The Wrinkly Writer - Mary Cameron
About this podcast episode…
Editor & SEO Copywriter Mary Cameron
Age doesn't matter.
Until it does.
Until you get the feeling people won't hire you anymore because you're too old.
For Mary, she was 58. From New Zealand, but having spent 30 years in Australia in 'normal' full time jobs.
Faced with ageism, she realised maybe it wasn't just that the interview panels didn't want her. Maybe she didn't want them anymore either. Maybe it was time for a change. To reinvent herself.
Someone suggested being a freelance copywriter. She didn't know what that was. But here are.
10 years later. 'The Wrinkly Writer'. Owning, literally as a business owner, her age.
In amongst the laughter you’ll hear:
- building long-term client relationships
- turning age to her advantage when mentor Kate Toon suggested her new business name
- continuous learning and passing on to the next generation
- her relocation to France, working as a freelancer in a different country with many clients in a different timezone
- finally achieving work life balance, prioritising her physical and mental health across her day and week
It's such a fun conversation. Full of the joy of life and work life.
Read a full transcript & get Links in the tabs.
More from MARY CAMERON
The Wrinkly Writer website
Mary on LinkedIn
Kate Toon episode of Being Freelance Podcast
Kate Toon Q&A episode (The full video in the Being Freelance Community)
You’ll also find Mary hanging out in the Being Freelance Community
More from Steve Folland
Transcript of the Being Freelance podcast with Steve Folland and The Wrinkly Writer Mary Cameron
Steve Folland: How about we get started hearing how you got started being freelance?
Mary Cameron: Well, when I turned 58 in Australia, living in Western Australia my hair was gray and I stopped winning managerial contracts, you know, in communications organizations or in the public service that I could have done, with my head, my gray hair in a paper bag. So I, I think I discovered that probably ageism probably was a thing.
That was one part of it. I I stopped winning contracts. And the second part of it was that when I walked into interviews in my best black frock and my heels and looked at the panel, I thought, My gut said, run, run. You know, this is so not what we ought to be doing anymore. And I think the panel probably picked that up because part of the reason I didn't win those jobs.
And then a lovely young woman who'd been on one of my teams that I'd managed said, you know what, you'd be a really good copywriter. And I thought, what even is that? I have no idea what that is. You know, I've written things all my life. I've taught business writing. I'd run communications organizations.
So, you know, I'd been a writer. I'd been a copywriter long before I even knew what it was. So, I decided to give it a go. Et voila. Just like that.
Steve Folland: Just like that, but so hang on, so you were 58, but you said you were going for contracts. So had you been working like for, for one organization for a long time? What was your role if it wasn't copywriting?
Mary Cameron: Not really, because you know, the era I, I gave up a permanent job, which people thought I was bonkers in the, in the vocational education sector as a lecturer and a trainer because my husband's a surfer and he wanted to move to the country near the beach. So I thought, well, I'll just work in the little towns nearby and see what I can find.
And so I'd been managing a training organization there as their training manager for years. Then I got seconded by the West Australian government to go into the remote outback to work on programs with disadvantaged kids. So I've, I've always reinvented myself and done different things really because otherwise I get bored.
Steve Folland: So you would often be applying for short term roles?
Mary Cameron: That's it. Normally three year contracts usually or a year or three year contracts. And then they just kind of dried up really.
Steve Folland: And you felt a large part of that was to do with your age.
Mary Cameron: I think so. Cause I was still me, you know, I still had a bunch of really good skills, but also I think it was to do with my gut, you know, saying really mary, it's time to do something different here. You know, this game is getting a little old and I think my antenna, I must have been vibing that message out really when I went for those jobs.
So I just decided to give this copywriting, freelancing, even though I didn't even really know what it was, see if I could just give it a go.
Steve Folland: And that's the thing. So you didn't know what it was. So how on earth did you get started? Let alone, you know, like doing it and also getting paid for it.
Mary Cameron: Well, in one of my former lives, I'd managed big teams developing digital learning programs. So I had a good grasp of how to put a website together and all of that. So I drew up a brief for a, for a website for Four Words Copywriting. Okay. Four Words Copywriting, tagline, fewer words, more meaning.
