Jen Casey (JC): So for those who don’t know you, I would love for you to share a little bit about how you got started in the online space. You started as a lawyer, right?

Sara Powers (SP): Yeah! I was a civil defense litigator for eight years. I got about five years into my practice when I realized that it was not my path. I’m grateful for the experience and the opportunity, but it was not where I meant to stay. I started looking at alternatives and I applied for coaching thinking that if I could get my own coach, they could help me repackage my knowledge and expertise.

When I met with this coach and she heard my personal history (something some of your listeners might be interested in because I had overcome anorexia and binge eating and had a passion for helping women become comfortable in their own skin) she was like, “You could do your own thing,” and at first I thought that was ridiculous.

I thought, “Who puts their name on a website?? That’s super egotistical.”

But she she convinced me, so I started building this health coaching business, all the while what I really wanted to do was what I do now. I really wanted to help women build their own things.

I just felt ill equipped, unqualified, and had all of those imposter syndrome issues. That businesses wasn’t where I was called to stay. I had to work through all of that, get myself into alignment, and finally give myself permission to do what I really wanted to do.

I started the business in 2015, made that shift at the end of 2016, and started offering business coaching. I also looked at what could set me apart from the sea of online business coaches. I do think it’s helpful if you have some sort of tangible, concrete skill.

I have always been a writer. I was an English major. As a litigator, lots of what we do is research and writing and persuading the court to rule in favor. Whether it’s through oral argument or through your briefs, persuading the court to rule in favor of your client is not that different from persuading someone that what you have to offer is really valuable and can be transformational for them.

I dove in headfirst to studying copywriting and that’s when things started to snowball in the best way!

 

JC: I didn’t realize that was how this all came together. That’s such a beautiful example of how this online world can become an expertise sandwich. For the people in my audience, some of them are like, “Copyrighting? You mean, like the legal stuff?” There might be some confusion! What is copywriting?

 

SP: Great question. Thank you for bringing that out. Copywriting that I do now with a W is basically words that sell. It’s your marketing message. It can be your website copy, emails you send out, and it can even be your social media posts.

I sometimes refer to it as Madmen without the adultery and alcoholism! You see the guys brainstorming a creative way that they can emotionally reach their ideal client.

A lot of copywriting is also understanding human psychology, your market, what they’re struggling with, their deepest desires, and what they want to experience at an emotional level.

 

JC: When I first started in the online business world, I didn’t even know copywriting existed. It was a total down-the-road kind of thing. I would love for you to speak as to why this is a different art form and why is it so important? You can hire a copywriter, but a persuasion copywriter, somebody who’s specialized in email copy and websites, it is a different skill set.

 

SP: Yes, a conversion copywriter is very different from a content writer. Transparently, you’ll see that reflected in the price that you’ll pay when you hire an expert conversion copywriter because they are actually skilled and trained to help you attract consistent quality leads and make sales. If you’re running a business, that is very important.

Sometimes people say, “Well, I just want to help people…”

Well yes, but when people pay, they pay attention.

You want them to pay for your services so that they take them seriously and do the work they need to do to get the results. You can have the best services in the world, but if you can’t convey the value of those services to your ideal client, they just won’t buy. We all know there are hidden gems in every industry. I’m sure you have people that you run across that make you say, “Oh my gosh! Your work is phenomenal!” But you look at their website and you read the words and it’s just like, “Do you want to achieve health and happiness?”

…What the heck does that mean?!

There’s no specificity. It’s not forming a solid connection that’s going to emotionally resonate with that ideal client.

 

JC: For women who are newer to building their businesses, the idea of creating email funnels or building a sales page feels overwhelming because they are, on some level, aware that this is a different beast. Sure, it would be better to improve in this area because you’ll probably need to have this in your back pocket and it would be useful, but you can also hire people to help you guys with this.

 

SP: To your point, I do recommend that people, especially in the beginning or if they’re making a transition, gather at least a basic knowledge of whatever subject. That’s exactly why I created a course around this because I wanted people to be able to get the templates and the frameworks.

