Why AI Can’t Replace Real Marketing | Rachel Allen

PROFITABLE TALKS...

On this episode of The Profitable Creative, host Christian Brim sits down with Rachel Allen, founder of Bolt from the Blue Copywriting, to unpack what’s really happening in marketing and copywriting in the age of AI.

With nearly two decades of experience, Rachel brings a grounded perspective to a rapidly changing industry—cutting through the noise around automation, “AI slop,” and the fear that machines are replacing human creativity.

Together, they explore why the best marketers aren’t being replaced, but instead are standing out more than ever—and why relationships, not tools, remain the foundation of a strong business.

Rachel also breaks down the difference between broadcasting content and actually connecting with an audience, why most businesses misunderstand the problem they solve, and how great copy translates complex ideas into something people actually care about.

This conversation goes beyond tactics into the deeper realities of business: trust, positioning, decision-making, and what it really takes to build something sustainable in an uncertain landscape.

PROFITABLE TAKEAWAYS...

•  Why AI is widening the gap between average and exceptional marketers 
•  The rise of “AI slop” and why more content ≠ better results 
•  How real marketing is built on relationships, not volume
•  The difference between what customers want vs. what they need
•  Why most businesses fail to clearly define the problem they solve 
•  How to translate complex expertise into compelling messaging 
•  The role of emotion in decision-making—and why it comes before logic 
•  Why strong businesses survive every “internet apocalypse” 

Join our community of creative entrepreneurs and get a free copy of our No-BS Guide To Making Your Creative Business Actually Profitable delivered straight to your inbox. We’ll share smart, simple tips to help you keep more of what you earn—no boring accountant talk, we promise.  
https://bit.ly/4uCmlX2

Transcript

Rachel Allen (00:00.494)
I should know that.

Christian Brim (00:01.536)
Greek mythology maybe? I don't know.

Rachel Allen (00:03.138)
That's my guess. that my brain is saying Aesop or Greek mythology. I'm not really sure though.

Christian Brim (00:06.396)
Yeah, yeah, I don't know. Welcome to another episode of the Profitable Creative, the only place on the interwebs where you will learn how to turn your passion into profit. I am your host, Christian Brim. Special shout out to our one listener in Vernal, Utah. Wonderful name, Vernal. Anyway, thank you for listening to the show. Joining me today, Rachel Allen of Bolt from the Blue Copywriting. Rachel, welcome to the show.

Rachel Allen (00:35.064)
Thanks so much for having me.

Christian Brim (00:36.7)
Absolutely. Okay. We already established you don't know where Bolt from the blue came from, but why did you pick that name?

Rachel Allen (00:42.4)
I know, starting strong. So funny enough, I never tell this story, but I did another interview today and told it. So this must be the day for my deep secret to come out. When I first started my business, I had the worst possible name ever. It was based on a pun. It was the revolution, but with a W, W, R, like writer. No one ever understood it. It was just absolutely terrible. And when I got tired of...

Christian Brim (00:52.702)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (01:09.556)
But was it punny?

Rachel Allen (01:11.63)
I mean, I thought it was, but at networking events, it just led to lot of awkward silences and then like, which is not really what I'm going for.

Christian Brim (01:14.196)
Yes.

Christian Brim (01:21.648)
huh, yeah, no, that's not, no, no. Okay, so why did you pick bold from the blue?

Rachel Allen (01:28.29)
So I was like angsting about this because I was like, man, this was like terrible. I've built this whole brand. Who am I? What am I doing? And I was trying to think of something that would really encapsulate the feeling of good marketing. And I was sitting in bed one night and it literally just dropped into my head and I was like, it's like a bolt from the blue because it hits you out of nowhere and it changes the way you see everything going forward.

Christian Brim (01:39.998)
Hmm.

Christian Brim (01:48.947)
inception.

Rachel Allen (01:50.668)
Yes, exactly.

Christian Brim (01:51.711)
Yes, yes. Okay, so I would be curious, know, copywriting is a industry and a skill that is in flux. How long have you been doing this?

Rachel Allen (02:07.374)
Mm-hmm.

Rachel Allen (02:11.534)
18 years this year.

Christian Brim (02:13.564)
Okay, so you have enough experience to opine on what is changing, what has changed, I guess specific to LLMs, because I think...

Rachel Allen (02:28.664)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (02:31.602)
I'm tell you what I think and until later maybe I will. What have you seen changed and where do you see it headed?

Rachel Allen (02:39.65)
So people ask me about this a lot because there's a lot of flux in the industry. And what I'm seeing is that people who are really good at this are not having problems. People who are kind of okay at this are having a lot of problems with their business. And so we're seeing this real talent gap emerge. As far as marketing trends, we're seeing people tend to really double down on the broadcast method and they're like, this is great. I can make AI pump out 500 posts a day for me.

Christian Brim (02:59.487)
Hmm.

Rachel Allen (03:09.806)
But then nobody wants to read that, you know? And like we all get a little bored. The term AI slop has entered everybody's vocabulary for a reason. And so the people who are actually able to show up very much as themselves and know how to leverage these tools without letting the tool do the job for them, they're the ones that are standing out and having the success.

