Episode 242: Leaning into you and your own tone of voice to create a professional and conversational copy with Emma McMillan of Emma McMillan Copy
Don't be afraid to repel people because by repelling people, you are also attracting your audience. In today's episode, Fiona chats with Emma McMillan of Emma McMillan Copy about the importance of having an effective copy. Not everyone's going to like what you put out. You've got to be okay with that. Tune in!
Topics discussed in this episode:
Introduction
On COVID
Emma McMillan Copy
Emma's advice on shifting into a different industry
Effects of having a powerful copy
On changing your brand's tone
Investing in your website's copy
Books and apps that helped Emma
How to connect with Emma
Conclusion
Get in touch with My Daily Business Coach
Resources and Recommendations mentioned in this episode:
@EmmaMcMillanCopy – Instagram
Lauren – past episode
“We need to get away from this feeling that writing needs to be formal. It can still be professional while it's conversational. If you can lean into you and your own tone of voice, that's a great way to do it.”
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Welcome to episode 242 of the My Daily Business Coach Podcast. This is a small business interview episode and this is a great one, especially if you are somebody who struggles with writing content. If you are someone who sits and stares at the screen, puts out emails that you feel a bit gross about, or maybe every time you post on social media, you're like, “Ugh,” and you want to get more confident, it is something that you're going to learn how to do and who to do it within this episode.
Before we get stuck into that, I want to, of course, acknowledge the traditional owners and custodians of this beautiful land. I'm looking out into gorgeous gum trees and looking at little rabbits and parrots working their way around the garden. I'm thankful that I get to live here. I'm appreciative and respectful of the traditional custodians, which are the Wurrung and Wurundjeri people of the Kulin nation. I pay my respects to their elders, past, present, and emerging, and acknowledged that sovereignty has never been ceded. Let's get into this small business interview.
If you are somebody who has ever struggled with your copy, our guest is going to be a breath of fresh air and shed a lot of light on why that may be and how you get out of that mindset. How do you go forward feeling confident and clear about your message and your content? My guest is Emma McMillan. Emma is an educator, a copywriter, a copy coach, and a podcast host. She started her life in a completely different career. However, a lot of the skills and experiences from that career have brought her to where she is today and have allowed her to be good at what she does.
Emma and I first met when she came to me for coaching. We worked together over the course of a few months or 3 or 6 months. We got to know each other. I got to know a lot more about her business and how she has crafted her business to help many business owners and bigger companies as well understand how important their message is and how to cut through and connect with their audience using the power of words.
As we go into this episode, Emma then branched out into coaching because she saw many people that want to create their own copy and want to do it for themselves. They don't have the confidence or don't understand the frameworks or things like templates or other ways of conceptualizing what it is that they're trying to say in a way that then makes it feel enjoyable to do. Emma is on the show to talk about how she started her career.
She's been in business for the same amount of time that I have. She has come from a different career. What was it like to go from a stable steady income and a job that you've studied in, you've worked in for a considerable amount of time, and then move across to doing something completely by yourself? What was that like? What are the lessons that she has learned? What advice would you give to others?
We also talk about things like website copy, frameworks, how to get over your own stuff, and how to get out of your head when it comes to connecting with your audience through words. No matter where you are in your business, you'll get so much out of this chat with Emma. She's a teacher, an educator, a copywriter, and a coach. She is a huge champion of small businesses, particularly creative small businesses as well. If you want to connect with Emma after this, you can find out everything over EmmaMcMillanCopy.com. Also, read until the end because Emma has a program running and you can apply for it. You'll learn all about that in our chat. Here is my interview with Emma McMillan of Emma McMillan Copy.
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Hello, Emma. Welcome to the podcast.
Hello, Fiona. Thanks for having me.
You're welcome. How are you feeling? I know you've had a bit of a rough week. Where are you talking to us from?
I'm talking to you from my beautiful home office in Melbourne, staring out the window at the first signs of spring, and I can't wait to get back out into it once I get let out of isolation.
