TCC Podcast #424: How I Built Immediate Credibility with Meg Kendall

A lot of copywriters need a way to attract prospects… but more than that, they need to do it in a way that immediately communicates that they’re the expert—an advisor clients can trust. In the 424th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, I spoke with copywriter Meg Kendall about creating an industry report that does this perfectly. If you want to stand out from all the other copywriters who depend on lead magnets and social posts to get clients, you need to listen to this episode. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.

 

Stuff to check out:

Meg’s Website

The Copywriter Accelerator Fast Track

The Copywriter Club Facebook Group

The Copywriter Underground

Full Transcript:

Rob Marsh:  One of the biggest challenges copywriters face… actually it’s not just copywriters, it’s freelancers of every kind… one of the big challenges we all face is getting noticed. But more than that, getting noticed in a way that builds trust with the clients you want to work with.

Just about everyone has a lead magnet… or an email list… or content on social media… all with the intent of making a connection to prospects and potential clients. If you don’t have those you should. They’re table stakes for creating a successful business.

But because everyone has them, you have to do more than these to stand out. One way to stand out is to write an eye-opening industry report that immediately sets you up as the expert in the field. It’s more than a download, it’s a shortcut to interviewing potential clients, establishing relationships with them, and demonstrating your ability.

Hi I’m Rob Marsh and on today’s episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, my guest is copywriter Meg Kendall. Meg followed this exact path to connect with several potential clients in her niche. She’ll be sharing exactly how she did it in this interview. 

Before we get to that… you’ve heard of The Copywriter Accelerator program. That’s our business foundations program used by more than 350 copywriters to start, build and scale their own writing business. Graduates include six-figure writers like Justin Blackman, Kirsty Fanton, Michal Eisik, Dani Paige, Krystal Church, and today’s podcast guest, Meg Kendall.

We no longer run that program live… the only way to get the business changing strategies and proven ideas we share in The Accelerator is with the Fast Track edition. And as I mentioned on this show last week, even that will be going away sometime in the new year.  So if you’ve been thinking of joining the accelerator, time is running out. What will replace it? It’s too soon to reveal the details but if you join the accelerator fast track before we launch this new program, you’ll get early access to both the accelerator and the new program. Until then, you get all of the content, the 8 modules and blueprints and several bonuses that are included in The Accelerator Fast Track. And when we launch the new program sometime next year, you’ll get that updated program too. Don’t wait to work on your business so when the new year is here you have a steady flow of clients and a signature service you’re proud to offer them. Visit thecopywriterclub.com/fasttrack to learn more today.

And now, let’s go to our interview with Meg Kendall.

Hey Meg, welcome to The Copywriter Club Podcast. Let’s start with your story. I’ve been watching you build your business now for a couple of years. I think it’s a good one.

Meg Kendall: All right. Yeah. I feel like my story is kind of similar to a lot of other copywriters and that it’s very winding and maybe a lot of the backstory is fairly irrelevant to what I do now. So I had a fairly long career in hospitality. I worked as a server and a bartender for about 10 years, and it was pretty hard to leave. At some points, I wasn’t sure I would ever leave. And then I finally broke out, and that was via going back to school for the millionth time, it feels like. Really, it was the fourth time that I finally got my undergraduate degree, and that was in botany. And I lean on that a lot today because most of my clients are… 

So I work in climate tech, so they’re all very focused on the science behind climate change. just like very technical topics, et cetera, stuff like that. So they love that I have a botany degree. From there, I moved to New York city for a job, completely irrelevant to botany. I moved there as the technical term is an orientation and mobility specialist, but nobody knows what that is. So I’ll tell you, I was a travel instructor for visually impaired students in the Bronx and New York city. So that was a really interesting time period of my life. And I’m only telling it because it’s relevant to switching my way to copywriting. 

Yeah, so I was in New York City. So many big changes in such a short amount of time. I moved to New York City with my husband, left that 10-year-long hospitality career, became pregnant with my now two-and-a-half-year-old daughter pretty much like a week after we got to New York City, which wasn’t in the plan, but was a happy accident. Yeah, really, really hated my job in the Bronx. It’s just, they didn’t paint an accurate picture of what the job was going to be like. And I found that out pretty quickly, but I was there at this job and I was pregnant and I had great health insurance and I couldn’t leave my nice health insurance job in New York City to go bartend pregnant in New York city. Right. So all that’s going on. 

And so two years past that I do this, like I’m, you know, I’m crying in the hallways at my job. It’s sad, but it’s fine. Like I’m getting through it. And then I have Charlie and I’m like, how do I get out of this? How do I get back to my roots and get back to doing something that I love doing and, like, never have to go back to this place again? It’s funny because I didn’t think about it while – I did think about it while I was pregnant, but I didn’t try to actively work my way out of it. And it wasn’t until Charlie was born that I was like, oh, I can’t go back there. Like, I just can’t do it. It’s not going to happen. So I remember that once upon a time I was going to earn an English degree, but everyone’s an English degree major, but everyone scared me out of it because there’s no way you can make a living as a writer. Like you’ll have to, you know, you know, the same old trope. No one thinks you can make any money writing for a living. I’m sure most of the people listening to this podcast have heard that same cliche throughout their careers. 

