[RTB:E10] The True Power of Opportunity (w/ Ian Stanley) - The Road to a Billion with Stefan Georgi

Hey, you're listening to the Road to a Billion podcast. I'm your host, Stefan Georgi, and I'm glad to have you with me here today. The Road to a Billion is a call and radio show where you can ask me questions about freelancing, copywriting, entrepreneurship, mindset scaling, funnels, relationships, money, and more. The name Road to a Billion comes because I will probably hit a billion dollars in sales this year for my own products and those of my clients. And my goal is to make an impact in the lives of a billion people in the next 10 years. And that really looks like a impact for them emotionally, mentally, and financially. So, like, mindset, making more money, feeling more emotionally stable, things of that nature. We'll start taking calls in about five minutes from now. And like I mentioned, you'll just take your questions, put them into the Q and A section in Zoom here. And then Ed Ray will be reviewing those questions and feeding them to myself and to Ian Stanley. I will have Ian introduce himself in just a second. Before I do that, Ed, do you want to go ahead and say hi to everybody?

Hey, I'm Ed Ray and I'm a Facebook copywriter. I enjoy breakdancing and helping host this podcast.

It's true, sometimes Ed is. Sometimes Ed is shirtless a lot of the time. But he decided to grace us with a tank top today. So, you know, it is what it is. It's kind of a mixed bag here on the Road to a Billion and Ian Stanley, who is my dear friend, special guest, co creator of Freelancer Freedom, which is a freelancing course that we just released this morning. But beyond that, just an amazing person. Ian, do you want to go ahead and introduce yourself, say hi to everybody?

Sure, yeah. You know what I really want to do is I want to read your intro in my Radio Guy voice. That sounds fun to me, but I don't have your copy. But the Road to a Billion podcast with Stephen Georgie.

I can do is I can put it into the. I can put the first two paragraphs into the chat for you. Okay.

That way you can see.

Go for it.

Let's do it. I'll do my radio voice and then you can, you know, use this as a clip later if you want it to sound just like you had some really douchey radio guy. Hey, you're listening to the Road to a Billion podcast. I'm your host, Stefan Giorgi, and I'm glad to have you here with me today. The Road to a Billion is a call in radio show where you can ask Me, questions about freelancing, copywriting, entrepreneurship, mindset scaling funnels, relationships, money, and straight up making it rain cash. Thank you for being here. I made the last lineup, Nailed it. But I think that's my. I think that's really my future. I think I might need to quit everything else and just be a radio dj and just be an American radio dj. Maybe get one of those buttons that makes fart noises, you know, like they do on the really high class shows.

Definitely. I think that's a really good idea.

I am not Stefan Georgie. I am Ian Stanley. I'm a half English, half American person, which means everybody thinks I'm Australian. I have written some copy in my life. I've sold over $100 million worth of stuff. So I'm just, you know, 1, 1 8th or so the man that Stefan is in that regard. And I've sold. I sold my first company when I was 27 or 28. I just turned 30 last month and pretty good at freelancing and teaching people how to make more money in less time while having more fun. And freelancing is one of the ways that I help people do that. Which is why I'm super stoked that Steph and I launched this course today, which is@freelancerfreedomcourse.com Is it live?

Are we up?

I haven't sent the link.

We were like live. I mean, apparently I emailed my list with a long like 2000 word email and a link and then I got a reply from Justin Goff of like links not working for me and said, well, shit, but I don't know. Then I reset the link out. So it's out. But yeah, we're live. I have no idea. Honestly.

It still says coming soon@freelancerfreedomcourse.com yeah, I.

Don'T know if that domain is ready, but I will put the like the checkout form there. We're gonna tell you a little bit more about it.

This is.

Yeah, this isn't gonna turn into like.

A Jason already webinar.

Jason Chen, my man. We're not gonna like, you know, the call. The point of the show is gonna stay the same, but we are of course going to tell you a little bit more about the course and what's in it because we're fucking excited about it, honestly.

We are. I really am. I'm super stoked to see what happens over the next 30 days for these people. And actually I want to answer that question right away because it's super important. Most important question of the day. Why do most A list copywriters have a beard? It's been proven in multiple scientific studies, double blind placebo studies, that having a beard does make you more successful. So it's really just a. It's a necessity. The other trick to being an A list copywriter is to have a name that is difficult to pronounce. So, you know, Paris Lampropolis, David Deutsch. And if it's hard, if it's not hard to pronounce, at least make sure it's hard to spell. Stefan Gayorgi or Georgie as he goes by. You know, Ian Stanley is actually probably on the easiest side of, you know, the spelling of the A list copywriters. But I think a lot of them have a. It's. That's kind of one of the other tricks is just make sure people can't spell your name. Make it very difficult. Ed.

Gary Benson re. Gary Benzema. I miss, I miss, like I stumbled on Gary Benson Vega's name one time on a live thing and everyone just laughed so hard. It was like I said, I don't know, like Donald Trump Drumf or something. And people were like, that's not his name. And I was really embarrassed by it. But you know, it's a hard name. Like Frank Kern has it easy, man. Frank Curran, just like he does. Hard to F that one up.

Yeah, that's why people can type in Frank Kern.com so easily. You know, they know how it's spelled.

You know, Frank Kern, he replied to my email yesterday, talking. It's so funny, that email yesterday about that copywriter who's like a hater on me and like I got replies from so many big guns from that. Like Craig Clemons replied, Frank Kern replied. Frank Kern's just like, good job taking lemons and turning them into lemonade. I was like, thanks, Frank Kern, very.

Frank comment I have. My only Frank Kern story is I had never met Frank in person before and I was at. He was at War Room in Austin and I went there and I was with Poseidon and he was like a puppy. And I just, I wasn't in the event, but I showed up and Frank's there and he stand next to this woman, Lori Taylor, and he's like. I was like, hey, nice to meet you. And he's like, I met you before, man. I know, I know we met. And I was like, oh, no, I. I know that we haven't met. I'm like, but it's nice. He goes, no, man, I met you.

I.

You. I know you. You look Damn familiar. I know. I know you. And I said, no, I know that you don't. So I don't know how many other ways to say that. And Lori Taylor goes, oh, he does those live Topaz videos, the, you know, the parody videos and the Can't Cardone. And he goes. He goes, oh, shit, man, I seen those. He goes, ty's lawyer called you yet? And I was like, no, he hasn't. But we were on stage together and that was my. Basically my full frank experience. And I've told him, I said, I want to do a video called Between Two Cones instead of Between Two Ferns. And I want him to be modern day short hair suit Frank. And then I want to get a blonde wig and do old school long hair blonde Frank and do it between two cones. And. And I think people would absolutely love that shit.

Yeah, that's a very strong idea. Everyone's talking about how to pronounce my name, which is just Stefan George. I. But I don't even. Ian doesn't say it correct and Justin doesn't ever say it correct.

I say Stefan.

No, no, the George. I though everyone you say Georgie.

Well, because I always ask you people. I hate when people do this. I go, how do I say your last name properly? And they go, however you want. I said, no, how do you want me to say it? I'm not trying to say it how I want to say it.

I hate when. I hate. I hate when people go, like, no, it's your name, man. Because I'm like, I don't really care because, like, it's gonna get mispronounced anyway.

So I don't know, Stick with gay orgy.

Well, the gay orgy you're not allowed to do, I'm told you, gay orgy. It's like the biggest mistake I ever made was telling Ian I had a quick story on this and then we're, yeah, great. I hope this. Hope this goes, spreads. And, like, that's the thing now. Thanks, Ian. Fucking Ian. Like, every couple years, Ian just fucks me every couple years. Like, he made up, like a fake tagline for like, a ED supplement that I had back in the day where he said it was a Christian arousal supplement for men and women. And he said that, like, he made a joke that my tagline was bring God into your life and into your wife. And which was not the tagline.

And then after that, to this day, one of the best taglines ever written.

Ever since people all, like, years later, I'd go talk to people at events and they'd be like, oh, yeah, the supplement. Bring God into your life and into your wife. That was brilliant. Like, that's not actually the tagline.

Imagine how much money you would have made if you did make it. The tagline.

I know. You know, I probably. I probably blew it, but, yeah, and then that one, that story is like, I had a European, like, history teacher who was from, like, Czechoslovakia or something in college, and, like, we were talking, and he's like, you know your last name. Like, you say. You say Georgia. And I'm like, yeah. He's like, that's not right. And I'm like, what do you mean? He's like, you know, that's an Eastern European name, and it's Georgie. And I was like, oh, like we've always said Georgei. He's like, nope, your family's saying it wrong. It's Georgie. And I was like, honestly, even if that was actually the correct way to say it, I would never take that and start just. I'm not gonna change my name to Stuff in Gayorgi, so.

Well, it's crazy that your last name is also your favorite thing, you know, that's what's just so interesting about it.

That's kind of a gift. That's kind of a gift, you know, when not only your last name is something that you truly love to do.

Yeah, that's me. I love tools, you know, Stanley Tool Company. Boom. Nailed it.

And you are a tool, so it's perfect.

And I am a tool, so it's like I was named after a tool company, and I fulfilled on that. It is funny because you. I remember that story that you told me, the whole story, and that's how I remember. But now when I talk to Siri and I call you, I'll say, you know, I'll say, you know, I hit the button or whatever in my car, and I call Stephan Stefan, Georgie, and she goes calling Stefan gave. And so each time, I'm like, I can't help but be re reminded of this. I'm glad that people are enjoying our roast session. We haven't gotten into any value yet.

I know, I know.

But this is what people. People don't want. If you've seen how podcasts are trending right now, the ones that are growing the biggest followings have tend to have, like, a comedian involved because it makes it entertaining. It's like, you're not. Information's great, but you want to be entertained along the way. So it seems like everybody's absolutely loving it. They're not. Nobody's like, go share this on your Facebook page right now if you're having fun. Go tell everybody to go join this and register if you're having a good time. And, you know, get even more people on here to laugh with us 100%.

And for everyone watching on Facebook Live again, hello. Glad you got to learn how to the real way to say my last name. You know, everyone's been saying it wrong this whole time. We are going to get into Q&As in just a second here. Usually on this show, I do a kind of an opening monologue. I'll keep this one pretty short, but I do want to just briefly talk about something that was on my mind, which is one thing that I love about digital marketing and this whole world that we live in. And that's the fact that it really is a meritocracy, meaning that you can rise based on your merits. And that is what is ultimately the most important. The reason this came up is because yesterday I was interviewing some executive assistant candidates of hiring an executive assistant here in San Diego. And I mentioned it to one of the One of the candidates is she's 22 years old. She talked about her age and how her age could be like a, an issue for her. Because I asked about what something that's been like a setback or something that maybe, you know, setback you've had in your career so far and, like, how do you overcome it? And she talked about her age and people looking at her age and not wanting her to, thinking she was too young for a job or position. And I talked about how in our world, age really doesn't matter, how it's a meritocracy. It's about who you are and what you do and the value you bring and all of that and how just incredible that is. And then I went to dinner last night with my friend Amber Spears and Ilona, who's her partner in her business and her best friend and my wife. And we talked about it again. Amber unsolicitedly mentioned how it's a meritocracy in this industry, too. And I just love that because, like, you've got people like Ed is whatever that is. 20, secretly 12. Shura, 16. Can we do 16? David Vuich is 16. Krishna, I think, is like 18. Hadley, I don't know if he's on. He's a dude in India. He's like 18. It's like all these young people and then older people, too, right? You can be 16 or you can be 60. It doesn't matter. Like, if you are committed and you're, like, really going for it in this industry, you can have success. And I just love that. So I just want to, like, celebrate that and what everyone think about that from a mindset perspective and how lucky we are to be in an industry where your age doesn't matter, your race doesn't matter, your gender doesn't matter, your sexual orientation doesn't matter. None of those things matter. It really is a meritocracy. Does that mean there's not sometimes going to be, like, kind of extra obstacles that certain people face? Sure. But, like, I look at my whole contingent of Nigerians who are fucking crushing it, all the Indians who are crushing it, like, all the people from all over the world, they're crushing it. And I just want to be really explicit, too, and say this because I woke up at 1:30 in the morning last night. I go to bed, like, 10 thinking about this, how I want to say this on my kind of show today, which is I want people who are watching this or who listen to the recording on itunes or whatever to know that truly what we're doing here is, like an inclusive environment. And I'm so thrilled to have every single one of you on here. If you're young, like, I want to be the person for you. I know Ian probably feels the same way. I know Ed does, too. If you're 16, 15, 14, 18, I don't care. I want to be the person for you. If you're 60 or 70 or 80, I want to be the person for you. If you're gay, I want to be the person for you. If you're straight, I want to be the person for you. I don't care. Like, you know, wherever you are, whatever race you are, like, I am here to support you and help you. And I just want to be really fucking explicit about that because I know. I think it's implied, my Italians. I love you guys. I know you said Stephan for president, but I'm not doing that. I just want to be really true, man. Like, I want you to know I want to be explicit and just say it and have that invitation to anyone who watches this or listens or who interacts with me that, like, you are welcome. And I want you to feel really comfortable, and I want you to feel like you can express yourself and you can be a part of what we're building. So I know it's a little bit hokey and stuff like that, I guess, but I just really wanted to share that before we get started, we'll go to questions in a second. But, Ian. Yeah, I figured you might want to hop in.

I'll just make a comment on that, is that I think no matter what age you are, you have a tendency to compare yourself to people your age. And depending on who you decide to compare yourself to, you're always going to feel either good or bad about that comparison. But you are your own person, you're on your own path, taking your own time to do it. And if you look at a lot of the most successful people you see out there, a lot of them didn't make money till they're not even their 30s, but 40s, you know, they didn't have. You just didn't see the 20 to 40 stretch where they were. I mean, John Carlton, who's become a, you know, close friend of mine and a mentor to me, I remember reading his stuff. He was 29 when he was still a waste of space, you know, sleeping on couches and, you know, doing whatever. And he's crushed the rest of his life after that. And, you know, I just turned 30 last month, which for a lot of people is this big ordeal. And, and it was like, it's, you know, I can look at people, people from the outside can look and go, well, you're 30, you know, you've done, you've had a lot of success in, and, and, you know, all sorts of things that I could also look at my life and I could go, whatever lens you want to compare yourself to other people through, that's what's going to make you either feel good or bad about where you're at. But the whole thing is to let go of the comparisons. Because I can look and go, well, look, there are 25 year olds who are already acting in movies and doing stand up and have a Netflix special. And here I am, I have no Netflix special. I have no real, you know, authority in the world of stand up comedy. And I'm, you know, and I've just turned 30. But then first, you know, Louis C.K. a lot of 32, 38. The real, the reality is a lot of standup is you got to develop an actual worldview. And no offense to Ed Ray or anybody else, but by 20, you don't have that much of a worldview. You haven't experienced that much shit to really have a, you do have one, but it gets better and better over the next 10 years. And so, you know, I can look at that. And then I, but I can also go. I needed to go through all of the experiences that I've gone through, along with the deeper emotional work that I've done about surrender and the therapy and the things that I've done in order to become the person that can be. Can excel much further down the road. Now that I'm taking that seriously, if I become famous at 25 years old, I know what my life would have been like. It would have been. It would have just been women and parties and fun, and that could have spiraled into all sorts of other things. It would have been a great life. But to actually have your shit together by the time you start succeeding is a lot. It's gonna keep a much more stable growth pattern. So you're never too old or too young. You know, Colonel Sanders was like 98. I think he was legitimately 67 or something when he started KFC. So. And he knocked on like a hundred and or a thousand doors or something before somebody was like, all right, I'll take your blend of herbs and spices.

Ray. Ray Kroc was in his, like, late 40s or 50s when he basically franchised McDonald's for the first time.

Yeah.

Other example.

Yeah.

Basically going to fast food.

Yeah, go. Just. Just create diabetes for people.

Forget the freelancing course we were. We're going to do. Yeah, Just open up a fast food chain and then take it nationwide and you're set. Mary Kay started as super fast food.

It's even faster than fast food.

Oh, man. Okay, so John Caprani is here. So let's answer a couple questions, and then, Ian, I do want to share a bit about freelancer freedom, but let's hop in, answer a few questions first, and then we'll do a little freelancer freedom break, and then we'll go back to answering questions. Ed, Ray, who do we have for our first question?

Well.

The first person we have up is Kimmy Do. She always asks the best questions, so she asks. Also, I need co host Stefan.

Oh, my gosh. Okay. On it every time.

So Kimmy asks, what are the biggest mistakes when reaching out to clients?

That's a good first question. What's up, Kimmy? Great question.

Hi, Ian.

Hi, Ed.

How are you doing?

Hello. Great.

Awesome. Yeah. So I'm wondering, like, what are the biggest mistakes you've seen when reaching out to clients?

For sure. Ian, you want me to go first or you want to go?

If you've got something lined up, I've got something. So it's up to you.

Yeah, I mean, you can go first because you're a special guest.

My biggest thing. My biggest thing for sure. Is is generic reach outs. I can tell you within 10 seconds that's a lie. Within three seconds. If this is a generic reach out, if I open up my email right now, because my attached to my Instagram account, and because once you get to a certain amount of followers, you basically just get bombarded with people reaching out to you. And I'll give you a couple examples of the difference of, of what can happen is, I mean, every day I don't even read all these message requests of people like, hey, get the blue badge. Hey, we can grow your Instagram. Hey, it's the same bullshit. I had one guy who goes, hey man, I looked at your account. I love your videos. You know, super good stuff. I'd love to help you grow your account. And I went, okay, what? I said, what's your, what's your favorite video? And it takes a little bit. He's like, I like that one where you were on a boat. And I was like, oh yeah, what was your favorite line from that video? What made you laugh most about that? And then, you know, he's sitting like, goddamn, now I'm supposed to go, actually watch this guy's stuff. Yes, you are. The difference between the people who succeed and the ones that aren't is these three minute, the willingness to do three minutes of research on a client. If your average clients worth a thousand, five thousand, ten, fifty thousand dollars, it's worth the three minutes to actually get to know the person. And so what I see all the time are these generic reach outs and they go, oh, well, I changed the name. I don't give a shit if you said my name. You can find my name anywhere. Actually take a minute. You can have a templated close right of like, this is what I do for people. Da, da, da, da. But actually taking the first three to five sentences to write something genuinely personal to that person about like, hey, I saw this on your site. I really like this part about what you said about this. And you know, I also have six kids and a wolf dog or whatever. You know, obviously don't. I'm not saying lie to people about whatever, but if you see something that you guys have in common, it's like you put that in. Like, by the way, I, you know, I see that you live in California. I grew up in Thousand Oaks. Just these little things that make you a person and that. Because what a lot of us are looking for is now Stefan and I have become people that hire freelancers and people we look for. Is this a real person? Do they have the work, the willingness to just send something actually personal. I had one guy on Instagram who sent me a video and he was like, yo, Ian, you know, check out stuff. Made me laugh a lot, like really great stuff, blah, blah, you know, 10 seconds, 15 seconds. And then, hey, this is what I do. I help people with this. If you're interested at all, let me know. If not, no worries. I responded to him because he took the time to record a 30 second video that actually showed that he did research. And now did that take him three to five minutes instead of ten seconds? Was it automated? No, but he's ten times more likely to get the client than these other people. And the other thing, this is a really bad experience I recently had that I think is really worth sharing. I had this guy, he reached out to our support and he was like, hey, you know, congratulations on getting 15,000 followers on Facebook. Like, that's awesome. Which also, that was like a long time. It's like, okay. And then he's like, you know, I love your products and stuff. I recently helped a guy launch. We did a launch together and we did 196,000 in a week. I have 64,000 followers on YouTube. I'd love to talk to you about how maybe we could do something together now. I thought, okay, this seems real. This guy just did. And I'm thinking he did like a launch with this dude where they did like a JV and they did 196,000. He's got all these followers. Okay, I'll bite. So set up a call with him, which like went back and forth. And he was in, you know, Europe, so it was eight hours ahead. And I broke my normal rule. I don't do calls before like 10 or 11am that's like the absolute earliest. I did a call at 8am to make it work. His assistant is the one on the call. She's there. And then as she's talking to me, she does. She starts, she does all the small talk. I have no idea why I'm on the call or what the. Who she is or what's going on. And then I look at his YouTube account. He's got 64,000 followers, but each video has like 200 views, which means that it's all bullshit subscribers. And his launch he did was nine months ago with somebody else's list. And I was like, I told her, I was like, I don't mean to be rude to you, but if somebody's going to talk to me, I'm not going to talk to their Assistant. When I don't know this person and they haven't demonstrated any value or given me anything, I said, this leaves a very bad taste in my mouth. And I would recommend that you guys change the way you're doing things because if you're, if you're low, if you're not as far along as the person you're trying to get in contact with, you do not send an assistant to vet that person. You show the fuck up and you do the call yourself. And I was like, it was a really good example though, of how to not do things. So don't lie to people and give them all this false stuff. And if your Last success was 10 months ago, don't say, I just had this thing happen. It's like, jesus, what do you. Like this is. It was all basically bullshit. And. But if you take a lesson from his, from his message to me, there was something personal that he used. He then demonstrated social proof through his following and what he had done and then made it seem like we could work together on something. And so he actually did a good job with that. But then, you know, terrible follow up and execution on the actual sort of thing that he had said.

Yeah, those are awesome answers. And I was gonna mention follow up as well, because it's something we talk about a lot. We have a really good case study in Freelancer freedom, the course that we just dropped today where I'm showing what to do and what not to do. It's an example of somebody who did a really good job of following up with me and then completely dropped the ball in a different way than what Ian just said. But it's pretty staggering. So continue to follow up. Just today, who was it today? Who. Somebody had been hitting me up to try and get me to test these email creatives. Oh yeah, sumama s u m a M a he's emailed me like 10 times. Last time was 10 days ago, but it had been on my mind. So then today I hooked him up with somebody from our team and like, was like, hey, can you go through these and check them out and if they're good, we'll test them or whatever. And it'd been in my mind to do it. I just didn't. Like, he literally had to follow up like 10 times with me. And finally I was like, oh, man, I really gotta respond to this guy. I will say this too. I teach that strategy, right? Reach out to people and provide value in advance. And you should, but, like, I'm not the best target for it. I get Hit up with this so freaking much. I know I just. This example of me doing it. But you have to understand, if I'm the one teaching the strategy, like, so many people are hitting me up about this that, like, and I don't, I don't actually control the copy for most of my offers. Like, I mean, I write stuff and I look over it, but, like, I'm not actually the right person. So just a friendly kind of notice that, like, I'm not going to be the best, the most responsive person, but I literally hear from people constantly who got wins by doing that strategy.

And I'll quickly just say on that note, a shout out to actually Sean Mabry, who's on the call. He. He's gone through my exponential income skill stuff and he then like sent these videos to us to look at and these emails and stuff. And I just. If there's one thing you do, it's. It's stand out and be different and be willing to take a risk. I know Jake Blue, who just came to my house on Tuesday for a private consulting day. He sent 33 DMS to someone before he got them to respond, and now he's working with them. Like, that's persistence. And that's why. Actually, Stefan, you haven't seen this yet, but in the sales page that we're going to put up tomorrow for the close. But I said, I think this one module on follow UP is worth $1,000 itself because it's the difference. Follow up is the difference between making $0 or thousands a month, and it's the difference between 5k a month and 15 or 20k a month. Because the reality is people like Stefan and I who are hiring these people, we don't not want to respond to you and we may even be reading your stuff. But I just may be in the middle of something. I may get a phone call, I may get a text. I may just look at it and forget to respond. And honestly, what I really want is I don't want to respond to your first message. Not out of the ego thing or I'm better than that. But I want to see if you have the, you know, the drive to reach out again and again. That's the person I want to hire is the.

For me. Oh, yeah, you're back.

