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Eggs 449: Kind Copywriting (That Sells) with Cath Reohorn · EGGS! The Podcast

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1:41
Hey everybody, welcome back to Eggs the podcast today.
1:43
Special guest is Cath Reohorn from kind copy calling in from
1:47
jolly old London. How are you Cath?
1:49
God, I hope I'm not in London. I'm in Wales.
1:51
I'm good, I'm good. That's all the same you.
1:55
Know honestly conceptually London is like so far away from
2:00
where I live. I live in properly in the sticks
2:02
on a beach in Wales. London's far too crowded for me,
2:06
but I'm in the UK. Nice to meet you again.
2:09
Yeah, absolutely. Well, Kath, let's kind of kick
2:11
this thing off from the very beginning for people who don't
2:13
know who you are or what you do over at Kind Copy.
2:15
Let's talk a little bit about how you got to where you are
2:18
today and what and what you do all.
2:19
Right, cool well my background's actually in psychology.
2:21
I was a psychology lecturer for 12 years and worked in schools
2:26
and colleges with basically kids who wanted to learn how to get
2:32
in touch with their emotions and feel their way through life,
2:37
right. So it's an academic position.
2:39
I got made redundant twice and I just, I was just over it.
2:43
I just thought this is absolutely absurd that my career
2:47
can be taken away. And at the time I left teaching,
2:51
I left academia and I became self-employed.
2:53
At the time I was a personal trainer.
2:55
And then COVID hit and I took my business online and I thought,
3:00
wow, I have got absolutely none of the skills I need to do this
3:05
job. Literally zero.
3:07
I couldn't even Google a good question.
3:09
So I needed to learn about copywriting.
3:11
I needed to learn about marketing, I needed to learn
3:13
about sales. And on the gym floor, you just
3:17
walked up to people and you were like, hey bro, do you want to
3:19
come and train with me? And it was always a yes, it was
3:22
easy. But online, standing out and
3:24
developing the skills to actually connect with people and
3:27
get them to trust you when you're a total stranger.
3:31
Zero. None of those skills.
3:32
So I learned them for myself initially.
3:36
Never intended that to be my job, never intended to do that
3:40
for anybody else. And I discovered that I'm
3:45
actually way better at doing this for other people than I am
3:48
at coaching them myself. And so that's sort of how kind
3:52
Cal copy came about. And at the time I was working in
3:56
the fitness industry and there was a ton of like really nasty
4:01
marketing. A lot of the marketing in the
4:03
fitness industry is quite knife twisty and cruel.
4:08
And I just thought, why on earth are we speaking to people like
4:11
they're a bunch of degenerates? That's not the way to treat
4:14
people at all. So Kind Copy was born so that we
4:17
can take people who are already in a state of readiness to
4:20
change and connect with them in a kind and dignified and hopeful
4:25
and powerful way so that you don't speak to them like a bunch
4:29
of DeGeneres. And I love that.
4:32
Well, and I think your psychology background is really
4:34
unique too, because I think it gives you the opportunity to be
4:37
empathetic. And I've worked with a really
4:39
broad range of people who are in control of copy over my life in
4:43
agency and out of agency. Everyone from I'm in college and
4:47
they just asked me if I would do the writing, you know, to people
4:50
who this is their real life career, right?
4:52
And they've spent their whole life trying to be this.
4:54
And they're English majors and they're literary, literary
4:56
experts and all these kinds of things, right?
4:58
So there's a really broad spectrum in copywriting.
5:00
And I think sometimes copywriters sort of get put down
5:03
a little bit. Like, you know, and I see this
5:04
as a designer as well, which is, you know, especially now in
5:07
modern days with AI and things like that, it's like, you know,
5:10
what is the purpose of even having that?
5:11
You know, I can copy and paste or my mom writes good copy or,
5:14
you know, like whatever. So it's like people don't really
5:16
understand what goes into it. And I think that your background
5:20
in psychology is unique among copywriters that I've met.
5:23
But having that, I'm sure gives you a little bit of, you know,
5:26
sort of a maybe a superpower around empathy and being able to
5:29
actually hear people's story and then act on it versus coming
5:33
from the, you know, coming with the idea upfront, which, you
5:36
know, I think a lot of people do, which is I don't need to
5:39
hear what you say. I know how to sell your thing
5:41
versus, you know, maybe with having a psychology background
5:44
you're maybe more trained for. I can listen to what you have to
5:47
say and let me reflect back what you're saying, you know, and
5:50
that, and I think that that, I mean, it's a kind of a nuanced
5:52
shift, but I wonder if you've noticed that as being something
5:54
that helps you in your career. Million percent, absolutely.
5:57
I think the most important thing for any sales process, no matter
6:00
what vertical you're in, is can I make this person feel safe
6:05
enough to even hear me in the 1st place.
6:08
And I think that was missing certainly in the fitness
6:11
industry, but in lots of industries where you need
6:14
someone to be collaborative in the process of change when
6:18
you're trying to get somebody to, to work with you rather than
6:21
just take a pill or flick a switch, you know what I mean?
6:24
It's, it's very much a case of do they feel safe enough to even
6:28
ask you for support in the 1st place?
6:31
And that's a huge psychology piece, the way you say it,
6:36
without being so nice that you're overly soft, you become a
6:40
bit of a pushover, but without being so direct that people
6:43
think who on earth you think you are.
6:45
You know, trying to strike that balance between kind and I think
6:48
kindness is that balance of directness and honesty without
6:52
being overly soft, or as I call it, a bunch of soft cocks.
6:58
Well, I think what is or stands out to me or one of the things
7:03
that I think is in that conversation or that bit of, you
7:05
know, bit of explanation that you just gave us is that
7:09
there's, you know, you really need to understand your
7:11
audience, right? And so now, and I'll just use
7:13
fitness as an example, and I'm probably generalizing, like I'm
7:15
not an expert in the space, but looking at the stereotypes that
7:18
exist in that industry, right? You've probably got some
7:20
percentage that are the, you know, really small, you know,
7:24
group of people that are the muscle heads that are going to
7:27
react to ADS that are a little cruddy, you know, a little
7:29
cruddy or speak, you know, a little more crass or whatever.
7:32
And, you know, are a little more like go kick ass or those kinds
7:35
of things. You know, where the lion and
7:37
chair of people just want to feel comfortable at the gym and
7:40
they just want to know a place that they can go where they're
7:42
not going to be judged or looked down on or whatever.
7:45
And that I mean, men and women alike, you know, I mean, people
7:47
have their insecurities. And so, you know, I personally
7:49
don't love going to the gym because I don't like working out
7:51
in front of guys that are taking it away more serious than I am,
7:54
you know. And so for me, hearing messaging
7:56
like what you're describing, which is, hey, I've tailored
7:58
this to an audience that actually is getting broader
8:00
reach, even though it doesn't feel like you're doing the
8:03
traditional, let's say, you know, gym marketing.
8:07
You know, the difference is that you recognize the audience, you
8:10
actually recognize the segment of the audience that's more
8:12
important or bigger and actually pays the bills for these gyms.
8:15
It's not really just that, you know, the 10, the 10 muscle
8:18
heads that never leave. And so I think that maybe that's
8:21
a good point. And you mentioned, you know,
8:22
this, this notion kind of works across verticals, whatever
8:25
you're doing, but this ability to identify an audience or pull
8:29
out of a group of people the right audience and speak to them
8:32
the right way. And maybe it doesn't always work
8:34
like with the gym crowd where you're actually speaking to the
8:36
majority, but it seems like if you're, you know, if you have
8:39
limited marketing spend, you have limited, limited money to
8:41
spend on these things, you know, it makes sense to try and hit
8:43
the most people with the best message you can deliver.
