From Kyle:
They say the About page is the most widely read page of any website.
So if you'll give me the next few minutes, in return I'll give you a bit of background that will open up an unbelievable new world of opportunity for growing your business.
Fair enough?
Here's a bit about me, from the start.
The Quiet Kid Finds His Voice
During grade school, I was the shy kid.
I did fine in school without much study, but my nose stayed buried in books about technology.
I grew up during the rise of the computer hobbyist, when Jobs and Wozniak were fiddling with hardware in a Cupertino garage, Bill Gates and Paul Allen were up in Redmond writing DOS bootloader code, and Intel was battling Motorola with Andy Grove as the operations guy, not yet the legendary CEO he would become.
When I discovered technology, it lodged itself into my head. Technology was my infatuation of that time. If you've ever seen a kid dive into a subject, then you know what I'm talking about. I soaked up every piece of information about bits and bytes that I could find. It wasn't long before I begged my father to take me to the local computer users group.
There I was, 9 years old, sitting in the lecture hall of the local college once a week on Sunday afternoons... listening to grown men talk about modular systems, hardware boards, programming languages, and software programs. I didn't understand all of the words, but I was hooked.
Tech has been a part of my life and part of my career ever since.
Since then, technology has exploded into the single most dominant economic and business force of our era. The tech sector dominates the stock market. Entrepreneurs create innovative tech services at an amazing rate. And local business owners are using technology tools for reaching more eyeballs and converting them into customers.
As you can imagine, my long standing tech interest has given me an advantage in spotting opportunities and making specific recommendations for greater revenue and growth.
But this early interest is only the beginning, the real wins came later.
.
“You write with reckless abandon.”
In college, I made money in three ways.
They were - playing guitar in bar bands, working in computer labs, and running a side business as an IT guy.
When you hear the term 'bar band' you think 3am nights, drunk crowds, and the smell of stale beer. There was that and more, but the music training also unleashed valuable creative thinking skills, which I still use.
The other two jobs had me thinking and talking about technology all day, every day, for years on end, convincing business owners and professors to adopt software and hardware projects.
It was really a form of selling, although I wouldn't have called it that then. I mostly bumbled around from meeting to meeting mistakenly thinking that everyone saw the potential of cutting-edge technology on the growth of their business.
Back then, selling technology was a tough gig.
Technology, during those moments at least, was basically a new frontier.
Some owners saw the potential. Others didn't have the vision.
After a while, my frustration levels hit new highs. You see, I was offering these services to the owners with the old-fashioned way – my feet! I would drive to an office complex then burn shoe leather knocking on business doors.
That was too slow, so I started cold calling and writing letters so people would reach out to me, instead of me chasing down deals in the Gulf Coast humidity.
I knew if I could somehow write a letter with the right words in the right combination, then the business owners would come to me.
I had some success and landed a few lucrative projects. It wasn't the millions that would come later, but it was a start.
I've always been glad that I started out in technology with small business owners and entrepreneurs.
Other than getting a job at a top-notch advertising agency, which have you grind out marketing ideas and advertising for clients in dozens of industries, sitting across from business owners and talking about technology was the most important training I could have for writing copy and growing products in complex markets. Why?
There are two reasons.
First, because it was an amazing experience on trying to sell face to face. It's a tough job, no matter what anyone says. One-to-one selling was too slow for me which led me to try new methods. And that's what made the reach of the web and the Internet so appealing.
I knew the impact of the web would be huge, but even I underestimated just how big. There are over a trillion pages on the internet, counting indexed and non-indexed pages. And 10,500 new websites are created every hour. That mind-blowing number should scream opportunity for every business owner on the planet.
None of the experts or CEOs I was following at the time predicted this size or growth. I'm not sure anyone did.
The other reason I relish my work with tech and business owners is these jobs allowed me to see first hand how people make decisions and think about complex topics like technology.
And even though the owners were in vastly different industries, the similarities were striking.
Having face to face conversations about complex new ideas is like a graduate course in human behavior and decision making. And that has direct application to marketing and copywriting.
By explaining what your service offers and its benefits, then answering the buyer questions, then answering more of their questions, you learn a lot about how people evaluate new ideas and navigate buying decisions. These are real people, in real situations, who are giving you money.
They aren't fictional personas or spreadsheet rows of audience demographics.
Your buyers are real-life, warm-blooded people with emotions, desires, interests, and passions. Some of them are new to your company and curious about your service. Some of them are ready to buy your products right now. Some of them just want their computer fixed.
But they are all real-life humans with real-life desires and wants.
And the more your service fills their wants and needs and issues, then the faster you'll see your company grow. This is true in consumer-facing companies and in B2B. I'll have more about B2B marketing in a minute.
