TCC Podcast #312: Grow Your Copywriting Business the Funnel Way with Jenn Spivak

The people and stuff we mentioned on the show:

Join the P7 Client Attraction Pipeline
The Copywriter Think Tank
Kira’s website
Rob’s website
Jennifer’s Forbes article 
Jennifer’s website
Join Million Dollar Agency and use code “copywriterclub” for 25% off.
The Copywriter Club Facebook Group
The Copywriter Underground
Free month of Brain.FM
Episode 54
Episode 64
Episode 203

Full Transcript:

Rob Marsh:  If you’ve been in the marketing world for more than a few days, you’ve probably heard the idea that you need a funnel. After all, a single funnel that reliably brings the right clients to your business is the difference between feast and famine and working with clients that you love versus working with those who tax your patience and drive you crazy.

Our guest for this episode of The Copywriter Club podcast is Jenn Spivak, the founder of The Ad Girls agency. Jenn’s take on creating a great funnel that attracts ideal clients is different from the approach of almost every other expert that we know and, in the second half of this interview, she broke it all down so that you can borrow her approach for your business. Before we share that, Jenn also talked about building her agency, how she hires the various roles on her team and a lot more. We covered a lot of ground in this interview, so stick around because this one has dozens of insights that are going to help you in your own business.

Kira Hug:  Before we jump into our interview with Jenn, this podcast is sponsored by the P7 Client Attraction Pipeline. If you haven’t heard about it and you have no idea what’s going on with P7, there’s still one day to jump inside before we officially start this intensive on Thursday, and if you’re like, “I don’t know what this is. What’s P7? What does this mean?” we’ll give you an idea of what it’s all about. After talking to hundreds of copywriters over the last five years, Rob and I recognized one of the biggest problems for copywriters is finding clients consistently with a dependable flow of clients.

Rob, you and I created this pipeline to help solve this big problem for copywriters. The problem is booking clients consistently, prospecting, creating the space to even do that, and what we noticed is that, even though copywriters like us know that it’s important to prospect and to send cold emails so you constantly have a flow of leads that you can turn into clients, even though we all are smart, we know this, there’s still a gap there because it’s not happening. It’s not happening for the majority of copywriters we speak to, and so you and I sat down and tried to figure out why is this not happening for copywriters, and what’s getting in the way.

Kira Hug:  What we discovered is that, as copywriters, we’re not building this into our daily routine. We’re thinking that we’re going to book time to batch cold emails, and then it doesn’t happen because we prioritize our client work over our own business and also, we’re all pretty overwhelmed dealing with business responsibilities, personal responsibilities, families. If we don’t prioritize it and have a system with every single step along the way broken down so we can just jump into it easily, it’s not going to happen, so we’ve put this together in this 30-day intensive so that you can have a system you can depend on to book clients consistently, to even have fun doing it so it feels like it’s part of your routine and it’s not something that you have to necessarily batch or wake up early to do, it could just be part of your day.

Rob Marsh:  It includes everything that you need to find your ideal clients and, not just your ideal clients, your dream clients, the clients that you really want to work with, identify the problem that you can solve for them, create a pitch and a product or service that they can say yes to very easily. It includes templates, more than 20 different templates that you can use to reach out to clients. Whether it’s to pitch or create a relationship on LinkedIn, via email, on Instagram, direct messaging on Facebook, however it is, lots and lots of templates, and then we talk through the difference between an MVP pitch and a GOAT pitch and when you want to use each one.

What we heard back from copywriters who went through this workshop series a couple of months ago is that they finally realized how to make pitching doable, how to fit it into their schedule, but also how much time they needed to spend on a particular pitch and when they should put in a ton of effort versus just a little bit of effort. Both of them work to connect with clients. If you are looking for better clients, if you’re struggling with feast-and-famine cycles, if pitching has always been a struggle, but you need clients and want to connect with people who can give you good work, the P7 Client Attraction Pipeline workshops will help you solve that problem, so definitely check out the link at bitly/tcc, that’s capital T, capital C, capital C, pitch, and you’ll find some details there that can tell you more.

Kira Hug:  Yeah, and one last thing that I will say is that we’re currently offering it for the last time at the lowest price. It’s actually at the beta price. Even though this technically isn’t beta because we’ve already launched it, we already ran it with the first cohort, we’ve proved that it worked, but we’re still offering it at the beta price, and so you can jump in for the final time at that price before it jumps up next time we launch it as we continue to improve the program.

