Should you Hire a Copywriter?

One of the things that I love to do in my business is write emails but one of the things that I don’t like to do is write emails. 

I love writing emails, because it’s my voice. It’s me talking directly to my amazing community of people. 

But the thing I don’t love about is how much time that it takes. And me with my creative brain, I just want to do fun and creative things. 

And so sometimes I just find myself in this tension with my love for writing emails, and then my hate for writing emails.

And so over the last year so I have been really, really toying with the idea of if I should hire a copywriter.

So we’re starting a conversation today talking all about all things copywriting. 

And I can’t say that it’s like a sexy subject.

It’s a fun subject.

But it is something that, you know, we have to think about as it pertains to our businesses, scaling our businesses.

Meaning, being able to generate more money in our business, growing the company, your team and all that type of stuff.

It’s things that we really have to consider is if we should be adding additional people, to our teams, and one of the people potentially is a copywriter. 

And so I want to just talk to you about my experience. So I was sharing in the intro how I really enjoy talking to my people. 

I know my people, they know me, you know me, and I know my own voice. 

And so it’s so easy for me to be able to just write and just, you know, open up a document and just write something and send an email to my community. 

The downside is that, from a business standpoint, that does not let me be in my main lane of genius, like I am really good on video, talking and teaching. 

I’m good at sales. 

I’m good at strategizing with my clients and all the things. 

And I can’t say that that is something that I could give to somebody else because that’s what I’m really good at doing. 

And so I kind of found myself in this space and time of hiring a copywriter. 

And we have hired different copywriters. I’ll give you an example. 

One time when we were launching my course Monetize the Tok. 

I invested in a copywriter and the person charged $150 per email. 

Whoah! yeah, you know, and so she learned a lot about our business. And then we let her write the emails. 

And so we plugged them into our funnel and all the things and I cannot say that we made more money by hiring her as a copywriter. 

Honestly, we made less as a result of it.

And so the next time we opened up our course, I wrote all the emails, and they performed better. 

So we did this again, we hired a copywriter for our sales page for one of our products, I can’t remember what it was. 

And they wrote the copy and all that. 

And when we got the copy back, it actually didn’t really even sound like me, it didn’t sound like my audience, it really didn’t sound like anything or what I thought it was gonna be.

And we spent a lot of money to have that person write the copy on our sales page.

And so I was, of course, very frustrated with that. 

But I learned a very valuable lesson, one that it takes time for a person to learn your voice, learn your audience, and be right for you. 

But even after they learn and all that, they’re still not you, right?

And so it’s really important that like when you’re working with copywriters.

What I’m learning is that when they write the thing, you still should read it and revise it for your own voice.

You know, so I had a friend who had a launch recently, and someone pitched her to write emails.

And when they pitched her and wrote the emails, she was raving about them. 

She was so amazed at the success of what happened with that particular person’s emails. 

And so she was talking about them and just sharing them with the whole world or what have you. 

But she’s still sad, like, it’s still our responsibility to read every single email and make the tweaks that need to be made in this email before it goes up to a particular audience because we know our audience better than anybody. 

Now, does that mean that that’s going to happen all the time? 

No. So what I mean by that, if you are in the market to hire a copywriter, you have to like play the long game, in a sense. 

Because that person is going to write and you’re going to read their emails, and you’re going to revise them.

They’re gonna make it easier for you because they wrote majority of it, and then now you’re gonna revise it. 

And so you’re gonna have to do that, you know, consistently over a period of time. 

And also giving them back the emails so that way they can see the difference between what they wrote and what you wrote. 

So that way they can continue to learn your voice and all the things. 

It’s not going to be something that’s instant.

If you are in the process of scaling your business where you’re like, “Okay, I’m trying to outsource this so that I can get to the point to where I’m not on this anymore”

Then what’s going to have to happen is that.

There still is gonna to need to be a you, there is still gonna need to be a person that wants this copyrighted whether their contract or their full time with you, that is rereading some things to like some checks and balances and all that type of stuff because nobody’s perfect. 

Nobody knows your voice, the way that your voice is. 

Nobody knows exactly what you’re thinking or what has changed in your market or area or whatever, like you do. 

And so you still have to spend time like, you know, rereading over things and changing things. 

