#188:Ross Simmonds on How to Land Fortune 500 Clients

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 18 8. Those notes always include a summary of our discussion as well as links to resource we mentioned during the show. There are lots of advantages to working with large corporate clients. For one, these bigger clients tend to have a ton of writing copywriting needs, which means that just two or three of the right clients can keep you book solid for months or years. This has been my experience. I built my entire writing and copywriting business by working with mid sized clients that were on the larger scale to very large clients. And I found that not only are they going to keep you busy, but they tend to have bigger marketing budgets and they tend to pay their writers very well. So having even just one or two Fortune 500 clients under your belt can boost your confidence and, and can give you serious street credibility, which of course then makes it easier to land progressively better clients. That's really just an amazing positive feedback loop that can boost your business very, very quickly. My guest today is Ross Simmons. He's a brilliant writer and marketer who's worked with many Fortune 500 companies. And in this conversation we get into a few different things, all of them extremely valuable. Ross talks about how he worked his way from barely making it, more specifically living in his parents basement to landing top shelf clients and becoming extremely successful in his field. He talks about how to generate a steady stream of high quality corporate leads. What these clients look for in a writer, that stuff right there is invaluable. You're going to really love what he shares there and how you can rise above the wave of commoditization and start commanding progressively higher fees with bigger name clients. Look, regardless of where you are in your freelance journey, if you're just starting out, you're somewhere in the middle. You've been at this for a long, long time. You're going to get a lot out of this interview. But before we get to it, I just have one quick comment. So our connection when Ross and I were talking was a little bumpy. You'll see there are a lot of instances where there's a brief pause, some of the words got cut off. Slightly. It's not horrible. But look, the content is solid. So just bear with us. Again, I think you're going to get a ton out of this. Enjoy. Hey, Ross. Welcome. It's great to have you here.

Thanks for having me. I'm excited to dive in and chat with you today, man.

So am I. This is great stuff. I would like to start by asking you a little bit about yourself. You've got a great background, you've done quite a few things you're doing and involved in many different things. But can you give us a little bit about your story, how you got here, what you do, what kind of work, what kind of clients you work with, and so forth?

Definitely. So I think I'll take you back to my early days when I first fell in love with this idea of creating content online. It would have been while I was in university, so I was a university student. I was writing in school, like you have to do. I was taking a marketing degree and I was doing a handful of electives, and I had to do the typical writing projects about Shakespeare, et cetera. And it just wasn't really of interest to me. So I wanted to write something about stuff that actually interests me and that I was passionate about. So I started to write about fantasy sports, and I started to get picked up and featured by a handful of sports blogs all over the world. And it really started to trigger for me this idea that, okay, it doesn't matter where I live. I can connect with people on a global scale and if I'm creating content online. I continued to write about fantasy sports for a couple years. I ended up actually monetizing my blog at the time and being able to pay for a couple years of my tuition. With that, the mark started to go down and my mom pushed me to shift my focus on fantasy sports to writing about marketing. And I just used that as a way to get better at writing and creating content online. From there, I went into the agency world, where I worked as a digital strategist and continued to write on the side for clients and on freelance projects. Whether it was blog posts or creating copy for websites, I was doing a lot of content creation on the side as well. I always had this itch to get back into entrepreneurship like I did when I was in university running that fantasy football blog. So I started to take on clients on the side, and eventually I was able to get myself to a point where I was doing about 35k in revenue on the side. And I was like, okay, this is enough that I can live off of I've done the ramen noodle diet before. If I drop down to 27.5, I'm pretty much okay, I can do this again and I can rack up some credit card debt at the time if I needed to. So I took the leap. I jumped out full time. I think I was 22 at the time. And I went full time into content creation and I started to build up a reputation as a content marketer simply through content creation. So a lot of people started to follow my blog RossSimmons.com that started to put me on the radar. I started to dabble in public speaking as well. And then over time, the more and more content that I created, the more and more opportunities came up. And today I'm at a point where I've been able to use the content and use my copywriting skills to create an agency called Foundation Marketing. And we work with B2B brands, everything from up and coming startups, some of the fastest growing startups today, all the way up to Fortune 500 companies who are common names amongst most people in the industry. So that's where we are today. In addition, I still have that entrepreneurial mindset we're constantly tinkering at Foundation. We have a handful of media properties that we operate. We have an e commerce site called Hustle and Grind which is dedicated to being the voice for entrepreneurs. Then we also have launched a handful of SaaS products over the years and we're going to continue to do so in the months to come. Lots on the go. But it all started and kind of ends with this idea of creating content.

