Wrapping up an eventful year
Welcome to the special festive episode of the Hot Copy Podcast.
Belinda and I have come back together to roast some chestnuts next eggnog and talk about all things copy.
So if you’re ready to put up your stockings with us and wait for Father Christmas to slip down your copy chimney, this is the episode for you.
Tune in to learn:
- The three big things that have happened for Kate and Belinda since they last recorded together
- How to attract higher-paying gigs through marketing and sales processes
- What challenges and benefits face Belinda and Kate as two copywriters collaborating on the podcast.
- Feast or Famine: What to do when work comes in, you’re too busy to take it, but you fear the famine
- Kate and Belinda’s 2 top tips on moving a new business forward in this brave new world
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Useful links
- Belinda’s Confident Copywriting Membership
- Kate’s Clever Copywriting School Membership
- Kate’s latest blog post
Transcript
Kate Toon:
Hello and welcome to the special festive episode of the Hot Copy Podcast. Belinda and I have come back together to roast some chestnuts, neck some eggnog, and talk about all things copy. So if you’re ready to put up your stockings with us and wait for Father Christmas to slip down your copy chimney, this is the episode for you.
Kate Toon:
Hello, I’m Kate Toon founder of, Stay Tooned, Inc., a collection of digital education companies, but at heart, a copywriter.
Belinda Weaver:
And I am Belinda Weaver. I am a copy coach to aspiring and working copywriters and Kate, that was a stellar introduction.
Kate Toon:
Thank you. Is it aspiring or perspiring? Copywriters? It’s probably a bit of both. Isn’t it?
Belinda Weaver:
Absolutely. They come, they both come with the same territory.
Kate Toon:
They do. Well hello!
Belinda Weaver:
It’s so nice to see your face.
Kate Toon:
I know, no one can see us. It’s so nice to hear your voice as well.
Belinda Weaver:
Yes
Kate Toon:
It’s been a while. When was the last one we did? I can’t remember. This year has been like 10 years long.
Belinda Weaver:
It has been, and we were mid breakdown. Each side. When we said, you know what? We need to take a break. It feels like it’s been most of the year.
Kate Toon:
Yeah, I think it has been. I don’t know. And what a year it’s been, we’re going to talk a little bit about that. On this episode today, we’re going to just to set some expectations.
We’re going to talk about what we’d been up to this year. We’re going to cover off some things that have happened in our businesses, our memberships, but we’ve also got some great questions for, from listeners tonight as well from both of our memberships and just from people who listen to the podcast. So we’re going to go through that as well. It might be a slightly longer episode.
You know, we haven’t been here for a while. We want to talk to each other. So settle in, grab a Sherry. Is it Sherry, your Christmas tipple? Or Baileys? Or-
Belinda Weaver:
No, Frangelico. Frangelico is my Christmas drink.
Kate Toon:
I’ve never had- Is that the one that tastes of coffee?
Belinda Weaver:
No, no, it’s an, I think it’s hazelnut. It’s a hazelnut liqueur and I only ever drink it at Christmas, but since coming to the states and discovering extremely boozy eggnog, eggnog is also now my Christmas drink.
Kate Toon:
That’s one of the things, we’re going to talk about from this year, I’m alcohol free now, it’s a whole new Toon. The look on Belinda’s face.
Belinda Weaver:
My brain’s like, say something nice. And so
Kate Toon:
Her smile just went – it was hilarious. I love seeing people’s reactions.
Well look, let’s talk about what’s happened this year. This year is 2021, which feels like a dreary extension of 2020, 2020 was a hoot. We thought it’d be a great time to launch our Mastermind, which was, which was fabulous. And the people in it were just the best humans ever. We’re very lucky, but it was very difficult. And yeah.
Belinda Weaver:
So hard.
Kate Toon:
And so we’ll be honest in 2021, we wanted to simplify make life a little bit easier for ourselves. And so we took a little break from the podcast. Who’s to say, if we will ever come back, I don’t know. I miss it now, sh, but I’ll talk about that at the end, Belinda, what three, I’m going to give you three big, Interesting, cool, horrible smelly, amazing, wonderful things happened in 2021?
Belinda Weaver:
First category is health. I’m going to start with the intense stuff. And my dad passed away. That was tough. And because we couldn’t go home as well. So it was a remote, you know, and I love my mum for setting this up. She made the funeral streamed on the internet.
So I got to watch it from my living room. So that’s, you know, modern technology, but that was intense. Cause it was also happened just before a launch. So you have to make these decisions about, do I push on? Do I stop and all that kind of stuff.
Kate Toon:
And you did push on.
Belinda Weaver:
I did push on, but I also, I reached out to my community and I said,look, this is what’s happening. So they all stepped up and supported me, which is why communities are such a good investment, such a good investment. Then my husband had a heart attack.
Kate Toon:
Oh my God.
Belinda Weaver:
Soon after that. So I can tick calling 911 off my lifetime bucket list. I had five burley firemen in my bedroom, which was-
Kate Toon:
Why did fireman come for heart attack? Surely you’d want ambulancemen.
Belinder Weaver:
Firemen were closer.
Kate Toon:
Wow.
Belinda Weaver:
So they were the first. That was the closest one. So it was, there was a lot to process with that. And then Simon also had a back operation. So it’s been a big year of health in this family.
Kate Toon:
Oh my God, poor you. What about your health?
Belinda Weaver:
Well, I would say the next thing, self care focus like 2020, just slap me in the face and where you need to take to make some changes girl, cause this is not sustainable. You are not having fun.
And so that’s what 2021 has been for me, a year of self care, exercise, time for myself without feeling like I need to justify it or have a reason, stuff like that. And I have felt so much better for it. Like I’ve just really slowed back on the amount of work that I’ve been doing and things of saying yes to, and of course school went back.
Our school year is August to May and finishing the year of distance learning and having the kids go back to school. Oh my God.
So good. So there was a big mixed bag of things in it for me.
