Evan coaching call with @thisismuch the #Fantasy copywriter (ep. 11)

All right, welcome back. Another edition of Coaching with Jen, the Fantasy Copywriter, episode number 11. We're already getting some props, a little different on Blab. You get props when you click on the person's face.

Okay, cool.

So what's up? Tell me what's the update has been.

Okay, so since we talked last, I developed a content calendar and I did pretty good with sticking with that. One thing I made sure that I did was do one copywriting video a week. Per our conversation. So I'm pretty proud of myself for that. Cause I celebrate, I did that.

Props, we're gonna give you props. There you go, you got props.

Yeah, and I love it because, that's awesome. That's hilarious, you can see little bubbles coming up, I love it. So yeah, so that was pretty cool. I'm really glad about that. And I have so many more copywriting videos now too. And I took your advice and decided not to like overthink it and not like write copy for each one of them. In fact, I don't think I wrote copy for any of them. Um, talked about my feelings and philosophies on things. And the other thing that's been great, which I love, is that now that I have more subscribers, people are asking me questions, um, and making suggestions and comments on my videos. And so it like gives me ideas for more stuff, more videos. So, um, it's been great. So I've been doing that, and many weeks I did 2 videos. Uh, I think maybe one week I had 3, but, uh, for the most part I did one copywriting video a week. So, and that content calendar really helped because I had it like scheduled out what I'm going to do. And that was huge to have that calendared out and scheduled and thought ahead of time.

I love it. And they're short, like 2 minutes, 3 minutes, easy to bang out because your other ones were 8 minutes, 10 minutes.

Yeah.

A lot of value, but it took an insane amount of time to put together, right?

Right, exactly. Because it wasn't just the filming and editing, it was the writing the copy and screenshots of before and afters and Those are, like you said, those are valuable and I definitely wanna do some more of those. I just, in order to keep to my goal, I just decided to make it easy, so.

Could it be multi-part too? Like that 10-minute video that you used to do, could that be 5 2-minute videos?

Yeah, I think it probably could be. 'Cause like there was like that, yeah, like that Portland Hot Copy video. I did, you know, I took 10 different websites or maybe it was 8, I can't remember even anymore, but it was like a lot of different websites that I wrote for and I could have just broken it up broken that up into individual little mini videos and like continue the series, which might be kind of a fun idea. Maybe I should do that again.

Yeah. I mean, it's great to understand the theory behind it, right? Like your, your powerful opinion on this topic on how to write a headline is whatever, and you have your methodology. Right. And then you could have a quick anecdote or example from your own life or story, or like, you know, you walked into Whole Foods and you saw this and it was great or it was terrible.

Right.

But you can easily follow that up with something the next week showing an example of a website if you wanted to go deeper into it.

Yeah, I think that's a cool idea. I love the idea of taking real-world examples, like the tweet you had the other day. I love that. That was awesome. I love that you said it was truth, and I was like, it's copy, man.

That's awesome. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. I was trying to remember what tweet.

You know what I'm talking about? Yeah, it was like a nuts thing about Christmas and how you can throw them away like after Christmas or something. I can't remember. I couldn't even hardly tell what it was. It looked like it was nuts, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, those, those, um, uh, is it walnuts? No, not walnuts.

Is it walnuts? It looked like walnuts, the picture. So like the idea was, yo, you can take these and decorate them in a bowl for Christmas and then throw them away later, because walnuts are a pain in the ass to crack, let me tell you. My grandma used to like crack walnuts. Anyway, random tangent.

I like it. So with Blab, we also, we can see, you know, how many props we each get. So you're destroying me right now in the props.

I love it. I love it. Thanks, Jay.

I feel like I need to talk more to get more props.

Oh, now he's doing it. He's propping you up. There you go. I love it.

Okay, so you have your content calendar. Great. And the content— sorry, the copy ones have been consistent and it's great to see that because you had a stretch there where it was all personal or book. Without anything about the business for a while. Yeah. So how do you evolve that now? 'Cause the goal last time was to have one personal, one copy business-related one per week.

Right, yep.

So you're close.