I’ll tell you a funny story. Even as a writer, English major, lawyer, and someone who wrote for a living, copywriting is just a different animal. When I first got my website and I had my (what I thought fantastic ‘About’ page!) my coach looked at it and said, “You need to hide this immediately. It’s all about you,” and I was like, “But it’s my ‘About’ page. It’s supposed to be about me!”  She told me,

“No. Your clients only care about you to the extent that you’re going to help them move forward, so you’re ‘About’ page is only peripherally about you. It is ultimately about how you’re going to serve your clients in achieving their goals and dreams. Everything you write must keep that in mind if you want your copy to actually work and convert people into customers.”

 

JC: Mmm. This is so good. So you have a six C steps or framework?

SP: I call it the Six C’s from Connection to Conversion. All my clients and our friend, Tiffany Lee Bymaster, know that I love alliteration. It’s super cheesy, but all the first letters are L’s and that’s really awesome! I also find it’s much easier to remember key principles if you have a framework for them.

JC: Amazing. Do you want to take us through what those are? I think this would be really powerful for our listeners to be able to take a look at how they’re showing up in their content and copy and identify where they’re maybe missing a step or have some gaps.

SP: Of course! So the first one is Connection. Businesses are built on relationships, especially today. Things kind of tilted too overly-automated for a season and people really got burned out on that. What I’m seeing working is the personal engagement. You need to connect with your ideal clients. To do that, you actually have to talk to them!

I go through this in my program. I actually have people do a set number of market research interviews where they either call past clients who had success or people that they know would be ideal clients or believe would be ideal clients and ask them a series of questions.

You’re going to start out really basic.

If it’s health, what’s the main issue you struggle with when you’re trying to lose weight?

Is it that you’re an emotional eater at night?

Or you have a super busy job that you can’t do your meals?

Or maybe your family isn’t on board and you kind of have to battle?

You want to understand which it is for the majority of your clients because those are very different scenarios.

Then you want to ask how long the issue has been going on and get deeper.

How does it make you feel?

What all have you tried to tackle this issue?

How does it make you feel that you haven’t been able to tackle this yet?

What you want to do is dig into the emotion and the why underneath the ‘I want to lose weight.’ You want to either get those interviews recorded, of course with their permission, or you want to note their precise language because you will echo it back in your copy. If they say “frustrated”, you do not want to say “stressed”. You may think frustrated and stressed are kind of the same thing. Not to your clients. Especially if three out of your five interviews have a similar phrase that they use, you want to repeat that phrase.

You also want to dig into the future hopes and dreams.

What is life going to be like when you get this thing tackled?

How are you going to feel and what are you going to be able to accomplish?

You want to hear the specific words that they say when they’re talking about that future positive experience. 

 

JC: You’re tapping into both the internal and the external problems with these questions and one of my favorite things is exactly what you just said, the future pacing.

When some people are doing discovery calls, they just keep hammering away at the pain. We have to remember that we want to get that person into a buying state. If they’re feeling totally beaten down and they’re focused on everything that’s going wrong, are they going to say yes, even if you put other persuasion things in there?

Not necessarily, so adding that to the end of what’s possible. Oh man…don’t leave that out.

 

SP: If you try to sell from the pain, it’s going to hurt your sales. The second C is Clarity. Who doesn’t love clarity? I know it’s a phrase that gets so tossed around, but when we can get clear on what we actually desire, that’s when we can make a plan to go get it.

If we’re in a state of confusion over what we really want, we’re not going to be able to know how to make a plan to get it.

It’s also important for us, as mentors and leaders, to have a really clear statement that tells our clients who we are, who we help, what we help them with – and this is the key point that most people leave out – why that’s important.

Here’s the example I give: From a copywriting and mentoring perspective what I say is, “I’m Anna Powers. I help online business owners create magnetic messaging so that they can attract more consistent leads and make more consistent sales.” See how much different it would be if I just said, “Hey, I’m Anna Powers and I help online online business owners create magnetic messaging.” Okay, cool, that’s kind of interesting, but, “So you can get more quality leads and attract more consistent sales,” now you’ve explained why what you do is so important for this person. Again, it’s always focusing it back on them. 

