Gusto
Payroll with less to-do, more ta-da.
Running a small business means constantly becoming someone new. One day you’re a baker, the next you’re learning payroll, hiring, taxes, or how to fix a burst pipe.
Gusto helps small businesses manage payroll, HR, benefits, and hiring—but the real challenge wasn’t functionality. It was emotional overwhelm. The category was crowded with jargon-heavy, feature-first software that assumed users wanted to become experts. Most people just wanted to feel like they were doing okay.
As Lead Brand Copywriter, I helped evolve Gusto’s voice from lower-funnel SaaS marketing into something more human, affirming, and emotionally intelligent—software that felt less like another task, and more like support. So all of these small business owners could spend more time doing the work they actually set out to do.
Gusto →
voice & messaging
My work focused on simplifying how Gusto communicated: fewer features, clearer ideas, and more attention to the real moments happening behind the software.
We shifted the brand away from “feature soup” and toward storytelling grounded in actual small business life—the unexpected problems, the small wins, and the feeling of slowly figuring things out.
A core principle behind the work: tech isn’t just used by techy people. Small business owners aren’t thinking about whatever feature rolled out last quarter. They’re trying to keep things moving.
I partnered closely with brand, product, and design teams to develop homepage messaging, voice systems, and integrated campaigns built around clarity, warmth, and restraint. The goal wasn’t to make Gusto sound clever. It was to make overwhelmed people feel capable.
campaigns
A Future With Gusto was a national campaign built around a simple emotional insight: everyone wishes someone could show them how to figure it all out. And if a future version of yourself told you what worked, you’d probably listen.
The campaign featured small business owners meeting exaggerated future versions of themselves—more confident, more stylish, more at ease. Instead of dramatizing the stress of payroll, the spots celebrated what becomes possible when administrative work stops taking over your life.
I served as sole copywriter and ACD/C across concepting, strategy, and scripts for the campaign.
created in-house for gusto
director dugan gundelfinger
watch them here →
homepage & product storytelling
One of the biggest shifts came through homepage redesign work. Instead of listing benefits or over-explaining features, we focused on affirmation: helping people immediately feel they were in the right place.
The work balanced delight with utility—showing how simple Gusto feels to use, rather than just claiming it’s easy. The redesigned homepage led to a 14% increase in engagement.
I also contributed to naming and messaging systems for seasonal showcase programs—building extensions that felt cohesive within the larger Gusto ecosystem, not like disconnected sub-brands.
shaping Gus AI
As Gusto expanded into AI, I helped name and shape the launch of Gus, the company’s AI assistant built specifically for small businesses. I partnered across brand, product, and leadership teams to develop naming direction, launch messaging, and positioning grounded in a simple idea: AI should help small business owners feel more capable, not more intimidated.
Rather than centering the technology itself, the messaging focused on ease, confidence, and practical support—helping business owners quickly get answers, automate tedious tasks, and spend more time on the work they actually care about.
Across every touchpoint, the goal stayed the same: help Gusto become part of people’s best days—not just another piece of software in their stack.
see the campy launch video →
created at gusto
creative direction: chien hwang, nick scarlet
lead brand copywriting: danica rog
lead visual design: dom richichi
brand studio producer: andrea pons-lopez