Announcing Clay Pigeon Communications!
We’re excited to announce the launch of Clay Pigeon, a new writing company serving financial professionals!
What exactly does Clay Pigeon do?
Clay Pigeon is a content company that works with financial professionals—advisors, insurance agents, broker-dealers—and specializes in a very specific process:
Identify a book idea
Plan out your book chapter by chapter
Write the book one chapter at a time, and publish sections via blog or email as we go
Publish your book after we’ve written all the content
We call this our “blogs-to-books” program. We also work with some clients who do not publish books, but this is the core of what we do.
Under the Clay Pigeon umbrella, you’ll see two names:
Clay Pigeon Communications: This is the digital center for all content planning, email/blog writing, publishing online, SEO, etc.
Clay Pigeon Press: This is where we handle all elements of book publishing: layout, proofreading, cover design, ISBN—everything needed to bring your book to life. You’ll see this one imprinted on the back of the books we publish—expect our first one in Q1 2025!
Oh great, another marketing agency targeting the financial industry…
We’re not exactly a full-fledged marketing agency, but I’m glad to hear you’re so excited about it! Oh…sarcasm.
I get it. There is no shortage of agencies servicing the financial industry. Plus, marketing agencies tend to be heavy on promises and light on results.
But we’re a little bit different.
So what’s the difference?
Basically, we provide high-quality content via longer-form communications channels for the purposes of helping advisors share their stories and build trust with clients and prospects.
Why not do those other things? To be honest, I’ve never been good at hustling for attention on social media, so you’re probably better off looking elsewhere if you need that. Same for branding, websites, and ads. All important, and all not within our wheelhouse.
Our core competency, our college major, our superpower is content: quality content that makes a lasting impression for your firm—that brings in site traffic, subscribers, and the right prospects.
One more difference between us and other agencies: we begin every client relationship with the end in mind.
I’ve spent a good deal of time in the agency world, and I’m pretty sure I’ve never seen a retainer end well. The primary reason is because endless agency retainers are like a never-ending road trip with your best friend—really exciting at first, but someone’s gonna want to put a period on it at some point.
Eventually, the client (or sometimes the agency) pulls the plug. The once-promising relationship goes sour for some reason. Either the agency’s work went off-course, the advisor found another agency they like better, or the results just aren’t there.
However it ends, no one walks away happy.
When you partner with Clay Pigeon, everyone knows upfront when your retainer will end—when we publish your book (which can be as little as 9 months!). No more wondering what you’re paying for and going back and forth on whether you should continue your retainer or not.
Who is Clay Pigeon?
Clay Pigeon is just me, Zach McDonald, for now. It’s been quite a path getting to this point—going from an agency to in-house team back to an agency—and I’m thrilled to be doing my own thing this time. I’m planning (at least for the foreseeable future) to keep this a one-man operation where I write everything we produce for clients.
I’ve been writing for advisors and fintech companies for over a decade now. You can learn more about me on our about page.
Why is it called Clay Pigeon?
When I was young, my family lived near a shooting range in a small town south of Denver called Louviers. My friends and I would comb through the range after hours, filling a wagon with stacks of unbroken clay pigeons.
I would love to tell you about my business savvy from a young age and how we made money selling unbroken clay pigeons back to the range. I would love to tell you about how that inspired me to start my first business at a young age and lit an entrepreneurial fire in me that burns to this day.
But this isn’t LinkedIn, this is real life.
Being 8-year-old boys, we spent hours throwing clay pigeons at the ground, trees, each other—any hard thing we could find that would result in a satisfying crash.
So why call it Clay Pigeon? Because it’s unique and I have fond memories associated with the phrase.
I’ll admit, at first I didn’t have any clever business tie-in. But now that I’ve sat with the name for a while, there’s a fairly obvious one that doesn’t feel too cheesy or forced:
Clay pigeons are all about practicing your aim. Content publishing is like a form of target practice—every time you publish, you’re finding out what works, what doesn’t, what resonates, what falls flat, what your audience loves and what your audience hates. The more you do it, the better you get at hitting your target.
And last but not least on the “Why in the world did you pick that name?” list is Blaze Foley’s song “Clay Pigeons.” It’s one of my favorites, and I’m proud to share a moniker with this sad ol’ tune.
(And if you haven’t heard Michael Cera cover this song, it’s highly recommended.)
Now there’s just one more question:
