Terrific Tiger: BNTHS@W senior building personal brand as freelance copywriter
In our third ‘Terrific Tiger’ story in a series celebrating graduating seniors, we meet BNTHS@W seniorJoshua Bowers, who has turned his passion for marketing and copywriting into his own freelance business.
Ask Joshua Bowers what he’s most excited about after graduation and his response might surprise you.
“I turn 18 in about a month, so I can finally open up my own PayPal account,” the Belton New Tech High School @ Waskow (BNTHS@W) senior said.
Bowers is already earning money for that future account working as a freelance copywriter. After a short stint playing baseball, he became interested in marketing when he joined the high school robotics team and began writing sponsor proposals for a mock company.
“I want to focus on sales copywriting, so I focus on sales emails,” he said. “I subscribe to a lot of companies’ promotional lists. So, I take their ad, and re-write the words by rephrasing what they have in order to make buyers click more.”
Bowers sends the reworked ads to those companies’ marketing executives and CEOs and has received helpful feedback and advice on how to improve. From cold emailing businesses to using a freelance work marketplace called Fiverr, Bowers has been slowly building a solid portfolio and gaining clients.
“My goal right now is not to get rich quick, that’s not a good way to look at it because if it doesn’t happen fast, you’re going to get discouraged easily,” he said. “I had to change my mindset to think, ‘Oh, this is a learning experience.’ So as long as I’m learning and being educated more, it’s more fulfilling and will keep me going.”
Bowers considers the support from BNTHS@W educators as demonstrably significant to his growth as a young adult.
“New Tech is so awesome,” he said. “Every teacher I’ve had a class with has impacted my life in some way, shape, or form.”
One of his favorite teachers has been New Tech instructor Brittany Zacha, whose junior-level Algebra 2 class Bowers took as a freshman.
“He brought so much life and energy to that classroom,” Zacha said. “Sometimes, sophomores and juniors will chill out, and Josh was so excited about being a freshman here at New Tech and really made teaching math fun … math isn’t always everyone’s favorite subject, so to have someone who is always excited made it fun to teach.”
For Bowers, that positive energy certainly was reciprocated. “She’s really supportive, a very happy person,” he said. “She was my math teacher, which is a subject I sometimes gave up on, but she never gave up on me. Her laid-back personality helped me to stop stressing and taking everything so seriously.”
About his work ethic, Zacha said, “He was willing to put in the work, ask questions, didn’t give up even if he was frustrated.”
His tenacious attitude will follow as he moves to Tulsa, Oklahoma, after graduation, to live with his sister and build his business.
“I’m going to network out there and get a part-time job while I try to scale as much as possible as I build my personal brand…get as many clients as possible and eventually be a full-time freelance copywriter,” he said about his decision to jump right into the workforce. “I’m very passionate, and the drive I have to succeed will help me become successful in this field.”