#193: How Chris Orzechowski Generated a Tidal Wave of Client Leads with a Short and Simple Book

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 there. Welcome to the High Income Business Writing Podcast. I am your host, Ed Gandia, and this is the podcast for business writers and copywriters who want to earn more and less time doing work they love for better clients. You can find detailed show notes for this episode@b2b launcher.com Episode 1 93. Those notes include a summary of our discussion as well as any links to resources we mention during the show. You know, one of the best ways to attract great prospects to your business is by offering what a lot of people call a freemium or a lead magnet, essentially some information that's highly relevant and valuable to your target audience. And in order to get that piece of information, that marketing asset, that educational asset, they have to give you their contact information. And one of the most powerful types of freemiums or lead magnets that you can create is a short and simple book that provides great value to your target audience. The idea is to leverage your knowledge, experience your processes and internal frameworks you use to do great work and put some of that insight into a book. So in other words, kind of get that information, that intellectual property, that secret sauce out of your head onto the page. And that's precisely what my guest today did not very long ago. Chris Orzkowski is a very successful and sought after email copywriter and email marketing strategist who works with e commerce companies in big name online entrepreneurs. And not too long ago he decided to write a short and simple book detailing how he wrote powerful email copy and how he designed results generating email campaigns for his clients. The result of this book effort blew him away before he had even completed the book, before actually he had even started writing the book. He had prospective clients asking and begging how they could buy a copy from him and how they could hire him. You'll hear the story about that here in a few minutes. And in this interview, what you're going to learn is how and why Chris decided to go with a book instead of a simpler type of lead magnet. He also explains the process he used to find the best topic and title ideas for his book, how he got it done quickly, and how he's promoted the book and the massive results he's enjoyed from this effort. I think you're really going to enjoy this conversation. It's just packed full of information, ideas and inspiration. So without further ado, let's get to my conversation with Chris Roskowski. Chris, welcome to the show. Great to have you, man.

Hey, Ed, thanks so much. Really excited to be here.

So am I. This is a great topic and I'm glad that you came to me with this idea because I think this is something that so many of us could do and get success from it if we do it right. So we're going to dive in here. But first, why don't you give us a little bit of background, tell us a little bit about who you are, what you do, what kind of clients you work with. Just a little bit of that.

Yeah. So for the past six years or so, I've mainly been focusing on being an email copywriter, email marketing strategist, operating also as a consultant in some circumstances. I've worked with a lot of clients, a lot of e commerce clients. That's kind of what I do. A lot of now, a lot of email marketing automation for business to consumer e comm brands. But I've also worked with guys like Jeff Walker, John Assaraf, Dan Meredith, a few other big thought leaders, and then some e commerce brands like chef Philippe Loretti, factor 75 and some other companies in those spaces. And mainly what I do every day or every week is I just create email campaigns for businesses. And it's so much fun. It's my favorite type of copy to writer type of marketing campaign to build just because the results are so awesome. For companies that have lists and have great products.

That's great. How did you get into this? Did you start as an email copywriter or did that evolve?

I started as a school teacher.

Wow, okay.

Yeah, I was a schoolteacher actually, in June 16, 2017 was my final day of being a teacher. But as soon as I started my teaching career, I quickly discovered that it wasn't really for me. I wanted to do something else. So was like, how do people make money on the Internet? Let me try to figure that whole game out. And I had a mentor at the time, this guy, Zach Evans, who was one of the original strength conditioning publishers. And back in the day, as I was growing up training under him, I always saw him sell ebooks and sell these courses. And I was like, man, how does that whole thing work? I remember reading his writing when I was in high school. I'm like, this guy's writing is so good. And something was happening in my brain and what I didn't realize was I was reading copy. And when you read really good copy, your brain kind of shifts into that different mode and you're kind of sucked into it. So I was like, I got to learn how to do this. This is so cool. I basically just gave myself a college level education in copywriting. The thing was, as I was learning all this stuff, I was teaching during the day, and then I would do this on nights and on the weekends. And I basically worked 80 hours a week. And I bought every. I bought every book. I started writing for clients for literally nothing. But I just kind of taught myself and just grinded my way until I got to the point where I had clients and I had experience and knew what to do.

