​Pay attention. This is a good one. 
 
It’s based on a true story which we’ll naturally anonymize, but let the lessons-learned shine through bright and clear. Because you can apply them, easily. And make more money, doing so. 
 
A persistent business-development problem is the search for new leads. An equally persistent biz-dev truth is that ice-cold leads are the hardest to reach. Whereas upsells, cross-sells, and especially referrals represent the lowest-hanging fruit. 
 
Ignore that low-hanging fruit at your peril. 
 
But you knew that. Right? 
 
Not so fast. Imagine “the tree of invisible fruit.” It’s growing right in your backyard. 
 
Allow us to explain. 
 
Not too long ago, we needed to find a new vendor—let’s say it’s a graphic artist—for one of our clients. 
 
There are many ways to do this. You can search on gig platforms like Upwork and Fiverr. Heck, you can check reviews on Yelp. 
 
But there’s an interesting parallel here to the biz-dev challenge we’d just described. Doing an ice-cold search on, say, Fiverr can certainly yield good results. But it takes a lot of work and time, and you need to trust the reviews posted by the graphic artists themselves. Finding ice-cold vendors is just like finding ice-cold biz-dev leads. 
 
See where this is going? 
 
If you do, then think two steps ahead. 
 
Again, let us explain: 
 
While you can certainly scour the gig-economy platforms for that new vendor, wouldn’t it be easier to simply get a referral from someone you know, trust, and respect? Of course it is. So it’s the obvious path to follow. 
 
Obviously, you can—and we did—reach out to your network. Sure, you can ask vendors in your network to recommend other vendors: That video editor may well know a good graphic artist. Totally fine. 
 
But what if you also reach out to your network of clients? Or better yet, recent/cool/lukewarm clients? Past clients? Heck, ancient clients! 
 
We did exactly this, when we’d needed to find that new graphic artist. And we can’t recommend the process enough. Sure, it was a fun trip down memory lane, re-connecting with old clients from years gone by. 
 
Know what else it was? It was Step Two that we’d just hinted at, above. 
 
Let’s be very clear about this: We were on a mission. We absolutely needed to find a new graphic artist for our current client. So we weren’t pitching our services, at all, when we reached out to all of these former clients. 
 
But still. As soon as they heard from us, they connected us to the work we’d done for them in the past which, we’re happy to report, was all good. And so it should come as zero surprise to you that more than a few of those conversations went something like this: 
 
“Hey! Nice to hear from you again. No, I don’t have a graphic artist to recommend right now, but I’ll keep my eyes open for you in case I find one. Still, I’m glad you called. Think you could help with this challenge my team is currently facing…?”
 
It’s the no-sell sell. Granted, you can’t do this every day, but when the opportunity genuinely arises, it beats the heck out of Fiverr. 
 
Need help with a biz-dev challenge? Contact us.  We’d be delighted to help! 

We do serious work for serious clients, here at Copel Communications. We help them with marketing strategy and tactical execution, with the aim of empowering them to better serve their customers, and generate more revenue doing it. 
 
For example, we recently helped a client to develop a marketing strategy and materials that targeted what are known as HNWIs, or high-net-worth individuals. 
 
And then Archie stumbled into the scene. 
 
What? Huh? What’s this have to do with “serious work for serious clients”? 
 
Oh come on. We have fun, too. Hence this silly story—and this article. But don’t worry: there’s a valuable takeaway at the end. 
 
So. We confess: We were indulging in one of our off-hours guilty pleasures: Reading an old Archie Comics Digest. The kind you find in the impulse aisle of the supermarket checkout line. It’s mostly full of old reprints from decades past. 
 
And there we stumbled across this great story, which instantly made us think of our client. Here’s the gist: 
 
Veronica discovers one day, to her amazement, that Archie actually has a large amount of money in his bank account. Turns out, he’s proud to explain, that he’s been socking away money from mowing lawns, running errands, and so on, so he can save up enough to go to college without burdening his parents. Pretty laudable. 
 
Veronica then takes this as a green-light for her to ask Archie to take her to the most expensive restaurant in town on their next date. “Why not?” she asks him. “You’ve got the money.” 
 
Archie is instantly defensive, and offended. He explodes. He says that that money is sacrosanct. He won’t squander it on a single over-priced date. 
 
