Wondering how copywriters could be using Facebook and Instagram ads to grow their business? Our guest for the 425th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast is Kwadwo Sampany-Kessie. Kwadwo had to reinvent his business during the pandemic. And today he helps businesses grow with ads on Meta. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.

Stuff to check out:

The Accelerator FastTrack

The Art of Online Business Podcast

The Copywriter Club Facebook Group

The Copywriter Underground

Full Transcript:

Rob Marsh: Facebook ads. Copywriters write them. Some copywriters run them. All of us see and click on them. And yet, most of us don’t have a deep understanding of how to use them for our clients or our own businesses. It’s not a skill you can easily pick up by listening to a podcast, but we can get a deeper understanding of them with the help of an expert.

Hi I’m Rob Marsh and on today’s episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, my guest is Facebook Ads Manager Kwadwo Sampany-Kessie. Kwadwo’s business collapsed during the pandemic and he had to create an entirely new means for supporting his family. So he began a business helping others use Facebook to promote their products.  

That’s not all we talked about. Kwadwo talked about the value of learning a new language and how that can change your perspective on the world. And the challenges of starting over. I think you’re going to like this episode.

Before we get to that… I’ve been telling you about The Copywriter Accelerator FastTrack— 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 hundreds of others.

The only way to get the business changing strategies and proven ideas we share in The Accelerator is with the Fast Track edition. And it will be going away sometime in the new year.  So if you’ve been thinking of joining the accelerator, this is just about your last chance to get that game-changing program. I’m working on a new program that will replace it… something that will be more concise and immediately applicable. It’s too soon to reveal the details but if you join The Accelerator FastTrack before we launch this new program, you’ll get The Accelerator and free access to the new program when it launches. That includes all of the content, the 8 modules and blueprints and several bonuses that will help you find and land the high-paying clients you want. If you get started with the FastTrack now, when the new year is here you’ll be ready with 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 Kwadwo…

Kwadwo welcome to the podcast. I’m excited. First of all, as I said, as we were starting to chat just to meet you, but also to have you on to tell us your story, how you became a Facebook ads manager, a strategy partner, host of a very popular podcast. How did you get here?

Kwadwo: Let’s go back to when I was sitting in Beijing, China, the capital of China, with my wife at a Mediterranean restaurant. And we were enjoying our hummus and naan and we’re sitting and we’re overlooking like a popular shopping strip. And so we’re chatting and just relating about China life because I’ve lived there for 12 years. And the next thing that happened was It’s very typical for me, but my wife had never experienced before. And so a couple of tables down, there’s two Russian girls. They had spotted me, and they had started giggling like they saw somebody famous. And the thing is, I was famous, and I’ll go into that in a moment. they made their way over to the table and, you know, say, excuse me, introduce themselves and wanted to take a selfie with me. So I introduced them to my wife and then did the selfie thing and they went away. And my wife was like, wow, you weren’t joking. Like this happens. People recognize you as the elementary Chinese guy. And elementary Chinese was my prior business that got decimated by the pandemic where I taught Mandarin Chinese. 

I’m going to go into the story a little bit, but I taught Mandarin Chinese to expats, expatriates, people who are not Chinese, but living and working professionally in China. And that was going quite well. I have this desire now as a Facebook ad manager, and I’m skipping forward, but we’ll get back to that previous business and what happened and why I’m not doing that anymore. But I have the desire to help people run their ads profitably and not make the mistakes that I made back then that got me famous for that previous business, but did not fill up my courses with a bunch of students who were the right fit for me to serve. 

And so here’s what happened. I was basically on the Hollywood B-lister level of fame. Conservatively, three out of ten people, expats, in China would recognize me on the street. And that happened because one timing, it’s some sort of success that usually has to do with like luck and chance. And so one was timing. I was showing ads at a time in China, a market that’s walled off. So like all of the good social media, you know, the YouTubes, the Pinterest, the Twitters, X now, Facebook and Instagram, you can’t access in China without a VPN, virtual private network that helps you tunnel under what they call the great firewall of China to keep out all the Western influence. And so I was showing Facebook ads for that business in China and getting my funny videos about speaking Chinese were showing up for super cheap all over everyone, at least the expats, like iPhones and Android devices. And that grew my Instagram account. I don’t know, 27, almost 30,000 folks like back in 2017, 2018, which is not a huge account, but decent. And lots of people knew me, but because Instagram is all about showing your ads. And this is why I say, constantly do not boost your post. Instagram loves it. I know you’ve seen it on your Instagram, right? This post is reaching more people than usual. Let’s go ahead and show it to more. Hit that boost button now. And it’s like, don’t do it. Don’t do it. They want to show your post to people who like to interact. But if only all of our Instagram followers or even 80% of them, 70% I’ll take that turned into customers. What happened was is since I have two kids and my wife and I like to speak foreign languages to our kids, I was speaking Mandarin to them. Their nanny in China was speaking Mandarin to them. My wife speaks fluent Spanish. 

We decided to take a vacation to Mexico and it happens to be on January 13th, 2020. And so a couple of weeks after that, people start looking at us sideways and saying, uh, where did you say you came from again? And we’re like, uh, we’ve been out of China for 14 days. We’re good to go. And then we were quarantining in Mexico. We extended our Airbnb into like a three month long-term stay because why not? It’s Mexico, chips and guac everywhere. A bit less so during the quarantine and then China shut down their border. So. And I think they gave us seven days to fly back. And well, who wants to buy one-way tickets with less than seven day notice for four people? And because my business was incorporated in China at the time, teaching Chinese, and our visas were tied to that business, we ended up not being able to return to China, having to get our cell phones, hop on FaceTime, because we’re Apple users, and get rid of everything in our apartment when our apartment lease was up. And so imagine four, four bedrooms of stuff, some good friends going over there and we got reunited with six luggages later on. And that was how the previous business ended. And the current, I guess the genesis of the current business where I, I coach and help with funnel strategy for online course creators and I run their Facebook and Instagram ads. That’s how that started.

Rob Marsh: That is nuts. Just the being locked out of your home, your place, everything. That’s crazy.

Kwadwo: Yeah. I think it technically was a midlife crisis. Hopefully I live longer than the half life that I had lived up to that point.

Rob Marsh: It might be your first midlife crisis. I hope to never have one nearly as bad as that. Before we talk about, you know, Facebook and the things you’re doing in your business, let’s talk about learning languages. So I am, I am one of those people who I love to travel, love to travel. Yes. But. I am also terrible in that I cannot speak another language fluently. I know a little bit of Spanish. I can read a little bit of French