I love what you shared there because I keep stressing all the time to writers at all levels, but specifically those who are trying to get their business off the ground is, man, the most important thing you need is resourcefulness. Because people tell me, oh, I don't have the resources. I don't have this. That looks you could do so much. If you're resourceful, you could get far. But most people don't want that. Most people want to take the easy route. And what I'm hearing here is, look, you had a day job. You just got your hands on everything you could and you committed to doing this in the evenings instead of binge watching Netflix. You worked really hard and very diligently to build up your skills.

Yeah, I mean, I was waking up at 5am to do client calls with clients in Europe. Every single lunch break, every single prep period I had, I was outside in the parking lot, even in the dead of winter on the phone with clients. It was resourcefulness. That's the perfect word for it. But it was just like, I knew other people had done it, and if that was the case, I knew I could just figure it out with enough hard work.

How long did you do this on the side before you. I know you said you finally left in 2017, but how long was it a side gig for you?

So from the time I started to the time I left teaching, I had been writing for four years during that time. So basically, yeah, like four. And that's the thing too. It's like a lot of people, they'll quit and go freelance and they have no money coming in. I was like, I need to match my salary or make more than that if I'm going to feel comfortable leaving. And I eventually got to that point and then I knew it was time. But I didn't want to risk things. I didn't want to. I was getting married, I had a house and a mortgage. I couldn't just be like, yeah, hopefully this freelance thing works out. I was like, I need to make sure it works out. I put the pieces into place.

Yeah. Your wife suddenly thinking, what have I done here? I married this guy who's got this dream. And. Yeah.

So.

And we're going to get to. I just have one more question because I know a lot of people are kind of at these early stages who listen to the show. I'm curious, what kept you going? You know, four years is a long time, and those are long weeks, long days. So what drove you? Because it's a lot easier when you start seeing results early on, but when it's going to be months or you haven't seen anything in months and you know that it's probably not going to happen overnight. What kept you going?

Well, for me, I mean, there was probably a few things. Like, one thing was that for me, it wasn't like it was something I viewed like, I want to do this for the next 40 or 50 years. So if it takes me a few years, I had that kind of, like, foresight to be like, yeah, you know what? Just like most things, you know, here's the thing, too. Like, when I was a wrestler and I was growing up, the first four or five years that I kind of sucked as well, I ended up wrestling at Rutgers. I got a Division 1 scholarship. You know, had a pretty good career in high school. But even, like, as a high school freshman, I was on the freshman team. I didn't even crack the varsity lineup. So I worked at that for four years as well. So I don't know if it's the number four or whatever it is, But I know with most things, for me, it's like, I know that if I just stay in the game long enough, I can beat everyone. And that's just my mentality. Because what happens is a lot of people quit, right? Like, 100 people have an idea to do something, and after the first three to six months, 90 people will drop out already. And then after the first, in the next year or two, another seven or eight of those people drop out, and really only one or two people will be left who actually stick through. And that's just a pattern I've seen in my own life. And I knew that this was probably no different.

Yeah, so you had experienced that before. Struggle and disappointment and, you know, the hard work and the discipline that something worthwhile requires. I love that. All right, so let's talk a little bit about the strategy that you deployed. Not too long ago, you wrote a book about email marketing, which is your area of expertise. Tell us about that. And specifically, I'd like to know more about what motivated you to write the book, what you were hoping to get out of it, and how you ended up picking that topic, that specific topic that you wrote about.

Yeah. So my thinking that went into this was I kind of pride myself that I'm pretty good at getting clients. And that's one of the aspects about my whole freelance business that I enjoy the most. And I just love. I just have this kind of rule for life where I'm always trying to move to a point of higher leverage. And I viewed all the activities that I was doing. I started producing content a while back, and I was like, wow, the more content I produce, obviously, the more leveraged it is. I could produce an article or something. Literally, I had this this year. I wrote an article 10 months beforehand, and then someone reached out to me and I had forgotten I even wrote that article. So I was like, okay, if I build assets for myself, then those things will work for me around the clock while I'm sleeping. So that way I could almost, to a certain extent, automate or highly leverage the client, getting activities or having those things out in the market, and I could focus on all the other stuff I want to do. So for me, it was just a way of thinking. Like, I bet if I wrote a book that would do a few things, that would position me, that would also, when I talk about my philosophy with email, how awesome would it be if every client that I worked with, they could read my manifesto of sorts and understand more about me and how I work? And I guess I could have put it into a sales page, but when you put it into a book, there's just something about the credibility you get. And I knew that that's how humans kind of operate. That's how our brains work. We kind of revere author. And I said, well, authors write books. And if I want to become an author and I want to have that kind of level of status and positioning in the marketplace, then it's just a matter of me going and writing a book. So that was the big thing for me. And I said, once I have this, I bet there's a number of different ways that I could use it. I could use it as a lead magnet. I could advertise with it. I could give it to clients in person, or if I'm at an event, I could hand it out to people. Most people probably aren't going to read it, and that's fine. But it's one of those things where, you know, if you can give away 20,000 copies of your book over the next five years. You're probably never going to need to worry about clients again. You know what I mean?

