What If Being Funnier Is The Missing Ingredient To Converting More Customers? transcript

I have a guest that I've wanted to talk to you on this podcast for a very long time and there has um only been so much time in everybody schedules to make it happen but the time has now opened up and here we are making it happen it is me and my friend lyanna patch who you may know if you've been around the D Toc kind of space for a little bit of time she's been very involved with e-commerce fuel hosted some events uh and is active on Twitter X we don't know what to call it yet still I just called it X in our earlier conversation and we're still trying to figure out if that's right but you get the idea um lyanna is great and she is great particularly on an area that so few people are thinking seriously about in our space and that is words and copy actually expressing words in ways that are fun and interesting and creative and clever and sell products all at the same time which is a remarkable task lyanna is the best writer I know in our space and therefore I wanted to bring her on and talk to her about writing and about words and messaging which is something if you've been listening to my podcast watching my podcast you know I've been sort of on one about this recently thinking about the power of great messaging in your ads so let's not delay it anymore lyanna patch founder of punchline copy punchline conversion copywriting uh coming to you live tape recorded from Austin Texas let's go hi oh my gosh I this is one of those intros where I'm just going to clip it and like save it for a rainy day when I feel really bad about myself and also like text it to my mom to be like see I'm a real person person just because I don't have a job with like a big company you know she's finally stopped sending me articles about how to get a job 15 years do your parents uh think your job is fake is that a thing they used to they really used to and then I was like well I'm making more than you I know I know yeah it is funny it's like such a little nichy subculture kind of thing and it's not really that big of a world and nobody really knows what it is and it's like wait a minute you like I don't know but then sometimes I tell people I do stuff regarding with Facebook ads I always say sheepishly because I feel a little bit silly about that yeah but then but then people like oh that's like important and good in terms of making money now like everybody kind of understand you know I don't know people have weird reactions to it but do they immediately like try to introduce you to like their cousin's neighbor who just started making soap in their kitchen that does happen what about do you get that a lot uh I sometimes get that yeah it's like I'm gonna email someone I know is writing a fiction book and I'm G to connect to you and I'm like that's completely unrelated but I'm sure it's great probably not it's probably really bad not yeah yeah um if you want to connect me so that I'll like buy one copy of their book and then maybe that'll be the way that they never talk to me about it again like $10 to get out of the conversation oh yeah thanks I'll read it and that's it um you uh have Co I'm sorry to hear that thank you I can't smell anything but I you know I don't normally smell people through podcasts so I think we're okay there I say that because I just want the people to know you're playing through pay you're a champ here you didn't cancel on me like you came on and said you have Co but you just you're just like you're just in it for the grind and yeah I think that I think that show laying out an excuse so that you know if this podcast sucks it's it's not me it's gonna virus okay yeah it's not gonna suck it's gonna be great okay Lanna um there's a there's I'm not kidding in my intro like when I read your copy and when I when I uh see you I you I mean you you actually do some standup comedy as well right I used to yeah yeah right so you mean you've put real time and effort into how words communicate meaning and in your case a lot of that is also in uh in the realm of humor and thinking carefully about how that happens but but even something like stand-up comedy one thing I've noticed about stand up comedy for a while is that uh good stand-up comedy actually partly requires doing all of these things uh like like creating premises for people that they can latch on to otherwise your joke doesn't really work right there's an old interaction I'm actually I'm gonna ask you a question in a second here there's an old interaction On Studio 60 the Aaron sorin show okay so here's my question for you are you an Aaron sorin fan or hater like a fan from afar I love The West Wing yeah me too um uh Studio 60 is mostly a bad show but uh but there's a a great interaction where like a headwriter is explaining to a new writer this uh this idea of why his jokes aren't funny and his and he says like we're like a page and a half into your thing and and I don't know what I don't know what it's about and the idea is like and and so he says by the premise by the bit and so like I I think that's an interesting like as a starting point for this conversation in all kinds of things like I think people might look on you and if they don't understand what you are doing they think oh she's funny which is true but maybe misses a little bit of I think what makes you good which is that writing is even to be funny you have to accomplish other things and you are a much better writer than I am and so I'm going to stop talking now and ask you to react to that basic comment what actually makes good writing for people uh at the most Baseline kind of way whether it is funny or not or what else i' I've suggested something but I'm curious what you would say about that I think there's so many like lenses to come at that through but the one that comes to mind first is does it make you feel something right and I know we're probably going to touch on AI in this conversation and I just want to leave that there does it make you feel something you know whether it's good or bad probably you want it to be good probably you want it to be desire or some sort of pain depending on where you are what you're writing um but if it doesn't evoke emotion then like what are we all doing here yeah um do you have it do you work from that from that basic idea self-consciously like when you write are you are you thinking what am I making somebody feel right now yes and I ask brands that a lot I actually asked that in a discovery call this morning and no one has ever ask them how do you want your brand to make people feel they're like like I just want money like yeah I know let's make them feel things and then you can make money um yeah and I'm also coming at it from like a gun to the Head mentality like they could be doing anything else right now they're very skeptical of this