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How to Fail Until You Succeed

Writer's picture: Kory MerenessKory Mereness

I was utterly lost.


The laptop screen glowed in front of me. For the second time, I was reading an email reply from my boss refusing a request to review my compensation after successfully completing another month's work carrying the largest caseload among my team. The stress of the work wasn't great, but the demoralizing paystubs had brought me to the end of my rope.


No one was coming to save me.


In Dec 2021 I began working as a chaplain for the local hospice in Amarillo. I knew from the first day that the clock was ticking on that job's shelf life. I was asked in my interview for a minimum range of salary I could accept, so I gave them a number. They responded by offering me $8,000 less than that, soundly within the bottom 10% of hospice chaplain salaries in Texas. Yet after a punishing ride through the hardest year of my life where I worked for five different employers, I was desperate to have a job that could at least be steady and cover my insurance.


So I said yes.


What a strange feeling to be in a career where you respect the sanctity of the work so much, but feel hopeless doing it.


Thus began another rendition of this dream-state routine where my every major life choice was made feeling like I didn't have any other choice. The stability of the job gave me some sense of rest, but somehow I was sure I'd become trapped once again. As I carried on, worked harder and harder, and advocate for my worth to my company, the more crystalized this fact became: I had no future here.


My, how things have changed.


Today, I'm a full-time freelance copywriter. I own my LLC, Copy Kory. I've got a few regular clients. Most importantly, I feel an incredible burden lifted from me and a sense of possibility about my future.


I just had to become utterly lost to get here.


The Pressure Point

2021 was a trainwreck year for me, and thankfully this is the abridged version. If you want the important context of the year that preceded it, check out these previous posts. It's a wild ride!


In my last post, I recorded at length the story of moving from Oregon to Amarillo TX where I now live, to take a job that I immediately lost as a consequence of COVID. This left me and my family stranded and searching for answers, wondering what I would do with my career.


I went through Unemployment phases in that year where weeks turned into months. This came with a lot of soul-searching about "what I want to be when I grow up". At 36 I thought I was grown up. But Johnny taxpayer was paying for my room and board, so I guess not.


As I drifted farther away in an unseen undertow from my 11-year career as a pastor, I was not blind that the growing distance made me appear less and less qualified as a spiritual shepherd under the employ of the church. I cast résumés out into those waters, and there were nibbles, but no bites.


My work search began to feel frantic. I had a very weird resume for what most employers were seeking, and for that matter, I had almost no clarity about what I would actually want to do besides ministry. But about six weeks after cleaning out my desk at my first job in Amarillo, I found a gig that seemed decent enough as an outside salesman for a solar company.


Over the next four months, I had some small successes and put a massive amount of effort into this job. Heck, I think I actually drove something like 27,000 miles in just those four months and became so stressed about the extensive work hours and the holes in my commission-based salary that my hair was actually falling out in the shower! I battled on and on as long as I could, my wife became my personal gym spotter motivating me with "Just one more rep!" but we finally agreed it was time to rack that job.


Providentially, I had two opportunities come up back-to-back that kept me afloat, even if it was just my nose alone that stayed above water.


First, I found a job taking out the trash with a local recycling company. Listen, this is work I respect because it's sweat labor and provides an essential service that homeowners and businesses invariably underappreciate (take ten seconds to consider a world where waste services don't exist!) But it's also a pretty iconic call-out of how far you've toppled from other career dreams when you find yourself sorting someone's used beer cans from day-old cat food tins.


Still, it paid some bills, and the kindness of my employer has left me with a friendship that I still value today.


That employer had hired me as a stopgap, and when I finished my time there, I jumped on with a crew doing residential home construction. They were patient with me as I learned some carpentry skills, and I did what I could to multiply the crew's efficiency on a local house build. Mainly I used this time to search for a steady job. I just couldn't keep up the pace of re-learning a career every three months for a diminishing hourly wage.


Finally, I found a hospice chaplain job through a contact provided by my brother. For any appeal it lacked in pay, it was salaried and it utilized existing skills and passion for serving people. After all, I had been through, I just needed a dependable job that would be there for me six months from now. So I said yes, and I started work there with all of the enthusiasm of a marathon runner who had just collapsed over the finish line.



Side Hustle

Looking back on this war campaign of work, I see how two deterrents kept me trapped in a vicious cycle that ushered me through the depths of physiological and psychological despair.


First I had a ministry resume, working in a secular world. That weighed on me and felt incredibly unfair because I could easily see how many transferrable skills I'd been outfitted within that decade of working for a large organization with 20+ staff. But when it comes time to say "I've got a Bible degree" to any interviewer who isn't a church. Well, you can imagine.


The second roadblock was something I think many more people find themselves baffled by in their journey to the work they love.


I absolutely could not decide what I wanted to become.


Ever been there?


Until this point, I had some notions that I wanted to write, but that vague notion was doing nothing to motivate me toward a practical goal. What did I want to write? For whom? And most importantly, would it even pay?


I set out on a quest for answers, and eventually found a podcast called Build Your Own Copywriting Business. That was the beginning of everything.


Choosing a Path

I was spending an average of 8 hrs/wk driving impossibly long commutes that are customary to hospice chaplaincy in the remote Texas Panhandle where there's nothing but 40 miles of road and 100 heat-seeking tumbleweeds between you and the next town with a stoplight and a Dairy Queen. I started putting that time to work for my education, and devoured multiple podcasts a day, learning everything I could about copywriting.


