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

Courtney, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Alright, let’s jump into one of the most exciting parts of starting a new venture – how did you get your first client who was not a friend or family?

One month after launching my copywriting business I thought I had it all figured out. Thanks to my professional network I’d booked two clients right off the bat, and another client magically rolled in thanks to Google. But six months later, after tallying up the days spent listening to business podcasts and staring at an empty inbox, I realized I hadn’t booked a single additional client since that initial boom.

I’d done everything the business gurus and coaches of the world told me to do—I wrote blog posts, showed up on social media, and created freebie resources—but none of that was bringing people to my digital doorstep. That’s when I decided to mute the experts and follow that tiny voice inside my head that I’d been ignoring.

There’s this misconception that being a solopreneur means doing everything on your own. But as a creative service provider, I knew that website copywriting is just one piece of the puzzle. My ideal clients are likely also looking for the other pieces of the puzzle—the designers, photographers, and website developers. So I started to reach out to these creatives, terrified that my asking for referrals would be seen as presumptuous, only to find out their clients were desperately in need of copywriting, but that they didn’t know what copywriting was! One brand designer even said she was writing her client’s copy for them (not her forte!) and was on the brink of tears trying to bring the project over the finish line.

Instead of trying to do everything on our own, or simply completing our piece and wishing our clients ‘good luck”, we needed a creative network of our own.

After establishing how we could work together collaboratively, yet independently, I soon found myself booked out for the remainder of the year.

Those early days of my business became all about building partnerships with other creatives and elevating each other’s work through mutual collaboration. It’s the smartest move I’ve made as a business owner. Even as the client pipeline ebbs and flows, I know my next client is around the corner, having a virtual coffee with one of my incredible creative partners.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

As the founder of Big Picture Copywriting, I help purpose-driven creatives with brand strategy and copywriting (web copy, email copy, sales copy, landing pages, etc.), but at the core of it all, I help founders with conversion copywriting services that get results by staying human. I marry the strategy (industry research, behavioral psychology, voice-of-customer data) with the storytelling (the messaging that inspires action.)

In addition to client services, I’m a speaker, mentor, and workshop facilitator, who teaches the strategic art of aligning your brand and messaging to resonate with your ideal audience.

How did I get here? Once upon a time, after receiving my M.S. in Print and Digital media from NYU (a master’s degree in selling stories) and flitting around the high-rise offices of The New Yorker, Simon & Schuster, and Macmillan Publishers, I said goodbye to the world of creative marketing campaigns and hello to the data-driven world of tech marketing, where clicks and conversions are queen.

To say it was a rude awakening would be an understatement. I was the resident creative used to building worlds through voice, storytelling, and organic reach Facebook campaigns. (Those were the days…) Suddenly my ideas and words were countered with a whole lot of “why?”

Why should our hero header say this? What is the data behind this decision? Can you show me the research on this?

I was thrust into a world of UX copywriting, analytics, heatmaps, user testing, and coming to terms with the fact that marketing was experiencing a dramatic shift into a trackable data-driven realm. But data without empathy can only take you so far…

Something was missing from the work I was doing day in and day out. The end goal was plain and simple: Make more money. But to what end? What was the purpose of it all? Who were we really helping at the end of the day?

After working with a career coach, I determined that working for another company wasn’t going to help me fulfill my creative purpose, so I took the leap and have now helped over 100 entrepreneurs craft messaging and copy that helps them build purpose-driven businesses of their own.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

I had to unlearn the 40-hour work week! To be more specific, the rigidity of the traditional working schedule. In truth, a lot of business owners are working more than 40 hours a week, but it’s not necessary or even healthy to do this every single day, week after week. Some seasons I am slammed with client work, teaching my students inside my Copywriting Cohort Course, keeping up with my usual marketing activities, and dealing with a sick kid every other week. When I hit my first slow season, I had a hard time adjusting my pace. I don’t need to sit at my desk for eight hours if I can finish the day’s task in four hours instead. It’s hard to resist the urge to then try and continue working in order to “get ahead” when really, I should congratulate myself on being so good at my job that I have the luxury of popping off early to go read in a cafe or listen to a podcast while I paint with my watercolors. As creatives, we know we need this mental space to rejuvenate our minds but the pace of the American workplace culture is a hard habit to break.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

This one is so embarrassing given what I do for a living but I committed the cardinal sin of not knowing my audience well enough when I initially named my business Big Picture BRANDING instead of Copywriting. Brand strategy is baked into every project I do because you cannot figure out what to write if you don’t understand your brand. Given my background in the marketing space, “branding” is an umbrella term that means the holistic sum of your business’ parts. Your brand encompasses your purpose, perception, personality, position, promotion/marketing channels, and yes your visual identity. However, I quickly realized that most people think a brand is a logo and colors. Which it is NOT, but after fielding one too many new client inquiries asking if I designed websites (I don’t but I know people who do!), I knew the name needed to change and a brand refresh was necessary. C’est la vie.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://bigpicturecopywriting.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bigpicturecopywriting/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/courtney-fanning/
• Other: Check out the BP Library for free brand strategy and copywriting templates, tips, and resources to grow your business: https://bigpicturecopywriting.com/resources DIY your website copywriting under the wing of a seasoned copywriter in just six weeks: https://bigpicturecopywriting.com/c3

Image Credits
Brand Photography by Jessie Wyman Photography