TCC Podcast #323: Unflubbify Your Writing with Sara Rosinsky

On the 323rd episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, Sara Rosinsky joins the show. Sara’s initial career plan was to be a stand-up comedian, but ultimately she decided to focus on her very enjoyable day job in a Boston advertising agency, writing copy. Sara is also the author of Unflubbify Your Writing: Bite-Sized Lessons to Improve Your Spelling, Punctuation, and Grammar, a book intended to help people avoid making common mistakes in English. Sara’s career spans from agency life, to in-house, and freelance copywriting, so you’re not going to want to miss all the insight she shares. Here’s how it all goes down: How Sara landed her first agency job that lasted over 10 years. The creative process at an agency and being able to learn everything on the job. How to become more confident in the words you write. Why you need to have passion for all of your ideas even when they don’t make it out. What’s the real story behind working in-house? Is it a good idea to go rogue and start freelancing? Which route is for you? How her two freelance endeavors are different. To niche or not to niche. Why she decided to get consistent on LinkedIn and how she built an audience who wanted to work with her. How to create a sales force for free. Packaging deliverables for out-of-state projects – what’s the best route? Her approach to LinkedIn and how she comes up with content ideas. Sara’s mantra for copywriters. How she makes many things work at one time. What can you make happen in 27 minutes? Her book writing process and why she decided to write a book. The most common mistakes people make when writing and speaking. How to channel creativity outside of work. Listen to the episode or read the transcript below. The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Join The Copywriter Accelerator The Copywriter Think Tank Kira’s website Rob’s website Sara's website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Free month of Brain.FM Episode 4 Episode 6 Episode 282 Gin's website  Full Transcript: Rob Marsh:   A few weeks ago, I wrote an email to all of the people on The Copywriter Club list that included some crazy math about skill compounding. Because I know a lot of copywriters say they don't like math, I added the phrase, "Bear with me," to my email as I explained how it worked. Only I wrote B-A-R-E instead of the correct form of the word, B-E-A-R. What's worse is that I realized my mistake and I meant to correct it, but before I could, I had to run out, pick up my daughter from school. By the time I got back, I forgot. I hit send with my mistake in place. Fortunately, dozens of you caught my mistake and wrote back to point it out, which I really do appreciate, by the way. One of those kind correctors was our guest for this episode of The Copywriter Club podcast, copywriter and etymologist, Sara Rosinsky. When she responded to my mistake, she offered to come on the podcast and clarify this beastly language that we all speak and make it fun and memorable. We're thrilled to have Sara on the show today to talk about her business and some of the stickiest language problems that we all deal with as copywriters. But before we get to our interview, let me introduce my co-host for the week, copywriter Gin Walker, who writes for educators and online experts. She helps them connect with their audiences. Welcome back to the podcast, Gin. Gin Walker:   Hey, Rob, thank you so much. It's so awesome to be here. I'm especially pleased to be here for this episode actually thinking about Sara's fascination with grammar and punctuation and so on, because I spent a good two decades of my life as an editor. And so this is kind of my bag as well. I'm particularly pleased to be here. Rob Marsh:   Yeah, that's partly why I thought of you- Gin Walker:   Oh, really? Rob Marsh:   ... thinking, "Hey, who should we have come on and help?" And I thought Gin would be perfect because she's kind of into this stuff too. Gin Walker:   Totally, totally. Rob Marsh:   This is going to be a great conversation. Also at this point, I need to make sure that everybody knows this podcast episode is sponsored by the Copywriter Think Tank. If you're looking for a mastermind/coaching program to help you scale your business, check out copywriterthinktank.com for more information. You get one-on-one coaching, not just from Kira and myself, but we have coaches for mindset and for systems and processes and for visibility. There's still time to get in and join us for our next in-person retreat in New Orleans in January. Go to copywriterthinktank.com for more information about that. Gin Walker:   Yes, absolutely. Please, may I say, I am an alumni of the Think Tank and I cannot sing its praises highly enough. Get in there. You will learn so much. It's just a hugely uplifting