I found myself in someone’s marketing funnel. I think it was The Comprehensive Copywriting Academy. And that’s how I discovered copywriting. I didn’t even know what it was. And I just really went all in on it immediately with my little five-day-old baby. And yeah, took it from there. And things have snowballed since then. I think when I first learned of you guys, I was learning like, oh, it’s a good idea to niche. Now, I think it was you that told me. I was like, I’m going to niche down to B2B SaaS. And you were like, that’s not niching. I was like, OK. Yeah, I guess you’re right. Because I was so new to everything. I didn’t really have any concept of the scope and what was possible and just how far niched you could get. And yeah, I came, I’d always wanted to work in sustainability, but I think I had the same, the same problem with sustainability as I did with writing. Like I’m like, either you work in a job that you love and you don’t make any money or you can make money and work, work in a job that you don’t love very much. So I’d always, I’d never achieved a job in sustainability. And then through copywriting, I discovered climate tech, which marries these two worlds of lbeing able to have a lucrative career working with like fancy technologies that are moving the world forward, but also doing something good for the world and the world of sustainability. So it seemed like a pretty perfect match right away.

Rob Marsh: Yeah. I want to go back to you being a bartender. I was a bartender before I started copywriting. Not for 10 years. I did it for maybe a year and a half, two years or so. But were there things that you take from that experience of working with people daily, trying to keep them happy, that basically translates to copywriting today?

Meg Kendall: Absolutely. So I think a lot of things, one thing being the obvious, like you’re behind the bar and people drink and they spill you their life secrets. I feel like you do get that sort of inside look at human psychology and you’re exposed to so many different people and so many different perspectives and so many different attitudes and you sort of get kind of an intuition for what makes people tick and how people are going to react to different things. So I think that’s one aspect of it. But the other aspect that I think affected me more is the hustle ability. Anyone that bartended through COVID knows how terrible that was. Not to promote the hustle and the grind because I don’t agree with that at all, but doing it for a short amount of time in your life I think does give you a little bit of grit and teach you stuff. And I think I translated that over into my writing career more than anything, like just doing the work.

Rob Marsh: Yeah. I think I took something similar. Uh, there’s, you know, there’s all kinds of ways to approach bartending or any work really, but there’s obviously there’s a time when hustle matters and obviously you can’t hustle 24 hours a day, seven days a week for your entire career. But there may be some really intense times where, you know, for a few months, maybe even for a few years, you require hustle. And I think, you know, while we’re mentioning it, because you talked about how, you know, you basically quit your job as soon as you had a child. Having a child is in a lot of ways, a 24 hour hustle, maybe not work, but it puts the rest of your life into a hustle mode in a lot of ways.

Meg Kendall: Yeah, absolutely. So I don’t want to frame that wrong. I didn’t quit my job right away. So I dived into copywriting for my 12 weeks of maternity leave because New York City is fantastic and those kinds of regards. I got maternity leave and so did my husband. But I did go back to work and I built up my copywriting career on the side. So that looked like

Rob Marsh: Even more hustle though, right? You’ve got to work hard while you’re working. You’ve got to take care of an infant.

Meg Kendall: Yeah, that’s not easy. Yeah, exactly. So it took me about six months back at my job before I could cut back down to part-time. And then another year after that, I was able to quit.

Rob Marsh: Okay, so let’s talk about how you found those first couple of clients. This is always a challenge for copywriters, especially as they start to move into a niche. I know you started a little bit broad before you really decided on climate tech and some of the things that you’re doing today. But how did you connect with people in order to get work?

Meg Kendall: Okay, so the first few articles I wrote, I was baiting people on Reddit. I was asking people if they had something that they wanted someone to write about and that I would write it for free. I know people don’t recommend that, but I was so new and I had no history or portfolio. And I knew I wanted to write for tech, but I didn’t know. I just didn’t know how to come up with a topic for myself that someone would want. And I wrote two articles for free. And those were my first portfolio pieces. And then from there, I went to Upwork, landed my first website copywriting job there, a pretty decent one. I think it was like they paid me like $1,700 to write their entire website, which to me, that seems really low now, but at the time I was like, this is great. I was so excited. I actually took the sales call in my office at my job in the Bronx school and took it way in the morning and locked my office door and then landed the client and was jumping up and down like, yes, I did it because I was so excited to get out of that job. Yeah, so first two articles are free. Then I landed a client on Upwork and then my next client I landed through LinkedIn.

Rob Marsh: And then obviously you started to move towards climate tech. I know you were in the accelerator and we talk a lot about niching and that kind of stuff, but what was the thought process there beyond the fact that you have this degree in botany?

Meg Kendall: For moving into climate tech? Yeah. So I really wanted to be involved in the world of sustainability and like doing the best that we can against the problem that is climate change. And then the tech aspect came, I think part of it’s a little bit nostalgic because my dad, when I was younger, he was a really gigantic tech nerd. And I know that he would be so flabbergasted and amazed at how far things have come today. So it just seemed like a really nice, like collision of worlds. So that’s what made me stick with it.

