JobsWorth

Lost For Words

• John Hawker • Season 3 • Episode 7

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This week, I sit down with Dave Harland, a copywriter, who shares his journey from young Scrabble enthusiast to a successful freelancer and agency owner. As well as exploring the events that lead to him changing his relationship with work talk about the importance of humor and authenticity in copywriting, the challenges of building a personal brand, and the evolution of his agency, Copy or Die.

 Dave discusses the impact of newsletters on audience engagement and the significance of standing out on platforms like LinkedIn whilst emphasising the need for authenticity and personal connection in writing. He also shares why he left a comfortable corporate job for the world of freelancing and public speaking. The discussion also highlights the balance between leveraging technology and maintaining the human touch in creative work.

Takeaways

  • Humour plays a crucial role in engaging copywriting.
  • Building a personal brand can filter out unsuitable clients.
  • The pandemic prompted a shift towards more humorous content.
  • Newsletters can be a powerful tool for audience engagement.
  • A strong personal brand can attract the right clients.
  • Engaging content can be both professional and lighthearted.
  • Vanity metrics on social media don't always translate to real engagement.
  • Copy should create a sense of urgency and curiosity in readers.
  • Enjoying the creative process is essential for fulfillment.
  • Stepping out of your comfort zone can lead to unexpected opportunities.
  • Authenticity is key in a world increasingly influenced by AI.
  • Outsourcing creativity can dilute the personal touch in writing.

Dave Harland

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/daveharland/
Website - https://www.thewordman.co.uk/author/dave/
Website- https://copyordie.co.uk/

Keywords

copywriting, humor, authenticity, personal branding, agency, newsletters, LinkedIn, marketing, freelance, audience engagement, copywriting, humor, AI, creativity, freelance, LinkedIn, personal branding, public speaking, outsourcing, authenticity

The JobsWorth website is here www.jobs-worth.com

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Contact me using hello@jobs-worth.com

I'm in a co-work in space but I've booked out. I'm in like a bit of a shed. We can book out these little meeting rooms. nice. my God, it is a shed. It is a shed. Yeah, there's about 10 sheds all lined up inside a big giant warehouse. It's like the creative quarter of Liverpool. It's called the Balford Triangle. Welcome to episode seven of Jobsworth season three. This week I catch up with copywriter, agency owner and wordsmith extraordinaire, Dave Harland. Dave discovered he had a particular talent for English at a very young age, being his dad Scrabble at just six years old and retaining his unbeaten title to this very day. He is, in his own words, an anti-bullshit copywriter who writes impactful and memorable advertising and marketing copy for businesses and brands who want to stop boring people to tears. If you read his work, you'll know he doesn't disappoint. We discuss how completing a degree in journalism led him to landing a job as head of copywriting at a Christmas hamper company before deciding to kick off his freelance career under the moniker, The Word Man. We also talk about the role of authenticity and humor when it comes to marketing, the importance of finding a tone of voice if you want to create engaging copy, and I asked Dave for his thoughts on the devaluing of copy due to the increased adoption of AI. If that all sounds a bit heavy, the episode also includes copious amounts of toilet humour, a great anecdote about Dave having an accident on a school trip, and both of us being disapproving of the word passion whilst using it constantly. So, further ado, let me introduce you to the man who gets a kick out of using his way with words to go to war with an army of scammers. If it doesn't make sense yet, it soon will. Dave Harland. When you were younger, what did you want to be when you grew up? Really handily related to what I do now. So I wanted to be a journalist. Although I say when I was younger, think when I was very young, I probably, I think I probably wanted to be a fireman. My uncle was a fireman, my uncle Charlie. I know I always remember like sitting in his fire engine when we were kids, he came around to me nan's one boxing day, the whole family used to go to me nan's one boxing day. So he brought the fire engine. So I think I was like, but around the same age, my dad got me into Scrabble and I loved words. loved reading, you know, rolled our books and writing all sorts of stories and poems and whatnot. I was heavily into the words from from an early age. And then when you come to school and I was good at English and naturally, it naturally kind of pointed me towards doing something where they for a career. make careers advisor, do it, do and do it work experience at the local paper. So that's what I did. Did work experience study and went on to study journalism. and then kind fell into copywriting, which is what I do now. So yeah, kind of related to what I set out to do when I was a kid. How old were you when you got introduced to Scrabble? Because I'm like, my oldest son is six and I like, he's, I mean, he can read anything now. So you put something in front of him and he can read and the lovely thing about how he reads, he's got this intonation with it too. So it's not that kind of Like, he's not always sounding things out phonetically. There's intonation, there's kind of like, he's almost acting it now. But I'm still, we're still a little way off Scrabble. But how old were you when your dad introduced you into Scrabble? Same age, know, it was 1988. I remember him getting me into it. Yeah. It's like, it's part of my, on my website, the word one, it's on my about page. The opening gambit is battering my dad at Scrabble since 1988. So that's me, that's me, me headline on me about page. So. Yeah, vividly know that I was six because I remember speaking to my dad about it and asking him like, when did you actually, and he was like, yeah, remember that year. Like it got, it started, got you, it got you into it. And like he was letting me win for the first six months, but then that quickly changed and I became the precocious little twat that was, yeah, just beating him nonstop. And I've kind of never lost a game since. The reading side, as my vocabulary group, the reading side of things, like you're talking about your little aunt being, you know, like good at reading, advanced reader. was like, I was that kid that I like, you know, they do, what's your reading age in school? I had like a reading age of 26 when I was like 12 or something stupid. Just one of those annoying little kids, which yeah, was funny at the time. But yeah, same age, yeah, six, scrabble. Yeah, if you find that you've got like an innate ability to tap into something and a talent and whether that's, in your case, that was words, if you can get, first couple of episodes I did of the podcast, I banned the word passion because I kind of, I'm a little bit ill at ease with the word passion, especially when it comes to careers. Cause I don't think first off, not everyone's fortunate enough to have a career that they are passionate about, or they can derive something that they are passionate about it. And also don't think it's always a good idea to follow your passions and make them a career. It's fine for those to be two separate things, but it sounds like you had this innate ability with words, with writing, with reading. And did it develop into a passion? Would you say you are, I'm not going to ban you from saying it, Dave, so don't worry, but would you say you are passionate about writing? It's all right. I'll self-ban myself. I can't stand the word either. Yeah. Have you ever seen David Mitchell's soapbox on YouTube? Yes. Really? Yeah. It's that little clip. Really talking about passion. Can you be passionate about not just tax optimization, but the optimization of that? Yeah, hilarious. Yeah, I mean, I know it's a bit of a wanky word, passion, but doing something I love, I'll say love, doing something I love as a job is definitely, yeah, that's definitely like a really amazing thing that I kind of kick myself sometimes. A lot of my mates are out there getting suited up in boiler suits and working as welders and whatnot and then out there grafting. When I tell them what I've been up to, they just laugh their head off. They're like, you just write stories all day. How's that even a job? It's nuts really when you put it into perspective. So yeah, I've always, always counted myself really lucky to be able to do day to day exactly what I love. That said, you know, Ask being being asked to write 72 product descriptions for security, fencing, perimeter perimeter fencing in, you know, 72 different colors and designs and whatnot. It can be a little bit of a like, shit, am I cursed here? Like how the hell am I going to attack this? And there are some briefs where it's a bit of a pain, but yeah, it feels like I'm constantly kind of solving. solving little problems and puzzles, just using words, I suppose, and finding the right way to fit. yeah, ever since I did it as a career, it's like a shit cliche, no, two days are the same, but I think as long as you're not just working with the same business, about the same product day in, day out, you really can make two days never the same because you're writing about new stuff and like a lot of... the stuff that I do isn't just purely focused on client work. I run an agency now, so it's a how am going to market the agency? It's like another phrase, I hate personal branding. It's how are you going to market yourself and talk about yourself on social media, which you like it all, but we all kind of have to do these days if we're to either run off our freelance businesses or try and become an authority in whatever industry we've all got. be kind of good at that. yeah, it's, I suppose it is. It's a passion that has allowed me to- We've come back around to the words that we didn't want to say. Make a career out of it, but I'd never say it. I've never used the word passion. I'm like you. I'm definitely against it for a number of reasons. think