Corrie Myers is a website copywriter and messaging strategist who acts as a thought partner for her clients. After 15 years in the education field, she made the shift to copy and has found ways to incorporate her leadership and teaching expertise into her business. She’s built a successful business over the last few years by leading with empathy and setting clear boundaries.

Here’s how the conversation goes:

Corrie’s career shift from teacher to copywriter.

Building a business as a parent of three and how she balances work and life.

The skills she’s brought from her teaching career into copywriting.

Why she treats her own business as a client and why you should, too.

The benefits of having less hours to do something.

How she built confidence in making big life changes.

Being a thought partner for your clients – how do you position yourself as the go-to?

How the Think Tank has helped transform Corrie’s business.

Why you should pinpoint gaps your clients might miss.

How she determines the types of clients she works with.

Where she finds leads and projects during unprecedented times and what she leans on during periods of unknown.

How her pricing has evolved since the beginning of her business and how she packages her offers.

Why day rates are helpful in getting your foot in the door for long-term work.

How to selll a day rate or retainer.

The subtle shift in language Corrie uses to position herself as the strategist.

The messy middle – how do you trudge through?

How AI has impacted her business and maximized her energy by being a way to “chop vegetables.”

Tune into the episode by hitting play or checking out the transcript.

The people and stuff we mentioned on the show:

The Copywriter Think Tank

Kira’s website

Rob’s website

Corrie's website

The Copywriter Club Facebook Group

The Copywriter Underground

Free month of Brain.FM

Full Transcript:

Rob Marsh:  There is a challenge facing most copywriters that many of us struggle to deal with, and that is how do I stand out from the massive other copywriters and content writers who offer sales pages, emails, case studies, and all of the other things that we help our clients with? And for the most part, any copywriter can probably figure out how to do a decent job writing just about any project deliverable.

And, yes, I know I'm probably oversimplifying here to make the point, but our guest on today's episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast is copywriter and Think Tank member Corrie Myers. And as we talk with Corrie, she shared a ton of details about her business. Perhaps, most importantly, she talked about showing up not just as a copywriter, but as a thought partner for your clients. It's an approach that has helped her stay fully booked over the last year, while many other copywriters have struggled to find clients. And it's an approach that a lot of us could use in our own businesses.

Kira Hug:  But before we jump into the interview, this episode is sponsored by the Copywriter Think Tank, which is our Mastermind for copywriters and marketers who want to figure out the next thing in their business, that could be new revenue streams or it could be a new idea or podcast or so many different ideas. I'm not even going to promote it right now, because Corrie talks about it with us in this conversation. So you'll get to hear from her what her experience was like in the Think Tank, and you can also hear the results of what she's been able to do while being in the Think Tank. And so I think that's truly the best promo for the Mastermind.

We also had a chance to talk about the retreats. I know Corrie got a lot out of our most recent retreat in New Orleans. And I'm just going to mention that we do have Think Tank retreats coming up. In June, we have a virtual retreat, and then in September we're traveling to London for an in-person retreat, because similar to Corrie, we believe that the power in business growth and all types of growth, it all happens when you're together in person at these types of retreats. So if you have any interest in our Think Tank and becoming a new member, you can visit copywriterthinktank.com. Okay, let's kick off our episode with Corrie.

Corrie Myers:  Well, in, what was it? January of 2019, I was pregnant and teaching full-time, and wrote on a little, it wasn't a fancy vision board, it was just a real basic notepad of my goals for 2019. And it was to explore other career opportunities. And I had a couple goals within that to reach out to people who had explored other careers outside of teaching. And then by the time I went back to work after maternity leave, I was also a copywriter. So that's kind of how I got into it, was deciding to explore it. And then six months later I was doing it.

Rob Marsh:  That's really concise. So let's talk about what you were teaching, and why you felt the need to maybe move on. And I know you were doing more than teaching, you were doing counseling, you were doing more than just showing up as a teacher. So tell us about that experience.

Corrie Myers:  I was a high school English teacher for 15 years and a department chair and helped lead programs. And so many of the programs that I led were about helping students develop their passion and explore what they were good at outside of what everyone said they should do. And I just remember one day standing there for so long teaching had been that passion for me. And then we were reading The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho and I was talking them through what it feels like to love what you do. And I had this moment where I realized I didn't love this as much as I used to.

And so that was a real starting point for me to explore what also could be. I've always wanted to write, I just didn't know that I could do that outside of writing a book that gets published. So that was the starting point. And then just sort of the seed that was planted. And then, obviously, I loved what I did, helping students, supporting them with their very big challenges. But it just became a little bit too much, to be honest.

It's a lot to carry, especially at that time I was also pregnant, and so you're caring for your own kids as well as everyone else's needs. And so I wanted something honestly that was a little bit less emotionally taxing. Because I have a big heart and I can't separate, I couldn't drive home and leave my student's needs at home, so I needed something different. That's a little bit of what started that, let's explore something else.

Kira Hug:  What happens when you realize you don't love something anymore and you have that light bulb moment? Which I think is precious in many ways because some people just don't have that moment at all, or it takes too long to get to that moment. So what happens after you have that moment? What do you do? What do you put into play?

Corrie Myers:  It's definitely scary. Especially, if you... I mean, I started teaching when I was 22. I hadn't done anything else career wise, and so it's scary. And then sometimes it feels too self-indulgent, especially if you're going to change careers when you're pretty deep into it. And so what it feels like once you make that decision is you do kind of have to decide, is this... I think a lot of times, particularly in the helping profession, we hold ourselves back from pursuing something that we are passionate about, because we feel a call, we feel a level of responsibility to help people.

And that's really noble, but it's also not sustainable if deep inside that there's something else. And so it really was just sort of being brave enough to keep going and telling the right people. I talked to my therapist at the time. And I really had to get comfortable with the idea myself first, because I knew that it would not be easy for everybody else with that change. So I think that's the biggest step is making sure that you are super confident why you're wanting to make a change and okay that it's for you.

Rob Marsh:  Okay. So you know you want to make this change. You wrote it down on a notepad, so you've kind of got the goal out there. But you didn't write, I'm going to be a copywriter. You said, "Explore other options." What other options were you thinking about? Where did your brain go as you started that exploratory process?

Corrie Myers:  Well, having been in education, I knew the options I had there. So within that I had two people that I wanted to meet with, one who was a copywriter and one who was in administration moving into education consulting. And so those were my ideas. I really didn't know what copywriting was outside of what my friend was doing. And so the other options were what else can I do as an educational leader? So that looked like working at the district office level or working for a consulting agency outside of it.

But that didn't feel like it was going to tap the creative energy that I wanted. Because as much as I wanted out of the classroom, I loved the creativity that I got to have with the students. And sometimes if you stay in education, I mean, you get out of the classroom, but you lose some of the best parts of it. So it just -

Rob Marsh:  I have a friend who did that exact process. He went from the classroom to the district level. He hated it, even more money and all of that. And the next year he was back in a classroom, he was like, "Nope, I wasn't doing it for any of the bureaucracy, I was doing it for the kids." So yeah, that rings true as you talk about that process.

Corrie Myers:  And then honestly just at that time, another big factor for me as a mom of young kids was the time factor. And as soon as you get into administration, your time just doubles and triples. And so even though the salary technically increases,