Connor Gallagher — How To Shift From A Freelancer To A Niche Influencer

Welcome to the Hustle and Flowchart podcast with your hosts, Matt Wolf and Joe Fear.

Hey, what's up, everyone? Welcome back to the Hustle and Flowchart podcast. I'm here with my co host, Mr. Jose Fierro.

Si.

That's what I call him.

Bueno.

And today we've got a special guest. We're talking to Connor Gallagher. Now, Connor's actually the copywriter that pretty much writes almost all the copy in our business. He helped us write our webinar. He's written sales letter, he's helped us with some emails, some advertising. He's kind of our go to copywriter for our Evergreen Profits business. And he was telling us a story right before we got on this call about how he just recently got his largest tax bill that he's ever gotten, his life.

And congratulations.

It had a little bit of a freak out moment and decided to restructure things and simplify and sort of rework his business. So what we're going to talk about today is that process that he went through and what he sort of discovered when he decided to, you know, make more processes and make the business more simple and, you know, just try to make life easier on himself. So thanks so much for joining us, Connor. Can't wait to dig in.

No, thank you. Thank you, both of you for having me. It's great to be here.

Yeah, man. Yeah. No, I think this has been a long time coming, this podcast episode. Yeah, yeah. Because we've been working with you for, I mean, how many years has it been? I know, Matt. You were working with him a little longer, I think.

No, well, yeah, yeah. 2009, I think I. 2009 or 2010? I think it was 2010. I think you wrote the first sales letter you wrote for me. You wrote one for Josh Bartlett, and.

Then I think kind of landed on my feet with that one.

Yeah, I think you wrote one for Josh. And then after that, I was looking for a copywriter for a launch I was doing. And Josh referred you to me. And then so back in 2010, he did the easy video player copy and then he did the Autopilot Cash formula copy, which is a product I very rarely talk about anymore.

I remember that. Oh, my God. That was like your first official launch, right?

It was. I had other products before then, but they were always kind of like more rollout.

Like the Mega launched. This is. This is it.

Yeah. And so that. That was kind of where we got connected. And I think we've stayed connected ever since. And, you know, we've Joe and I had our agency and did some client work and Connor was always our go to guy for agency work. And now that we've kind of stepped away from agency work and do our own products and that sort of thing again, Connor's our go to guy again.

Yeah.

So, yeah, I don't want to talk too much, but quickly, I don't want to because having a copywriter. I'm just going to put you on a little pedestal here for a second here, Connor. No, I'm going to do it more. No, but we always talk about how Matt and I in our podcast and all of our training and stuff is like the two skills that are probably the biggest skills that we have is the ability to drive traffic and create persuasive messaging of some sort. And it could be in any form. But knowing copywriting skills is absolute key for your business, for anybody's business. But that doesn't discount you from actually having a kick ass copywriter in your back pocket that you can go to for specific things. Like we just did for our webinar, where, yeah, we could have cranked out a webinar, but at the same time, that's a lot of work and we almost like, we focus on just what we can do, but not the nitty gritty processes that someone like Connor would have. So, Connor, let's kind of dig into it before we keep talking. Yeah, talking me up more and more.

But let's get back to your story. This tax bill thing, we don't want to like, leave that hanging out there too much because you kind of, you were telling us, and I didn't want to get too much of your story prior to this, but you had like an epiphany with this big tax bill and.

Yeah, I guess, you know, I guess for most entrepreneurs, receiving your tax bill at the end of the year is. It's kind of bittersweet, isn't it? This one for me was my biggest one I actually ever received, which is a good thing. But then the bad side of it obviously means I've got to pay out more than ever before. So kind of a kick in the teeth. But it got me to, I guess you could say, having a think about the structure of my business.

On how I could basically increase my income this year. And I started just writing down my thoughts on a piece of paper just to sort of gain clarity, I guess you could say, on all the different thoughts and ideas I had swirling around in my head.

I guess you could also say I've been feeling a Little bit stale and jaded in my business at that time.

Myself and my partner, we've recently had our first child, as you know.

And I guess I was looking for a bit more time and a bit more freedom. I wanted to spend more time with my family and it was a case of, well, how can I earn more money and do that at the same time? Which is obviously it's a double edged sword. It's a difficult question to answer. So I literally just started jotting down some thoughts on paper.

And kind of asked myself, how can I make my highest contribution to the marketplace? Was the question I asked myself at the same time as obviously freeing up time for me to do the things that I love.

