TCC Podcast #325: From Solo Copywriter to Thriving Agency Owner with Chanti Zak

The people and stuff we mentioned on the show:

Join The Copywriter Accelerator
The Copywriter Think Tank
Kira’s website
Rob’s website
Chanti’s website
The Copywriter Club Facebook Group
The Copywriter Underground
Free month of Brain.FM
Episode 54
Episode 141

Full Transcript:

Rob Marsh:  If you listen to last week’s episode, you know that from time to time, we like to have previous guests come back and talk about the evolution of their businesses since the last time that we spoke. This week, we’re doing it again. Our guest for this episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast is former Copywriter Accelerator member and former Copywriter Think Tank member, Chanti Zak. Chanti shared the details about the three phases of her business that she’s gone through over the last couple of years since we last talked to her and when she first started out as a copywriter. And if you are just starting out or you’re thinking about what your business could become in the future, you’re going to find a lot of inspiration in what Chanti has to share today.

Kira Hug:  But first, this podcast episode is sponsored by The Copywriter Accelerator, which is our five-month mastermind/coaching program for copywriters who want to build a profitable copywriting business and make roughly $10,000 a month in their business consistently. So if that grabbed your attention, if that’s what you want to do in the New Year, then join the wait list for The Copywriter Accelerator, and you can do that by going to thecopywriteraccelerator.com.

Rob Marsh:  Okay, let’s get to our interview with Chanti.

Kira Hug:  Let’s just rewind a little bit. We don’t have to cover everything that’s happened since we last chatted, but can you share a highlight reel with one of your highlights from the last two years post-COVID?

Chanti Zak:  Oh my gosh. From the last two years, probably one of the biggest things has been building a team and just working with a lot more brilliant humans and learning how to ask for help and support in my business, but also in life.

Rob Marsh:  We’ll link to the first interview. In fact, we’ve talked to you a couple times on the podcast, if I’m not mistaken, Chanti. But we’re going to link back to those so that people can catch up and hear how you built your business and how you literally went from getting laid off to creating this business. But we should probably also not only have you just built the team, but let’s talk a little bit about where you are in your business, the kinds of things that you’re doing today, the kinds of courses and work that you do for the clients. When we talked that first time, you didn’t have this huge roster of famous, big name marketers and copywriters and the who’s who of the internet that you have today. So tell us about that business.

Chanti Zak:  Yeah. Oh my gosh, it’s been a wild ride. So yeah, I think the first time I was on the pod was totally solo, really just figuring things out and I feel like I had no clue where I was headed or what I was doing. And today, I sometimes feel the same way, but I have a little agency, so that’s a big change because demand for quizzes became so impossible for me to meet by myself that it was time to bring other people in. And so the agency; learning how to run that, that’s been a big change. And then I think the first one was on the pod, I didn’t have a course either, and I was very much behind the scenes and putting all my energy into everybody else’s business and not my own.

So shifting from that to, “Okay, I’m going to use and discover my own voice and build my own audience and use the skills I’m using for clients for myself.” And that’s been a journey too. So Grow with Quizzes is my main course, and I probably am 50/50 now in terms of revenue from clients and from the course and other smaller courses that I’ve created. And that was my goal for a long time, was to get to that 50/50 mark. And so, now I’m there and wondering kind of what’s next.

Kira Hug:  Congratulations. Because reaching that 50/50 mark is not easy, and I know it’s a goal for many copywriters we talked to. I want to go back in time and just go to the moment or the moments when you were thinking through your strategy and thinking through, “Do I want to build an agency, do I want to be a 50/50 agency in courses?” How did you work out the plan so that you could start to implement and find people and build it out?

Chanti Zak:  So I think as copywriters, we’re in a unique position because we see directly the impact and results that words and stories and knowing how to sell has for our clients and seeing that for them necessitates seeing it for ourselves. So that was the shift for me was like, “Oh, what I did this thing for a client that made them millions or grew their list by tens of thousands, what if I applied those same skills to my own business? And what would that look like in terms of just using my energy to do what I love and not burnout?” Because I think that’s another thing as copywriters, once you’re in the groove and you know how to get clients and you gain some solid skills, there’s almost always too much work and too many people who are like, “I want that. I want that.” And so yeah, learning to say no and say yes to experimenting with doing these things for myself and my own business, I think that happened probably like 2017, 2018, I started really shifting my mindset to that direction, but that was really hard.

And at first, I created the course and I didn’t have a team and I was still doing one-on-one client projects, figuring out how to launch my own course, support my own students, and it was just way overwhelming. Every big change that I made in my business, even adding the course, building the agency, building a team was brought forth because of my children. Well, my husband and I decided we were going to have another baby when my son was four. And that was a wake-up call because I didn’t know what it was going to be. With my first, I didn’t sleep for two years and it was so intense. So I’m like, “Okay, preparing for that, what can I do to set myself up for this to not lead to massive burnout and overwhelm?” And so, the course was the solution in that instance.

And then fast forward, when my daughter was seven months old, I found out I was pregnant and I’m like, “Okay, having another baby.” And that was when I really looked at bringing in support and building that agency. So those were the key moments where I realized, “Okay, big change needs to happen.” And both of them changed everything.

Rob Marsh:  So, Chanti, listening to you talk about that, you went from being on your own to growing to 10 people, that’s a pretty big jump. Will you step us through each decision like what was the first position you added, what was the second, and why did you need that person in your business? Obviously you need to be generating the revenue to support a team like that, none of us have gold mines in our backyards. You might actually have one in your backyard just undiscovered, but my backyard is not quite that big. But yeah, talk us through building that team step by step.

Chanti Zak:  Yeah. Well, and I’ll just preface that with that’s been a real challenge and struggle is the revenue to support the team. There have been many months where on the surface I’m making a ton of money, but behind the scenes, I’m spending all of it on a mostly team. So that’s been a huge challenge that I’m honestly still trying to navigate and figure out. But the first team member that I brought on was a VA, and that was pretty early on. And I would highly, highly recommend anyone listening who’s still doing their own invoicing and putting their own proposals together, and if you can afford even just a few hours a week, that was a game changer, that was the first step.

And I think I started with 10 hours a month of support from my VA. So that was the first step was getting a VA who helped me with all the administrative stuff. And then from there, I started bringing on contractors to help with client projects. And that was a huge learning curve too, honestly, because I am a bit of a control freak and I would really not set my contractors up for success every time.

