TCC Podcast #326: From QVC Model to Email Strategist with Tara Lassiter

The people and stuff we mentioned on the show:

Join The Copywriter Accelerator waitlist
The Copywriter Think Tank
Kira’s website
Rob’s website
Tara’s website
The Copywriter Club Facebook Group
The Copywriter Underground
Free month of Brain.FM
Episode 157
Episode 269

 

Full Transcript:

 

Rob Marsh:  Imagine for a minute selling more than a million dollars worth of a product in about an hour’s time. What should you get paid for something like that? What would you learn from that experience, and how could you repeat that with other clients? Our guest for today’s episode of the Copywriter Club podcast did exactly that. Copywriter and customer journey strategist, Tara Lassiter, helped sell a million dollars of lotion on QVC and made $100 for her effort. She joined us to share how that experience, along with the Copywriter Accelerator and a great network that she has built around her, helped launch her career as a copywriter. We think you’re going to like this episode.

Kira Hug:  But first, this podcast is sponsored by the Copywriter Accelerator. Shocking, right? Tara was a member, she’s an Accelerator alumni member, so you’ll hear a little bit more about the program in this conversation. Before that, it is a five-month coaching and Mastermind program for copywriters who want to build a profitable copywriting business and get closer to the 10K-a-month mark. If you feel like that could be you and you want the support and the systems and the blueprints to help you get there, along with coaching from the two of us and the support of a tight-knit community, we’ve bundled it all into the Copywriter Accelerator. We know it works because we’ve been doing it for five years now. So if you have any interest, you can jump onto the waitlist, and we will drop the link to that in the show notes.

Tara Lassiter:  It started a long time ago, a little over a decade ago. In my past life, I was a model and an actress. My main client was QVC. There was one particular show, an hour-long show, where I had rubbed lotion all over my body for an hour. At the end of the hour everyone started to cheer. It was because we had sold a million dollars worth of body butter. I started to cheer and cheer and cheer. Then it dawned on me that I had made a hundred bucks in that million-dollar hour. I wasn’t jealous or anything, but I was so intrigued. How did they make a million dollars in an hour?

So I started to do research on buyer psychology and marketing. It led me to copywriting because I didn’t even know what the word was. I understood that there were triggers that were happening within the hour while we were on television that encouraged people to buy. So I started buying copywriting courses and books. I bought John Carlton’s… I think it’s called Kick-Ass Copywriting in 2014 or something like that. I’ve just pulled up the receipt. So I’ve been reading books and doing courses, but modeling was kind of golden handcuffs. I enjoyed it, and I worked with people that I loved. It wasn’t a bad gig. It paid well and it was really flexible. I got to travel. So it was really cool.

I wasn’t able to pursue copywriting until the pandemic shut everything down. Then there were a lot of castings that disappeared, and the ones that were, they would say you need to show proof that you had COVID already. Because before there were vaccines, they wanted to make sure that there was a bit of a bubble. Because I didn’t have that, I couldn’t work. That gave me time to jump back into the books and into the courses and to say, “All right, well, it’s now or never. I’m going to try this out.” That’s what I really did. I just started going back online, taking courses, reaching out to people that I knew, writing anything. I’d always been the person in the family who wrote cover letters and resumes for everyone, LinkedIn profiles, just anything I could get my hands on to try to start getting some practice.

Rob Marsh:  I want to hear more about QVC. I know you do that a bit. I’ve read Anthony Sullivan’s book, You Get What You Pitch For, which is all about his experience at QVC and selling on QVC. Were you just modeling? Did you have speaking parts? What were you doing to sell…? Again, I know you only made a hundred dollars for that hour, but selling a million dollars for the product, even though you said it was a big deal, that feels like a really big deal. So what was the role?

Tara Lassiter:  They were experimenting a lot with what models could do because we were basically personalities that the people at home could relate to. I was able to speak sometimes, but a lot of times I was just silent. A lot of what I learned came from behind the scenes because QVC is very particular about who goes on air. They’re very particular about their audience. A lot of times the founder of the company was who came to sell their own products. So if I worked for Martha Stewart that day, I worked with Martha Stewart. I would always ask, “What’s your favorite book?” You know what I mean? “Can I hear your story, classes, podcasts that you listen to, anything?” I would always try to pick their brains and see what got them to that point.

