[RTB:E4] “How to Make $6,250 per Hour” - 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 in radio show where you can ask me questions about freelancing, copywriting, entrepreneurship, mindset scaling, funnels, relationships, money, and more. And there are two reasons for the name the Road to a Billion. One is because the things that I've sold are going to reach a billion dollars in sales, as in I've generated. Well, we'll have generated a billion dollars in sales for myself, my clients, by the end of this year. And the other reason is because I want to help impact the lives of at least a billion people in the next 20 years. And I don't. The more I think about that 20 years, the more that annoys me. So I'd really Prefer it's like five years, but for now we'll keep saying 20 years and we'll go from there. But we'll start taking calls in about five minutes from now. The way that works is if you want to put your question into the Q and A section of Zoom, go ahead and do that. And then Ed Ray will be reviewing the questions, feeding them to me, and we'll answer as many as we can. Ed, do you want to go ahead and give a quick hello and introduction?

Hey, what's up? My name is Ed Ray. I actually have my little bio dialed in since last time because it was really good. I got some feedback on that. So I help make people's funnels Facebook friendly so they can get some of those Zuck Bucks. That's all I have to say.

Yeah, I think if you use Zuck Bucks, as long as you keep using that, it's very memorable and compliant. And compliant. That's true. It's much better than make those dollars dollar dollar bills, y'. All. Awesome. So, yeah, go ahead and pop your questions into the Q and A feature here of Zoom and we'll spend start answering them in a second before we do, though. And by the way, hey, to everyone else coming in here, hey, Girlien Christopher Ogle. What's up, Lorraine? By the way, John Caprani. Sorry about. I said that John was in the UK earlier and he's in Ireland, and obviously there's a bit of a history between, you know, those two spots. So, John, I apologize for that. It's kind of funny because I'm like. Well, it's like, it's a really. It's a bad mistake to make. Right? It's like it's brutal. So I do apologize, John, but yeah. Hey, Pedro. What's up? Too. Can you tell from the ginger hair? I know I should have been able to. Lakshmi, what's up, man? So, okay, before we get into The Q&As, the thing I wanted to talk about today is so my daughter watches Sesame Street. Love Sesame Street. And so I watch a lot of Sesame street and they have the number of the day and they have the letter of the day. But for me, talking about the number of the day and the number of the day for us on this call today is $6,250. And why is that the number of the day? Because that is what my hourly rate is. Why is that my hourly rate? Because I have the income goal of a million dollars per month this year. And I look at it and say, okay, there's four weeks in the typical month, 40 hours per average work week. That means there's 160 hours that I have per month that I'm working. And if I want to make a million dollars in income, that means I have to generate $6,250 per hour. So that's a really useful thing on its own because simply knowing that taking whatever your monthly income goal is, dividing it by the number of working hours in the month and then figuring out your hourly rate is really helpful. Knowing that helps me in a myriad of ways. It gives me a. If somebody wants me to do consulting for them, which I generally am, like, I don't want to do too much one on one consulting. I'm doing this call, right? But like, given that if somebody wanted me to get on four calls in a month with them and each call is an hour, then I'm like, all right, perfect. Now I know is $25,000, right? I know. Because 6,250 times 4 is $25,000. So I immediately know what to price for an hour of my time for a consulting call. It's also why these calls are so valuable. We go for an hour and a half. So you're essentially getting over $9,000 in value of my time for free on these calls. But I'm happy to do it. But same thing with writing a sales letter. So I wrote a sales letter last week, week and a half for a client and crushed it. You know, I think the letter is awesome. The client loves it. I think it will do really well. I charged him $50,000 50000 and it took me like 15 hours. So you hear that and you go, that's sick, you know, made $50,000 in 15 hours and it's like, yeah, but if I actually divide 50,000 by 15, that works out to $3,333, which means I actually only get about half of the hourly rate I need by writing sales letters and knowing that information is really valuable because then it's like, crap, I'm still going to write some sales copy, but I either need to charge more or they need to be sales letters for my own businesses. Or maybe you can make an argument that by continuing to write sales letters that go live into the marketplace and do well, that helps keep me visible, people want to keep following me, and then that enables me to charge more in other places. So maybe it's a loss leader. But I'm thinking about it in a really specific way because I know what my hourly rate is. Another example of this would be RNBC Applied, which is the new training program I just launched to my list yesterday, where we're going to go through. And once a month I will break down one of my best sales letters I've ever written in excruciating detail from the very beginning to the very end. And I'll talk about the decisions I made, what I think could have been better. I'll show how I use the RNBC method when writing it, whenever that's applicable. And it's a lot of letters that I've never shared with the public before and I don't really want to share with the public because maybe they're older and they're more aggressive or maybe because they're active right now for a client and the client doesn't want me plastering it all over the Internet. So it's a really exciting program. It's gonna be awesome. But even doing that, I'm like, okay, let's say the average call once a month goes for two hours and I'm gonna charge, I'm charging $97 a month for this program, which is, you know, really kind of low. I think it'd be way more. But even then I'm like, alright, cool. So that means I need had the math, 129 people. If I get 129 people to join RNBC Applied and it, you know, the breakdown each month goes for two hours, then that equals out to $12,513, which is just, you know, $13 over my hourly rate for two hours. So suddenly I have an easy goal, right? So just knowing my hourly rate by taking what my income goal is and dividing it by the Amount of hours I'm gonna work in a given month helps me to make all kinds of decisions. It helps me to set goals and all these things. So I would do the same. I recommend other people do the same thing. Freelancers. All the time. I talk with freelancers and they say, I don't know what to charge. And this is how you figure it out. You can take. Okay, say someone wants to pay you for a sales letter. All right, well, what is your income goal? Well, I'd like to make $20,000. And in a month. Okay, awesome. So given that 20,000 divided by 160, I don't have my calculator in front of me. Anyone's good with math, they can do it. Or I can pull up my phone and kind of do it. DL here. If anyone beats me to it, feel free to. Okay, $125. $125 an hour. Perfect. Okay, cool. So I'm like, all right, so Your rate is $125 an hour. Now, how many hours is going to take you to write the sales letter? And they say, well, it's going to take me 30, 40 hours. Okay, cool. So 125 times 45,000. So you charge $5,000 for your sales letter. Done. So it makes it a lot easier to figure out how to quote things, et cetera. And then if you want to level up, you figure out, okay, what do you want your income goal to level up to? And then you increase your hourly rate effectively and you apply it to everything else you do. So I just think that's a really important way to handle all that kind of stuff. And, yeah, I want to share it with you guys. Does that make sense? And is that helpful how that's a good way to think about things? Let me know if it is in the chat, and then from there we'll go into doing Q and A stuff.

Sweet.

We had two people, said it was helpful, so good for everyone else. Hi. Good. Little more love.

There we go. Chat's blown up.

Good. That's what I want to see. Get Ian Pettit said, assuming you have the skills to pay the bills. Yeah, of course. You need to get good at your. As always, the number one thing I say. And Justin Goff, my partner in copy of Cider, says the same thing. It's like, you know, you have to be good at what you do or you have to get good at what you do. That's really important. Like, you do have to achieve mastery and you don't have to be a Master before, you can charge $125 an hour, but like, you know, you can't completely suck and then be like, I want to make $10,000 a month or $20,000 a month, but if you just don't have the skills, then you can't do that. But you know, as you're developing and building up your skills, then you can. And again, you say Your goal is $5,000 a month. Great. What's 5,000 divided by 160? Anyone? I'm gonna do it for my math. My calculator again. $31 an hour. Perfect. Okay, cool. So then say it takes you 40 hours for a sales letter. What's that gonna be? That's gonna be $1,250. So $12.50 for a sales letter and that's fine. Maybe that's where you're at in your career. But as you get better, you can keep raising your rate. So super important. Dan Sherlock did ask and I know we're going to do the QAs and ED is going to feed them to me. I'll answer one question in the chat that Dan said. How do you know when you're good enough level to charge 3k or 5k or 25k for a sales letter? When you're getting results for clients. Yeah, that's what as Alex disagree with. It's really when you're getting results for clients when nobody's, you know, especially and then people aren't pushing back on your, on your fees or your rates, things like that. I do need to make Ed a co host here so he can work his magic.

There we go.

Ed, you are now a co host.

Thank you. Feels good?

Yeah, perfect. All right, cool. So yeah, I wanted to share that. And from there, let's jump on in.

Beautiful. All right, well, the first question we have is from Shuya Raghav asking what are the three biggest lessons you learned about consumer psychology, which really helped you drastically improve your copywriting and marketing skills?

Nice. Good question. Shira, the 15 year old Indian sensation. What's up, buddy?

Hey.

Hey.

Am I audible to you?

Yeah, yeah, I can hear you.

And is the static still there?

It's better than last time. Oh, thank God. Okay, so it's really awesome to be.

Here and I'm really grateful for being.

Here to like interact with you guys.

And like, you are the best copywriters.

And the marketers in the game.

And yeah, that's basically my question that what are the three biggest lessons that you learned about the consumer psychology? Maybe it was from Reading books or.

Maybe it was from your own experience.

So, yeah, three golden nuggets that you want to share with us today.

And anything will be fantastic. Awesome.

That you share.

Yeah. Cool, man. That's a great. A great question. It's one I have to think about, but I did as you're asking it, and I don't, you know, this isn't necessarily the top three, but it's the three that came to my mind the quickest. You know, one would be, and I've talked about this before, that people make decisions based on emotion and not based on logic. I think that's probably the most important one. People buy off their heart, not off their brain. Their brain kicks in to try to stop their heart, but their heart comes first. And if you capture somebody's heart, then their mind will do a double thing where it does try to kind of challenge them, but it also tries to rationalize for them to kind of please the heart. The brain wants to please the heart. So I think that's really, really important. That'd be number one. I think number two is that everybody wants to look smart. Everybody wants to be like a hero. Everybody wants to look like they made a good decision. So making people feel like they're the smartest person in the room by making a buying decision is really important. And the more you can make that an exclusivity thing and you can contrast that with a you versus them aspect, I think that can be important. One of the reasons that conspiracy theories work so well isn't just because they are interesting stories, which is a huge part of it, but it's also because people who buy into it, you're promising now you know the truth, right? 99% of the people out there are the sheeple who have their eyes closed. And your eyes are open. You know, you're one of the few who really gets it. It's the same reason that cults work, right? And a cult, it's like everyone out there, they're the brainwashed ones. Society's brainwashed. We're the ones who have really seen the truth. So there's a sort of select few that you're a part of mentality that is really powerful and really galvanizes people. And then the third one would be that people, and this is sort of related to. But people do buy and make decisions based on status. People want to feel like they are ahead of other people. People want to feel like they've made it like they're accomplished. Like you buy a Mercedes or a Porsche or whatever. It is because of status, because you feel like that says something about you and it differentiates you from others and it makes you. It's kind of effed up. And maybe you can say it shouldn't be this way, but people buy stuff to feel better than everybody else. It makes them feel like they're better than people. And the same thing, though, about whether it's being in a club or joining. I mean, Copy Accelerator, the mastermind I run, is, hands down, the best copywriting mastermind on the planet, and probably the best mastermind on the planet, in my opinion. But people join for tangible help and the benefits, improvements. But it's also a status symbol as a writer. People who. If you're in Copy Accelerator and you talk to a bunch of other people who aren't, you sort of are immediately held up and vaunted as being higher up. And that's a status thing. So emotion instead of logic, being like a hero, or I mean a hero, but being one of the select few, and then envy and status being important. Those are the top three that came to my mind. Okay.

