Reno-_-

Become a seal, they seem pretty chill. Not a navy seal. A literal seal.

The first step is, especially in creative fields, to put together a dynamite portfolio. That's the key piece of what I call a 'candidate packet', which is everything you might share with a potential client.

I definitely recommend you start with side work unless you have industry experience and at least 12 months of savings. Freelance starts sloooow. It snowballs, but those first few jobs are far and away the hardest. Hopefully you'll educate yourself more than I did and it won't take you so long to find your first job, but even experienced freelancers should keep 6 months of savings on hand. Because shit happens.

If you want to be respected you definitely do not want to be a creative.

I do. I was on marketplace insurance since it rolled out, but my fiancee's company allows me to get insurance through an informal domestic partnership. It's not all that much cheaper or better, but I don't have to deal with the covered california people, which is nice.

Saturation is difficult to overcome for copywriters. Everyone thinks they can write. Most of them are wrong, but that doesn't really help.

My advice would be to specialize early. Pick a lane and OWN the ever-loving shit out of it. A 'website copy' copywriter is a lot more compelling than a copywriter who can write website copy.