Your Copy Has Lost Its Soul The AI Copy Problem That's Killing Your Brand Trust with Mike Samuels

0:01 Being great at what you do doesn't automatically make you great at business. The skills that got you here won't get you there. This is Path to Mastery, the raw and real business podcast for service-based entrepreneurs, consultants, and practitioners ready to stop chasing tactics and start building foundations that scale. Hosted by Ryan Lang and Brooke Bishop, co-founders of Empire Partners. Let's dive in. Welcome back to the Path to Mastery podcast. I'm your host, Ryan Lang, CEO and co-founder of Empire Partners, and special guest in studio with me today, Mike Samuels. This is a guy that I have known for a really long time.

0:43 He is one of the most brilliant copywriters and brilliant minds on marketing and copy that I know. Mike helps copywriters and consultants earn higher fees. He's a great guy. Sign bigger clients and stand out against AI. He spent 11 years writing behavioral psychology-based copy, and that has collectively generated well over $200 million. This guy has worked with some of the biggest players in the game. He has written some of the best and highest converting copy that's out there right now. And he is the head copywriter for Empire Partners. He's also worked with a ton of our clients and, quite frankly, some of our biggest mentors.

1:27 Mike's definitely got a controversial stance on using AI in your copywriting. And what I can promise you is that this episode is going to deliver to you a perspective that you're not going to hear anywhere else. And more importantly, it's going to deliver to you a very clear strategy on how you can write copy that converts and how you can responsibly utilize AI to augment your copywriting. Okay. So let's dive in. This is the Path to Mastery podcast. Welcome back to the Path to Mastery podcast. I'm your host, Ryan Lang, CEO and co-founder of Empire Partners. And I got a special guest in studio with me today. Mike Samuels, what's going on, man?

2:08 Yeah, we're good, man. How are you? I am doing great, brother. Bro, I have been so excited for this conversation and to have an opportunity to really, really dive in to copywriting with you today. I think it's honestly... one of the hottest topics around, especially when we talk about our organic socials, when we talk about all of our different sales copy that we're writing on the marketing side of things. And I don't want to, I want to just go straight into it, douche. We're going to like dive in and then I'm going to come back, but I just want to ask you a really pointed question right now.

2:52 How are we fucking it up by using AI to write our copy right now? Because I feel like I feel like there's something off and I want to hear your very clear and pointed opinion on this. My short answer would be that a lot of copy has just lost its soul. It's emotionless. It's generic. It's vanilla. You can read 10 different emails from 10 different people and not know which one is from which person, which is a big problem, right? There's two different types of branding. There's like the business brand and the personal brand. We've seen much more of a shift in recent years towards a personal brand.

3:33 It's why you get even people like Microsoft now have their CEO go on podcast. It's why big brands like Nike have athletes who, you know, you don't necessarily know who's behind Nike, but you know the athletes who they pay to sponsor. And it's because we do inherently trust people more than brands. That won't be news to anyone listening. Yeah. But considering that the personal aspect is getting more and more important, it's insane to me that so many people are taking the personality out of their copy. So that's my like mini rant on the topic. I'm sure we'll go deeper into it. But that's sort of the that's the problem as I see it. So I love this and I agree with you 100 percent. Everything is kind of looking and feeling the same.

4:15 Yeah. What do you feel like let's just consider let's take the personal brand side of things for the moment, because a lot of people that listen to this show, I mean, all of us have a personal brand. But a lot of the people that listen to this show are really trying to grow and cultivate a strong personal brand. When you kind of take the personalization and somewhat of the soul out of it by really outsourcing the copy to AI, what are some of the what are some of the consequences of that? Because I think that it's one thing for you and I to sit here as people who love to write and go, don't don't do that, you know.

5:00 But I want to tell people why, because in my mind, there are some pretty clear consequences. And I'd love to hear your thoughts on this. Yeah, so the server-several answer is that people value authenticity. And I've worked a lot with AI, right? I've been hired by people to create brand voice guides, to create documents, to create SOPs their teams could use, worked with all the different types of AI, ChatGVT, Gemini, Claude, all of those. I'm still yet to find a way that AI can write that genuinely sounds like a human for the long term. Anyway, you can certainly have people who might start using AI, put out, a dozen emails to their list and their lists don't know that it's AI or they put some stuff on social media, their audience doesn't clock it.

5:43 But long term, it's just not going to deliver the same type of copy as a human would. And a lot of this comes down to an interesting concept in behavioral psychology that we call the pratfall effect. The Proud Fall Effect essentially says that when someone is positioning themselves as an expert, if you talk about or if you demonstrate some small flaws, whether that's like you talk about your mistakes, you talk about the ways you're messing stuff up, you talk about weaknesses, things in your past that didn't go to plan... people inherently believe your claims even more. It's why when you get someone who's like, oh, I make $10 million a month, I live in this mansion, and every client has had a success with me. It's like we don't trust them as much as the person who's sort of the slightly wounded guru or...

