890 Monica Badiu: Data-Driven Copywriting

Melinda Wittstock:

Coming up on Wings of Inspired Business:

Monica Badiu:

If someone’s going to spend time of the day to just look at my stuff, what’s in it for them? And this is exactly what I tell my clients. What’s valuable for someone who has access to the entire information of the world at the tap of a button? And what I try to do is imagine the conversation is happening one on one. So, we’re having coffee and then instead of selling, I guide them towards mirroring what’s happening in their lives and making them feel heard and seen. It’s always about them, right? How can I help the person on the other side of this feel heard, feel seen and gain a new perspective of their lives?

Melinda Wittstock:

No one ever likes to feel like they’re being sold, to be battered by an endless drumbeat of ads or emails screaming “me, me, me”. But we do need to learn about products and services that can help us solve challenges in our lives and our businesses. Today email marketing expert Monica Badiu shares her secrets for how to make your marketing work for you and your business.

Melinda Wittstock:

Hi, I’m Melinda Wittstock and welcome to Wings of Inspired Business, where we share the inspiring entrepreneurial journeys, epiphanies, and practical advice from successful female founders … so you have everything you need at your fingertips to build the business and life of your dreams. I’m all about paying it forward a five-time serial entrepreneur, so this podcast is all about catalyzing an ecosystem where women entrepreneurs mentor, promote, buy from, and invest in each other …Because together we’re stronger, and we all soar higher when we fly together.

Melinda Wittstock:

Today we meet an inspiring entrepreneur who began her writing journey in her early 20s before learning the ropes of sales funnel marketing and the secrets of high-converting email copy. It wasn’t long before Monica Badiu started her own marketing agency, where she now helps many businesses grow and scale. Monica is going to share all her secrets – from why it’s vital to get to know and understand everything about your ideal customers, engage in authentic conversation, and use data as your guide. Plus, we’re going to talk about AI in marketing, and how it can help analyze and fine-tune content for specific audiences, so your messages are always relevant and helpful.

Melinda Wittstock:

Monica will be here in a moment, and first:

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Melinda Wittstock:

Ok, so everyone’s looking for the secret marketing magic bullet to propel their business to new heights of success. It’s noisy out there so it can be hard to stand out and be heard. So, what are some things you can do right now for your brand to build awareness, engagement and sales conversions?

Melinda Wittstock:

Today copywriting and sales funnel maestro Monica Badiu shares her secrets and we’re going to talk about everything from AI and data-driven targeting to the art of authentic conversation to help you understand consumer behavior so you can create high-converting messages that resonate to specific customer segments.

Melinda Wittstock:

Let’s put on our wings with the inspiring Monica Badiu and be sure to download the podcast app Podopolo so we can keep the conversation going after the episode

[INTERVIEW]

Melinda Wittstock:

Monica, welcome to wings.

Monica Badiu:

Happy to be here.

Melinda Wittstock:

It’s great to have you on as well, and I love talking to copywriters. It’s an art, and it grows businesses, and we all need great copywriters. So, what was it that got you into the copywriting business?

Monica Badiu:

I’ve been writing ever since I started doing marketing, which was in my early twenties. So, like, 17 years ago and five or six years ago, I really wanted to just niche down on something and be able to specialize, because I was kind of a unicorn. I was doing everything, and it was exhausting. Back then, all the tools started to kind of become democratized, so more and more companies had access to it. There were so many experiments and so much data coming out. I just couldn’t, couldn’t keep up with it. So, I found an agency that was specializing on funnel building, and I just tried different roles until I got to do just, like, sales copywriting with a focus on email marketing. And it was like everything, it came so naturally, and I just felt like, okay, this is awesome. It combines my love for marketing and experimenting, my approach to marketing, which is data driven, my love for consumer behavior and psychology. And finally, this whole idea that you can do marketing in a way that feels good, like authentic, and that is a responsibility for every brand, because when you have power of influence over people, you get to choose how you do it. And I found myself in this position where I could actually change the messaging and the positioning of a company so that it doesn’t force people to just buy stuff. It educates and it informs, and it empowers people with the choice of buying stuff that they might or might not need.