Here's something else.
In these face-to-face conversations, most of the questions weren't about technology at all. They were about how the service helped their business grow, but not directly about the tech itself.
I've since learned this surprising fact, which seems to be an almost universal truth in marketing and sales, if there is such a thing. Most of the questions your prospects ask when buying your service aren't about the actual service. They are about all manner of other things.
I've seen this get worse over 27 years as buyers become more skeptical.
You see, if your marketing has done it's job and you have attention, a prospect may have an interest, but that doesn't mean they are ready to buy. Before they can be sure, they want to understand the value you provide and that you'll serve them in the best way possible after they've cut the check or entered in their credit card number.
On some level deep down inside, prospects have an interest in what you sell, but uncertainty bubbles up into their brain. The uncertainty creates a “wall of doubt” that prevents them from buying. To get them to say “Yes” , you have to remove this barrier.
I discovered that to close a deal, you don't need to know every single technology detail, but you do need to answer all these other questions. For each answer you give, one brick comes down from the wall of doubt, until brick by brick, doubt by doubt, you clear up the uncertainty, leaving only a clear path for them to say yes.
In my case, the questions were about budgets, training, timelines, and the return on investment to the company. In your case, for your service, the questions will be different.
But in all cases, the actual “product” or “service” is only a single part of the larger buying equation. You need a quality product to complete the equation, but there are other parts to consider.
So even though I closed plenty of deals, I wish I could say that it was because of my superior technology knowledge. But since these projects were breaking new ground and there was so much innovation going on, there were few easy answers. I just figured out how to answer their objections and answer all their questions.
And that's what was so liberating about having these direct conversations with decision makers and owners. This insight was incredibly helpful later when it came to creating marketing plans and copy campaigns that would trigger responses and attract new buyers.
So, yes, as I scrambled around town in my software side-business, I was going to class and working in campus computer labs in-between classes. I'll save those stories for another time.
But there is one more very important piece of human behavior that I picked up during these years.
It came from a note scribbled across the top of one of my papers in English class. It said: “you write with reckless abandon.”
The assignment was to write an opinion paper. My choice of topic was an impassioned plea about students studying improvisation in music because it helps with creative thinking.
The idea was under-developed, but the concept is strong. I still believe students (and everyone!) should be taught creative problem solving skills, but I've since discovered better techniques than music improvisation.
In any case, the professor choose to use my paper for a discussion about writing technique. Without announcing my name, he read a portion of it to the class. He discussed structure, style, and how to present a persuasive argument.
I was embarrassed to have my paper read aloud, but even with my head down, I noticed a bizarre behavior from the class. Everyone got into a heated discussion over the topic of the paper.
The professor was pointing out technique, which everyone promptly ignored in favor of discussing the subject of the paper.
I didn't know what copywriting was at the time and no one told me you could use it to make lots of money, or you could use words to change people's minds about your company.
But this professor's discussion opened the door to thinking about writing in a different way – you can structure presentations and materials to get people talking.
Indeed, it was the first time I noticed that pro writers talk about process and technique and structure, yet most people don't care about any of that stuff. They just hear the content.
Plus, writing that persuasive paper was enjoyable. And so, as I wrote simple promotion material for my side software business, the writing was fun.
Neato.
These skills came in handy later when working with billion dollar companies.
These Are The Values I Hold
One winning strategy that I've noticed over time is this.
Quality products and services offer the best chance at long term success.
Salespeople sell more when they have strong belief in the company, and the same holds true for the work that I do.
That's why I only work with owners and entrepreneurs offering value to their customers and helping them in their lives.
This has been a wonderful guiding principle and it wins out over time.
New channels and new techniques come into business every year. There will be new markets and new opportunities. Fads come then fade. Markets have cycles. Some of these changes impact your business differently than others. I know because I've been fortunate to be a part of several business revolutions.
And no matter the market, there is one single thing that stays the same – delivering value to your industry is always a winning hand.
If you share my value-as-a-strategy philosophy, sell a quality service or product that helps others improve their lives in some way, and have the financial resources to launch new campaigns...
…then I encourage you to reach out and schedule a meeting so we can explore the possibilities of building winning campaigns together.
Contact me here using the form on this page.
These Are The Solutions I Bring
Nothing makes me happier than solving the next revenue puzzle.
All projects I work on are for growth or expansion - either growing top line revenue or widening the profit margin. This has been a common theme through my twenty year career. My toolbox contains hundreds of techniques, all with a singular focus.
Copywriting and conversion are often the first projects, since there's always ways to convert more customers. But these projects connect to growth, scale, revenue, and expansion.
The specifics of the project vary according with your industry, channel, and audience. We always study what’s working – paper and interactive, print and digital, SaaS and mobile phone app.
