Professionalism is Killing Your Brand: Here's the Cure

Why Professionalism Doesn’t Mean Being Boring

Dave Harland: Thanks so much. What an intro. That’s ace. And yet there’s the whole thing about Scrabble. Me knowing loads of words, vocabulary is not amazing. I just know where to put all the small words. And that means everything in Scrabble.

Louis: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You’re this kind of guy who would just like to make them feel like, you know, they are just average. But you’re not clearly from your copy, from the way you, you write, from everything, you’re far from being average, man. So anyway, enough compliments. Fuck that. There’s something that we both agree on that I love for you to talk about a bit more. And it’s something that, you know, if we go to your LinkedIn profile or if you just come across your work, it’s clearly not your usual like, behavior of a marketing copywriting professional who’s selling services to brands who are so well established. In other words, some people might call you not professional and down like rude or whatever else. So I love to know, how do you interpret that? How do you explain that professionalism doesn’t necessarily mean wearing a three piece suit and talking like a British lord.

Dave Harland: Yeah, it doesn’t. I get that quite a bit. Like, you know, Dave, you’re so unprofessional in your approach. Or you’re not like, you don’t, you don’t kind of follow this, the same old ways of doing your marketing and your stuff. And yeah, I always come back and say professionalism doesn’t have to be all like, you Say like a British lord doesn’t have to be really corporate and buzzword heavy and really forced. Professionalism can be exactly how I like to do things, which is just a lot of the time just being nice and normal and honest and open and simple in the way I talk about things, like forever. Whenever I go into a shoe shop, the one thing I hate is when someone comes over to you and goes, hi, can I just. It’s like, leave me alone, get away from me. Like, I’m, I’m doing this in my own, in my own time. And I think like in life I’ve always kind of preferred, preferred taking my own time over, over kind of buying decisions. And you know, obviously there’s those little impulse things where you’re like, fuck, I’ve got to have that, like right away. But yeah, whenever I’ve signed up to anything or whatever, I’ve kind of followed a brand or anything like that, it’s because they’ve entertained me first or they’ve made me smile or they’ve, they’ve given me something first rather than asking for some random sale. And yeah, I find that that’s. It feels most comfortable to me because I’m not, you know, I’m not a marketer and I’ve kind of grown into that. My background was journalism, so I know how to tell stories. Yeah, I know how to tell stories and I want to write a headline and I’ve kind of learned how to persuade, which is the copyright inside of it. But like your traditional market and all of that, you know, marketing terminology about, you know, attribution, I don’t know any of the lingo. I’ve just kind of, just kind of found it as I, as I’ve gone and by asking a load of really smart people out there, that’s what I

The Evolution from Corporate Speak to Authenticity

Louis: want you to know. It’s like you didn’t arrive in this world knowing all of this. Right. So was there when you started your career, did you act like you think like you thought you should have acted, like, you know, like being a professional, wearing suits, being super proper and not so honest about what you’re thinking, like, what was the journey? Like that?

Dave Harland: Yeah, I think if I was to look back at, you know, emails I used to send when I first graduated, like my first job was a football writer work for the Premier League website, doing football reports and stuff. And if I was to look back at some of the emails I’d be sending, even like to get the job, it would be like, you know, dear such and such. And at the End, I’d probably write many thanks, like, now. I just don’t do that. Every email starts higher and at the end it’s always cheers and it’s just, it’s just me now. Whereas, like, yeah, back then it was just that. It’s like that what you taught in school, isn’t it? Like, you must write professionally. This is the way to write. You must always, you know, structure things. Almost like you’re writing to, you know, your kids, headmaster at school, you’re trying to impress them by using all of these big words. Whereas the moment you actually get into the actual copywriting, get into the weeds, it’s like getting the message across, Communicating the message as simply and as quickly as possible is, like, paramount. And, and all of the other stuff is, yeah, by the wayside. Taken. Taken a while, admittedly, to find my natural voice. So, like, the funny stuff that I’ll. I’ll try and put out on LinkedIn, even say like, six, seven years ago when I, When I really moved over and started doing most of my, my marketing and my, My lead gen on LinkedIn, it was certainly wasn’t like formal or anything, but it was, it was nowhere near my. The voice that I put out today, that’s taken time. And I say that to people when they get in touch. You go, oh, you’ve got, you know, such as followers and, you know, craft my voice, you know, if you got any quick wins. And I’m like, you should post every day for the next five years. It’ll come, you’ll find it, you know, so. So, yeah, there’s a stark difference between how I used to be and how I am now. And I was in House for 10 years before going for. Before going freelance in 2016. And those 10 years, even though fun and being a little bit daft, has always been, it’s always been there. It was a little bit kind of sheltered when, yeah. When I was in house, when I was more fearful of losing my job for perhaps, you know, speaking my mind in a meeting because I wanted to appease the marketing director than anything else, really. Whereas now I run my own. I am, you know, I’m freelance, got my own agency, basically say whatever the fuck I want because.

The Strategic Risk of Being Yourself

Louis: Yeah, but some would argue that it’s, you know, you can say whatever the fuck you want, but then what if those brands, those people working for those big brands read you and feel offended and therefore don’t work with you? Right. The risk is also quite high.

Dave Harland: Yeah. But equally, I’ve set out from the outset to really only purposefully want to work with brands and the people at those brands who are comfortable with maybe me swearing, maybe not in the first interview to the CEO or maybe, maybe, but two or two or three emails in or when we’re on the first call straight away, as soon as they hear me, they’ll know. They’ll know that I’m not going to be using any buzzwords. They’ll know I’m going to be speaking to them straight. And it’s like, if they’ve got an issue with that in meeting one, it’s going to be a fucking nightmare working with me once we get further down the line, because I’m just going to be honest and I’m going to be trying all these different ways of bringing out their personality, which don’t. I mean, I know that’s the kind of thing I do on social, like all in on the funny. It’s when I’m working with clients, it’s probably only like 40%, like, want me to do funny stuff for them. The others are just like, we just need to be a bit clearer or we just need to use, you know, get our, get our real authentic personality out. So.

