In the 186th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, Kira and Rob talk with two ambitious copywriters who recently launched the first of many Women Led Summits. Their first summit included 45 different speakers, helped them grow their email list and actually made money. We wanted to know how they did it, so we invited Great Cate and Betsy Muse to the studio to chat. Here’s what we covered:
•  how Betsy and Greta became business partners
•  the paths they both took to becoming copywriters
•  the original vision for the women-led summit and how it came together
•  what does it take to create a summit today
•  all the moving pieces for producing a summit… time, editing, interviews, etc.
•  how Betsy and Greta made it all work
•  their favorite take aways from the 45 speakers who participated
•  the impact the summit had on their list and bottom line
•  the real goal of their summit (it wasn’t really about the money)
•  how they promoted their summit—the promotion plan
•  their advice to anyone considering creating their own summit
•  how they make their partnership work—the benefit of partners
•  what the future looks like for both Betsy and Greta
•  how they’ve dealt with mindset issues (like introversion) as they’ve grown

If you’ve ever considered creating a summit for your niche, you’ll want to make sure to listen to this episode, which you can do when you click the play button below. Or scroll down for a full transcript.

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The people and stuff we mentioned on the show:

Full Transcript:

Rob:   This episode is brought to you by The Copywriter Accelerator, 12-week program for copywriters who want to learn the business skills they need to succeed as copywriters. Learn more at thecopywriteraccelerator.com.

Kira:   What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That’s what Rob and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast.

Rob:   You’re invited to join the club for episode 186 as we chat with two copywriters, Betsy Muse and Greta Cate, about forming a business partnership with another copywriter, running a summit and their advice for anyone who wants to do one, their biggest struggles in business and what comes next.

Kira:   Betsy and Greta, welcome.

Rob:   Hi guys.

Betsy Muse:   Thank you. It’s great being here. Thanks for having us.

Kira:   We’re excited to have both of you. It’s a little party today with the four of us. We were both recently a part of your summit that you ran a couple months ago now, your first ever Women-Led Summit. So I know we’re going to dig into that today and talk about summits which are quite popular right now in the COVID-19 landscape. Lots of summits are popping up. But why don’t we start with your story. How did you two end up as business partners?

Betsy Muse:   Well, it’s a really a funny story. Greta and I met in Joanna Wiebe’s 10x Freelance Copywriter and bonded over a shared love for AppSumo lifetime deals.

Greta Cate:   Yeah.

Betsy Muse:   Greta invited me for coffee. I thought, “Hey, great. She lives in North Carolina somewhere, and so we’ll just meet halfway in between.” Now, Greta lives in Corpus Christi, Texas. We weren’t quite meeting in person. And then a week after our virtual coffee, we started an accountability group in 10x Freelance Copywriter. That group is still active today.

Greta Cate:   Yeah. We had right off the bat realized that we had some shared values and were interested in making and having the same kind of impact. Back to AppSumo, they have this summit deal and we were talking about that and Betsy said, “Let’s do a summit. Let’s do it.” So it was born. We weren’t putting our heads together and trying to come up with a business that we could run together. It wasn’t that kind of situation. It all happened very organically. We just jumped in.

Rob:   I know we’re mostly going to talk about the partnership that you two have and the summits and the things that you’re doing together. But I actually want to take a step back and ask you both how did you get into copywriting in the first place? What was the thing that made you choose to be a copywriter so that you would have joined a mastermind and then met each other? Greta, maybe you could start and then Betsy.

Greta Cate:   Sure, sure. I fell in love with writing as soon as I fell in love with stories when I was a child and I sort of never looked back. I come from ghostwriting previous to marketing. I was doing ghostwriting for speeches, presentations, and articles. I have a great love of psychology. I was raised by an educator and a psychologist, so how people learn and why and how they decide to do what they do is kind of a lifelong family conversation that I’ve extended into a career. So then I found direct response, which was super interesting to me.

It didn’t fit like it was tailor made for me. And then I found conversion copy and that fit for me and I’ve been doing that ever since. Betsy? How about you?

