#316: Quoting Higher Fees With Confidence

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 another episode of the High Income Business Writing Podcast, the number one podcast for business writers and copywriters who want to earn more and less time doing work they love for better clients. With well over 1 million downloads from listeners just like you across 101 countries, most of us became self employed because we wanted a higher level of freedom in our work and in our personal lives. We wanted to have more control over the kind of work we did, as one example, or whom we worked with, when we worked, how we worked, and how we balance work and personal responsibilities. But after growing their business for a number of years, I find that some writers start wondering if they should take their business in a different direction and start scaling their operation. Their motivation varies. Some choose to go in this direction because they see an opportunity to create a business that doesn't depend entirely on themselves. Or maybe they want to create an asset that could be sold off for a hefty profit in the future. Or they just love the creative challenge of building a business that leverages the talents of other people. Or perhaps, and this happens very often, it's simply because they had really good clients or maybe one huge client that they could no longer serve on their own. So they chose to grow their operation to serve those clients or that client's needs rather than risk losing the client to an agency. Now, we've talked a lot about scaling up your business a number of times on this show and in my newsletter. You'll find some of those discussions and articles throughout my website and I've even included links to some of those in the show notes. We've also interviewed others who have chosen this path. Today I'm talking with someone who's doing this right now. Her name is Jacqueline Schiff and she's the founder of podreacher, which is a content agency that's exclusively focused on helping B2B tech companies repurpose recorded content into articles, blog posts, white papers, ebooks, case studies, lead magnets, and other powerful content formats. But they deal with recorded content only, meaning recordings of webinars, sales conversations, customer interviews, podcasts, and so forth. One of the many things that I love about podreacher is, is their nuance focus. This is a very tightly niched agency focus on a very specific set of solutions for a very specific audience. And that right there is a recipe for success when executed well in this candid conversation. Jaclyn explains how she came up with the idea for podreacher, how she transitioned from solowriter to an agency model, her motivations for doing so, and how and why she's pivoted and evolved her company a number of times in a few short years. She talks about her biggest challenges and maybe most importantly, the biggest misconceptions writers have about scaling up. I think you're really going to enjoy this conversation. Even if you're not really particularly interested in scaling up your business. You're going to find a lot of insights and interesting ideas from Jacqueline. Hey, Jacqueline. Welcome. Great to have you here.

Hey, Ed, it's wonderful to be here. I mentioned earlier that I've been a longtime listener of your podcast and learned a lot from you, so it's really an honor to be here.

Oh, I am so glad you're here and I am excited about this conversation. We have a lot to cover. I want to start by asking you about your business today. We're going to talk a little bit about the journey, how you got here, but why don't you describe for us what it is you do today, what audiences you serve, and so forth.

Sure. So I run Pod Reacher, which is essentially these days, I describe it as a niche content agency. So we work with mostly B2B companies and repurpose content or what we like to call content transformation. We do content transformation projects. So we will take any kind of audio or video recording. It could be a podcast interview, much like this one, or it could be a webinar. It could be the recording of a conference presentation. Sometimes we even take something like a sales call and turn it into some kind of long form written content. So podcast interview to blog post, white paper or webinar to white paper, customer interview to case study. So we always do, you know, we require some kind of input from the client, which again is a recording. And then our editorial process is based on turning that recording into really high quality written content that people will use in their marketing and sales funnel.

Got it. So just by that description, I can tell that we're talking about way more than a transcript. You're talking about a high quality piece of content.

Exactly right. And we work from a transcript, but it's really about a lot of it's massaging the messaging from the transcript. You know, we are dealing with clients that have specific ideas about how they want to say things and how they want to position themselves. You know, I like to think of it as like one part journalism where you're conveying what was said in a conversation or a presentation. But then the other piece is kind of what we broadly call content marketing, which is really more about that positioning, thinking about audience. And how do you differentiate this? How is this piece of content going to draw readers and customers in for the organization that we're working with?

Got it. Yeah. So there's a lot that goes into this, the context essentially, that's super important. Let's talk a little bit about the journey here. I'm curious, when did you launch Pod Reacher and how did you come up with the idea for the business?