Kate Toon:
Well, that is a lot to process. I mean your poor dad, I’m really sorry about that. My dad is very poorly as well.He has cancer and I was like, you know, I haven’t been able to get back to see him. I still don’t know when I’ll be back. And it’s, it’s something that I kind of desperately try and compartmentalize and just not think about really, because there’s nothing I can do, which is weird. And yeah, I’m, I’m really glad to hear about the self-care focus for those of you, you know, in the world communities. She is a very hard worker and I think you sometimes work too hard.
Belinda Weaver:
Right back at you babe.
Kate Toon:
Yeah. We both, I don’t know what’s wrong with us. We’ve talked about this on previous podcasts, but we have this compulsion to keep pushing and pushing ourselves. And I don’t know where it comes from. Obviously some deep, dark psychological issues there that we won’t go into today, but yes, I’m glad, I’m glad that you focused a bit more on you. Yeah mine is similar.
Belinda Weaver:
Hit me.
Kate Toon:
Hit me. So I mentioned my dad that wasn’t one of my things I was going to say, but I think it’s just been a big year of self reflection. You know, I did push through in 2020, you know, I did a podcast every day for a month. We did the Mastermind. We launched this. We did that. We did the B, B, B, B B did all the things.
And in 2021, I still did a lot, but obviously all my speaking stuff completely went out the window, which honestly is a huge relief because it’s a huge expense and it’s really tough on the adrenals. And it actually allowed me to actually get on with some work.
So I kept everything ticking and I’m going to talk about work a little bit more in a minute. So, but in real life, I calmed down. I just wrote a big blog post about. So maybe I’ll include it in the links, but I calmed down about everything, about money, about peer pressure, about life, about being a perfect mom, about trying to be a sexy partner, about trying to be fit, about trying to be up on everything. You know?
Belinda Weaver:
Our expectations on ourself are intense, aren’t they.
Kate Toon:
So much. You know, so much I calmed down. I started going to the gym a lot. God, who are we? I stopped drinking for big swathes of the year. Didn’t manage to be perfect by any means, but totally reexamined my approach to an attitude about alcohol, largely through The Alcohol Experiment by Annie Grace. I really recommend if you’re just want to not necessarily want to give up, but want to have a look at why you drink, how you drink, maybe cut back a little bit. It’s amazing. I bought a van, my partner,
Belinda Weaver:
That is just so cool.
Kate Toon:
Belinda, it’s been life changing and it’s, I’m going to get bit philosophical.
I reckon we’re going to be quite philosophical today, but I’ve got the van, it’s an empty shell and I have built the interior. Like I have used circular saws and you know, drills and I have pocket hole, pocket hole routers and things like that. Basically that’s the wrong thing. And I’ve just embarrassed myself. Pocket hole jig. I built walls.
You know, I made a bed, I built cabinets. And it’s one of those things where I’m one of these people who says, I’m not the sort of person who, I’m not the sort of person who can do that. And then I tell myself this story so much that I end up believing it.
And so I just changed. The script was like, why I run a seven figure company. Why can’t I build a cabinet and put a sink in it like, God, you know, how hard can it be? It’s really, really hard. And I made a lot of mistakes and the walls of my van were occasionally splattered with my own blood, but I did it and it’s been life-changing. It makes me feel like I can achieve anything.
So yeah, it was going to say calm down, lots of health and exercise, alcohol and van for my free things. So there we go.
Belinda Weaver:
I think I love that because that self care element, but also for both of us life outside of work has become way more important. And it’s such a cliche to go, “You’ve got to enjoy the journey”, but 2020 really hit me in the tit and went, look, if you don’t start making some changes, this is the new life. And you need to have a bit more fun. And I think for everyone, if you can’t look back and remember the last time you had some genuine fun, you need to make some changes. And I was definitely in that category.
Kate Toon:
We’ve talked a lot about this on the podcast. How, when it’s your own business, it can just eat your life. And there’s always more you can be doing. And you know, we often look around and see our peers doing things, and we think we need to do that. We need to do that. And you know, I think we come from a position now where we have ticked off a lot of things.
So, you know, if you’re starting out. Yeah. I think there is still that need to hustle and push. Maybe not to the extent that Belinda and I did, cause we did occasionally burn out and struggle that, you know, the reason I cut the reason both of us can take a step back a little bit is because we put the work in.
Belinda Weaver:
Oh yeah.
Kate Toon:
Life is short and all that kind of stuff, I guess. Yeah. We’re going to move on and talk about worky stuff anyway. But yeah,
Belinda Weaver:
Just quickly before we do, it’s just, I think you can still work hard. But one thing I’ve realized that if I prioritize and I get help as well, I can still get great results without working every weekend.
Kate Toon:
Yeah. I don’t know what I was doing like, I have managed during lockdown and all of this. To still get my work done and still spend three or four hours working on the van.
[MUSIC BREAK]
Kate Toon:
Before my internet decided to crap itself. I was talking about Parkinson’s law and how, if you give something three hours, it’ll take three hours. If you give something an hour and a half, it’ll take one and a half hours. And my problem was Belinda. I really realized this and this makes me sound such a sad egg.I didn’t have anything better to do. And I know that all this, obviously I’ve got my family, my, my beautiful son and whatever, but I loved my, I love my work.
And it gives you a sense of purpose and identity. I didn’t have much outside of work that gave me that same sense of purpose and identity. And that’s what I needed to find.
I needed to find something that gave me as much dopamine and serotonin as my work did, but there wasn’t work and that’s been the van, the gym, the walking, the other, other things. And I’m so glad because I just felt like I was a one dimensional beast, very successful in business. Brilliant, but not ticking many other boxes. And that’s been a big change for me.
Belinda Weaver:
Me too. Absolutely. But let’s, I would just, we’re just wanting to make that point because it’s easy to think when I get successful, I will start taking time off when I am successful. I will do these other things, but do them now, everyone. All right. But let’s talk about work a little bit. And again, stick with the three what’s been happening on the work front for you?
Kate Toon:
So look, not heaps. I had big grand plans, as many of us did. I was, you know, I had plans to launch a lot of courses and I had speaking events around the world. And I was going to really try and, you know, get more into the European and American market by going to a lot of events over there and speaking about copywriting. That all went away.
So what I did instead was I completely kind of went inwards and I totally focused just on the people who were already my members or who were already like in my universe. So I stopped marketing to cold people, stop top of funnel marketing and just really dug into bottom of funnel.