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So tell us. I guess I should back up a little bit. Tell us, what is the title of the book? And it sounds like you have it in digital form and printed form from what you just described.

Yeah. So the title of the book is called make it the secret to generating massive paydays from your email list. And the kind of clients that I get the best results for and the ones that I enjoy the most are clients who really put a lot of folks into their email marketing. And over my career as a writer, I've done some pretty big campaigns. The Filippo already watched campaign that was a Kickstarter campaign. We did $5.2 million in 30 days. At the time, back in 2016, whenever it was, that was the 18th biggest Kickstarter of all time.

Wow.

Yeah. And then I'd worked with a number with John Asarath and Jeff Walker, and I worked with all these guys. We'd done big multimillion dollar launches, and I had just. Even for some of my smaller clients, we'd got some pretty outsized results. And I was like, why am I able to get these results when there's a thousand other email copywriters just like me? Right. So, like, why? What am I doing differently? And I was like, you know, the best way for me to figure out what it is is for me to have to teach it to someone else and kind of put it into a bit of a system. So, you know, for me, I'm sure the same's for you, Ed. Like, for me, I was like, if I talk this out or if I have. If I force myself to document this whole process, at a point it was in my head, and it was just kind of floating around in the ether up there. But I said, I need to make this real. I need to take the abstract and make it concrete. And so that's why I decided to do that. And for the kind of clients that I want to go after, that title is going to resonate with them. If someone doesn't have an email list, they're not even going to care about that book. They're going to say, yeah, I don't want to read this. But if they have an email list and they recognize that it's an important thing in their business and they want to get better results, even if they're getting decent results now, everyone always wants to do better. Right? So those People are covered. And then also the people who suck at email and are really struggling with it and can't figure it out. That's a good on ramp for them and kind of lays out the big overarching principles that have helped my campaigns for the clients that I've worked for become so successful.

Man, that's just gold right there. And I couldn't agree with you more. You mentioned something about titles. The title of the book is so important, isn't it? Because that is what is going to get the right prospect to say, that's me. I want that. So it's got to have that specificity. And I love your title.

Yeah, you know, the thing with the title was I wanted to be a verb and kind of like action driven and almost like empowering a little bit, right? Yeah, it's like when you read that title, you're like, yeah, I could do that, or, yeah, you know, I'm gonna make it rain my business. Like, you know, and it's a kind of a benefit driven thing. And you're so right. Like, that is the most important thing. People, once they saw what the title was like, I had people messaging me like, hey, can I buy this off you? Like, what's your PayPal link like before the book was even written? And I was like, whoa, okay, I guess, I guess we hit a vein here, you know?

Yeah, that's so one of the things that I know some listeners might be wondering is, man, okay, so you were generating great results for your clients. You had the secret sauce. Obviously you were doing things better than many of your competitors, if we want to call them that. Here you are revealing your secret sauce. Were you concerned at any point that, man, if I put this out there, you know, first of all, prospects might go ahead and use this and not hire me, and some of my competitors might try to then replicate my process with their own clients.

