Abbi Perets
5-Day Email Sequence to Evergreen Webinar
Abbi Perets is a copywriter with 20 years of experience working with some of the biggest brands in the world. She’s passionate about writing email sequences and sales pages that help people get their courses, services, and products in front of the people who need them most. Abbi’s signature approach comes down to building powerful, long-lasting relationships with readers so that they open every email you send.
In today’s interview, I interview her about her business journey from freelance copywriter to CEO and course creator who uses Deadline Funnel to create evergreen sales systems.
Watch the video of my interview with Abbi or read the transcript below!
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Successful Freelance Mom Deadline FunnelTranscript
Jack Born: Hey everyone, this is Jack Born. I’m the founder of Deadline Funnel, and I’m here with another fantastic Deadline Funnel client. And her name is Abbi Perets. And I’m gonna read her intro, and then we’re gonna jump into her story because I was reading a little bit, some of the bullet points of where she came from and what she’s doing now and how she’s finished 2021, and I am super impressed. So I’m super excited to get into this. So, Abbi Perets is a copywriter with 20 years of experience, working with some of the biggest brands in the world. She’s passionate about writing email sequences and sales pages that help people get their courses, services and products in front of the people who need them most. Abbi’s signature approach comes down to building powerful, long-lasting relationships with readers so that they open every email you send. Abbi, great to have you here.
Abbi Perets: Thank you so much for having me. I’m super excited.
Jack Born: Yeah, so email is one of my favorite things to talk about. And I really feel like getting people to want to open those emails is a really, really critical thing. But before we dive into, you know, how you stumbled upon this superpower that you have, let’s talk about your journey. Why don’t you take us back and share what you want to share about how, like let’s start with what you do now, the audience that you serve and how you serve them. And then let’s rewind to how you ended up being who you are now.
Abbi Perets: Sounds good. So today I am the CEO of Successful Freelance Mom, where I help women, mostly moms, get started in freelance writing. So, understanding what freelance writing is- that it’s possible to get paid to work on the internet. Start that whole business, and then grow and scale it over time. That’s what I do now. And I got here, as so many of us do, in a fairly roundabout way. I had my first baby when I was 23 years old. She is now 22. And when I had her, I was like, “Yeah, I don’t want to work anymore.” And it’s not like I had, you know, a high power job prior to that. I had one real job in my life, and that was working as a junior copywriter at a small marketing firm. And I didn’t really know what I was doing. When they hired me, they were like, “Okay, you’re a copywriter.” And I’m like, “Cool, you want to tell me what that means? Like, what does a copywriter do?” So basically it meant they handed me things and said, “Write about this,” and I did that. So when my baby was born, I didn’t want to go back to work. And I announced that I was a freelance writer. And I still didn’t really know, “What does that mean? Who will pay me? How will that happen?” So I spent time figuring that out. And because I am very, very old, this was before Google. This was the days of Alta Vista. I was fortunate enough to be living in Los Angeles, and I had a great public library system at my fingertips. And so I read every book that I could find about like, “What is freelance writing? What does that mean? How do you get clients?” So I read a lot of books. I made good friends with my research librarian, which is probably my biggest tip to anyone anywhere who wants to do anything. Be really nice to the research librarian ’cause they’ll show you everything you need to know. And I learned what freelancing was. I figured out how to get people to hire me. I built up a business, and that business let me parent my children. I have five children. So I kept taking a year off to have a baby and recover a little bit and adjust my work schedule. It meant that I could be flexible. One of my kids has a lot of special needs, and we spent a lot of his first couple of years in speech therapy, physical therapy, occupational therapy, all of those things. And so I would spend a lot of my time with a laptop in a waiting room. And freelance writing meant that that was not necessarily wasted time, especially because like Facebook wasn’t a thing then. So that was time that I could be working on drafts of things that I was doing for clients.
And that went pretty well. I did okay. I spent a lot of years, probably 15 years earning a solid three to $4,000 a month from freelance writing. I worked very hard to bring that money in, and I was happy with that. And then my family had moved back to Israel. My kids were in more full day type programs. I was thinking of expanding my business, meaning taking on larger projects.
