TCC Podcast #226: Creating a Multi-faceted Copywriting Business with Christy Cegelski

Our guest for the 226th episode of The Copywriter Podcast is Christy Cegelski. Like many people who’ve become copywriters, Christy’s journey to becoming a copywriter was not a traditional one. She learned her marketing and copywriting skills after launching her own FOOD business. She gave us insights on how starting a business the “right” way isn’t the only way. Great results can be achieved by going off the beaten course and by following intuition. If you’re thinking about how your own background could prove useful in your copywriting career, make sure to give this episode a listen. This is how it all breaks down, we talked about: •   how Christy went from mommy blogger to food creator •   how margarita mix made Christy a copywriter •   the stigma of not being paid well as a writer was proving painfully true in the beginning •   her passion working behind the scenes with email funnels, website copy, social media •   the end of the food creation business but the beginning of a new one •   how she became the GO TO for all things websites & emails •   how she was able to grow her email list + social media organically •   how she proved email marketing was never “dead” •   the knowledge she brought into copywriting from her previous business endeavors •   when she knew copywriting was going to be a business •   how she used “the google method” in the beginning to price her offers •   why “figuring it out” in the beginning can be a positive and negative thing •   using feminine strategies rather than masculine & following intuition to do what feels fulfilling •   navigating burnout while learning a new skill •   why she outsourced before she was ready + the results •   how she’s scaled her prices overtime & works less •   Christy’s writing process + flow of creativity •   the struggles of going from storytelling to the point of the copy •   having a launch plan prior to starting a podcast + who should start one •   the benefits of having a podcast - reciprocal promotions •   how learning about something and taking action towards it are two different things Ready to elevate your mindset as a copywriter? Don’t miss this episode with Christy. Click the play button below, or subscribe using your favorite podcast app. The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Christy's website Copywriter Think Tank Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground   Full Transcript: Rob:   So many copywriters follow what we've called a winding path from one career or kind of experience to their role as a copywriter. And some even grow beyond that to help with things like branding or voice development and marketing strategy. Our guest for the 226th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast is Christy Cegelski. Christy started writing as a mommy blogger, but then she got really serious about selling when she and her husband launched a company to sell the margarita mix that they had created. What she learned from running that company came in handy when other business owners started reaching out and asking for help with their copy for their businesses. Kira:   Before we share our interview with Christy, this podcast episode is brought to you by The Copywriter Underground. That's the membership for copywriters who are ready to start investing in their business, improve their sales calls, proposals, and build a network that supports them with ideas, leads, and more. To learn more, visit thecopywriterunderground.com. Rob:   Christy's experience ranges from mommy blogger to food product creator, to copywriter, to digital product maker and podcaster. But we started our interview with a question about how she became a copywriter. Christy Cegelski:   It's funny because listening to so many of your podcasts, I realized that none of us have a typical story where we dreamed one day we were going to become a copywriter, and here we are. I guess I kind of, I didn't know that it sort of had become such a cliche, that it was, everybody came about it in such a strange way. But for me, I mean, I was a stay at home mom for years and years, and I really wanted to get back into writing. It was something that I was really good at when I was a kid. It was sort of an escape for me growing up in the environment that I did, which is another story for another day. But back in 2007, I was reading a lot of mommy blogs. And this is kind of back in the day when bloggers were bloggers and not influencers like they are now. But that medium really kind of became an outlet for me as I started my own blog the next year. And it was a way for me to sort of get back into the practice of writing every day and just sharing my own experience as a wife and a mom. And it was working on that blog that ultimately led me to the decision to go back to school, to get my bachelor's degree in English, with a writing focus. And at the same time, I started pitching myself for some freelance writing gigs in local publications. And these assignments literally paid zero to maybe up to $50 an article and you can't really make a living on that, right. It kind of seemed like what I was hearing my whole life about not being able to make a living as a writer was really kind of proving to be true. But I stayed in school, I loved it. I was still sort of getting these random low-paying writing jobs here and there. And then at the start of my final semester, my husband and I kind of veered off course a little bit and created a line of all natural locale margarita mixes, kind of by accident. It was totally random. But we really had no business kind of getting into the food industry or bottling this stuff. We were completely naive about anything to do with grocery stores and food packaging and all of that. But everybody that we were sharing this stuff with was like, "Oh, you really need to bottle this. You need to bottle this." And so the short story is we found a manufacturer to bottle the mixes for us. We hooked up with a few distributors and we started getting these margarita mixes into a lot of local natural grocery stores, specialty food stores. We sold them online and that was really my first experience with e-commerce. It wasn't big back in 2010 when this was happening. People weren't really buying food online. But what I kind of found throughout the whole process is that I really loved working behind the scenes in a creative capacity. And I seem to have a knack for building an audience and for email marketing. I wrote all the website copy, copy for the marketing materials, emails, all the social media captions. And I was able to really grow our audience and our sales without really knowing that what I was doing was copywriting. So that was kind of the start of it. And then long story short, we closed that business after four years because we just didn't make enough money at it. But the interesting thing that sort of came out of that experience was that other business owner, friends and acquaintances started to reach out to me for help with their website copy and content for their brands. And at first, I was writing a lot of copy for other product-based businesses like ours, but it kind of transitioned pretty quickly into writing for personal brands in the coaching and online course space. That was kind of my intro to copywriting when I didn't really know that it was a job title or that it was something that you could get paid for. Rob:   Yeah, so let's go all the way back to that first blog. What was the topic? What were you writing about? Were you also doing the mommy blog thing or did you have anything specific? Christy Cegelski:   It was definitely a mommy blog. It was called Heavy on the Caffeine. And I actually really liked that title, might revisit it for something, who knows? But yeah, it was just really about being a stay-at-home mom and my life with little kids. And I just really had fun with it. I had no idea what I was doing and it was just fun. Rob:   Yeah. I remember those early days of blogging, I did something similar. I think Kira also did something similar and just sort of experimenting, playing with ... Yours was a shoe blog, is that ... No, wait, tall. Kira:   Oh my God. Rob:   I'm trying to remember. Kira:   About being tall. I had a blog about being a tall person, which is the worst idea for a blog ever. And then I had one about rebelling against the bridal industry. But yeah, I miss those days too, good times. Christy Cegelski:   I miss it. I really miss it. Kira:   Let's go back. Rob:   That's definitely a better way... Well, maybe not a better way, but it was definitely a nice way to share a lot of thoughts and be able to engage in an audience that wasn't on a platform like Facebook or Twitter, where you get sort of all the negativity and all that comes along with it. Christy Cegelski:   Yeah, definitely. Because I think people were not going to kind of take that extra step to leave a negative comment. It just wasn't worth their time. Rob:   Yeah. Okay. Let's fast forward a little bit then and talk a little bit about your experience with the margarita company. So you were doing mostly, I'm assuming mostly content marketing for that, but what exactly did that look like? And maybe one or two big takeaways from that experience. Christy Cegelski:   Well, this was back in the day when Facebook, I don't think there was Instagram yet. But it wasn't a pay to play platform. It was pretty easy to build up a fan page and communicate with people that way. It was really just about showing up every day and engaging. But it's interesting because something that happened back then when we were sort of getting our website up and running and we worked briefly with the marketing team, because we were kind of looking into different ways to get our name out there. Did we want to go the radio ads route?