Melinda Wittstock:

There’s a lot of copywriters out there, but not necessarily copywriters that can write copy, that actually converts, and you specialize in that conversion piece. So, tell me, what are the secrets of making something actually converted?

Monica Badiu:

Data. Data. And understanding how data works and what you can do with it. What I mean by data, you have numbers, first of all, which is how many people open an email, how many people click that email, how many people go to the page, how many people go to the checkout? So, all those numbers, that’s data. And then you have consumer behavior and customer language, and you can play around with customer language and consumer behavior to increase those numbers. So, I could use customer language to write a really appealing subject line and a really good call to action that influences that consumer behavior into doing more of what I would like them to do. And when I think consumer behavior, it’s honestly psychological triggers like curiosity, like being coached on different fears, the need for instant gratification, all of these things can be combined into getting a conversion. And when I say conversion again, an open of a subject or an open of an email, a click on the sales page and then eventually converting as a buyer.

Monica Badiu:

And now that’s like the simple version, the really long version, is getting so much information about the customer that it feels like you are the customer. I try to put myself in the shoes of the customer, and I think about, what is this brand trying to tell me? What do they want from me? And I try to come up with every objection in the book to see how that email and that sales page stands against those fears, those objections, perceptions, expectations, limitations. And after many, many hours later, I come up with something that I call a minimum viable product. And then we put it in a live test, like a promotion, and we see what happens. What are the numbers, what’s coming back, what is underperforming, what can be optimized? So, it’s not a simple answer there. The reason behind making something converting is really a lot of research and learning a lot about the customer.

Melinda Wittstock:

I love that you mentioned knowing the customer. I think a lot of businesses go wrong there because they don’t actually really know, like, they have a, they have a hypothesis about their customer, and they don’t necessarily know the context of their customer or. Right, because you can say, yes, our product is for women aged 30 to 40, but like, what type of women, like, what about their interests? Like, what’s their current content?

Monica Badiu:

Exactly.

Melinda Wittstock:

There are so many layers upon layers upon layers. And so, what message might work for certain subset of that group would not work for someone else at all. And so, like, how segmented do you have to really get here to actually make this work?

Monica Badiu:

We have a joke in marketing. It’s when a client tells us their audience is every woman between the ages of 25 to 35, and that’s it. Awesome. So, there’s kind of two answers to your questions. One is ongoing surveys and asking your audience, what’s your age group? What’s your specific problem, where do you live? Things like that in a way that doesn’t sound as creepy as it sounds. And then building segments for each of those categories or behaviors and then testing them with specific angles. So, if I want to test an assumption that my audience is made up of women, who are between 25 to 35 and they struggle with sleep problems. Now, that’s a very generic and wide database.

Monica Badiu:

So, what I’m going to do in an upcoming promotion, I’m going to try and see what’s the biggest problems they have with sleep. Is it because they’re very stressed? Is it because they are moms, and they don’t have time to actually get proper sleep because newborns don’t sleep? Is it health problems? I’m going to have a survey that lets my audience choose what’s the biggest issue they have out of those three options. And then I’m going to test the first angle in a promotion. So, when I say that, it’s like next month, I’m going to send them emails that are focused on the biggest problem that came out of that. So maybe my audience is made up of moms with newborns and that’s what I’m going to talk about in my next promotion. And we’ve done something like this, like similar for a client. And he was teaching English grammar and vocabulary and punctuation. And his assumption was that his audience were made of non-natives.

Monica Badiu:

And then when we segmented and we surveyed the audience several times, we discovered it was people over 60 who were English natives and were interested in improving their proficiency in English. And that changed everything because we were able to make all the emails and the promotion and the product very, very specific and relevant to that segment. Now, that doesn’t mean his entire audience was just that. He did have some non-natives, but they were still professionals who were selling services in English. So that became a secondary segment. And that way you can make sure that when you promote a product or when you have a specific message, it really hits home with a specific audience. But you can’t segment if you don’t have data.

Melinda Wittstock:

It’s really interesting what you’re saying here about really knowing who you’re talking to, because that’s just how people work. And business is about people buying from other people, people providing solutions for other people. It’s about relationships.

