EP 346 Stop the Scroll with Better Headlines and Hooks with Reese Spykerman

3:24AM Mar 30, 2022

Speakers:

Tracy Matthews

Reese Spykerman

Keywords:

people

copywriting

headlines

jewelry

business

brand

work

tracy

formula

website

reese

landing page

thrive

captions

conversion

listening

talked

write

tip

design

Let's start out with this formula. It's so easy, Tracy. I think people are gonna love it. You're going to start out the sentence with this phrase: Become the blank ( ___ ). And then you fill in the blank with a specific type of character.

Welcome to Thrive By Design, the podcast for ambitious, independent jewelry brands, looking to profit from their products, get ready to make more and sell more doing what you love, without spending every single waking minute doing it. Hey, and if you're a creative fashion or product-based business, I want to welcome you to the show. I'll be dropping big tips on launching, growing, and scaling your business. So you can spend more of your precious time using your creativity to make money. You ready? Alright, let's do this.

Welcome to the Thrive By Design Podcast Episode 346. Hey there, it's Tracy Matthews, Chief Visionary Officer of Flourish and Thrive Academy and the host of the Thrive By Design Podcast. I'm excited to be here today with Reese Spykerman. She has already been on this podcast before and I invited her back to talk about stopping the scroll with copyrighting headlines, hooks, all those things that are going to get people to stop what they're doing, and read your emails to read your social media captions, all the things. Copywriting is a really important part of marketing. And if you don't understand how to do it right, you don't understand how to like speak to your audience in a way that gets them intrigued or gets them interested in what's next, well, then you've lost them forever, perhaps. And Reese on the podcast today talks a little bit more about a copywriting formula that you can use to write better subject lines, to write blog posts, subject lines or headlines, and also to use in social captions or anywhere where you're just writing something where you want to capture someone's attention, you can use it for just about anything. So before we dive in to this episode today, I just wanted to chat a little bit about your business. You know, we did this unofficial poll, in the Thrive By Design Facebook group, I'm going to be hosting some free workshops to talk about just different areas of business. And so I'm going to be announcing some of those next week. And I wanted to just jump in here and say I was like really fascinated by that. So if you're not in our Thrive By Design Facebook group, you can check it out, we'll have a link in the show notes. Or you can just head to flourishthriveacademy.com/facebookgroup. And it'll redirect you to our group. And come join the conversation over there. We just hired a new community manager Lauren Shaddow has been a longtime student of flourish and thrive Academy. And recently she went through some life changes and became a coach for our Momentum program. She specializes in Shopify websites design and conversion strategy for online sales and digital marketing. And we just brought her on as our new community manager. So she's pretty epic and amazing. So you're gonna love connecting with her in the Facebook group. And I also wanted to mention this, you know, we are heading up on Q2 here at Flourish And Thrive, lots of big things are happening. And this year has been an interesting one, I think all of us could see like a lot still lots of ups and downs with things that are going on in the world and all those things. You might be wondering, like, how do you navigate this and still run a business and stay focused on the right things, you need to stay focused during this time. So if you're feeling scattered, are maybe a little overwhelmed with your business, and you want to get back on the right track. And you're really trying to make big things happen, then I'd love to invite you to apply for a Free Strategy Audit. These strategy audits are an amazing opportunity for you to chat with someone on my team, and are best for people who are ready to invest in their business and then in themselves. Now, the strategy audits are free. And this is a great place for you to get our eyes on your business. And then we'll share with you how we can support you in one of our programs over here at Flourish and Thrive. So we have several programs that help people at different levels in business. And the strategy audit is going to help you get really clear on your three year vision for your business. So that you have an idea of where you're going. I think a lot of people are running blind in business, they don't have proper goals. They're not strategic planning, they don't really have a crystal clear picture of where they're going. Oftentimes, the people that work for them are unclear about what the vision is if you have employees or something like that, and it causes for a lot of chaos and overwhelm. So we're gonna help you crystallize that crystal clear vision, then we're going to take a look at what's going on in your business right now. And identify any roadblocks or hurdles or bottlenecks that might be preventing you from actually achieving that vision. And then if it seems like a good fit, we'll share with you how we can help you in one of our programs.