Rob Marsh:  Okay, let’s get into the interview with Jenn.

Jennifer Spivak:  It’s maybe a bit of an unexpected story, but I actually ended up starting my business towards the end of 2014 because of something that I realized I was really passionate about, which was putting more money into the hands of more women. This actually comes from being in a physically abusive relationship in my early 20s. I was really, really fortunate, all things considered, to be able to get out and move on with my life in the way that I was able to and in getting involved with domestic violence advocacy work.

After that relationship, I learned that my experience was really uncommon and that the reason it was so easy for me was because I had access to money. I just happened to have $1,500 saved in an account that my abuser didn’t know about, and that was literally potentially life or death, and so, I learned that financial abuse is actually present in 99% of domestic-violence relationships.

I had gone to school for marketing and I was really good at it, and I felt really, really, again, passionate about we’ve got to put more money in the hands of more women because, at minimum, it means never needing to be beholden to anybody, but, on a macro level, it can sometimes be a matter of life or death, and so I brought those two things together, the marketing and that mission, and I built The Ad Girls agency which, yes, is an advertising agency, but we use Facebook and Instagram ads as a tool to grow people’s businesses. Really, our purpose is financially empowering as many women business owners as possible.

Rob Marsh:  We’re going to link in our show notes one of the articles that you shared about that experience you had, but can we stop for just a second? As you mentioned, not everybody has access to these kinds of resources who may be in an abusive relationship, and while it’s primarily women, there are some men, not as many clearly, but are there resources, Jenn, that you could maybe share with us or share with our audience if they’re not in a situation to get away, you’re in an abusive situation, what can people do with that first step to get help, clearly, an important topic and one we don’t want to just gloss over and say, “Oh, this happened, and everybody’s going to be fine”?

Jennifer Spivak:  Yeah. I love that, Robin. Thank you for that. I think one of the most important things is the time when a person, usually a woman, is thinking about leaving a relationship like that is actually the most dangerous, so my number one recommendation is to not ever try to do that on your own. There are national organizations; there are local organizations, one of the national organizations that I just happen to know of that’s called Safe Horizons; there’s also a specific organization in New York where I live that I worked with called Met Council. Then there’s a really, really fantastic organization and my agency actually has a partnership with them because they specifically deal with this financial abuse element. They’re called FreeFrom, so freefrom.org. There’s so many people out there doing amazing work. I think the number one piece of advice is don’t do it alone. Really make sure that you are working with somebody who understands the intricacies of this type of situation. Create a safety plan and do it slowly. That’s the best way for you to stay safe.

Kira Hug:  Maybe there’s similar advice if we are a friend, if we’re aware of someone in our life who we think maybe something’s happening, but they’re not sharing it with us, what do you advise us to do if we’re a friend or a family member or acquaintance?

Jennifer Spivak:  It’s a tricky one. I mean, I know your example is if they’re not sharing, but I think the number one thing is to believe them and to just support them as much as possible. Trying to push somebody in that situation, they’re getting pushed around at home, so actually, even though your intention is help and support, that can feel really overwhelming and unsafe, so support, love, believe in them is really all that you can do in that situation.

Rob Marsh:  Okay. Yeah, thanks for sharing that. We definitely don’t want to gloss over that kind of experience. I know there are people out there having that, so hopefully, that helps. Okay. As you were then getting out of this abusive relationship, what sorts of things did you do in order to get started in your business? It’s easy, Jennifer, to say, well, I started a business, but how did you find those first clients? What were the services that you were offering? How did you connect with them? How did you make it all happen?

Jennifer Spivak:  Yeah. For the first couple of years, everything was really organic and word of mouth. Obviously, I’m on an advertising agency, but I do feel really strongly that, at least up to your first 100K, there’s a lot of good reason to really just focus on doing it with grit and door knocking or whatever the online version of that would be. It was really just showing up in different places, using my network. I was 100% focused on providing Facebook advertising as a service for female online businesses and, again, I mean, it was just very organic, word of mouth, referrals, talking to people, and so that was how I grew for the first couple of years.

