TCC Podcast #304: Making a Big Pivot with Rick Mulready

The people and stuff we mentioned on the show:

The Accelerator Waitlist
Join the Flip the Switch Workshop
The Copywriter Think Tank
Kira’s website
Rob’s website
Rick’s website
The Copywriter Club Facebook Group
The Copywriter Underground
Free month of Brain.FM
Episode 88 

Full Transcript:

Rob Marsh:  You ever get tired of what you’re doing? Maybe you’ve been working in a particular niche so long that it’s not just easy, but almost boring, or maybe you’ve been working with a particular client and it has become so familiar that every time you sit down to write for them, you’re seated solidly in the middle of your comfort zone and you’re not really growing. Maybe you’re feeling stuck. Our guest on The Copywriter Club podcast today is business coach and online ads expert, Rick Mulready. Rick has made a massive shift in his business since we last spoke to him and we wanted to find out why. And as we talked with Rick, we also got his advice on creating offers, mindset and how someone’s starting out today could create a business a lot like Rick’s. I think you’re going to like this one.

Kira Hug:  But before we jump into Rick’s interview, we want to share a little bit about The Copywriter Accelerator program, which we are really excited to kick off this fall. So, Rob, I’m curious what you like the most about this program.

Rob Marsh:  So I like a lot of things, especially the community. And that’s one thing that we hear over and over, is people talk about the two or three copywriters that they connect with, that they stay connected with for years afterwards. But two things that we’ve done recently, we reconfigured all of the content, rewrote everything the last time we ran the Accelerator and this time we are adding the training program, the workshop series that we just did, the P-7 training. I know that’s kind of a secret. It’s going to be a bonus as part of it, but if you’re a podcast listener, maybe we just let that out of the bag. There is so, so much good stuff here to help somebody build a business. If you’re struggling at all, if you’re trying to figure out a new niche, if you’re trying to just figure out how to make this all work, this is a killer program to help you do it.

Kira Hug:  Yes. And this is a program that we refer back to all the time. So when we’re talking to some of our think tank members who are at a different level and have been in their business for three to five years, oftentimes we say, “Okay, go back and focus on this part, your processes and go back into the Accelerator content.” So I feel like it really is everything you need on the business end to put together a copywriting business.

And it’s so foundational that I revisit it frequently. And I remind other copywriters at multiple, different levels in their business to also go back and revisit those business builders, because it’s critical to what we’re doing, especially as we pivot. And we know that running a business in 2022 requires a lot of pivots, which we’ll talk about with Rick today. So every time you pivot, you need to revisit parts of your business to make sure that it’s working for you. Even if it was working a couple of years ago, it might not be working for you today. So I like it, I guess clearly I’m biased, but I feel really good about this program.

Rob Marsh:  It’s a great program. If you want to get on the waitlist or if you’re listening to this maybe a week or so after this episode has come out, the Accelerator is actually open. Go check out thecopywriterAccelerator.com or if you’re on our list, look for those emails promoting some of the workshops and the things that we’re offering around it, but make sure you check it out. Okay. Let’s hear from Rick about how he’s completely changed his business over the last three years since we last spoke to him on this podcast.

Kira Hug:  All right. So Rick, usually we ask you your entire story, but we were able to capture your story in episode 88.

Rick Mulready:  Cool. Long time ago.

Kira Hug:  Yeah. So I would love to hear, to kick this off. You’ve had some pivots, some transitions in your business?

Rick Mulready:  Yup.

Kira Hug:  Last time we spoke to you, we were talking about Facebook ads and you shifted in your business. So I would love to know what was the catalyst for those shifts as a starting point.

Rick Mulready:  Yeah, I think it was… Well, number one, to be completely honest, I was kind of tired of talking about Facebook ads all the time, honestly. And…

Rob Marsh:  How could you be tired of that fascinating, scintillating topic?

Rick Mulready:  Okay. Talking about this again. And I mean, I can teach ads even today. I can teach ads to anybody and I truly do love it, but at the same time, I was like, “Ooh, I want to talk about something else.” And so it just became this thing where I was starting to get questions more and more from… So right now, my only offer as of recording this, is my Accelerator coaching program. I’ve had it around for years, but years ago was the shell, a very small shell of what it is today. And so I remember sort of the aha moment for me was, I was sitting in a conference room where I had sort of a live event for the members and it at back then, this was four years ago, I think it was, it was just ads related. And they kept coming to me and saying, “My ads aren’t working, my ads aren’t working.” And when we would dive into it, because they thought there was something wrong with their ads set up or, “I’m doing something wrong there.”

