John Corcoran: 11:02
Right? Right. It’s interesting because after these stints, Red bull and five hour energy, then, you know, the natural thing for someone to go to is the corporate hotel world. So, you go work for IHG, one of the biggest hotel groups out there. What was that adjustment like for you to switch from very different types of brands to something a little bit more corporate, a little bit more reserved?
Justin Blackman: 11:29
Yeah. You know, I wish I could say that it was really hard and I didn’t fit in and I was used to being on the field. And that’s where I was born and bred to be. And I need to be out. So outdoors.
No, it was actually really easy. I fit in more to the corporate environment seamlessly than I care to admit. It was a great company. It still is a great company. And what was great about that is that after five hours of energy, I had gone to write scripts for the sampling team and teach people how to communicate.
When I went to IHG. It was just me doing the things that I had taught people how to speak. And I, I just went from creating scripts to writing emails to reading and landing pages to read. And it actually gave me a bigger knowledge because I started understanding what copywriting was in between those transition years. And it just went from, from written to, to, to, I’m sorry, from spoken to written content and understanding how persuasion techniques work and the psychology behind writing and direct sales and direct response and understanding how to create emotion and a response through word.
And I got really good at that. And it just, it was like, okay, this is where I belong. Everything I’ve been doing, all the pattern recognition, all the analysis, all the, the, the processes that I had been discovering, watching all the hundreds of thousands of communications Under understanding why some of them worked copywriting give a name to it. These are all frameworks that existed. I’m not claiming to have discovered any of these things, but I sort of figured some of this stuff out for myself, only to realize that the science already existed, and then I could lean into that and I just became smarter.
John Corcoran: 13:21
Yeah. I mean, there’s lots of classic books. I’ve got breakthrough advertising behind me here, which is one. Yeah. You got a copy over there?
Yeah. One of the classics. And I’ve got a few others over here as well. But, you know, these books were written 75, 100 years ago. And a lot of these principles have not changed one bit.
Yeah. You know, even though the medium has changed.
Justin Blackman: 13:43
Yeah, the old stuff still works. It just does.
John Corcoran: 13:47
Yeah.
Justin Blackman: 13:47
Human behavior has not changed.
John Corcoran: 13:49
Yeah. So you are at IHG for a few years and then you go out and start your own, I guess you’d call it a consultancy. What inspired that?
Justin Blackman: 14:01
So I had been kind of starting a side hustle on the side and just taking a couple of weekend projects, writing some websites and emails for people. And I had a project I called the Headline Project where I wanted to get really good at understanding messaging and voice. And I used to write 100 headlines every single day for 100 days, and it resulted in a swipe file of 10,211 headlines. It’s up on my site if anyone wants it. And it generated some publicity.
And I had an agency come to me and say, hey, I need someone that can write in different styles. Do you want to give it a shot? And I said, sure, let’s see what happens. And they gave me a test project and I wrote it in 2 or 3 days. I gave it back to them and they said, we’ve been doing this for six years.
You’re the first person that ever nailed the test project on the first try. And I was like, okay, I guess I’m good at this. And they offered me enough recurring work that I could bring them on as a retainer client. So I left IHG, started my own business and really never looked back.
John Corcoran: 15:07
Yeah. And you have an interesting mix because you’ve worked with some, I’d call them online marketing thought leaders like Amy Porterfield, Stu McLaren and Todd Herman. But then you also have, as in your background, a lot of experience with more corporate companies.
Justin Blackman: 15:25
Yeah, it’s. So the reason why I was able to nail that test project is because I didn’t try to change what they were doing. They had a very unique style, a very interesting style. The cadence was ultra short, ultra choppy. Their tone was a little snarky, a little aggressive.
And when I read this, I was like, this shouldn’t work. Like, I don’t like anything about this, but they’re doing it for a reason. Let’s stick with it and let’s write it in their style. And that’s what I was able to do. And that’s why I nailed it.
