“As a copywriter, you’re a teacher, you’re a therapist, you’re a coach. The writing is only a part of it. If you can get the relationship right, that will frame the work that you give the client.”
Matt Fenwick
Large projects give me the heebeejeebees.
Working with government agencies leaves me cold.
And managing a huge team of sub contractors, ick!
And doing all that with ADHD, that’s got to be challenging right?
Well yes and no.
Matt Fenwick has taken his recent diagnosis of ADHD and sought the positive, using it to realise his big picture strengths and the gaps in his knowledge.
He’s also worked on his mindset and learned how to switch off the voice of doubt, to focus on the work and push forward with large-scale projects.
Today we’ll learn how Matt manages to work with subcontractors, master huge projects and find an escape when he needs it.
Tune in to learn:
- Matt’s copywriting journey
- His biggest win and worst fail
- Why he’s not threatened by AI
- His favourite copywriting tool
- How he manages self-doubt
- His tips for copywriters
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About Matt Fenwick
Matt Fenwick is the owner of True North Content, a kick-arse consultancy that tackles big, messy content problems.
Matt holds honours degrees in Law and Creative Writing, and a University Medal in English.
Matt himself is big and messy. Recently diagnosed ADHD, he is exploring how to advocate for neurodiverse people.
Matt lives in Canberra and loves long-distance cycling.
Fun fact: Matt is taller than he sounds.
Connect with Matt Fenwick
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Transcript
Kate Toon:
Hello. My name is Kate Toon and I’m the head copy beast at The Clever Copywriting School, an online community and teaching hub for all things related to copywriting. Today. I am graced with the glorious presence of Matt Fenwick. Hello fat. Oh, I called you. Hello fat, Matt Fenwick. Sorry.
Matt:
My friends call me Fat Menwick so it’s totally fine.
Kate Toon:
What a great way to start a podcast. Just randomly insult your slim guest.
Matt:
Yes. Well, it was good to be here, Kate.
Kate Toon:
Now I’m leaving. Anyway, I affectionately call you the Fen whether you like it or not. Because I feel like you are like what a real copywriter should be. I don’t know what I mean by that, but-
Kate Toon:
You’re beardy, you wear cardigans. You sound really clever. That’s what I thought a copywriter should be. I feel like a charlatan when I talk to you-
Matt:
You have better glasses and I do so stop it.
Kate Toon:
I do, I do have really good glasses. That’s all I’ve got. I also have the start of a beard, but we won’t get into that. It’s just menopause. Okay. Who is Matt Fenwick? He is the owner of True North Content, a kick ass consultancy that tackles big messy content problems. Matt holds honours degree in law and creative writing and a university medal in English. Matt himself is big and messy. Recently diagnosed ADHD, he is exploring how to advocate for neurodiverse people. Matt lives in Canberra, poor thing, and loves long distance cycling. Matt is taller than he sounds. You sound tall.
Matt:
No.
Kate Toon:
You sound like you’re talking in a wardrobe. Do you know what I mean?
Matt:
Are you insulting my microphone again?
Kate Toon:
No, no. It’s like, that’s how you sound in person as well.
Matt:
Weird.
Kate Toon:
No, that’s a positive.
Matt:
Okay, thanks.
Kate Toon:
I’m just going to randomly insult Matt throughout this podcast. I think that’s a real compliment to say that you have a wardrobe voice.
Matt:
Okay.
Kate Toon:
Yeah but anyway, let’s move on. Lots to talk about, even just in your bio, I’m sure we’ll get into the ADHD thing. Because we did an excellent session on this, in The Clever Copywriting School, which we realised that pretty much everyone in The Clever Copywriting School had some kind of neurodiversity and it was such a relief to talk about that in the open. Wasn’t it? Yeah and we had a great expert on to talk about that too. Look, let’s go back a few years when, you’ve obviously studied law and maybe you were going to be a lawyer at some point. When did the switch towards copywriting happen? When did that all begin?
Matt:
I didn’t really know that copywriting was a thing. If you asked me what a copywriter was, I would’ve given you some kind of mad men derived-
Kate Toon:
Yeah.
Matt:
I never thought it’d be something that I could actually do. My whole life words were one of the things that I could do. I think there’s kind of two types of people who were coming to copywriting or content design or whatever you want to call it. There’s the writers, the people who’ve always had some kind of a calling or a vocation and then there’s people who’ve done something else, built up a skill set and they bring that with them into the work they do as a copywriter. I want to make it super clear that neither it’s better or worse than the other.
