departure from that, that’ll have you change your career path, right exactly, and and I enjoyed it and in fact, it worked for a lot of companies in in the accounting and finance sphere and in the tech world with knowledge that I had from back then. But at some point, really, my true love was radio, and I wanted to work in radio. So I changed my major and started working. And while I was working at a radio station, playing elevator music and not much else, and a lot of recorded programming. The particular station at night had a program that played some really hard rock all evening.

[ 00:02:43,020 ]And they published a magazine that went along with it. The owners did. And I would read the magazine and I would read the articles and I enjoyed music and knew something about it. Kept thinking, you know, I could write at least as well as anybody who’s in here. And so, contact the editor and within a short time, I was the assistant editor and generating a whole lot of content. Come time to get out of school and. You know, as many of us in my age, now you have schools with big placement offices, but we really didn’t have that back in the day. And I had this vague idea that advertising agencies needed writers. I wasn’t sure exactly why or what they did. But two months after graduation, I found myself working on Michigan Avenue.

[ 00:03:29,650 ]And. people would come to me and say, ‘Hey, can you do this?’ And I’d say, ‘Sure, sure, I can do that. Yeah.’ And then figure out how to get it done. So it’s kind of a, like I said, it’s a strange way to make a living, but I enjoy it. The rest is history. Yeah. Who do you really like? I mean, I know you do work for diverse clients, right? What genre, what topic, what industry is there a favorite at all? My absolute favorite is organizations that do something that nobody understands but really needs to. They offer services that would be very beneficial to their clients and their customers, but those people don’t really understand either how it works or how it could apply to them.

[ 00:04:14,490 ]So anytime I have a chance to take that and explain it, I love doing that. What’s funny is I found that a lot of clients are kind of shy, almost about what they do. Of course, and you say, ‘Well, what is it that separates you from your competitors?’ And you always say, ‘Well, we do pretty much the same thing But then when you dig in a little more and you say, ‘Well, what is it that made you start your own business?’ Then you get the real story. And then you’ve got something where you can celebrate what they’re doing. Yeah. And I love seeing nothing makes me happier. Most copywriters in the advertising business are most concerned about the number of awards they win.

[ 00:04:59,260 ]What makes me happiest is when a client says, ‘Hey, our sales are up. 25% over last year.’ then i know that i’ve hit the target that’s that’s what i’m supposed to be doing the man behind the curtain right i’m a little bit of the odds right yeah exactly i’m perfectly happy the wizard of copy So what do you think the main maybe misconception of owners about what you do. Like when you meet an owner for the first time, they may not even know what you do. So I’m just kind of curious. how to get how do you how do you get through that challenge probably the biggest misconception and this is really across the board is everybody figures i can write I went to college. I wrote a lot of papers.

[ 00:05:45,150 ]I can write. Why would I need to hire someone else who can write? When it comes to marketing materials, well, I know I’m not a graphic designer, so I can hire them, or I’m not a lead generation specialist, so I can get marketing. But I can write. Of course, what people don’t realize is that copywriting is very different from most kinds of writing. It’s a completely different focus. It’s a completely different approach. And usually it takes the first project. People will do a first project with me and when they see A, how it’s handled and B, the results. Then usually I stick around for a while. Then they figure out there aren’t that great a writer. Right, right.

[ 00:06:29,470 ]And they figure out, I do a lot of ghostwriting articles, for example, and you know, yes, they can write that article, but it’s going to take them eight to 10 hours. They’d rather spend that eight to 10 hours making money. Right. So I’m happy to take that off their hands. Sorry. How is AI influencing the copywriting industry in both positive and what may be perceived as negative ways? Now, what people see as the negative ways, and I know a lot of writers who think that they’re going to be out of a job. in the next few years. AI is currently not at that point, but it’s accelerating pretty quickly. And I think another two, three, four years it’s going to be very different. I’m finding it to be a very helpful tool in a couple different ways.

[ 00:07:21,480 ]I would never give my clients AI written copy. First of all, AI is easy to do. detect if you if you know writing yes you know it’s easy to spot and it’s it’s still not not quite where it needs to be it doesn’t make the emotional connection that that human copywriting does But often it will give me ideas or different ways to proceed with something. I might say, give me an example of how this would work. it’ll come back with a great case that I can work from and say, okay, here’s, here’s an example. The other thing that I have found it valuable for is when you’re a one-man office. And you write, one of the things that you really can’t do well is proofreading. It’s impossible to proofread your own copy.