marketing message because they see a thousand a day uh can we win them over as quickly as possible can we give them and even if I'm not using humor can we give them the message that they need um as quickly as possible respectfully in some ways whether that's a dick joke or not you know yeah yeah um so uh so what do you mean respectfully like uh sorry just I just I mean that um sometimes when people hear comedy copyrighting they think like circus clown uh and there are I I say this often there's a spectrum right so there's like uh corporate jargon over here like soulless chat gbt copy hint hint and then there's like Cards Against Humanity on this end and most brands are so afraid of being Cards Against Humanity that they're too afraid to step one step out into like friendly and wholesome and humor that doesn't hurt anyone but builds affiliation yeah do you have any feel for why brands are afraid of that because like I I mean I would just say like many if not most brands are pretty boring as as one of the core problems in their in their messaging um do you have just I bet you just deal with Brands thinking about this in your interactions much more than I do like they don't want to ask me this question but they probably want to ask you this question well I think it's a privilege to to be be able to be thinking about brand voice right like there's so many other things to fix first there's a lot of lower hanging fruit you can have a perfectly fine converting product page without ever considering voice um even if you just have regular Garden variety copy so it is kind of a privilege to be able to think about it um and then what was the first part of your question that I'm going off on a why do Brands uh why why are Brands boring is that what I asked something like that like why why are they afraid of afraid yeah yeah um they're afraid because there's risk inherent in in humor right um but you get to decide how much risk you want to take uh and how worth it the risk is to you right so Cards Against Humanity alienates 90% of their potential customers but that 10% that loves them will buy everything they make yeah yeah that's interesting uh that's really interesting do you apply that same premise to Brands then do basically I mean how much do you end up being a uh therapist for the founder and saying like it's okay when your Facebook comments are nasty that's actually good it means that the reaction to you know what I mean uh I I sometimes say that although I'm also a person who takes it personally I think I tweeted once like me to clients unsubscribes are great you're building a more engage place like me to myself you know I'm not sure if I'm allowed to curse on this podcast it's fine people are pro I mean if you're listening to this with your kids what you're what are you doing forget forget uh the cursing or not like your poor kids are going to be so bored by my podcast or your kid is like starting a Shopify instance behind your back and like starting to Lemonade right it's one of the two you either have the super entrepreneur kit which is probably like yeah some of them oh my God it's like a kid selling freeze-dried lemonade tablets that's the new Lemonade Stand isn't it did I just invent freeze-dried lemonade you did I did okay yeah and the idea that it like yeah that's really funny it's also a very like um it's also just a very like modern annoying way to look at something in the sense of like what if we took the adorable and sweet thing of children selling lemonade and we monetized it with a better product that you could sell at scale you know like yeah teach them they're only worth as much revenue as they can bring in that's a normal lesson to learn in childhood right right yeah yeah um go ahead I was going to say there is a there is a process of sort of not founder therapy but like ex exploration right Discovery like what do you as the brand owner think is funny what resonates with you and can we use pieces of that to create a brand sense of humor that not only like feels right for the brand but is something that you can carry on long after I've ridden off on my horse into the sunset yeah ridden off into my horse now well so so are Brands capable this is one of my big questions for you um do you have the kind of business where you become absolutely 100% unfireable for them and what I mean is like can Brands actually do what you just said which is take the foundation you built for them and then keep doing it like like I I have this big question right now about ad creative and I'm thinking about it through ad creative though this applies much more across the entire business than just outra of which is like can you actually teach people to think and communicate clearly with words and like like I was sort of hinting at earlier I think that's part of being funny and so I I think you you may be coming at this from the lines of humor a little bit more directly I'm I'm a really boring writer I like but I but my number one thing I try and do is be clear um and so I uh yeah anyway can you actually teach people to do this yes yes oh yeah there's so many I mean there's so many Great copyrighting Courses out there that are just like okay think about the order of the messaging now look at the line level and is every sentence clear and then can we go punch up things with specific imagery you know there's all these elements of good writing that have been codified for centuries right yeah um from the humor perspective you have to have that Foundation I think uh or it makes it easier to start thinking of where to put humor in because you're already thinking strategically and you're thinking about the reader's emotional Journey Through the copy like where are they anxious and where do we want to keep them anxious and where should we insert a joke to sort of like release the valve a little bit like if they're so anxious if you get somebody so keyed up with your copy like direct response style you know it's just like you're a terrible person unless you buy this thing and watch this 10-minute vssl and like you know here's the coupon box you're just like oh my God I'm tired I quit um so maybe we need like a little moment of levity there and that's a relationship Builder and it is a a it reduces visual fatigue on the page from like a a conversion standpoint like there's there's so many strategic ways to use humor um but it is easier to learn to be a good copywriter first and then to start thinking about U bringing humor into it uh so you and you and that is so you would just teach being a good copywriter through writing courses basically as the way to do it and and sort of help people learn the elements of what makes this work for people like how to communicate clearly is not an art it's a you know it's I mean probably an art too but it's like a science a little bit you know yeah and some people