Yeah, so I started it towards the end of 2018, so it's been just over four years now at that point. I'd been a freelancer for about two years, so I'd been working for myself for two years. I'd always had a bit of the entrepreneurial itch. Like I'd previously started another company that I didn't quite have the, I think, drive to persevere with. But it was a good way to sort of get my feet wet and understand the right business and kind of what's required to really launch and bring something into the world and then make it a little bit sustainable. And so, you know, after two years of freelancing and I primarily call myself a content strategist, so a lot of marketing type writing, but also strategy work. And I noticed that people were asking for repurposing and I'm an avid podcast listener, have always been interested in the space. So I noticed it a lot with people asking for podcast interviews to be repurposed. And then I thought, huh, well that's interesting because I actually started my career in journalism and it's essentially journalism, right? You're taking an interview and extracting the main ideas, the key points, and turning it into an article that someone, once, that someone will read. And I thought that's really interesting. And it's also knowing and having done a lot of work like that, like it's not that easy to do. And especially like a lot of the people that were asking for it were, are businesses. They're not necessarily writers. So there's also an element of like, they know what they want, but there's a whole process that they're probably not like thinking about in order to get that like final written product. Long story short, I thought, you know, and this was before the pandemic, I thought recorded content is not going away. Podcasting's only going to get bigger. So I cold pitched a few clients that from the outside, I thought, hey, like, they could probably benefit from this, a couple of them were interested. I ended up working with, I'd say, two of them. And I was like, okay, I've validated a business idea here just for clarification.

Or whether you said cold pitch, but were these existing clients and you pitched them on a new idea, or were these prospects who'd never worked with you?

So these were prospects I'd never worked with except for one. One was someone I hadn't worked with actually, but I knew professionally.

Okay.

And so it was really just me looking from the outside and seeing that, you know. So when I started this, again, it was very podcast centric. I've since moved away from that, even though we still have, pardon the name. And yeah, just looking at it and thinking, huh, they could probably benefit from this, like probably a marketing benefit that they haven't thought about. But. So that was really the start of it. I started this business also very deliberately and with the idea of it wanting to be a business and, you know, not like a freelance business. That was a shift I was looking to make. And so I'm trying to think if I even fulfilled like the first initial client orders. I don't think so. I think I started with at least one or two other writers. And so I was really like kind of focused in more of a business owner role than the freelancer role.

And when you. So you landed these couple of clients, it sounds like something sparked there that you knew that you were onto something. When would you say you had the idea truly validated? Was it at that point or was it later?

So from reading and learning about business, I had a sense that. So let's say the initial outreach I did was to, I think about 10 people. And I thought, all right, if I actually can end up working with one person based on reaching out to 10. And again, this is cold. Like I didn't have a ton of information. And also I think the idea was, to be perfectly honest, kind of half baked, the idea of repurposing content and where it fits and who would really want to do this and who would spend money on this also. So I thought if someone will pay me money, if one person will pay me money, I validated that because there's gotta be other people who would do that if like 10 is a very small sample size. So when ultimately I ended up working with two of those, I thought, all right, I have something here and it's at least a foundation to build on.

Got it. It makes sense. So you had. You started with podcast, I guess you mentioned a minute ago, You've since kind of moved away or kind of. That has evolved a little bit. I'm curious. So what's been the focus more recently?

