Angie Colee (00:02):
Welcome to permission to kick ass, a podcast about leaving self-doubt in the dust, punching fear in the face and taking bold action toward your biggest dreams. I'm Angie Colee and let's get to it.
Angie Colee (00:18):
All right. Welcome back to permission to kick ass. With me today is my friend, Justin Blackman. I am so excited for this one. Say hello, Justin.
Justin Blackman (00:26):
Hello, Justin did it. I went that joke right away.
Angie Colee (00:33):
As soon as I started, I knew you were going to do it, but.
Justin Blackman (00:35):
I did too.
Angie Colee (00:37):
That's great. That's great.
Justin Blackman (00:38):
It's just going to be like 40 minutes of these zany dad jokes, just so you know,
Angie Colee (00:43):
40 minutes. So tell us a Little bit about you and your background, Justin.
Justin Blackman (00:51):
Uh, let's see, I spent about two decades marketing, big name brands, like red bull, five hour energy Puma. Uh, I was in the sampling program, so I got the chance to speak to thousands of thousands of consumers. And I learned the power of quick hit storytelling and good messaging. And I'd learned a lot of that by studying comedians and figuring out word economy and power loading, uh, the backs of sentences to really get people to hang on. And what I didn't realize was that was actually copywriting. Eventually what happened is I was speaking at a lot of college campuses and I got to the point where they, the students started calling me, sir. And I was like, Oh, I'm too old to do this.
Justin Blackman (01:35):
So I had a transition from being out in the field with consumer sampling to going into the back office and the corporate world where a lot of what I did, the messaging became training programs for those brands. So a lot of what I did, uh, wound up to become a national training program with red bull. I did a lot of the messaging for five-hour energy with consumer sampling teams, uh, and did that with a lot of other brands, little by little, I dove into that and discovered copywriting and realized that what I was doing verbally also worked well on paper. I just need to figure out all those elements,
Angie Colee (02:09):
every Copywriter I've spoken to at this point on this show accidentally fell into it and had no idea that they were doing it
Justin Blackman (02:15):
Yeah, that's really it. I went to create, uh, my first website doing the field marketing. And as I was doing that, I was like, I need to know what to put on this. So I Googled how to write a website and discovered Ann Handley, which was my intro intro into content writing, which evolved into copywriting over time. Um, kind of went deep on that. Uh, I wrote 100 headlines every day for 100 days. The headline project resulting in 10,211 headlines.
Angie Colee (02:45):
holy shit.
Justin Blackman (02:45):
That was a lot, that's kind of what put me on the map is like the guy that does too much. So I did that. Um, people said it really, that came from Kira hug who, you know, uh, that was a challenge from her and I was too dumb to say no, so I did it.
Angie Colee (03:01):
Well, you actually inspired. And th this is kind of, uh, depending on when this goes live, this'll make sense to people or it won't, uh, another guest on the show, Robert Lucas actually cited your hundred headline challenge as inspiration for him in his sales page challenge.
Justin Blackman (03:17):
Yeah, he did about 27 sales pages, I think 28.
Angie Colee (03:20):
Yeah. Sales page a day. It was insane. And I think both of you are insane, but you have my admiration for doing that much work. It definitely helps with mastery and letting go of the idea of perfection that holds so many of us back to just put it out there and do a hundred and see what comes up.
Justin Blackman (03:39):
Yeah. See that bound up becoming a theme where I just did too much. And I went overboard that actually led indirectly that the a hundred headline or the 10,000 headlines resulted in a, uh, someone identifying me as a writer that could write in different styles. And they brought me on to write emails and Facebook ads for clients. And they had a lot. And over the course of two years, I wrote for 329 different people.
Angie Colee (04:07):
Holy crap.
Justin Blackman (04:08):
There's a lot.
Angie Colee (04:09):
you've written more than me.
Justin Blackman (04:11):
It was, I was writing for up to six different people a day and it was just like, get it out and get it done. And this goes down a bad rabbit hole in a little bit that I'll tell you about open loop.
Angie Colee (04:24):
let's do it.
Justin Blackman (04:24):
Um, but then that, uh, is where I really learned the power of voice and figuring out how I was able to sound like everybody and adapt my style to match theirs every time. And I really dove deeper into that. And now I'm a brand voice expert and specialist around creative voice guides for industry experts and brands where I can identify and codify their way of writing and create voice guides. So their team can, uh, can sound like them.
