problem.” And I think that was really huge as well.

Rob Marsh:  Okay. So let’s talk a little bit about what you’re doing today, a blockchain, web 3.0, like all of this stuff. I kind of feel like we almost maybe… At least I do. And maybe our listeners are more dialed into this than I am. But I kind of would like a primer on what is blockchain? What is web 3.0? Are they the same? How are they connected? How are they different from whatever it was that was web 2.0? Let go and just help us understand this world of blockchain and crypto and all of this stuff that everybody’s talking about and supposedly getting rich doing.

Joel Begeron:  This is my favorite topic. I could talk about it for hours. So it’s great. I’ll try to give a little bit of an introduction, but for me, watching is a system of recording information. That’s really it. It’s a digital ledger that is stored in multiple places. So I’ll give you some examples. So these are the kind of the tenets or the main core principles of what blockchain is. So first, it’s decentralized, which means all of that information isn’t stored in one place. It’s distributed, decentralized across all of the network.

So I’ll give you an example of Bitcoin. So with Bitcoin, every transaction is recorded and seen. So when a transaction happens, the network basically distributes that transaction to all of the other nodes or all of the other people in that network. And they all agree. And so that decentralization where it’s not in one place, the data, means it can’t be corrupted, it can’t be hacked because you’d have to hack every one of those pieces of information on all of those computers, all of those things. And so that’s a really important part of it.

I mentioned transparent, right? So most people don’t know, but the blockchain is super open. You can see every transaction that’s ever happened from every wallet. Now there’s not a name associated with those wallets, but it is transparent. So, for example, a lot of people say that Bitcoin or other things are used for money laundering or crime or things like that. Every police officer I know says Bitcoin was a dream. Now we can track the transactions. USD in a duffel bag is so easy to use and those kinds of things. So the transparency is great for things like government applications or NGOs or these kinds of things.

Next one is immutable. So it can’t be changed. And we kind of talked about that, right? Where it’s cryptographically secured, which basically is just a fancy word or fancy way of saying that once that’s all distributed to the network, it would take the most massive supercomputer ever thought of in order to crack that cryptographic code. And because there’s so many people and so much hardware, it just becomes impossible. So now we have this system for humans that is immutable, that can’t be changed, there can’t be corruption, there can’t be nepotism, all of these things, right?

And next is programmable. A lot of people don’t realize this about watching. They think money or they think Bitcoin, or they think how much is it worth, but there’s actually a famous quote that’s the least interesting thing about Bitcoin is the price. And you could say that about any blockchain actually. The least interesting thing, because once you can program money or data as I said before, you can change the world.

I’ll give you an example. You could have a program where it says… Let’s say there’s a farmer and the farmer wants insurance. So basically, it could be programmed that if it doesn’t rain for 30 days in this area of Ethiopia, pay the farmer 500 euros. And so that example is an example of the contract that happens on the blockchain. It calls that weather data from a government store, or let’s say a weather station, right? Once that data says, “Yep, it meets that condition. Yes, it definitely didn’t rain for 30 days,” then that farmer would automatically receive that 500 euros. So bye-bye to the insurance industry, right? It all happened without intervention. It all happened transparently, and it also happened securely. And so just that concept that you can program money is game-changing.

Kira Hug:  In what ways do you feel like blockchain is misunderstood by people like me?

Joel Begeron:  Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, fantastic. I think just going back to that quote that the price is the least interesting thing, blockchain is going to change the world. When the internet first came out, we didn’t have the internet obviously, right?. The adoption was really slow. But now we have the internet, obviously, right? And what blockchain can do in terms of programmable money, trustless things, I’ll give some examples in a few minutes, but what it can do is just fascinating, and it will affect every industry, every location. Yeah, it’s super fascinating, I think.

I’ll give a couple of examples. So Uber is an example. Uber, I could build Uber on the blockchain. I could build my own app. I could say, “If Joel goes from A to B, then pay this driver. Or when this person reaches this destination, pay the driver.” And so the location data, the person that’s driving and the person that’s calling, you have that regular side of, let’s say the Uber app, but the idea of no intermediaries, this is a really big philosophical thing of blockchain, is there’s no one in the middle. So there’s no Visa in the middle taking fees. There’s no owner of the Uber. You could just literally create another Uber and then put it out there in the world, and it would never have to be created again.

