Permission to Kick Ass

Designing your own career as a creative with Reese Spykerman

• Angie Colee • Episode 167

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Two menaces to polite society sit down to record a podcast...

My friend Reese Spykerman and I get good and ranty on what it means to be a creative entrepreneur, how to know if you're too early or too late, and why taking a job doesn't make you a total failure in the business world. Her fascinating 20-year journey is full of pivots, burnouts, and imposter syndrome galore. But here's the kicker: every "failure" led her to exactly where she needed to be. 

Can't-Miss Moments from This Episode:

  • Intrepreneurship vs entrepreneurship: how "giving up the dream" and accepting a full-time role in someone else's business can still be a huge win-win...

  • I'm calling BS on this: there's one way "it" (whatever "it" is) gets done, and you've got to follow it OR ELSE. Reese has a rant for you if you're feeling stuck playing by someone else's rules...

  • Stop trying to impress the homecoming king and queen. Here's how to recognize when you're doing something that actually matters, vs doing something for the appearance and applause... 

  • Failure is part of the process! Hear the inspiring story behind one of Broadway's most iconic musicals (and how it wouldn't exist if its creator had taken, "This won't work," as a sign he wasn't good enough)...

  • If you have to take cheap shots to get business, you're probably not very good. Your business should thrive with a little healthy competition, not stifle. Here's why "stand on your own strengths, not others' weaknesses" is the ultimate power positioning.... 

Reese's bio:

Hi! I’m Reese.

Former journalist and rockstar designer who combines those mad skills into a copy and design double threat known as e-commerce conversion expert. (Yeah I’m a queen of pivoting when opportunity knocks—maybe you can relate?)

Lover of Diet Pepsi (we all have our vices), parenthesis, and seasonal Spotify playlists, I’m driven to help women with product businesses sell without so much stress. My magic? Highly leveraged websites and email automations that free up their time for other things in life besides work (whether that’s combing for beach glass in Bali or bonding with their babies, human and fur alike). 

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Angie Colee:

Welcome to Permission to Kick Ass, the show that gives you a virtual seat at the bar for the real conversations that happen between entrepreneurs. I'm interviewing all kinds of business owners, from those just a few years into freelancing to CEOs helming nine figure companies. If you've ever worried that everyone else just seems to get it and you're missing something or messing things up, this show is for you. I'm your host, Angie Coley, and let's get to it. Hey, welcome back to Permission to Kick Ass. With me today is my good friend, Rhys Spikerman. Say hi, Hi. We've already bantered for probably almost 15 minutes just before the recording, talking, gabbing, catching up. I wrote down in my notes that I had to share the fact that I was having a problem with my mic erection. For some reason, I've got this on a boom arm here in front of me for anybody watching the video and it just keeps leaning over. If you hear any weird shit throughout this, just assume that my microphone fell over and is tired of life. I don't know.

Reese Spykerman:

It lost its erection. My comment back to you was this really should be the title of this podcast.

Angie Colee:

My microphone lost its erection. It lost its will to live, apparently.

Reese Spykerman:

Tell us a little bit about you, about what you do? Oh my God, I love the open-ended question so much. Can you hear the dripping sarcasm in my voice? Tell us about you. It's the life story. When I was two, this happened, and when I was 10, this happened. We're not going to go down it.

Angie Colee:

I've had people say so at the beginning. I was born and I was like oh shit, we're going there. Yeah, trust me, I've heard it by now. Whatever you got, bring it on.

Reese Spykerman:

Well, this is a business podcast, so I'm going to funnel it that way. I'm Reese and I mean you already know that. You heard my name. I was a business owner for the past almost 20 years.

Reese Spykerman:

After college I had one or two jobs, I think Got tired of that. Didn't like working for people, opened up my own shop, started first out way back in the heyday of like, when blogs were getting hot. You could be a blogger and then get a book out of the whole thing. So I started doing blogs for some people who were movers and shakers at that time. It evolved to doing like blog design. It evolved to doing that for small businesses and then that evolved to like medium-sized corporate, international and it just I kept doing this and I at some point hated the web development side of things. So I made some divots and I started doing just design. And then that evolved into just kind of being a consultant.

