TCC Podcast #353: Stepping into the Spotlight with Lindsay Hyatt

The people and stuff we mentioned on the  show:
The Accelerator waitlist
The Copywriter Think Tank
Kira’s website
Rob’s website
Lindsay’s website
The Copywriter Club Facebook Group
The Copywriter Underground
Free month of Brain.FM
AI for Creative Entrepreneurs Podcast

Full Transcript:

Rob Marsh:  There’s a saying that gets thrown around occasionally in the business world that goes something like this: We overestimate what we can get done in a day and we underestimate what we can accomplish in a year, which is probably why we often feel like we don’t get much done as we work through our days. But when we look back to where we were last year or the year before, we are amazed at some of the changes that we’ve seen and experienced. Hi, this is Rob Marsh.

Kira Hug:  And I’m Kira Hug.

Rob Marsh:  And we are the founders and hosts of The Copywriter Club Podcast. Our guest for today’s episode is copywriter and copy coach Lindsay Hyatt. Over the past two years, Lindsay has experienced some big changes in her business. As we chatted with her, she shared a few of the things that she’s done that made all of the difference: activities like showing up regularly on social media, creating personal connections with their network, and exploring new opportunities for serving her clients. They’re small things, but they produce really big results. In short, she puts in the reps, so stick around to hear what she has to share about her business.

Kira Hug: But first, this episode is sponsored by The Copywriter Accelerator, which is our signature business building program that we are running in the fall for four months in the fall. And Lindsay actually is an alumni member of that program, so she’ll speak to a little bit of that program and the benefits, and you can hear from this conversation how it’s helped her in her business. If you have any interest in learning more about that program and the eight-part framework we work through in that program that will help build the foundation of your business, you can learn more at our wait list page, which is at thecopywriterclub.com/accelerator-waitlist. We’ll link to it in the show notes so you can jump over there and get your name on the list if you want to explore that program with us this fall. Let’s kick off our episode with Lindsay Hyatt.

Lindsay Hyatt:  Well, I have a winding road, but it started with copywriting, which I feel like not many copywriters say. So I started as a copywriter in radio, which was my first job out of college, and I wrote radio commercials for four different stations, all completely different genres. So that was the beginning of learning about brand voice for me. And I love that. And then from there I kind of got deeper into marketing as a whole and learning about creating campaigns and launching campaigns for different industries. So at the time I was actually in healthcare marketing, which is a whole different game. I really love the creativity part of it, but what I didn’t love right off the bat was feeling like I didn’t know what I was doing, and I didn’t really have a lot of guidance in the first few jobs that I had.

So I actually had, unfortunately, some bad work environment experiences that really molded the early parts of my career in marketing and it made me run in the other direction. So I actually took a break from marketing to pursue the other nagging interests that I had, which was education. And I had moved to Michigan with my now husband who’s from there. And while I was there, I went to the University of Michigan to get my graduate degree in education, and I became a fifth grade teacher, which seems completely out of the blue, but it was kind of one of those things that I thought I could go in this direction or I could go in that direction, and I went in the direction of the creative route. So this kind of gave me a chance to explore what does life look like as an educator.

I loved working with the kids. Fifth graders are super weird, but really cute still. It’s a really good combination. But after a few years of doing that, the market for finding a great job in education and at the elementary level was difficult. So I had already started to think like, “Oh, I don’t know if I want to continue on this route, clawing my way into a great public school classroom. Maybe in five to seven years time I was already feeling that draw to get back to my creative roots.” So actually, while I was teaching in Michigan, I launched a blog that kind of became my touchstone to keeping that creative flow alive. I called it The Daily Sampler, and I called it that because I wanted to set the stage for myself to write every single day, which was quite the task.

But for the first year, I wrote in that blog every day and I wrote about nothing important. I didn’t write about politics or education. I wrote about the Oscars. I wrote about movies and music and cocktails, just anything that was fun for me. And it actually had a pretty good following. It was a way for me to keep in touch with my friends and family and network back in Buffalo, New York where I’m from. And it also opened up doors for me to meet people all over the world. Fun, quick story: I was actually in Italy for a small amount of time with my husband who was doing archeology. That’s a long story. But people came up to me at a cafe and asked if I was the writer of The Daily Sampler because I was writing about my time in Italy. So it was a really fun time and it allowed me to improve my writing skills and keep that creative flow going even when I was working hard with kids and doing the educator thing.

