#018 Guerilla Prospecting Tactics That Work

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 18 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 18 the number 18. So if you're somewhere today where you just can't take notes, don't worry, I got your back. Think of these notes as the kind of notes you take on your laptop if you are at a conference. They're simple, unedited notes, but they include all the salient points of the discussion. So those of you who followed me over the last couple years know that I'm a big believer in having a prospecting system in place. But sometimes, you know, the best opportunities can come via unconventional means. And in this episode of the High Income Business Writing Podcast, you're going to hear from Angus Stocking, a successful business writer who specializes in the infrastructure industry. Angus has had really good success landing high paying clients and using low cost, what I call guerrilla style methods. These aren't the typical prospecting methods that you hear about all the time. And in this interview you're going to hear what's worked well for him and why it's worked so well. Now, anytime you get into anything unconventional, I think the natural tendency is to just discount some of them. Take whatever you think would work for you and just forget about the rest and not listen to the ideas. And I urge you not to do that. I think there are golden nuggets under within, I should say each idea that Angus talks about. So I urge you to think through all this and figure out out how you could apply some of these ideas into your own business. Even if the details of the idea and the way that Angus went about it doesn't quite resonate with you, try to think of how you can adapt it to your own use. All right, so without further ado, let's get right to the discussion. Hey Angus, welcome to the show. Great to have you here.

It's great to be here, Ed. Thanks for having me.

We've been talking here over the last few weeks and I'm glad that.

We.

Agreed to do the show because you got some really cool ideas to share and I know they might seem kind of second nature to you, but I Think from working with other freelancers. Your approach to landing great clients is a little different from what other people are willing to try or try out there every day. So I wanted to focus on some of the strategies that you've been using very effectively. And before we get to that, why don't you tell us a little bit about what you do, what type of writing you do, for what types of markets.

Okay. Well, I write mainly case studies and white papers and other educational content, I guess you'd say. And I write mainly for infrastructure firms. I have a land surveying background, so a lot of my work has ended up being for land surveying companies. And I'm very lucky to be a big contracted writer for Leica Geosystems. They're the biggest maker of land surveying equipment in the world. So that's been a great contact at times. I've worked for Trimble Navigation, another good, another big maker. I still do a lot of work for Bentley Systems. They make design software. I work for Autodesk. And I also have kind of an interesting concentration in sewer rehabilitation technology, which sounds dull, but it's a very hot field. A lot of money in it. I like to tell people that most municipalities spend the plurality of their budget, or sometimes the majority on wastewater treatment. So a lot of money out there on that. And I've been fortunate to kind of be the guy in sewer rehabilitation technology, so that's been fun. And yeah, mainly case studies and white papers.

So when you say infrastructure, I assume then you're talking about water. Sewer in all the underground utilities that we never really get to see is kind of average consumers out there.

Exactly. Roadways, sewers, sometimes big power plants, things like that get lumped in with infrastructure. But typically we're talking concrete. Anything underground, if you have a taste for it. And I come from an engineering family and worked in land surveying. And there's a lot of beauty and interest in infrastructure that is unnoticed, I think, by many people.

Okay. In terms of. You mentioned some technology companies. It sounds like you're writing directly for the companies that have technologies that support this. Tell us a little bit about that.

Yeah, I figured that out early. I've written and published for a long time, going back maybe 35 years or so. But my early publications, I published satire in a local alternative paper in the San Francisco Chronicle. And then later, after I started surveying, I published some general interest articles in land surveying magazines. But it was kind of a hobby. I always got good feedback out of it. And I came to realize early that writing directly for magazines or for newspapers Wasn't a great way to make a lot of money. So when about 11 years ago I thought about writing full time and making a living at it, I understood pretty early on that I wanted to do commercial work, that I wanted to work directly for corporations and write marketing content. At first I thought I was going to be more like brochures or sales letters, things like that, but that didn't turned out to be my expertise and ended up writing marketing content, which is a good fit for me and lucrative. I've been able to make a pretty good living from early on.

Very cool. Very cool. Let's get into some of the strategies and tactics you've used to land clients. You've had really good success getting clients, using some, again, some kind of unorthodox methods. Tell us a little bit about what you've done done that's worked really well for you.

Okay. Well, first I should probably give a hat tip to Peter Bowerman, whom I'm sure you know his book the well Fed Writer. Just for some reason I saw that book in a bookstore and I just had to have it and I read it obsessively and this was many years before I quit land surveying and started writing. But I kept that book around and it sort of nurtured a dream. And I'm sure you've read it, but he talks a lot more about how to get the work rather than doing the work. He makes a point that if you're reasonably intelligent, write fairly well, and are the kind of person that follows up, doing the work is not really that difficult. And I've never found it that hard to write a case study. But getting the work can be quite a challenge. And he's a big proponent of cold calls. So unlike you, I know that you kind of eased into writing and tapered off from your work and saved up. I kind of a jump in both feet guy. So I had this year where I changed careers and religions, states and wives in about 10 months and had some money saved and had to get some clients if I wanted to keep. If I wanted to do this and wanted to keep living in Colorado and other things. So Peter Bowerman is very big on cold calls. And that's what I did. At first I was kind of haphazard. I hadn't identified infrastructure as a niche. So I would do things like get out the yellow pages for my area and just work through things I thought I could write for. And I actually got clients that way. I turned up some work for a hospital in the county I was living in ended up doing some work for some realtors. But then I had kind of a brainstorm. I realized that I was very credible in infrastructure, that I'd already been published in a couple of land surveying magazines, Professional Surveyor and the American Surveyor. So what I did, and I haven't really heard of people doing this, is I took recent copies of those magazines and I just went through all the advertising. And my reasoning was, is that these were firms that valued writing because they were advertising in print magazines. And what I learned as I went through the cold calling process and as I started to get to know more about how the business worked, is that a lot of the things you read in trade journals are contributed directly by corporations and firms that are advertisers. And in fact, sometimes it's really straightforward and above board. Sometimes it's kind of the marketing reps working behind the scenes. But one way or another, an advertiser can place editorial content in trade journals as a rule. So as I worked through this magazine and I would do online research to find the person to talk to, sometimes I would have to go to a Receptionist or use LinkedIn or some of the tools that you've mentioned for warm email prospecting. I found that people were, it was pretty easy to talk to a decision maker, especially at mid tier firms, you know, not the big multinationals, but firms that were doing a lot of work with maybe 20 to 100 employees. Maybe they had a new solution that they were trying to get off the ground with municipalities. And it would be pretty easy for me to speak to either the marketing director or a lot of times the actual CEO. And a lot of times what I found out was that these guys had kind of had this nagging need for a long time to get a case study written because it was an extension of their advertising budget. They were being offered the opportunity to get a. They could spend thousands for a quarter page ad, but then if they got free content or a free editorial, then they would get three or four pages with pictures for nothing. So for what they spent with me, getting a case study written, that was a pretty small check for them to write compared to their advertising budgets. So they are pretty open. Go ahead.

Just to be clear. So you went through these publications, you found the companies that were advertising in these journals and you contact them. So they were advertising at the time, they didn't have any editorial place. In other words, they didn't have articles there. And your reasoning was, I bet that some of these companies would be open to me writing something for them that could be placed in that or a similar publication.

Exactly. And then as I was doing the cold calls and started talking to more people, I realized that the specific niche that was open was placing magazine writing magazine articles that featured my client's products. So usually a case study, occasionally maybe an opinion article or a white paper like report. And they would get. So everyone was happy the magazine was getting good quality content for nothing. My client was getting very valuable exposure in an editorial in a magazine article, and I was making good money.

So tell me a little bit about how you approach them. Let's get to specifics. In terms of a script, can you give me an idea of what you would say when the person would pick up the phone? Let's say you got a hold of a marketing director.