You know what, I would be lying if I said that I wasn't a little bit concerned. I definitely was to a certain extent. And I could see why other people might be concerned about that as well. But here's one thing that I've noticed before I ever wrote the book, for the past few years before that, I had gone into different business groups of people that I knew and done free trainings where I'm not even. Not like a webinar where I'm selling something, but just like, hey, you want me to come into your group and teach them how to write an autoresponder? Teach them how to write sales page. And I Had done like, probably 10 of these things. And the weirdest thing would happen because every single time I went into a group and did a training. And I mean, these trainings were not just like, yeah, here's some tips. Like, I was like, okay, here's email one. Here's what you're gonna write. Here's email two. Here's what we're gonna write. Here's an example. And I'd like do these breakdowns. I would, like give these formulas and everything. And like clockwork. It was nuts. Every single time I ended one of those things and we logged off, we ended the call. Within the next 10 to 15 minutes, I would get one, two, sometimes three people reaching out and be like, hey, thanks so much for the training. That was awesome. Can I hire you to do this for me? After that just kept happening enough times, I'm like, you know what? I literally just gave these people on a silver platter the roadmap. Here's all you have to do. Just write this. Here it is. Here's the whole system. And people were still like, wow, that sounds great. You sound like you're really good at this. I just want to pay you to do this for me. So after seeing enough times, I was like, I just don't know. I'm sure that some people are going to read the book and they're going to try the stuff. They're never going to need to give me money. They're never going to hire me. And I guess I'm okay with that because it's not like I'm handing these things out to one person at a time and banking my mortgage payments on it. But the thing is, number one, if people do take it and they use it themselves, then they're going to say, wow, okay, that really worked. I like this guy a lot. I want to go learn more from him. And then they're just going to be more receptive to the next thing I offer. And then the people who do read it and say, wow, this is really good. Chris knows what he's talking about. I'm just going to hire him to do it for me. Then obviously I'm getting paid there. So for me, I think there's long term wins and there's short term wins, and there's really no way you could lose by doing it.

Yeah, it's almost like when you think about it, in order to generate the right kind of leads and convert those leads into great clients, in order to reach that goal, which is what you want, you got to be willing to Let go of this idea that some people are going to take it and use it and they're never going to pay you anything. And I think it's all about the mindset, right? I think you took the mindset of this is what I want, and if to get there, then these people are going to never going to pay me and use my stuff, then so be it. Because the other alternative is I'm never going to do this because I don't want my intellectual property out there and somebody to steal it and use it. But then you don't get the result you want.

Yeah. And as someone who's produced intellectual property, like, I have courses, they've all been pirated. My intellectual property's out there. The thing is, even if you put it behind a paywall, it's going to get pirated. So. But the thing too is, will that matter? Paul A. Coelho, who's a very famous author, I remember reading somewhere, I think it was in the book, perennial seller Ryan Holley was talking about this, but he said that he pirated his own stuff just to get more distribution, and his book sales actually went up when he did that. I think it's a matter of, I take this mentality of, you know, how startups, like tech startups, their whole goal for the first five or ten years is just user acquisition. How many people can we get using us, talking about us, how many people can we get onto our platform, then we'll figure out how to monetize later? That's always been my view with all these things that I do. I spend money on ads and I lose money every single day on ads. But it doesn't matter because you could look at that as losing money on ads for the book, or you could look at that as, oh, I paid five bucks to get this book into someone's hand. And maybe a year down the road they might become a client and they might pay me ten grand. So is that really a loss or is that really me just making investment that's going to pay off later?

Yeah, cost of acquisition, so totally. All right, so let's dive a little bit into the book itself. How involved was the book project? And I asked that, Chris, because it's interesting for many writers, I mean, that's what we do, right? We write. But the thought of spending months writing their own book can seem like a daunting project. When they have client work and they're supposed to. Supposed to be marketing themselves and doing, you know, the kind of marketing they'll hopefully generate a client like, quickly. So that kind of commitment, at least that perceived commitment, can seem like a lot. So how did you overcome that? Was that even a question or a challenge for you?

I think the biggest challenge with the whole process was definitely the title and the topic, and not the topic necessarily, but kind of how I wanted to frame the topic and present it. Because it's not like a blog where you just go into WordPress and change around a few words or change. It's a book. It's a physical thing. Right. So I knew there was so much more permanence to it that I was like, I really got to think this through. The writing part wasn't that hard for me. I'm sure there's probably a lot of other writers out there like this too. But for me, I know that once I have the idea in my head and I can see it clearly in my mind, the writing is not the hard part. It's just figuring out what I want to write and how I want it to be laid out. I've written sales letters that are 40 pages long in a day because I spent four weeks before that just ruminating on what the hook is going to be in the headline and everything else. The book process was really no different for me. And I used Dean Jackson's company, 90 Minute Books, and they do an incredible job of helping guide your thoughts in terms of what you want the topic to be, who you want the book to be for, which is super important. Once I had all those ducks in the row, I was able to quickly create an outline and say, okay, they need to know this and this and this. I think my background as a teacher helped me a little bit too, in terms of designing lessons and curriculum. So I guess maybe I had a little bit of a leg up. But I think just getting. You can start writing your book today. You don't have to put it into paper this week. You could start writing in your mind, what do you want it to be? And then once you have it all figured out, the writing, if you know what you need to write, you can just sit down and blast it out.

