0:00:44 Jemimah Ashleigh: Hi, Ben, how are you?
0:00:46 Ben Wright: Hey, Jemimah. Well, have we covered a bit of ground this morning before we’ve even hit the record button? Have we spoken about a few topics?
0:00:53 Jemimah Ashleigh: We got on the call a bit earlier and it’s like this is the longest time I think we’ve just chatted. And the takeaway that I really want our audience to really know about is that you have been deemed of having a very smooth voice by your neighbors children who were like, best voice around. And then I was recently in an elevator with you where someone said, you sound like Squidward. And I was like, they’re not wrong.
0:01:13 Ben Wright: I’m just going to reframe. That calming voice was what I heard from the kids. And that was straight after they acknowledged that I was a Spotify star.
0:01:23 Jemimah Ashleigh: Spotify stuff. That’s a statement. And I think you’re allowed to let them be the young. Ben. These kids are young. They haven’t quite realized anyone can create a Spotify account yet.
0:01:33 Ben Wright: We’ve also spoken this morning about Nelson Mandela’s bodyguards, now working for a government department in Australia. And we’ve spoken about how you were too likable to be a spy.
0:01:45 Jemimah Ashleigh: Yep, that. We also discussed that it’s been a really adventurous morning this morning. Has it? And then talked about traffic for a little while as well. It’s been a good morning. I’ve enjoyed it.
0:01:53 Ben Wright: Yeah. Or everything but the traffic bit. So we have, speaking of great conversations and topics, we have someone who is very, very good with words on the podcast right now. His name is Steve Plummer and he’s a gentleman that I’ve known for quite some time now. He started as a school teacher, which, well, hopefully it was English. Right. It possibly explains his strength of words, but since then he’s gone on to become a copywriter, an author, a speaker, and a generally good guy. But one of the things that always intrigues me about Steve is that he self proclaimed that he works with soul led businesses around Australia, which I’m going to ask him about as soon as I introduce him, but let me do that and introduce the man no other than Steve Plummer. Thank you for joining us today.
0:02:36 Steve Plummer: Thank you, Ben, It’s a pleasure to be here. Hi, Jemimah. And yes, Ben, you do have a very sonorous, calming voice. So it’s a pleasure to be here.
0:02:44 Jemimah Ashleigh: He’s put multiple listeners to sleep. Sorry.
0:02:49 Ben Wright: If I could do a better job with my 5 year old when she’s excited, that would be fantastic. So, Steve, Soul Led Businesses want to jump straight in there. What does that mean?
0:02:59 Steve Plummer: So for me, well, it means a lot of things, I think, to a lot of people, Ben, but for me it’s businesses that are doing good on the planet that aren’t necessarily for the want of a term profit first. They want to do things for the business betterment of humanity. And obviously making a profit along the way is good fun as well. So that’s my focus now. Would I say that I never have worked with or businesses that don’t do that well? I’m in business and sometimes I have, but my preferred target market is those businesses doing good things to help the planet.
0:03:35 Ben Wright: Yeah. Cool. We all have our ideal customer profiles or we should all have our ideal customer profiles. If you don’t the first thing to take from today, it doesn’t mean we always get to work with our perfect customers. However aspirationally we need to have that. So fantastic. And your writing journey today, tell me what that looks like.
0:03:52 Steve Plummer: Yeah, it’s a little bit interesting. And in your introduction, you’re right. I was an English teacher then. I was a head of department and a deputy principal. I’ve always liked words. One of my little catchphrases, Ben, is that, you know, I write gooder than most people and that always gets a bit of a laugh, right? I guess my professional writing journey started when I was teaching at high school. I had an urge to do something different and I taught myself to be a freelance journalist and I found a niche in boxing. And I’ve always loved the sport of boxing and I was writing for a lot of Australian magazines and on the late night, mid-90s, early two noughties or early 2000s, I was one of Australia’s leading boxing riders. And I’ve interviewed everyone from Jeff Fennick to Costa Zoo and all of Danny Green, all of those really big guys at the time. And it was a lot of fun. I sat at ringside, I’ve had blood splattered on my notepad and things like that.
