Liz Wilcox will blow your email marketing mind on the 258th episode of The Copywriter Club podcast. Liz is a blogger turned email marketing expert who helps other bloggers become business owners. If you’ve been letting your list sit in the dust or you haven’t taken the plunge in creating an email list, this might be the episode to give you the push.

Here’s how it all breaks down:

• Have you ever googled: How to make money from home?
• The overwhelm that comes with all the ways you could start a business and make money online.
• Why it’s a good idea to start your email list. (even with no audience)
• What you should do when you begin to grow your email list.
• Writing a book about poop? How it became the beginning of everything for Liz.
• The secrets behind a 100% conversion rate.
• Do you really need to go to the experts?
• Van life. Is it for you and can you start a business while living in the woods?
• How to think outside the box of what you see online.
• Going from idea to done and executed in one hour.
• How to get to a 47% email open rate.
• Steps to take to become a digital course creator. (do you need to give up client work?)
• When is it a good time to start pitching to podcasts?
• Creating an inclusive digital product based model and following through.
• How long email newsletters should really be taking you.
• Is storytelling a thing of the past?
• The difference between stories and updates on your life.
• Is Liz going to take over our newsletter?
• How to keep it fresh and exciting when writing to your list.
• Everything you don’t want to do when it comes to email marketing.
• Making your business your number 1 client and not apologizing for it.
• What every copywriter and business owner needs to be for themselves.
• How Will Smith will help you build your business.

Need Will to help you build your business? Check out the episode below or read the transcript.

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The people and stuff we mentioned on the show:

Full Transcript:

Rob:  You know how when you meet some people, they just seem to be stuck. They’re not able to move forward, they’re just not able to do anything. If they’re in business, maybe they’re stuck following everybody else’s formulas, doing the same thing that everybody else is doing. And then there’s some people that you meet who seem full of energy. They’re free. They’re definitely not stuck. It’s almost like anything is possible for them in business, in life. Well, today’s guest for the Copywriter Club podcast, is the type of copywriter and entrepreneur who broke out of that box a long time ago. She’s the type of creative who sees the worldwide web as the Wild Wild West, and as an opportunity to build and connect with companies, ideas and people. That’s copywriter Liz Wilcox.

Kira:  Before we jump into Liz’s interview, this podcast is sponsored by the Copywriter Think Tank. That’s our mastermind for copywriters and other marketers who want to think outside the box and build new offers and revenue streams in their businesses. Rob, I’m going to interview you. Why do you think the think tank helps copywriters and marketers experience real results? Why does it work?

Rob:  I’ve thought about this a lot recently, and I think one of the things that’s really different about the think tank is that we don’t have a single formula that we’re trying to get everybody to buy into or to follow. Some courses, some masterminds you’re working with, an expert who’s done it their way. And so they teach their way and they expect you to do everything the way that they did it. That’s not our approach. We start out by asking each member about their goals, about what they want to achieve, about the challenges that they’re facing, about the impact they want to have in the world, the authority they want to build. And based on those goals, we tailor the experience for each individual in the think tank. Everybody else in the think tank is doing something similar. They’re working on their goals, but when you have everybody working together to achieve their goals in their business, you start to see what other people are doing.

There’s an effect that just happens where everybody grows together. And so it’s different from a lot of other programs that are a little bit more rigid. I think that’s one of the reasons why the think tank works.

Kira:  Wow. That’s a good answer. I feel like you practiced that. It was very smooth.

Rob:  Not practiced at all. I’m the most unpracticed person ever on the podcast.

Kira:  So smooth. If the Copywriter Think Tank sounds something that could help you in your business, you can visit copywriterthinktank.com to learn more.

Rob:  Okay. Let’s go to our interview with Liz and find out how she got her start as a copywriter. How did you become this expert in email, email strategist, copywriter, all of these things?

Liz:  This is a really fun story. I think it’s a lot different than what you typically hear on the show. Number one, I feel a lot of especially email copywriters, they start off as copywriters for other people who are selling products. I actually started off as a blogger. I was an RV travel blogger. I didn’t even start off traditionally where it was, this is my passion. I just want to share the word, RVing is so awesome. No, I started off as a business. I knew I wanted to travel and I had no means of making money from the road. Of course, I Googled how to make money from home, saw all these people, make a million dollars in six months, just watch my webinar, that type of style. I realized that there were all these people making money from blogs. I saw, especially in the RV space, I saw a lot of bloggers and I said, well, if they can do it, I can do it too.

I signed up for WordPress. I said, okay, here I’m going to go. From the get-go every, every online guru, so to speak was saying, my biggest regret was not taking my email list seriously. Before I had even hit publish on my blog, I made sure I had an email service provider set up. I didn’t even have Facebook at the time, but I got back on Facebook, added all my old friends and I hit publish on my blog and I said, hey, actually now I live in this RV. I want to get it going. I heard you can make money on a blog, please join my email list and I’ll figure it out as I go. I got 100 people on my email list in the first, I don’t know, it was 30, maybe 60 days. I can be persuasive, hence why I’m a copywriter. Right?

From there I just started, asking them, why do you follow me? Why do you follow me? People said, well, you’re really funny and you can tell a good story. So about six months later, I wrote my first book. I published it. It was a book about poop.

Rob:  Nice.

Liz:  It made over $7,000 in the first 90 days, it got picked up by an international sponsor that gives me $7 for every new lead it generated for them. I realized wow, the money really is in the list, because I only had about 300 people on my email list from them. I just kept creating digital products, creating digital products. I ended up launching my very first online course. About three years into business, I had 141 people on the wait list. By the cart close day, I had made 141 sales. Flash forward a couple of months later, I actually went to Tarzan Kay and Sage Polaris, they had some, what was it called? Legendary or something. I started meeting all these copywriters. I had no idea what really a copywriter did. I’d been following some online, but I wasn’t sure what they did or how they made money.

And so, I’m meeting all these copywriters and I’m like, but what do you actually do? They say, sales emails, pages, et cetera, et cetera. I said, well I do all that for myself and here are the results I’ve had. And they were like, whoa, you should do that for a living. And so I knew, number one, I was apparently very good at writing and I was really good at writing emails, because I didn’t run Facebook ads. I didn’t do social media campaigns. All my success just came from email marketing. And so I actually left that conference. I put my RV blog up for sale and I went right into the copywriting business.

Rob:  Nice. Okay. There’s definitely a lot of questions that come out of this. First of all, RVing, tell us a little bit about, what were you driving? Where did you go? How did you make that work? This is a dream of mine. I would love to have the skoolie, the refurb skoolie, maybe a trailer and live the van life. Unfortunately my wife has zero interest in that. So I have to do this all vicariously by asking people about their experience. Tell us a little bit about that before we come back to email and copywriting.

Liz:  Yeah, sure. I was married at the time, and number one, I hate to clean, and number two, I hate to spend money. We were moving, he was in the military at the time. The deal on our house fell through and he made a joke. We were moving to Alabama and he made a joke about, well, everybody in Alabama lives in a trailer, Liz, why don’t we just buy an RV? We’d only been married a year and a half. He didn’t really know me that well. And I said, okay, why not. And so six days later we bought an RV and we were living in it. That’s when I thought, hey, this thing has wheels, kind of like Rob just said, why don’t we move this thing? That sounds really fun. And so that’s when I started my blog. But about a year later into the blog, I actually started traveling. We traveled full-time for about three years.

