Rachel Allen runs Bolt from the Blue Copywriting, which helps small and brave business owners (that’s you) shake up the world one industry at a time with devastatingly incisive copy and content that gets right to the heart of who you are and makes your readers’ synapses sparkle.
Bolt from the Blue Copywriting is a creative agency specializing in helping you get all that amazing stuff out of your head and onto the Internet in a way that’s true to your voice, all in beautifully incisive language that leaves your readers breathless and dying for more.
Katie (00:01):
Hi everyone. Thank you for tuning into the Hustlenomics Podcast. I’m your host, Katie. And today I’m so excited to be talking with Rachel Allen. She’s the owner of bolt from the blue copywriting where she and her team helped businesses on a mission. Use words to make money by mixing the neuroscience of communication with the art of great writing. She creates the words and strategies that make it possible for businesses to take the cap off their income impact and influence. So, Rachel, thank you so much for coming on the show today.
Rachel (00:28):
Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me.
Katie (00:31):
Of course, of course. So I would love to learn a little bit more about you and really how you got to where you are today.
Rachel (00:35):
Yeah, so I was just feeling so fancy at listening to my own bio. So I guess that’s a good sign, but I actually got into this completely backwards. I would have never in my life thought that I would be sitting here doing an interview with you about business because I went to school for journalism, double majored in journalism and Asian studies like intern at NPR did the whole thing because I was so sure that I was going to be a journalist. I wanted to work for the economist in Hong Kong. And like, that was just the plan since forever. Then I graduated in 2008 and nobody was hiring anybody and especially not journalists. So I sent out 200 resumes and I got zero responses back. So the only job I could get was actually unpacking boxes in the warehouse at old Navy, I was like, Oh, yay, student loans for this.
Rachel (01:24):
So I ended up sticking it out for about six months and then I was just like, I’m not, you know, this is not what I am on the planet to do. So I decided in a move that may total sense to my 22 year old brain that I was going to move to Hong Kong where I had studied abroad before, but being 22 and you know, an idiot, I didn’t think like, Hey, maybe I should get a work visa or some savings. And I just packed up and went and I landed there with about a $200 in my bank account and I had to make rent. And so I started Googling like how to make money online, you know, as you do. And I heard about this thing called copywriting and I was like, huh, what’s that? And I looked around and I was like, I don’t know. I guess I could probably figure that out. So I took some freelance jobs and it turned out that I just really fell in love with it. And I ended up building a business out of it. And 10 years later here we are.
Katie (02:14):
That’s amazing. How long were you living in Hong Kong?
Rachel (02:17):
About two years.
Katie (02:18):
Very cool. So you became a business owner almost by accident, which happens to a lot of people, but so had, when you first had the idea of starting this business, was it something that totally terrified you or were you excited? What were those feelings going on in your head?
Rachel (02:32):
I honestly think it was like pure unrelenting panic for about two years of like, I’ve got to make friends, like I got to, you know, I’ve got to support myself. I’m, you know, living over here, da, da, da, and then and at the time I, so I ended up doing some freelance work for a couple of clients. But I was doing most of my work for a content mill back when those were still a thing. And I don’t know if people know what that is, but it’s like, they basically used to have sites where the, the objective was to turn out as much content as possible and it didn’t need to be high quality and it didn’t even really need to make sense, like as long as you just got stuff out and then Google changed their algorithm and stuff that different, but back then content mills were a thing.
Rachel (03:09):
And so I had this content mill that had hired me to write meta descriptions for Google search results. You need the little paragraph that shows up under the link. And they were paying me 65 cents a meta-description and I got to where I could do 302 hours. And so it was just this, like, this focus is intense focus and then I sort of incidentally thought like, wow, I’m kind of making money at this. Like I’m doing okay. Is there a way that I could do this and not have it feel like a garbage fire all the time? And then that’s why I kind of got into business.
Katie (03:40):
Yeah. I definitely relate to that feeling. Absolutely. And had anybody in your life started a business before? Did you have anyone to kind of ask questions to, are even mirror yourself after? Or was this something that was completely new to you?
