Kim Krause Schwalm - Why Writing Your Own Copy Is A Huge Mistake

When you hire a good copywriter. And maybe things aren't always going to work the first time. And I can go on and give you a million examples, just that I know from like knowing other copywriters, having worked at a major company hiring copywriters, a lot of big name copywriters do not hit it, you know, out of the ballpark on the first try. So it's foolish to like throw the baby out with the bathwater. Right. Since we're doing all these little things, you know, so go back to them and have. This is where you kind of have that partnership is, you know, like, give them another try. Because that second try sometimes can be that one that like really works or the third try, you know.

This is an intro. Intro, intro, intro.

Hustle and Float, Shark with your boy, my boy, Matt Wolf and Joe Fear.

Hey. Hello. Hi there.

How's it going?

Good.

I feel like I know how to hire a great copywriter now.

Yeah, I mean, you didn't before.

No. Wow. I didn't.

No. I didn't either. And you seem shocked. No, I'm just, I'm messing around. I'm pausing for effect to the dramatic and the audience is like, why is he pausing for effect?

Because I was confused too. Audience. It's okay.

Yeah, no, I just like to confuse people. I like to throw people off. No, today we did. We got a masterclass in how to hire the best of the best copywriters. What to look for, how to pay them, how to compensate them in other ways, how to structure deals with them.

Creating a nice partnership. It is a win, win throughout. Yeah. So Kim Kraus Schwalm was on the show with us and she's, she's got an insane just track record when it comes to copywriting and beating a lot of the greats. I mean, she's obviously a great herself, but she's like, when she was just starting off, she tells the story of how all these controls that were basically around and according to control meaning, like this is basically the thing to beat.

This is the current winning sales letter. This is the sales letter that's performing the best. Right.

So you'll hear Kim reference controls a lot in this interview. And she basically came in fresh out from her previous experience, but as a junior copywriter, essentially starting to just beat all these controls. And so she talked about how she did that, but more importantly, how you as a listener and us too, as these podcasters, people listening, talking to Kim, how we can just hire people to do this for us because, you know, most of us I think have some experience of hiring someone else to help us with the copywriting or at least the messaging of what we're trying to sell out there. And it's not that easy to get the right person in that seat.

Yeah, like if you're one of those people, like we've been in the past past us, not, not current us, past us.

The past is the past and we're new now.

But if you're like our past us, we've always kind of had this philosophy of, you know what, we should probably write the copy ourselves because nobody's gonna know our product as well as we know our product. And you know, copywriters are expensive, so we're not gonn, you know, to have somebody who doesn't know our product as well as us come in and write copy for our product. If you think like that, you're thinking like we've kind of always thought, but after this episode, we're going to think differently now. And I think this episode is going to make you think differently about thinking that way.

Definitely, yeah. Changed our thinking. And I think that. I know the thing that resonated with me is the partnership and there's so many ways to establish just a long term relationship and someone who can help support you in copyright. And as a business owner, we got so much stuff, I mean obviously endless to do lists, if you just let them go, you can work around the clock and it's like, okay, and then now toss in copywriting into the mix. Well, shoot. Now I'm going to learn how to write a headline and how to write a lead in and all these other bullet points and value proposition. It's like, that's a whole nother job right there. And it's like, you don't need to do that.

I still think there's a ton of value personally in learning copy, but I don't know if there's a ton of. Basically what I'm taking from this conversation that we just had is it's probably not always the smartest move. In fact, it's usually not the smartest move to write your own copy for your own products. Saying that I still think it's super, super powerful to understand copywriting and understand persuasion and understand the principles. Because you're going to be using copywriting and more than just selling your own product, right? You're going to be using copywriting if you're writing emails, if you're running any sort of advertising, you know, just communication and selling any sort of communication like through email. Like if we're talking specifically written copy, like just through email and. Yeah. Verbal communication and sales. They're all using this sort of philosophies of copywriting. So I think it's an important skill to learn. I just don't necessarily believe anymore that it's the smartest thing for you to write your own copy for your business, for sure.

So on that point, yeah, Kim's gonna walk us through how to find the right person, but also a lot of her principles as well, and will likely her back on to dive even deeper into some of the. A lot more deeper details of copywriting and how you can apply it as well.

Yeah, I'd like to bring her back and talk more about copywriting principles and how to actually structure your copy. And for those people that are listening because they do want to be copywriters and write their own copy, I do want to get more into those sort of tactical elements in a future episode. This episode, we kind of stayed in the vein of hiring copywriters and bringing copywriters onto your team to help what you're doing sell better, for sure. But I'm looking forward to having her back.

She'll be back, and she gave some amazing resources. I'll let her shout out that resource because it's pretty much at the beginning of the episode anyway. So we're taking notes on this episode like always. And there's a lot of notes on this one. You can get them for free within two weeks of the show going live at hustle and flowchart.com comp c o m P and you can also text with your texting device, usually called a.

Cell phone or a smartphone.

I have mine labeled as such as a texting device. Yeah.

No. Joe uses a rotary phone.

Yes. It takes a while to do this, but I have to rotary dial 38470 and somehow also rotary comp. C O M P. Yeah.

No, Joe. I've seen Joe try. He rotary dials 38470 and then just starts yelling comp into the handset. And he just. He doesn't understand why it never comes. He just, like, yells comp as loud as he can into the pH.

One day he'll figure it out. One day I'll send him some YouTube videos, show him how to do.

Send me a flip phone. I'll be happy with that. I don't need More technology. So 38470. If you text that number and the word comp, you also get the free notes. So. And then join the Facebook group. We're probably. We'll likely have Kim in that group if she wants to be. But we have a lot of podcast guests in that group, so you can interact with them. Interact with us. Interact with other folks listening to the show@flowchart group.com. yes.

Only one.com, because Joe didn't say with me, but it's flowchartgroup.com.

There is a lag. Yeah. All right, on to the episode with Kim. Let's do it. Kim, we are recording. How are you doing?

I'm doing great. How are you guys doing?

Good. We're all. I guess we're all toasty.

Yes. Very 90ish degree temperatures.

Right? Yeah. Summer is here finally. Oh, man. And we're. Yeah, we were just chatting about Shramko, so obviously to give props to who's introduced us. So James, mutual buddy of ours.

And Justin. Goth.

And Justin.

Yeah, and Justin, he's great too.

Yeah. Had him on the show. And Matt's like, wait, hold on. That's how I got on your email list.

Yeah, I know. Thank you, Justin.

Yeah. It seems like your emails are very similar to Justin's as well.

Where maybe, I don't know, mine tend to be a lot longer than I do.

That's true.

Yeah.

Yeah. And I know Justin's. What? Daily. You're often.

He's daily. I'm like, more as I'm inspired and sometimes it's just a whole lot.

Yeah, No, I was. I was telling Joe earlier that they're kind of similar in the sense that you don't always necessarily have a call to action in the email. Sometimes your emails are just like, hey, here's a lesson I wanted to share with you today. No call to action. You know, and that's true.

Yeah, they're not all marketing, but yeah, there's also some great opportunities to do other things too, you know?

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's weird that we have to highlight that because usually emails now from marketers are like, oh, there's always a purpose behind that, you know, like a call to action. They're always directing them somewhere, which is great and all, but yeah, it's his valuable emails, the ones.

Yeah, it's a lot of. I do give away a lot of valuable content. People are like, why do you give away so much content?

Well, might as well just shout it out right at the beginning here. Where can people get on your list if they want to check that out?

You go to www.kimchwam.com and it's K I M S C H W A L M. Very cool.

And we'll make sure we link it up in the show notes too. So if you're listening to this on the website, there should be a link.