Rick Mulready:  And so they’re like, “Well I’m not getting leads or I’m getting leads but the costs are way too high.” And so when we dove into it, nine, well almost 10 times out of 10, it was basic marketing stuff. They didn’t understand their target audience. They didn’t understand how to solve the problem that the target audience had. And it was just basic foundational marketing stuff that they didn’t understand. And on top of that, there was a whole bunch of mindset stuff going on, meaning like, “Oh, this doesn’t work.” Facebook ads stink. It’s like, “Well, no. They work and you have to keep testing.” And so long story short is that was sort of the catalyst of me starting to take a step back. And on the flip side of that, when people started getting success with their ads, they would be like, “Holy cow, my business is growing so fast, I’m working 14 hours a day. What do I do? How do I grow a team or what have you?”

Rick Mulready:  And then at that point I’m rubbing my hands together like I’m doing on video right now. Like, “All right, let’s get into that. I love talking about that.” And so what I decided to do is like, “You know what? I’m going to start to expand beyond just talking about ads.” And sort of my focus group, if you will, was my podcast. And so I was like, “I’m not going to make a name change or anything like that, I’m just going to start to sprinkle in these other topics, mindset or whatever and just kind of gauge the interest of listeners and listen to their feedback.” And it was all positive. It was all really, really good. And so that was sort of the catalyst, if you will, of me beginning to expand, and I’m more than happy to talk about how that translated into different offers and so forth. But that was sort of how it started to come about.

Rob Marsh:  Yeah. This is actually a really interesting topic for me, because Kira and I talked to a lot of copywriters who want to grow beyond the basic thing that we do, copywriting for clients. That one-on-one relationship, but a lot of people have the questions like, “How do I take those first steps? Can you only grow out of experience or you start trying things and experiment and see what works and maybe you’re not always right, sometimes you’re wrong.” So how did that work for you, Rick? And there’s a lot of mindset stuff going on just even with making that shift.

Rick Mulready:  Yeah, for sure. Because up until that point, I was known as, “The Facebook ads guy.” And so, number one, I had this whole identity thing where I was like, “Who am I if I’m not just the Facebook ads person?” And then it was like, “Well, people still want to learn from me when I’m still talking about ads, but I’m also talking about these other things too.” And so Rob, that was really that first thing that I did was I started to sprinkle in other topics on the podcast. And back then, it’s the same show I have now, except I changed the name a couple of years ago and it used to be called ‘The Art of Paid Traffic.’ And so people are coming for paid traffic, but then I start sprinkling mindset or team, or what have you, or systems or what have you.

And it was fine, I did lose people for sure, but I made up for that in new listeners. It was so much more fun for me. And that really came across in how I was talking about things, in my energy and talking about things. Again, I’ve been talking about Facebook ads for… I started ads in 2010 and so it’s been a long time. So then from what I did there, I was like, “Okay, people are starting to… This is okay.” But now the real test was I want to put an offer out there that goes beyond just this. And that’s really where I got… I was very, I wouldn’t say intimidated, but I was very nervous about it, because I was like, “Oh, how is this going to be received?”

And at the time I had my Accelerator coaching program. Again, it was a fraction of what it is now, but then I also had a Facebook ads course. And I think it was 497 or something like that. And then at the time my Accelerator coaching program was 10 grand for six months. And it didn’t jive for me, the price point and it was just this ads course over here, but then there’s a coaching program that’s all the stuff. And so that’s really where I made the first leap into, “Okay, let’s go all in on this and see what happens.” And so what I did was I created a brand new offer and I took my Facebook ads course, a standalone course off the market, if you will, and put it into this new program.

And at the time it was called ‘Offer to Optimized.’ And so it was all of these things. It was team. It was your foundational marketing stuff. Yes, it was ads, but it was lead generation. It was all the things that I really wanted for the business to be about. And it was super well received. I don’t have the offer anymore, but it’s not because it didn’t work. It actually worked really, really well. And so it is just kind of taking small steps to see what the response is from your audience.

Kira Hug:  So for anyone listening, who may want to pivot or transition or feel like they’ve outgrown their title, their services, could you share maybe what you struggled with along the way, any specific struggles and anything that surprised you along the way?

