Alyson Lex is the copy coach and direct-response copywriter that makes the magic happen in salesletters, landing pages, lead magnets and email campaigns. She helps entrepreneurs create winning copy for their business - whether they simply need a second set of eyes or want someone to do it all for them.

She's got the experience (nearly 10 years of it!) to back it up - and she's written for clients all over the world, changing their incomes one sales page at a time. From her start at Glazer-Kennedy Insider's Circle (arguably the leading authority on all things direct-response marketing) to her current business serving private clients, Alyson lives and breathes this stuff.

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I'm looking forward to sharing another amazing industry expert with you. I am excited about our guest because it's somebody that I have known for quite a while. She’s somebody who has been a great inspiration to me. I've hired her myself, so I can endorse her on so many levels. She is the best of the best as far as I'm concerned.

Alyson Lex is a copy coach and direct response copywriter that makes the magic happen in your sales letters, landing pages, lead magnets, and email campaigns. She helps entrepreneurs like you create winning copy for your business, whether you simply need a second set of eyes or you want someone to do it all for you.

She's got the experience of more than ten years to back it up and she's written for clients all over the world, changing their incomes, one sales page at a time. She is the leading expert on all things direct response marketing to her business, serving private clients. Alyson lives and breathes copy and not just copy, but high converting copy. Thanks so much, Alyson, for being here with me.

Thank you so much for having me. I am super excited. I love any opportunity I get to spend time and work with you.

You are so awesome. Let's start with the journey. One of the interesting things is that I love talking to people about how they got to where they are because, for me, I didn't wake up one day and say, “I'm going to own a marketing company, speak, and write some books.” I didn't do that. As a matter of fact, years ago, if somebody had told me that I'm doing what I'm doing now, I wouldn't even have believed it then. For you, where did you get to where you are now? What's the story of how you had this a-ha moment and said, “I'm going to write copy.”

My story is that I fully fell into it. I was an education major in college and I realized that being a teacher was not for me. I took a class that had existing teachers and none of them were happy and I didn't want that for myself. I had a little bit of an existential crisis where I didn't know what I was going to do. I floated around the school for a couple of years, taking random English and psych classes for fun. I decided to get a big girl job and answered a Craigslist ad to be an administrative assistant at this marketing company called Glazer-Kennedy Insiders Circle.

For the readers who don't know, Glazer-Kennedy is one of the foremost info-marketing companies in the world. They teach business owners and entrepreneurs how to make more money using direct response marketing. I fell in love with it. I had no idea about the whole world when I started there. I was immediately completely hooked. Three years later, I left, but when I left, I was the director of marketing. I went from admin assistant to the director of marketing in under three years. That's how I got started writing copy. I wrote my first sales letter for them in 2007.

You're doing it so well. I love everything you do, not just the way you write copy. I love the way you show up, post on social media, and communicate. For me, the experience was the most stressless experience I've ever had. For me, writing copy is tough. It's not something that comes easy for me. Even though I'm in the marketing industry, I do well with modifying. I have white paper paralysis. I just sit down. That's why I don't even have a blog on my website. I write articles for my magazines but other than that, I don't want to blog.

I sit down and it’s like, “I don't know what to say.” If I have something that somebody else already has, I can look at it and go, “This works better.” “I like this.” It's not something that comes easy to me. What's the difference between copy and high converting copy? We see landing pages, sales pages, web copy, and blogs. There's lots of copy out there and I remember the long sales pages like how we used to have long blog posts. What's the difference?

There are different types of copy, but I like to first split everything up into content or copy. If its content, its primary objective is to educate. That's your blog posts and video scripts for an educational YouTube video, and Facebook posts designed to be high value. Anything designed to educate falls into the content world and anything designed to sell or convert because selling does not necessarily mean an exchange of money is copy.

When I say that selling doesn't always involve an exchange of money, you can sell someone on an idea and you can sell them on the need to exchange their email address for your lead magnet to invest their time with you. There are a lot more currencies out there than just money. In my world, a high converting copy is a direct response. You have brand copy, which is what you see on Madison Avenue and Mad Men or what have you.

