August 28, 2025 • 38 mins
In this episode of the Healthy, Wealthy, and Smart Podcast, host Dr. Karen Litzy welcomes Linda Melone, a certified conversion copywriter and former personal trainer. They dive into the importance of having a strong, unique value proposition in the medical and fitness industries. Linda shares her diverse background, which includes a degree in nutrition, experience as a pastry chef, and her journey into copywriting. She emphasizes the need for health and fitness brands to identify their unique voice to stand out in a competitive market. Tune in to discover how to refine your brand's message and effectively connect with your audience.
Time Stamps:
[00:01:07] Unique value proposition in fitness.
[00:05:44] Differentiating as a copywriter.
[00:08:25] Unique value proposition discovery.
[00:12:02] Unique value proposition creation.
[00:18:07] Unique value proposition examples.
[00:22:15] The danger of over-promising.
[00:24:20] Testing your unique value proposition.
[00:28:27] Strengthening Unique Value Propositions.
[00:32:09] Importance of human touch in copy.
[00:37:08] Business advice for creatives.More About Linda:
Linda Melone is the founder of The CopyWorx, host of the High-Conversion Health Marketer podcast, a seasoned copywriter, former personal trainer and email strategist with over 15 years of experience in the health, wellness, and fitness industries.
With a proven track record including a $70k contract from a single email sequence and a 44% lift in homepage conversions, Linda’s work speaks for itself. Prior to becoming a copywriter, she wrote content (articles and blogs) extensively for all the top print and online publications. She’s been featured in MSN Health, TIME, Shape, Self, Men’s Fitness, and HuffPost, among many others.
Today she’s laser focused on helping craft messaging for her clients that attracts their ideal customers.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:02):
Hey everybody, welcome back to the Healthy, Wealthy, and Smart Podcast. I
am your host, Dr. Karen Litzy, owner of Karen Litzy Physical Therapy located
in New York City. And today we are going to talk about
why it's important to have a strong, unique value
proposition, especially if you're in the medical
or fitness industries. So to help us with that
(00:24):
conversation today, I'm really happy to bring on my guest, Linda Malone.
She is a certified conversion copywriter, former personal
trainer, and award-winning writer and founder of The
Copyworks. She specializes in helping fitness
and health brands find their unique value proposition and
voice so they can rise above the competition. So
(00:50):
Oh, I'm thrilled. So before we get into our unique
value propositions, can you give the audience a little bit more info
about you and how you went from personal
trainer and I know pastry chef to copywriting
Yeah, I'm one of those people who has just tried everything I have
(01:11):
a rule if it's when it stops being fun I stopped doing it. So
I'm older than I look, I'm a baby boomer I'm 66 actually
so I tell people that because, because they start adding up
all the professions, I've done and it's like, this doesn't
The math isn't mapping. So yeah, out of college, I
actually have a degree in nutrition of all things. And I thought I wanted to be a
(01:32):
dietitian. I found it was too dry for me. It just, I
wanted something more creative, ended up getting into the food business,
which was related to the nutrition thing. And then in my long story
short, I was working out
for, at the same time I had, I owned a bakery of
all things. And I would go into the gym and people would be like, Who
(01:54):
smells like muffins? And at a certain
point is like, I have to make a decision between these two things.
Cause it was such a difference. So I ended up
being certified as personal trainer. I love fitness. I dropped the
whole bakery thing. And so I became certified. I'm
a certified. I ended up having four certifications, including
(02:15):
this CSES. And I was really into
working with in-home clients. And I started noticing
that there was a magazine that was getting tossed in my driveway. It
was a free publication. It was a business one. And it had a fitness column
in it. I've always loved to write. I'm one of these people, I'll write even
if I don't get paid for it. I just love to write. And I
(02:36):
thought, you know, I do in-home personal training. They have this fitness column
and people always ask me like, what do I need for a home workout, like
setup? So I pitched the editor, I said, I have this idea. What about,
you know, would you be interested? And he said, sure, you know, send it my
way. So I wrote up, it was like, you know, how much space do you need for treadmill? How
much, like just the logical things. And I remember I sent it
(02:57):
to him and he called me, which I never expected. And
he said, this is awesome. He says, do you want to write some more for us? And
this is way back when. So I ended up writing columns. I
ended up writing cover stories. And then I started branching out into the
national publications. And basically, I wrote for every
fitness publication out there. I had a column in Oxygen Magazine. I
(03:18):
wrote for, well, Family Circle is the one I won an award for. It
was an article about how injuries early
in life affect you later in life. Spoiler alert, it's
mostly arthritis, but there's other
things. And so I ended up writing for MSN
Health and then around 2016, I
(03:40):
think, 2015, really the bottom kind of fell out of print publications.
Yeah, it was around that time. So I started trying
to go online and I was getting paid like 25% of
what I was getting paid for, for these magazines. So I thought, you
know what, maybe I'll just do personal training online, have a program. So
I set this up for, I had a program for women over 50. just
(04:05):
working out. And this is where I started thinking about
conversion copywriting, because I was marketing myself just
by the seat of my pants, just trying to figure out what's selling. I had programs I
did, like all these live webinars, which I just found I
enjoyed. And I hired a copywriter.
And this is when, this kind of segues into what I'm going to talk about today,
(04:26):
when you don't know your audience. So I paid this woman a
lot of money for an hour of her time. She was very well-known in
the business. And she spent an hour with me trying
to come up with a name for my program. And she thought
calling it a kick in the pants would be good.
Now, keeping in mind, this is women over 50. No one wants to
(04:46):
be kicked in the pants, but especially women over 50. We've been kicked
enough in the pants. So it didn't sell. And
it didn't, it took me a long time to realize why. And
that's when I said, you know, I want to become, I want to do what she's doing
because I think I could do a better job. So I segued into copywriting,
which was a whole different thing. I ended up writing for Bowflex. I
(05:09):
had co-hosted a podcast that
they had way back. It was like 2017. And the
rest is history. So I've just been, I've been working. I stepped
away from the fitness for a while as far as writing, because
I was so burned out. If I had to write one more description of how to
do a bicep curl. Right, right. I get that.
(05:30):
Knee slightly bent. I just couldn't deal anymore. And
now I'm realizing that's what differentiates me though from
other copywriters is because I spent 15 years as
a trainer. I wrote all these articles. And
most people who write copy for fitness publications
don't have, they definitely don't have my extensive background. So
(05:52):
that's, there's my differentiator. Right. A
Yeah, no, that's great. Because I think it's so cool to
see people kind of evolve over their lifetime. And
like you said, really kind of finding the things that are fun for you
and that make you happy. And then you're successful
(06:14):
usually if you're doing if you're kind of in that mindset. So
I love it, I think. And it's also kind of an it was a seemed like a
Yeah, it was gradual. Like when I was doing personal training and I started writing, I
You know, I would, I would, the more assignments I got, if I lost a
(06:34):
client, they quit with me. I wouldn't, usually I work really hard
to replace them. And I stopped doing that. I had one,
two people. And then I just said, I'm just doing the writing. So it took
That's, I mean, I did the same thing when I was working part-time
as a physical therapist in a clinic and starting my own practice. And
it took a while. It was gradual. I went from
(06:57):
20 hours a week to 16 to 12 to eight until,
so it took a couple of years, but for me, it
was the comfortable way to do it. So I'm totally with you. I 100% get it.