On them. Really valuable. And I hope this question was a worthy one to be on your podcast because, like, I brainstormed for 15 minutes to find a good question for your podcast.

I thought it was a great question. I appreciate that, man. I love that, you know, you came back after last week and, yeah, it's awesome to have you here on the call again. I really appreciate it. Okay, thank you. Awesome. Thank you, man.

Was a really good question.

Yeah, it really was. It was surprising. I was like, oh, should I have to really think about this one? But that's good.

That's good stuff. Cool. Next question here from Daniel Sherlock. Daniel's asking, do you have any book recommendations for learning about psychology, storytelling, and mindset?

What's up, Dan?

Hey, can you hear me okay?

I can. How are you doing? I'm great, thanks. How are you doing? Well, thank you. Good, good. Yeah.

So the question's right there. I mean, I've. I'm towards the end of the big leap, which you.

I think you recommended in the first.

Podcast, which has been really good. But, you know, obviously with sales copy, we're trying to convince people. So, you know, I've read things like.

Influence and Persuasion before, so I just wondered if you had any other psychology.

Books that you would recommend.

And then storytelling is obviously a huge part as well.

So the same for that 100%.

On the psychology side, I would say there's a good book called you. I think it's you're not so smart, or you are not so smart. And it's a book with all these, like, logical fallacies and things that we make. So essentially, like the strawman fallacy or confirmation bias are all these sort of flaws in human reasoning that we don't see, but that are there. I read that book a while ago, but it really stuck with me. There was a lot of really interesting stuff in it, so I would really recommend that one. I actually just haven't thought about it in a while, and just telling you about it makes me want to reread it. I'm trying to think of some examples. It's just sort of stuff like who survives in a plane crash? But it's also stuff like how you get tricked into buying stuff. And it's a really, really good book. Another book that's really good I haven't read in a while, but I should revisit is called Made to Stick. I'm not sure if you've heard of that or read that, but Made to Stick is a really good book. It kind of talks about how to make a point, how some points and ideas stick and others don't. They use an example of when people were trying to eliminate saturated fats from popcorn in movie theaters, and the scientists essentially were talking about it. Nobody was listening. And then they had, like, a demonstratable proof where they had a giant, like, thing of, like, oil that they held at a press conference. And people looked at the oil and they're like, this is all in one single thing of your popcorn. And then all of a sudden, everybody was like, oh, shit, we should probably stop using this oil in our popcorn. But now you know. So that's a really good book as well, girly. Nastya, you are not so smart by David McRaney. I'm pretty sure I'm gonna secretly Google it while I talk here. You are not.

Yeah, that's what it is. What was the second one? The airplane one.

Made to Stick. Oh, well, the airplane one was also part of you are not so smart by David McRaney. But made to Stick is by ideas. Why some ideas survive and others die. It's a really good book, too. Awesome. And then, yeah, as far as storytelling goes, I really go back to just great stories or great stories, no matter what or where they come from. So I don't know about books about how to craft, like, a story, but I would just actually read the great stories that are out there. Whether that's, you know, things like the Odyssey by Homer, which is, frankly, kind Of a monotonous read. So maybe just read the cliff notes of it. But studying the hero's journey, like what I always say, you know, the hero's journey is so vital. And if you look at like anything that follows that, obviously the hero's journey, which was come up. Came up with by Joseph Campbell in his book, I think, was it the hero with a thousand masks or something like that? But essentially he was basing that off of the Odyssey and other epics. But I always joke, but I'm not joking, actually, that Moana, which I know Ed Ray loves that Moana too. If you look at the movie Moana, like the Disney movie, it's one of the most clear cut examples of the hero's journey that you'll ever see. And so there's just a bunch of good stories that follow the hero's journey. I would just watch movies and read books that kind of follow that stuff as well. Sounds good to me. Awesome. Thank you very much. Yeah, my pleasure.

Beautiful. All right, I was just doing the show notes back here. So I'm back. Let's see, who do we got?

By the way, I love the chat. I love you guys are sharing insights in the chat. I'm reading them all that. And by the way, guys, if you have questions, put them in as a Q and a because that's where Ed will get to them. So if you put them in the.

Chat, ask me a question or I'll look at that. Stefan.

Yeah, you totally can ask a question, Ed Ray. That's great. I can take a break, Drink a little my cucumber flavored Perrier and just chill.

Nice. It's a good time. Cool. So next up, we have a question from Eric Chan. I know Eric. He says hello. I landed a client recently, but I always have this thing that happens. So let's say you're on the phone with a client. What's the first information you need to get from the company before writing anything for it? The information the owner gave is a little bit vague and not very specific.

Cool. What's up, Eric? How are you?

Oh, do you hear me?

Yeah, I can hear you. How you doing?

Yeah, very fine. And you?

Good, man, good, thanks. Actually, I have two questions. The second one just pop up in.

My head if you don't mind. The second one too, after the. Look at you.

Look at you getting the twofer. Yeah, that's fine.

Okay, cool, cool, cool. Yeah, recently I just land a client and sometime when I ask them some information about the the company, they don't know the answer that they gave me, it's like vague. So I don't know what, what information that you have to ask them, you know, the, you know, before to write anything for them because sometime you just need to tweak the offer and the conversion going to raise. So I don't need to write any copy, but they can't give me those information sometimes. So just want. What is your thought about that?

So what kind of clients are you working like, are you working in a specific niche or is it all over the place? Is elearning. Sorry, it's.

What is elearning industry?

Okay, yeah, elearning. Got it. And are you ready, what kind of copy are you writing for them normally?

Actually I'm doing the landing page, the.

Facebook ads and the email. Okay, cool. And the landing page, what's the number one reason they're hiring you?

Actually I just send him three free email to let him test. And the thing is he don't have, he doesn't have any email sequence. So he want me to build the email sequence for him and also build the lead magnet for him and actually also the, the landing page at the same time.

Okay. So it's a whole project and his main goal is to get more people to buy his program.

That's. Yeah, that's what I tell him because he didn't know what kind of goal he want. So I just like propose him some, some goal that we can, we can reach them.

Yeah. And is this an existing business or is it a new business?

It's kind of new. I think there's already two months ago that he started the business.

Got it. Yeah. I mean somebody like this, really, this is where like you're probably not gaining a lot of information from him because he, to your point, like he doesn't know. Right, right. And so this is where you have to be the consultant and come in and tell him what he wants and what he needs, which you're kind of doing, it sounds like. Right. So you're telling him, hey, we need to get you more. So what exactly is the program? Is it like, like just a course or is it like classes or what exactly is just a course? Okay. Yeah. And he's. How much is the course?

I think it's 99 Euros. It's a front end offer and at the back end he got I think €600 the backend.

Okay, got it. Yeah. I mean for something like that, really, you know, you have a lot of creative license for somebody like this. I mean, if it were me, I would sort of just. I wouldn't rely on the client very much. I would essentially do what you're doing, which is like, okay, our goal is to get you more front end acquisitions profitably or at a break even. In order to do that, we need to do X, Y and Z. And then really all you need to do is go through the course so you know what it is you're actually selling. And that's pretty much it. Which is actually nice. I mean, honestly, like. Cause one, I'm not saying you make this mistake, but one mistake I see people make is that they do get really dependent on the information that their client gives them. And even me, when I'm charging 50 grand for a sales letter, I ignore almost everything the client gives me. Literally, like, all I want to know is say it's like a health supplement because I do a lot of that is like, what are the ingredients? What are like the goals? Like, are you trying to build a brand? Are you trying to have something that's gonna just like sort of do a lot of front end acquisitions and you don't care if the company's around in the year or not, because that can affect the tone, right? And what we're saying and then what are like the price points? And that's pretty much it. Like I've had clients who give me just a thousand pages of research. I mean like all kinds of shit, all kinds of documents, all kinds of other stuff. And like, maybe I look at a few competitors pages and that's it. Because like, if I, if I, if I take everything that they told me, usually they're hiring you because whatever they're doing hasn't been working. And they're like, here, here's all the shit that was, hasn't been working. And it's like, I don't, I don't want to look at that, you know, and, and Craig Clemons is the same way. It was funny because I know when I did a project for Golden Hippo and with Tony Horton, who's the P90X, like spokesperson, and I remember asking Craig for some other offers that were relevant or something. And even he was like, I don't want to give them to you because I don't want you to look at them. And it was like, shit, man. Okay. But obviously he's done. He's doing like 400 million a year or whatever they're doing. And he's a great copywriter and the same thing. So I think that's an important lesson is generally in a case like that. Yeah, you Don't. I don't think you need more information than what you have.

Okay, so you, you won't ask them the. The result that they're actually getting from the previous, Like, I mean, like the copy.

No, no, yeah, I'd want to know that. I mean, again, I think if it's really, if it's really new, then obviously you don't have that information. But yeah, if they have like an existing thing and you're sort of beating or optimizing it, then yeah, I would want to know the metrics. I mean, if they don't know the metrics, though, maybe they're not. I mean, the guy might not be doing like very many sales or almost any sales, you know, and that could be part of why he doesn't have anything. But if he has good metrics and sure, I want to know, you know, what's the conversion rate? What's the average order value? If it's a subscription thing, what's like the stick rate? You know, what's your cpa, Right. What's the target that you're willing to pay to acquire customers? That kind of stuff. But yeah, I take notes. I have the second one.

The second question is the last one, actually. I already come up with kind of three strategy for him. And the thing is, the budget is limited, so he don't want to run the three strategy because I just want to test among the research which one is working the best for him. And he just told me that he. The widget is limited, so he don't.

Want to test the free strategy at the same time.

So what do you do in this, in this situation, do you float your golden gut and you just put one strategy randomly and just test it?

