Andy Mason (00:00)
By now you're probably aware that AI can multiply and accelerate your message, whatever it is you're doing, faster, in quicker time, with greater accuracy than what you are doing right now. But here's the problem: speed isn't the same as wisdom. And the faster you go, the quicker you lose your conviction. So, as a Christian business owner, how do you navigate the two?
Well, I'm glad you asked. If you haven't checked it out already, go back to last week's podcast. It's where I interview Ray Edwards, the author of How to Write Copy That Sells. It's all about being excellent at persuasion. But there's two tools: marketing and also AI that will multiply what is already in you. It'll amplify your message. It'll speed it up. But how do I leverage the tools without it taking my soul?
or out without it turning into manipulation. That's what we're going to unpack this week with part two of this interview with Ray Edwards. We're also going to unpack his Pasta Framework, a really simple tool that'll help you communicate in a way that will help others gain help faster, clearer, and with greater understanding. So buckle your seat belts and let's get clearer, let's get kinder, and let's help people even more.
Andy Mason (01:22)
So, Ray, let's just go to the next one. Well, AI. AI is now taking and amplifying things.
Ray Edwards (01:26)
Mm.
Andy Mason (01:28)
Beyond human. Like it's it just takes the best of whatever. There is no necessarily scruples or guidelines to how it can be used, depending on who's created the different frameworks or parameters. I know you can set up some parameters, but if I've got listeners right now and saying, okay, then what about AI? How do I use it to sharpen my voice, my sales, my marketing, my everything without replacing.
my agency and and the parameters or guidelines by which I operate.
Ray Edwards (01:59)
Yeah, this is such a big topic right now. It's so important because at first I was so enthusiastic about AI and I I just ran crazy with it. I was making, I was having it write blog posts for me and having it write emails for me. And I began to notice that my response rates began to drop off and people were paying less attention to me. So this is the first problem. The first problem is AI, as good as it is, as much of proponent of it as I am, it'll turn everything you do into mayonnaise.
It just doesn't it doesn't have any flavor, doesn't have any texture that feels good, and it feels a little slimy. ā why is that? Because this is the thing. This is this is the big marketing deception that the AI companies have promulgated to us. That it's artificial intelligence. No, it's not. It is an algorithm.
That is able to predict what words generally come next and the kind of text you're asking it to generate. And that's where it gets the the seeming brilliance from. It's just parroting back things it's heard from humans. And if you if you've ever noticed as your feed, I'm I have good news. So hang on, for those of you who are who are upsetting right now because you're using AI and you're thinking I'm I'm down on it. I'm not. I have my own AI tool that I use and I sell. And but I just think we have to be careful about how we use it. Because
it in in the in using it the right way it will just amplify your message and sharpen it and make it better. Yes. But in using it the wrong way, you give over your thinking to the AI and it does whatever its own agenda tells it it's the thing to do. And it'll tell you what you want to hear. So I'm sure we've all had the experience of s saying, I have an idea, I want to start up a a dog
Andy Mason (03:18)
Yeah, polish it.
Ray Edwards (03:37)
Health clinic where the dogs come in, it's like a spa, and they come in and and they they lay around by the pool and we feed them lots of fat-inducing foods, just things dogs don't care about because let's face it, dogs eat weird stuff out of the backyard. But it's not a good idea. But AI will say, that's an incredibly good idea. That's a real that's a real one-two hit because what you're doing is you're appealing to the dogs and you're appealing to the owners.
Andy Mason (03:55)
Mm-hmm.
Ray Edwards (04:01)
And people love their dogs, they'll spend anything on dogs. And that may or may not be true. So if you if you ever get that kind of sycophantic behavior from your AI, which tells you everything you think is brilliant, just go in when you get one of those responses back and just say the exact opposite in the next sentence. So you might say, I disagree with you. I think that's a horrible idea. And how can you say it's a good idea? Because it's just a weird idea I had and
Andy Mason (04:06)
Mm-hmm.
