TCC Podcast #321: How to Grow on TikTok, Build a Personal Brand, and Navigate Change with Mariam Vossough

The people and stuff we mentioned on the show:

Join The Accelerator Waitlist
The Copywriter Think Tank
Kira’s website
Connect with Mariam on TikTok and Linkedin 
Rob’s website
The Copywriter Club Facebook Group
The Copywriter Underground
Free month of Brain.FM
Jenn Prochaska’s episode 
Episode 75
Episode 177
Episode 276
Jenn’s TikTok

Full Transcript:

Kira Hug:  Niching down, owning your personal brand and showing up as your wild self on social media often feels like a huge obstacle for copywriters like us. But as business owners, it’s kind of unavoidable, especially early on in our business when we don’t have a team. The good news is we control how we niche, how we brand ourselves, and how we show up in the world. And our guest on this week’s podcast is the perfect example of a writer who’s not only taken control over her brand identity, but who has also built a business that provides meaning to her. And she’s done it in her own way with a brilliant sense of humor and grace. Mariam Vossough is a copywriter, screenwriter, and TikTok nerd. And after this episode, you just might rethink how you show up on social media and you just might find yourself creating a TikTok account.

I know she’s almost convinced me, like not quite, but almost, so close. And before we jump into the interview, I want to introduce my lovely co-host this week who is feeling a little under the weather, and I appreciate her being here. So welcome back to the show, Jenn Prochaska, who is a brand messaging strategist, writer, also a guest on episode 307, which is one of my favorite episodes where we talked about overcoming addiction, scaling a business, parenthood. We went deep and Jenn was so transparent and real throughout the entire conversation. If you haven’t listened to it, you’ve got to listen to it. So Jenn, thanks for coming back, especially when you’re not feeling so great.

Jenn Prochaska:  Yeah, thanks Kira. Yeah, I’m keeping it real. I’m a little congested, but I’m super excited to talk about Mariam… Podcast.

Kira Hug:  All right, great. And so before we jump in, this episode is brought to you by the Copywriter Accelerator. We are really excited because we are about to launch this program. We’re about to jump in with a bunch of copywriters and get started. So we’re currently offering early bird access to this business building program where we get to work with you over five months to put all the pieces of your business together. So you can go from feeling like an order taker to really feeling more like a CEO and in control of your business. And if you have any interest in joining or just checking it out, you can join early and save some cash, which is always nice. And you can check out more information in the show notes. You will hear a good amount about it today because our podcast guest is an Accelerator alumni member. So you’ll hear a little bit more about it. All right, let’s jump into the interview with Mariam.

Mariam Vossough:  I’ll try to do the potted history ’cause I’m very, very old, so there’s quite a lot. I always wanted to work in drama. I studied drama at university. I started off working in the film industry. I did various different roles on set to kind of learn the different trades. And I ended up landing in the cutting room. So I was really fascinated with the story and how a good editor can really transform quite mediocre material. So I spent hours and hours and hours sitting in cutting rooms and I started when we were on film, that’s how old I am. I was literally carrying canisters of film rolls towards the end of my time in the cutting room. It started to move over to digital, but it was an amazing place to learn about storytelling. I increasingly became frustrated because I wanted more input and to make a bigger difference on the story, which is why I went to the other end of the process.

And I wanted to start writing. So I got various jobs, script writing, script reading for other people. And I landed a big job on a program called Coronation Street, which is, I think it’s the world’s longest running drama serial. So I started there as a story liner. I worked my way up to story editor. So I was in charge of the whole story office. We would write all the stories for every single episode that went out. I did that for about a year and then I got promoted onto the writing team, which was a huge deal. So I was still quite young and I stayed on the writing team for a couple of years. Then I had a baby. So I just took some time off. And I decided when I went back to… Go for a different show, because I’ve been on Coronation Street at that point, about five years, and that’s not five normal years, it’s like five dog years.

It’s so intense. And I just wanted to do something else. So I worked on a Channel Four program called Hollyoakes, which is a kind of soap drama serial for a younger audience. And there was lots of comedy in it and they dealt with some serious issues as well. I liked being able to combine the two. So I wrote there for a couple of sessions. I did it for a few years, then I had my second son. Then I went back for a few years and then I found myself with two young children trying to write for a TV program full time and something had to give. And when you write for that kind of show, you are expected to be available 24/7 if they need rewrites or someone goes off sick, you’ve just got to be there. They need it in and they need it in for the next day.