Matt:
It’s just the pathways that people take. I was the first one. My first career aspiration was I wanted to be the guy who fixes the propeller on aeroplanes , which was weird, hyper specific, no aptitude. Then, my second one was writer. Then, I was really into English finished high school, didn’t want to be an English teacher because my parents, or my mum was a teacher and yeah, didn’t want to go there. Then, I did law because it was like the thing that I thought you did, if you liked words and wanted to make a job out of it. Fast forward through a bunch of gigs working in sort of policy, legal research, whittled my way into government coms. At that point, I realised there were things that I really wanted to do that being answerable to someone else wouldn’t let me do. That’s when I sort of started True North Writing and started doing some freelance copywriting on the side. I want to emphasise as well, I had no agency experience, very limited qualifications of any kind. I was starting from a really low base and without things like The Clever Copywriting community around to pull me back from the ledge. I jumped off a lot of cliffs. Unwittingly in the early years of my business.
Kate Toon:
Yeah. Gosh so much to talk about there. I love the two different strands that you talk about. I would’ve thought that I was a wordsy person, but in reality, although I did work at agency, most of my work was in project management. I was the producer. I was managing the budget, timeline, the team, the personalities, or lack of. Then, and that’s really served me so well. I think that served me better in my copywriting career than my actual ability to write. My ability to manage a project and to manage people and make people feel heard, has been better than my actual copy. I think I’m better at that than actually writing. I love that. You say you jumped off a lot of cliffs, you’d had some experience, but running your own business is entirely different to working from someone else. How long ago did you actually start True North Writing? How long ago did you actually start being a real copywriter?
Matt:
2011.
Kate Toon:
- Okay. About 11 years in now. Yeah. That’s good. Yeah, but you’ve been kind of doing kind of wordsy things since you’re about 18. Yeah and I’m surprised that you chose law and thought law was a wordy thing. I did Renaissance’s poetry. That’s a wordy thing. I just-
Matt:
English is as well, but it was like English isn’t going to get you a job.
Kate Toon:
Yeah. True. I did want to be a teacher. I really did want to be a teaching and in a roundabout way, I am one now.
Matt:
Yeah. I mean, you can have a vocation to educate and to teach without that needing to be standing-
Kate Toon:
A school teacher. Yes. I don’t think I’d have done well, actually teaching teenagers, you know? I actually want to teach people who want to be taught, which is a different thing. Let’s talk about your career since you started True North, what do you think has been a real highlight? It could be a particular event or just a general theme in your business. What’s been a real career highlight for you?
Matt:
For me, it’s actually building a team. I’ve realised that I’m at my best when I’m collaborating with other people. Something about the way my brain works means that I’m very, very good at reviewing things that other people have done or making other people’s work better. I mean, I can do stuff myself, but I don’t like to. I always tell my team, I’m trying to avoid doing any actual work and what I mean by that is, taking myself out of the critical path. Having things where people on my team can deliver stuff and I’m not needed to be doing all of it myself. Because that’s a good way for me to scale my business. Just to be clear when I say not wanting to do any work, I mean, I do a tonne of work and I put in pretty long hours, but I’m concentrating more these days on business development, relationship management, and actually systemizing what we do. Because we’ve been going for 11 years and the number of actual systems we have in our business, you could count on like one fraction of a finger. We’re very good doers. I’m really glad that like, particularly in the last six months or so we’ve been systematising stuff with the help of the team.
Kate Toon:
Yeah and I mean, you’ve been a member of The Clever Copywriting School since it started. You were the second member and you’ve also employed a lot of people in the community. A lot of people got their start with you or got their first taste of what it’s like to work in a real copywriting team. That subcontractor model has worked really well for you. We’ve talked about this. I always said, “I can’t do it. I can’t do subcontractors.” You’ve also spoken at several copy cons and you told me a line which still stays with me and it’s, “Your role is not to present the most perfect copy, but your role is to make the copy better than it was.” You are able to take the subcontractors copy and improve on it, but you’re not looking for perfection. You’re not trying to create a work of art. You can probably explain that better than I’m I’m paraphrasing but do you remember when you talked about that?