First, we had a big giant fifth wheel was about 400 square feet. And then when we started traveling, we realized that was way too big. We downsized into a 32 foot Jayco Greyhawk. You can Google it. It’s the picturesque RV. It’s got the cab over it. We have a daughter, she slept up over the cab and she called it her little princess castle. It was really fun. But like you said about your spouse, Rob, my husband who is now my ex-husband, he didn’t really care for it either.

Rob:  I have a feeling if I bought the trailer or whatever, I would probably be in a very damaged relationship if it lasted at all. That’s cool. We both love to travel. But she doesn’t necessarily love the idea of being on the road all the time, as much as being in cool places.

Liz:  It is very hard. Today I actually am in a hotel room right now at the time of this recording. Earlier I was trying to go up to the business center and print something out. I was working on some client work and I thought, if I just had this printed out, I could refer back to it. I’m just working on my small laptop right now. It’s so hard to go back and forth through the windows. And then the printer wouldn’t work and I said to myself, Liz, you used to live in an RV and do this on campground Wi-Fi, just stop, you can click through the tabs. You’re going to be fine. It’s all about perspective. And so something I love to tell people on top of my first digital product was literally a book about poop, is also, I started my business. I started making money online without any internet. If you’ve ever been to the woods, you can imagine what I was working with. If I can do it, I truly believe anybody with a deep desire can do it too.

Rob:  Yeah, I agree. There’s a lot to be said for hard work and just figuring things out, especially as you get started. You’ve mentioned it a couple of times, let’s talk about the book, the book about poop. I think this might be the first time I’ve said that word on the podcast in like 216 episodes or whatever.

Liz:  Congratulations Rob. You’ve made it.

Rob:  Growing. The obvious questions is why, why a book about that? How does that topic come to your mind? What were you thinking? Obviously there was a demand for it. Tell us a little bit about writing the book and then how you sold it.

Liz:  Yeah, sure. Like I said, and this is great advice for any copywriters out there who are thinking, well, how the heck do I come up with my first digital product? I’m tired of always just doing services. I just asked my audience, of course I was building my email list. I was all over the place. I was this travel blogger, but I was stationary at the time. I was trying to build up enough revenue so we could hit the road. And so I think I mentioned it earlier. I just asked people in my email, I sent out a newsletter and I said, I’m all over the place. Why the heck do you follow me? And people, you’re funny, you can really tell a good story. Your newsletters are so great. Actually, I was just driving one day and I was thinking about all these answers, all these reply’s I was getting. I thought, funny stories. Yes, I’m a good writer. I know I am. I could create a collection of funny stories about RV life.

Because if you go on Instagram right now, you go to hashtag RV life, you’re going to find all of these beautiful pictures, all these, come join us now. We hit the road and now we live on a hippie commune and see the Grand Canyon. Our kids are just awesome. All these picturesque utopia things. But that was not the reality I was living in. I was living in Alabama, sweating my butt off, had a leaky roof, had no carpet, a toddler, it was a nightmare. I thought, I can’t be the only one, this hashtag RV life cannot be the reality 100% of the time. I just started asking other RV bloggers that I was trying to network with. Hey, do you have any story that, it just sucked that day, but in hindsight, it’s funny? How about you give me that story, I’ll put it in a chapter in my book and I’ll give you 50% commissions of whatever you sell.

That worked. I got 13 different stories. I called it Tales From the Black Tank. If you know anything about RVing, Rob’s nodding his head, the black tank is where the sewage goes.

Rob:  Yup. You’ve got to find a lot of hook up to the black tank.

Liz:  Right. Tales From the Black Tank are a collection of hilariously crappy RV stories. I found that the niche, the pain point that I was solving, it wasn’t how to actually dump the black tank, how to get in the RV. It was entertainment purposes, but also it was filling that loneliness gap. When you get on the road it can be lonely. It can be like, I’m the only one who’s doing that. Maybe my spouse doesn’t want to do this, but I really want to do it. And so it’s just fine when you can connect with people through laughter, you can remove that loneliness. You feel a little different. And so that’s the pain point that I was scratching and people freaking loved it. I sold the blog and that I sold the book with it and that book still sells today. You can Google it. You’ll see a picture of me making a funny face in front of the black tank. It’s outrageous, but it’s funny.

Rob:  Nice. I like it. And then you said that you sold it or used it as a lead magnet for somebody else or was that a different book?

Liz:  Yeah, no, that’s the same one. What’s really great, and another thing, if you’re a copywriter and you’re trying to find more clients or even to sell more digital products, it’s just partner with people. The beautiful thing about my book was, I didn’t even write it. I wrote one chapter. I only had one story. I’d been in the RV six months and I’d never even moved it. Having those partners, having those pieces of the puzzle, being other people, they were promoting it. Somebody promoted it on Instagram, which I didn’t even have an Instagram account at the time. A company just happened to be looking at other RV influencers I guess, saw it, thought it was hilarious and thought, hey, this is how we are going to connect to the market. It was an international company trying to break through to the US. They called me up. And they said, hey, this book is hilarious. We love it. We’ve showed it around the office. Everyone’s laughing, can we use it as a lead magnet?

I was selling it for $10 at the time and they gave me $7 for every lead. I can’t remember how much money I made, but it was quite a bit, especially for someone who hadn’t even been in business for a year.

Rob:  I like this idea. I hadn’t really thought about writing a book that could become a lead magnet for somebody else. Obviously there’s probably a more deliberate way to go into it. Maybe touching base with a company like that, that’s trying to break into a market and then creating it on the front end, as opposed to the way that you did it. I love something like that, that obviously something that was working for your business, could work for somebody else’s business, licensing that property out to them or selling that property to them. It’s just a cool way to make more headway in your own business.

Liz:  Yes. 100%. It is called the worldwide web for a reason. It’s just bountiful, full of companies, ideas, people that want to partner with you. If you’ve got something good, definitely, if that’s a route you want to take. If you think I can’t do client work forever, or I’ve got this really. I know a lot about X. And so I’m going to write a book about X, and you can license it out. That’s actually something I’m trying to do with my business right now, license out my trainings, things like that. I even know of a copywriter who sells her curriculum to universities now. It’s a real thing that you can really make happen for yourself.

Rob:  I heard of somebody doing that just last week. University reached out about licensing a copywriters training, which I love that as well. There’s so many opportunities out there, it’s almost endless, especially when you start talking to niches as opposed to, I’m going to focus on marketing or copywriting or whatever. When you start getting into niches, there’s literally millions, millions of things that we could be doing.

Liz:  Yeah, 100%.

Rob:  Okay. Let’s go back then to, you ditch the blog, you sell that off and you lean all the way into copywriting as a business. What did you do to start connecting with clients, to start creating, well, you’ve got a lot of moving parts in your business, but let’s start with that. How did you start connecting with clients and get started actually writing for other people?

Liz:  Sure. I always knew when I started my RV blog, I knew I wanted it to be a business. I’ve always been really firm on the vision and flexible on my details. And so I knew I wanted to go into email marketing. I knew I had a framework that not a lot of people were talking about because I was a very B2C person. Right? Very business to consumer. I was talking to people that didn’t even want to pay for electricity, that were dying over poop jokes. It was a very specific, interesting framework versus the typical, online digital marketing thing. Anyway, that’s when I said, okay, I’m going to go full on into this copywriting service thing, because I’d just met all these copywriters who live in LA and Toronto and all these fancy places and I’m still stuck in my RV, in this trailer park at the time.