And that worked well.
I grew my memberships and our sort of attrition with the memberships dropped away to almost nothing. We’ve had very few people leave, which, you know, I think we’ve got about 750 people across both memberships. And they stayed even throughout financial issues and ups and downs. For me, that’s everything. That’s really important.
Belinda Weaver:
That’s amazing. That’s definitely worth celebrating.
Kate Toon:
Yeah, it Is. It is. I mean, you know, maybe not as many new people as one would have hoped, but I want the people, do you know what I mean in, I want to give back to the people who have given to me. So that was really good.
A big part of the year was just improving stuff. So I completely redesigned the Clever Copywriting School website,my Kate Toon website, all the sales pages.
We also revamped every template. We’ve got 50 templates in the shop now and we redid every single one, which was huge. Rewrote them, had them proofed. Each template was proofed by six different people. And guess what? Each person found a different mistake.
Belinda Weaver:
Oh my god.
Kate Toon:
And then I finally, I finally, after what is it, 10 years I’ve been doing this, 11? Launched my first copywriting course. So I launched my, my sales page course, which is great. It took me an entire year to finish. I just launched it at the beginning of December. It sold out in 12 hours, 10 hours, which was great.
So that is exciting. I’m very proud of it. I did have three other courses planned. They haven’t happened, but they’ll happen in 2022. So that was my work stuff. Really just keeping, keeping on, one new thing and a lot of revamping. What about you, Belinda?
Belinda Weaver:
Nice. Well, I’m in the process of getting a new website. So, you know, there’s things where you’re like, oh, well, if I’m going to, it was a cascading series of tasks.I thought I needed to get new headshots. I’m like, well, if I’m going to get new headshots and it’s a good opportunity to look at all my marketing. So a new website’s coming, I got new headshots.
I’m embracing the label of copy coach. I used to say it quite quietly after copywriter, but I’m really stepping into that. And the process of new website,new copy, new headshots has been a lot of mindset change for me. So I’ve kind of looked inwards, but me, inwards for me, because I’ve had to kind of reset my comfort zone and step in, step out of that. And it was, it’s been tough. I’m not gonna lie. We can be pretty mean to ourselves sometimes.
And so I’ve been working on how I think about myself, how I talk to myself, how I show up all as part of the process of, of kind of zhuzhing up my website. So it sounds like a small thing, but it actually turned out to be, to be quite a big thing. And there’s a lot of work as well in migrating website platforms. So there’s a lot of tech stuff happening.
Number two for me is team building. Letting go, letting go of control, getting help, letting other people do what they do best and boundaries, I think has been really big for work. So big decisions about how much I work implementing no work zones and actually sticking to them. But as part of all this kind of stuff, I’m really taking a good, hard look at what my business looks like, what I want it to look like and setting myself up for the year to come. So this has been all about me and I’ve really slowed down and thought, actually, this is the new pace. And I like it. I like it.
Kate Toon:
Oh, this is beautiful. We needed this time off. You sound like a different person. I just love it. And you know, really thinking about what you want your business to look like. I don’t want to go back to old Kate Toon. I, you know, I already have slow Mondays and slow Fridays. Those are my days when I don’t have any coaching calls or anything like that. And then I work quite hard Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and I’m happy with that.
But you know, the other thing is like, you know, I stop at three now and make sure that I’m there and present when my son gets home from school and I’ve made him some snacks like glad now he’s nearly 13 and God, he needs snacks, always need snacks. I’ll tell you. And just being, you know, it doesn’t, it’s not that we sit there and talk about nature and our feelings for an hour. You know, he comes in, eats your snacks, we have a chat.
And he goes to his room, but it’s still, you know, why can’t I finish at three? Why not? Why do I have to do coaching calls at 7:00 AM in the morning?
Your podcast can only have me at 10 o’clock at night, on a Friday? I’m not going to be on your podcast. You know, like life is too short. I don’t pair my, the number of F U C K s have dramatically reduced. I have no more F U C K’s left .
Belinda Weaver:
It’s been a really good year from a work perspective for me because I haven’t,
I haven’t achieved. Like if I looked on paper, I’d be like, well, it’s not my greatest year, but from the way I feel about myself and my work, it’s been a big year.
Kate Toon:
Yeah. And that enables you to then take another leap forward. Should you choose to, sometimes you need to kind of, you know, like little mountain goats going up the mountain. Sometimes you need to just rest on a plateau for a little bit, do some grass before you start going back up the mountain, or as I’m doing, coming back down the mountain, I’m done with my mountain. I’m coming back down. One thing I didn’t mention that I probably should is, I actually did some copyrighting this year. Belinda,
Belinda Weaver:
Nice!
Kate Toon:
I know. I worked for a coffee company and the immigration agent. It was so good to have that experience again, of, you know, going, using all my own templates and my processes and practicing what I preach. And it was so horrible as well. Having deadlines, owing people work, failing, like I was slow. It took me four months to write three sales pages because life.
And being in that position where I am someone’s creature again,and they’ve given me money and now I have to do a thing. This is humbling. And it was really good for me. It’s really hard having clients and you know, they were, they were happy with the copy, but there was some, one thing I did I’m babbling. I did a, they wanted a keyword research report. You know,
SEO is my jam. And it’s been a while since I’ve done one for someone’s, I’ve put together this glorious document.
You know, I charged him for about eight hours, but it must’ve taken me about 26. All the knowledge I’ve learned, charts, graphs, you know, explaining, clickthrough rate potential and featured snippets. And you know, all this stuff and they sell coffee. They were lovely about it, but they were like, so what keywords do we use then? And I was like, oh, don’t you want to see the glorious journey it took for me to decide that you should use ‘buy coffee online’? Ridiculous. I know, just anyway.
So having clients again has been great. I’m going to try and do a couple of copywriting jobs a year, a couple of pro bono jobs a year for charities and things just to keep my hand in. Anyway, I’m babbling. We wanted to talk about our members and our membership. So I know that you launched a free copywriting group this year. You’ve also been building your membership. What, what have been topics of conversation in your gang over the last year?.