are you know start at a place of more of bigger gift than other people but you can definitely learn um and then I think some people will like plateau and other people will get really obsessed with it and start studying like the Linguistics of comedy and like the structure formula for jokes so that they can go all the way down the rabbit hole and those some people are Lanna yeah talking about uh you teach people this we should just talk about this right now because you're talking about teaching people these things so let I mean let's let's break this down I so again I'm kind of coming at this from the angle of I like here's a really specific example I I'm working on an ad account that came to me and I I really wasn't sure if we if my if AJF growth could make an impact at the creative level because previous because there have been a lot of AD stride before right like essentially I just I just sort of was assuming the reality that with so many I didn't really like them but I just there's so many ads tried before that I just thought like I just don't really know and surely some of these would hit surely the people working on these things weren't just like bad at this or whatever like but but like in our first round of ads we had at least one maybe not Mega Smash Hit winner but like moved the ad account forward and performed pretty well and it is like product image with a headline and the headline was carefully crafted like so so the point is the imagery and and video that sort of thing was not the thing doing the work like it is clearly the words doing the work in the ad it's very clearly um so like I looked at that and I went like gosh like people need to learn how to communicate words better you know they need to messaging is everything it's everything getting that right and even like all of your visual communication what you know imagery video all that stuff has to follow the logic of the words the words have to lay out like and so so anything you try to do any concept you try to create starts with ideation with starts with words but the thing that I'm really wrestling with is like if I am I telling people something that is actually like not helpful advice to them in the sense of like how do you actually in the sense that I'm not telling them how to do it so like what do you do when you're working with writers how do you structure your work to help them get better and yeah like tell me about it I'm curious like how you actually pull that out of people um well okay I think what we're we're talking about with like ad headlines is idation right the ability to come up with a million different ideas and this is going to be very unpopular advice but I actually tell people to take an improv class um okay I love this advice actually keep tell why do you say that yeah yeah I've always wanted to take an impr for for exactly this reason I've never done it you got to do it okay live it I live close enough to UCB to where I've thought about going there so should that would be really fun yeah it will change your life I think it will change your life we don't get I keep talking say more why no we don't like I'm I'm such an improv evangelist because like it's so fun and we don't get to have this kind of fun as adults and it feels illegal um but improv teaches you to ask questions like uh it teaches you to observe the situation from a bunch of different angles and ask questions like if this is happening then what else is happening you know and it and it allows you to sort of think like what else is in this world and so it's a great way to step inside the reader's brain and also to think about like what's something totally absurd that we could use here and that could be a great hook right because no one else is doing something that uh comes out of nowhere like that um so it's just it's like a part of your brain that learns to it's a muscle in your brain that gets exercised um when you start thinking about like the wh ifs um which makes you a better copywriter in terms of editing people's work um sometimes I'll do it all at once looking at messaging and comedy um but sometimes I'll just go through and look at like messaging order first so like if it's easier break it down into two sweeps um who is this uh why should they care or who's this for what is it who's it for why should they care all at once immediately right um what do we want them to do next is it presented clearly is you know if I close the tab and walk away is there an image that I'm going to remember and we sort of talked about this at the top of the call like if they have three sites for stainless steel cookware open in their browser uh and one of them has an amazing imagery or amazing image like um I don't know you set off the smoke alarm because your pan burst into flames or something like that and like we can hear the smoke alarm we can smell the fire we had to open the back door and the dog ran out like we're making the problem worse right but we're also describing this very Vivid scene we're flapping a dish towel at the uh ceiling um and then the other ones are just like it's a great pan yeah you should buy it like I'm gonna buy the one that made me think about that well here's what the here's what the ACT this would be the second example you gave there the bad example would be the Andrew Ferris copy and the Andrew Ferris copy would I can tell you exactly what it would say there what it would say would be um this pan has a higher smoke point than other pants and it would have a comparison chart and it would show you know and I don't even think that's a thing with pans like the pant it's probably not right yeah right but you get the idea like oil has a higher smoke point right exactly right but that but like you know that's what I would do to make that point and it's like a tremendously more boring thing ex but but at least it would be clear and this is always what I thought about myself like I'm not going to be the BL like I always think there's like there's a creative Next Level past what I can do for somebody and I think you're right that there's like a the privilege kind of element of it because I think you can get pretty far by being clear but then to take your Brands to another level and I think that's actually another sort of interesting idea here is like I'll just like put it in monetary terms I think to get your brand to to low eight figures you probably don't need lyanna like you can you can probably do it without that but I think to make your brand do really yeah sorry Le you worthless to those brands Just sh I mean I don't know you might be able to get there faster uh but probably like if you're you know you're trying to stay lean that that stage of DC business is really cash intensive it's like probably the time where you're going to be maybe a little more careful about that money that said um as Taylor holiday