Liz: [00:00:00] Welcome to Small Business Big Network, the podcast for small business owners who want big results from their networking. I’m Liz Drewry, a freelance voiceover artist who knows that if you are not working, then networking could help. Laura Robinson is a copywriting and marketing mentor through her business.

Word. She likes to grow her network one person at a time by following the links between the people she already knows and the people they’re connected to. Thank you for being my guest on the podcast day, Laura.

Laura: Hello. Thank you very much for having me.

Liz: No, you are, uh, in copywriting, um, marketing, et cetera, but I want to go back a bit first and find out what you wanted to do when you were at school.

Was marketing something you always had in mind?

Laura: It was by the time I was at secondary school, I was interested in marketing when I was like really little primary school. [00:01:00] It was anything that involved being able to put a stamp on a piece of paper, so post office librarian, like if you could have one of those little rubber stamps and my job was to sit and like, press that on a piece of paper all day.

I would’ve been really made up with that. By the time I got to secondary school, I was a lot more interested in marketing. Uh, my dad worked for local newspapers. He worked in the advertising department for local newspapers. So I feel like I had like. Early exposure to yes. What that world looked like. Um, and I was just fascinated with it.

Absolutely fascinated. Um, so I wanted to do a marketing degree and I was talked out of that and encouraged to do a business degree instead, which is fine ’cause I did a business degree, but specialized quite a lot in marketing. So I still got my own way. Um, and then I found myself in a. Quite boring corporate job in insurance, but I kept wiggling my way back to marketing.

So I do feel like it’s been on the cards pretty much since the beginning, and I’ve always managed to find my way back to it, whatever route I needed to take.

Liz: Yeah. So what is it about marketing, do you think that that attracts you so [00:02:00] much?

Laura: I really love the idea of matching people. Like their problems to something that’s gonna help them.

Mm-hmm. Like there’s, there’s so many solutions out there and we don’t even know they exist. And we’re walking around with our problems and we don’t realize that they could be solved if we could just be matched up to that solution. So there was something about that, like bringing together. Some, you know, a a, a brand or a business that had a solution with the people that needed that thing.

And I also just love the like, human psychology side of why we do the things we do, the decisions we make, why we buy. Mm-hmm. Anything to do with how our brains work is just fascinating to me. Yeah.

Liz: Is psychology something you, that you’ve studied? N

Laura: not really, not in any, um, structured way. I think I kind of geek out on it whenever I can.

Um, sat behind me in my office is an enormous poster of, um, all the, the cognitive bias codex. So all the ways in which our brain creates shortcuts for us. Yeah. And I just love to look at the poster and pick something random and read about it. So it is a very much a like [00:03:00] amateur. Study for me. Yeah.

Liz: So you mentioned that you went into, into the corporate world.

How, how long did you, did you spend there? Not very long at all. So

Laura: I went straight from, um, so I finished my degree. I applied to all the graduate management programs mm-hmm. That were asking for applicants. Took the first one that came along. Really? And it was with an insurance company that had like an accelerated leadership program.

Mm-hmm. I did that for a couple of years and got put into a middle management position. I was, I think I was 23. Mm-hmm. Which I felt hopelessly out of my depth, um, in this kind of middle management position. Um. I also got invited to quite a lot of the, like, higher level meetings with the board of directors.

’cause I was someone who was happy to just ask the stupid questions. Yeah. Or put myself in the perspective of the customer or, um, you know, whoever they were creating these projects for. So I, I, it was interesting. I really enjoyed it, but it was just, I felt so far out of my depth. Um, and then I had my children quite a bit younger than I had originally planned.

So I thought I would have a corporate career for a [00:04:00] while and then I would settle down and have a family. Um, and. Uh, circumstances meant that I needed to do that sooner rather than later. Mm-hmm. So I had my kids when I was 23 and 25. I went back to work after the second one, but he was born with additional medical needs.

Right. And developmental needs. And it was just not, yeah. It was not practical. I tried for a year, I made it until he was two years old. Mm-hmm. And I literally walked out in my, of my job. But I didn’t come back. I went on holiday and I didn’t come back. Yeah. Um, because I was just so completely broken from trying to make all of that work.

Liz: Yeah.

