Objections to corrections: From lawyering to copy editing and the case for brand voice with Gill Hill [Bonus ep]

Hello, hello. Welcome to the place for offbeat health professionals who have bravely swapped their health care hats for non clinical creative caps. I’m Caitlin, a psychologist turned copywriter, and this is Healers with Hustles.

Caitlin: today’s guest is Gillian Hill, an editor for copywriters and a working

Caitlin: copywriter who specializes in brand voice. Gill started her business in 2017, first editing for fiction writers, then branching into websites. Once she discovered brand voice, as in finding the exact right words to sound like yourself while selling, she was on a new path and she’s merged brand voice copy and editing ever since.

Caitlin: Now I know Gill from Brand Voice Academy where I learned my brand voice superpowers. So I’m super excited to be chatting to Gill today.

Caitlin: Welcome Gill, all the way from the U. S. I’m very excited that you’re here. You’re our first international guest.

Gillian: Oh, exciting.

Caitlin: Very exciting. and I can’t wait to chat to you today about brand voice, but I thought maybe first we could hear a little bit about your story because I guess the idea for the podcast is like, for people that are in maybe professional careers and they have maybe like a little bit of an inkling or a desire to do creative work.

Caitlin: And I think you’re a great example of that. So I’d love to hear all about it.

Gillian: Oh, thank you. Well, yeah, so you can, even though I’m in the US, you can probably tell by the accent that I’m not from here originally. so I’m from Scotland and when my husband and I lived in Scotland, I was a lawyer, went to law school.

Gillian: He went to engineering school and was quite happily going along in my career as a lawyer. I had imagined that that’s what I was going to be since I was probably. 12 or something watching Ally McBeal on the television. I never ended up in that type of role. I ended up doing contracts and, specifically kind of like commercial real estate, you would say in the US, I’m so used to describing it now in the US way, and a little bit of environmental law, but I used to joke that I was like the anti Erin Brockovich because I used to work for the waste management companies, who were, but it was very important to make sure all responsibilities got, you know, divvied up appropriately and making sure everybody knew what they were taking on in terms of environmental issues.

Gillian: So absolutely loved doing that job. And then in 2009, after my husband had done a PhD, the industry that he worked on in Scotland just disappeared. So there was really, he was leaving academia, ready to start work again. And as he came out, there was no place to work in Scotland. and so there was like various options of where to move to, but we basically moved to the U. S. We decided to move here. it was in 2009. So for those of you who remember, there was a bit of a real estate crash happening at that point. So he had a visa, but I didn’t. And there was really… nobody was going to sponsor me and pay for a visa for me to work over here. and then fast forward a few years where eventually we got a green card, but by that point we’d had a baby and then we moved States and then we moved States again, and then we had another baby.

Gillian: So there was a whole period of kind of like family and really concentrating on And then when my youngest was two, I was ready to. get back to work. I had been creative through that time. I had done a lot of, fiction writing and I’d really enjoyed fiction writing as my outlet, but I wanted something more of a kind of day to day career rather than just writing fiction at night because I still have not finished the novel that I started in 2009, like, written and had published a couple of short stories, but my grand plan for the novel has never gone to the point of it being published or published.

Gillian: Finished. Still in a draft box somewhere. so yeah, at that point I was thinking, well gosh, I don’t know that I could, if I’m really employable as a lawyer, I’ve never worked in the US before. I’m the primary caregiver of two kids, I would have to sit the bar, which would involve sitting a whole load of exams again, which I didn’t want to do.

Gillian: And at that point I actually started editing for fiction writers. That’s sort of how I got my, got into my role as a copywriter. I started editing for fiction writers, first of all for friends, for free, and then they would pass my name on to other people and I started charging. And that’s really where the kind of like outlet of I’d like to do something for work and it would be fun if it was creative and I enjoyed it at the same time.

Caitlin: Beautiful. Yeah. so many changes And I have so many questions, but I was really curious about the difference in terminology and I had a little question about how have you found you

Caitlin: have assimilated American, speak into your vocabulary or you keep your Scottish slang

Gillian: yeah, it’s really interesting. So my husband is also Scottish. we come from different parts of the country, but we met at 18 when we went to university. So we’ve known each other since that time.

Gillian: there’s like words and phrases we still use, but I would say that when it comes to anything sort of professional, then we defer to the US version. So for example, over here, I will say that I used to be an attorney. I don’t say I used to be a lawyer, just because it’s not really the language that they understand.

Gillian: I’ll say I went to college and not university or I went to law school. I kind of use that language. And then our two kids were born here. So, When they were younger, they had kind of Scottish accents, but once they went to school, I think it’s a good thing, they assimilate with their peers and they listen to their teachers.

Gillian: So they have little American accents, although if you were to ask our Scottish, well, our Scottish family would say they spoke very American, and their American, our American friends think they have a Scottish accent. So I’m assuming they’re somewhere in the middle there.

Caitlin: Somewhere in the middle, yes.

