#294: How Freelance Writers Can Empower Each Other to Raise Their Fees

Restaurants and then I throw in a little sprinkle of SaaS and fintech and travel and cool things like that. But yeah, my origin story, man. So I did everything wrong. So I started all my freelance stuff wrong. I started in 2013 when I was about to lose my job. So I got my first job. And then about a year later they were like, hey, we're going to let you go. And I was like, oh crap. And so then I was like, they.

Love for better clients. With over 1 million downloads from listeners just like you across 101 countries, freelance writers and strategists talk and sweat about pricing all the time. But as a community, we rarely discuss how we can work together to communicate our long term value to clients or how to empower each other to charge more, how to cheer each other on when we do charge more, when we boldly ask for more, when we for the value we provide and not gasp when a peer.

Right, this is my time to start freelancing because I always wanted to start freelancing. And what ended up happening was I started my business in 2013 and about a year later I left to full time freelance. But when I started my business, I started on Odesk and Elance, which is now upwork. And I did all the things wrong, I said all the wrong pitches, I didn't understand anything. And then I found after doing my own business, like mostly still through kind of like the Upwork platforms, I found you and Carol Tice. And then I was like, okay, this is how we actually do things. So then I started building the business that I have now and kind of evolving that into a mix of like content marketing stuff like blog posts, white papers reported articles and content strategy stuff. So like helping people get the A to Z of their content strategy done. And now I also, you know, run a course, coach other writers and I'm a big like community person. I really like to join in all the community parts of freelance writing.

Got it. And all right, so a lot there. Got a couple of follow up questions on that. One is curious about your transition from Odesk, Elance or now Upwork into a very different model where you're finding your own clients. How was that? Because when you start that way, it's a serious mindset shift.

Yeah. So it was a disaster. And I'll even give kind of a behind the scenes on my behind the scenes. I got scammed on Upwork. So I had a potential client call at the same time. Right. So I got scammed where someone was like, hey, like we're trying to interview you, but you need to give us all this personal information. And at the time I was just like, okay. And then I was like, oh, crap. I just got scammed. So when I got scared and scammed, that's when I was like, I gotta get off of here. And I had been starting to read other stuff. So when I left all the platforms and started rebuilding my business, I just had nothing. I just fired everybody. I was just like, I'm done. And I started learning from you and from Carol Tice about sending Lois and how to figure out, like, one of your things that really stood out to me was, like, warm email prospecting. I think I still have the PDF somewhere, but that and your original pricing guide. And I started like, it took me so long to just make this shift of, like, oh, I'm not applying to jobs. I'm not looking for someone who's just, like, looking for writers. And this is like, a question that we talk about a lot, right? How do I find someone who's looking for writers? Nope, wrong premise. The premise is, how do I find ideal clients for me and then contact them about working with them, right? Like, how do I actually do that? So for me, I made a lot of missteps and mistakes. Like, I had no idea how to do the loi. I had to learn how to write a pitch. I had no idea about the landscape. And just realizing the potential of, like, what was out there from what you and had talked about in the blogs and the articles and stuff and the International Freelancers Academy, it was just like, it blew my mind basically, like, to make this shift. It blew my mind at the potential and availability of jobs and, like, what you could actually do rather than being tied to this platform that kept telling me, like, hey, if you leave this platform, you may not get paid. It's like, what? No.

So pay us half of what you made.

Yeah, give us your money.

So, yeah, it is night and day. And that's why I wanted to know more, because I know that it took.