This research allows us to find new opportunities so we can decide which areas to focus on that will make a significant difference.
And it's all to bring results from decades of experience in dozens of industries, both B2B and consumer.
If you have a quality service or product, and you are looking to grow, then contact me.
Today, I'm often asked...
...what the h*ll is coming next in tech?
Back when I was traveling non-stop to tech companies, I remember endless presentations and reams of research from customers building “the next big thing.” At the time, my entire philosophy on technology was to dive in and understand everything that you can.
Today the technology sector dominates the S&P 500 and it's only growing.
In recent years, ambitious entrepreneurs are using technology tools to change the landscape in dozens of industries and niches. The potential take-home and net worth numbers for the best of the best will be measured in the billions. Some reports say 10,500 new website are going on each day.
But to those who haven't made their millions yet, don't fret.
For business owners and managers wanting to help their company join the ranks of these multi-million dollar firms, but still out-compete the onslaught of competition, I have different advice.
It's based on wisdom from Sun Tzu: “Opportunities multiply as they are seized.”
To find your opportunities, review all of your incoming channels and find your “Focus Three.” The Focus Three are your three primary channels bringing you the right balance of volume, deal size, and profitable deal in your industry.
With your channels identified, optimize for this other piece of wisdom: The brain tucked inside the head of your buyers will remain the same as it ever was.
So with your Focus Three, optimize your deal flow using proven persuasion and conversion principles that convert visitors to prospects, prospects to quality opportunities, and opportunities to customers and closed deals. It's using the proven customer acquisition principles that make your Focus Three profitable.
When you have your Focus Three finely tuned, put them on auto-pilot, then rinse and repeat for the next three channels you want to dominate.
This strategy is one that I've seen work again and again.
This is the type of work I do today with clients and it's significantly different than others in your industry.
My team and I use creativity and problem solving skills to help you grow and expand your business.
We define your goals and then...
...analyze your audience data to discover the profitable opportunists that lie waiting today in your industry...
...create new concepts so your customers develop a keen interest in what you're doing, so you can give them more information about how you help...
...construct a message that entices buyers to flock to you in droves, written and described in their language, their way of thinking...
… and we do it all for one end...
...so that these campaigns put another comma in your revenue number and add more dollars to your wealth account.
To my knowledge, there's never been such a combination of skills like this available for growth-minded entrepreneurs.
You might be growing in your business right now, or you might be waiting to break out.
Either way, I'd like to help you reach your goals.
If you skipped down the page to this section, you'll find this page holds the details of my background and how I work with companies. Read more to find out the how and why I work.
If you are ready to talk now about your company, then click below.
When you're ready...
Contact me and let's schedule a time to talk. I'm busy, but never too busy to hear about new opportunities.
Contact me and let's talk
The Wealth Strategies Hidden Inside
These Two Unlikely Projects
If you'll indulge me a few seconds, I'll show two strategies for business owners focused on growth who are looking for areas other than copywriting to grow their business.
You see, there aren't many copywriters around who have hands-on experience with the computing and technology revolution that transformed business back in the 80's, 90's, and 2000's.
Not only do I have hands-on experience, but I actively pushed it forward, enabling some business owners to make millions, which you'll see in a second.
The reason for this quick side-trip is to show proven ways companies can grow even faster, beyond copywriting.
Yet both of these examples are related to copy, and since this is the About Me page, they help explain why copywriting is only one aspect of what I do for companies today.
Copywriting is always the start, and having additional strategies let's us leverage gains and grow faster.
And when done over time, the results combine, accelerating expansion so there's more money coming into the business, for even greater expansion or even to sell the business, if that's your goal.
The first strategy: When it comes to increasing revenue, top CEOs know that boosting top line revenue can be done by increasing deal flow through the business.
The more deals, leads, and projects you can move through your business without the wheels coming off, the more money you make.
In the book What The CEO Wants You To Know, the world-famous business consultant Ram Charen uses the word velocity to describe this phenomenon.
He says, “the faster the velocity, the higher the return.
In fact, the universal law of return on assets can be written as: (Return = Margin X Velocity).
How can you increase the flow – or velocity – of deals through your business?
Boosting front-end sales is one way, which is the focus of most copywriting campaigns. Yet that's not the only way, nor the true power behind this strategy.
Imagine that you're the CEO of a factory assembly line making gold-plated widgets. To boost production, many focus on getting more gold or buying more widgets. But you can increase revenue by increasing the speed of the assembly line too.
For business, this means that you can push more projects through the business, in addition to bringing in more front-end customers.
Here's how I found that out.
There was this one client who did consulting deals with very large companies and some state governments. It took months before their deals closed. Using B2B jargon, it was a complex sale for a high-consideration service.