Christian Brim (03:12.991)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (03:18.42)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (03:27.903)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (03:31.681)
Yes, I think the Here's an analogy it's probably not great but stick with me At the advent of the power saw People before that were using hand saws and Doing a fine job constructing things and then the power saw came along and meant that you could do that job in

Rachel Allen (03:49.72)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (04:01.588)
half the time. The saw did not make you a carpenter.

Right. now where that analogy drops off is in the way it's been phrased because, you know, the anxiety of AI, even though it's not artificial intelligence, but that's the moniker they've chosen. that anxiety is pervasive through all professions. Now I've got my fellow accountants that are like, my God, we're not going to have jobs. The bots are going to do the, you know,

They've coined this knowledge. Like it's a knowledge disruption because if you had a skill that they can teach a robot to do that somehow your knowledge is no longer needed. Like I don't need you to write copy. I have an LLM trained as a copywriter and it can do what you could do.

Rachel Allen (04:47.662)
you

Rachel Allen (05:00.686)
Mmm.

Christian Brim (05:09.456)
Insert any profession, physician, accountant, architect, whatever. That's not the reality I see. I'm curious your experience with the technology tools, as a professional, because I think a lot of people, that's they're like, I'll just have AI read it. What do you what do you what is your professional?

Rachel Allen (05:34.51)
Yeah.

Christian Brim (05:41.042)
evaluation of the tools as a copyright.

Rachel Allen (05:45.782)
So I can tell you that people who do say, I'll just have AI write it, then come to me about six months later and say, why is my sales funnel dried up? So the tools are, I think the tools are great for what they are designed to do, which is to be a very fancy autocorrect and to tell you what you want to hear and to give you a really quick overview of what a bunch of other people have said. And that is useful in its way, but that's not actually marketing because marketing is about

Christian Brim (06:00.736)
Mmm.

Rachel Allen (06:13.518)
creating relationships with people, even at a distance, even if you never talk to them, you still need to create a relationship. And it's about solving problems. just by the virtue of how an LLM is designed, it's not a problem solver. It's a solution gatherer. And you can then choose amongst the solutions that it presents to you, whether that makes sense to you or not, if you know enough to think through it. But it's not going to actually make a strategy for you. It can't really.

create anything for you because it's just, it's auto-correcting, it's not innovating.

Christian Brim (06:46.674)
Yes, I think the simplest way to describe this, and I am not a computer scientist, but just my layman's knowledge is everything in a computer is based upon one or zero. And it is, no matter how high you stack the software, it's reductive in its thinking.

Rachel Allen (07:01.954)
Yes.

Christian Brim (07:14.565)
It can't create anything new because

Rachel Allen (07:17.56)
Yes.

Christian Brim (07:21.088)
by definition, just the way it's created, I mean, the way it's made. But my question then is, as a tool in your quiver, how do you use it?

Rachel Allen (07:35.808)
Almost never. I have yet to find something, I use it for research, but other than that, I've yet to find something that I can't do faster or better just in the particular focus of my work. If I do have clients specifically request it, I'll use it like a marketing intern because that's about the level that it can perform at with marketing. It can give you a good first draft. It can bring you a bunch of ideas that you look at and go, dear God, no, not that, you know, and then bounce off up to something else. But it has that same.

Christian Brim (07:37.309)
Okay.

Rachel Allen (08:03.372)
sort of spunky optimism that a senior in college would bring to marketing.

Christian Brim (08:10.548)
Yeah. And I, I, I'm kind of like you. I mean, there are applications that I have built. A gentically that are, that are not like native LLM where I found it useful, but most of the time, anything that there's that time gap, it's like, it is, it is more time and frustration for me to teach it.

Rachel Allen (08:18.914)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (08:37.756)
And I can't get consistent results. I might get results once or twice, but like every time. No, that it's like, yeah, why bother? Like, and I keep going back to his like, maybe, maybe it'll be better this time. Like, you know,

Rachel Allen (08:52.35)
Yeah, maybe it's like, you know, updated or whatever. I think people often, or what I've had people say to me is, oh, you must be scared of it or people in your industry are scared of it. And I'm like, I'm not scared of a robot. I just recognize its limitations. If we go back to your construction metaphor, a saw cannot make you an architect. And sometimes you need somebody to think things through.

Christian Brim (09:14.002)
And the saw can't be a screwdriver. Okay, so let's talk business model. You said that the people that didn't have strong businesses were the ones that were failing. What are the components that make a business strong in your industry?

Rachel Allen (09:15.958)
Exactly.

Rachel Allen (09:36.376)
So the one that I always come back to and it really bums people out because I think it's hard is relationships. I've been through like six internet apocalypses now where people, something has happened, whether it's the Panda algorithm update or GDPR or whatever. And every time everyone's been like, pack it up, the internet's done, let's go home. You can't make money anymore. And it's just not true. It's just a large change in tactics. And the businesses that I see ride those out with no problem.

Christian Brim (09:42.72)
Mm.

Christian Brim (09:57.568)
Mm-hmm.

Rachel Allen (10:04.79)
are the ones that have a strong relationship with their audiences and with their colleagues. So that's the core of everything.

