An Unremarkable Beginning

You just never know. Her first thirty years were rather unremarkable. She grew up as a preacher’s kid on a farm in central Alberta, Canada. She attended a Bible College for three years after high school and lived and worked in Banff, Alberta for twelve years – as a chambermaid, housekeeper, and stores technician (fancy name for a jack of all trades). Her only claim to fame was that she was artistically creative.

Then life hit a solid wall of defeat and depression at age thirty. Not someone you’d put high on a list to accomplish much of anything in life. Hardly a glowing recommendation, right?

From Failure to a Changed Life

Yet that extremely painful time was the beginning of a whole new life and journey for Evelyn. Realizing that she was absolutely no longer willing to accept things as they had been, she made the choice to change.

And change she did. It was not an easy journey and there was much to learn. But it didn’t take long for new results to start appearing.

Business & Arts Experience

About a year after her new decision, she moved to Cochrane, Alberta, and began her first business - doing arts and crafts out of her home. She discovered that being her own boss was a freedom she enjoyed.

Then came the opportunity to write an arts and crafts column for a local newspaper. That led to the founding of an Artisans Guild – which Evelyn headed up for the next several years. The column also led to her organizing the local arts businesses for tourism promotion – and led to a very successful and long-running yearly arts event.

She also became involved in the Cochrane Art Club, serving a term each as vice-president and president.

During all those years, Evelyn also became an adult education instructor – teaching art, calligraphy, and crafts classes, and later business and personal success workshops.

She met and married her husband Roy and joined him in his business – a waste management company. When that company sold years later, they moved to the Edmonton area where they had already started a mini-storage business several years earlier.

Here Evelyn opened a retail shop selling antiques and handcrafts, and operated a farmers market.

After selling the mini-storage business, Evelyn took some training as a personal coach, and considered starting that as a business. She also wrote a personal success course called Powerstart Success.

Facing the Fear, Doing It Anyway

Thinking it was too complicated for her, she hired someone to create a website for her. That was a disaster. So out of frustration, it was off to the bookstore, two fat HTML coding books, and a week of work later, and she had her own website online. And a new knowledge that led to doing many websites for others as well.

But there was one other area of business that she knew was hindering her. Marketing was the main reason she had hesitated about getting into business to begin with - she had always felt very uncomfortable with it. She says, tongue-in-cheek, she was so allergic to marketing that just thinking about it was enough to give her mental hives.

But having learned that sometimes the best route is to face the thing you fear, she began studying marketing in depth. To her surprise, she discovered a whole new interest in, and a new attitude about marketing.

The Secret Marketing Tool

She also found a secret marketing tool that really intrigued her. Oddly enough, it was something she had never even heard of to that point, but it so interested her that she decided to learn more. That marketing secret was copywriting.

The Best Copywriting Training

She studied with the American Writers and Artists Institute, which provides one of the best marketing programs available. Simply learning their core program makes one a copywriter with more knowledge than 90% of the copywriters out there.

Evelyn went beyond that to became a member of the AWAI Infinity Program with access to all of their extensive copy-writing programs. This covers the core program, a masters program, writing for money-making websites and online marketing, for financial, health, fundraising, Christian, self-help, travel and other markets. It also includes courses on self-publishing, graphic design, video marketing and much more.

Still Being Creative

Presently Evelyn and her husband live in Cochrane in a beautiful home overlooking the Bow River. Something about the mountains just feels at home for her, so the daily view of the river, the foothills, and the Rocky Mountains is a pleasure she always enjoys. Her camera is kept handy by the window. (Even if hubby jokes that it’s the same-old, same-old view. According to him, if only it had cows and horses in it, then it would be perfect!)

She still finds ways to be artistically creative – painting, drawing, calligraphy, photography, bookbinding, to name a few. She is also working on her long-term dream of creating Willowrose Village, a unique arts and business village.

Becoming the Copy Whisperer

The discovery of copywriting was so influential in changing Evelyn’s attitude toward marketing, that she wanted to use this new-found skill to help others. Her passion is to see businesses begin to move toward the success that is possible when their products and services are marketed with well-written copy.

These days, Evelyn works from her home as a copywriter and marketing consultant. She is known as The Copy Whisperer, a name inspired by the horse whisperer, whose ability to tame wild horses looks like sheer magic – just like writing great copy can lead to amazing results.

Evelyn’s passion for learning, her love of ideas and all things creative, her love of writing and her passion to help others all come together to benefit her clients in her work as the Copy Whisperer.

She still shakes her head at times when she thinks back to her early years – if anyone had told her then that not only would she have her own business, but it would be in the field of marketing, she would have thought them certifiably crazy.

But here she is, enjoying the journey.

For more information about Evelyn and how her copywriting and marketing consulting services can help you, call 403-981-5910 or e-mail evelyn@willowrosevillage.com.

More About Evelyn...

• Member of the American Writers & Artists Inc. Infinity Program – which provides the best copywriting instruction available. It includes lifetime access to all their programs, past, present and future.

• Owner or co-owner of a variety of businesses for over twenty-two years: home-based arts & crafts, waste management, retail antiques and handcrafts, adult education, mini-storage, real estate development and more

• Artist – passionate about being creative, about exploring and creating ideas

• Ideas millionaire – an avid collector of ideas with a wealth of them to draw from.

• Adult education instructor – able to research and organize information so that it is interesting and exciting, and makes sense to the student. She loves watching for that “Ah-ha” moment when students realize that, Yes, they can do this! She has worked for local adult education programs and has promoted her own.

• Has been or is a member of: AWAI’s Infinity Program, Coachville, business networking groups, women’s business clubs, the Chamber of Commerce, art clubs, writers clubs, toastmasters, etc

• A passionate love of learning – has taken courses in copywriting, business, marketing, personal coaching, personal growth, success, accounting, writing, painting, calligraphy, photography, travel writing, etc, etc

• An avid reader – has a personal library that rivals most local libraries – learning is one thing that doesn’t get skimped on.

• Trained as a Personal Coach. Has also worked with personal and business coaches to improve her own life and business.

• Has studied the works of business and marketing greats such as Michael Masterson, Jay Abraham, Dan Kennedy, Chet Holmes, and a host of others.

• Regularly receives newsletters from top copywriters such as Bob Bly, Michael Masterson, Gary Biencevega, Clayton Makepeace, Troy White, plus numerous marketing masters

• Webdesigner – understands the basics of good web design and writing for the web.

• Author – of “Powerstart Success”

• Columnist – writes an arts column for a local newspaper and used that to start an artisans guild, and recently to set up an arts society.

• Speaker – has given speeches and presentations at business meetings, etc