Copy Gandalf Gary Cooper shares his sage advice
“Don’t just rely on copywriting. Find other ways to channel the money that you make from it into different things. Diversify.”
– Gary Cooper | Word Surgery
Some of us feel like freshly minted copywriters.
Just plopped out into the world and finding our copywriting feet like doddery gazelle babies.
Others are wise old sages, with years of like experience.
Today I’m talking to one of those – Clever Copywriting School Ambassador, Copy Cop and Copy Gandalf Gary Cooper.
After working in every career under the sun, he fell into copywriting as many do, and was able to use his previous experience to help him spot red flags, not sweat the small stuff, and work on projects that fit his lifestyle.
Today he’s going to share how he’s made a killing on Upwork, found a tool that helps him write well despite being dyslexic, and find a career that fits in around his busy life renovating a house in France.
Still curious, still willing to learn, Gary is an amazing member of my community and I think you can probably tell, I kinda want to be Gary when I grow up.
Tune in to learn:
- How Gary got started in copywriting
- How Gary has used Upwork to build an amazing client list
- His favourite client and why
- His worst failure and what he learned
- Gary’s life-changing copywriting tool
- Gary’s number one tip for winning new clients (it’s a doozy)
- Gary’s advice on how to keep pushing through
- And a wrap up of some of Gary and Kate’s favourite copy tips
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And big thanks to Angela Denly from Australia for her lovely review:
“Relatable and inspiring chats.
Hearing from the top-tier A-list writers is great. But there’s lots of amazing writers out there just powering on producing great work for their clients each and every day. So it’s great to hear from some of those people and the real world experiences they bring.”
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About Gary Cooper
Gary grew up not knowing what he really wanted to do – he says he still doesn’t know.
Born in England, living in France for 20 years and travelling have made perspective one of the keystones of his businesses – it’s not just copy, but some property and investments – and some luck.
He’s been everything from an operating theatre technician to a café owner and farmer with 200 sheep – he even pounded the beat as a London bobby for seven years.
Fun fact: Gary still has, and rides, the same motorbike he bought when he was 21. It’s now over 40-years old and could tell a few stories.
Connect with Gary Cooper
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Transcript
Kate Toon:
Hello, my name is Kate Toon, and I’m the head CopyBeast at The Clever Copywriting School, an online community and teaching hub for all things related to copywriting. And today, I am delighted to be talking to Gary Cooper. Hello, Gary.
Gary Cooper:
Hi, Kate. How are you?
Kate Toon:
I’m very well. He’s calling all the way from France. We’re going to talk a little bit about France in this podcast. But Gary grew up not knowing what he really wanted to do. He says he still doesn’t know. Don’t grow up, it’s a con. Born in England, living in France for 20 years and travelling have made perspective one of the keystones of his businesses. It’s not just copy, but some property and investments and some luck.
Kate Toon:
He’s been everything from an operating theatre technician to a café owner and farmer with 200 sheep. He even pounded the beat as a London bobby for seven years. Yes, he is our resident copy cop. Fun fact, Gary still has and rides the same motorbike he bought when he was 21. It’s now over 102 years old. I’m joking. 40 years old and could tell a few stories. So you’re a motorbike person, are you? A revhead?
Gary Cooper:
I always have been.
Kate Toon:
Have you? Have you got like a jacket with studs on it and things?
Gary Cooper:
No, not a jacket with studs, but a good jacket.
Kate Toon:
Okay, cool.
Gary Cooper:
Because if you fall off, it hurts.
Kate Toon:
It does. Yeah, I’ve recently been riding on motorbikes as well. I envisioned you with like a jacket with born to write or something on the back. I think that would look [inaudible 00:01:33]. Some flaming pencils or something. Anyway-
Gary Cooper:
At one point, I did have an old World War II flying jacket with the sheepskin.
Kate Toon:
Oh, cool.
Gary Cooper:
Yeah, that was good.
Kate Toon:
Very nice. Was it one of your 200 sheep?
Gary Cooper:
Yeah.
Kate Toon:
Did they all have names, the sheep?
