Falling Forward: 35 Years with Copywrite, Ink.

I was standing in the video production room at Sierra Pacific Power (now NV Energy) when President Bush delivered a televised address to the nation. Operation Desert Storm had begun. 

It wasn’t hard to gauge the severity of the moment. Communication employees had gathered around a half-dozen monitors, each tuned to a different network, staring in slack-jawed disbelief. One of them gave me a heartfelt embrace between sobs, wiping her tears on my shoulder. She was afraid for me. I had graduated from the University of Nevada, Reno, only a few days earlier. My future could not have felt more uncertain.

No one knew how long the conflict would last or whether a draft might return. What we did know was that my contract—an extension of a coveted paid internship—would officially end in June. Any realistic chance of permanent employment had evaporated in the recession.

Later that day, my fiancé struck a deal with me. We would leave Reno for wherever fate took us. When her job offer in Las Vegas beat mine in San Francisco, we packed up and moved into a one-bedroom apartment on what was then the edge of town.

My college mentor was almost as disappointed as I was. He had hoped to place me in journalism, despite my growing interest in advertising. I wasn’t thrilled either. Returning to a city I only wanted to escape felt like a big step backward. Still, he handed me the names of five contacts to call once I settled in.

I called those five, then dozens more from the phone book. Eventually I landed temporary work at an advertising agency while keeping my old summer job at a paint store. I had a gift for matching colors on anything from scraps of stucco to fabric swatches. When the agency role proved even more temporary than expected, I struck a new deal with the store: 40 hours between Friday and Monday. That left Tuesday through Thursday free to launch a freelance writing business, toggling between magazine articles and copywriting for ad agencies.

My biggest risks were a nearly new Volkswagen Jetta bought off a Ford lot and a monochrome Mac Classic, bubble-jet printer, and stack of 3.5-inch floppies purchased on Apple credit. I set the workstation up on a folding card table in our tiny dining room and printed business cards on Office Max stock. In August 1991—35 years ago—Copywrite, Ink. opened for business at a time when nobody was hiring full-time writers, but everyone had small jobs to farm out.

Two years of steady magazine assignments and a well-timed six-month contract covering a maternity leave at Nevada Power finally gave me the confidence to leave the paint store behind. Once I committed full time, the firm incorporated three years later. It grew into one of the region’s most successful strategic communication and writing services companies. From that foundation came the ability to help launch advertising agencies, graphic design firms, publications, and other ventures from startup shops to major Las Vegas resorts.

Over the decades, the firm has worked on more than a thousand accounts — the City of Henderson, Fidelity Investments, McDonald’s, the U.S. Air Force, and Volkswagen among them. The work expanded to include creative direction and strategic consultation, earning more than two hundred awards from organizations such as the International Association of Business Communicators, American Advertising Federation, Public Relations Society of America, AIGA, and the Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce. Early recognition included IABC/Las Vegas Communicator of the Year, the Chamber’s Community Achievement Award, and Working in Communications Principal of the Year — all before I turned 35.

The visibility also opened doors. For twenty years, I taught writing, editing, and social media at UNLV. I directed communications for the Council of Multiple Listing Services, advised political campaigns, and coached travel and high school softball. I also served as a commissioner for the Nevada Commission for National and Community Service (AmeriCorps), and for many years now, the Las Vegas Parks and Recreation Advisory Commission, currently as chair. I also served on more than sixty boards and committees supporting nonprofits ranging from Amnesty International to the United Way of Southern Nevada.

Of course, all this is not to say there weren’t hard lessons to be learned. Clients default on credit. Stock payments become worthless. Families face crisis. Operating costs explode. And sometimes you still wonder whether those first feelings of uncertainty ever went away. If keyboards could talk, mine would assure you they never really do.

Thirty-five years later, my original monochrome Mac Classic still rests on the top shelf above my desk as a silent reminder. Copywrite, Ink. was never just a job. It was a bet that passion, persistence, and values could outlast recessions, wars, and the hard times that shuttered bigger names.

