We recently connected with Andrea Shah and have shared our conversation below.

Andrea, appreciate you joining us today. What’s something you believe that most people in your industry (or in general) disagree with?

I firmly believe that authenticity doesn’t mean you have to overshare.

When marketing our “personal brand,” a lot of the successful people we try to emulate are the ones who are an open book on social media and elsewhere. And while that’s one way to be a person on the internet, it’s absolutely not the only way.

As my brand evolves, I’ve realized that I’m not wild about sharing a ton of information about my family, for example. You’ll figure out that I’m a parent, but I think of myself as a person who owns a business and happens to be a mom, rather than the other way around, and the stories and photos I share reflect that.

You get to choose your boundaries – and the boundaries you have in your personal life can be completely different than the ones you maintain for your business. The stories I share poolside over a glass of Chablis and a cheese plate are not the same as the ones I use to add personality to my business.

Andrea, 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?

Like all good copywriters, I never set out to be a copywriter.

I started out with an in-house job at a startup that translated websites, thanks to my degree in languages and my self-taught HTML skills. Over six years, I learned a little bit about a lot of things: SEO, brand voice, project management, sales funnels, and how to coax someone to give you more meaningful feedback than just “I don’t like it.”

After I had a baby, I started freelancing. Over several years, I gradually shifted from translation and consulting into copywriting – once people know you can do one thing with words, they’ll often ask you to do another, and that’s how I came into writing copy. (To be honest, I’d wanted to be a writer since age 8, and I was elated to discover that you could do that and make money, too.)

These days, I write websites and other sales content for creatives who’ve got an amazing aesthetic but who struggle to translate their unique voice and process into sales-oriented copy. In recent months, that’s included wedding photographers, florists, DJs, and brand designers.

My clients come to me because they’re several years into their business, they’re having a lot of success – and now they want to make a major shift. Usually they’re looking to book fewer clients but charge more, so that they can regain some work-life balance that was lost in the early stages of their business.

Before I write a word of copy, we first figure out who they want to book more of (and who they don’t want to book at all), what makes their work so unique, and what aspects of their personality resonate the most with their people. Then I weave that into website copy that’s designed to convert while also being genuinely fun to read.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

If there’s ever a lesson I had to unlearn, it’s the idea that your personality has no place in business.

When I worked in-house, I was acutely conscious of the fact that any email I sent could be forwarded up the chain, from my contact to their boss, and so on. So I stripped out all my personality, not wanting a single word to be misinterpreted – or to be perceived as “unprofessional.”

Then I started my own business, and learned the hard way that an absence of personality makes you completely unmemorable.

The more I lean into my personality, the more my people seem to find me and tell me that my messaging really resonates with them. And even when it doesn’t (I’m apparently notorious for not liking Ted Lasso and saying as much on my website), it at least intrigues them and sticks in their memory.

I’ve since realized that being professional has everything to do with the quality of your work and your client experience – not the absence of a personality.

Have any books or other resources had a big impact on you?

This is kind of a bait-and-switch, but I’m going to share some of my favorite books on writing:

– On Writing, by Stephen King: The advice in here is mostly about fiction writing, but it can be applied virtually anywhere. King is brilliant at observing the small, specific details of everyday people’s lives and incorporating them into his work, and there’s a ton to be learned from him (just maybe not about how to end a novel).

– Dreyer’s English, by Benjamin Dreyer: A book about grammar, style, and usage by the lead copy editor at Random House. Sounds like it would be dry as unbuttered toast, right? Not in Dreyer’s hands. He’s witty, uses great examples, and makes the abstract seem clearer. One of my favorite books to give to anyone who has to write…well, anything.

– Draft No. 4, by John McPhee: A short but stylish guide to research, editing, and shaping a piece of writing. (McPhee is admittedly close to my heart because he once interviewed my great-uncle for a New Yorker profile, but that’s not what landed him on this list.)

– Total Annarchy, by Ann Handley: This is a Substack by the author of “Everybody Writes,” and she’s got lots of pithy, actionable advice on how to tell stories and make yourself a better writer.

– Tone Knob, by Nick Parker: Another Substack that highlights stellar examples of brand voice and how they’re implemented. No voice is too weird, no niche too narrow. (And most are British, so they’re always new to me.)    

Contact Info:

• Website: http://www.andreashah.com
• Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/andreashahcopy
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrea-shah-copywriter-and-translator/

Image Credits
Claudia Segui Photography