How Laura Belgray built a $1M company on an implausible brand message—laziness. Plus tips on how you can do the same.

May 28

Laura Belgray shuns the self-help industry’s obsession with productivity. As a former TV writer turned self-identified “copywriting expert,” and owner of Talking Shrimp, Laura avoids doing the majority of tasks today’s online entrepreneurs do (webinars, Zoom calls, and sales calls) because she simply doesn’t want to. She makes her own rules, and has turned a career once subject to the ruthless demands of high-paying copywriting clients into a self-paced $1M online business built on one very unconventional message—laziness.

So, how did Laura Belgray single-handedly build a lucrative career—from the couch? Here’s one woman’s path to time and financial freedom—and 3 tips for how you can do the same.

Murky Beginnings

Like many 20-somethings, Laura didn’t graduate college with a firm grip on her career trajectory. Post college, she moved home and got a low-stress bartending job before landing her first “real job” as a fact-checker for a NYC-based author. She then followed that author to a satirical NYC-based magazine called Spy. While there, an experimental project writing an ad revealed Laura’s penchant for creating witty, and highly entertaining copy. Words, then, became her super power.

Two years later in 1994, Laura began writing TV show promos—the 30-second advertisements used to drive interest and viewership—for networks such as NBC, Nick at Nite, TV Land, USA, TBS, Bravo, HBO and many more. As her skills grew, client demand grew, and so did her pricing, the height of which she was making $1,450—per hour.

But when a lucrative 6-figure contract was stripped unexpectedly, it forced Laura to rethink her unintentional path as the once-novel concept of writing for household names as big as HBO began to shed its appeal and drain Laura of the only thing she knew she loved—writing for herself.

The Moment It All Changed

A productivity workshop in 2017 revealed Laura’s desire to shut down her 1:1 client work and “make money writing my own stuff and telling my own stories. In essence, getting paid to be me.”

That’s when Laura shut the doors to freelance clients, and focused on her digital-only business, Talking Shrimp, intentionally structured to suit her career and personal goals—making her own hours, her own rules, and a ton of money—from her couch.

But while the online world praises productivity hacks, it blacklists principals like laziness with equal vigor. So, why choose a messaging concept that most online brands shun, and how did Laura build a $1M brand on it?

Why Choose Laziness?

For Laura, being herself was her number one goal, and figuring out how to be paid to do that meant building a personal brand that leveraged intimate, insider stories that not only differentiated her from the masses, but that also struck a chord with an audience hammered to death on productivity. That brand story pillar, you guessed it, was laziness.

“That's how I see myself—as lazy,” Laura says. “People find it relatable, so I continue to talk about it. I know that it’s counter to “hustle culture,” which has a powerful backlash, so I lean into it as a brand attribute. When you’re relatable, it gives people a feeling of relief that they don’t have to be perfect and that if you can do it, they can too.”

Relatability, then, has become Laura’s brand story cornerstone, and the key ingredient to her business, Talking Shrimp, where she teaches people how to “get paid to be you” through writing unapologetically personal copy for websites, emails, social media, and sales pages (and anywhere else copy appears). Leveraging your personal blemishes, she contends, is how you differentiate yourself and create an intimacy and kinship with your potential, or existing, customers.

“The one and only thing you have a monopoly on is being you. And, perfection doesn't create connection—people want to see the sides of you that you're vulnerable and embarrassed about. That's what makes them feel they know you,” says Laura.

Laura’s 3 tips for creating magnetic and intriguing copy for your brand:

1. Build an email list. And share your personal stories with your subscribers on a regular basis. Email is, by its origins, an intimate format.

2. Be prolific. Tell lots of stories—honest ones—so that you have the opportunity to share many dimensions of yourself and go deep into the details.

3. Create a “Coat Of Arms.” If you don’t know what your personality is, try creating what I call a "coat of arms": a collection of symbols that represent what you’re all about. What are you obsessed with? What do you talk about all the time? What would friends forward or post on your timeline, saying, “This made me think of you.” My coat of arms might have a New York City skyline (because I’m a born-and-bred New Yorker), a bowl of spaghetti (my favorite meal), a Bravo logo (Real Housewives fan), and a glass pressed to a door (I love to eavesdrop).

In her own work, Laura has created mini courses she sells in perpetuity, downloadable PDFs, and a group coaching program called Shrimp Club. The big money makers in her business, however, include a digital course called The Copy Cure she sells in partnership with Marie Forleo, and her own Inbox Hero course, sold in her signature “lazy launch” style, which have collectively brought in $1M annually.

“I refuse to do most of the things you're supposed to do as an online entrepreneur because, well, I don't want to. I don't want to do webinars. I don't want to do a big launch with a bunch of affiliates. I don't want to do sales calls or "hop on zoom" with people who are interested in working with me. I don't want to "meet for breakfast," she says.

What Laura does want to do? Write her new book, Tough Titties, due out 2022, and continue doing what’s working—being the relentless version of herself—Laura f*ing Belgray—from her couch.