Looking back, it remains living proof that necessity truly is the mother of invention. Looking forward, it has become a leaner firm that works with select clients and a publishing division that will form part of a family legacy. I’m grateful for everyone who has been part of the story, and for everyone still to come, because the only words I refuse to write are “the end.” 

Enduring Relationships: The First Client

My first client in 1991 was the least likely, and ultimately one of the most important.

I had originally been hired fulltime by Cathy Collins of Collins Communications (an R&R Advertising alum) right out of college. The job lasted about two months before we parted ways, for reasons we joked about over the 20-plus years that followed. She had an obsessive-compulsive proclivity to raid my office on weekends to reorganize my desk because she didn’t like the way I filed things. She would place strawberry magnets in provocative spots on the naked men that sometimes decorated the office refrigerator. She would call me “Roach” for weeks after I accidentally sent her a memo with a “K” swapped for the “C” in Cathy. (I worked for a director named “Kathy” in college, and old habits die hard until you bury them.)

Still, despite the fireworks, I was working with a sharp-eyed agency owner with a respected name in Las Vegas. She had a gift for spotting talent, and a greater one for demanding excellence. This also meant that while we seldom disagreed on creative, we found plenty of other things to clash over, like the merit of tracking time in fifteen-minute intervals on a paper time sheet, or whether an effective media buy was measured by the number of people reached versus the number of times an ad aired, regardless of who was watching. The latter cost us a missed opportunity to buy two slots during every episode of Home Improvement on the cheap, just before it became a household name and the ad rates quadrupled overnight.

In retrospect, she admitted I was right. But it did me little good. She had two revelations before calling me into her office to tell me. I was destined to be a great copywriter with strong media buying skills, but she could afford neither a full-time copywriter nor a full-time media buyer. What she needed was another account executive, someone who was happy to be there. We both knew I wasn’t happy unless I was writing. 

The beautiful irony is that the very day I resigned and cleaned out my desk, she offered me my first freelance job. She needed an advertisement for Canyon Gate Country Club, a guard-gated country club and high-end residential community in Las Vegas. (Years later, I would have lunch there inside the now-former home of legendary impressionist Rich Little, who still performs.) She set the rate at $25 per hour for three hours of work.

This job was the first of many. Cathy became a sometimes-steady, sometimes-sporadic client who would often joke about how well we worked together, provided we weren’t in the same office. These early projects gave me the breathing room to build my own company in those fragile first years. It didn’t hurt that Cathy had a reputation for precision, which gave me instant credibility in the field. It wasn’t long before I learned how to balance creative work with client service.

Even so, I never fully understood how much she truly appreciated me and my work until years later, when she asked me to help on a production job. By then, Cathy had been afflicted by systemic scleroderma. Despite the chronic pain and oxygen tank she had to haul everywhere, she kept her eye on the future. 

Even as her body failed her, Cathy refused to give up. She was still strategizing campaigns, mentoring young creatives, and trying to set something up that would be her legacy. I learned this sitting in the edit bay of a post-production company. She confided that this new round of contract work had an ulterior motive. She was dying and wanted to make me a partner in her agency alongside a graphic designer who, while excellent at design, didn’t always present as well as an account executive, which was a skill set I had developed as my own company grew.

I was reluctant at first, given that my company was thriving, but my love for her eventually convinced me to say yes. Unfortunately, my commitment came too late. Cathy passed before any papers could be signed. The designer took over the agency instead, and as Cathy had predicted, it was forced to shutter a little more than a year later. Like many successful agencies that have blossomed and faded from the Las Vegas advertising community, her legacy lives on mostly in the lessons I carry forward.

Nowadays, we live in a world that treats connections like commodities, tally marks on social networks, the thinnest form of social proof in a highly connected but increasingly transactional era. Had Cathy and I met today, we would likely have blocked each other early on.

