Awesome.
Uh, yeah, I, I never made it up to Washington yet.
I'd love to, uh, we made it up to the very tip of the bottom of Oregon.
Uh, when we did a 41 day road trip up to California coastline route one.
Oh yeah.
I've been on that.
It's beautiful.
Yeah.
Yes.
Yeah.
So come, if you come to watch, when you come to Washington, come after, after
July 4th and before September 1st, because that's when it's perfect here.
I mean, just is heaven on earth the rest of the year is raining during that, you
know, six week window or whatever, like it's perfect.
Oh, that's awesome.
And you guys got to hear live right there, the copy tweak that he made.
Um, right.
If you, when you come, um, right.
So Jon's got skills when it comes to copywriting and repurposing content,
making sure content is optimized.
Uh, we're going to be talking about that.
We're also going to be talking about the scary truth of marketing for a lot of
you because I see so many small and it's been this way for decades now, um, small
businesses, most of you are not designed to have a blog.
This, this is not, everybody tells you to do it.
The content treadmill though, on the other side, um, is something that so
many people get stuck on or that content rat race, they say content is king.
I am here to say quality content is king.
Content is garbage.
Um, but quality content is king.
You really want to stand out and above the crowd with this.
And so escaping the copywriting trap.
Well, the best type of, of medicine is prevention, right?
Don't get into it.
Figure out what your irresistibility is first, figure out who you're serving,
how you're serving, ask them lots of questions and figure out what they actually
need once you started to understand that, then make sure that you go to the right
of team to get help because copywriters aren't meant to work alone.
It's it's a copywriting process.
There's a copywriter and editor, a publisher, a historian, um, somebody
who's doing R and D based on that.
Like the, it takes a whole group of people, including yourself.
So if I'm bursting your bubble right now, you're welcome.
Don't get into this without having a clear strategy on the front end.
Jon, feel free to debate and argue with me on that.
Let's, let's start diving into that.
I'll shut up.
Yeah, man.
I will.
So first of all, it's hilarious because I actually have a LinkedIn newsletter
called content is king, but I actually agree with you that it's quality content.
Like you said, like anybody can throw out, especially with AI, which I'm
sure we can talk about anybody can throw about crap all day long and it's
not going to do anything for you.
So you want a crap audience.
Yeah.
Right.
If you want a crap audience, if you want to, if you, I, if you want to fill a
page with the words, then you please use AI.
Don't come to me.
Right.
But if you want the quality, right, that's where the team comes.
I love that perspective.
I'm not to steal that by the way.
Please do.
Please save our, our copywriting industry friends.
Um, cause there's so many that it's like the marketing guy, marketing gal.
Bullcrap.
There's no such thing.
It's called a marketing department and a department consists of more than one ego.
So you get these people who, who claim, you know, that they can do it all alone.
And that boxes these solarpreneurs and entrepreneurs into situations
where they don't know any better.
And so they think that, Oh, I'll just get a heart surgeon who doesn't need a team.
It's like that's not, that's not how heart surgeries performed successfully.
That's not how copywriting comes together successfully.
It's not how marketing comes together successfully.
So if we can get entrepreneurs trained up on hiring the right types of entities
and we can get, you know, or, or individuals to come into a team environment,
then you can produce stuff that works really well.
But there's, you know, Jon, do you, do you handle the formatting as
well of posts that go out?
I do.
Yeah, actually for formatting is one of those things that like nobody thinks
about, but it's like super important.
I mean, yes, I always tell people like, think about it.
Think about the last time you went to a webpage or open an email on your phone
and it was a giant wall of texts.
Like how far did you get?
Like I, I'll have people just, just people I know sending me emails and it's
like, they wrote a book and I'm just like, well, I guess I'm not reading that email.
Yes.
I'm going to ask my wife what it said.
I'm not going to read that.
So yeah, formatting is super, super important and there's just some really
basic things to know about it that.
You know, I can do, honestly, anybody can do is just a matter of like, you know,
how, like when you learn something and you go, oh, that was obvious.
Why did I never know that before?
Well, yeah, it's obvious after you know it, but you need that person to tell you.
Yeah.
And then it becomes obvious, right?
That's what format is for me.
Oh, it's huge.
And on the, do you edit your own copy or how do you go about the editing process?
Yeah.
So it depends.
Um, because my strength is in words, right?
I can kind of do all the things fairly well.
I mean, that's what my business is built on.
So I might not be a great example for the typical entrepreneur, cause I just
happened to deal in that subject anyway.
But even so, like I work with clients, um, and it is a team effort.
Like I have a client who I write all of their ads for their newsletters, for
example, and so I'm working with that client.
And then what I come up with gets through their reviews.
And then it goes to the sponsor who's paying for the ad ultimately to get their
reviews and yeah, so it's just collaborative.
Those are two editors in the process.
Those are people who are paying attention to it.
And, and it sounds like you appreciate the editing that comes from.
I do.
Yeah.
I tell all of my clients, uh, that I have thick skin.
If I'm wrong, please tell me, you will not hurt my feelings.
Right?
Like I want it right more than I want to feel good about being able to nail it
the first time, right?
So yeah, editing to me is, is critical.