Rob Marsh:  This is sounding a little familiar to me.

Chanti Zak:  There’s been so much learning in that realm of what information and training and support and resources do we need to give a contractor or an employee so that they can succeed at the task. And I just had no clue. I was like, “Here’s this project, here’s some info on the client, go forth and crush it.” And so often, it would come back to me and I would read what was created, and my mind went straight to, “Oh God, I need to rewrite this whole thing.” And that was a really hard pattern to break. We just had Joel Klettke on our podcast and he was talking about the same thing. And he shared this great example of like even McDonald’s, we have this culture like, “Oh, you just work at McDonald’s? Come on.” And there’s like this degradation around it. But actually McDonald’s spends months training their employees on their systems and processes. And we as writers and agency owners and as business owners in general, hire contractors and we’re like, “Here, you know what to do, go figure it out,” or team members.

Rob Marsh:  Good luck. Have fun.

Kira Hug:  Well, it’s even worse than that. Sometimes we expect them to read our minds. It’s like, “Oh, you can’t read my mind and know exactly what to do?”

Chanti Zak:  Yeah. And, “Oh, you don’t understand my process? You can’t hang out in my brain. What do you mean?” So yeah, that was my first experience and that was really hard. So over probably the course of a year working with lots of different contractors, I started getting better at that. And I found a few really solid people that I loved working with that started to learn what I was looking for and that were really amazing. And one of them was my now best friend, Dawn. So we met through The Copywriter Underground and I had posted a job and she reached out. And so we started working together. I hired her as a contractor and she was almost working for me full-time just as a contractor. And so at that point, it was like, “Okay, do you just want to work for me full-time?”

And she was on board. So she was my first full-time hire. And she’s so good at communicating, she’s so patient, she’s so good at receiving a deliverable that maybe needs some TLC and some love. And instead of just taking it upon herself to do all of that, she would get on a call with the freighter and talk to them and really go back and forth and help them grow. And so, she served this role as an in between sort of a copy chief really for the contractors that I was still working with and myself. And by the time I would get the quiz or the email or the sales page to review it, she’d already gone over it multiple times. And it was in a place where my nervous system when I read it was not freaking out and thinking, “I need to stay up till midnight to redo this whole thing.”

So she was my first full-time hire. And then from there, again, we were working with contractors so regularly that it was like, “Well, do you just want to come on full-time?” Instead of having seven different contractors that are helping, we could have two full-time employees and this real team feeling like we’re all on the same page, we’re all connecting, at some points, it was daily just quick meetings. So that became three full-time writers and eventually a full-time assistant too and project manager, and then still a few contractors. And Dawn was really helping manage all of that. And so she was with me full-time for, I think, two years, and then just recently went off on her own to start her own copywriting business, and she’s doing amazing and crushing it. And so yeah, now we’re at one full-time writer and then there are still lots of different contractors that, by this point, most of them I’ve been working with for a few years.

Kira Hug:  Okay. So I love how you’ve figured it out over time and you’re admitting that it wasn’t easy. And there’s so many copywriters that listen to the show and we talked to who are really ready to hire or just to bring on contractors, but they’re struggling with similar struggles. So what advice would you give them so they don’t have to spend a year or two figuring it out? What could they do to move that forward faster?

Chanti Zak:  So what we built internally that really helped was basically a breakdown of every single asset that I would be bringing on a contractor to create, and we created internal templates for each of those things. And this is maybe easier for me than for someone who’s doing all the things, and it’s going to take a lot longer to create templates for every single copy asset you could imagine. But for me, it’s mostly quizzes, the emails that come after launch, sequences, sales pages, but mostly quizzes. So we created the templates for those, and then we created some videos that go into why are we structuring things this way, what’s the thought process behind it. Any contractor or team member that we bring on goes through my program and has access to support and mentorship either from me or from another team member that’s been doing this for a while and that knows the ropes.

And even my assistant/project manager, Dustin, he’s getting on calls with writers all the time to help them navigate all the things that are happening within the project and just really creating a supportive environment. And I never had that when I was a contractor for other agencies, which I did for a while. It was always just, “Here’s the project, here’s the scope, go figure it out.” And I just thought, “Okay, that’s how it is. Cool.” But yeah, it certainly would’ve been nice to have a feeling that I could reach out to someone, get on a call, ask questions, get an extra set of eyeballs on my work. And the final thing is instead of me jumping to like, “I just need to fix this, I don’t have time,” and getting into that panic mode and control mindset, we bake in a lot of time for review.

And for me to be able to go through the copy and make a video and say, “Okay, this section, I love what you did here, but here’s how we could change this,” and really just offer more guidance and then give it back to them and say like, “Okay, now go make those changes and come back to me.” And that I think creates a culture of growth and that’s who I would want to work for if I was still contracting. So those are the biggest changes that are just setting them up for success. We also added in a pretty thorough research process that’s standardized, whereas when I would take clients on my own, I didn’t have that, I would just stalk them, dive into their universe, make a Google Doc with a whole bunch of messy notes and go from there. And that’s not a process where I can hire someone and say, “Just do that.” I mean, maybe some people, but for the most part, having a bit more structure around the research process has also been really helpful.

Rob Marsh:  So while we’re talking about processes, you’ve obviously gotten pretty good at finding processes for getting good people on your team for doing the work, but it’s not just you have good people and good projects, you have really good clients. How do you make sure that you only end up with great clients that you want to work with?

Chanti Zak:  Yeah. Well, this is another thing that I would say has been a team effort. And you guys, it’s almost embarrassing to say like all these really wonderful positive changes that have happened in my business are because of other people or my babies coming into the world. And so, the changes around what clients we say yes to, the impetus for that was seeing if I’m just accepting clients who are not respecting our timelines, who expect the moon and the stars, who aren’t really aligned with what we’re creating, which like full disclosure I’ve totally done many times. And when it’s just me suffering the consequences, I would just suck it up and tell myself, “Ah, never again,” but still continue to make the same mistakes and too often let clients walk all over me because I’m a yes girl, I’m a total natural people pleaser. And breaking that pattern is because I saw the suffering it caused my team and that they weren’t feeling successful on a project, not because their work wasn’t good, but because the client was off the rails and swapping the word strong for the word mighty.