Me many years to figure that out. But for me, what I teach my students and what I follow is, like, you need at least 3 million in revenue for startups and you need 5 million to 50 million for regular companies. So depending on your niche, sometimes you can get away with 5 million in revenue for those companies. Sometimes they need 40 to 50 in revenue before they kind of have the money for content. So it took me a long time to figure out, going from someone asking me to cut my price by more than a quarter. 1250. Yeah. So by a quarter to being like, these are my prices. If that doesn't work for you, I totally get it. If you ever change your budget, let me know. Or being able to figure out where are my niches that have money where they can pay me to do content and I can set my rates and understand kind of, like, market value. And I also was really lucky in having people to bounce rates off of, which I think is really important for me. The pricing evolved, and I gained more confidence. Someone being like, hey, that's definitely too low. Don't do that. And I'm like, oh, okay. And I gained more confidence from my friends being like, hey, I just won a gig for 1,000 bucks. I'm like, 1,000 bucks? Oh, my gosh. And they're like, you can do that too. We have the same experience. I'm like, oh, okay, cool. So for me, my pricing kind of evolved with, like, having a sounding board, figuring out what other people were charging, learning confidence, and, like, these are my rates. If you don't accept them, you know, you're not my client. And just kind of getting to this place of understanding that, like, your work has way more value than you think.

Tell me more about that. So let's talk a little bit about value and perception of value and your mindset around value.

Yeah. So that's another thing that took me a long time to pony up to. So the value piece was I realized that my content lives so much longer than me working with my client. So I have blog posts and articles that are 10 years old that still drive traffic to my clients. Like, I can go find them. They're still live on the Internet. And when I came to that idea of, like, oh, wait a minute. This is not a single transaction. This is not a single, like, oh, my gosh, let's talk about, like, should I charge 700 or 800 for this blog post? It doesn't matter. Don't quibble over that. It matters that your content has massive value well beyond the relationship that you have with your clients. It adds leads and sales and web traffic and brand awareness and thought leadership and quality to that client. For many years, I'm sure you've had the same thing where you could go back to a client, and they're like, we have this case study that you wrote five years ago. It's our number one best lead magnet. And you're like, well, you only paid me X amount of dollars for it, but it's bringing in tens of thousands of dollars, hundreds of thousands of dollars. To this company. So when I realized that shifted the way I price things because to me, it became this thing of us worrying about a handful of $100 is not going to. The amount of content value that you're going to get is well beyond that. I know that because even after we stopped working together, you're gonna leave that content live. It's gonna be on the Internet and it's gonna bring you leads and sales and all the good stuff. So the value piece is more like kind of mixing like what I think the work is worth, the experience and knowledge that I'm bringing and how I understand the value to that client and the long term value of that piece of content that can live for decades. Allegedly.

Yeah. Just a point of clarification for anyone who's listening going, yeah, but you know, the market I work in, they don't really measure or they don't measure conversions and all that. Because that's always kind of the objection that a lot of people have who are working more in a pure B2B content play environment. Keep in mind that not all outcomes are quantitative client outcomes. A lot of them. In fact, I would argue that even the most valuable ones are qualitative in nature. So for instance, and I'll give you extreme examples, help, because they illustrate the point. I had a client tell me, hey, Ed, and I've been meaning to tell you, that white paper that you wrote for us on xyz, whatever it was, okay, they were a prospect at the time they read it and it made such an impression on them. I'm not saying that it's what sealed the deal because this is a million dollar plus software deal, but it made an impression on them and it lived beyond closing that deal. So they became a customer of my client and they said that white paper actually still lives in our internal portal. And we use it when people first come in because it describes our philosophy about this process so well. And it's a key part of our internal portal and part of the education that we use. You know, the educational process we use with new employees and with people coming into the project. And I thought, first of all, I never heard of something like that, number one. Number two, I was shocked at something I wrote. Help my client, not partly help them secure this client, this company customer, but also that they thought so well of it that they brought it into their portal. So that's a qualitative benefit, right? That's a qualitative value measure. What if it's greater confidence if you write something for a client of yours. And then that helps them clarify their own value to their customers. Like, wow, the way you describe this, this is so great because we've been really struggling with explaining this to prospects or to existing customers or to new employees. And, like, you've given us a framework or language to really talk about this. That's a qualitative measure of value, but it's a very important piece of value, isn't it?

