How in the world does someone go from being a massage therapist to becoming an SEO & case study copywriter? Well… the story is a lot longer than just that 1 leap! And I’m spilling all the coffee beans in this episode. I want you to know where I’ve been so you can get a better understanding of how all these dots connect together—and why you might want to stick around for a little while. I say this all the time when I guest teach, but please let me know if we have anything in common! Anything at all. I’d love to hear from you.
With this episode you’ll be able to:
Discover how a massage therapist became an SEO copywriter.
Uncover Brittany’s mission now that she’s a copywriter & podcaster.
Learn fun facts Brittany rarely shares on any other podcast!
Thanks for joining me on The Basic B podcast! Help me reach more service providers like you by following the show & leaving a rating or review on Apple & Spotify!
Get SEO to work for you—with the DFY SEO Packet from SEO copywriter, Brittany Herzberg. More details here!
How in the world does someone go from being a massage therapist to becoming an SEO & case study copywriter? Well… the story is a lot longer than just that 1 leap! And I’m spilling all the coffee beans in this episode. I want you to know where I’ve been so you can get a better understanding of how all these dots connect together—and why you might want to stick around for a little while. I say this all the time when I guest teach, but please let me know if we have anything in common! Anything at all. I’d love to hear from you.
With this episode you’ll be able to:
Discover how a massage therapist became an SEO copywriter.
Uncover Brittany’s mission now that she’s a copywriter & podcaster.
Learn fun facts Brittany rarely shares on any other podcast!
Thanks for joining me on The Basic B podcast! Help me reach more service providers like you by following the show & leaving a rating or review on Apple & Spotify!
Get SEO to work for you—with the DFY SEO Packet from SEO copywriter, Brittany Herzberg. More details here!
🎉 This podcast is brought to you in partnership w/ Leah Bryant Co.
I thought it could be fun to spend an episode dissecting my journey to sitting in front of this podcast mic because it was not an overnight thing. I'm honestly not sure how this is going to spell out of me because I have written and rewritten my notes about a dozen times already. So let's start there actually. I'm an introvert. I am also a very pale white chick. So I turn red. Pretty often I turn red, here's some examples. Public speaking used to be really, really bad. If anyone is singing the happy birthday song to me, that is another time. Pretty much if any attention is on me and I feel the least bit uncomfortable, I'm going to like flame up red and people get very concerned. They think that something is wrong with me. And really it's just like the abundance of attention is overwhelming to my system, honestly. I'm also a recovering perfectionist and that is something that I'm working on, you know, pretty much daily. When it comes to copywriting, that's something that I want it to be good. I notice myself like I don't want to disappoint my clients. I don't want to let anyone down. I want it to be absolutely incredible and I want it to be incredible the first time out the gate. And that is just, that is just... not going to happen and that is something that I am constantly working through. Although I will say I got to give myself credit because I have been much, much better even just within the last like four months. So I need to give myself credit. But between being a perfectionist and being an introvert, which people think I'm lying when I tell them that I'm an introvert, they're like, you're so personable and you do video and here we are with me starting a podcast and a YouTube channel and talking to people And you will hear me and you will most likely agree with those other people and think there is no way she's an introvert. And yet I am. I need that recharge time. I need, I desperately need that recharge time. I should actually, I'll add this to my list of episode topics, but there's a book by Susan Kane called Quiet. And when I read that I was like, it just exposed so much about being an introvert and it crushed a lot of myths that people believe to be true about introverts. and we don't, which I used to consider myself shy, and we don't like people and that's just not the case. Some introverts are very, very people oriented, but we just need that recharge time. That is the biggest thing in my book. But anyway, I digress. Between being an introvert and a perfectionist, recovering perfectionist, I took a very long time to start this podcast, to start this YouTube channel. Thank you, by the way, for wherever you're joining me from. But yeah, it's been a journey. It has been an interesting full ride and I'm excited to see where I go next. And I know that one day I will listen or watch this recording by myself. And I will be so proud of where I am at that point. It's something I'm excited about is to see the growth of myself. So that's really, really cool. So other than those two things, I'm also, if you're into any of the personality tests and things like that, which I love them, I'm an INFJ, which is one of the, I think it actually might be the rarest type. And yet I seem to have buddied up with a ton of other INFJs, which you'll get to meet some of them on this podcast. I am also a three five. Manifesting Generator if you are familiar with human design at all. So that really means for my like brief takeaway, very high level takeaway, I need to experience things and then break it down for other people. That is something