Profit first - Ghostwriter and Book Coach Helen Pollock
After the agency she worked for lost its major client, Helen took her first business full time. Later, when she found herself “slogging away not making enough money”, it was time for something new.
Next, she set up her second business, a marketing and PR consultancy, and since then, she’s found a niche in coaching entrepreneurs to write authority-building books.
Helen does some ghostwriting, too. She says she always dreamed of living a portfolio lifestyle. She enjoys the variety.
She chats to Steve about finding success with LinkedIn marketing and reflects on her experience of making the “classic freelancer mistake” of undercharging.
More from Helen Pollock
Useful Links
Copywriter John Espirian’s episode, Relentlessly helpful
Helen Pritchard, LinkedIn Mastermind
More from Steve Folland
Join us in the Being Freelance community
Transcript of the Being Freelance podcast with GhostWriter and book COACH Helen Pollock and Steve Folland
Steve Folland: Freelance ghostwriter and book coach, Helen Pollock. Hey Helen.
Helen Pollock: Hi Steve.
Steve Folland: Thank you so much for doing this. Okay. As ever, how about we get started hearing how you got started being freelance?
Helen Pollock: Sure. Thanks so much for having me on the show. So, as far back as the early 00s, friends of mine will remember me saying, "Oh, I'd like to have a portfolio lifestyle." It sounds really daft now.
Steve Folland: I'm amazed they knew what you meant or maybe they didn't.
Helen Pollock: Well, I would always swiftly follow that with a bit of this, a bit of that, bit of something else. So, fundamentally, I'm someone who gets bored quite easily and I love variety in my life. So, working freelance really appealed to me. And also, I was sick of working for eejits. So not all of them. I hasten to add, I'm very good friends with many of my former bosses, but there were some notable stinkers and it just makes your life a misery, really. So when I had my daughter... I think, for many women in particular, but also for many men too, having a family changes your priorities. And for me there was no way that I wanted to go back to a corporate job, nine to five and only really see my child awake at the weekends.
Helen Pollock: Because that's really the reality if you do work full time in a corporate job.
Steve Folland: So what did you figure you'd do?
Helen Pollock: So, I knew I didn't want to go back to my corporate job after I had my daughter. So during that year of maternity leave, I was looking out for other options. And my background was marketing and PR, but also my degree was French and Italian. I love languages. I speak several other languages as well. So I did a bit of after school primary school, French Club, teaching. And at the same time, I kept hearing on the news, "Oh we don't have enough Mandarin Chinese speakers. It's holding the UK economy back." And that sort of thing. So I looked for people who were teaching after school, primary school Mandarin. And there didn't seem to be many people doing that. So I thought, "I'll do that then." So, that was what I did. I set up my own business, Little Dragons, teaching Mandarin alongside a part-time PR job. And I did that for five years.
Steve Folland: Part-time in house?
Helen Pollock: No. Part time at an agency.
Steve Folland: In their building or were you able to work remotely?
Helen Pollock: I worked from an office initially, and then I was able to work from home because it was a satellite office, hundreds of miles from the head office. So eventually they decided there's only a couple of people at this office, they might as well work from home. So I did.
Steve Folland: Cool. So you had then a taste of working remotely, but for other people, but also from running your own business. How did it evolve from there?
Helen Pollock: I was made redundant when I was... Blimey, it was 10 days before my second child was born.
Steve Folland: Oh.
Helen Pollock: Yeah. And it was typical agency life. I'm sure loads of your listeners can relate to this. And probably particularly at the moment, but the agency lost its major client that made up 80% of its work, and they hadn't put the effort into business development. And then, this main client, the marketing director who we worked with left. A new one came in, and absolutely classic scenario, brought their own preferred agencies in. So everyone was made redundant. And again, people have this thought that being employed is much more secure than being self-employed. And I have to say, with what's going on at the moment, yes, being self employed isn't looking great in many ways compared to normal employment. But, most of the time, actually, having been through redundancy and the recession as well, the last recession, I don't really see that for working for yourself and being freelance is that much less secure than employment.
Steve Folland: Mm-hmm (affirmative) So what did you decide to do then? So you were still doing the Mandarin lessons, Little Dragons, at this time?
