#098: Work With What You’ve Got (to Get to Where You Want to Go)

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 there. Thank you for joining me for episode 98 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. As a quick reminder, you can find detailed show notes for this episode by going to b2b launcher.com forward/episode98. So today's message is first of all going to be a bit shorter than normal and it's also primarily geared towards new and aspiring freelance writers and copywriters. Now having said that, if you've been in this business for a while, if you're more established, I still think there's some good material here for you because I'm going to go back to some fundamentals that they could impact your business no matter where you are. But I do want to let you know that the primary audience for today's message is going to be for those of you who are, who are thinking about launching a freelance writing or copywriting business or have done so in the past year or two, but you're not really happy where, with the progress that you've made and where you are so far. So one of the biggest fears and concerns that I see out there when folks tried to launch their freelance business is this concern of who's going to hire me. You know, I'm new, why would anyone hire me? It's just how do you even get started? And that fear is based on the following assumption. The assumption is that you need to impress, let's say IBM, right? You need to impress these bigger companies that you think are the ones who might be hiring someone like you. And the assumption is that, well, these are the, the only clients out there, these tier one companies or they, they're discerning clients that need to see a proven track record. And first of all, I need to tell you that that is an incorrect assumption. And if that's how you approach your business launch, you'll never make it. I've met very, very few people who got an impressive start when they launch your freelance writing or copywriting business or really any solo or freelance practice most of the time. The way they ascended through the ranks is really not pretty when you, when you look at it, when you trace it back to kind of its origin and the path they took, it was messy, it was not that impressive. It's not the kind of thing you could write a movie about. It's one unimpressive client after another, one disappointment after another. And that surprises a lot of people because, you know, you hear the stories, right? You've heard my story. You've heard the stories of a lot of established freelance professionals. And of course, the, the reason it sounds so nice and tidy and put together is that we're giving you the condensed version. You know, there's really no time to give you the kind of the full story and all the ups and downs. Sure, we touch on that. In my case, I like to emphasize the challenges and the things that I went through and the fears and doubts and uncertainty. But we don't dwell on it when we're telling the story, as we probably would if we truly gave a historical and day by day account of what happened. It's actually pretty boring. It's pretty disappointing. It's painful to relive that and to have to see somebody going through that. So, you know, very few people I know who are successful today actually kind of skipped all that ugliness and messiness and went straight to success. You see them out there, but that is not the norm. Most of the people who I know who are successful today got there one ugly step at a time, if you will. So I, you know, I talked about this in episode 16 of the High Income Business Writing Podcast that your job is not. When you're starting out, your job is not to try to impress IBM. You know, if. If the prospect you're speaking with needs to see a proven track record, they're just not a good prospect right now. It doesn't mean they won't be a good prospect in the future. It just means that they're not going to be a good prospect right now. And what I shared with you in that episode was this analogy of college graduates, right? So let's just take your typical college graduate at age 22. For the most part, he or she doesn't have relevant work experience. Sure, they may have worked odd jobs, maybe done an internship while they were in school, but for the most part, we're talking about someone who is just entering the workforce, the professional workforce for the first time, right? They have no relevant work experience. So who would hire that person? Really? They're kind of in the same position that you might be if you're starting to freelance right now. Who would hire that person? And the answer is that, well, there are many companies and organizations who go to college campuses every year looking for talent. They're not Looking for a proven track record. They know they're not going to find that what they're looking for is character. They're looking for, of course, grades and performance, but that we all know that's no longer the biggest factor. They're looking for someone who's, who's really gone after a well rounded approach to their education. They've volunteered, they've participated, they have maybe done some traveling, whatever the criteria might be. They're looking for indicators that this is a person they can work with. They have raw material, the kind of raw material they can use to mold that person, train them, groom them into to someone who could eventually lead the organization or lead parts of the organization or what have you. So they could bear fruit, essentially. Someone who, an investment that can bear fruit. If they were looking for a proven track record for these slots, they would not be going to college campuses. It's the same thing here. You're not looking for someone who needs to have, going back to the kind of work experience analogy, you're not looking for someone who's got a, you know, at least 15 years in corporate sales, right? Those people are looking for someone. They see something in these, in these kids that tells them, you know what, this is somebody I could work with. This is somebody we can mold, we, so we can groom into a leader. So it's the same thing here. You're looking for someone who's willing to give you a shot based on what they see, right? Now let me repeat that when you're getting started, you're looking for someone who's willing to give you a shot based on what they see, right? Now another way to look at it is work with what you've got to land the right kind of work. So work with what you got to land the right kind of work. Don't pretend to be somebody else. Don't assume that you're going to have to impress IBM in order to actually make it in this business. When you're starting out, that's not who you're going after. Your first few sets of clients are not going to be impressive after all. So there's a scene in this movie, Bridget Jones's Diary, that I think just kind of