#058 Bob Bly: A Candid Talk With a Legendary Copywriter

Welcome to the High Income Business Writing Podcast, helping you propel your writing business to a whole new level. And now, here's your host, Ed Gandia. Hey everyone. Thank you for joining me for episode 58 of the High Income Business Writing Podcast. My name is Ed Gandia and this is the podcast for business writers and copywriters who want to take their writing businesses to the six figure level or the part time equivalent. As a quick reminder, you can find detailed show notes to this episode by going to b2b launcher.com episode 58. You know, one of the many blessings of doing a show like this is the many emails and comments I get from listeners every week about the impact this podcast is having on their freelance business and on their personal lives. When I launched a show in April 2013, I honestly had no idea the impact that it would have and the outpouring of appreciation that's come from it. It really does humble me and it keeps me going week after week. But you know, I owe a lot of that to two sets of people. The first set of people is the amazing guests that come on the show every other week to share their experiences, share their advice and their stories. The other group is the many mentors I've had, either direct or virtual mentors who have led the way and inspired me over the years to get better at my craft and to build a better business. I really do stand on their shoulders. These the great men and women who have led the way. And Bob Bly is one of the first mentors who comes to mind, which is why it's such a great honor to have him here on the show. For those of you who don't know Bob, Bob is a freelance copywriter and marketing consultant with three decades of experience in business to business and direct response marketing. He has written copy for over 100 clients. He has been voted one of the 50 most influential people in sales and Lead management by the Sales and Lead Management association, and he has won more awards than I can even name here. Bob is also one of the most prolific writers I've ever met. He is authored more than 80 books, most of them traditionally published, and as you'll hear in a few minutes, he truly loves to write. This is a man who does what he does because he's genuinely has a passion. He genuinely has a passion for this craft and that love and passion not only show up in his writing, but is also showing up in the amazing financial success he's enjoyed over the three decades that he's been doing this. In this interview, I Asked Bob More than 6, 812 questions. I don't know. We asked a lot of questions in this interview that you guys suggested I ask. I posted a request for questions on Facebook a few weeks back and you guys responded with tons of great ideas. So I asked as much of them as I could. We're going to talk about what a typical day looks like for Bob, what types of work he likes best, his thoughts on social media, how to get lead generation copywriting work in B2B, how to get your income to the $200,000 level and beyond. And even where his income comes from these days we even get very personal at the end of the interview with a question and an answer that really surprised me. So make sure to stick around till the end. So with that, let's get right to the interview. Hey, Bob, welcome to the show. It's really an honor to have you here.

Oh, it's a pleasure, Ed, as always.

Super. So, you know, you probably noticed that I posted on Facebook to letting people know, hey, listen, I'm interviewing Bob Lai. What would you love to ask him if he had the opportunity? And I thought, you know, I mean, I knew I would get a good response. But we got a great response. So the questions I'll ask you today are coming straight from my listeners. And I adapted, edited some of them, but these are really good questions and they're in no particular order, but tell me a little bit about the types of clients and projects that occupy most of your time today. Let's start there.

It's a real mix. I gave a weekend seminar in Baltimore which ended Sunday night, which was yesterday, and someone asked me, are you specialized in copywriting? And I told them when I started, I was, I think, you know this. When I started, all I did is write for industrial marketing. I write industrial marketing. I wrote for manufacturing companies that had chemical equipment and oil refinery towers and things like that, and heat exchangers. Now I'm much more diverse and most of what I do today falls into three or four areas. I do a lot of financial copy, I do a lot of health copy, which includes nutritional supplements, but also weight loss programs, fitness programs, exercise, nutrition. So it's financial, it's health. Then I do a lot in what I would call business opportunity, money making opportunities. And I have also do my traditional B2B and I still have industrial companies. One client I just did a mailing campaign for, they make gears. You know, you can't get more mundane than that. Although to me it's very interesting. So that's the kind of thing I do. And it's very diverse. I mean, just this week I'm looking at my to do list on the wall and you know, one of the items on the list is I'm doing a promotion, a financial promotion for one of Forbes magazine's financial newsletters. I'm also doing a, an ad, perhaps a little embarrassingly, for an erectile dysfunction clinic.

Hey, it's gotta be sold.

And I told the client, I said, you know, I know personally nothing about this, but I'll help you as best I can.

I have no idea either, but yes.

I mean, not us.

So in terms of. Because you have B2B there and then three kind of consumer direct response areas, what would the mix be these days, would you say, between those two?

Almost quarter, quarter, quarter, quarter. I'm looking at my list. You know, like you, I work on a lot of projects at once and you know, it's probably a fourth of them are financial. Roughly a quarter fourth financial, fourth health, fourth bizarre, fourth business to business. But if I was to analyze it more carefully, I'm probably a little more weighted these days in health. I do have a lot of clients that hire me to write video sales letters and long copy sales letters on the web. Also direct mail to sell dietary supplements and also health education things, Health newsletters, books, videos, that kind of thing.

Interesting. Interesting. I would have never guessed that. Okay, so you obviously thrive in variety.

I do.

I can tell that you, you love what you do. Tell me a little bit about a typical day for you. Can you walk me through a day from morning until evening?

Yeah. My day is real simple. And by the way, people ask that all the time. I basically work 12 hours a day, five days a week, Monday through Friday from 6:30 in the morning to 6:30 at night. I, I recently read Craig Ballantyne's schedule at ETR and Mark Ford's at the Palm Beach Letter, and they have all these things. They spend an hour journaling, Mark spends an hour doing Brazilian jiu jitsu. I just work. My leisure comes after work. So I get up in the morning, go right to the office, work all of the morning and a good part of the early afternoon on copy. That's what I consider my core work and the heavy lifting of my writing career.

And by the way, this is an office outside of your home, correct?

Oh, no, no, it used to be. It used to be I had an office outside of my home for 22 years. Five years ago my wife was diagnosed with cancer. And because of that I felt. And she, she actually was misdiagnosed and she was told she had months to live and which would turn out to be wrong. But when that happened, I immediately closed my office and moved the office into my home to take care of her again. It turned out to be a false alarm, but I had already moved. I wasn't going to move again. So now I'm working at home. It has its pros and cons. I was probably a little happier having an outside office, but I have no complaints working at home. And I had done it decades before earlier too, so I've done both. So I, you know, immediately from the, from the upstairs bedroom to the middle floor office, it's a 30 second commute. I turn on the computer at 6:30, I start typing all of the morning and good part of the early to mid afternoon is for spent copywriting which I consider the hard work and heavy lifting. Then as I tire sort of mid afternoon, I'll spend an hour maybe on my Internet business. I don't do it every day, but maybe an hour, an hour and a half depends on what projects are going on. On an ordinary week I may have to do nothing. But like this week I had two writers hand in ebooks I commissioned from them. I got to read them and edit them and that takes time. I don't spend time writing them but I have to read them and I have to edit them. So there's time. You're in the information marketing business too. So you know, we try to make it all passive income but there is work that has to be done.

Absolutely.

