Over the past few years the ways we work have changed. And the work we do has changed too. In the 397th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, Kira and Rob talk with copywriter and regenerative business designer Helen Tremethick about navigating the changes and creating a business that works for you.
Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.
Stuff to check out:
4000 Weeks by Oliver Burkeman
Helen's website
Helen's Cuppa Link (talked about on the show)
The Copywriter Club Facebook Group
The Copywriter Underground
Full Transcript:
Rob Marsh: For a lot of freelancers who write content and copy, work has changed pretty dramatically over the past year. Some of us, especially those who are just starting out have been impacted by tools like Claude and ChatGPT. While others may be struggling a bit thanks to layoffs in niches like tech and SaaS. As opportunities change, smart business owners change along with them. And relationships become even more important than ever.
Hi, I’m Rob Marsh, one of the founders of The Copywriter Club. And on today’s episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, Kira Hug and I interviewed copywriter and regenerative business designer Helen Tremethick. Helen has worked with several business owners as they’ve transformed the work they do. Sometime changing up their deliverables. Other times switching niches or the focus of their work entirely. As we spoke, we kept coming back to one idea… relationships. They’re more important than ever, and that’s one thing that probably won’t change in the near future.
Before we jump into the interview, I want to let you know about an upcoming training happening in June in The Copywriter Underground. If you listened to last week’s episode, you learned a bit about the technical things you need to do to ensure the emails you write get to the inbox and not the spam folder and then get opened. But it can be hard to see exactly what to do as you listen to a podcast… it’s audio only, so seeing where to find the tools and settings to adjust, well, you just can’t. So we asked email deliverability specialist Matt Brown to demonstrate exactly how to set up your ESP and google postmaster tools so your emails have a better chance of getting where you want them to go. This is a skill set that clients need desperately. And when you can bring them along with your writing skills, you have what it takes to land high paying email retainers that can last for months or even years. But to get this training, you must be a member of The Copywriter Underground. Learn more at thecopywriterclub.com/tcu.
And with that, let’s go to our interview with Helen.
Kira Hug: All right, Helen, we are not going to start with your story, because that's where we started last time, which we figured out was episode 176. And you figured out it was mid-March 2020, so right before the world changed dramatically. So it's good to be with you again. And I think a good place to start could just be around a line of copy on your website, on your home page, there's a line of copy that says, burn it down isn't good business strategy, but when something's got to give dot, dot, dot, and then you go into your brilliant copy. But that grabbed my attention because I feel like I've heard a lot of people around me recently talking about burning it all down and a conversation with neighbors, business owners. And so from your perspective, Where do you feel like people in the online business space, copywriters, where are they at right now with what they're feeling, what they're doing in their businesses? From your experience coaching them, what are you seeing and feeling right now?
Helen Tremethick: Oh my goodness. You know, I actually just had a call this morning where I was talking to somebody about exactly this, where it feels like there's a little bit of a different flavor in the air right now that's different from what we knew before. And maybe this is before the last time we spoke, which was before the world shut down, or maybe it's been gradually moving toward that. I'm not exactly sure, but there is a little bit of a different flavor. The way that people want to work with each other is different, the amount of connection that we want is different, and that I think is more and more connection, more community, more togetherness. And opposing that is that the conversation I'm having a lot lately is that people are having a hard time stretching that dollar the way they used to. Grocery bills have gone up. Everything has gone up except for wages. And so as a small business owner, often we are the canaries in the coal mine, so to speak. So we see this ripple effect before a lot of the rest of the world does. And there's an opportunity there as well, not to silver lining being the canary in the coal mining, but there is an opportunity there for us to start changing and start navigating new ways of working together beforehand. So it allows us to be a bit more agile. The fact that we know then see these things before.
Rob Marsh: I'd love to dive into what you think that opportunity is and what that looks like, because I have recently seen a lot of copywriters. Well, maybe not a lot, but a few copywriting gurus suggest that this is a really bad time for people to become a copywriter or to even start your own business. Or they're saying, you know, there are different things we should be doing. So yeah. What does that opportunity look like?
Helen Tremethick: Oh, I think it depends on the person. So I'm not going to opt out of that question at all. But it depends on what is really, really relevant. And it's relevant to a lot of the work that I do. Just like we wouldn't want everybody's about page to look exactly the same, or everybody's homepage to look exactly the same, everybody's website to look exactly the same. We also don't want our businesses to be exactly the same. So what opportunities are there for you are going to be different from what opportunities are there for me. So for me, for example, I do a lot of coaching. I was doing this four years ago. I was doing this eight years ago and really still heading in that direction. What I've noticed on my end is that people really want to connect with each other. They really want spaces where they can share more openly and they really want to talk about things that are not just business. They're really recognizing that business is affected by the personal. And so that comes into a lot of the conversations that we're having. Even though the end goal may be copy, a lot of the way that we get there is very, very personal. Now, for somebody else who is going fresh into copywriting, who really wants to get into the typey typey, they're really interested in writing. And of course, writers never stop writing. I still write as well. I think at that point, there's an opportunity there to really lean into done-for-you services for a very specific niche and really lean into that. I think it's going to depend, the solution is going to depend on the person according to their capacity, according to their lifestyle needs and wants, according to the way their brains work. So it depends. And also with a little bit of kind of uncovering and diving in, we can often find an opportunity there that works for everybody.
Kira Hug: Yeah, maybe we can talk a little bit about this old way and this new way, you know, the new way being more connection, more community and how you are changing in your business, maybe how you show up, how you help clients, maybe even how you market yourself. If you can make that comparison with the old and the new.
Helen Tremethick: Yeah, I think Well, okay, so I've been doing this since 2011, which, you know, makes me officially internet old and If you recall, there was a lot of emphasis on building your list and getting the most followers. And that, I would say, is very old way. And we touched on this four years ago where we were talking about what is the future of copywriting? What is the pattern that we see going forward? And the three of us agreed that relationships were that, that we were going to see a lot more connectivity. And this was just about the time that you had done your event or about to do your event. So you were really leaning into that as well. And I think there's a lot more of that. It's a bit more difficult. COVID isolated us and still is isolating us. And, you know, there's an epidemic of loneliness. And so we want to see that in our businesses as well. How I've been marketing is I've really pulled away from that one to many kind of marketing that we saw in the old way, get my freebie for your, in exchange for your email address or, you know, giant webinars. And I've really started speaking specifically to people, really building on the relationships that I already have, whether that be complimentary service providers or my referral network, or my old clients, my current clients. and really crafting solutions that fit for those people. So that's the way that I've been shifting toward is something that's a lot more grounded, a lot more personal. And frankly, I find that much more interesting as well, because it means that I'm having different conversations and hearing people's different perspectives as opposed to speaking into an echo chamber.
Rob Marsh: Yeah, I tend to agree. And that one on one relationship thing is obviously something Kira and I have leaned into for a long time. But also, as I think about this, or if I'm listening to this, you know, as a new copywriter coming into the business, and I'm hearing somebody say, well, you've got to do it differently for every instance, or everybody's different. That becomes really hard to wrap your arms around because, and this is why I think people sell formulas and swipes and whatever, because if you can repeat the process, it makes it a lot easier.