Gillian: Yeah, exactly.

Gillian: But I definitely find when it comes to any kind of work terminology, I really defer to the, to the U. S. version of it.

Caitlin: The U. S., that makes, yeah, that makes a lot of sense, just for clarity. yeah, I lived in the, in America for like a very, very brief stint, because I worked at, Disney World. So I lived in Florida for, yeah.

Caitlin: About six months and I found that because I had a lot of, it was fantastic. I, had a lot of American friends, which was great, but I definitely changed my vocab and I remember this one, night we were going to a party or something like that. And my fully Aussie slang, like inner Bogan came out and I was like, yeah, why don’t we just swing by the bottle and grab a bottle of grog?

Caitlin: And they just like all looked at me. It’s like, oh, I was so embarrassed, like, I’ve been trying so hard to

Gillian: Yeah. Well, and I sort of feel like Disney and Florida is like a whole nother cultural thing, even than America. we have not yet gone to Disney because that’s, it’s not particularly my thing. but yeah, I feel like when you know that, and I think that’s interesting in itself.

Gillian: People come from all over the US, but it has sort of a culture of its own.

Caitlin: That’s so fascinating. Yeah, that you have to be aware of, and particularly when you’re editing, doing copy editing, is that part of your process, like you work out where they’re from,geographically, and then, have to, Change things.

Gillian: So when I, all the editing I’ve done has been in the US. And so I really always have edited. Occasionally I do things with a UK dictionary or Canadian. don’t know if I’ve ever edited for anyone in Australia, but I could, I have talked about kind of brand voice and language with people in Australia.

Gillian: because there are similarities to Britain, right? We have some of the little theme. tweaks and some of the, words, like how we spell things, are similar. but mostly I have just worked for people in the US. But they will also have, the nuances are not so varied I would say, compared to country to country, but there are, there can be nuances state to state, or more likely maybe like the south of the US versus the north.

Gillian: At the end of the day, most of the editing I do is for digital businesses, right? Online businesses where their audience is all across the U. S. and sometimes all across the world. And so what interests me is they don’t, they either maybe want to hide their specifics of their geography. I actually think they should call it out and be proud of it, but sometimes people want to sort of cover it and just become more in the middle.

Gillian: Or they don’t really realize that something they’re seeing. is specific geographically to where they come from and they don’t realize not everyone says kitty corner which is what some people in the south of America describe as like diagonally opposite on a like on a four way junction they’ll describe that as kitty corner but it’s not something people in the north say it’s not something i had ever heard we my husband and i moved to texas first so we kind of got into the southern way As our first,

Caitlin: yes,

Gillian: like hearing the first set of slang.

Gillian: there’s lots of little nuances people use that they don’t necessarily know is geographically specific to them.

Caitlin: Yeah, it’s, so fascinating, all of that. But how do you, so you said sometimes people wanna like, cover things over and make it kind of a bit, Sanitized might not be the best word, but how do you

Gillian: That’s how it.

Gillian: And what are your best tips or how do you maybe make tiny tweaks as an editor if people say, Oh, no, I do want to show my personality or show my humanity or show that. What makes me me. Yeah. I think the biggest thing that I talk to business owners about with this is sounding the way you speak.

Gillian: So I think there’s this, and I mean, it sounds so obvious and I think we all hear it, but then as a lawyer, I really know this. You go back to what is professional and I’m putting air quotes around that. What does professional really mean? I would say that when I was writing contracts or even cover letters as a lawyer.

Gillian: Nobody would know that I wrote it and not the partner that I worked for or someone in the room next door to me. Like, your personality is supposed to be invisible in a contract or a letter from a lawyer to a client. And I think sometimes people think that’s what professional means. But when I think about it, what I want to know, I think we think professional means authority, and so I think then we have falsely equated the sense that I know what I’m doing and I’m trustworthy with you can’t tell who I am and I’m going to hide myself behind a suit and technical jargon words and all that kind of stuff.

Gillian: I call it BS for business speak. So get your business speak on. And if you’ve, if you’ve put anything into ChatGPT or, you know, Claude or any of the AIs, it basically comes out with business speak, which is just, there’s no personality under it. I think what we’re really noticing now is that any of that AI stuff that comes out, it sounds bland because it doesn’t have the personality under it.

Gillian: But I think people. have, have always written that way in a slight panic that I better not show my personality because somehow that means I’m not being professional. And I think, I just think that’s not what people want, especially in the digital world where I don’t really know you. I want to get to know you through your copy.

Gillian: I want to see who you are, really, like, are you really a good fit for me? Like, I trust you can do the job. Because you’ve got testimonials up there and I’ve heard from somebody else, but now I want to know, are you the right copywriter for me, or are you the right architect for me, or the right coach for me?

Gillian: And the only way we can show that, I think, is by letting a little bit of our personality show through. Which means don’t, don’t cover it up. Just be yourself. Just be yourself.