Yeah, I mean, I'd look at what has the highest probability of winning for the client and being a needle mover, you know. So if like all three are great strategies, you know, what's the one that. Not only that, but the client that the client's most likely to implement and then that's the most likely to yield results, and that's aligned with what the client's budget is. Because, for example, right to your point, it's like, hey, if I can spend a couple hundred dollars a day on Facebook ads, I can do this, this, that, and if the client's like, I don't have a budget for Facebook ads, and that just is what it is and you're out. Right. So you just got to find whatever the one is that is highest probability of getting results and that is aligned with what the client is, you know, able to do. And then you have to work on getting better clients, you know, over time. I know that it takes time.

Yeah, it takes time. Yes.

But it doesn't mind.

I will tell the time he need. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you so much for your answer.

Yeah, happy to help. Yeah.

Sweet. All right, next up, we have the legendary Sean Caesar. So Sean asks, are headlines with 15 to 25 words, gigantic headlines? The new theme of advertisement.

Interesting question. What's up, Sean?

Hey, how you back again?

Yeah, good to have. Glad to have you back.

Thank you. Thank you.

Yeah. So, yeah, you're asking if kind of longer headlines are.

Yeah, I was. I was doing, you know, I was studying some headlines and I found out that the new, you know, the new headlines now are getting so gigantic. 25 words, so big, filling up the whole page and having, like, too many promises in just one headline. And also they have, you know, they have the sub headline down and the thing up, like the sub headline to up. And I thought, like, is this really working? I don't know if this ad is working or not. It looks good, but, you know, the results are not, like, are not known for me. So what's your thoughts on the. These gigantic headlines?

Yeah, I think they can totally work. It depends. There's some factors. If it's like a headline above a video sales letter, it's like a video.

Something like this. Yeah. A headline and then a video down.

Yeah, I mean, I think that can work. The challenge with that is if the headline is too long and it pushes the video down below the page, like, especially on, like, mobile. Right. Where I only have this much of, like a screen. And like, if the headlines like all of this stuff, so the videos below, I think that can negatively affect conversions. So for a video sales letter, I'd probably try to go for shorter headline, and I generally do. For a tech sales letter, I don't think there's any harm in having a really like a pre header that's 10 words and then a big headline that's like 15 words and then a post headline that's 10 or 15 words, whatever. I think that's fine because then that real estate is great. You're just trying to capture their attention and get them to keep reading. And then besides that, Sean, I mean, I would look at. There are different kind of spy tools you can use to kind of see, like, how much traffic websites are getting. So, you know, you may look at a page that has a really long headline in a video, and then you use similar Web or adbeat or what runs where, or I know there's other tools. If anyone has any tools like this, you can pop them in the chat. But basically you could look and see if, like, that page is getting a million impressions a month and has been getting a million impressions a month for the last, like, five months or six months, Right? Then it's probably working for them, you know, having the long headlines. So that's how you kind of know if it's working or not.

So there's no problem with imitation. Like, if I imitate what they have and just emulate it to my copy, I just.

I just copy what's working. I think that's, like, a huge part of my secret to success is like, swiping other people and swiping myself. Like, I have a template that's working right now for sales letters. So now, like, basically every letter I write is me just swiping the same template again and again and again, because it works again and again and again. So. And I think, you know, looking at what works, though, and then just, yeah, swiping it or, you know, modeling off of it is a very proven strategy.

Thank you so much.

Yeah, my pleasure.

Next question. We have David Vujic Objections. Is making a big list of objections for copy that we can overcome. Good. I mean, does conversion. Does conversion become better if we answer all possible objections, even those not so common, at the cost of making the copy a lot longer and potentially losing people?

What's up, David? Hi.

So I have question about objection handling. So how are you, Stefan and Ed?

I'm good. That's good too. He smiled. He's good too. Yeah. Yeah.

So I wanted to go to the strange. Straight to the point. So, I mean, if we, like. I learned from that, from Agora and Jason Capital. So if we do copyboarding and, like, list all the possible objections and put them in categories. So do we answer, like, all possible objections that our avatar. Avatar could have, or we just answer, like, the most common one? Like, I mean, my logic says if we, like, answer every possible one, like, the copy is gonna be a lot longer, and we have potential to lose a lot of people there. So what's your mind about that?

Yeah, it's a great question. And by the way, looking at your picture, you do look young, but I think I realized you're. Are you, like, 16, too? Yeah. I love it. I love. I love you young guns. It's so awesome. Yeah. But, yeah, I think. I don't think you should answer every objection. I think your gut's Right. And I think that generally if you are answering the most common ones that you're going to be fine. I think there's an opportunity in the FAQs like as Andrew pointed out in the chat to answer some more of those objections and I think you can sort of answer others as sprinkled throughout the copy. But really like people, why don't people buy. Like it's too expensive, it won't work for me. I've been burned in the past. Like I don't believe, you know, you really. That's it. Now, Now's not the right time, I guess. Right. So there's really like a like four, four or five objections that are like at most the same. Everything else they're saying is really just a manifestation of just a few core objections every time. So I would just focus on what those core objections are that consistently come up. And then as long as you're answering those like it takes care of most of the other objections too. And if you try to answer everything to your point, I think it just makes the copy become boring and it draws on for too long or you're raising objections that people didn't even think they had and suddenly you have now planted new objections in their mind. So I think you're on the right track with what you're doing.

So do you think about if we could like do a question part about end of the copy like for people who have like there can see that question. Like I have that about that objections like objection and answer at bottom, full bottom of the copy or like you said, it's not good. Like I'm like making them in the head like yes. Oh, that is objection too. Like, you know what I mean?

Yeah, I mean I think you can do on the FAQ and you know, if you want to go longer and like the close and that's fine. One of the like the things that I talk about that I've seen a lot of other people talk about is once you get to the close and once you reveal your call to action and you're like alright, should be $200, it's only $49, click the button now and like buy. Right. I still have like a formula that I'm following where it's like next is like by the way, it's guaranteed. Right. And kind of like covering here's there's some bonuses, whatever it is. But after I've done my call to action at that point I always say like go as long as you want. Right. You could have another if you want at that point have you could have another 8,000 words of copy. Like that sounds extreme. I don't think you need to do that. And I'd never seen anyone do it. But once I've gone through everything else and I've gone to my call to action, the whole point is that they should just be buying now. So now I've played my hand right, I've showed all my cards. So now there's no. All I want to do at that point is to keep them around until I figure out why they haven't bought yet and get them to buy. So I give them all the build up, the story, the value, the mechanism, everything there. And then I'm like, alright, buy now, click the button. It's $49 for a limited time and they still didn't buy at that. I'm like, oh, and it's guaranteed. So if it doesn't work, no worries. Now I'm answering an objection. You know, guarantee stuff. All right, buy now. They still don't buy. It's like, okay, well it also comes with these bonuses or maybe I do the bonuses first. But like, you know, here's, you know, you want even more to get the value. There it is. They still didn't buy like oh, did I mention that? Here's what a bunch of people said. Like I just at that point you can keep going and addressing more objections but really. Yeah, I think go back to what I said, that generally there's only a few reasons people really don't buy and I would just focus on those. And if you want to address some specific stuff like in the FAQs, then that's the place where you would do that.

Okay, thank you, thank you.

So what about parts?

If those like I'm selling like if you are selling like a high ticket product or information product, is it all the same yet?

Yeah, I think it's all the same. It's the same thing. I mean high ticket, it's like I can't afford it. I don't know if it's really gonna work for me. Like am I gonna return on investment? Is this a scam? Are you full of shit? Is this really the right thing for me right now or should I be doing something else? And it's like that's really it no matter what. And that's whether it's a high ticket coaching thing or like a $49 supplement. Like it's still the same objections.

Yeah, thank you, thank you a lot. So you helped us a lot here.

Good, I'm happy, happy That I can help. Sweet.

All right. Yeah. One thing I quickly want to add on to that, that's cool, Stefan. Yeah, man, is you're totally right about. It's the same objections, but you with higher ticket stuff, you really have to show the ROI a lot more. Like for a $49 product you can get with, oh, you know, it'll help you do this and that, but most of the time it's like you literally have to spell out like, okay, if let's say you're in biz op, right, it's like, okay, well this will show you how to make, I know, say $2,000 this month. Is it worth it to, you know, spend $2,000 now to make $2,000 a month for the next 12 months, then it becomes a no brainer.

Yeah, I agree with that and I do. One, one piece of advice I've given before that I would come back to is when writing copy, I always recommend adding a zero to the price. So whatever the price is, add a zero and imagine that that's the price. So even if you're selling a $49 product, pretend in your head that's a $490 product. Because then if I have to sell you a bottle, one bottle of a blood sugar supplement for $490, I'm have to go way harder to try and sell you it than for $49. So even if I'm doing a high ticket thing, that's like $2,000, pretend it's $20,000 and be like, shit, like, what would I have to really say to this person to get them to be okay with investing $20,000? So one really important way to kind of do that and build the value is just adding a zero to whatever the price is and writing your copy accordingly.

I love it. Next up, we have a question from John Kim. And by the way, be sure to put your questions in the Q and A chat and give a thumbs up on the question you want answered.

Next.

So from John Kim, we have, for someone who doesn't have a substantial swipe file, is there an easy way to find winning campaigns, letters and emails to study? I'm thinking of going to Clickbank's High Gravity or Popular Offers. Is that a good start or is there a better source you recommend?

What's up, John? Hey, Stephan, can you hear me? How you doing? Yeah, I can. Good. How are you? Good, man. Thanks for taking my question.

Of course.

Yeah, my pleasure. Yeah, feel free to give me. I mean, it's pretty self explanatory. But feel free to give me any more background on it. I mean, pretty self explanatory. I'm just trying to figure out where some good sources. Yeah, cool. Yeah, I think clickbank is a good place to go because of the gravity score. And you can kind of see stuff that's working right now. I think if, you know, if you see like going back to what I said previously, if you see ads on the web for stuff and then you have a tool that can tell you an estimate of how many monthly impressions that a sales page is getting, then you generally can know if that's working. So for example, if you see an ad for like a dog, like health offer, or like there's a dog, like joint supplement or whatever, I think it's a part of the golden Hippo family. And I remember going and looking. I didn't realize it was going hippo at the time, but I remember going and looking and they have two variants of it and I think each one was getting like 3 million impressions a month, which is a lot. Right. That's for like a direct response offer getting 3 million a month and then 6 million total. So you're like, you know, that's working again. I used a similar web, but there are, you know, other tools as well. But Yeah, I think ClickBank's a good place to go if you're trying to look and study and ads add to your swipe file. Yeah. For like Facebook ads. I was looking at the Facebook ads library and it doesn't tell you, I guess like the impressions or like the comments or anything. It just shows you like what creatives are being used. So can't really tell if it's a, it's a good ad or not. You know, I can guess. But then, you know. Yeah, usually the good ads are gonna have like a lot of comments and stuff like that. So there's a lot of like likes and comments and things. That's usually a sign that the ad has been running a lot. Or if you see that they have like the same ad multiple times because maybe they've had to restart it for different reasons, that's usually a good sign that the ad has been strong as well. Got it. Okay, I'll keep a lookout for those.