And of course I edit other people's work too.
So I expect that they understand that I am doing this for their, for
their benefit, right?
We're trying to achieve a goal together.
This is not a, a combative thing.
This is a together thing.
Right.
And this is, this is what again, and it's, it's just a market where it's so
easy to get a job as a copywriter.
Um, you know, it's so easy to get hired for, you know, like cheap, if you're
willing to do things cheap, um, too, then a lot of people are willing to hire.
And then, so people end up building these portfolios of working with business
owners who don't know how to edit or audit the quality of the messages.
And so you can have a copywriter who's been hired by a hundred companies
that never make any money, but he's got 100 testimonials of people.
And it's like, Oh, well, I guess they're going to be awesome because
they have a hundred testimonials.
And you're not going to get somebody who's got thick skin.
You're going to get somebody who's a little bit pretentious, a little bit
protective, a little bit like, what do you mean all my other clients were
excited? Um, all my other clients loved what I did.
I see that happening so often in two spaces with copywriters and with designers.
Um, you know, a lot of designers are glorified tattoo artists.
They have no idea how the strategy works.
They will just design exactly what the business works once no matter if it's
actually in the right direction or not strategically, uh, you run into that as.
Well, I do.
And actually funny enough, my wife is a graphic designer.
And so she, she probably actually has a worse time of it than I do, because
I feel like graphic design is even more subjective than written content.
Um, and to your point, like we have talks, we talk all the time, like, what
do you do when you design a very high quality graphic or image for your
clients, but they want something else.
They want something that's actually not as good because that's their vision.
Yep. And, you know, at what point do you try to convince them and what point
to say, well, you're paying.
So I guess, you know, it's really hard to judge that all the time.
It is the cash 22.
And that's, it's really what this topic is all about the escaping the trap,
whether it's copywriting or design as entrepreneurs, we've got to be
envisioners, we've got to become better at interviewing.
Right.
We've got to become better at defining scope of works and understanding
how to articulate what it is we want.
I went through a massive painful learning curve of this myself, where
I fired my first three designers, you know, and I pointed the finger at
them until I remember the quote, you know, three fingers are pointing back at me.
Were they all perfectly qualified?
No, they weren't, but I didn't know what I didn't know about how to hire and how
to engage these individuals and how to set them up for success.
There's a lot of little lessons I learned along that way that I hope this episode
and other episodes will help you work through.
So we were talking about the idea of formatting and most of us know that,
you know, like how to break up a paragraph so that it's structured differently.
I want to go to one of the OGs.
This is digitalmarketer.com and it's their blog and the formatting we're
talking about too is having the right size and font color, knowing how long
these sentences are supposed to be.
So you don't distract people too much knowing how to split your content
up so that it's, it's easy to get to the time that you're going to be
in the right place, but you don't want to be distracted by the type of content
you might want to see having consistency of imagery knowing to have this sidebar
here of when was this published, you know, has this stood the test of time or not
having, you know, do you want to have an ad for your other content built into it?
You know, again, how long should these sentences be?
They, they go to through meticulous detail to create content that is divided
in to noodle
as, but you don't want to be distracted by the type of content
to have on top of that as well.
on top of it, right?
You know, I personally don't do that and at feature, quantity itself,
which I clay a, but I don't like to generalize the elements of what I
But again, it's also, I don't India, but with Youtube and Kiran
Well, what I've heard, and I've heard him say this in the past, I'm like 99% positive,
but I know for sure I've read it in a few case studies, hit every single blog post that
he creates, $15,000 is what he dedicates to making sure that these blog posts right here
end up driving him success.
You can see there, they're fairly long blog posts, but why does he do that?
Well, you're talking about somebody who is ranked entrepreneur of the year by President
Obama when President Obama was in office.
This guy has worked with some of the best companies out there.
He's extremely good when it comes to driving traffic and creating SEO and marketing and
getting things out there.
It is absolutely amazing what he's done.
He's a very good example of how quality content is king.
You want to rock the tops of the list.
Don't just produce a bunch of crap.
You've got to actually produce a copy that resonates with your audience and has your
audience saying, wow, I want more of this.
The one moment you waste your audience time is the moment your audience says, I don't
know if I'm going to come back to this.
This isn't helpful for me.
So Jon, we're going to shift gears.
We're going to talk about your vision and copyright and all that in just a minute right
after our break.
But first, what are three resources that have helped you as a visionary get to where you
are?
You're the top 3% provider of copy on Upwork.com.
That's a fairly competitive field.
There's at least five people on there.
In fact, I think there's more than 50,000 people, maybe more than 500,000 people on
there.
So tell us about what's helped you gain success so far.
One of the biggest books that helped me more than anything else, actually, I can't recommend
it enough.
And I'm not paid by this guy.
I don't know him.
There's no kickbacks.
I just love this book so much.
It's called Rejection Proof by Jia Zhang.
And if you don't read the book, he's got a TED talk, you can go watch the TED talk and
get the flavor of it.
And then you'll want to read the book.
So that book, I read that book, I found that book at a time in my life where I knew that
was the message I needed to hear that I had just done something that was not business
related personal thing, I was trying a big project and it failed flat.