Melinda Wittstock:

If you don’t take the time to actually get to know your customers, it becomes this one-sided thing. And this is where so much marketing goes wrong, because it’s kind of like you got a whole bunch of people on social media going, me, me, me, me, me. And people just are sick of that, and they tune out. So, it really is about getting that authentic conversation going, I guess, with your potential customers.

Monica Badiu:

Yeah. So, the way I explain this to my clients and even what I tell myself, because now I’m trying to build a social media presence and it’s very hard just because of what you just said, it’s like everybody’s talking about themselves and I have like a lot of, lot of imposter syndrome. It’s always the question of what am I bringing new or good to the table? Because if someone’s going to spend time of the day to just look at my stuff, what’s in it for them? And this is exactly what I tell my clients and exactly how I think of the email. What’s valuable for someone who has access to the entire information of the world at the tap of a button. And what I try to do is imagine the conversation is happening one on one. So, we’re having coffee and you’re telling me, I haven’t slept all night. I feel so bad. I don’t know what to do.

Monica Badiu:

And then instead of selling, which is most people do, right? And they say, me, I have the solution for you, I turn it into coaching. So, tell me more, what have you been trying and why do you think it’s not working? And what do you think is keeping you from achieving a really good sleep? And I turn all of that into coaching and I guide them towards kind of mirroring what’s happening in their lives and making them feel heard and seen. And I’m not selling until the last moment, only when I either have their permission, which is like, hey, would you like me to tell you more about how I’m doing stuff or what? I know 1000 people in my community, what they’ve been able to do to improve their sleep. Or I just tell them, look, it sounds to me like you would be the right person to try this. It’s not just me, it’s always about them, right? It’s what kind of value and how can I help the person on the other side of this feel heard, feel seen and gain a new perspective of their lives?

Melinda Wittstock:

It all comes down to like, you can guess, or you can know. So where do all your datasets come from? You mentioned, like surveys and things, but do you do deploy like other data sets to help you along?

Monica Badiu:

So, I started using Microsoft Clarity, which is a software that tracks engagement on a page to see what happens. And that’s one type of data set. A lot of data comes from customer interactions with the brand, like surveys or customer complaints, testimonials. I also do customer interviews, which I find amazing. I do a lot of data mining on social media. And this is on the customers owned channels.

Monica Badiu:

But I also look at the competitors and I look at what’s happening there. What are people complaining about? What do they identify as an awesome benefit? Or what kind of experience are they having with the competitor? That could be something they could have with this specific brand. I look at reviews on Amazon books that talk about the same problem the client is solving. So, if we’re going back to the idea of getting better sleep, who’s talking about that right now? Who’s the authority in this? And I go to Amazon, I buy the book, I read the reviews, I listen to the podcast, I look at podcast comments. So many, many data points. And sometimes it’s so much data, I plug it into an AI so it can help me sort through specific pain points that I’m interested in. I’m kind of using AI to see if my assumptions are correct based on analyzing lots and lots and lots of data, customer language. And then I also read a lot of reports.

Monica Badiu:

So, reports by authorities in the domain. I know the Institute of Sleep, I don’t know if that exists, but I look at health regulations, I look at country reports. If I know my client is talking to people in the US, and maybe it’s moms of kids with a specific age, I try to see what’s happening new in the year to come for that specific group of people. Is any new legislation or are there any health concerns or events with a seasonal or one time that could have an impact for that audience? It’s a universe of data, which I find amazing because having access to that kind of information allows me to find really good insights instead of just making assumptions. And this, for me as a copywriter, is amazing. I know for a lot of other people and professionals, this sounds overwhelming, but this is why everybody does what they do, right? Because they like something more than the next thing.

Melinda Wittstock:

Thank you for describing that in such detail. Because when people hear copywriter, they just think it’s someone writing, you know what I mean?

Monica Badiu:

No, I actually have a rant that is unpublished on my YouTube channel, which starts with, I am not a writer. Stop thinking about me as a writer. And I think this is a very good point to make. A copywriter is someone who helps you sell your stuff, who helps you engage your audience, helps you activate your audience in one way or another. It’s a lot about persuasion, it’s a lot about engagement and moving that person in your funnel. So, think of people who write commercials. Think of any commercial that you really love that really hit you home with a message that felt like it was meant for you. That’s what the copywriter does, and there are different types of copywriters, but that’s what we’re all into.

