We were lucky to catch up with Amanda Bourbonais recently and have shared our conversation below.

Amanda, appreciate you joining us today. To kick things off, we’d love to hear about things you or your brand do that diverge from the industry standard.

Old school copywriting focuses a lot on poking and prodding the reader’s pain points and fears around a problem, which prompts them to purchase or buy into a product that will relieve that pain or calm their fears. On the face of it, this is a very logical strategy — pain and fear are powerful motivators. But is it always ethical? Definitely not. And there’s no other industry I can think of that uses these pain and fear strategies more than healthcare. Many of our greatest fears revolve around our health after all: aging, memory loss, mobility loss, injury, death. We can all name something that we worry about related to our health. And far too many healthcare brands and even solo practitioners rely on fear-based messaging to motivate their audience to buy.

But there are plenty of health practitioners and brands that don’t want to come across this way, and they even recognize the value in the opposite strategy: appealing to people’s health goals and dreams — their vision of a healthy life. That’s where I come in. I focus on helping my clients communicate hope and possibility to their audience and ideal clients, educating them on what’s possible with their health as opposed to everything that could go wrong. Especially when over half the population has a chronic illness and thousands more have undiagnosed symptoms, this type of positive messaging is more needed than ever.

You don’t have to choose between ethical messaging and sales as a health practitioner or brand — you can absolutely have both. Not to mention that the people who invest in your products and services are far more likely to tell the people they know about their experience if that experience is making them feel positive, hopeful, and capable with their health. With ethical messaging that promotes your values, mission, and the transformation you can offer your prospects, you can build a community around your practice or brand that earns you customers for life.

Amanda, 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?

Nice to meet you! My name is Amanda Bourbonais, and I’m a copywriter for holistic health practitioners and brands. This generally includes folks like functional medicine doctors, chiropractors, naturopathic doctors, dietitians/nutritionists, and so on. It also includes companies that sell health-related products like high-quality supplements, health foods/CPG, and health tech. I absolutely love this space and the kinds of people and organizations I get to work with. I’ve also recently been venturing into the regenerative agriculture space, which is super interesting and ground-breaking (literally, ha).

I’ve tried my hand at most pieces of copy, but I like long-form the best. Long-form typically includes things like website copy, sales pages, blogs/articles, and video scripts. But I also write email, SMS, and ad copy. It really just depends on the client and what they need to grow their business. I love to get involved with my clients’ businesses and grow with them as they expand their content strategy over time.

I started my business in 2020 and I’ve been a full-time business owner since September 2021. It’s been a wild journey, but I love working for myself and serving clients who are truly making a difference in people’s health. In fact, I started my business because of my own journey to heal from chronic illness (Lyme disease and co-infections). When I began the healing process in 2019, I learned so much about health and alternative ways to improve it that don’t rely exclusively on pharmaceuticals. In my case, there really was no conventional option that could help me, so I had to find alternative solutions.

I had been thinking about finding a way to work for myself because going into an office every day for 8-9 hours was going to be impossible with my health issues. Between my newfound interest in holistic and natural medicine and my writing skills (English major here), copywriting for holistic health brands was the perfect match.

I think I’m most proud of creating a business that supports my own health and the health of others as it’s #1 priority. I call it my Health First business.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

I would say the biggest lesson, or multiple lessons really, that I had to unlearn when starting my business was all of the limiting beliefs I had around making money and the meaning of money.

I did a TON of journalling, self reflection, and digging into the ideas my parents, family, peers, and society had instilled in me around money — especially around how much money writers and small business owners can make.

At the time, I was also coming from a place where I had never earned more than $30,ooo a year from any job. Needless to say there was a lot of unpacking to do. Some of the biggest limiting beliefs I came up against were that “Writers don’t make money/are always poor,” “I can’t make money because I’ve never earned that much before,” “Most small businesses fail/go broke,” and “No one will want to pay me specifically for my writing.”

Obviously there were a lot of underlying beliefs around self-worth and deservingness also at play here. Through techniques like EFT tapping, journalling, meditation/envisioning, and then taking aligned action on projects and slowly increasing my prices until I was charging what I wanted to make, I broke down these limiting beliefs. That’s not to say they don’t still crop up from time to time. But I have a much more stable foundation in my money mindset now than I did when I started out.

Any advice for growing your clientele? What’s been most effective for you?

Honestly, the most effective strategy for me has been simply talking to people, networking, and having conversations with other copywriters and creatives. I love LinkedIn for this reason. I don’t create a ton of content on there, but I do interact with other people’s posts, comment regularly, and initiate conversations in DMs. I love the strategy of using social media as a connection tool over a content tool. It puts way less pressure on you to have this whole content strategy and focuses on more genuine interactions with potential clients and other creatives too.

It really works out for me because developing these connections is one of my strengths, and I think people genuinely crave real conversations over being pitched through email or any other channel. That said, there are certainly plenty of other strategies to pursue. I’m also working more on getting on other people’s podcasts (OPP, as I like to say :)) and doing more interviews like this one for PR and visibility.

That said, if you want to strike up a conversation with me on LinkedIn about copywriting projects, health, freelancing, or anything else, please do! :)

Contact Info:

• Website: www.amandabourbonaisagency.com
• Instagram: @amanda.gets.better
• Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/amandabourbonais