#148: How Ana Lands Clients and New Opportunities with Her Own Lead Magnet

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. Welcome to the High Income Business Writing Podcast. I am your host, Ed Gandia, and this is the podcast for business writers and copywriters who want to earn more and less time doing work they love for better clients. You can find detailed show notes for this episode@b2b launcher.com Episode 1, 4, 8 and those notes include a summary of our discussion as well as links to resources mentioned during the show. I've been a big proponent of using a lead magnet in your writing business as part of a comprehensive marketing strategy. It's not a panacea, it's not a cure all. It's not going to replace your prospecting efforts, at least not overnight. But it can help you generate a steady stream of quality leads. And that's reason enough to consider creating a lead magnet for your business. In this episode, you're going to hear from Anna Gascon Ivy, a copywriter and copy editor who wrote and published her own lead magnet just a few months ago. And she's going to explain how this lead magnet has helped her land clients and now how it's helped her elevate her authority and open all kinds of new doors for her. By the way, this idea sounds interesting to you, and if you already have paying clients, my team and I are now offering a new service where we write and publish your lead magnet for you. And not just a lead magnet, but the entire support system behind it. So it includes a powerful customized lead magnet, also known as a buzz piece, the delivery and follow up emails, the landing pages, the technology that automates most of this, the training on how to execute this powerful strategy. To learn more, send an email to edwauncher.com put the word leads in the subject line, and one of us will reply with all the details. So without further ado, let's get to our interview with Anna Gascon. Ivy. Anna, welcome to the show. It's great to be talking with you today.

Yeah, it's great to talk to you too.

Before we get to the main part of our conversation, I definitely want to start with some background because you have an interesting story to tell here in terms of how you got started, where you are right now in your freelance journey. So let's start with maybe what you do today as a freelancer, and then we can kind of take a step back and you can explain how you got to this point.

Sure, that sounds great. Well, today I am a full time free freelance copywriter and copy editor. I write a lot of website content, blog posts, I edit material like email campaigns, social media posts, that sort of thing. And that's what I do all day, every day, for a variety of clients.

Is there a common thread among your clients in terms of industry or topics?

Right. For the most part, it's in the healthcare industry. And the reason behind that is I worked for a book, excuse me, a book publisher for almost four years, doing primarily health research and health writing. So when I. Not to. Not to start in on this too quickly, but when I started my freelance journey, I decided to leverage that experience and ended up working for a lot of health marketing agencies, some work for some hospitals, clinics, that sort of thing.

Yeah. Makes perfect sense, right? Leverage what you know.

Exactly.

So that's a good segue into the next question. Tell me, because you've recently gone out on your own. Tell us how that happened, why you made that decision, and maybe a little bit about kind of your early days and how you landed some of these initial clients.

Sure, sure. So I became a freelancer full time in August of last year. August of 2017. Right. And the months leading up to that were first filled with disappointment. I had been at that book publisher for, like I said, almost four years. And I was feeling stuck, bored really, of the work that I was doing for the book side on the editorial team. Now, just let me back up and say that I love my editorial team, but I was just at a place in my career that I was no longer happy doing what we were doing, and I needed a change. So our company has a copywriting team and a position in copywriting opened up. So I decided to throw my name in the hat because I thought, well, that would be different, but it would at least keep me here. But it would be different enough from what I'm doing now that it might be more fun, more challenging. So, like I said, I threw my name in the hat, took a writing test, and was told that based on my writing test, they would not pursue me. So that was a really difficult rejection to accept from a company that I had been with already and knew the ropes and knew the people. And I got to tell you, Ed, I was really depressed for a day. I took a day off. I went to see Dr. Strange at the Dollar Theater with a friend because I was so down.

That's good therapy.

Yes. I just. I mean, I didn't even want to get out of bed. I was just so down. I really thought this was it. This was going to be my next career move, and it was going to be awesome. And then I was told no. And not just no, but no based on my writing test, no.

Did they elaborate on why, or was it just a mystery and they wanted to keep it that way?

I never asked, I never pursued, and they did not elaborate. It didn't matter to me. I was able to pick myself up soon after, and around that time, a book club that I started In January of 2017, we had decided to read a book called you are a badass by Jen Sincero. And that book really helped me change my frame of mind. It helped me realize that, wait a second. Just because they said that your writing test wasn't good enough essentially doesn't mean that you're not a good writer. And just because they said no doesn't mean that there's not a door that you can open somewhere else. So I started looking for copywriting work and realized that in order for me to get a good copywriting gig, I was going to have to drive to Atlanta. And I'm a good 45 minutes south of Atlanta, and I did not want to commute. So ideas were spinning through my head during this time. As I was trying to figure out what my next move was, since they weren't going to open that door, I came across this wonderful podcast by a guy named Ed Gandia.

