Support the Ortus Regni Kickstarter Campaign!

We’ve written a lot of things over the past 13 years at The Hired Pens. Web copy for gastroenterology programs. A speech for a rodeo queen. Copy for the back of a receipt handed out at a bakery chain. But we had never written a rule book for a “closed-deck, deck-design strategy card game set […]

Behold, the Worst Greeting Card in the History of the World!

Among the many fleeting business ideas Anna and I have had is starting a greeting card branch of The Hired Pens. It hasn’t gotten off the ground quite yet, in part because we’re too busy, you know, trying to make money at things we actually know how to do. Sometimes, though, it’s hard not to […]

(Not So) Easy to Assemble

My father recently bought an “easy to assemble” hanging light. It proved to be not so easy to assemble, even for a man who can fix cars, build houses and digitally retouch photographs. Normally patient and even-tempered, he became so frustrated that he actually mailed me the instructions along with a cryptic note suggesting they […]

An Accidental Entrepreneur, 10 Years On

I vividly remember my giddy first days at Sapient Corporation. The company — an Internet consultancy that was flying high during the dot-com bubble — had recently made the S&P 500. (We even got T-shirts to celebrate the accomplishment.) And I was lucky enough to land a job there just a few months after leaving […]

Check Out Our Guest Blog Post on Successful Business Partnerships

Those in the know say you should always be looking for opportunities to write guest blog posts. It gets your name out there, drives traffic to your site, helps with inbound links, etc. So here’s one I wrote for our friends at Grasshopper Group: “The Keys to a Successful Business Partnership.” Just went live this […]

The Grumpy Old Copywriter: Feeling Overloaded by Customer Surveys

Here’s a guest blog post from Thaddeus Van Haltren, who founded The Hired Pens in 1931 and now serves as our senior copywriter emeritus. His current accounts include Richardson & Robbins Plum Pudding and Heinz Mince Meat. I hear plenty of whining from recent college graduates these days. Seems many of them are having a […]

Shelby Upjg, Laziness Destroyer!

I’m a white American guy who went to a Catholic college with predominantly guys and gals of Irish and/or Italian descent. For better or worse, I don’t hang in particularly exotic circles. Nothing intentional; just the way things have worked out. And yet, lately I’ve been getting weird spam from people with names like … […]