Helen Pollock: Yeah, I was. So I carried on with that. And then, I think it was about the end of 2017, there had been several things that happened in a short space of time. And I tweaked that business model every which way. It wasn't happening. There wasn't enough profit. There wasn't enough meat in the sandwich for me to be the middleman. And I just thought, right, I'm slogging away not making enough money. I've tried everything. It's time to do something new. And so I just decided to set up my own marketing and PR consultancy because I'd always done a bit of that freelance anyway alongside Little Dragons, even after I was made redundant. So, that's what I did. And Oh my word, the sense of relief instantly was amazing. It felt so right.
Steve Folland: And did you decide to stop doing Little Dragons?
Helen Pollock: Yes.
Steve Folland: Right. And when you were doing Little Dragons, because you used the word middleman, were you using other Mandarin teachers-
Helen Pollock: Yeah.
Steve Folland: As well?
Helen Pollock: I don't speak great Mandarin. I certainly don't have Mandarin that's good enough to teach anywhere past maybe a term of primary Mandarin. So what I always did was employed people who did have fluent Mandarin. So yes, that was it. There wasn't enough because Mandarin teachers are far fewer in number than French or Spanish teachers, and they expect more money as a result. And then finding actually decent Mandarin teachers who can teach the average British kid in a primary school well, was also a real struggle. But then the parents or schools didn't want to pay any more for Mandarin than they would for any other language. So, fundamentally it was a bit tricky.
Steve Folland: Interesting. So I had misunderstood. I thought you were teaching it. Obviously, as freelancers, we're all businesses, but that really was a different type of business in that there was a model, you were hiring people and so on and so forth. So this time you think, "Okay, there's no middle man. I am the person providing the service." PR.
Helen Pollock: Yeah. And do you know what? That was also a relief because actually, dealing with the teachers who I was employing was the biggest headache. It's just really hard.
Steve Folland: It does suggest an entrepreneurial spirit though.
Helen Pollock: Oh definitely. Yeah.
Steve Folland: But I'm intrigued as to what happened next because I introduced you as a ghostwriter and a book coach. So-
Helen Pollock: Yeah.
Steve Folland: So it seems like from 2017 to now, which is only two and a half years, we have some way to go. So what happened next?
Helen Pollock: The first thing I did was get in touch with everyone I knew. Friends, family, everyone I'd ever worked for, with, just to tell them this is what I was now doing. And someone who I already worked for a bit in a different capacity, which we'll come to possibly in a bit, he asked me if I would be prepared to write a book for him because he was already an Amazon best selling author in his field, but he was now too busy to write the second book. But he was also a podcaster and he wanted me to create a series about this particular topic. So that was researching the themes and finding guests for each theme. And then each theme, which was usually two episodes of the podcast, I'd take the transcripts and turn that into a chapter of the book. So I did that and absolutely loved it. And that also became an Amazon best seller. That's how that got started.
Steve Folland: So you were doing the PR consultancy and doing the ghost writing on the side of that?
Helen Pollock: Yeah. Because-
Steve Folland: Your portfolio career finally coming.
Helen Pollock: Oh totally. You have no idea. Honestly. That is the reason I went into PR. So I've worked at every element of the marketing mix, but PR was the bit that I loved the most, and I decided, the year after graduation, yes, PR sounds great. You can get paid for writing. That sounded amazing to me because I just love writing.
Steve Folland: So what happened? Did you find success with the PR? Are you still doing that now? Did we simply mist that off?
Helen Pollock: I don't do so much of the speaking to editors and securing features and the contacting influencers and that kind of thing. I literally just do the writing now.
Steve Folland: So if I would have interviewed you two or so years ago for this podcast, I would have introduced you as a freelance PR consultant.
Helen Pollock: Yeah.
Steve Folland: And obviously I didn't do that today. So how have we got where we are today? You just gradually moved more towards one thing?
Helen Pollock: Well, when I had done that, when I had ghost written first book, then that author recommended me to somebody else he knew who needed a book ghostwritten. It was her first book. They were in the same space. So I did that. Then, I had people approaching me who said, "I really want some help, but I do want to write it myself." So I said, "Well, okay, I could coach you." So I put together a series of resources, and I have video calls with my authors, and just help them through the process to get to a draft final manuscript stage. So that was how I ended up book coaching as well and I adore book coaching because it's so rewarding when people come to you and they're really overwhelmed and they're like, "I really want to write a book." And I only do business and nonfiction books at this point, but they know it's going to have benefits for the profile and they're going to be able to secure more high profile speaking opportunities and it's going to enhance their credibility and authority. But they don't know where to start.