Betsy Muse:   I have a degree in journalism and have always, like Greta, always wanted to be a writer and have enjoyed learning about and understanding what motivates people to act and do what they do. But I come from the world of political writing. That started before we were online, direct mail pieces, speeches, and then of course once we came online, websites. It was being online I found Joanna Wiebe and that’s it, end of story.

Kira:   What was the original vision for Women-Led Summits when the idea was coming together in your accountability group and you both had that moment where you’re like, “This is it, this is what we want to create together?”

Betsy Muse:   I’d love to say we had some masterful plan and process that generated the idea but, as Greta said before, it was very organic. It was a lot of little things that came together at just the right time. What it really boils down to is Greta and I share a desire to help women and to lift up the voices that often go unheard because we live in such a male-dominant society. I’m not pointing fingers, I’m just stating a reality.

Kira:   And then once you have that vision that’s, in some ways it’s the easy part is seeing the vision. You’re excited about it, but where most people drop off is actually executing it and bringing it to life. What did you do to get this idea launched into the world and to take those first few steps that are the most critical? What did you do and what did that look like at the time?

Greta Cate:   Betsy pushed us off a cliff.

Kira:   Yeah. That helps.

Betsy Muse:   Childbirth is easier. Yeah, really just jumping, just doing it. It was so great to have someone to do it with and to bounce things off of. I would not have wanted to do this alone. We just had late-night conversations, right, Greta?

Greta Cate:   So many, so many.

Betsy Muse:   Many, many late-night conversations. We were somewhat flying blind because neither of us had ever worked on a summit before, let alone run one. But there was a little bit of information out there. The summit software that we were able to use offered some guidance too. So we combined that with our marketing no-how and did the best we could.

Rob:   So let’s dive into the details on that because I’m curious. Maybe I’d like to do a summit someday. What does it really take? How did you find participants? What does the software look like and do? What do we need to know before we jump into something like a summit on our own?

Betsy Muse:   I think the important thing is to know what software is out there that can help take some of the tasks off your plate. A product like HeySummit, which is the one that we use, already has some of the landing page structures and the cart and other things, the speaker structure, so that you really only have to plug things in. That’s going to be a whole lot easier than creating something on your own, pulling together a variety of third party products. Greta, any thoughts on the software and hardware?

Greta Cate:   Yeah. Make it as easy on yourself as possible, particularly if it’s your first go-around. You can always iterate. Know that things are going to happen. Not everything’s going to go smoothly all the time. That’s really just part of it.

Rob:   And then how did you guys decide who you were going to ask? How did the invites go out? What percentage of people accepted your invite to participate?

Betsy Muse:   Y’all already know the community that has built up around The Copywriter Club, 10x Freelance Copywriter and Copy School. We had amazing response.

Greta Cate:   Yes, incredible. It bowled us over, the response that we got. It was absolutely incredible. We had so much support, encouragement, and participation. It was a real testament to the power of community.

Betsy Muse:   It really was. Like Greta said, we were so supported by our friends in these communities, but also by people who had no idea who we were. Rob, got to give a shout out to you. Women-Led Summits is women-led but not women only. I don’t usually speak for Greta, but I think I can say this for both of us that we were incredibly grateful for the fact that you supported us and spoke at the summit.

Rob:   Well, of course. Yeah. For sure.

Kira:   Let’s break it down a little bit more into … It sounds like you had this great community support. We were both excited to be a part of it. I think that was the general feel is we were all excited because many of us did know you and we wanted to be a part of it. Beyond that, it sounds like step one, figure out the software. HeySummit is a great platform to use. There are probably other ones out there. Is step two call for speaker applications? Can we break it down step by step and work through it for someone who wants to do it soon?

Betsy Muse:   Absolutely. We’ll be glad to pull together some type of blog post or guide if you want us to, to go along with this. But I think really step one would be give yourself enough time. We pulled this together in under 10 weeks which is just-

Kira:   Oh wow.

