A Rare Behind-the-Scenes Glimpse Into My Business

You know that feeling when you're constantly putting out fires instead of actually building your business? 

Yeah, me too. After a handful of years of running my business reactively—scrambling to create content, adjusting to life transitions, and well, simply surviving—I'm  ready to build something more strategic, sustainable, and dare I say...enjoyable. 

In this Season 5 kickoff of Talk Copy to Me, I'm pulling back the curtain on my 2026 plans. You'll hear about the shifts I'm making, the programs I'm working on, the stages I'm already booked to speak on, and why I built an entire personal creative project (that lasts throughout the year!) to avoid burning out with work and work only. If you're also coming out of survival mode and ready to be more strategic, this one's for you.

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 EPISODE 177.
Read the show notes and view the full transcript here: Coming soon!

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Here's the info on your host, Erin Ollila
Erin Ollila believes in the power of words and how a message can inform – and even transform – its intended audience. She graduated from Fairfield University with an M.F.A. in Creative Writing, and went on to co-found Spry, an award-winning online literary journal.

When Erin’s not helping her clients understand their website data or improve their website copy, you can catch her hosting the Talk Copy to Me podcast and guesting on shows such as Profit is a Choice, Mindful Marketing, The Power in Purpose, and Business-First Creatives.

Stay in touch with Erin Ollila, SEO website copywriter:
• Learn more about my VIP intensive options or just book a strategy session to get started right away
• Visit Erin's website to learn more about her business, services, and products