And I was trying to work through that process of what do I do now that I failed in front
of you know, God and everybody, what do I do?
So I found this book Rejection Proof and read it and I realized, hey, you know what, first
of all, failing is okay.
In fact, that's how you learn.
And second of all, when someone rejects whatever it is you're selling or offering or doing,
that doesn't mean that you are a failure.
It just means it wasn't right for that person.
Yep.
And that insight really just like flipped a switch in my brain to go, okay, I'm not
a failure because that thing didn't work.
Maybe it was bad timing.
Maybe that person just isn't into it at the moment.
That doesn't mean that I did something wrong.
And so that was super helpful for me.
And I just, you know, Rejection Proof by Jia Zhang, anybody could benefit, literally anybody
could benefit from this book.
All of us.
Yes.
Every single person has to deal with rejection on a daily basis.
You know, whether it's in the grocery store and something that happens there, whether
it's your boss telling you, hey, I'm not approving that project or that vacation, there's lots.
But if you're in the sales role, then the customer service role, do you deal with it
all the time?
And it can start to really mess with your psyche if you don't come to understand those
principles.
I'm excited.
I got to watch that Ted Talk.
Yeah, it's pretty cool.
I'll let that inspire me to get the book.
But to double down on your point, again, visionaries, don't take it personal when somebody tells
you no.
That is one of the most important principles to realize is it's usually not about you.
It's about them and where they're at.
So imagine I'm making phone calls and I'm trying to get the right people move forward.
And there's this, let's say that I sell products for babies, right?
And this baby, whatever I'm selling is perfect for this mother that I call.
But think about the mom side, right?
If mom woke up that morning on the wrong side of the bed.
If mom had an issue with her husband and they fought before he went to work.
And then mom is trying to get cereal made for everybody and get breakfast made and she's
stressed and I call her and I've got the perfect solution for whatever her situation is, but
she's dealing with all of that stress.
And so when I call her and I get on the phone and hey, this is Jackson from babyproducts.com
and she's like, why would you call me right now?
You're an awful person.
Right.
And she clicks and hangs up.
Right.
And I think that, oh man, she didn't want to have anything to do with us.
You know, oh, my product must be awful.
We have such a strong tendency as visionaries to take things personal and to think that
it's about us.
When in reality, there's just so much stress and overwhelm and challenge that's going on
in that person's life.
And you magnify that into real life.
We've got election struggles, we've got financial struggles, we've got all sorts of things that
are bogging us down right now that it usually has nothing to do with your solution at all.
So if you know your vision and you are, you believe in it and you've got that intuition
strong stick to it.
No matter who's saying no, don't give up on that.
Know that it just usually has to do with a timing and a circumstance and a context.
So Jon, thank you for that.
That's fast.
That was rejection proof.
I got to get that one.
All right.
What's number two, man.
So number two, honestly, so I actually have a master's degree in biblical studies.
So you might guess that the Bible is important to me and you would be correct.
So you know, honestly, for me, for my entire life, you know, like going back to the Bible
and being in it all the time, like, if I'm ever feeling down or doubting myself or feeling
like God's not there, it's usually because I haven't been reading my Bible.
And so I'm not saying this to tell everyone to go become a Christian, read your Bible,
although I think you should.
But if you don't want to, that's like, that's not what I'm saying.
But you probably have some kind of faith or religion or belief of some kind.
And are you tapping into that regularly?
Because you know, I, you know, it's, I need money to pay bills, but like life is not about
making money, right?
There's many more important things and I need to stay grounded in what's really important,
right?
So loving God, loving other people, that's how I define it.
I love that.
And yesterday I got to be on the Graceful Warrior podcast and it's a Christian podcast
about leadership and about like what you're doing in your life and the successes you've
had.
This, this is my Bible from the past.
Nice, you know, and, and I have certain types of notes on here and I would second what Jon
said when I find myself feeling distant or just out of body, out of place, not, not really
in my element, a lot of it has to do with have I forgotten about my spiritual studies?
And I'm going to be going back on that podcast and talking about how I mark my modern scriptures,
they're digital.
You know, I don't use this physical book as often, really hardly at all anymore.
I use the digital version of it and it allows me to much more, much faster annotate and
keep comments and notes on what's there.
And I think that's one of the challenges people have with that book is a one, they try to
read it chronologically, you know, page by page to if you haven't been taught or had
the opportunity to learn how to hear what's being taught to you, then that can be really
hard.
I'll give, I'll give two simple tips.
One is I highlight anything that's about love in pink and color I chose.
It helps me look and see where love applies to that particular scripture.
And I highlight anything about blessings in orange and I highlight anything about the
spirit and how it teaches us in blue.
And that helps me again, be able to not only see the context of the story and what's there,
but also see how this applies to me and three major components of why the scriptures, why
the Bible was designed for our lives.
So I'm really glad you said that.
I think maybe, maybe three out of hundreds of people have been on the show have brought
up a spiritual text as one of their, their top three resources.
What's number three, man?
You're crushing this.
I'm going to say, I'm not going to pick, I'm going to pick a genre of books.
How about that?
So I am addicted to reading business, like business how to books, because when I started
this whole thing in 2021, I was in the corporate world and then I lost my job in COVID and
now I had to start this new thing.