Rob Marsh: Cool. So one of the things that you’ve done that I think is really smart, and maybe this idea came while you were in the accelerator or shortly afterwards, but you wrote an industry report and used that to launch an email list. So talk about that, the thinking, what you did and why.

Meg Kendall: Yeah, the industry report is definitely one of the best things that I’ve done for my business. I did get the idea while I was in the accelerator. I think it came directly from you guys. I was like, that’s a good idea. I’m going to do that. But I didn’t do it by myself. So I had been friends with another girl in the climate tech freelancing space. Okay, so let me back up. I’d been trying to work on this industry report, right? Months are passing and I’m making a little bit of progress, but not that much. And I’m like, oh my God, how am I ever going to get this thing done? And then a girl that I had just had one coffee chat with earlier on in my career, I had reached out to her like, hey, just trying to make friends in the space. Are you up for a coffee chat? Et cetera, et cetera. It was a friendly call and that was that. And then a couple of months later, she reached out to me like, Hey, how’s freelancing going? I’m just feeling like I’d really love to have someone to work on some kind of marketing initiative with. I’m just looking for something fresh to do with my business. Things are getting kind of lonely and stale essentially. I was like, it’s so funny that you should ask because I’ve been trying to write this industry report for climate tech to further my business and help people in the climate tech space, but I’m just not making any headway on it. I was like, let’s do it together. And that’s what we did. We did it together. I mean, there’s so much that came off of that, but we built an email list and it’s spawned an entire business between the two of us. So yeah, the industry report really changed everything for me.

Rob Marsh: Go a little deeper into what the industry report was, because I think, you know, as we think about this stuff, you know, we’re always looking for the thing, right? And there’s a lot of advice out there. You want to keep it simple. You want like a one page checklist or, you know, I mean, there’s so many different ways to do this, but an industry report, I don’t hear that very often. And so, yeah. What went into that?

Meg Kendall: So we reached out to so many people, mainly marketers of climate tech companies, and asked them to chat with us. An industry report is so smart because you get to position yourself as an expert in the space, but also you get to talk to these people that you want to be your clients one-to-one and understand what challenges they’re facing and what they’re looking for and what outcomes they’re trying to achieve. So, yeah, we just reached out to people simply on LinkedIn, like, hey, we’re working on this industry report. We’re hoping for it to be a really valuable piece of content to bolster the climate tech industry as a whole. Would you be willing to chat with us about, like, the challenges that you’re seeing? What do you think is working in the space? Like, where are you getting your leads? That kind of thing. And we had a really good response rate. I’d say it was probably 50-50, but people that didn’t respond or people that were like, sure. Yeah, definitely. We’ll chat. Cause I don’t know. I feel like in climate tech, most people are pretty willing to help. Like we have a common goal, right? So everyone wants to be helpful towards that goal. Yeah. So we’d get people on these calls and ask them about their challenges. What have you seen that’s working? I just listed these things off already, but people were more than willing to talk. And a lot of it too, is they wanted to be featured in this report because it makes them look good. So it was pretty easy, you know, and you’re not just making an ask. You’ve also had something of value to offer them.

Rob Marsh: And do you give them a copy of their part when it’s done? Obviously you used it as a lead magnet as well.

Meg Kendall: Yeah, I did. So how we did it is we, after we did write the report, we’d send them the snippet that we included them in so they could like approve their quote and like get context for how we featured them. So they’d sign off on that. And then we were like, okay, when everything’s finalized, well, you’ll be the first one to get the report. We’d be happy if you shared it with your network. And most of them were very happy to share it with their network because, you know, they were in it.

Rob Marsh: And what were the results? Did you see clients immediately from that or how has that played out in your business?

Meg Kendall: The clients have definitely been a long game. We saw a bunch of, we got a lot of traction for it and we built an email list from, we still have a pretty small email list. We’re floating at like, we’re getting close to 400, but it’s still pretty small. But more than half of that was from that initial industry report. And we’re still getting people trickling in from that industry report today. And honestly, it’s funny. So we didn’t get many clients immediately, but we had a lot of great conversations and it was great for our own voice of customer research. But in the second half of this year, we’ve gotten more people reaching out to us because of that industry report than we ever did at the very beginning. So I would say it was a slow burn, but it’s definitely paid off for us in spades.

Rob Marsh: And I know you say your list is only 400, but a list of 400 potential clients is actually a massive list. You couldn’t serve 10% of them if they all said yes immediately, right?

Meg Kendall: Yeah, that’s true. And it’s so funny because at the beginning we were watching it like, wow, is this really happening? Because we didn’t know if it would flop or if it would work or what. And when we got to 100, we celebrated. And I think we both bought ourselves a coffee from our shared account or something like that. But now we’re like, oh, 400, it just feels so small because we haven’t been growing as fast as we want to. But in hindsight, it’s a lot of people for us, at least at this stage.

Rob Marsh: And do you have plans to do another one in the future or to renew it for the new year? Anything like that?

Meg Kendall: So originally our plan was to do one every year. I think our current plan is to sort of refresh the one that we already have and just update it for 2025. We did have plans. So I did tell you briefly that we’re expanding our audience to include corporates. And part of our plans for that did include doing a new report aimed at that audience. But I think it’s going to have to be more of a mid-year kind of thing because we’re a little, we’re treading water right now.