Transcript

0:01

Welcome back to Talk Copy to Me, and it's season five. I have to tell you, I am such a sucker for year end reflections and making plans for the year ahead. I love reading them. I love listening to them. There's just something. About that glimpse into what someone's thinking and prioritizing and planning, that I find really fascinating, which is exactly why I decided to make my goals for the year, the very first episode of Season five. Now, it's not often. I do a completely personal episode. This podcast is usually pretty focused on just the copywriting, marketing messaging and making your business easier. But to celebrate the fact that this is a , long time running podcast, you know, we're starting season five. I mean, that's officially four solid years of podcasting in the beginning of the fifth year, and that's exciting. So it's time to get personal with this episode. I am not quite sure yet what my word of the year would be. But I think you could consider 2026 for me as a bit of an infrastructure year. For the past several years, I've been running my business in a very reactive way. Um, you know, a client asks a question and I answer it. The podcast episode is due and I record it. Email letter goes out on Tuesday and it gets written on Tuesday or Mon or Wednesday. It would be even worse case. And. That reactive approach definitely comes from life experience, which is fine. I'm in a solid 10 years of my business , august 1st will be the official 10 years of being full-time of running my own business. But this past October was actually 10 years of, of being self-employed, even though I was working part-time, traditionally . it's been a while, but five years ago I was still homeschooling two of my three children, two of which were in kindergarten or younger, and the other was almost about to start high school or who had just started high school. That that same child is actually in college right now., The younger two are both in the public school system, which means that in the past five years, I've had to reinvent my approach to work, hence worth the reactivity multiple times. You know, it started with the two kids homeschooling full-time. Then I transitioned into two kids in public school and just the youngest homeschooling then eventually it transitioned to three children in school, and you could say that I have my, my days back to work. I actually remember that year thinking that like that would be the year I took over the world because suddenly I would have so much time to myself. But what actually happened was that I was driving and waiting for pickup, , for over two hours of my day. You know, the preschool was a half an hour, at least from my house, so each way was an hour, and then you had to get there early to make sure you actually got a spot in the pickup area in addition to volunteering in the classroom. So it ended up being a bit more chaos and less time than I had during homeschooling. But I will say everything did get much easier when that child transitioned into the same school that a sibling was at, but. That was also the year my oldest started college, which emotionally, financially, and just for practical reasons, that's a huge transition for a parent. So everyone's settled now, and I hope that I am too, and I can be less reactive in general, , because my, my schedule is more predictable and I think that's why I am feeling kind of like the mama bear who's peeking out of the den after a hibernation period. I say all this, but I, I would like to remind you that things have actually been really good for the past five years as it relates to work. They really have, I have accomplished a ton that I have, I feel really proud of. But after all of all of those personal transitions that I've experienced, I do truly feel like I'm more me. Again, my schedule is more, I said this a second ago, but predictable and I can really be more proactive in my business. I had this realization a few months ago, and I, I, I've mentioned this I think on the podcast before, but I usually do my. Annual planning in October, and that's more of like goal setting, dreaming, trying to figure out what I'd like things to look like, and then I come back to review it either at the end of December or the beginning of January. So around that time I did have a realization that I was actually trading my business differently than I would treat my client work. If a client came to me and said, I need a website, I wouldn't just start writing for them. You know, the strategy element is extremely important. It's, I'm intentional with my clients. I ask questions. I build them frameworks that will work in their messaging for years, not just into the next month, but my own business. I mean, I was just, like I said before, being reactive, creating content when I needed it., Putting out fires where my, whenever my energy could focus at the moment, that's what I would focus on. I say all of this to get to the point that this year one of my big themes is to treat my business as I would treat a client project. Which means building out the infrastructure that will help me run sustainably for years, um, will help set up processes that are easier to manage things, correct processes that I already have. Um, automation in places that I know I need it. All of the boring stuff that nobody. Talks about or they, things that people want to do, um, but they ignore until things start breaking down and I'm, I think I'm very fortunate to not have them be in the breaking down position, which is why I know it's a great time to, to make some of those behind the scene fixes., Another thing I really wanted to focus on is being more strategic, especially about things like visibility and how I'm serving my audience, , about revenue streams and how that makes sense for the work that I want to do and the work that my clients need me to do. So basically, I'm building the business that I'd like to run, not just the business that I happen to be running. So let's walk through what that actually looks like. Some of this I think you'll see directly, and some of it is truly behind the scenes. The first that's happening right now is my website rebuild. As you know, if you've been listening to the podcast, I'm currently running the first cohort of Rewrite Your Site. We started a little over a week ago, and as they are working on their own websites and I'm guiding them, I have dedicated some working time to do the same work on my own site. Every single page that I have will be reviewed or started from scratch.. It's not like I'm rebranding my business, but I do hope to have more clarity and a website that actually reflects the offers that I have and I do most with my clients so I'm practicing what I preach. I'm building the site that I would build for a client, one that is strategic SEO, optimized and clear about