The third C is my favorite. I think this one is so important and it’s the one that most people forget. It is Contrast, exactly what you pointed out. People will tend to err on one side or the other. They’ll dig into the pain and forget to ever talk about the possibilities or they’ll kind of skirt around the pain. They don’t want to be rude or offend them and they’ll just say, “Oh! Possibility and rainbows and butterflies!” That falls flat because when you do it that way, we as humans seem to rationalize and help ourselves numb out when necessary.

If I’ve been struggling with my weight for five years and I’m 25 pounds heavier than I want to be, I can start to be like, “Well, it’s not that bad. At least I’m not 50 pounds heavier.”

We’ll rationalize it to make it more tolerable and manageable, so you do need to push into the pain, but this is why I call it contrast: You want to take them from their world of pain to your paradise of possibility.  

We need to learn what their struggles are and make it clear that if they don’t take a different action than they’ve been taking, they’re not going to get a different result.

Do they want to stay in that place a year down the road?

What happens if they wake up a year from now and it’s exactly the same as it was?

How would that feel?

BUT, we don’t want to leave them there. We want to move them into that paradise of possibility.

What happens when this thing is finally under under control?

What happens when you finally have the freedom from ever worrying about how much you weigh again like it’s just a total non-issue?

You can almost see their eyes light up, even if you can’t see them, you can hear it in their tone of voice the change. But here’s the key – you don’t want to leave them at their vision because we as mentors, coaches, and leaders know that there’s even more that’s possible for them than they’re allowing themselves to hope for, dream, or expect right now. We want to amplify the vision.

 

JC: I think that’s powerful from a manifestation perspective and an NLP psychology perspective of helping that individual not just identify what it is, but identify what they will see, hear, and feel when they get it at the next level and what else is possible.

 

SP: I’ll keep number four short because it is concise, like that is number four, Concise! Admittedly, it’s the one that I struggle with the most because, as you can probably tell, I love to chat. My copywriting mentor is  Ray Edwards. He’s written for Tony Robbins and Amy Porterfield, the top of the top. I’ve done a full apprenticeship and I’m endorsed by him.

Ray taught me to write your copy, write your draft, and then be ruthless with what you can cut. I read my copy on my feet and this is something Ray taught me. He has this thing called OYFAOL, On Your Feet And Out Loud. You read your copy standing up and out loud because when you’re writing, you can kind of mix words and you don’t realize it unless you read it all the way through. Often when I do that, not only does that help me catch little errors or typos, but I’m also able to realize what I said in 10 words could be said in four.  

As much as you can, cut the fluff. People are busy. Just get to the point.

 

JC: I love to hack things a bits! Take this four paragraphs and put it in one sentence. Ain’t nobody got time.  

 

SP: Ain’t nobody got time for that! Number five is Call to Action. I’m on a lot of people’s lists because I’m curious. This is the area where I put so much energy and so many hours into perfecting my craft, so I look and see what’s going on to stay updated on what’s working in the marketing world. I see so many people send an email about their program and just highlight the program name with the hyperlink, but they never say, “Click here to enroll.” “Click here to view the full details.” “Here’s your link to grab a call.”

Tell people what you need them to do! Call them to action! We may think, “But I put my program name with a hyperlink, clearly they can see that they can click there.” Well, people don’t always act with as much logic as we might think they would, so let’s just not make it any more complicated or any harder for them. We don’t know what’s going on in their lives. They may have had to make seventeen hundred and two decisions already that day. Just be clear.

The other thing with calls to action is that you want to be really mindful of your P.S. Your P.S. section is your next most read section after subject line. If I’m promoting something, I am almost always putting that call to action not just in the body, but also in the P.S. The kind of gold standard is twice in the body, so somewhere near the top and somewhere in the middle or near the end and then in that P.S. as well.

I sent an email to my list with a link to Michael Moore’s music video for ‘Glorious’ because I just think it’s such a fun song. He’s taking his grandma all around, it’s got a great beat, and it just makes me happy, so I’m just going to share that with my list.

 

JC: I love this because that is what makes your people fall in love with you.

 

SP: The key is that you’re getting them to take an action. It does not always have to be, “Buy my thing.” It can be, “Here’s a great TED talk that I ran across.” Or, “Here’s an amazing article that someone shared in one of my groups that I’m in.” Giving them value, but training them that when they see your email and they click, there’s going to be something great on the other end.