Now, let's move on to kind
of the crux of today's episode, which is knowing
what our unique value proposition is and why
(07:20):
it's a must have. But before we even get to why it's a must have, can
I mean, in a nutshell, it's what makes
you different from your competitors. What is going
to make someone realize you're not just a solution
to their problems, but the solution? And that's not
(07:42):
Correct. So why is
it a must have versus just nice to have? Like
it's because a lot of things are nice to have, but why is this
It's a way to compete that if like, if
you don't have a handle on what makes you different,
you're going to end up competing on something like price. You know,
(08:05):
everything is going to sound generic. If you're not
different and people are going to just start comparing you,
okay, well, who's the most expensive and, and that you never want
that. So that's my biggest argument for it, but it's
really what separates you from the pack. Yeah.
(08:25):
How do you figure that out? I
mean, there's got to be some sort of formula or something that
maybe you can share with the listeners on how they can figure out what their unique
value proposition is. Because I'm sure a lot of people are listening now like,
When I work with clients, it takes me literally about four weeks
(08:46):
to do it because I combine everything. I
look at social media comments. What are people saying about your
profession? But to someone who just wants to
do it on their own, I would suggest this. I go
People are talking and find out what people are
(09:07):
complaining about your profession. Like, what are they saying that,
because if you go on somebody else's website, they're only going to post what
is, you know, what are the good things they're not going to
post. But you go on Reddit and like, say it's
like, you know, there's subreddits, I forget how many,
I think it's like a hundred thousand, it's ridiculous number of subreddits. You
(09:28):
can find one on what, you know, exactly what you do. So,
you know, physical therapy, maybe there's a subreddit and
there probably is one, physical therapy nightmares, something that happened, like what
happened to somebody? And then also
look at, and this is my favorite thing to do, is I create
a chart of my clients competitors.
(09:50):
And if you're not sure, and here's where I know we're going to get into this
a little bit later, but I use AI to find like, here's what
are my top competitors in this area, create a
chart, find out, you know, what are they saying? What's their
messaging? And what are
you able to say that they can't or that
(10:10):
they're not talking about? It doesn't have to be different.
It just has to be something they're not talking about. There's
the old, and I use this story
a lot because it's so interesting, but years and years ago, there
was a famous copywriter that was hired to work for Schlitz beer
and Schlitz was not selling. I think it was Eugene Schwartz.
(10:32):
I'm going to say anyway. And so he was hired and he went
out to all the factories to find Heather making his beer. And
so he was taking a tour and the tour guide, whoever
was the owner of the company said, you know, we clean our glassware.
And it was a certain way they steamed it and whatever it was. And he said,
this is amazing. And the guy that was taking him around
(10:52):
to all of our competitors do it. It's not anything different because
when no one's talking about it. So he built all their messaging
around this pure water. And
I forget exactly what it was, but it ended up being like
outselling all the other competitors that whole year, because it was
(11:12):
Right. Right. So you don't have to reinvent the
wheel. You could just talk about the
Right. Just put really highlight it, make it sound like no
Right. Right. Right. So so
(11:32):
for homework, for those people listening, you're going to go on
a Reddit or a sub Reddit and find out what people are
maybe not so happy about with. whatever your profession
is, physical therapy, personal training, et cetera. And
then create a chart of your competitors and
look at maybe what they are saying and what
(11:57):
And then you step in and fill in those gaps is,
Yes. It's like, if you think about, is it a Venn diagram? Is
that the right term? When you have the circles, one, that's
what they're saying, what they're doing, what your competitors doing, then you want
to have, like, there's this part that overlaps. That's yeah. not
any, no one's doing this. And so, you know,
(12:20):
I mean, you think there's so many different brands you can think of that have done
that in the past, Peloton before, you
know, they had their problems they have now, but I mean, no one
was doing what they were doing with the, the bike and the, you
Right. Right. Exactly. So
(12:44):
so let's say you've got you've done all this research.
Right. And now now what? How
do you take all that research and distill that
Well, you want to find a way to word it
so that there's actually criteria that I use. And
(13:08):
I actually have a chart that I check off with
these five aspects. It
should be desirable, people want this. Memorable,
you know, think about taglines that these big brands have that you can't get
Succinct, it should be very, you know, distinct and
clear. And that's the next one is clear and then unique. So
(13:31):
something that is memorable, unique,
desirable. If it fills all those criteria,
I mean, you really, you do have to test. It's like any marketing though. I mean, you
have to test it. But what I do with my clients is
I come up with three. I usually come up with one main one out of all
the research. And then I will come up with a few smaller
(13:54):
ones and they can be used on different website pages. They
can be used for different things. And then we talk about it. Sometimes we end up
combining them. and having, they'll say, well, I like this
and that, but it has to have that real
distinct value
to it. And most people don't go through all
(14:14):
this to find it out. And the thing that always amazes me,
it was when I do this research and I go through all the competitors, a lot
of times they just say things like, award-winning or
welcome to our homepage or something that's complete waste of
space for the website, especially that they call it
the hero section, first upper part of your
(14:37):
And so I guess that leads into the next question is, what
are the biggest mistakes that people make that instead
of standing out, they're just blending in with the sea of
It's using jargon that everyone uses. And
this is where AI works against you because AI is going to pull from
the internet. And so people are like, I'll just use AI. I
(14:59):
saw something yesterday that there's an ad somewhere. I don't know
if it's in the States, but it said, stop hiring people.
Did you see this? It's all kinds of uproar about
it. And it's all, it's from an AI company, of course, just
hire AI, you know, use AI for everything. And when you do that,
all you're doing is pulling what's already been said. It's
(15:21):
not, AI can't create anything new. It can connect
things together. But what I see most is
just industry jargon. And by that, I mean, words
that don't mean anything like, Best
in class. In fact, I did a whole post on LinkedIn that went viral.
It had like 130,000 views on it,
(15:43):
but it's all of the words that people overuse that don't mean
anything. So if you're writing it out, you're value prop. So
ask yourself, can I get more specific with this? Can
I say something that's clearer than, so
maybe, maybe you have won awards and that's fine. I have
it on my site, but I don't have it on my hero section. I have it like at the bottom. And
(16:04):
I also have why that's important. So if you're going to, you know, talk
about what you do or what you've accomplished, you
want to follow it up with why that's important to the
people that you are trying to attract. But
just fluffy words that sound good. The easiest
way to get the right words is to talk to your customers,
(16:29):
your clients. How, like asking them, and
this is part of what I do too, is interviewing people. And
it's hard because no one wants to get on the phone. It's really hard
to get them. Nowadays, not easy. No,
but when you do, it's gold because you ask them like, so what made
you make the decision to go with me or to go with, you know,
(16:49):
if you're doing it for somebody else? and tell
them, ask them like, walk me through your day. Like, how has your
life changed because of this? Especially like I've worked and
written for some functional medicine companies and
I've worked for, there was one company that has a
product that helps with the side effects of chemo. I
(17:09):
mean, really heavy duty stuff. And when I would ask the people and
I was able to interview a lot of cancer patients,
what was it like before and what's it like now? And it
was really gut-wrenching. You want to get that emotion. You
want to have people feel something. And the best way
to do it is talk to people who have used the product, who have seen
(17:31):
results, whatever it is. And then how do you feel
now? And how has it changed? And then use
those words. That's the most powerful way. And people
Right. Now, can you give an example of
a unique value proposition? Like, what does
that sound like? Is it like what?
