#170: How to Grow Your Business and Command Higher Fees by Packaging What You Offer in a Differen...

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. Just a reminder that you can find detailed show notes for this episode@b2b launcher.com Episode 170 Episode 170 those notes include a summary of our discussion as well as links to resources we mentioned during the show. Now, before we get to this week's episode, I wanted to let you know that I'm putting together a coaching group where I'm going to work with a handful of private six figure clients to help them earn more and less time without the stress and burnout that often come with this level of income. If you're at this income level, you know exactly what I'm talking about. You already know that your challenges are different. In some cases, it's a different flavor of challenges you've always struggled with. In other cases, it's an entirely new set of challenges and you're probably not really sure how to get around them. So if you're a six figure writer and would like to work with me on this, send me an email@edblauncher.com put the word breakthrough in the subject line and I'll get back to you personally. Now, most commercial writers see themselves as just that, a commercial writer or a business writer or a marketing writer. They describe themselves as writers, they pitch themselves as writers, and they offer writing services to clients who need someone to write their marketing materials.

Now, there's nothing wrong with that.

I earned a steady six figure income for years using that model, and the same might be true for you. But that's not the only way to make a great living as a freelance commercial writer, business writer, or copywriter. In today's interview, you're going to hear from Maureen Farmer, and she's the founder of Wardwright Executive Career Management. Maureen is an executive career strategist, and much of what she does for her clients involves writing. In fact, she technically could describe herself to her clients as a writer or copywriter. But what I find really interesting is that she's positioned her business and her services very differently. She blends writing, personal branding, strategy, coaching, and consulting into a very interesting set of offerings for her clients, which happen to be C level executives. And by doing this, her clients see her as much more than just a writer. They see her as a strategic resource and they're willing to pay high fees to have her help them with some of their most pressing challenges. Now, rather than kind of get into this a little bit deeper and tell you more about what she does, I'd rather her do that. I'm going to let her explain it herself. This is an excellent interview. It's full of ideas and I got to tell you, if you're an established freelancer who's looking to take your business up a few notches in the next year or two, I think you'll get.

A ton out of it.

It's not necessarily about copying what she does, but I think you'll make you think about your value a little bit differently.

And if it can do that, I.

Think this will be worth your listening to this fantastic interview. So without further ado, here's my interview with Maureen Farmer. Maureen, welcome to the show.

Great to have you here.

Thank you, Ed. It's great to be here.

I always like to start with a little bit of background. And I know you have a really cool, interesting background. So would you mind just telling us a bit about yourself, the kind of work you do, the kind of clients you work with, and just kind of how you got here. Like, what was the path to get you to where you, where you are right now?

Well, that's a great question. And I kind of wondered that myself sometimes, you know, when I think of how I got to where I am, it certainly was not a straight line. It was very, very, I would call it kind of circuitous. But I grew up in corporate Canada here in Halifax, Canada, and grew up in the kind of the corporate world. Worked in energy services, I worked in financial services and I worked in legal services. So my background is human resources management. I also have a degree in business education. So I worked in professional development for a number of years as well as. So, you know, the firm is, it's incorporated. It's much like yours in terms of, you know, you're incorporated but, you know, you have no employees. And I don't have any employees either. I've outsourced, you know, all of that work to subcontractors and have a really great team that I work with. And so over the last seven years or so, I've scaled my business by, you know, sort of outsourcing the core functions or, sorry, the non core functions rather, so I can focus on my client work. So, so essentially I get my clients market ready in the corporate world for a promotion or board of Director position or outside job for business owners to help them find investors sometimes as well, if they're looking for money to start a business. And I do this primarily through writing and coaching and consulting with them. Today, I guess we call it executive branding, I guess would be the word for it. Helping clients find their authentic voice so that they can move up in the corporate world or as I said, find investors, that type of thing. So basically, companies hire me to get their C levels ready for something big, and private clients hire me directly. So companies will hire me if they want their C levels to be. They're grooming them for a promotion. So for example, in a succession planning situation, a COO will be positioned for a CEO position or it could be a CEO who is being positioned for a board of directors opportunity in another industry. So it really depends on, you know, what the client needs. And I also offer a really popular service that came up. Well, it evolved over time, but it's become a very, very popular service to my clients, both private and corporate. And they, they just absolutely love the process. So.

And well, I know we're going to get into a little bit more about that and what that is.

Right?

So we can.

Yeah, absolutely.

But before we get there, just to make a clear distinction, when you talk about private versus corporate, can you explain what that difference is?