And then the whole world fell apart. My middle son was diagnosed with leukemia, which is like, it just falls on you out of the blue. You have no preparation for it. It’s one day, everything is fine. And the next day you live in a hospital. And I stopped working completely. I shut down emotionally, completely. And for two and a half to three years, I feel like time froze. Like I feel like I missed out on a whole bunch of pop culture and the world in general, there were all these things. Anything that happened between 2013 and 2015, I’m like, I don’t know about it. It’s not part of my zeitgeist, I don’t know. And when I came back to the land of the living, when my son was better, I did not have the patience for freelance writing clients. Astoundingly. Like that was not the thing that I wanted to dive into right away. And at the same time I was in this Facebook group for moms of kids with cancer. Now I was fortunate. When my son was sick, we lived in Israel, where we live now, and we have universal health care here. So my son’s treatment was all paid for. I didn’t go broke covering the treatment that kept my son alive. Unfortunately, not all countries in the world have universal healthcare, and the United States’ healthcare is kind of a mess. And I was in this Facebook group with these moms who were talking about literally like, “I’m in danger of losing my home. I can’t keep the lights on. I can’t afford groceries.” When you have a kid with cancer, you can’t work a normal nine to five. It’s just impossible. And so, I started very informally showing them how they could do some freelancing and bring in some extra cash. And I would get these responses from these women like, “Oh my God, I did what you said, and like, you know, my old boss paid me $400 to do X, Y, Z. And I can get groceries.” And that was really powerful. Like this was a time in my life when- it’s the only time in my life when I understood how you could be so sad that you could kill yourself. I had never experienced anything like that before in my life. So it was this very dark time. And all of a sudden, I had a reason to get out of bed in the morning. And that was really powerful. And knowing that I could help these women was amazing. And I started looking to formalize that and build, I didn’t even know at first that it was gonna be a course, but that’s what it became, a course and then a company.
Jack Born: Wow. What a story. Thank you for sharing that journey. And how amazing it must feel to be able to impact the lives of people who are in such need and looking for a lifeline.
Abbi Perets: It’s amazing. I mean, truly I wake up every day and I’m like, “I get to do this. This is cool”. And we continue to have a real impact on, like we’ve had women who’ve been able to leave abusive marriages and take care of themselves. And then on the flip side, it’s also okay if you’re totally happy with your life, and this is just a way to find, “wow, this is something I’m passionate about and I can get paid for it.” So yeah, it’s truly been amazing and incredible and humbling, and I love it. I’m 46. It took me a long time to figure out what I wanted to be when I grew up. But I finally figured it out, and I’m really happy.
Jack Born: That’s great. Well, it shows through in the radiance that you have right now telling your story. So, why don’t you tell me what it’s like, so in your training, are you focusing primarily on teaching your students how to get clients and run their business and do the marketing that brings in a steady flow of paying clients? Or is it on the delivery side, or is it a little bit of both?
Abbi Perets:
It’s a lot of both really. It’s an incredibly comprehensive course. I’m probably biased. I think it is the absolute best course, particularly for women and mothers who want to be freelance writers. Our lives are different. There was a lot of stuff that was out there that was clearly created by men. And I realize that you are a man, so no offense here. But like, we don’t get to do
things like spend eight hours on our business in a big chunk of time, all at once, and then go home and eat dinner, like who made the dinner? What clothes are you wearing? Who washed them? So we have like more fragmented sporadic time. So this course is, it’s everything. It’s what is freelance writing? What is this concept of getting paid to write? How do you find clients? How do you market to clients? And then, what are they looking for? What is a white paper? What is a case study? How do you write a blog post? How do you write an email sequence, a sales page, a marketing brochure, whatever it is, like, what do those things look like? What questions do you need to ask? What does your process need to be? So it’s all of that. It’s, you know, 20 some years of knowledge distilled into bite-sized lessons.
Jack Born: Wow, so I’m curious, what market, sorry, what tech stack do you have it on? Is it inside of Kajabi? Teachable?
Abbi Perets: Teachable. I use at the moment ConvertKit for email. I tried once switching to ActiveCampaign. It was incredibly overwhelming to me. And so, that’s something that I’ll put off until I have a person who can handle that kind of full-time and I would never have to touch it. It’s on Teachable. The first year that I had the program, I launched it live three times and I was like, “This sucks so bad. I hate my life. I want to die.” And that’s again because I’m a mom. I have five kids, and [we] live in Israel, which is seven hours ahead of the east coast and 10 hours ahead of the west coast. And as an international entrepreneur, you understand, like I was not gonna stay up late at night to do launch events. I am too old for that. My life is not conducive to live launching. When I discovered Deadline Funnel, I was like, oh, this is so much better. This is like, “I’m gonna build a system where I don’t have to- where I can still provide an incredibly high level of service to my clients and also sleep.” Because those two things were pretty much equally important to me.