I had a very simple script. I was usually talking to a receptionist or somebody like that when the phone picked up. And I would say, my name's Angus Stocking. I'm a land surveyor by background. I'm writing for infrastructure firms now. Can I speak to someone in your marketing department? And sometimes that would. Fairly often, I didn't encounter a lot of resistance there. And I think that might be because infrastructure firms tend to have a engineering mindset. They're not defensive. They can listen to a factual argument and respond to it. And usually they'd give me a chance. They'd pass me up to the marketing director or sometimes the CEO if they didn't really have a marketing department. And then I would explain my background, that I'd been publishing in land surveying magazines, that I'd been on job sites, that I worked for 14 years or so as a licensed land surveyor. And then sometimes I would ask a simple question. I'd say, do you ever work with subcontractors to prepare marketing content? And I found that that particular question was very effective for me because these guys use contractors all the time. And also they didn't want to say no to such a question because that would, you know, imply that maybe they weren't really professional. So usually they would say, yes, we do that occasionally. And they would at least take my name or they'd be open to me staying in touch by email or whatever. And, you know, if I made enough calls, if I made, say, 20 calls in the morning, I would get three or four solid prospects. And occasionally I'd get a job. It wasn't at all unusual for me to get a client in a morning's worth of phone calls. They had something that they wanted to get out and they were willing to give me a Chance. And what I also found was that if they were doing writing at all, they were doing the writing in house. And a lot of times it was the top executive, maybe even the CEO was trying to take the time out of his day to write an article and it would go slowly. And I started to point out that writing is one of the best things they could possibly contract out because they weren't wasting time for their engineers. They were getting a better product and we get turned around professionally. And I also from the beginning offered to do the interview, to coordinate the publication, to work with editors. In other words, I tried to offer a complete package that would completely take it. The hassle from their point of view. And a lot of times I would get the name of the marketing rep that they were working with and contact them directly, get the specs for the article that the magazine was looking for. I tried to be a very soup to nut service and make it very easy for them.

Let's talk about some of the elements that made this so successful, because this is fantastic, by the way. Angus, this is. It's not something I talk about a lot, cold calling, because I know that a lot of people are scared of it. But there are some elements in here that I think are key factors for success. First of all, the fact that you were narrowly positioned, meaning you're focusing on a specific industry. The fact that you had the background in that industry. I think those were key. You also went to a place where there was a high chance of demand for what you were offering. So you were going to companies, they were already spending money in advertising, in trade journals. Right, right. Okay. So that made your value proposition viable because they're already going to be. They're spending money on a quarter ad. Quarter page ad, exactly.

Yes.

Everything you did was increasing your chances of success. You were going to what I call high probability prospects.

And I could also point to published article which I'd published, you know, kind of as a hobby while I was working as a land surveyor. But I had five or six articles that had come out in land surveying, national land surveying magazines. So I always felt credible. You know, I knew these guys, I knew the kind of work they were doing and I could point to publications.

That's great. That's great.

What.

And I'm wondering, you know, because even when these things are going for you, it can be very tough to make, you know, even 20 calls and to get a lot of rejection. So how did you keep up your self confidence and your motivation just to keep dialing well.

