#120: How to Get Valuable Insights Into Your Business by Tracking Your Inquiries

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 120 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 episode120 before we get to the material for this episode, I wanted to let you know about an opportunity I've recently made available. So I'm about to work with a small group of freelancers to help them create and sell their first info product and generate some passive income. I already have a great group forming, but I'm looking for a few more people to work with and I'm specifically looking for folks who are serious about creating a passive income stream, but who also have the right attitude and expectation. By that I mean that you're willing to work hard, you're willing to apply yourself and stay focused on this project for 90 days, which would be the time we'd be working together. The sad truth is there's a lot of hype out there about creating passive income and what it takes to do that and do it well. I've been doing this for nine years and I can tell you that it's not easy. It takes hard work, it takes dedication, emotional endurance, all those things. Now it's totally doable, but it's not something that's going to happen on its own. And much of what I see out there being promoted makes it sound like this is something that's just kind of, you know, basically do itself, that you don't really have to do much work at all to make it happen. Now, to work with me on this project, you need to be able to dedicate a minimum of five hours per week over the next 90 days, which would be the time period would work together. If you have a bit more time than that, that's great. But five hours per week is the minimum. If this sounds like you, if this sounds interesting, send me an email@edblauncher.com edblauncher.com with the words passive income coaching in the subject line and I'll reply to you with all the details. Okay, so now for this week's episode, my guest is one of my favorite people in the world, my good friend Diana Huff. Diana is a solo Marketing professional. And she's an expert at helping small family owned industrial manufacturers grow through better marketing. And she recently shared with me the results of tracking, the inquiry she'd been getting for the past few months and the amazing insights that she got as a result of this tracking and analysis effort. Now, I don't want to spoil it, but here's what I'll say. As tedious as this kind of tracking activity might sound, and by the way, it's really not, as you'll hear Diana explain, can lead to. To some serious breakthroughs in your business. And it has the potential to help you turn things around in a massive way. I think you're really going to enjoy this discussion, get a lot of ideas out of it. So, without further ado, here's my recent conversation with Diana Huff. Diana, so great to have you back on the show.

Well, thank you for having me.

It's always fun to talk with you. You know, I. I don't know if you know this. You and I have been talking for like an eternity. It seems like.

Well, since you first went into business for yourself.

Actually, even before that, if you. I don't know if you remember that I called you. I don't even know how I found out about you.

But you found out from what's her name, the copywriter coach, Chris Marlowe. Yes.

Okay. Yeah, okay. And I reached out to you and we had some conversations. I think I even hired you a few times just to mentor me when I was getting started with my business on the side. That was a long time ago.

That was. It was. And I'll never forget because I told you exactly what my business strategy was, which at the time was B2B marketing communications. And I'll never forget you said, oh, my goodness, that is brilliant. And I said, oh, thank you.

Well, I really did think that because see, at the time, I didn't even know that there was such a thing as business to business marketing and communications.

Marketing communications. That was what I focus specifically on. Working with Marcom people in corporations.

Wow. Well, back when we were young, so we connected way back then. So I wanted to talk with you today a little bit about an exercise that you recently went through. But before we get into those specifics, for people who don't know who you are, why don't you give us a quick background, you know, what type of work you do, what types of clients you work with that's evolved over time. But I love what you're doing today, so tell us about that.

Well, so I. My company is Huff Industrial marketing. And I work with small family owned industrial manufacturers and I help them grow through marketing. And it has evolved over time. So I started off in 1998 as a B2B copywriter. And that was when my son was 12 months old. And you know, I started, I had learned SEO. I taught myself SEO in 2001. Around 2004, 2005, people, companies were calling me and asking me to do what I called these odd projects where I started doing, I call them now website overhauls. But I started doing those. My first One was in 2004 and I was combining that with the copywriting, the SEO. Then social media came, blogs, you know, it just, everything just kept evolving and I was evolving too. And then finally I got burned out and I had a big crash. And so I went through a huge transition a couple years ago and really just, you know, what do I want to do? My son was going off to college. What do I want to do? What do I want to focus on? And I had always worked with industrial manufacturers. They were my favorite clients. And so that's what I decided to focus on. So I changed my business name, I changed my, my entire business strategy. I now am a marketing consultant. I now do I become Google Analytics certified. I'm moving into Google AdWords. I still do the website overhauls, but it's much more strategic and a whole lot more consulting. And I am so happy because I'm finally doing what I had been dreaming of doing since about 2009.