You poor thing, having COVID. What's that look like?
It's been a rough week but it has been a little bit of a chance to stop, which I don't give myself that often. I'm trying to look at it from a positive standpoint. It was going to happen eventually.
I haven't had one either, although my sister is like, “I reckon you've had it, you just didn't know.” You and I might be some of the last people. You've taken the whole two and a half years to get to this point of getting it.
I know the anticipation.
Was it anticlimactic?
It was anticlimactic.
I have been fortunate to get to know you and understand more about your business and who you are and why you started it. For those who perhaps don't know about you or don't know Emma McMillan Copy, what is the business? What's it all about? How and why and when did you start it?
The business has been around now since 2016. I still pinch myself when I realize how long it's been. I work predominantly as a copywriting coach with small business owners and organizations helping them to feel more confident about their copywriting. I started back in 2016 as a straight-down copywriter. I had a previous career in education. I was a high school teacher for about twelve years.
Gradually, the business has evolved over the years. In the last couple of years, I've focused much more on my coaching offering and working one on one with people and in a group program setting predominantly. I’m helping business owners to understand why copy works, how copy works, and how they can write it for their business. I help to keep them accountable and make them feel that copies are nothing to be afraid of or scared of because I don't think it needs to be. Everybody can write better.
I love that. It's such a needed thing. We'll get into how much people can be their own worst obstacle when it comes to copywriting. You and I are writers but a lot of people tell themselves that it's hard and that they could never do it and that they’re crap writers or whatever else. Before we get into that, you touched on the fact that you are a teacher for twelve years. It wasn't like you just did teaching for a year or two. That was a proper, full-time career and you'd studied and everything else.
I often hear from people that they're worried about switching careers as you've done. You've shown, especially with group coaching as well, that element of teaching and understanding and how to build even out a program. All of that would be drawing on your previous career and utilizing heaps of skills that you got from teaching into what you do now.
I'm wondering if you had any mental blocks or if there was anything that came up for you when you did start your business way back in 2016, the same time as me. Did you have to work through any of these? For anyone reading, even if they're in a business of their own but it's a particular career and they want to shift into a different industry, do you have any advice or anything like, “A teaching career is stable going into a small business,” which is unknown.
There are many things that come up. Even hearing that question brings back that moment for me. I was burnt out in my career. I loved the aspects of it but I was totally exhausted by others. I was desperate for a change. What I felt like I needed to do at that time was to almost turn my back on it and head in a different direction. For me, I almost disowned it for a while while I was trying to establish myself in a new career. I didn't necessarily see all the transferable skills. Now, there are so many that I'm using.
Also, I wanted to carve out this new identity for myself. I did create a separate identity for myself in this new business. The past several years have been a process of almost coming back to myself and always coming back to understanding that there was so much value in what I already knew. Now, I'm starting to tap back into what those things are.
It wasn't like it wasn't there through my copywriting in the early days. I'm a project manager from way back. I used to mount these ridiculously huge school productions each year. I know how to plan out six months of the year working backward to put on a huge, big show. Things like managing client projects and deadlines and things like that come easily to me in terms of stakeholder management and client relationships.
As a teacher, you're talking to hundreds of people a day. There were many things that I could take, clear communication, how to impart information, and all those things. It was also important to me that I spent some time reflecting on who am I now and what I want to do and focusing on the building. I don't necessarily think that was the best way to go about it. I don't necessarily think I'd suggest that to other people. If you can find a way to acknowledge where you've come from and help to bring it into where you're going to start with, that might feel nicer. For me, I did need to have that separation and have that break before I found my love for those bits again.
Many pieces of advice there. I like that you said you wouldn't do it the same way again. Sometimes it's not necessarily a separation of who we were but a further expansion of who we are in total taking in all of those things. School productions, whoa. In my son’s primary school, their production is a whole year that they're planning for this 1 or 3 nights of doing these productions. How did you go? How did you destress because they look stressful on the outside, let alone doing that?
