Getting to the Bottom Line: Conversations to help business owners maximize revenue, profit, and cash flow
Whether you're looking to boost your profits or simply gain a clearer understanding what drives business success, "Getting to the Bottom Line" is your ultimate guide to unlocking the strategies and secrets behind sustainable growth and the financial freedom you deserve. Tune in and discover how to turn your business goals into tangible results, one insightful conversation at a time.
Getting to the Bottom Line: Conversations to help business owners maximize revenue, profit, and cash flow
How Better Copywriting Can Transform Your Business with Jon Clemence
Ever wondered how precise language can shape the success of your business? This episode promises to unlock the secrets of elevating your writing skills, with insights from our esteemed guest, Jon Clemence. Transitioning from a 15-year corporate stint to running his own editing agency, Jon shares his strategic journey and the pivotal role of meticulous word choice in boosting a company's financial health. From common pitfalls to strategies for improving written content, his expertise is a goldmine for anyone looking to refine their business communication.
Join the lively discussion on the dynamic interplay between human creativity and AI technology in content creation. While AI tools like ChatGPT can aid in idea generation, they often stumble in capturing the nuances of personal tone or building authentic relationships. Our conversation underscores the irreplaceable value of human touch in crafting content that truly resonates with audiences. Tune in to understand how compelling writing can not only enhance customer journeys but also drive conversion rates, all while maintaining the essential human connection in social media interactions.
Discover how outsourcing content creation can be a game-changer for your business. We highlight why hiring professionals for writing and editing tasks that fall outside your expertise can significantly streamline operations and elevate your brand. Learn about the importance of setting clear goals for your content and the value of building strong client relationships for tailored services. Plus, find out why meticulously tracking business metrics is crucial for assessing the impact of these strategic decisions on your bottom line. Don't miss this engaging episode packed with practical tips and expert advice to transform your approach to business writing.
To learn more about my guest, Jon Clemence, visit him online at http://www.cedarpressproofreading.com
You can also grab a copy of his free blog self-assessment guide from his website. https://cedarpressproofreading.com/blog-self-assessment/
We want to hear from you! Send us a message.
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My name is Stephanie Smith, owner of New Light Financial Solutions, and we help business owners walk the one clear path to generating more cash in their business. To learn more, visit us online at https://newlightfs.com/
Sign up for our newsletter for more great tips on how to keep the cash flowing in your business: https://newlightfs.com/newsletter/
Need help generating more cash in your business? Book a right fit call with us today: https://newlightfs.com/rightfit
Hey everyone, welcome to another episode of Getting to the Bottom Line, where my goal is to help put into perspective the different things that impact your revenue, profit and cash flow. My name is Stephanie Smith. I'm your host. I am owner of New Light Financial Solutions, where we offer outsourced CFO services to help business owners generate more cash in their business, and we do this by looking at 16 financial drivers to figure out which ones are working and not working, so we can see what levers we need to pull to generate that cash in their business. But we all know that there's more than just these 16 things that can impact a business's bottom line, which is why I'm really excited to have on my show today John Clemens. John is a professional editor and writer. He also runs an editing and writing agency. John helps businesses improve their written content to attract more people to their websites and convert them into new clients. Thank you, John, for coming on the show. I really appreciate you being here today.
Speaker 2:Thanks, thanks for having me on. I'm excited to have a conversation.
Speaker 1:Awesome. So why don't we start off with what it is that you do and a little bit about your business?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so, as you mentioned, I'm an editor and a writer, so a lot of people think that means that I'm just some nerd that finds all of the misspelled words in your content, and that's true. I do that. But there's actually a lot more that to help it resonate with readers, we want to help it attract more people. We want to help it push people down your customer journey to get them to be your customers. So those are the things that we like to help business do. So it might be editing something that you've written to make it the best it can possibly be. It might be writing something that you would like to have written. You just don't have the skill or the time to do, or it could be any number of things like that. So, yeah, that's that's what we do and, like I said, if I it's, it's all about partnering with you to help you, you know, propel your business forward to meet those financial goals.
