Snowballing success - Conversion Copywriter Liz Painter
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Snowballing success - Email Conversion Strategist and Conversion Copywriter Liz Painter
Liz had been working as a newspaper journalist for two years when she began helping her husband set up his freelance photography business. With her own freelance journalism work on the side as well, it soon got too much and Liz left the newspaper to focus on the businesses.
It’s more than 15 years later now and both businesses are still going strong. Liz chats to Steve about how she’s learnt to find and manage clients, develop herself personally and professionally, and get more of the high-paying work she enjoys.
Read some of the highlights on the next tab.
How can freelancers accumulate success?
Liz reads the same book every year. The Slight Edge, by Jeff Olson, has helped her to keep going and keep growing.
“Imagine an upward trending curve of what you're doing in your life and how your business is going. What most people do, they'll see some success, and then they'll almost take their foot off the gas and they'll kind of dip. And that's why we get this feast and famine thing in freelancing — because we're not keeping our foot on the gas.
“What The Slight Edge suggests is that instead of easing off and kind of dipping every time you see some success, you just keep going and keep doing those consistent behaviours.”
Does it pay to niche?
Liz started out as a generalist taking whatever came her way. These days, she specialises.
“When you have a niche, it's so much easier to give examples of your work when you get on a call with a prospect. So I can easily say, "Oh, I wrote the seven email sequence for someone and it was this price." And it just gives them that reference point.
“It just makes everything a lot easier in your business. When you're posting on social media, all of the marketing activities you do for your business, they can all be focused in on that. It definitely simplifies things.”
Who can we learn from?
Liz looks to coaches, mentors and industry leaders for guidance.
“I worked with a coach, I think it was back in 2017. One of the things he said was find the person who is at the very top of your industry and follow them.
“I think it's really important because what I found is, as I was growing my business, was that I was learning a lot from other business owners, but they weren't in my space. So they didn't have specific things to teach me about how to get ahead in copywriting. Whereas once you follow someone who's in the exact same industry as you, the advice you get is so much more specific and so much more useful. I think it makes a huge difference.”
Other useful links
Jonathan Stark’s episode - Hourly billing is nuts!
Prerna Malik’s episode - No fear
Andy Maslen’s books:
More from Steve Folland
Podcast transcript
Transcript of the Being Freelance podcast with Steve Folland and freelance Email Strategist and Conversion Copywriter Liz Painter
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Steve Folland: Email strategist and conversion copywriter based in Birmingham. Hey Liz.
Liz Painter: Hi, Steve. How you doing?
Steve Folland: I'm well, thanks for doing this as ever. How about we get started hearing how you got started doing freelance?
Liz Painter: Yeah, so I started out as a journalist on a newspaper all the way back in. I think it was about 2003 that I was doing that and I was there for a couple of years and it was a great grounding in journalism. So I was writing new stories and I had my little patch and if anything happened, I was out there covering it. And then the features writer went off sick and I ended up covering some of her work. And a lot of what she did actually was advertorial type stuff where you'd go out and you'd interview business owners about their business. And then you'd write up a nice little feature about them. That was essentially an ad, but written as journalism. And I've really, really enjoyed that. And that was probably my first brush with copywriting, same sort of time. I was helping my husband set up his freelance photography business, and that was taking up my weekends.
Liz Painter: I was working quite long hours and it was also doubling in a bit of freelance journalism, which my editor knew about. And it just got to be quite a lot. I found I was way too busy and I made the decision to leave that job and to go freelance kind of partially working on my husband's business and partially setting up my own freelance journalism business. But what I found was that as my husband was winning photography clients and shooting commercial photography, people would say to him, "Oh, we got these pictures for the website, but actually we don't have any words. Do you know anyone that can write the website for us?" And he put them in touch with me and that's how I ended up being a freelance copywriter. And I did love the journalism side of it and I did both for a bit, but ultimately copywriting one out. And that's how I ended up as a freelance copywriter.
Steve Folland: Wow. So what year, or how long ago was that where you sort of made the move into copywriting?
Liz Painter: Yeah, so I was probably doing both through sort of 2005 to 2008 and then 2008, I was like, right, I'm going to give my business a name. I called it Comma Comma. And it was that time when everyone was doing kind of quirky names, you know what, that didn't really have as massive connection to the business. So that's my excuse, but I love it anyway. And in 2008, I mean, just as the recession hit really.
