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Lee: We interrupt this broadcast with an urgent announcement. If you are listening today, the 10th of April 2019, then there are only nine days left to get your ticket for agency transformation live. And if you’re listening any later than quick check the calendar, you may be running out of time to grab your ticket. Check out for information on Agency Transformation Dot live. Before we kick off the show, can I encourage you to listen back to episode 200, where I share how to transform your agency? It’s a combination of my own story, but also five pillars of transforming your business. Really, really useful episode. We’ve had tons of amazing and encouraging feedback, so I just want to encourage you, if you’ve not listened to episode 200, please download that and go ahead and check that one out. Now. Welcome to the Agency Trail Blazer podcast. This is your host, Lee, and on today’s show we have Michelle Hunter. And she is talking all about marketing in your agency. So sit back, relax and enjoy the ride. Welcome to a conversation today with me, Mr. Lee Jackson, as usual, but we have an early riser. 5 a.m. sharp. We have Michelle Hunter. How are you today?
Michelle: I’m doing well. I hope I’m as sharp as your intro. We’ll see.
Lee: She has confessed to have drunk several coffees and actually has one currently on an intravenous drip.
Michelle: It is true. Better living through caffeine. That’s my mantra.
Lee: The cool thing about these early starts though, and we were talking about this before we hit the record button. But you were saying that after this you’ve got some time then to create a whole load more content and content is definitely your thing. And I love these early starts. I was up myself at 5 a.m. several hours ago now it’s now 9:00 for us. But yeah, I was I was up, up nice and early, was able to create some audio, a video and also write a blog. So it’s just it’s just those magic hours because nobody’s calling. Nobody’s knocking on the door. My daughter’s not asking me to put the PlayStation on. You know, all these different things that are happening kind of past 9:00.
Michelle: It is true. As long as you can get for me, as long as I can get my brain functioning, then I can get in the flow and it’s amazing what I can get done in that time between about six and eight. Five is a little bit ahead of my optimal window, but we’ll rock with it.
Lee: I’ll be checking your social media later to see how grumpy you get over the course of the day. Anyway, folks, if you don’t know who Michelle Hunter is, then you can check out her website. MichelleHuntercreative.com. And instead of me butchering an intro for you, how’s about you tell our beautiful audience a little bit about yourself, who you are, what you do, maybe your favorite color, your favorite drink, or maybe a fact that you feel not many people know about you.
Michelle: Oh my word. Okay, well, I’m a marketing strategist and a copywriter. I offer custom copywriting and marketing services specifically for creatives and for established professionals. You know, the people who typically don’t know how to talk about what they do. And I don’t mean that as a slam. It’s just the truth. My favorite color. Oh my goodness, I don’t know. I haven’t I’m in the middle of a home remodel right now. And so you’ve caught me. And my Pinterest is full of paint colors. And my adult daughter tells me that no one cares. Like no one can tell the difference between the ten shades of gray that I have on my Pinterest board, but I am definitely trying to figure out which one is optimal, so we’ll see how that goes. Oh, of of gray. Of gray. Yeah. Cool.
Lee: My daughter is well, integrate. She’s 12 years old and she’s demanding that we remove all the pink from her bedroom and paint it different shades of grey. And she herself has been showing us stuff from magazines saying, I love this color and we can accent it with that. I’m like, who are you?
Michelle: Oh, I know. It’s amazing. Like, you go down the rabbit hole of grey and, you know, I don’t know how many crayons there were in the Crayola box that were grey, but apparently there are 3000 shades of grey now, so. And I keep showing my husband, do you think A or B? And he’s like, what are we? What am I even looking at? Those are the same. So it’s interesting. So I write and help web designers market. And the reason this home decoration deal is so interesting is that I’m not a designer at all. I can’t tell one font from another, and if they’re not, I can tell squirrely from scrolling. That’s 5 a.m. scrolling from sans serif, but that’s it. Like if you tell me which scrolling font do you like? I don’t know, I don’t care, and my eye doesn’t notice kerning. I don’t none of that. So for me to pick out paint colors, it’s just hysterical.