So eventually I moved back home to Buffalo and I jumped back into marketing. I had a few more jobs where I felt like there was another work environment situation that was really tough, and it really started to have me question everything that I thought about working in corporate America. Like, is this all there is? Is it just hopefully you do work you’re really passionate about and hopefully the people are nice and hopefully you are look forward to work, and if not, you just kind of get through it? And I just thought, this can’t be it. I started to think about what if I had my own business, but I just never saw how. I just never saw that it could be a reality. I don’t have entrepreneurs in my life that I could pull from experience. So I’ve kept going and I thought maybe someday. Maybe when I’ve paid my dues and maybe when I’m in my mid-career and things feel more stable, I will explore that.

So fast-forward to the pandemic, I was about to have my second daughter and I told my husband, “I don’t want to go back to this job that I’m at. It just does nothing for me. It’s not meeting any kind of creative expectations that I had, and I just want to see if this could be a possibility. Or I’ll have to get another job when I returned from maternity leave.” I had my daughter, and two weeks later, the world shut down. And because of that, it shifted everything for us. My husband lost his job during that time, I was on maternity leave, so we were freaking out a little bit.

But that is when I started to freelance again on the side of my nine-to-five once I returned from maternity leave and I started writing. And I was immediately transported back to why I love to do it, how good it felt, how good it felt just to be creative. At the time I was writing for clients in HVAC systems. It wasn’t really juicy, interesting stuff. I was just thrilled to be writing again and to work directly with a client and feel like I was able to help them directly.

So after some time I realized I might be able to match my salary if I can focus on it. I had two retainer clients at the time. If I could just bring on one more, if I had the time to do that, because I was working nights and weekends on the side of my nine-to-five, I think I could do this. We worked it out, convinced the husband, he’s been very supportive ever since, and I made the leap in 2021. I launched my business Lindsay Hyatt Co. full-time. And within a month or two, I matched my salary and I thought, “Why didn’t I do this earlier?” I mean, it was a winding road to get there, but I’m so grateful that life shifted the way it did. Though it was very hard for so many reasons during that time, it brought me to this opportunity today where I can work directly with clients and really dig in deep with them and see how I can help their business to flourish. And that has been so rewarding.

Rob Marsh:  All right. So I have about eight questions that come out of different times along the timeline. Unfortunately, I have to share the questions with Kira, so I’m only going to ask one of them right now. But I want to go all the way back to writing for radio. Something we actually haven’t even talked about on the podcast, I can’t remember talk… Maybe we did with Luke Sullivan briefly. But, I know it’s your first job, so you’re not necessarily a seasoned copywriter, but when writing for radio, you don’t have any visuals. So talk about that process and what you did as far as communicating the offers to the companies, that stuff, in such a unique medium.

Lindsay Hyatt:  So I worked very closely with the sales team in radio, and they were the liaisons between the clients and myself. So I was very lucky to have a great sales team that knew their clients very well, most of them were repeat customers of theirs and of ours, and were able to tell me about their business. They spend a lot of time getting to know them. And then of course, if there were specific promotions, everything would be laid out in a brief for me.

It also helps that being in Buffalo, it’s a pretty small town, so I’m pretty familiar with a lot of the businesses that we worked with and kind of knew their brand and had heard their radio spots and saw their spots on TV and kind of had an idea of what their voice would be like. And then of course, also knowing the information for each radio station and who the audience was. So we had everything from urban to country to easy listening. So these were all completely different ages and demographics. And then being able to pull those together to write a 32nd spot or a 62nd spot. So working with the sales team was very collaborative, and lucky for me, it also gave me a background in sales and learning how all of that worked together seamlessly with the creative.

Kira Hug:  So Lindsay, as I hear your story, it seems like you have this intuitive hit where you know, “Okay, I got to go to the next thing,” or, “I gotta figure this out.” You said this can’t be it. So I’m just wondering, how do you make those decisions around when to pivot? How do you know if it’s a good decision or it’s time to make that leap?