Veronica is equally incensed. She hands him an ultimatum: “Spend the savings on this date, or forget about having me as a girlfriend.”
 
Curious as to where this goes? So were we. 
 
Archie holds the line. He heads for the door, saying that “Some things are just more valuable than you think.” 
 
And here’s the kicker: During this whole argument in Veronica’s house, her multimillionaire father, Hiram Lodge, has overheard it all.
 
So he stops Archie at the door and tells him, “So help me, Archie. I want to shake your hand." 
 
Wow. 
 
How could we not wrap up this little Archie Comics Digest and mail it off to our client, who had just launched messaging to HNWIs about “earning the rewards of their diligent lifetime of smart financial stewardship”? 
 
And so, upon receiving this comic book, this client tripled their billing with us. 
 
No. Of course not. That wasn’t the case, any more than it was the expectation. Fact is, the client got a laugh out of it, and sent us an email to that effect. 
 
Because amid all the serious work we do for serious clients, we’re all people first. It never hurts to reaffirm that connection. 
 
Need help with your next creative assignment, regardless of levity level? Contact us. We’d be delighted to help! 

You might wonder what we here at Copel Communications—who daily toil in the trenches of executive-focused B2B messaging on behalf of our august clientele—have in common with those purveyors of click-bait ads that crowd your screen when you’re invariably trying to read something else.
 
You know what we’re talking about. Headlines, photos, and clickable tiles all doing their best to tempt you with teasers such as: 

• The Five Places Where Mold Is Hiding Inside Your Home
• Why Pediatricians Say Your Children Should Never Touch This 
• Her Red Carpet Dress Was A Little Too Revealing 

 
Admit it. You’ve clicked on some. Despite your deepest-held belief that it wasn’t worth your time. And you were always right. You swore them off, just as you’d had back in college on a bleary Sunday morning: “I’ll never have another drink again in my life.”
 
Yet there they are. Thriving on with virus-like invulnerability, despite the evolution of ad blockers, AI, and your own conviction to avoid them. 
 
Because they’re so juicy. They promise so much to your can’t-hold-it-back lizard brain. 
 
Okay. Let’s pivot back to B2B. This story actually has, believe it or not, a point. 
 
Marketing and advertising--any marketing and advertising, regardless of how buttoned-down and high-end—has a simple goal: Make that target audience sit up and take action. 
 
Oooh. How do we get them to “sit up”? No, we’re not espousing the use of salacious images or language (want to have fun? scroll through a page of click-bait ads and count the instances of cleavage leaping out at you, LOL!). 
 
But there is a lesson—a valuable lesson—that can be applied, from click-bait, directly to the C-suite. 
 
Those click-bait ads persist, despite all the obstacles we’d listed above, for one simple reason: They work. 
 
They generate clicks. And eyeballs. And revenue. They’re as American as apple pie. 
 
What then, is this “valuable lesson”? 
 
It’s simple. Learn from the power of click-bait. Leverage it. You needn’t dumb it down; for goodness’ sake, it’s already at rock-bottom. 
 
But you can smarten it up.
 
Aha. 
 
Each click-bait ad is tempting because of the secret it hides, and the promise it dangles. Those are universal truths. Consider this headline which we just made up: 
 
Logistics executives are rapidly implementing this new automated reporting solution
 
What’s the secret? The solution. 
 
What’s the promise? Learn what it is. 
 
What’s the lizard-brain button being pushed: Good ol’ FOMO, or Fear of Missing Out. 
 
It doesn’t really look like a click-bait headline… until you parse it the way we just did. 
 
Whaddya know? Lesson learned. Lesson applied. 
 
Need help with your next marketing challenge? Contact us. We’d be delighted to help. 

Credit where it’s due. Here at Copel Communications, we’re blessed to have some really great clients, and this article showcases one of them. What started out as something fairly mundane, transformed—for us, at least—into a teachable moment. And we’d like to share it with you. 
 
The setup: We were one of many attendees to join on a 45-minute Zoom call with our client, to cover a number of in-progress projects.
 
Others on the call included another vendor, and several internal members of the client’s team. One woman from the client company would be running the meeting. Let’s call her Sally. 
 
In case you were curious, we arrived prepared. The agenda had been shared with us in advance, and we were ready to step up, when called upon, and give our update on the various projects we were working on at the time. 
 