Big companies tend to use branding copy like your taglines like, “The best part of waking up is Folgers in your cup.” It’s a great copy because I rattled it off, and it doesn't hurt that I drink Folgers, but it's not designed for conversion. It's brand awareness. Your conversion copy is, “Enter your email address and get my thing,” or, “Sign up for this.” It has that super hyper-specific action and that's your conversion copy.

It reminds me of when I am teaching people about what is brand versus brand identity versus branding. Each one of them has an explicit purpose to get them in the right order. When you're doing copy for someone, how do you learn their voice?

Some of it is intuitive. Everybody has the ability to write copy, but not everybody has the ability to be a copywriter, which is a distinction as well. Anyone can write copy for their own business, but writing copy for someone else's business requires a little bit of empathy and intuitiveness. It’s a little bit of an art and a science. A lot of it is I spend time talking to that person. I review any materials they already have.

For instance, with you, I listened to some of your podcasts, although it helped that we’ve worked together on a different podcast before. I stalk them on social media. I read their personal page and their public page. I let their words wash over me. Frankly, when I work for clients, I never guarantee 100% right off the bat. I'm always going to try, but I want people to go into the relationship with the expectation that there will be edits. I'm not going to hit it 100% out of the park the first time.

You're not going to read their mind. It's a process.

The longer we work together, the easier it is. I have clients that I've been working with for years, and we don't have that anymore because I've got it. I've been doing it for so long.

By the time I realized, “Patty, hire someone,” I had thought to myself, “If I did, what was I saying? I was saying that I couldn't write my own copy.” I remember giving myself grace because people like to do things in different ways, like how we communicate. Some people like text, phone, or email, and some people like to read or see their stuff. I told myself that that was what it was.

When I reached out to you, I clearly remember telling you, “Don't send me a twenty-page questionnaire because if I could write all the answers to that questionnaire, I could write my own copy.” I remember saying, “You're going to need to talk to me.” One of the things that I remember was when we got on that call and you asked me questions. We were talking and I remember saying, “I'm ready, Alyson. You can go ahead and do the interview now and ask me the questions.” You said, “I already have five pages of notes. We’re done.” I was like, “Wow.”

It was a great process for me because you asked me how I felt and I got to talk instead of going, “I wanted to say this or that.” Thinking about that, I talked about how I felt and how I wanted to serve and show up. The process was fabulous. We did a little bit of editing and tweaking but not much. We did do some, but I was so surprised when I saw it because I couldn't believe how much you did have my voice down pretty good.

I'm listening to you say what your process is. I'm everywhere, all over the place, so I sound like I didn't have a lot of stuff to see. It was a great experience. I have always believed that you're not going to do things that you don't do well or don't like to do. You're not going to get them done. Why don't you work on your own brilliance and hire other people to work in theirs?

This is another thing that people should realize. I know a lot of people. I ask people all the time, “Do you write your own copy?” I have to tell you, Alyson, I had even taken copy courses and it still didn't do it for me. Finally, I was like, “You can't be good at everything.” Thank God that there are people like you who are good at that.

I have somebody who cleans my house and keeps my books. I can recognize what I'm not good at and say, “It's time for me to let it go.” I am one of those hold-onner people. I love to hold on to everything because nobody can do it as well as I can because it's my baby and it's my thing, but that's not the case. That being said, when it comes to your copy, you should at least know how to recognize good copy. That way, you don't get shafted by a copywriter but also how to create little things on the fly.

High-Converting Copy: Anybody can write copy for their own business. But writing copy for someone else's business requires a little bit of empathy and intuitiveness.

If you're in the Bahamas for a weekend and decide to run a quick sale, you don't want to have to run the project through your copywriter. You want to be able to at least put together a quick email that's serviceable. It doesn't have to be the best email that anybody's ever written. Let go of that idea. Put together something that's serviceable. Being able to do that allows you to have a little bit more flexibility in your business, which is what we ultimately want. We want some flexibility.

