The show’s guest in this episode is Nicki Krawczyk, and she’s the founder of Filthy Rich Writer. She’s also been a copywriter for 15+ years, working for and with clients including TripAdvisor, Marshalls, Hasbro, Keurig, adidas, and, yes, even Harlequin Romance novels! Tune in and learn more!

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Experimenting with Copywriting with Nicki Krawczyk

Hi, everybody, it’s great to be here with you today I’ve been thinking about my own leadership. And I’ve been thinking about sort of what’s the who’s the need that I present to the world as a leader. And that’s both visually and sort of in the messaging that we have an in the, the way that I as a human being, I’m open or vulnerable in podcasts and videos and writing with my clients. I sort of think of it as my leadership brand. And I’m not sure what your leadership brand is, but I’m super curious.

So I’d love to hear more about what your leadership brand is how you think about it, what are the pitfalls, where do you get yourself in trouble? I always find it interesting when I’m socializing with clients. It’s fine. It’s super fun. But I’m also I also hold myself back a little bit. I’m careful, not like careful in the way that I don’t say outrageous things, but I think about them before I say them. And I certainly hold an essence of business reality in my social interactions.

Today, I’m super excited about our guest today. Her name is Nicki Krawczyk. And she’s the founder of Filthy Rich Writer. And she’s also been a copywriter for 15+ years, working for and with clients including TripAdvisor, Marshalls, Hasbro, Keurig, Adidas, and, yes, even Harlequin Romance novels! I am so excited to talk with Nicki.

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Welcome, Nicki.

Great to be here.

Well, I want to just dive right in and I’d love to hear kind of you know, fall 2021 What are you working on in your business? What are you thinking about? What are you doing as a leader in your role? Leading your company?

You say fall 2021 I went is that next year is that last year is a busy year hasn’t? Um, yeah, no we. So our company, our filter trainers, one of the brands within our Nicki K Media Company. So filthy rich writer, we train people to become a professional copywriters, professional marketing and advertising writers. We’re ramping up our fired up fired up freelance brand where we teach people to become successful freelancers in in any capacity, and planning events for the new year, planning new offerings, all kinds of you know what it’s like to be a business owner. They’re always weldable balls in the air, all kinds of things going on. Yeah, all kinds of fun, fun stuff.

It sounds really exciting. And what about the work that you do as a leader excites you?

Um, well, you know what, I think there are really two parts of that on one side, I love the I love the marketing element, I’m a marketer at heart. So I love figuring out how to how to get across what we’re offering and how it’s going to benefit our target audience and so that they understand it and and embrace what it will how it will transform their lives. And then on the other half of it, there is that element of the actual transformation of helping people build thriving copywriting careers of helping people build thriving freelance careers. It’s funny when I started my business 10 years ago, I really kind of thought alright, well I’ll teach people to become copywriters because they people need to know this. And it didn’t occur to me that it what that would actually involve is helping people build careers and it was silly to say it like that. But it’s, there’s a difference between I’m just going to teach people this and, you know, our students coming back and saying, last year I was on food stamps and my husband and I just bought a house all because of this and or I finally found a career that I actually love or, you know, I was able to to be the primary breadwinner in our family for the first time ever that you know, that kind of thing. It’s very lucky and it’s an honor to be in a to have a business that actually truly impacts people’s lives. It’s a wonderful thing.

I have a similar experience like my I feel like my big stake in the ground or the thing that brings me joy in my career is helping people love their work. And so we’re very aligned in that it’s so surprising when you watch that happen over time. I mean, I don’t know why surprising, because you kind of hope you’ll have impact. But I love when people come back and say, Gosh, you said this and that I did this, and then this happened. And it’s a cool path.

Absolutely.

What do you think? How do you choose? Like, how do people know if copywriting is like a cool thing for them? What would they look for in themselves to know, this is something they might be interested in?

