Today on the Engaging Marketeer, I’m joined by Vishma Mistry. Vishma is a specialist copywriter and founder of Mistry Of Words, where she helps business to connect their values to their customers through words.
Vishma and I are discussing such topics as her background in copywriting, her decision to leave the UK to move to Brisband, Australia.
Below we’ve provided some highlights from the episode, which you can see in full here.
Vishma on her interest in copywriting…
Darren: So you do copywriting for businesses. What made you want to get into the written word? Because there’s a certain kind of person that loves the English language; what fascinated you about that?
Vishma: I think it’s always been inside me. I’ve always loved words from a young age, always been books, reading a variety of content growing. Being born and brought up in the UK, English literature is part of your life and I’ve always found that quite fascinating. I guess over time it just it was something where the words came so naturally to me, even in my marketing career.
Darren: So it was never something that you set out to say right ‘I’m going to be a copywriter’?
Vishma: Not at all. It was a fluke, I’ll be honest. I was doing my usual stuff as a marketing professional, but I kind of had a light bulb moment where I thought ‘I’m going to give this a go’. I set up a website with the intent of it just being a side hustle, and then I guess circumstances sort of led to me quitting my marketing job and, at that point, I was like right I have to give this a go. I’ve set up a website, let’s start calling companies and see if anything comes from it.
…on the challenges of starting her own business…
Darren: One of the things that frightens a lot of people about starting a business is not so much leaving the comfort blanket of the job, it’s the fact that they’ve got to get clients for themselves. They’ve got to phone people up and essentially pitch themselves to those people. As a self-confessed introvert, how did you get over that?
Vishma: A lot of self-belief is very important. You’re always going to get a lot of knockbacks. It wasn’t easy and free flowing for me in the sense of I called and I got the job. It was more you call people, they hang up; I had a number of phones just put down on me. But you just keep going, you’ve just got to keep believing in what you do and have faith that you know something is going to happen.
…on what copywriting means to her…
Darren: What is copywriting? What does it mean to you and how do you portray it to clients?
Vishma: There’ll be so many different answers for what is copywriting. From my perspective, it’s telling a story to someone. It’s your brand’s story, it’s your business’ story. That’s what copywriters do, they tell the story of a business and its services.
…on moving to Australia from the UK…
Darren: You mentioned that you studied and worked in the UK and then you just casually moved to Australia. What prompted that?
Vishma: So I was born and raised in the UK. Basically one day, my husband applied for a job here and overnight it just happened.
Darren: What are some of the main culture differences between the UK and Australia?
Vishma: I guess people are a lot more laid back here. Obviously the UK has that history and multiculturalism, which is growing here, but I find that people tend to be a bit friendlier over here. I’ve not been back to the UK in a while though so I cant say if anything’s changed.
…on her plans for the future…
Darren: What does the future hold for you? What are your plans going forward?
Vishma: At the moment I’m taking one day at a time, I’m kind of at that point of growth. I’ll soon be taking the next step in that growth area. I’d like to hire another person to help manage the workload, but I find it important to try and grow without actually losing the values of what the business stands for. I’ve always been about quality over quantity.
…on her advice for people that want to do the same as her…
Darren: What advice would you give to somebody who maybe is in marketing right now and thinking I want to go out and I want to do this myself ?
Vishma: First of all, is it your passion or are you just looking for a way out? If it is your passion, go for it. Life’s too short, you’ve got to pursue your passions.
If anybody wants to work or get in touch with Vishma, they can do so by heading to her website or reaching her on LinkedIn.
Thanks so much to Vishma for coming on the podcast. It was a pleasure to pick your brain about all things copywriting. To make sure you never miss an episode of the Engaging Marketeer, subscribe to us on iTunes, Spotify or any other major podcast platform, along with our YouTube channel.