They're epic. It was my favorite part of the job but it was the most stressful part, I’m not going to lie. Wearing all the hats from director to choreographer to producer some years and coordinating people to help with all the bits and pieces and the costumes and painting sets. Put it this way, that career is great to have before you have a young family when you don't mind as much sacrificing your Sundays or your evenings to rehearsals and things like that.
For me, I'd gotten to the point where I was about to start my family and I thought, “I don't think this intense co-curricular teaching role is for me.” I was the head of a drama and dance department. It was all of those out-of-hours things that played such a big role in what I did. It didn't feel like it was going to be conducive to family life. That was one of the big reasons. My body was getting tired. I was in my early 30s, which doesn't necessarily seem advanced. When you've been on your feet teaching all those years, it's physical and it is tiring.
Is it primary school that you’re at?
Secondary school.
You've got all these attitudes from people as well. They go through all their hormones. I feel for you. I was thinking primary school is hardcore enough. In secondary, you'd have people's hopes as well of being a singer or a dancer. It's less maybe fun than it is in primary school. It might be something taken a lot more seriously in high school.
There's a bit of everything.
Back to non-dancing and singing. You're still doing amazing things in your business but taking away that drama dance part of it and coming back to words. You're a copy coach and you work with people to empower them to create their own content. Words are something many people overthink or doubt themselves with. It's also an area that many people also think they should be able to do or that they can do from an early age with taught how to write in class. My 9-year-old is doing heaps of writing at the moment from instructional texts through to fiction and creative writing.
With this in mind, how do you move small business owners from that mindset of, “It's just writing.” I say this because I've been a writer for a long time as well. It's not in any derogatory way. People do sometimes think, “I should be able to do it myself. I can write. Let me just write.” They spend way too long with this crappy copy that doesn't make them feel excited and doesn't make the clients feel excited.
We know that words can have massive power and can see a major change when small business owners focus on what are you trying to say and how they get it across in all elements of their business. I love to know what changes have you seen in your clients, particularly copy-coaching clients who have focused on getting the language right or understanding what their message is. How has that helped their business?
Even someone like me who studied creative writing at uni and taught English as well, I still have these moments where I doubt myself. I can understand that self-doubt comes in for the people who are doubting themselves. We're all taught to write at school. We should all be able to write. Yes, we can all write. The difficult thing for some people to understand is that you need that distance from your copy to understand how it works.
Words are not the same as copywriting. To convert someone to sell something, it's not the same as sitting and writing an English essay, for example. Even if you could do that or you could sit and write some poetry, it doesn't necessarily mean you can write converting words on a page. Sometimes it takes bouncing around ideas to help people take a step back I suppose from themselves and their own business to think about, “What do my clients need to hear?” It’s not necessarily, “What do I want to write?” It’s, “Who am I talking to?” Creating that distance.
Often, one of the most valuable things that come out of working with clients, either in a one-on-one or group coaching scenario, is getting people to think like, “How are my clients consuming my content? Where are they consuming my content? What people are they? What time do they have? What things do they like to read?” You can go down to the smallest level of detail. Maybe some people naturally have a tendency to write long sentences. If all you write on your website are long sentences, that's going to not be something that connects with your audience.
What people need to see is short, sharp, and punchy writing. They need to see lots of whitespaces because long sentences that cover a website are not going to get read or consumed or you're not going to build that connection with your audience. It's about sometimes understanding what you're writing patterns are that you default to. How can we work with those? How can we tweak those so that you can see what it is you're doing and then start to replicate some different habits?
It might be a matter of, what you're saying here is a strong message but instead of two long sentences, what happens if you break it up into 5 or 6 shorter sentences? What happens if you take it and you convert it into bullet points with a strong headline? Sometimes it's not the message that's a problem, it's the way that it's structured. Sometimes the structure is working but maybe the message isn't clear.
I might encourage people to look at client testimonials or client reviews and things that their clients say about them. We try and weave those words into the copy. If you're a small business owner and you're trying to get more of the same clients into your ecosystem, why would you not use the language that your favorite clients use to talk about you to draw new clients in? These clients of yours can explain what it's like to work with you and they can explain the outcome of working with you in a way that you can't necessarily because you don't have that objectivity. Does that make sense?