Helen Pollock: And it's so rewarding to help to give them some structure and break things down for them, so it doesn't look like Mount Everest anymore. It's a series of mole hills that are manageable.
Steve Folland: And so how did you go about pricing that?
Helen Pollock: So, the average to ghostwrite a book is between 5,000 and 8,000 pounds generally for a business or nonfiction book because they're generally... Certainly business books are often fairly short. The average now-
Steve Folland: I that a statistic that is available online, for example?
Helen Pollock: Yeah. The average nonfiction book is 30- to 50,000 words. That's if you-
Steve Folland: So that's what you based it on?
Helen Pollock: Yes.
Steve Folland: Right.
Helen Pollock: If it's more of a literary nonfiction work and getting up, into maybe 80,000 words, then you might need to charge a little bit more.
Steve Folland: And then when it came to the coaching, how did you position yourself there? Like pricing, did you create different packages that depending on how hands-on you were. How did you go about it?
Helen Pollock: Really, it's the same offering over two different time spans. So the average time to write a book is three to six months. So for people who want to get this done in a hurry, it's 1500 quid, chargeable in three installments of 500 pounds. And we have two video calls a month and over the course of the three months receive 18 emailed resources as well. And there's some copy review in there too. Whereas my six month people, it's the same, 1500 quid, but it's 250 quid a month. And that's one video call a month, but the same 18 resources just spread out a bit.
Steve Folland: So these are resources you spent time creating once, but now you get to send them out again and again to each student-
Helen Pollock: Correct.
Steve Folland: As it were. Right.
Helen Pollock: Yeah. That's right. I'm always optimizing them. It's not like, "Oh yeah, that's done. End of." But yeah, absolutely. I did the graft at the beginning with my first book coaching client and now I can just roll it out again and again and again.
Steve Folland: How do you go about marketing that? It sounded like initially it kicked off through referral, one entrepreneur speaking to another, speaking to another.
Helen Pollock: Yeah. So, ironically, my first book coaching client is someone who is a friend. But my first, never met this person before book coaching client, she had actually come to my notice because she wanted to be on my first ghostwriting authors podcast. And she had approached me because I was securing guests for this particular series. Anyway, she wasn't right. Her profile wasn't quite right to be a guest on that podcast, so I had to turn her down. But later, when she saw... I changed my LinkedIn profile to reflect the fact that now, rather than being a PR consultant, actually I was a ghostwriter and book coach. She direct messaged me on LinkedIn and said, "Can we have a chat about this? I'm writing a book and I have got stuck." And I really ummed and ahed because, in my head, this book coaching program was for people who hadn't started writing yet. She was 10,000 words in. And I did say that to her at the time.
Helen Pollock: I thought, I'm a bit worried that this might not be relevant for you because you're not who I was aiming for. Anyway, she was happy to go ahead in any case and she was delighted with our work. And that book has recently been published, literally a couple of weeks ago. It's got loads of five star reviews at Amazon. And I know I was instrumental in helping this author to create a really great structure for this book and helping her to refine exactly what her audience needed. And I came up with a title. I came up with the chapter headings as well. So it's just really, really rewarding and satisfying to see that the work that I did, has made this book a success.
Steve Folland: When it comes to the ghostwriting side of your business, lots of us, myself included for that matter, we do work but we can't put it in our portfolio because it's behind closed doors. It happens to me a lot. But I can still say, maybe I've done something for this company. But for you, you can't, can you? How do you go about proving your... How do you get over that hurdle?
Helen Pollock: I think it really depends on the author. So I've worked with the first ghostwriting author for four years now in various different capacities. So he's someone who I consider... I know he considers me a friend too. We're actually quite close now, so he would not stand in my way if a ghostwriting prospect asks me, "So, what have you written?" On a one to one basis, I think that's okay. I know that's fine with him. I would have to ask other ghostwriting clients, "Is it okay if?" But sometimes, as a ghostwriter, you can co-write with people and be named. And generally, then, you'll have a cut of the royalties rather than just be paid to write. But as I work in business and nonfiction, royalties, not really much of a consideration. It's more about enhancing authority.
