small business owner Archives - Page 3 of 7

How Well Do You Adapt to Change in Your Small Business?

March 8, 2018 by Tanya Brody Leave a Comment

The only true constant is change.

This is one thing I’ve learned over and over again in my life, and especially in my businesses.

Having some ability to adapt to change is necessary for every small business owner.

Maybe one of your suppliers runs out of, or stops making, a part you need for your product.

Maybe federal regulations change your ability to import a necessary ingredient.

Maybe the partner or spouse of a person who is critical to the functioning of your business gets an offer to work somewhere fantastic, but that offer requires them to move, taking your critical person with them. (And that “critical person” could be you.)

There are all sorts of situations that cause change in your small business. The real question is, how quickly can you adapt, so you can keep moving forward?

This is one of those weird situations that you can’t really “plan” for but you do need a “backup” in place when it occurs. However, you rarely know what that backup may be, because typically, you have no idea what change is coming your way.

Knowing This, How Do You Adapt to Change in Your Business?

For a business that creates a product of some sort, you either find a new supplier, or you learn to make that part yourself. Sometimes, you have to create that new supplier, by going to a company that already makes something similar and asking them to modify their process to make your part.

If an ingredient in a recipe becomes unavailable, you either find a new place to get that ingredient, or you find a new ingredient. Sometimes you have to go as far as changing your menu.

When you’re a freelancer, change usually involves a sudden increase or drop in your work. This is either because of an increase or decrease in the number of clients you have, or in the amount of work they’re sending you.

(By the way, the following is also true for businesses that produce products, just change clients to customers and work to sales.)

If you suddenly have more work than expected, you spend a lot more time working than you had intended. Sometimes this involves pushing back other clients’ projects, or your own work. Times like these are great in terms of income, but they can be frustrating with regards to your personal life.

The alternative is to find another freelancer you trust to do the work for you. Then you review the work before it goes back to your client to make sure it’s done to your standard. Sometimes this works, sometimes you end up redoing the entire project, and you have to pay someone else for work that isn’t up to snuff.

Again, if you have enough work (and therefore money) coming in, it’s usually worth it.

When you suddenly discover that you don’t have enough work coming in, you have to hope you’ve put the right systems in place to make up for that.

The first place you typically turn when you’re a freelancer is to your email list.

You do have an email list, right?

If not, you should.

Here’s a post on why you should have an email list, how to set one up, grow it, and what to write about.

Using Your Email List as Part of Your Adaptation Strategy

Why do I encourage you to use your email list first?

These people all know you (hopefully because you’ve been emailing them on a regular basis). More importantly, at some point they’ve all said “yes” to something you’ve offered them. They’ve opted into your email list and expressed interest in your product or service.

Everyone on your email list is what’s referred to as a “warm lead” in the sales world. They know your name (or your business’s name) and they have some inkling of what you do. They may have worked with you before or bought your products.

This is the best place to start when you need to increase your workload.

And you can do it with a simple email that looks something like this:

Hey Samantha,

Tanya Brody here, you contacted me a while back, asking about my availability for an upcoming project. Unfortunately, I had to turn you down at the time. But things have changed since then, so I’m writing to let you know some time has opened up in my schedule in the next couple of months.

If you’d like to discuss that project, or different one, please schedule an appointment with me by clicking on this link. It will take you to my Calendly page, where you can choose a time at your convenience.

I look forward to the opportunity to work with you in the near future.

Cheers,

Tanya

Obviously, if you’re a business making a product, you’d adapt this email to invite someone to try your product (or to buy another one, or an additional product).

If you’re a service-oriented business, you can offer a coupon for a discount on the price of the first service. If you’re courting customers who haven’t come in lately, you can do the same thing, but phrase the email so you’re offering them the discount for their next service.

What I’m trying to say here is, your email list is a very valuable asset, so make sure you use it when you need to increase your business.

Get the Word Out on Social Media

Social media is a great way to let the world know that you suddenly have time on your hands and you’re looking for clients. One quick post and you can reach hundreds of potential clients.

Ideally, you have a Facebook page, a LinkedIn profile, an Instagram account and a Twitter account for your business. (In the interest of full disclosure, I only have the Facebook page and the LinkedIn profile. I was going to make a business-only Twitter account, I just never got around to it. And I don’t do Instagram.)