Rob Marsh: So yeah, let’s mention that because I think we were talking about that offline before we started recording. So just so everybody has context on that, the climate tech world that you had been serving is mostly startups. And there’s some challenges with that that are leading to the expansion of your niche. So talk through that a little bit.

Meg Kendall: Yeah, so climate tech is a fantastic space to be in, but it is startups. And then everyone knows that tech is going through kind of a funding downfall right now. And climate tech was immune to that for a while, but they are no longer. They’re not quite as down as the tech industry as a whole, but there’s still they’re down and they’re down and you can feel it. And yeah, so we’re trying to move away from only working with all these like pre-seed and seed companies and moving I think now we’re setting a standard. We only work with companies that have raised a series A, but also our interests are leading us to work with corporates as well. So we’d like to work with companies that have sustainability initiatives, and we’d like to help them with their sustainability reporting.

Rob Marsh: And obviously more established companies have more money to spend. They have marketing departments that you can connect with. So there are a different set of challenges, but it’s not necessarily moving away from the thing that you love, but expanding the potential clients you can help.

Meg Kendall: Exactly. Yep.

Rob Marsh: Yeah. Okay. So you briefly mentioned the coffee chat and the person that you have become a business partner with. Talk a little bit more about the development of that relationship.

Meg Kendall: Yeah. Yeah. So we just had that brief coffee chat. It’s so funny because just recently, we were like, who reached out to who? And we both remembered it the opposite way. She was like, I think I reached out to you. And I was like, I don’t think so. So we had to scroll back in our chats and see what the truth was. And we were both kind of right. I engaged her and then she was like, do you want to have a coffee chat? Anyway, so that’s how the marketing report came to be. We worked on it together for… It took a while. I want to say it took us a couple months because we were balancing our client work on top of that. And we launched it in January of this year. And we didn’t really know what we’re like, what do we do now? Do we keep working as like, co freelancers? Do we start a podcast? Like, what’s our next thing? What do we do with this? Like, do we make an umbrella brand? And we really went back and forth on it for a long time, because we were both very passionate about our flexible schedules and being able to take a long lunch break and not being beholden to someone else’s schedule and taking a vacation when you want to and not feeling stressed about it. So we stayed freelancers for a long time, but then we decided to like, hey, let’s do this thing because we’ve been working together side by side for so long and we know we get along really well and we share the same values and neither one of us is going to be like, oh, why aren’t you working right now? That kind of thing. So we just decided it would work and we went all in and now we have this shared Climate Hub LLC business. And yeah, we’re totally in it.

Rob Marsh: And how do you break up what you do? Obviously, you’re a copywriter. Is she also doing writing? Is she doing design work? Like, how does that work?

Meg Kendall: Yeah. At first, it made sense to us because I was more doing brand messaging and website copywriting, and she is more of a long-form content writer. I will say our skills really overlap quite a lot, which is textbook from what we’ve been reading in our business books, what you’re not supposed to do when you seek out a founder for a company. We’re aware of this and we know it’s maybe an issue, but we’re working it out. Yeah, we actually just had a consulting call with someone recently about how we need to really define our roles and how it doesn’t feel like it matters now, but it will as the company grows. Yeah, I think I lost the thread there a little bit.

Rob Marsh: I think that’s exactly right. I think there are opportunities for partnerships all over the place. And the way we structure them is pretty unique. I mean, sometimes it’s a full on partnership where you’re creating a business together. Other times, it’s a working relationship. And so it’s just interesting to see how yours has moved from that casual acquaintance to now you two are building a business together that could do some really amazing things with climate focused copy.

Meg Kendall: Yeah, it’s exciting. We’re really excited about it right now. We joke because it’s right now it is still just the two of us. We’ve dabbled in working with freelancers, but the idea obviously is to build a team, subcontractors to begin. But we’re definitely early stages.

Rob Marsh: Yeah. So let’s talk a little bit about the kinds of projects that you do. What is the way that you engage businesses? What’s the typical project look like? How much are you charging? All of that stuff.

Meg Kendall: Yeah, so this is in flux. I feel like it’s always in flux, but the bulk of our work currently is content marketing. So we work with climate technology companies. A lot of them are software, but also more hard technologies to like direct. Lots of climate technologies, but usually we work with them on a lead magnet, such as a white paper, and then engage them to make blogs and social media content based off of that, which is called a hub and spoke model. That’s our main offer, I would say, but we also work with climate tech companies on their brand messaging and positioning website, copywriting, that sort of thing.

Rob Marsh: And when you engage, you mentioned, you know, you started working for free. Obviously you’re not doing that anymore. What’s the typical price point for you guys?

Meg Kendall: Yeah. So our minimum engagement start at $2,500 a month, which I actively think, I think that should be higher, honestly, at this point, but just this climate tech winter that we’re going through, we’re holding it steady for now. Um, but yeah, lead magnet starts at 2,500 on the low end and then, content starts at 750 at the low end, because it’s pretty technical content. So we engage with subject matter experts. And yeah, so lots of interviewing, lots of research goes into the piece. They take a while.