And for each of these two products I need landing pages sales letters and I write my own sales letters for my online business so I have to do those as well. So then I spend an hour or two doing the Internet marketing business and then toward the end of the day I usually will work on either miscellaneous stuff. I don't do a lot of consulting, but I always have a couple of clients that have engaged me for some consulting. I do some of their work. I will spend an hour or two on one of my current books, although I keep saying I'm not going to do it anymore. I still write books for traditional New York publishing companies and I actually maybe stupidly have four different publishers, five books under contract right now. So I have books to write and then you know, I have my column in Target marketing, have my E newsletter so that, and that's how I close up. That's how I close out the day.

You know, for most people listening, I think they would, they just probably can't fathom getting all that done in a day. How do you avoid distractions in all the leaks?

It's easy. People always say that, but I don't have a lot of attributes. You don't know me that well, but I could tell you you have to. I'm not all that smart, and I don't have a lot of stuff I'm good at. But one thing I'm good at is focus. I read writers who are writing in Writer's Digest magazine, and they say, oh, it's so great to be a freelance writer. If I feel like it, I'll take off in the middle of the day to go to the shopping mall. Are you kidding me? I never, ever do that. I know lots of writers who do that. They go to a barbecue, they play baseball in the afternoon. When I'm working, I work. One of my idols in writing, not my writing hero, which is Isaac Asimov, but one of them is Georgia Simonone. I don't know if you know him. He wrote the Inspector Magrette novels, and he was the most prolific novelist of all time. He published 540 books. And they said, how did you get so much done? He said, you know, it's seat of the pants operation. I put my, you know, my pants in the seat, and I don't get up. And I do that, too. I don't do anything else. And the other thing, which you know, that I do, I outsource everything in my life, business and personal, just about, except writing copy and doing my books and doing my work. I haven't been to. And I'm probably. I bet it's the same with you. I haven't been to the post office in 17 years. I have never mowed the lawn at this house or the other house we lived in. That's over 20 years. I outsource. I don't. I hate wasting time. And as a result, I don't do it. I also don't mindlessly gab like so many people do on Facebook and LinkedIn all the time. You know, you can. You can choose to have fun, you know. Ben settle, right?

Oh, yeah.

So Ben just said he actually was on Facebook. I think I was looking up. I was trying to find your questions, and I. He had a post and he says, I just wrote my novel. And people said, how did you do it? He did like a month or something. He wrote his second novel. He said, because I'm not posting on Facebook or sitting in Starbucks staring at the space. I'm at the desk writing. And that's what I do.

Yeah, you just get it done and you maintain that focus. Plus, you love what you do, right?

Well, if you don't love what you do, then that's very hard to work all the time. But since you and I and Ben and a lot of people listening love it, we're hugely advantaged in the world. But it's not luck. We deliberately pursued something that we want to do. And part of that was my dad, who I was so close with. He died many years ago, young age. But he had a job, he took care of his family and he was an insurance agent. He hated insurance. And I knew he went to a job he hated every day for us. And I said, I admire him, but I never want to be him. The nightmare of my life is to work 8, 9, 12, whatever. He didn't work 12 hours a day like I. He worked 7 or 8 hours a day. But to work 9 to 5 or whatever at a job you don't enjoy.

Yeah, it really. Things do become a lot easier when you look forward to it. People tell me all the time, you know what, seriously, you're happy on Sundays? I really am. I can't wait to get to it the next morning, you know.

Oh, absolutely. And you know, I say, how do you start so early? You know, I'm at the desk by 6:30 every day. Some people do earlier and I say, it's not like I force myself. I pop out of bed when I was a corporate employee and I had to be at work at 9 and the alarm ran rang at 8 because I live very close to the office. It was torture.

Yeah. Let's switch gears a little bit because I want to talk about something that you, I. You're passionate about a lot of things, but something I know you're very passionate about and have a strong opinion on is social media. And, you know, the ROI of social media and people's confusion about what really is and what it's not. So I'd like to first get your thoughts on social media in general and then get your thoughts on what you think are the real opportunities, if any, for writers there.

Okay, Those are two separate questions. Let me do the first one on a broad view. I think social media is fairly worthless. I wrote something about this recently and I quoted a Gallup poll, which is a very reliable poll of business buyers. And they said 62 or 65% of business buyers say social media doesn't influence their purchasing. And someone criticized me says, you're stupid. That means that 35% say it does. I'm not saying it doesn't work, but social media evangelists said, you know, this claim, it is the, you know, is the greatest thing since sliced bread. You know, it's the second coming and it's the money. They say, you know, everything else is obsolete. And you know, now this is how marketing is done. Especially the millennials believe that it's not the over. The surveys show multiple surveys. Gallup Pastora did a huge survey of consumer buyers. I think it was 18 million e commerce buyers on 78 consumer websites. And they found that Facebook generated of the new sales that were made, 0.17%. So it's not that it can't work, but to say that it's the tops or the be all for most buyers, it doesn't work, it's not an influence. Now having said that buyers, it doesn't work, it's not an influence. Now having said that, I do is LinkedIn not Facebook. I almost made a deadly mistake. Is LinkedIn and I have developed and other people have developed methodologies which we teach on how to use LinkedIn to generate leads that turn into clients and projects and assignments using LinkedIn. I have a service I offer with a partner which we just launched called LinkedIn Marketing Magic. And I won't go into it unless you want me to. And we sell it, but I can tell people how to do it manually. The service we do is very fast and you get your big numbers, you can do it manually and get your results much more slowly. You can do that for free. And I'll tell anyone how to do that.

Yeah, definitely tell us about it because I want to include a link in the show notes to it.

Well, we actually don't. We just started it. So right now if you wanted to have people reference it, best thing is they email or call me. I'll put them in touch with my partner who's actually doing the work and I can get more into this if you want the basic method that works. I never believed in social media, so I tested it and here's the basic theory. Most people have a long work history, obviously not everyone in which they had a lot of people in their lives that they've lost touch with, which is what LinkedIn is all about. If you can search on LinkedIn for those people like I used to work for Nortel Networks years ago. They were a client and there was a guy named Mark Anderson. I haven't thought of him or heard of him until just now, but I'm talking to you. I realized I could go on LinkedIn and search for him and connect with him. If you go on LinkedIn and reconnect with five people from your work history, the best ones are either past clients or people who were employees of your past clients or your vendors or your customers. And you reconnect. Here's what you'll find if you do with five of them, two of them won't even respond. They're not interested. One or two will say hi and be friendly and. But otherwise be kind of cool, you know, not, you know, very lukewarm. But one of the five is going to say, oh, what are you doing? And when you tell them, they're going to say, oh, you know what? I'm now Mark, Mark Anderson will say to me, I'm not with Nortel anymore. I'm now with Verizon. And you know what, we have some needs. Can you pick up the phone and call me or Skype me? So that works manually. We have a service called LinkedIn Marketing Magic that we just launched and I'm doing it with a guy named Peter Boyle. And he developed it, not as a marketing tool. His main business is an executive recruiter in the technology industry. So he developed a way with software where he automates using LinkedIn to find job candidates. Basically goes to the top executives in his client company and he mines all their first and second level LinkedIn contacts. And his software automatically. Cool, you know, not, you know, very lukewarm. But one of the five is going to say, oh, what are you doing? And when you tell them, they're going to say, oh, you know what? I'm now Mark Anderson will say to me, I'm not with Nortel anymore. I'm now with Verizon. And you know what? We have some farms them and does two things. It produces a lead list, a prospecting list with all their names in a spreadsheet, their information, lots of detail, and it also automatically pings them without him having to do it manually and basically says, let's reconnect. And it's amazingly successful. Then he started to use it to market his recruiting business with great results. And we said, we're going to offer this to anybody who sells a professional service. Wow.