Absolutely, yeah, it’s a question we get a lot. And you know, I can, whenever people ask it, the first thing I would say is, I don’t know you. So I can’t necessarily tell you for sure. But I can tell you some of the commonalities among our students, you know, our students all have just a general affinity for writing an interest in writing, you know, they’re the people who always are, or I should say, our friends are always asking us to look over their cover letters or look at an email before they send it to a boss to make sure they come across, right. So that the that kind of natural ability to to write well, and I think to something that the people who have that tend to discount it, tend to think because they just naturally are able to do it that everybody can, and that’s very much not true. Most people are not naturally good at writing. And so regardless of what people do with it, it’s really important if you are good at it, to recognize that and to quite frankly, take a little pride in it. And then beyond that, really, people have to be open to being coached, to learning something new copywriting is a totally different kind of writing than any other kind of writing. I personally use that, as you said, I’ve been doing this for more than 15 get real close to 20 years. So I can tell you, it’s very different. But I love it, it’s a great combination of creativity and strategy. But you have to be open to being coached and be open to taking action, you know, we give our students all of the steps, all of the support everything they need. But it is a matter of saying okay, you know what, I’m going to do this today, I’m a little intimidated by this particular step in the process, but I’m going to do it. And those are really the I would say the the three things that most of our students have in common, or I should say all of our students have in common, which it sounds basic, but it can you be surprised to how many people aren’t willing to get out of their comfort zone are willing to try something new aren’t willing to learn something, you know, and I think to the great thing about copywriting, one of the many great things about it is that it’s not, if you if someone gets into it, they start learning it and they go, hey, you know what, maybe don’t want to do this professionally. And maybe don’t want to do this full time. You don’t have to do it full time. If you don’t want to do it. You know, and full time can be full time freelance or full time on staff somewhere, you don’t have to do it full time. If you want to. You can take clients part time, do it as a side gig, which we have plenty of students that do and but even if you don’t want to do that, it’s still the skills are so incredibly valuable, that you will find a way to use them and make yourself a more marketable professional in any field that you’re in.

Copywriting is a totally different kind of writing than any other kind of writing.

Well, I want to, before we got on today, we were talking a little bit and I sort of alluded it in my intro, the idea of sort of a leadership brand and writing. And we all write you know, we all write emails, we all write, you know, to present ourselves. Any tips for, you know, people who aren’t doing copywriting as a living but who want to produce impactful communications? What would you tell them?

Yeah, absolutely. Because, like you’d like we’re talking about these, these are transferable skills. The I think the the biggest mistake that people make when they are writing or when they’re communicating is they don’t think about the purpose before they sit down to start drafting an email, right? You see that a lot with the the meandering emails or the emails where you kind of don’t get to the point, you get the email and you go, I don’t, what do you want me to do with this? So the first thing really is to to make sure that you’re clear on the purpose of that email, first of all, who you’re sending it to him, and that’s kind of an easy one. But why are you sending it and what do you hope to get out of it? That’s the first thing that you need. go into it thinking about that, as you write it, what you need to focus on is, especially if it’s a request in any way, what the recipient is going to get out of the email and whatever action you want them to take. And I know sometimes people are like, Oh, that sounds so manipulative. No, it’s not at all you’re just highlighting, they’re going to get something out of taking whatever action it is. So you’re just highlighting that, which makes it that much more likely that they will take whatever action you want them to take, whether it’s responding to your email, whether it’s doing something you need them to do, whether it’s any number of things, but keeping your recipient in mind is almost always forgotten. And it’s so crucial to effective communication.

Well, I think what you’re talking about it sounds simple, like know who you’re talking to, uh, no, I want to get out of it. But I think we lose such volume of email. Um, sometimes we send emails for no reason, like, I think we can actually stop sending those, you know, there’s the got it, which is fine. That’s also helpful. That’s a response. But there’s also that sort of just owning the impact you want as a leader. And then being very clear about what is that impact? What do you see as a possibility? And then asking for that possibility? Somebody can say no to you. But I love that. I love that idea of thinking about what you want to get out of it.

Absolutely. Well, then too, as you’re you’re putting, you know, I think we’re kind of focusing on the email example. But so as you’re putting content into that email, what needs to be in there, in order to get that that reaction that you want? Or what information do they need? And what doesn’t, I mean, because you see, you get a lot of emails that are on both sides of that coin, right? emails where maybe they ask for something you’re like, I don’t even know what you’re talking about. I don’t this is totally out of left field, I don’t know what this is, and then are asking you to do something, they don’t give you all the information, actually do it. And then you have to send back an email back forth. And but the other half of the coin, where there are, you’re getting too much information, you’re getting all of this extraneous stuff that you don’t need, and it’s a waste of everybody’s time, which is really another copywriting principle two is making sure that everything in a piece of copy is pertinent to that message, not too much. And not too little. It has to all this all make sense within that messaging for the purpose of that message.