I'm with you 100%. It's really about the planning and the thinking and investing your time there. And then everything else just starts coming together. If you do that upfront work. Yeah, I love that you got some help. 90 minute books, I'm familiar with them and they help guide you through that process. I don't think there's any shame whatsoever in getting that kind of help. I know a lot of writers feel like, oh, but I'm a writer, I shouldn't need help. Well, I mean, you got your own thing. I mean, there's only so many hours in the week, right? So let's use it wisely.

Absolutely. I mean, yeah, there is that little like bit of rugged individualism we all have where we want to kind of go at it alone and be the self made person. But I just, I always look for just evidence in my life and try to separate the evidence of the things that happen versus the feelings. And every time I feel something like that. I hired a VA team as well, an integrator team. And they're absolutely incredible. They do incredible work. And once I did that, my top line revenue for my business grew 42% over the next six months. So I was like, okay, maybe I should just hire more people who are good at the things that I suck at. And I'd never written a book. So we hire coaches for writing, we hire coaches for getting clients or for whatever it is. In my mind, it wasn't any different. I was like, I want someone who's kind of, I want a Sherpa in this process. I want someone who can kind of guide me through the pitfalls and make sure I don't slip and mess this all up. And the thing is, it doesn't have to be a complex process. You can make it as complex or as simple as you want. But yeah, I think it definitely helped.

Well, here's what I've noticed and I've worked with Dean before. I love Dean and Dean taught me a lot of things. But one of the things that he got through my thick skull is that, look, the book does not have to be your magnum opus. So this is not going to be the book that you write. The book has done its job. The moment somebody requests it, when somebody requests it. I mean, does it have to be good? Yeah, absolutely. The content has to be great, but it doesn't have to read like something you would submit to a major publisher. So if you can get over that. And the thing with many of us writers is the perfectionism kicks in and we try to create something that we're going to be extremely proud of to our friends and family. And that is not the purpose of this kind of book. So I think if we can get over that, we can actually get this thing done a lot faster, ship, start getting results and we can move on.

I mean, agree, oh, 100%. I mean, when I had announced that I was doing this, to your point of we don't have to get it perfect. And it doesn't have to be the magnum opus. When I announced that I was doing this, I had hundreds of people reach out and say, yeah, I want a copy. And I was like, you don't even know what's inside.

Oh, you were just getting started, right?

Oh, yeah. I basically, I was like, hey, I have this book coming out. Here's the title. It's about blah, blah, blah. I had a sentence or two about what it's about and I was like, I did it on Facebook, I made a little post and I said, if you want a copy, just write. Make it rain in the comments. They made it rain with the comments. There were dozens and dozens and dozens pouring in the hours after that. And it was just so funny because I was like, I could send you a book and it could be blank, but it doesn't matter. Obviously I wouldn't do that. But hypothetically, it doesn't matter because the title and the big idea is what captured their interest, not what's on page 34 in paragraph two. That's not what matters is most. It's really about the big Idea. And just like with our writing, with any writing project, we do really the big idea is what's going to carry it. So I don't think those two things are unsimilar.

Let's talk about how you've promoted the book. So obviously you had a big launch, but in a week by week basis, how do you get the word out? What kind of campaigns or efforts do you have out there to help promote it?

So in the beginning, I like to do a lot of organic social to kind of test and gauge interest. And I'm very big on doing this. I don't have a 5,000 person friends list or even my email list is just over 1200 people. So it's not huge by most standards, but it does give me a solid feedback loop because the people who I am connected with are very engaged and they know a lot about me and the work that I do. So what I always do is in the beginning when I'm getting these ideas. I just did this the other day because I'm going to be writing a second one later this year, is I just test out, hey, here, I'm going to write a book on this topic. Are you interested in this? If you get crickets, you know, if you have a friend list of 82 people and none of our business owners, you're going to hear crickets. But if you have, you know, a lot of people on LinkedIn or Facebook or something where you have a lot of business connects. You know, you could test it out and say, are people interested in this? And if you get a bunch of responses, okay, maybe it's a good idea to create it. And then you think about the title. That's usually the next part. The title, the subtitle, and you kind of flesh out the big idea a little bit more. And then you could test that out as well. You could email your list about it and say, hey, what do you guys think about this? Like, if I wrote this book, would you want a copy? And if you have that marketplace response, then you say, okay, I hit a nerve here. If you hear crickets or people don't understand it, or they're not really clear on why it's important, then you got to go back to the drawing board. I think that's the biggest thing, is you don't have to be a perfectionist, but you should test these things out in the beginning to make sure. I'm a very big believer in not doing work twice. So I don't want to write a book and then launch it and then see that no one wants it and then have to rewrite the book. I would rather see if people want it first and then go and create the thing that people want. And I do that with courses, I do that with books, I do that with offers. I do that with every single thing. Because I'm just not in the business of doing work twice.