Christian Brim (10:12.812)
I would agree with that. mean, obviously relationships can't be replaced by any automation. Well, I don't know. Some people that don't have really good relationships might, but that's creepy. Yeah. End up in psychosis. What it sounds like your business though is more than copywriting. Like that's not the full value you bring.

Rachel Allen (10:24.35)
Yeah, that's what I've heard.

Rachel Allen (10:41.844)
Yeah, I say I'm marketing strategist these days that seems to encapsulate most of what I do. But basically I work at the intersection of words and strategy and I really like solving complex problems because words are they're basically technology, right? They're the technology by which ideas and influence spread. And I like coming in and seeing where people have got their technology kind of weird and then fixing it so their ideas and influence can spread more.

Christian Brim (11:09.418)
So would, okay, I love that. Would you say that, because marketing is a funny animal, and obviously there are lots of components to it, whether it's copyright or design or strategy, what do you see? So this is kind of my...

again, layman's terms of what I see, there's a bunch of people that would never have hired you, right, that are going to now use tools because they can do it themselves, right? But they're not the people that would have hired you in the first place, yeah?

Rachel Allen (11:43.96)
Mm-hmm.

Rachel Allen (11:55.894)
Yeah, they're the people who would have bought the, you know, foolproof 90-day marketing plan for 27 bucks or whatever.

Christian Brim (12:02.512)
Right. Okay. So who is your target market? Who do you deliver value best to?

Rachel Allen (12:10.368)
I work with founders and, or a lot of times C-suite execs who are like been shifting over into private practice. So people who have been doing grownup business for at least a couple of years, and they need somebody who can come in and express what they're thinking and how they're feeling and work with them strategically to get their voice out. A lot of people in that like chunk or chunk, that's a horrible word, niche.

call me their second brain because they want somebody who they're like, I know I could be good at this if I sat down and I like took the time to really focus on it. But like, I want to be a great attorney or I want to be a great accountant. So I want you to come in and do the word thing so I don't have to get good at this.

Christian Brim (12:56.2)
I don't think an accountant could be a good copywriter ever. No, no, no. An attorney, maybe, but they'd probably use too many words, would be my guess.

Rachel Allen (12:59.842)
I've met one. Yeah, one in all my travels.

Rachel Allen (13:08.162)
they get really worried about specific words and about being misunderstood and that kind of hangs them up on things.

Christian Brim (13:16.724)
Yeah, well that would be probably the same problem with accountants. Accountants and engineers are cousins. I will never work with an engineer. We've had them as clients before. Before we picked our target market of working with creative professionals, I had like one and I'm like never again because, yeah, anyway, I wouldn't have account.

Rachel Allen (13:24.9)
They're so fun.

Rachel Allen (13:29.633)
Really?

Rachel Allen (13:35.437)
Mm.

Rachel Allen (13:43.32)
They're very, yeah, very specific in their working style.

Christian Brim (13:50.593)
To me, it's more of the... I shouldn't say this. There's not any engineers listening anyway. They tend to think that they know everything. And it's like, you have the capacity probably to understand everything, but that doesn't mean you know everything. And it doesn't make sense for you to know everything.

Rachel Allen (14:00.824)
Ha ha!

Rachel Allen (14:06.956)
Yes.

Rachel Allen (14:13.314)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (14:20.48)
But I do think that engineers and accountants specifically have a way of communicating that is not, well, I mean, they're process people. They're not people people, right? And their brains work differently than a lot of others. so I imagine that could be a challenge to take, you're really translating, really.

Rachel Allen (14:35.318)
Yeah. Yeah.

Rachel Allen (14:41.218)
Mm-hmm.

Rachel Allen (14:48.556)
Yeah, that's a really good way to say it. Mm-hmm. Yeah, it's, it's taking, it's figuring out why they actually care about it because a lot of the people in like the more high context industries I've worked with, so engineers, finance, law, medicine, they actually really like what they're doing or they really care about it or there's something about it that drew them into that. And they do genuinely like some element of it, whether that is making life easier for people or solving problems or

Christian Brim (14:50.601)
Yeah.

Rachel Allen (15:18.168)
figuring out something nobody's ever figured out before. And so it's my job to get into that and to find that enthusiasm or interest or passion and then translate it, even though it may come across in them as just like, this is so great. I love solving problems. I'm like, no, no, no, we can do better. Let's make this really impactful for people.

Christian Brim (15:39.808)
That's funny. You make them interesting. To normal people.

Rachel Allen (15:43.372)
I think, yeah, it's like showing why they're interesting to normal people because a lot of times they'll lead with something that they get really excited about. So I used to work for like a probiotic company and they were so excited about the way this particular blend of probiotics interacted with the molecules that form iron in the blood. And I was like, you have got to tell me why anybody would care about that because that's like, you are clearly super jazzed about it, but like, what does that translate to? And what it translates to is better dental health and better heart health. And I'm like,

Christian Brim (16:01.098)
Mm-hmm.

Rachel Allen (16:13.346)
Well, of course people want that, but they don't care about like the reuptake of, you know, interactions.

Christian Brim (16:15.006)
Yeah.