So. The call begins on time. There’s maybe 30 seconds of hello’s and how’s-the-weather-by-you’s. Then Sally started running it. 
 
She “went around the table,” asking everyone for their updates. Like us, they came prepared. So the responses were along the lines of “Progressing well,” or “On time,” or “I’ve had a slight delay due to X.” There was an occasional question for the group, which either the group, or the appropriate member within it, quickly answered. 
 
As it turned out, the other vendor didn’t show. Not sure why, but it’s a factor in this story. 
 
Sally completed all her check-in’s. Then she asked us all, “Is there anything else to cover?” Everyone said, “No.”
 
And so she said, “Okay then, this meeting is over. Have a good day.” 
 
And she ended the call.
 
If stuff like this happens to you all the time, then 1) this story shouldn’t surprise you, and 2) consider yourself lucky. That’s because 3) stuff like this almost never happened with us. And we’ve been in business, replete with meetings, for decades. 
 
The teachable moment
 
Everyone left the meeting in great spirits. Not only was the meeting short, but it was productive. Kudos to Sally for recognizing that once all the boxes were checked, there was zero need for additional bureaucracy. 
 
Indeed, you could say that the meeting was effectively extra productive, because it gave every attendee an extra 40 minutes back in their day to do real work which was on their plates, when the meeting had started, waiting for them. 
 
Do the math: If there were 12 people in that meeting, that comes to eight person-hours recouped. An entire day.
 
Jeff Bezos, when he was still running Amazon, was famous for requiring six-page updates from his reports. You had to be succinct. Time is everyone’s inventory, and it’s precious. Sally reminded us of Jeff Bezos. In the best possible way. 
 
Of course, if there’s 45 minutes’ worth of stuff to actually cover in a 45-minute meeting, then expend every second on it. But if not, heck, the five-minute version of the 45-minute meeting is an aspirational goal. 
 
Putting all wind-baggers on notice: This is a teachable moment. 
 
Thoughts? Pile-on ideas? We’d love to hear from you. Leave a comment below or contact us directly. 

​In case you were unaware, here at Copel Communications, we alternate our blog articles between those directed toward business owners/consultants (at the top of the month), and our “creatives” audiences of ad agencies and other creative folk (at mid-month). 
 
This article is one of the latter. 
 
And it begins with a story. A colleague called us up not long ago, bemoaning the fact that her creative agency (we’re obfuscating/anonymizing here) had seen a sudden drop in business, since all of her clients were switching to AI for their creative work. To say she was unhappy was an understatement; there was a distinct edge of panic in her voice. 
 
But was she right? 
 
And how does this story relate to you, and your business? Are the ubiquitous doom-and-gloom headlines correct? And what the heck is an “Upwork moment,” which we’d teased in the headline? 
 
Let’s unpack this part-by-part. 
 
They’re going where?
 
A little more (fudged/anonymized) info about this colleague of ours. Her creative agency serves big you-know-them national brands. They’ve entrusted her and her great staff, for years, to deliver beautiful hand-crafted creative which elevates these brands to their respective audiences. Collectively, there’s billions of dollars of brand equity at stake here. 
 
Now ask yourself an obvious question: 
 
Are these huge brands suddenly asking ChatGPT to do the same thing for them? 
 
Yeah, we’re laughing, too. 
 
These huge brands know that ChatGPT can’t come close when it comes to quality. They also know that ChatGPT (or any other widget of its ilk) treads in very murky waters when it comes to copyright clearance. 
 
Do you honestly think that they’d risk their billion-dollar brands on that? Do you think that they would dump our colleague and her team, in order to get such sketchy and legally-questionable content… merely to save a few bucks? You think they don’t have “a few bucks”? 
 
Or is the answer perhaps far more mundane? 
 
Spoiler alert: It is. 
 
As we’d told our colleague: “This isn’t AI. It’s just a downturn. A basic dip in your business, wherein a few accounts happen to be slow at the exact same time.” 
 
You could hear her sigh of relief. “Oh,” she said. “That, I can deal with.” It was, in short, familiar territory. Solve-able via old-school tricks like shaking the trees and good old-fashioned business development or biz-dev. 
 
Beware the ostrich
 
Does this mean that AI isn’t a threat, or at least a factor? Get your head out of the sand. It’s a real thing. But then again, so was Google. So was the internet. We’re still breathing. The world didn’t end. The sky didn’t fall. 
 
