Introducing internet sales wizard Jim Edwards and his side kick, Stew Smith, as they the journey into sales copy, content marketing, and entrepreneurship in highly successful internet businesses.
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Transcript
Jim Edwards: Welcome to the Sales Copywriting and Content Marketing Hacks podcast the go to podcast for…
Creating sales copy only content that ACTUALLY works to sell your stuff without…
Any of the pain or frustration of staring at a blank screen!
Hey! Welcome! Welcome! Welcome everybody!
Jim Edwards here along with my cohost Stew Smith!
Stew Smith: Hey! Hey! Thank you!
Jim Edwards: This is our very first episode of the Sales Copywriting and Content Marketing Hacks podcast… And I think that intro might be a little long….
We’re going to have to work on that but you know what it’s our first show…
So, we’re just getting it out of the way.
So, WOW! So, this is pretty exciting! Um, I’m Jim Edwards and I’ve been selling online since 1997…
And if, we were a 1980’s duo… I would be Hall and a Stew would be Oats
If we were a rock band… I don’t know what we’d be…
But, if we were a rap group… I would be Run and he would be either D or MC.
And so basically, what we’re going to be talking about in this podcast is all about how you can create amazing sales copy and…
COMPELLING content that gets people to CLICK and BUY!
And let’s get one thing out of the way right up front… I am not here to teach copywriters the finer points of copywriting!
That is not our purpose… Our purpose here is to help normal people or…
As normal as you can be… use words and pictures to SELL MORE online.
That’s the purpose!
So, if you’re a copywriter… WELCOME!
I have lots of copywriters that I know and like and love and…
I’m sure we’re going to piss some copywriters off with some things that we say here!!… And that’s okay!
So, I tend to talk a lot and Stew is kind of… you’re a little more reserved but I think you’re a little crazy too….
You just don’t ever let it on… Am I right???
Stew Smith: Yeah… I got a little shield up…
I like to let it go every now and then… (laughing)
Jim Edwards: But you know, I wanted to kind of give everybody a…
This episode’s really about kind of where we’re coming from and…
WHY we’re here and… WHY we want to teach this stuff.
And so, I actually started selling online in 1997 but that’s not actually true….
I had made my first attempt to sell online on America Online in 1994…
I was trying to hook people into an MLM and that will show…
Stew Smith: Ohhh! WOW!
Jim Edwards: Yeah…
That was like… that was not cool. That was not good…
But, that was… if truth be told, I made my first foray into the world of online marketing 1994…
I retired for three years and then came out of retirement in 1997.
Stew Smith: Wow!
Jim Edwards: I actually wrote a book on how to sell your house yourself.
My girlfriend… now wife in 1992 said to me, “Hey, you ought to write a book!”
I said, “Yeah, I’m pretty smart. I’ll write a book.”
And so, it took me four years to write the book…
I piled up 40 rejections from different publishers… I just stopped counting.
So, I actually took the book… turned it into really a business card.
I went down to Kinko’s as anyone would do in the 90s…
If you wanted to self publish your book… you went down to Kinko’s.
I had it photocopied and then I had a comb bound with these cool construction paper covers and…
Really quickly built this whole funnel around my book with for sale by owners.
I would call them up… I’d talked to them… I’d send him a copy of my book…
I’d go out and take a look at their house and actually took 51 listings my first year in real estate.
And then in late 1997, I was at a fraternity party at homecoming been out of school I’d been out of school for what… eight years.
And a fraternity brother of mine said, “Hey, my dad and I… they owned an advertising agency…
They had just bought a web server… as it was, I didn’t even really know what the web was…
I had email but, I said, “Hey, do you think I could sell my book online? He said, “Sure, I guess.”
And that kind of started the whole gauntlet of doing this…
I was living in a trailer at the time with a leaky roof and a bad electrical system….
But by God I had had high speed Internet!!!
Stew Smith: But couldn’t use the phone at the same time?
Jim Edwards: No
Stew Smith: did you have DSL?
Jim Edwards: No, we actually had cable.
Stew Smith: Really?
Jim Edwards: Oh yeah. Oh yeah.
Stew Smith: In the 90s?