The other thing is something you brought up. When we had our talk, I wasn't trying to say, “What do you want this to say,” because you edit yourself too much. A lot of the problems that people have is we try to overwork the words so much that we end up losing all of ourselves in them. For someone like you who sits down and you have blank documents syndrome, but frankly, you get on a phone call with a friend and you can talk for six hours, I can too. I love it.

Speak your blog post. Speak your copy. There are apps on your phone that can record. You send it over to Rev.com and they'll transcribe it for $1 a minute and you now have something that you can edit. There are ways to write that don't involve sitting down in front of a blank Word document as well. Consider it.

That's how I wrote my books. I spoke all my books and did that. There's a difference even between writing a book and writing a high converting sales copy. I was at Grant Cardone’s conference in Miami and he said the funniest thing, but in being funny, he made a point like so many people do. He said that when he wrote his book, people would write to him and say, “That should have been a semicolon,” or, “This shouldn't be this.” Everybody's critic. He said, “I said it was a bestseller. I didn't say it was the best written.” I thought that was so funny, but it made the point because it was like, “Are you there for the content? What is it that you're looking for?” That's important.

I say this in marketing all the time and what I'm hearing you say is when you're on social media, what is it that you want it to do? What's the goal of what you want it to do? Is it a sales copy? How do you want it to convert? Do you want them to pick up the phone? Do you want them to book a strategy session with you? What is it that you want? With that in mind, what are some questions that people need to ask themselves before they make the decision of, “Is this something I should do myself? Is this something I should hire for?” What are some questions that they should ask themselves?

The first question is, “Is this going to get done? Am I going to hate this so much that I'm going to put it off until 11:30 on the night before my midnight launch and I'm going to scramble and throw something together because I'm out of time?” If the answer to that is, “Yes, I am going to put this off,” or, “No, it's not going to get done,” maybe it's time to get somebody to help you out.

The second thing is, “Do I feel confident that I can get this to convert at the level that I need it to?” That's an important distinction. We don't necessarily need conversions for conversion’s sake. If you're soft-launching a lead magnet, as in you're not running Facebook ads, you're not heavily promoting it, you're going to toss it into your rotation on Twitter, then maybe you don't need to worry about it. It’s because those six visitors a week are not that big a deal. Let's face it, you're soft-launching and not even pushing it.

If you're ready to launch your new signature program and it's time for your big list build to fill your list beforehand, then maybe it's time to consider, “I'm going to need some higher conversion percentages on this and now it's time to call in the expert. Is the budget that I'm going to outlay for this worth it?” If I'm selling a $7 program, I don't want to pay $10,000 to a copywriter to write the sales page. The ROI isn't going to be there. I'm going to have to sell so many of them before I can even make my money back. If I'm selling a $5,000 signature group coaching program and the sales page is going to cost me $3,000, I need less than one sale to make up for it. The rest is profit. Look at the numbers. Is this something that makes sense?

By waiting and waiting and not having somebody else do it costs you money to not hire someone. When you look at what is going to cost you, what's the cost of not doing it? That is important when you're thinking about it. That's why sometimes people shouldn’t think of it as a fee or as a cost. It's an investment. You need to think of that as an investment in your business. What is the cost?

I talked to people about that a lot with my clients and potential clients, too, when they say, “This is what's happening in my marketing.” What's the cost of not hiring somebody to do it? Not everybody knows how to market for themselves. Posting stuff on social media is not marketing and we know that. I've heard you say that you have some pillars of copy. Tell me about that. That sounds interesting.

It is fun. I have five pillars of sales copy, in general. They’re things to remember when you're creating your marketing. Pillar number one is to make it personal. This is because we are hit with thousands of marketing messages every single day and we're overwhelmed. We were going to miss it if it's not personal to us. At a high level, use personalization when you can. On a Facebook post, you can't personalize, but on email, you can. If you're sending direct mail, you can. Always personalize with their name whenever you can.

More than that, you want to make it connect with them. This requires that you know who your ideal client and perfect target audience are. Use your words to show them that you get them on a deeper level. This is important because even though we're all super-connected and I can call across the world with a touch of a button, we're all still isolated and alone. We all live in our own heads and it's lonely in there sometimes. If we see messaging that shows that someone else understands the crazy underneath our skull, we're more likely to connect with them.