I appreciate it.

Cool. Yeah, my pleasure.

Sweet. All right, next up we have Luca Manigetti. So he says, hey, Stefan, my question for today, how would you write for landing clients for yourself? So your one man agency and where and how would you advertise it?

What's up, Luca?

Okay, so. Hi, Stefan. And hi, Ed, how are you?

Good.

Okay, fine. So my question is primarily made because of. I went through all the like freelancing sites like fiverr, etc. So the. In the episode three you said about you starting on Elance, that now is upwork and. Yeah. How were you writing your proposals? Because this is. I see so much people on this website making proposals that are not so like helping them to get the client. So I saw Luke Minlis. Sorry, I saw Luke Mean list that made 1k on Upwork and. Yeah, what do you think about those proposals?

Yeah, I think Luke had a really good case study. And I've been going through case studies the last couple of days for the freelancing course Ian and I are doing. And I had like 70 plus submissions from people. So I've been able to look at how a lot of people got their first client, which has been really cool. The big thing that was cool to me is what I was doing in elance back in 2012 is the same stuff that people, the same things people are doing today in 2020. And I don't mean that like I'm an originator, it's just that it worked for me and people are doing the same stuff today. So nothing's changed. Which is cool because it's like a universal. These are things that just keep working. So it really comes down to personalized proposals. It's like calling out their pain point, demonstrating mastery, knowledge of the subject, talking about, for example, if they've done a link to what their domain is. Like going in and even saying, hey, I've gone through it. Here are three things that I think you could. But there's actually 10 things. These are the first three. And then having a lot of confidence, I would always, in my proposals talk about how I'm like, I'm not the cheapest, but I'm the best. And it was like, you get what you pay for. If you're trying to get somebody and you're just, it's all about, you know, budget, you can do that, but what are you going to get for that? Right? You're going to cut corners and going back to the ROI and how they're hiring, doing the math for them. Like I talk about. So being like, you know, when you hire me, you're doing it because you want to get an roi. You don't want to have the work redone in a month. You don't waste your time. You want to have tangible results today. And that's what I offer. So a lot of confidence, personalization really answering their pain points and then demonstrating why you're the best person. I think that's. Those are really the main keys.

Okay, thank you very much. And can I ask you a first question?

Yes. This is two for one Thursday.

Okay. So, yeah. How do you. What do you think about charging per word or per letter? So Danlok, for. Make a little example, made a video about how copywriters should charge their works, but what do you really think? How do you charge? I know you charge by the value you give to your prospect, but how do you. What do you think about the charging per word?

Yeah, I mean, I think that it's an okay strategy when you're starting out. I've never done it, really. And so in theory, I don't really like it, but I also understand people are at different places. So if you're, you know, like I just put on my calculator, right? If you say you charge $0.05 per word and you know, 100 words, that's $5. So you write a 500 word article, that's 25 bucks. And if you write that article in like an hour, that's $25 an hour. And that's not bad, you know? Um, so if you're, you know, like early on and you're trying to just get some clients and build up your portfolio and things like that, then I think it's okay. But I think it's like a beginner strategy. And so as soon as you can get away from doing that and focus on, you know, the ROI and charging a higher rate and a flat rate, I'd prefer that.

Okay, thank you. Can I add something to that, Stefan?

Yeah, you sure can. Cool.

To me, I think if you're doing like, if you're doing actual copywriting, then you charge for results, but if you're doing like article writing, then sure charge per word, you know? Cause it's like, realistically you ask the client, it's like, what matters more how many words I use or how many sales you get? If I think I can make you more sales with less words. What do you want? So I. Was this a question for me? It's just Luca, it's kind of me sharing. Like sometimes it is. Like, especially when getting started. If you're doing articles, sure do charge per word. But if you're trying to do copywriting and sales, it's not necessary. At least that's my opinion. Okay. So I asked this question because I have done so far, like 100 maybe prospects, 100 clients writing copy. So I'm doing the copywriting work. But yeah, I saw a lot of business owners that concentrates themselves like asking, what is my price per word? And yeah, I don't like this thing too much.

So.

Yeah, that's why you asking.

I just think. Yeah, I think the goal is to keep building up your portfolio, have more confidence in your proposals, and then get away from those people where it's like, you don't need 100 business owners, you need five who are going to pay you higher amount to write for a specific project. And I know that's easier said than done, but it happens, right? That's what you. By building your portfolio doing all those things, you can start to get better clients. But better proposals help because again, I never. When I started off on Elance and I did content writing, I did web copy web content. I wrote stuff for like a logistics company and all kinds of shit. I mean, it's fun. It'll be fun to go back through all my stuff. I would take any job someone would give me because I'm like, fuck, someone's paying me to like write and I don't have to have a boss. I'll do it. And I did stuff for like $15 an hour, $20 an hour. But I never went like lower than that. And I just would make my proposals better. And I really quickly made my rate like 50 an hour. Then if I had to go down to 30 an hour, that was fine because, you know, that was still more than I was making at my job. So, you know, focusing on higher quality proposals I think can help a lot.

Okay, thank you very much, Stephan. And thank you, Ed. And yeah, thank you.

Our pleasure. You know, Ed, before we get to the next question, this is just a small thing. I don't know if anyone ever read Charles Dickens, but I had to read A Tale of Two Cities in high school. And I don't know if you guys know, but Charles Dickens got paid by the Word. And I fucking hate his books because they're just so long because, like, he just would make them extra long because he like was getting paid by the Word. And I think he would have been a better novelist. And I get Charles Dickens. He's like, you know, still really famous and a great novelist, but I've always hated his writing. And I think part of it's because he asked if he got paid by the Word.

The fact that someone would even recommend that, I'm just astounds me.

Cool, let's hop on to. Okay, hop on.

The next year we have a question here From Santiago for me.

Good. Perfect. 15 mile breather.

Yeah, there you go. Get your coffee, get your tea, whatever you got to do. He says. Question for Ed. Any advice for young upcoming copywriter like you? Hey, Ed. Hey, what's up, Santiago? Thanks for the question, buddy. I'm great, man. How are you? I'm good.

Yeah.

I wanted to give you some time to talk to now, but I mean, yeah, I wanted to ask you this question because I watched your interview. I think it was with Justin, not with Stefan.

It was about a week ago that I watched it.

And yeah, I've seen that there are some young copywriters like me, let's say up and coming, like I'm 18, for example. And there's Luca that he was 16, and David that he was 16 too, like here in the call. And yeah, that's basically why I wanted to help, why I wanted to ask you this question.

Hmm. So.

Is this in terms of getting clients, is this in terms of positioning this in terms of how to write? I mean, what are you guys looking at specifically? Well, if I had to choose what to ask you, it will be on getting clients. Yeah. That's the part that has been the most difficult for me, at least for now. So the number one thing for me is from what I've heard from talking to people, I want to say our age, because I still feel like I'm 16. But in our age category is there's this huge hang up about age. But clients don't care how old you are as long as you're mature. Like, it doesn't matter. Like, age will not come up if you're just a mature individual. Okay. Like, I branded myself as the young person because that's how I got people in my corner. That's how I got. Yeah, that's like a good angle to brand yourself. Yeah. So you can look at my name on the cult of copy job board and you can see some my old Facebook posts that went completely viral in the group. So I think some of the most important things is one, don't be ashamed of your age. And don't try and hide it either. But also don't let it hold you back. Don't be like, oh, because I'm this age, I can't do it. Like, When I was 16 or 15, I got my older brother to open a PayPal account so he could take payments in for me. Right. Like, just find ways to get around the system and position yourself in a way at least I guess, if you're getting started. Yeah. Position yourself In a way that really makes you different, even if you don't have like any crazy different skill sets. Like, I'm the Facebook compliance guy, right? Like I can say that. But back then I was just a 17 year old who wanted to not go to college and my parents were gonna kick me out of the house. So that was my personal brand as it may be different. So if you can find a watering hole where all of your potential clients would be and just post in there frequently, giving value, making offers, helping people, being active. Like the Justin and Stefan talk copy group, there's like some eight and nine figure business owners in there just fucking commenting to like the most random things. Like I see like Chris Haddad and Kim Krause in there and they're like seven figure copywriters and they're just like chilling. And it's like, like, holy shit. If I had this group when I was, when I was, you know, starting out, when I was so young, right? But as I teased Stefan, yeah.

I.

Would be so if I was in your guys shoes, I would be posting in that group every single day. Just something to provide value. I'd be commenting every single day, just engaging in the group, giving value, helping out other people, asking questions, giving feedback. Because like, look like the people who show up on this call even like show up for this call. We now, like, me and Stefan now know you. We know who you are now.

Yeah.

And if you can keep showing up like that, the people who are in the chat who are watching, maybe one time you make a comment and it's exactly what a business owner who's watching this needs to hear or see. And they'll reach out to you. This happened to me the other day. It's like, I'm a compliance guy. I'm gonna talk about compliance. And I've had like two people, three people reach out to me in the past, like two days or so, like, yo, like, I need your help and I am not cheap when it comes to compliance. So dude, just keep showing up. That's the number one most important thing. Just by you being here, provide value, be on this call, join, you know, Stefan's groups as much like in the RNBC group, I've heard of people who went from. They literally have been in other, I'm not gonna say which ones. They've been in other copywriting programs for like a year or something and they haven't had a single client. They jump into Stefan's RNBC group and within a matter of a week they have three clients. I'm not saying that everyone's gonna do that, but when you put yourself in the right place with the right tools and you buy into the right room, it makes it very easy to win. Especially when you have someone as amazing as Stefan who's literally handing out opportunities like Oprah's hands out fucking cars.

Okay. Yeah. Nailed it.

That was the greatest response.

Nailed it. Ed, that was so good. Got me fired up. Yeah.

Yeah, he got me fired up too. Like, to be more active on this community. I mean.

I think, yeah, today is.

My first call, like, this type of call. The first time I'm joining, I'm joining. But I will make sure to keep showing up on 241 Thursdays and to be more active on the Facebook group. Yes, sir. So, yeah, thank you very much for your response, Ed. It's my pleasure, man. It's my pleasure.

John Kim said shout out to Ed for being a badass moderator. I agree.

Thanks, man. Appreciate that.