So the focus is more on a type of client rather than the medium that they're using. And the Client is a B2B tech company. We work with sort of a range. So one of the insights there is the podcasting space. I mean, I see it as very analogous to blogging. You've got someone who's a hobby blogger, and then you've got organizations that are blogging for a specific, you know, to achieve specific marketing goals. You've got people in media who are blogging. There's just like a range. And so with podcasts, at first I was really just. I don't think I had a clear vision of like, who is the kind of podcaster that would want this and why. Quickly I realized, okay, I can't be working with people that are trying to monetize their podcast because they probably don't have a budget to spend on creating high quality content that is developed from the podcast. So that was a really early insight. And it's just evolved. As we've worked with different clients over the years, I sort of looked at the client engagements that I liked the most. I looked at people that have budget to spend and that are willing to invest in high quality content. And so it sort of very naturally moved in the direction of B2B SaaS. I also noticed that when I was talking to people and selling the service, I really liked having conversations with marketers, quite honestly, more than podcast host. Because like a lot of times the conversation I'm having with a marketer is they understand the value of repurposed content and they have some sense of what it could take to do well. And I just have to have a conversation that shows why we are the best people to do it for them. That's a very different conversation than a podcast host who might not be a marketer is maybe trying to monetize their show, wants to grow their listenership, and they're going to say, well, how is repurposing my podcast going to like, give me more listeners, drive more downloads? Right? And I believe it will. But that's a very, you know, there's like 10 steps there. Whereas talking to that marketer, it's just a much more succinct conversation. The switch from podcasting is that clients started asking us to do different types of recordings. And I thought, oh well, why are we, like, so podcast focused? These types of companies Especially are creating tons of webinars. And they're putting a lot of effort into the webinars. And they also, there's this consistent belief, like, I should be doing a lot more with this. And most of them really, like, don't have the time and bandwidth for various reasons. And so I was like, this is. It's a very similar process for us. And in some cases, there's more alignment between the webinar content, possibly, and the type of written content that they're in need of. And so that kind of explains that evolution. But let me.

I love that. Yeah, no, that made perfect sense. And I can see how at first you were really excited about this idea. Oh, my gosh. Of 2 out of 10. And there's so many tens of thousands of podcasts. You know, this is a huge market, and it's true. But this is why it's so important to go ahead and just keep moving in that direction and let the market teach you and show you the way. And what I'm hearing from you is you have paid careful attention to what feedback you're getting, what's working and not working, indirect feedback in many cases. And you have pivoted to a point where now what I'm hearing is this is a very narrowly niche business. You're essentially working with B2B SaaS companies to repurpose recorded content. It could be podcasts, but in many cases it's things such as webinars or sales calls or customer interviews. And they know they're problem aware. They know they have this problem of, we got this great content. What do we do with it? They're not solution aware. You're bringing in a solution. I'm curious, how much do you get involved, especially with your strategy background, how much do you get involved in terms of content strategy and offering that as part of your solution?

Great question. Not very involved. And so. And that is an area of evolution I see for the agency. So my focus has been like, I would like podreacher to be the service provider that creates the best writing based on repurposed content. Like, I want us to be the category leader in that. I feel like I've spent four years essentially, like, refining that, getting systems and operations to support that. But the strategy has really had to come from the client to some degree. We introduced the start of strategy last year with clients that we currently work with. But it's like what I would call strategy lite. So what we do is clients, you know, send us a webinar, because I. And this again, Was like, based on an observation from talking to clients and like, where are the friction points? Right. A lot of times I'd be on the phone with someone that seemed really interested. And the problem was, okay, we don't know what to repurpose first. Or I have this great webinar. Yes, it could be a blog post, but I bet it could be so much else. So we started saying to clients, send us these super valuable webinars that you have and we'll create what we call a content menu. So we'll actually go through and review the webinar and identify all the opportunities that we see. And we're well positioned to do that because, you know, this is all we do all day, every day. So we have a really good sense, like, could this and should this be a blog post series? Or do you really want to do one blog post and then like put a lot of effort into creating a high value lead magnet or three lead magnets based on whatever the recording is. So we're making a recommendation and then the client ultimately selects the content and then we do the writing and editing and deliver it that way. I'd like to do more strategy. And I see strategy as, to a degree, a guardrail against AI or that's, you know, it's an interesting way of wording it. But like, because my feelings about AI, as I'm sure a lot of people listening, fluctuate daily. You know, some days I'm like, I'm a little panicked and other days I'm, I'm excited because I see the efficiency possibility. But I think, and I do think it's a matter of time before it's more folded into our process. I think offering that strategy and helping people to think through smarter ways of doing more with their content and then once they have more content, what do they do with it? I think is the next step. And again adds more value and makes us less replaceable by a tool. But that means also adding a whole like, account management feature. And we don't really have like, or adding a whole account management function. And we don't really have that yet. I'm the account management.

