TCC Podcast #306: So You Want to Become a Screenwriter? with Jamie Jensen

The people and stuff we mentioned on the show:

Join the Accelerator 
Join the Flip the Switch Workshop
The Copywriter Think Tank
Kira’s website
Rob’s website
Jamie’s website 
The Copywriter Club Facebook Group
The Copywriter Underground
Free month of Brain.FM
Episode 62

 

Full Transcript:

Rob Marsh:  This is the 306th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. And if you’ve been here since the beginning, you’ve certainly noticed some themes that tend to recur as we’ve interviewed nearly 300 copywriters. Obviously, we like to ask about things like prospecting and sales calls teams, and all the things that copywriters do in their business so that you can borrow or steal an idea or two to use in your own businesses. So it’s a little surprising when we stumble across a topic that we’ve never addressed before. And today’s guest on the podcast is copywriter, screenwriter, creative coach, and someday showrunner, Jamie Jensen. When we invited Jamie to the show, we thought we’d be talking more about the changes that she’s made in her business since we interviewed her a few years ago, but we discovered something that we’ve really never talked about before on the show. And so while today’s episode does address Jamie’s business and how it’s evolved, it’s also a primer on writing for TV and cinema.

Kira Hug:  But before we get to Jamie’s interview, we just want to share a final announcement that today is the last day to join the Copywriter Accelerator Program before we shut the doors and kick off this program this September. So if you have any interest in building your business, so you have consistent income processes that help you feel really confident about what you’re doing. So it’s easier to sell what you’re doing. This is a great program. A lot of the conversation today with Jamie is about creative pursuits in writing. And I think most of us have some creative ideas that we’re inspired to work on, but it’s tricky to do that if we don’t have a business that’s running and providing consistent revenue.

So we’re not stressing over paying our bills and stressing about where our business is going to go. And so the Accelerator Program is actually a really nice fit for people who just need a workable business. That feels really good to them and is something they could depend on so that they can pursue those projects, whether it’s writing or something else and shape their life around, or I guess, shape the business around their life rather than vice versa. So today’s the last day we hope we can work with you. If you have any interests, you can find out more information in the show notes.

Rob Marsh:  And like you were saying, Kira, if you’ve struggled at all with your business over the last year, if things just don’t feel quite right, or you feel they could be running smoother, this is the time to go through the Accelerator and get it all set up, so that January 1st you’re ready to rock and roll for the new year. So I know we’re still a ways away from thinking about the new year, but it’s not that far away. And if people want their businesses to work the right way, they should definitely check out thecopywriteraccelerator.com. Okay. Let’s hear about how Jamie has transitioned her business since the last time that we talked on the podcast. So Jamie catches up. It has been a long time. So he is talking on the podcast since we saw you in San Diego on stage at IRL.

Jamie Jensen:  Yeah. We went in a time machine called COVID-19.

Rob Marsh:  Yeah. Seriously. What has been going on in your life and your business?

Jamie Jensen:  Yeah. Thank you. So many things. I made a decision late last year and just to ground us in time, we’re in August 2022 now. And so late 2021, probably around October, I made a decision to burn everything down in my business. And the irony of this is that that’s the second time in my eight, nine years in business that I have done something like that. But this was a more… I’m going to just speak in my truth and not worry so much about whether the languaging I use makes sense. I’ll just let you ask me questions if it doesn’t, but there was just a truth in my body where I felt I hit this brick wall and so much of what I had been building and working on just felt like a no.

Rob Marsh:  So, yeah. Let’s talk about that because, I mean, there’s burnout where you’re tired or you struggle, but usually, it doesn’t feel like everything is a no.

Jamie Jensen:  Yup.

Rob Marsh:  A total 180 do over tear-it-all-down.

Jamie Jensen:  Yeah.

Rob Marsh:  I mean because you’ve done. You’ve had both.

Jamie Jensen:  Yes.

Rob Marsh:  You’ve been burned out before and not torn everything.

Jamie Jensen:  Totally. Absolutely.

Rob Marsh:  What was the difference?