So it was a really fun and interesting side hustle. While I was teaching. I did try and leave teaching to go into journalism, but I four kids and a mortgage. I would have had to take a 20 or 30 grand pay cut. And that just wasn’t going to happen. And it just so happened. Ben. I was at a, at an event one day in Sydney and one of the guys up the front of the room said, I’ve got four kids. And I went, oh, I’ve got four kids. He said, I really love words and writing. I really love words and writing. I work from home. I went, no, I don’t do that. I’m getting up at 5:30 as a deputy principal and getting home at 6:30 and not having an injury for my own kids. He said I’ll work the hours I want, I don’t do that. And he said, and I earned six figures. Now I was doing only two of those things lined up right. Four kids, love of words. And it was like, wow, I want to know what you do because that’s the life I want. And I think they call it stalking now. But I pursued him to be, become my mentor and he taught me everything he knew.
0:05:34 Jemimah Ashleigh: Highly targeted investigations.
0:05:38 Steve Plummer: Yeah, AKA stalking. But he didn’t see it that way. And he took me under his wing, taught me everything new and I guess the rest is history. I’ve worked with some really big companies around the country. I’ve spoken on the same stage as Russell Brunson. So it’s been quite a journey, Yeah.
0:05:52 Ben Wright: Yeah, awesome. Really like that. In my experience, people like helping people in general. So as long as you go about it in the right way, you know, you can often find some captive mentors.
0:06:05 Steve Plummer: Actually, Ben, can I interrupt you? Here’s a really interesting thing, right, because when he agreed to work with me, he said, look, there was one thing that you did that no one else did. He said, I get, I asked for help, asked to be taken under my wing and mentored and blah blah, blah. He said the one thing you did that was different. He said, you said you would write for me for free until you were good enough to be paid. And luckily I was in a position where I was still earning money obviously, but that was a key point of difference. And again, that was a really interesting early learning for me to stand out differently in the marketplace. It was that keyword free. Yeah.
0:06:37 Ben Wright: Yeah. Well, how long did you write for him for before you got paid.
0:06:42 Steve Plummer: Maybe three or four months. You know, a little, little job here, a little job there. Do they do this bit and then, hey, I’ve got this client, why don’t you Go and quote for them. And being in government employment, it was like, what do I do? I’ve got to ask for money. What? That was a big load.
0:06:59 Jemimah Ashleigh: Where are the rates card? How much am I meant to ask for? What did the last guy get? It’s really. Yeah. When you’re in that first day of doing that and like, you like how much? I got asked for a quote this morning and I was like, I’ve never done this specific thing before. And I was like, 5,000. Like. And you can see my voice go up at the end of it and I’m like, you got to pretend like you’re more confident here, kiddo. There’s a moment whenever you’re doing something new that happens. And especially when you jump from corporate. Well, you know, like, you know, and I again, having worked in government, I knew what my next pay raise was going to be. I knew that I was going to get 3% here. I knew that my next salary band was this. And suddenly you’re being asked to quote for a any company.
0:07:39 Ben Wright: Jemimah, A good little hack for when you’re pricing. Something like that. Just to segue here when you’re in the services business. So as you’re going through those conversations, first thing to ask yourself, is this a once off or is this something I will do again and again and again, right? If it’s a once off, all consultants should know, right? We take away value based pricing, right. For me, value based pricing is the way to lead on a lot of these. But if you put on the spot, if it’s a once off and you’re knowing your hourly rate or your daily rate, right. You calculate how long you think it’s going to take and you double it, right? Because anything you do for the first time is going to take you twice as long. And if it’s a once off and you need to deliver value, right? So your hourly rate, double it for however long it’s going to take. If it’s something that you think you’re going to do again and again and again, right. You essentially don’t add the doubling at that rate, right? However long you think it’s going to take, it will take double that, right. First time in doing anything. But it’s a really nice way that I’ve used to price when I’m on the spot. Because for me, getting pricing out in that first meeting is really important because those objections straight away. And rather than spend the next couple of hours, right. Working through with them, what’s going to happen? Well, meetings, right. Anyway, Segue. Let’s get back to Steve. So, Steve, copywriting is changing rapidly because of the ability now to access a large amount of average or better content from AI. So, you know, this is a two pronged question, if you’re ready. First part of this question is to say, the reason I’m asking this is because for me, it took me a long time as a business owner to actually understand why you’d use a copywriter. I used to take the approach that said, yeah, that’s fine, I understand how to write. I understand how to write gooder in Steve Plummer’s words, right? I should be fine. I passed English, just so, Steve, copywriter, rather than talk about what’s the value of a copywriter? What’s the value of getting the words on a page or a computer screen? Really spot on.
