TCC Podcast #390: Growing an Online Presence with Kieran Drew

Want clients to find you instead of always having to pitch and find them? Then you need to be where they are. And in most cases, that means somewhere online—Twitter, Instagram, Tiktok, LinkedIn or in your own newsletter. In the 390th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, Kira and Rob talk with former dentist turned copywriter Kieran Drew about how he took two years to grow an online presence that earns him six figures a year today. This one is worth listening to twice. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.

Stuff to check out:

The Blockbuster Principle by Michael Simmons (article)
The Almanack of Naval Ravakan
Poor Charlie’s Almanack by Charlie Munger
The Status Game by Will Storr
Mastery by Robert Greene
Perennial Seller by Ryan Holiday
The Copywriter Club Facebook Group
The Copywriter Underground
HypeFury (posting tool)

Full Transcript:

Rob Marsh: Last week I started off the podcast by talking about the idea of slow and steady growth. This week is a little different. It’s about overnight success. Or rather, what might look like overnight success, but really is a two year effort to build and iterate something that works.

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, and I interviewed copywriter and social media expert and not-so-funny stand up comic Kieran Drew. Kieran is one of those over night success stories. When I first came across him online, he was in the middle of a six-figure launch that surprised even him. And in the year since then, he’s done it twice more. But the back story is less instant recognition and more grind and fail, then grind and fail again until something works. 

But before we get to what Kieran shared about launches, growing a newsletter and social media presence and why he gave up a promising career and guaranteed income for something a lot riskier like copywriting, I want to mention again our free report called how to find clients. I recently took a week to rework and revise one of our most popular client finding  resources… this report. it’s completely updated for 2024 and now includes more than 21 different ideas for finding clients… many of them could help you attract a client in the next 24 hours. Wither we’ve used these ourselves, or we know other successful copywriters who have landed good, high-paying clienets with them. I’ve said it before…This isn’t a one page pdf that will get lost in your downloads folder. In fact, if you’re just going to download it to get to it later, don’t bother. It’s too valuable to not get used. But if you’re ready to take action and go after a new client, this report includes the 4 mistakes you can’t afford to make when looking for clients—if you make them, clients will not work with you. It also includes more than 21 ways to find clients, templates for reaching out to clients, and finally the five things you need to do to improve your odds of landing a client. Get your copy now at  thecopywriterclub.com/findaclient.

And with that, let’s go to our interview with Kieran.

Kira Hug: All right, let’s kick off with your story. How did you end up as a copywriter? Yeah, sure.

Kieran Drew: Well, first of all, thank you for having me on because I have devoured your podcast. When I first heard of writing and copywriting, I must have listened to like 80 of your episodes because it was a very exciting and scary world, copywriting.

Rob Marsh: So you only have 320 to go, it sounds like.

Kieran Drew:  I know.I had to start doing the work at one point. It’s been a massive help. I got into copywriting while I was a dentist, up until a couple of years ago and when COVID hit. I never really enjoyed my job as a dentist. The pay was pretty good, but unfortunately, I was working six days a week and I sort of lacked that creative fulfillment. And when COVID hit, obviously we couldn’t see patients from home. So I had a couple of months and I thought, you know what, let’s have a little look at what we could do here. 

And I actually decided to be a standup comedian and I started writing jokes in the morning and thankfully no one actually heard my jokes, but what I noticed was those few hours in the morning when I was writing flew by. And that was my first taste of flow. So I started to ask myself, how can we build a writing career from this? And I found blogging. I sucked at all that. I failed for like a year. I built a website that all went terribly. I tried writing on Instagram, Reddit, and it all just failed one bit after another. 

And then I met a friend on Twitter and he said, have you ever heard of this thing called copywriting? And until that time I thought copywriting was for lawyers, right? Like the circle with the R. Iit was really cool to realize that you can combine writing with persuasion and psychology. I fell in love. I mean, I sucked at it. I’m still not that great, but I fell in love with it from there.

Rob Marsh: So let’s talk a little bit about moving away from what you did before. Obviously you’re not entirely happy with your career, even though you’re making pretty good money. Let’s talk about the mindset a little bit and the shift. Because when you’ve invested so much time, schooling, effort, energy into something, it feels like there’s a lot of tendency to be stuck and to want to remain and to finish. You may not have been happy, but you had invested so much into your career. Talk about that mindset shift and what it took to step away from that into something,  as you describe it, totally unknown.

Kieran Drew: Yeah, I mean, the toughest point probably was right at the start when I sort of knew that the career was okay. I wasn’t ever, I was never really that mad about it. Like I said, the pay was pretty good, so I never really questioned it, but unfortunately dentistry is not really transferable. So I used to feel really desperate, um, going into work. And I remember listening to podcasts of creative people thinking, Oh God, I’m in the wrong career, but there’s literally nothing you can do. And so stupidly, like a bad gambler, my, my plan was to double down. So I started specializing, I took a second job and I thought, look, if you can slog this out for 10, 15 years, at least you have enough money. If you save well and invest, you can at least try to retire early and do something else.

And what happened there was, so I started doing okay at dentistry and I remember listening to Seth Godin and he was talking about sunk cost bias. I’d never heard of it before. And I was like, well, here it is. You know, I’ve spent 10 years on a career, uh, over six figures in training. And I always thought because of that, you know, the first 10 years of your career should dictate the next 50. And when you think about that on paper, it’s like, how stupid is that? And, when I realized this, then it actually got a bit harder because every day I drove to work, I was like, you’re making a big mistake. You, you become aware of the opportunity cost of time. But the only good part was it was quite exciting to finally go, “you know what? Changing careers is always really overwhelming because you’re always focusing on things like expert status.” And I was like, “you know, let’s just start by exploring and curiosity. And you’re not here to make money. There’s no pressure on the result. Let’s just get good at a different skill.” And that was really fun. But over time, it’s a bit like having a stone in your shoe, Rob, where you think you could ignore it, but the more you walk, the more it annoys you. And I was coming to work and I was like, I really do feel like I’m in the wrong job here. 

My plan was to slowly transition. I go down to three days a week at dentistry, start building up the writing career and do that over sort of five years. I’m really risk averse or I used to be anyway. And what actually happened was, my boss texts me the day before I was meant to start a new job three days a week. And he texts me being like, oh, the clinic isn’t ready for another month. And we’ve been waiting nine months to work together. And I was, I remember I was so happy I was in this flat and I was running up and down fist pumping because I was like, yes, I don’t have to work for a month. I get to ride for a month. 

And when that sort of settled down, I was like, how screwed up is this that you’re celebrating so much to do something you love? Maybe this is actually a sign to back out. And I have never been so scared in my life, man. I called my mom, my dad, all my friends being like, “I think I’m going to quit my career here.” And it’s way too early. Everyone was just saying, go for it. At the end of the day, you can always go back. This isn’t a fatal decision.