Steve Folland: Oh, God, yes.
Liz Painter: And yeah, that was that I decided it was copywriting all the way. I wasn't going to do journalism anymore and I'm still here.
Steve Folland: What made you choose to go with a company named rather than just being Liz Painter copywriter?
Liz Painter: So one of my kind of mentors at the time was Andy Maslen. The way I really got my grounding in copywriting was to basically read every book that Andy Maslen had written. He's more of a novelist now, but at the time he was very well known in the direct response copywriting world. And he really gave me my grounding. And one of the things he recommended was setting yourself up to look like a bigger business than you were, almost like an agency, even if it was just you partly because, so this was back in the day. You got to remember before social media was a way to win business.
Liz Painter: So a lot of the time you'd be on the phone with people and it kind of sounds a bit, well, he felt, and I think he's right, that if you ring up and you say, "Oh, it's Liz Painter, can you put me through to so-and-so?" And the secretary says, "Liz Painter from where?" And you say, "Oh, Liz Painter from Liz Painter." It doesn't sound all that professional. So it was just a way to add that layer of professionalism of it's Liz Painter from Comma Comma.
Steve Folland: I see, yeah.
Liz Painter: And that you maybe don't need that so much now. I think there's much more of an argument for building a personal brand, but at the time when it was the way to get in touch with people really was posting the phone. It did just make sense.
Steve Folland: So obviously your first clients were coming via your husband's business, but how did you go about getting your clients in? Was it just that or did you find other ways?
Liz Painter: No, I got out on the networking circuit, I think at the time my kids were quite little, so I would try and find networking events that were more in the evenings. So I would be kind of looking after them in the day. And then I would go to evening networking events when my husband was at home to look after the kids. So that was quite a good way to break in and just chat to people. And it just kind of evolved from building relationships with people I found going to the same networking events over and over again was quite a good way to build those relationships and then get recommended to other people rather than dipping in and out. And obviously we can't do that at the moment, but I think you can achieve something similar with online networking now.
Steve Folland: So you would do that and you were positioning yourself as a copywriter so you would write people's websites?
Liz Painter: Yeah, to be honest, I was very generalist at that point. So I would write websites. I was writing brochure copy, really anything that anyone asked me to do, I think I was even doing press releases, which I haven't done for years, but because it, it did overlap with where I was at that point having just left journalism. So really anything that any business asked me to write, I would do it, I didn't discriminate. And I think that was actually a mistake since then I've niched down into email and funnel copy, but at the time, I guess a lot of people start out this way where you're almost scared to turn business down. So you just take anything that comes in the door.
Steve Folland: Because obviously at the beginning I said, email strategist and conversion copywriter. So at what point did you make that step to narrow it down?
Liz Painter: Yeah, so I think probably by about 2016, 2017, I'd already narrowed down into really only doing online stuff. I wasn't writing brochures anymore. I was doing websites, emails, funnels, funnels being kind of your lead magnet and your ads and your email copy and landing pages as well. And then I think it was around about 2017. I was chatting to a client actually, who was saying, "Look, you're clearly really passionate about email. You're really very good at it." I just got some really good results for her with a campaign we'd run. She'd had like an 80% lift in sales, she said, "Have you not thought about just doing email?"
Liz Painter: And I had thought about it, but I had wondered whether it was a good positioning strategy or not. But from that point that really made me think, do you know what I think she's actually she's right. And I did start to focus in, I didn't immediately cut out the other work, but I started to focusing on email a bit more. And then probably over the last two or three years, I've really, really niched down into email. So I will write the other stuff to go alongside emails. And obviously if I'm writing an email campaign and I'm sending someone to a website that isn't very good, that's not a great idea. So I will sometimes work on people's website messaging as well alongside their emails, but I don't tend to take like an entire website project so much anymore. It is very email focused and it was quite gradual, it didn't seem like a sensible strategy to go right from now on I'm only ever doing email. Like I kind of gradually moved into that space.
Steve Folland: Did you notice, as you sort of niche down that it made it easier to sort of sell what you were doing and to price what you do and like, what was the response in inside your business?