Jim Edwards: And the funny thing is nobody else in the trailer park had a cable internet…
So, man, we were jamming on the speed… that was back when they had… you know… all the nodes and…
All the people when they got on it would slow down…
But we were the only ones…
And so, I started figuring this whole Internet thing out.
Everybody said, “Oh yeah. You, you started selling right away.”
Nope! First two years it sucked dude… All I did for two years was just figure stuff out…
Had to try and put up web pages with Front Page ‘97. You remember that?
And the way to learn that was… remember those? You’d go to books a million or a Barnes and Noble and…
They had those big computer bible books like Html Bible… Font Page Bible… Adobe Bible… these giant things.
And what I would do… I went and got the Front Page book and I would follow my wife around when she was going to thrift stores…
Or the doing the… it would take us like five hours to go grocery shopping because everything had to have a coupon…
It was the only way we could afford to eat!
So, I would follow behind her in the grocery store reading this book and… highlighting it while it was pushing the cart.
And that’s how it literally how I taught myself to make web pages and… for two years it absolutely sucked…
And then, I finally got it figured out… I got my website up…
Got some things going and… Going up to where I was making about $1,500 a month off of the…
And that was about 2000 and then… I went to a conference in Boulder, Colorado.
It was working for a company that did a search engine promotion.
I was actually a vice president… I was the vice president of special projects.
That meant I was making $1,500 a month working for a boss that really didn’t like me…
But he couldn’t replace me for that crappy amount of money.
And so, he got invited to speak at this conference in Boulder, Colorado and… I could speak and…
I had developed this product… In fact, this is the product that we developed right here…
It’s called the Search Engine Directory Promotion CD.
It was a CD Rom because nobody had high speed and you know, there wasn’t online video really back then.
So, I figured out how to burn all these instructional DVD videos to this CD that people would pop in… and watch them… And we got invited to speak.
Well, he got invited to speak, but… he couldn’t speak.
So, he had me speak instead… And so, I helped him build up the business.
We got up to the point where we were doing $100,000 in sales…
Of these! …At 97 bucks a pop!
And so, long story short, he fired me, but…
That year, I had made the decision that I was going to get REALLY good at sales copy!
I realized when I saw those guys, it was February of 2001…
I said, you know what??… I see these guys and they’re making forty fifty a hundred thousand dollars a month!
And I saw them in the lunch room at this conference and…
These guys are spilling food on themselves and… they’re just disgusting people.
I said, if these guys can make that kind of money then…
I know I can! And I just decided I was going to get awesome at sales copy!
So, I decided…I took my 20 page website that was selling the for sale by owner book…
I converted over to a single one page long form sales letter and overnight…
Sales went up two and a half percent… overnight sales went up by 250% that was pretty amazing….
All right!
Stew Smith: Damn!
Jim Edwards: So, I went from selling basically one book a day to two and a half books a day but… that’s a big difference!
When I was charging 30 bucks… I went from 30 bucks a day to 75 bucks a day.
But that’s 30 days a month… That got me up to the $2,000… almost $2,100
And I got up to the point where… it was… we moved out of the trailer and…
It was able to cover my house payment… two car payments… and the electric bill…
WITH THAT BOOK and… That’s when I knew that I COULD make this thing work!
And along the way… in 1997, I actually started writing a syndicated newspaper column or 1998 I started writing a syndicated newspaper column…
Which I’ll tell you another story about that another time, but…
Actually, wrote that for 10 years and that’s when I discovered the power of content marketing!
Because what I would do… once I started building up my online business…
Was I realized that I had this list and…
You guys got to understand… this is back before there were people to teach you all this stuff! …This was back before.
All the things that we take for granted now… with list servers and being able to send out emails and…
Publish videos on Facebook and… Automatically have all these communities that you can plug into… There was none of that! I realized…
Stew Smith: That was back when you were excited to get an email!
Jim Edwards: That was back when you could build a list by having a box on your website that says… “Join my newsletter”
You get hundreds of people to sign up to be on a list because you put a box that said… Join my newsletter…
No benefits… No headline… No title to newsletter… Just sign up here to get updates… Oh hell yeah!! I’ll take some updates!!!
Stew Smith: Remember when you used to go on to your computer… That little mailbox thing would pop up… You’ve got mail!
Jim Edwards: Exactly.
