Episode 338: Nadine Nethery of Can Do! Content
In this episode, Fiona is joined by Nadine Nethery, the founder of Can Do! Content. They discuss the impact of AI content-generating tools on copywriting, the art of crafting authentic brand messaging and so much more. Tune in!
Topics discussed in this episode:
Introduction
The challenges and rewards of transitioning from corporate life to entrepreneurship
The impact of AI and ChatGPT on copywriting
The importance of using AI tools as a complement to human creativity
The power of audience research
Leveraging community and social media for audience insights
The significance of aligning messaging with audience needs
Creating content that debunks myths and objections to build trust
The importance of self-reflection and constantly evolving your approach
Conclusion
Get in touch with My Daily Business
Resources and Recommendations mentioned in this episode:
I think it's all about making your audience and your customer the hero of your messaging. Stepping away from you pushing that hard sell with every email. We've got this save 30%. Presenting them with the benefits of buying from you. Even as an e-commerce brand, there are so many opportunities to speak out on things happening in your niche, on product developments, and on eco-friendly things that you've implemented into your brand. It's about showing how you as a brand are showing up authentically to support your customers on a deeper level beyond the product and how you invite them on a journey with you.
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Welcome to episode 338 of the My Daily Business podcast. Today's interview episode is one of my favourites, where I get to sit with just amazing small business owners who are curious and creative and pick their brains and ask them all about how they started, why they started, and what they think are some of the best things that they've learned and tips and ideas that they can share with my audience, which are you. Thank you so much for joining us today. Before we get stuck into today's interview episode, I want to acknowledge the traditional owners and custodians of the land on which I'm recording this, and that is the Wurrung and Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation. And I pay my respects to their elders, past, and present, and acknowledge that sovereignty has never been ceded.
The other thing I wanted to mention is that Marketing for Your Small Business kicks off very soon. If you are keen to do the course and coaching program, it's a live nine-week program. We offer twice a year for anyone who has already bought the Marketing for Your Small Business course or who wants to invest in it now. What you do, is you go through that course at your own pace and then you come every week and hear from other people who might have questions or you might have questions. We dissect and debate all of this live at the end of the nine weeks. You also have the opportunity to present your marketing strategy and your marketing plan to the rest of the group for feedback, including myself.
It's a good course. It's a good way to keep yourself accountable, especially at this time of year, to get a real roadmap happening for 2024 and make sure that your marketing is no longer just scattergun, but it's strategic and why you're doing what you're doing and how to measure if it's working. Even if you do outsource things to a digital agency a copywriter or somebody else, you'll be able to assess is working. Am I getting what I'm paying for? What's the return on investment? You'll know how to do that. If you want to get into that, everything's available over at marketingforyoursmallbusiness.com. If you already have the course, please make sure that you've checked your emails because you can upgrade for a small fee. Let's get into today's small business interview.
Today I'm joined on the podcast by Nadine Nethery, who is the founder of Can Do! Content. Can Do! Content helps small business owners, particularly female small business owners with audience-driven copy and brand messaging and being more strategic in the way that they connect with their audience through content. Nadine was a very generous sponsor for one of our businesses for floods or business for bushfire fundraisers that we did. She donated her services and I have connected with her previously. When she pitched herself on the podcast, we were like, “Yes, please come on.” I also wanted to know from her perspective, being a copywriter and helping people with content what she thinks of things like ChatGPT and AI content-generating tools in general. Are they good, or are they bad? How can people use them?
In today's podcast episode, she talks all about that and gives you some great tips and insights if you are going to use AI tools, how to create a process to use them so that you are getting the most out of them and that they're still creating content that reflects your brand and your messaging and your themes and everything that you want to put across. We talk about that. We also talk about how Nadine even got into this type of work. She started her business I think about six years ago, but prior to that, had an interesting career. She's originally from Germany and she talks through how she ended up in Australia, how she ended up doing what she's doing, and also drives home the importance of understanding your audience. I think that's something that people may do at the very start of a business, but they're not looking at it all the time.
Nadine talks about why it needs to be front and centre when it comes to your content. We talk about all sorts of things. It was lovely to chat with Nadine. I just want to say that on this particular day, my microphone stopped working. There were a couple of interviews, this one and a couple more coming up where I had that horrible sensation a minute before the interview started off thinking why isn't my audio connecting and I just had to roll with it. That's what you have to do sometimes in life. Please ignore my audio. I'm sure my editor Scott will do the best he can on this. Here it is, my interview with the wonderful Nadine Nethery of Can Do! Content.
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Hi Nadine, welcome to the podcast.
Hi Fiona. It’s lovely to officially meet you.
I know, it's so nice. You have those Instagram DMs and things and then you're like, “Here, we meet,” I mean we are meeting as much as you can on Zoom. Where are you coming from and how do you feel about life right now?