Speaker 1:Awesome. Yes, I want to know what got you into doing this, cause this is definitely not something everybody likes to do.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it is something I like to do, so I just, you know, have to claim that I do enjoy it. I actually spent 15 years in the corporate world before I did this, and for the first 10 years it was great and then for the last five it was terrible. I just I got to the point where I was burnout. I hated it, didn't want to do it anymore, but I was too scared to do anything about it, really honestly. And then COVID happened you might remember that and I lost my job because of COVID. So you know nothing performance related. It was just literally, I mean, the economy shut down and so many of us lost our jobs.
Speaker 2:So, rather than go back into the corporate world, which I knew that I did not want to do, I said what can I do that I enjoy and that can provide value to society? And so I thought back and I thought, you know, I always liked the English class. I was kind of the nerd who always liked Shakespeare, right, All the other kids were like what do we have to listen to learn about this? And I'm like, can we do this some more? I love this. And I was also the guy who would always offer well, you know, in college or seminary, to just you know, let me proofread your paper.
Speaker 2:I'll just do it for fun, I just like doing it, so I'll just you know, let me let me read it for you. So I thought about this when I was, you know, on unemployment. I said, okay, what can I do? And I thought I wonder if people would pay me to proofread their work. And so I found out, people pay me to proofread their work, and so that's really how I got started. It was just getting on Upwork, you know, working for 10 bucks an hour, doing just menial tasks, but slowly growing and growing to the point where I needed to expand and start an agency and get some bigger clients. And that's, yeah, that's how I got my start, just just leaning into a passion that serves people.
Speaker 1:I love that and I am not that person. I was the one who didn't want to read Shakespeare right, or proofread anything, or I like to think I'm okay with finding grammar issues in my writing, but I'm definitely like, let's Google, is it this or that? So I'm glad there are people like you in the world to help people like me in the world. But that's awesome that I know you've worked with a lot of clients. I would love to know, like what are some of the biggest mistakes that you find when you're reviewing people's work?
Speaker 2:You know, I'll tell you the funniest one, and it's probably at one point. I was seeing it once a week I'm not seeing it quite as much, but I still find it all the time and that's the difference between complimentary with an I and complimentary with an E. Complimentary with an I means for free, like you're not charging anything. Complimentary with an E means it complements your existing product line. So I can't tell you how many thousands of dollars I've saved companies who wanted to advertise that they were giving away complementary with an I ie free product, when they really meant no, this product complements our existing brand so that's a very common one and now, you know, I don't think that's gonna, like you know, land you in court or anything, but it's just funny because it's something that I see all the time.
Speaker 2:Uh, that could potentially affect your bottom line because you're using the wrong word, you're advertising something that's not true. That's a big one, uh, yeah. And then, as far as others go, no one not many people know how to use a comma or a semicolon, or there's like three different kinds of hyphen. There's a hyphen, an end dash and an end dash, and no one has any idea that those exist, but they do. So there's a lot of little little stuff as well, but when people ask me this, I always think about the complimentary complimentary one, because it's just, it's just so funny. I see all the time.
Speaker 1:That's a good one. I like that Because you definitely don't want to give stuff away for free that you're not. But I think that's interesting that some of the mistakes obviously are words and grammar. But I think, too, I'd love to hear your input on when you're reviewing content. To hear your input on, like, when you're reviewing content, like, do you, do you think or your point of view of what people are writing and how it comes across when it doesn't have, like, all these things done and perfected? Like, how does that sound to the end user? Is it bad? Would people leave? If it does, if it sounds grammatically wrong? I don't know if I'm asking this question, yeah so let's look at yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:So let's look at it in two parts actually. So, starting with grammar, surveys have shown that 59% of people, if they spot a grammar or spelling error on a website, they will not buy from that website. So does grammar, does bad grammar, affect your bottom line? I would argue that it does, because the studies say that it does. So that's one aspect. Looking at it from a higher level to your original question of like, then this is going to get more into like.