I am so excited to welcome Reese Spykerman back to the show Reese, thanks for being here today.

Either way, you're gonna walk away with some actionable steps and things that you need to implement in your business right now. So if you're interested in checking that out and you're ready to get support now in your business head on over to flourishthriveacademy.com/strategy, book a call in if you get approved for the strategy audit and chat with Natasha and let's see how we can help you today. All right, let's dive into today's episode I'm going to do a quick introduction of Reese Spykerman is an ecommerce marketing expert who specializes in website conversion and copywriting. A former journalist, she helps women with product-based businesses prioritize the activities that will bring them the highest ROI for the least amount of stress. Reese has been seen an Entrepreneur, Business Insider and Entrepreneurs On Fire and lives in northern Michigan with her husband and four pound morkie. Alright, let's dive in to the episode today.

I'm so excited to be talking with you again, we had such a fun conversation last time and some other time. So I know today's slated to be just as good.

It's gonna be amazing. We're gonna be talking about copywriting. And I think that everyone could use a dose of copywriting inspiration and tips to improve their copy on their website. Because copy can do a lot of things for you including sell, right?

It can and I think it's often overlooked by people. I also think that people don't understand how important it is they put up the words they think that the words will sell. And there's actually really an art and a science to this that we're going to dig into today.

I'm so excited about it. So I had you on the show about website conversions a while ago, we'll also link that episode because Reese is brilliant with conversions on your website and E-commerce and all the things. I was part of her e-commerce Summit. What was the name of it again? Because you're going to have it again, the Commerce Club? Yes, that's it? Yeah, awesome. It was great on the waitlist for the next time, because the interviews that she does are really, really good. And so much to learn from that. For people who didn't listen to that first episode, why don't you give us a quick rundown of your background and experience?

Sure. My background is I went to school for journalism. And when I graduated, I really wasn't that thrilled about getting a job in the media. Even though I had a really strong writing background, and I eventually decided I want to work for myself. And I started designing websites for businesses, small and then slowly bigger and bigger. And what I found was that there was this issue where people really wanted their websites to be pretty, but that wasn't necessarily selling for them. And I kind of went down into this rabbit hole of what does it take to persuade people visually? And what does it take to persuade people with your words, like both together? And my website designs evolved to be more oriented towards how do we convert people? Like how do we move them on that path? And that's what you and I talked about quite a bit in the last episode that I was on. But there's another whole side to it, which is the copywriting aspect. And I bring that as well into my work. And I think that's one of the things that will set me apart from a lot of other people in the industry is I've got both that, like design background and that conversion, optimization point of view. But I also can do the copywriting.

You don't design websites anymore do you?

Not if I can help it.

Coach confirm what's

Oh my gosh, you're so hilarious the look on your face, if you're listening to this, you're not going to see it for the look on his face.

Anyways, designing them after a while they are really hard to design like, yeah, see, if what happened is I was doing the design and the development, it was too much. So I got away from doing the development. And I found people still were very insistent on I want my logo this big. I want this thing like pretty and they get very fussy about how it looks. And I'm like, do you want this to sell for you or not? So finally, I just got away from doing the hands-on design stuff.

It's true. But you know, it's interesting. I'm just going to take a little sidebar here because we were running Facebook and YouTube ads. And it's funny because the landing page that we have for Facebook ads does not work on YouTube. The YouTube ads have to be this like ugly white thing with just a title on it, an opt-in. And it's interesting because what you're saying but not that your website's I'm sure we're beautiful, but it's funny because like I was like that is so ugly. No one's gonna work but it's totally working. And you just never know like you have to test things to see what's gonna actually get people to take that next step.

I'm so glad you brought that up because so much of it is about context and things you don't know, till you go into it, but what we do know and you probably like found out through what you were doing. The YouTube market is, in general very different. Oh yeah, then say the Facebook market. And so you have to, it's so weird stuff that will work on YouTube as an ad or a landing page. Completely different than Facebook it's bizarre to me too.

