The Greatest Copywriting Event In History
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In this special episode of Copy Lab, host Sara Estes shares her takeaways from Copy Chief LIVE Nashville — what's now being called "The Greatest Copywriting Event in History."
You get a front-row seat to the epic 2-day event, hearing firsthand about the insights and advice shared on stage by the world's top copywriters, like Parris Lampropoulos, Jeff Walker, Kevin Rogers, Chris Orzechowski, Marcella Allison, and more.
Join Sara as she delves into her experience meeting renowned copywriters like Laura Belgray, Stan Dahl, and Daniel Throssell and the practical advice she gained from them.
In a time when there’s a growing reliance on A.I, the success of Copy Chief Live reminded us all about the irreplaceable value of human creativity, connection, and vulnerability in the world of writing.
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(This is transcribed by 🤖 so please excuse the funky sentence breaks, misplaced periods, and typos. The robots are doing their best!)
[00:00:00] There is nothing, nothing like getting in a room with a group of people in real life and making connections. If you have the opportunity to get into rooms with the right people, with people who inspire you, with people who are doing what you want to do, it's worth every penny.Hello and welcome to the copy lab podcast, the marketing and business podcast that teaches you how to write better, sell more and ignite your business. Even if you suck at writing. I'm your host Sara Estes – entrepreneur, copywriter, marketing strategist ,and founder of copy tiger where I help changemakers Disruptors and dreamers get their message to the masses. Let's get started.
Hello, hello, and welcome to this week's episode of Copy Lab. As always, I am super excited to be here with you. There's so much I want to say in this episode. This one is going to be all about my takeaways from an event, a live event here in Nashville called Copy Chief Live. And if you happen to be a copywriter, there's a good chance, if you follow any major copywriters on LinkedIn or wherever, you might have heard about this event.
This event was absolutely insane. Basically, every legendary copywriter, or a lot of them, were in town, in Nashville, at this incredible event. It was two days of speakers, Laura Belgray, Parris Lampropoulos, Brian Kurtz, Chris Orzechowski, Marcella Allison, Ryan Lee, Daniel Throssell, Justin Blackman, the list just goes on.
It was incredible. And What I want to do today is talk about my takeaways from each of the talks, but also I just want to talk about live events in general. So it's been a long time since I've been at an event like that that I was as excited for. I've been in a copywriting mastermind, but everything is on Zoom, which is great, and it's a good solution to, um, you know, connect people and disseminate information and to learn and grow.
But I have to say, there is nothing. Nothing like getting in a room with a group of people in real life and making connections. And Daniel Throstle sent out an email after the first day of the event talking about how transformative it is to have these real life meetups. And one thing he pointed out about why it's so impactful is this idea of physical touch.
And I mean just light physical touches, a high five, a handshake, a pat on the shoulder, you know, those types of things, when you're able to communicate with people like that for some reason I think it's something psychological. It is just a deeper bond than when you're on Zoom. I just don't think there's anything that compares.
And what's amazing is that I went to dinner and out to drinks and all this stuff with this big group of people and met these awesome copywriters. Those are memories and feelings of joy that I will absolutely never, ever forget. The Zooms. Those can get a little blurry in my memory sometimes of, you know, what was said.
And oftentimes I don't really make the connections that I hope to make, especially when it's like a group call. Um, even if it's in, you know, a mastermind or something like that, the connections are just a little thinner. So what was really amazing about this event is I was able to make connections with.
Dozens of people and these are people that might change the trajectory of my career and that's a huge huge opportunity So I just want to give a huge shout out to Kevin Rogers of copy chief for putting that event together It was truly an experience of a lifetime and everyone keeps talking about it No one will stop talking about it all the pictures all the things that happened all the stories.
It was just so much fun and it's one of those things that I feel like in 20 years we'll look back at that so many of us as a pivotal moment in our careers when we got to meet and connect with all of these legends in the industry and it was just honestly it's still kind of surreal to think about all the amazing stuff that happened some of my favorite memories Number one, when we first got there, we did a VIP cocktail party that was on when it was Wednesday, Thursday, Friday was the event.
But if you were one of the first people to buy tickets to the event, you got into this VIP cocktail party. So it was really limited. And it was the day before the event officially started. Well, when I first got there, I was feeling just a little bit nervous because we, you know, you walk into a room and it's just a lot of people and And I just felt my nerve kicking a little so I beelined outside.
There was like a little deck patio situation So I beelined it outside and there's Daniel Throssell and Stephen Young who are both Amazing. Daniel's an awesome copywriter and just a general cool dude. And so I sat at a table with them two and we all just kind of talked about how nervous we were. Daniel was about to puke because he was nervous about his talk the next day.
