Episode 64: Debunking Misconceptions in Copywriting with Julie Schoen

Episode 64: Debunking Misconceptions in Copywriting with Julie Schoen

Julie Schoen:
Go to another local business that makes you excited. You could look at any brand you love. If you're a car guy, go look at the Porsche website or a Corvette. Or if you are a girl that's really into maybe flowers, look at florist websites. So you get inspiration outside of your industry. And that allows you to be more creative because you can't just copy and paste what they're saying, but you can start to see the structure of what they're doing and say, oh, I like how they had a headline and they had this chunk of text. They said something funny. And then they did this. Now you can take that to your website in copywriting. I never ever, and you shouldn't either look at a website in that industry. Look outside further, get inspired, and then bring that over it.

Announcer:
Grow your cleaning business, make more money, have more time. This is the Profit Cleaners podcast with your host Brandon Condrey and Brandon Schoen.

Brandon Schoen:
Welcome back everyone to another episode of the Profit Cleaners. I am Brandon Schoen, your host. This is the only place where you can learn from the top 1% of cleaning business owners to next level,

your game, and win in this industry. Today, I am joined by a very special guest. She is none other than my beautiful, wonderful wife, Julie Shane. She is an amazing copywriter. She is an amazing asset to our business. And I just wanted to bring her on the show today to introduce you guys to Julie Shane, my wife.

So Julie say hi to everyone and tell us about, Yeah. Hi guys. Thanks so much. I mean, it's about time you have beyond the podcast. So I'm Brandon's wife, as he said, we've been married 11 years now, which is awesome. We have four kids, as you probably know, but besides being a mom and wife, I am a copywriter.

And I have been doing that over a decade now for all of our businesses and then working with customers and clients. I've worked at corporations, the corporate world, which was not for me, but I'm glad to have had that experience. And now I am working on launching a course because my goal is to help way more clients than I can just working on my own hour by hour.

And so, yeah, I really want to help business owners, whether they have multi-million dollar business or they're just getting started, but understand what copywriting is. And then I like to say D confused copywriting, because so many people think it's this big, scary thing that they can't do, or they have to really struggle with, or they need to hire someone.

And that really isn't the case. So that's what I am out. Teaching wanting to help business owners everywhere, clean up their copy and become really a prolific writer behind your brand with that authentic voice. Awesome. I love that intro. Just so you guys know Julie and I are sitting in our living room, we just dropped our kids off and we've got another baby in the other room napping.

So we get it done. We always find a way to get it done. So there's no excuses around here, guys. We have four kids, we run multiple businesses. Julie, over here has thousands of clients that she's worked with over the years, writing their copy, which is their branding and their text on their website. Basically, if you don't know what copy is,

some people don't. So I've got to say that, but copywriting and your branding is what makes your brand your brand. And it's like the words that the messaging, that way you make people feel when they feel your, when they read your messaging, when they read your emails is really, really important. And so I want to go back to the beginning.

Julie actually has worked with me on all sorts of brands, but specifically with the cleaning business, when we very first started, you were the magic behind the scenes that was getting all the messaging up that branding and that she helped us come up with the tagline claim your weekend. So Julie was really a critical part of the cleaning business and still is to this day.

She still helps us with emails, with blog posts. When we put them up, she still helps us with every little piece of content ads that we write. That's all copywriting. So if you guys haven't put a whole lot of thought into what your messaging is behind your brand, if you just throw up a website and haven't really touched it, or don't add content to it,

this is what we're talking about. We're talking about your copy, the messaging behind your brand. And that's what Julie does. So actually in our 10 X course, Julie's got lots of teaching that we're adding in that course. She's got some initial teaching that was just giving you guys insight on how to write your about us pages, how to write your brand story,

things like that behind the scenes that just make your messaging and your brand more compelling, which is really key. But I don't know if you want to add to that, Julie, just what else you were involved in helping the cleaning business, but you've done so much for us. I'm so grateful for you and all the help that you've offered us. So it's really been amazing cause everyone loves the tagline.