Lindsay Hyatt:  That has definitely grown for me over time. I think as I’ve experienced so many different things and as I’ve gotten older and hopefully a little wiser, I’ve learned to trust myself more than I probably did in my twenties when I was starting out. I always have a sense of frustration when I feel like I know that there’s something else coming. An example would be my last nine-to-five job. When I took that position, I was really happy to. The company I was working with at the time was having a lot of troubles and I didn’t know how much longer they were going to be around, so I knew I needed to jump.

But I knew that the position that was being offered to me was not something that I was interested in doing, but I didn’t listen to my gut then. I was motivated by some fear and like, “Oh my gosh, I have to keep a job so I can provide for my family.” And I knew on day two of that new job that it was not the right place for me, and I didn’t listen to my instinct. So in the last couple of years, I’ve gotten very good at not ignoring that and trusting that I can listen to that. And also, nothing is permanent. If I make a decision and it’s the wrong one, which I don’t think there’s really such a thing as the wrong decision, nothing is permanent. I can change gears or I can get a new job or I can shift and pivot. So I’ve gotten more comfortable with that over time.

Rob Marsh: I also want to ask about your daily writing habit. When you were blogging, that’s not an easy thing to do. It’s not an easy thing to hit publish every single day. I actually did a quick search for your blog and was a little bit disappointed it’s not out there anymore.

Lindsay Hyatt:  I know.

Rob Marsh:  Or at least not anywhere I can find it. But tell us about that. How did you structure your time so that you knew you were sitting down to write? Or was it just kind of as it came? Some nights, if 10 o’clock rolls around, you’re in a panic because you haven’t posted anything yet. Talk through that whole habit.

Lindsay Hyatt:  I was craving creative writing so badly at that point. I also didn’t have much of a social life at the time, so that helped. But I treated it almost like a second job. I took it very seriously. I made a commitment to myself to do this, and actually I almost forgot about this, but the reason was not just to have a daily writing habit, but I had applied for some jobs to get out of education and get back into the creative part. And I had been turned down because I didn’t have enough of a portfolio of writing at the time, because it had been so long. And I thought, I just need to start doing this again.

So I was really committed to myself. I would wake up in the morning and go throughout my day. I’m sitting in our class with my fifth grade class and thinking, “Oh, that’s a great idea for a blog post.” And I would jot a little note down. I was always thinking about looking for inspiration, whether it’s something I heard on the radio or on TV or in my classroom or something funny someone said to me. I was also very attuned to pop culture, which was really what the whole blog was about. So I could hear something silly about Taylor Swift and I’m going to talk about that tonight in the blog. So I’d kind of made a note for myself and I looked forward to doing it, so I really enjoyed it.

Kira Hug:  I mean, I didn’t realize that you took off during the pandemic and also I didn’t realize that you had your baby during the pandemic. I’m wondering what helped you take off so quickly, because I mean, you mentioned you matched your salary by 2021.

Lindsay Hyatt:  Yeah.

Rob Marsh:  In a month and a half, two months, that’s nuts.

Kira Hug:  What were you doing during that time?

Lindsay Hyatt:  Yeah. I was so fortunate because I know most companies, most businesses don’t start off like that when you’re starting from scratch. But once I knew this was a move I was going to make, I started to plant seeds and I would reach out to people I trusted in my network. And I’m talking to the whole network. I’m talking to people I used to work for, people I interviewed with, friends, family, anyone. I pulled the pride thing and I threw it away, like I’m just going to put myself out there. And I started emailing people and sending messages on social if I had a relationship with them and said, “This summer I’m launching my business full time. This is what I’ll be offering. I would love your support. If you need this kind of service for copywriting or if you know anybody else that does, I would love to talk with them.”

I just kind of put myself out there and I started planting the seeds as soon as I knew. And that made it so by the time I launched on June 1st officially, I hit the ground running. I had the two retainer clients and I already had some irons in the fire that were ready to start burning. So that’s how I was fortunate enough to secure my next client pretty quickly.