Louis: So that’s something that is very important to unpack here, what you just said. And then I want to go back to something about your journey. But first, what you said here about you, you went all in with the funny on LinkedIn, so it’s clearly like a legion strategy. You purposefully like all in onto that. So you would. When you get a message from a scammer, like someone you know is like fake profile or whatever, you entertain them, you take screenshots, it’s. It’s fucking hilarious. But that’s not the. You lead with this, right? So it’s kind of your beach head, your. Whatever you want to call it, right? You lead with this. So people know you thought that first, but then when they start working with you, it’s not just that, right? So it’s also help us make that clearer, help us make it make sense, help us explain it so people understand and stuff like that. So I’m repeating that because for folks listening, I know this is a big issue where they are afraid of being pigeonholed into a specific skill set, discipline, sector, industry, category, whatever you want to call it. And they are afraid that their entire identity is going to wrap around that single thing. They are afraid that their brain is going to shrink because that’s the only thing they do. And so, like, you know, and I think it’s a good example of what you described. The fact that. No, it’s not about just picking one thing, it’s just you start with one thing, right? Do you agree with this? Do you disagree? Like what’s, do you see it this way?

Leading with Humor Without Being Pigeonholed

Dave Harland: Yeah, 100%. I mean it’s the strategy I’ve gone with be known, be the go to person for funny copy. That’s the reason I put out 19 and 20 posts. I stick on LinkedIn or either, you know, sarcasm or parody or piss take or.

Louis: That’s unfamiliar.

Dave Harland: It’s made. It’s very rarely that I’ll ever. I mean I never asked for the sale. My call to action is always, do you want more like this join me newsletter? That’s all it ever is really. Because I know back to what I said about that salesperson in the shop, I’m like, I’m not going for the sale. It’s just not, it’s just not, not what I’m comfortable with. It’s not what I feel, I feel right doing. Not that I’ve really had anything to sell. I’ve just opened the agency copy or die. The back end of last year. I will be asking for the sale. Like we have website isn’t 100 launch yet. We just got a few tweaks but it should be, should be launched next week and I’ll be saying like if you ever, if you ever wanted to work with me, I’m open for business now. Now’s the time, like fill in a form. I will actually be inviting people to do it. So. But yeah, back to what you’re saying. Yeah, definitely purposefully going all in on the funny and I don’t mind being, being known for that because the way to grab attention and be remembered and once we do have that first meeting so like it’s, it’s like, like I said before, only 40. I’d say of the jobs they want me to work on stuff that’s humorous. The rest is, is more clarity and you know, more often than not it’s hi Dave. You know, we’re just a bit boring. Can you bring our personality out? They’re not expecting me to go, you know, all guns blazing with a load of, you know, finally. Yeah, yeah. No, I mean the other way like finely tuned like jokes and puns and like over the top shit. Which a lot of the time just getting there, just like putting contractions in instead saying, you know, we will. You say wheel. It’s like the simplest, the simplest little tweak in the book just, just gets the humanity across a Little bit more. And sometimes that’s. Yeah, that’s all it takes.

Louis: I love that man. I like the fact that it’s intentional, which goes back to the journey and what I wanted to ask, like, can you pinpoint a specific event, a specific thing, specific story, something that happened that led you more to this all in funny kind of strategy versus more of a average. Like yet another professional in the space who’s just saying best regards at the end of every email. Like, was there some specific moment in time where things change or was it more of an evolution?

The COVID Turning Point - Going All In on Funny

Dave Harland: I think in terms of the all in on the funny, I’d say the start of the COVID pandemic really hit home for me when quite rightfully a lot of people were panicking about, you know, massive changes in the way they work. You’re getting shifted, know, to work from home. The, you know, people were worrying about their, you know, vulnerable family members who would and you know, deaths shooting off left, right and center. So the kind of general consensus and the mood everywhere was pretty bleak. And then, you know, you had on A1 and I was getting emails from CEOs of businesses that I hadn’t done business with for eight years saying hi Dave, or hi Mr. Harland at this time we really cared about you. And it was just so insincere. And I was like, like straight away it was just parody worthy. I was just rewriting or just slate in them and saying this is not how you do market. And so I first thought, right, I’ll just do yeah, some parodies of these or explain almost like explainers. This is not the way to do it. But then of course you had like government slogans come out with like, you know, I can’t even remember the worst one. One of them had control the virus in the middle of it. It was just the worst bit of it. Like what does that even mean, control the virus? Like how you gonna give me a net, get it out the window? Like, it was, it was nuts. Some of the, some of the government communications was, was insane. My favorite one was when Pretty Patel, who was the home secretary at the time, came on national telly and said that shoplifting was down 90 on, on the previous year. It’s like, no, no, no wonder all the shops are short, you lunatic. Like the maddest, the maddest communication things going on. So at that time it wasn’t really a strategic decision at that time to go to do funny stuff now. It was more for a mix of sanity and also my own sanity. Just thinking right how am I going to keep my mood light? But also, yeah, I just started just taking the piss a bit more really? And being less. Yeah, less, less caring about. Like prior to that I was putting out, you know, your classic listicles. Never, like 10 ways to do this. They always had a little bit of weirdness to them, but never, yeah, never. From the kind of start of the pandemic, I probably have my, yeah, my, my most successful year during those three months that everyone was locked down. The first the leads flooded in. It was nuts. And I was like, oh, I’ve it on something here, like let’s do more of that. And I wasn’t getting, you know, Rodrick from, you know, dreary IT Solutions asking me to write a case study anymore. It was like household brand. This is really funny, Dave. Can you help us do stuff like this? And I was like, bang, there’s the reason to do more of that and lean more into it.

Louis: Great. I’m glad I asked because I could feel that there was something there. There’s always a turning point, right? Do you think the influx of leads coming through was primarily because of the new angle you had picked as a, as a reaction to what was happening? Or was it also because the demand was sky high, like everyone was staying at home and so people were taking courses and fucking improving what they had. And like, online was like everything was thinking online. Or was it a bit of both?

Dave Harland: I think a bit of both. Yeah. I’ll attribute it to my change of approach to make me sound all smart, but it was probably.

Louis: Sorry to bring you down.

Dave Harland: Yeah, yeah, it’s probably. No, that was just the thing that, you know, inspired me to go all in on the funny. I think it was probably a bit of both. You know, people were never had their dickhead boss over their shoulder, so they could probably be on LinkedIn a little bit more and they were maybe, you know, discovering all of these new people that they’d never connected to before. And I went from like probably 5,000 followers to 25,000 in that three month period on LinkedIn which, you know, as anyone who gets past like 10,000, 15,000, the reach then of your post kind of goes. And that’s when you start going, I’ll like commenting on me posts on LinkedIn is almost like a part time job at that point. So yeah, it was a bit of both. More people, yeah. Doing courses and stuff and yeah, my reach kind of growing as well just because I’d had that kind of influx of followers and just yet because most people on There were still doing what they’d always done, which is really boring stuff, talking about themselves, which I’d never ever done. And I just think more people were seeing me doing slightly different stuff that they were used to and going, oh yeah, I’ll have more of that.

