Copywriter Jessica Manuszak joins Kira and Rob to talk all things copy for the 38th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. Jessica specializes in capturing the unique voice of her clients. In this interview, Jessica opens up and shares the details of how she’s grown her business over the past couple of years, including... (we added the ellipsis for her benefit—you’ll see why).
• How she became the top-performing salesperson with absurd scripts
• The “mixtape” secret for writing in her client’s voice
• Her process for naming products and services
• How she “justifies her copy” cuts down on edits by using Google Docs
• A step-by-step rundown of her process working with clients
• How she really landed several “big name” clients—she says it was luck : (
• The thing she hates most that other copywriters keep doing
Lots of good ideas and information from a successful copywriter who hasn’t been in the game for decades, but is doing well nonetheless. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show:
Sponsor: AirStory
Ash Ambirge
The Middle Finger Project
The Little Mermaid
Spotify
Scrabble Dictionary
Saved by the Bell
Acuity
Typeform
World’s Best Boss Mug
Neil Gaiman
AAA
Dove
The Copywriter Club Email
Lianna Patch
Marian Schembari
VerveandVigour.com
Kira’s website
Rob’s website
The Copywriter Club Facebook Group
Intro: Content (for now)
Outro: Gravity
Full Transcript:
The Copywriter Club Podcast is sponsored by Airstory, the writing platform for professional writers who want to get more done in half the time. Learn more at Airstory.co/club.
Kira: What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes, and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That’s what Rob and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast.
Rob: You’re invited to join the club for episode 38, as we chat with copywriter Jessica Manuszak about her career journey, from working in government to growing her own agency, landing and working with big name clients, finding confidence, and what she sees as the biggest opportunities for copywriters today.
Kira: Hi, Jess. Hi, Rob. How’s it going?
Rob: Hey guys.
Jessica: Oh, hi. I’m good, thanks.
Kira: Welcome to the show, Jess. We’ve been waiting. We’ve been waiting for you.
Jessica: Oh man. I’m so ready.
Kira: So, I think a good place to start, Jess, is just how you ended up in copywriting, especially from government finance.
Jessica: It’s funny because it was a completely natural and completely unnatural transition. Right out of college, I went into telemarketing, selling like skeezy online degrees to people who didn’t need them. I was talking to like 74-year-old women, being like, “No, but engineering would really help you with your goals.” It was not good news. But that was the first time …
Rob: I can think of a couple of degrees I might want to get, actually.
Kira: I know.
Jessica: Right, I think we can do that.
Kira: Are you still selling?
Jessica: Yeah, I’ll hook you up … underwater basket weaving. But that was actually the first time I ever realized how powerful personality can be when you’re selling something. Because everyone else was like, “Oh hello, Jane. Would you like to purchase this degree program?” I was leaving them voicemails, it was like, “Jane, this is Jane from the future and I’m so glad you got that degree,” just like …
Kira: Did you really?
Jessica: Well, yeah.
Kira: Did you really leave those messages?
Jessica: Mm-hmm (affirmative), 100 percent.
Kira: Wow.
Jessica: I actually was the top performing salesperson on my floor while I worked there because of those like just off-the-wall, absurd scripts. So I left that, went to work for a school district, where I was managing a multi-million dollar bond project. Spent a lot of time with rich, White dudes for a while … and that was a learning experience. My boss at the time made a comment on one of my emails that I had sent to another staff member, saying that I had too much personality. He was like, “It’s very funny. It’s very funny. You’re very funny, but you know this is just … it’s not professional.” I knew then that something had to change.
So, I had been following Ash Ambirge for awhile, with The Middle Finger Project and House of Moxie, and I knew that she was my people. Over the course of a month, I actually taught myself how to build websites, basic ones not great ones. So, I built a one-pager about why she should hire me and tweeted her the link. She was not hiring at the time. She emailed me back, later that night, and was like, “Oh my God, I’m crying, like yes, let’s do this!” The rest is history. I put in my notice at my job, worked for Ash for a few years, and then transitioned into my own agency, after she had mentored me and showed me the ropes.