If you don’t it’s still an effective way to spread the word via friends, family and those people you only know in the digital world.

Most people post about their daily lives. That includes changes in their work status. I’ve seen hundreds of people successfully land new jobs shortly after losing theirs. I’ve also seen freelancers fill up their schedules quickly by announcing they have time available.

When I started my freelance copywriting business, I wrote a post about how supportive my community was as I was starting. It all started with a “vaguebooking” post I put on Facebook and turned into an incredibly long and amazing post of people saying, “I’m so sorry to hear this” or “you can do this” or “hey, these folks are looking for a copywriter.” Check it out at the link above.

If you reach out to your social media community, you’re sure to get a positive response. You may not get work immediately, but word travels fast and you may have new clients knocking on your virtual door, saying “Hey, such and such person mentioned that you have time available to take on a new project…”

Again, for those of you with more traditional businesses, you can also announce your special, discount or other exciting news on social media to get customers in the door.

Update All the Online Profiles

This is a tactic particular to freelancers.

Because there are so many freelance job boards, bidding services and places to promote yourself as a freelancer, you need to go update your profiles. Yes, all of them. At least the profiles where you’ve gotten work in the recent past.

This is just another way of letting your clients know you’re available to take on more work.

For some of these services, you’ll just have to go in and change your status to available or post something saying you’re taking new clients. For others, you’ll need to look through the long lists of jobs available, make bids on those jobs and hope yours gets accepted.

These freelance websites are not my favorite way to get work, but they are effective when it comes to making sure the bills are paid.

Continue to Make Sure You Have the Ability to Adapt to Change

You will always encounter changes in your business. The more prepared you are to weather them, the better off you’ll be. And to be completely candid, if you can’t handle change, you may not want to run your own business.

That’s why you’re better off preparing for it whenever you can. When you can’t, make sure your business is agile and adaptable enough to survive whatever comes your way and thrive, once the crisis is past.

If you haven’t guessed yet, all of this is a very long-winded way of me announcing that I suddenly have time in my schedule. I am still working for FunnelDash, but my position has been reduced to part-time. I work for them on Tuesdays and Wednesdays now. The rest of my week is up for grabs.

I am looking for clients to fill in that gap.

If you have a copywriting project coming up in the next few months, please schedule an appointment with me by clicking on the button below.

I am also offering a new business development and marketing consultation service. We meet weekly or monthly and I walk you through the process of setting up and marketing your business. I’ve done this for a few people now and they’ve found it very helpful. More about this service in next week’s blog post. (You’re welcome to make an appointment to find out more about it in the meantime.)

For those of you on my email list, you’ll be getting an email similar to the one I wrote above.

For those of you who are friends with or follow me on social media, you’ll be seeing posts soon.

And yes, I’m going to go update all the online profiles.

As always, thanks for following along on this crazy journey of mine.

How Do You Handle Change in Your Business?

Tell me about it in the comments. I’m always interested in how business owners weather the ups and downs of their industries.

Happy Birthday to My Blog and My Freelance Copywriter Business

March 27, 2017 by Tanya Brody Leave a Comment

This month marks one full year since I started writing this blog.

I can’t claim I’ve been incredibly consistent, or that everything I’ve written has been perfect, but I’ve kept it up to the best of my ability, as I’m growing my own freelance copywriter business.

It’s been a little over a month since I wrote a status report on what I’m doing. My last one reported that I’d made my goal, without realizing it, months ago. Yay me! Thank you again, all of you, for your congratulations, whether they came in the comments on that blog post, on my Facebook page or Twitter feed, or in a private email. They mean the world to me.

Suffice it to say, things are picking up around here. One of my new clients, a company called FunnelDash, brought me out to the Traffic and Conversion Summit earlier this month. It was fantastic. I met lots of folks, learned more about FunnelDash’s product and had a wonderful time.

Meanwhile, I continue working on projects for other clients and am currently booked through mid-April, if not further out (which is great for me, but hard if you need something done quickly.)