8:46
And and so, and I think, you know, again, maybe it's the
8:49
psychology background of yours, but it seems to give you a nice
8:51
edge on being able to identify, you know, who are the people
8:54
we're actually talking to, you know, or what will resonate with
8:57
this group of people. Absolutely.
8:59
And I think back when I was, this is funny, right?
9:02
Because back when I was a psychology lecturer, you'd have
9:05
these open events and the whole course would only run if you
9:09
could get enough numbers in for your course.
9:11
So you'd stand there and you'd pitch to the students and you'd
9:14
try to get them to sign up with you rather than something else
9:17
that was maybe a bit more mainstream so that you could get
9:20
some funding and keep your job right.
9:22
And kids would come up and they'd say, what's psychology
9:26
good for? And I'd say, well, any job
9:29
really where you're trying to help people, where you know,
9:33
you're trying to humans or animals, where you're trying to
9:37
help them and you're interacting with other people and this is
9:39
going to give you an advantage from this reason and that
9:41
reason. And then I'd say, or I guess I
9:44
suppose you could use it for sales.
9:47
And I saw those as completely different things.
9:49
I thought, you know, helping people and selling to people or
9:53
marketing to people was, were totally distinct pathways.
9:58
And when I started marketing my own business, I how to overcome
10:03
that mindset around selling and marketing isn't helping.
10:07
And it really is helping. It's helping in its most pure
10:10
form. One of the simplest sort of
10:14
hacks I could give myself at that stage was instead of
10:17
thinking about selling, think about helping.
10:20
And that totally changes how you show up, how you relate to
10:23
people, how you even how you speak to them through the
10:27
process. And rather than sort of steam
10:30
rollering them and telling them what they need, you're in this
10:34
position where you are collaborating on the problem
10:37
together. And it's actually a very
10:38
beautiful idea. It's a, it's a, it's a
10:41
fundamentally human thing to, to market and sell to somebody
10:44
else, provided you're not trying to do anything unethical.
10:47
And I think that's the that's the rub right there.
10:50
Yeah, that's the catch. So, well, and it's funny because
10:53
that's a big part of why I sort of moved away from traditional,
10:56
I guess what you'd call traditional advertising, you
10:58
know, billboards and these kinds of things is I didn't feel
11:01
comfortable any longer pushing things on people that they
11:04
didn't need. You know, and, you know, from
11:07
the perspective of our clients, they'd say, well, of course,
11:08
everybody needs, you know, XYZ or whatever it is we're selling.
11:11
But to your point, this idea of selling versus helping, I think
11:15
started to become more clear for me.
11:16
I don't know, it's probably been 10 or 15 years now, but there
11:19
was plenty of years that I was just like, I don't know, we're
11:21
just moving a widget. Like, who cares?
11:22
Like we just got to sell this thing, you know.
11:24
And so there's plenty of years that I spent doing, I guess what
11:26
I would think of as as traditional advertising.
11:29
And I think a lot of people are maybe now coming along to more
11:32
like what we're describing here, which is trying to be a little
11:34
more empathetic and being a little more helpful.
11:36
And you're seeing this kind of messaging coming from ad
11:38
agencies and stuff now where they're talking more about, you
11:40
know, the human touch or how we get related to whatever, you
11:43
know, But it's like for the longest time was kind of grody.
11:45
And so I don't know if generationally if, if the next
11:50
group of, you know, people coming up through our, our
11:54
markets, our next group of consumers, I don't know if there
11:57
is sensitive to this stuff because maybe they expect it to
11:59
be a little more kind and a little more, you know,
12:01
relationship driven than it used to be.
12:03
And so for older people like me, like I'm, I'm constantly calling
12:07
out, no, no, but we're relationship driven now.
12:09
It's all about people. And it's like, maybe that's a
12:11
given these days, but it's clear that there was definitely a
12:14
delineation at one point where there was the stereotype of the
12:17
sleazy car salesman, for example.
12:19
And, you know, and that type of sales was very little to do with
12:23
help and a lot to do with buying my car because I need to make my
12:26
Commission. And, and I think that switch
12:29
that you mentioned, this idea of moving from from selling to
12:32
people to helping people, I think is, you know, nuanced, but
12:36
I think it's, I think it's the right move.
12:38
I think there was, there was definitely a time right when I
12:41
first got into the industry from a fitness perspective, this the
12:45
common sorts of marketing that you would see with things like
12:49
if you're tired of being fat and ugly, join a gym and just be
12:52
ugly. So it was sort of tongue in
12:54
cheek humour, but it was taking a, it was taking a, a stab at
12:58
people, I think a little bit. And I think it peaked right
13:01
after COVID where you had this like return on relationship
13:06
style marketing. But I'm, I think you're bang on.
13:09
I think it did peak. And now certainly in the fitness
13:12
industry, I'm seeing a bit of a backslide.
13:14
And I think it's because there's some fear in the market.
13:17
I'm seeing a bit of a cyclical return to things like fake
13:24
urgency, higher pressure situations.
13:28
And I, you know, like anything it is cyclical.
13:30
But I think we're starting to come back to a slightly more
13:36
urgent steamroller ring style of sales.
13:41
And I don't know if you're seeing this across the board.
13:43
Like I'm I'm heavily in the fitness space and I've got a
13:46
smaller audience of creatives that are very uncomfortable with
13:49
it. But maybe it's maybe markets
13:53
change at different speeds, but I'm definitely seeing it come
13:55
back around to be a little bit more cruel than it had been sort
14:00
of maybe six years ago, seven years ago perhaps.
14:05
Are you, are you saying that Ryan are?
14:06
You not like I'm not super close to it, but I will say I have two
14:09
teenage sons and they're both, you know, constantly trying to
14:11
get gym memberships and things like that.
14:13
And so I'm seeing the kinds of like, I don't know, offers
14:16
they're giving. And, you know, to your point
14:18
about urgency and things like that, it's, you know, buy now,
14:21
get in here, you know, get your month free, whatever.
14:23
And then they hit you with some kind of weird $60.00 fee.
14:25
And, you know, like I felt like they'd really kind of, you know,
14:28
preyed on our kids and we tried to warn them, but they, you
14:30
know, they ain't nobody listening to their dumb parents
14:32
until they get hit with that $60.00 fee after three months or
14:35
whatever. And then now all of a sudden,
14:38
now they know. But but yeah, so there was a
14:40
bunch of that kind of stuff going on.
14:41
So I, I definitely agree that it seems to be getting more like
14:44
that. And I wonder if it isn't what
14:45
you say, which is kind of a little bit of a fear in the
14:47
marketplace. It's a lot easier to work out at
14:49
home these days. There's a lot more equipment
14:51
that you can get in the house. You know, I mean, even in our
14:53
house, we've got a little home gym.
14:54
We've got like a tone hole and a Peloton and that kind of stuff.
14:58
So there's really no need for us to go to a gym anymore, right?
15:01
And so, and if you already don't love the social atmosphere at a
15:04
gym, which is kind of been my case, then I don't want to go.
15:07
Now for my older son, he's a former football player.
15:09
He's used to working out with dudes.
15:11
He likes being in the gym. He, you know, runs into former
15:14
players that guys he knows from school and stuff over there and
15:16
stuff. So, so for him, he enjoys raise
15:18
it right? It's a nice opportunity for him
15:19
to go socialize and that kind of thing.
15:21
So I think to each their own, but I think that, you know, each
15:24
of these places, these gyms, I mean, one of the things they're
15:27
competing against is this home market, you know, and I'll tell
15:30
you, I mean, the amount of money we spend on Peloton and Tonal
15:33
between each of their monthly memberships, it it would be way
15:36
cheaper to go to a gym, you know, And so it's like, or at
15:39
least your average gym, you know, I'm sure you can find a
15:41
fancy gym, but for your your average gym, you know, it would
15:43
be cheaper to go there. But for me, I'm buying the
15:46
ability to stay home and not go to the gym.