Once I got to, I want to say maybe I was three years in, probably doing somewhere around three, 400K a year, give or take. I was still technically more of a freelancer than an agency. Sure, I had a project manager and I had an admin person, but it was really still me doing all of the things, and I hit a point where I could not possibly take on any more clients on my own. I was making good money but never sleeping, never vacationing, never anything. It was crazy, and that was really when I said, okay, I see what it looks like for a business because we do it for our clients when they’re able to use Facebook and Instagram ads as a system to really be in control of their own growth. I see what that looks like. I see how businesses benefit from that, and I’m ready to step into that so that I can predictably build a team and figure out all of that stuff, but I wasn’t finding anything out there that seemed to translate to my type of business.

I started thinking about, well, the way that we do ads is you provide some sort of value, have a lead magnet, you have a webinar, free workshop, whatever it is, and then, from there, there was a call to action. That’s the right way. That’s the way that we do things, but as I would sit down and start to brainstorm on the lead magnet that I wanted to use and thinking about, okay, my perfect ideal client, what sort of lead magnet do they want to consume, the answer was they don’t want to actually because they’re a done-for-you buyer. That was when I had this epiphany that done-for-you buyers behave really differently from people who are ultimately going to be purchasing a course or a group coaching program or some sort of coaching.

The done-for-you buyer just wants the right person to come in and show up and do the thing for them, and so I, on a whim, said, “Okay, this is breaking all the rules, but let’s see what happens. What if I just drove ads directly to a page?” which is atypical of me. You’re not supposed to be able to do that. There’s a million reasons why that doesn’t make sense and doesn’t work, but I tried it, and, in all honesty, I forgot about it and came back a month later, and it worked.

Kira Hug:  Okay. I want to hear more about, just to take a step back, your vision as a business owner when you decided to go from solo, so like you said, you’re A freelancer, you’re tapping out around 300K, to thinking bigger about the agency and then starting to experiment with different strategies for gaining clients. How did you know that agency was the right route? I’m asking because a lot of copywriters deal with this, too, and they don’t know when they should shift to an agency model and what they need to do to start thinking differently, so I’d love to capture that moment for you.

Jennifer Spivak:  Yeah. I mean, think the honest truth is I didn’t know that it was the right model. I just knew that I was working constantly and there was no space. I would go on vacation but work the whole time that I was there. There was just no space for me to actually have a life. It seemed like the options were either I take on fewer clients and I make less money, but I didn’t want to sacrifice my lifestyle or I somehow find a way to keep the amount of money that I’m making but work less.

Again, it just seemed like the natural next step. I did it almost in phases, not intentionally, but, looking back, there were phases to it where, again, it was just, I’m going to hire one person to do media buying, but I’m still client-facing, and then it was, okay, now I’m really having clients who really know their media buyers. I’m building out more of a true team. Then there was a phase of, okay, we’re like a real company now, not just a group of women trying to make this work. We need a COO. There were many levels and phases to it, but I think the short-long answer is I didn’t know. I just knew that the place that I was in was really sticky and just didn’t have a lot of space and it wasn’t the lifestyle that I wanted for myself.

Rob Marsh:  While we’re talking about team, I’m curious who’s on your, not necessarily people, but roles that you have on your team today? What does that look like, and what are the different things that they’re handling for you?

Jennifer Spivak:  Yes. I’m honestly 99% out of service delivery. At this point, I don’t really do anything. I just oversee as a bit of a visionary. One thing that was really amazing for the growth of my business is, at the beginning of 2021, I brought on a minority business partner. She had also previously owned her own agency, and we did things really similarly, so it was a super easy merge. She is the COO, so she is really the person who oversees operations and service delivery. My role at this point and as CEO is, again, visionary of the overall business. I also do all marketing and sales because that’s what I’m good at; that’s what I really love and, again, I get to run this ad system and then handle all the sales. I know we’re going to be talking a little bit about it today, but then, underneath, in terms of the delivery part of the business, we have two senior strategists, and then underneath each senior strategist is a set of account managers.

We’re always growing, so I don’t always know the exact number, but I believe we are a team of 15 or 16 at this point, so, again, senior strategists, underneath them are the account managers, and those are the people who are actually the media buyers. They’re very client-facing. We also then have a set of copywriters, and we actually work with an outside creative team called No Limits Creative. A lot of ad agencies work with them. They’re really great for just pumping out various images and videos that we might need to use for the ads, and then separate from the service delivery part. We also have a head of personnel who handles all hiring and then we have an ops manager.