Christian Brim (16:18.854)
Yeah, they don't want to know how the sausage is made. They just like the sausage. But we, I mean, I think also professionals have a tendency to over explain, maybe because it is interesting to them, but also I think there's this compulsion to feel like I know what I'm talking about.

Right? Like, so I'm going to give you all the context and details because you need to understand that I know what I'm talking about. Not, I didn't just come up with this. Yeah.

Rachel Allen (16:45.666)
Yes.

Rachel Allen (16:53.134)
As I have said to many a client in those industries, because they'll show me their about pages and it's just like lists of every class they've ever taken, and I'm like, dude, I believe you so hard. Now, what if we didn't have to prove it? What if you could just stand confidently and know that nobody actually knows how good you are at this, but they're willing to take your word for it?

Christian Brim (17:18.11)
Well, that's interesting because you've talked about relationships. I think one of the challenges in the age that we're in is the deterioration of trust that existed pre-LLMs, but LLMs have definitely accelerated. And what creates trust is not credentials and experience. I mean, that's not.

Rachel Allen (17:31.459)
Yes.

Christian Brim (17:47.211)
but that's what we think as professionals we have to lead with. But to your point, you you go to the doctor and you have no idea whether they're doing their job right or not. There's no way, unless you went to medical school and residency and did all this, how would you know? And it's okay, doctors disagree on things, right? So how are you gonna know that your doctor's opinion is better than the other doctor's opinion? So like,

Rachel Allen (18:02.128)
yeah.

Christian Brim (18:16.192)
You're never going to know whether the professional is doing their job quote right end quote. Right? how do you replace that with?

Rachel Allen (18:25.869)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Rachel Allen (18:35.052)
Yeah. So you have to start out by replacing it with proof that they understand where you're coming from. So one of the best billboards that I ever saw, and I wish I had written it, but it was in like North Mississippi somewhere. It was for a law firm. And all it said was it can't hurt to call. And I was like, that's so good. Because that is exactly what your friends tell you when you're like, Hey, like, should I call you? well, it can't hurt to call. That's exactly what they say.

Christian Brim (18:53.952)
Hmm.

Hmm.

Rachel Allen (19:04.533)
And so these, wrote that was brilliant because they were able to get so into the voice and mind of where people were exactly before they make that call. So exactly where they were in that sales process. So if you can understand what your people really actually care about, and you can signal to them by using very specific phrases or markers or experiences that, I get you and like, can, we can do something together here. Then they're willing to at least check you out.

Christian Brim (19:35.987)
Yes, yes. And I think what the natural next step of that is, which is I'm just, I've been shouting this from the rooftop on this show and in my book, I mean, for the last two years is you have to have a very clear understanding of the problem that you're solving.

Rachel Allen (19:59.875)
Yes.

Christian Brim (20:01.472)
And so many businesses don't understand that. you know, like I was, I walked in, I went, I went to the Walmart super center today. I hate the Walmart super center, right? but there, there was a guy there as a greeter and normally it's like the 80 year old that doesn't have anything to do. Right. This guy was maybe my age, maybe a little younger. He looked

just like Howard Stern. And the energy that this guy had was just off the charts and it was genuine. And I'm like, why have I never seen this in Walmart? And I'm like, well, because that's not why you go to Walmart. You go to Walmart because they're gonna have what you want and it's gonna be cheap and you can get it.

Rachel Allen (20:32.774)
Ha

Rachel Allen (20:39.585)
Nice.

Christian Brim (20:57.478)
Walmart knows their job. know their role there, right? But but but but it's it's it's interesting to me how so few businesses really understand what problem they're solving. They try to be everything to everybody and they're like, Yeah.

Rachel Allen (21:11.965)
my gosh, yes.

Rachel Allen (21:16.886)
Yeah. Or like I see them try to be everything to everybody or they articulate their understanding of the problem based on how they think you want to hear about it instead of what you actually care about. And like my favorite example of this, there was a guy who David Hyatt owned a jeans company and he wrote an essay called 10 lessons from a maker. And one of the lessons was nobody goes to sleep at night and dreams of high quality. So

Christian Brim (21:42.048)
Mmm.

Rachel Allen (21:42.734)
everybody, all the jeans companies like a high quality denim, the best rivets or whatever. And I'm like, I don't actually really care about that. I care whether my butt looks good in the jeans or not. And so you have to be able to think about what I call the 4 a.m. language, right? Like nobody wakes up in the middle of the night going, if only I could find some high quality denim. They think, man, I looked awful in that last picture. How do I fix that?

Christian Brim (21:51.54)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (22:00.873)
Yeah.

Christian Brim (22:05.596)
Yes, yes. And I think the longer a business is in business, the more they can get kind of calcified in their thinking about like, this is, this is really what they want. And I don't, there's, and this is kind of a nuance of marketing. You, you can absolutely, or just business in general, you can sell people.

Rachel Allen (22:13.112)
Yeah.

Christian Brim (22:32.868)
what they want, not what they need all day long. And, and, and a lot of people, myself included, it's kind of like, yeah, I don't want to sell them necessarily what they want. I want to sell them what they need to get what they write. And so like, there's this, this knowledge gap. say, well, I want, I want jeans that make my ass look good, but they don't understand what is necessary to make that happen. Right? Yeah.