I knew, I know nothing about running a business, right?
I thought I would get an upwork and I'll edit things and I'll make money, but that there's
so much more to it.
And so even as a person with a gray and his beard, right?
I continually have to reinvent myself.
I have to learn.
I have to be willing to humble myself and say, okay, what do I need to know?
And how do I, so for me, any kind of book that talks about how to grow your business,
how to do business things, how to market, how to sell, how to run operations.
If I even get one nugget of wisdom out of that book, that's a great book because that
makes me a better person and a better entrepreneur.
So like, I just read that book, the 10 X book by Grant Cardone, I think.
Yeah.
And so a lot of stuff in there that was great, a lot of stuff I disagreed with, but there
was a couple of nuggets that I could take and apply.
I'm like, you know what, thank God for Grant Cardone.
So for me, just, you know, the ability to have to go out and read about business and
from people, experts like you, right?
And learn that one thing, two things, three things like that's, that's propelled me so
far.
I love that you said thank God for Grant Cardone.
I am fairly, let's call me notorious a little bit for using him as the poster child of unethical
marketing.
And, but at the same time, while people may hear that, I don't hate the man.
I love the man.
I want him to step up as a leader and make some adjustments to the manipulation tactics
that are utilized, the force and control language that's utilized.
And I feel passionate about that because I used to be that way.
I used to tell people what to do, you know, and push people down a certain direction.
And so I don't think that's appropriate, but it doesn't mean if we were looking at it as
mathematicians, right?
It doesn't mean his formulas are wrong, right?
He's got some phenomenal formulas.
He's got a lot of genius to him.
So business books and the genre, this is my mouse pad.
I talk about it all the time because it is one of the least read, but most highly recommended
books by ultra successful people.
And it is through picking up the books that are harder to read that, well, why is it harder
to read?
Because there's a lot of depth of what you can learn that is new to our paradigm.
So I definitely recommend that for visionaries out there.
You are business owners, whether you realize it or not, you know, you have leadership opportunities.
You have a brand to build.
If you're building a vision that is meant to attract other people to work with you,
then that is what's called an organization coming together, people coming together to
accomplish certain good.
You are in the life of business and business is a great sector to get training on.
Well, how do we, how do we then build frameworks and infrastructure to help us create security
for those who want to belong to the process?
So well, well done.
I'm going to appreciate all three of those.
We're going to come right back.
We're going to dive into Jon Clemence vision of copywriting and why this is so important
and helpful to business owners.
And we'll see you guys on the other side.
All right.
Welcome in to Vision Pros Live with Jackson Calame.
I'm your show host.
We will be doing interviews for visionary entrepreneurs and guest leaders who are building
fantastic visions out there.
All right.
Welcome into another episode of Vision Pros Live.
I'm your show host, Jackson Calame, founder and CEO of First Class Business.
And if you follow me regularly, you will see that like Jackson's antsy today, right?
I've got a little bit extra vibe going on in me because Jon Clemence is coming on and
we're talking about a subject that I just I am ultra passionate about because it's one
of the most powerful subjects for any visionary out there.
We're talking about copywriting and presenting your message and knowing how to do that.
And the challenge of copywriting is it's kind of like the water of business.
It is essential.
It is simple to gain access to.
And if you if you drown yourself in it, you can be in real trouble.
You can really kill your business and brand.
So while it's a resource that all of us can relate to and all of us are influenced by
knowing how to get into the copy game, knowing how to use what you're trying to do to influence
others so that you actually gain the impact you want is imperative.
And Jon has done some things already on this show that have me saying like I've got to
learn a lot from what he's up to.
And we've got to debate some subjects to make sure we deliver the most value possible for
you with where you're at at your business stage.
So take everything we say with a grain of salt visionaries.
One thing Jon says may not be applicable at all to your scenario.
One thing I say may not be applicable at all to your scenario, but it may also be that
golden key that's necessary for a different entrepreneur.
So be very careful any time you have the opportunity to learn about copywriting and branding to
know how to siphon through it and know what's for you and what's not.
Before I bring Jon back on stage and we talk about that, a couple of sponsors, one that's
actually very well in tune with this subject, Brain Glue, was written by James Bond.
James Bond, I just can't say that name without smiling.
He wrote a book though that Jack Canfield, the author of over a hundred million copies
published to Consume for the Soul said, if you were an entrepreneur, you would have to
be an idiot not to read this book.
You got to read this book if you're in the business of visions of marketing.
He said the book should be in every marketing school in America, every marketing class,
every university.
The concept of Brain Glue helps us move from logical presentations to helping people write
emotionally and create a message, a message that emotionally sticks so that you're not
out of sight, out of mind with the individuals you're trying to influence.
Listen to the audio clip on that on Amazon.
I highly recommend checking it out.
I laughed out loud when I listened to just that audio sample and I got the book from
James just a couple of days ago.
I'm going to be diving in very deep with that.
Then there's Dave Morrow's Hard2Kill.org.
Hard2Kill.org is helping a hundred thousand veterans lose two million pounds collectively.
If you know any veterans who are interested in maintaining their health, want to be part
of a community that's doing good things, Dave's helping people look good, feel good, and then
go and do good.