I've been reading, we were talking about this before we came on the call. I've been reading a book called Essentialism recently. Great book, but the Basic teachers To focus on one thing.

I looked at what I enjoyed most in my business, what work I enjoyed doing most for clients, and what enabled me also to get the best results for them.

And for me, it may come as a surprise. This is definitely critiques where rather than writing a sales letter or a video sales letter or webinar from scratch, it's actually taking someone's existing marketing, reviewing every element of that going through the funnel, the copy, etc. And suggesting ways that they can actually improve their conversion sales and profits.

So yeah, rather than.

Writing something from scratch, it's basically taking someone's existing, mocking and improving it.

Yeah, that's actually interesting and I think we've chatted about that in the past too because there's not many people who actually have a service or focus strictly on that. It's critiquing and modifying what's already there. Most copywriters want to just kind of scratch and say like, ah, let's start from scratch, you know, I want to do it.

All right, it's very true. And you'll find a lot of rookie copywriters and things like this will sort of jump at the chance to pull your sales letter to bits and automatically offer to rewrite it. I meet clients all the time who say that copywriters want to get too down and dirty, sometimes too involved rather than doing what is asked of them. And oftentimes the way for someone to get the highest return on investment is actually to hire someone with the experience to look at their existing marketing that they're already doing and saying, well, if you make a few tweaks here and there, this could actually result in quite a measurable impact. On your bottom line.

So that's kind of where that sort of comes from. And then also you've got the side of things. It's very difficult to get someone who.

Doesn'T have a product or a service that's selling already results. It's very hard to quantify whether you have actually had a measurable impact on that person's business. Whereas, you know, if they were at a certain level before, if you can move their conversion Even half a percent or 1% or 2%, you know, that can be obviously directly quantified to your work actually having that impact. So that is definitely where, you know, sort of moving forward. I want to kind of focus my efforts. Really.

Yeah. So it's been in your business, it's really just you, right. You don't have a team, you don't have any other junior copywriters helping you out?

No, not at all. It's literally just me.

Yeah. So trying to really free up time yet make more money. It's kind of like a tricky, like you said, double edged sword where you're a service business, so you're calling, you know, you have clients calling on you for X kind of help and you were mentioning a recurring model that you want to kind of start doing. So is this kind of what you were thinking or is what you're doing?

Yeah, it's an element of it. So basically this kind of thought process, this mapping out of ideas that I had on paper, kind of led to a few decisions. The first decision I made was plain and simple to cut back on client work. So I actually sacked two clients.

There's no way to kind of sacked, meaning fire the. Fire them for the.

Pretty much, yeah. I can't say they were best pleased, but it basically came down to. I wanted to get to a point where I'm only working with three clients per month and sort of knowing through experience what kind of projects they are and what kind of time restraints they entail and things like that that then enables me to have enough time to just spend with my family and live the life that I want to live. Which is obviously why we all become entrepreneurs in the first place. It's not necessarily just for the money, it's also for the freedom and the lifestyle that that can provide you with.

So my second decision in this kind of LinkedIn was to kind of niche down and focus solely on working with experts, which were a large part of my business anyway. So your authors, speakers, coaches, consultants, info marketers like yourselves.

They are historically the people that I've gotten The best results for the types of clients I've enjoyed sort of working with the most. We have kind of a natural rapport being in the same kind of space, if you like. So those two clients that I sat, although they weren't best pleased, could kind of understand my reasons for wanting to niche down and basically make my highest contribution to the marketplace, as I said.

Yeah, and I think that's a smart move. I mean, it takes a lot of balls to fire a client. I mean, we've done the same thing. Obviously, being established in something else makes it a lot easier. But in your case, I guess, what was your process of doing that? Did you prepare kind of that other form of income coming in, or did you just say, screw it, this is the right move?

I mean, thankfully, I was in a position where I would be financially comfortable without those two clients anyway.

But that's not to say I don't want to replace that income. My goal, as I said, was to create not only time freedom, but financial freedom as well. So moving forward, my plan is to implement a couple of new services, which I'll talk about in a second, that will enable me to not only replace that income, but then some kind of a thing.

So this decision, these two decisions that I made, yes, they'd allow me to kind of free up time and allow me to focus on doing what I do best. But another thing I plan to do, which we were talking about before we came on there, is to basically take a leaf out of your book and launch a print newsletter, which is actually in the works right now.

The topic is going to basically be how to harness the power of the written word to basically create time and financial freedom. Because.

The reason for wanting to do that is that basically.