Lee: Maybe you should be connecting with Christine and getting her help then. So as a designer, she’ll probably be able to help.
Michelle: She. She is. Christine Thatcher’s a glorious designer. She’s one of my best clients. And she’s also a strategic partner for me and my web designer. And she is also one of the most thoughtful, gentle, elegant people. I’m like a bull in a China shop. I just say whatever, I think, and I’m very candid and she’s very refined, very elegant. So she sent me a book and it’s a beautiful book. It’s a book on design. And in the card that she sent me said, I know you think you don’t have an eye, and I know you think you don’t have a style. Just read this book I think you’ll enjoy.
Lee: It was beautiful.
Michelle: Understatement, for I know you.
Lee: Need help.
Michelle: That’s a really polite way of saying it, folks. If you want to check out Christine’s website, that’s ChristineMariestudio.com. You can check out her work and all those nice smiley faces. I love it when you see a website full of smiling people, which is phenomenal. All right, well, before we carry on, we’re gonna find out how you got into marketing, what you do, and we’re going to get some great marketing advice from you. But, folks, before we continue, I just want to give a shout out to a great resource that Michelle has made available. If you go to Michelle Hunter creative.com/creating hyphen profitability, you will be able to get a free guide for improving the business side of your agency. So we’re all great aren’t we? At designing or developing, etc. but there’s a common problem for a lot of the people listening in the show. A lot of the people in our Facebook group where we struggle with that business aspect of running the day to day. So that’s Michelle Huntercreative.com/creating-profitability. And if that’s too long for you to remember don’t worry. Look at the show notes. There’s going to be a link there for you as well. Right Michelle. Add over. Oh it’s not really an ad, but um, but um, can we jump in a time machine together, Tardis or whatever kind of mode of physics that you’re into? But can we just jump back in time? And how did your business first get started? What was the trigger point?
Lee: Sure, I began my career in corporate America, actually in accounting, finance and logistics, which is about as uncreative as you can possibly get. No one likes a creative accountant, actually, but I always had a dream of writing and enjoyed writing just for myself personally. And so after 20 some years in the corporate world, I actually was in leadership in a fortune 500 company here in the US. Our economy constricted and I found myself with an offer of a buyout and unemployment. So I cried a little bit, drank a little wine, and then talk to my husband who said, you know, you’ve always wanted to do something with writing. Why don’t you take this opportunity and see what you can make happen? So I, knowing nothing about copywriting, just having a natural talent for writing, if that’s not too arrogant, or at least a love for writing. Let’s go with that. I started a home office just and set about doing some research, and thankfully, because I have a strong background in business, the business side of a creative business was the part I understood and could nail. It was the working with clients collaboratively piece that was a little frightening and offputting. But that was 2012. And if we fast forward now to 2019, I’ve learned a lot about myself. My business is stable and growing, I have a team and I’m doing quite well. So in between that was a lot of trial by fire, a lot of learning and struggling. And along the way, what I found is that while I am a good writer, I would say you can’t hear the humility. Just use like the humility font for that. But yeah, actually my talent is in marketing and business. And so what I found is that there’s a need amongst us creatives, if you will, to. To know how to monetize our services. To know how to talk about what we do. To know how to land clients. And so my business is shifted to lead with the marketing strategy and the business strategy, and then also offer copywriting services. So we start I’ve found that it’s most effective to start with creating the core message and then build it out from there. So the writing is almost like a tag, an add on versus what I started with. And I think what’s cool about this may be for those in your audience, is that we start out, I think it’s a pretty common story that we start out thinking, oh, I’m just going to do this, or, oh, I’m just going to do that. And then when we step out into the market and we start actually serving clients, all of that evolves because we didn’t know what we didn’t know until we learned it. For instance, I thought I would write blogs for people I absolutely loathe and abhor writing blog posts for others. I love to do it for myself, but so I wouldn’t have known that without giving it a try. And I don’t know. Is that what you.