I feel pretty good about life. Recessions and all the things are happening, but I feel like I'm at a nice spot where I can blank as much of it out as possible and I love, especially being able to support small business owners at this time because I feel e-comm brands, service-based business owners, everyone seems a bit shook and uncertain about what's happening. I just love to be the rock to help them navigate the sail still be waters and get them out stronger on the other side. I felt okay not so much at the beginning of the year because of chatGPT coming officially onto the scene and everyone falling in love with it, thinking it's going to solve all their problems and bluing recessions, increasing interest rates. There were a few lean months if I word it this way. But it feels like people are, more confident to spend and have realized as well that chatGPT isn't all that easy and all it's cut out to be.
Yes, I'm looking forward to getting stuck into that a bit more as well, what you've just touched on. But we've had such a crazy few years of like, “We're in locked down.” No, we're back and down. Like it's just been going full-on. And then now it's like, “Okay, we're out, everyone can exhale.” “No, you can't exhale. The recession is coming.” I shouldn't laugh. It's just like poor business owners. It's just being a rollercoaster nonstop. Can you tell us about Can Do! Content? What is it? How did it start? Why did it start and what it does do?
I’m like many copywriters who came into copywriting via a few detours and never knew in school that copywriting was even a thing. Straight out of high school studied to become a translator for English and German. You can probably pick up a little bit of an accent going on there. Studied, translated and knew pretty quickly that I wanted to travel the world and see what was out there. I moved to London, worked there for two and a half years, and met my Aussie husband, hence I'm now in Sydney. Two and a half years later I call myself the European souvenir. Began via funny coincidences. Ended up working for Volkswagen over here in PR who trusted my skills, my expertise and my curiosity and took me on board and I learned on the job I would say.
On the side then also got some marketing skills up and running, some event management, and all the things you have to do as a PR and loved live, travelled the world to older shows, to product launches, all of Europe, and winding and dining, the automotive media overseas. I love it. That was pre-kids and funnily enough got made redundant 10 years into my career, my dream job, and had a huge identity crisis. As you can imagine. I had a three-month-old, and was shaken by the call going, Is it me? What's happening? Am I just not good enough? Like the usual questions that come up plus post-birth hormones happening at the same time as well. At that point decided that I didn't want to be a number in the corporate system anymore because, after 10 years, it was just a big shock to the system.
I just want to do something else. Something that I can contribute to the world somewhere where I can use my love of words, and my love of languages and have a bigger impact. That took a little while, again, detour because you have to work and earn a living. I took a full-time job for a few years with Australia's largest retailer in sales. Something new. I seemed to get my foot in the door somehow and they learned on the job and stayed with them for five years then the penny dropped when I did another course, I did a content marketing course on the site. I never stopped learning. Love to explore what else is out there. Part of that course was a copywriting module because content marketing is, a big part of it is copywriting.
That's when the penny dropped that people are paying people to write their copy, to write their websites, their emails, all the social media stuff. I started my side hustle while pregnant with number three, working a full-time job. I just need something bigger. The job itself was paying the bill didn't light me up. And found my first few customers doing everything for everyone. Eventually, the inquiries picked up. I worked out what I love doing most. That's the website copy and email copy. While on mat leave I just went, let's give it a go. Let's see how this works. There's no pressure I'm a smart woman. If it doesn't work out, I can always go back to a corporate gig somewhere. I've just been so busy with inquiries ever since and have worked with some amazing brands both in the e-commerce space and the service-based sector and I couldn't imagine doing anything else nowadays.
I love this. There are so many parts to that that are super interesting and people could take away from it, but I love it when you said I'm a smart woman, I can get another job. That is exactly how I felt in terms of, I've done enough of a career that if this doesn't work out, I can go do something else. Or if this doesn't work out, I can go back to my very first job, which was a checkout at Kohl’s because they hire, it's just better to have tried and maybe failed than to have never tried and then have that regret of what if?
I think all of those things like the redundancy after 10 years, I mean that would've stung no matter what the situation was. I think that's the thing people sometimes think, but I'm in a safe job. I've got a contract. It's like the contract is not worth anything. I've sat through HR meetings where they're like, “Okay, how can we get this person out?” Like it doesn't matter. It's like, the business could all just change tomorrow and you're out. They don't need to help you get another job or find your way or anything like that. If you have that passion to start something, I always think just give it a go figure out financially how you can give it a go, but give it a go like you did.
Work a bit longer, have a side hustle, and keep it up. You touched on this just before, but I have a content background as well. I used to start coffee and all of this. I think it's always interesting when people talk about AI and all these new products coming in and anyone who doesn't know that's artificial intelligence. People are thinking, this is going to reduce my cost. It's going to be this golden light that comes into my life and all my copy is done and I don't have to pay anyone. I don't have to feel awkward, I don't have to sit there wondering what to write myself. Has chatGPT impacted your business, which you mentioned just before? Do you think that there's a place for AI and humans and also why should somebody continue to find that people like copywriters to help them with their content?