And I sent that brief out to several agencies. And one of the agency bosses came right back to me and said, "Fewer words, more meaning. You sound like my kind of copywriter. Would you like to pitch for this website project that I've got on my hands at the moment and the the boss of the company is not happy with who we've assigned. We need someone. Would you give it a go?"
So I just pitched for this job. Huge, huge, huge website job. I was still working a day job to the end of a contract at that time. Won this copywriting job. Worked every waking hour between, you know, 5pm and 6am in the morning to do it. And it turned out good. So I just jumped in the deep end really.
That job went well, that agency gave me more work, I worked for that same client who I did the first job for for years, until I moved to France. And then word of mouth, really. I just morphed into something that I didn't even know what it was really.
Steve Folland: So you sent out a brief for your own website and off the back of your own brief, got your first freelance client.
Mary Cameron: That's it, yeah.
Steve Folland: I love that so much. But then it was word of mouth from that chunky project.
Mary Cameron: Yeah, absolutely. And still is. In fact, I don't have an enormous volume of clients. I have maybe six or eight people that I do everything for and have done for most of them for years. You know, I don't often pitch for new work unless something looks interesting. I did pitch for something recently.
That was on the job board in a group I belong to and got that contract. That was quite interesting because I haven't had to establish that level of rapport and trust with someone who knew me not at all, you know, from, from zero for quite a long time. So it's worked out well, but it was quite a different experience from how I normally start with clients who come to me knowing something about me or knowing someone who I work for.
Steve Folland: Let's put this in perspective. So what year were you getting that first freelance client?
Mary Cameron: At least 10 years ago now, I probably just passed my 10 year anniversary as when, from the launch of my first brand, which was Four Words Copywriting. So 10, nearly 11 years, I've been doing this gig now.
Steve Folland: So when did you relocate to France?
Mary Cameron: Seven years ago permanently, I've always come and gone from France, but yeah, we came here permanently in 2017. And most of my clients just, you know, came with me. They don't mind, I'm like this little copy elf that works away in the night when they're sleeping and they wake up in the morning and there's fresh copy, you know, to have with their coffee.
Steve Folland: I was going to say, so they are mainly still back in Australia.
Mary Cameron: Mainly, yeah. I have the odd UK client. Very odd, in a good way. And I'm doing a bit of transcreation now that my French is pretty good, so I do some not really translating, but transcreation of case studies and I've written a couple of websites in French for people. So I'm starting to get some local work.
But mostly my clients are still based in Australia, yeah.
Steve Folland: So you mentioned that your first brand was Four Words. You decided you'd go with a company name to begin with.
Mary Cameron: That's it, yeah.
Steve Folland: That's obviously not what you are today.
Mary Cameron: The Wrinkly Writer.
Steve Folland: At what point did you leave Four Words behind?
Mary Cameron: Well, I'd been Four Words and tonking along okay with Four Words for quite a while and then the inimitable Kate Toon, I belong to her Clever Copywriting School group -she was running a copywriting mastermind. And that was maybe three, four years ago now. And I signed up to do that.
And when we were doing a session on branding in that training, Kate said to me, "I've got something for you. You're either going to be deeply offended or you're going to love it". She said, "I think you should rebrand as The Wrinkly Writer". And I loved it. It was perfect. You know, it was just absolutely who I am, you know, quirky, not born yesterday. Yeah, loads of experience. So it was just so right. And so I did a rebrand as The Wrinkly Writer and it's working quite well.
Steve Folland: Instead of being deterred by ageism, it's your strength.
Mary Cameron: It absolutely is. Yeah, completely. I don't have a niche, you know, I tried to niche once and I got in the sort of allied health area. And after six months, I thought if I write another blog about the piriformis syndrome or physio stuff, I'm going to go insane. So, you know, I'm a general jobbing copywriter. I don't have a niche, but I do quite often write for older people who are starting new businesses. That was one of the reasons I pitched for this recent job. That was for a guy in his sixties who is launching a new consultancy.
So yeah, I often, not always, my clients are all ages, but I mean, I do quite often work for people who are like me, who were inventing themselves at an advanced age, vintage.