6:29 Yeah. Why the data shows actually we trust restaurants that have like a 4.4 or 4.5 rating on Google more so than we trust the 4.9s or 5s. We see a super high rating go, that seems a bit too good to be true. And AI wants to paint you as an expert. And then even when it even if you do say to put in some weaknesses, put in some flaws, it still comes across as very forced. People like to think they've cracked the code by telling AI, write like a human or don't use these tells. Again, I'm not saying I'm right about this across the board, but the amount of times I've used AI and the different tactics, different prompts I've tried, it just doesn't do it consistently.

7:09 So I don't care what prompt you're using. actual final copy should never come from AI. Even if you edit it heavily, like if you're a good editor, good copywriting, get away with it. Most people, they don't know the rules well enough to be able to correct the mistakes AI makes. Yeah. So it seems to me you're hitting on exactly what my belief is, is that we're basically... We're losing trust by outsourcing our copy to AI, especially when we're doing that very heavily. I'm this is one in particular, man. Brooke and I talk about this quite a bit that, you know, we really we were in a bit a major trust recession right now.

7:54 People. People's level of trust is at an all time low and their need for certainty is at an all time high, which is a really interesting combination. And I think one of the things that where I think this is so important and vital for us to talk about is that this is one of those deals that people are not going to tell you. Outside of the random, we all have those people in our lives, you know, that that'll spout off about one thing or another. But most people are not going to tell you. And it's really tough because this isn't the kind of thing that that shows up on your KPI sheet.

8:35 You're not going to be able to track this. You're just going to notice, you know, people will just quietly not engage with your post. They'll just quietly not, you know, go to your landing page or opt in for your offer or say yes, you know, on that first call. And it's a very difficult thing to track. Yeah. Let me ask you something. So let's just say we agree right now that basically we lose trust when we're fully outsourcing our copy to AI. I want to play devil's advocate here as somebody who, and there are three different angles I want to hit on this.

9:17 So the first one is, let's just say that I am somebody who sucks at writing. I either am not a good writer or I hate writing or, you know, it's one of those two things. And the minute AI came on the scene, I was like, holy fucking Lulia, I don't have to go... I don't have to write my own copy anymore. Someone, something will do it for me. What do you say to that person in this moment? What is the strategy for somebody like that to fix this so that they're not losing trust silently in the background, you know, with all of their, all the people following them, all the people consuming their content?

10:03 I'd say there's a couple of things. First off, Let's say you somehow have a big audience and you're not really communicating with them and AI is the one thing that makes you go, oh, actually, this is much easier now. There's less friction here. I feel like I can put some stuff out to the world. Shorten Tang is probably going to have a beneficial effect because not everyone has clocked what is an AI copy yet. I talk about that being a pyramid and it's like... The top level is where the marketers start spot AI copy. We've already passed that stage. The second tier is where people in business and maybe in the corporate world spot AI copy. We're kind of in that stage at the moment. The bottom tier is when like general public spot copy. So if you're selling, I don't know, supplements, if you're selling anything D to C, that kind of stuff, you've got like 12 to 18 months before most of your market figure out what is and isn't AI copy.

10:52 So if you're selling to those people, I think you can kind of get away with it. But my larger answer would be that writing and communication is a skill. It's a skill that should be learned. It's like if you wanted to sell, like a lot of your guys are selling sort of a $5,000, $10,000, $20,000 program, and they didn't like selling, they would still have to learn selling, right? Because no, unless you know what you're doing to sell it, you know, the biggest product in the world is only going to sell so many units, cohorts, whatever. Yeah. It's the same with writing. I think it doesn't take a lot. It's one of those skills that you can get in the top 10% of, not writers in general, but people who write copy, by doing some fairly simple stuff.

11:39 You can do something like the classic hand copy a sales letter for 30 days. You can read a few books. It's one of those things where it doesn't take a lot of effort to get competent enough at it. And even if then you do that and you go, right, I've got the basic skills. I know, like I said a minute ago, I know the rules so I can see when they're being broken. So when I do use AI, I can go, that doesn't make sense. There's loads of repetition there. You know, it's using triplets too much. It's got words that don't really make sense. It's all passive voice. I might use it for the original first draft, but I'm going to tweak it. I would still rather people learn to write and wrote from scratch because I think in terms of how much it pays you back, like...

12:22 It's exponential, but I get people's resistance to it. So I would say, even if you are like, I want to use AI, give yourself 90 days where you do something copy related for that time, because that will pay off massively. I love that. And I agree with you 100% that it is one of those skills. I believe I have believed a very long time that, you know, first of all, if you can sell something, you will never go hungry. If you're willing to make relationships with people, you will never go hungry. And this is the third one for me. I mean, I really, truly believe that that writing and communication in general is so vital that you can, you can not know a whole lot of things, but if you can be good at that, boy, you can be better than most.

