Deliberate Freelancer

Today’s guest is Portia Wofford, an award-winning nurse, writer and content marketer who lives in Alabama. After dedicating her nursing career to creating content and solutions for employers, Portia now runs a content marketing agency, The PW Agency.  Her agency empowers health and nursing brands to grow their communities through engaging content that connects and converts. As part of her mission to help nurses earn extra income, beyond the bedside, Portia teaches nurses how to get paid and published by showing them how to land their first paid freelance writing gig. Nurses can learn more about her courses and training packages at http://pwenterprises.co/nurses-who-write. Portia began freelancing in 2018, leaving her home health care nursing career. She created The PW Agency in 2020, so she could bring on more nurse writers and help more health care brands. Nurses are used to writing in a more academic style, so Portia started teaching nurses how to write blog posts for consumers or a health care audience. Po

Today’s guest is a freelance editor from Durham, N.C. Laura is the owner of Archer Editorial Services. She exclusively provides editing to university presses. She also develops and conducts training for editors and publishers.   As defined by the Success Alliance, mastermind groups offer a combination of brainstorming, education, peer accountability and support to sharpen your business and personal skills. A mastermind group helps you and your group members achieve success. Members challenge each other to set strong goals and, more importantly, to accomplish them.   A mastermind group is not a class, group coaching, mentoring or networking, although it can have aspects of each of those things.   Laura became a certified life coach several years ago, which is where she was introduced to mastermind groups. Her mastermind group, called The Quad, started organically via a Facebook chat when she connected with several cool people she kept meeting at conferences. She later realized her group had been functioning li

In today’s episode, writer Treasa Edmond walks us through several client scenarios many of us struggle with—scope creep, treating us like an employee, not paying us on time—and gives us the script for what to say and how to say it. This episode is like Treasa is handing us all templates on great client management.   Treasa is the owner of Edmond Editing and Writing. She is a ghostwriter and content creator in Missouri. She gets straight A’s for knowing how to communicate with clients—as Melanie witnessed in a writers’ Facebook group. So, she’s here today to teach us her wisdom. In addition, Treasa is currently writing a book about client management and how to have these tough conversations, so Deliberate Freelancer will keep you posted on her book, which may be published within the next year or so.   Is the customer (or client) always right? Treasa learned from her business owner parents the importance of standing up for your business. She combines customer service with client management.   A problem Treasa s

The Center for Independent Journalists, aka The CIJ, is a new organization—launched in September 2021—to provide advocacy, education and support to freelance journalists of color and those from other underrepresented groups in the media. Programming is open to anyone, and white journalists can also join the organization.   It’s open to all freelance journalists, not only writers. Currently, membership for the first year is included when you register for The CIJ’s March 11–12 virtual conference. The CIJ has received grants to support the organization and continues to explore other revenue models that won’t require higher registration fees.   CIJ Co-founder Katherine Reynolds Lewis lives in the DC area and is an award-winning journalist and author who writes about education, equity, mental health, parenting, science and social justice for publications including The Atlantic, The New York Times, Parents and The Washington Post. Katherine’s 2015 story on the school-to-prison pipeline became Mother Jones’ most-rea

Atlas Katari is the owner of Katari Creative, a B2B organic content marketing agency focused primarily on LinkedIn marketing with some SEO and content creation.   Atlas is a self-described “LinkedIn nerd” and walks us through the latest LinkedIn offerings and how to best use LinkedIn for our businesses. They say that LinkedIn has an incredible organic reach you can use to promote your content.   So many people have only posted their profile on LinkedIn (ages ago) and haven’t looked at it much since. LinkedIn has changed a lot in recent years and offers a lot of new services.   LinkedIn is focusing heavily on creators these days so it’s a great way to show and practice your writing chops, talking about what you know and what you love.   In 2021, LinkedIn rolled out several new services that are a part of its free tier. LinkedIn introduced newsletters for users to create and now has “creator mode,” which allows you to highlight on your profile that you are a creator, choose topics to display in your profile as