Wow. I love that. And you know what I love about your story is that you have pivoted several times, but it's always been based on the results you're getting. So this was never based on theory. It was based on connecting the dots little by little. Right. Because I see so many people, especially with a consulting bit, Ed, I want to kind of position myself as a consultant. But they're just starting out and my advice to them is like, look, you can certainly work your way into that, but I think you need to kind of get out there first and see where the needs are.

Exactly. Yep, yep. You know, and Steve Jobs actually, you know, in that commencement speech he, he did at Stanford, he said, you can only connect the dots going backward, you can't connect the dots going forward. And that whole speech was him connecting the dots. And that's your, you hit it when you said that. That's during my, it was about a two year transition during that time. I mean, there was a lot of inner thought, you know, inner introspection and a lot of connecting the dots.

That's the way it should be done. That's it. You learn as you go and then you pivot. So let's talk about the exercise that you recently went through. That was actually very revealing. So I'll let you talk about it and tell us, you know, what it was about and maybe the motivation behind it.

Okay, well, the motivation behind it was I'm always telling my clients to track their inquiries because how do I know if my marketing strategy is working for them unless they know and I know how many inquiries they're getting every month. And so these are manufacturers, you know, they're small. I've had manufacturers say, gosh, if I could get five inquiries a month, I would be happy, you know. And so for them, that means if they get a project where they have to make, you know, a bazillion widgets, that's something. Okay, so, and so I had been telling them, track your inquiries. And so I thought, well, I better follow my own advice. So I started tracking my inquiries because I wasn't really sure myself. I mean, I sort of knew they were coming from search and referrals, but it, I wasn't really paying attention. So I just create a simple Excel spreadsheet and I, and I should back up a little bit. I do use Nimble, which is a CRM, and it also has one of those deal tracker things inside of it where you can keep track of all your deals. But that, that, that little widget inside of it, it never, it didn't really tell me how long it took for sales to close. And I also, I didn't put all my inquiries in it because if an inquiry, if someone called and they weren't the right kind customer and I, you know, after I pre qualified them or tried to qualify them and said, well, this is not a good fit or I don't do that or whatever, I just didn't put them in because what was the point? There was no deal, right? No deal to track. So I wanted to track all my inquiries, the good ones and the bad ones, because I wanted to see who was calling and why. And I mostly what I really wanted to know was how long did it take to close a sale. So that's where I started. I started last November tracking all the people that called me or emailed me.

Any incoming inquiry, basically any kind in your spreadsheet. And just to clarify, the CRM. So those who people do might not know. So like a contact management software.

Yes. So I use Nimble.

Yeah, gotcha. So it was Limited So now with a spreadsheet. The great thing about a spreadsheet is you can customize it however you'd like. You're able to track. Do you remember what fields you were tracking? I know you're keeping it very simple.

Yep, I have the date, the name of the person, the company the service needed, how they found me, that's something. If we can double back on that at some point. How they found me, that's really important. And whether the job. Whether it became a job or not a job. So go or no go? When. When the sale closed. The dollar amount and the number of days it took to close the sale.

Interesting. Okay, so that's great because that's exactly what you needed and you're able to track it the way you wanted and then get the insights you needed. Now let's talk. And I definitely want to touch on the. The how you found out about me, because I know that's important. I think it's one of your insights. Talk about kind of the big things that you were able to uncover after, what, about a year of.

