Tough Titties: Living Life on Your Own Terms

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0:56hello and welcome to another episode of the duct tape marketing podcast this is john chance and my guest today is laura belgray she's the founder of talking shrimp a co-creator of the copy cure and is a copywriting expert who helps entrepreneurs find their perfect words to express and sell what they do in a way that gets them paid to be themselves. Through her work with hundreds of clients, including online biggies like Marie Forleo and Amy Porterfield, she's seen firsthand that putting you into your copy and all through your business is pure magic for getting people to love you up, share your ideas, and happily click your buy button.

1:35It's like a copywriter wrote this thing. Her book we're going to talk about today is not necessarily about copywriting. It's called Tough Titties on living your best life when you're effing, when you're the effing worst. So Laura, welcome back to the show. We were just talking about, it's been a few years. It has been a few years. Thank you so much for having me back, especially to talk about this not necessarily copywriting book, Tough Titties. You know, in fact, I don't know if it was you or a publicist, but somebody kind of said, But gosh, does John really want me back on this show? Because this isn't a business book necessarily.

2:14But frankly, what you talk about in this book, every entrepreneur goes through at some point. So I think it is an awesome entrepreneur book. It's obviously a people book in general, but I think it's an awesome entrepreneur book. Viewers can't, listeners can't see this, but you can if you visit the show notes. But the cover, it's got like a 70s wallpaper vibe. What were you trying to do there? it's actually more what I was aiming for is a t-shirt vibe yeah 70s 80s so it's really a coming of age not strictly in 80s 90s New York it also gets into the 2000s and up to today but there is for sure a retro vibe to it especially to the early chapters and I feel like I'm just really drawn viscerally to nostalgia, to the ephemera of that time of my growing up, of my middle school years and my 20s.

3:12And I put together a Pinterest board for the cover, which I feel like they nailed. It's like a whole mood board of things like the Bubble Yum logo and Pepsi Light and all the logos from that time. And I feel like they really nailed it with the Tough Titties logo, just captured that like t-shirt, iron on look. I was going to say it kind of, it definitely reeks of pop culture. That's how I kind of, kind of see the cover. So again, I'm sorry, listeners, if you're driving down the highway and you don't know what we're talking about. Let me just, this is a stupid question, but I think it's valid here.

3:47Why'd you write this book? It's not a stupid question. It's just a big one. And I mean, I truly, I always wanted to write a book and I wanted to tell my stories. Like I, I do love telling stories in my emails and throughout all my copy and, but they never get to be the full story. I mean, you can't write the whole thing. You can't write a whole chapter in an email. And so there are many things. I always wanted to write a book and I probably announced many times over the course of the last 30 years or so that I was writing a book. I'm writing a novel. I'm writing a memoir, et cetera. I never followed through.

4:25And I was just thinking about this. I it's, I haven't talked about it that much, but in around 2016, I met up with this online writer, copywriter named Alex Franzen. And she came to a dance class with me. She was in the city and she, we were sitting on the floor stretching. And she said to me, so, so tell me, do you have like a body of work. And I was like, well, I have my, I've got blog posts. I don't know. I've got my emails, I guess, kind of that's really hit me in that moment. I've got to write my book. And I have always thought about it that way as my book, like the book that needs to be written.

5:04And so I finally really got writing on it in earnest in around 2019 after many stops and starts. And as for like, why should it exist? I think it's gonna, I feel like it has an audience with anyone who's ever felt behind in their life or career, or like, they're not very good with the supposed to's in life. The title tough titties is I see it as sort of the ultimate sorry, not sorry, for not doing life the way you all want me to. Like I've never, you know, learned to I don't drive a car, I never learned to roast a chicken and I never had kids. And my career trajectory has been very windy as opposed to a straight hockey stick that it's supposed to be.