Today’s show is all about how I’m feeling right now—that blah feeling of languishing. If you feel like that too, or are dealing with any mental health challenges right now, please listen to this episode and then join us in the Deliberate Freelancer Facebook group, where we’ll be talking about this and solutions that might help each of us. Resources: Join the Deliberate Freelancer Facebook group. Support Deliberate Freelancer at Buy Me a Coffee. Subscribe to the Deliberate Freelancer newsletter. New York Times article: “There’s a Name for the Blah You’re Feeling: It’s Called Languishing” Psychology Today article: “COVID Left Us Languishing. Here’s Why We Should Care” Episode #52 of Deliberate Freelancer: Embracing Self-Care without Guilt, with Acupuncturist Rachel Brumberger Episode #48 of Deliberate Freelancer: How to Cope with Coronavirus Anxiety, with Therapist Mira Dineen Episode #90 of Deliberate Freelancer: Coping with One Year of COVID-19 Lockdown, with Therapist Emily Derouin Episode #70 of Delibera

Today’s guest is Molly Rose Speed, founder of Virtual Assistant Management, which provides trusted virtual assistant (VA) solutions and flawless tech execution for busy entrepreneurs. Molly Rose is the go-to professional for some of the most successful entrepreneurs in the speaker/author and content creator industry. She is also an awarded military spouse and solo world traveler who believes in creating a career and a life that allows you to do more of what you love. Molly’s company trains and places virtual assistants, the majority of whom are military spouses. It’s time to consider hiring a VA when you are sacrificing income because you’re spending time on lower-billable or unpaid work such as administrative tasks. It’s also important to spend time working ON your business (building and improving your business), not just IN your business (client work). Also, keep note of your energy level. Are you exhausted trying to do everything yourself? Are you dreading each work day—on a business you created for yourse

On today’s show, I talk about my word (phrase) of the year and what I’m hoping to do in 2022. Then, I talk about the importance of habit formation and give several strategies to build better habits.   As I begin to work on developing better habits this year, I want to point out that if you try to introduce too much change into your daily life, you’re setting yourself up for failure. Humans are not great at reorganizing their entire day all at once. We have to start small (so don’t make 10 New Year’s resolutions and expect success).   You know those people who talk about willpower? Well, willpower is a crock. Willpower does not often get you to where you want to go. It’s habit formation that gets you to your goals, and willpower only causes most of us to feel like failures.   Gretchen Rubin, author of “The Happiness Project” and co-host of the Happier podcast, developed a concept and wrote a book about it a few years ago called “The Four Tendencies.” This framework is based on how a person meets inner and oute

FACEBOOK UPDATE: The Deliberate Freelancer Facebook group is now live! Please join at www.facebook.com/groups/deliberatefreelancer. In today’s episode, I look back at my time tracking for 2021’s Q4 briefly and then I dive into analyzing the entire year. At the end, I share some questions that can help you evaluate last year and plan for this year. My average weekly time in Q4 was similar to the previous quarters. I was really proud of myself that I stuck to my “absolutely no work” plan Dec. 23-Jan. 3. And I took at a four-week podcast hiatus. All of that was restorative and rejuvenated my creativity. The biggest surprise for me was I earned more money last year than I ever had in the past—by a wide margin! I do track my money each month, but I wasn’t really adding up those monthly figures to see what I was making for the year. While I’m thrilled with how much I earned last year, I’m not sure it’s sustainable. That’s not just pessimism talking. Two big projects I landed in 2020 continued into 2021, but ended o

This episode is all about books! And it’s the last episode of the year. My next episode will be January 6, 2022. Happy holidays! As of December 5, I read 51 books this year. I will likely finish book #52 this week, but I probably won’t hit my goal of 60 books in 2021, which is OK. I set a goal just because I have fun tracking my books along the way. In this week’s episode, I rank my top 10 books of the year — all were published in 2021. I then give you two extras that I loved this year that were published in 2020. I also mention a few other 2021 books that I haven’t read and that don’t seem like my cup of tea but that you might want to check out. And, I mention a few 2021 books that I really want to read but haven’t gotten to yet. Then I finish up by listing a few 2022 books that I’m looking forward to. Listen to the episode to hear my top books of the year in ranked order — what will be my #1?! However, all of the books I mentioned in this episode are in the list below.   Fiction Writers & Lovers by Lily

