A lot of copywriters need a way to attract prospects… but more than that, they need to do it in a way that immediately communicates that they’re the expert—an advisor clients can trust. In the 424th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, I spoke with copywriter Meg Kendall about creating an industry report that does this perfectly. If you want to stand out from all the other copywriters who depend on lead magnets and social posts to get clients, you need to listen to this episode. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.

Stuff to check out:

Meg’s Website

The Copywriter Accelerator Fast Track

The Copywriter Club Facebook Group

The Copywriter Underground

Full Transcript:

Rob Marsh:  One of the biggest challenges copywriters face… actually it’s not just copywriters, it’s freelancers of every kind… one of the big challenges we all face is getting noticed. But more than that, getting noticed in a way that builds trust with the clients you want to work with.

Just about everyone has a lead magnet… or an email list… or content on social media… all with the intent of making a connection to prospects and potential clients. If you don’t have those you should. They’re table stakes for creating a successful business.

But because everyone has them, you have to do more than these to stand out. One way to stand out is to write an eye-opening industry report that immediately sets you up as the expert in the field. It’s more than a download, it’s a shortcut to interviewing potential clients, establishing relationships with them, and demonstrating your ability.

Hi I’m Rob Marsh and on today’s episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, my guest is copywriter Meg Kendall. Meg followed this exact path to connect with several potential clients in her niche. She’ll be sharing exactly how she did it in this interview. 

Before we get to that… you’ve heard of The Copywriter Accelerator program. That’s our business foundations program used by more than 350 copywriters to start, build and scale their own writing business. Graduates include six-figure writers like Justin Blackman, Kirsty Fanton, Michal Eisik, Dani Paige, Krystal Church, and today’s podcast guest, Meg Kendall.

We no longer run that program live… the only way to get the business changing strategies and proven ideas we share in The Accelerator is with the Fast Track edition. And as I mentioned on this show last week, even that will be going away sometime in the new year.  So if you’ve been thinking of joining the accelerator, time is running out. What will replace it? It’s too soon to reveal the details but if you join the accelerator fast track before we launch this new program, you’ll get early access to both the accelerator and the new program. Until then, you get all of the content, the 8 modules and blueprints and several bonuses that are included in The Accelerator Fast Track. And when we launch the new program sometime next year, you’ll get that updated program too. Don’t wait to work on your business so when the new year is here you have a steady flow of clients and a signature service you’re proud to offer them. Visit thecopywriterclub.com/fasttrack to learn more today.

And now, let’s go to our interview with Meg Kendall.

Hey Meg, welcome to The Copywriter Club Podcast. Let’s start with your story. I’ve been watching you build your business now for a couple of years. I think it’s a good one.

Meg Kendall: All right. Yeah. I feel like my story is kind of similar to a lot of other copywriters and that it’s very winding and maybe a lot of the backstory is fairly irrelevant to what I do now. So I had a fairly long career in hospitality. I worked as a server and a bartender for about 10 years, and it was pretty hard to leave. At some points, I wasn’t sure I would ever leave. And then I finally broke out, and that was via going back to school for the millionth time, it feels like. Really, it was the fourth time that I finally got my undergraduate degree, and that was in botany. And I lean on that a lot today because most of my clients are… 

So I work in climate tech, so they’re all very focused on the science behind climate change. just like very technical topics, et cetera, stuff like that. So they love that I have a botany degree. From there, I moved to New York city for a job, completely irrelevant to botany. I moved there as the technical term is an orientation and mobility specialist, but nobody knows what that is. So I’ll tell you, I was a travel instructor for visually impaired students in the Bronx and New York city. So that was a really interesting time period of my life. And I’m only telling it because it’s relevant to switching my way to copywriting. 

Yeah, so I was in New York City. So many big changes in such a short amount of time. I moved to New York City with my husband, left that 10-year-long hospitality career, became pregnant with my now two-and-a-half-year-old daughter pretty much like a week after we got to New York City, which wasn’t in the plan, but was a happy accident. Yeah, really, really hated my job in the Bronx. It’s just, they didn’t paint an accurate picture of what the job was going to be like. And I found that out pretty quickly, but I was there at this job and I was pregnant and I had great health insurance and I couldn’t leave my nice health insurance job in New York City to go bartend pregnant in New York city. Right. So all that’s going on. 

And so two years past that I do this, like I’m, you know, I’m crying in the hallways at my job. It’s sad, but it’s fine. Like I’m getting through it. And then I have Charlie and I’m like, how do I get out of this? How do I get back to my roots and get back to doing something that I love doing and, like, never have to go back to this place again? It’s funny because I didn’t think about it while – I did think about it while I was pregnant, but I didn’t try to actively work my way out of it. And it wasn’t until Charlie was born that I was like, oh, I can’t go back there. Like, I just can’t do it. It’s not going to happen. So I remember that once upon a time I was going to earn an English degree, but everyone’s an English degree major, but everyone scared me out of it because there’s no way you can make a living as a writer. Like you’ll have to, you know, you know, the same old trope. No one thinks you can make any money writing for a living. I’m sure most of the people listening to this podcast have heard that same cliche throughout their careers. 

I found myself in someone’s marketing funnel. I think it was The Comprehensive Copywriting Academy. And that’s how I discovered copywriting. I didn’t even know what it was. And I just really went all in on it immediately with my little five-day-old baby. And yeah, took it from there. And things have snowballed since then. I think when I first learned of you guys, I was learning like, oh, it’s a good idea to niche. Now, I think it was you that told me. I was like, I’m going to niche down to B2B SaaS. And you were like, that’s not niching. I was like, OK. Yeah, I guess you’re right. Because I was so new to everything. I didn’t really have any concept of the scope and what was possible and just how far niched you could get. And yeah, I came, I’d always wanted to work in sustainability, but I think I had the same, the same problem with sustainability as I did with writing. Like I’m like, either you work in a job that you love and you don’t make any money or you can make money and work, work in a job that you don’t love very much. So I’d always, I’d never achieved a job in sustainability. And then through copywriting, I discovered climate tech, which marries these two worlds of lbeing able to have a lucrative career working with like fancy technologies that are moving the world forward, but also doing something good for the world and the world of sustainability. So it seemed like a pretty perfect match right away.

Rob Marsh: Yeah. I want to go back to you being a bartender. I was a bartender before I started copywriting. Not for 10 years. I did it for maybe a year and a half, two years or so. But were there things that you take from that experience of working with people daily, trying to keep them happy, that basically translates to copywriting today?

Meg Kendall: Absolutely. So I think a lot of things, one thing being the obvious, like you’re behind the bar and people drink and they spill you their life secrets. I feel like you do get that sort of inside look at human psychology and you’re exposed to so many differen