TCC Podcast 32: Taking 4 Months Off Every Year with Sage Polaris

Copywriter Sarah Grear stops by the clubhouse to share how she’s built a successful copywriting business over the past five years. Sarah’s clients include course creators and entrepreneurs about to launch their products. As usual, Rob and Kira ask questions to pull back the curtain and reveal the tactics and ideas that have made her successful, including: •  The two-year process she used to identify her niche •  How she slowly priced herself out of doing websites (and what she charges now) •  Why she does “live edits” with her clients •  How she creates a copywriting experience for the people she works with •  What she did to land a speaking gig at Rick Mulready’s event and Social Media Week •  How she used networking to get 80% of her clients when she was just getting started •  Why she created a $1000 course and lowered the price since it launched •  How she takes four months off a year (and doesn't lose clients or revenue). We say this a lot, but this is another must-listen episode for anyone who wants to grow a successful writing business. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript. The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Sponsor: AirStory The Copywriter Accelerator The Well-fed Writer The Law of Attraction Rick Mulready Pat Flynn Amy Porterfield James Wedmore Social Media Week Copy Camp Maggie Patterson Streak Sarah’s Giving Page 826LA Sarah’s website Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity Full Transcript: The Copywriter Club Podcast is sponsored by Airstory, the writing platform for professional writers who want to get more done in half the time. Learn more at Airstory.co/club. Rob:Before we get to this week’s interview, we want to tell you about The Copywriter Accelerator, a new 12-week program designed to help newish copywriters get serious about their business. This isn’t a copywriting clinic. Instead, we’ll work with you to improve the business side of your business, things like your onboarding process, choosing a niche, building a brand, and being a smarter business owner. This isn’t a video course. It’s hands-on training with personal access to both Kira and me. To learn more, go to thecopywriteraccelerator.com. Now, on to the show. 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 32 as we chat with freelance copywriter, Sarah Grear about writing for healers and creative souls, how she landed a speaking gig at Social Media Week, working with her coach and a team, and taking branding vacations. Kira: Hey, Rob. Hey, Sarah. Sarah: Hey, guys. I love it. Rob: Hey, Sarah. Sarah: I’m so excited. Rob: We’re excited to have you. Kira: I think Sarah, a great place to start, and this what I’m actually really curious to know, where did you come from? What were you doing before you started your copywriting venture? Sarah: Cool. Yeah. I totally want to share my story with you. Before I do that, I just really quickly want to acknowledge both you and Rob for putting together this amazing podcasting group. I just want to say when I first started getting my copywriting business going, I actually, the number one referral source for my business was other copywriters, and I don’t think that gets talked about enough, so part of the way I build my business is what you guys are creating, so I’m just so grateful for communities like this, and I just wanted to say thank you for that. Rob: Thank you. That’s nice of you to say. Sarah: Yeah. Totally. The way I got started in copywriting and where I came from, I actually went to art school. I promise this will all make sense in a minute, but I went to art school. I got my degree in ceramics, and I did all types of art like ... Kira: Wow. Sarah: Yeah, pretty much everything under the rainbow I got my hands into. One of the things that happened was I actually read the book, The Well-Fed Writer by Peter Bowerman. When I read that book, I started to fall in love with the whole online marketing world and I was already doing some travel blogging, so I was telling stories online, and then I realized, “Oh, if I pivot this, I could actually start telling other people’s stories and get paid for it handsomely”, so I was like, “Yeah. I’m game for that.” When I found out that I could do the online writing, I shifted to copywriting and just really fell in love with and became addicted to the whole marketing world as it does, and since then, I’ve just been building relationships with people, building relationships with my clients, and my business has grown from giving a lot of value to people along the way. Rob: That’s really interesting, so you’ve actually got a pretty specific niche of people that you target. At least from what I can tell on your website and the things that you do on Facebook, you target, let’s call them ‘Creative souls’. Tell us a little bit about how you came up with that as the place where you really wanted to focus your efforts? Sarah: Yeah. I work with mainly creatives and healers now, but when I got started, I wanted to focus on just entrepreneurs in general. When I looked at when I had two years in business, I had a lot of historical data to look back at, and I was like, “Oh, I really love working with these creatives and people who fall under the healing umbrella”, so it could really be anything from I’ve had clients who teach law of attraction, so the self-care type of healing to people who also are coaches and they’re health coaches, all different types of healers. I just realized that the more I learned about what they were doing, I just fell in love with it and decided to focus in that area. It’s funny because I didn’t come out of the business womb like knowing exactly who my ideal client was, and I think that’s okay to give yourself a couple of years to experiment and figure out where you want to focus, and then look back and say, “What was the most fun for me?”, and that’s how I landed on those ideal clients. Then, over time, I started out writing websites, just general home about sales service page, whatever contact page, whatever people needed, and then I really fell in love with the copy conversion and doing launches because I realized that it was directly tied to their revenue, and when you directly tie what you’re creating to the outcome of them getting revenue in their business, it changes the game. They’re willing to invest more, and I priced myself out of doing websites now because I started at a certain price, and now, people don’t necessarily want to pay that just for a website when they don’t see the outcome of getting leads and getting sales and all of that which is totally fine for me. I still throw it out there. If they want to hire me to do the website, great, but now I realize people are way more willing to invest in their launches, and so I focus on that. Kira: That’s interesting. I feel the same way with websites, so I’m curious to know what you were charging if you don’t mind sharing with websites that priced you out of that market just because I know there are a lot of copywriters that are working on websites or want to get into that space, and they may appreciate that frame of reference. Sarah: Yeah. Of course. When I first started, I remember I was doing about pages for like 375. $375, and I would do three meetings, two revisions, and then slowly, I got it to the point where people are paying for an about page for 575, and eventually, I had to phase that out too. I feel like people ... When I started to phase that out, it changed to charging between 1,500 to 2,000 for up to five webpages, then I just couldn’t do that anymore, so it got to the point of charging 3,500 and up. Kira: Yeah. Sarah: That was like the minimum to get started with me in around four pages, and even then, people are having a tough time swallowing that, which is fine with me. Rob: Yeah. It’s a good place to be when you charge the rates that you like and you can take the clients that you want and turn away the others. You do some interesting things with the way you talk about the packages that you have of your services, and you call them ‘Branding vacations’. Tell us a little bit about the thinking behind that and why you phrase it like that. Sarah: As I’ve shared earlier with the travel blogging, I really looked back at my own personal experiences to inform my brand storytelling, and a big part of that was travel, so I also knew that that really appeals to my ideal clients. They love the idea of travel. Like anytime I ask a room of people, “Who doesn’t love travel here?”, nobody raises their hand, which is a confirmation for me that I was on the right path in putting together those packages, so I positioned in this branding vacations because I do work in the intensive style where I try to get things done in three to five business days, so for me, it was like it really was like going on a vacation. I got to focus on one or two clients at a time and I always let them know like “It’s just you and I for this period of time and we get things done quickly so that you can go ahead and launch it as soon as possible”, and they love it. Kira: I’m really drawn to your packages as well because like everyone else, I like vacation and I actually was ready to purchase it because it’s such a great brand and it creates the right vibe and very inviting. How do you run intensive style projects? I have no idea if that would even work for me. I’m sure it wouldn’t work for everyone, but what happens behind the scenes to make that work and successful? Sarah: Yeah.