Got it. Okay. No, but I like the way you're thinking about it. And I'm curious, are you charging? That's a separate engagement, right? That's a separate deliverable.

Yeah. So the content menus we actually don't charge for. I experimented with this.

Okay.

I charge for it initially. And then I realized, you know what, this, especially with the types of conversions that we were seeing from it and it also the conversion rate was high, but we were working with clients that we already worked with, so that's something to consider. But also it was helping increase like the average order value. So people were spending more and based on just like one recording. So started seeing this more as a sales enablement tool. And so like, you know, a lot of agencies will do content audits or something like that. And it's sort of like a free get your foot in the door. And then once this is all in front of them and they've got these like detailed outlines of everything it could be, and all they have to do is make a choice, it removes so much friction from the process. And so that's sort of where the money comes down the road. So it's a free service.

Got it. Okay. And I do agree with you, by the way, on the whole AI thing it's offering. We're really in the business of expertise. Right. So offering your expertise is really the killer app. I mean, that is what will always separate you from AI. I say always, at least, you know, in our lifetimes is what I'm hoping.

Or at least think about this in terms of the next three to five years. I don't try to project further.

I hear you. You know, just like the Navy seals. I read a couple books about them. I said, look, during training and missions, we're just trying to get to lunch. Like, we're just trying to get like midday and then from midday to mid afternoon, mid afternoon to the evening. Yeah, so, yeah, I hear you. So I'm curious about business development. What is the biggest source of clients for you today?

So the last few years, I think because I had some initial success with that cold outreach, I've leaned on that a lot in the last two years, actually worked with a freelancer who does sort of the initial outreach for me. So because I know, like, I have a sense of who we're targeting and you know, what their role is, what size the company is, I've sort of provided that information to them. They send an initial outreach email and then if the person is in and they'll do some follow up, if the person's interested, they will then put them in touch with me and then I will schedule a call or sometimes we email a bit back and forth and that's worked really well. So that's probably been the main thing and then the rest is word of mouth. And I did lump like podcast appearances into that. So I've done a little bit where I've been on podcasts should do more. And so some of our best clients have come in that way or otherwise just referred to from current clients or other contacts or people that know us for one reason or another.

Okay, very cool. And then that's neat to see that you've continued the cold outreach. I'm curious not to get into the weeds there, but does your. The freelancer who sends these out, do they customize them a little bit, or is it kind of the same email for everybody?

It's slightly custom. Like, it's not. I don't think it's as custom to the specific organization, but the way it's worded. And I've gotten several compliments on the email. So I think for sort of template email, it does the job that it needs to do. You know, I think the way I think about those emails is it shouldn't feel like a disturbance to anyone. And for the people that, like, have thought about this, you know, are actively looking for a service provider to do this, it should catch their eye quickly. I think it does that without needing to come across as. Without needing to be super personal and be like, I see you've done 10 webinars. On this topic. That's not needed to catch their eye.

I'm not surprised, because I think the more innovative, the more into being an idea that you're presenting to a prospect, the more you can get away with a template. Okay, so the newer the idea, the newer the concept. Yeah, the more you get away with just sending almost the same thing to everybody, I found. But the more kind of run of the mill every day. You know, I write case studies and white papers, like that kind of message, then you need to be more customized because the idea is not new.

I agree with that. And I think also. So if you're an individual who's sending this and your goal is to get a foot in the door, like as an individual writer or whatever, I think that probably also needs to be more personalized. Like, you need to show more evidence that you've done research about them.

Yes, agreed.

Yeah.

Okay, Switching gears a little bit. So we talked about business development. I want to talk a little bit about operations. Okay. Obviously you're not the only person here doing all this work. So give us a sense first of kind of where you are, whatever you feel comfortable sharing in terms of size. So we get an idea of or what kind of scale we're talking about, and then give us an idea of what your team looks like.

Yeah. So when you say size, you mean like the client side?

Yeah, clients in terms of, you know, number of projects you're delivering per month, I just. For somebody listening in who doesn't know, are we talking about you got two or three clients you do this for, or are we talking about 2, 300 or somewhere in between?

