#074: Ten Things to Avoid When Ramping Up Your Freelance Writing Business

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. Well, hello there and thank you for joining me for episode 74 of the High Income Business Writing Podcast. My name is 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 of this episode by going to b2b launcher.com episode 74. You know, there's plenty of advice out there about what you should do when you're starting and growing a freelance writing or copywriting business. A lot of the show is about that. It's about, hey, what, what should you do if you're looking to grow? And not just, of course, if you're just starting out, but if you're looking to take things to the next level. But what you don't hear a lot of is what you should not do, what you should avoid when you're starting out, and especially what you should avoid if your goal is to ramp up as quickly as possible. You need to get to the viable stage very, very fast. For whatever reason, many times it's financial, you're in a big hurry and you need to get this business off the ground quickly. It's very important when you're in that situation that you're very clear and that you're very focused on doing only the things that are going to give you the fastest and best and biggest possible result. My guest this week is Diana Schneidman and Diana is a freelance writer and researcher who specializes in the insurance and asset management industry. She also specializes in helping freelance writers get their business off the ground quickly. In fact, she's developed a reputation for helping people who want to land well paid freelance and consulting work quickly. She even wrote a book on the subject, which I will link to in the show notes. And in this episode she shares 10 things that new freelancers, freelancers really in all professions, but specifically today, freelance writers must avoid if they want to get that business off the ground fast and cost effectively. So let's get right to the interview. I think you're going to enjoy this one, especially if you're right now in that stage or you're going to be making that switch sometime in the next few months. Hey Diana, welcome to the show. It's good to have you here.

Hi Ed.

This is an interesting topic because I you do a really good job talking about things that new freelancers Especially those who need to make something happen quickly, who need to ramp up quickly, shouldn't be doing. And what I love about the things you talk about is many of these are things that you would think you should be doing or other people strongly suggest you should do. So this is, I'm looking forward to our discussion because it's kind of a contrarian view on a lot of these topics.

Well, yeah, you know, I think that all of these activities are right for some people at some times. And so there is no one way to do marketing. But what I tried to do is distill a way that works if you don't have any business and you need some money fairly quickly and what you can take off your plate so that you have time to do what you really should be doing. Because the biggest risk is that you try to do too many marketing activities all at once and you confuse yourself. You don't really get anything done.

Well, oh yeah, seen it happen many, many times. And let's start here just so folks understand where you're coming from. Tell us a little bit about yourself and your business and kind of your background.

Well, Ed, I've been a freelance writer for probably about 20, over 20 years now. But the thing is, I haven't been a consistent freelancer that entire period. I also had periods with employment where I would do a little bit of freelancing on the side. And each of those jobs at various times of course went down the toilet. So there I was self employed again. And what this meant is that each time it was almost like starting from scratch to build a clientele. So I really have a lot of experience at starting out because I've done it so many times.

So you've been where a lot of people are today. And in fact I know you've written a book about this which I definitely want to ask you about a little bit later because it's, it's very much needed out there. So let's, let's talk about this list of things that you should avoid when you're in that situation where you need to ramp up quickly and, and there are so many things you could be doing.

Well, I think the most important thing to do is you have to figure out who your best prospects are and get in touch with them personally. And that's the fastest way to get paying work. But this is time consuming and so you have to take a lot of other things off of your plate in order to get done what you really need to do. And so I have a list in my book Real skills, real income of quite a few things that you can quit doing, and that'll make your life much easier. And the first thing I think not to do is blogging. And the reason I talk about blogging is because a lot of people reading online about how to start their business see that blogging is very important and that Google really looks for new. For new content. And so Google will reward you if you have a blog. And that's also how you build a community and you reach out to people. There's a lot of potential, potential benefits to blogging, but there's also a downside. And the problem is when you're starting out, you have no paying business. This gives you a lot of time to market and to think of marketing ideas. And you can get yourself all engaged with the blog. And then if your marketing is working, you've got a lot of incoming work, so it gets impossible to do the paying work plus to consistently blog. So what people tend to do is they let the blogging fall off because it's not paying anything. And so then a lot of their marketing makes them look really dynamic. And you hear their elevator speech, you think this person's really cooking. And then you look at their website and it looks pretty good. You look at their LinkedIn profile, that looks really strong. And then you look at the blog and perhaps it hasn't been updated for a year and a half. So then it makes you wonder about this person. Are they really marketing? Are they still in business? Do they have some type of problem with getting their work done? It just does not present a good image.

