Crystalee Beck has constructed a million-dollar copywriting enterprise from her dwelling within the Salt Lake Metropolis space whereas elevating 4 kids ages one, 4, seven and 9.
She is founder and CEO of Comma Copywriters, a copywriting company that serves tech and actual property corporations. She additionally runs the Mama Ladder Worldwide, a neighborhood for mothers who need to begin and develop companies. She shares what she has discovered about find out how to do all of it on movies on a her YouTube channel, from which you’ll be able to see one instance beneath.
“I wouldn’t be a enterprise proprietor with out my infants because the motivation,” says Beck. “I needed a lot to be there for them, and stated I’m going to determine find out how to do each.”
Beck is a part of an thrilling pattern: the rise of million-dollar, one-person companies. In 2019, the U.S. Census Bureau counted 43,012 companies with no staff besides the homeowners that introduced in $1 million to $2.49 million in income, up from 41,666 in 2018. One other 2,553 hit $2.5 to $4.99 million in income, and 388 made to $5 million in income and past. There’s no telling what number of extra of those companies are more likely to spring up, due to free and low-cost sources like cloud-based and synthetic intelligence instruments and strong freelance platforms for hiring expertise.
She’s mastered life-style design to drag it off. Working 20-25 hours per week from Monday by means of Thursday, Beck depends on 47 freelancers in 20 states. She is anticipating to rent her first payroll worker this 12 months.
Beck started growing the talents that allowed her to create her profitable enterprise at her first jobs. Graduating from Brigham Younger College in 2009, Baker acquired a job doing content material improvement of in-flight coaching supplies for flight attendants at SkyWest Airways and have become a flight attendant herself.
Eager to receives a commission to jot down, she earned a grasp’s diploma in communication at Weber State College. Then, after two years as a contract options author at Deseret Digital Media, she labored as a company communications specialist at a worldwide company after which as a social neighborhood supervisor for Market Star, an outsourced direct gross sales group.
After getting laid off, she began Comma Copywriters in 2016. “I had a little bit little bit of warning it was coming,” says Beck, who had been freelancing on the aspect. She was juggling being the primary breadwinner with being the mom to a one-year-old, together with her husband in graduate faculty.
“I virtually skipped out the door,” she recollects. “I used to be so excited to have some freedom to do with my day what I needed to do with it.”
She acquired critical about rising the enterprise shortly. “I purchased myself a enterprise license in February 2016,” she recollects. “I wrote in my journal ‘That is going to be a million-dollar enterprise.’ I had no concept how I used to be going to get there.”
One in all her early tasks was writing Joyce’s Boy, a guide that captures the lifetime of serial entrepreneur Alan Corridor, who’d been the president of the company the place she labored.
Via her community, she gained different purchasers. At first, Beck merely responded to what these purchasers requested. “I name these first couple of years my sandbox years,” she says. “I used to be enjoying the sandbox. I might simply do what individuals had been paying me to do.”
Quickly Beck had extra work than she might deal with. Somewhat than attempt to do all of it herself, she recruited a couple of freelancers.
Beck pulled in $100,000 in 2017, her first full calendar 12 months in enterprise. The enterprise continued to develop, and by 2019 she rebranded it below the identify Comma Copywriters.
One in all Comma Copywriters’ promoting factors to purchasers has been that assignments are delivered on time or they’re “on the home.” Final 12 months, Beck says, the corporate delivered greater than 21,000 items of content material, and 99.94% was on time.
She doesn’t fear about different businesses and freelance platforms purchasers might think about using “I don’t take into consideration competitors,” she says. “I consider them as choices, reasonably than competitors. We’re a complement. It finally ends up being rather more cost-effective for our purchasers to rent us than a full-time headcount author internally.”
As the corporate has scaled up, Beck has organized the corporate into three teams of writers based mostly on the sorts of purchasers they serve: B2C (enterprise to client), B2B (enterprise to enterprise), and businesses. “Crew leads” handle every group. She additionally has a crew assist supervisor and a shopper success supervisor.
When recruiting writers, Beck has discovered she does properly by on the lookout for individuals who match the corporate’s core values: Freedom, Accountability, Humility, Curiosity and Care. Many are ladies who admire the chance to be a part of a company that provides them regular work {and professional} improvement whereas they’re managing family obligations. “I really feel we actually have the perfect of each worlds for our writers, who need the flexibleness of being a freelancer and the assist of a crew,” says Beck.
To maintain her freelance crew motivated and aligned, Beck provides bonuses for on-time work, holds month-to-month skilled improvement occasions and brings them collectively at a crew retreat yearly. After writers have been with the corporate for 3 years, Comma Copywriters provides them a $1,000 bonus to dedicate to ticking one thing off their bucket record. One girl invested in tenting tools. One other went to Disneyland.
Comma Copywriters leaves it as much as writers how a lot work they need to tackle. The crew communicates about tasks by way of Basecamp, a mission administration software program. That’s allowed the corporate to maintain issues operating easily, regardless of what’s going on. Final 12 months, when the corporate broke $1 million for the primary time, 4 out of seven members of its management crew had new infants.
An necessary focus of the enterprise is giving again, notably to ladies. A technique is thru the Comma Cares program. For every shopper it really works with, Comma Copywriters sponsors a women’ training by means of a nonprofit associate, Kurandza.
Beck additionally began a sister enterprise, The Mama Ladder Worldwide, a 12 months after launching comma. It provides workshops and a retreat to assist ladies begin and develop companies, in response to demand. “I had all of those ladies coming to me and asking the way you begin a enterprise with little infants,” she says.
The Mama Ladder provides the HIGH FIVE Grant for Mothers, which offers a $5,000 grant, together with a number of others, to moms who need to develop their companies however lack entry to capital. This 12 months, Lowe’s and Clear Easy Eats are sponsoring the grants for the primary time.
Beck is aware of from her personal expertise that elevating kids and reaching vital enterprise success should not mutually unique. “There’s nothing a motivated mom can’t do,” she says.