You’re a curious, creative and resourceful adventurer: a copy alchemist apprenticed to the challenge of crafting scientific copy that converts.
Your north star is curiosity.
Curiosity is what will keep you grounded and focused as you learn how to grow your business in a way that aligns with your values.
Let’s take a deeper look at what makes curiosity your greatest asset as a copywriter.
Your Unique Marketing Strengths
You listen. I mean, really listen.
Listening and seeking to understand people is your quintessential craft. You’re a master of observation, fascinated by human behavior.
When interviewing, you ask questions with curiosity and stay grounded in the present moment with your interviewee. Because of this, clients are convinced you can read the souls of their business and customers.
You combine creativity with a hefty dose of strategy.
You love to experiment. You know there’s no such thing as serendipitously stumbling upon a big idea: you have to feed your curious, creative brain the right nutritious mixture of ideas, data and inspiration to coax that big idea to life.
And once you’ve discovered it, that’s just the beginning: you love to test and experiment to pick the best-performing copy.
You thrive at detecting (and solving!) copy problems.
As a scientist and creative, you spot meaningful patterns where others see hieroglyphs.
You’re quick to see the shape and soul of a copy problem and investigate deeper to uncover what’s not working and why.
Like Sherlock Holmes, you puzzle through challenges with an instinctive mixture of logic and intuition.
“The true alchemists do not change lead into gold; they change the world into words.”
— William H. Gass
Your marketing hero trait
Self-motivated and tenacious, like Leonardo da Vinci you thrive on variety and follow your quenchless curiosity to new discoveries.
With your strong empathy skills and fascination for human psychology, you love to create copy gold (and tangible results) for your clients.
Your quest for copy mastery
You’re on a voyage to copy mastery.
To you, there’s no more satisfying adventure than finding that persuasive sweet spot between prose, personality and psychology: the unique chemistry of ideas that will make your audience feel validated, connected, and say ‘hell yes’ to your client’s offer.
It’s fun and challenging and when it hits the bullseye, the reward is intoxicating.
Your new marketing frontier
With passion, grit and resilience, you’ve built a livelihood as a freelance copywriter. But navigating the challenges of growing your business can be tricky.
As you journey forward, your focus will shift to making sure your business provides you with the creative challenges you crave, aligns deeply with your values, and supports the life and freedom you’ve always wanted.
Your Business Growth Obstacles
what keeps you up at night
A secret inner mountain of imposter syndrome
As an entrepreneur, fear and self-doubt are likely near-constant hobgoblins gnawing at your confidence.
Whether this shows up in your life as sneaky imposter syndrome, trampling over your own boundaries in your haste to please others, analysis-paralysis, avoiding visibility, perfectionism-procrastination, researching a thing to death, or playing hide and seek from what you truly want, you’re not alone, friend.
Every single copywriter in the universe (yes, even ‘insert your copywriter crush here’) battles these hobgoblins from time to time.
1.
Understand your fear.
What you experience as fear and self-doubt is actually a recipe to your greatness.
Why? Because what you’re most afraid of most likely reveals what you truly, deeply want or need.
Take some time to meditate on what your fear is trying to tell you.
If you reshape your fears into opportunities to grow, rather than an excuse to limit or beat yourself up — you can craft your very own philosopher’s stone: an elixir of self-trust in your resilience.
2.
Unravel your fear.
The best antidote to fear is action.
Like an alchemist on a quest to craft a philosopher’s stone, give yourself permission to experiment and take imperfect action. Remember, you can always iterate later.
Collect objective facts you can use as evidence to counteract the hobgoblin voices when they make chatter.
Although you may never put the hobgoblin voices fully to sleep, you get to choose who you want to be (and how you want to show up in the world) every damn day.
Key takeaway
The very best thing you can do for yourself and your business is to craft a mindset that embraces failure as learning, prizes resilience, and transforms your fear into pragmatic opportunities.
Training your brain to question negativity, focus on growth and positivity, and become intentional about the actions you take will release you from inertia and self-doubt.
what’s draining your energy
A leaky hourglass
You dared to dream of an exodus from a traditional career — because you wanted to build a life of freedom.
Even though you’ve turned Gantt charts and time tracking into an art, you face difficulties juggling your time with so many competing demands on your time and energy.
You’re overwhelmed by everything you want to achieve on your to-do list. And you daydream about devoting more time to the writing and strategy you love, instead of losing time to the vortex of admin and research.
But to accomplish this, you know you need to spend less time on day-to-day business, and more time in the visionary CEO role in your business.
Breathe, friend: it’s possible.
1.
Seek clarity to nurture discipline.
Accept you can’t (and shouldn’t) do everything and become quartz crystal clear on what you’re willing to let go of.
Make time once a week to check in with yourself on your priorities and goals.