Caitlin: But no, I love that. I think you said it better than I could say, because that’s such a thing, particularly in like the professional world where people have been taught how to write and it is to kind of make ourselves not be there, but then that doesn’t connect with, that might be right for our like professional to professional.

Caitlin: But then when you’re trying to engage with a client or a customer, it’s not exactly going to work. I talk a little bit about. when I work with health professionals, copywriting you don’t have to, put big things in there, only tiny little tweaks or tiny little things that you can pop in there, show your personality.

Caitlin: Like on my contact form on my psychology website, I have references to the X files, which shows a little bit of my personality, but it’s not too in your face. Like only someone who know the X files would understand that. And I’ve had a few. clients mention that when they work with me, like I knew that you were the psychologist for me because you were talking about the X file.

Caitlin: So I knew you’d be, relatable and you’d be, approachable and you’d be, someone that I

Gillian: Yeah. And also, so I talk about this a lot in terms of, so the reason that brand voice, I kind of specialize in brand voice as a copywriter. And the reason it interests me, I think is because I came from such a flat professional.

Gillian: A contract could be a sentence is 23 lines and it takes up a whole page and it’s so dry. And so when I learned there was another way of writing, like it was so night and day opposite. That’s what really interested me. And I often talk about, like the Venn diagram of things that you’re interested in.

Gillian: And I call these fascination circles. So the fascination circles are the things that interest you and you’re passionate about. One of them is going to be the thing that you’re the authority on. But you have lots of other fascination circles. So mine involve being really interested in words and where they come from, like the etymology of words, because as an editor as well, that fascinates me.

Gillian: But when I write in my, like, newsletter, and even on my website, you’ll see I talk about Scotland a lot because that’s what, you know, I’m proud of being Scottish and I don’t hide that. And I also talk about, like, I love puns and a good kind of punny joke, so I’ll add a lot of that in there. and as you layer sort of fascination circles up, it gives people like a more three dimensional version of you.

Gillian: They don’t, they don’t have to have the same fascination circles as you, but they trust that you know the one that they’ve come to you for and then they learn you have all these other ones and it gives you like a more, gives more depth to who you are as they’re learning about you. So what, like how you approach the world, what lens you look at it on, Knowing that, I mean, as a psychologist, you know way more about this than me, but knowing, you know, the X Files probably tells us something about how you approach talking to people and learning about something and diagnosing and things like that.

Gillian: So it just gives them more, like evidence and information to help them dig around and decide, are you the one I want to commit all my money to when all I’m seeing is a website page?

Caitlin: Exactly. Yeah, that’s so, so right. I’m glad you brought up the fascination circles because I remember reading that in one of your newsletters recently and thought it was such an interesting concept.

Caitlin: I think that might be really useful for people to understand the concept of personality and how they can layer on.

Gillian: sometimes you see people go all in on one. And I think it might be if a.

Gillian: If they have a copywriter write for them, they’re asked, what do you like? So they’ll say, Oh, I love the X files. And then the only, there’s a lot of the X files mentioned, but it’s the only thing that’s mentioned as well. And so then it feels very cardboard cut out. Like it gets a bit stereotypical. Right.

Gillian: And that’s because as humans, we’re all interested in lots of things. We don’t just have one area that we’re fascinated. So by, by layering it, it gives people options. They’re like, Oh, you know, That X Files reference isn’t for me but oh look here she’s going to tell us about her extreme interest in cheese and like I love restaurants and cheese and I’m a foodie so now this part has caught my attention a little bit more.

Gillian: if you think about how you talk to people at parties, when you first meet them, when you’re networking in person, like all these little things come out and make you more interested in talking to someone. Then just that flat dry. Hi, I’m Gill. I am a copywriter. I write words like nobody just wants to know that about you.

Gillian: They want to learn more things.

Caitlin: Yeah. And having, someone that, like you’re saying, I can connect with and I think that is sometimes the problem, but the risk, with personality, that if it is that one dimensional, like, I talk only about like X Files references, and then it’s like, I’m a character of my own self, rather than Caitlin, I have a huge amount of interest and I maybe even act differently or speak differently in different contexts, which is a whole nother thing.

Gillian: Yeah, well, and the other thing that I wanted to say when people are thinking about being professional or they’re scared to put their personality out there, and I think this is extra true for health professionals, is that if the reason you’re being professional is to show authority, like you can trust me, I would say that you break that trust if you sound one way on your website and then you don’t sound like that in person.

Gillian: And I’m going to guess that if you want to trust your medical professional, you’re trusting them in a different way. Than you’re trusting, I don’t know, a coach or someone who comes to paint your house, for example, what brand voice does is it promises that you are this person and you will be this person all the way through from the moment they’re interested in learning about you to when they pay the bill to when they write your testimonial and to, I think you can risk breaking someone’s trust and we’ve sometimes seen that in the coaching industry I would say online where someone has sounded a certain way and then you pay the money and you get into their program and you never speak to them, what you thought you were promised is not being delivered, and that’s that break in trust that is the whole reason we’re trying to get people to trust us online, is to say we are who we say we are.