Wow, man, I'm sweating over here just listening to everything that you're doing and everything you've done. We all know that these things are not linear, right? These paths are not really pretty thing. In hindsight we can craft a great story and I'm curious, how did that happen? How did you go from you starting out, you're doing this on the side, how did you end up with the kind of Fortune 500 B2B clients that you work with today? I know there's a lot to that, but I'm curious, could you point to a couple of pivotal moments that enabled you to make that shift?

I think you're spot on with this idea that it's easy to look back and overlook some of the truly grueling parts of it. But I can remember back my first Fortune 500 client actually came while I was living in my parents basement. They didn't know that I was living in my Parents basement. But I was living in my parents basement drinking instant coffee. I didn't have much money in the bank account, but I had written an article about how to connect with millennials through content. I got an email from a gentleman who was working at a very large company, and he was like, we want you to come down and speak to our executive team about the way that you think around content creation for Millennials. So they flew me out. My parents were freaking out. They were like, this is wild. Why is my son being flown out there? They made me call as soon as I landed, and when I got there, I just essentially had to help them better understand how to create content for Millennials. And this was before I'm a millennial myself. This was before millennials were like 30 plus and we were still relatively hip and everybody wanted to connect with us. So they brought me out and I did my thing in terms of educating them and telling them the story. But again, I'll tell you, it was funny. I forgot to bring a shirt, like an actual dress shirt for this meeting, and when I got there, I had to run off and find one, and my credit card was going into overdraft. It was a mess. It was chaos. But I was able to push through it, and they were happy, and they ended up being a client that I worked with for many years thereafter.

Would you say that once you had that client under your belt, your confidence got to a point where. And of course, now you have a track record that you were able to leverage that to get other Fortune 500 clients?

It did. It definitely gave the confidence. But I think that whole idea of imposter syndrome that is oftentimes talked about was still there in those early days where it didn't feel like I was supposed to be working on those projects the first time. It really did feel like luck. I felt like I just happened to write a piece about millennial blogs, and somehow someone on the Internet found it and brought me out for this thing. But the more I created content, the more I told the story, and the more I started to do public speaking, the more I started to actually unlock opportunities with those Fortune 500 companies. A few years back, I spoke at a conference called Mozcon that unlocked a handful of new opportunities with Fortune 500 companies. Because once you're on stage, it just changes the dynamic entirely. You're immediately seen as an expert, and if you can deliver value to people, which is what I think is what a lot of people make the mistake of doing when they're speaking on stage, they try to sell rather than value. If you can deliver value when you are speaking, I think that it's a business development superpower and you can create connections with people at scale. So I strongly recommend that people consider that when they're trying to build their own reputation in the industry. Do believe that if it wasn't for public speaking, I wouldn't have been able to build the business that I have today. And I should also point out this didn't come naturally for me. My nickname in high school was Shy Ross. My friends weren't creative. That's the nickname. But I was really shy. I was a shy kid. I'm not someone who was comfortable on stage. I wasn't someone who was comfortable speaking in front of hundreds or even now thousands of people. That wouldn't have been even in my cards. But I came across a piece early on in my career that said that public speaking is one of the best ways to differentiate yourself from the industry, especially when you're young in your career. And when I read that, I was like, okay, this is something that I'm going to have to get comfortable with. So I signed up to start speaking at conferences and events. And the first few, there was only like 50 people. And I can remember sweating through my T shirt and being dripping on stage. And it was messy, it was ugly, but I kept going up to bat. I kept signing up to speak at more conferences. And today I've spoken in front of thousands of people all over the world. And I think it's again, all because of that persistence and recognizing that at first, sure, it was uncomfortable, but if you can get comfortable with that feeling, then you can unlock some amazing results, man.