That’s really what helped me to understand marketing strategy on a grand scale, because I wasn’t content with just being a model. I always wanted to see the journey for the person behind the business, and I got to actually reach out and touch them. It’s a small place. It’s not like the celebrities are separate from the regular people. So I got to really interact with a lot of cool people and ask questions and go out to dinner and try products before they went on air. So it was a very experimental role.

Kira Hug:  So you were in multiple QVC campaigns and promotions, not just that one?

Tara Lassiter:  Oh, definitely. I was there for 12 years. I was usually there between 10, 20 hours a week, so 10 or 20 shows for over a decade every week, so I kind of lived there. I spent my 20s there. It’s where I grew up.

Kira Hug:  Have you written a book about this yet?

Tara Lassiter:  No, no. I just read Joe Sugarman’s book though. I don’t know.

Kira Hug:  I feel like this is a book.

Tara Lassiter:  You feel like it’s a book?

Rob Marsh:  There’s definitely a book here, for sure.

Kira Hug:  In the meantime, the book can be this interview, but that’s fascinating. Now I have so many different questions. One is, let’s just talk about the triggers. Because you started with that specific promotion for that lotion, what were some of the triggers that contributed to that million-dollar campaign?

Tara Lassiter:  Definitely. They used a lot of one-time-only, which would be a price that was only available for a short period of time that now I know is scarcity. There was also lots of bundling going on, so you got a value based on buying groups of products together, and they were able to bake in profit that way. The countdown timers and how many sold in an hour for some social proof and that kind of pressure. So I saw in the end all of those copywriting things that now I’m like, “Oh, yeah, that happens at every webinar.” It’s essentially a 24-hour webinar that’s happening, and then the product just changes every 6, 8, 12 minutes. Essentially, it’s just a live webinar that’s happening all day and all night.

Rob Marsh:  I love that. When I got my start, and especially it was before the internet was huge, so a lot of direct response television is where I would sort of learn it. Of course, QVC is basically hour after hour. Anyway, I love the lessons that you pull from that because it is a sales page an hour, and what they’re doing in video echoes a lot of what we do in email sales pages today. So good takeaway. Let’s talk about how you then took that, and you said that you read a couple of books. You started really saying, “This is the time.” How did you go out, find your first clients, start your own business, what did that look like?

Tara Lassiter:  It started out with me just reaching out to my network. People knew… So backtrack a little bit. Once I got a taste of how I could use marketing to make money outside of QVC, I started an Amazon store with my husband, and we started to resell products that were overstocked from certain parts of the country and put them on Amazon. Typically, people would buy them in the other part of the country where they were out of stock or if they were discontinued. I became known in our family and in our friends’ network as someone who knew how to sell things. So I would write our own Amazon product pages. I started playing around with their sponsored ads. I just basically said, “Hey, I’m trying this new thing. Can I write something to sell you? Can I write your cover letter? Can I write your resume?” That’s really what it started with.

I kind of hit a wall, and I didn’t know how to transition from family and friends to my general network. I realize in hindsight it was just because I didn’t have confidence on the benefit that I was offering them. I knew that I could do this, but I didn’t understand how to create it into an offer and sell myself or my services as something specific because I was still using that generic copywriter title. So I was just like, “I’ll do anything.” But they didn’t know what they needed necessarily, and that didn’t leave me with a lot of confidence.

So I needed to specialize and really drill down into, what are the parts of copywriting that I’m good at? What are the things that I’m doing for clients that are helping them get results, and how can I say that? That’s really where the Accelerator helped me to really hone in on, how do I sell myself and my services in a very specific way instead of just saying, “I’ll go on Upwork. I’ll write your brochure”? I did beauty websites for hairstylists and things like that. I’ll write anything. That was the bridge that took me from, “Whatever you want, I’ll write it. If it sells, I’ll write it” to “This is what I’m really, really good at, and I’ve gotten these results.”

Kira Hug:  What are some concrete steps you took in the Accelerator program to start moving in that direction? Because I think it’s easy for us to know that it helps to be specific and to not show up as a generalist, but there’s a lot of mindset trash that gets in the way. There are a lot of roadblocks. What did you do to transition?