who I serve and how I can help them. In addition, part of doing this work is just making sure that it's providing a better experience for for you, for the website visitor., Whether you're, you are looking to hire a copywriter if you are considering one of my programs. If you'd like to listen to the podcast while reading show notes, you know, I want it to be easy to navigate and clear to understand. Understand. So the general timeline for this. Is quarter one. I hope to be done and launched by the end of March. And maybe I'll even be sharing about what I learned about myself and my business along the way., But that's not it. I'm also planning to do some refining and improving of business systems like I hinted on earlier. This isn't starting from scratch. You know, I have systems already. But I would like to make some of them more efficient, or alternatively, just better documented in SOPs. I've started a lot of, things in Airtable that are 90% complete and ready to go, but it needs to be taken to the a hundred percent mark of actually being complete. So it runs how I'd like it to. Um, I also really need to audit my client management system. I used ddo. I liked ddo, but I. Have touched things throughout the years since I did my first real builds of Sato, which means things fall through the cracks, or I have to make adjustments to things like, um, proposals or, or contracts for, for new clients. And I don't wanna customize things. I would like the seamless approach that I. Had making my job easier and my leads easier to onboard, just to work how it's supposed to. And then again, finally just regular SOPs. I wanna make sure things are documented so that way, you know, if I bring on a virtual assistant or I have a subcontractor that works with me, it's not starting from scratch In regard to education or explanation, there's documented videos. You know, document documented practices about what works, what doesn't. And you know, how I approach things. This system's work is really all, you know, from quarter two through quarter four. I know that some of these things are gonna take a while and some of them are just gonna be done as I'm working on them, like, like documentation, for example. If I don't realize that I need to create an SOP for something until quarter three, because that's when I'm doing it, that's why I say they'll be taking place throughout the year. Another main goal I have is getting ahead in my content. You know, and this applies to all of it, emails, blog posts, the podcast, you know, for the podcast. For years I used to be scheduling ahead and that made me feel really good. It wasn't, sometimes I would be pretty far ahead, in all honesty. I didn't love being too far ahead. But in general, it would just be, you know, a couple of weeks of content available and queued up. So I didn't feel like I was scrambling. But it hasn't been like that for a solid year here, which is why if you look at the collection of 20, 25 episodes, you might see some gaps in time, and that honestly makes me feel nuts as I'm missing weeks. So I plan to get back to being consistent and ahead. Specifically for the podcast, uh, for emails. It's honestly podcast, uh, reliant on some ways since one of my two weekly emails are usually podcast, um, announcements to say there's a new live episode and. If I email an additional time, I have some nurturing content, I have some sales content, but it's not loaded in there as a sequence that could be like an evergreen email sequence as an example. And I think just having something like that accessible to me would make things easier on a week that I have less time or less energy to connect with my audience. You know, the goal here in doing all of this working ahead, is just to build breathing room. It's not 'cause I wanna work less, but it's because I would like to work more strategically. I want. Creative energy to go towards timely content. For example, if something happens and I need to be reactive in a positive way, I want to have the time and energy to do that., I don't want to scramble to fill a content slot because one, when that happens, and I see this in clients all the time, you are not usually creating quality content. It, it's a scramble just to check, uh, something off of a list. And I don't want that from me or for you. This specifically probably won't start till quarter two, just because I know between client work, running this copy program that I'm currently teaching and my own website copy. Quarter one's already pretty booked. Fourth. The next goal is getting serious about visibility. I plan to do a few rounds of podcast pitching,, as well as guest blog pitching, and. Speaking events. I am already booked to speak at Yale twice this year. I will be leading a workshop again at startup Yale, their entrepreneurship conference in April. And then I will be returning to SI Center to teach their summer fellows about SEO and and search everywhere in June. So that's exciting and it's really nice to know I have some things booked. They both take place in quarter two, so I would love to put more events on my schedule for quarters three and four. If you happen to know anyone who is looking for a speaker who can talk about marketing and messaging and search. Visibility isn't anything new to me, but the, but the visibility I've done has been scattered. I have been in certain years on. 50 podcasts in other years. One, , I will write guest posts if someone reaches out and asks for one, but it's probably been years since I've done that. So part of this visibility approach is more testing out my capacity is what feels good for me and where I would like to show up. I also want to be systematic about it and track pitches, , build relationships with podcast hosts so I can ask them if they have anyone they can refer me to, to, to pitch, to be a guest on that new person show., So I guess what I'm trying to say is I'm treating visibility more like, a business development strategy,. And hopefully that means I can serve how I'd like to within my business. Fifth, , you know, I have been doing done with You work at least, I don't know, five to eight years in my business. It is nothing that I've, I've been particularly quiet about. I've had it on the past two iterations of my website, so I'd probably say it's been a service that I have publicly sold for at least five years. But I have been maybe for the last year and a half really refining my approach to the type of done with you work. I like. Which is why I started 2026 with running a website copywriting program. So I could take a cohort of people through my framework and do that done with you writing and editing with them to see how that works. You know, I've done most of the done with you. Projects on an individual basis., But I really think this program itself is kind of like the culmination of all that