Which brings us back to our “Upwork moment.” Several years ago, back around 2013, Upwork and other gig-economy platforms, such as Fiverr, burst onto the scene. Many people predicted that they would rob us of all our work and that we here at Copel Communications would promptly go out of business. 
 
We’re still breathing. The sky is still blue above us. 
 
But Upwork and Fiverr are still here and thriving. So what gives? 
 
As it turns out, Upwork was a really great find for businesses who, say, wanted dirt-cheap copywriting and didn’t care too much about the quality. So if you wanted to hire a writer from India who would create a 2,000-word blog for 15 bucks, Upwork was a godsend. 
 
This did not put us out of business. All it did was to better delineate various strata of clients and providers—and we don’t interact with either of them. Our work is higher-end than that, and our clients are, too. If you’ve read this far into this article, 1) thanks, and 2) you’re likely in the same watertight boat. 
 
Which gets back to AI. Sure, there are tons of people, worldwide, for whom AI/ChatGPT-generated content is good enough, and you certainly can’t beat the price. That is, free. 
 
For them, it’s a godsend. For us—and for you, and for our now-breathing-again colleague—it’s just another way the rest of the landscape is evolving around us. 
 
The sky ain’t falling tomorrow, either. 
 
Have a comment? Leave it in the comments below, or feel free to contact us directly. 

​Do not get us wrong. We are not luddites here at Copel Communications! We love shiny new tech. 
 
We use AI a lot, too. 
 
So don’t think that this article—about yanking the plug on Apple Intelligence—is about some kind of irrational fear of technology. 
 
Nope. It’s far simpler than that. 
 
It’s about helping our clients to make money. 
 
Wait, what?? Apple Intelligence stands in the way of that?
 
A solution in search of a problem
 
The comedian John Mulaney once compared his aging body to the iPhone: each year it looks the same, but it just gets worse. LOL! 
 
We’ve been on Apple tech since the very first generation of Macs, so we have a well-entrenched more-love-than-hate relationship with the folks in Cupertino. But Apple Intelligence crossed a new threshold for us. 
 
Sure, you’ve seen all of the “ingenious” new features that Apple will foist on you, every single year, with every new OS update, whether it’s for your Mac, your iPhone, whatever. Each one purports to be the greatest thing ever—which is a tacit admission that the very thing it’s replacing, which had been identically hyped at its outset… wasn’t. 
 
Fine. It’s easy for us to throw stones, and we’re well aware of Theodore Roosevelt’s famous “Man in the arena” quote (the important part: “It’s not the critic who counts”). And besides, every time Apple rolls out a controversial feature, it typically back-pedals with a new slider whereby you can disable it. Liquid Glass, anyone? 
 
You certainly remember--remember? it’s still ongoing—all the hype around Apple’s version of AI. It was so special that it wasn’t just AI, i.e., artificial intelligence. Oh no. The “A” now stood for “Apple.” Apple Intelligence. Capitalized. 
 
It would solve everything in your life. 
 
Until it didn’t. 
 
The last straw
 
As we’ve taken pains to make clear: We’re not afraid of technology. When Apple Intelligence rolled out, and even as it got updates and bug fixes, we stuck with it, waiting (and wondering) for it to help us in our daily lives. 
 
Until it tried to answer emails and text messages on our behalf.
 
Woah. Stop the presses. It’s one thing to suggest some verbiage. It’s another to insert it into a reply by default, whereby our accidentally depressing the spacebar would constitute “Send.” 
 
A client asked us a question. We were about to give them a well-considered and nuanced answer, with a few factors to consider. 
 
And there’s Apple Intelligence, replying to our client with “Sounds great! I agree!” 
 
Fortunately, we caught this before any damage was done. 
 
Here at Copel Communications, clients pay us for our intelligence. The real kind. Not the over-hyped artificial kind. 
 
Hence the illustration for this article. We effectively rocketed our way to System Prefs to disable this hallucinogenic digital sidekick. 
 
Should you? Your choice. 
 
But now you know where we stand. And should you contact us, you also know that you’ll get a real reply, from a real sentient human. 

We have a client who’s an accomplished executive speaker and wanted to book more bookings. We were tapped to help.
 
If you, too, want to build business by building your live audience outreach, this article is for you. Or if you know someone with the same desire, share it with them. 
 