I think I know him.

Yeah, I think you do. And it really encouraged me to, you know what? There's a lot of copywriting work out there in the freelance world. Maybe you should explore that. I started reading a book called the wealthy freelancer, Started reading the book called book yourself. Solid. And those books and the messages in them empowered me to make the move to become a freelancer.

Up until that point, you had not. This wasn't really something you had considered. You were looking for traditional employment.

I sure was. But the thought of commuting to Atlanta was just. No.

The two words, commuting in Atlanta, that spells disaster for those of you who don't live in this area. So just FYI, one more reason. It wasn't just the time. It's the nightmare commute here.

Right? Exactly. So I just thought, that's not an option for me. And really, the badass book kind of helped me to meditate for a minute and decide, okay, what is it that you really want to do, Ana? And I thought, in the perfect world, I would work from home. All right, then. Work from home. So that's what I did.

Wow.

And I have this wonderful, beautiful group of Women in my life, we call ourselves the Divas. We all experienced a great hardship together and have come out of it well healed. And the Divas thought I was crazy and they were cheering me on at the same time. So I just said, I'm doing it, girls. I'm stepping out on faith that this is going to work. And it has. It has.

That's fantastic. And by the way, the Divas, are they local or is this a virtual group?

No, they're local. They're a local group of friends.

Gotcha. It makes a big difference, doesn't it, just to be there, present?

Absolutely. Absolutely.

So you get this idea of the badass is the spark, and it gets you thinking in a different direction, and then you start exploring different possibilities. Come across my podcast, Read the Was a Freelancer and some other books, and it starts becoming a real possibility for you. Now, somewhere along the way, you're still thinking, okay, this sounds great on paper. Where do I start? How do I get clients? Gulp. So how did you make that transition? That's probably the hardest thing for most people to make, is going even when they have experiences, is making that leap. Because it's a completely different model from traditional employment. You now have to find the work yourself. It's not given to you.

Right, right. Well, I did a lot of reading and a lot of research, but honestly, I think that you just have to have an incredible amount of faith and an incredible amount of confidence that it's all going to work out in the end. But as far as, like, the practical, I think this would be a good time for me to tell you about the ebook that I wrote.

Yes, please do.

Yeah. Because that really made a huge difference. So as I was reading through the Wealthy Freelancer and through Book Yourself Solid, I noticed a theme in both books that made sense to me, and that was I needed to create a product that would set me up as an expert in my field. So I thought about it for a while and a while. You know, all this happened relatively quickly, but it sounds like it took forever, but it happened really fast. That was when I decided that the best thing for me to do was leverage my background in health research and health writing and put together a product that would set me up as an expert health researcher and writer and editor. So. So that's what I decided to do with my product. I decided to make it an ebook because I'm a writer. So it was a writing sample as far as I was concerned. On top of being a marketing tool.

How long was it just because ebook A lot of different people think of ebook differently.

Well, this one is, you know, I created it in an eight and a half by 11 format, you know, for each page. So it's only 17 pages, but that includes a bio page at the end and the COVID and, you know, a little intro page. So the writing itself is probably just 13 or 14 pages total. And it's double spaced, you know, it's not. I mean, sometimes I look at this ebook and I think, what was I thinking that this was going to get me work? But it really has opened doors.

Yeah, we definitely want to dive into that. We're talking maybe 3,000 words or so. So it's a small ebook. It's not this thick, 50,000 word manuscript.