Rachel Allen (22:35.266)
Mm-hmm.

Rachel Allen (22:43.885)
Yeah.

Rachel Allen (22:48.492)
Mm-hmm.

Yes.

Rachel Allen (22:59.586)
What goes into that? Mm-hmm, totally.

Christian Brim (23:02.432)
And so there's this knowledge gap of like, this is what I want, but this is what I really need. And not focusing on the need, you know, but it, yeah, I don't want to be a crack dealer and sell people things that they want, but don't really need. And I think most business owners are in that head space. But sometimes you have to lead with what they want, not what they need. mean, like,

Rachel Allen (23:07.885)
Yeah.

Rachel Allen (23:17.304)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Rachel Allen (23:31.308)
Yeah. Or

Christian Brim (23:31.68)
You can just kind of give them what they need and they don't notice.

Rachel Allen (23:35.694)
So that's like the the pill in the peanut butter approach, you know, like when you have to feed your dog something you could do that or if you can at least acknowledge what they want, then you can tell them, you know, I think, you know, you think this is what you want, but here's what you actually need and here's why. And if you can educate them like that in the copy, a lot of times they will be so grateful and convert at much higher rates because you've acknowledged like, look, I get that what you care about here is how your ass looks in those jeans. But let me tell you why this particular denim that I buy.

Christian Brim (23:39.508)
Yeah.

Rachel Allen (24:05.312)
makes that happen. And doing that education process establishes you as an expert, it builds rapport because they feel seen, and it leads, it helps them sort of sell themselves on you before they even really get to you.

Christian Brim (24:17.556)
Yeah, yes, you've engaged them emotionally and then you brought their cognitive mind in to help them rationalize it. Yeah, like.

Rachel Allen (24:20.824)
Mm-hmm.

Rachel Allen (24:25.012)
Exactly, and importantly in that order, because we feel faster than we think.

Christian Brim (24:30.278)
And we don't think real clearly. I like to make fun of my brother. He thinks that he makes every decision completely rationally, like no emotion involved. I'm like, yeah, that's what I said. You're the only human ever, really. That's fascinating. But they're...

Rachel Allen (24:32.141)
Yeah.

Rachel Allen (24:43.01)
That's cute.

Yeah.

Yeah, you should give him a copy of Thinking Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman. He will be very upset.

Christian Brim (24:54.674)
I, but, that, is the reality is that people think that they think rationally, and not emotionally, but, and when you're dealing with people's emotions, sometimes because a lot of people abuse it, it can, it can feel kind of. Shmarmy. mean, the best example is the car salesperson, right? Like no one wants their emotions manipulated, but that's what sales and marketing is.

Rachel Allen (25:02.497)
Yeah.

Rachel Allen (25:16.204)
Yeah. Yeah.

Rachel Allen (25:22.266)
Mm-hmm

Christian Brim (25:24.486)
Is it's manipulating your emotions? mean...

Rachel Allen (25:29.038)
I think it can be. I think people associate manipulation negatively. think what I would... I don't know. I prefer the word.

Christian Brim (25:36.009)
I don't think manipulation is positive or negative. I think it's the intent behind. Yeah. Yes.

Rachel Allen (25:40.27)
Oh yeah, no, I hold it as neutral. think people just, yeah, associated that way. So when I'm doing my peanut butter, peeling the peanut butter to my clients, I'm like, okay, we're not manipulating them, we're inviting them. Which, you know, it's the same thing, it's a little neutral, you know? But I think that it's more, it's not, people think a lot of times that marketing is almost like an incantation. Like, oh, if I say the right series of words, then you're gonna go.

Christian Brim (25:52.02)
Hmm, sounds better.

Rachel Allen (26:07.822)
blank and I will have like, Manchurian candidated you into buying my thing and I'm like, sure, is that how you buy things?

Christian Brim (26:12.96)
It is largely source. It is largely sorcery and witchcraft. Yes. Um, I would agree with that. Yes. Uh, but you know, the example I have in our business, like the, the need that people have is, uh, like good bookkeeping. Uh, you know, they, they, they come and they're like, Oh, I want to, uh, I want to get my taxes, uh, done. want to pay less taxes. I want to know they're done right. I want to.

Rachel Allen (26:17.526)
Yeah, I mean, that is why I do it, yes.

Christian Brim (26:42.292)
get them done on time and I don't want to owe any taxes. I want to have that all planned. Great. Nowhere in there is the underpinning of good bookkeeping, right? Or timely bookkeeping or accurate bookkeeping. And you really, in most cases, can't sell bookkeeping. Like nobody wants to pay for bookkeeping, right? So, you know, we don't even, I don't even know if we...

Rachel Allen (26:53.889)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (27:10.516)
We might mention that as a feature, I don't know, but like it's hidden. you're not buying bookkeeping, but we know that's what you need and it comes with the package because we can't do those other things without that.

Rachel Allen (27:23.82)
Right. Yeah, I recently wrote copy for a fractional finance department. So they had everyone from a CFO right down to bookkeeping, but they were having the hardest time with positioning because everyone just saw them as like really expensive bookkeepers. And so we were having to explain, you know, what we're really doing here is helping you strategize and make good decisions for the longevity of your business. Yes, we also happen to do your books and yes, we can, you know, sign your payroll and stuff like that. But what it's really about is solving problems.