Jamie Jensen:  Well, the difference here was that I could feel that there was one thing in my business that felt true for me. It felt like, “I love doing this, I could do this forever.” It was the one offer I was holding that I most loved. I was most excited to show up and that I felt I could do endlessly forever and I never got tired of it. And everything else felt like I was pumping from a place of emptiness to go through with it, even though it was really smart. And even though it was valuable and it was offering value to folks, it was just something that in me, when I got up to try to do marketing for it, or when I got up to try to create content for it, I kept hitting a wall.

And it wasn’t for lack of anything that I had built not working. It certainly wasn’t at the scale that I had dreamt it would be, but I hadn’t really gotten to that spot yet. Specifically, I’m talking about a program called Create Your 6-Figure Copywriting Business, which I had been working on at the time for a year and a half-ish. And I loved the program. I loved the clients. I loved the content. I loved everything that it had to offer. And it was something that I had probably put the most of myself into in terms of what I was offering in my business. And I believed in it. But there was just something about it that felt like a no for me to continue offering it in the way that I wasn’t to try to build something to scale on the foundation of that offer.

It just was not, there was something in it that was like, “I love these humans who are showing up for this. I love the results they’re getting. And this just feels like a no. And a lot of the other products that I had created around copywriting no longer felt true for me.” And the way that I describe that is it wasn’t just burnout. It was this coming to a place of truth and honestly, deeply feeling the grief of that, it wasn’t like, “Oh, I made this decision,” and then it was just easy. I was really sad. I really had to grieve it. It’s like that it was just what was true.

Rob Marsh:  Yeah. I mean, as I hear you talk about this too, I can think of other people I know who have done something similar, but usually, they’re just like, “Oh, I don’t love the work,” or like, “What I’m doing is crap,” and that is not what you’re saying, because the stuff that you created is, I mean, it’s awesome.

Jamie Jensen:  Yeah.

Rob Marsh:  I’ve seen the stuff that you were selling.

Jamie Jensen:  I know.

Rob Marsh:  It is really good. And when you had your agency, which I think we talked about last time you were on the podcast.

Jamie Jensen:  Yeah.

Rob Marsh:  Your agency was really good, right?

Jamie Jensen:  Thanks.

Rob Marsh:  So how do you walk away from something that’s good, but not right as opposed to-

Jamie Jensen:  Yeah.

Rob Marsh:  … “This just doesn’t, it’s not good, and it’s easy to walk away.”

Jamie Jensen:  Yeah.

Rob Marsh:  Talk about that. I mean, I guess it’s grieving, right?

Jamie Jensen:  Yeah. It is. Yeah. It’s a grieving process. I think for me, how do you walk away from it? You just create a plan, a step-by-step short plan that goes, I’ve said this to a lot of clients, because I tend to work with a lot of folks who are in transition or wanting to pivot. And ironically, ever since I shut my agency down, I’ve had a lot of clients that I’ve coached around the process of transition and pivoting.

Rob Marsh:  Uh-huh.

Jamie Jensen:  And the thing that I’ll say about it is, I think that you have to set realistic expectations for a transition and create a step-by-step plan for how you want to handle that. I terminated a lot of client agreements, contracts, and relationships for a period of time to really create space, to discover what wanted to come next. And that was something that I hadn’t done when I shut my agency down. I didn’t say, “Okay. I’m done with this, but I’m going to give myself the permission to really take the time to discover what wants to come next or what wants to be created next,” if that makes sense. And so in terms of how, I think it’s setting realistic expectations for a transition and really honoring that you can’t pivot and scale simultaneously. You can’t. So you have to really be mindful of your energy, your capacity and give yourself the permission to be messy.

Rob Marsh:  Yeah.

Jamie Jensen:  Because it’s been messy. It still feels messy and I’m like-

Rob Marsh:  Everything feels messy.

Jamie Jensen:  … “You know what? It’s fine.”

Rob Marsh:  How did your clients react? Were they okay with it? Were they like, “Oh, yeah?” Because there’s disappointment there. You’re helping them-

Jamie Jensen:  Yeah.

Rob Marsh:  … achieve really good things. And then suddenly it’s like, “I’m not going to be there for you anymore.”

Jamie Jensen:  Yeah. It was tough. I think the folks that I had had a newer relationship with, I still, in my opinion, owe them a check-in now, just to see how they’re doing, because honestly, I have so much love for my clients. I think I get really sad when programs end, even if they’re supposed to.