So that was the reason why we really looked at, “Okay, who do we want to work with? What are the parameters here? What are the red flags? How can we communicate that we are not just going to serve you at your leisure?” It’s so common if a client just doesn’t respond to a request for feedback, and I get it, they’re busy, but they drop off the face of the earth and they pop back up into your inbox two months later and are like, “Hey, I’m ready. Can you make all these changes and have it done by Friday?” Those things were happening. So what we did to try and stop that essentially was, okay, so having a project manager and Dustin is not a people pleaser, he is a very logical, straightforward person who has no problem following up after a deadline and saying, “Hey, we would love to get this done for you. If you don’t get back to us within two days with your feedback, we’re going to have to activate our pause clause”, which we added a pause clause, I never had that, and that’s end of story.

And having that sort of boundaries being actually implemented sets a different tone and I think communicates a level of professionalism that most clients respect and align with and are like, “Yeah, cool. Right. Thank you for putting me in my place. I’m on it,” and we can keep things rolling. Whereas before that, I would get so busy and overwhelmed that if a client just didn’t respond, I was happy. I was like, “Okay, great, cool. I got more time to work on this new client’s stuff.” But then of course at some point, they come back and they’re like, “Okay, let’s pick back up,” and then everything is topsy-turvy. So having support in that department, not being the bad guy and having to email a client and be like, “Hey, no seriously, we need your feedback.” Or, “Hey, you actually need to pay your invoice if you want us to continue working.” Things like that, I was never good with. So having help has changed the game.

Kira Hug:  Yeah, I can relate to that as a fellow people pleaser, that is not my strong suit, but I think it helps for people like us to have other people who are protectors, bouncers can keep the boundaries for us. So thank you, Dustin. I am interested in how you’re spending your time now that you have this team and you’re splitting your offers 50/50 with courses and then services. Where are you focusing most of your time day-to-day at this point in your business?

Chanti Zak:  Not a lot of it is spent on actually copywriting for clients anymore, which is a strange thing. I’m definitely in this sort of strategy seat where I’m helping to really set the project up and then handing it off and being in a position of oversight as it’s worked on, but that doesn’t actually take that much time, which is wonderful. So a lot of time goes toward my own program, launching that, supporting students in there, getting on podcasts and creating content and writing emails for my own business. That’s where my copywriting energy is still going. I’m still writing pretty much all my own emails and social content, but also a lot of time goes into just management and meetings and supporting everyone and keeping all the balls in the air and doing sales calls and still working to bring in the right clients. Yeah, that’s really where my time is going these days.

Rob Marsh:  Can we talk a little bit more about that? Because I think there are a lot of copywriters who would see that kind of a shift in their business as not feeling okay, because we identify as writers, like the people who are doing the work, and you’ve basically created a different kind of a role for yourself within this copywriting agency that you have. So what kind of mindset kinds of things did you go through or maybe it was easy for you, Chanti? Maybe you’re like, “No, I’m the boss, I’m in charge and I’m okay with this.” But for me, that feels like a pretty significant shift.

Chanti Zak:  Yeah. No, it wasn’t easy. Like I said, I just have that inclination to jump in, fix things, do the work, and not necessarily communicate what I’m doing or what I’m changing. So that was my pattern for a long time and I still sometimes get sucked back into that, but at the same time, I have a lot more fun and I feel challenged by growing my own. I don’t even know how to create the distinction because my business is like it’s the agency and it’s clients, but it’s also courses, and I’m starting to get into coaching a little bit and writing emails to my list and building my list. And I have a lot more fun on that side these days. So in that sense, it’s easy because, I mean, if I get to write for myself, I am maybe my own worst critic, but I’m also my own easiest client, like I can say whatever and do things my way and not have to worry about the brand voice guidelines for client A and client B, and client C.

And so, there’s a lot of freedom in that and that’s been really fun. And that comes with its own challenges because I think it’s a lot easier to write for other people in some ways because you get to hide behind their message and their voice and their framework and their philosophy and their social proof. And doing that for yourself, you have to build all that up and you have to get to know things like, “Well, what do I stand for? What do I want to be known for? What is my IP?” And that’s a huge process. So that’s really the fun part I would say at this point, but also it’s really challenging at times.

Rob Marsh:  Okay, Kira, before we hear the second part of this interview, let’s just jump in and talk about a couple of points, a few things that maybe stood out to you, to me. What do you want to touch on, and maybe just add some thoughts too?

Kira Hug:  So many things. When listening to Chanti talk, I just hear the word that comes to mind is empowerment and the way she talked about using her own skills to build her own business and basically taking the skills and everything she did for her clients and putting them into practice to build her own business. And she started doing that really around 2017, ’18, and empowered herself to do that. And that excites me, I think that’s a lot of what we talk about on The Copywriter Club Podcast and in our community and our programs. It’s like, yes, we have these skills and these superpowers and we help our clients accomplish these amazing things in their businesses, which is great, that is wonderful. But we can also do that and use those skills to build our own businesses. And sometimes that becomes a copywriting agency or sometimes it becomes something entirely different, but we have those skills and so let’s use them. So I love that we kicked off the conversation with that empowerment piece.

Rob Marsh:  Listening to Chanti talk, it strikes me, this is one possible career track. Of course there are some copywriters who only want to write copy, they’ll be happy forever writing work for clients, individual clients that just come, and you can build a great career out of that, but sometimes it develops into something else. And it’s almost like Chanti’s had three different phases in her business and where she first started out as a solopreneur or individual copywriter doing the work, then she started to shift into her niche and she built some courses around it, started building this business teaching other people how to do it. And now this third phase where she’s basically got this agency, she’s the owner, CEO, doing less of the actual work in her business, but still making good money, the business is serving her in a different way, and it’s just been really fun to hear her talk.

Kira Hug:  Yeah. Not everyone wants to be the CEO of their business. Not every writer pursues that same dream, which is why it’s so fun to talk with so many different writers because we all are moving towards different goals. But for Chanti, that’s the direction she’s moved. And I like that she commented on the fact that her business has evolved due to her children. And when they came into this world, every time she brought a child, she had three kids into this world, she made significant changes in her business, and I could relate to that. I also have three kids. And so, when I think of it like when I brought each of them into the world, I made significant jumps and changes too. And so, throughout the conversation, I definitely could relate to a lot of what she’s saying just because our kids are about the same age and we’re both dealing with toddlers right now.