Angie Colee (05:00):
Yeah. And that's such an important skill because I think so many people, even for the listeners, you're not at a point if you're not at a point yet where you can hire someone to write as you, this is going to be one of the trip-ups when you're ready to hire a writer is do they sound like me? How do I get them to sound like me? It's one thing to know how to write as yourself. It's another thing to teach someone else to write as you. And that's where it gets a little bit sensitive, a little bit like I don't know how to do this. And so voice specialists like Justin are really kind of critical to bridging that gap. And I don't know, heading off the frustration that you can feel because it's totally, totally possible to have someone else write as you and pretend to be you actors do it all the time.
Angie Colee (05:45):
Like there's a whole acting profession who knew of people that pretend to be other people. Um, and as you grow and scale your business, it's going to be even more critical for you to learn, to go of certain things that may not necessarily feel like you can actually let go of them like writing as yourself is so personal. It doesn't feel like something you can let go of. But I know that Justin knows me from my background. I used to ghost write as a guru, a well-known guru in the internet marketing space, um, where I was a late fifties family man from Michigan.
Angie Colee (06:22):
I don't think that we actually sound anything alike given that I am female and in my thirties at this point, but you know, the fact that I could take some of Justin's tricks and strategies and tactics, and then step into that role and pretend to be him, his name is Jeff, so that he could go off and run his business and do the strategic things. And I could write all the marketing materials. It was so great. That was a little bit of a tangent there too, but, you know, I think it's important for future thinking for, as you grow your business, because yeah, you've got to be able to hire at some point and replace yourself and step away from the business too.
Justin Blackman (06:58):
Yeah. The term that keeps coming up with a lot of my clients is bottleneck, where they become the bottleneck to content and they can't do as much as they want because they have to write everything or they're working with other writers and everything has to go through them and they spend hours editing it where they could be working on more profitable projects and it just bottlenecks the whole process. So what I do is I remove that bottleneck.
Angie Colee (07:22):
Oh, that's perfect. That's perfect. So I know before we got on the call, you were telling me a little bit about a struggle with your first writing client. So you want to share a little bit more about that?
Justin Blackman (07:34):
So this was a, a guy that made custom mouth guards and she was a great product. It doesn't sound fancy and it's not, but it was actually a cool product. It was great for, uh, you know, athletes and, um, people that, uh, uh, grinded their teeth at night. It was a really good product. And he was leading with one message and he was doing it for a long time and he was doing quite well. I came on to help with sales and I looked at one of his emails and I was like, you know what? I think that this could be done better. And I said, do you mind if I rewrite it? And we did it and he was, he read it. He said oh, this is interesting. Let's try it. My email had a 200% higher conversion rate than his, so double the sales.
Justin Blackman (08:17):
Yeah, it did really, really well. And again, this was when I was just kind of figuring out what copywriting was, but I hit it out of the park. He then went, and this was like this, 'cause I was getting paid on commission for this. So we did it as a test project. I said, you know, I'll make some money on the back end if this works. And he saw that and he goes, all right, good job. But let's see if it was a fluke. And he wanted me to write more free work. And I said, you know what? I think that this is pretty good. And he goes, well, I guess we're never going to know. And he wouldn't, he wouldn't let me, he wouldn't trust that my, he wouldn't, he wouldn't let himself be beat. And he wouldn't acknowledge the fact that my work wasn't a fluke and my work was good.
Justin Blackman (08:59):
My work was based on consumer research and feedback, things that I had taken from field marketing and lead with that. And it did really, really well, but in my head, I always wondered if it was a fluke. And I wondered if I was really any good. The fact is that lack of confidence and that questioning stuck with me for four years to the point where it wasn't until I recently started, like getting into mindset about, you know, year and a half, two years ago, that I realized where my lack of confidence came from. It was that first client questioning whether or not I was really any good
Angie Colee (09:33):
And to have that on your very first client where they're questioning the effort that you put in. Uh, I could understand that if you were a brand new writer and this is your very first project, and you're, you're going on commission, because you have no idea whether it's going to work, but you told us so much about your great background and how you've spoken. You were basically in marketing before, and you were just moving from a marketing background into a writing, but still marketing background. It just a different shade of the same thing.