Well, actually after the first three months or so, the big one that I realized right away I was getting all these inquiries. So I used to write Wikipedia pages, and then I stopped offering that service, and I was getting all these inquiries for Wikipedia pages, and they were all coming from one article that I had written for the Content Marketing Institute about five years ago. So, like on one month, you know, I think I even wrote in the post, I got seven. I got so many, I forget how many total inquiries, but, like, seven of them were for Wikipedia, a Wikipedia page. And so right away I thought, okay, I need to find a way that I can go. Go somewhere where I can write articles where I can get inquiries for. From manufacturers, not for people who want Wikipedia pages. So I actually early on was beating my head against the wall, going, well, because I tried pitching myself to trade journals, you know, industrial. You know those trade journals.

Yeah. That your. Your customers read.

Yeah, exactly. But they don't want anything about marketing. They only wanted, you know, process improvements, case studies. They didn't want anything about marketing. So I was sort of at a loss. But that's. That was one of the first key insights was where how could I start getting more inquiries that way to replace these Wikipedia things? And then the second one was most of my. Outside of that CMI article, the rest of my inquiries were coming from search. Now, I don't. I know search is a big thing, but the other thing I tell all my clients is Stop relying on search because it's changing all the time. And you can't just base your entire business on search because it can go away. Google's changing everything. You know, you've got to have your eggs in other baskets. So, and here I was totally reliant on search, so I thought, I've got to change this too. So that's what started this whole process of what can I do to start bringing in more inquiries? And I just started trying different things.

Well, so let's talk about that. A lot was coming from search. You were heavily reliant on that. Then you found a couple of sources that were sending quite a few inquiries your way.

Not till the end. So it took a good, it's taken a good, I would say, nine months to really get this going. It was like, you know, it's like, I don't know if you've done spin class, but it's like getting the flywheel going. It just didn't happen overnight.

Well, so let's talk a little bit about then, what, what you, you were able to do to diversify your marketing because you were so dependent on these things that were frankly not giving you the kinds of leads you wanted anyway. So what have you been able to do from, from that insight? What have you been able to change?

So one of the things I did was I went through all my marketing assets and I jetsened anything that wasn't working. So I like, I, I cut way back on social media and said, I'm only going to focus on one thing and I'm going to, or one platform and I'm going to do it. Really? Really. One that I picked was Twitter because I like it. And plus, my clients aren't on LinkedIn or they are on LinkedIn, but they're business owners and they're not sitting there all day on LinkedIn. So like, my client that I met with this morning, he's on there maybe once every other week. So for me, LinkedIn is not a good place to be. But I was finding a lot of manufacturers on Twitter and I was also finding a lot of manufacturing publications. So I felt that that was a good place where I could start some brand visibility. So I started researching everything about Twitter. I went through all my Twitter, the people that I was following, and I got rid of anyone who wasn't in manufacturing with a few, with a few exceptions, like, you know, you or Steve Sonweider. But mostly it's all manufacturing, manufacturing publications, manufacturing organizations. So I really became hyper focused. Twitter is going to be my Manufacturing marketing platform. And then I started doing all tweets about manufacturing. So I started retweeting other manufacturers. I was reading, you know, I have a feed reader and so I would post stuff from other publications. I was. And then I use this tool called Meet Edgar M E E T Meet Edgar. And it's a social scheduling tool. So instead of having to go in like every few weeks and rebuild your. Your queue, what it does is it's a content library and you put all your content in it and then you set up your schedule and it just continually retweets all your stuff for you. It like a database. So I started making. And then the other thing that I did in conjunction with Twitter was I really hyper focused my blog on manufacturing marketing. So no more personal posts, you know, more fluff crap. It was just this is going to be for. The content is going to be for business owners who are manufacturers. And that went out on Twitter. So I just became really hyper focused and to build up that brand visibility and so that actually my traffic to my website from Twitter went from 2% up to 5%.

Nice.

Yes. Yep, yep. And people started getting to know me and I started getting to know other people on Twitter and my blog got better. And then because I was writing better stuff for the blog, I was getting found better in search.

Perfect. All right, so in terms of online stuff that makes complete sense, you got hyper focused. And as far as offline stuff, I'm curious because I know you told me things that you started reaching out to former clients.

Reconnecting. Yep, just reconnecting, Just calling people. People, you know, how are you? Type of thing.

Did that lead to something?