Reese Spykerman:

And there was sometime around 2015 or 16, I want to say I knew I need. I saw some writing on the wall like intuitively but myself, where my business was going and that my income would kind of be kept doing what I was doing and it was at that point I wanted to get into consulting and I just dove into the pool of becoming an e-commerce optimization consultant. I knew I had a skill set like just from my years of doing what I was doing, but I also had so much imposter syndrome at that time I'd never been in e-commerce, I hadn't done website optimization, even though I'd built tons of them I just dove into the pool and a few years after that so I want to say 2020, I got away from one-on-one client work and I started a program, as many of us in this realm do, where it was like a six-month program for women with product-based businesses who were in e-commerce and it was basically marketing 101 for them from A to Z, everything from what they need to do to optimize their websites to their copy. I had started getting back into copywriting at this time and I love that so much. I love that program.

Reese Spykerman:

I ran it for three rounds, so about a year and a half, six months at a time, and then I ran into a volume cap. In other words, I just could not attract enough leads. The women I were getting in were amazing, but I was really struggling with the whole lead funnel method of getting people in. I think there's a lot of people out there that make it look like it's quite easy and for some people it can be. I think if you had started doing it years and years ago, that's a different story. But I also am not the kind of person where I'm like peppy polyanna, charismatic, like there's a certain type that can attract that and that's not me, and it's okay. But there's not enough leads, there aren't enough people who are attracted to this to justify it. So I shut the program down, even though I loved the teaching, I loved what I was doing.

Reese Spykerman:

I kept doing private client work for about a year after One of the clients that I'd been working with for a couple years approached me over this past summer so this is 2020, like late 2023, we're talking and asked me if I would be interested in coming in at a full-time, employed role.

Reese Spykerman:

Until then, I had kind of been batting around in my head for a while do I go get a job? I was burned out. I was burned out on trying to find clients, on doing everything myself, on the hot spot, and so it kind of came at a time where I think my brain was ready for it and I knew them. I trusted them, I knew them. I negotiated what I needed to make it work for me everything from remote to the number of hours that I would work, and I've been in that job now for four months. It's absolutely kicking my ass and I don't mean that in a negative way, it's just been childlike fire. And I'm their director of marketing for this company. That's like expanding rapidly into 20 new locations in the next year. And here I am. This is my story.

Angie Colee:

Wow, yeah, well, and it's funny, I've been taking notes I don't actually ever show this on the recording but like I always have my little remarkable tablet here that I'm taking notes on and I actually put freaking numbers on all of the transitions in the pivots that I was writing down here. I counted eight of them total over the course of this. And I say that to say this that often I see this stalling people out that they feel like they have to start with the end goal in mind and they have to have the perfect plan before they ever get going. And look at Reese's evolution here from blogs when those were popular, to doing the web development and design, to burning out on the web development and focusing on it, on design, from pivoting there I had to write it all down to consulting, then switching industries to something that she didn't know at all and had massive imposter syndrome in e-com, then consulting with those, then creating a course, then abandoning the course Like abandon is not the right word, but I know that you know what I mean there.

Angie Colee:

I love that you shared that entire journey because I think that there's a lot of insecurity or maybe self judgment or something that holds people back when they think I have to pick this thing and I have to get it right. But I always tell them, for now is not forever. And, by the same token, exactly what you said, because you choose to go back into a job and you made sure it was the right opportunity for you, that doesn't make you a failure. Or like you didn't succeed for 20 fucking years at this thing, through all of its evolutions, because you decided to do something different for now. And so, like, what I want everybody to get out of all of this rambling here is that it's okay to do you.

Angie Colee:

You get to burn out on things or lose interest in things and change directions. You get to decide. You know what? I'm tired of prospecting and running the whole show, and for right now, I'm going to go use these entrepreneurial skills to help other business owners solve their problems. We call that entrepreneurship, which Angie is also a big fan of, because I just see entrepreneurs as doers. They're people that know how to solve problems on and on until the day we fucking die. Right, life is a series of problems. Every problem you solve is going to create another problem. I don't know where I was going with any of that, but we already set ourselves up before this recording to know that it's going to be meandering and ADHD is fuck and beautiful.

Reese Spykerman:

It is. So what I love about what you said I want to extract something here, because there's wordplay that I just cannot help but do. Your podcast is permission to kick ass, but I think what we're also talking about here is permission to pivot, permission to know what the fuck you're doing and do it, and permission to not be perfect when you go about it. Like this is really like what we are talking about here, because you say, like you know entrepreneurs, they get caught in their head and should I and shouldn't I? What is the biggest thing I want you to hear from me and from Andy right now is about we're giving you permission to do you.

Angie Colee:

Absolutely, and we all fall into this trap. I'm somebody that talks about this damn near 24 seven in every circle that I'm in. I've got a whole show dedicated to this and even I get caught up in these traps and that's exactly why I created this show. I wanted to have something. That was the show that I needed. When I got to in my head and this you need to meet my best friend, you would get along with them very well.