5:51So it's largely autobiographical. However, you are trying to teach big life lessons too, aren't you? I am. Honestly, I thought I was going to get to just slap together a bunch of stories that I like to tell. But I discovered through the process and from my editor who told me in not super careful, delicate terms, that most of the stories didn't have a point. The voice was all over the place. And she basically said, what are you trying to say here? And I realized then that just like I tell everyone to do with their emails, like every story you tell has to have some sort of point, especially if it's in a book.

6:34It can't end with like, and it was really funny, the end. Anyway, it was so embarrassing. Next chapter, it has to arc to some meaning. And my editor reminded me a few times because I was resistant to this. I was like, I'm not, this isn't a how-to. It's not a self-help book. I'm not doing takeaways, spoon-fed takeaways. She's like, but people still want some wisdom there. They do want some life lessons. What did you learn from this? So it took some work to infuse it with those, but I'm satisfied. She did come out a way better book because of that. I mean, people do want to know, why are you telling me this story?

7:12And what should I learn from it? Frankly, thank God you had that editor, because there are a lot of editors that would have phoned that in and said, you know, send it onto line copy. And, you know, frankly, that's the editor's job. You know, I had an editor on one of my first books that used to always say, you're doing too much throat clearing here, which was basically his way of saying, get to the point. I think that's what a good editor actually can do. I mean, you can find somebody to put the semicolons where they belong. So that's awesome. You know, what's interesting is I listened to you talk about your struggle with that.

7:45You were defiantly, I was going to say self-reliant, but you definitely are yourself. You want to go your own path. in some ways, did that make you recoil against what you saw as the structure for a book? Yes, it did. I mean, first of all, as I said, I set out, determined not to write the kind of book that I was supposed to write in the space, in the online space, coming from a business background. I was supposed to write a copywriting book, a marketing book, a self-help book, something with bullet points at the end of each chapter or cyber or your next steps. And it's like, I am not doing that.

8:22I refuse. I want this to be, I was a little snobby about it. I was like, I want this to be a literary book. And yeah. So, and I kind of felt like the structure of a literary book is whatever I want to make it, which is not true at all. So yes, but I was, I was defiant about structuring it the way you are supposed to. And I am glad that I had that, you know, this editor Eric that I have who told me, you know, this needs to have wisdom to it. It needs to arc to some sort of meaning. And yeah. So one of the copywriters key tools is vulnerability. Some of the stories in this book would make me blush were I to write them.

9:07So was that part hard? no that part was actually pretty easy and it you know it could be because my my father died in 2018 and i have a feeling that timing had something to do with me finally moving ahead on this book there's a lot in there that i would not want him to read a lot that confirms his suspicions back when i was in my 20s and living at home and staying out till four or all night like what i We're not going into that chapter, by the way. Chapter nine. So when I warned my mom not to read and she did, but yeah. So, so there was a little block around that for a while he was alive. And I do, I didn't think about it consciously until recently.

9:54I was like, yeah, that might've freed me up. And I do tend to, I, I'm drawn to TMI. I like sharing too much information. I am not private about a lot. There are a few things that I'm private about in my current life. And there are things I wouldn't reveal about my current life or my private life with my husband or anything like that. But revealing things about my past, I feel a little, in a sense, disembodied from that me so that it's almost like I'm writing about somebody else because it was a different person, different time, different person. Yeah. You've talked numerous times about being a late bloomer, you know, from a career standpoint, I think that anybody who would look at your current body of work would say that you're quite accomplished.

10:41So, you know, where's the late bloomer come from? Is that just because you were saying I didn't do what people expected? I think that is part of it. I mean, if, you know, if you read the book, you might say, oh, like Laura was handed opportunities from early on, like just a year out of college, got this job and then that job and then that job. But I always felt like I was on a delay. Everybody was moving faster than me. My first year out of college, everybody was out getting jobs, getting internships, getting, you know, working as paralegals, making money. And I just, I didn't want any of it. And I was waiting around to find a job that I really liked.