And I couldn’t make myself that available. Well, I didn’t want to. So I became an author. I wrote for children. Now obviously, I had two young children at the time and I never thought I’d write for children. But what spurred me on is that I had two boys and the lack of imaginative books for young boys at that time, I was quite disappointed. Unless you wanted to read about firemen or tractors, there wasn’t much. And I was sure you could do better than that. So I wrote a series of books that aimed at boys under a pseudonym and that was great fun. And opened me up to the world of children’s book authors who are the loveliest set of writers you will find. Copywriters are second, but children’s book writers are just the most welcoming. They are so lovely. And I enriched my life in so many ways.

So I did that. I carried on doing that for a few years. And then unfortunately my eldest son became very, very ill. And I had to completely step back from work for a couple of years. We were trying to find our feet, me and him. I was trying to get him the help he needed and just adapt our whole way of life to his illness. And after a year or so, my brain is the kind of brain that just won’t stop. And unless I use my brain positively, it starts to go down a dark path because it keeps going whatever I’m doing with it. And at that time, I’d heard more and more about self-publishing. Now it wasn’t familiar to me because I came up through the very traditional writing part. You had to find an agent and then the agent got your work. So I started to look on YouTube and found tutorials and things and I thought just out of interest to see if this is possible and to keep my brain ticking over, I’m going to self-publish a couple of books.

So I wrote a couple of fiction books, which I’d never done before. I never liked to make my life easy. So I wrote a couple of fiction books and published them on Kindle under a pseudonym and made them into an audio book. And I really enjoyed the process, but I thought, this is not something I want to do. I don’t want to be a publisher full time. It takes me away from the work I enjoy, but I’m still earning money back from that. That’s a regular sort of income. And whilst I was on YouTube, I then started to see things on my feed about making a living writing online. And I was completely clueless. I didn’t know what this could possibly be. So I started to watch videos and found out about writing blogs and writing online content. And I just thought this was incredible because when I came up as a writer, you had to get past the gatekeepers and just seeing how young people now can just be a writer, I think it’s incredible how democratized the whole industry.

And as someone like me who had no context whatsoever, I had to kind of fight my way to pass every game, I thought this was amazing. And then I started seeing one of my feet about copywriting and I was like, okay, what’s this? And I started to download a load of new podcasts and I found your podcast and yours was the first one I found on copywriting. So actually it’s kind of your fault that I’m here. And I began to learn about copywriting and something just clicked because it combines two of the things I love to do, which is writing obviously and research. Give me a topic and I’m an expert in two days. Give me a wi-fi connection, I’m there, I love to research. And what else I loved about it, was there was so much to learn. I get really fired up about learning new things. I get good at something and then I have to learn something else.

I’m speaking to some friends about this and through friends, I started ghost writing for people, ghost writing content and copy. And I did that for a year or so and I thought, okay, I really do want to make a go of this. I’m going to have to come out from the shadows at some point. And that’s when I saw your Accelerator program and I joined Accelerator. So that’s kind of how I ended up here.

Rob Marsh:  Okay. There’s so much in your background. I’m not sure where you’re ever going to get to your copywriting career because I’ve got all these questions about all the stuff that you did before. So just setting this up, we’re going to be talking a little bit about cutting rooms and drama and whatever. At least those are some of my questions. So I want to go back, skipping forward from your time in drama, although maybe I’ve got questions about that too. I’m specifically interested, you said it’s amazing what a good storyteller or a good editor can do with mediocre content and turn it into a really good story. Talk a little bit more about that. What is the process? Because so many of us think that the material we’re working with, the ideas that we have are mediocre, and yet there’s a way to make that stuff sing and to be amazing if it’s put together. So let’s talk about that process. How do you put together content so that it tells a really interesting compelling story?

Mariam Vossough:  Well, if you’re talking about… Yeah, I worked on both film dramas and TV purely, and I don’t know how much people know, but when you are in the cutting room, you get every single version of every single shot. So a basic shot, you’d have a wide and then you’d have closeups on them speaking and you’d have three or four versions of each shot. So as an editor you go through to find the best shot from each and then you try and fit them all together to make it work. And I saw editors literally cut a few seconds off the beginning and end of shots and that made the whole scene much pacier. So structure in itself is an art form. The way you put these shots together, the way you put your lines together, rearrange things. I have no fear of editing. I’m quite happy to tear something apart and put it back together in a way that it wasn’t necessarily meant to be put back together and it works better.