Steve Folland: So you were in Kate Toon's Clever Copywriting School. So if you, you started copywriting, not knowing what copywriting was, at what point did you decide to learn it? If that's the right word,
Mary Cameron: Learn it. Yeah, that's really interesting actually. And that's one of the challenges for me still is to carve out enough time for my own professional development. I mean, you know, I'd written, I'd sort of done copywriting for years, really, you know, long before the Internet was even a thing, I realize, you know I taught communication schools and marketing writing schools in the vocational education sector in Australia for yonks.
As I said, I'd managed these big digital production teams. So, you know, lots of things in my career had dovetailed into copywriting and given me those sorts of skills. I grew up in the era of plain English. You know, I taught plain English writing. So, you know, those rules of plain English - write actively, write short sentences, know who you're doing the writing for and what you want them to do with it.
That was totally ingrained in all of the training and teaching I'd done with other people. So without knowing it, I had a pretty good grounding in copywriting skills, but things like SEO copywriting, I learned, thanks to people like Kate. I did her course, the SEO Recipe course.
So I took the things I suppose I'd learned in 40 years of writing and teaching everything imaginable, you know, in various careers. And then when I joined Kate's group, there's brilliant training. You know, she's a fantastically skilled, enormously generous human who provided some of the best training in copywriting that anyone could ever get really.
Steve Folland: It's funny, isn't it? Sometimes how we have more skills than we think, sort of layered up over the years. Did that include business skills though? Did you know what you were doing from that perspective?
Mary Cameron: Mm. As a bookkeeper and a small business person, I'm a half decent copywriter, frankly. You know, I still struggle with those things. One of the things that make me savvy in business, I think, is that I'm good at client relations. You know, I have good soft skills.
I really do. I'm good at managing clients. So that's the basis of being successful in business. Certainly you need to be able to manage the finance, all those other things. I've still got a lot to learn on that score, probably. But in terms of the human aspect of being good at business, I think I'm quite good at that.
Yeah.
Steve Folland: So what do you think makes a good relationship or managing that?
Mary Cameron: Yeah, I think it's, here's a brag. Last year, I won the editing award in the Clever Copywriting School. One of my clients said, you should put in for this. And I thought, nah, you know, there's people in this group who are really highly trained skilled editors, have been doing it for a million years and have degrees in it, you know but I chucked something in anyway, and I won and the reason that the the judges gave was, sure, probably a bit for my word wrangling skills, but mainly for my very human way of managing people.
I'm really good at I don't know if my latest clients would, yeah, he would say it now. I'm really good at making people feel confident and okay about about their words and their writing as an editor. You know, I'm really good at explaining how we could do something better or differently without them feeling like I'm putting nails in the hands of their word babies, you know.
I'm generous with my time. I mean, I think that's something that counts quite a lot. You know, I spend a lot of time, I'm a copywriter, not a cab driver. You know, I don't turn the meter on the minute I start engaging with someone.
I don't charge for them to talk to me or send me emails, you know, because if you don't bill people for that sort of conversation time, they'll relax and they'll tell you things that will help you write really well for them that they may not tell you if they're tense because they think the meter's ticking in the background, you know.
Being clear. I mean, I'm quite direct. The client that I've been working for recently, who I pitched for the job. When he sends me something to review, he says "I'm off to pour myself a stiff whiskey while I wait for your usual frank and fearless feedback".
So, I'm very clear, but I'm very human and I'm generous with my time. I think those things make a difference. Yeah.
Steve Folland: The other thing about having long term clients is being able to put your prices up over time. How have you dealt with that?
Mary Cameron: You know, I don't put my prices up much. Because part of my ethos is that I want to be able to work for people, you know, small businesses doing good things who perhaps normally couldn't afford someone with my level of experience and expertise. So I've kept my prices pretty low for someone with my experience and background.
I'm fortunate because I'm really, really old, so I'm at that point in my career where, you know, I'm not trying to establish myself financially. I can afford to work for probably less money than a young, you know, just starting out, just building, you know, someone's copywriter with a mortgage and little kids and all that can do.
So, you know, it's partly it's a consequence of my age and where I'm at financially at this point in my life. So I don't put my prices up really very often. I don't think I've raised them for two or three years now because I want to be able to work for people who are doing amazing things, but otherwise couldn't, I don't want to price myself out of the market of the people that I want to work for. If that makes sense.