You know, the print newsletter model has that scalability to it whereby other than writing, putting together a set amount of content each month, rather than having to do that for each and every client, obviously you're doing that once and rolling it out to 50 or 100 clients at a time. So you were saying, Joe, about it's literally just me and my business. That is definitely something I've struggled with in the past, is there's only so much of me to kind of go around, and you can end up at a point where your income is capped. And also you're sort of working yourself to the bone as well. So it can be very difficult as a copywriter, I think, to find that balance.

Yeah, yeah. From the agency's perspective, we definitely know that feeling. We've had scenarios where we felt Like Joe and I were working ourselves to death. And there was no upward momentum in our income because of the way the agency was structured. So let's talk about this newsletter now.

What led you to the decision that this print newsletter is the way to go? Because there's obviously a lot of various recurring models out there. You can obviously email a PDF to somebody each month or give them a membership site or.

Sell some sort of software that's a monthly recurring. What led you down the path of specifically saying, okay, print newsletter? This is the scalable model that I want to focus on.

I guess.

The main reason.

From my point of view at least, is the tangibility of it.

I think digital information nowadays, and you'll probably agree with this, guys, having made the same shift yourselves, is very ten a penny. Every man and the dog kind of has a membership site nowadays. And it's. I think it's very difficult to stand out. Whereas direct mail.

Has kind of become this forgotten about opportunity. Whereas everyone's jumped on the Facebook advertising bandwagon. Everyone's got a squeeze page and an opt in page and a membership site. There's not many people sending printed sales letters through the post anymore. In fact, the only thing you really get through the mail nowadays is bills. And there's certainly very few people, by comparison, doing print newsletters.

You know what's even hotter than that?

Go on.

Telegrams.

Telegrams.

All right. No carrying on.

Morris code marketing, flashing lights.

No, no. But you're totally right. So I didn't want to, but you're right. No, it's that whole like not surprise factor, but like that wow factor when you open up the mailbox and you're like, boom, I got my package, My month package. Or they randomly just sent me something really cool like a book or whatever it might be.

Yeah, I mean, we're subscribed personally to three print newsletters ourselves, outside of the Evergreen profits letter, which I'm also a subscriber of.

And every time one of these newsletters comes in the mail, I get excited about it. I mean, the day it comes in the mail, I go and I'll go sit on my couch outside and grab a beer or something and sit down and I'll sit there with a highlighter and I consume it the day I receive it. And some of these guys that I'm subscribed to, sometimes I'll get like a bonus book in the mail or a bonus DVD in the mail, or, you know, there's always kind of something extra that you could slip in that gives People a little surprise each month. And you know, at the beginning of the month when I know these newsletters are about to come, I'm out there checking the mail myself, like every day. Like I'll see the mailman drive by and I'm like, okay, I wonder if my newsletter came today. I'm gonna go check the mail. It's like, it's top of mind at the beginning of the month that I'm gonna get this. This cool thing in the mail. And you just don't get that with digital products. You don't get it with membership sites. With membership sites, people are excited. The day they buy it. They might jump in, browse around, look at two or three videos and say, this is really cool. I'm gonna check back in next week for something else. And then they forget to ever log back in again. And you've gotta constantly send them reminders like, hey, you're paying for this. Get in and check it out. And those reminders remind people, oh yeah, I need to cancel that monthly subscription.

Yeah, I think you touched on an important point there, Matt, as well. Consumption is such a big thing. It's very, very hard to get your content consumed these days. Whereas if something's obviously coming through your door, you're looking forward to it. It's arriving on the same date or thereabouts every single month. There's that excitability factor. You can't wait to open it. I don't know if you have this in the US but we have. I remember when I was a kid here, party bags. Are you familiar with that concept?

I don't. A party bus.

Oh, no. Like if kids go to a birthday party, they get like a bag at the end with a lot of stuff.

Yeah, yeah.

Like a goodie bag. Yeah, we'd call that like a goodie bag.

It's kind of like the same thing. Like, I'm subscribed to a couple of newsletters. Ben Settle's been one of them.

Yeah.

Obviously the EGP letter as well. And you're constantly getting like you say, I think Ben at Christmas sent like a breakthrough advertising DVD set which was completely unexpected. Hadn't pre warned you about it. And I was like, wow, that's really quite cool. So my kind of Christmas period was taken up by consuming this DVD set that I hadn't even expected. So I'm sure your wife loved that as well. Yeah, she was well pleased. Yeah.

No, I've got that same box set that came from Ben and I was pumped to get it. I haven't actually gone through it yet.

It's sitting right behind me right now.