Yeah, I mean I go by Kim Krause Schwam, but you can just type in Kim Schwam. You don't have to type all that stuff in.

All that stuff.

Cool.

Well, now that we got the call to action out of the way.

Okay, so we're done. It was nice talking with you.

I know, I'm like, this isn't our normal structure. It's great to have. Yeah. No, you have an interesting. I mean, Brian Kurtz, you've done a lot of work with him as well. I saw you've done some work with Agora and we're buddies with a lot of those folks too. So it's just really cool to hear the tie ins. And you as a copywriter, you've done I don't know how many. You have an insane world. Just like you've had a breadth of industry experience. It's not like you've been in one lane. You've kind of seen it all, it seems like from what you've done. And I think it's going to be an exciting conversation around copy in general.

We'll make sure it's exciting.

That's our job. Yeah.

I have a former life as a marketer too. Publisher. So that's how I got into this whole copywriting thing. I never actually worked as a copywriter before I went freelance a few decades ago. I was always the marketer who could write and worked for a couple different companies. But it was Philips Publishing that was probably the big turning point for me in terms of really getting heavy into direct response and Phillips Publishing back when I joined it. And the. God is going to make me sound so old. But the early 90s, it was when the whole alternative health market was exploding and just taking off. And I'd been there about six months as a marketer and they asked me to help them launch a supplement business. And so I launched a business called Healthy Directions and grew that to like more than 23 million in sales within the first three years, which is like 38 million in today's dollars. Just going to the back end, like to their, their house, you know, in house. Subscribers to their alternative health newsletters. And so that was just a lot of fun. So I've been like in the supplement business, you know, since, you know, some of you guys were even born.

So I'm really excited and really passionate about alternative health. I mean, I have Done a lot of other things too. I worked in some other areas of Philip's business. After I launched the company, I worked with actually directly with Jay Abraham on some of his newsletters. I worked, worked with Toby Smith, who went on to do his own investment stuff. And then I finally decided just to take the leap. And I worked with all these big name great copywriters over the years and just saw, wow, they live a great Life. They work 20 hours a week and they have all this flexibility and they make all this money and I think I could do it. And so I took the leap and never looked back. And it's been now a little over 20 years and, you know, so I've, you know, that's kind of just to give you the bigger picture of my background.

Was that the reality? Was it 20 hours a week for you once you got into it and. Or was it like, oh, wait, there's a lot more to it than I.

It took a few years, but yeah, so I got to the point of. So, you know, I. So I mean, at the time I was at Philips, I mean, way back, this was like in 98 that I left Phillips Publishing, I was making like six figures even then. I was making like 100k plus a year. And so to walk away from that job was like, you know, a big leap. But I was able to do so. I had a retainer arrangement that the first, you know, for like the first six months that was guaranteeing me like 90% of my salary, but would only take half my time. So I was doing that right out of the gate. And then I just started having more clients come to me or people that I was referred to. And so the first year I made like 50% more and I probably worked, you know, 35 hours a week. I had a full time nanny because I just had my first child.

Wow.

And so, you know, it's one of. There's nothing like having a. I don't know if you guys probably haven't dealt with this yet, but when you're paying a ton of money to somebody to come to your house and watch your child, like, I would go to my office when she got there and I'd just be like, nose to the grindstone. I was so productive. I'd get so much done because it's like, hey, you know, I'm paying like a fortune for this, you know, this nanny. And so, yeah, I worked pretty hard, you know, and then it was like, you know, it was like the best of both worlds. I could take breaks, I could Be with my son, I could take him out for a walk or whatever. But yeah, I, you know, as I did that and then I had a second child and then like my kids got a little older and then it was time that they were just in school for like maybe six hours a day, like the primary, you know, whatever, preschool, whatever on up. And so by that point I had gotten to the point where I was writing promos where I had royalty potential. I know we're going to talk about that a little bit later. But that allowed me to create streams of passive income. And so it just got to the point that I just kind of simplified my life. And I did get to the point where I was working maybe 20, 25 hours a week and I was making significantly more than I was at my six figure job at Phillips. And I was just working when the kids were at school and then I was just mom the rest of the time and doing all the mom stuff. And it was just wonderful. I felt really lucky that I was able to achieve that elusive balance and have a satisfying, good paying career. And. But like it was, you know, I wasn't doing all this like nowadays because my kids are both like in their early 20s now. But like nowadays it's like everything is like 24, 7, you know, oh my gosh, you know, but like I just, I literally, like I didn't have a smartphone back then. Everything would just be okay, I'm done, it's three o', clock, I'm picking up my kids and then I got take them to football or soccer or whatever the heck, you know, and so it was great. So I did that for many years and I did really only work probably 20, 25 hours a week for many, many years.

Well, I think that's, I mean, that's a great, I mean I had a kid on Halloween, so our first baby. And my wife is experiencing exactly what you're going through. Where we have, you know, help, it's from my sister. So it's a little cheaper than a super expensive nanny, but still, like it's a constraint. And I feel like those constraints, like I have it as well, not as much as her, but oh my God, it's been helping me so much just to prioritize, prioritize what I'm doing, set up more streams of income that don't rely on us doing the work, like actually manually. So yeah, I mean, I think it.

Makes you very focused on how you run your business. And now that my kids have, you know, independent or in college or whatever, it's like, I'm. Like I'm not nearly as good as I was. Like, I find myself, wait, why is it taking me so long to get this done? And why am I working at 10 o' clock at night? Like, it's nuts. You know, it was weird when I had more the constraints with the kids. Like, I actually, you know, in some ways, I mean, I'm focused. I'm definitely focused. I'm doing a lot of different things, but, you know, it's just, it's different, you know, because you kind of, when you have those force constraints, you have to get really focused and.

Yep.

Yeah, I feel like we live in a world too where it's just so much easier to get distracted now than it probably was 20 years ago. You know, I kind of wish that.

It started 20 years ago rather than now just for the constraints. But it's all good we're dealing with.

I mean, especially with our, the current news cycles, which we won't get into now, we won't get into today.

But yeah, you know. Yeah, let's hope, let's hope it's old news a few weeks from now.

True.

I just want it all to go away.

Yeah, well, let's have. I mean, I would. Let's get into the copy stuff because what you're doing, you know, you help a lot of clients out, but you're obviously helping out a lot of folks to become better copywriters. And I know we were chatting about pre chat before recording is helping folks who might have issues hiring the right people, the right copywriters, or even understanding the reasons why they would do that in the first place.

Sure.

So maybe I don't know where we start there, but what's I guess the common issue when someone's thinking about copyright, you know, hiring someone or maybe just approaching like, hey, I want to improve my copy, what do I do?

Right. Well, it's not so much you want to improve your copy, you want to improve your sales results. Right. Like know that you're whatever it is that you're currently using, it ain't getting it done. Right. And so, you know, and you know, coming from the background I came from, which is, you know, from a major direct response publisher and you know, at that time Phillips was probably five or 10 times as big as Agora was at the time. But you know, again, Gora has, Agora has similar philosophy. So that's boardroom where Brian Kurtz was obviously for many years. They always had the attitude of we want to be constantly be testing new promos and we want to hire the very best copywriters we possibly can, and we want to pay them as much as possible, because if we're paying them a lot, that means we're making a lot, you know, and that's where some of these royalty arrangements come in. Where, I mean, I know there were times where, you know, Phelps was probably cutting like a three or four million dollars check to Gary Bensavinga or, you know, people like that, you know, just for royalties for massive mailings. But then they were probably making 15 or 20 million, you know, so, you know, they always. They, like, it was a good sign. Like, if they're paying a lot of royalties, a copywriter, it's because they've got a really successful promo or package that's kicking butt and making the company lots of money. And then in return. And again, I don't want these numbers to scare anybody away, because no one's making, like three or four million dollars in royalties per mailing these days. Right. But, you know, when you have Win Win kind of baked into your copywriting arrangements, you know, it's a whole different thing. It's really more of a partnership. There's an incentive to, you know, the copywriter has a stake in just doing everything they can. I mean, they're not working. I know when someone hires me, I'm not working for that fee. I'm working for, you know, maybe the hundred thousand or plus, you know, 200,000 plus, hopefully in royalties over time that that promo may bring me.