Rob Marsh: Yeah. My kids are obviously not the same age, but it still resonates because it doesn’t matter if you’ve got young kids or you’re at a different phase in life, that you want your business to support you where you are. And as I’ve been listening to Chanti talk, a question kind of occurs to me. She’s been super successful in creating courses, creating this business, and there are a lot of copywriters who’ve tried to do something similar and haven’t been as successful. And I was thinking, why has Chanti been so much more successful than so many others? And I think the answer is because rather than just saying, “Okay, I’ve been a copywriter and I’m going to teach copywriting,” obviously she had her niche, but she taught a tactic. She started talking about quizzes and teaching specifically how to do this one thing in the business.

And because of that, she became known for that thing very early on, people started coming to her for that thing as opposed to, “Well, I’ve successfully built a copywriting business. I’m going to teach other people how to do copywriting. I’ll teach people all of the things.” And because of that, she’s been super, super successful.

Kira Hug:  Yeah. I mean, she’s a great example of what a niche can do for your business. I mean, she is a great example of that. I also appreciated that we talked about the ups and downs of training copywriters to join your team. And Chanti was very transparent about how it has worked for her and that it’s definitely not easy, and some of the mistakes she made along the way. And some of the mistakes she shared are really, they feel quite universal because so many of us make the same mistakes over and over again. And so, some of the takeaways that someone could jump in and start working and hiring writers to join their team and hopefully avoid some of these mistakes that I made and Chanti made by just creating a supportive environment for their team from day one, and really building a training program for their writers as they bring them on in the same way that McDonald’s makes their training program for their team members.

And that’s not easy to accomplish, and most of us don’t do it. I didn’t do it when I brought on writers, but it can go a really long way and you’ll probably create that training program at some point when things continue to go wrong repeatedly and if you want to build a team and build an agency. And so, I really like the way she thought about just creating a supportive environment for her team members and her writers based off her experience and what she did not receive in some of her previous jobs. And I think we can all think about our previous jobs and our previous career, and we probably all have at least one job that was not a positive environment and how we could actually avoid that and create the opposite for our team. Even if our team means one person and it’s a contractor and it’s not a full-time employee, you can still set the stage as you build and change the workplace environment for just one person, which can make a huge difference.

Rob Marsh:  Yeah. As we were hearing Chanti talk about this stuff in her business, building the training process, building the systems, building relationships with her team members, it reminded me of our conversation with Brittany McBean, who was another Copywriter Accelerator and Copywriter Think Tank graduate, and the similar changes that she made in her business, and being really conscious about making sure that every single person who comes in knows the process, knows how they reach out to clients, the kinds of things that we write and go through all of that. And then when the team produces the work, it makes it so much easier because the expectations are set up front, we know exactly what the outputs are supposed to be, makes us so much easier to review and present to the client and basically takes us from this thing we do to a business that does the thing that we do.

Kira Hug:  Yeah, I was thinking of Brittany McBean too. I was going to mention that very similar agency model, similar hires, similar team model, at least as of the last time we talked to Brittany. And I think it’s a really smart model and even just choosing people to join your team based on personality and their style. Similar to me, Chanti is also a people pleaser, which she admitted too in our conversation. And so, she brought on Dustin, who sounds like might be a little bit more direct. And so I think for anyone who is a people pleaser, finding those people who compliment us, Rob, maybe you are that to me, since I’m more of a people pleaser, you can be more of the direct person on the team, maybe I’m good cop and you’re bad cop. But it’s really important to find those people to avoid caving in every time and not setting those boundaries.

Rob Marsh:  Yeah. When you’re building a team, you’ve got to find people who will do the stuff that you don’t like to do. Having other people who want to do the same stuff that you love to do, that’s just duplicating you. And obviously the reason to have a team is to get all of the pieces in place. And so, as you think about who to add on the team, I think Chanti was very conscious and really good as she built her team to cover all of those bases, and she’s done exceptionally well. And I think the same thing applies to clients. When we talk about getting great clients and working with those, you want to make sure that you’re working with clients who are doing the things that you like and you’re helping them solve those problems, and being aware of the red flags, the yellow flags, the stuff that bugs you and saying things upfront in your marketing on your website, whatever the pushes those clients away.

Creating the boundaries that Chanti talked about and making sure that you’ve got somebody on your team to help you implement them so that things will go as intended, as opposed to how the clients and maybe feel like something needs to happen in an emergency or if something becomes urgent, having all of that in place helps you have an effective business.

Kira Hug:  And we wrapped up this part of the conversation talking about why writing for yourself and writing for your own business can be quite amazing and quite positive and something that many of us want to do. But it’s also the downside of it too, like Chanti said, “It’s great because you could be your own easiest client, but you can also be your own worst critic.” And so, it just changes the game when you start to focus your time and you’re building out products and programs and now you are maybe the lead copy chief for your own brand and writing your own copy. And it’s rewarding, but it also can be very tricky because you can get in your way. And so, I’m glad that she touched on that because I know a lot of copywriters we talk to aspire to maybe not drop clients completely, but focus more time writing copy for their own products and creating new revenue streams and creating copy for that.

Rob Marsh:  Yeah. I think it’s critical to have that in your business where you can write for yourself, for your business, be focused on that in addition to being able to serve your clients. I thought what she shared there was amazing.

Kira Hug:  All right, let’s jump back into the interview with Chanti and listen to how she’s navigated her identity shifts over the years. How do you manage your identity as your identity shifts? Because, I mean, we’ve joked around about you’re the quiz queen and that has really served you well and helped you build this amazing business, but you continue to evolve as we do. And so, does that still feel like it’s the right fit or have you found that other titles and identities are a better fit? And then how do you kind of shift back and forth so it serves the business but also serves you?

Chanti Zak:  Yeah. That is a huge thing that I’m grappling with right now because I love quizzes and they’re super fun and that is sort of the backbone of what’s made my business work over the last years, but at the same time, there’s so much more. And working with clients and students, I see that the quiz isn’t everything, there’s a lot more going on that leads to holistic success. And I would feel remiss to not address those things and talk about all the other aspects of what can make your online business successful. So those are the areas where I’ve started in my email content and mostly email. Just talking about other stuff like mindset and lifestyle stuff and having support and building a team and all these other things, having really solid offers. I put out just a little workshop on offer development recently and people reply and they’re like, “How dare you talk about offers? You are supposed to only be talking about quizzes.”

