You work seven years, and whaddya get?
Threatened with legal action, and not even a gift.
I know, I know. It’s a day early.
That’s because today’s a milestone.
Ten years since I last had any gainful employment.
On May 29th, 2015. 12:30pm. I walked out of the city centre offices of my last full time employer for the last1 time.
I’d been there seven years.
Seven long, sometimes rewarding and sometimes infuriating years. Two promotions, one week-long suspension, and one or two fun discussions with the Ops Director that will crop up later.
So rather than give you a list of things I’ve learned working for myself first as a freelancer and now as an agency partner, I thought I’d arm you with the three lessons I took away from that job.
Hopefully you’ll get a laugh out of it.
One - you need to define what success means
I thought I had a good handle on what success meant as an in-house copywriter for an SEO company. Every piece had to do three things:
Hit the brief. Then rank. Then sell.
Solid KPIs. If copy is published, visible and converting, it’s good copy.
Positive reviews were great too, like, but it was about doing the job for the customer.
Yeah. I didn’t get to define success. Success, instead, was defined for me. All I had to write was content that did one thing.
Earn the company I worked for more money.
So imagine my surprise when I recieved three emails.
One from a client, leaving a glowing review that conversions were up massively.
One from an account manager, saying a different client had another round of amends.
And one from the Ops Director summoning me to a meeting.
Cue ten minutes being chewed out about email two. Because needing to amend copy made it less cost-effective for my employer.
For ten years, first as a freelancer, and now with HNW, I’ve been able to decide what a successful piece of work does. It needs to be published, visible and converting.
Get that right and in my experience, the money takes care of itself.
Two - You need to be able to sell yourself without your work
When I set up the first 603 Copywriting website, I laboured under the illusion that just showing off the work I’d done would be enough to win me enough work to grow a business.
So imagine my surprise when I recieved another email from the Ops Director. Summoning me to a meeting.
Cue ten minutes of being chewed out about my website. Because even though a different freelancer still had an old version of the company website in his portfolio, I wouldn’t be allowed the same luxury.
In fact, were I to mention my employer or any of the companies I’d worked for (some decent enough names, that rhymed with Heel Poldings and Nontezuma’s Chocolate), I’d be sued. Not sure what for, or on what basis, but they’d sue me. They’d done it before. I knew.
I’d had to draft the letter telling the poor bastard to expect to hear from a lawyer.
I took it well. I went into the MD’s office straight from that meeting and told him “if you’re going to fucking sue me, get some other twat to write the email telling me.”
I was fuming. I shouldn’t have been. I should’ve thanked them for forcing me out of my comfort zone.
Instead of just relying on my book, I had to learn how to pitch clients and sell my skills and expertise without just introvertedly shoving a link at them and saying “Words? Like?”
An indispensable skill, and one that’s paid my mortgage this past decade.
Three - you’ve got to be able to do it for you
When I walked out of that last full time job for the last time, I didn’t expect much. Card and a whip-round for a few pints maybe? It was a company tradition - to the point that I was called a tight bastard for not chipping a fiver in after someone had left, come back, and left a second time.
Alright, I’d gone from being another SEO consultant on the rebound from my first copywriting job collapsing, to an SEO copywriter, to the Head of Communications, but I didn’t expect a carriage clock.
And fine, I’d been a third of the brain trust that built the creative department that’s still going strong a decade later (despite the Ops Director’s insistence that we were wasting time on mobile sites because “nobody would ever Google from a phone”), but I didn’t expect a banner.
A card, and about fifty quid to spend on beer in Rain Bar that evening. That was what I expected.
I got the card. I didn’t get the money. It’d been confiscated and given back to the donors by the Ops Director. She was clear. I didn’t deserve it. I was a dickhead2.
Everything I’d done for her company! Fuming again, surely?
I wasn’t. I didn’t care about her. I didn’t do it for her.
I angled to become the company’s first ever SEO copywriter because I was good at it and wanted to keep doing it. I wanted to get involved in the creative department because I knew the other two lads were angling to leave and wondered if we’d be able to set up our own agency (a three man agency? It’ll never work). I wanted the responsibility of a senior role because I needed to learn how businesses worked before I set my own up.
I’d done it all for myself. Like Heisenberg with a pen and a better hairline.
And the card never even made it out of Rain Bar.
Gosh, that was cathartic. But if you’re struggling in a job you hate, with an Ops Director who hates you (and who once hired a Social Media expert just to tell him people went on Facebook to look up businesses, not socialise), hopefully you can take those three lessons to heart.
Define what success looks like on every project
Learn how to be your own biggest champion
Don’t do it for revenge, or praise - do it for yourself
Something mint - some blatant fucking egotism
One of the last HNW jobs I did this week was a real throwback. An on-hold marketing script. I started off as a junior copywriter doing on-hold scripts, and that company (despite shitcanning me during a recession) never threatened to sue me. So one of the favourite things I’ve ever written remains in my book to this day.
It’s so good, British Gas ripped it off.
Bastards.
They also used the same fucking VO artist. Maybe I should sue them? Although given that they could afford the actual A Team music, they’d probably win.
PS: No Unmemorable Title next week. I’m currently on holiday in Greece, and won’t be back in time to write something. Sorry, not sorry. You can always go and read this post on the HNW blog instead.
OK, not the last time. I’d nipped in to use the bathroom after a meeting about six years later, and ended up going in and selling tickets to a conference to an old colleague.
She was wrong about mobile internet usage, but you know what? I can’t argue there. I was, and I remain, a dickhead.