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Uncharted Entrepreneurship - hosted by Brent Peterson out of the Minnesota chapter of Entrepreneurs’ Organization – brings you daring stories straight from the trailblazing entrepreneurs who are unmapping business frontiers across every industry. Settle in around our virtual campfire as Brent sits down to pick the brains of startup pioneers, visionary founders, and intrepid CEOs whose origin stories - marked by unexpected twists, lessons, and stumbles along unpaved paths - will inspire your own trek in launching a boundary-pushing venture. Trading war stories, strategies, and even warnings, these audacious guests invite fellow founders and future leaders into their confidential circles in a uniquely transparent, wise, and motivational way. So join us off the beaten business trails to light your entrepreneurial fire!
Brent Peterson (00:01.454)
Welcome to this episode. Today I have Suzanne Riley. She is a business coach and marketing strategist, copy advisor and more. Suzanne, go ahead, do an introduction for yourself. Tell us your day -to -day role and one of your passions in life.
Suzanne Reilley (00:18.125)
Sure. Thanks for having me here, first of all. My role day to day is usually helping professional service businesses and online course creators to streamline their business efforts. And that can look like a little bit different for everybody. So some people are really great with lead generation. They're just hamming it up on Instagram. They're like a natural with that stuff. And then they're like,
people aren't converting like we thought. So why is that and what do we do? And I love troubleshooting that stuff. I wish everybody to have no problems in a totally seamless business, but we all come across issues now and then. Or people who say like, I have this beautiful brand, but I need more people to see it. And so just helping people troubleshoot all those pieces. And...
something I'm passionate about. Currently, I'm learning a lot more about PR and media training, which is really different than the digital marketing world. It just has its own...
culture and best practices, but I'm really, really enjoying learning about it. And then something about me professionally, I'm really into hiking and rock climbing and delicious food, but I can be a homebody as well. So, yeah.
Brent Peterson (01:44.238)
Wow. That's fantastic. Thank you. so, you know, I, let's talk about, my passion is I tell these horrible jokes and none of them convert. So maybe we can do use that as a, as sort of a sample of how somebody could do something on Instagram, actually do mostly on tick tock, but so I'm going to tell you a joke and all you have to do is should that joke be free or Brent, you will need a lot more coaching with that joke. How's that? So here we go.
Suzanne Reilley (02:11.981)
Perfect, sounds good.
Brent Peterson (02:16.75)
It is crazy. Okay, I gotta start over and I'm gonna edit that out because I picked a hard one. I didn't pick a hard one on purpose. Is it crazy how saying sentences backwards creates backwards sentences saying how crazy it is?
Suzanne Reilley (02:21.441)
you
Suzanne Reilley (02:35.117)
So, and what's my response again? I say, the joke was so good that I'm just speechless.
Brent Peterson (02:45.146)
Yeah. It's sort of a tongue twister and I just had to get it out.
Suzanne Reilley (02:51.661)
I'm impressed that you did.
Brent Peterson (02:54.702)
Yeah, thank you. All right. Well, that was clearly I need coaching on that. And, and I do that delivery, the hiccup on the delivery was, you know, like if we're going to get takeoff points, you know, that that took off at least seven points out of 10.
Suzanne Reilley (03:12.429)
I mean, it's quite a tongue twister. So...
Brent Peterson (03:14.542)
Yeah, I should not. Normally they're really silly, so anyways. And I don't do tongue twisters. All right, well, let's just jump right in. So I'm intrigued at what you said. Okay, so number one, I do a lot of just republishing PR stuff on my, I have a blog and it's gotten popular. So then PR people find me and they're like, can you just do this post or whatever? So I do some of that. So I,
Suzanne Reilley (03:20.301)
You
Brent Peterson (03:43.854)
I'm not, I now have exposure to the PR community and I can see how it's different, but I don't understand the differences and I'm not sure if I care, but I'm sure that there's a reason for it. Is that a good place to start? Or do you want to start at, at, at, at business coaching and copies or marketing strategies? Or do you think that'd be the strategy we could jump into?