Yeah, it's true. I mean, I don't know how old Supreme Supreme Win is, but that dude just, like, was posting regularly, and Justin and Stefan taught copy, and then he kept posting, and he had one that really honestly eat it for, like, a couple weeks and then. But he was doing it every day and, like, talking about how he eats like, once a. You know, once like, once a night at dinner time. And so final, I was like, all right, I got me. I'll hire you. So I hit him up, and I'm hiring him, and I'm gonna pay him, like, $2,500 to write, like, a mini sales letter for me. And, like, I don't think I've ever gotten a copy. Like, I think maybe he said one client or two client before. That doesn't mean, like, I'm gonna hire everybody I don't want to be. I'm not trying to say that, you know, but, like, it. But the point is, like, I just. He got my radar really fast because he just kept posting stuff. And then I even told him, like, hey, don't worry about it if it's not good. I was like, you don't do your best, but, like, it can suck. Don't put that pressure on yourself. And if it does suck, then, you know, like, I'll just work with you to help you get better. But it's because he's around. But everyone on these calls. Yeah, exactly. People just sort of like, I recognize almost all the names who are here. Right. And so you guys are all more in, like, my inner circle. But I'm not the only One like it's the same thing. Like if you're posting regularly and Justin and Stefan taught copy or in rnbc, if you bought that course or you get the monthly training or whatever. And not just my shit. I'm not trying to say you have to buy my stuff. If you're in the Gary Halbert copy group or whatever it is, as you post regularly, provide value, it'll come. And the one thing I'll say, and the one thing I'm really proud of is from a culture perspective, I'm trying to create a really inclusive culture where you can be a total newbie. Like if you notice that in the Justin and Stefan Talk copy group, people come in who are newbies and sometimes they ask what are kind of dumb questions. But people still not all the time, just every now and then. Right. But even when that happens, people try and give them good, honest answers and point them in the right direction. Because I've been in groups where somebody asks a dumb question and everyone just trolls them. Not having that, man. Like not happening that like it's everyone, everybody had to start somewhere and so like I just want to lift everybody up and that's the culture I think it set and at least all the stuff that I'm doing and hopefully there's, there's, you know, other groups out there doing the same thing. So. Yeah.

Yeah, man, you've seriously built something cool here. I mean, I've. I've been part of certain communities run by certain people and the culture is not like this, man. Yeah, so do an excellent job.

Well, thanks.

Alright, so we have next question from Justin Lucas. Justin says, hey, Stefan, any big red flags to avoid for compliance when running a blood sugar supplement promo? Just like claims phrases, etc. Sweet.

Justin, how are you doing?

Hey, Stefan, how's it going?

What's up, Ben? It's going well. Yeah. So are you running a promo right now? Are you writing one or what's the story there? Yeah, so I'm writing one right now.

So I had got RMVC like a.

Month ago and I finally got around to writing something and it's awesome.

I was able to get through RMB within just a few days and then I'm going to write C later.

So like they're just like a few things I want to, you know, make sure I'm not too aggressive with it because like, I plan starting off with.

Email drops and like, you know, I.

Just want to be safe. Like I don't want to say anything too crazy and then like, you know, end up in jail or something. Yeah, understandably. And the short answer, by the way is, and I know you're, you know, just kind of jokingly saying to end up in jail, but like, realistically on health supplement stuff, like, you're not gonna go to jail unless you, if you're like this, like supplement cures cancer and like, it does. I mean, honestly, even then you probably aren't gonna end up in jail. You're a shitty person, right? But like, you're probably not gonna end up in jail if you had like poison in your supplements and a bunch of people die, you know, then maybe. But you also don't want to get, you know, slapped by the FTC or regulatory body and fined and banned from selling supplements in the future. And that's really what the real fear is, right? It's like, it's getting your name published on the Internet and all that stuff. So within that context, especially with blood sugar, which is a more regulated niche, and you're trying to be kind of compliant, uh, you know, you know, the standard stuff applies, like you're not curing, treating, reversing any conditions or diseases. And you can't really make like implied disease claims either. Which means that you can't sort of say, well, for one thing, it can't be like, you know, eight like cinnamon has been shown to lower blood sugar, you know, reverse diabetes. And this contains cinnamon. Right? Because like you just like, well, basically the intent, they look at the intent, like is your intent that you're trying to say that this cures, treats, reverses any disease with your, with your kind of copy and what you're saying, what your claims are. So what you can do is really look at. And again, there's always a fine line when selling a health supplement because if we don't say it does anything, it's really hard to sell it. Right, right. But obviously you can say stuff like, like look, look into structure, function claims, if you haven't ever heard of those. So basically you can say that something like supports like, you know, healthy functioning and it supports like the structure of an organ or something like that. So, you know, it can support, support healthy blood sugar, it can help to support blood sugar levels and support normal blood sugar. Things like that helps to support your pancreas, which is, you know, one of your insulin producing organs. You know, you can say stuff like that, no problem. You know, you can talk about erratic blood sugar within reason. So last time we used one of our blood sugar promos previously and then we used it again in a new one but in the new one we did, it was funny. We just had. We have a new blood sugar promo coming out and we have like an FDA FTC attorney on. On retainer. And he was like, this is the most compliant blood sugar offer like I've ever seen, but I think the copy's really good. Um, but we talked about erratic blood sugar. Now he said we had erratic blood sugar like 50 times. And he was like, you gotta tone it down. He was like. Cause like, even then, like, if you're just saying it so much as, like a substitute for, like, you know, you can't. You can't put erratic blood sugar as, like a substitute for diabetes. But you can be like, you know, people are worried about their erratic blood sugar and this is. Helps to support healthy blood sugar. You know, stuff like, that's fine, because erratic blood sugar just means your blood sugar is all over the place. You can have. You can totally not have diabetes and still have erratic blood sugar or, you know, unpredictable blood sugar, things like that. Totally fine. But as soon as you're saying this is going to lower your blood sugar or, you know, if you have high blood sugar, take this to lower blood sugar or this is going to help to fight diabetes, anything like that, then. Then you're starting to. You're talking about disease. You're talking about diabetes, which is a disease. And if you're saying that it's going to help, you know, address the disease, that's. That's where you get into trouble. I see. Yeah, I definitely got a lot of stuff to clean up, even though I was trying to play it safe. Like some of those phrases like lean more towards, like, implying. So, like, I definitely gotta fix that up. Yeah, and there's a fine line. I mean, you know, I mean, honestly, there's like so many. The reality is that for the most part, there's so many people out there who are bad actors, and the agencies that enforce this stuff only have kind of like very limited bandwidth. So they're typically not gonna go after you unless you're one of the most egregious ones or you look like really big and they can get a lot of money from you. But that being said, if you can not. If you can kind of COVID your ass anyway and just like, you know, minimize the risk of that happening and you can still sell, then you might as well do that because it just helps you to sleep a lot better at night. Because what happens is people go more aggressive with their claims and they're like, I'll fix it later. Then Suddenly they're doing 2 million a month, 3 million a month, 4 million a month. Money's coming in. They're blinded by the revenue, they're making profit. And then they're, like, afraid to try and change anything because the money will go away. But then they're having trouble sleeping because they're envisioning, like, the Feds kicking down their door and taking them off to jail, even though it doesn't actually happen. But so it's better to just sort of come out the gate with something that's cleaner and more compliant, and then that way you can just sort of. Yeah, you're more relaxed and you can scale without having paid. I gotcha. And, like, if you don't mind me asking, like, do I need to get, like, a FTC lawyer, like, right away, or should I, like, wait until, like, I get more scale? I mean, I think you're okay waiting until you get some scale. Like, there's no, like, if, you know, I mean, like, honestly, you launch it and you do, like, a couple hundred thousand dollars in your first month, let's say, in revenue. Like, you would just have to get really, like, really, really, really, really, really unlucky to, like, get into trouble. And then even then, if you, you know, get a couple hundred thousand dollars in revenue, hire a lawyer and change it, and you got, like, a letter from a regulatory body that was like, hey, you made these claims. And you could just respond and say, I did. But then I hired a lawyer, realized that I wasn't in compliance and changed it because I want to follow the rules. Then they're probably going to leave you alone anyway. The people they go after are the people who have crazy claims and then don't change it and then just keep, know, keep doing that. So I think. Yeah, so I think. I think you're fine. I don't think you need to hire an attorney until once you're live and getting data. But then I would do it once you're. Once you're starting to get some scale. I would do it just to clean things up and make sure, you know, you cover your. Your ass. Awesome.

Thank you.

That cleared up a lot of stuff for me, and I feel a lot better now, so thanks, Stefan.

Cool.

Yeah, my pleasure.

And one quick thing for compliance, from what I've heard and from experience, is just in general, especially on Facebook, too. They. They don't want you becoming, like, a superhuman, like, you know, like, fixing your stuff, basically. But if you can talk about how this product or this service or this whatever it Is helps support regular functions, then you're better. Because it's not about saying, oh, it's gonna cure diabetes.

Right.

But I say it's gonna help support, you know, healthy blood sugar levels. Because then so, so imagine like there's like, there's bad, there's great and then there's like homeostasis which is like normal. They're here right now. Facebook doesn't want them going here baseline, if that makes sense.

Thank you. And Ed, I'm definitely gonna hit you up like once my offer is ready, so.

For sure. Sounds good.

Thank you. Sweet. You know, Ed, I got my YouTube creator stats for the month of May and I've only been putting stuff on YouTube like the last couple months or whatever. So I think it may have like 400 subscribers. But my. I think now I'm at like 800 subscribers, which is cool. But my watch time for May was like 37,000, like 800 minutes or something like that. Which for having like 400 subscribers was crazy because I'm so. Because I'm so freaking long form, you know, I mean for all this content I'm gonna start putting out more short content. But I was putting the chat. I wish I could. I wish we could go for like three hours, but I'm already probably too long at an hour and a half. But let me. I'm gonna also shut up and then. Thank you. 774 is what I'm at subscriber wise. But let me shut up and let's go to more questions so we can get to as many as we can in the time we have left.

Let's do it. Alright, we have a question from. I believe it's Peter Semis, but it says so best advice you've gotten or learned on money mindset and attracting and keeping wealth.

What's up, Peter?

Hey man, how are you?

I'm good. How you doing? Good, good. Enjoying the sun here. So it's nice to meet you. Yeah, I mean, let's talk about money mindset. I don't know if you've. I missed the early part of the call. We didn't talk about it. But people can make money, obviously. There's two facts to that, right? They're making money, keeping money.

So I know you're good at both.