Yeah, I'm close. Well, I had the idea of maybe evolving it by, 'cause now that you can do little mini videos on Instagram and Twitter, maybe even just doing like a little, you know, 10-second, video or whatever, however many seconds you have on each of those to say, hey, check out my new video on. So almost like doing a video to promote the video that's on YouTube and experimenting with that.

You can, but what about getting the other piece consistent, the personal one or the book one, something you have the blue series, the—

Yeah, the blue is the Fantasy Friday. And then I've been doing the Take a Leap on Mondays, which I think would be a really good one to make sure I continue. One of the things I've done with that is a lot of my mastermind videos I've used for that, which have been great because they're kind of like, they're sort of business oriented, but they're about like my, like me though too, like my own personal take on my business. So I've been wondering like, should I continue doing those with Take the Leap or should I like focus more on like, you know, something more specific about what I'm doing to help my business, which is kind of how I sort of originally presented that series.

True, or you tie them together if you see a fit. Like, what was the last one? Talking about your favorite book?

Or no, Jera's favorite question. Well, Jera's had for this week is the, which I've filmed already, I just haven't put it up yet. So that was the, what ways to inject fun into your day right now?

Right.

So yeah, I think actually that could be applicable to Take the Lead for sure.

And if you're talking about a book that could be related, you relate that to your business. Even if it's not a business lesson, even if it's a personal life lesson, that you like. Why do you like this book? Because it gave you confidence. And then you can tie that into my business. Business. Yeah, with a good story.

Yeah, I like it. Okay, yes, I will take it to the next level and for sure do a Take the Leap video every week. And I still want to do Fantasy Friday. I'm kind of— I've been sort of doing every other week with Fantasy Friday, so I think that's kind of good to, you know, keep that every other Friday. But, uh, for sure do Take the Leap. I love it.

So along those lines, can you batch them together?

I can, I can. Like, you mean as far as filming them all on the same day?

Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, now that I've sort of established my content calendar, it's a lot easier to do that because I've kind of determined ahead of time what I'm going to do. So it's just a matter of one of the things, obviously, that I'm— because I'm a newbie, I'm still learning how to you know, what am I trying to say here? Do it quickly and smoothly. And, you know, so there are days like I planned on doing 3 videos and I only did 1 because it like took me longer than I thought, right? So a lot of—

but like, yes, yeah, I think a lot of it is that there's a lot of setup time to get ready, both in terms of like the camera and the gear and, you know, if you do a tripod, but also Uh, makeup and clothes and getting ready and doing the hair. And, and then third is just the mindset of being ready to— like, when I'm writing in my book, I don't want to talk to anybody. It's like, right, no, I get it, don't talk to me, I want to do my thing, I'm in my zone. But when I, when I finish doing one video, I can I'm right already in that zone, easy to go into another video and another video. Just give me another topic. Go, let's go, let's do more. I'm all set up, right? But it takes a little bit of mental effort to get ready for it the first time.

I agree. I agree. And for me, it's like a full-on setup 'cause I have a backdrop that I put up and then I like, I mean, you know, I'm kinda laughing 'cause my setup is kinda like Rishi's. Like I literally have this rolling dishwasher that I roll in that I like set up my camera on, which I'm changing. One of my goals this next month is to you know, get like a tripod, you know, attachment for my iPhone and some other things. But in the meantime, for now, it's like furniture like gets put in place and it's hilarious. So you're right, like it's a lot of time setting that up. So it does make sense to do them all at once.

Yeah, you could probably, you could probably bang those out and have 2 or 3 videos a week because they're not, they're not one that long. Like you're not talking Fantasy Friday is 2 minutes, under 2 minutes.

It's not, Right.

Like valuable, but not an insane amount of work to put together. Mm-hmm. Yeah, I think you just put them all on the same day. What is it? Is it still Sunday, or when is your video recording day?

I've been doing them on Tuesdays.

Okay.

I mean, I moved it to Tuesdays. I originally wanted to do it on Mondays, but it just turned out to be Tuesdays is a better day.

Okay. Yeah, try it. Yeah. I mean, at least the 2, if not the 3.