Suzanne Reilley (04:10.061)
Well, how about both? I will speak to a little bit of PR, but I am not an expert. I have literally been learning about this for two months. And the other stuff I've been learning for 10 years. The one thing that I would like to share with people about...
Brent Peterson (04:12.91)
All right.
Suzanne Reilley (04:35.213)
learning about PR is that I chose to learn about it very intentionally. I think there's a thing that happens in the marketplace where people just, they need to go to like every class and every certification and every live event and every whatever. And I have nothing against learning, but the thing is for a long time, I learned too much and didn't get enough out the door. So.
If I have a skill and I'm proficient at it and I'm enjoying it and my clients are doing well, I'm good. Like there's like a point of diminishing returns where if I took more training, it would just be taking time from me getting copy or strategy or whatever out the door. So I think that is the one thing that I really want to share about that is that.
You know, I'm sort of continually honing my craft by working with people and by writing copy, but I've been practicing it for so long that I do have a proficiency. And so when I chose to learn something new, it was with great intention. And for me, it was really to try to leverage my marketing efforts because marketing can be a lot.
And so I was like, what can I do that's like one piece of effort that yields a ton of results? And I was like, well, I could share value with other people's audiences and I could pursue big media quotes and contributor pieces and things like that. So podcasting is something that I love. So I included podcasting in that. I've certainly been on podcasts before. So yeah.
Brent Peterson (06:25.294)
Yeah, I like that take and I think I mentioned in the green room, I'm part of the entrepreneurs organization and we're all about taking actionable stuff out of our trainings and we have something called a quarterly day where you learn something about cash, you learn something about people, about execution. And what really got me involved and what really kind of hooked me was,
It wasn't just a whole bunch of theory. You left with things you could do. there's another thing that we say, keep it simple, stupid kiss. Like that is, and I'm so into that. Like there's so many people that try to do so much upfront and they never finish because they can't get over the hurdle of all the things they have to do. So just speak to a little bit about how you help business owners.
Suzanne Reilley (06:58.253)
Yeah.
Brent Peterson (07:24.462)
keep it simple rather than continually trying to make something so perfect and they never get it live.
Suzanne Reilley (07:31.917)
Hmm. Well, that's always a balance and I'm still trying to, you know, I tow that balance probably every day myself. But, so I think one way that I do it is across, across my time and doing this work, I have been able to see the things that get right to the point, that get right to the problem, that can really move the needle. And then,
once you're aware of those things, it's easier to start there and cut out more of the fluff. So one of the things that I really enjoy, first of all, I really encourage people to create goals that fit not only with their income goals, but with their lifestyle goals, because...
We live in a culture where it's easy to just say like, I want bigger, faster, more. I want to scale to the next level. I want to double my income. I want to double revenue, all this stuff. And that is perfectly fine. And I'm all for just endless success. And at the same time, a lot of times people build things too big. and they really don't like what they built and they're stressed out by what they built and.
their lifestyle sucks because of what they built. And so I really encourage people to think about that going in. Some people are wired to just work 12 hours a day. They're wired like that, but a lot of us want more balance. And so I try to encourage people to think about that ahead of time and build what they want. And it's usually...
what that usually looks like is a lot simpler than they originally imagined. Because people can say like, I want the podcast. I want to write a book. I want to do courses. I want to do one -on -one. I want to do just everything under the sun. And what they don't realize is that's a lot of work. It's a lot, a lot of work. So yeah, I try to help people set goals that really fit with them.