Melinda Wittstock:

So huge amount of research, a huge amount of data. And I’m fascinated by the AI side because there’s all, there’s, every day there’s an article about, oh, you don’t need a human being, ChatGPT can just write your copy for you. And that presupposes that you know all the things that you just talked about, right? Which most people don’t. So, tell me about AI, because you’re using AI for the data and to kind of analyze that and synthesize a lot of information and talk to me a little bit more about what you actually use and how you leverage AI successfully to kind of not only learn things, but really, you seem to be talking about synthesizing it, right? So, you can take certain bits of data and then figure out how you’re going to make it actionable.

Monica Badiu:

I’ve been using AI for maybe, what, one year and a half, maybe two years back, before there was even a ChatGPT, and I was very reluctant to use it because this is like my natural skill. And for me, it’s a lot easier to write a piece of copy than to spend 1 hour training on AI to do it for me and then refining it ten times. For me, that’s very frustrating, and I’m not happy with the quality of the output. I imagine it’s very helpful for people who hate writing or are very stuck with, like, how do I open this email? We don’t go through the kind of in-depth level of research I do because that’s where I get a lot of my ideas from. But what I use AI for, I think that’s very, very helpful, is for analyzing big volumes of data. And let’s say I get, like, the results of a survey. It’s a lot of information. And yes, I used to use like a spreadsheet and hit control f and use pivots, whatever, and try to filter that data, but it takes a lot of time.

Monica Badiu:

So, I feed it into ChatGPT, and it gives me a really nice summary. And then I take it one step further. Let’s say most of the people in that survey, they say they struggle to sleep at night because they’re very stressed. So, I asked ChatGPT, who else talks about this specific problem? Can you give me a list of book authors or professionals? And that way I can look at competitors, what are some industry data? Or where are some false beliefs? Or I some solutions this audience might have tried before to solve their sleep problems. And I kind of tried to go in depth with the research within ChatGPT, so that I don’t go to Google and manually search for that until I actually have a kind of a clearer idea of what am I supposed to search on deeper. And this helps. Like, it saves me a lot of time and it allows me to test assumptions before spending more time on it.

Monica Badiu:

I use it like my assistant, just like if I would be in an agency and I had the junior assistant or a junior writer, we would talk about these things like a one-on-one conversation. And then we try to figure out which of these ten different angles would be most likely to be a really good match for this specific audience. I also use it to analyze my copy, which is sometimes backfire because it takes a lot of time to train an AI to write in a specific tone of voice, because that’s what I do as a copywriter. It’s not me, the copywriter who is writing that email and having the conversation with the reader. It’s the course creator. So as a human, I identify the specific nuances of that specific person, and it’s easier for me to emulate his tone of voice when delivering my specific, persuasive message. But to do that with an AI, it’s very, very difficult. And sometimes it gets stuck into using really weird words.

Monica Badiu:

So, I would not recommend it for that. But for analyzing data or for going in depth with a specific topic, it’s amazing. I use it to help me learn in school, teach me about this specific topic, ask me questions, try to explain this to me like a 19-year-old, and that’s a lot more effective.

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Melinda Wittstock:

And we’re back with Monica Badiu, email copywriter and sales funnel expert.

[INTERVIEW CONTINUES]

Melinda Wittstock:

So, tell me a little bit more about your clients. Who are your ideal clients? Who do you work with?

Monica Badiu:

I work with course creators, coaches, and consultants who have some kind of an online, digital, or in person educational program. And they are curious about using email marketing to convert more of their subscribers into students. And they want to do it in a way that is not aggressive, and it’s not based only on massive discounts. Buy it now. And finally, my third condition is they need to have a genuine interest in making a positive impact in the world. So that that’s probably the biggest one for me. And I actually have a list of really, like, my dream 100 clients, and most of them are people who are out there already teaching and talking about how we can have, like, a positive impact in the world as individuals, as professionals, as parents. And I find that very, very inspiring.

Melinda Wittstock:

So, tell me how you got going, because I know you have clients in the US and Western Europe and you’re from Romania, and, like, was there like a language barrier to begin with in learning this? Because you got really profession, you got really proficient, obviously, in English. I’m thinking if it were the other way around, and me, as, you know, Canadian, actually had to do what I do in another language, in a second language. That just blows my mind. So how did you do that?

