Ep 243: What to Say First So People Actually Buy (Without Feeling Salesy) with Conversion Copywriter Juzbi Walia

SHOWNOTES

“If I really want to make wealth for myself, I need to bet on myself.”

That’s how Juzbi Walia explains the moment she stopped playing the corporate game and started building her own. And that same energy runs through this whole episode: sell with integrity, don’t slime people into a ‘yes’, and stop guessing what your audience is thinking. If you’ve ever read bro-marketing copy and felt like you needed to wash your eyeballs afterward, you’ll love Juzbi’s approach to persuasion that’s effective and ethical.

Juzbi Walia has spent over a decade in persuasion and influence, working in corporate communications with major global agencies and a wide range of organisations across sectors. Now she brings that same influence skillset into the online business world as a conversion copywriter and email strategist, helping course creators launch with messaging that converts without crossing into manipulation.

WE ALSO TALKED ABOUT

• Why most course creators don’t actually know their real objections (and keep answering outdated ones).
• The hidden cost of over-persuasion — even if it “works” in the short term.
• Why “copy is assembled, not written” (and how customer research is the real work).
• How to find your sales argument (the unique point of view that makes your offer stand out).
• The power of message hierarchy: primary promise first, then secondary angles in the right order.
• Using a custom GPT to pressure-test messaging angles (without randomly “testing everything”).
• Why copywriters who step into the strategist role will thrive (and “selling words as a service” won’t).
• A very real take on business growth: “spaghetti on the wall” is sometimes the job description early on.

If you’re building a course (or launching anything online) and you want to sell without sounding like a late-night infomercial, you’re going to get a ton from this one.

Get regular access to tips, techniques and advice from experts about growing your business https://onlinebusinessliftoff.com/newsletter/

RESOURCES MENTIONED

• Juzbi on Instagram: @juzbi.copy
• To get Juzbi’s free resource –  “How to Write Non Manipulative Emails That Sell” (a checklist of persuasion triggers for launch emails).  Or you can send her a DM on Instagram.

Suggested Timestamps

• 00:00 – Intro + why “non-sleazy persuasion” matters
• 00:01–00:04 – Juzbi’s background in persuasion + corporate comms
• 00:05–00:08 – Why she left corporate: “bet on myself” + designing work around life
• 00:13–00:17 – Objections, customer research, and the danger of over-persuasion
• 00:19–00:25 – Messaging hierarchy + sales argument example (Instagram course)
• 00:25–00:26 – GPT bot + Danny Page
• 00:32–00:34 – Copywriter vs strategist (and why strategy is the moat)
• 00:35–00:38 – Lead gen experiments + “spaghetti on the wall” phase
• 00:40 – Where to find Juzbi + free checklist

My newsletter is for people who need a way to make money from home so they can build a better life for themselves and their families:
👉 https://onlinebusinessliftoff.com/newsletter

_____________

Trudy Rankin is the host of the Online Business Launchpad Podcast, Director of West Island Digital and the founder of the Online Business Lift-Off program.

Affiliate Disclaimer: If you click on links on this page and then make a purchase, I may earn a commission (at no extra cost to you).  I am a proud affiliate of these resources because I use them in my own life and business.

TRANSCRIPT

Episode 243: What to Say First So People Actually Buy (Without Feeling Salesy) with Conversion Copywriter Juzbi Walia

[00:00:00] 

Trudy Rankin: If I really want to make wealth for myself, I need to bet on myself. That’s what today’s guest, Juzbi Walia told me when she explained why she walked away from corporate and into entrepreneurship. And honestly, you know, I definitely felt the same because if you’ve ever tried to sell something online without feeling like you need a shower afterward, then this episode is going to feel like a breath of fresh air.

Juzbi is a conversion copywriter and email strategist who spent over a decade in the area of persuasion and influence. And she’s done it with big global agencies all the way through to major organizations and startups. And now she brings that skill into the online business world, helping course creators launch with integrity and clarity.

And she’s especially passionate about marketing that gets results without the bro marketing slime. And in this conversation, I’m chatting with Juzbi about how to use persuasion triggers that sell without being sleazy or manipulative, why customer research is the real [00:01:00] secret sauce and why quote copy is assembled, not written. We also talked about the difference between writing words and stepping into the strategist role that helps a launch actually convert and how to handle objections without overexplaining or overjustifying or accidentally talking people out of buying.