Suzanne Reilley (09:52.685)
And then I also really enjoy helping people see around corners. You know, if they're looking to make something happen, I really work with their specific brand and the nuances of who they are and their values. And so I'm sort of part coach, part consultant. So the coaching part is me.
drawing out what they really want through open -ended empowering questions, but then ultimately they have spaces, they have gaps that they just need help filling in and understanding. They're like, you can ask me questions, you know, till tomorrow about competitor research and still not going to know how to do it. You know, and so, you know, we leverage their strengths, but then I help them fill in any gaps with the knowledge that I.
all in the efforts to streamline and hopefully simplify their online funnels, their marketing efforts, their messaging so that things run the best.
Brent Peterson (11:00.558)
Yeah, that's awesome. I had a chance to attend a content entrepreneurs event that was the beginning of the month and they have it every year in lovely Cleveland, Ohio. It's called content entrepreneurs expo or something like that. CEX .events. And, you know, building courses and writing books and everything around creating content is so important. And I did attend one of the talks about how
You need to have intention in your content, but you can't always make your content too dry that it's not appealing. So talk a little bit about how people put some intention into what they're writing for to get their marketing strategy, but get lost in that.
Suzanne Reilley (11:38.253)
Yeah.
Suzanne Reilley (11:54.765)
Yeah, so...
Okay, so you're asking how they have intention bucket lost in that?
Brent Peterson (12:02.926)
Yeah, it's not a very well said question. Another. Yeah, like I'm trying to I'm trying to like go down the road of of everybody trying to do everything and then they they get they get they try to make even their their content so perfect that they get caught up in having to write the perfect copy and never testing it and never getting it out there.
Suzanne Reilley (12:05.069)
I think I can still answer it, but if you have a clarification, I can. Sure.
Brent Peterson (12:27.054)
or making it too long or there's so many things that they're doing. I guess the underlying thing is that you need to test it. You need to get it there and you have to start doing something. And if you wait to the very end to test it, it's too late. You need to test things iteratively. There you go. Thank you.
Suzanne Reilley (12:42.349)
iteratively. Yeah. So it's a word I know very well. It's important. And that's, that's the whole thing of what this, you know, online business and marketing is. It's sort of coming up with the strongest hypothesis you can, like the strongest piece you can, and then testing it. Like you're not going to know how well it does until you test it with an audience. So, and I think part of what you're getting at and how I approach this is,
You know how to be intentional is really to make sure to consider Why why am I doing this? like what's the reasoning behind this and that you know strategy is kind of a It can mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people, but it's really just Why have I chosen this channel? Why am I writing on this topic? What is the reasoning behind pursuing this and so?
It's very easy for people to drop into guessing, I think, because they don't always know how to uncover the best data to inform the strategy. So they'll try to come up with ideas of what to talk about in their head. They'll say things like, I really, I'm going to start a blog.
You know, and, and, and so the question comes up of why, and it's sort of some version of like, well, I should. And, and so then people start five or seven or 10 different things, and it becomes this freewheeling hamster wheel of, I don't know why I'm doing this, but I'm totally overwhelmed with everything I have to do in post and engage and whatever. that, you know, so what.
What I really recommend is that people take their goals. They also consider their audience. When I'm thinking about the channels for what people should pursue, it really is the intersection of what do they enjoy most? Like,
Suzanne Reilley (14:56.781)
where are they comfortable being and where are their ideal clients hanging out in large numbers. So that can look different for everybody. I have clients who I had one client say to me like, do you think I can be successful filling my coaching practice by doing speaking engagements and a YouTube channel? And I was like, absolutely. Yes. But there are other people who
are a little more introverted. They want to share value in small workshops. They want to, they feel comfortable on one social channel versus another. Some people don't want to be on social at all. So I think it's important to choose one to two or three places that you enjoy or your ideal clients are also hanging out. And this is a whole other topic, but get to know your ideal client.
share solutions and value that really makes a difference to them and then just invite them to take the next step with you and your business. And so it becomes a lot more focused and intentional and manageable.
Brent Peterson (16:06.862)
Yeah, I think that's such a good point. And so many people get caught up into the, I like what you said about hamster wheel. The other side of that though is not doing anything. And I see in, you know, our main business is creating content. And we see people that say, well, we're just gonna do this ourselves now. And then two months later, they just stop because.
