Read The Transcript Of The Episode:

Brittany A.: All right. Are you ready for this?

Jennifer Hudye: I'm so ready.

Brittany A.: Cool. Okay. Let me just pause for one second. Hello, this is Brittany Anderson with the Ultimate Advisor Podcast. I am so excited about today's guest that we are featuring. We are talking today to the lovely Ms. Jennifer Hudye. Jennifer, give us a little shout out.

Jennifer Hudye: I'm so excited to be here, Brittany.

Brittany A.: Awesome. Well, Jennifer, she's amazing. Jennifer is the founder of Conscious Copy & Co. It is the go-to copywriting company for some of the biggest name entrepreneurs and influencers out there. Some that might be familiar to you to our audience is Dan Sullivan, Joe Polish, Brendon Burchard, Bulletproof Coffee, and then of course yours truly.

 She has written for us at Sweet Financial Services and we are just forever grateful to her and her team for the copy that she's done and the impact that she's helping us to make. So Jennifer, I could go on and on about you just because I love the work that you do. I love the work that your team does, but why don't you just give us a little bit about yourself? Talk about your journey and kind of who you are and where you came from.

Jennifer Hudye: Yeah. So I will share a bit about my journey here in a moment and just want to highlight my passion is really helping entrepreneurs, business owners in being able to communicate what they do in a way that gets people to take action. Because there's nothing worse than knowing that you have the most amazing product or service that can genuinely help people that consistently gets them results. But then you kind of feel like the best kept secret or you feel like people ...

 When you are sharing in your messaging or in your marketing, it's really confusing. And so that whole why the mission started way back when I was much younger. I grew up in a town of 500 people in Saskatchewan, Canada. Grew up in a family of farmers that were a really, really savvy entrepreneurs.

 And throughout growing up, I was just immersed into entrepreneurship and like really, really fell in love with it. So growing up in a really small town and my dad having a service-based business in the farming industry, I got to see like how deep the relationships got. Like him and my uncle who owned the company at the time just really, really showed up for their clients in such a big way.

 They're like family. Their clients would come over for a dinner and I'll often times ... I experienced them as family, and so that was something that was planted into my awareness early on. And so when I got a bit older, I decided that I wanted to go to Arizona, to business school and move across the country.

 And by the time I was 18 years old, I had started a couple of businesses with a couple of my siblings and one of the businesses we sold for a little over a million dollars when I was 18 years old. So entrepreneurship has always been in my blood.

 But I got really fascinated with the online marketing world when I was in college. I actually interned for Harvey Mackay, if you've heard of Harvey Mackay, he wrote the book, Swim With The Sharks Without Being Eaten Alive. So forever grateful.

 I was not good in school at all. I just did not really have a brain for how the school system was set up and I'm forever grateful because one of my professors saw that and said, "You are not going to thrive in school." He's like, "I see how hard you work in my class and you're like barely getting a C." He introduced me to Harvey Mackay and I got to work with him and one of his partners and really got into the online marketing world.

 I went to one of my first online marketing events, a Brendon Burchard event actually, and I just fell in love with this idea of being able to really help people through digital marketing and like the expert, like business.

 One of the biggest drivers for me that made me fall in love with copy was this idea of being understood. So most of my life, I grew up and the typical entrepreneurial mind where like everything clicked in my brain and I feel like I can just see things a certain way. But it was always really a challenge for me to be able to communicate it.

 And so growing up in a lot of my relationships, I always felt really misunderstood. That really helped me dive into or that really connected me to my why when it came to copy, which is working with these entrepreneurs who are so, so brilliant and they can just see the bigger picture. But then there's a disconnect somewhere between them communicating that bigger picture and how they can help people and how it lands for the clients.

Brittany A.: I think that you bring up something really interesting there. When you talk about just the whole concept of being understood and feeling like ... For your experience, majority of your younger life, you felt misunderstood. I think that's relevant in both regards to a business and communicating your message but also from the client perspective as well.

 You think you're articulating the services that you provide, but I know in the past, before we really started focusing on our copy and before we brought you and your team on and have done a ton of work with our messaging and with our image and brand and all of that, if you would have asked our clients, we actually did this.