Angie Colee:

But I had an instance where a couple weeks ago and this has been like six months in the making I used to give it full context. We have to go back to when I was working for my friends agency. I was the copy chief and I was the account manager and my favorite piece of this was how, every month, we could plan out the entirety of our clients email promotion calendar in one half hour to hour long meeting and that just blew people's minds like we could not only do that, we could also basically write 80 to 90% of the emails within that time. And I'm not talking about speed writing or anything. I'm talking about asking the right questions to get the client to tell me the story, which I'm then going to go rip from the transcript and turn into an email with the best practices and the calls to action and linking it to the right product and all of that. But like working smarter instead of harder, and I just went. I've been telling various friends it's so interesting to me because I can't sell like a brainstorming thing how do I package this? I feel like there's something to the fact that we could plan not only plan out, but pretty much get your email marketing done in just an hour or two a month and like how much easier would that make your life. So it finally evolved to the point where I think just three or four weeks ago I was having a meeting with somebody. I hashed out some details I wrote up in a Google doc here's what it is, here's what it does, here's who it's for, here's how it works, here's what it costs like just super plain English. And I started talking to people about it and said I'm trying this new thing out. I don't know how this offer is going to go, but I'm really interested in it. And so you know, I'm just talking to select people that I think would be really good for this program and I want your input on it. Blah, blah, blah. Talk about the easiest fucking sales I have ever made in my life.

Angie Colee:

I worked on something that was exciting to me. I talked to people that I thought would be excited about it too. I didn't go build a whole fucking funnel and all of the Facebook ads to drive people to it, because I don't know how it's going to go. I only have in my imagination I have this hypothesis that maybe I could do that with 10, maybe a max of 20 people per month, because that's a lot of phone calls, right, I just plan all of that stuff out. That's a lot of creative energy. I don't know how it's going to go. Maybe I could handle 40 with a good admin or something. Who knows? But it's all an experiment right now, and I just find it funny that, like of all of the programs I've tried to create as an entrepreneur I've done workshops, I've done courses, I've done consulting and all of this that was the easiest fucking sale I've ever made, just like. Here's what it is. This is Google Doc. Tell me if you like it.

Reese Spykerman:

It reminds me of, in a very in a micro way, when I was doing my business.

Reese Spykerman:

There would sometimes be a social media post that I would labor over for hours with the design and the caption, and then I would just get in fuck it mode and put up something like that. I got to put something up and the thing that I just put up where it was like I don't even know about this, everyone would be like hello, and it was. It's such a mind fuck when you invest all this time in a thing and it doesn't have as much resonance or success or whatever you want to say as a thing, that you just kind of like I'm flopping this up here. Yeah, and one of the things I think I got out.

Reese Spykerman:

What you were saying reminds me of a friend of mine, one of my best friends, who is still in the entrepreneurial realm and she's struggling with some pivoting in her business and she has one of the things that she will come talk to me about is like well, this person is doing it this way, but I don't want to do it that way.

Reese Spykerman:

And it's not that she feels she's a very, she has a lot of agency, she's a very independent woman, but she still I still catch her at times going through this like this is not how it's done, so I'm not sure if it's going to work. And I say to her we get to write the rules. And just because someone built a funnel or whatever mechanism we're talking about, or technique a certain way, doesn't mean we have to do it that way, because there had to be an originator of those methodologies. Why can't we be an originator of our own methodologies? Maybe other people will end up using them someday, but that's not the point. The point is again make your own damn rules about everything from the methodologies in your business what you sell, how you sell it, who you sell it to. Stop looking at everyone else and start getting on a playground and play. Oh yes, play.

Angie Colee:

Yes, when done right, the work can be the adult version of play. Like, you don't have to recreate the employee game. And if you've done that with your business, I think welcome to business. We've all done that, because when you first started out, unless you grew up in an entrepreneurial environment, the only filter that you have to look at these problems is an employee filter. Right, you think how much do I charge per hour? How many hours do I need to work per week? Like, right, you just go down what you know. Then you learn to think differently when you start to meet different people who reflect this awesomeness back at you.