Liz Painter: Yeah, it's so much easier, when you get on a call with a prospect, it's so easy to give examples. What I tend to do as part of my process now is I'll give people like rough ballpark figures when we first get on the call, because that way you don't waste loads of time talking to someone who's not got the budget for the project. So I can easily say, "Oh, I wrote the seven email sequence for someone and it was this price." And it just gives them that reference point. And it just makes everything a lot easier in your business. And yes, even when you're posting on social media, all of the marketing activities you do for your business, they can all be focused in on that. It definitely simplifies things.
Steve Folland: How did you find pricing?.
Liz Painter: Yeah, so pricing has evolved as well. I think I vividly remember actually. So I said that I'd learned a lot from Andy Madison's, but then I think it would have been maybe around 2014. I was at a copywriter conference in London and he was one of the speakers and he delivered a workshop on pricing, which I went to. And one of the things we talked about at the time was blog posts, which was something I used to do. I don't do a lot of that anymore. Obviously I still write them for my own business. And I think at the time I was charging something like 150 pounds per blog post, and Andy Maslin was charging more like 400. And then he got us all to stand up and practice saying, "Yes, it's 400 pounds per post." This kind of funny little exercise, but it was actually really hard because that felt like a massive leap at the time.
Liz Painter: I mean, that wouldn't be very much now it was kind of seven years ago or something like that six, seven years ago. And yeah, I think you do have to practice saying your pricing out loud. If you want to push it higher and really get the value. The other thing that's really useful or has been useful for me as an exercise is I now track my time religiously on every project. So I use Toggl, which is just a free app just to track how long you're spending on each project. And then I review it at the end and I'm aiming to hit a specific hourly rate. And obviously the client's never going to know what that hourly rate is, but it just gives me a guide.
Liz Painter: And probably, when started out in copywriting, I was charging ludicrously low prices, but you gradually realize that actually you need to be paid a fair salary for this. You are doing it because you love it, but you also do need to get paid. And it's all those shifts kind of professionalizing your business and putting systems in place. It all weaves into the pricing side of things and helps you charge what you should be charging. And also being open with other copywriters. I have copywriter friends now that will say, "Oh, actually I'm thinking of pricing this project like this, does that sound about right to you?" And just having that reference point is really useful.
Steve Folland: Yeah. And when I was looking at your website, I noticed this kind of works more first for certain things. And I think certainly as a conversion copywriter, it makes sense. Like you have very specific kind of like, these are the sort of differences I've been making to clients because obviously email conversion, copywriter, and I guess it makes it easy to get to the metrics. It's like a proof that you're good at what you do. Do you have to make that part of your terms and conditions, if you like? Like you want to be able to see the metrics, you want to be able to quote the metrics?
Liz Painter: Yes. That is a really good point actually, Steve. I think I didn't push for that early enough in my career. And it has made a huge difference because if you position it from the outset that when you're first talking to a client, I want to see how you're doing now so that we can compare it with how you're doing after I've worked on your copy. They buy into it from the beginning then, and they're happy to share. Whereas I think when I was starting out, I was a bit too timid and I wouldn't kind of demand to see their metrics.
Liz Painter: Whereas now it's just part of my process and I probably wouldn't want to work on something if I couldn't see that I'm having some kind of impact. Because that's where I get the buzz. That's the kick that I've had this amazing impact on their business, but I've got them good results. And it does not quite the same pool for me if I don't get to see that. And it's not as good for them because they don't know that they've had return on investment which is crucial. Otherwise, why would they want to work with you again if they haven't seen results? So, I think it's a really important piece of the puzzle.
Steve Folland: And that reminds me of when we spoke to Jonathan Stark in the last season, when we were chatting about more value based pricing, because as a software developer, he was able to see the difference for his work was making and you can see that difference. So did that affect your pricing?
Liz Painter: Oh yeah, definitely. It's much easier to say to someone, "Yeah, this is going to cost 10,000 pounds." If they know they're going to make 100 thousand pounds. I mean that, I just pulled those figures out of the air, but it just makes it a lot easier if you can show the value you're going to deliver.
Steve Folland: You know, this is all the magic you do for your clients. How do you work that magic for yourself?
Liz Painter: Oh, that's a really good question. So I do have an email list. I probably haven't focused on it as much as I should in terms of growing it. And that's something I want to look at over the next few months, but I do win clients through my email list. And I think that is just because they can see what I talk about, what I do in my emails. They can see how I work. They can see that I write well. And it's just a way to build a relationship, which a lot of the time it is just about having a certain number of points of contact with someone, isn't it?