And then I went to see the boss again. People say I was brave. I had a panic attack outside the practice. I remember I was walking past the door, went to knock, panicked, went to the alleyway, stood in the alleyway for like five minutes. And then when I actually came in, I spent half an hour talking to nurses about jobs I’ll never do and materials I’ll never use and all that. Eventually when I got into his office, I said, yeah, I’m done. And he said something similar where it’s like, oh, you’re throwing away 10 years of a career you’re only 10 years in. And I was like, precisely, there’s never a good time to quit. It’s now. Right. So yeah, a scary decision, but in retrospect went really well.

Kira Hug: I always wonder when people feel this change of heart, if you know, for you, did you love dentistry in the beginning or do you feel like you just, you started on a path that was really never something you loved or did something change for you over those 10 years?

Kieran Drew: We’re expected to pick a career before we can pick a car, right? So, I mean, I decided to do dentistry from about 16 years old. And at the time it felt like the right choice because I’m not sure what it’s like in America, but it’s dentist, lawyer, or doctor, you’ve made it. 

I come from a working class family and so no one’s really graduated from uni. So I was like, hell yeah, this is going to be it. And it felt like the golden ticket. And yes, when I was at uni, I was like, Ooh, it’s not actually that fun staring in someone’s mouth all day. And, I’ve got quite a bad neck and back and I was always sore. And it was like, you kind of ignore these little signals. Because we always used to joke, Oh, you know, we’ll have the Porsche and the golf play golf all day. And I don’t like cars that much. I don’t play golf. And so when I graduated, that’s where it started to sink home. It’s like golden handcuffs sort of thing. 

I was happy when the paychecks were coming in, just so I could invest and save. But it doesn’t really solve that Monday morning anxiety. Right? And I think the more I started reading about philosophy and what you’re doing with your life, it was, it was kind of like, I don’t know, it seemed to me, you can’t really do great work until you’re loving what you do. The more I realized that the more it just felt like time to throw it away and start a new career.

Rob Marsh: And then as you started exploring, playing around with it, when stuff isn’t working, you created a website—blogging—it wasn’t working. How did you stick with it knowing that there’s a positive business outcome here? You know, writing is one thing. Lots of people have books in their drawers that never get published or they’ve written bad poetry and never make any money. But how did you keep going through all of that?

Kieran Drew: Yeah. It’s easy to paint the story in retrospect. I think I’m going to try not do that. I’ll be a hundred percent honest. I think fear is a brilliant motivator. I really started hating my job that much that I was like, you have to keep trying. So that was pretty handy. The other side of it, I remember having a conversation with my girlfriend and I was like, look, this is going to suck. So let’s expect results in two years, not two months. And that was one metric I constantly ran through where I was like, okay, we’re at month 10, nothing’s working, but you said two years. And ironically, actually the 24th month was my first 10 K month, but it took me 13 months to make $1. So I think zooming out has always helped. 

It’s really easy just to say: have faith. I think that really helps people that much because having faith is having complete confidence that something will work. You don’t really get that until you’ve done it. But I used to just look at people who had done it and thought if they could do it, why can’t I? I always said for copywriting, if I could get paid 4k a month or something, I would be in heaven. So I don’t need to be this six, seven figure copywriter. And so it was always like, if they can get to that, surely processes out there somewhere. A combination of those things.

Kira Hug: I have one more question about dentistry before we fully move on, we’ll see if this comes out the way… you’ve worked with a lot of people, you’ve seen the inside of their mouth. What frustrates you the most about patients? Is it they just don’t floss no matter how many times you tell them? Why can’t they just adult and floss and be a good adult?

Rob Marsh: I think this is the second time we’ve mentioned flossing on the podcast in 400 episodes. 

Kira Hug: Are you sure we’ve talked about it before? 

Rob Marsh: I mentioned I floss every day on a previous episode. I am a daily flosser.

Kira Hug: I do now because of tiny habits. Anyway…

Kieran Drew: To be honest, from what I’ve heard, you Americans are much better at flossing than us Brits.

Rob Marsh: I don’t know that that’s true across the board though. I don’t know very many people who floss every day. One of my friends is a really good dentist. This is not a dentistry podcast, but one of my good friends is a dentist. And he says, if you look at the amount of floss used in America, it averages to like two feet per person per year, which means nobody’s really flossing.

Kieran Drew: Well, the flossing bit didn’t annoy me because I get why people don’t. I mean, it’s very hard to do the whole vitamin versus painkiller thing, right? People start flossing when they come to me, the gums are knackered. The thing that was actually quite tough as a dentist. And one of the main reasons I quit was because… well actually two… for one, no one is happy to see you. And that’s actually quite tough, like emotionally. You know, dentists have one of the highest suicide rates. Every single time you meet someone, you have to be very affable. If anything goes wrong, you’re to blame. And you know, the good part of that is I actually learned a lot about how to talk to people because I’ve never been that great at that. But when you meet 40 people a day,  you learn how to do that stuff. So that was pretty good, but it got very demotivating. I’m quite a positive guy. If you’re quite empathetic, you take on a lot of people’s problems. So I used to be exhausted every day. So that was quite tough. 

And the other side is perverse incentives. So I don’t know what it’s like in America, but the NHS system, you’re kind of rewarded to be on a hamster treadmill. And so you’re incentivized to not do the best work because your business will go bust. And, iif you’re in a broken incentive system over time, it begins to warp the way you think. One thing I’ve really liked about being online is that everyone’s happy to see you if you’re here to make people money and save them time. Right? I think that that’s brilliant and you can really set up win-wins for everyone. And so that’s what I’ve been doing since.

Kira Hug: All right. I’ll be nicer to my dentist next time.

Kieran Drew: They treat you better as well if you like that.

Rob Marsh: So Kieran, let’s talk about your business today and what it looks like. You know, I actually think, you know, 13 months to the first dollar is an amazing runway. It takes a lot of faith in yourself that you’re going to make it work. 24 months to get to 10K, but you’re doing better than that today from what I’ve seen online and from what other people have said about you. Our mutual friend, John Bijakovic talks highly of you. So tell us about your business today.

Kieran Drew: It’s been a bit of a pinch yourself moment, but this is my 24th month in monetizing. So in two weeks of the 31st of March. I launched my first product two years ago. That was a 5k launch. Uh, that’s probably the biggest rush I’ve ever had to find out that internet money is real after 13 months. That was incredible. Then it was a very scrappy 12 months where I just tried to do everything. I was doing ghostwriting, consulting, coaching… I had my digital product. I was building the email list. I was just trying to, you don’t really know what you like until you try it, right? So I was just saying yes to everything. Like a lot of people, I was a burned out shell after about nine months. But it got me to my first six figures within 12 months. And at that point I said, look, I’m struggling to get anywhere over 8K a month because I was so busy. I couldn’t think straight. And so I decided to cut away everything and just do two things. Which was writing—the more clients I was signing on, I was writing less  because a lot of it was coaching. I wasn’t doing my own writing. And Product building, because I think serving people at scale is really, really fun. I love leverage. I find it fascinating. So when I made that decision in January, 2023, I launched my flagship product because everyone was just like a swipe file in May. 