Gillian: And so if you want to sound the same way on your website as you do when they get on a sales call or a discovery call or the first meeting you have with a, with your doctor or your psychiatrist or whoever that might be, is then we’re like, oh yeah, that is like, I picked you because I think you’re like this.

Gillian: Oh, you are like this. Good. Then I, then I feel confident in the decision. But you know, like if I picked my chiropractor because I felt like he had a like upbeat personality and then I turned up and he didn’t say a single word to me and had a grumpy face, like I probably wouldn’t go back to that chiropractor.

Caitlin: No, not at all. I’m so glad that you said that because it is about that trust and about Being the same, the same, if I call you up, you’re going to sound that way. If I read your website. And I find that sometimes that can happen with health professionals, or maybe the opposite.

Caitlin: like when we’re trying to choose between different psychologists and if we all sound the same, well, how do people make that choice? it makes it a little bit difficult. And so people can easily stand out. like say a Psychology Today website, and they’ve got a little bit of their personality it really stands out among.

Caitlin: a lot of dry, snooze worthy content.

Gillian: Right. Well, and I think there’s a people worry that that means that some people will not pick you. But I would say that’s a good thing because the people who are not, who don’t pick you, they were not going to give you good testimonials. You were not going to have a good working relationship with them, but it allows the ones who are the good fit to say, Oh, I think we be a good fit together.

Gillian: And often I say to clients, and I’m sure you think about this as well, like think about who you’re trying to attract into the circle and also who’s not a good fit for you. You want your website, copy your emails, anything you write and anything you see on like in person, cause that’s your brand voice coming over as well.

Gillian: sometimes people to say to repel. And I feel like that’s too strong a word for it. You just want someone to be able to self identify. Is this a good fit for me, or is this not a good fit for me? And you’re giving them the evidence and the information to help them make that decision.

Caitlin: It’s such a, oh, so I love talking about this.

Caitlin: It’s so fun. so something else that I really wanted to talk to you about, because I learned about this from you on your Instagram, I saw a reel and you were talking about brand voice, but then the different brand voices and the different stories they tell. And I thought it was such a cool concept that I hadn’t thought about before? it’s something that’s maybe implicit when you’re writing, but how you made it really explicit and broke it down, I thought it was such a beautiful idea.

Gillian: Oh, thank you. Well, because I, I mean, I still do work sometimes as an editor for fiction writers and more for memoir writers, but when you write fiction and memoir, you, like, you sort of have to follow a plot structure of how you tell your story.

Gillian: And so I’m very, like, one of my fascination circles is digging into how does plot work and uncovering that. Like, I cannot watch a movie or a TV show without dissecting. Like, my poor husband’s, I’m going, I know what’s going to happen in 43 minutes because I’ve figured out the plot structure behind this.

Gillian: And he’s just trying to enjoy this the movie or whatever we’re watching. So it’s not always a good thing. but I love it and I like to talk about that and break it down. And so I think that’s where I really was interested in merging. Like we all have stories and kind of classic brand stories we tell.

Gillian: We tell them in different ways, depending on how to me at the end of the day, brand voice is just how we want to relate to our audience. So we tell different voices depending on how we want to relate to our audience. and so a really great exercise I ask people about when I’m trying to help them decide this is where do you want to be in the room?

Gillian: So I say imagine that you’re at a conference in like your ideal conference. It’s on the topic, you know, so for us, it would be like maybe a copywriting conference and but there’s a potential you’re going to get clients there. So it’s not just all your peers. There are people who might be someone who would hire you or purchase what you sell there.

Gillian: So are you up on the stage? Giving the speech, describing what it is that you do, or are you sitting at a round table as people come and go and engaging in one to one conversations and meeting new people and passing business cards over a drink? Or are you at the back of the conference room? loudly talking about how you feel about the industry, where some people are pulled in to hear more and some walk away like, I don’t know what that person’s talking about.

Gillian: And so those generally relate, like, you know where I’m going with this, they generally relate to do you want to lead with your authority, which would be being up on the stage? Do you want to lead with connection, which is where you’re sitting at the table? Or do you want to lead with, like, your outlook and your opinion?

Gillian: Like, I love this industry and I’m so passionate. Or you might be really passionate. Because you think the system’s broken and you think there’s a better way to do it, but, but you’re being loud about your opinion on that. and so I think that we tell stories differently. The same story would be told differently depending on if you were on the stage, if you were sitting at the table, or if you were in the back of the room pontificating about how you felt.

Gillian:

Caitlin: Yeah, that’s such a great exercise to run people through because you can visualize that and it makes a lot of sense.

Gillian: Well, and I think the other thing to remember is that we all want, we all should, all brands should be all those things at some point. So sometimes when you ask people, do you want to. leads with connection, say. They panic that that means they’re not an authority, but the point is if you’re in the room, you are an authority, but like, you’re not necessarily the authority up on the stage, but, but you didn’t get access to the room without having authority.