0:09:28 Steve Plummer: Making money, making impact, right? Good copy is often the lever or the hinge that opens the big door to success in business. You know, I mean, you’ve heard me say before, Ben, words are spells. I really believe that. And I believe that on two levels. One, for ourselves, what are we spelling into our own heads in our own life with the words where, you know, Steve, you’re never going to do it. You’re not good enough. What’s that going to get me? That’s going to get me those results, right? Whereas if I’m saying, Steve, you know, you’re excellent what you do, you know, you’re worth every penny that they pay you for. That’s going to get me different results. And so the same thing, I believe, applies with the words that we use with our market. If we are spelling the right things into our market, then we have a very good chance of success. Now, there are no guarantees in life, Ben. But the difference is you brought up an interesting point.
You did okay at English. At school, there is a huge difference between writing for marks, writing to convey information, and writing to sell. And one of the learnings I had to do early on in my writing career, my professional career, was unlearn all of the correct English, right? Because copywriting, it’s very specific, it’s very conversational. Don’t use the word formulas, because people get a bit annoyed about that these days. But there are also certain language patterns and things that you have to do that if you were to take that as an English essay to school, you were going to fail, right? And so my big message is, basically everything you learned at school, chuck it out, because you’re not being marked here. The only mark that counts is whether there’s a sale or not.
0:10:57 Ben Wright: Okay. Yeah. Fundamentally makes sense to me. And you talk about formulas. I try to use the word frameworks wherever I can because I work in threes and fives. If you can get clear on how you’re going to approach the same task again and again and again, then it’s just so much easier for you to get results. Okay, so get your words on the page or the screen, right? And essentially what we’re talking about is converting customers, right? Attracting the right customers and converting them. With the rapid rise of LLMs and AI tools out there, what do you think’s changing around how people approach copywriting?
0:11:31 Steve Plummer: It’s a really good question and a really topical one. I mean, in business and marketing, you almost can’t utter a sentence without the two letters in there, right? AI. Well, two things, actually. I’ll. I’ll start almost at the end. We talk a lot about AI and maybe we should be talking about H.I. instead of artificial intelligence, maybe we should be talking about heart intelligence. And are we giving too much over to outside things like AI and rather than getting the lessons from within and connecting in a heart way with our community, with our customers. So that’s sort of a, a bigger level thing. But look again, there’s much to unpack in this AI piece. The first thing is, is that average copy can be done really quickly and simply. You just put a prompt or two into chat gtp, for example, and it will spit out something that is reasonable. I think there is a word of caution there for everyone. Unless you know the fundamentals, the principles of copywriting and what makes people move. Because that’s the whole purpose of copywriting artists. To take them from where they are, meet them where they’re at, take them from where they are to that point of sale. And it’s that journey that you take them on that isn’t necessarily simple or linear even. And that’s the skill of the copywriter being able to use the language, you use the framework in the right way. And yes, you can put those into those prompts, into chat, GTP and the other AI tools and they can do a reasonable job. However, I see an awful lot of very, very ordinary stuff out there, you know, and I. My perception too is that I’ve heard a number of people say this is that conversions are waning because of the sameness of a lot of the AI copy. Doesn’t mean it doesn’t sound okay, but there is this danger that everyone’s seeing the same thing. And when everyone sees the same thing, they see nothing.
0:13:13 Ben Wright: Yeah, it’s a really interesting comment. I’m starting to pick up. I do a bit on LinkedIn and I’m starting. This is where Jemimah would go, “Really”, where I’m starting to pick up people commenting on my posts that are AI generated. And I’m starting to noticing it now. It’s not stopping me engaging, because engaging is the name of the game in LinkedIn. But, yeah, I’m certainly becoming aware of it and perhaps a little bit more routine in my response.
Okay, so would this be a fair summary of what you just said? That AI is lifting the overall baseline of copywriting. However, it’s perhaps bringing down the peaks so that we have a middle band where everyone’s sitting, but it’s a lot harder to differentiate that human connection when you’re using AI. So we’re losing some of that capability. Fair.
0:14:04 Steve Plummer: Yeah. Yeah, that’s a really good summary. Know, for example, I think it’s easy to tell what’s been generated by AI, Right. The paragraphs are all the same size. There’s a lot of the dashes in there. There’s a lot of emojis in there.
0:14:16 Jemimah Ashleigh: Oh, the emojis, Steve. I’m just getting triggered, as we all have in our networks. We have people of varying degrees of skill sets, and some are very good at explaining what they do, some aren’t. What I’m seeing now is that the people who have historically done very loose copy, not being very clear on what they do, suddenly come out with these exact paragraphs that you’re talking about that are littered with emojis that are. Yeah, yeah. And it’s like, you know that. And it just reads to me, while I’m now getting clear, understanding what they do immediately when I see it’s just AI. I am not saying don’t use AI. I’m absolutely. I think it’s really worthwhile doing. But the editing was where it becomes interesting. Get the dot points and get the framework, if you will, of what you’re doing here. But the emojis breaks me. It just. I don’t know what it is about me. It just makes me go, oh, you’ve missed the mark here a little bit. And trusted AI completely with your business, and that’s a really poor idea.