Trudy Rankin: Welcome to the Online Business Launchpad podcast. I’m Trudy Rankin and I help people who need a flexible work from home option start and grow their business so they can earn more stress less and have greater freedom in how they live.

And today I’ve got Juzbi Walia with me and Juzbi is a conversion copywriter and an email strategist.

And when I had a bit of a chat with her, we had a little bit of a glitch. We’ve already chatted [00:02:00] once and of course I turned off the record button instead of on. So we are having a second crack at it. So Juzbi, I’m really glad that you’re able to come back and that we’re able to talk about the things that you have a lot of knowledge about.

Juzbi Walia: I’m really happy to be here. Thanks for having me. 

Trudy Rankin: Yeah, so, one of the things that when I was first looking at what you might be able to talk about, one of the things that jumped out at me was the fact that you were interested in talking about when somebody’s trying to launch something, being able to use non-sleazy persuasion triggers.

Now most of us have, for our listeners out there, most of you have all sort of experienced all of that bro marketing sort of stuff where you read what they’ve got to say or you listen to what they have to say. And it all sounds amazing and wonderful and everything, but you still get left with this slimy feel at the end of it.

And so I’m looking forward to chatting about [00:03:00] what that looks like. But before we get into that, could you just share with our listeners a little bit about you and just how you got to where you do what you do today? 

Juzbi Walia: Sure. So I’ve been in the business of persuasion and influence for over a decade. I spent nearly a decade in corporate communications working with some of the biggest global agencies, Edelman, Ogilvy, those who are in the PR world would know, and also, uh, serving clients that ranged from a sovereign wealth fund in Abu Dhabi to Canada’s largest sector employer to, a startup tech, which today is a unicorn in Dubai doing PR for them. So I’ve had a wide range of clients, working across different sectors, but doing what I do, which is persuading stakeholders media to understand the narratives of the brands that I was, serving and buy into it and promote it, whether it’s landing a media pitch in an overcrowded inbox of a [00:04:00] journalist or delivering a CEO’s speech or a mayor’s speech for that matter for City of Guelph mayor in Canada to influence the public about a certain decision that the city municipality has taken. So it really was a wide range of, activities and tasks and projects that I was doing across, uh, all these places in the last 10 years.

But also the underlying theme was always how do I influence and persuade the stakeholders in front of me, right? Whether it’s media or investors or public or even internal stakeholders, like the different departments that you need to work with. So corporate communication allows you to do a lot of fun things and it really sharpens your skill in the out of persuasion.

You, a lot of times, early in your career, you do all the wrong things that you learn through your lived experience, what to do, what not to do. So it’s a great, industry, but I always had a burning [00:05:00] passion for entrepreneurship. In fact, I did you know, get into entrepreneurship I would say from 2019 to 2021, when I only taught yoga for three years. Today I teach yoga as a side hustle. Uh, and I’ve been doing that since three, four years now, teaching on the side. And I wanted to, use all the knowledge that I’ve gained in all these years of working in the corporate and leverage that and also upskill myself in the highly specialized field of conversion copywriting, and email marketing.

So there was a steep learning curve because it’s extremely specialized. It’s a different market. But I really got into it and I immersed myself in this world and learned it and delivered results for a client of mine and did some other interesting projects like ghostwrote a project for another client who’s based in New York.

And all this I could do because of my background in influence and persuasion. And yeah, I just absolutely love what I do and that’s why I’m here today doing [00:06:00] this work. 

Trudy Rankin: So what was the trigger point for you from making the leap from corporate into your own business? 

Juzbi Walia: I think I, if I have to be brutally honest, Trudy, I just thought that if I really want to make wealth for myself, I need to bet on myself.

Like I will, you know, I consider myself very ambitious. I looked at the corporate world and I said, I’ll get my promotions like this in a steady space if I do all the things right. And that also is not granted. Unfortunately, I’ve had a lot of like, contract jobs, so I’ve been contracted for a project that’s lasted over a year.