Everyone loves our emails and our blogs and everything you do. So I don't know how you do it, but enlighten us A couple things here. So I'm super happy that I've gotten to work with our cleaning business, Sandia Green Clean. It's such a fun business to work on a very different than a lot of the other customers I used to work with.

I worked with a lot of digital companies, so to work with a brand that is physical with real employees and real customers that are in a specific setting that you might run into at the grocery store or something is actually helped me a lot more becoming a better copywriter. And I think helping me to teach business owners how to be better writers for their business,

because really at the end of the day, everything you write is being read by a real person. It's communication. Copywriting is communication. And if you think about your day, how often are you talking and communicating as the person in Europe, brand yourself, whether you think about it or not, you up every day and you present yourself in a certain way and people treat you accordingly and you have conversations,

whether you're texting or emailing or on the phone or at lunch with somebody, you always are having conversations. And most of us don't think of that as copywriting, but it is for your personal brand. And so really when you sit down to do an email for your cleaning business, or you sit down to write a blog post, it really shouldn't be any different than you sending an email to your mom or to having a conversation at lunch with a good friend,

because that is who your customers are. They are moms, their dads, their grandparents, they are friends and husbands and neighbors. And it's that one person that is opening that email or that one person that's reading your about us page. So it's really not anything you don't do already. You just have to get more confident behind knowing that this is something you're capable of.

And as much as I have loved helping Sandia Green Clean grow, I think really what I noticed too is I didn't need to be that person doing that work. Brandon and Brandon are more than capable of doing it. I'm just helping. Cause that's what a good wife does, but they really are capable of doing this. Just like you are capable of writing your own content too.

You don't need to have a copywriter come in to do it. And that's really what I'm trying to teach is that it isn't this mysterious, super difficult thing to learn. It's just communication. And there are some tricks of course, that you can learn that elevate what you're writing. And that's what the course I'm teaching systems that you can implement right away that make you instantly sound like,

oh, she studied copy. Or he studied copy for a long time, but I'm just giving you like the fast track version, because that's how we do things around here. It's like always like fast track to success because time is precious. We don't want to waste it. That's right. And then what I think I hear you saying is that people do business with people they know like,

and trust, like you're saying send these messages like you would a friend or like your mom and that's all we're really doing. And when people receive a message like that, and it's genuine and it feels like it's from a friend, I mean, that's good copywriting, right? It makes you open that email. It makes you want to read that post or that ad,

that messaging is like, Ooh, what is that? It's peaks your curiosity. And then you want to go to the next thing you want to click on the next thing you want to get that offer. Right? And so that's what we're talking about guys. And really what Julie said was so important. It's just like you're talking to a friend and if you can make your messaging and your website,

your brand, your copy on your website, the text on your website, feel like it's coming from a friend. The world has changed like a hundred years ago, radio and television and people could sell snake oil. And they didn't know who was behind the brand. Nowadays. People want to know who's behind the brand. They want to see the person.

They want to know the family that owns the business, the local business behind the brand. And so when you can send out those blogs and those emails and those ads representing your brand and make it feel like that it's so much more compelling. Like a friend, people want to do business with someone they know like, and trust like a friend. And it just makes your brand so much more relatable,

so much more genuine, so much more remarkable. And you stand out so much more from these franchises and the big competition out there that is more just boilerplate, like generic, nothing to it. People want to do business. Like you said, with somebody that they know like and trust because the person that they know like and trust as something for what they care for them,

the end of the day, we all want to feel like somebody cares about us. And if you think about writing an email, for example, to your list of, of customers for your cleaning business, it's more important that your customers feel like the owner of this business cares for them. Then this email is perfect. Every single time. They want to know that you are caring about their experience.

And so even if it's not a hundred percent perfect grammatically perfect, maybe you could have written a better headline. Maybe something could have changed. It's still, I would argue better that you do that work as the owner, that you get confident enough to communicate important messages to your customers, then outsourcing it. And we're big on outsourcing things. We are all for it.

But I still think that if you can at least get in there and not be afraid to write messages, maybe you don't do every single one. But if you can be com the confident writer that you know, that if an employee has a problem and you need to text them or message them something, you don't need to ask somebody else to help you.