Monica Badiu:

My first job with a US company speaking and writing in English was when I was, I think, 21. So I’ve been doing this for a long time. And the way I started it was back when there was no Internet. We only had Cartoon network, and nothing was subtitled or, you know, with an audio override. So, we actually had to listen to the cartoons in English and then try to use our brain to understand what they wanted to say. And I used that to get started. And then something we used to do in Romania. We had magazines where we would have lyrics of some of the songs we listened to on the radio or on MTV.

Monica Badiu:

And we had the English version and then the translated version. So, I used to manually copy, like, written the English and the Romanian version for dozens, dozens of these songs. And that’s what I used to do during my summer, and it started to become more and more natural. And after I had my first job interaction with someone who was not in Romania, and having experienced that business mindset and respect they had for the employee and the investment they put into the employee, I was. I’m sold. I’m going to do whatever I can to work more with these kinds of people rather than local companies because I felt that’s a massive opportunity for me to grow. And in the beginning, I was very, very, very terrified of my accent. And I remember lots of English natives, they would tell me, but your accent sounds really good.

Monica Badiu:

And in my head, I was sounding like one of those Eastern European bad guys you see on, you know, eighties or nineties movies from Halloween.

Melinda Wittstock:

Wow. So, what have been some of the other big challenges? You mentioned imposter syndrome a little bit back in our conversation, and it’s something a lot of women entrepreneurs actually go through. And I’m always keen to try and unpack that and help people not have that. And, like, I can think of myriad reasons why we would think that about ourselves, because they’re, they’re, you know, women are still historically relatively new to business. We get judged in different ways than male counterparts just on that. I’m a technology entrepreneur, so on my side of things, we’re still getting less than 2% of the venture capital money.

Melinda Wittstock:

So, there’s lots of reasons why, you know, we would undervalue ourselves. But tell me about how imposter syndrome, how it manifests for you and what you do to overcome it.

Monica Badiu:

Oh, it’s a small voice inside my head…

Melinda Wittstock:

Right?

Monica Badiu:

Yeah. Why do you think you’re someone who has something better to say than the other 100 people who are already established authorities in this industry? And I have this. It keeps telling me I’m average and mediocre. And even when I get really good results for a campaign, like I know six figures, I’m still not. Like, I celebrate for a second, and then I’m terrified of the next one because I’m thinking, God, if I don’t get six figures on the next campaign, then that means I suck. So, it’s exhausting to be a professional, having that tiny voice inside my head. On the other hand, it has made me so much better at paying attention to details and to finding ways to improve what I do.

Monica Badiu:

It has helped a lot to do therapy and other personal development work so that at this point, I’m not thinking that the imposter syndrome is like something that limits me. I try to think of it as a protector, a part of me who is trying to protect me from potential rejection, potential criticism, potential pain. Right. And thinking about this, like, I feel how my body constricts itself.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah, because this voice that we have inside our head tells us all kinds of things about ourselves that aren’t even true. Like, they’re just kind of subconscious, limiting beliefs, and it holds us back. And, I mean, to your point about, like, what could you offer that’s different from everybody else? Well, you’ve already blown my mind on this podcast because you have unique expertise. Like, I’ve met, God knows, hundreds of copywriters over the years, and I haven’t heard and, like, really successful ones, and I haven’t heard as specific a process or an analysis of what you then what you just took me through.

Melinda Wittstock:

I’ve just given you a little bit of a pep talk.

Monica Badiu:

Thank you.