Yes, it completely makes sense. It's such a good way to even have somebody change or reframe the way that they're thinking about this to even think like, “I've got heaps of testimonials. That's a practical thing that I could do.” When you said breaking it in or chunking it into bullet points or breaking it down. It's not always about rewriting everything, which might seem overwhelming to people, especially if they've been in business for some time as well.
On that note, a lot of people at the moment are feeling burned out. We're seeing many news articles about it even though it feels like everyone should feel better because things are opening up a lot more in the pandemic than it has been. If people are reading this and they're thinking, “That sounds good but where's my motivation to even get started on this? I should empower myself to be better at this but I don't have any mojo to get up and do it.”
You've studied creative writing and you've been an English teacher. Your writing is amazing, Emma, as you would expect in somebody who runs your type of business. I have been in writing for a long time, a journalist. I'm guessing that both of us were told, “You're pretty good writers,” at school. A lot of people reading may have sucked at English class. They're thinking, “That's fine but I can't even string a sentence together.” What advice would you give to them? How might even working with a copy coach help them?
If you're feeling like you're lacking in confidence, I would say there are a couple of good things you can do to start and one of them is maybe to start by looking around and seeing what resonates for you out of the things that you're consuming. When you get emails into your inbox, what grabs your attention? What's a great subject line? What's an email that gets you to keep reading? Try to think, “What is it about that, that's appealing to me?”
If you're scrolling your social feed, maybe instead of scrolling, actually save or screenshot posts that maybe resonate with you or that you think, “I like the style of that.” Get some inspiration. Sometimes the problem is that your head is down in your own stuff and you don't have enough creative inputs from outside. You run out of ideas. That can be a helpful way to remind yourself, “That's a way to do things.”
There’s another thing I suggest to my clients, which they love, especially people who find it hard to start the actual first sentence, for example. Take yourself for a walk and use your voice memos on your phone and record yourself saying some stuff. All copies should be conversational anyway. What's nice about recording your voice is that it is recording you in conversation. Often, it comes out in a way that feels natural.
Sometimes people have got what they create in their heads and it maybe doesn't come out on the page. My husband says this to me all the time, he says, “I can say it in an informal conversational way but when I go to write it, it feels all formal.” It's funny because it's almost like we put these things that we've been taught, we overlay them over our natural tendency. Sometimes it doesn't help the copy to come out in a way that feels like us.
That voice recorder is a nice way to get it down in a way that feels like you. Use that as your basis for your social post or your next newsletter or even if you're writing your about page. It feels more conversational and natural. We need to get away from this feeling that writing needs to be formal. It can still be professional while it's conversational. If you can lean into you and your own tone of voice, that's a great way to do it.
I encourage clients as well to create a word bank. For instance, it's thinking about your tone of voice and words that you say, and words that you don't say. For instance, I don't use a lot of exclamation marks or fab, amazing, and things like that in my copy. For some people, that's on there. It's about staying true to who you are and your brand. If you've got a little word bank next to where you work that reminds you of words that you use commonly and that you can come back to anchor yourself if you're feeling like you're wandering off on a tangent or words where you're like, “That's not on brand for me. It doesn't sound like me.” That thing can be helpful as well.
I can hear people scribbling down all of these things. Many good ideas there. Sorry to put you on the spot but I've got a question. I thought of it as you were talking about being natural and recording yourself. I'm all about voice memos, voice notes, and voice-to-text. Let‘s say someone is rebranding or not even rebranding, they are sick of their tone.
I have one client I'm thinking of and they got somebody else to do their copy years and years ago. They were maybe a little bit worried about how they would sound so it did come across as formal. I'm not trying to make anyone guess who this person is. It came out in a way that they're not necessarily happy with. Now they want to move in a different direction and be more casual and more conversational but they're worried about, “We've built this tone and now we're shifting.”