Gillian: So knowing that, where are you in the room? And I think it can sometimes help people say, Oh, okay, I’m not so scared now that I’m losing one. It’s just where am I most likely to sit or stand? Where am I most likely to be when I walk into the room?

Caitlin: Yes, absolutely. And what do you lead with, I think is the big thing.

Caitlin: And like you said about how some people think that, if it’s the connection that you’re not an authority, but you can absolutely be at authority. It’s just not the if you’re standing on the stage kind of looking down and telling people how it is. I think that’s a beautiful image.

Gillian: Yeah, it’s very different.

Gillian: Like, I won’t go into all the detail of how it works, but one way of thinking about it just. Like as a brief example is if you’re telling a personal story, people up on the stage will not probably be telling a personal story about what happened to them today because they’re scared that that vulnerability means they might not be an authority.

Gillian: They’re going to tell you a story about what happened to them, maybe in the past or something that happened to one of their If you’re sitting at the table, you’re almost definitely telling a story about what you did today and you’re willing to be vulnerable that you messed up a little bit. And if you’re at the back of the room yelling, you’re probably telling the story about someone else and how it made you feel.

Gillian: So that’s another easy way to think about it. How do you tell the story long ago, just tell the story now, or are you telling the story about somebody else?

Caitlin: And then from there, then you go into the. The other voices that kind of make up their…

Gillian: Yeah, and you can bring the other voices in at different times as well they’re all, it’s just like that layers of fascination circles there’s also layers of voices we don’t only ever lean on one because it would feel too one dimensional.

Gillian: But it’s more just like what you’re known for so if you think about like Simon Sinek, he’s definitely known as he’s approachable and I would imagine he likes to connect with people but he’s a voice of authority like we, we expect him to be on the stage talking about. What it is that he knows.

Caitlin: Yes.

Caitlin: And that leading with your why and your purpose is also another really important thing on that.

Gillian: Yeah.

Gillian: I think when you talk to people about their voice, almost always what you’re really trying to find out is why do you do what you do? Why is it important to you?

Gillian: And that comes back to that fascination thing, like what are you passionate about? Sometimes you can hear somebody when, if you get them into their sphere, as you’re talking to them, their whole voice changes. Their body movements start getting exaggerated because they’re getting excited and I love to hear someone to talk like that because they forget about that self conscious piece which is like I’m supposed to be a professional right now they just get all excited and caught up in what they’re talking about and to me that’s when and you will often sound much more authoritative when you are like that because you will use you won’t be tentative you’ll be using definite language because you know what you’re talking about you feel so passionately about it.

Caitlin: Yeah. Absolutely. And people want to be around. Well, I, at least, well, they’re the people that I want to be around is that they have intense, amazing knowledge about a particular thing and it just is infectious. And before we hit record on today, we were having a bit of a chat about being a professional and burnout

Caitlin: So I was really curious to hear your experience because honestly, just thinking about what a lawyer must do, or attorney must do, on a day to day basis must have been a lot.

Gillian: one-off Well, so it’s kind of funny because I guess we left, when we left Scotland, I was, Oh, was I maybe 29?

Gillian: I’m trying to remember how old I was when we left. I don’t, I think I had maybe hit 30, but maybe just. So I was in a time period in my life, like it still was a lot, yes, but we didn’t have a family. I could work the hours I needed to work. I was still very excited. I mean, honestly, if we hadn’t moved, I don’t know if I would have.

Gillian: this career. I really love it now and I, I’m glad that I did but I was quite happy being a lawyer and helping people communicate just in a very different way. And I think probably what it did was it allowed me to multitask and learn how to just juggle a lot of files at the same time. I still track my time very carefully, which was one of the things that I had to do as an attorney.

Gillian: and even though I mostly charge, well, when I, as an editor, I charge hourly, but most of my work as a copywriter or creating brand voice guides is project based work, which is a one-off fee. And especially if you’re moving into a role like this, where you haven’t done it before and you’re your own boss, it’s so hard to decide pricing and be confident that you’re pricing the right thing. And I think a lot of burnout can come from needing too much work to, to get yourself to the place that you want to be, right? Comfortably. So for me, tracking my time means I can go back and look at like how many hours did I actually spend on a project as opposed to what do I confidently believe that I could do because it’s, I’m going to tell you, it’s almost like always one and a half to two times more than whatever you actually thought it was.

Gillian: But when you translate that to an hourly rate and you say, I was getting paid 10 an hour effectively to do this, you know, why, why am I doing this? Or. The other way of looking at that is, okay, I need to sell, I can realistically only do so many of them in a week or in a month. So I have to price it at X for that to work for me.