Matt:
Yeah, I do. Actually goes back to something you said a moment ago, Kate, around what actually succeeding requires. Clients are not looking for perfection, or if they have an idea in their head of what perfection looks like, it’s either poorly articulated or it’s wrong. The value that we bring is actually in listening to them and making them feel heard and loved. That’s why I’m not particularly spooked by AI copywriting. I think it will get better. It will get much, much better. As a copywriter, you’re a teacher, you’re a therapist, you’re a coach. The writing is only a part of it. If you can get the relationship right, then the clients, that will frame the work that you give people. I think the other thing too, is that the type of work we do at True North, we cover a reasonably wide range, but often when you’re working for government or peak bodies, they’re not looking for an award winning creative concept. They’re usually looking for something that reads better than it did when Darrell in policy wrote the first draught. That’s where that making things less shit really comes in for me as well.
Kate Toon:
I get that and I like the fact that we’re not looking for award winning copy. We’re looking to make things plain English, but one of the things I really struggled with, having a team having subcontractors is the copy would come through. It would be perfectly fine, but it wouldn’t be as I would’ve written it. I could not resist the temptation to rewrite it. Obviously, every time I did that, any kind of profit that I had from having a subcontractor was eradicated. How do you work with subcontractors and not rewrite everything they do?
Matt:
It’s about fit for purpose. It’s thinking about the copy in a functional way almost. I think what job does this copy need to do? Does the copy meet the criteria for doing that job, whatever that looks like. Of course, there’s creativity and emotion in what you write, but fundamentally copy is there to achieve something. That’s the first part. The other part too, is that it’s about our relationship to the work that we do. For some of us copywriting is about expressing something that’s deeply personal to us. I think, if you have that mindset and there’s nothing wrong with that, but if you have that mindset, then looking at other people’s work is going to be more, would I have done it this way?
Kate Toon:
Yeah, I get that. I get that. I think, that’s why when we’re talking in the previous episode with Angela Denley, and she doesn’t have subcontractors, it’s just her. I just love that there are so many different approaches into this copywriting world. There’s not one size that fits all. You can be fit for purpose too. We talked about a success there. One of your big joys is building teams, working with teams. What’s one of your big fails? Tell me an embarrassing story.
Matt:
I would say that I’m really, really good at scoping and finance and spreadsheets, except when I’m not. One of the things about being ADHD is that we have these things called intentional blinks. Where it’s like concentrating, concentrating, concentrate, and our brain will just like go off to lunch for a couple of seconds and then we’ll come back. That means that I was finding that when we would set up a budget reporting spreadsheet, and this is some fairly big projects, I would do something that would-
Kate Toon:
Stuff it up-
Matt:
Would stuff it up. Yeah. Yeah. My approach in these kind of situations is that if there’s an error, it’s always resolved in the client’s favour, but it was pretty uncomfortable and sometimes pretty embarrassing. When you need to have conversations with clients about actually this has happened. I guess what I’ve learned from that, and the ADHD diagnosis for me was huge. It’s that I don’t have to be good at everything. I would’ve accepted that at a conceptual level for most of my life, but actually really owning that and also realising that one of the things that was holding back our business growth was this sense on my part, that we didn’t quite have the finance stuff as sorted as it needed to be. I’d also say that I’m getting a new admin team on board who are just absolute guns at this stuff. One of whom I met through the digital master chef’s community. That’s been huge, because that’s just meant that I’ve had less anxiety and can actually concentrate on growing a business, rather than cleaning up spreadsheet methods.
Kate Toon:
Yeah. I mean, let’s dig into the neurodiversity a little bit if you don’t mind because the diagnosis, we’re friends in real life. I remember when you kind of said it was kind of like, “Hooray, I finally understand.” It kind of unlocked a lot. I don’t know if anxiety and depression is even class neurodiversity, but one of the things I’ve learned about myself is that I have really, really great days and really, really bad days. There is a yawning gap between the two, like I’m inconsistent. Obviously, like you with these spreadsheets, I’ve always felt terrible about that. Why can’t I show up every day? Why can’t I maintain this level of enthusiasm? What I needed to do is exactly what you did. I needed to find someone who could be consistent. A team member who could turn up every day, make sure the emails were answered and things were done so that I could take a down day. Then, the next day come back and be glorious. That for me has been really, really important to live with my black dog, rather than trying to stuff it into a bag in the corner. For you, ADHD, you’ve talked about one thing, these intentional blinks, what other things has it helped you identify and kind of go, “Ah, I have a reason there’s method to my madness?”