Okay. Okay. Yeah, I think it's a great idea. I mean, there was this one time with Jason, one time I like filmed like 10 videos or something in one day. And like when I went up to Seattle with you, like you had them all. I mean, guess what? If you have everything prepared ahead of time, you know, you can just whip them out. We did like what, 7 videos in an hour or something like that when I was in Seattle with you.

We just walked around with the camera. I mean, that's cool too.

Yeah.

I didn't know what I was gonna talk about. You didn't even know, right? It was like—

I didn't even know. I had no clue.

And go.

I said go. Right.

Right. And so here at least you're talking about, you know, Fantasy Friday, you're talking about something that, a quote that's meaningful to you that you like and why. Like all of this stuff you have, the copy you want to, you have expertise, you've thought about this. If you haven't like word for word know what you're gonna say, you thought about it and have an idea.

Yeah.

So Yeah, I like it. I like the idea of doing 2 or 3 on the same day. I like that you got the consistency on the business one. Now I'd love to see the consistency on the other one.

Okay, okay.

I love how Zaino has to make sure that our props are equal.

That's hilarious.

You sit there to make sure that the other side goes up and the same, now we're both at the same number and then stop.

Yay.

Until somebody disrupts the force.

Right.

And he's going to come back and make it right again.

Oh, there goes J.Rod. Yay. That's awesome.

Okay, so J.Rod actually wrote in with a question. Does the content creation bring you value personally? Is it rewarding? Does it feel worthwhile?

Absolutely. For me, I love it. I think it's great to, I don't know, I love being able to talk about it and I think it's for personally, I think it also helps clarify things for me so that when I'm out talking to customers, and making more sense too. And also I use a lot of this in my personal life. In fact, so last weekend I had a fundraiser for my dance group that I'm a part of. And one of the things that we did was a cakewalk. And so we all baked a cake and then, you know, like each one of the dancers baked a cake and then we, you know, auctioned it off at the cakewalk, right? And so I was like, hey, this is a great opportunity for me to do a little copywriting. So I took pictures of all the cakes and I made little signs for each of the cakes and it was super fun. And actually it was kind of funny. I tried to Facebook it and I totally messed up posted it on our personal Soul page. That's the name of our dance group, the Soul. And so I kind of messed up. I didn't like properly promote it like I should have. So be more prepared. But that's my point is that I can use some of the stuff I do in personal life for business as well. And it helps me, you know, cross-promotes helps me in both personal and at work.

Cool. And then, so you mentioned you're getting some comments and subscribers and feedback now starting on the channel.

Yeah.

What kind of feedback are you getting?

It's mostly positive. I think a lot of people just want to know more about something I'm talking about in depth. They want to know about more of my process. They want to know more about fantasy. I'm still amazed by people who don't fantasize, and they're like, how do you fantasize? And I'm like, I don't understand. I don't understand the question.

It hurts my head.

It hurts. Yeah. But no, they're great questions, questions that we never even think about. But I think the cool thing about the videos is they really help people understand what I'm talking about with fantasy. 'Cause I think people sometimes just go, how are fantasy and copywriting related? Like, I don't get it. And I think the videos help me communicate that and it helps them understand it. So a lot of the comments and questions are around that and around, you know, getting advice for copywriting, which are great. It's great. 'Cause it gives me more content to talk about.

And then, so can you turn those into videos?

Yeah. Yeah. Which I have done. In fact, I have like 3 more videos from past questions and comments. That are slated that I'm gonna be doing in the next couple weeks. So I gotta catch up now. Welcome to my world, holy crap. I know, right? Yeah, you have so many questions and comments. Like, you don't even have to think about any more of the content, right? You just pull what they say.

There is no more thinking. It's all requests. It's all requests. Cool. Now, like, taking it back and looking about your business, Can these be things that you show some of them to prospective clients or any of them? Is this only like helping people who wanna learn copy or would potential clients of yours be watching these and getting value from it too?