And we just sat out there and commiserated until all of us built up the momentum to Go inside or you know more people started coming outside. So the tension kind of dissipated I think we all started to feel a lot more comfortable once we got in the rhythm of networking like that So that was really fun.
And on the last day of the event, there was a Dinner for female copywriters. That was one of the best dinners that I've ever went to in my entire life It was absolutely amazing. I got to sit across from Laura Belgray and Marcella Allison was on my right and We just talked and chatted over wine and had an amazing time.
Laura Belgray even gave me a critique of my website and offered me some changes, which was fucking phenomenal. And I just got to be around these incredible powerhouse badass women, which was so invigorating and so inspiring. And I feel like I took more from that handful of hours being in that dinner with those women than I have in.
So many of the week long courses that I've taken about business or copywriting or whatever. I mean, just being there in the room, soaking up the genius was incredibly powerful for me and something that I will remember forever. And after that dinner, we ended up going to this place called Bar Sovereign in Nashville.
And that is where I got to have drinks and hang out with Stan Dahl, who is the owner and CEO of Marketing Rebel, which is, as far as I know, the only place that you can get one of my favorite copywriting books, Kickass Copywriting Secrets of a Marketing Rebel, which is just a phenomenal book. So, I got to kick it with Stan Dahl and Justin Blackman, who...
is widely known as the expert in brand voice, and I got to chat with him a little bit about his awesome tool called Verbatim, which I use all the time. It is a free online tool that helps you detect brand voice and helps you really deconstruct a brand's voice in a way that allows you to recreate it and get pretty spot on.
So it's an incredible tool. I recommend it for any copywriter, especially if you are. doing test projects, or you're trying to match a brand's voice, especially if they have an interesting or like hard to nail down brand voice, this will help you deconstruct the elements so that you can put them back together in a repeatable way.
So I want to briefly talk about the speakers and what they discussed on stage. The theme of the entire event was the future of copywriting, and Most of the speakers spoke on that, but not all of them, but they all had really incredible perspectives on Sort of what's happening in the world of copywriting now, which I absolutely loved So first off Kevin Rogers opened the event did panel discussions did interviews with different speakers and that man is Hilarious what a cool dude with such a big heart and just a delight to be around.
I totally fell in love with him and his style and his delivery and he just cares so much about connecting people and helping people get to that next stage in their freelance career or in their business. And after that event, I walked away with so much respect for him. So anytime he was on stage, it was awesome to hear him talk and tell stories about how Copy Chief has evolved and his whole background.
He started in comedy and then became a copywriter, and he had a lot of great stories about, um, his trajectory too. So that was really cool. Another one of my favorite speakers was, of course, Laura Belgray. Laura Belgray was the copywriter for Marie Forleo, and She also co created the CopyCure, which is a phenomenal copywriting course that you can get through Marie's site.
And I just absolutely love it. Actually, I think it's coming out soon. I think they're doing the next round of the CopyCure, uh, live launch soon. So Laura is a big part of that and I love her style. If you're not on her email list, you are absolutely missing out. She sends hilarious emails that are all very story based and she's just not afraid to call it like it is.
And it's... It's really awesome. She has her own style. She does her own thing and she is completely unapologetic. On stage, she talked about her book writing process. So she just came out with a book called Tough Titties, which I got a signed copy, which was awesome. And she talked about that whole process and this idea that the publishing companies don't help you sell your book a lot of the times.
They'll publish it, but it's on you to market and sell your book, which is pretty crazy. Thank goodness, someone like Laura has all kinds of marketing savvy and knows how to do that, knows how to, um, you know, do lead generation and create funnels and, you know, do email prep. But that's a word of warning for people who are looking to get a book deal and get it published.
Just know that the selling of the book is on you, which is a huge undertaking. So Laura's talk with Kevin was really amazing. Um. Eye opening in terms of what it takes to launch and write and sell a book and get it on the charts. And then there was Daniel Throssell. Daniel Throssell has become sort of a controversial figure in the email writing world because he has a huge following with his email list.
And he has this persona of kind of being a dick, so he writes these emails, makes fun of people, um, ruffles feathers, gets in these little scuffles with other copywriters, and he's just always at the center of some kind of drama, some kind of controversy, but I've always seen it as good fun. I think it's, it's so nerdy half the time that it is just very entertaining for copywriters.
He's definitely a copywriter's copywriter. His site, his email, the funnel that you go down, his parallel welcome sequence which he created, all that stuff is just fodder for people who love words and love copywriting concepts. So Daniel flew all the way from Australia to be at this event. This was his first speaking event and he did amazing.
He talked about Social proof and testimonials. He pointed out the importance of social proof and getting, and getting other people to say stuff about you. He also talked about, in reference to his emails and all this controversy that I was talking about, he did a really good job of explaining the idea of creating a character when you are doing certain types of writing.