Great question. A lot of aspects to it as well. ChatGPT and AI, the various tools that are out there are here to stay. They're just going to get better and smarter. There are so many opportunities, but we have to be smart and clever about how we are integrating them into our business. From a copywriter's perspective, copywriting and messaging are all about that human connection and the storytelling and your unique opinions on what's going on in your industry and in your niche and chatGPT simply can't replicate that. ChatGPT is going to give you middle-of-the-road content that is based on all the content that's out there, all the mass-produced articles and the clickbait blog posts and it's going to package that for you in a different shape and form.
I have been embracing it in my processes because it does speed certain things up. Ideation for example, if I'm stuck I have blank page syndrome and I just don’t know where to start. I just throw a few things at it to help me. I have a dirty first draft that I could work with and just spar some ideas. I also use it to help me analyze some data. Even firsthand audience research that I've conducted to give me a summary or come up with some content ideas based on the research that I've done. It's important to use chatGPTas as a tool rather than as a replacement and train it properly on the unique brand aspects of your business. Give it the right strategic input and give it parameters as well to improve what it's given you. But it'll never give you a copy of all content or social media posts that are a hundred percent ready for you to copy and paste into whatever social media platform you want to work in. Learning how to embrace it to speed things up and to spark your ideas but then truly making it your own and giving it those personal angles as well.
You make such a good point because I have a client who has gone full-ball into chapter two and wanted to create a blog. I fully suggested I think you should work with a copywriter first and understand your tone of voice. They said no and they went for cost. They said no, we'll do it ourselves. They sent me their blog and there are like six articles on it. They sound nothing like them and they're very well-written articles, but like you said, they're very vanilla, they're very like, I could be reading this on Wikipedia but I could also be reading it on, some business magazine. But like it's not you. I feel like it's not you. I have none of your personality. I also think with that as well, like we repurpose content here.
I'm a big one for repurposing content. I was looking at one of my old emails, I send an email out every Sunday and I was looking at an old email to copy and paste and re-edit it a little bit and resend it. I was super busy at that time. I was trying to batch create before I went overseas and I looked and I was like, I can't believe I used to talk like this. It was from 2017. I was like, “I have come a long way.”
It was all very like biz boss and I mean I never said biz boss, but it was this way of talking that I don't talk now and I was read editing and changing it and that's only something I would know in my own brain. If I had taken some of those 2017 emails, put them into chatGPT or done something, it would've spat out something that's still not me right now and who I am in 2023. I totally feel those points. Part of what you help people with is brand messaging and also you just talked about audience research. Can you explain what that is and how you do that when you were talking about putting that in to get the data quickly?
A massive fan of audience research and truly getting to know your ideal customer. Often I find new business owners, don't appreciate the power and the potential within conversations that you're having with your perfect fit customer. You don't even have to have existing customers to your name. There are so many opportunities out there to harness your community. There are so many Facebook communities that you can leverage to get to know that dream customer and get into their head. It's that audience research that should be the starting piece for any bit of marketing, any bit of brand messaging that you put out there, defining how you can support your dream customer on their journey towards being ready to buy from you for the first time, the next time. If you do it the right way, your audience can do all the heavy lifting for you.
They're telling you what they need to hear from you to be ready to buy. They're telling you what keeps them up at night. They're telling you those tangible things they're hoping for by working with someone like you. It makes everything in your business, in your content creation and in your marketing just so much easier. A huge fan of audience research. Every project that I work on with my clients starts with digging deep into their audience. Whether that is via customer surveys, customer interviews, or if they have done surveys previously, looking at those surveys and getting the themes and picking up the tangible expressions even that they use to talk about their problems. Those sticky terms make a copywriter's given a brand owner's life so much easier because often you can copy and paste them into headings, and subheadings. They are just so genius tangible relatable and they connect on a deeper level. Brand messaging is finding a way to come up with a perfect blend of you as a brand. Your purpose, your why, what you're trying to achieve beyond just making a quick dollar. Also, your audience, whom you're trying to attract and blending those into messaging copy and words that are true and authentic to yourself but also to your audience.
I think it's something that people don't do enough of. Let's say you're a big corporation and I've worked at a few, they will always have focus groups, and they'll validate assumptions because it's a huge amount of money that they're about to drop on something and they want to, is this the right thing? We'll look at all sorts of stuff including speech and language that people are using. We're using that back almost exactly like you say, mirroring it back. We're using slang. It's funny because I was working for quite a large corporation, like consulting them when I first started my business and they were in the delivery sector and yet they kept saying fulfilment. I'm like, the average person who is just starting an e-commerce is looking at delivery options, shipping options.