Rob Marsh: Yes. Not your typical blog post. I’ll read three other blog posts and rewrite something similar. There’s a lot of work that goes into it. For sure. Okay, so we talked about how you got your initial clients built up this client list or potential client list with the industry reports. Is that where most clients are coming from now? Or how does that engagement start so that you can go from, okay, they’re on my list, they’re interested in us, they know us, but now we want to actually start work.

Meg Kendall: Yeah, so it’s a mix. I’d say we get a fair amount from the newsletter. It’s funny because some weeks, so we send out the newsletter every week, and some weeks we’re like, why are we doing this? Because it’s work. But then the next week, we’ll get someone that’s like, I love your newsletter, and we’re looking for storytelling. Can you guys help? And we’re like, oh, OK, it is worth it. But it’s easy to forget week to week when you have a couple of quiet weeks. So yeah, I’d say it’s probably a pretty It’s a pretty even split between people that are nurtured on our email list and people that just find us inbound on LinkedIn. So that’s where most of our leads come from, I would say. We do do some outbounds, not a lot, we should do more. We should do a lot more than we do. And we get probably a small amount from our outbound as well.

Rob Marsh: Yeah, amazing. Okay, you’ve also developed a few frameworks. I know the frameworks may be changing as you are switching from, or as you’re enlarging your niche just a little bit. But I love frameworks. I love them partly because they demonstrate different things about a business, but they also set us apart from other copywriters, content writers in the space. So you’ve got a couple of them. Talk a little bit about how you came to develop. I guess the first one you built was the pedal framework. And then you’ve got four C’s and you’re working on yet another framework for this newer audience. But let’s talk a little bit about your thinking there.

Meg Kendall: Yeah, so I love the frameworks because it makes it so much easier to talk about what you do, and it makes it feel like you own a process, which I think clients really like because it makes it clear to them like, okay, hey, she’s done this before. She has a way for doing the thing that she does, and she knows that it will get results. The first framework I came up with was Petal. Yeah, it was very on brand for my individual branding. I came up with it. I went through Justin Blackman‘s brand voice special. I don’t know if that’s the right name for his signature brand voice program, which is a great program. I’d recommend it to anyone. I came up with it during that. to outline the way I approach voice, which was relevant to my brand messaging guides that I was offering at the time, which I still offer. I just don’t talk about the framework as much. I think it’s a little pedal’s just a little too frilly, I think, for my climate tech people today. Maybe not. That’s just the gut feeling I have about it. So I don’t talk about it as much, but I can. So pedal. Let’s see, what did it stand for? OK, so P was for pattern ease for emotion. T is for tone. A is for atmosphere and L is for language, as in like the brand language that you use to talk about things. So I’d go through each of those letters to sort of develop a brand voice and tone and like develop a brand language framework for my clients. And that’s what they would work within for their materials. So they could sound unique and resonate with their audience and all those nice things that we want our copy to do.

Rob Marsh: And then you also have the four C’s, which I think is the one that’s on your website today. And at least I find it there now. Yeah.

Meg Kendall: Yeah. I think they’re both on my website. The 4C Copy Canopy is a more general phased approach. I still use this approach. I just don’t talk about it in the same way. Actually, I think now my approach is a five-phase approach. The 4C Copy Canopy, the first C is Collect. That’s an audit of the client’s current atmosphere to see what’s working on the website. What does the brand voice sound like? How’s their positioning working? How does it fit in with the larger market? That’s collect and then phase two is cultivate. That’s where we go in and define the key messages. Their messaging pillars, we dial into the strategy and then figure out how to match those messages to each of their ideal customer personas. Phase three is compose and that’s where we develop and document the brand language system using the pedal framework, which is below it on my website, which I already talked about. Then phase four is communicate, which I say is how you get visible with your voice and message in the market and sort of bring that to scale so people can hear what you have to say.

Rob Marsh: I think what I really like about your approach here is the way that you’re using two kinds of frameworks. So the four Cs is more of a process framework, whereas the pedal framework is a little bit more of an idea framework or about the thing that you do. And you’ve put them together in a way that totally makes sense. is so different from the way everybody else talks about their business, even though what you do isn’t all that different from other copywriters. You do research, you do writing, you present to the client, you make changes, whatever. Like literally doing the same work, but the way you’re talking about it is totally unique to you.

Meg Kendall: Yeah, exactly. It’s really a marketing tool in itself and it makes you sound unique and clients find it impressive, I think.

Rob Marsh: Yeah, I mean, that’s actually my next question. And clients find it impressive. How do you use them as you’re bringing clients on board? Do you talk about them before, you know, on a discovery call? You know, do you work it into a proposal? Like, where does it show up in your process?

Meg Kendall: I typically, I briefly mentioned it in a discovery call, I could probably use it more there. But mostly, I’d say it shines in my proposals. I reference, like, this is how I do it and this is why it works. And it looks nice in the proposal, too. So I’d say that’s where I get the most mileage out of it.

Rob Marsh: Yeah, that makes sense. And like I said, it shows you off in a way that’s very unique to what other copywriters are doing. Let’s talk about where your business is going in the future. I know the tech world’s seen a little bit of a slowdown, so you guys are expanding, but what does the business look like next year, hopefully even two or three years down the line?