Tara Lassiter:  I loved the X Factor module. I really, really loved it. I love the opportunity to brag because it’s not my nature. I’m used to… I don’t know if people think QVC is cool. I sell granny sweaters. I knew it wasn’t something that everyone did, and I didn’t know if people thought Amazon was cool. Maybe they hated Jeff Bezos. I wasn’t really sure how to speak about myself. So it gave me permission to just say, “I’ve done all these things, whether you think they’re cool or not,” and then to connect the dots between QVC and Amazon.

Back in the day when I was a shop girl, I led promotions in clubs and things like that, talking to strangers, getting to know people on a personal level very quickly and connecting the dots between where they are and where they want to go, I had to figure out that and how to say that. What is it that I’m doing, and why is it that I’m good at resumes? Oh, because I’m a good listener. What are you doing? You are seeing what the other person can’t see in themselves and showing and highlighting that. So that module definitely gave me the opportunity to just connect the dots between all of my skills, the things people ask me for, and to pay attention to, “This is what I’m good at,” and to say it and not feel ashamed. It was a safe space that I didn’t have to do it in public because I wasn’t ready to change my LinkedIn or put a whole website together while I tried things. So it was a safe space in the Doc to just be like, “All right, these are all the things you do. Now let’s workshop it.”

Rob Marsh:  Talking about it from that standpoint, it kind of sounds like the changes you were making were more mindset-oriented than actual changes in your business. That’s obviously not the only thing that the Accelerator focuses on. We do talk about websites and all that. But what other mindset changes did you make as you were going through that process?

Tara Lassiter:  Oh, I’m so happy you’re asking that. Because I started taking notes, because I had to sit and think, “What are the things that I was thinking before that I wish I knew now?” The first thing is, you can date a decision. Meaning, we’re going through the Accelerator and you’re going to make decisions, but you’re not marrying them. They’re not legally binding. They’re not set in stone. Try some things out. Because I was putting so much pressure on myself to make the final decision. “Okay, you are an email strategist for a while,” and I was like, “and that’s what it’s going to be. You’re going to stick to that. You’re going to put your website out and your LinkedIn, and that’s what you are.” But if it’s not a good fit, it’s okay. You date it. You find the next one that’s a good fit, and you pull from that and create the next opportunity, the next title, the next skill set that is a good fit. So that’s the first mindset thing. It was like, you can date a decision. You don’t have to marry it.

The other thing was that I needed to make decisions based on data and not just dreams and desires and this esoteric thing because I would do the blueprints and I would say, “This is what I want. This is what I want.” Or I would say, “I don’t know what I want,” which is viable. Lots of people aren’t sure what they want. But I do know what people come to me for. I do know what I’ve done. So I needed to implement while I was doing all of the modules to say, “Draw from data. What are people asking you?”

In your discovery calls, comb through the transcripts. What are you doing? What is the transformation that you’re offering? You’re calling this copywriting, but is this actually copywriting? “Oh, it’s strategy. You’re really good at strategy.” People who are coming to you from leads, from TikTok, from my challenge, what are you actually offering them? “Oh, I didn’t write any emails. I did tons of strategy sessions.” So that gave me data to say, “Okay, this is what the market wants from me,” and then I can move forward with confidence knowing, “Okay, this is what I really, really do.”

Also, I wish I would’ve just asked more questions because I was shy. I was afraid of asking the wrong question and being behind or being too far ahead or hogging the space. Now I’m just like, “Man, you should have just… When you have Rob and Kara’s attention, you just ask all the questions while you can because afterwards you’re going to wish you had.” Those are all mindset things, though. The implementation, you guys lay it out really clearly, and it’s something I return to over and over again even as I pivoted. It was the mindset that really helped me back.

Kira Hug: It’s because Rob is so intimidating. That’s why. That’s why you didn’t ask.

Rob Marsh:  I am clearly the problem here, for sure.

Kira Hug:  Oh, yes.

Tara Lassiter:  You know what? It was like our meet and greet, the first one, and I was in Rob’s group and I was literally shaking. It was my first time talking to new people since the pandemic. I had been home with my husband and my kids in my home for years. It was like, I was shaking. I remember I said, “Rob, how do you get it all done?” He said, “I don’t.” I just was like-

Rob Marsh:  That is one of the saddest things that’s ever been said about me is-

Tara Lassiter:  No, no, no, no!

Rob Marsh:  … The facade isn’t real.

Tara Lassiter:  It just made me feel comfortable that you were real and that you weren’t going to be like, “Well, I wake up at 4:00 a.m., and I don’t see my kids, and I work”

Kira Hug:  Well, he does.