It's actually sitting behind Joe. The problem is I don't have a DVD player set up. I'd have to actually watch it at my computer.

But it's a good point. It's time to start sending USB drives or something.

Yeah, that's the problem with sending DVDs and CDs is nobody has DVDs or CD players anymore because everything's so digital, everything's so in the cloud.

But you're totally right. Yeah, sorry, go ahead.

No, I was just going to say it was completely irrelevant. I went to recently buy a new MacBook Pro and they've done away with the DVD drives on.

They're totally gone. Yeah.

So it's interesting, but if we go back to. Because, I mean, with you moving into this continuity, this newsletter, obviously it's a new approach for you. How are you going to be able to. Because we're looking at systems. I mean, that's a great system. And obviously there's a whole system to creating a newsletter that's going to be pretty new to you. Obviously you're working with us, so we're kind of giving you a little of the scoop here and there. But how are you going to balance and kind of make sure your systems are in order for your service side? Because it's kind of like a balance now that you're going to have to do.

Yeah. So basically my focus was I looked at this four weeks in the month, and I said before working with only three clients per month. So my plan is to basically take one week every month and just focus exclusively on this letter. So one of the things I took definitely from reading the book Essentialism was you can make a bigger impact and a higher contribution by focusing on only one task at a time. Another tip is to focus on the hardest task.

First. When you sit down in the morning, don't put that thing off. Tackle it straight away, get it done, tick it off the list, move on to the other things. For me, I'm literally going to set aside one week every month to focus exclusively on the print newsletter.

So the Skype's going to be turned off, Slack's going to be turned off, client communication is going to be turned off for that week. I'm basically going to go into monk mode, if you like, and just literally crank out the content for this newsletter. And the remaining three weeks will be dedicated to client work. So by sort of.

And hopefully marketing the newsletter. Right.

That's a whole system That's a system in itself. But obviously you have to have the time and the freedom to be able to do that. So that decision for me, I hate to use the word sacking or firing two clients, but I had to kind of make that decision. And it was a bold one, obviously, to sort of take the initial drop in income to kind of say, well, this is what I want to do. I want to actually be able to, you know, because when you are a service based business owner, there's always this kind of underlying feeling that you have more to give. I don't know if you guys would agree to that. I agree with that. Oh yeah. I've always kind of felt like in a way that I'm possibly devaluing myself as a copywriter. And this print newsletter will also enable me to sort of bring some of my marketing and psychology expertise to the table and share that with the world as well.

Well, that's, that's exactly it is. We, Matt and I were doing a service agency for years and years and you do feel like you're stunting your ability a little bit because a, you're, you're just giving your value to a handful of clients every month. And you're kind of stunted because they're kind of still running the show. Even if you believe it or not, they're still the boss. You know, like they're going to take, allow you to go as far as is they'll let you. But when it's your own thing like a newsletter or just an email list, even just sending emails out, you're going untapped potential there and you run the show, you're sending the message and then it's that authority. At that point, they're all going to come. I mean, you're going to just filter in these best clients that you could potentially ever have if you choose to even accept more clients.

Yeah. And essentially what you're doing as well is by doing a newsletter.

You'Re kind of, you're kind of putting yourself out there as an authority on the subject. So you're out there saying, look, I am a guy to listen to when it comes to educating on copywriting. I am somebody you should be paying attention to. I teach thousands of people. I'm, I'm the one that people come to when they want to learn copywriting. And when people have that frame of reference in their mind as you're the one that people come to when they want to learn copywriting, that allows you to raise your prices when you actually do copywriting.

Totally.

Yeah, absolutely.

I'd be lying if I said that wasn't part of my sneaky strategy.

Yeah, that's cool.

It's a positioning kind of thing as well. I was talking before about Ben Settle, who I know has been on your previous podcast. I think, Matt, a lot of stuff what I'm doing now kind of stems from studying the likes of Ben, who, I've got to be honest, has completely changed my perspective on positioning and marketing psychology, because I can't remember I was listening to a podcast or a webinar with him on it probably two or three months back. I can't remember exactly how he worded it, but it was something along the lines of, when you position yourself correctly, not only can you command higher prices, but you also end up in a situation where you're magnetizing the right customers to you, which you can do, obviously, through a print newsletter that, you know, sort of elevates you from the typical freelance copywriter to someone, you know, an authority on the topic. But you also end up repelling those who aren't a fit for your product or your service or your company. So it's kind of like a win win in a way.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's something that Joe and I have really been diving into a lot lately, is not just, like, attracting the right people to us, but figuring out how do we get the wrong people to just go away? You know, that sounds bad, but that's. That's honestly what we want. So we've been studying our data, studying our data, looking at the numbers, analyzing what's going on in our business, and we're actively trying to make the people that we don't want as customers go away.