That’s why I have a wide ranging experience. And then I would move to another contract. All top companies. But, corporate always gives, I would say you know, loyalty is obviously really important, especially now more than ever. So it always rewards people who’ve been there for 10 years, [00:07:00] 7 years, 11 years.

So I was, I thought to myself that this is not an advantageous situation for me and I really want to bet on myself because I feel that I would be able to become a lot more wealthy if I do that, you know, I can create opportunities for myself far more than any job can give me.

By the way, it’s still early days, so I’ll test it out how that looks like and whether my hypothesis was, you know, right or wrong. But I do believe that, you know, and, uh, being my own boss and taking my own decision is very exhilarating. I know for a fact that I’m someone who has always loved freedom and now it’s more about like, I’ve done the grunt work of, spending 11, 12 hours in a corporate setting, which is the nature of the beast, especially as you’re in your younger days. But now I thought to myself, okay, how can I design my work that serves my life, which I think a lot of people talk about, right?

It’s not just me, but it, for me, [00:08:00] it was okay, I want to be doing what I love. There are many ways of making money in the world. There are 10 business ideas I can tell you right now, which I know will work way better, right? But I’ve always been a heart led entrepreneur. It’s not about just being able to pay the bills.

It’s like, what do I do in those eight hours? You know, that needs to intoxicate me. Which by the way, a lot of my friends and cousins and what have you, don’t understand. Because they are very, they don’t think like me, there are not that many people, I suppose, who are this passion led. And maybe it’s also a privilege to be able to do that, so, so I think it was about, I want to do something I’m genuinely passionate about that really fulfills me. And then as a byproduct, it gives me money and wealth, et cetera. Second, it needs to be completely under my control, like in terms of having the freedom to take off when I want to, to structure my days the way I want to, to say yes or no to clients the way I want to.[00:09:00] 

Granted it requires a high level of self-directedness. But you know what? You lose some and you get some, so, yeah. 

Trudy Rankin: Yeah, I think it’s really interesting because you know, especially what you’re saying about, family and friends, not always understanding, they’re going, why don’t you just go get a job and they can’t understand why that’s the last thing that you want to do because it seems risky. It seems risky to some people and in some senses it is. But also if you can back yourself and know that you’re going to do what it takes. It can actually really, really work, especially these days. You know, lots of people are so worried about AI, and we’ll get into AI later, but so many people are worried about AI and it’s just like, you know, hang on.

You’ve gotta be able to use these things as tools rather than, and make sure you stay ahead of the curve rather than just knowing that something’s going to come along and eventually eat your corporate job for lunch. I have a question for you because you’ve mentioned persuasion and influence, which is what conversion copywriters do.

That’s the focus, that’s the hallmark of success if you [00:10:00] like, is how many people are persuaded and influenced. But I’m curious because I, once again, I’ve got a background in corporate myself and one of the things that I found fascinating and sometimes difficult was being able to persuade people higher up the rank about specific ideas or taking a specific tack towards something or doing specific projects and being able to speak in the language that they recognize.

So I’m curious when it comes to copywriting, conversion copywriting now, do you find that being able to influence and persuade via your words is different or not different to when you were doing it in a corporate environment or whether you’re doing it for the clients of your clients. 

Juzbi Walia: So it is, there are a lot of similarities.

Obviously there is difference, but a lot of similarities too. For instance, you spoke about how, finding it difficult sometimes to influence [00:11:00] people higher up in the corporate. So to that, I would say, and then I will draw parallels to what it is like in the online world, too. To that, I would say that I would always look at people who could be on my side. So if there were, there was a policy or the idea that I wanted to sort of promote and get a green lit for, I would look at who are the people I can, who can be my advocate, because sometimes the idea coming from me may not be the right thing. It’s not only just the idea that goes out, it’s also who is speaking of that idea?

What is the perception? Is that person too junior is, has that person not been able to be visible and noticeable among senior leadership because they’re too new in the business? Or whatever it may be. So, so who’s delivering that idea? It may be yours and you may get the project, right?

That’s what you want, the main outcome. So you still get the outcome, but how do you go about getting that influence? So you look at the people around you who can back you up, who can be your [00:12:00] advocates. You may consider not being you, the person who voices that idea out, but eventually gets that project.