Rob Marsh:  Not 4:00. But I think you’re right, Tara. While we’re talking about this, it is true, I think a lot of people show up as these gurus, these experts. It’s like, “You do it my way, I’ll get you to whatever.” That’s clearly not what we teach in the Accelerator. It’s like, you do it your way. Yeah, nobody gets it all done. I think it’s important to say that more than once. Nobody gets it all done.

Tara Lassiter:  I appreciate that.

Kira Hug:  This is some great advice, mindset advice. You mentioned your TikTok challenge. Where does that fit into your Accelerator experience? How does that fit in? How did you get the idea to do it? What is that about?

Tara Lassiter:  That actually came to me at TCCIRL. I kind of joined… I paid for it before I started the Accelerator. Because I was new to copywriting as a whole, I didn’t even know what I really paid for. I just was like, “I think I want to go.” It just drew me to you two. I was like, “You need to go be around these people. Go meet them. Go see what they’re about.”

At the VIP session, I was in the hot seat. I knew in my head that I would continue to do resumes and cover letters and websites for random fields or e-commerce email, which wasn’t lighting me up, but I could do it, or I could stick a stake in the ground and say, “All right, I’m going to do something different.” So in front of the room, I said, “I’m going to do a TikTok challenge. I’m going to put myself out there. I’m going to stop hiding behind my laptop, and I’m going to show my personality. I’m going to be on screen again because this is what I’m supposed to do. You’ve been on screen for 10 years, why are you hiding all of a sudden?”

So I committed to 100 days, and I did 30 days. In those 30 days, I got so many leads and questions, one about skincare and beauty but also about strategy, that I was like, “This is the data that I need.” You’re talking about email, but they’re asking you to connect the dots not just on email, but how email fits into their entire marketing strategy. I didn’t want to continue for 100 days ignoring what they were asking for. So I took the challenge from TikTok to Upwork and I want to pitch on Upwork, and I did a pitch a day for 30 days. I started out pitching copywriting in general. Then last week… Oh, and I got crickets, by the way. So good thing I had gone through auditions my whole life and I was used to hearing no, because literally I was pouring my soul into these personalized cover letters and making my own samples for every Upwork, and it was crickets the whole time for anything copywriting.

So I started to apply for funnel strategy jobs. The first one I sent, it was right away. The second one I sent, she booked me for a strategy session. I was like, “Okay, so this is the data that I need to tell me that that is the direction to go in, and a general copywriter, for whatever reason, doesn’t fit me.” People see me, they see my profile, and they’re like, “That’s not what she does.” I still don’t know what it is, but I guess I don’t need to. But I know that if I say, “I will help you with your customer journey, I will help you with your marketing plan, your marketing strategy, people are like, ‘Shut up and take my money.'”

So I use that to start working with new clients, and that’s what I’ve been doing for the remainder of the year. That was this summer that I did that TikTok and then the Upwork challenge. Then I’ve been working with two clients basically building out their whole customer journey. And I love it. It’s the thing I like to do. Frameworks and naming things and funnels and products, and all those things that make me excited, I figured it out. TCCIRL was the catalyst to me not thinking anymore and doing. Once I started doing it, it gave me the information I needed to know if I was going in the right direction or not.

Rob Marsh:  Tara, what advice would you give to somebody who might be thinking, “Well, of course, Tara can do TikTok. She’s a model. She’s been on TV. She’s got all of these advantages. I’m more like Rob, clearly not a model, none of those kinds of experiences. But maybe I’m thinking, “I want to show up in a bigger way for an audience what you did”? What advice would you give them in order to get started and to get some traction there?

Tara Lassiter:  First, being a model is not a prerequisite because actually being a real person is what’s attractive. Especially because of what’s happening with influencers and we don’t believe them anymore because they’ve lied so much, that it’s a lot more attractive to just be yourself, be a little weird, be a little disheveled, don’t have a full face of makeup. You can’t be too perfect because it sends off signals that you’re trying to sell people, or you might be like a snake oil salesman. So it’s actually a good thing to just be yourself.

