TCC Podcast #368: Copy Legends and TCCIRL Takeaways with Rob Marsh and Kira Hug

The 368th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast is all about what we learned from participating in the Copy Legends Lock-in Event, The Top One Mastermind, TCC IRL in London and our own Think Tank Retreat in London. There’s something in this episode for everyone, from copywriting tips to ideas for better supporting your clients and interacting with members of your team to be more effective.

Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.

 

Full Transcript:

You’ve heard us talk about the impact that masterminds and events can have on your business. It’s why we talk about The Copywriter Think Tank so often. It’s why we organize retreats and IRL events just about every year. And we don’t just say that because we produce our own events. From the beginning of The Copywriter Club, Kira and I have both belonged to several masterminds from people like Brian Kurtz, Jeresia Hawk, and Todd Brown. And we’ve attended events around the country to add to our own business and copywriting skills.

Hi, I’m Rob Marsh, one of the founders of The Copywriter Club. And on today’s episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, my co-founder, Kira Hug, who I just mentioned, talked about the four events we attended over the past two weeks—Copy Legends Lock-in, The Top One Mastermind Retreat, The Copywriter Club In Real Life in London, and our own Think Tank retreat in London. We’re sharing our biggest takeaways and what we learned from these awesome experiences. You’ll want to stick around and listen to this episode.

But first, this episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast is brought to you by The Copywriter Underground. It is truly the best membership for copywriters and content writers… let me just give you an idea of what you get for $87 a month… first there’s a monthly group coaching call with Kira and me where you can get answers to your questions, advice for overcoming any business or client or writing challenge you have. There are weekly copy critiques where we give you feedback on your copy or content. There are regular training sessions on different copy techniques and business practices designed to help you get better. And we’re adding a new monthly AI tool review where we share a new AI tool or a technique or prompt you can do with AI get more done. That’s on top of the massive library of training and templates. And the community is full of copywriters ready to help you with just about anything… including sharing leads from time to time. Find out more at thecopywriterclub.com/tcu

And with that, let’s go to our discussion for some of what we’ve learned over the past few weeks.

Okay, Kira we are. It’s just you and me today. But we’ve been up to a lot of stuff. Lots been going on the last few weeks so let’s let’s kick it off you know where do you where do you want to start with all the stuff that’s been going on.

Kira Hug: Ah I think we should just start with our health… I mean I’m seeing you on the screen and you have a heat pad on your shoulder and you’re in pain and I think we should talk about this. We have been traveling a lot and I don’t know how we physically do it.

Travel isn’t necessarily is what triggered your pain, but I think it definitely triggered my cold. I’m a little worn out. I know you’re a little worn out. What’s going on with your arm and shoulder right now?

Rob Marsh:  Yeah, well we were in London for an IRL event and a Think Tank Retreat but I went a few days early just to do a little bit of traveling around England with my wife and some friends that we have there. I woke up Sunday morning in massive pain. It was the most pain I’ve ever felt. I could barely move… it was hard to dress myself. It was it was awful and I didn’t really know what was going on. I felt a little bit better the next day. Although it hurt all week long I didn’t want to go to the emergency room, simply because we were on vacation. We had our friends there then we had the retreat and everything was going on with without so once I got home I went to my doctor and he has diagnosed me with a slipped disc which I guess the the medical term for it is a C5 Cervical Radiculopathy.

And it’s just a slipped disc and it is incredibly painful. I’ve got some physical therapy that I’m working on trying to fix it. Hopefully we don’t need surgery. 

It’s a really good reminder of when people are feeling pain—how desperate they are for solutions. This is something we talk about in copywriting all the time. You want to you want to start your copy by focusing in on the pain or the problem or the thing that your prospect needs and the the more impactful and deeper felt pains that people have, you know we help them solve that. 

We identify what that pain is, we empathize with the pain that they’re feeling, then present solutions. You know if a doctor had come along while we were in the retreat with a unique mechanism  and said, “Hey I understand what you’re going through. You know it’s this diagnosis and my solution does this and you’ll be fixed up and healed in you know a week or two” I would have paid any amount of money for that solution and so that’s what’s going on with me. I’m hoping over the next few weeks that that gets fixed and I’m back to normal. We’ll see. I haven’t been able to go running for a couple weeks. I’m really feeling that lack of exercise. You know I can’t I can’t really lift weights with this going on. So I’m just doing the exercises the physical therapist gave me and trying to make it better. 

But I’m not the only one that’s been suffering. You didn’t slip a disc but you spent some time in bed the last couple weeks too. What’s going on with you?

Kira Hug: I know. I mean it’s real life. It’s real life and you know I’m grateful I did not slip a disc that sounds awful. For me, it was just a cold.

Rob Marsh:  This is a horrible way to start a podcast by the way.

Kira Hug:  Things just caught up with me. My schedule’s been very strict with like getting up really early and I think I’ve been okay for a while, but the travel is what did me in. I think that’s what threw me off so when we were in Orlando I was fine. You and I were running together that was our high moment.