Angie Colee:

There were two awesome things that you said there that I wanted to call attention to. One was the tactics, right, how other people do things, the tactics and strategies and I was in an interesting discussion in a group the other day about this where somebody was talking about saturation and I come from a background people have heard me talk about before. It's copywriting, but even within copywriting, there's the brand the more like a Geico Gecko, the gimmicky kinds of things like national ads and Superbowl commercials, more awareness campaigns, and there's direct response, which is what I do, which is basically sales, like sales messaging and somebody was talking about like saturation and I had to remind them what saturation is within our little niche of a niche in direct response is completely different from what saturation is in the broader business market. And I say this because, like, we get tired of seeing certain tactics, but people in different industries have never seen these or heard these before, and why this is relevant to the conversation. It's like, try it if it sounds interesting to you. There's no rule exactly like you said. There's no rule out there that says, because it worked for this person, I now have to try this, I should be trying this, I should be validating, you don't have to do shit, you don't, you don't. And the other thing that I wanted to say like we're just gonna get good and ranty. So it was funny that you talked about not knowing what's gonna resonate and creating content and I talk about this a lot like authority.

Angie Colee:

Content is how you get out there and you get known, but you never know what's actually going to work. So consistency is the name of the game and you may never hear from the people who are being impacted by your work. It's not necessarily gonna go viral, it's not gonna get all the likes. It's not gonna get all the comments, but you know I've told the story a couple of times by now you never know who's watching and a while back, when I said I was gonna do this 40 by 40, I'm gonna get on 40 podcast by the time I turn 40. Somebody who'd been following me for years, who I didn't know existed, reached out to me and said I have a podcast, will you come on my show? I'm a big fan and sent me a lovely message about like I promise this is not a creepy stalker thing. I wrote a blog post about you way back in the day the first time I heard you on a podcast, because there was something that you said that really just changed things for me and I was like, oh my God, that's so cool. And that happened again this week. I feel like I'm just ranting at this point, but I know you'll appreciate this.

Angie Colee:

I had a situation last week. I'm also launching a book by the time I turn 40. That was my big goal this year 40 podcasts, launch a book. I just last week as we're recording this. We're recording this in October. By the time it comes out it's gonna be May your birthday. Release us on your birthday. So the book will have been out.

Angie Colee:

But just last week, with a month to go until this book launches on December 1st, my birthday I had to pull from the publisher and completely move everything over to Amazon and in a moment of frustration I wrote this is why I'm doing all of this Like I could have taken the self-judgment route of this is not going the way I wanted. I owed people answers by now. People are bugging me for the presale link. I need to get something out there, but no, when I talked to and here's what happened in a nutshell I talked to the publisher about the print proof that I got, which over 50% of the pages were super blurry and I didn't like that. It was like double printed and it was distracting.

Angie Colee:

I will, yeah, and I sent them probably a dozen pictures of this happening and at first I thought maybe my phone camera was compensating for it, but then when I looked at the detailed pictures, I'm like you can see the ridges of my fingertips next to this blurry-ass type. So they should have been able to see what was going. What I got was a super condescending message of basically like well, it's the thinness of the paper and that's the way it works, and you're just gonna have to decide what you can live with and let like oh my God, hold me back. Oh, it was such bullshit and I actually like copied and pasted the entire email thread in that post that I did and went well. So this is why, with you know, just over a month to go until I launched this thing, I am completely pulling all of the publications and the pre-sale links that I had with this other company that I spent months working on and I'm moving it all over to Amazon, gonna sell my soul to the giant because they make it easy and get this. I just finished uploading everything yesterday Again, this is the end of October, as we're recording it. I ordered two print proofs from Amazon yesterday that we'll get here tomorrow. That cost me $16. The print proof that I ordered from the other distributor took about a week and a half for them to generate and it was 30 bucks.

Angie Colee:

So, like, if you're not gonna, at least compete on Amazon's level, maybe don't be a fucking dick about it. I know I'm leaving a lot out. Go to LinkedIn. You'll find the post where I said I think it's called something like my honest thoughts on self-publishing, and it has that whole interaction back and forth there. But where am I going with this? I'm going with look, people are gonna reach out to you in your business too and they're gonna be upset about things. Don't make assumptions. Care about them and their result. Understand that the effort they're going through in just reaching out to you and trying to find a solution, and maybe don't fucking condescend, because I guarantee you this person who was telling me, he told me it was bleed through or she, I don't know, and I was like I worked in print for a long time. I've seen proofs of catalogs and postcards and weekly circular ads and all kinds of shit. That's not bleed through, my friends, but thanks.