A story There. I used to be very religious in an evangelical group and I'm not anymore, but I actually went door to door quite a bit. And you know, if you do that, you're going to get a lot of rejection and some of it's going to be very heated and personal. And I just learned that if I wanted to do that kind of work, if I wanted to go door to door and try to make a pitch to someone, you just had to shake off a no and move on to the next one. And I developed the attitude that basically I would think to myself, good, they said no right away, I'm done with this call, I can make a note, I won't have to call him again. Now I can move on to the next one where I might get a yes. So maybe because of past life experience, I never really found it scary to call someone up. I was, I had a, you know, a good product for them. If, if they were to listen to me and let me make my pitch, I felt that they were coming out ahead. If they were rude for some reason, which happened, you know, not very often at all, it didn't bother me. You know, it was just a short interaction by phone. I hadn't really wasted their time. They weren't wasting my time. I was just working through a list. And for whatever reason, I never have suffered much rejection. I was able to get in pretty easy and early with good clients. I like all my clients. I've never had a client that I felt uneasy working for, which might be another feature of the infrastructure market. Again, working with engineering types, they're very numbers oriented, they're rarely trying to scam anyone because their product has to work for decades and they have to sell their product to departments, public works and directors of public works, who are pretty cut and dried type people. So I found that as long as I kept it simple, told the truth, was honest about the experience that I had and what I could do for them, I really didn't feel much resistance and I never felt any fear around making cold calls. It came to seem like a treasure hunt. I'd had this list and if I worked through it, I was going to get some jobs. And at the time it felt so good to be getting clients who would pay me for sitting in my little office and writing. I had a literal garret. I lived in an A frame at the time and my office was this triangular shaped cubby at the top of the A frame and I had a, just a very small floor area, but I could sit there and make phone Calls and emails and get jobs and turn interviews into case studies and get money. And it was such a.

Yeah, this.

Is truly never really felt.

Yeah. So it's really about mindset, really. Right. It's. It's the conversation you had with yourself, which is interesting. It's. You didn't think about the rejection. You didn't think about what that might mean. You just. You came into it with a different mindset and different attitude about the whole thing. And I bet that each little success that you had really lifted you. Right. I mean, really kept you going even further.

Yeah, definitely. So it worked really well for me. I had some other things that maybe I could talk about early on. Well, I was also doing some journalism work, which I define as is working directly for the magazine rather than for a company. And for example, I had an ongoing relationship with a magazine called the American Surveyor. They really liked my work. They told me several times that I was their best writer. And I wrote a column for them for a while. Sometimes they would assign profiles of land surveying firms to me, which I could then sometimes turn into a professional relationship. And I also wrote for a municipal sewer and water. And honestly, I'm trying to remember how I got on with municipal sewer and water, but they were a great early client for me. I eventually stopped writing for them because magazine work pays so poorly, but as far as credibility and making contacts. And I also got invitations to write for the magazine, and they would send me, or I would get paid to attend trade shows, conferences. Autodesk, for example, has something they call Autodesk University, which is a huge show. And I would go there and I would cover it. But I would also do a lot of marketing. I'd hand out my cards. I would work the booths and get to meet people that way. And I guess, to be fair, I probably have pretty strong interpersonal skills. I'm kind of outgoing. I think I'm an ambivert. I have an introverted side. But when I want to turn on the extroverted side, I can usually do pretty well in chatting people up. And also from the religious background, I never had a hard time talking to strangers. So that ended up becoming kind of a nice complement to the cold calls is I'd get referrals from editors because they liked me a lot. Because I did good work. I followed through. I met deadlines, and I would take care of things like getting images, getting approvals, writing captions. I tried to make it very easy for everyone that I worked with. I tried to just be a relief in their day when they saw my name, I wanted them to think, oh, that one will be turnkey. I don't have to worry about it. And I have a lot of work that ongoing clients that I've had for years, that came from an editor basically matchmaking us, sending an email to both of us saying, I think that you should be working together. So that's been a nice thing. I got in with my biggest clients. Autodesk, Trimble, Bentley Systems. Those all came from attending conventions that I was being paid to attend. So if you can imagine being paid to go put up in a nice hotel, meeting a lot of people that you think are interesting anyway, and I'd write an article for the magazine that was sending me. But while I was writing those articles and interviewing people, I was also doing marketing for myself, and that worked out extremely well.