encapsulates this whole concept so neatly and in a funny way. And I'm going to include a link to that scene in the show notes but so Bridget and I apologize, it'll be a little crude, but Bridget had slept with her boss and it didn't work out and so now she couldn't work with him Anymore. And she had to find another job, so she quit. And she's interviewing and she's pretending to be somebody else. She's pretending to be somebody she's not in all these interviews. And, and as you'll see if you watch the clip, they're. They're trying to find out why she wants to be in tv. Because she's interviewing for a reporter, TV reporter position, and she's making up these answers, right? She's not being herself. She's not working with what she's got. She's trying to impress IBM. After several failed attempts, several failed interviews, she decides to just come clean. And in her final interview, the guy asked her, well, why? Why do you want to work here? And she just plainly told him, well, you know what? I slept with my boss. It didn't work out. I can't be anywhere around him. And he says, great, you can start on Monday. See you then. It's interesting because that's exactly what tends to happen when you find the right client, someone who's willing to work with what you've got for whatever reason. Then things start gelling, things start coming together. So what you want to do is when you're at zero, right, you're trying to get a two, you're trying to find a client. Let's just say that's a 2, not a 10, not an 8, you're looking for a 2. That's not much further out than zero where you are right now. Your starting point, once you get a two, and that's all you need, you got to stay focused on getting that two. Forget about the eights, forget about the tens. Once you get a two, you can start going after some twos and threes, right? Eventually you'll lend, you'll land a three, and once you have that three, you can start going after some threes and fours, okay? And now here's the interesting thing. In that process, you'll sometimes land a six. You're going after threes and fours, but suddenly you end up landing a six, and you land sixes. And many times in this process, you end up kind of skipping ahead because the 6 has an urgent need or they don't really care about some of the things that you might lack. They didn't even look, in fact. So this is exactly what's happened to me. I see this happening over and over again when I look at my colleagues. It's interesting that it's not as linear as you might think. You go after. In a linear fashion, okay? You go after twos. And then twos and threes, and then threes and fours. Many times there's a, there's a jump. Many times you plateau for a while, but then there's a huge spike. So when many of you have heard my story, you know, when I started out, I was willing to write anything for anyone. My first real client was a potato chip company. I was writing copy for the back of their potato chip bags. It was kind of fun, you know, but it didn't pay very much. And you know, here I am, I'm trying to get enterprise software clients and I ended up writing potato chip copy. So it is what it is, right? But that was my two, right. I ended up through somebody I knew, I started writing some financial copy. Again, not a topic I was interested in, but you know what, it was work. And it paid and it paid relatively well. And I just trusted that that was a stepping stone to get me to my next client. So sure enough, I'm here, I am working on this financial copy, writing copy for the back of potato chip bags and I land in enterprise software client. So let's say that I was at a level three. I suddenly land a six, right? Six, maybe a seven. And that was so important not only for my self confidence, but because shortly after I ended up connecting with a friend of mine who brought me into a project. She was more of a kind of a marketing generalist and she brought me into a project to write some copy for a client of hers, some brochure copy. And after working on a couple of those projects with her that gave her enough confidence in me to recommend me to somebody else in that client she recommended me to was more of an eight. So very quickly I went from working on threes and fours to landing a six, to then landing a seven, to then landing an eight, all within the matter of let's say three to six months. Just this is a long time ago, but somewhere in that range I jumped very, very quickly, which as you can imagine, just change, change things for me forever, right? My confidence went up, my, my skills went up, I mean, because they had to. And I've started, I started attracting just more of those types of clients because now I had the experience, a track record, I was getting recommended referred, et cetera. And. But it started by going after those twos when I was at zero. And once I had that two, I started going after more twos and threes and so forth. Now again, this, as I mentioned earlier, is a very important lesson for those of you who are just starting out. But it Applies to all of us, not just new freelancers. Think about this. If you're going, if you want to go after a new industry or target market, somebody that you haven't really approached before but you're very interested in going after, you can face the same challenges. You know, you're not known there, you have no track record. So how do you do it? Well, same thing, you're starting at zero. You have all this experience, but in this particular target market, you're starting at zero. Guess what? You're looking for your twos and threes. Same thing. If you set your sights on the tens, which I think is fine to do long term, but in terms of daily weekly action, if you set your sights on tension, you're never going to get there. So set that goal of a 10, but cut yourself some slack and say, you know what? I'm going to go after those who are willing to hire me based on what they see today. Same thing. If you're offering a new service, maybe something you don't have a lot of experience in, but you were trying to get that service line kind of jump started or kick started. Same thing. Look for those who are willing to hire you to do that kind of work based on your overall experience, not necessarily based on the fact that you already have several samples in that new service area. This happened to me as well. I mean, it's several times I'm thinking one that really sticks out was when I started offering SEO services like 10 years ago, search engine optimization. So I kind of did that at the same time sort of offering web copywriting services. Said, hey, my web copywriting, I write with SEO in mind. Now of course, these days that's kind of a given. People wouldn't. Most clients are not going to hire someone who doesn't have some SEO knowledge. But back then, 10, 12 years ago, you know, this is. It was still kind of a new thing, especially for a