I didn’t try to change them. I didn’t say, oh, this is weird. Let’s make this more normal. The reason why I’m able to write with corporate clients and professional clients male, female, empathy, sympathy, compassion, whatever tones they have. I’m not trying to change it.
I’m really good at analyzing what’s there and mirroring it. That’s kind of what became the secret weapon for me, that was that the source is understanding and being able to, to mirror it. A lot of people, they just sort of, they’ll say, like, how do you get their voice? They’re like, well, I just listen to everything that they say. And I, and I read everything that they write, and I just sort of do it intuitively.
That’s great. But intuition doesn’t scale. I have an actual process where I do it, and I measure their vocabulary, their tone, their cadence. I literally have tools. I built a website that will analyze your copy and give you mathematical data.
I get ultra nerdy on this thing. It’s the thing that goes all the way back to childhood with being quiet, but understanding the process and, and the thinking patterns behind people. Because I have a process, it allows me to work with really any type of client. I don’t have a niche in my industry. I niche by voice because my thing is, I can tell you how you write and then I can mirror it.
It’s a process I call brand ventriloquism where I can throw my voice into any style. Not through intuition, but because of literal math and patterns.
John Corcoran: 17:23
And what’s interesting to me is that you say that after you have helped companies with figuring out what their voice is, that then they can take that, and then they can use it with either their writers or their AI. Which is interesting because there’s a lot of people I’ve seen, you know, and, and I identify as a writer that’s been my profession for many years. I don’t do it as much as I used to, but I’ve seen a lot of people that are really afraid of the changes that are happening with AI, even though I will say that some of the writing that is done by AI is tremendous. It’s, you know, much better than the vast majority of human writing, I think today. What are your thoughts on that?
And as I, you know, came around over the last three years or so. Did you fear it or did you come around to it?
Justin Blackman: 18:16
So I’ve had it’s not fear, but I had a little bit of dislike at the beginning. And at the beginning it was easy to dismiss it because the fact is it was a terrible writer. ChatGPT was awful. And people were like, oh, look how good it is. I was like, it’s good if you don’t know what you’re doing.
But if you do, this is crap. And I didn’t like it. And it was easy for me to say I’m better than AI these days. I actually use Claude more than I use chat and chat. Claude can be a damn good writer.
Yeah, with the right context, with the right, with the right inputs, with the right. Just everything. Yeah, he’s a pretty good writer. And it would be foolish of me to be scared of it, or to think of it as an enemy rather than a tool to help people that can’t write well or that want to be able to scale things. Yeah.
I use it as a thinking partner. I don’t write with it very much. I have written with it. And sometimes it’s sometimes it says stuff that I was like, wow, this is actually better than what I wrote.
John Corcoran: 19:20
Or it can rewrite things too. You know, you can take something you’ve written, put it in and it’ll punch it up in different ways that are sometimes a little bit unexpected or, you know, sometimes like transition sentences can be really hard. I’m, I suck at conclusions. You know, sometimes it comes up with things like that. It’s like, oh, great.
Thank you. I’ll take that.
Justin Blackman: 19:39
Yeah, I like it at this point. Yeah. And it’s weird for me to say that two years ago, I never would have said that. But right now, what is it? Two and a half, three years old.
It’s a toddler right now. It’s just learning how to walk, right? If I position this as the enemy for a couple of years, I’m gone.
John Corcoran: 19:57
Yeah. No, that’s what I don’t understand about some people. I feel like some people are just really putting their head in the sand right now. And they’re denigrating the mostly the ones who are denigrated are the ones who haven’t spent any time trying it out. You know, they say that it can’t do this.
They say they can’t do that. And I’m like, have you tried it recently? Because maybe three years ago it couldn’t do that, but it can now. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Justin Blackman: 20:20
And I mean, there’s such a demand for me. I have some workshops where I help people get AI to sound more like them. And it’s because I’m not just saying like, make it sound more human or, you know, just make it friendlier or make it warmer. I’m not doing that. I’m giving it mathematical processes in the way that I help people define and document their, their style and their, their, their perspectives and things like that.