Louis: So let’s go to a more practical, applicable topic for folks listening, right? And because at the start of this episode I said how to find where to find the funny, which is your words. Like I’m dumb, right? I just use guess words and then I make, I just mash them up. So how to find things that are funny and how to write about it. Right now, the. I don’t think the aim is to turn every folks listening into a copywriter, but it’s more in term of how can they get the courage to try things that might seem counterintuitive. You started to mention a few, like about clarity, about contractions, about, you know, jokes, you know, even if you’re a fucking. How do you call them? The places where you’re. When you’re dead, you go to. And then you go in a coffin and then you go to a cemetery. What’s the name of those before?

Dave Harland: A funeral home.

Louis: Yes, that’s one. Yeah. Right. Anyway, so okay, long, long winded intro to this. But when folks, let’s say, you know, solopreneurs, consultant, agency owners, small business owners, whatever, you know, ask you, okay, I want to be. I want to, you know, do something, write something that makes more sense for my people, but also want to try to, yeah, be a bit funnier or at least be more myself. Where do you start?

Finding Your Personality and Knowing If You’re Funny

Dave Harland: Two areas, really. The first one is I’ll make sure that they have actually got a personality and they are actually like genuinely a little bit funny. Certainly the one man bands, I’m talking kind of entrepreneurs here, who asked me to do that. So my first bit of advice is don’t try and go all funny if you’re not actually funny and you haven’t actually got a personality. If you are quite boring and techie in real life and you try and force funny, it will quickly become apparent when you pick up the phone or when you start replying to emails in your actual tone that I haven’t written for you. And they’re really dry, so forcing it is probably the bad way to go. I mean, I can certainly run them through some ways of bringing out their actual personality. I do a tone of voice workshop and I do one to ones with people where I delve into what their actual personality is like and we look at different ways of doing that, which is I’ll get onto in a sec. But I’ll usually know in that first meeting or the first email, you know, or the moment we start delving into that personality or tone, whether they’ve actually got something and they can really kind of run with it authentically on their own. And then the second part is key. Like, it’s like you’re just doing it for you or will your audience kind of take to it? Because if your audience hasn’t got an appetite for humor, it’s like, what are you doing it for? It’s point. It’s pointless. And I quite a lot I ask just some simple questions or I’ll ask them to ask their customers or do a survey or something, or just put a poll out, saying like, you know, which of these comedians would you sooner go and see? Stand up and make them as different as possible. Make it like, you know, Jerry Seinfeld all the way to, like, what’s his name, the Scottish guy? Frankie Boyle. So like household name, kind of observational. Or Peter K. All the way to, you know, really Jerry Sadowitz or someone a little bit wacky or something. Maybe tell a couple of jokes or even do a little bit of testing, some really light testing with a little bit of humor within, you know, an email subject line just to gauge whether. Yeah. Whether the stuff that you’re doing is. Is funny or not. And you might just see replies to your emails. Like if you’ve done a funny subject line one week and they’re normally really, really straight and boring, you might get five people go, oh, I like, I don’t normally open your emails, Louis, but I’ve opened this one because you, you did xyz or even just like, I don’t know, changing the button text on your website. There’s a few little. Yeah, a few little ways.

Louis: Don’t say too much. You’ve already said a lot, which is great.

Dave Harland: Okay, go on.

Louis: So let’s backtrack a bit. How do I know if I’m funny?

Dave Harland: It’s a good question. I suppose deep down you’ll probably know. You don’t need me to tell you whether you’re funny or not. I think if you know when you’re in a room and you say stuff and people laugh, it’s like we’re talking like, thanks. We’re talking like, I’m talking like caveman stuff here, aren’t I? This. Yeah, really basic stuff. I think deep down you’ll know if you’re not funny, like I get, people come to me quite often. Hi, Dave. I’m not, I read your stuff and laugh. I’m, I’m really not funny. Can you make me more funny? It’s like one of the most popular. And I go, well, I can make you funny, I can make you sound funny, but are you funny? Because it’ll be weird if you’re not. And you try and run with this yourself. Or you then start doing, you know, speaking gigs and it’s all, let’s have a look at the Q2 results of the. And it’s just like it doesn’t work. But yeah, I think deep down you’ll know. And if you don’t. Yeah, I haven’t really got any kind of tests to draw that out.

Louis: No, that’s okay.

Dave Harland: It’s like. Yeah, I think you either. Yeah, you have an inkling or you don’t.

Louis: Yeah. And you talked about personality. So what do you think is the difference between the two? Like between being funny and having a good personality or whatever objective you want to add to that? Because surely one can go without the other. Right? You can have an interesting personality with a being funny. Would you work with people like that?

Dave Harland: Yeah, personality and humor are completely different. Human is just, is just one kind of one element of your personality really. So, you know, you can be, you can absolutely have a personality without being funny. Some of the most, you know, interesting people, they might have a little bit of dry wit or they might have something else interesting with regards to the type of stuff that they’re into or passionate about or whatever. But yeah, I think there’s the kind of mutually exclusive. Yeah.

Louis: So how do you know if somebody has an interesting personality or not?

Dave Harland: Yeah. Again, another interesting question. I suppose that’s back to when I, you know, when I delve a little bit deeper probably even before I, you know, work with them in terms of like a one to one session or a deeper tone of voice session. I just ask them some questions on the first call and just tell me a bit about your business. And usually in sense, like if they’ve got a little bit of a, a kind of quirky story or if they’ve like worn their way into their industry or whatever and if they’re not just making everything about work, you can normally go, ah, yeah, there’s, there’s something there, there’s little nuggets that, that I’ll be able to sense. I don’t know, maybe that’s the kind of journalist training in me where we’re kind of, you know, taught to Sense those kind of newsworthy moments, I think. Yeah. Personality and like, interesting things. I often say I’ve got a slightly, you know, finely tuned radar for stuff, like, a little bit interesting. And I’ll tend to spot that in people as well.

Recognizing Interesting Stories and Personalities

Louis: You learned that again, you are not born this way or maybe a bit, but you learn that in journalism, right? Like, I mean, that’s one of the core things is, like, how do you recognize a good story? How to know what is interesting, what is not. And there is this sort of sense, taste. There is something that some people have that others don’t. But, like, I want you to, like, channel that energy or whatever it is, you know, when you’re listening to someone, trying to, like, maybe you know, how it makes you feel or whatever when you hear something interesting. But, like, what are the telltale sign where you feel, okay, there’s something like, is it. How does it feel for you?