And so it’s going to change a lot of things that way, because when people don’t like a company or they feel like they’re not getting a fair deal, it can probably be replicated on chains. That’s something that I think is really interesting as well.

Rob Marsh:  So how is this different from web 3.0? Or is it a small part? Is it all of the part? How do the two work together?

Joel Begeron:  Yeah. Web 3.0 is sort of the umbrella term for all of this technology, but it really talks about the internet. So the internet is a highly centralized thing, right? You have to pay Vodafone or you have to… There’s servers in places. Even each individual company or a website on the internet is centralized. So I’ll give you an example. Twitter, for example, you have an account with Twitter. If Twitter gets hacked, all of your data is gone because it’s stored on their servers, right? That would be a web 2.0 example. In web 3.0, your information would not be on Twitter servers. It would be either sitting on your computer or decentralized. And they can call that data when they need it, right? Your birthday, for example, or these kinds of things. You can also pull that information back at any time. You can say, “Nope, I don’t want them to have this information anymore,” and pull it back.

And so not only are you in control of your data, but you also have the ability to remove access at any time securely. Again, I gave that example before about Uber, the same thing with Twitter. This could all be done on chain as well. And so when things aren’t centralized, this is a big part of it. Centralization usually creates problems, whether it’s security, whether it’s corruption. Whenever you put a lot of power or a lot of things in one place, there’s always problems. So web 3.0 will be basically the decentralization of everything. So everything about the internet will be decentralized eventually.

Kira Hug:  Okay. Let’s stop here for a couple minutes and talk about a few ideas that popped up for the two of us. So Rob, why don’t you kick it off? There’s so much to discuss here.

Rob Marsh:  Yeah, I mean, as always. So I think we pointed it out kind of, as we were talking with Joel, but just this idea of where copywriters come from and it feels like we all have a different path. Unlike doctors who go to medical school and they all kind of have the same kind of training, copywriters come from all walks of life. And Joel’s walk seems pretty interesting. But then, as I was thinking about it, I’m like, “I don’t know that I know any copywriter or very few copywriters who are just like, ‘Ah, I want to be a copywriter’.” I mean, most of us start somewhere and end up here. But the advantages that gives us and having all of these other ideas, experiences, even case studies and projects that we’ve worked on helps make us better copywriters. And I think it’s something that we should celebrate more.

In fact, as we talk with a lot of copywriters, people start out and they start saying, “Well, I’m a beginner. I can’t charge a lot or I don’t have a lot of experience,” but the fact of the matter is most of us have a ton of experience. It’s just not necessarily writing for our clients. It’s gathering up all of this other life experience that makes us better at what we do.

Kira Hug:  Yeah. And that experience is so valuable. Joel’s experience has played into how he’s established himself as an expert in the space that he’s in today. I also like that we were able to talk about just how to challenge ourselves, how to stretch ourselves, but where there may be a limit. I think Joel answered that question elegantly as far as how do we know when we should hit pause, how do we know when we’re mirroring burnout.

I like the idea of stretching myself. I like his quote. He said, “The army is like an elastic band. It takes you and stretches you to way out to places that you’ve never thought you could go.” And I guess you could see that as a negative. I see it as a positive as seeing what’s possible for yourself. I don’t know. I was just brainstorming. I’m like, “Well, I’m not going to join the army right now, but then maybe there are other ways that I can stretch myself,” right? I think parenting definitely can stretch you. Some sports, definitely some more intensive sports, can stretch you. Travel can stretch you. And entrepreneurship and what we’re all doing can also stretch you in new ways. So I was just wondering what you thought about that part of the conversation.

Rob Marsh:  I think it’s a great idea. I really like that you’re pulling this out because we do need to stretch outside of our comfort zones and there can be these external experiences like the army or something else that make us do that. When we take on a new job, we can have a boss who pushes us. But as entrepreneurs, sometimes it becomes a little bit harder for us to find this. And so we need to go searching for it. We need to find a mentor or a group or a person who can help us stretch. Or if it’s not a coach or mentor, we need to find opportunities where we can learn and grow. And a lot of times we become really comfortable with where we’re sitting now, we’re not doing it necessarily intentionally but we’re holding ourselves back from the bigger things we could be doing.

