#296: How Dave Snyder Scaled Up to an 8-Figure Content Writing Business

Person operation to a massive agency with hundreds of employees and thousands of contractors. They simply want to earn more and less time and they want to maintain a lifestyle business. Part of getting to a more successful lifestyle business might involve scaling strategically with one or more contractors or changing their business model to some degree. There are many, many ways to have a massively profitable lifestyle business, and they don't all involve scaling into a highly complex operation. Every time I work with a coaching client who has this goal, we unpack this and we look at many different ways to scale based on their values and based on their goals, and we pursue the one that's the best match. Dave Snyder is different. About 12 years ago, he decided to grow his writing business aggressively by going after clients that needed marketing content at scale. I'm talking about content needs in the range of hundreds and hundreds of articles and other content assets every month per client. And for brands such as Stitch fix fanatics and LinkedIn, whose main goal is increasing organic web traffic, improving SEO, and building brand awareness, the road to getting there was not easy for Dave and his team. Dave faced constant challenges and setbacks that would have caused most people to give up. And we're not talking about short term challenges and setbacks and inconveniences. Some of these setbacks were massive and they lasted years. But Dave persevered and today his company, Copy Press, is a very successful eight figure. You heard that right, eight figure content agency with dozens of employees and more than 2,700 writers. In this interview, Dave shares a story of how he got to this place, including why it took so long to find success, the biggest mistakes he made along the way, his marketing and sales strategy and why it's so effective, and what sets Copy Press apart in a market filled with MeToo content agencies. I was very intrigued by Dave's story on paper, but I wasn't sure what to expect until we actually connected and started talking. And frankly, I was very impressed with what he shared with me. And I'll say that even if you have zero interest in scaling up your business to anywhere near this level, and you probably won't, and that's okay, you're going to enjoy this conversation. I hope you keep an open mind throughout the episode. There are many, many lessons here, some of them very nuanced. If you look carefully and what Dave shares in our conversation, I think you're going to walk away with a new perspective and a few very interesting insights. So with that, here's my conversation with Dave Snyder. Dave, welcome. It's great to have you on the show?

Yeah. Thanks for having me, Ed.

Well, so I'm really curious to hear about your story because I think it's something that a lot of us can learn about. Before we there, why don't you kind of give us a glimpse into your business? So who are you? What kind of business do you run? What kind of work do you guys do? And then we can kind of fill in the origin story a bit.

Yeah. So, you know, I'm Dave Snyder. I'm the CEO of Copy Press. You know, my background is largely in marketing and SEO, but I'm also a writer myself. I have a degree in creative writing from fsu. Very valuable degree. Worth. Worth all of the money I paid for it. But you know, Copy Press is a content production company.

Right.

I always look at us as a platform, as a service. We're not a middleman.

Right.

I think a lot of content companies tend to be middlemen where it's just they're connecting you with a buyer, potentially. Copy Press's unique value is we don't just connect with the writer. We do QA editing, platform integration in terms of technology.

Right.

And so what we're trying to do, the way I look at is we have two customers. We have our end buyer who's buying content from us, but we also have our contractors, our writers.

Right.

Like they're customer for us in the sense that, you know, when you're freelancing, you're doing content writing, you've gotta be able to build a client qa, your own work, edit it, talk to the client. We take all those things away. So hopefully the content writer can get a better hourly rate.

Right.

There's some education that has to happen there because people will just look at their per word rate and be like, this is lower than what I would charge. And it's also like, yes, but let's do some math together, because I can actually help you make more money. But that's our business. Our real specialty is content at ludicrous scales. We can produce like 2,3000 articles a month from. For a client, have. For customers. We have customers that we produce content across like 3 or 400 of their customers. From an agency perspective, again, these are projects for all of your writers that are listening who may start off hating someone like me. Cause they see me as a middleman. These are projects that would never go to them.

Right.

Because it's just too. The. The economy of scale is way too big. Somebody's gotta manage this.

You're talking about a client that.

That big yeah, yeah, right. It's like, you know, you may end in a pool of writers, but these aren't like your one off sales, copywriting, or really high yield valuable customers on a smaller basis. This is just tremendous scale. That's really Copy Press's specialty.

So tell me a little bit about what kind of clients you guys work with and what kind of content are you mostly producing?

Yeah, great question. Copy Press splits into a 54, 50 on client type. We work with enterprise clients a lot.

Right.

Our biggest clients today are enterprise, you know, meaning like, you know, a billion dollar revenue type of company that has really high scale needs. Our other type of client are agencies actually. And those are the ones I really enjoy working with the most because I help, I love helping people grow their businesses. And that's what we end up doing, right? We end up like say an SEO agency that they don't have the internal resources to do content production. But you know, billable hours are a tough business model and you need to have recurring revenue. We come in and help them scale that and teach them how to sell quality content and how to manage it and whatnot. And so that's the other 50% of our business. And I really think that's the future for us. I'd like to get to eventually 100% of us just helping agencies scale this offering. Yeah, that's, that's our basic client makeup.

And do you work with agencies who maybe do have some writing capability? So like not an SEO, but let's just say a traditional marketing agency. But they, they really want to scale their writing because they're having a hard time filling that themselves.

Right.

And the beauty of working with a Copy press type of company is the ability to scale up and down.

Right.

So like, all right, we have our normal customer flatline level. We can manage that ourselves. But oh wait, I just got this huge opportunity for an RFP and I need some help. Copy Press, let's bring you in. I know I can keep the quality level at the same amount and then those guys go away. I now don't have to lay off five writers or whatever your structure looks like. I can now just scale down with Copy Press. So, you know, it's, it's SEO agencies, just general marketing agencies, some content writing, a couple of agencies that just focus on editing that. We come in and help with writing as well. So it's kind of across the board where we're kind of working with lots of different agency models.