Gary Cooper:
Some of them did. We had Elvis. Elvis and Lambchop and Rambo. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Kate Toon:
Yeah, okay. Cool. Your favourites, that was? Well, look, we’re not here to talk about sheep, although we may talk about sheep. I like to call you one of the sage old members of The Clever Copywriting School. You were remiss in not mentioning in your bio that you’re also one of our ambassadors. Gary is renowned in the group for just being incredibly nice and helpful, but we’ll see on this podcast if he really is incredibly nice and helpful. I don’t know. No, he is.
Kate Toon:
Okay, I was going to say, “Take me back a few years,” but you may have to take me back a few more years than that. How long have you been a copywriter? How did you get to where you are today?
Gary Cooper:
I did copywriting before I even realised it was a thing. I think lots of us do that. I think that it started when I had the farm. I mean, I’d always been used to, in the police, writing reports and doing admin and all of that kind of stuff, and I’d always been okay at writing and putting thoughts together and putting them on paper. When we had the farm, we were on a pretty tight budget. We had to sell our stuff, obviously, so I started writing adverts and doing radio scripts for some radio stuff that we did. It just was in the background.
Gary Cooper:
And then when I retired, moved to France, we did our first house up, I got a bit bored and I was talking to my nephew who was a dance captain on one of the cruise ships out of Sydney, and he was looking for a promotion and he asked me to write an email for him because he’s not very good at that sort of stuff. Which I did. And I got him the job and I got him a good pay rise, and he was delighted and he said, “Do you know what, Gal, you’re really good at this stuff. I reckon you should have a look and see if there are more people who want this kind of stuff done.”
Gary Cooper:
So I did, and I went onto the web and just looked at writing jobs, and of course Upwork came up. Your bête noire, I think, but-
Kate Toon:
No, no.
Gary Cooper:
… I guess we’ll go into that. And I did a profile, and I got my first job and they were happy and gave me five stars. It kind of went from there, really.
Kate Toon:
Yeah. I mean, I love that. I was just thinking about writing police reports, that’s where it started. I’m wondering how many adjectives you used to describe the assailants and if you were doing alliteration.
Gary Cooper:
Yeah, “I was wandering in a westerly direction [inaudible 00:04:32].” Yeah, yeah.
Kate Toon:
“And the man attacked me like a tiger, roaring in the darkness.” It’s so funny because literally you are… Every guest so far has said that they kind of fell into copywriting, didn’t know it was a thing, didn’t call themselves-
Gary Cooper:
Yeah, it’s strange, isn’t it?
Kate Toon:
… didn’t call themselves a copywriter. But one of the things, I’m looking at my notes about you, you’ve had so many different roles in your life. You’ve been an army reservist, a lifeguard, a café owner, property owner, police officer, hospital theatre assistant, despatch rider. I mean, obviously you had the skill of writing, but do you think, because I think, that people underestimate all those other life skills that they bring to being a copywriter? You mentioned perspective, but the discipline of being a policeman, the people skills of being a café owner. Do you think that those other skills have helped you in your copywriting career?
Gary Cooper:
Undoubtedly, because you can put yourself into those different roles. You can relate to so many different people and so many different aspects of business and the way people work, the soft skill side of being able to talk to anybody and put up with people that you don’t like. Yeah. You learn how to smile, don’t you-
Kate Toon:
You do.
Gary Cooper:
… while inside you’re thinking, “I don’t like you.” But you just get on with it, yeah?
Kate Toon:
All Gary’s clients are like, “What, does he mean me?” So when you say soft skills, what do you mean by soft skills? I like that expression.
Gary Cooper:
I think the ability to relate to people, to empathise, to be able to talk to them in the way that they can relate to rather than talking down at them or up at them. There are so many different aspects to soft skills. Turning up on time, doing the work, if you promise you’re going to deliver this, you do it. If you say this is the time you’re going to be there, that’s the time you’re going to be there. They’re things we don’t normally think about, but they’re very, very important in the background of, if you like, reinforcing your brand, whatever that might be.
Kate Toon:
I so agree, because I often say in the membership that I think being a successful freelance copywriter or having a copywriting business is kind of half about being a good writer and half about all those other skills; your people skills, your relationship skills, your budget management, your project management. I know some amazing writers who are just terrible at that side of it so they’re never going to succeed, and I know some fairly average copywriters, I’m waving my hand here, who aren’t amazing but have managed to be pretty successful because of those soft skills.