They're not looking at the word fulfilment. They don't even understand what fulfilment means. Sometimes people in their business are so close to their business that they think acronyms and certain industry jargon are just part of the course. Whereas getting somebody like you who's outside of it to then look at things to do some audience research and then mirror it back, it's like, I'm assuming it must bring up a few things for people to be like, I didn't know that's how they saw us or the language that they use.
Absolutely. There are so many aha moments and that strategy piece before the copy is my favorite part. Simply because as you said, the assumptions, people assume they know our audience even if they've never talked to them. They'll tell me it's 30 to 50-year-old women living in Fitzroy and they've got two kids. I'm like, that's great, but that could be anyone. They all are very different in the course, so let's just talk to them.
Someone could be like an atheist.
Exactly. Let's just talk to them like let's find out what keeps them up at night. It's just so powerful. Often as I said, they have these assumptions around their point of difference. Whether it is their green credentials, but when you go to the call, your audience is telling you why they're buying from you. That can shift your marketing strategy completely. That also means your website is not going to sound like all the other coaching websites out there. They're not going to empower or uplift level the boss babes and the mompreneurs, all the terms, sound the same because no one takes the time to get those tangible outcomes and tangible insights to sound like their dream customer because everyone is not your dream customer.
I could not agree with this more and I feel like I'm harbouring a point, but I'm like, this is so important people. I feel like also it dictates how you show up and what is important for you as the brand owner to come forward in say figurehead marketing. I know you just mentioned mompreneur there, which personally I don't like that term 'cause I'm like, who are entrepreneurs with who happen to also have children?
Exactly.
A lot of people that I work with don't want children, don't plan to have children or can't have children. Even though I'm a mother, part of my brand identity is, that I don't come forward. My kids are not all over my Instagram. People know I'm a mom, but it's not part of my big brand identity as an entrepreneur. I feel like that research also dictates lots of things in your business. Language but so many things. I'm sure there's like a million of these, but if we go back, you talk to people, you do research, you run that data, I'm assuming present this to your clients. How does that then practically work into website copy or email copy?
Great question.
How does that work?
We usually get together for a strategy session. That is me having digested their intake questionnaire where they present me with their assumptions. Things everything about their brand themselves, their products, their offers, and how they see those offers and the brand connect with their audience. At that point, I had already sifted through all the audience intel and presented that to them. As I said, themes, things that they appreciate about them as a brand, and why they're buying from them. I quite openly present the mismatch. Often that happens. Where people have an existing website, we are looking at things that don't work and the messaging that clearly isn't connecting and that's why they're approaching me to help them and identifying the structure for the website. How we need to split up the services to make sure they're speaking to the right customer and they've got very clearly defined messaging so it doesn't get muddled up between early-stage business owners and established business owners.
We can be super clear and super precise in the messaging and the same for the emails. Identifying those false beliefs and the objections that might be standing between them and being ready to invest and believe in that solution. And knowing all that gives you a content runway where you can prime your audience. You can have a pre-launch period, let's say you're launching a course or a new service, a new way of working with you. You can spend a very strategic amount of time presenting them with content that debunks well with that helps them understand that, you might be busy, but this only takes two hours of your time a week and it's going to save you that much time down the track. Identifying all those hurdles that I'm standing between you and your audience at this point in time and nudging them that step closer with every piece of content, they're reading.
There's so much content out there. They can get it wrong so often and it's just good to be able to come to experts like yourself. What do you think is the biggest myth when it comes to creating content that connects with people?
One of my favourites as well. The amount of times I hear I want to be out there, I want to be quirky as a brand, I need to sound like go-to skincare or frank body, especially as e-commerce brands, people have that perception that you need to be bold and you need to be controversial. You need to rub people up the wrong way sometimes to get attention and to capture their attention long enough to purchase. I think it's all about making your audience and your customer the hero of your messaging. Stepping away from you pushing that hard sell with every email. We've got this save 30%. Presenting them with the benefits of buying from you. Even as an e-commerce brand, there are so many opportunities to speak out on things happening in your niche, on product developments, and on eco-friendly things that you've implemented into your brand.
It's about showing how you as a brand are showing up authentically to support your customers on a deeper level beyond the product and how you invite them on a journey with you. You can connect people with people and convince people to buy from you without pushing that hard sell and being like all the other loud brands out there, it's pretty hard to keep that up to you if it's not you. If you are someone pretty timid, you're not out there and you develop this brand voice that is, or go to and quirky and I'm like, how are you going to ever show up authentically? It's going to fizzle pretty quickly when your budget for the copywriter has run out. It needs to be authentic for your brand, authentic for your audience, and sustainable especially.
I think when you're starting out, you can get lured into exactly like that, go to skincare, all of them and thinking, but they're doing so well. I have to sound like that. Like when I first started, there were a few other business coaches that were very, not me, and I remember I did like an Instagram story or I did something and my husband saw it and he was like, “What are you doing?” He's so supportive. He's the most supportive man, but he was just like, “It's just not you. You just don't sound like you.” And I'm like, “I don't, and I felt so uncomfortable doing that story.” I think it's, good that you make the point that you can still be successful and just do it in your own way.