Yeah. I think that example is just like what I teach my students, which is like the ripple effect. You have no idea when you put that stone of content in there, where it will go, where it will live. And the same thing I've had the same thing where they're like, hey, by the way, we told all our new employees to read your blog post to understand what our company does, what our values are, and how we actually go about creating things that align with our brand. So it's not even just money, right? It's not even just getting in leads and sales and all the fancy stuff. It's like the back end of, hey, someone new to our company now has basically a guide of where to go, which is, you know, it's just insane to me sometimes when we think about, like, how much value our content really brings to people we never meet and.

For years to come, like you said. So that's really cool. So it sounds like you've definitely taken more of a value based mindset in your pricing. And you know that it leads me to the next thing I wanted. And kind of the core reason we kind of engage here is you have noticed that as a community, freelance writers sometimes adopt the wrong mindset and attitude toward each other when it comes to pricing. So I'll let you talk a little bit about that. I just wanted to kind of introduce that and see if we can kind of start going down that path.

Yeah, I actually even brought you two examples today. I had only one, but now I have another, so I snuck one in there. So I'll just give a little synopsis. I'm a dork. I constantly ask people, what are you charging? How did you get that? Who's the client? How'd you do this? And that's how I started being like, all right, here's how we kind of play with all the dials. But I realized that a lot of freelance writers kind of poo poo this whole money idea and then pooh, pooh each other of, like, don't charge that. Like, if someone comes to them and they're like, I got $1,000, they're like, you should have charged 800.

It's like, also the other way around. Not encouraging to charge more, but basically castigating you for charging as high as you did.

Yeah. And that's the importance of the two stories. So one thing, couple things I wanted to mention is just like, we have this idea that it's transactional, but like you and I just described, it's not transactional. The ripple effect of the content goes beyond that. So thinking about your content, per blog post or per transaction is missing the whole pricing point. So if someone says, you shouldn't have charged this much, we're missing the point. We're on the wrong boat. The next thing is that we miss that value piece. Instead of empowering someone to say, hey, don't you know your content lives for years? Or your content can affect a lot more people than just this one audience. We kind of are like, that's too much. You shouldn't do that. They're going to come hunt us down with pitchforks. Don't. You know, instead of encouraging each other and building people up and building confidence. Right. We all kind of know that writers and I am definitely very guilty of this. Live in kind of a fear and scarcity and, like, money is like a thing we don't talk about and we're afraid of it. And, like, if you charge too much, your clients will hate you and you end up in, like, the black box. You know, no one will talk to you. But the deal is that if we empowered each other, we would feel more confident giving rates and we would feel like, hey, other people are getting these rates. I can too. And it's not just like that rate. Rate is just for them. It's like, well, if they can do it, I can do it. And we should kind of support each other in learning best practices. I feel like as a community, the best practices part is part of pricing is like, how is this working? How are you doing this? And working to a place where it's kind of like, I think I talked about this in my pitch is like rising tides, they raise all the boats. So if we all can kind of work together, that helps all of us raise our rates and then we don't have to worry about this. Quibbling over, oh, no, someone charged $100 and someone charged 1 25. Or little amounts of money like that.

Yeah. And I get it. I personally hadn't seen that before, and mostly because I'm not in a lot of communities and just participating and looking at those conversations. But I once you mentioned it, it made me realize I have seen that before. So I guess a couple of follow up questions is, how prevalent do you feel that is in terms of writers tearing each other apart and punching down on each other instead of building each other? How prevalent is it?

That's a good question. I would say it's probably in.

Describe this. This is so great. Because we've been really struggling with explaining.

I have been in a bunch of different communities, so I would say it's prob. Like at least half. At least half of the communities I've been in are like people that are like, no, you should charge $100. Like I said, it's these very small amounts of money. Nobody cares. Nobody cares about 100 extra dollars, your clients. It's very small. But To US writers, $100 is important. And I talked to my friend about this at lunch the other day. I was like, well, do you think it's still happening? And she's like, yep, I see it all the time. And it's kind of this thing where, like I said, I think it comes from fear, is that people are afraid that if they charge more and then it's all kind of like a crab bucketing thing. Right? Like, no, I'll just. The crab bucketing is basically that crabs don't need a cover on a basket of crabs because one crab will always pull the other one out. So if a crab is trying to escape, another crab will pull them back into the bucket. It's kind of like that. And I get worried about that because it's like, man, if half of writers or at least half the communities that I go in are nickel and diming each other. Right. That's a problem.