So I'd like to hear the second portion of that. Yeah, and I'm still not. I mean, I'm decent at keeping money. Like I've gotten way better at it as I've gotten older and part of my mentality was always Like, I'm gonna make enough money until I can't like outspend what I'm making and I'm like forced to save money. That was always kind of a mentality of mine, which is not necessarily a smart mentality. It's just the way I approached it. And then again, as you get older and have a child and a family, you get a little bit more, you know, kind of about that. An interesting realization I had in 2015, 2016 was that my. Your business finances will often reflect your personal finances. So if your business is sort of like in disarray, or you don't really know how much you're making, or you're bringing money in but you're not like keeping it, you'll generally find that that's reflective in your personal finances as well. So I think that's kind of an interesting lesson. So if you run a business like the two really go hand in hand together. I think that sitting on cash is never a problem, never a bad thing. And people, the thing with having money is like, you always want to put it somewhere, which makes sense, right? Because you want your money to work for you. But I think that having a stockpile for a rainy day and being comfortable with that and okay. Cause for example, say you've got like whatever you have, whether it's $10,000 or a million dollars just sitting around in cash and you're like, well, right now I could be investing in this, this or that. But like you also feel like there's a probability of like a recession coming or something bad happening. Like for example of COVID when Facebook stock went down to $139 a share from like $220 a share, it's like, yeah. And then went back to 240 or whatever it's at now. It's like, so basically if you're staying on that cash and you see those opportunities and you can act the returns, you can get a really massive versus feeling like you always have to immediately take your money and put it places. But of course, in order to do that, you do need to have the discipline to not just look at that money and do dumb shit with it. Which is important, right? Because it's easy to look at it and be like, I've got this money, I should spend it. Yeah. I mean those are a couple, you know. But I think the biggest mindset too, like from a mindset perspective is that like, if you like not feeling guilty, I mean the biggest thing people have is hang ups and guilt around money and I feel like they don't deserve it. They don't deserve what they're being paid. They feel like they're a bad person and other people want them to be like a bad. Other people judge them or feel negatively about them if they have money as well. The way I feel about it personally is that I'm never going to apologize for having a lot of money, but, like, my entire goal is, like, just to get everyone else a bunch of money too. It's like, I'd rather. Instead of apologizing and not. And limiting myself, I'd rather not apologize and bring everybody up to my level. And so. But I think that's a mindset shift versus the upper limit stuff, like Girly mentioned. And it's in the Big Leap, which is a really good book of people just sort of looking at it and feeling like, I've got to give some of this. I got to get rid of it. I shouldn't have this. You know what I mean? Like, it's not about the money. It's what do you do with the money? Like, having a lot of money enables me to then do this call without charging people because, like, I'm not worried about where my next fucking. I mean, I could be retired, right? Which is great, but, like, I don't have to worry about where my next monthly rent or mortgage payments coming from or how I'm putting food on the table. So having money to me isn't a tool that enables me to then help more people. And so if I didn't have that money, I'd be way less effective, and I wouldn't be able to help as many people or reach as many people. And so I look at money not as an evil, but as this incredible gift and this incredible asset that enables me to make really powerful change in the world. So I think maybe thinking about money from your perspective of what does the money enable you to do, right? What does it help you to get? Like, what can you do with that money? And not just about making more, but, like, how can you impact the world in a positive way? And if you align that with making money, then I think it becomes easier to make money and to feel less hung up about it. That's a good paradigm shift. Thanks. Cool, man. Yeah, happy to help.

Beauty. We're on fire today. We got 10 questions down the hall.

I want more. Let's go.

Let's do it. Okay. Oh, this is a good question, by the way. At this point, you should just co write a book with Gay Hendrix. Or just like, I know, hey, man, you said you want to write a book. You know, do, like, freelance.

I want to write a bunch of books.

I know. I'm actually gonna write a book soon. Just thinking about the other day.

Nice. I want to start a publishing company, so I'll publish it.

Oh, hey, let's do it. Let's do it anyway. Question from Conrad Diaz. Any productivity tips for reading all these books, writing all the copy you write, and run the businesses you run?

What's up, Conrad? Conrad, I can't hear you if you're. If you're talking. Could be. Conrad stepped away from his computer for a minute while. Didn't expect to be called on, but I'll start answering because I think it's a good question. The big things for me are deep work. Like, I mean, scheduling time for deep work. So, like, really, I'm looking at, okay for any given week, what are my major, what's everything I have to do? My kind of, like, must. Must do things. My biggest needle movers, my things that are urgent but aren't important. Kind of the Eisenhower box is which people, if you haven't heard of an Eisenhower box, look into that. Sort of like that. And I go through, and then I'm kind of picking out my top two or three needle movers that are like, these are my needle movers. These are the things that I. If I get these things done this week, I'm going to feel really good about, you know, myself and my week. Right. And okay, so I have those two or three things. How many hours is each of those things going to take? And then so say one's going to take 10 hours, one's going to take five hours, one's going to take seven hours. Okay, that's 22 hours. All right, perfect. Now here's my calendar in front of me. What time blocks do I have right now for the week that aren't? And I have other commitments or things where I can just schedule the deep work time to do these and then which one do I want to do first and how am I going to do them within my calendar. And then in addition to that, having stuff that sort of set like around all that. So this call is Thursdays at 10 Pacific, my time until 11:30. I may try and go another 10 minutes again today if that allows me because I want to answer more questions. But basically, 10 to 11:30, 11:45, whatever. Set my calendar now that I'm doing this, the RNBC applied program that I'm doing, that's Fridays at 9am I'm assuming they'll go for about an hour and a half, but I'll probably allocate two hours just to be safe. So that goes from nine to 11. Perfect set. I have like a weekly call, the supplement company that I'm involved in from 1:30 to 2. So I have all this stuff like set, I like reoccurring and I have my big needle movers and I have those blocked out on my calendar and those times for deep work and then even stuff like my daily email. Right. I basically just wake up at 5:30 in the morning, 5:45. Which by the way waking up early is like a just massive game changer. It just really, really makes a big difference because you have more time. So that's when I'm gonna write my email, my daily email to my list, respond to emails, catch up on Facebook and I allocate time for my fuck around. Time to just go on the Internet and do dumb shit, whatever it is. But yeah, by doing that it just sort of helps me. And then everything else on my list that isn't urgent or important and that isn't the biggest needle mover, one of the top three I kind of look at if I have that checklist. So whenever I have free time or scheduled free time, I try and go through and check off as many of those things as I can. But if I can't get to them then it's okay. I also accept that there's things I want to get done that I just won't get done. And I was actually thinking about this recently, how if I look at my to do list and say I don't look at it for a week or two because I'm doing other shit and I come back to it, or I look at something I wrote down and I was feeling stressed out, I pretty much got everything done. Like we don't have to. The big things and important things that you need to get done, you'll get done. So you don't have to sit around stressing about them and keep writing them down, repeating them to yourself again and again and again like it doesn't need to happen. Like they'll get done. Sometimes it may take a little bit longer, but that's okay, right? In the grand scheme of things. Like we have years and years and years on this planet, hopefully. So rather than stress out over yo, I didn't get all these things done in this five day block. It's like alright, whatever, who cares? I got done in 14 days or 21 days or whatever. Maybe it Took a little bit longer than I wanted, but it doesn't really affect anything in the grand scheme of things. So those are sort of the big Kind of the way I approach all that. Cool. Thank you, man. Yeah. Yeah, my pleasure.

Beautiful. All right, next question from AS Cort Jaz asked. How important is getting down the voice of a client in your copy when you're using RNBC to write the letter in less than a week?

What's up, Jaz?

It's good.

It's definitely good to talk to you again. Yeah, you as well.

So, yeah, you write.

You write letters so quickly. So how do you get down the.

Voice of your client?

Yeah, ideally, if the client is somebody who has, like, you know, videos on YouTube or who writes regularly or whatever it is. I mean, I think if you spend a couple hours reading or writing or talking with them, then you generally have a pretty good feel for it. I mean, that's really the biggest thing I think, is just sort of, like, looking at their style and how they talk and their colloquialisms and things, and.

Then.

You know, bringing that. And then I think, yeah, you don't have to be perfect again. I know the only time that I ran into, like, a perfection issue was with Tony Horton, the P90X guy, because, like, he, like, I interviewed him a couple times. We did this stuff. I wrote a draft, and he'd be like, I've said something. Like, what would be an example? Like, I felt like my head was going to explode. And then he'd be like, I wouldn't say it that way. I'd say, like, I felt like my head really hurt. And I was like, okay, Tony. Like, I don't know. Like, at one point, I literally. I told him. I'm like, tony, like, I understand, dude. I was like. But honestly, short of you and I being, like, best friends for the last 20 years and spending, you know, every, like, time together every week, I'm, like, never gonna be able to write exactly in the way that you think. Like, I think this is a pretty good approximation based on watching interviews with you and talking with you and recording conversations and. But he was, like, really the only person who ever really was a challenge for that. But generally, I think if you're just sort of. Yeah. If you just sort of, like, do whatever you can to familiarize yourself with them, spend, like, a few hours doing it, and I think usually that's good enough.

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense then. Cool. Thanks.

Sweet. Awesome. And gulam. No, I didn't write the P90 ads. I just did some stuff for him and the company recently. But yeah, happy to help, Jaz. Ed, let's go squeeze in a couple more. We can do it.

All right. Trying to find some questions we haven't answered like that much or from people who haven't asked a question yet. Oh, I like this question. Okay, question from. Let's make sure he's on. Question from Pedro Martens. What's a typical day for Stefan look like it's a pure productivity and habit oriented question.

Cool. Pedro, what's up, man? What's up, Lee? Hey, Stefan.

Hey, Ed.

Can you hear me? Yeah. Wonderful. How are you guys doing? Good, how are you doing?

Yeah, I'm actually cooking dinner.

Nice. What are you making?

Scrambled eggs, some chorizo?

Yeah, a lot of stuff. Nice. Lots of chorizo.

Like today would be my dad's birthday, so we have having like a little.

Party to celebrate him. That's awesome. That's really nice.

Good stuff, man. Dinner at Pedro's house.

Yeah. Cool.

So yeah, yeah, the question was.

Yeah, it's pretty much self explanatory, man. Yeah, 100%. So let me get back to the question here. Like a typical day, right? From productivity, habit oriented question. Um, yeah, I kind of answered it a little bit in the previous one. Yeah, exactly. But yeah, primarily Paige, let me have you meet yourself while I answer. Just because of the.

Yeah, sure, sorry.