Liz Painter: And demonstrating the value that you deliver before they can buy into what you do. And I think an email list where you're emailing weekly or fortnightly, or perhaps more often, depending on the industry you're in, it really does do that. It does give you those multiple points of contact where you build a relationship. I mean, I'm aware of people on my list who've been there for a couple of years and then they'll come on board as a client. You know, it's taken that long for them to think. Do you know what I really should sort out my email marketing,
Steve Folland: What kind of stuff do you share in your email?
Liz Painter: So, I tend to share stuff that I'm learning because I'm always reading and learning and listening to stuff and taking courses. I'll share things that I've done for clients. I share quite a lot of stuff about productivity and mindset actually, because I'm quite into all of that. So I could be talking about coping one week and then meditation the next week, it's quite a mix.
Steve Folland: Interesting. So you don't feel hemmed in, but you should just talk about email strategy. You talk about whatever is interesting you to help your business and therefore might help their business and in doing so, they get to know you as well?
Liz Painter: Yeah.
Steve Folland: How do you find managing clients?
Liz Painter: Do you know what? It's got a lot easier since I put really good processes in place. I think that's something that I resisted for quite a long time in my business because you hear about businesses that want to scale and they obviously need all the right processes in place. But I think as an individual freelance, so you may be thinking, "Oh, do I really need systems and processes to quite the same extent?' But actually once I bit the bullet and started working on that stuff, it made a massive difference because you just have a system that you work through with every client. And so they feel really comfortable and really confident that you know what you're doing and they know what's going to happen next. And you're taking them on a journey through the project. They know they're not just going to end up being left for weeks and not knowing what's going on.
Liz Painter: And you've always got the next thing booked in. So, I'll start a project and that will have the kickoff call and then we'll book the messaging call. So they know I'm off working on the research and I'm going to come back with the messaging report and then there's a call booked in for that. And then there'll be the copy delivery call booked in so that they've got a real sense of movement and momentum on the project. And it just gives them a feeling that they can just relax and get on with what they should be doing and not worry about managing a freelancer. So I think it's really important.
Steve Folland: And so, if we look at like your business now, where the clients find you now, or rather, how do you find clients? Guess it works both ways.
Liz Painter: Yes. So, I still get a lot of referrals. So could be old clients could be people that I've met networking that come back to me. And I also always ask clients at the end of a project, "Is there anyone that you know, that I could do this for?" So, especially if we're kind of on that results call where we're talking through how it's gone and it's all gone really well, particularly then is a good time to ask if they know anyone else that I could help. And I've had some really great clients come through that way. I mean, I remember one particular client who was a business coach. I asked her if she could suggest anyone and she gave me something like five names of different people that she thought I could help. And then one of those people also gave me about five names that he thought I get help.
Liz Painter: And I was like, "Wow, how many clients am I going to get out with one client?" So that was brilliant because some people are just connectors like that they'll just they really want to help you find more clients because they know you'll do a good job, but that's not the norm, but often I'll get maybe one referral that way. And then also I'm starting to do quite a bit more on LinkedIn and I've had a couple of clients come in through LinkedIn. So that's quite effective as well, but generally it has just been networking and people kind of pushing other people my way.
Steve Folland: When you say you're doing more on LinkedIn, what you're doing?
Liz Painter: I'm adding people. So probably an ideal client for me is someone who's a founder or a chief marketing officer. So I've been adding people from software companies, E-commerce companies in those positions and also founders of some smaller businesses because it's not quite like having a mix of size of client. They have their own kind of advantages and pros and cons of working with them. But I like that mix. So I'll add people like that. And then I'm going through and searching for what they're posting, because what I've found is if you just look at your feed, you don't always get to see the stuff that is useful to you.
Liz Painter: So if you do a search for the people you want to be connecting with more, just your first connections and then search what they've been posting say in the last day or the last week, and then comment on their posts. And what happens is not just them, but most CMOs for example, will be connected to lots of other CMOs. So if you post something useful or intelligent, or just adding to the conversation on one of their posts, not only will they see it, but other people in their network will see it and I've won clients that way.
Steve Folland: Oh, it's good when it works.
Liz Painter: Yeah.
Steve Folland: So it's not so much about putting your own content on there, but rather searching out for other people?