Teaser: we’ve got a killer tip to help you, toward the end of this article. 
 
The lay of the land
 
First off, we’re not talking about using some high-priced speakers’ bureau that books A-list celebrities at Fortune 500 corporate events. We’re talking about getting our client booked at things like regional association meetings and conventions of larger national business organizations. 
 
The point here, in case it wasn’t glaringly obvious to you, is to place our client in a target-rich environment. This isn’t about ego or garnering some kind of Tony Robbins-like adulation. It’s about presenting to business prospects, and then getting opportunities to close them, afterward. It’s a very narrow use-case of biz-dev. 
 
So. No big booking agency. No chanting crowds. But there are tons of these more-realistic gigs, across the country, all the time. And they’re booked, typically, ages in advance: we’re talking anywhere from six to 12 months, easily. 
 
How do you find them? 
 
These days, there are digital exchange platforms that connect speakers (such as our client) with event planners (i.e., people who seek to book speakers for their gatherings). An obvious one is eSpeakers; we’ll talk about that one here. 
 
Load up your ammo
 
If you want to get booked as a speaker on a site like eSpeakers, you need to stand out. For the purposes of this article, we’re going to assume that you, like our client, are a stellar speaker with a great stage presence, absolute command of your thought-leading/breakthrough material, and have also done this before/are a published author/have been featured on podcasts, and so on. 
 
Yep. A high bar to start. 
 
Assuming all of that, you’ve got to let all of those eSpeakers-seekers know. Which means that, after you sign up for a (pretty darned affordable) eSpeakers membership, you’ll need to upload a lot of stuff about yourself to entice that audience. And herein is the gist of this article.
 
Here’s what you’ll want to upload, with some notes and thought-starters to help you along: 

• Your bio. You already have one, right? Well, this one should be tailored just to speaking engagements. You want to show off how many events you’ve spoken at; you might want to include, for example, an aggregate audience total (“Has presented to more than 50,000 people”). Include locations (“…across the U.S., Canada, and Mexico”). Be sure to mention any awards won; if they’re not recognizable, like Oscars, just say “Award-winning speaker…”. 

 

• Your headshot. Sure, a basic headshot is fine. But what’s better is a shot of you, on stage, doing your thing. Guess what? AI can help. Start with preferably a low-angle pic of you (as if taken from “the audience”) and ask a common tool, such as Grok, to add the catwalks and lighting way up in the stage ceiling behind you. 

 

• Your programs. These are the different topics you’re available to speak about. Each needs a sexy title, a bullet list of take-aways, and an “ideal audience” (such as “middle managers and their teams who are eager to take their sales production numbers to the next level”). These need to entice, entice, entice, and sell, sell, sell. 

 

• Your sizzle reel. Your what? This is a brief (about three minutes) compilation of clips of you on stage, doing your thing. Bookend it with an intro title, featuring your headshot and bullet-list of top credentials, and closing titles that include audience testimonials, your website, and where to book you. 

 

• Other stuff. You’ll want a nice 3-D image of your book, if you have one. You’ll want to create a doc known as your Presentation Rider, which includes all of your on-site requirements (time allotment for sound check, technical requirements, video recording limitations, etc.). You can also include discrete video clips of you, speaking at different engagements; these can be longer slices of the quick clips you’d featured in your sizzle reel. 

 
The best tip you’ll get
 
What’s the best way to find out how to put the best stuff up on a site like eSpeakers? Simply visit the “other side” of the site and pretend that you’re an event planner. 
 
Use the filters to drill down to direct competitors of yours. Take a look at them. You’ll easily see who the most impressive ones are. Then you can simply see what they’ve included in their “packages,” and use that as a baseline for you to, well, blow out of the water. 
 
Need help with a challenge like this? Contact us! We’d love to help you. 

​Question: As the year draws to a close, are you merely older… or wiser? 
 
Not to flatter ourselves, but we think we can help with the latter. That’s because it’s time for our year-end round-up—an annual tradition here at Copel Communications —of our top posts for creatives like you. 
 
Catch the ones you’d missed. Or revisit those that helped. Enjoy! 

• How to keep your business videos on the rails—and on budget.  There’s a technique, developed in Hollywood, which will actually make the production of your B2B videos go faster, easier, and cheaper. Check it out. 