Laura: Um, I took a year out to just be at home with the kids. They were four and two at that age, but we needed, like desperately needed some income. I’d been the main earner when I left my job, so it was a bit of a shock to be without work. Um, so I needed to at least make a part-time income. So I spent that whole year.

I must have Googled how to make money online so many times. I dunno why it wasn’t like. Burnt on the screen of my laptop. So I spent the whole year figuring out, okay, I’m clearly not gonna go back to [00:05:00] work basically ever. How am I gonna have any sort of income? Yeah. In the meantime.

Liz: Yeah. And so what did you decide to do?

Laura: I took, um, I took what I was already good at, so I, in my, the, the last role I’d had at work was like a communications manager. I’d worked in marketing and I’d worked in communications so I could write. I, I really enjoyed writing. I liked communicating big ideas. Um, I had worked on the company intranet, like the internal website.

Mm-hmm. Um, so I could do like how use content management system. So obviously I think that so many people do this when they realize they need to make money online. Obviously the first thing I turned to was I’m gonna build websites.

Liz: Yeah.

Laura: Even I was just hopeless that out. I had no design. Skills whatsoever.

I was not good at this thing. Um, so I had, I, I did that for a little while. Um, it was difficult and I didn’t make very much money, and then I completely fluked into specializing in writing. Mm. I, I had a toy blog on the side, so I was really interested in, um, how advertising and affiliate marketing worked, and I had little kids, so yeah.

I started a [00:06:00] toy blog. Um, not, which was great ’cause the company sent me free toys. Yeah. And we would just try them out, um, and write about it on the blog. And I would go to toy events in London. So there was two, there was Toy Fair, which was in January. I think that would. Introduce you to all the new toys that were coming up for the year.

And then there was Christmas in July, which literally was in July when you would go to pick whatever the toys were gonna be, the winners for Christmas. And I was at one of these events and I was chatting to someone who built websites for toy companies and because I built websites as well and. I asked, I dunno, I don’t even know what inspired me to ask the question, but I said, who writes the material that you put on your website?

Maybe I was having difficulty getting that like written content off of my clients. I don’t know. But I just asked him, we were just chatting and I said, who writes the material for the websites? And they laughed and he said, well, it’s just whoever’s got the least design projects on the go. So they had these web designers and they were writing the copy for these toy brands.

Mm. Because they didn’t have anyone in-house that could do it. Um, and I thought, well, I really like writing. Yeah. And I showed them the toy blog and said, well, how about I just do that? And [00:07:00] that’s how I ended up specializing in writing initially for toy websites and then, um, did something for other digital marketing agencies.

Liz: Wow. That’s a great story.

Laura: It’s funny how I ended up there. It was the most obvious thing to do because I really enjoyed writing. I dunno why I didn’t start there. Yeah. But I suppose in a way I did by starting the blog. Um. But yeah, it was a very, I still like, I can vividly remember the conversation. I couldn’t remember like where I was like in the arena and all the other toy brands were around us because it was just such an important question, a moment where I thought, oh, they hate doing this job and I would love it, so why don’t I come and do that for them?

Liz: Perfect. So after toys, what did you write about next?

Laura: Oh, when I was working for digital marketing agencies, I. Wrote about everything that you can imagine and it, it was a fun, it was a fun and useful time because I had an editor above me. Mm-hmm. So it was brutal because the only way you’re gonna get better a copywriter is to have someone tell you how rubbish you are, like over and over again.

And like, this could be better. Tighten this up, do this with this. So I really appreciated that. I go on education and it. [00:08:00] While I was getting paid to do it, but the pay was abysmal. Um, and I had no control over the types of things I was writing about. So I would write endlessly about office space in London, which is very boring, like how far away key monuments were from these empty office buildings.

And oh, it was so dull. Um. I had a whole project that was writing blog posts for a damp proofing website. And that was about, I think that was about 15 years ago. And you could still ask me any question you want about damp proofing or how damp would show up in your home, and I’d be able to give you an answer.

’cause I had to research it so extensively. Um, there were product descriptions. It was just like every week you had no idea what it was gonna be. Mm-hmm. It was something that I knew nothing about. I was gonna have to improvise, research, learn as I go. Um, so I developed a lot of skills, but that wasn’t, um.