0:15:12 Ben Wright: Jemimah. One thing that I hate about that is I’ve been using emojis on my text messages for like 10 years. So now all of a sudden, I’m thrown into the AI emoji man bucket, which. Which just breaks my heart.
0:15:23 Jemimah Ashleigh: You send dumb emojis though I love you, I really do. There’s often emojis that come through and I go, how did you like. It’s ones that you just wouldn’t expect. It’s not the love heart, it’s not the smiley face. It’s sometimes like a tiger or a duck like you. Really, your emoji game is strong. You obviously scroll through, you’ve got screens that you use. No one goes to the last page except for Ben. Ben’s checking out every emoji on the list.
0:15:46 Ben Wright: Yeah.
0:15:47 Steve Plummer: So just on that though, I guess the overall point for me is that when it’s all the same with all the emojis, what I think is happening more and more is that people go, oh, it looks all the same like the one I just read yesterday or that one. And therefore I’m not going to engage with it. And so I think there is a danger and you know, using LinkedIn as an example, if they’re all the same like that and if you’re. Because understand copywriting is. And marketing, it’s a one on one conversation between me, the business owner and the person I’m speaking to. And you know, we will talk in human beings talk in different length sentences. You know, one sentence will be quite long and involved and detailed, the next is short. Then we might do a medium one and the next one might be really tiny. And so that’s kind of the flow, the rhythm, if you like, of human language. And so one to one communication is not AI produced blocks that are all the same with emojis in it.
0:16:41 Jemimah Ashleigh: Do you think we’re going to see a rise of AI written books and people really pushing to publishers to go publish this book. Do you think we’re. And because that’s something I’m starting to see now is like I might just get AI to help me write this book. And I was like, helping is one thing. Getting it to write the book will be completely different. How safe do you think it’s going to be with people using things like ChatGPT and uploading manuscripts and ideas that they’ve got and blog posts and all of that. How secure? While ChatGPT is actively stating, oh, it’s pretty secure and no one’s going to be able to see your things. Do we think? Do you think that’s true?
0:17:13 Steve Plummer: Well, you can take precautions like in the projects folder in chat GTP GPT 4.0 like that. That’s a way of doing it. But it changes so fast. The answer is I don’t know. I Don’t know. And that’s one of the, I guess the challenges with large language models is that we just don’t know. And it changes so fast. You know, two years ago this would have been an irrelevant conversation because everyone would have gone, what are you talking about? Right? And the other thing too is it’s not going anywhere, right? AI it’s like the motorcar, it ain’t going anywhere. You know, we’re horse drawn vehicles now. We’re in motorcar slash motorbike kind of thing. And it’s getting faster and faster and faster and faster all the time. So if you’re not using it, get on board because the world is racing ahead.
0:17:58 Ben Wright: Yeah, absolutely. So Steve, let’s get really practical for a minute. So business owner, part of a marketing team, leader in any business. Tips that you have for them using AI for their copywriting.
0:18:10 Steve Plummer: Okay, Learn the fundamentals first. You understand what is a reasonable, like the PASPA formula problem, aggravate, solve, prove, call to action, right? Learn a formula that is proven to work and understand how the words fit into that formula. That’s the basic fundamentals of it. The next thing is to make sure that you are prompting. Well, you are putting good hearty prompting. It’s not just a two line sentence. Write me a sales letter. Write me a blog that does blah. You’ve gotta be more thoughtful with that. And Jemimah touched on it before. It is also a draft, you know, if I can, am I led? Swear on this program, Ben, is that okay? Or the S word, Can I say that?
0:18:47 Ben Wright: Well, I think you’ve all but said it. You may as well.