as well, I'm always mindful that there are so many people out there that are doing jobs, like you say, that your mates are doing where they're clearly not passionate about it. And that's okay. That's fine. But it sounds like that. sounds like you find a talent, you find a skill, and then you can build into that. And what you're doing really, I was trying to think of how to articulate this before we started recording, like you are weaponizing words. are your weapons and you're putting them together in a way that is getting the results for your clients. And that's great. I would imagine though, and we'll talk about the personal brands you've built. And I know you through LinkedIn, Davis, I'm sure a lot of people listening to this might do too. I'm sure your personal brand that you've built though kind of filters out some of the clients that look at what you're doing. And I'm sure this is by design too. Surely you don't get certain clients approach you with the kind of style of what you put out there for that very reason. Maybe they think that comedy, humor, a bit of personality is not what they're looking for. We can make the argument why they should be, but maybe you're kind of filtering out people that go, Dave's not for us because of that. I don't think that's a bad thing by the way. 100 % a conscious decision. It wasn't always. I think I've leaned into more of the using humour within my copy, probably the last four years since the pandemic really. And I was stuck at home, wasn't in my lovely co-working space where I feel like I've got all the time in the world to come up with ideas. was hemmed in this little box room and... The whole world was doom and gloom and it was like, like everyone was in nightmare scenario, weren't they? So I was just like using, leaning more into humor as a bit of a crutch delight in the mood for me, hopefully try and bring in more fun jobs because yeah, I've been freelance for eight years, started an agency about 18 months ago. But in that time, during the freelancing anyway, for the first four years, I was pure generalist. I'd say I was. In terms of my approach, was still 50 % entertaining stuff that I put out in terms of marketing, but the other 50 % was like useful stuff. like tips and whatnot, which, you know, the area that most people start in when they're starting to do personal branding on LinkedIn, they try and give as much of their knowledge away for free. So was doing all of that. Yeah, as soon as the pandemic hit and I thought, I need to, just for my own sanity, need to lighten my own mood and start just getting a bit sillier, just to make my days a bit more fun. I consciously lean more into it's like 90 % human now, probably closer to 100%. Still a little bit of usefulness in the background. What I've found in doing that is that, yeah, I won't be getting Roderick from Innovative IT Solutions asking me to write a case study for him anymore. I'll be getting, you know, Gemma from a really cool startup. dog food brand to come and help me work out how she's going to have more of a laugh with her tone of voice. it's, pulls apart in terms of the types of clients it brings in, but I feel more natural in that, you know, that humor comedy world and being able to translate what's relatively kind of boring strategic copy into stuff that feels nice and grounded and relatable and fun. It feels like that's just the kind of natural home for where I work best. It's what I enjoy. So to be able to enjoy it and do good in the work that I do, I can't really knock it. So it's been, wasn't originally conscious. then, yeah, I will always attest it to that during the pandemic, leaning more into humor as kind of. led me down this path where I'm a lot more focused on that kind of comedy and personality side of things. It's authentic, isn't it? And I think people buy into that. It makes it easier for you to do it. I imagine as a creative too, you can tap into something that feels genuinely your style of communication. A lot of people are working recruitment. A lot of recruitment companies, recruitment agencies out there are a lot more corporate than I am. I still work in the same space, which is these big technology transformations, but I have fun with it for myself because if I had to tow that very corporate line, I would go mad and it doesn't feel authentic. And I can't sit there writing something without taking the piss out of myself or the kind of perception, the perceived ideas around the industry. So a lot of people say to me, we like your branding and, it's completely self-serving, it's selfish, it keeps me interested in it. And then you filter out people, I know there's companies that don't want to work with me because I take the piss or I'm saying something that is kind of against the norm, but that filters out the people that are kind of buying into that. I know they're the ones that are going to work and enjoy working with me rather than me trying to pretend to be something I'm not. So it sounds again, like you kind of lean into that during the pandemic and then think, actually, I'm having more fun, I feel more engaged and these are the type of people, this is the tribe of people that I'm happy working with. Yeah, it's natural filter. It just filters out those people who they you wouldn't really want to do anywhere, work with anyway, but be like, are they really going to make the job fun? Like if someone's taking themselves really seriously and it's a serious subject and you've tried and have a bit of a laugh, like how's that going to go down? Well, as if, yeah, if you're having a laugh from the outset and they come to you. Like I don't even, don't, I very rarely have to persuade people anymore on the power of either, you know, copy with personality or even using humor. Like I do talk, I do talk now, I come from this and stuff where I talk to different techniques and stuff. By far the question I get asked all the time is, can we still be taken seriously if we're, you know, messing around all the time? And I'm like, there's a difference between being professional and being corporate. You still be professional, but in a really lighthearted way. Like it doesn't have to be all super corporate and innovative solutions. We're delighted to announce this and that. We're delighted. That's the trigger for me. We're delighted. I'm thrilled. I'm thrilled. The minute you see it, you're like, no one's thrilled. No one gets thrilled about certain a post on LinkedIn. It's crazy. It's a really good point though. You can have fun with it and still tow that professional line. It doesn't mean straight away that people are going to start pointing fingers and saying that you're not taking it seriously. No, and they say like, you know, but we're B2B and I'm like, I'm B2B like I'm working with other businesses, whether it's, you know, whether it's a B2C product, I'm still working with that business. Like I'm the most B2B you could get. but like you can't argue that the way I kind of, you know, do my, do my stuff on LinkedIn isn't attracting the right clients for me because like it's, it's nuts. The amount, the amount of clients that come to me and just saying like, or we've been told we're boring, or we're really fun, but we just don't know how to articulate that. It's like, where it's proven to work, this approach works. And I will be the self-evangelist of this kind of humor, B2B humor-facing copy, because it's been working for me for, whatever, at least four years, if not all eight years since I've been... both freelance and since we started the agency, which is again, heavily focused on more of the personality and the humor side of things. It's two of you. Is it two of and the co-founder that started the Yeah, me and Ben. Copy or die, Copy or die, yeah, that's our agency. So we've been going around about 18 months now. We still haven't done like an official LinkedIn look like, hey, we're open. Just because We both still do our own thing on the side. Ben's a copywriter, he also runs a commercial window cleaning business. In my other kind of 50 % of the time when we're not working on the agency, I do consulting and speaking and working directly with agency founders and stuff on their own copy and tone of voice and things. So we've both still got our own little thing going and the agency was only really set up to just as a way of capitalizing on all the leads that I was having to say no to through LinkedIn. we were like, yeah, yeah, let's set that up. it was doing my head in because I was saying no to some really, really cool jobs. Like what I was saying before, like startup brands, which like need a voice and the dead, they're so willing to have a little bit of fun. And I'm like, fully booked for four months here. can't, I just can't do it. So to be able to set up this agency model, which was all kind of Ben's idea initially. He was like, what are you doing with your leads? I'll buy them off you. So it initially started as a bit of a way for me to earn a little bit of commission off the back of the leads I couldn't give it by sending them to a guy I really trusted because he takes the same approach as me really, doesn't take himself too seriously. And he's a really great writer as well. It was only really after about six, nine months doing that. He was like, should we set up this official? Like he already had like a pool of freelance writers that he was getting to work on the different briefs that were coming to him. And it was just a case of let's stop making this a little bit of a sideline. Let's go a little bit more all in on it. So that's what we did. But yeah, like I said, still yet to press like go 100%. Right, come on. come and start working with us on LinkedIn, which is, think as soon as I do that, just because of the profile I've got on there, I'm guessing might attract a fair few people filling out our, we've got a little type form at the bottom of the site. the site's live now, you can go on through it. It just doesn't got any kind of work examples. We've done a bit of a soft launch, suppose, over the past year. So we've been working with clients and we're working with clients right now. We've got two or three on the go. But yeah, once I... Once I kind of press that button and say, right, we're open for business. I'm hoping there'll be quite a few people, yeah, filling out the form and wanting to work with us. Cause it'll be the