On a lighter note, things that you know your ideal audience is interested in. For instance, I am a crazy cat lady. I totally admit it and own it. I sometimes get marketing from cat-related brands that's like, “Hey, crazy cat lady,” and all of this. Instant connection because it's personalized to something real about me. One of the brands purchased from CatLadyBox has a Facebook ad that says, “Facebook told us you might be into cats.” They’re upfront about it and it connected with me and I was like, “I totally am.” Anything that you can do to personalize it either with their name, interests, deeper feelings, fears, or dreams will increase that connection they have with you and that opportunity for them to buy.

Would you say that if they're trying to connect, at that point in this pillar, should they be speaking first person or third? I know a lot of times I see people from page to page on their website or some of their stuff is in the first person and some of it is in the third person. Is there a rule?

I like the first person, simply because people work with people. Even if you're at a big company of 800,000 people, you're still one person. People buy from people. With that being said, if your business or your organization has created this identity of its own, if you think of an organization like Apple or Google, they tend to have an identity of their own. It's okay to go third person in that respect. If you're the face of your business, you should be talking as the face of your business. It should be you.

For example, the About page on a website should be in the first person. Your bios are sometimes in the third person.

It can be confusing. I like a conversational copy. I write like I speak. I rarely talk about myself in the third person. It’s only when I'm talking to my kid and then it's mommy. If you write like you speak, your personality is going to come out a little bit more and it's going to be easier for people to understand as well. You have a professional bio. I have a bio that might be read as introductions to podcasts or when I'm on a stage or something like that, but when I'm talking or writing, I'm the crazy cat lady who happens to be a kick-butt copywriter. It's super first person.

Whereas Alyson Lex is this copywriter and she's this. It feels a little more forced and a little more corporate. Especially in today's world, where we are seeking that connection, we are looking for that authenticity. The word authentic has been thrown around a lot lately. We are seeking it. We're seeking people who are who they say they are and show up the way they say they're going to show up. If you can get that in your marketing, it's a little more personal that way, too.

One of the nicest things that people say to me that I love is when people say, “Patty, when I meet you in person or I hear you speak, you're exactly like how you are on Facebook. When I meet you, I don't feel like you're a different person. You're exactly the same.” That is important to me.

That's the way that business, in general, is headed, so people buy from people becomes even more important. I remember I went to an event and I was drinking the Kool-Aid. I was ready to buy it and it was not a cheap program. The owner of the company shared something deeply personal that was something that I had experienced as well.

After his presentation, I went to talk to him about that for a moment. I wasn't looking for a huge sit-down dinner or anything and I got brushed off. I didn't buy it. Not only that, I unsubscribed. I haven’t had nice things to say about the company. Not that I blast them publicly, but if people approach me privately about them, I tell them my experience.

We wanted to align with our values and our belief of what they're telling us they are.

He had this persona on the stage that he hadn't even gotten off the stage and I saw that it wasn't true.

High-Converting Copy: You should at least know how to recognize a good copy. That way, you don't get shafted by a copywriter and also know how to create little things on the fly.

That's sad.

It's that important. I was at that event with a friend and she had already purchased it and got a refund.

It can bite you.

It's that important to be personal and to connect on a real level.

What's pillar number two?

Pillar number two is to poke the bruise. Here I am talking about being personal and being authentic and now I want you to beat somebody up. Maybe this is me but do you ever run into a wall, a door, or a table and you have a bruise? Right when you do it, it hurts like the dickens. You’re like, “Oh my goodness.” It's a major active pain. 24 to 36 hours later, it doesn't hurt anymore until you bump that spot, rub it, slide your shirt, your kid hits it, a cat jumps, or whatever, all of a sudden, it hurts again. You have gone back into active pain from passive. This is indicative of the two states that we live in regarding our problems at any time, active pain and passive pain.