Not at all. And honestly, when I first started out, oh, I was going to make it 21 tips. You know, I had all these big aspirations and I thought, girl, you're crazy. Just make it simple. Just make it 10 tips and be done with it. So that's what I did. I created a book called how to Hook youk Health Readers or How To. I don't even know what it's called. Let me. How to Hook Health Readers. Thank you. And it's something that's really important about a marketing product that you create for yourself is you have to make sure that it speaks to the audience that you want hiring you. And that was something that you even had a good example in your book, the Wealthy Freelancer. Because at first I was going to make it tips, you know, healthy, healthy eating tips, healthy eating habit types of tips. And I thought, that's for consumers. Consumers are not going to hire me. I need to write a book. I need the angle to be geared towards publishers and editors, people, marketing agencies, people that will hire me as an expert in this field. So I had to switch gears when I first started writing and get the consumer mindset out of my head because that's what I was used to writing was for consumers. So I wrote tips that would help editors and publishers in the health field. And the tips were based on things that I had learned as a health researcher and writer, either hands on at the company that I was with or just from researching and watching some YouTube videos on how to speak what's called in the health government field, plain language. That's what, you know, that was what I was going for was, hey, how can we leverage plain language in our writing of website content and of blog posts and any kind of writing that a consumer is going to read? How do we do that? So that's how I came up with my tips.

Well, you know, I love a couple of things about what you just shared. One is the fact that you maybe didn't feel like you had every single answer. It didn't 100% come out of your head. And whatever you didn't have or you wanted to supplement, you just went out and researched it, right? To fill some gaps or maybe add some color or some examples or what have you. And I think that's a very strong point because as writers, many of us tend to be perfectionist and we feel like, well, if I don't have it all in my head, then I'm not qualified to write it. And that is, that is such a self limiting belief. I cannot tell you. I hear it every day. So I love the fact, right? I got knowledge, I got information, I got insights. Whatever I'm missing, I'll just find and fill those gaps. And the fact that you recognize early on. Wait a minute. Let's begin with the end in mind. Ultimately, what I want is to target this audience. What do they care about? What will they be interested in? And how does that intersect with what I do and the services I offer? And that's a, that's a very important point that many people miss is they get one of the two, right? What are my services, what do I offer or what do they care about? But you got to have the intersection of both for it to work.

Right. And the intersection of both is what has opened so many doors for me through this ebook. I've even shared it with freelancers that are struggling, other copywriters or writers, and they're not doing it and they're still living off of their savings. And I just tell them, well, have you written your marketing tool yet? Oh, no, I just haven't had time. Okay.

Well, yeah, that's a whole different set of challenges, right? It's prioritizing and treating like a client project because you are one of your top clients, if not your top client.

That's right.

So let's, since you've mentioned it, let's go there. I want to hear more about what it has done for you in just a few months that you've been out on your own.

Well, I'm going to be honest and tell you that the first month was slow and I was sending my ebook out. I was tracking down email addresses for people contacting different organizations like health organizations like the American Heart association and the Diabetes association and the arthritis. You know, I was just. And magazines and I was getting very, very little response.

So what were you doing, let's say American Heart Association? You were looking for a marketing director there and getting his or her contact info and sending a warm email with a link to the book?

Absolutely, that's exactly what I was doing. I did get responses here and there from people saying, we do hire freelancers, but I'm not the person that does that. I'm going to forward your information to the person that does that. And I would respond, thanking them and saying, is there any way you can share their name and contact information with me so that I don't bug you, I can follow up with them. And most of them said, sure. And then I would contact them a week or two later saying so and so told me that they forwarded you my ebook and my email. And I was just wondering if you ever have a need for a freelancer. And they wouldn't respond. The people who actually hired the freelancers wouldn't respond. And so I would try a few more times and then I'd give up and move on. And it was hard because I was like, okay, I mean, I've heard and read some of your things about warm meat emails and lead generation and all that. And when you're trying to figure out if you should just buy ramen noodles that week for dinner, it's just hard. It was hard. That first month was very slow.

And by the way, you had quit your day job already or were you trying to do this on the side?

I started a few weeks before I left on the side. I'll tell you what was. It's okay for me to mention companies, right?

Yeah, absolutely.

Okay. So I'll tell you what was really helping me out at the time is through a flukish little posting on LinkedIn, I got hired as a contractor with WebMD and I started copy editing for them.

This is as soon as you left, quit your day job.

This was right before I left. For me, getting that one client was the beginning of the end of my other job. Because I thought, okay, here we go. I just landed this. I totally did not expect for this to happen and here it is happening. WebMD has been a great client for me. I do a lot of work for them every week. But it wasn't enough. When I started out, it was enough for me to leave my full time job. But I knew I was going to need to land some more clients.

But at least you had that foundation, which is nice.

Oh yes, thank God, yes.

So you see, you have that a few weeks before you left and I'm just Curious. I don't want to digress too much, but I'm curious. You said it was kind of a freakish thing on LinkedIn. Can you tell us more about that?

