Are you ever in for a treat with today's special guest? Okay. For context. Anytime you write words for your business, one could argue that is called copy and you are what is called copywriting. So if writing words that are designed to ultimately sell stuff is an art.
Then today I have with me Picasso.
Today's guest is a world-class copywriter and copywriting teacher and the copywriting tips and advice that she drops in this episode might honestly make you sell so much more just by adjusting the way you are writing about what it is you sell.
She is also a national bestselling author of her book. Tough titties on living your best life when you're the effing worst and co-creator of The Copy Cure with Marie Forleo, which is an incredible online copywriting course that I took and I highly recommended. And now I will seamlessly segue into my interview with Laura Belgray.
Do you know that I talk about you behind your back all the time? I don't know that, but I want to, I hope it's good, and if so, I want to hear everything.
If not, it'll probably ruin my day, but I assume you're mentioning it because you say nice things. No, I would never say mean things. I just talk about the copy cure all the time, which is the copywriting program that you co created with Marie Forleo. Yes. Oh my gosh. I love that you talk about it. Thank you for spreading the love.
If I ever refer to anything I learned, I make sure to give you credit. I toot your horn. Thank you for tooting my horn because, uh, that, that is always great.
And the more people who find out about the copy cure, the better because so many people need it. Was that part of why you guys created it? Like, what went through your head when you were deciding what are the first things somebody needs to know when you're a small business owner and you're starting to write copy and you need to write it better?
You probably saw a lot of bad copy. Yes. So much bad copy. The main thing that I saw, was that people did not and still do not know how to write like they talk, which is one of the first rules of copywriting is writing conversationally, people do not have any sense of. Like the words they're putting down on the page, matching how they would actually say them out loud to a friend.
Most of us have, casual conversational, style drilled out of us, whether it's in school, in elementary school, in high school, in college, like academia is the worst for this, making everything formal and putting big red lines through anything with a contraction in it, like with the phosphorphene in it, and then you get a lot of corporate escapees, especially people who've worked in legal, who would never dare say, wouldn't instead of would not.
So their websites will say, you know, hello and welcome to my website. I will now teach you how to blah, blah, blah. I am so glad that you are here. And it's like, God damn it. Can't you just say, I'm so glad you're here, but they wouldn't dare. Um, and they don't even know how formal and stiff it sounds.
So that was the first thing that we had our mind set. To drill out of people is that formality they mistake formal for professional. So it's almost like you have to like teach them the skill in the writing skill, but really you have to get inside their head and be like,
hey, trust me. It's okay. You can release the idea that using a contraction means you're unprofessional or something. Yes, absolutely.
Contractions like just using making use of that right pinky, which touches Mr. Apostrophe, that one key can make so much difference in your copywriting. So that and,, another, hallmark of terrible coffee is all the squishy, vague words and buzzwords.
And especially in the online world and among women business owners, you see who consider themselves quote heart centered. You see so many, so many terms like heart centered and juicy abundance vibe. Um, all these words that mean absolutely nothing. That's so funny that you say that, because I have been crafting a list for my clients of all of my banned words that they're not allowed to say, because I kind of had them in my head and every time I was teaching, I'd be editing, like, I'll edit people's copy, many skills of which I learned from you, and I'll, I'll, I'll like, be like, oh, this is on my banned list, like, this is, you're not allowed to say this, whatever, and they're like, can you just give us this list?
I'm like, well, it's not really a list, but now it is, and abundance is one of them. So, okay, tell me more about your , favorite, least favorite words. That is definitely one of them. Although, you know, some of these have become shorthand that people know, but in the beginning it was kind of like, these words are meaningless.
They're inside baseball words that like your coach, a bunch of coaches talking to other coaches in a language that you've all learned together and your customers aren't going to get this at all. And I still believe that. Um, I do believe there's like a, A generation of people who now relate to the word abundance.
And so it's hard to ban it, but I still say, instead of using that word, talk about what it means. Is it having a surplus of money? Like, what is abundance? Abundance of toilet paper, abundance of, You know, abundance of time, abundance of what, so like feeling abundant in yourself is just, I hate phrases like that.
Step into your power. What does that mean? Does step into your power mean, is there a pile of power on the sidewalk that you stepped into and it's all over your shoe or does it mean you walk into a room and everyone puts down their phone to listen to you? Or does it mean that you say no when you're invited to a jazz concert because you hate jazz?
And you have the power to say, no, instead of being a people pleaser, describe things, paint a picture. So that was one of the big things that we wanted to teach in the copy cure and do is about using words to paint a picture rather than using these shorthand buzzwords that are, either are meaningless or have lost all meaning.
People that just heard you say that, I feel like you're going to have so many light bulbs going off because you made it sound so easy and it's, it is a special skill, but it is a learnable special skill.
And so listener, I want you to know that you can do that too. Like you can translate your words into more specific words. picture painting words that then make your audience so much more receptive to all of your content. I have a question about like your life. Yes. So now you're this big fancy lady, who has this on.