Monica Badiu:

Something that has helped me a lot lately is to ask for feedback. So, I do consultancy or coaching, and then at the end of a workshop where I teach someone how to figure out their emails, I ask them, so what did you think about this workshop? Right. Not about me. What do you think would make this workshop so much better? What didn’t you like about this workshop? So, first of all, I’m trying to get feedback on what I deliver and not me, the person who is delivering. So that way, I kind of create the difference between who I am as a person and what I do as a professional. And I find that that is helpful.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah, that’s hard for entrepreneurs, too, because entrepreneurship often is so personal. Like, what we create is, you know, in my case, it’s very difficult to separate myself from Podopolo because it’s entirely my own brainchild. Where we have a lot in common is on the data, because we’re doing that with podcasting of really actually understanding through using AI to sift through hundreds of millions of episodes in real time, like, what’s going on topically on those shows, correlating that with what we know about audience and whatnot. Power everything from contextual ad placement to a good sense of what the creative should be on a podcast. ADHD, right the way through to recommendation engine, search engine, connecting fans and podcasters and the like. Right? So totally have that appreciation of data. But in this case, because it’s just so much born of my own experience in this space with both technology and content over many years.

Melinda Wittstock:

And, you know, you come up with something as an entrepreneur that’s uniquely yours, and so it’s hard then to separate yourself personally from it. Like, I know I struggled with that as well. And it’s hard to actually literally, like, I am not Podopolo.

Monica Badiu:

Yeah, I remember my first. My first two years in business, and it was excruciating because of this, because I was just starting. Right. I needed to sell myself basically and it was very hard to not take the rejection personally. It was very hard to, you know, negotiate with clients to, oh, my God, I don’t even to this day, I don’t understand how I was able to survive from a financial point of view in my first two years in business, because I must have had, like, the lowest rates possible. And it took a lot of repeated burnouts and a lot of therapy to remove myself from that position of playing small. And many years later, I realized it was happening because I was trying to protect myself.

Monica Badiu:

But at the same time, it felt very hard. And I don’t know. I think I know. Well, in Canada or in the US, there probably were many more women in business who are visible in the field. In my case, there is no. No entrepreneur in the family, no man or woman in the close family. Right. So I started with, like, trying to do that myself.

Monica Badiu:

It feels like I’m breaking generational trauma. And then even in the industry, like, locally, the women I saw felt looked like to me like they were ingrained or embedded in this masculine type of industry. And I felt like I was not represented, or it felt like how they were doing. It wasn’t something that I would like to do like that. So, it felt like I was kind of trying to reinvent the wheel with not a really good example how to do that.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah, no, I get it. Because it can be. Entrepreneurship can be very isolating. I mean, I think one of the things that makes us great entrepreneurs is we see something that other people don’t see. And in doing that, that’s the opportunity, right, to zig when other people zag. And yet that in and of itself is lonely and sort of isolating, because there’s nobody.

Melinda Wittstock:

You’re sort of looking like for the human. Right. Humans. You’re looking for kind of safety in numbers. Right. Like other people like me or just like a community. But the great entrepreneurs see things that other people don’t. Right?

Monica Badiu:

Yeah. I was just thinking about this yesterday. I was thinking, if you see a problem and then you have more than ten solutions to that problem, you would make a really good entrepreneur. And then if you have a specific way of doing things and you want to continue doing things in your specific way and not feel the need to kind of be validated by others or, I know, have someone tell you what to do in order to do it, then you’d make a good entrepreneur. And those are skills we don’t really know we have when we’re starting. Honestly, for me, it felt like I was trying to I know. Fly Mount Everest with no preparation.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah. Early in my entrepreneurial career, like, with the first business, God knows, like more than 20 years ago now. I didn’t even know kind of what an entrepreneur was. I didn’t know any entrepreneurs. I just decided I was just going to do it. I kind of, like, jumped in, like, oh, how hard could this be?

Monica Badiu:

Well, you know what I mean? Well, and you just…

Melinda Wittstock:

Right. And then, and then, you know, you learn obviously, along the way, like, there’s a lot of stuff you can’t control. You can only really control yourself. And, I mean, ultimately, I’ve just come to the conclusion that this is an inner mind game. Like, if you want therapy, just become an entrepreneur because you’re everything in your life, every belief you’ve ever had that’s diminishing or, like, limiting in any way is going to confront you and you have to figure out how to overcome it for your business to succeed. Almost like, just hands down, like, entrepreneurship is hard, but it literally is about your mindset at the end of the day.

Monica Badiu:

And it changes. It changes you. I mean, for me, it made me into a better person.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah. Oh, 100%. I agree with that. For me, like, every entrepreneur, male and female that I’ve ever talked to about this, this is always usually the case. And what can be really easy, like, on the isolation side of things is, can easy. It can be easy to look out onto social media or elsewhere or like, magazines that write about entrepreneurs or wherever it is and think, oh, man, I must be the only person who’s having this issue or this problem or this challenge. And no, like, you’re not. So, it’s quite a journey.