experience in every sense. Let's get to this interview with Sara. Sara Rosinsky:   I graduated from college and had an abundance of self-confidence. I thought employers would be beating my door down. That was not the case. And so I did what any advertiser should do, which is I put up posters that said I was available for hire. I put up just 8-1/2x11 posters all over Boston's Back Bay, which is where I was living in Boston, had the little tear off phone numbers at the bottom. It so happens that I thought I might be interested in advertising and had contemplated taking an ad club class. But when an ad agency called me, I was over the moon. They initially wanted me to hand-deliver some baseballs. They were invitations for American Express, and they were kind of a cumbersome-sized and shaped box, and they wondered if I could hand-deliver these invitations. That gig did not happen, but the head of the agency kept my little phone number, and when they needed somebody to fill in for the, I'm going to say, girl who was answering their phone, very young woman, I was available. Absolutely, I'd love to answer your phones and type up your media buys and all the things that you need. That was how I got my foot in the door at a Boston ad agency where I stayed for a decade. That was the beginning of my career. There's more to it, but I don't want to go on too long. Rob Marsh:   But let's stop there because this is amazing. I started my career very early in an agency as well, and there are so many stories of people who in order to get the foot in the door, join the mail room and deliver letters for a year or two until they can catch the attention or whatever. The poster, they literally found the poster and that's how they found your name. Then you worked as a receptionist. Then what was the next step? How did you get the attention of the person to say, "Hey, we need you to help on a project and not just answer the phones"? Sara Rosinsky:   I was fortunate that this agency was very small, so I was not overlooked at all. I also was doing standup comedy at that time, and the man who hired me, Stan Bornstein, was intrigued by that. He had a concept where he thought it'd be great if we had a standup comedian delivering jokes about our client, Store 24, which was a convenience store. He almost immediately was engaging me to think of writing and ideas. When he learned that I wanted to take an ad club class, that was when he really said, "Oh, you want to be a writer? You want to write advertising? Don't pay them. I'll give you stuff to work on." He did, and he gave me assignments. I would very shyly put what I wrote on his chair when he wasn't there because I was too self-conscious to present anything. Anyway, he mentored me. He really did. I can remember him telling me what was terrible and when I missed the point. I got an on-the-job teaching opportunity. Kira Hug:   How long did it take you to go from answering the phones to getting that opportunity and moving over to a writing role? Sara Rosinsky:   I was doing both at the same time for a while. I can't tell you exactly how long it took before I found myself in an office. It was probably honestly, it may have been a couple of years even. I'm not sure, maybe 18 months. It really was such a small agency that I was their IT department. Can you imagine? When they got ... I am not qualified, but I was the most qualified. Anyway, there was a lot of wearing of different hats and things. It was not strange that someone writing some copy might be sitting at the front desk. Kira Hug:   Then just to give some context, can you talk about how the roles progressed over that decade, especially for people who haven't had that agency experience? Sara Rosinsky:   Let me think about how that unfolded. When they hired someone else to sit at the front desk, that was clearly an inflection point of you are now a writer. I shared an office, and I think I was the only writer besides Stan. I do also remember, probably three quarters of my way into that decade, I remember through my husband's coaching telling Stan that I wanted to be a senior copywriter because I think there was maybe another copywriter there. I laughed just because it was such a small shop that that didn't fundamentally matter, but I supposed it did because the next job I ended up getting at Publix Super Markets in their in-house department. They hired me as a senior copywriter. As I say this out loud and I giggle about titles, they may actually matter. It may be worth pushing for that. Rob Marsh:   It doesn't really matter in maybe the work that you do, but it totally matters in the way that people perceive you. I agree. I think within reason, somebody with three months of experience shouldn't be pushing for a senior copywriter title, but if you've been doing it for a couple of years, for sure. That seems smart.