So it sounds like the moment you decide to do it, unless you understand the full commitment it's going to take, you got to be careful because it could actually end up hurting you more than helping you.

Right, Right. Another problem I see is that people start blogging because they have a few good ideas, but then they run out of ideas, and then it becomes a real burden to blog. So they either have to keep out there looking for ideas or they let the thing slide, which is not good.

So when would you say would be a good time to maybe start considering a blog? Because he did say that you understand the value of it, but not if you're in that situation where you got to make things happen quickly.

I think it's a very personal decision, because if you're not going to maintain it over the long haul or you don't have topics, enough topics to really keep it going, perhaps you should never start it. Because once you start, you have to Keep going or it's really meaningless activity. There's other things you can do instead. If you just have an occasional yen to write, you can create another page to your website, for instance. Or you could do guest blogging or something like that. And then you can have the, the fun and the impact somewhat of blogging without this long term commitment.

I like that. And I've seen how effective guest blogging can be for several freelance writers out there who have. Not only have they gained clients from it, but it's led to bigger things such as speaking opportunities. And I know we'll talk about speaking too here in a minute. So blogging, that's a big one. Let's talk about number two.

Well, let's talk about writing a business plan which a lot of experts advise. And this is very hard to do because if you are new to the business or you haven't had much work yet, it's hard to project much of anything at all. And you can pull out some numbers from no place, but it's not really going to help you achieve them because you have no feel for whether that's based in your reality or not. So you're doing all this work and it's not really going to do anything for you. Business plans are if you are going after financing. But most beginning freelance writers aren't really going after financing at this point. So they don't have the same need for a business plan that maybe other types of businesses have.

You know, I agree with you there. One thing I see especially with writers, and I work with all kinds of freelancers, but a lot of writers seem to be kind of planners and thinkers. They're really good in those areas. And plus it's like a comfortable thing to do. Right? Because the one thing a lot of people don't want to do is to actually prospect. So the whole planning, the doing a business plan feels so comfortable and it feels right. And that's what you've heard other new businesses do. But I agree it could be a total waste of time and it's just another way to procrastinate. And this could set you you back a couple of months.

Right? Right.

All right, so business plan. I'm with you. I'm with you there. Let's talk about number three.

Conducting telephone market research.

So this is interesting. So tell me more about this because this is one that I hadn't really come across before.

Well, there's other types of marketing research also, but from time to time you'll see advice that if you're going to Start a business such as a freelancing practice, you should go out to the companies that you would think would want your service and assess what they're looking for. And you assess whether they use freelancers and what qualities they're looking for in freelancers and all this kind of thing. And perhaps going back to the business plan, you can interface this marketing research with your business plan. And there's a danger here that it eats up a lot of time and you're going to all the effort to contact people, often by phone, and yet you're not taking the next action of offering your services. So I believe if you're going to go to the effort to contact prospects, why not actually make it a sales call? Why just do this marketing research? And then if they say I'm interested, what do you say? You say, okay, I'll get back to you, or after I write my business plan or whatever. You know, when you're talking to somebody who might be interested, go ahead and make your pitch. Don't just put it off for later.

Yeah, It's, I can see how that can get you in trouble quickly and gosh, what a bunch of missed opportunities you could come across. Right? It's, you keep going. And I don't know what you can glean from that. That's the other thing. It's, gosh, you know, if you're going to go into this business, you've either decided that this is for you and there's a demand, or you haven't, or you've said no to that. So to try to continue to justify it by doing research, definitely a time waster. And that kind of segues into the next point, which is similar.