15:48
And so for me, it's worth it, right.
15:51
So, but I'm sure that with the rise in that kind of competition
15:54
and just access to tools and things like that, you've got to
15:57
make a more compelling case than ever that you should come use
15:59
our equipment. Yeah.
16:01
So I totally agree with that. So one of the things I wanted to
16:04
try and talk to you about because I thought it was a
16:06
really cool experience was so earlier this well, I guess it
16:09
would have been end of last year.
16:11
So just for people to give a little context.
16:13
So I haven't actually met Cath in person.
16:15
We've talked a couple times online here.
16:17
We got sort of introduced through this guy Mike Janda, who
16:20
I've talked about before, but he's business coach, you know,
16:23
agency coach guy, whatever. And I went to his event in, in
16:26
London, which is why I said Cath was from London.
16:28
But but I, I went to his event over there and got introduced to
16:32
all these English people and, and you know, and I don't know
16:35
what they call people from Wales, Wales and, and so, and,
16:40
and so I made all these connections and all this stuff.
16:43
So we started talking and one of the things that Kath did for me
16:46
that I thought was really cool and I think it could be really
16:48
practical for just about any business is I was launching a
16:51
new personal website. So it wasn't like, you know,
16:53
this big deep website or anything, but I was launching a
16:55
new personal site. And she had done a session for
16:58
our coaching group that was about, you know, copywriting
17:00
and, and making sure, you know, we had our messaging figured out
17:02
and all that kind of stuff. And she ran a quick audit using
17:05
her system for kind of looking over my website and giving me
17:09
some critique on the messaging and stuff that I do.
17:12
Now, I won't get into the kind of messaging and on what she
17:14
called out on mine because there was plenty.
17:16
But I wonder if you'd talk a little bit, Cath, about like
17:18
when you, you know, are encountering a new customer or
17:21
if somebody asks you for an audit like this, what are the
17:23
kind of the top maybe three to five things that you're looking
17:25
for in copy to sort of, I guess, qualify it as good copy?
17:30
That's a great question. Probably the first thing I will
17:34
be scanning to look for is, is it clear who this is speaking to
17:37
and who we're trying to attract? That'd be the first thing.
17:42
The thing I'm looking at, the singular page, is there just one
17:46
thing for the person to do on that page?
17:48
So lots of the time, one of the mistakes I'll see is I'll put a
17:52
bunch of calls to action in here so that if they don't do this
17:56
thing, maybe the visitor will do this other thing instead.
17:59
And it becomes a little bit of a mishmash and a muddle on what
18:03
exactly they're supposed to do on that page.
18:05
And from a marketing perspective, in the back end,
18:08
when we come to analyse the data and the clicks and stuff, it's
18:11
hard to know if that page is working because it's trying to
18:15
do so many things. So number one, is it clear who
18:18
you're trying to speak to? Number 2, is it clear what you
18:20
want them to do on that page? And probably #3 is, are you
18:24
aware of the sort of 8020 on what's driving the activity on
18:29
that site or on that page or on that social media like profile
18:34
or whatever? Is there sort of a, a way that
18:38
you are directing people to the next step?
18:42
And those will probably be the three things that I will be
18:43
looking out for just to see if it's functional, if it's
18:46
working, if it's attracting the right sort of people.
18:50
There's a million and one rabbit holes will be good on there.
18:52
But that's probably the like the high level stuff that I will be
18:55
looking out for. I did an audit recently on a
19:00
awesome ladies e-mail sequence. So they'd gone through her
19:04
website and they'd opted into this e-mail sequence, but within
19:07
maybe, I think there were maybe 10 emails in that sequence.
19:12
There were about 7 different calls to action.
19:14
And so this is so, this is so like dumb.
19:20
I changed all the links to one link and then she's like, this
19:24
is working really well. I've made my money back really
19:28
quickly on this sequence. I was like, well, yeah, now
19:30
we're getting 10 opportunities to do that rather than three
19:33
opportunities to do that. So we should have at least
19:35
tripled the number of clicks. Yeah.
19:38
Well, what I love there, or what I think, you know, a good point
19:40
to pull out of there is, is that I think for a lot of us,
19:43
especially if you're a solo operator or you're doing a lot
19:46
of the work yourself and you're trying to figure things out, you
19:48
know, or maybe even you do have a small team that you're
19:50
directing. It's really easy for us to kind
19:53
of, I guess, get high on our own supply or kind of like get into
19:56
our own head about what we're talking about.
19:57
And this was something that I was doing on my website, right,
19:59
Is I was writing a website that I thought sounded good to a
20:01
group of people. But Kath did a really good job
20:04
of identifying who is it you're actually speaking to here.
20:07
And I've been in marketing a long time.
20:08
So it's like for me, I was like, yeah, no, I know what I'm doing.
20:11
I'll just write my own words. I can try and articulate this in
20:14
a way that makes sense to me. And then having a third party
20:17
vet, it was really useful for me.
20:19
And, and so I think that, you know, in the example of your
20:21
e-mail series or anything, it makes a lot of sense to have
20:24
somebody on the outside. You know, maybe you, you don't
20:27
have money for, to hire a team or somebody to, to do the work,
20:30
but you know, minimally, you know, have your mom read your
20:33
copy or whatever and make sure that it actually makes sense.
20:35
But Kath, when does it make sense to actually bring on a
20:38
professional? And I mean, obviously, I think,
20:40
you know, sooner than sooner than later, obviously, but I, I
20:43
think that what you just illustrated through the the
20:45
strip campaign is a really good example or a really good point
20:49
of why an expert is important, right?
20:51
Because there's you know what I mean?
20:52
I hearing you tell the story. I can go, OK, well, that makes a
20:55
lot of sense. Right now we have 3, you know,
20:57
one CTA instead of 10 different Ctas.
20:59
And I think a lot of people, you know, try and shotgun ideas and
21:02
see what sticks to the wall and stuff like that, when really
21:05
just committing to the one idea might be better.
21:06
But having a third party that's objective.
21:08
Say that to you can be invaluable.
21:11
And so when do you think you know, whether you know large or
21:13
small or or whomever, when's the right time to start engaging
21:16
with people? If you're looking for something
21:18
like just an audit, having somebody read through your
21:20
stuff, I would say do that day one because you can probably get
21:23
somebody to help you to do that that, you know, in real life.
21:26
And sometimes if you've really got nobody around that you would
21:29
trust to, you know, be more literate perhaps, or maybe be
21:33
more objective or be less in love with the words.
21:35
That's something I fall into that trap all the time.
21:38
I get so in love with the words that it almost becomes a poetic
21:42
rather than functional. Having somebody go through your
21:46
stuff that doesn't really know what you're talking about and
21:49
stop you any time it make doesn't make sense, that's
21:52
useful. But if you haven't got that,
21:53
simply just read your copy out loud.
21:56
That is probably one of the simplest free things that you
21:59
can do for anything that you write.
22:02
And don't just think to yourself, Oh yeah, OK, I'll just
22:04
read it slowly. No, actually read it out loud so
22:08
you've got an idea of maybe runtime or sticky phrases that
22:13
you might stumble over in the sentence structure.
22:16
If you're looking to hire somebody to take it off your
22:18
hands, I would say do that as early as possible.
22:21
That doesn't cause financial stress because any investment
22:24
that you make in your marketing is a you'll become ROI positive,
22:30
but that money will be out of circulation in your business for
22:33
some time. Be clear about when you need
22:36
that cash back so that you aren't tying up revenue in such
22:42
a way that you think I'm panicking because it's now a
22:44
week in and I haven't seen an ROI or it's I'm a month in and I
22:47
haven't seen an ROI. So that money's just out of
22:49
circulation. It's not gone.