He's got this community that he's now opened up to civilians as well.
I've been in it.
I haven't worked out in almost eight years.
I tried here and there.
I did some things, but I pretty much let myself go to an extent.
He's the first personal trainer and health coach that somehow is meowing me into actually
getting things done.
I'm up to 125 pushups daily now in a matter of eight weeks.
It's fun to see the transformations that are taking place.
Most importantly, even after my back surgery, my back feels better than it has since the
rehab after the surgery.
I don't take that for granted because, man, I was in a lot of pain these last few years.
I just hit it well.
Thank you, Dave, for helping me with that.
Go check out his podcast, the Hard2Kill Podcast.
He's an award winner.
He's been at this for a long time.
There's the Water Project.
We are not part of the Water Project, but we do support it.
We love everything about it.
When I learned about it and I contributed to it, I got really inspired because when you
pick a community that you contribute to, they actually send you the plan and the update.
You get to see the community as they come together and what they build, whether it's
a sand dam or a borehole well.
I love the transparency of this initiative.
The more I thought about it and the more I realized, wow, there's people on this earth,
millions of them, who don't have access to even clean drinking water.
How lucky am I?
How blessed am I?
I started to think more and more about this process, realized I want to talk about this
all the time and see if I can inspire others to help out in the process.
This picture right here, as I study more and more, it reminds me of my children on Christmas
Day.
My kids probably don't even celebrate Christmas this enthusiastically anymore.
These are kids who are celebrating the very essence of water itself.
We have the ability to make that type of an impact.
If you don't have the financial capacity to give to one of these projects, my request
is just share this with somebody who might have the ability to just try to inspire others
to help out.
We have 8 billion people on this earth and there's a lot of ways that we can do just
that even just by sharing a message.
I think without further ado, Jon Clemence is a testament of that.
I'll bring him on and we'll talk a little bit about does messaging work?
Does messaging actually drive people to take action?
Jon, welcome to Vision Pros Live.
Hey, thanks for having me, Jackson.
Excited to be here.
Absolutely.
Jon, I was just talking about how a simple share might make all the difference for another
country or at least one community or one person.
Talk to us about that because that has a lot to do with what you do in terms of repurposing
content.
Am I right or wrong?
Yeah, I mean, like one share could be the difference between a sale and not a sale,
honestly, like in a business context, right?
And so that's actually one of the things I've had to learn just as a human being.
So I, so there's a mentor a long time ago told me that there's two kinds of people in
this world.
There's there you are people and there's here I am people.
And I try to be a there you are person because I want the other person to be drawn in and
to feel edified.
But as a business owner who's trying to sell things, right, I have to be here I am person
sometimes.
And so I've had to learn to give myself permission to do that to realize I'm not being selfish,
but I'm doing the things I need to do to grow my brand.
So I absolutely believe that, you know, I post all the time on social.
I'm always trying to write the next blog, the next email newsletter, the next email
to a client or an old client.
Hey, you got anything for me to, you know, trying to get my name out there and remembering
that it's not there's not be being selfish.
I'm trying to serve this greater good.
And so that's that's that's a key for me.
I love that it goes along with the quote to instead of being interesting, right to be
interested in others.
And it's important to be able to balance both just like it's important to love yourself,
right?
As much as you love others, it's hard to learn how to love others appropriately if you don't
even love yourself appropriately.
And so that's an important aspect to step into.
So Jon, what's what's the vision for the people that you serve?
So I'm extremely big on quality and excellence.
Like those are my if I just pick my values, like those would be up near the top.
And so when I look at someone's website or like get an email or even look at a social
post and it's not as good as it could be like that just kind of like breaks my heart.
You put all this work into it and it's just not going to do the thing you want it to do.
So for me, it's like how I want to come alongside people who also value quality and excellence.
And I want to say, look, I mean, the title of this show is about like, you know, getting
off the content treadmill, like let's let's find ways to help you succeed that don't involve
you working harder.
So now we're back to the teamwork discussion that we had a little bit before the break.
And how can we together as a team help you succeed?
Like that's to me is like, that's why I get up in the morning.
I get up in the morning and I say, okay, I'm here, I'm alive.
What can I do to make this world a better place?
And for me, because I have skills in the English language, because I'm basically a professional
nerd, like that's where I'm going to lean into.
So if I can help people by being a nerd, then I want to be the best nerd I can possibly
be.
And my vision is just, how can I help you succeed without doing more and without, you
know, just, just being on that, that death by blog posts kind of mentality, but to take
what you already have or what you know, you is in your head and get it out there in a
way that resonates.
Like, that's really what I'm trying to do.
Okay.
And I, I, I re there's so many principles I want to circle back to, but I also want
to make sure that we put that in the context of, well, who do you feel are the business
owners, or the, the people who have content that are qualified and ready for this type
of help?
Because sometimes, you know, there's, there's that quote, the moment I start selling hammers,
everything begins to look like a nail.
Right.
So it's easy to think, well, every business owner needs this.
And to some extent, yes, every business owner needs the ability to have more influence,
but at what point in stage are they ready to dive in to what it is that you do to help
them?
Yeah.
So there's a couple, a couple of things they probably need to have.