0:18:51 Steve Plummer: I always quote Ernest Hemingway, right? And Ernest Hemingway, the great novelist, he says the first draft of anything is shit. And you know, oftentimes the first draft that AI spits out is shit and you have to massage it, you have to then go back and reprompt it, upload files to it and all those sorts of things. So you know, it is something that needs refining and it isn’t necessarily the quick fix. I’ll give you one example of where it is really good. I’ve got a mate in the US who calls it voice of the buyer copyrighting. When in manual times, pre AI times, I would get testimonials from my clients, right? And I would read through them with a pen and a highlighting key phrases and I would use those highlighted key phrases in the headlines and in subheads and in the text of the sales copy. The reason for that is that’s actually coming not from the business owner. But that’s coming from their customers. So talk the way the customers are now, I can upload testimonials into AI, give it a prompt, and it will do that thing in seconds, right? So that’s a really good example of how it’s speeding things up. But unless you know what you’re doing with that stuff, it’s not going to be great, right? So that’s what I’m saying. Learn the fundamentals, you know, and you might say, well, what are those things? Well, the offer is key, right? They buy the offer. If the offer is not strong and clear and. And what they want, it’s over. What’s the next most important thing? The next most important thing is the headline. If you don’t stop them in their tracks, then it’s over. What’s the next most important thing? The first line of copy. If that doesn’t hook them in and encourage them to read the next thing, it’s over.
So you’ve got to understand that hierarchy of things and the other mistake or other little thing I think I see a lot of is humans are so busy these days, right? And I saw a statistic the other day where in 2018 or something, our attention span was something like 3 minutes and 44 seconds or something like that. In 2021, it went to 45 seconds. Now, apparently our attention span is less than 10 seconds. And so, I mean, wow. And scary. But understand that to hook someone in, you haven’t got a lot of. A lot to play with, right? It’s a very short time that you’ve got to hook someone in to get them to read what you’re looking at. And that is getting tougher and tougher. And so people need remind, right? One and done never works. You have to give them reminders. Unlike that. I need reminders. You guys need reminders. We all need reminders.
0:21:14 Jemimah Ashleigh: Yeah, Steve, I totally understand that I really gotten quite interested in this, how we consume information, obviously, being digital marketer, learning how to do pr, these sort of things. But one of the things that’s come out recently, and this is largely because of the pandemic, we had a lot of people at home suddenly, on social media platforms like never before, we have fundamentally changed the way that we consume. But in the last five years, we’ve started consuming two full movies on average, like, of data extra per day. That is like you are not consensually taking on board Speed one and Speed two, or Independence one and Independence Day number two. Like you have full movies being thrown at you through TV through media, through just digital ads and total consumption of what you’re doing and online. So you’ve got microseconds to get someone’s attention.
0:22:08 Steve Plummer: And isn’t that crazy? It’s a great point, because you think about that. If you worked all day, then you sat down and wrote independent, well watched Independence Day 1 until you’re getting to bed at 10 o’ clock kind of thing, right? And you’re saying that’s now crunched into our whole day. That’s scary.
0:22:20 Jemimah Ashleigh: And their attention spans are being ruined because of this. So your hook has to be amazing. The writing has to be like, I am in right now.
0:22:30 Ben Wright: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Absolutely. Well, Steve, you’ve answered my couple of questions there in one. Thank you so much for today. Jemimah, Key takeaway from today.
0:22:37 Jemimah Ashleigh: Going back to just watching Steve do spells over people. I just thought I could see Steve hunched over doing Witchcraft. So I was like totally in on that for a little bit. I will say the thing that I’ve really enjoyed listening to, Steve, is really what I think everyone knows that AI is a tool. It’s never going to replace completely what we’re doing anyway. And that copywriting is just one of those things that it’s an absolute art and science all at once. And that’s been really interesting, hearing your takes into that. Thank you.
0:23:04 Steve Plummer: My pleasure. Thank you.
0:23:05 Jemimah Ashleigh: And what about you, Nikway? Biggest one.
0:23:07 Ben Wright: Look, I’m going to go look up Keanu and Sandra tonight and do a double header. Speed one and speed two. But I think outside of that, the main message is use AI to supplement your copywriting. Your words, but don’t forget that you have very little time. 10 seconds. I think you said Steve, to grab people’s attention. If what you’re getting out of AI is not top class at generating people or generating interest from people, then all that time you’ve saved or money you’ve saved is worthless because your conversions will, in Ernest Hemingway’s words, be shit. So that for me, is the encouragement. Steve, where can people find you before we finish up today?
0:23:42 Steve Plummer: If you would like a copy of my book, The Influential Marketer. As you can see, it’s a hefty read. A day, a page. Ben, you have a copy, I know you do, and you use it. Go to the influentialmarketer.org or you can contact me, [email protected] if you want to email me or go to symmetrymarketing.com
0:24:02 Ben Wright: Excellent. Thank you very much for your time today, Steve. We’ve been your Friends in Business enjoyed today. We will see everyone next week. Bye for now.