And similarly in the online space, you know, people do a lot of collaboration. So suddenly if I am writing for a very huge, you know, Marie Forleo, what have you, right? If I’m writing for them, suddenly I’m in the league of 6, 7, 8 revenue figure online course creators, and I, you know, people just look at me differently.

So who do you partner with right? When we do testimonials, which is such a huge trust signal asset that online course creators rely on during their launch emails, who do you, uh, put in the testimonials if you have people who are extremely successful in the stuff that they’re doing, which is related to your course, right?

And then you Google those people, you’re like, wow, these guys are amazing. You suddenly feel that online course creator knows what they’re doing. It’s about who you connect with, who you know, who’s advocating for you. [00:13:00] So that is a similarity, I would say, between both the worlds and it’s really about, uh, like I said, looking at all your experience, lived experience and translating it and seeing connections in the work that you’re doing now.

Trudy Rankin: Yeah, I think that’s always interesting because it’s actually an important thing that a lot of people don’t think about, and that is that whole collaboration space and the many, many opportunities there are too. Work with other people and you know, even if you are using kind of, I use the term borrowed authority but just working with people who do have that standing and your audience recognizes them and trust those people, which is always really, really helpful.

Pardon me, I’m curious. Because my understanding is, and correct me if I’m wrong, but my understanding is, is that you work a lot with people who are course creators and who are ready to launch their courses and you help them do that effectively and successfully. What would be one of the things that they would need [00:14:00] to be paying a lot of attention to when it comes to thinking about how they’re going to address objections in their copy because you know, one of the key fundamentals of putting something out for sale is understanding people’s objections and addressing them. What would be one of the things that would be the most important to think about for somebody who’s a course creator and getting ready to launch?

Juzbi Walia: What I’ve seen people get wrong is that they don’t really know the objections well. They think that this is the objection, and so they address it because that’s the obvious thing that comes to them, you know. So a lot of times the objection could be the price, or it could be the time.

They don’t have the time, and quite honestly, you can’t really address them too well, you know, if somebody finds you expensive, they find you expensive. They may genuinely be won’t have that money to spend on a certain course or a certain, it’s not maybe urgent for them. And there’s nothing you can really do about that.

And those who really [00:15:00] genuinely understand the value of your course because you’ve clearly communicated it to them and it is your top level priority more than anything else, then money will never be a problem. They know that it’s something they really need to solve and they want to go for the top notch course out there, you know. Money aside, fees aside, I would say a lot of people don’t invest time in customer research. So when they hire a copywriter, that’s 80% of what a copywriter does is the customer research. The rest of it, writing copy is 20, 30% of the work because copy is assembled, not written. That’s what happens in conversion space, conversion copywriting space.

And so you’re not injecting a modality within your strategy to know how to get answers to the objections. A lot of people use the same objections people had two years ago or three years ago of the same online course, but the market has shifted. Your course may structure may have [00:16:00] shifted, so they just don’t.

So this is the number one thing I would say. They don’t know the right objection to answer to. And the second is, if they do know, there’s something called overpersuasion. And that I think goes beyond just the objection you know, addressing objection. It goes, I would say that runs across the entire copyright for your launch emails.

When there is overpersuasion, people kind of see it and sometimes they don’t because manipulation is something that really works, right? If you can do it subtly, but it never benefits the course creator in the long run because people get seduced by your amazing copy because you’ve overpersuaded, but it’s addressing objections or anything else in your copy.

They get into your, the course, they burn their fingers because either they don’t have the time to follow through or it was just wasn’t the right fit for them. You don’t have any success stories on the back of your course [00:17:00] takers work and then when you’re promoting it next year and next year you are still running 2021 testimonials or 2022 testimonials, so it benefits no one, you know.

So there is something to be said about the cost of over persuasion and how it’s prevalent in the online industry and really need to watch out for every word that you’re saying should really be genuinely helpful. You should look at it that way. Genuinely helpful for the person that there is.

Trudy Rankin: That’s a really interesting take on that. In terms of the overpersuasion, I’m just, like I said, once again, coming back to the whole bro marketing thing, it sort of feels like that’s what they’re doing, they’re overselling overpersuading, making what feels like almost false claims because 99.99% of the people who want to be able to do what they’re selling wouldn’t have what they need to be able to be successful.