You're confident to do that. If you have a customer saying, Hey, you messed this up in my house, how are you going to fix it? That you don't have to wait 5, 6, 7, 12 hours for a writer to get it back. So you have the right answer. That should be something that you are confident enough to do, because when you can show that person,

you care about them, that energy behind that matters more than great copy. Although you can learn to write great copy too. So if you can learn how to do both, then you're like golden and you can actually end up saving a ton of money because you can do it all yourself. Yeah. And I would just say part of the secret sauce behind the scenes that we're adding here that Julie has.

So lovingly provided is so much of this copy that we use for our brand. We are packaging up and we create like swipe files. What are called swipe files without thinking too much or spending too much time. A swipe file is something you go in for copywriting and use, grab on any, write an email, you grab a headline, you grab an example,

text or something, and you just copy and paste it in there. And then now you have like a base or a foundation to start off to write your email or to write your social media ad or whatever piece of copy. Maybe it's like a review, right? Review response. We're actually creating a whole swipe file of review responses as well in the 10 X course.

This is on the 10 X course of course, guys. But these are going to help you guys to be more quick on your feet to quickly have really great messaging at your fingertips that you can just adjust, put your own flavor on and change to match your brand. Of course, but that's, what's cool about copywriting is it's like literally copying what works.

So my favorite part about the people I think copywriting, but a lot of people get confused and they think you're like in law and you like write copyrights for products, which isn't what I do. That's not what copywriting is, but it is copying, writing. You are just copying good writing. And now there's a difference, of course, behind stealing Straight up copying.

Sometimes you do straight up copy, but when you do straight up, copy two things, never copy something that is someone else's personal information. Don't copy someone else's about us page and be like, I have four kids. And I w you know, don't do that because now you're not being authentic and caring. You're just straight up lying to people. So don't copy personal information obviously,

and try to pretend that's you, you don't copy stuff that has tons of personality. Like if you go to a page and you can tell that they have chosen really specific adjectives and descriptions, and it's a big chunk of text, you don't steal that and you might look at it and say, oh, I could change it a little bit. Maybe I'll put this description in here and you can get inspired from it,

but you don't ever copy like a big chunk of text. That's just a no-no in the business world. Also blogs when the copy blogs, because it's not unique content in Google actually penalize you for copying pasting a blog from like a home gardening website on deer cleaning website. So you want to make unique content, change it up as much as possible. You can get an idea from something for content and then make it your own.

Hey guys, quick question. Does your cleaning business need more customers? And the answer is of course, yes. So if you're like us and you want more customers, we've created a 10 X marketing bootcamp course to help you guys 10 X your business, get to that seven figures and beyond, and really commit to your success. So if you're ready to commit,

let's tell them where to go head over to Profit Cleaners dot com slash courses. You can get started right away. And we'll see you guys on the inside. Keep it clean, keep it clean When you're copying something for copywriting. If it's like a two word, like email, subject lines, sometimes you're like, that was a great, it just has opened me or like,

Hey there, of course you can copy that for your brand and business. And then the other thing I always say is you don't copy from your industry. So if you want to write something for your website, for your cleaning business, for example, rather than going to another cleaning business, which now you just feel like you're copying them, not their words,

you're copying a which isn't okay. Go to another local business that makes you excited or go to a big national business. I mean, you could look at any brand you love. If you're a car guy, go look at the Porsche website or a Corvette. Or if you are a girl that's really into maybe flowers, look at florist websites. So you get inspiration outside of your industry.

And that allows you to be more creative because you can't just copy and paste what they're saying, but you can start to see the structure of what they're doing and say, oh, I like how they had a headline. And then they had this chunk of text, and then they said something funny. And then they did this. Now you can take that to your website.

So that's when I copy in copywriting, I never ever, and you shouldn't either look at a website in that industry, look outside, further, get inspired, and then bring that over. And it's unexpected. It's fun. I mean, you wouldn't think like a lawnmower company would be using like Gucci headlines, but it can actually work really well. It's pretty cool how that works.