(17:53):
Yeah. Even if you want to, you could tell the listeners you are UVP.
Right. But what does that sound like? So that people understand,
like, is it a sentence? Is it just a couple of words? Is
Well, it has, before I give you the one example, I have a few
examples. It should include who you're
(18:14):
helping. So your ideal client, what problem you're solving and
then why you're the best choice. So the one,
and I don't have mine in front of me, but it's, if I say it,
it's going to be discombobulated because I have I
have it completely memorized, but I came up with like, if
you're a personal trainer that
specializes in postpartum moms, so I help postpartum moms
(18:38):
regain core strength without long, boring workouts so
they can feel confident in their bodies again. So who is it for postpartum
moms? What are you doing? What is your value?
Regain your core strength. And then what
is the value? They can feel confident in their bodies again. It's
really, it's not hard. I mean, it's really something you
(19:00):
should be able to say in one sentence that is
memorable. I mean, for me, I help health
and fitness brands create
effective messaging, so they reach their ideal clients. And
this is where I haven't woven in the last part of it.
(19:21):
And I speak from both sides of the table because I have been in
So I just think it's important for the listeners to know, like, it's not like it's
three paragraphs long. No. Right. But
and that's what makes it hard. Right. Because we can probably all
write three paragraphs about what we do and how great we are, what
(19:42):
we do and who we help. But to simplify
that, not dumb it down, but simplify that into
what you just said, that very simple to
It is. And that's why it takes long. And people think, oh, it's just, it's
(20:02):
even like when I write copy for a website and I'm like, well, we
don't need that many words. The fewer words you need or
that you want, the harder and longer it takes to get to that.
You think about ads, everyone uses the Apple ads as a gold
standard, but it's true. I mean, they have like two words, They
had one for to show their waterproof aspect
(20:24):
or property of one of their new phones. I forget which ad it was, but
the, the heading said it was P followed by
F like, like, you know, don't worry about
it. And it was just because it was waterproof. That was their ad,
and that's how you come up with that. You don't
Yeah, you don't need a lot to say a lot or to
(20:47):
create, to your point of what you said before, that kind of emotional connection
to your brand and to what you do. Because
in the end, you're trying to get people from, I guess, more
of an emotional standpoint versus, again, to
harken back to what you said earlier, you don't want
(21:09):
Right. Right. Especially with what you do. I mean, as a, you know, physical
therapist, I mean, people are in pain. Yeah. I mean, there's so
many pain points. So literally, yeah. And
it's, it's also hard because you don't want to overstep like
it's a delicate balance. Like when I example, when I used to
work with women over 50, I don't talk about
(21:33):
belly fat per se, you know, I would say something. I mean, sometimes I
would, it depends on what the copy was for, but I
would talk about, you know, kind of make light of it, you
know, tired of like laying on your bed, trying to zip up your pants or,
you know, something to the effect of what is, what
does their day look like when they have, when
they're struggling with these issues? So what is it that you're, you know,
(21:57):
the people that you work with, where are they going through you
know, that is affecting their everyday activities and
in a way that lets you know, lets them know, you know, you
can relate to them, but not in a way that is
Right, right. And is there, a
(22:19):
point within your copy where you might be
over-promising and is that, can that be a little dangerous?
Cause I always see just one of my biggest pet peeves is
we'll eliminate all your pain. And I'm always like, ah,
that's like a, like, what is that? You know? So what
is the danger of over-promising in
(22:43):
Yeah. I mean, you have to be able to back it up. I mean, there's always going to
be click baity copy, you know, and, and you just, you
have to read through it and just be really open-minded. I
posted just today. In fact,
I've been writing on medium, trying to get back into content writing now.
And it was about like different coaching
(23:06):
Like how I, it was about how I spent $42,000 I went $42,000 in
debt from hiring the wrong coaches, and so it was all about.
that aspect, and now I would know better. You have to
look at what they're promising. Does it make sense? I mean, no
(23:34):
Yeah. So is it something that makes sense? And
it's even like, as a personal trainer, I had somebody quit working with me once
because after two weeks of working with me, she wasn't seeing results. And
I thought she was kidding. I remember I went to her house and she's like, I
need to talk to you. I'm like, okay. She's like, I
haven't seen any changes in my body. And I'm
(23:54):
like, I thought she was kidding. And I think I started laughing. And she
goes, I'm not kidding. I explained to her how a lot
of things happen on the cellular level, blah, blah, blah. And
she didn't want to hear about it. I said, there's changes happening to you that
you're not going to see for a couple of weeks, but you should be feeling more
energetic and so on. She didn't want to hear it. So people
(24:15):
are like that, and they expect miracles from you. You don't want to work with
Now, once you have, so let's say the
listeners have done all their homework, they've come up with what they
feel like is a winning UVP, how do
(24:35):
There's a few ways you could do it. The first one is to just run
it by people, you know, and say, preferably people
who don't know what you do say, hey, does this make sense? What, if I say this,
do you know what I do? And see what they, because a
lot of times I've heard this so many times you go on a website, you have
Yeah. So then you'll know if
(24:58):
you put it up on your website, there used to be a easy
way to test it. Um, what was it called? But
there are different ways to run it by people. It's not free, but
you can get a usertesting.com. I think now they charge quite a
bit for that. But if, you know, even if you run it by
five people, what you do is put it
(25:19):
on your website. And then with
this particular app that they used to have, I think it's still out there.
I just think it's gotten really pricey, but you will have a recording of
people walking through your website and they have to say out loud
what they're thinking. So gosh, they might read something. No,
it's so valuable. Like, okay, I'm not really sure what you're trying to
(25:40):
say here. Right? Okay, this button isn't taking me to where
I thought it would. But that's that's more of a website thing. Yeah.
But yeah, run it by people. I would do a poll on something like
LinkedIn, because I'm on there a lot. And that would
be helpful. If you have a list, send it
out to your list. There's so many
(26:01):
different ways. And then ultimately, it's like you put it up on
your website, because websites, people think you put up your
copy and that's it. I mean, it's constantly changing. Right. Yeah,
totally. You can change your homepage copy every week if you want. I
wouldn't recommend it, but I mean, you can try different things, see where
people are clicking, what's making them open something, your emails. Do
(26:23):
Right, right. Yeah, I know. I just went through and
changed a lot of the copy on my website because
it had been a while and I was like, oh, I think I need to change
some things up here. So I, but it's time consuming,
but I felt really good about it and I still have more
to do, but I'm, you know, it's very satisfying. So
(26:46):
don't be swayed by the daunting task because
Hot jar, I don't know why they named it that, it's very weird. But
Hot jar, and there's other trackers like that. It's
(27:08):
a heat tracker that I have it on my website, and it's
kind of scary to look at, because you can literally see where somebody's
moving their cursor. It records it. And so
there's something called rage clicking, which is a funny term,
but it means when people can't find what they want on your website, you'll see
them click over and over and over. Like say there's
(27:32):
Just this past week I had, there's a couple of people, they
were on Tik TOK, but they were looking for donations and it was some animal welfare
And the links were all broken. I'm like, you know, if this was a
website, it'd be horrible. And I really was going to donate and I didn't. But
you want to make sure that, you know, they're able to get to where they are. But Hotjar
(27:52):
is good to look into. I don't know what it is. It's not expensive. I have it on
my site. But it records where
people are clicking. So you can see where they're dropping off.