It just cut out for us. It's when my phone's connected. I got to disconnect the Bluetooth from this. But basically that just that simple act of demonstrating that you're willing to follow up separates you from almost everyone. But the Thing I was going to say about what Sean's done, take a risk and really, really stand. Oh, Shawn, that's awesome. I didn't know that. He just started working with a new client from one of these videos. He has like his hair in like a towel tied up and he's like talking about all this crazy stuff and his subject lines and things are just like wild, like take a risk. It's better to hear no than to hear nothing at all. And you, you know, be willing to do it. So even to Stefan. And if you do the same cookie cutter shit, yeah. You're not going to stand out. So focus on, you know, it's better to be different than it is to be better. And it's easier to be different than it is to be better. And the number one rule of all marketing in my opinion is don't be boring. Don't be another me too product. Don't be another me too, you know, person sending out the same Instagram growth giveaway thing that I've seen 65 times.

So Kaisha said, does anyone else feel like being persistent will come across as annoying? Yeah, I think a lot of people feel that way. But it is something you kind of have to just get past. Like it's totally a mental hang up on your end and it's understandable. But at the end of the day, people who are busy like seeing fault, does that mean that nobody will ever get annoyed by you? No, for sure some people will get annoyed by you. But like, who cares? It's at the end of the day, it's like a numbers game. It's like a reach out game. It's proving it. It's just like anything with sales, right? Like if you, any sales organization, like the reason they make you dial a hundred people or 200 people and those jobs suck. Right? But you have to, it's a number. At the end of the day somebody actually says yes. I mean anyone who's ever done sales has noticed the exact, that exact thing. They talk about it in like the dating world, right? It's like a numbers game. I mean for whatever but like same thing with, with, with all of this, you just have to be okay of kind of pounding the, the pavement a little bit and really just being comfortable there.

And it's, and it's their own triggering. You got to understand too, they're dealing with. Somebody may respond back to you like a total asshole. And if you were to talk to them again, they would say, well, actually I got your email right after my wife yelled at Me and I took it out on you. This is extremely common for almost everyone. And. But beyond that, the cool thing is this is something to understand too, is you may have to be super persistent early on in your career, but that stops having to be a part of what you do to that degree for persistence. For Stefan and I now, it might be, hey, man, just wanted to circle back on this, see if you still wanted to do it. And you do that once or twice. It's a reminder. Whereas when you're starting out, you know, it may be. You may be willing to send 10 messages and it may be annoying to someone, but to that same person who it's annoying, there's another business owner who goes, I'm hiring you only because you sent me 10 messages. That's why I'm hiring you. Like, that's. That is the trick early on is who wants it more? And it is similar to dating John, where the reality is for most guys that trying to, you know, go and just talk to enough girls that, you know, oh, one of them will say yes. And like, you know, I haven't been single for a while, but I used to teach dating. That was my first business, was teaching dating boot camps. And when you get into a certain place in your life and you like your. Really what it comes down to is loving yourself. You actually, it stops being a numbers game and it starts being pretty much everyone you meet would like to be with you. And that may sound super arrogant as that came across, but also, if you don't believe that, what's the point? I remember when I was teaching dating stuff, my buddy goes, do you think that just any girl you meet you, you could be with? I was like, yeah, 100%. He's like, what? I was like, yeah. Whether it's true or not, it's unimportant. It just matters that I believe that because it ends up creating that reality. And when you believe that about yourself as a copywriter, a lot of this stuff as a freelancer comes down to your own self worth. Do you feel worthy of high. Of charging high rates? Do you feel worthy of these earnings? By the way, Stefan, I have a bonus to add to freelancer freedom that I didn't tell you about. I created a new meditation on Tuesday for how to charge higher prices. Because the biggest issue for people charging higher prices is not that they aren't worth it, it's that they don't feel worthy. And so you have to shift your own internal environment so that you feel worthy of those prices. So I created this new meditation that helps shift that inside of you to improve yourself with around charging more. So I want to add that in as a. That'll be a bonus for the product that's not on the sales page or anything.

Yeah, that's amazing. That's awesome. And it's funny because another thing I wrote down was confidence, right? But, like, then you really expounded upon what that. What that looks like. One more kind of quick thing on this, and then we will tackle some questions, of course, but about differentiating yourself or setting yourself apart. So going back to how I'm hiring executive assistants and I did these Zoom interviews and then scheduled in persons and for one of the candidates only so far, at the end of the zoom interview, she was like, you know, do you want to give me some kind of, like, test assignment between now and when we do the in person? And I was like, oh, yeah, like, that's a good idea. I should probably do that. She said, yeah. She's like, well, you want to. You're moving into a new office and you want to, like, you know, get it all furnished and decked out, right? And I was like, yes. So why don't you just sort of, you know, give that to me as an assignment. Give me, like, the info on the office and I can go through and kind of like, look at some design concepts, price things out for you, and show you what it would look like. And I said, all right, cool. So then I did. I shot her like a Loom video where I showed a, like the pictures of the. Of the empty office, and they had like a little 3D tour. So I kind of showed the different rooms, talked about what I wanted, gave her a ballpark budget. I was like, obviously, you know, we probably can't just do this virtually. We'll have to do like a walkthrough, whatever. And then within like 24 hours, like right now, like the next afternoon, I got a video from her. Couple cool things. First of all, it was a Loom video. She's like, this is the same one who's 22, right? She's like, oh, I've never used Loom before, but I saw you used it, so I just got it and I used it too, so it'd be easy for you since you already, you know, work with Loom. I was like, great. Then she's like, Evernote. She's like, I've never used Evernote before, but I wanted to kind of challenge myself, so I organized my stuff on Evernote. And then she literally hand drew or Drew on her iPad or her tablet, like the blueprint of the office, and then like uploaded to Evernote and she went through and she had, like the furnishings for every room, different concepts, images, pulled all these different options, had them priced out, had different design concepts, like, had it mapped out to where I could see this whole office as this incredible thing. And she did all of that, like on Wednesday night. And she had her. Or Tuesday night, and had her in person yesterday. And then the other candidate, who I had the in person yesterday was really great as well. I mean, who knows, they may watch this video. So they both were excellent. But the fact that the one candidate went through and did all that extra stuff and like, I don't know how it took her an hour or two, but the job pays like 30 an hour to start and we'll pay more. And it's like, it's hard for me not to hire the one who did that extra work, but she created that opportunity for herself, right? Because she was like, what can I do before this interview? You know, like, give me a task. And then she provided this crazy value. So it's really hard for me. Like, I already know what working with her is gonna be like because she already, like, answered an objection for me by doing that. But that was a really cool, unique, and intelligent thing she did. So I just wanted to share that with people because I thought it was so smart.

It's feelings in advance, right? Can you create the feelings that you want the person to experience before they actually buy something? So can you send them a three minute video going over their sales page saying, and you do this compliment sandwich thing, which we talk about more in depth in the, in the workshop, is basically you like, hey, I really like this part of the sales page. I think this part needs work. Here's what I would change. And I also like this part. So they get this nice comment, then they get the sort of harsher truth, and then they get another compliment and then they feel good walking away from it. And that, that works really well. But you're creating that feeling in advance of like, oh, this person does know what they're talking about. They just gave me. And you're like, go ahead and change this and use this for free, you know, but if you want to hire me and have me rewrite the whole thing and make it better, then, you know, let me know. But that's a total differentiator of demonstrating those feelings in advance. They get this feeling of like, oh, man, this person really knows what they're doing.

Yeah. 100%. So I want to go to more, answer more questions. Well, let's take a second here. We obviously, we kind of riffed on this a while, but I think it's really a topic we're both really passionate about.

People are loving this. We're getting a ton of great comments.

100%. No, it's awesome. And I would say this is the quick little plug for Freelancer Freedom is if you like this, then you should get Freelancer Freedom. The course we just put out, the first module has a 45 minute conversation between Ian and I all about mindset. So we literally start the course with mindset. But if you don't know anything about this course, basically, Ian and I, in November of 2019. Well, actually, let's rewind to the summer. In the summer of 2019, we ran into each other outside of a bar in New York and we talked about.

How we run into each other. I ran into you from behind and used my Batman voice to scare you.

While putting his finger into my back to, like, imitate an erect penis. So really?

No, it was a gun. Jesus.

Oh, this whole time I thought you were pretending it was the penis.

No, no. Genuinely, no. No.

You guys, you guys need to stop with this gay orgy. It's Luffy and Ed too. It's not becoming a thing. I really don't want gay orgies spreading. So, so annoyed. So annoyed.

Stefan, it's your fault.

It's your fault. You're the one who said it first. Either way, basically, I don't know how to say this without sounding douchey, but whatever. Basically, like, I had flown to New York on a private jet because of, like, some traveling issues, and I told Ian Mann I'd really like to fly back to Vegas on a private jet, but that's a big investment, you know, and probably not, like, worthwhile or whatever. And Ian was like, well, why don't we just sort of create content on the jet and then we'll make it worthwhile? And I was like, that's a good idea. What could we do? And I was like, well, I'm really passionate about freelancing. And Ian was like, I'm really passionate about freelancing too. So we're like, okay, what if we do this? What if we create a bunch of content on the flight and we'll just talk about freelancing, mindset, entrepreneurship, business, everything, and then we'll do a live event, like, a little bit later in the year and, you know, we can basically pay for the jet that way, which is exactly what we did.

Yeah. And then we came up with this little hook too of the introvert extrovert system for freelancing. Because so much of the freelancing advice and I actually, I think it's one of the most underserved markets that exist. It's really, there's not a lot of great advice out there and there's, there's people who like, maybe they got to 10k a month as a freelancer and then they created a course about how to be a freelancer or most likely and most often they landed one client and then created a course on how to land clients. And so it's, you know, for us it's like, you know, everybody's got a different personality so you have to use the strategies that fit into your specific personality. For me, I'm very extroverted. I like to meet people and talk to people I've met most of the people I've worked with, I've at least talked to them on the phone. Whereas Stefan's probably had over half of his clients he's not even talked to on the phone. And they're paying him $50,000 from some emails, which is a pretty, you know, a pretty big deal for somebody to do. And so which is also one of the coolest parts about this product is We've got this 15 case studies from people of how they got their first clients and how they've grown from there. Which means you have 15 different personality types of people that you can go and pick the one that you resonate with most and implement that strategy. Which by the way, Stefan and I both had zero guidance or templates or case studies to follow when we started out. And this would have accelerated our journey so much faster to be able to find the people who were, you know, to be able to follow case studies of exactly how to get clients. Instead we sort of did it our own unique way. And that's what's really cool is you got 15 different ways that you can go land that first client or land more clients that are really, that all work. And it's just, they all work. You just want to pick the one that's going to work best for you.

Yeah, 100%. I mean that's what's really cool. So there's like case studies on getting high level clients on LinkedIn. There's like in person, like the kind of networking and marketing, there's getting thousand dollar an hour gigs on Fiverr, there's stuff on Upwork and Freelancer Instagram, Kimmy Doo has A case study. Guerleen has a case study. There's stuff about how to get clients, about a portfolio, how to get organic leads through social media. There's all this stuff about how to cold prospect. FIT said is this webinar 2.0 for buying the course? You know, it is not a webinar 2.0, but at the end of the day, we launched the course today and we're gonna tell you about it because.

And we're excited about it.

It kind of changed your life. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. So, you know, but it is an obligation. If it's valuable, selling it is an obligation. So, yeah, so like 15 case studies on it, and then we have the recordings of that event. So we did this live event. We basically spilled out everything. There's like 21 videos on it, but basically everything from how to find your dream. So basically, if part one for case studies is like, if you've never gotten a client before or you're getting clients, but it's inconsistent and you wish you could bring in more clients and have less of a struggle, less of the feast and famine cycle, all that kind of stuff, these case studies will help you pick one of them or two of them and then just stick with that, implement that strategy and you will get clients. I mean, it would be shocked if you don't. And then once you do that at that point, then if you want to try some additional strategies and have even more pipelines and ways that you're bringing in clients, cool, go for it. But the next part is what we taught at the live training, which is the higher level stuff, right? How to not have vampire clients. How to not avoid all these traps that normally happen. How to escalate what you charge dramatically, how to do that while working fewer hours. How to make your own luck, how to have clients coming to you via the referral question. Ian, like, you want to add in some of the stuff that you talked about as well, but we did all kinds of things.