If you embrace being confident about what you're saying. Yeah. Something that you also touched on that I wanted to elaborate more on and we've been talking about is the fact that copywriting is very formulaic. It's a formula. And on top of that formula is like a structure. So within that structure, a lot of people think, oh, it's a structure.

So I'm like limited within that structure. It's actually the opposite. So one with copywriting with good structure around the copy, you can actually have more freedom and more creativity to do and create even more compelling words and messaging within a formula within a structure. And so tell people more about that. Yeah. Yeah. So the formula gives you confidence and the best copywriters in the world,

the ones that are paid $10,000 for one page of content, they use these formulas again and again and again, and then they build confidence because they get results. But they're not limited, like you said, because they're using the formula. They have exponential amounts of directions that they can go using that formula. So for example, my brand, the course that I'm making is called clean.

Cut copy. So check it out. But in the course I have made for business owners. One of the things that is in there is the swipe files. So I've got, I'm calling it a field guide, but basically it will say, use this word, this word, this word, then insert your own adjective. Then use this word and now add a noun or something.

And if you don't know what an adjective or a noun is that also I give examples. So you don't even have to think about that, but you can start to see like, oh, I can actually use the same thing. You can use it over and over again too. And you can just keep adding in different words to convey the message that you want to convey.

And it does give you a lot of freedom and it makes it a lot of fun. And the more systems you have in place, the easier writing becomes too, because now it, isn't just a blank page that you're looking at now, you know, well, if I drop in this and this and this, and I just change this word, change this word,

change this word. Well, now I have a good email. I mean, that's one of the fundamentals to good copy. It's just, it's knowing. So I guess when I teach people, it's knowing who your audience is, knowing who you are as a brand and how your audience is expecting you to show up. And then it's knowing what you want to say.

And really it's all that, it's that simple. Who am I talking to? Okay. I'm talking to an angry customer who am I? I'm the business owner that they are blaming for this bad result. Okay. So that's how I'm showing up in this conversation. And then what is the message I want to say, I want to say, I'm sorry.

I want to say, how can I help you? And you can even write those down in bullet points and then just use that. Okay. How do I say, I'm sorry. Well, I'm sorry. That happens, right. Okay. Now I want to say, how can I help? Is there anything we can do to help you? It really is just filling in these blanks.

And if you have confidence and I feel like that's just the number one thing. People go to high school, they go to college maybe, and they have such bad experiences with writing. So many people don't think they're a good writer, just because they can't follow the rules. Are they more interested in writing a 20 page term paper on some book that they didn't care about?

And so now for the rest of their life, I'm not a good writer. Well, when it's your business, when it's something you love, when it's your customers meeting you to show up, just to talk to them, that's very different. And this kind of writing has nothing to do with high school writing. Almost. You want to break almost every rule you learned in high school,

English class in order to write good copy. I liked that breaking the rules, breaking the rules, just like a good entrepreneur would I feel like there's so much we can teach people. So we're probably going to have to have you on again on the show, Julie, but this is just more of an introduction to our secret weapon, copywriter behind the scenes guys.

And actually Julie's working on her own course. She's added stuff to our 10 X course that you guys can learn a ton from, for your cleaning business, but you are actually working on a whole system. We've been working on this for years actually, and it's going to be available really soon. And actually this holiday season, you're publishing it and launching it out.

So why don't you just tell people like a little bit more about the clean cut copy system and the numbers and the energy behind the words? I mean, all that stuff is so fascinating, I think, and then we'll dive into that. We can tell people more about that, but again, I don't think we're going to have to be able to cover everything in this episode because there's gonna be so much cool stuff you can share with the cleaning community to create better messaging and to just be more compelling for their customers.