Justin Blackman (10:02):
Yeah.
Angie Colee (10:03):
And that one question, you know, I, I'm gonna put on my judgey hat a little bit here, not knowing much about this client, but personally, I think that's a little bit of a Dick move. Like I can understand how from the business, putting myself in the business owner perspective, if you are just working with somebody and you're nervous about their approach and their approach did way better than you thought I can understand how that instinct is. Maybe this is a fluke, let's try again. But I think by the same, you know, the flip side of that coin is with your fluke. You have proven that you can deliver.
Justin Blackman (10:43):
Yeah.
Angie Colee (10:44):
So it should, you know, business owner mentality, but, but mindset issues too, it should have made sense to invest in trying again,
Justin Blackman (10:54):
it should have.
Angie Colee (10:57):
for whatever reason. And you know, for whatever reason he decided it was a good strategy to tell you that it was on you where, okay, I'm going to, I'm going to be really, really real with everybody listening right now. I'm a marketing expert. I have no idea why half the campaigns I write work. There are so many different things that play, you know, timing. And what happened in the news today on this campaign that I've been working on for months could affect it. The technology could go wonky. Like so many things are changing at lightning speed these days that it's almost impossible to know what's working, what's not working. You've just gotta use your, your gut instinct and your best guess, educated guess, knowing your market the way you do, and then throw shit against the wall to see what sticks.
Justin Blackman (11:44):
So let's see a line it's a, that now needs an update. It's 50% of my marketing. Only 50% of my marketing works problem is I know which 50%
Angie Colee (11:55):
I think that was an Ogilvy line or something.
Justin Blackman (11:58):
So I think now it's updated. We know that 50% of our marketing works. We just don't know why, you know, sometimes we do, but we like when you A/B test, you can ask any marketer. They're like, there are times that the ones that I know will win, lose. Just don't know why.
Angie Colee (12:17):
Yeah.
Justin Blackman (12:18):
goes against every fathomable expectation,
Angie Colee (12:21):
But it does. And we're recording this at the beginning of March. So just two weeks ago, there was a massive freeze that took out all of Texas and a good portion of the country. So, I mean, talk about planning your marketing for weeks and months and having promotions that are set to go the day that freeze hits. Well, there's no way that you could have predicted that would happen. Are you going to determine that your marketing is a failure because you didn't get sales the day that Texas went dark, that might've impacted it. You know, that's another little tangent, but that's what I love about this podcast. It was like, you never know what's going to happen. So you just kind of have to plan, put your heart behind it, say, Hey, I really hope this works. I'm doing this with the best of intentions. Let's go.
Justin Blackman (13:05):
Yeah.
Angie Colee (13:06):
And then learn what you can from that. So I don't know, my like four years, that's a hell of a long impact for that comment to stay there. Like.
Justin Blackman (13:17):
it was, It was brought on by the fact that when I worked in corporate, uh, and this is actually where the root of my love for brand voice came in. When I worked for corporate, everything that I wrote went through rounds of approvals and usually had at least 12 people's eyes on it. So everybody had an opinion. Everybody changed it. And I was essentially the low man on the totem pole because all the stakeholders and the directors and the VPs and the presidents of the departments would all weigh in and change things to the point that when it finally went out, it was a watered down version. And I wasn't really happy with it. Sometimes it went out pretty quick sometimes it just got stripped. And every time I cringed a little bit and I was like, I guess, you know what? I wrote wasn't any good because it got, it got put down. And the same on the same token, there were times when it was like, Hey, a spot just opened up for tomorrow. Can you write an email that we can get out right away or something, there was a glitch in the system. Can you rewrite something right now? Every time I did that, those emails crushed, but it didn't go through all those approvals.
Angie Colee (14:27):
That's the down side of copy by committee and really any kind of creativity by committee. Like we used to joke because I come from a corporate background too. My creative director used to have this practice of 95% done, which sounds kind of funny, but like we did that deliberately 95% done. And that's because we knew once it went to approvals, somebody higher up is going to want to put their little thumbprint on it. Like I did this, so we would deliberately like, this sounds really bad. We'd leave a typo in a very obvious spot. Something that somebody could come and fix and be like, aha, I caught you. You stupid creative. It would be like, good as long as you didn't touch the rest of the messaging. So we'd like, self-sabotage a little bit just to get the thing through.