Rob Marsh:  So I want to dive a little bit deeper into this because it’s one thing to say I was putting myself out there, but let’s talk about specifically what did you do. Because I think a lot of people hear that and they’re like, “Well yeah, I’m putting myself out there. I posted on Instagram a couple of times, or I updated my LinkedIn profile,” whatever. Did you go through your calendar or your Rolodex, identify people to reach out to? Did you structure your times that you were doing it? Let’s talk about the specifics.

Lindsay Hyatt:  I made a list of people, like I said, everybody I could think of. I went through my LinkedIn, just kind of behind the scenes who I’m connected with. I went through old emails of people that I had interviewed with and hit it off with. I started connecting with people, asking people to have coffee with me. At the time, of course, we were all quarantined at home, so it was actually quite easy to say, “Hey, do you want to have coffee over Zoom?” People were looking to connect with people in general. So not even any kind of agenda, but just to say like, “Hey, this is what I’m doing, what are you up to? How can I support you?” So for me, it was always really about having conversations with people and just not being afraid to introduce myself or reconnect with somebody from my past.

I’m a big, big believer in personal brand, and so social media was always part of the game for me. I started a brand new Instagram feed from my business, started it from zero. I did all the things on LinkedIn. Once I launched, I changed my title and all of that. But I am pretty committed to showing up on social media as myself and putting content out there that I am inspired by, that I think could inspire others, and just blatantly sharing what I do. So people know, because most of the time people aren’t paying attention and you gotta keep coming back and coming back. So between social media, putting content out that supported my new business, and also just having good old-fashioned conversations with people, that was really what got me started.

Kira Hug:  Let’s talk more about building a personal brand because that is something that you’ve done really well and I think that works well today when we are pivoting more frequently. Your personal brand, you carry that with you no matter what. So what are some ways we could think about building our personal brand, strengthening that? What is working for you today or what have you seen work for others?

Lindsay Hyatt:  Yeah. The word authenticity gets thrown around so much to the point where it’s kind of annoying now, but sometimes that’s just the best word to use. I just think that if you’re comfortable enough just being you. Whether that is showing up in your pajamas and sharing a post or a story on Instagram or having a whole content calendar of your thoughts, your inspirations, things you’ve learned that you think would be helpful to people in your audience, I think that it’s really important to just follow through on that.

So as you’re building your personal brand, you have to look at who you are as a person and who you want to bring to your business. So of course you want to examine your values, what you feel comfortable sharing. Is there something that is an important part of your own brand voice and tone that’s going to be part of your persona, if you will? I know a lot of copywriters are introverts, and funny enough, I don’t consider myself an extrovert at all. I do not. But I’ve gotten to the point where I just don’t care what people think about it. And it took me a while to get there because in the beginning I’m like, “Oh my gosh, my aunt’s following me. I don’t want her to see this.” But then I realized this isn’t for her. She can follow if she wants, but this is not a message for her. It’s for people that I want to connect with. So it’s really about practice and deciding your values, deciding how you want to show up and how you feel comfortable showing up, and then just putting the reps in.

Rob Marsh:  I don’t hang out a lot on Instagram, but every time I open it up, there’s Lindsay. You are there a lot. So I’d love to just talk a little bit deeper. This might tie back into what you were doing with the blog because it feels, to me, like you’ll show up and talk about almost anything. Usually it’s marketing related, but there’s a lot of other personal stuff in there too. Talk about your philosophy when it comes to Instagram, how often you post, why you do the things that you do on Instagram and the impact that it has on your business.

Lindsay Hyatt:  Yeah. Stories is probably my favorite place to be. And the reason is because I really feel like I’m having a conversation with people. Very often, it is a back and forth where people will respond to me in my DMs based on something I said earlier in the day. And I usually find that when I’m sharing something more personal, that’s really when people want to connect because they relate to it. So they’ll say, “Oh my gosh, that happened with my kids the other day too,” or, “You were having a really tough day, and I was too, but what you said really resonated with me and it kind of helped me feel a little better.”