I don't know if you guys can't see her, but she's wearing a tiara. Um, how much of you I'm wearing, sorry, I'm wearing a fleece sweatshirt, which is what I live in. And what you can't see is I'm also wearing fleece sweatpants. Which I also live in, which my husband refers to as my givin ups. No, he doesn't! Oh yes, he does.
You're like, yeah, goin out in those, huh? In your givin ups? I guess I am. In our house we call them soft pants. Soft pants. They are soft pants. Yeah. I mean, I came home the other night in hard pants. And quickly changed into my soft pants, and he was like, Why didn't you keep those jeans on? Because they're hard pants.
They're not for indoors. That's amazing. Um, so like, at this point in your biz, like, how much of your own writing are you doing? How much of your own emails are you doing? And, okay, yeah, that's my question. That's what I want to know. All of it. All of it. The only thing, I think this is the first thing that I've ever, contracted out is YouTube, um, like my YouTube videos.
I just started a YouTube channel and, I hired somebody to like break up my hours and hours and days and years of content into short videos that could be uploaded to YouTube and create the thumbnails and headlines for them, the hooks for them. And I've done a little tweaking of that.
It's just like something I don't do. Feel like doing. But when it comes to the rest of my copy, I really enjoy that. I feel like I always wanted my job to be. I had this fantasy that of having a job that consisted of writing emails to my friends. And then figured out how to make that my job. That is what earns me money, is writing emails.
It's to my list, but I consider them, every email I write in e fab, which stands for email from a bestie, and always write it as if I am writing to a friend. And, , it's my creative outlet. It is my art form, and it's what makes me money, and that's the, to me, the holy grail of work is getting paid to do, well, getting paid to be you, essentially.
And, so, I, I have no desire to outsource that. That's the thing I love doing. Yeah, yeah, I played with that in my business because I felt like you're getting all this advice about outsourcing and only doing your zone of genius. And I've over the years, how much of this am I supposed to do?
How much am I not supposed to do? And then when it came to the writing, I started training up a team, passed most of it off. And then it was like, I, I like that. I don't want to give it up. I enjoy it. Right. Well, I, I've never found anyone who could, capture my voice, even though people are saying, you know, I use chat GPT to sound like you.
I'm like, why would you want to do that? A, don't you want to sound like you? And B, show me one example of something that it came up with that sounds like me, that's incapable. And, , I've yet to meet a copywriter, even a great one who can sound like me, but the pleasure for me is in expressing myself.
And getting paid for it. So that's something I never wanted to outsource. I'm going to write an email in your voice and send it to you and ask if I did it. That's my new challenge. I'm going to try to be honest and not a people pleaser and tell you I, I can already, see myself writing back like great job when I don't mean it at all.
No one can do it. I'm promising you. All right, go ahead. I challenge you. No, I can't on the fly. I definitely would, I love like the asides that you toss in. Like, um, even not just on your website today, I was seeing, you're here because you want this, if I've pegged you right. And I like that you, have all these clever asides that are just subtle.
And I know when I'm writing, sometimes I get nervous that people won't get it. And then I spell things out a little more and you leave a little bit of room to bring the reader along, which I bet kind of gives us a dopamine hit when we're reading it because we feel clever for understanding what you mean, even though really you're the clever one for making it clear without spooning.
Thank you. You know what? I was just listening to, uh, there's a podcast called Talking Sopranos. I'm rewatching The Sopranos. And. It's with, Michael Imperioli, and, um, I'm forgetting his name, who plays Bobby, but the episode I listened to was with Alec Baldwin, and he was asking them, like, what do you think is, like, the secret to, The Sopranos?
Like, why is it so good? They said, David Chase, creator, always. Wanted the show to assume that the audience was as smart as the writers and the creators. The audience is as smart as the creators and I think that, and that is respectful and that's what makes something good. And so I never, I don't dumb down what I'm writing thinking like that people aren't as smart as me.
Yeah, I wonder how thin a line it is or if I just have some relearning to do in order to take my copy to the next level which is also on my list of banned words. Thanks. Yeah. You know, there are some things that are hard to replace. It's like, it's hard to come up with something like a substitute for next level, but it's true.
It's so overused. And it's like snooze. If you see it, you know, take your business to the next level. Like snooze. What does it mean? I'm going to say, really? How? This is actually so fitting because this morning on the like, letting your reader fill in the blanks and just trusting that they'll get it, I posted a reel today and it got 12, 000 views in like maybe half an hour.
Like, it went up really, really quickly. And then, and I was looking at the comments, the comments are all really awesome, there's so many fun quips and stuff going on in there. Once it went up, I looked at it and realized all my text, the Instagram glitched and erased all my text. There's like a glitch on Instagram right now where it sometimes does that?
When I published it, I put text explaining my joke on the screen, and then when it went up, the text was gone, and it was just a video of me, and a short caption, and to me, like, all the context was gone, but to the viewers, they got to fill in the blank, and they're eating it up.
Oh, fascinating. Don't you wish you had a side by side, like could split test it? Like, legitimately split test it for the same amount of time. I would, I would love to see that. But that's fascinating. Yeah. It also goes to show, this is total sidebar, but as an Instagram coach, I need to say that you never know, as much as we want to know, it's so empowering to release the idea that we have any idea what will succeed.