Totally. And we can do that in so many ways. And I would say the easiest way we do it. And we've said this on podcasts in the past, but is emailing almost daily.

Yep.

And filtering people out, having them, and then making it very clear, like, if they. They tell us in our support, like, yeah, you're. You're sending too many. Well, there is an unset subscribe button, and you're more than happy to click it.

Well, there's so many elements about what we do that are actually designed to repel the wrong person. The fact that it is a print letter and not a PDF is one thing that some people just. They don't want. They don't want more stuff. They don't want to receive stuff in the mail.

We've made it unavailable to purchase our stuff through PayPal. We had it turned on for a little while. We analyzed the data. When we looked at the data, we saw that the people who purchased through PayPal were our lowest stick rate. Those were the people that only stuck around for one or two months and then canceled. The people who didn't come in through PayPal on average stay a lot longer than the people who did come through PayPal. So we turn PayPal off as an option. You can't get it through PayPal.

That's interesting.

You know, in our sales letter, in our copywriting, we talk a lot about how this isn't for everybody. We talk about if you're looking for to make money online or you don't have a business yet, or you're looking for that business option opportunity, this stuff is not for you. You know, we want people that have existing businesses. We know that if you've got something set up, you're making money, then, you know, the 49 to 99 dollars a month that we're going to charge for our newsletter shouldn't be an issue for you. You know, if. If you can't afford 50 bucks a month to a hundred bucks a month to learn the latest and greatest strategies in automation and Internet marketing, well, your business is probably in a pretty shitty situation and were not right for you.

Exactly. Not only does it enable you to sort of get better results, you know, it enables you to get better results for your clients. It enables you obviously to charge higher prices. And if you are running like a service based business like myself, ultimately it could lead to you attracting the right kind of clients for that as well. Right?

Definitely.

Well, so, you know, for me, for an example, like saying I only work with three clients a month, which is 100% true by the way.

And sort of charging a high price for that as well automatically sort of makes me more desirable to the right people as it does with you. We're trying to take that stance that we're going to polarize you until you unsubscribe kind of a thing.

Yeah, exactly, exactly.

To go.

Exactly. So what sort of things are you doing or are you planning on doing when you release this newsletter to sort of repel the wrong people? I'm just kind of curious again for selfish reasons because I want to know if there's some other things we can do to repel the people we don't want on our list.

I guess it would be, I don't have anything sort of planned in particular other than to sort of persuade people that this is not for them through the actual sales page. So I'm planning on basically promoting this newsletter not through a VSL or through a webinar, but through a traditional long form written sales letter, which to me a lot of people would say people don't read sales letters anymore. But through analyzing the data, I know through working with clients, people do still read long form copy. And in actual fact they're reading long form copy even more, providing it's something that is of interest to them. So it makes sense to me, being that the topic's going to be all around copywriting and marketing funnels and that kind of thing, to actually use a traditional long form sales letter to promote it. So that in itself is a way of filtering out the tire kickers or the people that are just sort of sniffing around for. Matt, you mentioned those business opportunity people. Again, they're not the people that I want.

I'm probably going to pick a nominal sort of random figure out the air in terms of pricing. So I'm not going to go with the typical 47 or $97 a month price point. I'm going to maybe go 117, 127. Something a little bit different that we're not seeing with everyone else. You know, everyone would generally say, well, you want to be under the $100 mark, $97, $99. My view would be, well, let's go something like $103 just to kind of look different and to sort of stop people in the tracks. Because if you're doing things the same as everyone else, if you're following the same copywriting processes or the same marketing processes, people are going to automatically tie you with the same brush. And that is not what I'm looking for.

So it's going to be about doing things differently to the mainstream. I guess.

It'S going to be taking a stance that is a little bit different, perhaps a little bit in your face and maybe comes across not as arrogant, but as if I know exactly the type of person I'm looking for, which is going to be a freelance copywriters who want to do what I've done, which is.

A earn more money but also have more time, freedom.

And it's also going to be business owners who are passionate about getting their message out there and not having to hire some $25,000 copywriter to get that done.

My kind of prediction over the next few years, if you like, I think we're going to see a big shift from business owners hiring copywriters to write copy for them to actually wanting to learn this skill. This practice, which, you know, you guys said before, you have me write your webinar for you or at least help you with it, because it's a lot of work, but obviously there's a lot of input from you there as well.