Gillian: now I only work 30 hours a week because I basically work around my kid’s schedule. So I work nine to three Monday to Friday and three o’clock is like the absolute deadline. There’s no being like, Oh, I just need to stay at work another hour because I’ve just got to get this document finished. The school bell goes at 3. 15 and I have to be there, so three o’clock is pens down, like no choice really. but I think that leads to being really quite ruthless about that because I cannot really, I can work nights and weekends, I don’t want to though. So I have to be quite, ruthless with myself in terms of what can I, what can I realistically do in the six hours I have a day.

Caitlin: Yes.

Caitlin: Yes. And I also find that interesting about the,transferable skills and how being so good, tracking time and time management. Has probably helped you in your, copy business and running a business I’m like, I don’t track my time.

Gillian: Most people, most people do not. And they also think it’s, interestingly, a lot of people imagine it as a thing that you only do when you charge hourly and therefore you’re a lower sort of I guess I don’t mean lower value as a personal thing, but lower value in terms of how you charge. But lawyers charge a lot of money, and they track their time from the beginning.

Gillian: So, I love to see people who have done some other job before they are in the job they’re in now, because I think it’s amazing the insights and the takes that you bring to it that’s slightly different to everybody else. So I think I’m a much better copywriter and editor because I had some other career first.

Caitlin: Absolutely. No, I totally agree with you there. What are some of the skills or some of the things that you

Caitlin:

Gillian: the confidence to be able to wing it, when I go into a call, honestly. I, I worked at a, I guess I worked at sort of the early 2000s in a very male dominated part of the legal field. and I would often be the only, women in the room at meetings and if I was going to be able to be, if I was going to make my point, I had to be sure that I was going to be heard.

Gillian: And so there had to be a level of confidence as I spoke, regardless of how I really felt about it. but I think one of the other things that legal training teaches you, and I wonder if it’s like this for medical training as well, is that you cannot possibly keep in your head and know the thing. You know how to find the answer, but you don’t know the answer.

Gillian: And I think a lot of, copywriters and coaches and different, service providers can panic that if you’re on a call, you have to know the answer. And so they can panic about how to prepare for sales calls and discovery calls and things. Whereas in fact, nobody expects you to know the answer. They just want you to have a confident, process to find the answer for them.

Gillian: So you can say, oh, okay, well, I will find out about that, and here’s how long it will take me, and here’s when I will get back to you. but they don’t, nobody actually expects you to have the answer on the call, but I know a lot of people panic about that, so. Yeah, I think that might come through. I have to say, amusingly, I think the biggest benefit I get from being a lawyer is that copywriters are kind of known to be a bit flaky and not always deliver, and a lot of clients I speak to have had copywriters in the past where they haven’t delivered.

Gillian: And by saying that I used to be a lawyer, honestly, they’re like, okay, like they trust that I’m going to meet my deadlines and I’m going to do the job for them. Because they know that I was in an industry where you couldn’t be flaky and just not turn up or say, Oh, the document’s coming, the draft’s coming, the draft’s coming, but never actually deliver.

Gillian: You know, you had to fulfill on your deadlines. So that’s probably the biggest thing I get out of it.

Caitlin: Oh, no, definitely. Particularly if the people are a bit cautious about working with them, even a freelancer, right? Iwonder if that’s why some people go with big agencies because they assume that, things are going to get done on time.

Gillian: I definitely think it’s that because the reality is that the agencies are hiring freelancers to do the job. But what you know, probably what you’re paying for is that they will find another freelancer to do the job if that one flakes. It’s on them to figure that part out. I think as a freelancer, for anyone who’s listening, thing if they’re like starting up or they’re thinking about it is, you just need to show people that you have a process.

Gillian: So telling them how you go about it, how many, what steps are involved, how long it takes from this call to the next thing, when the deliverable is, just being very, clear that you have a process gives a lot of people confidence that you’re not just, I think sometimes people imagine that we have to write.

Gillian: I don’t know, wait for the muse to hit and sit there and oh, here come the words and explaining to people that this is research based and evidence based and what you do to get to the point of giving them the end result is, that’s probably what gives them the confidence, that, you know, you’re not going to be a flake because you have a whole system and this is how you’re going to deliver.

Caitlin: Definitely that step by step process that you go through and absolutely the combination of the art, the lovely, creative bit, but at the end of the day, it’s still going to get the work done, which means it’s the research and the process that you follow and all of that. And it’s funny when I, first started, Doing copywriting, I was like, ah, it’d be so lovely.

Caitlin: I’ll sit there outside with my pen and paper and my coffee and I’ll just be writing. And the reality is Nothing like that.

Gillian: I wish it, I wish it was like that a little. Well, I do and I don’t because I think it would be terrifying to think that you just had to wait for something to kind of like turn up the inspiration to show.

Gillian: I think maybe once you see under the hood and realize it’s not actually like that, it’s a bit of a relief. Like the first time I did a website copy project and I really didn’t understand the structure of pages and how that worked. I just sat there and was like, with a blank page, like, I don’t know, like, what am I going to write?