Jack Born: So you did three live launches, and then you found Deadline Funnel. What did you create? Can you share with me what your process looks like? So if I’m interested in your course, am I first signing up for a free lead magnet, and then going through an email series? Walk me through it.
Abbi Perets: Absolutely. The very first lead magnet I created, which is still my primary lead magnet, is actually a free email course. So it’s not a PDF. It’s not a thing that you download per se. It’s something that gives me a reason to show up in people’s inboxes for a few days in a row to build that relationship. And it didn’t occur to me for a long time to have a different lead magnet. I was like, “no, I like the free email course.” And I still do. It’s been since early 2017 that I’ve had that in place. And we’re just now thinking maybe there should be like some sort of, you know, checklist or something that goes with it when they enroll in this course. So they go through the free email course, which introduces the paid course. And we explain, and I’m very, very transparent with people that things are automated. And so we explain that we open enrollment on a rolling basis throughout the year, as the coaches inside the program have time to take on people. So your particular window of opportunity is open for about five days, once every five or six weeks. Do we allow people in if they, in the middle-? Yes. If somebody has been in contact with my team, has been emailing back and forth and says, “I’m trying to get the money together,” then we tell them, “Email us when you’re ready. We’ll give you a special link.” So we have a special 24 hour Deadline Funnel link for someone who’s ready to take action. But for the most part, the funnel is, I forget if it’s four or five days, honestly, but it’s one of those. I think it’s five days, that it gives them access. And we’re very clear about it. We have emails that guide them through it. We’ve found that people do need that deadline to take action. I’m very big on, we don’t lie to people. Like that’s just how I run my life and my business. So we’re very open about it. And we wanted a real way to provide that urgency and help people take the action that’s gonna move their lives forward.
Jack Born: Awesome. So it’s a five day email sequence. Can you share a little bit of what you’ve done as an email copywriter to take someone from, they’ve just heard of you, or they’ve just signed up, to five days later, they’re making a buying decision? What are some of the big things that you do that maybe as you go through other people’s email sequences, you see that is different from what other people do?
Abbi Perets: Yeah, I think I’m very real. I think I’m very open and honest about who I am and what I’m delivering. I don’t try to make my email perfect. When I talk, I say things like, “like” and “dude”, and that shows up in my email. I’m not cool. I’m not trendy. I have a 22 year old and a 20 year old who make fun of me constantly, my daughters. My sons are a little bit less aggressive on the making fun of me, but my daughters are really up there on it. So, you know, if I use a phrase like “on point,” I’ll be like, “We still say that, right?” I mean, like, these are the things that I actually say when I’m talking out loud. I’m a little bit awkward. I think I’m funny, but not everybody else thinks I’m funny. So that all, like that personality comes through in my email. I think that by having a place to, that I want to drive people to. Because I’m old, I like to drive people to Facebook groups. And so, like I pushed to that Facebook group where they really get to know me. Where I am showing up live on a consistent basis. Where I have videos that I’m linking to in emails so they can get to see who I am, how I teach. Does my style resonate with them at all? I think I concentrate a lot more on the content of the email than I do on the subject line. I know people talk all about the fantastic importance of subject lines, I don’t really believe in that. I think that people open email based on who it’s from, not what the subject line is. The other thing is that I think my emails are all about my people rather than about me. I tried to avoid the use of the word “I” as much as possible. And I think that it’s about relatable stories. It’s really getting into, it’s really listening to people and reflecting back to them what I think they need to hear right now, rather than what I necessarily want to talk about. Which may not be the same as what they need to hear, et cetera.