22:52
Invest it as soon as you can afford for it to be out of
22:55
circulation for a little while and speak to the marketer that
22:59
you're hiring and think, you know how roughly how long do you
23:01
think this is going to be out of circulation for?
23:03
Not in a panicked way, just This is Money that we can't redeploy
23:07
into something else. Yeah, no, I love that idea, this
23:10
notion of being out of circulation.
23:12
I think a lot of people look at hiring an expert, you know,
23:15
whether it's a designer or a copywriter or whomever.
23:18
I think they kind of look at it as an expense, right?
23:20
They they're not even looking at the other part of the equation
23:22
there, which is, you know, theoretically you'll get your
23:24
money back. And so, so I think that that's a
23:26
really clever way of talking about that, because I think that
23:28
might take, at least for some people, might give them another
23:31
way of thinking about it takes the edge off of investing and
23:33
these kinds of things. Because, you know,
23:35
theoretically, I mean, and I, I love your confidence.
23:37
I think that most, you know, competent people can probably
23:41
help you get your money back in one way or another.
23:43
I mean, it doesn't work if the economy doesn't circle back
23:45
around. And so, you know, like if you
23:47
hire a bunch of people and then you never see your money come
23:49
back, like it's just not working.
23:51
So maybe to that end, like what are the kinds of things that
23:54
somebody ought to look for if they wanted to hire somebody
23:56
that does like your kind of work?
23:57
Because you know, like I mentioned at the top, there's, I
23:59
mean, there's a broad range of people who claim copyright or in
24:02
their title. Yeah, for sure.
24:04
I think one of the things that I would probably be looking for is
24:07
if, if I had a word of mouth recommendation, I would probably
24:11
look them up, I'd Google them and I would look to see, are you
24:15
good at the thing you say you're good at?
24:17
Because if you look me up on let's say, Instagram, you might
24:21
think, wow, this woman can't design anything.
24:25
Her graphics are appalling or her, her videos are terrible.
24:30
Her video editing skills are terrible.
24:33
Don't measure me on that. You're not hiring me for my
24:35
ability to do that. Check, read my words.
24:37
Please do that. So see examples of their work.
24:43
You might do it on their when they write for themselves or
24:46
when there are other people. Ask for samples of people in
24:48
that same vertical if you if you can, but almost always if you
24:54
reach out and you think, hey, I'm looking to get some help
24:56
with this specific part of my business.
24:59
Anybody who's got capacity to take you on as a client will
25:03
almost certainly say, here's a quick Loom video.
25:06
Let me give you a little bit of a feedback.
25:08
You don't have to hire me for this.
25:09
I can help you with that. Anyway, almost everyone I know
25:13
in this space is so ready and willing to help others if you
25:17
just ask them for help. I don't know anybody who I've
25:19
ever sincerely asked for help with a specific problem that has
25:23
been unwilling to help me. I think that's the one, the
25:27
beautiful thing about creatives and two, the sincerely,
25:32
genuinely lovely thing about the Internet is the degree to which
25:37
you have democratized access to cool people who've got potential
25:41
to be your friend. So just ask them.
25:45
They'll probably help you for free.
25:48
And then if the, if you like what they're about and you like
25:50
their style of writing or their style of design or their style
25:53
of website or whatever, then think about pursuing a
25:56
relationship with them. But almost always you can get
25:58
something for free, you know? Well, the thing that you just
26:01
mentioned that, well, there's a couple things in there actually,
26:03
but one thing that you just sort of glazed by, but I think is
26:06
really important for especially small business owners trying to
26:09
decide what to do. You mentioned that they should
26:11
approach somebody like this with a specific problem.
26:14
And I think for a lot of folks, I don't even think they really
26:16
know what their problem is. They'll come to you and say,
26:19
hey, our website's just not converting or hey, we don't have
26:21
any traffic, how come or whatever.
26:23
And so I wonder if we could talk a little bit about that, like if
26:26
somebody comes to you and basically they've got, I don't
26:28
know, nothing, they have a website up or something, but
26:30
they're not getting any traffic, they're not getting anything.
26:33
Do you have, I guess sort of like a process that you would
26:36
work through or like where would you begin with somebody like
26:38
that? Like it could be a low dollar
26:40
engagement, a high dollar engagement doesn't really
26:41
matter. But just like, you know, if
26:43
somebody's got something online but it's not getting any love,
26:47
you know, what would be your, you know, starting place with
26:49
somebody like that? That's a phenomenal question
26:51
because a lot of the time I deal with quite small businesses that
26:54
really usually don't even have a website most of the time.
26:58
So there'll be a social media presence usually, but there
27:01
isn't much more. So the first thing I would look
27:04
at is to define the problem that we are trying to solve.
27:08
And lots of the time people come to me and they say, hey, I'm
27:10
going to leads. That's usually the DMI get.
27:13
I'm going to leads. I'd be like, OK, have we got
27:16
traffic? Is anybody seeing your stuff?
27:21
That's the first thing. So I'd be looking for, you know,
27:23
reach views, site visits, maybe impressions, possibly depending
27:29
on the platform. Is anybody seeing your stuff?
27:31
That's question number one. Question #2 would be of those
27:34
people who are seeing your stuff, are you consistently
27:37
sending them to the same place? So if the call to action, for
27:41
example, is to DM a keyword or to click on a link or to read
27:46
this article, whatever it is, are you consistently asking them
27:50
to do that? So you've got traffic, you're
27:53
posting regularly, you're asking them to do the same thing all of
27:57
the time. At that point, you've got a
27:59
pretty good idea of is it an issue of not enough people, a
28:04
quality of ask issue, or is it an issue of inconsistent?
28:11
I'm just flooding you with a bunch of different stuff and I
28:13
don't even really know what I'm trying to measure.
28:15
Once you get to that point, we can pretty much be sure of where
28:20
the problem will lie. At that point, we can start
28:24
looking for nuances. So is there social proof on the
28:26
site? Is there are people beginning an
28:29
application process? Are they which pages on your
28:33
site or which topics that you talk about on social media tend
28:37
to drive most of the clicks? Let me give you an example,
28:39
right? I recently worked with a coach.
28:43
He's in the health and fitness space, and he hired me because
28:48
he was getting about 100 people a month start an application
28:51
form in his business. But only about 20% of people
28:55
were completing the form, and then they were trying to get
28:59
them on a call. So it was something like 120
29:02
people would start, 130 people would start, only about 20
29:06
people would finish. So I was called in to fix that
29:10
problem. I was actually removing copy.
29:13
I wasn't writing copy for that. I was removing copy and I was
29:17
showing them more stuff before they got to the form.
29:20
We took the completion rate from 20% to 71% just by removing
29:27
copy. I'm actually going to write, I
29:31
haven't done this yet, but I'm going to write an article about
29:33
this on next Wednesday just to talk about how we exactly what
29:38
we did and exactly what we removed.
29:40
That's probably step one of about 3 of optimizing that form.
29:44
So then we had the call and we were like, if we look back on
29:47
your last 12 months of business and you tell me your worst
29:51
month's revenue, if we'd had this system in place, then what
29:58
would your revenue have been? So that small business went from
30:04
about £28,000 a month on their worst month to almost £100,000 a
30:10
month on their worst month with this without one change.
30:14
And that was probably 1 of about 3 things I was going to do to
30:17
that form to try to get more people to actually complete it.
30:22
So lots of the time I used to think that lots of my value was
30:25
I can write really good copy. But increasingly I'm starting to
30:30
see that it's less about the copy and more about thinking
30:34
really clearly about the problem.