Yeah, I think they could. I could probably be a little bit more strategic about the videos that I produce and think about, okay, what would be a great video that I could email out to somebody who is a prospect, right? So yeah, I probably could be a little bit more strategic about that, but I definitely think that they— there are some that I definitely think I could use, and I have in the past. Like, there's a storytelling selling one, and actually I have that one on my, um, on my front page of my website, but I actually want to update that and make it a little bit more relevant to someone who is like new to my website. So that might be another great one I could do for the website and one I could email out to people. That's a great idea.

Even the topics, as you get, uh, As you get better, like every video you get better, more comfortable, more practiced, right? If you go back and compare like last week's compared to the first one, I remember your first one still being actually really good, like compared to my first one, like, man, Jen is a rock star. But like you may find yourself wanting to update that video a number of times. J-Rize gives you all the props. I gave the compliment, J-Rize, okay?

The props should go to, to Evan Carmichael. That's hilarious. A little bit competing for props.

Yeah, my last Blab, we had like, it was, it was an hour long. We had like 20,000 props or something. It was crazy. That's awesome. Yeah, it's an interesting platform. Yes, you may find yourself like—

I'm digging it.

What's that?

I said I'm digging this platform so far. It's fun.

It's cool.

Yeah.

So think about, it'd be good to think about what videos you can put on your website so people who are visiting get a better sense of what you're doing. That is, it ties into your channel and still is educational, but then also provides a high-level overview. And that, that may need to be updated like every 6 months, every 3 months, like as you get better. It may be the same story that you tell, but you're now better at it. You're more energetic. Maybe you use fantasy more in it. You know, it's every time you tell the story, you get better at telling that story. You find new nuances, how you word it, the intonation. You could— you just get better every time, right? So that might be a cool thing to put on. And also, if you're talking about, um, I don't know if you have a page on your site that talks about your process and your, your, your 7 steps or whatever it is.

I don't, but that'd be a good idea.

It'd be good to have a video on each one of them too.

Uh-huh.

Uh, from a content strategy on the website as well as on the YouTube channel, um, it would be great to know, here are my 7 steps and here's what each of them mean. Like, you could do a video on each. This is, this is generally like, one is headline, right? One is call to action. Um, so 3 minutes on what a good call to action is, and you've done, you've done, yeah, call to action, you've done headline. So I know those two, but there's others that I don't remember. If you did a quick video on each one of them, you could link that up on your landing page. And then also if you do future videos on YouTube channel, you can reference it back and put a card or an annotation.

Oh yeah, that's a great idea.

Today we're going to go deeper on call to action. You can watch my intro video with the link above, and then you go dive deeper with an example.

Right.

Unbear— this is the challenge I have of unbearing content. 'Cause there's so much content, people don't go back on the channel to find those things. Right.

Yeah, you have so much YouTube content. What do you think about— this is something I've actually tossed around doing before. Instead of putting like, let's, you know, like there's 7 or 8 things that are like part of my process for a sales page. What if I like did a video series with video on each one, but then I had like kind of an overview on my website that had a way to capture leads. And then they have access to the videos, you know, for free if they, if they sign, you know, give me their email. Cause I don't have any really way right now to capture email. I mean, I do, but it's real general. It's like encouraging people to share their fantasy with me or people will contact me if they're interested in copywriting, they'll just send it through that form. But other than that, there's no real motivation to sign up.

Yeah, you'll probably have, uh, two markets. This is the challenge. I just talked to this on the last Blab. Um, the guys who will respect you and pay you for the bigger projects are, are usually unlikely to go through a newsletter filter process. They may They may, 'cause you're not dealing with massive clients. But I think of, you know, for my big deals, when I sell to Microsoft or Dell or any of these companies, they never, they didn't find me through my newsletter and then they got drip content and then ended up, right? They have a need, they're like, okay, who's talking about entrepreneurship? Okay, oh, Evan, okay, let's bring him on and get a call going. Like they have a need, they wanna solve it. And so I think for those clients, that's, it's consistently putting out content so that when they are searching for copywriters, your name comes up. Or if they ask their friend and say, oh, this person, you gotta go talk to them. And it's just like sheer volume of content plus quality stuff. And so like the more you produce, the more you grow your catalog and the better you get at doing this, the more likely you're gonna get clients finding you and wanting to do some kind of deal together. The newsletter strategy can work. It's usually, it's usually at the lower end. It's usually like, it's usually like it's guys who don't have an immediate need. If they had and they had a budget, they would hire you. So it's people who don't have an immediate need or they don't have budget, right?