The owner had a archaic quoting process with complex proposals that numbered hundreds of pages.
As they went through their discovery phase, they were forced to constantly update the proposal. It was mind-numbing work. The owner asked me to help automate their quoting process by streamlining their proposal creation.
My work took their lengthy proposal process down to around 14 days after discovery, increasing their deal flow by 3x to 4x without adding any extra work.
The contracts were often worth over a millions dollars, so do the math and you'll see this amazing result. Assuming his close rate stayed the same, he would gain several million dollars just by accelerating the deal flow through the business. In fact, just focusing on the math, with a steady flow of deals with an average deal size was one million dollars, that work produced a 300% boost.
Honestly, I don't think he could have delivered at that level because of the manpower involved, but operations is a different issue.
And operation issues aside, if I had combined that acceleration of deal flow with the marketing and copywriting techniques that I've gained after 20 years, I could have doubled, tripled, or maybe even quadrupled that business in 18 months.
Indeed, you see this with the big companies running lots of front-end copy campaigns. They are always try new angles, new hooks, running multiple ads, trying out new letters and ideas.
Yes, it brings in new front-end sales, but, more importantly it means that more people are flowing through the business, making multiple purchases, upgrading their purchasing, and buying more often.
Today it's done using lead tracking and deal management software.
But it wasn't always so easy.
For example, there was that project with another million-dollar lesson.
I designed and built a sales database for a small firm doing around $5M a year, adjusted to today's money.
Back then SaaS companies weren't a thing, so you took general purpose database software and built the right tool, sorta like software Play-Doh. You start with a clump of software functions then mold them into the tools you needed for the job.
Now, I had built software before, but other than what I was picking up on my own, I knew next to nothing about sales. I didn't know a sales pipeline from a pipe-wrench.
So while the software construction was interesting, the research was more interesting. I spent 6 weeks documenting and learning all about their sales process, from lead gen to nurturing to final deal close. It was a real world training on sales pipelines and process.
Here's the lesson – productivity went up, they consolidated all their tracking, plus, the owner could keep track of each person, and as the partners ran into issues, he could suggest techniques or materials to send the prospect.
I poured my heart and soul into that thing and at the end of the project, the owner asked me to put it online. He wanted to access it from home. I didn't because of my class schedule so they kept it on their internal network for years.
If I had added in the copy techniques that I know now about lead nurturing, follow-up, automation, and something more here, that thing would have been worth something. We could have done so much more, adding in tracking for direct mail, pipeline tracking, and connecting into email marketing campaigns.
But at the time, I was only getting my feet wet in the sales process.
Plus, I still had classes to attend to.
Years later, I realized that the owner was asking me to build a stripped down version of Salesforce.com.
Salesforce DID add in all those other things I wanted to add, plus many more features that I hadn't thought of at the time. At one point Salesforce.com was pulling in over 15 billion dollars a year.
Oof.
I try not to think about that one.
Was the software up to par with Salesforce? No way.
I've seen way too many entrepreneurs over-exaggerate their first product and think it will take over the world. Ambition is a necessary trait for success, but objectivity is what you need for getting things done.
Could that product have been bigger than it was? Absolutely.
Yet I also know that with new products, being early is an advantage. And even if I had seen the potential and only did 1% of 1% of the billions.... it would still be $1.5 million. That's small potatoes today, but it would have been a nice return back then.
So – side lesson - don't get so distracted by college classes that you can't recognize good ideas.
The main lesson - there are many growth levers to push on - copy is only one
And it was these lessons that served me well as I got to see first hand how a startup grows, and then operating inside a billion dollar company.
And I saw even more ideas on how to grow.
A unique and powerful journey
that can be leveraged in your projects
As you read earlier, no one starts out as a direct response and conversion copywriter.
One pro said – “This gig finds you.”
In my case, this is true.
I admit 100% that my career path has been unique, and it's been filled with fortuitous turns. Along the way, I've picked out and picked up several growth strategies that work, for companies of all sizes.
The path through technology has given me an edge today, not only in the copy, but in campaign-thinking, product development, strategy development, and scale.
Constructing winning campaigns is easier today because of my background. I intuitively understand things like algorithms, reaching new buyers online, and converting using clicks.
But there's another more important lesson. Most people talk of climbing a mountain as they gain their skills. I was tossed into a pit with lions who hadn't been fed in weeks, and I was fresh meat.
My only job – don't die.
It worked out fairly well in the end, thankfully.
And the lessons I learned and mistakes I made are all valuable insight into the work that I do today.
If you have a project that you think might be a match, then contact me today and let's talk about it.
The Project No-One Wanted
That Made My Career
As college came to an end, I was looking for my next gig.