Matt:
Oh gosh, so much. Just to respond to what you were saying as well, Kate, with your experience. ADHD is a disability and that’s been quite weird as like a white male with a tonne of privilege, getting my head around the idea of being a person with a disability. One of the things that’s tricky about it, number one, it’s invisible and number two, it’s variable. The extent to which it affects me will vary hugely day to day. Again, having support people has been huge, but I would say one of the things for me is around, I don’t think in a linear sequence. I tend to see everything all at once. The downside of that is that actually planning for a goal or executing a sequence consistently is really hard for me. The plus side of it is though, that particularly when I’m doing strategy work, being able to see a problem domain all at once, means that I can just see kind of gaps, connections, themes really, really fast in a way that a neurotypical person might not be able to do or might take a really, really long time to be able to do so. I think understanding that and just being able to lean into the strengths a bit more is huge.
Kate Toon:
Yeah. I mean, I think, my partner has ADHD and I think it’s both his superpower and his kryptonite, but he just needs to recognise which is which. That linear thinking is something that I take for granted. That I can see a thing and work out every step in the process. I sometimes get lost in the detail and I can’t take that helicopter view. Yeah, I love that though. I think we just need to talk about this more and more and understand it more and not trying to be perfect, not to pretend that because from the outside in, other people in the copywriting community would see you doing these huge governmental projects, working with hundreds of subcontractors on giant jobs and be like, “Oh my God, he’s amazing.” We all have our struggles and I think it’s great to talk about them, whether we are white men with privilege or not. Let’s flip to something a bit lighter and then we’re going to come back to talking about feelings. Do you have a favourite copywriting tool that you love to use?
Matt:
I have two. I have Hemingway, which people who don’t know it. It’s a free online tool where you plug in your copy, copy paste, and it will highlight which parts are hard to read and which aren’t. I’ve looked at a lot of readability tools, including ones that cost you thousands of dollars a year in licences, like the Visible Threads and others and none of them have that immediate accessibility to them. I love that. The other one I use a lot is Mirror, which is good for brainstorming strategy. It’s an online whiteboarding tool on steroids. If you’re a non-linear thinker like me having a space and particularly a virtual space, we just throw all of your guff up on a virtual board and it sits on your computer. You don’t have to make your wall look like one of those detective bits of thread going all over the place, crime scene things. Yeah. That’s been really useful for me as well.
Kate Toon:
Great tips. I haven’t heard of Mirror so I’m excited about that one. I have my little whiteboard here which I adore.
Matt:
[crosstalk 00:20:44] Time.
Kate Toon:
I know, but I like that. It keeps my thoughts small and manageable. We’ve talked a little bit about mindset. One of the things that’s quite crushing for a lot of copywriters and we talked about this with Angela as well. I think it’s because we are quite emotional creatures is the self doubt piece that I can’t do this. The comparison-itis, the imposter syndrome the second guessing our quote, before we send it. The anxiety after we’ve sent the first draught, how do you deal with that now that you are so grown up and mature?
Matt:
There’s still things that I struggle with. For example, I’ve had many people tell me that we are undercharging. Yeah, I’m actually getting some advice around that. Around the self doubt thing more generally though, I think for me, I ignore it. That may sound a bit strange, but you can spend so much time and get caught up in loops trying to correct yourself and go, “No, I shouldn’t be thinking that I should be thinking this instead. Oh no, I’m terrible. I’m always putting myself down and get in these in these loops.” For me, focusing on the work really helps and the self confidence kind of follows along. I’ve found a lot of value in mindfulness and some of the sort of Buddhist derived thinking where it’s not about trying to combat self doubt, for example, it’s just recognising that it exists, recognising that objectively, and allowing space for it. There’s this Buddhist parable, if I can get a bit fruity for a second, where I think Buddha was being accosted by this demon called MaraI think. Mara was all like, “Blah, [inaudible 00:22:43].” Buddha was like, “Come in, sit down, have some tea.” Taking that approach where we have the resilience, like where we are able to do that, creating some space for negative thoughts rather than trying to correct them and fix it, has been really helpful for me.
Kate Toon:
I love that. Invite those negative thoughts in, for a cup of tea and a crumpet and then let them pass through you. I like that. I think thinking is a wonderful thing, but I think we can do too much of it. Most of my power comes from doing the do, because once I get absorbed in the work, the voices recede. The little demon is out the back eating his crumpet and then he’s not bothering me anymore. I mean, we’re talking a lot about mental health, but how do you balance work and real life? Because real life gets in the way people, things happen. Life isn’t great. Work can be challenging. How do you find escape from all of the stress of running a business?
