Detroit Lawyer’s Morning Routine Helps Him Build Fast Growing Freelance Copywriting Career
Copywriter success seemed to come easy to this lawyer. Looking for new ways to market his legal business, David Vigna, a lawyer in Detroit, stumbled across AWAI’s copywriting training program and … it changed his life.
“I fell in love with copywriting almost instantly, finished the course rather quickly, and started wondering whether I could actually do something like this,” says David, who’s been practicing law for 35 years. “As I found myself thinking more and more about it, I finally asked myself what I would do if I were offered two pieces of business from two clients, one legal and one copy, but could choose only one. The answer was the copy client, hands down.”
David, now a full-fledged member of AWAI’s Barefoot Writer, which helps writers become successful freelancers, continues to do legal work as needed by his clients in the afternoons. But he dedicates his morning to writing copy — it’s where his real passion is these days. David uses his courtroom legal experience to help businesses that sell products and services to lawyers, law firms, and legal departments gain more success. And it’s not only his legal experience that allows him to write great copy for his clients but also achieve a certain level of copywriter success.
As he studied more about the direct-response industry and how it works, he realized that much of what he did litigating business cases was conducted through research and the ability to write persuasively. Those same skills have served him well in his new copywriting career.
These days, David is happy with the flexible schedule the writer’s life has given him, although organizing his workday so he can as productive as possible has been key to his copywriter success.
“I’ve been a longtime reader of Early To Rise and Mark Ford, co-founder of AWAI (even though he is no fan of lawyers!). After I began getting serious about copywriting, I started paying close attention to Mark’s advice on day planning,” explains David.
“I thought this would never, ever happen, but Mark’s essays convinced me to give up reading the newspapers and email first thing in the morning and, instead, start with what is most important to me, which is copywriting. So I follow something along the lines of his typical workday, which is early to rise, writing, marketing, exercise, and brunch, then more marketing (I’m still in the getting-clients stage).”
David is also a big believer in physical fitness to keep him motivated, focused, and energized so that he can continue on his path of copywriter success.
“I played ice hockey in a men’s league twice a week for many years until suffering an injury last year that will probably keep me off the ice. I’ve recently finished rehab for the surgery I needed and now am back to running (sprints mostly) and bodyweight exercises,” says David.
“I’ll have to find a new sport if I can’t go back to hockey. The physical fitness work helps mentally, as well. Try being mad or depressed while you’re running sprints — it can’t be done. And spiritually, I have a nine-minute routine first thing every morning, which I borrowed from Tony Robbins.”
To find out more about copywriting and how it can take you from your current job to an exciting new freelance writing career, check out Barefoot Writer Club, which showcases all the possibilities of the writer’s life.
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Here's to your smooth transitions! From my perspective of intense experience as an attorney assist paralegal, I can wholeheartedly relate.
Mine goes like this:
Rise 2:00 AM, (often jotting down copy ideas) doing active, independent work outdoors;
Rest, eat and rise to write;
Mid-day turn to communications, marketing, eat; and
Late afternoon train, eat, attend business chores and everything else.
Clayton Makepeace suggests: create when most awake; when recouping do the right brain stuff.
Jennie Jen –