It wasn’t a forever arrangement. Yeah. Which is why I set up my own copywriting business so that I would have a bit more control over. Yeah. Who it was that I worked with and, and the kind of projects I worked on.

Liz: Yeah. Yeah. So tell me about setting up your own own [00:09:00] business. When did you decide to, to, to do that

Laura: again?

That was probably, oh, it’s. I’ve just had my 10th anniversary, so it was 10 years ago that I set up the business. I set it up as a limited company ’cause I really wanted to get out of this freelancer. I was such a freelancer mindset of I’ll pick up any gig, but anything that comes up, if you say, can you do this?

I’ll say yes. Yeah, because I need the money. And I really wanted to move away from that way of thinking to. Set myself up as a business. Yeah. Just felt like a complete mindset shift, even though, you know, I didn’t need to, it didn’t make any kind of legal accounting sense mm-hmm. To do that. But I did it anyway.

Um, so I just, yeah. Set it up, had a website, wrote a page that said, I can help you with these things. Um, I really struggled to remember how I found those initial clients. Mm. But weird. So basically I found a client who was a nutritionist, um, and I wrote her website and then she told me. Told all of her friends about me.

Yeah. So for a while there I did a run of like five websites for [00:10:00] nutritionists before I realized I cannot do this anymore because I can’t keep writing original, unique content. Yeah, for the same, in the same industry. And also it was such a weird pick because I’m just like, I’m not really, not really into that world now.

But definitely then I wasn’t like, I was surviving on coffee and biscuits, sitting writing these websites for nutritionist. It felt so surreal. So I think I just relied more on like friends of friends. You know, clients referring me on to people that they knew, but making myself less available for the ones that worked in nutrition and being more open to ones that worked in a slightly different way.

And that was really like probably the first couple of years just. Going from person to person. And when you, when it’s just me working and I just needed one-to-one clients, I didn’t really need anything else. Like, that was enough context for me to keep the business going.

Liz: Yeah, yeah. So tell me how your business has changed between, you know, 10 years ago when you started out and, and, and what you do now.

Laura: So I accidentally built an audience, not a huge audience, just a [00:11:00] few thousand people, but I didn’t need that to. Keep having one-to-one copywriting clients. Um, I, I’m a bit of a show off with writing. Mm-hmm. So I think I, I really like to write, I wanted a newsletter where people wanted to read the newsletter.

It wasn’t just email marketing. Mm-hmm. Um, so I put a lot of effort into that and now I have a few thousand people that like to read the newsletter and so I needed to figure out. What do I sell the people? Because I can’t, I can’t do one-to-one copywriting for all of these people. No. So about that was seven.

This feels like I’ve been doing this for a long time, but seven or eight years ago I launched a membership that was, um, to help other small business owners write their own marketing content and copy. ’cause there’s just so much of it. You have no idea how much your time you’re gonna spend writing when you start a business.

And if you don’t. Enjoy it or more so people feel like they’re not very good at it. Yeah. When that’s not true, but that’s how they feel. Um, so I launched a membership that was focused on that, like building their confidence and their copywriting skills, providing templates and tutorials, showing them how to write the key pieces of content they’d need for their [00:12:00] website and for their marketing.

And that’s, I still have that in some format. It’s evolved into like what it’s called and the way it’s presented and how it’s priced. But that’s basically the still, um. The core of what I do is help people feel more confident about writing their own content and copy. Yeah. All of the writing that they need to do for their business.

Liz: Yeah. Yeah. So who are your clients? What kind of businesses come to you?

Laura: They are very much like I was, they are scrappy people who needed to make money in some way, and they figured out like, okay, well this is my expertise, this is what I’m good at. And I’m gonna turn that into some kind of one-to-one, like done for you service or coaching or consultant.

So they’re really small businesses. It’s usually just them, or they might have some like part-time VA support, um, which means they’re really flexible, they’re agile. Um, they can make decisions and act on them really quickly, which I enjoy working with. Um, and they’re just really scrappy, resilient people who knew like, I need to make a go of this, and I’m mm-hmm.

I’m going to make this work. Um, I, I just love working with them and they also tend to have more. [00:13:00] Difficulties with their confidence levels, with being self promotional because, um, when you’ve come from a background like I have where, you know, you didn’t, it wasn’t my dream to start my own business. Mm-hmm.