Belinda Weaver:
So three things that have been coming up a lot over the course of this year, especially in Confident Copywriting, which is my group. First one being VIP days. So hot right now, what do they look like? How do you do them? How do you prepare? How do you price them? Will they suit your way of working? We’ve been having lots of conversations around those.
The second one’s been, voice of customer research. Now I know when I started out on voice of customer research, interviewing customers, that’s what big agencies did, but now it feels like it’s becoming a staple part of more regular copywriting projects.
So in my group talking a lot about how you do it, what questions you ask, how long you should take, how to meet objections that clients might have around adding an extra five to seven hours into a quote. So that’s another thing. And also kind of ethical and conscious copywriting. We’ve been having a lot of conversations around what are the common structures and frameworks that we use formulas like pain agitate solution, and how can they be used for good and not so good?
Like we want to empower and motivate rather than manipulate people. And so we’ve been having a lot of conversations around making choices about how you write your copy that might not follow some of the big group trainings. So that’s the three, three for me. What about you?
Kate Toon:
Yeah. Different for us. It’s the perennial questions about pricing. How to price effectively, you know how to set a day rate. I must admit I’m not a big fan of the VIP day. I must, that’s a whole, we could do an episode on that because of lots of reasons anyway, but how to price, how to price for agencies, how to price as a subcontractor.
You know, we talk a lot about money in the group about profit first about managing your money about riding out the feast and famine. Because for me is one of the biggest factors of being a successful copywriter is to, you know, have regular income, a lot about project management. So more businessy things by the sounds of it, project management helps you successfully run a project. What documentation in each stage, how to avoid endless amends and clients ghosting you and, you know, being the captain of your copy ship, you know, leading the client, not being your client’s creature.
And then a lot about personal branding, how to stand out from the crowd as a copywriter. There’s so many of us, but there is so much work.
So how to be known for something, whether it’s a, an industry-based niche, a channel niche, a particular tone of voice, you know, whether you want to be known for VIP days or being an ethical copywriter, you know, just how do you create a memorable brands without sort of sharing pictures of yourself and your underwear and telling every sad story.
So yeah, pricing, project management and personal branding.
Belinda Weaver:
And what’s, what’s interesting about the personal branding is that when a lot of us become copywriters, we’re not in it to be celebs. We just want to write. And so there’s a lot of friction around stepping into a more public version of yourself in order to differentiate yourself.
Kate Toon:
Yes. And I think a lot of copywriters, I know that we would, I think maybe we would refer to ourselves as ambiverts, but at heart I’m an introvert. You know, it may not look like that from the persona that you see online, but that’s my best self. And as you said, I’ve stepped into the competence of being who I am. And the hardest part of that is no one wants to look like a fool.
No one wants to get trolled. And, and you know, we’re all sensitive beasts, so it can be scary to put yourself out there. But I think it was Hemingway. It probably wasn’t, everything’s attributed to Hemingway. It wasn’t Hemingway.
It might have been George Bernard Shaw, if you want to, it’s something like, if you want to be nothing, I’m going to find the quote. If you don’t want to be criticized, be nothing, do nothing, say nothing, that’s paraphrasing it terribly, but yeah, you’ve got to do something, say something and be known for something.
And I think this is a 2021 thing. Again, Belinda, because throughout the 2020 and 2021, we had a lot of social upheaval. We had some political events, some human rights events, the whole Black Lives Matter issue. You know, there’s been a lot going on. And I think as, as copywriters, that can be this thought of, well, let’s just focus on copywriting. We shouldn’t talk about our personal opinions or our values, but, you know, with that ethical copywriting comes the ethics of being who you are and being proud of that.
And being willing to stand for, what are your values? I want to work with someone whose values are aligned with my own. I don’t want to necessarily work with a copywriter and then find on social media that they’re, you know, not an ally in, in the movement, you know, that they are racist or that they are sexist or that they are something. And then find that out after the fact.
So I think the separate personal part of personal branding is we can no longer say, oh, this is just business. I don’t share my personal views. They are one and the same. And I think that’s so challenging in this modern world with this whole diverse, diverse, you know, the issues around whether you have your injection or not. And just everything today seems to cause an argument.
You know, you, I put this post up in my misfit entrepreneur group have a picture of an egg. And I said, here’s an egg. And that was all I said. And the group is very fun and sarcastic. So everyone started to argue and say,that’s your, you are sharing an unrealistic representation of eggism. No one could aspire to, that is not an egg. That is a chicken baby, you know, eggs. That egg is too oval. It’s supposed to, you know, just everyone got into it.
And it was every comment that you see on Facebook. And, and, and if people can argue over a picture of an egg, even comedically, they can argue about everything. And I think that’s what challenges people about personal branding. That was a long segue, sorry.
Belinda Weaver:
No, I love it because, you don’t have to necessarily make a big deal out of it. But as your business develops, you have to ask yourself what’s important to you. Where are your boundaries? What are your lines? When will you say yes.
And when will you absolutely say no? And for me, I, haven’t always known the answer to that, but with big social issues that are happening, I’m like, oh yeah, no, I definitely know what, where my line is on that. But other things have just evolved as my experience and my business has evolved. But I think it’s important to ask yourself those questions, because you want to, as you say, Kate, you want to work with people who aren’t diametrically opposed to you.
Kate Toon:
Okay. It doesn’t mean getting on a soapbox. It doesn’t mean being a celebrity. Those things are not personal branding. It’s just trying for your business persona to be as close to your own persona as possible. Because once it is, it’s so easy, everything becomes easier. Every post you write is on brand. Everything you do is on brand because you are your brand.
Anyway, let’s move on. I think we were going to talk about the festive season.
Belinda Weaver:
Yes. I want to know what you’re up to. Like, you know, we’ve talking about self care, but are you slowing down over Christmas because it’s good time to take a break. It’s a good time to get some work done as well. What are you doing?
Kate Toon:
That’s a hard one. Isn’t it? Well, my ex-husband who I live with. There we go. A little bit of personal stuff there and we are nesting three years and going strong is having his hip removed or not removed. It’s going to be replaced. Put another one back. You’re just going to have no hips meaningful.