Kate Toon:
I think one of the things I like about you is your ability to look back through all the different careers that you’ve had and bring that perspective to copywriting. I’m going to come back to the Upwork thing, because I do want to talk about that, but you sound like you’ve done a bit of everything in your career and now in a copywriting sense, do you niche? Are you a specialist? Or do you still do a bit of everything?
Gary Cooper:
I do, but I’m in the very privileged position where I can pick and choose. It is a privilege and I appreciate that. I won’t now work with people I don’t like, can’t get on with. It’s just not worth the hassle. It’s not worth the grief and aggravation at all. That’s my overriding criteria.
Gary Cooper:
I’ll work on anything as long as I’m happy with the client and the person that I’m dealing with. And I’m very strong on the fact that I want to work directly with the people who make the decisions, run the businesses. I do not want to work for agencies because I just find that I don’t get that connection. I’m just, if you like, a drone writer. I’ve tried that and it doesn’t work for me.
Kate Toon:
Yeah. I know that recently you’ve been really digging into videos and radio scripts and scripting in general and you really like that kind of copy. What is it about video scripts that you love so much?
Gary Cooper:
They’re creative. It’s a challenge to get all of the information into 30, 60 seconds, two minutes. It relies a lot on psychology, and I love that side of it. What’s the person on the other side of the video thinking when I say this? How are they going to react? What’s going to be the next line that I use to cement that or to lead them into the next section? What do I want them to do when I’ve finished and how am I going to actually play this so that they will take action when they’ve stopped watching the video? How are we going to pitch this thing so that it’s not too over the top but it creates a bit of curiosity and interest?
Gary Cooper:
There’s so many things, and trying to put that into 30 seconds is great. And, I’m sorry about this, Kate, but also, it doesn’t involve any SEO and all of these complications. It’s just dead straight.
Kate Toon:
It is. I mean, I love videos, but sometimes you’ve literally got 15 seconds for a video script. What I like about video is that, in our little template that we have in the shop, we have one column for the copy and then we have a column for what’s going to be happening on the screen. Is it drone sequence or is it someone talking to camera? I like the fact that you get a little bit of input on the visuals as well, because often we don’t, right? As copywriters, we hand over our copy and someone massacres it over the website and we don’t get that control.
Gary Cooper:
Yeah, exactly.
Kate Toon:
Yeah, I’m a big fan of video scripts as well. I really enjoy them. Very different creative challenge, I think. Very different. And to keep people watching as well, because there’s something around they say most videos are around three minutes but people will only watch about 60 seconds and trying to keep them engaged throughout the video, that must be a challenge as well.
Gary Cooper:
Yeah, there’s that to it. But the biggest challenge, the one I love most actually is radio scripts. I love writing radio scripts, because you don’t have that visual to fall back on.
Kate Toon:
Yeah, okay.
Gary Cooper:
Yeah. And my favourite is having two people bouncing a conversation back and forth against each other.
Kate Toon:
Well, I love that too which is why I have this podcast, because although me and you can see each other right now, it’s a purely aural medium and I love that. I find that very intimate. The podcasts that I listen to, usually I’m listening when I’m doing something nice like I’m walking the dog or I’m cooking and it’s like you’ve got two buddies in the room with you. I really like that. I think it’s very intimate and nice.
Kate Toon:
So, look, let’s have a little chat about Upwork, because it’s not my bête noire at all. I haven’t used it, but I am not averse to Fiverr, Freelancer, Upwork, all these sites. I think they have a place and I think they have a bit of a negative view of them. People often see that they’re a race to the bottom and you’re going to be fighting over jobs like seagulls over chips, but a lot of the writers that I’ve seen on Upwork are charging decent rates. I mean, they’re not charging $5… There are the $5 an hour copywriters, of course there are, and there’s a market for that. Some people will never pay good money for copy. More fool them. Those kind of people can use the AI tools. But there is decent work to be found on Upwork, right? I mean, you have.
Gary Cooper:
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Kate Toon:
So what are some tips for some people maybe thinking about joining a site like Upwork?
Gary Cooper:
I think that you have to use their filters to make sure that the jobs that you’re looking at are the type of jobs that are going to give you all of the things that you want; the money, the interest. The collaboration, I think, with the client is really important. I can’t work with people I can’t collaborate with. I’m not one of these people who can’t get feedback. I love bouncing ideas like this off of people.