Betsy Muse:   We don’t want to use ugly words, but it really wasn’t that smart of us. But like Greta said, we jumped off a cliff and it was time to act rather than plan to perfection. So we did. But give yourself enough time. Go ahead and start letting people that you know within your community who would make good speakers, go ahead and give them a heads up. Get your open call for speakers out on social media and broadcast that as far and as wide as you can. Before you actually do that, you’re going to want … We built landing pages that had all the information that our speakers would need before they filled out an application.

Rob:   So yes. Can I maybe just ask a little bit more about the timeline? What are the things that took so much time? Because somebody listening might think, and it occurred to me, “Well, 10 weeks, that feels like that might actually be a lot of time.” Obviously, we’ve planned events and live events. That’s a really difficult thing to pull off that quickly. But what are the things that take so much time? Is it that people need to prepare presentations? Are you list building? What are the things?

Betsy Muse:   It’s the interviews.

Greta Cate:   Yeah. We were a little different. There are a lot of summits that have mainly presentations and we did informal interview style were a lot of ours. Actually, we had given the option and were surprised at how many speakers chose to do the interview style. We thoroughly enjoyed it. It was fantastic. Really great conversations, really incredible insights from a lot of incredibly skilled marketers. But unfortunately, there was a lot of editing that needed to be done with that. That is incredibly time-consuming. I just have to give an incredible amount of props to Betsy because she is a wizard, an absolute wizard in the editing department. That was really well-done. I don’t know how you did it all, Betsy.

Betsy Muse:   Aw Greta. Thank you.

Kira:   So Betsy, you were editing all the interviews?

Betsy Muse:   Yes.

Kira:   How many? I know you included a lot of speakers. How many ended up as part of the summit?

Betsy Muse:   45.

Kira:   Oh my goodness. That’s a lot. That’s a lot of editing. Wow.

Betsy Muse:   It’s a lot of editing. We had days where we had eight hours worth of interviews.

Kira:   Just to dig into that, what would you do differently, will you do differently next time? Will you not do interviews? Will you have less speakers? Will you just hire someone to do video editing?

Betsy Muse:   Well, I think the next time we will simply give our self more time and we’ll honor hard deadlines for the interviews, which then gives us the time to do the editing. Video editing is actually expensive. So if we’re going to spend money it would probably be in another area since I can do the video editing. But I think just giving ourselves more time. We loved the interviews. I don’t necessarily want to do fewer of them. I just want to be smarter about how we approach the timing. Honor those deadlines.

Having a mix of presentations and interviews and having a mix of links of different presentations and interviews is really important for a summit.

Kira:   Okay. All right. I know you mentioned step four. I don’t know why I have to break this into steps for my brain. But you built landing pages with all the info your speakers would need and you did that before you even accepted your speakers. I remember just from being a speaker, just I felt like anytime I got an email from you or I saw the landing page, you did such a great job of just organizing a lot of content as far as what you need to collect from us and details. Can you just talk a little bit about specifically what that looks like to prepare speakers for a summit and the communication that’s required?

Because I do think it’s easy, like Rob said, to just think this is easy. It’s virtual. But any time there’s communication with speakers about half an hour, hour interview, it’s a lot of back and forth if you don’t do it well.

Betsy Muse:   Right. Well, early on we wrote our speaker and sponsor transactional emails. So they were ready to go. And then we built out the landing pages. I did a lot of the structural work. Greta’s really good at writing the step-by-step copy. So it was really a combination of the two of us pulling these pages together and making sure that we had everything and then putting ourselves in the speakers’ shoes. Because our approach is, yes, we’re providing a platform, but we look at it as you’re doing us a favor by speaking at our event. So we want to make it as easy as possible and put as little friction as possible in the way of a successful event for you as a speaker.

Rob:   While we’re talking about speakers, can I … I won’t make you choose favorite speakers. But can I ask what were some of your favorite takeaways from the people that you spoke with? Were there-

Kira:   Rob, you just want them to say you.