I was going into my second launch. I was going in expecting 30 K, which I would have been buzzing about. And it ended up going to 140K in four days. And so that was absolutely crazy. It felt like a massive fluke. And then I relaunched again in September and that was 180 K. Then we launched another product in November for black Friday, which is like the MRR, which is at maybe 4 or 5K a month now. And then I actually just refilmed my whole flagship product. I wasn’t that happy with it. So I completely rebuilt it and gave it away to my current customers for free. And that was 120 K. So actually in the past two years, we just crossed 750 K, which is again, crazy to me. Like absolutely wild.

Kira Hug: Yeah. Amazing. Okay. Can you talk about the product a little bit about what it is and just how you launched it? I mean, anyone listening might think, okay, I want to launch a product and have a 140 K launch. What do I need to do to get there? What had you done before that?

Kieran Drew: Yeah, I mean, so the, just a quick TLDR for the product is called high impact writing. Uh, it’s a social media writing product primarily. And the reason I built it was because actually it didn’t exist when I was writing. So I mentioned to you guys at the start, my sort of journey was I was going to be a copywriter and, but I ended up getting into the social media world and, um, I started to grow quite fast because when you learn the fundamentals of copy, it really works on social media. A lot of copywriters aren’t involved on social media and a lot of social media people are terrible writers. And I wanted to bridge that gap. So, um, thankfully that went quite well in terms of the launch stuff. So, I mean, when people say, how do you have a six figure launch? I always say the first answer is I spent the first year sucking at my first product. Cause you know, it was a 5k launch. I launched as quietly as I could. I was terrified to promote myself. And then throughout the year I was like, well, we’re going to have to learn how to sell this thing. So. What actually happened with high impact writing, uh, we’ve got the email list. So, um, probably at the time there were 15,000 subscribers on that, uh, maybe a little bit more. The biggest change was, uh, again, the concept from Seth Godin and about tension, because you only have four days to launch a product, maybe five, depending on how long you want to do it. And so what, um, I found fascinating is like an elastic band and the longer and harder that you pull. When you let go of that band, the bigger the snap at the end. So for high impact writing, I think maybe four months, four or five months before I started, uh, uh, marketing it. Didn’t know what it was called. Didn’t even know what I was building. I just said, um, on my emails, just at the top, by the way, a few people have been asking about my writing systems. Click it if you want to join the waiting list. And so gradually started building up a wait list as we were going. And I started to use that as ways to test ideas. So for example, if I were to write, um, a post on data driven growth, I’d say, if this is interesting to you, we click on this link and I’ll pop it on the waitlist. And I could see the bits that people loved. So I could use that for the sales page and a copy later on. Uh, and then all, all I began to do to build more attention, cause you can only talk about your product so much. So I’m a huge fan of building in public. So I was very inviting for people to be like, Hey, do you want to get involved in this? What can I help you with? How can I help you doing loads of free courses? I started telling the story of the build. So I was showing the slides, I’m showing the filming process, the bloopers, having a good laugh about it, saying that, you know, I’m losing all my hair building this product. And then the whole point I carry over is that like on the day of the launch, nobody was surprised it was coming. A lot of people were excited. They could see the effort, but in the value and, um, Uh, I guess we’ll say in terms of why it hits six figures before that I had released, um, six free courses, maybe eight. So I’m a huge fan of this like reciprocation, right? I thought let’s give everything we know for free. High impact writing is just the concise systems of everything we know. And that’s how I framed it. Uh, so when I actually came to launch day, you know, the, the mechanisms really it’s urgency and scarcity. So, um. Four days, I think the first one was five. I’m never going over four again. Launches are exhausting. They’re exhausting for you. They’re exhausting for the customer. Four days, I think it’s the sweet spot. Inside there, it became like, it’s just maths by the end of it, right. Or math for you guys, um, where attention to the page, certain conversion rate. And so, uh, I started sending more emails, uh, two to four emails per day, slightly segmented. So, you know, if you’re on the wait list, you got four, if you’re on my full list, you get two. Uh, the urgency was for the first launch was you can only buy it for these four days and then I’m closing it because I want to improve the product with people. And it’s not, I mean, people don’t give enough reasons when they, you know, oh, this is open close. It’s like, no, you have to like, people aren’t idiots. We’re all online here. It’s like, you have to give justifications. And so I just said, look, I want to work really closely with my customers, which actually built hype for the second launch because it was like, this guy’s taking this product really seriously. Um, and just tell me where you want to go with that. Cause I’ll just keep going.

Kira Hug: One thing I just want to dig into is you said you have, you had 15,000 subscribers on your list.

Kieran Drew: Yeah.

Kira Hug: So could you just touch on how you had built your list over time? I mean, from social media, I imagine. Yeah. But that’s, that’s a good list to go into a launch with. Yeah.

Kieran Drew: It’s, I’m grateful to have it, uh, 90 now, maybe a little bit less at the time. It was probably about 98% social media. So fully organic. Uh, the only downside to what I had done was I gave away, um, I know a lot of what we call giveaways. So if you guys are on social media at the moment, but, uh, they’re not great. And so like, it’s like, Oh, we give away stuff. You have to give me your email address to get the thing. And I was chasing the numbers, but what I didn’t realize was that the quality of lead that was quite poor. So my churn weight was really high. 

I’ve stopped doing that for like a year now. And the only other thing that I’ve changed, I tried a little bit of courage. So, you know, when someone joins another person’s list, you get recommended, Hey, join Kieran Drew’s and you pay two bucks per subscriber, even with the filters on spark loop, where it’s, you know, if they unsubscribe within two weeks, so they get the welcome sequence for that. The ROI was pretty poor. I think I spent two, three grand as an experiment. And I made two grand or a grand and a half, so probably some tweaks there. So I wasn’t a fan of co-regging. 

Then the other thing now that I’ve been doing is cross promotions. So I realized that you can only do so much work yourself, but there are a lot of people out there that are building really good bonds with their audience. And I just started reaching out and making the ask, right? A lot of us writers are introverted. I hate asking people for stuff, but I just started sending messages, starting with people around my level and just saying, Hey, do you want to promote my list? I’ll promote your list. And it’s been a really cool way to cross populate. And now I’m very grateful to say people like Chris Orzakowski have been helping out and John Morrow. And I’ve just been asking people if they wanted to swap lists and promote. So that’s pretty much all the growth.