Reese Spykerman:

Oh, my, okay, I got a couple of things. We got to talk about condescending for a minute, yes, so I would imagine almost anyone in your audience who's listening are gonna be more of the bat like you and me, rather than the condescending asshole then, because they just have to listen to a podcast like this. But the people who are listening it is easy to become intimidated or believe those sorts of people because of how they carry themselves, and if you are still working on some mindset things and stuff, it can be very easy to kind of kowtow to them. And I had a similar story recently and, like I have to kind of kowtch a lot of this in confidentiality. But there was a meeting where someone was kind of coming in the ivory tower situation and I love this so much Said I noticed that you're sending your landing pages, you're sending your ads to a landing page that's off the site and the type of business I'm in has a lot of regulatory issues on it, and so part of why we do that is because if we sent it to the site, we would never get approval for some of the other products that are on our main brand website.

Reese Spykerman:

And so we explain this to this person and he goes well. When I worked for an e-commerce company and his eyes get really big, like he's coming with his big smackdown, would you believe we were even able to send to a brand website for vaccines for pets and I'm like, oh honey, you're gotcha and someone else on my team, because I'm just like sitting here like, oh boy, who's gonna tell them those? I'm pretty sure the regulations for human products are not the same as the ones for animals. Yeah, so it's similar to your story with the print. That's what reminded me of it.

Reese Spykerman:

But I'm telling you this scenario this person was just coming, like it got all this experience, this pedigree right Pedigree from their degrees, from the big corporate names they've worked with, and it's like you could have heard a penny drop in the room and you don't know everything. Yeah, but another thing I want to talk about that you brought up. You never know who is out there watching you, listening, whatever it is. I've had that happen in my business so many different times and I want to like put a logical spin on this for people to help them understand. Yeah, often I'm one of the quiet ones, like you won't know it from the way I'm animated on this podcast right now, but.

Reese Spykerman:

I'm a very introverted, quiet person, and I'm a busy person too, and so I'm not that extrovert who wants to always engage and reach out an email and be bubbly and social. That doesn't mean I'm not watching you yes, it might very well, damn mean there's a lot of us who, even if we aren't quiet, we have so much going on in our life that we don't have the time for that kind of engagement and interactivity until and when there's a like strike, while the iron's hot sort of thing Like this person did inviting you on their podcast. And so if you think like your stuff isn't getting resonance, I encourage you and it's so hard to do this. But like vanity metrics are basically like being in high school. You're like trying to get a fucking cheerleader and the homecoming king to like you.

Reese Spykerman:

For what reason? Like, really for what reason? Whereas there's the nerd in the back who's just gonna go and make like an eight billion gazillion dollar company in 20 years and he might remember you because you were kind to him and you didn't give a shit about what people thought about you. He's not gonna go and be liking your posts, he's not gonna be going and propping you up, but someday he or she might remember you. So don't get caught in the resonance that's external, that you think you can like, measure and see, understand.

Reese Spykerman:

You may not always know it, you may not get reflection back, but you might have someone come to your door like they have like three years down the pipe and say that thing you did three years ago, that you put out, that you wrote it, changed my life and I've had that happen four times and I can count and I promise everyone listening keep putting your stuff out there. It will touch people, it will move people. They may not speak up today, but someday you will start to get back from people that you do have resonance. And if you can do that for just one person, if you can just change one life, for me that was as meaningful, if not more, than any money I was making, oh yeah.

Angie Colee:

And I think that I love that you're bringing that up, because a lot of us have that pressure, especially if we wanna do some good in the world or we're rebelling against shitty stuff that's happened in a corporate life and we're like, no, I'm gonna make a positive impact, right. It's real tempting to fall into that trap of, well, how big can I make this? Could I have an Elon Musk impact? Could I be like a world changer? And look, you're a world changer if you impact one life, exactly like Reese said, because the impact of one life is potentially exponential in ways that you can't possibly predict.

Angie Colee:

One person may talk to 20 more people and each one of those people talks to 20 more people, and suddenly that one person that you helped with that one blog post that got no response, is out there in the world doing immeasurable good for you, your name and your reputation, and people are talking about it. You're just not aware of it. So it feels like I only helped one person. I had to keep reminding myself because I worked on that book for five years and was like, but it needs to be my magnum opus, it needs to be like debut author. So I actually wrote in there, I think in the very intro. If this helps one person, I consider this a success like a raging. If I sell one copy and I help one person, will I be disappointed? I didn't hit the best seller? Yes, obviously, but the book will have done what I wrote it to do help one person. Do business a little bit better.