Michelle: Know, that’s.
Lee: That’s really good. And I think a lot of us, we all start out well, not all all of us, but a lot of us have started an agency completely by accident. Um, somebody asked us to build a website or somebody asked us to do a design, etc. we did one that led to another, that led to another. And before long we have a business, but we find it really hard to express ourselves, express who we are, what we do, who we do it for. And perhaps we don’t even understand all of that. And very often I’ll hear web designers or design agency creatives, etc. at networking saying, oh, I just, I’m just a web designer. I just build websites and kind of almost putting themselves down because they don’t really know how to explain what they do, or they go the complete opposite track. And if somebody asks you, hey, so what is it you do? And then they go off into this kind of full service agency spiel, uh, almost trying to sell people, you know, the entire nine yards when all the person was asking was essentially just like, literally, what is it you did you give me a one sentence reply and then And then you’re rolling your eyes. So, um, so can we deep dive into this a little bit? Because I know a lot of us do struggle with this. We are creative. We want to do what we love the most, which is designing and helping clients. But we we hear very often and we see in our Facebook feeds that we should be marketing our business. And it’s true, we need to be marketing because we need people, need to be aware of us, etc. we want to build our audience. We want to be able to help people. And whilst we’re working on the tools, as it were, we need to make sure something is also happening to continue with that kind of longevity of our business. I think there’s very often is that kind of feast and and famine cycle for a lot of creatives because we get the business and then we focus down and nothing else happens. So first of all, I’m going to ask you a really simple question, because people have different understandings of this. What is marketing? The most simplest question I can ask you what is marketing in as simple as a way for a creative who maybe has just started and is trying to work out what’s marketing versus just picking up the phone and calling a couple of people to try and get some leads.
Michelle: Sure. Well, it’s a simple question, and it deserves, I think, an ultra simple answer. And then I’ll elaborate from there. But marketing is really simply a conversation about what you do and who you do for. That is absolutely all it is. And so you see a lot of stuff online, or you hear a lot of stuff in business books about marketing is several posts on Facebook, or it’s creating content or it’s going to a networking meeting. Those are all tactics. And the reason they’re not effective for many of us is because we’re blindly pursuing a tactic without really understanding what the conversation is in the first place, and the conversation is the marketing strategy, if you will, or the foundational logic of what we’re trying to do. Your example of someone asks what what I do, and I either go off on a big long agency spiel or I say something that includes the word just. I’m just a this. I’m just a that. Yeah. Um. Which always makes me cringe.
Lee: Yeah.
Michelle: That’s a those both those scenarios are a symptoms that the person doing the speaking hasn’t nailed down. That conversation doesn’t understand the logic behind it. So I have a simple. So you’ll find throughout this podcast that I and anyone who works with me as well, that I use really absurd analogies and simple analogies to try and illustrate points, because I find that otherwise we get hung up on language and it’s just not helpful. So I have a story. Do you mind if I tell my Apple story? I know you’ve heard it. All right. So this story is basically to illustrate and to train on the foundational marketing logic that I’m talking about the conversation. So one of the reasons we get stuck with marketing is that we overthink it and we get nervous and we get awkward instead of just thinking of it as a normal conversation. And so here’s an illustration. So imagine, Lee, that you and I have met up at a pub. We’ve met up for coffee or whatever, coffee up at a pub for. I’m drinking coffee right now, so that’s all I have on my mind. Well, a pint okay. I’ll be British as much as I can be. Cheers, mate. So we’ve met up for a pint. Maybe we’re going to discuss some kind of business opportunity, or we’re just friends. We’re just meeting up for a pint. We’re going to talk about our week. And so as we’re sitting there talking, you notice, first of all, that I have a really large bag on my shoulder, you know, that women often carry. And so I sort of throw that to the, to the ground there. And we get our pint and we start to talk and I say so slowly, tell me about your week, and you start to tell me about the things you’ve been doing in your business and so forth. And then you take a sip of your, of your pint and then you say to me, you know what? I’ve got to stop. Would you mind? I just I don’t know if I can stay. I’m not feeling well. I’m feeling kind of tired. I’m feeling kind of mentally brain fog stuff is going on. That’s you expressing a need to me, right? You’re saying I have a pain point. Here’s. Here’s it. I would love to engage with you, Michelle. I would love to talk openly and candidly and have fun, but I’m not feeling the fun. Yeah. So that’s actually the beginning of a marketing conversation. Or it can be in this context and this silly analogy. So I would naturally say to you in that setting, oh my gosh, really, what do you think’s going on? And you might say, well, you know, I my stomach’s a little upset, I have a little bit of a headache. And then I may say, it sounds like you’re hungry. Are you hungry.