Rob Marsh:  Yeah.

Jamie Jensen:  So what I’ll say is that the greater population or the greater number of clients, everyone was actually incredibly supportive and inspired in their own way. In the permission that I was granting myself and the permission that I granted them, I think they saw it as a step in modeling the honoring of what is true for you and not waiting for external permission to take the step that feels true for you. And so we had a very emotional final call in this one program I lead that was Craft and Cashflow at the time. That was to me, the one program that I felt the most love around and it was beautiful. I had them, we had a complete conversation and discussed that.

And I had completion conversations with each of my clients where we talked about where they were, what was the next best step for them and brought them to a place of completion in our relationship. So that was a process that I used for everyone that I was working with and we had one-on-one calls and we also did it as a group. And I received a lot of gratitude and a lot of positive reflection. So even though it was really difficult for me and even though I felt not the best about it, I still am like-

Rob Marsh:  Yeah.

Jamie Jensen:  … “Yeah. It’s hard to do that without feeling really guilty or feeling like you’ve abandoned your clients.” And at the same time, there were growth opportunities for everyone in the experience there and operating out of your own truth is ultimately not going to be in the highest service to anyone, whether it’s your clients, your customers, or your team. And so that’s how that unfolded to give you just a transparent window.

Rob Marsh:  Yeah. It’s a high-level look. Okay. So you burn everything down. I mean, again, you’ve done it once before, maybe more than once before, but like a phoenix out of the ashes, something better seems to happen. So what is the next thing?

Jamie Jensen:  Yeah.

Rob Marsh:  What are you building or what are you doing that lights you up?

Jamie Jensen:  Yeah. So a few things. Well, one thing that I’ll share is, and this isn’t a secret, I think anyone who’s been following me for any length of time knows that I also am a writer outside of copywriting and outside of coaching. I also write screenplays and movies and I have for a very long time and in the last 18 months, I’ve also, or maybe even longer than that, I had started giving thought to television writing and I’ve worked in a TV writer’s room before, but had really put that aside and not seen that as something that I desired for myself. It wasn’t something that I liked. It wasn’t a goal or it wasn’t something that I knew I wanted. And there have been a handful of collaborations also that had started coming up in the realm of television and not just film. And so I just felt this true calling to make space for that and for what that might look like.

And so I’ll share that in my creative life, I have been working a lot on television projects and becoming more available for the opportunity to staff on a television show or create a television show with other writers and creatives. And so that is a piece of what I am that is true, that is happening. And then there are two other pieces that I’ll say, one is working a lot more in the space of coaching and working with clients who are in a process that I think would be really egoic. I don’t hold the line of, “I did this and I’m so great. And I’m going to teach you the perfect steps on how to do it,” right? I think that I hold space for the messy human process of making changes and taking risks and how hard it is and how vulnerable it is to put yourself out there again. And the shame that can come with that. I mean, I work with folks who have shame in asking for clients, even if they don’t have a story of burning something down or making a change.

Rob Marsh:  Yeah.

Jamie Jensen:  And so I tend to work with a lot of other service providers and creatives that encounter that, whether it’s through their creative work or through their business or both. And so that is the true thing and the way that I most love supporting clients, whether they are coaches or therapists or other creatives. And so that has evolved as a very true thing for me. And so that’s shown up as supporting them in their creative projects and there are still brands and businesses that I work with as a writer and strategist, but it’s very different than how I was supporting folks previously, which was really focused a lot on how to make more money, how to sell, how to structure a business and all of that stuff is valuable and it’s necessary. And so not the zone that I feel called to move into anymore.

Rob Marsh:  So away from the business school and into the art school, film school, maybe?

Jamie Jensen:  Yeah.

Rob Marsh:  It sounds like.

Jamie Jensen:  Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. And the type of muscle it takes to hold both and be willing to, I think that that’s-

Rob Marsh:  Yeah.

Jamie Jensen:  … the other piece is, it’s a practice I’ve been practicing behind the scenes for so long. I’ve been writing movies and honoring that and working in the realm of being an artist and a business person. And there’s just a space in which I see other folks wanting to experiment with that or kick the door open for that. And they feel nervous too or they think they can’t think it’s going to be exhausting. And that’s the realm within which Craft and Cashflow was born and is the space where I’m excited to serve.