13:09 Yeah. Um, what do you feel like are some of the, you kind of talked about, um, you know, books, maybe, you know, trying to write a sales letter a day for 90 days, that kind of thing. I love that. Um, do you have a couple of resources that really, you know, have kind of formed you as a writer that you would suggest to people who really feel like they struggle with it or whether it's a book or, you know, a specific person to follow? Definitely. I would say the sort of Bible of direct response, as a lot of people call it, would be Breakthrough Advertising by Eugene Schwartz, which isn't so much a copywriting book. It's more about knowing the levels of marketplace awareness.

13:52 So meeting your buyer where they're at and being proud of the sales message that hits them where they are. It's the only idea that there's no point selling a program that says, I'm going to help you do this way to someone who's already done 50 diets because they've heard that promise before. Sure. That I would say is a complex read, but it's instrumental in understanding how kind of buyers work, the psychology behind making sales, all that kind of stuff. Outside of that, I'm still a fan of the old school stuff. There's another book that I really like. There's a bit of a lesser known one. but it's called The Advertising Solution. And it's a kind of a bit of a case study of six classic copywriters.

14:33 So it talks about Gary Halbert, John Capel. I can't remember the other four. I'll stop by it. It's on my shelf somewhere, somewhere up there. But it's put together by Brian Curse and Craig Simpson. And I just think that so many of the principles in there still ring true today. And I like that book because it's got a lot of examples and that kind of thing. Outside of that, just getting on people's email lists, whether it's brands or people in industry that you follow, whether it's copywriters. Ben Settle's daily email is pretty famous. John Carlton writes great emails. Brian Kurtz writes brilliant emails. Yeah, anything like that, I think, is just going to stand you. It's going to be one of those things where it doesn't take a lot of effort to really make a dent in your expertise and proficiency.

15:16 Yeah. I love that you mentioned, especially that last one. First of all, two good, really good resources on the books. And but but I love I love that you talk about signing up for somebody else's newsletters. I actually think tell me if you think I'm wrong here, but I actually think one of the biggest misses that we have at whether we consider ourselves. pro marketers, total amateurs, or I don't know shit about marketing in general. I think one of the biggest misses is not reading other people's copy and recognizing when it's really good. I actually... I got obsessed with doing that a couple of years ago.

15:58 And I have a few people whose email list that I'm on. And every once in a while, they write an email and I'm like, son of a bitch, that's good. Like, I have to find a way to kind of put my own spin on the way that they, you know, that they wrote this. Yeah. And I think it's such a great way to do it. And I especially think this is super effective for the person that we're talking about here who really sort of struggles with copywriting, doesn't like it or doesn't want to do it or doesn't feel talented at it. Listen, it's kind of like, you know, it's kind of like when I remember when I first started to learn to play guitar and I asked one of my teachers, hey, like, I don't understand how to, you know.

16:42 how do I get to a point where, where I have my own style? And he said, well, you go out and you find the things that you like and you copy them. And then after a while, those things start to blend themselves together. And, you know, and you creatively start to find the way to put them together in your own, you know, in your own way. But you can't do that if you're not on the, if you're not looking for it. And also if you're not trying, I mean, I think that's a pretty simple, that's a, pretty simple fix if you're just willing to do a little bit of the reading and then making the attempt at what hits and what doesn't. I love that. Before I kind of move on to these two other angles that I want to hit on this man, I'm curious.

17:26 I've never asked you this question before. We've known each other a really long time. And in fact, I love to remind myself of the fact that you wrote the copy for the very first high ticket offer that I ever had in my life. In like 2016, early 2017. But you've been at this for a really long time. And I'm just curious. I've never asked you what got you so fascinated with copywriting. What was it for you? Was this something that started really early? Did you develop it later on? What was kind of the origin story for you? My path is a bit of a cliche because it seems like it's how a lot of people have done it.

18:07 But I had a fitness business back in the day. And actually, I got interesting copy when I was still doing personal training. I used to have a mobile personal training business. So I used to load on my car with kettlebells, with yoga mats, with dumbbells, all that kind of stuff and drive around to train people at their houses. And one summer I had a guy reach out to me, never met him before. He just said, I found your website. I don't want to go to the gym. I've tried gym memberships before. I don't like them. I've just bought a setup to use at home. Could you come around and I'll pay you for a couple of hours and you can teach me how to use it. So I thought, yeah, happy to do that. So I walked up to his house and he lived in an amazing like three or four story townhouse in the marina in the town I live in Southampton.

18:54 And he was only a few years older than me and he had a Porsche and we got talking. He said, yeah, I've not really worked this year. And it was like June. And he said, oh, I'm still making royalties off the work I did last year. Not in an arrogant way at all. It was a really nice, very down to earth. And I sort of got talking to him because I was like, well, I've been doing 5 a.m. starts and 9 p.m. finishes six days a week all of this year. How are you doing? And he said, I'm a copywriter. I didn't really know what that meant, but he sort of talked me through it and told me about what he did and that kind of thing. And then he said to me, oh, what, you know, what are you working on? Are you trying to grade a PTV business? And I said, well, I like it, but I'm trying to go and do online stuff.