Sure, that's a great question. A private client is an individual who hires me out of his or her private budget, out of their own pocket to work with me. And typically, you know, it's because they need, they need a strategy. They may be getting ready for an exit from their company. Maybe they're unhappy in their job or they know that change is coming. Maybe there's a merger or an acquisition or such thing as that, and they want to be ready, they want to be market ready for when an opportunity comes up for them. When the company decides which CEO is going to stay with the company, that type of thing. The corporate client will hire me on behalf of their C level to do the very, very similar things, get them ready for a board position. It could be executive career coaching, sometimes executive leadership coaching. Because as you well know, Ed, being the CEO or the owner of a company, it's kind of a lonely spot. And you know, executives, they might only not, they might not have anyone to confide in. So, you know, say if they report to a board of directors or, and an owner, they really have no peer in the company. So they have their own direct reports, their own team, and then the board of directors, but they have no one to confide in and no one to strategize with. So they'll bring me in to work with them and help them make decisions, help them with strategy, that type of thing. So that's on the corporate side.

Gotcha. And you don't have to answer this question if you don't feel comfortable with that. But what roughly what mix of clients do you have? Corporate versus private hiring?

You?

Yeah, no, I don't mind answering that at all. I would say about 30% of my business right now is corporate and 70% is private.

Interesting.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, it is interesting. And it's interesting because a lot of the private clients that I talk to and the prospective clients that I talk to will say, you know, my company would pay for this, but I think I'm going to do this on my own. I want this to be confidential. And so they decide to pay for it on their own.

Well, this is such a cool business that you've created here. And I know that you've already mentioned you provide kind of a unique mix of services to your clients. And there's some writing involved, there's some career coaching, there's some HR type stuff. So let's talk a little bit more about that. Maybe you can kind of expand on what that looks like. Maybe some different flavors so folks can kind of get an understanding of what it is you do for them.

That's a great question. It's taken a number of years to develop a product line. I mean, I have three main packages that I offer clients.

But I love that you're doing packages, by the way, because. Because I'd love to ask you about that as well. You know, packages as opposed to hourly or fixed fee. So maybe you can get into that as well.

Of course, I find that hourly stresses everyone out. It makes it really difficult for. Because clients can't imagine how long is something going to take. What will it cost? With a project with a package pricing, it's a set fee and it includes everything. And if the client decides at the end of the package they want to continue on retain, on retainer basis, we'll do an hourly situation then. But the packaging is really like. So for example, I do psychometric testing, so things like disc profiles, Myers Briggs and things like that. But I don't include that in my marketing. They have no idea that they're getting that tool until they hire me. So they've hired me to do an executive portfolio for a board of directors position. So in order for me to get to know that client really well, I Do a very deep dive with them and I'll do a disc profile and we will use that disc profile to create some of the content for their portfolio. And they also use it as well for networking meetings, they use it for job interviews, they use it for media interviews, things like that. So they get to know themselves throughout the process too, which is a really cool thing. So the three different packages I offer are the, the executive resume success is pretty self explanatory. You know, somebody has tapped them on the shoulder for an opportunity and they need a CV or you know, they might need a CV for a board of directors opportunity or whatever it might be. It's pretty, pretty self explanatory. The professions package is a full suite of services that includes, you know, a bio LinkedIn portfolio or LinkedIn profile rather. It includes a CV, it includes a networking letter and a strategy that goes with that. It also includes a job search strategy that I have designed and that's using the hidden job market, which is what I promote with my clients. So you know, 90% of jobs are never advertised. So that's where we spend 90% of our time kind of mining that kind of that market. And then the career navigator program is really a soup to nuts type of program that includes, you know, about a full year program that really helps people change industries or it might help them change careers or really help them navigate their career. And I have a few other packages as well that I don't really advertise on the website, but if something comes up that people need. So for example, I have an executive interview success package as well that you know, if somebody is getting ready for an important meeting or an interview, they can hire me for a half a dozen coaching sessions and I'll help them through that and any, everything from getting ready for the, the interview using the disc profile and other things right up to, you know, salary negotiations and things like that. So I love the packaging. I remember I was at a conference one time in Orlando in the early days, it was likely back in 2011 and I hadn't, I was just neophyte, you know, I had no idea what I was doing. And one of the people that was sitting at my table at the conference, it was a resume writers conference, talked about pack and I think I must have written like 10 pages of notes at that table when I heard her speak. And it just made so much sense to me. So I immediately came back and created packages. And of course the packages have evolved over time, but I still have the three that I use to market So I hope I answered your question.

Oh, absolutely. One of the many things I love about what you said is that by really offering packages, you get away from offering features and instead focusing, you're offering results, not necessarily the end result. Although of course that's implied, but meaning like, hey, I'm going to deliver this to you. How I get there doesn't really matter. I'm going to use all kinds of.