[ 00:08:07,980 ]Even if you read it backwards. Exactly. Because your brain knows what it’s supposed to say. It tracks there. So I’ve taken to feeding my work into AI. And it is amazing what it has spotted. I’m very clear. I don’t want to rewrite. You know, it goes back to that prompt, making sure the prompt is thing, but making suggestions that I look at and I think. Yeah, that makes us a lot better, right? A year ago, it wasn’t really able to do that. Today, it can. It’ll be curious to see how long before it eventually does put me out of a job. It may never. Right, yeah, it may never because I don’t know. I mean, this comes back to the emotional part: whether it’ll really can a machine truly understand a human emotion well enough to not have it tries, it’s usually really bad, you know.

[ 00:09:01,010 ]Then, I don’t, you know, some of them now they start placating you even having the conversation with you. They’re being nice to you. Even in the conversation, oh, you know, Scott, that was a great idea, Scott. But it’s like a used car salesman. Right, it’s just really yeah because you know it’s not real. So trying to. Throw emotion from it back to you is actually really disingenuine. So I’m kind of with you. I don’t know. No. And the thing that it can’t replace is your experience and your behavior. That also true. and it can’t like you know it can’t pick out like the the framework that you might be writing that particular piece from like is this a hook pacing method or is this a

[ 00:09:46,620 ]blade formula or what formula is this the you know ET formula what what formula are we using for this particular piece of content that’s going to drive the outcomes that that were looking for and from your experience you know how to play around with words that impact people to tell a story to break through the mental barrier when somebody’s reading something to communicate on a human level with someone to help them understand what they’re being communicated with. Exactly. And it goes back to when you said, talked about misconceptions, you asked about misconceptions. You know, the biggest difference between copywriting and other kinds of writing is is that most writing is aimed at the brain but copywriting is aimed at the heart. It’s aimed at emotions.

[ 00:10:30,310 ]My job when I write something is to create an emotional response inside people. People tend to forget that we’re really emotional creatures. We all are. And that even includes attorneys, and accountants, and actuaries, and people like that. We make decisions based first on an emotional response. And then we backstop that by gathering the facts. You know, a great example that I always like to use is when you walk into a sporting goods store and let’s say you’re a golfer and you see the putter of your dreams. You got to have it. Well, then you spend 20 minutes walking around the store looking at other things while you try to convince yourself to buy it. And really what you’re doing is you’re coming up with a list of things so that when you bring it home and you get that.

[ 00:11:16,550 ]You spent how much on what? You’ve got a response. But as soon as you saw it, your emotions said, ‘I’m going to own it.’ Right. And you knew you were going to leave. It’s no different. Everybody’s reactions within the business world are based in emotion. Probably it’s an old ad campaign going way back. I’m not going to suggest that either of you may be old enough to remember it, but. Back when there were many different computer companies, IBM ran a very successful campaign that was all about ‘came down to a message that nobody got fired.’ for recommending IBM. That’s correct. I remember it. And there’s that fear inherent when you’re going to make a decision.

[ 00:11:58,430 ]If you’re a company that’s selling something to a manufacturer, well, if I buy your solution, will it going to leave me in a bad situation where my boss is going to chew me out? And my writing is designed to to get sure so that you don’t you overcome that and you feel confident and you feel safe, depending obviously on what the objective is, yeah. Hmm. So one of the most effective ways for companies to, you know, obviously get a result from copywriting is case studies. And so I know that’s also something that you do. Talk to us about some of the favorite ones that you’ve worked on. Oh, I love case studies because writers very rarely get a chance, copywriters at least, to tell stories.

[ 00:12:41,530 ]Most of the time, you know, we’re writing a hundred words in NAIA or we’re writing a webpage that’s designed to capture everybody looking for furnace repair in a particular city. But case studies give writers a chance to stretch out. And I think that there’s no better way for a company to support its marketing efforts. A lot of marketing is about standing up, jumping up and down and saying, ‘Look at me, look at me, look at me.’ Sure. But a case study is what provides the evidence that you really know what it is you’re doing. So it helps in a couple different ways with that. First, it helps you get that much closer to the sale. An ad might catch your eye, but a case study actually pre-sells you so that when you’re finally talking to the sales rep, you already want to go there.