I’ve had to do this because I didn’t really have any other options and I’m really, really glad I did. Like it’s the best thing that could have happened to me. Um, that there’s, you’re not doing it from a place of, look at me, I’m so great. Come and buy my stuff. Mm-hmm. You’re doing it from a much more, um. A place where you lack that confidence.

Mm-hmm. Uh, so I really love to work with those people and help, help them just realize how good they are at what they do, and how many people out there need them to do that, uh, and, and have some confidence to express themselves, put their personality into their work and be. Self-promotional in the way that they need to be to be able to get those clients.

Liz: Yeah. And, and where are they? Are they local to you? Are they all over the country?

Laura: They are everywhere. So in, uh, I run a three month mentoring program mm-hmm. Where I work one to one with people for three months. And I’ve just done like, just closing an intake of that now. And I have someone in New Zealand.

Yeah. [00:14:00] And obviously like people in uk, someone in Switzerland, um, and also. On both coasts of the US so that my people aren’t even in the same day as each other. No. Which blows every time that like blows my mind. I’ll put out like, this is when our office hours are and you can come and chat to me. And I realize like for some people I’ll have to give them the UK time.

You’re gonna have to figure it out ’cause you are all over the world. Yeah. And I try and keep out that in mind, like, okay. I’m actually awake at the same person who’s in New Zealand right now, so they need to get my full focus because this window of time is such a small, yes, small opportunity to talk to each other and then the UK people I’m a bit more flexible with.

And then at the end of the day, I have to remember to turn my attention to my American friends.

Liz: Yeah, sounds like some long days for you then.

Laura: It’s a bit, it is strange, but I mean, that suits me. ’cause I’m not, I’ve never been like a nine to five, five days a week kind of worker anyway, so I like that kind of flexibility.

Liz: Yeah. So tell me something about the program that you take them through. What, what things do you help them with?

Laura: It’s, it’s more of a, it’s a structure every week. So [00:15:00] at the start of the week, um, there’s some questions to help them make their prioritized marketing to-do list. Mm-hmm. So they know. The absolute essentials, I’m definitely gonna get this done.

Um, they have the opportunity to ask me anything they want. So where they’ve had an idea and they’ve run into a problem or they start to doubt it, they can get an outside perspective on it to keep that momentum going. Mm. Um, and then there’s copywriting feedback. So anything they’ve created, sales pages, website content, blog posts.

Marketing emails, like literally anything. I will look at it for them and I’ll give my feedback in terms of what they’ve done well and what could be better. That’s probably my favorite part. I’ve, that’s always been part of working with me one-to-one for like the eight, last eight or nine years, and people describe it as having, it’s like I sit on their shoulder, so they’ll be writing something in the future and they can hear me saying, yeah.

You know, like, now move that right to the top and turn, change that into a verb so it’s less passive and like I’m whispering in their ear because they’ve seen my feedback videos so many times telling them what to do. Yeah.

Liz: So what difference do you think that you make to them? How, how do you see them [00:16:00] grow from when they start with you to, you know, the end of the three months?

Laura: Confidence.

Liz: Confidence

Laura: in themselves. Confidence in their ability to make a decision. See it through, through that wobbly period where you’ve made a decision you think is the best thing in the whole wide world. And then 10 minutes later you can think of a billion reasons why you shouldn’t do it, so that they know like, Hey, this is coming.

I’m gonna be able to work through this, and I’ll get to the other side. And actually I’ll think it’s a reasonably good decision and I’m gonna take action on it. And to know how to notice what happens when you take action. Not just the numbers, results of how many sales you make, but all the other information that you gather and the way that you feel and how your audience responds to it.

Um. Confidence in being able to take an idea and communicate it in whatever format feels good for them. Like is it an email? Do you just wanna chuck that idea out on social media and see how people respond? Being able to create an offer and put it on a sales page? It’s, it’s confidence in their ability to move quickly, have momentum, um, see something through and get what’s inside their head.

In front of their audience as [00:17:00] quickly as possible, and then to be able to respond to however their audience responds to that.

Liz: Yeah. Do you see some, um, sort of common mistakes that people make when they’re writing their copy?