Liz Painter: I think so, yeah. I mean, I do post my own content and I think that's important because I think you get more reach the algorithm likes you better if you post so more people will see stuff, but yeah, you don't just have to post it's as much about the networking side of it as it is about posting.
Steve Folland: Now, I was obviously checking out your website and it's very nice. And intriguingly, given that we spoke earlier about presenting yourself as being bigger than you are, despite still having the name, Comma Comma. It's very much about Liz Painter. How has that website changed over time?
Liz Painter: Yeah, so that was a really conscious decision actually, that, because there was a point in my career where I did have freelancers working for me and I was outsourcing stuff as well as writing copy myself. And it was a conscious decision to contract and go back to it's just me. And sometimes I might bring in another copywriter if I needed additional expertise, there's a lot of people out there saying, "Oh, you shouldn't position yourself as just you, you should try and make yourself look bigger." And do you know what it's just me and I'm very open and very honest and very transparent. And I don't want to hide that fact. And actually I think it's a bonus that you're getting me with my kind of ridiculous number of years of experience, let's not count them up.
Liz Painter: So, you are getting me and all of that experience and knowledge that I've built up over many years. And so why would I try and hide that and try and make how I'm a bigger business than I am in it. When I rewrote the website, I did just make that conscious decision that I'm just going to position myself as it's me. And I might change that decision in the future. You know, maybe when my kids leave home, I'll want to go to the business bigger and I want to take people on, but at this point in my life, it's at the perfect size for me.
Steve Folland: How old are they now by the way?
Liz Painter: They are 10 and 12.
Steve Folland: So you did actually sort of like start working with other people though at one point, what made you do that and then what made you go back?
Liz Painter: Yeah, that just evolves really, just because I had more work than I could handle. And I used a freelancer, she was brilliant actually really reliable to write blogs for me. This was a few years ago now. And it was a really interesting experience because I've found, I just became really, really busy because I was writing copy, but I was also editing the copy that my freelancers had written.
Liz Painter: And I didn't find that I was making enough profit to justify spending all that time on the editing and managing people. And probably at the time I wasn't as good at the systems and processes side of things. So, I maybe wasn't managing it as well as I could have done. And I think I probably wasn't charging enough. So the margins weren't quite there and it was really a good learning experience, but it was very challenging and I just made the decision, actually, it wasn't the right way to go. And I was better off focusing on building my own strengths and my own copywriting skills and getting really good so that I could put my prices up that way and make more profit rather than trying to spread myself too thin managing people.
Steve Folland: And so did that mean you had to get comfortable with turning work away?
Liz Painter: Yeah. And actually it's been brilliant because what I have done is grown in my copywriting network so that now if a project comes in that isn't a good fit for me, I can quickly say, "Oh, I can't do that, but I know someone who'd be brilliant for that." And pass it on, and that feels really good because I'm helping share out the work with my colleagues and I'm fine with that. I don't feel like I need to make a fee or anything. I'm just happy to share the love, spread the work out. And I actually had a conversation with another copywriter the other day where she said that another copywriter friend that we both know had passed and work onto her and she described the company and I said, "Oh, is it such and such a company?" And she said, "Oh yeah." And I said, "Oh, I passed that onto her originally." So it's kind of, she's now got too much work on and she's passed it on. And that makes me happy.
Steve Folland: So it sounds like you've, you've found quite a community of fellow copywriters?
Liz Painter: Yeah. And I think that is so important because you can discuss things like pricing, you can ask for help on stuff when you're struggling, that's been a big learn for me. I was kind of raised to be really independent and self-contained, and I wasn't very good at asking for help actually. It's okay to ask for help. Did you know? Newsflash, it's okay to ask for help. If you're struggling with something, you can go to another copywriter and say, "Oh, I'm really not sure how to tackle this. What would you do?" And likewise, if you've got cooperates in your network who aren't as experienced as you, they can come to you and ask you for help and that's allowed. And I think that's been a really big lesson for me. Very useful lesson.
Steve Folland: And of those online communities?
Liz Painter: A mixture, actually. So I've got a little network of kind of Birmingham, Midlands copywriters that I've met in real life, or kind of organically. But also, yes some online communities, so another great one is The Copywriter Club, which is... There's like a massive Facebook group and also a page, slightly smaller Facebook group community it's based in the States, but it's global and that's a brilliant community, I recommend that. And then also another community I'm in is 10x Freelance Copywriter, which is run by Joanna Wiebe and Amy Posner. And that's also brilliant. You know, you can always get some great advice in that community.
