We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Kate McDermott a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Kate, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Are you able to earn a full-time living from your creative work? If so, can you walk us through your journey and how you made it happen?

It’s 2019. I’m five years in to a job as an executive assistant to a restaurant owner.

And while there are definite perks to the job, I am burnt out and unhappy.

I want more autonomy over my work and over my time. I want to work from home. And I want to do something creative.

So I think to myself, “Maybe I could be a freelance copywriter? That ticks all the boxes.”

I quit my job.

The following Monday, I sit down at my laptop at home and start looking for clients.

It’s now five years later.

I am a freelance copywriter for lifestyle and hospitality brands. My business brings in enough revenue to pay me a full-time salary, cover business expenses, and save for retirement.

How did I get from zero experience and zero clients to a packed schedule working with awesome companies?

Step One: I got my first client

Getting someone to trust you to do creative work for them is your first hurdle.

Don’t waste time on a fancy website or primo marketing materials. That stuff can come later.

The most important thing is to start bringing in some revenue.

In my case, my very first client came from a cold email. I reached out to restaurants in my area to see if I could help with any writing needs. Since I had plenty of restaurant experience and I was a local, I was able to make a strong case that I “spoke the language” of restaurants and could help busy restaurant owners with their marketing materials.

Within that first week, I had my first project: writing an email newsletter for a local restaurant. It paid $75. (I still have the check pinned to my bulletin board.)

While my first client came from a cold email, many of my other early clients came from UpWork. In fact, some of my best regular clients came from that platform. There can be great jobs and great companies on sites like UpWork to help you get your foot in the door.

To help get those jobs, I created “spec work.” These were sample pieces that I created just for myself, to demonstrate my writing style. As I completed more client work, I replaced the spec work with pieces I’d done for clients.

Pretty soon, I had potential clients reaching out to me, rather than the other way around.

Step Two: I presented a professional face

After you’ve started to get some client work, you can start working on your marketing.

Personally, I focus my marketing efforts on a website with a blog. I dabbled in social media, but I found that I wasn’t getting inquiries through Instagram or Facebook. My website, however, has been a steady source of leads for me.

Your mileage may vary!

As the primary place where potential clients encounter me for the first time, my website and blog had to present a professional face AND give people a sense of what it’s like to work with me. I tried to make my service pages clear while also sharing my unique voice. My writing is why people hire me, after all.

I do NOT believe that creatives need complex websites or complicated marketing funnels to get clients. But they do need to make their potential clients feel like they are a professional. You’re asking someone that you don’t know to hand over their hard-earned money, and a professional presence makes that decision easier for them.

Step Three: I cultivated repeat clients

This is the reason that I am able to make a very comfortable living without spending hours upon hours hunting down clients. 90% of my weekly workload (sometimes 100%) comes from repeat clients. I love to do one-off projects, like websites for new businesses. But I also get a lot of joy from building trust and personal relationships with clients, and that only comes with time.

My goal is for every client to be a repeat client. So I want to make sure each new company I work with is delighted by the experience. I ask lots of questions. I provide opportunities for feedback. I over-communicate. I deliver on time.

I’m convinced that while the deliverables are good, it’s the service that brings clients back again and again. They work with me because the LIKE working with me, and I make their lives easier.

And when they’re happy, they refer me to their friends and colleagues. That’s more inbound leads for me.

Step Four: I pay myself a salary

When you talk to freelancers, you may hear about the “feast and famine” cycle. It’s a real thing. Some months I’ll have so much to do I can’t see straight. And some months I feel like I’m twiddling my thumbs.

The slow times are actually a great opportunity to do important backend tasks, like creating systems to make your work more efficient. But that work may not bring in any revenue—at least in the short term.

To avoid feeling the “feast or famine” cycle in my checking account, I pay myself a bi-monthly salary. All of the money that my business earns goes into a business checking account. I use this money to pay myself, make business purchases, and squirrel money away for savings.

At this point, I have about six months of expenses in my business account. So if I had to stop working for the next half year and didn’t bring in another dime, I’d still be able to pay myself a salary for that time.

This turns a bad month into an inconvenience, rather than a financial catastrophe. And it gives me some cover, in case I get sick or have a family emergency and can’t work for a few weeks.

There’s still more for me to learn and a lot more I want to do. I want to sell some digital products, create better systems for some of my writing projects, and possibly rebrand my business.

But that’s what running your own business is like. It’s always a work in progress.

Kate, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I’m Kate. I’m the founder of Eat, Drink, and Write Copy, a solo copywriting and content writing shop for lifestyle and hospitality brands.

What the hell does that mean?

When a company has information they want to share and they’re not quite sure how to say it, they call on me. I combine what we know about the company’s ideal customers, the product or service details, and some fun wordsmithing into a message that connects with the reader.

There are copywriters out there for all sorts of industries. SaaS brands. Banks and mortgage companies. Law firms.

Hard pass. I work with brands that are all about better living. Whether that’s through fantastic food, bucket-list travel, or day-to-day relaxation.

My clients include:
– An Austin-based bong manufacturer
– A Korean fried chicken chain in New Zealand
– Some major hotel brands (that I have to keep hush-hush…NDAs and whatnot)
– A highly respected culinary school
– A company that creates high-end notebooks
– A Colorado wedding venue owned by a sweet-as-pie pair of sisters
– And a lot more

I’m all about reader-focused business writing that doesn’t sound like business writing. I use language that people can relate to and words that actually have meaning. No bland platitudes or trite cliches. When readers are finished with my copy, they not only know what the client is offering—they know why it’s the right choice for them.

My goal? To get the ideal customers—people who will LOVE the product or service—to whip out their credit cards faster than we all lost interest in Threads.

Have you ever had to pivot?

When I first started EDWC, I planned on working exclusively with hospitality brands. In fact, I expected to mostly work with restaurants, as that’s where a lot of my expertise lie.

And while my very first client was a restaurant, they have actually made up a very small portion of my overall clientele.

I learned quickly that most restaurants DIY their copy, and they often don’t see much of a need for outsourcing it.

While I do think that with a strong outreach and education program, one could create a business around copywriting for restaurants, I prefer to spend more time doing the work and less time LOOKING for the work.

So I branched out. I work with some restaurants, along with hotels, event venues, and tourism boards. Plus liquor brands, cannabis companies, and a couple of fabulous interior designers.

I’ve found that branching out has helped me to grow a sizable client base while also keeping my job interesting and fun.

What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?

The longer I’ve been in the freelance space, the stronger I feel that the deliverable is not the most important part of building good client relationships.

A good experience can save so-so copy. A bad experience can’t save great copy.

I get a lot of referrals from my clients, and most of them hire me again and again. I think they come back to me because

a) I’m reliable. They know that when I say I can do the job, I’ll do the job.
b) I communicate. Regular check-ins. Bulleted lists of questions. Google Forms.
c) I deliver on time. And in the ultra-rare case that I am going to be late on something, see item b) above.

When you ask clients about experiences with freelancers in the past, you’ll hear horror stories of missed deadlines, messy work, and straight-up ghosting.

If you do what you say you’re going to do when you say you’re going to do it, you’re more than halfway to a happy client.

And when you do that over and over again, you build a Cadillac reputation.

Contact Info:

• Website: eatdrinkandwritecopy.com
• Instagram: @eat.drink.writecopy
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kate-mcdermott-edwc/