Christian Brim (27:29.877)
Hmm.

Christian Brim (27:38.772)
Mmm.

Christian Brim (27:55.969)
Yeah, and when you get into places where people are uneducated, like finance, it becomes difficult. like that example, I used to do work as a fractional CFO. And I realized that what I knew CFO to be was not what the

Rachel Allen (28:01.154)
Mm-hmm.

Rachel Allen (28:13.794)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (28:24.608)
people thought CFO was. And there was a fundamental disconnect from the start saying, well, I need a fractional CFO. And then you get in there and look at the situation. I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, no. You don't need a CFO. I mean, yeah, you can hire me, but this is not what a CFO does. So there's this disconnect of knowledge between the buyer and the seller as well. But you gotta use the...

Rachel Allen (28:26.755)
Yeah.

Rachel Allen (28:37.911)
Yeah.

Rachel Allen (28:49.982)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, and that's your responsibility.

Christian Brim (28:52.85)
You gotta use the terms they use, like you're kinda stuck with them.

Rachel Allen (28:55.35)
Yes, totally. You have to start with their language and then say, you know, this is what this actually means. and I think that as the person who's doing the marketing, you have the responsibility to educate them. Otherwise you end up with a bunch of people in your inbox who don't actually need you or who needs someone else. and that's just frustrating.

Christian Brim (29:14.944)
That's actually counterproductive. Okay, I'm gonna pivot. I'm tired of talking about this. You've been doing this for 18 years. What are some of the challenges that you've had not in delivering what you deliver, the creative aspect of it, but from a business, operational, financial standpoint? What are some of the challenges that you've encountered?

Rachel Allen (29:20.11)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah

Rachel Allen (29:42.018)
I mean, I think the first challenge everyone encounters, or at I did, is just not actually having any kind of business knowledge or finances. Because I started this, I fell into it totally backwards. I did not plan to run a business. I started freelancing and then it just sort of became my job. So I made just like every mistake you could make. At one point, I had not paid taxes for three years in two countries. So it was just unpleasant all around. I, you know, I like to aim high with my mistakes.

Christian Brim (29:57.563)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (30:06.57)
Hmm. That's impressive. That's impressive. Yeah. I mean, yeah. It's the multiple, the multiple countries that gets me. Were you working remotely? Okay.

Rachel Allen (30:12.094)
So it was a lot to sort out.

Yeah, so I founded the business living in Hong Kong and then I lived nomadically for 10 years after that. So I moved about every six months. So I owed tax in the US because we still have federal tax even though you live overseas and then in the UK. And so we had to assemble a team of accountants that could talk to each other so we could get both returns filed and have me not pay double.

Christian Brim (30:27.135)
Hmm.

Christian Brim (30:42.08)
Yeah, that probably gets expensive. know, we, having creative professionals, we have a lot of clients that are not necessarily nomadic, but they travel a lot. They work remotely a lot and in different countries, but even in the United States, like technically, if you go to work in California, you're supposed to pay tax in California, right? Practically speaking, most people don't, but that whole...

Rachel Allen (30:52.856)
Yeah.

Rachel Allen (31:03.188)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Christian Brim (31:10.624)
tax nexus thing becomes really complicated and it can get expensive in a hurry.

Rachel Allen (31:12.45)
Yeah.

Rachel Allen (31:19.246)
Yeah. Yeah, it was a pain. I ended up hand categorizing expenses across five years of spreadsheets, which if you ever really want to rethink your decision-making paradigm, that is a good way to do it.

Christian Brim (31:28.543)
Oof.

Christian Brim (31:33.918)
Well, it's only the painful lessons that we learn something from. I'm assuming that elicited a change in behavior.

Rachel Allen (31:37.964)
This is true.

Rachel Allen (31:43.893)
It did. Yeah, I got a bookkeeper for the very first time and had it because I, it was, you know, like such a rookie business owner thing of like, well I'm bad with numbers. I, you know, I'm bad at math. So, but also I can't outsource this because what if they mess it up and like bookkeepers are scary. And so I, you know, finally got the courage to call one of us. Please, can you help me with my spreadsheets? And they were like, yeah, it's fine. Give me a hundred bucks a month and we're done. And I was like, okay. Well, this is so much easier than I thought it would be.

Christian Brim (32:13.448)
Yeah, and I think what you're describing is a very common, I would say belief among creative professionals that statement, I'm not good with numbers. I think that's, and I've even said it myself, but the more I've worked with creative professionals, the more I realize is that they use numbers all the time.

Rachel Allen (32:41.006)
Yeah, I know.

Christian Brim (32:41.2)
It is not that they're uncomfortable with numbers. It's it's more akin to a foreign language, right? Like you're you're you're speaking a language I don't understand. And I think there's I think there's well, I don't think I know there's a lot of shame among creative professionals like they feel ashamed that they don't know have this knowledge and it like.

Rachel Allen (32:48.291)
Mm-hmm.

Rachel Allen (32:52.685)
Yeah.

Rachel Allen (33:04.45)
Yes.