first time I've ever really touted for business. It's not my style. I'm a bit, I'm a bit lazy. It's just like, I'll do, I'll give everything away for free. I'll be as daft as you want, but come to me when you're ready. Like I've never been, I'm a writer. I'm not a, I'm like a salesy. Mark as a guy. it's again, it's the authenticity. It's, again, I, I worked for a big recruitment agency for seven and half years. So I kind of learned the salesy part of, of the job and, you know, so it get whipped to hit KPIs and different metrics and phone, like spend two hours on the phone every day, call 20 clients a day, all these things. And part of the reason I started a moment was to escape that. the only The nice thing about being small is that you do not have to go and tag yourself out. You know that it's much more feasible for you to pick up a couple of really good clients. I don't know exactly how it works in your world, but I would imagine a similar kind of thing. You get a good foundation of clients that are helping you pay the bills. again, that matters, doesn't it? The finances need to add up. So if you get the bills paid, you've got the quality of life that you want. Yeah, you don't always have to prospect, but I'd say Dave, I'm not just blowing smoke up your ass here. The profile that you've got on LinkedIn. following you've got, I would imagine the moment you do make it LinkedIn official and start talking about the agency, you're going to get an influx in the same way that you do now with your own work too. So it sounds like a really good idea. It makes a lot of sense. The question I was going to ask when you talking about it though, how comfortable are you when it sounds like with your co-founder, you know him, you know that he's got the credentials, a similar kind of viewpoint on the copy. How do you kind of feel about delegating some of that writing because you've got such a, I haven't seen your work that you do for brands that isn't like, hasn't got that kind of humor behind it, but you've got such a style that has become synonymous with comedy and with humor and with personality. How do you feel about delegating that to other people and hoping that they're going to kind of represent you in the right way too? Yeah, that's a good question. And it's one of the things that which has kind of held me back from doing any outsourcing and any agency model in the past really. was always, Dave, we want to work with you. And as soon as I say, can't do it, but I know such and such who can help. And I'm talking like really good writers who I trust and I know their standard of work. They're just like, no, we want you to work on it. And I'm like, kind of dead in the water when it's like that. But I think now that it's not just me. as a freelancer saying, I can get such and such to work on it. It sounds like just a really casual way of outsourcing some stuff to another, right? It's exactly what it is. Just the fact that it's like, look, I run a copyright agency now. I'm the creative director of that copyrighting agency. Your project, I will be on those early scoping calls and those meeting calls. I will know exactly what you need. I will be doing, we'll obviously have a team of Check the specialist freelance writers that will be working on the different briefs for each project. But if possible, we will get them in on a briefing call. We will get them in on a turn of each workshop that we do. So it's not a case of me delegating stuff and making sure that the messaging and the approach kind of filters down to the right person. It's like we're going to have the right people in on a project as early as possible. WQA at the end, at the end as well, just making sure that the quality is there and, and you know, what we're putting out and what we're sending back to the clients. It's kind of there or there about, you know, what, what I, what I would probably have, what I would probably have, you know, written, not, so much in a word to word, but the approach and the fact that, whatever, whichever freelance writer works with us on, on, the project. like that they'll be because because they're coming in from like the early parts of a project and it's not just a piece of yeah can you do two days for us as a brief see you later we'll see you in two days because I've got hope in there already bought into it too and the fact that we're using we're only using experienced freelance writers here we're not using any juniors really and not using any people from Upwork we're using people who we've definitely got that experience be it you know, sector specialism. So it might be someone who's focuses on law firms or something on, you know, SaaS products or something that they do that day in day out. So if anything, like we're gaining the expertise of someone who's much better than me or Ben, because we're just generalists at the end of the day. Okay. I focus on comedy and humor, suppose, in my approach. But if we're bringing it, if a law firm comes to me and says, we need, we need you to add humor to our stuff. I'm like, yeah, I can certainly do that. how good is it if I can bring in a copywriter who writes for law firms and helps law firms have that extra personality? It's just a massive win-win for us. So I'm not too fussed that clients will be asking, can we work with you? Can we make sure that you're on the project? think the second they know it's an agency, like everyone understands the agency model. It's one big team, I suppose. And I suppose it lives or dies on the strength of the brief that we'll be given. And like I said, if we're getting them in and out, those early stages and giving good briefs out as well, like for years, the amount of shit briefs I've had, it's just like, where do you even begin? Like I work with quite exclusively now with two or three agencies who give me absolutely squat on briefs. their ace, the account, account directors that work for them are so good at their job. They understand the creative process and everything is just perfect when it comes to me. So we're trying to take all the good bits that we've both, me and Ben have both learned from the briefing process as well and making sure that our writers are so clued up on exactly what's needed. That it should be a breeze for them. But like I said, again, that they're people, I'm sure. they'll be telling us a thing or two. It's not like we're having to kind of coach them or say, it should be in this kind of style. We're expecting them to, yeah, just, just pick it up. because they're, really good at what they do anyway. And that's, they're, they're the relationship we built just from, yeah, I've been freelancing eight years, Ben's been doing a five. We know so many really good people, good freelancers. Yeah. And we know, we know people in, in it, like I said, the different sectors and the different. who write for different media, like I know an email specialist, know a FinTech specialist, know a ton of voice people who can help us with those different projects. it's no secret that it's a bit of a tough market at the moment. And there's a lot of people worried about, you know, applying budgets heavily reduced and the loads of these agencies are giving, you know, the shop bots a little whirl and seeing if... The robots can write them marketing copy, know, faster for them or, you know, better quality. So there's a little, yeah, I'd say there's a fair bit of worry and yeah, uncertainty, I suppose. And I think if we can bring in, we can bring in clients and bring in, it'll match them up to the really good writers. We can try and alleviate a little bit of that for, yeah, more the good writers who've got the experience, but are just finding it hard to. hard to come across the clients because we're taking that a bit away from them. can focus on what they do. Yeah. Exactly. I think from my perspective, the reason I ask, I've gone from a one, let's say one man band. So it's very easy to manage your time, manage your workload. say easy. It's only your workload. It's only your time. It's your stress. It's your responsibility. And for years, people have asked me, so when, when are you going to grow? When are you going to hire? When are you going to start to build something out? And. I started this business as a lifestyle business and a lot of people that listen to this podcast also a freelance or they're running something small or a side hustle, something like that, where maybe they're at the precipice of saying, I either go all in on this or I start to grow, start to hire someone, start to bring someone in. And I think sometimes what stopped me for so long, I'm saying this now six months after hiring my first employee, but what stopped me for so long was that delegation, that dilution of control because When you have built a personal brand, sorry if that gives you the ick, but if you've built a personal brand that's synonymous with your tone of voice, your style, allowing someone else to come into that I think can be really difficult. I have to say six months on, I have no regrets hiring someone else. I think a lot of it is about the person that I've hired. It's just incredible. They're not sat in the room with me. I'm not just, again, just being overly complimentary. But yeah, just the... thought process that goes through, it's just me, it's not going to be just me for a while. yeah, where you get to the point where you pulled a trigger on it, but it sounds like you're there. You could use that as a sound bite, what you've just said, Dave, as a really comprehensive bit of insight for any customers that want to work with you too. But it sounds like you're giving it some thought and you're kind of ready for that. But yeah, I look forward to seeing it when you do pull the trigger and announce it. It has to be LinkedIn official at some point, doesn't it? Yeah, it's it's imminent. We've just got to get I just want we want to get the website launched with a few examples of our work on there so that they don't just land there and go, OK, this is just the day of Harlem show. Like, where do we fill the form? And there's no actual like authentic proof of the work that we've done and the work that we're capable of. Like even though I can't, like I said, most of most of the people landing there will effectively be pre-qualified because they'll see the shit that I'll put out, you know, on the daily, whether it's, you