But we didn’t. We met in a time when the world felt smaller and people were willing to endure small hurts to build relationships that felt more like family. That’s what Cathy and I ultimately became: she cheered my successes, and I valued her sometimes harsh but always enduring guidance. We don’t often make time for that kind of depth anymore. Maybe we ought to. How else could I have been so influenced by someone whose life embodied resilience, precision, and loyalty?

Four takeaways from Cathy Collins

• Challenging relationships can be the most valuable. The people who push you, disagree with you, and refuse to let you coast are often the ones who help you grow the most as long as you’re willing to stick with it.

• Loyalty and appreciation matter more than convenience. Cathy kept coming back because she valued my work even though she didn’t care for the way I worked. This kind of enduring trust is rare and worth protecting.

• Small beginnings can shape everything that follows. A $75 freelance gig became the foundation that helped me survive the early years and build a lasting company. Never underestimate modest starts.

• Take the time to build real depth. In today’s fast, transactional world, it’s easy to move on at the first friction. Sometimes the better move is to endure the small hurts and invest in people who become more like family than clients.

Cathy taught me these things the hard way through with biting humor, conflict, and ultimately grace. I’m grateful for every day we spent together, something that would have been squandered with a different measure.

Taking Chances: The Bewitching Ad That Launched My Career

I wrote and designed my first advertisement forty years ago. It was a classified ad for the now-closed Tropicana Hotel & Casino. A local marketing agency took a chance on a high school senior whose only advertising knowledge came from Darrin Stephens on the television series "Bewitched."

They wanted something fresh. And they decided to take a chance on me to deliver it. So I framed the ad inside a suitcase, pushed in some palm trees, and sold the Tropicana as “The Island of Las Vegas.” Somehow, they loved it.

I would go on to draft a couple of ads and logos for the firm before heading off to Whittier College in California to study psychology. They had a great program there, with alumni like Harrison Ellenshaw (renowned visual effects supervisor for Star Wars) and Melanie Brunson (executive director of the American Council for the Blind), alongside their most famous non-psychology alumnus, President Richard Nixon. I quickly became immersed in the school and the field, attending world-class conferences on cognitive thinking and teaching a rat to push a Skinner box bar for a drop of water.

Outside of class, however, I found myself continually drawn to advertising. I was commissioned by the local YMCA to develop a logo for their "porpoise" swim club and was eventually assigned to paint murals in the residence halls as part of the work-study program that helped pay for my education. 

These outside experiences and one elective art class convinced me to reconsider everything. As much as psychology interested me (and still does), I had a passion for the arts. The revelation surprised me, given that I had given up on my dream to become an artist, and I inquired with the admission counselor who had recruited me. 

"It's interesting you're asking about this, Rich, because we're starting a new advertising program at the school with four years of study and one year interning at a number of global agencies," he said. 

Sign me up, I said. 

"It's only open to freshmen." 

In other words, goodbye?

"Exactly." 

So, I did what many freshman students do who fall out with their first choice. I transferred to the University of Nevada, Reno with the intent to major in art and minor in psychology as a precursor to the advertising field. Except, the school saw it differently. They encouraged me to apply to their journalism program, which offered a track with an emphasis on advertising. 

I was skeptical, but admissions won me over. The Donald W. Reynolds School of Journalism was ranked among the top ten at the time, and my assigned student advisor was Warren Lerude, who came to the school after a wildly successful career at The Associated Press and USA TODAY, among others. He won the Pulitzer Prize in Journalism for Editorial Writing in 1977.

Who was I to argue? I didn't know the first thing about advertising, and the school suggested they transform me, a would-be commercial artist, into a copywriter. And, along the way, teach me to write like articles like a journalist as well — a skill set I sometimes resisted through several rigorous writing classes where every error (AP Style or otherwise) earned a two-point deduction off whatever base grade you were assigned. It wasn't uncommon to see an "A" or "B" downgraded to a "C" or "D" by two-point deductions. As students, we hated it, but the policy had a purpose. 