Kira Hug:  Wait, what? Did someone really reply and say that?

Rob Marsh:  That might’ve been me. No, I’m kidding.

Kira Hug:  I hope people did not do that and did not send that response to you.

Chanti Zak:  Yes, totally. I’ve had multiple replies, and this is negativity bias in full force. I get way more positive than negative, but our brains gravitate toward the negative. So the negative commentary is like, “Why are you talking about this? I signed up for your emails to learn about quizzes. I don’t want to hear about anything else.” And bridging that gap has been interesting because I’m like, “Well, I don’t want to sit down every week and write three emails only about quizzes. There’s other things to talk about. I have other skills that I would like to share with you.” And some people are game and they love it, and some people are like, “No, stay in your lane.” So yeah, navigating that has been really interesting. And how am I doing it? I don’t know. I’ve created a segment of my list where once in a while I’m like, “Hey, if you are here and the only thing you want to hear about is quizzes and quiz funnels and email marketing, click this link, I won’t email you about anything else.” And hundreds of people have clicked that link and are in that segment.

Kira Hug:  That is so-

Rob Marsh:  I’m starting to wonder what I’m allowed to talk about now in our email.

Kira Hug:  I know. Rob just talked about copywriting tips.

Rob Marsh:  My email that I’ll send out tomorrow, it’s going to be about driving across the country or whatever.

Kira Hug:  Don’t send it, just don’t do it now.

Chanti Zak:  Not allowed. You’re only allowed to talk about PAS or something.

Rob Marsh:  Wow. I mean, let’s talk a little bit more about that because niching has obviously helped you in a really big way. I mean, when people think about quizzes, your name is literally the first one that comes up. And I’m not just talking about people in our group, there are a-list copywriters who talk about Chanti as the quiz person. So there’s obviously a very positive side to that, but then yeah, there’s that, like how do you focus on one thing exclusively for so long and not have it drive you crazy?

Chanti Zak:  Yeah, exactly. Exactly. If you just get bored and sure there’s like, there’s new layers and I’m creating a quiz right now, a new quiz for my own business that’s like, it’s crazy. There’s like all this segmentation and 16 different results and I’m excited to talk about that and test it out and see how it goes and share that with my audience. But it does get old sharing the same tips and strategies over and over again. And that’s where it’s like, “Okay. Yes, this has served me so well. I’m certainly not going to throw the baby out with the bathwater and not focus on this anymore.” But at the same time, there’s other things I would love to explore and play around with. So I don’t know, I don’t have any answers yet. I’m really in this place of figuring out what that looks like.

Some ideas I have are, I’ve got the courses and the content and the emails to support a lot of automation on that side of things where if someone opts into my super meta quiz on what type of quiz to create or my free course on how to create a quiz or any other lead magnet that I have that’s quiz-centric, that could lead them to an automated sequence, an evergreen funnel, specific to quizzes, I can then ask them in that sequence, “Is this all you’re interested in, or do you want to hear about the empathy marketing ecosystem and everything that goes into that, and growth mindset strategies for entrepreneurs, and the daily life of trying to grow all my own food, and be a mom,” and all that stuff. “If you do, cool. Then that’s just going to naturally happen. If you don’t, you can click here and I won’t talk to you about that stuff.”

Rob Marsh:  Interesting hearing you talk about that too, Chanti, because even in my agency days, I remember companies, they get tired of their brand long before our customers do, and we do this as copywriters after two or three years like, “Well, I need to change up my website because it’s boring.” But it’s really only boring to me because I’ve seen it every day for three years, maybe multiple times a day, and I’ve rewritten it sometimes multiple times a day. But the customer coming or the client coming to my website today or tomorrow has never seen it before and it’s totally new and it’s still fresh for them. And so, there’s this balance obviously like it would be a massive mistake for you to throw away quizzes. I mean, you’ve earned $1 million selling quizzes and supporting people with quizzes, but at the same time, being trapped in something that fills that confining would be tough.

Kira Hug:  Yeah. I know you’re saying you don’t have all the answers here, but it seems like you’re approaching it from the right direction of just, “Let me explore,” and you’re giving people options to opt out along the way because there are a lot of people who do want to hear about how you’re growing all your vegetables. I want to hear more about that.

Rob Marsh:  I still want to hear about the quizzes too.

Kira Hug:  I want everything else. I want quizzes, but I want everything else. So you’re giving us that option. And I know we’re talking about how you’re evolving beyond quizzes, but what is your take on State of the Union on quizzes today? Because we meet lots of copywriters who are like, “Well, I want to do quizzes, but I can’t do it because so-and-so’s already doing it.” So there’s so much opportunity there. Can you just speak to that for our newer copywriters who might want to jump in, but they feel like they can’t own that or claim it?

Chanti Zak:  Yeah, there’s so much opportunity. I’m still getting probably 10 times more inquiries to work with my team than we can even take on, and a lot of them aren’t even a fit. So I think there’s still a lot of opportunity for copywriters who want to create quizzes, especially if they niche down a little bit. I don’t see nearly enough copywriters creating or offering services for e-commerce brands, to create quizzes for e-commerce brands like Amy Williamson, she does. I don’t know of any others who specialize in that. And yet e-commerce is a massive industry and one of the industries that can use quizzes most effectively, or you could get the best case studies really easily. And yeah, I’m not seeing that need being fulfilled. So that’s one niche. Other niches too, I mean, I get so many inquiries from people that want to work with me, but they’re more in the beginning stages of their business.

I’m like, “I’m not going to let you invest $25,000 on a custom quiz funnel with my company. That doesn’t feel right. It’s not going to lead to strong ROI. You don’t have the team to implement the level of quiz and segmentation strategy that we would create for a client who’s like the seven eight figure mark. But there are so many copywriters who would be able to support a client who’s maybe in that six figure range and they want to ramp things up.” So I think there’s a lot of opportunity. I started a certification where we now have a list of copywriters who’ve been certified through me who we can send referrals to, and that’s been wonderful because there’s still way more demand than we can meet.

Rob Marsh:  So reminded me of a discussion that we had with you probably three and a half or four years ago. You may not even remember this, but when you were talking about creating your course about quizzes, at one point you expressed a reservation that you would be creating your own competition. And if you start teaching everybody how you do this thing that you do, you might put yourself out of business. How did that turn out?