Or they wanna do it themselves and they just kinda want advice on how to do it.

Looking for tips. So like, I don't know if that's a strategy that you want to pursue. Like if you are then creating, if your longer term vision was, I wanna create a copywriting course, I wanna teach people how to be great copywriters, inject fantasy into what they're doing, have a ebook to sell or Udemy online course or whatever it is, um, that's definitely something that you should pursue, right? Like, my business is I do the, I do the high-end clients and I do the masses, right? Like, right, right, um, so I don't know where you want to take it with your business. Like, I've never— we've never talked about that angle. I don't know if that's on your radar, if that's of interest or not, or if it's just I want to work with clients, um, Yeah, I think it's of interest, like long term, for sure.

Um, yeah, I think it is. And I also think too that there's something to a small business owner that might like think they want to write copy themselves right now. Um, and then once they start doing it, they're like, uh, I don't want to do this, or they don't like it, or, um, it's like a temporary solution until they can grow their business more, and then they might hire a copywriter. Um, so I can see that being helpful with the newsletter strategy. Um, getting copywriting tips, you know what I mean, until they can grow more. I don't know though. I mean, I think you're right though. I think most people that have contacted me, like, they have immediate need. They saw a YouTube video or they read my one, you know, one of my blog posts, or they just heard about me somehow through a friend, and they're like, I need copywriting, I want to hire you.

Yeah, it's really hard to grow with your clients, um, Sometimes it happens and it can, but it's only a select few. Like it, it's hard to have it as a bankable strategy to say like, okay, I'm gonna go out and get all these startups and then I'm gonna work with them and give them copywriting tips. And in the future when they grow, they're gonna be able to afford to hire me. Uh, most of them won't grow, right? It's like, right, it's just you gotta be super selective on who you work with cuz most of them won't grow and And the curse of entrepreneurship of selling to entrepreneurs is they don't have budgets to pay you what you're worth.

I understand.

Right? And it's tough because you have attachment and they're on a good mission and you love what they're doing. And maybe a portion of what you do is, I mean, this is who I work with constantly. And I face that battle too where it's like, I only have so many hours in the day. I solve it through mass content like this, right? Like creating videos where people can tune in and ask questions and learn. So they may not get access to me one-on-one, but they can learn from osmosis and by hanging around and watching the videos. Um, you know, so it's thinking longer term. Is your goal to be, uh, a personality and to have a mass following? Like, do you want a mass following or do you want a niche following, um, you know, if you want to write a book, for example, right? Like, you're right, right? Then part of that is I need a following. Like, who's going to buy the book? Because if you want to get a publisher on board, they want, uh, to see that— like, now it's all about can this author sell the book? Because we don't know how to sell books. It's sure, it's all about the author. Um, so having a big audience makes a big difference there. And if that's the goal too, just like I'm going down on this tangent.

Yeah, no, it's great.

Is the audience that you're building on your channel relevant to the audience who would buy your book?

Right.

Because if you're giving copywriting tips, that's a different audience than the people who are going to want to buy a book about people doing magical things with their hands.

Right, right.

Some people overlap just because I love Jen and I love, you know, I went and wrote a book on entrepreneurship it has a high likelihood to sell to my audience, right? If I write a book about salsa dancing, which I know a lot about, how many of my audience would buy it? It's just, it's a disconnect, right?

Right.

If that was the goal, I would start building a salsa audience of people who love that and want to learn about that.

Right.

So interesting.

So would you recommend then if I, because that's one thing I do want to start doing is going back to doing more of my book fantasy videos. I mean, I have it on a separate playlist, but would you recommend maybe a whole new channel for that?

Yeah, so I honestly, I would say it depends on where you are, uh, in your life and how much you can afford to experiment. Um, right, you look at Zeno's comment there, Zeno's a hardcore fan.