So for him, he has created this character, which is the Daniel Throssell who writes the emails. And that's just not the same as Daniel Throssell, the father and husband who's at home. So he really takes on this character in his emails where he's a lot more brash and argumentative and willing to say stuff.
He's not necessarily like that in his normal life. So that's really interesting because You know, you always hear this advice of be yourself, just be you, be authentic, be natural, where Daniel was talking about. No, just build a character and let that character play out in the world and it's an easier way to put yourself out there and put your ideas out there.
If you can create a sort of character and, you know, we've seen that in like Beyonce has her Sasha Fierce character, which has helped her, you know, kind of go on stage and be able to switch between the onstage performer persona and then the at home, just real life persona. So I do think that that is a really.
Smart way to compartmentalize different types of your personality so that you can perform and you can be on in these moments where you need to be a little bit fearless and be out in the public eye. So I thought that was really cool about Daniel's talk. Another talk that I loved was Justin Blackman, and he has come to.
My copywriting mastermind, the one that I'm in with Alex Catone, he came and spoke to our group not too long ago and taught us all about brand voice, which, you know, that's when I really started to come online with that and understand like exactly how to mimic someone's brand voice and talk in their voice.
So he taught me a lot about that. So I was. Super excited to hear him talk at this event and what he ended up talking about was this idea about how you have to his line that I loved that I wrote down in my notes immediately. He said, if you want to stand out, you have to stand up and what he was referring to is this idea that as copywriters as freelancers as business owners as entrepreneurs that we have to stand for something and that.
In the future, when you're going to have, you know, AI just writing generic, bland copy, that really our power as human writers is in our ability to have strong opinions and to pick fights with certain things that don't align with our values. So the point of his whole talk was to have a cause. So as a copywriter, we need to stand for something.
We need to have a cause that we fight for, and we need to have compassion. And he described compassion as interest plus Action, which I really loved. That's a very good definition for compassion. He also made the point. He was talking about websites and you know What's on our website and he said that in regards to websites and i'll remember this forever when I Am creating them.
He said people are hunting to discredit you when they go to your website And that just blew my mind because he said it so perfectly. People are hunting to discredit you when they visit your website. They are looking for things, so you have to be so on point with every word, every message, everything that you put on there because people really are looking for ways that they can say, Oh, no, this is a scam.
This is not for me. This is, you know, I don't want to buy from this person and they're coming in very critical. And so we have to really think about that as we're creating our websites and laying them out and they deserve all of our attention and they deserve to be put together really well, not just slap together with whatever kind of copy and messaging and photos that are available.
And I really loved the importance of that message. A couple of other nuggets from Justin's talk were a few quotes that I loved. He quoted Ben Settle, who's another great email copywriter. Ben said, people listen to experts, they follow leaders. That I loved. Very, very, very true. He also quoted Neil Gaiman.
He was talking about style and voice and all that. Neil Gaiman said, style is the stuff you get. wrong, which is just a beautiful way to sum up how style comes about and how we become known for something. And a lot of the times it is how we divert from the rules, how we do something different, which is a lot of times considered quote unquote wrong.
So the idea that style is what you get wrong was a beautiful reframe of making mistakes or shirking the rules. Or just doing what other people aren't doing. Then we get to Parris Lampropoulos, who was the star of the show by far, one of, you know, he, Parris is known as the top copywriter in the world. So to be able to be in the same room as him, talk to him, shake his hand, um, hear him speak was really, really phenomenal.
Um, his talk inspired me a great deal. talked about essentially what separates the average copywriter from that top 1%. And he talked a lot about the 80 20 principle, which is a book that I'm actually reading right now. So it was very relevant for me. So he talked about the 80 20 principle, which is essentially that 80 percent of the results come from 20 percent of the effort.
So it's really great in evaluating how you spend your time as a business owner, because essentially, 20 percent of what you do is creating 80 percent of the results, so you want to focus on that 20 percent as much as you can and try to enhance that rather than spending your time doing 80 percent of stuff that doesn't actually get your results.
But the 80/20 principle plays out in so many other ways in society and it's been researched time and time again for eons, and basically it's this ratio that kind of plays into all sorts of things in the economy and society. So, like, 20 percent of all the copywriters make 80 percent of the money. But what Parris talked about that I loved is that it's also fractal.
Meaning, of the 20 percent of copywriters that make 80 percent of the money, 20 percent of that 20 percent make 80 percent of that amount. Right, so it keeps going and it keeps cutting into 20 percent portions, which is kind of crazy to think about, but it's really eye opening if you are kind of hanging around, being average, doing an average amount of work.