30:35
And like you say, Ryan, lots of people aren't actually able to
30:38
define the problem very well. So take time to ask a good
30:42
question, and lots of the time you might not actually need as
30:46
much help as you think. I think lots of the times are
30:48
just about sitting down and understanding what's actually
30:51
going wrong without having a an emotional response to it.
30:55
Yeah, no, it's funny because it's, he actually just wrote
30:57
this down too, because we had just talked about being able to
31:00
identify a specific problem. But you know, being able to give
31:05
a specific ask I think is maybe the opposite or the inverse of
31:08
that problem, which is if you run a a business or something
31:11
like that. And, you know, we talked about
31:12
this a little bit earlier with the, the e-mail chain, but, you
31:15
know, getting specificity around what you're actually asking.
31:18
I think a lot of people, especially on limited budgets,
31:20
feel this need. And I'm guilty of doing this
31:23
myself, which is I'm, I only get your ear once.
31:26
So my God, I'm giving you the whole dump.
31:28
Here's everything, you know, whatever you want.
31:30
I do this. I do this, I do this, I do this.
31:32
You know, here's the 100 things I do.
31:33
Maybe one of those will resonate with you.
31:35
Yeah. And, you know, and the
31:37
discipline to whittle that down to one specific ask that's
31:41
really gonna, you know, appeal to a specific group of people.
31:44
I mean, sometimes you forget how big the world is, you know, but
31:46
there's, I mean, there's a lot of people out there.
31:48
And so even with a very niche ask, you know, and maybe, you
31:52
know, if you can throw more budget at it, you can ask more
31:54
people, you know, ask more specific asks, but, you know,
31:57
but you scale up by doing more asks, not one message with more
32:01
asks in it. And so, so I think by getting
32:04
tighter around that, it's really good, you know, and, and the
32:06
point about editing, I think is really big because a lot of
32:08
times that is it, right? It's, it's what do you actually
32:12
say versus not say I think is so critical when it comes to
32:15
whether it's copywriting or video production or whatever.
32:18
You know, a lot of times the stuff that you leave in, you
32:21
know, if you had taken it out, the message would have resonated
32:24
a lot better. And I think a lot of people feel
32:26
like more is better when the, you know, in reality, actually
32:31
being a little more brief is probably better.
32:33
But The thing is, this happens because they don't know what
32:35
this part of the process is trying to do.
32:38
So everything they post on Instagram, everything they
32:42
record on YouTube, every podcast they do, it's all trying to do
32:46
everything rather than thinking the responsibility of this piece
32:50
of content is to get them to that website.
32:53
Did they do it? Yes or no?
32:54
So, so if you're working on this in your own business, the goal
32:59
is to get to the point where each individual stage is only
33:03
doing one part of the the process.
33:07
You're not trying to show social proof, you're not trying to sell
33:12
them, you're not trying to go viral, You're not trying to, you
33:15
know, become a stand out authority in your niche all in
33:19
one post. You can do that, but it's really
33:23
hard to measure the effectiveness of that post.
33:26
If it's trying to do 5 jobs, if the piece of content, the
33:29
e-mail, the ad, whatever, it's just trying to do one thing, it
33:33
becomes a yes, no, Did it do it or not.
33:35
So if you can't measure it in a number or a yes no binary
33:38
decision, you can probably afford to simplify what you're
33:42
asking that thing to do and just take more time.
33:47
Take them through the process. You'll keep more of them than
33:50
you think. Yeah, Yeah.
33:53
It's another one of the, I guess the levers that we were talking
33:55
about before, which is urgency. And I think a lot of times
33:57
people feel like I don't have a lot of money, so I have to move
34:00
fast. I have to get the most out of
34:02
this that I can. So I need to tell them
34:03
everything. And basically all these things
34:07
that come from sort of this scarcity mindset, they make you
34:09
make all the wrong decisions, right?
34:11
They make you bloat your messaging.
34:13
They make you, you know, invest in things that are crazy or, you
34:17
know, you'll reach out to a broad audience of people who
34:20
suck versus a really narrow audience of people who actually
34:22
care about you. You know, these kinds of things.
34:25
You make these big broad decisions and say these really
34:27
narrow decisions because you're just trying to do the most you
34:29
can with the least amount of resources.
34:32
And, and so maybe going back to that notion about, you know,
34:34
just putting that money temporary out of circulation,
34:37
you know, maybe that's a way to try and rationalize or come to
34:40
this stuff with a little bit more of a, a even keel or a more
34:43
like level head, which is OK, I'm going to take $500.
34:47
I'm going to take that $500 and put it out of circulation for
34:49
right now. It's going to come back two or
34:51
three fold, like whatever, it's going to be great.
34:53
But I'm going to take it out of circulation now.
34:55
But knowing that that money is coming back to me, I can afford
34:59
to focus in on a specific offer. Try and sell widget A, you know,
35:04
try and sell service B, you know, whatever it is that I'm
35:06
trying to move, but I can try and sell just that specific
35:09
thing. You know, we're going to do, you
35:11
know, I don't know, heating and air conditioning, you know,
35:15
furnace replacements and that's it.
35:17
We're just going to market furnace replacements like crazy.
35:19
We're going into the fall. People are going to need new
35:20
furnaces. That's all we're going to sell
35:22
now. We also do plumbing and HVAC and
35:25
you know, all these other things, solar panels and
35:27
whatever, but we're only gonna talk about this really niche
35:30
thing because that gets us the biggest bang for our marketing
35:33
buck. And I think a lot of people
35:34
think just the opposite, which is load up your messaging.
35:37
So I love that. What do you think?
35:40
So one of the things that in again, I don't know, I spent a
35:43
lot of time projecting on this show.
35:45
I'm noticing, but so for people who hate sales calls, you know,
35:50
there are other ways to generate business out there.
35:52
And for people who meet like me, who generally I do well
35:55
socially, but I definitely have to get out of my bubble to do
35:58
social stuff. Like if I was left to my own
36:00
devices, I would just chill and not.
36:03
And so, so for people who don't want to get on the phone or
36:07
don't want to do cold calling, things like that, there's other
36:09
ways of finding people. What would you or like, I guess,
36:12
how would you guide somebody if you were trying to help them
36:14
create another path to their business?
36:17
And we talked a little bit about a couple options, e-mail to
36:19
e-mail chains and things like that.
36:21
But can we talk a little bit about just sort of building a
36:23
funnel in the 1st place? Like I, I think that that's
36:25
something that a lot of people just don't even do.
36:28
Totally. I think, I think that can be an
36:30
intimidating thought, right? For somebody who is doing their
36:32
own marketing right now, who's writing their own copy, maybe
36:35
doing everything, wearing lots of hats in their business, the
36:38
thought of managing A funnel sounds technical, scary, and
36:46
also quite inhumane, right? So all we're talking about when
36:50
we talk about a funnel is I need you to, I need to get in front
36:54
of you. I need you to quickly appreciate
36:57
who I am and how I can help you. So what do you do?
37:00
Clearly then I need to have a way to take money off you some
37:07
kind of way. Some people will like sales
37:08
calls. I'm very much in the camp of no
37:10
sales calls. Then you've got to do the thing
37:13
you said you were going to do and then you've got to talk
37:16
about it. That's it.
37:18
That's the whole thing. That's the entire funnel.
37:21
It can be as long or as short as you like.
37:26
This could be I post on Instagram, Ioffer you with, then
37:29
you slide into my DMS. I take a payment that could be a funnel
37:31
that that it could be as short as that.
37:34
If you are finding you're getting a lot of people speak to
37:36
you, but they're not buying from you, It may be that the funnel's
37:40
a little bit short, so you can just make that longer.