For those wondering what copywriting is, the most effective description I've seen is this:


Copywriting is salesmanship in print.


Copy is everywhere you look. It's every web page, every social media ad (or post, for that matter). It's the backside of cereal boxes and books. It's billboards, emails, and scripts read on commercials.


A lot of people probably come to copywriting because they love writing, not because they love marketing. For me, it's both. My intuitive disposition has always grown more curious when wondering "what is my audience thinking, and how can my words speak directly to their need?" This was always a part of my process in ministry, and I now saw how valuable this skill was in the business world.


So I listened. I bought books and read. I followed Twitter accounts to get insights. Then I finally put some money down on my dream and bought a copywriting course from my favorite copy podcaster, Filthy Rich Writer. For anyone wading into the shallow end of copywriting with a lot of interest but a million questions, this is where you start. This became my point of no return.

*Disclaimer, this is an affiliate link and I may make commissions through these links. I promote it as a product that can help someone finally start their copywriting dream. It did for me.


I tried for many months to establish a routine as a side hustle, but I was coming home emotionally depleted every day from a job that is literally ensconced in death, grief, and tragedy. Building this website was everything I could muster, and sending out pitches to clients was an ever-elusive next step. Always the thing "I'll get to later."


This is when I had a watershed moment, staring at a glowing laptop screen, realizing my boss couldn't or wouldn't do anything to offer me a future.


Continuing the writing endeavor as a supplement to my 9-5 would have been the safer play. But the embarrassing pay and frequent on-call work had already taken their toll. There wasn't enough in the tank anymore. The risk had been weighed. It was time to take a leap of faith.


Thank God my wife was willing to leap with me!



Copy Kory LLC

In January I filed my copywriting business as an LLC and rebranded my domain copykory.com. I fulfilled my two weeks' notice with hospice and transitioned to full-time self-employment in February 2023.


I had zero clients.


Here's where mindset has to meet reality. Freelancers tend to start with a ghost town portfolio, and need to grind for that early work. I've approached the market humbly while having great confidence in my ability. Despite what anyone else presumes about my church background, I worked at a church with a staff of 20+ who had a creative team and launch meetings. I wrote copy for every format: webpage, email, launch campaigns, Facebook marketing, and more.


Whether or not anyone else knew I could do this, I knew it.


Fortunately, copywriting is a meritocracy. Your work is the proof of your ability. Putting it in front of people is where the elbow grease happens.


As I've set out to pitch clients this month, I've had some real successes, landing a contract position writing social media posts for a West Texas commercial contractor, and even found a content writing gig with some steady volume work through a local web developer.


These jobs have provided a higher-than-anticipated base of work for me in my first month, and I consider myself blessed for that. Each time I get paid for a writing gig or see my copy show up on a webpage, it's one more incredible step towards a real future in my new career. Those "firsts" are simple, but they feel unbelievably awesome!


I've also made some deliberate efforts to pursue local copywriters and marketers and found them to be wonderfully gracious with their time. I've been fortunate to find myself sitting across the table from people who are years or decades further down this road and learning from their experiences. Without enduring the crucible of my previous jobs, I don't think I would have even had the courage or initiative to approach these people.


As I continue to progress a day at a time, here's what I most want to say:

  1. I'm thankful to God for a much-needed win in this first month.

  2. My wife is a hero who has been an oak throughout this saga.

  3. You can put off your dream forever. When you're willing to risk it, that's when it starts.

Working in hospice for a year gave me a very important perspective on this brief life. I sat with 3-6 people every day who could count their remaining lifespan in measures of minutes. We reviewed their life stories and delved into regrets and gratitudes with utter honesty. Here's the most important lesson that was a singular thread through every one of those stories:


Each of us gets to write the story of our life once.


Just once.


This is why we take risks. Because we're going to look back on our life from a deathbed--and I've sat at the side of 300+ of these--and we're going to look back on a story that followed a singular line chosen over and against a billion other branching paths. And there will be no one else to blame for the choices that were made.


My life is made up of my choices.


This is why I started writing.


Because I didn't want to look back and see how I had never tried.


Finish Line

There have been entire years in this saga that were utter hell to live through, and even now I'm not in a position of income stability where I can say "we're in the clear!" But this is the most hopeful moment I've lived in for over two years.


I'm a writer.


And I'm a business owner!


There's not just one path to starting your own business, but this one will certainly get you there! I've had a lot of help in specific moments along the way, and an incredibly supportive family. I'm thankful for that and know not everyone shares such an incredible resource. But I believe there's a path no matter how hard (God knows people have started businesses in easier ways than me!)


Pain is an incredible teacher, even if very cruel. I had to have so much stripped away from me to begin my career as a copywriter, and I see how it was necessary. I never would have taken the leap from a place of comfort. So if you are in the pain point of your story, consider asking what the thing is that you really want. Expect it to be costly. But know this:


You only get to write the story of your life once.


And you're already writing it.




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3 Comments


sr harris
sr harris
Mar 17, 2023

Yeah, you spit blood and get back on...

S <3

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itsdavidford
Mar 11, 2023

Kory thank you for sharing, may God continue to bless you and your family in this new path and that your faith in Him will continue to guide you each day. Praying for your success in the coming months and years. God has a plan that He works in His time and you maybe seeing that right now. Take care, you have a beautiful family, you are blessed beyond many. David and Vicki.


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dianemereness34
Mar 11, 2023

Thanks for sharing your story.

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©2022 by Kory Mereness | Copy Kory LLC

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