Yes, it would actually I would just call people, hi, how are you? What I would do is send an email. Hi, you know, I haven't talked to you in a while. How are things? Would you like to schedule a call to talk? And I use calendly, you know the. And so people could schedule their own calls. And actually last month client did that I hadn't talked to in a while and he's going to end up doing work with me in the starting in January.

So just simple reconnecting with people who don't business with you.

Connecting. Yep. And then the other thing that I did which actually terrified me was I sent out prospecting emails. So at first what I was doing was I was taking some of my blog posts and I was having my designer Rachel Cunliffe reformat them to look like trade publication articles because I my first thought was, well, since I can't get in these trade publications. I'll pretend that I've written an article for them and I'll have it formatted like an article and then I'll mail it out. And I created my own list. I just started looking for manufacturers in New England and I, who had really crappy websites, I created my own list and I started mailing out these articles that was a total dud. So I did that for four or five months. Didn't get anything from it. But I mean, you don't know these things until you try, right?

Yeah.

So that I, at first I thought, okay, this is it, this is really going to do it. Then I tried direct mail where I did letters and you know, I can help you with your marketing. That didn't work either. So like, be still beating my head against the table. So then I, what I did was I went through, so I have a very small email list and I went through my E newsletter list and I picked out all of the people, all of the subscribers that had domain names, you know, instead of Gmail or Hotmail or whatever. And then I looked at their websites and then I segregated the lists so I had a two lists. And then I stood just once a month, in addition to my E newsletter, I would started sending out. Sorry, that's my phone. I started sending out an email about how to just about like an any kind of industry update with regard to Google and you know, SEO and that sort of thing and just to update them. And then at the end there was a call to action of if your website's not, you know, responsive, you need to call me. And, and I got a couple of gigs that way.

Nice, nice. So that's in addition to your newsletter?

Yes, and I wouldn't, in the past I wouldn't have done that because it just seems so salesy to me. But so instead of getting a sales email, what they really got was an email that had information about, you know, here's a Google change, like their mobile first index. What does it mean? It means blah, blah, blah. So it was an informative email, but at the end there was a call to action.

Yeah.

And it went specifically to manufacturers, not the entire list.

Yeah, it's instead of saying, hey, want some cheeseburgers? You were basically showing them how to make a cheeseburger and then you cooked it right in front of them. So they're smelling the cheeseburger and then at the end is like, hey, you want a cheeseburger?

Yeah, I mean one on one of them that I sent out the. I swear to you, like 10 minutes after it went out, one of the people on the list called me and said, I have been getting these emails from you. You obviously know what you're talking about. I need to hire. Please send me an invoice and we'll get a check to you.

I'm like, whoa, wow, that's fantastic.

So it was just stuff like that, just lots of trial and error.

So what I'm hearing is, hey, the first insight was you needed to diversify your marketing channels so you recognize that and you started throwing, in a very strategic way, spaghetti at the wall. Yes, a few things didn't work. And a few things worked.

Yes, exactly. And I'm still constantly honing that. So, like, now I've moved into LinkedIn, but I'm still having a hard time with that one. And maybe because I don't know how to use it well, I don't know, but that's how I'm doing it. One thing at a time.

There you go. That's all you can do. So let's talk about the second insight about sales cycles. So what did you uncover there?

Oh, so I thought that it would take take maybe a week to close the sale. Well, actually, it was taking much longer than that. So it could take anywhere from a week to two weeks, or it could take sometimes three months. Or, you know, some of these were six months. I had a couple people who called who would say, you know, our fiscal year, I can't do anything until our new fiscal year, and that's six months out, so I'm going to put you on the list. And so I tried to keep track, you know, I tried to keep in communication with those people, people. And one of them I lost because she ended up going to a new job. So I lost that total gig because they ended up hiring someone else. And then another one, I'm actually meeting with her next week. And that one started, like last March, that first communication. So the sales. I'm. I learned that my sales cycle was very. Could be very long.

And much longer than you thought it was, Right?