I like the concept because it takes away something that a lot of people find tedious or they're not really thorough with and. Right. It just kind of narrows it down for you.

It's yes, you can do it manually and get the same result slowly, but this automates it.

Yeah. Oh, I like, I like that. Brilliant. And people are there. I think for the right reasons. Right. They're already thinking business as opposed to some of the other networks. So you're seeing that the biggest opportunity for writers in terms of business development is just to go to LinkedIn and leverage your network.

Totally correct. I see very little value in most of the other social networks for various different reasons.

So tell me a little bit about Facebook because I've been seeing you a lot on Facebook recently.

Well, I don't really do too much on Facebook for a while. I said, let me just do it because I should see what it's all about. But I've really discovered that Facebook isn't social marketing, it's social networking. It doesn't get a business result. Yes. Someone listening to this will tell me. Bob. Well, I know I self published my book and I went on Facebook and I sold 20,000 copies. There's exceptions to everything. I'm saying the exception doesn't mean the rule isn't generally correct and most people don't get great results on Facebook. Now I do use Facebook, but not for my freelance copywriting business. And I don't know if you use Facebook for your info marketing business, Ed, but we've started using it here with okay results. I wouldn't say I would give it five stars, but we use Facebook ads. That's what works. Facebook boosted posts and also more than that, ads. Facebook advertising works. It's a little tricky to make it work, but it can work. And I know other marketers, some of whom are my clients, that have much better Facebook ad results than I do. So definitely for some audiences and some offers and products, Facebook advertising is very effective. But that to me is not social networking. That's online advertising.

Yeah, you're right. There's a big difference. And that's where the real profits are being made in my opinion. What I've been seeing. And I'm the same way. I haven't started advertising there. I'm looking to do that in the next 60 days. Most of what I've been using it for, for my information products business has been really just to connect with people and start conversations and get people to know me.

I see you doing that. And anybody who's interested in advertising on Facebook, I'm not the expert. Perry Marshall, who's the world's expert in pay per click ads for AdWords, also has a Facebook advertising book and it's very good.

Tell me a little bit about that second question about the opportunities for writers in social media. Do you think there's an opportunity for people who are interested in that.

Just the one we said, using LinkedIn, whether you're a content writer, an editorial writer, meaning a journalist or a copywriter, it's a good way to get clients. Beyond that, no, I don't see any opportunity clients. Beyond that, no, I don't see any opportunity.

And specifically, I met more in terms of actually writing content that would go on social media Specifically, I met more in terms of actually writing content that would go on social media a lot. And I'm not really sure what the opportunities are.

Here's what I think in terms of writing. No.

Or managing a client's social media account, because I get asked that a lot and I'm not really sure what the opportunities are.

Here's what I think in terms of writing. No. Almost no one. And again, of course, yes, someone will say, oh, there's an exception. Almost no one. And again, of course, yes, someone will say, oh, there's an exception. Look at Brian Clark, copy blogger. Look at his money. He made it his an empire. Yeah. Look at Brian Clark, copy blogger. Look at his money. He made it his an empire. Yeah, but he's 1 out of 3 million. 99.9% of the people who write, let's say a blog make zero. He's 1 out of 3 million, 99.9% of the people who write, let's say a blog make zero or close to zero money and it's an enormous waste of time. No. Or close to zero money and it's an enormous waste of time. I believe. I can't prove this statistically, but I think I'm right. I believe that 99% of people who self publish a Kindle ebook sell less than 100 copies. There's no money being made. If you're serious about making money as a writer, social media is not where you would do it. And I do think I read an interesting article that worries me a little. I do think the whole profession of content writing is at risk. Copywriting? No, but content writing, yes. Especially people who do articles, because. Did you know? I didn't know this, but apparently there are half a dozen writing bots, software programs that do thousands of articles for Wikipedia. And the people reading these articles cannot tell that they're written by a robot. So I actually did post an item on my blog. If you go to Bly.com and click on the blog, the headline is, are writers going to be replaced by robots? Question mark. And my first paragraph is, it appears that in fact, they can be. And so if your job can be done by A piece of software. Your value in the marketplace is very marginal or vanishing. But Ed, you correct me if you disagree, but I think you'll agree no software can do what you and I do. When we write copy for clients, they can't even come close.

No, they can't. I think there's. With content, we've been seeing that for a long time. Right. So we've been seeing the overseas writers trying to capture the bottom of the market, the bargain basement. I think it's definitely.

You said bottom of the market. I call in lectures, I call elance the cesspool of freelance writing.

Even more colorful. So you're right, we've been seeing that. And the trend is definitely going in this direction. I think there's always going to be a segment of the market where you have to come in at a more strategic level. And maybe software can get there to a certain point, but there's a point where I'm not really so sure. I think there'll always be clients, and this is just my opinion, Bob, but there'll always be clients who really want to work with that writer who's got the 20 years experience in that industry and who can kind of look at the whole strategic level. And maybe software can get there to a certain point, but there's a puncture and come up with a. And build a business case, specifically something like a white paper, for instance. That's going to be hard, very difficult for software to do.

Software cannot do what either a competent, good, very good copywriter, a great copywriter like you, or even many other copywriters who are just okay. It can't come close to duplicating what you guys can do. It can come. It can't also come close to what you said to writing thoughtful content. All it can write is basically. See, here's the difference. The cheap writers you get on Elance from overseas and these bots, they don't. They only write information. What's valued in content. Writing is when you write, when you write advice or strategy or wisdom or knowledge.

Yeah, exactly.

Analysis. That's the word I was looking for. Analysis. Knowledge. That's what gets you paid higher. And software can't do it. Software can write an article about five steps to growing potatoes. There's no news or wisdom or analysis, but it can't write an article. Should the Koch brothers be vilified or worshiped? And I actually just wrote my E newsletter today on the Koch brothers. Not because I'm political, but because I worked for David. I was his advertising manager and I wrote about one of his advertising, his marketing things that he taught me.

So, yeah, I think the difference is, look, anything that's a left brain activity, very straightforward, a numbered list type article that's in danger, anything that requires more right brain thinking and analysis, totally correct. Yeah, that does make sense. And really, if you pay attention, everything's moving in that direction. Right. All these things that can be commoditized will be commoditized at an accelerating pace. So let's shift gears a little bit. Rachel had a question. I think this is a question that a lot of successful writers have today. How can a solid copywriter or commercial writer get to the $200,000 to $300,000 level consistently today? Is that still possible? And if so, how can you get there?