They're overwhelmed. So I guess it does come back to the same thing, but there's a point in which you need to hire somebody that can do it, right? And that's part of it. Like learning in EOS, we call it letting go of the vine. So you let it go with the things that you keep focusing on the things that you do well, and hopefully you scale enough to be able to hire out the things that you don't do well or you don't like to do.
Suzanne Reilley (16:59.981)
Yeah, I would agree with that. And there was something I was gonna say to your earlier point that is slipping my mind right at the moment. that sometimes people take no action. I think we have mismatched expectations in the marketplace, or at least with what I'm trying to say is,
the social media headlines can make it sound like you can do this overnight. And it's okay. I mean, we, of course we put the most engaging messages in those titles. We put the most engaging metrics. We speak of things that went really well.
So I think people see those titles. And the one time I saw someone post something in a social group and they were like, I watched this 90 minute webinar and like, I'm not making 300 ,000 a year yet. And it's like, it's funny, but it's also, that's what the headlines sometimes seem to promise. And people don't appreciate all that goes into it. So I think sometimes they leave all excited and think they can do it.
And then they just get stuck or overwhelmed or don't understand like how much day to day, like thankless stuff happens that like goes nowhere or nobody sees or like, I think I heard the guy from copy blogger who's like, sorry, who's like really well known now say something like he posted just gold like every day on LinkedIn for like,
I don't know if it was four months or six months or nine months and like nobody cared, you know? And it's like, so I think that's part that we don't always talk about that. It's like, where do you talk about it? When do you talk about it? But not everybody's ready for that. I know I wasn't.
Brent Peterson (19:05.262)
Yeah, there's definitely a mixture of talent and tenacity. Like you have to be, you have to keep doing it, but you also have to have talent. And then there's also timing and luck. So if you look at, you know, what happened with Apple computers, they were at the right time, you know, and they were there to do something that at the time they did it, same with, you know, Microsoft. Those things don't happen again and again and again. They happen really big at a time that
Suzanne Reilley (19:10.765)
Yeah.
Suzanne Reilley (19:16.493)
Yes.
Brent Peterson (19:34.414)
that introduces that thing. But we all can't be a Gary Vee or something that just says things profoundly while he's just sleeping. But the flip, I mean, there is a balance, right? And I think that's what you're getting at, that you need to know what you're going to do well. And maybe social media is a false flag or it's a false flag.
It's an appearance that is such a tiny little piece of somebody's life that you don't know everything that went behind that. And even people that are super big content creators have a team at some point that helps them and coaches them and gets the best content out there.
Suzanne Reilley (20:08.109)
Yeah.
Suzanne Reilley (20:21.773)
Absolutely, and I've seen, I remember seeing one job post for a really big name in digital marketing and they were like, like, you know, there's no way you're clocking off at five, basically. Like, like launches don't really follow the, the traditional clock. So just like a heads up and I, I,
I can't remember. I mean, some of them don't really want you to have your own business either. I mean, that's with any company, but it's just the thing of some of these companies, any company that's pretty big, pretty successful. They have like whole teams doing this stuff and solopreneurs are trying to do it all themselves. Like, and you have to become good at enough things all at the same time.
for things to go well. And that's just, it can be a little tricky and it's a real learning process.
Brent Peterson (21:27.47)
Yeah. And I think the other, I like the other thing, the other thing that I'd like to comment on is that you mentioned like working 12 hours a day or working 18 hours a day. And there's so many entrepreneurs that say, this is the way you have to do it. A hundred years or 120 years ago, the Victorian times you didn't work when you were successful. Right? Like we have come full circle to say, I don't take a vacation. I work 18 hours a day.
Suzanne Reilley (21:50.285)
Yeah.
Right.