Yeah, I mean, the interesting part is like, Jason's, like, Jason is my, he's my boyfriend, but he's also doing some consulting for me right now and operations for my business. He also has a really strong marketing degree, he's been pushing me for like a year, we gotta get YouTube ads up. So we finally do. And he's like, we're getting that, like the conversion with the regular landing page was so expensive. I'm like, I can't keep running these. I'm getting like two conversions for $100. It's too expensive. And he's like, Well, let's try something else. We're gonna try this really simple landing page. I looked at it. I was like, That is terrible. I'm like, You're not a designer. He's like, I know. But it's working. Look, they're coming in at $5. I'm like, Oh, my gosh, oh, but the thing is, is that the premise is like, you have to understand the platform, we're getting a little bit off topic, but we'll, I'll bring it back. You have to understand the platform and what the purpose is. And on a YouTube ad, it's like a video platform. And so the videos are what sell what's happening next. So if your video has to sell, if the video doesn't sell, then you're not going to the landing page doesn't have to sell it just has to be tell them what they're getting. And get them to enter their details for the next step.

Yeah, and like let's keep that as simple and distraction-free as possible. Because like you said, they've already been sold to getting there with the video so do not get in their way. Right? Like they're on a mission. Let's let them keep on their mission.

Yep. Okay, so let's dive into copywriting. So enough little YouTube stuff. But in your opinion, like how do you define copywriting? Why is it so important to a jewelry or product organization or someone who is trying to sell physical products that you might even wear on your body?

Yes, great question. All right. I think of copywriting as in general, the words we use to help our customers like, do everything from hate, you're in the right place to would you like to buy this? Would you like to sign up for this, it's even things like telling our story. Copywriting when it's done well is your captions on Instagram. And it's, I think for people to understand it really easily is when you see a billboard, that's copywriting. When you watch a TV commercial, even though you're listening to the words, that's also copywriting. It's how we communicate in a persuasive way, in order to get people either interested in the beginning in our product, and then later on, really thinking seriously about whether they're going to buy from us and then finally pulling that trigger and buying in every stage of the way. The copywriting is serving a different function, right? As you and I talked a bit about customer journey in our other episode and copywriting also applies to that customer journey.

So true. And I was telling you before we even started recording on this interview that I just got off another interview with a jewelry brand called OXB, and their brand positioning and copy is all around the fact that they have sweat proof jewelry. And so what they ended up doing is positioning their brand and like most jewelry is sweat proof. I just think that the general consumer doesn't understand that. But silver and gold vermeil, which are like lower price point kind of items, as opposed to like solid gold or some for gold filled, actually will tarnish when you sweat because or in all the obviously things that are made out of metal will like disintegrate when you're working out. Like if you have a string tie jewelry or something like that. But I found that so interesting. And I was on their website and the copy is all designed to help like get someone into the journey like you're a fitness junkie, but you don't want to take your jewelry off kind of thing. So like what do you do you need your that sweatproof which I thought was like fascinating. In the end, like I'm like, that's a really good idea.

It is what I love is there's so much going on here. But one of the things that's going on and you and I talked about this is there's this intrigue, right, we get pulled in like so is my jewelry, not sweat proof? Or if you don't know this, or for people who assume it is right. And there's this, it's like kicking that curiosity. But the other thing it's doing, and I think it's really a cool example for your jewelry maker audiences. It's talking about a transformation that people can ask. Right? Like, it's like, let's dig deeply into what that is. The transformation is that you don't have to worry about your jewelry again.

Yep, that's true. You never have to take it off. You could wear it in the shower, sweating it like it's gonna hold up. It's gonna stand the test of time like all the things right?

Yeah, like I've been taking off my rings at night and I'm afraid of losing them because I don't want to get them all gunked up. Yeah. So if you think of jewelry is having a pain associated to it, but it does, it can This is such a good example.

Yeah. Well, and you should take your rings off. I'm telling you that.

Okay, thanks.

Like all lotioning up was like all like, Why do I know? So good. All right, so let's get back to the copywriting piece like, what are some of the core pieces of copy that are going to stop readers in your tracks? You know, you talked about a little bit about a pattern interrupt briefly. But let's dive a little bit more into that.