I've always thought that too. I remember a couple of years in, someone just said to me, “Just put your blinders on and unfollow a bunch of people” and it'll work. And it has. I'm like, I'm so glad I just took that advice because it's very easy, especially if you're a service-based business, to look at other people and think, I need to be like that. That's the only way, versus I can do it my way. As someone that you're in this space and you help other people with their marketing and their copy and their EDMs, their website, your website looks great.
Thank you.
What are your own tactics or how do you figure out your own content strategy? Sometimes we can all be like the plumbers where the plumbing in their own house needs fixing, but how do you do this for yourself to make sure that you are connecting with your audience?
I love to involve my audience. I taking them along for the bride. If I'm developing a new DIY resource, I'll ask them. If I'm looking at a toolkit to write your webpage, your service page, your homepage, or any page of your website, which one is most practical for you? Making my audience personally invested, in what I'm launching and making it relevant for them, helps me as well. Having constant conversations with my customers. I am huge on automating my audience research. As part of the onboarding survey, offboarding survey, I have a very strategic set of questions that not only captures testimonial that I can use on my website, but it helps, helps me basically reif the whole project through my customer's eyes. What was going on in their business, and in their life before they worked with me, and what they were hoping to achieve by working with me?
That quick excitement when that shiny web website copy is lending in their inbox, but also very important that tangible win down the track. Three months down the track, I check in with them to see what has shifted in their business. That can be increased sales, increased conversion rates on their website, retention rates, all those things that are a lot more relevant than Nadine was nice to work with. Like that's great, but Nadine increased my sales. But 25% of my customers are hanging around. I work with Dream customer who does a lot more for my my website.
Content and my testimonials as well then that waffly language the testimonials that everyone gives you when you ask someone for a testimonial. What I love doing as well is keeping an eye on the environment. Trends that are happening in the industry, even the economy interest rates. Keeping my messaging relevant and current. Funnily enough, people think you write your website copy once and it's done and dusted. Same for onboarding sequences, and welcome sequences, everything shifts so quickly, especially in this online space. Coed, I don't have to talk you through all the things that we've been through. But just keep a close eye on all your offers and whether they're still relevant, whether you might have to adjust the offer itself to cater to new ways of working. And staying relevant, making sure you're keeping a constant eye on developments and adjusting your messaging part of that.
I wanted to ask you about it, and you just touched on this, sorry if it's repeating it a little bit, but we are just going to dive a little bit deeper into this. How do you know if your content resonates? Like you've just mentioned, I want to stay relevant. You're not going to be talking about covid or lockdowns when you're no longer in them. Sometimes you do see things where you're like, someone has something up for Christmas or, and you're like, are they going to take that down? Maybe they mean Christmas time.
Are there metrics or are there ways for people, let's say they've worked with their copywriter or now they're out on their own? Are there metrics that they're looking at to see if are people still engaged in our content? Also on that then how do when it's time to change things up and be like, this is not working, or who we were two years ago is not who we are now?
Again, have a conversation with your audience so regularly check in with them and ask them, what are you going to see from me? How can I support you best? And see whether what they're telling you aligns with your offer. That's when it comes to how you're serving, and serving your customers, but also check your email open rates, whether they are shifting it all. I know the email systems make it a bit tricky at the moment with all the data changes. Open rates aren't necessarily the best indications, but even clickthrough rates, how people engage with your content conversion rates on your website or even whether questions you get on discovery courts, whether they are shifting and they're adding new angles to your picture that you'd never considered before. Being in touch with how your customer wants to work with you, how they're thinking about your products and your office, and then making sure that's incorporated in your emails, your website, and all the places.
I'm just putting you on the spot here, but do you ever like, see people's copy and think, this is so bad, you need to work with me do you ever just like cold call and be like, “Hey, I noticed this,” or does that just never come in where you're like, I've got enough clients, but sometimes I feel like that, and I used to be a writer and I was a journalist for a long time, but sometimes even just you look at someone's sales page and you're like, you are asking me to invest a huge amount of money here and this is misspelled. The first sentence is misspelled. Do you ever do that or are you just like, “No, I'm nice.”
I have a full day in my inbox for brands that have huge potential, but I haven't pitched anyone yet because the opportunity hasn't come up. I do have certain brands where I know they could do so much better. I just keep a little record of emails that are coming where I'm like, it's just building that up. I don't know whether I'm going to tap into it one day. But I certainly keep an eye on content, cultures, and sales pages, I subscribe to quite a few just to see how they're doing things and often go, that's maybe not how to do it. There's still unfortunately the trend to use false scarcity, false urgency all those pushy tactics and guilting people into not investing. It's just more about working out what to stay clear of and how to do things better. I think it's just part of my job I've got a huge number of newsletters I subscribe to simply to see how other people are doing things and How my clients can be different and stand out from the same that's out there.