Dave Harland: What. In terms of, like, their interest and personality or whether, for example, like, you

Louis: know, like, you talk to someone and you have goosebumps or something for, like a few seconds when they say something or like, what are the telltale signs for you? Like, in your own, like, how does it feel when you hear something that is like, ooh, that’s interesting.

Dave Harland: It’s usually something that I’ve never heard before, which is, I think, intrinsically linked to, you know, a lot of the way I’ll write headlines. Like, I’ll say, like, if you can Google a phrase, rewrite it. If there’s 10,000 search results for whatever phrase you’re using for your headline, rewrite it because people aren’t going to notice it. Whereas if it’s something that makes you stop in your traction, go, fucking hell. There’s five words that I’ve never seen put together before in a sentence that’s going to make your ears prick up and stop you in your tracks and be interested. So I think the same is. Yeah, is probably true for, like, you say, when I’m listening to someone tell their story, if they then say, you know, just something like, you know, yeah, when I was younger, I was into, you know, donkey farming. And then. And then they go off and I’ll go, whoa, what the. Tell me more about the donkey farming. I want to know that. Like what, like, what’s that backstory there? Might not go anywhere what it might do or just a little interesting hobbies. And, you know, on podcast you hear people talking about their. How they got it, how they got into what they do or what’s. What’s your founder story. What’s. What’s this? And more often than not, there’ll be at least one little quirky story within those which might, may or may not be a representation of kind of real authentic personality there. That or interest and personality that you could maybe dig a bit deeper and dredge out. Oh, so that donkey stuff, how did you get into that? Oh, I was one of my friends, we were doing such and such. And actually that friend of mine, she now works. And then before you know it, you might have gone off on a mad tangent. You might. You might have your questionnaire that you normally. Your 10 questions that you ask them at the start, but you’ve gone off on a. On a completely kind of mad. Yeah, on a mad tangent. Like when we do briefing calls at the start with new clients, we’ll just say, so tell. Like, even though they’ve already filled in a questionnaire, we’ll say, tell us about your story then. So how have you come to launching this business? Go back to the start. But like you’ve done with me, go back to the start, tell us where it all began, and then, like, there’ll be something within there that you’ll find. And if not. Yeah, it’s quite difficult.

Louis: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I exactly know what you mean. Like, for me, when. When I try, when I feel like there’s something interesting, it’s. It’s. As you said, I think you mentioned the word so many times already, which is great. It’s like there’s a story there that is unique to them, obviously, because, you know, that’s what happens and. And you want to know more and you’re curious about it and it makes you laugh or it surprises you or it shocks you a bit.

Dave Harland: And.

Louis: And that’s when. Then you dig deeper and you feel like that could be an entire. Yeah. Another blog post. And as your podcast episodes, an entire something. Right. Something that I feel you’re doing very, very well, that I think they’re teaching in journalism as well, is not being afraid to pick an extremely specific story angle, whatever the fuck. Right. Something that is so specific that if you were to Google it, you wouldn’t find anything else. Right. So a lot of folks are afraid of that. They are afraid of specificity. They are afraid of picking something narrow whenever they write something, whatever, because they are afraid of missing out on other stuff. Right. So what do you say to people like that who think this way? How can we try to convince them to go ultra specific and ultra niche, ultra whatever you want to call it?

Ultra Specificity - Going Uncomfortably Deep

Dave Harland: Yeah, it’s, there’s a, like an analogy that when I was chatting to one of my clients about like if someone throws five baseballs at you at once, like what are your chances of catching all five? No chance. Maybe two, three if you’re lucky. If you throw one at them, they’re going to catch that every time, aren’t they? So a bit of a tired, a tired analogy. I suppose it’s probably been done before, but yeah, I’ll say to, I’ll say to clients, like, if you’ve got five messages, don’t say them all in one email or don’t try and squeeze them all into one ad, split them over five different ads and just focus on one in each one. But more than that, like the ultra specificity, it’s like, it’s one of the, it’s one of the key techniques that I, that I teach when I’m trying to show people how to, how to dive into these, these areas for being funny, just zooming into a subject almost to an uncomfortable, uncomfortably detailed degree.

Louis: Yeah, we don’t say almost like to an absolute uncomfortable, detailed degree. Especially at the start. You will feel uncomfortable doing this, right?

Dave Harland: Yeah, yeah.

Louis: When you’re not used to it, like you probably don’t feel that uncomfortable anymore doing it. Folks trying that will feel uncomfortable, right? That’s one of the telltale sign. No.

Dave Harland: Yeah, 100% there’s pushback and it’s like we’re not used to doing this but the more you zoom into something that you’re trying to convey, it makes that thing extra relatable to the audience. So why would they visualize it, right?

Louis: It makes them feel it, it makes them, right.

Dave Harland: 100, 100. Like I was working with a travel agent a couple of, couple of years ago here in the uk. I don’t, you know, I’ll name them like on the, on the beach travel agent. Big, big travel agent. More like a. The working class travel agent. Sort of the travel agent for the people. So whereas, you know, all the luxury escapes and all of them are all about like, you know, cocktails by the pool, like on the beach at about like, you know, drawing, drawing stuff on your mate’s backwards and cream and throwing your kid into the pool and all of that type of stuff. And one of their offers was you book a four or five star holiday, you’ll get free airport lounge access. So rather than kind of, you know, extol the virtues of the luxuriousness of kind of free time in this airport lounge and being able to relax and Blah, blah. We went ultra specific on how you can absolutely fill your boots with the free ale and all the free food there. So we zoomed into like, I was talking about like specific stuff that you’ll be shoving onto your plate, like the sandwiches without crusts and extra fluffy croissants and you know, like taking, taking an Instagram photo of that cocktail to send to all your mates to make them jealous. I like, I probably wrote about 3, 2, 200, 300 words just about what it’s like being in an airport lounge. Whereas the other brands may have just gone, you know, spend a fuss free three hours in an airport lounge, but now on the beach said like, like we want to, we want to make this more relatable. So I was like zooming in is the way you’re going to do that. So yeah, a brilliant little technique to get more relatable.

Louis: So ultra specificity, that’s one of the things you like to teach, right?

Dave Harland: Yeah.