I think you should also start small. You don’t have to do a 30-day challenge, but maybe just introduce yourself and say, “Hi, I’m Rob Marsh, and this is what I offer.” Even if you’re not ready for TikTok, put that on your LinkedIn, put that on your website. Just give yourself a bite-sized taste of the familiarity that customers can get even before they meet you by just giving them a little bit of video. It doesn’t have to be a 90-minute video. It doesn’t have to be an hour. You don’t even have to have shoes on. I don’t have shoes on right now. You just have to show up in the tiniest way. People really appreciate hearing your voice, the tone of voice. They can feel your energy, the excitement that you get when you talk about what you’re doing. All of those things, you can’t feel it through typing when they’re reading your words, but once you start speaking, people are like, “I get it. That’s it. I like that person.” So you’re really shortening those stages of awareness to getting people to being your biggest fans. Start small.

Kira Hug:  So Rob, you don’t have to brush your hair. You don’t have to worry about that anymore. 

Rob Marsh:  It’s nice knowing that I haven’t been doing my makeup, and I’m not going to start. 

Kira Hug:  Let it go. Let it go. I’m going to stop brushing my hair. I think that is really great advice, so it’s a relief to hear that. You mentioned feeling shy on the first Accelerator call. I’m just curious how you’ve been able to work through these types of visibility, whether it’s QVC or showing up on TikTok, showing up in your business as an introvert, because I know you’re an introvert, like the two of us.

Tara Lassiter:  Yes.

Kira Hug:  So what has helped you? Because you would almost think as a model you would be used to doing this and comfortable. So what else can help introverts who are listening, who are struggling?

Tara Lassiter:  I actually didn’t figure this out myself, but through the coffee chats that we were assigned through the Accelerator, I also met with Charlotte Davies. She was in our group as well with Rob, so we set up a chat to talk later. She said to me when we were on our chat, she said, “Tara, why don’t you just create Copywriter Tara. Create a role. Then when you’re online, you’re Copywriter Tara, and then close your laptop and you can go back to being yourself.” I was just like, “Why didn’t I think of that?” I’ve been putting myself in roles my entire life. So just create a persona. I’ve created the things I want to talk about, the energy that I want to have, how I want to look. I usually wear pink. It’s just what I do. It makes me feel ready for being online and showing up as a business owner. Then when it’s over, I close my laptop, and I can go back to being a homeschool mom, and it’s fine.

Kira Hug:  Well, as a follow-up to that, how do you re-energize? Because Copywriter Tara might drain you. Copywriter Kira drains me. So what do you do to refuel the tank?

Tara Lassiter:  We haven’t mentioned this, but I’m a homeschool mom, and my day is in blocks. So I recently flipped them. Most days of the week, I work in the morning, and then I give myself either a 12:00 to 1:00 or a 1:00 to 2:00 transition period. I’ll listen to a podcast. I’ll take a shower. I’ll walk the dog. I’ll eat lunch with my kids. Sometimes I take a nap because I’m just like, “I talked way too much, and I can’t do anything.” I just take that time. I take an hour and I transition from Copywriter Tara to mom and wife. That transition period, even though I’m only taking a couple of steps out of my office, it’s the physical transformation that I need to turn back into myself. It’s just a few moments that I need to not feel like I’m drained when I’m talking to my kids.

Rob Marsh:  You mentioned going through the Accelerator and some of the changes that you made. But the Accelerator is a process that only lasts four or five months, and then it’s over. Building a business lasts a lot longer than that. I know for a fact you’ve gone back and revisited some of the stuff and kind of rethought what you did in the Accelerator. Talk about that process just a little bit.

Tara Lassiter:  One, well, before you do the Accelerator, put the modules in a folder so that you’re not searching all the time like I am because I just recently did this and it’s made it so much easier. Like, this is module one, module two, name everything, and then make copies of them. Sometimes I’ll print them out. I like colored pens and highlighters, and I’ll physically write in the things that I need to do and make it pretty, cut the paper up, move it around. I just realized that it’s something that I could make my own and that it doesn’t have to be set in stone. Like I said before, I could date it. So I just take bits and pieces and I focus on those things at specific times when I feel like I need it most.

The other thing that helps is having theme days. So I know if it’s a marketing day, I know that I need to go into the marketing module and remind myself, “All right, these are the ideas you had. These are the things you said you were going to commit to.” Because sometimes I sit down and I’m like, “What am I doing? How do I start an outline again? Do I research first?” It helps to have everything outlined. I have onboarding outlined. I have my entire process outlined. That was all things that I did in the Accelerator. When I have those brain fogs, I just return to them and say, “Okay, you did this work already, so just remind yourself. Now you can plug these tasks into Google Tasks.” It saves me from having to reinvent the wheel.