Right? Yeah. The bigger picture.

Yeah. And not everyone is going to be a huge winner. I mean, I have a pretty good hit rate, but, like, no one's. No one's batting a thousand, you know, and every single one's gonna be huge. But, yeah, you're looking at, you know, what do I need to do to get that big winner? So you put everything into it, and then when, let's say it becomes a winner and it's, you know, they're using it, and then six months or a year later, they're like, hey, you know, it's starting to fatigue a little bit. Like all good promos do, you know, I'm like, yeah, let me. Let me add it. Like, let me do a new headline test, let me do a new email, whatever, and I'm not charging for that kind of stuff because I, you know, I'm your partner and I have a stake and keeping this thing going, or let's test something that's going to boost response or whatever. So, you know, that's kind of what you get when you work with a more seasoned copywriter who, you know, has a vested stake in your success of your promo, you know, in the success of the promo they wrote for you. So. And I don't think a lot of people really see it that way. They see, oh, well, if it's like 4% or whatever it is, you know, of my sales, like, that's like an expense. But it's not because like, again, like, it's, you know, you're going to be bringing more sales in and, you know, if you are able to, like, you have a successful promo, you can run it to more, you know, list or, you know, run more ads or run more traffic to it, et cetera. Like, you know, your sales are going up, you know, more than proportionally.

So.

As a, as a copywriter or I guess as a business owner, what are some things that maybe as a copywriter, like, what would you look for as like an ideal partnership? Like, are there certain things with their offer that you want before you say yes? And this is where I'm kind of framing it for the business owner. Like, maybe they can prepare themselves for, you know, a list type copywriters to help them out.

I mean, there's definitely, I mean, look, a lot of copywriters will take a wide range of projects on, you know, it's not always the same list. I mean, for me, like, the best bet for me, like, would be, you know, if I was picking and choosing, I would be looking for maybe two things. One is this is a proven product. Like, have you actually been successful selling it, you know, versus a completely new launch? You know, now I definitely do launches all the time. Like, I, you know, write the first promo for a brand new product and that's fine. But, you know, sometimes if you're going, if you're looking at it like, as a, you know, is this going to. What's going to give me the best ROI on this time slot in my schedule versus something else? It's like, well, this is a product that's been proven to work and the control is really fatiguing. So then I know, okay, good. I can. It'll be something that's beatable, you know, rather than, oh, it's like kicking butt. And, you know, it's like, oh, God, like, do I really want to go up against something that's already kicking butt?

Right?

And it's funny because I remember Gary Benzivenga talking about this very topic, like when I went to his Benzemanga 100 seminar, you know, so even like the great copywriters kind of look at those things and then, you know, are they, you know, back in the day, you know, when direct mail was huge, most copywriters were, including myself, and still am.

Compensated in terms of royalties per piece mailed. Because the bigger the mailing, the better the promo. The stronger it was in terms of its response or projected response, the more names a company could safely or profitably mail. And so if they're able to do a huge rollout, it's because I was just talking with a potential client who somebody actually used to work with at Philips just earlier today, and she's like, yeah, if we have a just okay promo. And this is the. Even now with direct mail list, we're able to mail like 200 to 300,000 names every two months. If we have a strong one, we're mailing half a million names every two to three months. So if you're getting a royalty of 3 or 4 cents per name mailed, then you're talking about a big difference.

And again, this is where the incentive comes in. Right.

So I would look at, potentially, okay, so are you already generating a lot of sales with this profit product online or, you know, are you mailing a lot of names regularly and so, or. Or with other products that you have that are successful? You know, so then I can kind of gauge, okay, so it might be X amount up front, but then here's the potential, you know, and so, I mean, I, you know, if I, if I was just looking at that. But again, there's a lot of, A lot of copywriters who, you know, like, working sometimes with just a different, you know, like a different range of clients are not always going to have like, oh, it has to be a certain threshold sometimes. It's like, maybe they really buy into, you know, the passion that you have or the market or the product, and they're willing to take a chance on something that they think they can make it into a big opportunity for both of you.

Yeah, I think that's really good. Do you? Yeah, because we were chatting, Matt and I were chatting before with you about how we've run into hiring copywriters that just don't pan out how we wished it would have. And it's probably because of our lack of wanting to invest more in them or maybe build in incentives, like you said, royalties and maybe some extra things. So help us out.

Yeah, yeah. Well, sometimes you get what you pay for. I mean, we all know that's sort of one of those things. Now that's not to say there's a lot of really good up and coming copywriters. I mean, I know I've been mentoring some myself and. And not everybody you need to pay huge dollars for and you can get some really good copy. I mean, I started out, like, obviously not making what I've made in recent years, and.

People saw in me. Oh, I remember once somebody said, you know, you're like this. What does she call me, Like a hidden gem or something. And I kind of felt like I was just like this dusty old thing, like in an antique shop that somebody just picked up, you know, I said, oh, this one's kind of cool.

Diamond. Enough. Rough.

Maybe that's what she did. I felt like it was kind of a weird. I don't know, I felt a little weird about it, but I was like, okay, it's fine, you know, I'm not gonna like. But anyway. But she, you know, then she just started giving me some more opportunities. And so, you know, I was able to take these small projects, like, you know, two page renewal letters or some emails or whatever, and really do very well with them. And then next thing you know, they're like, well, let's give her a chance at one of these big projects, you know. And then within a year or so, I think on my second try, I beat Jim Rutz. I don't know if you ever heard of the late Jim Rutz, but he was like this great copywriter. He was legendary. And he had the control for their flagship financial newsletter. And here I was, this little upstart, and I was able to beat him. And then as soon as Brian Kurtz heard that I had the control for this product and had beat Jim Rutz, he's like, let's hire Kim to write a boardroom promo. And then I went up against Paris on Popola. There was like some seven year control for tax Hotline. And then I ended up beating his promo. And I became the first female copywriter to go to boardroom control. But it all started with just being a little diamond in the rough that somebody said, hey, she looks like she could write some good copy. And so I guess for those kinds of things you want to look at is even if they haven't written exactly for your type of product or even the type of promo that you want them to write, get some samples of their work. And, you know, and I always tell other copywriters starting out, like, you know, the best way to start is just start, you know, getting some paid work, getting some samples in your portfolio. And it don't necessarily have to be exactly in. Like, you don't have to say, oh, I only write for the poodle owners who live in San Diego niche or whatever. You know, like, sometimes people just, like, want you to go so micro, and it's like, that's crazy, especially if you're just starting out. Like, I would write for pretty much everybody and anything almost, you know, like when I was starting out. But I think it made me a better copy because I wrote such a wide variety of stuff. I mean, again, a lot of it was in health and financial because of my background, but, you know, it gives you that flexibility and, you know, because you realize too, like, you know, none of these two products are really exactly the same, and you don't want to take a fill in the blanks, formulaic approach to every single promo, you know, So, I mean, I could go on and on about that topic, but, yeah, so that's kind of how I got started. And so things you would look for is look at their writing, look at their portfolio, and kind of just talk to them and just, you know, are they a person who is really passionate, like, very curious? Do they. You know, what, you know, did they strike These kind of person gonna really put the hard work into the promo, you know?