Steve Folland: Totally does. Although maybe also you had prices that you were happy with.
Mary Cameron: I did. Yeah. Well probably the last time I did raise my prices was with a hefty nudge in the ribs from Kate when I did the mastermind. You know? So yes, I, I do, I think it's a fair price and I do quite a lot of pro bono work as well, you know, at least two or three big projects a year that I don't charge anyone for, because they're amazing humans doing fantastic things. So yeah, I mean, I probably could be better at the business side of what I do, but I'm just not.
Steve Folland: When it comes to pro bono work though, do you still invoice them with it zeroed off? Do they understand what you're giving them financially value wise in case they recommend you to somebody else?
Mary Cameron: That's actually a really interesting idea, and I'm going to implement that now because no, I never do that. You know, I just say, you know, your job is free because you're amazing. And I do two or three of these a year and yours is one of them. No, I don't. But that's actually a really interesting idea.
And thank you for that. I shall, I shall implement it.
Steve Folland: So what on earth led you to leaving Australia? Was it the fact that you suddenly realized you didn't need to be going into a certain place that you were properly free?
Mary Cameron: Well, you know, I'm a New Zealander by birth. Lots of New Zealanders of my generation moved to Australia. I moved to Australia in my late 20s. I had 30 odd very good years in Australia, but I've always been Francophile since I learnt my first word of French as a little 11 year old at high school in New Zealand.
Something just clicked in my head. I thought, I love this place. And so, you know, I've always come and gone from France, and then we bought a house here. My husband's English, he grew up in the south of England, so Brittany, where we live, is not unlike Cornwall and Devon, you know, he feels pretty at home here.
We eventually bought a house here in 2017, and then in 2017 we came, we said, we'll come for a year from Western Australia and see how we like it. And after three months, I knew I was never going back.
Steve Folland: You, you mentioned getting some French clients. Are they local to you?
Mary Cameron: Yeah, well, mainly local, not all, not entirely local. Some of them are local. I did a website with a woman. She's actually Irish, in fact, married to a Frenchman who wanted, had just started an association to do biodiversity projects, you know, really great things for the environment. And so she needed a site in French.
So I managed that for her. My neighbors - my French teacher needed a website for her French classes. So I helped her with that, you know. I do translation of case studies for an Italian born French speaking copywriter who's a friend based in Paris. And then through her I've got other translation jobs, one for an enormous French telecom.
So, you know, again, word of mouth. Word of mouth stuff, really. Yeah,
Steve Folland: But is there anyone doing or like working the way you live or living the way you work, whichever way around that is where you are?
Mary Cameron: Not enormous amounts, but more and more. I think it's becoming you know, France is really interesting. It's so advanced in so many ways, but it's been in other ways. The structure of work here is quite calcified, you know my beautiful neighbor, for example, wanted to morph from being a travel agent, doing some sort of marketing work, you know, she was in her forties and she with enormous courage and tenacity, she pulled that off. But she said, it's so hard here in France, you know, it's hard to change what you do. It's hard to work outside the system. It's hard to get people to accept you on the quality of your work.
If you don't have a diploma in that thing, you know, so I think, yeah, I think it's happening. Generational change will make it happen more in France, but it's much harder. You know, to start off freelancing here, I think, than it is, you know, in Australia. For me, I just had to show what I could do. You know, I didn't, I don't have any qualifications in journalism or marketing or, you know, any of the things that you would normally expect from copywriting.
My degree's in history and political science, you know, education.
Steve Folland: Yeah, but you have a ton of experience. What have you found most challenging about being freelance?
Mary Cameron: Work life balance was really challenging and still is a bit. That was the motivation between me trying to morph from a doing enormous, big absorbing website copy projects to doing editing, you know, short, quick, easy to do. Give me more time to throw my wet suited body in the Atlantic and have long lunches and all that stuff.
But, yeah, I do struggle with that, I have to say. You know, not to work seven days out of seven. Yeah, where to draw the line, how to make time for myself. I'm getting better at it. You know, I'm nearly 70. It's time to get better at it. But yeah, that, that for me has probably been the biggest challenge .