Gary Cooper:
Upwork is a strange platform because they will not sort out all of these spammers, so you have to be very aware of the scammers out there and the people who are trying to get you to do work for free. There’s lots of, “We just want to do a test piece,” or whatever.
Kate Toon:
“We just want a sample. We want a free sample and then you’re going to get all this work.” Yeah, yeah.
Gary Cooper:
Yeah. The standard answer for me for that is, “Hey, look at my profile. My profile has all my samples in it. My profile has all of the work that I’ve done. You can read all the reviews. I don’t need to do a sample, thanks.”
Kate Toon:
No. And if that’s not good enough, thank you very much. And I think the thing is we as copywriters may not want to be on platforms like that because it puts us in competition with lots of other people, but if you think of it from a client perspective, if you’re going out there trying to find a copywriter and you’re googling, and yes you’re going to people’s websites and reading testimonials, but it’s very hard to compare apples with apples. It’s very hard to… You could google and google and google and spend hours but Upwork presents people who’ve done the right kind of copy, who are in your location. They can use the filters to find the ideal client. I mean, I think especially if you’re starting out especially it can be a great way to build up that portfolio and get some samples.
Gary Cooper:
Exactly.
Kate Toon:
Yeah. I have nothing against Upwork at all. I think it definitely has a place. And I think you just don’t need to charge the same rates as people who are in different countries to you who have a different cost of living. You won’t be able to compete with that, so don’t compete with that.
Gary Cooper:
You can’t.
Kate Toon:
You may not get every job. But yeah, you can’t, so don’t.
Gary Cooper:
Absolutely.
Kate Toon:
You’ve obviously been a copywriter for a little while now. What’s been one of the best jobs that you’ve done and why did you love it so much?
Gary Cooper:
Best jobs? I think my Ferrari job was the best one.
Kate Toon:
Oh la la.
Gary Cooper:
I’m out of NDA now. It was my third job on Upwork. That’s the thing about Upwork-
Kate Toon:
Sorry, you got a job with Ferrari on Upwork?
Gary Cooper:
Yeah, that’s the thing about-
Kate Toon:
That’s awesome.
Gary Cooper:
Yeah. That’s the thing about Upwork. People do not realise that you don’t know who the job is going to be with until you actually pitch for it and you’re accepted for it.
Kate Toon:
It’s like Uber. It’s like Uber drivers don’t know the destination until they pick you up. I love that.
Gary Cooper:
Yeah, exactly. I’ve worked with loads of… I’ve worked with Jeremy Bloom, who is one of the US Olympic skiing team and was an NFL player. Yeah, I’ve worked with a guy who was a Porsche designer, who started his own design studio and he wanted me to help him name his new car.
Kate Toon:
What an awful job. You’ve done a few jobs for the California Gold company as well.
Gary Cooper:
They’re my main client, yeah. I love them. Yeah, but I mean, again, this was through Upwork. They flew me out to Los Angeles.
Kate Toon:
They did not, stop.
Gary Cooper:
I met the team. They did. They flew me out to Los Angeles. Yeah, we stayed for a week and they took us to Las Vegas for a weekend. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Upwork [inaudible 00:16:22]-
Kate Toon:
I’m just going to finish this podcast now and go and set up my Upwork profile. Flipping heck, that’s amazing.
Gary Cooper:
Yeah, it is.
Kate Toon:
It’s a great side to see the positive of it, because people are so negative Nancy about it, but it just shows if you have your boundaries, play your cards right, watch out for the scammers, charge a good rate, there’s work to be had. But that all sounds-
Gary Cooper:
People earn fortunes on Upwork. The other thing about it that people don’t realise is that, and I’m not advocating this of course, is that you can always go off platform afterwards.
Kate Toon:
You’re not supposed to-
Gary Cooper:
No, of course not.
Kate Toon:
… but of course, you can. Of course, you can. But I think as well, although there are pitfalls, one of the things Upwork does is it protects you a little bit because people have to have a profile, you get your page in money. There’s a few little areas there that you can be protected with as well. You can’t just get scammed. And when you’re starting out, I hear so many sob stories of people who do do the free sample or who don’t really know how to invoice, do the work, never get paid. They don’t have any terms and conditions so the client stops the job halfway through and goes away and there’s no comeback. That kind of thing, you’re protected against on Upwork. So I feel like… If you’re listening to this, Upwork, could you please sponsor this episode? That would be fantastic.