37:43
Now, throughout this whole process, you are in total
37:45
control as the business owner of adding more friction or taking
37:49
friction away. That's really the only thing
37:51
that your marketing team is trying to do lots of the time.
37:54
Add friction, remove friction. The more friction there is, the
37:58
harder they have to work to get access to you.
38:02
And by the time they do have access to you, the more sold
38:06
they'll be. So you're playing with volume by
38:08
making it harder. You'll have fewer people that
38:11
are more pre sold. That's all we're talking about.
38:13
I personally hate sales calls. I get so stressed out of the
38:18
thought of doing a sales call that when I was doing it in my
38:21
coaching business, I would have people have the call and I would
38:24
have to lie on the floor in the dark after the call and be
38:29
basically non verbal for the rest of the day.
38:31
And I remember speaking to a mentor of mine at the time and I
38:34
was like, I just can't go on like this.
38:35
I can't run this business like this.
38:37
I hate it. What have I got to do to never
38:42
have to do a sales call again? And he kind of like, like kind
38:45
of laughed at my face. He was like, grow up basically.
38:48
And I was like, no, seriously, what have I got to do?
38:50
He's like, well, I suppose you'd have to get really good at copy.
38:54
So there I go, what's coffee? I go on Google, what's copy?
38:58
I'm like, cool, that's what I'll do then because I can't go on
39:00
like this. I am trying to run a business on
39:02
like films. This is so energy intensive for
39:06
me as an introvert with ADHD and or a million other things.
39:11
So like that's not for me. So now tactically, what I
39:15
actually do is if I post on social media, if I make an offer
39:19
via e-mail, I put the Stripe link as they can see it, so they
39:24
can actually see the link. This is a Stripe link.
39:28
I don't hyperlink it. That means that if they click on
39:31
that link, they know they are going to be asked to buy
39:33
something. And I'll say to them, this is a
39:35
payment link. It's going to charge you this
39:39
much money this way. You haven't got to ask me any
39:42
questions. And if you do have any
39:45
questions, send me a DM reply to the e-mail first.
39:48
I invite written communication and I tell them if you click
39:53
this, I'm going to message you. If you click this, I'm not going
39:57
to message you. I'm just looking to get
39:58
information from you and I'm not going to pounce on you.
40:02
So the lesson is. Whenever you're at the gateway
40:06
of maybe taking a payment, maybe asking somebody to trust you,
40:10
opt in, whatever, tell them what will happen when they click the
40:15
button. So when you book a call with me,
40:18
we're going to talk about XY and Z.
40:20
It's going to take about 20 minutes.
40:22
When you click on this link, it's going to charge you however
40:25
much money. Do you get what I mean?
40:28
So there's no nasty surprise. The reason people want to have a
40:32
call with you is because they are uncertain about the process
40:36
they're in. So the lesson is tell them what
40:40
stage of the process they're at and then direct them to the way
40:44
you want to be both from or interact.
40:49
I love that. There's a couple things in there
40:50
that you said that you just kind of want to touch on or
40:52
reinforce. 1 is this notion of adding or removing friction.
40:55
So I think a lot of people just, you know, if you're just
40:58
thinking base, you know, mentality around marketing, I
41:00
think that everybody thinks the notion is you should be removing
41:03
friction. Like how do I make it easier for
41:04
you to buy my product? But I just what I, I liked or
41:08
wanted to elaborate on that notion about adding or removing
41:11
is that, you know, first of all, you're in total control.
41:13
This is a lever that you can manage and you can decide more
41:15
or less, you know, and, and theoretically you've got so much
41:18
business coming in, you need to add some friction so that you
41:20
can, you know, just keep things to a manageable level.
41:23
You know what a great problem to have.
41:26
But but what I like about it too is you could use this friction
41:28
as a way to create exclusivity, to create excitement, you know,
41:32
to make it just so, you know, like stupid easy that they can
41:36
just go right through and make a payment.
41:38
Like, you know, I mean, there's different ways of doing it, but
41:40
like each of those different approaches is going to create a
41:42
different emotion, right? If it's too easy, sometimes you
41:45
go like, wow, I just where'd my money go?
41:47
Now, what did I do? Like you're almost left like
41:50
without a net, Like you just let me fall through.
41:51
That was so easy. Like I didn't have to do
41:53
anything. And then other times it's like,
41:55
man, I'm just trying to give you my money and I can't.
41:57
Like, why won't you take my money?
42:00
And so it's funny, but I guess I'd never really thought about
42:03
it in the terms of adding and removing friction because I
42:05
think the common version is, hey, let's try and make it as
42:09
easy as possible. So I thought that that was
42:11
pretty clever. The other thing on.
42:13
That point right and to interrupt you sorry is please
42:16
don't think that the amount of friction that you will settle on
42:20
now today is the amount of friction that you will always be
42:23
settled on forever as you have more or less demand in dressed
42:29
leads you may have to add and remove friction next month.
42:34
You this is a constant process. It's not like cool that's
42:37
settled now that's the that's the right amount.
42:39
This is a constant tweaking of the recipe.
42:42
So if anybody is doing this themselves and they think, I
42:45
thought this was done last month, I thought I'd nailed
42:46
this, why am I changing it again?
42:48
You do, That's normal. You haven't done anything wrong.
42:51
That's a normal part of the process.
42:52
Sorry, just wanted to. And I think that's a really
42:55
great point. Yeah.
42:55
I think there's a lot of people that are that way, like,
42:58
especially if marketing's not their thing, if they're really,
43:00
you know, manufacturing widgets. And it's like, well, yeah, but I
43:02
got to tell people. So I'm doing my little marketing
43:04
thing, and I spend a weekend and by God, I'm getting it done, you
43:07
know? And then they feel like they're
43:08
done and they're going to go back to their manufacturing gig.
43:11
And you know, they don't adapt after change or whatever with
43:14
that messaging, then it can either be effective or not
43:16
effective depending on how well they do the first time.
43:18
And so, but I think that that's a really good point because I do
43:21
think a lot of people sort of want to set it and forget it and
43:23
don't realize that marketing is actually something you're
43:25
actively engaged in most of the time.
43:28
The other thing I was going to mention though, was this idea of
43:30
hiding behind your automation. And so I really like this notion
43:33
of, you know, actually taking an e-mail.
43:36
Now I understand maybe a scale this doesn't work.
43:38
You know, you're some, you know, Intel or something.
43:40
You can't stand around and take every single phone call, you
43:44
know, and you need to automate some things.
43:45
But I think a lot of people, especially in small companies,
43:48
are looking for a solution almost like in the example I
43:50
just gave, which is I just want to do my manufacturing, man,
43:53
leave me alone. I'm doing the bare minimum
43:55
marketing. And so I'll set up this thing
43:57
that will collect your names and e-mail addresses or whatever,
43:59
and then we'll reach out to you in our own due time or we'll
44:02
automate, here's an e-mail you're gonna get and that's
44:04
gonna give the offer or whatever.
44:05
And so, but by making yourself unavailable, you know, for
44:09
people who are having problems or having doubts along the way,
44:11
you may be converting less. And I think for some people,
44:14
especially in what I consider being a more relationship driven
44:17
society, or at least, you know, around certain types of products
44:20
and services that might be more relationship driven, having a
44:23
human being on the other end is great.
44:25
And I actually think that as we proceed, you know, and we
44:28
haven't spent a lot of time on AI and stuff like that.
44:30
So we can talk a little about that.
44:31
But as you're starting to get into, you know, this really high
44:34
tech world where it's easier than ever to throw like an AI
44:37
chat bot on your website or whatever, and the world is just
44:40
becoming more and more noisy and it will get much worse.
44:42
I think there's, I think, going to start to be a premium on
44:47
human interaction. And you see this in things like
44:50
craft beers and beard oils and stuff like that.