 We surveyed our clients, some of our very best clients and said, "If you could communicate in a sentence or two what it is we do, how would you tell somebody about that service?" And they thought for a while, pondered it and they're like, "I guess I don't really know. You just have to experience it."

Jennifer Hudye: Oh, right. That's the worst.

Brittany A.: We're like, "Okay. Well, I guess it's good that you're telling us it's a good experience and you just have to go through it." But in the same token, that was a huge red flag to us because we're like, we need our best clients and our biggest advocates to be able to articulate what the heck it is we do.

 And I know that's a struggle for a lot of financial advisors out there is that you know internally just the amazing services you provide. All of the things that you do to go above and beyond when you're looking at somebody's holistic wealth plan, but how in the world do you articulate that to help the client understand and to come to them to allow the client to also feel understood on the same end so that you're putting your copy out there to address their deepest concerns all while communicating what it is you do and how you can solve those problems.

 So I just think, Jennifer, if you could kind of touch on some of your experiences with how the right copy, how important it is and how it can change the trajectory of your business and even your referral process as well.

Jennifer Hudye: Yeah, I love that you touched on this point. So the first thing that's really important to understand ... If you're listening and you're like, "Okay, but what is copy?" My favorite definition of copy is written words that sell or influence in print.

 I literally picture copy and I got this from our friend Joe Polish, like millions of little salespeople running around selling for you. However, they never call in sick and they never ask for a raise. Whether they get in a fight or they're not ... How they show up to work that day isn't going to change because they got into a fight with their spouse the night before.

 When you craft copy that is clear, that really meets your ideal clients where they're at and compels them to take action and moves them towards your offer, then it's like those millions of little salespeople that are consistent. So that's the first thing.

 The second thing is also understanding the difference between copy and content. So oftentimes, I will have people come to me and they're like, "Oh yeah, I'm like writing copy." But really it's content. And so copy is written words that sell. The whole goal of it is to motivate someone to take action. Whereas content can be just information and education.

 There may be a lot of content writers out there. You may be good at writing content, but do you know the psychology to get someone to take action? And so understanding that first is really key because with content, the goal of content is for someone to understand you. Whereas the goal of copy is to make someone feel understood. Two very different things. And so in your copy ...

 One of my favorite quotes of all time is by an old, old copywriter that's no longer around named Robert Collier. And he has a quote that says, "Enter the conversation that's going on in your prospect's mind." And that is really the key to writing effective copy and marketing that's going to get your ideal client to take action, because 95% of decisions are made from the subconscious.

 That was a study done at Harvard by a researcher that found 95% of our decisions are made from the subconscious. Meaning they're emotional decisions. They're not logical decisions. So oftentimes, business owners and entrepreneurs can get tripped up because they want to obsess about talking about their process and the cool things that they do and kind of the logical parts of how they help their clients.

 But really, you got to focus on that emotion. Like an understanding your ideal client's world and starting to answer some of the questions that they have that are floating around. And the best way to visualize this is by a quote from one of my good friends, Lisa Sasevich. She says, "Sell the destination, not the plane." So focus on that end goal, like how are your clients going to be different? What's their life going to be different after working with you?

 And specifically in financial planning, like really paint the picture of how their life is going to be different. That should be 90% of your copy, in your communication. The other 10% is about your process and how you do what you do, and the delivery method, which we usually have that swapped. We focus on 90% being the delivery.

Brittany A.: Yeah. I'm so glad you brought up that point because we've talked a lot on that under our Ultimate Advisor Coaching. So with a lot of our clients and and in our ... We have bimonthly webinar trainings and we talk a lot about how so many financial advisors. It's not an intentional thing, but you go to their websites and it is literally a bunch of words that's all about them,, how great they are.

 They have to articulate how their process is different, how their methodology is unique, how they can provide great service, financial guidance. And you see so much of the same language across the board where you're really not differentiating because like you said, you're not getting into the client's mind to truly address the questions that are floating around in their head.