So I am going to be playing a nurse needs to him, which is going to be fabulous. Cause obviously he’s an excellent patient. And yes, I, I, you know, I’ve cleared the week of the 20th and the first week back and then hopefully traveling to Singapore to see my best friend who has been stranded in Singapore without his partner for nearly two years now.
So hopefully all of that, I did plan to take the whole of December off, but because of life, things that were supposed to happen in November, I got pushed back into December. I am hoping quietly to revamp my 10 Day SEO Challenge, which was the thing that started all of this Belinda, this whole, it was my first ever thing.
And I just, this morning with the clarity I have from not drinking and being such a healthy cow at the moment, I finally had the idea for my next book. So what I would love to do is do you know the way you love the morning pages?
Belinda Weaver:
Yeah
Kate Toon:
I kind of want to do that, but with the theme of the book. So just come in every morning, maybe 6:00 AM till 7:00 AM and just free write for an hour. I’d love to, then, you know, by the end of that, I’ll have some materials to start my next book so-
Belinda Weaver:
That cool.
Kate Toon:
Ah, that’s sorted and I’m not going to talk about it. Cause I talked about my other idea to death, to the point where I don’t want to write anymore.
So this one I’m keeping under my hat. What about you? What are you going to be doing?
Belinda Weaver:
I usually like to take a break over Christmas, but that’s usually because I am a willowy husk of a human by Christmas, thanks to burnout. But this year I’m feeling really good. So for me, I’m, I’m working through, but that’s because you know, the chance to migrate my website to a new platform. It’s good. If everyone else is busy and no one’s logging in, but I’m also migrating my email systems. There’s a lot of backend tech stuff that I want to get through. Kate Toon: That’s SEO. We don’t want to lose that to main authority on that.
Belinda Weaver:
That’s right. So there’s a lot of, it’s not a simple operation. There’s a lot of things that have to be considered. I’m also giving my copywriting course a complete overhaul and rebrand, which
Kate Toon:
That is such a big job
Belinda Weaver:
I know like I’m not just, usually I check in every year and I zhuzh up some examples this year. I am taking that apart and reassembling it.
Kate Toon:
That’s what I’m doing with mine. And it’s so hard because you’ll find the same as me. Like I’m like, it’s so needs a redo. And then you look at it and you go, actually, it’s not that bad. What do I change?
Belinda Weaver:
Yeah. I’m giving it a new name, a new look, a new order. And I’m really excited about that, but, but I have to sit in my chair and actually do the work. So for me, it’s a lot of things like that.
But what I am going to be doing is because I want to hit January. I’ve, I’ve got a few things that happening between January and March, but the reason I want to get all this done kind of over the holidays is to leave my first quarter clear for these other things happening.
And so what I want to do is I want to say, well, I’m going to work this many hours per day and then I’m stopping and then I’m going to do something fun. So I’m really going to try and be strict with myself and find the balance. So I don’t get to new year’s day going, ‘I’m exhausted’.
Kate Toon:
That sounds great. Like, so like, you know, if you get your three hours done, then you can go and do your fun thing. We had a great, great dude come into our Clever Copywriting Community called Chris Bello. He’s actually a real estate agent.
And he works on this point system where he gives everything, he does points and he has a school that he would like to reach each day. So for example, recording a podcast would be two points. Closing a deal for a house sale would be five points. So he’s not necessarily measuring productivity or whatever, but it’s like, what’s enough? When’s enough, enough? You know?
Belinda Weaver:
Nice.
Kate Toon:
Like, and, and, and also assigning points by really what difference they’re going to make to his business. Not just financially, but you know, what’s the impact? So crapping around on Instagram for an hour is only half a point because what big impact is that? You know what I mean?
Belinda Weaver:
Yeah
Kate Toon:
It was such a different way of looking at it.
Belinda Weaver:
Oh I love this.
Kate Toon:
Yeah. I haven’t quite implemented it. It’s something that, you know, I hope to implement next year, but –
Belinda Weaver:
Yeah, I love the idea of going well, I can do one big. juicy, high power thing, or I can kind of mess around with some admin for three times as long.
Kate Toon:
Exactly. And also thinking about your energy levels, like recording a podcast, doing a Masterclass, Coaching, those are high energy level activities. And I’ll sometimes have this day scheduled by my team. It’s my fault as well, where there’s five hours of coaching, you know, there’s a Masterclass and some Hot Seats then, you know, doing a critique of someone’s website and then a Q and A with like 70 people. And it’s like, that is too much in a day.
Belinda Weaver:
Yeah I can’t do that.
Kate Toon:
And then the next day I’m dead. So yeah. I love the idea of prioritizing and putting limits on the hours words. I think that’s great. I’m so excited. I’m interested to know what the other things are in February and March, but I’m guessing you’re not going to tell us because you’re kind of mysterious about that.
Belinda Weaver:
Yeah. I’m going to be mysterious. It’s hard for me because I’m terrible at keeping secrets about stuff I’m excited about.
Kate Toon:
That’s great because you know, people can’t criticize stuff they don’t know about and they can’t pee on your bonfire and it’s nice to kind of go in your burrow and then come out, you know, like for like, what is it? My analogies are terrible. Like what are those wormy things that goes into like a gooey thing and then turns into –
Belinda Weaver:
A Chrysalis
Kate Toon:
And cocoon.
Belinda Weaver:
For some reason, I thought of peacock. And I was like, no, I don’t think that’s the one.
Kate Toon:
Peacocks don’t go in a cocoon. Or maybe they do. Maybe there’s a secret life of peacocks where they’re all in cocoons. Anyway, let’s move on from the cocoons and listen to this. The questions who’ve we got first?
Belinda Weaver:
Yeah. This one is from your Clever Copywriting Membership, actually Diana Loppolo. And I’m going to read you the question, then you answer it first.
Kate Toon:
Okay.
Belinda Weaver:
Diana says. “I’d love to know what your take is on how to best communicate your value to attract higher paying gigs in our marketing and sales process.”
Kate Toon:
Great question. Yeah. I mean, look, I still believe that your website is your hub and that it really needs to be the absolute tits. You know, like I don’t think you can get away with a cobbler shoes. The thing of, I’m so busy writing for my clients, my website supporting, you know, I think that you should, on your website, treat it like your best client, you know, consider that each of your services pages is a full sales page.