When we're in active pain that's right when we've either poked the bruise or made the bruise, whatever pain we have is actively on our brain hurting us right now, it's something that we're thinking about, worried about, and stressing about. It's in the front of our lives, in front of our faces, right this second. When we're in passive pain, the injury is there, but it doesn't bother us right now. We're going about our daily lives. We're going to work, going to school, hanging with our kids, doing whatever it is we're doing. Only when we're reminded that we have that injury does it come back to the front of our minds. That's the setup there. The same is true with anything you do. Any pain that you solve, there's either an active state or a passive state.

You're a weight loss coach. There are times when your audience is feeling down on themselves. They think how they need to lose weight, “My clothes don't fit,” or whatever. They're in active pain, but we're not walking around all day like that. They're going to work, going to school, hanging with their kid, and doing what they’ve got to do. Poking the bruise means reminding them of their problem to get them back into the active pain state.

This reminds me of the difference between target market and target buyer. I tell people all the time, “Your target market is somebody who has a problem and you have a solution, but your target buyer is somebody who has a problem that you have the solution, but they're actively looking for the solution.” By poking the bruise is how you turn your target market into your target buyer. With some good copy, that makes it a whole lot easier.

That's the point. We do that by agitating their pain and reminding them of the problem that they have, letting them know that we understand how it's affecting their lives, not on the surface but on a deeper level, as well as showing them what their lives could look like if they continue to not solve the problem. We show them that we understand that they've tried X, Y, and Z solutions and that maybe they're frustrated enough to go back to doing nothing and that’s always an option for your buyer to do nothing. We do that and it re-agitates the pain, but it goes back to pillar one. We get them. We live with them in their head. We understand. We are there with you. It's personal for us. They tie together well but poking the bruise is super important.

What's pillar three?

This one is a fun one. It is don't wimp out. If I talk about this on a stage, I use this wimpy guy doing the muscle posts. It's my favorite picture ever. We'll spend all of this effort, energy, time, what have you into identifying with our market, poking the bruises, and showing them how we can help them through this pain. We say something like, “If you want, you can go ahead and maybe click this.” We kneecap ourselves, “Maybe you could go ahead and click this.” We don't come out with a strong call to action. We don't give them the offer. We kneecap what we're saying. If it feels like it's not right for you, no, it's right for you. If this is your problem, this is your solution. Don't wimp out is important.

It’s so true and a lot of times, people don't. I'm a firm believer that if you are highlighting for someone and they're talking about their problem and you have a solution, you're doing them a disservice by not inviting them to go with you on the journey to solving their problem. That’s like, “I see you have this problem. Too bad. So sad.”

“Sucks for you.” That's definitely a mindset issue that I've seen a lot with my clients or prospective clients. They don't want to go too salesy. They don't want to push too hard. Why? First of all, they can say no. You are running a business. You are an expert in what you do, which means you have the right and deserve to be paid fairly for what you solve. That's the first thing. It is totally cool to get paid for doing what you do. I do. Secondly, your people are in real pain. We're not in the business of making up pain. We're not scamming people.

You didn't hit him over the head to get the pain.

You didn't cause it. You're solving it, and that's okay. Dan Kennedy always used to say that he's going to market to them until they buy or die. I've added a third to bring it into the modern generation to say buy, die, or unsubscribe. They can always say no. They can always get off my list. I'm not forcing them into this.

I would prefer them to get off my list. If I'm not bringing them value and you're not my person, don't feel like you have to stay there. It cost me money to have you on my list. I want to nurture you and give you value. For whatever reason, if something has changed in your business or your life, my feelings aren't going to be hurt. You have to do what you need to do for your business. If that means unsubscribing, that’s great. Everybody reads an email with one finger on the delete button.

If I read it at all. I have told several prospects that I've gotten on the phone with, “We're not a good fit.” I am not the right copywriter for everyone and it's okay. There are no hard feelings. Of course, I'd love to be able to help you, but I can't for whatever reason. Don't wimp out when it comes to making the offer. Make the offer and make it bold.

Don't be afraid of sharing your price. Don't try to hide anything. This is what it is. This is why it's awesome. This is what it's going to do for you. This is how much it costs and here's how to get it. The important thing is to always tell them step by step what to do next. “Fill out your credit card information. You're going to get an email from me that's going to have your link.” Tell them what to expect.