I was like, oh yeah, this is what I’m going to do. I set up the copywriting services in order to pay for me building the email marketing digital product side. And so because everyone had already seen my success, I had built my RV travel blog for three years. I put it on the market, and the second it went on the market, the same day I posted on Facebook, just on Facebook, at this time I probably had one, maybe 2000 Facebook friends that knew me from the RV business, had seen me selling. I said, hey, you know what I really hate, when a friend of mine tries to create an online course and they spend six months to a year agonizing, creating the curriculum, blah, blah, blah, and then they make zero sales. I said, I’ve sold a book about poop. I’ve sold an online course about RV maintenance and I’ve never even changed a tire before.

I know exactly how to do it and I’m going to share everything with you, just join my newsletter. The same as with the RV blog. I got my first 100 subscribers, at that point, it took seven days or something. And then I said, share it, share it. If you’ve been watching me the last three years and you think, how the heck does that blogger makes so much money and she hasn’t posted a blog in two years? Share this, share this, share this. And then I put another post out that said, okay, I did it through email marketing. I’m going to start doing some copywriting services. If you’re interested, like the post, send me a DM, comment, whatever. I had something like 12 or 13 comments, a couple of DMs. I just took my sticky note, wrote down all their names and went in the DMs, hey, can I have your email? I want to send you the details. Can I have your email? Can I have your email?

I didn’t add them to my email list, but I did email them. I said, hey, this is what I’m thinking. I’d heard about day rate. I was like, in a day, I think I can write X amount. If I said I can write eight emails, they said six, that way, I’m giving myself some room. I think I charged a thousand bucks for my first one. I made my first sale in the first couple of days. Because like I said, I did have that experience, people had been watching me online so they knew, oh yeah, I’ve seen her writing. I’ve seen her make sales, she’s legit. I already have the social proof. And so I did my first day rate for a thousand. Then I realized that’s not enough. I did my second rate for 1200, a couple weeks later. Then 1500. And then within I think six months I had raised it to 2000 and that’s the rate now.

Rob:  That’s awesome. You’ve been doing it for how long?

Liz:  It will be two years as of December, in December of 2021, 2 years.

Rob:  Okay. That’s amazing. And then you said that you were doing the writing to basically allow you the ability to create the products. Talk about some of the products you’ve created. It seems like a lot of fun.

Liz:  Sure. I love creating products, with my RV business, I created over a dozen digital products in three years. I think it might’ve been even two and a half years. If you name a digital product, I’ve created it. I’ve done digital summits. I still own an RV business that’s a digital summit. But anyway, so yes, all the copywriting was just to build up cash flow until the products were built up. Actually in that two year mark, December, 2021, I probably won’t need to do any more copywriting unless I want to. Right now, my very first product, actually I had a mastermind call, used to meet with some people at 6:00 AM every Monday morning for three years or something. Get yourself some friends if you don’t have any, you can ask me, I will be a friend, just DM me. I’ve got lots of Facebook friends. I’ll most likely accept your request and read your message.

But anyway, my first product, actually I was part of a summit, the Rebel Boss virtual summit with Eden Fried. I had actually been running her private mastermind for years when I was an RV blogger. I knew that her summit was going to be pretty big. And so I created my presentation. I had dancing banana GIFs on there. I had sound effects, because I really wanted to be noticed. This was my first, quote unquote, real publicity. And so I asked my mastermind, oh my gosh, my presentation, it goes live in five hours. I’ve had it on my to-do list to create a product. I know if I don’t, I’m really missing out, this is what I’m supposed to be doing. This is my plan. I said, so tell me, what’s your problem with newsletters? I know I can write them quickly, but what’s your problem with email?

And they said, well, newsletters suck and I never know what to say. I said, I can write a newsletter in 20 minutes. It’s nothing. They said, well that’s what your product should be. I said, okay, I’m going to name it 20 minute newsletters. Anything I name is very much what exactly it is. They said, if you can figure out your outline for a 20 minute newsletter, that’s going to sell. And so got off the call, I signed up for SamCart. I had no place to even get people to buy a product. I Googled free trial cart, found SamCart, set up the page. I said, okay, well, I’m not going to create 20 minute newsletters unless somebody buys. The second the page went live, the summit started, within five minutes of my talk. I had made three sales. I was like, oh shit, I better create this. Right? I’m like, okay, what do I act?

I went back through all my newsletters, of course, like I said, I used to own a business. I had three and a half now, four years with my new business of newsletters. I was looking for a pattern of how I was writing. I found out, first, it literally was say, hello. Personal updates, segue into content. You don’t even have to buy it now, that’s the whole thing. I just put it in a Google doc. I sent it to the people who had purchased, sorry for the delay. Here’s the 20 minute newsletters. I made a video that said, here’s an outline, gave some examples of what that actually looks like. I ended up making over $500 in that first, the product was $22. I don’t know the math, but I made over $500 from that one product. That took me from idea to creation, less than an hour. From there I created an outline called just pre-sell it where I pre-sold Tales From the Black Tank. Before I had even created it, I had made a couple hundred bucks and I kept doing that over and over with other products. I created an outline for that.

My open rate is actually crazy. When I sold my RV blog, my open rate was over 47%, it was a three and a half year old email list. I had sent over a half a million emails. I had I think about 6,000 people on the email list. And so people said, how the heck do you do that? And so I made a two hour workshop. I sold that, you can buy that, that’s called Open Sesame. And now back in February, my pride and joy, my favorite product to sell is actually a membership. It’s called email marketing membership, hoping the SEO catches up with me on that one. It’s $9 a month. I write a newsletter every single week that you can use. It comes with a skeleton outline, an email explanation, a detailed template, and two swipes written from two different perspectives, two different businesses. In the first six months I have over 400 members. And as of right now, I’m trying to get a hundred members in the next 17 days.

Rob:  Nice. Okay. Let me ask about the financial side of that then, because obviously you’ve put a lot of time into creating these products. You are still writing for clients, although maybe not so much longer in the future. How does that break down in your business? What are the percentages and how much are you making from digital products?

Liz:  As of today, summer 2021, my digital products are about 40% of my income. I still am making quite a bit from copywriting. Just full disclosure, in July of 2021, I had my best month, I made $15,000. I’m trying to think of, actually, I think I have it here, I’m obsessed with my numbers. Right? And so it was about, I would say about $7,000 of that came from the digital product side. And then the 8,000, that’s where I got about 40%, of what came from the copywriting. Basically how I’ve been able to just build that up is doing podcasts like this. In 2021, by the end of the year, I’m hoping to have over 52 interviews. Right now I have almost 40, summer of 2021. And so just positioning myself. Like I said, I wanted to be the email marketing lady. Right?

And so, positioning myself as such in these interviews has allowed those new leads to come in. Most of them honestly didn’t even know that I was a copywriter. They didn’t know that they could hire me. And so it was actually working pretty, pretty quickly. I will say, also if you go to my site, you can see I now have productized services where you can just buy five days of emails. You can just buy a homepage, a sales page. That was because I was getting all these new leads that were just buying the products. All of my products are less than $50. I want to be very affordable. When I started my business, I was really, really quite poor. I try to price it where it’s really affordable for everyone. But anyway, I realized, wow, okay, there’s not enough leads coming in. I still do need to sell some copywriting services.