That's great. This points to something else that I think a lot of freelancers don't consider, which is if you're specializing in one target market like you are infrastructure. Most of them have big conferences. In fact, sometimes too many conferences, but there's always one or two really big conferences. It can really pay off to go to these things and spend the time chatting people up, you know, meeting people, getting to know who the players are and introducing yourself as somebody who might be able to help them in this specific area. And sure, it'll cost you a few hundred bucks to register, a few hundred dollars to fly there, and a few hundred dollars to stay there. But when you think about the number of people you can reach, and not just reach them, but actually physically meet them, that makes a world of difference, doesn't it?

Oh, it's amazing. Yeah. I would certainly pay to go to a large conference, and I may be doing that in the future because I haven't been to one for a while. But I would also suggest, if you have any credibility at all, if you published a few publications and you're the kind of person that wants to sell yourself, which of course, you have to do as a writer, make some phone calls and see if you can get an assignment, because you could either get paid by a magazine to attend, or sometimes the people throwing the conference. For example, Autodesk will make funds available to get journalists there, so there's a reasonable chance you could get at least your expenses met. Attending a conference.

That's a great idea.

And it's not hard at all to get the registration fee paid for, which can be hundreds on occasion.

So this is a great point for journalists who are listening out there right now. It's become a very, very difficult world to be a journalist today, just writing in the traditional channels. If you're considering the commercial writing field, and I really think you should, I think what Angus is sharing here is extremely valuable to you. What I would urge you to do is to think about where you have experience. What fields and industries do you have experience writing? You don't have to be a 20 year expert in a specific area, but most journalists have pockets of influence and pockets of knowledge in some very specific industries and sectors.

Yeah, I mean, I feel lucky that I had the land surveying career that I did. It was something I did for a long time. I was pretty good at. I moved. I had a pretty good position as a land surveying manager at a big firm and I was doing expert witnessing. But I think, honestly I almost think that you could just pick a concentration that interested you that was that there was money in and probably develop enough expertise with research and reading the trade journals and maybe take a class or something. I think you could go about it the other way. I think you could pick your field and get into it as long as you had at least some interest in it and some aptitude for learning about it.

Yeah, that's a good point. And if you've been writing for a long time, I bet if you kind of draw up an inventory of everything you've done, I mean, you probably don't have to start from scratch. You probably already have some working knowledge based on some articles and things you've covered.

Yeah, that was huge for me, the fact that I had, you know, I started writing in college, I had some early success publishing and I think I told you in an alternative paper in the San Francisco Chronicle and a few other places. Oh, yeah, I didn't pursue it because, you know, I got married. I needed a little more substantial job, I thought, and so I did that. I did the land surveying for a long time, but I never stopped writing. I had a journal that I've always kept. I would get articles out. I think if you're going to write professionally, I think it behooves you to like writing and be pretty good at it. Otherwise do something else. Right. So that was a nice thing and it complemented my background in infrastructure, the fact that I could put a sentence together.

Tell me a little bit about. I don't think we've really touched on this too much. You've alluded to it, but you also were talking to me the other day about a strategy where you would interview managers at large engineering and construction firms.

Right.

And then you would get business, you would get in the door that way. So tell us a little bit about that.