Meg Kendall: Yeah, so we love talking about this because it’s what we’re so excited about right now. We’re in the middle of a website refresh right now. I think hopefully it’ll be live by the time this episode goes live.

Rob Marsh: Fingers crossed.

Meg Kendall: Yeah. Fingers crossed. Yeah. Okay. So right now we’ve got our eyes set on continuing on in climate tech because we love it. It’s our zone of genius and the people in it are so fantastic. And I swear all my clients are the smartest people I’ve ever talked to. So we love that, but we’ve got our eyes set on expanding to corporates that are doing good sustainability work, or at least doing their darndest at doing good sustainability work because it is hard work. And we’d like to help those companies with their sustainability reporting. And that is so that’s more than just like a fully impact report, right? Because it’s this is going to become a compliance issue. Companies are going to have to start reporting on their sustainability. This is more relevant in Europe than it is in the U.S. today, but hopefully it will become relevant in the U.S. more than it is today. So for us, that looks like really understanding the regulatory frameworks and standards that these companies are having to report to. So that’s something that we’re both working on in our our very limited free time is credentials and these different kinds of sustainable finance credentials, accounting, all that kind of thing. Yes. So that’s our nearish short, nearish medium term goal is to help corporates with their sustainability reporting and helping them achieve compliance, but also using those reports, not as just like a data driven checklist, but as a narrative driven marketing asset. so that they get the best of both worlds. And then long term, we’d also like to bring sustainability consultants into the fold under the Climate Hub umbrella and help those companies that are doing their sustainability reporting actually reduce their emissions too. So our positioning would be like, Hey, we’ll help you report on this. We’ll help you use the support in your marketing initiatives. And while your stakeholders, as long as you’re actually doing the work, we don’t want to fluffify it. That’s our big thing. You don’t want to tell a story that isn’t right, but we want to tell a story that is accurate and still makes you look good. And then also our additional value add would be like, not only can we help you report on this and make it make you look good, but we’ll also actually help you reduce your emissions and make a tangible impact on improving the world for everybody’s futures.

Rob Marsh: That’s amazing. I love that it goes beyond just writing where you’re trying to help implement best practices, help share the story. Too many copywriters, I think, just get hung up on just doing the words like this is all I do is I just write the article or I just write the website and they don’t go the extra step to help clients implement whether it’s sales strategy, climate strategy, whatever. So I love that you guys are doing that.

Meg Kendall: Yeah, we’re really excited about it because we’ve obviously what we do right now. I feel like we’re doing good for the world, but I feel like with the direction that we’re going and we can do much more good than we are today.

Rob Marsh: So let me ask you maybe a strange question. A lot of copywriters, you know, we’re working alone in our offices or at the kitchen table or wherever we, you know, the coffee shop, wherever. What are some things that we can do to make our own businesses just a little bit more climate friendly?

Meg Kendall: Oh, good question. Well, we have writers at home at their desk have such a light impact to begin with.

Rob Marsh: Yeah, I know. That’s kind of my initial thought is, well, maybe I can’t do anything other than turn off the lights and work in the dark.

Meg Kendall: Yeah, I mean, all of us could be doing so much more. So there’s like, I’m not sure if you’re maybe some of our listeners aren’t familiar with everyone, AI is all the rage, right? And it’s a very powerful tool. But my goodness is the energy consumption of AI, such insanity. And now that it’s replaced people’s Google searching, I’m not good at keeping statistics off the top of my head. But it’s something like one Google or one AI prompt is equivalent to some ridiculous amount of water used. Don’t quote me. Look it up for yourselves. But the energy use is insane. So I think the best thing people could do with their online businesses is probably being mindful of their AI use. Not to say not to use it. I use it. I think it’s a very powerful tool and it makes me more efficient and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. I’m a big fan. Things like that. And people talk about this a lot… the carbon footprint of your website, that’s something you can think about. But again, I don’t want to shame anyone’s personal actions because there are so many bigger fish to fry out there when it comes to the climate crisis. But yeah, all of us could be doing more. Have a vegetarian day, et cetera.

Rob Marsh: There you go. Vegetarian day is maybe where I’ll start. Less meat today. We’ll see. So as you were answering some of these other questions, you mentioned a couple of different programs that you’ve invested in. And this is something that I admire about you is that you’re always looking to learn and to improve. I mentioned you were in our accelerator, you were in the think tank for a while. What’s your philosophy there? And why do you do that?

Meg Kendall: It’s obsessive. It’s a good question. My husband would probably like to know as well, too. I think that it’s important to always be learning and there’s always things you can improve on. And quite frankly, I get bored if I’m not working on something new or learning some kind of new skill. And I just think it’s I don’t know, maybe I’m a bit of a personal development freak. I just think it’s good practice and it keeps me from getting sad, I think. So, yeah, maybe it’s a tick. But yeah, it’s so nice to meet other people that are also investing in these courses because they have the same, not the same values, but the same yearning for more, I guess is how I would put it simply. So yeah, it’s just a great way to meet people and keep your mind sharp and keep doing better in the world.

