On the 276th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, Esai Arasi hops on the show. Esai is a Social Media Manager and Strategist who helps copywriters with their content strategy to get the most out of their content. Social media has the potential to expand your reach and connect with more leads, and in this episode, Esai walks us through how you can use it to its greatest potential.
Here’s how it goes down:
From social media strategy to strengthening your behavioral psychology skills, this episode is a must-listen (or read).
Kira: For many copywriters, social media is a necessary evil. Many of us dread showing up on social media, I am one of those people. But we also realize visibility on social media can be a game changer for our business. For the 276th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, we’re joined by Esai Arasi. Esai is a member of our Think Tank Mastermind, a copywriter and a social media strategist who helps copywriters, oftentimes copywriters who dread social media, and helps them navigate social media so they can stand out to premium clients. And today I am so excited to sit here with my co-host Jared MacDonald. So Jared, thanks for being here. I appreciate it.
Jared: Thanks for having me, Kira. Always a pleasure.
Kira: It’s been so long since we got to hang out. So, I’m glad you’re here today. And why don’t you just introduce yourself? Let us know who you are, what you do.
Jared: Sure, sounds good. Yeah. So, it’s been a little while, but yeah, if we haven’t met, my name is Jared MacDonald and I’m a growth coach for one person service-based businesses, helping with a lot of different perspectives from sales to tech and just overall, just some of the challenges that I’ve found that come easy to me, but are pretty headache conducing for my friends in the service-based business space. And then on the client side, I do a lot of UX strategy, user experience strategy. So, customer journey mapping and customer research kind of main specialties there.
Kira: And can you just share like the clients, the types of clients you typically work with?
Jared: Yeah, yeah. They’ve… It’s ranged over the years, but largely enterprise. So kind of financial and eCommerce as well.
Kira: Okay. And I feel like, Jared, you’re one of those people who just can do everything. So, anytime I have any type of problem, tech related, automation, active campaign, I just ask you or I refer people to you because you have all the answers to all types of tech questions. Do you feel like that’s fair?
Jared: I mean, I feel like you’re way too kind first off, because I definitely don’t have all of the answers. But yeah, I mean, it’s just all about helping, all about serving and I think if I can help, I most certainly will.
Kira: All right. So for today, before we jump into this conversation with our guest, this week’s sponsor is TCC IRL, ‘The Copywriter Club In Real Life’. So it’s our big event, which is taking place in person in Nashville, Tennessee, in March 28th through 30th. And it’s been a while since we all hung out in person. So we are excited to get together, hang out, bring together some incredible speakers. And you know Jared, you’ve been to our event, so maybe rather than me plugging it in reading this promo copy on the page, you could just share what was your experience like at TCC IRL?
Jared: Yeah, I mean, it’s hard to sum it up, to sum up multiple years into just a quick kind of pitch. But I feel like it’s going to sound a lot like your promo copy, not because you paid me to say this, but just because I love you guys and love your event. Yeah I mean, I’ve been to just for perspective too, for anybody listening. I mean, I… Not anymore because of COVID, but I went to conferences, probably 12 to 14 conferences a year, all over the world. And Rob and Kira, not just because they’re my friends, but because it’s such an awesome event and it is literally the top three, if not the favorite event of mine of year. And the reason for that, I mean obviously the content is great, you will learn a lot.
But for me, what I love is just the people that are attracted to this event and the connections that you’ll make. And that’s kind of consistent for a lot of conferences, but I think this one in particular, I’ve told a lot of friends, I’ve told family about it. It’s the quality of the people. And every year I’ve gone, I’ve met new people and seen old friends and even if you don’t have that luxury, this is your first time going, I would highly, highly, highly recommend you go.
Kira: Thanks Jared, for saying that. And of course I want to know, what would take us from number three to number one? But we can talk about that.
Jared: I thought you were going to say, “Of course I want to pay you later.” But no, I’m just kidding. I didn’t receive any compensation for-
Kira: That too, that too. All right. So, thank you and if you’re listening and you have any interest in this event, head over to thecopywriterclub.com/tccirl-2022 and we’ll link to it in the show notes, so you can check out the event. Now, let’s jump into the interview with Esai.
Esai: I think the first time I ever wrote something, I was probably eight. And I can’t remember a time when I haven’t been writing stories, poems and a lot of really embarrassing stuff that my parents still kept. But I never thought I would actually become a copywriter. What I thought I would become is a trainer. Somebody that helped people, helped people change, helped people become better versions of themselves and that’s what I did at my corporate job for almost, actually almost a decade. The story of how I have become a copywriter from that, it’s very interesting and it’s not at all a typical story of how somebody starts a business. But, I’m really glad I got here because I feel like everything that I’ve learned, reading books, writing stories, becoming a trainer, learning, researching experiential learning and behavioral change, everything has tied in so beautifully with what I do today.
Rob: So, tell us more about that. As a trainer, what were the things that you did and how that applies to what you do as a copywriter?
Esai: So, I was actually incredibly lucky to work with some really good managers who prioritize employee wellbeing and prioritize training, which helped me focus on not just creating this cookie cutter training, but actually designing programs that helped people change their behavior. So that was the first mandate I got. One of the first jobs that I held as a trainer and the first things we worked on, is how do we get high school kids to change the way they behave. A part of that, and I’ve talked about this in many different platforms, is how do we get high school boys, especially seniors to stop vandalizing the school and instead, whenever they have free time, get them to read books. And that’s felt like, such a lofty goal when they actually first told me that this is what they wanted, that I wasn’t sure how we are going to do it. But we started from the basics, right?
So, we talk about when we don’t want people to change their behavior. A lot of old school thinking comes in and this actually ties in with the way we have these cassette tactics, right? We always think we can treasure people, we can scare people into doing something we want them to do. Unfortunately, that’s… In my experience as a trainer, it works in the short term, yes. But it’s not sustainable and it often implodes or explodes in the worst way possible. So, one of the things I learned was the only way you can help people change their behavior, you can help people, help people become better is number one, understanding what they want. Go back to basics and talk to them and like to understand what they need, understand what they want, understand what they believe. And once you have a good understanding, once you understand them, then you create an environment which helps them change that belief.
And once a belief is changed and the change in action is very, very easy to affect. So one of the things that we did for when we wanted high school boys to start trading books was number one, we looked… We completely overhauled the kind of books the library was stocking. So we bought a bunch of Goosebumps, we bought a lot of thrillers and Whodunit mysteries, and Michael’s Brighton and sci-fi, and we also stocked a lot of comic books. Because, comic books are still legitimate. It’s still legitimate literature. Sometimes, I lead, I… There was a period when I read a lot more comic books than books even. So, we stopped all of that, because we remove the judgment of what constitutes reading a book. It’s not always your Charles Dickens and your Jane Austen. So when you want somebody to foster a reading habit, then you have to understand what they like and do that.
So that was the basic, because nobody thought to do that. Because everybody was thinking increase supervision, make it mandatory and all of that, which was not working. So second thing we did was, we looked at okay, what would motivate? What would motivate them? How can we make this a practice of reading long term?, is when we implemented a credit system. So every book they read, they got a few credits which they can spend towards something. And these are kids who are coming from extremely impoverished communities. So they did not have to, did not have access to a lot of things, including stuff like footballs, like really good quality footballs. Because these are jocks who are interested in primary sports. So we set a very high goal of, you have to have like 300 credits to be able to buy that football, where each book will give you two to five credits based on the kind of book you were reading.
And there were a bunch of other things. So, everything actually worked together so beautifully that in a couple of months the boys had just read everything the school library had, and they had to go out and buy more books. To date, that’s my most successful behavioral change program. That’s when I realized, and copywriters know this, there are content writers, there are people like for any price range who can just write content, right?, who can write words to fill up your website. But really good copy, copy that actually helps you achieve your goal, that’s premium. That takes years to master. Even then it takes a long time to research and implement the right way, but it gets resolved. It’s a same thing that I found with training. It starts with research, it starts with understanding who you’re trying to help and then it all fits together.
And if you are… If it’s not helping that person, if it’s not built into what you do, no matter how good you are it’s not going to work. It’s all about keeping that end person in mind and working towards that. And that’s what I got to do for almost decade in my training. Year after year, I researched more and more into how training programs work, how adults learned, how people change human psychology. Most people hate change, right? So, how do we help them? Even those who want the change, cannot. We want to work out, we want to lose weight, but we can’t stop eating junk food. So there’s a lot of stuff in there. So, if you want to change that behavior, I spent a decade researching how do you do that. What are the exact steps disposed into helping somebody change their behavior? And that’s pretty much what I did then and that’s luckily helping me really, really well in my current role as a copywriter as well.
Rob: Yeah. I love this idea. Obviously, as copywriters we are trying to get people to change their behavior in some way and hopefully it’s in a way that positively impacts their life in some way like, using a new product, or hiring a coach, whatever the thing might be. So, you mentioned specifically understanding where the person is, their world view, what’s their motivation and what’s currently going on, and then also providing positive inducements or incentives for them to do something different. Is there anything else that you would think of through that persuasion process that’s worth mentioning?
Esai: One other thing that I would say is the process that you’re implementing, the process itself has to be fun. That’s the piece a lot of us miss. And thank you for asking this, Rob, because even when we are talking, it’s often very easy to overlook this piece. Anything that’s fun, it’s easier to do. And this is talked about in a book called Flow, right? Where you talk about, if you want somebody to do something, there are two ways you can approach it. One, you make it easy. But there are so many easy things that people don’t do because it’s just boring. A lot of people don’t like folding laundry, I’m one of them. Like I cannot, it’s just something I cannot do. Like, I would die before being forced to do laundry and fold clothes. It’s just, I cannot. It’s incredibly boring for me.
And the way that I solved it is, I cannot watch Netflix unless I’m folding, right? Unless I’m folding clothes. So now, I’ve added a layer of fun to that activity, so now I’m able to do it. So making the change easy is one part of it, which is a part a lot of people understand that they do it well. The more difficult part is to making it fun and that’s the part we struggle with. That’s one of the reasons I love quiz funnels so much. The quizzes are fun. Implementing a PDF that you’ve given me as a date packet is difficult because I have to read it, understand it, change my habits, implement it and then see results.