 

• What are website “pilot pages”? And why should you use them? Be efficient. Be frugal. Adopt best practice. And learn just what the heck “pilot pages” are, and why they’re an essential step in your next website or site re-brand. 

 

• Where do you draw the line, literally, with creative direction? When should you purposely create low-quality input and/or downplay the quality of the input itself? This is a fine line to walk, both literally and figuratively—but it can yield stellar results from other creatives who work for you. 

 

• How do you get good creative input from non-creative types? If for no other reason, click on this article to see the awesome AI-generated “nerd” we created for its illustration! LOL! Seriously, though: Great tips in this article, too. 

 

• When will real intelligence serve you better than the artificial kind? If AI makes things easy, isn’t it better for challenges like marketing taglines? Well… no. Read a true (anonymized) client story here, and grab some useful takeaways for your business, too. 

 

• How can you update your brand, yet keep it familiar? It’s a paradoxical challenge: Update your brand, keep it from going stale, yet keep it familiar, too. But how? Get the guidelines and guardrails you need, right here. 

 

• One blog is worse than none. Really! Even if you’re not a marketing guru, you don’t want to shoot yourself in the foot. Ready to cringe? Read this true story about a supposed marketing guru who did just that! Yikes! 

 

• The biggest shifts in book publishing since Gutenberg. You want your exciting new manuscript to be picked up by one of those famous New York publishing houses… or do you? You might be quite shocked to learn about the new reality of book publishing. Get it, quickly, right here. 

 

• We made a Gantt chart in Word! (And so can you.) Talk about counterintuitive: Here’s a way to make a Gantt chart not only in Word… but in reverse! Trust us: This will make you look like a hero to your client or boss. 

 

• How to live with a ghost (writer). There is a very specific way to structure your relationship with the ghost writer or copy-editor you choose to develop your thought-leading book. But what is it? You might be pleasantly surprised to find out what it is. So find out here. 

 

• What we’re thankful for, 2025 edition. It’s become an annual tradition here at Copel Communications, dating back over a decade. And we haven’t run out of things—or more importantly, people—to thank. Sit back and enjoy this one; it will inspire you to appreciate others in your life, even more. 

 
Well, that’s all for this year. Have a suggestion for a post for next year? Contact us. We’d love to hear from you! 

Wow. It’s a tradition (almost) as big as Thanksgiving here at Copel Communications. In which we devote our mid-November blog post to that which we’re thankful for. And in which, of course, we ask you what you’re thankful for! In other words, feel free to chime in, in the comments!
 
The title of this article is a tad misleading. Last year, we wrote about what we’re thankful for. 
 
“What” implies things. 
 
You can already see where this is going. That’s why you read these. Just to stay two jumps ahead of us!
 
Not what, but who
 
Sure, there’s plenty of “what” that we’re thankful for this year. Our technology and systems keep chugging along, relatively unimpaired. The economy, doom-and-gloom headlines notwithstanding, has been pretty good to us. Heck, at the more primal/Maslowian (??) level, we’re happy every time we flick a switch and the lights come on. Or open a spigot and get water. 
 
Don’t take anything for granted. 
 
But enough of the stuff. Let’s talk people. 
 
If you’ve read any of these articles of ours, you know we’re sticklers for anonymizing details when appropriate. This article is no exception. That said, if you’re reading this, and you’re called out in our little honor roll below, we’re confident that you’ll know who you are. 
 
Boy are we lucky to be surrounded by great people who help us do our job and make us look insanely better than we actually are. 
 
Here, we’re talking about other creatives. We’re talking about vendors. We’re talking about members of internal client teams we work with. We’re talking about SEO nerds and knob-turners. Some examples: 

• We’ve got a great graphic artist we’ve worked with for years. She turns our crappy thumbnail sketches into masterpieces. And she’s simply a nice person to work with. 

 

• We’ve got a designer who’s also a video editor we work with, at one of our clients. This person exhibits a degree of can-do attitude and positive professionalism that’s at once inspiring and humbling. Bonus: When the higher-ups at that same client get delayed on, say, providing us input for a project, this one person transforms into the world’s most polite yet effective squeaky wheel on our behalf. Bonus-bonus: This is also one of the nicest people we’ve ever met. 

