How can copywriting lead you to success? In this episode of Incorporating SuperPowers, host Justin Recla is joined by founder and creator of Copywriter Brain, Michael Giannulis. Michael was a high school dropout who eventually ended up getting his AMBA, and is now helping businesses scale, with his business growing and thriving to over eight-figures. Michael talks about the common fear of people thinking that they have to be some incredible writer and say things. Michael emphasizes that a little knowledge of sales and other areas can go a long way and that you can succeed in copywriting even if you are just a regular person. Join Justin and Michael in today’s episode to know more about the secret to success in copywriting.
Welcome back to Incorporating SuperPowers. My name is Justin Recla. I am your host. Thank you so much for listening today. If you are here, it’s because you know that there is a better way of doing business, that the old methodologies don’t work and everything that you’re seeing across social and so forth, if you’re here listening to this, you know that kind of stuff just doesn’t feel right.
And I am super excited to talk to my guest today, Michael Giannulis, who is the founder and creator of Copywriter Brain, who’s been helping businesses scale their businesses. He’s got quite the backstory, which is why I’m excited to talk to him. Because folks, if you have excuses, this story I hope inspires you, because Michael has got a very unique background. He was a high school dropout who eventually ended up getting his AMBA. He’s been on a mainstream television show because he lost 300 pounds. And now he helps businesses scale and he’s grown businesses to over eight-figures. And he’s here to talk about how he can help you do the same and hopefully inspire you to look at things differently as the business world moves forward. Michael, thank you so much for being here today.
Hey, so glad to be here, Justin. I’m really pumped. I love doing podcasts and to get a chance to be on your show and what you’ve done with what you’re getting built, I feel very honored.
Thank you for being here. Folks, these are the conversations that are going to change the world. It’s this kind of thinking, and I think you’ll see that as we get into it here. Michael, you’ve got such a unique backstory. Just give us a little brief glimpse from your perspective of how you got to Copywriter Brain.
Sure. I started way back in the day as a staff copywriter, which for those who might not know what that term is, a copywriter is just someone that writes ads. It’s Write not Right, which is why I get that a lot. I’m not an attorney with all that stuff. I started as a guy that wrote ads and I worked in an actual personal development company. And I think a cool thing was it was actually a direct mail company because it was 2006. The internet was a thing, but it wasn’t a big, big thing yet. And there were still a lot of people doing that.
I learned a lot of the hard-coded stuff. How do you track everything? How do you do the reporting? And you had to be very good because it wasn’t like now, where you can go write a post, hit send or hit go, and then see. You had to design the postcard and wait for it to come back from the print shop and then mail it off and wait for a week till it dropped and then see the response come back and every test would cost you thousands. It wasn’t like it is now, where you can just do a quick thing.
I definitely had to learn to not just rush it out, and I think that sometimes that’s whereas you talked about, we get some of this bad stuff because there’s not a lot of consequence to screwing up. People do what they want to do. That was how I got my start. And as I got better at it, I ended up becoming a partner in the firm that I was at, because I got so many jobs offers that the owner was like, “Hey, I want you to stay here.” So she actually made me a minority partner and I did that till about 2010 or so. And then that’s when I jumped on to the TV show that I was on, which was a weight loss show in which I lost 255 pounds in one year.
Wow.
It was crazy.
That’s insane. Folks, if you’ve got excuses, this right here should inspire you to know that you’re the only one holding yourself back. And I love the fact that you’re in the copywriting space. There’s so much magic to be uncovered in it, but if you bring your fears to the table around your business, how far is that going to take you, Michael? If I’m copywriting from a place of, if I don’t do this, or if this isn’t successful, how much does fear play into successful copywriting?
I think it’s a huge factor, because of a lot of people. Well, the first fear that I see a lot in people that should be able to write decently is that they’re afraid they can’t write, or they’re thinking that they have to write like at some kind of school grade paper. And those kinds of things, that’s not what works. People don’t want to read a five-paragraph essay. Firstly, secondly, thirdly, in conclusion. Those are the things we’re taught by teachers, but those are not the things that make people buy.