has talked about a lot recently as others like there are Brands who get that next level up like really climbing the eight figure thing and to do that they have to stand out and they have to be interesting and they have to have products that stand out and it's exactly what you just said which is like you move from here's what the smoke point is or whatever and here's the comparison chart of those two things to okay how do we actually make people feel like the difference in those pans and how do we make our brand have lasting imprints that's that's my feel for like kind of what you just described and and I actually think if Brands could do the smoke point comparison thing first at least right uh that will maybe help them build a foundation because there's at least clear ideas there right which is we have created a point of differentiation at which we are messaging and now what you're doing is taking that clear idea and saying like what if we actually made that clear idea interesting and not just clear you know that's what it feels like to me is what you're saying yeah um and I feel like there are so many brands that understand like they're not at Aid figures yet but they understand uh the vibe that they're trying to create like they understand the meaning of brand which is this sort of ineffable relationship that someone has with your company right but they're not quite sure how to get there and so they've invested in product photos and they've got the fancy Shopify site and you know they're they've got all their flows set up and they've checked all the boxes but they're still missing the sort of like Soul um or they have the soul and they're so frustrated because it's not coming through in the copy uh and that's that's where the words come in y'all yeah okay so so let's talk more about that like so again like how do you make the words do that how do you make them come in what like what's the starting point for that um for me it's again sort of getting curious uh about like hey let's just talk about the brand let's talk about why you started it let's talk about what's special let's read all the reviews and see if there's anything we can pull out like not just from a a copy swipe standpoint which is really helpful but like what are the things that we would never think to say about the brand that people are saying I remember I wrote for a period uh underwear company and everybody was describing it as magic and Wizardry but that wasn't in the copy yet and so I was like great this is just like a concept being served to us from the reviews so it's it's this um Discovery what did I do I I used it in some headline you know I basically pulled that piece of copy out put it in a headline in quotes and like let the customer do the work for me yeah which is the dirty secret of all copywriters you know we're just like voice of customer research we're just doing that yeah um did you did you I'm just C I mean did you like go off on a long magic and wizard like did you you know what I mean did you did did you turn that okay right not not on that page but I but usually when I find something like that if it's strong enough it's like hey this could be an idea for a campaign or a dedicated landing page you know sort of playfully using all of the the playfully World building right and that's something else you learn 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A okay so do you when you're teaching this sort of stuff what's the structure of the way you teach it you you don't just have like a buy my course right you do something beyond that um so there is there is the Evergreen course which is so nerdy it's so nerdy um the first section is like the psychology of humor what's happening in the brain and then we get like very nitty-gritty down into um joke formulas and Linguistics of funny but I also do a live cohort and currently it's once every two years I run this thing for six weeks so we're com how many people like ideally in the cohort 12 okay great yeah and we have eight and so far or we have are you pulling in okay okay great so go get those that's not very many spots are you pulling in um so you're teaching this specifically for humor right yes uh mostly it's for people who already write copy but they want to use humor strategically and they're afraid to do it in a way that alienates them alienates readers or loses Revenue right and so it's like I'm going to give you the understanding of what we're doing and the skills to do it so that you can feel confident in the choices that you make in the future and you can defend them when maybe a test goes wrong and someone's like why did we publish this it's like well I thought it would work because you know yeah yeah yeah um and do you uh okay so so how do you do it with them you you do you give them some course materials to start and then work through them yeah so it's like a I think KH Academy model um where they watch the videos on their own time and then we have weekly meetings and it's uh copy hot seats or just like let's talk about the material what questions do you have there's a slack community so we're just like what questions came up for you because there's so much there's so much to talk about right um and I want I want people to go in the direction that's most interesting to them because some parts of the course are like a grab bag like you can go down this Rabbit Hole what kind of stuff are there any themes that that tend to come up the most for people um that's a good question uh they they struggle with coming up with ideas always um and then sometimes they have an idea that's where they need improv right yes and there's so much improv stuff in the course um but sometimes like the actual joke construction is where people struggle and I it's it's funny that like it's not actually that hard you don't have to write a perfectly constructed like C Bear level joke in your copy you can have moments of levity that aren't even necessarily jokes and so there's looking at what kinds of levity to insert and wear um but then we do get into like how do we come up with jokes and we do a late night style Association um joke formula so it's like we take a headline we figure out what the most interesting parts of that headline are which are called the handles um and then we do word associations everything you associate with these handles and then we see do any of these associations sort of make us think of something more and that's probably where the joke is right and then you have your your draft joke and you refine it until it's tight yeah it's the whole thing and then you and then you get good from there at speeding up that process basically as you go yeah yeah it feels so weird when people start it feels like you can actually hear the gear sort of cranking in people's brains when they start to think about humor in this way um but then within