Kira Hug:  All right, so this is like a legit agency.

Jennifer Spivak:  Oh, no, it’s legit.

Rob Marsh:  This is big.

Kira Hug:  This is legit. You’re not messing around here.

Jennifer Spivak:  No. No. It’s legit.

Kira Hug:  To go back in time, you said you started it in 2014. Is that right?

Jennifer Spivak:  The end of 2014 was when I officially took on a client on my own for the first time, so we’re getting close to eight years, which is, honestly, just crazy, but yeah.

Kira Hug:  It’s also really amazing how it shows how much you can accomplish and build in a short period of time, under a decade. Building out this 15 to 16-person agency is really impressive and also just, again, it’s a reminder of what you can do during that time.

Jennifer Spivak:  I mean, to be honest with you, now looking back, I see how I could have done it in half the time, maybe even less, all of the mindset of how the pace it’s supposed to be, if you will. I see how much of that just wasn’t true, and I think if I were to build another agency and start from scratch tomorrow, I could probably do the same thing that I did in eight years in two, maybe less.

Kira Hug:  Okay, so I was going to ask a bunch of other questions, but now I need to ask about that. Can you please share, because there’s so much overlap with what we do as copywriters, what would you do differently if you did it over again so that you can grow in two years versus eight years?

Jennifer Spivak:  Yeah. I think the thing that I’m most present to today in terms of what it takes to grow an agency is the closest synergy possible between hiring and sales. We’re always chasing one or the other. We have too many sales and we can’t bring on the team fast enough. We don’t have a system for that or they’re not getting trained fast enough or they’re not the right people or, the opposite, we’ve over-hired, and then sales slows down. Making them sync up, I mean, to me that is the whole thing. We’ve spent the last two years, it was hard, man, figuring out hiring, whoa, one of the hardest things I’ve ever probably done in my entire life, but we have really figured out a system and a process that seems to work.

I think bringing on an in-house HR person was one of the best decisions that we ever made. We had worked with an outside agency. They were good, but they also worked with other marketing agencies, and so, when they got a good candidate, they were deciding where it made sense, and we weren’t getting all of the options, and so an in-house HR person was completely business changing, and then the marketing funnel that I now use, which pretty much guarantees, once it’s set up and running, it really can get off to the races within I’d say 30 to 45 days, and that can just start bringing in sales calls. I think that, with those two things, I could grow much faster.

Rob Marsh:  I definitely want to know more about the system for hiring and getting the right people on your team. You’re called The Ad Girls. You do have a couple of men on your team, I believe.

Jennifer Spivak:  We do. We do. We do.

Rob Marsh:  False advertising. I’m just kidding, but how do you know when somebody is a fit for your team? What is that system, that process that you put somebody through so that, yeah, maybe they don’t fit the title of Ad Girls, but we know they’re going to serve our clients the right way or they’re bringing the right skillset to the table?

Jennifer Spivak:  Yeah. Just on that note, we always say we’re female-focused, and most of our clients are women. All of our copywriters are women, which is really important to our clients who are usually marketing to women, but we love men and think that they’re absolutely wonderful and, as long as they are part of that mission of putting more money in the hands from our women and they can get results for our clients, we welcome them.

I will say that my business partner is way more involved in the hiring process than I am, but we have our HR person essentially going to all the places you would expect, LinkedIn, Indeed, and really just sources as many candidates as possible. From there, the first thing that we do, and this was totally a game changer, is we have them… Well, first, they have a quick 15-minute intro call with the HR person just to make sure that there’s some synergy there, but this next step is we’ve actually come up with a list of questions that we want them to answer on video. What that does is it saves quite a bit of time with the interview process. For example, having myself or my business partner interview just like anybody who seems to have the right qualifications, I believe that not only do we get to learn a lot about them from the answers to their questions and the way that they answer, but, even just energetically, I can pick up so easily on who they are as a human being and are they a good fit.