I’ve been accused of not having a sensor button. I will overshare often, but I am comfortable doing it because I have been doing it for so long. It’s gotten to the point where if I feel like I’m having some kind of conversation, it just feels very natural for me. So I almost, I’d prefer to show up on Stories or an Instagram Live or something rather than just posting a static post because I want the back and forth. That’s kind of what I thrive on and that’s why I keep showing up to Instagram. I found that community to be quite interactive. And that’s why I like it.

Kira Hug:  How do you make it work for you so it’s strategic and it is helping you build the business? And how do you do it when you’re having a rough day? I mean, because part of it is you’re talking about when you have a rough day, but then there are real rough days where it’s hard to show up. So how do you deal with it then?

Lindsay Hyatt:  I give myself permission to do what feels good to me. We’re taught like, you are showing up for your audience and you’re talking to them, it’s about them. And it is. But if I’m not feeling inspired or great, usually I’m not going to show up just to be there. Something I’ve always told people who ask about building a brand on social media is I share with them that it has to be something you actually enjoy. It has to be a little bit fun for you. Or one, you’re not going to do it, and two, you need to get comfortable with having the flexibility to be there when it’s the right time for you, and that’s based on your own intuition, and being okay with not showing up every day if you can’t. Because in the grand scheme of things, it’s really not that important to your life as a whole.

And then in terms of what I’m sharing, I don’t have a calendar that I schedule for the week or for the month of like, “This post is going out today. This post is going out tomorrow.” I have content pillars that I generally stay within business wise, especially if I have something that I’m promoting or launching. I have a million notes in my phone of content ideas or inspiration that I have that I think, “Oh, that would really fit under this pillar that I’m sharing this week because I have this new program.” So I kind of shoot from the hip. That’s what feels good to me. But I generally think if you have three key content pillars of things that line up towards your goals and your business or whatever you want to share, that’s kind of a nice framework to have.

Rob Marsh:  And then the impact on your business, how often do clients reach out? How often does that work, transact on Instagram? What does that look like?

Lindsay Hyatt:  Yeah. So I’ve had people reach out for copywriting and for coaching. I’ve even had referrals from people who said, “Oh, this person on Instagram referred me to you as a copywriter,” and I don’t even know them. So that’s the best compliment is, thinking of somebody here who I also follow, but we don’t know each other personally, she lives in another part of the country, she thought enough of me from what I’m showing up online to refer somebody to me. So I’ve had that come through Instagram. I’ve also gotten clients from Instagram because I am in their audience and I have kind of become somewhat of an expert in their brand just from following them. So I’ve pitched somebody through DMs before and became her copywriter for a project. So that was cool. To me, again, it all kind of comes back to building relationships. And then also on LinkedIn, LinkedIn is a wonderful place, especially for copywriters where you’re really getting more into the business side of connections and people who really need copy services. So I’ve gotten clients through LinkedIn as well on the copywriting side.

Kira Hug:  And you do stand out on LinkedIn because your content is more personal and it’s not the typical LinkedIn content in that feed. I’m also wondering how you work with clients, because I know we work together in the Think Tank  and I know more about your business. You can do just about anything for your clients, and sometimes that’s a great thing and sometimes it can feel like a disadvantage when you’re marketing and selling to clients. So how do you deal with that and turn it into an advantage on sales calls?

Lindsay Hyatt:  Yeah. I have struggled the whole time with niching. From the early days of the Accelerator to now even, I have had a hard time committing to a niche, and I’ve tried it a couple of times, but because of my wide variety of experiences in so many industries and in so many different realms of marketing, I didn’t want to settle into one thing because I really like the variety of doing a lot of things. And what I really like doing is building a relationship with a client and being able to dig deep into everything they’re doing. So more like a strategist besides just writing the copy.

So it has been challenging especially lately as I feel like people are being very cautious about where they’re spending marketing dollars of course, and that’s understandable. But my preference is I would love to be your go-to copy person. And because we have a relationship here, I have the opportunity then to dive even deeper with you and see where maybe there’s gaps. Maybe your email campaign could use a little bit of love. Maybe your social media feed could be a little bit more personalized. So I love seeing the whole big picture of a brand or of a client’s work and being able to support them with different types of copy depending on what they need.