Louis: What else do you like to say about that specific topic? Right. Is there anything else that you tend to go back to explain that to clients or use it for your own, with your, in your own work. Right. You shared that example, which is fantastic. Is there anything else there that you’d like to talk about?

Dave Harland: Yeah, I’ve just, like I said a couple of times, I’ve just started these one to one power hours, almost power, but everyone calls them a power hour. So I’ve called them 63 minutes of business stuff or worthy stuff or whatever. I thought, let’s just kind of go elongate the name of this thing to a ridiculously stupid, silly degree. And then when I’m explaining what goes on, I, I don’t just say like, you know, come to me for business advice for such and such. My bullet point list about nine long and I go just, you’re really stupid. And it gets to the point where like once you get to number seven, it’s like. And at the end they go, but don’t ask me about cooking, I’m at cook. So just, just finding any excuse to take that reader on, on a little bit of a weird tangent or an odd little journey through, away from what they’re expecting. Because I know again, you know, 19 and 20 people out there who’ve got a power hour will just be saying, I, I come to me for advice on your business strategy and I can talk you through, da, da. Whereas if, you know, if someone’s read the man and they make it all the way to that bottom bullet point of nine and I’ve made them smile along the way. I reckon they’re probably more likely to go, yeah, you know what this will be. This will be a laugh. Let’s do 63 minutes of that weirdo and click by. So that’s. I think that’s one way that I kind of zoom into the real specifics of what’s a relatively standard offer. Just in a bit of a. Bit of a wacky way.

Louis: Yeah. If I were to reverse engineer why a lot of the stuff you write makes me laugh. It’s definitely because you go very deep, weird into one specific thing or a few specific stuff. And I can tell why it’s cashing on. Just today I sent you a message saying. What did I say exactly? Hold on, let’s reverse engineer. What did I just say to you this morning?

Dave Harland: It was quite restrained. I was going to go deeper, but I held myself back.

Louis: Yeah, I sent you a message. I said, I hope your balls are already getting sweaty as I. To prepare you for the episode to say, I’m ready. And you reply by, I made sure to model them in talc. Talc. Talc. Is it talc? Talc this morning? Right. So again, that sounds like a stupid answer, but if you were to reverse engineering it, you went very visual and very specific with the type of things you would use and the action you take. Right. And I know I might overly read into this, but to me, that’s what makes it then ultra funny.

Dave Harland: Yeah. Nail on. Nail on head. It’s like as vivid as you can make something if you can just paint that picture in someone’s mind. And almost worked. And almost like. Because, like, I’ve got the audiobook, Stephen King’s audiobook on writing, and he’s all about, like, you know, let the reader fill in. Yeah. Let your reader in the audience sometimes fill in the blanks. I’m like the opposite. I like. Oh, I like. Oh, yeah. Let’s go uncomfortably close to this and focus on it. Yeah.

Louis: But, yeah, it’s like I was with you.

Dave Harland: Yeah. Now you say. Now you say it. See what I mean? I do that without even thinking about it. Now, is it a curse? It’s probably a curse.

Louis: Yeah. I think your partner is sick of you.

Dave Harland: Yeah. She doesn’t laugh at any of my jokes.

Louis: Yeah. That’s how, you know she’s the same. She says, I’m not funny. She doesn’t understand how people think I’m funny. Ultra specificity is one thing that you like to teach and talk about a lot. What other aspects do you like? To talk about when you, you know, talk about tone of voice and all of the stuff we’ve talked about so

Dave Harland: far, I think in terms of like comic comedy approaches and using humor, there’s, there’s like, I’d say three or four of us. So the first one, which is massive, I think on LinkedIn, if you can do this, I think you’re going to win people straight away. And that’s self deprecation. So being able to laugh at yourself is so likable. And When I was 15, we had a new English teacher. He joined us from a different school and we were all stood outside the classroom and he walks up and there was like audible gasps from me and my fellow classmates because he had the most bulging, biggest bulging eyes any of us had ever seen. We were like, we were like, like, like shock, shock, horror. And he goes, you know what he said? He went, I’ll never, never forget it as long as I live. He went, first thing he’s ever said to a group of whatever, 15 year old, 10, 10, 15 year old lads, he went, all right, boys, I know I’ve got dead big eyes like a frog, but I’ll let you laugh about it today. But if you laugh about it and take the piss after today, you’re all in detention. But we’re gonna have a boss here. How’s that sound? We were all like, oh, mate, that’s the best thing a teacher has ever said to us. Because he had a little bit of a pop on himself and at the same time he let us know that he took no messing. So we respected him for it immediately. But brands can do that. I don’t know how many listeners will be familiar with Lewis Capaldi, the singer. Scottish singer Lewis Capaldi.

Self-Deprecation - The Fine Line of Having a Pop at Yourself

Louis: I wrote about it on my newsletter a few times.

Dave Harland: Constantly takes the piss out of himself as Pops about about him, you know, suffers badly with his mental health and he has Tourette syndrome and he’s really open about that. But like in the main, even the way he talks about that, it’s just so open and just, yeah, just as Pops about himself and Ryanair do it a lot as well. Like Ryan, like Ryanair really, really open about how they would charge you to go for the piss on a plane if they could. Like, I know it’s just, I know it’s just tongue in cheek, but the way they do it is just they own the whole, like, no, but low budget, no frills. And I think brands that can do that, it’s just, it’s such a quick win. To get people on your side. It’s like they don’t take themselves too seriously. Like does anybody really like people who take themselves too seriously? Unless they’re like the CEO of some big kind of, you know, a big healthcare company who you kind of want to be nice and serious all the time. If you can have a bit of a pop at yourself, I think you can get more people on your side.

Louis: So it’s interesting that you shared the example of Lewis Capaldi because I think it’s a very British, Irish, British Isles, whatever the fuck you want to call it. Humor, like the self deprecating humor is something I think that, you know, the UK is known for. Right. By worldwide in terms of type of humor.

Dave Harland: Yeah.

Louis: And it’s not as frequent in America, not as frequent in.

Dave Harland: In France.

