Case study: Finding The Thing Jo Just Had To Say

Client spotlight: Jo Hooper, The YOLO business coach at Get Wildly Free

WORK COMPLETED: Hook Strategy + Homepage SEO website copywriting

When Jo first got in touch about Hook Strategy, she was in that particular phase of business growth that looks calm and competent from the outside, but feels oddly disorienting when you’re inside it.

She’d built a strong following, a successful coaching business (Get Widly Free) and was using ads to get more eyeballs on her main offer — but she knew that really nailing down her message was the missing piece in unlocking the next era in her business.

An era where she plans to be regularly invited to talk on stages and even a published author.

The problem wasn’t momentum. She had plenty of that. The issue was a lack of direction, knowing exactly what to say, and to who, to drive that momentum in the right direction.

As she said on our first call, she could see glimmers of things working, but she couldn’t see how it all hung together. And without that, everything else felt harder than it needed to be.

Her website was outdated, and it wasn’t being used or shared. Her messaging shifted depending on where you encountered her. And she was doing far too much heavy lifting in every post, every email, every conversation, because she still hadn’t found her through-line: not knowing The Thing She Just Had To Say was holding her back.

She knew she was really good at what she did, and that so many people needed her support (her clients call her work “life changing” on the reg). But online, she just didn’t seem to be cutting through to the degree she needed to be.

This is the point where most business owners assume the answer is more content, more eyeballs, more tweaking around the edges.

Jo already knew that wasn’t it. She’d been running ads for a year, and couldn’t shake the nag that they could be performing SO much better if she was clearer on which message would attract the most clicks (and lower her cost per lead).

What she was missing wasn’t effort or ideas, but the overarching guide – the thing everything else could organise itself around.

Jo could describe her work brilliantly in a coaching call. But none of that richness seemed to be translating fully into her messaging. Jo described this feeling as not being able to boil her message down into anything snappy that felt like it fit. Then, whenever she did get more specific she’d “feel like I’ve boiled it down too far.”

The issue wasn’t that Jo didn’t know what she helped people with. It was that she did so much, it felt impossible to narrow it down to one thing.

Jo was working with beliefs. With strategy. She was empowering people to take Fridays off, stop checking Slack in the bath, charge properly and take a nap in the middle of the day without guilt. But how did she tie all that together?

Other coaches in her niche simply call it “living a life you love”. But… Jo isn’t like other coaches. And that catch-all messaging did nothing to differentiate the empathy-with-an-edge approach that clients love her for.

She needed to find her own Hook for her business. Something that tied together not just the work she did, but the philosophy that drove it. And without an answer to that, everything else felt fragmented.

She needed to decide what she wanted to be known for, and have the courage to let that lead.

Jo had been circling this for years. Six, to be precise (and, incidentally, the point in my own business where I started to run into the exact same issues). She was so intertwined with the inner workings of her business, she just couldn’t see what it looked like to an outsider anymore.

That’s where Hook Strategy came in.

Our objectives

Based on that first conversation, we set out with three very clear aims.

1. Messaging that matched Jo’s impact – and gave her the words to own it.
We wanted to create a comprehensive Hook Strategy that captured the core message of her coaching business, while leaving room for it to flex and expand as her future financial wellbeing venture came online. This needed to be a foundation she could return to again and again – for ads, website copy, pitches, bios, and explaining what she does out loud.

2. Clarity and authority, especially on her website.
The work Jo knew landed so powerfully in rooms and calls needed to become crystal clear in her copy too. We wanted more of the right people recognising that they needed her work now, not someday, through a site that made her POV and packages very clear.

3. One distinct, ownable throughline.
Jo had done a lot of experimenting across social, ads, email and offers. Our job was to pull together what was working, define what she wanted to be known for, and build a messaging framework she could actually use – so she could keep writing her own content with confidence, backed by a clear strategic throughline.

The work: Hook + Homepage

Jo chose my Hook + Homepage package, opting for a deeper tone-of-voice add on so we could really get clear on her language (which was already very distinctive).

Over eight weeks, I went deep into her business, joking that I would be stalking her online presence harder than anyone ever had before. And, by god, I did.

Her offers. Her clients. Her language. Her beliefs about work, time and money. The threads she kept returning to without always realising it. And the places where her message was already hiding – usually a few paragraphs down. I stalked it all, even taking a look at which phrases performed best for her on social media.

We worked collaboratively throughout and our IG voicenotes became a fun little part of both our days. I shared the strategy as it was forming so we could steer it together, then brought everything into a full first draft.

Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.

The moment of crystallisation came when we finally named the crux of the thing Jo was trying to say: Stop wasting your life working all the time!

And once we had THAT, the main hook made itself visible: she was giving people the Work Wake-Up Call no other coach would give.

Here’s a tiny peek of how that was spelt out inside the Hook Strategy doc:

“In a world of Alex Hormozis and Brewdogs, Get Wildly Free offers a loving-but-blunt antidote to the world’s obsession with hustle. This is the Work Wake-Up Call that other business coaches won’t give. Rather than productivity and process, you focus on the human at the heart of the business – treating them not just as a service-provider or “face” of the business, but the whole point. You remind them that they went self-employed to have choices – and show them how to start making better ones.”

Finally, Jo had an umbrella concept big enough to contain her coaching, her Me-First Method accelerator and the speaking ambitions and the book she knows is in her. Giving people their much-needed Work Wake-Up.

Once that line existed, everything else fell into place. So I built out a full language lexicon of core secondary messages, words and phrases, a manifesto, and defined her tone of voice; bringing all that together into an easy-to-follow messaging strategy document.

Because Jo chose the Hook + Homepage package, I also wrote SEO-led homepage copy that brought the strategy to life immediately, and showed her how to carry it over into other pages.

She was so energised by the new direction that she updated her bio on podcasts and social media before we’d even wrapped the project. We love to see it!

Jo’s YOLO business manifesto

The shift

Jo doesn’t have conversion stats yet – but right now, that’s not the most interesting part (although I know they’re gonna be great).

What changed straight away was how easy everything suddenly felt.

Creating content became faster, punchier and more enjoyable. Ideas started flowing. Engagement improved. Writing pitches and bios stopped feeling like pulling teeth. And, crucially, her website finally reflected who she is, what she does and where she’s going next.

As she put it:

“Now I literally NEVER run out of content ideas, because I Just Have To Say It. I'm bolder than ever, because I Just Have To Say It. And people can tell. I'm getting better engagement than ever on my social media content and my message is being seen by more people than ever. Ruddy heck that feels good. I can’t wait to plaster my messaging everywhere. Look out 2026. I’m coming to a stage near you with a gut punch of a work wake-up call, care of Emma Griffin!”

Want some of what she’s having?

Are you ready to find The Thing You Just Have To Say in 2026?

Take a look at my Hook Strategy packages here – or get in touch directly on my Contact page.