Rob Marsh:  All right, let’s jump in here for just a second. Add a little context to some of the stuff that Lindsay has been sharing. So immediately, lots of things jump out. Before we jump into a lot of the stuff that Lindsay was talking about, her business, I want to just mention quickly just writing for radio. I know we haven’t talked about that a lot. Writing for radio is something that tends to happen in radio stations, with copywriters who are working directly for radio stations or in agencies. And there is a really good section of Luke Sullivan’s book all about writing for radio that’s in Hey, Whipple, his book. And we talked, I think, briefly with Luke about that as well in our interview with him.

I don’t have the number in front of me, but if you want to hear more about that, it is definitely a different kind of media. You don’t have any visual clue for your listeners, and so you’ve got to be entertaining or breakthrough, the noise that’s there. So anybody who’s interested in that, just jump in and check that out in his book. All right. Let’s talk about what Lindsay was sharing. Kira, what really stood out to you?

Kira Hug:  Lindsay’s whole approach to building her business is just something that speaks to me. I think it’s similar to my approach, that’s why I appreciate it. She’s all about just testing, trying. Her philosophy is, nothing is permanent. So Lindsay pivots until she figures out where she wants to land, and she may land there for a couple months or maybe a couple years and then she may pivot again. And I think she just brings the right mindset to this whole process because we all have to pivot anyway, but she’s coming into it with the right frame of mind so that it’s easier. And that’s something that we’ve been able to see her do. It’s not always easy to do that, but her approach is really smart and has helped her especially more recently.

Rob Marsh:  Yeah. I really also liked when we were asking about the blog that she started forever ago, just the process, the discipline required for writing every day. Even when you’re busy, you’re tired, you’ve got the schedule in front of you, and some of the things that she shared there about keeping the idea list and just knowing that she’s got to be writing every day. You and I don’t write to our list every single day, at least individually we don’t. We try to send something out at least during the week every day, but it’s not always from us. And that is a discipline. It is hard to get that writing done and get everything out on a regular basis, even when we’re only doing it two or three times a week. So I admire that, and it’s something that more of us need to be doing. Even if we’re not sharing our list, we should be writing every day.

Kira Hug:  Yeah. I struggle to get our email out once a week. I’m writing once a week, sometimes twice a week, but even that can feel like a struggle. But once you get into the routine, it’s a little bit easier and you can kind of get that schedule down. So yeah, I need to create that idea list like Lindsay and keep everything in one place. That seems to be the biggest struggle of mine and something that she’s already figured out.

Lindsay’s also great at putting herself out there, which you can hear from the entire conversation. I’ve been pitched personally by Lindsay. I’ve seen her pitches. She’s actually great at nailing that pitch. But she’s willing to plant seeds and to put herself out there and to feel a little uncomfortable and to not bring too much ego into the process. I’ve seen her do that even recently. I mean, she did it to build her business, which is why she grew quickly and she mentioned that, but she’s also done it recently and just booked a few new projects as of this past week because she’s been pitching like crazy. So I just appreciate that she is not afraid to do that and put herself out there.

Rob Marsh:  Yeah. A couple of weeks ago, you and I talked on the podcast in that episode just between you and me about what was working for copywriters and those that are succeeding. And Lindsay’s a really good example of this. This is exactly what it takes. If you’re going to pitch, if you’re going to be making these connections, you have to bury your pride, put aside your ego like you were saying, and look at it like planting seeds as opposed to asking for work. Because Lindsay’s creating relationships and sometimes they pay off immediately, but more often they pay off down the road. And those are the kinds of things that you can go back to then when things do get hard, when you do lose your clients and the work that you have, as Lindsay was sharing earlier on in the interview.

Kira Hug:  And she doesn’t just show up in the inbox with her pitches, she shows up on social media. She shows up even just in the program she’s a part of. In our Think Tank, she shows up to just about every Tuesday check-in call that we host. And it’s an optional call, you don’t have to show up, but Lindsay is great at if she’s a part of something, she is fully a part of it and you will see her and you will get to know her. And that’s just how she operates. And I think we could all learn from that, even if that doesn’t come naturally to us. But that’s part of being in a business, is you have to show up somewhere, otherwise people don’t know what you do and they definitely don’t know that they can hire you.