Steve Folland: So you can tell people about it one on one, but you can't necessarily put it on your website. Speaking of which, actually, you use a business name now, right?
Helen Pollock: Yes. The Content Doc.
Steve Folland: As in doctor?
Helen Pollock: Yes.
Steve Folland: When did you start being the Content Doc?
Helen Pollock: Only about nine months ago.
Steve Folland: Ah. So how did that come about?
Helen Pollock: So I did some market research when I was deciding I was going to push the ghostwriting and the book coaching. I really wanted to niche down into. So it was when I was conducting research and a business owner, who is also a friend of mine, said to me, "Ugh. It's like my mind was chaos when it came to content creation and now it's calm. You should be like the content shrink." And I thought, oh, that is brilliant. But, I don't know, it didn't feel quite right. But then I looked at the content doc, and it is kind of first aid for content. First aid for writing. That's what I do.
Steve Folland: And how has that made a difference for you?
Helen Pollock: Yes, it has. Absolutely. In June last year, I think it was, I overhauled my LinkedIn profile. I've been on LinkedIn for years. I actually had over 500 connections, but it was by accident rather than design. I followed the fabulous John Espirian. John is a friend of mine.
Steve Folland: Oh my god. Yes.
Helen Pollock: And he gives away so much brilliant free content on LinkedIn about LinkedIn, and he has a free PDF, how to sort your LinkedIn profile document out. And that's what I did. And I am not joking. Within a day or two of doing that, I already started getting direct messages from people who are interested, including that book coaching client. It was amazing.
Steve Folland: Wow. By the way, I'll put a link to John Esperian's episode in beingfreelance.com. We spoke to John for the last season. And in fact, he's doing a live Q & A in the Being Freelance community as well. As he puts it, relentlessly helpful. Isn't that his slogan?
Helen Pollock: He genuinely is relentlessly helpful, and he's just a lovely guy. He's a technical copywriter. So we're, we're like cousins I guess. And-
Steve Folland: A few times now you've said, "Oh, this person who's a friend of mine." Your business owner friend. Part of me starts to think, "How come she's got so many friends who are business owners?" Is that from simply networking online, being in communities? Is it going to conferences? I don't know, are you just a magnet a bit like?
Helen Pollock: Do you know what? Me and first ghostwriting clients... I said this to him a couple of months ago... He and I are very similar in some respects and one of those respects is we are both collectors and connectors of good people. I'm always when I meet someone, I think, "Oh they're great and I really like what they're doing." I remember them and I will put them in touch with people who I think they ought to have a chat with. It's just something that I've done for a number of years.
Steve Folland: So gradually over time you built up a network of connections. Do you go to conferences?
Helen Pollock: No.
Steve Folland: Hah! I thought this might be a way for you to meet potential entrepreneurs who might want to write a book. So that's interesting.
Helen Pollock: Probably. But do you know what? I've got two young children. We're only coming out of the dark years. The early years of darkness.
Steve Folland: They're in school now. You can breathe a bit, but not entirely.
Helen Pollock: Well, the youngest one is four. He goes to school in September, but he's always been a terrible sleeper even until very, very recently. And even now he's not brilliant. So, I don't know. I don't have the energy. Although to be fair, maybe a conference would actually be a break.
Steve Folland: Yeah, it's a weekend away. There you go. How do you cope with work life balance, actually, since you've mentioned them?
Helen Pollock: I work from home. So I have to say, in terms of the Corona virus situation, me and the other half, for us, it's not that different because he works from home a couple of days a week. I work from home all the time. So we're taking it in shifts. He works in the mornings at the moment and I work in the afternoons. And whoever is not working is, is teaching and looking after the kiddos. But I can always take the kids to school or nursery. I generally work three to four days a week, but school hours. So that fits in really well.
Steve Folland: And then do you do anything in the evening or weekends, or you managed to contain it within the school hours?
Helen Pollock: No. I do quite often have to do a little bit in the evenings. I have made a conscious effort to try and maintain some boundaries though. So now, no way am I working past nine o'clock. So I need some downtime. I need at least an hour or two to watch the tele, read, whatever it might be.
Steve Folland: And so how do you manage your workload? I'm guessing with the coaching clients, that's something where you can have multiple ones at a time. Whereas ghostwriting a book must be much more intense.