I put those up, this was in May or June, and within a few days of putting that up, I had made over $3,000. No contracts, no sales calls. It was just, my friends said, wow, awesome. I’d love to refer you. I’ve never known how, now I have this hire me page. And people were just going up, signing up, filling out the survey, everything that I needed to put their message into copy. And then I guarantee a 14 day turnaround once you purchase and fill out the survey.

Rob:  Do you do all of the work yourself, or there’s so much coming in that you would need to have a junior writer working along with you?

Liz:  As of right now I do all the writing myself. I am in Chicago and I wish that I was working less. I was actually speaking with a friend yesterday and saying, I think I need to hire a junior copywriter or take down some of those services.

Rob:  Right. Because when I saw that, I’m like, it’s so easy to buy from you, whether you want a product or whether you want a service.

Liz:  Thank you.

Rob:  I was definitely curious about that. Okay. A lot of other things that I want to ask about, you talked for a minute about your framework, your framework that’s a little bit different. I think it’s follow a friend customer if I’m not mistaken. Let’s talk about that. How does it work in what you do? How do you talk about it with your clients?

Liz:  Sure. The framework that I follow to build my email list, and then the framework that I followed to write newsletters, I think the newsletter is one is really different and I hinted towards it. What Rob was saying is, and you can get this right on my homepage. I really truly believe that email marketing will work for everyone if you just keep it simple and you really truly know your people. Just the way that I was able to sell a book on poop, how did I do that? Because I knew exactly what my person wanted. Right? And so basically first you have a follower, right? They find you on Instagram, you’re listening to the podcast, whatever. Then you get them on your list. You can turn them into a friend. Now I’m not talking about your best friend who you tell all your juiciest, craziest stories to, you air your dirty laundry out. No, not that type of friend.

This is a friend where let’s say you went to high school together; you haven’t seen them in 10 years. You bumped carts in the grocery store. Oh my gosh, Rob, I haven’t seen you in forever. How are you doing? I’m doing great. I’m a copywriter now. Me too. Awesome. Let me get your email. I’ve got some tips for you. That kind of friend, where you’re talking a lot about that mutual interest. And of course, you can add in personality, as copywriters we know you need to make a personal connection. But basically when you have a group of friends like that, with that mutual interest and you focus on that mutual interest, that’s when they can start opening up to you, you can start really knowing those pain points. And so just I asked my very first email list, why do you follow me? I was able to create a product. Once you know those people really well and they answer those questions, you can say, hey, I’m thinking of creating X. What do you think?

You can just turn them into a customer quickly. There’s no guessing what they want. There’s no, Rob mentioned earlier, it’s so easy to buy from you Liz, that’s because I knew what they want. All those productized services, it was an email. I said, hey, if you could buy one thing from me, that was at an affordable price, what would it be? Then literally the replies started coming in. I started writing them down. They were on the page the very next day. And so of course there are things that people want to buy. They’re in an easy to find place because those are the things people told me. And so when it comes to writing your newsletters, and this is the podcast and the listeners that might burn me at the stake for this. I do not encourage anyone to tell stories in newsletters. I think that is a little bit of outdated advice. I’m sweating.

Rob:  We’re going to come for you. The listeners and the pitchforks, it’s coming.

Liz:  Yeah, I know some people. Like I mentioned, I sold to an audience full of people that didn’t want to buy electricity. People that had never heard of a digital course. When I first created my online course, the very first FAQ in my FAQ email was, what is a digital course? They had no idea what it was. And so I had to find a way aside from the typical tell a story, create a hook, segue into et cetera, et cetera. I had to find a different way to connect with people. These people were traveling, they had terrible internet. They were subscribed to many different RV blogs. These are Pinterest and Google search kings and queens, and they are just signing up for everything. They follow everyone online. It’s how do I make myself stand out? And also these people tend to be in their 60s and 70s. My ideal avatar was a 66 year old guy named Jeff, right? I could not be any further from Jeff. Right?

Chances are the stories I want to tell him, he doesn’t actually care about. I had to come up with a different framework and I mentioned it in my 20 minute newsletters outline. Instead of telling stories, I really encourage people to give personal updates. The thing about stories is chances are most people, most of your audience if you’re a copywriter and you’re talking to your client, chances are they’re not a professional storyteller like you are. Right? They don’t get paid to sit down and write and craft these beautiful stories and create these amazing hooks that get you to click over to a $5,000 program and get you to have that emotional, logical argument with themselves in order to purchase, et cetera, et cetera. Chances are that their client, their ideal person doesn’t have time to read those, especially in a post COVID world, where we just spent the last 18 months on our phone, subscribing on Pinterest, on Google, all the Facebook groups, all the Instagram lives, we are completely burnt out.

And so, because everyone is doing these stories, everyone is following the same type of framework with their newsletters. What I believe, it’s actually teaching subscribers to say, well, I know that’s a story and I don’t have time for that, because actually my brain is pretty fried. I’m going to leave that for later. And so your open rate continues to go down and down and down. And so when you can just make that quick personal connection, like I talked about, bumping carts with Rob in the grocery store. You’re a copywriter too. Awesome. I got to go. Give me your email. I just want to send you a quick tip real quick, but my kids over here are opening the Captain Crunch, that’s relatable. It’s a quick connection. You can make that, again, that human connection without going on and on and putting the hook first, and then it’s just get on with it.

I’ve heard so many people, I hate newsletters, Liz, this is in my personal life. I hate newsletters. How can you market that? How can you teach people to do that? They’re so annoying. I have 10,000 unread emails. I’m like, well, no, that’s not what we’re doing. A personal update, I always recommend just two to three sentences. Like, hey, I just interviewed, this is me writing Rob’s right now. Hey, I just interviewed this girl named Liz Wilcox. I can’t believe it, but we were talking about poop on the podcast. It’s going to premiere in a couple months. Anyway, I’ve got to go with my wife to the store, here’s what I really want you to know. Here’s our maternity leave. The Facebook group just hit X, whatever, peace out, Rob. That took 20 seconds. I always say, if you’re taking more than 20 minutes to write your newsletter, you’re really overthinking it.

Chances are, if you’re taking 20 minutes to write it, it’s going to take way too long to read and that person is going to tune out and they’re going to stop opening your emails.

Rob:  I like that you just wrote our next weekly update. Look for that. By the time this broadcast, we will have mailed it already, but that’s good advice. I’m assuming, because-

Liz:  I will send you the invoice Rob.

Rob:  Yeah, there you go. There you go. Because you’re obviously anti story, your audience is not necessarily copywriters. Who are the people who are buying all of the digital products that you’re selling?

Liz:  I have such a plethora of customers, students, clients, it’s crazy. Just this year alone, I’ve worked with a company that launches your remains into space. How they looked at my website and said, yes, this is the lady, I’ll never know. But also just down to people who are just starting their blog and they have no idea except they heard email marketing was it. And so I tend to work with a lot of, like I said, B2C, business to consumer. And so bloggers, Etsy makers, Shopify owners, tech startups, apparently people who launch your remains into space. Who else is a big one? I do have some service providers, some copywriters that just like my approach, they saw my website and they’re like, oh yeah, this girl can write. They like to do that. But mainly a lot of B2C companies, whether they are digital or actually in-person.