19:35 So I've got this ebook that I've written, but I don't really know how it's set. I've got an email list, but I've only ever sold them personal training before and that kind of thing. And he said, well, send me the ebook and I'll put something together for you. So I did that and about a week later, we sent through a massive long Word document and I was like, this is great, but I don't really know what to do with it. He said, go to your Word guys, get them to upload it. I'll give them some notes on the design and whatever. So we did that. And I put up for sale at $19 and I sent the first email to send my list to the sales page at about 8 o'clock in the morning. Didn't really think that much else of it. And my list was only about 1,000 people at the time, I think.

20:16 And by 9 p.m. that night, I'd have my first 1,000-pound date, so about $1,500. So I went for something nuts, man. Yeah, from a $19 e-book. We had something like 85, 86 people off that 1,000-person list buy it in that first day. And that reason I thought, okay, copywriting is valuable. So that guy... His name was John and he's gone on to, I've bought courses from him. He's been my mentor for about five years. But that was sort of how it started. And I stayed in fitness for a couple more years, but I got more and more into writing, into blogging, into email marketing. Eventually had other fitness people say to me, can you do this for me? So it's very organic. I started doing it for others in about 2013 and made the switch full time in 2016.

20:58 But yeah, it all started from a random personal training session with a stranger who lived in an amazing house with a Porsche who gave me a sales letter for free. Dude, I love that. I love that story. And you know, it's funny. You may have told me this at one point. I mean, I know you and I, we've obviously bonded over fitness, you know, over many conversations. But I don't think I realized that you had a fitness business, which is super fun. What was something in the early days that you feel like made a really big impact on you early on as you were starting to learn to do this? Yeah. Definitely writing conversationally because a lot of my early learning is kind of what you alluded to earlier with the guitar playing.

21:44 I learned from people who are great storytellers. So that's one who I learned from initially. I had mentoring with a guy called Dave Mundan, who's a classic old school copywriter mentored under Gary Howe, but he's an amazing storyteller. I did courses with people like David Deutch from Ben Settle. So basically everything that I did was very story-based. And over time, I got more into doing copy for other stuff. So whether it's like D2C, Econ, that kind of thing. But story always remained quite prominent and still to this day because that's something that just isn't going away. You look at how... how sort of fleeting our attention spans are for a lot of stuff now, we will still sit down and watch a three-hour movie if it's a great story.

22:26 Maybe not like I'm much used to, but we'll still do that. We'll still binge watch TV series because of the story. For me, that was a big thing. I didn't really learn a lot about hooks. I didn't learn a lot about calls to action. I've never been the kind of guy who's like, oh, we should tweak this language in the CTA, and that's going to make a big difference. It's always been... Is there a story there? Is that story compelling? If not, let's do something with that because that's why people buy. This is so good, man. And I think so relevant right now because this is the hard part. When using AI for copy, this is actually one of the areas that I think AI falls very short is in the storytelling category.

23:08 Right. And I think that even when you do something like I will do periodically where I'll talk into my cloud and I'll actually tell a story. And I will un-storyify my story in so many different ways by the time it gets done with it. And it never quite comes out in a way that feels authentic. So I think this is really a key point. Yeah. What do you think it is now? This is an interesting, this is kind of an interesting topic for a minute because I think that right now we're sort of in this time where I see it as a little bit of a tweener time with regard to content and what people are consuming and that kind of thing.

23:53 We went through that period of time where it's like short form was just everything. And... And then all of a sudden, podcasts, everybody said, you know, it's too late. Podcasts are dead. They're very much not dead. YouTube is huge. And longer form content is now kind of a bigger deal. And not that you have to have long form content to tell a story. Obviously, you can do that in short form content as well. But I think that it boils down to whether we're talking about longer form content. What is what is truly necessary to get somebody invested in what you're in and what you're saying?

24:37 And why should they waste? You know, why should they spend their time? What are some of the things that you're seeing right now in terms of people's attention spans, what they will and won't do? And how does that play along with our ability to be good storytellers? To put it basically, I think the short form I see as its intention is to grab attention. That wasn't deliberate that that kind of rhymed. But you put short form out to kind of grab attention, whereas longer form is to build trust. So whenever I'm working with someone, I always think, right, how can I short form stuff? How can it be different?

25:17 And how can it teach someone something they haven't heard before? Because... We're very much in a stage with most markets where everyone's heard the big claims. They've read the copy that's been all about pain points and twisting the knife and that kind of stuff. And all of that does still work. We're still humans. We still have emotions. We're still motivated to achieve something. We're still hardwired to want to avoid loss or to escape a pain. But where we get so much content now and where a lot of marketplaces are very much more sophisticated, it's really working out what's different. So whether you call that a USP, a unique mechanism, that's the kind of thing I'm always looking for. If a client comes to me and says, like, our offer's not working, my first port of call will always be, well, what are you saying that's just the same as everything else in the market because we need to switch that?