Lee: Always.
Michelle: Yeah. And you would answer that. Correct. So now we’ve agreed on the problem. The problem is you are hungry. That’s the problem. And once we’ve agreed to it, now we can start to discuss the solution. So I’ll say to you, perhaps, you know, while we can order some food, but they have burgers and chips here and I don’t know. That’s not that’s kind of heavy for this time of day. And you’d say, yeah, I don’t know that I need all of that. And I’d say, you know, maybe what you really need is a healthy snack and you’d say, yeah, but where am I going to find that in a pub, correct. And then I might say, well, at least, you know, let’s see what we can do for a healthy snack. So now you and I have agreed to the solution to your problem. The solution is a healthy snack. Yeah. Now I say to you, well, guess what? Actually, in my bag here, I happen to have a beautiful apple that I picked up on the way. Here’s an apple. Would you like it? And you’re like, oh, thank goodness you have this apple. And you take it kind of hide it from the the pub attendant or whatever you call them, so that you don’t get busted for eating food that you didn’t buy. They’re inside the pub. But I’ve now solved your problem. This is logic for a marketing conversation. You, as the client or potential client, express a need. You have a pain point. We agree together on on what the problem really is. Then we discuss possible solutions and we agree upon the best solution. And only after that do I give you a call to action and invite you to come a little closer and use something that I’ve offered, whether it be a free opt in or maybe an inquiry call or a service offering. The problem with many of us when we market is, number one, we either we we start with the solution. So it would be as if I sat down at the pub with you and I said, you know, I have an apple. Do you see this apple? It’s beautiful, isn’t it? Look at it. It’s so red and juicy. It’s actually fresh. You know, I bought it from the vendor down the road. You’d be thinking, who is this person and what is her issue? Right? But I see so many websites and so many social media posts and so many pieces of content that lead with a call to action. Really, they lead with a discussion of your service offering. Who gives a fig about your service offering? Frankly.
Lee: We’re talking about apples now, not figs. Okay.
Michelle: I’m mixed metaphors. I’m missing.
Lee: So when someone asks you in, like, a networking setting. So what is it you do? My answer would be, would not be I’m just a copywriter. I’m just a marketing strategist because that is leading with the Apple, right? I’m talking about the service instead. What I can say is, oh, I help people who are struggling in their business do a little better. I’m wondering, why are you asking me? Will you seem like you might say, well, you seem like you’re a really creative person, and you know, we’re here and I’m a web designer and I then I can say, oh, well, do you find you have difficulty getting clients? Oh I do. Why do you think that is? You notice that we’re questioning and we enter into a conversation in a dialogue where eventually, naturally, there would be an opportunity for me to say, you know, I think I can help you. Why don’t you. Why don’t we talk later?
Michelle: Yeah.