Gillian: but once I understood, you know, then I went and found some trainings and researched it and then I was like, oh, there’s a process and I need to do this first and then I need to do this. And, it was kind of a relief to realize that.

Caitlin: Yeah, that is very containing or helps with the, nerves or the anxiety.

Gillian: If it’s like, no, I’ve got to do this. It’s like this part first and then this part. And Did you do courses I kind of just went for it to begin with. So I think when I started editing, I mean, this is another thing that always makes me laugh because I don’t have a degree in English.

Gillian: And if I was to have a degree in English, it would be from the UK. So I always kind of wondered how would people trust? Like nobody ever asks me. These questions, they, I guess I have testimonials, and I talk confidently about what I do, and especially at the beginning when I was, editing fiction, I used to be a member of the Editorial Freelancers Association, which I paid to be a member of in the U. S. And it was like it had a job board and a lot of the way that you work with editing is you do a sample edit now and as copywriters, we have a lot of friction and discussion about whether you should do unpaid work but in the editing field I think it’s really important because editing is surprisingly subjective.

Gillian: You wouldn’t think that right you think you’re just following the rules of the dictionary, but there’s a lot of different ways it can go and I think you really want to keep the voice of the author. So I don’t want to make changes. There’s so many changes on the page that it’s now not doesn’t really sound like you.

Gillian: so you would do a sample edit and from that, they would decide they would get 10, 15 people to do samples and decide who they picked. so I think that probably gave in the editing. It was really just doing small free samples for people and then they were, they could see on the page what it was you were going to do for them.

Gillian: and then for copywriting, I think I did a lot of what similar people did. I did a few copy hackers courses. I mostly learned on the job, so I would get a job, I would say I could do it, and then I would go off and figure out how I could do it. I’ve always been like a paid member of the Copywriter Underground and they, I really like.

Gillian: It was a really great resource in their Facebook group to ask questions. It was always, copywriters I find are incredible resources. I’m so happy to help each other. I don’t know if it’s because we don’t, we all sit in our own little copy caves, but I find them so helpful and I like to be helpful like that too now because I remember that feeling of kind of Posting like, Oh my goodness, I said I would write a brand messaging guide, but I don’t know what that is.

Gillian: And someone would call and talk you through what you had to do, or someone would give you resources and you would figure it out. So yeah, I think I just kind of learned by doing.

Caitlin: That’s the best way to learn. But I think particularly for something like writing, because you can read about it, you can watch videos, you can know the theory of it, but it’s not until you actually put, Maybe pen to paper and write and do it yourself.

Gillian: Absolutely. And because the, I teach in Brand Voice Academy, which is like the kind of leading training that copywriters go through for to learn about brand voice. And it’s, it’s quite, yes, and you know, but it’s quite intensive. And it’s quite, it’s not one to one exactly, but there is lots of one to one elements in it because Justin Blackman, who’s the main person who runs the course, and I also agree.

Gillian: I think it’s so important that you learn by doing. Like, you can’t just 2x watch a video of this and then know how to write in brand voice. You’ve got to do it. You’ve got to create a guide. And that’s part of the process of the training is learn by doing. So I’m a really big advocate of that.

Caitlin: Yeah, exactly with that, brand voice course, that was the best part of it, actually doing it because you can learn about it, but then it’s not until you do the guide and then you have your clients

Gillian: Yeah. It can feel a lot like you think you understand the principles and then yeah, as you say, you go to put your fingers on the keys and you’re like, what am I doing?

Caitlin: Yeah. Awesome. Definitely. That was a big learning curve. And I think that first brand voice guide, took me so much time, but yeah, the first one’s always the hardest, I guess.

Caitlin: And then it’s, all a bit easier from there, but when we were talking about editing and, the different guides and different ways you can edit. I was just having flashbacks to my psychology training and you know, APA manual and having to put the full stops in the right place or getting severely marked down.

Caitlin: And I think that’s maybe where like, I know psychologists, when they go to write, that’s where it comes from. It’s that fear of no, I’ve got to do this, this way because I’ve been. marked down beforehand and it’s kind of ingrained in us.

Gillian: Definitely and I think other especially yes, like, like I sometimes I edit stuff for lawyers and they’ll say they want to be friendly and approachable and then they have like the statute written and you’re like, oh, like, I understand that you want to do it properly, but this is a blog post.

Gillian: Okay, it can’t be proper the way it would be like submitting it to court. There has to be some, but it’s very hard when you don’t know how to shift from one to the other. It feels quite binary, like I can write this way or that way. and it, it can be really hard to shift from and sort of merge them so that you’re somewhere between the two.

Gillian: I think we all have that inner teacher telling us off

Gillian: because we make really is.

Caitlin: It really is that internalized, idea of what, the teacher would say or something like that, that we’ve got to break it can just be in the background, but we didn’t have to listen to it.