That is a problem, but it's a huge problem. I had no idea that it's that prevalent. So then why do you think this happens? I mean, I know you mentioned fear, but can you maybe get a little bit more into that? Because it'd be interesting to see kind of what's inside the mind of the person who's discouraging others from rising.

Yeah. So I kind of think about it in a few ways. So I wrote some things. So the deal is that for me, when I think about it and when I've looked at writers, like I've talked to thousands of writers over the years, and I feel like that these seeds are planted. Like we don't have the right seeds planted. So what ends up happening is, number one, we don't know that long term value of content. So people are afraid. There's either not enough clients, or if they don't charge the exact right price. And this perfectionism comes in, they're like, okay, I have to do the perfect price or else they'll say no. And then they get lost in perfectionism. The other thing is that they forget the life cycle of the content. So then we kind of go back into people not knowing the depth of their content. So they think very small. They think very transactionally about just one blog post, just one case study, just one project, instead of thinking about the expansiveness of it. The other thing that I think is a seed that I wish was planted more often is. And I know, I think if I remember right, you had Jeff Goins on here, and I love artists don't starve. Right? That idea of the starving artist from Henri Merger, he's French, that has survived for like 170 years, but Michelangelo is making 47 million. So we're still. And I, you know, even me being. There's people younger than me, but not being that old, I still had the idea planted in me of, like, artists starve. Like, you can't be a writer because da, da, da, da, da. And this kind of filters through the communities. Like, they still believe this kind of, you can't get paid well for your work. Or they're surprised when they end up on this thing where they're like, I can't believe my client paid me 50 cents a word. And you're like, you could have been paid a dollar. And so for me, when I think about all that stuff, we're kind of taught as creatives, and I still see this idea circle around even in my own community of, like, we come from a very little encouragement of, like, yes, you can make money as a writer. We'd come from like, you're a creative. You're not going to make any money. You're going to be a starving artist. Which is nuts. And the other idea that I think is really important is that there's this difference between authors and freelance writers. So authors go off and they sell their books and they can make a bunch of money, but no one goes to an author most of the time, at least I had a creative writing background in school, and no one was like, yeah, you're going to be an author. You're going to make money. That's going to be great. And then when I said freelance writing, they're like, don't do that. You're not going to make any money. But it's most of the time that the freelance writers are the ones making Money and the authors are not. But for some reason in the freelance writing community, we're still like starving artists. Creative. But the author thing, you're going to hit it big and make millions of dollars.

That idea, that's programming. It's societal programming.

Yeah. And I find that very interesting that it's still surviving. Like that idea, the starving artist idea that Jeff Goines talks about from Henry murger is from 1847 and it's still living on even though there's people like you who do really, really well and there's tons of six figure freelance writers and there's even like Ray Edwards who makes crazy money. Right. But we're still in this idea of like worrying about a hundred dollars and we're still feeling like it's an ambiguous thing that we just can't overcome. Like this pricing thing. Right. It's what we all get asked about, right? Is I'm sure you get asked. I know Carol gets asked, I get asked. It's like the number one thing we all deal with is like pricing. But yet we've been doing this for so long and there's so many examples of people doing well, but we're still stuck in this starving artist thing for some reason.

Well, and I don't think it has to be a binary thing. I wonder how much of it is people, you know, And I've seen some communities where it's actually there's a lot of the opposite going on and a lot of chest beating and you know, a lot of bro kind of energy. Like, you know, you guys don't know.

What you're doing in this starving artist thing for some reason.