Right, right. Oh, that's cool. Okay. So another tool
for everybody out there. This is like full of like very practical stuff
here, which I love. So now let's say you
(28:15):
put your UVP out there. It's good, but
maybe not as strong as you would like it to be. So what
Well, the first one I mentioned before is to be specific. Don't
use generalities anywhere where you can say,
like, instead of lose weight or ease, like,
(28:43):
Yeah, let's say back pain, like reduce back pain or
If you could, and this wouldn't be, this may
be later in your copy, but you really want to get specific on
how you do that or how
it's going to feel. So maybe it's from lifting something or
(29:06):
I mean, it would take, see, I can't do this off top of my head because it's really hard, but
you want to incorporate something specific. Most
importantly, what I mentioned earlier too, is to add emotion. How are
they going to feel? Because when you get into
that emotion, because we make decisions with our emotions,
we justify it with logic and people are going, so logical. Science
(29:28):
and research proves it. We all do it. It's part of our brain. That's how
we decide. So any kind of emotion you could put behind it, get
them to feel what it is. And so
that's why talking about their pain a
little bit helps because sometimes people are looking for help and
then they forget what they were even looking for and they
(29:50):
click off of your site. It's like, I need to remind you, you're in
So what is- Right, right. So kind of making
sure that you're constantly kind
of hitting those pain points of the people who are
coming onto your website, that you're not just saying it
(30:12):
once up on the top maybe, but that further
down into the copy, you're repeating that again and just reinforcing the
fact that, like you said, you're here because you're
Right. Right. Yeah. No, that makes perfect sense. And
it's making me rethink everything on my website at the moment, but
(30:34):
that's okay. I will revisit that
It's okay. Cause people start kicking themselves. Like I should have gotten help. It's
like, like I just worked with a, I don't just work with health and fitness.
I have a bookkeeping accounting client and he said,
you know, people are embarrassed because they, their books are such horrible
(30:54):
shape. So on their website, they said, you
know, they wanted it to be personal. I said, okay, you know, bring us
your shoe boxes. Don't worry. We don't judge. Like that was some of the copy that
Cause people are embarrassed about it. Right. Right.
Or, you know, they're coming to, they're in a vulnerable spot.
(31:15):
Right. Especially if they're coming for a health or a fitness professional,
you know, they're usually not like, I feel
100% the best I could feel. I'm going to go see a PT. Like it usually doesn't
happen, you know? So you're catching people at a time when they're vulnerable. Sometimes
they're desperate. They've tried a million other things and
(31:37):
And that's the type of copy that you have. Like you've tried everything, you
know, you've done this, you've done the exercises, you've done the stretches, whatever
it is. Yeah. And you're still hurting, you know, maybe it's
something blah, blah, blah, that you don't know or that you haven't thought
Right. And this is where we can help. Exactly. Exactly.
Well, as we begin to wrap things up here, is there anything
(32:00):
that we didn't cover about a strong UVP
Well, the most important thing is to don't rely on AI. to
do it for you. Right. Because you're only going to get what's already been said.
And I have never, I mean, you can use it for research. In
(32:24):
Ask who your competitors are. Yeah. Find out, you know, but a
lot of times when I ask things like that, I use perplexity and I use
chat. It comes up with links that are no longer relevant. So it's,
it's hard, you know, We can do your research that
way, but find out. I mean, I would definitely recommend
talking to people who are using your services. Find out
(32:44):
why did you choose us instead of, you know, somebody else
and, and really have them give you details like this. Oh,
because I thought you were better. Well, what do you mean? Like what? What came
across? Was it our support? Your problem?
What was it? And really get into what makes
(33:06):
Yeah. Yeah. And that's something, like
you said, you can't get from chat GPT. on
what makes you different. You have to talk to people who have
used your services, which makes perfect sense. And
just sticking with AI for a moment, I
love the fact that you said like, definitely use it for research, but don't
(33:28):
use it for your voice, right? And I
I think a lot of people use chat GPT or AI. I
don't want to plug one specific there's so many to
replace perhaps hiring a copywriter or
hiring someone like you. So, I guess the
(33:54):
It's the strategy that I work with with my clients because that's in
any copywriter out there who is not doing strategy is
going to lose because it AI replaced people
who are a lot of our beginners who don't really know
how to do copywriting I've been doing. copy for
five years, seven years. And before that I did all the content writing, magazine writing.
(34:15):
So I know my stuff, but it's how do you use
it? Like a lot of the questions that you asked me, like how, where does
this particular copy belong? What, how should I
word this and how, where should I put this? What
if it's, you know, a landing page, you can have all the copy in the world, but
if you don't know where to put it, what's triggering the clicks in
(34:36):
the, in the opt-ins, or contact
the leads, it doesn't do any good. Everything
I was going to say, we still need people. We
still need people because it's people who go onto your
website who are looking for your services. I don't think AI is
(34:58):
looking for a physical therapist at the moment. So usually
that's people. Unless they're spamming you.
Unless they're spits. I can't, that's a
whole other conversation. I can't even go into it. It's so much,
it's so much. I wanna throw my phone right out the window
some days. Okay, so I
(35:20):
guess, well, I guess
we come down to where can people find you
if they want to learn more about you, they
Well, my website, thecopyworks.com is
the best place. I'm very active on LinkedIn. I
(35:42):
have like 10,000 followers in there, but I've started getting a little
burned out from that. So I went to medium and I'm starting to write on medium.
So that's something new, but I do have
a lot of little freebies on my site. And one of them is 21 phrases
I know I saw that. I'm like, I'm dying to know what that is.
(36:05):
So every time I post on LinkedIn, it goes viral and it's the marketing speak.
Yeah. Yeah. Twenty one cringe worthy words and phrases
to banish forever from your copy. Right. But
so if you're listening and you want that freebie, if
you scroll down on whatever platform you're listening to right now,
we'll have a direct link right to that so you can sign up
(36:27):
for that. That's something I was I saw it. I'm like, oh, that's good. I
need to like I need to know what words not to use. And
I have a newsletter that I put out every Thursday. Perfect. Yeah.
Oh, perfect. Yeah. So we'll have links to all of that in
the show notes. So last question, it's one I ask
everyone and it's what advice would
(36:49):
you give to your younger self knowing where you are now in
your life and career? to your 20 year old
I would say get more serious about
learning how to run a business. That's
the one regret. I've run businesses throughout
my life and I never had anyone really
(37:11):
show me how to do it. I just did it by the
seat of my pants. I lost a lot of money. When I look back, at
what I did, and because I did have a lot of different businesses along
the way, I would have really benefited from
having some real business advice, like, hey, stop
spending money. a
(37:34):
drunken sailor, or whatever those sayings are, because I
never really was good at money, because I'm an artiste, right?