That’s actually the only part of the hiring process that I’m really involved in, so I watch the video and I just feel out, and I don’t even necessarily listen to all of their answers. I feel out in one to two minutes, yeah, this person is the right vibe or they’re not and then, once they pass the vibe check and they have all of the right answers, then they move into an official interview with Courtney, who is my business partner. In that interview, they actually will do a surprise live audit of an account so that we can really get a sense for how they think on their toes and then from there, if we like them, reference check, hire, and then they go into training.

Rob Marsh:  Just real quick, how does it all break down full-time versus part-time? Is everybody contracting part-time or-

Jennifer Spivak:  Everybody is full-time except for one copywriter who is part-time, but everybody, otherwise, is full-time.

Rob Marsh:  Okay. Awesome.

Kira Hug:  All right. We are going to talk about marketing funnels because that’s relevant for cover. We are going to get to that. We’re going to keep teasing it, but, before that, more questions about all of these different phases you’ve moved through and especially the merger with your business partner. I would love to hear more about that. That’s really interesting. Again, that applies to so many copywriters who could merge with designers to form really incredible agencies or other Facebook media buyers, too. Can you talk about the catalyst for that and then how you actually structured it?

Jennifer Spivak:  Yes. It was not planned. If you would’ve asked me two years ago if I were ever to have a business partner, I would say absolutely not. There’s no chance. What happened is Courtney and I actually met on Facebook, on the Internet, because we were both constantly getting tagged in comments when people in the online business world said, “Who knows somebody who does Facebook apps?” We knew of each other and, in 2020, we decided competition isn’t real. Let’s start masterminding together and see if we can support each other and, from there, a couple of things came to fruition. One, we realized that we had these complete opposite zones of genius. It was really weird. You couldn’t have planned it better.

I had this agency that was probably four times larger than hers. 2020 was our first seven-figure year. I was really good at marketing and really good at sales and, I’ll just be honest, operations were a little messy. It just wasn’t my strength. I don’t think in SOPs. I just do. I had this larger agency we were growing, but internally we definitely needed some support and some structure.

Courtney is the opposite. Courtney’s dream life was what if I could just never get on a sales call ever again, but she hit 50-something percent profit margins as an agency. That’s unheard of. She is a profit margins machine. She is a beast at SOPs, and so we were like, “Maybe we should help each other with these things that we’re really good at,” and so she first hired me to come in and build out for her my sales and marketing system that we’re going to talk about, there’s another teaser, and so that helped her get really good at sales and start to be able to bring on more clients, although again it just wasn’t something that she really enjoyed, and then, later that year, I hired her to come in and do some consulting with my team.

It actually was my accountant at the time who was like, “Your profit margin is really good this month. What changed?” and I was like, “Well, I have this person I’ve been consulting,” and she said, “Maybe you should buy her out,” and I was like, “What? That’s not a thing,” and I messaged Courtney as a joke. I was like, “FYI, according to my accountant, I will be buying you out soon,” and she goes, “I might be open to that,” and I was like, “Are you serious?” We just started talking about it, and it just made sense. It was not a plan. I wasn’t going to look for anybody, but we just kept thinking about what if there were two owners and I got to focus 100% on bringing in new clients and she got to focus 100% on making sure that we could deliver the service that I was promising to clients, and it just happened, and here we are.

Rob Marsh:  I’m curious about that partnership discussion. You mentioned that you brought her in as a minority owner and your business was four times larger, but she was 50% more profitable. I mean she had a better profit margin. How did you negotiate the split of equity? Kira and I get asked about partnerships all the time. In fact, we probably talk about partnerships on the podcast more than we talk about anything else. I mean, if people wanted this, if I’m going to partner with somebody else, how do I figure this out so that it’s going to work for the long term?

Jennifer Spivak:  Yeah. I mean, everything we did was really unofficial. Again, we have a really good relationship, and so our call went something like this. Courtney said, “I really wouldn’t want to leave my business for anything less than X,” and I said, “I really wasn’t imagining giving away anything more than X,” and we said, “Meet in the middle? Meet in the middle,” and that was essentially the negotiation process. I mean, I remember even being advised we have to get lawyers for each one of us and the lawyers will go toe to toe, and we were like, “No. No, we’re not interested in that. That’s not the energy that we’re bringing here. This isn’t a fight to see. We’re good,” and so it was just very unofficial negotiations. Obviously, we went through lawyers to get all the paperwork and stuff like that, but it was very easy and pain-free in that way.