Well, and I don't think it has to be a binary thing. I'm charging X which is like 10x what everybody else is charging. And that kind of bragging, nobody likes that. First of all, it doesn't have to be if I'm charging more, it doesn't put me in that category. That is somebody with a problem.

That.

You should just ignore. Just like you should ignore somebody who's charging. First of all, buy the word and then charging 3 cents a word. Right. It's same thing. I also think there is such a thing as people who don't want others to shine their light because that means that you're going to make me look bad. If you're one of us and we're all the same crabs in the bucket, you try to get out, suddenly I have a responsibility. Suddenly I have a choice to make. And it's like, wow, somebody just proved that you can actually get out of this bucket. Now, what does that say about me? So there's a lot of psychology going on there. I think one thing that really helped me. And of course, if you don't have this background, it doesn't really matter. There are other ways you can get around it. I don't think I was particularly talented. In fact, I know I wasn't. But you know what I didn't have? I didn't have all this baggage. People who started out here or started out in journalism, and they brought all that baggage with them. And it's like, things you can't do or you can do or you should do, or you rules and all that baggage can really hurt you. Because I came from a world, I was earning six figures, selling software. In my mind, it's like, feed my family. We're used to making six figures. I got to make it work here. I never asked, is it possible? I mean, I did, but it was mostly a mindset of, it has to be possible because I've already decided I'm going to do this. So I got to make it real. And don't ever underestimate anyone listening. Your ability to just make it happen, because you have to. Something really, really powerful happens when you have no choice and you just got to feed your family and you'll find a way to make it work. But if you come from a group of crabs all saying, no, don't do that, you can't do that, then. So I guess it really just. Let's start moving into, all right, how do we escape that? If you're starting to see that if you got friends and peers and colleagues who are kind of trying to bring you down, maybe they're not doing it maliciously, but what are some ways that we can kind of break out of that kind of thinking?

Yeah. So for me, this is one of my stories that I wanted to tell that I think illustrates it really well. The idea that you would overcharge for a project is very low. So the idea, right, that you would. I have one project, and I wrote it down just for this. So there's one project that I have come across in 10 years where I was like, this person's a crazy Daisy. This can't. This is not going to work. So I wrote it down. So this person was $30,000 for four blog posts and eight social media posts for two months. So, yeah, 15k a month for. I wrote this down, four blog posts and eight social media Posts. So that was the only example I've Ever found of someone overcharging and me being like, we need to have a chat. This is definitely gouging your client. So the first thing is the idea that as you're working through this, building other people up, the idea that you would overcharge is very small. So if someone charges more than you, the likelihood they're overcharging their clients or that they're something that's not industry standard or whatever is very small. Like, very small. And I think for me it's more about learning, like to build those people up as an example of what's possible. Like, I always kind of look to you and to Carol and to other people of saying, like, this is what's possible. Like, I came from the exact opposite of you. Like, I was very much like, I didn't know for many years that six figures was possible as a freelance writer. I thought like, if I was doing get hitting 40k, I was like living like Snoop Dogg. I was like gold star living. When I realized, like, I was like, ed Gandia makes six figures. What's happening? So the idea I think should shift to, like, what is possible? Like, what could I do? Or what types of things? How could I get to this place that someone else is. And most of the time writers are undervaluing and undercharging rather than really looking at the landscape and saying, cool, someone else did this, I can too.

Yeah. Using his inspiration. Inspiration and maybe a food for thought. It's like, wow, I need to probably think about this.

Yeah. And I feel like it's more about asking questions too. That's one of my strengths is, like I said, I'm a nerd. I go out and ask people about, what are you charging? How did you do that? What type of client, what niche was it? What type of work? What was the word count, page count? Like, what were you doing? That information gives you a framework to work from and you have all this data now to say, okay, when I have something similar, I feel like the value I'm bringing, my knowledge and expertise, the long term effect of this content. Now I have eight parameters from my friends to give me kind of an idea of what I should charge and what's possible. So you kind of have this nice soup almost to work with. And I feel like you got to ask more questions and be engaged about pricing. You have to cheer each other on, but be inquisitive and curious about how do I get there and how does that work? And we all know every niche is kind of a little bit different. Like Things kind of like, there's little tweaks everywhere. But I feel like when you're kind of learning the ropes, I think that's something. Writers get stuck in this, like, what's right. But if you're inquisitive and curious about what's going on in the industry, you end up with so much more stuff that you can use that's more useful for how do you want to build your own business? Rather than saying, someone did X, I'll just do X or else the crabs will get me.