Christian Brim (33:10.078)
makes them hide a lot of times. Like it sounds like you might've done.

Rachel Allen (33:11.619)
Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely. I was deeply ashamed that I couldn't understand this because I'm pretty smart and I pick most things up pretty quickly, but this I just couldn't. And all of the advice I found was geared towards people who had W-2 jobs. So they're like, well, assuming that you have a salaried income that's the same every single month, here's how you do it. And it's just so easy. Why can't you do a budget? And I was like, I don't know. Why can't I do a budget? it's because this advice is not meant for people who have the type of income I have.

Christian Brim (33:24.021)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (33:29.097)
Hmm

Christian Brim (33:44.596)
Yeah, have you heard of Profit First? Okay, so you've read, okay, so do you use Profit First?

Rachel Allen (33:49.068)
Yeah. Yeah, now I have. I had not at that point.

Rachel Allen (33:55.766)
Yeah, I use sort of kind of a modified version of it. And I just had to make it work for my business, but yeah, I have.

Christian Brim (34:03.156)
Yeah, so you've read Mikhailovits's book.

Rachel Allen (34:06.75)
I got it off a blog, so I haven't read the book, but I've read people talking about it.

Christian Brim (34:09.417)
Okay, that's fine.

Well, I'll I recommend buying the book just to hear his story, but I happen to have captured that on an episode of the show. So when we're done, I'll send it to you because it's worth it just from his to hear his story because he's not an accountant. And like the story of how he ended up where he ended up that he created Prophet First is a very compelling one. But OK, I think, you know,

Rachel Allen (34:16.782)
Mm-hmm.

Rachel Allen (34:21.097)
nice. Yeah, please do.

Yeah. nice.

Rachel Allen (34:37.015)
Nice.

Christian Brim (34:42.912)
plug for profit first, not for core, but for profit first is I think one of the most powerful parts of profit first is it meets the business owner in a language they already understand bank accounts. they're already used to bank accounts and using looking at their bank account online. and so the process doesn't try to change their behavior from that standpoint. It just, you know, mod takes that as a starting point and modifies it.

Rachel Allen (34:56.62)
Yeah. Yeah.

Christian Brim (35:12.928)
And you'll see, it's kind of wild. There are accountants that are vehemently opposed to Profit First. Like they think it's an anathema and they hate it. I think it's because they feel threatened by it, because they think that, oh, if you have Profit First, you don't need an accountant. I'm like, no, no, no, dude, you don't understand it.

Rachel Allen (35:36.408)
Hmm

Rachel Allen (35:41.869)
Yeah.

Christian Brim (35:41.949)
It's not for you, it's for the business owner and they don't need to become an accountant. They're not trying to take your job away from you. They're trying to have a tool that they can use to run their business. And in that, I thought it was brilliant. Okay. Any other challenges that you've had to overcome besides the non-payment of taxes?

Rachel Allen (35:45.486)
Yeah.

Rachel Allen (35:51.265)
Absolutely not.

Rachel Allen (36:00.322)
Yeah.

Rachel Allen (36:09.132)
think a lot of it, I, there's, there's so many, I'm trying to decide which direction to go in. mean, one was I, I actually had a very profitable business, about starting almost immediately. And, but about three years in, since I had started this as kind of a side gig, I couldn't wrap my brain around it being a real business. And I was just absolutely petrified all the time because I was like, I'm never going to get a real job in the job market. And so I had to.

Christian Brim (36:30.9)
Mmm.

Rachel Allen (36:39.244)
decide that I trusted myself enough to figure this out to make my living off of it. So that was a big mindset shift that I had to go through.

Christian Brim (36:44.521)
Hmm.

Christian Brim (36:50.368)
And what was that mindset shift? what, mean, I'll shut up. What was that?

Rachel Allen (36:57.58)
Yeah. So I'll paint you bit of a word picture because I think the background adds to this. So at the time I was living on an island in Greece and, you know, living the dream, working in the morning. I know it was so, it was awful. Somebody had to do it though. But I was like working in the morning and sunbathing all afternoon and people are bringing me fresh pressed orange juice all the time. And I was just absolutely miserable. And I was like, well, this sucks. Like, this is not why I wanted to.

Christian Brim (37:08.17)
Boo hoo. Yeah.

Christian Brim (37:18.772)
Mm-hmm.

Rachel Allen (37:23.874)
do this because I was just so worried all the time about like, but what if it, what if it dries up? What if I can't do it? What if, what if, what if? And so I decided that I was going to do a master's degree as a sort of last ditch attempt at following the path that I had grown up thinking I was going to follow. So I did a one year master's in London and at the same time grew the business. And I decided that at the end of that year, whichever one was more interesting, I was going to do that.

And at the end of the year, the business was more interesting and more challenging because I know how to be good at academics, but I still didn't know how to be good at all of business. So I threw my hat in that ring.

Christian Brim (38:00.721)
So, so you were, you were, got the masters as kind of a hedge of, like getting back in the workforce.

Rachel Allen (38:06.028)
Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah. To see like, well, maybe if I end up really liking this and like, I know that if I do well at this, I can probably get a job in academia. And I just, I just didn't want to.