Rob Marsh:  Yeah. What Lindsay was sharing about being authentic, that word has been thrown around so much over the last few years, and I think misunderstood as well. A lot of people think that sharing everything negative, whatever is being authentic, and maybe that’s how it works for them. But just being that person who is there, who is ready to help, who is, I think she mentioned showing up in your pajamas if that’s what comes natural to you, I don’t think I would ever show up in my pajamas, but showing up however you are real, I think is an important part of that. She does that, like you’re saying, almost every day on Instagram. She talked a little bit about being more personal on LinkedIn and how to do that. And really, it’s just being yourself as opposed to putting on the copywriter voice and writing a copywriter or putting on the consultant hat and feeling like everything has got to be not necessarily perfect, but professional in a way that doesn’t come across as being natural.

Kira Hug:  Yeah. Her brand is consistent. So if you hang out with Lindsay in person, which we’ve been able to do, it’s the same person as the brand that she reflects online because she’s just doing what feels good to her. She also is great at sharing her viewpoints, which I know she’s experimented with more recently on LinkedIn and on social media, just to say what she stands for, what she values. She’s got some strong opinions that I appreciate, we all have them, but she’s willing to put them out there to differentiate her brand from all of the other brands out there.

And then I appreciate that she also talks about having fun, and I know that’s a big part of what feels good to her. So she does pay attention to that. She doesn’t grind it out with activities that aren’t fun for her. And I think that’s something that I know I can learn from her because I don’t always lean into fun. I’ll lean into pain before I lean into fun, but that comes more easily to her. And it’s just a good reminder that we can all pay attention to that, what feels easy, what feels fun, what could we do more of, because there’s probably something there that is working.

Rob Marsh:  Yeah, there’s that idea that people talk about when you’re looking at your business or anything that you’re doing. And that is, what would this be like? What would this feel like? What would I do differently if this was easy? And maybe twist that a little bit and say, if this was fun, how would my business change? So if you’re struggling, if showing up for what you want to do or for your clients feels like a drag, maybe asking that question saying, what would this be like if it was fun? And then make those changes because you get to choose how you do business. And if fun is an important part of that, then build it in.

Kira Hug:  Yeah. And there’s always a way to do it. There’s always just something little you can do to turn that on and make it more fun if you can catch it and realize, “Okay, something’s not working here. How can I make a quick switch in the copy I’m writing or in a project I’m working on?” Or just sitting down and mapping out my plan for the next six months, how can I make that activity a little bit easier? There’s always a way.

Rob Marsh:  It doesn’t necessarily have to be fun if that’s not your value. What would this feel like or what would this be like if it was fast? What would this feel like or what would this be like if it was easy. There, you can insert your own adjective or value or whatever it is that you want out of your business, but the question works for all of it.

Kira Hug:  All right, let’s get back to our interview with Lindsay where she shares how her business has changed over the last couple of years.

Rob Marsh:  So what are the changes have you made in your business from those earlier days, the HVAC type clients, to today, these relationships that you’re developing? How else has your business changed?

Lindsay Hyatt:  Yeah. So at the end of last year, I made the decision to go into coaching, and I struggled with that decision. I’m not abandoning copywriting because I love writing. It’ll always be part of what I do. I struggled with the decision because being a fan of the online space, especially Instagram, I saw coaches everywhere, the whole, everybody and their brother is a coach for different types of things. And I just thought, who are these people? I really struggled with the word coach.

But I started a certification program in the fall and I started to learn the actual skills that you need to support people as they’re growing, especially in a business setting. That gave me confidence and it kind of put into perspective what it really means to be a coach. I knew as soon as I left my nine-to-five that I would love to support other people who always wanted to pursue that path but maybe didn’t know how, maybe felt like it was too risky, especially women. I really wanted to be a source of support or even inspiration like, “Hey, if I can do it, you can do it, because I’m certainly nobody special. This is something that I didn’t even think was possible for me, but it can be possible and it can be very rewarding.”

So going down that path and growing this arm of my business to support other creatives with mindset and business coaching is my new passion project, and it has been very exciting. And also