a couple weeks it's like oh I'm starting to look for those associations just subconsciously yeah do um what how in what context do people end up applying this kind of work I'm curious like do they is this like does this go into email does this go into ads does it go into totally non D Toc stuff like what where is the where where do people end up uh going after after your course they go all over I tend to use a lot of landing pages and emails as examples because that's just mostly what I write um but we make memes that people can use on social media um yeah we talk about like concept level idation so like how do I come up with a fun campaign idea for a client oh have you thought about trying improv you know and they're like oh my God shut up about improv I can't I just can't do you do any improv now by the way oh my God I was supposed to go to my first improv class with a new teacher tonight and I can't yeah um but I'm really excited about it he was a he was the coach for my Duo team briefly and I think he's a genius so next week I'll be excited that's awesome yeah does I would I would assume Austin has like a good improv scene yeah tons of improv yeah yeah that's cool um yeah I um uh uh who's who's quick quick three great improv people that people can go chase down to watch if they've never watched or listened to any ire before um Ben Schwarz oh he's the he's the goat I love him so much I just saw him uh a couple weeks ago he came to Austin he fun he does like these like 200 seat theaters here in La where it's just like and he had like a residency with I went you know saw him in middle ditch at one point it's so oh midd yeah not one of the ones that made it to Netflix but like they did Largo with the cornet and yeah just I mean just so funny yeah I'm so jealous um okay bench fors John Rio for those who don't who don't John Rio um and then I don't know if you're watching Dropout lately I'm not oh my God okay go watch uh dropout.tv formerly I want to say it was college humor or Funny or Die one of those um they rebranded as Dropout all of their stuff is improv and it's like bringing improv to the masses Game Changer and make some noise are really hilarious great there some good plac riy is also really good yeah yeah uh have you have you this is going to I'm sorry this is the last thing listeners about this are are you a fan of Jess McKenna do you know Jess McKenna yes she does the Improv musicals podcast yes I don't I haven't listened to the podcast but I think she's been on Dropout she's probably she she's I first heard on Comedy Bang Bang and so the but oh my gosh I think she's so good I love musical improv I took a musical improv Workshop once and was just like this with me I do sing yeah awesome I didn't know that right now that's great okay um so let's ask a totally related question with improv does being funny sell stuff does it actually make a difference in your Brand's ability to generate dollars we talked about that earlier yes yes um next question all right move on yeah um there's so many reasons okay the because okay there's so many reasons I get so excited about this um one of the reasons is that humor boosts information call so if you make a joke either before or after you present an important piece of information people are more likely to remember it we've talked about how it alleviates anxiety so if people are like worried about a thing like oh I don't know I don't want to give my credit card to this website like it's okay we're just going to steal your credit card info and you know become you uh and they're like wait that's not oh okay a person is here you know maybe don't go that Direction with it um yeah like 10 10 squirrels are standing by to steal your data I yeah yeah yeah yeah no I see what you're saying you're it's it's something that becomes the most valuable part of uh someone's relationship with the brand because they expect to be entertained by you and it makes that relationship um more uh damage proof like if you mess up and you have already established that you're like a fun brand and people like you and you send an oops email you're going to get fewer people being like I hate this unsubscribe or like I want to return like um everywhere in your funnel if if you're using humor strategically to to make people feel comfortable to alleviate objections to build that relationship it can reduce returns uh it can make people nicer to your customer support staff uh yeah it can make them more likely to go through with the purchase it can make them more likely to buy from the abandoned cart email like it's all about where do we need that and where is it probably getting in the way of conversion yeah and I think like in the highly tactical world that I live in um it can sometimes sound like the pathway to making money for Brands is just getting all the tactics right uh and like if you just do all of these little things and and and that can kind of make it sound easy and what I what I have noticed for some Brands I've worked with that are actually newer and struggling to get real traction is that like part of the problem for them H part of the problem maybe the design of their p&l like right that is like don't have enough margin or they there's like all of these kind of Baseline Financial considerations that are real in a business of course um but but there's another thing that I see sometimes happen which is like people enter a crowded space and then they're just like of course my ads should work and like and they haven't like done anything to make their brand actually stand out or be interesting or whatever and when I think of the kind of things you're describing as as as you're going through that list of different ways they make money what like that that the thread that ties it together that I see is like just actually just being in interesting gets you pretty far as a brand it allows you to do a lot more stuff it makes it makes you makes you just that much more memorable and and for some Brands interesting is not going to necessarily be funny right like that's like like probably not the right thing for some Brands yeah unfortunately yeah yeah they probably could use it some but like just uh just not as the main thing but then of course everybody can think of the you know Chubbies of the world or whoever where it's just like everything they do is a is a joke everything everything and um and there is that is a real way to build a brand it's a real way to go and say like I'm we're going to make sure that we are relentlessly interesting to people and that will then make its way down into the execution of any individual ad or whatever and then of course you want to support that with the right media buying principles and p&l design and all that stuff but like yeah I I think I think that's uh so much of it is that this this is a pathway for Brands to um to be