Exactly, exactly. No, you and me both. And
I would say, unless you went to school as like a
business major, or you grew up and your parents really taught
you all of the ins and outs, it is a really hard thing
(37:55):
to do. So I think that's great advice to give to any
younger person, regardless of whether you want to start a business or not. I
think it's great advice. So thank you so much for
that. And thank you so much for coming on the podcast.
Thank you for having me. And yeah. And everyone,
again, if you want to learn more about Linda, you can go to the copyworks
(38:18):
dot com. That's the COPYWORX dot
com to learn more and get all of those wonderful freebies. And
thanks so much for tuning in. Have a great couple of days and stay
Hey everybody, welcome back to the Healthy, Wealthy, and Smart Podcast. I
am your host, Dr. Karen Litzy, owner of Karen Litzy Physical Therapy located
in New York City. And today we are going to talk about
why it's important to have a strong, unique value
proposition, especially if you're in the medical
or fitness industries. So to help us with that
(00:24):
conversation today, I'm really happy to bring on my guest, Linda Malone.
She is a certified conversion copywriter, former personal
trainer, and award-winning writer and founder of The
Copyworks. She specializes in helping fitness
and health brands find their unique value proposition and
voice so they can rise above the competition. So
(00:50):
Oh, I'm thrilled. So before we get into our unique
value propositions, can you give the audience a little bit more info
about you and how you went from personal
trainer and I know pastry chef to copywriting
Yeah, I'm one of those people who has just tried everything I have
(01:11):
a rule if it's when it stops being fun I stopped doing it. So
I'm older than I look, I'm a baby boomer I'm 66 actually
so I tell people that because, because they start adding up
all the professions, I've done and it's like, this doesn't
The math isn't mapping. So yeah, out of college, I
actually have a degree in nutrition of all things. And I thought I wanted to be a
(01:32):
dietitian. I found it was too dry for me. It just, I
wanted something more creative, ended up getting into the food business,
which was related to the nutrition thing. And then in my long story
short, I was working out
for, at the same time I had, I owned a bakery of
all things. And I would go into the gym and people would be like, Who
(01:54):
smells like muffins? And at a certain
point is like, I have to make a decision between these two things.
Cause it was such a difference. So I ended up
being certified as personal trainer. I love fitness. I dropped the
whole bakery thing. And so I became certified. I'm
a certified. I ended up having four certifications, including
(02:15):
this CSES. And I was really into
working with in-home clients. And I started noticing
that there was a magazine that was getting tossed in my driveway. It
was a free publication. It was a business one. And it had a fitness column
in it. I've always loved to write. I'm one of these people, I'll write even
if I don't get paid for it. I just love to write. And I
(02:36):
thought, you know, I do in-home personal training. They have this fitness column
and people always ask me like, what do I need for a home workout, like
setup? So I pitched the editor, I said, I have this idea. What about,
you know, would you be interested? And he said, sure, you know, send it my
way. So I wrote up, it was like, you know, how much space do you need for treadmill? How
much, like just the logical things. And I remember I sent it
(02:57):
to him and he called me, which I never expected. And
he said, this is awesome. He says, do you want to write some more for us? And
this is way back when. So I ended up writing columns. I
ended up writing cover stories. And then I started branching out into the
national publications. And basically, I wrote for every
fitness publication out there. I had a column in Oxygen Magazine. I
(03:18):
wrote for, well, Family Circle is the one I won an award for. It
was an article about how injuries early
in life affect you later in life. Spoiler alert, it's
mostly arthritis, but there's other
things. And so I ended up writing for MSN
Health and then around 2016, I
(03:40):
think, 2015, really the bottom kind of fell out of print publications.
Yeah, it was around that time. So I started trying
to go online and I was getting paid like 25% of
what I was getting paid for, for these magazines. So I thought, you
know what, maybe I'll just do personal training online, have a program. So
I set this up for, I had a program for women over 50. just
(04:05):
working out. And this is where I started thinking about
conversion copywriting, because I was marketing myself just
by the seat of my pants, just trying to figure out what's selling. I had programs I
did, like all these live webinars, which I just found I
enjoyed. And I hired a copywriter.
And this is when, this kind of segues into what I'm going to talk about today,
(04:26):
when you don't know your audience. So I paid this woman a
lot of money for an hour of her time. She was very well-known in
the business. And she spent an hour with me trying
to come up with a name for my program. And she thought
calling it a kick in the pants would be good.
Now, keeping in mind, this is women over 50. No one wants to
(04:46):
be kicked in the pants, but especially women over 50. We've been kicked
enough in the pants. So it didn't sell. And
it didn't, it took me a long time to realize why. And
that's when I said, you know, I want to become, I want to do what she's doing
because I think I could do a better job. So I segued into copywriting,
which was a whole different thing. I ended up writing for Bowflex. I
(05:09):
had co-hosted a podcast that
they had way back. It was like 2017. And the
rest is history. So I've just been, I've been working. I stepped
away from the fitness for a while as far as writing, because
I was so burned out. If I had to write one more description of how to
do a bicep curl. Right, right. I get that.
(05:30):
Knee slightly bent. I just couldn't deal anymore. And
now I'm realizing that's what differentiates me though from
other copywriters is because I spent 15 years as
a trainer. I wrote all these articles. And
most people who write copy for fitness publications
don't have, they definitely don't have my extensive background. So
(05:52):
that's, there's my differentiator. Right. A
Yeah, no, that's great. Because I think it's so cool to
see people kind of evolve over their lifetime. And
like you said, really kind of finding the things that are fun for you
and that make you happy. And then you're successful
(06:14):
usually if you're doing if you're kind of in that mindset. So
I love it, I think. And it's also kind of an it was a seemed like a
Yeah, it was gradual. Like when I was doing personal training and I started writing, I
You know, I would, I would, the more assignments I got, if I lost a
(06:34):
client, they quit with me. I wouldn't, usually I work really hard
to replace them. And I stopped doing that. I had one,
two people. And then I just said, I'm just doing the writing. So it took
That's, I mean, I did the same thing when I was working part-time
as a physical therapist in a clinic and starting my own practice. And
it took a while. It was gradual. I went from
(06:57):
20 hours a week to 16 to 12 to eight until,
so it took a couple of years, but for me, it
was the comfortable way to do it. So I'm totally with you. I 100% get it.
Now, let's move on to kind
of the crux of today's episode, which is knowing
what our unique value proposition is and why
(07:20):
it's a must have. But before we even get to why it's a must have, can
I mean, in a nutshell, it's what makes
you different from your competitors. What is going
to make someone realize you're not just a solution
to their problems, but the solution? And that's not
(07:42):
Correct. So why is
it a must have versus just nice to have? Like
it's because a lot of things are nice to have, but why is this
It's a way to compete that if like, if
you don't have a handle on what makes you different,
you're going to end up competing on something like price. You know,
(08:05):
everything is going to sound generic. If you're not
different and people are going to just start comparing you,
okay, well, who's the most expensive and, and that you never want
that. So that's my biggest argument for it, but it's
really what separates you from the pack. Yeah.
