TCC Podcast #188: From Stage to Page with Gin Walker

In the 188th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, Kira and Rob talk with Gin Walker on how her experience as a stage actor influences her writing process, her REACH framework, the misunderstanding that turned her into a copywriter, and what she does to manage the competing interests in her life.  Here’s the outline of what we covered during this interview: •  the airplane discussion that “mistakenly” turned her into a copywriter •  the podcast that helped her discover what copywriting is •  the difference between copy editing and copywriting •  how she landed her first few clients after she made her career switch •  what she did to build on her initial success and grow her business •  how attending TCCIRL changed her business •  how being an actor has helped Gin as a copywriter •  how she uses her R.E.A.C.H. framework as she works with clients •  what she does to manage all the competing interests in her life •  how her business has changed over the past year •  what her business looks like today •  the mindset issue she struggles with and how she deals with it •  her experience as the closing speaker at TCCIRL Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.   The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: The Copywriter Accelerator The Copywriter Think Tank The Copywriter Club In Real Life Joanna Wiebe Ry Schwartz Joel Klettke Hillary Weiss Tarzan Kay Rob Braddock Gin’s Website Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground   Full Transcript: Rob:   This episode is brought to you by The Copywriter Underground, the place to be if you want to master marketing mindset and copywriting in your business and hit 10K a month without losing your mind. Learn more at TheCopywriterUnderground.com. 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 188 as we chat with copywriter and TCCIRL closing speaker Gin Walker about her journey to copywriting, the advantages that she gets from being a stage actor that apply to copywriting, her reach framework, what she's done to grow her business this year, and what she would do differently if she had to start over today. Kira:   Welcome, Gin. Rob:   Hey, Gin. Gin:   Hello, guys. How are you doing? Kira:   Good. Great to have you here. We have known you for a while. You were in the Copywriter Accelerator program, and then the Copywriter Think Tank Mastermind, and most recently, you spoke on stage at The Copywriter Club in real life in San Diego. So, we've seen firsthand how you've grown in your business, and I'll be fun today to share a little bit more about what's been happening behind the scenes. So, why don't we start with your story and how you ended up as a copywriter? Gin:   Right. Sure, absolutely. Well, it's been relatively recent that I transitioned into copywriting in fact. I started out in educational publishing. I was a copyeditor for the longest time. Decades, in fact. So, yeah, I've been altering minds with word power for a little while. I was a copyeditor, as I say, and a commissioning editor. I was also a kids' science author within that educational field. I went into that basically straight from university, straight after I graduated way back, and I worked up from the bottom there. But then I went freelance, in fact. I worked in-house at a couple of large educational publishers in the UK, this was. But then went freelance way back in 1995. Well, I continued to work with various publishers that I had worked for in-house for a little while, but then it branched out and I was working for various educational publishers. Because I got myself into really quite a narrow niche by accident, and I didn't even know what niching was in those days, to be fair, but I was working as a science editor. In fact, people often used to ask me, "How did you get into publishing when you had a science degree?" Because I did [inaudible] biological sciences at university for my first degree. Yes, the fact that I did sciences doesn't mean I can't read and write. But nevertheless, it was relatively unusual to be working in the publishing field with that kind of background. So, yeah, I did end up doing similar work for various publishers, especially biology books, but also chemistry, physics. This was at the school level, the kind of high school level. But during all that time, even when I'd gone freelance, I was still very much in the order taker, basically outsourced employee mindset. I was there exclusively for my clients and I had no concept that I had really any control over the direction of my business. It was great. It was actually hugely flexible at a time when I was moving house a fair number of times. I had four kids during this period when I was working as a freelance editor. I even moved continents. I moved here to the US and I live in Colorado. It was incredibly flexible and it meant that I could work when it suited me. I was never short of work because, as I say, I've got myself into this fairly narrow niche that meant I was pretty much always in demand, so that was great. But, as I say, I wasn't earning a whole lot because I had no concept that I could actually ask for any more than I was offered for any particular project. Fast forward through all of that, it really was, as I say, great for the time, but by four, five, six years ago, I was really wanting something new. By that time, I was living here in the States, still working for British publishers for the main part, although they were publishing internationally, so the books went all round the world. But I was aware at that point that I needed some kind of structure or some kind of career path. I wanted to feel like I could make progress because I was just starting. I was on this plateau. I thought at the time it meant that that would, for me, would mean going back in-house to work for some sort of publishing company. I did actually get the job here in Colorado, in-house, for a very brief time. It was awful to be fair, and showed me by that time, to be honest, I was entirely unemployable. I could not work in-house doing something that I didn't feel invested in, I didn't feel was worthwhile. I didn't feel it was creative. I didn't feel that my input and my expertise by that point was really being used. It showed me that I needed to do something for myself. I needed to build something for myself that would fulfill this need to be creative and to do something that was worthwhile for me. The reason that I got into copywriting, because at that point I still didn't really know what copywriting was, I was still working on this editorial plane, so to speak, I was mistaken for a copywriter on a plane, basically. I was on a flight back from London here to Denver. As I was sitting next to this guy and inevitably the conversation started, "Oh, what do you do" sort of thing, and I explained that I was a copyeditor. He had heard not copyeditor but copywriter, and he actually ran a company that helped startups get to the next level, so he was involved with people who needed copy for websites and so on. But we did exchange business cards by the end of the flight, and so the next day he actually emailed me and said, "Oh, I think I've got some work for you." It was funny because obviously I knew, but I didn't do what he thought I did, and yet I knew I could. But because he did suggest that this might be a regular thing that he'd need me to do more, I went away and thought, oh my goodness, well I really ought to find out what this thing is that I don't do. Hence my research began into copywriting and what it was all about. As soon as I started diving in, oh my goodness, it really justified that initial feeling that I shouldn't say no to this guy because I felt this is what I should have been doing all along almost. It was using so many skills that I already had, but in a much more creative way and helping people to get their message across was something that I was really passionate about. But yes, so that is when I first discovered this amazing podcast, in fact. This was my very first, almost one of the first podcasts I ever listened to. I wasn't really into podcasts at that time. But when I discovered this one, you'd only just begun in fact. I think I only had to catch up, I don't know, half a dozen episodes or so. This is how I discovered what copywriting was. Then, through The Copywriter Club, also the Facebook group and so on, I started to hear about Joanna Wiebe and various other amazing people. I got into Copy School very early on and started all that training. The rest is kind of history in a sense. I feel like I've been on a fabulous ride ever since. Rob:   Yeah, awesome. Thanks for saying such nice things about the podcast. We definitely appreciate that. I'm curious, Gin, are there skills that you learned or developed as a copyeditor that directly apply to what you do as a copywriter today, or are they so different that it just was sort of a career change, one led to the other. Gin:   They are extraordinarily different in fact. When I was editing for educational publishers, and it does depend on the kind of copyediting you're doing of course, but I wasn't working in magazines or, I mean that's more [inaudible] editing anyway, but I was working in books mainly. There was online stuff as well, but that was very much at the beginning of online educational stuff. I was editing author's books. Authors were commissioned to write stuff and I basically helped them get it better. But a lot of that role, in fact,