Yeah. Well, not. Not to get too granular here, but when you do get samples, what kind of things are you looking for inside of the samples? Like, if. If we're somebody who maybe isn't well versed in copywriting, reading a sample of somebody else's work, what. What kind of things would I be looking for?

That's a good question. I mean, one thing you could do is just read it cold as if you were the prospect. Like, does. Does the headline grab you? You know, does it make you want to read further? You know, do you find yourself, you know, reading it and not getting confused or lost? I mean, I had, you know, I've had the experience of having, you know, Paris and Propolis, who I just mentioned earlier, but he copy chiefs, all the copywriters who write for one of my. And so I think he told me once, sometimes he just prefers to read it, like, read copy that he's reviewing, like at night, maybe, you know, when he's kind of sleepy and maybe after a drink or who knows? You know? And does it, like, does it still grab him? Does it, like, does it. Is he able to follow it?

You know, so basically, like, get him out of his own head almost like.

Yeah, get out a little different prospect, be able to look at it Cold. I know it's hard. Like, but if you're. You're a business owner and, you know, sometimes it's hard to sing to write your own copy. I mean, I have the experience I was sharing with you of having my own copywriting programs, and sometimes I'm just like, oh, my God, like, it's so hard to just write my own copy. And I get other people to write it who have been through the program because they can usually take a fresher approach than I can.

Yeah, no, that's something that we definitely struggle with ourselves. I mean, Joe and I have both studied copywriting quite a bit, and we can look at other people's sales letters and actually give, like, pretty good feedback on. Here's where we make some tweaks. When it comes to writing our own sales letter. We struggle like crazy to even put the first few sentences on the page.

Right. One thing you could do, now that you mention it, is, and I know there are copywriters who do this, is you can ask them to just do a critique of your current control. And if you like what they say, maybe you're like, maybe this is a person you want to hire to do a whole new one.

Yeah. I mean, so that's actually probably a great thing. And we've done that minorly, but without, like, really a real process of what we were doing. But, yeah, the audits are critique, like you said. I think that's one of the cooler ways to see them as a character, like, how they work, too, because we've had some issues of copywriters just kind of falling off and not literally just falling off and, like, not communicating. We're like, dang it. I like that.

Well, let's talk about how to solve that. But just real quick, not to my getting on my list again, but my current freebie when you get on my list is what I call the A list Copyright writers promo checklist. And it's actually five checklists in one. You know, like, there's like, a start kit, you know, one for, like, getting a copywriter started on a project. There's a research checklist, but there's some for, like, the promo, like, for each section of the promo that can actually help you as the client, you know, evaluate, like, the headline, evaluate the lead, evaluate the body copy, evaluate the clothes, you know, because you could just go through and see, does it check all the boxes? Right. And then there's like, a final promo checklist, which, you know, covers a whole bunch of other things. So I would say, you know, get that free checklist, which I probably should be charging for now that I talk about it. And in fact, I might know. So get it, get it quick.

Get it quick.

But yeah, use that. And that might lead you to some things in terms of evaluating the copy. And then what was. I was about to say something else and now I forgot.

The other one was about having them drop, like just communication falling off, them not following through.

Yes. So I guess the question in that case is how are you paying them? Are you not paying them 100% up front? Are you?

No, no, we've never done that.

I mean, this is a case. Case basis. I think the one that you're talking about, I actually can't remember the guy's name because he fell off.

But we're not going to say it anyway.

Yeah, we wouldn't say it anyway, but yeah, so we, we basically were in conversations with somebody who was going to do some copy for us. We actually never got to the point of making agreement with, with this particular.

Response to that specific one. But I know, yeah, it's kind of happened in numerous phases. But I guess if you have any good principles or best practices that to.

Prevent that, sometimes if you just go, I'm not saying this is what you guys did. But if you go back and forth and back and forth on price, I don't know, to me that would just be like a. I don't want to work with these people. So.

Again, it kind of comes down to you get what you pay for. I'm not saying that you should just, you know, be like, price is no object and I'll just pay anybody, you know, $20,000 to write a promo. I mean, you still want to make sure you're getting, you know, something like a good value for your investment of, you know, I mean, you know, that's a big investment, whether it's 2,000 or 5,000, you know, for a lot of small companies, it's a big investment. So I think you would look at, you know, trying to, you know, have a fair deal that, you know, you're compensating them well, pay them, you know, 25 to 50% up front, depending on what the situation is. I mean, I've always gotten half up front just to book a slot in my schedule. But you could have a phase where. And I know there's companies that do this, and I personally kind of drives me a little crazy, but, you know, you could just maybe do a quarter up front and then maybe they give you some sample headlines or some kind of outline and copy platform, document or something so that you kind of have maybe some different steps of approval built in that allow you to like, maybe especially if it's the first time you're working with a particular copywriter and not like somebody that you already know, it's like established with 100 different controls. But like, you know, that could be a way to maybe minimize some of the risk and, you know, kind of go through it that way. And then they have, you know, kind of some built in deadlines they have to meet, you know.

Yeah, they're like milestones that are holding them accountable. Yeah, go ahead. Sorry.

No, I'm saying that that could be one way to do it. And, but most, I mean, again, most professional copywriters, you're not going to have that situation. I mean, you're going to agree to a schedule up front. You're going to hopefully put it in your agreement. I mean, I always put like a rough proposed schedule, like in any kind of agreement or invoice so that everybody's on the same page and.

So make sure you have all that mapped out.

The other thing that I've sort of run into when hiring copywriters in the past is I'd love to hear your perspective on it is in my opinion, almost copywriters being almost too stubborn with the voice that they want to use. We've had people write copy for us in the past. We'd read it and we'd give them the feedback that this isn't really our voice, this isn't really the way we'd want to word things. And then we'd have the copywriter come back to us and go, well, do you want it to sell? Because what I wrote is what sells. Right. And so there's this kind of debate between us and the copywriter of like, yes, it does, maybe this is what sells. But it also doesn't really feel like us and we're kind of uncomfortable with the wording. And I've had that sort of back and forth situation in the past where I've butted heads with copywriters because they wanted to write it in one way, but I kind of would have preferred it being in another way. And I'm sure you get what I'm saying, but.

Yeah, well, I do. I'm just trying to lift my jaw up off my desk. I just think that's crazy for a copywriter to be like that. I mean, especially because, like, you. I mean, what are you guys selling? Are you selling something that's based on your personality and your Your. Your own personal brand, right?

For the most part, yeah. And we're talking more like past case scenarios. I mean right now we really don't have many offers that are ours that we're putting out into the world. Most of our revenue comes from affiliate marketing and sort of JV deals where we're kind of more behind the scenes these days. But in the, in the past, yeah, it was like info courses or like agency services or things like that.

And there was a brand element, like. Yeah, like there'd be emails. So we're just trying keep it congruent. That was the only thing.

Yeah, well, so maybe that you add that obviously to how you evaluate potential copywriters because you want copywriters who have had to write in other brands voices in the past. And there is a whole skill set to that. In fact, I know a friend of mine, Abby Woodcock, created this whole thing. I think it's called Codex training and it's a pretty high dollar training that copywriters can go through. But I know a lot of people who've done it and you know, it allows, it gives them the tools. Like how do you. There's a whole, whole systematic approach to incorporating the brand voice or the spokesman voice. But I mean, even going back to my Philips publishing days when you know, we had the big brand person for the alternative health newsletter was Dr. Julian Whitaker. And you know, so the newsletter came from him, it was written by him. But all the stuff we sold on the back end, including the supplements, was very much his brand. And. And so we were incorporating his voice like every little like in house. We wrote a lot of the copy, you know, that on my team and it would be, you know, sales letters and stuff that would be coming from him. And we always incorporated his voice. Like it had to be on brand. I mean it was just. That's just like a basic of marketing, you know, and any kind of communication. I mean I was once a brand manager in a previous company. So I mean, I don't know, like it just kind of drives me, it makes me. Especially in something where somebody's selling a course or people are buying something based on that person. Like I can't think of anything more important than for it to not just sound like everything else out there, like some generic marketing voice.

