TCC Podcast #254: Permission to Fail with Amisha Shrimanker

For the 254th episode of The Copywriter Club podcast, Amisha Shrimanker hops on to talk all about her journey from order taker to CEO. Amisha is the founder of The Copy Crew and their focus is copy for online business coaches. As business owners, we don’t always give ourselves the permission to get things wrong, but Amisha looks at this from a different perspective. Here’s what we talk about: Writing copy without knowing you’re writing copy. Finding the right community to propel your business and skillset forward. How to write pitches that land you the job. The reality of beginner pricing. Do you need to settle? Going from order taker to 20k months in 18 months. Sending people to junior copywriters when they want to haggle. The pros and cons of being the order taker. Note: Learn all you can. The better way to land big clients. Why you need to document your copywriting process. How to get extra validation from your clients. (even if it doesn’t pay.) The reality of hustle and the benefits it can bring you in the long run. Getting the best case studies to showcase your work and results. Hiring someone to ask your client questions about you. Win-Win? Being on the other side of the interview. The interviewer becomes the interviewee. Getting the most out of job boards and paying for connections. How to do more than just “done for you” work. Why you shouldn’t let inexperience hold you back. Shifting your mindset from scarcity to abundance. How surrounding yourself with high-achieving people will propel you 10 steps forward. Building trust with your clients and demonstrating your expertise. When is enough learning, enough? Is it time to say no to more courses? Leveling up from skillbuilding to strategy-building. Can audits be profitable in your business? Hit the play button to listen to Amisha’s genius or read the transcript below. The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Amisha’s website Nicole’s website   Full Transcript: Rob:  If you're a longtime listener to The Copywriter Club podcast, you've heard hundreds of copywriters share their stories over the last four years. And while we talk about the struggles that copywriters have from time to time, the big focus of our interviews is the success that so many copywriters are having in their businesses. Our guest today is Amisha Shrimanker. Amisha has a counter intuitive process for finding success. It's all about choosing lots of ways to fail each week or each month, and then going after those failures with serious intensity. But the result isn't failure, it's actually success. And we can't wait to share this interview with you in just a minute. But first, you're still on maternity leave, and I want to introduce my co host for today, Nicole Morton. Nicole, how are you? Nicole:  Good. Thank you so much for having me. This is such a treat. Rob:  Yeah, this is going to be fun. So Nicole, for those of you who don't know her, she's a copywriter, brand strategist, really a creative genius. I know she doesn't want to own that title. But it's true. She's a member of our think tank, and she's been a longtime member of the copywriter underground, and she is the CEO, chief writer at the creatively named Nicole Morton Agency, so you can check her out there. And before we get to our interview with Amisha, this is the last time that I'm going to mention this for a while. But the Copywriter accelerator is open for two more days. If you're listening as this episode drops, it will close tomorrow, midnight September 1st year 2021. And if you are looking for a program that will help you set your business on the right foundation moving forward so that you're ready in 2022 for the success that you want to create in your business, if you need help with things like mindset and creating packages and the clients want to buy and processes that serve those clients and pricing those packages and branding and getting yourself out in front of the right clients, finding your X factor and so much more, then you'll want to check out the Copywriteraccelerator.com, where you can still join this program for two more days. And if you're listening after September 1st, we will be opening up the Copywriter accelerator again next year. Kira and I are actually working on adding some new and improved content. Everybody who joins this year will get all of that new and improved content next year, but the price will probably go up just depending on what we add. So check out the Copywriteraccelerator.com. Okay, let's jump into our interview with Amisha starting with her story and how she became a copywriter. Amisha:  I started my copywriting business in 2018. I was doing it before I even call myself a copywriter honestly. I had friends like peers who were business coaches because I wanted to be a business coach at the time and not a service provider. I started my online journey in 2016 right after I had my second child and I just knew I wanted to do something that would give me the work life balance and make a good living and do something online. And long story short, my friends, my peers would send me their landing pages or emails to have a look at and make some recommendations. And I would do that. They would take my suggestions and would see some results. And I still didn't know that you could be just paid for doing that. I didn't know that was actually called copywriting or whatever or copy auditing. And I was like, "Who's going to pay for that?" So anyway, fast forward in fall of 2018, I put a stake in the ground and said, "You know what? I think I know enough. And I think this is a thing called copywriting. And I'm going to say no to everyone else. I'm going to say no to trying to get my business coaching off the ground, group programs and building seven dollar passive income products and hoping I would make a grand every day as promised by the influencers out there." Three years ago, it wasn't such a big thing as it is now with low ticket offers and upsells and down sells. So, I was like, "I'm not going to do any of that, I'm just going to do copywriting. I'm going to launch my thing. And I'm going to write copy for business coaches. So I firmly decided that I was going to do it, say goodbye to all the distractions and figure this out. And here we are three years later, mistakes, rejections, nightmare clients, not getting paid on some projects, but also a lot of good stuff that's come out in all of this. Some great peers, supportive community, making... Having those 20K months kind of a thing once in a while, releasing digital products and all that good stuff and future looks exciting. Rob:  That was the perfect way to set up this conversation, because you mentioned all of the things that we should be talking about. But let's start at the very beginning. So people were starting to ask you for help, when you put the stake in the ground, decided that you were going to go forward as a copywriter, how did you start attracting your first clients? What is it that you did to connect with them? Amisha:  I started being active in Facebook groups because I think that was a very dominant strategy at the time, two, three years ago. I think it still is even today to an extent, but I don't know how much it's practiced. But anyway, that was the thing, right? You join Facebook groups, you find people that you want to work with, and you do the value posting, and then you add comments, and then you kind of like showcase your expertise somehow. And there was one particular group that I joined, it was a paid group, and which was good right off the bat, because the people, the quality of people, really, it was high, was good quality. And this group had a job board sort of a thing. And it was a lot to do with digital marketing. And now and then there would be jobs posted about looking for a copywriter, looking to write funnel copy, or emails or sales pages, or social media posts. And I would jump in those and that would apply to those positions to get the gig back in the day, and just see what works. But I think. And what worked for me was I would write a very strong pitch. That Facebook group had maybe 1000 people in there. And there were a lot of people who wanted the same gigs, obviously. And not that I would get every single one of them that I applied for, but I knew I can write and I knew I could position myself differently from others. And I just took a gamble. And I'm like, "Sometimes it paid off." And I got some really good projects out of that. So that was how I got started. And then those clients were happy, they would refer other people, I would apply to more of these job board postings and get myself practice my craft and do what I could. Rob:  So, can you walk us through what some of those early pitches looked like? Obviously, you're doing something because you're connecting with people, but what was it that made your pitches different from the way other people were approaching? Amisha:  So I... And I have this in one of my digital products, there were two ways I would approach it. If I had no experience at all with the client and the kind of project they were looking for, what I would do is lay down a list of certifications, or the training that I've had. I have taken Marie Forleo's, The Copy Cure, I have gone to Copyhackers, I understand this is what I'm willing to do, I'm going to do the research. I will tell them what I was willing to do, even though I had limited experience. And I said... And I was hoping that based on a little bit of my work ethic and the kind of explaining my process, which was even loosey goosey at the time, it wasn't refined, I would hope that that would at least get them to say, "Hey, let's hop on a call and have a conversation."