Yeah, I just had a recent example of that. I was doing an article for Bentley Systems. They make design software. And this particular article was they send me to a couple of international conferences each year. So I've been to Amsterdam and Copenhagen in London. And in return I write an article for them. And I like doing it because I like these people. Anyway, so they assigned me to write an article about a series of roundabout interchanges that were being built in Indiana, as I recall. And I was talking with the lead IT guy at an ENR 400 firm. And it's an engineering news record, list the 400 biggest design firms. And so I did the interview and we had a good rapport. And he actually brought up, you know, we would like to develop some case studies. And I said, great, you know, who's your communications guy, your marketing guy? And so this guy actually took the initiative to get me the right person to talk to, gave me a referral to him. And meanwhile, of course, I wrote a really good article and made them look good. One nice thing about the type of work that I do is it's my job to make everyone look good. I'm not muck raking, right? So I made sure it was a good experience for him. I actually gave him a credit on the article because he was such a useful interview. Since then, I've written a couple of case studies for them. So that's pretty classic. I probably have a dozen clients that I've worked for for varying lengths of time. Sometimes it's just one or two jobs, but other people I've been with for a long time. Another good example is an engine firm in Chicago. I did a profile of the firm and a project they were working on. And that was, as I recall, that was journalism. That was an article that I did at the request of the American Surveyor magazine. Well, as it turned out, a couple years later, the owner of that firm was launching an IT launching an online business that was related to infrastructure and geospatial location of construction projects. And he realized that he needed a lot of content. He needed case studies, he needed web pages. And he actually ended up writing a column under his name and I ghostwrite a column for him. So again, in both those cases, they came to me. But sometimes I've actually, at the end of the interview asked, you know, you're a pretty big firm and it seems like you might have a lot of stories to tell. Is there Any way that I can talk with your marketing director and maybe do some case studies for you? Because I've made it a pleasant experience for them. I often get the referral and fairly often it works into me writing maybe some newsletter articles for them for their in house stuff or magazines or other content that they can use in their marketing efforts.

I love the fact that you always keep your eyes and ears open, you're always looking for opportunities. Because I think most of us just kind of fall into this pattern. We have this tunnel vision. We're just too busy doing the actual work and we don't think about all the different possibilities that we could leverage.

Right. Can I pass on the best sales advice I ever got?

Yeah, please.

And it was from a figure in my religious background and he was kind of coaching us on how to be good in the door to door work. But he said I always ask a closing question. And what he meant was, even if you don't think the interview is going well, make a point of asking for what you want. And sometimes you'll get it even when things aren't going very well. So I always try to ask something as simple as do you have any writing work that you would like done or can I send you my white paper or something? So whenever I structure, whenever I'm doing any sort of sales marketing or trying to convince somebody to go with me, I make a habit of at least stating clearly what I want to do for them and asking for the work. And that's a good mindset to have. And also that classic cliche which I'm sure you know, ABC always be closing. Just, you know, be aware of it. There's. If you're offering a good product and people need it, bring it up all the time.

Well, I love that. And I don't want people to take that as meaning. You're always selling in a negative sense of the word. I think that the lesson there is offer. I don't think of it as selling as much anymore as I think about how can I add value if you don't offer an idea? If you don't say, listen, we've been doing this article, but have you thought about doing this? Can I help you in this other area that need might go unmet. I mean, they made. Don't wait for them to connect the dots, connect the dots for them.

Right. And I don't think that I'm a high pressure guy. I'm talkative, I'm certainly comfortable, maybe I'm even glib. But I've never had the feeling that I talked someone into doing an article, I've never had the feeling that I've talked somebody into it. It's usually more a matter of getting or uncovering a need that they already have and matching up my services with their. So it's more making sure that the people who need me know me.

Yeah. And I think my point too is, and I can tell you do this very well, is whenever you ask for these things, asking them in your own. Ask them in your own voice, don't ask them in a way that you think you're supposed to ask them in. You know, don't think you have to be the salesperson. Ask it in a very natural tone. Right. Because if it doesn't sound like you, there's going to be misalignment.

I'm conversational in everything. I'm conversational in my cold calls, in my emails, if I'm going, if I'm walking from booth to booth at a convention, I'm just striking up a conversation. And that's always worked well for me. And even in my case studies and so forth, I think I'm noted for a little more casual and conversational tone that I think is easier to read and serves my clients better. Certainly I get good response from the editors I work with on that.

So tell me a little bit about. And we didn't talk about, about this prior to the interview, but I'm wondering if you're okay maybe talking about it. You're kind of expanding into different areas, like you're looking into different services that you can offer your clients. Are you okay telling us a little bit about that?