I’m closer and closer to making my goal a regular occurrence, instead of a spike in activity, which makes me even happier. For those of you who are wondering if you can “make it” yourselves, the answer is yes. You can. It takes time and determination, but if I did it, you can do it!

For the record, I’m going to save personal blog posts until the end of the month from now on. They used to come out around the 13^th of each month, which is when I started this blog, March 13^th, 2016. I don’t want to do that anymore, so, from now on, you’ll have to wait until the end of the month to find out what’s going on in my world.

Ultimately, this blog is not about me. I enjoy reporting in on my progress, and I’ve gotten good feedback from many of you, telling me that I’m an inspiration to those of you who are starting your own businesses, or who have your own businesses and are struggling to make them work.

Really, this blog is about you. If it were up to me, I wouldn’t write a blog post every week. I’ve got a lot going on and sometimes, I feel like I don’t know what to write about. Or I feel like I’m shouting into an echo chamber, writing about the same things everyone else writes about, just from a different voice.

I write this blog for you. All of you. Whether you’re my friends and family who humor me as I walk down this crazy path, or you’re on your own, similarly crazy path and are trudging along with me. I do this for your benefit, not mine.

So, tell me what you want to know. Tell me where you’re having problems and how I can help. Tell me what experiences of mine you want to hear about. I am here to serve you, my fellow small business owners and folks who are kind enough to follow what I’m doing.

Stop behaving like a typical Minnesota audience, who give the polite golf clap and come up to you to tell you that they love what you’re doing, then walk away with a bemused look on their faces. (I grew up in Minnesota, I live here now, and I’ve been a touring musician and performer. I am licensed to say these things.)

Tell me what you like about my blog posts. Tell me what you hate. Tell me what you want to see more of, so I can give it to you. Really. I want your feedback. Either leave it in the comments below or fill out this survey.

I want to help you get to where I am now, and continue on to where I’m going. I want all of us to be successful in our own spheres. (I’m weird like that. I think everyone deserves to make it. Success isn’t a pie that diminishes the more others take. There’s plenty to go around.)

Yes, I’m always interested in helping you be successful by writing your advertising copy. And I’m aware that I can’t handle all of you as clients. I need to sleep occasionally. But I can help you with writing techniques, ideas and marketing advice.

Help me help you. What do you need? What will get you to that next step on your path to success?

I look forward to hearing from you in the comments, or on the survey.

Thanks, as always for following along on my crazy journey as I grow my freelance copywriter business.

My Top 5 Reasons Why I Love Leadpages and Use It Every Week as a Copywriter

February 7, 2017 by Tanya Brody Leave a Comment

Okay, I’ll confess, this post is a bit off the beaten track. My friend and former colleague, Kat Von Rohr, gave me the idea for this post. She mentioned that she did a Google search for “Leadpages copywriter” and my listing as a Leadpages Conversion Marketing Certified Professional came up on the first page.

Yeah, that’s pretty cool.

At last check, I am one of two people on that list who use the word “copy” in their title, and the only person who uses the word “copywriter.” I guess that explains that. Thanks, Google.

For those of you who may not know, I come by the title of “Leadpages copywriter” legitimately. I used to work for Leadpages, as a copywriter. I’m now going to rave about why I love Leadpages and why you should be using it in your own business.

Yes, this is a crass, commercial blog post, but I get to do those every once in a while.

So, here are the 5 top reasons (in my humble opinion) that all of you should be using Leadpages as one of your primary online business tools.

1. Thank You Pages

I know it seems silly to start with what is normally the end of a lead or sales funnel, but I probably make more Thank You pages than any other type of landing page.

Why?

Because I use them for every content upgrade I put on my blog. If you’ve ever downloaded a checklist or a cheat sheet from one of my blog posts, you’ve seen my Thank You pages. They look like this:

Honestly, this is very similar to how the original template looks. I think I added my logo, changed the text, removed one of the “speaker” sections and added my own picture and comment.

But now that I’ve got it set up, I duplicate it every time I need a new Thank You page, change the text and social media links, and I’m done. I attach it to the Leadbox for the week’s content upgrade, and it’s ready to go. (Don’t worry, I’ll rave about Leadboxes further down in this post.)

Thank You pages are useful, because they can lead to another action, even after someone has opted into your email list or made a purchase. The Thank You page above encourages my subscribers to share my blog posts with their friends, which helps grow my list.