Awesome. I love it.

Zane was a hardcore fan. He was on, he's been on 2 sessions today. He comments on almost every video. He loves the stuff, right? And if he asked me a question, you know, he has my attention. I would answer it. No problem. I would not buy a book about salsa dancing, to be honest. Sorry, Evan, right? Like, yeah, he's a hardcore fan. I have a lot of clout with him, you know, and he would not buy that book, right? So I mean, some people would just to support, but you know, it's, uh, it's a hard— sorry, it's a hard, um, hard market to build up. So like, if you had extra time, as an example, then you could start on these parallel paths. Uh, and like, we're talking about now, do we have enough time to do 2 or 3 videos a week on my regular channel? Now I gotta do a new channel and do this. Um, I think there can be a little bit of overlap. Uh, like I talk about salsa dancing from a business context on my, on my business channel, and I'll share stories about hiring the team and working with this company and whatever, right? I— it's always, uh, the, my YouTube channel is always a reflection of what I do and who I am. And so salsa is now a big part of it. I bring it into the channel, but I don't have how to dance salsa. I think I have like one video on there about that. The rest is just business context. If you want to learn about salsa, you can go to the salsa channel and learn about that. I like that there is some bleed because it gives greater context and understanding. But if I started posting half of my videos salsa on my YouTube channel and half of them business, I would lose everybody. Like, I would only get people who are salsa and business fans, which is a— there's an audience for that, but it's a lot smaller. So it feels like a place where it would be another channel to—

another channel.

But I worry about your time, and I want you to make your copywriting business a success and get the clients that you're looking for and need, and maybe build— if it were me, I'd probably get it to the point where I could afford to build a bit of a team on the YouTube channel, especially take the editing side away.

Yes.

So if you could just show up on a Monday or Tuesday with your washing machine, or maybe afford to buy a tripod, you know, you have your tripod, you have your setup, you have an editor— it's not a full-time editor, just somebody to edit— um, then that frees up your time to then do other things that you're great at and it could be starting this new YouTube channel. Mm-hmm.

Until then.

Until then. And you, you gotta do what's right. I just feel like it's just trying to water too many plants and then nothing gets fully watered and everything kind of just doesn't grow.

Yeah, I totally know what you mean. I don't wanna spread myself too thin. I also wonder too, it's kind of almost opposite of your business in that though, that like I feel like that my copywriting's more niche and the book is more of a mass interests, maybe. I don't know, but I could be wrong. Like maybe I've got that off and maybe, and you're right, I kind of do some overlap. Like I talk about how writing for a book can be similar to writing for copy, but it is, I mean, you're right. I think people who are just my copywriting are gonna be either potential copy, like wanna be copywriters or business owners who may wanna hire me or write their own copy. So it is different for sure. Totally different content.

Yeah, and I don't honestly know, like the group that you left out is corporate. Like I don't, that may be your biggest market of all. Not targeting, obviously not targeting copywriters.

Right.

And business owners, it's a select group who'd be willing to spend on a copywriter, but it'd be, I think corporate, like people running campaigns who need something different. They're not getting results. You walked in, I forget the store you walked into when you analyzed their signs and thought they were terrible. Right.

Yeah.

That company should be the one hiring you. So you're dealing with like a marketing, VP of marketing or communications.

Mm-hmm.

I think that's my much better angle. And then, so if that's the audience, then does your content speak to them? Now, as much as I love entrepreneurs, like I'm the entrepreneur guy, I don't think you're gonna get the lifestyle and the growth that you want trying to sell high-end services to entrepreneurs who may love it and appreciate you to death, but can't afford it.