That’s kind of interesting. I’m a little bit curious coming back to the [00:18:00] whole concept of objections and doing the research to discover what those objections are, what are the ways that you do your research for the people that you work with?

Juzbi Walia: It is an extensive process but it’s absolutely crucial to crack the strategy.

I interview past participants, whoever can come on a Zoom call. I have a bunch of questions that really goes deeper into their desires. Like it, you know, you break it down. Why, why, why, why? And then it go to the core of it. And sometimes they don’t know what they don’t know themselves and they actually discover it during the call, so a lot of times that happens, too. I do online research, Amazon reviews, Reddit is a great source. And I also use A GPT bot, where I feed all the research and it helps it, it gives me a bit more of nuance in [00:19:00] terms of, it does its own research, pulling things from the online space and giving me even more sources to look at or even more ideas to look at.

That’s a bot that I use for also going back and forth to refine my offer message and offer positioning for the client I’m working for and what I’m mainly looking in my research is a sense of patterns, you know, what is the main, the hierarchy of messages.

What is the most important deepest desire or most important outcome that they want? Where are they getting stuck? Where is the objection and what is the hierarchy of messaging angles that are like secondary to the main must know message or the main sales argument? And why are they in a certain level of hierarchy?

So my research tells me all this. 

Trudy Rankin: That’s a little bit interesting. So, couple of questions. The first one is, can you just talk a little bit more about that whole concept of a secondary hierarchy? [00:20:00] And what do you mean? And can you give an example? 

Juzbi Walia: Sure. So for example, if, um, I’ll just put it out straight from a specific example which gimme a second.

It’s, yeah. So for example I had this person that I did like messaging work for. She’s a social media strategist, Instagram strategist. And you know, she had a bunch of benefits, right? Like, why people should join her Instagram sales course. And it’s rooted in timeless marketing principles.

It is you know, it’ll make you write content at a much faster pace. It’ll be easier for you to create it as a methodology. There’s a system so that you don’t burn out, just constantly writing. I’ll also teach you hidden strategies where it’s not about just constantly posting and being on a hamster wheel on Instagram, but posting very less, but [00:21:00] making it work exceptionally well for you and doing other things on Instagram like engagement.

That’ll work. So all the hidden strategies where you are saving time by not posting. She spoke about adding fun to the whole thing because people are jaded. They’re like, oh, what is happening? Et cetera, et cetera. Spoke about confidence building how you will know that you’ll be able to generate repeatable sales without second guessing your marketing efforts.

So she spoke of all of this and while she was consistent about these messages on her sales page, on her email launch, copy in on her webinar invites what she was missing once I diagnosed with a singular definition, you know, the sales argument, which is what I feel a lot of course creators miss.

What is that one thing that is unique about your course, that stand makes you stand out from the rest of the other offers? Or what is like [00:22:00] your pet peeve or for a lack of a better word, which is ironical, because I’m a copywriter, but what makes you angry about the state of the affairs in your industry that you want to go at it for something that feels like an injustice, right?

So a sales argument is always rooted in your unique perspective or something that you are offering and bringing to the table in the same industry that no one can really copy or a point of view, which is very distinct, right? It doesn’t start with just benefits that this will make you do A, B, C, D, E, which is how people start with.

So when I did the research, I realized that, you know, what she was missing, for instance, was, that helped her, the main real problem, yes, was all these things that people were feeling jaded. They were burning out from constantly trying to post content. They’re not seeing the logarithm doing their work, and the logarithm keeps changing a hundred percent.

All of this were the problem. But the main problem was that [00:23:00] Instagram felt unpredictable and draining, like I already said, for their audience, and they no longer trusted themselves to make it work. Now, this comes from the research. If I didn’t know that I cannot address it, right? And so it was about really talking about what is a solution? It was what is she going to then offer that speaks to that main issue, which is a timeless marketing principle-based content system that clarifies why content works. And the big idea was that you’ll learn how to generate repeatable sales from Instagram without second guessing your efforts.