So yeah. Tell us more about clean cut copy. Sure. So clean-cut copy has been in the works for years because as I was worked as a freelance copywriter for years, while Sandia Green Clean cleaning business was growing and we weren't making too much money, I was working as a freelance writer. She was our saving grace. Like when we very first started the cleaning business,

we were paying our selves $0 for quite a while. And she made all the money. She was a total game changer. And in doing that though, it was amazing because you worked with thousands of local business owners and All over the world. I worked with so many different clients that needed different things. They were about as pages to emails, to lead magnets,

to copy for their funnels to books that they wanted to get out there, everything. And as the volume increased and I realized, well, I still have X amount of time each day because we have kids. We have Brandon's business, we're growing. We have all these things. I have a limited amount of time and I need to get more clients though,

so we can make more money. I need to get this work done more quickly, and I need to have more confidence as they come to this work. So that I'm not second guessing myself, because that is one of the worst parts about writing. Is that people leave stuff open forever thinking, well, I don't love that paragraph. I'm not sure.

So you have to have the confidence that, Nope, that's it. That's the one send done. And so I developed this clean cut copy system for myself because it was the way that I could not only get through the work quickly, but I could guarantee the results were amazing. I mean, I think I probably did tens of thousands of projects, not exaggerating tens of thousands of projects with different customers and clients.

And I probably got a handful of people saying they didn't love it. So it was an impressive amount of five-star reviews. I want to say thousands of five star reviews. And I want to say you worked with, it was a multiple six-figure business. That, that year you were really cranking it out. I mean, was that a necessity? Cause we didn't know for sure if the cleaning business was going to take off the way it did,

thankfully it really did. And it's totally replaced that now. But the funny thing is you put yourself out there and you were so good that you just blew up like word of mouth and it was crazy. So I was really proud of how well that went like that business. It burned you out, but what did we learn from? We learned that you do need these systems.

So, and we're like the system couples. So Brandon is always making systems for cleaning businesses, these physical businesses. Well, now I am copying him and making a system that's right. Making a system for writing because as I started to see all of these customers, they are paying me more excited. I just started charging a more and more money. I was like,

well, I can't keep up. So will you pay me this shirt? So as they started paying me more and more money, I realized, wow, these businesses, some of them, I know don't have this much money and they are giving it to me because they really feel like they need a professional writer to help them with their website, with their emails,

whatever. And when they knew how much time I spent on their project, they probably maybe a little bit angry. Not really because they loved the result, but a lot of times what they would give me, you need something, you need some notes as a copywriter to know what they're to say and do, and their details that what they would give me was so good.

And all they needed to do was a few little things I would spend just a few minutes. I would get to, oh, well just change this headline, add this word in, cut this out. Anyway, that is how I developed the clean cut copy system. And that is this new course that I'm creating because I am really as local business owners,

ourselves, as people who have started so many different businesses and you're trying to figure out what's important, what do I need someone else to help me with? What do I outsource? What do I need to do? What Han I do. I really feel passionate that this part of the writing is critical that the business owner, if they don't do it every time,

at least has the confidence to do it when they need to. Because when you can own your voice behind your brand, you become more successful. Because like we said, at the beginning, people want to work with a real person. And so they want you to show up in that email, they want you to show up on your website. And when it feels consistent,

when someone can tell the same person that wrote that email wrote, this wrote, that wrote that you develop a lot more trust. And so the clean-cut copy system really is just my secret weapon that I use to make a lot of money working with business owners. But it's to teach you as a business owner, how to do these little tricks and techniques as a copywriter so that you can show up as that for yourself.

So you can be best, highest paid copywriter for your business. And now you don't have to wait for somebody to finish your work. It makes you more prolific, which we know as business owners, that is the key to success, consistency being prolific. So if you can now send five times more emails every single month, because you are confident enough to do it yourself and you don't have to budget while I can only afford someone to write one email and you don't have to overthink things.

So you don't dread it. You know, you have the confidence. I can sit down. I know who I am as a brand. I know what my customer wants. I'm going to type this up, use a swipe file drop in this formula. And I'm good. And that's what clean copy is all about. And I'm so excited to get it out to business owners everywhere.

I'm excited about it because actually one of the biggest struggles I struggle with is owning my voice. And actually you've helped me so much with this brands. It gets me outside of my comfort zone. When I have to go write an email or some of these things, I don't always think of myself as the best writer, but what you've been teaching me through your course and helping me get better at is just owning that voice and showing me that,

like you just said, you are your best copywriter, you know, your business and your brand better than anyone else. You're also more passionate about your brand. More than anyone else, nobody cares as much about, well, first of all, your personal brand, but especially your business brand more than you, no going to put that effort more than you are.