But quizzes, I can. It’s fun to take and I immediately get results and I love them. So you need to implement both of these. It has to be a degree of easy, but you can’t always make things completely easy for your clients. And again, even if you’re there, there are a lot of easy things that our clients and customers and prospects don’t do. So you also need to make it fun, so people will do the difficult things that you’re asking them to do.
Rob: Okay, yeah. This is fantastic. The first seven minutes of chatting with you here, like masterclass on how do we get people to change behavior? So, that’s fantastic. Let’s go back to the switch then, from when you were a trainer to just starting out as a copywriter. What did you do to get your copywriting business started?
Esai: Rob, in fact, I did not start out as a copywriter. I did… I actually started out after my training and then I had to quit my job because of a bunch of personal reasons. I realized I didn’t want to start over in another company and have to prove myself all over again. Then, I decided I wanted to start a… I wanted to freelance as a career coach because I’ve been in HR, I’ve been in training, I can help people find placements. And I was doing that and I realized, I know how to do training well, I know how to do HR well, but I don’t know how to sell, like grow my business. I don’t know how to market it, I don’t know how to get clients. That’s when I started learning. I discovered the school Online World. It started with Sunny Lenarduzzi’s YouTube, where I tried to figure out how to, how do I get clients with YouTube?
It started there and led to Amy Porterfield. It led to Prerna, who’s a copywriter from India and I didn’t think somebody from India could actually break into that role and actually do that. And from then on, it led to a lot of different things which finally led to me meeting you and Kira and working with you guys in the Think Tank. But initially it started that way and the more I tried to build my business, I realized that the most fun I was having was implementing these market strategies, was in doing SEO and especially in copy writing. So again, in all of these courses that I was taking, I was seeing much better results than everybody else implementing those. So people started hiring me saying that, “Can you write my emails? You were saying to have an act for doing that, can you help me write my YouTube video script?”
And that’s when I made the switch. I realized this part was so much more fun and I love writing. I couldn’t believe somebody would pay me money. This is what… This happened when I started training, because I couldn’t believe somebody would pay me to train. And I couldn’t believe somebody would actually pay me to write. So, the first few times… And you wouldn’t believe it, the first time I wrote an entire launch sequence for a client and she’s still using it to the state, because I’m still on her email list and I still get those emails. I wrote 11 email launch sequence for $600. And at that time for me it felt like, “Oh my God, somebody’s paying me this much money to do this job.” And at that time it was quite a bit for me, because it was proof of concept that I have a skill that’s valued.
Rob: So, why do you think it is that you were able to get so much more out of the training that you were taking or get so many great results as opposed to the other people who were taking the same kind training?
Esai: There are actually multiple reasons for that and one thing, and… This is going to fly directly in the face of everything that we commonly talk about in the online space. First is, doing an actual full-time MBA has a ton of value. There’s a lot of success that I have that I can directly track back to the training I received in my full-time MBA. I used to be deathly scared of public speaking. I couldn’t get up on stage. Like I would shake, I would stutter and I couldn’t get more than 10 words out on the stage. MBA completely cured me of that. Because we would do two to three presentations every week, and you got on stage and spoke so much that it completely cured me of that fear. And the second thing is, there’s so many basics. So there’s so much basics and foundational training that I received in my MBA that helped me a lot in implementing.
For instance, in a lot of the programs we talk about your ideal audience, your ideal client, right? And we have… Most courses give you the set of questionnaire, they give you this framework and to tell you how to identify who your ideal audience is. And I know the best Courses have it and that’s where they start. And I know we do that in the Think Tank, I know we have that in the accelerator as well, and it’s very foundational work. But because I had already done MBA, I had already done deep work into segmentation, psychographic segmentation, what are the different types of segmentation, what does it look like and all of that. And because I already had that background, it was very easy for me to understand the foundation on which the principles, the framework of ICA was built on.
And I think… Jacob and I actually go very in depth into this, on his podcast that we recorded last month, where we actually go deep into how we are now implementing strategies without a lot of times understanding the foundation on which it is built, right? So that really helped me, that was one part. The second part… The second reason I think I saw so much more success is I do not… I like implementing things fast, I like testing things. When somebody says this, somebody gives me a topic or a project, I like to create a minimum viable version of that and to quickly test it. And I always create that MVP and because I’m testing, and iterating, and building on top of it, sometimes the thing that I’m putting out, it looks like it needs a little bit of polish. But very, very quickly and it looks like a lot sooner than everybody else, it looks like I have something really good. And that did not happen by absent.
It is a lot more work to build an MVP and iterate it. It’s easier to wait for it to be perfect and just put that out there. But I think it’s these two things that really help me stand out, because MBA gave me the foundation and it gave me the training to do the grant work, to work on something until it looks good. It actually is different and it works.
Rob: Okay. So before we go any further, you mentioned your podcast interview with Jacob Suckow. We’ll link to that in the show notes, if anybody wants to listen to that discussion. So, just leaving that there. And then as far as these things that set you apart, obviously an MBA isn’t something that, if you don’t have an MBA you can just go out and have that tomorrow, Right? But the MVP part is that quick implementation. So do you have any tips for, how do we approach that? As we’re learning things in a course or we’re learning things from a mentor, how do you quickly put it into action so that you’re proving the concept and getting something out of it?
Esai: Oh, for sure. And I would actually like to add Rob, that for me it was an MBA, but now… For me it was an MBA in 2008, right? When there was no social media, the way it is now, right? So at that time, MBA was the only resource. Now, MBA is not the only resource. Everything that I learned in my MBA, we can learn but by reading the right books. So today when somebody talks about branding, I tell them to go back and read Al Ries, read Jack Trout, read primer branding and if you want to learn marketing, go back and read Philip Kotler. There are a bunch of other books that you should also read, but you should definitely also read Principles of Marketing by Philip Kotler. If you want to learn human behavior, write… Read organizational behavior by Stephen Robbins.
These are foundational books and these guys are the founding fathers in their field for a reason. And this will ground you in the basics of what you need to learn. And you definitely need to know the ICA framework and all of that, but this foundation will make you much, give you much stronger understanding. So, even if you don’t have an MBA does not mean you can’t have all of this knowledge. The knowledge is freely available now more than ever, just make sure you are going to the source. When you’re learning something, go back to the source, try and understand what principles is this built on?, where is the original research?, who was the original creator of this psychological principle? Try and go back as close to the original source as possible and you’re a hundred percent good to go. That’s what I do for a lot of marketing now, because my MBA was just… It was very… It was a decade ago, right? And going back and reading those books and they’re so incredibly relevant even today. So, I just wanted to touch on that.
Rob: Yeah, I think that’s a really good point. We’ll link to the books that you specifically mentioned. But you’re right. You don’t need to spend $90,000 on an MBA or whatever cost, wherever you are, for whatever the program is. You can teach yourself. But having said that, there’s still a little bit of time involved in that. And so yeah, let’s jump to, what are the things that you do to prove the concept and to do that fast implementation?
Esai: So, one of the things I do, anytime that I don’t want to implement something… And this is what I did when I started as a freelancer, when I decided that I don’t want to pick, I don’t want to start, I don’t want to be a career coach, I actually can get into marketing and I started out as a freelancer. So one of the things I did was, when I approached clients I told them, “I’m from India and I am new. So, I would work for you for like low.” I started at $10 an hour. I told you that’s how much I would charge you. But, I’m also going to learn on the job and implement this. And I found clients who still respected me for my honesty, and they were completely okay with me learning and implementing things. And what I did was any time that you are trying to do something, one of the things we do is… Let’s say you want to start, you want to launch a course, right? You want to launch a digital product.
And we’ve seen some of them do this, do it really well in a Think Tank. And Ash did it fantastically with her prelaunch content, Grace Baldwin, she’s doing it… Doing her group boring and she’s doing the MVP version of it now. Kristen Macintyre is doing her MVP version of her VIP, demystifying VIP packages for copywriters. So what would do is, instead of getting hung up on the tech and all the things that you don’t know, right? Just focus on what is it that you do know. What is it that you do really well? So when I’m trying to implement something, I don’t… I do have the habit of, and I think all copywriters have this in common, we try to go deep on that subject because we want to low… We want to learn and know everything there is to it.
And that’s just our insatiable curiosity and that’s what makes us great copywriters. But even as you’re doing that, start immediately taking an action. So, for email… And this is easy to say, difficult to implement. I struggled with this in some areas as well. I still haven’t launched my… At the time we are speaking, I haven’t started sending out weekly emails. But, my goal is by the time this airs, it would be up and I would be… It’s slated for a weekend. I’m going to start sending them out. But it… Everybody struggles with that. And this is easy advice to give, but launch in a way that’s simple. And that’s what I’m going to do.
My emails are not going to be these perfect weekly emails, but I’m going to make sure that anybody who signs up sees value. So what I’m going to do is, because I read a book a week and it just… I constantly learned so much and I have systems in place to make sure what I’m learning stays on top of mind. I’m going to share that in an email and my email is not going to be very wordy, it’s going to be quickly, what am I reading?, what have I learnt?, and how can copywriters implement that at their business? So anybody signing up for my emails, it’s going to take them two minutes to read my email. They’re still going to get something very valuable and actionable, and it’s going to be easy for me to implement as well.
So, this is an MVP. And I will probably layer a lot more strategy on top of it. Little bit later, I’ll segment my list, I’ll send customized book recommendation, I will send customized weekly emails, all of that. But I’m not going to get hung up on all of that. Right now it’s only about how can I focus on what I enjoy and what I do really well, and how can I get that out there. I think if you make that your focus and you implement that in everything that you’re trying to do, you would find that there’s so much you will learn by taking action, way more than you could have in taking courses.
Right? And I wanted to talk about this especially in our Think Tank as well. Rob if you see, a lot of the things that we are talking about in the Think Tank is not that different from the accelerator, if you think about it, right? We are all still working on a framework, we’re just doing it at a much higher and the focus is actually on implementation. Because while the implementation looks very easy when you’re learning the concept, it’s really not. With every step of implementation comes a new level of learning, requires a new level of support and guidance and mentoring.