(08:25):
How do you figure that out? I
mean, there's got to be some sort of formula or something that
maybe you can share with the listeners on how they can figure out what their unique
value proposition is. Because I'm sure a lot of people are listening now like,
When I work with clients, it takes me literally about four weeks
(08:46):
to do it because I combine everything. I
look at social media comments. What are people saying about your
profession? But to someone who just wants to
do it on their own, I would suggest this. I go
People are talking and find out what people are
(09:07):
complaining about your profession. Like, what are they saying that,
because if you go on somebody else's website, they're only going to post what
is, you know, what are the good things they're not going to
post. But you go on Reddit and like, say it's
like, you know, there's subreddits, I forget how many,
I think it's like a hundred thousand, it's ridiculous number of subreddits. You
(09:28):
can find one on what, you know, exactly what you do. So,
you know, physical therapy, maybe there's a subreddit and
there probably is one, physical therapy nightmares, something that happened, like what
happened to somebody? And then also
look at, and this is my favorite thing to do, is I create
a chart of my clients competitors.
(09:50):
And if you're not sure, and here's where I know we're going to get into this
a little bit later, but I use AI to find like, here's what
are my top competitors in this area, create a
chart, find out, you know, what are they saying? What's their
messaging? And what are
you able to say that they can't or that
(10:10):
they're not talking about? It doesn't have to be different.
It just has to be something they're not talking about. There's
the old, and I use this story
a lot because it's so interesting, but years and years ago, there
was a famous copywriter that was hired to work for Schlitz beer
and Schlitz was not selling. I think it was Eugene Schwartz.
(10:32):
I'm going to say anyway. And so he was hired and he went
out to all the factories to find Heather making his beer. And
so he was taking a tour and the tour guide, whoever
was the owner of the company said, you know, we clean our glassware.
And it was a certain way they steamed it and whatever it was. And he said,
this is amazing. And the guy that was taking him around
(10:52):
to all of our competitors do it. It's not anything different because
when no one's talking about it. So he built all their messaging
around this pure water. And
I forget exactly what it was, but it ended up being like
outselling all the other competitors that whole year, because it was
(11:12):
Right. Right. So you don't have to reinvent the
wheel. You could just talk about the
Right. Just put really highlight it, make it sound like no
Right. Right. Right. So so
(11:32):
for homework, for those people listening, you're going to go on
a Reddit or a sub Reddit and find out what people are
maybe not so happy about with. whatever your profession
is, physical therapy, personal training, et cetera. And
then create a chart of your competitors and
look at maybe what they are saying and what
(11:57):
And then you step in and fill in those gaps is,
Yes. It's like, if you think about, is it a Venn diagram? Is
that the right term? When you have the circles, one, that's
what they're saying, what they're doing, what your competitors doing, then you want
to have, like, there's this part that overlaps. That's yeah. not
any, no one's doing this. And so, you know,
(12:20):
I mean, you think there's so many different brands you can think of that have done
that in the past, Peloton before, you
know, they had their problems they have now, but I mean, no one
was doing what they were doing with the, the bike and the, you
Right. Right. Exactly. So
(12:44):
so let's say you've got you've done all this research.
Right. And now now what? How
do you take all that research and distill that
Well, you want to find a way to word it
so that there's actually criteria that I use. And
(13:08):
I actually have a chart that I check off with
these five aspects. It
should be desirable, people want this. Memorable,
you know, think about taglines that these big brands have that you can't get
Succinct, it should be very, you know, distinct and
clear. And that's the next one is clear and then unique. So
(13:31):
something that is memorable, unique,
desirable. If it fills all those criteria,
I mean, you really, you do have to test. It's like any marketing though. I mean, you
have to test it. But what I do with my clients is
I come up with three. I usually come up with one main one out of all
the research. And then I will come up with a few smaller
(13:54):
ones and they can be used on different website pages. They
can be used for different things. And then we talk about it. Sometimes we end up
combining them. and having, they'll say, well, I like this
and that, but it has to have that real
distinct value
to it. And most people don't go through all
(14:14):
this to find it out. And the thing that always amazes me,
it was when I do this research and I go through all the competitors, a lot
of times they just say things like, award-winning or
welcome to our homepage or something that's complete waste of
space for the website, especially that they call it
the hero section, first upper part of your
(14:37):
And so I guess that leads into the next question is, what
are the biggest mistakes that people make that instead
of standing out, they're just blending in with the sea of
It's using jargon that everyone uses. And
this is where AI works against you because AI is going to pull from
the internet. And so people are like, I'll just use AI. I
(14:59):
saw something yesterday that there's an ad somewhere. I don't know
if it's in the States, but it said, stop hiring people.
Did you see this? It's all kinds of uproar about
it. And it's all, it's from an AI company, of course, just
hire AI, you know, use AI for everything. And when you do that,
all you're doing is pulling what's already been said. It's
(15:21):
not, AI can't create anything new. It can connect
things together. But what I see most is
just industry jargon. And by that, I mean, words
that don't mean anything like, Best
in class. In fact, I did a whole post on LinkedIn that went viral.
It had like 130,000 views on it,
(15:43):
but it's all of the words that people overuse that don't mean
anything. So if you're writing it out, you're value prop. So
ask yourself, can I get more specific with this? Can
I say something that's clearer than, so
maybe, maybe you have won awards and that's fine. I have
it on my site, but I don't have it on my hero section. I have it like at the bottom. And
(16:04):
I also have why that's important. So if you're going to, you know, talk
about what you do or what you've accomplished, you
want to follow it up with why that's important to the
people that you are trying to attract. But
just fluffy words that sound good. The easiest
way to get the right words is to talk to your customers,
(16:29):
your clients. How, like asking them, and
this is part of what I do too, is interviewing people. And
it's hard because no one wants to get on the phone. It's really hard
to get them. Nowadays, not easy. No,
but when you do, it's gold because you ask them like, so what made
you make the decision to go with me or to go with, you know,
(16:49):
if you're doing it for somebody else? and tell
them, ask them like, walk me through your day. Like, how has your
life changed because of this? Especially like I've worked and
written for some functional medicine companies and
I've worked for, there was one company that has a
product that helps with the side effects of chemo. I
(17:09):
mean, really heavy duty stuff. And when I would ask the people and
I was able to interview a lot of cancer patients,
what was it like before and what's it like now? And it
was really gut-wrenching. You want to get that emotion. You
want to have people feel something. And the best way
to do it is talk to people who have used the product, who have seen
(17:31):
results, whatever it is. And then how do you feel
now? And how has it changed? And then use
those words. That's the most powerful way. And people
Right. Now, can you give an example of
a unique value proposition? Like, what does
that sound like? Is it like what?
(17:53):
Yeah. Even if you want to, you could tell the listeners you are UVP.