Things were great and then after we left Orlando that’s when I started to fall apart and came home to Maine for one weekend and to plan a sleepover. And I just couldn’t do anything. I felt awful because my husband has been taking care of the kids and I come home and I’m like, “I still can’t take care of anyone. I just need to be in bed.” And then you and I went to London after that and so I never fully recovered I think it was just like bursts of energy to just show up. Especially at our events in London. Luckily I could rest enough to feel good to host those with you and enjoy them so I’m glad that I can could be there and enjoy.

I had moments where I was like I don’t know if I can pull this off. But luckily we did. So the lesson here is recovery is important. Rest is important. I’m never going to schedule back to back trips again. I just it doesn’t make sense for me and my life right now. It seemed like a good idea at the time when we planned it.

Rob Marsh:  To take nothing away from the events… all of the events were were great, but this is just a reminder of some of the the hassles that we have when we run our own businesses. You don’t have the luxury of not showing up. You know whether it’s for a client or whether it’s for something else that’s going on, you still have to make that stuff happen. And obviously there are a lot of positives to running your own business. This is definitely one of the drawbacks and occasionally business is hard. Things aren’t going well and you still have to show up. Hopefully—hopefully—we showed up in a way that was meaningful for everybody who was at the event and our mastermind and the various activities that we were doing.

Kira Hug:  Yeah I got to the point where I was fantasizing when I was laying in bed in London the first day. I was thinking, “Okay if I can’t do this, Rob could do it… before I knew you had a slipped disc… Rob could do it with Linda and they’ll be okay, it’ll be okay.” But you just got to step up and do it. It’s a good reminder that we’re human—we’re only human—and that’s definitely a struggle I have where I think I’m super woman and then I am brought to my knees and I’m reminded that I’m not super woman. That’s definitely been the last few weeks where I was reminded I can’t do all the things so I need to just chill out a little bit and scale back.

Rob Marsh:  Rest is important. So hopefully we’re both able to get enough rest while we are actually working on all of the stuff that’s got to happen now because we’ve been gone for two weeks. There’s all this stuff that we’re getting ready for.

Let’s talk about some of these things in depth. One of the things we’ve got coming up immediately is a year-end planning program that we have done successfully in The Copywriter Underground a few times that we now want to make available to everybody who listens to the podcast, or anyone who’s in the free Facebook group, or anyone who is on our emailing list. Talk a little bit about, Kira. What are we thinking about with that year-end planning and why it’s so important for copywriters.

Kira Hug:  I’ve been working on the the sales page for it and I think it’s important to do this planning every year. We’re gonna take what we’ve done in the past which has been successful, but in a way kind of basic. And we’re going to take that and turn it into an actual program—like more of an incubator for a couple of weeks—where we kick off with a group session where we dive deep into reflection and really thinking about what has happened this past year, then starting to think about what we’re going to prioritize in the year ahead. But doing it as a group because this is hard. 

It’s hard to do and it’s not fun to do alone. We need to do it individually, but the whole idea is we’re about community. And we’re about doing this together. So I think that live component where we are in it together, becoming friends, building connections, but also thinking strategically about your business and your growth in a number of ways. Not just financial growth which we know is important. But thinking about how other types of growth that are important to you as a person and are critical in the year ahead. Then we’ll follow that with sprint exercises where you’ll actually walk through SWOT Analysis and choose an objective to accomplish.

We’ll walk through measurable outcomes and build out a plan for the year ahead. We’ll mostly focus on going really micro with the first quarter of 2024, but will also have a high level plan for the entire year. The importance of this in our world as writers has changed dramatically. I know we probably say that every year, but things really have changed this past year a year—ChatGPT came into the world and everything is different. We need to think differently and be more proactive because our day-to-day is full of surprises every day. There’s a new tool or update or change to how we operate almost every day. So it’s just time to really think about what does this mean for me as a writer as a thinker as a strategist as a creative and a visionary? How am I going to show up in my business? How am I going to get paid? We want to be really intentional about it in this community together so you don’t just have to think about it in a silo you can actually pull ideas from other people and share ideas and get feedback and not feel like you have to figure this out alone. It can feel really lonely especially if you’re the only entrepreneur in your circle at home. This is a chance to do this with a group.

Rob Marsh: We’ve done it in the past as a challenge or as a training in The Copywriter Underground and the feedback we’ve gotten from it has been very positive. People really appreciate the process of being able to look forward actually walk away with a plan. They know exactly what they should be doing from week to week. They know exactly what they’re building over the course of the coming year. It’s not going to be free, but it’s also going to be priced relatively low so that as many people as possible can participate. 

It really is I think one of the most valuable things that we’ve done for our membership group, but we want to extend that out to as many people as possible who want to participate in it. So you can look forward to seeing some things about this new program soon. If you’re not already on the copywriter club email list, we encourage you to join that so you get those notifications. Or you can look for it in the free Facebook group and we’ll try to make sure that you hear where you can find out more as soon as that information is ready to go.