Much longer than I thought it was. And some of these, you know, it would take them months. Like, even if I lost the gig, I was still keeping track of when I finally heard back. And so some of them would take three or four months. And then when I finally heard back, it was, you know, oh, well, we ended up hiring someone in house or we decided to do it ourselves or, you know, whatever the reason was.

So what were you able to change or have you been able to change or adjust in order to just deal with that reality?

Well, I changed. What, what that made me do was rethink my entire cash flow process. Because I have been thinking in terms of my cash flow, it was month to month, like, do I have enough money coming in? Ah, you know, can I meet all, can I pay all my bills this month? And I realized that because the sales cycle. Sales cycle was longer, that I needed to start thinking in terms of quarterly, like, how much money do I need to bring in for the quarter? And that way I wasn't so panicky, like, oh my God, I've got to close the sale in order to meet my goal for this month. It's more like, okay, I have a goal for this quarter. And so I have all these things in process, all these sales, so I want to try and get as many close as I can this quarter. But, but instead of, does this make sense to you? So instead of like, oh my God, I only have a week, it sort of made me relax more knowing that I was on track if even if something was taking longer.

Absolutely. So it's like thinking of it as a bigger bucket instead of a cup.

Yes, exactly.

You have more wiggle room, which, I mean, gosh, when the sales cycles are this long, you need that kind of flexibility. I think that makes perfect sense. Sense, yeah, yeah. And make better decisions that way too. So you're not doing stupid things like.

Taking on anything because you have to pay your bills. So. And then what happened there too? So, okay, so now, you know, I'm sort of letting things ride longer. And so that then bumped me back up again to, okay, I need a cash cushion. It needs to be, you know, somewhat substantial so I can ride out, you know, when I get deposits. And also building recurring income. So that's something that I've been focusing on, on all year, creating programs, a program. I have my annual marketing consulting program. And you know, I started off with two clients, getting them to renew and then adding on new clients. And, you know, so I want recurring income and then also project based income. And then, so my goal for 2017 is cash cushion. Build up that cash cushion.

What do you think is, if somebody's trying to do the same, what advice would you give them from a cash cushion perspective? That's always been a big question. Well, how much should I build? How big should it be?

Well, I think for me it starts off in increments. So how much do I need just to have that wiggle room from month to month? So whether it's $1500, $2500, whatever it is you need, depending on your own cash flow, you know, what do you. What's coming in, what goes out. When. When are things coming in? When do things go out? So it. That. That initial amount could be fairly small, you know, sort of like. Think of it like an overdraft, you know, protection kind of thing. But then I personally think having at least one month of income or two, I personally would like two. Just so you can ride some of this stuff out, you know, because it can get scary sometimes.

Sure. Yeah. There's. There's this. I moved into that this year where there's a certain amount I put into a buffer account for those unexpected things. Not so much an emergency account. Right. Because an emergency account is the refrigerator died.

Right.

This is really more for the ebb and flow of cash.

Right.

And things like a. Like life insurance. So my policy for me, it's like.

The client pays late. For me, buffer account means it's covering you for when your client pays late. Right?

Yes.

Or the check doesn't come for whatever reason, because the post office. I don't know about you, but in my. Here in my New Hampshire, for some reason, you mail something to Boston, it goes to Philadelphia. I don't know, because.

Because that makes sense. Yes.

Or, you know, the client pays late, the job gets delayed, whatever it is that makes a glitch in that cash flow. And your mortgage is due on Tuesday, but the check doesn't arrive till Friday. Well, that's scary. At least it is for me. So that's what. For me, that's what that buffer is for.

Well, I think there's both sides. It's the. The incoming side, which you just addressed, and then there's the outgoing side, which is the. I just had a big spike that's not unexpected. Like, you know, maybe a big payment that I got to make out that's not in my monthly budget, but it's got to come out from somewhere. So I think.

Well, that. And for that, I recommend that you break those payments up. So if you have insurance that's due quarterly or annually or whatever, to break the amount up into monthly payments and put it aside. No.

And put it aside into a separate account. Yeah, yeah. That way you have it.

So you have it. And it also helps you then build up this little cash cushion, too.