Yeah. And I mean to be fair, and in retrospect, it was probably just the fact that we were kind of, we were price shopping copywriting. You know, at the end of the day that's probably what it comes down to.

Yeah, you get what you pay for. Who said that?

Who knows? I know you've said it a few.

Times here, Pennywise and pound foolish.

I mean, that's. But I think that's a struggle that a lot of business owners have with this is to know, understand the value that a really good copywriter can bring to not only just a promo, but a business overall. And I think that's the big. I know that was our issue. And that feeling, maybe it's. This isn't a partnership, it's a transactional. Oh, I'm gonna get a sales page. But like you've been mentioning, partnership, more of a partnership.

I mean, you know, no one can guarantee your results. Like, beware of. Somebody says, I'm going to write you something, I guarantee, you know, but you can build in something even if it's not like this, you know, huge royalty deal, you know, but you could build something in like, okay, we're going to hire you to do one version, and then we're going to want maybe two possible test versions, and maybe we'll do those after we do the initial test or something. You know, when I say tests, like, maybe two different headline and leads and, you know, you could either have them provide those along with the initial draft, or you could, you know, say, we want to test it with this one, but then we may come back and based on what we learned, what you do, do another one, you know, and maybe just include that in the whole deal. Because I'll tell you, I mean, I did almost. I've done a whole presentation on this once, and I actually have a whole. My first course. I talked about this, but, you know, and I mentioned earlier how I got a control early on where I beat Jim Rutz and another one where I beat Paris and Populous. And then after that, I actually wrote my first health supplement promotion. And I will say, and that was like, Like Magalog, right? Long form. And the first one of each of those, it didn't work, or it came either bombed or it came close to working, but not quite right and had the client and I just. They said, oh, forget it didn't work, you know, blah, blah, blah, you know, you know, but no, like everybody, you know, because I, I had an incentive, you know, even though, like, I'm not going to get the royalty obviously, if the promo doesn't work, but I had an incentive, like, well, let's go back and try something else. Or the, you know, and the client, you know, to their credit, was like, yeah, let's. Let's give you another try. Right. So the first time, it's kind of a funny story, but, like, when I wrote my very first financial promo, and this is for a fairly big company, and I thought, you know what? I'm going to take this. Maybe it's a little cocky, you know, because I'm, like, this young, arrogant, not arrogant, but you know what I mean? Like, didn't know any better, really. Basically, I was, you know, like, I'm gonna take a fresh approach. And I convinced them to let me put this Godzilla monster on the front cover. And it was like, the headline was something like the Change monster that Ate the Economy. And I understand it was actually kind of intriguing, but it was going up against Jim Rutz and the control it went up against. He actually had put a presidential seal on the front cover. And it looked. Imagine, it looked like a special White House report.

Yeah.

And it said something like, what I forgot to tell you before the election or something. It was like when George W. Bush was president. And so that was just like. That just killed it, right against a dinosaur, you know? So mine, like, did not do well. But then they. They hired me six months later and said, you know, what can you write? And they paid me a full fee again, like, write a whole new promo and blah, blah, blah, because we liked your copy. It just, you know, it didn't work against Jim Ross. And so I did it again, and I took a whole different angle, and I made it more like a issue. It looked like an actual issue and all this stuff. Anyway, I ended up beating Jim Rutz on the second try, and kind of the same thing with the boardroom folks. When I got my first shot to go up against Paris's control.

You know, I kind of. My headline was a little too clever. You know, everything else was great. Headline was a little clever. It came close. It might have actually tied, but you need to be, like, at least 15, 20% ahead to get the new control with boardroom, or at least back then. So they gave me another shot, like, well, can you do another headline test? I'm like, sure. And, of course, I didn't charge for that. I'm like, yeah, let me just. I got a new headline, new lead. Let's put that on. Everything else was the same, and I beat them on the second try. And then, you know, with that first nutritional supplement promo that I did the first shot, like, I was like, wow, this pro. This product does everything. It does, like this and this and this and this, and it went out there. And, you know, of course, at the time, like, that Kind of stuff wasn't working. It was more like, is this a joint pain thing or is this a memory solution? And people wanted a specific solution. I went back on the second try, and the client paid me more money to just do a complete reworking. And I decided to position it as a joint supplement. And that thing nailed us to control for, like, 10 years. Yeah. So these were all humongously successful promos. But, like, it was the first try, like, either bombed or just really didn't quite work. And then. Or didn't beat the control, but then it was going back and doing it. So I guess. I guess another lesson is, like, when you hire a good copywriter and maybe things aren't always going to work the first time. And I can go on and give you a million examples. Just that I know from, like, knowing other copywriters, having worked at a major company hiring copywriters, a lot of big name copywriters do not hit it, you know, out of the ballpark on the first try. So it's foolish to, like, throw the baby out with the bathwater. Right. Since we're doing all these little things, you know, so go back to them and have. This is where you kind of have that partnership is, you know, like, give them another try. Because that second try sometimes can be that one that, like, really works or the third try, you know.

Well, that's so power. And that's why I think it's resonating, at least for me, because of all the other times we've taken a hack at copywriting and, you know, it's like, oh, we need someone else to, because we just don't have the time, or we think they could do it better than us, and then we don't give them a fair shot to try to actually maybe learn our voice or learn what's working, what's not. I mean, nothing. You can't expect an amazing result out of the first go every single time.

Well, we've also shopped around copywriters in the past, and we've sort of price shopped a bit, I think is a big element of it. And we've talked to some of the more quote unquote, like a list copywriters, names that people all know and stuff. And. And there's a. Definitely a sticker shock element when they first bid you, you know, the copy project. And it's a sticker shock that comes prior to, like, even knowing if we're gonna get a result. So, like, I think there's that. That sort of mental barrier that we've always struggled to get over of like, okay, this person, I'm just, I'm making up numbers. But okay, this person wants like 30,000 up front plus, you know, 10% royalty on the deal. Well, shoot, that's, that's a really, really big number. We don't even know for sure if they're going to drive results for us. And so I think there's like a mental block there that we've yet even to this day to like really get over to jump on board with like the a list. Higher ticket copywriters.

Yeah. And you don't necessarily need. You know, again, if you have a business that at most I don't even know how big your business is, but let's say it's a 2 million a year business or something. You know, that would be like living in a house that is like, you know, worth about $200,000 and putting on like $150,000 addition or something. You know what I mean? Like, you mess. You may not, you're not going to necessarily get a big enough roi potentially. Again, it really depends. Like you could have a product, a business that's 2 million, but it really could be a $20 million business. And in that case, hiring, making that one big investment and getting that really great copywriter that could potentially really leapfrog your business. So I think it kind of depends on your situation. I mean, like, you're speaking of Jim Rutz, like I'll never forget when he wrote a promo. It was like 15 years ago. It's a legendary direct mail promo with the headline read this or die. Believe it or not. And you guys, it's one of these ones.

It sounds familiar.

Yeah, it's really worth studying. But I remember when that, and this is when, you know, direct mail was in its heyday. But I mean that piece was so strong that was able, they were able to mail like it was healthy directions that are Phyllis Publishing that was mailing it for one of their health newsletters. And it brought on like 100,000 subscribers like within a year. So that mean I could build an entire business because they also had a whole back end supplement business which I also helped them launch. And so that, you know, it was like bringing people in at like an average of maybe 60, $70 for subscription. But then being able to sell a good chunk of those people, like several hundred, if not thousands dollars worth of supplements, that was a huge business. So if they paid him, I think back in, back then, like, I think Jim Rutz would charge like $100,000 to write a promo. And then I think he might have even gotten royalty on top of that. But it was worth every penny. I mean, literally built like $100 million business out of that investment.