Kira Hug:  Awesome! Yep! Excited to see you all in there. Then beyond that, another update is just that we are putting a group together in our Think Tank mastermind that will kick off officially in January and so we’re inviting new members this November and December, through different conversations. We definitely want to meet with you and chat with you before we invite you into the group just to make sure it’s a good fit for you and for the Think Tank. That’s something that we’re really excited about starting in January mostly because we just came from London where we had our Think Tank Retreat. We got to spend some time with our Think Tank members and that was definitely a highlight for me. It made the trip worth it, so we’re excited to kick off this new group of Think Tank members who will experience retreats together, and private coaching with us, and group coaching, and really figure out the plan for the year ahead. And also have the accountability baked in and the personal, private coaching to actually put that plan into action. So that’s something you’re gonna hear about over the next few months as well.

Rob Marsh:  And then finally we are working on a Copywriting Boot Camp. Some of you may know that we’ve created a copywriting course with our approach to copywriting and research. There were a few people who joined when we offered this to our email list as early adopters and we’ve been releasing a few of the modules to them. They’ve already seen most of the research modules. The copy modules are coming out in the next week or so and then we’re going to have a boot camp where people can use that information to actually create a piece of copy they can then use to land clients.

If you are always thinking, “I need a sample to show or I don’t have any prior work, and I want to move from writing blog post to writing sales copy whether that’s email or sales pages… whatever… but I don’t have anything that I can show my clients to prove to them that I can actually do this,” this bootcamp will be a really good opportunity to use the research frameworks the copywriting frameworks that we’ll share in order to create copy like that. So that you can use that as a sample and build your business. We’ll also be sharing some information about the Copywriting Boot Camp soon. It’s and it’s not just the course materials. we will actually help you think about the the right approach to your copy, how you’re writing it, and give you some one-on-one critiques, with ideas for doing things a little bit differently as well as bouncing ideas around with the others who will be in that boot camp with you. So a lookout for more information about that coming up.

Kira Hug:  All right? So now we just want to share some takeaways since we were both in the middle of multiple events with other brilliant marketers and copywriters and entrepreneurs and so I think I’m just now processing everything that we experienced, but Rob and I haven’t actually sat down to talk through it yet. So we’re just going to use this time to talk through what stood out to us what we might want to consider or implement or what we think would be useful to other copywriters and just do it in real time record it and share it with you. So I’m excited, Rob to hear what you know what you took away from the last few weeks

Rob Marsh:  Yeah, we attended three different events. The first was The Copy Legends Lock-in that was a one day event where Todd Brown extended invitations to 30 different copywriters. There were I think 19 of us in the room just to talk about what’s going on in the world of copywriting today. What’s working, what’s maybe not working, and we talked through things like leads, ad ideas, and different approaches to what people are doing. 

We talked about research and so there were so many things shared and so many different ideas that it’s almost impossible to give a full wrap-up of all those things. But I do have a couple of takeaways and I know you had several as well. 

It was it was kind of fun I was sitting next to Tony Flores who worked with Clayton Makepeace, I think a lot of people have seen the PDF that Clayton and Tony worked on about bullet writing. It’s very popular. It’s been shared millions of times and it’s pretty easy to find online. They outlined I think 20 or 21 different kinds of bullets in this newsletter and I was talking with Tony between some of the sessions and I mentioned to him that the week before I had taken all of that information that he had put into that PDF about writing bullets and all of the examples he presented and created a mega prompt then fed it into claude AI for a client project that I was working on. Then I asked it to use that information plus all of the research information I fed it in order to so help me write some bullets for this project and I got back a hundred headlines, 23 of them really impressed me and I used them as copy points or as bullets in my copy and even as some headlines throughout the copy. I shared that with Tony and he thought that was interesting. He’s told me that actually gives me some ideas of some of how we can reuse some of that stuff with AI that wasn’t even part of like what was going on in the discussion. So it was just sort of a side conversation. But it’s kind of fun to just bounce some additional ideas around with these amazing copywriters who’ve you know decades of experience. Ah, selling products in new and unique ways.

Kira Hug:  Yeah there were so many great conversations from that day. So I’m just gonna highlight a couple ideas that stood out to me. One is from Justin Goff who’s been on the podcast and is actually gonna return soon. He talked about how he surveys his audience. And I know Rob you’re on his list so you’ve seen these surveys and the whole idea is that it’s to test different offers to see what his audience is interested in buying. Each question in the survey would just be kind of an introduction to an offer like hey here’s an offer. It’s a course about eating oreos. Would you be interested in buying this, yes or no? And there’s little explanation of what is in that offer. But that’s it and he lists a bunch of those different offers with yes or no responses. 