By the way, if you click on the content upgrade at the end of this post, you’ll see the newest Thank You page in my collection.

2. Leadpages Makes It Easier to Write Your Copy

This is true. Leadpages wants you to be successful. They’ve made it easier for you to write good copy, even if you’re not a trained, persuasive copywriter, like me.

The great thing about Leadpages templates is, you know exactly how much copy you need for any given space. You don’t have to stick to the amount of text in the template. But generally speaking, you have a pretty good idea of how much copy to add, because every template is already optimized for conversion.

By the way, this idea was given to me by the fabulous (and aforementioned) Kat Von Rohr.

Every Leadpages template comes complete with some form of advertising copy. (I wrote several of these when I was there, so I know it’s good copy.) Even if you have no earthly idea what to write, you can find a template that is designed for your industry and customize what is there to your business.

I don’t recommend using the Leadpages template copy verbatim, that’s bad for SEO and will ultimately reflect poorly on your business. But you can look at what is in the template and craft your own message around that.

For those of you who are copywriters, having these templates can be very freeing. You can delete whatever is there and insert your own text, or you can adapt and improve the text to your needs.

3. Create Your Own Website

Yes, you can build a website entirely out of Leadpages templates. I’ve done it. As an example, here’s the Home page for my music website:

I am not a designer or a developer. I learned HTML when rocks were new, and I’m not very good at it. But I managed to build this website, despite that fact. I’ve done it for other businesses as well.

Leadpages templates are incredibly versatile. You can turn sections on and off in the Standard builder. The Drag-and-Drop builder lets you move sections around to customize the look. You can change images, colors, logos, add sections, whatever you want to do.

There are several template sets that go together to create category and detail pages. There are also templates that can work as one long website. So, if you’ve been frustrated by the fact that you need a new website and you don’t want to pay a huge amount of money to build one, use Leadpages templates.

There are several ways to get your new pages onto your website, including the Leadpages WordPress plugin and exporting the HTML.

4. Automatic Lead Magnet Delivery

A lot of email service providers (ESPs) let you upload your lead magnet to their system and deliver it as part of your automation sequence. But if you use a free version of these ESPs, or your ESP doesn’t offer this service, how do you get your Lead Magnet to the people who requested it?

Leadpages lets you upload your lead magnet to their system and they will deliver it automatically, as soon as someone opts into your email list. You can customize the email and add links to your website, sales landing page, or wherever you want to send people next.

You can send just about any file type, including Word documents, PDFs, images, ZIP files and MP3s. If you’re sending something like an entire course, with video, audio and document files, it’s probably better for your lead magnet to be a PDF with links to these items. (FYI, this is what Leadpages does for their courses.)

This feature saves me a lot of time and dithering when it comes to sending my lead magnets. I just upload the file, write my email and click “save.” They send the lead magnet every time someone enters an email address in one of my Leadboxes.

Speaking of which, I saved the best reason for last…

5. Leadboxes

A Leadbox is the Leadpages proprietary, 2-step opt-in form. They’re built into every landing page template. You can also make stand-alone Leadboxes and add them to any web page you have control of. (I’ve even added them to LinkedIn Pulse articles.)

I use Leadboxes every time I offer a content upgrade. In fact, if you look below, you’ll see a bright red button. If you click on it, that’s your example of a Leadbox. It’s a very simple, attractive opt-in form.

You can connect a Leadbox with a text link (like that), use a pre-generated button, like the one below, or link it to the image of your choice. Put these anywhere on a web page, and you’re ready to collect names, email addresses and anything other information you want to gather.

You can customize your image and headline, as well as your form fields. If you can add the form field in your ESP, you can add it to a Leadbox. Leadpages integrates with several different ESPs and CRMs, so you’ll have plenty of options.

Since we’re talking about Leadboxes, I recommend you click on the button below (or one of the links above) to download my current lead magnet, “The Top 5 Reasons to Use Leadpages for Your Business.” I’ll also send you a free email course on how to build your mailing list. You don’t need a Leadpages account to use this course, but it sure will help.