So it sounds like what I'm hearing there is that I bet this is one piece of advice you would give to anyone who's looking to work with Fortune 500 companies is speak at the right event where those kinds of prospects are hanging out. Right?

100%. I think that we live in a fascinating time where you can see exactly who's sponsoring what conferences, who's attending what events. And if you can reach out to the conference organizers and start to get on stage at these events, it unlocks a massive opportunity for you. It's one thing to be an attendee. It is a completely different dynamic to be a speaker. The authority that you are given simply because your name is on the pamphlet changes the entire experience at a conference. I strongly recommend that people take a chance at speaking at events. And remember, you don't need to go after that 5,000 person event where you're the keynote. You can start by simply going to your local chamber of commerce and working your way up by simply developing your skills and then eventually starting to go after some bigger events, some bigger conferences, some local talks that maybe, you know, a C suite executive is going to be at. And as you do that, you're going to get more exposure and you're going to also fine tune your craft as a speaker.

You know, and I'm glad you mentioned the fact that this did not come naturally to you because I think people who give that advice. Oh, you need to speak.

Right.

Writers will often downplay that and they will often discount that advice because, well, yeah, that's easy for you to say because, you know, it sounds like you're a good speaker. I'm extremely shy. Maybe I'm introverted was the last thing you probably thought you would be great at.

100%, right? Yeah. I always say I'm a writer first. A writer first. And speaking is not something that it's like I've been able to get better at it without question. I get my energy from being behind my keyboard and writing and bringing pixels into words and creating that. That's what gets me excited. Speaking is a grind for me still, even today. And sure, I get great marks and amazing feedback when I go on stage and I rock the mic, but there's no question I still get a lot of energy from just writing.

Yeah, yeah, I'm the same way. I do well up there, but it takes me more work. It takes a lot out of me to create and prepare a talk and deliver it once I'm done. It feels great, but I'm with you. And it's like you connect with your audience in a way that you can't connect in other formats. So I'm with you 100%.

Yeah. And sites like Eventbrite Today make it so easy. If you've ever been on Eventbrite, where you can actually do research on what conferences and events are happening in my city, you can very quickly fill up your calendar with like four conferences a year just by going into Eventbrite, clicking on business conferences nearby and finding a few that you think your audience is going to be at. And one last pro tip on this, you don't want to always speak at your own industry conferences. I think a lot of marketers and writers make that mistake of signing up to speak at conferences where they're competing with a bunch of other writers and they're all keynoting with them. You want to be one of the only speakers on content creation or on writing or storytelling. And when you're the only person, it means that everyone else in that conference is going to look at you as being the sole expert. They can't talk to the person who spoke before you because that person was talking about accounting. They can't speak to the person that speaks after you because that person was talking about process and systems and things of that nature. So if you can be the only one, it will give you a huge opportunity to differentiate from the crowd.

Oh, man, I love that. That is so true. And that's what you want. And you're right. I would say that two things. If you're introverted, this is actually a little bit different because I'm somewhere in between introverted and extroverted, But I can easily get up there. And I love the fact that it gives me that authority. And then people were coming to me in the hallways between sessions because I was one of the speakers where I would be really shy and it would be very hard for me to have that conversation, to approach others otherwise.

And I think when it comes to it, yeah, it's amazing. It's definitely a game changer. And it's similar to writing in theory, the writing process. If you're creating a piece of content, you're putting it out there for the world to see. You're trying to establish authority with everybody who may come across that piece of content that you've written. With speaking, you just happen to have access to people right in front of you who are sitting in a chair and you know they are there. When you press publish on a blog post, you press publish on a report or something that you've created. It can go to your mailing list. It can be distributed through a variety of different channels, but people are going to read it on their own time. When you're all at a conference and everyone is sitting there and their eyes are on you, it definitely changes the dynamic.

Let's shift gears a little bit. And you've given us some great ideas there for getting in front of the right audience if you're looking for Fortune 500 companies. But I'd like to get a little bit of insider information from you on what these types of clients are looking for in a writer. What's important to them.