Absolutely.

Yeah. And then once the book was done, then I got some images from Dean's team, and there was one with the picture of the book. So I put that on social and said, hey, we're going to be releasing this soon. Book's about to be done. Putting finishing touches on it. Let me know if you want a copy. And then I got even more of a flood of responses. And that was when I had people, even some potential clients, private messaging me, like, hey, yeah, I want the book, I want to pay for it. And even I even want to talk to you about doing some emails for me. And I was like, whoa, okay, that was. You still have not read the book at this point. But that's the thing. It doesn't matter, because it's such a powerful way to credentialize yourself and to set yourself apart.

So, yeah, right away, I mean, you hadn't even published that. This thing was already generating leads and potential clients as a kind of an ongoing marketing strategy for you. I think you run Facebook ads still to it. You offer it on your website. What Other things do you do to just keep it alive?

Yeah, I spend about depending on the month between 1000 and 1500 on ads between Facebook and Amazon. The Facebook ad strategy, it's kind of like a two prong strategy. And I have Mike Yonda is the guy who runs my Facebook ads and he's awesome. He's basically having me do a lot of engagement videos which are more long form content and then we just retarget those people with an opt in for my book. And that's starting to work pretty well. We're starting to get those things dialed in and bring down the cost for subscribers, which is good because it's growing my list and just bringing more people in my world getting more inquiries. Ever since I started running the traffic, I've been getting twice as many leads as I normally had. It's weird, almost every single Sunday I wake up with some random person who finds my website mostly because of my book and fills out an application to work with me. And also on Amazon too. I'm obviously, like I said before, I'm not making money on the book, but it's not the point to make money. The point is to get the book into as many people's hands as possible. And what I did was I created a Kindle version and then I have the paperback as well. So. And then I give it away free on my website, which I know is kind of weird. Like why are you giving away for free if you're charging for it? But the people who are probably finding it on Amazon have never heard of me before. But anyway, so yeah, I'm just spending money and just trying to get the book into as many people's hands as possible. And then I also have a bunch of printed copies that if I go to events, I give them out to people every now and then I'll do it. When I initially launched, I think I did a contest like hey, if you share my book's landing page on your social profile, I'll send you a free copy of the mail. And I had about 20 or so people who did that. So it's still an ongoing experiment. I'm still always looking for ways to optimize and improve. But it's fun because it's cool, it's helpful. It's not like you're giving away some one page piece of crap lead magnet you bought off Fiverr. It's like you're giving away something that's really helpful. It's 58 pages, it's packed with stuff, it's got examples and People can take it and they can use it and actually get results from it. It's definitely an interesting and fun experiment.

Well, I love that it's 58 pages. I mean, I hadn't asked you about that, but that goes to show. Look, this thing doesn't have to be, again, 300 pages. This the business book you were meant to write. This is not your life's work. It's really just adding great value on a very specific topic. I'm curious, I don't know if you've measured this, but what have the results been to date? I mean, I can tell that it's paid off in a big, big way, but do you have any metrics that you could share with us in terms of what it's generated for you or give us some idea?

There's kind of tangible benefits and there's more intangible benefits. There's tangible benefits in terms of more contracts, longer retainers, those kind of things where there's immediate financial benefits, then there's also just so many intangible benefits like getting invited to summits, getting onto more and different podcasts, getting invited to do interviews and have affiliate relationships. So it's hard to kind of tally it all up and put one nice neat bow on it and give you like one specific number because there's just so many, you know, there's the financial benefits and then there's just also so many non financial benefits and just long term seeds that you're planting. You know, like every time I send out, like it's one of those things where that's going to live on their shelf, it's going to own a piece of real estate in their home and maybe when they need that email person, I'm going to be the person that they call. Like I said, it's hard to put an exact figure on it, but it's definitely. My income is definitely skyrocketed since I published it.