I think generally, just from working with clients, being around the copywriting space and seeing what's going on, there's an awful lot of dissatisfaction with people hiring copywriters and not getting results. And a lot of it stems back to not having the right positioning in place, that copywriter, not being able to capture their voice and the passion that they actually have for their product. I mean, my view is who better to write sort of the marketing piece or the sales message for your product than you? You're the person who understands it inside out. You're the person who has the passion for it, the fire in your belly for it. And that is very, very difficult for someone else to capture, I think. So I do think over the next couple of years, we're going to see that shift where business owners, savvy business owners at least want to actually make that time investment. A, to learn copy, and B, to actually go about the process of writing it themselves to attract the right type of clients.

Yeah, very cool. Now, before we wrap up, I actually want to touch on some copywriting strategies, some copywriting principle. Are there any sort of tips or takeaways or sort of like what should be some big aha moments people should take away when they're going to go tackle writing their own copy?

Like the essentials.

The essentials, yeah. Here's the thing. I know a lot of people, they think of copywriting and they think that if I just put the right combination of words together and I use some of these magic power words, all of a sudden my product is going to sell better because I replaced this word with that power word and that, you know, we all know from our own experience that's not necessarily true. You know, no sort of correct combination of words is just going to make people open their wallets. But I'm curious to hear some of your essential tips or tricks or.

I don't know, I would say just a handful. Maybe it's two or three things that, like you said, a business owner should be able to do. Maybe there's a quick formula for a headline or where they should actually focus their time, a way to structure maybe an email, something that's a little, you know, something that you do kind of daily but mindlessly, I guess.

I don't know if this kind of fits the bill. Of what you're looking for. But.

Most of the time, I'll be honest with you, 85, 90% of the time, when a client comes to me to hire me to write copy for them.

I'm amazed at how they don't have a clear sort of idea of who their prospect is. You guys are completely different because obviously we're talking now about you having taken that stance of repelling the wrong people and attracting a very specific.

Subset of your market. And I think before you even sit down to write a word of copy, like we're talking about copywriting critiques before, most of the time people have this idea of a critique in their mind, like you said, Matt, of sort of me coming in and sort of replacing certain words that are maybe a bit bland or dull in the copy with these emotional power words. And that sort of all of a sudden making all the difference. And all of a sudden the sales figures go through the roof. It's not that at all. It's actually more. What I would look at is the underlying strategy behind your copy. You know, have you actually zeroed in on who your prospect is and who your prospect isn't? Because that's really ground zero. You need to know sort of who your prospect is. Exactly. You need to know what conversations are going on inside their mind. Do you talk their lingo kind of a thing? Can you show them through the language that you use, that you actually understand them and their problems and their desires?

Can you actually, and this is something I think is very hard for a business owner to do, is to actually take a step back and sort of size your offer up from your prospect's point of view. That can be very, very difficult to do. So I think that's the first thing to do before you sort of sit down and say, I'm going to write a sales letter to sell my latest and greatest product is, do I actually have a clear idea of who my prospect is? A lot of people call this like a customer avatar.

And then talking about sort of headline writing formulas and things like this. The most important thing you can do is make sure that your headline flags down that target audience. In other words, if someone reads that and they're not convinced, someone reading that should know whether it's for them or not. They shouldn't have to read any further than that headline. And obviously one of the easiest ways to do that is to state the biggest benefit of your product or service in the headline. Does your headline actually promise a clearly defined end result?

I think that's one of the biggest things, because 80% of the time, we're all guilty of it. We'll be skim reading through Facebook or Twitter or whatever, and we'll wait until we stab our eyeballs on something. And that's why it's so important, obviously, the headline that's kind of the facilitator for grabbing someone's attention and making them click through to your sales page or whatever it may be. That headline is obviously so important. So I would say a know your target audience or your prospect inside out, inside and out, and make sure your headline promises a clearly defined end result specifically for those people and kind of repels everyone else in a way. Yes.

That's perfect.

Yeah. And another thing that I just kind of want to add to it is the, you know, the focus on features versus versus benefits. Right. So a lot of times, and this is. I'm definitely guilty of this with some of my old sales messages, is writing a sales letter that essentially tells people what they're going to get. Right. So I'll write a sales message that says, you're going to learn how to do this, you're going to learn how to do this, you're going to learn.

How to do this.