Kira Hug:  Yeah. And then when do we know when it’s time to stop too? And so I think for me, I was trying to sort through that in my mind and just thinking through, well, if it’s something that sacrifices sleep long term, I’m not going to push through that because that actually… I mean, there’s research to prove how detrimental that is to your health long-term, and it can actually cut years off your life. So I draw the line there. I draw the line if there’s something where I’m stretching myself. So it’s so great, but it’s actually streaming and forcing me to sacrifice my relationships on a regular basis, I can’t do that. So I guess I’m just trying to look for some parameters as far as like, what is the good stretch, what’s the bad stretch. How do you look at that, Rob? As far as when do you draw the line, and you’re like, “Okay, this is actually not a good stretch anymore.”?

Rob Marsh:  Yeah. I don’t know that I’ve got a really good framework for that other than just to trust your gut, you know? Certainly, there are times when it’s like, “Oh, wait, I’m not growing the way that I want to. I need to do something to make that change.” Then you can search for it. Or I’m completely overwhelmed, and I need to pull back in some way, right? So I think it’s really just about trusting your gut. If your health starts to suffer, that’s obviously a sign that something’s off with either how you’re spending your time or maybe it’s diet and exercise, sleep like you pointed out. But we have those warning signs. We kind of know that they’re coming. We just have to be smart enough to listen to our bodies and our brains when it gives that signal.

Kira Hug:  Yeah. And another great quote from Joel in this conversation there are a bunch of great quotes, but one was, “Life is a culmination of your intention and attention.” So why do you do things, your intention. And then your attention, what you pay attention to every single day. And that reminded me of a Seth Godin post. I think he emailed it out this week. So it was only a couple of days ago about really focusing on how we’re spending our day. And even if we audited our day in six-minute increments, what would we find? And oftentimes, we find that how we’re spending our time is not in line with how we say we want to spend our time or what we say we care about.

Seth Godin had a really great quote. “When we give away our day, we give away our future.” And so that just has me thinking too about, I say I care about all these different issues, causes that are so important to me, but then when I look at my day to day, am I actually giving any time and giving my attention to those movements, those causes I care about? And sometimes, it just doesn’t line up. So I think that audit is really important. You can use that audit in business too. If you say you need clients, but you look at your day, are you spending any time actually focused on landing clients? And it might not line up.

Rob Marsh:  Yeah. I think it’s really important to do that and to think about it. But also when we do that, oftentimes it’s like, “Oh, I am not giving the time that I need to this or that.” And to take a step back sometimes to say, “Okay, why am I spending the time that I’m spending doing the thing that I’m doing?” Usually, it’s going to be because, “Well, I’m trying to make some money to support my family.” And in my opinion, if that’s not the highest cause, it’s got to be close to it.

And so, yeah, obviously we’ve got to take care of home first, but assuming that that baseline is done, our calendars tell us what is important to us. And if you’re able to spend a couple of hours going through Instagram or TikTok or whatever, there’s a disconnect there. There’s maybe some opportunity to spend time on things that are maybe more important, whether it’s political, whether its family, whether it’s growing your own skillset, there are all these kinds of things. And I mean, it goes back to what we were talking about earlier about stretching. Instagram does not stretch me. It might entertain me, but it certainly doesn’t stretch me.

Kira Hug:  Oh yeah. I guess it could stretch you, right? If you start getting uncomfortable and recording yourself doing something.

Rob Marsh:  Yeah. That’s creating instead of consuming, right?

Kira Hug:  Yeah.

Rob Marsh:  Most of us spend most of our time-consuming.

Kira Hug:  Yes. Consuming does not stretch anyone; I don’t believe.

Rob Marsh:  Yeah, for sure. I also was intrigued when Joel was talking about his experience with the NGOs, the disaster services stuff. He mentioned that they didn’t have a lot of money to pay, and oftentimes that is the case. But the trade-off was that he had a ton of experience. He had opportunities to work on the kinds of projects that we don’t usually get to work on when we’re working for a higher-paid client that has a staff of people that are doing all of these things. It just got me thinking that oftentimes we’re really down on those kinds of opportunities because they’re not big money makers for us. But spending a bit of time doing something for a client that maybe doesn’t have a lot of money but has all these opportunities where you can make a difference, whether it’s an NGO like what Joel was doing, or even a mom and pop company or your own company, your own business, those opportunities are gold. It really helps you grow and develop your career in a way that sometimes isn’t easy when you’ve got great paying clients.