First of all, like to your point, it's going to help out a ton.
If you can know who your customer is, because otherwise, how, what are we going to write
to?
We have no idea.
We're just going to throw some stuff out and see what happens.
So if you can, if you already know, if you've got that customer avatar nailed down, that's
going to help a ton.
If you already have an idea for your voice and your tone, like, are you trying to, are
you trying to educate?
Are you trying to inform?
Are you trying to use humor?
Like what is your voice?
If you can nail that down, that will help.
And we can, you know, nail that down together.
That's a conversation we can have, but like those two things are critical because that
determines how we're going to write your content.
And then the third one, and this is just the truth and you know, it kind of sucks, but
like, you have to have a budget for it.
I wish that could just do what I do for free, but you know, I had to pay bills.
So there is a component of, you know, you have to have some kind of success to be able
to have those.
What's the budget?
Divert.
You know, like if you just want to.
Here's what's happened.
And Jon, I like you.
You like, you have a lot of leadership qualities and I would, I wouldn't say that if I didn't,
by the way, I think some people can get an idea.
A certain guest that I've had where, no, I don't really like them as a guest.
I love them.
Um, but in their expertise, no, but the challenge is we live in a market where all three of
those generalities are taken advantage of.
And most people don't even recognize it, including the marketers who are doing it.
So most of you as visionaries, you do actually know your customer avatar, but you end up
getting into a consultation with somebody who did what Jon just did.
And they start asking you questions about psychographics and demographics.
And you start to get a little bit bottled up and worried like, oh my gosh, I don't know
if I really know this or maybe I don't know my customer.
And then you end up latching on to that marketer or that individual and hoping that they're
going to save you.
But in reality, all they've done is created confusion and your own heart and mind, even
though you started on a, on a situation where you actually did know it, but they, they leveraged
those realities to get you to second guess yourself, because that's also one of the fastest
ways to get people to buy from you is when you get some, if they feel confused, but they
see that you're more certain about what, how you read them than they are, they will latch
onto you.
It is an, it can be an extremely toxic reality as much as it can be an extremely good reality.
So I'm not calling Jon, so I'm not saying Jon's bad for this.
I'm saying entrepreneurs be careful because if you, if you do that, if you, if you start
to second guess yourself, you're probably going to end up in a situation where you,
where you end up hiring somebody just because you want to feel safe again, versus it actually
being a situation that's going to help you.
So that's why we got to move beyond that a little bit.
So budgets, one of those realities, it's like, well, let's define that if budget has to be
determined, then you also Jon have to be able to say, well, what does the budget look
like?
Yeah, so I mean, like right now, so I'll put it this way.
If you, let me approach this.
If you have, hopefully as a business owner, you have an effective hourly rate that you're
charging yourself, right?
Like I know how much my time is worth.
And so I'm just going to throw it a number out there.
If your effective hourly rate that you charge for your own time is $50 an hour or more,
then you need to hire me because it's going to save you money in the long run.
You're going to be able to get that time back to do more sales calls, more network building,
more product development, and then leave the editing and writing stuff to me.
So that's kind of the break I would say, you know, it's without getting like, Oh, it costs
this much for this much or this much for this much.
Right?
That's a neat way to put it.
Because again, if you don't know your effectively hourly rate, don't do this.
You know, like you need to have that type of security as a business owner in order to
move forward.
And I'm sure Jon, you have the ability to consult.
I'm sure you have the ability to do different types of services for people too.
So all of that should be considered, but knowing your budget, as Jon put it, is important.
Knowing your customer and the voice and the tone.
Do you know what I'm talking about, Jon, when it comes to how these, these marketers
out there are asking these, like asking these types of questions and then getting businesses
to second guess themselves?
What are your thoughts on that?
You know, so I try to be the same person all the time as best I can.
So like my goal, I'm talking about the ones they're facing.
Like it's again, the business owners aren't facing you every time they're facing all sorts
of different types of personalities.
So have you seen that much in the market?
Have you paid attention to what they have to go through with the other people they hire?
Only to the extent where I get, you know, marketing emails and message on LinkedIn,
like everyone else.
You know, 90% of those just, okay, that's fine.
So I mean, I, you know, because I'm not in the business for, for my own work.
No, I don't know.
Yeah, I don't go out and contact other marketers, but I do just to your point, like, if I ask
you who your customer is, I'm not, I don't know what all the, like, I just want to know,
like, yeah, they're 40 year old guys and like, then they like to wear flannel and drink beer.
Perfect.
Like that's enough for me.
That's your point I don't like, I don't need to know the percentages.
Just what's he look like?
What's she look like?
Like that's good enough.
Right?
So I totally agree with you.
Yeah.
Well, it's really helpful because at video power marketing, we did ask all of the psychographic
and demographic information, but at video power marketing, our budgets were $10,000
a month on YouTube ads.
And so we were looking at virality and scale at a level that most people can't really comprehend,
you know, and have never experienced before.
So there's stages to this and there are good doctors in the world and there are bad doctors
in the world.
There are good providers in the world that meanwhile there's others who don't necessarily
have your interests at heart.
They just want to paycheck.
So that's reassuring to me that that's the type of process you go through.