Is there any advice? Do you have any clients that work with you in coaching where they have had a particular tone and now it's changing things up? You and I both have young children. Things change over time. The way you speak in a certain part of your life changes a certain part of your life. Is it the same with business? Can you change your tone and is it okay?
Yes. You should. Everything evolves. You don't even need to necessarily acknowledge it. It's a matter of stepping in however it evolves. The people who resonate with that will come along for the ride. The people who don't might drop away but that's okay because perhaps they're no longer your audience if that tone doesn't resonate with them.
If anything, it sounds to me as though this would be a great move for this client of yours because it would come much more naturally to them to speak in a slightly evolved tone of voice that’s more conversational and in their natural way of communicating anyway. We should all check ourselves occasionally from the tone of voice but also in terms of what we talk about in our business as well.
I'm following someone who had a baby and a lot of the content that's coming out now has got a bit of a baby spin on it. She openly said, “If this isn't resonating, that's okay. This is going to be a part of what I talk about. Not everything is going to be baby related. It's still going to be business related.” We shouldn't have to cut off parts of our lives. It's our business. We're free to talk about what we choose to talk about. If we don't want to talk about things as well, that's our business too.
Not to be afraid of pleasing our customers out there. The best thing we can continue to do is to talk to one singular person every time we write a piece of copy to imagine one person in our audience who we know will read it and have them in our minds. That's the most helpful thing that we can do rather than trying to imagine all of our audience at once or all of our database or whoever. Picture that person whether it be a bestie or someone like that who's going to be on the other end reading that and write for them. That's what I would do.
There’s so much good advice there. I love that you said some people might drop off but they're not for you. I run a Sunday email. Whenever I have talked about death, people are like, “It's a small business. Why are we getting an email about death?” That email is not all about death but I've gone through a lot of loss with both my parents passing away. I feel like, every single time, I will get more unsubscribes than normal.
I will also, on the flip side, get way more replies from people who've also gone through this or people who are going through it or people who are like, “Thank you for mentioning this.” You've got to be okay with taking that step and being like that person that you're following with the baby. It’s like, “This is part of my life now and you're going to hear about it. I'm not going to compartmentalize every single part of my life.”
Consider which metrics mattered to you. I'd rather lose a few people from my email list who don't like what I'm speaking about but know that many people are writing back saying, “This resonated.”
Another part of your business is website audits. You're working with people a lot in today's life of having website content and everything else. I've been a journalist for over 22 years and a writer and all of that stuff. I know that a lot of people are, especially when they're starting a business, concerned with how things look, as in the visuals. They will pour money into the graphics and the visuals. What does the website look like? As opposed to necessarily, how does it function? What does the language say? How is the copy being used here to convert people as you say?
I'm wondering, as somebody in this space, are there, firstly, key elements of a website that small business owners should focus on from a copy perspective? Also, how do you go about encouraging people to invest in their copy? It's a huge part of the business. I often say to people, the last pin before people purchase from you is what they're reading most of the time.
They can look at the beautiful photos but they also need to look at the information to see that it's the right fit for them. If you were to look at all poor business owners across the board, I would say that more probably do pour money into how it looks rather than the copy and content if that makes sense. How do you encourage people to look at it like that, something worth investing in?
I love my graphic design and website design friends dearly.
Me, too. I'm married to one. Two of my best friends are graphic designers and website designers.
It is important. We're all important. It's interesting that you bring this up because what's happened over the past several years is I've noticed a big change. In many ways, this is what's facilitated the growth of copy coaching as a service. When I first started, it was an afterthought for a lot of people. I would still get that question, “If I'll copyright it, is that copyright trademarks and stuff?” I haven't had that question for years.
What that shows me is that people are becoming more attuned to what the benefits of good copywriting are. They're understanding the value and they are placing more importance on it when it comes to the overall brand, which is exciting. It's moving in the right direction. I see so many things on a daily basis that made me cringe. There are many easy fixes that small business owners can do without having to necessarily go back to the drawing board and that's why I do have the website for copy audits.