Rob:   No, I don’t. I fully expect that it won’t be me because I saw the lineup of speakers. You guys had an amazing, amazing gathering of speakers. I didn’t realize it was 45. That’s…

Kira:   I didn’t either.

Rob:   Yeah, that’s a ton. But yeah, what were some of your favorite takeaways as you talked with other women primarily about their businesses?

Betsy Muse:   So many.

Greta Cate:   We literally ended up taking notes for pretty much every single interview and presentation because there were just so many amazing insights. We were connecting dots left and right for big umbrella term marketing and for even our own businesses. There was, gosh, Betsy, can you pinpoint one?

Betsy Muse:   Well, I think one of the things that I took away and it wasn’t really necessarily something that I learned personally that I applied in my business, but one of the talks that we got was from a very shy, introverted startup founder. She had tried to handle her own marketing and she submitted a talk, and she had not spoken in the past. That was among the favorites because it was so personal. She was sharing a personal experience rather than necessarily giving advice. People really liked that.

I think sometimes, and this may come later when you ask what advice we might give to people who want to speak. But that’s really speak about personal experience.

Rob:   Okay. I’m also curious about the business impact. What were the results? You started from scratch, so you had to build the list. What did that look like? Did you guys make money? Did you lose money? What did all of that look like?

Betsy Muse:   Well, we did make money. But that wasn’t our goal. That wasn’t our focus. We made enough to pay for the event and then some. So we still have the lights on. But we went from a zero list to more than 500 in three weeks. Just the fact that we had 45 speakers, those were our success indicators. But it was nice for the event to pay for itself.

Greta Cate:   This was more of a mission-based, values-based experiment and first foray. So we didn’t do the hard sell and all of the many, many trappings that can go with some of the summits that are just sell, sell, sell, sell, sell. We were focused a lot more on creating an impact. I think that we could not have had a better experience with that. I mean yes, we definitely made money. We got a list. All the things worked and that was fantastic. But we learned so much about how many other marketers, even how many copywriters, how many other business owners are also looking for a value match in what they’re doing.

That was one of my biggest takeaways, to go back for a second. I was really surprised at how often values and mission in marketing, personal values, business values, and value-based missions came up in our talks. I found that very interesting.

Kira:   Yeah. Well, I mean I think that’s quite a win for the two of you to have the event pay for itself and make a little extra, to grow your list from zero to 500 in a couple months, and to then also build relationships with all the speakers. Those relationships are valuable in many different ways and build your own authority as well. And then there are so many other benefits attached to this type of event, especially I think that’s the power of doing it virtually is that you can kind of get it up and running and feel that impact and all the benefits a little bit faster and maybe with a little less … I know it was stressful, but a little bit less stress as an in-person event too and less overhead.

But can we also just focus on the promotion part of this? Because I think it’s easy to hear you two say, “Okay, we grew our list to 500 in 10 weeks.” That sounds really dreamy for a lot of copywriters who don’t have a list or are struggling to grow their list. But can you just talk about what it took to do that? What was the plan to get people to sign up for this and to share it? Yes, you already had a community, but what was the strategic plan to grow and get people to sign up and grow your list?

Greta Cate:  Well, it wasn’t anything incredibly shocking. I mean summits are list builders. They inherently function that way because speakers also obviously want to promote to their own audiences as well. We let people know that it was happening. We pointed them into the page to sign up, and they did. That sounds very anticlimactic and disappointing, doesn’t it, Kira? We didn’t have a secret weapon that way. There wasn’t a special secret handshake strategy that we used.

Kira:   Well, maybe it’s just that then. I mean having 45 speakers gives you more reach. Also for someone who’s considering whether or not to do a summit, how many speakers to add, adding more speakers could help you reach more people. If list growth is really important to you, that could be worth it.

Betsy Muse:   It could be. One of the things we did, we knew we were relying on their audiences, the audiences that speakers would reach out to. So we did provide assets. We had several email templates they could use if they chose to and some social media graphics. We tried to make it as easy as possible, and then we did our own social media marketing and networking in a very short time span. If you already have a decent list and you already have a decent following on social media, it may be a lot easier for you than it was for us.