Reese Spykerman:

So much, yes, when I think back in my career, the moments that I remember the most are when I, for example, would have a woman in that program I was telling you about really ready to close shop in her business, not knowing what to do and having so many confidence and self-esteem issues on a personal and career level, and by the time six months later, comes down the pipe, she's transformed the way she shows up in her business and transformed but the way she felt about herself. That's the stuff I remember and I have a recommendation for you and for your listeners related to your book. She said, like worked on it for five years. And the minute you said that I'm like, oh, I watched a movie the other day, life-changing movie, called Tick Tick Boom. Have you heard?

Angie Colee:

of this. I've heard of it, but I haven't had a chance to watch it. I'm writing it down.

Reese Spykerman:

Okay, so it is like I'm not gonna give away the farm, but it's about the man who ultimately would write the musical rent. But before that made you know it's huge Broadway debut and it was. I've never seen rent but it was, from what I understand, very changing for Broadway. It was a very different way of doing a musical. He had two or three hero that just he had worked on one for eight years and he had a workshop for it and people were like okay, sweetie, get ready, you need to write the next one, because this one's not gonna have resonance out there in the world. There's no resonance world and it was beautiful in the music. Like I have chills right now thinking about this movie and how it touched me, because here's someone who believed so much in what he was doing and worked on it for eight years and this big moment comes and they tell him you need to go and write something else new. But he had to do that to get to that, to get to the next one, to finally get to rent.

Reese Spykerman:

If he was given up after that workshop, we would not have today rent. I would not be sitting here telling you about this movie that had me in tears, that has heart, that I have not seen in a movie in years. He had stopped after that workshop or they spoke no.

Angie Colee:

That's what I love about creativity. It's like I think all of us have faced that moment. I know you're on the design side, I'm on the writing side, but I'm sure that you've faced this moment where it was like the idea isn't working and I don't have anything else. And, oh shit, now I'm scared, Like I don't have anything else. Am I ever gonna have any good ideas ever again? Like is that? It? Was that the last it? But something always clicks into place in that moment of desperation that takes you to the very next level, that, exactly like you said, that first one had to land with a thud to get us to the level of rent for that idea to be surfaced, right Like the failing is part of the winning.

Angie Colee:

We gotta learn to embrace that.

Reese Spykerman:

Well, that's exactly it. Not only on a real like sort of tactical level he got feedback, say from the marketplace, about what would or would not work but on a more like personal, transformative level. One of the things that the movie shows is after that moment. He's exactly what you described Like. What do I do I've been working on?

Reese Spykerman:

I don't even know what my ideas are and he goes and he talks with a friend of his and I'm not gonna give away too much here but the friend reveals something going on in his life that brings this man to his knees and in that moment he realized that what he needed to write about was what he knew, like the stories of, just like the human stories of the people he knew.

Reese Spykerman:

And that light bulb shift would have never happened if he hadn't gone through writing about what he thought he wanted to write about. But then he almost had to go back to the drawing board and simplify, and then the more he simplified and the more he did that, the more he actually found things that have resonance. But he had to have that moment of bringing him to his knees, both about his project and the news he got from his friend and that unlocked everything that happened after. And it's like when you hear something like this God, I hope people who are listening to this like bookmark this episode for those times when they're feeling down, when they're brought to their knees, when they're told no, they don't get the job, they don't get the client, their program doesn't sell like they want it to Breathe and like be receptive to this being exactly where you need to be in this moment in time, for where you are going later.

Angie Colee:

Mm-hmm, what if it was working for you?

Reese Spykerman:

Everything that happens to me is for me.

Angie Colee:

It is for me Amen, amen. And I love that you brought up simplification, because I've told this story before too, but I suffered from that when I went through my first screenwriting class. I was operating under this delusion and I'm going to call it for what it was a delusion. Maybe you share this and this is no judgment, but that to create something great, I had to create something that's never been seen before. I have to be this world builder in this class world class imagination and all kinds of stuff. And so every script that I turned in I'll call it spade to spade.

Angie Colee:

It was overwritten within an inch of its life. It was so fucking complicated and so grandiose and so wrapped up in what I thought it had to be. And then my screenwriting professor said look, you can't make this shit up. It's happening around you. The world is an infinitely fascinating place. If you just open your eyes and your ears and listen and watch what's become a student of the universe in the world around you, and you would be shocked what kinds of stories you can come up with by just being a good observer and somebody who asks questions and watches like observes. And it just so happens that then and all of my scripts to that point, my assignments. We always read them out loud as a group and mine you could. Just the air got sucked out of the room. They were just so. They were landing so much with a thud every time I wrote them and I was getting really disheartened. I was like what's a good writer?