Well, I definitely want to ask you a little bit more about business development. But, but before we get there, let's. Let's talk about a couple other things since. Since we're talking about, you know, where you are today, let's go back in time. I know that, you know, from looking at your website, you have over 10 2,700 writers on your team, contract and full time. But I know that this wasn't always the case. And, you know, it looks great now, but you went through a journey to get there, the journey with a lot of perils. So why don't you tell us a little bit about that? You know, kind of the early days and kind of the early challenges and.

What you went through. Yeah. So when we started the first iteration of Copy Press, I was actually an owner in another agency and this was a sub product that we rolled out. This was Pre Panda. So 2010, before Google really came out and said, hey, quality content's important.

Right.

So I'm just going to be honest. We were a penny a word kind of provider, right, that we were paying writers a penny a word. It was the market in those days, right. So everybody understands. When I got my start online, it was creating. I was writing for fantasy sports sites and I think I got like 30 cents, like little blurb that I wrote or whatever. It just. There was a time on the Internet where people commoditized value high quality content. They didn't care. They just wanted words on a page, right. And let's just throw it online. And we started there and what we realized before Panda even rolled out was this is unsustainable. Eventually the market's going to move towards quality, right? Because it was content, it was just words on pages all over the Internet and like, nobody's finding valuable information. So we started making a move towards paying our writers more and charging. Charging our customers more. Well, when you're the first person out of the gate with that strategy and everybody's only willing to pay a penny a word or two cents or whatever, it's hard to find business, right?

Oh, yeah.

So for five or six years, I mean, we just, we battled against the commoditization of content. Like we, we had to wait for the market to move towards us. And we've seen that happen in a big way, you know, like where now what we're charging customers, I keep increasing and I keep paying the writers more because people are just willing to pay it.

Right.

Part of that has to do with the labor market, how it currently is, which is helpful. But I think also people realize, like, just like every other job in the world, Copywriters aren't all equal.

Right.

And so you're gonna have a lower level, you're gonna have a mid level, a high level, and those all need to be paid in a differentiated manner, and that's totally fine. But there was five or six years where we basically should have been out of business. I mean, I was taking loans, what are called merchant account loans, where I'm taking loans against my credit card billables and paying 30% on them.

Wow.

Every single time. Just to make payroll. Just to make payroll, man. Like my life savings. My wife. My wife got an inheritance that went directly into the business at one point, Right. It was just like, let's just keep making payroll and keep building our software and our systems, because I really believe that the market was going to come around eventually. And, you know, it's also like the gambler in me that eventually I was so deep in, I was like, all right, I guess I just got to keep going.

What did I heard a. A term the other day I never heard before? It's like chasing a falling knife.

A hundred percent. Yes. Yes. That was it, man. I was like, all right.

Trying to catch a falling knife.

Yeah. And so we just kept putting money in, hoping that the market would turn, and then not only would it turn, but that we would be an effective player in the market once it turned. And all things did work out for it. But I would advise anyone against taking the path that I did.

Right.

I think learning from my story, it's, don't scale before you're ready to scale. I mean, we had a lot of staff in those days because we were kind of pre building what we wanted to have. We were investing money in places that just didn't need to be invested in yet. So when I talk to a lot of agency owners today, it's like, maintain profitability and extra cash in the bank. If you start hiring people, don't be living hand to mouth because you lose that one customer and all of a sudden you're figuring out how payroll's going to be made.

So how long a period was it where you really struggled to make ends meet?

Yeah, I would say until 2017, things started turning around for us.

So that's what, like a five, six year period?

Yeah. Yeah. Wow.

That is a long time, man.

No, I mean, we should be, like, I've said we should be out of business. I call myself the cockroach of content marketing because it's just like, no matter what we got thrown at us, we stayed alive. But again, it worked out Hindsight's fine, but it's like, it was a lot of pain and struggle to get to where we are now.

So why don't we maybe unpack that a little bit and tell me about some of the things that you're. You're glad that you did and stuck to and others that looking back, you know, you probably could have gotten away with not investing there or doing or pursuing endlessly.

Yeah. Yeah. I think one bit of advice I'd have for anybody running a business if you're going to hire people, is be reasonable. Like, I have a huge heart. And so that really got me in trouble for five or six years where I literally did anything I could to keep people employed.

Right.

Like, I mean, I sacrificed my family and put way too much on the line. And what you'll start to realize over the years as you own a business is your loyalty may only be one way where you're doing everything you can to keep people employed. But as soon as the next good job opens for them, they might be out the door. And it's really about keeping that balance of understanding. Like, you should do good for your employees. You should treat them well and do everything that you can for them. But there needs to be a limitation on that.

Right?

Because for sure, on their side, there's going to be a limitation.

Right.

It's kind of like you have your employees. Like, I know my employees today that if I stop paying payroll for two months, they would be there at the end of that two months. And then, you know, your other employees that wouldn't. They would. As soon as that relationship stops, which is right by them, they should. Nobody should work for free, you know, but keeping a really good perspective on your employees and being willing to make layoffs and cuts when you need to, it's really in the best interest. It's like being in a relationship.

Right.

If you're just in a toxic relationship, staying in that relationship is not good for anybody. So just being. And maybe people don't have this issue. Maybe it was just an inherently hard issue for me to get a hold of for a long time. But just realizing who your key players are and when. When it's economically time to make cuts, that's okay. That's not a failure. That just means your business is changing and you need to make those changes.

Right.