Rachel (03:53):
It was completely new. Yeah, I was, I didn’t really have any models. I didn’t really know anything. So I just kind of read a bunch about it online and experimented and made a lot of really, really awful mistakes and eventually kind of learned from them.
Katie (04:09):
Yes. Yes. That is one thing that a lot of people don’t talk about are those mistakes that happens when you’re first starting. I definitely have, I could probably fill a whole novel full of mine. You might be one or two just to let people know, Hey, it all happens to everybody.
Rachel (04:23):
Oh gosh. Yeah, totally. It totally all happens. All right. I’m thinking of my favorite mistakes. One was I was ridiculously undercharging. I had no sense of the value of the work at all. And I like, you know, completely not a business person. So I didn’t do any sort of like cost projections or anything like that. I was just like, I don’t know, like, this feels easy for me. So I guess it should be cheap, which is such a common mistake and like such a, such a terrible one. So I’m undercharging. I didn’t like, I was scared of my numbers so much early on because I also didn’t have any financial training really. And I was, I wasn’t completely financially illiterate, but I certainly didn’t know how to do finances for a business. And so I just ignored the mostly and was very lucky in that I was able to get by and things kind of worked out, but I had a great reckoning with that about five years ago now where my accountants actually had me go back through and hand categorize every transaction for my, for everything for like three years.
Rachel (05:24):
And that is a fantastic way to reassess your priorities and decision making paradigm if you’re ever interested.
Katie (05:32):
I can only imagine. Yeah. Yeah. Those are definitely things that I feel like are common mistakes for beginning entrepreneurs, but you definitely learn from them. And so, yeah, I would love to talk about your business. The name is so intriguing. Where did you come up with that?
Rachel (05:48):
Funny enough. So I, I had been operating under my own name for awhile and then I was like, Oh, you know, all, all the cool people have brands. I should have a brand, which is also another mistake following what all the cool people do, but in this case made sense. So I was going to do my own branding because I, you know, I didn’t ever think about hiring somebody to do that. So I was like messing around with it and I took a bunch of branding courses and kind of played around with designs and did the big soul searching stuff, you know, like the desire map and like, what is my purpose on the planet type stuff. And I banged my head against this wall about it for like six weeks. And I was so frustrated and irritated and just like, what is your name, business? Who are you? And then I was sitting in bed one night and the words bolt from the blue just dropped into my head and I went, Oh God, that’s it because that’s what good copy. And that’s what words do really. They hit you like a bolt from the blue and they don’t let go.
Katie (06:44):
Yeah, that’s so true. That’s so true. And you mentioned branding, which is so confusing. I feel like for people who are not in the field and are having to do it on their own, so it’s very clear, very clean. Did you do this on your own or did you go to somebody to help you get it all together?
Rachel (07:00):
I did the first iteration on my own and I operated into that for about three years. And then I got a brand like a brand development person and a designer a lot of Burke who to help me out with it. And so the, the website that’s up now is all her genius work. I basically just pointed her at my old website and said, make it good. And she made it so much better.
Katie (07:18):
Nice. Yeah, there is. There’s definitely some great things about reaching out to people and their zone of genius instead of trying to do everything yourself. But I totally understand that one man band at first. Cause that was, that was me as well. So copywriting is obviously a term that you’ll hear if you’re in the business world, but I’m not sure everybody understands like where it applies. So could you talk about all the places that you might run into copywriting if, as a business owner?
Rachel (07:41):
Yeah. And funny enough, even people outside, like people even just a little bit adjacent to the industry, don’t understand what it is. A lot of people think that I’m a copyright lawyer like that I can get you a copyright and I absolutely cannot do that. So I always am fielding inquiries about that. But copywriting is you would find it anywhere in your business, really anywhere from your website to your emails, to blogs, podcasts, videos, to courses and books and social media, basically anywhere that you need words in your business, a copywriter can help. And since business, a business, without words is a business on mute, you really meet them.
