TCC Podcast #142: How to Inject Style into Your Copy with Tamara Glick

What’s the big deal about style in copy anyway? We invited Style Consultant and copywriter Tamara Glick to join us for the 142nd episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast to get to the bottom of that question. We covered a lot of ground in this one, but unfortunately we forgot to ask Tamara about joining a biker gang—even though we teased it in the intro. However, we think this episode makes up for that mistake because it’s our first interview to include the word, “huge-mungous.” Here's what we covered with Tamara: •  how she went from working as a fashion consultant to writing copy •  what it means to be a style consultant •  the importance of a personal brand and showing that to the world •  what she learned working closely with other creative in an ad agency •  what it took to transition full time to copywriting •  what she did once she decided to quit a full time job and make a living writing copy •  what she did to line up projects and find clients •  the changes she made when she went through the Copywriter Accelerator •  the packages, prices and other things she offers in her business today •  how she’s investing in her business today •  mindset and how she gets out of her own way •  her advice to others who aren’t as outgoing and energetic as she is To hear this episode, you’ve got to click the play button below or download it to your favorite podcast app. Prefer to read? Scroll down for a full transcript.   The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: The Copywriter Accelerator The Copywriter Think Tank Soho House Agnes Kowalski Tamara’s website Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity   Full Transcript: Rob:   This podcast is sponsored by The Copywriter Underground. Kira:   It's our new membership designed for you to help you attract more clients and hit 10K a month consistently. Rob:   For more information or to sign up, go to 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 142 as we chat with copywriter Tamara Glick about leaving the safety of a job and going freelance full-time, the role that fashion and style play in her business today, what she's doing today to invest in her business, and whether it's true that she's a member of a biker gang. Kira:   Biker gang, what? Rob:   Hey, Tamara. Kira:   I feel like we're teasing that, but I want to know right now. So welcome. I know you and I have chatted about this for a while and getting you on the show, because definitely you have been through a lot of transitions in your own business that we want to talk about. But before we do, let's just dig into how you ended up as a copywriter. Tamara:        Sure, hi guys. This is so exciting for me. How I ended up as a copywriter is kind of a twisted, checkered story. I actually started my career in advertising, but on the business side. Originally I would be the person who was going between the clients and the creative teams and briefing a creative team from what I'd been given from a client, and then allowing the creative team to do their magical work, and then coming back and working through that again with the client, and back and forth and back and forth. I would be that person who would sit with the creatives right beside them kind of hanging over their cubicles and saying, ‘What you doing? Can I help? What can I do?’ So I really learned a ton from hanging out with my creative teams and appreciating the processes that they would go through, but I was working more on the business side. Simultaneously, I was also building a business as a personal stylist. So I became a trained image consultant and built a business helping people with essentially self-expression. So that came in terms of the clothing that they would wear or the words that they would use on their resumes or their LinkedIn profiles or on their business's websites if they were growing their own businesses. I had quite a few clients when I moved into image consulting full-time for whom I did that kind of messaging work. But I never really considered it to be ‘copywriting’. I've got my air quotes going. Then as my business started to evolve, we're talking 13 years down the line, a few of my digital copywriter friends approached me and said, ‘We could really use your help on some overflow. Did you know that you're a copywriter? We don't really understand why you're not doing that.’ I said, ‘What do you mean I'm a copywriter?’ They're like, ‘Well, can you go back and explain your story again?’ I thought, ‘Oh. Oh that's what you meant.’ So essentially, I've been helping people to tell their stories for the entirety of my career just in different types of ways. I was really ready to do it in a more concentrated sense. So taking all of my different sorts of backgrounds, from agency side to client side to retail and fashion and service and putting it all together into my content and copywriting business. Rob:   Okay, so before we get into the copywriting stuff, I want to talk a little bit about you being a style consultant and what that involves. Talk about it. Tell us. If you saw me on the street and you saw my style, how would you fix me? Kira:   Can we have a makeover episode where we fix Rob up? Rob:   That'd be- Tamara:        Makeover, makeover. Rob:   I could definitely use it for sure. Tamara:        Yeah. Oh no, the sneakers are a signature style, Rob, and I think you need to keep that. Rob:   I have some pretty sweet bacon socks as well, so yeah there's that. Tamara:        Nice. Kira:   Oh my gosh. Tamara:        And the eggs, don't forget the eggs. So a style consultant, the way that I approach that world is, again, it's to help people express themselves effectively so that what people see on the outside is essentially how they feel about themselves on the inside in their best day, right? So a lot of us will fall back on a uniform that's easy. So maybe it's jeans and a T-shirt, because we don't really know what else to put on our bodies. Or maybe it is yoga pants, because one day we're actually going to go to yoga, or we don't need to wear pants, because we work at home, so we just wear shirts and we do the entrepreneurial mullet. Sooner or later, we kind of lose a sense of ourselves when we look in the mirror and don't really relate to what we see. So being a style consultant to me is a lot about helping you to relate to the person that you see in the mirror, so that when you look at yourself, you're really happy with what you see. When other people look at you, they have a sense of who you are. So what I loved seeing initially, I've known you guys for over a year now, and some of the first pictures that I saw of you were you sitting together on a couch. I don't know if those were intentionally branded photos for your personalities, but what I really liked about it was how individual you each were. You reflected your own personalities in a way where I knew that if I was going to talk to Rob, I'd get somebody who is fairly buttoned up, but at the same time, comfortable, relaxed, and confident in what he knows and who he is. When I looked at you, Kira, I saw a person who was equally comfortable and confident, but also colorful and a little bit more expressive of her individuality. That's just like how you are in both your work and in person. So I loved seeing that you were able to figure that out for yourselves visually as well as you can when you're writing. Kira:   I love that. So because we're going down the rabbit hole, how important is style for other copywriters, in terms of their photos and showing up to events, and even what they wear day-to-day, which I have confessed I do wear the same outfit most days, but I know how to dress up when I'm going out, because I think it's easy for us to say we're all about the words, and style and fashion doesn't matter in our business. Tamara:        I think that coming from... I'll back up a little bit. My image consulting business started because while I was taking my MBA, I was looking to apply for work in advertising. That is not one of the two typical flavors of Kool-Aid that you get in an MBA course of study. The flavors are either purple, which would be finance, or orange, which would be consulting. So I was going for this tutti-frutti flavor that nobody really understood. So when I would ask, ‘What should I do to get ready for an interview in this kind of environment? What should I wear? How do I network in an agency setting?’ I got some really poor advice for agency people, awesome advice for corporate people. That was my first real understanding that my love of fashion and beautiful things was not just novelty. It was a practice of identity. So I did go to a mock interview where I wore, I will never forget it, I wore a black skirt suit that I bought from the store that I had been managing prior to getting into my MBA. It was very cool at the time. It was a skirt suit with a long jacket that had a zipper all the way up. It was in the late '90s, early naught, and a top that went right up to my neck, and a French twist, and pearl stud earrings, and pantyhose. Rob:   Wow. Tamara:        Yes. Rob:   Knock the doors down. Yeah. Tamara:        Whew. It was something. I met up with my mentor, and she took one look at me and said, ‘What the heck is this?’ I thought, ‘Oh my gosh, thank you. Stick a fork in me. I'm done. I could do this to a bar mitzvah, but I can't wear this every day.