Yeah. So you know, LinkedIn is all over the world and anyway, I was just reading and at the time, let me just back up, at the time I might have had like 40 contacts on LinkedIn and that was it. Because LinkedIn was not a big priority for me through social media. It has become since I became a freelancer, but not then. So I knew that growing my LinkedIn social media channel was going to be important as a freelancer. So I started looking through LinkedIn more and more, just trying to understand it. And one day there was a posting on there saying, I'm looking for some writers and copy editors. If you're interested, email me. So I emailed the person that posted that, thinking that I would never hear from him because it's LinkedIn and probably thousands of people had responded to his message. But no, he emailed me a few days later. We had a phone interview a few days after that and I was hired.

And this was somebody at WebMD, at.

WebMD that didn't know me from Adam and I didn't know him, but the stars just aligned and it was meant to be because he hired me. And right before I left my full time job, I started working for WebMD. So it was just perfect.

That's fantastic. It goes to show so much of this is timing, folks. I mean, you just never know. Of course you can't depend on that as your sole source of success, but timing is a big part of this. So wow, what a great way then to transition because now you have something going. It's not enough, but at least you know, in terms of your confidence too, right? It's showing you that this is viable, right?

Exactly. I knew that there were other outlets out there for me to make some income and it was just a matter of tapping into the right ones. So once I left and I had that first month or two where things were kind of slow, I was doing little projects here and there, but not, you know, not anything that was truly worthwhile except for the WebMD work. But I kept at it, I kept peddling my, my little ebook and all of a sudden the work just starts pouring in. I was contacted by health marketing agency, they wanted to hire me to do some work. So I've started, I started doing work for them.

And how did that. Is that because you had, they contacted you because you had reached out to them?

I had reached out to them. I had, like, one day I Google searched health marketing agencies and got some, you know, got some hits through Google, wrote down, like, the top 10 or 12 that I came across, emailed all of them with my ebook, and one of them contacted me and said, we'd like to do a test with you. And I said, okay. And they paid. It was a paid test, which was really nice.

Wow.

So I did this writing test for them. I got paid for it. They said, we love the way you write. We want to hire you to do some more work for us. So I started working on a big website overhaul for them as a writer, then another marketing agency that. How did I find them? I think I learned about them through a marketing group that I'm a member of on Facebook. I threw my name in the hat on something that they posted, and they reached out to me and hired me to do some work for them. Then a magazine contacted me because I've done some magazine writing.

And how did they find out about you?

It was also through a. I want to say it was. So you're in the Atlanta area like I am. I'm a member of a marketing group on Facebook that's for women only. It's called the Marketing and Communications Women of Atlanta, and it has like over 5,000 members.

Oh, wow. Big group.

It's a huge group. But this group, they post job openings all the time, and some of them are for freelancers. So I posted on there one day saying, does anybody out there have a need for a health writer or health editor? And somebody reached out to me and said, hey, I work with a lot of health clients. As a freelance marketer, I can throw your name around and see if somebody bites. And this magazine that's affiliated with a hospital chain contacted me through her. So it's a lot of networking. You have to do a lot of networking when you're freelancer. But that opened those doors. Probably the biggest door that has opened for me is through a company called Writer Girl. And Writer Girl does exactly what I have marketed myself to do, and that is write in easy to read, plain language for health consumers. So I had heard about Writer Girl actually through someone on LinkedIn and filled out their online application, sent them some writing samples.

You sent them the book?

I absolutely sent them the book.

And by the way, that's something you've been doing with a lot of these prospects and clients you've been mentioning. Right. Even if they didn't learn about you because of the book, even if it was through Online networking. It seems like the book was kind of part of your process.

Absolutely. I sent them the book as again as a marketing tool to show them that I am an expert in this field and also as a writing sample to see how I write. So with Writer Girl, I sent them the book and actually that really got their attention because they reached back and said, this is exactly who we're looking for to join our team. So they have brought me on as one of their writers and I'm working on a big website overhaul for them right now. The neat thing was that Writer Girl has like a sister organization now called Wonder Writer. And Wonder Writer recently reached out to me and said, we'd like to use your book and the tips in your book as a training resource. Yeah. So that was really exciting. And I've not. We haven't formalized anything but that in and of itself. The fact that they even are considering it just blew me away. I was so thankful that somebody saw some merit in the tips that I had written and came to me and said, we'd like to use these tips to train other writers.