 I think the other thing that becomes really relevant here is that for financial advisors, a lot of us ... Well, you look at some of the people who have built their business from the ground up. I mean, they were literally in business, coming into their office 16, 18 hours a day. Sometimes even just sleeping there, cold calling, there was door knocking, there was all of these things that were being done to build their business.

 Now, they've gotten to a certain point and because they have taken on kind of all walks of life through that journey, they get to a point where it's like, "Well, yeah, I want to articulate and given the heads of the people that I can help, but I also want to make sure that I am making it clear that we can help anybody and everybody."

 Whereas as you know, as you get to certain barriers within your business, you get to certain points in your business, you have to learn to appreciate and implement the whole concept of attract and repel.

 Jennifer, I've seen you do presentations on this. I've seen you talk about this live and I think you just have some really great insight into the importance of attract and repel and kind of how it ties into helping your client feel understood, speaking to the right audience and making sure that you are kind of steering away the people that really are not going to be a good fit for you.

Jennifer Hudye: Yeah. Attract and repel is one of the most important concepts to really get in marketing. It's so tempting to want to gravitate towards helping everyone and anyone. But as we both know, that's extremely ineffective and it actually ... The wider the net that you go in trying to make your message stand out to everyone, the more watered down it is.

 And the more the people who are your ideal client, who ... You would just love to work with and that are ... They pay on time and you get along with them and you genuinely help them and they light you up. Those people actually get repelled from your message if your message is too watered down. So the concept of attract and repel basically means you want to get ... This all stems from really, really defining first who your ideal client is.

 We have an exercise that we take our clients through what's called The Ideal Client Snapshot, but it basically walks through four different steps of who is the ideal client and no, it's not everyone. And so you want to go a couple of different layers.

 The first one is what type of characteristics do they have. Say in the financial planning stage, are they a business owner? Are they an executive? Are they in the C-suite? Are they in a particular industry? How much in assets does the ideal client have? Again, this is an exercise and you're really looking at who's your ideal client, not maybe who you're attracting in that isn't the greatest person to work with because your message just becomes a magnet to who you're attracting in. So you want to be using the language of who you want to be attracting in.

 And then you want to go into what are some of the biggest situations that they run into around the topic that you can help them in. And then what do they see the end goal or that destination really looking like for them. Is it that they're able to retire and know that they're not going to have to downsize their life when they retire and they're going to be able to spend even more time with their family and friends? Whatever it may be.

 That's really getting clear of the attracting, and then you also, on the flip side, want to get really clear of who do you want to repel. Even if you say, and it could be so easy to drop into scarcity and be like, "I don't want to attract anyone." Yes, you do.

 We all know that, one, we're multiple clients that by the time it was all said and done, we lost money and we actually paid them to be our crappy client. I've definitely experienced that and it's just like, "Man, I do not want to attract anyone like that ever again." So then you actually map out. "Okay, what were the characteristics of that person?" So that in the messaging and in your copy, you clearly communicate who you want to bring in and who you don't want to bring in. There's a quote like if you try to be everything to everyone, you're going to be nothing to nobody.

Brittany A.: There's so much truth to that. I was just thinking as you were talking through the concept of repelling and how it can be a little bit unnerving, especially as you first go into this. If you're used to maybe taking on kind of anybody who comes through your doorway within ...

 We all have certain guidelines that we look at within our business depending on our practice, but if for the most part you have a pretty ... We'll just call it flexible vetting process for who you work with. The concept of attract and repel can be really, really difficult, especially for financial advisors.

 The thing that I want to point out and I think is interesting is that Jennifer, you mentioned in the beginning how you're from a small town. So you understand for our audience members who are maybe from a smaller area where everybody kind of knows everybody. You get that fear in your mind that, "Gosh, it's a small town. People are going to talk if I turn people away. I'm going to have a reputation of not being nice or whatever."

 We're in Minnesota so we're all about the Minnesota nice up here. But really, I think it's important that you understand that you are doing a disservice to the people who you can best serve by taking on the non ideals. Because I think you brought up a very valid point that the people who end up being non-ideal, the people that you should have focused on repelling in the first place end up sucking the life out of your business. Or end up sucking the life out of your team members, taking too much time.

