Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Paige Worthy. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Paige, we’re so excited for our community to get to know you and learn from your journey and the wisdom you’ve acquired over time. Let’s kick things off with a discussion on self-confidence and self-esteem. How did you develop yours?
Oh, you haven’t heard about the Confidence Pill? I took that — worked like a charm. Just kidding.
It’s work, man. I got bullied pretty hard when I was younger. One memory that really sticks out for me is early on in high school, when Baby Nerd Paige knew how to hand-code HTML and had her own little website on an Apache server in her dad’s office.
I was finding my writing voice and trying my hand at short stories (they were objectively awful). I published a couple of them to that little website, and two boys from school found them and started sending me cruel (anonymous) emails about how terrible my writing was.
Yes, I’m still holding a grudge.
How that didn’t stop me from writing forever, I have no idea.
But somehow I’m still in love with language and delight in writing — even though these days it’s more client stories than short stories.
And the longer I’m in this business, the more I understand that Same Doesn’t Sell. As a business owner, I sold myself short for a long time by curbing my creativity in my own marketing copy.
I was not the buttoned-up, “I’ll help you get more conversions” marketing professional I came across as, and I was hearing from exactly the wrong kind of prospects as a result.
I tell my clients now that marketing exists not just to draw your dream customers to you — but also to repel the folks you’d never work with in a million years.
Once you internalize that and put in the effort to find the heart of your message and voice, you’re unstoppable.
And I took my own advice. I thought about what really gets me to my desk in the morning and what I believe and turned that into the professional ethos that grounds everything I write. In my copy, I’m all soft insides with an oddly pleasing spiny exterior.
I cringe every time somebody unsubscribes from my email list, or I lose a project to another marketer. But then I shake it off because I get to be 100% myself every day, and I know that when someone wants to talk about partnering up, they’re pickin’ up what I’m puttin’ down.
What’s the worst that can come out of being true to your own brand? Someone you wouldn’t like anyway decides they don’t want to buy from you? Damn.
Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?
In short: I’m an email and website copywriter for businesses that give a shit. (Read: If you care, you can be my client.) But let me back up a little.
I have a college degree in journalism, but after a brief career in community news, then consumer magazines, then B2B publishing, I called it quits (okay, jumped without a net) and turned to marketing. I’ve had my own business since 2010 and have run it full-time for more than a decade!
I spent several years building up my marketing offerings from short blog posts to full websites and email campaigns. Then, in 2019, I discovered a brand messaging framework all about centering customers, making clients their guides, and letting empathy drive the story.
It changed everything about how I work with clients.
Today, every client project — no matter what — kicks off with a messaging and brand voice session that sets the tone for everything I write and makes the copy so much more effective.
My client writing helps them build relationships with their dream customers based on shared human experience and shared vision for a transformed future — so they know they’re coming by every sale honestly.
The best way to get to know me is by subscribing to my weekly Words Matter email, which blends personal stories with marketing insights to help you find your own voice and make customers feel seen, not sold to.
Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?
I wish I had more advice on how to write, but mostly, the qualities that have impacted me most are related to how I do business. And listen, I’ll acknowledge my privilege here: I’m a white woman with a safety net and support system I can tap into if push comes to shove.
I’m in an economic position to turn down business that doesn’t suit me. Not everybody is.
So take what resonates here and leave the rest.
Sales: a necessary evil when you’re running your own business
Selling is not gross.
I repeat: selling is not gross.
Being gross while you’re selling is. If you know, you know. They’ll know too.
I understood over many years that sales isn’t about a transaction for me; it’s about building a relationship around mutual trust and respect for each other’s craft. Both parties are selling themselves. And either can decide it’s a no-go.
A few tips:
– Pay attention to red flags. They might be little or still a little pink in the middle, but they get bigger and redder the deeper you go. You will regret that paycheck.
– Be honest about what you can (or want to) take on. If it’s not a hell yes, it’s a hell no. Period.
– Not a fit? There’s so much pie. Develop a network of trusted colleagues you can refer if you’re not the person for the job in question. Prospective clients remember integrity, and fellow pros rarely forget a successful referral.
Client boundaries: a must-have for people who don’t want to jump out their windows
Just beginning your journey? This will be an uphill climb for you forever and ever, amen.
It’ll probably be even more difficult to set and stick to boundaries if you’re a woman, because my goodness, the world really wants us to break our backs for other people, don’t they?
I know this because I’m still runnin’ up that hill.
But as a business owner, it’s on you to draw lines that you won’t cross and expect others to respect, too. And you have to know what you’ll do in the event of a violation.
My tip: Write it down. If you create uber-specific contracts or other written company policies — yes, even if your business is just you — you have no choice but to enforce them. (I now have a “ghost clause” in my contract that dictates I get paid if a client drops off the face of the earth.)
“It says on the paper…” you’ll say. And then you decide what happens next.
Generally giving fewer f*cks: a nice-to-have talent in a tough world
As a copywriter, I am precious about my words. But I also tell my clients, “You can’t hurt my feelings.”
Unless a client annihilates my first draft with a barrage of extra commas, I’m teflon when it comes to edits because it’s not about me.
Not only do my clients ultimately own every word I’ve written for them, but it’s their business my words need to reflect — and they have to love what they’re putting out there.
Still, some feedback can sting more than others.
Couple of tips for dealing with that:
– Remember their role: We’ve all got our junk. And you never know what junk a client is bringing into your interaction. Leave some space for that reality!
– There’s a big difference between criticism and abuse. Defending yourself, both from off-base criticism and borderline tyranny, isn’t easy — but unless you have a very specific kind of business, you aren’t getting paid to be someone else’s punching bag. Trust yourself to speak up. And…
– Sleep on it. Do not send that hastily penned, poorly veiled clapback right away. Give yourself at least a few hours before you respond to especially harsh feedback.
All the wisdom you’ve shared today is sincerely appreciated. Before we go, can you tell us about the main challenge you are currently facing?
My business is changing! My professional ethos and the services I offer haven’t changed, but how I want to talk about it has.
So I’m faced with the Herculean (and hopefully not Sisyphean) task of rethinking my own website copy, plus my lead generation and email strategies. Gah!
That means treating myself like a client — did you hear? the cobbler’s children have no shoes — and to do that, I’ve hired a business coach.
He won’t write my copy for me, because I would never loosen my iron grip on my voice. But he’s helping me put the same strategic thought into this “pivot of spirit” I would for my own clients — and acting as a bracingly honest sounding board as I develop my new message.
For me, this process is personal. And honestly, it’s scary. For all my confidence in my writing, putting something new-ish into the world still feels a bit like jumping off a cliff.
Getting an outside perspective is absolutely essential when you live inside your business every day — and even more so if you’re like me and also live deep, deep inside your own head.
I never thought I’d enjoy the collaboration so much, and I can’t wait to see what ultimately comes out of it.
Contact Info:
- Website: http://www.paigeworthy.com
- Other: Subscribe to my weekly Words Matter email: https://paigeworthy.com/email-subscribe
Image Credits
Osiris Cote