Yeah, there's one that kind of is the queen that rules them all that I want to talk about today. And it's a headline, so let's break down what I mean. So that people get it because you and I know Tracy like we're in this world. But for everyone listening and watching, they might be like, okay, isn't that like ripped from the headlines like the New York Times? So what does it mean for copywriting? You know, when you go to the grocery store, and Target, and there's the checkout rack with the magazines, right? And you see cars, smoked like 'Sex Sessions That Ended in the ER, You'll Thank God It Wasn't You'. That's a headline, right? I mean, that pulls us in, or we got Women's World with 'Lose 56 Pounds by Memorial Day, like that's more straightforward. It's not quite as dramatic. And you don't have to be crazy dramatic like Cosmo about this. But those are headlines. Yep. And we can use them in our websites, in our captions, even in our emails, my God, the way you write a subject line could be considered a headline. So because they're meant to grab our attention. And often when we think about especially a website, you know, you'll go to a website, and at the top of the homepage, there will be a larger text in a larger size than most of the rest. That's usually the headline. That's what we're talking about here. And they have a place in E-commerce. And I don't know, I'm really curious what you think Tracy, but I have found, there's a lot of advice out there for service industry and for B2B copywriting, but e-Commerce is like left behind. So I kind of went on a mission for how do we do headlines for people with product-based businesses? Because they got to know too.

Well, I think this is really good. And I think we I mean, we teach this in our community in our Laying The Foundation program, and also in our Momentum students. And when we're working with someone to really optimize like their about page, or even the homepage of their site to have something where when someone lands there, they know who the jewelry is for, I think a lot of people rely on the look for the photography to actually do the selling, which it can over time, but the copy I feel like or the headlines, as you're saying can be a really powerful tool to call out who your dream customer is, or who the products for, to dive in maybe to a pain point, or, you know, a pique curiosity. Like there's a lot of different ways that just a couple of words can change that like what are some of the coolest things that you've seen for a product business? My putting you on the spot on you.

You are, but that's okay. Like, we can roll with this for product business in general. Well, I'll tell you, this isn't not so much like what I've seen. I'm not great on the spot, but I'll tell you what I did for one of my clients. So they have this vegan coffee creamer that they made. And it was free from all kinds of junk, basically. So the headline we use for them on their landing page was never drink another unhealthy coffee again. And good. Yeah, and it's it's doing a very much like the whole sweatproof jewelry where people are leaning in and they're going, what's wrong with my coffee? Why is it unhealthy? Do you see where the idea behind what I just said? And even that sweatproof jewelry is not to tell the whole darn story. It's just to get people to stick around and start reading what's below it because they want to know more.

Exactly. That's a great example. I'm glad you can think on your toes girl. That was amazing.

I'm tired

Sometimes.

So tell me about

some headline formulas that make it easier to write a headline.

First, I don't know about you, but I find it so much easier when I'm doing things if I have like a framework or a formula almost like a mad lib to work from because for me personally, it helps alleviate writer's block so I'm not like faced with this blank page like crap. What do I write? What do I do? So that's part of why I came up with these different formulas especially because so much of your audience and the people you work with are not copywriters, and they shouldn't have to be. So how can we make this easy for them? Right? I've made a bunch of them and there's one I would really love to share. If that's cool with you, like break it down for you.

Go for it.

I'm calling this one the 'Step Into You' formula and it's really good especially for jewelry. So that's why I'm pulling this one out because I know who your audience. And I want to get them with they need, I don't have to tell you, Tracy jewelry is a very emotional buying decision. Right? Like, we will back it up sometimes with logic, but we're driven by emotion. And for me, and I'd love to know your thoughts before I tell you my formula is, I think jewelry is often made because of how we want to see ourselves, or how we do see ourselves, whether it's a certain style, or certain type of character, or sometimes we envision a future scenario where like, we're going to wear this piece, or even a past thing, like something that commemorates our past. So like, would you agree with that assessment?

100%, you're right on target, like people buy jewelry, because of desire. So there's, because it's a desired purchase, right? So it might mean, like commemorating a loved one or a past experience, like, you know, the more you can position that, it might mean be a status play, it might be something to, like, give you that like, like a certain feeling that you're trying to generate, so that feelings can like run the gamut, right? Like, from anything from like, confidence to sexiness to flirtiness to all the things. So there's a very specific angle that any jewelry brand could lean into, based on like, why someone would buy that that particular product. You know, I think people who buy like maybe, you know, when you think of like that, remember that TV show Dynasty from the you might be too young, but like from the 80s or 90s.