You should buy it because I'm also going to throw in this bonus. It's going to teach you how to do this. And that's really all just essentially the features of it. Right. That's what they're going to get when they purchase. And a lot of people make that their sales message. But I think a really good sales message is a sales message that tells people what their life will look like after they've purchased the product. Not what they're going to get, but after they've purchased and used the product, what does life look like now? And if you can really convey that and even add in imagery and you know that that's where some of these power words may come into play. If you can really convey this, this is what your life like, looks could look like if you purchase this product. That's what makes it sell more than the. Here's what you're actually going to learn.

Exactly. Yeah. And again, it all comes down to knowing that prospect, doesn't it? So, you know, if you take the frustrated freelance copywriter who maybe has one retainer client and a couple of side gigs going on and is struggling to sort of really move things forward because obviously he's only got a certain amount of time, if you take that person as an example.

My sort of copywriting newsletter would teach them how to elevate themselves from that point of frustration, that point of pain. And it would want to. What I would want to do in the sales letter is to put them in that state, like you said, Matt, where the solution has already been kind of delivered in a way. So you want to get them out of that mental state of mind of, you know, struggle, struggle, struggle as to how life could be in the future kind of a thing.

Yeah. And. And if you can more accurately describe what their life looks like right now, the better.

And that comes from knowing that Avatar. Yeah. Yeah, you're perfect now. I think that's great, man. I think we gave. I mean, it's a ton of information here, so potential business models for folks listening. And I think these copywriting takeaways here.

Go and implement these. Test them out. And I think that's all it really is. And try to do some of this yourself first. Really what we found is the more you write, the more you practice, the more you'll just get better, and you're gonna see your results blossom. So let's wrap up a little bit.

I kind of know the answer of this one already, but can I ask it?

Okay, go. What is it, the book question?

Yes.

Okay, so we'll do our last two question.

So the first questions. Is there three questions?

I want to put another one in there.

Joe's going to ask a third one. He's going to try to stump you, I think. All right.

That's a trick question.

Yes, potentially.

Can I phone a friend?

I'll give you one Lifeline.

So the first question is, other than essentialism, are there any sort of books that you either reread pretty consistently because of the content or books that you find yourself recommending over and over again? We like to usually give people one or two good, like, book takeaways after listening to a podcast episode.

Can it be a book or a course is included as well?

No.

Books only. No, I'm just kidding. Yeah. If you have a. If you have a course you want to push them over to, that's cool.

Let me think. I guess some good sort of basis, you know, if someone's looking to build up, like, a foundational knowledge of copywriting and the article Persuasion, there's a few I'd recommend, definitely. Scientific Advertising by Claude Hopkins.

One great one, actually, is Cash Advertising by Drew Eric Whitman.

Never heard of that.

That is a brilliant book. And that kind of has, like, a load of actionable sort of quick tips and templates that you can use as well. So that would probably be One I would highly recommend people get.

Other than essentialism. Dare I say the book, the One Thing, which is kind of very much along the same lines. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm a big one. For simplicity, as you may have guessed.

Yeah, no, those are both great books. I've read them both. Yeah, I mean, they both have kind of the same concept, but I think what makes them both really work and stand out individually is they both sort of tell completely different stories and really help drive home the points.

Yeah, cool.

Actually, there's another book I just read, actually. Am I allowed to swear?

Yes.

Fuck, no.

I actually just read Dan Meredith how to Be Fucking Awesome.

How is that?

I mean, it's not so much like.

A template or.

Like a guide for anything in particular. It's more of just like an inspirational.

A series of inspirational takeaways, I guess you could say, for getting out of Maybe like a. What's the word?

Getting out of your head or.

Yeah, kind of getting out of your head and actually taking action on things. Got it. It's probably the best way I can explain it now.

Would you recommend it to somebody who's already pretty awesome?

Well, you can always be more.

You can't talk about me that much, Matt, come on. I'll still read the book.

It's an awesome title, though. I love his book title.

Okay, you are the second person I've heard mention the book, so I think it's about time.

I've heard a few people say cashvertising, too, and that's another one I haven't picked up yet.

So here's a question that might be. I mean, you might have already heard this question if you've listened to the podcast, which I know you have, but what's one question? Let's take this stance as a copywriter. Copywriter, conn. Not newsletter writer. Connor, what's one question that someone should ask you but you never get asked and answer that question? If you could.

Silence.

In terms of, like, a client coming to me and asking me that question. You mean anybody?

I would say.

What's one question we should have asked you on this podcast that we didn't ask you about copywriting?