I would really harp on that with. With most people. I think some people are probably more capitalist than I am and just know that you do that kind of thing. But for me, it was a really hard lesson to learn.

No, I don't think, I don't think you're alone because most people in my audience and myself included, it's a very personal thing. Most people in my audience didn't come from a corporate background where they were used to this, you know, where they had to fire people. It's a very personal thing and they, it hurts and they don't ever want to be in that situation. So I don't think you're alone.

And I think everybody, like, you know, over the years we've employed hundreds of people that have come and gone for different reasons. And I think looking back, almost everybody's left better than when they came into copy press. More knowledge, more information, better resume. We paid them correctly, right? We did the right things. There's a net positive there. And so I think that's what you have to start gleaning, right, and saying, okay, this is it from a positive standpoint. I think what we did correctly, we're in kind of a different space than some of your listeners. But we never took venture capital. I have some investors that are friends, but we're a software backed company. And so there was that thing of like, oh, should we take venture capital? Like that will destroy a company. If you're looking to build a profitable real business, venture capital is not really what you do.

Right.

Venture capital is there for just grow at all costs and who cares if you make money or not. And eventually there's only two ways for venture capital backed companies to go. Well, the one path is like acquisition, slash ipo, which is way unlikely or you're out of business. Right? Those are your two options. And so if you want to run a real business, you got to pick the right investors, I think.

Right.

Even if you are going like I did with friendly investors, I would say, dude, due diligence on that. Like are you taking on an investor who if they don't get this money back, it's going to be huge on them. They're probably going to be constantly banging down your door, hey, how's this going? I got lucky. I got guys that when they invested it was extra money that they're rolling the dice on.

Right.

So they left me alone for the most part, which has allowed me to make both mistakes and get out of the hole eventually.

Right.

So I think picking the right investors was the best thing I ever did.

When did you take on investors? I'm just curious.

It was early. It was like right away. And so, you know, if you think about the story, we, we just, we blew that cash in like two years.

Yeah.

And so part of that, part of my desire to continue pulling even when I shouldn't have was my indebtedness to, to them, you know what I mean? Like, I'm on the hook for the money. They would never come after me for it. But that's just who I am. And if somebody's given me something and entrusted me, I'm gonna get us to where we need to be.

Was it an equity investment? So they were. They gave them some ownership in the company.

Yeah, exactly. Right away, yeah.

Okay. Yeah. So. So that. Tell me a little bit about the other thing you did, which was building a platform, so software backed. I know we've mentioned it a couple of times, but talk to me a little bit about that and how that makes you different.

Yeah, so the market's weird. There's a couple of players that sell solutions and you could probably build something yourself off of like a notion, so. Or one of these workflow programs. But when we first started, we knew scale was going to be our main thing. And in order to scale content again, 2,000 articles a month, you need to be able to onboard writers and keep data and information on them. You need to be able to manage payroll.

Right?

Like, how are we going to pay these people? When you have 10 writers you're paying, you can manage that via PayPal or write checks or whatever. But when you're paying out a couple hundred every single month and millions of dollars in payroll every year, you need a system that ties in with multiple payment processors. Because we got people in the US that will get checks. We've got people out of the country that can only get PayPal. So we've got to be able to differentiate that. And then you need a system that you can load lots of content and then build workflows around. Workflows are really the key of high quality content. Too few people really talk about it, right? It's just like this, this concept that if you're a really good writer, it will all work out. And it's like, no, there's a planning stage. Like one of the things that we did early on that nobody was doing was creating style guides for the customers. People were creating content briefs, right? Here's what I want for this content. But what about an overarching style guide? Like when you go get a website design, they start with a style guide. What's your typography, your colors, your logo? Same thing should happen for content, right? Like what's your voice and tone and like all of these things. So we Started creating style guides beginning of the workflow process.

Then were you insisting that 100%. Yeah.

We would force it on the customer. Yeah. Because customers are paying. They'd be like, oh, we don't need this. And then you come back and they're like, this doesn't fit what we'd want. It's like, well, if we would have started with a style guide.

Yeah, I'll know it. I'll know it when I see it.

Yeah, the worst. The worst, Right. Like, I've been on so many of those calls when it's like, I can't tell you what's wrong, but I just know it's wrong. Cool. So content briefs, and then we've created a really good editor where, you know, you work with different customers that get that want to structure their data in different ways depending on the CMS they're using. So we are able to actually create very customized templates for an assignment. Right. Where we could put, like, meta descriptions and titles and like, different tags and whatnot. We have a description box there and then we have, like, commenting features like in our. In our. In our cms, where we can create the word. You can actually just, like Google Docs, highlight something and then give a reason why it's wrong. And editing features and there's commenting boxes. Right. These are all things that once you hit a certain scale, you could do this all in Google Docs. But, you know, you get to a couple hundred pieces for one customer and it becomes untenable.

Right.

So we. We had to create our own system because there was also the other issue. There's nothing on the market that really works the way we wanted it.

That was my next question. If there is anything out there.

No, I mean, we looked at a system called Kamiak. There's a couple that were built, it seems like, for, hey, you have copywriters in a couple different places, but they didn't have, like, the accounting situation. And they all seem to. Here's what it seems like in this market, some guy was working on a content program and built a software for that content program and then offered it out there, which means it was specifically built for that and not flexible for everything.

Right.

So if I want to do articles, and maybe that was built for that, fine, but now we've got another one where it's product descriptions or it's this or it's FAQs.

Right.