Chanti Zak: Well, here we are. I have spawned a lot of incredible quiz-focused copywriters who’ve built entire businesses on creating quizzes from what they learned in the program. And that’s really cool. It’s kind of a pinch me moment to even say that out loud. And yeah, it’s all good. They are doing their thing. They’ve got their own unique way of approaching quiz funnels, and I have mine. And I would say that that’s going to just continue to evolve faster than I can teach exactly what I’m doing now that’s changed, and it’s just going to continue to be an area of opportunity for any copywriter that wants to explore it. But it has been an interesting mindset journey of going from, “Oh, I’m creating my own competition,” to, “No, it’s all good.”

Kira Hug:  I’m like, “I’ll be okay. I’m going to be okay.” Because you mentioned mindset and growth mindset, what are you doing today in your business at this stage? What are some practices you have or tools you use at this stage to continue to grow?

Chanti Zak:  Yeah. Well, I’m really trying to, with everything that I’m doing, take a step back and ask myself, “Is this fun? Is this enjoyable? Is this a pleasurable experience that you’re having right now?” And if the answer is no, and there’s a lot of constriction and overwhelm, then taking a step back from that and just trying to look at the situation from a neutral perspective and ask, “Okay, if it’s not enjoyable, why is that? Where is that coming from?” And a lot of the time it’s not the task itself, it’s this sort of programmed mindset that it should be hard, it has to be hard. If it’s not hard, then you’re not working hard enough and you’re not going to get results, so like shifting out of that energy. And this is really a daily practice, sometimes I totally fall off the wagon and I’m like, “No, it’s just hard and it’s got to be this way and there’s no way around it.”

But most of the time there is. And so it’s sort of like, “Okay, no, it’s all good.” You can approach this in a different way and view the hard work as an opportunity for growth and evolution. So one example of that would be, say, so building a team, that’s been really hard because it requires sometimes having hard conversations. And really I’m so afraid of hurting people’s feelings and really always worrying about like, “How are they going to feel? What are they going to think? Are they going to quit and hate me if I communicate that we need to work on this specific thing?” And no. Most of the time, I create this entire scenario in my head of how a hard conversation is going to play out. I’ll have a hard conversation a million times in my head, I’ll totally worst case scenario it, and then it becomes more painful to have that hard conversation in my head than to actually say to the person, “Hey, can we talk about this face-to-face? Not in text, let’s get on a call and talk about it.”

And then you get on the call and I have a nervous system explosion of like, “Okay, we have to talk about this hard thing.” I’ve already painted the picture of how this is going to play out in my head a million times, and then we actually sit down and do it. And almost every single time that’s happened, it has been the most beautiful moving experience of understanding that we’re all human, we all experience the same spectrum of emotions, this person that I’m talking to right now has their own doomsday scenario playing out in their head, and we can just communicate and be open and be curious.

And that has led to so many breakthroughs and not overcoming that resistance and fear of, “Why I’m going to have to have so many hard conversations, I’m going to have to let people down potentially.” But it’s really shifted my mindset around the hard stuff and how to approach it and how it can actually lead to far better outcomes than if we stay in our comfort zone and avoid those things, which is really easy to do. Or just be passive aggressive or be in that place of like, “Well, you should just know, you should be able to read my mind.” And I think we’re never taught that. I was never taught that. So it’s been a real learning experience going through it.

Rob Marsh:  Yeah. So listening to you, Chanti, as usual, every time we talk, I think to myself, “Man, I want to be Chanti. I want to be more like Chanti.” If I were a copywriter just starting out, it feels like maybe the first step to becoming Chanti is learning how to sell quizzes, create quizzes, those kinds of funnels as a service in my business. Give me some advice on how I should get started and share some of the tools that you’ve built that help copywriters do that.

Chanti Zak:  Yeah. Well, I think I hear from a lot of newer copywriters who want to get into quizzes, and there’s a lot of analysis paralysis that comes up for them of like, “Well, I have to know all the things first before I do it. I have to have a client who I can do the test project for first before I do it.” And my advice is, do it for yourself first. Just create a quiz for fun, either for your own brand or just create it for a brand that you’re not even working with. Like Dustin did with the headline project. Go ahead and get started and just practice and play and see if you even like it, and then you can see where your blind spots  are. If you play around, you create the thing and you then can look at that and see, “Well, I had a hard time coming up with the questions and I don’t really know what to include in the results. What is segmentation? How does that work? Why is that important to a potential client?”

And then you get clear on, “Well, what are the things I need to develop in and learn more about?” And from there, you can get the answers. So lots of different ways in my universe to get those answers. I have a lot of free resources, I have a free quiz on what type of quiz you should create, which you could take for yourself or through the lens of a client that you’re working with. I have a free sort of mini course on how to create your first quiz and all the steps that go into that. And then I have my paid program and certification and one-on-one coaching and support. So lots of ways that once you have the questions, you can get the answers, but I really recommend, just jump in, see if you like it, and then move forward.

Rob Marsh: And as a quick follow-up, I know you’ve worked a lot with Interact, but are there other quiz tools that you see out there, you’re like, “Hey, you should play around with these couple of tools and see which ones you like”?

Chanti Zak:  Yeah, Interact is awesome. For e-commerce, there’s this tool called Octane AI that is pretty impressive and has some really interesting features. So if you’re looking at something like, “Okay, yeah, I want to explore this e-commerce niche,” that could be a fun one to play around with. Typeform is still really popular with quiz creators and really affordable. You could totally just start a free Typeform account and start playing around with how you can use it to create a quiz. I think the nice thing about Typeform is that you can ask open-ended questions and VoC, we know why that’s important. So yeah, Typeform is one to experiment with.

And then so many other new ones have popped up that I haven’t even had a chance to try. I think that’s another indicator that there’s a lot of demand in the market. Every time I turn around, there’s a new quiz hosting software that exists. So yeah, no shortage of options. Interact has free accounts. And then one thing my team did with Interact was create hundreds of quiz templates. So those are fun. If you want a starting point and you have an idea for maybe a specific niche, you can go find a template for that, tweak it and see how it goes.

Kira Hug:  When this episode goes live, we’re going to be in our Accelerator cart open period, and you were in the first round of The Copywriter Accelerator way back in the day. So I’m just curious how you would describe the Accelerator fitting into your larger business journey for anyone who’s interested in the Accelerator.