Brent Peterson (21:56.206)
And all I do is work and my play is who knows what it is where end of the 18th century it was I have a whole team of people that are doing all the stuff for me and I'm just sitting at my country house sipping tea and Whatever climbing walls
Suzanne Reilley (22:16.237)
But we say like, what's
what's the next hundred thousand or what's the next million or what's the next level or what's the next. So I think part of my also wanting to help people set goals. I mean, and this is something I practice for myself. I mean, people can do it or not. I'm really, I'm really into supporting people as they are and supporting their uniqueness and sort of not have, you know, that doesn't have to be the same as mine, but.
It can be really helpful to set process goals or long -term goals so that you know, you know, when you're at a finish line, because otherwise there's no finish line. Like there's, there's always something to do. There's always something to fix. There's always something to respond to. And so, yeah, just if people want to have that sense of whatever you want to call it.
like containment. I love my work, but I'm not someone who can work 12 or 18 hours a day. And so I'm still, I'm still learning this myself, but it is really helpful to have specific things to complete in a day or in a week or have some kind of structures so that you know when it's like, unless something's genuinely on fire.
and we're not surgeons, like that's just gonna go to tomorrow, you know?
Brent Peterson (23:48.622)
Yeah. And there has to be that for sanity. And especially when it comes to the sanity of your team, you know, once you get to have a team, I remember we did a lot of business in Mexico and their team was, they were just like work seven to seven and you have to be going, going, going. And everything was an emergency and pretty soon nothing's an emergency because everything's an emergency and nothing is getting done because everybody's so tired. You can't just keep.
Suzanne Reilley (23:54.061)
Yeah.
Suzanne Reilley (24:17.197)
Right.
Brent Peterson (24:17.966)
keep that and I was, you know, part of my role was helping in project management. My role was let's have some two week cycles that maybe at the end of a delivery, then everybody is expected to put in all the heavy hours because this is when everything really matters. But outside of that, we can't have everybody working 12 hour days. Everybody has to have some balance in that. How do you coach a...
Suzanne Reilley (24:36.877)
Yeah.
Suzanne Reilley (24:44.685)
Yeah, I mean.
Brent Peterson (24:48.046)
entrepreneur who believes that themselves. They do it themselves and then they demand it of their team.
Suzanne Reilley (24:57.613)
people who grind and grind and then demand it of their team.
Brent Peterson (25:01.454)
Yeah, everybody they think and my most recent experience was with a PE company that I quickly learned that it was a, you know, it's all about, it's all about the bottom line and it's all about being as productive as possible. And I think a lot of times, depending on leadership, if you're in a founder organization where the founders, it is he's he or she is maybe build it, built it as a lifestyle brand. they, they realized that.
Suzanne Reilley (25:27.693)
Mm -hmm.
Brent Peterson (25:30.542)
they're getting more value out of their employees when the employees are happy. I think that's the first thing. But also then that they have some creativeness back in their lives. And I've heard it many times, Google gives their engineers 20 % of the week and 3M. There's all kinds of big companies that are great examples of how having that break in creativity makes them more, break in mundane tasks makes them more creative.
Suzanne Reilley (25:34.893)
Mm -hmm.
Suzanne Reilley (25:59.469)
Yeah, I absolutely agree with that. And you know, it's a constant practice for me too, because again, I genuinely love my work. So sometimes I'm working on something and I realized that I like, haven't taken a breath and really need to eat and you know, I just like I went down the rabbit hole for too long. So I, you know, I don't want to come across as some sort of like, perfect, whatever. But I think...
the people who demand a lot and who grind and grind and then demand that their team grind and grind. I think.
We're generally just not gonna be a match. I work with people who work very diligently and they're very committed to their brands.
But they take time off to surf. They're trying to ratchet back to spend more to so they're not as stressed out around their young kids. They are carving out an identity for themselves after their kids are going off to college. So they are very, very diligent, but they don't grind. And I think,
Yeah, so I don't know. You know how sometimes just like your right people find you and you find them. And so I don't come across a lot of grinders. And I think if I did, they get too impatient because they get too impatient with my process because sometimes those grinders just go and go and go and go without a second thought. And sometimes...
