Welcome to the premiere of the Better Biz Academy podcast with Laura Pennington! Laura is a wildly successful freelance writer who creates content for a variety of clients, including entrepreneurs, small business owners, life coaches and law firms. She is also the owner of Six Figure Writing Secrets, a platform through which she teaches new and emerging freelancers how to build and grow their businesses.
In 2012, Laura left a teaching career to pursue freelance writing full-time. In just 18 months, she established a six-figure freelance writing business. She is passionate about teaching others how to skip the trial-and-error stage and fast track their careers in freelance writing. On this episode, Laura covers the benefits of pursuing a freelance writing career and outlines the three things you must have to get started.
Key Takeaways
Don’t fall for the myth that it’s too much work to get started
- There are no startup costs
- You only need a computer, your brain, and an internet connection
- While 80% of new businesses fail within the first year, freelance writing is low risk but has a high potential reward
Another benefit of pursuing freelance writing is that it fits in well with other responsibilities
- When you work is up to you
Laura’s 3 Non-Negotiables for Landing Clients
- Quality writing samples
- Clients will overlook lack of referrals and testimonials if you have killer writing samples
- Determine the niche/industry you want to pursue and research what others are doing in that field
- Consume as many free resources as you can
- Pitch
- Don’t focus entirely on yourself
- Discuss what you can do to help the client reach their goals
- Don’t overwhelm the potential client with too much information
- Willingness to put yourself out there
- You will hear no and/or get no response a lot
- Don’t take rejection personally
Laura’s advice for presenting yourself as a competent professional
- Don’t present work with grammar or spelling errors; clients will write you off entirely
Resources
Connect with Laura Pennington