Yeah, there's no doubt that it's paid off in a big way. I like what you said about you're noticing all the additional benefits like being invited to speak and so forth, because like, yeah, you're right, that does plant seeds. And now you have a multiplier effect because now that you can speak to the specific audience because of the book, now you're generating some additional leads short term and long term at that event. And then that multiplies itself too, right?

Over time, 100%. I mean, it's crazy. I have to turn away gigs every single week because. And that's part of the problem, too. It's like, eventually, when under the current structure of my business that I've been working with clients, it's been hard to take on more work just because you know how it is, you get maxed out and you can work 100 hours a week, but it's probably not that fun. So you have to start referring those gigs out. So there's money that I'm just giving away because I just don't even have the bandwidth for all these jobs that are coming. But for people who are listening to this, it's not like you're going to write a book tomorrow and this might not necessarily happen. Obviously, it takes work. You have to have a bit of distribution, you have to have a bit of experience and somewhat of a network. So it's not some magic pill necessarily. But if you have been doing this for a while and you have a network and you have all of those things, this could be the thing that really boosts you to the next level.

I'm curious, as we start wrapping up, what kind of advice you would have for other writers and copywriters who want to try the same approach. Especially if somebody who's listening says, that's great, but I'm more of a content marketing writer. I don't have the results, for instance, because what you do with direct response email marketing, sometimes it's very easy. It's usually very easy to measure a lot of this stuff. But. But let's just say they're doing good work. They're definitely delivering results for their clients. They're just not maybe as tangible. So I want to make sure people don't discount what you're doing here because they think, well, this wouldn't apply to my business. So what would you say to somebody who's doing great work? They're intrigued by this, but they're not sure how they can make it work.

I think the best piece of advice that I could give is you got to think about this in terms of the problem that you could solve and the result that you could deliver. This was my problem for a long time as a copywriter, Especially early on my career, I was like, oh, I just got to find someone who could pay me for emails or pay me for a sales letter and like, really? No. Or for blog posts or whatever. Even if it is content, whatever it is, like, that's the drill. But we all want the hole, right? That's that old advertising cliche, right? Like, people don't want the drill. They want. They want the hole. So they could Hang the picture on the wall or whatever it is. So if you, you just got to start finding what those holes are for people. So even like with content it's like why do they want the content, right? Like maybe they really just want more traffic, maybe they want more email opt ins, maybe they want to pre frame people better, right? So those are three completely different problems, right? Like which one of those problems do you specifically solve with the content you create? And I think in terms of like, you know, if you want to write a book, like that's kind of the frame of mind, the worldview that you have to have and the filter that you need to apply in your reality when you're looking at all these things, right? Because no one wants to hire a copywriter, no one wants to hire a content writer. What they want is the result from that experience, right? They want the product, they want to cut a check and get a result. That's what everyone. You know, now as, as I'm starting to become more of an entrepreneur and business owner where I'm starting to write less and develop more of my own infrastructure, I'm starting to notice as I hire contractors myself, like man, I wish I could just cut a check and get this thing done. I need to find a person who can help me do that. And I don't care what they do as long as it works. So you have some flexibility there. But it's really about just finding the problem and just thinking about that result that you could deliver.

Right on man. Couldn't agree more. Chris. This has been great, man. This is very inspiring. You've given us some great ideas here. Where can people learn more about you? Where can they take a look at the book? Where can people connect with you?

Yes. So the book's on Amazon. If you feel like paying for it, go right ahead. Thank you. You don't have to though. You can go to www.themakeitrainbook.com youm can also go to my main website which is the email copywriter.com I give it away for free both places. So either or you'll get onto my list. But yeah, you can check it out. Take a look. It's short, it's quick and easy to read, but it's one of those things where you read it in the afternoon and the next email you write is going to be a heck of a lot better.

That's awesome. I'm buying a copy because I want the printed version. Digital is just doesn't work for me. I got to have it in my hands. And highlight passages and dog ear pages. That's just me. Hey, that's great, man. We'll make sure to link to all of that in the show notes. And again, Chris, thanks for coming in today and sharing your insights and expertise with us.

Thanks so much, Ed. I really appreciate it. Have a good time. The High Income Business Writing Podcast is a production of B2B business launcher. Learn more at B2B launcher.com.

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