Yes, while I could coach you through fixing those if that's what you want to do as well, there are some times when it's a series of things that you could probably work through on your own. It’s things like making sure that every page has got the call to action. You'd be amazed at how many people feel like they don't need a call to action or they need ten. We need to help people understand what it is that we want them to do next and the easiest way to do that is with a clear call to action on each page.
Lots of people will go for giant slabs of text. It’s being able to break that up in terms of strong headlines, impactful subheads, bullet points, and leaving lots of whitespaces. Don't be afraid of the whitespace. When it comes to about pages, images of you or your business help create a human-to-human connection that's important.
One of the things that a lot of small business owners particularly struggle with, which is an easy flip once you can see it, is changing to customer focus language. Rather than saying, “I'll do this or we'll do this for you,” it's more about, “This is what you'll get from the process. You'll discover this. You'll learn this.” It's about flipping it to a language that speaks to your client rather than at them. There are all things like these that are easy fixes some of the time that doesn't necessarily require a rewriting of everything.
There are many ideas and reframes. What people need sometimes is a framework, reframing it, and putting it back on, “What do they need?” Thinking about that journey. Where are they going? I agree, there are many dead ends on websites that seem obvious once you say it to somebody. It comes back to sometimes these beautiful websites. I'm not bagging out graphic designers or website designers. Sometimes I'll say, “How do I get in touch with you?” If I think your folio is incredible, where am I going next? It can be a small thing, putting a hyperlink or one line of text and getting people to be able to continue their journey with you.
It's often about thinking when's the last time you sat in front of your website and looked at it as if you were one of your own prospects? It’s thinking about, what is the customer journey here. If they were to come in on my homepage, does that direct them in all the different directions that I want to send people? If they land on my about page, does it clearly have a USP? What do you do it for? How do you do it differently? What do people need to know about the process of working with you? Is it all there?
It’s putting yourself in the shoes of your prospect. How will I contact you? Is it there? Is it clear? Is it to book a call? Is it to submit a contact form? What's the process? You can also do a swap with a business friend and have each other look at each other's sides. Are there any glitches? it's a good idea to once a month even get someone to test your contact form and make sure it's working and things like that. You can always do that in partnership with someone else and they can be a little accountability buddy.
Speaking of accountability, you run one on one and group coaching programs. You're a mentor for many people and helping them create these beautiful sites but not just sites, their emails, and all of their content, direct mail, and other things. Have you had any mentors? Is there a particular mantra you live by? Is there a book that blew your way and has helped you with your business?
Yes. There are many mentors along the way, it’s almost innumerable. I do have a few books that I'll call out and one of them if you're at all interested in any kind of writing or copywriting is Stephen King’s On Writing. Have you read it, Fiona?
Yes, I have. I have a copy of that. Somebody gave that to me before I started a business saying it's such a good book in general about writing. I have that. It's a little book as well in comparison. If everyone's thinking, “Stephen King, it's going to be 500 pages.” It's not.
I've never read another Stephen King book. I'm not interested in the horror genre. He has some excellent ideas about how to start writing. Often, I'll pull little things from it or ideas inspired by it. With my groups, I'll encourage them to do something like set a timer for five minutes and get themselves on a roll with writing and then see where it goes. What happens if you added the five senses, for instance, into your email? You brought in something about what you could smell, what you could taste, and what you could feel, see, or hear into some of your writing to help lift it if it's feeling a little bit flat.
There are lots of different little writing techniques that you can get and some of those are in there in that book and some of those are inspired by things that are in there, too. Another book I have read that I loved was Atomic Habits. I'm all about a bit of habit stacking. I read Big Magic every year. It reminds me to tap into my creativity. One that I am due for a reread I reckon is This Is Marketing by Seth Godin. I'm sure that you've probably read that one.
Yes.
It helped me to deconstruct marketing into something that feels achievable and not something that needs to feel overwhelming and something that's for marketing people to get their heads around.