So what I learned as well as story structure in those cutting rooms was first thought is never best thought. You have to be unprecious about your material and especially if it’s something you have written, you have generated. My philosophy to everything I write is if someone can contribute an idea or a line that makes it better, I’ll take that. Because anything you can do to make the content better is worth it. The content overall is… You’ll not take your ego out of it and just make the best thing you can possibly make. So that I know from just seeing shots rearranged and editors turning scenes around, maybe not necessarily the order that the writer or the director had seen it, makes an enormous difference.

Kira Hug:  So I want to hear more about Coronation Street and your experience on the writing team. I know you had different positions and worked your way up and then ended up in the writing team because that experience is so distant from me, I have no experience in that department. Can you just talk a little bit about what your day-to-day looked like in that role on the writing team and the intensity behind it?

Mariam Vossough:  Yeah, sure. At the time I was on Coronation Street, we worked in two-week cycles. So over the course of two weeks we would storyline and complete two weeks of episodes. At the time it was about eight episodes we’d work on. So the start of the process would be a one-day meeting with all the writers, producers, the story team. And we would have an agenda and we’d go through each story that we needed to talk about in order, picking up from where we’d left off with that story. And we’d have to make a decision about where that story was going in the next two weeks. Now those meetings varied in quality because sometimes the writing team would get stuck on one story. I don’t mean necessarily stuck in that they couldn’t think of it, but they would be obsessed with one story and they’d just talk.

80% of the meeting would be just one story. And then as when I was in the story team, you’d be left with loads of story to fill because they hadn’t even got to those other stories. So as a writer, you’d come in for that meeting. At the end of the two-week cycle, you’d wait to hear whether you had been commissioned for one of those episodes. I would then be sent a story document which… To outline scene by scene what had to happen in that episode. So each story was in that episode it’d say, this is where that story starts, this is where that story ends. You then went into a meeting a few days later, asked any questions you had about the episode. If you wanted to make any kind of big changes within the scope of the story, you’d have to get permission. Then you’d have to talk about could I have this extra character, could I have this set? Because there’s huge restrictions on… You can’t just have anyone in any location.

There were production issues. Then you would go away, write this episode, you’d have usually maybe a week depending on which episode in the block you’ve got, which is not long to get your first draft in. The story team and the producers write that first draft, then it would usually go through two more drafts. Then that script went to production so that the costume and the actors and everyone would get that. So as a writer, you are in a two-week cycle. Now bear in mind, if you’re a regular writer, you are working on more than one episode at a time. You are writing an episode whilst you’re editing another episode, whilst you’re coming up with ideas for the story meeting about those eight episodes. So you’re constantly in a state of flux. And on the screen from what you saw where you were working about three months ahead of what you said. Most of the time you spend, as any writing job, most of the time you’re spent in front of your computer at home.

Kira Hug:  So it sounds like you started as the story person, the story editor, and then you made your way to being the writer. Was that-

Mariam Vossough:  Yeah.

Kira Hug:  The trajectory?

Mariam Vossough:  Yeah, that’s it.

Kira Hug:  Okay. And as a follow-up, just what lesson or two did you pull from that experience that you find yourself using today in copywriting?

Mariam Vossough:  In terms of the promotion or in terms of the difference between the two jobs?

Kira Hug:  The writing portion of that job.

Mariam Vossough:  Well, like I said, we’d sometimes, in the story office, we’d be left with a huge deficit of story and with not much time to write these episodes. So you had to be fearless about putting out ideas. You have to sit in the office. There were maybe three or four story liners and then story editor, you just had to throw ideas out. You could not sit there and worry, oh no, this is a bit… You just have to say stuff because someone’s bad idea can lead to someone having a good idea. So you develop a very, very thick skin and a very fast reflex to filling gaps in episodes, in stories. So in terms of storytelling, it’s just my heartbeat now.