Kira Hug:  Let’s break in here. Let’s just break in here. Rob, what really struck a chord with you? I was going to say, struck your fancy. That’s not how that goes.

Rob Marsh:  It struck my fancy. Struck-

Kira Hug:  It struck you fancy. I’ve never used that phrase, and I’m not going to use that phrase.

Rob Marsh:  Having some trouble with words today.

Kira Hug:  Words are so hard. What grabbed your attention? What hooked you?

Rob Marsh:  There were a couple things. Obviously, Tara’s story about QVC is kind of funny, especially when we know how big that organization is, how much their hosts, their famous hosts make doing it and that Tara was only able to make $100. Obviously, she wasn’t doing all of the selling. She was part of the program. She was a model. But knowing that her participation in something like that generated that much money is eye-opening.

I think there’s a lot of things that QVC does in particular. Maybe we should do an entire episode about them, and the process of selling, which is applicable to sales pages, sales emails, a lot of the content that most of our listeners will be working on, it still also works. But that buyer psychology, understanding your buyer, demonstrating benefits, and there are so many demos that QVC does, owning the conversation and really showing up with facts, knowing your product inside and out the way they do, and then using stories to sell, all of those are really powerful sales techniques that most of us should be doing more of. I read last year a book by Anthony Sullivan, he’s one of the big stars at QVC, all about pitching. It’s a fantastic book and kind of goes into that process that Tara was talking about. That just kind of zinged a part of my brain and just said, “Ah, this is really interesting stuff going on here.”

Kira Hug:  I love the fact that she had that realization, “Wow, QVC just made a million dollars and I made a hundred bucks.” Because I think even if we have not been a model on QVC or even worked with a client who brought in that much money, I think it’s still relatable. I have felt that way many times with clients, clients I love too, who have success, which is what we want. Then in the back of your mind, you’re like, “Well, what’s really in it for me? If I can help them do this, then what else can I achieve?” So I think her reaction is the reaction that we see and we hear about in the copywriter community where we, I think, are all realizing that we have this skill set that will allow us to maybe create the next QVC and to create these larger platforms using our creativity and our superpowers and so we don’t have to necessarily take the hundred bucks an hour. We can get the whole million dollars. That’s what we want. We want the million dollars.

Rob Marsh:  Maybe it’s not a million dollars. Maybe it’s we just help the client do a six-figure launch. Maybe they made half a million dollars, and we charged $3,000 for a sales page and a few emails and or something.

Kira Hug:  No, I want the million dollars.

Rob Marsh:  Well, at some point you have to look at it and say, “Wait, my skills helped build this, it wasn’t all of it, but helped build this need, as people are reading the emails or the sales page or whatever, for the product. I should be getting more than that.” That’s actually one of the things we do teach in depth in the Accelerator when we talk about pricing and how to price for the value you create.

Kira Hug:  Rob, I also liked how Tara was talking about reaching out to family and friends and really how she really got her business going and that she realized that she was struggling with her confidence, and it was the confidence in selling the benefit. I think this is a really common struggle when copywriters are starting out. Even when we aren’t starting out and we’ve been doing it for a while, we often talk about the deliverables. We write, “Oh, I write emails, or I write copy,” and you leave it as general. Or even worse, “I can write anything that you need. I can do all the things.” Then we wonder why clients aren’t actually hiring us and why our name isn’t being passed around. It’s because we aren’t actually putting a benefit in front of them.

She was able to really figure out, “What is the true benefit that I’m selling to these potential clients, friends, and family?” That’s what built her confidence once she realized that benefit. I do think that something that’s missing for many of us at different stages is like, “What is the benefit I’m giving, and can I speak to that rather than talking about the deliverables that I’m writing or what my title is and people are supposed to just get the value? If I’m a copywriter, you should just want to hire me because I’m a copywriter.”

Rob Marsh:  Along with that, the thing that I got from the Amazon storefront experience that Tara was talking about is that one of the best ways to build the skills that we need or that we sell to our clients is actually to do the thing for ourselves. In setting up an Amazon storefront, Tara has to figure out, “What are the benefits? How do I connect with the audience?” You go through that for a product that is your own business product, it becomes a lot easier to take that skill that you’re building for your own business and apply it into other clients’ businesses as well.