No, it's okay. But yeah, it's like waking up at like 5:35,45, drinking coffee. When I can, I try to like do a walk or something. It's different. Like in Vegas, it's so warm in the morning. That's actually great for doing a really early morning walk. In San Diego, where I am right now, it's more overcast in the morning, especially during the summer, so I'm less motivated to do that. But going on, honestly, typically checking like my email and going through messages pretty, pretty fast because I just enjoy doing it. I used to spend like a half an hour reading the newspaper. Like I'd read the Wall Street Journal, LA Times and the Las Vegas Review Journal. But I found that for whatever reason that actually kind of didn't set my tone of the day in a good way. Even though like the Wall Street Journal I feel like is fairly objective compared to, I think most newspapers aren't. I just sort of, maybe it got my mind going too many places or distracted me and I feel like I didn't have as much, I don't as much focus when I do that. So I'd rather Kind of jump in and start answering stuff and doing all that kind of stuff. Then I'll tip. A lot of days I'll take a break, say I Woke up at 5:30, at about 6:45, 7, and I'll read a book for about a half an hour. And that can be anything. Whatever I'm reading, it's usually not the same book I'm reading at night. But you know, if I have maybe saying that's more like stimulating and less and more practical, like a business book versus like a history book because I read a business book at night, my mind gets to like starts racing and I don't fall asleep. So then on 7, 7:30 I'll write my daily email and then about 8 o' clock I'll jump into my deep work stuff. Usually I have calls. I really try to schedule any calls as much as I can until at least I really would prefer like 11, 11 30, 12. I really try to schedule my calls in the afternoon because my better, my most best working time is in the morning. Let's say I had a call at 9 with somebody, all good, but I really try to avoid that. And then since the lockdown, around 8, between 8 and 8:30, I go up and get my daughter up to wake her up, start the day with her and I'll usually chill till like nine. I mean that's the big secret, guys. Like I'm working less right now because of the lockdown and I'm at home. So I spend like from about 8:15 to 9:00 clock with my daughter. I work, I put her down for a nap. That's from about 12:30 to 1 1:15. And I usually stop at like 4:30 because then it's like family time. So I'm actually. I know it sounds crazy because I do a lot of stuff, but I'm working like probably it feels like I'm working like six hour days I guess like the early morning times. What really makes up for that? But I don't think that's work. It's sort of just catching up on stuff. But yeah, I don't know. So that's kind of the main things. And then like I said what I said before with the deep work stuff and all that.

Thanks man.

Yeah, absolutely. Enjoy dinner. Let's do like two or three more. Ed. If there are two or three more.

There'S a lot more.

Stefan.

He's so funny, dude.

I know, I'm sorry. I know you're. Ed's such an awesome guy. Just giving his time to do this. And then I keep. I've honey potted him, I roped him in. And then poor guys, just trying to like, you know, just trying to make a man. I know.

Is this your game plan? You're just taking up all my other clients time?

At least one or two more. I know.

I'm teasing you.

I know, I know.

Okay, we got a good question from Marcus Ortiz, actually, so. It was actually from Yong. Marcus posted it because Young's having some issues. Yong is gone, though, so do you still answer it?

Let's see somebody who's on the call.

Okay. Yeah. Guys, be sure to give a thumbs up on the question you want to answer next because a lot of the ones that are in the chat right now are like ones that we've already looked at.

Yeah. Make sure you check the timestamps on the replays of these other videos and you'll see that some of these, you know, have been answered before. It doesn't mean we won't ever answer them again because there's value in hearing, you know, different answers to the same question. But, but in general, I would love. If there's anything new, I'd love to.

Yeah. It's even like questions that are like. They're all variations of the same questions we've had answered on, like in today's call. Okay. We have a question from Josh Knox. So Josh asks the first question. Can ads be too topical?

What's up, Josh? Hey, how you doing? Well, I waited a long time. We got you in, bro.

Yeah, I'm just kidding.

So my question is this.

And I honestly, I want to be.

Really sensitive about it because. Because it is a sensitive topic in today's news. And it's this. So, you know, I serve small businesses. And so I had the. I had the thought the other day of a headline or a topic of small business matters. And so I wondered, and I hope it's not offensive to anybody, I really do. I just wondered if that is too topical. Like, can you go that far with your copy? And instead of getting that response that you're looking for, that emotional response, It's a good emotional response. Can you get a bad emotional response? Yeah, I think my philosophy is, I don't think, you know, I think asking questions is always like, you know, we're fucked as a society if we can't ask questions and then consider them. So, you know, I think thinking about that as an idea and talking about it is totally reasonable. My. My guess, my gut. I don't have a scientific answer, but my gut is not you shouldn't do it. I just think that while I understand the rationale behind it, and I also understand. I also think that there's a segment of people who would really be, like, pumped and like it. I think it just opens too much of a can of worms. And I think that it would. Too many people would be concerned that, you know, you're taking attention away from Black Lives Matter or what's going on. And so I think it would too much of a risk of backfiring and creating, like, a negative experience. So I just think it's one of those cases where. Yeah. I don't know if it's, like, too topical, but it's probably just not worth the risk, even if it might cut through the noise, you know? Yeah. And that's why I asked the question, because from my perspective. Right. What's going on is an important conversation that has to happen. But what's also going on is millions of small business owners are suffering as well. Right. So that was where the thought originated. That was the genesis of it. But I had the same sort of gut reaction that you just had. It was like, okay, I get where my brain's going with it logically, but my gut says it's probably not over the top. I don't think that's the right word. It's just probably not the right time. Yeah, exactly. I think you can speak to the fact that these businesses are struggling, but I think anything that's gonna then draw comparisons to the racial inequities and injustices that are happening, and that's going to invite people to say, are you comparing and contrasting. Are you saying, you know, not to pay attention to the fact that, you know, black Lives matter or that, you know, there's police brutality or whatever? Right. I think just as soon as you open that can of worms and people, you know, see that, you know, fair or not. Right. Because you're not trying to say, like, of course, when you saying, you know, the small businesses matter and stuff, you're not trying to say that black lives don't matter. But, you know, that being the case, I think the way that it'll come across, and for too many people, it's just. Yeah. My perspective, it's just not. It's not worth it.

Yeah, yeah, I agree with Stephen.

Understood.

I think if you did something about, like, so you can be topical. You can be very topical, but it's how you do it. So saying stuff like all businesses matter, that's. I think that definitely land you in hot water. But for Something like protect your business in these uncertain times. That's fine.

Yeah, I've thought about that as well. And it's funny because I was actually just on a marketing call with a company that we service and the guy who was giving the marketing presentation played.

I don't know, a dozen clips which.

Just said exactly what you said. Ed is. Which is in these troubling times. And so that is the noise. Now everybody is saying. And I get what you're saying, Ed. I'm not coming at it, but everybody is saying the same thing in these troubling times. Small business. So anyways, yeah, no, I get it. I think, yeah, you, I think find a way to cut through the quarter is good. But again, I just, I just would. I think it would. Backlash backfire. Yeah, agreed. Okay, cool. Thanks for the.

Thanks for the response.

Appreciate it. Of course. Of course, man. And let's do one more. I'll get one more.

Okay. I've already selected which one I want next.

Okay, great.

My boy, Josh Copeland.

Dude, that's good. I just opened it and I was hoping because I want to rant about it, so.

Good. Hey, Stefan, what do you think of performance only deals? Actually I have one right now going on, so I want to hear your thoughts too.

Hello. Hey, Josh, how's it going? What's going on? Seth, it's a pleasure to meet you. You're a legend.

Ed, what's going on, man? Oh man, it's been a while.

I know. Dude, you've come up so tough, bro. Freaking dominating your path and stuff. Congratulations on your success.

Appreciate it. Thank you.

Yeah, man. So. So I've been writing copy for a while and I'm. My, my successes, you know, they're not.

As consistent and I found my.

I find myself getting caught up in a lot of performance only deals where you kind of have to like prove to the client that you can provide results. And I was working with, I was.

Actually working with the 5th funnel guys.

On a really big offer that didn't pan out. That was a strictly performance based deal. And both Tyler Ryan and Sam Robson was like, performance deals are the devil.

Don't ever go them. Don't do it. And it's like, I mean, I was.

Agreeing with him for a second and I believe it to.

To a fault.

But I have this one client right now who he's a dating coach and his business is kind of like not doing as well as I want it to do. But I have control of his email campaigns, all of his copy, his funnel, funnel everything. And I kind of want to give him results, but at the same time, like, I feel like, you know, if it's just a performance only deal, am I going to get, am I going to get screwed at the end of the day? Because if it doesn't work right, you know, I pretty much did all this.

Work for free and I know I can provide the results, but if I'm.

Not, if I'm not getting paid, it's kind of hard to continue being a copywriter and like living the lifestyle that I want to live and stuff like that. So what are your thoughts on that? Yeah, cool. Yeah, my thoughts are they'll work out like one out of every 10 times. So I feel like you can do it, but I would be wary and then I would only. Ideally, if I want to do a performance deal, I'd want to find one that is like a small amount of effort and high leverage. So for example, somebody has an email list or not doing anything with their list, but they have like 100,000 names of buyers and they're like, hey, you know, you can set up like a campaign mail to that list and I'll give you 30% of the revenue generated. And I'm like, all right. And if I know I can do that in like five hours or 10 hours, you know, maybe that's worth it. It also comes down to like who I, who the person is. Like, do they have credibility and a reputation in our space? Do they have, you know, good. Like, are they, are they like someone who's been around for a while, things of that nature? Because generally performance deals are being offered by broke ass people who haven't hit any scale yet. And they're like, once they hit scale, you know, everything is going to be magically better and it's not. And even if you do stuff for them, they are typically going to buck it up and not be able to pay you because either they make sales, but they run out of inventory because they didn't think about that, because they've never like scaled before or they're not actually making profit because they didn't know what their numbers were, all these sorts of things. And it's just really hard to get paid on performance deals. In my personal experience, especially performance only, I prefer to take, maybe you could take less money upfront but still have like an upside. But I don't want to say that they're never going to work out. I know people who have done performance deals that have worked well, but typically I would only do it if it's a really vetted client who has a proven track record and who I know will actually pay for performance. And that's a fast implementer. Because the other thing is you do it, you do performance seal, you create this stuff and then they're like alright, perfect. And they don't ever launch it or they launch what you did in like nine months later and kind of half ass test it and you did that work. But it never actually goes live and goes to market so that kind of ends up fucking you too. So I think you can do them as like a moonshot occasionally. But I would not make it my bread and butter and I would, I would not put a ton of time into those. I find like I said, high leverage ones where it's a little bit of effort leads to an outsized result. That's sort of my personal take on it. I would love to hear Ed's take as well.