Justin Blackman (15:10):
I've done that.
Angie Colee (15:11):
And then I know, you know me because I'm feisty. And I like to argue a little bit,
Justin Blackman (15:16):
little bit,
Angie Colee (15:18):
little bit understatement of the century there. Um, part of the reason that I'm so adamant in all of the groups that I like, I coach and give advice about pick your battles is because I burned out hardcore, in corporate turning every thing into a bite. If they didn't agree with my approach to something, Ooh, man, I'd bring in like stacks of research. I'd set up the presentation. I argued with them over everything instead of just letting things go. And I don't remember when it kind of dawned on me how much energy and power I was giving away. Just some things weren't worth the fight.
Justin Blackman (15:54):
Yeah.
Angie Colee (15:55):
You know,
Justin Blackman (15:56):
I went the opposite. I wanted to be liked. So I would just let anybody tear it apart, which goes back to that lack of competence, because I didn't know if I was any good. Maybe it was a fluke. Maybe these guys know better. There's a reason why they're in the bigger office than me. Wasn't the case. My confidence was shot where the fact that I wouldn't stand up for my work and I do now. Uh, but I'm also very careful with what I fight about. Um, I do not, I've written so much work and this goes back to the, all the headlines and all the clients that I've written for that I don't get too attached. I don't get attached to anything that I ever write. I have no problem slashing my favorite lines, the whole kill, kill your darlings or murder your darlings. I have no problem doing that. You don't even have darlings anymore. Like I'll write, I'll look at a line and think, Oh, that's a good line. If we cut it, it stings for like half a second. And then I move on it. Okay.
Angie Colee (16:48):
You know, that's a good point too, for all creatives. I mean, in writing, we have that term killing your babies. You're killing your darlings, which means basically don't fall in love with the work because sometimes it just doesn't work here. That doesn't mean that it doesn't work ever. But like for this particular piece that you're writing this thing doesn't work and you have to be willing to cut it. If it doesn't work, no matter how much you love it. And I think the same thing holds true for just about any creative field out there. Like if something is not working, you have to be willing to omit it from this piece that you're working on so that this piece can stand on its own. So interesting. You know, back to the confidence hit that you took from that. What helped you snap out of that?
Justin Blackman (17:33):
It was after I wrote for the 329 different people
Angie Colee (17:38):
That might help a little bit just volume
Justin Blackman (17:41):
As I was doing that. I was still wondering if I was any good because I wasn't getting a lot of feedback. I was, I was in my copy cave. I was in the shut up and let me write phase. And I loved it. I didn't have to deal with clients. Intake forms came to me. I got sheets. I did a little bit of research. I watched some stuff I wrote and I handed it out. The account managers took everything from there and they put it out, but I didn't get the results every now and again, I would get like a line from the account manager would tell me like the client absolutely loved it. Here's a, an email praising you, which was great. I thrived on that happy little hugs, big fan, but I never knew if it performed because I wasn't getting that data every now and again, they would just, they would show me something like, Oh my God, this ad crushed like do more like that. And I would, but then out of 329, maybe I got that like 10 times, 11 times, which, I mean, I was happy to get those, but in between I wasn't getting anything. And I finally asked one day, I was like, you know, what is, I don't know if what I'm doing is any good. And he goes dummy. If it wasn't any good, would we have let you write 329 of them?
Justin Blackman (18:53):
All right. I guess that makes sense.
Angie Colee (18:55):
I love the bluntness, but I also, like, I'm just kind of shaking my head over here at how something can be so obvious to one person, but not at all obvious to someone else on the other end of that. 'Cause I I've been there too. Like how the hell do I know? Am I even any good at this? And they're like, we wouldn't have kept you around if you sucked at it. And I'm like, well, try expressing that in your use your words. Tell me the thing
Justin Blackman (19:23):
He did. Tell me when I did the test project for him, that I was the first person in four years to ever nail it on the first try. So I went in with guns blazing. I was like, yeah, I'm good. But then like the feedback stopped. And, and um, that being said, like when I hear, uh, Stefan, Georgi, he was talking about how he was writing all these sales letters and the way that he got great really fast and where his competence came from was he was constantly getting the results and measuring to see what worked. So he would be able to use those on further letters. That's how he came up with his system. I didn't have that last part. I was doing the same amount of work with him, but I didn't know what was working. And I didn't have that confidence to carry it forward, to be able to say, this is why that ad did well. I'm going to do more like it. That was a missing element for me.