You know, whether you want it to be or not, it needs to have that problem agitate solution. You need to articulate what people get, who it’s for. You need the proof. You know, I want the testimonials, I want the results. I want the case studies.
And I want to know about you. So I think, you know, you need to thread you through everything. You need to be confident about tooting your own horn. So that by the time someone gets to pick up the phone, it’s, you know, they’re ready to make a purchase.
People like buying stuff. And when people call you and when they email you to ask for the quote, they’re really looking for affirmation that they’re about to make a good insensible purchase choice that the computer reassure them. At some point, I think it’s fine to have pricing on your site.
You don’t need to price everything, but you can give indicative pricing for one of your productized services that also just sets that bar. And a lot of it is going to be, to do with proof. People want to see people who had similar problems to them that you have sold. So, you know, logos, testimonials, case studies, videos, results. I think all of those help communicate higher value, but you know, the most important thing of all of it is just your confidence in yourself, your boundaries, how you communicate when you communicate, you know, if you are answering emails at the checkout at Coles, because you’re frantic to get the job, it’s not a good look.
If you send a quote, the client questions that, and you immediately discount your offer, it’s not a good look. If you, you know, say to the client, you’re only available these days, but then suddenly you’re taking phone calls on Sunday night. It’s not a good look.
So confidence speaks of value. I think you have to value yourself before your clients are going to value you.
Belinda Weaver:
Yep, absolutely. I agree a hundred percent. What I would add to that is all those things that you just said, this is what you need to have on your website. You also need to put all those things out into your public facing marketing, consistently.
The results you get, the projects you’re working on, the social proof, explaining your process, sharing information that positions you as an expert and an authority to someone who knows what they’re talking about doing that consistently, not once, not twice, but all the time, that just creates a digital footprint that is just soaked in the value that you offer.
Kate Toon:
I love that. I mean, really, if you look at your own website and you’ve done a good job on it, you could sit, work through each page of your site and generate 30 to 50 posts from the content on your own site.
Belinda Weaver:
A hundred percent.
Kate Toon:
Every testimonial, the copy on your homepage, the copy on your services page can all be tweaked and turned into social media posts. And then you know that you are literally ticking off all those proof points.
The next question is from your Confident Copywriter membership is from Sean Chamberlin and he asks very pertinent to this episode, “How do you balance the need to make money with the desire to do meaningful work?”
Belinda Weaver:
And this is like, again, this is what we’ve been talking about a lot.
As people have been looking inwards and going, what do I want from my life? And I say, there’s, there’s no reason you can’t have both. And when you were looking at the work that has meaning for you, you need to be clear on who that’s for.
So you need to be clear on your revenue goals. Like how much do you actually want to earn? And these kind of vague success metrics that we often see in copywriting can be quite toxic. So I always recommend people crunch some numbers about how much you actually want to earn to break even to pay bills, to be comfortable.
But then also when it comes to doing meaningful work, be strategic in your marketing. And you can have both be clear about who you want to write for what kind of work you want to do and the kind of choices that you make in your copywriting.
Kate Toon:
Yeah, I agree. I mean, I think meaningful is an interesting word. I think on first glance you might think that meaningful is about, you know, purpose driven content or content for causes and charities, but there is meaning in all copy, you know, there is meaning in helping an accountant grow their business by two new clients, that’s changing their lives.
That’s enabling them to have a nicer life, pay for their kids’ karate lessons. So I think find the meaning in all the work,there is always meaning there.
Belinda Weaver:
I like that.
Kate Toon:
As you said, you know, be realistic about your financial goals. It’s pointless to people that throw out, I want to hit 10 K a month. I want to hit this much of whatever. Why, what do you need to earn to pay your bills? What do you want to earn to live the life that you want? How long are you willing to give it?
I think the biggest problem I see with aspiring and perspiring copywriters is impatience. You know, it takes a while. It took me three years till I felt like I was really at a point where this was going to be sustainable and I could keep doing it.
And it took maybe seven years to the point where I could really pick and choose. And you know, one of the ways I do meaningful work in that classic sense is that I will take a couple of pro bono clients a year. You know, I allow nine people to join my membership a year for free. If they’re from minority groups or are struggling financially.
Those are different ways to give back and give meaning to my work, but it’s not directly doing meaningful work. If that makes sense. You know, I’m not writing the letter for a charity, but I am noting that charity have something free from me. It’s different ways of looking at it, but yeah, find the meaning in all the work I would say.
So that was Sean’s question. The next one.
Belinda Weaver:
I’ve got one from Jacinta Marshall who I think is in your group, but I’ll take packing here. I always love listening to this podcast. Thank you Jacinta. And I would love to know the challenges and benefits of working together as two copywriters located in different parts of the world, trying to get together to produce a podcast.
Kate Toon:
Wow.
Belinda Weaver:
It’s so hard.
Kate Toon:
It’s hard for time zones. And also because we’ve both got families and also because we’re both trying to live lives now. So in the early days we really pushed it. You know, we had no idea what we were doing. We would do. We’re trying to do a lot of episodes.
Organizing interviews was the hardest because then you have like this triangle of, of time schedules, you know, people in – Belinda’s in the US, I’m in Australia, you know, we’re interviewing people in Europe, it’s a nightmare.
We actually found that from our stats and from feedback that the interviews weren’t as popular as the solo episodes. So that took some pressure off us, but it is hard. I think when we’re at our best, we have similar views, but sometimes opposing and it’s really harmonious. When we’re our worst. It can be just quite clashy and miscommunicate. It’s hard to communicate online. So there can be sometimes be miscommunications or interpretations that weren’t men. We’ve worked really hard on that over the last 47 years of-
Belinda Weaver:
We have. I mean, even the last couple of years,we’ve had adult conversations.
Kate Toon:
We have.
Belinda Weaver:
And I think if you are going to work with a partner, whether they’re in a different time zone or they’re in your city, you have to be prepared to have difficult conversations, to clear the air, to set expectations and to make sure you both still getting something out of it.