I am the most annoying person to watch any film or television because not… you know that kid in The Sixth Sense who sees dead people? I see story holes everywhere. I don’t look, they’re just there. So it can be quite frustrating for me watching anything ’cause I always see the holes. Yeah, so sorry, I’ve lost my train of thought. I’m just thinking about the poor people who have to watch TV with me.

Rob Marsh:  I think it’s probably better to see story holes or plot holes than it is to see dead people. So you’ve got that going for you indeed.

Mariam Vossough:  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Rob Marsh:  As you’re thinking about stories, I’m guessing you got really good at writing or thinking about cliffhangers with an episodic television show like that where you need to have something that brings people back. Copywriters obviously call these open loops in are copy. Tell us about how you approach cliff hangers, open loops and how you use it in your storytelling, your copy today.

Mariam Vossough:  Oh, absolutely, because on Coronation Street we had… It was on ITV, which is a commercial channel. So you’d have something called the ad tag, which was the tag going into the adverts. Then you’d have the tag at the end of the episode to pull people in. So it was very natural for me to build to that rhythm. The rhythm of Coronation Street was up to the ads, then further up to the ends. On Hollyoaks, we had an extra tag because after the credit sequence there was a small one small tag. So you have to go in a slightly different rhythm with that. As a copywriter, it’s hugely useful for me when I write emails. And I love writing email sequences because I see them in the same way as I see scripts. Take a sales email sales sequence.

For me there’s some hot main objective, which is from the first to the last email, which is the same as the main story thrust through a script. So that has to run through each email. Then within each email, there is a story structure in itself, which has to contain some of the main sales stuff. So that’s how I sync and structure email sequences and I wouldn’t say it’s easy, nothing’s easy, but I always think in terms of pulling them into the next email as well. So mine are slightly different from that. I have a kind of hook at the end to help them pull them into… So hopefully when they’ve seen the next email, they’re going to want to open it and make the subject line acts as a kind of hook for me as well. You’ve got to get the subject line right to get them into the email. So that structure and that series of hooks, tags, whatever you want to call it, is there, with all my writing actually.

Kira Hug:  What helped guide your decisions along your career path that you shared with us? There are many different turns and different career paths related to writing. Was it just intuition along the way? Did you have a process to help you evaluate when to leave a position, when to pursue something else? And how did you decide what that next thing was for you at the time?

Mariam Vossough:  Partly life, life just as a habit of getting in the way and the best possible way, also, as I’ve said, I genuinely, genuinely love to learn and writing is… We are very privileged that that is a career. Whatever type of writing you do, where there is always something to learn, but I just like to add more tools to my kit. When I’m finding something boring, frustrating, I know it’s time for me to move on to something else. And also what, as I said, working on TV and that’s fast paced and you are just doing, you’re not really enjoying the process as much.

You’re just doing, doing all the time. You don’t have time to sit back and think about your career in that way. So I think that was the best thing for my career that I did to step out of that and have more time to reflect on where I wanted to go with my writing. I mean, there’s so much still I want to write that I’ve got a children’s book that’s kind of partway through. There’s a marketing book I want to write. So now I just use my intuition.

Rob Marsh:  I’m curious also about the crossover between writing children’s books and writing copy for clients, whether that’s email or sales copy. I know there are significant differences, but what are some of the similarities? What are some of the things that you take from writing children’s books that applies directly to what you’re writing for clients?

Mariam Vossough:  Well, I can tell you quite honestly, children are the hardest audience to win over. It’s kind of laughable to me that people think that writing children’s books is easy. It is the most difficult thing to get right. I mean, I started writing for children, my kids were kind of the target age and they’re brutal. I knew when they started to fidget or yawn and “Oh mom, don’t talk about that again, don’t talk about that all the time.” And again, it’s thick skin. And as part of my MA, I went into schools and taught creative writing. So you know, you’ve got to be on the ball with those kids. So I don’t think any clients I come across in a sort of personality-wise can really get under my skin because I’ve worked in TV, I’ve worked with some of the best editors, producers, I’ve worked with some of the worst. So I don’t sweat the small stuff when it comes to clients on a one-to-one level. Like I said, the thick skin is all.

Rob Marsh:  It seems like more of us as copywriters can maybe use those first readers, those kids telling us to quit talking about that stuff, it’s boring me and get to the interesting part.

Mariam Vossough:  Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I’ll send my kids over. They’re teenagers.