I love doing and I'm going to probably say a little bit more about that. But I have to experiment and then I want to share about those experiments with people. So what better way to do that than with a podcast at a YouTube channel. But also being a fast. I like moving quickly. I like being efficient, which is part of why I love focusing on the basics. That's something that whether it's technology or a process or a workflow, if I can keep it as basic as possible and give myself as few roadblocks and brick walls to run into, which could potentially... slow me down and also make me just not even do the thing. If I can remove those roadblocks, remove those brick walls, it's going to be better for me and everyone else in my world. So it's pretty cool. I'm also like really, really into astrology. I'm even diving more into this with a couple of my favorites this year. I am a Libra rising, a Taurus sun, and a Sagittarius moon. So I'm kind of cool. And I have what's called a stellium, which means just like a cluster of planets in Capricorn. So if I were saying that properly, I would say I have a Capricorn stellium. So got a lot going on. But a little background of like how I ended up here. In school, I was kind of, I don't know if anybody else uses this term, but I was kind of a floater. And I moved around a lot. Like what I mean by that is I moved around a lot and I bounced around between the different groups. I wasn't in one clique. I wasn't in like the popular jock clique. I wasn't in the nerdy kids clique. I was in all of them at any different given point. So with me moving a lot and with me going to a bunch of different schools, I figured out how to blend in and be friends with just about everyone. Of course, like kids will be kids and everybody's got their, you know, opinions and their own baggage that they're coming into the situation with. But I was able to blend and to mesh and to make friends with just about everyone. And it's something I'm still able to do, which I'm happy that is part of who I am and how I am. But in the last 10 years, I've really done a deep dive to figure out who I am, what I want, what that means, how I want to show up, how I want to help people. And by goodness. Entrepreneurship will help you do that and it will present an opportunity to you real quick fast and in a hurry, which is something I wasn't prepared for. I wasn't anticipating when I became an entrepreneur. I just, I was not expecting that. And yet that's been one of the coolest and most challenging parts of being an entrepreneur has been figuring out who I am. what I want to be, who I want to help, how I want to help them, like what does that look like, what are my opinions, what are my beliefs, what is my framework, what is my approach to things. And I'm sure if you're listening you can probably relate to this as well. Um, one of the neatest... parts about me is that like I just know when something is right for me, when something is a smart next step for me. It doesn't always make sense. Part of this also goes back to that manifesting generator bit as well. I just know there's this internal pull of like Go become a massage therapist, Brittany, even though you've never had a massage. True story. I knew that I wanted to work in a chiropractic office even though I had never had a chiropractic adjustment. Turns out, I didn't know this at the time, but when I was a baby, my mom used to take me with her to, they had a friend, my parents had a friend who was becoming a chiropractor and then he opened a chiropractic office and my mom used to take my brother and I when we were really, really little. So that was pretty cool and I had no idea. I thought I had never stepped foot in a chiropractic office. office. So it happened with massage, it happened with me knowing I wanted to work in a chiropractic office. It also happened when I heard of copywriting and then I realized, oh, wow, I'm pretty good at doing this. And people will pay me that's pretty neat. So it happened again with SEO. And now once again with the podcast and the YouTube channel, I just know even though I'm uncomfortable a little bit in this moment, I know that it's going to be the right thing for me in a next step for me and it's going to enable me to reach more people than I really could have ever dreamed of and you know dreamed possible but the very first thing in my world that I knew was right for me that I was meant to do was to teach. and I have done that successfully. But I was really discouraged because I really wanted to go to a four year college and I didn't do that. I actually ended up going, I finished my two year degree pretty quickly after high school. That's a whole other part of the story, but I went to a couple different high schools where I was able to get college credit while I was in high school, free of charge. And so I graduated with like two thirds or three quarters of my two year degree done, my bachelor's degree done. and bachelor's no, associates. Let's just cut that out and say two-year degree. I was able to graduate with like the bulk of my two-year degree done and then I had a semester to play with and in that time I met a massage therapist and decided to go to a technical school. So that program, I think it was 18 months and I went to night school to become a massage therapist and I needed during the day. See, I didn't know how any of this stuff was going to come out of my mouth and into this podcast, but I... I knew I wanted to teach and once I became a massage therapist, I was able to, I saw this interesting need for a couple different kinds of classes. One was a, I called it Roll It Out, I think was the name of it, and I