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October 4th, 2019 ← The day I took my life in my own hands

Writer's picture: John BrandtJohn Brandt

Today’s an important milestone for me. 


You know how the stat goes: Around 50% of businesses fail within their first five years. 


But not mine. 


Today is my 5th year anniversary. To the day. Five years ago was my last day at the design agency I worked for before I started my copy business. Friday, October 4, 2019 was my last day. Today is Friday October 4th, 2024. I’m still here. My business is still here. And I ain’t going anywhere. 


I still remember my first day without a “job.” 


After taking the weekend off because I needed it—before I officially quit my job, I started laying the foundation for my business, which meant working 8+ hours at the agency during the week, then another 4 hours or so after work, while spending at least 6 (and sometimes more like 12) hours on the weekend, I needed one last break before I went balls to the wall. 


But I remember sitting down at my laptop that following Monday with absolutely nothing I “had” to do. Sure, I was in a tricky situation: Besides the partial paycheck that was coming in two weeks, I had zero clients and zero moolah coming in. So, I didn’t just browse social media at the time—I spent the full day working as hard, if not harder, than I did when I was grinding 12 hour days juggling both my job and my future.


Still - the freedom that consumed me that Monday morning was infatuating. 


I had complete control over my day and how much I could earn. I didn’t have to play the office politics game I hated. 


Shortly after I landed my first client. 


Then another came in. 


And another. 


And another. 


When I started making them money, that’s when my life changed. 


Anyway, I’ve come a long way in the past five years. 


* I wrote a book (and I’m feeling the “itch” to do another)


* I’ve generated well over 20 million in sales for my clients


* I’ve watched my business grow from barely breaking $3k a month to having months where I’ve done well over $20k 


But I’ve also made my fair share of mistakes along the way too. 


That’s why, since I was in Jamaica over my 30th birthday (and spared you from the played-out 30 lessons I’ve learned in 30 years schtick) I wanted to share with you the five most important things I’ve learned in five years of running this here copy bidness. 


They’ll also apply to your business too (even if you don’t have a copy or service business).


1. Never stop marketing 


This was one of the biggest mistakes I made early on. After struggling for the first month or so, I suddenly started to hit a nerve in my cold outreach. I quickly jumped from 3 or 4 clients… to… 8 or 9. 


“I had made it,” I thought. 


At the time and because I didn’t have an offer and would say “yes” to everything, these 8 or 9 clients (give or take) resulted in 6 to 8k in monthly revenue. 


In other words, I doubled my salary by the end of 2019/beginning of 2020. 


But I became too busy to continue doing the same level of cold outreach that got me to where I was. And so, I stopped. Completely. For more months than I’d like to admit. 


At first, I didn’t notice anything. My clients stuck around. And I was making a similar amount each month. 


Fast forward a couple of months and losing a few clients, and I was back to square one. Except, worse: I didn’t have any leads in my pipeline. And while my wallet didn’t “feel” the impact of me stopping marketing for a few months, it changed in an instant. 


That’s when I learned another important lesson:  


2. What got you to where you are now won’t get you to where you want to go


Like I said, I had no money to spend on marketing when I started. All I had was a partial paycheck due in a few weeks, a dream, and an insane work ethic. 


But I couldn’t rely on this insane work ethic. 


As soon as my clients started eating up my day more, I stopped my “bare bones” lead gen strategy. This strategy was free, but it was time-consuming. It didn’t take much thought or brain power, but it took time.


And all the client work I was doing was taking too much brain power to have anything “left” when it came time to scour Google for leads, use Hunter.io to find them, and then load them up into my Streak CRM for outreach. 


That’s when my mentor at the time called me an idiot, said I should buy a list on Fiverr and use an automated cold outreach platform so I didn’t have to do any work. 


I don’t know why I never thought of this. But this led to my next big breakthrough. And it also laid the foundation for my current success (even though, more recently, I’ve “upgraded” to using agencies for cold outreach to take even more off my plate to better serve my clients). 


Moving on… 


3. You need to work “on” your business instead of just “in” it


My next big breakthrough—which led to consistently making $10k a month and having months as high as $25k, $17k, and $16k—happened next. 


After I started saying “no” more often to random copy projects and instead started focusing on what I’m best at, emails, I realized I made another mistake: 


My offers weren’t good. 


I barely even had an offer. 


And that’s what I focused on next. 


I started brainstorming better offers. Offers that would be more attractive to potential clients, make more “sense” to them, while also giving me a fatter lump sum than I was used to. Not only did this let me trade some of my low-paying, annoying clients for higher-paying, less annoying clients, but it let me serve the latter group better. 


Oh yeah, and I also ratcheted up my price during this time. Another lesson every business owner needs to hear about early and often. 


Creating better offers also resulted in easier sales calls. I went from converting around 20% of calls to clients to 50%. 


4. Make time for learning and creating (and having fun)


Peanut and I started dating around 9 months into my business’s life. This created a new set of challenges: She wasn’t used to someone working from home or doing creative work. 


But she also played an important role in my personal life (obv). 


Peanut made me travel more. And we’ve been to a lot of places (Chicago, Mexico, Florida, Colorado, Jamaica, Vegas, Myrtle Beach, Austin, to name a few). 


And nothing focuses you like traveling. 


I tapped into this “travel focus” when I wrote (and published) my first book in 60 days. 


I tap into this “travel focus” when I still handcopy direct response ads. 


And, of course, I tap into this “travel focus” when it’s time to get a bunch of extra work done before traveling, so I can better enjoy myself while I’m there. 


Plus, there’s the added benefit of coming back to a bigger business when I travel. It doesn’t happen every time, but it happens a scary amount of time. 


5. Always be on Team Client (even when it sucks) 


This last one is my superpower as a service provider. 


I’m always on Team Client (even when it sucks). 


How does it suck? 


Well, before leaving for Jamaica, I got slammed with random questions from clients asking for help. I hop on an hour-long meeting with another client every Monday because of this. And it’s also made me yell and shame clients when they need it—even though I don’t particularly want to do such. 


But it makes us better. 


It makes me more valuable and less replaceable. 


And it’s the secret sauce for why my average customer lifespan is insanely high. In fact, there are still a few of my clients that I still work with since October 2019. 


How many service providers can say they’ve worked with their clients for five years? 


Not many, mesuspects. 


Anyway, there are a lot more lessons that I’ve learned over these past five years too. 


But this email is already much longer than usual, so lemme wrap it up:


In another five years, when I write my 10-year anniversary email, mayhap you could be the beneficiary of my copy and email skills. 


Which means, I’d talk about you in that milestone email. 


Or mayhap you know a business who struggles with their emails. Well, if’n you connect us, I’ll still honor the 50% first-month commission (which could be a pretty penny for ya). 


So hit reply if you want to make more moolah from your emails each month like clockwork. Just be prepared to stick with me for the long-haul. 


John

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