Rob Marsh:  I like it.

Jamie Jensen:  Yeah.

Rob Marsh:  So when I worked in the ad agency that I worked at, there was a joke that every copywriter had a screenplay in there or maybe it wasn’t a joke, maybe we all did. Everybody had a screenplay in the drawer that they were working on after hours or maybe during hours when they should have been working on the agency accounts. I don’t think we’ve ever talked about screenwriting on the podcast before. Can you give us-

Jamie Jensen:  Yeah.

Rob Marsh:  … a five-minute primer, maybe a 20-minute primer on what does that even look like? I mean, obviously, everybody’s got ideas for stories or everybody wants to have written a book, whether they want to write a book or not, but let’s talk about that process.

Jamie Jensen:  Yeah. Sure.

Rob Marsh:  And how do you develop the idea? How do you sit down to write, walk us through it?

Jamie Jensen:  Oh, my God. I could talk about this for hours. I don’t even know where to start.

Rob Marsh:  This is the Jamie Jensen version of Robert McKee’s STORY masterclasses, right?

Jamie Jensen:  Yeah. Absolutely.

Rob Marsh:  Yeah. We’ll do that.

Jamie Jensen:  Yeah. I mean, yeah. That is the only course that I captain I’m like, “No one can have this yet as my story course. I don’t know what I’m doing with it, but it’s mine.” Yeah. Just a funny little window into how the mind works when you are burning things down. So to answer your question about screenwriting. So screenwriting has been something I’ve done since I was 18, 19, 20, right? I went to a summer program at USC in California and I’m from New York. And I felt the pull for it from a very young age and was always fascinated by it to the point that I designed my own major at NYU at their Gallatin Individualized Study School and called it Dramatic Storytelling and basically created a curriculum where I was like, “I’m going to read Aristotle and I’m going to take a class on the history of comedy and I’m going to read the classics and I want to read all the Greek comedies and I want to talk about it.”

And I’m a nerd for that. And that’s just what’s true. And it unfolded into seeing myself working in story development. And as I moved through Hollywood, I came to understand that development wasn’t really for me in terms of what that job is. But writing and working with writers and developing stories still is. And in terms of the process for a screenplay, there are two that I have right now that are out with producers. And there are many that I have written prior to those that have existed and I would call them, “Those were great projects to develop my craft.”

Rob Marsh:  Yeah.

Jamie Jensen:  And the most two recent ones that are out and around definitely are the best of all of the ones I’ve ever written. I think you have to be willing to put in the time to exercise yourself on your craft and be bad at it. You know what I mean? You have to be willing to be bad at it before you can let yourself be good at it. And so the process for me has been, I mean, I’ve written 11-feature length screenplays at this point, maybe 12 at this point.

Rob Marsh:  That seems pretty good.

Jamie Jensen:  Two have been produced. Two are out with producers and I’m now uncomfortable transitioning my skills into pilot writing, which is different, very different, similar but different. And in terms of process, I have an idea. And at this point, I think my first screenplay I ever wrote, I sat down with Save the Cat-

Rob Marsh:  Right.

Jamie Jensen:  … and was like-

Rob Marsh:  For anybody who’s listening, Save the Cat is one of the two books that everybody who wants to be a screenwriter reads.

Jamie Jensen:  Yeah.

Rob Marsh:  Save it.

Jamie Jensen:  And when there was a spec market, this guy, Blake Snyder, he really gets how development executives think, and how studios think, and what’s commercial, and what sells. And none of the principles he’s teaching are wrong. They’re all true. But the market for selling spec screenplays is not what it used to be.

Rob Marsh:  Right.

Jamie Jensen:  And the reason for that is the industry has really shifted in entertainment when we’ve transitioned to streaming, DVD revenue shrink. And so there just hasn’t been room for these sort of mid-budget films. There was big budget, and then there was mid-budget, and there was low budget. And now, everything’s sort of in the center that isn’t an action movie or an indie got eliminated, and the studios didn’t have as much money to throw at like, “Well, I want to buy that screenplay so no one else can have it.”

