When entering an exam, did you know that if you can understand the time you have and how it is broken down it can help you maximise the potential to gain the most marks. If not, don’t worry, we’ll be covering it later. Before we get to all that, let’s talk to John Espirian, a freelance technical copywriter who has the nack to make the complex, simple. Not only that, but he shares a wealth of knowledge at every single touch point, just checkout his website – espirian.co.uk, which is jammed packed with guidance on a whole host of topics, not just copywriting, of which some of these topics and a link to the website can be found in the show notes, so you know John will be bringing the same level of knowledge from these to this eposide. Go check it out: espirian.co.uk   Takeaways I told you John was full of hints, tips, guidance and knowledge…. So how do you unpack all of this, hmmmmm. Here are my top takeaways from this chat: - John Espirian’s 5 fundamentals for starting as a copywriter are: - Find your niche and don’t be generic - Make sure you have a web presence (obviously ) – choose one social platform and do it well - Connect with peers and help each other thrive - Connect with your ideal client (like, comment and share…. Stuff) - Invest in yourself and learning what you need to learn - Write down everything  - Even if it makes no sense, then go back and edit as it’s the editing that can be the hard part. John relates this to baking. You need to leave your copy to prove, before going back to edit it to make sense. - Always be thinking of the call to action while writing. Why are you writing what you are writing and what is the intent behind this? Is it sales, download, contact? And this can be related to your assignments or exams and writing to make it easy for the examiner to give you marks – see we do provide you value as well as stimulating chats!   Top Tip - Time, is on your side (exam timings) So let’s get mathematical. Say your exam is 3 hours long and is worth a total of 60 marks. If we look at the July exam there were 5 questions in total all with different levels of marks attributed to them. Now for the science bit (it may be worth looking at the show notes for this one to make some sense of it all) : 3 hours = 180 minutes 180 / 60 total marks = 3 minutes per mark We can now work out how long we should spend on each question, so: If the questions is worth the following marks: 10 marks = 30 minutes 15 marks = 45 minutes 20 marks = 1 hour If you can worth this out in the first few minutes of any exam then it will pay dividends as you will be able to keep on track and shouldn’t run out of time! I hope that make some sense. LinksJohn Espirian: https://espirian.co.uk https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnespirian/ @espirian - https://twitter.com/espirian Using Social Media to Get Copywriting Work:https://espirian.co.uk/can-social-media-help-you-get-copywriting-work/ Freelancing: https://espirian.co.uk/freelance-copywriting-work/ Writing Tips:https://espirian.co.uk/10-writing-tips/ Proof Reading Tips:https://espirian.co.uk/top-10-proofreading-tips/ Books:Deep Work – Cal Newport : https://amzn.to/2KpcUD2 Selling the Invisible – Harry Beckwith: https://amzn.to/2vAGAaS App:BB Edit (Bare Bones): https://www.barebones.com/products/bbedit/ Snagit: https://www.techsmith.com/screen-capture.html Brain Toss: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/braintoss/id576226036?mt=8 https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.braintoss.app&hl=en_US Theory:The Scientific Process: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BVfI1wat2y8