Rob Marsh: So let’s talk about what you were doing on social media. I know this is a lot of what you teach in your course, so I’m not asking for a free course. But obviously, there’s some basics here that copywriters need to be aware of. You mentioned a lot of copywriters in social media are doing it wrong or not taking advantage, maybe, of the copywriting skills that we have. We’re taking pictures of our breakfasts and sharing those, all of that stuff. So what should we be doing, you know, or maybe I’m asking for, you know, what are your top two or three tips for what we need to be doing differently when we’re showing up on social media?

Kieran Drew: Funnily enough, it’s kind of like if we’re writing a sales page, uh, we all know that it’s about the customer, right? It’s exactly the same on social media. It’s like having a funnel where social media is the top of the funnel and you’re working people down. And so, Um, saying that we need to be talking about what’s in it for the reader and the way I kind of frame that we have three pillars of magnetic writing to attract and it’s advice, personality, and storytelling. And so I tried to kind of do a bit of a combination of this, depending on your platform. So, um, I’m primarily on X, uh, LinkedIn is pretty popular now as well. Um, on X, you probably post three times a day on LinkedIn. You’d post once is the only difference. And. What I suggest to people is trying to get this blend of, if you’re just giving advice, you’re competing with chat GPT. So there’s no kind of real reason for someone to actually like you. If you’re just personality, I, you know, you’re just talking about politics or whatever. Um, you’re interesting to read, but it doesn’t really build a strong brand. And if you’re just storytelling, there’s no utility. And so what I suggest to people is you think, well, what’s we’ve got one person in mind. We’re going to write to our, I say one true fan, our avatar. And what’s the most useful stuff we can give to help them win? Just giving advice that don’t go too in depth because it’s social media. That’s we don’t consume social media for crazy about depth, which is one big mistake. I see it particularly with new people that have got a lot of expertise. Um, what sort of advice can we give to help them win? How can we address their beliefs? You know, what are they seeing, thinking and feeling? And I think. big mistake we make, particularly me, uh, most of us hate being polarizing or we hedge our bets. And so, um, I always say to crank the dial a little bit. I don’t know. I’m not, don’t be like a dick for, sorry about my language, um, for engagement purposes, but you know, like if you’ve got a strong belief, there’s like a seven chances are when you’re writing on social media, unless you’re someone like Andrew Tate, you dial it down to a five, but actually what you want to do, you need that seven or eight because super, super noisy on social media. And so to slice through it and reach your fans, you have to pick certain messages that you can double down on, starting from a few areas. Um, so that’s very, very short, brief social media side. And like you said, no, uh, but pictures of your food and stuff. It’s not actually that bad if it’s the occasional bit of personality, if you really love cooking, but people are here to learn and be inspired. So.

Rob Marsh: So just to bring this home, can you give us some examples of the way you crank up the dial in your posts so that you’re getting that kind of attention?

Kieran Drew: Yeah. It depends on who your enemy is. So my enemies evolved over time. I used to be very anti 9 to 5. And so my most viral tweets have been insulting the boss. I could probably actually have a quick look at one here. But yeah, just looking at the bosses saying stuff like no boss has ever said I care about my workers, creativity, health and happiness, which is why you need to employ yourself. People love this sort of stuff where you’re throwing stones at other people. Again, similar with like sales pages. And these days I am more kind of focused on peace of mind, clarity. I think the thing that’s helped me most as a writer is being able to think straight. And so I actually ironically like to throw a lot of stones at social media and, you know, like constantly scrolling and all that sort of stuff. So. Um, getting clear on an enemy and just trying to articulate yourself in what I call sticky statements. So using stuff like alliteration, rhythm and rhyme juxtaposition, uh, these are quite nice writing tools, just kind of condensing your best ideas into presentation. That’s the shorter form stuff. 

And then the longer form stuff would be more the value-based, you know, the steps, the tricks, the blueprints. And, um, one thing that. One thing that’s good for your audience copywriters is that 90% of people in social media have no results. They want to build the audience and have the product, but they haven’t got anything to talk about. And so whenever I talk to someone new that ‘s experienced, like I was just chatting to David Deutsch, he’s been on X for a little while now as well. And it was like, hey, you’ve got so much reputation here to tap into. You have to be your own cheerleader. And so in the hooks, the framing, I say like, you have to talk about yourself as much as you can without coming across as like, hey, look at me. So if you’re comfortable with mentioning revenue numbers, but even just talking about like, hey, I was working with a client instead of it being here are seven random copywriting tips. It’s like, you know, I’ve been working with 67 clients over the past five years. Here are my seven favorite tips. Every single person who reads that now knows that you’re the real deal. So trying to identify your skip the lines as you’re writing, it’s people don’t trust you until you prove who you are. So it’s a great way to put your foot in the door.

Kira Hug: Do you have additional ideas to help us, you know, really speak to our experience and expertise? Cause I agree. I think that’s just, I mean, I know I’ve struggled with that where I’m like, I don’t mention how many clients I’ve worked with. I just, I know it’s important, but I just, it’s a struggle. Um, yeah. Other strategies.

Kieran Drew: Yeah. I mean, like, uh, unfortunately the part about social media is it comes with a certain level of cringe. And you have to decide that level and that’s okay for you. So I think the ultimate one or the big discussion is, are you happy to share revenue numbers? Because unfortunately we’re all just monkeys with mobile phones, right? And people pay attention to money the most, but if you’re not, you can frame it in different ways. I have a number of clients even talking about projects that you’re working on. So, you know, if you were to say that you were building out a 2020 email sequence, all of these things are kind of what most people aren’t doing. So just trying to frame your projects and the way you’ve been working or how long you’ve been a copywriter, or the fact that you guys have almost 300 episodes or 300 or more episodes of all of these things, are little reputation builders. And then I have to remind myself sometimes to be my own cheerleader because I’m like, God, I really don’t want to talk about myself here, but just having a couple of words completely changes the framing of what you say. And having that personal perspective, you know, the problem on social media is it’s full of everyone telling other people what to do. 

But if you’re talking from like, Hey, this is what I did. So you’re swapping all of your how to’s to how I’s or being a guide instead of a guru, it’s really welcoming. And. The way I tried to frame it for people is if you post a hundred things on social media that are just platitudes and shouting from a podium versus a hundred posts that are like, here’s what I’m learning, doing, and thinking. The second person is going to have a hundred times better relationship with that audience. So even if they don’t grow as fast and that’s really important to know, uh, I’ve smoked the digital dopamine crack pipe way too much. When, when I started, when I realized I could say certain things, uh, to go viral, I was writing stuff, um, like. eight habits you must do before 8am and going viral. And then, uh, I, I certainly realized that, you know, reputation is much more important than reach. And so how you grow your audience is more important than how fast. So hopefully there are a few ideas there for you.