Rob:  You talk about how stories aren’t necessarily working right now, maybe ever, because of what’s happened over the last couple of years. What else is not working in emails? Or what else are we getting wrong as we’re mailing to our list or trying to attract people to the things we want to share?

Liz:  Well, I think, especially in this audience of listeners, they’re probably doing it right. But a lot of people with the stories, they’re just along with that, they don’t bury their emails, right? They’re either always pretty long or always really short. I think you can really vary your emails, that way your customer, like I said, they’re not trained to not, that’s another really long one, I can’t read that. Or they’re just sending me this, right? If you’re just always sending out the same thing, then that’s going to train someone to save it for later. That’s just going to go to the abyss of on the open. Right? We never want them to save it for later. We want them to open it right then and there.

Kira:  I really enjoyed hearing about Liz’s start to her career in business. I also liked hearing about your RV travel dreams, Rob, but it sounds like that’s not going to happen anytime soon for you.

Rob:  Sadly. I think I’m going to be an airplane and hotel traveler for the short-term here until I can convince my wife that kitting out a van and traveling around the world is the way to go. We’ll see. There’s some more convincing that needs to happen, but we’ll see. We’ll get there.

Kira:  You created the course on persuasion, Rob, so you can do this. You can persuade your way to make this happen.

Rob:  Working on it.

Kira:  You’ve got everything you need.

Rob:  Yeah. Working on it. See, the problem here is that the number one best way to persuade somebody is to step into their worldview. My wife does not share the worldview that driving around in a sprinter van or a skoolie is the right way to travel. Like I said, a little bit more work to do, but we’ll get there. I know for a fact here that you’ve got some travel dreams too. A couple of weeks ago we talked about, with John Murray about some of the traveling stuff that he did, the crazy stories that he had. I think you and I both are missing traveling right now, not being able to go out of the country or in some cases out of the state. But what are your biggest travel dreams?

Kira:  Well, I actually was trying to travel to France to hop around a bit on a little adventure with my husband and to take our baby, but just because things have been so crazy with travel, we’re not going to be able to do that with the baby anytime soon, but I still am dreaming about it and dreaming even about living abroad and spending some time in Europe over the summer. Maybe even a couple of months with the family and just really taking advantage of the virtual lifestyle that we’ve created for ourselves and actually going somewhere and spending some time there. I’m figuring out logistics, of course logistics they are so much more intense right now, but it could still be possible for summertime in 2022. I’m working on that. What about you, Rob?

Rob:  Yeah, I’m going to be going to Orlando a little bit later this fall for a mastermind retreat, but other than that, I don’t have a lot of travel plans, we’ll see how it goes. But enough about you and me and what we’re doing. We need to talk about this interview that we just did with Liz and all the awesome things she just said.

Kira:  Yeah. There was so much in this interview, it was packed. Liz just gave us, I see why she is pitching podcast and that’s part of her strategy, because she gives so much and just shows up fully as herself and just delivers so much great advice in the podcast. It was really fun to listen to it. What was something really big that stood out to you as you were talking to her through this interview?

Rob:  This is less about what she shared and more about what you were just saying, is Liz comes across as so friendly, so genuine and so warm, that you just want to hang out with her. I have all kinds of respect for that, and it’s no wonder that she’s been as successful as she has been. Talking about some of the specifics, I love the way that she put together her book, it wasn’t even really a book around copywriting, but basically she created this product that because she almost, crowdsourcing is maybe not the right word here, but because she crowdsourced it, she knew that she had a ready audience, she put it together, she was able to sell it. It was an easy thing to promote because of what it was and who was on her list and the kinds of communities that she was around. That’s a bit of a model for us to follow too.

If you want to create a product in your business, and when I say product, I also mean service. You need to think about, okay, who is in the community that I’m serving? What is the thing that they need, or that they’ll be attracted to? When you promote it, how are you going to talk about it in a way that makes that attraction really obvious? All the things that Liz did when she promoted her RV book, are things that we can do when we promote not just books, but products, services, all the things that we do to our niche audience.

Kira:  I love that Liz talked a lot about partnerships. You and I have a business partnership. We have talked to a couple other people about business partnerships, but she’s really approaching her business totally open to multiple partners and opportunities. I think that’s an area that scares a lot of people, because it feels like a huge commitment, or it feels like you just have to focus on one. But she just is so open to possibility and where a partnership can be a win. I think it’s a great way to approach our business as copywriters, because there are a good amount of partnerships out there that we could develop. It doesn’t just have to be a partnership similar to our partnership where you go all in on one big business, you can form multiple, maybe smaller partnerships on different products that you create too.

That really stood out to me. I also loved how her naming process for her offers, so she created the offer called the 20 minute newsletters to help you write your newsletters in 20 minutes. We often as copywriters, we get so caught up in the creativity and our own clever ability to name our products and offers. I love that she’s just so clear in her offers creation. But it’s so compelling in that title and the offer that she created. I love that.

Rob:  It’s not just how simple the name is. It includes the benefit, the promise, the 20 minutes part is really the thing that’s attractive. If you’re writing newsletters all the time, there’s a big promise right in the name. I think that’s a fantastic way to think about the products that we create. Can you put the benefit right in the name, so it’s crystal clear from the moment somebody hears about what it is that you do, what it is and what they’re going to get out of it. When it comes to naming, we did the same thing with the Copywriter Club, that’s not necessarily a benefit oriented name, but it’s very simple. It’s really clear who we’re for, we’re for copywriters. That’s pretty much it. A little bit of a silly name maybe, but it says exactly what we do and who we’re for.

Kira:  I remember the first time I heard the name, the Copywriter Club, I was like-

Rob:  Yeah. Rob’s pretty done with that.

Kira:  I think we can be a little bit more creative here. We’ve got this, but now I get it, Rob, I get it. You came up with that and it’s crystal clear. Four years into it, I like the name. Thanks for being so clear of the business we’re building. Also we talked about newsletters. Liz said something that was maybe controversial. It definitely stood out to me when Liz said, we maybe shouldn’t share stories in newsletters. It might not be the best way to approach our newsletters by dropping in all these stories and instead sharing personal updates. Rob, as you heard that, did you gasp? Did you fall off your chair? Did you get it? How did you react to that?

Rob:  I didn’t necessarily gasp, but I wanted to argue. I was like, wait a second, everybody’s talking about, we need to think about stories. We need to involve people with the narrative that we have. I don’t think that Liz was really saying no stories, because when she reports on personal updates, she’s basically telling a story about what she’s doing. I think it’s reframing what that story is. You don’t need to go outside of your own personal experience in order to find the stories, I think is really her main thing. It’s like, look, just keep it centered on what you’re doing, keep it centered on the audience that you serve. It doesn’t matter if you read an interesting book or you’re not always trying to tie in the latest movie into a newsletter, you can simply do it with what you’re doing in your business.

I do think that that’s a really smart approach. Is it right for everybody? Maybe not, but it’s probably a good approach for a lot of people who struggle to find stories to share in their emails. Maybe it’s a way to just notch down the way that you approach that, so it’s a little easier.