know, talking about. work stuff where I'll, you know, ripping up a really poor email that I've received from Microsoft to shreds and show you how it could be rewritten better. Or if I'm, you know, like you do, suppose, pointing out the ridiculous things that go on in our industry or in the world at large. I'm trying to, yeah, trying to keep things a bit grounded and a bit normal before everyone takes things a bit too seriously. I yeah, because they'll already be kind of pre-qualified. I don't think I'll have to do that persuaded, but I still don't want to take it for granted. I want everyone to learn on that side to go, man, like why haven't we found these years ago? This is like exactly what we need. Especially at a time where copy is being devalued everywhere. It's like, we will help you stand out. Like the whole premise, like we're called copy or die. It's the premise of it is words and ideas for brands that want to live forever. So it's like, if you've got shit copy. You're doomed. Your business is doomed. you don't know how to engage with your audience in this day and age of social media where, know, what do they call it? The attention economy. And if you're not capturing people's attention and persuading them that, you know, you're right for them, like they're going to go elsewhere because they've got a thousand and one options. So I think we've got a good thing. It's just a case of pressing go when it's right and when it's right, making sure that we've, yeah. We're more than capable of handling day one. There's a hundred briefs. Like, Whoa, okay. So we'll probably have to hire. We'll probably have to hire four account managers, but like, knows? said, I said, I like I'd do a newsletter every other Friday through my, my, my word man. So that's got like just, it's got like 20, 20 or a thousand subscribers now. again, I never sell on it. I've got no product yet. I'm working on a course at the moment, but never really selling it. I did a wait list last year. I announced that we were starting the agency and said, if you've ever wanted to work with me, like I'm opening my doors for the first time ever. 300 people signed up, 300 businesses signed up. And I was just like, proof of concept. was like, wow, that blew me away. I was like, if we can just do that once we, once we're officially launched, if we can do, yeah, do something similar and get that level of, Yeah, that level of volume of clients in, kind of run itself. Shows the buying sentiment, doesn't it? And guess that's what you're trying to give it like a real, like official terminology, I guess. But it does show the buying sentiment and you must feel you were pried too, because to even get to that number of subscribers on a newsletter. I wanted to ask about that because my perception of newsletters a few years back were dead and buried. These email subscription lists are just shit. This is something of the past. It's not going to kind of have that resurgence. Little did I know that now all I'm being advised to do is start this newsletter. I've got a LinkedIn newsletter that I'm trying to take off LinkedIn at the moment, because LinkedIn have got such a monopoly on everything that I do. I need to claw something back and have that IP myself. But there is so much like, you can be consistent, if you can get that, again, the messaging out there and build the brand awareness is so powerful, isn't it? But what put you onto the newsletter idea, Dave? Again, just buying into it, thought it was a good idea, had something to say and just wanted to build that audience. Yeah, it was an extension of the kind of strategy shift during the pandemic, which again, probably wasn't conscious at the time. It was just I'm going to start doing more funny stuff. And then like I remember that year, like had me back in 2020 stuck in this box room in my house. like my like revenue wise, I had like my most fruitful like three or four months. during the first lockdown, it went nuts. wasn't just getting like, like I said, I always take the pit like Roderick from innovative IT solutions. I was getting like, hi, this is Jane from Google. Can you help us? I'm like, Like, what's going on? Yeah, it was just, it was nuts. So just the fact that it already made that shift towards writing more consciously around around human and focusing on that type of stuff. Yeah, I've got to like the September. I was already subscribed to a few newsletters like my mate Eddie Schleiner runs very good copy. So he does a really good, like a really highly successful newsletter. So at the end of that I subscribed to Anne Handley. She's another amazing writer from the States. She does, what's it called, Anarchy. Yeah, A-double-N, Anarchy. Just writes amazingly. And I thought... You know exactly what you were saying about LinkedIn, having the monopoly over stuff. was like, if LinkedIn went tomorrow, I'd be screwed. I mean, I've got most of the stuff I've done on LinkedIn saved on my desktop. So yeah, never, never throw anything away. It's all kept, never that I had a platform away from it to really go, okay, how am I going to build an audience? So I was thinking just a little bit of a loss leader here. I'll pay for me. Mail Chimp Fees and just like, I still haven't gotten any products. I'm not selling. This is just me trying to, yeah, trying to share most of the stuff that I already do on LinkedIn with a bit of a behind the scenes. I've always seen my newsletter a bit like, you know, digital DVDs on thing anymore, are they? But when you used to get the commentary and it was like, or the bonus extras and it would be like, you know, Bill Murray and Dan Aykroyd talking about like, how Ghostbusters was originally going to be called Ghoststoppers. All the little tidbits that you don't really get to see when you just watch the film. I wanted my newsletter to kind of be that and to be anything I shared on LinkedIn. So if it was a story, I'd explain how I wrote the story and go more into the technique for anybody that wanted to kind of nerd out on copy or humor. And it just kind of took off. it's been... It's been the best thing, the newsletter has been the best thing I've ever done, like 100% in enabling me to find my own voice and really understand what my true style is and just understanding a bit more about marketing as well. Because Eddie taught me loads about, like I'm talking really basic email marketing stuff. I didn't even have a clue. like, how do you even do it? I was like, can I just do it on my outlook? I'd only ever had a Hotmail account before I started me. We business. So then it was like, can I just look at it? was like, no, you have to actually use like a male, male client, like male chimp or something. So I was like, okay, you know, you launch it off and you read past page two. And it's like, this is far too technical for me. So I knew one of my mates, Catherine, she, she was a male chimp expert. was like, can you set this up for me? She's like, yeah. So she saw it. And then it was like, started it. And then Eddie was like, you've got to, I had a couple of calls with him and he was like, get more newsletter subscribers mention it at the end of every LinkedIn post and then within every newsletter edition list the three or four LinkedIn posts that you've done that week he said you just create this little flywheel effect so people who miss your newsletter see it on the socials and people who miss the socials see it in your newsletter he said and that's just it's like self-fulfill and stuff and for me that was like sorcery I was like this is like amazing just like marketing 101, email marketing, the basics. It just shows how naive I am to the whole thing or how naive I was. It's helped me gain a better understanding of just how marketing works, I suppose, and how campaigns work and see that from the inside rather than me just kind of fudging my way through it when I'm working on client stuff. It sounds very similar to my approach, which is I do fudge my way through most of the things. There's not much of a strategy to what I put out there. I've worked with various people to try and put that in place and half of it's buying my attention span and getting quite flighty with different ideas that I want to try and put into play as well. Cause a lot of it's beta testing. A lot of it's just firing something out to see if it works, gaining that research, gaining that insight, that data, whatever you want to call it. But you've got to be brave enough to give it a go, haven't you? And just roll the dice and think, okay, what have I got to lose? you've probably got a lot more to gain than you have to lose for most things that you put out there. Unless you go, unless you cross the line, unless you cross the line too far, there's obviously a level. what I've got to ask about your LinkedIn following, you know, we don't need to mention the numbers, although they're pretty like, it's an impressive following that you've, you've grown on LinkedIn and I am a big advocate for personal brand. Sorry again, Dave, for anyone that can't see Dave's face, he pulls a face every time I say personal brand. but for me, it's, You've said the proof is in the pudding in terms of the numbers that you've got too, but when did you see those numbers really start to shoot up? Was that again when you started leaning into the humour, leaning into the authenticity and just starting to put a bit more of yourself in your posts and your writing? Yeah, I think so. I I originally started off on Twitter when I first went freelance. So it was Twitter where I first got introduced to some of the real luminaries in the copywriting game. was where I first met Ben, he was like my co-founder now. We just liked the same stuff. We were both into football, into Alan Partridge, daft little memes that we'd see. He'd always comment on the same stuff that I would. So we had this kind of mutual respect for the same stuff and seemed to get really get on well, despite never, you know, I'd never met him until like five years after really encountering him on... on Twitter, so that's where it started, Twitter, and I built up like, you know, I'm probably like three or four thousand followers on Twitter, basically just all other copywriters and designers, so it wasn't really anyone I could ever sell to, to be honest. But LinkedIn, was, I remember it was like 20, when I first like took Start of Dignity, it