copywriter to be talking about that. So I started offering SEO. Now, I had no track record. So how did I end up getting this? Well, it was interesting. I just went ahead and wrote the copy anyway, put it on my website, started offering it, and I just talked to some people. I remember a friend of mine or colleague of mine had heard about it. I think I had told her somewhere and she said, look, somebody just contacted me about doing some web copywriting for an OBGYN's website. I think you'd be better suited for it. I could write it, but I really, I'm not doing SEO. I don't really know anything about it. Would you be interested in it? I said, sure. Now, she knew I was just starting out with that, but she didn't care. She just referred me. This designer was the one looking. She hooked me up with this designer and I worked directly with her. And you know what? I wrote some great copy for this ob GYN through this designer. It ended up working very, very well. It was very effective. That g me the boost and confidence that I needed. The client was happy, this designer was happy. And it gave me the lift, the boost I needed in every way, and of course, some track record that I desperately needed to go ahead and get going. So, you know, really, at the end of the day, what we're talking about here, whether you're new, whether you're established and you're trying to get into a new area with a new service or a new industry or target market, this is all about incremental improvement. An incremental improvement may not be sexy, but I think most of us recognize that this is a proven path. This is when else, when else fails. You just can't go wrong with steady incremental improvement. That's how when you look back, you've probably achieved most of your success in your career and in your life through steady incremental improvement. You know, it's funny, I just had lunch with an old friend of mine, somebody I've known for 18, 20 years, and he has done very, very well in his career. When I first met him, he worked with my wife at a software company, and he was just a trainer. He trained users in the system. And you know, that that's. That's all he did had. I'm not sure if he had higher aspirations, but somewhere along the way, a couple years after starting to do that, he decided to get in into sales within that company. And it wasn't an overnight thing. He just kind of worked his way through that sales department and today. And he's actually been in this position for a while, but he's gotten more responsibility and his scope has grown significantly over the past few years. But today he is sales director, works directly under the VP of sales, has quite a few people, a big team under him, lots of responsibilities, doing extremely well financially. And again, this has taken about 18 years to get here. It's pretty rare to be with a company, especially in technology, for that long. But the point is, you know, it still didn't happen overnight. He went from just being a trainer to now being one of the top people in the company. You know, the trick is, regardless of what you do and where you're trying to go is about stair stepping your way to where you're trying to get to and forgetting this idea that you have to impress IBM right out of the gate, that you have to get to the very top right away, you know, and instead it's about focusing on finding prospects who are willing to work with you based on what they see today, or hoping that every once in a while there'd be some sort of fluke that you couldn't have engineered yourself. As I mentioned earlier, somebody who just had an urgent need, a first software client of mine, they just had an urgent need. They didn't even really check me out, they just said, you know, great, I was doing a direct mail campaign, they got my letter, they, they didn't even download the lead magnet I had created that I was offering in that letter. The guy just picked up the phone, called me, explained the project to me and I, you know, I gave him some pricing and he hired me and I worked with him for several months to redo their whole website, wrote a ton of copy for them and you know, he just didn't have the time to keep looking for somebody right place at the right time. If you keep taking action, you'll eventually get some of those right place at the right time. Now, if you're trying to get your B2B writing or copywriting business off the ground, or if you've already launched your business but you're still struggling to break past that, let's say thousand dollar per month income ceiling, I may be able to help you. One of the things I do really, really well is, is help freelancers get their business off the ground quickly and with less risk. And I've just opened the enrollment process for my coaching program which is called B2B Business Launcher 2.0. Now if we end up working together in this program, I'll show you how to get results faster, how to land progressively better clients, and how to gain serious momentum quickly. Again, working through incremental improvement. But incremental improvement that you can see, you can taste and will give you the motivation you need to keep pushing yourself and to keep going. I don't make these coaching and training opportunities available very often, but again, I've just opened up a window. So if this sounds like you, if you're new and you're trying to get some guidance through this process so you can avoid making so many of the mistakes that are just inevitable when you're starting out and you have no real guidance or leadership through this process. This might be something you'll want to explore and you can learn more about it at b2b launcher.com forward/program I will tell you this opportunity is not for everyone. You have to be hungry. You have to be serious. You have to be focused and determined to make this business work. Most people who try to launch a writing or copywriting business, I will tell you right off the bat, most people fail, okay? And it has less to do with talent than it does with persistence. Having a plan, working that plan and working that consistently, and not giving up too early. So there's so many other factors, and this is just some of them that have little to do with talent. You have to be a good writer, there's no doubt about that. But there's much more to it than that. I see way too many people fail who are extremely talented writers, but then they lacked some of the other ingredients necessary to get that business off the ground successfully. So again, this is not for everyone. But if you're at the spot, I'd love for you to take a look at it. And if it sounds like something you'd like to explore, then I hope you consider enrolling. So that's it for today. That brings us to the end of the episode. Again, I am your host, Ed Gambia. Thank you 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. Learn more@b2b launcher.com it.