That’s what we get in the Think Tank and that’s what we pay much more for than a course, because that’s the challenging part. So you… And the only way to do that is to take action. That’s something I struggle with, but that’s something… Even while I struggle with it, that’s something I continue to hold at the core of what I do and in the way that I work with my clients as well. Implement, learn, implement, learn, implement. That’s a thing.
Rob: Okay, so as you go through that process, this is fantastic, clearly part of the learning process though, is that not everything works. And so as you’re trying out ideas and things fail, how do you deal with that? Or how do you reset your expectations? How do you change up whatever the thing is that you’re creating in order to iterate it towards a success?
Esai: The one way to do that is to go into it expecting to fail. And we have such aversion a lot of times because the way we are brought up in our schools, because failing is wrong, passing is good. We have a ton of aversion towards failing. But what you should do instead is look at every time you fail, you learn something and that is something you could never have learned if you had gotten it right at the first place. There are so many people who breeze through a bunch of things at the lower levels. And then after they hit the ceiling they struggle because we didn’t learn the lessons, we didn’t build up the stamina of failure at those early stages because we breeze past through those.
And I’m doing that now because my business grows so quickly, I’m at that stage where now I have to face a lot more failures because I’m trying to build out a team. I’m trying to scale my agency. I’m meeting that ceiling where I have to fail over and over. And it’s because I built that up much earlier in my business, I’m able to fail and still do well.
So, the way to do that is when something is not working, the most important thing is if you are working with multiple stakeholders, talk to people. Talk to people with the curiosity of what happened. What happened, what did not work? Why did it not work? And remove judgment, judging others, or judging yourself, remove all judgment and approach it with a sense of curiosity. What didn’t work? And you can only do that when you go in expecting to fail.
And failure is a very good thing, as long as you follow up with checking, what went wrong, identifying what went wrong and just tweak it and make it better. And again, the next time going there with failure and I love Peter Thiel talks about this, how he wanted to invest in a company, but he wasn’t very sure because the founders were very hesitant. They didn’t have very firm answers for anything he asked. And they were very like, yeah, we are trying this. We’re not sure. We’re still testing this and this. So he didn’t feel very confident. So he actually passed on that investment. The founders, then the company they founded was Uber. Uber is so internationally successful, but those founders, they went in saying that, “No, not sure we think this will not work, so we’re testing it.” So they went in expecting to fail and because they failed and tested so many times the success is there for us to see.
So that’s what I would recommend to approach it with curiosity. When you remove judgment, every stakeholder, whether it’s a client, a VA or an employee or your audience, everybody. When you remove judgment and when you remove emotions from that equation and only have curiosity, then everybody will be willing to give you the information that you need to make sure it goes better the next time.
Rob: Yeah, it’s the good approach to it. I can’t remember who it was that said it, but the idea that it’s not failure, if you learn from it, you basically … it’s an experience and an experiment, an experience, a challenge. But as long as you’re able to take something from it, it’s not failure.
Esai: Yeah. And I love … There’s a quote in Gray’s Anatomy, and I think this will resonate with a lot of my clients as well. Where Meredith Gray, she says, “Failure is what progress looks like.” That there’s no other statement that has hit me that hard. Because progress is that. Progress is a journey. That means the journey is just one failure after another. That’s the way to success. And it’s the only way to succeed. If you’re only succeeding, which means not living up your potential.
Kira: Okay. Let’s jump in here and talk about what stood out the most to you, Jared. So as you listened to the interview, what stood out?
Jared: Yeah, I mean, there was a lot, honestly the folding laundry comment kind of hit me right in the feels, but in all seriousness though, I think just awesome what she’s doing with in her history of kind of teaching young boys kind of how to read and that kind of resonated just because reading has been such a big part of my life as well. And just even when I was a young kid to nowadays, so I think there was a lot there. And then just talking about habits and behavioral change, I think that’s definitely something that we as marketers, copywriters, definitely zero in on. So I think there’s a lot we could unpack there and yeah. And just what she shared about kind of initially not knowing how to sell or kind of grow her business or not really know how to market it in the beginning. I think that’s a common thing that a lot of people can relate to.
Kira: Yeah. Behavior change. I mean, even as she was talking about taking these boys from, I believe she mentioned vandalizing school to enjoying and reading books regularly. It sounds like such a huge transformation and she was able to do it. That stood out to me too. And I was thinking about how I’m trying to help my kids learn how to read, not learn how to read, learn how to love reading. They know how to read. They understand how to read. They have required reading at school, but how do we take them from feeling like reading is a chore to loving it? I’m not always sure how to do it, but I’m working on some ideas right now. And so it was fun to hear her talk about it because I’m actually doing the same thing as far as… She mentioned filling the library for these students with books that actually interest them, like comic books and other more exciting thrillers and starting there to create that incentive and to line up their interest with the books.
And so that’s been a big change for me. I’m like, “Well, let me find books that actually interest my kids, rather than just giving them what I think interest them and seeing if that works.” And then she also mentioned the reward and having that point system to lead to the prize, which I believe was a football. And so I’m all about rewards in the reward system too. So it’s been working for my kids so far, but again, I’m at the beginning stages of this behavior change for them. So just listening to that, I was like, “I feel like I’m on the right track. And it’s really cool to know this works.” And it’s also great to know that this is something we can do as copywriters for our clients and we can do and learn and improve in this area. So Jared, has this worked into your client work at all or into your personal life?
Jared: Yeah, I’d answer both. As you were saying that, what stuck out to me is just how the lightning rod that is cast, or the connection that blows up when you, or I guess the person you know, in this case, your kids is reading something or learning so that they’re really interested in. And that comes with obviously knowing them and you as their mom is going to be… You are going to know them pretty well and get to know their interests. But when you tied into kind of a work context of kind of knowing your audience and that’s a cliche. I’m almost cringing saying it. Just because it’s everywhere without any practical kind of tips and we’re happy to go there. And I think Esai even talks about that, but I think just, it’s amazing.
I mean, even from my own personal experience of in school, not really enjoying some of the topics, dare I say. And then once getting out and reading articles and books on psychology and marketing and human behavior and these things that became really interesting to me, it’s amazing how that kind of childhood reading addiction almost. And it’s with its downfalls. That’s something that I definitely would love to talk about, but I think getting back to the application of what you’re reading, but I just think it’s been nice to kind of see how obviously there was a massive interest for reading for me growing up, but then later on in life finding things that I really was interested in that related to my work, I couldn’t stop consuming.
And I think with that, it’s really important to apply what you’re consuming and not kind of go down the full-time student route, obviously readers are leaders and we’ve heard all the terms, but I think it’s really important and beneficial to make sure that we’re applying I guess kind of factoring that into kind of counting the cost of what you’re going to learn, whether it’s a course or a book, like, do you have time to apply it before you buy the book?
Or before you buy the course, do you have the time to apply it? Not just consume it, but to actually take the time to let it marinate and let it permeate and then apply it.
Kira: Yeah. I’m glad you mentioned that because you know, she also talked about her MBA in this conversation and she mentioned these weren’t her exact words that you could be simply pursue your own MBA and just read the foundational books and continue to read. And I know Esai is such a voracious reader. And I think about that often, many copywriters we chat with consider going back to school at different times. And I just wonder could we pursue our own MBA or own just any type of degree by just reading and just reading voraciously and adding multiple books to our bookshelf every week. Is that something that we can do?
I tend to think that the benefit of doing it within a school and I mean, oftentimes paying for it, is that you feel that pressure to complete it and to apply it. And you may not feel that same pressure if you’re doing it on your own and you aren’t necessarily, you don’t have any skin in the game, but what do you think as someone who loves to read, how do you view the learning capacity through books and how you build it into your schedule, so that does happen and you do apply it?
Jared: Yeah. Building into your schedule is key and kind of having that open time to be able to not feel guilty doing it. I think sometimes when the hustle and bustle of whether it’s personal life or work life or both, and they converge and you’re feeling almost guilty to kind of take half an hour or an hour and read part of a book. But I think it’s just also really important to just be… You never know what you’re learning in the moment. So I think it’s important to really document… You don’t have to obviously write the whole book again, but, or the article, but I think just really kind of keeping whether it’s in Notion or paper or Evernote or whatever you use the tech isn’t really important. I think it’s just more so you never know what you’re learning in the moment that could help you.
And I think even looking at my career back in the day, like 15 years ago, you know what I was doing, I’d have no, I’d absolutely no clue that it would help me with what I’m doing today, but it did. And I just think always learning is such an important, especially in this kind of thought leadership or kind of knowledge work space.
I think it’s just so important to always be learning and always refining your craft in both application as well as knowledge. But I think it’s just, you might never know what you’re consuming and it… And at the time is how it’s going to affect you down the road. And I think it’s just so important to cross pollinate and is the term I love to use, not that I’m an avid horticulturist or anything, but just being able to cross pollinate and kind of read books and disciplines and kind of diversity of thought that you wouldn’t normally. And I think that’s kind of where you can become really dangerous is when you aren’t reading all of the bestsellers necessarily that everyone’s reading and being able to read some of those, but then also kind of reading other books that might pique your interest and be able to kind of apply some of those learnings and start to form your own kind of knowledge web.
Kira: Well, you mentioned that and it brings back all my memories of just different conversations we’ve had. You’ve shared your notes in Notion, I’ve seen your Notion. And so I know that you take a ton of notes when you learn something new or you’re watching a training, or you’re reading a book. Can you just share a little bit more about that process for you? Because you’re not just taking a couple bullets, writing a couple bullets like I do, you have extensive notes. Do you have a process you go through when you read a book or is it just something like you figure it out book to book training to training?
Jared: Yeah. Great question. I’m surprised that you’re right. We’ve, we’ve had some calls in the past and you’ve seen my Notion and I’m surprised you’re still living to tell about it. So that’s good. Because I feel like you can’t have an entirely clean, it’s going to be a little messy, embrace the messy, as one of my friends would say, but yeah, I think it’s important to kind of just brain dump what’s in your head.