So know your customer, know the voice and tone, you know, and again, my addition in
there don't work with somebody who makes you second guess yourself.
You know, that's not a healthy relationship to be in, especially from a business standpoint
where your success, your vision is the build out of your vision.
It's all based on your security and your confidence in what you're doing.
So thank you for diving so deep on that.
Anything else you want to add about your vision for those that you're serving and what you
hope to see them accomplish?
Yeah, I'll just throw in a quick story.
I actually asked some of my current clients for some feedback a while back.
It's like, Hey, how am I doing?
What can I do better?
What do you like about it?
And the one that stuck with me is one person replied to me and said, when I send you something,
I don't have to worry about it.
I know it's going to get done.
And I was like, that's it.
That's it.
So if I can do that for you, if I can take worry off of your plate, then I've won.
Everything else is that I've won.
So I was super happy to hear that.
That's awesome.
That is a that is an important testament.
And so a lot of a lot of visionaries live in fear.
There's a lot of unknowns when you're trying to bring some of the fruition.
So to have team members like that is super valuable.
Jon, what do you see for yourself on the horizon?
What's your what's your vision for you?
You know, I just try to keep growing every day as a person.
I mean, as a business, I just want to keep like.
Well, let's be honest.
I want to get to the point where money is not an object because that's going to allow
me to do more things to make my neighborhood, my a better place, my society a better place.
Like I want to get to that point where someone says, hey, we're doing a mission trip to such
and such.
Sweet.
Sign me up.
Or I find out, hey, by you know, my friend needs five thousand dollars to cover medical
bills.
No problem.
Give me the hospital's phone number.
Right.
Like I want to be I have had so many people in my life be generous to me and poor to me.
That's about time that I started doing this right the same.
So that's really what I want to get to with my my personal life.
My business life is all tied together.
I want to get to the point where I can be that philanthropist.
Right.
That's what I want to get to.
That's high level.
That's big.
I like that.
That's what we stand for on this show.
Something caught my eye just now.
Proofreading University.
Yeah, that is mine.
Yeah.
OK.
So that's a piece.
Yeah.
University.
Yeah.
That's a piece of the puzzle.
So so this is just something that I felt was important to do.
A lot of people are sitting at home and maybe like me, they're grammar nerds and they want
to get started doing what I do because you can, you know, whether you maybe I just want
to make a couple hundred bucks as a side gig like or maybe you want to be full time.
So I said, you know what I can do to give back?
I can start a website.
I can do a brain dump.
I can just tell you everything I know about what I do and how to do it for yourself.
And that way you don't have to buy an expensive course.
You don't have to, you know, buy the whatever book is right here.
And so it's just a way that I have to like try to give back to the community.
And it was again, part of that overarching idea of just how can I be generous?
So many people have been generous to me.
How can I be generous?
And that's that's one of the practical aspects.
I love it.
And this is as we saw digital marketer.
We saw Neil Patel.
This is world class formatting.
I remember when Josh Fector of Badass Marketers and Founders, I was in that little group and
I shouldn't say little was a big group.
In fact, Mark Zuckerberg invited Josh to go out to Facebook headquarters with 19 other
group leaders to design the future of groups in Facebook.
And that happened right before Facebook ended up shifting their personal mission from personalized
profiles to a sense of community.
And Josh taught that content like this that flows kind of like an EKG machine, you know,
is so much easier to read and catch up on.
And you got these awesome links on here.
You've got quotes pulled in with a different frame as well.
The content then gets switched up into bullet points.
One of these have a link to a deeper level of content.
This is this is outstanding.
So if you're doing this type of work for other businesses, those are the things that a lot
of visionaries just don't know how to look for.
They've never done this before.
They don't they don't necessarily know what they don't know about if you do power to you.
Keep going.
Jon, what's the what's the worst leadership experience that you've ever had?
It's hard to narrow down to just one.
As I alluded, I spent 15 years in the corporate world.
And if you're in the corporate world and love your job, then more power to you.
I learned it wasn't for me.
So that that's where I'm coming from.
It wasn't for me.
I never survived it.
I couldn't.
My mouth to do.
So I my mouth is probably too big.
Now, I used to work for a very large aerospace company based here where I live near Seattle.
I won't say which one.
And I got I slowly worked my way in job positions from further away from production to close
or to production.
And the closer I got to production, the more I learned how the sausage was actually made
and the more disillusioned I became.
OK, so there is a documentary on Netflix called Downfall.
If you want to learn more, it is the most accurate documentary I've ever seen.
And I you know, I and many other people lived through it.
So that's where I learned that focusing on profit above all else is a terrible, terrible
leadership strategy because it results in safety issues.
It results in low employee morale.
And as we know now, it results in major fines to the government and just like big issues.
So it's a very short sighted way to lead.
So I never want to put profits over people if I can, you know, if I can help it.
So that was probably the absolute worst leadership experience I ever saw.
I got to ask a book I haven't read, but I've been recommended to a lot profit first.
Have you read it?
Yes, I have read it.
And so that's actually does a line that's a good set or does it go?
It's actually completely different.
The only similarities in the title.
I actually use it in my business.