was like 2018, before that, it was originally just like my... you know, an extension of me CV. was where I'd worked before. was a little bit of an about us and that was probably, you know, diligent and hardworking trained journalist, the usual shites that everyone puts on their stuff. And then, yeah, just I think I had like a bit of a I was I was working. I remember working on a contract at a big bank and the contract was for the set number of hours. And every I think at the bank like. the team I was working with got to go, they got to leave like two hours early on a Friday. So effectively I had like two hours of nothing, just nothing to do. They obviously set me tasks, but more often than not, there was nothing to do. So I was like, you know what, I'll use that two hours just to plan out my, yeah, plan out my LinkedIn posts for the next month or for the next week. So, and I started seeing there was certainly people on LinkedIn at the time. who were just like, know, hi, you know, I'm delighted to announce I've got this new job or, you know, I'm working in marketing. If you're interested, it's like, whoa, like this is the most boring stuff I've ever seen in my life. Like I could stand out here a mile if I just play my cards, right? So that's all I started doing, just doing stuff differently, which is like, you know, being distinctive and doing the opposite of what everyone else in your category does is always been a sound approach for, yeah, people looking to. Yeah, overthrow the category leaders and stuff. Not that there's any like real category leaders in copyright and all that. You know, not that it's as devious as it is in, you know, the B2B world or whatever. But I remember at the time I can stand out here just by being a little bit funny and showing a bit of the kind of humor that I've always tried to use within my writing when I've had the opportunity. So that's what I did. Just started doing. Yeah, slightly funny stuff. And then one post that I did overnight kind of blew up really simple post about like how to use adjectives to make your stuff seem more appealing. So just using wankier words, a bit like an and S ad. And I did three different descriptions for the same product and just to show how you can add, you know, charge more for stuff that sounds a bit more appealing. And it got like a million views and I like 300 inquiries off the back of it. return into like all this freelance work and I was like, shit, this is where I live now. This is my new home. So how can I replicate that? So and back then I don't even think LinkedIn didn't really like they've slyly added followers. It used to be connections, didn't it? LinkedIn. It was like, many connections have you got? And then it was, you can follow people now. So followers was never really, I mean, it still isn't like it's nice to have them big numbers. Also is this more people see your stuff. That's all it is really. When you get an announced, you know, as a speaker, it might open more doors that way, you know, seeing you as an authority, but in terms of the numbers, you see people having follower parties like 100,000 followers. And they like get big gold balloons and all of that. it's just like, just it's, it's the opposite of how I ever want to come at things. Like if my mates seen me doing a follower party, I would be, I'd be shunned. forever. My family would as well. My family would rinse me. It's just like, get over yourself. Like this isn't you. Where's our David from Birkenhead? Where's the lad that we all knew and loved? Like what's happened to you, you weirdo? So yeah, that's got go to me as well. It keeps me grounded before I get too much of a big head. You can't get bogged down with follower numbers, but there are some positives that come from it, which is a lot of it is visibility or how, from what I've learned about LinkedIn now, it's really... visibility, a lot of that is controlled by LinkedIn. So sometimes those numbers don't mean your posts are going to get seen by that many people. But I think the example you gave, which is that post that got a million views, then also got you 300 odd inquiries, that's the best example you could give because the vanity metrics can go through the roof. Everyone can get posts that get loads of views, get loads of likes, get loads of comments. It's turning it into money, isn't it? What's the return on investment? So the fact that you've got 300 inquiries on the back of it, and I guess in a way that's part of what you do is trying to emulate that for the clients that you're working with too. Like I loved, I was watching one of your podcast clips and the analogy you were giving about when you've had a bad curry or a bad pint and reading some copy. It's essentially reading a copy makes you like should be doing, making you run to the toilet at the speed that you would do if you were. Yeah. Needing to go through a shift. It was a ridiculous analogy, yeah, purposefully made and yeah, craft, every word crafted to avoid, avoid the, the shite filters on LinkedIn, the algorithm. So I was, yeah, I was using like toilets, disasters and all sorts of words that, kind of, you know, surfed surf beneath the profanity radar. but it is like, I know it's, again, it's a ridiculous, it's a ridiculous thing to say, like when you're writing copy. people should be so desperate to get to that next line. Like if they're not, you run a chance of losing them. Like they should be so desperate, like subliminally desperate to know what the hell's contained within that next paragraph because the paragraph you've just written is so full of intrigue and curiosity and like promised benefits. Like it should be as like the point I made, like when you're desperate to go to toilet and like you can think of nothing else but unleashing hell into that toilet bowl. Like your mind, kind of feeling you should have in people's minds is they should think of nothing else but clicking see more to get to that next bit. Like Drayton Baird, one of my copy heroes, he's like, you should think about like your copy almost like if you've got a gun to your head and like how are you going to persuade this person to read the next line? He said, lazy people don't, lazy people will just write anything. He said, I come at things thinking if I've got a gun to my head now and somebody said. If you don't get that person to that next line, I'm going to pull this trigger. He said, that's what it's like when you're, when you're in the cutthroat world of sales and your business lives or dies on making that sale. You've got to, you've got to get people there. So I think it helps putting things into, weird and wacky perspectives like that. And that's all I was kind of trying to do with the toilet post. Plus, you know, I got to write a toilet about, you know, being desperate for a shit on LinkedIn, which is very, very rare. Any excuse, any excuse. I love it. And I think hearing you talk about it again, you can just sense this energy and enthusiasm you've got. And you're so, you are so right. Like I'd like to think that I can write copy. It is not, if I said, if I judged all of that copy in the same way, if I had a gun to my head, I wouldn't post anything. So like a lot of it, but I, I'd like to think I can write, but seeing You put some long form content out there, Dave, and yours are one of a very small handful of people that I will always read to the end. And there's a talent and there's an art and there's a really beautiful thing about that. And I think you said earlier, copy is being devalued. And we're going to go into this now. Copy is being devalued and I'm noticing it and I'm trying to rage against it. And I'm sure from what you're... know, what you're putting out there at the moment, you're in a similar sort of train of thought to me, but we're going to talk about AI and this advent of AI. When did you start to see AI permeating the kind of landscape that you operate in, Dave? I think it was about six months before GPD came out. So that was like, well, we're coming up to two years since its launch now aren't we? So was probably around the summer of 2022 when I saw, I think it was another copyrighted, made to mine, Dan Nelkin. or maybe slow mo Genshin, one or the other, I'd mentioned this open AI and the fact that there's this, like highly advanced chat. But I mean, they've been using AI for years, like businesses have been using AI just as like automated chatbots, but they they've been, they haven't been to the extent that these large language models have been, they've been kind of based on a spreadsheet full of like designated answers. So if somebody says, you know, what's my account details? We just got the spreadsheet just pulls the query up from, from something like nothing had ever created anything from scratch before. I was like, wow, like, this is interesting. Just looking at a pure intrigue, like no, at no point has there ever been like, this is an existential threat to like everything I hold here. Like I'm going to lose my job and like have to retrain as a farmer or something. It's like, I was calling at that time, okay, let's, let's see what it's like. So my, my first. My first thing with open AI and I did a talk on it last, or this summer actually just gone about my experiences and now I kind of got into kind of having a little play with these things. One of the most basic things I said, like the one of the prompts I put in was I'm starting a new brand for Huddys. It's a purpose, purpose led brand. Give me some taglines. So it like spat like five options, all like terrible. It was like, know, hoodies with a cause. was like, no, come on, keep, need them to be more creative. And then I got to the point where I was having to say like, give me, give me one that rhymes. And it was like, I can't think of the exact one, but it would be like the perfect rhyme for hoodies is goodies, isn't it? Hoodies for goodies or something like that. But it was coming up with like, know, hoodies for a better world. And I was, I felt bad. I was like going back going like, where's the rhyme there? And it's like, well, it could rhyme if you do. And I was like, there's no rhyme. And I asked it the question, do you understand what a rhyme is? I'll never forget it's answer. It just replied and it typed it out really slowly. Yes, I understand what the rhyme is. It was always like, like I just patronized it. Like, just