Client management was a beast, so I cut back business and focused on school. I figured if I could double up on classes, then I'd be free of these silly classes to do other things.
I landed a role at a software startup in customer support but was quickly transferred into the software engineering group. The startup operated in a tiny sector called embedded software. We wrote software that powered semiconductors, the 'brains' of computing devices. At the time, the computing device explosion was just beginning.
One day, a random project came in from a company named Acorn Computers. I volunteered to do the project after-hours. The CEO considered it a one-off project from a company he never heard of, which is why he let the new guy work on it. I didn't care. I love a new challenge so like most things, I dove in.
That project labeled me as 'the Acorn guy' so when a new Acorn project came it, it was funneled to me. And when that one was complete, another one came along. Then another. And another.
Eventually, the company named Acorn changed their name to ARM, short for Advanced Risc Machines. Today they only go by ARM.
That tiny seed of a company sprouted into a massive tech giant with roots in every major country and hundreds of well-known, well-respected companies. They have processors in hundreds of billions of devices that run your life today. ARM is the leading semiconductor IP company in the world.
As I became an expert on ARM architecture, I was given more responsibility and the company created an ARM software engineering team.
The device revolution was growing, so we grew too. The marketing team asked that I write content for promotion and lead generation. And the sales team brought me in to help them close more deals. Because this industry was revolutionizing the world as we see it today, our sales team was talking with very experienced and very savvy business and tech people.
If you wonder why the technology industry grew so large as to dominate the world economy, part of the reason is because there are some seriously smart people running businesses in the industry, with amazing business skills and amazing foresight.
Every phone call I was on seemed to have brilliant guys and amazing insight into product strategy and business building.
We were having daily conversations with business owners, managers, and entrepreneurs with big ideas and ambitious plans, and we were soaking up every idea and strategy that we figured could trigger extraordinary results for our own company with new leads and new deals.
And I do confess that even though I've built powerful campaigns and brought in amazing results, I also learned, borrowed, and stole (shamelessly!) from the smart people I was meeting with and gaining exposure to.
The sheer volume of this exposure is because of the way our sales team was structured. Our dozen or so sales team was divided into geographic territories across the United States. International deals were handled by teams also. Each sales person was handling all the details around each account, so they would handle emails plus phone calls, and deal with client departments like accounting, purchasing, and legal.
So that meant they only needed me to speak to key decision makers in the deal. And since each sales person was handling different time zones and accounts, that meant I was speaking to multiple prospects across multiple accounts across multiple industries every week, sometimes several times a day.
It was exposure to so many smart people that it was personal exponential growth.
The truth is, the sales and marketing teams weren't really requesting me in their meetings, they wanted the skills and techniques that I developed from these ongoing conversations and sessions. That's what they loved, the expertise and feedback that I gave to our prospects to help convert them into a customer.
And clients today have used the same techniques to achieve similar results, even in industries far-removed from technology.
The CEO must have liked the work I was doing with these departments because he suggested I go to business school to get an MBA, and when I did, he put me in charge of the growth of one of the software products.
The role was a combination of Product Marketing Manager and, because of my direct experience with the product, a Product Manager. It's tough to explain that role to people, but I once saw a billion dollar venture capitalist refer to the role as a 'mini-CEO' of the products, so that'll have to do for this write-up.
The titles don't really matter. What I want to emphasize here is this – these techniques that I picked up have allowed companies to achieve unprecedented consistency in producing winning marketing growth ideas, generating an ongoing flow of incoming leads, create an impressive array of winning campaigns, stand out in their market more than ever before, and launch blockbluster new ideas, services, and products with success that they've never experienced. And that's true no matter what industry, this isn't just about tech.
As the company grew, my own copywriting tasks grew. So in addition to strategic growth ideas, meeting with prospects, and talking with customers, one part of my job was writing – both editorial style content and conversion copy for driving people to take action. In marketing lingo, this is top of funnel and conversion copy for bottom of funnel.
I wrote in the office, first thing in the morning and in-between meetings. I wrote while traveling, in airports and hotel rooms. I even wrote in unexpected places, like trade shows and convention halls.
Usually you'd see a good idea among the thousands of companies at these shows, then I would furiously take notes and adapt it for our own sales and marketing efforts.
I didn't always have time to fire up my laptop to write, so I would squeeze-in writing in quick bursts. I learned I could scribble off several hundred words in a hotel lobby waiting for my room to be ready or while I was waiting for a plane. There were many, many pieces written in 300 and 400 word segments. I carried pens with me at all times.
All of this time I was writing materials, and the rest of the company was feverishly working hard also. I was one person in a dedicated group of amazing people.