That we're building for a customer. These are inherently different. The data needs to be structured differently. And so, yeah, I mean, it just wasn't anything in the market that matched what our need was. So then we went down the path of building our own system. I mean, we started off with our own system, but I can tell you that early system was a hot piece of garbage and probably could have been replicated with just doing Google Docs and whatnot and what we're sitting on today. And so what we've also done over time is said, okay, we want this to be the core cornerstone of all of our work. And so we're currently launching like sows and proposals like the front end of our business development into this system as well. So that way it's just like one streamlined thing where it's like, all right, we're doing a proposal and sow that flows into a client, flows into a campaign, right? And so the full lifecycle of a customer will be kept in that system. Which is great, right? I can just put everything in one place and not have them all over the place in, in.

So you said you started developing this early on. That was part of the challenge that you had is you're pouring money into this 100%. I mean, we're knowing this was going.

To be key for you. 100%, like probably, I would say consistently half a million a year in development costs. Wow.

Okay.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So I would have not guessed that.

So just po. I mean, between.

Right.

Because when you're building a system this big, you've got developers. I've got a top end chief product officer and then I've got a product designer.

Right.

Somebody building the front end ui. But also usability is key.

Right.

If you're dealing with 500 riders, you gotta account for the, what I call the mom factor. Like my mom getting in the system and knowing what to do when she's in there.

Right.

So you don't have to walk everybody through. And so, yeah, man, it's, it's an expensive build and then you have the maintenance element. Once you get a few hundred people in there, things start breaking, bugs start popping up. So we've got developers like that are bug chasing. We got developers building new features. My product guys constantly managing the task list between the two and managing our internal users, which are our staff. So yeah, I mean that's where a lot of the money went, right. Was just software development. Knowing if we ever want to get to this level of constantly managing the task list between the two and managing our internal users, which are our staff. So yeah, I mean, that's where a lot of the money went, right. Was just software Development, knowing if we ever want to get to this level of managing these huge campaigns, this is a necessity. It also makes us inherently unique in the market.

Right, Absolutely. Well, I can see why this wasn't a luxury. If you wanted to go down the path that you had set, you needed this. So the other area I wanted to ask you about was staff people. You know, you invested in people. I think you've mentioned that you have a hybrid model. You have employees, you have contractors. Tell us a little bit about, you.

Know, staffing, managing these huge campaigns. This is a necessity. It also makes us inherently unique in the market, Right?

Absolutely. Well, I can see why this wasn't a luxury.

Yeah.

So.

We have a hybrid model, and we started this because our main enterprise customer was very specific in their needs, and there was a really high volume of content to where, you know, working with. The way I've always seen, if you.

Wanted to go down the path that you had set, you needed this. So the other area I wanted to ask you about was staff people.

Our role with our contractors is we are kind of a spillover for them.

Right.

So a lot of these writers have their own customers that they're working with. But if they have downtime. All right, I will get some work from Copy Press for the week.

Right.

So what makes it hard for us is when we need to deliver 400 articles a week, I need some kind of consistency in that. And so we realized we needed some internal writers. It also allowed us to create better training materials and to understand the issues that the contractors were having better. So I think today we've got about 50 internal writers. We have about 10 internal editors. We've also integrated with an editing system called Prooft, which is just a company that does editing, because editing is really a key component of what we do as well. It's always overlooked, but, you know, it's hard. Like, as a writer myself, I am terrible at self editing. Like, I am bad with grammar. I can't catch my own mistake. So having that extra set of eyes.

Is really, you know, you invested in people. I think you've mentioned that you have a hybrid model. You have employees, you have contractors. Tell us a little bit about, you know, staffing.

Yeah, so we have a hybrid model. And we started this because our main enterprise customer was very specific in their needs. And there was a really key.

But.

Where I blanked. I just blanked on the original question.

Well, yeah, the. The hybrid model and.

Oh, yeah, you needed the employees. Yeah. So, I mean, we have a tech staff, and then I Needed a production staff, a team that was managing the writers, assigning to them, understanding them. Then we needed an HR staff. So not just to manage our internal staff, but to manage the issues that you're working with. 2700 contractors, they're gonna need to change their bank accounts. You gotta get 1099 every year. Oh, total nightmare, man.

And people in different kinds, high volume.

Of content to where, you know, working with the way I've always seen entries.

It sounds like you do have some people in other places.

You gotta know all the tax issues for everything that you're going through. So we have an HR slash community team. We needed a client management team.

Right.

So I did. What I didn't want was the people managing the writers and the editing and the production managing the client themselves. So have a client management team. Our role with our contractors is we are kind of a spillover for them.

Right.

So a lot of these writers have their own customers that they're working with. But if they have downtime, I will get some work from copy press for the week.

Right.

So sales team, which is really just me today. So, yeah, I mean, and all these components, we didn't know what we were doing early days. Right. Like, it's funny, the person who runs my HR today has had eight different jobs in the company. My COO has had every job.

Right.

Like, we've kind of figured it out as we've gone. I do think that we are really well structured today, but that, that only came from us failing. I tell everybody all the time, like, I mean, all we did was fail for 10 for so long that that's how we figure it out. You know, some people are lucky and just figure it out. That wasn't our path at all. We fumbled until we got it correctly. But yeah, I mean, we, we, we have to keep this hybrid. I think we're going to keep this hybrid kind of brighter thing going on long term because I actually think it makes it better for the contractors. Again, we have a better insight today on what training materials are needed. What makes it hard for us is when we need to deliver 400 articles a week, I need some kind of consistency. That's something unique that we offer for the writers. Again, we don't just send the writers out and be like, hey, here's a breezy in that. And so we, we realized we needed some internal writers. Um, it also, we offer them training on, here's how to write for this customer based on their style guide and based on what we know about them.

Oh, okay. That's Interesting. So on a per client basis, not just training in general, but yeah, per.