Jack Born: So as they’re going through, by the way, I thought those tips and insights were fantastic. So as you’re going through this email series, you mentioned that you are very transparent about a lot of things. But I think one of the things that you mentioned was that, that there is a course and that there is an enrollment period. So is that something that you’re bringing up in the very first email, or where are you-
Abbi Perets: I think that I do from the very first email, when they’ve enrolled in this free email course, I’m pretty sure there’s a line in there that’s something like, “Spoiler alert, I do have a paid program. We’re not even gonna talk about that right now. Right now we’re focusing on like, “What is freelance writing,” right? And just to clarify, to be a little bit more clear, the five day free email course is its own course, its own mini-course that has value on its own. What happens at the end of that five days is they’d get this invitation to the webinar itself. And then even the webinar opens with, “This is recorded. I’m not really here right now. And if you have questions, drop them in the question box and we’ll get you answers as soon as possible.” I tell them from the beginning of that training, that there’s a paid course that I’m gonna be introducing them to at the end. And again, that free training itself, it’s full of personality. It’s full of value on its own. Like even if you decide, “I’m not interested in paying for a course right now or at all, or this chick is weird.” All valid decisions. You’re still gonna get something from having hung out with me for that 40 minutes. And that’s another thing, I am not a fan of these like 90 minute, two hour webinars. I don’t have that kind of time. And I don’t think anybody else does. So like 48 minutes, and then like six minutes of walking through the course and the pitch, you know? I don’t know. It’s probably not in line with what some people consider to be the perfect formula for a webinar, but it works for me.
Jack Born:
No, I think one of the most powerful communication methods is transparency. I mean, you don’t have to have some fancy NLP type of, you know, trend setting, you know, set of words.
I think just explaining, look, “here’s, what’s gonna happen if you decide to enroll,” and just showing them, you know, “this is the email that you’re gonna get, and this is what’s gonna happen next.” And sometimes just walking them through the steps like this is what’s gonna happen. And just removing all of the anxiety can be just very-
Abbi Perets:
You know what? That is such a huge piece of it. I think it is. It’s knowing what’s gonna happen next. I know for me as a person and specifically, you said anxiety, like I am a person who has suffered and continues to suffer crippling anxiety at times. And I really like to know what’s going to happen. Like if we’re leaving our house, I want to know, when will we stop for the bathroom? When will we eat, what will we eat? Like I want to know what’s going on. Right? And I assume that other people want to know that as well. So I really think that that’s a big piece of it. It’s telling people what’s going to happen. Setting expectations, but in a very realistic way. Like, we’re gonna hang out together. This presentation is 48 minutes. Try not to let your kids bang on the door, you know, whatever, and letting them know what’s gonna happen. It’s so important to me personally. And that’s how I want to treat the people I work with.
Jack Born: So this is a leading question, but in addition, like, I don’t know the answer, but it is a leading question. Have you found that by, another benefit of building your business on automated marketing systems, evergreen systems, that you’re able to have more predictable revenue and thereby plan out, like have a further time frame for your planning on who you’re gonna hire onto your team? You mentioned coaches. So is that another benefit that you’ve had, is just having that predictability of the income?
Abbi Perets:
Massively. I guess there are people who do these big launches and they bring in, you know, a million dollars in their launch in January. I mean, I’m not that person. That’s not the kind of money I deal with. It’s not who I am. I’m not that big, yet. I like predictability. So yes, having automated systems means that there is significantly more predictability in my income, and I can plan ahead. I mean, I’m very much in the figuring out what this business ultimately looks like kind of phase. I have coaches. I may have leapt into having coaches sooner than I needed to. And still, I like what I’m doing. I like that I’m able to take a step back, I’ve provided the frameworks. I’ve provided the systems and the training. And now I can work on what is the next step for my students and be building that out while other people are running the day-to-day for me. The predictability in general in life, I am a huge fan of routine. After having had our routine
completely turned upside down for a few years. I am so about boring and going to bed at nine o’clock and, you know, eating my oatmeal for breakfast every morning. Like, I really like predictability in all things. And particularly in income, I like to know I’m getting paid and this is how much is coming in and this is what’s happening. So yes, that’s a huge benefit for me. Like it lowers my stress level significantly.
Jack Born: So any parting advice for someone who is much earlier on that entrepreneurial journey? Like, what would you say to someone who’s just starting out?
Abbi Perets: Yeah, I would say there’s a lot of focus in the entrepreneurial world on launching and big launches and excitement. And while I think that having a live round of your program once or twice can be very beneficial early on to get some of that real-time feedback and to interact with your students, I think that the sooner you can build automation into your business, and you can do that from the early stages, I think it’s ultimately better for your students. I think that if you do have something that you want ultimately to scale, you can’t be bogged down in the day-to-day of it. You need to focus on, well, “How do I provide the best service and delivery to my students, to my audience, and free up my own time and brainpower for doing even more for them”?
Jack Born: That’s fantastic. Listen, Abbi, thank you so much for sharing your story. Where can someone go to find out more about the training that you have?
Abbi Perets: Sure! Head on over to SuccessfulFreelanceMom.com, and check it all out. It’s all over there.