Yeah. So I would say the process and the ability. The process is without question the most important thing I find. It's so oftentimes we go into a contract and you go into a project and you think that you can just wing it and you'll come up with it as you go. So you jump on that first call and rather than talking them through the process that you would take them through on a writing project, you simply say, oh, yeah, I cost five cents a word, et cetera, et cetera. You tell me what you want and I'll bring it to life. And that's it. That doesn't work with Fortune 500 companies. You need to take them through the process and what the experience will be like when they work with you. Is there going to be an initial discovery session, let's say, where you start to understand their voice, their tone, their messaging, and paint a picture of what that experience is going to look like once the discovery is done and you've got a clear understanding of their voice and their tone and you start to create content for them on a consistent basis. What does the actual track look like for the creation of that content? Let's say you're rewriting the content on their website. Okay. They need to know clearly from you what that process looks like, what does approvals look like, how many people are going to be proofing it before it goes to them, how do you deal with revisions? All of those things need to be answered in that first, initial kind of conversation when they're about to make a decision. It doesn't have to be the first 15 minute call that you're having, but when they're starting to ask you to talk about how you would work with them, you need to have your process clearly laid out from start to finish around the delivery of the content, how many rounds of revisions they'll receive, what happens if they're on vacation. You have to have all of this stuff documented and put together and in place so you can have that conversation. Because for Fortune 500 companies, you have to recognize that cost is very rarely the issue. They don't really care about the actual cost. What they care about is knowing that you are going to manage this project smoothly. They need to know that you are going to deliver on timelines that you've put forward. And they also want to know that you have done this before. And if you are still very early in your career, that's okay. Start with somebody smaller, start with a smaller client, but start to work on getting a process and selling a process and using that process over and over again. And then when you have that conversation with a Fortune 500 company, you will be more comfortable talking them through the steps that you take to getting an understanding of their business, all the way through to giving them the Final deliverable. And that will give them the comfort that they need to sign the dotted line and give you their business.

Man, that's gold. I love that idea. And I would say, and tell me if you agree that if somebody does, well, gosh, I don't have a process. You're already doing something. So it's a matter of a hundred percent, right? It's like, okay, let me get that out of my head. And now that it's on paper, it's kind of a mess. Let me organize it better and create kind of a framework or a roadmap that's more formalized than I can present to a client.

That's it. Everyone has a process. They just may not have written it down yet. Nobody just wakes up every day and is winging it entirely. Sure, certain elements, you may be winging it, but when you are jumping on that first initial call with the client to understand their business, you can call that discovery session. When you're going through the creation process, you can call that something else. You can call it, okay, when we're developing copy for websites, these are the steps that we take. When we're writing a 500 word blog post, this is the steps that we take to get there. We start with a framework and then once we have the framework approved by you, the client, we're then going to start actually adding meat to the bones and you can start to paint a clear picture of what that entire process looks like. And it is key to recognize even though you might not be able to articulate it today. Take some time, grab a cup of coffee, sit down and map out from start to finish on the best clients that you have worked with, the experiences that you've enjoyed the most. What were the steps that you took to get them to that deliverable that left them wanting to leave you a testimonial or a case study.

So not to get into the weeds here, but I have a more detailed follow up question on that for sure. If a prospect is, if you're going, you know, you have this process down, but you don't get that cue from them. Tell us about how you would approach this. Do you go ahead and insert that in there somewhere? How do you deal with that? When is an appropriate time for that?

So as soon as you feel like this is getting serious and it's less of, oh, I like your writing and I'd love to get a quote from you. When it hits that point of I would love to get a quote from you, really, that's when you start talking about process. That's when you start talking about, this is how we work with clients like you. This is how we will do this. And it can be delivered in a few different ways. One, it can be delivered directly in your estimate. So if you are delivering your estimates today and they don't actually talk about process, I would advise that you consider including your process actually in your estimates themselves. From there, you want to jump on a call and talk them through that process. Rather than just sending them a PDF and hoping that they read it and they consume that content on their own time. You want to talk them through it, you want to show it to them and just start to have that discussion.

That's great. Okay, so process is a key one. What was the other one you mentioned that they look for in a writer?