The work paid off and we were eventually acquired by a billion dollar corporation, where our company did a reverse-merger deal. Our software company took over the leadership of their division, and for five years, our company name was on the division masthead.
We were working with amazing local, national, and international companies includes Boeing, ARM, Analog Devices, ST Microelectronics, Hitachi, Samsung, Bosch, Freescale, Infineon, Intel, Siemens, Microsoft, Qualcomm, Mediatek, Toshiba, MIPS, Kyocera, LG Electronics, Cisco, AMD, and many more.
Our partner and client spreadsheet listed thousands of rows.
As you can imagine, the budgets inside a billion dollar company were bigger than what we had as a startup. That accelerated my travel schedule and had me meeting customers and clients even more than before, so that offered me even more exposure to smart people.
A side benefit to this travel was that it put me in some amazing cities with great people. In total, I've traveled to over 75 U.S. cities and 25 International cities, including Tokyo, Yokahama, Seoul, London, Paris, Barcelona, Shanghai, and Hong Kong. There were a few years where I spent just as much time in Japan as I did in the U.S.
It was a constant influx of top-notch marketing strategies from world-class players in the most competitive environments operating at the time.
Occasionally I would get small speaking invites in trade show panels, so I would give talks and insights about the industry. That allowed me to be on speaking platform at conferences with HP, Microsoft, Motorola, Intel, Cisco, Google, Redhat, Samsung, and Siemens, with several featuring prominent speakers including George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton. It was a busy time.
To be clear: In all this travel to meet with customers and partners, these executive teams weren't pitching us.
They were freely sharing their marketing strategies for going into the market – their marketing ploys and roadmaps for dominating intensely competitive industries that are measured in billions and trillions of dollars, like consumer, wireless, telecommunication, electronics, industrial control, aviation, aerospace, and much more.
It was an amazing, real-world education with exclusive insider access to see how these guys were structuring their deals and making money. It was a front row seat to learn from smart people.
Little did I know that this would become the basis for playbooks and formulas in my later work for clients big and small, feeding my marketing strategy work and copywriting.
Furthermore, in-between the client meetings, there were sales calls, partner meetings, trade show meetings, and worldwide tours with a non-stop bombardment of marketing materials, roadmaps, and go-to market strategies from some of the most innovative and advanced companies in the high-tech industry, full of A-level thinkers - both scary smart short-term marketing tacticians and long-term value creators with breakthrough, game-changing, disruptive products.
By the time I left that position, the CEO had put me in charge of seven software product lines, with the flagship product running today on over three billion devices around the world. That's more versions than the Windows operating system... even if you start counting way back in the 80's from it's first release.
During that time, copywriting and creating new marketing plans were a recurring task.
Since then, I've continued to work on marketing and copywriting projects with companies big and small, in multiple industries.
You'll find information on some of those wins on other parts of this website, so I'll skip over those to avoid repetition and to save time.
Here's the types of things I'm asked to write today.
One group falls into the category of building thought leadership and establishing expertise...
Ghostwriting for CEOs and Executives – Publishing as an executive lets you build your personal brand, spread your knowledge to others, and get feedback on your ideas. It allows you to rub shoulders with other thought leaders on the web, gathering insight and feedback to push your profile higher.
Editorial content for education and Thought Leadership – Ongoing analysis is a part of the gig today for experts and authority. If you're plugged into your industry, then you'll need to spread your knowledge. I don't replace your know-how, but I can take it, add new angles, then enhance the pieces so they're more persuasive and suitable for lead gen or demand generation.
Research, economic, and market analysis – Ambitious people read. Ambitious companies publish insight for the ambitious to read. You can write research and economic analysis so that you show your market that you have the answer, and the insight. Did you know that you can turn this insight into marketing lead gen? You gain the respect of the industry, and generate prospects at the same time.
The “core” digital content – 80% of your buyers are visiting your website before they pick up the phone. You don't know these people because they haven't called you yet. To get them to take the next step, the copy on your website, email communications and something must answer their core questions and crate a compelling reason to call.
Partner and Affiliate materials – Ecosystems, partner programs, associations, affiliates, and distribution channels can be anywhere from 200% to 1,250% more effective. How? Make it easy for them to sell. Write the marketing material on their behalf is a small cost that returns large gains, simply because you're providing them with easy wins by writing materials on their behalf.
White Papers and Case Studies – When prospects search for the right answers, they'll look to educate themselves first. Offering information about your expertise and product with white papers and case studies will give you a leg up when they schedule a presentation because you'll already be an expert in their mind.
Blog Posts and Top of Funnel Material – Top of funnel posts for content marketing and blog posts are widespread, and when done correctly they can pinpoint the right prospects so they travel down the path to a buyer, while the tire-kickers stay away.