I've learned in the past five or eight years of working with people. And I am, I'm personally really excited about it. We're only in the beginning of rewrite your site. So I don't have any huge success stories to share with you yet, which is fine., We still have eight, probably like seven weeks to go maybe in the program. Uh, but it's going well and I'm excited by it and I really think that this is gonna be a hit and something I will continue to re-offer so I can serve more people . I've already been asked when I'm relaunching, I'm not sure. It's either going to be May or September, and that's for a specific capacity reason., I will tell you what that is. This is part of the building in public., Part of that is because I plan on launching a done with you content program that is about 75% actualized at this point. Started planning this in 2025., Put it on pause just so I could do an official launch of rewrite your site. And now I just need to make a couple of program decisions to make sure both the copy and the content programs I have. Are running how they should. For example, I told you the copywriting program rewrite. Your site is cohort based. One of the things I'm still held up on is whether or not I want to make this content program cohort based as well, in, or make it a membership or make it individual content sprints. I need to make that decision and then finalize a few of the, you know, sales page things, actual program elements before I can launch that. If that gets done sooner than later, which I honestly, I hope that it does, I will run the done with You content program before I relaunch, rewrite your site, which means rewrite Your site will start again in September, and I will be selling it in August. If that does not get done, I'll probably just go straight into another round of rewrite your site in May and when everything's really feeling how I'd like it to with a content program, . Honestly, I think that what's gonna happen is I'll finish. This round of rewrite your site and go straight into the content program. I'm feeling really excited about it. I hear so many rumblings on social media on how people have decided to really invest in blogging again, which I should tell you, blogging has never died. People just have not chosen to do that as part of their marketing plan., But because people are starting to see how much it affects things like G-E-O-A-I-O, which basically, which is basically AI search, , and, and wanting to show up with more authority in their business, I, I think I'd just like to capture their interests. Your interest maybe while you are thinking it., So if you are interested at all in working with a copy coach specifically for content strategy, content creation, and you like to work in a specific way, whether that's one-on-one and individualized, whether that's a group program, a cohort, so that's, you know, a group program that has a time specific,. Part of it, uh, let me know. I, I'd love to hear your opinion as I help, you know, as I start making these decisions because it will help me with planning., I think that's it. Businesswise. I i'll share a fun project that I dreamed up for myself this year. I, I'm decided I wanted to be more creative in 2026, so of course I'm a, a Virgo who, , likes to. Strategize and make plans. We'll, we'll preface this with, that, but I created a creative project where I will be breaking it down into four quarters., Each quarter I'm gonna focus on something very specific. Quarter one right now where in what I call the baker's dozen, if you know, a baker's dozen is actually 13 instead of 12. And there are 13 weeks and a quarter., For the Baker's dozen. I am. Baking. So once a week, I'm gonna think of one thing that I would like to make, either with my sourdough starter or just on my own from scratch. Just to try new things and create, you know, with my hands. So I think I'm on week three at this point. Week one was banana bread. Easy peasy. Done it before. I just wanted to kind of get my feet wet. Week two was cornbread, eh. It didn't go as well as I'd like it to, but it didn't go bad. And then week three is cinnamon rolls. I'm very excited about this week. I think next week is biscuit, so I, if you're interested, follow me on threads 'cause I am sure I'm gonna be talking about my baking pursuits., quarter two. I'm a little unsure about, quarter three is called. Plot to pot. So those are gonna be 13 garden to kitchen projects, . The reason I share all of this with you is because if I focus only on business, which I know I will, if I do not set time for other things, I'll just burn out. So I need creative outlets that have nothing to do with revenue or clients or strategy, and. Because my brain can only work in the way of plotting and scheming and organizing. I obviously need to set my creative projects up, like actual projects, with an infrastructure, a word that I mentioned earlier in this podcast. So I'm also making that space. For personal creativity time now, so I'm not reactive and just doing it when I can fit it in and feeling at the end of the year. Like I didn't set aside time for creativity. I. Obviously, I'm not gonna talk about my quarterly project on the podcast all the time because this is a marketing podcast and not a baking or a gardening or a r uh, podcast. But if you are someone who also struggles with the balance between like work and creative fulfillment, I think you understand why it's important to make the time in the early part, versus just wishing you had made the time later. And that's it. That is my 2026. That's what I'm building. That's what you can expect from me,? And if anything that you've heard come out of a season of surviving and you plan to be more strategic, welcome. Join me. We can support each other. If you've heard about the done with you copy or content programs and you know that you need a coach and, and I use that word lightly, you know, a copywriting mentor, let's say to guide you, welcome. I'd love to be that person for you., . And that's it. I mean, it's been a fun four plus years here on the podcast. I've said it before and I will say it again over and over again. I'm so appreciative of you, the listener. When I first started podcasting, I thought it was so weird to just talk to myself on a microphone., But, but after hearing so many people, reading reviews, having feedback from , listeners who turned into clients, and just talking to people who have listened to the podcast, I don't feel alone anymore., We have built this community together. It's not just me, it's not just Erin in a microphone. It's. Erin and a microphone and those earphones you have on right now., Or, or just coming through the speakers of your computer, whatever it is, thank you for being here. We're gonna have a great year together and I'll talk to you next week where we keep talking copy.