Yeah. So actually towards the end of last year, I sort of put together like, no, look back on the year, high level, these were our numbers and all of that. So I think last year we worked with. It's really not last year. It's probably over the last three years we've worked with about 50 clients. I would say that at any given time we're probably actively working with 15 to 20 clients. And so why I say active is because we actually don't do any monthly retainers. I started the business like just wanting that because a lot of the advice you see is like, get people on retainer, do subscriptions, all this stuff. But for the kind of content that we are doing, it actually, like, it just doesn't make sense. So like, for some clients, we'll do a ton of work with them over two to three months and then we might not hear from them for four months because people will create a certain number of webinars per quarter or they'll have their executive do a podcast tour and then they'll want to send several of those to us. So it truly is more episodic. And I'm just a big believer of not like, you know, like it just didn't fit a monthly model. And I never want to force people to work in a way that just doesn't make sense and isn't going to be sustainable. So when I say like 20 actively, that means like they're sending us work at least a couple times a month. So I think that answers the question.

On, yeah, 15 to 20. At any given time you're working with 15 to 20 clients. That's a lot, right? So each of them maybe one or two projects. So there's a lot going on. So what kind of team are we talking about then? Behind the scenes?

So the team is all contractors. I'm technically the only full time employee in the business. We have a writing team of about 20 to 25 writers. So these are like writers that are in our network that have gone through our process, that we've onboarded, we've sent materials to, we've shown this is how we do things. You know, probably like four to five of those writers I keep really busy. And they're getting 20 to 40 hours sometimes of work a week from Podreacher the rest it's much more. Yeah, the rest is much more project based, you know. So like they might get anywhere from two to five projects from us per month. I have a managing editor, Kira Hinkle who is excellent. She really runs a lot of the day to day in terms of giving assignments. She also does a lot of like kind of liaising with clients when we have questions to really like figure stuff out. So she's the managing editor. We have an about. We have three other editors that we work with on a pretty consistent basis and then we have essentially a client success project manager that we call the editorial administrator and that's pretty much the team that's impressive.

What is your role? So what would you say you spend most of your time doing?

Laughing because was just talking to someone about office space and so I got like a flashback of what would you say you do here?

That's right, the movie. Yeah, Office space.

Yeah, that's a great.

Other than writing TPS reports every Monday morning.

There you go. So what else, what would you say you do here? So I still do some editing. In fact we're really like we've kind of hit editing capacity so I'm doing more editing than I would prefer but so I do a little bit of editing but I mostly focus on sales, marketing and what I'd say is like account management. So again if something comes up or like a client wants to start a new project, they're going to come to me. I'm going to like kind of figure out the scope and get that started and then sales, you know, because we work so episodically and people buy in packages rather than monthly really have to have a good pipeline. And so that's just an important part of keeping the business healthy. And so yes, I spend a lot of my time on that Makes sense it.

What would you say your biggest strength is in the business? Like what is your ME capability? Is there an area where you know, okay, this is where my time is best spent invested?

That's a good question. So I really, I do like doing sales and I think especially now that I've gotten comfortable with it, more comfortable with it, you know, I'm able to have these conversations where the outcome isn't that there's a transaction but it's given me a lot of information for like what is the work we could do with them down the road. And also just having these conversations gives me a lot of information about how to develop the service and that's something I really like thinking about. I think it's a fairly unique type of content agency. I want it to be as useful as possible for people, and I want us to be as easy to work with as possible. I don't think that's always the case with agencies, so that's definitely a side of the business I gravitate towards. The other piece that I really like thinking about but don't always do as much, is what I would call, like, product innovation. So we get something and we get a recording from a client, and there's like a different way to do this, and it can maybe be like a new thing that we offer to other clients. I like to sort of know what people are doing. I think I've always liked being a trend spotter. You know, Like, I just. I pick up on ideas from the marketplace and like to think, okay, how do we incorporate that and how can we give it our own spin?

I like that. You're a very creative person. I can tell. And you got entrepreneurship running through your veins.