Kate Toon:
Yeah. Yeah. We’ve grown up a lot together. Both of us have, you know, I think improved our emotional intelligence improved out of rationalness. Yes. And I’m glad I’m proud. Yes. We could have paid for a thousand dollar mastermind or got some fancy coach, but we’ve been each other’s coaches over the years and we’ve resolved a lot of difficult, weird stuff that we won’t even go into, but just stupid stuff where our minds went off on tangents and, and, and, you know, we’ve resolved a lot together. So, you know, it’s, I think we’ve grown as business humans. Don’t you Belinda?
Belinda Weaver:
Yes
Kate Toon:
Like compared to who we were when we start, we didn’t really know each other at all. So yeah,
Belinda Weaver:
No, we thought that would make it easier, but as we got to know each other?
It proved to be more difficult, but it’s been so good. And I think what happens is every time we actually get together face to face, we realize, oh my God, I really do like you really, this is really fun together. And I think that’s another part of it is when you’re working with someone, go try and keep it fun.
Kate Toon:
You do. Just one final point on that. I think Belinda and I have been very open about our, our confidence and our imposter syndrome and our insecurities as our confidence as individual business owners has grown as our understanding of our own values and what we bring has grown, we have worked better together
Belinda Weaver:
Yes
Kate Toon:
Because in the early days, I think we thought we were exactly the same and we’re almost together but competing. And now I think we realized that we’re not in competition with each other at all. We’re very different people. We can do nothing about who likes one and who likes the other. Doesn’t matter if we have similar offerings, people are going to just make choices or choose both of us. But we did not know that in the beginning. So I think working with someone who has a similar level of confidence to you is crucial and accepting that you’re going to evolve over time into different people, like a marriage, like a relationship. You’re not who you are when you start, that’s a great question.
Belinda Weaver:
Yeah, you’re my business wife.
Kate Toon:
You’re my business wife. Exactly. You’re my business mistress.
Belinda Weaver:
I like that better,
Kate Toon:
That’s far more exciting, and elicit. Well, we’ve got another great question here. This is from Pia Payne. Who’s a member of the Confident Copywriting membership. And she says, feast or famine when work is coming in, you’re too busy to take it on, but you fear the famine. What do you do, Belinda?
Belinda Weaver:
Okay. I’m just going to jump in it’s Pyre. So, and that you didn’t know that I called her Pia.
Kate Toon:
Sorry Pia
Belinda Weaver:
And then she went, it’s actually Pia. I was like, oh, thank God you told me. So with this one, this is going to be a little bit woo. But if you’re doing the solid work to keep your skills sharp, you’re doing the marketing work consistently to position yourself as someone who offers value and can be trusted. And you’re getting regular work in, you have to trust the process.
When you’re doing that work, and the leads are coming in. You have to tell yourself, well, I can set up a list and you can wait. But if you want the work done quicker, I’m happy to pass the lead on knowing that all the work will still come in.
And so it’s that kind of trusting that when you’re doing the hard yakka of the marketing and the craft and all that kind of stuff, the leads will keep coming. You just have to have those. I have to have five, but you have to have a little bit of a strong talk with yourself.
Kate Toon:
Oh, absolutely. I think there’s practical ways that isn’t, it sounds woo. But it’s also practical. Sit down. As we said before, we’re talking about Sean, what do you want to earn each month? What kind of projects do you need to take on to earn that money?
How many of them do you need? How are you going to get them? Where are they living at the moment? Who should you be marketing to map out the next three months? What money is coming in? And then look for gaps and ramp up your energies in that area too often.
I see people talking about famine and then I say, okay, well, what have you done to market? What products are you selling or to big push at the moment that I might, I don’t know. I just do copy. Okay. Well, that’s hard for me as a consumer to digest. What does that mean? Tell him, package it for me,
price it for me. Where are you marketing this?
Who, how many people have you talked to in the last month about what you do? How many podcasts have you been on? How many social media posts have you made? How many emails have you sent and you know, doing the work, as you said, if you do the work, the work will come.
And I think the problem is, is people don’t do the work. And then they’re like, why isn’t the work coming? It’s like it’s chicken and egg people. So it’s, it’s, it is have faith in the process, but also have faith in yourself as well, have that consistent approach. And it, and it will work. I love that.
And I’m sorry, Pyre. Everyone calls me Kate and it’s actually K eight, but I’ve just, I’ve just lived with it from now. I’m not, I’m taking the piss that just being silly. And the next question is from, oh no, it’s you it’s.
Belinda Weaver:
Yeah. This one is Mariska. Mariska Threadgold.
Kate Toon:
Isn’t that a good name?
Belinda Weaver:
I know, I love it.
Kate Toon:
Threadgold: Threadgold! I mean, that second name is a dream. It’s even better than Toon.
Belinda Weaver:
And I’m assuming Mariska is in your Clever Copywriting School
Kate Toon:
Yeah.
Belinda Weaver:
And she starts with, “Woohoo. Great to have it back. We’d love to get two top tips each from you and Belinda on moving a new business forward in this brave new world, please.” So I’m assuming we’re talking about this COVID world.
Kate Toon:
Yeah.
Belinda Weaver:
But you know, I feel like a lot of the challenges we have now, not that different to the challenges we always have. So let’s have two tips.
Kate Toon:
Two tips. One is I think embracing that personal brand, we’ve talked about it already, you know, stop hiding behind some pun on words that is your business name. You know, get your name out there, get you out there, your values, what you’re into share some fun stuff that you like, you know, you love Take That starts talking about Take That you’re obsessed with Guinea pigs. Talk about it.
You know, people are, people are people, so they want to find people who they like and trust and feel like they know.
So personal branding I think is, is big. I think in terms of, you know, this brave new world and connection and, and digital media, I still think that the biggest thing in digital media moving forward is going to still be video as much as possible live videos.
We have so many opportunities now with reels and TikTok and Facebook lives and LinkedIn lives and Instagram stories to talk directly to your audience, to let them see the cut of your jib. We are writers, but the biggest part of having a successful copywriting business is not the words you write on the page. It’s the relationship you have with the client.