And one thing you said is, if you do things the way the majority does them, you will, by definition, get average 80 20 percent rule is, is that the vast majority of People get very average results. The vast majority of copywriters are very average copywriters. They make very average money. So it's important to think of that when you are mapping your goals and your trajectory, and even just your day to day, which is that, you know, you need to be consistent and you need to be aiming higher or else you're going to land in that 80 percent of very average people.
I really loved hearing him talk. It was awesome and inspiring and kind of, uh, lit a fire under me to try and be above average in my professional dreams and goals. And then there was Jeff Walker, who is the founder of Product Launch Formula, and he talked about concepts in launches, and he's kind of the father of launches.
He started it like 20 years ago, and he has been studying and producing All kinds of amazing launch funnels for a long time now. And something that I loved that he said is what makes a launch work is your ability to create desire before availability and value before the reveal. And he said that people need to enroll in themselves.
before they enroll with you, meaning they need to enroll in their future. So when you're doing a launch, you are essentially telling a story, and that story is of your prospect's future self. So you need to get them to buy into who they could be in the future before they're ever going to enroll in your course or whatever you're launching.
So this idea, I really love this idea that They need to enroll in themselves before they enroll in you. I thought that was really beautiful. One of the other talks that I loved was Chris Orzechowski. He is one of the great email copywriters. He's created an awesome email copywriting course, which is called Email Copy Academy.
And he's just done a lot of really cool stuff. He runs a seven figure email agency, and he's just doing really badass stuff. stuff in that world. And he talked a lot about the business of copywriting, meaning running an agency and figuring out how to diversify your revenue so that you're not just doing client work.
And he spoke about the future of copywriting in a different way, but his big piece of advice, which I, which really hit home is he talked about building a moat around your business. And if you haven't heard this concept, it's talked about a lot in different like stock investing, um, books because you, you want to invest in a company.
That has a moat around it. And what that means is it's just something that makes them uniquely different so that they don't really even have competition. Now, of course, every business has competitors, but if you are doing something that's so original and so uniquely you, then you really don't have competitors.
So it's this idea of being a category of one because you're so different because you're doing your own thing, nobody can compete with you. And that's something that every business owner should remember is that we're always trying build a moat. We're always trying to do something in a way that we are in a category of one.
Another thing Chris touched on was the idea of investing your business revenue in three things. Assets, allies, and audience. So this idea that we need to, as a business, be purchasing Assets and then, um, investing in our allies, our network, our groups of people that we surround ourselves with, our friends, our masterminds, that kind of thing.
And then investing in our audience. So creating content, bringing people into our world, growing our email list, that kind of thing. So that was really insightful and I loved his advice. And then there was the insane all star panel that included Brian Kurtz, Ryan Lee, Sean Twain, Daniel Throssell, and Chris Orszagowski, which was...
Bananas to see them all on stage and they talked about all kinds of things But one little nugget that I took away from that panel is they talked about how your back end Offer is what should influence your lead magnet. So if you are into marketing, you know about a lead magnet That's the free thing that you offer in exchange for someone's email address so that might be a PDF or a mini course or an audio training or whatever it is and we often think of lead magnets as being a stepping stone to that next purchase.
So that low end, low ticket offer that you have. So maybe you have a 97 starter course and then you have a high ticket multi week course and then maybe you have coaching and that's your highest ticket offer. Well, what they pointed out was that your lead magnet actually needs to influence and pull in qualified leads for that high ticket back end offer.
That's what you're actually trying to get. So keep that in mind. If you're in the stage where you're trying to figure out what your lead magnet is, think about the highest ticket offer that you have and the thing that's the furthest in your funnel and that's what you want your lead magnet to be influencing.
So don't think about it as just that next step up. Think about it as the lifetime value, the entire scope of what you're offering somebody. So that was very cool. All right. So there were so many other speakers. Those are the highlights that I wanted to talk about today. But if you have the opportunity to get into rooms with the right people, with people who inspire you, with people who are doing what you want to do, it's worth every penny.
Every penny. There's very little that I can compare to that two day event, and let me tell you, I have taken beaucoup of courses. I've been on tons of live Zoom workshops all over the place. I have been in masterminds. I've been in coaching programs. I have done a lot of the online digital realm, and all of that is good.
All of that has its place. I'm not knocking that. But I will say that investing in an IRL in person event was one of the best decisions that I've made this year. And I'm so excited that I did it. I know I've made friends that I'll keep for the rest of my life. And that is absolutely priceless. All right, I'm going to wrap it up there.
It was great talking to you. If you're not already on my email list, go sign up. You can get there by going to copytiger.com/newsletter. It's an inbox party you don't want to miss. And if you haven't yet, please follow and subscribe to this podcast on Spotify, Apple podcasts, wherever you get your podcast.
And remember. The right words can help you make a huge difference in the world. So keep writing. I'll see you in the next episode.