Makes sense. Makes sense. So, and I get. One thing I'm hearing from you is don't let it overwhelm you. So if you know that eventually you Want two months. Don't get discouraged and say, well, screw it, I'm so far off from meeting that goal, then what's the point? Point? Gosh, even if it could just do.

200 at a time or even 25 at a time?

Yeah, anything.

I mean. Yeah, that's the thing. I think the one thing I've learned reading all these personal finance books, I read all of them practically, is it they're very overwhelming in terms of you have to have six months of income and you see that amount and you think, oh my God, that is so much money. And so it's like someone saying to you, you need to go run a marathon tomorrow. Well, you don't start off that way. When, if you're going to run a marathon and you're not a runner, you start off with, God, can I run around the block? First let me go get my running shoes and then can I run around the block and then can I run a half mile? Then can I run a mile and it takes a little while, you know, here's a good analogy. So I'm a cyclist now and I, I can ride 100 miles. I rode three days the length of New Hampshire. But when I first started out, that was four years ago and my first ride was 20 miles with a meetup group. And I swear to you, I was terrified that I would not be able to make that 20 mile ride.

Yeah. And look at you now.

Right. So what I'm saying is you have to start somewhere and don't worry if it's $5, $20. Start somewhere.

Yes. Just commit to it and do it. It's all about baby steps, consistency in doing it, no matter what. So I want to come back to the cash flow thing, but before, I kind of have a big picture question. And then we'll move on back into that to wrap it up. I love this idea of collecting data. I think building a very simple spreadsheet to track your inquiries. That's the whole point of what we've been talking about here. Because it's not about just, just the exercise of collecting data, it's really the analysis. So if somebody listening is saying, you know what I need to do that I have really no idea if somebody were to ask me where my inquiries coming from. How long has it taken to close a deal? I have no idea. I need to know that. What would you advise them from an analysis standpoint? Because data alone is not useful. It's the analysis and how that can help you that's useful.

Yep. So one of the Things I looked at. Well, so I mentioned that after about three months I realized most of my inquiries were coming from that Content Marketing Institute article. Well, that was because every time someone calls or emails, I always ask, how did you hear about me? And so people would say, oh, well, I found you online. Well, how did you find me? I always ask, how, how did you find me online? Some people don't remember, I was doing all these searches and your name kept popping up. And some people would say, well, I found your article. Or they'd send me an email, hi, I read your article. So I always ask. And just as a side note, I had a guy call me a couple weeks ago who said, oh, I found you through searching. And I said, what, what search phrase did you use? And he said, industrial marketing consultants. And I said, oh, I said, so did you look at the other people? Because I know exactly who shows up under those that search phrase. He said, yeah, I called all of them. He said, but I could tell immediately when I went to your website, I want to use you. So we ended up talking about the other people, the other agencies. So I got lots of good feedback on my own marketing. But anyway, yeah, I know it was really interesting. Anyway, so always ask how they find you because if you don't know that, you don't know what parts of your marketing are working. So how they found you. So that's how I knew that most, you know, the majority of my inquiries are coming from that article, which I needed to change. And then I wanted to know how long it took for my sales cycle so that I kept track myself. So I had to train myself to enter the name on my spreadsheet on as soon as it happened, not the next day or a week later, but as soon as it happened and then go back in. So maybe the sale didn't take place or maybe I didn't find out if I I won or lost it for two or three or four months. But I had to go back in and record that. And then from there then I started like each month, how many inquiries did I get this month? And then after inquiries am I getting on average each month? And that was pretty depressing. Like I need to get this up. And then how many did I win or lose each month and which ones? So what? Why did I win or lose them? So that was a good thing to go through. And then I kept track of the dollar amount, but that I didn't really do anything with. It was mostly how they found me, how long it took to close to get Some kind of confirmation, a go or no go on the sale and the number of days.

I'm curious if you had anybody who they just, just could. They had been on your list for a while, so it wasn't a brand new inquiry, but they've never hired you before. So it's one of those things. Well, gosh, I don't remember how I first found out about you kind of things. Did you. How do you, what do you. How do you deal with somebody like that? How do you tag them?

