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B.S.ers Are SOL in Copywriter Jeff Putnam's World

The Sales Podcast With Wes Schaeffer, The Sales Whisperer®
The Sales Podcast With Wes Schaeffer, The Sales Whisperer®
Episode • Feb 10, 2024 • 1h 11m

Professional Sales Tips you'll learn today on The Sales Podcast ...

  • Listen to Jeff Putnam’s first interview on The Sales Podcast, episode 510, back on June 23, 2021, and see the change he’s made
  • Deep down, he always wanted to be a writer
  • He did a project as a kid on Ernest Hemingway and saw a picture of him smoking a cigar and hunting a shark with a machine gun that lit a fire
  • In December 2018, he got the idea for Rugged Legacy and launched it in early 2019
  • He didn’t want to work for anyone else
  • He had to learn copywriting so his business wouldn’t die
  • Then, he started teaching people how to do it
  • Wrote two books, and he reads all the time

Related episodes and posts

  • Working on a novel and is about 1/3rd complete
  • Most people suck at writing so they pay him to write
  • Now 99% of his income comes from writing for others
  • He focused on Twitter rather than building a “personal brand”
  • He got so busy with work that he didn’t have the time or interest in building a brand
  • He no longer promotes himself online
  • People know who he is
  • He has a great network now
  • He has some coaching clients
  • He wakes up at five am, takes his huskie for a walk, gets some coffee, reads for four hours, then starts his day writing for clients
  • Vince Flynn/Mitch Rapp series
  • Jack Reacher series by Lee Child
  • Loves Musashi by Eiji Yoshikawa
  • Will reference a business book but doesn’t sit and read them
  • Does not like the appeal of the “digital nomad” lifestyle
  • He doesn’t want to live out of seven suitcases
  • He spent nearly five years hustling and grinding and perfecting his writing craft
  • A customer of his asked him if he’d help with their website, and that became his first paying copywriting client, but he was visible and active online and on Twitter, so they knew him
  • He Googled typical prices for copywriting and added 20% to that
  • Then he raised his prices until people balked, and then he dropped his prices 5%
  • He’ll include three revisions, but the fourth is 50% of the original invoice
  • He doesn’t design websites, but he writes the copy
  • He loves writing long-form content like 80-page white papers
  • He’ll write 16k-20k words every ten days or so
  • Many people confuse niche and industry
  • He can research any industry and write about it
  • A Web 3 startup paid him $60k upfront ($5k/mo) to do all of their content, and he had no experience in that space
  • The Web 3 client saw an article Jeff wrote on marriage and reached out to him
  • If clients are jerks, he cuts them loose
  • He charges 6-7 cents per word
  • He just does words
  • He uses AI as a style guide by uploading something like a five-paragraph description the client provides
  • “Additionally…in a fast-paced world…”
  • He loves 3-piece suits
  • Anchoring…
  • He’ll sometimes wear his suit to write to anchor himself
  • “Okay”
  • Zuby
  • “I’m a serious Catholic”
  • Adoration and Holy Hours and Mass
  • He carries his rosary always
  • He has Catholic cigars, Incensum Cigars
  • He converted to Catholicism last year
  • There are only 450 TLM churches in the U.S.
  • His wife is Hispanic who grew up in New England and is Catholic
  • He spent 18 months writing a book on Catholic masculinity
  • He decided to go to Mass May 7, 2023, which was two months after he launched the book
  • His wife was a lapsed Catholic, but now they go weekly
  • He’s in RCIA and entering the Catholic Church fully this Easter

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