Christian Brim (38:20.596)
That's interesting. I find a lot of creative professionals end up in business not because they chose to. Not a majority of them, but like they lose a job, industry change, know, divorce, whatever. But like they find themselves in a situation of like, well, I got to make a living and so I'll start this. I also find it common that

There is that hedging, that hesitancy. I see a lot of people that are continuing side hustles and they won't let go of that guaranteed paycheck, which, you know, that's not a guarantee. And it is really, I think, driven by fear and lack of confidence in themselves.

Rachel Allen (38:58.595)
Yeah.

Rachel Allen (39:02.968)
Yeah.

Rachel Allen (39:14.798)
I mean, in my case, it certainly was.

Christian Brim (39:17.738)
Yeah, and I think creatives, I write about this in my book is,

For most creatives lives, they've, they've not had somebody that has mentored them that what they're doing is actually valuable. There, there's a lot of, when are you going to get a real job kind of conversation? Right. Yeah. And, and, and so I think that contributes to the lack of confidence, but I'm firmly, I firmly believe that we need.

Rachel Allen (39:38.829)
Yeah.

Rachel Allen (39:44.504)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (39:57.129)
And I'm defining this as broadly as possible, but we need more creative professionals. We need more divergent thinking. We need more problem solvers. We don't need more people that know how to fit things into a spreadsheet or a box. Yeah.

Rachel Allen (40:04.877)
Yes.

Rachel Allen (40:13.472)
Yeah. Yeah. I strongly agree. It certainly makes the world more interesting. And I think it's actually where innovation comes from. If you look at it, I mean, even from the standpoint of complexity theory, right? There's a book actually called Complexity. It talks about complexity science. And for any organism to live, it has to continue to innovate. But you only actually have to have a relatively small fraction of people who want to change it.

Christian Brim (40:25.278)
Absolutely.

Rachel Allen (40:41.89)
and the rest actually have to want it to stay the same, otherwise the system is too unstable and it collapses.

Christian Brim (40:47.198)
Mm-hmm. I think that's fascinating. I thought dr. Cutts wrote a book called contextual intelligence and he describes the Or you know most of the organizational theory of management has come from like a military Hierarchical structure right the management theory of

Rachel Allen (40:50.092)
Yeah, it's cool.

Rachel Allen (40:56.234)
Mmm.

Rachel Allen (41:12.038)
Mm. Yeah.

Christian Brim (41:17.728)
It's a complex system. You just have to figure out what part is broken. You replace that piece, and then the clock starts working again, right? But his statement is organizations are complex, not complicated. his analogy is to a cake. They share the commonality of having many

attributes or pieces, but he said, complex is like baking a cake. If you, if you put in a bad egg, you can't take the egg out. Right. So like, it's not a, it's not, there's a broken piece in the machinery. need to replace it. It's, it's more organic and that you don't have to change, much to have an

Rachel Allen (41:58.392)
Yeah.

Rachel Allen (42:08.077)
Yeah.

Christian Brim (42:16.836)
over, what's the word I'm looking for, have more impact. like salt is a great example. Like you don't have to put much more salt or leave the salt out before you fundamentally change the taste of the cake. Yeah. So just thinking in terms of complex as opposed to complicated and all of that to say like complicated.

Rachel Allen (42:26.071)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Rachel Allen (42:33.388)
Yeah. Yeah. that's cool.

Rachel Allen (42:41.1)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (42:46.532)
is more of a convergent linear way of thinking. Find the pieces that's not working, replace it. But because organizations are people, they're complex. You can't just replace a person. You might disrupt the whole thing, which is, think, you were saying.

Rachel Allen (42:50.614)
Mm-hmm

Rachel Allen (43:00.867)
Yeah.

Rachel Allen (43:10.154)
Yeah, absolutely. And thank you for the delineation between complicated and complex. That articulates something I've been thinking about for a really long time, so I'm just having a little light bulb moment over here.

Christian Brim (43:20.294)
I highly recommend the book. I've offered to help him rewrite it as an anecdotal story because he is a professor and it's not an academic work, but it's written like an academic work, which is interesting because he in person is like not academic talking at all. Like, so I'm like, I don't know if he wrote it thinking that he had to have credibility. don't know. But anyway, but it's a great book.

Rachel Allen (43:25.474)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Rachel Allen (43:33.772)
Yeah.

Rachel Allen (43:44.755)
Yeah, fascinating. Yeah, that sounds awesome.

Christian Brim (43:50.762)
Contextual Intelligence Cuts, K-U-T-Z. How can people find out more about Bolt From The Blue and or Rachel Allen?

Rachel Allen (43:55.17)
Nice.

Rachel Allen (44:03.395)
They can find out more at boltfromthebluecopywriting.com or you can connect with me on LinkedIn.

Christian Brim (44:08.832)
Well, that was simple. Listeners, I'll have those links in the show notes. If you like what you've heard, please rate the podcast, share the podcast, subscribe to the podcast. If you don't like what you've heard, hit that little message button and shoot us a text and I'll get rid of Rachel. Until next time, ta ta for now.

Rachel Allen (44:10.337)
I know, keep it short.

You

Rachel Allen (44:25.774)
Permanently.