Laura: Um, I, the number one mistake I think people make is they think if it takes ’em a long time, they’re doing it wrong.

Mm. Like, they’ll say, it takes me forever to write my marketing email, or I’ve spent this, you know, I’ve spent five hours on this sales page and it’s still not done. And so they kind of give up too early. Like they, there’ll be a draft and they’ll go, mm-hmm. Okay. That, that will do, because I’ve spent this long on it and that’s how long it should take.

And. That’s it. And honestly, I, I have been doing this the whole of my adult life. It takes a long time. I will write a first draft of anything is terrible. It’s nobody else would even be able to read it because my hands have moved so fast over the keyboard that the words don’t even make sense. Yeah. But to me, that’s an outline of what I need.

Then I’ll go back and write. The next draft, which will have most of what I want to say, but there’ll be whole sections that say things like, insert a feature and why they’d [00:18:00] want it here. Mm-hmm. Because I can’t re, I haven’t got anything to mind and I’m not gonna let that slow me down ’cause I know what the rest of the email is gonna look like.

So I just fly through it and leave those kind of placeholder texts there. Then the next version I go through and I replace the placeholder text. Then I’ll go through it again and read it and tighten it up. So by then I’m on like my fourth or fifth draft and it’s probably still not ready to go. Mm-hmm.

That’s when I’ll take a break, might come back to it the next day, might come back to an hour later and then tighten it up one more time. And I do have to find that balance between this is never gonna be perfect, and the second I press send, I’m gonna be able to see a typo on it. But I do want it to be as good as I possibly can get it because the.

The time and the effort is in those first three drafts. Yeah. But the magic is in the last one. Yeah. So it is worth going that extra, extra version, an extra half an hour on it to get it as good as possible. Yeah. And I, I find when I talk to people who are writing their own content copy for their own business, it, they feel like they’re doing something wrong if they spend that long on it.

And I think that’s kind of, [00:19:00] it’s kind of championed as well, this idea of like, well just get on with it, put it together and get it out there. Like everything needs to be quick, but mm-hmm. It’s. It’s not quick. If you wanna do it. Well, it does take a while. That’s just how it is. It will get quicker the more you do it, but, um, it’s worth putting in the extra effort to get that final polished version because that’s where the magic happens.

Liz: Yeah. And so what are your thoughts on using AI to help you write copy?

Laura: Oh, I, I use it, I use it as, um, it’s like my little office assistant. So I don’t think I’ve ever successfully used any kind of AI tool that tells me like, this is gonna write your blog post or your sales page for it, and then seeing what comes out of it and gone, yeah, this is great.

I’ve definitely used it like it just hasn’t happened. No. If it, if it works for you, great. I’ve definitely worked with people who are happy with the results of ai, and if they’re happy with it, then that’s good enough. Like I don’t have anything against using it, but the way I like to use it is I. It’s like having a person in the office and I’ll say, right, you are.

And I’ll tell them like, you are this type of person. Mm-hmm. Like you are this parent and you have this kind [00:20:00] of problem with your child. So they’re, I’m getting them to be my ideal client. Yeah. Like, imagine you are this person and you’ve got this kind of problem and you’ve tried all of these things and I’m here and I’m an expert in this.

What’s five things you’d ask me? And it’s really interesting to see what it comes back with. Mm-hmm. Um, so I use it, and again, I would never use that output of those five things. Probably nobody would ever see those words. From that, you know, what I see on my screen doesn’t turn up anywhere. Yeah. But it’s just inspiration.

It helps me start a conversation instead of being trapped inside my own head. Yeah. Trying to figure it out for myself. Um, and it, it’s the kind of research that I used to be able to do on forums. I still could do it, but I like to deep dive on forums to find out what’s the ideal client saying and how do they present their problem?

How do they word it? What’s the things they’re struggling with? And probably AI is scraping the same forum. Yes. So it might just be speeding up that process. Yeah. Um, but yeah, it’s basically, I literally use it to chat to. The, the clue is in the name. Yes. I don’t get it to do it for me.

Liz: Yeah. Yeah. So let’s have a, a chat about networking now then.

How do you like to network for your [00:21:00] business?