I just put them in there as I had a couple of those I actually had I put in there on my. This inquiry spreadsheet. I have stuff in there from clients who hired me for new gigs, you know, in addition to what I was already doing.

Okay, gotcha. Yeah, I think that's important. And if I may add something too, this would be for people listening to. Consider doing a separate area of your spreadsheets for outbound marketing. Right. Because there you know what the source is like. Let's say you read about them in the Business Chronicle or you found them in this list of top 100 medical device companies to look for to watch in 2016. I think that can be very valuable because not only because you can figure out where am I getting hits, but also because you could do the same analysis in terms of deal size, how long they're taking to close and so forth.

Yes. And what's also very interesting, so, you know, I do all these websites and Rachel, my designer, so we do them together, so she puts our names at the bottom of them. And I actually got a call a few weeks ago from someone who found me by actually, I'm actually two calls. So I'm actually doing a gig right now because the guy found my name on his. On another website that we had done. And then I got a call a few weeks ago because she saw the website that we had done a different one, and said we love it. Our whole entire team loved it. And so that's how I got that call.

Wow. See, you never know.

I know.

So as we wrap up, I want you to tell us a little bit about your. Your cash flow guide. Because I know we were talking money a little earlier and I think what you've put together is invaluable. And I find that when it comes to cash flow, it's one of those things that many freelancers just don't want to think about or deal with managing their money and their cash flow. For many, it's boring or it's uncomfortable, but it's something. If you want to stay in business and you want to avoid having to go back to cubicle health, you really need to take care of this piece. And so I don't think we can emphasize that enough here, but you've put together an awesome guide that's extremely practical. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

Yep. So I wrote it. I published it in January last year. Cash Flow for Freelancers. And I wrote it because I basically. So when I went through my transition and changed my business from being a copywriter to huff industrial marketing, my income plummeted. And. And I actually, when I hit bottom, and you can actually hear that interview, that whole story on entrepreneurs on fire. And the link is on the cash flow site, cashflowforfreelancers.com yeah, when I hit bottom, I basically was at the point where I'm like, I have to go get a job. I don't know what I'm going to do. I have to go get a job. And I just thought that, oh, my God, I thought, if I have to get a job, I'm going to die. Like, I can't do this. And so I. It was like something inside of me just sort of clicked. And I said, I have got to figure this stuff out and make it so I can survive and thrive and be profitable and live the life I've always wanted to live. And that's. So Cash Flow for Freelancers came about because I just kept realizing that the more books, the more personal finance books I was reading, none of them addressed how to handle your finances if you were a freelancer. Because every time I read something, I kept thinking, well, what about my business? How. How do I handle the cash flow for my business? I've got this whole business side. You're telling me how to handle my finances if I'm employed, but I'm not employed. I'm. I'm my. I'm my employer. I'm the one bringing in all this money, you know, and it was driving me crazy. And so that's how it came about was based on my own. I've got to figure this out. And I really tried hard when I write, when I wrote it, to not make it one of those things that only works for one person. My colleague, Rachel Cunliffe. She went through the whole thing. She did all the exercises, and she lives by it, too. And she put in a lot of input. So it's. It's something that would work for any freelancer, whatever country you're in, if you're married, single, it's just basically how to create your. Create and manage your own cash flow as a freelancer. From a freelancer's perspective.

Well, when your income is variable, too, right?

Yeah. And when you're. Yes. Especially when you're in.

When your income is variable, it's a fantastic resource. And you're right. I mean, look, Rachel is a designer. She lives in New Zealand, right?

Yep, yep. And I went. I visited her in March.

I saw that. That's awesome. That's so. You know, guys, really check it out. We'll link to it on the show notes page. Really one of the best things you could do for yourself. It's not necessarily the most exciting thing to talk about and deal with, but, man, I think the motivation is right there. If you want to avoid getting a day job, you need to take care of this stuff. So, Diana, thank you so much for coming on the show today. I just love this topic and I love your. Your take on this.

Well, thank you very much for having me.

The High Income Business Writing Podcast is a production of B2B business launcher. Learn more at B2B launcher dot com.