Stew Smith: That was the best!
Jim Edwards: You’ve got mail or you’d hear that Ding… you know.
It was before there was so much coming in and… you would let it automatically have outlook or outlook express.
It would check the email every five minutes and then you’d hear that ding.
“Oh crap. I got mail. Let me go check.”
Stew Smith: (laughing)
Jim Edwards: I forgot where I was in my little origin story here… So, anyway, I got the thing up working for the guy and…
I got… he ended up firing me!
But, it was interesting because the day he fired me… actually fired me over the phone over… in my car.
That was back before we had unlimited minutes… So, I was paying 35 cents a minute to have this jackass fire me….
I was like, “Okay, let’s keep this short… Okay, I’m fired. Great!”
I almost said the F word, but I was like, “Okay, whatever. Bye.”
But within 24 hours… It was interesting how the universe works because…
I had been concentrating on creating content… I know where I was.
Anyway, I went back but… I got ahead of myself.
So, I got fired… I needed a way to build my list… a way to communicate with people.
And by the way, he fired me for something I didn’t do…
I’m not going to get into it because it doesn’t matter… But he said I did something and I said No…
He was looking for a reason to fire me anyway because…
I made this product and my name was Jim… my names still is Jim…
His name… his name was Jim…
And what was happening was… people would call the office and they’d asked for Jim.
And so, the secretary will put them through to him and he’d say, “Hey, this is Jim.”
They’d said, “No, no other Jim.”… Oh. And that shit got on his nerves quick!
So, he, you know… he just, anyway… but what I realized was that I needed to stay on people’s radar…
And this is where we’re crossing over between sales copy and content…
I needed a way to stay on people’s radar that was UNIQUE and…
That was going to be valuable for them.
And so, I didn’t have a lot of time because I got fired from my job and…
I had to work on a bunch of other stuff.
And I actually got another job that was half time.
So, I said, “Okay, how can I stay on these people’s radar?”…
And that’s when I realized, that these articles that I was writing for the newspaper…
I should be sending those articles out to the list and…
And I know it sounds obvious but… back then it was breakthrough.
It was, I married my offline newspaper column… to an online column and then…
I did something that people take for granted now…
I said, “Feel free to share this article on your site… in your email list. Just leave it in tact and give me credit.”
So, all these people were like, “Damn, these articles are good… Let me share this with my list.”
So, I had this big share effect going on by…
Creating great content that was worthy of…
Actually, I was in… I think four different print newsletters to newspapers and…
I was in magazines all over the place!
And I realized instead of trying to get these people to pay me for my articles…
Let everybody publish my articles… as long as I had the byline!
So, all of a sudden… I started appearing in hundreds of online newsletters!
I was on hundreds of sites! I was appearing in real print magazines!
And real print newsletters because I wasn’t worried about making people pay me 10 bucks for a column…
Stew Smith: That was like the social media… effect of the day.
Jim Edwards: Exactly! The exact same effect.
But I was doing it with print and I was doing it with…
I mean making a website was a pain in the ass!
I mean if you wanted to have like what we have taken for granted now with WordPress or with Shopify…
With publishing an article and… automatically having an added to your menu and all that other stuff.
There was none of that!
So that’s… so every Tuesday, because my deadline for the newspaper was Tuesday at 10 o’clock…
So, about Tuesday at 9:59 in the morning… when I was finishing up my article…
As soon as I sent the article out to… over to my editor, then…
I would send the article out to my list and say, “Hey, here’s my article”… and this is really probably what I did here.
“Hey, here’s my newspaper article that goes out tomorrow but you get the scoop… today!” and I would send it out to everybody!
And I did this for a couple of years and then one day I missed a week and…
Our inbox got flooded with all these people saying…
“Hey, where’s Jim? Is Jim okay? Did the article, did I didn’t get my article? Am I still subscribed?”
I mean just, and I’m not talking just a couple. I’m talking flooding the inbox…
And that was when I really realized… that was about 2002…
That was when I really realized the power of regular communication…
Regular quality communication with content… without going overboard in the sales stuff.
Not EVERYTHING has to be a sales message but…
I also learned to balance the sales message with the other!
And so, that’s kind of how I got started… That’s where all this came from!