Speaker 2:You know how resonating you write and what are your click-through rates and on-page rates and all that stuff. If you write something, you need to avoid three mistakes, and this is something else that you know an editor can help you with. Number one, you need to not make it all about you. We all have a tendency, when we write, to make it about us and that's great, I love you, you're a great person, you're wonderful. But your customer doesn't care, right? They want to know the answer to their problem and they want to know how you can help them. So by making your content about them and not you, that's actually how you increase engagement. So that's one thing. Number two is forgetting about the customer journey, which I mentioned earlier. Everything you write, there are ways to structure and format and say things that will help your customer to get to the next level of where you want them to go or where they need to go. So if, when, you forget about that, that's going to hurt your bottom line. And then, finally, this is a big one that's actually super easy to implement. You can implement it.
Speaker 2:Starting today is a lot of us tend to forget about mobile users and skimmers. So what does that mean? It means most of us, when we're going to your website, we're either A on your phone, on our phone, or B skimming that article before we read it. So what does that mean? It means you need to include lots of white space. Don't have super long paragraphs. Break those up Two, three sentences max.
Speaker 2:You need to include some headers that tell people what your article is about. You need to have some call outs that can help them understand at a glance what you're talking about, how you're going to answer, how you're going to solve their problem. So, like, from a higher level, like those are the problems that I see day in and day out that I can help you with as as a business. Again, you know making that content about the customer helping that content. You know push people down the customer journey and then making sure that anyone on their phone who's skimming that content about the customer helping that content. You know push people down the customer journey and then making sure that anyone on their phone who's skimming that content is still going to get value out of it.
Speaker 1:I love that because I feel like we write. We obviously write, like you said, what we think, what we feel like people want to hear, and not necessarily take the approach of what they need to hear. But I do think too, we don't always think about how it shows up in your phone. I think that's true for web design too. Right, you make a website, you're doing it on your computer. It's not quite the same and it is know as I'm going through my phone, right, like, if it's too long of a chunk of of text, I'm not going to read it, I'm going to skim it. Hopefully you got some headlines in that first sentence or last sentence and I'm just going to move on. So I like those are all great tips and I'm sure you see that a lot. Now I have a question I hope you're okay with me asking, but like, why do I need you, john, if you know ChatGPT exists?
Speaker 2:Yeah well, so that's a great question. Chatgpt is good for a lot of things. I use it to help me in my business. I use it to help me brainstorm a ton. It's really good at that because if you ask it for 10 ideas, it's going to give you two really good ideas, five okay ideas and a couple stinkers, right. So you can kind of like narrow down that way.
Speaker 2:But when it comes to something like editing, you can dump your text into chat GPT and I guess it will fix the errors.
Speaker 2:But the problem is it doesn't know your tone of voice, it doesn't know your story, it can't suggest things to you that might enhance your how resonating this article or blog post is for the readers and really, at the end of the day, like you can't have a relationship with it.
Speaker 2:Right, businesses are built on relationships and I can't and don't want a relationship with a computer. Like you know, I want to deal with people, because people are what makes your business work. So use chat GPT, use AI where it makes sense, but as far as, if you want expert editing, help you're. You're not going to find it there and, for the love of all those good and holy, don't off load your writing to chat, gpt or any of these AI bots, because the problem is they are trained and designed to spit out average content that's mediocre, that doesn't take a strong stand on anything. It's just literally the next most likely word in the progression of words, and I don't know about you, but on my website, for my business, I don't want people describing me as average and mediocre and not taking a strong stand on things. So there's still the need for human editors, human writers, and I don't think AI is going to supplant me anytime soon.
Speaker 1:I agree with you. So I feel like that's your question right. But even so, like, first of all, I love chat GPT to like brainstorm, like you said, and give me ideas and push me in the right direction, and it's very helpful from that perspective. But I posted a question on Facebook just a couple of days ago and a friend of mine posted back like a response and I was like did you chat GPT this? It sounded just like it came out of chat GBT and he's like but it has really good recommendations. I was like but I know none of this actually came from you Like, this came from this. This wasn't what I was looking for anyway, and you could almost tell the difference that it was. It was not personal at all because it came from AI.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I actually. They've got a new feature now on LinkedIn where you can do that too, and I've seen some comments on my my posts that I'm going. This is just a reformulation of what I just said. Like, I'm pretty sure you just press the AI button like this. This provides no value to the conversation. Why did you do that?
