TCC Podcast #293: Figuring Out When it’s Time to Quit with Marcella Allison

On the 293rd episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, Marcella Allison comes back on the show. When she first joined the show, she was in the midst of building The Mentoress Collective, and now after 7 years, it’s time for her to pack it up and leave behind a legacy. In this episode, she talks about her decision to move on and the chance you have to get your hands on what she’s built for a steal. Here’s how the conversation breaks down: What was The Mentoress Collective all about? The difficult decision that entrepreneurs are faced with when growing their brands and businesses. What’s changed in the marketing space since the beginning of The Mentoress Collective? Step by step tips to find a mentor – The do’s and don’ts. Is it possible to have too many mentors? The real difference between a copy chief and a business mentor – Which do YOU need? How the most successful copywriters use these two things to create high-converting copy, and how you can use them too. The attitude you need to take on when editing your copy. The three types of entrepreneurs – Which one are you? How are we supposed to balance learning, success, failure, and accomplishment all at the same time? Are you ready for an agency? The difficulties that come with being a solopreneur and entrepreneur – Are they the same? How to embody someone that would demand the rates you want to ask for. Practical advice on supporting yourself during an extreme transition or pivot in your business and life. Why it’s important to allow a time period of business grief and choosing possibility. How you can change the vehicle in which you give rather than give up what you love. Be sure to tune into this episode all about change and rediscovering passions. The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: The Copywriter Think Tank Copywriting Income Survey Kira’s website Rob’s website Marcella - Bundle 1 Copy breakdowns Marcella's Legacy of Success - Bundle 2  The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Free month of Brain.FM Episode 48 with Marcella    Full Transcript: Rob Marsh:  We talk about success a lot on the podcast. We've interviewed lots of copywriters who have built thriving, six-figure businesses. We've even talked to a few people who have made more than seven and eight figures in their business. They've shared the habits and processes, and even the luck that they've had along the way, but we don't talk a lot about failure or quitting. So today's podcast is a little different. Our guest for this episode is our friend A-list copywriter, Marcella Allison. In addition to writing dozens of successful promotions in the financial industry over the past few years, Marcella has spent much of the last seven years building a community to help mentor and support women in marketing. Originally, it was called Titanides, and now it's called the Mentoress Collective, but recently Marcella made the decision to close the doors on that venture, and this episode focuses on that decision. We also talked about mentoring, pay gaps, and what comes next. There's a lot to learn from Marcella's story and her decision, and we hope that you'll stay to the end when Marcella makes an offer that we think is almost too good to be true. Kira Hug:  But it is true. It's too good to be true, but it is true. And this is actually the last day before the price increases for the Think Tank, our mastermind. If you listen to the podcast, you've heard us talk a lot about the mastermind over the last few months. If you have any interest in it, today would be the best day to reach out to our team and find out if it's a good fit for your business so that you can jump in there before our retreat, before our virtual retreat on June 9th and 10th, and before the price increases. You can find out more at the copywriterthinktank.com Rob Marsh:  And just a note about this episode, because we've recorded it just in the last couple of days, we are not adding any commentary throughout this interview this week. So let's just listen to Marcella's story and her decision to close her latest business. Kira Hug:  All right. So, Marcella, it's been a while since we chatted with you on the podcast. And more recently, we did speak with you at TCCIRL back in April, but a lot has changed for you since we last saw you. Can you just give us a quick update on a couple of the small changes you've made in your business? Marcella Allison:  So I made the decision at the start of this month to close down the Mentoress Collective, which was formerly the Titanides, and to not be an entrepreneur in that way right now, and to go back to being more of a solopreneur, working on different projects and with different communities. But I made the very difficult decision to shut down the membership at the start of this month actually. Rob Marsh:  We should actually back up a little bit because I think the last time we actually talked, so anybody who is only familiar with you from our podcast is like, you were really just getting started on the Titanides, which then became Mentoress Collective. I think we should go back even farther. Let's save the terrible news of closing it down, now that we've spoiled that already, but let's talk about what the whole purpose of Mentoress Collective was and what you were doing and the things that you guys accomplished because I think there's this massively encouraging story of just so much of the good stuff that was happening in that group. And yeah, maybe there are reasons that it's not making financial sense, but there are so many other good things that came from that group, and I don't want to skip over any of that. Marcella Allison:  Yeah. You know, it's been... I was thinking about that because I think I was on the podcast your very first season, like within a couple of your first episodes. So it's been a crazy journey. So the Mentoress Collective or Titanides began seven years ago, a little more than seven years ago now at an industry event where there just wasn't a lot of representation, not only for women minorities, it was just a very white male-dominated panel and presenters. And it became obvious to me that we needed to really work harder and do better about lifting women up in this industry. And because it was a friend of mine who was hosting the event, I decided that the best way that I could do that was to hijack all the women at the event and invite them to dinner that night, which is what we did. And we had a mentoring conversation where I started by saying to all the women there, some of whom had only been in the industry for a year, some of whom had been in the industry for 25 years at that point. And my question was, “What was your all is lost moment, and how did you come back from that?” And that led into a very deep discussion of how we actually overcome challenges and how we get back up when we think, “Oh my god, I don't know what I'm going to do after this.” And it was all over the map from personal challenges to business challenges, and I was so struck by how much wisdom was there and that there were women who wanted the opportunity to share that wisdom as part of their legacy, and there really wasn't a container that allowed them to do that. Marcella Allison:  So we started with just a very small private Facebook group, which grew from about, I think we started with somewhere between 15 and 18, and it's 1,500 now of women co-mentoring each other within that private space where they can be upfront about any of the challenges they're facing, ask for help, get mentoring. And from there, it just kept growing. We began to ask some of these women to come and do our version of a podcast, which is a literary salon where they read from maybe a book or a publication of theirs, take questions, share some of their thoughts and wisdom with us. We started to do trainings with some of the senior women in the industry and we created a more formalized structure where women could offer mentoring to each other, whether that was just an hour or 15 minutes or saying to someone, “Hey, can you jump on a call with me and just talk me through your lead magnet and how you do that? You know, I'm new to this. I don't know how to do that. Can you talk me through this?” Those kinds of things, really based on the principle of generosity, this idea of paying it forward to others and also the idea of resilience that you're going to face challenges and you're going to face what you think are endings, but really contained in those endings are new beginnings and a new opportunity, and you have to be willing to see those and to lean into that moment. And so I think one of the things I'm the most proud of is how that ripple effect of that generosity of one woman mentoring another woman who then goes on to mentor another woman has had such a tremendous impact, not just on individual careers, but I feel like across the industry in terms of women recommending each other for jobs, or for speaking engagements, or encouraging each other to get up on stage, or to share what they know, or to own their expertise. And that is a legacy that makes me feel very proud and very happy to know that ripple effect will continue out there for, I hope, years to come. Kira Hug:  You mentioned that you started this seven years ago when you were at that event, and it was mostly white men on this panel. I'm just curious what changes you've seen in the marketing space over the last seven years, especially due to a lot of the work that you've done. Marcella Allison:  I think that... You know, it's a challenge because progress never comes in a straight line. Progress comes in sort of we go forward, then we go back a little bit, then we go forward, then we go back. So in some ways, I feel like more and more women see this as a possible career for them,