Rob: Jess, that’s really cool. You mentioned a couple of times personality, and I think if anybody starts looking at your website or any of the things that you’ve written in the past, personality is one of those things that really jumps out from what you do. Talk a little bit more about how you use your personality in the things that you’re doing with your customers, but also the work that you’ve got on your website and that you’ve done for other people, it also just sort of … it’s really good at bringing out the personality of your clients. How do you do that?
Jessica: Well, I sold my voice to a sea witch in 1996.
Rob: Wait a minute. I think I’ve seen that episode.
Jessica: Yeah, yeah, I know. They made a Lifetime documentary about it. It’s called The Little Mermaid.
Rob: Awesome.
Jessica: That’s a great question. I have always been super into pastiches, where you mimic someone else’s tone. I remember like for fun, in middle school, I was like the chubby, nerdy middle school kid with like gel holding her bangs back, right? During that time, I was such a nerd that I would read books, then try to write in the author’s voice in my journal. It got to the point to where I was winning writing contests for pastiches. It’s always been a skill I’ve developed because I’ve enjoyed the process of it. I love thinking like someone else and feeling like someone else. I think it’s good not just for like compassion and empathy, but obviously for like writing and sales, too. I don’t know if that answers your question. I mean I do it because I’ve worked really hard to be able to do it. I guess.
Rob: Are there specific things that you do to sort of put yourself into that mindset? Or is it just … you’re just to the point now where it just comes naturally?
Jessica: Both. With like my retainer clients, who I work with all the time, that’s a pretty automatic like switch that gets flipped. But for like new clients and stuff, I will actually make playlists in Spotify of songs that have that same tone or … this is going to sound so woo, woo and absolutely bonkeroo, but I go by my gut feeling a lot. So, like I’ll read over a client’s intake stuff and see how it makes my gut feel. Then, I’ll try to listen to music and find music that makes my gut feel that same way — to like create an ambiance of their tone, like I seep myself in their tone. Does that make sense?
Rob: Yeah. Yeah, it does. Now I sort of want to go through your intake form to find out what music matches my personality.
Kira: Yeah, I do, too. I do, too.
Jessica: I’ll make you a mixtape, Rob.
Rob: There you go.
Kira: Yeah, and I want to go over your process and the questions you’re asking on the intake form and all of that. But I feel like first, I want to back up a bit and find out, while you were immersed in copywriting in your first agency experience with Ash, what were some key lessons you took from those writing projects and experiences that you’ve really incorporated into your own agency now?
Jessica: Ah, so many things. If I had to pick one or two.
Kira: You can share 10. I mean we’ve got time.
Jessica: Five thousand, seven hundred and eighty-two things.
Kira: We’ve got all day.
Jessica: The best BuzzFeed article of all time.
I would say, from a business standpoint, Ash does an incredible job of projecting confidence and authority, constantly. Even if things are showing up in her life or circumstances or whatever that kind of indicate a little bit of vulnerability or whatever, Ash is just this unwavering pillar of strength for her community, which means people are just constantly clamoring, like, “Give me your money,” because they trust her, and they should. So from a business standpoint, that was really helpful to see. Because I’ve been kind of a doormat in my life. You know, “Oh, whatever you need, I’ll do it. Okay, sure.” So, to see her be so strong and still liked as a woman was really important for me, especially because when I first started working with her I was mid-20s, early 20s I guess. That’s an important time to like figure out who the heck you are and how you want to show up in the world.
In terms of like a copywriting lesson, everything I know about naming I learned from Ash. She’s the best namer I’ve ever met. She understands how words feel together — like how they taste, like how they, you know? She gets it.
Kira: Are there exercises? Because I don’t consider myself a good namer, and it’s something that I have struggled with. I haven’t really focused on it either. But are there any tricks or just ways we can improve if we’re not necessarily a great namer, but we need to incorporate that into some of our projects?
Jessica: Whenever I’m stuck with naming, I get real intimate with the thesaurus, which I know is nothing revolutionary, but like I won’t even necessarily look for specific words. Sometimes I’ll Google like two-syllable words that start with F,