Chanti Zak:  Oh my gosh. Well, I’m just so grateful to my past self and to your past selves for, one, finding the courage and the funds to join. Because at the time, I had just gotten laid off, I was the sole provider for my little family, and it was so scary to make that investment. But talking to both of you, I was like, “Nope, this is it. I need to do it. I know this is where I’ll receive the support and the guidance and the resources that I need to make my business work.” And at that point, I had just so many questions, so much self-doubt that I think if I would’ve been just navigating everything on my own, I would’ve caved, I would’ve not been able to overcome those voices in my head that were saying like, “No, what are you doing? Get a real job.”

But you guys kind of became the voice in my head for a while and really helps me to get past that and build confidence. And that was everything, so thank you. And anyone who’s in that place of doubt and hesitation and like, “Can I really make this work?” You probably can if you have the right mentors.

Rob Marsh:  I wish I could take a look at that alternate universe and see where Chanti would have been if she wasn’t a quiz copywriter, where you would’ve ended up. You’d be a yoga master somewhere in India or something like that.

Chanti Zak:  Oh my gosh. Yeah, I kind of wish we could too. That would be wild.

Rob Marsh:  Yeah. But it’s amazing, as I look at where you were back then and where you are today, obviously you have worked extremely hard on your business and you’ve put a lot into it and focused on all the right things, on choosing a good niche and finding great clients and doing all of that hard work. But just looking at your success and knowing where it started and that we were part of it is so gratifying. So it’s just kind of been fun to watch.

Kira Hug:  It also shows you what’s possible over a five-year period, give or take some time, but what you can accomplish, and if someone goes back to your first interview and then listens to this interview just to see and hear what’s possible over such a short period of time is it’s kind of unbelievable for anyone. And so, that’s the biggest takeaway for me. And as we start to wrap, I would like to hear more about a day in the life of you. So I know there’s not one typical day, I get that, but I’m just curious, as a mom to three children, I know one of them is around Homer’s age, so crazy toddler stage. What does a day during the week look like for you? How do you make it all happen?

Chanti Zak:  Yeah. Well, I’m really grateful to say that I work a lot less than I did in the first few years of starting my business by necessity, but also by design. So lately these days, I mean, I get up pretty early, Asher is up at 5:30, and then by 6:00, I get my coffee, I’m hanging out with my littlest dude, and I just read. I stopped using my phone until about 10:00 or 11:00 in the morning. I don’t check my email, I don’t go on social media, I just read fiction often, and I’ll just hang out on the couch by the wood stove, read my book intermittently while I get the other kids up and make breakfast and get everyone ready for the day. But it’s pretty chill. And mornings used to be such a stressful time for me, but I totally reworked my mornings so that they feel relatively calm.

Although you can only have so much calm when you have a one and a half year old, a three-year-old and an eight-year-old who never wants to leave for school. So they are a bit chaotic. But yeah, it’s all family time. And then around 8:30, I will usually run off, cluster myself in a room and do some yoga or do a workout or do just something for my body because something over the years of working at a desk for eight hours a day, plus my physical being is like, “You need to care for us and pay attention.” And that comes first, health comes first. So that’s been my habit of just doing something, even if it’s just a 20-minute hiit workout or yoga flow, anything to get moving. And then after that, I will start to get ready for my workday. And I haven’t been starting until 10:00 most days, which I personally really love.

I am so over getting up at 5:00 to get straight into work. And maybe there will be a season in my life when I’m game for that, but for now, I’m just taking it easy. And then usually work from 10:00 to 4:00. I am trying to eat lunch and take a break in the middle of the day like you would if you worked at an office or a real job. And then after that, I’m back to mom mode and kiddo time and there’s no real room to focus on anything else, I’m just immersed in hanging out with the littles. And if it’s summer or spring or fall, we’re usually outside in the garden, going for walks, going to the beach. And if it’s winter like right now, then we’re just chilling and it’s cold.

Rob Marsh:  I can’t wait for winter to be over. And it just got started, it’s time. Chanti, this has been awesome. It’s been fun catching up with you and just seeing where you are, as always, just fun hanging out with you. Let’s say a few people listening want to hang out with you too, or at least want to follow you, where should they go, where’s the best place to track Chanti and see what she’s doing?

Chanti Zak:  Yeah. Well, you can go to my website, chantizak.com. If you take my quiz that’s on there, you’ll join my email list and that’s where I’m most active still with email. So you’ll get my emails and you can hit reply and it’ll come straight to me and we can chat. You can also follow me on Instagram, that’s probably the social media I’m most active on @chantizak.

Rob Marsh:  Very cool. I can’t wait to see what’s next for you.

Kira Hug:  Yeah, and I’m going to be on your email list waiting to hear about all the things quiz-related and more. I want all of the rest. So thank you so much for hanging out with us and catching up with us and sharing what’s working and what hasn’t been working with us. We appreciate it.

That’s the end of our interview with Chanti Zak, but before we wrap, Rob, what stood out to you?

Rob Marsh:  I thought it was really interesting what Chanti said at the very beginning of this portion where she was talking about people responding that they only wanted to hear about quizzes, which again, I know that came through in our discussion with Chanti. This still boggles my mind that we sign up or that we come to somebody and there’s only one thing that we can learn from them. And maybe this is my own mindset or maybe this is something that other people who are listening might be thinking, but to me, it feels like if somebody is really good at something, I can learn a lot of things from them. One of our mentors is Todd Brown, who is so, so good at getting a response and building funnels, but I’ve learned a lot about personal discipline from him. I would never have signed up for something from Todd if he was saying, “Hey, I’m a weightlifter, or I’m really big into nutrition.”

And so, there’s just so many things that we can learn from the experts in our business and being open to that, to me, feels like the right thing to do, and I’m just shocked that some people don’t feel that way learning from people who are super, super smart like Chanti.

Kira Hug:  Yeah, it bothers me. Even when I was re-listening to this episode and listening to this portion, it makes me so angry to think that there are people who are telling, I mean, it doesn’t mean Chanti has to listen, she’s probably not going to, but telling her to stay in her lane. And it’s like, “Well, who said that’s her lane? She can build whatever lanes she wants. She can build a freeway, she can create whatever type of road or transportation system she wants. Who are you to tell her what to say and talk about?” But I think it just speaks more to those people. And I think some people just are triggered when other people evolve because it’s a reflection of how they are not evolving and not changing and becoming the next identity that they may aspire to. And when they see that, it triggers them and bothers them. So anyway, it’s mind boggling, but it speaks more to them and their problems than to what she’s doing as she continues to evolve.