Yes. Now, if you want to get to the 500,000 a year and higher level, which is toward the top, which some of us are, you have to do a mix of B2B and B2C copy and have some business B2C clients who pay you royalties. Mm. Because. But if you just are a straight fee copywriter, and usually B2B copywriters are straight fee. All my B2B work is straight fee. I don't care. I almost never get royalties on B2B and do get it on consumer copy, you could still get to a 200. You can get to a 200 to $300,000 level. Being a flat fee copywriter, you don't have to work 60 hours a week like I do, but you have to work. You have to work hard. You have to work fairly vigilant and diligent hours. You have to work for better paying clients, and you have to be good. Now, to get that many clients, you have to do marketing, which you know, I teach and Awai teaches. And the simple rule is most mistake most copywriters make. The reason they don't make that kind of money that Rachel wants is they're not busy enough. They don't have enough projects and assignments. The other reason is they don't charge enough money for those projects and assignments, which goes hand in hand with that. But to get enough clients and projects, what most people copywriters do is marketing. You know it, you've done it, I've done it. And the mistake they make is they figure out how much marketing they have to do to get enough business and they do it. I say that's a mistake. I tell every copywriter, do figure out the exact amount of marketing in terms of your time and money invested. You need to get the number of clients you want and then double it so that your lead, your pipeline. You know that word? So that your lead pipeline has twice the leads that you can handle. And people say, bob, that's stupid. You're spending money to generate leads. You're only going to be able to service half of them, so you're throwing them away. No, no. I say you market to have a choice. When you only have as many opportunities for projects in front of you as you can handle, you sort of have to take everyone and you have no leverage. But. And you're in this position now, Ed, and I am too. You know, when somebody says, well, that's a high price, Ed, or bob, you know, I'd rather pay this. And you have people lined up around the block with their checkbook in their hand waiting to hire you. You say, sorry, no, this is my price. If you want it cheaper, call someone else. So you need to market not to be able to get business, but to have a choice. The most successful writers and copywriters, especially copywriters regularly, are turning people away. We had a guy today was a local. I don't normally don't get leads from people near where I live, but he was very close by. Small company. Not ideally, not an ideal prospect for me because a little too small. But I felt I could help him. And we gave him the quote and he didn't respond. So, Elise, you know who manages who's my rep said to him, no pressure, but, you know, if you don't let us know today, it's gone. He has three other people who want to buy the next three weeks. And believe me, if this guy makes up his mind on Wednesday, we're talking on a Monday, he's going to get a very unpleasant surprise in that we weren't kidding. And now I'm going to be booked up for two months.

Wow. But, you know, let me go back to what you just said about doubling your effort. I got to tell you, Bob, I. You. I heard that from you about 10 years ago. I was listening to one of your CDs on marketing. And that has been the most important thing you've ever taught me. It just so it's. It's kind of interesting you brought it up today because you still believe it, because it's true. I remember it was so impactful. I still remember where I was driving when I heard it. It was in my car. And that changed my business. I realized, you know, I've been doing the bare minimum. I've been doing what I think needs to happen. And when I heard that everything changed for me, I realized I needed to do more.

Can you. So let me interview you for a second. Can you explain to our listeners right now why do you do twice as much as you have to do?

Well, because I think we're always too optimistic. I think we assume that things are just going to work themselves out, that if you do so much that the business is just going to come to you. And I think most of us, and I'm a very optimistic person, but I think all of us have that natural optimism and we believe that it's just going to happen just by doing X. And most of the time it's 2x. You're going to need 2x to get to what you want, work themselves out. That if you do so much that the business is just going to come to you. And I think we, most of us. I'm a very optimistic person, but I think all of us have that natural optimism and we believe that it's just going to happen just by doing X. And most of the time it's 2x. You're going to need 2x to get to what you want.

Yeah, if we have the time. Let me give you the most common cry for help I get from freelancers. I get an email or phone call saying, bob, help. I'm talking to a potential client and I quoted a fee and they're not getting back to me. And I don't know whether to charge less or to lower my fee or to offer something different. And I say to them, let me ask you why you're so worried about this. I'm going to make a guess. Let's say the guy's name is Fred. Fred. I bet this is the only potential job you have that you're quoting on right now. And they always say yes. I said, here's the answer. If you had, you have room maybe to do two jobs this month. He had seven other leads like this. You wouldn't give a crap. Sorry for the language. I hope I didn't ruin your recording. Yeah, but I said you wouldn't care. You need to do enough marketing so you could say to this person, you know what? This isn't for you. Thank you. I got. I'm gonna take the next person in line. Let me. If we have the time, let me give you the most common cry for help I get from freelancers. I get an email or phone call saying, bob's help. I'm talking to a potential client and I quoted a fee and they're not getting back to me, I don't know whether to charge less or to lower my fee or to offer something different. And I say to them, let me ask you why you're so worried about this. I'm going to admit most freelancers can never do that and that's why they struggle.

Well, let me add something.

Let's say the guy's name is Fred. Fred. I bet this is the only potential job you have into this.

Because I know you see this a lot, Bob. The moment you get a hit and you get someone, you think, okay, this one's going to come through. Do not stop marketing. I see this too often. People, they get dragged along by a prospect. Two months have gone by, they haven't done more prospecting because they think this one's going to come through. And then it falls apart.

I actually put up on my YouTube channel a video about this. It's called if people go to the Bob Bly YouTube channel and click on the video, always be marketing. It's exactly about that. And it explains what Ed says with a graph that you're quoting on right now. And they always say, yes. I said, here's the answer. If you had you have room maybe to do two jobs this month, yet seven other leads like this, you wouldn't give a crap. Sorry for the language. I hope I didn't ruin your recording. Yeah, but I said you wouldn't care. You need to do enough marketing so you could say to this person, you know what, showing how it works.

Oh, we'll link to that for sure.

It's right.

That is one of. That will kill your business. I'd say, look, use it as motivation to keep going. In fact, that's when I pick up the phone or send more emails or do whatever I need to do. Because now I'm excited and I'm more self confident. Don't let that go to waste. Use it.

This isn't for you. Thank you. I'm going to take the next person in line. Most freelancers can never do that and that's why they struggle.

Well, let me add something. All right, so let's talk a little bit about. Mike had a question about B2B content. A lot of my listeners write a lot of content. White papers, case studies and articles versus B2B lead generation. There's a lot of information about content development and what's working. Not a lot about B2B lead generation. So if you're looking to get into that, how can you learn more about it and how can you tell what's.

Working and not working Lead generation in my experience, although I do both, lead generation copywriter will make more than a content marketer. The client perceives it as a higher level of skill. You know, it's like when they give you the score in the Olympics.

Because I know you see this a lot, Bob. The moment you get a hit and you get someone, you think, okay, this one's going to come through. Do not stop marketing. I see this too often. People, they get dragged along by a prospect. Two months have gone by, they have.