Matt:
I mean, just for context, I have two young kids, eight and four, so that’s a big part of my life. I don’t love the term balance because it kind of suggest that it’s static. I think it’s more about ebbs and flows and-
Kate Toon:
I was just going to say ebb and flow literally. Because I don’t believe in balance either. It’s a word that’s thrown around it puts, I think it puts even more pressure on us. We’re supposed to have these serene days, so yeah, I love ebb and flow.
Matt:
I mean, there’s also a thing around meeting responsibilities, to the people in our life. I’d also say work is very much my happy place. It’s where I get a lot of sense of kind of mastery. It’s where I feel competent. Whereas, again, as an ADHD person, navigating the real world, it’s often pretty frustrating. How I think about this stuff is just recognising when I need to do something for myself. For me, that’s going on a long bike ride or going in a flotation tank or actually today, weirdly, for an interview, I don’t normally get like this, but today I’m pretty [inaudible 00:25:07]. I’m like, “I just want to go out with someone and go to dinner and have a drink.” Responding to your needs as they arise. Then, with having said that I get a lot of satisfaction from work is really easy for me to kind of just go too hard and then I’m exhausted the next day. Haven’t figured it out. I’ll text you when I do.
Kate Toon:
I love that though. I’m glad you said that because there’s some permission there in terms of saying, “I’m quite good at what I do and I get a lot of pleasure out of my job.” I feel like this is somewhere I’m competent because I feel the same Matt. Yet, I do sometimes feel like I’m bumbling full when it comes to relationships and friendships and navigating real life. When I’m in my little office, I feel like I’m more in control and I get that. Like you, I could stay here all day and all night, if I’m not careful. I’m going, I love a flotation tank. I’m going to have my legs squeezed in a tube today.
Matt:
What?
Kate Toon:
It’s this weird thing. It’s called like neuro something, neuro farm or something. I’ll text you, but it’s good for muscles. Because I’ve been at the gym a lot but I’m having my legs squeeze in a tube. I mean try and can’t get better than that, can you? We’ve got obviously, hopefully, I’m saying this, we have no listeners at the moment, because this is a brand new podcast. I’m hoping we’re going to have copywriters at all levels. If you were talking, I’m not going to ask you … I did ask you in the question for a tip for newbie copywriters, but you know what I’d rather get from you. What’s a tip for old copywriters? Copywriters have been doing this for 10 years. How do you keep on keeping on? How do you turn up each day and motivate yourself to do the do?
Matt:
You know Mike Manson?
Kate Toon:
Oh yes. Yeah.
Matt:
Yeah so he’s got at a staying, “Choose your problems.”
Kate Toon:
Yes.
Matt:
Which I loved because when you’ve been doing it for a while, you can go through this stage of like, “Maybe this sucks and maybe I should go and do something else.” I went through that particularly with COVID. COVID times and I may still, at some point, decide that I’m going to go and do something else. Any path that we choose will have problems, things about it that will suck. It’s about choosing what you are willing to grapple with. For me, in leaving the security of the public service, to start my business, it was deciding that I didn’t want to deal with the problem of having to get permission to do the work that I was interested in. That then meant that I was saying yes to the problem of having to go out and find clients or worrying about financial security. I think it’s really normal for people who are oldies to go through periods of like, I want to do something different and I would take that seriously and listen to it, but thinking about the problems.
Kate Toon:
Yeah.
Matt:
Yeah.
Kate Toon:
Choose your heart. Choose your heart. Being an employee is hard. Being a freelancer is hard. Choose your hard. I love that. It’s one of my mantras. I love it. If I had mantras, I don’t really have mantras. Well, we’re going to finish off with a daft question because I like a daft question. For the rest of your life, you’re only allowed to use one piece of cutlery, do you choose a spoon, a fork or a knife?
Matt:
I’m all about the both ends so I choose a spork.
Kate Toon:
Ah, I choose spork. I want to make you a t-shirt that says that. I feel like you are a spork, multi talented, innovative. I used the word innovative. God slap me. I can’t be a copywriter if I use the word innovative, can I? I’m going to say that I’m passionate in a minute and then we’ll just have to end the podcast. We do have to end the podcast. Matt Fenwick the Fen, Fat Menwick. It’s been amazing having you on the show. Thank you so much for being in the community, for being one of our investors, and for being what I consider a proper copywriter.
Matt:
That’s lovely for you to say Kate. I will believe it one day, but thanks. Thanks for having me.
Kate Toon:
Thank you.