26:04 Or... What your competitors are not saying is a big one. The classic example of this is actually one of the copywriters who was in one of the books I mentioned earlier, The Advertising Solution. a guy called Claude Hopkins. He was hired years ago to come up with a campaign for Schlitz Beer Company. And I think they were like number five in America at the time. And he said, right, let me see how you guys brew beer. So they took on a tour of the factory. And as he was going through, they got to one of the, and you'll have to forgive me, I don't know the technical terms here, but they got to one of the brewing rooms. And he said, oh, what's happening here? And they said, oh, we're filtering our water for a second time because we need the water to be pure.

26:46 And he said, oh, that sounds interesting. Like, I've never heard that before. And they're like, yeah, everyone does it. It's how you have to brew beer. You need particularly filtered water. He said, yeah, but no one's saying that. He's like, no other company is saying we do this filtering process with our water, making the beer more pure and more, you know, whatever. It tastes better, all that kind of stuff. So you put that in the campaign and they went from fifth bestselling day to second. And that's the perfect example of something that is sort of common practice in the industry, but no one else is saying it. Which is kind of a roundabout way to say that short form or long form, I'm thinking about what are other people not saying? Because that's what we need to be saying. And whether that's about the product, the outcome, even someone's backstory, relating it back to stories.

27:29 What's the kind of thing that people are, I want that reaction of people where they lean in because they go, oh, that's interesting. I've not heard that before. I love this. And you know what it reminds me of? I'm like an absolute geek. I've rewatched Mad Men 8 million times. And it reminds me, have you watched the show? Shame it, though. I've only seen bits and pieces. I've never sat down and watched an old series of it. Oh, Mike. Oh, man. So good. It's so good. So it reminds me, though, there's a there's one of the episodes of that show.

28:10 They're working with Don's firm is working with Lucky Strike and they're they're discussing kind of the process of kind of how they you know what they do with their tobacco. And they talk about the guy from Lucky Strike says, yeah, well, you know, we. you know, we put it out in the sun and, you know, and we dry it. And Don says, so you toast it? He said, yeah, toast it. But, you know, everybody does that. And he goes, yeah, but nobody's saying that. And that was exactly the thing at the end of the it was, you know, the slogan was something like Lucky Strike. It's toasted, you know, but it's it's such a brilliant point.

28:51 And I think that. A lot of times, one of the reasons I really love digging in on this is because I think a lot of times we have to figure out the ways that we need to kind of remove blockades that shouldn't be there for ourselves and business and writing and marketing and all the things. And this is one in particular where I think a lot of times we're not thinking when we think about... Take personal training, for example. Like if you and I were both personal trainers, I'm sure there are a lot of things that we both did that were very similar because there are core tenets of something that you do. But if there's somebody out there, you know, if a lot if there's something that everybody's doing that nobody's talking about that gives you an opportunity to kind of let people in.

29:38 I think it's a brilliant idea to be. Right. considering that as a possible angle, just as just as much as it's important to be thinking about, hey, how am I different? You know, what is different about my approach or the way that I see things or or what have you? This kind of brings me to a question. I want to ask your opinion at this point. Tell me right or wrong. I believe right now that there has never been a time where it is more important for people to be as real and authentic as is humanly possible, no matter how uncomfortable that might be or how contrarian or whatever.

30:22 Agree or disagree. And why? Why? 100% agree because why do I agree? I mean, we're just seeing everywhere. It's why big brands are now maybe not going away from celebrity advertising, but you're seeing a lot more of this UGC content, user-generated content, where they're getting sort of everyday influencers. So you get a lot of the mom influencers, the women who, they don't really, I'm being a bit sort of dismissive here, but their social media profiles aren't really teaching anything. It's just like the life of a mom. But they're now getting big deals because they've got to follow them because people are watching them and they're buying into it. That idea that, and again, there's loads of examples of this in advertising from decades ago as well.

31:06 But like I mentioned, it's the idea of showcasing a flaw. We believe that's when they are more authentic. And you can definitely overdo that. I talk about you still want, or rather people still want to buy into people who they aspire to be like. Strong, courageous, committed. They follow through on what they say they do. But we also like that little bit of normalization of someone. People can do that in a very inauthentic way. We've seen that, I think, probably around about 10 years ago as the golden age for... like the gurus talking oh yeah from their past and actually it was just really up easy and cliche like yes a friend of mine did a mentoring program once and the first thing he was told was think of the saddest time in your life and get on camera and film it and then post it to social media and he was like i'm not going to do that because that's horrific so we can go too far with that but at the same time i do think that yeah there's there's a line as well right i make the joke that if you are hiring a surgeon, you want to see people's weaknesses, but if you're a surgeon, you wouldn't put out a piece of content that's like, just killed a patient, lol.