Well, and I was just thinking about an email, my son’s sent to his guidance counselor. And he literally had four points, which all were important to him and all were sort of related. So I think they belonged in one email that I know sometimes, I guess I’d love your advice on this. But sometimes when I’m, my clients are super busy. So sometimes I send them single thought emails, and I might send them two of them over a couple of days because I want them to give me the I want them to not get stuck in the headlights on one thing and not answer that easy thing. What’s your advice on that? You think about email a lot?

Well, I mean, that’s another principle right there, is you are thinking about your target audience. So you know that your target audience that the people you’re communicating with, have time to answer one email at a time. That’s it, they can give you their thoughts, but it’s one email at a time, it’s a get a list with eight questions, or even four questions, it’s gonna sit in their inbox, or for to do it’s going to sit in their inbox, and maybe they’ll start, but it’s gonna sit in their inbox and get pushed further and further down, because that’s a big task, whereas one email, they can, they can send you a response quickly. So that’s a really great example of thinking about your target audience. But again, another copywriting principle, whereas for your son, I think it’s totally reasonable for him to make four requests or ask for four things. And I assume sounds like he’s a good communicator. So maybe he bulleted it out to make it as clear as possible. Excellent. That’s totally reasonable. Because this is a different type of audience that these emails are going to. But that’s uh, that bullet it out is a really smart way to do it too. Because I mean, how many times I’m a business owner and I moved quickly. There’ll be emails where people ask for something and then there’s some more email and then they ask for something else but it’s lower in the email so I miss it completely. I answered the first thing and then I’m on to my next task. So there’s even a matter of the order in which you present your information. Your son did it perfectly in that everything he wanted was all together. So to miss something it Yes. Could someone still miss something? Absolutely. The sad truth that we always tell our copywriting students is nobody’s going to read all of your copy you will, your client will, your mother will, but nobody else will read it all.

Well, my clients never… No, no, no, no. That’s like a dream, right?

Yeah, no, I mean, as a copywriter, your client, the person you’re writing for the person writing for they should write? Yeah, but no, that’s the thing is that nobody reads all of it, which is why it’s so important to keep it concise, right to make it easy, because that’s another thing, if somebody opens up an email, like for long paragraphs, that’s another one that gets starred and stays in the inbox until you feel like going through it. But when you make it easy to digest, easy to get through, get the key messages, then it’s that much more likely that people will consume it, and will not even necessarily read all of it. But if you’ve made it skimmable, they get the important information, and then we’ll take action on it.

Well, I have a question for you. Because you’re sort of you know, you’re an expert in in writing. And you manage a team, probably people who prefer written communication. And how do you think about sort of meetings, written communication? In person communication, you know, talking? How do you think about all that in your company? And why?

Well, you know, it’s tricky, right? And I don’t know that any company has gotten it right. Yeah. So I’m always kind of looking to see because yeah, there’s, we have zoom meetings, we have regular zoom meetings, you know, my business operations manager, my marketing manager, I have one on ones with each of them. And then we have a little executive team that little, we have an executive team meeting at the beginning of the week, and then they meet with their direct reports. And so we definitely, we do one on one meetings, and then we’ll do meetings for Project kickoffs, and that kind of thing. But obviously, there’s communication in between that. So we use our project management system a lot. We use Asana a lot. But then there’s still email and slack. And both of which are a challenge for me personally. Because if slack, email is good, because I can leave it and check it twice a day as I’m trying to be better about doing. But slack is a big challenge for me, because it’s a, it’s important that you know, people have questions for me, they be able to get answers to this question. But it’s very disruptive. If I’m trying to get through a project, if I’m who knows what, you know, be doing 10 different things, 20 different things every single day. But if I’m trying to get through something and a Slack, notice notification pings, you know, I can I can think I can go Alright, I’m going to deal with that later. But it’s still here in the back of my mind as an open loop, which distracts me from what I’m doing. So and then I found two, I could turn off the notifications, but then I forget to turn the notification back on. So yeah, I wouldn’t say that I necessarily have a have a solution for any of that. I do think within an organization, it has to be it has to be a mix of all of that those types of communication. But I think there needs to be parameters, you know, it, for example, I wouldn’t send a Slack, if I have a long request that needs some context with it, that’s going to go in an email, I try not to send slacks if it’s not something that needs to be done, or needs to be dealt with. On a relative, you know, within the next couple hours or something like that, that can go to an email, if it’s not something that needs to be done immediately or within the next couple of hours. That can go to an email. But it’s, it’s it’s tricky, because it can be tempting to want to go I just want to send this out real quick, but I’m thinking of it. But it’s you know, then it’s you putting something else in somebody else. It’s a challenge. I think boundaries are very important for all of us, but especially as professionals and business owners.