Client, specifically what we want, what we've seen. And then we refilled us to create better training materials and to understand the issues that the contractors were having. So I think today we've got about 50 and find it. Because the style guide's a living, breathing document.

Right.

As we get information back, we'll update it and we refine those trainings as well. And then we'll work with writers. Like, hey, I'm having a really hard time on this. Can I get some individualized care? We have a training team of two people that will work with that writer on getting this locked down.

That's really cool.

Again, I see it as we have two customers and I. What I try to do is not be that middleman. Role of internal writers. We have about 10 internal editors. We've also integrated with an editing system called Prooft, which is just a company that does editing because editing is really a key component of what we do as well. It's always overlooked, but you know, it's hard. Like as a writer myself, I am terrible at self editing. Like I just arbitraging content from a content writer. What services can I give to a. I am bad with grammar. I can't catch my own mistakes. So having that extra set of eyes is really key.

But.

Where I blanked. I just blanked on the original question.

Well, yeah, the. The hybrid model.

And you needed the employees. Yeah. So I mean, we have a tech staff. And then I needed a production staff, a team that was managing the writers, assigning to them, understanding them. Then we needed an HR staff. So not just to manage our internal staff, but to manage the issues that you're working with. 2700 contractors, they're going to need to change their bank accounts. You got to get 1099 every year. Oh, total nightmare, man.

And people in different countries. It sounds like you do have some people in other places.

You got to know all the tax issues for everything that you're going through. So we have an HR slash community team. We needed a client management team.

Right.

So I did. What I didn't want was the people managing the writers and the editing and the production managing the client themselves. So I have a client management team, a sales team, which is really just me today. So yeah, I mean, and all these components, we didn't know what we were doing. Early days. Right. Like, it's funny, the person who runs my HR today has had eight different jobs in the company. My COO has Had every job.

Right.

Like, we've kind of figured it out as we've gone. I do think that we are really well structured today, but that, that only came from us failing. I tell everybody all the time, like, I mean, all we did was fail for, for so long that that's how we figure it out. You know, some people are lucky and just figure it out. That wasn't our path at all. We fumbled until we got it correctly. But yeah, I mean, we, we, we have to keep this hybrid. I think we're going to keep this hybrid kind of writer thing going on long term because I actually think it makes it better for the contractors. Again, we have a better insight today on what training materials are needed. That's something unique that we offer for the writers. Again, we don't just send the writers out and be like, hey, here's a brief. We offer them training on. Here's how to write for this customer based on their style guide and based on what we know about them.

Oh, okay, that's interesting. So on a per client basis, not just training in general, but per client.

Specifically, what we want, what we've seen, and then we refine it because the style guide's a living, breathing document.

Right.

As we get information back, we'll update it and we refine those trainings as well. And then we'll work with writers like, hey, I'm having a really hard time on this. Can I get some individualized care? We have a training team of two people that will work with that writer on getting this locked down.

That's really cool.

Again, I see it as we have two customers and what I try to do is not be that middleman role of just arbitraging content from a content writer. What services can I give to a content writer to help them maximize their income?

Right.

We're not where I want to be. We still get yelled at. I was getting emails weekly from this one writer that kept cursing at me and saying, don't send me content at $0.06 a word or something that was being pushed out there. And it's like, okay, I would love to send you content at whatever it is their rate was. But as the other side of my other customer, who I'm still. We're still trying to work within the market reality. The market reality is not a dollar a word yet.

Right?

Like, for some people it is. I know that.

Right.

There's great sales copywriters that are making that, but that's not the overarching market reality today.

Well, my perception from hearing you and then of course I work, I'm working in a different market. Is that you are very specific as to where you're looking for and especially if you're in the enterprise market at scale, at huge scale. It's not going to be the dollar award thing.

My.

Yeah, most of the people I coach are working, you know, these are very niche opportunities in markets where. But they have limited capacity and scale.

So I tell writers all the time, I'm like, if you want to make, you want to make that six figure or more, whatever amount of money, become a niche writer, become an absolute in one area and become the person to hire in that area. If you're just going to be a generalized copywriter, you're not going to be. It's going to be really hard for you to earn that premium pay. And so, you know, again, copy press for those people should really be a backfill as well.

Right.

If we're your day to day thing, then look, you're not going to get up to that six figures because it is hard for me to sell a dollar word at scale. But I can help backfill your pay until you get there. But you should be spending your time becoming the voice. The voice in a niche.

Right.

Pick a passion and fate and like just apply yourself in that area. And then I do think it is if you're a good writer and you can apply yourself there, the income will come, right?

Oh, absolutely. I'm working with people. You know, the goal is 200. We didn't ever charge by the hour but $250 plus per hourly, internal hourly rate. Right. But that you have to make the conscious choice to be a business owner. That's the other thing. You're running a business. Yeah, yeah.

Going to be doing stuff that. Yeah. You're not necessarily going to be getting paid for like your taxes and your.

Exactly everything else. As opposed to, you know, the other model is, hey, I want work fed to me. So if you want that somebody else paid the acquisition cost, somebody else is paying for project management and everything. So yeah, I mean I give it. There's no perfect model. You just have to know where as a writer you fit, what kind of game do you want to play. And you know, for you guys and your company, you figured out where you want to play as a business and you know, it sounds to me going back to the writers and how you want to make sure you have two different customers and one of them is writers. You haven't said this, but I'm assuming that one of your Values is you want to make sure that you're a great choice for the writers you work with, that you keep them happy.

So if you go online today, it's pretty interesting. And I think one of the things that interests me about is we're really transparent.

Right.