It's a higher degree of difficulty. And to learn more about it, there are lots of resources. I'll just give you a couple. I have a book that's out of print and I'm actually right now writing the new edition for Raycom, which is a publisher of marketing books. And that'll be out next year. But if you don't want to wait till next year, here, go online and order a used copy of my book Business. My book Business to business, not the business to business, Direct marketing. And it's all about how to generate leads and it'll tell you more than you want to know. Now if you don't want to spend any money, go on my site, Bly.com, scroll to the bottom of the homepage and you'll see a big box there that says Download your free B2B marketing handbooks. This is a more contemporary publication. It's an e book 150 page ebook that has a few dozen of my columns. I write a column on B2B marketing for Target Marketing magazine and each new column I add to the book and it's free, doesn't cost you a dime. So do that and you will learn a lot of stuff.

I haven't done more prospecting because they think this one's going to come through and then it falls apart.

You don't know about B2B lead generation.

That's great. So. So there's some great resources there. We'll link to those as well. Now let me take this a step further. If you're trying to get in the door somewhere, you're fairly new. Let's say you're an established writer but you're trying to get more into Legion.

I actually put up on my YouTube channel a video about this. It's called Generation.

You have no track record of success. How can you get a client to give you a chance? I mean this, they got a lot riding on the campaign.

Here's that. Not the answer you're looking for, but it's actually I think more accurate. People ask me this all the time, how can I get a chance? I think if people go to the Bob Bly YouTube channel and click on the video. Always be marketing. It's exactly about that. And it explains what Ed says with a graph. Client world. You've been a copywriter for a long time, freelance. See if you agree. I think the client world is like a pie chart and it has three slices, three segments, equal thirds. One third is what I call the hard ass client. These are the clients, you know, if they call you and showing how it.

Works, we'll link to that for sure. It's that is one of that will kill your business. That say, look, use it as motivation to keep going.

Well, we need a white paper on blue widgets. And you go, oh, that's great. I just wrote a white paper on pink widgets. They'll go, no, no, we said blue widgets. And they hang up the phone on you. There are some clients that want you to have done exactly what they have done 40 times and just won't hire you unless you have. And as a beginner, in fact that's.

When I pick up the phone or send more emails or do whatever I need to do.

Our listeners, you're never going to get that client. But fortunately that's only one third of the market. There's a third of the market and that is the opposite end of the spectrum. There are clients who when they need something, go to Google or get a reference, go to someone and as soon as they find the first person who looks reasonably humanoid that says, oh, I can do that, they don't ask for.

Samples because now I'm excited and I'm more self confident. Don't let that go to waste to use it.

They don't ask for your client list, they just say, okay, do it. I've had that happen many times. So amazing as it is, there are people who will hire you if you have little or no experience. And the other third of the market is sort of in between the sensible people, you know, if they need a white paper on blue widgets, they won't reject you if you haven't done one on. If you've done one on pink widgets. But they might reject you if you have no widget experience. They might take you if you work.

All right, so talk a little bit.

About gidgets, which is a related technology. They're like so, so difficult and you'll get some of those and you'll lose others. I mean, copywriters always say, how would Anybody hire me if I have no experience. Think about this. Every brain surgeon working today had a first patient for surgery that hired him to do the operation when he had never done a brain surgery before.

I think it's what happened to me. I think I was one of those patients now. Yeah, I couldn't agree more because you're right. I think we focus too much on the hard ass clients. When there's another segment of the market that would be willing to give you a chance and one of those segments would be. Would quickly give you a chance. I'd tell you some of the best projects I ever had and best in terms of the doors they open out. Mike had a question about B2B content. A lot of my listeners write a lot of content. White papers, case studies and articles versus B2B lead generation. There's a lot of information about content development and what's working right. Not a lot about B2B lead generation. So if you're looking to get into that. Enough for me came from people who just didn't. They didn't have time or the desire to. How can you learn more about it and how can you tell what's working and not working?

Lead generation. In my experience, although I do both.

To research other people.

Can I tell you a story about that? I once got a call from a guy, easiest client, I think he actually showed up in my office when I had an outside office that I rented. And he says, you got to help me. He said I found, you know, I found. I didn't. He didn't look on Google. He looked in the local yellow pages in Bergen County. He found me listed as a writer. I don't know if I am anymore. It wasn't copyright, just underwriter. And he said, and I was the first one and I was the closest one to where his business was. He says, I just joined the Chamber of Commerce. And as you know, when you join the Chamber of Commerce they give you a free lead generation. Copywriter will make more than a content marketer. The client article about you in the Chamber of Commerce. But you got to write it. And he said I just joined it and they will give me one in the next issue. But it's due on Tuesday. Can you write it? That's all I want to know. Can you write it by Tuesday? And I happened to say at the time I. It was. I said yes. And it wasn't like next Tuesday, but it was like eight days or something. I said I could do that. He took out his checkbook. He didn't look at my samples. He didn't ask anything about me. He just wanted to do it. And there are lots of clients. And you guys are listening. If you own a home, sometimes you're very fussy about hiring a vendor. You're having something expensive done. Like, we just had a full house generator put in. I got quotes from four different vendors and we spent a lot of time discussing it and having them explain why we should hire them versus the competition and which generator was best. Generacs or whatever. We really put them through hoops. On the other hand, once when we lived in our old house, one day I was in the basement and crap poop was coming out of the drain in the shower. We had a shower in the basement. I called the first plumber I called who said I could come. Now they got the job. I hadn't asked him where he went to plumbing school.

Perry Marshall calls it the bleeding neck.

I never heard that. It's so typical of Perry to have the right metaphor. But that's what it is.

You gotta be. You're looking for prospects who have a bleeding neck.

That's very good. Thank you for telling me that. I'm going to use that.

So tell me a little bit about farming out work to other writers, because I don't think you do that.

I never do. No, I don't farm out any copywriting. It says on my homepage. I actually have a section of my homepage where I make very clear. I say, unlike other senior copywriters, I do not farm out. So if you hire me, every word is written by Bob Wide. This is an advantage you can get with no other copywriter. You can't get me through an ad agency. You can't get me. I don't subcontract. Other top copywriters don't subcontract and have me write their stuff. But I don't hire other copywriters either. Now, I do hire content writers to write ebooks that I sell in my information marketing business. But I don't subcontract copywriting.

That's a huge competitive advantage. And the fact that you can say that because a lot of people at your level have a lot of copy Cubs and so forth.

Well, the reason I say it is because they have copycubes. People started asking this all the time. They said, I want to know, do you write it or do you farm it out? And I can say it, you know, I say, look at my homepage. There it is.

Very cool.

I write every word.

Tell me a little bit. You mentioned we've been talking a little bit on and off about some of the information you put out there. You put a lot, a lot of educational material for writers. A lot of it is influenced me dramatically. My business has changed over the years because of some of the stuff that I've. That I've learned from you and bought from you.

Well, you are the best implementer. Lots of people bought what you bought. But the success is not buying it, it's doing it. And you are a doer. Like with the Internet marketing retirement plan, you did it. Any other people could have done it, but they're the kings and queens of excuses.

Sadly to say, man, I gotta tell.