Well, and that's key. You said the whole back end there. You know, it's like if business owners only focused on just this front end product, just understand.

Of what more customers will do for selling, repeat customers.

Yeah. You know, it's interesting. I did just have a podcast interview with our friend James Schramko that we were mentioning earlier. And it's funny, our whole topic was a completely different topic than what you, what we're talking about today. It was all about that whole back end.

Right.

And just maximizing that because, I mean, that was sort of the background I came from was when I went to Phillips, it was all like, what do we do with this whole back end? And you know, and now that I've, you know, for years have been that unicorn that can write the acquisition promo that's successful, which, you know, a lot of copywriters can't really do, that's what everybody always comes to me for. And then, you know, I just see like some business owners, not all, but some are just so constantly focused on bringing new people in and just churning through new customers. And they're not, they're just ignoring this huge back end. They're not nurturing those people. They're not thinking about what next can do. They want to buy beyond the whole funnel upsell thing, which I think can be a negative when it's not handled as well as it could be. You know, having a short sighted vision of let me just max out everything I can get from this person just because they, you know, click the button and leave them feeling like, oh my God, have I made some horrible mistake? You know, like, you don't want to start the relationship off like that. But yeah, like, you know, back in the old, you know, old school days, like we would, you know, get somebody to buy and again it would be through like an insert in the newsletter or whatever kind of mailing. And then we always found that they buy like some kind of bounce back in the box. And then we'd mail something within the first 10 days and then we'd get like 8 to 10% response from that and you know, while they were still hotline. Right. So the hotline period isn't just at that time of ordering. There's a whole period of time like in that first 30 days that I think are really critical. And I'm not Sure. Very many marketers focus on that.

Then maybe we talk about. Yeah, I've actually never heard of that term hotline.

Yeah, it's an old, old school. I mean, you know, it's like, I mean it's not like it's that old school. I mean, my God, within the last 15 years, I mean, I'm sure there are companies like, okay, so I just like three, four years ago, there's a guy I know, he's super old school with what he's been doing. Like he does like newspaper ads and he sells like these vinegar books. And then on the back end he has like all these little honey vinegar supplements and all these things that he's never really like done a lot with this. I mean he's, you know, it's a nice little business. But I just consulted with him for free, you know, just because he's like in a mastermind that I'm in or he was at the time. And we just had a few conversations and I actually had somebody I was coaching as a copywriter that I was linking up to help him out with some copy. And so I mentioned this whole idea. Like, you know, why aren't you like sending people a mailing to introduce this product like after they buy the book, like send something within the first 10 days. And he was just, he tried it and it's like, oh my God, like you know, we did that. And I know it was like another thing too, like have a stock up, have people buy more of what they've already bought. Which, you know, I know Justin Goff's probably talked about in other people, like upsells. But you can do that really at any time with your, with your buyers. One of the things I did, you know, back when I was at Philips there would be these times where they would literally call it Dash for Cash where company president be like, okay, everybody come up with something you can do before the end of the course quarter to boost everybody, you know, the boost revenue or whatever. So we'd call it Dash for Cash. Everybody had to come up with like five ideas to like bring in more cash. And so I came with this idea. Like we had, you know, all these people buying, you know, supplements which are obviously a consumable product. And we tried to get as many people to go on auto ship and not everybody wanted to go on auto ship or stay on auto ship. So I'm like, well, let's do a stock up sale. And we, you know, put like a seasonal thing on it, like stock up for winter stock up for summer, whatever. And we just brought in like a, I don't know, with one little mailing to the list, like $350,000. And it's funny because like 15 years later, there's a woman who lives in my neighborhood and she works part time for the company for Healthy Directions and all she does is stock up mailings. Really. And then one summer she hired my son to babysit her kid. I'm like, wait, it's all come full circle. I invented the stock up milling, I created her job, and now she's got a job for my son.

Wow.

It was just kind of funny. But no, I mean, so anyway, I had told this guy, like, like, you know, do a stock up mailing. And he's like. And he was so happy, he just like sent me a check. He's like, I gotta pay you something, like, okay, whatever, you know. But, you know, and I was able to just take one of my old stock up mailings and give it to the copywriter I coached and said, here, just kind of follow this. And she wrote it and it worked great. So, you know, it's a lot of much more simple copy that you, you know, you don't need an A level copywriter to do this backend stuff. And there's so much money in it and there's probably a lot of opportunities for a lot of companies and you can get like a fairly junior level copywriter who can just knock this stuff out. And that's basically how I got started. I was doing all that for the first couple years and people were like, oh, she's doing some nice stuff. Maybe we'll give her a shot at something bigger, you know.

Well, that's actually interesting because that could be a way to get a little warmed up to hiring a copywriter. It could be a junior copywriter at least. Lesser, lesser investment up front. Maybe there's a, maybe there's more perks, incentives built in because you have the back end to deal with. And.

That could be very interesting because it's kind of just found money at the end of the day.

It is. And if you're not getting to it. Yeah, I mean, I think that would be, that would be a top, top opportunity for any business to look at is, you know, and then bringing in a copywriter who can write a simple one page, two page letter or email or whatever it is and you know, just bring the money in and that's much lower risk than. It's much, much harder to get somebody who can, who will buy from you for the first time, you know, with a cold, you know, cold list or whatever. And that's why people pay, you know, the A listers like me a lot of money. And I, like I said, you know, we become those unicorns that can do that because a lot of people can. And it is hard to bring on new people. And obviously both are vital to any business. But, you know, I worked with way too many companies, especially smaller companies, but even bigger companies that just. There's so much emphasis just on that acquisition. Acquisition and not really building. I mean, like a real business is, you know, the customers that buy from you again and again, especially if you have a consumable product. I mean, you're absolutely crazy if you're not. And it's funny too. I think so much of this got, you know, inculcated into my head because, you know, coming from a subscription business, like a publishing company like Philips, you know, that was all around me was like, you know, we're in the business of getting renewals and this and that. And so when we were getting ready to launch the Healthy Directions business, I remember having the company president, you know, grilling me like, okay, so, you know, because we were like, oh, we got this little. We got the copy, we're ready to sell. I was like, okay, so what do you. How are you going to get them to order a second time and what are you going to do after that? And it was like, whoa, whoa, whoa. And so we had to have it all mapped out, have everything set everything in place for that first order in, like, boom, boom, boom, go right into the machine. And you know, and again, I just don't think a lot of businesses think about it that way.

Yeah, no, it's not. We actually had a conversation just, you know, prior to we recorded another podcast and his whole emphasis is on the back end and he has a whole model around it and exactly what you're saying. I know Perry Marshall referenced over there. He has this whole espresso machine concept where it's like they're always going to get keep percentage of your customer are going to keep paying for more expensive things, giving them offers.

Absolutely.

Yeah, I like that. And, and that's a good way to.

Bring a new copywriter in and test it out and. Right, and I know, and another thing too is you can also, you know, maybe work out arrangements with other copywriters to copy chief, you know, for you, you know, because I think that's also where sometimes things go awry if you are a busy business owner or maybe you don't Have a lot of experience with copy and you're the one. Or maybe you fancy yourself to be a good copywriter, which sometimes can be conflicting because you think your way is the best way, but yet you hired this person to figure out the best way. Right. And sometimes that can be an issue. So sometimes it's better to just sort of separate yourself. And maybe you have someone come in and kind of copy chief and manage that project for you because they'll know better how to work with that copywriter and make that process go more efficiently. And almost like.