Monica Badiu:

Yeah. And there are many supportive communities. So maybe eight years ago, I was revamping my entrepreneurship side of things, and I realized that if I wanted to get to another level of growth and kind of allow myself to think bigger, I needed to really, really work on my mindset stuff. So, what I did, I went to, I joined, I think, a few different Facebook groups for female entrepreneurs, and I looked for accountability buddies. For maybe one year and a half, I met twice a week with a fellow entrepreneur from Romania and another one from, I want to say Baltimore. And we did that weekly for one year and a half, coaching ourselves to just stay on track and not get demotivated when things got hard. Just so we can escape that isolation and just, you know, having a conversation that’s only happening in your mind. And that helped me so much because they would challenge my false beliefs and they would challenge me when I would say, this is so hard.

Monica Badiu:

I think I’m going to give up, or I don’t know how to solve this. I don’t know what to do about this. And it was so helpful. So helpful.

Melinda Wittstock:

Right. Well, we all need community around. You mentioned your family. There were no other entrepreneurs anywhere. And your extended family. So, we kind of need a business family, you know, and it’s different from our own family and friends. Cause they will never understand, because they’re not entrepreneurs.

Melinda Wittstock:

And they will say things to you sometimes, even if they’re well meaning, that will be discouraging because it’s their own fear. Like there’s a reason why they’re not entrepreneurs.

Monica Badiu:

Yeah. And so, I have a friend, she started her business one year ago, and she’s doing something awesome. I think it’s so powerful for the community she’s in, but nobody was supporting her. And here I was, like, the only insane person. That’s how it felt. And I was telling her, it’s going to be hard, but you can do it if you really want it. And don’t expect support from your family or other friends right now, because they are afraid that you’re going to fail. And that fear of failure and the fact that it might be painful to you, that’s what’s pushing them to try to protect you by telling you, don’t do this, you’re insane.

Monica Badiu:

And it took her some time, and now she’s trying to overcome this whole thing that she doesn’t have support, you know, from the people that were supposed to support you, the closest people around you. If you don’t have that support, it’s very hard to continue. But to your point, yes, find. Find the people who understand what you’re doing and who have been through what you’re about to experience. It helps. It helps a lot.

Melinda Wittstock:

So, I have a question for you. When you’re working for a client and you’re doing all the research and you’re getting all that? Is that that same process you use to build your own business? And is it harder to do it on behalf of yourself than it is for other people?

Monica Badiu:

It’s so much harder to do it for myself. So right now, I’m actually in the process of revamping customer avatars, revamping my ideal clients, revamping a big side of my business, because I want to go more into teaching and building online authority and speaking on stages and all of that. So that implies changing a lot of the things I have in place. It’s like I’m trying to take them to another level. If a client would have come to me with this project, I would have gotten it done a long time ago because I wouldn’t have to deal with their false beliefs about themselves, which is what I’m dealing with right now. And thinking, am I worthy enough to do this? This sounds like a really big goal. Why am I the one who is supposed to be doing this? Do I want the stress? But I don’t have the resources. So, there are so many moving parts that you don’t know.

Monica Badiu:

You don’t know until you actually get there. And when I do this for a client, you know, they already have their own team, even if they have mindset crash, I don’t necessarily have to be the one to coach them through that. They have more resources than I have as a solopreneur with a VA and a video editor. So, yeah, it’s a lot easier to do this for clients than for myself. I learned to outsource what I can to other people. So, this year, I launched my podcast, and the only reason that got launched was because I outsource everything, with the exception of me recording the video and writing the script for that episode. I had an agency that did everything else, because if they weren’t there, my podcast wouldn’t have come out.

Melinda Wittstock:

Right. This is important for women is that we sometimes fool ourselves into thinking that it can’t happen unless we have to do everything and do it all ourselves. And that’s the surest, fastest way to create a very small or failing business. Like, we have to be willing to hire other people, whether they’re coaches or freelancers or agencies or employees, to be able to grow a business. Right?