Katie (08:20):
Right? Absolutely. And so if someone’s like, all right, okay. I need, I obviously need to pay attention to what I’m writing and what I’m trying to say. Where’s the first place to start? Would it be social media, your website emails?
Rachel (08:32):
So I would say it depends on the business, but a good place to start is always the website because that’s kind of your storefront, right? You want to make sure that that’s the place that people are seeing first and that it truly reflects you from there. I would say probably social media, given that that’s the next biggest thing. I’m trying to think basically where, where the eyes are. Right. You need to be able to show up as a professional and you need to show up consistently in that way. So probably website first, then social media.
Katie (08:59):
Okay. That makes sense. Fantastic. And you had a really cool blog post that I came across, but it was titled how to be vulnerable online without coming across as an attention seeking jerk. I love, I think that’s fantastic, but I feel like this is a problem that we all have these days. We’re trying to be authentic and vulnerable, but Boehner trouble. But I think part of us feels like we’re bragging. I’m not sure if we learn that alone society taught us that you know, talking highly about ourselves as bragging, which I, I don’t know where that came from. But do you mind just talking a little bit about what that blog post was was about?
Rachel (09:32):
Yeah, sure. So I love, you’re bringing up like three of my favorite soap boxes being vulnerable online and the, this concept of authenticity and sounding like you’re bragging. So, okay. I’m going to answer all three of them. And if I go off piece, I know you’ll bring me back in. So the whole thing about being vulnerable online without looking like you’re an attention seeking jerk. So we all know that there’s those, there’s those situations where you have to show up vulnerable in your business, right? Because that’s what makes us human. You can’t just show up as robo business owner because otherwise people won’t be able to connect with you. You won’t be able to have a compelling brand. And it’s just weird. Like we’re in this, we’re not in this to be corporate weirdo people we’re in this to be humans with each other.
Rachel (10:15):
And so vulnerability is a key part of that. And yet we’ve all come across those blog posts or those websites where those podcasts, where you’re like, Oh God, like, I really don’t know that you were in the mental space to be sharing that about yourself, you know? And it feels awkward. And it feels like this burden that you, that is being put on you because you don’t have that type of relationship with the person. Right. If it’s the kind of thing that should be shared in the context of like a spouse relationship or a family or a friend or something like that. I think Renee Brown actually calls this from Jack lighting when you’re when you just get blindsided by someone who’s like just going along and like, you know, I’m, I’m whoever, whoever VA and I do this. Oh, and by the way, here’s some huge trauma about my life.
Rachel (10:55):
And you’re just like, Whoa, like roll that back lady. The key here though. So the key to being vulnerable online without coming across as this sort of like crazy boundaryless weirdo is you think about why you’re sharing it. Like does the other person genuinely need to know, or do you just need somebody to know that this has happened to you because those are two very different things and two very different outcomes. And the other thing is to think about the context in which you’re sharing it. It’s a really different thing to share a story about some vulnerability you have or something that’s happened to you when, in the context of your providing your service to someone. Like if they need to know this about you so they can trust you or so they can understand you or so that they can relate and not feel alone. Those are all completely legitimate reasons to share things like that. But otherwise it’s just self serving and it, it really turns people off.
Katie (11:46):
Right? Yeah. I couldn’t agree more. I’ve definitely had those awkward feelings and when listening or reading things, it’s like exactly what you we’ll take a step back. And when it comes to copywriting, obviously you, you specialize in this and people could contact you for your services, but for somebody who’s, maybe in the very beginning stages and has zero. But maybe just wants to get a good start on copywriting for their website. Let’s say, do you have any tips and tricks or strategies to give someone who maybe feels like they’re not the strongest writer, but wants to get some good copy on their website?