Well, let's go back to this marketing research thing because there's some type of perception out there that you really have to understand your customer in order to be able to serve them. But in my book, I suggest that, that you freelance in an area very similar to your last good job. And so you already have a sense of what they're looking for. And by the way, almost all freelance clients are looking for the same thing. They're often able to do the work themselves, but they don't have time to do it. So they're working. They're looking for more hands to offload some of the work to. And often their problems are stressful, lack of time, conflicting demands and that sort of thing. So you already know what their needs are. You don't have to spend all that much time researching the needs.

Sounds like it just could be here Again, another way to procrastinate.

Right, Right.

So let's talk about this next idea about researching prospects at length. How is that related to number three.

This sounds like a great idea when you hear it, that you should go and find and really research them so that when you make them an offer, it really relates to what they need. But there's a problem with this. No matter how you're contacting prospects, you're not going to talk to everyone that you communicate with. They might not take your phone call, they may not open your email, they might not open your mail. So you're doing all this effort to really assess their problems and. And they might not even see it. Furthermore, when you're assessing their problems, what you're really doing is consulting. You don't want to do a lot of assessment for free or not even related to making a proposal. Just sort of spinning your wheels, looking at their websites and asking people about them and looking online and all this thing. It's going to take a lot of time. It's really going to cut back on the number of people you can contact and, and often they won't really appreciate or even perceive the work that you've put into it.

Yeah, I'm with you there. Go to where there's already a demand, there's a need, and, you know, trying to go down this research, gosh, I've never seen that work. But I wonder, do you see a lot of new writers do this? It seems like it's a problem.

Well, I think it is. And another thing that you'll see online in discussion groups for freelancers, people, especially freelance writers, they'll say, today I saw a website and it was terrible. It had bad spelling, bad punctuation. It lacked all the elements of a marketing page. I'm thinking of contacting them to offer them my services because they really need a writer. And those are the people who are not worth going after because they have no perception of what marketing communications is about. They have. They don't value what you're offering them. They're not going to pay top dollar for it. They already have a very bad website. They're not going to spend more money, and they might not even perceive what is wrong with their website. So don't waste your effort on these people. You get much better results when you go after people who already have good writing or good marketing in place, because these are the people who are more able to appreciate what you're offering and they're more likely to spend money on it anyway. You can never have enough content.

Yeah. Wise marketer once told me, listen, if you sold watches, the best people to sell to are those who already own a watch.

Right.

Don't try to sell watches to people who don't have them or don't believe in them. All right, so number five, this is an interesting one because this definitely goes against what a lot of people today are preaching. Tell me about number five.

Don't spend serious time on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc. Now, if you already have accounts in place and you start freelancing, of course you would let. You would let your connections know that you're freelancing. I mean, that is just so obvious. That's the very first thing you would do.

But a lot of people don't even do that. So I'm glad you mentioned it because it is important.

Right. But what people want to do is people are looking for ways to take the easy way out on marketing and avoid the things that are a lot of work or are uncomfortable. And so they start their day out by looking at, you know, LinkedIn and Facebook and Twitter and whatnot. And then they believe that if others know like and trust them that the work will naturally follow. But that's not true. You have to be doing these services strategically. And it takes a lot of thought and research to do it strategically so that it's going to create work from the right prospects.

And I see a lot of time wasted there. And it's a black hole, isn't it?

Right, it is, it is. It can take extreme amounts of time and it's very difficult to get it to pay off unless you really understand what you're doing with it.

Yeah. You'll find yourself wondering, well, wait a minute. Three hours have gone by, what have I been doing?

Right.

Okay, so that's good advice. Let's talk about the whole elevator pitch dilemma.

This elevator pitch thing is really sad. I've gone to meetings where I say hello to somebody and ask them how they are or what they do or something conversational like that. And their first words are, I feel so awkward about this because I know I should have an elevator speech and I don't. So, you know, sometimes it takes a while to develop an elevator speech. And when you keep going to these events and you keep talking to people and you listen to yourself speak to them and you get their answers, it helps you put your finger on what this jewel is, this juicy element that should be in your elevator speech. And so sometimes you don't even know right at the beginning what you are offering that sounds so good. So through conversation and through time and through doing assignments, it'll be much easier to develop an elevator speech. But sometimes it's hard to do it on day one, and it's not even really necessary. You've got to be able to say your name, and you also have to be able to say what service you offer in just a few words so people understand what it is.