Ray Edwards (04:24)
You went full guns on it and I don't think it's that good. And the AI will invariably say something like, Good catch, Ray. I'm glad you pointed that out, because the truth is it's not really a good idea. Where were you thirty seconds ago?
Andy Mason (04:36)
Exactly. So some a couple of cheats there. Test the phrase, test, critique, or challenge. Do that regularly because otherwise all it's gonna do is parrot you or make a more polished version of whatever you've put in. Ray, the other part of it is your writing and even so we I I always do a a podcast live.
Ray Edwards (04:50)
Yes.
Andy Mason (04:57)
I then take the transcript and I and I convert the transcript into blogs. Now, and and I make sure there's parameters around it. Like it must do not create anything, just make it clearer and don't go out the bounds of the language that I've already given it. But even that I'm realizing actually my wife's saying, Andy, there's some things in there that we need to better work on. So I'm taking this myself and realizing, you know what?
Ray Edwards (05:12)
Yeah.
Andy Mason (05:22)
We need to tighten up this. It's going to take more time, but it's necessary because when it takes what I've got and it puts it in a more polished form, what it can do is it turns it into mayonnaise. It loses the conviction piece. So how is is there any what am I saying? Is there any easy way to do that? Or do I just need to make sure that I keep?
Ray Edwards (05:38)
Yes.
Andy Mason (05:45)
Even if I'm saying use only my words, it will still it'll make it much polished, but it still can lose the lose the conviction piece, which only comes from me.
Ray Edwards (05:54)
Yeah. Well, is there is there an easy way to do it? Yes, but it'll give you the mayonnaise. So if you just want mayonnaise, it's easy. You just crank it out and spend 30 minutes and you're done. But my recommendation and what I'm the the protocol I'm following now is I do what I've always done. I think of an idea for a piece that I'm going to write for a sales letter or an email or an article or a book that I'm writing. I think of the idea and I'll go in and make an outline of how I think the idea should come together.
Andy Mason (06:03)
Just keep telling her.
Ray Edwards (06:21)
I'll put in some key phrases, some headlines, some bullet points, and I'll I'll think about that for a day or two. I'll put it aside, then I'll come back to it and I'll flesh it out. And I'll come up with my own first draft of the piece that I'm writing. Then I take it to the AI. My AI of choice these days is Claude. And then I also have our own tool that we use, Clarity Scribe, but that's for a very particular set of practices. I'll explain more about that in a bit. But ā I'll I'll give it to Claude and I'll say,
Can you flesh this out? Don't change anything about any material statements that I've made or facts that would undermine my argument. But can you just clean up my grammar and make it a little more understandable? Claire edit for clarity. And then here's the key. I tell it, don't make the changes yet. Tell me what changes you're going to make and let me approve them. Now most people won't do this, Andy, because it's it's work. But
Andy Mason (07:12)
Time. Yeah.
Ray Edwards (07:13)
Trust me, your writing will get better if you do this, not worse. Yes.
Andy Mason (07:16)
Yeah, because it's gonna teach you how to do it. And that's
speed versus wisdom. I will s sabotage and I will compromise if I'm going after speed all the time. dang it. I gotta do more work here, Ray.
Ray Edwards (07:27)
Yes. Haste makes waste.
I it's funny because I'm working harder at the writing I do these days, but I'm writing better and it's me. It's my stuff. People don't get it and say, ā this sounds like AI. ā that doesn't happen anymore. It did in the past. When I figured out, it's just it's think of it like a writing assistant or an editor. And I think it's really important to not let it change because here's what can happen. I I know because I experienced this.
I began to think what it was giving me was good writing and it was my writing. I'm like, it sounds like me. No, it didn't. But I was deceived.