Rob Marsh: Yeah, I mean, I’ve talked about this maybe 100 times on the podcast, but this has always been a game changer for me. I’ve almost always been in some kind of a mastermind. I still invest in programs and try to learn from things. I was on a call yesterday with somebody that I met in a mastermind that both of us were not in that particular mastermind anymore. We were sharing, oh, who are you learning from right now? Or what’s the thing that you’re working on? And having those kinds of relationships This isn’t even a question. I’m just confirming what you said. It’s a total game changer for business.

Meg Kendall: It really is. It makes such a difference. It makes things less lonely and it gives you a sort of a sense of accountability too. Like right now I’m eager for another, like we’re ready for another business coach. You know, like someone that knows more than we do. That would be great. Any day now. But yeah, yeah. I’m a continual learner and investor and yeah, I can’t help myself.

Rob Marsh: It’s a good place to be. You mentioned the impact of AI, but let’s talk a little bit about how you’re using AI in your business to help you make more progress or to do things faster. What are your two or three favorite tools and what are you using them for?

Meg Kendall: I use chat GPT the most. Someone just introduced me to perplexity and I cannot believe that I didn’t know about it. I mean, I don’t know that much about it yet, so I don’t have that much to say. I just saw someone quickly show me on a screen and I was like, that’s amazing. That’s a cool tool. It’s a really good tool. So I plan on investigating that more, but mostly I’ve just used chat GPT and Claude. I used to be way more wowed by Claude than I am by ChatGPT. But in the recent weeks and months, I am seriously impressed by the output from ChatGPT. like to a point where I’m a little scared and nervous because just in the last year, it just seems to me like it’s improved. So maybe I’ve gotten better at prompting and like feeding it better context, but the stuff that it puts out these days, I’m just really wowed. Okay. But to answer your question on how I use it. So honestly, for most of my clients, I have a giant conversation ongoing and ChatGPT for each of my clients that understands their brand voice and has been fed like all the content that I’ve previously written for it. And it helps me outline, you know, sometimes it helps me build out full sections because it’s trained very well on my writing and all of their background. And it’s an incredible tool. It terrifies me every day.

Rob Marsh: All of them seem to be getting better. And yeah, it’s good to use them. They definitely move our businesses forward. Good to be aware of the changes as well so we can stay ahead of them just a little bit.

Meg Kendall: Yeah, I will say I had sort of written it off for a while there. Like I dabbled and explored when it was, you know, for such a rage and I was like, I just don’t really see how it’s that. I don’t know. It didn’t excite me, but over the last few months I’ve been using it again and I really am impressed by the improvements I’ve seen.

Rob Marsh: Yeah, same. So we also briefly skipped over this, but you basically launched your business with a newborn. I think your child is a couple of years older now, but you’ve done all of this as a mom of a very young child, high demands. How did you balance your time? How did you find the time to even work on your business with all of that going on in your personal life?

Meg Kendall: Yeah, so I think about this, and then I think of other moms that have multiples, and I’m like, how do they do that? But I’m sure you just adapt as your life changes, and that’s just how it goes. But to answer your question, let’s see. So I’m very lucky in that my husband – well, lucky, it’s a double-edged sword. My husband and I have opposite schedules. So he is a manager at a cocktail bar, so he works evenings, which means that he can be with Charlie while I work during the day. My day usually gets cut off by three or so. So that helps a lot because we don’t have to pay for daycare or anything like that. I don’t know what we would do if our schedules were not opposite. Beyond that, I wake up very early and I make sure that I get my exercise and my breakfast in before anyone else wakes up. It’s not really a time management thing. It is though. It’s like a mental management thing, which makes me able to handle my time much better. This is thanks to my business partner. I’m also a recent Cal Newport fangirl.

Rob Marsh: Okay.

Meg Kendall: I finished his deep workbook and just listened to a really long podcast from him on, uh, the Huberman lab. And I am actually, I’ve got his planner right here, his time blocker planner. And I will say that has made a big difference in the way I approach my day. I feel so much more accountable and I get so much more done. And it’s just like, there’s when you take the guesswork out of your schedule, it really, it really changes things. So I would say that’s a recent development, but it helps me a lot because my day really is short and I had to fit it all in before I switched to, two and a half year old duty at three o’clock.

Rob Marsh: So let me ask you about that, because it’s one thing to buy a planner. It’s one thing to say, I’m going to do all of this stuff. And it’s another thing to have the discipline to do it. Now, obviously, there are a few forcing factors in our lives that, you know, force discipline. The mortgage payments do or, you know, I do have to do child care at three o’clock. And so therefore it has to be done by three. Some of that stuff helps. But how else do you find you adding discipline into the various things that you do so that you make sure it gets done. Instead of picking up the phone to scroll and suddenly it’s 30 minutes later and the only thing you have accomplished is that you’re angry about the election or whatever.

Meg Kendall: That’s exactly what that accomplishes too.

Rob Marsh: I know. Me too. I’m speaking from experience here.

