#161: How Maggie Patterson Transformed Her Writing Business by Creating Premium Services Built Ar...

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 details show notes for this episode@b2b launcher.com Episode 12 and those notes include a summary of our discussion as well as any links to resources we mention during the show. You know, you can earn a very handsome living as a writer working on what I like to call transactional assignments for clients, clients who value your skills and experience. So transactional, when I talk about that, I mean the kind of situation where a client says, look, I need this done, I need this written. Can you help us? It's a very common scenario and really you could earn a very, very handsome living doing that. You could say you write long form content. You could make a Great Living writing $6,000 white papers for clients that have recurring needs. With just two or three of these repeat clients, you can stay book solid. And as you get to know the client better and their content better, what happens is your internal hourly rate can skyrocket when you keep your fees the same, but then get more efficient at producing the work. And that's a great model for some writers, however, this model can get old and they start wondering if there's a better way to do things. And that's exactly what happened to my guest this week. Her name is Maggie Patterson and she was making great money as a freelance writer. She was continually book solid, but she was starting to burn out and she started looking for ways to to better differentiate herself from other writers and get paid well for the full level of expertise she brought to every client engagement. Like many writers at this level that Maggie was in, she was bringing more to the table than just the writing. She was doing a little bit of consulting and strategy just as a natural extension of that and she wanted to get paid for that value. So she began experimenting with offering more comprehensive services that included what she calls proprietary services, and the idea took hold. Today she runs Scoop Studios, which is a content marketing agency that serves small and mid sized businesses. And in this interview, Maggie explains how she transitioned from the traditional freelance model to an agency model built around proprietary services. And also how she leverages these processes to differentiate herself from the competition while adding way more value to her clients in every engagement. I really think you're going to enjoy this conversation, especially if you're at a transitional point in your business where you've grown to the point of maybe you're starting to burn out a little bit and you're wondering what the next step might be for you. Maggie, great to have you on the show.

I'm really excited to be here. Thanks for having me, Ed.

Well, I am very excited to have you and this is going to be a very interesting and exciting topic. I know it's a discussion I've had with several people privately in the past, and I can't wait to go into this at length with you. But before we dive in, give us a little bit of background. Tell us about your business today. And I know that's evolved and morphed over the years, but what kind of work do you and your company do today and what types of clients do you work with?

So I own a content marketing agency called Scoop Studios. And you know, I started off as a freelancer, but now we've stepped into having a team and really working with a wide variety of clients. But we typically specialize in everything from a micro business to kind of a small corporate client. I grew up in the enterprise software space and I don't really play there anymore. I don't want to have HP's and Microsoft's as clients. I love that small agile business where we can really come in and have content marketing make a huge impact on their bottom line.

Who are you typically working with at these companies? I mean, I'm assuming they have at least one marketing person. Or are you sometimes working with the CEO or president?

It varies widely. Sometimes we're dealing with literally a two or three person company. So we're, we're literally working with all members of the team. And then other times it's working with that marketing team, typically kind of that content marketing manager, that marketing director.

Gotcha. Okay, good. So kind of all over the spectrum and I would think, you know, with the smaller organizations that that's going to be, there's going to be some variety there. I'm curious how you got your business to this point because I don't think you started out as a content marketing agency and, you know, maybe tell us a little bit about your journey to this place.

So we're going to go way back in time, 13 years. We're going to get in the time machine. And you know, I like most freelancers, I started my business with a very basic kind of need in mind, which is I wanted flexibility for me and my family. I had been working in a PR agency. I had worked my way up. I worked grueling hours. I traveled all the time. I loved, loved, loved my job. But I learned in that role that it was a very entrepreneurial company, and I saw how I could run my own business. So I went on my maternity leave, which is a year long in Canada, and I packed up my office, and I knew I wasn't coming back. I was like, there is no better time I've transitioned out the door than for me to try this. And I quickly got my feet under me as a freelancer, and I started doing actually less PR and way more writing. And because that's really at the point where content marketing was becoming a thing. And I was like, oh, thank goodness I can retire from pitching for PR and really focus in on writing things like white papers and press releases and blog posts. And, you know, this was the early days of blogging, so people were like, I need a blog thing. Can you do that for me? And really just jumping in with that beginner's mindset of, sure, I can. I'll give it a shot. And from there, you know, I freelanced very successfully for eight years. And I woke up one day and I was like, oh, my gosh, I can't do this anymore. I don't want to have Ford. He 46 little bosses. And I really kind of shifted. And I think this is very typical, shifting from freelancer to kind of that business owner mindset. Started putting boundaries in place, started pricing myself differently because I hadn't raised my prices in eight years. I'd literally been charging $100 an hour for eight years. And over the last five years since I did that, I kind of pivoted into having a personal brand and then started building out my team and realized, Maggie, you're running an agency here. So the Maggie agency is not a good way to go. And Scoop Studios was born from there. So now I'm not just a solo show. I have backup singers working with me, and that makes my life a lot easier. And I don't have to do 100% of the client management, which makes me really happy.

Well, I know for a lot of listeners, they're going, oh, my gosh, that sounds exactly what I need, because I'm kind of burning out. So it sounds like the first iteration of this was really you.

It was Maggie Pat into having Scoop, and she since exited the business for personal reasons. No juicy story there, everyone. It's happy times. It was a good move for both of us. Everyone's like where's the business partner breakup story?

Well yeah there usually is one so.

Yeah so it really kind of forced the issue of you can't just be a personal brand anymore you're going to create this agency and at the point we did that we hired full time employees. So now I have one full time employee and a series of I would say very steady contractors that we work with so that we're able to create that stability and consistency for clients and clients know exactly who's working on their team and I am still involved. I'm just not necessarily doing 100% of the writing, 100% of the client management. I get to pick and choose how I want to spend my time.

Now I'm curious if somewhere along the way like early days when you were burnt out on the freelance model you were following did you ever look ahead at this kind of more scaled business and say yeah that sounds awesome but I don't want to have people under.