There's more, of course, but those are the top topics that compose thought leadership. It is a long-term strategy and it's a tool for companies taking the long-term view.
However, there's a downside. Thought leadership is important, but not always urgent.
For more immediate gains in sales and quicker revenue results, a different type of writing is required, with a different style. This group of revenue generating materials falls into the category of conversion.
Conversion copy converts visitors to subscribers, converts subscribers to qualified leads, or converts leads to buyers. For B2B companies, conversion copy is a tool for the sales team to use to push the sale forward.
Here's what that looks like.
-Email Conversion Copywriting – Ah, the joys of email. Say what you will, but email is still the highest converting channel in digital. Email marketing has an ROI of 4,200%. Despite our Inboxes being full, there's still plenty of money to be pulled from them. The best aspect of a solid email marketing campaign is that they can be adapted so easily to social channels.
-Advertorials – What new audiences can you reach? With advertorials you can highlight your product to interested prospects, who then discover more about your product. It's a straightforward and professional way of presenting your company, and they work great for pulling in new prospect outside of your own distribution channels.
-Sales Letters for Conversion – On the web, sales letters are your digital sales force, so the copy isn't simply word-writing, it's salesmanship in print. These letters are useful for education and for selling. As you deploy more of these digital sales tools, the pages transform into an online sales force, which makes scaling and growth easier than it is with other techniques.
-Ongoing Campaigns – Change your concepts, change your results. If you're running campaigns now, then let's look at ways to split-test some messages, or boost your return. Copywriting is the first step, but it's the follow-through that turns an average campaign into a profitable one.
-Client Acquisition – What are the messages that matter to your prospects? What are the new ways to talk to them? How messages are working now, and which ones are wearing out? Should you ramp up your frond-end ad buys or extend the funnel for greater commitment? Should you diverse now? All of these are issues we can talk about in new client acquisition campaigns.
-Lead Generation and Demand Generation – Deal flow and lead flow – the lifeblood of business growth. Most campaigns worry about volume, but I worry about your time. Why? Because from birth to retirement, sun up to sundown, each of us only has 1,400 minutes a day. Doesn't seem like much when you see it written out, does it? Don't waste your time with tire-kickers. Bring in qualified prospects who are interested in your offer.
-Conversion Copy - Getting people to take the next “step” is the toughest job in writing today. That next step might be subscribing, joining a site, signing up for a course, or attending a webinar. It could be click a link or clicking a button. Whatever it is, that's what conversion copywriting is all about.
-Company scripting for “non-sales” items – Scripting and copy for marketing “leaks.” Leaks are the tiny, overlooked spots where prospects interact with you, but combine to create exponential gains. This includes on-hold messages, voicemails, and email autoreplies. These things go unnoticed, but they add up to create a wave of new sales and subscribers.
-Sales-enablement – In B2B, for every call you make there are 2 to 6 competitors calling on the same person. And there's a growing trend that at least one, possible two, of them are using sales materials to close deal fasters, in higher volume, and with bigger order values. And if it's working for them, it'll work for you better. Probably better, since you'll have me.
There's more, but this is a portion to give you an idea.
I also work with owners, entrepreneurs, managers and Vps who are looking for consistency and planning docs, so they can keep their team organized, productive, and moving forward.
The playbooks and tools are all solid strategies and proven growth. puts them into a new tax bracket.
And then there's more, but that's something else.
And in almost all cases, much of that later work starts with copywriting, which brings me to today, and the reason you are on this website.
Here's What That Means For You
So... after all of that “non-copywriting” experience... you may be asking:
Why the hell am I still writing?
There's two reasons.
The first reason is that I enjoy it.
This is best explained from a Warren Buffet quote that you may have heard.
It goes like this: “In the world of business, the people who are most successful are those who are doing what they love.”
I have loved working with teams as a part of growing businesses and have enjoyed writing and business building, and continue to do so. For over two decades, that business building has involved copywriting.
Brain science says that after you perform an activity for years, the neurons in your brain rewire themselves to support the habit you've built. And if you miss a day, then your brain feels like something is “off.”
I wrote for so long and across so many niches in various forms that I built up a habit writing. If I skip a day, my brain gets a bit out of whack. This might be why I get a little grumpy if I don't write something every day.
Of course, that's also the telltale sign of someone with an addiction, so maybe that's not such a healthy behavior.
The second reason I still write is a practical one.
Copywriting projects are usually the first steps to bigger projects. I'm often asked to work on longer term projects after I write for them.
It's really a win-win and actually really convenient.
Building campaigns and writing copy is the perfect way to start making progress quickly. I learn about a the company, their market, their product offering, their service, and their buyers. The business owner gets sales and customers. Win-win.
