So, just guessing here … you’re a genius, right?

Ok maybe YOU wouldn’t say that – because then you’d look all big-headed and kind of rude.

But come on, I feel like we’re chums already – no need to be coy with me.

Admit it, you have bloody marvelous ideas and expertise to share – and frankly waaay more people need that good stuff in their lives.

Trouble is …

It all started back when I was just a nipper …

(~imagine bubbly harp music and wavy vision, as we go baaaack in tiiiime~)

Fresh out of Cambridge, with a Natural Sciences (Biological) BA tucked under my arm (not literally – no one wants to see that sh*t), I’d just started as a budding science editor at Hodder & Stoughton Educational Publishers in leafy Sevenoaks, England. Nice.

I’d barely figured out how to use the single typewriter I shared with my co-worker (it was the early 90s – and still a good 6 months before one of those baby Apple Mac things arrived … you remember, with the 3½ inch floppy disk drive and tiny screen built in?)

… when I got my first taste of the power of copy to persuade.

See, our department was bidding to publish a series of books for a big examination board. And since it was a jolly important contract, it came as quite a surprise – to absolutely everyone – that I was asked to write our proposal!

Bonkers really, but knowing that so much depended on it, I spent DAYS on that letter. I asked questions, I pored over reports, I read every bit of relevant information I could dig up – 

I got inside their heads and figured out EXACTLY what the board members wanted us to bring to their lives.

Then I set out, in irresistibly customized terms, just how our department could make their every dream come true. I crafted and edited and honed those words until they shone with an enchanting clarity that made our offer a no-brainer.

(No-one said ‘no-brainer’ in the 90s … but you take my point.)

And it bloody well worked. We got the contract – I was a COPY HERO!!

Honestly, the thrill of that early success still fills me with wonder. It is genuinely magical to me that words – the stories they tell, the emotions they stir, and the trust they build – can be so powerful.

And I love that there is ALWAYS a solution. 

Just the right words, to precisely the right person, at exactly the right time … will always cast the spell you need. It’s just a matter of finding those words.

I’ve spent decades now shaping people’s thinking with words and stories – as a published author and editor, as an actor and director (a story for another time …) and of course as a conversion copywriter.

I’ve worked with tons of major international publishers, solo-preneurs, nonprofits and start-ups – as well as with some of the biggest names in marketing and messaging, like James Wedmore, Brandon Lucero, Christina Jandali and Tarzan Kay.