Rachel (12:17):
Yeah, absolutely. So the key is I always tell people to take it in four steps. I’ve kind of broken it down into a four step process, and this is what we use in house. This is what all my writers use and it’s what I recommend to my clients as well. And there’s just a little bit of backstory with this process, which is, I got really curious about seven years into running my business as to what made great writing great. Like I could see it and I could know it was going to be good, but I didn’t know why. And I was really interested in figuring out why, because I’m a science geek like that. So I did this massive study of all of the copy projects that I had done to see what the elements were that made them successful. And I ended up distilling it down to these four steps that anybody can follow.
Rachel (12:55):
And so the first one is to get very, very clear on your message. Like, what are you actually trying to say? And this can be so hard because you have to fight through all of the like, well, I should sound like this, or I should say that. Or like, I don’t know, people are gonna think I’m weird if I say this or whatever, but if you can get down to that core message of like, if nothing else, what is this about? What do you do? Why do you care that stuff then? That’s amazing. That’s an amazing start. The second step is you have to think about your audience. So if you know what your message is, but you don’t know how to communicate that in a way that your audience can understand. You might as well not say it at all, because it’s not getting out to anybody.
Rachel (13:32):
So you create a clear message. You figure out how to inflect it for that audience, which sounds fancy, but basically just means how do they need to hear it? You know? And then the fourth element is strategy because so many people put words up in their business and don’t, they just do it because everybody says they should, but your word should be an asset for your business. They need to perform. You need to see outcomes from them other than just, it makes me feel cool. So you get your message in place. He would collect it for the audience. And then you think literally, what do I want these words to do? Do I want them to build my brand? Do I want them to convert? Do I want to get followers? Like what numbers can I put on this to know if this is working or not? And the fourth and final step is you execute well. So you just, you do it really well, make sure that the typos are fixed. Make sure the grammar makes sense. It doesn’t have to be perfect, but it needs to make sense, do whatever you can to make this as high quality of product as you can for where you are at the time. And that’s that’s basically the four steps I’d run people through.
Katie (14:28):
I love that. Those are so actionable, practical and yeah, you’re right. You can do them at any stage of your business. I love that. Thanks for sharing. And I’m sure you’ve seen a lot of websites and a lot of homepages and obviously people, everybody knows your homepage of your website is your first impression. And you want to make that a good first impression. Have you seen some common mistakes that keep coming up on home pages that you’re like, Oh, that again, that people could easily fix it. They might not know they’re doing wrong.
Rachel (14:56):
Yeah. So the number one mistake I see on homepages is there’s no clear call to action. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. And it sounds a little weird cause people think about calls to action in terms of sales copy. And they think like, well, why would I need, you know, why do I need to call to action on my homepage? So the weird thing about humans is that the way our brains work, when we get to the end of a process and we don’t have a clear next step, we experienced something called cognitive dissonance and it’s uncomfortable in, in your brain. We’re kind of like, Oh, what do I do? I don’t know. And because your brain hates this feeling, it will shut it down as fast as possible. So when it gets to like feeling, it’s like, well, I guess we should leave.
Rachel (15:32):
Like, let’s get out of here. And that’s obviously you don’t want that. But if you provide someone with very, very clear next steps, like on my website, I have one page where there’s a massive button at the bottom that says, click this button. Yes. This button, if you can provide them with super clear steps, then your brain’s like, Oh, I guess we clicked the button and it feels good. And you get a little you get a little reward of dopamine and norepinephrine, which keeps you focused and feeling good. So whole point of that little divergence into neuroscience is have a call to action on your home page. Even if it’s just like click here to learn more about how we can work together or like click here to do whatever and make sure it’s super clear. Other mistakes. I see are people kind of getting really shy and like hiding behind their homepages and only having something like, hi, this is my name, the end.
Rachel (16:20):
And like nothing else there. And you’re like, Oh, come on, man. Like tell me what to do. Like who are you? Let me see. And this is a design mistake, but a saying not a copy mistake, but it’s also very common. I want to see pictures. Like, I want to see your picture on the front page or something that tells me something about your business. If you have more of an agency model, like I do, you know, like I need to know from second one who you are and what you do and whether we’re a fit.