Tools, but I'm selling the tools.

I'm selling what I'm going to give you what I'm going to deliver. And of course, what you're going to deliver is going to create this result. And sometimes it makes sense to even go that far. But I love that you're doing that because you're also, especially at the level that you are working in, that's what's going to resonate with them. These people aren't interested in the nuts and bolts. They don't want to get down in the weeds, right?

Oh, absolutely.

They want the result. They want. Yeah. That package. This is what I think would work best for me. So in terms of. Let's talk a little bit more about packages because we talked a little bit earlier about hourly and all that. You said that stresses everybody. Did you start out that way or did you go straight into this with packages since you kind of learned about this pricing approach and this positioning approach kind of early on in your business?

Oh, wow, that's a good question. I can barely remember. I think I've done packaging from the very beginning. And so I started the business. Started as a resume writing business, so. A writing business. And although, you know, I never. So you talk about freelancing and copywriting, and I never identified with those terms. And I remember when I heard your very first. Heard you the first time. Heard your podcast last summer when I was traveling, and I thought, wow, I'm a copywriter and I'm a freelancer. But I never really positioned myself that way. I refer to myself as an executive career strategist. And. And within that, the majority of that is writing. But as you know, writing is all strategy. So I think I got lost in the answer that I just gave.

What was the question in terms of. Yeah, how you got started? Was it packages at the very beginning or. But you said you started as a. I didn't know that. So this started as a resume business.

Yeah.

And how long did that last, that iteration?

About a year and a half. And I remember my husband saying, you're going to charge to do what? And starting this business. And he just could not see any application in the marketplace whatsoever for this business. And I knew that there would be a. I knew that there was a business model out there, very successful ones from the people I had been tracking in my market research. But I started as a resume writer. I got the credentials which really helped to differentiate me like in the marketplace, which was great. I mean who ever heard of a Certified resume writer 10 years ago ago? I mean I never had. But then I got their credentials and I've got a few of them now. But then people started asking for coaching and can you help me with a strategy? And I started. I always coached anyway, like working in professional development and human resources. People would come to, to me with their stories, with their confidential questions and, and that's where I got a real taste for the coaching model. So I guess I would consider myself a consultative coach. But I wanted to start the business as a simple business. I didn't want to get into really complicated products and services and things like that. So I started really small as resume writer and then just things grew from there. And so probably about 18 months into the business I changed it from, I think it was word right resumes to word right career. I wanted to kind of broaden that, you know, the scope of the offering and yeah, so that's, that's it.

That's really smart. I know that you had mentioned at one point in one of our conversations that you were looking to move to one to many also because you've been doing a lot of one on one.

Right.

But tell me about the one to many ideas that something you started to pursue. What does that look like?

Well, that's a great question. Well, one to many. One to one. So I am, I would consider myself pretty introverted. I do, I do teach, I teach some workshops and things like that. But they really take a lot of energy for me. From me, I guess I should say so I do do them, but I don't advertise that service at all. It's just sort of like referral. I have an engineering has hired me to do a job search strategy for their master's students. They're masters of internetworking, so they're technology, I guess, professionals. But what I've learned is that I love the one on one. But I'm sure it's the same with you. You know, get a lot of people wanting to work with you and you might not have the capacity to do the one. So I'm looking at information products now as a service offering so that I can help people beyond Just this, you know, private client experience. So things like resources, creating scripts for people, creating, you know, content that they can use in their. In their own. So things like networking letters and things like that. So I've been doing a lot of research on sales letters, and it's really similar to a letter I create for my clients and a strategy for getting in the door of organizations. So can I tell you a little bit about that?

Yeah, absolutely.

So one of the components of the hidden job market is really leveraging centers of influence and not just sort of the people, you know, but also people in the business community. So I was working with a client and I'm still working with him. And we. He had a very defined idea about where he wanted to go and what he wanted to do. He wanted to work as a CEO of a health care of a healthcare company, one of many here in the Toronto area. Excuse me. And so we put together a. I created a letter for him. It was a very short networking letter with a very direct call to action. At the end, we sent out seven of them and he got two responses. He got to speak face to face with the chairman of the board of these two different organizations, these huge, huge organizations. And I have to have to say, it was quite amazing. And there's a very specific strategy around that.

Something you had learned, something that you knew this is going to work, you had some idea, because there's no way you would have experimented five different approaches until you.

No, exactly, exactly. No, this is not my unique approach, but it worked. And just using a very short kind of letter that gets.