44:52
There's people that try and support small companies that do
44:55
small things and a part of that is this connection with that
44:58
person. You know, they like what I like
45:00
and we're talking about this thing together.
45:01
And so, and this is how you choose your influencers and
45:04
stuff. You know, these are the people
45:05
that you follow because they're into the thing you're into or
45:08
whatever. And I think that for a lot of
45:11
people, especially if marketing is not your number one, you try
45:13
and hide behind your automation by building some sort of, you
45:16
know, platform where you can just kind of let the machines do
45:19
their work. You know, not realizing that
45:21
what you're actually giving up are the people who would become
45:23
your, you know, to use like the the thousand true fans idea, you
45:27
know, I mean, that would become your thousand true people are
45:30
the ones that can actually reach out with you and shake your hand
45:33
and stuff. Like you don't need millions and
45:34
millions of customers, especially for some small
45:36
businesses or service based businesses, you don't need
45:38
millions of customers. You need 20 customers that love
45:41
you to death and that will never leave you, you know, and so I
45:45
think by hiding out behind your marketing.
45:46
Now, granted, this can be a strategy too, depending on the
45:49
type of work you're in. But but I think that just the
45:52
idea that making yourself available, I thought was really
45:54
cool idea. So as we or I wanted to pivot a
45:59
little bit and talk about AI, it's kind of the ugly sheep in
46:01
the room, especially with, you know, somebody who spends a lot
46:05
of their time doing marketing, messaging and copy.
46:08
It seems like one of the things that AI is coming after most
46:10
rapidly. And and so, but to the point I
46:14
was just trying to make, which is I think human to human
46:17
contact is, is still going to be or maybe will actually become
46:19
the premium, you know, and there will be more value put on that
46:23
kind of stuff in the future. I think it'll actually end up
46:25
OK. But I wonder if you talk a
46:27
little bit about just like content creation in the new
46:30
noisy world, you know, trying to be more signal than noise.
46:33
How do we know what's worth posting?
46:35
We when are we just contributing to the mess of stuff out there?
46:38
Like, what kind of things should we be putting out on social?
46:42
This is a tough one because right now I think we're in an
46:46
early adoption phase of AI where everybody is using it and they
46:50
are creating a lot of stuff. And that is making a lot of
46:53
noise in the marketplace because it's so easy to make a bunch of
46:58
stuff. But the goal of your content is
47:00
not to have a lot of content. The goal of your content is to
47:04
have content that people actually consume.
47:07
So how to know if your content is working?
47:10
Is anybody reading it? Is it converting?
47:12
Is it bringing you any money? Does it work?
47:15
And if your AI content is, you know, if you've got a big enough
47:18
audience and you can crank out AI content that is actually
47:21
bringing you conversations, converting, bringing people into
47:25
your world, then it's probably good enough content.
47:28
But in terms of, I don't know if you've noticed this, but I have
47:34
recently, let me give you, I'm going to tell you the truth,
47:36
right? I have recently started
47:39
unfollowing people on Instagram when I notice it's AI content
47:45
because it's unreadable nonsense.
47:48
It's so rhythmic. It's so it's got that staccato
47:53
style of writing. I think AI is awesome.
47:55
I use AI every day. Let me, let me preface what I'm
47:58
about to say, but from a copy perspective, it's so less.
48:03
There's no, there's nothing beautiful in it.
48:06
There's I haven't read anything in my life by an AI and I've
48:09
thought, wow, you get me right. AI is a shortcut for people who
48:13
can't be bothered to think. The value of writing is not that
48:17
you have got a piece of content. The value of writing is that you
48:20
have sat down and examined your thoughts in a way that humbles
48:26
you. That's why it's hard.
48:28
That's why people want to get an AI to do it.
48:30
Sit down and write the topic. Write down a post today about
48:34
something that you know really well, a belief that you actually
48:36
hold, and sit down and write 300 word e-mail on it.
48:42
You would be no AI. It is so revealing how muddled
48:49
your thoughts are, how challenging it is to express a
48:53
thought clearly, to express the same single thought all the way
48:57
through, to be persuasive about something that you actually
48:59
believe. It's difficult.
49:01
So the goal of the content is not to have a lot of content,
49:05
it's to have content that you are proud of.
49:08
Does it pass the pride test? Have you read it and thought?
49:11
That's what I actually think, and I've communicated it
49:13
clearly. And I don't think AI is great
49:17
for that yet. But I do think AI is absolutely
49:20
bloody mega for helping you to find patterns and things in your
49:23
business, especially with numbers.
49:25
I think it's amazing for that. I give it my Stripe data all the
49:28
time. I help it to look for patterns
49:29
in my, you know, in my sales process.
49:33
But I don't love it for writing just because I think I, I don't
49:39
want to read it. I've been unfollowing people and
49:41
I'm now down about 600 accounts in about since January the 1st.
49:47
Wow. And I mean, it may be, I don't
49:50
know, maybe it's a little old fashioned to say something like
49:52
this, but I think that there's something about being human that
49:54
we don't all totally understand yet, which is, you know, there's
49:58
there's some, whatever it is, call it this magic juice or
50:01
whatever that makes us human. And you know, the at the end of
50:05
the day, the AI isn't intelligent just cuz the name's
50:07
in there, you know, just as they use the word intelligence
50:10
doesn't mean it's actually intelligent.
50:11
You know, it's literally just computer programming and you
50:14
know, predictive language models and things like that.
50:16
Like, I mean, it, it's really just ones and zeros still at the
50:19
end of the day. And the problem for AI and you
50:22
know, maybe they'll be able to be convincing with this one day
50:24
or maybe someone else slipped one by you every now and then.
50:27
But I think what it misses is whatever this nuanced juju in
50:32
humans is that it just doesn't have because it can't exist in
50:36
in a machine, you know what I mean?
50:38
And so and so I think there's something too, and I think it is
50:41
exactly what you're saying, which is when you're doing
50:43
social content, especially if you're doing it as a let's, I
50:46
hate that word influencer. But if you're trying to get
50:48
people to follow you for your thoughts or your beliefs, and I
50:53
think what people have with you, and I always use this example.
50:57
I mean, I don't know, it makes me probably sound a little
50:59
stupid. But when we were, you know, two
51:01
or three years in the podcasting, you know, we're
51:04
trying to figure out what to do. We're trying to grow the show,
51:06
all this stuff. And we had an opportunity, or I
51:09
had an opportunity to go out to California and see this guy,
51:11
Adam Corolla talk. And Adam Corolla was, you know,
51:14
radio guy, all this stuff. He's got one of the biggest
51:16
podcasts in the world. I don't know how he is anymore,
51:18
but you know, but his, his show was really big at the time and
51:20
he was really popular in the podcast realm, right?
51:23
So he had this, this podcast course and you could go to this
51:26
comedy club in California and see him.
51:28
And so I went out there and I, I watched his presentation and I
51:31
used their tools and it was really cool.
51:33
It was a great conversation. And afterwards, they had like,
51:35
this little hangout session with him.
51:37
And, you know, so you go hang out at the bar and Adam was just
51:40
kind of walking around mingling to, you know, and I remember I
51:42
went up to him and just kind of without even thinking about it,
51:45
just tapped him on his shoulder to like, turn him around and be
51:47
like, hey, Adam, what's up, dude?
51:48
You know, it's like, hey, it's me, your old friend Ryan.
51:51
And what occurred to me is, wait a minute, this guy doesn't know
51:53
me at all. But by virtue of listening to a
51:55
lot of his content, I have a relationship with him Now, it's
51:58
totally 1 sided and you know, but I know about his kids, I
52:02
know about his wife, I know about his, you know,
52:03
relationship. I know about the cars he drives.