They need to know. You said something that I thought was interesting when you're talking about that. Where do you sit? For people, it's a fine line. Some people go on one side or the other. Where are you on the fence about putting pricing on your website? You have this great copy. A sales page is the sales page. I have seen sales pages, though, where it sounds good and they don't put the price anywhere and I have to hit the button and go all the way over to PayPal before I finally figure out what the price is. That always feels sleazy to me. I usually get mad. I don't like that.

I know it's a sales page. If I'm reading a sales page and I know it's a sales page, what's the investment? I'm okay with that. I'm talking about other stuff. When people are writing copy that maybe is not quite that, do you think people should put their pricing on their website? Is there a rule of thumb? What do you think? What’s your opinion?

I do not put my pricing on my website. I get asked about pricing a lot. My personal process is to have a discovery call first before I reveal pricing. The reason is that my prices are high enough to induce sticker shock for some people if they haven't had the experience of a discovery call with me. My sales trainer friends would kill me for this, but I don't use a script during my discovery calls. It's finding out about the project, throwing some ideas around, and then I send a proposal afterward. My prices have a comment in them.

That's okay, too. I don't put my prices up either. I'm specialized in pricing strategy. I don't do it, though, because when you put pricing and you say, “Here are my packages and here's the price.” That's great. If they fit into that mold, that's awesome. Most of my people don't. I'm not trying to put you into my packages. I want to have a call with you so I can figure out what you need so that I can serve you by giving you something that is what you need and not saying, “My package comes with this. You don't need that. Too bad, that's what my package comes with.”

High-Converting Copy: Most writers edit themselves too much. They try to overwork the words so much that they end up losing all of themselves in them.

I do custom packages. Another thing that's happened a couple of times is that we've gotten on the phone and talked about what they need. What they need is less than what they think they need. I say, “You've got some good stuff here. What you need are some tweaks and a review.” That's a much lower investment than writing everything from scratch. It is important for me to see everything so that I can say things like that. I don't want to charge you for a custom copy if I'm not doing it.

My bookkeeper, for instance, puts her pricing up there. These practices are all pretty standard. It’s like, “Do you need X, Y, and Z? This is what you need for your books.” You still have the discovery call. She still sends a proposal. During my call with her, we discovered I needed a little bit more than I thought, so the pricing changed. Not everybody needs a landing page sales letter or three series of emails. Not everybody needs that. If you're super custom and you can't put your prices out there, I wouldn't. I probably wouldn't put your prices on your website to begin with unless it's in the context of a sales page.

I like it. That sounds good. Thank you. What's the fourth pillar?

This is Homer Simpson. A dear friend of mine used to say that you need to act as if your target audience is full of Homer Simpsons. I named this pillar Homer Simpson because it's easy to remember. What I also like to say is it doesn't matter how sophisticated, educated, smart, beautiful, worldly, cultured your audience is. Everybody's had bad days where they do not have the mental energy to put effort into anything. We've all had them. We will all have them and so will everybody else.

When I was talking in pillar three about telling them what to do next, giving them crystal clear instructions, making it easy for them to know what's going to happen, this leads to that. You want to speak to people who do not have the mental energy to give you more. Have you ever had those days where you're like, “I don't have it?” Speak to your audiences if they have those days. The reason is we don't want to make them do more work than they have to.

It's because they won't.

Don't make go on your website to find the button they need to click. Give them the button or give them the link. Don’t use these big 85-syllable words to sound smart unless it's industry jargon that everyone in your audience will immediately understand. Right off the bat, don't use the word. Look for any stumbling blocks in your copy on your pages or in your posts that someone who doesn't have a lot of mental energy that day is going to see this and say, “I don't have it.” We want to avoid that. We also want to give them clear expectations so that they know what's going to happen.

Think about when you're in a restaurant and you walk in and you get led to your table and then five seconds later, you realize you need to use the ladies’ room, the men's room, the potty, or whatever you want to call it, but you have no idea even what direction to start walking. It’s that instant little confusion panic. It's that little moment of, “I don't know what to expect. I don't know what to do. I'm stuck.” You want to avoid that for your customers. If we can guide them through the process of working with you, it'll make it easier for them to say yes in the first place.