Rob:   Okay. So I want to know then your advice for people who are thinking, “Okay, I’m going to do this,” your biggest takeaways. Would you talk us out of it? Again, yeah, biggest takeaways, biggest things that you learned from the whole experience?

Betsy Muse:   I would not talk you out of it. I would simply say start early. Keep your first one small. What else, Greta?

Greta Cate:   Work scared. Just do it. Just do it. Just jump right in and do it. Following someone else’s plan is great, but just taking the risk, putting yourself out there doing the thing. Just do it. If you’re called to, if you’re interested, if you feel it tugging at you, just do it. Do the thing.

Betsy Muse:   Yeah, do the thing. Make sure you have a central theme and that the presentations are related to that theme. I mean that is as hard as it gets.

Kira:   Right now there are lots of summits popping up. I don’t know. Maybe it’s the normal amount and I’m just paying attention to them more since we can’t attend in-person events. How would you two based on your experience, what advice would you give as far as standing out as a summit? I mean the theme is probably important. Have a really solid theme to help your summit stand out from all the other summits out there. But I know I’m kind of feeling right now just, oh my gosh, I’m overwhelmed with all the summits I could sign up for. It doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do them. But how can we do them and stand out and get people to participate in an online world where it’s very crowded and loud right now?

Greta Cate:   It’s really important just to have a lot of clarity about what you’re offering. Our summit was basically a deliverable in and of itself. There were results that you could get from attending the summit. All four days had their own part of the conversion journey that they discussed. So you were learning actual processes, strategies that you could integrate into your own business. It wasn’t vague and it wasn’t like, well, that might be a good idea. People could look at it and say, “I could learn how to do my email marketing better for my launch. Yes, I’d like to do that.”

So I would say be very specific about the kind of … and clear about what results your audience is going to get from your summit. What do you want it to be about? What are they going to get out of it? Who are you talking to? Just like any other pitch, it’s okay to be incredibly specific about it. It doesn’t have to be a huge topic. It doesn’t have to be a massive audience. I have seen some summits that are incredibly successful happening right now that are very niche, very, very niche. But since we’re all online now, it’s easier to gather your people.

Rob:   I know you mentioned the timeline was a bit of a struggle. But did anything else go wrong? Did you have problems with anything else?

Betsy Muse:   The only thing that really threw us off was that Greta and I included an implementation boot camp as part of our offer. It wasn’t necessarily wrong. It just made things not quite gel. It was difficult to market. That’s the only thing I can think of that went wrong.

Rob:   Can I ask what you mean by that? What do you mean when you say it didn’t quite gel?

Greta Cate:   I think Betsy’s just referring to the fact that it really split the focus in terms of our marketing. So it kind of felt like so we have this value-driven summit that we’re doing and then we’re selling these two different things, the all-access pass and then the implementation boot camp afterwards. So it kind of felt like it was an awful lot of selling for what our personal KPIs were. We were feeling a little bit of a disconnect with that and we weren’t feeling totally aligned, which now we know.

Betsy Muse:   Yeah. I think our audience too, they’re not used to seeing those things at a summit. So I think there was a disconnect there as well, but lesson learned. We did hold the boot camp. We do feel comfortable with what we’ve done.

Kira:   It sounds like it was easier to sell the all-access pass to the summit compared to the implementation boot camp, is that right? Or was it split?

Betsy Muse:   Well, it was pretty well split.

Kira:   Okay. What advice would you give to someone hosting a summit as they’re thinking about their offer or their offers? It sounds like it just needs to fit and feel aligned with the mission behind the summit. Is there anything else we should think about as we’re pulling together the offer at the end of the summit?

Betsy Muse:   If you’re going to do something that is outside the norm for a summit, make sure you talk about it early on.

Kira:   Okay. So it’s not a surprise and they’re like, “What is this?”

Betsy Muse:   Right.

Rob:   Awesome. I’m going to change the topic just a little bit. We’ve been talking about summits for a little while. I’m interested in your partnership and how you guys work together. Obviously, Kira and I are big on partnerships. We’ve been doing The Copywriter-

Kira:   Are we?