So yeah, actually one of my clients now is Pure Performance, but they are an eight figure company and they only like, they don't pay any base for any of their copywriters. It's only like pure Performance. It's really interesting. So one really good piece of advice that Justin Goff gave me at the last copy accelerator event was he told me to have one or two retainer clients that just pay monthly to cover all my bases, cover all my bills and then no problem and then go after more ballsy things after that. So right now like I have one client who covers all my bills and so because of that I can go after these high risk, high reward performance deals. And that's something to really think about to before you start chasing the performance deals. Get that comfort, get that security first of the retainer client and be sure to have them locked in and really over deliver for them. And then they'll just keep hiring you to work with them and then you go after the performance deals. Similar to what Stefan said, like smaller is usually better. It's like better to work with a client who has existing stuff that you can just kind of tweak or edit to be the control or boost, AOV or boost, whatever it is.

Right.

Like for example the one that I'm working on, they want me to revive one of their offers. So the offer was doing okay and then it shot the bed after a while. The upsells are incredible. All of it's amazing. But I have to rewrite a new sales letter which is fine. I actually enjoy doing that so it's cool. It's taken me a few weeks but if it Was like, I have to redo the whole funnel. I have to, like, I even had to create the offer from scratch, like, and tweak it, which I enjoy doing again. So it's like, if you enjoy doing it, it's not that bad. But from a pure work perspective, it's probably not going to pan out being worth it monetarily, but fulfillment wise, it's a lot of fun. So it's, it's pick and choose, you know, so.

So if you were to, you know, if you were to, you know, obviously optimize a deal where it's like, okay, I won't do a performance deal, but what I can do is I can take a little bit up front and then we can work out a performance based incentive. What's the best, what's the most effective way to go about that? Because I know a lot of clients do a lot of pushback where it's.

Like, oh, you know, I've been screwed.

In the past before. I even had one client tell me that my time didn't mean shiznit to him and all that mattered to him was the results. And I kind of was like, you know, and it's just, it's just kind of frustrating. It's just like the same, same objection that I keep facing. So I guess my last question here was how would you go about structuring the deal that they could say no to?

Can I jump in on this one, Stephan? I'm ballsy.

Go for it, go for it.

Stop going after broke clients, dude. Yeah, that's what I'm hearing. Because somebody who's like, oh, I can't. Like somebody who's only trying to get you on performance, they either really know what they're doing or they have no fucking clue what they're doing, which is why they can't afford to pay you.

Yeah. And I just feel like I also a different. I mean, if I'm talking to somebody who says I've been burned in the past, I'd be like, oh, that, that sucks. What does that to do with me? You know, I mean, like, okay, yeah, cool. Guess what? Why have this amazing track record? You know, here's all the shit I've done. It's all worked. Here's a bunch of people you can talk to. So sorry you were bad at hiring somebody in the past, but now you're talking to me and you're talking to me so that you don't get burned in the future, you know, um, but you gotta pay me upfront. Like, that's just the way to operate. And I usually charge this. I'll give you a discount. We'll do it for this. But I want to have a, you know, there's gonna be a performance kind of component to it. And this I want to look. But ultimately, yeah, man, it is. It's leveling up your. Leveling up on the clients too. Because there's. Those people exist, but that's like, they're just like, they're all here. And if we can just get you coming up a little bit higher, then yeah, that's gotta be the goal.

I've actually never ran into that issue where it's like somebody like, I'll just say like, here's my price. And they'll be like, oh, I can't afford that. I'm like, great, yeah, yeah, maybe I'm too nice.

But also I'll try to work with them. Like we could do like a paper plan or what is your budget? And maybe, maybe that's like my big thing too. But that's just the thing that I keep running into. I feel like I'd be making six figures by now if I just hop over this hurdle.

Yeah, dude, it sounds to me like you want them more than they want you, which is not really what I want to be as a free sponsor.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, you're right. There's so much power in that. So go ahead, Ed.

Yeah, they need you. Like, you can live and you can have a lot of other clients, but if they don't get their shit sorted out, they're not making any money. So they need you. Like, I think once you realize the power in that you are not just wanted, you're needed and you solve a very big problem that's very lucrative. Like, for example, so about 2, 3 months ago, I charged 2k for. Yeah, there's like 2, 3k for a VSL and then I charged like 5k for a sales letter for Stefan and Justin. And I'm like, oh, you know what, let's bump up the price to 10K, you know, for my next client. So this was a compliant, like a compliance job though. So somebody wanted me to go through their whole funnel and make it Facebook compliant. And so I was like, Alright, 10K, let's do it. They're like, okay, how about we do 5k up front and then 5k after you hit. After we hit 50k in sales. So I'm like, great, because then that overcomes the objection. Actually. That's actually gonna be like my new offer. Well, I'm probably Gonna bump up the price again because it's a fucking big job. Probably 7 point up front, 7.5k after they hit 50k in sales, but we'll see where. Basically there's no what if you just leave me. What if, you know, this doesn't work. It's like, dude, I want the rest of my money. Like, don't you worry, I will make sure this works for you. I think if you can find, like if you're really running into those issues first, look at it I think as a. Either wrong audience issue, self worth issue, or a lack of confidence issue, which is also a bit of self worth as well. So I think if you can address those three things, you'll have most covered. And then if you still feel like you're running into it, once that's all covered, which you shouldn't be, and you start charging higher ticket, I don't know what you charge right now. Do a half up front, half later, but with incentivized numbers. So it'll be examples like, hey, you know, once this is crank into I don't know, 10, 15, 20 sales a day, then you pay me the other half. But that's risky because you have to know that they're going to launch it. So that is the other part, right? Like you have to know. I think Stefan mentioned like half up front and then half like on a certain date. Doesn't matter if they've launched it or not.

Yeah, I just prefer half a front and half upon delivery. But if you can't swing that, then at least like half a pound launch. But if it doesn't launch by a certain date, then you get paid regardless. I think I actually got that from Brian Spirinello, who's in Copy accelerator. But that was solid because that's the problem. I had one guy there was like in half when it launches, but the guy took like six months to launch it. So after like three months, I was like, hey dude, like you got, you gotta pay me the other half because it's for 50 grand. So it was like like $25,000. I'm like, like, hey bro, like, you know, I've given you like three months. Like you, you know, either you launched it or you got to pay me. To his credit, he did. He actually just rehired me for something. But when he rehired me, I told him half up front's fine, but half upon handing in the copy. Not like when you launch, because I don't want to go through that again. And he was understanding. But yeah. Okay. Wow. Well, I really, really appreciate this, guys. You know, I'm actually, you know, fighting through a lot of negative beliefs, but it's. I'm getting to a point where, yeah, like, I do deserve, you know, that kind of money.

And I'm gonna go take your.

Take you guys advice. Thank you so much, Ed. You know, I see you out here killing it and thank you, guys. Thank you. I'll be. I'll be more. I'll be more active in the chat, in the group from now on, too. Awesome. Cool. Thanks, Josh. Hey, Ed, we're going to wrap up here because I do have to go be a father. Don't have to. I get to be a father. And excited.

Come on. One more, Stephan. One more.

Do you want to do one more? Do you have one more?

I enjoy answering questions, so if there's one for me, I'll do it. I'll take a look.

Okay, take a look. I was just going to say I had a conversation today with my designer. One of my designer actually is a project manager, Hussain, who's in Pakistan. I've been working with him since, like 2016. And he watched my freelancing video I put on YouTube about making 10k a month. And he's like, hey, you know, you're right. I feel like we're undercharging. We did a whole funnel. They do like him. His team will do, like, design dev integrations, all this stuff. And their design is really good, which is important. Design is a huge conversion factor. And he's like, you know, we got paid three grand and the funnel did like $10 million or something like that. And I feel like we could have charged more. And I was like, yeah, you totally could have. And he's like. But he's like, I always think, though, like, what if I lose clients? You know, if I charge more money? And then, you know, people might say no. And it's as funny as it sounds. It was like, yeah, dude. I'm like, that's fine, right? It's like, it's like, you do you want. You would rather have fewer clients who pay you more than more clients who pay you less, Right? And like, that's an important mindset shift. Like, losing clients is great. And if being detached is so important, like, I used to not. I used to think it was kind of like a hipster thing, like hipster entrepreneur thing to, like, like, stoicism. But at the same time, like, then I kind of, like, have realized that it's so true. Like, and again, it helps if you have income streams coming in. So to Ed's point about having some good retainer clients or whatever it is, or if you have a business that your business is creating cash flow, whatever that is, but once you have that and you can be detached from it, you will just. Your life will become 100 times better. I literally had on today's Thursday, so Tuesday, somebody hit me up. I was like, hey, I heard you're the best for supplements. I want to do a funnel, blah, blah, blah. And I was like, hey, man. Well, I'm not taking out a lot of clients, but I. I'm about to close on a house and give them a check for $589,000, which I'm doing tomorrow. Like, so, you know, I'm open. But, you know, just, you know, I charge 50 grand. Other people charge less. Did account what I do, you know, here's why. And he was like, all right, well, I'm not gonna negotiate, so, like, you know, can we get like a lower, more realistic number? Blah, blah, blah. And I was like, no. I was like, honestly, I was like, if you wanna pull the trigger, like, right now I probably do for 45,000, just because, like, it's gonna be take me 15 hours. But going back to my hourly rate, I shouldn't have done that. But I'm like, also at fucking Jerome's, like, the furniture shop, buying a bunch of, like, recliners and leather sofas and dropping grand. Several grands. And so mentally, I'm like, oh. Which is my own hang up to keep working on. But. But then, like, you know, he kind of didn't respond, but it was like, okay. And like, I'm not. I'm always. I'm gonna follow up with him is to try and get him to hire somebody in copy accelerator for less money. But, like, that detachment of it not bothering me at all that I didn't get, you know, but if I went to 30,000, we hired about 30,000 is just not worth my fucking time. And I'm lucky to be in that position. But it doesn't matter if that's 30,000 or if it's like $300 wherever you are. But being able to be detached from that outcome is great. And every time, saying no is what leads to more opportunities, right? Every time you say yes, you book yourself up and you say, now you're saying every single yes is like a no to 10 additional things in the future, right? The time things. And so being able to say no more often is just so, so valuable and important. But Ed, let's let's go ahead and wrap up here because I do want to go do dad stuff and everything and for sure but thank everybody. You guys thank you so much for hopping on for joining us. Really really appreciate it. I love doing this and I'm just so honored you guys come and join us and ask questions and if you you know if we didn't get to your question and authentically I'm sorry wish we could have but we will definitely do this again next week and answer more and then for everybody who's in RNBC applied we'll be hanging out for two hours tomorrow breaking down a sales letter high be to control in the health space that had been running for like two years and we're gonna go through it in deep ass detail so can't wait. Thank you Ed.

Also thank you for having me dude. Always happy to help.

You're awesome man. Really appreciate it. All right thanks everybody. Talk soon.