Yeah, so the other thing that they look for in a writer is having some type of samples and examples of work that you've done in the past. You need to be able to show that you can do and not just someone who can sell. So if you have some examples of content that you've created and that you've developed, the more recent the better. They want to see that. And as you start to move up the chain, as we talked about earlier, credibility becomes more and more important. So the higher you go in terms of dealing with these Fortune 500 companies, they want to see some logos from other Fortune 500 companies. And don't get me wrong, at first you may not have them, that's okay. But if you can show a plethora of companies that are mini brands, or that they can quickly Google, or that you could even show have generated some massive results because of the way that you've created content for them, that can trigger some insight as well. So first and foremost, you want to be able to show case studies, samples, examples of your work. You want to be able to show logos, something that will give you that additional element of credibility, or just show that you've been featured or published on a larger site. That was also a key part of my ability to lock in Fortune 500 companies is when I would share with them a piece that I had written for Forbes or that I've written for Social Media examiner, that kind of solidified me as a writer, as someone that they could trust. So if you have been able to lock in any of those types of writing opportunities with a high authority site, don't be afraid to include those in your portfolio as well. Because for a Fortune 500 company, oftentimes that is just as valuable as writing for a competitor or another brand that would be doing similar revenue as them.

Yeah. So street cred, social proof, anything that shows that somebody has believed in you enough to publish your stuff or to feature you.

Exactly.

I love that. Okay. That really resonates with me. It makes perfect sense. I'm curious about your take on writing and the fact that what I'm seeing out there, and I'm curious if you agree. Writing in and of itself is being gradually commoditized. So the days of order taking, I need this, I need you to write me this. That's getting more and more competitive. And what I'm seeing is that writers who can bring much more to the table outside of just the writing are rising above this. And they're doing very well, Very, very well in some cases. But they can provide strategy ideas, insights, more than just the deliverable. So first of all, would you agree with this? And if so, how can writers start distinguishing themselves to Fortune 500 clients in this environment of commoditization?

Yeah, I always say there's riches in the niches, and if you can find something specific that you can do that your competitors can't, whether it's industry based or strategic based, you need to double down on that. Let's say, for example, you're going after the medical field. If that was your niche, that was your vertical and that's where you were going to spend a lot of time, then own that lane and completely focus on creating content and telling the story that that's what you do. You create content in the world of medical. If you want to go into tourism and you want to focus on that and you want to be traveling the world to work with your clients, then say, all I do is travel writing and that's my sole focus, and create content around that. If you wanted to take a different opportunity outside of industry specific niches, I agree with you 100%, Ed, that there's a lot of value in adding additional levels of expertise. If you can say, not only am I a writer, but I have a deep understanding of SEO, or I have a deep understanding of content distribution and how to spread this story after I press publish, or that you have a great understanding of how to ensure that the content that we're writing for you can then be repurposed for social and for other channels. All of that type of thinking is valued by Fortune 500 companies because they know that you're not just somebody who's going to write some words for them and call it a day. You're someone who's going to create some amazing content, some amazing words, and then you're going to turn them into something special that could rank in SEO, that could be more easily distributed through social, or you're going to provide them with a reco on how they can spread that content in the appropriate ways. So I do agree 100% that it's important for writers to think about themselves as being kind of like if you're not familiar with the T shaped marketer, I strongly recommend you look up that concept. I even have a video on what T shaped marketers should evolve to next, which is this idea that we should be in the weeds trying to constantly learn new things and getting our hands dirty so we can develop the skills that go beyond just writing. You should be very deep in terms of your knowledge on writing, but you should be very broad in terms of your understanding of different elements. So you should know a little bit about social media, you should know a little bit about conversion rate optimization, you should know a little bit about SEO. And if you can take some time to go really deep in additional factor outside of just writing, then that's going to make you someone who has skills that are very niche, very specific and will differentiate you from the competitors.

So I'm assuming that the T shape comes from going deep in one area and then going broad in a bunch of other disciplines.

Exactly.

Okay.

