Welcome to this week’s episode of the phenomenal career podcast. I’m excited to have Melody Flumendorf with me today. Hi, Melody. Can you give us an introduction?
My name is Melody. I’m a copywriter and content writer for female entrepreneurs and small businesses, and I help them to sell and I help them to get more clients, but in a way that doesn’t feel salesy.
How did you come to do that and did you have to overcome and hurdles?
My road is probably very intertwined with mindset work. My late father was an advertising copywriter and as a child, I went with him to the agencies and you know, ads were done very differently back then. It was all a power game and something I didn’t like as a child. But I was always interested in writing stories. I had an old orange typewriter at home and we’d sit together and hammer away at the keys. I would write fairy tales, mainly, and would create my own library at home.
I was always pretty obsessed with words and books. But I never understood how you could actually turn writing fairy tales into a job. I didn’t want to do what my father was doing because you had to constantly fight for your place within the industry. Advertising in general can be pretty brutal.
I always wanted to write, but I had this idea in my head that you have to be super successful from the beginning. I put so much pressure on myself that I effectively stopped writing. I then took part in the Growth Edit – we did the programme together actually, and it was great! I was asked by the coach all the time, what do you really want to do? And I had no answer. I was constantly scribbling in journals but came up against a lot of mind blocks. After several weeks or so, I realised that my mind block was that initial thought I had had, all those years ago – I could only be a writer if I wrote a best selling novel. Which was ridiculous – I knew from my family’s experience that you didn’t have to be a best selling author to write. I never wanted to write a novel and I never actually wrote on but I did start writing that day again.
From there, I started advertising my services and started getting clients, and then everything started moving pretty fast. When you find your zone of genius, when you find what you’re good at, what you were born to do, you are already on your way. The difficult part will always be the mindset work, setting up your business strategy, scaling, overcoming yourself. The difficult part is rarely the zone of genius.
You mentioned you work with small businesses. Why is that?
I understand small businesses because I’m also a small business. And the other thing is small businesses are often very agile. When you have big businesses, they want to hold agency, they have to show something for their budget. They will blow a lot of money, not necessarily on the best thing, but on the thing that looks good. With small business owners, you have less of that because they’re more in touch with their business. They’re behind it, which is why they burn out more often.
What do people need to consider before deciding to work with a copywriter or content writer?
I think what they have to consider is what they want to achieve. Usually, the two things people want is either to get more clients or more visibility. It’s very important that they know what they stand for. If you have three pillars, three values that are important to them, that we can integrate into the copy, It doesn’t matter so much, if you don’t know exactly what kind of copy you want, but having these pillars is really good for evergreen content.
How long have you been doing this work?
I started doing this during COVID and the business took off almost immediately. It was really interesting. I think there’s a lack in the market for what I offer, a mixture of mindfulness and copywriting. It’s pretty niche what I offer.
What’s your career been teaching you?
It has taught me that a lot of being an entrepreneur has to do with self-confidence.
I always feel you have to take your client by the hand and say, don’t worry, I’ve sorted this out for you. I think that’s very important. It’s not only about the writing, it’s about giving a client the feeling of, I really get you. You really have to invest a lot of time in that, because then the copy and the content will be much easier to write.
Where people can connect with you find out more about your journey and your work.
They can connect with me on Instagram. I try to give tips to help people with their content and with their copy. Otherwise, they can find me on LinkedIn or my website.