We actually have a no email policy in our organization. So we only use Slack and Trello, which is Trello and Asana are similar. But I mean, that doesn’t just internally, we just don’t communicate internally, mostly because of that problem that you were talking about. I become the bottleneck with email, where’s slack I see as like a clear request, and I will follow up, but it’s all just flow. You know, it’s interesting just to think about how we’re all just trying to find our own flow as yours, as an organization. And I just found that we had so many different email threads, and then people are see seed and with Slack, you can figure out who should be on a, you know, a purpose and then a thread for that. So I think it’s interesting that you guys are using kind of the same things we are. Maybe everybody is using exactly that same sort of project management plus slack plus email.

I was at a mastermind meeting a couple of weeks ago and a woman that I know was talking about, you know, taking her business to the next level and all this, as we all are professionally talking about that. And you know, she’s doing quite well for herself, but she has yet to implement a project management tool. And we all went, Oh, my God. I mean, the idea of trying to execute anything without a project management tool nowadays just gives me heart palpitations. Because it also are, you know, Asana, we now that has taken the place of a lot of email chains. It’s all within a project. So yeah.

Well, and I have one team member who came with Basecamp too. And so we use a little Basecamp for like the big picture organizing for work, because Trello and Asana have some limitations, too. And moving files around Basecamp is better. I mean, it’s just interesting how, you know, you can have your tech stack just grows. I don’t know if that’s true for you. But it was for us.

And absolutely is because there’s a we use a scheduling a reuse a task scheduler on top of Asana. It’s called Flow sauna, and our ops manager, but to schedule out things automatically, but they’re still you know, you don’t know the limitations until you get into the technology to go. I wish I could do this.

Yeah, it’s right. And, yeah, I think all of that is really interesting. And I’m curious, what do you do for self care for yourself as a leader?

That is a great question. Um, I love working out my peloton is my best friend I used to in a nother lifetime, I used to teach group exercise used to be a personal trainer and teach group exercise in my early early 20s. And so it’s kind of nice to to hop on a bike and enjoy that too. But it’s, it’s something that’s quite transparently that’s something that I find to be a challenge in the evenings to find a way to log off. Because there’s always more work to do, right? Whenever I go, I love my parents so much, but whenever I go visit them, you know, maybe I’ll close my computer, I’ll get it from my computer, and she’ll say, Oh, are you done? There’s never done, there’s never I will never be done. So I do find it a challenge in the evening to log off. But then also to find activities in the evening that energize me or you know, because it’s so easy to sit down his turn on Netflix and go, you know, have some dinner and go upstairs, read a book, go to bed. And it’s so that’s definitely something that, especially as we go into winter, and I’m stuck in this house, we’re living in Massachusetts, that’s definitely something I’ll be willing to say a little bit more on.

And I know, you know, I mean, it Canada was probably more lockdown than the US. And I spent some time in the US during the last 20 months. But I feel like we did that thing where we just sat and watch Netflix because we weren’t going anywhere. We weren’t doing anything. And it’s hard to shake that. Because it’s easy. And we’re tired. I think and I think going into this winter is hard. I’m looking forward to spring, which it’s a little early.

I hate to break it to you.

What burns you out?

What burns me out, I think trying to do too much at the same time. Bless our business operations manager, because she is the one who takes our projects and breaks it all down into the pieces and the steps and makes it make sense. You know, we were just planning out our q1, and we’re going through all the stuff we want to do. And I looked at it as Caitlin, can we do all of this? Then she said yes, we can do all of this. I’m going to go through and schedule it out. We can do it. But I tend to try to take big bites of projects and get things done all at once you know the batching that everyone recommends, like Oh, record all of your podcasts in one day or record all of your content for this or write all of this. I can’t do that. I try to do it. And sometimes I’ll get on a roll and then just try to push myself point past the point where I should stop. And that doing too much of the same thing is I find it very tedious, even if it’s stuff that’s important stuff that needs to be done. And then it makes me go when it’s all stuff I’d like to do, I just can’t do it. Massive amounts of it at the same time.

I think that’s interesting. We went live on our podcast in September, I have to say, I’m enjoying it much more than, you know, batching doing a bunch of interviews in one day, because by the end, it was kind of like, Ah, I feel like I’ve asked those questions. And I really treasure the connection, that I get talking to other leaders like the freedom to just be able to ask you, whatever I want. Like that’s know you’re running a highly successful company. I love just being able to sit and have a conversation and hear what works for you and what doesn’t, and it’s rejuvenating. But you’re right, if I do three of them, or four of them in a day, I lose that guy one time you did eight or 10 of them in a day. And I just thought why, why is that the highest? Good for you?

