
Crystalee Beck has constructed a multi-million dollar copywriting enterprise from her residence within the Salt Lake Metropolis space whereas elevating 4 youngsters, ages one, 4, seven and 9.
She is the founder and CEO of Comma Copywriter, a copywriting company serving expertise and actual property corporations. She runs them too Mama Ladder Worldwide, a neighborhood for mothers who wish to begin and develop companies. She shares what she discovered about it in movies on her YouTube channel, an instance of which you’ll see beneath.
“With out my infants as motivation, I would not be an entrepreneur,” says Beck. “I wished to be there for her so badly and mentioned I am going to determine easy methods to do each.”
Beck is a part of an thrilling development: the rise of million-dollar one-person companies. In 2019, the U.S. Census Bureau counted 43,012 corporations with no staff apart from house owners that had income starting from $1 million to $2.49 million, up from 41,666 in 2018. One other 2,553 had income starting from $2.5 million to $4.99 $388 million and gross sales of $5 million in income and past. There is not any telling what number of extra of those corporations are more likely to emerge due to free and low-cost sources like cloud-based and synthetic intelligence instruments and strong freelance platforms for hiring expertise.
She masters life-style design to drag it off. Beck works 20-25 hours per week Monday via Thursday and depends on 47 freelancers in 20 states. She desires to rent her first payroll clerk earlier than the tip of this 12 months.
Beck started growing the abilities that may permit her to construct her profitable enterprise from her first few jobs. After graduating from Brigham Younger College in 2009, Baker received a job at SkyWest Airways overseeing content material growth of in-flight attendant coaching supplies and have become a flight attendant herself.
Desirous to get paid to write down, she earned a grasp’s diploma in communications from 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 her launch, she based Comma Copywriters in 2016. “I had a little bit of warning,” says Beck, who additionally labored as a freelancer on the aspect. She juggled being the primary breadwinner and being the mom of a one-year-old together with her husband in grad faculty.
“I virtually jumped in entrance of the door,” she remembers. “I used to be so excited to have some freedom to do with my day what I wished to do with it.”
She significantly set about increasing the enterprise rapidly. “I purchased a commerce license in February 2016,” she remembers. “I wrote in my diary, ‘It’ll be one million dollar enterprise.’ I had no concept easy methods to get there.”
One in all her early initiatives was writing Joyce’s Boy, a ebook that captures the lifetime of serial entrepreneur Alan Corridor, who was president of the company she labored for.
She gained extra clients via her community. At first, Beck merely responded to inquiries from these clients. “I name these first few years my sandbox years,” she says. “I performed within the sandbox. I might simply do what individuals pay me to do.”
Quickly Beck had extra work to do than she might deal with. As an alternative of making an attempt to do all the pieces herself, she recruited a couple of freelancers.
Beck raked in $100,000 in 2017, her first full calendar 12 months in enterprise. The corporate continued to develop and by 2019 she rebranded it as Comma Copywriters.
One in all Comma Copywriters’ promoting factors to shoppers has been that jobs are delivered on time or “on the home”. In response to Beck, the corporate delivered greater than 21,000 items of content material final 12 months, and 99.94% have been on time.
She’s not fearful about different companies and freelance platforms that shoppers would possibly think about. “I am not eager about competitors,” she says. “I see them extra as choices than competitors. We’re an addition. In the long run, hiring us is way more cost-effective for our shoppers than hiring a full-time headcount author in-house.”
As the corporate has grown, Beck has divided the corporate into three teams of authors based mostly on the kinds of clients they serve: B2C (enterprise to consumer), B2B (enterprise to enterprise), and companies. “Staff Leaders” handle every group. She additionally has a Staff Assist Supervisor and a Shopper Success Supervisor.
When recruiting writers, Beck has discovered that she does effectively to search for individuals who align with the corporate’s core values: freedom, accountability, humility, curiosity, and caring. Many are girls who admire the chance to be a part of a company that provides them regular work {and professional} growth whereas they maintain family chores. “I feel we actually have the very best of each worlds for our writers who need the flexibleness of a freelancer and the help of a workforce,” says Beck.
To maintain her freelance workforce motivated and aligned, Beck affords bonuses for on-time work, hosts month-to-month skilled growth occasions, and brings them collectively for an annual workforce retreat. After the writers have been with the corporate for 3 years, Comma Copywriters offers them a $1,000 bonus that they’ll use to tick one thing off their bucket checklist. A girl invested in tenting tools. One other went to Disneyland.
Comma Copywriters leaves it as much as the writers how a lot work they wish to tackle. The workforce communicates about initiatives via Basecamp, a undertaking administration software program. This has allowed the corporate to make sure issues run 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 the chief workforce had new infants.
A key focus of the enterprise is giving again, significantly to girls. One chance is the Comma Cares program. Comma Copywriters sponsors training for women via a non-profit companion, Kurandza, for each consumer it really works with.
A 12 months after beginning comma, Beck additionally based a sister firm, The Mama Ladder Worldwide. It affords workshops and a retreat to assist girls begin and develop companies to fulfill demand. “I’ve had all these girls come as much as me and ask me easy methods to begin a small child enterprise,” she says.
The Mama Ladder affords the HIGH FIVE Grant for Mothers, which gives a $5,000 grant together with a number of different mothers who wish to develop their companies however do not have entry to capital. This 12 months, Lowe’s and Clear Simple Eats are sponsoring the grants for the primary time.
Beck is aware of from his personal expertise that elevating youngsters and vital entrepreneurial success are usually not mutually unique. “There’s nothing a motivated mom cannot do,” she says.