Steve Folland: You mentioned the fact that you love to learn and like constantly develop yourself?
Liz Painter: Yeah. Books, courses, I've been on a couple of masterminds as well. I'm really big into kind of self-development books and just continuous improvement, really. I have, there's a book, The Slight Edge, which I read every year. And if you imagine kind of an upward trending curve, oh, I think we were a bit sick of those kinds of things at the moment, aren't we? But take COVID out of the equation, an upward trending curve of what you're doing in your life, how your business is going and what most people do. They'll see some success, and then they'll almost take their foot off the gas and they'll kind of dip. And that's why we get this kind of feast and famine thing and freelancing because we're not keeping our foot on the gas and what the slight edge suggests is that instead of easing off and kind of dipping every time you see some success, you just keep going and keep doing those consistent behaviors, like the posting on LinkedIn or whatever it is that it can apply to any element of life.
Liz Painter: So, the meditating every day or running three times a week or whatever it is, keep doing it. And that curve will keep going up without all the little dips. And very few people will actually do that. And if you can keep doing that, you're putting yourself in that top 5% of people. And you're going to see, kind of exponential success a bit like you do when you put money in the bank and not now with the interest rates. But you know, money, maybe not in a bank somewhere it's going to grow, you know? Yeah. Cumulative thing where suddenly you're streets ahead of where you would have been if you'd been doing the traditional kind of up and down curve. So it's that kind of attitude. And so I'm always seeking out books that will help me improve in different areas of my life.
Steve Folland: How do you manage your time? Like split across all of these things?
Liz Painter: I think at the moment I don't manage it brilliantly being honest, I don't have very good balance at the moment. And I think that is a symptom of the kind of the climate we're in at the moment of a feeling like I want to make hay while the sun shines and work really hard and almost stockpile because we don't know what's on the horizon. And so I work a lot of hours at the moment and I do want to improve that.
Liz Painter: I wanted to get more balance, but generally there are some things I do well. And I think managing my time in terms of blocks of time is something that works really well for me. So almost taking a break before you're too tired to keep going. So working in kind of blocks of 90 minutes, for example, and then maybe taking a break, maybe a block of two hours and then an hour break, which it seems counter-intuitive, but I find I get more done if I can work really solidly for a block of time and then take quite a long break, but also building in things like a daily walk, meditation, all those things that you probably think you don't have time for, but that actually make you more productive when it comes down to it.
Steve Folland: So what does a day look like for you then based around let's presume kids are actually in school for a start, but yeah. Yeah. What, what does it look like for you? How, how do you fit it all in?
Liz Painter: So I do tend to mix it up a bit actually. So there's not really one typical day. And then there's a couple of structures that work well for me, I will regularly get up at say 5:30 and do like a huge block of work before anyone's up. And then my husband will get the kids ready and I'll finish that block at like 8:30 and then I'll walk my youngest to school. We live about a mile from his school and there's this lovely off-road walk that you can do along the canal, which kind of really sets you up for the day. So I'll go and do that and then I'll come back and might have like a half hour break and then I'll start again. But I love that because it makes me feel like I've done half a day's work before the days even started.
Liz Painter: It's like you were ahead of the game. And then on that sort of a day, I'll kind of I'll work a full day and then I'll finish like five or six. And that will be when I've, I've got quite an intense project on, usually that I need to get some headway with. Whereas a more relaxed day might be where I get up a sensible time, like 7:00 AM, get the kids ready and then come back and start like nine and, and just work till I'll have a lunch break.
Liz Painter: Work till about six, stop for a couple of hours, hang out with the kids, dinner, all the rest of it. And then back to work for a couple of hours before bed, which, I mean, it's not the healthiest, but it is what being honest is what I'm doing at the moment. But what I find that means is that because I've done a solid amount of work in the week, I feel okay about taking most of the weekend off. I find if I work shorter days, I just end up working at the weekend. So that's not great either, but I mean, you can tell from what I'm saying, that I'm still working at achieving balance.
Steve Folland: Yeah. Perhaps it's good that you're both, you and your husband are both freelance.
Liz Painter: Yes. I think it's really helpful, but it does mean you don't always have a typical day because my day will change based on his day. So, if he's on a shoot where he has to leave really early in the morning then my day is influenced by that. Because then I can't do my full bulk of work early in the morning, but it's okay. We've got used to it over time and it works well.