I think that's very powerful advice, and it can be hard to start thinking that way. I get it. I still have a hard time with some things because, listen, this is all relative, right? It's easy for me to talk about what people said, but, you know, I'm looking at people who are charging way.

More for, like, how do you want to build your own business? Rather than saying, like, someone did X, I'll just.

And I will admit sometimes I'm thinking one of my first thoughts is, who do they think they are? You know? And I have to stop myself. So there is someone out there. He's a great dude and a brilliant mind. His name is Jonathan Stark and he is a consumer. Right. He's got a great podcast, by the way. I'll plug it here. Ditching Hourly. Ditching Hourly Podcast. So he's not a writer. He is a software developer by training, and he does consulting for software and app developers. And he's got a service that is basically advisory on call. The only way he does retainers is advisory. And get this, he charges $15,000 a month for this. $15,000 a month.

That's amazing.

That is amazing. Right?

I love that guy.

And recently when I came across that, fortunately. So this is my litmus test. Instead of thinking, my first thought being, who does he think he is? You know what? I was happy for him. Oh, my God. First of all, good job. That is amazing. And you are getting. I see from reading an article that you are getting that you always have one or two clients who, on any moment in time, who are taking you up on it. And then. And this is the question I would ask anyone to ask themselves, ask yourself, okay, what version of that idea could I implement? Because we tend to think of it literally like $15,000 a month for advisory retainer for this audience. Oh, well, I'm not in that. That's not my audience, and I don't do that kind of work. You know what? Let's just forget about all that. What are the core lessons and principles behind this offer that he has. Let me study that, and let me just sit with that for a while. And it's gotten me thinking. What version of not saying, literally, charge 15k a month, but what version of it? So for me, it might be, I don't know, $2,000 a month, but it might be a different offer, but it's something that I would have to push myself toward and grow as a result. Because if you do that, guess what? Sometimes the real question is, what kind of a person do I need to become? What kind of professional?

I love that. Yeah.

To charge that confidently. So I think rather than trying to bring people down, it's like, what can I learn from that? I love the fact, Mandy, that you ask questions like, okay, well, how do you do that? And how do you present it? And what kind of client? And what did they say? How did they react? And what are your payment terms? Be inquisitive. So I think that's awesome that you do that, because that's how you learn and grow and then don't automatically shoot it down the moment you hear, well, that's not my market. Or that. Instead, ask yourself, you know what? What's the core lesson here? What version of that could I deploy?

That's the framework, man. That's the, like, deconstructing the house. Like, Jonathan Stark built a 15k house. And if you look at it and you're like, huh, I'm not a fan of Tudors. You're like, it doesn't matter. We're not looking at the tutor. We're saying, all right, he chose these paint colors, this type of stone, this type of furniture, but underneath it, what's in the stud? What kind of wood is there? How did he build the layout? Like, okay, now how do I apply that to my business? Now that I can see the studs and the framework and how he did it, we don't care about the fancy, the paint, and all that stuff. We care about or the size. Yeah. We care about the functional aspects of what he's doing. How do I apply that to myself? And then how do I get curious about how do I build my business more in that direction? Or what questions do I need to ask myself to become the furniture? But underneath it, what's in the stud? What kind of wood is there? How did he build the layout? Like, okay, now how do I apply that to my business? Like, now that I can see the studs and the framework and how he did it? We don't care about the Fancy, like the, you know, the paint and all that stuff.

We care about, like, or the size, you know?