Kira:  It helped me to hear that, because I am someone who takes way longer than 20 minutes to write an email. I put a lot of time into it there. Usually quite lengthy as you know. And so hearing Liz share that, that it really doesn’t have to take more than 20 minutes and it’s okay, it can be quick, but you can create that human connection in a couple of sentences. It takes the pressure off someone like me who wants to create a thesis in every single email that goes out and it gives us permission. At least for me, I feel like, okay, this gives me permission to try to write an email, using a different approach and maybe create more content, because it’s not taking me a day to write every email, it’s taking me 20 minutes to write an email. I think that was really helpful for copywriters who struggle with that.

Rob:  I do think it matters what the purpose of the email is. We’re specifically talking about newsletter type emails, catch you up, what’s going on, here’s what to expect or here’s what’s coming, or here’s some things that I noticed. I agree for those kinds of updates, writing it quickly, getting it out, not focusing too much on the story can be a really solid approach. But if it’s a sales email, if it’s a welcome sequence where you’re trying to introduce your brand or you’re trying to introduce products, there may be some exceptions to that rule. Use that rule and Liz’s advice as it benefits in your business. If it’s not working for a particular type of project that you’re working on, then jump back to other ideas for emails.

Kira:  Rob, you’re giving me permission to write the 6,000-word email that I prefer.

Rob:  Go for it.

Kira:  I’m getting permission to continue doing that. Thank you. I’ve got all the permission I need. Something that also stood out to me was what Liz mentioned. We didn’t really focus on it in the interview, but how she created her pricing to be affordable. That grabbed me because so often in our conversations with copywriters and service providers who are trying to figure out, okay, how do we pack in the value and charge as much as possible? Let’s increase your rates as quickly as we can. That’s all good, especially if you’re struggling and you aren’t charging enough and you’re burnt out in your business because you’re working all the time. But I also love that Liz is approaching her business and how she works with clients in a different way, and trying to build packages that are affordable without forcing her to burn out and to do it strategically so that it works for her business and it’s not viewed as a loss or I’m not good enough to charge more.

It’s more I’m charging this because I want them to be able to afford it. I know my ideal client can afford this type of package and not the $10,000 VIP day. I’m going to make this for them because I know what it was like to struggle to buy that type of package. And so it’s just something that I think we should talk about more frequently, or at least as frequently as we talk about raising your rates and charging those premium prices, which is also okay. There are two different approaches.

Rob:  Yeah, for sure. Either way is good. I think you just have to know what’s going to work in your business and what’s not.

Kira:  Yes. Rob, anything else that stood out to you from this part of the conversation?

Rob:  Not really. The idea that either you want to vary your emails just a little bit, that you want your readers to engage now and not to think, I’m going to say this for later. By the way I do this in my inbox all the time. I’ll get emails from gurus or experts that I respect, but I don’t have time to go into it right now. So I’m like, oh yeah, I’ll read that later. Several weeks later, maybe I find it back in my inbox. And so I think that’s really good advice, is that if you can make your emails and there are exceptions to this rule, but if you can make your emails so that people want to engage in them now, they’re short, they’re quick or there’s a ton of value that’s immediately obvious so that they want to keep reading, really good idea and it helps keep people engaged in your list.

Kira:  Okay. Let’s get back into our interview and hear about how Liz has dealt with her own business struggle and how she’s leveled up.

Rob:  Let’s also talk a little bit about what you’ve done to level up, because obviously coming from where you started, a couple of years ago, travel blogger or RV blogger, to launching courses and even products that people can buy on your site and serving clients, you’ve come a long way. Talk a little bit about the mindset challenges and things that you’ve had to overcome, beliefs that you’ve had to change as you’ve gone from literally zero to where you are today.

Liz:  Sure. I always like to say that I did not have the privilege of having a terrible mindset or getting hung up on, I’m not good enough, or what if this writing sucks or all those typical things that I especially see in the Facebook group. I grew up very, quite poor. I’ve always just had to do things. My mom instilled in me from a young age, if you want something, you just have to go out and take it because no one is going to give it to you. And also, I will say I am also an enneagram three, so I’m a high achiever. As much as I don’t want to admit, I care about what other people think. I like for people to think that I am the best. Right? I will admit that rashes and all. When I started my business with the RV blog especially, I mentioned it earlier, I started it as a business. For me I just took it very seriously from the beginning.

I wasn’t dabbling. I wasn’t like, maybe I’m good at this and someone gave me the idea, you should start a blog or you should be a copywriter or you should have a side hustle. It wasn’t that. I had decided it on my own. I was always very firm in my vision. Just in my personal life, financially, I have to support a lot of people. And so when I realized you could make money online, I thought, that’s my ticket out of poverty. That’s my ticket. My mom, up until April of 2020, she lived on 8 Mile in Detroit, because that’s all I could afford to give her, living in a separate household. I love you mom, but you’re not living with me, especially when I lived in the RV, that was definitely not going to work. I watched those webinars and I saw those people making money and I thought, okay, this is my ticket.

There never was, but what if I can’t? My mantra was always, why not me? I know I’m smart. I might not be the smartest person. I didn’t even know what a copywriter was until three months before I started calling myself a copywriter. I guess there might also be an element of cockiness there, I don’t know. But really it was just not allowing myself to think about or to go to a place where I’m not good enough. It was, wow, they’re doing that. Let me see what I can do with that too. Let me see how, if everybody’s digging, how can I just zag a little bit to make myself stand out while doing my own thing? I always picture, when I have to work and I see all these things on Facebook or I’m on Instagram and I start to even feel those emotions of, I don’t know if I’m good enough, or oh gosh, I can’t believe that person did that. I didn’t think of that.

I just literally picture myself like a horse with blinders on. And it’s like Liz, just do the one thing. To wrap all that up, I love the story. In my brand, if you go to my website, you’ll see very quickly. I’m very 90s pop culture. I love talking about NSYNC. Will Smith is another-

Rob:  Fresh Prince.

Liz:  Yeah. Fresh Prince. If I wasn’t traveling, I always wear my Fresh Prince to interviews, because he’s such a big inspiration to me. And so I have this Will Smith story, well Will Smith has this story that I tell. I do believe stories work. I just don’t think they have a place in newsletters every single week.

Rob:  All right. It comes full circle there. That’s good. We’ve made people happy again. Thank you.

Liz:  Okay. You’re welcome. Namaste y’all. Will Smith tells this story about when he was young, we all know he grew up in West Philly, born and raised. His dad bought a building downtown. He bought this warehouse and it was dilapidated. He took his kids there and he said, we’re going to rebuild this building. They said, dad, that’s impossible. It’s torn down, it’s broken. He said, we’re going to do it brick by brick. I can’t remember how long it took, probably at least a year. Literally they just laid a brick, one brick at a time. He says, in my career, where everyone else is trying to get to X, I’ve just been laying one brick at a time. You do that enough times. You lay your brick as perfectly as a brick can be laid. You do that over and over and over and soon you have a wall. That’s always been really inspiring to me.

That’s how I am. I just put my blinders on and I just lay my brick. I just start my blog, start my email newsletter, sell my first product, sell my second, my third. Even with the productized services, send out the email, gather the results, put it out there, make my first sale, create the survey, right? Like oh shit, it’s selling, let me create this. Just brick by brick, by brick. And soon I have a wall, just like I said at the beginning, it was sell my copywriting services until my digital products took over the business, so to speak. I just do that every single day. It’s working for me. If you’ve never heard that story, Google Will Smith brick story. He tells it better than me I’m sure, it’s his story. But it’s really, really inspiring. That’s how I tend to live and build by business.