Kira Hug:  Okay, Jenn, let’s break in here. I am curious to hear what stood out the most to you during this part of the conversation.

Jenn Prochaska:  Yeah. So first of all, I’m totally fangirling over Mariam, just her general disposition and her story. And when she said Coronation Street, my jaw dropped. I mean, that’s a big deal. And she was like, “Oh yeah, so I’m a writer on Coronation Street.” And I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa. Did she just say… Yeah, so I mean that stood out immediately. And I love that she talked about working with such a large team. I think there’s a lot of takeaways there that I could relate to. Mine was at an agency, so definitely not as prestigious, but when you work with large groups of people and everybody has a say in what you’re writing, I mean, you do learn to develop a thick skin. And I didn’t get the sense that she meant thick skin as a defense mechanism like it bothered me, but I learned to deal with it.

She was like, it ceased to bother her anymore. And she even said at one point, “I don’t sweat the small stuff with clients,” and that’s key because I do see a lot of newer writers sweating the small stuff. So the fact that she got that pretty early on in her career is a definite benefit in everything she does in life, I think. But certainly when writing for somebody and having that creative process judged by so many people. I got the sense that she was honestly able to detach from the creative process, which really lets it take on a life of its own and that’s when the magic happens, that collaboration. That’s what really stood out to me about that part.

Kira Hug:  Yeah. I wonder for someone who still feels that attachment and it may feel more sensitive to it where it’s not as easy and maybe your skin is not as thick because they haven’t had experience like Mariam’s had. Do you have any advice for anyone who’s like, ugh, I wish I didn’t feel as attached. I don’t want to feel as attached, but I still do.

Jenn Prochaska:  Yeah. And I don’t want to say attached is a bad thing, I mean, everything we write to some extent can be our baby, right? Especially with those larger projects. I know when I write a website, I definitely mean a whole website that’s part of me as well. But I think that the piece of advice that I would give is to think about the creative process holistically, because she also said that it made her fearless about ideas because “Someone’s stupid idea,” quote unquote, “Could spark a good idea.” So it’s not detaching and not caring, it’s actually elevating your part in the entire creative process knowing that it will produce something far greater than any one of us in theory could have come up with on our own. I mean even the greatest writers, or editors, everybody arguably needs some outside perspective. So I think when we can look at it that way, it becomes much easier. And it’s less of I can’t care about my work and more of I’m a spoke in this really awesome wheel.

Kira Hug:  Right. It’s just more of a collaborative approach, right? It’s like I am not the copywriter who has all the answers and my client can’t question me, but it’s like, well, what if I jump into this project and I look at my client as a collaborator? I mean that definitely requires vetting prospects. You’re working with clients who are looking for that and who are matching that level. But I think it’s a different approach and might be more useful going into it. It sounded like she left that kind of high stress position and those writing rooms after having her first baby. And that grabbed my attention just because that’s when I left corporate life after I had my first baby. And I remember that feeling just of it wasn’t 24/7, it sounds like her position was like you had to be available 24/7, which is pretty crazy, especially since we’re not medical doctors and we’re not working in the ER, we’re writers.

I’m like, you shouldn’t have to be available 24/7 if you’re a writer. But that’s when I left my corporate life and really took a big shift in my career. And it sounds like she did something similar. I feel like that is a common pattern, whether it’s having a first baby or just having a big life change and questioning everything you’re doing. And it seems like that came up several times throughout the conversation with Mariam. It was about knowing when to leave a position, knowing when to kind of zig and zag throughout the career, which I think can feel confusing and overwhelming at times, but it seems like she’s handled it really well over her career. So I’m just wondering from you, Jenn, when was that moment where you felt like you had a really big zig or zag in your career where you had to make that first really big shift that led you to entrepreneurship?

Jenn Prochaska:  Yeah, I love this and I love that you asked her about her job transition decision making process because I feel like a lot of copywriters get stuck there. I think a lot of people get stuck there. For me, my switch, my biggest switch in my career, was actually very much in line with what she said. It’s just my getting sober was… Instead of having my first baby, for me, it was getting sober. But she said, when you’re just doing and when it really doesn’t light you up anymore. I mean she gave her launch copywriting niche six months. So it’s not like you have a bad day at, oh, I got to change my business, when it’s really just not inspiring you.

