Before I started my copywriting business, I was an academic: I’ve got a phd in archaeology and when I finished that, I landed a steady 9–5 as an academic editor. The dream, right? Except it wasn’t my dream.

 At that time, I’m not sure I knew exactly what my dream was. All I knew was that I didn’t want to continue working for someone else and I wanted to be more creative. I wanted to enjoy going to work every day and I wanted to get to be 100% authentically me in the process.

 So I took the leap and left my job. I’d saved enough money to get by for a wee while and at the end of September 2018, I was officially an entrepreneur… or maybe not.

 You see, it took a while for me to figure out where I actually wanted my business to go and how I was going to get there. I knew I wanted to keep working with words and communication and messaging, but I wasn’t sure how I could translate all of this into my own business. 

Starting your own business is a massive learning curve and often, just when you think you’re finally on the straight and narrow, a new bend emerges, and you have to adapt again.

I spent a long time figuring out what my message was – what was my ambition, my why, my goal with this? And an even longer time figuring out my own voice and then building the confidence to use it. 

Now, I teach business owners and CEOs how to hone their voice, clarify their message and strategise their business in a way that is 100% them.

Because if there’s one thing I’ve learnt it’s that everything you do in your business needs to come from you. Cookie cutter, one-size-fits-all approaches – they won’t work half as well as customised, couture messaging and strategy.

And that lesson was a hard one. I spent a lot of money, time and energy consuming courses, books, products, free content, downloadable freebies and yes, even podcast episodes, in my quest to figure out a strategy that fits.

It was hard, overwhelming, stressful, depressing.

And so I get what it’s like to be there, at that point in your business where you need to get some momentum, where you want to start seeing real progress, where you’re scared that the clients aren’t coming or you’re hearing crickets.

• When you’re not sure if your passion and your message is actually coming across.
• When you’re not sure if you’re actually resonating with your ideal client.
• When you’re not sure which strategy to follow, what to post, what to do next, how to move the needle and get where you want to be.

Because I’ve been there. I was there. Sometimes I’m still there.

And how did I get through it? I realised a pretty simple thing: in order to build MY business and brand, I needed to focus on ME.

I needed to stop looking at one guru or another, one cookie-cutter approach and the next one, each promising the exact same success they had had if I followed THEIR way

I realised that the only way to strategise MY business, express MY message, resonate with MY ideal clients was to do the work MYSELF.

Figure out who I am trying to talk to. Figure out my own brand identity. Put my message across in a way that speaks to my ideal client. Strategise my content sharing in a way that shows my ideal clients that I’m the one for them. Strategise my business in a way that gets me to my goals, doing the things I love, on my timeline, for my reasons.

And so I did this. And it took a long time.

And then it made me think: If only I’d known this at the start. If only I’d known that I don’t have to follow someone else’s path in order to be successful like them. If only I’d had this deep belief and confidence in what I’m doing now and the steps I’m going to take back when I was so scared, so uncertain, so afraid it would never work.

If only I’d known how powerful your messaging and copy really is.

And that’s why I started The Copy Coach podcast – so I can share this knowledge with other business owners and CEOs who want their copy to do its job.

Listen to the full back catalogue of episodes here.