Yeah, yeah, we care about the functional aspects. Person who does that type of thing, that kind of stuff.

I agree. So in terms, going back to community, you offered some great ideas there in terms of how we can help support each other. I do agree with your philosophy of, like, look, we're all kind of in this together. We really should be supporting each other and our peers and our friends. So in terms of community, what else could we be doing to maybe encourage people and learn from them rather than bring them down or discourage them?

Yeah, I think, like, for me, one of the main things was just being around a lot of different types of people. So if I could be around a lot of different types of writers in a lot of different fields doing a lot of different work, from content strategy and messaging, positioning to the very first blog post or very first project they had, that I feel like, gives you a better viewpoint of how many shoes there are to walk in. And then it's really easy to. Of what he's doing. How do I apply that to myself? And then, like, how do I get curious about how do I encourage people? Because you're like, man, you know, like, when I was coming up X didn't happen, but now I see this person build my business more in that direction or like, what questions do I need to ask myself to become the person who does that type of thing, that kind of stuff.

I agree.

So really struggling. Maybe I can help them and answer some questions and, you know, I don't know, not mentor, but help them out. And then you see someone all the way at the other side. Right? Like, maybe they're doing marketing, consultation, messaging, positioning, content strategy. You're like, what can I learn from them? So I think for me, the first thing was just being around a lot of different people all over the world, all, like people in Australia and India and the UK and Chile, learning what they're doing, and then we can kind of cheer each other on that way because we're all in different places and we can learn from everybody's kind of perspective. That's kind of the first thing. And I think the other thing as a community is just kind of like, looking at what are the main things that. For me, I kind of look at it as, like, what are the things we all kind of struggle with and how can we help each other build confidence or make each other, you know, like, instead of bringing each other down, we could help them move forward, like, give them Examples of like, hey, I remember when I was in your shoes, empathize with them. Hey, maybe you can try this, maybe you can do that. And then for me, the other thing is like just actually being in community, just talking to people. We live a lot of our lives as freelance writers alone. Like, I can't tell you how many students or people I've who have emailed me being like, I don't know anyone as a freelance writer. Reach out, build a LinkedIn network, like become friends with people and learn kind of what's going on. I think as a community, if there is more talking about these subjects, if there's more people connecting rather than working in their hobbit hole all alone, I feel like that really helps everybody. And I wish more people would talk about that. I wish more people would celebrate others wins rather than. When I get on LinkedIn sometimes and people are like, oh, well, that's great for you, but I could never do it. Just celebrate them, let it go. And I just feel like when we look at the community as a whole, I feel like if we could just talk more about money, talk about being confident rather than saying like, no, you can't do that, or that's dumb, or kind of like denigrating people's ideas. I feel like we kind of need to offer this opportunity to understand that like I said, you and I come from very different areas. Like, I didn't even know six figures was a thing. And you were like, I got to do this or else this is going to happen. I'm going to make it happen. I think understanding all those things and as a community, we can kind of help each other where we're at. And the more people, you know, the more people you can say like, oh man, I know Susan, she's really struggling with this, but I know that Lindsay got over it. Let me see if I can connect them and they can talk about it and help each other. So more, I don't know, I guess more connections, more community that you can be a part of. Don't sit at home being all by yourself, like trying to do it alone.

Angry at home, bitter, resentful. Listen, you know what, Talking about that, I. Mandy, I don't know if you would agree, but I would say don't feel bad if your first thought when you see somebody like moving up is maybe a little bit of resentment or a little bit of, you know, jealousy or envy. I still feel, I just. Full disclosure, a few days ago, somebody sent me to a page of some coach and you know, since that's what I do for a living. Now. I felt fear because this person was good. I could tell immediately. And I felt a little bit of resentment. I don't know why. I'm just being fully transparent here. But you know what? I paid attention. I think the key thing is don't feel guilty or beat yourself up. If that's your first reaction, use that as a prompt. It's like, okay, let me journal on that. Why did that come up? And have an honest conversation with yourself or with a friend. And then I think it'll be easier to then celebrate them. Nothing good comes out of tearing people down, bringing your fellow crabs down. But I think not only do good things happen to them if you build them up, but also you build yourself up too. I know that sounds really corny, but it's so true. I think you win as well. Right?