32:17 That's like too much of a weakness. But when you're talking about things aren't your main expertise, talk about weaknesses and be real with it. Oh, man, that's so good. Such a great example. And I agree with you. I think that it does. We, you know, I think that's such a it's such an interesting point. One I think we should all be striving to reach is that point where aspiration and relatability meet each other. Like there is kind of a magic point there in my mind. And I agree with you a thousand percent. People want some they want to follow somebody who.

33:01 you know, inspires them to, you know, to be better, become more. They've got something that you don't kind of a thing. But at the same time, they're still human. They can still relate. And, you know, I think there are some really, really good examples of that, you know, that are out in mainstream media, especially when we think about kind of like the bigger personal brand type people. A couple that come to mind for me, I think that... You know, I think Alex Ramosi is very good at showcasing flaws and talking about all the different ways that he, you know, fucked shit up and how he, you know, how he's learned things.

33:43 And obviously he's built enough that he's got a lot of credibility. I think he toes that line really well. And I think one of the other people that I see doing this quite well as well, you know, on a bigger personal brand stage, who's also, I mean, a titan in the business world is Ed Milet. Ed is not afraid on podcasts or, you know, in interviews or things of that nature to talk about the ways, not just that he was flawed in the past, but the ways that he's flawed right now and consistently talking about how, you know what, a lot of times I'm putting out this content because it's something that I need to hear. And like that, people really latch on to that. I think it's I think it's really, really powerful.

34:25 Yeah. OK, so let's kind of flip over for a second to somebody who we talked about. We talked to the person who doesn't like to write copy or isn't very talented at it or doesn't want to do it. Let's talk to the person who who does like to write. And maybe they got wooed by AI. Right. And I think the other thing right now. There is a lot and it's not noise like there's definitely something to this. We talk a lot about it on this show, you know, business mentors who are going, hey, you've got to be protective of your time. You have to, you know, be efficient, that kind of thing.

35:11 How does the person who does like to write, how do they effectively use AI? And I would sub kind of answer to that, Mike. I would love to hear, like, what is your process? When you do use AI, what is your process? What does it look like? How can you relate to that person who really is talented at writing, does like to do it, and wants to know how to kind of integrate this in a responsible way? I think there's two levels to this. One would be if I talk to copywriters for a second. The big thing that I found AI to be very useful for is certain bits of research. So I started with a new client about 18 months ago now.

35:53 And I was familiar with his work, read a couple of his books, I'd seen him on podcasts, that kind of thing. But still needed to do the research, obviously. So what I did was went to AI. I think I probably used Claude for it. And I gave it the PDF copies of some of his books. I got his last 10 to 15 social media posts and emails, transcripts of podcasts, transcripts of webinars. Yeah. And I put it in and said, can you digest all this? You know, act as like a research partner with me. What I'd love is a document that contains, and again, I'm blanking on exactly what it was, but along the lines of 10 outcomes that he helps people get, 10 pain points that he solves, 20 common words and phrases, give me what you think is five top values, five things that he stands against, all that kind of stuff.

36:41 And that whole process probably took about 45 minutes. Now, in the past, just to do that research probably wouldn't have been possible to read books, to listen to like five hours of podcasts and stuff. So to do like half of that, it would have still taken me the best part of a week, which would have been fine. But... AI definitely has a massive advantage there. So I think that if you're a copywriter working for clients, there's a big way that you can use it with that. I would also use it a lot for variations of stuff. So some of my clients, they test pretty aggressively with ads. Obviously, when you're testing ads, you don't need a brand new ad every single time. You need a brand new ad. five ads that are mostly the same but they've got a different or they've got a different action yeah that's the thing i find that i will write the initial ad and say look we need to keep the first 80 the same give me 10 versions of call to action and they're not going to be perfect they will have a lot of ai tales in still but it's a lot lot quicker than doing it manually and then for the person who maybe is writing for their own business or just writing for enjoyment the one This won't apply to everyone, but most of us started a business to do more of what we enjoy.

37:50 So if you enjoy writing, why not just still spend time writing? Keep doing it. Yeah. You can use AI to automate other stuff. AI can do accounts for you. It can research. If you've got an AI agent, it can automate stuff. I'm not an expert in this. So many people are smart to me at the automation side of things, but I listen to them and I think, yeah, that's the way that I would want AI to work for me, like customer support, handling that kind of thing. If that frees up more time for me to write, like I'm happy. Long-form writing is one of my favorite things to do. So that's the pair to outsource that part of your business. If you enjoy it, it's like... I hear so many people, coaches who say, oh, I hired a business mentor. And the first thing they told me to do was hire a coaching team so I didn't have to coach.

38:34 But I love coaching. I'm like, well, yeah, so you should do more than that then. Yes, you have to accept that maybe your revenue might only hit $500,000 a year. Whereas if you had a big team, you could hit $5 million a year. But which one of those is worth more to you? So if you enjoy doing something, do more of it. Yeah, I love that. I love that. And I think as well that one of the things that I think is so... important about remembering that is that I think it can get really easy to sort of just get caught up in the shoulds that can come along with AI being available to us. Right.