Katie (16:44):
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And one thing that I’ve noticed that I’m actually a little bit surprised by when I go to a certain home pages is that there’s so much copy on there. So verbose that it’s like, Oh, I’m going to be reading for 10 hours. There’s no way I’m getting out of here. Is that something that you see happening a lot as well?
Rachel (17:02):
Yeah. I think homepages should generally be very short with the exception of if your homepage is your only page. Like if it’s a landing page and you have all your stuff on it, then that’s fine. It can be a little bit longer, but generally speaking the tighter, the copy the better. And that’s not necessarily because short words are always better than long words, but if you take the time to get it really tight, it means you’ve really thought through it and you’ve had to sit with it and really felt into it. So it just tends to be better.
Katie (17:26):
Yeah, absolutely. And I would love to kind of take a left, turn into email marketing. That’s something that I’m passionate about, but I mean, as you probably know, the email open rates have just keep dropping and dropping and dropping and it’s amazing. You’ll go in and you’ve crafted this email that took you so long to make and like two people opened it and maybe one person clicked in it. Probably your mom. Oh my gosh, what am I doing wrong? And so do you have any advice for people that are just seeing their emails? Just knock it open and sit in people’s inbox.
Rachel (17:54):
Yes. Oh, first of all, I feel you like, I have so many people come to me with this and a lot of people will tell you that it’s the medium that’s wrong, but like, Oh, email’s a dead force and blah, blah, blah. Don’t do it. That’s actually not true. And the reason I know is that my own emails get open rates between 40 and 60%. And I get similar results for my clients. I actually made a client’s $23,000 in one day last year with three emails. So email marketing can definitely work. The reason that it tends to fail is that we’ve been taught to do email marketing, like we’re selling timeshares. And what I mean by that is, you know, like if you’re ever going to a timeshare and it’s like, Oh, you know, we’ll stay there for the week. And it’s so nice and so lovely.
Rachel (18:33):
And everything’s really friendly and dah, dah, dah, and then at the end of the week, they sit you down on the couch and like give you the spiel. And it feels like you’ve been slapped in the face, right? Like you’ve had this wonderful vacation and then you have to listen to a sales pitch. That’s how people teach email marketing. It’s like, Oh, you know, like warm them up and give them a nice lead magnet and be super friendly. And let’s all, you know, connect and engagement and dah, dah, dah, and then buy my stuff, you know, like right at the end, it’s like people get a personality transplant by email seven and that teaches people receiving email in general to ignore it. So my, the way that I fix that with people are, first of all, just provides stupid amounts of value in every single email.
Rachel (19:11):
Even a sales email can be valuable. It doesn’t have to even feel salesy. You know, it’s more of a conversation that continues and view it instead of you creating the situation where it’s like, you’re trying to hold onto their attention long enough to get a sales pitch in front of them, treat it as a genuine conversation. The old saying you know, if you want to be interesting, be interested that completely applies. The more you respond to other people’s emails, the more you invite people to respond to your emails, the more you’re going to grow and the more you’ll get that engagement and then you’ll get those big payoffs.
Katie (19:41):
Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. I’ve definitely get to implement that into my email strategy and, you know, education, like you said, you kind of were learning all of this on your own from running a business to, you know, finding freelance opportunities when you first started, did you invest in any education like courses or anything like that?
Rachel (19:59):
I did so much later than I should have. I I did courses kind of all over. I would do them like on the spot. So if there was something I needed to learn about, for instance, writing nurture campaigns, I would find a nurture campaign course, or I would do like a branding course, or I’m trying to think of some of the other ones I’ve done money, mindset and stuff like that. But the best investment I ever made actually was just in really good coaching. And I started coaching with your life’s workshop in, gosh, I want to say five years ago, something like that four or five years ago. And that completely shifted everything. I was both the coaching with them and also the mindset of like, Oh, wait, I can actually give people dollars. And they will tell me what to do because they know better than me. And I don’t have to treat everything like an experiment. And that was absolutely revolutionary.