Rob:   … Club as a partnership.

Kira:   Are we?

Rob:   Yeah, I think it works. How do you guys make it work? Because not all partnerships go well. Oftentimes you start something and you find that you maybe have different ideas about what the goals are or what you should be doing, how you focus on your time. How have you guys made your partnership work?

Greta Cate:   We get real okay with us talking over each other.

Kira:   That helps.

Greta Cate:   We both get real excited.

Betsy Muse:   I think the one thing that I go back to no matter what’s going on is that I care as much about Greta’s success as I care about my own and I think she feels the same way. That helps us get over any rocky points and it always brings us back to a very focused partnership.

Greta Cate:   Yeah. I think the key is taking the ego part out. When you’re collaborating with someone it’s maybe even a little bit different. But if you’re partnering with someone on something, you’re there for the bigger purpose. You’re there to serve the bigger purpose. You’ve chosen each other. So it’s like Betsy said, we care about each other’s success. It’s important. And we care about our joined vision and mission. So that makes all the little stuff little stuff.

Kira:   What has surprised you the most about being a part of a business partnership? For both of you, what surprised you the most along the way?

Betsy Muse:   One of the things that I don’t know if it surprised as much as it’s just been this rhythm that we’ve gotten into. We initially had ambitiously planned four summits and realized that that’s not a sustainable goal. But at the end of this summit and boot camp, we both had growth in our own personal businesses and made some changes. So without having to communicate, it’s like we’ve been able to move back and forth. We know what’s going on in each other’s businesses and lives. We just come back together when we need to come back together.

Greta’s been good about what if we do this, what if we do that. We have these discussions. But it’s been very pleasant, a really pleasant way to run things.

Kira:   Running two businesses is hard. I mean we both are doing that now. It’s been tricky. There’s definitely been ups and downs along the way. How do you two fit your joint partnership and business in with your own businesses, which you mentioned are also taking off just like the summit and your Women-Led Summits are taking off? How are you two each juggling the two and making it work and thinking about it so that you do stay sane, you stay focused, you don’t burn out too?

Greta Cate:   I think the key for us has been that, and because it is event-based, Women-Led Summits, we really have not been it’s not so much keeping all the balls in the air, but deciding on which one at which time. We did incredible singular focus on the summit that we had in January. And then after that was said and done and the boot camp was over, we both took a step back and said, “Okay, we need to spend some time over here thinking about this for the future.” And then just those check-ins and making plans for when are we going to be adding this back into the mix so that both of the balls are up in the air. How heavy is each one going to be?

For us, they’re not really equitable at the same time. That’s just not where we’ve gone yet with it. What do you think, Betsy?

Betsy Muse:   Yeah. I think both of us, pretty much other than supporting client work, took a pause from growing our businesses during the summit. It wasn’t a let’s keep all the balls in the air at the same time and spin all the plates. It was now we’re doing this, then we’re doing this. I think that, as Greta said, because it’s event-based we can manage it somewhat like that. Right now we’re focusing on our personal businesses to get them to a healthy place where we can maybe ignore them a little bit in the fall when we hope to have another summit.

Rob:   I know this is probably the wrong time to ask this question because, as we’re recording this, everybody’s sort of hunkered down at home. Nobody’s going out. But assuming that things change here in the near future, are you tempted at all to take this thing live and to do an in-person event? Or is it enough just to be online with a summit?

Betsy Muse:   Nah, we’ve talked about it an in-person event.

Greta Cate:   Yes, from the get-go we’ve talked about an in-person event.

Rob:   And what does that look like?

Greta Cate:   I think it looks a whole lot like not this year.

Rob:   Yeah. Events this year are going to be a little bit tricky, I think, for a lot of reasons.

Greta Cate:   Yeah.

Betsy Muse:   Yeah. I think we originally talked about a 2021 and that may be a little ambitious. But we are keeping it top of mind as we proceed and just staying on top of everything because this is something that has to be done in advance.