 

• There’s a video editor out there whom we’ve never even spoken to, but boy is he great. Why haven’t we spoken to him? It’s because he resides behind the wall of one of the major gig platforms, so we have to effectively email him our input and feedback. (See our article about how you can navigate these sticky wickets yourself.) The talent from this person is blinding. Even better: He’s got great taste. We can describe stuff in broad strokes, and he translates it into just the right music cut, just the right amount of white space in a title, just the right kind of transition or effect. We hope, someday, to talk to this special person! 

 

• There’s a voice-over artist we’ve been using for years who is flat-out awesome. Here’s proof: Every time we get one of his reads (via an intermediary; it’s complicated), we always respond, not with “Oh, here are the flubs to fix,” but rather, “Wow is this guy ever great.” Double bonus: Both his turnaround times and his pricing are amazing. 

 

• We’ve got a web designer who is so smart and professional, that they make us raise our game when it comes to providing input and/or working with a mutual client. And the deliverables—the websites—are just gorgeous.

 
Not to leave out… 
 
We’re happy to sing about these unsung heroes. They’re vital members of the Copel Communications pantheon, which includes some really great clients who make it all possible, and the love of a family that makes it all worth it. 
 
What, and who, are you thankful for this year? Post your reply in the comments, or feel free to contact us.
​

If you’re an aspiring business book writer, this article is for you. And if you know someone who is, this article is for them. Share it with them. 
 
Our topic: How to get the most from your ghost copy-editor. 
 
We feel pretty qualified to weigh in on this topic, having ghost-copy-edited numerous books for various authors, some of whose works have gone on to become Amazon bestsellers. 
 
First things first: Credit where it’s due. Those aforementioned bestsellers did not become bestsellers because of us. It was due to the authors’ vision, as well as the complete marketing team that guided the book through its gestation. 
 
Still. We were along for the process from concept to completion. 
 
Interested in penning a business book? Let’s dive in. 
 
Division of labor
 
When you hear phrases like “ghost writer” or “ghost copy-editor,” you likely think of some celebrity, sitting back and sipping martinis, while some poor hack does all the work of actually writing the celebrity’s so-called “memoir,” or whatever. 
 
And that may well be true, in that instance. 
 
But that is not what we’re talking about here. 
 
Here, we’re talking about you, as a thought-leader in your business area of interest. You want to share your wisdom and experience with others. Done right, everyone benefits: Your readers elevate their knowledge. And you elevate your status as an authority. Heck, a published authority. 
 
So this is, clearly, not about sipping martinis and letting someone else come up with the ideas. The ideas here are yours. All of them. 
 
After that, however, it gets fuzzier. 
 
And that’s not a bad thing. In fact, the opposite is true. When this process is done right, it’s custom tailored to you, and no one else. We’ve worked with authors who are detail freaks. We’ve worked with authors who are bulls-in-China-shops. And in every case, it’s our job to accommodate their style of working. 
 
Ta-dah. If you take nothing else away from this article, it should be this: Your preferred and most comfortable style of working is the one that is best for you, when working with a ghost copy-editor. Period.
 
It’s hard enough for you to get these ideas out of your head and down on paper. And then to pay someone to lubricate that process can feel like adding insult to injury. 
 
But if it’s a good fit, it will be the opposite. It will be intuitive, stress-relieving, and rewarding. You’ll get to see pages appear that make you say, “Dang! I never realized I was that good!”
 
And that’s just when it comes to the finished product: the pages. In consultant-speak, that’s the “destination.” Which is certainly crucial. But equally important is the “journey.” How do you like to work? In person? Via Zoom? Transactionally and asynchronously, via email? Or some crazy hybrid of all of the above? Are you serious? Are you playful? Do you work in marathons? Or sprints? 
 
Again, it doesn’t matter. Whatever works best for you is what’s best. Period. 
 
So we’ve done brainstorming sessions to help authors tease out ideas. And we’ve worked with others who have simply “thrown stuff over the wall” at us, nearly completely baked. 
 
And what’s our reward? Sure, we get paid. But the far bigger reward is seeing the happiness that our authors derive from both the journey and the destination. 
 
Remember: “Ghost.” Our name does not appear, anywhere, on any of the books we’ve helped shepherd to press. So it’s got to be a good relationship—on both sides—for it to work. 
 
Writing a book is a big project. It takes a long time, typically measured in months. So be sure you choose a ghost you can live with. 
 
Have a book project you’d like to discuss? Contact us, and let’s see if it’s a good fit.