Sometimes it is the stuff you least suspect. Yes, I mean, I saw somebody posting, um, there's an Instagram expert posting that they had had a conversation with someone at Meta who said that the secret was to post consistently, meaning the same thing at the same time of day. Every day or if you post a real post it every Tuesday at 8pm and that's going to get all the traction and I doubt that very much.
I'm like, I feel like they gave her a bum steer, or who knows, maybe they really believe that, but I don't think that that's true. Now, honestly, I teach my program members and businesses to figure out how to craft posts that get engagement. What we call them as engagement attractors, so that you're being proactive about getting people to touch your posts.
So, instead of just hoping they like it, Tell them to like it in the caption, or instead of just posting a single image, make it a carousel so that they have to swipe through it. So like, build it to be touched, but then it's all about, same thing as in the copy cure, figuring out what your audience actually wants from you, ideally in their words.
And those are the only tricks to growing on any platform at the end of the day. So, Anytime someone says, Meta told me this, or whatever, I really don't believe it. Plus, sometimes when the platforms are telling us things, this is, anecdotal, but in my experience, um, sometimes what's better for them, not what's good for us.
So like when Instagram was telling us last year, only post three hashtags, well, every social media manager on the internet was like, we're still getting more reach with 15, so we're gonna do that. But, but maybe they had a reason for wanting us to have three, but it wasn't our best interest.
So you have to really be careful. You have to listen to like tricks and hacks like that with a grain of salt, just as you have. Yes. All that, like what you're saying makes perfect sense just in terms of, , you know, human nature, building it to be touched. Or telling people what to do and and the copy cure and any copy writing that I teach and storytelling is also based on human nature.
That's why it's timeless. There are trends that come and go, but, really certain things stand the test of time, which is, , when it comes to copy, getting in someone's head, saying things that sound like they're They would say to themselves or out loud rather than what you want them to want or want them to think and say, which doesn't work, , like expressing problems in the way they will say them in their head when they're up at 3 a. m. or desires the way they might think of them when they're blowing out their birthday candles. Oh, I love that one. I mean, nobody, nobody closes their eyes and says, this year I want to step into my power, so. Exactly. And so, like, I just want everyone to, I want everyone to hear this episode, I want everyone to take the copy cure, but even, I feel like you've already been so generous with your knowledge, and given people so much to think about, and if we can really translate, , what you've said, if we can really let these things sink in, Think in because a lot of this is about breaking habits or perceptions of what you think your copy should be, what you think your marketing should be, or what you think makes you look fancy.
So I encourage you, dear listener, to Come back to me. I like to sometimes be Amy Porterfield and say, If you're multitasking, come back to me. And tell you this amazing gift that Laura is going to give you. It's down in the show notes. I'll blast it everywhere. And it is a free resource called 33 non sucky subject lines for emails that always get open.
And then, and speaking of how you like to write asides, Oh yeah, plus four that tanked, and why?
Nice little parenthetical. That, that one is a classic Talking Shrimp freebie that people have. They tell me every single day that they have it, like, printed out, taped to their desk, taped to their monitor. They use it as a reference every time they're writing a subject line. So it also has templates for you to make your own.
This isn't like Uh, you know, swipe these 33 subject lines. It's a whole guide to writing our own subject lines that always get opened, , based on these different categories of them that worked for me. It's been so lovely to, , meet you, even though I feel like I know you, which happens with audiobooks and social media. Oh, speaking of which, you can also buy Laura's national bestselling book. Tough Titties on living your best life when you're the effing worst.
I really recommend that as well. I'll put that down in the show notes too. Do you have anything else you want to add to our dear viewers? No, but they should definitely pick up that book. Because, because it's awesome. I think I have to say, and it's also it, I would call it, it's not a business book and it's not a self help book, but you might call it a stealth business and self help book.
book. I mean, it's really, , you know, a memoir and essays of coming of age and on the Upper West Side of New York in the eighties, nineties and early aughts and full of dating disasters and career fails, , and humiliations. Or as my husband likes to call it, loser sex in the city, but people tell me your husband is so funny.
He's excellent. That's been my like hero marketing line, really. Yeah, people are Always telling me that they read it and like, Oh, it helped me, you know, dump my narcissistic boyfriend or, , it gave me hope because I'm a late bloomer too. Cause it's really like ballad of the late bloomer. And, , it inspired me to try something new or inspired me to pivot in my career.
So. You know, it, it might, um, in its own undercurrent way help you with your life. I believe it will. Thank you so much for all of your generosity today, Laura, and have just the best life of your fucking life. Thank you, Jenna. You too. It was a good closer, right? Yes. I don't know where I went. I don't know where 📍 I went.
I might have to cut that out. No, I think, I think that's a t shirt. Have the best life of your fucking life. I'm having the best life of my whole fucking life. I just, that's my new favorite. I like gonna say day, but like, who cares? I like, I have the best life of your life.