What's pillar five?

Pillar five is the Energizer Bunny. The Energizer Bunny keeps going and going like me when I get on a roll. The point with that is don't do one-and-done marketing. Sending one email to your list is not going to convert. It takes between 7 to 12 emails for them to make a buying decision with you. I've even seen stats that it can take 25 or more touches or connections with you before someone is even ready to think about buying. One email is not going to cut it. It’s multiple emails. Continue working with them.

If you have prospects that have fallen off the cliff, send them a message, “Is this still a problem for you?” Whatever you can do to keep that marketing going until your deadline. Don't keep going past your deadline. If you have set a deadline or set a number of people you're accepting into your program or what have you, stick to that and don't stop before them. Keep going.

Those are some good pillars. Sometimes when people think about copying, this was what it was for me. We have a stumbling block. Something is getting in our own way. My husband likes to tell me, “The reason you don't do copies is that you don't want to do it. You don't like doing it.” We all have some of that. We also have fears, like, “It won't convert,” or whatever the reason could be. What was the biggest obstacle or roadblock that you had to overcome?

It's the imposter syndrome thing. The biggest thing that I caught myself doing was comparing my blooper reel to someone else's highlight reel. Especially on social media, I would see these people on a meteoric rise. For example, I saw Russell Brunson when he was speaking on the GTIC stage years before ClickFunnels was ever even part of his imagination. He was just getting started. All of a sudden, Russell Brunson has a huge company. He's always been a super smart guy. Ryan Deiss, the same thing.

I saw them when they were starting out. It was around the same time I had started. Now, look at the difference.

There have been a lot of differences in our lives during that time that I'm not privy to the struggles that they've gone through. I'm not privy to what they've done. I'm not privy to their blooper reel. Why am I looking at their highlight reel and comparing it to my blooper reel? Another thing is someone else's path is not your path and neither is there a timeline.

Sometimes some people choose not to work as hard. They may choose to say, “I'm only going to do this.” Somebody else might say, “I'm going to throw every single thing I have at it for X amount of times.” You don't even know what the road is that they’re on.

Recognizing that everybody's journey is their own, especially as it pertains to building and growing your business, is important. I still struggle with it. I'm not going to pretend that I'm cured. My therapist would yell at me for saying that.

It's a journey. I appreciate you being vulnerable because I know that we all have it.

I'm a hot mess. That's how I show up.

Your mess is our message. That’s what we say. What's your favorite social media platform?

I'm a Facebooker. I like my Facebook. I like sharing my cat and kid pictures. I like being able to be in groups and message. Frankly, I never understood Instagram or Twitter. I like Pinterest a lot, but I’m on Facebook all day.

Alyson, what does success mean to you in your life? For you, what does success mean? How would you define it for you?

Success for me is not having to wonder where my next vacation fund is coming from. The bills are paid, the food is on the table, and I still get to enjoy life's little luxuries.

High-Converting Copy: Your target market is somebody who has a problem, and you have a solution. By poking their bruise, you turn your target market into your target buyer.

What do you love the most about your business today? It's been a journey all along, but where are you right now? What do you love about your business?

Professionally, I love that I get to work with such a variety of people. Also, because my audience is primarily in the coaching and expert space, I feel like I'm helping them make a difference in the world, so I'm starting a ripple and I feel like I can help change the world. Personally, I get to take off pretty much whenever I want and go on field trips with my kid. I took a nap and that was nice.

What’s next for you? What project are you working on?

I'm getting ready to launch an info product called The Booked Coaches Email Templates. It's marketing Madlib style templates that coaches use to fill their calendars with sales calls. I've been building that in secret for a while now.

I can't wait. When is that going to be coming out?

As soon as I could get my act together. One of the struggles that I have is implementation. Our mess is our message. I'm working on it.

Cobbler’s kids have no shoes, we all know.

Cobbler’s kids are barefoot.

This is the Marketing Media, and Money show. I always ask every one of our influencers and experts to share what's a strategy or chip that you would like to share with our audience.