For anyone who doesn't know Seth Godin, he's a marketing guru. He also has Seth's Blog and he sends out an email every single day. Sometimes it's three lines and sometimes it's 30. They're quick two-minute reads. As a form of content and marketing, it’s good. Sometimes, I’m like, “How does he do that every single day?” I'm sure he batch creates.
Sometimes, when we think about copy, we forget that there are many ways to do it. It doesn't have to be in a particular format or anything else. if you're interested, if you've read This Is Marketing, or now you're going to read it because Emma suggested it, maybe also get on to his email. They're random thoughts on all sorts of things but they're always good.
He's onto something. Honestly, the more you write, the more you write. There's no way around that. I used to have a monthly newsletter and then I converted it to a fortnightly newsletter. I realized that I wanted to send it out every week. The more I got into the habit of doing it, the more I have things to say.
What happens to my clients all the time is that once they start committing to the practice of writing regularly, it gets much easier and the ideas come. Whereas if you put it off, you'll be stuck. You'll keep going around in these circles and making a bigger hurdle to jump over. My best tip is to start writing for five minutes a day. Write anything, write a grocery list, write a note to your partner, or write whatever. Creativity begets creativity.
I could not agree more. I was thinking of this because we had somebody on the podcast a while ago, Lauren from Sisalla. She was talking about how she got her column in the design files. She's an interior designer and educator. She was saying, “I'd been writing a blog for years before that.” She's like, “It didn't happen overnight. Also, when people did come calling, I had all this content. I had a practice writing quickly to be able to pull that together.” She was saying that helped. Don't wait for some big thing, just start writing. Write your grocery list and make it beautiful. Likewise, have you got any apps or platforms or tech tools that have helped you build the business since you started?
I do love to organize myself in Google Drive. I have a massive content repurpose there as well. I like to keep good track of where all of my bits and pieces are so I can pull them out and reuse them in other ways for other platforms and so on. I used to write a blog regularly. I've had fallen a bit off that but that's because I replaced that with my podcast, which has been coming out weekly since then. That's my main source of regular content. From there, I repurpose a lot for my newsletter, socials, and things like that. My Google Drive and my folder structure there is everything to me.
My OBM and I use Airtable to schedule our content, which has been a good one. It's set out like a Google sheet if you don't know it but it's got also a space where you can add an image. You can toggle to communicate with one another between different steps in the process. It notifies you when the other person has got something ready for you, which is quite handy.
I love all my Xero accounting software, anything that makes my life easier. Acuity for my scheduling. I wouldn't dream of trying to set up an appointment with someone via email anymore, “When are you free? What about these times?” Back and forth. Things like that. It's also important to me to still have a personal element in my business. Whilst I love automation, I also am big on client contact too, which is why I try not to spread myself too thin. I like to know the people in my ecosystem and in my programs and so on quite intimately so I can give them that personalized attention too.
What are you most proud of from your journey in business so far?
I'm excited that I've had a different career in my late 30s and early 40s that I couldn't have even dreamt of years ago. I couldn't have foreseen what has unfolded, the people that I've met, the connections that I've made, and the clients that I've impacted. There are ups and downs. There are peaks and troughs. There are tough days. There are things that don't go to plan. There's all that stuff. I wouldn't go back and work for someone else. I'm so proud to have created a business where I'm in charge.
I hear you. I'm high-fiving you from here. If people are reading this and they are thinking, “I want to be part of the group coaching program. What's her podcast?” Where can people connect with you? This podcast will come out at the end of September 2022. What's next for you? How can people find you?
My group program is called the Co-writing Content Crew. We have the next round kicking off on October the 14th 2022. The doors are possibly open or are about to be open to that. If not, you can join the waitlist. My website is EmmaMcMillanCopy.com. The podcast is called Not Just About Copy and that's a weekly podcast that alternates between a conversation one week with someone fabulous and a copy coaching tip from me every other week. On social, Instagram, you can find me @EmmaMcMillanCopy and I would love to connect with you if that sounds like your thing.