Yeah.
Steve Folland: That surprises me, especially because... , well, in my head, I'm painting a version of what I would be doing if I was living in Brittany in France. And I'd be sitting at this little cafe with my little coffee and my pain au chocolat waving at people going past on bicycles. What does your day or your week, look like?
Mary Cameron: Yeah, well, it's interesting you should say that because I now quarantine Mondays. I don't work. Monday is market day here. So Mondays I don't work. Mondays I have a run. I do my shopping. I hang out with my neighbors and have a coffee. Just exactly like what you described, really. So Mondays, no, I don't work and quite often Fridays now, but this is very recent.
This is only in the last few months for me that I've instituted these kind of things. To keep myself kind of in good mental shape for writing, I do quite a lot of sport, you know, I run, I've run long distance for 40 years, I still run. I live in a 15 minute town, you can go everywhere in 15 minutes on foot.
So I walk to the pool and swim most days. So between getting up very early and doing sport, and managing the normal things you do in your household, I probably only write 4 or 5 or maybe 6 hours a day, you know? That's probably as much writing time as I fit in around other things.
Yeah. So it's a balance between those things for myself that I do, which are, you know, meditation, sports, those sort of keeping yourself in good on an even keel things, running the household, running your life in your second language, even though my French is really good now, still takes more time than running your life in your first language, frankly, and in a different culture.
Yeah. So mostly I write in the afternoons. And at night quite often are my best times for writing, yeah.
Steve Folland: In what way are they your best times for writing?
Mary Cameron: I think because the morning is taken up with sport and a leisurely breakfast and doing the wordle and the quirdle you know, and those, those word puzzly things that keep my brain in gear and, you know, telephoning and making appointments and paying bills, et cetera, shopping, cooking.
Yeah, I've always written well at night. I don't know, it's quiet and there's no one around and there are no interruptions, I think. So I quite like working at night, yeah.
Steve Folland: I'll be honest Mary, it sounds like your work life balance is better than maybe you think it is.
Mary Cameron: It's better now. Frankly, it's much better now than it ever used to be, actually. Yeah, you're right, describing that. I think I'm starting to get a grip on this thing, taken me 10 years, but I'm getting there.
Steve Folland: yeah, because it sounds like you're building your day around when you work best energy wise, like creatively wise, but also prioritizing the things that keep you healthy and bring you joy outside of that work. So it's not just about taking days off, but just about actually your day. It sounds very well balanced in itself.
Mary Cameron: The rhythm of my day is absolutely , I'm a creature of habit. Absolutely. You know, if I don't run in the morning, the world's a much less safe place. I mean, by 10am I'm verging on.... Yeah. So, you know, I do have quite a fixed sort of rhythm in my day for sure.
Yeah. And then because my clients are in Australia, mostly, you know, if I'm talking to them on Zoom, which I do. That's early morning for me, so, you know, sometimes I'll be talking to people at five and six in the morning my time, because that's the right time for them in Melbourne or Sydney, you know.
Steve Folland: Let's just go back to the business name thing because some people think should I you know? Use my own name should I have a business name? You' re still behind a business name, The Wrinkly Writer, but I'm just wondering what your experience of that has been, whether it made a difference.
Mary Cameron: I think it made a huge difference. I mean, when I announced it, you know, the rebrand was done and everything was ready to go. And I announced it in Kate's copywriting group, everybody went, Oh God, that's so neat. Except for one person who said, Oh, that is so insulting to older people. How could you possibly do that?
You know, it doesn't matter what age you are, which was kind of my point, really. It doesn't matter what age you are. But so I've had one very adverse reaction from somebody who's probably around my age as well, I guess. But, you know, most people go, Oh, that's so clever. You know, that's, it's it's such a great brand, you know, and of course it's me, they look at me, my wrinkles.
I am the wrinkly writer. Et voila, voila. No point pretending that I'm not a wrinkly old dame, a wrinkly bossy old dame. It's what I am.
Steve Folland: Have you had much experience of that, I guess surrounding yourself with other copywriters or freelancers,
Mary Cameron: I, I haven't done a lot of that sort of formal mastermind type training, but I, I do definitely surround myself with a little coterie of really brilliant, other absolutely brilliant, talented copywriters that I share work with. Hey, what do you think of this? And what do you think of that?
