Let's chat with a millionaire copywriter - Stefan Georgi shares his secrets

I think that it drives me crazy. There was a culture. I don't think it's as pronounced now, but it's still around of that idea of almost like this whole like, ugh, fuck the client. Clients are so stupid. Oh, you mean the people who fucking pay your bills? Those people are the worst. The people who send you money through the interwebs, like magic. Oh, yeah. They're so fucking awful. They have the audacity to ask you like, hey, how's the project going? Right? Like, of course it'd be annoying. You're working on some big projects and like, you know, you're like, hey, it's gonna take four weeks. And after a week they're like, hey, can I see updates? Can you show me anything? You know that's annoying. And you know, you handle it. Hey, no, you can't, right? Like, you're like, hey, it's going well, but I don't wanna show you anything right now. Like, you have to trust me. Like, that's part of our process. But the idea of, like, that clients are like, you know, the whole fuck your client attitude, I cannot stand so going back to being successful. I just think everything we do, almost everything, you're almost always a service business. Whether you're like the CEO of a large publicly traded corporation, you're still in the service business, right? You still have your stakeholders, you have customers, and you have people that you're serving. We're all serving somebody. We're all in the service business. And so you need to be the best at service and then fulfillment that you could possibly be so good communication professional, on time. Like showing up when you're supposed to show up doing what you say you're gonna do, over deliver, right? What's so wonderful when you go to a nice restaurant and they bring you a free dessert at the end, you're like, oh, how nice is that? Right? Like, you know, like, oh, no, I don't want dessert. Like, well, here's like a little, you know, some chocolates or some truffles or like, oh, that's so nice, right? Do that for your clients. Be like, hey, you asked for five emails, so there they are. Plus, I decided to write you two more. Here they are, right? Do shit like that. Like, wow, people over deliver. And I just was thinking about it again today. I was telling you, Maria, right before we started about somebody who kind of like had a crappy interaction with somebody on my team who we were hiring, like a freelancer. And I messaged him with unsolicited advice, but I just was thinking if like all the freelancers out there just actually really like there's like five things to do and there's not a lot of things. If you actually like did the very basic stuff like, well, like you would, almost all of them would probably be making two to three times more money per year than they're making right now. And then those things are skill related. So again, fulfillment become the best in order. Whatever it is you're doing, whatever you know whether it is. And if you're a business owner, same thing, like make your product the best in the world and then, you know, the customer service become the best in the world. World class of customer service. No matter who you are or what you do, if you just do those two things, I swear to you, you'll be so far ahead of 99% of your competition it's crazy.

Yeah. And I, you know, I, I love that point, which is customer service. My background, I was a customer service manager and I find that a, that just do very well in the industry. Have a little bit of some kind of service business or customer service background where they did like call center stuff or sales stuff right at the beginning of the career. And it's something that you have to bring with you later on. Like when I talk to a customer now, even though, you know, maybe they're not doing very much volume or whatever, I still treat them like, you know, they're important and I make sure that I follow up with them and stuff like that. Like, we have to keep service levels to a certain point. Why, why would anybody want to work with me if I'm just being a jerk? You know what I mean? And I find a lot people right now is like, oh, well, I'm worth this and I'm worth that. And it's great because I mean, I interview some writers too and sometimes I'm like, so what's your rate? They tell me their rate and I'm like, why should I pay you that? And they, they can't answer. And I'm like, well, no, you know, so especially when you're, you're in a gig type of economy, it's like you have to. Proof is in the pudding. Like, tell me I wrote this for that merchant processor and they got like X amount conversion on that ad or whatever. Great. You know, that's awesome. But if you've never written for my niche and you're coming to me and you're telling me you're going to charge 1500 bucks for a blog post, that's a Thousand words. Well, no, thank you. You know what I mean? Like, tell me why I would pay that much for something benign as, like a blog post. So it's good to hear that side of the coin because I do feel like a lot of people are maybe overextending themselves in terms of like, you know, what they are. Like, I don't, I don't want to misrepresent myself too. I also feel like sometimes I'm like, you know, like that imposter syndrome. Sometimes when I give people my rates, I like, like I tighten up like one second before. But at the same time, we also have to keep in mind, like, if, if you're looking to break out, let's say you're a health writer and you go into somebody that, you know, talk to, somebody that has a finance product, well, maybe you bring your price down, maybe you, you change your stuff up, or maybe you double up your work so you can prove that. Yeah, I'm a good health writer, but I also, you know, I can deliver on this. So that's a really interesting point and I'm happy that, that you said that because I see a lot of these discussions and it makes me chuckle as a business owner because I'm. Money's not growing on trees. I work my ass off, you know, so I don't, I'm not gonna pay you just because you tell me that's what you're worth, you know, that's fucking stupid. Like, just, you know, prove it. Prove it. So that's, that's the point of that, is prove it. I'm gonna, like, completely shift focus. And this is just. Again, I read a lot of your stuff on social media, emails and all that, and I'm curious about the stuff that you were saying. I think it was like, must have been around Christmas time, so. But it's stuck in my head. So that's good. That's proof. Proof that your stuff is working on me. You were talking about, like, live, how it's like becoming a trend and stuff like that. So I'm kind of curious, kind of pivoting from copywriting and pivoting from the topics we just discussed, but literally offer owners and people who are selling. Like, right now we have a very traditional model. You know, you're at a long form sales copy, you do a vsl, you have a couple of upsells and so forth. How do you see that model changing? And, you know, and obviously, if you can give me your thoughts on live selling.