[ 00:13:31,310 ]It also gives you a chance to project the case across your own business. If you saw that using a particular product could improve your throughput by 12%, you mentally say, ‘Well, we’re producing this much. That means we could produce that much. You’re already convincing yourself.’ But I think the most important thing that a case study does is it gives you something to pass along to someone else. Because, in particularly, in the business-to-business context, almost nobody is a single decision maker. You’ve got to work your way through the whole food chain in order to get your idea through. It’s a lot different if you go to your boss and say, ‘I think we should buy this whiz bit.’ then if you bring an article saying, ‘Hey, here’s how somebody used this whiz bit.

[ 00:14:20,400 ]to reduce defects or something.’ Yes. So I think that’s what makes them particularly powerful. I’ve done a lot of them. I think my all-time favorite was for an ice cream producer. That was having a problem. With snow, they had between the loading dock and between the production facility there was a dramatic temperature change, and their facility was was fairly tall, about a 30-foot ceiling. And so at the loading dock, clouds would form near the ceiling, and snow would come pouring down on a concrete floor. So you’ve got workers and, you know, slipping, you’ve got equipment sliding here and there. And what it was was the engineers who figured out how to solve the problem. We’ve developed a desiccant system. To take the excess moisture out of that room.

[ 00:15:14,380 ]And eliminate the snow problem. Wow. That’s kind of cool. Now, that’s of interest to ice cream people, but it’s also there are other manufacturers who have similar problems. Frozen products. High humidity or anything like that. So that’s those are the kind of stories that are just an absolute blast to tell. Yeah. So what’s the process you use with someone to produce one? What’s that look like? People often have a basic idea of, you know, this is the message that we want to convey, but they just aren’t sure to get there. So I walk into the situation. Usually I might know a little bit about the process, but I’m accustomed to walking into situations completely ignorant. So I ask all the dumb questions. Okay. Why is that important?

[ 00:15:58,880 ]All right, well, why is it done that way? Why do you do it that way? And the more you talk to people, the more they open up and the more they tell you the real story and what makes it work. And that’s where the story comes out. You know, lots of times you’re talking to a production engineer. And they’re not known for giving you detailed answers. They usually, you know, it’s very quick. Well, we do this and this. But when you keep pushing by asking those basic questions, then they start to get animated because here’s someone who’s actually interested in what I do for a living. And they start telling more, and they start telling what they’re proud of. And voila. Exactly. And often that’s where the hook is that makes the story work.

[ 00:16:42,540 ]Interesting. So it’s uh. That right there, in my opinion, why it’s going to be hard for AI to replace it. Correct. Because they just, they won’t know. Maybe it may learn how to ask the right next question. Well, it also can’t see the facial expressions of that product engineer. Correct. And understand, okay, now I have permission to ask a deeper question. Right. Okay. Now we can take the, you know, based on that answer, now I can take the line of questioning in a completely different direction based on the answer that they just gave. Yeah. And I just don’t think that AI is at that level. And I don’t know if it’ll ever be at that level. No, I don’t. I don’t think so. I think that you know that human element is just so important.

[ 00:17:28,469 ]I think that’s we may all become— people who sit behind keyboards all the time, and everything else works automatically for us. But we’re still going to need that human input. And people are still going to need evidence to move forward with decisions. Yes. So back to the technical example, you know, case study, and you may see this as well, I think, with technical people, and I don’t know if that’s the right term— specialists that they take for granted what they know. And they, you know, to your point, they don’t necessarily know how to explain it to other people, called you know, the unwashed, the uneducated, whatever you want—right. I mean, it’s like you know, just average Joe citizen who may use you know their particular product or service, but they don’t know what’s happening behind the scenes.

[ 00:18:13,570 ]But I think sometimes those specialists truly just take for granted what they know that other people have no idea. Right. And so all they tell you is that front. And then they leave out the back part. You don’t need to know the detail. Yeah, maybe you do. Right or at least the ‘how’ or the ‘why’ and those kinds of things. There’s a story in there. There’s a story. The other thing that trips them up as well, and that’s very key to it, but the other part is language. Because, you know, for example, aeronautical engineers are some of the smartest people that I’ve ever known. We know a few, right? Right. But yet, when they start talking and they start using all this terminology that’s out of graduate level work. Sure.