Yeah, like a project manager for copy, essentially.

Like a project manager, but also someone who. Well, you also have those two. I mean, there are people. I've done a lot of work, you know, in the past, like book launches and stuff for Dr. Mark Hyman and some other people and you know, they will bring in. I actually know a couple people who do this, who I could highly recommend that are, you know, know for hire project managers and they just take over. They handle all the creative, like they will manage and select the copywriters, the designers, this and that. They'll get it all though, you know what I mean? Like they'll take that off your plate.

Right.

And it's almost like having, you know, but you only need them for, you know, use, like having a part time basis, you know, having a solid marketing manager or project manager who can like handle those things. And sometimes that's better because they're much more experienced with how do you work with the copywriters and how do you keep things moving along? Because you can get. Things just get bogged down. I know how busy I get. I'm sure you guys get busy and any business owner gets super busy.

Yep. And then that prevents the thing from the project from actually working out. And in our case, sometimes it prevents us from even pursuing copywriting even further, hiring someone because we're like, we don't want to manage that or another thing.

Right, right. Yeah. You just don't have time. But like you're missing out totally. You're not able to. Yeah. Grow your business.

Interesting.

Yeah. I'm curious, when it comes to like the cost of hiring a copywriter, are there any sort of rules of thumb or anything like that that people can follow as far as like what they can expect to pay for copy? What they can expect as far as like upfront costs versus royalties? Like, you know, how does somebody know that they're going into like a copywriting agreement then and they're getting like a, you know, a decent price. They're not, you know, they're not getting.

You know, they're not, they're not getting robbed by it basically. You know what I mean? Like, how would somebody go into it and know that they're paying a fair price for what they're getting with the copy?

I mean, you know, there are some people who have done some like pricing guides out there. I know AWI has put one together that actually could be, I don't know if it's something you might be able to get it for free.

But it, it breaks down like all the different types of promos, you know, this and that. And it gives ranges, but the ranges are quite broad if I recall. So you know, the ranges are going to vary a lot depending on the experience level of the copywriter, you know, and their reputation obviously.

So is there any like, is there any like, you know, if you're willing to give like this amount up front, then the percentage should be this much, you know, is there like any sort of like sliding scale on like royalty versus upfront kind of thing?

Thing? So I mean the royalty deals that I've done are generally there's like a flat fee for creating the promo and then there is if it's like an online promo, it's like a percent of gross or net sales beyond that and it's, you know, it's a single digit number. It's not some huge scary number. Right. But yeah, so that might generally be how you would structure an online. And this would be only for a long form copy. Like I would not charge a royalty on an email or website copy, you know what I mean? But if it's like a single long form sales page or video sales letter, something that is meant to convert people who land on it into being buyers, you know, that is, you know what I would potentially. Because also it just takes a long time to write those, you know. So there's the flat fee and then there's the royalty. If I was writing and I have done this like a series of a bunch of emails that were maybe acquisition oriented, I might just charge a flat fee. But then maybe there'll be like a one time bonus, you know, if it like reaches a certain threshold. Right. There's so many different ways you can structure it. I mean you could have just, I mean I just set up a deal with one company for one of my mentees to just do a headline and lead test and some emails to drive traffic to the sales page and they'll be paid a flat fee, you know, assuming the project gets completed you know, to their satisfaction. And then if, if they run it and it reaches a certain sales threshold within, I think the first three days, whatever the period of time is, they'll get basically an additional bonus, one time bonus. So you can build in incentives.

For performance. And then you might find that, okay, so maybe they might want to charge 3,000, but you say, well, how about we do it for 2000 and you get 2% of net sales? Or how about we do it for 2,500 and if it becomes our new control, we'll give you a one time bonus of $2,000 or whatever. There's so many different ways you can do it. I mean, I once had a control with National Geographic many years ago for one of their books, and they were not accustomed to doing royalties, but I just set up something like a bonus structure. And they had a, like they hit certain thresholds for the number of names that could mail. You know, this is like with direct mail, the more you mail, the more it's a sign that it's a successful promo. Then I would get either a $5,000 bonus for each mailing or a $10,000 bonus or whatever it was, the structure. So there's just a lot of different ways you can do it. You don't necessarily always. Royalties don't always make sense. It depends on the kind of promo. And you can use incentives to pay less upfront. I mean, as a business owner, I actually think you can use them to reduce your upfront risk.

Oh yeah, yeah. Setting in. I like the milestone thing too. The bonuses, like, even if it's just a one time and maybe within a time frame, so it's getting them to really put a lot of focus into it. Do a lot of a B testing, assuming you have enough eyeballs on there.

I mean, I've done it with like people who are like, I don't want to pay your full fee. It's too high. You know, it's just like a while ago. So I'll just take a smaller fee, but I'll be like, but I'll get a one time bonus of X amount. And it basically comes out to what my full fee would have been or beyond or whatever. But, you know, it makes it a little bit less risk for that up front, you know, so. So there's ways you can structure it. And I, and I think that incentives and bonuses can work to actually reduce your initial upfront cost. And you may pay more over time, but you're only paying it if it's successful in making you money.

Right. Awesome. I think that's, I mean, that's super helpful, Kevin. Kind of exposing what I think a lot of copywriters and folks don't really talk about. It's kind of unknown for them.

No copywriter will ever. Now no one's ever going to talk to, to me again, like, oh, damn, why'd you fill all of our secrets?

That was our code.

No, I think it's been really helpful for us because we've always had these sort of like, mental barriers about, you know, hiring copywriters. Whether they be, you know, financial barriers of us going, oh, that seems pricey for what it is, or, you know, barriers of us feeling like nobody knows our product better than we do, so we shouldn't hire copywriters. We should write ourself because we know the product inside and out. Or maybe it's, you know, just, just we're too close to our own product.

Or it's a combination of all that. I mean, you know, you're too close to it and you want to get a copywriter who's not going to just freaking phone it in or just do some little template, like let me fill in the blanks, but is going to really dig into that product. And I think I told you I have this program I've been doing where I've been tearing down some of my most successful controls. And for each of these, there's obviously steps that are always the same, but then there's, you know, just approaching each one is like its own unique thing because, you know, there's. It's like digging out that story.

Right?

And, and, you know, I mean, I learned that early on, like working at Philips, you know, just some of the different products that we marketed. And I even got on a plane in the middle of winter and went to visit a manufacturer of an air purifier that we wanted to see if we could sell. On the back end. We were like a $400 air purifier. But I knew, you know, by the time I toured the factory, saw how he took one apart, you know, I knew why there was this much Zeolite and why there was like that much HEPA filter and why this was there and that like I could have built the thing and, and I wrote like this little six page insert and nobody thought it was going to work. And it like did really great.

You know, you understood the product.