memorable which is just to be funny and it's it's and it's pretty hard to make a brand memorable so like you like like finding a real way to do that could make a difference yeah and like what's the way that we can be funny that isn't just what everybody else is doing to be funny because you know Chubbies was one of the I I don't want to say one of the first but like maybe one of the first DTC Brands to blow up that was using humor so uh aggressively and now everyone's doing it right so it's like we're not just doing what they're doing we're doing something that's still connected to who we want to be as a brand and that's still I hate to say authentic but that still feels auth no but but see at the time authentic is the right word though I know it is an annoying word but at it at at the time there was not obviously another chubbies in the same way where it was like frat humor um taken to a sort of extreme silly level it works really well visually on the internet like and uh and so that's that's just like that really did stand out it was unique to them it was authentic to them in a way that was good now if you try and go do the same thing again everybody's going to say you're knockoff Chubbies so like the point's not to go be Chubbies like it's but it there's there's just there is something to that idea that like if you want to actually create memorability it comes before the execution of individ any individual ad it comes at the level of doing interesting things as a brand uh yeah more broadly and like what are people on your team watching and laughing at and how can you bring more of their personalities into the brand like if they're you know if they're not not just like a temporary worker they're going to be with you for a while like the I don't know we're all interested in the people behind the brand right we all kind of want to know um something I've noticed actually is that as companies get bigger they they Tamp down the humor they start removing it all like I don't know it's the eight figure Mark but they they start like oh we're we're now afraid to be Chubbies like Chubbies has pulled back I think a lot yeah I'm sure yeah yeah yeah now you you have to be serious now right cuz now you're now you're not just like some friends who started a business who are screwing around you know now or whatever right and I think yeah that's wrong I think I think it's wrong sad it's like a friend dying I don't know if it's that sad but it is a little having with a pair of shorts over here you really like Brands LNA I do I really do yeah yeah um okay uh there's a lot more I want to say about this I I'm I think this is a very interesting I think the thing I'm landing on is just this idea that like there's a real Pathway to being interesting here and that you you know yeah and it's it's just hard it's really hard for Brands to actually do that I I deal with Brands all the time who like they're trying to sell their product they trying to figure out and and the idea that that would be one Pathway to make your brand stand out I think is um something more brands should explore is to add some elements of that in a way that's appropriate for their brand go ahead I was going to say it's it's possible that you're too close to it right I was talking to a software company owner a month ago or so and uh he just casually mentioned that like the company I was like why is the company named this and I won't name them because I haven't got got permission to talk about it but you'll probably be able to figure this out um he was like oh the company's kind of named after this you know character from fron kof because metamorphosis and I was like excuse me what like there's 50 Tools in your space and it's a free tool it's like a free premium tool um so everyone like Googles picks him randomly then picks somebody else the next time there's no loyalty and I was like but there could be loyalty if we talked about this and if we had a little cockroach mascot you know his name was Gregor and he likeit your inbox with your file you know like scurrying into your inbox with your converted file uh like there are there are things you have the idea there you already have the husk of the idea right you're saying like right but he can't see it because it's like it's just his brand he's been running it for years so it's like sometimes you need somebody to come in and be like hey why is that that way or why did you choose to make this uh and then all of a sudden there's a fun story to tell did you ever watch the cartoon The Adult Swim cartoon home movies no okay okay there's a really good episode of that show where they do where some like fourth graders make a rock opera about the metamorphosis and it's great anyway that's all um the um yeah okay I actually want to to go to another place more tactical and specific which is down to the level of actual writing which is um AI you mentioned it earlier oh yeah it's another thing I've been thinking a lot about recently um AI is bad or good Lanna go uh AI is bad in that it's stealing from creators and devaluing creator work AI is good in that it's democratizing the ability to write in some ways and also ruining it in other ways if you're like a nth grader who's never written an essay yeah um yeah uh in terms of AI for e-commerce um a lot of people have said like oh I just don't hire copywriters anymore I just have chat gbt or Claude do it there's some people who go really hard on that um and I think it's going to get you to like 70 to 80% of what you need if your copy was garbage or you were just using like the manufacturing copy that came with your drop shipped product you know that's like written in China uh then chat GPT will get you to 80% good um but it literally can't be original it can only pull from what's out there as we know uh and I just read this New York Times article that is I I encourage everyone to go read it's an author of fiction author named Curtis sittenfeld and she goes toe-to-toe with chat GPT to write a beach read like a fun summer story right they get the same prompts she writes her story and it's like hey can you tell the difference between what Curtis sittenfeld wrote and Chad gbt and within literally just the title I could tell the difference because she has the the ability and the wisdom to play with the syntax of the title in a way that chat gbt just can't do because it hasn't seen anybody put the word probably in the wrong place in the sentence and then the rest of it just goes on and on and she pulls from these specific human experiences that chat GPT will try its [ __ ] best to come up with and it will it will just pale in comparison to what it's like to actually be a human on this planet yeah so I'll link I'll link the article uh I just found it and so I I'll link it um I think the notion of like we just talked a lot about humor can make you