So if you own a glassdoor today, you'll see a bunch of reviews use historically for copy press, like five or six years ago, when things were tough and we had, like, I've, we've. We're all paid up with everybody, but we had late payments kind of going out and stuff. I mean, there's, there's record of it, like, and you can kind of see the history of it kind of going up over time where people like work. And the goal was, how do we get people to love working for copy press as contractors? I think people like working for us today, but I don't think they love it. And that's kind of like, all right, what's the next thing we can do? What's the next thing we can do, contractor wise? I think employee wise, you've always had a pretty solid footing. But yeah, I mean, you, you want to be the place that can get the best talent.

Right.

And so, like, in order to do that, people need to know, like, all right, I'm going to make good money, but also I'm going to work with. You know, what's really important to writers too, is working with editors and people that are ordering that they like working with, like anybody.

Right.

You want to like the people that you work with. And so I think we've done some good stuff on that front. I think there's a lot of work left to be done, you know, And I'm just again, being transparent that I don't think we're the best place for a contractor to work with. But I also hope I never feel that way because that means I'm always trying to get better.

Right?

Yeah. Don't get too complacent.

Yep.

So two other areas that I want to talk to you about as we start kind of wrapping. Wrapping up the conversation. One is sales strategy. I'm just curious. Business development, marketing, selling. That has got to be huge for you. You gotta feed the machine. So what is your main core strategy there?

Yeah, I actually want to write a book on this one day because I'm the antithesis of a normal sales guy. So we actually had a sales team until October this year, and I let them go. And it was an interesting thing because before that I was a sales guy and we saw huge Growth.

Right.

We saw like, I think we went from 4 to 6 million and then 12 million the next year when you were doing sales.

Yeah.

And then I think over the course of a year and a half where I had the other sales team, I think they brought in four deals. And so it was a huge down. I mean this was in the middle of COVID and Right. There's all kinds of things happening, but it was still low since that time. I've doubled our client count again since taking over in October. And really my strategy is being I don't sell, I sell without selling.

Right.

So I get on a call with people and I always start off with tell me your problem. Then I formulate whether, whether we can be the solution and how we would solve that problem.

Right.

I think too many people start off their sales with just here, let me tell you about how I do content. It's a pitch or whatever and nobody wants to hear that or they've already heard it somewhere else.

Right.

And so I want to hear what people's problems are. I want to then speak to those problems directly. I want to instill trust as well. So I'm always very transparent. Here's the things we don't do well, right. Like Copy Press doesn't because of the way we're built. We don't work well with small customers. We're not a, we're not a company built to work with a thousand customers. We're company built to work with a hundred customers at scale.

Right.

So you know, you got four blog posts a month that's not gonna, that's not a good fit for Copy Press. You know, we're not good on quick turnaround because we have so many steps in our system. And so I lay out the things we aren't good at. And I think people value the transparency and build a relationship around trust. Just, hey, if I give Copy Press and Dave a dollar, I'm gonna get a dollar's worth of, of work back and it's going to be on time and it's going to be what I expect. And so that's what I try to really instill on the sales call rather than just trying to pitch somebody on why we are good, you know, why they should work with us. The other thing that I think is really important is, and what I've done since I've come back to the sales process, when we pitch someone, I pitch them on a three month proof of concept with us. I don't do long term contracts to start because as most people listening Will know not only can you be a bad fit for a customer, but a customer can be a bad fit for you.

Right.

And I don't want to be locked into a contract where the customer is a bad fit for us. So I always try to do three month proof of concept. Can we sell each, can we, can this work on a long term basis? And then we start selling the bigger contracts. So really sales is an avenue to get people in to just try a sale. And then my client success team, as we start to really deliver the value, starts to upsell and get more and more work.

Right.

And that's the way we've structured our biz dev and that's worked really well for us. It keeps us with a client base that really fits who we are and who we're trying to work with. It also keeps the onboarding phase down because remember, we're dealing with some pretty big contracts. So if I go in with a 12 month contract at a huge number, it's going to take way longer for them to get approval on that than what you see with Most companies at $10,000 kind of budget scale where they can just spend that.

Right.

So if I go in with a three month contract at 3,000amonth. Okay, cool. Yep, that's easy to sign off on. Then again, now you got three more months to upsell them during that process. And so that's how we manage it. Like let's get people on, let's build a relationship. It let's get them into a testing phase and then let's upsell them from there. Got it.

No, I love that, love that approach. And in terms of what happens before that to even get that conversation with that prospect, what are you doing for marketing and lead generation?

So I think this is still something we're working on because this space is weird.

Right?

Again, you go back to what's a fit for copy press. I get lots of leads for like three blog posts a month kind of stuff. But you know, we're running, we have a system where we're running things like webinars. We're building some tools out and essentially dropping all of this into email sequences and newsletters.

Right.

To then move them to the next phase of the concept until, until eventually the funnel yields down into a call with me. So I think from our side, anybody who's looking for content is usually a longer buying funnel. It's not like somebody, oh, I'm going to buy this right now. They're not buying a basketball. And so you need to have secondary conversion Elements.

Right.

Like if your only conversion element is just set up a call or fill out a form on your website, then you're going to be missing out on some opportunities. So I think ebooks, case studies, webinars. Right. Those secondary elements where you can just build lists and then, sure, go get people to raise their hand and 100. And then you start to educate them on your process, why you're different. Plus they get to know you during that process as well.

Right.

So it's again, that relationship creation of, hey, we've been emailing, you've went to a webinar, you know, a little more about how we work. It makes that initial sales conversation much easier because they have a better insight into how you actually do things. We're all paid up with everybody, but we had late payments kind of going out and stuff. I mean, there's, there's record of it, like, and you can kind of see the history of it kind of going up over time where people like work. And the goal was, how do we get people to love working for Copy Press as contractors? I think people like working for us today, but I don't think they love it. And that's kind of like, all right, what's the next thing we can do? What's the next thing we can do contractor wise? I think employee wise, you've always had a pretty solid footing. But yeah, I mean, you want to be the place that can get the best talent.