So by the time my screenwriting career emerged that shift had happened in the industry. But what we’re seeing now or had been with the streaming monopoly is that there’s been room for smaller-scale projects to happen, especially when they’re culturally relevant, there’s a purpose for them to happen now. And they’re touching on some topic or theme that the zeitgeist is interested in. What are we talking about? Why is this interesting to us? What window does this give us into humanity? What conversation and community can be created around this story? And so I’m obviously going into the thought process of it from a producer perspective where you have your creative idea, but then when you want to think about it to package it up as a product, you’re going to be thinking about it from that perspective as a story of why now?

Rob Marsh:  Yeah.

Jamie Jensen:  And then the process is you sit down and you start writing it and you write all the footage you see, even if you don’t know the perfect structure for it yet. So I say, start with an outline and then just write all the scenes you see. Everything that you already see starts there because there’s life there. And by writing what you see, you’ll pull out more, it’s really similar to anyone who’s ever created a course or a webinar. And you sit down and you start and you’re like, “I have one thing to teach.” And then you’re like, “I have 5,000 things to teach, but I pulled on this one thread and then all this other stuff came out.”

Rob Marsh:  Yeah.

Jamie Jensen:  And I think even a fiction or narrative writing project or creative project, it operates in a similar way where you have to write what you are seeing and feeling and is really present. And then you’ll find that more will come out as you keep going.

Rob Marsh:  So when you start, I’m curious, how big is the idea already? And I’m not even sure that I’ve got the language to describe what it should be, but do you start say, “Oh, I’ve got this idea for a movie. It’s going to happen in space. There’s this kid who wants to be a knight or Jedi, whatever.” How developed is the idea when you sit down to, is it boy versus world, boy versus nature? And I’m like, “I go from there,” or have you thought through, “Oh, and he’s living with his uncle and the bad guys is going to three movies from now, or two movies from now is going to turn out to be his debt.” How big is the idea before you sit down to start writing?

Jamie Jensen:  Yeah. So I usually have a pretty big idea of the concept and the tone. And what I usually need to write, especially for feature length, but I think for anything I need to understand what the four quadrants of the story are, because those are really the points that move the plot. So there’s always an act one, there’s a midpoint, there’s an act, then there’s an end of act two and there’s an act three. And so even when you are trying to pitch what we call a logline of what a movie is, you can-

Rob Marsh:  And logline is that two, three lines about what it is?

Jamie Jensen:  A logline… Yeah. It’s a one to two… Sorry. I just hit my microphone. Sorry, guys. I accidentally slapped everyone. The structure of the story is usually pretty clear from what the logline is because you’re going to explore what the different plot points are. And that usually is obvious from how you say it in one or two sentences because it’ll be like, “I wrote a movie,” I’ll give you examples from scripts that I’ve just written. I’m trying to-

Rob Marsh:  Okay.

Jamie Jensen:  … help with that. But-

Rob Marsh:  Yeah. I don’t want you to give away ideas. Nobody steals Jamie’s ideas, but yeah, whatever.

Jamie Jensen:  I don’t think anyone would write the demented things I write, but yeah.

Rob Marsh:  Do you? Yeah. Well, I can’t wait to see that movie.

Jamie Jensen:  Yeah. So I wrote a movie about a woman who gets an abortion and then is haunted by the spirit of her unborn child until she finds the real father and has the baby.

Rob Marsh:  Interesting.

Jamie Jensen:  But here’s the thing, the pitch for that when we were going out with it was like, “It’s about a pregnancy that won’t end.” And so it’s a comedy. It’s super weird. I mean, imagine Melissa McCarthy playing this spirit child who’s haunting this woman who’s busy and is like, “Go away.” and it’s really a two-hander with this really awkward. It’s a really demented idea, but it’s actually really funny. And it’s a wild concept. But even from just what I described to you, you understand what happens in the movie, you know what I mean?

Rob Marsh:  Yeah.

Jamie Jensen:  It’s like, “This is what this person wants. She has to surrender to the process. There’s a romantic comedy element. What is the arc of this character that she becomes available for the concept of motherhood?” That actually is what the project is about. And so it’s told through this demented high concept, weird, elevated thing. So that’s an example of within that structure, you can see, “Okay. Well, in the first piece of this is where we’re going to get what the game of the movie is. You have to get to the fun and games, which is something that Blake Snyder talks about in Save the Cat. It’s a structured piece of the film that is fun and games. So you get to that point where you enter a new world and the game is there.