Because it’ll be about timeless marketing, right? So it suddenly you’re just delivering the main concern that they have, the number one concern they have through the research. And when it comes to answering your question, when it comes to second, I needed to set the context by talking about this.

And now answering [00:24:00] your question about the, uh, the secondary messaging, again, it’s, there is a framework that I use that allows me to, and I use the chat, ChatGPT bot also to analyze what are the most important influence-building messaging angles for a high converting copy. So I put all my one idea, one problem, one solution, the outcome they want, objections. I write the angles that I have and the bot tells me which one will work. So I give the bot everything because it’s customized, right? It’s trained. I give the bot everything about my client’s audience profile, their, the whole thing, right? And so through the back and forth it tells me what the messaging angles is. And that helps me not to test it out too much, you know, and there’s always a reasoning. There’s always, you know, and this is again, coming from customer research, you’ll know [00:25:00] exactly whether it’s fun, wanting fun, back into the to the ‘gram confidence, whatever their. You know, desires are through this course.

You will know through research what is coming up, what are the patterns, what is constantly coming up again and again. You know, and then in your emails and your sales copy, you know how to address them in what hierarchy. What are you going to write in your last sales copy, the final call before the class closes?

Are you going to address the last thing that’s a desire or they’re going to address the number one thing. If you don’t have that kind of a document, then you’re just sort of leaving a lot of money on the table and not being able to do sold out launches because the strategy is not fully there. 

Trudy Rankin: I think it’s interesting.

And you mentioned, you’ve mentioned a couple of times that you’ve got a GPT bot that you use to help with a lot of this. I’m just curious because I’m deeply into GPTs as well. And did you get access to that from somebody or did you build it yourself? [00:26:00] 

Juzbi Walia: I got it from this conversion copywriter called Danny Page.

She teaches a lot of people like me how to step into the strategist role. And she is something I bought back in Q4 of 2025. And it’s been outstanding for my business. 

Trudy Rankin: It sounds like it would be really, really useful because a, a lot of the effort or the brain work that has to be done is all around trying to fit your head around that whole thing about your audience. What are they worried about, what are they scared about? What all the research that goes into understanding their dreams and desires and everything. And it’s interesting that you are able to put all that into what is essentially a pattern recognition machine and come back with stuff that’s actually really, really super useful, really, really useful.

So, that’s quite interesting. So what made you decide that you were going to focus [00:27:00] mostly on course creators who are ready to launch? 

Juzbi Walia: I love the online course creation space. And before I get into it, I also would say I’m going to be also approaching SaaS and e-commerce industries.

Eventually I will niche down, but like I said, I’m early in my business, so I want to, uh, cast a wide net. And I genuinely love SaaS and e-commerce. There’s a lot of opportunities out there, so I’m just going to go ahead and do that, too. But a reason I started with online course creation and a lot of my marketing is around that world, is because I have an unfair advantage of being someone who has been taking courses for I think 6, 7 years now. It has really helped me upskill in every aspect of my life. I’ve taken courses for corporate communication while I was there. I have taken courses on personal development, uh, you name it, and I’ve done, and I always do the top ones because then I know [00:28:00] that I’m in good hands. So I have been able to experience the course creation world from the other side, being a consumer. Also burned my hands with some courses which didn’t deliver. And there are many courses out there where they just overcomplicate something that’s simple.

You know, they’ll have gazillion modules on mindset and breath work and they, just to make it a bigger high ticket offer, they’ll just overcomplicate it with all the stuff when it could be just simple. So I’ve seen what doesn’t work and what works. I’ve seen being a, you know, content creator and writer for so long, I can observe from a vantage point the blind spots that the industry is having.

And therefore, I felt I’m very equipped to serve this industry and, help people sell courses. I really have benefited from this world. And I also see a lot of, uh, murk, which I feel unfortunately spoils the reputation of the entire [00:29:00] industry, right? So I want to use my skills to be able to help course creators really uplevel their selves and do marketing with integrity and achieve success.

And I really feel passionate about it.

Trudy Rankin: I’ve got a question for you that’s I guess, focused on another audience that I work with and that’s freelance writers. And one of the things that a lot of freelance writers are really worried about is the fact that AI is there, and, for a lot of them, they’ve had a really tough year last year and it’s been hard to, for a lot of people, not all of them, but for a lot of people it’s been hard to maintain the consistency of income or the level of income that they might have appreciated before.

