Last week SPN hung out at the Mastercraft in Omaha with Wayne and Laurie Brekke, founders of Big Ink Writing Services, to talk about copywriting, podcasting, and the creative life. Here’s what happened:

Q: You’ve been doing Big Ink for 10 years now. What’s changed?

LB: Is that right? Ten years?

WB: Well, yeah. 2005 we started writing part-time. We were doing our normal daily gig, and then coming home and writing for Hayneedle (at that time it was Netshops) because I was working there. Then I quit Netshops, turned around, and made them our biggest client.

LB: Over the course of a decade we’ve really grown with the online retail industry. We went through the whole arc. First, it was just trying to get information out there. Then it was trying to craft these really long, elaborate stories. And then it kind of reversed, and everyone was shipping all of their copy overseas to be written. But it would come back, and it would be horribly misspelled, grammatically incorrect, just awkward. Now we’ve come back to quality.

WB: Shoppers want to know the facts. They know what’s bullshit, and they know what’s fluff. They know what’s serious stuff, and they know what sounds good.

LB: They are smarter, too. They’re looking for a more bespoke experience online, which is what you would always get from a boutique. People want a little bit of story or a little bit of sass. They want the business that they’re buying from to have a personality and a voice that resonates with them.

WB: If it doesn’t have that character to it, people just move on and find a place that they trust. Because [good writing] builds trust. If they see a lot of fluff, they know they people didn’t care about their site enough. If they don’t care about the site, do they care about their customer service? If they don’t care about that, do they care about their products? So we are like the head of the domino effect for online retailers

Q: How much have you grown in the past 10 years?

LB: When we started out it was very part time, only a couple thousand dollars. And now we’ve got five freelance writers that we use.

WB: Since we started, except that one time when one of our big clients dropped a little, we’ve increased our business every year consistently.

LB: 10-25% a year. Especially since we came to the Mastercraft.

Q: 10-25% in revenue?

WB: Yeah, in revenue.

LB: Last year was our biggest year yet. Every year’s been bigger than the year before.

Q: How many episodes of your podcast Worlds of Wayne have you done now?

WB: 258.

Q: When did you start that?

WB: I started Worlds of Wayne nine years ago. Laurie and I used to have a show–it was very popular actually–it was called Freelance America. Then we had another called Love, Sex, and Business, which was all about working with your spouse. Both pretty popular.

We now have five podcasts. We do Worlds of Wayne. We do Necronomicast, which is a horror podcast. We just launched Strong Words, and we have the DnD5e Podcast, which is a brand new D&D podcast. And Five O’Clock Lifestyle, which is all about cocktails and entertaining.

Q: So with all this experience doing podcasts, what were some of the mistakes you made?

WB: Mistakes? Are you kidding me? (smiles) I did an entire interview with Billy Ray Cyrus unrecorded. And I had to call him back and pretend that I had more questions, and then do a recorded interview so that I had something for the podcast.

I lost an entire interview with Lee Rocker from The Stray Cats.

Lots of mistakes. But that’s the fun of it.

Q: Which podcast is your most popular?

WB: Well, that’s hard to say. Worlds of Wayne is the oldest so it’s got more downloads per month than any other show. But when we did Freelance America, we were surprised how that took off. In the short time we did that, it was huge. Mainly because it was a very specific niche.

Same thing now with Strong Words. Now everybody’s talking about content. Content, content, content. I hate that word. I can’t stand that word anymore. “Oh, you’re a content creator?” NO. I mean, yeah. Yeah, but, I’m a writer, man. I’m a podcaster, an artist, a musician–I’m a goddamn pirate.

LB: You’re a pirate? (laughs)

WB: I’ve got a string of ladies in every port.

LB: Oh, right.

WB: They’re kitty cats. They’re female cats. I’ve got a string of them.

LB: (laughs) You’re ridiculous.

WB: I just like kitties.

Q: You guys do writing, art, music, podcasts, etc. A lot of people wonder, “Can I have a creative life and have a family, have kids, have a house?” What do you say to those people?

WB: It took us ten years. But we’ve had this plan of doing a business together, and we’ve done that. Our thing has been, “How do we find a way to merge all of our interests together in a way that makes us happy and financially stable?” I think we’ve found that balance.

LB: The big thing was we figured out each other’s strengths and weaknesses. Wayne’s like, “Hey, let’s do it! We’re going to jump off this cliff! And it’s going to be awesome!” And I’m like, “Oh, crap! Ok, here’s a parachute.”

WB: She keeps everything wrapped up. I can say, “Engage.” And she’s the engineer who makes sure we don’t blow up on our way to warp.

Photos by Atiim Jones.