Rob:  I love that story. I’m definitely going to have to look it up. Will Smith, there’s a lot to admire about his approach to his career for sure.

Liz:  He’s so good.

Rob:  Yeah. Very good. Okay. You mentioned that your goal is to get on 100. I think it was 100 podcasts. Obviously this is, maybe I got the number wrong, but obviously this is a big part of building your authority. Talk a little bit about that process. The reason I would love for you to talk a little bit about this, because I think you’re doing something differently than what most people do. Most people figure out all the podcasts and they write their pitches and they get hung up on it because it’s really time intensive. I think you’ve had some help with that. Would you talk a little bit about how you have landed on so many podcasts so far and what you’re doing to get out there?

Liz:  Sure. Of course I do want to mention, again, I did have a business before this and I was interviewed on some podcasts. Of course in the RV space there’s not as many as there are in copywriting, digital marketing, et cetera. I’m pretty sure I did the whole tour on all the podcasts. I might have even created one or two. Basically I knew that I was starting out. I did sell my business and I had some money from that business. I used that money to pay myself in case I didn’t find any client work. But I knew in order to position myself, I needed to get on podcasts. I needed visibility. I knew with 100% certainty, I did not want to run Facebook ads. I believe Mark Zuckerberg has enough money and I don’t. I knew I didn’t want to run Facebook ads for personal, ethical reasons, but also because I didn’t have a lot of money to start out with.

I was starting basically at zero. When I was starting my business, I was also getting a divorce. A lot of money was tied up. I was moving, I was traveling, I was living in an RV. It was a lot. To learn Facebook ads would have just been too much. And so I knew if I can get in front of people, people like me. I know that one of my strengths is the ability to get noticed, the ability to have people listen to me. I knew that my perspective on things was just different enough to get people to pay attention. And so I knew podcasting was going to be a big part of that. And so as I was doing the client work, it was probably about nine months in, I said, okay, Liz, you’ve got your first product. You made $500 a couple months ago. Now it’s made, let’s say maybe double that, but your email list is not growing the way that you want to. You’ve really got to start getting on podcasts.

That’s got to be your next brick. Right? And so I started pitching myself, just to people that I knew that had podcasts, hey, can I come on your podcast? On Instagram, hey, do you have a podcast? Let me on. I’m not very shy when it comes to self-promotion. If you do not hype yourself, no one else will, you have to be your own marketer. Right? As copywriters we believe all words are copy, right? Everything you write for your business is copy. Everything you put your face on is marketing. Right? It’s the same thing. And so I actually, I pitched myself, got around on a few and then I was actually, a client was introduced to me, referred to me and I got on the phone with her. I do these one hour sessions called digital get downs, which actually is an NSYNC song. It’s all in my business, but we just meet for one hour and I do some copy editing for you, stuff like that.

She was a podcast broker, which means she pitches you for podcasts. I heard about that and I had always heard, don’t do that, don’t do that. They won’t pitch you the same way. It will be in personal. I thought, well, you know what, Liz, you’ve got so much client work right now, which you actually need to eat. You’re a single mom, you support two households, you need this client work. But you know for your vision, you need the podcast. And so I just decided to invest. It was a three-month thing. She guaranteed two podcasts a month. I said, okay, I’m going to really knock it out of the park. She’s going to help me figure out my pitches. I know if I can get on some good podcasts, I’m going to find some leads. That I was confident about. I was willing to put in the money. Just like I feel confident when I’m selling my own services, you’ve given me the money I’m going to produce the results. Right?

I decided to reciprocate that and it worked really well. Also what got me really excited was, hey Liz, you got a booking, you got a booking. And then I thought, well, I should set aside some time and I’ll pitch and I’ll get double the results. She’s pitching for me, I’m pitching for myself. It just really started taking off. I decided to take Mondays and Fridays in my business, I only work on lizwilcox.com. Part of that is pitching, marketing, et cetera, et cetera. It’s the reason why my website looks so good. Why you’re able to purchase from me easily, is because I treat my business better than I treat my clients. Sorry guys, if you’re listening and you’ve ever given me money, lizwilcox.com always comes first. And so I was just pitching myself, pitching myself. Rob did misspeak, my goal is only 52, one for each week. 100 could be nice. Put it out there, put it out there in the universe. Maybe I’ll get 100 by the end of the year. I don’t know. I’m at about 40 right now.

But also, just the podcast pitching, having someone do it for me, doing it for myself at the same time, I also joined podmatch.com. I’ve done, just in the last six weeks I’ve gotten something like, I don’t know, eight or nine bookings from podmatch.com. Having that pitch, knowing what I’m going to talk about is really super easy to pitch people. Also once a month, I’ll say, hey, do you have a podcast on my Instagram? I have a lot of people that watch my stories because I share a lot of ridiculous 90s and 2000s pop culture jokes. Naturally I’ll say, oh yeah, I have a business to run. Do you have a podcast? Here’s what I can talk about. I usually get at least one every time. I think that’s it. Just really not being afraid to market yourself and making it a priority.

Rob:  Obviously podcasting is number one. Are there other things that you’re doing to build your authority for your business?

Liz:  Sure. I also do summits. What I love about doing summits is I use something called Ecamm live. That’s what allows me to have the dancing GIFs and the sound effects and the slides and things like that. People really like it. Like I mentioned, the Rebel Boss Summit. I remember last year when I did it, I had gotten something over 500 signups from her summit. She said, holy crap. That’s like 15% of my entire audience. That is something I said, well, clearly I’m very good at getting leads that way. And so I started asking the same way as podcasts. Do you have a summit coming up any time? I saw a friend talking about getting on a summit. I said, hey, are they still taking speakers? I actually have a signature talk that I do.

I actually have three now, that I can pitch just like a podcast. I have the slides. It’s very easy, 20 to 30 minutes to record. Also I’ve just recently gotten into a lot of JV partnerships, doing them with people reaching out. I actually have a task on my to-do list once a month now to reach out to at least 10 new partners a month, asking if they have any private training that I can come in and do, or if they want to come into my audience, doing things very mutually. I really truly believe in community over competition, collaboration over competition, that RV summit that I sort of mentioned. I actually own that with three partners. I’m used to working with different people. My first product, like I said, had 12 other people involved in it. I believe that’s the quickest way to grow your authority and to help others grow their authority, is to just share each other’s work.

Rob:  I love that. Okay. What comes next for you, Liz? All of this stuff that you’ve accomplished over the last couple of years, what’s the next big thing?

Liz:  A million dollars baby.

Rob:  I like it.

Liz:  I’m hoping by December, 2021, my products will fuel my entire business. I’m just doing copywriting with people that I just think are super fun. And then from there, I’m not really sure. I just want to be the email marketing lady. I think it’s super fun. I love talking about email. I love seeing people succeed where they thought it wasn’t possible before. I’m not at home, but I have a sticky note on my computer at home that says my definition of success is to be an example of what’s possible for others. And so that’s one of the reasons why I just try things. I don’t overthink it. I really, I’ve always been, even in my personal life, I was always the sibling that was, look at what Liz is doing, for better, for worse, sorry, siblings. That’s really ingrained in me to be that sort of model behavior. And so I don’t know exactly what’s next, other than selling more products.