You, and this is perceives it as a higher level of skill. You know, it's like when they give you the score in the Olympics. It's a higher degree of difficulty. And to learn more about it, there are lots of resources. I'll just give you a couple. I have a book that's out of print and we're. I'm actually right now writing the new edition for Raycom, which is a publisher of marketing books and that will be out next year. But if you don't want to wait till next year, go online and order a used copy of my book the Business. My book Business to business, not D Business to business, Direct marketing. And it's all about how to generate leads and it'll tell you more than you want to know. Now if you don't want to spend any money, go on my site, Bly.com, scroll to the bottom of the homepage and you'll see a big box there that says Download your free B2B for everybody out there.

You buy something I tell people all the time, I'll be your success story. Because if I buy it, first of all, I've made up my mind that I'm going to implement it and I'll put a little plan.

Marketing Handbook. This is a more contemporary publication. It's an e book 150 page ebook that has a few dozen of my columns. I write a column on B2B marketing for Target Marketing magazine. And each new column I add to the book and it's free. Doesn't cost you a dime. So do that and you will learn a lot of stuff together on a.

Spreadsheet or on a notepad. And I mean I go through it module by module, I take notes and I start implementing. And I don't care if it, you know, some of it fails or if I stumble my way through it, I still put it into place. And I get great ROI from every program that I take. And I encourage people, you know, like.

If you've spent, you don't know about B2B lead generation, that's great.

So there's some great resources there. We'll link to those as well. Now let me take this a step further. If you're trying to get money, implement it.

You know, the problem is that there are a lot of people and there's nothing wrong with this, I suppose, who they're actually what I call armchair marketers.

They get in the door somewhere. You're fairly new, let's say you're an established writer, but you're trying to get more into Legion.

Really want to be marketers. They like reading marketing books and taking marketing courses. And that's okay. Unless they start complaining that I'm not making any money. And I say, because you don't do anything.

Yeah, very different. So I'm curious and I kind of have an idea from what we've talked about so far, but what percentage of your business would you say info marketing, educational marketing products are these days?

Mine is different than yours because you've told me yours. I am primarily a freelance. Classical or traditional freelance generation.

You have no track record of success. How can you get a client to give you a chance? They got a lot riding on the campaign.

Here's not the answer you're looking for, but it's actually, I think, more accurate. People ask me this all the time. How can I get a chance? I think as a copywriter, I make my money by writing copy for clients. And I would say I haven't done a spreadsheet of it like you do, but client world. You've been a copywriter for a long time freelancing. If you agree. I think the client world is like a pie chart and it has three slices, three segments, equal thirds. One third is, let's say between 70 and 80% of my income is writing copy on a contract basis. And 15% or 20% is information products. And that would include maybe some. The little speaking I do today. I don't do too much speaking. I did much more of it years ago. I once thought I called the hard ass client. These are the clients. You know, if they call you and say, well, we need a white paper on blue widgets, but becoming a professional trainer and you know, oh, that's great. I just wrote a white paper on pink widgets. They'll go, no, no, we said blue widgets. And they hang up and do some speaking. And I get, you know, Book contracts and which don't pay me that well. It's not that I've never made good money from a book, but that's been declining steadily over the years. So it's maybe 80, 20, 75. 25.

That's what I figured after our conversation. That's interesting. That's really good. Carolyn had a really good question. What inspires you.

To do what?

You know, she didn't ask.

So here's what I would say. Here's what I would say. I don't know that I'm inspired. My writing hero is Isaac Asimov. You know who he is, right?

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

So they asked, Isaac Asimov, what do you love on you? There are some clients that want you to have done exactly what they have done 40 times and just won't hire you unless you have. And as a beginner, our listeners, you're never going to get that client. But fortunately, that's only one third of to do besides writing. He said, well, to tell you the truth, there's only 10 things I love to do. Write, write, write, write, write, write, write, write, write, write. Oh, do I like. Are there other things I like to do? Yeah, I even do some of them. But what I love to do, that's it. And for me, it's that same way, you know, I know there are. I don't know what your hobbies or interests are. I have hobbies or interests, but I don't love them. I love the market. There's a third of the market that is the opposite end of the spectrum. There are clients who, when they need something, go to Google or get a reference, go to someone, and as soon as they find the first person of writing and the things that surround writing like reading and books and information and publishing, that's what I love. So I'm doing what I love. And another thing that Asimov said that I relate to, Barbara Walters was interviewing him and said, what would you do if you found out you only had six months to live? And he said, I type faster.

I love it. That's a great litmus test.

Yep. Who looks reasonably humanoid that says, oh, I can do that. They don't ask for samples.

Patricia asked, if you were just starting out today as a freelance writer, what would you do differently of anything?

Well, it depends how early you're starting. Me, if I knew in high school or entering my freshman year in college that I wanted to be a freelance, let's use the word copywriter. She didn't. Right. She just said writer.

She did.

Well, let's say copywriter. And if you want me to do it for writer, maybe it'll be a little limited, but if I wanted to be, I knew that in my senior high school I would pick a major. They don't answer your client list. They just say, okay, do it. I've had that happen many times. So, amazing as it is, there are people who will hire you if you have little or no experience, and the other third of the market is sort of in between. It's something that I knew I would want to write about. I guess I would do that for other kinds of writing as well. So I do a fair amount of financial copywriting. It's not all I do, but I do it. If I wanted to really do that, and it's a great field, I would have majored in economics. That's what I would do differently. I tell a lot of writers, copywriters and content writers, book authors, sensible people. If they need a white paper on blue widgets, they won't reject you speakers. It's not enough to master speaking or writing or communication skills. The world sort of assumes you have that as a given, although that's an iffy proposition. But what you need is something to write about. You need to acquire knowledge. I had at the Awai event ed yesterday, Denise Ford. It was so nice. She invited. We had it in Baltimore. My first job was in Baltimore. I was a writer at Westinghouse. She invited my boss to say hi to the crowd and then have dinner with us. And I asked him at dinner, oh, no. Denise said to him, why did you hire Bob? And I said, well, I know why he hired me because I had written all these articles from my college newspaper and I brought them and he read them and he thought I had writing skill. And he said, no, that's not it. He says, yeah, I know you did. You were a good writer. But we at Westinghouse had technical products. The other three people in my department were liberal arts majors. They were good writers. Not as good as you, but they were good writers. But you were technical. You had knowledge. You need to know. One of my books, I can't even remember which one. I have an article of the three reasons most people can't write. And one is they have nothing to write about. They don't know anything. So I would say I would acquire the knowledge of subject that I would want to write about for my career.

That is brilliant advice. I couldn't agree with you more.

You did it. You started out. If you haven't done one on if you've done one on pink widgets. But they might reject you if you have no widget experience. They might take you if you've worked on gidgets, which is a related technology. They're like so, so difficult. And you're getting a freelance copywriter and software. You've been a software. A very successful software salesman. You knew it. All the other copywriters just said, oh, that's a good niche. I'll go into it. They didn't know anything about it.

You know what's weird, Bob? The day that I put myself out there as a total generalist because I thought, well, you know, the world would be the path to my door.

Right, right.