Right. But what does that sound like? So that people understand,
like, is it a sentence? Is it just a couple of words? Is
Well, it has, before I give you the one example, I have a few
examples. It should include who you're
(18:14):
helping. So your ideal client, what problem you're solving and
then why you're the best choice. So the one,
and I don't have mine in front of me, but it's, if I say it,
it's going to be discombobulated because I have I
have it completely memorized, but I came up with like, if
you're a personal trainer that
specializes in postpartum moms, so I help postpartum moms
(18:38):
regain core strength without long, boring workouts so
they can feel confident in their bodies again. So who is it for postpartum
moms? What are you doing? What is your value?
Regain your core strength. And then what
is the value? They can feel confident in their bodies again. It's
really, it's not hard. I mean, it's really something you
(19:00):
should be able to say in one sentence that is
memorable. I mean, for me, I help health
and fitness brands create
effective messaging, so they reach their ideal clients. And
this is where I haven't woven in the last part of it.
(19:21):
And I speak from both sides of the table because I have been in
So I just think it's important for the listeners to know, like, it's not like it's
three paragraphs long. No. Right. But
and that's what makes it hard. Right. Because we can probably all
write three paragraphs about what we do and how great we are, what
(19:42):
we do and who we help. But to simplify
that, not dumb it down, but simplify that into
what you just said, that very simple to
It is. And that's why it takes long. And people think, oh, it's just, it's
(20:02):
even like when I write copy for a website and I'm like, well, we
don't need that many words. The fewer words you need or
that you want, the harder and longer it takes to get to that.
You think about ads, everyone uses the Apple ads as a gold
standard, but it's true. I mean, they have like two words, They
had one for to show their waterproof aspect
(20:24):
or property of one of their new phones. I forget which ad it was, but
the, the heading said it was P followed by
F like, like, you know, don't worry about
it. And it was just because it was waterproof. That was their ad,
and that's how you come up with that. You don't
Yeah, you don't need a lot to say a lot or to
(20:47):
create, to your point of what you said before, that kind of emotional connection
to your brand and to what you do. Because
in the end, you're trying to get people from, I guess, more
of an emotional standpoint versus, again, to
harken back to what you said earlier, you don't want
(21:09):
Right. Right. Especially with what you do. I mean, as a, you know, physical
therapist, I mean, people are in pain. Yeah. I mean, there's so
many pain points. So literally, yeah. And
it's, it's also hard because you don't want to overstep like
it's a delicate balance. Like when I example, when I used to
work with women over 50, I don't talk about
(21:33):
belly fat per se, you know, I would say something. I mean, sometimes I
would, it depends on what the copy was for, but I
would talk about, you know, kind of make light of it, you
know, tired of like laying on your bed, trying to zip up your pants or,
you know, something to the effect of what is, what
does their day look like when they have, when
they're struggling with these issues? So what is it that you're, you know,
(21:57):
the people that you work with, where are they going through you
know, that is affecting their everyday activities and
in a way that lets you know, lets them know, you know, you
can relate to them, but not in a way that is
Right, right. And is there, a
(22:19):
point within your copy where you might be
over-promising and is that, can that be a little dangerous?
Cause I always see just one of my biggest pet peeves is
we'll eliminate all your pain. And I'm always like, ah,
that's like a, like, what is that? You know? So what
is the danger of over-promising in
(22:43):
Yeah. I mean, you have to be able to back it up. I mean, there's always going to
be click baity copy, you know, and, and you just, you
have to read through it and just be really open-minded. I
posted just today. In fact,
I've been writing on medium, trying to get back into content writing now.
And it was about like different coaching
(23:06):
Like how I, it was about how I spent $42,000 I went $42,000 in
debt from hiring the wrong coaches, and so it was all about.
that aspect, and now I would know better. You have to
look at what they're promising. Does it make sense? I mean, no
(23:34):
Yeah. So is it something that makes sense? And
it's even like, as a personal trainer, I had somebody quit working with me once
because after two weeks of working with me, she wasn't seeing results. And
I thought she was kidding. I remember I went to her house and she's like, I
need to talk to you. I'm like, okay. She's like, I
haven't seen any changes in my body. And I'm
(23:54):
like, I thought she was kidding. And I think I started laughing. And she
goes, I'm not kidding. I explained to her how a lot
of things happen on the cellular level, blah, blah, blah. And
she didn't want to hear about it. I said, there's changes happening to you that
you're not going to see for a couple of weeks, but you should be feeling more
energetic and so on. She didn't want to hear it. So people
(24:15):
are like that, and they expect miracles from you. You don't want to work with
Now, once you have, so let's say the
listeners have done all their homework, they've come up with what they
feel like is a winning UVP, how do
(24:35):
There's a few ways you could do it. The first one is to just run
it by people, you know, and say, preferably people
who don't know what you do say, hey, does this make sense? What, if I say this,
do you know what I do? And see what they, because a
lot of times I've heard this so many times you go on a website, you have
Yeah. So then you'll know if
(24:58):
you put it up on your website, there used to be a easy
way to test it. Um, what was it called? But
there are different ways to run it by people. It's not free, but
you can get a usertesting.com. I think now they charge quite a
bit for that. But if, you know, even if you run it by
five people, what you do is put it
(25:19):
on your website. And then with
this particular app that they used to have, I think it's still out there.
I just think it's gotten really pricey, but you will have a recording of
people walking through your website and they have to say out loud
what they're thinking. So gosh, they might read something. No,
it's so valuable. Like, okay, I'm not really sure what you're trying to
(25:40):
say here. Right? Okay, this button isn't taking me to where
I thought it would. But that's that's more of a website thing. Yeah.
But yeah, run it by people. I would do a poll on something like
LinkedIn, because I'm on there a lot. And that would
be helpful. If you have a list, send it
out to your list. There's so many
(26:01):
different ways. And then ultimately, it's like you put it up on
your website, because websites, people think you put up your
copy and that's it. I mean, it's constantly changing. Right. Yeah,
totally. You can change your homepage copy every week if you want. I
wouldn't recommend it, but I mean, you can try different things, see where
people are clicking, what's making them open something, your emails. Do
(26:23):
Right, right. Yeah, I know. I just went through and
changed a lot of the copy on my website because
it had been a while and I was like, oh, I think I need to change
some things up here. So I, but it's time consuming,
but I felt really good about it and I still have more
to do, but I'm, you know, it's very satisfying. So
(26:46):
don't be swayed by the daunting task because
Hot jar, I don't know why they named it that, it's very weird. But
Hot jar, and there's other trackers like that. It's
(27:08):
a heat tracker that I have it on my website, and it's
kind of scary to look at, because you can literally see where somebody's
moving their cursor. It records it. And so
there's something called rage clicking, which is a funny term,
but it means when people can't find what they want on your website, you'll see
them click over and over and over. Like say there's
(27:32):
Just this past week I had, there's a couple of people, they
were on Tik TOK, but they were looking for donations and it was some animal welfare
And the links were all broken. I'm like, you know, if this was a
website, it'd be horrible. And I really was going to donate and I didn't. But
you want to make sure that, you know, they're able to get to where they are. But Hotjar
(27:52):
is good to look into. I don't know what it is. It's not expensive. I have it on
my site. But it records where
people are clicking. So you can see where they're dropping off.
