Allison Evelyn Gower is our guest for the 172nd episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. We asked Allison about her experience creating her first program, what inspired her to move fast, and how she got scrappy to fill it. She offers plenty of learning and advice to anyone who is thinking of creating a program or course. Here's the outline of what we covered during this interview:
• what inspired her transition from film production to copywriting
• how she learned to be “scrappy” as a production assistant
• how Allison landed her first few clients
• what’s happened in her business since she launched—lots of changes
• the process she went through to find her niche
• the 3 things that have been the biggest game changers for her business
• how she pulls brand personality out of her clients
• the answers Rob and Kira gave to one of Allison’s on-boarding questions
• how to get feedback from clients on the words that describe you
• secrets for identifying the language that shows off your personality
• how you project your personality into the world
• what she did when she launched her day-rate package
• why she decided to launch a group program—and how Kira lit a fire under her
• how Allison mapped out her program and created her content
• what she did to fill her first program—an idea she stole from Tarzan Kay
• the things she’s doing differently as she relaunches the course
• how to run a business while moving across the country
If your copywriting business could be scrappier or you're looking for some launch inspiration for your first product, you won't want to miss this interview. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript. Better still, subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher so you never miss an episode.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show:
Joe Nefziger
Tarzan Kay
Laura Belgray
The Copywriter Think Tank
Allison's Website
The Brand with Bite Podcast
Kira’s website
Rob’s website
The Copywriter Club Facebook Group
The Copywriter Underground
Full Transcript:
Kira: This episode is brought to you by The Copywriter Club In Real Life, our live event in San Diego, March 12th through the 14th. Get your tickets now at thecopywriterclub.com/tccirl.
Rob: What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That's what Kira and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast.
Kira: You're invited to join the club for episode 172 as we chat with copywriter and product creator Allison Gower about how she became a copywriter, her first big solo product launch. How she's changed the work she does over time, launching a podcast and running a business while moving across the country. Welcome Allison.
Allison: Hey mates. How's it going?
Kira: Good. It's always good with you. It's always good. So we're so excited to have you here to talk more about your story. Let's kick it off with how you became a copywriter.
Allison: Oh my life, in a summary. Yes, let's go. So the long story short, I was always making up ads and writing as a kid and doing all these things that had no idea what actually does something later in life. Right? Like I think a lot of us, copywriters and people in brand, we look back as kids and are like, ‘Oh yeah.’
Rob: We don't normally interrupt you in the story. But ads as a kid, what were you writing ads of?
Allison: Me and my best friend, elementary school, we came up with this candy bar and we called it a nitwit bar and we created the packaging. We actually made a barn, created the design and then we created commercials for it. And then we had a school project where honestly, you didn't really have to do very much but we went real hard and then create a commercial and performed it. So we would do stuff like that all the time for fun. And yet it took me another two decades to figure out what I wanted to do. Which is kind of funny, because it should have been obvious. So doing stuff like that. Majored in English, minored marketing, was working in production. So it sounds glamorous to say we had headsets and we're in LA working on shoots and all the things.
But what I discovered was even though there was a lot I loved about the production world, commercials and photo shoots and all the things I always felt this jealousy almost of the agencies we worked with, because then I would partner with them, it would be story-boarding and saying, ‘Oh here are the words, this is what the brand should be.’ And then we would take our stuff and go make the commercial happen. I always felt like, ‘Oh the fun part was in the room that we just left.’ And I think sometimes a little bit of... We feel that envy or sadness like, ‘That show is what we're supposed to be doing.’ It was one of the gents who would be in the story boarding sessions who were on a shoot one day. And I saw him taking notes and I didn't know his exact role. Right? I just knew he was in those rooms, in the storyboard meetings.
I asked him, ‘Joe, what do you do? What's your actual specific title?’ And he said, ‘I'm a copywriter.’ And I said, ‘I'm going to change my life.’ Because I asked them what that meant specifically in his role and from there on I basically stalked him a little bit. ‘Mike, let me get coffee with you, check his first workshop.’ And I spent eight months, while still working in production, getting up at 3:00 AM for sunrise shoots, running around, getting Perrier for clients, real wild times. Y'all real wild times. Every weekend, everyday after work, learning everything I could about copywriting on YouTube and podcasts and got my first freelance gigs. My first one was off Craigslist. Yes. Seems janky but totally was legit. And then went freelance after eight months, turned it into a business. And Rob and Kira, here we are. Here's life.
Rob: Yeah. Before we get to today's life, I want to jump back just a little bit to those first couple of projects. I'm guessing that a lot of people listening, struggling to find their first clients or they found the first one or two but then they struggled to do more. So back about how you found that first client, what was it that you did in order to get that janky, almost changing client, but then how did you turn that into client number two and client number three?
Allison: Oh y'all, it was super strategic, as in really scrappy. So not fancy at all. My first client I found on Craigslist and because I started interviewing copywriters, I was very lucky to be in this production world where I was meeting with copywriters and I would just ask them on the side, ‘By the way, how did you get your clients?’ I would question, I would take notes on everything that they said. So basically like your podcast before, I think your podcast existed. So going around and finding and hunting these people down and someone said, ‘It sounds weird, but go on Craigslist.’ So I figured, what do I have to lose? So on Craigslist there was a lot of things that your gut goes off, your gut knows, ‘Okay, that's a weird sketchy situation.’ So I just went through every day until I found one that I felt I could actually be a fit for.
Did it feel natural? Absolutely not. Because if you've never charged for your own writing before, you don't really know what you're doing, what pay you're supposed to expect and all these things. But it was for a blog and it was about my neighborhood where I already lived and they wanted someone local to put out blogs and posts and they were charging by the word and I went, ‘Okay.’ I was Googling, ‘Do you charge by the word?’ Right? Looking at the things and figured this is something I could do.
I wrote an email where I sounded like I already knew what I was doing. I'm not going to lie. Full on, ‘This is why you should hire me. I'm going to crush this for you. Here's all the reasons.’ Went through all the things, was a very confident email, even though I did not feel super confident, and got that. My second client y'all, this is so scrappy. I was dating someone for just a couple of weeks and he had a friend community for pizza with a group hang situation. And I just was starting to say I was a writer. I was just saying it to people. Like, ‘Oh what do you do?’ ‘I work in production, I'm a writer on the side. I write.’
I just kept saying it because I figured if I kept saying it I would feel more and more it was true, because I knew I could write. It was just, I hadn't been paid much for it before. And his friend turned out, worked at an agency and said, ‘Oh we need freelance writers all the time.’ And he got me my second gig, this random friend. So the lesson I suppose in this is sometimes it really is just speaking up all the time about what you do, because I only had literally one client, but I spoke like I was doing more with confidence, because I knew I could do it if I got the chance. I knew I could, I just needed someone to take a chance on me.
Kira: Yeah. It's almost like speaking to where you want to go. Speaking about like your future title. I mean even though you'd already had your first project, you were really forecasting the direction you wanted to take your career and you weren't shy in a way from saying that. So it started to come to you and worked out that way. So who is the original, the copywriter guy that you originally asked? ‘Hey, what do you do on set?’ ‘Have you kept track of him?’
Allison: Yeah, I went to his house warming party actually a couple of years later, because I moved and it turned out the house that him and his wife bought was down the street from my apartment. So it was funny. Yeah, I still saw him. Now he's doing... His name is Joseph Nefzinger. Joe, what's up?