Angie Colee:

and everybody hates what I write. Maybe maybe I don't have it in me, or maybe I'm just like a dialogue specialist because I was always really good at voice Hello, copywriting. But then she said that in the next week we had a comedy assignment and it just so happened that a whole bunch of people had told me grandma stories that week. Like my grandma takes her medicine every day at five and by medicine I mean a shot of Jack Daniels, religiously, she never misses it. And another one was like my grandma just discovered the wonderful world of online dating, but she only goes out with guys named Jim. That's pretty weird. And there was another one that had bought like an at home facelift kit. And again, if this is you, I'm not making fun of you or anything like that, but it's just yeah, like I could combine this at home facelift kit taking your Jack Daniels medicine every day at five, only dating men named Jim.

Angie Colee:

I think there was another weird thing too, and I combined all of those traits into one supremely weird and interesting grandma. And they were ruling when we read this script out loud Like how did you come up with it? And that was when it finally clicked. I didn't Like, I just knew how to take the reality and shape it into what I wanted to see. But I had to have somebody point that out to me after trying and failing over and over and doubting myself and wondering if I was really up to what I was trying to do and if I would ever figure it out right.

Reese Spykerman:

Okay, okay. This is so good, so I'm going to use this as a springboard for like sort of a copy tactical tip for people.

Angie Colee:

Yeah, let's do it.

Reese Spykerman:

Because I love how you, like you, bring up a story and, like God, I have such a parallel in my own life. So, literally yesterday I was talking with my digital ads team. We had a campaign that we ran that we were looking at our competitors. They were doing everything that was trendy and shiny and catchy and like over the top marketing, right, like all that catchy shit that's out there that everyone else is doing. I said to my team we need to zag where they're zigging and we got back to how our men talking about this particular service that we need to to market, and I let one of the guys on the ads team talk about his own experience with this particular problem and I said this is our ad copy. Our ad copy is you telling your story as a man, as a dad, and how you're struggling with energy and making this work in your life.

Reese Spykerman:

And my point is it's exactly like what you were saying about your screenplay. I mean, basically came up with the golden girls and you did it by just listening to how do people really talk, and I think a lot of marketers get caught up in how they think they should sound, how they think people should talk, what they think people want to hear. No, go listen to what people are saying and spit it right back out in them using their support. That is resonant copy, positioning, copy and content, whatever. That's the stuff that I have always found working in my own career for my clients, for my own stuff. It's working now in the job I'm in. Do that.

Angie Colee:

Yes, you don't have to be the grandiose over the top world builder with completely new, original ideas that have never been heard before. If you are a good observer of life around you, if you know instinctively ooh, that's really good, ooh, that's really interesting, tell me more about that. You have the skill to draw out the things that people really connect with on a human level. Exactly, I think you hit the nail on the head. They think that this has to be the thing, that it has to be a certain way. They're overthinking it to an extent of like how do I reverse engineer how to meet this person? I get it. We all have to learn to think that way as business owners like how do I reverse engineer the distance between me and the person that I really want to help at the end? Because that's how I do business the person that I want to help, not the person that I'm trying to sell to. There's a completely different energy there if you look at it. You have to be able to think about how to build that bridge between you and them. But it starts by listening to them. Instead of sitting alone in your bubble trying to figure out what they think, just fucking ask them. Somebody's going to be honest with you and be like look, hard's on the table, this sucks, this sucks. This is my frustration with the industry. I've been burned by the last five people that I worked with. I hoped for this and I got that. All of that is marketing copy. That's your copy. That is positioning for you to learn how to be better and to differentiate yourself from others.

Angie Colee:

The funny thing is, it's easy to fall into the trap of thinking, okay, well, cool, I've listened to people's bad experiences and I'm going to build this differently. I'm going to show them I understand them by talking about all of the shitty things that other service providers do. Don't do that. Don't do that. Not only is it a cheap shot at the competition, but you never know when they're going to pivot. You never know. I just think it's just weak positioning in general to harp on somebody else's weaknesses instead of standing on your own strengths. That was a rant that I didn't anticipate coming out today. But there you go Stand on your own strengths, not what somebody else is doing wrong. You're going to build a hell of a lot stronger business.

Reese Spykerman:

Not only that, amen, but you also raise fucking objections when you do that, when you start saying X, y and D does things this way. You might think that you're talking about your competition, but you might be actually bringing in objections about the entire thing you're trying to sell, no matter who's selling. That we're not even thinking about until you raised it to them. You don't need to bring this stuff up to them.