Justin said that based off that survey which he’s done a couple of times, the number of people who buy those offers actually matches the percentage of people who said they were interested in those offers. So he found that it actually is quite accurate at predicting which offers will perform the best for his audience. That’s something that grabbed my attention right away and we have put together a survey that’s very similar to test with our audience. I don’t know if Justin would approve it or not. It’s probably a little bit longer but it’s maybe 8 different offers for copywriters and just a yes or no—is this something you’d be interested in? I’m sharing that with you because I think it’s something that we can all do with our audiences. We can ask them exactly what they want you to create. A big theme from all of the events we were at is just how the market is shifting rapidly and what worked a year ago is not going to work today so we need to really keep on top of changes trends beliefs and what your audience is actually needs today that maybe they didn’t need a week ago. So I think that type of survey which you can snag from our list because we just sent it out is something that you could test for your clients or for your own business.

Rob Marsh:  Yeah I think there’s a real opportunity for us to work with our clients to help them develop new ideas and help them create new assets in their businesses. A lot of times we wait for our clients to come to us to say, “Okay I need a sales page for this thing that I’m doing.” But if you show up as a strategist and say, “You know let’s figure out what your audience needs next,” you can actually help them and become a better, bigger part of their team, making a bigger contribution to what they’re doing so it is a really good idea and another takeaway that I had from that event.

There was a a conversation that I was in where a few of us were sitting around the table at the end of the day on Thursday and Todd Brown was talking about the genesis behind Copy Legends. He went back even further to when he launched his E5 Marketing Method which is the thing that put him on the map. He was talking about the approach and said when it came to something like Copy Legends, he knew that you couldn’t just send out an email and ask people to respond with an idea or two. He couldn’t just get people on Zoom to talk about copy like a normal online summit. He wanted to show up in a different way—in a big way—that would get attention. So he prepared these packages that went out to all of the copywriters who were invited that included notebooks and promotional materials. 

And then they rented this mansion where everybody came together and met and there was a lot of socializing around the whole event and rather than just having it be this thing about copy. He turned it into this event that was big and the kind of thing that people wanted to attend, similar to how he launched his E5 method. He’s got this program that helps people figure out how to sell whatever it is that they’re selling whether it’s an information product, a physical product, or a service. And you go through these 5 steps of the of the E5. For that launch, he did something similar. He hired out a big hotel room. He sent out invitations to 30 or 40 high end marketers that he was familiar with, but not all of them knew who he was. They weren’t necessarily all of his friends but you know he invited them to come and attend for free and then he knew that because he had all of these big name marketers there, that just getting on video with them, seeing them sitting in the audience listening to him teach would help build his credibility. 

I think that was one of the things that he did early on that really launched him from one of those marketing guys who is you know able to help anybody do the funnel thing into one of four or five people who are best known for the things that they do. So hereplicated that approach to E% in the creation of Copy Legends. The takeaway there is: if you want to be noticed you have to show up different. You need to look for the pattern interrupt you need to do something different and while it’s okay to you know guest on podcasts and post on Linkedin and show up on Instagram, it’s the things that you do different that really stand out. Tthat doesn’t mean we should all be hiring out hotel rooms and creating courses for marketers. But there are things that we can do to show up differently from what other people are doing. You used to do this when you would show up in your bear costume on client calls, Kira. It’s silly, but it’s different and it gets noticed right? And so there are lots of different ways that copywriters ought to be thinking about showing up in different ways that break through.

Kira Hug:  Yeah, different is often difficult too and I think it doesn’t have to be so I don’t want to put that barrier up to say it has to be difficult. But for Todd in those examples like planning ah in-person event is more difficult typically.

Rob Marsh:  For sure.

Kira Hug:  It’s not a bad idea because that is still different and right now there’s a craving—I mean we felt it in the the last few rooms we were in in London and Florida—there’s this craving for people to be together right now. So even if you can’t tap into that and host your own event because logistically and financially, it’s a lot. Maybe it’s just showing up more in person at other events which is not something you typically do because there’s a hunger for connection that I don’t think is going to go away. There’s such a hunger for it and that’s something that Todd tapped into with Copy Legends just to get us all in a room. We just wanted to be together and to have those side conversations and to not just direct message these other copywriters. We wanted to hang out in a room together. So I love that idea and I didn’t hear that backend story of how he did it so that’s really cool to hear.

Rob Marsh:  Yeah, it’s funny because Todd even mentioned that he didn’t actually know all of the copywriters that got invited to Copy Legends. In fact, I won’t mention the name but he said that he had introduced himself at the cocktail party the night before to one of the copywriters that was there. Todd walked up and said hey you know, you really helped me as I was starting out in my business. And the person said, “Who are you?” which is kind of interesting because this was Todd’s event and yet these people wanted to come and participate didn’t even really know everything about Todd and and who he was. There was so much excitement around this event for those people that were invited and so you don’t even need to have relationships with all of these people. This is a little bit of like “sell the sizzle” in addition to the steak right? You create a little bit of a spectacle, you create a little bit of intrigue and curiosity around the thing that you’re doing and people will want more of it.

Kira Hug:  Yeah, it’s creating something beyond yourself which I think is the exciting part about entrepreneurship You could create this entity that exists and excites people and brings people together. That’s not necessarily connected to who you are as a person and that’s really cool. I think that’s a little bit of what we did with TCCIRL when we started in 2018 and continued through London last week. It’s something that exists outside of us that connects people and gives them something that we can’t necessarily give individually, but we can create this this feeling in this community that gives it to everyone and and draws them in.