One of my favorite phrases is stay inspired because I think it’s easy to be inspired, it’s harder to stay inspired. And after a while, and certainly the hours and her priorities shifted once she had her baby. But even after that, as she was pivoting along the way, she said, “I was just kind of doing it wasn’t lighting me up.” And I think that that is really important to hear from someone like her as a Gen X. She talks a lot about Gen X women and shout out to Gen X. We were taught that you had to stay in a job for a while. You had to pay your dues, you had to stick it out. I mean now it’s normal to have 10 jobs before you’re 30. In my day we called that job hopping and your resume went into the trash.

So I think it says something that she was able to say to reflect at various times in her life, what do I want here? Oh and I have the right and the freedom to go after that, whether it’s the positive having my first baby or the more challenging my son has an illness. Either way, being able to say I don’t have to do anything other than take care of my family. How can I do that and still fulfill my creative mission? I think sometimes as women, I don’t know, and maybe this is a Gen X thing or not, but I feel like we have to choose between our passions and our children and she’s proof positive that you can take care of both. Now certainly on a daily basis, they’re not going to be equal. But she has really managed not only to take care of both, but to have a thriving career. I mean, we’re not talking about just leaving businesses here. I mean she went from the most popular, longest running television show in Britain to being a children’s author.

I mean, I just moved from in-house to agency life to… Those are big things and I’m really in awe of her commitment to her creativity and her need to keep that brain busy. I can relate to that. And I think a lot of us visionaries can, she said, “When you have a brain like I do, it doesn’t stop. And if I don’t put that to use, to good use, it can go to dark places.” So the fact that she was able to stay out of dark places for the most part and still creatively produce, I mean, well I said I’m fangirling over Mariam and that’s one of the reasons why that’s so inspirational to me.

Kira Hug:  Yeah. When I think of her throughout this conversation, I feel like fearlessness comes up and pops into my mind. I feel like she’s just a really great example of a writer who has been fearless in her writing career. And you’re right, I mean has had such an impressive path and not just in one space and like you said, jumping into writing children’s books out of working in these story rooms on a show and it’s such variety and you just kind of know when you speak to her and hang out with her that there will be more in her journey and she’ll just continue to figure out what’s working and what’s not working. And it really gets me excited about being a writer because there are so many different ways we can pull this craft into our career. And it doesn’t have to be the same and it can be whatever we want it to be, and we can still own that identity as a writer, but it can show up in so many different ways.

And again, she’s just a great example of that. And I think she even had a quote when she was talking about advice about pivoting. She said, “When I’m finding something boring, frustrating, I know it’s time for me to move on to something else.” And I think that’s important for us to remember as copywriters in our own businesses because it’s easy to build a business where maybe you’re not working for someone else and it looks like you should be happy all the time because you have this so-called freedom in your business. But maybe you find yourself feeling bored or frustrated or even resentful. Maybe that’s also a time to start to look at how else can I shift things in my own business so I don’t have to burn it down necessarily and start over? But I can just start to shift it so it feels more exciting.

I feel less frustrated, it feels easier, it’s giving back to me. And I think that’s where a lot of copywriters do get stuck because they’re like, well, now what? I built the business, it was supposed to feel amazing and it’s not feeling that way. And I can’t blame it on someone else because I don’t have a boss to blame it on. I have nothing else to blame it on. So what do I do now? And so she’s a great example of how we just can continue to poke around. Poke around until it starts to fit and then when it doesn’t fit, poke around again.

Jenn Prochaska: Yeah, absolutely. And I think a lot of copywriters and a lot of creative people in general that I’ve run into, have kind of higher purposes, right? You’ve had on the show talking about veganism. And I know that you’ve recently taken that up and I know we’ve had talks about how to bring in politics, how to bring in those social issues. And I found it really interesting that she said she couldn’t find books for boys that were imaginative, right? And I’m a mom of two girls. And I was like, wow, really? Because I have a hard time finding books for girls that aren’t all girl power. Not that I’m against girl power, but my daughter just wanted a book with a character that was a girl. It wasn’t all about fighting the man. And words are so powerful. And when we think about what a copywriter and a content writer is, what we’re trained to do, we are trained to educate, enlighten, and ultimately convince.