Speaker 1:I don't know. I mean, it's good that it's helping people save time, but I agree that I think having a real human point of view makes a difference, and the computer hasn't quite gotten to that point yet. Who knows, maybe in the future. But for now we need people like you, john, hopefully long in the future for your sake, in the future, for your sake. But I would love to know when it comes to like blog posts and things you're writing on your website. Obviously, how you write can also improve. You had mentioned before people coming and going through your customer journey. So one of the drivers that we look at is like conversion rate, right, so people who find you actually want to do business with you. How do you see what you do relate to that? The improving people's conversion rate or improving people's the website leads, and things to that nature.
Speaker 2:Yeah, one thing. So one thing we look for and that actually I'll just share this with with your listeners. There's actually three things, three components to a really strong like, let's say, blog post, and they're going to directly affect those. You know, click through rates and read rates and conversion rates, and so, like when I'm reading a blog post, I'm looking for three things. Number one do you have a strong introduction? And that really needs to be in the first sentence or two.
Speaker 2:And this is another area where AI is not going to help you, because you need to do something or say something that gets people's attention, that resonates. So maybe it's a personal story related to what you're talking about. And another quick tip is start in the middle, start at the apex of the story and leave that as a cliffhanger. So people are like oh my gosh, you know, I was in a car accident and this was you know, blah, blah, blah. Oh my gosh, he was in a car accident and this was you know, blah, blah, blah. Oh my gosh, he was in a car accident. Now I got to know what was going on. I got to read the rest of the article. Right, something like that can really hook a reader, maybe a statistic. So I mentioned earlier, you know, 59% of people won't buy from your website if they spot a spelling or grammar mistake. People don't know that. So if that's you know something you can lead with, that will get your attention. So strong introductions are key because you have to hook people in an attention economy.
Speaker 2:Second of all and we just again I mentioned this already make sure you've got those headers in place, make sure you've got that white space so that it's super easy to follow the flow and the logic and the progression of your article. Because, again, we're all lazy. I'm lazy, right, I'm going to skim to see if this has what I want, or I'm going to back out and find someone else. So you know, just lean into that, just accept it and say I can use this to help people even more. And then, finally, this is the really the one that is the kicker, and it's amazing, if you start looking for this, how often you'll notice it's not there.
Speaker 2:So if you've got some written content on the internet, please, please, please, end with a strong call to action to a product or service that you currently sell. Think about it the next time you read a blog post that someone's you know some business's webpage, you get to the bottom and go, huh, I wonder what they do, I wonder how I would contact them. I have no idea. Oh well, back up, you know. So that's just a super easy way to just ensure that customer, or that potential customer, knows what to do next. Because we don't know what to do next, you need to tell us so strong intros, you know, make sure you have those headers in place and then that call to action. Like those are some of the key things I look for. If you can just implement those three things, that automatically puts you, you know, above so many other companies out there.
Speaker 1:I like that. Those are easy tips too, yeah, so I feel like I've heard not to put calls to action on everything. Right, maybe that's just social media posts, but I can see on the blog, like if you're having a blog post, that, yeah, you would want people to know something about you at the end. Any thoughts on that?
Speaker 2:And really like a call to action. I like to have it for a current product or service, but maybe you have a different goal in mind. Maybe the call to action is check out this other blog post that speaks to this other aspect of the question you may want to know about. Maybe it's sign up for my newsletter, because I'm trying to grow my email list so I can do some more targeted marketing down the road. So, whatever it might be, I don't know. I'm of the opinion that I always try to include a call to action on anything I do, including social media, but often, like on LinkedIn, it's hey, connect with me. Like that's the call to action.
Speaker 1:Oh, I like that. Yeah, I like that. Good, good tips. Yeah, when it comes to what you do, I know you help write content in addition to edit content, like how do you know what to write for people?
Speaker 2:Really comes down to relationships. So, like if you were to go to my website, which is cedarpressproofreadingcom, you can book a call with me and you can have a conversation, just like we're having right now, and it's really just about hey, what do you need? And maybe it's you know, I have a functional medicine company and I want to write, you know, 10 blog posts about these topics, but I just don't have the time to do it. Ok, we can take that and we can run with that and we can kind of get insight from you about, okay, what angle do you want to take? How long do you want it to be? Do you have any links that you want to include in it? You know what's your call to action, so we can really, just through conversation, get a pretty good idea of what it is you want in a finished product and then go from there products and then go from there.