You have the two main characters who are playing off of each other in a specific way that is catalyzing each other’s transformation or one is catalyzing the other’s transformation in a really specific way. And what’s the fun of that? So that’s sort of– you want that to be really clear. And then you want to have like, “What is the deeper thing that needs to be transformed here?” And that’s a beat plot thing that happens around the midpoint. The clarity of that needs to be obvious around the midpoint. And then what are the complications and obstacles, which isn’t clear from the logline, but structurally, you’re still getting piece one, “This is the thing that happens until this happens. Then this happens until this happens, but this.” So you have every single piece in that little contained explanation of what the project is.

Rob Marsh:  Yeah. I like that. So what’s your writing process then? Do you sit down at 5:30 AM or do you go do hot yoga, come back, and still write, what does that look like, because, I imagine that’s a challenge?

Jamie Jensen:  Yeah. It’s hard. The hard thing is even when you have time, you find other things to do with it.

Rob Marsh:  Right. Just like copywriting. Yeah.

Jamie Jensen:  It’s like, “Oh, well, I set aside this day and I have all this time.” I set aside this time for this project, but what else would be fun? Scrolling Instagram and going for a walk-

Rob Marsh:  Yup.

Jamie Jensen:  … and talking to my friends and hanging out. And quite honestly, the thing that helps me the most, there are two strategies that have helped me, right, the most. One is I take myself into a different environment for a short period of time. And that becomes the special environment within which I create the story. So I had a script that I wrote in early 2020 called Queens, Get the Money which I then rewrote into a novel. And it’s a sci-fi, rom-com. I wrote that by going to a coffee shop a few times a week, I would stay for an hour and my hour at the coffee shop, that was all I was doing. And I created within this frame, “I’m going to go, I’m going to have my coffee. I’m going to write. And I don’t know what I wrote, but I know I wrote, and then I put it away and move on. I compartmentalize it and I don’t stress about it. And I’m honoring the project. I’m having a regular relationship with the project. I’m showing up for the project.” And within a month I wrote a whole script.

Rob Marsh:  Okay.

Jamie Jensen: So that was one way that really worked for me. Another way that really works for me is setting dates to do it. And the best way to do this is for me to do it with other people. And this is sort of how I structure writing retreats and other ways to-

Rob Marsh:  Is it a co-writer or an accountability buddy?

Jamie Jensen:  Oh, accountability co-writing session.

Rob Marsh:  Yeah.

Jamie Jensen:  So we’re both working on something we’re going to sit together and do it. And I have a structured way to do that. I also use focus music, which helps a lot. And it just helps like, “Okay. I’m not alone. We’re both doing this together. There’s accountability. I also feel the energy of it.” And the fact that we have both decided to prioritize this and make it important. There’s no wiggle room around it. I treat writing the same way. I treat fitness. It’s hard to get to the gym, but once you’re there, you do the workout. And so if I can structure my relationship with writing the same way that I structure my relationship with fitness, which for me is I invest in group fitness training, right? It’s like, “I’m going to sign up in advance. There’s going to be a small group of people who are there. And then if I can show up for it, I will just do the workout.”

Jamie Jensen:  And so for me, that’s the most valuable way. I’ve also done things like short-term retreats, where I go away with a friend for a weekend and we work together for a few days and it’s really intensified and sort of batched, which I find really helpful. But I do believe that there are occasional times in a writing process when you do need a whole day or a chunk of hours or a lot of dedicated time. And sometimes that’s true, but I find that those days are actually more valuable for doing the deep thinking work about the project or allowing yourself to creatively receive what’s possible and not so much necessary for the actual writing of it. I find that the writing only takes an hour to 90 minutes. Sometimes you could do a lot in 25 to 45. And you can get a lot done in a short period of time.

Rob Marsh:  Yeah.

Jamie Jensen:  But you just need to keep doing it. And I think it’s a myth that you need all this time in a day.

Rob Marsh:  Well, I mean, that’s a really good point. Obviously, when you’re writing, you’re writing, but when you’re not writing, are you ideating and just writing in your brain so that tomorrow when you sit down, you know what you’re going to write because you figured it out when you were doing everything else that you were doing that day?