Kira Hug: Well I was writing a post for LinkedIn and now I think I have to redo it because and pull in my own experience into that post. So it doesn’t feel like it’s just like preachy. So I think that’s, that’s really good advice.

Rob Marsh: So Kieran, there’s a lot of stuff that I’d love to dive into on your process and how you create the content. But first, I want to ask about engagement. Because it’s one thing to post, and then there’s a whole other thing around, do you comment? Do you engage with people in direct messaging, whether it’s on LinkedIn or Twitter or wherever? How do you approach that side of it? If you have a post that goes viral, you could spend all day responding to comments.

Kieran Drew: Yeah. I was smiling because I hate this stuff.

Rob Marsh: So do I, this is why I have struggled so much, especially with Twitter or X..

Kieran Drew: I mean everything has a cost and being, I have before, before I started on social media, I took a five year break from all social media. I thought it’s the most shallow, toxic, biggest problem that we have in society to cause people to think poorly. So it was hell, hell coming back to it. Um, the only way I could do it at the start, uh, Rob was, um, a basic habit forming here is let’s try and make it enjoyable. So I used to put my favorite music on. I put a timer on for 20 minutes, twice a day, one in my lunch break at work, one after work. So I’m not wasting my creative energy. It didn’t feel like I’m like you said, cause you could do it all day. And I have people who have done it all day and now they’re like, Oh my God, no one’s listening to me because I haven’t actually got anything of substance to talk about. So time blocking… favorite music. 

The big mistake people make on social media is like they’ve rehashed comments. So they say the same thing as the poster doesn’t do anyone any value. Um, and, or the other is you comment on big accounts because of their size, not because of their content and interesting people are not on boring posts. And the whole point in commenting on other people’s stuff is to go find more interesting people. And so my rules are, I don’t reply to anyone that I don’t like, no matter how popular they are. That made it a lot more fun because actually there are so many interesting people out there. And if you’re not judging by audience size, you begin to build quite a cool network. Uh, number two is kind of having a list of people. So if you’re trying to comment on a hundred people’s stuff, you’re like praying to form a relationship, but it’s kind of less is more. So if you have 10 people that you really enjoy talking to… I just use bookmarks. So I open bookmarks, 10 people appear, I comment on their top post. I move on. Less is more to build that bond. 

And again, I guess it comes with a bit of reps, but have fun in the comments. For some reason, people think that you have to comment like a robot, but most of my comments have just been having a laugh and, um, that’s helped a lot. to get in the foot of like quite bigger accounts because they’re like, Oh, this guy’s just, just joking around or, you know, letting your personality come through. So, because one thing I’m very fond of is that you think you’re just talking to one person, but everyone sees that comment. And so if you’re saying some cringe stuff or a lot of my friends use VAs for this, like I just started engaging on LinkedIn last week. I haven’t engaged on LinkedIn yet. I’ve just been posting from X and, uh, I started looking at the replies and I was like, wow. Uh, there are a lot of people using VAs or AI for this and you could smell it a million miles off. Um, I think personally having a little bit of time set aside each day when you, when you’re a little bit tired, but not exhausted. So you don’t suck it up a little bit. Uh, because once you do get that initial momentum, you don’t have to do it as much. Uh, for example, I took like four months off engaging. I was only doing two minutes a day, uh, when I was building my products and stuff. So, um, like I said, there’s a cost to it, but. The social media audience stuff is really, really powerful for a long-term game.

Kira Hug: How do you structure your days beyond spending some of the time, you know, the downtime on social media? How else do you structure your days?

Kieran Drew: Yeah. I’m a big fan of building around your energy. And so. Uh, I wake up at like six in the morning. That’s a habit from, um, or about five, sorry, from trying to write before the nine to five. Uh, and then what I’ll do is I’ll, I love deep work sessions. So 90 minute blocks for writing. And I’ll do two 90 minute blocks in the morning with like a 20 minute walk in between. And during these sort of deep work sessions, um, I don’t go on social media. That’s a big one. Uh, the problem with being a social media entrepreneur is that you’re constantly connected. So I actually don’t go on social media for the first eight hours of my day. No social media, no emails, no client calls until three, 4 PM. So I’ll do, uh, the two work blocks in the morning, go train, have a bit of lunch, do another 90 minute work block, uh, have a little break and then do another 90 minute work block. And in these work blocks, the work is getting less creatively intense. So the first three hours would be your emails, your content, whatever, um, writing I need to do. And then the afternoons I do my lower leverage work. And like I said, I only quite strict about my time. So I only have, uh, no more than four client calls a month or cause in general. Um, uh, I think that’s usually about one call per week. And, um, I spend a lot of time walking and reading, uh, because I remember when I quit, uh, finally quit my nine to five and I was like, wow, you’re going to spend so long writing. You can only write for like four hours, right? Uh, good writing. And so I realized that a lot of it was actually trying to look after yourself outside of writing, because the better you think, the better you write. So I generally walk for 90 minutes a day. Uh, that’s the best time for ideas. And I like to read for about two, three hours a day as well. So. It sounds really boring, but I remember when I was a dentist, I was like, if I could drink tea, write and read books all day, like take me to heaven. That’s the goal.

Kira Hug: Yeah. That’s the dream for people who listen to this podcast. Yeah, for sure. Um, when you say client calls, can you be more specific? Like, are you talking about consulting calls? You’re working with four clients per month and consulting or something?

Kieran Drew: Yeah. Yeah. So a bit of a blend. So I actually only have one client for consulting now, which is just one call per month. Um, that’s just discussing his writing and a bit of his business strategy, mainly around leverage stuff. I think a lot of my friends, they sort of capped out about 20, 30 K a month. And I was always stuck at like the two K a month. And I mean, that leverage long-term play is like building the products, building the automations, the backend of convert kit, helping out with that. The other calls are at scale. So like I have my MRR, that’s a monthly call, um, where people come on Q and a and, uh, critiquing content. I mentioned before that, um, I really liked the service at scale and helping your audience on mass. And that’s something that I made quite early as a constraint. It was, can we do the most high leverage stuff? So the calls are generally group webinars, um, podcasts or another one. So, but, but otherwise. I sound like a diva, but you know, going from 40 patients a day to being able to have like no nothing in a day. Wow. And even if I have one call at 4 PM, it shouldn’t, but if I wake up in the morning and I know I have a free day, like it just feels great. So I just thought, well, why aren’t we just doing this? Even if it means you make less money in the short run, all that time, you can spend building product and stuff. Uh, it’s helping out now. So.

Rob Marsh: So I’m curious about your content creation process and how you think about that. A few weeks ago, we interviewed a woman on the podcast, Amanda Goetz, who creates a month’s worth of content in two days. And then, you know, she’s working on other stuff. And when I say content, I’m talking about her social media content. Then she’s working on course’s… that kind of stuff. What do you do to create your content? Are you creating it all up front and scheduling it to go live? Like walk us through that, how much time you spend on that and your thought processes. How far ahead are you, you know, as you’re thinking through, okay, what am I posting in April? You know, we’re recording this towards the beginning of March, but you know, how far out are you, you know, as you, as you start to create this stuff?