39:14 Um, and you know, like there's the old saying that just because you can, doesn't mean you should. Uh, and I think that's definitely a case here for people that love to write that are talented writers. Um, and, you know, where this is a strong suit for crying out loud, keep doing that. And you and I both know, by the way, that the people who are really good writers that we follow, that's exactly what they're doing. They're continuing to, you know, they're continuing to do that. OK, so that's I think that's really great. And that's super clear. What one avenue that I want to kind of explore here. So I want to talk about how.

39:55 this you said something to me before we started today that I really loved and I want to kind of flesh it out a little bit which is sort of the concept of what it means to be an expert today and how that plays along with am I using AI in my copy am I not using AI in my copy let's kind of talk down that road a little bit share a little bit of what your thoughts are and let's play that out a little because I think it's really a fascinating topic for people It's never been easier to portray yourself as an expert. You can go to AI and say, I've got an offer for this demographic. This is what I want to help them do. Write me some copy that makes me sound like I know what I'm doing.

40:37 And it will give you a pretty good copy. I see that's a lot... on instagram particularly so i've had a lot of clients in the past who are like fitness business mentor type people and still spend time with a few people like that as well so i get targeted with these ads all the time and i see so much now around grow your fitness coaching business 10k a month sign your next 50 clients here's how to sell high ticket fitness coaching services And 10 years ago, the copy they were using would have worked because the market was much less aware of it. And it sounds OK. If there aren't any AI tales in there, you hear and you go, oh, that sounds good. Especially if they're wearing nice clothes, they're next to a fancy car or they're in Dubai or wherever they are.

41:22 You look at it and on the surface it looks great. Yeah. Yeah. When you start digging beneath that, you go, okay, they sound like an expert, they're not an authority. And to me, a key differential is that an authority, authority has two things. First of all, they've got a way of getting your results are different. So going back to that fitness business manager angle, so many of them will say their big promise and they're like, oh, we've got a three-step system to get you clients. You're like, okay, what is the three-step system? Or they'll say, oh, we optimize your Instagram profile to help a true authority doesn't just repeat other people's systems you know we'll help you build a lead magnet okay well we've had lead magnets for 20 years like it's not a new and the other thing is that for for the authority factor is are they actually doing are they embodying the stuff they talk about so are they the kind of person who is showing up daily and you know doing what you would expect of them Are they showing the lifestyle you'd expect them to have?

42:22 Are they doing what we talked about in terms of talking about flaws? Have they got stories? Have they got stuff that makes them unique and individual? And also, what's their background? We're seeing this a lot with these AI experts. Three years ago, they were doing day trading or foreign exchange, Forex, whatever that kind of stuff. Two years ago, they were on crypto. A year ago, they were doing, I don't know, whatever else. They're positioning themselves as a full stack marketer or whatever. And now they're onto the AI train. It's like, yeah, I don't want to come across that guy who's anti-AI. I'm just very skeptical of most people who are saying... I, you know, I think, I don't mind naming names.

43:04 I saw Russell Brunson do a post the other day. Like I saved myself $650,000 a month or a year or whatever because I fired my whole marketing team and replaced them with AI. I'm like, yeah, what you said earlier about the idea that you don't see that impact directly, but I read that and I'm like, That's just like the least authority driven thing you could have done in my. So true. Again, he's he's a very smart guy. Yeah. He might be absolutely crushing it now because of that. I don't know. I'm not going to cast his versions. But from the outside, that kind of thing just seems utterly bizarre to me. I couldn't agree more. And I think that right now, listen, I actually think that if you're I think a lot of what drives people behavior or people's behavior around this actually is fear.

43:53 Yeah. I think there's a lot of fear around if I'm not using AI in this way, I'm missing out on something. We do see people spouting off about it all the time. I must be missing something. I'm not going to move as fast, whatever. But I actually think, to your point, this is such a grand opportunity because things have shifted. We started, it was interesting because I, when AI first came out, I'm, I'm geeky that way anyway, kind of predisposed to want to know more about that kind of stuff. And when it first came out, I did not wait. I didn't like, I was just like, well, I'm going down the rabbit hole.

44:34 I want to see what this is about. Um, um, But at that time, very few people were kind of it was like, oh, I don't know. I don't know what this is. This is a little scary. And the people that were sort of figuring it out early accelerated themselves. And now I think things have changed in that the average person has just gotten super lazy and it's just like, oh. Everything AI all the time. Right. And I think that especially in copy, you know, we talk about the marketplace today. And I think people there's still a lot of fear around where we are in the marketplace and, you know, how do I differentiate myself and, you know, how do I sell in a marketplace like this and that kind of thing.