Kate Toon:
Look, being flown to Las Vegas and naming cars sounds pretty sexy, but I’m guessing you’ve had a few fails as well. We love a good fail, Gary. Tell us something that went horribly, horribly wrong.
Gary Cooper:
Yeah. My worst was a Chinese client. It was a real pain. We just didn’t click, and he ran a language school out of Hong Kong. I did loads of work. Basically the problem was that he wasn’t getting any clients. When I looked at his website, the answer was pretty obvious. The Chinese version of Mandarin is [Chinese 00:18:24]. That’s what they call it. And his site said basically, “Learn [Chinese 00:18:30] in Hong Kong, blah blah blah.” I said to him, “Just alter it. We change every reference to this to Mandarin.” And we did that, and his… I forget. It was in the thousands his inquiries went up, because he had a lot of people interested but it just didn’t work. Mostly US clients. And he decided that he wasn’t going to pay me.
Kate Toon:
That’s a good one.
Gary Cooper:
It was a total nightmare. I had to go into dispute with Upwork. Yeah, it just went on and on and on. And the really galling thing was that I’d done the work and he was getting results from it. I think that was my worst. I haven’t had any total disasters because I’m very careful at the beginning to make sure that the people that I work with are good and click.
Kate Toon:
I think it’s interesting to think about what are red flags. Being a sage old copy cop, what are some red flags that will stop you taking on a job? You mentioned the click. I mean, the click, is it kind of a vibe thing? And you mentioned people asking for free samples. Are there any other things that you would immediately go, “Hang on, that sounds a bit weird”?
Gary Cooper:
Very detailed and complicated briefings.
Kate Toon:
I so agree.
Gary Cooper:
Yeah. Because you’re dealing with somebody who’s very controlling and you’re not going to have any leeway and it will turn into a nightmare because they will be nitpicky and they will want to just look at every aspect of it and criticise it. I don’t need that. The standard draught copy, first revision, second revision is the ideal, isn’t it?
Kate Toon:
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Gary Cooper:
And your final copy, which is proofread.
Kate Toon:
Yeah. I noticed that as well. One of my red flags as well. And again, this might not be a red flag for somebody else, is somebody that when they contact you, they kind of pour their heart out. They don’t just give you a brief. They’re like, “And this has happened and my dog was sick and then I moved.” It feels like it’s a catharsis. And I just know that although I can be loving and friendly, that’s not my job here. I’m here to write your copy. And often you find those clients really want to talk a lot.
Kate Toon:
And if you’re a talker too, you can just build that into your quote. You can put, “Five hours discussion time.” But I’m not a talker. I like to have my briefing. I like to present each round of the copy and have a chat with that. But I don’t want to just have a chat. That’s not me. I want to get on with the work. But for other people, they might like that. I think that first email can be super telling. Too much detail, they might be a bit of a control freak. No detail at all, they don’t really know what they want. And the sob story or the long, heartfelt story can mean they want a lot of handholding as well. It’s interesting to think of those things.
Kate Toon:
Now, I’m assuming that you write with a quill and parchment, being-
Gary Cooper:
Being so old.
Kate Toon:
Being so old.
Gary Cooper:
Absolutely. I use papyrus.
Kate Toon:
Papyrus, okay. I only write in cuneiform and I like to chip it into…
Gary Cooper:
My hieroglyphics have to be seen to be believed.
Kate Toon:
I want to see it. But do you have any, other than your quill, do you have any tools that you like to use to write copy?
Gary Cooper:
Yeah. I’m dyslexic and I have terrible trouble with spelling and I found a thing called Dragon 15. Dragon Naturally Speaking, it is absolutely brilliant. It’s perfect for me. It’s a dictation system. It allows you to go back and alter your copy. It’s so flexible. It’s at least tripled my productivity, I think.
Kate Toon:
I’m fascinated by this. You never mentioned the dyslexia, because you would think that that would be a huge barrier to being a writer. I don’t know a huge amount about dyslexia. Do you dictate your copy? You actually speak your copy instead of writing it?
Gary Cooper:
Yes.
Kate Toon:
What?