Lee: This is really good. So just to kind of reiterate what I’m understanding here. So marketing is a conversation. And instead of leading with the Apple, we’re creating the context of a conversation where we can unpack what the problem is that the client is having. And then if we feel we have the solution, we can come to an agreement on what that solution may be and then make an offering. So it’s that that nice. I love it when people tell things in stories, because if you were to just tell me a bulleted list, it would literally go in one ear and out of the other. So that was beautiful. I really, really love that story. Now, how do you feel we can translate that into a digital experience? Because that’s me and you in a pub, which is great. We’ve actually had that conversation, but a lot of people, their first connection with us is going to be potentially that Facebook ad that’s going to take them to the website or someone’s going to say, you need to check out Michelle’s website. So how do we have that sort of beginning conversation with people?
Michelle: The most compelling place to connect with a potential client is at the problem, the pain point and the problem level and then lead them to a solution. You can typically in one piece of content. And so that would be a Facebook post a blog post any any touch if you will, intellectual digital touch with a client. You can only move them one step. And that’s something to really remember, because we often try to move them all the way to the point of inquiring. And that’s typically too many steps. So we have to connect with them around their pain or around their problem. Because most of us are either pain, we’re all pain aware. You know, if I if I drop something on my foot, I feel it. I you don’t need to ask me. So does that hurt? Like I’m really aware of the pain, but I might not have seen what I dropped. I might not be aware of, say, I stubbed my toe. I might not be aware of what I kicked, so I might not be problem aware. We’re all definitely pain aware, and some portion of your potential client base is also aware, so they may know they need a new website. They may know that their website stinks, that people you know, they’re embarrassed to share it, but they may not know that. They may only realize that they’re not getting leads, or that it’s not converting, or that no matter what they do, it doesn’t seem like anyone cares. There’s no traffic going to their site. They may not understand why. If you can connect in a Facebook post around that pain or that problem, then you can move people a step closer by explaining to them, number one, that there is a solution and then demonstrating a few options for solution. So what would that look like in a Facebook post? You can. Facebook is not my favorite thing in the world. Full disclosure um, you can create a post that shows maybe someone who’s really frustrated and you can say, this is also not elegant copywriting. I don’t typically copyright live, but you can say something like, I’m struggling to connect with the right clients or struggling to get any leads. No matter what you do, does it feel like nothing happens? Your problem is probably this or your problem is. Your problem is your website or your problem is functionality. And then you can ask a question, does this sound right? Yeah. And people will comment. Well probably not on that because it’s not elegantly written. But that’s the that’s the logic in a blog post. You can assume the problem and then in your lead to a blog post, tell a story or in some other way share an anecdote that allows people to connect around the pain of it. So you ask me a question what is marketing? So if if I were going to write a blog post with that title or something similar, I might write a post with a title that says I’m confused about marketing. And then the lead of that post would be around the pain. So have you felt awkward at a network meeting? Have you, you know, blah blah blah? And then I can move them to the point of knowing and understanding a solution. So the blog post would then go through here, you know, here are three things you can do. Or here are some things you’ve thought about that’s a solution oriented movement. Once they have moved from pain point and problem to solution in that post, I can’t typically move them another step because remember I said just one step, but I can, at the bottom of a blog post, have a call to action for an opt in or something that would move them one step closer to my business would allow me to know that they exist, and now I can nurture them further.
Lee: So perhaps you would have given them a lead magnet at the end of that saying, kind of, I know this is terrible as well.
Lee: Marketing demystified the five steps to a successful Marketing campaign.
Lee: Yeah. I’m amazing. I’m I should maybe go into copywriting.
Michelle: Are you sure?
Lee: But that’s that one extra step, isn’t it? And it’s still free. Yeah. You’re going to though. Get that email. It’s a transaction. They’re you’re getting their email. You can then continue to develop that relationship. So that’s one step closer to you. So keep going I was just just making sure I was on the right page.
