For the 59th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, in-house copywriter and creator of The Headline Project, Justin Blackman, is in the house to share how writing 100 headlines a day for 100 days changed his writing and his business. (We recorded this one a couple of months ago and are just getting around to publishing it now—apologies Justin.) In this episode Justin shares:

•  his path from sports and field marketer to copywriter

•  what his job as an in-house copywriter involves from one day to the next

•  why he started a side gig as an outlet for his creativity

•  how Shel Silverstein helped launch his first side gig—try, fly or walk away

•  why more copywriters should consider in-house gigs instead of freelancing

•  what in-house copywriters can expect to make (yep, we asked this question)

•  what made Justin decide to write 100 headlines in 100 days

•  some of the “tricks” he used for brainstorming to stay prolific

•  how his “creativity muscle” grew as he did the work every day

•  how he found motivation from the people he said he couldn’t do it

•  how the Headline Project has helped him grow his business and list

Plus we asked Justin how in the world he balances his work along with his side projects with his family duties, and we asked his advice on what copywriters should do to move their own businesses forward. To hear his answers, click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.

 

The people and stuff we mentioned on the show:

The Copywriter Accelerator

PT Barnum

Bill Veeck

Lianna Patch

Copyhackers

Shel Silverstein

Hippo’s Hope

The Headline Project

Laura Belgray

Tackle Your Tagline cheatsheet

Joel Klettke

PrettyFlyCopy.com

Justin’s Twitter

Kira’s website

Rob’s website

The Copywriter Club Facebook Group

Intro: Content (for now)

Outro: Gravity

 

Full Transcript:

Rob: 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 Kira and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast.

Kira: You’re invited to join the Club for episode 59, as we talk with copywriter Justin Blackman about his journey from marketing manager for companies like Red Bull and Five Hour Energy to copywriter and content manager, what it’s like as an in-house copywriter, balancing in-house work with freelance work and a family, and what he’s learned from his 100 day headline project.

Kira: Justin, welcome!

Justin: Hi!

Kira: Thanks for being here. We’ve had a chance to get to know you better in The Copywriter Club and The Copywriter Accelerator and I think it’d be really fun to just start with your story and maybe parts of your story that we don’t know, specifically how you went from sports marketing to content creator to copywriter. So, can you share that path with us?

Justin: Yeah! It’s kinda one of these paths that seemed obvious to everyone but me. I went to U Mass for sports marketing, mostly because I wanted to work for the New York Rangers, which was pretty “high school” of me but I had a good time there and learned a lot. The biggest change was that I had one professor there that talked about P.T. Barnum and Bill Veeck, who was a baseball promoter—he owned the Chicago White Sox and the Cleveland Indians—and really, focused more on big-time promotion and making the game fun. And these guys didn’t sit in the skybox, they were down in the cheap seats with the bleacher creatures and just having fun and talking to the people.

So, I realized pretty quickly that as much as I love sports marketing, it was more the marketing side that I liked, and that branched me into field marketing. And field marketing is essentially a fancy way of saying “consumer sampling”. So, anytime you go somewhere and they’re handing out different promotional items—could be drinks, or Chapstick,