Deliberately set aside time for rest, regeneration and business planning. The trick is to book these into your calendar before you schedule in your client work.
Struggling to carve out the time because you feel guilty for ‘abandoning’ your clients? Try hiring yourself — and yes, paying yourself — to complete a project.
2.
Redefine what rest and recharge mean to you.
Your self-care plan should reflect what rest and recharge uniquely mean to you.
What activities feel most nourishing to you, your wellbeing and your values? What feels deeply good to you?
Avoid the temptation to brush these aside as luxuries. Rest, fun and relaxation deserve scheduled space in your calendar.
And remember, you don’t need to take this entrepreneurial journey alone. You can befriend other copywriters (hello! *waves*) and outsource the tasks that don’t help you fulfil your ideal future or thrive in your zone of genius.
Key takeaway
Take a leap and invest in your sanity — your wellbeing is a non-negotiable.
When it comes to building a business that loves you back, understanding yourself, your goals and the life you want to create is the most important work you can do.
Iconic Avant-Garde Alchemists
Here are some famous Avant-Garde Alchemists to inspire your creative alchemy.
Amelia Earhart
Amelia Earhart, the first female pilot to fly across the Atlantic Ocean, immersed herself in learning to fly. She read everything she could find on aviation, practiced with dedication, and devoted herself to the pursuit of greatness against tremendous odds.
Like anything truly worth having, confidence doesn’t magically appear overnight. But there are lots of (research-proven!) ways you can improve your self-trust little by little, to become the most assured (and resilient) version of yourself possible.
“The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity. The fears are paper tigers. You can do anything you decide to do. You can act to change and control your life…”
Mary Wells Lawrence
The real-life inspiration for Peggy Olson on Mad Men, legendary copywriter Mary Wells Lawrence carved out an impressive creative legacy as one of the very few early women copywriters.
She found success as the first woman to found, own and run a major advertising agency — and the very first woman CEO of a company listed on the Big Board of the New York Stock Exchange.
“You can’t just be you. You have to double yourself. You have to read books on subjects you know nothing about. You have to travel to places you never thought of traveling. You have to meet every kind of person and endlessly stretch what you know.”
Joan Didion
The creative non-fiction writer, essayist and cultural icon, Joan Didion is famed for her vigorous writing style and enigmatic personality.
But peer into her life’s body of work and you’ll find lots of rich and surprising wisdom for copywriters, too.
Aside from her soulful and incisive writing, she followed an absurd ritual to banish writer’s block. It involved sealing her incomplete draft inside a Ziplock bag, shoving the cursed thing in the freezer, and walking away, guilt-free, until clarity emerged. You’re welcome.
“I am a writer. Imagining what someone would say or do comes to me as naturally as breathing.”
Meet your fellow copywriter
Hey, I’m Melissa.
Conversion copywriter, voice-of-customer researcher, bookworm, foodie, avid slow traveler, and sencha tea drinker.
I believe that interviewing with genuine curiosity and empathy creates the strongest foundation for copy that connects and converts. And chances are, if you’re here, you believe this too.
A copywriter for digital agencies and in-house marketing teams for 10 years, I took a leap of faith and navigated the craggy path to freelancing because I wanted to take a more ethically-conscious approach to the craft of copywriting.
The world is changing and we need conscious conversion copywriting that prizes research, positive regard for the individual, consent, honesty and autonomy.
Are we headed down a similar path? I’m excited to meet and get to know YOU.
Your Spotify playlist, curated with love to help you grow your business
Avant-Garde Alchemist Playlist
A playlist to help you marshal courage (without giving in to the chatter of your hobgoblin internal critic) and grow your business in a way that supports the life you want to live:
Book recommendations to fuel your momentum
If you want to overcome inner resistance and grow your business, read…
- The War of Art by Steven Pressfield
- Writing Down The Bones by Natalie Goldberg
- The Middle Finger Project by Ash Ambirge
- Grit by Angela Duckworth
- Superfans by Pat Flynn
Please note: These are not affiliate links but they are from Better World Books, a socially responsible online bookstore that donates a book for every book sold to support literacy programs around the world.
It’s not every day you make a new copywriter friend
What to expect next
If you opted in to my email list (yep, I believe in consent and won’t email you if you didn’t explicitly sign up!), please scout your inbox for an email from yours truly, welcoming you to my cozy list.
A copy of your quiz result to take with you
Tucked away inside your welcome email, you’ll find a fancy PDF download of your quiz result for your convenience.
Your Sunday Postcard
Each week, I pen a short but thoughtful love letter to my email list, offering insights into ethical marketing persuasion and running a creative business in alignment with your values.
Hey, if we hit it off, maybe we’ll embark on a new adventure of friendship?
I’m in if you are.
