Kathryn Messer left her executive job to become a full-time freelance copywriter. She built a multi-year plan with specific milestones to manage the financial risk, and shares how she balanced both roles while making the transition.
Welcome to the High Income Business Writing Podcast, helping you propel your writing business to a whole new level. And now, here's your host, Ed Gandia.
Hey everyone, thanks for joining me for episode number 10 of the High Income Business Writing Podcast. I am your host, Ed Gandia and this is the podcast for business writers and copywriters who want to take their writing businesses to the six figure level or the part time equivalent. You can find detailed show notes to this episode by going to b2b launcher.com episode 10 the number 10. So if you're somewhere where you just can't take notes, don't worry, I got your back. These are detailed notes you can reference later at your convenience. So let me set the stage for this week's episode. You have a full time day job. It's not something you love, but hey, it pays the bills. Unfortunately, it also leaves very little time for launching and growing a freelance side business. So how are you supposed to make the transition from cubicle hell to full time freelance writing? Well, that's a dilemma Kathryn Messer faced a few years ago. As a well paid executive, Kathryn couldn't afford to simply walk away from her day job to pursue her dream of full time freelance writing. Yet she knew that there had to be a way. So using my customizable transition plan as her guide, along with a heavy dose of hard work and persistence, Kathryn finally made the leap.
Not only that, but I had to get pretty creative. You know, I'd be working 910 hour days at work and then I'd come home and make dinner and then I'd tell my family I was going to write for two or three hours after before bedtime, and I'd get that writing in and then I'd set the alarm and I'd write maybe an hour and a half in the morning and then I'd use my lunch hours to do some more writing. But I think what it really comes down to is I put that plan in writing and I had milestones I had to meet. And I knew that once I could get those milestones under my belt, then I'd be able to actually see a little bit more the feasibility of actually writing full time for a living.
So tell us a little bit about those milestones. You remember what some of those were?
Yeah, I actually had several of them. And again, you know, let me backtrack just a little bit. Ed. This plan wasn't a 12 month plan. It wasn't a 24 month plan. This was like a three year plan for me. It didn't happen overnight. I didn't just all of a sudden go from, you know, making six figures, doing copywriting, especially part time. So I had this is a three year plan. And some of the milestones included some of the basics. Like, I had to have at least four regular steady paying clients. I had to have a particular amount of debt. And this is all personal. You know, everybody's different. But I had some some debts that I needed to take care of time and actually make a living doing it. So I was all jazzed about that and continued my writing, my copywriting, on and off. And it wasn't until several years ago that I actually started getting serious about it and thought, you know, I'm going to find out a little bit more about how I might be able to make a transition from copywriting part time to actually making a living.