Rob Marsh:  And I don’t think we’re saying, “Hey, just because you’re an expert in one thing makes you an expert in everything,” but we are saying there is room for growth and from learning from everyone.

Kira Hug:  I think we can both continue to rant about that, but we will move on. What else?

Rob Marsh:  So Chanti talked about building the team and the conversations that she’s had to have in doing that. And one of the things, it was kind of an offhand comment, but she talked about how this has required her to get outside of her comfort zone. And I feel like this is maybe one of her strong suits. It’s something that I tried to do more, something that building The Copywriter Club together has forced, I think, both of us to do. But getting outside of your comfort zone then makes it so that you have to have difficult conversations. Sometimes it’s with your team, but oftentimes it’s with yourself and it’s not just, “I can do this,” but, “If it’s something that I can’t do, I can figure out how to do it.”

Kira Hug:  Yeah, that’s the part that stood out to me as well. It’s just like, it’s being uncomfortable and out of your comfort zone. And I think for me, that’s what I’m focused on in the year ahead is just I feel like I’ve maybe moved into a comfortable stage because I was uncomfortable for a while, so then I finally got comfortable over the last year and now I’m like, “No, no, no, no, no, let’s get uncomfortable again.” Because as soon as you hit that comfort zone and if you sit there too long, sometimes we need it and we just need to land for a while, but it’s knowing when to kind of move out of that comfort zone to start to evolve and grow because otherwise you’ll hit a plateau on your business and that never feels great.

So for me, I’m looking at it like, “How can I get more uncomfortable in many different areas of my life because that’s when it’ll get really interesting?” And it sounds like Chanti is doing the same thing by having those hard conversations with her team members and looking at it that way. And it’s also funny because she mentioned oftentimes those conversations she feels will be really tricky are not nearly as tricky as she expected. And so, we tend to make this discomfort so much worse in our minds than it really is most of the time.

Rob Marsh:  Yeah. There was an interesting juxtaposition too where we’re talking about getting out of your comfort zone when it comes to things like building a team, but then at the end of the interview, Chanti was talking about how she’s really built comfort into the way she works. She’s part of the 10:00 AM club, not the 5:00 AM club. There’s no discomfort in getting up early and powering through whatever has to happen before the kids come up, she’s built a life that supports the business that she’s running and that allows her to be uncomfortable in other places because she’s got the support, the comfort in her personal life that makes that all possible.

Kira Hug:  Right, that’s a good point. And technically she is part of the 5:00 AM club. It’s just that she will get up and drink coffee and read and have time with her family. So what she said that I appreciate is that she isn’t jumping onto her laptop right away, which is so nice to hear because it’s like we can wake up early and have a great morning routine and it doesn’t have to mean we are busting and out on the laptop and jumping into client work. And so yeah, I like that she shared that as well. And you’re right, I think we have to achieve some level of comfort in order to get to the next stage. Because if we’re constantly uncomfortable, then we’re constantly in fight or flight mode, which is not great for our entire system.

Rob Marsh:  Yeah, exactly. Mental health, physical health, you don’t want to be pushing all of the edges all of the time. Sometimes it’s okay to step back and say, “I’m going to relax here, but I’m going to push on that thing.” That makes sense. One more thing that I think I would just emphasize, and I don’t want to hammer this, but just the impact that the Accelerator had on Chanti’s business and the fact that, as I mentioned earlier, she’s almost built three different businesses over the past four years or so. One, where she’d leaned in and built this career as a copywriter. Two, where she was able to sort of rethink that business and start to train others to do the thing that she was doing. And then three, where she’s built this agency and is able to support not just training but big clients that need the thing that she does. And the process that she went through in the Accelerator in working on mindset, setting the goals, figuring out her niche, the packages, how to get in front of the right clients, all of that has supported her as she’s built her business.

And obviously we are big on the Accelerator, it’s one of the programs that we offer for copywriters, but it’s gratifying personally to see that impact in her business. And I think it’s worth thinking about if you’re listening, you’re at that point in your business where you either want to figure all of that stuff out or you’re just starting out and need to figure it all out is something that maybe you should consider joining this year.

Kira Hug:  Yes, definitely agree with that. And just to circle back as we’re wrapping up talking about niches, we emphasized and Chanti also confirmed that there’s so much opportunity, so much opportunity not just for copywriters, but for anyone who wants to specialize in quizzes too and to truly niche down. And so, if you were like, “Okay, I know there’s opportunity out there, but I don’t know how to niche down on my own,” we can help you with that in the Accelerator because there’s so many exciting opportunities for copywriters today and sometimes it’s hard to see it for yourself. And so, being in a room with other copywriters who are at a similar stage and then receiving some mentoring from other copywriters like the two of us can go a long way. So we would love to work with you and The Copywriter Accelerator if that’s a good fit for you.

Rob Marsh:  Yeah, I love that Chanti called us the voice in her head at that point in her businesses. I’m not sure that I’ve ever thought of myself as that, but it’s gratifying and it’s something that we can help a lot of copywriters with.

We want to thank Chanti Zak for joining us on the podcast today. If you want to connect with her directly, you can find her at chantizak.com or you can find her hanging out over on Instagram at @Chantizak, if you want to hear our first interview with her on the podcast, head over to Episode 54. It was quite a while ago, but she talks about how she got started with that first business that she built. And if you want to listen to another episode about quizzes, we interviewed Josh Haynam, one of the principles at Interact on episode 141. And I also refer to Brittany McBean, who was a former Think Tank member during our discussion. She talked about her business growth on Episode 193. And just a reminder, if you want to join the waitlist for the Accelerator so that you get notified as soon as it opens later this month, go to thecopywriteraccelerator.com. We’ll also put that link in the show notes if you can’t remember that URL.

Kira Hug:  And that’s the end of this episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. The intro music was composed by copywriter and songwriter Addison Rice. The outro is composed by copywriter and songwriter David Munter. If you enjoy this episode, please visit Apple Podcast to leave your review of the show. We see all the reviews, we appreciate them, we will read them on upcoming shows if you post a review. We’d love some fresh new reviews for 2023, so definitely give it a post. And thanks for listening. We’ll see you next week.