Gary Cooper:
Everything.
Kate Toon:
What nonsense is this?
Gary Cooper:
Yeah. Even on Facebook, even on Twitter, whatever, yeah.
Kate Toon:
And how is the editing? If you want to go back and change a word in paragraph two, how do you do that?
Gary Cooper:
You just go… I don’t know. Say you want to alter, I don’t know, piglet, “Just go to piglet. Delete piglet. Put in pig.” And it will do it for you.
Kate Toon:
Honestly, mind blown. Boom. I often say to my clients, “If you’re struggling to write, just try saying what you want. Dictate it to something like Rev or Otter.ai or now this amazing tool and yes it won’t be perfect but you’ll have got the raw matter down.” But I could not imagine then editing. Because everyone’s first draught is usually a bit of a hotch-potch of nonsense and then you go back and polish and polish and polish. But I couldn’t imagine doing that verbally, so that’s fascinating to me. I’m going to check that tool out.
Gary Cooper:
It’s such a tool. Really is.
Kate Toon:
Fantastic.
Gary Cooper:
It’s incredible. And it’s not a subscription thing. You buy it one-off. It’s quite expensive. I think now it’s something like $400, but it’s made by Nuance, and Nuance are the people behind Siri and the speaker thing, I can’t remember what it’s called, that Amazon use.
Kate Toon:
Yeah, yeah. Alexa or whatever it’s called.
Gary Cooper:
Yeah. Mm-hmm.
Kate Toon:
And so they’re really good at capturing voices basically-
Gary Cooper:
Absolutely.
Kate Toon:
… even if you’ve got a bit of a East London accent like you, they can still grasp it?
Gary Cooper:
Yeah.
Kate Toon:
Fantastic.
Gary Cooper:
They can. You have, every so often, it launches what it calls its accuracy metre thing. It will go back over all the previous work that you’ve done and compare what you’ve written with what you say and it will just gradually get to know your voice, your expressions, the people that you use or things that you refer to very often.
Kate Toon:
Wow.
Gary Cooper:
For instance, in the gold thing, there are lots of special words for bullion and carats. For instance, carat with a C is usually used for silver, but karat for gold has a K.
Kate Toon:
And it works that out?
Gary Cooper:
Well, I told it, “This is what we use when we use gold,” and every time it does it so you can dictate it and you haven’t got to worry.
Kate Toon:
You’re just blowing my mind here. You’ve sold me on Upwork. You’ve sold me on Dragon dictate. It’s fantastic. Well, look, now that you’ve been writing copy for longer than most, I’m going to stop doing the old guy thing now because you’re not that old. What are some big lessons that you’ve learnt over the years? I do like to call you the Gandalf of copywriting. If you’re Gandalf with your long white beard and your staff, what three lessons would you like to pass down to us little copy hobbits?
Gary Cooper:
Wow. I think one of the main things, I’ve noticed lots of people saying that they’re finding a fallback in work at the moment. One of the things that I’ve found really useful to keep clients on board and get repeat business is just to send little articles or things that you read or notice or a photograph or a cartoon or a joke or something to them and just say, “Look, I thought you might be interested in this.” Because you know your clients and you know what’s relevant to them and you know the kind of things that they’re interested in.
Gary Cooper:
It might be something about, I don’t know, fishing, motorbikes. It might be an article on accounting. It might be an article on fire extinguishers, because somebody’s been talking about something. So often, people will come back in an email and say, “Actually, I’ve been meaning to get in touch with you. You’ve jogged my memory. Yeah, actually I’m really pleased because this is something that I need to get done.” And it’s a brilliant way of doing that.
Kate Toon:
Yeah, I love that. I just think it builds a relationship. It doesn’t necessarily need to be forced, but I used to have a little note in my diary once a week to just have a little google and see what I could find to help my clients, whatever it might be. You’ve also mentioned before, and through this podcast as well, about red flags. I know you’re a big believer in trusting your gut instinct. How does that manifest in your business? If I’m a newbie, sometimes I’m not sure if this client is good or bad. So if I’m feeling nervous, do I just walk away?