It doesn’t have to be e-commerce, Amazon. It can be selling yourself online. It’s exceptionally hard to write about ourselves. We all, I think, struggle with that, or most of us struggle with that as copywriters. But the exercise of going through and figuring out what is unique about your business? How do you stand out? What is the niche that you serve? What are the products that solve a real problem for your clients? All of those things, which… Again, this is going to sound kind of promotional or whatever, we teach all of that in the Accelerator. All of those things are things that then, once you do that for yourself, you can take that and start applying in your client’s businesses. That’s exactly what Tara did. In doing the thing, you build the confidence that you were talking about.

Kira Hug:  In a way we’re doing that with the Copywriter Club. You’ve had other businesses, and so you’ve developed that skill through building your other businesses. That’s something that I think we can all do. You don’t have to build the Copywriter Club. You could build whatever business that looks like. I was tinkering and building other businesses that were not as successful before we worked on this one. But I know that I’m a better copywriter and a better marketing strategist for my clients. When I’m working with my clients, I show up differently because of all the work that we do and all the learning that I can extract from building the Copywriter Club. I think that does make us more valuable as specialists and as marketers. Like you said, you can do that in many different ways. Tara figured out how to do that through the Amazon shop, which is really cool. But it does make you more powerful at what you do.

Rob Marsh:  Another thing that really stood out to me as Tara was talking, that she said came out of the Accelerator, the idea that you can date a decision. You don’t have to marry your decisions. I think this shows up in a big way when people are choosing niches. People do not want to lean into a niche because they’re afraid they’re giving up so much work in other industries, or other things that might come their way. You and I have repeated this a lot in our business and as we’ve taught other copywriters, but everything is an experiment. Treating your decisions as an experiment, as a date, “I’m just trying this out. If it doesn’t work out, there are other decisions I can make. There are other things that I can do. There are other niches I can try,” that mentality, I think, helps us cycle through experiences. Maybe there’s some failures that happen along the way, but it’s really about getting the experiences that you need in order to move forward in something that’s going to work for you personally, work for your business, and work for your clients.

Kira Hug:  I think we’ve associated that type of decision change to being a flaky person, and I think it has a negative connotation, but it doesn’t need to have it. You can date your decisions like she said, but set parameters to protect yourself and to help you still feel confident and in control and to set some guidelines for yourself. It could just be as simple as, “I’m going to date my decision to go all in on writing emails for e-commerce. I’m going to give myself six months to just go all in and maybe make a couple of changes to my website and change my LinkedIn title and introduce myself as an e-commerce email strategist to everyone I meet. Then at six months, I will sit down and reevaluate it and maybe decide to date someone else or to date a different decision.”

You are still in control. There’s nothing flaky about that. You can even think through, “Well, how will I evaluate this at the end of six months so I know if it’s a good decision, if I want to move forward, or if I want to do something else?” so that you are not flaky. You’re just making really smart decisions as you figure out what’s working and what’s not working.

Rob Marsh:  I think the great thing about that approach is, as you take that step back and you’re evaluating, you’re really basing it on the experience, on the data, on what you’re able to accomplish. It’s not just, “Oh, I love this thing, I’m going to lean into it.” That might be an okay thing, but, of course, you want to evaluate based on what actually happens to your business. If you love something, you lean into it as a niche or as a deliverable or some other facet of your business and it’s not working, it may be valuable to take a step back and say, “Okay, that’s not working. Why not?” and look at it there. It’s just an easy way to match what you do with what the market needs.

Kira Hug:  Tara also talked about making decisions based on data, not just your desires or your dreams, which I think is a really good point, too. Really following the market and figuring out what the market wants from you is important. Yes, your desires can still play a role and what you aspire to do is important, but sometimes we ignore the data and what’s right in front of us. I know I did that for a while when I was like, “Oh, I really want to start a business, but I don’t know what to do.” Meanwhile, I was writing copy for multiple people, but I just hadn’t called myself a copywriter yet. So the data was in, and people were asking me for website copy, yet I could not see it, and I was confused. So we all have that type of data available to us. Where are we possibly overlooking it or not seeing what’s right in front of us to help us make those decisions?

Rob Marsh:  That goes right along with what she was saying just a little bit