Suzanne Reilley (27:44.717)
Not always, but sometimes the work ends up like not being that good. Like they're the ones that are just filling the blog and they're just, they're just doing whatever. And there's no like reasoning or why behind it. And as a strategist, I need to pause for at least like a half a second and, and just get on the same page about the intentionality of why we're creating something. So I think if they did come to me, there would be a pretty short.
patients fuse on both sides and that would not, that wouldn't work out. I'm all about working with like, you know, the good matched people for the sanity of both. So.
Brent Peterson (28:26.062)
I want to switch gears and talk a little bit about customer experience. I have in my notes about how, I think, well, let me just say from my own experience that a lot of entrepreneurs start by saying, we do this great. Instead of focusing on the customer, how the customer is going to get the benefit from what they're being delivered, what is the delivery of the item that you're doing for the customer. Talk a little bit about how.
Suzanne Reilley (28:36.397)
Yeah.
Suzanne Reilley (28:42.509)
Yeah.
Brent Peterson (28:55.342)
you can flip your script to being customer focused rather than, I mean, I think a lot of people in marketing have the intention of being customer focused and they say, we'll do this for you or we'll do this great. And sometimes they leave out the customer completely in their message.
Suzanne Reilley (29:14.732)
Absolutely, and I was just in another conversation and it it helped me see that I think I think a lot of businesses Want to be customer focused and they just don't know how so first of all it does take the emotional you do need to have the emotional skill set of Empathy and being able to see things from another person's perspective that may be
different than your own and it can sound simple but not everybody has that skill. So first of all the business owner really has to have that skill for this to work and then if they do and they really want to be customer centric the next step is that they say well I want to be customer centric but how do I actually find out
what my customer wants. I don't know how to do that. And so one of the things that I'm really passionate about is doing voice of customer research. And I can speak to some of the nuts and bolts if that would be helpful. Yeah, sure. So.
Brent Peterson (30:21.262)
Yeah, no, I would love to hear that.
Suzanne Reilley (30:25.101)
There are a bunch of different ways to do voice of customer research and I'll talk about the ones that I don't love as much first. So sometimes a bit larger corporations will do focus groups but that can sometimes lead to group think and people agreeing with one another and it can also be costly.
People sometimes also do customer interviews. They can be really great because as you're interviewing someone about their experience, you can hear the emotion in their voice and you can hear the things that really matter to them. One of the challenges with that though is that you have to be really good at interviewing people because what can easily happen sometimes is you'll ask a person a question about their experience.
and they'll tell you their opinions about the industry as a whole. And for voice of customer research, that's not very helpful. And then surveys are another way that people sometimes use, but we are so over -surveyed these days. Like you search Google and it's like, what did you think of the results? It's like every step we take,
someone is surveying us about how that went. So I'm open to surveys, but I use them. I craft the language very intentionally. I only use surveys in very specific places, and I use them very sparingly because we're all just a little over surveyed. So I love, I've sort of just...
in the need to be like simple and efficient and whatever, I've learned and honed my ability to do voice of customer for free in like an afternoon. And basically, these are things that people can do right now. And I'll talk about three different steps people can take. So first of all, of course, you have to know your niche and your ideal client. So say,
Suzanne Reilley (32:39.661)
Give me some kind of like business topic, like a niche or like a.
Brent Peterson (32:45.07)
How about selling a widget?
Suzanne Reilley (32:47.949)
Okay, let's see, like what?
Brent Peterson (32:52.206)
business topic or like an internal process topic or a mark.
Suzanne Reilley (32:56.141)
So I guess I was recently having a conversation and I was discussing the example of say like a woman or a man who's recently gone through a divorce. So I was just looking for like a different topic.