Kieran Drew: I’m a huge fan of batching. I think the hardest part about social media is feeling like you’re on a treadmill. And so I’m always at least a week ahead with my content. Now I’ll tell you what I’m doing, but it’s different from what I advise people starting out. But I’ll explain why I started the newsletter first. So the reason being that I think the problem with social media content is people are thinking quantity is the answer, right? Just volume, volume, volume, volume. And so they don’t put that much time into it. And the problem with that is chat GPT can now do that. And I think if we don’t know it now, I think in two years time, the people that are focused on quantity are going to have a lot of problems. 

So I like to do the newsletter first, because if I can spend, I just usually send one weekly newsletter, about 1500 words. But if I can spend 10 hours on that, I can get a full week’s worth of content. That’s really refined, really concise, and, you know, distribute that as social media content. And that takes an extra half an hour to turn it into the posts for the week ahead. Um, most people probably shouldn’t be spending 10 hours on a newsletter. And so if you’re just getting started on social media, so what I always say is like, let’s batch write the process. So for me, it’s always first drafts, Monday, second drafts, Tuesday, third drafts and scheduling on a Wednesday. Um, but I would just suggest people doing that with social media content, a couple of long form pieces and the short form there as well. You kind of, for me, I mean, I’ve got, I’ve probably got about 200 posts scheduled out already because what we also do is if anything performs well. My VA will actually schedule that again in four to six months time automatically. And she also sends it to me and says, Hey, you know, this post did well. And so I’ll quickly turn it into five more posts that removes a lot of mental friction. Instead of me going, what am I writing about? If so, if I see a post that says, Oh, this one on systems did well, I might write five different posts about what I like about systems, how I built my first systems, my commercial automations, and we’ll go schedule that out over a month or two. The reason why I say this is because, um, what happens now with my social media stuff is that I don’t have to, it’s just happening. It’s in terms of time, honestly, it’s probably about half an hour a week. And ironically in that week, I get more followers than I get in my entire first year. So it’s that compounding game.

Rob Marsh: Yeah. That’s crazy.

Kieran Drew: So it’s all like compounding, right? So it all kind of adds up slowly, but it’s that initial friction is horrible.

Rob Marsh: Another question related to this, what are the tools that you’re using as you schedule it that, you know, help you do this better?

Kieran Drew: Yeah, sure. So I’ll kind of run you through the funnel, I guess, and talk through the software if that helps. So I post on X and LinkedIn with hype theory. And we also screenshot that with a tweet, pick and put it on Instagram. And when I say we, all I do is write on a notion. So, um, originally when, when I, when I started, I was doing my writing on Google docs and I was replying to emails and Gmail and I was doing all like, it was, it was absolutely chaos. And so what I did was I built my full business on notion. So the only thing I use is notion and my VA and my girlfriend, they’re sort of trained to take everything away from that. So I write something on Notion. We use HypeFury to schedule that out. So my posts, I’m never writing live. My stuff is just ticking away in the background. When the post gets to like 200 likes, HypeFury will auto plug my newsletter landing page, usually with a lead magnet. So someone will sign up with ConvertKit. Beehive is another popular choice, particularly for beginners. I like ConvertKit because of the business side of things. With ConvertKit, they’ll get a nine day welcome sequence, pitching the product and just giving value and pointing towards my favorite podcast episodes.  I use Thrivecart for the product. If they do buy with Thrivecart, there’s two upsells, my old product, which is the swipe file. And then my MRR product, which is a bit more of like breaking down copywriting with content. If they purchase any of them. There’s 30 days of emails scheduled afterwards. Again, just providing value, checking in how are things? And so the bit that really excites me now is that a thirty second tweet is potentially 20, 30 hours of value plus  thousands of dollars in LTV. And that’s the one reason that we’re at 750 K when it’s just me and my girlfriend and VA doing a couple hours a week, because the robots are doing all the work. And I just think people don’t spend enough time on process. It’s so easy to get into that trap of busy work when what I did a long time ago was setting aside three hours a week for this stuff. And so I looked at everything I was doing and just kept asking,  can we automate, can we delegate, can we eliminate or can we systemize? And so everything has SOPs, everything has routine and  it’s just got rid of so much friction,  which I think is the big problem.

Kira Hug: So you’re kind of going more, you’re not going all in on X cause you’re on LinkedIn as well, but like, how do you, how do you pay attention to those platforms so that you can make smart decisions moving forward as algorithms change and just products change? Like, are you evaluating them on a regular basis to see if it’s worth sticking around?

Kieran Drew: Yeah, I am actually. team not paying to the algorithms so much. Uh, I used to a lot. It’s, it’s, it’s, it’s kind of like outsourcing your happiness. Um, and you’re at the mercy of, of changes, right? These fluctuations and trends kind of come and go the algorithm ebbs and flows. And the one thing that doesn’t change is people. And so that’s why I’ve always been focused on good writing. So I’m actually. moving away from the whole social media is the main focus. Um, the way that I’m looking at it now is that the email is the product. If you can build a very good newsletter, have a system to redistribute it. Um, and then you have to have faith that quality shines through because it’s quite easy to get sucked into that chasing the algorithm game. And what happens is there’s a concept I’ve been thinking about, about incentive drags, where if you, if you’re constantly chasing the algorithm, Your ideas begin to sound like everyone else’s. So if you go on LinkedIn now, there’s like a million LinkedIn people, LinkedIn experts selling LinkedIn. That’s incentive track. And I actually, I looked at my, uh, my first blog posts from 2020 to do the whole meme of see how much your writing sucked. And it was a big kick in the teeth because I was like, your writing suck, but your ideas were really good. And I was looking at my social media content and I was like, This has gone wrong somewhere and it was because of the algorithm. And so I’ve actually stopped looking at that stuff. I think you just have to have faith over time. So there’s still, but the packaging is kind of second nature for me. You need a good hook. Um, but otherwise, yeah, I try not to pay attention to it.

Rob Marsh: So what else are you building? Uh, what’s, what’s coming next as you work on, you know, move away from, you know, the social media more into your email. Are you building additional products? You know, what, what are you working on?