45:20 Here's the beautiful part. Now, I'm not going to say that it's easy because it's not. It is definitely the hard way, but it is also simple. It's the same thing that we talk about in sales. Like, listen, if I had a fucking nickel for every time you can tell I'm not fired up about this. Every time I had a nickel for every time I saw somebody who was like, hey, here's this other, you know, AI reach out solution on LinkedIn that's going to get you 60 more clients a month and you don't ever have to do anything. Yeah. OK, great. Knock yourself out with that. I'm just going to tell you beyond the shadow of a doubt that if you can make relationships and have good, solid conversations with people and be willing to cultivate those relationships and ask people great questions and and simply have care and concern about where they are, what the gap is and how you might be able to help them close that gap.

46:21 you will sell more than just about anybody else you know. And it's the same thing with the copywriting that you're talking about, Mike. The cool part is that if we're willing to not be lazy... we literally can just blow past the majority of the competition because now, like, that's the red ocean is everybody and their mother just using AI for all of their copy. And the blue ocean has now become the people who are willing to write what's authentic, be authentic, even if it's messy, you know, have genuine conversation with people, those kinds of things. And that, to me, I don't know about you, That gives me so much peace at the end of the day because I know that it's a thousand percent in my control.

47:07 And I actually think to what we're talking about right now, I think people are craving it, to be honest with you. Yeah, without a doubt. And at this point now, me verging on grumpy, almost middle-aged man territory. But it's that whole idea of human connection, as in, yes, there are some people who would rather order everything through a screen, and they would rather chat to a bot than a human. I think that gives people that option. So if people are on a website, you can say, would you like to talk to a human? Would you like to try and sort this with AI? Or worse, that folks. Give them the choice. But as you say, the relationship building thing, it's... But I've never thought of myself as being amazing at networking and building relationships.

47:47 I think of myself as better now, partly because I've worked there, but also because the general standards got so bad. You can't focus on a conversation. A lot of people can't focus on a conversation. They're not able to do something like this because if now you're... If all your thought process is being generated by AI when it comes to marketing, your sales, how can you properly express yourself in a verbal conversation? And yes, laying back to more stuff we've said, it's like to get that authenticity to show that you're the real deal. People are going to want to see you on stages, on podcasts. They're going to want to listen to you, watch you, all that kind of stuff. If you don't want to do that in your business, I think there's still ways you can get around that.

48:28 And it depends on the business type and demographic and that kind of thing. But by and large, you need to be showing up as the person you are. And I just worry that the more people use AI for the stuff they can use it for, the less they'll be able to come up with their own unique thoughts and the worse they'll get to express in those as well. I couldn't agree more, my friend. I couldn't agree more. Dude, this was so good. And I feel like we could just go on for hours. Actually, we're going to need another episode for sure, because I actually want to spend some time digging in with you. You've created such a wonderful lifestyle business for yourself. And I think it's something that a lot of people covet. We'll put a pin in that one little teaser for the next one that we do together.

49:11 I'd love to dig in on that. But Brother, thank you for spending the time today. I think this is such important conversation. You're such a phenomenal writer. Mike, by the way, for those of you listening right now, is our head copywriter. So anytime that we're putting out a new website, when we're working with our own clients internally, he's the guy that's going to have the final say on that kind of stuff. Uh, he's amazing. I love working with you. Uh, and I also really appreciate that you're willing in a time where it would be really easy to just be another guy who's going, here's how to use AI to write your copy. You, you're not saying that.

49:53 And I, I really appreciate that because I actually think that the people that listen to this episode and have the aha of like, oh, this is how I could differentiate myself. Uh, it's a grand opportunity. And I actually think that you can just blow past your competition if you're willing to do this work. So thank you for everything that you do, man. Thank you for just being you. You're such an incredible human being. And I love working with you and appreciate you greatly. I'm excited to do another episode for those people that would be interested, because, by the way, there are some people who aren't great at writing copy or have reached a point in their business where, like some of the bigger brands that you work with right now, they're going, man, I can't write all my copy.

50:36 I do need some help. How can people get in touch with you if they'd like to work with you to do some of some of their copywriting, whether that's advising or actually writing the copy, et cetera? Where can they reach out? Well, first up, I want to say thanks for the kind words, man. They are 100% reciprocated right back at you. And then in terms of getting in touch, the easiest place, I'm across all social media, but if you go to copywithmike.com, that's my own website. I've got all the usual stuff, courses for sale, coach, and that kind of thing. But honestly, just send me a message. And if I can help, I'll help in the best way I can. That's amazing, man. And yeah, listen, if you're somebody that wants to learn to write better, reach out to Mike.

51:17 If you're somebody who needs copywriting help on your team, reach out to Mike. The guy's absolutely brilliant. He's our guy. Appreciate you, brother. Can't wait to do it again. Thank you for listening to this episode of the Path to Mastery podcast. Until next time, take care. Thanks for listening to the Path to Mastery podcast. If you got value from this, leave us a review and subscribe so that you never miss a single episode. And if you know another entrepreneur who needs to hear this, do us a solid and send it their way. We'll catch you next time on the Path to Mastery podcast.