And so I’m just curious if somebody was at the place where they, either they’re a writer or they’re good with words. Let’s just say that they’re good with words and they’re wanting to make a living from their words. [00:30:00] Would you recommend that they get into conversion copywriting? And if they, well, I’ll ask that first.

Would you recommend that they get into conversion copywriting? 

Juzbi Walia: I would say the truth is, I don’t know because I’m also figuring it out. I started this business last year. I am of the belief that it really is a very lucrative market. And the reason I say that is because I have had a lot of conversations with both the buy side and the sell side to service providers like me, industry colleagues, who are doing really well and having great launches themselves in terms of client work, et cetera. So they’re still doing great work. And I’ve also spoken from the buy side of thing. Course creators are hiring people like me and my customer research has said that 7 out of 10 course creators value having copywriters in their world.

A lot of them don’t, [00:31:00] they don’t have right now because they consider this as a high value task themselves. Sometimes, you know, they are podcasters like you and YouTubers, they so it’s a mixed bag. But my assessment of the industry, based on my research and also the current work that I’m doing with my clients and knowing how the value that I’m adding, that’s more than words in so many different areas that we can get into.

It’s just beyond writing words, you know, and people who see that the way you position yourself, you can position yourself as a strategist who’s a core decision maker and has a skin in the game when it comes to profitability of a launch, then you will always find demand for your work because people want to work with excellent people like themselves who get it. If they know that your work is directly related to getting sales for them, they will be convinced. It’s just now about upleveling your game. So the [00:32:00] copywriters who are selling copywriting work as a commoditized product, selling for certain deliverables, like 10 emails, 5 emails, and this is the money I’ll charge for this amount of work are going to find it hard to sustain, but those who are stepping into a strategist role, co-leading the launches, and guiding the course creator with their leadership to understand where the blind spots are, because that’s the thing, right? Experience does not eliminate blind spots. You could be the best of the best of the best course creators, but experience cannot eliminate blind spots. So if you can come in, have a big picture view, even if you’re doing, let’s say, just Facebook ad, right? Even if you’re just doing sales copy as you start out. But do you have a big picture view of the entire launch? Can you see, can you have a point of view on their pricing strategy, on their positioning? Is there like a framework that you have to [00:33:00] ensure there is a consistency of messaging across all the launch assets?

Be it socials and sales page, what have you. If you’re able to provide all of that under the title of conversion copywriter, that’s where you’re going to really thrive. That’s my experience. But if you are just delivering X, Y, Z as a commodity and selling words as a service, that era is gone.

Trudy Rankin: Yeah. No, I think that’s really, really valid. And besides the strategy part is the part that’s personally, I think that’s the fun part, but it’s also the most valuable to people who are they, as you said, they don’t know the blind spots.

They don’t have time to look for the blind spots, and they wouldn’t have time to fill the blind spots once they knew they were there. It’s been really interesting speaking with you. I do have one more quick curiosity question, and you don’t, it doesn’t have to be a massively long answer but given the work that you do, [00:34:00] what is your main, I’ll call it a flywheel, if you want to call it that for finding clients? So do you have a flywheel and what does it look like in general? 

Juzbi Walia: I’m still testing it out. I don’t have my lead gen strategy nailed yet. It’s in that phase where I am casting a wide net.

I’m putting spaghetti on the wall, but I’m happy to share what I’m thinking of now. The reason why I said that, you know while I’ve kind of niched down on the online course creation space, I’m now looking at casting a wider net and approaching SaaS and e-commerce and upskilling there too is because I hear a lot in the online space industry that, niche down, you know, X, Y, Z, but sometimes, niche doesn’t come by arriving at a niche.

There’ll be enough course creators who are going to offer you courses as copywriters to niche down on X, Y, Z. But like sometimes you just need to cast a wide [00:35:00] net, put spaghetti on the wall, and then through that you find your niche when you get your first anchor client and then you get your second and your third, right?