I definitely. It's something that's always been very core to me. Like, there's that quote about. I'm totally going to butcher the quote, and I hate when people do this, but basically, like, how sort of when you die and you, like, you go to the grave with the song still in you.

Oh, yes.

And it's.

I don't remember the exact quote either. Yeah.

But I'm saying if I wouldn't have started some sort of business, the song would always be in me. Like, it's really a thing I've wanted to do. And just also learning about the process of creating a business and entrepreneurship and how it's really. Like so much of it is not about you. It is about having the ability to respond to the market and what the market wants and where it's pushing you from an outsider looking in, you know, and people that I've known sort of along the way, where it hasn't worked. I think I understand this. I mean, I'm not immune to it. It's very easy to get attached to your own ideas and the way you think things should be done. But I think a good entrepreneur is able to create some distance there. So you're able to drive a vision, but realize this isn't a vision that I totally own on some level.

This is great. And I can tell that you learned so much through this experience because you don't get to where you are if you're not resilient and creative and willing to pivot and evolve. So kudos to you.

It's Interesting you mentioned the word creative. Because I really used to think of myself that way and I do think I'm a creative thinker. But if I look at how I spend my time, it's not really on a lot of creative pursuit. And a lot of what honestly drains me from the business is the operations and the systems. And it's, you know, it's something I've chosen, wanted to sort of rise to. And I think you have to, like, if you run a business, like, you just have to find a way to kind of love this or at least pay attention to it. But that's, to me, feels so in opposition to creativity that I feel like I do sort of fantasize. I know I said I don't really think much more beyond five years, and I don't. But, like, one day, like doing a more creative project.

Well, I'm switching gears a little bit again. I'm going back to operations and specifically writers and your managing editors. Where have you had luck finding good people? Has there been a particular source or has it been word of mouth or is it all over the place?

No. So I think the hardest thing in the world is hiring writers because, you know, anyone can say they're a writer or decide to market themselves and position themselves as a writer, right? And like, we can all type words on a keyboard. But there's so much more that goes into being a professional writer. It's also been amazing for me to be like, on the other side of this and just see what differentiates people and how just a little bit of professionalism goes such a long way when you're a freelance writer. But in terms of where, I mean, there isn't really one place. We periodically put out posts for this writing gig. We do ask for a brief unpaid test. I was very opposed to that when I first started this because I know, you know, I got to a certain point as a freelance writer where I wouldn't have done an unpaid test, but when I was younger, I definitely did few unpaid tests. And for the level of writer, typically that is going to be the best fit for us. They're willing to do that. So I think this is a roundabout way of asking for answering your question. There isn't one place, but we have a process around this that has helped us identify talented people. So it starts with the application, which isn't super extensive because we are asking people to do an unpaid test. And then if they get through that screening, we ask people to do a paid test. And sometimes there's quite a mismatch between the unpaid and paid test and even sometimes people will get through all of that and they really fall flat on the first project we give them. And so, you know, I think if there's a secret sauce to hiring good writers, it's managing them on an ongoing basis.

What do you think? You guys do well in terms of managing the team and expectations.

So I have to give a lot of credit here to the managing editor. So Kira, actually. So she started working with me as a writer and she was new to her freelance writing career. She's done a lot of other things, including she has a teaching background. And so she personally has a passion and is just really good at creating onboarding materials, explaining stuff to people and instructional design. So she's really brought things a long way. Like, this was not an area I was good at. It wasn't something I wanted to spend a lot of time for. But it's critical, especially when you're working with people on a project basis. So that's helped a lot.

It's so important to have people in those roles who bring some of those talents that we just don't have. We can't be great at everything. So I'm glad you found someone who could be that hub right in your operation. I'm curious about where you're looking to take the business. What's your vision right now? Early 2023.