 So what that does is it pulls you away from the people that you really should be giving your attention to because you want to service the heck out of them. Well, I think that developing, kind of going back to the whole idea of developing your copy in a productive way, which is part of the reason why we hired you in the first place is we want it to be crystal clear in our messaging as to who we do work best with and who we absolutely love to serve. But then also who we really shouldn't be working with and kind of factoring that in.

 So maybe talk a little bit too about the dangers, I guess, of having people who have tried to kind of do some of their copy, I guess DIY per se versus having somebody whether it's yourself, your company or anybody versus having an expert who's really put the time and the attention to understand the psychology of it. Just the dangers of really trying to do it yourself.

Jennifer Hudye: Yeah. I want to answer the one thing too that you mentioned. I think that you brought up such a good point when you share like if you're in a smaller town or you're in an industry, where it's like super niche and everybody talks and everybody knows each other.

 Obviously, when we talk about repelling, it doesn't mean like being an A-hole to someone. It can simply be ... I know that I appreciate. Like if I'm talking to a company and say they ... We're a service and consulting-based business and they specialize in e-comm services and I say, "Hey, I want to work with you." And they say, "Hey, honestly, we focus on e-com and I don't know that we're going to really best serve you because we really specialize in this and we're the best in the world at this." That's what I say when ...

 Because there's still people that they'll see who we work with and they'll still apply and hope that we're going to make an exception. And I say, "You know what? We're the best in the world at this and the reason why we're the best in the world with this is because we focus on that.

 Like, "Let me see if I can refer you to someone else." If you get to the point where you're in a phone or in person conversation with that person. But what's cool is you don't even have to get to that point if your copy clearly communicates like, "Hey, this is the person that we can absolutely help. If you're this person, yeah, we got you."

 That's the first thing. And then going into the dangers of just writing your own copy. I don't think that there was anything wrong with anyone writing their own copy. We have services where we help businesses write their own copy, and then we also have training and education services where we train them in their teams too.

 But the key to really understand is one ... This is the biggest one is it's hard to see the message when you're in a bottle. Or like the other term around this that's used is it's hard to see the picture when you're in the frame. And so oftentimes as business owners and entrepreneurs, we're engulfed in our process. And so we don't really see what makes us different and unique amongst the other people that do what we do.

 And so having either a copywriter write your copy and/or help you with it can really help you remove yourself from being in it so that you can know how to communicate it effectively. So that's really important. Oh gosh, what was something else I was going to say? And I forgot. It will come back to me.

Brittany A.: As you're thinking about that, there's actually something else that you just kind of brought to light here. You made the comment about how for you even, when you're kind of vetting potential customers, potential clients that come your way and saying, "Here is where our expertise lies, but let me refer you to somebody else.

 That is a great thing if our audience members, if you are not doing that within your practice, this is a great takeaway for you to implement immediately is that for us at Sweet Financial, any time a prospect calls in, so whether they're a referral, they're cold calling, whatever the situation is, our reps or our advisors who do vet and take those calls, they have one goal on every single ...

 Well, actually, okay, let's say two goals and every single one of those calls. The first one is to completely understand the need of the prospect to completely understand and get to the bottom of or uncover what it is that they want and are looking for. But the second is to always add value.

 Regardless of whether we can actually take them and help them ourselves, we are always going to leave them with something of value. It might be something as simple as, "Hey, based on what you've said, I wouldn't make any changes to your current situation, but here's a couple ideas for you."

 Or if it's below our account minimum, because of our service standards, we have to set a minimum. But here is a couple of different names of people within the area that we've referred people to in the past. So our goal is to always leave them with something of value, which again, when you look at that whole concept of attract and repel, we're able to essentially repel the person that is not an ideal fit, that's not best suited to our services. But we're doing it in a way where we're still going to leave and have a really positive experience and positive relationship.

 So if that's not something that you're doing with in your business, I highly recommend it. That's an easy one to implement. It's just making sure that you have that value mindset every single time that you're on the phone and you're in communication with a prospect. So I just thought that, that was an important one to touch on because you alluded to that, Jennifer.