I say that also with my hand up. I've probably got lots of content, things that could be bettered as well. But it's interesting. I feel like sometimes you sign up to emails, whether it's from a service or an e-commerce place, and then the first couple you're like, these are good. And then suddenly you're like, you're inundating me. I can tell now I'm just a cog in the wheel and there's no personality. It went from like, “Nice”, If you go on a date, let's say I haven't been on a date in like 20 years, but let's say you went on a date and then someone looks amazing, it's so funny. After date three, once they've got something like, not date three, but putting that out. What do I mean? Anyway, we'll move on from that part, but I wanted to ask then, outside of the things that you've already mentioned, are there books or platforms or tools that you go, this absolutely should be part of somebody's toolkit if they're wanting to work on their content, if they want to make their copy and their, their way of their messaging much better. Are there things that you would recommend they work with?
I feel like I'm repeating myself, but your audience just always starts with your audience and having a play with chatGPT. I don't think it'll replace anyone anytime soon, but there are so many opportunities to save time and explore chatGPT in a way to save your headspace and resources to be more creative in your business and to explore things that you simply enjoy doing more. Just playing around with it, I mean, there's a free plan, there's a pay plan, which is much better, and gives you access to chatGPT four. You can also have plugins that then access the internet and can look through websites themselves. That's great just to get some content ideas and again, spark that creativity in the background. One thing people should keep in mind when sharing stuff is to chatGPT trains its language model based on all the inputs. All our input. If you have confidential stuff, you don't want to be out there, just be conscious of how you feed it and what you feed it. But I'm not opposed to chatGPT and think it's got great potential to free up our resources especially for us one-person businesses to just work smarter and make smarter use of our time.
Have you tried any of the others, like Canva, I know Canva has its own AI tool now. I tried it. It's not that great and you have to specify stuff and it does come out quite vanilla, but, and I also know, I don't know if Loom is doing something.
They are.
But we record tutorials, within our business for people on Loom. The other day it’s for a freelancer who's doing some graphics and I didn't realize what I sent. As soon as I sent it, it had created a whole text of what that video was about and it had misspelt her name and all these. I said, please ignore that text chunk. I didn't even realize it was in there. It doesn't explain what the video is about it explained part of it, but then it took a couple of sentences, I said randomly in a 10-minute ramble. I was like, that's what the video is about. That's not what the video's about. But I didn't even know that that was part of it, that it was looking through my video instantly and then coming up with sentences. Have you tried any of the other ones outside of ChatGPT that you think are good, are bad? Do you think everyone's just learning at this moment?
I think that's more it. I think just playing around with things and as you said, there are so many platforms that are now integrating AI. Even Grammarly because I've got a subscription to Grammarly, they're trying to steam me into their little guidance auto AI. I've been using auto AI to transcribe my Zoom customer interviews for quite some time. That's quite good. But again you have to go through, and make sure it gets the hint and then Loom. I had the experience the other day when I sent a client project walkthrough and the blurb was completely irrelevant to my walkthrough. I just delete them now because I just don't have the time to edit randomly generated blurp.
I'm putting you on the spot again, it would be easier if I could plug it all into ChatGPT and it could write 70,000 words for me. And of course, I would never do that. But I was thinking, I wonder if people will or are already using this to write books and then in the future, let's say you're John Grisham and you've got 60 books and they can just plug the whole book in figure out. And then you're like, that's a storyline. This is the characters, it's done. Do you think that will ever get to a point like that? As someone who loves the book, I'm like, the book has to come from someone's imagination. Do you think that's pretty happening?
It's very funny you're saying that because someone approached me who is working on a platform for authors, they wanted support with their copy. The project didn't eventuate, but it is exactly what you are describing. Making that creation process for authors a lot easier. You put it in the outline and this particular system comes out with a dirty first draft for you. It's quite scary because again, I want that human angle and it's scary in a way. But we've been interacting with AI on so many levels, even like online shopping at Woolies, and Kohl’s, they all have their little robots presenting you with exactly the right things at exactly the right time because you haven't bought parsley for a while. It's all been around forever. It's just, it becomes very personal now. Even artists and drawings and Canva randomly generate cats riding on a unicorn. It's just interesting times. I think we just as a society have to be very careful how far we want to take this. Legally we don't even know the legal implications and who owns the output. That's another consideration as well. If you let ChatGPT write something for you from scratch and you copy and paste it without major edits, you don't own any of it at this point in time.
Fascinating. Also, there's been a lot of talk about all of these AIs being racist and quite sexist. There's a great woman out of the US. She reports on AI all the time, I think she reported a while ago in some music competition, an artist won the best rap, but it was an AI-generated artist coming across as a black person. It's very complex.