And I think the process or process as some of us up in Canada say, it’s evolved over time. And I think one gentleman that follows Tiago or Tiago Forte and his process of like progressive summarization and that can be a time consuming endeavor, but it’s essentially where you take… There’s a great book called How to take great notes, as well. And basically taking a summary and as you’re listening, whether it’s audiobook or paper book or whichever it is, logging all your notes and then going back and another great tool is Readwise, which can sync all of your notes from like a Kindle or actually has like an OCR scanner and now we’re really getting into the weeds. So you you can cut me off Kira, you can be like, “Jared we’ve got to move on. We’ve got to move on.”
Kira: No, I love this. This is why I ask you all of my questions about all the tools.
Jared: Always be trying new things. Readwise is great. You can take photos of paper books and it’ll pick up your highlights. So however you do it, but just being able to just go back and distill down your massive notes. So probably the note that you saw was just raw kind of notes and a little bit longer, but kind of going back and basically highlighting or bolding meat and potatoes, if you will, for lack of a better cliche of what was kind of the best parts of your summary. And you do that a couple more times so that when you go back and you write your own summary in your own words to kind of help with retention and it’s obviously more time consuming because… but I just, especially actually, it’s pretty timely because I think for right now, even in the last kind of three or four months, I’ve really noticed that a lot of books that I’d read, I forget what’s in them.
And I think there’s some really… There’s so many good nuggets in there that I wanted to pull from. So I think that’s kind of been one of my priorities this year is just to really summarize and retain what I’m reading. Even if it means I get to lose some of the books that I was reading when I do my year in review or whatever it is at the end of the year of how many I read. But yeah, I mean, there’s so many different tools, but Progressive Summarization: How to take great notes, is a great book and yeah. And there’s another book too. It’s just Pat Flynn, it’s kind of an underrated book. It’s less about note taking, but it’s more of just kind of the value of kind of being a generalist, not necessarily that’s how you’re going to market yourself, but just kind of being able to pull in resources and experience and knowledge from different areas. So kind of tying back to what I was saying before.
Kira: Yeah. And how do you apply it? I mean, because we’re chatting about notes, you have these great notes, you’ve revisited them a couple of times, you’ve highlighted it, it’s sinking in, but then what do you do to apply it in your business in life?
Jared: Yeah, I would say just a couple things kind of commenting. So I think some of when you’re switching up the like environment or like if you’re going out for a walk and listening to an audio book, I mean, there’s just by you being in a different environment and you’ll be able to factor or kind of come up with new ideas that you wouldn’t have thought of necessarily in your office at your computer. So I think really just whenever you have an idea, whether you’re reading something or not just get it down right away, because you will not remember it.
I don’t care how great I think my memory is, I cringe at what’s been left on the cutting room floor, so to speak through no intention of my own just by just forgetting and thinking that I’ll do it later.
I think capturing that and then the taking the extra time to summarize in your own words, what you’re reading and I think audiobooks can be fun that way just because you can just… Obviously I won’t endorse the driving thing, but I’ve definitely done on it where if you’re listening to an audio book or something, just record your own voice note of kind of what the chapter was that you just listened to. And that really helps because again, if you listen to 5, 6, 7, or if you binge half the book, you’re not going to remember each chapter. So those are just a couple things, but didn’t think we’d nerd out on consuming content, but I think it’s important because I think it can inspire you and go in a lot of different ways. And I think Rob mentioned this too in one of his comments where the learning process of kind of just applying what you are learning.
Part of the learning process as Rob was saying, is that not everything works. So kind of just rather than consuming, consuming, consuming necessarily all the time, putting it into practice pretty quickly, even if that means turning away what you may want to consume next, just in favor of applying and taking that extra time. And I just think of back when I was learning languages, it’s like you can take a month to learn how to perfectly say a phrase or think in your head and stress about how you’re going to say it, but you’ll learn much faster by kind of hopping on a call with a native speaker. And they’ll correct. You on your pronunciation within the first five minutes.
Kira: How many languages do you speak or what languages do you speak?
Jared: Oh my gosh anymore. No, just French. That’s it, nothing-
Kira: Just French. No biggie.
Jared: Nothing too fantastic. Yeah.
Kira: Okay. That’s impressive. So you also mentioned folding laundry and what Esai shared about laundry is that you can make processes and behavior changes fun and implementing that change fun. And so I’m glad she shared, she’ll watch Netflix while folding laundry, which is smart. I’m going to try that. But I was also thinking this is a good reminder just to make our client experiences fun. And sometimes with our own clients, they do have homework for us that they need to complete an intake form and we’ve geeked out about intake forms before we won’t go down that rabbit hole right now.
But sometimes that’s not actually fun for a client. They want the outcome, they want their website, they want their email sequence. But to get to that point and fill out and answer 40 questions, which is what I make my clients do.
It may not be fun for them. And so I think it’s also important to think about, well, how can we make it fun? How can we create an enjoyable, fun, surprising to like experience throughout the entire process. Especially during those points in the process where we know it’s a sticky spot and they may give up or they may be like, “holy cow, why did I sign up for this? I have to do all of this homework. Doesn’t Kira know I’m busy?” And so you focused on your client experience. How do you think about creating a positive, fun experience for your clients?
Jared: 100% and I was just nodding. I mean, you obviously can’t see me, but I was just nodding what I-
Kira: I felt it.
Jared: You felt it. I mean, you know me for a while. I think just in terms of designing an experience, I think there’s so much to unpack there. And I think when you mentioned about a client saying, “Oh, like don’t you know me, do I really have to do this?” And I think sometimes… And you can kind of weed these people out earlier on and I’m not saying that was your client, but usually the clients that you want to work with who are kind of paying you the rates that you are desiring they will pay more for a teacher. So if you assume that role of teacher and kind of guide along the process as early as possible, even before you close them, I mean, that’s obviously reflected in rates, but then also, like you said, that kind of enjoyable experience for them and you being able to kind of walk them through and guide that along.
And there’s so many other intangibles that are shown while you do that. But I know my friend Marcus Sheridan will talk a lot about that, about how kind of the role of a teacher and how teachers essentially… It’s not just about money, but not just getting paid more, but it totally reframes the relationship as early as possible when you can do that. Because it kind of shows, obviously you’ve done it before and you’re an expert in those things. And not saying that I’m an expert by any means, but I think it’s just so important to not only, I mean, like I was saying before, but knowing your audience so it, it is important to know your audience and have a target audience and we’ve talked about personas and jobs to be done, and we could go through that till the cows come home. But, also to kind of the second portion of that is what is the experience that you’re giving or providing for your audience, especially in a client sense? Which is so important.
Kira: Okay. Well, I’ve got to ask you then, tell me more about the role of the teacher? Let’s say as far as if I’m listening and I like that idea. I want to charge premium rates and I want to show up as a teacher and guide my clients through the process. That’s what I want to do. How do I do it? So could you give us an example or two of how we could do it with our next client?
Jared: I mean, it can be a scary thing to do. So I know if you’re listening, and kind of taking the reins and kind of owning the process, it can be a little scary sometimes, because you might think that you’re being direct or being a little bossy or those kinds of things, or depending on your personality, you may really enjoy being bossy, I don’t know, but really just owning the whole process.
So from start to finish and that from the first touch point that they have with you being able to, for example, meeting prep, and this is something that I’ve gone deep on before, but just even meeting reminders and prepping just something as simple as, “Hey, this call that we’re going to be on,” calls are such a meetings, whether they’re in the sales process or after you’ve worked with or you’ve been working with a client are such an opportunity to flip the status quo on its head and obviously Annie Becher and workshop facilitation, and those principles highly recommend you follow her because she can talk a lot about… We’ve geeked out over this too, is just being able to facilitate an experience or a meeting experience.
So that’s one opportunity, but to kind of really get down tactical just for a minute is just really, so say you’re in your sales process and you have either a first, if you’re doing a one call process or a two call process, whichever one, just being able to kind of just send either a video or an email reminder ahead of time, about what to expect, the agenda, what we’re going to cover with the outcome of the meeting in is if you have any questions and, and kind of just teaching along the way and kind of saying, “Hey, we’re going to be on video. So make sure that you are prepped. I’m not going to surprise you.” And just kind of we talk about empathy a lot.
We talk about these things, but putting them into practice sometimes kind of living out your values I think is really important. And we won’t go off fund that tangent, but really being able to own the process and essentially walk them along through it. And meetings are one and then proposals as well, and then onboarding like 100%.
Kira: All right, well, I’ve got one last question for you. We talk about failure as well. And Esai talks about how that’s really how you learn and failure is what progress looks like. Can you share a recent failure? Are you open to sharing maybe an example of progress that you made that stemmed from a failure?
Jared: Oh my gosh. Yeah. Professional failure, personal failure. I mean, you-
Kira: All my failures.
Jared: … Yeah. And I think it’s important to just be okay with admitting that, I mean, I wouldn’t go as so far as to say to expect it. I think it’s this fine line mindset wise to kind of anticipate and know that you’re going to fail and you’ll get great learnings out of that. But I think if you go into something thinking you’re going to fail, I don’t think that’s necessarily going to set you up well in the right frame of mind, but, but definitely kind of encouraging it and embracing it when it happens, because it will. I mean, one, one thing that I just think of is just COVID last year late into the year, lost a friend and it rocked me.
So, I just kind of realized that, Hey, I was too busy to kind of get back to him and he was kind of declining health wise with some health issues and that just really rattled me. So I think it just was like, “Okay,” I took a few months off and fulfilled my client work, but kind of just unplugged. And there was a lot of shame there, there was a lot of, “Oh my gosh, I’m I’m not showing up,” I’ve got these plans for products and all these things and that I’m are in the works. And I just essentially pause them all and just focused on life and went back to family and reprioritized things. So I think it’s easy to get carried. I think it’s so hard to shut off sometimes, but I think that was kind of… I guess, it felt like a work kind of failure or business failure, but also a personal one too because I wasn’t there for that person.