Rob Marsh:  Yeah, yeah, any other takeaways that you had from copy legend specifically.

Kira Hug:  Oh my goodness still so many there were some really good quotes that I might not quite nail, but Peter Kell was there. I met him for the first time he’s a VSL copywriter who works for Mind Valley and he said something that I wrote down. I don’t write down a lot of quotes, so it was important to me. He said “If they aren’t buying, it’s because they don’t believe it. They don’t understand the path from A to B.” That resonated with me because it is very simple. If your customers or your prospects aren’t buying, it’s just because they don’t get it and they don’t believe it and so in order for them to believe it, we have to show the unique mechanism and we have to show the transformation and we have to show it in a believable way so it clicks for them and they’re like oh yeah, this makes sense. I think that could happen for me too and it’s not easy to do that. Often we overlook that step but the way he clarified that was just very simple.

Rob Marsh:  Yeah, there was another idea like that stood out to me. As we were talking about Facebook ads—and I think this applies not just to Facebook ads but to sales pages and emails—and that was the idea of giving our prospects a taste instead of a tease. That idea was repeated several different times. The idea being that a lot of times we tease the offer, we tease the thing that we’re selling, but we don’t give away what it is. A lot of people in the room were suggesting that doesn’t work as well anymore and that what you really need to be doing is making the advertising valuable. That’s a Gary Bencivenga thing—you make the ad absolutely valuable so that people want to hold onto it, to keep it. He invented the Magalogue which is a sort of magazine. It’s an ad but it feels like a magazine. It’s so got so much good information in it that you want to hang onto it and taking that idea of making the information you’re sharing on the front end when you are advertising or in your lead or in your email actually sharing the thing that you’re talking about. So rather than teasing it, teaching a lesson from the course, or helping people see how the mechanism works in the product that you’re selling. Or really explaining why the the thing they’re struggling with, what’s causing that, giving enough information that if they went with that information they could fix it themselves, and yet you’ve still got a product here that will help them do it more more quickly or more efficiently, more effectively.

Kira Hug:  And you could say well if I give them everything upfront I’m going to lose them. They won’t need my product. But several of the marketers in the room have tested it and shared that actually it does work. If you educate and diagnose, and share the taste up front. People actually do stick with you and then they still purchase the product. So um, that stood out to me too I know Rich Sheffren mentioned Oreos which made the whole tease verse taste concept resonate with me. So if you think about it in terms of Oreos, if you just see a picture of a cookie—that’s a teaser and it makes your mouth water a little bit but most of us can kind of pass it up if we just have that tease. But if we taste it and we try an oreo, it’s really hard to stop once you have that first taste. So that’s the whole idea is give them a little taste because it’s hard to stop and you’re going to want more and you don’t have to worry about losing that person. They’re going to want more Oreos.

Rob Marsh:  Yeah, yeah, there are a ton more takeaways we’re going to put our takeaways together into a document and include them with that Copywriting Course that we’re putting together that we teased earlier when we mentioned the boot camp. But if you want all of our notes our takeaways from that event, that’s one place that you’ll be able to find them. We may share them other places as well. But for now we’ll share them there so that’s Copy Legends. 

The next day we were in Orlando for our own mastermind that we participate in with a bunch of marketers who have various types of different programs and businesses. Some of them are selling financial software. Some of them are selling courses for coaches others who have various other kinds of businesses. Spme new members that were there teach people how to speak Italian. So various kinds of businesses all there just to talk about how to market better and share ideas that are working. Is there anything that you took away from that Top One Retreat that you want to share Kira?

Kira Hug:  Yeah, a couple things. There is a good conversation around adapting to systems. This may or may not resonate with everyone listening because this is more if you have a team, but if you’re building any type of system and processes, you need to adapt to—we had a whole conversation about being the visionary of the business which most of us are. It’s really hard sometimes to follow SOPs and not want to just kind of create on the spot and have the world revolve around us right? We’re the entrepreneur, the copywriter, we’re running the show, and so we had a helpful conversation about that and when we need systems to work around us. This is where you can hire a VA or you can hire team members and build systems that work for your unique Genius or Madness. But then we need to adapt and actually adjust to systems and to team members to make it work and so there aren’t really any resolutions here other than it was helpful for me to hear that there’s a tension there for other entrepreneurs at different stages in business. Some who are 20 steps ahead of me and to know that so many of us struggle with this and so many of us struggle to adapt to systems and we kind of just like break things and are very clutzy along the way.

We’re not alone. So I guess there was some relief there but Rich Sheffren again came in and he had this great comment when I was asking about how to deal with this, and whether or not to just adapt or make systems work around me as a visionary. 