On today’s episode, Ashlee Sang talks about how you can work with purpose-driven solopreneurs and service providers. She also explains how you can base everything you do in your freelance businesses around a set of core values—and how that will help you make decisions, find the right clients and grow your business. Ashlee lives in Central Illinois. She owns Ashlee Sang Consulting, where she works with visionary founders who want to grow their impact and their business in a way that’s rooted in values and propelled by purpose. Before doing brand messaging strategy and consulting, she worked with a variety of nonprofit organizations, including a human rights education non-governmental organization (NGO) in Senegal and a local branch of Habitat for Humanity. The common thread has been sharing messages that matter. Ashlee began working with purpose-driven founders after learning about the conscious consumerism movement. She wants to work with businesses that have a mission and impact in the world. Ashlee always k

On today’s episode, I’m leaning in to the theme of the Thanksgiving holiday here in the U.S. and sharing seven things I am thankful for in my business. Beyond just telling you about these things, I’m sharing why I’m thankful and asking questions to you that I hope will prompt you to think about how to improve your business life. Thinking about my business this way got me thinking about how I should be building a joyful business in all things that I do. So, as I go through my list, I hope it helps you think about things you are thankful for and perhaps want to change moving forward so you can build a more joyful business.   #1. Complete freedom. When I decided to go freelance, I looked forward to being my own boss more than anything, but I didn’t fully grasp the complete freedom I would have as a freelancer. Work is still work. But, I have a lot of control over my business—who I work with, when I work, how I work, where I work and what I work on. I worry that some freelancers haven’t fully embraced this freedo

On today’s show, I want to talk about simplicity and how to pare down your network. I talk a lot about building business relationships, which is a different way of considering how to build your network. Former podcast guest Anna Hetzel talked about this also, how to build community intentionally. By definition, a community will be smaller than a network. A network is often vast and you can’t make personal connections with everyone in your network. A community should be made up of people you actually know and who are invested in your success—and you are invested in theirs. There have been times in my freelance journey where that large network is overwhelming. I’ve done things related to that network that are exhausting or a waste of time. So, as my business became more successful, I saw what was helpful and were I wanted to invest. I started to intentionally set the rest of it aside. And every now and again, after I try new things and new groups and new resources, I have to remind myself again to pare back. He

Today’s guest is Danna Lorch from Brookline, Massachusetts. Danna has been a freelance writer for 11 years, mostly focusing on journalism. She has covered the visual arts, design, architecture, the trades and parenting. She has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, Architectural Digest and many other publications. Before becoming a writer, she managed nonprofits in the Middle East and Africa. Then, she covered the emerging art scene in the United Arab Emirates for seven years before “crash landing” back in the U.S. for health reasons, with her husband and young son. Most recently, Danna pivoted to working for higher education clients and now does about 30% journalism, 70% higher ed. About four years ago, Danna’s husband became really sick and they had to quickly leave their home in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, to move to the U.S. so he could get the treatment he needed. (He is now stable but with some lingering health issues.) Soon after, Danna discovered she had an autoimmune disorder. All of

It’s time for my third quarter roundup. Each quarter I review and analyze my time tracking, hours worked, money earned and client mix. My hours in Q3 were similar to Q2. I worked an average of 28 hours a week in Q2 and an average of 27 hours a week in Q3 when you take out my vacation. However, I made less money, so I have to analyze that a bit more. Nothing like time tracking to show you when you are not committing to being unplugged during a vacation. I really wanted to take a full week or two off from work when I visited my parents at the end of August. But, like so many times before, I had a few projects I had to finish or things I had to check in with. Sometimes it’s just easier to finish up a couple of projects when I’m at my parents’ house, rather than stress myself out by finishing them before my trip or waiting until after. So, while visiting my parents for 11 days, I worked for three of those days. During my last week there, I only worked for four hours. Then, when I returned home, I took off the ent