But bringing it back to business. You have been in business for a little while now. What has helped you most in your business? It sounds like you had a wealth of experience beforehand in marketing and PR and all the things that are going to be helpful for most small business owners. But have you had any mentors or mantras or documentaries or books or anything that you're like, or even a good friend that's been like, they have been in me getting to where I am in business?
Absolutely. Because I never had any intentions of going into business ownership as a kid. None of my parents ever were entrepreneurs. The whole concept was pretty foreign to me until I started and I just was winging it forever. We writing invoices in Canva and have no accounting system. It took a little while to realize it's just me and I have to work a little bit smarter to still have time for my family and make a living and make it all worth my while. I always have believed in investing in people who are a few steps ahead of me, not necessarily people who are killing it up there, the experts and inverted commerce. Just someone who's mastered what I'm trying to do.
When it comes to copyrights, I have invested in a fair few courses, but the standout was with Kirsty Panton, I don’t know whether you've heard of her. She's got a course called Brain Camp and it's all around consumer psychology and how you can ethically and authentically support customers to be ready to buy. Everything that I believe in. She's made a huge difference to my approach to copy and the impact that I'm having on my clients. That is the copywriting side of things. I've also worked with Jordan, she's based in America and systems like systems are her expertise, but she helped me structure my services in a way that helped me find my boundaries very clearly. I still get the same results from my clients, but my projects no longer extend for months and months and months where I'm relying on clients to give me stuff.
I have defined processes where I get payment upfront, and I get the brief upfront, there are very clearly defined start dates and end dates. That means, especially as a mom of three, I have my sanity back. I can plan my project. They never overlap. I know when I can take on new clients and I finally escape that, a vicious cycle where you think you're organized but then something falls apart and everything just becomes complex quickly. That's why I've got intensives and day bookings now that make it easy and good. I know what I have up and coming and capacity as well. Lately, I am into Elizabeth Goddard. She's based in the UK and she's all about having fun in your business and doing things a bit unconventionally.
As copywriters, because our time is our potential earning capacity often there's that perceived pressure to launch your group program and go your big ticket group offer, which I have no interest in whatsoever because again, it adds that pressure and extra things and schedules to my things to my calendar. She's all about having small DIY resources where you can still support customers but it's not linked to your calendar and necessarily your energy as well. She's just sparked a lot of ideas lately that I'm exploring at the moment. On a more personal level, Kate Northrup's book Do Less has been a real game changer when it comes to how I approach life and business. She's all about cyclical living, which is shocking.
But I'm early forties and I've only recently realized that if I try again to plan my schedule around the weeks of my cycle, then I naturally set myself up for success. Podcast interviews like this one, as an introvert, naturally stress me out a bit. I try to plan them in the week when I'm by nature more chatty and everything comes a bit easier. During my period, for example, I would then do planning things and backend stuff to organize where I don't have to extrovert and chat with people. It's just interesting something that I think a lot of us women haven't realized yet.
This is so interesting because I've just booked somebody to come on and talk about menstrual cycles. I even think anyone who's reading who doesn't have a menstrual cycle, it's still very interesting for anyone in your life who might be going through that. Even the other day I was talking to my son who's 10 years old and I was like, the amount of stuff you don't learn at school. That is important when you get out, we were talking about fractions and I was like see this is the stuff you might know need because you are going to figure out, if I've got five weeks left and I've only got this much money, how much money is my is it going to last?
Anyway, but with the cycles, because people don't get it. You're like, why am I so moody or irritable? And it's like, low and behold the thing that's happened every month, the last 20 years came and that explains things. I think it's so important as women, particularly women in business like this so smart what you're doing to be like, I'm going to set those things up. The best part of my cycle or the most energetic. Not doing the things where I'm going to second guess myself or go on a podcast and they'd be like, did I say all the things?
Exactly.
What are you most proud of from your journey in business so far?
A lot of things. It's funny, it took me a little while. When I first started I would, I'd always go, I'm just having this little business and I'm just writing copy for people. I think a female thing. A lot of my clients do the same when they go, I just sell candles. Getting to the point where I'm putting myself out there, even being on a podcast I would never have done two years ago. I’m just owning my expertise and knowing that I've got value to add to my clients and also other business owners just more broadly. I love that I'm doing business my way. I resisted the pressures from people to start an agency and hire other copywriters to do work for me. I have no desire to go there.
I don't want to be huge. I just want to have a business that allows me to be there when my kids need me to do something that I love and that I know has an impact, on other women as well, who follow their passion and just like exploring and being experimental lately. I've become a bit more playful and just try new things and if it doesn't work, it just didn't work, then we'll move on. Just stepping away from that self-imposed perfectionist that's inside me and just allowing myself to fail and not to do well. A launch sometimes just doesn't come back with results and then we'll just have a look at why it didn't work and move on. Just trusting my instinct and my talents and tapping into them.