Steve Folland: You've said the word mentor a couple of times. So are mentors important to you and are they like one-on-one type mentors or do you use that term as in like just people that you look up to?
Liz Painter: Yeah, I think I use it as just people I look up to, I worked with a coach, I think it was back in 2017. One of the things he said was find the person who is at the very top of your industry and follow them and that's how I found Joanna Wiebe. She was actually recommended to me by a client as someone worth paying attention to, and yeah, I ended up joining her in Mastermind, yeah, she's definitely been one of the most important mentors to me, but there have been others as well. I think it's really important because what I found is, as I was growing my business was I was learning a lot from other business owners, but they weren't in my space. So they didn't have specific things to teach me about how to get ahead in copywriting. Whereas once you follow someone who's in the exact same industry as you, just the advice you get is so much more specific and so much more useful, I think it makes a huge difference.
Steve Folland: So have you sort of stayed like long-term part of groups as in like the Mastermind for example, or is it a thing you do for a period?
Liz Painter: Yeah, I think both. So, that Mastermind was a six month Mastermind. Did that included the retreat that was at Lake Tahoe. And then I've also worked for Toronto Waves Agency as well, done quite a bit of copywriting work for them. So I've been able to learn from her in kind of different ways. And I'm still in her kind of, it's a lower level mastermind, I guess you'd call it 10X FC.
Liz Painter: And then yeah. So, I think some mentors come and go in, some mentors stay with you for quite a while and then sometimes you're ready to move on and learn from other people. I think it's got to be a mix of both really. And I think the same with courses, you take a course and it might seem amazing and transformational at the time, but then six months, a year, two years later, you're taking courses that are at a different level because those courses are no longer... they're far behind where you are now, because if you're on that continuous growth curve things move quite fast. So yeah, you always want to be looking out for the next person that can teach you something.
Steve Folland: It's interesting, like all of these different ways that you learn, for example, or take things on board, that's only part of it, isn't it? Turning it into action is another, how do you make sure that you do that part of it?
Liz Painter: Oh yeah. What a good question. I think the implementation side of it is really, really important thing. It's quite easy to read a book or take a course and get really excited about where it's taking you and then not actually do the work. I found having people that hold me accountable is absolutely critical. And in fact, we met through someone who has helped me at the moment Prerna Malik, and she can take a fair bit of credit for helping me get my website rewritten and actually launched. She introduced me to my website designer as well, and I have another copywriter friend. Who's done a lot to hold me accountable to finishing stuff. We meet every week just for 15 minutes on Zoom and we tell each other, right, this is what I want to achieve this week. And we hold each other accountable in Slack and that has been really, really important.
Liz Painter: And we also ask each other advice and help and just give each other a nudge when we're not doing the stuff we should be doing. And then I have another copywriter friend who is like my LinkedIn accountability buddy, so far I don't post by about 5:00, 6:00 PM today. She'll be on my case in Slack saying, "Come on, where's your LinkedIn post?" And vice versa and those kinds of things, if you take them seriously are so helpful. Certainly for me, I don't know that everyone needs that.
Liz Painter: There's other stuff that I can just get done without accountability. You know, I'm a runner, I don't need someone to tell me to get out the door. I just love it and I'll go three times a week, no problem. And I'm always training for something, but certainly with work, I think it's really easy to focus on the client work. And especially when you love what you do and kind of to the detriment of the work for your own business. And what I need is someone to say to me, come on, you have to carve out that time to do the work for your own business. And that's where I need the accountability. So yeah, I think I'm pretty driven, but it just is helpful having someone saying, "Come on, you're going to do that today."
Steve Folland: Yeah, I love that. Out of interest, like there might be people listening who are thinking, oh, that sounds like a really good thing, but I don't know how I would find somebody to like, how did you, like, did you approach those two, for example, with that idea? Or like, how did you end up in that situation?
Liz Painter: I think both of them actually approached me, but there are definitely systems for getting this set up. So certainly in those communities that I've already mentioned, there's the Copywriter Underground, which is part of the Copywriter Club. And then 10X FC, they actually have like an accountability buddy system where you can put your hand up and say, I need someone to hold me accountable. And they will introduce you to someone who's maybe at the same sort of level as you in copywriting. And I don't know, you could probably find that in just the open group, The Copywriter Club, Facebook group, I'm sure if you put your hand up and said, do you know why I'm struggling to get X, Y, and Z done? Does anyone else need to do that as well? Because it is helpful when you're both working on something similar, like with the LinkedIn thing, I'm sure you could stick your hand up in there.