Rick Mulready:  Well, the surprise there was that it was so well received. I really had no idea what to expect from people. And so that was a super, super pleasant surprise. The biggest struggle was right here as I point to my head, it was mindset. And because again, it goes back to, for so many years I had been, quote, “The Facebook ads guy.” I was known as that. So then it’s my identity. I feel like, “Wait a minute, people are going to think I’m not doing that anymore, so I lose that.”

I lose all the stuff that I built, if you will, from a reputation standpoint up to that point, which isn’t truly the case at all and we can have a whole other discussion about identity and that we are not our business and all that stuff, but that’s what I was going through and that was the biggest struggle for me was, “Who am I now? And how does the business do? Can I still scale this business by moving away from what got me here?” And I had to really align with, “You know what? Where do I want this going? And what do I want to be doing in the business for the next several years?” And I knew that it wasn’t just Facebook ads and I will also mention, and it’s very relevant to this day, it was several years ago, it was a case of Facebook went through…they go through this roller coaster of shutting accounts down with zero… You try to log in one day and it’s like you’ve been locked. You’ve been shut down, with no reason whatsoever. And over the past several years there’s been… It tends to happen in big chunks of time where it happens over a few months and whatever. So I always had this fear of my account getting shut down and just being that my business was solely focused on one platform. And then it became, obviously, Instagram. That really freaked me out that the whole business was tied on one platform. And that was another catalyst like, “Mm, you know what? Maybe I want to start thinking about expanding beyond it.” But that was the biggest struggle along the way, was wrapping my mindset around it.

Rob Marsh:  We definitely want to come back to mindset, but you were talking about creating those initial offers and offer creation is such a huge part of what we do as copywriters, helping our clients actually create offers people want to buy. I think oftentimes the biggest problem with ads not working is just, it’s an offer nobody wants. So maybe we can take a few minutes and just talk about your approach to creating offers, maybe some of those first offers that you created as you started to change your business, but also what does an offer absolutely have to have so the people will say yes to it.

Rick Mulready:  That’s a great question. So with that original offer, I call it OTO, Offer to Optimized. Again, I don’t offer it anymore, but what went into that was, I basically just took all the questions I’d been asked over the years. Not that I had it documented, that would’ve been too smart, but I had them… Just, I know what people were asking about and I was very clear, number one on who this was for. So once I was clear on who it was for, then I worked backwards from there and then created, “Okay, what is the promise of this course? So what do I want them to get out of this program?” And once I figured that out, then it was, “How do I want this to be different from every other program out there?” And so that’s really where the differentiating factor came in.

And I think there’s, from an offer creation standpoint, I think that there’s… So many people teach how to create courses. And I think that’s both good and not so good, because people think like, “Anybody can create a course.” And that’s true, but if they’re not really doing it correctly, I feel it brings the whole online course market down, because the quality is just not very good. And so anyway, I was looking at, “Okay, what’s offered in the online space when it comes to what I’m teaching? Because I wasn’t teaching anything necessarily brand new, but I was teaching a process from, “All right, you already have an offer. You’ve sold a few, but it’s really not doing what you want it to. So I wanted to take you from that point up to about $5,000 a month in revenue.”

And so I looked at that and said, “Okay, there’s plenty of courses out there that teach this.” But I wanted to differentiate. And so this became a group coaching program for 12 months where you were actually… So they got calls with me and they were assigned a coach from my team to help them go through the program and answer questions. And there wasn’t anything like that at the time. Because it was either a group coaching program as, I hit my microphone, or a course–not really the two. And so that’s what we created. And so from there I’m always talking about, sell it first, then create it. And so that’s exactly what I did. And in that process, essentially what I’m doing is going through that exact process I just shared. Being really super clear on what is somebody going to get out of this program?

What is the promise? And then from there, then you can get into sort of the, “Okay, this is what we’re going to be teaching in there, this is what you’re going to be learning, coaching calls, etcetera, etcetera.” And you’re selling that. And then once you start to sell it, then you can create it. But that’s how I have always gone about offer creation. Going back to the other part of your question, Rob, excuse me. I think one of the best things, and again, this is… It sounds so cliche and it’s like, “Oh, really rick? This is your earth-shattering groundbreaking advice here?” But so few people actually do it. And I want to share a very timely example, is, listen to your audience. What are they going through? Do your research. And I know everybody is listening right now because they listen to both of you doing those things.