Laura: I am not a big go outside kind of person. Um, I also live in a, in a seaside town, and so the local businesses are all kind of tourist based. Mm. I, I did go to one local networking event when I very first started my business and realized like, okay, this is not, this is this.

It would be very hard to, um. Find the kind of businesses that I wanted to work with there. Um, although the Toy Fair, like the toy blogs, toy fair places were good for networking. Um, so I like, actually most of my networking is online and it’s, it’s um, it’s people who know who I know. It’s really simple.

It’s just one going from one person to the next person. Yeah. To the next person. And I’ll never run out of people because, uh, yes. You know, I’ll, I will meet someone and they’ll like my work and I’ll see that they’re connected to five other people who might be interested in my work and I’m not. I’m gonna run outta time before I’ve even contacted all five.

So I’ll pick the one that seems like the best match and they’ll have five other people. And yeah, so it’s, it is just [00:22:00] following one, one connection to another. I quite often find those connections through when other people recommend content. So I’ll be on someone’s email list and they’ll say, Hey, so and so wrote this blog post, and it was really useful.

It was about this, um. I’ll think, oh, that sounds like the kind of thing that my people would be interested in. So I go off and read that and I can meet, you know, virtually meet that person because I’ve read their content, I’ve got to know them a bit on their website. I can connect with them and say, my people might like your content, and your people might like my content.

Like, is there a way we can collaborate together? Mm-hmm. So it’s just, it’s very slow, it’s very manual and it’s just one person at a time.

Liz: Yeah. And, and what do you get from, from doing that?

Laura: It’s audience exposure. So I like to get in front of new audiences like that. Um, it’s not high volume of people that I will add to my email list when I do it, but the ones that are, that do come across are gonna be.

Um, like, you know, it’s considered they’ve decided to join my newsletter, so they’re really well engaged. Um, and also I think that doing those kind of reciprocal arrangements is great for my audience. Yeah. Because just like I said, I like to match [00:23:00] people who have problems to solutions that are out there.

So if I think my people might have this problem and someone’s got a solution, I’m happy to put it in front of them.

Liz: Yeah.

Laura: Um, so I think it’s good for my audience and it’s good to build my audience.

Liz: Yeah. And, and why do you feel it’s important for your business to, to keep growing your network?

Laura: Um, partly ’cause it’s an adventure.

Like, you know, I don’t think I’ll do the same thing, um, for the same people forever and ever. So it’s, it’s kind of made my business evolve and, um, you know, given a kind of flow or a direction, a bit of an adventurous spirit to it. Um, obviously more people. As I grow the network, I like to grow my email list.

That’s more people that can buy from me. I also like to do affiliate marketing, so I like to. Put other people’s offers in front of that audience of people. Um, and I earn a commission for doing that. It’s not a massive part of my business, but it’s a really, I I really enjoy that. That feels like magic money.

’cause you haven’t really needed to do anything. You’ve just said, Hey, this thing exists. Would you like to buy it? Yeah. Um, and I just, I really love the connections of [00:24:00] people when they replied to my emails, they tell me about their life and their story. And, um, I would definitely, if I didn’t need money, I would definitely still do this.

Like, I really enjoy. Writing for an audience who read my emails and then they reply. It’s just the highlight of my week.

Liz: Sounds like you’re in the right job then.

Laura: Yeah, I haven’t got any plans on changing anytime soon.

Liz: So my final question then, Laura, is if people are interested in finding out more about you and uh, word your business, what’s the best place for them to find you?

Laura: It is my website, which is word two.co uk. Um, and join my Comfy Business newsletter, which. It should be all over the website. You should be able to find that quite easily. And that’s where it’s easiest to stay in touch with me ’cause I’m not very consistent on social media at all.

Liz: Right. So join the mailing list.

Laura: Come and join. Yeah, but it’s, it’s not just like any old mailing list. It’s a newsletter where you’ll be happy to see it in your inbox every week. The whole point is for it help you feel kind of entertained and encouraged at the same time.

Liz: Perfect. Well, thank you very much [00:25:00] for being my guest today, Laura.

Laura: You’re very welcome. Thank you for having me.

Liz: Thanks for listening to Small Business Big Network. If you found this podcast useful, please do rate review and subscribe, and don’t forget to share it with the rest of your network too.