Treat Your Copywriter as Your Confidante

When it comes to hiring a copywriter, this is perhaps my biggest piece of advice: tell me the truth. Sounds obvious, right? And yet so many people who come to me for writing start out by telling me the trivial and the contrived. My word to the wise is not to treat your copywriter like your customer, telling them your sales patter and your planned and perfected elevator pitch – because what sounds like a succinct and rather special marketing spiel to you will sound to a trained ear like a mish mash of jargon and bullshit.

Instead, treat me like a confidante so I can get beneath. In order to be your voice I need to know you at that deep, gritty level. So you dropped out of college, have four failed marriages or your business isn’t making the money you need it to. That’s OK. I can work with this, it makes you real.

However, if you tell me you want a six figure sales company, that your business provides solutions, helps others achieve their goals, attain growth or inspires, connects and breaks down barriers, I probably won’t make it to the end of our first meeting without shooting myself in the head. Nobody wants to hear the bullshit bingo. And yet everyone is full of it. You only have to spend half an hour on Facebook or Instagram to see another “expert” flaunting their amazing offering, all using the same words (clarity, potential, creative solutions, money blocks, tribe, implemented strategies) yada yada yada, tell me something REAL.

So my first piece of advice when you get sent your initial questions or sit down for a coffee with your copywriter, don’t simply link them to pages on your website or lift a chunk of your marketing blurb to answer who you are and what you do. The chances are, your wording tells them very little at all (that’s why you’ve hired a copywriter), tell them the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth about who you are and your personal journey. As anyone will tell you, a great copywriter is worth their weight in gold. But one you can truly trust and have the courage to show yourself to, unguarded and utterly authentically, she’ll tell your story in a way it’s never been told, taking your shadows and your depth and making that where the magic lies. Because nobody wants to know about your same-old six figure plan, they want to know what stands you apart. And in my experience, it’s your unique truth every time.