Brent Peterson (33:12.526)
Let's say, how do you market your service to a specific segment audience?
Suzanne Reilley (33:22.541)
Okay, so I think in the interest of keeping this on topic, sorry to put you on the spot there. Let's just use the same topic that I was discussing before. So let's say it's a man who just recently went through a divorce. So the first place that...
I recommend people go to gather voice of customer research and I'll speak more of what that is, is Amazon and specifically Amazon reviews. So what you would do is go to Amazon, type in books on how to recover from divorce for men or something similar and see which books come up.
and choose the ones that have the most reviews. And then basically what the person would do is go through the reviews and look for, so, okay, let me clarify. You're not gonna take any copy from the book. We are not plagiarizing anything here. You're looking for people's sentiments in the review section of the book. And what you'll find is people will say,
such and such was happening in my life that brought me here today. My biggest challenge is this. I'm really stuck on this. My biggest desire is this. You're looking for people's hopes, dreams, fears, and aspirations as it pertains to that topic. And you want to capture those in their own words. You want their words verbatim.
And so, and then as you're reading through, you can also look for, you can just sort of get the general vibe of everybody. And you can check out maybe two or three different books or a couple of different resources and feel the overall vibe. And also just in like a document or something, compile people's hopes, dreams, fears, and aspirations in their own words. I recommend doing the same thing in.
Suzanne Reilley (35:26.573)
the comment section of competitors' social posts, usually the most popular ones, usually popular ones that have a lot of comments, as well as your own social posts if you have a business started in this niche. And I also recommend doing the same thing with past.
client communication, like if people came to you and were curious about working together and they share a bit about what's going on with them. You can also look for messages in there. You can also look for messages. You would, of course, anonymize all of this. You can look for messages in emails. You can look for messages from...
Discussions you've had in sessions and you can also recall in your memory what people usually say to you but really be careful to recall it in their own words because you want to speak to them and their challenges and their needs in their words, so you can really do this in like an afternoon or a couple days just however long it takes you to get the hang of it and have everything in there and then
as you learn copy principles and how to use copy frameworks, you know, copy is much more architecture than it is artistry. So you really, and Eugene Schwartz has said, copy is assembled, not created, not written. Copy is assembled, not written. And so you can take all that language and put that into copy frameworks for emails, landing pages, websites, all that stuff.
And if you're using the VOC, you can be really sure that you're speaking to what your audience wants most instead of what you want to talk about.
Brent Peterson (37:15.022)
So tell us what VOC means.
Suzanne Reilley (37:17.581)
Sure, it means voice of the customer. So this is doing voice of the customer research. And when you use this, it's really beautiful because when someone lands on a page with, you know, that was crafted with the voice of the customer, it really causes them to be like, my gosh, this person really sees and hears and understands me. They really get what's going on with me. And then when they see an offer that's like,
the top thing that they've always wanted, they're like, yes, that is what I have been asking. That is my top need. And then when they purchase it and you really deliver on the promise, it's just such a win -win for both. And it's just such a sustainable way to do business.
Brent Peterson (38:05.582)
Yeah, I love that. That's kind of like the there's a new Google pixel commercial. Well, there's they circle the thing and that's exactly what they're looking for. And then they order it. And there's a picture of a guy looking for a dog lamp or what doesn't matter. But how you target in on exactly what you want and and help that help the customer buy what they want rather than selling them something. Right.
Suzanne Reilley (38:32.109)
Absolutely. Like nobody likes to be pushed on or told what to do or, you know, and so it's like, you're really just, and of course, I hope everybody takes this and is respectful and ethical with it. You know, the idea is to take what they're looking for and really deliver just a great solution. And, you know, but if and when you're doing that, it's really just a matter of,
connecting a person who really needs something with a brilliant business owner who offers it and it's just It's such a cool win -win and it just makes things so much easier
Brent Peterson (39:12.462)
Do you think the timeshare industry is then is just they do everything the opposite of what you're saying?