11:24And that's been most of my career is saying like, no, I don't want to do that. I can't do that because I don't want to. I'm not very good at doing things I don't want to. So jobs that, I mean, I think part of it is my resistance to corporate culture. I've never been that person who gets promoted every time they walk into a room. And I lasted all of six months in my one nine to five job. And so I've never been that person who moves up and up in my career. I'm a very windy path and we're sideways and looking for things that I actually want to do. And it takes a while to find that. And now a word from our sponsor.

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13:46Yeah, I think the adventure path is the way to go, which, you know, is not for everybody. I think when you, many people looking back on their lives would say, yeah, that was the way to go. Let's dive into a couple of chapters to give people a flavor of what they're going to find. As I already said, we're going to stay away from chapter nine. I mean, you've already gotten me in trouble with the title of the book to begin with. So just because I'm such a goofy guy, how I met my husband. How I met my husband. Well, that's a story of how I met my husband. I know, I want to hear it. Nothing gets named a chapter title without it being a significant story.

14:25Exactly. Well, I think I wrote about that because the way I met my husband defies all the common dating advice and wisdom of how you are supposed to meet the one. And I met him like our relationship overlapped for both of us with terrible relationships that we shouldn't have been in. And I think the common advice would be make room. You know, people talk about Marie Kondo-ing your love life, getting rid of what doesn't spark joy, making room for the love to come in and getting rid of the clutter, which would be bad relationships with people who don't serve you. And yeah, I would say that it is absolutely because I was in a terrible relationship that obsessed me, you know, a person who was married and cheating, cheating in all different ways.

15:23And a bit of a narcissist and a liar and all those things. Because I was so obsessed with him, I was not a clingy monster when I met this new person who I liked so much. I was actually able to be the aloof, not caring, sure, write me back anytime. Sure, you can cancel tonight kind of person that I always wanted to be. You also have a title chapter chapter titled The Most Driven Person You Know. So that obviously speaks to your level of ambition somewhat. yes it's because i'm absolutely the most ambitious person you know no it's it is the opposite of that it is an intentional mislead it is about two things it is a i am literally the most driven person you know because i don't drive and so i'm the one who's driven around and really driving is a metaphor for so many things you know be the take the driver's seat in your own life take the wheel be in charge you do the steering and I've always been content to lean back and nap in the passenger seat and I'm a terrible driver and I'm also I also just don't come out in any of those personality tests as the driver you know there was a personality test that was going around at work and my boss took it and she was like I'm a double driver I'm in the upper right of the upper right quadrant, which means that I'm a driver in every way.

16:55And I was like, I don't know what, where I fall in that test, but I know it's not double driver. I'm not, I don't consider myself a leader. I never wanted to manage a team of people. I don't even like seating people at a dinner party, telling anyone what to do. So that's the essence of that chapter. You also talk about laziness, the good, the good kind and the bad kind. And I I firmly agree with you. I think there is some awesome bad laziness. Yes, I do. Some people look at it as procrastination, you know, as a form of bad, lazy. And I actually think sometimes what you're doing is letting things brew.

17:35I agree. So yeah, I think that just like with cholesterol, there's good cholesterol, bad cholesterol, good fats and bad fats, like guacamole, you know, avocado is good fat. I think there's good, lazy and badly. This week, this week. It'll be the next. This week. Yes, exactly. After I just consumed three bowls of it yesterday. So I think that I would say that I have both an equal measure. I identify as an unapologetically lazy person. And a lot of people say, oh, you're not lazy. Look at, you know, you accomplish things. You wrote a book. You did this, you did that. And I'd say that for one, the good kind of lazy is being able to relax.

18:15I don't measure my self-worth or locate my self-worth in how hard I work. In fact, for me, it's a little bit of a badge of shame, maybe because I brand myself as lazy, but to be working too hard, to be overworked, I am very comfortable lying around and doing nothing. And that's my natural state. And also if my husband comes around with a vacuum, I'm like hard pressed to even lift my feet. And to me, that's good lazy because a lot of people, especially women, have a hard time not doing anything they have a really hard time with blank space on their calendar which is something i relish to the like i love it when there's nothing on my calendar my favorite kind of day is blank and so that's the that i think is the good lazy because people struggle with it they struggle to like relax and be okay not doing something every moment and then the bad lazy is, I would say is what I call fear dressed in pajamas.