patronize the robot here. So that was my, that was the first time I'd, yeah, I'd really kind of seen it, seen its limitations. I mean, still even though. You can criticize the output, like the fact that it exists and the way it works is just mind boggling. It's it's mind blowing. Like how have we ever reached this point in technology? I will never, ever, ever know how it can create, you know, a poem about lampshades in the style of Shakespeare in two seconds is like, wow, that's, that's computing for you. That's computing like it's computing from the year 2100. It's insane really. Yeah, back to kind of, yeah, present day. Everything I've seen so far in what I do. So I'm obviously focused on, as we've established, focused more on humor and finding the personality, which again, is a subjective thing like what you find funny. You know, I might not find funny what my clients might find funny is probably, you know, going to be something different again. for what I do, which is finding that kind of deep rooted humanity, full of human and lived experience. It just hasn't got it. I think because it's based on stuff that has happened in the past, I just don't think it will ever get there where it's as authentic as we need it to be to confidently go, yeah, let's just push it forward and let it be done with our kind of written output. Not that I'm businesses and brands are using it like that. I business, certainly a lot of copywriters I know are using it more for ideation. Like if I'm at a brick wall or I'm staring at a blank page and I've got to write a blog post about teapots, give me 20 ideas or facts about teapots. It's basically a better syndicated Google. We were doing that anyway on Google. You'd probably start with Google, you? Tell me all teapot facts. your speech marks around it to find the best page on Google chat you with these, just getting you there a bit quicker. with the, with the generative stuff where it's, where it's creating the copy that you would have previously had to write from scratch. I think, I think there's a lot of danger in doing that in outsourcing your thinking and certainly as writers, like all ideas are at the kind of heart, they're at the heart of everything. We do and everything we sell basically like without all ideas were screwed. like these people are doing, you know, just typing in prompts and letting, these large language models come up with the first draft of whatever they're writing. I know I make it tongue in, I make this point, tongue in G what happens if the wifi goes down? Like, how are you going to do that? Like what, what happens if you're in a meeting with the clients and you've been You've been outsourcing your thinking for so long and the client goes, what's another angle we can come in at for this? And you go, let me just prompt the machine and see. Like you'd be left out the building. Like I think that's where the danger lies. Again, I did that talk about kind of my experience with AI and how it's completeness really when it comes to writing with human and personality. But I think we're also in danger of if we are outsourcing or. or thinking an art kind of earliest, say when you're working on it on a new brief and you've got to sell something like, know, sell this microphone. If I'm immediately going to a chat bot saying, you know, give me eight things that I can talk about this microphone, interesting angles, you're giving away the actual truth about the thing that you're selling. Like if you're not speaking to the client first, if you're not asking them to send you the microphone, If you're not looking at what other people are saying, people in the real world on reviews, if you're not doing that type of research, which I know AI could probably pull all of that information together. But if you're, if you're getting the robots to do the creative stuff, you're losing that truth that makes stuff that's so engaging and, and, and so worth reading. And, think that's a slippery slope as soon as you start doing that, because it's like anything, the less it's like, it's like, when you stop going to gym isn't it like I can't talk massively overweight human here I know that what they in the past when I've gone to gym and it's been like you know you're on your game I was doing CrossFit for years and I was pumped I could do pull-ups I could do it all stop it for like two weeks and it's like this is so hard to get back into like I see the link with outsourcing your idea generation and your creativity if you stop doing that Like how hard is it to get back into it when you really need to? There's a whole lot of flip side around it about it being like enjoyable. Like I love writing, all of these new AI tools, it's all about like, know, focus on the things, let these AI chatbots do all the donkey work so you can focus on the stuff that you enjoy doing. I enjoy that. I enjoy coming up with the ideas, you weirdos. Like, don't take that away from me. That's the best part. I enjoy seeing people's reactions when they read my stuff. I wrote another story. It sounds like all my stories are shit based, I promise they're not. There was a story about when I shat myself on a school trip when I was a kid. So I wrote this story about it and obviously it was on LinkedIn. So it had a business lesson attached to it. Of course. I forgot where I was going. The shit sent me head west. I'll remind me when I can. I'm just thinking about where this story is going to go. You were talking about, I do know where we are. My train of thought hasn't completely gone. You were talking about enjoying the process. the whole thing about, yeah, go for it, come. So I'd written this story and it just so happened my mum was on that school trip. So she salvaged the situation. She saw me waddling towards her. and we silently communicated, you know, what had happened. And she looked at me in that way that mums do when they know that their kids just shat themselves. And it was a beautiful unspoken moment, even though it was horrible and she had to wad the gussets of my kecks with, you know, some two-ply toilet paper in there. It was in the Yorvik Viking Centre, in the Viking Centre toilets. It was nuts. But anyway, I recently retold this story tongue in cheek for LinkedIn with a bit of a business lesson, just, you know, as I try and do. with many tenuous stories. And I remember reading it out to my mum when she was sitting there crying with laughter. And like, when I reflected on that, like when I had to do this AI talk, I thought, if I would have used a chat bot for any part of that story, like, would I have been as fulfilled and satisfied seeing the tears running down my mum's face? Because that came from me. My memory, I wrote every single word and I chose every single word carefully. I was using words like cascaded, like it was just a horrible word for like this, know, rancid volcano of filth. I'd chosen a out of a hundred words I could have chosen. If I'd have got a robot to help me with that, I really do think that I wouldn't have had the same level of like, I did that. Like that was all me. Like I've made, I've made that happen. And like, again, I think if, if you do really enjoy what you do in terms of the writing side of things, and it's not just a job, like another job, which I think if you work in marketing and it's like, you're going to do copy, you're going to do this, you're going to plan campaigns, it's going to make your life easier, isn't it? If you've got, if you're not really kind of, precious over the, over the one thing that you do. But yeah, for me, thinking about it from that perspective, like, I enjoy it. And if I get someone else to do it, sorry, if I get one of these robots to do it, it's going to take that enjoyment away from me. And I don't want that to happen. I don't want to be like, I made an analogy again in that talk. I don't want to be like one of those chefs in the restaurants when Gordon Ramsay goes in and he's been there for 20 years and he's been microwaving the spaghetti and there's bits of salmon floating around in the fridge and all of this, all of the lovely chefing that he loved 20 years ago. It's just cause he's overworked, he's lost the love for the job and he's kind of all dejected, all the love's drained from his eyes and Gordon comes in and he goes, what the fuck's this? Mike, you're raving a spaghetti. Like, what are you doing? Where's the passion? You know, what's happened to you? Like, I know that I certainly do not want to be like one of those chefs. No copywriter that's going to be working with us or our agency is going to be anywhere near those chefs. They're going to love what they do. They're going to be proud of what they do. Like we all want to be Gordon Ramsay. We want to be steering the ship. We want to be coming up with the innovative stuff. We do not want to be going, you know, outsource me brain. You tell me and I'll just like, what does that make us? That doesn't make us anything, does it? Certainly doesn't make us writers coming up with cool ideas. It makes us just like editors, like five steps down the process. nowhere I want to be. Not from creative copy. Obviously I'm ranting a little bit more about creative copy here and outsourcing ideas. I know. future is probably going to be 90 % streamlined processes by these amazing, incredible robots. Just in case anyone's at danger of calling me a massive luddite, I need to stop being a dinosaur. Just in case the robots are listening, we want to be on their good side by the time Skynet goes live. man, people say it because whenever I do any test, I never use it. Never use the chatbots aside from when I'm testing something. Like at the end of my newsletter, say I do like a before and after on an email that I've rewritten. At the end I'll say, let's see if one of the chat bots could do it better. So I give the chat bot a prompt and say, give me five alternatives for this strapline. And it's invariably like the worst thing in the world. Like here are the five options and it's all elevation, creativity, unlocked. It's like, what? Like, see you later. Nuts. So I make that point about how, yeah, how the... The chat bots are just terrible in what they do. So yeah, that's the way I try to keep me sanity. I thought we were going to get some like an impassioned overview of your thoughts on AI. yeah, it's not odd to provide what I thought you were going to