And the biggest thing… and we’re going to hear a Stew’s origin story with all this in a second…
But the biggest thing I want to get across to you guys in this inaugural episode…
We’re going to be talking a lot about sales copy and how to make sales.
And my buddy Dave Lindenbaum, he says…
“Jim, you’re not a sales copy writer… You’re a biologist… a B-U-Y-ologist because you show people to BUY!
I said, man, that’s good!
Stew Smith: That’s better than copywriting
Jim Edwards: Yeah, that was good.
We might incorporate that… So, maybe we’ll have a B-U-Y-ology lesson every once and…
So, I just wanted to tell you all though… that being able to sell is a learned skill.
I sucked at selling my but… my first seven jobs that I quit or got fired from in 18 months…
When I graduated from college… All involved commissioned sales.
So, in order for me to eat… and I didn’t eat real well…
In order for me to make my car payment… which was late quite often…
I had to learn how to sell belly to belly… person to person… eyeball the eyeball!
And I will admit to you, I absolutely bit the big one at it. I was bad…
So, if I can learn… you can learn. That’s the big thing I want you to take away from this episode.
So, Stew… tell everybody about your…
Stew Smith: Yes sir!
Jim Edwards: About your background and how you came to become Stew Smith world famous navy seal… a fitness writer.
And then, we’ll talk about how we met and how we came to this.
Stew Smith: So, went to the Naval Academy after that… I served in the navy for eight years and… I knew I wanted to do something in fitness.
I just didn’t know what… went back to school a little bit and you know…
Was working for some physiology courses and some certifications, you know…
That would allow me to do something a little more professionally and…
Jim Edwards: I need to interrupt Stew’s being modest… This dude graduated from the Naval Academy…
Went to buds… which is the hardest military training in the world…
Became a navy seal… was a navy seal for eight years and…
Is just a complete and total fitness BAD ASS… and so, keep going…
Stew Smith: Well, thank you! I am! I do enjoy fitness! You know, personally…
And you know, it was a passion of mine and… I knew I wanted to do something with it…
And I actually am a good writer! … I grew up a kid that had two eyes on every page!
Two sets eyes on every paper that went to an English teacher because…
My mom was an English teacher and my dad was a journalist and it’s just…
I learned how to write, you know…
Jim Edwards: Whether you wanted to or not…
Stew Smith: Yeah! It was just one of those things…. I learned how to do it.
I read a lot, a road, a lot. So, you know, anyway… it seemed logical to, you know…
Try to find something to write about…. Well, I knew it was fitness and so I got pretty good.
I went back to the academy as an instructor… I got pretty good at coaching kids on acing fitness tests.
I would get all the kids that would fail them and before they got kicked out…
They got to see me and we would, you know… change the way they did things… you know… get them in a little better shape.
They would pass… they’d stay… they’d hug me… you know…
It was all that good stuff! So, I was like… this is really rewarding, really rewarding work.
And so, I got out after eight years and… I started working out and… writing about it!
So, I was a trainer… I started writing about it…
Jim Edwards: Published a book too.
Stew Smith: I was lucky! Right as I was getting out… I found a publisher…
A publisher was going around to all the military bases, service academies and… doing a service academy book.
And I just happened to run the fitness program at the Naval Academy at the time.
And I said, “Hey, I have one, it’s kind of navy seal base, but it’s already done. You want to see it?”
And he handed it to him and he’s like, “Holy Mackerel, this is already finished. All we need to do is take some pictures and that’s done”
And so, actually had that published… But got really lucky with the publishing, you know, and…
I’ve been publishing books with the same publisher since, so it’s been 20 years now!
Jim Edwards: And that same book is in its third edition! Right? What’s the title?
Stew Smith: Yeah… it still sells. It’s a Complete Guide to Navy Seal Fitness.
And then, I have my latest series is that Tactical Fitness series, you see behind me.
We’ve published 13 different books but… what I realized to… is around the time Jim was getting online…
I figured out about 2003… I was writing articles for military.com… working out as a trainer and… selling books… writing books.
So, it was decent… I mean it wasn’t great money… And I realized I could probably start making more money if…
I did ebooks but… I didn’t want to compete with myself either.
So, I change things up a little bit.