Clients aren't so forgiving. They don't care if you stayed up until 4 a.m. in the morning breaking down a concert and re-installing a basketball floor at the Lawlor Events Center. Carelessness can cost thousands if you are lucky, and cost you a job if you are not. You can't wiggle your nose at a print job and wish it away. 

Heck, you can't wiggle your nose and wish away something right. Outcomes matter, which is what makes advertising a high-risk, high-reward profession. You have to take chances. You have to accept the consequences. 

Sure, there are plenty of great technicians in advertising. They can make things look slick, but that doesn't mean the work will stick. Advertising is all about persuasion, which is much more of an art than a science, even if it sometimes feels akin to teaching a consumer to press a button for water. 

This isn't a new idea, but a proven one that William Bernbach, one of the founders of Doyle Dane Bernbach (DDB), frequently spoke about. The psychology behind it is powerful enough that I included it in my On Advertising deck, one of my favorites made for my classes at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

Of course, now, forty years later, I understand that Bernbach was only partly right. Advertising is an art, a science, and maybe a little magic. The chances we take aren't random shots in the dark on a weak idea that tries to impress people, but rather they are thought exercises designed to come up with a memorable story that reinforces the brand relationship between the company and the customer. 

And, incidentally, that was what I did forty years ago by pushing “The Island of Las Vegas” in a tiny classified ad. It was a promise that people could pack their bags and escape the everydayness of their lives and live what was arguably a fantasy made real, unlike anywhere else in the world at the time. 

Pardon The Dust: A Collection Of Essays

There are changes in the air and plenty to share. 

Late last year, I successfully launched a new author site, byRichardRBecker, which has even more focus on my books than I sometimes share here or a Copywrite, Ink. The new author site included a blog, but I was very leery about starting one (given that it meant starting another one). Until, well, today. 

I've been playing with an idea my son and daughter gave me a few months ago. They wanted me to write something for them, specifically related to life lessons, memories, and things of that sort. 

So I've been thinking about the request, on and off, since then. I mean, it made perfect sense, given that Screen Door, the Wisconsin story in "50 States," is closer to real life than fiction. A few others do, too, maybe. Except, which ones at what times and how much will always be the mystery. 

Anyway, just this morning, I took a break from WIP (work in progress) to pen the first one. Sometimes writers have to write when inspiration strikes. It certainly struck me this morning. And then, shortly after I was finished, I had no idea what to do with the essay because it didn't really fit here. But it was the kind of thing that might fit over there. 

So that's what I did. The first lesson, aptly titled "The First Lesson," is about the first real lesson I learned in school as a poor kid struggling to read in the third grade and about to be failed forward into fourth. That's what they did back then. And sometimes some people tell me they still do today, too. 

Interestingly enough, as much as I love it, I almost didn't publish it. But then the universe sent me a little message. The essay I wrote contained a reference to Bass Reeves. And right after lunch, while I was debating whether to publish the essay, I picked up the book I was reading only to discover that the next chapter opened with a reference to Bass Reeves.

Message received. This new collection of essays can be found on my author site as I write them, even if a few people might remember that the first couple of sentences were originally penned on this one almost 20 years ago. I had shared a piece of my life to open for a promotion, but never really paid the story off. 

There were blue tickets, and there were red tickets.

Blue tickets for the kids whose families could afford a 30-cent lunch. Red for those who could not.

[read more]

The new essay pays it off. At least I like to think so. Maybe you can tell me. 

As for the rest of the news, please pardon the dust as I make changes. I've been slowly realigning my online presence to match the scope of my work — as a communicator and as a literary author. Mostly, that means you'll find more posts about writing and communication here, and more author-related things like  short essays there, and short parts and pieces of fiction if you subscribe to my author newsletter, which may also be undergoing some changes, too. 

Good night and good luck!