Oh, I watched it with my parents.

Yeah, like they were always dripping like the people in Dallas always dripping in those like, amazing like, or like Elizabeth Taylor is a good example. She always her collection, she had these amazing jewels, like no one really wears jewelry like that. And the people that do only buy it because it's a status symbol, right? Like that's a good example.

Oh, you brought up the perfect example, because I'm going to talk about basically that. So if we go into it, assuming it's this desire purchase, we want to paint a very descriptive picture for them about like, that's reflecting back to them what they want to see either in themselves or further future in one sentence in this headline, so let me give you an example from Mejuri. Am I saying that brand name right?

MEJURI? Mejuri?

Yeah. So yeah, yeah. Okay, so this, I pulled from one of the product descriptions, but it's the headline, looking like a French girl, if sent as difficile, as it seems.

That is great. Yeah, that's so good. But your own brand? Yeah.

It's like, do you notice this is about our identity is basically what you were describing, like people, that status thing. And it's confirming for the buyer, how she sees herself or how she wants to see herself. So when you use my 'Step Into You' formula, which I'm going to break down for them in a minute, let's do it, you need super specific, you can't just be like, be a precious flower. I mean, you could but God,

Or right for busy moms, like that's, that's a lot of moms. So it's a little bit too general. So if you can get more specific.

Yeah, I wish the audience had seen my face on that one. I will always be like.

You'll look it if you're listening it with watching the video, so.

Let's start out this formula. It's so easy, Tracy, I think people are going to love it, you're going to start out the sentence with this phrase: Become the blank ( ___ ). And then you fill in the blank with a specific type of character. So let me give you some examples, like become the Lady Gaga, but there's more. So you figure out this character, and then you're going to add an aspiration after it so: Become the Lady Gaga You've Always Dreamed' or 'Become the Most Graceful Woman at Your 25th High School Reunion', or 'Become That Effortlessly Chic Woman Who's Always Turning Heads'. You can play around with this it's going to depend on your brand voice and brand style like if you are selling $25,000 pieces what I just said is not going to work but let's give a completely different example that you could tweak you had a Katy Celeron from Metal Marvel's Yes. And she's very, very different jewelry brand, right? Yeah. This say like Kendra Scott or Cartier. She swears a lot. And she could turn this on her head and before I do this, can I swear on this?

Yeah, let's do it.

Okay. So her could be Become THAT Bitch And Own It Every Fucking Day. Yeah, it's on brand for her right?

So good. We should get a text or happen someone came up with a headline.

Yeah, I've got a headline for you. So it's let me just repeat it for these guys who are listening, Become that or become the and then feeling that picture of this person, this persona, and then the aspiration afterwards. Go play with this.

So fun will have that little caption that little formula in the show notes. So make sure that you check it out. Okay, awesome. So what is one tip that our listeners could use to actually improve their headlines in their marketing?

I think the best tip that I have is pause this episode, go grab a piece of paper and a like a pen or pencil. Don't do this with your keyboard. Because I really believe when we write with our hands, it taps into something different in our brain. And I want you to go brainstorm based on either your brand, or specific product or a few products 10 different headlines that use this formula. But then what I want you to do is I want you to take a hot minute, go take a walk with your phone and start talking into your phone a few more. Because when you verbalize it, sometimes really good stuff comes out that won't when we feel locked up with writing it down. So just don't edit yourself, just get this stuff, do a brain dump, go back and edit later. And here's the beauty of this tip Tracy, it's like my little Trojan horse for your audience for them to really begin thinking, Who is their ideal customer? What does she want? Right? So this built right into this formula is a lot of people don't think this through like, Who exactly am I talking to? And what does this customer care about? This formula gets you started in that thinking process.

That is amazing. I love it. That's such a great tip. Okay, and I want to just like reiterate that because there's something really powerful about the hand to writing, like writing on a piece of paper versus like, trying to type things out on a keypad or something like that, like it really does make a total shift and things. And also, like helps you be I don't know, get into more of a stream of consciousness or something like that. I don't know, what do you think?