Angie Colee:

Yeah, again you don't know what somebody else is thinking. Maybe they came to you full of positivity and energy and enthusiasm to get this thing done, and then you start talking about everything that's wrong with all the competitors and then they go. Oh, oh shit.

Reese Spykerman:

I didn't know about that. Maybe it can be doing this?

Angie Colee:

Yeah, do you do that too? That wasn't even a thing that I knew was happening in the industry, and you're the one that introduced the doubt into their mind. This is why we stand on our strengths. Answer objections as they come, don't poke at other people.

Reese Spykerman:

Oh my God, oh my God. Quote quote like turn it into a T-shirt. There are several T-shirts in this episode today.

Angie Colee:

There are a lot of T-shirts.

Reese Spykerman:

I think the most important T-shirt, though that we have not gotten to before with this whole shindig ends, is you and me. Both are like general menaces to polite society.

Angie Colee:

Yes.

Reese Spykerman:

I would like a T-shirt that says general menace to polite society.

Angie Colee:

Amen. Oh gosh, that's such a great point to wrap up on. I was laughing. Anybody that's been through my podcast process knows that I have this questionnaire and I don't necessarily ask all of the questions, but I built that into help people prepare, especially if they're not as comfortable with this casual conversation format. Some people, like I, can wing it with the best of them, but a lot of people can't. So this questionnaire that people fill out and I was reading the questionnaire before the show and I told Reese we got to work in this thing that you said that I thought was fucking brilliant, which was, I'm a general menace to polite society. That needs to happen somewhere. Reese so expertly brought it back in right at the end, coming in clutch, and I just feel that in my soul Like, yes, I'm here to fuck shit up, I'm here to make people uncomfortable with who I am and thereby doing the Marianne Williams thing, williamson thing, shine your light and give other people permission to shine their lights too. Yes, permission to kick ass in full effect.

Reese Spykerman:

Thank you for everything and also like this is why I love you. Like I don't do the podcast circuit really anymore. I don't need to with my business, but I came on here to spend time with you because of you being a general menace to polite society. Just like me, like you don't give a fuck, and neither do I, and we people who don't give a fuck need to find others who don't give a fuck.

Angie Colee:

Yes, we're raising the don't give a fuck army Love it.

Reese Spykerman:

Oh, there's another book in you, right there girl.

Angie Colee:

Yeah, I will. Is that not a book title? Yeah, the don't give a fuck army. Yeah, hell, yeah, I like this. Oh, I like this. So many ideas. Okay, before I start us off on our two of conversations because I could keep going forever with you please tell us a little bit more about how to keep in touch with you, how to learn more about you, because I have a feeling everybody's going to want to be your friend after this episode.

Reese Spykerman:

I don't want more friends, okay.

Angie Colee:

Well, so I was the last one. I got in under the deadline.

Reese Spykerman:

You did Well, I think, like even my Instagram's locked down, I don't want more friends. You could try to find me on Instagram and if you don't look like you're like only fans or something, I'd probably say yes, so that's Reese Spikerman at Instagram. So R E E S E S P Y K E R M A? N, you can also find me. I can hate LinkedIn, but go find me over there if you want. Is there? I would people do. These days I don't even know where people exist Usually LinkedIn, usually Instagram.

Angie Colee:

Send me an email, you can I still need an email.

Reese Spykerman:

You can send an email to support at designbyriececom. If you go to that website and you try to like load it, it won't work. I had a whole scamming fishing problem happen. So I found my site but I the email is still working. So if you want to like reach out and say, hey, that way, I actually do still like people and would like friends, so I don't buy, yeah.

Angie Colee:

The, the, the bark is tougher than the bite. I had a chance to meet and really get to know Reese in Florida earlier this year at an event and, like we didn't set out to meet each other, we were introduced by a mutual friend. Thank you for introducing me and Reese and just hit it off really, really well, and I'm so excited that the timing of this comes out on your birthday. It's just, it's so amazing.

Reese Spykerman:

Oh, my God, I'm a lucky girl. Thank you so much for having me. Yes, thank you. This has been like the conversation of the last six months. For me, this has been amazing.

Angie Colee:

That's all for now. If you want to keep that kick ass energy high, please take a minute to share this episode with someone that might need a high octane dose of you can do it. Don't forget to rate, review and subscribe to the permission to kick ass podcast on Apple podcast, spotify and wherever you stream your podcasts. I'm your host, angie Coley, and I'm here rooting for you. Thanks for listening and let's go kick some ass.