Angie Colee (20:15):
Yeah. And I think, I mean, that's critical because we did talk about not really knowing why things work or don't work, but this kind of goes in that educated guess column, right. We know from historical data that this particular strategy works. So I'm going to try this again and modify it for whatever I'm working on. That's usually a good baseline of this has worked for me in the past. So I'm going to try this again and make it fit for this product or this audience or, or whatever. So that's how you reconcile those two thoughts. And you know, for everybody listening, that's new to the copy world. Stefan is another industry leader in the copywriting industry who has come up with a particular research style. And he has like a formula for writing sales letters and sales pages that is really effective because it just takes you through a specific line of thinking to help get your messaging in order and reach the people on the other end and in a very emotionally appealing way.
Angie Colee (21:14):
Um, but without formulas like that, to your point, it's hard to know what is working and what is just, Oh my God, I love this idea. Let's see how well they like it. And then throw it out there that reminds me of this one, one of the best stories that I got, or one of the best pieces of learning I got from my copy chief, when I worked in house was I had written this magazine ad. And to this day, I can't remember what I actually said, but at the time I thought it was the most brilliant thing that had ever been written. It's so funny. And it's understated and people are just going to laugh. I take this magazine ad to the review meeting where my chief reads it and he kind of smirks out a little bit. And then he looks at me and he goes, I don't get it.
Justin Blackman (22:00):
Oh, dagger. Oh,
Angie Colee (22:02):
I know. And then I looked at him, you know, I mentioned earlier in the call, I'm a little bit of a fighter. So I looked at him and I was like, okay, well here's the point of the joke? And I walked him through it and he goes, Oh yeah, that's super funny. Could you please have new copy on my desk this afternoon? And I was like, what? Why do I have to rewrite this thing? You said, you've got the joke. And he said, this thing that has stuck with me ever since he goes, Angie, can you follow the truck and explain this joke to everybody at the magazine stand? And I was like, well, no, that's not humanly possible. And he goes, exactly. If it's not clear enough for them to get it without you following the truck and explaining the joke, it's not clear enough period. You need to go rewrite it. And I was like, Oh shit. That makes sense that I really hate you. Yeah.
Justin Blackman (22:52):
That's the worst. It's like all comedians. I study a lot of comedy. And I've said this before that if you study the rules of comedy and you study the rule for copywriting, if you made a Venn diagram, you'd have a circle.
Angie Colee (23:06):
That's true.
Justin Blackman (23:07):
The overlap Is there. It's almost identical. Um, but one of the, like all comedians have a joke that they love, but they know doesn't work and they like keep it in their act. And then eventually they go to another comic and they're like, Hey, do you want this joke? I can't do anything with it. You can't do anything with it. Why do you think I like that? They won't kill it. They won't kill their darling. And it's like, they try and they try it. And then like after years, like, oh fine, alright.
Angie Colee (23:34):
But my secret weapon after all this time, and it's probably taking up like gigabytes on my computer at this point is I have a swipe file, which is, this is common in copywriting to have a swipe file, which is like little bits of inspiring writing that you see out and about in the world. That'll spark an idea when you're looking at a blank sheet of paper and trying to create something from scratch. I have a swipe file of my own writing because I really buy into that. Like no time spent writing is ever really wasted. And so if I had to cut something from one piece, 'cause it didn't work there, I throw it into the swipe doc. And then someday when I'm writing again, I'm like, didn't, I make a joke that one time about, you know, this thing, I'll go look up that key word and see if I can remember what that joke was and see if it works in this piece. Um, yeah, we're talking about pages and pages and pages.
Justin Blackman (24:27):
I wish I have a notebook just filled with like random things. And it's like, but there's no context to it. And like I'll open it up and it'd be like hidden pumpernickel. I don't know what that is.
Angie Colee (24:43):
What was I talking about. I have no idea,
Justin Blackman (24:46):
but at the time it was genius.