I do, and I don't know what it is. But something in my brain will like lock up on the keyboard that feels more free. When I just write by hand. I just feel more free. I don't edit myself as much.

That's true. Yeah, totally. And you're like, oh, just revise it later. So what are some of the places that you can use headlines to actually connect with your customers. So there's so many I'm sure.

There's a ton. But here's a few key ones. We've got, I mentioned that top of your homepage, especially where a lot of people will have like a big promotional banner. But you can use headlines even as you scroll down your home page to have like things that the eyes can grab on. And here's like another tip I want to sneak in is that when we look at Search Engine Optimization and what Google wants, Google wants what people want. And what people want these days is something that's super fast for them on their phone. And when you use headlines that way to break up text, so it's not like long tones of text, you're helping give people what they want. And so you're helping giving Google what they want. So that's like, use them all over your Home Page, but also your About Page, it should not just say about Tracy Matthews, you can use a headline there, you can use it in an email subject line, you can use it in your Instagram captions, you could use it to start as the very first sentence of your product description to grab people.

Yep. So good, so many places. And I think everyone can use like better subject or headlines or things for things to stop the scroll anytime someone's like scrolling on their phone, so that it that all the placements that you just mentioned are good, but especially I think also in your social media captions, which is so powerful. I know a lot of people get stuck on with it right there. You know, I love this. Like I love your the little the formula that you gave before because it's so powerful. You can even start it off like, hey, you know, become the blah blah blah with this da da da. And you can do that for like different pieces of jewelry that kind of fit the different personas of your brand.

Brilliant. Yeah. And then it might also help you get started writing the rest of the caption. You're like, hey, now that I got my start, I'm good to go. And you know what else, Tracy? Think about like emails we get in our inbox. Imagine if you got one. This is a little bit of a riff off my formula, but it can show you like flexibility. Imagine if you got one that was like, be a Diana in a world of Kardashians, which is something I heard. But what if you turned it on your head? And you were like, be yourself instead of Insta famous? Like maybe your brand is actually about not being anyone else. But being your own damn self imagine email subject line, I would open that.

That is so good yourself instead of Insta famous, yes. That's really good. The dynamic reactions one was really good to like, love it. Okay. What should people avoid right? I mean, I don't know. And I liked it. Because I'm like, oh, that's like, very specific. And I can tell I'm totally visualizing it right now. I just watch like one of those Netflix things where, like, binge watch the whole Diana series, or I don't know if there's Netflix or Amazon Prime or something that.

So Diana has been on your mind anyway.

Yeah, I don't know. I'm thinking about it. Like, yeah, totally. Anyway, so back to the copy. What should people avoid when writing headlines? And what do you think they should do instead?

Okay, so this is we talked just now you were like that was really specific. So what you want to avoid is being general and using like these overuse words. And I'm so curious, Tracy, if you see these a lot in your industry: lovely, beautiful, unique and special. You need there's just for the individual person.

That's like, I feel like probably a lot of people, no offense if you have that.

I work with people who have that. And they struggle, and I feel great compassion for them. Because it's very hard for people to wrap their head around this. And they're like, my jewelry is unique. And I said, but if you're on the phone with me, like you asked Tracy, what you should do instead. So if you're on the phone with me or Tracy, you were telling me about one of your pieces? You had to describe it to me like so I could see it because you and I aren't looking face to face. What would you tell me about that piece? You wouldn't tell me unique? You'd have to find some way to describe it to me, right?

That's a good point. Yeah, there's no video or no way to visually see it, it's hard to. And here's what I would say about that. It's like, you're not standing out if you're just trying to say this use the same words that everyone else is using. I mean, you could use words like that, but there's like more descriptive words that you can I love the idea of just like calling out for I think that's super helpful. And digging really deep into even like finding a word that describes like your design aesthetic, or a short phrase or something like that, that's really specific, can be super helpful.