Speaker 1:I love that. What kind of so other? So you write blog posts. What other things do you do other than editing and that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I, yeah, do a lot of editing, do a lot of writing a blog posts. I also have experience writing ads, so I write a ton of ads for newsletters. I've written a ton of podcast ads in the past. What else have I done? Yeah, we've also edited a several books. So we've done several book length book length projects. Wow, um, I have some. Yeah, so I have someone on my team who has some experience with developmental editing so we can even do that.
Speaker 2:Um, nothing, we just did line editing. So there's all these different kinds of editing which people maybe don't know. So I just took someone's um old material that they had from a number of years ago and they said we want to refresh this, we want to bring it back to life because we're going to sell this as a new guide on our website. Can you do that for us? Yeah, so we can step in and we can totally do that. We can make those, you know, make that content just come alive again. We can take out old references, add new references, update the speech. You know we can do all that stuff. So it's really limitless kind of the things that we can do, and we've done a ton of things along those lines, probably a lot more than I can even remember right now.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love that taking something you've done in the past and refreshing it right, like, why work harder when you can work smarter? Right, just refresh something you've done in the past. I'm sure you could do that too, like make something into a blog post or help people that way creating content. You'd make a really good partner for that, so that's really neat. I like that a lot. How many people do you have in your team?
Speaker 2:I have myself and I have a virtual assistant and I have about nine freelancers who are contracted with me so I can work. You know we're do I do various projects with different ones of them, so we got a pretty good team. We go about 10 or 11 now, wow.
Speaker 1:If I got my math right, yeah. What's your favorite? What's your favorite thing to work on?
Speaker 2:That is a tough question.
Speaker 1:What's my favorite thing to?
Speaker 2:work on, I think, what started it all and what I still get the most joy out of, and this is so simple. But if, if I can take something, that that you have and I can clean it up, find all the errors, make it, do what you want it to do, and we can get that out in the world, I feel like I've contributed something, like I've added to the world instead of, you know, subtracted from it, and like the more and more quality content that lives out there in the ether, like the, the better I feel about that. So I think, just yeah, finding and fixing mistakes is this is like, is like a drug to me almost, but honestly, like it's all in the name of like helping people. I want to help people, I want to make the world a better place and this is a way that I can do it.
Speaker 1:I love that and I know we could all use some help making the writing out on the Internet better and I feel like your job is like is is going to get you're going to have a lot more work once this next generation of people graduate from high school, because everything's code, it's all code now and shorthand and the art of writing is kind of changed over the years since I was in school. I feel like I don't know.
Speaker 2:I don't know. Yeah, that's a good question. I know my kids they probably don't. Yeah, they don't. They don't do a ton of writing, that's true.
Speaker 1:And I. It's just shorthand. You text someone shorthand, you don't really know how to write out your thoughts the same kind of way. So I think partnering with someone like you to be like this is what I'm thinking right Could really help get the ball rolling and create some quality content for you, because you definitely want to get your message out there in a way that resonates with other people.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, and you're totally right. Yeah, if you just even have an idea and some and some thoughts around it, yeah, we can totally take that and totally help you out.
Speaker 1:I have lots of ideas and not enough time, so I feel like there's probably a lot of people just like me in that same position that could use your help doing this kind of stuff.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I have to ask. Yeah, to ask. Oh no, you go ahead. I was going to say, the time thing reminded me.
Speaker 2:Hopefully this doesn't take when you refer to the questions, but that's another key aspect too, is right, it's like you may just not have the time to do the writing.
Speaker 2:Maybe you can do it, or maybe you don't have the time to edit it. And the way that I like to think about this is like what's your ROI? And so the?
Speaker 2:If you have an effective hourly rate that you assign yourself as a business owner which I hope you do, and that effective hourly rate is, let's say, a hundred bucks an hour and you spend an hour editing your blog posts, you just paid yourself a hundred bucks to edit your blog posts and you also didn't spend that time doing the things that your business needs to move forward. Didn't spend that time doing the things that your business needs to move forward. So maybe it makes sense to hire a guy like me who can do it in half the time for half the amount of money and a better job, and give you your hour back to to do the things that you really, you know, need to focus on in your business, right. That's exactly why I hire my son to mow my lawn. That's why I have a CPA right. That's why I have a virtual assistant. It's no different Like if I can come along and free up some of your time and save you some money in the process, like that's.