Right.

And so, like, in order to do that, people need to know, like, all right, I'm going to make good money, but also I'm going to work with, you know, what's really important to writers too, is working with editors and people that are ordering that they like working with, like anybody.

Right.

You want to like the people that you work with. And so I think we've done some good stuff on that front. I think there's a lot of work left to be done, you know, And I'm just again, being transparent that I don't think we're the best place for a contractor to work with. But I also hope I never feel that way because that means I'm always trying to get better.

Right?

Yeah. Don't get too complacent.

Yep.

So two other areas that I want to talk to you about as we start kind of wrapping, wrapping up the conversation. One is sales strategy. I'm just curious. Business development, marketing, selling. That has got to be huge for you. You got to feed the machine. So what is your main focus, core strategy there?

Yeah, I actually want to write a book on this one day because I'm the antithesis of a normal sales guy. I don't. So we actually had a sales team until October this year, and I let them go. And it was an interesting thing because before that I was a sales guy. And we saw huge growth, Right. We saw like, I think we went from 4 to 6 million and then 12 million the next year.

And when you were doing sales.

Yeah.

And then I think over the course of a year and a half, where I had the other sales team, I think they brought in four deals. And so it was a huge down. I mean, this was in the middle of COVID and.

Right.

There's all kinds of things happening, but it was still low since that time. I've doubled our client count again since taking over in October. And really, my strategy is being, I don't sell. I sell without selling.

Right?

So I get on a call with people and I always start off with, tell me your problem. Then I formulate whether. Whether we can be the solution and how we would solve that problem.

Right.

I think too many people start off their sales with just here, let me tell you about how I do contact. It's a pitch or whatever. And nobody wants to hear that or they've already heard it somewhere else.

Right.

And so I want to hear what people's problems are. I want to then speak to those problems directly. I want to instill trust as well. So I'm always very transparent. Here's the things we don't do well, right? Like Copy Press doesn't, because of the way we're built. We don't work well with small customers. We're not a. We're not a company built to work with a thousand customers. We're a company built to work with a hundred customers at scale.

Right?

So, you know, you got four blog posts a month that's not gonna. That's not a good fit for Copy Press. You know, we're not good on quick turnaround because we have so many steps in our system. And so I lay out the things we aren't good at. And I think people value the transparency and build a relationship around trust. Just, hey, if I give Copy Press and Dave a dollar, I'm going to get a dollar's worth of work back, and it's going to be on time, and it's going to be what I expect. And so that's what I try to really instill on the sales call rather than just trying to pitch somebody on why we are good, you know, why they should Work with us. The other thing that I think is really important is and what I've done since I've come back to the sales process, when we pitch someone, I pitch them on a three month proof of concept with us. I don't do long term contracts to start because as most people listening will know, not only can you be a bad fit for a customer, but a customer can be a bad fit for you.

Right.

And I don't want to be locked into a contract where the customer is a bad fit for us. So I always try to do three month proof of concept. Can we sell each, can we, can this work on a long term basis? And then we start selling the bigger contracts. So really sales is an avenue to get people in to just try us. And then my client success team, as we start to really deliver the value, starts to upsell and get more and more work.

Right.

And that's the way we've structured our biz dev and that's worked really well for us. It keeps us with a client base that really fits who we are and who we're trying to work with. It also keeps the onboarding phase down because remember, we're dealing with some pretty big contracts. So if I go in with a 12 month contract at a huge number, it's going to take way longer for them to get approval on that than what you see with most companies. A $10,000 kind of budget scale where they can just spend that.

Right.

So if I go in with a three month contract at 3,000amonth. Okay, cool. Yep, that's easy to sign off on. Then again, now you got three more months to upsell them during that process. And so that's how we manage it. Like let's get people on, let's build a relationship, let's get them into a testing phase and then let's upsell them from there.

There, Got it. No, I love that, love that approach. And in terms of what happens before that, to even get that conversation with that prospect, what are you doing for marketing and lead generation?

So I think this is still something we're working on because this space is weird, right? Again, you go back to what's a fit for Copy press? I get lots of leads for like three blog posts a month kind of stuff. But you know, we're running, we have a system where we're running things like webinars. We're building some tools out and essentially dropping all of this into email sequences and newsletters.

Right.

To then move them to the next phase of the concept until, until eventually the funnel yields down into a call with me. So I think from our side, anybody who's looking for content is usually a longer buying funnel. It's not like somebody, oh, I'm going to buy this right now. They're not buying a basketball. And so you need to have secondary conversion elements, right. Like if your only conversion element is just set up a call or fill out a form on your website, I think you're going to be missing out on some opportunities. So I think ebooks, case studies, webinars, right, Those secondary elements where you can just build lists and then, sure, get people to raise their hand and 100%. And then you start to educate them on your process, why you're different. Plus, they get to know you during that process as well.

Right.

So it's again, that relationship creation of, hey, we've been emailing you, went to a webinar, you know, a little more about how we work. It makes that initial sales conversation much easier because they have a better insight into how you actually do things.

And how do you build breadcrumb trails to those assets, to those calls, calls to action.