Yeah, I mean, one of the big things I went super deep into is how to get lucky and how to actually harness luck. People think of luck as this thing that exists, as this sort of ethereal, intangible object that exists out there that you either have luck or you don't, or it's this random thing. The reality is there I break down. I think it's now seven different types of luck, but the core sort of five types. The first, Stephan Korb. We can charge you 10,000 for the course, by the way.

Hook us up, man.

That's Fine. Not a problem we'll accept. But basically, this is something that people really don't think about, is with luck, you have your first type of luck, which is literally just statistical chance luck. It's a tornado hitting a certain area at a certain time. It's the fact that you were driving at this time and you ran into this person or it's even looking at, you know, Stefan and I running into each other. Obviously we're already friends and all this, but literally out front of this bar that we were going into, which actually leads into the second part of the second type of luck, which is called exposure luck. And whenever you're starting out on any new endeavor, you want to increase your stimuli and your exposure order to increase the opportunities that you can land something that's going to create money for you. Now, basically, when you're starting out, it's about increasing chaos. The more chaos, the more exposure, the more chances for luck. As you become more successful, it becomes about saying no and it becomes about reducing chaos. So as you're starting out that you want to create all this exposure, your third type of luck is, and I go way in depth of this, but there's pattern recognition. And then the fifth type is what I call only you luck. And that's the type of luck that's created when you are the type of unique individual that people seek out. And one of the great examples that Naval Ravi Kant gives about this is, you know, if you're a deep sea diver and you become known as the world's best deep sea diver, what happens is you now just sit back and, you know, you do whatever you want. You don't seek anyone, you don't seek out any jobs or anything, but some random person finds some trou, they know that there's some treasure off the coast of wherever. And that was luck, that was chance luck that they just found this treasure. Now because it's only you that could do it, they hire this one deep sea diver who's the best to go find that treasure. And now that person makes millions or tens of millions or hundreds just because they became this only you unique individual. When somebody goes, I need a supplement BSL to crush it, who is the first person that gets brought to their mind? It's Stefan, Georgi, George I. And the reason for that is because Stefan has created this only you luck. If somebody wanted to create a parody video for their product or they want to create a funny VSL that has comedy infused into that, who's gonna do it? It's gonna Be me. Or they're gonna go to the Harmon Brothers. They're gonna go, you know, it's like, that's there's only a couple of people in the world. And so it becomes only you luck. So instead of me seeking clients, you become the type of person who people find and it's instead of you finding money, money finds you. And it's a very dramatic shift. But I have a whole hour in this product on how to do this. The steps to go through, how to create that. And it still comes back to the same idea too, is of how to not be boring. And actually, I'll just say, I'll add this to Stefan is I'll add one. I have a four part newsletter on how to not be boring. But I'll put the first part into the course as well as another bonus. Because I think it's so incredibly important to not be boring. And I give you actual strategies. And another way to think about this is that, you know, if you see a guy on a unicycle, well, that's interesting. You see a bear at a circus, well, that's interesting. But you see a bear riding a unicycle, now that's really interesting. Interesting is the opposite of boring. And you create intriguing and interesting, non boring content and ideas by combining things that aren't supposed to be combined. When you. Somebody just said squatty potty. When you're talking about ice cream and gold, you don't think poop. But when you mix poop with ice cream and gold, you literally start printing money, which is what they did. So you can always create these seemingly, you know, non combining things, combine them together to create something really unique. And that's where, you know, over time, you start to become the person that people go, I know, I want this done. And they know exactly who it is. And you may only have 50 people who know who you are, but those 50 people are all willing to pay you $100,000. And that's not unrealistic. That's very possible, you know, if you become that unique of an individual. So that, you know, that's just one piece. I'm working on the book about luck. I'm also, I'm actually going to release the how to Not Be Boring as its own book because I think it's really important for people. But, but. So, I mean, that's just a small part. And then Stefan and I go into, you know, I think one of the big things is like, I mean, when was the last time you sold out a client, Stefan?

It's been several years.

Yeah. So imagine that as your future reality. Right. Like you get to move forward. And right now you may seek out. And I love. I can see Stefan trying to figure out the last time he had to try and seek out a client.

Yeah, I can't remember.

Yeah, they just come to you. And these aren't $10,000 clients. These are people paying $50,000 up front as a minimum to work with Stefan. And that's what happens when you create only you look. And when you become the type of person that money finds instead of the type of person who's trying to find money. And so we go really deep into that stuff. I mean, and also results wise, we had somebody who his biggest month coming into the event was $6,000. A few months later, he did his first $30,000 a month. We had multiple people quit their jobs, do over 10k a month. Like the results speak for themselves. And that was just from the one day in person training that doesn't include any of the bonuses we've added. That doesn't include the case studies or any of that other stuff. And so it's, you know, it's a really. It's really exciting to see people leave an event and genuinely change their life. And that's why Stefan and I don't have any shame about being like, yeah, you should go buy this, because we know what will happen for you if you do it and if you implement it.

Yeah, 100%. I'm gonna put the link in. I swear. This isn't webinar 2.0, but that is a checkout for people who are watching. If you want to grab it and you should, one other cool thing, I'll say, Ian, and I promise I don't wanna get back to Q and A. So we'll get back in just a minute. But the luck stuff, to me, it's funny because honestly, I was kind of skeptical that I was gonna think that I was gonna enjoy that component. And then I ended up just writing pages and pages of notes, like, furiously. It actually had a lot of stuff that helped to click, like, even on the chaos phase was so interesting to me as someone who was then going out to build. Cause I was like, basically right as I launched my email list and started my, you know, personal brand. I don't think I even had my email list yet at that point. I think I watched it in December. But that idea of like, being like, as like, I'm doing something new, I should have more exposure to chaos and create chaos and Just like, let these things roll around me and sort of like, you know, be open to all that. And like, I've done that really a lot for the last year since then. And even, you know, like, whether it's stuff like podcasts, I'll go on pretty much any podcast somebody offers me to go on. I'll do Facebook lives and like, all that stuff. But then it's cool because, like, now it's stuff like this week I found out that I'm doing a, like a TV interview on this show called the List, which is a nationally syndicated TV show, on Monday. I'm being interviewed by Business Insider on Tuesday. So it's like all of this, like, sort of chaos is happening happen. But through all that and all the people I'm reaching now, it's sort of like the whirlwind is becoming a tornado, right? It's like its own little funnel forms is a way to look at it, right? And so now it's gonna get a little bit narrow and narrower and who knows, like in another year, maybe like Good Morning America or like Oprah or the Tim Ferriss show or whatever. But it really was with, like, you have to be open to that chaos first, and then it sort of funnels itself naturally. So I love that tornado. I just made up that tornado metaphor. But. Well, I really like it.

It's really interesting. And I think it's worth one, one or two more minutes on this because I think it's really valuable for people. But the. It's funny you say tornado because I've told you, I think you're in a. You're in like a money vortex or a money tornado right now where you're just. It's like you're this tornado and money's just like getting pulled into it. And I feel like I'm having a similar experience right now. And that's why I said to Stefan, if our tornadoes just, you know, formed one super tornado, what would happen? And that's, you know, part of what we're doing with this. But the, this idea of chaos is also. It's important to acknowledge the existence of ego within this concept of chaos. Because when you've already succeeded at something, right? So I've had good success in the world of business. It would be easy for me to be like, well, I don't want to just go do stand up sets for free and do open mics and do this. I'm successful elsewhere. That's bullshit. That would be a pure ego move. You have to start out as a beginner and accept yourself. You're a beginner at everything at all times. You have to keep, keep that beginner's mind. But when it comes to stand up. So when it comes to business, what I've been doing is, is reducing chaos because I'm further along and in stand up. I know that I have to expand chaos. And that's why I'd moved to la. Now I'm up in Boise because standup's really not a thing right now. But it's, it's that I view all of the world as every city you live in is a pinball machine. And every group you join is this pinball machine. And Austin, Texas was, where I lived before was this pinball machine with three or four pinballs bouncing around at any given time. You leave your house, you do something and you may run into one of these pinballs and something good happens. LA is like 20 pinballs going off at once. So your chances of success become higher and higher. You don't know what random meal you go to where somebody is sitting near you that ends up being this person who lands you your first Netflix show or whatever it might be. But it's that willingness to step back, be a beginner and expose yourself to chaos and exposure. Whether you are. And this is where you know, if you're 60 years old. Well, I've done this and this and this. And I don't want to be this beginner. Well, you have to accept that as your reality. If you're just starting out in something new, just because you succeeded somewhere else doesn't mean that you get to take all of your clout and all of your past experiences to be this known person within this new realm. You have to accept yourself as new.

Yeah, 100%. So all right. With that being said, personally recommend. Yeah, highly recommend that you check out the course. There is a guarantee. You follow the stuff. You don't get clients, you don't get better paying clients. You don't change your life, then give you your money back. Right? I don't really. We made this to help people. It's like one of my biggest passions in life and we're gonna do all kinds of cool shit with it later, but like go to cold traffic and really try and get more people stuff. But at the end of the day, I wish I had it when I was starting out. With that being said for now. And I did put that link in the chat if you want to, Ed. I've been missing you, by the way. But also I want to answer questions I know that's. I love doing that on this, on this show. And let's go back to answering some amazing questions.

Jimmy, I hope any of that answers your question.

All of that.

All the questions she didn't even know she had. It's already answered. All right, next up, Peter Cemis asked what is the fastest way to get really, really, ridiculously good looking? I mean, good at writing copy?

Nice. What's up, Peter?

Hey, man.

How are you doing?

Good. There's no. Yeah, I'm doing good.

Awesome.

Yeah, there's no. There's no context to the question. I mean, there's three experts. Figured you all had different opinions, maybe.

All the same, who knows?

Also, I just want to say that I just closed my biggest retainer deal while on the call. So I thought that was pretty ironic considering it's three lines of call. Let's go.

That's sick. Congratulations, Pierre. That's awesome. Yeah. So the fastest way to get really good at copy, for me it would be like practice. You have to practice every day. You have to. I would read, like, stuff that's working. I would review swipes, review, like controls, review the sales copy that you know is working and today and the classic stuff. I personally prefer more stuff from today than the more old school stuff. I think there's value in both. But like, I think some people get so obsessed with these, like, direct mail pieces from the 80s and 90s or whatever and like, are even older.

Crazy stuff you can't say anymore.

And it's like the language has evolved too. Even stuff where it's like, dear friend, here's a dollar bill. Like, I'm not trying to knock on the dollar bill thing. It's just like, different. It's different. But if you're trying to be successful today, then you need to look at what's working today. So, yeah, I'd look at copy that like, is working today. I would be studying it, I'd be dissecting it, I'd analyze it, I'd look at what is the structure? Am I seeing commonalities? What's the language I really love? You know, what are they doing that really works? And then looking at the next piece of copy, does that do these same things? What are these commonalities? And then, you know, we've talked about before, but it's worth repeating again. The handwriting, copying sales letters by hand. Ian and is a big advocate of doing it by hand. By hand.