Yeah. So at the bottom of the T, let's say you're focused on writing. If writing makes up the bottom of the T, then you have skills in copywriting, you have skills in writing a great lead, writing a great conclusion. All of those things would make up the T. When you get to the top of the T where you're starting to dabble in social media, landing page optimization, analytics, content marketing, paid media, et cetera, that's when you're building out that top of the T. And then if you wanted to take it a step further, where I go, you should become a capital I instead of just the T. It's at the bottom where you start to actually build things like what many would consider soft skills. So the ability to manage people, the ability to collaborate with other freelancers, the ability to have a design thinking, the ability to manage process, et cetera, that's what would make up the bottom of the T. And I think that if you can build out a skillset around that, it's going to allow you to really differentiate yourself in the market.

I know that you do quite a bit of strategy work for clients. In fact, I think you have a separate business Just for that. Am I correct?

Yeah. So foundation is really focused. Our step in the door is with the strategy. So our initial process is let's develop a strategy for you. And out of that strategy, there's going to be some writing work that goes within that as well. And then from there we're typically working on a monthly basis, writing blog posts, writing ebooks, writing landing page copy, et cetera. But it always starts with the strategy around how we should be promoting ourselves on behalf of the client and how the client should be promoting themselves to their audience.

Which makes perfect sense. Right. Let's work together to develop the strategy, then design how we're going to execute this, and then let us help you with the execution piece.

Right, exactly.

So you do it soup to nuts. So let's talk about that, if you don't mind for a minute, because one of the questions that often comes up is I can see offering strategy engagement to smaller clients, but do Fortune 500, Fortune 1000 companies, are they willing to hire somebody who's leading with strategy, or do they usually have that all figured out and they just want someone to help them with the execution?

Probably a 50 50. So sometimes organizations are coming to us and they say, we don't understand what type of content we should have on our website, we don't understand what type of content we should have on our blog, and we don't really understand what we should be doing on social either. And that's when we say, okay, let us develop you a strategy as a whole and we're going to bring this to life for you. And then we actually create a strategic plan around all of their digital marketing efforts, all the way from social media to content for their site, landing pages, email marketing, et cetera. We go deep in other situations, though. They do have their strategy in place, but they still need one element of writing done where they say, we know who our audience is, we know what type of content we need to create, but our team simply is full up on the internal politics, the internal management of team members, all of the other elements that go on within the organization. And we just need someone who can help us with the output of new content. Can you craft two blog posts a month? Can you create five blog posts a month, whatever that may be? And in those cases, they're looking for us to execute. So we start with, again, not a full out strategy session, which could take two to three months of kind of strategizing, research and collaboration. We start with a week of let's better understand your audience, let's Understand your situation, let's do some keyword research and then let's go and start creating content and follow our process.

One of the things that I've had, I've seen several writers go through, is they're providing the strategic help and advice kind of by default. So they get hired to help them with some of the content. And there, because they're experienced and they know a lot, they've worked with a lot of clients in that industry, they automatically provide that. And then the question comes up. I love the idea of just kind of splintering the strategy because that is its own thing. But I don't have ready made frameworks, I don't have a strategy session process, or how would you suggest somebody maybe take the first step in that direction who's in that situation?