Kira:   Okay. I just kind of want to, before we start to wrap up, I just want to talk through the details, the nitty gritty here. Because for someone who does want to do this, maybe they are on their own, they don’t have a partner. You mentioned that you paid for the event. It paid for itself. Can you just talk through rough numbers? If I’m running my first virtual summit, say I want around 30, 40 speakers, around the same size as yours. What should I be thinking about as far as what to budget for it so I can make sure I have that set aside?

Will I need to have a team? Should I have a VA or some type of support? If I don’t do video editing maybe I need to think about having someone to help. Can you just kind of run through what I need to know prep-wise before I jump into it as far as hard numbers and structure?

Greta Cate:   I think a lot of it has to do with what your vision is for the summit. I mean you can find some incredible platforms in terms of pricing. You can do a budget-friendly summit without any trouble. There are platforms that you can use that are really low-cost. You can host on YouTube. If you only have presentations, finished presentations sent in or if you’re okay with leaving in all of the um, uh, awkward pauses, and unflattering laughs, you can really do it for not a lot of money if that’s where you’re at right now and you need to bootstrap it. So I wouldn’t let that hold you back if you are thinking about planning a summit.

Betsy Muse:   Yeah. You can do something that’s budget-friendly, but if you want to do the way we did, we did host on Wistia. You have to budget for bandwidth. That was a surprise because once people start watching your videos, that $99 a month explodes. So that’s several hundred dollars. If you have a VA, obviously you have to budget for that. If you’re doing it on your own and you aren’t giving yourself a lot of time, the more time you have the less money it costs I think.

Greta Cate:   Agreed. Agreed. And if you are doing it alone, I highly recommend finding someone or if you’re part of a community where you can get a gut check, you can get some feedback, do that. Because one of my biggest takeaways with this is that it was so incredibly useful to have a partner in this situation. We could, the two of us, check each other. We were able to cover a lot of ground and make sure we didn’t miss or misstep because we had each other for feedback.

Rob:   Yeah. In my experience, that’s one of the best things about having a partner that you can trust. I know you guys mentioned you’re focusing on your own personal businesses right now, but that you have a summit maybe in the fall. Tell us about what that might be. Maybe this is the first opportunity to start promoting it, asking for speakers or whatever. But what’s the idea? What are you guys going to be doing next?

Betsy Muse:   Well, one thing we’ve thrown around is a women makers summit to celebrate and promote podcasters, community organizers, people who create tech products, people who create physical products. That’s something that we’ve thrown around. But we haven’t really decided on that. So if you have any ideas, now is your time to promote your ideas, everybody.

Greta Cate:   Absolutely. Yeah. We haven’t nailed down exactly what it’s going to look like. But I believe if you want to be in the loop you can definitely, or if you would like to speak and you just want to know what’s coming up next, you can definitely get on the list at womenledsummits.com and we will keep you in the loop on what’s coming up next. Because yes, we are looking at another summit in the fall. We’re looking at other boot camp I think late summer. Is that where we landed on that, Betsy?

Betsy Muse:   Yes.

Greta Cate:   Yeah. And then I think we might be revisiting January’s.

Betsy Muse:   We have talked about it will happen later in May, but we are going to open the Keys to Conversion Summit up again for another week, offer free access to all of the videos. If people want it longer than that, of course they can buy an all-access pass. But that’s not the intention here. I think seven days is plenty of time for most folks to get through the videos they want to watch.

Kira:   That’s a great idea. That’s a great idea. I mean you have the content. It’s sitting there. You had 45 speakers. That could help people. You could also make some money there for your business for the next summit too. That’s a great idea. Okay. You both know we love to talk about mindset and the underground on the podcast. You two have transformed your businesses, your own businesses, launched this together taking some really … I mean you’ve taken a leap, right? You jumped off the cliff together.

You’ve gone through a lot over the last few years and then most recently with this summit. How has maybe mindset changed over the last year or so? I just am personally interested in what has helped you continue to shift your mindset and overcome some of those limiting beliefs that hold us back.