Thank you for doing that. But most people when they’re either creating an offer or writing copy or trying to figure out why an offer isn’t working, they don’t normally think about, “What’s my audience needing right now? What are they going through?” And the example I want to share is, I have a member of Accelerator in the teaching space. So, a teacher-entrepreneur and they serve specific grades and so forth. And let’s face it, teachers have gone through hell over the past couple of years. So for a lot of different reasons and for serving teachers, it’s a new thing for them, what seems like every few weeks. And so if you have tried to go to the same message, use the same message, solving the exact same problem that you’ve always done for years. You very likely, if you’ve not been paying attention to what their needs are and what’s going on in their world, your offer’s not going to convert anymore.

And this is exactly what one of my members saw and they have a very successful business. And so we started talking about, “Well, what are they going through right now? Let’s survey them, let’s get on Zoom or whatever to talk to a few people, let’s listen in the Facebook group on what the conversations around.” Because again, in the teaching space, what was affecting them 30 days ago, something completely different has come up and that’s unfortunate, but if we want to serve them and have the biggest impact that we possibly can, it’s about learning what our audience is going through at this time. And most people don’t do that because that is exactly what informs your messaging, your copy, your offer, etcetera.

Kira Hug:  Yeah. That’s a great example. I worked with a client who serves teachers in COVID times, 2020. And I wrote weekly emails, but every week the space changed and the message changed and what the teachers were dealing with change. And so I had to change it up and definitely pull all the messaging from the Facebook group, because that space was changing so rapidly and their pain points were different from week to week. So as you were making this transition, we’ve talked about the seven-figure business and you’ve built a seven-figure business and was that a concern of yours as you transitioned? How will I maintain this business and the team and how did that go? How did you maintain it during that pivot?

Rick Mulready:  I was really fortunate when I made that kind of shift after already attaining the, I’ll use air quotes, “Elusive seven figures.” I have a whole different viewpoint on that now.

Kira Hug:  You’re part of the club. You’re part of the club. So we can talk about that.

Rick Mulready:  I know, but it means nothing honestly, but yes, I mean, and I don’t say that… I’m not trying to make light of it, but I also am. I was really worried about that. It’s like, “What does this do? Oh, I have to keep growing. I have to keep growing.” That was my thought. And so I was fortunate in a sense of, I made that pivot if you will. And I don’t really look at it as a pivot, but yeah, it is a pivot. I got away from just teaching Facebook ads and selling ads courses, but I had already established a brand and reputation and been known for quality work and all this other stuff. So it was easier for me at the time. It wasn’t early on and I didn’t really have much of an audience or what have you. So I did have that going for me, which is not lost on me at all. But I think that for sure, I was worried about, “Okay, what happens here?”

But I didn’t let that really kind of stop me if you will. That’s one of the greatest things that we can do, where it’s really what we do when we’re faced with those types of fears. Do we take action or do we freeze and stop? And so I was like, “All right, I’m going to keep going with this.” And I knew that I could always go back to ads. I still get people reaching out to me. They’re like, “Hey, do you sell just a standalone ads course?” And I don’t. It’s wrapped up into… Well, now into Accelerator, but I was able to start to communicate and message through my messaging on the podcast, through copy, etcetera, of the importance of the fact that ads are just one piece of the puzzle. Outside of that, there are all these other things and that’s what we’re now talking about.

Rob Marsh:  I’m curious, Rick. It’s one thing to decide to change your business like you did and go through that yourself. What about your team? Were they on board from the very beginning? Did you have to change anybody or change roles? How did that shift happen for them?

Rick Mulready:  Yeah. I didn’t have to change any roles. It was more of, “This is the new direction and this is the new vision of the business.” And then really enrolling them in that. I’ve had turnover since then, but it wasn’t because of the change in direction of what we were talking about and teaching. In fact, if anything, it became easier and better for the people on my team and the people that were on my team are not here now, but again, not because of what I was teaching. People that I brought on since then, this is much easier to get them on board and get them behind, rather than I teach Facebook ads. And going back to, I just want to circle back on something that we’ve been talking about here, is if I could have pivoted back if I wanted to.