say, to be honest with you. think outsourcing of ideas is something I talked about when chat GBT was coming up with things specifically in the recruitment space. Because what immediately chat GPT went live and then all of a sudden there was a load of recruitment technology that was being formed on the back of using these large language models that were going to make people's life easier. Again, like you say, leave you doing the part of the job that you really love. Now, if you work in recruitment, you've really got to try and break down what voice the part that you love anyway. But I just thought what it's actually doing is outsourcing the ideas. It's going to dull us down. It's going to dumb us down when it comes to Like connection like this, don't get, you you're in the room in real time having a conversation with someone. That's thinking on your feet. is ideas coming to the fore and then articulating that. What we're doing by using TrackGBTs, like working on these long form prompts, kill me as well. Like if you can't do it on a short form prompt, why are you going to write something that is essentially what you could create yourself if you just concentrated enough? Like people were advocates. Long form prompts are the best thing to do. You're not going to write two A4 side pages of a prompt to create something that's two paragraphs long. That's madness to me. That's not productivity. That's the complete opposite. So I'm anti it. Even the ideation stuff, I've got to be honest, Dave, I struggle with that. struggle because I think it's one small step from ideation to then go, I like that. Can you write it for me? And then all of a sudden it's built something again and then you're editing that. So I'm bastards aren't we? Us humans. If there's a shortcut, we'll do it. Yeah. Yeah. Anything we could do to avoid having to sweat a little bit. Yeah. But it's, it's a really good point. And I think, yeah, like I said, it's not unexpected your response to that, but yeah, the outsourcing of ideas, but then going back to the point, if you love what you're doing, if you really enjoy the process, then why would you want to outsource that in the first place? some people will be listening to this going, I'm happy to, cause I hate writing and I don't want to do it. I've got a couple of. More questions for you, Dave, and then we're done. So let me see. There is, God, I'm going to ask you quite a broad question. I probably should have prepared you for this one. but don't feel put on the spot at all. And the question is what advice would you give for someone that's looking to change their relationship with work? So what we haven't touched upon is what you were doing before you went freelance, I guess, like the time, cause I go back on people's LinkedIn profiles and I'll look at. what's there and I'll try and do a bit of digging beforehand. I mean, yours is a wasteland before 2015, I think, from what I could see. And then it starts to build up with Wordman and then Copy or Die from there. But I would assume what you were doing prior to that was working for other people, still doing copywriting or working in-house for people. Is that right? Yeah, I was head of Copy, our Christmas shampoo company, for 10 years. Just underneath 10 years, yeah. I think, I think it was on my, it was on my profile. And then I think it was just, I think I just disabled it cause it was, it was how I'd written it back when I just started freelancing and it was like my old tone of voice. So I just hadn't updated it. I remember reading it like probably about a year ago thinking, well, that's not me anymore. Bye. So I just paused it and I thought I'll write a more fun version and I've just never got around to doing it. So at the moment, yeah, it's just weird man. and copy or die. But yeah, I was head of copy there for that's how I got into the copyright. And to be honest, because I originally went there. was about four years after graduating. I'd done a few other little kind of semi journalism, semi PR jobs. And then I got a job at that company right in there as editor of the customer magazine. It's got as a Christmas helper company, the way it works, bit like the Avon catalog, they have agents who kind of save up the the Christmas savings from their friends and family. And then the agent, they called an agent. like say it was like your mom, she would, she would collect, you know, a 10 a week from Auntie Sandra, from Uncle Bob, whatever, from her mates down to Bingo. And then like at the end of the month, she'd send maybe like a grand over to the hamper company and she would earn, you know, 50 quid commission and that would go and kind of pay for her. So there was an incentive for them to do that. But, to kind of encourage the agents to kind of keep up the hardware. We had like a, it was almost like a woman's weekly magazine. Like it was nuts on like this 20-stone rugby player writing like articles about like French manicures and like having to interview some woman who's just gone like on a makeover and asking her all of these things. But I still thought I was a journalist at that point because I was like using my researching and interviews. techniques and stuff, but I wasn't. everything was a of a puff piece for the company and it was all positive kind of PR, which was fine. But it was only really yet like probably three years into that job that my boss was like, do you want to start doing more copywriting for us? Not just the magazine doing DMs and sales letters and even like helping out writing some product descriptions. I was what's a copywriter? Like literally that's how it was, like Googled it and I had to find out. So kind of learned on the job there. And then after like, yeah, after like six or seven years doing that, I'd worked my way up. had a little team there and then just had an opportunity to do a little bit of freelance on the side. I thought, well, this is more fun than writing about the same stuff every single day. So yeah, that's kind of where I made the leap into what I do now, which is. Yeah, working with myself and kind of run any agency. So yeah, 10 years I was there 10 years. So what was the question? I'll probably link that back. The question was what advice would you give to someone that's looking to change their relationship with work? So let me phrase it in this way. If you were like, say you're nine years into that job and you go back to have a conversation with yourself then, and maybe at that point you're not ready to make the leap. that point, it's in your mind that the freelance route is something that you'd want to go down. But what advice would you have given yourself back then if you were going to make that move earlier? Good question. I never really thought about that. That's why I should have given you the heads up, Dave, to be honest. No, I've got an answer for it. Not that I've ever really taken myself too seriously, but I suppose at that time, I only ever thought that you would either employed or you were like a boss and you had a team. I never knew the freelance life existed. you don't get told. Like back when I went to uni in like 2000, like back then you never got told or even freelance and just started your own business. And it was like, no, you get a job. You've got to pay a mortgage. You you pay your car payments, you pay your gas bill. Everything's got to be nice and sensible and regular. And that's the way grownups do it. And it was like... I found out quite late stage again, probably just naive. I've got to be comfortable in the job I was in. It didn't really challenge me. was doing it standing on my head, no sweat. When I got offered that bit of freelancing work, was like, wow, this is possible. And again, yeah, I don't think I took myself too seriously in that job. I tried to infuse as much fun and laughter, certainly in the office where we worked. It was hilarious. I've got mates there now I keep in touch with. still go for appliance every now and again. That's a little bit overdue actually. I'll have to send them a WhatsApp later. But just thinking about like my mindset back then, it was still very much like serious career like and I was a bit in my own head. I had a little bit of a lack of confidence and thought, just didn't think there was another way of doing things. And I'd always like, kind of, I remember like I hated being on the spot. Like it was a It was a cushy little, I didn't have to go to any like big board meetings or anything like that. It was just the art. Here's a brief, do that. Work with your team. That was like nice and easy. I didn't have to do any public speaking. Didn't have to put myself out of my comfort zone like at all. So I suppose the one thing I would say if I was kind of linking it back to, yeah, what would I say to someone looking to change their approach to work? would be like, just be a little bit careful that you're not getting too comfortable. Like the moment you push yourself out of a comfort zone, and it can be just a little half a pace out of this comfort zone. Like for me, setting up my own freelance business and having to go and meet a client, like for the first time in a Starbucks in the shopping center, by the It was like, was sweating my tits off when I got there. I was just like, like worry, panic, and what do I say? Will I look like a dickhead if I'm not using the right terminology? And it was like sound. So that was like my little step outside of that. And then. started taking more clients on it was another step and like just just little steps out of your comfort zone like you don't realize how much opportunity they will they will open for you and like even up until two years ago and I used to hate public speaking used to hate it still still not a massive fan but I was like getting offered to speak at conferences and stuff and I was like I'm a writer I don't speak but I was having I'm saying no like probably twice a month for like really good engagements and you know, will you come and speak at such-as-such in Rome? And I was like, I'm having a car crash that week, I can't make it, or, you know, something, just making up purely because I've had this morbid fear of being on stage, going completely freezing, like looking like a beetroot sweating and thinking like, he's blagging it, he's been blagging it all of these years. And like, yeah, stupidly, I just pulled it off. So then I pushed myself