[ 00:18:56,920 ]Ordinary people don’t use it. Yeah. Another common example I love to cite is educators. Educators are smart people. They do an amazing job of teaching other people about things. But when they start talking to non-educators, you know. Mom and dad show up for the third grade parent teacher conference and the teacher says, ‘Little Billy scored at the 82nd percentile on a norm reference formative assessment.’ What? Yeah, what? And mom and dad are sitting there thinking, ‘Okay.’ Does that mean he’s smart? Is that 82% better or worse? Do we take him out for ice cream? Do we leave town? And the same thing happens in so many corporate settings. And whether it’s an engineer, or whether it’s an accountant, or a finance person, or something.

[ 00:19:44,640 ]They say things and everybody else just looks back with a blank stare. Because another thing about being human is we don’t like to look stupid. Right. For me, that’s a secret weapon. I’m perfectly willing to look completely ignorant if it gets me the information that I need. But humans don’t like to admit they don’t know things. 100%. Back to ego. Yeah. All the way back to ego. But it can be broken down with the right questions and authenticity to get the story that you need. Exactly. Exactly. I’ve learned so many fascinating things over the years putting those things together too. I mean, I always like to say I’ve got a really wide breadth of knowledge. Very shallow but it’s very wide.

[ 00:20:29,330 ]Yeah, so if you kind of rewind back a little bit, and if you just did it fast— i mean you’ve been doing this a long time and you’ve got lots of experience— but if you roll that back in your mind, what are the three or four things that you’re most proud of that pop to your mind? Well, probably the first has nothing to do with knowledge or any of that. It’s a service thing. And that’s that— across my 40 some years of doing this, I have never missed a client deadline. That’s that’s a business press. I mean, there are not a lot of businesses that can say that. Um, I think another thing I’m very proud of is that I always become a very strong advocate for my clients to the point where I almost could go out and sell.

[ 00:21:13,740 ]For them, because I work for people who I admire. I am so impressed when I talk to some of these people and their knowledge. I want that knowledge for other people to know how smart they are. So that’s a key point. And the other thing is, I just tend to take a very practical approach. I grew up, my dad was a straight commission salesman. And I used to go out on sales calls with him once in a while and I’d watch. So often in marketing, we get into this lofty language and these phrases: commitment to excellence, dedication to quality. Quality, service, and value. If he stood there and said that to a customer, he’d walk away without an order. So I learned that you go in and you just get straight to the heart of things.

[ 00:22:05,230 ]What’s the problem you’re having? Here’s how I can fix it for you. And that’s really guided the work that I’ve done. That’s awesome. Interesting. So, from a copywriting perspective, what else would you share with us about that world that might help somebody better understand that. I think that another point that is very important is that when you work with an outside copywriter, you work with someone that doesn’t come to a situation with all your knowledge and all your baggage. Companies will so often know something so well, or they’ll have such a history with something that, again, they assume that everybody else shares that. It takes an outside person sometimes to say, ‘Well, why is that important?’ Well, why wouldn’t you do it this way? Or why shouldn’t people do that?

[ 00:23:00,430 ]And even though sometimes when I ask those questions, I get a look back like, ‘What kind of idiot are you to ask that?’ That’s usually at the heart of what it is because other people outside the company don’t know those things either. So I have to stand in and be an advocate, not only for my client, but I have to be an advocate for whoever the audience is going to be. Because that’s who I have to connect with. On an intellectual level, but more importantly, on an emotional level. Yeah, absolutely. Is there a time that stands out where— one of your clients literally of the light bulbs went off after, right? Fairly common where they just go. Oh, you know, I never realized how bad we were right now.

[ 00:23:44,620 ]They don’t— they won’t often admit that— but usually you can tell when they say. Can you do something like that for this product? Can you do something like this with this client? Wow, this is a great way to explain that. Now let’s do this with this person. That’s when I know I’ve hit the target. Nice. So back to the beginning— you grew up in Chicago, I grew up in Chicago, down the southeast side of the city, down by all the steel mills, all right. Soon to be the home of the Chicago Bears, maybe. Yeah, it’s potential. I think it’s a ploy, but we’ll see. The site is about two miles from where I last lived. Okay, there you go. So you know it well. Fished in that lake many a time.