He said the best thing you can do is hire an assistant. Ah, so you can tell that assistant something once and then you can completely forget it and then they can adapt to the systems they can help you work within systems. So for anyone who’s more creative minded and struggles with step by step systems and processes, finding that person might be really critical to help you stay on track with client projects, or to help you stay on track with your own projects so that you can get stuff done. They provide that support and fill in the gaps where you drop the ball and it’s okay if you drop the ball as long as you know that you have someone to come in there and support you and that you don’t have to wait till you have a million dollar business to find someone to be an assistant to you. I think that’s something that we can all find a little bit earlier and not try to change who we are necessarily, but try to adapt to how we function and find those people who can support us. Hearing Rich said say that was just comforting to know he also struggles with that.

Rob Marsh: I think you might not have have heard the presentation on creating hot products and by that we mean services or products that have almost built-in demand, but there was a really great presentation on that where Todd laid out what it takes to create a product that almost sells itself. In the criteria he laid out, he talked about how a hot product is rare. It’s the first of its kind, or it’s the first time that it’s being offered. You know there’s nothing similar out there in the marketplace that’s available. It’s extremely difficult to replicate. Whether that’s because the person who is putting it together is unique or the formula is different. You might have to work to really engineer that into your product. Or the hot product gives access to your customer to something that they normally wouldn’t have. And oftentimes it gives them bragging rights. Participating in Copy Legends is that kind of a thing. When you’re able to engineer a hot product or a hot service, it really doesn’t require a lot of sophisticated marketing because the demand is already built in. The demand for buying is just there. It creates buzz on its own and it makes that conversion game just so much easier. So that gave me a lot to think about you know, like how do we start to engineer those kinds of things into the products that we have at the Copywriter Club? And also with my clients—how do we make our clients products that much more in demand? How do we build in that kind of demand that happens the first time it’s being offered? That uniqueness? The thing that’s not available anywhere else? Gave me a lot to think about.

Kira Hug:  Yeah I miss I missed that presentation. But there are a couple other conversations we had and Todd led around adapting to the market and so I think there are a couple questions that you probably have heard already but are important. So I’m going to just share a couple of those questions that I know we need to think about in our businesses and again our clients also need to think about this.

First is what does your market care about today that maybe they didn’t care about a month ago? And what do they not care about today? And what is your audience seeing and believing today? I think that’s a really important one is like we forget that we’re not marketing to a blank canvas and so they are seeing messages and promises and ads and claims and they’re believing some of them and not believing others and we have to be aware as marketers to what they are seeing and believing. Today and so that’s an awareness that I think is really important for all of us to have.

Rob Marsh:  Yeah, absolutely again, lots of other things that we may share in future podcasts so stay tuned. Let’s also talk about what we did in London because there was a lot of great stuff there too.

Kira Hug:  Yes, so in London we had incredible speakers. I’m not going to call every single speaker. It was a fantastic room and it reminded me why we started The Copywriter Club because as we mentioned… Rob was in pain and I was feeling really sick and wondering how I was going to get through the day. So it was a very uplifting moment to be in a room full of creative copywriters and people you know some of whom we’ve known for a while some we were meeting for the first time, and to me, the biggest takeaway was just, “Oh yeah, this is why we started the copywriter club. This is why it’s so important for all of us to get together whether it’s virtually or in person because what we do is unique and it’s not It’s really hard to talk about it with neighbors and friends and other people or even other entrepreneurs.” I find we’re in our own little bubble here and so there is a lot of value in connecting with people in that bubble who understand what we’re all going through. That was just more of a high level like feel good takeaway was like this is what it’s all about.

Rob Marsh:  Yeah, we asked our friend Kennedy to come and speak. Kennedy’s a mentalist and he’s been on the podcast as well. One half of the duo that runs Email Marketing Heroes and he stepped through the SCORE method.

I’m not going to share what each of those steps are but basically the idea behind this welcome sequence is: you know as people join your list, only some of them are ready to buy immediately. And oftentimes what we do as markers is give them a welcome sequence. We’re really slow in introducing our products and we’ll pitch them after a few weeks or  maybe in a couple months and we repeat the same offers. Kennedy pointed out that you know as people join our list. They are hot. They want the thing that we have to offer, but not everybody wants it right away. So after those first 3 or 4 emails that are building that credibility in the welcome sequence, you immediately should go into a sales sequence and then you know that sales sequence will sell. Whatever your number 1 thing is to your audience. And maybe 10% or 20% will buy that thing. But that still leaves more than 80% of your audience that hasn’t bought yet. So what do you do with them? Kennedy basically just stepped through the different kinds of sequences that they string together. So that when you join their list. You’re really getting a sixty day welcome sequence that steps through different campaigns targeted to different needs. So you know the ready buyer gets that sales sequence but somebody who’s a little bit more reticent and needs you to build trust with them is going to get a content sequence. After that maybe they’re going to be ready to buy and then somebody who’s you know, maybe not at the right point in the business is going to get a different kind of a sequence, or a different kind of offer. Maybe they’re wary so you need to remove the risk at some point and so you’re you’re making a different offer—same product but different offer—each different time. And each of those offers is targeted at a different buyer need or a buyer that’s at a different place in that journey. We talk about states of awareness all the time. But we don’t always market to the various states of awareness as people join our list. It’s something I’ve heard him talk about before but going through it in depth with him again really just opened my eyes to the way that we need to talk to our buyers differently. And that went along with something that Linda shared which is targeting people based off of the whys that they have in their lives. You know and being able to talk to different people. You know whether you look at like Enneagram scores or Myer Briggs. Different people need different messages at different times and the better we know our customers and our prospects the more we can target those messages to them so they get the right messages at the right time.