Angie Colee (24:49):
Absolutely genius. Uh, so yeah. Then that's the, I think the overall point of being willing to let go of something, if it's not clear or if it's not working in this piece is years later, are you even going to remember what that genius thing was? I sure don't but I know I was 5000% convinced that that was genius and it was the best thing I've ever written. And I don't even know what it is anymore
Speaker 3 (25:13):
And for, for anyone who writes about bread, feel free to use hidden pumpernickel. And let me know how it does.
Angie Colee (25:19):
It's a winner, it's a winner.
Justin Blackman (25:20):
Control beater
Angie Colee (25:24):
So I love this thing about confidence because I don't know to create requires a certain amount of faith, right? inner faith in yourself and your capabilities. Because if you're already going to create whether you're setting the frame for a photo or you're painting, or you're getting ready to bake something from scratch, and you're just feeling inspired. If you're second guessing, every single choice that you make in the course of creating this thing in writing, we call it your internal editor. If you're letting your editor out while you're trying to write, then that's almost a guarantee that what you're working on is going to turn out like crap.
Justin Blackman (26:02):
Yeah.
Angie Colee (26:03):
Because you're not just, you're not letting that inner creative person out to play just to see what happens on the off chance that it might fail, because it might be bringing something that exists only in your head into the light of day is an exercise in and of itself. And it doesn't always work out.
Justin Blackman (26:26):
So this is, I think this is the, uh, the open loop that I said before about, um, where some of the challenges came in is I was getting to that point where the more I would learn, the more I started to question my work to try to figure out if it was any good and I would edit sentences as I go. And it would take me days to write something that should have taken minutes because I kept editing it editing. And I kept trying to look for research to validate every single word in every single sentence. And I thought that if I had learned one more lesson or took one more class or read one more article or discovered one more hidden Himalayan secret of pumpernickel, um, that I would have figured out the reason, but all it did is make the anxiety of writing worse.
Justin Blackman (27:11):
And that's when I got into the mindset and it was actually, it was Ian Stanley who, you know, um, who taught me that at that point I was writing for myself and not the audience and my ego was getting in the way. And that's where I had to figure out like, Oh, this isn't, I'm doing this for me. I'm not doing it for anybody else. I'm doing it because I want to prove to people that I'm a good writer rather than the fact of acknowledging that I am a good writer. And that's when everything started to change.
Angie Colee (27:38):
You know, that's interesting because I didn't realize it until you just pointed that out, that I've had that situation pop up a couple of times with writers that I have coached or, you know, overseen, chiefed, uh, in, in the roles that I've functioned in. I have two specific instances where I remember somebody was writing a sales letter and the, I think I was on their third or fourth draft. And I kept saying this isn't working and here are the reasons that I'm struggling and something in the way they responded to my feedback instantly made it clear that they were trying to impress me not. And I said, okay, okay. I think I understand what the challenge is you want me to acknowledge that you're a good writer here. I am saying that you're a good writer. I like your writing this isn't working. If you write this for the person on the other end, that you're going to help. And not me, you will automatically get my approval as a good writer because you're writing for the people that you need to be writing for, which is them. Don't write to impress me, write to impress the person on the other end. And the very next draft that he turned in, I was like, yep, it's perfect ship. It let's do this. Yeah,
Justin Blackman (28:45):
That's it. Cause they wrote for the right person. I was writing for my ego and my ego is a Dick.
Angie Colee (28:53):
I agree. We're our own harshest critics on that. Um, I said that in a previous podcast episode too, that my inner Angie is a bitch. Like she will not shut up.
Justin Blackman (29:05):
And th the, the, the other challenge with that is it's a sliding scale where the more I would learn, the more my ego would, would move up too. So I would never catch up to that point. And that's when I finally had to realize. Like, you know what, I'm good. I can look back and see the changes that I've made. And it gets to the point when I start fiddling with commas and changing them to em, dashes. I know that it's ready.
Angie Colee (29:28):
All of that little stuff, that the thumbprint, all of that stuff, that doesn't really matter. Um,
Justin Blackman (29:34):
I also have the other technique that I use as soon as I convince myself that it's crap. I know it's good. That's what I said. So my confidence kicks in and I know I'm ready for the run.