I'm a big fan of hand copying. And if you're willing to hand copy on unlined paper in cursive because it actually helps with spatial awareness and plasma neurons in your brain so you learn faster. I just had Ed. I took Ed through basically a sort of an 8020 bootcamp of improving his copy and I had him hand copying a bunch of my emails and sales pages and stuff. One thing to note for this is that what you should hand copy is stuff that first stuff that you're interested in, you must. You're much more likely to finish hand copying a sales letter when you are interested in it yourself. And second is don't hand copy stuff that's only like if you're just clicking through from an email list and you think it's working. It may only be working because it's warm traffic. What I would do is the ads that you get served on Facebook and on YouTube and on that click them, look at the sales copy and hand copy those ones that seem to be running and working because that means that they are relevant, they are timely and they're working to cold traffic. You do not want to be just hand copying stuff that only works to warm traffic because you're going to get a skewed view of what's actually working. I don't have to write as good a copy to my list because they're going to probably buy what I say because I'm saying it now. Something that's working to cold traffic, that's a different thing. If you go to like my book, funnel is going to be something that's running to cold traffic. That's something you would want to hand copy because it's working to cold traffic. Now, an offer that I just launched to my list, hand copying, that may not be as beneficial because I'm relying on a lot of trust and relationship that I've previously built. So currently working offers that you resonate with and that speak in a voice that you identify with. And the difference between cold and warm traffic, cold traffic is like, this person's never heard of you or anything about you. They've just seen an ad for the first time and click through to your sales page. So warm traffic would be, I have an email list and these people open and click on my emails and they already know me and like me, trust me. So they're much more likely to buy already. So your copy doesn't have to be as good because you already have an established relationship. Whereas to cold traffic, you've got to do all of this work to establish this different trust and stuff before they buy. Okay, cool. Awesome.

Ed, what about you? Hey, Peter, Being greedy. He's like, I hear from Ed yet? Let's go ahead.

I would definitely say to pick one person who's got the copy that you want to write and just do your best to learn from that one person and just go deep with that one person as much as you can until you feel like you've learned as much as you can and do your best to get access to them, whether that's by, you know, doing stuff for free for them in exchange for, like, critique on your copy. Because having a grandmaster, like, or whatever you want to call like a. A lister, tweaking your copy and giving you feedback is better than any book ever teach you.

Yeah, when I was going over Ed stuff like, you know, I basically would pinpoint what are the one or two things that Ed needs to work on in this moment. And for Ed, it was really what I call sandpaper transitions. So a lot of people, you write these stories and these correlations, and then they. And then these, you transfer, you transition into that sale, and those work. Those are the best emails you can really ever write. They work really well for Facebook ads and stuff. But they had what I called it like a hammer transition, where it felt like you were getting hit with a hammer. Like, oh, that didn't. That wasn't smooth. And so, I don't know, I was like, let's work on this one thing, which is sandpaper transitions. And I had the same thing, by the way. That's why this isn't a critique on Ed. I had a phase in my career where I realized I was really good at writing different pieces of sales page, but they didn't transition super smoothly. So I spent time literally just focusing on smooth transitions. So pick one part of your copy to work on at a time and only focus on that and then improve another element later. Do that for a week, two weeks, until you're really good at that. Don't try and improve all of your copy at all times. You're not going to just get better collectively. You want to focus on. I'm going to get really good at writing stories or leads or closes or transitions and focus on that. And then the other piece, Fred was creating more personality in the writing, so it became adding in these phrases that make things more fun and more interesting. So he had these two primary focuses of sandpaper transitions and adding personality into the copy. So pick those things that you're sort of lacking in or have somebody try to identify them for you and then improve those individually. And like Ed just said, pick one person, learn from them for 90 days. If their stuff doesn't work after that, pick someone else. But commit to one, you know, one person or one group, whether it's, you know, Stefan and I or it's somebody else, commit to that and then just learn from them. Because what's going to happen is you're going to get conflicting every. You may have five different copywriters who are all great, but they're all five saying different things and you're trying to do all five different things at once, then you're not going to get that good. Pick the one person, follow their stuff, and then go to someone else later if you sort of gotten everything you can out of them.

Okay, cool.

Thanks, guys.

Sweet. Glad to help. Ed, who we got next?

Shaurya.

How to quickly build authority and attract clients rather than keep chasing clients for your whole freelancing career.

Hey, Stephen.

Hey, Ed.

Hey, Ian. What's up, Shira? How you doing?

Yo.

Yeah, I'm doing fantastic. Yeah, I'm doing awesome.

Fantastic. And. And after. Yeah, after I got rmbc, I won rmbc maybe. So that like. Yeah, I'm speechless right now and I'm getting so nervous.

Okay. It's all good.

Yeah, Huge, huge one. Just everyone knows because I did. I put them on the podcast episode on itunes that came out for the podcast yesterday. The three winners for the RNBC contest for, like sharing with the podcast, it was Shuria, it was Liz Green, and then Deborah Ferriman. So Shira was one of them, which I was super pumped about. Super deserving guy. All three of them was super pumped about. But congratulations to all three, including you, Shira. It's really awesome.

Yeah, this seems so surreal.

Okay, so, yeah, yeah, basically that's the question. How to quickly build authority and get the word of mouth spreading through the industry and quickly make the shift from you chasing and reaching out to clients to clients chasing you. Yeah, that's the question.

Thank you.

No, yeah, of course, man. There's a lot that goes into that. I mean, we do cover it in the freelancer freedom course. Of course. But you know, that being said, the whole point of the show is to help people without you having to buy anything. So, gosh, I mean, the posting, posting regularly, like in social groups, whether it's like LinkedIn, Facebook, places like that, as you're posting, adding value, not asking, being like giving case studies, like specific examples, like not just like ethereal or not ethereal, but like just kind of like really broad. Like you should have a good headline. It's like, alright, cool, man. But like, you know, instead it's something like, you know, here's why. Having a good headline really makes a huge difference. Like, you know, parentheses how I helped a client go from a 1% conversion rate to 2% conversion rate just by changing 10 words. And then you, like, have the post where you're like, yeah, I had a client and I was doing this and I changed. Right. You could break down what you did, doing those sorts of things, and those posts where you're then sharing actual specific examples of wins or ways that you've helped people, or maybe it's the way you've helped yourself is one really fast and easy way to build authority so they start to, you know, chase you. The other one would just be then as you get wins, like, broadcasting those wins in general, being open about it, not being. Feeling like you're being braggadocious. If you share wins that you're getting for people, I think that's really important. You know, Ed, you did a really good job of this on the compliance side. And just by posting regularly and you kind of increase your authority around Facebook compliance really fast. I don't know if you have anything you want to chime in with, my good friend Ed Ray.

Yeah, I think so. My perspective is, at first, you're kind of gonna have to do a decent amount of chasing clients so you can sort of find out what you enjoy doing, what clients you like working with, what kind of deal structure you want to do, what kind of copy you actually enjoy, what niche, etc. But once you kind of like dial in what you're good at and what you want to do, then you get known for that. Like, when I first started copywriting, I was doing everything for anybody who would.

Pay me.

And now I only do. Well, not only, but primarily do Facebook compliant copy in the biz op industry. Like, that's basically it.

Right.

So now that's only you luck, by the way.

Right. So Ed's now known as the Facebook compliance guy for the biz op industry.

Yeah. Like, I've worked with some of the biggest brands on Facebook and the biz op niche that have they're able to scale effortlessly without worrying about getting shut down. Because I've worked with them, and that's something very unique that few people can say. So when you can get to that point where you can say, this is my thing, then you attract a lot of opportunities that way. So that's definitely a huge thing. And then you create content based around that. And like Ralene says, you show up and show up consistently around whatever it is that you want to be known for. People start to reach out to you. Like, people reach out to me, like, hey, like, you know, can you look over this copy before I send it out to, like before we launch it? Can you look over this offer before we get started? Like, can you write the sales edit for me that's like Facebook compliant? Can you write me some Facebook ads? And I haven't, I haven't had to hunt for a client in probably, well, since I've basically left my last job. So it's been what, like almost six months now maybe?

Yeah. And I think one of the other pieces there that goes along with that is leveraging your wins. So Stefan said it, and a lot of people have shame about, you know, saying that they did something. Well, you know, I still, the 80 20, my 8020 email course still has the same sales page. I wrote of what he learned from sending daily emails to a list of 1.2 million people. A lot, you know, I. The first list that I worked with had 1.2 million people. And I split test four to eight variations on every email and created the principles and everything that worked for it. So if you've sold millions through email, leverage that, talk about that, let people know, because they want to know that you have a track record that works. So if you, you know, the first one you get talk about it. The guy who just came over for the consulting day, he had just found out that he wrote a sales page for free for someone that did $2.3 million in a week. Now you got to talk about that. You got to tell people that that happened. You know, you got a. You got a. And it's that it was a really good sales page actually. And shout out to Jake Blue there. I don't know if he's on, but Jake Blue. And so, you know, that's a really big thing in itself is just, is is taking that win and then using that win potentially even over and over again to establish yourself as an authority and then, you know, showing people that you can recreate those results for them.

Sweet.

And having a unique voice. That's the other part. I'll just say, like, for me, a lot of my authority came from these parody videos, which don't have anything do with copy or anything to do with. You know, they make fun of marketing and marketers and stuff. But that built a lot of authority because people saw my videos, they had, they went viral, all that stuff. So I'm not saying you're going to go make Parody videos. But putting yourself out there and saying things that other people aren't saying, that's going to you get. You get established as a thought leader sometimes simply by being a contrarian, taking the common things that people say and saying the opposite.

Awesome. Does that help, Shira? Yeah, yeah, definitely.

Thank you.

Of course, happy to help. Congrats. Congrats again, man. On the Getting the rnbc. Awesome.

Cool.

Ed, who we got next?

Next up, we got Jack Ainley. There's a question for you, big Mr. Georgi.

Oh, let's go.

Asks. Earlier this week you had a conversation with the Godfather. Direct response. In arguably the greatest historian of dark response. Oh, it's your deep words, Brian Kurtz. What was your biggest takeaway and what was your biggest surprise?

I'm laughing. I'll tell you why in a second. What's up, Jack? Hey, honored to be with you guys today.

Hello everybody. Yeah, that was my question.

Yeah, it's a super good question. But unfortunately there was a crazy storm in Connecticut in Brian's town and the power went out and everything went out. So the cognitive game rescheduled. So we haven't had it yet. So super anti climatic.

Good open loop though for next week. Next week?

Yeah, next week I'll have an answer. Brian even he said he emailed me about it and he's like, this is the first email I've ever sent from my phone. But like I feel so bad, like I never miss calls, blah, blah. And I was like, dude, it's fine if you like don't have power or like Internet or anything, then there's not much you can do.

Not even data, Nothing.

I mean maybe a data, but it's Brian. I don't think he wants to do zoom on his phone on data, so. But Brian's super cool. I mean he's like, you know, when I email him, we email back and forth. Like he responds like within an hour normally. Like we. So tune in next week and I'll give you a really good answer to that question, Jack. Okay, sounds great.

Looking forward to it. Thank you.

All right. Absolutely, you got it.

Hope that answers your question.

Carolyn said the storm was crazy here in Connecticut, 200 trees down. Yeah, apparently it was a crazy storm, so. But I do love Brian. I'm excited to chat with him and I do want to share the takeaways, but for now, Ed, what is the next question?

We have a question from the girl herself, Girlen. Saying Girlen, she says agencies. Why the bad rep? How do you tell what's a good one? Would you recommend them for someone starting out? Anything and everything.

Girling, what's up?

Hello.

What's up?

Hi.

Hey.

Yeah, no, no, that's my question. It's not really much else to it.

Well, to clarify, because I wrote an email about my wife's bad experience with kind of media buying agencies and how I'm pretty vocal about how I generally don't like working with agencies. And you were kind of curious from perspective of as a like, aspiring writer who may go to work for an agency. Right?

Essentially, yeah. Because I've heard from or like a lot of copywriters say that when they first started working or what gave them a lot of experience and that they're great for is just working through an agency because they were exposed to so many different, like, niches and stuff and just different types of projects altogether.

Yeah, that makes sense.

So the question's more like as a copywriter.

Yeah, okay, gotcha.

And my personal opinion, Girling is actually that that's totally fine. I mean, it depends on who you are and what your journey is and what you're looking for and all that kind of stuff. But I think it's fine to work for an agency and get exposed to a lot of different offers and to get a lot of practice writing copy. So from the writer perspective, I think it's cool. My issue is just that 99% of agencies don't really get great results for their clients. And so, and again, even for those agencies, they usually have a few clients that they are getting good results for and then a bunch of people who they aren't. But all their attention and focus goes into those few clients who already had their stuff pretty dialed in before they came to the agency. And the agency is kind of having an easy time running ads for them and like, life's good. Whereas for a lot of people come in think they can just throw money at the problem, pay an agency X amount of money, whether it's a retainer, percentage of ad spend, or both, and ends up that, like, wasting the client's money. So my issue is with the agencies, but as far as like a job opportunity goes, if you know and gain experience, I actually think it's totally fine to write and work with an agency.