Jamie Jensen:  Sometimes, yes. Sometimes, no. Here’s what I’ll say, I took a walk Tuesday. I took a 90-minute walk, something I do fairly regularly. And I went by myself, and I have in this moment, this was this week. I have two pilots, one I’m rewriting from scratch completely different from the first version, one I delivered to my literary manager and he gave me notes last Friday. And so I know I have edits, but they’re not major. And then I have a major rewrite I’m doing. And then I also have a client project I’m working on, creatively, right? This is outside of the coaching programs I’m working on and clients I work with. So just the creative, “Who’s employing me creatively right now?” Or these two projects that aren’t monetized in this one that is, right?

Rob Marsh:  Yeah. Yeah.

Jamie Jensen:  So I take a walk and I’m not really trying, I’m just taking the walk, but my brain is going, “Oh, this is an interesting way with this character to do this.” I see that. Then I just keep walking, looking at the trees. And then the next thing I have is, “Oh, I think maybe for this other pilot, this idea that, and it comes in and then I keep walking and then I have 10 taglines for this client that I’m working with and ideas for their brand story and things.” So I treat that relationship with creativity as it is. It’s sort of expansive and infinite and all the things can talk to me. But then when I have dedicated time to sit and focus on one specific one, then I’m just sitting and focusing on one specific one. But I can’t control when I’m going to let myself think about it. It’s not like I’m thinking about it. And I’m going to try really hard.

Rob Marsh:  Right. From 2:00 to 3:00, I’m working on pilot one.

Jamie Jensen:  Yeah. Yeah.

Rob Marsh:  From 3:00 until 4:00 pilot two. From 5:00 until 6:00, I’m having dinner and then I’m working on taglines.

Jamie Jensen:  Yeah. Yeah. I mean, if you are creating space to sit down and write period. Then to some extent, you can let yourself move through what needs to happen. That’s my experience, right? I work on a very energetic level. I feel connected to my projects as if they’re people in my life.

Rob Marsh:  Yeah.

Jamie Jensen:  And so my relationship with them is like, “Hey. Oh, I’m thinking it’s the same way you would think about someone you care about when you’re taking a walk and they just come into your mind and they’re there and you’re holding space for someone you care about because they’re just part of your life.” It’s a similar relationship for me. And I find when there are creative projects that really want your attention, you can get into it, a similar dynamic when you’re ignoring them or pushing them away or telling them you don’t have time for it-

Rob Marsh:  Yeah.

Jamie Jensen:  … then they’re sad and try to pay attention to me.

Rob Marsh:  Texting you? Yeah. Remember me? Yeah.

Jamie Jensen:  Yeah. Why did you ghost me?

Rob Marsh:  Yeah. All right. Let’s cut in here and have a little chat or talk a little bit about what Jamie and I have been talking about. So Kira, you weren’t able to make it to this first interview when Jamie and I were talking. So I’m curious to hear some of your thoughts on what she’s been sharing?

Kira Hug:  Yeah. Well, I enjoyed the early part of the conversation where Jamie was talking about burning down the business because this is something that we talk about with a lot of copywriters. And I feel like it’s grieving and grief is something that Jamie has talked about with our community at TCCRL in 2020 in San Diego. And there is this component of grief in what we do as business owners, but we don’t talk about it frequently. And sometimes you can feel ashamed of grieving part of your business. It can feel awkward to let go of parts of your business because it could feel like a failure.

And so I appreciate that you two are able to cover this because as our businesses change and evolve and the marketplace changes, we have to let go of something in order to move forward and to continue to build and to stay relevant in our marketplaces. You can’t just move forward and hang on to all the pieces and all the offers and everything you’ve built so far in order to continue to grow. And so for me, it was just more of a reminder that there may be parts of our business we need to shut down or grieve, even though it feels really uncomfortable. No one really wants to do that. And so I mean, Jamie’s brave as always and willing to do the things that feel uncomfortable and are not easy like burning it down and grieving.

Rob Marsh:  Yeah. Usually, when we think about, “Oh, it’s time to make a change,” or, “I want to close this thing down,” or, “Stop doing this thing,” it’s because it’s not working. And that is definitely not the case in Jamie’s business, which makes it really interesting to me, because she built that amazing agency that