Yeah, I mean, if that works for him, awesome. It did not work for me. I mean, I we we always try to be ahead on all of our content. So I think we’re like two or three months ahead with our podcast schedule. But we record every Friday. And yes, we’re ahead. So sometimes if we’re like, Ah, you’re traveling or I’m traveling or whatever, we can skip a Friday. But yeah, trying to do I think that’s where the magic starts to die. For me. I love everything that is involved in our business, I love coaching our students, I let you know, we did a Facebook live with our students this morning. And I love coaching our students, I love answering questions, I love teaching new things, I love creating new content for them. I love podcast episodes, I love coming up with with ideas for other areas of the business. But if I tried to do any of those for 4, 6, 8 hours or multiple days, it then it turns, it’s not fun anymore, then it then that’s when I start to burn out and go, I can’t do this. And that’s you can’t be you can’t be a leader. And you can’t be an effective leader. When when you’re starting to get into that I don’t like this anymore. Place because you don’t as a leader, you don’t have the luxury of not liking it, or you don’t have the luxury of of complaining to anyone, at least not within your organization. You know what I mean? It’s not, you can complain to your friends complained your significant others or complained but your your team, your team deserves to see the best version of you. I mean, which is not to say that you lie you certainly if you’re like, oh, you know what, guys? I’m having a rough day. Can we reschedule this for tomorrow is this mess anything up? If we reschedule this for tomorrow, that’s totally reasonable. But you know, your part of your job is to a big part of our job as leaders is to support the people underneath us and to make their jobs you make it make make it easier for them to do their jobs and when they’re having tough days, being the person who comes up with solutions and going okay, sounds like you’re alright, you know what it sounds like you’re struggling with this a little bit. Let’s see if we can figure out a better way to do or even sometimes saying hey, you know what, why don’t you take half of our take tomorrow off? You’ve been working really hard. We’re ahead take tomorrow off. But you know, as the leader, I mean, yes, you can certainly assign yourself days off but you, your team deserves you at your best or as close to your best as you can be on a regular basis. And when you let yourself burnout, when you know what burnout comes from, and when you let yourself burnout, you can’t be the best leader that you need to be.

I think that there’s so much wisdom in what you just said. Thank you for that. Where can people find you, Nicki?

Oh my gosh, all over now. Well, if people are interested in copywriting kind of thinking, maybe that’s something I want to look into. You can go to can find us at Filthy Rich Writer, online, on social, all that stuff. And at freecopywritingtraining.com. If people are interested in going freelance if they’ve been a leader for a while now they go no, I want to be a consultant. Pop over to firedupfreelance.com and then freecopywritingtraining.com also works as well. But we’re around we’re all over. So. I mean follow us to connect with us.

Thank you so much for being on the show today. It’s been such a pleasure to get to meet you and get to know you a little bit.

Thank you so much for having me.

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That was just such a compelling interview. Nicki she’s so interesting. I’m left really pondering this idea of whether or not leaders can have bad days. I think one of the things that we bring to organizations as leaders is that bright eyed bushy tailed energy not all the time and not in a cloying way, and not in a fake way. There’s some authenticity around it all. But I do think being able to walk past some of the bullshit and just be in the possible, like the positive and the possible and hold space for that, for our staff is something that we can do really powerfully as leaders. I’m really curious as to where you think you cross that line, where your authenticity steps a little too much into whining, or where you actually do a great job of holding that positivity of being solutions oriented, of walking past the trouble and sort of holding a beacon for your staff. It’s been great being here with you today. Go experiment.

Important Links: 

• Filthy Rich Writer
• Free Copywriting Training
• Fired Up Freelance
• LinkedIn – Nicki Krawczyk

Nicki Krawczyk

Nicki Krawczyk is a copywriter with 15+ years of experience, writing for multi-billion-dollar companies, solopreneurs, and every size business in between.

She also coaches people to become professional copywriters and build thriving careers of their own via her website, http://www.FilthyRichWriter.com , and her Comprehensive Copywriting Academy.

For her, being “filthy rich” means having a job you love, being good at what you do, and making great money doing it. Nicki is also one of the hosts of the “Build Your Copywriting Business” podcast.

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