Thank you so much for coming on. I hope you get out of iso soon and feel a lot better. It's been my pleasure to talk to you, Emma.
Thanks so much for having me, Fiona. I loved it.
Bye.
Bye.
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I know that many people reading, they’ll be taking a bunch of notes and thinking, “Maybe I could be okay at copywriting. Maybe I could figure this stuff out. Maybe I could get some coaching and feel more confident with where I’m going.” If that is you, please get in touch with Emma. She is launching the eight-week live Co-writing Content Crew. If you have been sitting on your content for a while or thinking, “I like to get better at it. I'd love to do that in a supportive crew.” Definitely check that out. You can find all the information over at EmmaMcMillancopy.com.
I would love to know what you took away from this chat with Emma on all things content and how to get your message across. I know it can be a tricky thing to get it right, especially if you're working by yourself and you have no one to bounce ideas off, which is a perfect reason why anyone would join the Co-writing Content Crew. I would love to know what you took away from that.
Of course, I will highlight two things that stood out to me among many that Emma chatted about and that is the use of voice notes for natural tone. It is something I've talked about on this podcast a few times and it's something I use all that time. Particularly if I'm writing my Sunday emails, I will often use my voice-to-text tool on the notes app on my phone. If you're new to that, you can have a look on your phone, you can do it. If it's safe to do, have a look whilst we are on this podcast episode.
When you look at your keyboard on the phone, you'll usually see a little mic button. If you tap that while you're in a notes app or any app where you can type, it'll dictate what you are saying. If you're sitting there thinking, “What do I want to say about this new collection?” You can maybe sit there for a while and imagine that somebody has interviewed you and they've said, “Tell us all about this new collection. Where did you come up with it? What's the inspiration?” You just talk naturally.
Quite often, what you've got there, once you've talked for a little while, is a couple of paragraphs that you can then separate. Chunk them up, put them into bullet points, and put them however you want to format them. It'll come across so much more natural than if you sit in front of a computer screen trying to get every single word that you're typing correct or perfect.
The other thing that I loved that she talked about was the concept of repelling and attracting. It is something I see all the time in my own content. I see it with other people's content. We've all felt it. We've all seen somebody's ad, email, blog, or social media post, and we've thought, “That is not for me.” There's nothing wrong with that. Not everyone is going to like what everyone else puts out and vice versa, not everyone's going to like what you put out. You've got to be okay with that.
The right people are going to love what you put out and you're going to attract those. They are the people that you want to work with. They're the customers, clients, suppliers, and other such people that you need in your business that you're going to get on with most where you're in synergy with each other.
Equally, as we've been repelled by other people's content, there'll be other content that people put out that we love and we're like, “That is funny. That is on point. That is exactly how I feel.” That resonates with us and that creates a connection. You've got to remember that when you're writing, don't try and be vanilla that it's tolerable for everyone. You don't want anything to be tolerable. You want people to love what you're putting out.
Equally, if they don't like it and it's not for them, switch it off. The pool of your audience is engaged and you're not having a whole bunch of people there who couldn't be bothered listening to what you have to say. I love that concept. Don't be afraid to repel people because by repelling people, you are also attracting people as crazy as that might sound.
You can find out everything about Emma including her copy coaching and other services that she runs, the website audits, and other things over at EmmaMcMillanCopy.com. If you want to get social with Emma, you can find her on Instagram, @EmmaMcMillanCopy. Of course, I'm sure she would love to hear from you.
If you're interested in diving into copywriting in more detail and all sorts of things around that, you can find Emma's podcast wherever you usually listen and it's called Not Just About Copy. If you found this useful, I would love it so much if you could leave us a review. It helps these podcasts get found by other small business owners. Who knows? Maybe they need to work on their copy right now or their confidence. Thanks so much for reading. I'll see you next time. Bye.
Thanks for reading the My Daily Business Coach podcast. If you want to get in touch, you can do that at MyDailyBusinessCoach.com or hit me up on Instagram, @MyDailyBusinessCoach.
