From $11/hr Barista To Six Figure Copywriter

This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.

[Music]

What's up friends, listeners, Side Hustle School community. My name is Chris Guillebeau. So excited to work on this story today from an Austinite. Austinite means someone from Austin, Texas, a wonderful city. I've been there many, many times, especially for book events.

And in 27 days from now, I'll be beginning my new tour for the Money Tree. My book, "The Money Tree," is gonna take me to 40 cities in North America. I would love to see you in one of them. If you're not in North America, I'm gonna work on that next one thing at a time. But if you go to MoneyTreeBook.com, you can see all the dates for my upcoming tour, which includes Austin, Texas.

All right, today's story. This Austinite starts a coffee blog and becomes a barista. And all that is cool, but he has no idea that these things will merge into an $8,000 a month dream job. What changes he make to go from an aspiring freelance writer to making $2,000 a month, which is not bad at all, but then making four times that amount? Some of the answer, as you'll hear, is consistency, finding better clients, et cetera.

But he also made a simple tweak to his work description or his title, essentially, that had an immediate effect. What was that tweak? How did it work? How might you apply this to your idea? All that's coming up in today's episode from $11 an hour barista to six-figure copywriter.

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Garrett Oden can remember the very first cup of coffee he actually enjoyed. He was a freshman in college, and one of his friends worked at a local coffee shop. He pestered Garrett to come give coffee a try, promising him that not all of it tastes like burnt rubber. Finally, he relented, going to the cafe, ordering something called a French press and taking a sip. His eyes were opened that day, along with his taste buds, green apple, caramel, milk chocolate.

Garrett can still remember the shock he felt when he realized coffee could have real flavor. Hooked, he made an affiliate blog on WordPress to document his journey into the world of coffee and hopefully make some money from Amazon while he was at it. He wrote fascinating educational content, like does coffee go bad? And why does my coffee taste bitter? While he made a couple hundred bucks a month, it wasn't very lucrative.

However, the research paid off. A year later, he applied to be a barista at a new cafe and was hired. Shortly after that, he got an email from a business owner in Chicago. That guy was preparing to open a massive coffee e-commerce store and wanted to start building authority for his brand. He'd found Garrett's blog and asked for his help writing articles to do it.

Paid help, that is. Garrett was surprised thinking, people actually pay money for this? He did some research and crafted a proposal. $800 per month for 12 1,000 word articles. He had no idea if it was a fair offer.

Garrett simply estimated it would take two hours to write each post and figured $800 divided by 24 hours is $33 per hour. It seemed insane because for him, that was nearly three times what he was making at the coffee shop. The coffeepreneur accepted and Garrett Oden Writing was born. That initial contract didn't last long. The business owner would give up on the coffee idea, but the fire was lit.

So Garrett began looking at freelancing sites to see what other coffee related gigs he could get. And sure enough with his resume, he didn't have a hard time finding more. Three blog posts for $80 for one client. Six blog posts at $30 an hour for another. A 2,000 word article for $100.

Garrett was getting work, but it was low level, mostly for other affiliate websites. He knew to get higher quality repeat clients, he'd have to build his own authority. So he started pitching magazines. In early 2016, he published his first article in the Respected Daily Coffee News. Later that year, he pitched a feature story to print magazines around a trip he was taking to visit the Guatemalan coffee farm.

Fresh Cup Magazine picked up the story for $125. And in August, Garrett's first feature was published. Now with multiple industry publications attached to his name, he found it much easier to get the attention of his target coffee clients. That December, he brought in his first $1,000 month from writing, averaging $40 an hour. During this time, Garrett had moved up to manager of a coffee shop he'd been working at.

It was a good job, but he couldn't get the idea of freelance writing out of his head. He and his wife wanted to travel, and he knew that increasing his writing income would help. So in early 2017, Garrett began stepping up his game. The first change was finding food technology clients to work for. This industry was getting a lot of investment, and there were no writers who specialized in it.

Garrett wanted to get in early. The second change was moving towards more copywriting work instead of just blogs, things like webpages, emails, and marketing handouts for trade shows. And the third change was viewing his clients more as relationships he wanted to nurture, rather than just gigs or projects that would end. He joined LinkedIn, made a new website, and began cold pitching himself, no longer as a freelance writer, but a freelance copywriter. He also changed his business name to Garrett Oden Copywriting.

Slowly, his income began to grow. By May 2017, Garrett and his wife decided to leave their jobs and explore over 20 countries. The travel was thrilling, but also exhausting, and it was hard to grow the business. He was bringing in just two to $3,000 a month, which was only enough to sustain their lifestyle if they were really budget-conscious. So after 15 months abroad, they moved to Waco, Texas.

Now able to follow more of a routine, Garrett was also able to thrive. He began cold pitching, posting on LinkedIn, and creating content for his own website. He now ranks number one on Google for coffee copywriter and food tech copywriter. In 2019, Garrett earned $70,000 before tax, and in 2020, he expects to break six figures. [Music]

So what was that big difference I alluded to?

Well, first of all, Garrett worked hard, he was consistent, all that stuff mattered, but specializing in food tech and then calling himself a copywriter was part of what made a big difference for him. And that description, just that word copywriter, the profession, it signifies a business relationship or a connection between whatever you're writing and some sort of business goal. And then identifying with food technology makes it clear what his expertise and interest is. So that was obviously a very smart move. Often people are afraid to do something like that because they fear it's going to limit themselves.

When actually it's going to help you a lot, it's going to make you an expert in authority, which in turn is going to increase your rates. Now, by the way, Garrett has actually been one of our writers in the past. We were very fortunate to have him on our team. And part of the reason he stopped working for Cytosol School was because he's just too busy. So I respect that and we wish him well.

I'm not sure how available he is since, you know, he's busy, but if you're in food tech and looking for someone reliable and creative, which is a hard combination to find at times, but he is your guy. So check him out at garrettoden.com. Of course, we will link it up in the notes as well and try to keep his number one rankings going strong. All right, those notes. All right, sidehustleschool.com/1165.

Inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is better. Thank you so much. My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is Cytosol School. [Music]

From the Onward Project.