And, you know, I've also seen the opposite, where people have these canned elevator pitches that are horrible and they're lengthy and they're filled with jargon, and they lose the listener immediately. So that's somebody who is really obsessed over taking action, but taken the wrong action.

Right. You know, and the best part about a networking conversation, it's an interaction. You have to be willing to listen to the other person. But after you've pontificated for 10 minutes with your testimonials and your success stories and everything, the other person just wants to leave the conversation. They don't want to keep feeding it. So not a good way to go.

If people are running away from you at a networking event, that's probably an indication that your elevator pitch needs work.

Right? Right.

Yeah. And I've always said, look, just like your specialty and your target market and your niche finds you most of the time, I think your elevator pitch finds you. I agree. I don't think this is something you can nail on day one. You have to walk down a certain path and have a certain amount of experiences for you to really nail it. Gosh, I'm still refining mine.

Right, right.

Okay. So since we're talking about networking, let's talk about the whole networking meetings issue. You know, are they important? Should you attend networking events?

Well, my book is about how to start getting assignments in 30 days. And most networking does not pay off in 30 days. And to make networking really effective, you have to go to the same groups more than once. You have to develop relationships. And over time, you'll find a few organizations that really help you do this. But you've got to be very careful about what organizations you go to, because remember, if you read online about how to develop a freelancing practice, everyone says you should specialize. Your niche should be very, very specialized. And if you're going to the local chamber of commerce, which is people from all different industries and all walks of life, you probably will not find that group of people there. So you're choosing probably the wrong events to go to. You're not going to make these connections fast enough. So networking may have a place later on when you have a more relaxed pace of marketing and you're already getting some clients, but it's not the good starting place.

Yeah. You know, my experience has been that if you show up at a networking event with desperation, it's going to show.

Right.

You're better off staying home and coming back when you're not going into it with the expectation that it's got to pay off today.

Right, Right. And the more specialized your industry or your offering, the less likely it is that there's a local group that serves that interest. For instance, my strongest writing field is the insurance industry. There is no local organization of insurance copywriters or something like that. So there are some organizations, but they only have national meetings. So a lot of this stuff doesn't really pay off because it's not quite the right audience.

Yeah. And again, if you're looking to ramp up in 30 days, the chances of the national meeting happening next week are slim.

Right.

But you know, brings up a. And I know we're not talking about what you should do today, but I think it's if you find yourself, because I know I have a lot of listeners who are in remote areas. If you have a very narrow specialty or target market, you should consider going to the annual event. And, you know, there's ways. And we can have a separate episode about that. There are things you could do to get some serious return on investment from that event. So that way, in three days, you can accomplish what it would have taken you months in kind of a local chapter.

Right, Right. Another problem that beginners may have is, especially for instance, if you just lost your job, you feel like you have no financial resources. And it's very scary to put something like that on your charge card because some of these conferences are very pricey. They've been designed for corporate executives, not for freelancers.

Yes. Very expensive when you consider travel, too.

Right.

All right, so we're up to number eight of things you shouldn't do if you need to ramp up quickly.

Okay, next, don't hire a telemarketer to make your phone calls for you.

People do this?

Oh, yeah. Yeah, I believe they do. I mean, I've seen many an expert who says that they don't like making phone calls, so they hire someone else to do it for them. Wow.

So many things wrong with that. What would you say to that? What would be the reason, the biggest reason?

Okay, now I've got to let you know that I myself make phone calls for work. And yet oftentimes when people call Me, when telemarketers call me, I hang up on them. And that's because there's quite a few things I don't like about telemarketing. But they're not the person, they don't really know anything. So you ask these telemarketers who they're calling for, why they're calling, what they offer. They, they, they don't know. They can't go off script. So when I make calls, I make them myself. And I have a friendly voice, I think, and I'm able to set up a connection with these people and start a real conversation. But what's really cool is if they ask me a question about my services, I'm able to answer the question. I'm not like, well, I'm calling for somebody else. I don't know the answer to anything, and I'll have them call you back. Which is really what it's saying is their time is so important they're free to call you and have me waste your time, but they're too busy to make these phone calls. It's really kind of an insult.