Okay, why, like, is it like a bad. Is it a bad experience? Because do they hire like, new copywriters that don't have a lot of experience and that's why it ends up being a bad experience? Like, why is that?

Yeah, I think more than anything, it's a bunch of stuff. It's like most agencies are started by freelancers who are pretty good at what they did. And then we're like, oh, I have a, I'm the bottleneck. I have a bandwidth issue. But if I hire and build out a team now, I can replicate my actions and, you know, take on more clients and I don't have to do more work. And it's like, great. But what really happens is they build the team. Yeah, the team isn't as experienced as they are. They don't really know what's going on as much. So they end up getting worse results for clients. Some agency owners over promise they're just trying to pay their bills and make money so they don't actually vet their clients and have their best interests at heart. So they say yes to too many deals. And like I had one more point on that I really want to remember. I guess they don't care. Yeah, the biggest thing is they just don't care as much.

Right.

Like it's not. If it's not. When it's not your own offer, like you just don't care as much. They're, they're more detached from the results. Like we were talking about that at dinner last night when my wife Laura fired the one, one of the two agency that she was using. The guy responded, oh, boo. Sad face. Like, I'm not kidding. Like, that was, that was his first response. And like it's like, that's the response of, hey, like, this isn't working. You're not getting results. I put all this money and you know, I mean, oh, boo. And then he was like, you know, well, sorry it didn't work out, whatever. But like that, you know, it wasn't like, hey, can we get on a call? How can I keep you? I know I can do better. Like our, you know, here's why you should stay with me, here's a game plan. I was like, okay. And that's like agencies. And I think if you just look at like, I think it's telling that I feel this way about agencies. I was talking with my friend Tom Merritt, who's a really good media buyer and has his own health offers and he was talking about how he feels that way about agencies. Craig Clemons recently posted. About how you shouldn't do an agency. You should build your own media buying team. Amber Spears last night was talking about how she's never had good success with agencies or hardly ever. I mean, I think that it's very telling. Jason Kutaski doesn't like agencies. He's one of the best media buyers out there. I think it's very telling that all these people who are really high level all feel the same way about agencies. To me, that's a pretty big sign that you probably shouldn't hire an agency. Does that mean there's not exceptions? No. And there's agencies that get results for clients. It's not like no agencies get any results for their clients. It's just that it's very inconsistent. Most of the time they don't get great results for their clients. There's an 80, 20 principle. Maybe 20% of their clients they get great results for 80% they don't. So so many clients, so many people come in, again, think that they can just throw money at it. The agency is going to handle everything and it just doesn't work that way. And so that's why I typically think like working with affiliates, figuring out how to buy your own media, getting an in house media buyer, things like that are just going to generally be way more beneficial than hiring an agency and throwing money at it.

Okay, yeah.

As a cop, as a, if, you know, if you're talking about writing copy for agencies, if you have the right strategies to be your own freelancer, there's no reason to rely on agencies to bring you clients and give them a cut. And then sort of goes back as well to the question about how to get really good at copy fast. The actual single best way to get good is to get data. You know, the way that I compare what most freelancers do is they're like they're playing tennis but they can't see the other side of the court. So they're hitting the ball and they're going, oh, that felt good. But it was out by 12ft, you know, and they don't know that. And so now they're basing their next shot off of this shot that didn't actually work. And so when it comes to freelancing, the reason I got so good at email copy is because I had insane amounts of data that taught me what worked and what didn't. It wasn't because it was theoretical, it was based on actual data. And as a freelancer, you want to do your best to get data from your clients. And it's harder to do if you have an agency in between you. You're not going to get a lot of data and you're not going to get that good.

Okay, and then the last question, just to wrap it up for media social, for anyone that is looking to work with an agency, how Would you know what agency is good to work with or what isn't? Like what are the red flags that you should look out for?

Or as an aspiring, like aspiring, but as a copywriter and someone who's looking. Yes, yes. I mean, you know, reputation, like hopefully like leverage your network, like talk to people. Do you know anything about them? You know, like there's like ROI machines and Rudy Mahler. You know, they're a good agency. They have a lot of good copywriters. They're, they're really good crew. Um, there's, you know, there's a bunch of them out there.

So.

Yeah, I don't know. I would mostly leverage your network is the best thing. I mean like ask me basically, you know, and then ask other people in your network. But I think that's the best way.

Okay, cool. Sounds good. Thanks guys.

Cool.

All right, Ed Ray. What, what's our next question?

Look.

It'S a good question from Michael McGovern. Hey guys, what limiting belief did you change that made the biggest difference in your growth?

Cool.

What's up, Michael? Hey guys, how you doing?

Good.

How you doing?

Good man.

Good.

Good question. So yeah, are you kind of like trying to figure out like are you looking to sort of grow personally and that's sort of one of the reasons for the question, or are you just curious? Curious about the context of that? Yeah, yeah, maybe a little bit of both, I think. I think, you know, once I had a breakthrough moment, you know, you kind of get addicted to that, to that feeling and then you're like, okay, what else am I just believing that's totally not true. So yeah, interested to hear your guys perspective. They're just looking for ways to grow. Yeah, for sure. I think one of my biggest ones actually happened when I was with Ian in France at this weekend at the Chateau, which is as fancy as it sounds, where it was like a $15,000 sort of like four day event. It got referenced in this the hater guys email he sent out this week. But like basically it was a huge stretch for me to attend. You know, I had a fledgling business that was not successful really at that time. And then I committed to going because I was trying to deepen my network and build relationships and things of that nature. But it was a bunch of really high level people like Ian was there, Jason Kirsky, who runs Straw House, which was the fastest growing company in Canada for a while, really successful agency actually. But really as a media buying team, calling them an agency is not even really fair. Chris Clark and Scott Rogue from native path Daniel to who's really successful, Mike Geary and Ed Scow, who are just monsters in our space. Tyler Bramlett, who's a big name in our space, like, all these people. And I remember feeling really nervous the whole time. But there was a specific moment where it was after, like a whole day, like a day trip we did to these, like, wine caves or whatever, and coming back and we're sitting in, like, this parlor room by a fireplace. I know this sounds bougie as fuck, like, wine caves, parlors. Totally get it. But yeah, it was like, Chris Clark, Mike Geary, and I can't remember if someone else was there and they were talking about, like, email deliverability and something else. I didn't even know what they were really talking about. And I just had this instinct like, oh, I should go. Like, the big boys are talking, so I should let them talk. I don't belong. I should go. And then I kind of forced myself to stay, but it was really uncomfortable. I didn't add anything to the conversation. I just. But I forced. I knew in my gut, I knew that was a weird belief and that shouldn't actually leave, but I couldn't quite place why. And then at night in bed, kind of was like, thinking about it more. And I really. The realization I had is that I really had these two kind of negative beliefs that have been governing me since I was a child. And they were that, like, you know, I'm not good enough and I don't belong. And I think that they happened because the genesis maybe when I was in third grade, I moved across country from kind of a rural town in Maryland where my going away party was inside of a barn. And, like, it was like just small town, small school. My sister's graduating eighth grade class had nine people in it, like, so super small town. And I moved to, like, California. And then because we had been in such a small community, my parents put me into, like, a private school, which was a, you know, a big financial investment from them, but they wanted us to have smaller class sizes and not have this culture shock of the local high school my sister would have gone to had like a thousand people in it, like the. Like the freshman class. And she had been from a class of eight people and whatever, I got to come along. So to go into this, like, private school in La Jolla in a new kind of more urban environment, and I was like, overweight kids were kind of more materialistic. Like, it would be like you were that, you know, you wore that shirt last week, like, Shit like that, weird stuff. I got teased mercilessly, really had a tough time with it. And then over time I kind of overcame it and found my way and had a good experience by the time I got into like high school and you know, made friends along the way. But I think that was really, for me even, even though it sounds so stupid in a way, right? But like that one thing in fourth grade of like moving to a new place and then feeling like I wasn't good enough because I didn't have the fancy things that other people had and I didn't belong because these people were all close knit and they had and I was an outsider. I realized that that had stuck with me like into my adult life and onward and even was manifesting itself in that moment. So at that moment, realizing it and being like, this is crazy. Do I really want something that, from, from fourth grade to keep controlling my life like for the rest of my life, you know what I mean? And it was like I realized I had a choice on that. I'm like, I can continue to believe that narrative and let that continue to, you know, govern me, or I can just say, that's fucking ridiculous. I'm, you know, whatever I was at the time, 29 or 30 or 28 and like, I'm not gonna let that rule my life anymore. And I made that decision. It didn't happen immediately, but that was what started it. And then, then I'd be in other situations where I start to have that same feeling of I'm not good enough, I don't belong. But being attuned to it and aware to it, I was able to kind of catch myself. And it became a lot easier to start kind of to overcome it. But that was mine. I'd love to hear Ian or Ed, if either of you have one you want to share as well.