I also -because I think it's a responsibility that comes with my age, I do mentor and support and nurture and nudge young copywriters or not necessarily young but beginning copywriters because I think that's part of that sort of crone responsibility of older humans to bring on the people who are coming after you.
So I do a fair bit of that mentoring and nudging and reviewing of work for up and coming copywriters. And then I have a select group of you know, other copywriters around me whom I trust who I share work with. But, you know, I'm like a lot of people who are freelancers. I'm quite profoundly introverted.
So you know, I'm not a big sort of social person, I suppose, to have a huge group around me, if that makes sense.
Steve Folland: So are these people you've met online?
Mary Cameron: Yeah, mostly. Yes. In fact, all of them. Yeah. No, I don't think I've met any of them face to face.
Steve Folland: Hmm. I love the phrase nurture and nudge. That's nice. And is that like as in a paid mentor or...
Mary Cameron: No, it's just I mean, I started doing it when I had more work than I could handle and I wanted to subcontract, you know, I wanted to subcontract some young copywriters to work or copywriters to work for me, but it just didn't work, you know, because, I couldn't, despite providing lots of examples and I thought being very clear, I somehow couldn't get the level of work that I needed without a lot of going back in and rewriting and re editing.
So I kind of stopped looking for that sort of formal subcontracting relationship where some portion of that you know, would be, I would pay for some of it, but also I would do some mentoring for it. Now I just do it for free, you know, people can just, you know, there's always two or three people at one time who can send me their stuff.
I'll look at it, comment on it. We'll do live edit, which, you know, like my client in Melbourne, they probably need to have a stiff whiskey. We put their work up on the screen in Zoom and, you know, we edit it on the fly with a conversation around it. So, yeah, but I don't charge for it. No, I don't.
Steve Folland: So now you don't subcontract anything...
Mary Cameron: I don't, no. I just, it's not... it's too much hard work. It's probably a fault on my part, which is weird because I'm pretty clear in setting out what I need and what I want. But also I think my clients want to work with me.
You know, they want that sort of bossy, quirk. You know, experience, clear, fewer words, more meaning, kind of copy - that's what I do. Yeah.
Steve Folland: Does that mean that you now might turn work away? If if at one point you had so much that you wanted to bring on others
Mary Cameron: I would probably just refer it on to that coterie of copywriters around me. You know, I'd say look, I can't do this you know but here's somebody who I think would be a good fit for the job. Have a chat with them.
Steve Folland: So you chose not to niche or rather you did and found it boring and backed out of it. But I also described you as a freelance editor and SEO copywriter, which is in itself kind of like narrowing down what you do. How have you found that experience of focusing on those skills, you know, a niche of itself within the skills of
Mary Cameron: yeah. I mean, I guess on the on the aspect of niche. I think I wrote about this recently. I did Nikki Pilkington's eight week LinkedIn challenge because I'm really trying to show up on LinkedIn. I'm really not doing a good job of it anymore. But, you know, one of the challenges in that was to talk about your niche.
And you know, I'm, I'm a no niche copywriter, but my clients are really niche. You know, they're all amazing, courageous, curious humans . So I seem to attract a niche of a particular kind of client, you know which is as far as niche I'm ever going to get, probably. But yeah, I've lost the thread of the question.
In terms of the editing, I mean, I'll edit anything anyone wants to send me, you know, I edit an amazing range of subject matter, you know, from newsletters for dental practices to blogs for you know, companies that produce amazing fetish equipment and everything in between.
Steve Folland: Now if You could tell your younger self one thing about being freelance. What would that be?
Mary Cameron: Well, I would tell my younger self who was pretty much a kind of language loving fish out of water, always, hang in there, kid, because you're going to find your pond, your freelance pond. You're going to do amazing, great work that you love. You're going to be your own boss, which is going to suit you right down to the ground.
It's going to take a little while and it'll be on the other side of the world, but you will get there.
Steve Folland: I love that. Well, good luck with the business the work life balance. Thank you so much. All the best being freelance.
Mary Cameron: Thanks, Steve. Eh, bonjourno.
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