I love that. What I'm seeing is that. And this is brilliant, Ana, because you may have written the book with lead generation in mind. You were just trying to drum up business. But it's had two other facets that have really helped you. One is the fact it enables you to position yourself as an expert Right. In this industry, health writing. And the other is it's a great follow up tool. Whether you're already engaged with a prospect or it's someone whose timing wasn't right, it's yet another asset you can use as part of your follow up process. So it has so many purposes, so many benefits, that man. I mean, this obviously paid for itself, the first client you landed, but you continue to extract value out of it.

Absolutely. Absolutely. And I would encourage any freelancer out there, no matter what field they're in, do something like this for yourself. It will open doors.

Yes. Some kind of document that shows your expertise, that's relevant to your prospects, adds value and intersects with the services you provide.

Absolutely.

So how are you using the book now? Have you changed the way you're using it or are you still kind of using it for the same in the same ways we've talked about?

To be honest, I haven't used it much lately because I don't have time.

You got a different problem now. Your book's.

Yeah, I have a different problem now. And that is I have, you know, I had asked this sweet Couple that I'm very close to a few months ago said, could you. Could you guys please just pray that I get more clients because I need more clients. And the last time I saw them, I said, okay, you can stop praying now.

Listen, I want to modify the prayer. And that is, can you help me be patient and be able to do all the work that I have? Yes, at a good level of quality. I love that. So I'm curious, where are you looking to take your business over the next year or two? Do you have any specific plans, or are you just kind of going with a flow? Do you have a better. Now that you're in it, do you have a better idea of where you'd like to take it?

Yes, I do. For me, I would say phase one of my business was to just get enough clients to pay my bills. And I'd say that I am smack in the middle of phase one, and it's going well. And now I'm looking at 2018. Start exploring phase two. And I'm not 100% sure what phase two is. I know that where I want to be down the road is creating products that will bring in passive income, but I'm not sure how to make that happen yet because I don't know if it's. I do love the idea of coaching. Doing some coaching and teaching. That's part of my personality. It's part of who I am. So I homeschooled my son for many years. I just enjoy. And I've taught writing classes. I've taught. I'm bilingual, so I've taught Spanish classes in the past. And I really enjoy kind of a mentoring, coaching role. So I may go in that direction down the road, but I'm not sure yet. I kind of also want it to happen organically. I don't want to force it. But I do know that my next phase is thinking about and then implementing ways to earn passive income.

One of the things I love about doing this kind of work is that it opens up all kinds of possibilities. Right? It's a gateway to all kinds of different things. Some people choose to continue to do this for years and years and years, and that's absolutely great. But many of us kind of start exploring, it's okay, what else can I do? I find that it's rare for people to ask themselves that question, do they remain traditionally employed for a long time? But once you're out on your own now, you see that you can actually do this. So suddenly a different world of possibilities opens up.

Right.

And I Love that. Because to me, that's where all the fun is. Nothing is out of the question. Everything is within the realm of possibilities. It's just really, do I want to do that? Is it for me and so forth.

Exactly. Exactly. And I. For me, it's, you know, to borrow an old cliche, the sky's the limit. I'm ready and willing to do whatever happens next. You know, I had explored the idea of becoming a small boutique marketing agency, but that's not who I am. I'm not. I don't want to run numbers. I don't want to run analytical spreadsheets. That's not me. So I'm like, well, who are you, Ana, aside from being a writer and an editor? And I thought, I'm a teacher, I'm a mentor, I'm a coach. So I think that's probably the direction I'll take. But thankfully, now that I've got enough clients and enough money coming in, I've got time to kind of sit on it and meditate on it until I figure it out.

That's fantastic. Well, this has been extremely inspirational. I love your story, love what you're doing and how you just used the faith that you had to just keep pushing yourself enough until you got results, which, of course, motivated you even more. I don't want to leave without you telling us where listeners can learn more about you and your work.

Yeah. I've got a website. It's www.anas contentstudio.com and we'll make sure.

To link to that in the show notes. Beautiful website, by the way.

Thank you. I designed it myself.

Wow, I'm impressed.

Thank you.

That looks really, really good. I mean, I'm not saying that, you know, I didn't think you could design something great, but, you know, we writer types aren't usually the best when it comes to designing a website, so it's. Yeah. Great job. Well, Anna, thank you so much for sharing your story with us and these tips and insights. I really do appreciate it, and I know our listeners do as well.

Well, thank you for having me, Ed.

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