Liz Painter: It's just somebody locally that you know who maybe has the same level of drive as you. I think it does have to be someone who's driven. It can't be someone who's flaky because that's just not going to work. It's just going to be annoying. You need someone who's actually committed to something as well so that you can bounce off each other. Tim Ferris stuff is good for how to hold yourself accountable. I think he's got a blog post on it where it might be a podcast.
Liz Painter: I remember reading about something that he had talked about an app where like it's a carrot stick type app where I think you reward yourself. If you hit your goals and maybe it gives money to a charity you hate or something like that. If you don't achieve your goal as a way to be self accountable, I can't remember what it's called, but yeah, it's like an app that I'll give 100 quid to an organization you really don't get on board with, if you don't do the thing that you are going to do. And that wouldn't work for me, I don't think but yeah, different strikes for different strokes.
Steve Folland: Oh, I know what I'm meant to do. You've just reminded me one thing I wanted to ask that because we're a bit, before we wrap up, was there was something on your website. I think it was like, save my emails, save the world, tell me about that.
Liz Painter: Oh, yes. So, when I first started my business, I had quite an eco-angle to it and a really good friend at the time said to me, "Like no one cares about that. They just care whether you're a good copywriter, you should take that off your website." I mean, this was a long, long time ago and I kind of followed that advice and then actually we've come full circle now haven't we and people it's cool to care about the planet again. And I just, when I was redoing my website, I wanted to think about how I could do more than what I'm already doing. You know, I love helping businesses, I get a real kick out of seeing them get great results, but I wanted another layer to it of what else can I do? So, I've set up this thing where for every new project that I bring on, I will twin an office space, whether it bee hive because you know, we have this declining bee population in the UK and that's really bad for us as a planet.
Liz Painter: It's obviously bad. If you can't pollinate, eventually we'll have no food. So you really want the bee population to be strong. And yeah, so I'll twin a company's office space. It could be anything, it could be their garden shed if they want, if they're working from home, with a bee hive. And what that does is the company that I do this with. It's an organic farm and they're kind of so more wildflowers and they do more for the bees, but for every kind of beehive that you twin with them.
Liz Painter: So yeah, it's just a way of doing something for the planet. And I'm also working with the wildlife trust, just my local one, helping them build up a funnel so they can win more members through the internet online rather than... Obviously they can't do a lot of their face to face stuff at the moment. So they need those kinds of online ways to win more members. So I'm doing that at a discounted rate for them. And yeah, I think we'll end up doing some more work together. They're a really good organization to work with them. They've got staff furloughed so they need kind of outside people to come in and help them. So yeah, that's been a fun and quite rewarding thing to do as well.
Steve Folland: I love that whole twinning bee hive, it's not just I'm going to give and not that there's anything wrong with this. Like I'm going to give some money to plant a tree or whatever. Like there's such a wonderful visual, like my office spaces twinned with a beehive is nice. Now, if you could tell your younger self one thing about being freelance, what would that be?
Liz Painter: I think I'd love to go back and just tell myself to be a bit more ballsy and have a bit more confidence. I think I kind of, I messed about for too long not really pushing myself to do all the things that I do now. Partly that was a symptom of having young children and all of the lack of sleep that goes with that. But I see copywriters now kind of going from not to amazingness in like a year or two and I think, wow, it's taken me quite a long time to get here.
Liz Painter: You know, I wonder if I could have done it quicker if I'd done things a bit differently. So, and I think a lot of that comes down to not being confident enough and what I found going on all these masterminds and things like that, is that it was actually already a really good copywriter. I just maybe didn't know it and working with kind of stellar copywriters, like Joanna Wiebe quickly showed me, Oh, actually I do know what I doing. And I'm quite good at this. And I think if I'd known that a bit quicker, I could have got where I am now a bit quicker. So yeah, I'd love to go back and give myself a bit of a confidence boost.
Steve Folland: Liz, it's been an absolute joy chatting to you. Thank you so much and all the best being freelance.
Liz Painter: Oh, thanks for having me on the podcast. It's been great.
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