Yeah, I totally agree. And I know this sounds silly. It may be like for me, I'm not a very woo woo person, but I very much believe that. And I have seen that. The help that I give, I get so much more back from that. The more people I have helped, the more people I've talked to about XYZ subjects, the more people I've interacted with. That all comes back. This is something I stress a lot with my students. The more freelance writers and the more people you connect with on LinkedIn, it's a lot easier to make friends, to get leads, to get people who know your business to actually have all of this stuff come in and referrals, that stuff all like, pays itself back. And I always feel like the more kindness and the more stuff you can put out where you're helping other people, that always comes back. And like I said, I'm not very woo woo, but I think it just, I don't know, it's just kind of this like, nice cycle that happens where the more seeds, like friend seeds or like kindness seeds you plant, those things all bloom and then you get to enjoy all the flowers kind of thing.

Absolutely. And it comes back in one thing to keep in mind. Not necessarily from that person. In fact, it rarely does. Yeah, it comes back from places and people and sources you would have never expected, but it always comes back. It's all energy. You know, we're putting out good energy, good vibes out there. I'll do the woo woo for you, Mandy. So you put good energy out there, good energy comes back, you know, not necessarily immediately or from that source, but it always does. So I think that's very sound advice. Maybe a good place to kind of wrap up. Is there anything we didn't talk about that you feel is maybe we left out or a point you really want to stress here? As we wrap up, I wrote some.

Notes to make sure I didn't miss anything. So I think a lot of the things we covered just in our general conversation. I mean, the example that I was going to give, we basically talked about anyways. And my personal grudge against Henry Murger for the Starving Artists idea. Yeah. But I think that's kind of it. It's basically like I would just want to leave with the idea that one of the last things I think that really helps just the community is to, like, help newer writers, like helping the new generation or the people coming up. Like, that's like a generational. Like, it keeps going. So, like, for me, I had Ed Gandia and Carol, but, like, now it's like writers rates are even higher than when I started. And so if we can keep kind of mentoring and talking and helping other writers coming up, that just keeps rippling down the effects of other writers coming up in other generations.

I like that. Very well said. Well, Mandy, where can I send people to learn more about you, your ideas, and where can they connect with you?

Sure. So I have a few. Do you want me to mention them all or just pick, like, whatever you.

Think is most helpful go whole hog.

Okay. So I have a free pricing guide. So that's mandiallis.com pricingguide and I used to use Ed Gandia's, but then I decided that Ed Gandia stopped updating his OR at some point. And I was like, someone's got to take the flag. Someone's got to take the torch here. So I decided to do that. So I have a pricing guide@mandialis.com pricingguide I also have a course called Freelance Writer Wealth Lab. And if you go to mandiallis.com course, you can check that out. If you ever have any questions or want to hop on and hang out, I do a live stream every Friday at 12pm Central on YouTube. And if you just go to mandialis.com live, you can hang out. I do a new topic every week and I answer all the questions.

Oh, very cool. All right. I hadn't really seen that before, so I may have to pop in one day and say, hi.

Oh, my gosh, we would love to have you. I have like 10 or so students that hang out. But yeah, we would love to have you come hang out and be part of that.

Super cool. I love the idea. Mandy, thank you so much. This is a fascinating topic, and until you brought it to my attention, I thought, well, I've seen some of this, but I had no idea that it was so prevalent, and I think it's important that we address it. So thank you for not just addressing it, but for offering some advice and solutions to make this community better and stronger so we can all benefit.

Yeah. And thank you for having me on. Like I said, I'm a longtime listener, and I love your stuff. I've followed you forever.

Well, that's it for today. I hope you enjoyed the episode. And just a quick reminder to grab your free copy of my latest book, earn more and less.