Yeah, I mean, I can tell you. So first off that trip, I just wrote Stephan, I got to send you the newsletters I wrote, but I just wrote like 10,000 words about the chateau and how it ended up leading to so many of the different. I sold my water company to Jason Kresge, to the fastest growing startup in Canada. He was there in that place. I recorded the first ever Light Topaz video in that chateau. And, and I was terrified. I wasn't terrified. I was, I was afraid to spend the money on it because it was $15,000 and I was not, you know, crushing at that point. That was the huge, those biggest investment I had made. But that single trip led to so much of what's been great about my life. So it's like when you feel that fear, you just do it anyway. Also, I mean, I could talk about this for days on end. You know, I had a business with the therapist where we helped people work through the deeper mental and emotional blocks that are holding them back. So I've done, I essentially ended up doing, you know, 30 years worth of therapy in the course of about two years through running this. But the, I'll say the biggest one that really was in my way for so long is that basically we all had this thing called the upper limit problem. And, and it basically states that as you get closer, it's self sabotage. So as you get close to getting exactly what you want, you find a way to fuck it up. It's my words and it's, you know, it's. Yeah, it's the big leap. So is that book that talks about it. And my big trauma was that as I started to do really well at things, other people's feelings would be hurt by that. So it actually goes back to the same thing. I was in fourth grade. My best friend at the time, dj, his mother was just a horrible person, still is. And she said in front of him, she was like, oh, Ian's, you know, she's talking to this party is, you know, a bunch of adults and stuff around. And she goes, oh, Ian's incredible. He's, he's the only kid in the school at the 4.0. He's the best athlete in the school. He's, you know, he tutors dj. And then she goes, and DJ just struggles and he's really not that good at stuff. And I just felt, and I'm, you know, I'm an empath. And so I'm feeling just like, oh my God, I feel so bad for him. DJ doesn't even remember this, but because his mom said so many bad things, that this is just one in the long line of bad things she said. But what it signaled to me, and I didn't know this till later, is that basically that my success offends other people and that I need to dim my light because it's not okay for me to just be good at stuff. And the reality is, as arrogant as this may come across to people, this is my own burden. And just like everybody thinks that things are individually good or bad, nothing exists as good or bad on its own. Everything's a double edged sword. I was, you know, I was the smartest kid in my school. I was the fastest and best athlete and Naturally, and I didn't work hard and I didn't do much. But what I learned at that point was, well, I gotta. I gotta shut this shit down because I'm gonna hurt other people's feelings. And so that's something that I've been working through for the past 20 years and have, you know, gotten a grip on, is that it's okay for me to succeed, it's okay for me to continue to expand. And the second stand up set that I ever did, I was in Scotland at this bar. And during this comedy festival, and it was about 30 people in the room. I did my first five minute set, went well. And then the comic who's supposed to show up at the end didn't show up. So the guy says, hey, do you want to come up and do some more time? And I was like, I don't have any more time. I just started doing this. She was like, I don't have more standup. And I was like, I could tell a story. So I went up and I told the two most embarrassing stories in my life. The second one, which I've never known how to end and how to finish it well, and I. It built up into this just crescendo and I killed the ending and the room just like erupted. And it was just this highest high that I felt. And these two English guys that were there that I'd met, they had been doing stand up. One of them had been doing it for a year, another one for two years. And we. I mean, I know exactly where I was walking in Edinburgh, and we're walking up this hill and they were upset set. I could just. They were mad that it went so well for me. How could this guy who's just started go and do that? Well, I've been trying this for years, and they weren't particularly funny and most comics aren't. And. And so for me, it was. It was another sign. And I basically, you know, I did like five more. Seven more sets that year while I lived in San Diego. And then I basically stopped for four years in Austin. And it continued to signal to me that when I succeed, other people get hurt. And the reality is it's not your responsibility to support those other people. They're dealing with all their own triggering and their own stuff. And the only thing you can do is do your best. And the people that are offended by it, that's okay. That's their own journey that they're on. But for every person that's bothered, there's all these people that are Inspired. There's probably plenty of people who see my post or Stefan's and go, fuck this dude. Oh, look at him charging 50k sales that I want a douche. And then for every one of those people, there's, there's five people going, God, I'm so inspired and I want to do this. And if Stefan was letting that hold him back, then he wouldn't be helping all those people. So for me, it was working through noticing as well. Really great. Creating the self awareness around when I'm self sabotaging. And it becomes more insidious as you get further along in your life. The self sabotage isn't something so clear as like, oh, cheating on a girlfriend when you're about to get married to, you know, to her, it becomes things like the night before you've got something important going out and, you know, maybe drinking too much. Or for me, it's even like before I was full carnivore. You know, I have Crohn's disease, so like, certain foods will destroy me. And so. But eating a risky food the night before a big day, because your subconscious is afraid of all the good things that are going to happen. So you have to start to practice the tolerance of good feelings as, as people where we're given this idea that you're not allowed to be happy all the time and that you're not allowed to experience large quantities of joy because there's a. There's basically a switch that gets stored, triggered and yeah, Stephan, go ahead and. And so, you know, you get this. You basically learn that you're not allowed to just be happy all the time. And I'll just talk about this for another couple minutes because he's got to go to the bathroom real quick. But basically, you know, I, I started working through noticing when those things would happen and stopping myself before the sabotage patterns and came up. And, you know, and if you look at actually the way that movies are structured and you look at story structure, the hero's journey, which is the most prototypical story arc that goes into a Hollywood movie. They all follow the same structure, which is, you know, there's that you don't watch a movie where things get better for the main character and then they get a little bit better, and then they keep getting better. They meet the girl, their dreams, and then they get married and it's all good. That's not how movies are told. Movies are told where, you know, the main guy, he meets the pretty girl, ooh, things get better. Oh my God, they're in love. They're gonna get married. And conflict. And here's the conflict. And if you don't know story structure, then maybe, you know, maybe you're not as aware, but the. You know, things go bad, and then there's the resolution. In every movie, it doesn't matter if it's a rom com, a romantic comedy, or anything else they follow the same structure of things are about to get resolved. The movie's about to end, and then there's a conflict, and then there's a resolution. And so we're literally taught through stories and through movies for our entire lives that in order for things to get better, they have to get worse first. And that's not true. That's just something that we've been taught to believe. And so it's understanding that things can continue to get better and that that's okay. Stefan and I both know people and maybe have experienced it in our own lives where you make a. You know, you have your biggest monetary day, and then you find a way to either blow some of that money or do something stupid right after. Something really good. I'll do this with friends. They'll be like, I'm having this stuff happen to my relationship. And I go, how's business going? And they go, they're like, I don't know if I want to be with my girlfriend anymore. How's your business? And they'll go, it's doing well. I say, how well? Actually, it's doing the best it's ever done. Yeah. So what's happening is you're making so much money that you're finding a way to create pain in your life, in your relationship. It has nothing to do with your relationship. It's the. The fact that you can't tolerate all of the good feelings that are happening in your life. So you learn how to build a tolerance for good feelings. You learn how to sit with them when good things happen and expand and amplify those good feelings in order to create a higher tolerance so that you can continue to rise without having to take those, you know, big.

Oh, yeah. I've never. I've never thought about it, like building a tolerance to good feelings. That's. Yeah, that's. That's really something I never considered.

Something that most people don't talk about. That's helpful. Cool.

Yeah. Thanks for sharing, guys. Awesome. Yeah, thanks for asking, Michael. Great job, Ian. So you're good to go for a few more minutes? I want to answer a few more questions, if we can. Here, let's go. All right, sweet. So we're going to do Jacob Ch. I'm not sure how to pronounce your last name, Jacob, but how do you stay at the top of your game and fight rejection as a standalone entrepreneur? So I'm going to hit answer live. I'm not as good at, like, doing these as Ed Ray is. Are you there? Are you there, Jacob? I don't know if I have to, like, do something to, like, end people or, like, I don't know. I don't know what I'm doing without Ed Ray, but Anne's going to pee. Okay, Jacob, I'm going to answer this without putting you up so you can, like, speak, since I have no idea what I'm doing. But basically, how do you stay on top of your game and fight rejection as a standalone entrepreneur? The honestly, the biggest answer for that one is to get a network. Go to masterminds, be in Facebook groups, have a network of people. I used to feel that way, too, before I found Masterminds. I felt like being an entrepreneur was being on an island. It's really lonely sometimes and it's really hard to relate to other people because if all these people in your life aren't entrepreneurs, then they just aren't gonna know what you're going through and they're not gonna really want you to talk about it. And they don't really understand your business and they don't really actually care. The coolest thing about having a network of other entrepreneurs is that they do care. So, like, we're like, that's what we love, right? We love talking about business, we love talking about our wins and our struggles, and we love sharing what's worked, and we love providing insight to everybody and guidance to our friends and things like that. So that's why I go back to, like, masterminds and networks. My hair is going crazy, by the way, if you guys can see this. But, like, that's why going to Masterminds, one of the many reasons that changed my life. And then you have those people and then you can do, like, you know, weekly calls and touch base with people and just do all these amazing things. So, yeah, if it were for me, I really think that the answer to that one is to just build a network and stuff like that. Let's. Let's be set up like Tintin, but hopefully that that helps. Jacob. I am going to try to figure out how to actually unmute people and let them ask their questions, even though I'm not at Ray. So Mason Dewar said, dumb question. What is the most Common delivery method of sales letters. If direct mail is officially dead, is it the same as a sales page? Do people charge 50k for a sales page? Let me see here if I can. I'm going to find you, Mason. I'm going to allow you to talk. I realize what I need to do here. I'm learning and evolving, so give me one second. Mason. Oh, yeah, there he is. Okay, allow to talk. Mason. What's up, man? How are you doing?

Hey. Hey.

How's it going, man?

Good. How are you?

Good. Big fan.

Honestly.

Awesome.

I.

See a lot of, like. I mean, the real money in copywriting is obviously sales letters. I'm an email guy right now, and it's okay, but like, you definitely drive more revenue via a sales letter. But I keep hearing people. This sounds so elementary, but I keep hearing people talk about sales letters, and I don't know if they actually mean sales page, like a really good landing page. Because sales letters, when I think of that, I think of direct mail, which no one really does anymore. What do you personally mean by sales letters?

Yeah, so I am talking about usually a long form, like script or a. Like a text sales letter. So kind of the same thing you would get in direct mail, but the formats a little bit different. The one thing I would say is you mentioned, you know, if direct mail is officially dead, and it's totally not dead, there's still tons of people doing tons of money with direct mail. And you'll find these swings too, in the market where people will. A lot of people will move away from direct mail. And then people who do it actually make a ton of money. Like newspaper advertorials, newspaper ads. I know people just crushing with that. So I do want to just kind of mention that direct mail totally isn't dead. I mean, people have been saying email is dead for like years. It's like email is certainly not dead. So, you know, just. People will say that stuff, but we don't want to necessarily believe it. So, yeah, for me, if, like, it's either a script, you know, for a video sales letter, which may be like anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour long, you know, basically like a digital infomercial, so to speak, or maybe a formatted long form letter that's. That's telling a story and following a whole structure. And usually those for me are between about 6,000 and 10,000 words long. But that's what I. What I'm talking about. Does that make sense?

Yeah, I'm just. Because I'm trying to like, reference it to something I've seen. Because I do read a lot of copy. I love reading copy, especially first thing in the morning before I start working. Yeah, I don't think I've ever read, like, because I've heard you talk about 10,000 words as well, which is insane. And that would take probably, like, a long time to read. Yeah, I don't think I've ever seen one.

Online.

Video sales letters definitely make a lot of sense. I've seen those, like, in funnels and stuff, but. Yeah, no, that definitely clarifies.

Cool. Yeah, the text ones are. Go ahead, Ian.

I was gonna say the idea, though, that you're just gonna make more sales letters isn't necessarily true. You can make a shit ton with email and emails tends to be a lot easier. It's all about deal structure. Like, it's all about setting up your deals in a way where you get paid on the incentive. So I would argue that. I mean, I've made a lot of money writing sales letters, but email's really the most valuable skill that you can have, in my opinion, writing great email copy. And so it comes down to the fact that the. That you need to understand how to set up the deals, which is. That's one of the biggest things that Stefan and I, I feel, like, do differently than so many people. And that's one of the biggest bug. Somebody just asked, do we talk about deal structure and freelancer freedom? Yes, that's one of the biggest things that I talk about and that Stefan talks about, I think. So to give a quick little aside on this is the difference between rich doctors and poor doctors isn't their skill as a doctor, it's that the rich doctor owns a practice and understands the business side of being a doctor, and the poor doctor just does doctor shit. All right. The difference between a rich copywriter and a rich email copywriter is not that they're better at copy per se, it's that they understand deal structure and they set up deals that create win wins that pay them lots of money for little bits of work. So deal structure is what I would say is the single most important thing to understand when it comes to growing your income as a freelancer. And that's something that both Stefan and I do differently than almost everyone. And it's something that makes us more than almost everyone when we're doing that type of stuff. So I definitely would recommend, you know, reevaluating that to some degree and understanding that it's not the skill, it's the deal structure. That's how you can Make a lot of money as a web designer or graphic designer. If you think about things differently, if you deliver ROI on what you do, you can charge dramatically more than everybody else because you're making people dramatically more than what you're charging. So what you charge doesn't matter. What you deliver, what result you provide is what matters. And that's how you decide on how to charge a ton. And it all comes down to deal structure. We go super in depth on that in the course. Show different examples how I charge 25k upfront plus an additional 15 to 60,000 or more on the back end from four or five, you know, sometimes an hour, two hours of work.

Awesome. Cool. So Mason, hopefully that helps you out, man.

Yeah.

Thank you, gentlemen.

Yeah, absolutely. And then, yeah, I will put in the link to the Freelancer Freedom checkout page again for those who are Interested in webinar 2.0. Okay. When they go to Nikhil. See he had his kind of rising up here with a new offer that's been validated in cold traffic. What are some cases where you won't scale fast? Thank you, Ed, Stefan and Ian. So I'm going to answer that, but I'm also going to tag team that with Chris Lobb's question, which was about the metrics you're looking for when you're trying to validate an offer on cold traffic. So I'm gonna, I'm type team both. I'm gonna, I'm gonna just jump in without necessarily, I think putting either of you guys to live just because I'm combining the two. So first Chris asked like, okay, what kind of metrics are you looking at when attempting to validate a brand new offer on cold traffic? Reason I ask is because I want to validate something before building out a more elaborate warm up relationship building sequence. So in terms of declaring an offer validated, would you be looking to break even fairly quickly? Slight loss, knowing you optimize over time. Negative 1 x ROAS, which is return on ad spend, knowing you'll be able to optimize, et cetera. For me, Chris, like the biggest things I would be looking at are I don't have a specific metric, but if I have guidelines or baselines. So for example, if I'm sending out to a list where I've emailed similar offers to this list consistently and I kind of have these baseline metrics, I guess that's warm traffic.

Right.