No, Really, You Should Get a Leadpages Account for Your Business

As I mentioned above, I am a Leadpages copywriter. I use my Leadpages account at least 3-4 times a week for myself and for clients. If you don’t want to get your own account, but want me to create landing pages for you, I’m happy to do that. Contact me and we can discuss what you need.

If you are a copywriter and want to be able to make landing pages for yourself and for clients quickly and easily, get a Leadpages account.

If you run your own business and want to grow your email list, build an easy website and promote your products and services, get a Leadpages account.

If you work for a company that wants to do anything listed above, talk to your boss about getting a Leadpages account.

If you’re worried about committing to Leadpages, they offer a 30-day, money back, no questions asked guarantee. Try it for 30 days. If you don’t like it, they’ll give you a full refund.

I’ll Give You an Extra Incentive to Get Your Own Leadpages Account

Yes, I’m pushing Leadpages hard. Yes, I am an affiliate, so I will benefit if you click on any of the Leadpages links in this post. But I wouldn’t recommend this service if I didn’t believe in it. I do. I know it will help you grow your business, because it’s helped me grow mine.

So, here’s a little extra incentive to get, and use, your own account.

Purchase your Leadpages annual account by clicking on one of the links on this page, between now and May 1^st, then send me your purchase confirmation receipt. I’ll review the first 3 landing pages or Leadboxes you make. Or, if you build a website, I’ll review up to 5 pages.

I am a trained persuasive copywriter, a Leadpages Conversion Marketing Certified Professional and I used to work for the company. I know what I’m talking about, and I can help you succeed with your marketing.

By the way, Leadpages used to offer reviews as one of their incentives, but they don’t anymore. If you sign up for an account through me, you’ll get a valuable service that the company no longer offers.

Get your Leadpages annual account now to start building your list and growing your company.

My 3 Favorite Business Tools to Help with Productivity

January 24, 2017 by Tanya Brody Leave a Comment

One of the biggest hurdles to overcome when running your own business is finding the time to do all the stuff that it takes to run your business. The day-to-day work can be overwhelming.

Fortunately, there are a lot of companies that create business tools to make it easier for us small business owners to do what we love.

Here are three of the business tools I use every day.

Timely

Keeping track of how much time I spend on any given project has always been an issue for me. I’d vaguely observe what time it was when I started and vaguely estimate how much time I’d spent when I was done. Not terribly efficient.

Enter Timely.

I looked at, and tried, a few different time tracking apps before I settled on Timely as one of my regular business tools. I like it because it is sleek, easy to use and gives me exactly what I need to keep track of time spent on each project, but doesn’t pile on a bunch of extra stuff I’ll never use, or that I already have through other apps and programs.

Timely lets me track my working hours by project and client. I can bill different projects at different rates, if I need to. I can also set a certain amount of money or a specific amount of time for a project, and Timely will tell me when I’ve gone over that amount, and by how much.

Because I typically bill by the project, this helps me determine how much I ‘really’ made per hour when I go over my allotted time or budget. It’s good for helping me estimate future projects and noting if the number of hours for the project need to change.

I can also look at reports on what I’ve done. This helps me keep track of the project and what I need to do next. I can also export the report in Excel or as a PDF, to send to clients.

Timely integrates with several apps, including Google Calendar, Trello, GitHub, Asana and Office 365. Timely will automatically enter the time I spent on work appointments. This is great if I forget to start the timer once I’m on a call, or at a meeting.

Timely also has great customer support. Any time I have an issue or I’m confused by something, they’re always quick to respond with useful information or to help me fix the problem.

Timely offers a free plan, but it limits the number of projects you can have running at a given time. It also allows for multiple users, depending on the plan you choose.

Timely is keeping me on track, by tracking the amount of time I spend on each project. It’s fantastic. Learn more about Timely here.

Calendly

Setting appointments is one of my least favorite time-wasters. I hate sending emails back and forth with, “Can you meet at 2:30 on Thursday?” Only to hear back that Thursday won’t work, but how about next Monday.

To avoid all of this, I use Calendly. It’s a fantastic scheduling app that integrates with my Google Calendar. I just send someone a Calendly link for the appropriate type of appointment, they go to the app, choose a time we’re both available, and book the appointment.