And I created personalized or individualized programs for every fitness test… The military, law enforcement and firefighters programs offer…
And doing my research, I found that there are about 35 different fitness test just… in the United States alone that all these different agencies use!
So, I started writing about all of them, started selling my ebooks and…
From then on, my business just completely flipped upside down!
And I no longer had to spend… in a good way… I no longer had to spend eight hours in the gym training people personally or doing group training.
You know, I was making money while I was sleeping… selling ebooks!
And from there it grew and I did it the same way Jim did…
I would write articles… I would send those articles out to the Internets and…
It was like the big, it was like…
Jim Edwards: On… The. Line…
Stew Smith: Yeah! On the line… like a big net that would pull people in…
To see, you know… the programs that I was selling.
And you know, I still do that… I’ve, I’ve been doing it ever since and… it’s just been a blast!
And during the journey, Jim and I met… he found me through… I got him sucked in right into the funnel.
Jim Edwards: It was article!
Stew Smith: It was an article… it was an article maybe mixed with social media and that it came in and…
He saw my personalized training program that I offer online… training online.
And he called me up… We got him set up… That was about five years ago…
turned him into the Stud Muffin. He is today…
Jim Edwards: Please… But, it’s funny that you say we’re a product of the product!
It’s one of the things that we talk about… you create content…
It’s content marketing! You think about it… the CONTENT and the STORIES and the stuff that you put out there…
That’s what makes people THIRSTY!
And then your SALES COPY… your OFFERS… your PRODUCT PAGES…
That’s the SALES COPY ….
That’s where you sell them a drink and…
You just want to keep it simple! You make people thirsty with your content and…
You sell them a drink with your sales copy. That’s the way you got to look at it…
And literally, when we say a product of the product… a product of the…
Actually, we’re a product of the process… And the process is what we’re going to be talking about in this podcast.
You know… Stew… I had a problem.
My problem was that I had plateaued in my fitness…
I had been fat and 40 and real fat… And 42 and decided that I needed to make a change!
I had a friend of mine who did some fitness stuff… had been in the Canadian army… helped me get started again with fitness.
And I got to a certain level and I plateaued… And so, I wanted to improve my pull ups and…
So, I’d started looking around for just help with pull ups and I mentioned something in a go ruck group on a group on Facebook and…
Somebody said, “Oh, Stew Smith, he helped me to get ready for a 24 hour Go Ruck Heavy”… which is an impressive thing to go through.
And so, I looked Stew up… found an article he had written about doing pull ups.
I said, this is my guy went to his website… I saw all the books aside.
I don’t want to buy an ebook… The ebook guy says… “I don’t want to buy any book. What’s he got to train me in”…
And I saw at his PT program, which was like 350 bucks a quarter. I said, “I’m in.”
And so, I didn’t even call him first… I signed up… gave my money and… I sat there for about 10 minutes…
Then I called him up like, “Hey, is this Stew Smith?” He actually answered his phone… He said, “this Stew Smith. Yeah…”
“Hey, I just signed up for your for your PT club. I’m really excited! I want to start!”
I’d just like fanboy gushed all over the guy…
And he said, well, “Okay, well let me send you…”
“You going to send me anything? You send me something like an intake form or something… I mean, I’m ready to go…. I’m ready! I’m ready!”
And I remember, I walked out and told my wife… she was out doing something with the chickens or… in the garden and I walked out there and I said…
It was in November. And I said, hey, “I found this dude to help train me. It’s going to be 350 bucks a quarter” And I said, “I really want to do it.”
And she said, “Okay!” I mean… I was expecting to argue with me. She said, “Okay! Okay!”
So, but the cool thing about it was that… I don’t want to get into this stuff…
but the coolest thing about it was that… that’s what kinda started… that’s what started our friendship.
I found Stew through the process…
And then Stew and I were working together I guess for about three months, four months, five months.
And then Stew said to me one day… “Hey, what’s this ebook coach thing in your email address?… What’s that all about?…”
And what tell that part of…
Stew Smith: That was a huge peace because you know…
I’ve been selling ebooks at the time for you know… over 10 years… maybe even closer to 15!
And he just gave me like three tips right from the start and… I was like…
Okay, let me try some of this stuff…you know?