Right, right. Oh, that's cool. Okay. So another tool
for everybody out there. This is like full of like very practical stuff
here, which I love. So now let's say you
(28:15):
put your UVP out there. It's good, but
maybe not as strong as you would like it to be. So what
Well, the first one I mentioned before is to be specific. Don't
use generalities anywhere where you can say,
like, instead of lose weight or ease, like,
(28:43):
Yeah, let's say back pain, like reduce back pain or
If you could, and this wouldn't be, this may
be later in your copy, but you really want to get specific on
how you do that or how
it's going to feel. So maybe it's from lifting something or
(29:06):
I mean, it would take, see, I can't do this off top of my head because it's really hard, but
you want to incorporate something specific. Most
importantly, what I mentioned earlier too, is to add emotion. How are
they going to feel? Because when you get into
that emotion, because we make decisions with our emotions,
we justify it with logic and people are going, so logical. Science
(29:28):
and research proves it. We all do it. It's part of our brain. That's how
we decide. So any kind of emotion you could put behind it, get
them to feel what it is. And so
that's why talking about their pain a
little bit helps because sometimes people are looking for help and
then they forget what they were even looking for and they
(29:50):
click off of your site. It's like, I need to remind you, you're in
So what is- Right, right. So kind of making
sure that you're constantly kind
of hitting those pain points of the people who are
coming onto your website, that you're not just saying it
(30:12):
once up on the top maybe, but that further
down into the copy, you're repeating that again and just reinforcing the
fact that, like you said, you're here because you're
Right. Right. Yeah. No, that makes perfect sense. And
it's making me rethink everything on my website at the moment, but
(30:34):
that's okay. I will revisit that
It's okay. Cause people start kicking themselves. Like I should have gotten help. It's
like, like I just worked with a, I don't just work with health and fitness.
I have a bookkeeping accounting client and he said,
you know, people are embarrassed because they, their books are such horrible
(30:54):
shape. So on their website, they said, you
know, they wanted it to be personal. I said, okay, you know, bring us
your shoe boxes. Don't worry. We don't judge. Like that was some of the copy that
Cause people are embarrassed about it. Right. Right.
Or, you know, they're coming to, they're in a vulnerable spot.
(31:15):
Right. Especially if they're coming for a health or a fitness professional,
you know, they're usually not like, I feel
100% the best I could feel. I'm going to go see a PT. Like it usually doesn't
happen, you know? So you're catching people at a time when they're vulnerable. Sometimes
they're desperate. They've tried a million other things and
(31:37):
And that's the type of copy that you have. Like you've tried everything, you
know, you've done this, you've done the exercises, you've done the stretches, whatever
it is. Yeah. And you're still hurting, you know, maybe it's
something blah, blah, blah, that you don't know or that you haven't thought
Right. And this is where we can help. Exactly. Exactly.
Well, as we begin to wrap things up here, is there anything
(32:00):
that we didn't cover about a strong UVP
Well, the most important thing is to don't rely on AI. to
do it for you. Right. Because you're only going to get what's already been said.
And I have never, I mean, you can use it for research. In
(32:24):
Ask who your competitors are. Yeah. Find out, you know, but a
lot of times when I ask things like that, I use perplexity and I use
chat. It comes up with links that are no longer relevant. So it's,
it's hard, you know, We can do your research that
way, but find out. I mean, I would definitely recommend
talking to people who are using your services. Find out
(32:44):
why did you choose us instead of, you know, somebody else
and, and really have them give you details like this. Oh,
because I thought you were better. Well, what do you mean? Like what? What came
across? Was it our support? Your problem?
What was it? And really get into what makes
(33:06):
Yeah. Yeah. And that's something, like
you said, you can't get from chat GPT. on
what makes you different. You have to talk to people who have
used your services, which makes perfect sense. And
just sticking with AI for a moment, I
love the fact that you said like, definitely use it for research, but don't
(33:28):
use it for your voice, right? And I
I think a lot of people use chat GPT or AI. I
don't want to plug one specific there's so many to
replace perhaps hiring a copywriter or
hiring someone like you. So, I guess the
(33:54):
It's the strategy that I work with with my clients because that's in
any copywriter out there who is not doing strategy is
going to lose because it AI replaced people
who are a lot of our beginners who don't really know
how to do copywriting I've been doing. copy for
five years, seven years. And before that I did all the content writing, magazine writing.
(34:15):
So I know my stuff, but it's how do you use
it? Like a lot of the questions that you asked me, like how, where does
this particular copy belong? What, how should I
word this and how, where should I put this? What
if it's, you know, a landing page, you can have all the copy in the world, but
if you don't know where to put it, what's triggering the clicks in
(34:36):
the, in the opt-ins, or contact
the leads, it doesn't do any good. Everything
I was going to say, we still need people. We
still need people because it's people who go onto your
website who are looking for your services. I don't think AI is
(34:58):
looking for a physical therapist at the moment. So usually
that's people. Unless they're spamming you.
Unless they're spits. I can't, that's a
whole other conversation. I can't even go into it. It's so much,
it's so much. I wanna throw my phone right out the window
some days. Okay, so I
(35:20):
guess, well, I guess
we come down to where can people find you
if they want to learn more about you, they
Well, my website, thecopyworks.com is
the best place. I'm very active on LinkedIn. I
(35:42):
have like 10,000 followers in there, but I've started getting a little
burned out from that. So I went to medium and I'm starting to write on medium.
So that's something new, but I do have
a lot of little freebies on my site. And one of them is 21 phrases
I know I saw that. I'm like, I'm dying to know what that is.
(36:05):
So every time I post on LinkedIn, it goes viral and it's the marketing speak.
Yeah. Yeah. Twenty one cringe worthy words and phrases
to banish forever from your copy. Right. But
so if you're listening and you want that freebie, if
you scroll down on whatever platform you're listening to right now,
we'll have a direct link right to that so you can sign up
(36:27):
for that. That's something I was I saw it. I'm like, oh, that's good. I
need to like I need to know what words not to use. And
I have a newsletter that I put out every Thursday. Perfect. Yeah.
Oh, perfect. Yeah. So we'll have links to all of that in
the show notes. So last question, it's one I ask
everyone and it's what advice would
(36:49):
you give to your younger self knowing where you are now in
your life and career? to your 20 year old
I would say get more serious about
learning how to run a business. That's
the one regret. I've run businesses throughout
my life and I never had anyone really
(37:11):
show me how to do it. I just did it by the
seat of my pants. I lost a lot of money. When I look back, at
what I did, and because I did have a lot of different businesses along
the way, I would have really benefited from
having some real business advice, like, hey, stop
spending money. a
(37:34):
drunken sailor, or whatever those sayings are, because I
never really was good at money, because I'm an artiste, right?
Exactly, exactly. No, you and me both. And
I would say, unless you went to school as like a
business major, or you grew up and your parents really taught
you all of the ins and outs, it is a really hard thing
(37:55):
to do. So I think that's great advice to give to any
younger person, regardless of whether you want to start a business or not. I
think it's great advice. So thank you so much for
that. And thank you so much for coming on the podcast.
Thank you for having me. And yeah. And everyone,
again, if you want to learn more about Linda, you can go to the copyworks
(38:18):
dot com. That's the COPYWORX dot
com to learn more and get all of those wonderful freebies. And
thanks so much for tuning in. Have a great couple of days and stay
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