Oh, sure. You know, I kind of realized suddenly this year that I've been doing this since 2001, early 2002 maybe. So that's like 12 years, which was a shock to me because it feels like I just got started being self employed. Honestly, it feels like just a couple years ago that I've been doing this and I certainly, you know, I'm going to say that I'm one of the top five guys in my niche in terms of. I'm the go to guy if you want to write about sewers or land surveying equipment. And I think I've probably written, you know, hundreds easily of case studies and a couple dozen white papers and. And it's getting so I've been kind of looking for a way to do a little bit more. What I'm looking at recently is video. I think that that's to some extent going to displace the conventional Case study. And so I'm partnering with a production firm here in Colorado and I actually have just got out my first proposal and I think there might be a pretty good market for higher end videos that marry a strong infrastructure background. And that's always been key for me to have that very credible. I know how to communicate with the guys out there in the field who are working the backhoes or working the total stations or whatever it is, and I can translate very well. And I don't think that's been done yet. In videos you tend to get very salesy videos and I want to make more that video case studies. So that's an experiment I'm working on and I hope that works well. I would kind of like to get some longer projects. You know, I was just listening to your podcast. I was listening to it yesterday with Denise Kiernan on longer projects. I think that I could take on longer projects. I mean, I've got up to about 10,000 words on some white paper projects, but I think I can handle a book. And I have done some ghost writing for books. So I'd like to expand there too. But a lot of my energy over the next six months are going to be devoted to expanding my infrastructure writing brand. And that's my website infrastructurewriting.com and I'll be developing infrastructure videos dot com. And I don't know, I may be wrong, but I feel like there's a ripe market there for the same reasons. I was able to get into writing content easily because of my background in the industry. And also in this case, I'll be working with someone who really knows how to make videos. So yeah, we'll see.

Well, what I love about what you're doing is you're not falling prey to this whole idea of oh, video is hot, video is sexy, I need to do it. There's some reasoning behind what you're doing and why you're offering it. It's that whole again, leveraging your infrastructure background, the ability to translate these ideas well, I think it's a very strong value proposition. So I think you're going about this the right way.

Another thing I find in infrastructure is that especially the mid tier companies that I work with, they haven't thought a lot about marketing and they're a few years behind in terms of what you can actually do. Sometimes I'm leading the way. I have explained to people how case studies can be used and how white papers can be used. I'm not a marketing guy. I really avoid public relations and marketing. I Try to stick to writing, but just from being around it for a while and from working with companies that don't have their own dedicated marketing department, I'm pretty credible in that area and can help them out a lot. My feeling is that a lot of businesses, let's say the healthcare industry that was doing videos five years ago, my clients are kind of at that point now, they're just starting to realize they need some videos on their website and they need to get a handle on this. I hope that I can help them do it really well. And I also hope that some of my really huge clients who are of course doing a lot of videos that they might be interested in working with. My partner in this is a documentary filmmaker who I think does outstanding work. And as an award winning documentary filmmaker, so it should be a nice marriage of quality and authority, I guess you could say.

Very cool. We'll make sure to include a link to both of your sites, including the upcoming video site here in the show. Notes. And I guess before we wrap up, any parting thoughts?

Well, you know, yeah, it connected actually with the interview with Denise Kiernan. She mentioned Scrivener.

Yeah.

And everything she said was spot on in terms of the way it organizes information and so forth. And I use it just like she uses it. I wanted to point out to anyone who had some interest in Scrivener, this. The feature that I actually like the most is it has the best full screen approach that I've ever seen. So say you have your notes, an interview or a PDF or webpage, whatever, you can bring that into Scrivener, as Denise was describing. Then you can pop those up as what's called quick refs, which are little pop up screens. Then you go into compose mode, which is a full screen mode. So if you have a nice big monitor, you can have the article you're working on and there's all sorts of ways to arrange the screen the way you like. You also have your reference material right on screen with you and it's easy to flip through and get to the quotes and things and you can drag back and forth between. And also you can flip over to the Internet, to your browser and do some research and flip right back and it's right there. And if you know, like Microsoft Word in their full screen mode, if you go to another program or to the Internet, it shrinks it back down again. It's very frustrating because you need to bring it up again and it's aggravating. Scrivener stays right the way you Want it to look. So I wanted to mention that as a big part of my workflow. I agree with everything Denise said, but I don't think she mentioned enough that it just makes the process of writing so much easier because you have those references up on screen as you're writing the article.