Michelle: Yep. You’re right there. So if you’re if you’re tactics are not converting your Facebook posts, let’s say, or your Pinterest board or your blog posts or your podcasts or whatever, nothing is converting. It’s not driving traffic. One of the things to look at is our is whether or not you’re attempting to move people too far. So we live in a digital culture where we get thousands upon thousands of sales messages all the time, and therefore we’re all very jaded about that. We expect a sales message. We know that the freebie that we download puts us on somebody’s email list. We understand that if we call for an inquiry call, we’re going to get sold at the end. A free webinar has a message at the end for us to buy something like, we all know that. So we tend to turn off at that point if we’re not engaged with what’s going on, if we’re not in the conversation, if we haven’t already agreed to a solution, we’re not interested in the sales message and we typically don’t hear it. That’s why things don’t convert, you haven’t moved them from pain down to agreement around the solution. Only when you do that will people actually take action on a CTA. Because like a sales CTA, I should say. Does that make sense?
Lee: Really interesting. So let’s put this into perspective for my event. So I’m launching well, I’ve launched a live event here in the UK. And for me I’m recognising a mistake that I’ve been making from what you’re talking about. So I’m investing in Facebook advertisements, etc. and I’ve, I have led with pain points. But what I’ve also done is I’ve led with pain points and then told them to go and buy a ticket. So it’s almost like, and some of these people will have never heard of me. I’m making custom audiences here for people that follow certain design magazines or people that use certain design tools and software, etc. and I think what I’m doing and the mistake I’m making is I’m trying to help them make that leap instantly. And I do definitely get jaded with lifetime deals on Facebook or this event or, you know, this piece of software that I could sign up for because lots of these messages are going straight in for the give us all your money. And I think I’m making that mistake now. I’ve got so much content that I could do to help people down a track where I could say, okay, are you struggling with this? Great. In this episode, we talk about it and let’s just take them there on that episode page. I can offer them something, or there’s also a advertisement for the event if they’re interested. But also I talk about the event probably on that podcast as well, and I can take them on that step by step journey. So I think as well, what you’re saying, the beauty of the stepped process, guide them one step at a time, is if further down the line you’re seeing things aren’t happening, then you can go back a couple of steps and fix what’s there. If nothing’s happening, then your very first step is wrong and you can go back to that and then start from there. And then you never know. It might have just been that one first step that was wrong. The minute you tweak that, everything else just flows perfectly.
Michelle: Yes.
Lee: So I am literally after this call, I’m gonna go change some things.
Michelle: What I love.
Michelle: About this, another story that I tell and this. This is not my unique story. I read it somewhere and I wish I could give accreditation, but I don’t recall where I read it. But. And I’m not trying to be, you know, critical of you, but it’s almost like asking for marriage on the first date. So asking someone to buy off a cold Facebook ad is like asking for marriage on the first date. So you meet up at the pub and you’re like, hey, you look good to me. What do you think? Should we do this for life? And they’re Like. Freak, you know, I’ll move along. So a good rule of thumb is the bigger the ultimate ask. Yeah, the longer the warm up period required. So you can ask that first date if she’d like, if he. Well, in my case, he. But if he’d like to go, you know to lunch that that’s a natural next step. But to ask for marriage is not so in your case for your live event. You’re. That’s a relatively large ask. So I don’t know what the price point is, and it’s irrelevant really to me. But you’re asking me to leave my office, travel to your site, probably get some lodging. Be mentally invested. Clear my calendar. Come ready with an empty glass to learn whatever you have to give me. That’s a large mental ask. And then for me, while I would love to join you, I would also have to make sure my passport was in order, you know, get flight information. It’s a it’s a good size ask. Therefore you need a fair bit of warm up in order for that to land well, and for me to really consider that what I love about Facebook. And I know I previously said I don’t care for it.
Lee: Better The devil you know as they.
Michelle: That’s right.
Michelle: What I love about Facebook is if you work with a Facebook provider who’s really skilled at ads, you can retarget. And so what you can do is serve up this stepped approach and give someone who’s cold a soft message, move them one step and then retarget so they gradually see ads that draw them closer and closer to your event. And when they finally see the buy now ad, they’re then quite warm and interested, because the metrics will allow you to see that they’ve consumed other pieces of content and so forth. Now that all of those algorithms and so forth are completely outside my wheelhouse, but I understand the logic of them and the value of it.