And the day that I changed that to focus on software, I mean, within, within days I was the same guy. I had the same amount of skill and people were kind of beating a path to my door. It was eerie how much that changed. And they were not questioning a lot of my samples and my skills. They love the fact that I brought that industry background knowledge and perspective. That's what they were.

Just said that they didn't question you. That's what I had when I started. I have a degree in chemical engineering and my clients were industrial firms. I did industrial marketing. Get some of those and you lose others. I mean, copywriters always say, how would anybody hire me if I have no experience? Think about this. Every brain surgeon working today had a firm. And my clients are typically companies that made pollution control devices filtration. First patient for surgery that hired him to do the operation when he had never done a brain surgery before.

I think it's what happened to me. I think I was one of those patients.

Heat exchangers, valve pumps, control systems. And what would happen is I talk with the client and they say, so you're a copywriter. We need copy. And they will say. And then they would always say, well, we have technical products. How are you going to understand this? I'd look now.

Yeah, I couldn't agree more because you're right. I think we focus too much on the hard.

This is what I'd say. I'm a chemical engineer. I'm a chemical at four words. And I was hired. There was nothing else said. Isn't that they said, okay, when can you start?

Hard to ask clients when there's another segment of the market that would be willing to give you a chance and one of those segments would quickly give you a chance. I tell you some of the best projects I ever had and best in terms of the doors they opened up for me. Came from people who just didn't. They didn't have time or the desire to. I love it. I don't think people. I don't think they leverage a network enough. I don't think they leverage their experience and their background enough. And of course, we all. We've already talked about they don't do enough marketing.

Yeah. But the first point, just to come back to it, one of the guys at the AWAI weekend sent next to me says, I'm trying to decide about two niches. One is biomedical biotechnology and one is stock market investment newsletters. And I said, what's your background in investments? He says, none. I just see it's a very lucrative niche. What's your background in bio? He says, I have a master's degree in bioengineering. I said, what do you think I'm going to say there's a million guys out there that want to do financial and they're more experienced than you and they're better than you at it. What if a biotech company is going to hire John Ford, and I love John, but it's going to hire John.

Ford to research other people.

Can I tell you a story about that? I once got a call from a guy, easiest client. He. I think he actually showed up in my office when I had an outside office. And you're gonna hire you?

Yeah. But you know what, though? I think we're too close to that.

I rented and he says, you got to help me. He said, I found, you know, I found. I didn't. He didn't look on Google. He looked in the local yellow Pages in Burke.

Own problems. We're too close to our own. Sit. To see that. I mean, believe it or not, even with my software background, I was torn between software and wine.

Were you. Are you a whiny.

I'm a wine guy, you know.

Yeah.

There's no money in wine. Not. Not in copywriting, at least in Canada.

He found me listed as a writer. I don't know if I am anymore. It wasn't copyright, just underwriter. And he said, and I was the first one, and I was the closest one to where his business was. He says, I just joined the Chamber of Commerce. And you know, when you join the Chamber of Commerce, they give you a free article about you in the Chamber of Commerce, but you got to write it. And he said, I joke. There is. There's not. In copywriting. It's interesting. There are a few guys out there. You know this because you're a wine connoisseur. That actually do make a decent living as wine writers. Oh, yeah. Not in copywriting. And yeah, you know, you could have done it, but you, you know, you're back. Your credentials in software were five times stronger because wine. What are you going to say? I drank it.

Yeah. And what I really wanted was quick wins. I mean, I wanted to build a business as quickly as possible. All right, so I got one more question for you. This is one of, you know, kind of a. One of those soft questions, right. When you're 80 years old, what would you like your legacy to Just joined it.

And they will give me one in the next issue, but it's due on Tuesday. Can. This is not what you expect that I was. You write it. That's all I want to know. Can you write it by Tuesday? And I happened to say at the time I, it was, I said yes. And I know it wasn't like next Tuesday, but it was like eight days or something. I said I could do that. He took out his checkbook. He didn't look a good father and a good husband.

I love that. I love that. You know, at the end of the.

Day, right, that's all. That's the most important thing to me.

That's super. Your kids are how old? They're out of the house. Right.

You have young kids, right?

I have, I have an 11 and a three year old.

Well, yeah, well, 11 is not that young, but my kids are 24 and 21 samples. He didn't ask anything about me. He just wanted to do it. And there are lots of clients and you guys who are listening, if you own a home, you sometimes you're very fussy about hiring vendor, you know, you having something expensive done. Like we just had a full house generator put in. I saw, I got quotes from four different vendors and we spent a lot of. The 24 year old still lives at home. So the goal of my life is to get him out. The 21 year old technically lives at home, but he goes to college in Pittsburgh and in summers he works, you know, in another city, Pittsburgh or San Francisco, wherever he gets the best job. So he's never here. He doesn't live here anymore.

Wow. Well, it's. And I've learned from you and so many others, it does go by fast.

Time discussing it and having them explain why we should hire them versus the competition and which generator was best, generics or whatever, we really put them through hoops. On the other hand, once when we lived in our old house, one day I was in the basement and. And crap Poop was coming out of the drain in the shower. We had a shower.

So it's.

Well, you have a three year old, so I. You didn't ask for personal advice. And I never give unsolicited advice except right now. And you already know what I'm gonna say. Enjoy your kids while they still want you.

I know he calls for you. My three year old only wants me. He doesn't want his mama. So sometimes it's difficult, you know. But I tell you, I try to save her every moment because he's not going to want his daddy all the time.

When they get to Chad, typically when they get to be. No, not much more than 20, that's the end.

Yep. Then you got to wait for grandchildren.

If I live that long, if I baseman, I call the first plumber I called who said I could come. Now they got the job. I didn't ask them where he went to plumbing school.

Perry Marshall calls it the bleeding neck.

I never heard that. And it's so typical of Perry to have the right metaphor, but that's what it is.

You gotta be. You're looking for prospects who have a bleeding neck. Well, Bob, thank you so much. This has been fantastic. Really enjoyed it. You've been very gracious with your time and advice.

My pleasure.

Appreciate that.

Thanks Ed.

Well folks, I hope you enjoyed that interview as much as I did conducting it. And I wanted work to remind you that you can grab the details show notes for this episode@b2b launcher.com forward/episode58. I also had a quick reminder.

That's very good. Thank you for telling me that. I'm going to use that.

So just open enrollment for my B2B business launcher training and coaching program which starts on September 16th. This is an intense. Tell me a little bit about farming out work to other writers because I don't think you do that.

I never do. No, I don't farm out any copyright. It says on my homepage. I actually have a section of my homepage where I make very clear. I say unlike results driven program where.

You get to launch your own profitable commercial writing business in 10 weeks or less, you and I get to work together one on one and in a small group setting to implement my proven system step by step, week by week, we get to do it together. The result is that you will accomplish in 10 weeks what takes most people one or two years to implement assuming.

They even other senior copywriters. I do not farm out. So if you hire me, every word is written by Bob Bly. This is an advantage you can get with no other copyright. You can't get me through an ad agency. You can't get me I don't subconscious Other top copywriters don't subcontract and have me write their stuff, but I don't hire other copyright Try the failure rate.