That’s how I’m able to get good content that sounds like you. And, you know, I have conversations like long, crazy long threads with Claude and also some with ChatGPT and some custom GPT where I just go back and forth thinking about it. And I don’t just take what it says at face value. I tend to write some stuff with it like, what about this play? One of my favorite things is to say, play devil’s advocate.
Tell me why I’m wrong. And if it can’t, then I know I’m right. Or if I don’t agree with what it says.
John Corcoran: 21:21
And when you do this, what does that process look like? Is it just talking? Are you talking about a random topic? And then at the end say, okay, sum up what you’ve learned about my voice or how do you do that? And also, do you do it all or do you do it in writing?
Justin Blackman: 21:37
I do it by writing. I think through writing and actually most of my best sales letters, I actually still write by hand. Not even a keyboard, but pen and paper. Like I have a fountain pen and paper that slows me down. I have a sales page up right now that people are like, this feels like a journal entry.
And I was like, it is. I literally wrote this as a journal and then I turned it into a sales page. Those are still my most connected, best pieces. AI doesn’t touch it. My best pieces come from me, but if it’s just a quick email and I’m struggling with something, hey, I am great for that.
But as far as what I’m giving it there, I have style guides that I’ve created for myself. I have ones that I’ve created for other people, and it used to be that I needed to give it everything. These days, once you give it a specific angle, and I don’t just mean like, you know, approach it from this perspective when it understands you, when you can document some of your best assets and your traits and your patterns and things like this, and as well as patterns in your writing. Like literally the mathematical components of your writing. That’s when AI starts to sound more like you.
We all have. I have a process and there are nine different voice types, and they can range from voices of authority to like you’re leaning on your expertise. Voices of outlook with your viewpoints on life or voices of accessibility? Are you on a level with your readers, above them? Below them?
What are you trying to convey? Those all have different measurements to them. Changes in the vocabulary. The tone, the cadence to make you sound more accessible versus more authoritative and more commanding. We can literally change the patterns in your writing to make you sound one way or the other.
AI is doing that sort of just by design. I can give it the sort of the codes and the processes and the calculations to help it get there faster and more on your brand, on your level.
John Corcoran: 23:51
You have a new program. Tell us about the new program that you are just acknowledging now.
Justin Blackman: 23:55
I do this one called different on Purpose and it’s a whole lot of fun. I ran it once last year. Doors are actually opening up again right now. They’re opening today, and that is really about helping you find your edge. It’s for people that have had quite a bit of success and were doing well and just felt like everything was great and then just had the rug pulled out from under them.
And the last few years, it just felt like the world has stopped devaluing their craft or whatever they do, and it feels like they feel a little alone. And the people that just it’s like, what I was doing is working. And all of a sudden it just stopped. And I don’t know why or I know why, but I don’t know what to do about it. Different on purpose is an eight week workshop where we actually go really deep into what you truly do differently that can’t be copied.
And it’s not just about AI, it’s not just about your competitors. It’s about understanding what you do and being able to reposition it as something that is forever valuable or something that people need right now because people are not obsolete. We’re getting blended in and there’s, you know, a big monster that’s kind of threatening a lot of us, but we’re not obsolete. And I truly believe that with the right messaging and the right positioning, there’s enough people for everyone that we can still succeed.
John Corcoran: 25:17
Well, I love that message of hope and positivity. Justin, this has been great. Where can people go to learn more about you, connect with you and download those 10,000 headlines?
Justin Blackman: 25:28
So the easiest place is JustinBlackman.com. You can hop on my email list. I’ve got right now, I’ve got 93 fun ways to sign off your emails. And it’s just a way of adding a little bit of pop and personality to everything that you send. Just sort of showcases a little bit more of you, which, as we all know, is very important right now.
John Corcoran: 25:46
Yeah. All right. Justin, thank you so much.
Justin Blackman: 25:49
Thank you.
Outro: 25:52
Thanks for listening to the Smart Business Revolution Podcast. We’ll see you again next time. And be sure to click subscribe to get future episodes.