And the other thing too, that I knew that I could do, but it didn’t really excite me, because I see this happening a lot right now, is when I was saying like, “Oh, I was all in on one platform.” Being Facebook and Instagram. Two platforms, yes, but the same company. And like, “What happens if something happens to them?” I see several people right now. I think we can all guess that we’re Facebook ads people. This is what they taught. What do you think they’re teaching now? They’re teaching TikTok ads. So they just kind of moved from platform to platform to platform and that’s what they do. And I knew that I could do that, but it just didn’t excite me. I was just like, “Eh, okay.”

And I get it. I understand the platforms because I pick up on them easily, but that just didn’t excite me. And so I just wanted to mention that and it really more of, if we want to talk about team again, I’m more than… Especially right now, it’d be a timely conversation. But the changes back then, as far as pivoting the business didn’t affect the team. In fact, it made it… I think they were more excited about it, because of, “Oh, cool. We get to have this much bigger type of impact for online businesses.” Rather than, “Just teaching them Facebook ads.”

Kira Hug:  Because you mentioned we could talk about the seven-figure business and we can poke fun. I just wonder how… Because you’ve achieved it and how do you look at growth now? Because you mentioned you were looking at how can I continue to grow? What does growth mean to you today and how has it changed?

Rick Mulready:  Yeah. So I think before I answer that it’s really important to… So after I hit seven figures in 2017, my revenue did dip. It dipped in 2018, dipped in 2019. And it was right around the same… I mean, it dipped when I say it dipped, I’m not afraid to share, but I think 2018, it dipped down to around 900,000 and the next year it dipped down like 860. So I’m like, “Wait a minute, what’s going on here?” We’re declining and that’s been two years now and so I’ll make this long story short.

What I realized and through the help of a coach at the time was that I was subconsciously sabotaging my revenue. The reason for that is because on my path to, and I think we’ve talked about this before, but on my path to seven figures, burn out a couple of times, one being a very, very dark period. So it came at the expense of my emotional health, my physical health, my relationships, etcetera. And so my subconscious was saying, “That’s what you have to go through in order to hit seven figures.” And so my subconscious was saying, “Well, I’m not doing that again.” And so it wasn’t until I realized that and started to work on that, that revenue started to come back up again.

And so what does success mean to me today? So we’re recording this August 2nd, 2022 is very different from what it used to be. Yes, very much revenue for sure. But now it’s how few hours am I working? We were talking before we hit record. My daughter, Maya is three and a half, a little over three and a half, she’ll be four in December. And I just want to spend as much time with her as I can. So how can I have a huge impact in my business, support our members, have a great team and obviously be making a lot of money, but working as few hours as possible? And so right now, I’m at about 25 hours a week. I take Fridays off, I’m looking at potentially taking another day off.

Kira Hug:  Sign me up.

Rick Mulready:  Well, that’s how I define success.

Rob Marsh:  Yeah. I mean, I love that. So I’m guessing there are a lot of people who are listening, who are just like, “I can’t even see a pathway to that kind of a setup.” So walk us through how your team supports you then in order to create that because clearly, it’s not just you creating value. You’re doing something, you’re leading, obviously helping create content products, that kind of stuff. But how does it break down between you and your team? What are they doing in order to help you have that and are they also 25 hours a week? Are they putting in 80 hours a week so that Rick can take 10 Fridays off?

Rick Mulready:  So I will not let that happen. That type of thing where I’m like, “Okay, I’m working 15 hours a week and you’re over here doing 60 hours a week.” No, that just does not align with me. And as I mentioned, it’s a very timely conversation, because my team has gone through a massive shift in the past 30 days. Where I had my number two person, who was essentially my operations manager, been with me for three years, I decided to pursue other things. And so it was, “Okay, we got to figure things out now on the team side, to what do I do as far as backfilling, do I want to sort of move things around?” So what I’ve done now, and literally a lot of this is very, very new. Some of which started yesterday is I’ve hired a fractional CMO.

So she’s essentially part-time, but she’s my chief marketing officer. She and I drive strategy on the marketing side. So content planning, different channels, list growth, etcetera. I then moved, who was my executive assistant, who, when I hired her and she’s only been with me for about four, five months now, four months, where she was already very good with marketing, writing emails and connecting systems and all that stuff. So what I did was I moved her over into the marketing assistant role to support the new fractional CMO, which then meant, “Okay, I have an EA position open.” So I just hired a new EA. This is her, the beginning of her second week. And the plan with her is to… Because she’s coming in very hot, she’s got a lot of experience. She’s great so far. The plan with her is to get experience in the EA role and then move her into just running the day to day of business.

