'From first ugly draft to the perfect text'

During the initial lockdown due to the corona virus, Didi Vlaar and Armand van Middendorp decided to take the bull by the horns and start their own business: Chi Skills. Wanting to take their writing skills to the next level in order to generate more interest in their business, they opted for Adwise Academy's Copywriting training. The result was more listeners for their podcast, more website traffic and more requests for their workshops and courses.

The first two years of Chi Skills were mostly about getting comfortable in front of a camera, developing technical skills and learning what it's like to be an entrepreneur. "Now it was time to take our business to phase 2.0 and we decided to look for a good course in Copywriting. By getting the message across even better, we hope to reach an even larger audience," Didi says.

Didi and Armand enrolled in Adwise Academy's Copywriting course. "Our eye fell on that course when we looked into the offerings through the STAP budget portal. This course appealed to us because it is a course with three sessions shortly after each other, including homework and a return moment. This allows you to stay intensively engaged with the material for a longer period of time. Moreover, the training is not only offered in Almelo, but also in Utrecht. We live in Zoetermeer, so that is close to us," Amand explains.

Born trainer

The two entrepreneurs liked the fact that the training could also be followed "live. They were impressed by the way trainer Jan Meijroos divided the attention between the online and offline groups and how he kept everyone focused. Armand: "I am a trainer myself and I take my hat off to how Jan did that. You could tell immediately that he is a born trainer. Moreover, he has a tremendous amount of subject matter knowledge."

Didi and Armand have a YouTube channel, make podcasts and organize workshops and trainings on Chi Kung, or energy skill. Armand emphasizes that the message about their core business quickly tends to become vague. "That is exactly what we want to stay away from, as there is nothing mystical about energy work. The right texts can really help with that."

Keep scraping

In their own words, the two learned to "sharpen the pencil" during the training. Didi: "You have to keep asking yourself: how can I formulate it even sharper? Clear language makes all the difference. So never opt for the first ugly draft out of convenience, but put your work away from time to time to take a fresh look at it later. Keep scraping."

She notes that because of her communications background and experience, she was able to shift gears quickly during training, which allowed her to grow very quickly. Armand, who has been in the creative field all his life, also picked up the material quickly. "In the first session, we established a framework for copywriting, a roadmap to the desired outcome. Who is your target audience and what message do you want to convey? During the second day of classes, we were explained different tools and techniques and then immediately got to work in concrete terms. Everyone was addressed and the trainer provided good feedback that was immediately useful. During the third session we worked with headlines, which is an essential part of copywriting."

Most listened-to podcast ever

Didi and Armand went straight to work on a podcast after the training, for which they came up with the headline and format during the training. "That podcast was up in no time. If you think about the theme, angle and structure beforehand, it works really well. I think we rewrote the headline and intro text ten times during the training before we were completely satisfied. But this did have the desired result: it's our most listened-to podcast ever!", says Didi.

In addition, since more attention has been paid to copywriting, the number of registrations for their workshops has increased, as has the number of information requests by email. Someone from New Zealand has even signed up for a workshop. "You couldn't be further from home," Armand says enthusiastically. Right now, the two are critically reviewing all web texts. "There too we can still make some improvements. The tools and formulas we received from Jan ensure that we never run out of inspiration and the copy checklist ensures that we know: if our text meets all the points, then it's just fine," Didi explains.

The couple recommends Adwise Academy's training to anyone who wants to do more work on copywriting. "Jan is an experienced instructor bursting with knowledge that he is also good at transferring. The training location was top notch and there is a good balance between theory and practice. We were really able to take our company to the next stage thanks to this training. It came at exactly the right time for us," says Armand. Didi has something else to add: "I noticed that the training made me really enjoy writing again. And I sincerely wish that for myself - and others, too!"

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Operations Manager Academy

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