Louis: Definitely not. So it’s interesting to pinpoint that and I think it works everywhere because of the, what they call the pratfall effect. You know, like it goes back to when you’re willing to admit to weakness, you’re more trusted because you’re not perfect or whatever. I just found, I wrote a piece about Leo Scarpoldi and an example of that very thing. So I’m just going to read what he was saying. So there was this Alison Hammond who’s British journalist, asked him, how would you promote to the viewers out there your new album? And he replied, don’t waste your time. It’s a complete and utter joke that I’ve been allowed to do a second one. If anything, I’ve got worse. Don’t bother yourself with it, go buy Etron’s latest offering and everyone’s cracking up already. And then the other journalist said, do you enjoy the performing? And then he said, no, no, I hate this. This is like just paying the bills. And then he went, no, no, sorry, I really do. It’s better than to have a real job. I’m not really good at anything else except, except that lovemaking. And until I can make a career in that. So everyone’s just cracking up. So yeah, I think it’s a great example of self deprecation. But you’ve got to be. I don’t know if you’ve seen this. I’m sure you have. I’m sure that you have watched the Office, the American version of the Office,

Dave Harland: not as much as the UK one because there’s about 7,000 episodes. But I am familiar with it. I know all the characters. I know you know Jim and Pam and all of them.

Louis: Okay, okay, okay, okay, okay. Anyway, there is this episode where Michael Scott, the boss, falls into a koi pond and Jim tells him after a while that, look, everyone is laughing at you. If you were laughing at yourself first, people would stop really laughing at you. And he starts by saying, you know, oh, can you believe I fell into that koi pond? And whatever. And then he doesn’t stop where he should and he starts to, like, say that he’s basically an idiot and that no one likes him. And, you know, he goes too far and at the end he’s in tears. And I think this seems so fucking funny. So anyway, to go back to what we were saying, where do you stop with this? Because it’s easy to just overly do it. No.

Dave Harland: Yeah, I think you have to stop because I think overdoing it just makes it look insincere and almost like you’re humble bragging. So there’s definitely a fine line, I think in the first. In the kind of. The first time someone sees an ad of yours or in your first message to a prospect or the first email that you send, having a little bit of a laugh at yourself can definitely break down barriers for that first time. But if, you know, if you’re into email 2 and 3 and you’re still taking a piss out of yourself, I think it smacks of lack of confidence. I think you’ve got to quickly flip it on its head and maybe delve into other areas of kind of humor and bringing out your personality. Which leads me nicely on to number three. But, yeah, that’s. I’d say, yeah, certainly don’t overdo it because, you know, people aren’t soft. You’ll see someone on LinkedIn if they’re having a pop of themselves too much. It’s like, like I said, lack of confidence. Or this is. You’re just using this as a device to get people on your side and you don’t really think of yourself like that. Like, again, talking about comedy, have you seen Tim Robinson? I think you should leave. Yeah. U.S. sketch Show. So it’s a brilliant sketch. So there’s three women sitting around in a little bit, like what you said about the Office. One where they go too far. Three women sitting around just having a little lunch date and they’ve just taken a selfie of, like, having coffee and one of them’s posted and she goes, oh, just had lunch with these three dumbos. And the other one goes, oh, that’s so cool. And then the other, the second one goes, oh, yeah, just. Just chat. Chatting about nothing with these dummies. And then the third the third one, like you hear bing, bing. And she reads it out loud and she goes, just having lunch with these two fat hogs. I wish these two would fucking die. And like it’s just takes this takes it like so far removed from like where’s, where’s appropriate and it’s exactly that. It’s like you can, you can have a tiny pop at yourself the first time but if you’re doing it every time, like, like ripping into yourself, it’s like. It’s just a bit weird, isn’t it? Right, yeah.

Louis: Like anything, I suppose.

Dave Harland: Yeah, yeah. I mean kfc. Kfc. When KFC ran out of chicken, they did that now famous ad, didn’t he, where they changed KFC to fck and it was just an empty bucket of chicken. Like we up, you know, we ran out of chicken. It won’t happen again. Like I know they do funny stuff but that was the last self deprecate, the first and last self deprecating thing that I saw KFC do where they openly admitted that they’d messed up. And I think that’s probably, probably the best way to go if you’re doing it too much.

Louis: Yeah, it’s probably so ultra specificity. Third deprecation. What else?

Picking Fights - Defending Your Audience Against the Big Boys

Dave Harland: Oh man, my favorite one. Picking a fight. Picking a fight is, is the most fun you can have. And there was a, there was a shop, there was a carpet shop when I was growing up called Taffy’s and it was on the direct bus route on my way from my little village to our town centre. Ten minutes on the bus and every day or whenever I’d be going down, we’d drive past this carpet shop. Never really took notice of it but I was probably nine or ten, I was really, really quite young. What the hell were my parents doing? Allow me to get a bus to my local town at 9. But anyway, that’s by the by, opposite this carpet shop there used to be a load of houses and they all overnight it seemed they all got dragged down one day and a big massive like superstore sized carpet world was erected in place of these houses. So this little local kind of family run carpet shop, Taffy’s, which had been there for years, all of a sudden they had a big nasty national chain competitor over the road and you know, it was probably taking a load of their custom. So the best thing I’d ever seen at that age was probably secretly what got me into copywriting. They had a billboard on the side of their building which they used to just rent out to local Businesses, but they clearly never this one time because they just put in big, massive 3,000 point typos. Wealth warning. Crossing the road will seriously damage your wealth. And at the time, as a kid I was like, this is, this was incredible because I was like, they’re picking up, they’re like, they’ve got this scrappy underdog mentality, picking a fight with the big nasty bully boys over the road. They were very shrewdly competing on price, saying, don’t spend money over there, you know, spend money with us. And yeah, thirdly, they did it in a way that made me smile and made me laugh and yeah, I’m still talking about it 30 odd years later. So, yeah, for me, that the kind of picking a fight mentality, which tends to only really work with the smaller brands against the big boys or the underdog brands against the bigger ones. Like in the uk, Aldi supermarket, they had quite a famous lawsuit that they had to defend against Marks and Spencers. So Aldi, the budget, relatively budget, some of the stuff they do is quite expensive now, but yet relatively budget. Supermarkets made almost like an imitation of Marks and Spencer’s Colin the Cuthbert, Colin the Caterpillar cake. It was about two or three years ago. So Marks and Spencer’s are like maybe, maybe on a par with Waitrose in terms of kind of quality of stuff that they do. And everything’s decadent and indulgent and luxurious and their adverts are all about oozing chocolate cakes. So, yeah, so Marks and Spencers issued, yeah, a lawsuit, copyright or intellectual property infringement against, against Aldi. And on the day that it got announced, Aldi tweeted Marks and Spencer’s more like Marks and Snitches. And I was like, oh, here we go. And like their Twitter for the next three weeks was just an absolute piss take of the whole lawsuit. It was incredible. They were showing artist impressions of Colin the Caterpillar in court. Like a pencil drawing of Colin. The actual box, it wasn’t Colin, it was their imitation one was Cuthbert. Marks and Spencer’s was Colin. But they’re Cuthbert the Caterpillar. I think it was just a mock up. They changed the packaging to look like he was in jail. And it was just, honestly, it was just, just relentless. And all they were doing was exactly what Taffy’s did. They were picking a fight against the big boys because, and I think this is key, whenever you’re picking a fight. Exactly. Like the Carpet Shop. The Carpet Shop knew that their main audience was working class families from Birkenhead. Who don’t like paying over the odds for stuff. They don’t like being ripped off. So they knew back by having a pop at the big carpet shop over the road, they. They’d win back anybody who was maybe thinking about going there. Because we don’t like. They know what they knew that their audience don’t like being ripped off. And exactly the same with Aldi. They know that the bulk of their audience, they come to them because they’re a budget. Yeah, A budget supermarket. And they’re probably more working class and like, quite like, you know, having a little bit of a pop at anyone who tries to do them over. So I think they very smartly align themselves with huge swathes of, you know, their audience and, you know, what did he say? No, I always get it wrong. No publicity is bad publicity. Is it? But, yeah, they spun it on its head and, yeah, made it really, really work for them.

Louis: I’m a big fan of this approach as well, because. Exactly as you said, when it’s used to protect or defend the people you’re serving against, the thing you’re fighting against, Right. You’re just picking a fight for the sake of it. Then you’re missing the true essence of what it means and you’re missing what storytelling is about.

Dave Harland: Right.

Louis: Like when you have an enemy, a monster or whatever in a story, it’s a representation of the. It’s the representation of the origin of people’s struggles or, like, why, you know, they’re in this situation, whatnot. So, yes, picking a fight not for the sake of it, but in order to defend the people you serve works really well in your world. Do you see it really as a picking a fight against a big brand, against a big competitor? Or have you tried with your own client, let’s say, pick a fight against other stuff that might not be, like, material, could be like the culture of something.

Dave Harland: Yeah, I quite like advising people to pick or brands that I work with. We’ll get onto kind of our agency positioning in a minute and what we pick fights against. But when I’m doing it with clients, it’s usually kind of behaviors and systems. If you can pick a fight with what you deem to believe, behaviors that the types of clients that you don’t want to be working with anyway, or the types of brands that you want to be competing against, if you can pick a fight in those people who are following those behaviors or systems or AI. AI. Perfect example at the moment, certainly for, you know, for my agency and any. Any brands that I’m Working with in a market and capacity, I’m advising them too. If they want to lean into this kind of everyone wants to be human and have a personality. If you want to humanity fight, let’s fight for team Human. In these early days of this, this age that we’re in, where you can press a button and these, these chatbots will spit out whatever and you know, there’s businesses out there using them, horror stories, businesses using them in an unfiltered way. If you can just pick a fight with AI and the businesses that, you know, the types of lazy, kind of emotionless businesses that are planting, you know, all of their trees in the AI field at the moment, you’re going to win the customers and the clients who are also against that and are also a little bit like, this isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, you know, which in the early days of new tech, it’s a risky thing to do. And there’s been a few conversations I’ve had, certainly from our agency position. And I’m, you know, I’m taking the piss out of it all the time, but about kind of just blindly pressing a button and spitting out, you know, copyright and content and believe it or not, there’s some ghost writers out there who are actually like doing courses on how you can ghost write clients. Stuff like, here’s the right prompt to do on like the worst prompt, the worst prompt ever. It’s like, use the copywriting skills of Justin Welsh. Add in the thought leadership of Sahil Bloom. It’s like Frankenstein’s most terrifying monster. So, yeah, back to what I was saying. Like picking a fight with something that you are comfortable that the types of clients and customers that, that you want to win over, if you’re comfortable that they’re also there, the enemy of theirs, go all in and bring them along for the fight. If you’re a little bit unsure. Yeah, it’s a bit, it’s a bit rocky. Rocky ground.

Louis: Yeah. It needs to come kind of naturally. It needs to be something that you like to fucking rant about in the pub or whatever that you naturally get pissed off about. And I know that some folks don’t really agree with my way of doing stuff. People will see it as very negative or pessimistic or whatever. But it’s not that. It’s like I like to channel the negative, the hate, you know, that everyone has like a human brain just naturally recognize the things you don’t like, whatever. And I like to channel that a lot to see. Okay, what pisses me off right now in the moment. I’m not pissed off about it all day, every day. But right now I’m fucking pissed off. And I try to channel it to go back to what you’re saying about the fight. So I actually advise folks to do exactly what you describe as well. And I like to give them a list of like the four type of kind of enemies, monsters, whatever you want to call them. So one is giant corporation. So like something that is very faceless. It’s became so big. So Google is a big one in marketing, Facebook, whatever, an alternative. So it’s like not direct competitors, but what they could do if you didn’t exist, if your category didn’t exist. So, like, let’s say just a crude example for your carpet store that could be making your own fucking carpet, right? The culture of the category as a whole as well. So it’s like, it’s not a person, but it’s more like the culture of get rich quick and all of this kind of stuff. So you don’t point at a specific, brand specific person, but like the culture and then inside us. So it’s like the last one is usually the things that you can’t control about yourself because you’re born this way, because it’s in your DNA. It’s millions of years of evolution, like, you know, the monkey brain and stuff like that, that could also work. So those are the five I like to give people. Okay, we’ve been at it for 55 minutes, so it’s already quite a long time. I’ll ask you one last advice or one last thing that you love to fucking rant about or give advice about. So we talked about ultra specificity, cell deprecation, picking a fight, if you had to name another one.

Hyperbole - Telling Ridiculously Obvious Lies

Dave Harland: You know what? I love it kind of. I suppose it kind of falls into what I was saying before about the ultra specificity. If you take ultra specificity too far, you can be in danger of going into something that isn’t quite true sometimes, which takes you into hyperbole. And hyperbole is, again, a masterful way of getting the right people on your side. Because if the types of clients that you want to work with understand that an ad of yours is hyperbole, you’re more likely to win them, I think. And if they don’t get it, they weren’t really meant to be one of your clients at all, I don’t think. And one. One of my favorite examples is there’s a. I think Richard Shotton maybe tweeted it or stuck it on LinkedIn. It’s a restaurant called 321 East. And the headline was, how good is our steak? Last week, a man who was choking on a piece refused the Heimlich maneuver. And as a headline, I just remember seeing.