showed people how to work on themselves at home with lacrosse balls, with tennis balls, with foam rollers, you name it, we tried to use it. The very first place that I had a massage practice, no that's a lie, the second place in a yoga studio in North Carolina. And so I had the space to be able to teach and that was really so cool for me to be able to do that because I was able to, for the first time, fulfill that teaching dream. So I was able to show people, like I said, show people how to work on themselves at home. I didn't want them to be dependent on me. I wanted them to learn how to do this stuff for themselves at home on their own, listen to their body, know that they had the tools and know what to do when they were feeling uncomfortable. I also, the second class was a couples massage workshop. So this started out with big workshops and it didn't even have to be like a husband, wife or girlfriends or whatever. It was just two people. So I had, you know, like, I know I had friends come in. I know I had partners, you know. married people, people dating. Actually, I think a couple people came in and it was some of their first dates, which is pretty cool. I had clients, so people who knew me would bring in their partners and the partners got to meet me. But just two people working on each other, learning how to do that. So it was in a big workshop setting. We used the yoga studio room and my boyfriend was able to help me out on a couple of occasions. So that was a blast because that was a group setting. it turned into more of like one-to-one and I had probably four or five couples that came in and I was able to show them. We just used my massage room, my massage table. Everybody stays clothed for these, by the way. That always has to be something that I mentioned. But I had a couple of couples, like I said, four or five couples come in and I was able to show them, you know, take that time one-to-one. So we think. I made them like 90 minutes. I don't even know why I'm telling you all these details, but here we are. I think I spent like 90 minutes and half the time would be one partner working on the other partner and then we would switch and then the other person would get the massage work and the other person would have the time to play massage therapist. So All of that is to say that's one place where I was able to teach and then I became a copywriter and learned SEO and I really wanted to show other people the same deal. How they can help themselves, what they can do to harness these skills, to use it to show up and be more findable and be more visible online. But you know, at the core of it, I love people, I love learning, I love teaching, I love words, I love experiencing things like I said earlier, and then I really, really love telling and showing people how they can help themselves. And what I really want to do is help them move through things quicker. and with more confidence and that it just makes me so happy and it makes everything feel worth it. All of the experimentation, all of the, I don't know, I'm going to try this. Let's see how it goes. Oh, this like didn't pan out, but let me tell you about it. And that's really what I want to do with this podcast. I want to share what I've learned. I want to share who I've met, what I've tried, what worked, what didn't so that you can make your life and your business easier. all feel easier. It'll flow a little bit faster. It'll flow a little bit easier faster. And you'll probably hear me say this a lot, but take what resonates with you throughout any of these episodes and leave what doesn't. Not everything is going to fit and it doesn't have to and it's totally fine. So probably the funniest part is that I never ever thought I would be a business owner and yet looking back I have been an entrepreneur. pretty much, I really thought about this and I think I've pretty much been an entrepreneur. It's been in my world, in my system since I was about 11 years old. I started with babysitting and nannying and pet sitting and even house sitting for neighbors and things like that. And I was volunteering to do something, not volunteering, but I was offering to do something in exchange for money. So I have been doing this entrepreneur thing for a lot longer than I realized. But owning a business, operating a business in my world growing up as a kid, that seemed like a very unstable, volatile choice to make, thing to do. And I just don't think I had really great examples of what that could look like, whether it was... the person or the business or the time and the economy and all this kind of stuff. Like I just I didn't see it being a positive, happy, amazing option. So I really steered away from it for as long as I possibly could. And then at one point I kept having this one massage client actually who was like, what's next? What's next? And he was a retired business guy and always just like wanting to help, wanting to steer people toward like the next best step. And lo and behold, I actually really liked his idea. It resonated and like I said, if things feel right, then I just go with it. And even though I will say I always have at least one backup plan, sometimes I have two just to be on the safe side. But before I became an SEO and case study copywriter, I was a massage therapist. I was... trapped in a 700 square foot apartment in Raleigh, North Carolina amid the pandemic. And if I take you back to that moment, I had my massage practice for, let me see, six years at that point, five years at that point, I think it was six years. And that was my life. That was my world. I was working at least five days a week, if not six. and I was really missing my clients. I