A little secret about me:

I hate working.

A lot.

And my long term “career” goal is to work as little as possible — doing only work that I enjoy — while making enough money.

Just enough.

To be clear: Building wealth is important to me. And I do (obviously) enjoy copywriting. That’s not what I mean.

I simply have no aspirations to be “rich,” drive expensive sports cars, or own a mansion.

It’s the opposite of why I got into copywriting.

But unfortunately, it’s why many newbie copywriters flock to gurus who embody this idea of “getting rich with words,” and pitch it as a possibility for anyone.

Is it crazy to not want this?

Maybe.

But my belief is that life is far too precious to be spent climbing a corporate ladder or chasing the next big purchase — a house, a car, whatever  — from behind a desk.

I’d rather wake up, write for a couple hours on a project I love, then spend the rest of the day hiking, or climbing, or with family and friends.

So it shouldn’t be a surprise then that any time my day-to-day copywriting work turns into “button punching” on a keyboard, I am living in my own personal hell.

When I hear:

“Oh, can you just skin X copy you did for Y product? Just swap the name?”

Or

“Just follow that Z headline formula you tested, it always works.”

I literally go crazy!

Now — I’m appreciative of the work I am able to do — and of course, this sort of “rote” copywriting process can be effective at scale.

But writing it drives me nuts. And my goal is to not have to do stuff like this for long.

And unfortunately, a lot of copywriting jobs are becoming like this. So many employers just want button punchers who will “polish” their crappy ideas for $15/hr.

Even worse when you consider the AI copywriting bots like Jasper.

Point is this: If you want to be happy as a copywriter, find ways to do work that give you lots of freedom to creatively solve new problems with words.

It’s the biggest reason why I started this email list. And it’s something that I look forward to writing every single day.

More on the blog:

www.stealthiscopy.com/blog

David Patrick