I mean talk about the ability to create the change that we want to see in the world. I mean it’s a really powerful tool and I love that she parlayed that without much fanfare. She was like, oh, this doesn’t exist. Well I need it and I’m going to create it. And she did it. That’s something that I think sometimes writers forget because we do get lost in the business of writing, but we have power in our words. And if something isn’t fulfilling you… I know for me sometimes if when my work gets a little tedious, which is going to happen in any job, I don’t care what you do, it’s going to get tedious, then it could be using our powers for good, right? Like going to a nonprofit and copywriting not for money, but for just to make the world a better place.

I mean there are all sorts of options. The thing that Mariam really represents for me is just being open, open your mind. Whatever preconceived notions you think you have, just toss them aside because the stupid idea might lead to a good idea. I mean everything goes back to being in a room with all those people and just working together.

Kira Hug:  Yeah, yeah. I mean it’s problem-solving, right? She is solving problems. She found there was not the book she needed for her children. She solved that problem. I mean you can’t solve every problem, but you can start to solve these problems. And then she moved on to the next problem. And speaking of books, so I do think back to when my kids were a little bit younger and we were reading all these classic books with all the different animals who were talking. And my daughter was always frustrated ’cause she’s like, “Why are all the animals boys? Why are they always boys?” They’re never any girl animals in these books. And so I would have to change the gender of half the animals or some of the animals just to have some representation there. So anyway, when Mariam mentioned that, I was like, yeah, there’s a lot of work needed in children’s books.

I know a lot of work has been done and it’s progressing, which is so exciting, definitely. Writers who are interested jump into that space too. There are problems to solve, there are problems to solve in all of these spaces. And so I know we’re going to talk a little bit more about the problems she’s solving today in the second part of the conversation. So I won’t give too much away, but it’s exciting to hear about that too. Before we kind of wrap up here, the last note I wanted to mention is that we talked a good amount about how her experience working on storylines can really inform what she does today for clients. And I was just thinking about storylines and how she was talking about the hook and really transitioning from one email to the next. So people want to… They’re ready and they’re excited to read the next email because those transitions are so seamless and that’s really tricky.

She does it really well. But most, not to say most of us don’t, I struggle with that. Oftentimes it feels like my emails even in a sales sequence, they’re defined. It’s like you just read one by itself and it doesn’t really speak to the other emails. And so I think there’s a lot we can learn just from Mariam and seeing writers and reading from writers who do this well, so that we’re transitioning easily and it doesn’t feel like we’re starting over. Every time we read an email from a business or a brand or an individual, it feels like that relationship is developing and we’re even looking forward to it. So that’s something that I am going to work on with even our TCC emails. We’re sending daily emails now. How do we make those transitions? Especially if it’s one email is from Rob, the next day it’s from me. How do we make more of a connection there? So it feels like it’s connected. So that’s something that stuck to me. Jenn, anything else before we wrap this part?

Jenn Prochaska:  No. Yeah, I love the email thing and the idea that somebody’s going to be excited to get your next email. That is a shift for me because, like you were saying, my emails tend to be siloed. So I love that she mentioned that. I mean, we’re story crafters. We talk about that all the time. And the fact that she can translate that so naturally into her emails, that’s a real gift. Let’s get to the interview with Mariam.

Kira Hug:  I want to fast forward now to where you are today just to share with anyone listening, what does your business look like?

Mariam Vossough:  In the middle of relaunching my brand. When I came to the Accelerator, I didn’t have any experience of being a personal brand. I’d never considered what I did as a business because I always had an agent, because for any reason I really had an agent, one because you kind of had to have an agent for sort of status. Also, I am rubbish at talking about anything financial. Put me in a meeting to talk about the work, I can talk all day. As soon as fees or anything come up, I’m like no. So my agent dealt with all that. So thinking of what I do as a business was a big leap for me and quite a struggle, actually. And when I left the Accelerator, I didn’t niche down like most people did by deliverable or by who you were writing for.

The one thing that’s gone throughout the whole of my writing career is comedy. I love writing comedy even in places it’s not meant to be. I managed to sneak it in somehow. And so I thought, well that’s how I’m going to niche. I’m going to niche my style of writing. And I did that and I was really pleased with my website, et cetera, et cetera. But something was just not clicking with me and I was finding marketing stuff, writing… Something wasn’t right and I could not figure out wha