And it's just a way to ensure that you as a business person pay yourself first and pay
your taxes first, honestly.
So it has nothing to do with how you treat your employees or how you pay.
It's really just about setting your finances up in the correct way.
So I'm glad you brought that up.
I definitely recommend profit first.
It is not at all like this other company I used to work for.
Well, that's the nuance of context, right?
And that's where as entrepreneurs, as we learn to think through and assess and ask the difficult
questions like it could have been easy for me.
It would have been easier for me to just take his word for it and then assume, oh, well,
that means he must not like profit first.
That's us staying in our safety spot versus being able to be executive in nature and ask,
well, wait a second, what do you think about this book?
If we stay eager and hungry and willing to ask questions in safe places with safe people,
we can gain context that creates harmony across subjects that seem like they don't correlate,
but actually harmonize really well.
So thank you for that.
I'll have to check the documentary out here in the next couple of weeks.
What's the best leadership experience that you've ever had?
Yeah.
So I actually used to work at a subsidiary of this company that I worked for that I just
mentioned.
And so I had a boss there or a manager.
I don't like the word boss, a manager named Jackie, and she is the best manager that I've
ever known, ever met, ever had the opportunity to work with because she just had this way
of bringing out the best in you and treating you like a valuable human being and member
of the team.
And she also taught me how to flex my personal style.
So I'm pretty introverted.
I'm pretty task oriented.
So to be able to, she taught me how to be able to like talk with an extrovert and how
to be able to like match their energy and match what's important to them.
And so like that skill alone has just been worth so much to me in my life.
So yeah, Jackie just like, whenever I think about like, what would a good boss do or excuse
me, what a good manager do, like I think about Jackie.
And so I'll make sure to send this to her so she can have that praise.
I was going to say huge shout out to Jackie then.
That's amazing.
We all need more Jackies in our life.
So that's awesome.
Thanks for sharing that.
If this was, if this is the very last chance, Jon, that you had to share a message with
the world, what powerful lesson can other visionaries learn from your experience?
The most important thing that I think I can tell someone about my experience is lean into
the fear.
So fear is going to stop you more than anything else.
But if you can get to the place in your brain where you understand that that whatever that
thing you're afraid of doing is probably pretty good indication that that's the thing you
need to do to grow.
And if you can lean into that, then you're that's, that's going to help you be successful
probably more than anything else.
So like, if I like, that's what I would, you know, whether it's my kids or my friends or
not from my family, anybody, that's what I would recommend.
Lean into the fear.
And once you do, you find it's not as bad as you think it is.
That's right.
That's huge.
Um, you know, there's again, for those who aren't biblical, um, faith and fear cannot
coexist.
Um, and faith is action, our beliefs.
And that's exactly what Jon's talking about is leaning into the fear, um, realizing that
the fear can't conquer you.
Um, and, and diving into it now, of course there are logical thresholds.
Um, he did not say lean into the Grand Canyon.
Um, you know, and there, there are certain things that you know when it's appropriate
to have and when it, when it's not, but in most cases, we, we tend to hide from or back
away from opportunities because of discomfort.
Um, so leaning into it is something that is an absolute requirement for all visionaries
out there.
You're talking about bringing some of the de-fier-ition that other people can't see.
Um, you know, and other people will have a hard time believing in.
So you, you've got to have the resilience to be able to step forward and make it happen.
So thank you for sharing that.
Um, all right, we are very low on time today.
Um, so we're not going to be able to dive into too much else.
Um, but, uh, again, the scary truth of marketing is it's just not as easy as, as you think.
Um, and all the things that, that you're like, well, this is going to be the solution.
This is, I hope that you get off of that path sooner than later visionaries.
Um, cause most people go through that for many years before they finally realize, okay,
maybe I should listen to Jon and dive into the business books.
Um, you know, maybe I should look at more of these podcasts and see what, what are the
stories of these, but maybe I should watch more movies about people of inspiration and
see just how hard their paths were.
But I would also double down on lean into fear.
Um, being a dad is not easy.
It is so worth it though.
Um, right.
All the things that are hard in life, um, you know, I should sell these are hard.
All things that are worth it in life are typically hard to do.
So how do you escape the copywriting trap and the other traps that are out there?
Learn to do what is hard and what is virtuous with people that you can gravitate towards
loving.
And if you've loved what you've heard from Jon Clements and don't hesitate to reach
out to him below this episode, you'll see there's action steps that you can take to
get involved with him and his brand.
I'll add the links on there.
We'll also have the links to all the resources that we talked about so you can easily and
quickly dive in and benefit from those resources as well.
And in the top right corner, we got one more invitation for you.
If you're a visionary and you want to lean in and talk about that vision with us on this
stage, we'd love to see you apply and become a guest on vision pros live.
Uh, we'll see you guys on the next episode.
Jon, thanks so much for being here today.
This is fantastic.
You bet.
I hope to see you in the future.
Bye.
Thank you for being here today.
I'm really happy that you tuned into vision pros live.
I'm looking forward to seeing your reactions as these episodes continue to move forward.
This is going to get more and more fun.
We'll have more and more engagement as well.
We'll invite people to participate in the show and thank you for giving us your time
and attention.
I hope you have an excellent time building out your vision.