Kira: Right. But then it shows the progress of just pausing to realize and reprioritize, which will help you moving forward and strengthen your relationships moving forward. But at the time it feels like a failure in many ways, even though it’s progress big picture.
Jared: And I was talking with somebody else about this too, who’s kind of in a similar situation. And I think we won’t go down the mental health route, but there’s a lot of, I don’t want to say stigma, but I just think there can be a lot of like as a business owner, freelancer, entrepreneur, however you’re at in your business. I mean, you can definitely with a lot of shame and a lot of guilt for taking time for yourself, whether it’s to recover from something or just to take personal time and you and I we were chatting about this Kira, just about kind of being present when you have that time to be off or to be with your family or be with friends or whichever.
Kira: Yeah. I mean, we can dig a lot deeper into mental health. So we’re going to to bring you back for that episode, continue that conversation. But for now let’s get back into the episode and dive into social media strategy.
Rob: So, let’s talk about what your business looks like today. I know you’re not necessarily doing what you did as you were just starting out. You’re starting to build a team. What is the thing that you focus? What’s the problem that you solve? The package that you’ve created in order to help your clients?
Esai: Okay, this is my favorite question and this is something I can get on a soapbox and talk for hours, but, and as it really sets me off as well. So the biggest problem that I’m solving is for copywriters who want to attract premium clients. And I help them do that with social media content.
I think there’s so much misinformation and so much wrong advice, that’s being pedaled out in the market and it’s not done intentionally, it’s just for the wrong audience. Nobody’s talking specifically about social media strategy for copywriters. So copywriters are following advice that’s meant for businesses, that’s meant for cost creators and marketing focused businesses, right where your success and revenue depends on traffic. So they’re following advice. That’s meant for them and it.
So, they’re following advice that’s meant for them and we’re burning out or they’re implementing things which they don’t need to, as much as they do. And often it takes their entire business in a different direction because their audience is now different and what their audience is demanding is different. So they lose focus and that’s what I’m trying to solve. I help service providers attract premium clients with the way that they focus their messaging with the type of content they put out. And with this type of strategy, so it’s not about likes and comments, but it’s the prospect when they get on the call, they know what your framework is, they know your values, they know how you work. And it’s a smooth sales call from that point, that’s the service that I’m providing for my clients at the moment.
Rob: Yeah. So let’s talk a little bit about some of those mistakes as we listen to the bad advice, what are the things, let’s go deeper on that, what are the things that we’re doing that are hurting our business and what should we do instead?
Esai: Okay. So the first mistake, and as a social media manager, I will say this, the first mistake is there is this, when you’re starting out your business, you don’t need to create social media content. And this advice I’m glad to hear a lot of people are definitely sharing. They’re saying, you don’t need to be creating content on social media, because there is a point in which you are not 100% certain what your niche is. You’re not 100% certain what your brand is, who you’re attracting. So that is not the point to focus on, on social media. That’s the point where you should be working with different kinds of projects and different kinds of clients to first figure out who you want to work with and what kind of projects do you want to work on?
And that is the first stage. And it’s a freelancer stage, where you’re not a business owner, or you’re not a copywriter yet, you’re still a freelancer, because you’re still shopping to figure out what you like alone. At that time, if you create content you’re then pigeon holding yourself into only doing certain types of things where you shouldn’t be doing that, your way of thinking at that time should be divergent where you’re saying yes to different kinds of things to see what you like. So that is the first advice, but luckily now, more and more people are telling copywriters that no, you don’t need to focus on creating content. But what you do need to do is have an optimized social media profile.
Even if you’re not posting content, especially optimized LinkedIn profile, because when somebody… And you can test that, go to incognito and type in your name. I bet you, in the first three results will be your LinkedIn profile and anybody who’s thinking of hiring you, they’re going to click on that profile because they want to know what your experience is. They want to know if you have the skills and experience and the knowledge to do the service that you are promising that you can do for them. So stage one, do not create content, optimize your profile. So you can have a place where you can send people. Even if you have a website, website is content that you have created. People will trust LinkedIn because LinkedIn also has endorsements, it has recommendations and it has social proof built in because you went to a certain college, you’ve worked with certain people and you have certain years of experience doing certain things. So it has social proof built in. So people will check you out.
So that’s the second advice that service providers do not hear. They think I don’t need to be on social media means just being non-existent. And I talk about that in my content because I had a client, a premium client for a very big project that they were in the same Facebook group as me. They saw that I was posting a ton of content, they loved what I was talking about, we got on a call, it went really well. So he said he is going to bring his co-founder on so we can finalize the contract. But before he could do that, he sent me an email saying, “Hey, I Googled you, but your profile is not updated. You don’t have a website. It seems a little bit sketchy. Can you send me some details? Can you send me a portfolio and some other details that I can share with my co-founder. And can you send me some proof of your experience?” That’s when I realized, even if I’m not posting content, it’s important that my social media profiles reflect who I am. That’s important to do as well. That’s a second advice.
The worst advice that I have heard that’s settled out everywhere and which is so not true for copywriters is, in order to prove your expertise in order to be a premium copywriter, in order to charge premium prices, you have to create how to content. You have to create content that provides value, you have to create content that teaches. And what happens is that when you’re teaching, you’re attracting an audience that wants to DIY. And I highly doubt, Rob, you and Kira were actually click on and read something that says how to write a social media caption. I highly doubt that’s content that will appeal to you at the stage that you are now.
Rob: Yeah, probably not me. I mean, probably at any stage, that wouldn’t appeal to me much, but yeah, I get what you’re saying.
Esai: Exactly. But if there is content that actually talks about what type of strategy is… What type of social media strategy you should choose based on your business, that you might be interested in because you would say, “Okay, I have a business that’s of a certain type, does this apply to my business?” That is something you might actually be interested in, or if there’s a social media strategist that you are considering hiring for your brand, or for TCC, you would actually look at what is the process? And if I create a thing about, this is my process, this is my framework. And that’s why we talk so much about framework within the think tank and then the accelerator as well. What is the framework? What is the way in which I am implementing? That’s important that you want and more to decide whether or not this is a good fit for what you’ll need.
So, there are so many different things that you could talk about that would actually appeal to a premium client, which is definitely, definitely not how to content. So that is the second bad advice. And the third advice, which I don’t know who started it, and I don’t know how this got so popular is, posting the exact same copy in all the platforms. So I see there are people that I follow who post the same thing on their social Facebook profile, the exact same caption on Instagram, the exact same thing on LinkedIn, and the exact same copy in their email. I’m sure you’ve seen that as well.
Rob: Yeah, I think I’ve done that before.
Esai: It’s very common. I don’t know how this got so popular. But here’s the thing, when you’re saying that, and there is a reason why people follow you on multiple platforms, people who follow you on LinkedIn, because they want to hear thought provoking in depth content from you. People follow you on Instagram because they want to know the real you, they want to see you on a day-to-day, like who are you? They want to get to know you as a person. They follow you on Twitter, but they want snackable content, it’s easy to digest. They want your email so they can get even more in depth with you on topics at their own leisure. When you’re posting the exact same content on multiple platforms, you’re essentially telling them that, “Hey, you don’t need to follow me on different platforms. It’s going to be the same thing. Just follow me on one, that’s enough.”
Rob: Yeah. So it would limit engagement if you’re trying to… If you’re doing the same thing everywhere, there’s no point.
Esai: Yeah, exactly. There is no point in doing that. But if you have… So what we do for our clients, for who we manage multiple platforms, is we take the same core message, but we modify it for each platform. So what happens is, I’m hearing the same message. So for instance, if it is for the copywriters club and you’re talking about, let’s say you’re promoting TCC IRL, then you would say the importance of connecting one on one, the importance of real relationships over networking, let’s say you’re talking about that. Then what I would do for you is I would have… At first, I would create maybe the email or a podcast or a blog post that goes really in depth on that topic. And then I would repurpose that into a LinkedIn post, which is very text focused. It’s very logical and talks about what that is.
And then I will turn that into an Instagram carousel where you go one by one, but it’s pictographic, because Instagram still is a very visual platform. And then I will take tweets, the quotes and snappy sentences and we’ll repurpose that and push that on Twitter. And then we will take passages from it, trim it, tweak it and make it into an email. So what happens now is anybody who’s following you on multiple platforms, they’re hearing the same message, but they were like, “Oh, I saw a tweet from Rob about something about TCC.” And then I go to LinkedIn and I see something else. “Oh interesting. So TCC is happening next year, I should probably go.” And then when they’re on Instagram, they actually see it. “Oh wow, TCC covers this much. I don’t know there was actual one on one… There was an actual networking time built into this. I didn’t realize that.” And then when they get the email, they see it and like, “Oh my God, this sounds really good. I think I should sign up for this because this sounds amazing.”
So, what’s happened is you’ve hit them with the same message, but because you’ve put it in different packages, every piece is now working towards moving them one step closer towards conversion. As opposed to when you’re posting the same thing, they will start reading they’re like, “Oh yeah, I’ve already read this.” Skip. That’s the difference.
Rob: Yeah. That totally makes sense. So before we go any farther with this, I want to clarify. So at the very beginning, as we were talking about our approach to social media, you said new copywriters should not be creating content, but it’s not necessarily any content, there is some content it’s just not teaching content instead they should be talking about their projects or documenting, is that a correct assumption?
Esai: Yeah. I was saying that they shouldn’t start out by creating content until they’re clear on what they niche and their audiences. They should first experiment with different things to get clarity, have their framework dialed in. And only after they do that should they focus on creating content. At that stage, they should only have an optimized profile, which they can send traffic towards because they still need to engage with other people’s content and other people’s platforms to drive traffic to their profile. So that’s stage one.
Rob: Okay. Yeah, that makes sense.
Esai: Exactly. And once they’re certain, once they’re confident, once they have a framework, then can start creating content. But even then, the content is not about how to… And then that will actually bring us to the last point that I want to touch upon on this is so they still need to create content, but be very strategic about what type of content they create. And there is the time has long passed where you can be on one platform and make two. It doesn’t work like that anymore. If you are a serious business, you need to be at least on two platforms. You need to be on a platform that’s driving traffic and you need to be on a platform for nurture. You need both kinds of platform for your business to grow. Instagram is not a traffic platform. It’s a nurture platform.