We’re both sent a calendar invite, which goes right into my calendar, so I don’t forget. I can schedule reminder emails to go to the person who booked the appointment, so they don’t forget either. They can cancel the appointment from the reminder emails if something comes up, and Calendly prompts them to reschedule immediately.

On my end, I can send different appointment types of varying lengths, with buffer times on either end to make sure I don’t overlap appointments. I can control the times clients can schedule appointments, and I can block off certain days if I know I’ll be unavailable.

It’s a pretty slick system.

Calendly integrates with several apps and programs, including Drip, Salesforce and Zapier. They also have an API key and webhooks available for those who are more proficient at programming than I am.

Calendly does offer a free account, but your appointments will have Calendly branding on them. It’s not terribly intrusive. If you only have one event type (one type and length of appointment you need scheduled) it’s a great free scheduling solution.

If you have multiple event types, like I do, want to send appointment reminders and integrate with other apps, you’ll have to go with a paid account. The Premium account is $10 a month or $96 a year, per user.

Calendly has made my life a lot easier when it comes to scheduling appointments with clients and I recommend it highly. Learn more about Calendly here.

Quickbooks Online

I’ve used Quickbooks to handle my billing for years. Before that, (back in the dark ages) I used Excel spreadsheets. Not a fun game, I don’t recommend it unless you’re really good at Excel spreadsheets. I’m not.

Life in general has moved online. So has Quickbooks. It’s a fairly simple system to use, especially if you’ve used Quickbooks in the past.

I can create and email invoices to clients from the desktop interface. I enter a client’s contact information and Quickbooks sets up the email for me, then sends it when I’m ready. I can create recurring invoices and send them monthly to my retainer clients. They go out automatically, so I don’t have to think about them.

I have control over how the invoices look, including adding my logo, changing colors and specifying which columns and fields appear on the invoice. It’s very similar to designing an invoice in the desktop version of Quickbooks.

I can also accept payment via Quickbooks. I had to sign up for this service, and there are fees. It’s 50 cents per direct deposit and 3.5% of a credit card payment. But it’s worth it to have clients pay directly from their invoices.

All of my business bank account transactions are downloaded into Quickbooks, so I can manage everything in one place. The download interface is easy to use, though it took me a few times to get used to using it. Quickbooks automatically enters any payments made through its system into my checking register, as well as the fees it takes for letting me use that system.

Quickbooks offers a free 30-day trial. I pay about $16 a month for the version I use. There are several different versions, depending on the size of your business, number of users, etc.

Using Quickbooks online has made my billing and accounting much easier. Learn more about Quickbooks here.

What Productivity Business Tools Do You Recommend?

I hope this round-up of business tools to increase your productivity helps. I’ll keep doing these posts as I have more tools to pass along. Meanwhile, what business tools do you use? I’d love to hear about them. Perhaps I’ll end up adopting them myself, and mentioning them in one of my future posts.

How to Create Your Elevator Speech in 4 Easy Steps

January 19, 2017 by Tanya Brody Leave a Comment

If you’ve ever been in a business course or a course on learning how to ace your next interview, you’ve probably heard of the elevator speech. It’s that 2 to 3 sentence speech that you rattle off to someone you meet, that explains what you do.

Ideally, it’s a concise speech that you can rattle off to a fellow passenger during a short elevator ride. Thus, the name, “elevator speech.” And it should give some reason for what you do, some benefit to the activity. That way, whoever you’re talking to is engaged and asks for more information.

For many small business owners, this can be a major hurdle. A lot of people never get around to doing the simple exercise of creating their elevator speech, because adding that benefit can feel overwhelming.

It’s easy to say “I’m Bob and I make widgets for woodworkers.” It’s a lot harder to explain what benefit the woodworkers get from those widgets in less than 20 words.

Today, I’m going to show you a simple method you can use to drill down from a full explanation of what you do and why you do it, to a one-sentence elevator speech. I learned this method from the amazing Pat Flynn at last year’s Converted conference.

Step 1: Figure Out What You Do and Why You Do It

The first part should be pretty simple for most people. Generally speaking, you know what you do for a living, whether you own a small business or you work for someone else. The “why” part is where many people get hung up, especially small business owners.