Totally. Yeah.

So around Christmas time, I took a Couple weeks off, which was very, it.

Wasn'T like a full on. How do I say this? I took time off from like from all the stuff I normally do basically. And instead of that I was like spent ton of time with my family. But then also I spent time like reading and thinking and stuff like that, which is so magical. And as I was doing that and going through just both like tons of books but also, you know, like different websites I was interested in. So like VentureBeat, TechCrunch and I read the Wall Street Journal and just like all these different like entrepreneur, Forbes, Fortune.

Blah, blah, blah, blah.

But I kind of started to see. I'd read one thing about livestream selling before that and kind of like was in the back of my mind. But then I started seeing it coming up more and more and more. And basically we're talking like livestream selling, we're talking kind of QVC style selling, but done on Facebook lives or Instagram lives or Amazon is like beta testing a platform for it or now there's a bunch of third party platforms as well. So like where you go on, you know, you're talking with your tribe, you're selling products, you say you have like 500 of them. Like, you know, you're, you, like, you actually sell live. People can buy as you're going and you really just do this kind of like QVC type of selling through live streaming. It was really, you know, at its essence. There's variance, but that's sort of what it is at its essence, you know. Okay, yeah, that's kind of interesting. And they're like, yeah, totally. It's $65 billion a year business in China and they're just fucking crushing it with it. And it's actually to be like a $330 billion a year industry in the US by like 2023 or something stupid like that. And you're like, oh shit, I should probably pay attention. I'm not. The China one's pretty much 100% accurate. The US one, I'm not. I can't have a 330. So it was some crazy number that's supposed to be in the US and so yeah, and it made sense because really I think we're at a place where people crave authenticity, community. And you know, they want like interactions, things that are interactive. They don't like static. I think like, you know, the road of, so much of the road of marketing used to be static. Like we talked about direct response and online being different. We talked about TV ads being static because you're at home, you're watching the ads going on. You know, you can't really respond to it except for if you go buy a Ford and like next time you buy a new car because you stop all those ads. Right, great. But in reality, like, which I'd like the Internet, you could get feedback with your ads and you could optimize stuff. So it sort of felt like, oh, that's better. But it wasn't really. You weren't having a true conversation. And then it's like, oh, on social media you're having a kind of like Gary Vaynerchuk comes out with jab, jab, hook or whatever. And it's like having conversations, you're like, yeah, but then you're not really selling. You're like, you're building up goodwill and you're like building up your brand. But I think that the algorithm of all this comes into like the idea of live stream selling and things like that, where you're going live, you're having conversations with consumers and customers, you're building relationships, you're being real, authentic and vulnerable and you're selling your product and you're telling the story. So it's copywriting galore, right? You're still storytelling. You're storytelling about you and your experiences about this product, about how it came to be made. You're selling stories about the ingredients and then you're doing call to actions. All right, We've only got 150 left click below buy right now. And I know other brands, funnily enough here in the US who have kind of done it accidentally and had tons of success, but it's just not a big thing here yet and I really think it will be. So I am wanting to do it with my own sort of team. Like, we've talked with a few people. I'm doing so many things that it's one of those pain in the ass where it's like, oh, God, I want to. I'm going full steam of this. And it's like, actually, I've got like 20 other things, so I'm not. But I really think there's no agency, there's no, you know, somebody's going to come in and just own that space really hard Guthrie Ranker type thing and create like a billion dollar company. So if any of you who watch this do that and start to get momentum, let me know so I can invest in you.

It'd be great.

Yeah, no, I mean, I just, I heard about that. And you know that we see so much on social media. So for me to actually remember something, I was like, man, that's actually. I started talking about it to just people. I was like, man, it's definitely where it's at. Like, people want to interact, the whole influencer model, you know. You know how many times I've bought something because, like, I don't know, Ariana Grande put it on her hair and I was like, oh, man, her hair looks great. I'm gonna buy it. You know what I mean? So it's like. So, I mean, it's just the next step to that. So it's. I mean, I would love to see what you do in that space and how. I'm sure you're gonna crush it, but, you know, any ventures that you have, I'm curious to know, you know, if you're live selling and like this becomes a thing, where do you see copywriting and all this? Like, are copywriters going to write the copy for the person to read? Do you think it's going to be that scripted or you think it's going to be like off the cuff and like, where's it going?

Basically, yeah, I think that it'll be both.

I think you have people who just feel so much more comfortable with the script and so they'll have like a more scripted approach and then hopefully still go off script some. So obviously copywriters are writing that and.

I think even if, like they aren't.

Writing the full script, I think I can see that copywriter is still storyboarding. Kind of like here's like the points we're going to talk about. Here are the different segments within. Here you're going to tell stories and helping you as a consultant, helping the person who's going to go live to draw out the stories, to draw out the talking points, to kind of list them out for them. I think that's all the purview and domain of copywriters, though. So I actually think there's a ton of crazy opportunities for copywriters in that space moving forward.

Hope you found today's session valuable. If you have any questions for me or just want to connect, please feel free to visit my website, marias. Com. That's M A R I A S P A R A G I s dot com. I'd love to hear what you're working on. So drop me a line on any hot button issues your business is experiencing. And remember, don't worry about failure. You only have to be right once.