Gillian: Well, and it’s, I often say, even especially for those kind of things like lawyers, and I would definitely say agree with doctors and so on, it’s like, well, how would you, like, imagine you’re sitting next to the patient, how would you describe it? You wouldn’t be quoting, you wouldn’t be using Latin terms.

Gillian: You wouldn’t be giving every single like exception or thing that might not fall into the main category. You would just describe the generality to them. And you would describe it in a way that, Makes sense. I think the one thing that’s hard is when you’re having a conversation, you have those social cues that are nodding their head or they look confused and you realize, oh, I need to slow down.

Gillian: And when you’re writing copy it, that can be much harder, or blog posts, because there’s no person nodding or shaking their head.

Caitlin: Not getting the feedback.

Gillian: Right, but the best you can, by picturing somebody in the room, I think that allows you to imagine how that feels. giving your drafts to someone to look at and saying like, where did you stutter and get stuck and where did you stop and have to go back and read a sentence again? Like that gives you a sense of the pacing.

Caitlin: Definitely. It’s a good thing to keep in mind.

Caitlin: Okay, now for some rapid fire questions. Um, Gill, I’m super curious about this one, but what is your favorite movie?

Gillian: my favourite movie is probably Braveheart, I absolutely love it because it came out in 95, which was just as I was finishing at school, my last year of school when I did history, I did a kind of deep dive into that time period and the Battle of Bannockburn, so I love it as just a good Scottish movie, I love the time period it reminds me of when I was like 18 and going to university, and I love Mel Gibson’s terrible Scottish accent.

Caitlin: Braveheart, very classic. And, um, what’s your favourite character?

Gillian: For a character that I love, my favourite is probably Walter White from Breaking Bad. Breaking Bad’s my favourite TV show of all time. I think it just does a really amazing arc of a tragedy, which we don’t often see as much as hero type stories. And you just see the fully developed character from beginning to end.

Gillian: My understanding is they plotted it right the way through. It wasn’t one where they sold the first season and then they finished it. Figured out what to do in season two, the entire story and character arc developed from the beginning. I just think it’s an amazing one to look at from a story perspective and Walter White is just so good.

Caitlin: Heck yeah, Breaking Bad is uh, what a TV series. it’s the absolute best.

I even have a mention of Breaking Bad in my wealth sequence. And what about a concert that you’ll never forget?

Gillian: A concert that I’ll never forget is, I went to see The Hives in Glasgow in, and I don’t remember exactly when, but it was early 2000s. Their album Tyrannosaurus Hives had just come out. I really didn’t know very much about them but my now husband, then boyfriend, was really into them so I was like, sure, I’ll go along with you.

Gillian: I think it was like a bank holiday weekend. And the energy of them playing, I was just blown away. I had such a good time at that concert so, yeah, I really loved them.

Caitlin: And, lastly, what’s absurd about you or something you either love or that you do, one of those boring fun facts rather than an interesting fun fact. I think a boring fun fact is a little bit more fun in some way.

Gillian: absurd thing that I love, so you’re gonna laugh about this, but I, I am known for having an incredibly special skill in my household, and it is that I can go to the store and I can buy pasta in bulk. Can we keep it like in a big storage box in our house? And I don’t look at how much pasta we have before we go to the store, but I buy it in bulk and I bring the bag home and every time I fill it exactly to the top and no more, so I get exactly the right amount of pasta, that there’s no gap left, but also not so much that it spills over.

Gillian: It’s precisely right every time, and it’s a matter in which I take great pride and my children laugh about every single time.

Caitlin: Ah, oh wow, that’s, that’s such a talent. I’d love to see a video of this for sure.

Caitlin: thank you so much for chatting with me today. I’ve loved it. It’s been so much fun, but where can people get in contact with you?

Caitlin: Or like the Brand Voice Academy, but you also do editing work.

Gillian: if you’re on socials, I’m on Instagram at Gill Hill Edits and Gill with a G. my website is called Gill Hill Writing Services, which is a huge mouthful and clearly I made before I understood copywriting principles,

Gillian: But Gill Hill Edits on. Instagram that’s where I share all the funny puns and stories and talk about the storytelling and that side of things. So yeah, that’s probably a good place to start. And you can always message me there.

Gillian: I’m on Instagram far too often. Much, or way more than I should be on a daily basis, so you’ll, I’ll almost definitely message you right back, maybe not the Australians, but as soon as I get up in the morning.

Caitlin: Yes.

Caitlin: No, definitely follow Gill and, sign up to, Gill’s newsletter because you share great stories and nugget of wisdom.

Caitlin: It’s, it’s incredible. You’re a fantastic person to follow on Instagram. Love a pun.

Gillian: Yes, me too, definitely. But yeah, thank you. It’s been so fun to talk. Caitlin, thanks so much for having me on. I could talk about this all day long.

Caitlin: All day. Yeah. I’ll have to get you back on and talk more about all of this because I know I could talk about it for hours, but it’s been wonderful.

Gillian: Thank you so much.

Caitlin: Yeah, you’re welcome.

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