And it's hard work like I don't I have empathy for people that yours is listening, doing this work. It's not necessarily like, Oh, I'm gonna be done with this episode. And I've got it, you're gonna have to dig I think, and I, but I think it's worth it. Like, I hate to use a pun here, but you're really it's gonna be like mining for gold for you. Yeah, you know. And the other thing I want to tell people to avoid that I think would be helpful is you don't want to sound too formal. So we have so many of us have it drilled into us from like our eighth grade English teachers to write a certain way. But you want to really write the way that you talk. And the way you can fix this is like, sit down, do your headlines. And remember earlier I said even talks about into your phone, like into your recorder. But when you're done writing, I want you to do this with all your copy, whether it's your headline, your product descriptions, read it out loud to yourself, where do you stumble? Where do you say, God, I sound like a robot. That's where you need to, like fine tune your copy of it.

So, so true, which is good. And this is, you know, another thing you keep saying like it's this is really hard work. One of the things that I would recommend is like finding someone you can bounce the ideas off of, or someone or hiring a copywriter or getting coached by someone like Reese or something like that, where are being in our community, of course, like we're, we're digging into their brand with the coaches and stuff like that, where they can take a look at what you're doing and like help pull out of you like what it is that you actually stand for. And like help you put the stakes in the ground and the and develop the core messaging and all that stuff. Because sometimes when you're so close to it, it's really hard to think outside of the box. And I can't emphasize that enough. Last year, I hired a consultant to come in, like, take a look at our messaging and dig deep and like we were doing so many things wrong. They're kind of like, um, yeah, you need to be more specific you need to do this we identified helped us like really dig deep into all these different avatars that we have and people that we could serve in the industry and the market. It was all the stuff that I didn't even think about before and I was like, Duh, why didn't I think about that. So it's a really good idea to get like people who aren't attached or at close to your situation to give you outside feedback because it can really be helpful.

It can if it helps anyone hearing this, but I'm a copywriter who brings in copywriters to help me with my stuff because of what Tracy just said is, I'm too close to things to know what's going to be powerful, effective, what's going to connect with people. So even people who do this for a living will get professional help. So if you're trying my exercises, and feeling badly about yourself, don't. It's normal to have it very hard to do your own marketing, because you just lack that objectivity. And it's nothing wrong with you like Tracy had that issue. I did too. So if you if that's you, and you're listening, it's okay.

Totally. Okay. So raise this was super informative and amazing. Where can everyone find you?

Well, they can find me over on my site. And if it's cool with you, I've got a free gift that I'd love to offer them. They can check out my 10 Common Websites Mistakes That Lose Them Leads and Sales and How They Can Fix Them Fast. And you can get that on my site at designbyreese.com/fixes, f-i-x-e-s. And you know what, after you sign up and you get one of my emails, go ahead and reply to me. I reply to pretty much every email I received. So I'd love to hear from you. If you had a question about anything I talked about on the show, like shoot me a note, and I'll see if I can help you work through it.

Amazing, Reese. Thanks so much for being here. Today. You are a rock star.

Oh, thank you for this conversation and always bouncing things off at you with you. Bye, everyone.

Thank you so much for listening to the show today. This is Tracy Matthews. Just about to sign off. But before I do, I want to know Have you picked up my brand new book, The Desired Brand Effect, standout in a saturated market with a timeless jewelry brand. I am thrilled because this book has gotten so many five star reviews, that means you're loving it. And I am so grateful to all of you who've picked it up. If you haven't picked it up, and you haven't given it a review yet. I would love to see what you think about it. So head on over to Amazon, give us a review. Let me know what you think about the book. If you haven't picked up the book yet, and you're not sure if it's for you or not, I would love to give you the first chapter for free. You can head on over to desiredbrandeffect.com/chapter1 and download the first chapter of the book completely complimentary. If you enjoy it, then you'll be invited to purchase the book and read it for yourself. I've been getting tagged on social media so much in Instagram stories and all the things about how people are just loving the book. And I'm so grateful for all of you who have picked it up. So thanks a million, and I'll chat with you soon. Thanks for listening to the podcast today. This is Tracy Matthews signing off. Until next time.

Thank you so much for listening to today's episode. It's my mission to help thousands of creative businesses inside and outside the jewelry space use their creativity to make money. Make sure that you're subscribed to Thrive By Design on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and wherever podcasts are played. And we'd love to hear what you think. Please rate and review the show and if you're inspired please share this with your friends. Cheers to seeing you flourish and thrive!