When I thought about today’s article, I said, “Should you hire a copywriter?

It depends on where you are in your business, okay?

But if you’re at this place where you’re like, your time will be best spent doing other things, then my answer is yes. 

But you still have to prepare yourself that you’re gonna have to reread this person’s emails, you’re gonna have to revise their emails.

And you can’t just fully just give it to them, you know, so I have had a lot of like, uncomfortable experiences where, you know, like, recently, we hired a copywriter.

I think I read this person’s best work and didn’t really see all of their work or given enough time to see more of their work. 

And as time was going on, I was just like, What is going on? 

And this actually has happened multiple times where we have hired somebody and we’re just like, what is happening? 

Well, what we were experiencing is that people were just writing the way that they write, you know, when they were writing for us as it pertains to TikTok. 

They’re writing for TikTok as a creator and entertainer, not as a person like me, who teaches TikTok to business owners having to constantly pull this person back and go. 

Why are you doing it that way, please stop doing this, please do it this way. 

And like trying to really help them like giving them access to all of our emails and all of our blogs and how I did things, trying to like help this person.

I started to realize that this person and people actually wanted to just write the way that they write. 

And that’s just what they wanted to do. 

They didn’t want to learn my voice and they didn’t want to do it my way. And I’m not talking about me being a micromanager. 

I’m more talking about teaching TikTok for business owners, not TikTok for creators. And so there is a way that I’m teaching. 

And so that person didn’t want write in my way or teach my way in blogs.

They wanted to just do what was easy for them, which doesn’t make sense for me because it’s not going to actually translate to my audience or to our particular offers or what have you. 

So we’ve had multiple people, we had to let them go. 

And so I started to learn my own lesson of “Hey, you gotta take your time hiring people that you know”

And I say this all the time, you know that you have to hire slow and fire fast.

Meaning that you like take your time before you hire people get to know them, have them write a couple things, like multiple things.

Pay them to write these things, but have them write and write and write and write. 

But also, my friend taught me she said, when she hires people, she actually hires multiple people to do the same job for 30 days.

They don’t know about each other, but they’re both doing the same job for 30 days. 

So she can determine if this is actually who’s the right person versus one person. 

And then now 30 days later, you let them go, you have nobody, but you have multiple people that are doing the jobs. 

So at the end of the 30 days, 60 days, 90 days or whatever, now you’ve got the perfect person that you’ve trained and cultivated for the particular job. 

So if you’re thinking about hiring a copywriter, I definitely think you should really consider it, especially if writing copy is not your lane of genius.

But it is really, really, really important for you to understand that it’s gonna take time.

But a person to get to know you, your voice talk like you, right like you.

And you’re still gonna have to spend time reading their emails, reading every single piece of copy, giving them feedback. 

And so you got to make the space you know, in your life, and then your day to actually work with them to help them to nurture them to be a good copywriter for you.

Because even though they may charge you $100 an email, $200 an email, it doesn’t mean that they know you, know your voice, know your industry or write the way that you write. 

For me, I typically write the way that I talk. And so, I’m always telling people when they come on board, “You gotta watch my videos and listen to me”

“You’ve got to listen to my podcasts so you can really understand how do I talk, you’ve got to read my emails”

“You’ve got to read my blogs, you’ve got to read my social media posts, because otherwise you’re going to be talking in a language that makes sense for you but doesn’t make sense for me and my tone, my brand and my particular my target audience” 

So if you’re thinking about doing this, I encourage you to do so but make sure that you spend some time hiring slow and firing fast. 

I’m not saying like just like on a dime or whatever, you know, like just firing them so fast that they’re like what is happening.

But just taking them through a process before you fire them but just like knowing in your head,

okay telling them in advance, “Hey, this is a 30 day thing. We’re going to evaluate this after 30 days”

That way they know that this is not permanent.

That their job is to do a good job with the job before you know before you make a final decision on if you’re going to be with them for the long haul. 

Okay, I hope you have found this valuable and I’m curious if you are a copywriter and you’re interested and writing for us. I would love to hear from you. 

Just send me a DM on Instagram at Keenya Kelly and just let me know what it is you do as a copywriter or pitch me do your writing. I would love to hear from you because we are still looking for a copywriter. 

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