A tip that we've touched on a lot here but maybe not said out loud is it is entirely possible to write your own copy. Do it. I would rather see you have not great copy than no copy. Not great copy has a shot at converting. No copy, no conversion.

Done, not perfect.

It’s a big thing. If you get out there and give it a shot and start learning what works for you and your audience, you can get more confident creating copy and get to a point where you're outsourcing simply because you don't want to do it and not because you don't know how to do it.

I don't think people don't realize that. Alyson, you told me that you have something that you would love to talk about. It’s a little freebie that you would like to share.

I do have a freebie. White page syndrome is a thing for us all. As such, I have put together a headline generator. This headline generator helped me come up with six awesome headlines, important seconds, completely customized, marketing Madlib style, as we talked about with my templates. It's a PDF download that helps you fill in the blanks and learn the elements of a good headline. AlysonLex.com/headlines.

Will it work for blog post titles, subject lines, or that stuff too?

Anything you want. It's great for sales headlines, but it could be a great blog post title, generator, subject lines, any of it.

Thank you so much. Alyson, how would people connect with you?

The best place is AlysonLex.com. That's where I live. There are links to all my social. I'm also Facebook.com/alysonlex. I try to be Alyson Lex everywhere. On Twitter, I'm @TheAlysonLex.

Alyson, we have this little thing at the end that I like to do. I want to make sure that I serve you as well as the audience. You have been so generous and shared all this great stuff. I had a lot of writer downers myself. We call this portion of the show Open Mic. We call it Social Karaoke. That's what it is. We're going to give you the opportunity to have the open mic and share with me and my audience anything that maybe we didn't cover. Maybe there's something special you want to share. This is open mic. What would you like to share?

One of the things that I used to write all the time that I don't get to write for clients anymore is direct mail. I write some but not a lot. With the internet, Facebook ads, and all of that, direct mail has been seen as too hard, too expensive, too big of an investment to do anything with. I want to challenge that with the idea that when you see an ad on your Facebook feed, you scroll by 9 times out of 10.

When you get an email in your inbox, if it even makes it to your inbox and not your promotions folder, you may not read it 9 times out of 10. When you get a letter in your mailbox, you sit down on the sofa, go through the mail, open stuff, and look. It has changed. It used to be that you would throw away your physical mail and read your email like crazy, but it's flip-flopped again. The conversion rate on direct mail is starting to go up. The other thing is Facebook ad costs are starting to go up.

If you can build, find, or buy a physical list of mailing addresses, do it and give direct mail a shot again. It doesn't have to be this big, huge, over-the-top thing. Although if you want, we can always talk about that. Try reaching out to potential clients, prospects that have fallen off the radar, and hot leads via direct mail to see if you get a better response when going through some online methods. Let me know if you want help writing it because I love writing direct mail.

That's awesome and a great segue, if I may say so. I'm going to add to your tip, too. One of the things I found out about that super surprised me is if you belong to any organizations, maybe networking organizations that are online as well that you fill out a profile. One of the things I didn't realize is I get things in the mail all the time. Somebody sent me a mug with my logo on it. Somebody sent me brownies. I thought, “How did they get my address?” I couldn't figure it out.

I asked someone, “How did you get my address?” If people say that to me and if I know them, I don't have a problem giving them my address. They said, “When you filled out your profile, it was asked for in your profile.” You may already belong to an organization that you already have an affinity with. There's already something that you do there. Go look at your profile and see if you put your address in there. If you did, pretty much so did everybody else. That's a good opportunity. You may already have it. That was a good tip.

Buying and selling email lists is frowned upon, if not outright illegal, depending on where you live. Buying a list of mailing addresses is okay. There are lists brokers and that's what they do.

Thank you so much, Alyson, for being here. That was great information. You were generous, as you always are. For the audience out there, if you enjoyed this episode, please like, subscribe, and review the show on your favorite platform. Remember, sharing is caring. Make sure you grab Alyson's gift. That's a real good one. I'm going to get it myself as soon as we get off. Thank you again, Alyson. It was great to talk to you. For everybody else, we'll see you in the next episode.