Greta Cate:   Very good question. I would say for me that the biggest things have been community and experience and just trying to find … being around people who get it and who are also driven, who are also able to understand that mindset is part of the deal and so they’re actively working on that and just experiencing as much as I can in my career, doing things, taking the risks. Those are the things that have made the most difference for me is just acting as if I feel the way that I want to feel. Can I do it? I don’t know. I have doubts. Let’s just go with it and see what happens.

I guess just really not taking everything so seriously. It’s an experiment, just like your copy. Put it out in the world. See what happens, iterate.

Betsy Muse:   For me, there a lot of similarity. Surrounding myself with people that are smarter than I am, being in active copywriting and marketing communities, putting my work out there for feedback, not playing it safe and small, so many things. One of the things that really provide, and y’all are going to think I’m kissing up and I’m not. But I’ve told both of you this before. But I am an extreme introvert. I’m very shy. Going to The Copywriter Club in real life in 2018 in Brooklyn just absolutely changed my life.

Being with copywriters, it wasn’t just being at a conference. I was with people that I could nerd out with. It was an amazing experience for me and it was one of the first times I went from wanting to be invisible to embracing visibility. Honestly, from that moment forward, because it was just a couple of months after that that Greta and I met for coffee, it’s really been coming back from that.

Kira:   Yeah. I appreciate you saying that. I mean I believe that’s the power of meeting in person, introvert, extrovert, doesn’t matter. But just stepping into that room really does change you. It continues to change you every time you step into a new room, whether it is virtual or in person.

All right. So as we wrap up, you probably have heard one of our final questions we like to ask. What is the future of copywriting? What does the future of copywriting look like to you?

Betsy Muse:   I think it’s incandescently bright. As mentor and friend, Joanna Wiebe, says, “Nothing is sold online without copy.” I think we’re going to see more things being sold online and we’re going to be necessary.

Greta Cate:   Really interesting question at this point in time in history. One of the things I’ve really enjoyed seeing is how many helpers are coming to light right now. I think that might be part of the trends that we see. But I think it’s going to be more personal. I think it’s going to be more diverse. I think marketing in general is kind of going through some transformations right now and I’m pretty excited to see where we go and where we can take it. I mean we’re the messengers. We get to have a say. We get to have a voice. That’s pretty exciting.

Rob:   This has been awesome. I’m almost convinced that we need to do a summit of our own, listening to you guys talk. If people want to reach out to you, connect with you, find out more about the previous summit that you guys led or possibly future summits, where should they go?

Betsy Muse:   Well, I’m getting ready to launch my new site, Rocket Fuel Strategy.

Kira:  Nice. Okay.

Betsy Muse:   So betsy@rocketfuelstrategy.com. I’m still on most social medias as Betsy Muse or Copy Muse.

Rob:   And Greta?

Greta Cate:   Yeah, if you want to find out about the summits you can hit us up at womenledsummits.com. You’re welcome to join the list. You can reach either of us at Betsy or Greta@womenledsummits. You can reach us at our own businesses. I am actually in the middle of, or not quite in the middle, I’d like to be in the middle of a rebrand. Gretacate.com is where you can find me right now. Depending on when you are listening to this, you might also find me at readtheroommarketing.com.

Rob:   Awesome. Lots of places to check out.

Kira:   Also, just thank you to both of you not only for sharing the inside look at what it takes to run a summit, but also for inviting both of us to be a part of your first summit. It was really exciting to be a part of it, so thank you.

Rob:   Yes. Thank you.

Betsy Muse:   Thank you.

Greta Cate:   Thank you both for being a part of it.

You’ve been listening to The Copywriter Club Podcast with Kira Hug and Rob Marsh. Music for the show is a clip from Gravity by Whitest Boy Alive available in iTunes. If you like what you’ve heard, you can help us spread the word by subscribing in iTunes and by leaving a review. For show notes, a full transcript and links to our free Facebook community, visit thecopywriterclub.com. We’ll see you next episode.

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