In this business is sky high. I'm gonna guide you through a process. It's got a great success rate. It will fast track your success like you wouldn't believe. If you're ready to finally make this a reality, you'd rather not go through this on your own. And if you'd love to have a client or two by the end of November, take a look at this unique opportunity which you can do so by going to b2b launcher.com program info this program is by application only and I have just 10 total seats available, some of which are already taken. Once we fill up, we will close the doors and we'll go ahead and get started.

Now I do hire content writers to write ebooks that I sell in my information marketing business, but I don't subcontract copywriting.

That's a huge competitive advantage. And the fact that you can say that because a lot of people at your level have a lot of copy cubs and so forth.

Well, the reason I say it is true.

So hope you consider it. Take a look. B2B launcher.com forward/program info that brings us to the end of the episode. I am your host, Ed Gandia. Thanks so much for listening and I hope you have an awesome day.

The High Income Business Writing Podcast is a production of B2B business launcher. Because they have copycubs, people started asking this all the time. They said, I want to know, do you write it or do you farm it out? And I can say it. You know, I say, look at my homepage. There it is.

Very cool.

I write every word.

Tell me a little bit you mentioned. We've been talking a little bit on and off about some of the information you put out there. You put a lot. Learn more@b2b launcher.com A lot of educational material for writers. A lot of it has influenced me dramatically. My business has changed over the years because of some of the stuff that I've that I've learned from you and bought from you.

Well, you are the best implementer. Lots of people bought what you bought. But the success is not buying it, it's doing it. And you are a doer. Like with the Internet marketing retirement plan, you did it. Any other people could have done It. But they're the kings and queens of excuses.

Sadly to say, man, I got to tell you, and this is for everybody out there. You buy something, I tell people all the time, I'll be your success story. Because if I buy it, first of all, I've made up my mind that I'm going to implement it and I'll put a little plan together on a spreadsheet or on a notepad. And I mean, I go through it module by module. I take notes and I start implementing. And I don't care if it, you know, some of it fails or if I stumble my way through it. I still put it into place. And I get great ROI from every program that I take. And I encourage people, you know, can you spend money, implement it?

You know, the problem is that there are a lot of people. There's nothing wrong with this, I suppose, who they're actually what I call armchair marketers. They don't really want to be marketers. They like reading marketing books and taking marketing courses. And that's okay. Unless they start complaining that I'm not making any money. And I say, because you don't do anything.

Yeah, very different. So I'm curious and I kind of have an idea from what we've talked about so far, but what percentage of your business would you say info marketing, educational marketing products are these days?

Mine is different than yours because you've told me yours. I am primarily a freelance classical or traditional freelance copywriter. I make my money by writing copy for clients. And I would say I haven't done a spreadsheet of it like you do, but I'd say between 70 and 80% of my income is writing copy on a contract basis. And 15% or 20% is information products. And that would include maybe some. The little speaking I do today. I don't do too much speaking. I did much more of it years ago. I once thought of becoming a professional trainer and do some speaking. And I get book contracts which don't pay me that well. It's not that I've never made good money from a book, but that's been declining steadily over the years. So, you know, it's maybe 80, 20, 75. 25.

That's what I figured after our conversation. That's interesting. That's really good. So Carolyn had a really good question. What inspires you?

It's what? Inspired to do what?

She didn't ask.

Here's what I would say. Here's what I would say. I don't know that I'm inspired. My writing Hero is Isaac Asimov. You know who he is, right?

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

So they asked Isaac Asimov, what do you love to do besides writing? He said, well, to tell you the truth, there's only 10 things I love to do. Write, write, write, write, write, write, write, write, write, write. Oh, do I like. Are there other things I like to do? Yeah, I even do some of them. But what I love to do, that's it. And for me, it's that same way, you know that I know there are. I don't know what your hobbies or interests are. I have hobbies or interests, but I don't love them. I love writing and the things that surround writing, like reading and books and information and publishing. That's what I love. So I'm doing what. What I love. And I. Another thing that Isaac Asimov said that I relate to. Barbara Walters was interviewing him and said, what would you do if. If you found out you only had six months to live? And he said, I type faster.

I love it. That's a great litmus test.

Yep.

Patricia asked, if you were just starting out today as a freelance writer, what would you do differently, if anything?

Well, it depends how early you're starting. Me, if I knew in high school or entering my freshman year in college that I wanted to be a freelance writer. Let's use the word copywriter. She didn't. Right. She just said writer.

She did.

Well, let's say copywriter. And if you want me to do it for writer, maybe it'd be a little different. But if I wanted to be freelance copyright. I knew that in my senior high school, I would pick a major in something that I knew I would want to write about. I guess I would do that for other kinds of writing as well. So I do a fair amount of financial copywriting. It's not all I do, but I do it. If I wanted to really do that, and it's a great field, I would have majored in economics. That's what I would do differently. I tell a lot of writers, copywriters and content writers, book authors, speakers. It's not enough to master speaking or writing or communication skills. The world sort of assumes you have that as a given, although that's an iffy proposition. But what you need is something to write about. You need to acquire knowledge. I had at the Awai event ed yesterday, Denise Ford. It was so nice. She invited. We had it in Baltimore. My first job was in Baltimore. I was a writer at Westinghouse. She invited my boss to say hi to the crowd and then have dinner with us. And I asked him at dinner, oh, no. Denise said to him, why did you hire Bob? And I said, well, I know why he hired me because I had written all these articles for my college newspaper, and I brought them and he read them and he thought I had writing skill. And he said, no, that's not it. He says, yeah, I know you did. You were a good writer. But we at Westinghouse had technical products. The other three people in my department were liberal arts majors. They were good writers. Not as good as you, but they were good writers. But you were technical. You had knowledge. You need to know. One of my books, I can't even remember which one. I have an article. The three reasons most people can't write. And one is they have nothing to write about. They don't know anything. So I would say I would acquire the knowledge of subject that I would want to write about for my career.

That is brilliant advice. I couldn't agree with you more.

You did it. You started out being a freelance copywriter and software. You'd been a software. A very successful software salesman. You knew it. All the other copywriters just said, oh, that's a good niche. I'll go into it. They didn't know anything about it.

You know what's weird, Bob? The day that I put myself out there as a total generalist because I thought, well, you know, the world would be the path to my door.

Right, right.

And the day that I changed that to focus on software, I mean, within. Within days, I was the same guy. I had the same amount of skill, and people were kind of beating a path to my door. It was eerie how much that changed. And they were not questioning a lot of, you know, my samples and my skills. And they just. They love the fact that I brought that industry background knowledge and perspective.

That's what you just said, that they didn't question you. That's what I had when I started. I have a degree in chemical engineering, and my clients were industrial. I did industrial marketing. And my clients are typically companies that made pollution control devices, filtrations, heat exchangers, valves, pumps, control systems. And what would happen is I talk with the client and they say, so you're a copywriter. We need copy. And they will say. And then they would always say, well, we have technical products. How are you going to understand this? And I'd at. Look.