So it's something honestly, I'm working through quite a bit at the moment, in part, again, the introduction of ChatGPT last year really gave me pause and just made me like, I think, consider, like, what is the vision and how do we differentiate and leverage AI and what does that all look like? So I think that's something I'm still wrapping my head around, but the core vision really remains the same, which is to, like, be the best service provider doing repurposed content. I really think there's an art to doing that well. Something that I will often say in conversation with clients, and I notice that this really resonates, is this shouldn't be a regurgitation. Right. And again, to your point, it's not a transcript. So we're not repeating things. We're finding smart ways to take content from one format, which is audio or video, and optimize it for a different channel, which is text, and wherever that text is going to live. And obviously there's other people that do repurposing. There's a lot of content agencies that do it, but to my knowledge, there's few that it's the only thing they do so. And like, I just really believe in specialization if you want to get results. So that's the core vision and that isn't changing. Something I'm thinking a lot about is if it makes sense to change the name. Because we have POD in the name people and because I think we started there and a lot of initially where we were known was amongst podcasters. People assume it's a podcast company and you know, we're not, we're a content agency. The thing I'm also trying to lean into is we're really about taking the spoken word, which, especially for the companies that we work with, like that's where they're differentiating themselves because that's where the personality and the ideas really come in. And so leaning more into thought leadership, I think that's a bit of a disconnect in probably how we market ourselves, the name and everything. And so finding a way to pull that all together.

I like the way you're thinking about it. And you know, as we wrap up, I. I'm curious of your take on. On the following. I know I got a lot of listeners who are established, have done very well and they've been soloists. Right? They've done very well on their own. You are on your own. You did well. You created scaled up writing business. I think the image or the thinking is that wow can earn so much more. If I had a scaled up operation, what would you tell somebody who's looking to scale up their operation mainly because they want to earn more?

That's probably not going to happen. That's straight. So I think if your main goal is increasing your income, that's going to happen a lot more quickly and probably easily and with a lot fewer headaches if you just do it yourself. And maybe you bring in a virtual assistant or like a writing assistant or something like that. I think if you're thinking about scaling because you want something that is greater than yourself, like, that's gotta be the first question. Or like, do you have a desire to run the business? I really like writing, but I also really like doing all this other business stuff. And so this for me is an expression of that. I'm realizing that I'm figuring out like what it means to run and build a business. And it's something I really wanted to do. And if I didn't believe me, I would have quit early on. Because, you know, what I do say is I really like what I do 75% of the time, which I think is amazing. And I feel really lucky because I Don't think most people can say that about their work. But 25% of the time it is hard and it challenges me, you know, on a level that no real job has. You know, and I say, quote, unquote, real job, like when I was employed by someone else has challenged me. And because it's different, because ultimately, like, this is my responsibility, like I own it. Things don't, like, I've put a lot into it, I'm risking things. It's ultimately. So the level of responsibility is just really different than when you just have to answer to yourself or even when you have to answer to an employer. And also say candidly, Ed, I mean, my individual income, like, I made a lot more when I was a freelance writer and I knew would take time for me to sort of build my income back to that level. Honestly, it's taken longer than I would like. But for me, it's also like, it's about creating something that's greater than myself. And the fact that it's my creation and it can support me is very rewarding. But I don't think that's for everyone.

True. You just named a bunch of other reasons why you may want to do this. But what I'm hearing from you is, you know, don't do it just because of the income, because it could be a while before you're earning the same or more. And one thing you are doing is you're creating an asset. You're creating something that, you know, you could conceivably create a income generating business that doesn't require you there all the time. So. And I think you're moving in that direction is what I'm hearing. But that is a very balanced perspective he gave us. So thank you for that and thank you for coming on today. I mean, this has been so inspiring just to hear where you've come from, what you've built and what you're doing. And I know you're definitely going to inspire others to think a little bit more broadly about their business. Where can I send people who want to check you out, want to connect with you, or should I send them?

Thanks, Ed. Well, thank you for the opportunity. You know, like I said, I really learned a lot from you over the years and so it's been fun to chat here. So if they'd like to connect with me personally, LinkedIn, trying to be a little more active there, that's really the best place or otherwise. Podreacher.com you can check us out there.

Great. Well, thanks again. 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 in Less Time the Proven Mindset, Strategies and Actions to Prosper as a Freelance writer. You can get your free copy@b2b launcher.com or you you will also find the detail show notes to this in all my other episodes. Enjoy and have a great day.com or you will also find the detailed show notes to this and all my other episodes. Enjoy and have a great day.