The plan for that right now is hopefully by the end of the year, but we’ll see. I’ve been very upfront with her too, about having that conversation around, “This is what I’d love to see happen.” And then finally, I’m also hiring another Filipino VA where we have an assistant in the Philippines right now. She runs all of the administrative side to my Accelerator program and she is amazing. She’s full-time. And I’m a very big believer in duplicate efforts. I want cross-training on knowledge essentially. So I’m hiring another virtual assistant to learn all the other things that Joelle and my Filipino assistant do. So I want them to also know all those things so that if, whatever, Joelle’s taking time off, or God forbid, something happens where she needs to be away, the business doesn’t skip a beat.

And so that’s where we’re at right now, as far as the transformation of the team. And I’m super excited. The other thing too is the new EA is part-time, the marketing assistant is part-time, the fractional CMO is part-time. And then the two Filipino VAs are going to be full-time, but I like that structure. I really like the simplicity of it. And so I just want things as… I’m all about simplicity. So I want things to be as streamlined as possible. And I just don’t want a big team. And that might sound like a big team to some people, but for what we do in the business, that’s a really… It is a pretty small team.

Kira Hug:  So many questions. I guess as a follow-up to that because so many of your team members are part-time. I mean, you haven’t struggled with this because they’re part-time, but how do you manage it so that they’re still focused on your business and not focused elsewhere because they’re part-time? Has that been a struggle for you or how have you dealt with that?

Rick Mulready:  It hasn’t been a struggle for me, I think because I’ve been really lucky, honestly, in who we’ve hired. So I think about it now and the person who was my EA, who I just moved into the marketing role. She’s part-time, about 15 to 20 hours a week. She has other clients from an administrative standpoint, but it doesn’t get in the way at all. And I’m very upfront with them too, like, “Hey, if this is looking like it’s getting in the way, let’s have an open communication about it.” Or my new EA, she’s only 10-ish hours a week. I think that’ll increase pretty quickly, but before I even had the conversation about potentially, the pathway into running the day-to-day, I needed to know her availability, is that even an option down the road?

And what she said is like, “I could go up to about 30 hours a week, but if we’re doing that, that’s full time, because that way I wouldn’t be taking on other clients.” I’m like, “Cool, got it.” I’m cool with that. So now I know what would need to happen. I think. And, and I think the reason for that again, is the hiring process. We’ve just done a really good job with that. The real problem that… Not a problem, but a challenge that can come up on the Filipino assistant side, is to do everything you can to hire somebody full-time. Because when they’re part-time, they’re splitting with 1, 2, 3 other clients and that’s where it can get, you really want their full focused attention on your business. And so that’s something that I learned the hard way.

Kira Hug:  I wanted to ask about how you’ve set the vision for your business because you’re so clear on… I mean, part of its experience and you’ve been building for a while, but you’re so clear on, this is where I’m going to go. I need the EA to fit in and get to full-time, run day-to-day. What’s helped you set the vision, especially for freelancers who are listening, who may not see themselves as a visionary?

Rick Mulready:  I just look at what I want. Why do I have the business in the first place? Because that’s so easy to get caught up in just the day-to-day, you’re just doing stuff. And it’s very easy to get lost in that. So we’ve got to take a step back and be like, “What do we want out of this business? Do we want to make a million dollars so that you can do X, Y, Z? Amazing. If that’s intentional, cool. If you want to make $5,000 a month while working this many hours, amazing.” I work backwards in everything that I do. And also that’s how I coach, what’s the end goal? And then what do I need to set up in terms of the business to be able to achieve that? So the vision for me is, I don’t have a number, I think is kind of cliche. And I apologize if anybody listening has this number, but for me, it’s not like I want to help a thousand people do this.

Kira Hug:  It’s a million, Rick. It’s a million. I want to help a million,

Rob Marsh:  No. I’ve seen people say a billion. I want to help a billion entrepreneurs.

Rick Mulready:  What does that mean? Does that mean, because we do a million downloads on the podcast in four months, does that mean I’ve helped a million people? I don’t know. So I don’t go by the arbitrary number. It’s more so, I just want to have as big an impact as possible, but I’m also very clear on why I’m doing what I’m doing and specifically how we’re helping people accomplish those things in their business. But I don’t have a number of like, “Oh, you know what? Cool. Did really well. I did help 10 people this month.” Or whatever it might be. That’s really, it’s like I want to have as big an impact as possible by helping people with specific things for their online business and the container with which I want to do it is, schedule based, how do I want to work? How much do I want to work? And then obviously that informs the team and that sort of thing. Does that answer your question, Kira?