Kira Hug:  Yeah, I also think about Kennedy’s presentation and and Linda’s—what you’re saying about different types of buyers, different types of people, who think in different ways, and I think about it in terms of launch email sequences because that’s what I typically work on. You can check out Kennedy’s SCORE method great or you could check out Linda’s Why in her approach. There’s so many different approaches, but the key is just to think about, if I have someone who is more of a researcher and needs has more questions, what email am I going to give to them in this launch sequence? So that I’m able to really speak to them and calm their nerves. So they’re ready to buy and also what about that person who’s more of a emotional feeler and more of an empath, they might want a powerful story, so is there a story email in this sequence? And is there another email that maybe allows for more personalization where it allows for a reply and a conversation with a team member to answer questions over email? I love that idea from both of them like you shared about just thinking more expansively about our sequences whether it’s a 60 day sequence, or it’s just a seven day cart open sequence, to think about how am I speaking to a wide variety of people with different beliefs and different stages of awareness and different ways of communicating and moving to the sale. Anytime I hear those talks, I update the way I run my launch sequences. It’s so useful to think like that.

Rob Marsh:  Yep. Another speaker who was really impressive—he was just on the podcast a few weeks ago—was John Bejakovic and he talked about diagnosis. His presentation opened with some stories which is kind of unique. We don’t see a lot of people opening presentations with stories. I did it last year at IRL when I talked about Oceans Eleven but oftentimes we just kind of jump into information. John’s stories were so compelling, I looked around the room as he shared 3 different stories and then linked them together, as he launched into his presentation and every single person in the room was sitting on the edge of their seat. Everybody leaned in. That wasn’t the point of his presentation, but that was a big takeaway for me just watching how people reacted to that got me thinking. Okay, we all know how powerful stories are. Why don’t we use them more often? You know as we open up podcasts for instance or open up presentations in ways that maybe we haven’t thought about using stories in the past. They’re a way to break that pattern and interrupt it to be a little bit different. It was a great way to get people leaning into his presentation so that when he did share the information that he shared. We’re all ready for it.

Kira Hug:  It was it was the way he set it up and this isn’t the exact wording but he introduced that he was going to share three stories, that they were going to be short stories, and that they would be connected. So already that grabs their attention because we know they’re going to be short. And we’re trying to figure out how they’re going to connect. It was really mysterious the way he shared it, and he even put on a blank white slide in the background so you could just kind of clear your mind and get lost in the story. I found it really powerful too. I don’t think I’ve sat through a presentation where there are 3 vignettes, linked together to kick off a presentation. It was really powerful. Definitely something I want to experiment with. 

John also talked about the power of diagnosis. And finding the root cause of a problem and how that when we do that as marketers, we’re able to create a new insight—almost like a revelation—for our prospects, so they think differently, believe differently. A good example is the Enneagram diagnosis or even the Why diagnosis that Linda shared at the event. Anytime people think differently about who they are, or about a problem they have, or how they show up in the world, and they have a terminology for it.

Now there’s some type of system involved in the diagnosis that makes it believable to that person. It really changes the way they think, and changes what they think about purchasing, and the way they think about a unique mechanism. So he talked a lot about the diagnosis and that’s something that I will add to my brand insights book. This is beyond what I typically add, I think that’s something that we could add for our clients to help them speak to their audiences in new ways.

Rob Marsh: There’s almost too many insights and and things I know we’re going to leave people out and don’t want people to feel offended but I want to call out Charlotte Davies who was our opening speaker. We had some technology problems where the slides just would not advance, would not connect, and Charlotte was such a Pro that she just went on with her presentation without the slides. This is something I think a lot of people could not do, especially if you’re just starting out as a presenter. We don’t know our material well enough without the slides to back us up. And Charlotte was again such a pro. 

This happened at our very first IRL event with Hilary Weiss and she did the same thing. She knew her slides so well that she didn’t actually need the slides to give the presentation. Charlotte just knocked it out of the park. Talking about how to network and how to get the most out of an event. It got me thinking like okay anytime I go to present I definitely want to show up with you know slides not just what I’ve sent off to the event organizer. I want to make sure that they’re on a thumb drive just in case, you know they didn’t get the right slides right? And they’re ready to go or I want to make sure that I’ve saved them as a PDF so all the fonts are correct, because sometimes if you open up a Powerpoint in Keynote or vice versa, what happens is the fonts get messed up. So having a PDF of the slides that preserves the fonts—but mostly just knowing your materials so well—that if something happens you can continue on with your presentation. You don’t have to worry about whether I can do this without my slides. Charlotte was amazing and deserves a ton of credit for being able to do that. She made me realize, wow, I need to practice more when I’m going out to present because I want to be that person who can talk about the material forwards and backwards. Even if the slides don’t work.