Angie Colee (29:48):
Yeah. To have that signal in there, we're like, okay, this is the point where I know it's ready to go. That's why I laugh. 'Cause we're, we're in a lot of writing groups together. And when people get so wound up over commas or typos or things like that, like does this impact that, Hey, Hey, here's, here's a new flat newsflash for all of you writers out there. Sometimes your brain inserts the right word. If a word is missing, sometimes my brain doesn't even register that there's a typo there. And that happens to your audience too. So the typo thing that we're getting our panties all in a wad over isn't nearly as big of a thing, I mean, we're all going to laugh when a sign says shit instead of shirt, but then we're going to move on with our days. And I'm going to be a little bit grateful that I had an unexpected laugh. Thank you, typo.
Justin Blackman (30:36):
So like when I had public relations and forgot the first L in my resume,
Angie Colee (30:42):
Wait, walk me through this. Cause I'm not getting it. I'll be like relations. Oh God, pubic relations
Justin Blackman (30:49):
there you go. It Was on my resume.
Angie Colee (30:51):
That's fantastic.
Justin Blackman (30:52):
for like six months.
Angie Colee (30:55):
Certainly that would catch my attention at a higher end role. And I'd be like, are you sure you want to, like, are we talking about genitals here? And let's be specific. It works.
Justin Blackman (31:06):
I got a job I'm still on there.
Angie Colee (31:08):
Exactly. Yeah. Those are the little things that we get tied up in trying to make perfect. And we make a mountain out of a molehill when really, I think intent matters for a lot. If you care about the person that you're making the art for, whether that's writing, whether that's sculpting or baking a cake and you're doing your best, that counts for probably 80 to 90% of it.
Justin Blackman (31:31):
agreed.
Angie Colee (31:32):
And there's always going to be room to improve and get better. Lord knows. I can look at the same thing and find something to change every single time it crosses my desk. But at some point it's gotta be good enough to just let go of it and move on to the next thing. Otherwise you are, what is it? Uh, Moby Dick captain Ahab.
Justin Blackman (31:53):
hunting the white whale.
Angie Colee (31:54):
hunting the white whale that it's going to wreck everything. Oh yeah. So Justin, it has been a pleasure talking to you today. I want to do this again for sure. When did you tell everybody a little bit more about how to find out more about you?
Justin Blackman (32:09):
Well, there's a couple of different ways, uh, depending on whatever your cup of tea is, if you want to learn how to write silly and all the weird things that I learned writing for the 329 different people and developing their styles and their quirks, I've documented all of that. And that's in a ridiculous little writing course called write more personalityer
Angie Colee (32:31):
I love that. You could say that without tripping up over it.
Justin Blackman (32:35):
This is another thing where that was actually written like as a placeholder, but people liked it and it hurts my soul to say it. And I sound like I'm drunk when I actually say it. Uh, 'cause it's so grammatically incorrect, but that's okay. The world likes it. That's actually the proof of the course. It teaches you new grammar rules. I'm actually a stickler for the rules. I just play by different rules. That's all documented that's at Justin blackman.com, which is me. Um, and then if you want to learn the secrets of voice guides and how to codify voice that is of course taught by me and Abbey Woodcock, who you also know that's codex persona.com, or if you just want me to write down words for you on the internet that's at pretty fly copy.com.
Angie Colee (33:18):
Fantastic. And I will make sure that they have all of these links, all clickable in the show notes for you. So I am so happy that we got to do this today. I think confidence is such an important thing to talk about as a creative figuring out how to shore up that own your own internal confidence in your own internal compass so that you know, which direction to follow, even when people don't agree with you. So important.
Justin Blackman (33:43):
mindset is a thing.
Angie Colee (33:45):
Absolutely. All right, we're going to do this again soon. Take care.
Justin Blackman (33:48):
Cool.
Angie Colee (33:52):
So that is it another awesome episode of permission to kick on the books. If you want to know more about the show, if you want to know more about me, Angie Colee and the mission I'm on to help entrepreneurs punch fear in the face and do big bold things, then head on over to permission to kick ass.com.
Speaker 1 (34:10):
That is all one word together, permission to kick ass.com, make sure to sign up for my email list so that, you know, whenever there's a hot, fresh and ready podcast episode out for you. And also on Mondays, I like to send out a little newsletter called kick Mondays ass I'm sure you're totally, totally surprised by that. So thank you for being here with me today. I'm Angie Colee. Make sure that you share this with a friend that needs to hear this message today. Like it, share it, comment wherever you're listening to this today and let's go kick some ass.