Kira Hug:  Yeah. Thank you.

Rob Marsh:  So while we’re still talking about team, one more question about this. I’m curious what you look for when you are talking with, or considering somebody. There are hundreds of virtual or partial CMOs out there. There are probably thousands of marketing assistants, maybe tens of thousands of virtual assistants. How do you know which one is a good fit for your business? What are you looking for other than the, “I’m trying to get them as close to full time as possible?”

Rick Mulready:  So I will share that my new fractional CMO is from your audience. She has been my copywriter for a couple of years now and…

Kira Hug:  I was wondering.

Rob Marsh:  I think we know who that is.

Rick Mulready:  Yes. And it was just a conversation that I started to have with her. It wasn’t something that she came to me with. It was just more so I brought it up and we talked about it for several months. What could this look like? Why do I want to do this? That sort of thing. And so it just sort of came to fruition and it was a conversation of, “Okay, this is what I want to have done.” And then it’s obviously a two-way conversation. This is what I want done. And then they come back with, “All right, this is what that I think I can provide. And these are the parameters, this is the scope, that sort of thing.” And so I get along with them super… We talk multiple times a day. I’ve become really good friends with them, know my business really well.

They’re a coach inside my program. They’ve rewritten my entire copy for two… It’s just a natural fit for that. And it’s less of like, “Oh, number of hours and these are the results that we’re looking for.” And that’s a whole other conversation as far as hiring, you’re hiring for results, not check the box. So that’s how that worked. And then from there, I looked at and I spoke to that person and said, “Okay, what do you think in terms of having an assistant for what you’re strategizing?” And so now this person is to go implement. How many hours do you think? And so I had an idea, but obviously, I wanted to get their thoughts on it. And so we came up with a number and said, “Okay, it’s about what this person’s already working.”

And so that conversation happens way before anything gets specific. I started gauging interest. I also have, again, this is an experience thing. I also have a pretty good idea of what that person is really… What lights them up? Because we often try to hire somebody for a specific role. And they might really like the role. They might be really good at it, but they might be lit up by something completely different in the business. And that’s really the key, because we often get caught into keeping that person there. Now with my EA, I just moved into the marketing assistant role. I saw it pretty much within the first two weeks of that. They really took to the marketing side, suggesting topics for the podcast or giving me ideas or what have you. And I love that it’s part of our values of taking initiative and so forth.

And so I kept watching, I kept asking her, “Is this something of interest?” And the answer was, “Yes, yes, yes.” The whole time. So then when the opportunity came up, it was a natural fit. And so the biggest thing that I’m looking for when I’m hiring is the intent or the intangibles. Number one, values, hands down, do they align with our values, my values? So if we can check that box for the values, then it’s about the intangibles, like work ethic. Or are they like, “No, I’ll get around to it or what have you.” Personality, do I get along with them? Because I can teach somebody whatever, how to use their table, for example, but I can’t teach somebody integrity. So those are the things I’m looking for first and then the other things come after.

Rob Marsh:  We’re breaking in. As we like to do,  to talk a little bit more about a few of the things that Rick’s been sharing that maybe deserve just a little more attention or at least us calling them out. Kira, one of the things that just, I mean, really jumps out, obviously this whole episode is really about going bigger, not just making a pivot, but pivoting into something where you can have a bigger impact. And I mean, we’ve, we’ve talked about doing some of that stuff between us with The Copywriter Club, but Rick has done it in a way that I’m kind of jealous of.

Kira Hug:  We’re jealous of you, Rick. We’re jealous. I mean, for me, I think the part that stood out the most during his conversation was the identity shift and letting go. I think a big part of this was, Rick was very open, which I appreciate about what was happening behind the scenes and his mindset shifts during this time of transition in his business, where he was letting go of an identity, as the Facebook person, the Iron Man of Facebook ads and shifting into this new role and this new identity that he was sharing with the world and making those business changes that would support this new identity and it can be very scary. And so I appreciated that Rick was so open about that. It’s not easy when it’s your business and your livelihood to make changes in your own message and your own positioning.

I think oftentimes from the outside looking in, we get it, even looking at Rick and having worked with him previously and following him closely, it’s like, “Well, yeah. Of course, Rick is moving into a different space and ta