There's an established heuristic that says new team members take around 90 days to truly start bringing in results.
The way I figure it, even though I don't come in as a full-time employeed, starting with a copy campaign cuts that 3 months down to zero. From day one, I start learning about the service to build up sales.
And like I just mentioned, once copy campaigns start to bring in buyers, there's often other areas of growth to move into.
There's no obligation of course, and there's no guarantee. It's just the way that it's worked out.
Here's why that matters to you....
Today I work with CEOs and VPs who are looking for a proven copywriter with strong marketing skills to grow their business so it puts them into a new tax bracket.
The marketing skills I provide are based on past experiences adapted and customized to your business. You've just read about some of the wins.
But there's much, much more to the story.
There's lots of parts I left out because they aren't relevant to copywriting, but they are relevant to growing businesses, and they could be relevant to your growth plan.
So far I've been fortunate to work with amazing people in both small and large companies.
The hands-on education was a remarkable opportunity and allowed me to rub shoulders with great marketing minds in the biggest companies on the planet. It offered me an insider's perspective into how great marketing plans are formulated, structured, and implemented.
Many of these teams were filled with experienced marketing mangers, engineers, computer scientists, and sales pros. They were led by brilliant strategic thinkers.
That allowed me to connect the dots in marketing success in ways that are entirely unique. When you see hundreds of products and thousands of pitches, you began to see repeated concepts and discover proven marketing models.
These projects have been wonderful and lucrative for the business owners. The accelerated learning curve was a solid base for which to continue for generating millions of dollars.
And I've learned a lot and met lots of amazing minds and had lots of amazing things.
I've been punting in Cambridge, seen Paris from the Eiffel Tower, stood in front of the Mona Lisa in the Louvre, slurped up Raman in a backstreet cafe in Tokyo, and been frisked by South Korean security guards with guns while closing deals for top secret projects at Samsung and LG Electronics.
It was a one-in-a-million education, an opportunity of a lifetime, and I'm forever grateful.
And the one consistent thing through it all has been writing conversion copy and building profitable campaigns around customer acquisition.
I suspect it will be for many more.
I don't plan on stopping writing or working with businesses on growth any time soon. I'm still having too much fun.
Finally, since this is the about me page, you might be interested to know that I've continued my education, as I've honed my copy chops.
I've built up more in business growth, disruption, innovation, account-based management. On the tech side, I've studied dozens of niches, including IoT, biotech, fintech, EdTech, no-code, and others. I've continued my analysis skills with data science and analytics. And I've completed coursework and certifications from M.I.T, Stanford, Wharton, and Harvard Business School.
Ask me today about improving marketing campaigns for complex products in complicated ecosystems and I could rattle off a dozen ideas that are proven to work without even breaking out my playbook. Over the years, these methods have been refined further from working with local, regional, and national companies who are NOT in tech industries.
Or ask me about a profit-growth strategy to improve the health of the company and find better qualified buyers and I could hand you a treatise on 90-day, 120-day, and one year goals... which would turn you from lean-margin business into a healthy, full-bodied company, ripe for picking by the hungry venture capital market desperately searching for healthy companies to buy.
Or, most importantly, ask me about copy conversion campaigns to attract and bring in new buyers, or increase your conversions, and I'll be glad to deliver to you concepts, messages, and a strategy that will have your company brimming with new orders.
And, finally, if you have a project that you think we might be a fit for, then contact me and let's talk. I will happily schedule a call if there's an opportunity for both of us to benefit.
And so...
...that's a little bit about me.
And now... tell me about you.
If you are looking to partner with a proven growth marketer and copywriter, the best way to do that is by using the link below to tell me more about your project.
I'm scaling back on my new clients because of my workload, but I'm never too busy to talk about new ventures and new ideas. I'm really a recluse that doesn't travel much, so it's likely you won't run into out into the wild, wild world of conferences and trades shows.
That's why it's best to schedule a call with the link below to discuss your big vision and your goals.
The form is easy… uncomplicated… and completely removes any sticking points that normally freeze up so many entrepreneurs when it comes to writing websites, emails, video scripts, sales letters, and everything else required for a profitable business.
Copy will be the first topic we discussed, but the true money and bigger profits may be hiding in other areas of your business, and copy may be just the first step.
That's why I've provided my full background on this page, with results and insight from past clients and workmates, and partners. Growth ideas are fun if you put like-minded people together.
That's also why we start with copywriting... copy is the golden thread through all of the wins over 20 years. There's plenty of techniques for growth, yet it's the copy that is the glue holding them all together.
A once you get a solid growth campaign running, you’re in for an eye-opening discovery that really can change your business life faster than you might think is possible.
Click the link here and let's talk.