I’d really like to get into buying and selling businesses. I sold my first, I’m selling my second at the end of the year. I’m hoping to take that money and buy a business, build it, kind of like flipping houses, but flipping blogs. But in general, I just really strive to be an example of what’s possible. Hopefully even this podcast as it lives on, will inspire more copywriters to get out there, create their own things, because it truly is very possible for you. You’re an expert in your field, you know what you’re talking about. And if you just ask around a little bit, you don’t even have to come up with the idea, people will tell you.

Rob:  Awesome. All really good advice. Liz, if somebody has been listening and they’re like, okay, I’ve got to get more Liz in my life or maybe they want to buy one of your products, where should they go?

Liz:  Sure. Just go to lizwilcox.com. For all you copying geeks out there, read the copy. I think it’s really fun. But if you want to get on the email list, of course, that’s where I want to hang out with you. You can click in the top right hand corner. There’s a button that says free email swipes. You’ll get a welcome sequence that I’ve written. If you’re into welcome sequences, you can check that out. You’ll also see how I do it a little differently with the personal updates. I’ve got newsletter suggestions there. And also 52 subject lines that have garnered me an over 40% open rate over the years. Or if you want to hang out on Instagram, that’s where I hang out on social media the most, at thelizwilcox, T-H-E. In my Instagram stories is where I spend most of my days. Oh wow, that’s a Will Smith. I’ve got him on the brain.

That’s where I share email tips. You’ll be able to see me really modeling. I mentioned my email marketing membership. I want to get 100 people in the next 17 days. I do that mainly through just hyping myself. And so watching me on social media I think would be really helpful for you.

Rob:  Okay. Awesome. Thanks Liz. We appreciate your time. This is fantastic.

Liz:  Thank you so much. This is a dream come true. I appreciate you.

Rob:  That’s the end of our interview with copywriter, Liz Wilcox, before we go, there are definitely a couple of other things that stood out, that we want to highlight. One of those that Liz mentioned is this goal to be on 52 podcasts in a year. That’s a lot. We’ve talked with others that have had similar kinds of goals. What do you think about that Kira?

Kira:  You know I’m all for pitching podcasts, speaking on podcasts. I think it can really change your business with the visibility, but also just change the way you feel about your business by speaking about it and building your own confidence. And then as an added bonus, you get to test ideas and real time and get feedback, even from the podcast hosts as you’re talking about a concept. You can see the reaction or hear the reaction from the host, if they’re interested, not interested. And then ultimately when the audience hears the podcast, you can get feedback, like, what did they follow up and if they asked you anything, what resonated? For testing your own concepts and material, it’s worth it. I love that she’s doing it. I love that she set a big goal. When I was just getting started, I set a goal for your pitching 30 podcasts in 30 days. I think I ended up with 27.

Just going through that process of pitching allows you to focus on your own visibility, forget about failure, because it’s more about the action you’re taking than the result. I think it’s a really smart way to focus on visibility, and I love that she is so self-aware to know that she shows up well on podcasts, like we’ve already said, and not everyone does. Right? It doesn’t mean you can’t do it. You can always practice, you can improve, but it’s important to know, have that self-awareness to know where is your strength in terms of visibility? Is it writing that 6,000 word blog post or is it showing up in video or is it speaking as a guest in a podcast like Liz has done so well or something else? And so we don’t all have to do this and do what Liz is doing, but just know what works for you and what you’re excited about, what energizes you as you’re building out your own marketing strategy and marketing plan.

Rob:  The thing that I about this is just Liz taking massive action towards reaching a goal. We’ve seen other people do similar things. Robert Lucas wrote a sales page every day for a month and he talked about it on our podcast a year or two ago. Justin Blackman with 100 headlines for 100 days. That project. McKay saying, when she pitched a hundred podcasts in three days. Anytime you’ve got a goal like this and it forces you to take massive action, you tend to get some really positive results at the end. It’s because you’re focusing your energy on accomplishing this big goal. It gets noticed by people. Even if it doesn’t get noticed by people, it starts to develop a habit, develop skills. It gets you in places that you might not have been otherwise. It may not be podcasts for you or for me or for anybody else listening, but it might be something else. So setting a goal like that is super smart.

And then she recognized that she needed some help in order to get out there. And so, it’s okay to hire help to help you get your goals accomplished and in order to get more done.

Kira:  All right. There’s so much that stood out to me, but I’m just going to run through a couple of key ideas. One was the question, why not me? That idea, Liz just jumps into it. Why can’t I do this? Why not me? I think that that is so needed when we’re getting our business started. We could all benefit from that question. Also I wanted to share how she approaches focus in her business. I love the idea that she thinks about herself as a horse with blinders on and just doing the one thing in front of you, focusing, laying that brick one at a time like Will Smith shared in his story, bird by bird, but just focusing on those little pieces that start to add up and the bricks that turn into a wall. I think that’s just so important to not get overwhelmed by the big picture sometimes as I do. Just crawling back into that.

Let’s just build it piece by piece and stay focused on what you’re doing and what’s in front of you rather than focusing on what everybody else is doing. That’s so important.

Rob:  Yup. I agree 100%. I love the brick by brick or bird by bird idea. It’s the way that careers are built. Almost nobody starts with a wall built for them. And so we’ve got to do it one step at a time, brick by brick.

Kira:  Yes. Liz also shared, she said it so confidently and I love that she just owned this. She said, I treat my business better than my clients. She’s owning that. It’s so important if you want to grow your business. It does not mean that you are failing your clients. It does not mean that you don’t care about your client work. It doesn’t mean that you’re not successful or helping your clients be successful in their own business, but it means that you’re taking care of your own business so that you can be the best service provider for your clients. Owning that and embracing that mindset can radically change a business if you say that to yourself every day and actually believe it, and then take action based off that idea.

Rob:  Maybe the better way to say that is, my business is my number one client. It’s not that it’s necessarily being treated so much better or whatever, but in order to serve all of your other clients, you do have to treat your business in a way that keeps it going, keeps it fresh, invents new products, able to deliver on the services that you provide, your business should be your number one.

Kira:  Yes. Finally, I just want to wrap with something else Liz shared that resonates with me. She said, if you do not hype yourself, no one else will. For many of us, it’s hard to do that, right? We are humble naturally and it feels uncomfortable to talk about, or even brag about your wins and all the amazing things you’re doing for your clients and your business. But Liz is right. No one else will do it. And if you don’t share what you’re doing and how you’re helping people, it’s going to be that much harder to help more ideal clients. If they’re not hearing about the results you’re creating for your own business or for your client’s businesses.

Rob:  Yeah, absolutely. We want to thank Liz Wilcox for joining us on the podcast today. If you want to connect with her or check out the different products that she’s created, the things that she offers, you can go to lizwilcox.com. I’ll just point out the top right of her website, there’s a little offer for free email templates. Go ahead and click that if you want to get on her list and check out everything that she sends out. She’s a great email writer and her newsletter is a fun one to be subscribed to. Check it out.

Kira:  That’s the end of this episode of the Copywriter Club podcast. The intro music was composed by copywriter and songwriter, Addison Rice. The outro was composed by copywriter and songwriter, David Muntner. If you’ve enjoyed what you’ve heard, please visit Apple podcasts to leave your review of the show. If you’re ready to invest in yourself and your copywriting business as you scale, and finally achieve your goals, visit copywriterthinktank.com. Thanks for listening. We’ll see you next week.

(singing).

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