out of my comfort zone a little bit. Watch the talk from one of my, he's he's a mate of mine now, my choppy. Watch the talk about how to get over yourself and learn, learn this kind of public speaking, learn, learn the reps of public speaking. And like, just, it's not like too, I said, I was, was on a call to him earlier today. I said, like two years ago, it made me physically sw- I remember getting all hot and clammy, typing out a LinkedIn message to him to say, can you help me with my public speaking? Last month. I spoke at a conference in Ibiza and I had to go on stage after like he's like Rory Sutherland. He's like one of the world's greatest public speakers. I had to follow him on stage. I couldn't, I was sweating typing out the LinkedIn message about two years ago. So it's just to see that like, I know this is sounding almost like a, this is your life tale now, isn't it? But I promise there's an ending. If you can just think about like just getting ahead of yourself and What might look like a little bit of a, like, I don't want to even go there. If you can just push yourself out that tiny little comfort zone and just take these little baby steps, you never know where it might lead. Because now, yeah, I get asked all the time and I'm like, yes, I'll come there. I was meant to be going to Philadelphia in December, like the visa looks like it looked like it was going to be a nightmare to get a visa. But they're like, we're having it again next year. You're going to come next year. And I was like, 100 percent I'm going like I'm there. Like if you'd have asked me that two years ago, I would have just said, fuck off. Like no way, no way am I going speaking. Like I was worrying speaking in front of like me clients over the Zoom call. So to like stand on a stage of over 200 people, insane madness. it's amazing, mate. It's amazing. I think, I think the lesson there is so much about getting out of your own way, isn't it? You know, just overthinking. Exactly that. Yeah. Thank you so much for sharing that, Dave. I've got two parts left to this. So the next part is going to be, I've introduced a game for this season. So it's going to be a quick game of this or that. I'm going to give you, supposed to be 10 questions, Dave. I've got eight questions for you. Let's call it a timing thing, but it's eight questions and not 10. So eight questions, two options. You've got to me one of those two as quickly as possible. we'll start with this. Is it just quick fire? Quick fire, quick fire, literally no context. Okay, got it. Right. So this or that. Question number one, Liverpool or Everton? Liverpool. Question number two, LinkedIn or Twitter? LinkedIn. Question number three, freelance or agency? Sorry mate, I am. Because freelancing is just all me and I can basically do what I want and I've got a bit more of a responsibility with the agency, it'll still be kind of freelance or hard but the future is... There's got to be agency. It's the only way forward. Okay. Number four, short form copy or long form storytelling? Short form is where I feel more comfortable. Longer form is more when I can dictate the flow. If somebody says, this long form about a quick quilt cover. No way, Jose, but if it's write this long form about a time you crashed your car into a road sweeper. And the poor fella got dragged out covered in leaves. Yeah, I can write a thousand words on that. Okay. So it just depends. depends on the brief. I said no context. I'm giving you context. I'll let you off. It's fine. Humor or hard sell? I don't know what question number we're on now. Let's say five. Humor or hard sell? Humor. Obviously. Can't do hard sell. Question number six. Confuse the scammer or call out the influencer? Interesting. love them Scammer stories man. love them man. I love them. They make my just love them so good. When I get them to the point where you can just see they're so flummoxed by what's going on and it's just yeah there's no and it's like it has a kind of perfect end into the story. comes close. So calling out the influencers is easy. I could do that in my sleep because they're just like The self satirizing. It's the that it's that like the piss has already been taken out of them by what does the type of stuff that they post and let's face it, it's not even them posting. Like I'm not having to go at these people. I'm having to go at the act of outsourcing your social media to an agency, which is making you look like a tool because that's what they're coming across as. the answer is confuse the scammer. So much context. For anyone listening to this as well that hasn't yet seen Dave's confused the scammer post, like where have you been living? These are some of the best things that you can see. Like out of all the drudgery that you'll go through on LinkedIn, you need to be seeing this stuff. Question number seven, life dinner or just normal dinner? Every day of the week. Life dinner, I'm off to comment 39 of life dinner now. It never gets up. I'm so childish aren't I? I'm 43 next birthday and I'm still just taking the piss out of one fella's innocent post like about two years ago and I've just clung to it. It's so good. Final question, question number eight. Uncle Tony or Dave Harland? I can't say myself can I? It's Uncle Tony. half of these that you thought, it's like, it's coming up with characters and silly stories. It's like, it's the root of everything I try and do. yeah, Uncle Tony. Honestly, Dave, you have brought so much joy to my life through the shit, the seemingly random shit that you post, but there is always, there's always a lesson out of it. And there's always, either at least a smile at the very end of it anyway, but thank you for that. Cause it's brilliant. The closing tradition on the podcast, I don't know if you listened or fast forwarded to the end of one, is actually, you brought your mum up earlier, it's a question from my mum. So every episode, my mum leaves a voice memo that I'll play down the microphone or if someone sat in the office, I'll play to them. And it's a question that you need to answer from my mum. So I always, always apologize in advance because I don't know what she's going to say. Let me know if you can hear it. I'm loving this. I'm a big proponent of bringing moms and family members in general into your business world. I get my mom to respond to my emails sometimes. Spends an entire day responding to comments. so good. I do, but as her. As her. all capital letters. Yeah, of course. She responds to some of them. It's funny. I love it. Right, I'm going to play this down the phone. Hi David. As a fellow creative, Do you think we should embrace AI and see it as something that will actually help us push our own limits? Thank you. I actually just called you David when I expressly sent Dave. dad's got exactly the same name. David William Harland. He's Dave and I'm David to everyone in my family. And then professionally it's... gone for the day. Wow what a deep work we've kind of already covered it. have. I think she said as a creative I think no. think as people in the people who are paid to come up with ideas if you're incapable of coming up with ideas without falling back on something which is gonna kind of get you the majority of the way there. I think what's the point? Right, what are you even doing it for? You can't really call yourself a creative if you're doing that. I don't think personally. But who's to say in a few years, you know, everything that we do is just gonna be three prompts away and away, know, blah! It's like that scene in Back to the Future. You have to use your hands, that's like a baby's toy, where he's playing the old arcade game. In 20 years time, when I'm retired, will it be mental that we used to have to think, use our brains to come up with creative ideas? Because hang on a sec, you just type in, you know, this 7,000 word prompt and it generates everything for you, like a computer program. Is that how it's going to be in future? Maybe. It's not the future I'm looking forward to, I have to be honest. Yeah, I think we're on the same page with that. For context, I don't know if I mentioned this already, my mum and my brother. who have both featured on the podcast are artists. that's where Mum sang as a fellow creative. She's a ceramicist, so works with Clay and my brother does a number of things, but drawing is his main medium. yeah, we talk a lot about AI and the kind of, yeah, the creep of these AI generated images and art. for me, the biggest thing that we can all lean on now is authenticity, because I think as well, AI is damaging trust. It makes anything I read now, start thinking, and I worry about the stuff that I put out there that people are going to judge that as, John's written that with AI. Because there's no real way to tell a lot of the time. There's an issue with trust, I think a lot of it. I think the main way creatives are going to be able to stand out is through showing the process, showing the human being behind what they're doing, which my brother does a great job of and my mom is really leaning into now as well, which is lovely to see. at age of 63, putting herself out there and getting in front of a camera and really embracing that has been really lovely to see. So Dave, you're a legend. It's honestly felt like I've been speaking to a celebrity. Like I've been following you for a long time. You are a LinkedIn legend and it's just been really nice to get to know you little better. So thank you for committing some time to that. That was really good. Yeah, John, my pleasure, mate. Yeah, it's been nice just to, yeah, it's been nice to chat and... Yeah. Delving in and have a little bit of a rant about some of the stuff that just, yeah, just pure does my head in. I love it. Okay, mate. All right. I will speak to you soon. Cheers, Dave. Thank you. Thanks for listening to Jobsworth. If you enjoyed this episode, please feel free to give us a follow wherever you listen to your podcasts and while you're there. If you could take two seconds to rate the show, that would be awesome. You can follow Jobsworth on Instagram where you'll get teasers for upcoming episodes, some behind the scenes videos and the occasional bit of career inspiration. And if you'd like to learn more about my day job, then feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn.

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