Louis: I think you do good, doesn’t it?

Dave Harland: It was just in. I think it was like in a newspaper. Newspaper. Cotton. And it was like, if you. If the thing you’re saying is so ridiculously, like, unbelievably a falsehood, it can make it such a really surprising and unexpected headline again. There’s danger to it, you know, if you do it too often, you might be seen as the brand that cries wolf, but there’s ways of getting out of it as well. Surreal serial. Who have been. Yeah, they’ve had a bit of a rocky couple of months. Surreal have. But they did a campaign last summer, I think it was where they were naming or using the names of celebrities in their headlines. So big, massive headlines. Serena Williams eats our cereal. And then in, you know, the little tiny asterisk underneath it was. Serena’s a student from London and she really loves it. So, yeah, that’s a way.

Louis: She’s a real student. Like. Like, they went.

Dave Harland: An actual student. Yeah, yeah.

Louis: Actual people.

Dave Harland: Yeah. Massive hyperbole in the kind of setup and the way they’ve done it. But, yeah, they’ve used an aside underneath, which loads of brands do a little asides, put stuff in brackets afterwards. You can kind of say whatever you want, but we’re only messing. We’re only joking. So you can kind of get out. Get out of it. So I think brands who are probably a little bit unsure whether the readers will get the joke, like the Heimlichmaneuver one, you can imagine them putting an asterisk. Actually, this, you know, this is just a representation of events that never actually happened. So that, like, hyperbole for me. I’m always telling lies that are, like, blatantly. They’re so obviously ridiculously untrue. Yeah.

Louis: So you want to go ultra specific. But then there is a kind of no Man’s Land where it could be. It’s too much and it could be believable. And so it’s like. It’s a bit weird, but then if you go past that, then it’s like, ridiculously stupid and most people would get it.

Dave Harland: Yeah. Yeah.

Louis: I can’t tell you the number of times that happened to me when, like, I’m not comparing myself to the examples you gave. Far from it. But in my Little World on LinkedIn, a few times where I was being I thought extremely sarcastic and stupid people falling for it. You know that’s always my favorite thing. It’s like oh I just joined this whatever stupid company like this hyper growth startup and people sending me like congrats and stuff. You know, like I like to do that as well, to play with that, that buffer as well a bit. And like how stupid can. Yeah do people think I am?

Dave Harland: Like is this real here? Like I get it all the time. Like about the scammer stories and like I use characters as well. Like I’ve got me reply to the. I’ve got my infamous Uncle Tony who responds with his weird and wonderful yeah, anti thought leadership messaging with tales from his life. And yeah, all the time I get, I get, I get messages. Is Uncle Tony real? Like is he, Is he real? So to add a bit of spice, I introduced my mum and then my, my, my fictional mum was getting asked about fictional Tony or is he fictional? It’s like what’s real? No, no one believes anything anymore.

Louis: Yeah, I think there’s a lesson there about alter ego as well. On to create alter egos or whatever you want to call it, characters to really double down on something and play with it.

Dave Harland: Right.

Louis: Which is why Yousef Bulfara, whatever Bulsara is Freddie Mercury’s real name. It helps you to act out a bit in different ways. Anyway, we can go on for hours. I’m cautious of your time. You have a young boy and I have a girl of around the same age. So we need to go back home and take care of them. What are the best, the top three resources you’d recommend, folks listening right now?

Dave Harland: Top three, definitely a website that I dip in and out of probably weekly called deckofbrilliance.com which is, it’s like a compendium of little angles that could spark creativity. So it talks about dramatizing the problem or challenging the customer or championing the underdog. Like I mentioned before about Taffy’s and it gives you a load of examples and links to campaigns that have happened. So you know, if you’re not that blank page and it’s just like how can we come at this? Use that cash wise. I know I said I don’t listen to podcasts, but Call to Action Podcast from GASP is just a belter for me in terms of how it really delves into the kind of really normal side and proper marketing and it tends to include a lot of people talking about marketing in a really normal way which as a non marketer and a journey journalist I need. And then the last one, I suppose it’s a community called the Keynote Club which is a really safe space to practice your public speaking skills. So they meet every, every other Thursday. So if anyone’s. We all need to present stuff and you know, find ourselves in pitches and even tough meetings trying to persuade CEOs to take awkward decisions from time to time. And what, yeah, what the Keynote Club does is, you know, get you past those nerves and teaches you how to structure the presentation deck and how to, yeah, how to do all the stuff that terrifies most people. And it’s helped me loads. Like I about a year ago I would have kind of, I would have broken out in a, a really sweaty talc laden underpants situation if people had asked me to do a talk. But like I’m booked through for three talks in, you know, foreign countries this year so. And the Keynote Club has helped help me do that. So they’re my three mate.

Louis: Great, great recommendation. I’ve never heard of the Deco Brilliance. I’ll. I’m on it now. I’m gonna definitely take a look tomorrow.

Dave Harland: Superb, Superb.

Louis: Love it. Well, they’ve been a pleasure. I wasn’t expecting anything else but still it was really good to talk to you. Thank you so much.

Dave Harland: Enjoyed it mate. Nice one. Thanks for having me.

Louis: And that’s it for another episode of everyone hates marketers.com thank you so much for listening. I’m super, super grateful. I’d love for you to consider subscribing to my daily newsletter Monday to Friday called Stand the Out Daily. I send very short, hopefully interesting, surprising, shocking, entertaining content to help you Stand the fuck Out. It’s at everyone hatesmarketers.com you can subscribe for free and obviously unsubscribe whenever you want. I’m just gonna read a couple of emails that I got recently as a reply. Juma said, your content attacks the mind primarily, which is such a good thing because most of us are skilled at what we do, but we don’t have the courage to do it our way. Mark, who just subscribed couple days before, said, this is my first issue of your newsletter. Love it. Glad I subscribed. Brianna said, I just realized this morning that my email habit is now to 1. Came through the list. 2. Select all unread industry email except yours. 3. Delete and don’t think twice. 4. Quickly scheme yours. Amy said, Also loving the new content that’s coming from you. It feels really lovely. Kendall said, I like your writing a lot. It really resonates. There’s so much bullshit out there. It’s good to touch the authentic. And Chloe said, where is the I love this email button? Brilliant. I hope you subscribe. You’ll be joining more than14,000 subscribers at this stage, which is crazy. It’s the size of a small stadium. Anyway, thank you so much. See you on the other side.