Lee: That’s really helpful as well with your with your stepped approach as well. That helps me understand because, I mean, I’ve spoken to so many people how I find the Facebook ad system literally like rocket science. I don’t even know where half of my ads are half the time. And I’m going down this rabbit hole trying to find them and then trying to understand, you know, trying to understand the path of what people have taken and retargeting, etc. sometimes is a nightmare. However, the way you’ve described it today, it’s definitely been an aha moment for me, and I’m sure people listening as well as that kind of step by step approach. I love the idea of not going in for the marriage proposal straight away, but Hey. You know. Would you like to go for a drink? You know, this is, you know, this is a staged approach, an equally that kind of journey of someone saying, you know, uh, lead in, you know, is, are you experiencing this pain? Can we agree that this is the problem? Okay. Now that we’ve agreed this is the problem, can we agree that we think this might be your solution and and we just take them through that path? I think it’s brilliant.
Michelle: Thank you. But another thing I want to mention that comes to mind this I love doing this, by the way. So if you can’t tell that I’m like geeked out now I’m wide awake. I’ve got all my coffee. Oh, I can tell. Rocking Okay.
Michelle: And then of course, I lose my train of thought. That’s awesome. Oh. So one of another mistake that I see frequently is that people will use Facebook advertising to promote even a small offer, and they consider the offer to be small from their perspective, rather than looking at it from a client’s perspective. This is as a creative It’s really easy for us and maybe for other entrepreneurs too, but I mostly work with creatives for us to kind of get in the zone, and we think in terms of how much it’s how much coding it’s going to take to add that functionality to a site, or how anyone ought to know that that site is on an old version of WordPress, and it’s going to break any time. And we think about our offers within that silo instead of thinking about them from the perspective of our potential client. So we might say, hey, for 50 bucks, I’ll give you a website analysis and I’ll figure out what’s wrong with your site. Okay. To someone who doesn’t understand our industry, that’s $50 or £50 or whatever you want to say. That’s money spent for something that feels like black magic. They don’t understand what they’re getting. They don’t understand why they need it. That is actually not a small ask. There’s a fair bit of trust involved there for someone who doesn’t know how to work the back end of their site, and you’re going to go in and maybe break it. No I’m not. That’s like, you know, dropping your child off with somebody. Boyfriend’s mother for for daycare. You’re like, what? You know, I’m not doing that. So we think that’s a small ask, but actually that’s a large ask. And and it needs to be warmed up with maybe an opt in of, you know, signs that your website has a problem or what to do if you’re feeling, you know. But the point I’m trying to make is point I’m trying to make is when we consider how big the ask is so we can determine what the warm up time needs to be. We have to put ourselves in the shoes of our client who is uneducated and not. We have to take off our expert hat and think of it from their perspective.
Lee: Brilliant! I absolutely love that as well. I’m loving everything you said. But then I did listen to you on Kim Dale’s show as well, which meant I was super excited. The fact that you were going to come on mine, so I knew you were just going to drop value bomb after value bomb.
Michelle: Tell all your friends. Oh, I’m sorry.
Lee: I am literally telling all my friends because all my friends listen to this show.
Michelle: Perfect.
Lee: Thousands a month of the awesome people. Which is fantastic, folks. Remember, you can grab talking about leading with value. You can grab that download from Michelle that is helping you with the business side of your creative business creative agency. That’s michellehuntercreative.com/creatingprofitability a framework to help you understand. Uh, well it says here I’m reading it out now. Let me just read it out. Why not. Because you are the copywriter, not me. Know how to identify which offers make you money and which should be eliminated. I literally know ten people off the top of my head who have asked me this question recently. So this is for you guys MichelleHuntercreative.com/creating profitability. Also you can learn how to evaluate the profitability of new offers before you launch them and discover solutions to the business model problems you face. So this sounds like something all of us could use to download is completely free. And I see Michelle is doing the exact thing she’s talking about here. You know, talking about the pain, showing that, you know, potential solutions that are inside of this. And the ask is not big. The ask is literally just my email address and my name so that I can get access to this documentation. And then I can build up an awareness of Michelle, like her content, etc. and then you never know, eventually engage as well. Michellehuntercreative.com/creating-Profitability in the show notes I that’s a great.