Kira Hug:  I feel like this is going to scare people just to not ever speak on stage because that’s the worst case scenario right? It’s like oh I don’t have my crutch. But I think what Charlotte did that was smart is she had her slides on her iPhone so she was prepared.

I’m not trying to diminish what she did, she was amazing, and I respect her—she was calm and she just stepped right into it. But what she did that was smart is that she did have the notes in her phone. So I would say always have it in your phone or have a printout. I would take a printout because I’m old school like that. But I would have a printout so just in case it all falls apart, you have something to guide you. I’ve never taken a printout but I probably would do something like that or have some cards just in case. Yeah way to go Charlotte that was amazing.

Rob Marsh:  I also want to make make one final mention Fina Charleston who is our podcast editor. She came on Friday and talked about how copywriters can help podcasters and it really stood out to me that for copywriters who are interested in doing things like show notes and repurposing content from podcasts into things like lead magnets or other pieces of content like blog posts, there’s a huge opportunity there to pair up with a podcast editor who may have 6 or 7 shows that they do editing for over the course of a week. Pair up with them as a potential partner where you can now start providing content assets that go along with the production that they provide. Just another idea of how copywriters might get started in the world or if you’re interested in that kind of content work, a way for you to add value significant value for your clients who do podcasts.

Kira Hug:  And it could go beyond even copy and content writing. It could be as hands-on as more of a consultant if you want to take on even thinking about tools for podcasting especially with AI tools. There’s so many different voice tools now you can use to speak in different languages for podcasts and I think podcasters like us are left saying there’s so many opportunities today but I’m kind of maxed out. I know I’m not tapping all these AI tools that could give me a broader reach. But I can’t handle it right now and so if you can swoop in and have knowledge of these tools and maybe just introduce them and assist with them or and be able to handle copy and content and grow the podcast, and turn the podcast into a revenue generator by selling new offers like that. Sets you up to really stand out because not a lot of people are doing it at that level right now. Huge opportunity for all of us.

Rob Marsh:  Yeah, and of course we haven’t mentioned all the speakers: Alissa Burkus talked a lot about building your authority engine and what goes into that. Peta talked about how to grow your business with all this stuff going on around us (Editor’s Note: I’m not doing justice to her presentation here). She shared some really really great ideas. I know I’m probably missing a couple of other speakers…

Kira Hug:  Brandon Burton talked about about AI and so he talked about the changes that are happening in AI and it was interesting because he created his presentation back in 2020 for a contest we were hosting at that time, and he didn’t have to make any changes to the presentation because what he predicted basically happened. That’s where we are in the current state. He’s just a futurist in his thinking and put that presentation together a couple years ahead of time.

Rob Marsh:  It was a great event as always in the feedback that we got I’ve seen posts on Linkedin. You know people who are really appreciative what we put together just being able to spend time together. We’re grateful for those of you who came and joined us. It was a lot of fun and we’re definitely gonna do it again.

Kira Hug:  All right? So as we wrap I think we just want to hit on what we mentioned at the beginning of this podcast that the big event happening now is our annual planning program. I’m calling it a program. It’s more of a sprint and that’s going to be high touch, group involved, and it’s going to take place this November leading into December so that you have a plan in place, that’s really clear, with clear objectives, measurable outcomes, and behaviors to support that that’s laid out so it’s easy to follow. And you’ll have that before you even end the year. You don’t have to do it alone in a silo. You can do it with us and get feedback along the way from us and fellow copywriters. I know it’s something I desperately need to do you don’t have to do it on your own so you can sign up. And we’ll share that with you soon.

Rob Marsh:  Yep, we’ll also share information about the copy boot camp and the Think Tank if you know are interested in getting on stage and participating in those kinds of things. The Think Tank is exactly the kind of program that help can help you do that. And you know standing out is getting more and more important. Standing out from copywriters who are using AI or doing things the old school way and you want to be different. We can help you do that in the Think Tank. So be sure to look for more information on that as well.

That’s the end of our discussion. Usually I would add a few additional thoughts but I think we’ve covered most of that already… so I just want to thank the people who made our events in London so great. You should definitely track these folks down and follow them. Thanks to Charlotte Davies, Kennedy, Linda Perry, Brandon Burton, Peta O-Brien Day, Nic Moors, Alyssa Burkus, John Bejakovic, and Fina Charleson for the wisdom and ideas they shared. They helped make our event better. And if you’re listening and thinking I wish I had been able to go, we’ll do it again soon. Keep listening or jump on our email list so you get all the details.

And as we wrap, this is your reminder to check out the copywriter underground… go to thecopywriterclub.com/tcu to join the best community for copywriters who want to get better. The resources there are an amazing value.