Yeah. So then I write supplement copy. Like, I go deep, I really dig deep into, okay, not just, you know, what is the unique mechanism, but like, sometimes there's multiple ingredients and they all have multiple mechanisms. And there's not just one mechanism of the problem, but there's multiple mechanisms. And like, how do you make it up? And you have to make it all obviously understandable and, you know, but like, how do you weave this whole story that you feel like I need every single ingredient in that formula. I'm not going to just go off and buy this other thing, you know, because I read about this or, you know, so there's, you want copywriters who are going to really dig in and, you know, like another quick story, like on that vein. Again, these are all lessons for me that have influenced my copywriting over the last couple decades. But when I first went to Phillips Publishing, one of the reasons my job was created was Clayton Makepeace, the late Clayton Makepeace, great, great copywriter. He had written the launch promotion for their first alternative health newsletter, Health and Healing, which was the one with Dr. Julian Whitaker. And, and so, like, the way he approached his research, I mean, it's ideally how any copywriter would approach it, although not everybody's going to do it to this length. But he flew out to Newport beach, he toured Dr. Whitaker's medical clinic, he hung out with him by the pool and talked for hours and just like, really got into his head, got into his brain, like, figured out like, what is so unique about what this guy does, you know, and basically just created this brand, you know, that was in this, this incredibly successful Magalog sales promotion that brought in, you know, within the first couple years they had over 300,000 paid subscribers. And so when I came and I was like, figuring out what else to sell to these people, you know, like, well, let's, let's start a supplement business. I mean, basically, you know, we went to 23 million, you know, just going to that list, you know, and you talk about brand, voice. Like, so much of it was like, what's that brand? And how does Dr. Whitaker talk? You know, and he says these certain words and phrases and, and you get his passion across and everything else. So, like, as an entrepreneur, like, you ideally want a copywriter who's just going to do that, at least on a mic on some kind of micro level, but, like, really interview you figure out, like, you know, why you do what you do, what's unique about your process, whatever it is, you know, and then put that story out there. And you want a copywriter who's really going to do that work, do that level of research. I mean, at least 60% or 70% of the work I put into every long form promo is, is research. Research and figure out what I'm gonna write about. And then the damn thing practically writes itself. It's also a lot more work than that. But still it's like, it's really that, you know, but it's just that research and those interviews and I, and I have been dissecting all these promotions in my copy teardowns. I've been pulling out file folders. Some of them are from like eight or 10 years ago. And I'm like looking at notes where I interviewed the doctor, I interviewed the formulator or interviewed, you know, whoever. And just like, yeah, that's where I got that. And that's where I got that. So know, you, you want, you know, you want people who are going to put that work into it.

Yeah. And it's like, it's kind of like the copywriters will find selling points too, that if you are the product creator, you're probably too close to even see those selling points. There's, there's the example. This is going to sound really bad because I don't remember if it's from Mad Men or if it was something that Ogilvy did, but there's that, that example of like they're trying to do this like cigarette campaign, right? And they're saying, well, ours are toasted. And they're like, yeah, but everybody's are toasted. Yeah, but the customer, the general audience doesn't know that. Just say you're toasted and everybody will associate you with the guys whose cigarettes are toasted.

Well, that's the strategy of preeminence that Jay Abraham talks about. And he uses the Schlitz beer story, you know, and they were, it's funny cause Mad Men probably, they probably the scriptwriters probably based it on that. But you know, they, you know, Schlitz was talking about how their beer was cold filtered or some kind of manufacturing process. Everybody did. And then it was like, ooh, the cold filter.

Let's just label it, you know, label it. And people imprint that in their minds.

But the reality is, I mean, you might have to do that. But reality is there's usually a unique story that can come out, especially when it's a, you know, a personality driven product.

Definitely. Well, Kim, we already took you longer than we asked. You give it to something great.

The time has flown by. It really has great talking with you guys.

We could probably do three hours. So maybe if you're open, we'll have you back for around two. And we'll go off on a different tangent.

Yeah, different copy tangent.

Yeah, we can definitely, I would definitely be up for that. I would love it.

Awesome. And remind us again where folks can get the action guides that are free, but you're probably going to make them paid right after this episode goes on.

Yeah, I'm just kidding. It's so free. It's the A List Copywriters checklist. You can go to Kim schwam.com K I M S C-H W A L M.com right on.

Very cool. Now are there any. We like to ask this question to all of our guests because we're big readers ourselves. Are there any books that you recommend others often or you refer back to often probably specifically in copywriting because there is a lot of copywriting books out there. What are sort of your go tos?

Well, I mean, Gene Schwartz's Breakthrough Advertising is an amazing book. There's really like one or two chapters that I just always go back to. I look at like the stage of market sophistication and stage of awareness. And I think that really ties in a lot with figuring out the right copy approach that you might take, especially with a headline or just the main hook. So I mean, that's for probably a little more sophisticated person about copywriting. But I'll tell you, like two books that I read when I left Philips and I first became a freelance copywriter were Scientific Advertising and My Life in Advertising by Claude Hopkins. And at least I think one of them, I think Scientific Advertising, you can just get a free PDF online.

I believe so.

Yeah, I believe.

Yeah. But they're just great books. And you know, I mean I did reread, I reread Scientific Advertising last year and just got actually, I think again earlier this year and I got so many lessons that I shared with some of my mentees and. But I remember reading it back then and this is after having six years of working at Phillips and having all that, you know, success with healthy directions and it all just like made everything click. I'm like, oh, wait, like, okay, now I get it. Like, you know, it was kind of weird because I knew, like I said, I'd never actually been a copywriter, I'd written copy, but I, you know, I was always a marketer.

Sometimes it sinks in a little deeper.

Yeah, it just really made it all connect. Even though it's like taking place in the 1920s or when it was written like this. It's timeless. It's just timeless about selling through words, you know.

Well, that's not going to change.

It's just the medium and timeless lessons. And I think that book alone, if you read scientific advertising, you're just gonna get so much value and you can find it for free.

Yeah, I believe that one is in the public domain now, so.

Yeah, well, we'll link that, that up and along with everything else, too. And Kim, thank you so very much and.

Oh, you're very welcome. It was great. It was wonderful. Hope we'll see you guys in real life one of these days.

One of these days. All right, see you later.

Okay, take care.

Thanks so much for tuning into that episode. I hope you dug it. I know Joe and I dug it. I actually kicked Joe out of the room. He's not here right now. Because I wanted to tell you about a tool that I really, really dig. We use it in our business. We recommend it all the time. It's called Easy Webinar. And it's a tool that lets you do live webinars, automated webinars, hybrid webinars, and, you know, pretty much any other kind of webinar, if there are other kinds of webinars. But anyway, this tool is kind of like your all in one, do it all tool for anything webinar related. It's easy webinar. It's put out by a dude named Casey Zman. He's been on the podcast. If you haven't listened to that episode, it's a killer episode. He's a really smart dude, but his software is amazing. It does everything. It's, you know, the title tells you exactly what it does. It's an easy webinar platform. And we use this in our business to run automated webinars all the time. We don't do a lot of live webinars these days. We like to do the kind of automated webinars where somebody can register and then it, you know, they can either watch it like 15 minutes later or they can watch it the next day, but it's just kind of always running. And it's a system that helps us make autopilot sales off of our webinars. Super cool tool. If you haven't tried it yet, you know, it's, it's, it's an amazing tool. And Casey is actually hooking you up. He said for listeners of Hustle and Flowchart, I can't believe he's doing this, but he said for listeners of the Hustle and Flowchart podcast, he's giving 25% off of the membership to use Easy Webinar. It's already super, super inexpensive for what it does and all the cool features it has. But he's hooking you up with 25% off because you're a listener of Hustle and flowchart. Go to easywebinar.com hustle. That's where you can get that 25% off discount. That's easywebinar.com hustole. It's a awesome tool. You're gonna dig it, so just go grab it. Check it out. Easywebinar.com hustle See ya. No, not see ya. You'll hear me in the next show. I don't know. I don't know how to close these things. Go get Easy Webinar. Talk to you later. Thanks everybody for listening to this episode of the Hustle and Flow Chart podcast for taking the time to listen. We want to give you something a little bit special. Every single episode that we do, we actually have somebody on our team take notes. We basically have a Cliff's Notes version of every episode where you can go and find all of the tips and tactics that they laid out, all of the resources that they laid out, all the good stuff from this episode. We actually have a nice simple notes version that you can find on our website. So go to evergreen profit profits.com find this episode that you just listened to and give us your email address and we'll send you the notes. Thanks for listening.

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