Kieran Drew: Yeah, so we just finished launching high impact writing, but I really like over delivery. I just think it’s a lot of fun to do for people. So for the next month, I’m building out more stuff for the course. Uh, so I want to build a summary version, like a 40 minute version of the course, uh, maybe make it a podcast version, do loads of overshort of the writing sessions. I just want people to have this thing where when they pay me money, they’re like, holy shit, this is, this is the real deal. We then got the MRR, which at the moment, the churn isn’t too good. So it’s 21%. I’ve been too busy to try to address that. So I need to slow down and actually work out what, what I’m doing wrong there. After that may, um, I wanted to build what people have been screaming out for me in terms of my customers, which is the email version of the course. Uh, there’s just been a very good response about the way I like to write. Um, and I did again. I’ve taken so many email courses and it’s all pieced together. And like, I learned most of my stuff from copywriters, who are brilliant email storytellers, but a lot of entrepreneurs, especially social media stuff, they don’t do it that well. So I was thinking about building out high impact emails, which, you know, carry on the product repertoire once that’s done. And this is the bit I’m really excited for. I’m just obsessed with doing one thing. Well, and I think if I look back at the journey, it’s just been a series of trying to shake off the baggage. And so once we’ve got two products and an MRR, um, I just want to write the newsletter. I want to see what happens when you put 30 hours into a piece instead of 10. Uh, there’s a, there’s a brilliant post, um, on Michael, Michael Simmons called the blockbuster principle. I don’t know if you guys have seen it. Um, it’s a great read. It’s just, it’s, it’s this, I think for a prediction for the internet, there is a swelling sea of increasing noise and. Whilst the information is becoming infinite, attention has stayed the same, right? We’ve only got the same, however many hours you actually go on your phone. I think in three to five years, there’s going to be a big crisis of quality. And I want to make sure I’m on the right side of that. I want to be. Um, and so I just want to write my newsletter. I want to do 34 hours, 30, 40 hours, just on the newsletter and social media content, driving traffic to it. Uh, because. I would love to write books and stuff. And I think this will be the next step where it’s just trying to find your ideas. I don’t know what I’d write about, but it’s kind of hard to tell when you’re just writing about writing and marketing. I want to get into more of the philosophy side, the stuff that interested me in the first place.

Kira Hug: And when you say 10 hours, spending 10 hours on your newsletter and you want to increase it to 30 hours, can you just break that down real quick for me? Cause I think if I spend four or six hours, I’m like, that’s a lot of time. So what are you doing with 30 hours?

Kieran Drew: Yeah, well, I don’t know what I’ll do with 30 right now.

Kira Hug: Or let’s say the 10 hours specifically. Yeah.

Kieran Drew: Yeah. So 10 hours, um, for one, I like, I love editing. I’m not a great writer. Uh, I’m not probably a great editor, but it’s the other thing that I like, like trying to come up with really concise, entertaining ways to say it. Um, for me, one of my metrics or one of the reasons I want people to read, uh, is frameworks. So inside that sort of 10 hours, I’m trying to think of frameworks or cool ways to present ideas that they haven’t heard before. Um, because, you know, good content is like novelty. Right. And unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, I don’t really read any like trends or timely content, which is like a sin, uh, for the most part, but I figured, well, if you’re not doing that, can you start to frame timeless concepts in new ways? So I spent an hour or two sort of again, thinking about that, usually walking. And then the actual writing, drafting, redrafting process, and then turning it into social media content at the end. So I say 10 hours. It probably would be more like between six to 10. Uh, sometimes they go into like 2000 words. And, uh, one of my rulers is you have to delete 33%, one third rule. And that’s quite fun as well, because it really makes you kill your darlings. Um, so yeah, when it comes to 30 hours, I don’t know what that would look like. I think either it would be two emails per week for one. Or really well researched. Uh, because my, my big mistake, and I think a lot of people’s mistakes with this stuff is clarity. You, you think, you know, that the reader knows what you mean, but that curse of knowledge, that gap is, is a killer. Right. And I think spending more time on stuff would help you give more examples, more metaphors, more analogies, try to change how people think a bit more. So.

Rob Marsh: Kieran, you mentioned that you read three hours a day. This is kind of maybe a two or a three part question, but what do you spend your time reading? What are your two or three highest recommended books? And what are you reading today? Like, what is the book today?

Kieran Drew: OK. So what was the first part again?

Rob Marsh: So what, well, what kinds of books are you typically reading? You know, what, what are the categories?

Kieran Drew: So I split this into three. The only way I can read three hours a day is to treat it like TV. I flick through books quite a bit. So I tried to have one book, which is practical, which is usually business or copywriting or marketing. Once I start getting bored there, I move more into  the philosophy mindset sort of stuff. So I’ll go through the ones I’m reading in a moment. And then the third book is always my favorite. And that’s fantasy. I am a sucker for dragons and stuff. So I’ve been reading it since I was like six. It’s just very nostalgic for me.

So that’s how I finish my day. It’s like a three hour thing. It’s first book for an hour, second book, and then the third book at the end.

Top two or three books? For your audience, Breakthrough Advertising. Maybe not only if you’re a complete beginner, but my God, every time I read that book, I’m like, this is it. This is everything you need for writing, marketing, and creating content online. I find it very, very insightful. 

The book that probably changed my life the most, I should have a few. There’s one called The Almanack of Naval Ravakan. He’s the guy that is all about ideas. That’s all I’ve been doing. I listened to him every three months. I just do what he says. It works. I’m a huge fan of Charlie Munger.

Rob Marsh: I’ll break in to mention Naval’s book—it’s like $2 on Kindle. Everybody should own that book. Even if you’re only going to read three or four lines in it today, you almost come away with something every single time.

Kieran Drew: Yeah. It’s, for me, it’s word for word, the most insights per book, per page. So that’s really good. Like I was saying,  Poor Charlie’s Almanack, a lot of almanacs, but that’s Charlie Munger’s book. I find that really insightful as well. And then you asked what I was reading at the moment. So I’m reading The Status Game by Will Store. So I’ve got that here. I find evolutionary psychology really interesting. I think if you could understand where we’ve come from, it makes a lot of stuff helpful. Now I’m reading Mastery by Robert Greene. Which again, I love Robert Greene. It just took me a year to finish The Laws of Human Nature. Like it’s just as big storytelling. And then I’m reading, for the second time, Perennial Seller by Ryan Holiday. Strangely, the first time I read it, I didn’t get it. I didn’t understand the point about timeless content and building stuff that lasts forever. But now that I’ve spent two years building and building, it’s like play longer term games. And so I’m reading it and I’m highlighting everything.

Rob Marsh: Mastery and Perennial Seller are both among my favorites. I love both of those books. They’re fantastic. I agree. Perennial Seller, I actually shared this recently on LinkedIn, but this is one of those books that’s not about copywriting, that’s absolutely about copywriting, timeless content, and creating an offer that stands the test of time, which is what we’re all trying to do with copy.