really, really needed the break because I had been working so much non-stop, but I really missed my clients. And I'm also someone who has felt the need over the course of her life to do, to do and do and do and do things. And so I was home with all this time and there were definitely things that I had been wanting to do that I hadn't had a chance to do. And a couple of opportunities also presented themselves. So. how it happened, how I became a copywriter really, was I attended an audio summit, I watched a webinar, I learned what those things even were, I learned what an email funnel was, I kind of threw myself unknowingly into the world of online marketing and that's where I really realized, oh, what I like doing with words and with writing is copywriting and by the way people will actually pay you for this skill so... That was just fascinating to me. I ended up joining a couple of copywriting courses. So I learned to write a quiz. I learned to write emails. I learned how to write web copy. What I was doing was already working and I knew that because people were coming to my massage therapy website and booking with me, having only found me on Google. So I knew that I had something working for me but I didn't know exactly what it was. And in order for me to pivot from massage therapy only into massage therapy plus copywriting, I really had to figure out, I felt like I had to figure out what am I doing that's working? What are some things I can learn and add into this skillset and this framework and this workflow that I've got going on for my clients who were at the time mostly health preneurs, healthcare service providers. nurses, dentists, other massage therapists, chiropractors, things like that. So I really wanted to understand what was working well, how I could make it better so that everything would just really click and flow for them and me, right? Like from the business side of things, I really wanted to know how I could make it efficient, how I could do a good job, how I could... really shine a bright, bright light on these other business owners and these services that were being offered. So one of the things that came into my world that I realized was SEO. And with my massage practice, I was all about like, the client was going to come in to me on whatever day they came in, feeling however they felt, and I always asked them, how are you feeling? Literally like, how are you feeling? How is your body? What are you noticing in your body and your emotions and how's your day going and things like that? And it didn't matter what they told me. I had this like tool bag, this invisible tool bag that I could pull out whatever tool I needed to help them that day. It could be massage cups, it could be trigger point therapy, it could be craniosacral therapy, whatever I had I was going to pull that tool out and make sure they had the best session for what they needed that day. I wanted to do the same thing with copywriting. So when I learned about SEO and I learned that it was using the right words intentionally in the right places, I was... all about it because I'm like I don't want to I was taking on all kinds of copywriting projects emails like I said quizzes web copy you name it I was trying it because I wanted to figure out what I liked and what I was good at and what was really like doing it for clients and so when I learned about SEO I knew I needed to learn more. Thankfully, I had a couple friends who were also diving into SEO at that point, and my boyfriend, Daniel, was writing his web copy, and he knew he didn't want to be on social media. So SEO and using keywords, that was really a big, big... part of his strategy. So I was surrounded by people also learning the same skill. And it was really incredible because it was just fun to exchange notes and learn from them and have them learn from me again with the teaching and the learning. So that was really a the biggest push that I had to get into SEO and to learn more and right time, right place, right situation. And from there with copywriting, I knew that I still love emails. I still write email sequences for clients. It's not something that I publicly talk about really. The things that I really love doing right now are case studies. I love writing them myself. So I have done for you case studies. I love showing people how to write them. So I have my case study training program. I mentor business owners as well in the art of writing case studies that are data driven with SEO keywords. and story-based. So that is really the project that I have found that is my own, that I want to make my own, that people now know me for. They know me for SEO, they know me for case study copywriting, and it's a really good feeling. It's a really amazing feeling to have made it this far to have been known as a massage therapist who did cupping and craniosacral work. all the way over here to now I'm doing SEO and case study copywriting and people are calling me. to come in and do guest teaching. They are finding me on Instagram because I have keywords in the right place and they want help with SEO or they want help with case studies. It's a really incredible feeling and that is what I want for you. So that is why, that is how, first of all, that is how I went from being a massage therapist to turning into a marketer and copywriter and strategist. And that is why I have this podcast. I really want... to make an impact in your world. I, you know, if I had to sum this all up, I have an insane love of people and efficiency and teaching and simplifying and sharing things, and I created this podcast so I could do all of that. And I really can't wait to do all of that.