19:12It is resistance, resistance to doing what you know you need to do, the fear of not doing a good enough job. That's where the, like the bad procrastinating comes from. It's like putting it off because you're so afraid that you're not going to do it right or knock it out of the park. And that stops, that has stopped me a lot in my life. You know, and that's the kind that puts a lot of stress on you that you don't realize. I think a lot of times, you know, there's a line from the Scarlet Letter when the protagonist, you know, is finally kind of released from all the guilt and shame that had been put on her.

19:46And she did not know the weight until she felt the freedom. And I think that's the way a lot of that does that to us. It's like we don't realize how much this stuff is weighing us down until we're like, you know, free of it. And then you're like, holy crap. That was, I'm much lighter. That was, you know, that was definitely weighing me down. Yes. So I want to do one more chapter. how to be popular. How to be popular. That was about the year that I switched schools. And this wasn't the typical from, you know, public school to a posh private boarding school or something like that, where it was that kind of obvious culture shock.

20:25It was from one private school to another private school. There was a culture shock. They were totally different places. And And my, you know, old, my former private school that I was in for 11 years was like laid back progressive school where you could say, you know, if you were handed back your test papers, you could just go around the room and say, what'd you get? What'd you get? What'd you get? And then the new school was an all girls school and very traditional and a little and competitive. and you know if you said what'd you get person would like move their paper away from you and fold down the corner and cover it with their arm and be like that's none of your business but it so that chapter is mostly about me trying to fit in there and the contradictions of you know you're supposed to look effortless and have the right shoes that are scuffed from years of you you know, salt air corrosion on daddy's yacht and be really chill.

21:27And it was a certain kind of preppy old money aesthetic there. And, you know, that contradiction with, you know, you've got to work hard and you're not supposed to be seen working hard, which is just like in our current, you know, online business culture. You're not, you're supposed to be the picture of ease. And yet we still have people yelling at us to hustle. and there's such a confusion between grinding and anti-hustle culture and hustle culture and being in our in my new school it was called being a grind and you're not supposed to be a grind but you were supposed to get good grades but the you know the punch line of that chapter is basically that I tried to I really wanted to have shoes like everybody else I knew I needed this right kind of beat up, broken in leather boat shoes.

22:20And I begged my mom to buy me a pair and she bought me a pair of Docksiders or Topsiders. I forget what brand, but they were, yes, Sperry. And they were glaringly virginal, fresh leather, so shiny, unblemished. And so I bought a wood file and scuffed them, hand scuffed them myself one afternoon after school. And then the result was that they looked insane. In no way did I look like a preppy kid whose daddy had a boat. You looked like you'd just into the factory, maybe. Yes. And then attacked by a tiger. Well, Laura, it was so great catching up with you again and having you stop by the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast.

23:08You want to tell people where they can connect with you and perhaps pick up a copy of Tough Titties? Yes, please. Well, you can connect with me at talking shrimp.com. That's my digital home. And I'm mostly on Instagram as at Laura Bell Gray. So please do connect with me in either of those places. But you want to get a copy of Tough Titties, or several copies, and then you will unlock more bonuses. I'm going to actually have writing trainings and things like that to go with it, even though it's not a copywriting book. That is at toughtittiesbook.com. And all the booksellers are represented there, all the ones that matter.

23:48So please come by and score a copy or several copies. They're great as a set, Tough Titties. You know, got to at least get two and fill in the form and you will get your bonuses. Awesome. Well, again, as I said, I appreciate you taking a few moments to stop by the show and hopefully we'll run into you again one of these days out there on the road. I would love that. Thank you so much for having me on. Hey, marketing agency owners, you know, I can teach you the keys to doubling your business in just 90 days or your money back. Sound interesting? All you have to do is license our three-step process that's going to allow you to make your competitors irrelevant, charge a premium for your services and scale, perhaps without adding overhead.

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