Kieran Drew: It really is on point with me because I found a thread from James Clear. Obviously he writes about habits usually, but there was a thread in 2020, which was about his decade long business. One of his tweets, it was just two lines, and it was like: Only create timeless content. The runway is longer for success. And I was like, damn, the problem is that most people keep getting told you have to write about timely stuff, be on topic and be on trends and which works  in the instant, the first instance, but where are you in 10 years? And I think I would rather make less money or get less attention if it meant I was building a body of work that I’ve changed about two posts a week for three years. So I would love to do something like that, but you can’t play both games.

Kira Hug: Amazing. Well, you’ve given me a lot to think about in terms of the content I’m creating and thinking about creating. So thank you so much for giving us your time and sharing so openly with us. We really appreciate it.

Rob Marsh: If people have been listening, they’re like, I got to get into Kieran’s world… where do they go to find you on Twitter… or what you might be posting on LinkedIn… find your course… all the things.

Kieran Drew: Yeah, kierandrew.com. That’s where I’ve got my newsletter sign up and then you’ll find your way around or it’s Kieran Drew—that’s my LinkedIn as well, but definitely my Twitter (X). Primarily on X or my newsletter.

Rob Marsh: Fantastic. Thank you so much for your time.

That’s the end of our interview with Kieran Drew. If you’re like Kira and me, you’re probably buzzing with a bunch of ideas that you want to try out in your own business or on your social media. Lots of things that Kieran shared have me excited. I want to add just a couple of thoughts to our conversation, as I always do, so you’ve got a couple more things to think about as you apply these ideas in your own business. 

I want to revisit The Blockbuster Principle that Kieran mentioned. You can find an article on LinkedIn by Michael Simmons, where he outlines The Blockbuster Principle. We will link to that in the show notes, but it’s really built on the idea that Chris Anderson came up with maybe 15, 18 years ago. And that’s the long tail and the head. And the idea is that  towards the head, more people see that content and it’s more popular, makes more money, but that there’s this amazing long tail and people find the content that resonates with them as you move down the tail. And there’s an audience for all of that. And What Michael Simmons argues with the blockbuster principle is that that’s not really the case, that the head, this glut of the most popular, the biggest items, the things that people find is getting bigger and the tail is actually getting smaller. 

And when Kieran mentioned the information is trending to infinite, but attention is staying the same. What that means is if you’re not creating content that’s in the head, that’s some of the most popular that people are sharing and resonating with, nobody’s going to see it. It will get lost. And another part of the blockbuster principle is that it lasts. Kieran mentioned Perennial Seller, the book, which is really about the idea of creating content that lasts forever, whether that’s literature or music or whatever. But you need to be shooting for creating amazing content that lives in the head. And that is not easy to do.

Michael Simmons talks about a little bit how to do that in that article. And like I said, I will link to that in the show notes. So look for that. 

Kieran also mentioned that when we were talking about how he launched and was willing to leave a sure thing to move out of dentistry and into copywriting, he talked a little bit about fear being a motivator and how it keeps you trying. I love that Kieran set a realistic deadline for his business, he needed a result within two years. So 24 months out, if he keeps failing, maybe he goes back to dentistry, maybe he tries something different. And it literally took him 24 months to get to $10,000, which is a very long time, 13 months to make that very first dollar. Now, most people who may be listening to the podcast, maybe this is you… if we’re starting a copywriting business, most of us don’t have 13 months to make a single dollar. And we don’t have two years to get to the point where we’ve built a business that’s actually working for us. So sometimes it has to happen faster, or sometimes you have to hang on to that permanent job, that full-time job as you build on the side in order to create something that will work. Kieran obviously had this opportunity where he had some money saved and he could make it work. But if you are motivated by fear, that often gets you going and will help you find that success, maybe a little bit faster than Kieran did.

Another thing to keep in mind is Kieran is building products and wasn’t working with as many clients. And it’s often easier because you’re selling your service, you’re selling your time in a client facing business to find those clients more quickly, to get a decent pipeline running, whether you’re out there pitching, you’re starting to attract clients back to you, getting referrals… it generally can happen a lot faster than that 24 months that Kieran talked about. But if you’re building products, 24 months is not an unrealistic timeline. Even Kira and I, when we launched The Copywriter Club, it was six months before we launched our very first product and made any money. And before that, there was a lot of investment in time and energy and even money in the podcast and in the Facebook group and all of that stuff. And of course, that entire process is what builds confidence. As Kieran mentioned, you probably don’t start with that confidence, but it does grow as you build, as you try things, as you gain experience, you become more confident and able to deliver on whatever it is that you’re trying to create. 

Kieran also talked a little bit about building around your energy. He mentioned waking up early. I think he said six o’clock, doing two 90 minute blocks of writing time in the morning, two 90 minute blocks of writing time in the afternoon, using his morning for those high leverage activities and the afternoon for maybe more lower leverage activities. He’s doing deep work. And so he’s turning off social media for the first eight hours of his day. All of this is amazing.

This actually reminds me of our interview with Amanda Goetz a little while ago where she talked about her processes of getting things done, a very similar process. They’re similar, but they’re very different in how they’re spending their time and how they’re executing. And I guess really my point here isn’t: hey, you need to adopt Kieran’s process or you need to adopt Amanda’s process. It’s you need to adopt your process. You need to figure out what works for you. And I’ve said in the past, you know, I don’t find that my best writing happens early in the morning. and oftentimes it takes me a little bit of time to get up and running. Sometimes I hit that deep work or that flow state in the afternoon and I can keep going well into the evening. Whatever works for you, find the process and then block out time for it, make it work. 

So if you have to work around kids, then work around the kids, work at night, or if you’re working around a full-time job, then do that, but find the process that works for you so that you’re not reinventing your schedule every single week. And I think this is a challenge for many of us. 

Finally, just want to mention, it’s sort of a theme of a couple of the last few episodes… Kieran talked about rebuilding a version of his course and shaking off the baggage and creating new elements that are intended to wow his buyers and his customers so that he gets the reaction, “holy crap, this stuff is good, right?” This is all about engineering the client experience. We talked about this a bit last week and the week before with Jason Friedman went really deep on this. But again, engineering this customer experience, the client experience that we’re creating for the people that we work with is the kind of thing that pays off long-term with additional referrals, additional opportunities to work, attracting new clients to our business. So a little bit of a theme that I’m seeing over the last couple of episodes and maybe that’s a sign that I need to be working on my client experience Maybe you’re feeling the same thing. 

I want to thank Kieran Drew for joining us to chat about growing a social media presence, his newsletter, his business, and so much more. You can find Kieran on Twitter at It’s Kieran Drew. And that’s K-I-E-R-A-N-D-R-E-W. Or visit his website, kierandrew.com. 

 

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 was composed by copywriter and songwriter David Muntner. 

If you’ve enjoyed what you’ve heard, please leave us a review. Let us know what you think, or email us and tell us what you think, whether you’ve got an idea that you want to implement in your own business, or maybe you want to share this episode with somebody else that you know that it might help out. 

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