Gary Cooper:
Okay. Another red flag would be, with the discovery call, I always send an agenda. I lay out for them in advance what I’m going to talk about and what I’m going to ask them, and I’ve usually got 15 questions laid out and it ends with next meeting and any questions. The best clients always reply and always perhaps fill in the agenda or add an extra question. When they don’t respond to that, that’s kind of a red flag to me because, are they interested? Do they not want to do this? And if I then get on the call and they completely ignore the agenda and don’t want to talk about that, then that’s a major red flag to me because we’re going off on a tangent.
Gary Cooper:
I always start my meetings at 20 to the hour and I tell them, in advance, that I’ve got a meeting at the hour so that the meeting never lasts any longer than 20 minutes. There’s none of this collateral time damage.
Kate Toon:
That’s one of my classics. I love that. I do 15 minutes to the hour and always say, “I’ve got 15 minutes to chat to you but I’m going to warn you now, I have a meeting at 1:00 so we will have to wrap it up.” And it works every time because I find that a lot of… Well, even experienced copywriters, the longer they talk, they either talk themselves out of the job or they give away too much information and the client just goes away and they’ve sucked you of everything they needed to know. They’re using it as a bit of a fact-finding call.
Kate Toon:
And one thing that I saw in our notes for this episode was you mentioned that you ask for two referrals. One of your most successful marketing strategies is asking for two referrals. What do you mean by that?
Gary Cooper:
Okay. When the job’s finished and they’re happy and everything’s done, I will phone them. Got to be on the phone. And say to them, “Look, I’m really pleased that we’ve got on so well. Is there anyone else you think who could use my services? Would you mind just perhaps thinking of a couple of people and letting me borrow your name so I could actually get in touch with them and see if I can help them in the same way?”
Kate Toon:
You’re just blowing my mind. I’ve never done that. I’ll ask for the testimonial. I’ll keep in contact with them and reconnect and a couple of months later say, “Hi, checking in. How’s it going? Here’s that article about fire extinguishers.” But I’ve never thought of saying, “Hey, is there anyone else you think would like to work with me?” That’s genius. “Can I borrow your name?” I love it.
Gary Cooper:
Yeah. Well, the thing is that if you do that, and obviously they’re going to ring their mate, aren’t they, and they’re going to say, “Look, I’ve got this guy going to call you,” and they’ll have a chat about you. Because you’ve just done the job and everything’s happy-
Kate Toon:
Beautiful.
Gary Cooper:
… and fluffy, it’s a very, very, very warm introduction.
Kate Toon:
Mm-hmm. I love that. They’ve sold you before you even call.
Gary Cooper:
Exactly. It doesn’t always work, but often it does.
Kate Toon:
And what’s the harm in asking? What’s the harm in asking? If they say, “No, I can’t really think of anybody right now,” well, fair enough. That’s fine.
Gary Cooper:
Absolutely. But sometimes they will come back and say to you, “Look, I’ve been thinking about what you said. Actually, I’ve got somebody who works in a different area but their website isn’t too great and maybe you could perhaps have a chat with them.”
Kate Toon:
Very sage. See, he’s wise, people, he’s very wise. And obviously throughout the years, you’ll have struggled with work-life balance and self-doubt and had dark days. What are some-
Gary Cooper:
Oh my God, yes.
Kate Toon:
… mental health tips? Because us copywriters, we do feel the feels, don’t we? What are some mental health tips you might have for our listeners?
Gary Cooper:
Just keep going. I think one of the major things is to ask yourself, “Is this going to matter in five years’ time? Will you even remember it?” How many things in your life have you done that have been major problems at the time and you might be chatting with your wife or husband or kids or whatever and you think, “What was that about? Do you remember?” And, “No, I can’t even remember what that was.” It doesn’t matter, does it?
Kate Toon:
No.
Gary Cooper:
There are major things that matter, but most of it is just rubbish really.
Kate Toon:
Yeah. I’m a big believer, and you’ve mentioned in the notes, ploughing through. You’re going to have good days and bad days but just turning up each day and dealing with failure and success both the same, that Rudyard Kipling kind of way. Treating those two imposters both the same and just doing the do, sitting at your desk, getting on with it. Not too much navel-gazing, and, as you said, taking a bit of a five-year view.
Kate Toon:
I mean, you’ve given us some great tips already but I like to finish the episode just doing the more tips, because they help. What other tips would you have to pass onto your fellow copy beasts?