Kira Hug:  Okay, and your role as a visionary is always interesting to me because this is something that Rob and I talk a lot about because we both lean into the visionary vibe frequently. How would you define a visionary in your business, and what are you doing on a weekly basis to really make sure that you’re leaning into that role?

Jennifer Spivak:  Yeah, and I do think it’s interesting. To your point, it has come up more and more lately that, while I never occupy the integrator role, if we’re talking about us, Courtney does sometimes occupy the visionary role at times, but, to me, I feel like I am the vibe holder of the agency, of the business. I’m holding the energy of the entire company. I am the one keeping an eye out for new trends, new ideas, coming up with random things like how can we have every other Friday off for some members of the team, and then, of course, Courtney is the one that’s like, “Here’s the exact structure for how we’ll do it.”

It’s really amazing, but more than the visionary role, I think probably my number one role is almost more like a CMO, honestly. We don’t have one of those currently. I spend the majority of my time on marketing and sales tasks. I take sales calls Mondays, Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays. I have certain blocks, but like, just this week alone, on each of those days, I have four to five sales calls, and so I’m on Zoom a lot talking to people. I am creating content. I’m sending out emails. I am running our ads. I’m on podcasts. I’m just looking for opportunities to really be as visible as possible, bringing in, getting in front of as many new people and then actually having the sales calls. I would say that that is my number one role above all else.

Rob Marsh:  All right. You sold me. I want to work for Ad Girls. Sorry, Kira. I’m done here.

Kira Hug:  All right, Rob, what are your initial thoughts on this conversation?

Rob Marsh:  All right. I made a couple of notes of things that are worth touching on. Before we move any further, I just want to note that, if the abusive relationship discussion that we had, if that sounds familiar, if that’s something somebody is struggling with, we’re going link to a couple of resources in the show notes, so be sure to check that out because we want to make sure that those resources are out there for somebody who might be struggling with that kind of a thing.

Having said that, one thing that Jenn mentioned that we jumped over just a little bit was this idea that there’s a difference between a regular buyer or a buyer of, say, a product or a do-it-yourself, that kind of person who wants to work on their thing and a done-for-you buyer. I think this is really significant because, with Jenn’s agency where they’re creating or they have a service that creates funnels and campaigns for clients to bring in clients to their business or whatever, that is a done-for-you buyer who needs a different level of service and a different kind of care than maybe a buyer that a lot of us are writing for, and so being aware of the problem that you’re solving, where that client is in their business, the time that they have or they don’t have to commit to a product like this.

When you’re talking to a done-for-you buyer, you’re trying to make things easy. You can’t put a lot of obstacles in place. Like Jenn mentioned, you don’t want them to have to download a lead magnet and then jump through a bunch of hoops in order to sell themselves on your website and buy something there. You’re trying to get them to a call where you can basically help them self-diagnose or help them realize that you’re the solution for the problem. You’re trying to take work off their plate. You’re not trying to make them jump through hoops, and so being very aware of those kinds of differences, depending on who you’re selling to, I think is a really insightful idea that we should pay more attention to, and I’m glad she brought that up.

Kira Hug:  Yeah, and she talked about her mission of putting more money in the hands of women, and I feel deeply connected to that mission as well. I love how she’s built a business around a mission. I think that’s something that we don’t always hear about when we’re interviewing people on the show. Even later in the conversation, we will talk about how that makes its way into her marketing, but we also talked about how much she accomplished, and I think you could probably hear in the conversation when I was like, “Whoa, you’re running a legit agency,” and I probably didn’t… It didn’t come out the right way, but I think so often we talk about agencies, and we’re talking more about agencies like the one I ran with copywriting, more of a micro agency, which is also a great model; you can keep it lean, you can keep it agile, but then hearing Jenn talk about her agency, she’s talking about a team of 16 full-time employees, different layers and departments.

I was just so impressed with how quickly she grew that type of company. In less than 10 years, she was able to build out this company that’s doing really well revenue-wise and also, again, is serving this big mission and is employing 15 to 16 people, probably more by now, and so I think my biggest takeaway from this part of the conversation was it’s incredible how much we can do, how quickly we can build, how much we can build in less than 10 years if we are focused and motivated and just doing the work day in and day out. I think that’s really motivating to me to know what is possible in a relatively short period of time.