Katie (20:44):
Yeah, absolutely. I can only imagine. And you, you mentioned your businesses is like an agency type, so you have a team that you’re working with, correct?
Rachel (20:53):
Yep. Yeah. We have a team of writers. We’re in three countries right now, I think. And then we’ve got clients in, I want to say 21 countries as of last count.
Katie (21:00):
Oh, wow. That’s incredible. So how early on did you start building that team?
Rachel (21:05):
I think we’re about three years ago. Yeah. That’s when I started converting over into the agency model.
Katie (21:09):
Okay. So it’s been a little while. So what were some of those adjustments that you had to make going from a solo preneur wearing all the hats to handing off some, some things to other people on your team?
Rachel (21:20):
Honestly the hardest part was the mindset shift of, you know, letting go of that tight, tight grip of like, but they are not going to do it exactly like I would do it. And that means it’s bad, which is of course not true. I had to learn to trust my people and to trust myself in hiring them. I go through, we go through a super rigorous hiring process. We actually get an average of 300 applicants per position. And then we typically hire one out of that and it’s just like long drawn out thing. And so I’ve had to learn to trust myself and that like once we get to the one I know they’ve got the skills they go through an inhouse school for the agency with all of the stuff that I’ve written and both on the theoretical and on the practical side. So I know that they understand why we do this and why we do it the way we do. And they also have all the skills they need to implement on that. And so I’ve had to learn to just step back and be like, you know what, they’re amazing workers. I’ve trained them well, and I want to see what they can do. And now I love it when they surprise me because I’ll be like, Oh my God, that’s amazing. Like I, would’ve never thought of that. That’s great.
Katie (22:18):
Yeah. That’s so awesome. I’m in the beginning stages of thinking about bringing on a team, sorry. I always like to ask questions cause it’s a whole new world and it’s a little intimidating when, when you’re first starting out, I think
Rachel (22:30):
Super intimidating.
Katie (22:32):
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Are you happy with kind of the amount of team members you have now or are you looking to grow in the future?
Rachel (22:38):
I’m happy for right now. We, in my five year plan I have us going up to about a seven member or 10 member staff. So but that’s probably going to be spread out over the next three years.
Katie (22:49):
Cool. Very cool. Well, that’s very exciting. So do you have any, you already mentioned some great resources that I’ll definitely link to it in the show notes, but are there any other resources, whether it be books, podcasts, courses, anything out there that, that you have found really helpful that you would recommend to the listeners?
Rachel (23:05):
Mm, I have so many just like specific recommendations if I had to choose a general one. One book that I read again and again, and again is mastery by Robert Greene and in it, he walks you through the process of mastering your vocation. So basically what you’re here on the planet to do. It’s how to sort of it’s how to work with that and enter into a relationship with it and become a master at it. So I love that and I feel like that really helped me reframe, I guess the way that I do my own work as far as podcasts I listened to so many of them, but I really love the good business companies podcast. The best course I’ve taken recently was mastering masterminds with Liz Scully. Because that’s one thing we’re also investing in, in the business is doing more one to some work where I’m running masterminds and running small groups and stuff like that. And she just broke it down and completely into, you know, here is exactly how you do it. So that was cool. And I’m sure I have just a million other things that aren’t coming to mind right now.
Katie (24:04):
No worries. Yeah. Like I mentioned, you can always send them over to me and I’ll put them in the show notes, but I’m not going to want to check out everything you’re doing and follow your journey. So can you let listeners know how they can find you online?
Rachel (24:14):
Absolutely. My website is bolt from the blue copywriting.com. Anybody can email me at Rachel at bolt from the blue copywriting. I do all my email in person I’m really accessible that way. And then I’m also on Instagram and Facebook as bolt from the blue copywriting. So very easy once you get that first thing down.
Katie (24:31):
Perfect. Perfect. Thank you so much for coming on the show. It’s been such a pleasure to talk to you.
Rachel (24:36):
Oh my God. Absolutely. My pleasure. Thank you so much for having me.