So don't be deceived because the nature of deception is you are deceived and then you don't know what's happening. But if you go into this with your eyes open and you ask the tool to give you the suggestions it would make to change before you approve them, then you can change them ahead of time and you get a much better, more solid third draft. Because the first draft is my outline, second draft was my fleshed out draft that I gave to AI to improve. Then I've got back from AI the third draft.
then I'm gonna rewrite that. And rewrite, there's not as much to do, but there will be things I go in and change words because I'll I'll re I'll realize I would never say it this way. This is how I would say it.
Andy Mason (08:33)
Yeah.
Yeah, so what you're doing is this is how I can have a practical workflow. Start with the idea, flesh it out, give it time. Like don't the I I I'm hearing that again and again and again. AI is gonna save you time. yes and no. It will it will turn everything into mayonnaise unless I maintain ownership and agency of the process, which is everything we're talking about. Don't outsource your identity, your gifting.
Ray Edwards (08:50)
Yes.
Andy Mason (09:06)
To a tool that can help enhance and will enhance whatever you're doing as long as I maintain agency. And I'm taking that on board myself is like yeah, we've already decided to do that even more. So that's really cool. Ray, you've got this really cool, which I think is the best marketing framework I have ever come across because you're turning marketing from manipulation into shepherding people, helping people go where they need to go. And it's your pasta framework.
Ray Edwards (09:30)
Yeah.
Andy Mason (09:32)
Could you just give us the five minute version of that for any business owner, business leader that wants to better serve and better communicate? What is the pasta framework?
Ray Edwards (09:43)
Yeah. so I was at a marketing conference quite a few years ago, and they unexpectedly asked me, Could you speak after lunch? Because the guy who was supposed to speak is not gonna be here. I said, What do you want me to talk about? They said, Copywriting. We need to give people some kind of framework they can use to write their copy. And I thought, okay, great. I'll do that. I went back to my room and prayed to God. Please give me some idea. I don't have no idea what I'm gonna say. And he said to me, Pastor.
And I realized it was an acronym. So that's where it came from. And here's what it means. P-A-S-T-O-R, the letters stand for pieces of your the structure of your talk or your blog post or your sales page. What anything you're going to write that you're going to craft to persuade people to do what's in their own best interest, you're going to use the pastor framework. And and by choosing pastor, the original meaning of that word was not the guy in the Sioux who leads the
The service at the local Baptist church, but it was a shepherd. And what does the shepherd do? The shepherd cares for the flock, protects them, gets them food, gets them water, makes sure they're healthy, doesn't let the wolves come around. That's what a shepherd does. And the great shepherd, as we know, laid down his life for the sheep. my God. When you think of your business like that, I'm the shepherd of these people.
I'm going to help them make a good decision for them. It may not be the best decision for me because they won't give me their money. But if they don't need to give me their money, if I can't help them, I don't want their money because then I'm stealing from them. So I'm shepherding my people, leading them to a good decision. The P stands for person, problem, and pain. You think of the person who is your ideal customer in your mind, who's the person you could help the most, who's the person that most needs it.
Who's most aware of it, that they have a problem, that they have a pain, and that you can help them solve it. That's the person. Then you think of the problem. What is the problem I solve? And I'm going to urge you to think of just one problem. You may say to me, Well, I got a business, we got 15 different things we could do. That's the problem for you. Your problem is you people say, I focus on 15 things. I'm like, no, you don't. You don't focus. I don't think that word means what you think it means. Focus means there's one thing I pay attention to.
So it's one problem you help them solve. And what's the pain as they feel it that comes from that problem? Not as you feel it, not as you feel like they ought to feel, how they feel, how they experience the pain. So then we move on to the A, which is for the the ā the aspirations of the of the person you're working with. What do they aspire to? And also we want to amplify.
the consequences if they don't solve the problem. Now people get a little edgy about this because they think I'm I'm recommending you use fear in your marketing. No, that's not what I'm recommending. I'm I'm saying if if you're a doctor or you're a physician and somebody comes in your office and they're they're clearly out of shape and they're eating wrong, they've got plaque in their arteries, are you engaging in fear-based marketing if you tell them you're very close to having a heart attack?