Right. Well, I think there's like, there's somewhere in between corporate and like a small business owner. I feel like there's that, like I just saw Jay Rise's question. "To work with bold leaders, Portland style." Absolutely, I love to work with bold leaders. And I feel like there are businesses out there that have a, you know, like they're not small and they might be like a local business owner in Portland. They're not like a huge corporate client per se, but they're, 'cause I feel like a lot of corporate, what a lot of corporate clients do is they hire agencies. That means I'd be working with the agency, you know, at some kind of reduced rate 'cause they have all these access to copywriters and that, you know, I think having a relationship with someone who's a bold leader, you know, like yourself, for example, right? Who's willing to pay for a copywriter. Um, that's not necessarily a small business owner, but you're right. That's a, that's a really good thing. I really should have down, right? Who's my target client and who should I go after? And that will help determine what I'm doing with my channel.

I like, as you talked about me being a bold leader, the sun like came through the window and I'm like all lit up now. I'm feeling godly here. All right, I like it. Yeah, you know, so thinking about somebody who has a team and somebody who is doing bold things, it just may not always be the entrepreneur and it may be a politician, it may be somebody who is at a company, they may be tired of their agencies. Like, I displace agencies and when I work with them, it's not at a discounted rate, you know, like, Right. Why are you different, so different than these guys that are not producing the results, right?

Mm-hmm.

That's the key. Right.

So yeah, and you're right. And agencies might be willing to pay more too because they're working with client budgets. It just depends on, yeah, like you said, like if they like why I'm different, if they like my work, if they think it's warranted paying more money for it, right? Yeah, I just, yeah. Coming from the agency, I've worked for a couple of different agencies and I kind of know sometimes how they think and they like to sometimes, you know, hire somebody who, and pay not a lot of money so they can then keep a lot of that profit when they pass on the cost to client, right? So it's establishing good relationships directly with the client if I can.

Yeah, I have a mixed relationship with agencies. I don't wanna throw them all under the bus.

Yeah, I totally agree, yeah.

Honestly, the same thing with brands, like, Most brands that want to work with me, we can't work together. Like, we just don't align. They just want me to pitch their stuff when I haven't even used it or know it or care about it. And they're very transactional. And so I end up turning away a lot of deals that I could make, you know, some good money with, but just it's not in the long-term best interest and they won't get the results they're looking for either. I think when people clearly understand your difference, then they're coming to you with a specific goal. So you're not just, let's get a copywriter, right? Let's get somebody to write an article about small business. Tons of people could write that, right? You know, that's not me. Like, if you don't have a serious commitment to doing this and a budget, uh, I'm not the guy to work with.

Right. And I love that. Yes.

So it's like, yeah, like the equivalent, right? You, there's tons of copywriters. Great. That you, you can't be just any copywriter. And if you are really clear about that and your difference and people, how I market is I'm not really the salesperson. I'm not the guy knocking on doors and saying, hey, buy my stuff or going to networking events or any of that. It's all, it's through marketing.

I'm much more Whoa, where'd you go? Shoot, I don't know if I'm gone or you're gone. Can you see me? Okay, what happened to him? I'm still here. But what he was saying was right along with what Jason said, was, do these guys use fantasy effectively. You're right, I mean, like, that's what I need to promote is my fantasy abilities, and I can't. Okay, it's— Evan's in charge of this Blab. What do I do? I don't know what to do. Aw, yes, give props. Hmm, I don't know if I should start over. We should start a new blab. I guess we should probably wrap it up. Soon anyway, right? Oh, Jason's popping on. Hey, what's up?

Can you hear me?

I can. Yo, yo, yo, yo. Are you with Evan right now?

Oh, hell no.

Okay, spirit.

That's awesome that you popped on.

I didn't know you could pop on unless that's the problem. That is cool.

I think Evan had to click yes though.

Okay. Gotcha. Oh yeah, I think you're right because I read about Blab before.

Evan says, I can't see Jay Rise either, but feel like the session is rocking. But let's get it back on track. You and Evan were talking about agencies and brands and targets. So do you want to elaborate?

Yeah, well, I just think he had a good point, which is he was talking about basically I have something that somebody else doesn't and that's why they would hire me and why they would pay more because they're looking for something that I have, which is fantasy. Right. So I need to do a better job of communicating that. And so that people will hire me for that thing that I have that nobody else has.

Yeah. So what are some, what are some good ways you can clarify that for people?