Yeah, this is hard.

Yes, it is.

Putting me on the spot here.

He told you he was gonna stump.

You if the client thinks easier and beneficial. That could be. That could be one. Like, maybe how you work with clients. Like, yeah, if someone were to hire a client, maybe. What's one question that they should be asking you about, you know, the project you're working on with them?

Do you know what's funny, actually, is it's something that barely anyone ever asked. And it's probably because maybe it's a sign that my positioning is right.

I don't know.

Is what results and experience do you have? What experience and results have you gotten for clients that are actually in my market.

Is, you know, some kind of documentation of past results. Because like I say, you get a lot of. Particularly on the critique side of things, you get a lot of. Like I say, I'm talking before about copywriters who will willingly come in and have you pay them 5, $10,000 to rewrite a sales letter or VSL, whatever it may be, and it may still tank at the end of it. So if from a client's point of view, maybe you took the time to actually vet that person out beforehand, sort of see who they've worked with before, actually go away and speak to those people, sort of see what kind of track record they have and what sort of experience they have. Working in similar situations to your own.

I rarely ever get asked that, but for me, if I was looking to hire a copywriter, that would be one of the biggest things I ask is what kind of results you've got, what credentials have you got?

Yeah, smart.

I mean, I think that's probably a. You know, that's probably a result of word of mouth. I mean, I think Referrals. Yeah. If a lot of your business is based on referrals, people referring you to other people, then you're probably gonna get that question a lot less. Where people are finding you cold. Like, they do a search on Google and they run into your website and. And they reach out to you, they're more likely to ask that question. But if I, you know, let's say Joe and I weren't business partners, and I went to Joe and I said, dude, this. You got to hire this copywriter. He's done some great stuff for me in the past, and it's worked out really well. Joe's probably not going to turn around to you and say, prove it.

Prove it.

You know, he's going to.

He's going to.

He's going to take my word for it because I referred him to you.

Yeah. Which, to be fair, like, if you are good at what you do, I think word of mouth gets around.

Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah. Not to kind of blow my own trumpet, but to be fair, most of my clients that I work with today have come in some form or another through either yourself, Matt or Josh Bow, like two of my first ever clients Most of my work can be attributed in some way to come in from you or like a referral from someone that you know.

Yeah, yeah.

That's how I grew my previous service business is all word of mouth.

That's awesome. You also kind of tooted my horn in that one, so I like it.

Well, let's wrap her up here. So where's a website email? Where do we want to send people to after listening to this episode?

People can go to thefunnelstrategist.com there's actually. We're talking about copywriting principles and hacks and whatnot. A minute ago, I've actually got a copy critique checklist, which is kind of like a starting point for that I would use when sort of critiquing a client's copy, and that focuses more on the actual structure of the copy. So if someone's got a sales letter or is developing one, this might be quite a good starting point for them to actually analyze whether their hook or their angle is a good starting point for success.

And like I said, if someone's got something online already, it's quite possible they could apply some of these changes and see a, you know, sort of like an instant impact in the conversions.

Perfect. So the funnel. Strategist.com.

Yeah, it's a bit mouthful.

And Connor's looking quite dapper on that page.

Dude. Yeah.

This Photoshop, honestly, he looks nothing like that.

Yeah, just kidding.

Very, very cool.

I could see it.

The funny thing is, you know, coming sort of back to Joe's question about something people never ask. Well, something people rarely do when coming on our podcast is have some sort of, like, giveaway or something.

True.

Something to offer at the end of the podcast for people to go check out, which is something I think you did really well. You've got. If you go to the funnel strategies.com, you can actually download the direct mail solution all about some of your direct to mail strategies. So that's pretty cool.

Right on, right on.

All right, man.

Well, thanks for being on and it was an awesome chat and we'll talk soon.

Thanks for having me, guys. All right, see you, buddy.

Talk to you. Hey, thanks so much for tuning in to this episode of the Hustle and Flowchart podcast. Now, if you don't know already, myself and my partner, Joe Fear, every single week we put together this killer weekly newsletter that's completely free. If you go to theweeklyprophet.com you can get on this weekly newsletter. And what we do with this newsletter is we scour the Internet. We read every piece of content, listen to my blog post, check out new software and tools, and we distill down the best of the best into a weekly newsletter and deliver it directly to your inbox every single week. So head over to theweeklyprofit.com and make sure you're signed up to receive that weekly newsletter. You're going to love it. Thanks so much again for listening to the Hustle and Flowchart podcast. We'll see you in the next one.

Sam.