Gary Cooper:
Don’t just rely on copywriting. Find other ways to channel the money that you make from it into different things. Diversify a bit. I mean, I’m quite conscious of the fact that things are looking quite dodgy at the moment all over the world financially and I think you need to look at different… Even within copywriting, if you rely on just getting leads from, I don’t know, emails or going on Upwork or whatever, when you go out shopping or when you go out with the kids to the swimming or the football or whatever you go to, talk to people. Get some cards done. Chat to them. Tell them what you do. Introduce yourself and say, “Look, if you could ever need me or you’ve got somebody who might be able to use my services, then please.” Give them a card or whatever.
Gary Cooper:
And put your cards up in the local newsagents and shops where they allow you to do it, because you never know. And all of those extra little clients coming into your business, it all adds up. It all adds up. You have to diversify what you’re doing now. It’s so important.
Kate Toon:
I really agree. Put yourself on Upwork. The little cards in local businesses do work, because local businesses need help too. Go to local networking meetings. As you said, tell everyone what you do. Two of my first clients, one came from Gumtree, like a little crappy ad on Gumtree. Who would you think was looking for a copywriter on Gumtree? And another one came from having a massage and the woman asking me what I did and explaining and then she said, “I need some copy.”
Kate Toon:
And it may not feel like… “Well, I should do something big, really big. I should do some paid ads and get floods of people.” But it actually often is you’re mopping up crumbs of clients here, there and everywhere and then you do a great job, you give them a lot of love, and then they become repeat clients and then you don’t need so many new clients because you’ve got people on retainer and regulars. Yeah, I love that.
Kate Toon:
And some other tips I’m just going to recap on, I love your tip about sending an agenda in advance for the meeting. We have the same tip around starting the call 15, 20 minutes before the hour. I love your soft skills thing. I thought that was really good. And one of the ones that we both love, which I think I gave to you. I’m going to take credit for it, is Looming instead of emailing. Making little-
Gary Cooper:
You did.
Kate Toon:
… videos. Yeah. It’s one of my favourites. So instead of just sending your copy deck and saying, “Here, I’ve done it,” you present that to the client. And I remember at CopyCon, creative director David Bell was like, “You haven’t finished selling when you get your proposal signed off. You have to sell each draught of the copy and explain why you made that decision.” So you’ve become a big Loom fan now, haven’t you?
Gary Cooper:
Absolutely. Yeah. And it was you-
Kate Toon:
Yay!
Gary Cooper:
… you did get me into that. I’ll swap you for Dragon.
Kate Toon:
You can. I mean, here’s me teaching an old dog new tricks. There you go. And this is it, a lot of people who listen to this podcast may be slightly older. I mean, I’m nearly 50. Gary’s about 27. But you’re never too old to be a copywriter. And in fact, I think it’s a great career to have as you get older because it’s not too physical. You can fit it in around other things that you’re doing. You’re renovating a beautiful house in France, seeing family, you can fit it in around your life. And you’ve got all this life experience and these skills that you bring to copywriting. Maybe we don’t have quite the youthful exuberance as some, but we have all that life experience to bring. Do you agree?
Gary Cooper:
I do. I mean, to quote the song, I’m 64 next birthday and it’s an ideal job for somebody of my age because it just fits in with everything. You can do as much or as little as you want. It’s great.
Kate Toon:
Fantastic. And it keeps us curious, which keeps those brains ticking.
Gary Cooper:
Absolutely. Yeah.
Kate Toon:
Which is so, so important.
Gary Cooper:
And I have clients all over the world, it’s ridiculous. A perfume factory in India, for instance. Yeah.
Kate Toon:
That’s very cool. You’re very cool, Gary Cooper.
Gary Cooper:
It’s bonkers.
Kate Toon:
I love it. And you’re a member of our community. You’re English, you live in France. Our community is primarily Australian, and we love our Euro beasts, as we call them. And thank you as well for being one of our fabulous ambassadors. Gary, it’s been lovely talking to you. It’s always lovely talking to you. I’m going to ask you to pop a few of your links in the show notes. We’ll link to your website, the Word Surgery, and we’ll also get some links to that fantastic tool which I’m going to check out. Thank you so much, Gary.
Gary Cooper:
You’re welcome. Great to speak to you as always.
Kate Toon:
Bye-bye.