interesting um and it's almost sounds like what you're saying is like uh chat GPT won't do that very well yet uh it actually it actually will run up again if that's what you're trying to accomplish is to stand out and be interesting it's G to be really hard to do that there um that is very much my experience with with these tools though I am trying to also figure out where they work like tools like things that create leverage uh for for my ability to Output are you finding any of those sometimes if you have something to start with and you can say like hey analyze the style of this email for me and then write another email in that style that's a great place to start but I wouldn't start with it as like generative you know I would say use it for its analytical capabilities and it's mimickry but don't use it for coming up with the ideas which I think we've all heard before um yeah we didn't discuss this but I'm I'm heartened to hear you say that this is my conclusion after spending a lot of time with it over the last couple weeks yeah I and like I use it um I use it and I'll say like maybe one out of every 20 things that it gives me turns into something like there's something in you I'm like hey give me 20 headlines for this product and it's like garbage garbage garbage H garbage garbage garbage and I take the the one that made me go and I'm like well it's not it's not exactly the right order and it needs another word and so I still have to tweak it um but when it when you ask it to just write a joke it'll give you a dad joke or it'll give you something in the shape of a joke and then you think about it it's like there's nothing in there yeah right this is this is this is funny I I'm uh the time this comes out I will have just released some some sort of early Reflections on AI and I purposefully released it as like a time capsule like I think it's possible that I will go back in a year and that I will sound ridiculous like that like you know same and it might might be because the it might be because I get better at the tools it might because the tools get better I'm not sure but um but this is definitely my experience and there's another thing I found which is that the actual struggle of writing is itself part of what's productive about the process um and so so having chat GPT or Claude solve it for you even if it could do it better would have sort of a hidden cost in the uh in the in the actual work uh involved with uh with creating with putting ideas to paper right and um and that when so what you just described about like 20 headlines take one and turn it into something that I have found to be somewhat useful like but then it still is like it's just a kind of a way to get me outside of my own little like brain cycle um and maybe come up with something new which that is it's a nice tool for that I think but it's still part of a process that requires a kind of more significant effort as long as the task is not a truly repetitive writing task you can tell chat GP to write as me um and it will give you the most obnoxious uh like pey insane like rodeo clown version of copy um but doesn't know where to edit right so I asked it I said like your copywriter Leanna patch you're known for writing funny copy that converts blah blah blah write this thing and it was like howdy partner you know we're gonna have more fun than a unicorn at a disco party and I was like unicorn at a disco is actually pretty good but party ruins it and it's like listening to the Cadence of the line it just it it can't do that for now yeah right now and that's such a good example is that a real example that's a real example yeah yeah unicorn at a disco is an idea but it's but it's it's what you just described earlier which is it's not actually quite a joke yet no you know it's like there's something missing from it you could probably tell me better but like Yeah well yeah okay so it's it's good because it's a funny image and it's unusual words and the words are unusual because they have what is called linguistic entropy which is a combination of letters that doesn't often appear in English uh so like you know rasat Taz is is an example of a word with high linguistic entropy because it's like we never see a lot of Z's in a word um but yeah it's like it's it can't listen for the the flow unicorn at a disco and yeah it's like well can we take this image further no it would just totally go off the rails describing the Unicorn at the Disco yeah yeah yeah interesting um okay so you are using it some for some little get outside your brain cycle ideas um yeah uh and you have concerns about stealing people to work which I think is good um um anything else you want to say about Ai and writing I mean I started feeling much worse about it when it was like Hey every chat gbt search uses 10 times as much electricity as a Google Search and I was like oh no everything is bad we can't have anything yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah today that that's the kind of problem that will get solved over time but yeah um I do think so yeah I think this markets are really good at solving problems like that in my view we may we may have different worldview on that but yeah uh I don't know um anyway that's for our follow-up podcast yeah definitely that's for our follow-up podcast which is like uh the climate change show with me and Le yeah and I send my AI Avatar to be on the show yeah yeah um okay uh this is helpful this is a helpful conversation um we should wrap it up is there anything else that we didn't talk about with writing D Toc things that you just think most D Toc operators Founders can and should know that we didn't get to if not that's okay but we we didn't get to uh looking at the parts of your tools that you just flipped on and ran with and I talk about this a lot because I think it's such a low hanging fruit like in Shopify and clavio those like abandoned cart emails or whatever they are I would say like a huge a surprisingly huge proportion of Brands just turn those on and never think about them again um especially like order confirmation emails but if especially if you've given attention to the front part of the brand and you get somebody in the door and they spend money with you and then you just sort of like flop them into this wet lame like your order is on the way thank you for shopping with us like it feels so lame and it kills your uh retention right so think about parts of the funnel where you can go add some fun and human even if they're postp purchase those are famously like 95% open rates too like everybody opens their order and shipping confirmation emails and so it's like it's like a really surprising High leverage way to do something interesting yes and and everybody for a while was doing the CD Baby CD Baby version do you remember that confirmation email uh is it the is it the one where