And that starts on social media, you know, so get your little face out there. Even if you’re awkward, I should share my first ever video I did on YouTube. It’s an embarrassment. I still am embarrassing on videos, but first, no one’s watching. So make videos like no one’s watching because they aren’t. And only for time, you’ll get more and more competent. So personal branding and video would be my two tips. What are yours? Belinda?
Belinda Weaver:
I love those. All right. I’m going to try and think of two that add to that.
I would say always be marketing, a lot of copywriters are like oh I’m too busy now. So I’m going to stop, stop marketing myself, and I’m going to just write and then the work dries up. So always be marketing.
Even if you’re busy. We’ve talked about a couple of things in this episode about building your digital footprint and those should be happening all the time.
That is how you keep that momentum. That is how you keep the leads coming in. The other thing I think is just keep doing good work. That means investing in your skills and it might not be in a course. It might not be money, but it might be in practice. It might be intention, but if you want to get into a niche, if you want to charge more and take on the kind of projects that earn clients money, what skills do you need invest in those and keep your skills sharp, but also in delivering good work.
That means delivering a good experience, make it easy for the client, give them the safety of a process, be the copywriting lead in your own project. And when you have those kinds of things, systematized, that would systematize were all about the processes and the systems here, then your brain isn’t carrying those lists around.
That means you have capacity to delight and add extras to form stronger bonds with clients, because that is how strong word of mouth network happens too. When you’re not just delivering the basics, you’re delivering not only solid copy, but a great experience of working with you.
And I think these are just things that you can look after improve, invest in and be intentional with so that you leave a great reputation behind you. So always be marketing and deliver good work.
Kate Toon:
Love it. Boom. You can turn those into little memes. Well then we’re done. Those were all the questions and we’ve covered off what we’re doing.
We’ve talked about what we’re going to be doing. We’ve kind of talked about Christmas? What’s your, I want to ask one more question. This isn’t scripted, Belinda will go mad. So you’re not going to tell us your secret plans for the early part of the year, but do you have any kind of like big goals or words that you’re putting out there for 2022? What’s 2022 going to be about for you? More of the same or more self-reflection and self care or what’s the plan?
Belinda Weaver:
Like I love me a theme word, and normally I’m like, I already know my theme word. I don’t know my theme word, the vibe that I want 20 to 2022 to have for me is I feel like I’ve, I’ve reestablished a better baseline for work and self-care. And so I want to make sure that that stays firm. I want, I want more unscalable conversations.
I want to get to know people just like you having this year, Kate, like getting to know people on a more personal level. I want to bake that into my business. And so it’s not going to be like, I’m going to be launching some things and there’s going to be new looks and websites and stuff, but at the heart of it, I want to focus on nurturing relationships. So that’s what I’ve got in my mind so far.
Kate Toon:
I love that. That was similar for me. I mean, I feel that that’s kind of where I was this year. I want to keep that going, keep that good vibe going. I think I’ve let go of some of the more you could just go parts of my business to speaking of it useful and not saying it’s just about you go with the speaking and the performance and that kind of stuff.
I want to go back in my burrow. You know, I really want to write my new book. I’m launching my new podcast, which is going to go along with the book. I just want to, I just want to stay at home, do good work and connect with the people who I’ve connected with. That sounds really lame, but like I love being in my membership and just chatting with the people, you know?
And then yeah, new people joining in a fresh voices. That’s great. But I’m happy with what I’ve got. So, my word for the year is definitely not scale. So maybe it’s descale. I don’t know. It’s it’s I don’t know what it is, burrow. That’s going to be my word. I want to be in my burrow with all my people, just doing the work, so there you go.
Belinda Weaver:
I’m excited to do lots of new things and I’m excited to grow and expand, but I don’t want it to come at the cost of my sanity, my emotional health, my mindset, or the relationships with people.
Kate Toon:
I think mine is my business is just a scale where I know that it’s at its limit and to go any bigger than I am, is going to require an, you know, a mammoth effort. And I don’t have that in me. So I built the business I always wanted. And now I need to try and enjoy it.
Belinda Weaver:
Oh, I love that. Well, on that note, everyone, we’re going to say goodbye. Thank you for listening. Hopefully you’re catching this before Christmas. Hopefully we can get it out before Christmas.
Now we did, we don’t have any plans to start a regular schedule. We were like, there’s an episode every two weeks, rain hail or shine. And we don’t have that plan, but you know what, Kate, I love this chat. So I think again, maybe we’ll get randomly special episodes.
Kate Toon:
Yeah. I’m feeling, I’m feeling a Valentine’s Day episode might be good to send that copy-love something about copy-love. And I’d also love to do an episode about those VIP days. So there’s a couple of ideas. If you’ve got any ideas for episodes, head to the Facebook page, hot copy podcast or Twitter, I’m not sure where else we are.
Just email us we’re everywhere and tell us what you’d like us to talk about. But I think that, I think those are a couple of ideas I would love to chat about. I’d love to.
Belinda Weaver:
We make no promises, so convince us.
Kate Toon:
Okay. Okay. I’m keen. She’s Not keen
Belinda Weaver.
Well I’m dead keen, but you know why
Kate Toon:
She’s got Stuff to do in February-March secret stuff, too busy for us.
Belinda Weaver:
This is our trap. When we go ‘let’s do it’.
Kate Toon:
I know. I know. Cause we’re excited and you know what? I’m glad that we’re still excited about all this. We’re not just crusty old copywriters sitting on our plinths, flowing ideas down. We’re still in here. We’re still in the arena.
You know, we’re, we’re, we’re wrestling the tigers, long may we continue. They’re smaller tigers than they used to be, slightly tired tigers. They’re still there. I don’t know what I’m talking about
Belinda Weaver:
Alright well, yes. Until you hear from us again, happy writing. Bye-bye Kate.
Kate Toon:
Bye-bye Bill.
Thanks for listening right to the end. If you enjoyed this podcast, you might enjoy my two other podcasts. I have one called the Recipe for SEO Success, which is all about SEO tips, advice and helping you grapple the Googlebeast. And my other, Confessions of a Misfit Entrepreneur, which is all about dealing with the stresses of dealing with your own business. You can find both of them on iTunes and Stitcher, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
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