Andy Mason (12:14)
Yeah.
Ray Edwards (12:35)
We need to do something about this. You need to change your eating habits. You need to exercise. We might even need to go in and make sure you don't have a blockage that's about to kill you. No, it's just telling you, he's amplifying the consequences because he or she knows what's going to happen if you don't take care of the problem. So they it it's important. It's their duty to let you know that. That's how you think about amplifying the possible pain of not solving the problem. And you and then you also amplify the aspirations that they have. What do they want to be true?
In their life. What do they want to happen in regard to this problem? What would be paradise for them? Then there is the S. And the S stands for the story of struggle and success either you have had with this problem or your other customers have had. So you can say, Well, Bob is one of our customers and he had the same problem. We helped him solve it. This is what he experiences today. And you he's given us permission. Here's his phone number. You can call him.
And talk to him about whether or not it works for him. And we have 1,300 other people just like Bob. Or I discovered this method, it changed my life and it changed the lives of other people. So that's the story of struggle and success. And it's important to let people know what your struggles have been because we don't, I mean, how do you feel when the guy jumps up on the stage and their big pearly white teeth and their perfect suit and their perfect hair? And they say, I'm gonna tell you how I became totally successful.
It feels a little bit hard to believe, doesn't it? I want I I want you to be successful. I want you to know what you're doing. You can know that you can help me, but I also want to know that you're human and that you not everything you do touch turns to gold. That's that's important to be real with people is what I'm really saying. So then the T of pastor stands for transformation and testimony. So you tell the story of the transformation that can happen in their life, in their business, whatever however you help them. And you gotta be truthful about this.
Andy Mason (14:21)
Yeah, the key to everything.
Ray Edwards (14:23)
Truthful. Don't make any over-the-top wacky claims you can't verify. Just tell them the true story of transformation and then give them testimonies of of people that you can have your customers provide you with if they feel good enough about what you've done for them. You can just call them up and say, Hey, Bob, we helped you out with that situation, right? And Bob says, Yeah, you sure did. Really made a difference for me. I love what you did. Do you ever tell people about it? Yeah, I tell everybody about it who listened to me. Could you tell tell people about it like
On the phone with me right now. Could you just if somebody said, Well, would you recommend working with Ray? And then Bob tells the story and gives you permission to use the story and you put it on your website. That's how you get testimonies. And then you make the offer. And the offer is it's also could be the opportunity. Because this works even if you're not selling a a product for money. You might be selling a belief. You might want people to to believe that the Bible means what it says and says what it means. So
You're gonna make it clear in the offer. Yes, you have deliverables. We're gonna consult with you. We're gonna meet with you five times. We're gonna help you do your budget. We're gonna help you pay off your debt. We're gonna help you build up your wealth. We're gonna help you feel better, be healthier, whatever the thing is you help them do. So you tell them what the deliverables are, but then you wanna focus on now's where you start talking about the benefits. You say, look, this is you're gonna feel more freedom, you're gonna feel less pain, you're gonna feel better about your life, you're gonna have a better position in the business world.
And that's the offer. And then you tell them how much it the investment is. And you don't do it tricky. You don't use any gimmicks or manipulative NLP or any of that stuff. You just tell them this, this is what you get. This is how it works, how it helps you, it's how much it is. And you ask for a response. That's the R of pastor. Response, request a response. So does that feel like something you want to do today, Andy? Or no? And then they'll tell you.
And then you both leave the conversation feeling good and happy and and at peace and you don't feel like you have to go take a shower because you feel nasty about what you just did. And that's a much better way to live. So that's the Pastor Framework, the seven minute version.
Andy Mason (16:12)
Yeah.