So there's two ways that you can go about it. I think one of my favorite recommendations to folks who are in that stage where they're really not sure how they can do that process, is to start by offering it to a local company who is a friend, a nonprofit, a charity, and do it as a test run and just try to help them out. And when you do that, you don't have to necessarily charge them an arm and a leg, you don't have to even charge them your typical rates. Just let them know, this is something that I'm testing and I want to help you because I love your story, I love your brand, I love what you're doing. You might be able to get some free products out of it, who knows? But that's where I would start. And then once you've done that, start to think through what your process was to get them to the final delivery of a strategy, ask them for feedback, get their take on it, and then once you've gotten that, you have a case study under your belt that you can then start to sell to other corporate clients. As you start to sell it to other corporate clients, you then can move up the chain because you've got a more fine tuned process. You can increase your prices for this strategy section of your proposal. And then you can go to Fortune 500 companies with this and say, look at all of the different companies that I've assisted with this in the past year. So it might take a little bit of time to get this process down, but on the flip side, it could also just take a week. You could just sit down and map out what you think that initial discovery would look like. What are the 20 questions that you want to ask every single client? Write those down and that could be your process where you jump on a call for two hours, you're asking them a bunch of questions, maybe you have some slides to go with it and you use that as your launching pad and that's your kickoff. And once you've done that, you start to take all of the answers to their questions and you start to figure out what's our approach going to be moving forward to bring this thing to life. I think that's really one of the key pieces. It's figuring you have to recognize when it comes to selling the strategy, it truly comes down to confidence. You have to be confident that it is going to add value to the client. And if it doesn't add value to the client, you shouldn't be offering it. But you need to start in a place where you know that what you're going to be doing by understanding their business, by understanding the deliverable that you're going to hand them at the end of this, that there is going to be true value. And Fortune 500 companies love research, they love insights, they love data. If you can say that through these questions that you're going to ask them, you're going to map out the content journey that their buyer goes through. Or you can map out what type of things their audience is going to be looking for online and ensure that the content you're writing is going to align with that. That's going to be gold. And they're not going to view it as something that is necessarily a one off project that could be an asset that they use for years to come, even beyond your own engagement with that client. So that's where I would start. I would start by understanding how to sell it to a local company, use that to kind of build up. Or you can simply start to craft your own narrative around it. Make sure that you're having from start to finish an end deliverable and that you can create something that will be at the end of your strategy process. A leave behind that they can use for years to come as an insightful piece of content or a story or a message or journey map, whatever that may be that they can use for their business for months to come.

Man, I love that. So basically iterate, right and come up version 1.0 and just move on up.

That's it.

These things don't happen overnight. I think it's invaluable advice. So Ross, as we start wrapping up here, I'm curious, you've seen what people should do, what they should not do. What's the biggest mistake you see freelance writers and copywriters make when pursuing these larger corporate clients charging too little.

I think that's the biggest mistake. You also have to keep in mind that when it comes to a Fortune 500 company, oftentimes the price point can trigger some anxiety for them if it's too low. If you are pricing at a rate that is cheap and low, they are going to consider that maybe we're going to get cheap work back, maybe we're not going to get the value that we would have gotten if we hired a big agency and they brought in a copywriter and they brought in a creative director, et cetera. So you have to value your time and also value the work that you're delivering. My reco would be to take some time and review and read some of the reports that are out there about what other writers are charging and make sure you're not in that bottom 50%. Strive to be in that upper 50%, especially if you're going after Fortune 500 companies. Don't get me wrong, early days you definitely will have to charge what you have to charge to get a first few clients under your belt. But when you start to really go after those Fortune 500 companies, they will judge you not necessarily positively if they see that your rates are extremely low.

Man, that's sound advice. I love that. Great stuff.

Awesome.

Roth, this has been wonderful. I really appreciate you sharing all these insights and ideas with us in your story. I want to make sure that people know where they can learn more about you. You got several different properties. I loved your website with all the Hustle merchandise by the way.

Thanks so much. Appreciate that.

Let us know where can people learn more for sure.

So you can check me out@rosssimmons.com but I definitely do have a few pieces of content that I would love for people to check out. I created a gu called the Hustle Manifesto which you can access through RossSimmons.com or through HustleandGrind Co and it's a guide for how to escape the 9 to 5. If you are a freelancer, if you are a writer and you're working in the 9 to 5 today, the hustle manifesto has helped tons of people all over the world be able to actually escape their 9 to 5 and start creating content for clients. Fortune 500 companies full time because of it. On those sites Rossims.com and Hustle and Grind. I believe there's also a resource called 100 tips to make your first 100k. I wrote an article a few years back about how I was able to do $270,000 a year at like 25 years old and I turned that into 100 tips on how you can make your first 100k and I think that's a resource that I would strongly recommend to anybody who's already on their own doing their own thing as a freelancer and they're struggling to kind of crack that six figure mark. It's a great resource and it's definitely something that I think your audience and your listeners would enjoy.

Absolutely both of those. So I'll make sure to include those links in the show notes please guys check those out. Ross has got great stuff and he's living proof that this advice works. So check it out. Ross again thanks so much man. This has been a lot of fun.

Thanks for having me on Ed. I appreciate your time.

The High Income Business Writing podcast is a production of V2B business launcher. Learn more at b2b launcher.com.