it's like we're all excited and so this person packed your order stuff yes we the CD off a shelf and put it on a velvet pillow and everybody applauded and we rang a bell and we took the rest of the day off like everyone's done that version but like can you do something else like that that's the version for your brand yeah yeah yeah yeah that's great um I think that's a that's a really good highly tactical point which is like yeah go that's there is those do have such high open rates that there's like a good opportunity to to make a good impression there yeah because you will get people's attention surprising um yes that's great uh anything else any any of this any other like lyanna patch uh toolbox tiny tactical tips um the tpts uh I don't know try a new sender name mix it up a little bit try uh try not sending from the brand the founder at the brand and uh send something that looks like plain text and we all know that it's not but like if you always send image Forward Design heavy emails try sending plain text and if you always send plain text send an image uh okay great sender name plain text keep going what other what other I love this rap and fire what are there other places that you could think of that are like people are it's just like simple small things you could do that have a big um this is random but uh something I've seen is like hiding something funny or interesting in the last image of a carousel on a product page and or using that as like bullet points yeah but like if they swipe all the way through be like you made it here's the cat wearing a top hat you know like we did it that's really that's really good yeah what else um o ctas can you make a CTA more fun to click one of the best emails that I've seen recently was super interactive I like to think of it as like how can we play 4D in box chess like how how what if this weren't an email what If This Were a video game or what If This Were A an art experience or uh an interactive card game or something I saw an email from Disney that was like you know click to turn over one of these playing cards and they flip and then you would like take them to a landing page based on if they click the right one or something uh yeah there's there's some brands that are doing fun things in emails but like what if it's not just an email you know yeah impro I think sort of P there's some of that sort of pattern Interruption right just like you're so used to seeing shop now on a CTA that's like what if you did I mean the idea I just had as you're talking is like what if you just made a CTA that was gigantic that was just like a paragraph of I mean it would probably not look like a CTA anymore you'd have to figure out how to still make it read as a CTA but like yeah if it was just like three you know a sentence long like if you click this you will get to take to the next page which will have all the information you need and also you know we your money from you whatever like uh something something like obvious that's very top of my head but like as you're talking that's what I'm thinking like do little things that are sort of little pattern Interruption things like that do you want do you want to re-record this whole podcast and I can talk about like all the fun things to do in emails yes yeah I do uh and by that what I mean is uh let's schedule another one and we'll do like it'll just be like like lyanna patch pure comedy tactics just like that's that'll be the whole thing great yeah because there's I literally have a talk about this um about fun stuff okay great okay I'm going to the moment we hang up oh my God make sure you subscribe to this podcast we are going to do another one and it will be I mean not right now probably probably I have to pick up my kids so they probably won't like that if I tell them Daddy was recording an important podcast and then they're like I work from home sorry on yeah no because that woman said the f word yeah remember so if you would yeah yeah um yeah okay um uh this is great we're gonna do another one about this it's GNA be all tactics next time no conceptual anything we were not allowed to talk about the concepts behind the tactics at all no improv yeah yeah um okay thank you lyanna people should go sign up for your cohort they should go do it right now they should stop what they're doing and sign up and make their brands more interesting by being better writers or have somebody on their team go and do that they should go do that at punchline copy.com CC for conversion comedy great uh punchline copy.com CC the link of course is in the show notes I have no referral fee on this by the way I'm absolutely not skimming some off the top no we can't no we can't okay no yeah great um just I just always I mean I do pro it's probably worth me saying that because there's a lot of Shilling that happens and so I try to be really clear anytime I'm chilling um x.com twitter.com copy punchline copy uh is the way place to follow lyanna on Twitter I believe I have said your name right every time in this episode as I was corrected from being calling you lyanna earlier yes sorry again about that it's okay I've moved your name in my notebook from the left hand page to the right hand so nothing bad will happen yeah it feels good um okay uh thank you so much L I appreciate it thank you Andrew it was so much fun the moment we hung up this uh call well I guess stopped recording this interview I told lyanna that I think that she is in a very small group of people in the DC space who has truly unique insight into writing and thinking and creative I just love what she has to offer so go sign up for her course go check out her stuff uh and go follow her on X right now all the links are in the show notes and as promised there uh pretty much immediately after we finished recording we found some more time on our schedules to record a followup where it's just going to be pure fun tactical stuff like we did at the end there um and get really in the weeds of just places to go inject humor into your business so go do that subscribe of course wherever you're watching or listening to this show as well so you don't miss that future episode I have so many good episodes coming up holy cow uh I've got ashon Milani coming up soon from obvy I've got some more solo episodes on some stuff that you're going to be really interested and I have uh very very soon here a Throwdown uh with build allisandro and Drew Fallon talking about Revenue based financing and what kind of loans you should take really good stuff subscribe to all of it and don't forget to visit ajg.com to look at everything that I am doing and uh if you want to work with me you can um fill out a form there to do that there's and sign up for my newsletter uh in my email capture there so thanks so much that's it you know how to do all that stuff I'll talk to you next time [Music]