I could do that through my YouTube channel, through my website better. I could do it, you know, through everything that I do. I feel like I do a decent job on social media, but I can, you know, I can do a better job. My website though, for sure. Like my website needs work big time.

Zeno is saying, Evan, where'd you go? I miss you so. It's like it's been forever that you've been gone.

It feels like a team.

You are a hardcore fan. I know, it totally does. It's almost a rap.

Poetic.

If you have a camera, I don't know if you want to remake the video. Evan, look, it shows he's talking. There's some kind of I know, it's like, boo, boo, boo.

I don't know if— I don't know what it is.

Magic. The magic of Blab.

All right, well, what time is it?

The session's over anyway, right?

Yeah, he was gonna end it anyway, so there he is. Yay! Yes, we can wrap it up.

We saved it. That was messed up. I don't know what happened there.

I don't either. Oh, bye, Jay. Thanks for—

thanks for rescuing us. I was ranting about agencies and then I got kicked off. It's very interesting. Yeah, so I feel like Jay Rise added some value there.

Sure.

But I think it's with any agency or clients, there's a lot of wrong people. And I think we try to, if you just sit in the box of copywriter, you're gonna get a lot of wrong people who don't, want you and just, it's a commodity service, you know?

Absolutely. There's, yeah, I could get, I just want some generic thing that's not me, right?

You type in copywriter, I can get somebody who's, you know, in high school, calls himself a copywriter who doesn't have any experience. And, you know, uh, so like it's understanding your point of difference and making that clear in everything you're doing. And I think, I think that maybe adds some clarity to the channel and your website too. Is if the audience is going to be— how are you defining it? If it's bold leaders, or I don't think it has to be limited to Portland. It could be— you're on YouTube now and it's, you know, I agree, to meet them unless you do, unless that's what you do, you have to meet them. But defining who you want to work with, and then even if you don't know them yet, right? Like then when you're creating your content and you're imagining that this ideal person is watching it, and even if it's not a, it doesn't have to be a sales pitch like, okay, and call me now, I'm Jen, the fantasy copywriter.

Right.

But if the intention is there to meet that audience, then that'll come through in the videos and you'll create the content that will be more relevant and valuable for them. Where if you just stay in the, small business, solopreneur, you know, or copywriter kind of zone, then—

Yeah, I think you've got a really great point. It's funny that this came up because I actually got in a conversation recently about this 'cause they were like, fantasy is way too niche. Like people don't understand it. Like they're just not gonna, you know, you should have like a general, like, you know, I'm a copywriter. And I was like, no, like that's exactly the opposite of what I should do. I should like, maybe just better define what fantasy is for people, but I mean, yeah, if it doesn't stand for something, then you're not, I'm not gonna attract the right people to work with me.

Yeah, and also if you look at the examples that you use, right? If you look at, I remember you had a woman, a coaching woman website or whatever.

Right.

Then who's gonna like that? It's gonna be other coaching women, right?

Right.

Which is not who you want to work with. So if you're— if in your examples and you're talking, you're showing like something that would be relevant to me as an ideal person.

Great point.

Then like if you— if you talk about politics just as an example, not that I'm advocating it, right? And talking about how politicians should be using fantasy in their speeches and you broke down for the next 20 videos is breaking down political speeches and campaigns and tactics, who is going to subscribe to your channel? It's going to be people interested in politics and how to use communication effectively. Your next gig might be writing a speech for a politician. And so, you know, it doesn't have to be your angle, but think about who your ideal client is. And maybe you haven't fully worked that out, but you think about who they are, then you create content for them. Even the intention, the intention is for them they will start to come, right?

Absolutely. Or people that are similar to them. I love it. Great suggestion.

All right, well, there we go.

All right, love it. Thank you. Great job. I'm glad you were able to come back on and wrap it up.

That's awesome. We made it. Thank you for the awesome session. Uh, have a great end of the year.

You too.

The next time we'll connect on this will be in January.

Yeah, 2016. See you next year.

I'm liking it.

I'm sure I'll talk to you before that.

For sure, for sure. Okay, cool. Thanks, Jen. Thanks everybody for watching.

Bye everybody. Thank you.