Yeah. And the justification I've heard before is like, well, that could position you as very successful person because if you have somebody doing this for you, wow, you must be really busy with client work. I don't know. I don't get that.

Well, there's all sorts of place people who recommend that you create this illusion that you're very busy. So if someone calls you about doing an assignment, you say, well, let's set up a time to talk. I'll be available three weeks from Tuesday. Or, you know, I've looked at my schedule and that's when I can fit you in. And I don't believe in any of that. I think if your strength is the quality of the service that you offer, then you should show your quality of service right from the beginning before they even sign on as a client. And I think very immature, easily impressionable people might think, oh, if you've got time, then you're not very important. But I don't think that's the way it works.

I agree. That takes a lot of work to put that kind of facade together.

Right.

I don't have the time or the energy to do that. So, yeah, I agree with you. So let's talk about number nine, public speaking.

Public speaking, okay. This is a good way perhaps to get business, but it's not going to get the job done in 30 days. First of all, you've got to get the engagements. So how do you do that. Well, very few clubs are looking for someone to speak this week or next Monday. Many clubs are scheduling months in advance. So your first challenge is to get scheduled. That's going to take time. And then the second problem is very few people. There are really hot prospects for your services at this time. Some of them will keep your information. They may call you back in months. It's not going to kick in fast enough. Plus, the other problem is you really have to have something worth presenting. Do you have that at this point? Yeah. You can throw together an outline probably pretty quickly and get up there and wing it. But I've heard an awful lot of poor quality speeches by people who are not adequately prepared. And they typically give a very brief introduction and then they say something like, I really want to help you with the information you want, so I'm going to ask you to ask me questions. And that way they don't have to prepare. But I don't think it makes a strong impression.

Oh, gosh, not at all. So, you know, this is another example and most of what you shared so far, these are things that are not necessarily bad, they're not bad ideas. But if we're talking within the context of having to ramp up quickly, and you've been talking about 30 days, because that's the topic of your book, but I would say even three to six months, these are not good things to focus on initially.

Right, right.

So, yeah, I agree. Gosh, that would be crazy to try to put together your keynote speech to try to find a place, a venue and practice enough that you can do an amazing job.

Right.

And then right there, there'll be a client who wants to hire you on the spot.

Right.

All right, so then moving on to number 10, what's this about?

I believe you should not try to publish information products at the beginning. And if you're online much at all, you will soon see recommendations that you engage in passive income, which is selling products while you sleep, which sounds like a great way to make money. I love to make money while I sleep. But if you're just starting out as a freelancer, first of all, it's going to be hard to think about what are you going to write this product about. It's going to take its own marketing and it's going to take more time than you think that it's going to take. And it's going to take away from your prospecting for freelance work. And in my experience, I have found it much easier to make a significant amount of money with freelance writing assignments. Than I have with passive income. Passive income takes a lot of time and a lot of effort to develop.

Gosh, I can definitely speak to that. You know, I'm on my seventh year of putting together information products. I would say that it's only been in the past couple years where it's really started to pay off.

Right.

And that's after a really, really strong effort. I mean, like, crazy strong. Like, I never thought I would put that much work into it. Now, I'm not saying that, you know, I'm the norm, I think I am, actually. But there are a lot of people out there who are smarter than I am. But I. It's really rare to see someone make money early.

Well, and, you know, I've looked at a lot of your products and I've listened to your audios, and I can tell that you put a lot of work into them and also that you're drawing upon a lot of experience. But there's some misconceptions out there that people can quickly make these information products. For instance, you come up with a list of 10 questions. You give that list to your friend, you set up an audio session, they ask you the questions, you answer the questions, and there you are with the product. And somehow you're going to make a lot of money off of this product. If you don't have quite a list developed or you don't have relationships with others in the field, you're not going to be able to sell it. And there's so much free out there, you better have something pretty good if you really expect to get paid for it.