If you’re only on Instagram, you need to bring the traffic to your Instagram either by doing podcasting or doing IG lives with other people or driving your email traffic to your Instagram, you need to do that because Instagram does not organically drive traffic anymore. It’s very difficult to do that. And as a copywriter who’s not looking to go viral and have 10,000 followers, you cannot compete with course creators, in that space.
Right now, LinkedIn is a fantastic traffic platform. It will not remain… Probably somewhere around next year in to change, maybe in a year it’ll change. But even right now, it’s a fantastic platform for organic growth. So that can be your search platform. But ideally your search platform should be Google, YouTube, or Pinterest. You have to be on one of the three and you have to use one social media platform for a nurture. And going forward, you have to be on multiple platforms, so somebody who misses your Instagram post will cash your Twitter. You need to be on the platform of choice of your audience. You need to be on that and pretty soon it’s not going to be an option. And then I have one last tip left.
Rob: Yeah. Well, before we get to the last tip, let me just… I want to clarify this. So you’re saying that Instagram is mostly a nurture format, which means that the people that we’re engaging with there, we’re creating friendships or relationships with, but it’s not necessarily going to sell a program, is that what you’re saying? Or you can still sell there, but you might I guess I’m asking for some clarity there.
Esai: Yeah. So what I’m saying is you can sell there, Instagram is fantastic for building relationship and going deeper with people and converting them and having those conversations. It’s great for that. What it’s not great for is driving traffic to your profile. Like 10% of your own audience will see your post. Even if you have even your own followers, not all of them will see your post. So it’s not great for traffic, it’s great for getting in deeper with people. And there are a lot of other things that we do to make sure people see the post, the tip and tricks that you can do. But again, it’s a hustle so you shouldn’t use it as a traffic platform. You shouldn’t rely on Instagram to send you traffic. You should rely on Instagram to help you build a relationship with your followers. Your traffic will come-
Rob: Okay. Cool. And then the last tip that you have.
Esai: Open your inbox and look at all the people whose emails you’re opening and reading on the regular. And I bet you that 90% of those people, you’re also following on social media, all you know in real life. Like 90%, I will confidently challenge anybody, and somebody… If it’s not the case, I would love to meet you and talk to you and learn who you’re following, if that’s not the case, but 90% of the people who you are opening emails for are people you’re also following on social media because you relate to them as a real person. So even if you’re even marketing to do the heavy lifting in your business, you still need to be on social media. It is not optional anymore.
Rob: Okay. Yeah, that also makes sense. And I think that’s probably true of me. I definitely open the emails to the people that I follow and respect and want to learn from. So that makes a lot of sense for sure. Okay. So we’re going to run out of time before I get to ask all of the questions that I have for you, aside. But one of the things that I think people may be asking, you mentioned that you work in and live in India and there’s this, I think assumption that we can go to India or a place like the Philippines or Vietnam and hire people to get decent work at a very, very low price, but that’s not your, that’s not what you do at all. You charge premium prices. And maybe you can talk a little bit about that and how you do that as somebody who’s working from India, with clients around the world.
Esai: Absolutely. And in that way, I don’t want to say that I have been lucky so far in my career that every single client that I’ve worked with, they have respected me for my ideas and for my talent and my skills, instead of treating me as somebody they could work with for cheap and I’ve had clients tell me, they’re lucky they got to hire me at this stage in my business because they got premium service for pennies on the dollar. And they’ve tried to do right by me as much as they could. And I’ve been lucky that way. But one thing that we need to consider is, as you’re hiring, anybody even overseas VA, as that’s what I started out as, when we do start out at a lower cost, anybody who is actually skilled and anybody who can give you the solution, actually give you the value that you need are going to quickly level up and start charging premium prices.
So only people who are still charging low end prices, you are not going to get the results that you want from them. So if for admin, for all of that, you can go and you can find somebody who’s charging a lower dollar amount, but it will still reflect in the quality of service you get, because that’s not the way to treat an employee, because that is not the… Because that becomes a part of your company culture. And just like values are important for an individual. Culture is very, very important for a business because culture is the value of a business. So if you are looking to save money by looking to hire for cheap, then you’re going to put that out there. And I’m not very spiritual, but even I believe that when that is your mindset, then like attracts like, you’re still going to attract clients who have that mindset as well. And you’re going to attract employees when you grow your business who have similar mindsets of figuring out where can I cut corners? So that is not what I would recommend.
And this is a type of service I provide, the type of clients I work with is I used to target introverted copywriters, who struggled on social media, that was my niche. And I actually moved away from that and I’m only now working with copywriters who want to attract premium clients. And the reason I do that is I want people to get ROI from what I do for them. I want to charge premium prices, but I want to make sure that my clients are seeing 10X results from the dollar amount they’re investing in me, which means I want to provide that level of service.
And I’ll tell you Rob, this I found it to be true, that it’s a lot more competitive to charge $300 as social media than it is to charge $600, $800. Because the top, it’s not that crowded, people desperately need high quality service providers, high quality copywriters, who would not miss deadline, who will get my voice right. Who will get me content that converts, who will actually help me have a business and ROI impact. And if you can and get yourself to that place, you can charge the premium dollar because you are confident you are going to help your clients get the premium results. And that’s where VAs, regardless of our location, that’s where we are moving towards. And I think when you are looking to hire somebody, that’s the goal you should have as well, is there somebody who’s invested in my success because that’s how much they’re charging and they want to make sure I can continue to work with them, that’s what I would advise for anybody. Who’s either looking to hire a VA or social media manager or anybody who’s looking to get hired as well.
Rob: That’s such an important point. It is easier to compete at the top, if you are solving the problem that your clients have, as opposed to producing direct or more of the same, in the bottom tier of any market. And so I like that you point that out.
Esai: Thanks. Thanks, Rob. And I love that. And to that end, even the ideas that we talk about in my social content and even in the lead matter that I pride, I talk about how do we give instant value? How can people quickly get something out of this and see results and see value and understand that that’s going to be their experience throughout the relationship with me and my team.
Rob: Awesome. Okay. And I want to talk a little bit about your team and some of the things that you’re trying to do there, tell us about how you bring people onto your team, how you’re paying them, do you have to tell them what to do? How do they take on the roles and work within the business that you’re creating?
Esai: Okay. So, like I said, this was a long trial and error process for me, even with a lot of background in HR and actually training in how to hire and how to train employees. It was still a struggle for me hiring and bringing on employees that I exclusively have to manage. So one of the books I highly recommend of anybody looking to hire or set up a business is the E-Myth, and I will… You can link to that in the show notes, Rob, I think everybody who’s trying to start a business to read that book because it’s fantastic. Because it felt like he starts off with a story of how this burnt out business owner is trying to hire somebody to light up the load. And he could have been writing about me. That entire story could have been about me.
And so, the first thing that I did, I made all the mistakes, I dumped work on my first hire. I let them flounder and figure out what to do. I paid, I made them work six days a week while I paid them well, but they still did not get any feedback. Everything was last minute and urgent and difficult. There were no processes. And all of that was very painful. And I slowly learned from that. And even then, I hired the wrong person and then I had to let them go because they not the good fit. And out of all of those mistakes are these key lessons that I learned.
Number one, so now when I hire somebody, I start the process way ahead. I need to hire somebody up in the next three months. So I’m going to start looking now because my process right now is very long. I do interviews. I do test projects, and all of that. And even while I do that and I don’t have criteria around their qualification or the experience, as long as they’re able to do the job well and they take feedback. So there is a concept called assessment center. Anybody who’s interested can actually Google that and learn more about what it is, because all of my frameworks are built on the foundations. Assessment center is the foundation on which I built my processes.
So, I do paid projects. I do exact kind of projects that they’re going to implement in my business. I have them do that as a process during the interview process itself. And I see how well are they able to do the work? And then I give them feedback and I have them correct the work had send it back that’s to check how well they respond to feedback and how well they understand the feedback and implement the changes. That is one part.
The next most challenging part has been in training. And Maggie says that in small business, she has a small business podcast and I will send you the link to that as well where she talks about the realities of hiring and she puts it so beautifully. She talks about, even if you hire the most unicorn, the most talented, motivated, highly-driven employee, it’ll still take you three months to get them to a where you need them to be, that’s what I saw. My team right now is fantastic. They’re individually suitably talented. They’re very motivated and they’re always eager to learn and implement, but it still takes me three to four months to train them fully.
In terms of training, make it collaborative. It’s not about you telling them something. As a part of my training process, it’s them telling me what they’re going to be doing because people will forget what you tell them. They will always remember what they told you. So have them talk back. So we call them teach backs, we have that built into their training process, that’s number two. The third process is, how are they compensated? So I compensate very well. I pay them obviously in Indian currency, but they’re compensated really well. I pay much better than what they could earn anywhere else. And again, I can do that because I’m from India and the currency exchange works in my favor. But what I also do, because I understand that money is not the only thing that motivates employees. So they don’t have fixed working hours.
And I definitely do not track hours. Even for my employees, I do not track hours. There’s two hours in a day that everybody’s supposed to work so we can do any collaborative work and last minute meetings. But apart from those two hours, everybody’s free to work at their work at their own pace, that’s one. I don’t micromanage. I train them, I support them, I encourage them and then I have them implement things of their role. The second thing is right now, we’re at five-day work week, but I’m looking to both towards four-day work week. Because I want work-life balance for me. And I want that for my employees as well. And I know that only when I demonstrate the values that important to me that will become culture and that culture will affect my marketing in the way they deliver work in my company and for the clients, it’ll have that quality as well because they’re dressed and they’re happy to pay at work, happy to be doing what they’re doing. So little things like that.
We also have pay that’s tied in with performance so they can… Salary increases, not just increments, but for instance, we do social media. So if they are 100% consistent with the client social media, without missing a single deadline, they get completion bonus. And next year we are trying to implement a version of profit sharing where anytime a client gets results, they get a bonus. We’re not charging the client extra. They’re going to cut into profitability for that, which is why we’re naming it profit sharing, but it’s to make sure that they get a slice of the pie and they feel motivated to go for the result and that.