Meg Kendall: Oh my goodness. Yeah. So the phone thing is actually a recent huge focus of mine. I’m really trying to tackle that addiction. I haven’t completely broken it. Everyone has it, right? But I will say I’m markedly better over the past few weeks. As for how to maintain the discipline, I’m not sure. I just think I do think that I lean – I’m pretty good at having it in the first place. I don’t know if I have a secret answer to it. I think that I beat myself up if I don’t do the things that I tell myself I’m going to do and then I don’t like how I feel when that happens. Not that I’m perfect. I do end up beating myself up about things quite often but I think – I mean that’s my best motivator. I’m like I can either do this and feel good at the end of the day or I can not do the thing I told myself I would do today and then be really hateful of myself in the evening. And no one wants to do that. So that’s my driver.

Rob Marsh: Being aware of that feeling, I guess, it is a good way to maintain that discipline for sure.

Meg Kendall: Yeah, I think I relate it to exercise. So someone told me this a long time ago. I’ve been a pretty regular yoga practitioner for most of my life. And something someone said to me once is like, you may not want to go to yoga class, but how many times have you ever left yoga class and regretted it? And so that’s how I view my workouts in the morning when I don’t want to get out of bed. And that’s how I view my work, too. I’m like, I’m not going to be mad that I finished this thing that I set out to do today.

Rob Marsh: I’m exactly the same way with running. In fact,  I run four or five times a week. I actually don’t like running, which is a little ironic because that’s the thing. I do it because it’s easy. It’s quick. You know, I can get out in 10 minutes or whatever. But I love having run like the actual running part. I hate it. I hate it until maybe the fourth mile when maybe you get a little bit of that, you know, kick in of the runner’s high or whatever. But I love the feeling when I’m done—that I have run.

Meg Kendall: Yep, exactly. It gives you such a feeling of accomplishment. I can’t agree with you that running is easy because I hate running.

Rob Marsh: I don’t think it’s easy to run. I think it’s an easy exercise. So the other thing I love doing is getting on my bike. But by the time I put on my kit and check the tires and you have the light on the bike and it’s cold or what, you know, it’s just so much easier to go for a run.

Meg Kendall: Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense.

Rob Marsh: So Meg, if you could go back and talk to, you know, Meg, I don’t know, 2018, you know, as you started exploring and thinking about copywriting, or maybe it’s a little closer to 2020, what advice would you give her in order to help her, I don’t know, make more progress more quickly or, you know, have an easier time of it? What do you think you would tell her?

Meg Kendall: I think one of the things I would tell myself is to get over your fear of networking. because I’m still not great at it and it’s still not my favorite thing to do. I love it while it’s happening. When I’m in conversation with someone, I’m like, this is great. This is why I scheduled all these coffee chats for this week, but I dread the time leading up to them. When I was an early freelancer, I was like, am I going to be able to do this? I’m not a super social person. I don’t know if I’ll be able to make the connections that I need to do. I would think I would go back and encourage myself to get over it and do it anyway, which I did eventually, but I would have wished that I did it sooner.

Rob Marsh: Takes a little bit of time sometimes just to figure it all out. Okay, Meg, if somebody wants to find you, follow you, maybe check out your industry report, get on your list, all of those things, where should they go?

Meg Kendall: Yeah. So you can find everything that I do at theclimatehub.co. And you can reach me via email at megattheclimatehub.co, or you can find me on LinkedIn, which is my only active social platform.

Rob Marsh: Amazing. Thank you so much. I appreciate your time.

Meg Kendall: Yeah, thank you so much. This has been such a pleasure.

Rob Marsh: Thanks to Meg for sharing so much about her business, creating an industry report, partnerships, frameworks, and so much more. If you want to connect with Meg, you can find her at megcadmell.com. She has her information about her business, everything that she’s doing there. You might also see her popping up on social media occasionally. We’ll see how that all goes. 

I really like this idea of industry reports as a way to generate almost instant credibility with your ideal clients. In fact, we like it so much that we have a couple of our own industry reports for copywriters and content writers. One of those is our pricing survey where we ask more than 500 copywriters about the projects that they work on and how much they charge for each of them. You can find that report broken down into three different articles on the blog at thecopywriterclub.com if you want to check it out. There’s also an opt-in there on those articles if you want to download a free PDF that has all of the information that we gathered for that report if you want to keep it handy when you’re trying to figure out prices on various projects that you might be working on. 

We also created an in-depth 32-page report on how to find clients. One writer that we shared it with said that it was more helpful than a course that he had taken on the same topic. Each of the ideas in the report have been proven successful by other copywriters that we know personally, and if you decide to get your own copy, I’m certain that several of the ideas will work for you. Several of them work for me, so I know they work. You can find that report at thecopywriterclub.com/findaclient. Find a client’s all one word. Forward slash find a client. It’s free, so be sure to check it out. 

But getting back to my point about building credibility with industry reports, it takes work to put them together. A good report is something that you can’t just write in one afternoon. You need to gather information and hopefully talk to several experts in your industry in order to produce one. You’re looking for trends and new ideas and insights that you can share. But if you do that work, these kinds of downloads tend to be far more valuable than an ordinary lead magnet, and they will help you attract clients to your business. got a report that you’ve produced. I’d love to see it. So send it to me when you have a moment.