 

JC: What I see in my inbox is that people only send out emails when they have something to promote. If I was getting emails from those individuals where it was a little bit more fun, light, and engaging, I’d be able to understand what they like to make that connection.

 

SP: You know, I send out quite a lot of sales emails and emails with opportunities for people to buy things. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that, but if that’s all you ever send, it kind of can start to be mercenary or transactional rather than relational.  

 

JC: And then email companies will start to shove you into the spam folder.

 

SP: That’s so true and such a great point. Totally.

Okay and the last one is super important. Probably the most important of all the Cs. Whoooohoo! Not the sexiest. The sixth C is Consistency. I know it’s not like *impressive tounge roll* consistency, yet it is so important from a trustworthiness standpoint.

It’s a risk to a lot of people to put a credit card into an online order form, but when you are consistent, when you show up regularly, and when you offer value week in and week out, people will start to say, “This is a genuine, legitimate person. This is someone who really does care about me and about my goals.” That’s part one of consistency.

Part two of consistency is making sure that your messages match across all your platforms. I know you and I hear some of our mentors talk about The Ascension Model and that you have one core business purpose. For me, it’s Pursue Your Powerful Purpose, whether you do that through high-level mentorship or through my copywriting course or you listen to my podcast, that’s the through-line.

Your messaging needs to have through-line.

Take a stand for your key thing that you help people with and make sure it’s dropped throughout your messages.

JC: Can you give us an example of what that might look like?

 

SP: This is a super concrete example. Let’s say you’re setting up a Facebook ad for a new opt-in that you created. If you’re doing longer form copy for that ad, you want to have some arrows or emojis that list out the transformational results (that you can’t guarantee!) that people can expect when they download this thing and start implementing these principles. They’re going to read your Facebook ad, click on your link, and get taken to your landing page. You want to echo those same points on your landing page, not necessarily word-for-word identical, but the same kind of language.

Go through your branding and find five or six phrases that really resonate with your ideal clients and sprinkle those into everything you do so that there’s that consistency there and it makes sense.

 

JC: I’m curious, too. What are some of the big mistakes that you’re seeing, specifically health and fitness and wellness coaches, making when it comes to their copywriting?

 

SP: Too much generality and these vague, generic phrases that everybody says so as not to step on toes or hurt feelings. That’s another big one that has come up with people in our circle: not being afraid to be polarizing. That’s actually a really good thing!  

I’m faith based, so I love Jesus and there’s amazing marketing lessons in the Bible, by the way. I’m developing a whole keynote on marketing lessons in the Bible. There’s a verse that says,

“Do not be lukewarm. If you are lukewarm, I will spit you out. You be hot or you be cold, but I can’t take this lukewarm.”

If you deter clients, great! I don’t get upset by unsubscribes to my email lists because if they’re unsubscribing, they either are overwhelmed with the messages in their inbox and they may very well re-subscribe two months later. They may actually adore me and become a top client but they just need a little break.

The other scenario is that they don’t resonate with my stuff at all, in which case, bless and release and please do not take up a spot because I have to pay for that 🙂 I always encourage my clients to not be distressed over unsubscribes or negative comments because that’s how you know you’ve taken a stand that actually matters.

If you’re walking the line and just kind of vanilla, that’s not really attractive. You need to take a stand for what you believe in and that will draw in people who are meant to work with you and it will repel the people who were never meant to work with you in first place.

 

JC: This is so valuable and I want to echo this. After our mastermind, I decided to have a little fun with my social media and make it my goal to be as polar as possible and to ruffle some feathers. It was funny because my fiance came home yesterday and was like, “You’ve been getting a lot of engagement,” and I was like, “Yeah, I really have.” Not just people liking stuff because that goes up and down, but on a handful of recent posts people are writing paragraph response and I’m like, “OH, we’re on to something. This is working.”

They’re on different topics, relationships, money, and things that are not even necessarily my teaching principles, but they are a part of my core message and my values are coming through.

Man…it’s been so wild to see how people are engaging with this.

 

SP: That’s such a gift that you’re giving to your audience to get to know you. I’m betting you’re going to start having people sign up without even wanting a phone call because they already know you. It’s a gift because it makes it a much easier decision for them.