I’m replaying this January 2021 episode to hopefully motivate you, inspire you and encourage you to do some of these things if you haven’t already yet this year. The year is starting to wind down, incredibly enough, so let’s embrace these concepts and set up our businesses for success now. This episode might also be a good reminder of how to think like a business owner and how now to take time to improve your business. This episode goes through seven areas that I would love for you to improve upon, if you haven’t already. They are: 1. Embrace a business owner mindset This idea is what this podcast is based on. Think of yourself as a freelance business owner and all that that entails. Words matter, and the words you tell yourself and others can help to change your mindset. 2. Raise your rates The pandemic has been a hard year economically too, so raising rates for all clients might not be doable. But there are some clients who fared well, and it may be time to raise your rates. It’s certainly time to raise you

Today’s guest is Emma Siemasko, the founder of Stories By Us, a content marketing business. Emma, who lives in San Jose, California, also offers freelance writing coach and is co-host of the Freelance Writing Coach podcast.  Emma has been a solopreneur for six years. She is an expert on writing case studies to promote our businesses. She created the DIY Case Study Kit and has created dozens of case studies and customer stories for tech companies and solopreneurs. Emma’s clients include Figma, Grammarly and Salesforce. A case study is “the story of a customer’s transformation because they used your product or services.” Case studies go beyond testimonials and LinkedIn recommendations. Case studies allow you to get more specific about what it was like to work with you, plus you can share results. Melanie thinks of case studies as being sprinkled around solopreneurs’ websites. But there are several ways you can use case studies. Case studies can be emailed as pdfs as part of your sales pitch or during onboarding

Today’s show is all about the benefits of time tracking. But it’s not about my experience today. Instead, five Deliberate Freelancer listeners sent in audio files about their time-tracking experiences and explained the various ways time tracking has helped their freelance business. Information is power. I believe if you know how you’re really spending your time—rather than making assumptions or incorrectly guessing—you can begin to figure out where you want to make changes and make better use of your time. I hope you find my guests’ tips helpful today. And thank you to these lovely guests and listeners for participating!   Biz Bite: Download potential clients’ lead magnets. The Bookshelf: “What Could Be Saved” by Liese O’Halloran Schwarz   Resources: Subscribe to the Deliberate Freelancer newsletter. Episode #10 of Deliberate Freelancer: Think Like a Marketer to Grow Your Business, with Megy Karydes Episode #91 of Deliberate Freelancer: All Things Pricing: Project Rates, Day Rates, Retainers and More, with

Today’s guest is Courtney Chaal. Courtney is an American now living in Vancouver in Canada. Courtney helps creatives, coaches and consultants stop being broke and start getting more clients by creating an irresistible service that they can eventually turn into a scalable offer. End goal? Freedom! Courtney is a copywriter turned business coach obsessed with making complex concepts (like business models and sales copy) simple and tangible to help regular people get big results. Over the past 10 years, her business has evolved from her writing custom proposals to now launching digital products and programs, including her high-ticket coaching program, called Yay for 100K. Courtney was diagnosed in July 2020 with ADHD (attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder). Before her diagnosis, she was struggling with managing her business: “I was dropping a lot of balls; I thought I was really organized and I just kept forgetting things. I was struggling with feeling like I should be more on top of things than I was.” Some w

Today’s guest is Anna Hetzel, from Columbus, Ohio. Anna is the owner and founder of Strange Birds, a business they started five years ago in which they convert copywriting and strategy for websites and community design and strategy.   Anna works with service providers and entrepreneurs who are trying to expand their reach and figure out how to talk to their ideal clients and build more scalable offers through paid online communities.   Hear the fun story about how Anna named their business Strange Birds.   A lot of freelance advice is about how to grow your network. But Anna approached it differently. From day one, they approached it based on relationships: “I didn’t give two hoots about how many people I was connected to. What mattered to me was did I have good relationships I was connected to.”   The value of that relationship building showed up when the pandemic hit. Instead of having just a lot of names of people Anna had met, they had real relationships.   Melanie talks about how she hates the traditiona