I know I still haven't signed on, but I didn't know about the browser feature. That's one of my big pet peeves with Microsoft Word is I don't have two monitors, so I'm going back and forth. It's a real pain, especially if I have several documents open. It becomes very cumbersome. I thought about getting another monitor just for that reason, but I like this idea better.

Yeah. And it is a Macintosh program now, I think. Yeah.

I think it's actually available for both.

Oh, did they do that? Okay. That happened since I got it then. Yeah. I think it's superb. It's a lot like a database. It's a superb writing environment. And there's so many just great features that work really well, and you don't have to delve deep into the features to benefit just the stuff that's right there on the surface. You watch the video that they provide. It's a huge part of my workflow. In fact, most projects now start with me. I set up a computer folder, I get it into my to do list organizer, and then I. I create a scrivener file, and I start slurping in the research that I do. So it's all right there.

Very cool. Very cool. Angus, I really appreciate you coming on today. This has been fantastic. I know that listeners will really profit from these ideas.

Great. Well, thank you for having me. By the way, I've listened to at this point. I just came across your podcast maybe a month and a half ago.

What?

I know, I know, I know. It's my fault, and I wasn't much of a podcast guy, but I started doing a lot of commuting between Telluride and Peonia, where I live. So I had these long drives, and I think I've worked through almost every one of them now, and they're always fascinating, and I come away with so many great tips. So thank you for doing the podcast.

Well, thank you. And now we got another great one here in the queue. All right, folks, So I hope you enjoyed that interview. I know I really enjoyed talking to Angus about these ideas. And as I mentioned at the beginning of the show, it's always a good idea to have prospecting systems in place. Things you don't really have to think too much about you just do them. You constantly perfecting your approach. But I also think it's important to know how to freestyle a bit if you will. I think it's important to get creative with your prospecting and to constantly look for ways that you can find high paying clients in unusual situations or using using unconventional means. And I hope that this discussion opened your mind up a bit as to what the possibilities are. So as a reminder, you can grab the detailed show notes for this episode@b2b launcher.com Episode 18 Again, these are detailed show notes and make great reference material, especially if you listen to the show in your car somewhere where you just get can take notes A couple of Quick Announcements before we sign off. Wanted to give you a heads up that I'm about to do another of my popular free webinars on how to launch a successful B2B or commercial writing business in 10 weeks or less. So be on the lookout. I'm going to make an announcement here in the next couple days. Watch your inbox. This is a free webinar. This is detailed media instruction. We usually go two and a half to three hours including live Q and A. This is a very popular webinar that I only do a few times a year. So if this sounds interesting or you've missed previous webinars that I've done, be on the lookout for that email. It's going to happen real soon here. Also, if you enjoyed this episode, I'd be grateful if you shared it with friends and colleagues. And the easiest way to do that is just to go to b2b launcher.com love or of course you can use any of the social media sharing buttons on the show Notes page. And also it would mean a lot to me if you gave the show a quick rating or review on itunes. And the easiest way to do that is to go to bwlauncher.com iTunes. You'll see a blue view an itunes button on that page. That's going to take you straight to the show page in itunes. And if you've enjoyed what I've shared with you over the last few weeks, if you're enjoying the show and think there's value here, I'd appreciate it if you give me a quick star rating or on a sentence or two and how you feel about the show. So that brings us to the end of the episode. I am your host, Ed Gandia. Thanks so much for listening and I hope you have an awesome day. The High Income Business Writing Podcast is a production of B2B business launcher.

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