Yes. I think it's important that you say all of this because it's important to remember that there is an audience for that as well. I've just booked in with a business, and I have business coaching from time to time. I booked in with a different business coach. I just booked in with this guy and he is so lowkey, he's not somebody that people would look at his website and be like, “Wow.” He is like he is the big like you said before, expert with the little America that we all know who those like top five. It's almost like a pyramid scheme I feel like half the time. But he just spoke to me through his humbleness and his quietness and I'm like, that's what I want. You just always want to remind yourself and it sounds like you were, when saying how proud you are that you're doing it your way, there's always an audience. I feel like that too. Sometimes I'm like, I've just done it my way and there's been people it's not as big or flashy or whatever as other people. It's who I'm, it's just me. It's like I'm the same as the person.
If you show up authentically, you do business your way, you attract people who resonate with your wife and they're going to be organically aligned with your way of working and they resonate with how you show up. I think that's important as well. You don't have to fend off customers wherever you go, I don't even know how you track me down. I hardly get that anymore on calls. People just go, I just resonate with your website and how you show up and I just think you can add some of that to my business. That would be great. I'm like a genius. That's the job.
It's a real human connection. If people are reading and thinking, “I need Nadine in my life.” How do they connect with you and also what's next for you and can do content?
Best to track me down via my website candocontent.com. I've got a whole bunch of freebies there as well. Free resources just to help you get started with that audience research because very important, I think we've established that. Also semi-active on Instagram, probably my most active channel. You can find me there @candocontent and I love appearing on podcasts as well, so I'm sure you'll hear me somewhere. What's next for me? A lot of the same. I think I found it pretty nice rhythm in my business. I still love serving my one-on-one clients, so doing more of that and then working on a few more DIY resources to help people who simply aren't in the position yet to work with me one-on-one and just to get them started, to give them the confidence to actually put themselves out there and to just do it because done is better than perfect. Sometimes it's just that little bit of guidance from someone who can do it for a living that can just give you that confidence boost to put yourself out there.
Thank you so much for taking time out of your busy schedule with three kids and a visit to chat. I appreciate it and we'll link to all of those places in the show notes, but thanks so much Nadine, for coming on.
Thanks so much for having me.
Bye.
Bye.
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How lovely is Nadine and just so nice to chat to somebody about content. I think it's something that a lot of small business owners know that they need to put a bit more effort into or time into and it just, I think it's also a huge block for people for not getting started on an email or for not getting back to their emails or to not do more on social or whatever because they're thinking, I want to do it, but every time I sit down to write nothing comes out or it comes out and I don't like the way it comes out, I'm just going to park that. They're just delaying and delaying this opportunity to connect. I think there are so many things in what Nadine said that people will take away to be able to action in their business.
If you are reading and thinking, I want to connect with Nadine, whether you are trying to action these things, like I said in your business, or you want some more one-on-one help or you want some advice from her, you can find Nadine's info over at candocontent.com. You can also find her on Instagram at Can Do! Content, and we'll link to that in the show notes.
But I'm going to pick up two things that stood out to me from my conversation with Nadine. I know there are many more, but the two things that stood out, I think the first, and she just drove this home continuously, is the audience intel. Understanding your audience, how they speak, how they connect, what they want to know, what are they interested in, what are their frustrations, what are their pains, and what are their pleasures. All the things.
Like I said, I think so many people do this at the start of creating a business and don't do it consistently. I know that when we rebranded, we did it, I do it probably every six months in my business. We have a Pinterest board of our ideal audience, all sorts of things like books, they're reading podcasts, listening to mantras, they would use fashion a whole bunch of stuff. That changes podcasts they might've listened to four years ago are not the podcasts they're listening to now. Or maybe TV shows have come up that people are listening to that have brought books or other things out to the forefront that need to go into that persona that we have around people. But we also do a lot of listening to the language that people use around the frustrations that they have in small business and how we can talk to those in our content.
I think this is important. I know that Nadine is very generous. Like I said, donated to our fundraising appeals before and she's also offering anyone who's reading this a downloadable that will give you 10 free strategic questions that you can ask to gain that audience insight and the audience intel yourself. If you want to download that, you can find it at link.candocontent.com/my-daily-business. We'll link to that in the show notes. You'll be able to find the show notes at mydailybusiness.com/podcast/338. If you ever can't find show notes, just know you can find them at mydailybusiness.com and you just find the podcast link, click on that and then you'll see all the episodes with the show notes attached. That is it for today's episode. I just want to say thank you for Nadine. If you want to connect with her, you can go over to candocontent.com and connect that way or look at her services and what she's offering. Thank you again, Nadine, for coming on and thanks for reading. I'll see you next time. Bye.