But I do want to know at least that helps me to see if it's gonna have a better chance on course Traffic. Once I get to cold traffic. Yeah. Justin and I normally talk about even if you're at like 60 to 70% ROI early on, like, that probably means you can get the offer to work. You just need to like, tweak it and modify it a little bit. It's very rare that you put stuff out and it's just like giving you this fat ROI really fast. So if I'm seeing like, you know, if I spend $1,000 and I get 600 or $700 back, I feel pretty encouraged by that. If I spend $1,000 and get zero back, I might be a bit concerned there. So for me, anything at the 60 to 70 percentage threshold would be typically where even maybe 50%. But then that would depend on some factors. If there was already suspicions I had, that might make a difference. Be super candid with you. I'm just going to throw this out there for Freelancer Freedom. And we just launched it to my email list this morning. We're mentioning it. I think that the. We're getting a lot of people. We're definitely getting people buying it, which is awesome. One of my suspicions is that we really need to have probably a payment plan there because, like, the market of a lot of freelancers paying 997is just gonna be like, you know, it's a big investment for a lot of folks. Right. So for me, even though maybe if I don't have as many sales for Freelancer Freedom, having launched it as I would have expected out the gate, I'm not like, we are making sales lots. We're getting this course and people get it. Gonna change their lives. But to me, I'm not like, oh, shit, guess who aren't interested in making more money as a freelancer and getting clients and all that. I'm like, interesting. I wonder if, like, you know, that's to do with the fact that you've got a lot of people who are freelancing who really need a payment plan option. So if you have a hypothesis, like, and you're getting like, you know, an roi, but it's not as high, or even saying negative roi like that also can influence things a lot. And I would probably urge to test on that. I do want then answer part two, which would be Nikhil's question. But, Ian, do you have anything else you want to add to the stuff that Chris asked first?

Yeah, for me, it's sort of similar if you're getting 0.6 to 0.8 sort of ROAS in the beginning, there's probably good legs there for that to work. If it's break even, you're going to crush it. I always say with any sort of offer you're putting out, start with, especially with email stuff like the follow up, start with the simplest form and then add layers of complexity as it grows. So don't try and create this super complex follow up with all the shit, just do a really basic follow up and then start to add the layers of complexity once it's going. And then, you know, a lot of it becomes about tolerance for how much you're willing to tolerate losing on the front end. If you want to really scale something fast, but if you are getting a pretty good rate right out of the gates, then that's a good sign that it's probably going to do real well.

Cool. Sweet. And then Nikaela's question was, with a new offer that's been validated on cold traffic, what are some cases where you won't scale fast? Right. So my answer to that would be mostly it was to come out to like logistics and fulfillment. So even whether that's digital or physical, like if I don't have the infrastructure to scale fast, like if I don't have the, like if it's a supplement offer or any physical product offer and I don't have enough physical, you know, if I'm around inventory, if I scale really fast, I don't want to do that. It could depend for me on the traffic source. If I'm scaling fast with a brand new affiliate partner who I know nothing about and they don't know anything about them, then I don't want to scale fast because is the traffic legit? Is it like fraudulent? Like I don't want to, like the worst thing that could happen is they bring, they send you 5,000 sales and you're like holy crap, I'm about to be so rich. And then you find out that all those sales are stolen credit cards and your entire business shuts down. Those would be two really big ones. Another one would just be, you know.

CPA in general can kind of cause that. Just saying like we pay on our, on my book we pay a $30 CPA. If somebody just sent 500 sales the next day and they were coming in at like $20 AOV, which it's normally around 35 to 45, I'd be like, hey, pump the brakes. Like clearly you're sending shittier traffic. We'll keep send it. You can keep sending for a $20 CPA. Like, but that's why doing revenue share, doing like a 75% or 95% rev share makes things a lot safer to scale. And also you don't always want to scale super hard on Facebook or YouTube with 10, you know, you want to do it 10 to 20% ad spend increase at a time because that's what they want. You can break sort of the whole process if you go from $100 a day to $1,000 a day. They don't want to see that type of violent increase in ad spend. So you want to be a little slower with the scaling. And like Stefan said, I've watched businesses fall apart because the direct response digital info people that start killing it with E commerce and they completely don't have the skills to manage cash flow, cost of goods, sold inventory, and then the whole business shuts down despite doing, you know, 20 million a year because of cash flow issues around infrastructure and shit like that.

Sweet. Awesome. So hopefully that helped both of you too. I'm gonna maybe cherry pick a few questions here and we're gonna start to wrap up. Wrap it up. I want to answer John Choice. He said Stefan, for you personally, I was wondering what your why is for the reason behind still writing sales letters for clients. I understand you charge a hefty 50k but don't you make more money by writing your own offers? Yeah, I do. The reason I have continued to do third party work is a couple of things. One is I'm running Copy Accelerator where I'm teaching and training about copy and all that. And yes, now I have my own offers that I'm partnered in, but those are pretty much running on autopilot. But if I'm working with different clients and having success for them, that's just a lot of social proof. And it's proof I can point to and be like, hey, look, I'm actively writing for these people. So when I come to teach you, like I'm not teaching you based on stuff that worked a while ago. I'm not teaching you for just one product or one type of thing. It's like I'm having success with a variety of clients. That helps to increases my credibility and things like that. Also it enables me to teach and have more interesting, diverse things to teach. Like my honestly, my supplement company is, you know, successful. I mean, it's eight figures, which is great. I know it sounds like laugh to hear eight figures and hear me be kind of nonchalant about it, but there's like tons of, we have tons of, you know, issues and challenges and things that don't get done as fast as I would like and all of that. I don't actually have the bandwidth to optimize those things. And I could, but I couldn't do all the other stuff I want to do. But at the end of the day, if I write something for a client who's super dialed in and they're going to run all these tests and do all this interesting stuff and give me data really fast, then that's really interesting data that I can then apply to my supplement company that I can teach on all of that kind of stuff. Dude, I just got the most amazing testimonial ever, so I'm gonna pause for a second. I love that John Caprani. Yo, Stefan, My little girl Alyssa just said, daddy, every time you listen to that man, you get more money.

That's so great.

So good. Shout out to Alyssa. Alyssa, thank you so much for listening with your daddy. I really appreciate it. Your daddy's an awesome, awesome guy. We love having him here with us and we love that you listen to Alyssa. Thank you for being a part of the show.

And I'll say one note about part of. I think why Stefan does it as well is because there's not an endless amount of offers of your own that you can create. And also, this is one of the benefits to being a freelancer, especially early in your career, is you don't realize all of the insane things that go into managing an offer in a business and employees and all this stuff. Like, he gets to write the sales letter. That's it, right? Like, that's. That's. That's all you have to do. Whereas if he creates a new offer, first off, if it's a digital product, he has to create all of the content, all of the product itself, do all of that work. He has to have people managing all of that customer service, you know, then affiliates, where does the traffic come from, all of that stuff. Whereas for, you know, to get 50k to just go write a sales letter is a lot different workload than launching a new offer or a new business.

Yeah. And it also depends on, like, usually the letters I'm taking on now. It's like, stuff where I know I can crush it really fast. And, you know, so Honestly, I have three letters in my docket right now over the next 12 weeks, which is because, one, I got paid for two letters back in March, and then literally yesterday, they're like, hey, we're ready, and they paid me back in March. And so what's cool about that one, talking about contracts is that there is an option where after those first two letters I have like, there's like an option where I can write. I get to choose if I want to do two more for them. And I think the pay for those is like 90 or 100,000. So basically after I write those two letters for them, I can literally trigger something in our contract and they have to pay me like $90,000 to like write two more letters, but only if I want. And if I don't want to write the letters, then I don't trigger it. I don't have to do any more work.

Work.

And honestly right now I'm leaning towards not wanting to do the additional work because I want to focus on my publishing company and other stuff. And I have one for somebody who's creating an offer on ClickBank. But after that I don't, you know, I keep saying I'm going to get away from writing sales letters for people because like I have some other things I do want to do. But then I do love it as well. Honestly that's part of it as well. And so, and to get paid to Anne's point, to get paid like whatever it is to just get to do something you enjoy and kind of as a reprieve. And it's so clean. So many things I do, I have all these ongoing businesses, which is great. And there's so many things and so many moving parts to have something where it's like I get paid money, I write this thing, I give them the thing and the transaction is complete. Like I don't have a lot of that in my life and my businesses. So there's actually just a kind of like an appeal to that as well. There's something sort of nice about it. So I don't know how long I'm going to do. I'm already. I say no to 95% of stuff that comes my way. And I don't know how long I'm going to keep doing other letters for people, but you know, that's for a little bit. Okay, maybe one more question. I'm looking here. One more.

I gotta, I gotta run in two minutes here.

All good. I'm gonna answer Aldrin's Audrey said, what's your take on taking projects where you have no experience on and learning the task as you go? Audrey. I mean I did that a ton early on. I honestly, for me personally, I'd rather the super cliche thing I use a lot now, like an entrepreneur, like entrepreneurs life of like jumping out of the plane, building the parachute on the way Down. I mean, that's what I did. People would be like, do you do SEO? And I'd be like, oh, yeah. And I would like, how do you do SEO? Do you build websites? And I would be like, yeah, definitely, I do websites. And then I would like, how do you build a website? To me, I was just, you know, really hungry and I figured if I knew I could teach myself things and learn things. So I typically was like, I'd rather just come out there. And it also helped me a lot is I looked at what other people were doing for these clients and like most freelancers out there, especially in the world of like upwork and elance, which was at the time, they weren't that good. And I was like, dude, this stuff's like, not that good. Like, these sites aren't that good. This, like, these people don't know what they're doing with SEO. Their writing is not that good. And I'm like, I just, by pure, like, kind of determination and like talent and ambition, I'm pretty sure I can do something that's as good as anybody else. And they probably better. So I did have like a confidence factor there in that because that's the thing. It's not like there's, there's not that many really like high level freelancers out there. Right. Most people are kind of like really mediocre at best. So if you're really going to work hard at it and you're determined to like to get a great outcome for your client, then I personally am okay with, you know, taking a risk and trying something that you haven't done before. Ian, do you agree with that? Be curious.

Oh, I'm. I think I'm about the most prime example of a person who's just like, I'll figure it out. Like what I, what I say. And it sounds cheesy, but is the how is not for now. So people always go, well, I know what I want to do, but I don't know how to do it. And I go, I know what I want to do and I don't know how to do it. But that doesn't stop me from doing it. I figure it out. You smart, you figure it out. That's my belief, especially goes back to the chaos theory at the very start of this, which is, if it's early on in your career, say yes. If it's later on in your career, feel free to say no.

Yeah, 100% that's true. That's exactly what I did as a freelancer too. Awesome. So everyone thank you so much for coming on, for joining us. We'll be back next week to answer a lot more questions. If I didn't get to your question, I do. I'm sorry. I want to answer as many as I can and I know Ian does too. But, you know, check out Freelancer Freedom. There's links in the emails I sent is in the Facebook Live thing I put in this chat link just goes to the checkout page. But honestly. Well, you'll see more about it. We're going to.

We're going to have a sales page tomorrow. We're each going to have one with our own lead. So that'll be fun. But if you're already freelancing, you want your first clients, no matter what it is that you're freelancing, highly recommend you get it. There's no way, if you implement that, you won't make your money back in multiples. So we'd love to have you in there and have you in that sort of first group. We're closing it down. The plan is to close it Monday night. So make sure you get it soon so that you don't miss out and so that you can be part of that first group to go through.

Yeah, absolutely. And if you're advanced, you should get too. I mean, that's. We should mention that everyone in Vegas.

You're advanced. No, I mean, dude, that's like.

Yeah, originally, that's who we did it for. There's a ton of advanced strategies in there.

Yeah, it's people who literally 6x their income within three months, people who doubled their income within a couple months, people who quit jobs. It's, you know, the results speak for themselves a hundred percent.

Awesome. So check it out. And again, thank you as always for joining me and thank you, Ian, for being with me as well. And I'll see everyone next week and I'll interact with everybody on social media and email. So bye, everyone. Thank you.

Sweet. See ya.