So I think that's really, really important. And that's what the system has been teaching me. It's giving me a lot more confidence so I can write better emails to our customers. We can be better at crafting really good messaging. And it's just really exciting. So we're going to cut this short because we got a baby waking up in the background, but we're going to do part two of this very,

very soon. Thank you so much, Julie, for the clean cut copy methodology. Actually, I'm going to go grab the baby. You tell him a little bit more about clean-cut copy, where they can pick it up. And then in this episode, we're going to have Julie back on a part two here very, very soon. So thank you guys for tuning in.

I'm going to go grab a baby. Get crazy. What about for you? No problem. Thanks sweetie. So clean-cut copy is going live by the time this podcast comes out, it should be going live just in a matter of a couple of weeks, you can go to clean cut, copy.club, C L U B in order to learn more about the course and the teachings.

Well, one of the biggest things that I'm excited about and the chorus aside from teaching business owners, how to become better copywriters and better writers is that there's also going to be a social club at the bat where if you do have questions about copy that you're writing, if you do want extra people to just really quick say, Hey, I am wondering this headline or this headline,

we're going to have a group where you can bring any of your copy and you'll get my eyes. And some of my copywriter, friends, eyes on your work and we can brainstorm ideas. There'll be other really cool teachings, Q and A's all sorts of things in there. So it's another good reason to get the course, but all of the modules are designed to take you step-by-step whether you are already thinking I'm a great writer and I just want to be a better writer or I hate writing,

but I know I need to do it. And I'm tired of not being able to do this for my brand. And it really does matter. So the writing it is what you say as your brand out into the world. So if you are the type of person, that's like, well, whatever, I got it up, it's done like a good job.

Cause at least you got it done. I'm always about getting it done. But if you're not being aware of what you're saying and how you're saying it, there's a chance that you are missing out on more customers. There's a chance that you're missing out on this deeper connection that might make that customer stay with you. Maybe now five or 10 years instead of just six months or a year.

So there is weight behind what you say and how you say it. So while my initial goal is just to really help people put work out there. If that's your stumbling block, the goal of the course is to help you get your work out into the world. The next step is learning how to say what you say in a more authentic way, in a way that is more engaging in a way that will really help your customers relate to you so that they can develop this relationship that is meaningful and impactful.

And the same is true with your employees. When you say the right thing on your website, or you say the right thing in an interview that helps you develop a relationship with your employees, where they feel cared for, where they feel excited to show up each day. So every bit just like in your life, everything you say in your conversations, whether you're sending an email to a friend or you're talking to somebody at the grocery store,

they influence your day. They determine how your day goes, what opportunities show up, what friends you have, the same is true with the copy you write for your brand. So I really encourage you if you haven't thought about what you're writing and how you're writing, just to go to your website right now, take a look if you haven't made a website yet,

because you're just thinking about launching a cleaning business, we'll start thinking about what would you put on your website? How could you make yourself stand out from the competition? And from there, you can start to see where maybe you can improve where you have questions and maybe that's what we can do for the next podcast. If you guys email Brandon, some questions for me about copy copywriting writing in general,

how to communicate more effectively. That would be a great way to answer some of those questions for you guys. So you can email them at hello at Profit Cleaners dot com. And I'll answer some copy questions next time for part two of this, but super excited. Get into the 10 X course. I'll be teaching more in there. You actually get some of my swipe file specific for the cleaning business and the cleaning industry in that course.

And then if you're just hungry for more clean cut, copy is coming. And I can't wait to connect with you guys more. Keep it lean. Brandon says, keep it clean. Thanks for joining us today. To get more info, including show notes, updates, trainings, and super cool free stuff. Head over to Profit Cleaners dot com and remember keep it clean.

Announcer:
Thanks for joining us today. To get more info, including show notes, updates, trainings, and super cool free stuff. Head over to Profitcleaners.com and remember keep it clean.