[ 00:24:28,800 ]Yeah. My great grandfather worked at U. S. Steel up there as a chemist. So what made you, how’d you end up in central Indiana? Well, it got to the point where, at that point, I had my two sons. I didn’t, my daughter hadn’t arrived yet, but they were nearing school age and the Chicago public schools really are not particularly known for being very good schools. Unfortunate. I hate to say that. And we would have had to look at finding a private school of some sort. We were also looking for, I was looking to shorten my commute. I was living in the city, working in the city, and on a good day, it was still an hour 20 each way. So you eat up a lot of time.

[ 00:25:10,500 ]I did a lot of reading, got a lot of good reading done, yeah, but was looking just to shorten the commute, go to a simplified lifestyle. He had a brother-in-law who lived down in central Indiana, and every time we came down and visited him, we’d look around and say, ‘Not so bad; down it’s kind of quiet.’ Then we started looking into the financial end of it and realized that the cost of living was probably about 25 percent less. So I came down here, made a little more money, but was able to live a better lifestyle because of that cost of living. Yeah. So what are some of the things that you miss about Chicago? The lake, first of all. Sure. Living within where I could smell the lake. Yeah.

[ 00:25:49,760 ]That was a big part of it. Really miss the transit system. Nice to be able to get everywhere and not have to worry about driving. Yeah. Um, in fact, where I live now in Indianapolis, I’m right by the red line and I use it frequently if I’m going to a meeting downtown or something, just so I don’t have to mess around with parking. Which has become more expensive down. Oh yeah. Yes. So I really like that. Um, I’m just so impressed that everything that’s within a two-hour radius of Indianapolis too. Like there are some, I can be in Cincinnati. I can go to Louisville. I can go to all these, so many great state parks. I love hiking. I just hate driving 65. Oh, I know. It’s awful. Yeah, I understand.

[ 00:26:38,060 ]Although it’s better now than it’s been in a while from a construction standpoint at least. Yeah. It’s not bad until you hit Chicago. Yes. That’s brutal. It’s all always— it doesn’t matter when you’re there, yeah. Always. So, what do you like to do for fun? Well, hiking is one that I really enjoy. I like biking as well. I haven’t done as much of that. I grew up as a kid, walking my, my mom living in the city didn’t drive. And so we walked or took the bus everywhere. So to this day, I still get out and I walk all the time. I am a currently inactive model railroader. Love model railroading. What scale? HL. Okay. But for the uninitiated, what’s that? Big, small. Yeah. Just the bigger. Yep. 187th.

[ 00:27:27,200 ]Like typically are about that big. Yeah. You get any smaller than that. With my eyes in the state that they are now. You need the big magnifier. Is it on the track? Is it off the track? Exactly. Working on parts can be difficult too. So those really, those are probably the big three. So, as being in that, do you get out to many shows and stuff like that? No, not too often. It’s the point where. You know, when you have a hobby like that and you can’t actually do anything with it, going out and seeing stuff and saying, ‘Oh, this would be great,’ ‘This would be great.’ And then you go back and you say. I don’t have room for it, right? So yeah, it’s kind of like golf.

[ 00:28:08,090 ]Yeah, it’s not that much different. What’s the coolest setup you’ve ever seen? I think my absolute favorite is the one at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago, which is just extraordinary. The layout that they had when I was a kid was fun and very cool. It was larger, it was O scale. But when the Santa Fe Railroad or Brinton, Northern Santa Fe, paid to have them completely updated. And they basically reconstructed it to represent a trip from Chicago to Seattle, everything along the way and all the different types of industries. They did such an amazing job. That’s really cool. If I could get a job being the guy that sits there in the middle and keeps it running. Yeah, there you go. It would be a dream. Retirement plan. What about a tour guide that tells people about the display? Would you like that? I could do that too. So did you wear a conductor’s hat while you did it? They would probably expect it. Yes. But they’d have really good copywriting for the marketing. Exactly. Scott’s been great having you on. I really appreciate it. I appreciate the time. Your interest. Thank you, bro. Likewise. Happy to have you. Okay. Let’s go!