Is the “why” supposed to be about why you started your own business? Is it supposed to be about what your product does? Is it supposed to be about why people should use your product or service?

Technically, it’s the third one. But it goes a bit beyond that. It’s what benefit does your product or service give the end user.

If you haven’t figured that out yet, I recommend reading my “Finding Your Why” blog post. It will help you figure that “why” part out.

Step 2: Write It Down

Take between 5 and 20 minutes and write down what you do and why. Be as descriptive as you want, but make it 1 page or less.

I’ll model that here:

I am a freelance copywriter and marketing consultant. I help my clients by taking care of their marketing, so they don’t have to think about it. I offer a wide range of services, including:

Website copy
Landing pages
Squeeze pages
Online sales letters
Content marketing
Blogs
Articles
E-Newsletters
Emails
Autoresponder series
Case studies
White papers
Direct response packages
Press releases
SEO copywriting optimization for websites, blogs and articles
Keyword research
Site audits
AB testing and analysis
Refining and improving your sales funnel
Email list building
Customer conversion – the art of turning website visitors into repeat customers

I work closely with my clients to capture their company voice and work with their overall brand. If they haven’t established those, I help them create their voice and brand, then use them throughout their marketing.

I set up email list building and sales funnels to convert website browsers into life-long customers. I help my clients grow their businesses through well-written content and strategic marketing practices.

Okay, that’s a lot to tell someone in an elevator. Even if you had 40 floors to tell someone all of this, they’d have tuned out a long time ago. The next step is to hone this down to something reasonable.

Step 3: Reduce Your One Page Down to One Paragraph

Yes, editing is hard. All those precious words you just worked laboriously to create, how can you let them go?

Once you get going, it’s easy.

First, take out anything a total stranger doesn’t need to know. A lot of this information may be great for your website, but for a succinct one-paragraph description, it’s too much. As you’re doing this, feel free to change what you wrote originally so you’re happier with the way it sounds.

My single paragraph would look something like this:

I am a freelance copywriter and marketing consultant. I take the burden of marketing off the shoulders of small business owners so they can do what they love best, run their businesses and make their products or perform their services. I offer a wide range of copywriting services to my clients, from website copy and landing page creation to lead and sales funnels. I help my clients grow their businesses through well-written content and strategic marketing practices.

Well, that would be a lot easier for someone to get through during an elevator ride, but there’s not a lot of room for conversation. By the time I finished all of that, whoever was riding with me would want to get off a floor early and take the stairs.

Now, I’ll reduce this down even further.

Step 4: Reduce Your One Paragraph Down to One Sentence

“One sentence?” I hear you cry. “My business is far too complicated to explain in one sentence.”

No, not really. Most people explain what they do in one sentence. If you ask someone “What do you do?” They usually answer with about 3-5 words:

I’m a copywriter.
I’m a lawyer.
I work at a grocery store.

When you add the “why” into that sentence, things can get complicated. The “why” is usually where all the extra words come in.

Take a moment and think about your “why.” If you’ve done the “So What Method” exercise, you should have a pretty good idea of why you do what you do.

My “why” is, I genuinely want to help small business owners grow their businesses. I do that by helping them with their marketing.

I could say something like: “I’m a freelance copywriter and marketing consultant, I help small business owners grow their businesses.” That is what I do, and even a little of why I do it. But there’s not a lot of end-user benefit there.

And honestly, I don’t have to tell people I’m a copywriter. Half the people I meet assume I work for the government in the Copyright Office, which I don’t. I usually say “I’m the kind that writes words for advertising” when I get that response.

I’m going to take the word “copywriter” out of my elevator speech entirely. Instead, I’m going to tell people what I do. Here’s my final elevator speech:

“I help small business owners grow their businesses by writing advertising copy that converts website visitors and leads into customers.”

This sentence tells you who I serve, what I do and the benefit my clients receive from my services.

See, easy.

Thank you, Pat Flynn.

Does this still seem overwhelming to you? Download my Pat Flynn’s Guide to Creating Your Elevator Speech checklist, so you can reference every step as you create your own elevator speech.

DOWNLOAD PAT FLYNN’S GUIDE TO CREATING YOUR ELEVATOR SPEECH NOW