Jennifer Hudye: Yeah. I love that you brought that out because it really does bring up full circle. It is one of our intentions with all of our sales and marketing and anything that we do in our business. One of our phrases that we use is lead people better than when we found them.

Brittany A.: Love it.

Jennifer Hudye: And so that's a perfect way to do it. Even just taking it one step further, my strategic line can't help but do this is you can come up with form other strategic partnerships with, say, other financial advisors who maybe do take the clients that you don't want to work with and then you can always come up with an alliance. I'm not sure if you can do this in your industry, but even if it's like a referral fee or something like that.

 So now it's like your helping the client, you're helping other people in your industry and then you're also like ... You're helping yourself too because that may be ... It's like win-win-win. I mean that's something that we do because we have focused so much on ...

 We were the best in the world at helping service-based businesses that have a higher ticket offer that they sell over the phone or in person with their copy either through writing the copy or teaching and training their teams. And so there's so many people that will come to us and say like, "Do you write blog posts? Do you write SEO copy? Do you do just like website copy here and there?" It's like, "No we don't, but let me guide you to the best person who I think can help you."

 Yeah, it always just feels really good and clean. But again, the best place that you can start doing that in filtering those people is through your message in the first place, through your emails or through your website or your landing pages or wherever they're going to be researching you.

Brittany A.: Awesome. Jennifer, if there was one big kind of takeaway that you could leave with our audience, what would that be? One big insight or takeaway.

Jennifer Hudye: It's one of my favorite quotes that we've kind of talked about a little bit earlier. It truly is the most important thing in copy, which is the goal isn't for them to understand you. The goal is for them to feel understood, and so how can you craft your marketing and your copy. Anyway, always making sure that you're shining the spotlight on your ideal client.

 So really, think about writing in their language and what are the questions that constantly are coming up in your sales conversations or with your clients and how can you take those topics that they're coming to you asking for and then package it into a form of copy so that now you can leverage yourself.

 For example, if you have a client who ... They're really nervous about retiring and maybe you walk him through the process of asking these four questions that helps them get clear of their next chapter. You can turn that into a piece of copy and simply state like the four questions that you should ask yourself before when you're getting ready to retire.

 Like that's a piece of copy, and then you write it, and then you alluded to booking a call with you. And now you've leveraged yourself and your time and your resources, but always focusing in on shining the spotlight on your ideal client. And if you do that, you're going to be like ... You're just going to be more successful because the business that wins is the business that understands their clients the best.

Brittany A.: Awesome. I love that key insight. It ties in so well to some of the previous episodes. So I encourage you, our audience members, to go back and listen to the previous episodes up until now just because it really rounds out and gives more example to what Jennifer just talked about.

 So Jennifer, I feel like we could go on for days on all of this. I love it because you are such a strategic thinker and kind of start going into ... You talked on copy and ideal client and attract and repel and strategic partnerships. There's just so much there, but I think we'll save it for another time and keep them hungry, right?

Jennifer Hudye: Yes.

Brittany A.: So if somebody's wanted to get a hold of you and explore if they want to look at your direct services at some of your training opportunities, how would they get ahold of you?

Jennifer Hudye: Great question. You can head over to consciouscopy.co. So it's not dot-com, it's dot-CO. Consciouscopy.co, and you can check out we have workshops where you come in and we help you get total clarity of your message and your process and how to communicate to your ideal clients.

 We have services where we help different types of entrepreneurs in crafting their copy so that they book more sales calls and book more sales appointments. One of them is actually called bookmoresalescalls.com, so you could head over there.

 Yeah, on our site there, we have a couple of different free gifts, one of them including the Conscious Copy Scorecard. So you can just head over to our site there, and that is a scorecard. So anytime that you're writing any marketing, you literally just pull that out, and it's a checklist that will help make sure that you're including all of the critical elements to make sure that your offer or whatever it is that you're trying to sell is set up to convert. So you can go check that at consciouscopy.co as well.

Brittany A.: Awesome. And we will make sure that, that gets dumped into the podcast notes, so you have got that for reference as well. So that wraps up today's episode of your Ultimate Advisor Podcast. Again, this is Brittany Anderson, and I look forward to catching up with everybody again in next week's episode.