52:05
I know about all this stuff because I've heard him say all
52:07
these things. So I know him completely, you
52:09
know, but he looked at me like I was crazy, like what are you
52:12
doing? Why are you touching me?
52:14
He was this person, you know, And you know, granted, in the
52:17
context of a meet and greet, it was fine and he was very
52:19
gracious, so it was no problem. But but I had this little
52:22
realization there where it was like, oh, OK, So what I've done
52:25
is I've formed a relationship with him, you know, whatever
52:29
that means. And, and, and I've created this
52:32
thing. And so and I think that's what
52:33
we get with a lot of social media content, especially if you
52:35
have people you follow, like I follow a lot of mindless stuff.
52:38
I look at Porsches, I look at watches, I look at stuff like
52:41
that. So for me, like there's not that
52:42
many people that I'm following because he's the watch guy.
52:45
You know, there's a couple of them, but you know, there's not
52:47
a lot of those. And so, but I'm just looking at
52:49
pretty watches and stuff like that.
52:50
So I spend a lot of time doing dumb stuff on social media.
52:53
Nothing really that deep for me. But I think for people who are
52:55
really engaged, you know, they have their favorite influencer
52:58
or their favorite person that they follow for whatever.
53:00
Or, you know, I'm really into woodworking and this person does
53:02
the best woodworking. So I follow their content, you
53:04
know? And so you've kind of formed
53:06
this relationship. And I think what AI is doing or
53:09
in the way AI is being used is the shiny new toy.
53:11
To your point is, people are using this in lieu of actual
53:15
relationship building. They're trying trying to just,
53:18
you know, get bulk out, you know, they're just pushing out
53:21
content. And I think what that's doing is
53:23
screwing with our humanness where you kind of had me fooled
53:27
that we had a relationship and I was invested because I cared
53:29
about your messaging and I cared about what you're doing.
53:32
But now you've taken this departure where it's clear that
53:35
you don't care that I care about your stuff.
53:38
And so it's almost like this weird emotional breakup almost
53:41
with your influencers or with the, the people you're following
53:43
online because they've become disengaged.
53:45
They might be posting more than ever, but they've become
53:47
disengaged from it. And then I think as a, as a
53:49
viewer, you know, and maybe using you as an example and you
53:52
can speak to your experience, but it seems like the interest
53:57
in following them. And I, I, I don't know, three
53:59
times a week I talk about getting off social networks
54:00
because I just, you know, I'm, I'm finding very little joy in
54:03
my flipping. And, and so I'm just finding
54:06
though, as people to your point are starting to disengage, it's
54:09
becoming less and less obvious what's true or real or what
54:12
actually happened or didn't happen because, you know,
54:14
there's so much muck in the news and stuff like that, that.
54:17
And then with AI, it's really easy to fake stuff and all those
54:20
things. So I mean, so there's like no
54:22
trust, there's no, you know, relationship, there's no
54:25
anything anymore. And so I think it's becoming, I
54:28
don't know, for me, I think it's actually working against it,
54:30
even though people think they can do more with AI.
54:33
I'm completely with you. Every single day I have
54:36
conversations with people who have built their businesses
54:38
online and every single day they're telling me if it wasn't
54:42
for my business I would not have a social media account.
54:44
I hate this. Why on earth are we doing stuff
54:49
that we hate? Please notice the next time
54:52
you're on social media and you're scrolling through
54:53
something and you the pay attention to the moment, the
54:56
instant you realise you are reading AI and pay attention to
55:01
the way that your whole body is. Now you go from I was engaged
55:05
and interested in what you had to say and now I've just gone,
55:08
I've just powered down completely.
55:10
Notice what is happening to you in your body when you read that
55:14
stuff, because my reaction is you couldn't be bothered to
55:19
write it and it was something that you wanted to say, so I
55:24
can't be both to read it. And then people wonder why my
55:28
audience is disengaged. I can't get anybody to reply to
55:31
me. I can't get anybody to have a
55:33
conversation with me online. And then you look at the content
55:35
and you think, well, yeah, it looks like you couldn't be asked
55:39
of that. So of course they can't be
55:42
bothered to engage with you. But on a purely visceral level,
55:46
notice the instant you realize, recognize this is not human
55:52
written and how your interest switches off like that, like a
55:58
switch, and tell me that AI is not problematic in people's
56:03
businesses. I think AI is amazing.
56:05
What incredible tool. I can't believe how exciting it
56:07
is to be alive in an age of AI. But as a tool for connection,
56:13
appalling dangerous people are so.
56:20
Yeah, I think you're so right. Well, so as we're starting to
56:23
get to the end here, I wanted to just kind of ask you for one
56:25
last little thing, which is kind of, you know, I don't know if we
56:27
were gonna give people one little leave behind or, you
56:30
know, maybe offer OfferUp 1 little bit of free advice.
56:33
What would be the one channel that you would bet that people
56:36
should bet on or spend more time in 2026?
56:38
And that Channel could be e-mail marketing, it could be LinkedIn,
56:41
it could be Instagram, it could be whatever.
56:43
But like, where do you think people, especially, you know, if
56:45
we're talking to a group of startup founders and people you
56:48
know, have limited marketing budgets, you know, where would
56:50
you say is the best time or best place to invest your energy,
56:54
your information? I would advise someone to pay
56:57
attention to what energizes them and where you can actually
57:01
genuinely show up without too significant to spend.
57:05
Putting your message into the world should not feel like a
57:08
particularly energy intensive thing.
57:10
They should never feel like more than a three out of 10 on the
57:14
effort scale. So if you're an amazing podcast
57:16
and you speak well, do podcasts. If you prefer to write and
57:19
you're a bit more introverted and you prefer to to do things
57:22
behind the keyboard, do that. Whatever format allows you to
57:26
show up consistently and get someone to spend more time with
57:29
you, invest heavily in that. But pay attention to your energy
57:33
levels and your how up for it you are when you think about
57:39
sitting down to create content. If I sit down to create video
57:41
content, my energy level is a 0. When I sit down to write an
57:44
article or an e-mail or something in writing ten, I'm
57:48
ready to go. We can run through walls all day
57:49
long. So what works well for you?
57:53
And there's there's always room for your personal preference and
57:56
taste. What can I do that doesn't feel
57:58
like too labour intensive for me?
58:01
Yeah, I love that. Well, and I think that's the, I
58:03
just underlined the word consistency here.
58:05
And that seems to be the biggest thing.
58:06
It's where can you show up with the least amount of friction,
58:08
You know, where you enjoy what you're doing, It doesn't feel
58:11
like too much pain or whatever, because whatever it is that's
58:13
working for you, that'll be the thing that works best for you.
58:16
So as we wrap up here, Kath, where can people find you
58:19
online? Where can they track down or
58:21
engage your content? How can they?
58:23
How can they get in touch? Well, I always like to give a
58:26
very specific freebie for the audience, so I will send you a
58:29
link over for that Ryan. But if you just want to stop by
58:31
my Instagram and say hi, you can find me at Kind Copy UK.
58:35
I've got longer form articles on Sub Stack.
58:38
I've got other podcasts I can direct you to, but I wouldn't
58:41
make any assumptions. Stop by, say hi and I will
58:44
tailor something to whatever you need.
58:48
I love that. Well, thanks so much, Kath.
58:49
This has been awesome. I'm really glad we were able to
58:51
find the connect and get this to happen.
58:52
So I appreciate you taking the time out of your day.
58:54
I know it's getting towards your afternoon or evening, so I
58:57
appreciate making the time for us.
58:59
Thanks for having me on Med, this is a pleasure.
59:01
Absolutely. And thanks so much to everybody
59:03
who tunes into the show this week and every week.
59:05
And we'll see you guys next time.