Lee: Fake accent. That is Michelle. We’re pretty much coming up to our time for this episode. So first of all, thank you so much. Thank you for telling things as stories. I love it when people tell stories because it helps us understand things a hell of a lot better than just throwing word stuff at us. And then we don’t know what you’re talking about. So that was brilliant. How else can people connect with you before we say goodbye?
Michelle: Well, you can go out to my website, MicheleHuntercreative.Com and there’s a little bit of content there. There’s an inquiry form. You can inquire. I promise I won’t ask you to marry me or anything like that. As a result of that, I really would encourage you to take that opt in that you’ve so lovely in such a lovely way. Promoted for me, because I’m launching as of April 1st, and Inbound Content Marketing system, which actually means that if you sign up and opt in, take that opt in, you’ll receive articles that I write twice per week beginning in April. In your email, you can unsub whenever you want. So if that feels heavy to you, you can just not do it. But what I love about that and what my intention is, is I’m writing this content is not to write blogs that are necessarily all about what I’ve eaten today or what my dog is wearing for Christmas, but to actually answer valuable questions that creatives have. And there’s not a lot of sales, actually, there’s none, because this is how I’m warming you up and drawing you closer to me in full disclosure.
Michelle: By Providing lots of good, helpful content. And so if you never work with me, that’s perfectly fine with me as long as I’ve added value to your agency. So please go out and sign up for that. I promise there will not be a huge sales message or anything awkward. I think that I will also say, however, if you’re listening to me and you know that you have business model issues, you know that you’re struggling with marketing, you know that the stuff you’re doing isn’t profitable. Like you’re working way too hard for the amount of money that you’re keeping. At the end of the day, we should probably talk. And so if we get together on an inquiry call, I don’t have a big sales message at the end because I don’t believe in being salesy. If you want to work with me and we agree that there might be an opportunity, then I may create a proposal for you, but I don’t.
Lee: You like to Quote people.
Lee: I do. I like, I like a long dating cycle before I marry. That’s just how it is.
Lee: Oh that’s awesome Michelle.
Lee: Thank you so much for your time. You are a legend. I use that a lot, but that’s because I invite great people on the show, and I’m honored to have met you, to be connected with you and to have learned from you. I’m also on your list, so I’m looking forward to the articles that are going to be coming in from the 1st of April, as long as that article is not entitled April Fools.
Michelle: I haven’t. Written that yet, but that’s a great Idea.
Lee: I go, I tricked you!
Lee: Um, anyway, thank you so much. Take care. Have a wonderful and productive early morning.
Michelle: Thank you.
Michelle: Thank you so much. It was my pleasure. I appreciate you, you and being on your show.
Lee: Thank you. Nice one.
Lee: Cheers.
Lee: Bye bye.
Michelle: And that wraps up today’s show. Don’t forget to grab your free download. Check the show notes for the full URL. If you are not registered for Agency Transformation life, remember there are only nine days left to grab your ticket as of the recording of this show, so check out for more information on Agency Transformation Live. If you want to invest in yourself and get the most out of that event, go ahead and check out episode 200. You will be blessed by that episode even if you’re not coming, because it’s going to help you understand how to transform and scale your agency for the better. So go ahead and check that out. And in that is a reward for investing in yourself, which is £75 off of the ticket if you would like to come. So be sure to check out episode 200 for that special offer and agency transformation live! For all the information about our event here in the UK. If we don’t see you at the event, we will see you in the next episode.
