Moving from Copywriting to Consulting
It’s no secret that I love consulting as a business for myself, and it’s a career I also enjoy sharing with my students. But I’ll be the first to admit that consulting isn’t the right fit for everyone.
It’s still true that consulting is an excellent fit for all types of people with diverse backgrounds who can approach problems with their unique lens of solutions. It’s an excellent path for those who enjoy the freedom of being a fractional consultant for businesses that need the support of a strategist without having a member fully on their team.
I always caution newer business owners against going directly into consulting. Why? It takes time to earn the relationships, knowledge, and skillset that are best learned through done-for-you work.
Sara Anna Powers a Conversion Copywriter and the Founder of the Clickworthy Copywriting Certification™. I had the opportunity to speak with her on my podcast. Anna is one of the students in Fractional Freedom and our abundance mastermind. She, like me, acknowledges that all businesses still need “the doers” that provide the services to make the profit happen. Still, there is also an incredibly high value in the consultants who can leverage their skills in such a way to offer the strategy and a bird’s eye view of the next steps.
Sara’s Business Background
As the Founder and CEO of the Clickworthy Copywriting Certification™, Anna is not only a copywriter with extensive experience but also a successful online business mentor.
But she wasn’t always a copywriter!
Anna began her career as a civil litigator and practiced law for eight and a half years. After five years into her practice, she started to dissect the parts of the job that she loved and what she didn’t love. She realized her favorite functions of her job were analyzing and building arguments. She thought there must be a better way to use her skills and hoped especially for a way that involved more time with human interaction as Anna is a self-described people person!
This was when she started a separate business in an unrelated niche. Two years later, she found copywriting, began carefully studying the craft of conversion, and achieved six figures in her freelance copywriting business before taking it full-time in 2018.
Fractional Freedom Incubator
Around this point in her budding career, she found Fractional Freedom. Anna realized that she would have to start charging such high rates to justify her time and experience if she wanted to move to the next financial milestone in her business.
For Anna, Fractional Freedom was a no-brainer to learn how to leverage her skill set to still be incredibly valuable to a company while also stepping away from that one-on-one client work. Consulting was the way to reach that next level.
Anna now trains and certifies aspiring copywriters in her strategic process and methodology.
When to Level Up?
Anna explained she knew she was ready to move from done-for-you copywriting to coaching and certifying when her copywriting business was so booked up with clients needing copy that she was forced to turn clients away. She saw this happen to her own business in 2020 when there was a substantial uptick in service providers seeking copywriting services. She said it best in our conversation, “[You know] people want to work with you, but there’s no more you to go around…I think [then] looking at consulting is a great option.”
The second part of what made Anna feel ready to transition from just done-for-you copy to consulting work was that her internal confidence was ignited by a presented copy and brand strategy challenge rather than intimidated. Anna also explains that it’s a bit of a personality match. Her consulting skills aligned with what she loved best in law - looking at all the different angles and putting in place the best plan and arguments (or, in copywriting’s world, messaging), not so different from the challenges presented by conversion copywriting.
Final Note
Anna has big plans to continue to grow her certification program. She shared with me on my podcast that she had just wrapped up her best launch to date, with nearly 70 people in her most recent round. The follow-on program is a 90-day certification program focused on building the actual copywriting business, with a focus on backend processes. Anna maintains her finger on the pulse, as she calls it, by continuing to serve as a copywriter to other successful businesses, allowing her to stay current with market trends in brand marketing.
With an unending love of strategy and a love of the business, Anna continues to serve a handful of high-level clients while also serving her consulting clients. A perfect mix.
To learn more about Anna, visit her website here: https://www.saraannapowers.com or connect on Instagram here: https://www.instagram.com/saraannapowers/.
To hear more about how Anna’s business was brought into a brand new chapter after taking my Fractional Freedom Incubator, tune in here.