And I’ve actually found that a lot of people have these fears, but their fears are misplaced because they’re thinking that they have to be some incredible writer and say things. No, the truth is you have to be able to write as you talk. So many times some of the best copywriters are people that are just regular people. Maybe they have a background in sales. Maybe they have done door-to-door stuff, or they used to work at a car lot even. Many times it’s easier to teach those people, because they know to sell. Copywriting is true, the writing part is actually the easiest part.
It’s more about what’s called copy thinking, which is a phrase by a very famous copywriter named David Deutsch. And it’s this great idea because it’s all about how do you speak to your prospect and how do you create a logical argument to get them where they want to be, where you want them to be, where they should be, which is buying your product, buying your service. Because if you really believe in what you sell and its quality, then you owe it to your potential customers to give them the proof as to why what you have is going to help them.
Because we never want to take, right? Everything should either be we give or it’s a trade. Maybe we give more or maybe we trade and it’s even. But that should be your goal. It should always be, how can I give? I think if people can take that and get past that early fear, that it’s not about, as I say, writing some college essay. It’s so far from that. As a matter of fact, if you did that, you’d probably fail. It’s truly about being a regular person speaking in regular terms that everyday people use. I think again, that’s a big area where people let fear drive them when they shouldn’t.
Everything that we’ve looked into, everything we’ve seen, everything that we’ve done comes from a place of speaking to your people, right? You have to, if your people, the ones that you know you can reach and can hear you, you need to talk to them. I think there’s this confusion in the copywriting world that you have to speak to the world. Right? So talk to me a little bit about that a little bit. How niched down should copywriting be in order to see the success and returns that you want to achieve?
And this is one that I still mentally cannot understand, but it just works and works and works. I still to this day, it shocks me, but I’ve seen time and time again, the tighter you can get and the more you can speak to one single person, one person when you write when you do a video, even podcasting. I’m shocked at how many people there are out there that are into very, very specific things. So many times if I’m bringing on a company, I do investments and things like that. And there are people that’ll say, “Well I’m going to sell this product to every single person, every male and females ages 40 to 60.” And my first thought was, no, you’re not. You’re just not. The truth is you really want to get down to that niche and you want to really speak as tightly as you can.
I met someone at an event that I was at and I think she was running a $20 or $30 million a year company. And I was like, “Well, that’s cool. What do you do?” And it turns out that she provided marketing assistance, and this included postcards and tools, things like that. But it was only for IT companies that provided offsite IT services. That’s it. In the United States. So it was marketing materials done for IT professionals, only providing offsite hosting services. You would think, okay, how many people can there be? How big can it be? But she was doing $20 or $30 million a year. And she has been for years and years and years. The cool part is it gives you an edge because if you are speaking to that audience when they find you, they’re going to be amazed. Wow, this is me. This is made just for me.
And because the world is so big and because the internet has opened that door up, you can really hone in on a true niche. And the cool part is that you start with that and you build that core, then you can always go from there. I like to talk about the idea that Facebook, Facebook started as what? As a social site for Harvard. That’s it. That’s all they did. And then they became a social site for some of the Ivy League Schools. And that’s all they did. And then they became for all schools. And that’s all they did. And then it wasn’t until they were probably five or six years old maybe when they started opening it up to more and more and more people. You’ve got to think like that. If you figure it out in one industry or one niche, you can always expand that core.
This is good stuff, folks. And when we get back from the break, we’re going to dive down this rabbit hole a little bit deeper because you’re onto something here, Michael. In the sense that in understanding this piece right here., I think no matter what, if you want to understand this piece right here, that success is. It’s eminent. It happens. And we’re going to dive into a little bit more about this right after the break. But before we do go on break, Michael, where can people go find more information about you?
I actually put together a page just for the guys here or the people that are on the show. They go to my site, which is onlyonemike.com/superpower. When they get there, they’ll find all my socials and also find some previous stuff too, including a community for people that want to learn to write copy. It’s all there, free.
Fantastic, folks, go take a look at Michael’s system and what he’s got going on in the Copywrite world. It’s the key to unlocking what comes next. And we get back from the break, we’re going to dive down this rabbit hole a little bit more. And use Facebook. It’s a great, great case study for how to grow things from success to success. So stay tuned. We’ll be right back.
To listen to the entire show click on the player above or go to the SuperPower Up! podcast on iTunes.
Podcast: Play in new window