But ultimately what’s worked really well for me, Rob, that’s what I’m trying to implement more of the week as well, is my employees are not responsible for the action. They’re responsible for the results. And when I train them, empower them, support them. And there’s a concept called servant leader or servant manager. Again, you can Google that to understand what that means. It’s when my job is to make their job easier. That’s it. That’s all I do. Ultimately, they are the project owners. They’re the ones that I need to serve. So because they’re responsible for results. And once I’ve done that, they feel a lot more empowered and motivated and they feel a sense of ownership with what they do. And that has actually led to much better quality of work than trying to track hours and trying to micromanage and trying to make sure they are not trying to… Have a good mindset that my employees are trying to scam me. This is just so much better than that.
Rob: Yeah, I think there’s just so much good thinking that you’ve done on how to build a team and how to treat your employees. When we first met, Esai, I remember you saying that one of your goals was to help women grow their own businesses and to succeed in business. We only have a minute or two left, but would you mind just sharing what that goal looks like for you and how you plan on doing that in the coming years?
Esai: This actually coming year, Rob, we’re moving along of that. I do need to hire one or maybe two more people early next year. But after that, I’m setting up on a training in- Early next year. But after that, I’m setting up a training academy, where we are going to pay women salary to come and learn English, learn social media and learn marketing and all of that. We’re going to pay them to come and learn. And these are women who have gone through marital abuse, these are women who have gone through sexual abuse, and these are women who normally would not have the kind of lifestyle that we can help them provide. And my goal is, after the next two hires, anybody, everybody that I hire will be from the women that we are training. And the clients will also know that like Tom’s shoes, the way that they do that from their branding, my goal is to showcase these women and the kind of work of they do on our websites and on our social.
So, clients know that when they’re hiring us, they’re not just hiring a social media manager, but they’re completely changing the life of a woman who could not have imagined buying a house on her own, like ever. And they’re having that impact and they’re making that difference in somebody’s life. And that’s the impact by which I want to measure whether or not my business is successful. And my goal is to launch it by August next year. We’ve already started work on it, and this is going to be my most important impact that I have in the world, and I’m very, very excited.
Rob: Yeah. I love that goal and obviously, we’re hoping that we can contribute in some way and helping you make that happen. So I just again, I love it. And congratulations to you on setting your sights on making that happen. Okay. Aside, we’re at the end of our hour, if people want to connect with you, follow you on social media, wherever, where should they go?
Esai: So, I live on LinkedIn. That’s my favorite platform. It’s Esai. I will leave all the links here, because my name is hard to pronounce, which is why I go by my brand, which is Elysienne, which again, I realize it’s still hard to pronounce and spell for a lot of us, but it has a lot of meaning for me. Elysienne means paradise in French. And for me, the idea is that we work towards creating, making the world a better place than we found it. So that’s story behind the brand, but anywhere you can find me at elysienne.in, that’s what I am on Instagram. I hang out in Instagram a lot as well, so these are the two best places to reach me. But, the very talented Daniel Lamb is working on my website content, but that’s going to be a while. But once that is ready, it’ll be… it’s elysienne.in. Again, I’ll leave the LinkedIn. You can just come and subscribe to my emails there, but the website itself probably will take a little bit long.
Rob: Awesome. Thank you, Esai. We appreciate you taking the time to talk about your business and all of the amazing advice you’ve provided.
Esai: Thank you so much, Rob. You and Kira have been so instrumental in my success this year, and I’m really happy to be here. I did regret I didn’t get the chance to go a little bit deeper into that, but I’ll probably continue this conversation. My socials, when the episode does air, I would also love to talk about the impact Think Tank has had on this journey. So if you follow me, you can continue the story and can learn more about what’s happening over there. And I would love to talk to you there as well.
Kira: That’s the end of our interview with Esai Arasi. Before we head out, Jared, let’s cover the rest of this conversation. You know, what should we touch on that really stood out to you and something that you’ll possibly implement in your own business?
Jared: Absolutely. I think content, whether it’s on social or elsewhere, not being about likes and comments. I think we can get so cut up in those vanity metrics, but what she was talking about in terms of having content being used as a tool to have people prepared for a sales call. And I think that’s obviously an avenue that I could go down pretty deep on, but I’m pretty passionate about that. But also, just how important it is to kind of prime people for… And again, creating content that’s either attracting… And again, whether, even if it’s social media or not, but just this, whether it’s offline or on your website or PDFs or whatever it is, but just being able to create different types of content that are related to sales and not just kind of awareness. So, like content that will attract people or repel people from you and those things.
Kira: Yeah. And the highlighting the how-to content. I know Esai talks a lot about how-to, and how we should really avoid that as writers, if we want to use social media to attract premium clients. Because what you end up doing oftentimes, is attracting a bunch of writers, which isn’t a bad thing. If that’s your audience and you have offers for other writers, great, then create all the how-to content you would like. But if your goal is to book some premium clients that are operating in different spaces and at high levels in their business, and aren’t trying to figure out how to write a high converting email, they don’t want to think about it because they want to hire you to think about it. Those are the premium clients, and they’re oftentimes too busy and just have too many other priorities in their head to focus on how to write great subject lines.
So that content won’t resonate the same way that it would resonate if you talk about how you are different from other email strategists, and highlighting your process and your framework and setting yourself apart from everyone else in the space so that you’re showing, “I am not just a writer, I’m a thought leader, I’m a problem solver. If you work with me, I’m going to solve this problem for you and help you reach your goals.” So I think that switch is really important because again, we see a ton of writers we follow on social media who are creating how-to content and may struggle and wonder why they’re not attracting the right clients.
Jared: Yeah. Especially if they’re looking at wanting to work with, like you said, that premium service provider, and just as you were saying that with framework and your process and those other types of deliverables or pieces of content you could create, I just thought of that session when you had Todd Brown in, and he was talking about reverse engineering your offer, and really kind of unpacking it all the way back to really kind of find that separation and that was, that was a big, that was a big deal.
Kira: Yeah. And for you, do you show up on social media frequently? Or how do you… I mean, I’m not really on social media, so I don’t know how you show up on social media, but how do you approach your own business presence on social?
Jared: That’s a good question. I mean, you can try and find me, it’s like, Where’s Waldo?, if we’re going back to books from the beginning, trying to find Jared on social media. But yeah, I think it’s obviously important and I think I’ve been really social offline, by going to conferences and just enjoying people and hopping on calls regularly every week, offline. But there’s obviously, 1000%, a need to be on social media. And I like what Esai shared about needing two platforms, one for search and one for nurturing. And I think that was a cool way to spin it, whether it’s like a Google and/or YouTube, or, I mean, ideally both, but, having a nurturing platform as well. And yeah, to kind of let people see the more human side of you and get to know you. But, in terms of my own business, just largely, like I said, offline and kind of being un-google-able for a while and just keeping my head down, doing my thing with clients and really refining.
And I think it ties back to one thing that Esai was saying just about, basically wanting to be able to refine what you do, and not that I’ve needed to do that over the last few years, but just especially if you’re starting out, being able to really get clients and be able to apply what you’re learning and figure out what you like, what you don’t like, what your niche is. And I know you go deep into that in the accelerator and the think tank too, about really refining and your audience and the value there as well. And I just think that, I mean, that would be… That is pretty big just because I’m thinking of the book Company of One as well, which is one of my all time favorite books. I read it every year.
I’m reading it right now because it’s the new year, but just talking about kind of the best… or… not the best, but the companies of one just want to get better instead of bigger necessarily. And just always, one of the benefits of being, if you don’t have a team yet, or you are solo is that you can pivot and you can fail faster and you won’t have as many eyeballs on you. So I feel like it would be pretty anxiety inducing if you have thousands of followers and you’re just continuing… But there is value to kind of failing in public too, and kind of owning that and sharing those learnings as well. So I think it’s just, self-awareness, I think, coming back to what is going to work for you or “what may work for me may not work for you” and may not be in line with your personality and your brand and, and what you want to be doing, but…
Kira: Yeah, and also, you’ve been intentional about building your business offline and going to, I mean, how many events did you go to or attend in 2019?
Jared: Oh my gosh. Yeah. I think it was like 16 or 18, I think?
Kira: Right! So, you have been intentional about working your charm, and working the room, in person, to build-
Jared: Again, too kind, Kira, too kind.
Kira: … the Jared charm!
… to build your business, because that’s worked for you and you’ve had a really successful business. So I think the important part is, there’s not one way, like you said, and it’s just being really intentional about it. And it’s not like if you are off social media, you’re not working and focused on building your business and building relationships. You could be, of course it’s been more difficult over the last few years, and that’s where social media can really make up for the fact that we can’t, we haven’t been able to attend those events. But I think it’s important to just be clear that you have been doing that, you’ve just been doing it offline and that’s what’s worked best for you.
Jared: Yeah. And then, like you said, just being intentional and being strategic about it. I know there’s people just crushing it on LinkedIn right now, because they have a strategy. They’ve bought either a course or they’ve been testing different lengths of posts and commenting, and LinkedIn still is good for organic, and the rare, last, last platform standing for that. So yeah, like you said, I think it’s just, it varies. And I just was… the people… the strategy I had for conferences was never actually even just to sell or to get clients. And it actually kind of weirded out people up here. I remember talking to my mom and talking to just my friends up here. They’re like, “Oh, you’re, you’re going to this conference. You’re going to a conference again. You know, are you going… Do you get clients from this conference?”
I’m like, “Nah, I may not.” And they’re like, “Well then why are you going?” I’m like, “Well, to meet people.” And they’re like, “But that’s a lot of money just to meet people.” And I’m like, “Yeah, but I’ll be seen, you’ll be able to see right through me if I’m the person that’s wanting to give you my ‘business card’ without even hearing your last name yet.” But, yeah. And just kind of wanting to meet speakers, that was kind of my big thing, looking at the agenda ahead of time, going deep on who’s speaking, learning what I can about them and then kind of going up to them after their talk and connecting that way. And I know they would never find me on social media in that case. So just being able to kind of have a direct line to them and by popping up sometimes at the same conferences, they see you multiple times, sometimes in different parts of the world.