Monica Badiu:

Yeah.

Melinda Wittstock:

And so, I think sometimes we get held back thinking, oh, my God, I don’t know if I can afford that, but can you afford not to? Because if you see it as an investment as opposed to an expense.

Monica Badiu:

Yes, exactly. So, for me, what actually helped me to kind of justify the investment was the fact that it would save me time, and it was time I could spend with my daughter, because that’s, like another conflict I had in the last few years. So, my daughter is four years old now, and such a lovely age. Yeah.

Melinda Wittstock:

Mine are older now, but, like, I remember that I look back at it fondly because they were just full of wonder, you know, and anger. Yeah. You know, they’re a lot to manage.

Monica Badiu:

But, you know, but, yeah, I love her. She’s an inspiration, and she’s amazing. But I realized, maybe I realized pretty soon after I gave birth that I was experiencing mom guilt. I felt like I had to juggle, you know, being an entrepreneur, working for clients, building my business, building my marketing, being a wife, taking care of myself, taking care of my daughter. And it felt like it’s impossible to do all of that in 24 hours a day. And I have continued to have these, like, big dreams of where I would like to take my business and what I would like to do to have that kind of positive impact in the world. And for a lot of time, I kept myself in kind of paralyzes mode because in my head, it was, if I go after this big dream I have, where will I find the time to spend it? With my daughter.

Monica Badiu:

And I’m trying to build positive impact in the world so the future will be better for her when she grows up. But I’m taking that time away from her right now. So, it was very difficult to juggle all of that in my mind. And one of the ways I found to kind of relieve the pressure was trying to outsource what I could, but that actions would still keep me on the path towards achieving what I had in my mind.

Melinda Wittstock:

Amazing. So, Monica, as we start to wrap up, like, what’s next for you? What’s your vision? Where are you going? Where do you see yourself in, like, 5 to 10 years’ time?

Monica Badiu:

Speaking on stages and teaching people how to own responsibility for the messaging they put out there, I call this, like, customer centric copywriting. And it’s not rocket science. I’m not inventing the concept. There are many people who talk about this, like Seth Godin, he talks about this, but entrepreneurs don’t understand what that means. I’m trying to give them practical framework for doing that. And I’ve started with my YouTube channel, and I plan on creating more educational content to show people that it can be done. Like, you can sell with email marketing, and you don’t have to talk about a discount for, like, in eight emails. It’s not necessary.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah.

Monica Badiu:

And, well, I want to start teaching.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah. I love your approach to the data because that’s where a lot of people, they say they want data, but they don’t know how to use data. They don’t know how to find data. They don’t know how to evaluate data. And so that whole piece is absolutely critical. So, Monica, I just want to thank you so much for putting on your wings today and flying with us. And I want to make sure, and I’ll make sure on the show notes, everybody knows how to find you on your website, LinkedIn, YouTube, your podcast, all of it. But thank you so much.

Monica Badiu:

Thank you for the opportunity. I love talking about entrepreneurship with you more than, like, the AI stuff and the copywriting things. But thank you again for giving me the opportunity. And I hope this was inspiring.

[INTERVIEW ENDS]

Melinda Wittstock:

Monica Badiu is the founder of the Monica Badiu agency, specializing in customer-centric copywriting and data-driven sales marketing to produce targeted and non-spammy emails and funnel pages that drive high conversions by prioritizing value over pressure to build long-lasting relationships with audiences.

Check out her podcast, Master the Inbox, on Podopolo. Also follow Wings of Inspired Business there, create and share your favorite moments with our viral episode clip feature, and join us in the episode comments section so we can all take the conversation further with your questions and comments.

Melinda Wittstock:

That’s it for today’s episode. Head on over to WingsPodcast.com – and subscribe to the show. When you subscribe, you’ll instantly get my special gift, the WINGS Success Formula. Women … Innovating … Networking … Growing …Scaling … IS the WINGS of Inspired Business Formula …for daily success in your business and life. Miss a Wings episode? We’ve got hundreds in the vault, all with actionable advice and epiphanies. Check them out at MelindaWittstock.com or wingspodcast.com. You can also catch me on LinkedIn or Instagram @MelindaAnneWittstock.

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