Suzanne Reilley (39:17.485)
I'm definitely like, I'm definitely old enough to know of like, you know, when the salesperson would like come to your house and try to sell you something, it just just wouldn't leave for like four hours. It's like literally the opposite of that. Or, you know, you can get the free patio set, but you have to like have
Brent Peterson (39:43.982)
You have to buy it right now.
Suzanne Reilley (39:46.029)
Yeah, well, no, you have to like listen to some four hour like presentation about some nonsense. They're like, if you just listen to this, this presentation. Yeah, so it's the opposite.
Brent Peterson (39:48.878)
yeah, yeah.
Brent Peterson (39:57.902)
Yeah, exactly. So like, we have a few minutes here. What do you think are the trends? What was your bit of advice that you could give somebody now on helping to be a better copywriter, let's say?
Suzanne Reilley (40:17.741)
That's a fantastic question. So I...
There are, I'm sure, a lot of great places to learn how to write copy out there. Being the way that I am, when I find a select few things that work for me that,
match my values that resonate with me. I stick with those couple of things and I recommend people do that too, because otherwise it's just so overwhelming. So there could be great other resources out there. I just don't specifically have experience with them, but I learned to write copy through Jeff Walker's product launch formula. it's a course that's certainly focused on product launches, but he also teaches a ton about.
doing voice of customer research, competitor research, funnel strategy, email copy, copywriting of all kinds, launch planning. It's such a robust course. And so certainly there's a lot more in it, but through all of it, he teaches a lot about copy. That's probably the number one place I learned. And then another place that's really great is anything from...
Joanna Weeb and Copy Hackers. Their stuff can be a tad more advanced, but it's really, really good. And then, so both of those I have learned from directly and really enjoyed and feel that they offer a very...
Suzanne Reilley (41:54.477)
high quality training that's respectful of an audience and also focused on results, which is really important to me. I think that's one thing that if people are looking for a course, those are two things that I would encourage people to look for. Those are two things that are important to me. The third place I can recommend, this one I haven't done myself, but when people have done this and they come to me, there's a ton of synergy and that's Storybrand.
So I've heard good things about that. Again, I don't have firsthand experience with it. But the thing to keep in mind is that it's easy to think that we can write because most of us have been writing since elementary school, but conversion focused copy is a completely different thing. It's like, just because we could write in first or third grade or whatever doesn't mean we can write legal contracts. It's kind of the same thing. So it's really its own skill set.
And it's something that's very high value to hire for. So if someone has any kind of writing ability, it's really worth looking into learning yourself because you can always in a pinch, you can hop in and write a message or you can solve an issue or you can, it's just, it's a skill that really pays and pays for itself.
Brent Peterson (43:16.302)
That's awesome. Yeah. And Story Brand has come up a couple of times in my conversations recently. So I'll make sure we get all these links in the show notes too. I appreciate it. This is really good stuff. Suzanne, we have a few minutes left. As I close out, I give everybody a chance to do a shameless plug about anything you'd like. What would you like to plug today?
Suzanne Reilley (43:24.301)
Yeah. Yeah.
Suzanne Reilley (43:36.237)
Sure, anyone who wants to connect further can find me at suzannereilly .com and on the topic of voice of customer research I have...
a free email opt -in called Content Calendar Mastery, Map Out a Year's Worth of Engaging Topics in 90 Minutes or Less. I'm looking at it on my second monitor here. And it's really an approach that, similar to looking up people's hopes, dreams, fears, and aspirations, this one focuses on looking for people's questions. And these are things that are great to use to fill out your content. So like email topics, social topics.
YouTube videos, it's really good. So it goes through, again, like a really simple way to do that. And you can get that on the site.
Brent Peterson (44:28.334)
I will make sure we get all that on the show notes for the website and I appreciate you being here today.
Suzanne Reilley (44:35.885)
Yeah, thank you again for having me.