Speaker 1:that's a no brainer. I love that and I love talking about that because definitely in my world of things is the same is the same thing. I have that conversation. We have bookkeeping clients. It's like you could waste a lot of your precious time doing your own thing or you can hire an expert to do it as well. So I love that.
Speaker 1:And, man, I had a thought related to this and it made me think I was going to say one of the biggest challenges that we we see when it comes to business, running a business, is you get stuck in that like bottleneck, like everything has to come through you because you're the business owner, especially if you're a solopreneur. But it's a great way to help offset some of that right. Like you don't always have to be the bottleneck, you don't always have to do everything. So hiring an expert, I think, is a great way to take some of that off of your plate. So I love that. And I was just thinking to myself. I know a lot of people that will just talk out thoughts into like a message to either. You know, like your phone, you're just going to talk out your thoughts and then I'm sure they could just hand that to you and be like make this into something beautiful for me.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we could take a look at that for sure. Yeah, I haven't haven't done that exact thing before, but I mean there's no reason why it wouldn't work.
Speaker 1:Yes, I know a lot of people that will. Just you know, you got to write down your thoughts somehow and turn it into something useful later. So well, this has been a great conversation, John. I want to know if you had, if there's one thing that you would want everyone to take away from this conversation today, what? What would that be?
Speaker 2:want everyone to take away from this conversation today. What would that be? If I had one takeaway, I would say check out my website. So go to cedarpressproofingcom, because it's going to have something for everyone. So if you're the kind of person who is thinking I need to hire this guy, like I need to help with this, what he's, he's scratching my itch, then you can book a call right there on the website. But if you're like a lot of people need to say, well, I would love to do this, but I don't really like I really need to keep this for me for now, because I maybe I don't have the funds to do that. There's also content on my website to help you get better at editing and proofreading your own work, and hopefully that takes a little of the burden off you as well. So I would just say, yeah, go to cedarpressproofreadingcom, check it out, you'll learn some stuff. There's a chance to interact with me through booking a meeting and you know I will. Let me help, let me help you. Let me help you.
Speaker 1:I'm sure you have a lot of great content out there too, because this is what you do for a living. I was going to say what's the statistic? You said 59%.
Speaker 2:Yeah, 59% of people. Yeah, they won't buy from your website if they spot a mistake.
Speaker 1:That was my takeaway. That's a huge number. So, like if there's a mistake and I feel like I find mistakes a lot Like you go to a restaurant, you're like there's a typo on this menu, kind of thing, so we naturally look for it sometimes. But knowing that statistic should encourage everyone to really do a better job editing or hire someone to edit, so I love that. I was going to ask you, john, where can people find you and learn more about you, but you just said it. But tell me again, what's your website.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's cedarpressproofreadingcom, so you can find me there. You can also find me on LinkedIn. You can just search for my name, john Clements, or you can search for Cedar Press Proofreading, and I will show up. So yeah, connect with me on there. Check out the website. Book a call.
Speaker 1:And if we can help you, we will. I love that. I will certainly reach out to you too, john, and if you're looking to find more about me, my name is Stephanie Smith, new Light Financial Solutions, our website. You can find me online at wwwnewlightfscom. And I just want to say, regardless of what you do this whole conversation of things that impact your bottom line you won't know if something's impacting your bottom line if you don't track any of your numbers. So I want to recommend to everybody getting started to at least start tracking, if you're not doing it today, because, let's say, you do hire John to do some copy editing or anyone else to do stuff in your business the only way you'll know that there is some kind of return or it's really helping you is if you can have a before and after shot of your number. So it's a great place to start. But just wanted to throw that out there. I want to say thank you again, john, for coming on the show and talking with me today.
Speaker 2:You're so welcome. Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1:On that note. That is it for this episode of Getting to the Bottom Line. I hope you all join me again next time. Thanks everyone.