And then he had a program that you… you put me through your program of how to write an Ebook and…
Jim Edwards: It was a different program… we were using wizards and habit forming and stuff.
And it was 27 day book… which we’re actually going to be doing launching here in the not too distant future…
The 27 day book challenge… based on what I put you through.
Stew Smith: Yes. And I did a 27 book challenge cause one thing I wanted to do and… Not something I never had done was put an ebook…
Personalized self-published ebook on Amazon.
That’s not that I was lazy and couldn’t do it… I just thought it was too difficult to do… And you know, they didn’t do that.
But, lo and behold… Jim’s process put me right through that, you know..
Actually, wrote a really good book… in a month and got it out there.
And you know… everything that he says came, came true…
It was ranked number one for that… the first week of launching.
You know… you take a snapshot of that and that’s great for marketing.
And then, you know… the book cover probably was the biggest thing that the biggest tip that he had taught me because I had just, you know…
Didn’t even have book covers! … if it was an FBI workout…
Jim Edwards: It was like the FBI logo…
Stew Smith: The FBI logo up there…
Probably copyright infringements or whatever… you know… it was just… but anyway…
So, I went to Fiverr like he told me to and found a guy and… we went through 35 different ebooks and… completely changed the look of my online store!
And no kidding… 30% increase in sales just from that… within a month!
So, that was really big! And I was, I was doing pretty well enough as it was.
And you know, the fact that it jumped like that. I was shocked!
Jim Edwards: And then you called me at the end of the year and you’re like… “Dude, you put me in a whole different tax bracket!”
Stew Smith: Thanks a lot!
Jim Edwards: You’re welcome!
Stew Smith: No, it was really nice… And that’s how we met!
And then, I kinda got the idea and I called him up and…
I said, Jim, I got this idea… something that I want to do with you.
And I got the idea to write a book about do it yourself marketing because…
Really what we had been doing, for years is… you know is using all types of marketing.
Social media was the new thing…. And, but we still used the other stuff… we would use… you know, handouts…
You know, whenever you would sell something and… Make a package and you know, for advertising that you do…
Radio advertising… TV advertising… Print advertising,… you name it… right?
And I wanted to come up with a system that would enable the average person who had a business…
To no longer be in the business of just… if you’re a real estate agent… you sell real estate.
I wanted you to make people… a marketing company that sells real estate, right?
And really, if you think about it now… you have to be a media company…
A marketing media marketing company that sells x…
Jim Edwards: Right
Stew Smith: If you’re going to have an online business or even a local business for that matter….
So, that is where we came up with the DIY Media Marketing Academy and… we have 24 classes that we are putting in together and creating this new program.
And that’s really what this podcast is going to be.
It’s going to be, you know… copywriting… how to do that.
But then, we’re also going to have… you know, the latest and greatest things that are changing in social media too…
To help you use social media to market your business.
And we’ve got a great, you know, curriculum for all of that.
Jim Edwards: Those will be the B-U-Y-ology lessons and Stews… Stews underplaying…
He’s been extremely successful with Instagram! Also, very successful with Facebook… very successful with Youtube!
And so, when we came together to create the DIY Media Marketing Academy, it worked! It worked really, really well!
And then we realized, recently… you know what?… Instead of competing between a DIY Media Marketing Academy and the Jim Edwards Method Premium…
Let’s combine those two together and really move forward as a team rather than… Feeling like we were competing with ourselves… which is really what we were doing.
So, that’s why the biggest… And I think you would probably agree to the most important thing that any business owner does in their business is…
Drive sales! And the way you drive sales is by content and sales copy…
CONTENT is what brings them in and SALES COPY is what sells on.
And that’s why we want to focus on this… in this podcast.
So, that’s what we’re all about.
We’re super excited for you guys to join us… And I think this is a great place for us to just wrap this up.
You’re going to want to jump in on the next episode where… what are we talking about in the next episodes to next episode is…
Stew Smith: Why is copywriting so important?…
Jim Edwards: Well, there you go… I think that’s an important, that’s an important topic!
So, you guys are going to want to definitely tune in next time for that.
I’m Jim Edwards
Stew Smith: and Stew Smith!
Jim Edwards: And we’ll talk to you soon. Thank you guys!
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