So, once there was in Scotland and then two weeks later it was in Chicago and person’s like, “Okay, who are…? Who are you? Like, okay, so you seem to be doing okay if I can see you in multiple parts of the world.” So not to say, I was like… I mean, I’m big on a debt free business, And I know Prerna and Mayank are amazing at talking about them, or talking about that at, but, yeah, I just… Obviously I wasn’t just going into the red, just to go on a conference binge, but I think that was just a little bit of extra context, so.
Kira: Yeah. Well, it sends a message. If you’re showing up to a conference, especially if people see you at multiple conferences. It shows that you are taking your craft seriously, you’re investing in relationships, you’re investing in your space, you’re aware of industry trends. All of that feeds into it nicely. And just to go back to what Esai was saying about optimizing your LinkedIn profile too, even if you’re not focused heavily on social and your business, just having that optimized profile is so important to have that home base. And she shared that example about how she was talking to a client and they couldn’t find her website. I don’t think she had a website at the time. And so, you know, how important that is. And I know I’ve shared referrals with copywriters many times and either they don’t have a website or they have the LinkedIn profile, but it hasn’t really been optimized.
So, it doesn’t work for them. It ends up possibly even working against them. And they could be the most talented copywriter, content writer, and they could be professional and all of the things, deliver on time. But if they don’t have that home base, and have that social proof, and have all of that dialed in, they could lose the opportunity to work with some great clients. So, that stuck with me. Just get those pieces, like if you don’t have the website up, okay, but then make sure your LinkedIn profile is dialed in. So you can send people there until you get the website up.
Jared: Absolutely. Yeah, yeah. Just missing out on opportunities you may not even know you have, or could have had, just from not having the right materials or the right content. Absolutely.
Kira: So Esai and Rob talked about really giving the ROI to clients, and how that can really help you land more premium clients. At that level, that’s critical to what we do. So how do you think about that in your own business, as far as that ROI and speaking to it, when you land clients, when you’re on sales calls, how do you approach that?
Jared: Yeah. ROI is such a juicy, juicy topic just because it’s so essential. And I think of our friends that are in the course launch space and can really, I don’t want to say easily, but probably more easily than certain strategy projects be able to be tied directly to revenue. And it be measurable in that sense. And I know Esai mentioned something like that on when she was speaking just about the goal of the return being 10 times what they paid you. So if they pay you 2,500 for something, the result you’ll result in 25K in additional revenue.
And I think there’s another guy I like to follow a lot, he’s Canadian, but kind of moved to the states. And his niche is taking service-based businesses or online entrepreneurs from six figures to seven, its Scott Oldford and he talked about that a little bit. Just about, if you can’t do that, then it’d be pretty bold to just say, if you can’t get 10 times what they’re paying you, you shouldn’t be in business, but that’s a little, that’s a little extreme. But I think it’s such a juicy topic, because I think it’s important to definitely want to desire that. And I think it can move mountains for you with clients for prioritization of projects.
So, I know for me, I work with clients over a long term, and we have so many ideas and projects in the parking lot, or backlog, or whatever you want to call it. And it’s nice because it kind of puts on them the prioritization. And then it’s amazing how you can kind of earn a bit of, I don’t want to say leash or a little bit of leeway because they will acknowledge that if “Okay, we need to do something more strategy oriented or something that doesn’t have a deliberate outcome in terms of dollars and cents that’s reflected that way,” in terms of like customer research or like a journey mapping workshop or something like that. And, they’ll be more open to that and they’ll be okay with that. But I think, yeah, I think ROI is just such a… It’s obviously so important, and I think there’s… kind of tying back to what we were saying before about knowing your audience and knowing who you’re working with, and getting to know your clients as people, not just as companies, and being able to deliver kind of that, I don’t want to say the word premium, but just an experience that obviously does what you want to do in terms of your deliverables and fulfilling your scope of work and those things, but when is to kind of go beyond that. And especially if you’re working with a bigger company that has multiple people that you’ll be talking to throughout the course of your project, I think it is important to get to know those people, where they’re from and what they like and what they don’t like, just personally, what their kids’ names are.
And I think that’s really where Kira, when we were mentioning earlier about kind of fun, I think that’s more fun, is when the clients you work with, if they text you or you text them, they respect your boundaries. They don’t like… Like, rates are obviously one thing. And then obviously the flip side of that ROI being for clients in terms of what they’re getting out of the deal. But I think just the intangibles or the personal side is, I think, really where comfort and lack of stress and yeah, just enjoyment comes from.
Kira: Yeah. Now is probably a good time to mention your interview on The Copywriter Club podcast, episode 242, where we talked with you about many different things, but we highlighted the 28 month client and that the majority of your clients have worked with you for 28 months on average. And, when you think about that, how much an ROI how much value you’re providing over that extended period of time, that will continue well beyond the 28 months. Like, that’s when you can really feel that boost of confidence too, when you jump on the next sales call, because you know what you were able to do over those 28 months. So, if anyone listening wants to check that out, we’ll link to episode 242 in the show notes. And then just kind of going back to the ROI, though. I think the cool part you mentioned is the 10x-ing, the value you’re providing.
So, it’s always there and approaching every project. It sounds like that’s what you were saying, approaching the project, really thinking about it seriously and thinking about: “How am I going to deliver the ROI on this one project, or on this retainer over the next year?” And I, I mean, if that sounds stressful to anyone as you’re listening, you’re like, “Ah, how do I do that? How do I get to 10x?” You’re probably already doing it. I feel like most of us are already doing it. We’re just not great at tracking it, and speaking to it, and pulling in the data and the numbers to say, “Here’s the value I typically provide,” because it extends far beyond the project or even again like, the 28 months. The value can really show up over the next five to 10 years, depending on the type of work you’re doing.
And so, most of us are already doing this. We are 10x-ing, we just aren’t aware of it. We haven’t had that data to collect from the clients two months later, two years later. So it’s harder to speak to it when we haven’t asked those hard questions, because oftentimes it’s uncomfortable questions that probably for you, Jared, it’s less uncomfortable because you do this frequently. But for many copywriters, it’s hard to ask about the results from a project and even like, “Hey, have you used that copy in another launch? Have you used that copy anywhere else?” You know, “How is that helping you?” And so I guess I just want to add that note that we’re probably doing it, so we don’t have to stress over we’re doing it. We can keep it top of mind, but let’s just speak to it more and be clear about what we’re doing.
Jared: Absolutely. Well, and don’t stress as well if you’re not. I’m not going to sit here and say that every one of my clients over the however many years it’s been has gotten 10x return on every dollar that they’ve paid me. So even if you look at Facebook ads, or obviously talking about return on ad spend is such a… ROAS is such a huge term to talk about, but even a three times return, four times return is still a no-brainer for people to invest. So, as you’re listening, don’t again, I’m not going to say that every one of my clients has been a 10x return.
I think, tying back to what you were saying too, Kira, earlier, just about the value of being an expert and that you’ve done it before, and they want to hire someone who is just going to take it off their plate. That is, even if it doesn’t result in… I mean, obviously, ideally you want to 10x your return on what they’re paying you, but even if you’re just solving that pain for them and taking it off their hands and doing it competently and doing it well, doing it on time and all these other intangibles, can still go a massively long way.
Kira: Right. Other benefits. Taking stress away from that person because they know you’re handling it and they’re not handling it so they can sleep better at night. I mean, that’s a huge benefit… Like, sleep. I mean, sleep matters! So, there’s so many other benefits there that we can talk about. But as we wrap, I guess one last note I will mention is that I really loved Esai’s mission to help other women, and help them learn how to speak English, and then learn social media so that she can help them build their own businesses or possibly train them to work within her agency, and having that “why” behind our businesses is so important. And so I just, I love that this is part of her mission really. That seemed really cool too.
Jared: 100%. Yeah. Just saying that she wants to feature the people so clients can get to know who they’re hiring. And, I mean, it’s also a bold, and I like bold projects or missions too, because wanting to create her own hiring feeding system so she can scale that way, but kind of doing good and making change in the world as well. I think it’s, yeah, very, very interesting and exciting to follow along as she builds it.
This has been The Copywriter Club podcast with Kira Hug and Esai Asari and… Go to TCC IRL. Do it, just do it. If you’ve been debating, go get your ticket now. Go. Nashville’s great, awesome city. But, the people you’ll meet, the relationships will last a lifetime. So as we were talking about clients and longevity in terms of value, the conference will pay it for itself over and over again, maybe not in the client sense, but maybe in the client sense… But then just the people that you’ll be able to lean on in the future and just really, bright, intelligent, really cool people to be around. Go to the event. That’s all I can say.
Kira: And if you enjoyed this episode, be sure to check out Jared’s episode. Again, we shared that episode is 242, or you can check out episode 54 going way back about building quiz funnels with Chanti Zak, or you could check out… And/or you could check out episode 106 about using psychology in your copy with Kirsty Fanton. And, the intro music was composed by copywriter and songwriter Addison Rice. The outro was composed by copywriter and songwriter, David Muntner, a big thank you to you, Jared, for co-hosting. This was really fun. And also, I always learn a lot. I learn a ton. Whenever I interview you, speak to you on private phone calls, I always just take away a lot from what you have to share and what you’ve done in your business. So thanks for jumping in here. I really appreciate it. And if anyone listening wants to connect with you, where can they go?
Jared: Yeah, you can just go to my website. So, mrjaredmac.com M-R-J-A-R-E-D-M-A-C dot com, or to shoot me an email hello@mrjaredmac.com, happy to chat, lots of content and helpful resources, kind of coming down the pipe to help you work with better clients. And, just to follow up what you were saying, Kira, feeling’s mutual, love chatting with you. This has been so much fun. Thank you for having me on again and yeah, just really exciting to see what this year holds for you and Rob. Cause you’ve already been off to such an awesome start.
Kira: All right. Thanks, Jared. And thanks for listening. We’ll see you next week.
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