Rob Marsh:  Yeah. While we’re talking about team, we can talk about how she hires, how she looks for somebody who’s a good fit for the team and the mission that they have. You and I have been thinking about this quite a bit. We’ve had conversations with people that we respect about building teams. I think there’s this myth out there. It’s kind of a myth. Sometimes it’s true, but this idea that, when you meet a great person, it doesn’t really matter what they do, you should hire them and find the right role for them.

As a business owner and as we meet with and talk with other business owners, yeah, it’s good to have really smart people who know how to figure things out on your team, but also they have to fit into specific roles. Jenn is so committed to making sure that, because they serve mostly female-owned businesses, having copywriters who are all women is a really good move for them because they can relate to those clients better than most male copywriters would be able to do, and so knowing that, yeah, it’s again good to have smart people who fit the culture, but they also have to fit the skillset. You can’t hire somebody who doesn’t do sales into a sales job, or you can’t hire somebody into a copywriting job who doesn’t know how to write or, if you’re looking for somebody to manage a team, it helps if they’re a people person and they’ve got systems background. You want this really good combination of capable, smart, able to figure things out, but also the ability to fit into the slots that you need for your business to grow.

Kira Hug:  Yeah, and that’s why hiring is so tricky, because it is a delicate balance of the right personality to match the company culture, the right attitude, the right work ethic, also the skillset. There’s just so many factors involved, which is why it’s so tricky, and it came up so frequently in this conversation. It did stand out to me that Jenn talked about the importance of hiring sales people, and it sounds like a lot of her growth has stemmed from hiring sales people and getting the right sales people in place and doing it on their own versus relying on a hiring agency.

It made me think of a recent interview with Kristin Lajeunesse about how she brought in a sales partner and a salesperson to support her and her growth. It just is such a great reminder to me that we don’t think of ourselves necessarily when we’re freelancing as building this business where we need sales people on the team, but maybe we should start thinking more that way. What could my business look like if I had a really strong salesperson on my team even if they’re contract based and even if they’re part-time or, as I scale, maybe when you get to the point like our size, for TCC, could we benefit from having a sales team? I hadn’t really thought about it until recently, but how much could that benefit our team to have some dedicated sales people? I think that works at every stage as Kristin proved in episode 308, I believe, when she talked about how that dramatically changed her business. As copywriters, I feel like we should think more about partnering or hiring sales people to support us as we’re growing.

Rob Marsh:  Clearly, that works for Jenn. I mean, her business partner had a much more profitable business because she was so good at systems and process and serving her clients, whereas Jenn had built a much bigger agency, but less profitable because she was so good at outreach and sales and bringing clients in, and the partnership together being able to focus on the things that they do best, that visionary-plus-integrator idea that so many people talk about, and we talk about it, it’s just critical for creating businesses that really work at their maximum potential. Again, I really admire what Jenn has built with The Ad Girls because she and her partner have done that so well.

Kira Hug:  Yeah, and speaking of partnerships, we touched on that a little bit. You and I have talked about our partnership a good amount. I think what I took away from this is just how her partnership sounds similar to our partnership in some ways. It sounds like it started pretty easily, and it sounds like it’s pain-free and just happened naturally. Yes, they brought in lawyers and set up contracts, but that came after. There was the initial trust there from the beginning, and then everything else came after that. I feel like that’s how it felt, at least for me, with our partnership, and then when I even think about, like, romantic partnerships, too, I feel like that’s easy. It’s pain-free. It just happens naturally.

We do talk to copywriters who are interested in partnering here and there, and so I think that’s something to pay attention to. It doesn’t even have to be a business partnership. It could just be promotional partners or partnering on visibility and so many different types of partnerships that we can do in our business and just paying attention to which relationships feel relatively easy and pain-free and just there’s like that connection that you don’t feel like you have to work that hard at it because I think there’s so much room for different types of partnerships as we grow in our business.

Rob Marsh:  Yeah, and then just keeping in mind, when you have a partner, what you bring to the table and what they bring to the table. Visionaries are good at strategy and obviously vision, figuring out where you need to go, some of the things that you might need to do, even connecting with potential clients or opportunities, but may not be as good at getting things done, systems, processes. Like Jenn and her partner, being able to make up for the weaknesses of the other partner, bringing your strengths to that partnership so that both of you