Kira Hug:  Yeah. It definitely doesn’t feel glamorous or look glamorous when you’re in a lot of those positions. But yeah, I mean, I came from the nonprofit space and the startup space before starting my own business so I definitely believe in that. It’s, I’d rather be in a job where I’m learning a ton. I mean, it’d be nice to be in a job where you’re well paid and you get to learn a ton.

Rob Marsh:  Sure. Both. Yeah.

Kira Hug:  But sometimes it is tricky. And for me, it was worth that investment of taking a job that didn’t pay well and having to take extra jobs, but you learn a ton. And then you can channel that into the next part of your career. So yeah, sometimes it’s worth it.

I just think we talked a little bit about metrics and Joel said you can improve what you don’t measure. And so that just, again, was a good reminder to me because I think it’s important for measuring our client project success and we can start wherever we are today. I think metrics can intimidate a lot of copywriters. It’s intimidated me before where I’m like, “Oh, I don’t know how to use all these tools. This isn’t my area of expertise. I’m just a creative.” But we can start where we are today. And there’s always some metrics you can pull in. Even when you start working with a client for the first time, you can ask them about some of their metrics. They know because they’re the business owner. They’re tracking something. And so you can ask them those questions to pull in their metrics. And then you can start to measure against it as you work with them to see if you have helped them increase traffic to their website or land more clients or grow their email list. All those things you can start to measure. So I think that’s important.

And then also as we’re building our own teams, even if you’re a team of one or a team of three to five people as copywriters, tracking metrics is so important. And I know Rob, this is something that’s important to us with The Copywriter Club and something I think we can get better at too. Just having those ongoing conversations to see what matters, what doesn’t matter, and only track the metrics that actually matter, too, and not the vanity metrics.

Rob Marsh:  I think a lot of times when we talk about metrics, we think about, “Oh, I’m going to use this metric and I’m going to improve.” So let’s say I have an open rate that I want to improve, or I have a click-through rate that I want to improve, those kinds of things. That may be the most useful way to use them, but there’s the other side too, where metrics show us where things aren’t working so that we can fix them. It’s like, “Oh, nobody opened that email, or nobody responded to that offer. There’s something wrong here.” And if you don’t ask those questions, and sometimes that feedback is painful, but if you don’t get that, you can’t improve. Maybe this whole conversation is really about stretching ourselves into ways that maybe are uncomfortable. And getting that kind of feedback is uncomfortable, but it allows us to do things differently.

Kira Hug:  Are you speaking to me directly with that note?

Rob Marsh:  No, not at. Not at all. Maybe I’m internalizing this like, “Oh, I need to get better at some things here.”

Kira Hug:  Yeah. No, I figure. I mean, yeah, it hits me because I’m like, “Yeah, I need to be less sensitive” and just collect the metrics and look at what’s really happening because you can’t improve if you don’t look at that.

Rob Marsh:  Let’s go back to our interview with Joel and find out a little bit more about blockchain and what it’s all about.

Kira Hug:  So where are we in that process? It makes sense as you’re speaking about it that we should decentralize, but where are these larger companies? Do larger companies, or smaller companies, are they moving in that direction? Are most of them not there yet?

Joel Begeron:  We’re so early. We’re so, so, so early. It will move fast, I think, but we’re so early. Most people have only heard about the money side of things, and they haven’t heard about the idea or the concept of decentralization or trustless interactions, right? And so I think it will move quite quickly.

One of the big problems right now is it’s highly technical. It’s not easy to use any sort of blockchain. And so when it’s not easy to use, it’s really hard to get everyone to get on board. Once they fix things like the UI/UX interface that you’re using for blockchain and once they make it as simple as your banking app or as simple as any app, that’s when I think they see real adoption move really, really quickly. And I think in the corporate space, it’ll just take a company that rea