Yeah, I love it. And it's so helpful. It's certainly helped us do what we do and communicate much, much clearer. And that will help anybody, whether they're selling widgets or they're a speaker or they're writing a book or whatever it is you may do, if you can actually, whether you're using it intentionally or not, if that will help you communicate more clearly and help people. Ray, if there's people listening right now and they're saying, Marketing, copywriting, AI, where do I start? What would be a real practical first step?
to get on this pathway of doing it in a God honoring way.
Ray Edwards (16:55)
Well, ā I I'm gonna be bold and say first you could get those two books that we showed you earlier and there'll be links to those. Yes. Yes. And be happy to to give you I'll be happy to send you a free copy of either or both books if you'll pay for the shipping. That's that's all I ask. I don't have a I don't have a funnel I'm gonna put you in or anything like that, but I'll if you send me an email and say I'd like to have a copy of your books and you'll pay the shipping, which is
Andy Mason (17:02)
How to Write Copy That Sells by Ray Edwards.
Ray Edwards (17:23)
Probably gonna be ten or fifteen bucks. It's in the continental US only. ā if you're outside of the continental US, I can I can get you digital copies, but a little more complex. But anyway, happy to do that.
Andy Mason (17:33)
Or you can just
buy it online. But ray at rayedwards dot com.
Ray Edwards (17:37)
Yes. Yes, that's my email. ā and then I would recommend you take a look at Clarity Scribe, which is our AI tool. And here's why it's different from all the other stuff that's out there. There there is, I've looked very carefully trying to find something that's built exactly like ours is, and there's nothing. There's nothing yet. Somebody will copy us one day. But Clarity Scribe is a whole system, not just for it's not prompts. You don't prompt it. It prompts you. It asks you the questions I would ask a client.
if if they were gonna come have me write copy for them. And we start with we tell people, look, we have to know about you and your customer first. And we put that information in the Clarity Scribe and it builds a builds a profile and it'll do it'll it'll write all the first drafts of stuff for you according to the the criteria that I have for writing copy for me. We did we put in we as my business partners Brian and Noelle Swatalski and they
Andy Mason (18:14)
Very good.
Ray Edwards (18:30)
They programmed this thing. They came to me. I have to give them credit where credit is due. Brian came to me and said, Bray, ā I've got an idea I think would work really well for you. I want to put your brain into this AI, your your copywriting and marketing brain, and we can code it into the AI so it'll write and think like you do. And then people can get their copy written. And they can either after it's after it comes out and it writes sales pages, emails, launch copy.
social media content, it writes all that stuff and it'll remix it for you so you can use it in various formats over time. But it it gives you a much better first draft. Even I use it. It gives me a much better first draft because all the the questions and frameworks and ideas and and tools that we use are built into it. You don't see all that though. You don't have to know all that. You just use the tool and we can set you up with a free trial. You can get it at Clarytescribe.com or
We have a we have a master class we've put together. Brian and I sat down. We we were so excited about being able to do this this podcast. We sat down and went through a sample of how we would build a campaign for a business. And we show you how to do it. And you can watch it for free. And even if you decide you don't want Clarity Scribe, you could take what we teach in that in that masterclass and you could use it to write better copy in Claude or Chat GPT. So that's what I'd recommend.
Andy Mason (19:44)
Great. And that is ClarityScribe.ai. ClarityScribe.ai. That's where you can find that. Or ray at rayedwards.com. And all of this we've been covering today, how to write copy, how to use the tools. But at the core of it, bottom line, don't worship the tools, don't reject the tools, but allow God to form the person behind the tools, which is you and I.
Ray Edwards (19:48)
Yes.
Yes.
Andy Mason (20:11)
And that's what we get to do with Heaven and Business is helping people be formed by God in the process of your work. So I can stand before Him and say, Here's what you gave me, here's what I did with it, and let's go. If you want to find out more, heaveninbusiness.com. And we look forward to seeing you again next week.