Like right now, I’m also doing work on podcast pitching for a client, which is not like email launches for online course creators. But you know what? I enjoy it and frankly saying it helps me pay my bills. So why not? Right? So what I’ve decided is to leverage some of my in-person contacts, people who I know in the SaaS industry who are CMOs or senior leadership, and come and approach them because I have second degree of connection or third degree of connection with them, sometimes even first, and that’s better to do so than sometimes cold pitching to online course creators because I live in India. My clients are in the US and Canada where I lived earlier.

And then cold pitching has also worked. It’s more of a difficult [00:36:00] approach in the sense it’s difficult in the sense it’s time consuming. Not necessarily difficult. It’s time consuming because what I do is I take the guerilla approach. I actually give them value. First off, if I see they can tweak their webinar, free workshop invites, or sales copy, or sales page, I give them a high level reframe what they should do instead and why. And sometimes I come back with like impressive work. I’ve been able to convert one person like that, but it takes a lot of time. But what I found the best is what you said, borrowed authority.

So that’s another thing that I’m testing. I really believe in creating high ticket offers and using other people’s audiences who are also very appreciative of taking your stuff. Because they don’t have to create content all the time. They can just also use somebody else’s content, which is also very valuable for the audience, so I’m trying, and I’m getting, and referrals have worked for me really well. I landed a really good project last year, like I was telling you about where I ghostwrote a [00:37:00] entire course for a physiotherapist. And that came straight from my existing client of 3 years. You know, referrals, it is putting myself everywhere.

And then finally cracking my lead gen strategy. So I’m doing everything right now, but I just wanted to be fully transparent that business building takes time and one thing that I realized. The main thing I’ve realized in this journey is that ultimately you have to think for yourself.

You know, no business coach, no other person advising can really tell you what to do. It’s not that prescriptive, and I had to unlearn a lot of things I learned from online coaches and realize, actually that doesn’t work for me for X, Y, Z reasons. So that’s been my biggest learning in this business building journey.

Trudy Rankin: I think that’s really important to acknowledge that. Like I keep telling my clients, you have to start from zero. Doesn’t matter how experienced you are or how old you are or what you’ve been through, when you start something new, you have to [00:38:00] start from zero and you might be able to learn a bit faster because of your experience, but you still gotta go through that whole washing machine churn of trying it, does it work? Does it not work? Or you call it spaghetti on the wall? It is really, really real. And just giving yourself the grace to take the time to do that and to do it really well. And I think that’s really good advice that you’ve shared for people who are thinking about doing what you’re doing or maybe they are doing what you’re doing and they’re still scratching their head and going, why is this not doing what I thought it was going to do? So you’ve gotta take the time to do that. So Juzbi, it’s been just really, really fantastic talking with you.

If people were interested in either getting in touch with you, maybe they would just want to get to know you better or maybe they would like your help, where would they go? 

Juzbi Walia: I have an Instagram account called juzbi.copy. So you can follow me there, you can reach out for me on DMs.

I haven’t put a website yet because my priorities are laser focused on getting more and more clients and so I’m just [00:39:00] going to keep my visibility there. But I do have a free resource for your audience in case they would love that. It’s, um, it’s called, How to Write Non Manipulative Emails That Sell and they can plug 15 non-sleazy persuasion triggers in their sales email copy when they’re launching a course.

And it’s a checklist of all those triggers to make sure that you’ve covered all these triggers in your launch sales email. Because who knows which trigger makes somebody say, okay, I’m ready to sign up now. And mine could be different from yours. So you want to cover all the ground. So that’s a resource they can get in case they’re launching a course and they want to revise their copy.

Trudy Rankin: No, that’s fantastic. I’ll make sure I put a link to that in the show notes and I’m sure that people will find it really, really, really useful. Once again, thank you so much. 

Juzbi Walia: Thank you for having me. This was a great chat. [00:40:00] I really appreciate it. 

Trudy Rankin: Second time around. I really appreciate your patience.

Okay. 

Juzbi Walia: Alright.​

Trudy Rankin: Well, that was a good chat and I hope it gave you permission to sell in a way that feels like you. Now, my biggest takeaway from Juzbi is this, you don’t need louder marketing. You need clearer marketing. The kind that’s rooted in what your audience actually wants, what they’re worried about, and then what’s stopping them from taking action, not what you think they’re worried about.

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