Plus, you know, we haven't even talked about creating a list which costs money to do so, whether it's directly or indirectly. So I agree with you. And I think that falls into another strategy that, hey, it's not don't do it, but at first, if you're trying to ramp up, quickly, not a good idea. So tell me about your book, because, you know, this is just part of what we talk about in your book, but you have a very comprehensive guide you just published, and it's specifically geared at people who are in that situation. They've lost their job, they got to make something happen quickly. That's kind of a unique group of people, and that's a very difficult, I think, topic to write about. So tell us, tell us, I guess, first, like, how you came up with the idea, why you decided to write it, and tell us a little bit about the book itself.

Well, the book is called Real Skills, Real Income, A Proven Marketing system to land well paid freelance and consulting work in 30 days or less. And it's available on Amazon. And I developed the concepts in it slowly over time and through a lot of frustration and a lot of low income periods because as I said before, I, I started out freelancing on multiple occasions. So I was starting from scratch several times. And eventually I boiled it down into a few key principles. And so it's really three steps to what to do. And this is for people who really need to start making money. And it's number one, you've got to decide what service you're going to offer. And it's easiest if you make it as similar as possible to what you did on your last good full time job because it's easier to calculate what to charge, it's easier to understand the marketplace if you've already done this kind of work. And then the second step is to contact the best prospects individually. And the way I recommend doing this is picking up the phone and then backing it up with an email. There's other ways to do the same thing. And then the third step is to get real. This is going to take 30 days, not 30 minutes. People want to make one phone call, it doesn't accomplish anything. And then they conclude phoning doesn't work. It works. But every single kind of marketing takes large numbers. There's nothing that doesn't take large numbers. And this is the same as any other marketing system.

I have a question about the first item you mentioned. So starting with a service that was similar to what you did in your last job as a full time employee, so what if you came from a different world? What if you worked in a corporate environment but you didn't do writing? Let's say you did a lot of writing, but your job was not a staff writer. So for people like that, what would your advice be?

Well, if you've done a lot of writing, then you are a writer, you know, it's still valid. You might want to take an element from your last job and turn that into your freelance career. Before I ever started freelancing the first time, I knew I wanted to eventually be a freelance writer. And I was in marketing research. And so I would look for opportunities to write presentations and write articles for other people and all kinds of writing. And often I would put a lot more effort into these projects than they really justified. But then I'd take a copy home and that would be my sample file for when I got started. So even though my title wasn't Writer, I knew that's what I was going to do. And I sort of positioned my job at that time so that I would be kind of a writer. But, you know, you can do something else as well. I'm not. You know, different things work for different people. And I'm not saying that you have to, but what I'm doing is. I'm just positioning this against another recommendation that I hear a lot, which is you should identify your passion, and then your work should be your passion. And if you found your passion, then you will never work another day in your life because it will all be so pleasurable. And I have problems with this now. If you know what your passion is, it might be possible to go ahead and pursue it. But a lot of people are so down when they've been let go from their jobs, and probably they've had a lot of issues at work even before they lost their job. Their morale is down. It's hard to figure out what your passion is, and it's even harder to figure out how to turn that into a paying job. There's nothing shameful about going in a different, different direction than some passion. We've come to believe that everybody is owed their life's passion in their work. And I don't agree with that.

We're definitely on the same page there. You know, this is. If you find yourself in this situation, you're pivoting. And if you're pivoting, it's been proven that your highest chances of success are kind of in front of you. So start where you are. It's just another way of stating what you've just said. Start where you are. Because it's not that every opportunity will be there, but the closest, fastest, most viable opportunities are around where you are. And if you're trying to ramp up quickly, you know, be smart and go with that. And listen, it doesn't mean you abandon this other idea or that passion you talked about. It just means that, you know, you're trying to be practical here. So I think it's really sound advice. So, all right, so the books available on Amazon, is it available in different formats or Kindle only?

It's available both in print as a soft cover and it's available for Kindle.

Fantastic. So I will tell you, before we did the interview, I went through it. I didn't read every single thing, but I found some really, really solid nuggets there. So, guys, check it out. You can find that on Amazon. And, Diana, thank you so much for coming on show the.