Well, our, our biggest thing has been organic search, because that's my background, right. So if you go on copy press today, you'll find a knowledge base that has grown our traffic. We're doing about 50,000 visitors a month, and I want to get that up to 100,000 visitors a month. But we're, we've, we've leaned heavily into let's drive traffic from organic search. We've tried paid search. That was really terrible. Again, I think the market is too mixed. The other thing, to be honest with, though, is I've been around so long, my network yields the most for us and referrals, because, again, we're really, I do think we're a good company to work with as a partner. So our referrals are amazing. Once we come in, we start producing results, people leave that job, go to another one, or refer somebody else to us.

Those are great, right?

And so, like, you know, I don't know how to tell people how to build a network. I would say, like, now that the world's getting back to normal, going to conferences is a great way to build a network. Interacting with other people online and publishing content together and doing webinars, podcasts. Right. These kind of things is a great way to build a network. But a network is key, producing great work. You know, it's just like anything. If you own a restaurant and your food's garbage, people are going to tell people Your food's garbage. If you food's good, people are going to tell other people. So your business has to be good and your product has to be quality and people will start to refer you. But also don't be afraid to ask for referrals early on. And then for us, I think, yes, the way that we have sustained growth has been through organic search. I think that's going to be on a business by business basis. Right. Like, what platforms are the right fit for you? We work with like, again, agencies and a lot of B2B. So Instagram, Facebook, all that stuff's just not going to be the right channel for that kind of thing. LinkedIn will be a little bit. But organic search, specifically investing in content that somebody is looking for when they're in the process of investigating content marketing has been the way we've yielded people to those secondary conversion elements and then.

Have a call to action element there so they can ask for something, they.

Can request something, do something.

Right.

And usually it's good to have a couple.

Right.

Like, all right. On my screen right now, I can see, oh, I can contact them or I can download. Sign up for this webinar.

Right?

Yeah. And then again, having a really strong email, which I'm still working on refining, but an email sequence type of setup where regardless of the element they're going to, you're leading them farther and farther down that funnel towards purchasing.

Got it. No, I love that. I'm curious as we wrap up, if somebody's listening and thinking, I do want to scale, but what Dave is talking about is way beyond what I'm looking for. What advice would you have for them? They're looking to build maybe a small team, kind of in a niche market or in a niche specialty in a world and in a market that's very, very competitive, there's a lot of noise. What would your advice be to them?

Yeah, I mean, I think becoming an expert in that niche market is number one.

Right.

Like if I was to go back to young Dave and say, hey, what do you want to do and how would you structure this? I would honestly find one or two market rate. We serve everybody now, but I would find one or two markets to really focus in on, build all my marketing collateral around these markets. I'd find conferences that are specific.

Right.

You don't want to go to content marketing world. You want to go to like some lawyer expo and focus on the legal end of things.

Right.

That would be the path I would go down and how I would instruct people to Go. And then that way you could build like if you start talking about scaling out your writing staff, building training models, I think is going to be incredibly important. Like, okay, good, you're an expert in this niche. You can't scale yourself so you need some people to be brought on. Well, you can't just go out and find somebody who has experience in what you're doing either. So you're going to have to invest a couple of months in getting them up to speed and like figuring out how you, you actually train them up for what you need. And I think if you're investing that kind of money in someone, that's where you have to make a decision. Do I go contractor or do I go full time employee?

Right.

Because investing either one is scary. Like investing in a full time employee costs money while you're training them. Where a contractor might not, but that contractor might not be around and might not be taking full time work either. But I would say the niche thing is where I would go, right? Until maybe you find out like, hey, we're really good, let's add another niche, let's add another niche. Let's add another niche. I think that's the more important, that's the probably the better way to grow than what we did where it's just like, all right everybody, let's work with it, let's figure it out. Because I do think the marketing becomes easier, right? It's easier to silo yourself in.

Oh yeah. Especially when you're doing content marketing. You can really narrow down what you're.

Talking about, you know, legal, finance, like, I mean, and these are niches where they will pay a premium, right? So like, I think there's, there are some really great niches. Machine learning is another one that's of, you know, engineering and tech, SAS kind of stuff if you, if you have a mind for that. I, we can never find people that I had to, we booked a deal once where we needed to write a machine learning ebook and I ended up having to write it myself because we couldn't find, couldn't find anybody to write on the topic. So the, you know, I think there's some really valuable niches out there that are still underserved from a content perspective.

I think it's very wise advice and I appreciate you sharing that with us. And I want to make sure, Dave, that we send people to the right place. So they want to learn more about you, they want to learn more about Copy Press. Where should I send them?

Copypress.com is the best place to go. We have Webinars Monthly right now, so that's like this one this month I think would be valuable for your listeners. AI versus Human content. That's a topic that used to keep me up at night and now I'm just like, oh who cares? It's not a big deal. Long story short, I think there's never a day where AI takes our content writing jobs fully. I think they're for a specific niche. I think they could make things better for us. But you know, you can go to copywrest.com I'm on Twitter avesnider. I rarely go there anymore because it's a cesspool and it just makes me angry. So like I'd rather not live my life angry. So I don't go on social a ton. But copypress.com is the place to go if you want to email me. D. Snyder copypress.com I always like talking to people, writers and business owners. So yeah, you can always email me as well.

Well, thank you and thank you for coming on. I've learned a lot and I know our audience is going to find this super, super valuable. I'm really impressed with what you built and man kudos to you for just pushing through 5 years plus of most people would have quit and you pushed through. Whether it was foolish or not, here.

You are still alive. So I think we're okay.

Well, congratulations on your success.

Thank you.

Well, that's it for today. I hope you enjoyed the episode. And just a quick reminder to grab your free copy of my latest book, Burn More in Less Time. The Proven Mindset, strategies and actions to prosper as a freelance writer. You can get your free copy@b2b launcher.com or you will also find the details shown notes to this and all my other episodes. Enjoy and have a great day.