Helen Pollock: Yeah. I could only have one ghostwriting client at a time because you really need to immerse yourself in their story in order to tell it well. But with the book coaching, I could have, I'd say, up to probably 10 at a time. That's probably my goal, is to have somewhere between five and 10 book coaching clients at any one time. That would be amazing.
Steve Folland: And then, would a ghostwriting project be as and when it comes along?
Helen Pollock: Yeah.
Steve Folland: Or do you have a regular stream of them?
Helen Pollock: No, I don't have a regular stream of ghost writing clients. To be fair, first of all, I'm not massively pushing ghostwriting. If people ask me, I will consider it, but book coaching is where it's at for me.
Steve Folland: I see. So you started with the ghostwriting, but now you're seeing a better fit and the ability to help more people but also get a good balance for yourself.
Helen Pollock: Absolutely. I love writing, so I do enjoy ghostwriting. But yes, certainly in terms of profitability and the ability to have a positive impact on more people, book coaching does appeal more.
Steve Folland: In your common business, have you taken any lessons out of what you did with the Mandarin, for example, or what you did when you were at an agency and you saw the mistakes that they may have made?
Helen Pollock: Absolutely. Yeah. I know there's a book with this title, but yeah, profit first. Which sounds really mercenary and anyone who knows me will tell you I'm really not materialistic at all. I'm probably wearing a dress that is seven years old or something. Do you know what I mean? I'm not someone who follows fashion. I don't need stuff. I'm just not materialistic, and I give so much to people.
Helen Pollock: But I also have been guilty of a classic freelancer mistake, which is undercharging. Not charging what I'm worth. Bearing in mind, I'm 45 and I've got decades of experience in PR and stuff. It was another friend of mine who works in PR and she's worked generally in the public sector, whereas I haven't, I've worked in the private entity. She's telling me that her day rate and stuff, and I'm like, "What!" And that was only about a year ago or something. Or maybe two years ago. So that is the biggest mistake. Never forget that you don't get sick pay, you don't get holiday pay, you don't get your pension paid for. You don't get any benefits, so make sure you're A, taking that into account, and B, charging what you're worth.
Steve Folland: Now if you could tell your younger self one thing about being freelance, what would that be?
Helen Pollock: I think it's probably what I said before, just profit first. Don't undercharge. But also, and I think this goes back to the agency that I worked for when I was made redundant, business development. Never ever forget to do business development. Schedule it in. No matter how busy you are, schedule business development in and make sure you do it consistently because as marketers we should probably know that consistency is key. But all too often, if we're busy, sales and marketing tends to go out of the window. And then, three, six months down the line you're like, "Oh crap, I haven't got any customers."
Steve Folland: What does business development look like for you now?
Helen Pollock: So right now?
Steve Folland: Well, I mean in general, in life, not at this particular nightmare Coronavirus as we record this point.
Helen Pollock: It's the same, to be honest. So, LinkedIn, I decided was my primary social media channel because I'm a big believer in following the Pareto principle and concentrating on one social media channel. Doing it really well and then maybe you add another one. But if you spread yourself too thinly, you're just going to be overwhelmed and not do what you need to do. So I started creating videos for LinkedIn in about September. And I knew that I needed to do that probably since about June or July, but it took me a few months to summon the courage.
Steve Folland: So how often do you make videos for LinkedIn? What sort of thing do you do?
Helen Pollock: So they're short videos. They're maybe three minutes. They usually tackle something like it would be a pain point for my clients. So, how do you find the time to write your book? Or, how long should your book be? Just useful information. I did a little series recently about the most common errors that I come across in when I'm reviewing clients' writing. Just helpful things. Always, I try and write a blog post off the back of it, stick it on the website. So, yeah, that's what I do.
Helen Pollock: But blimey, since I've started posting every day on LinkedIn, not a video every day, but a video once a week at least, and I've posted at least five days a week on LinkedIn. And I've just stuck at it. And in the last few months, it's been crazy. The week before half term, mid February, one week I had three women get in touch with me who wanted to talk to me about their book. And the week of half term, seven women got in touch with me on LinkedIn. It's like, what? And I don't need that many... I haven't got the capacity for that many clients. But all these leads, it's fantastic.
Steve Folland: So it kicked off quite quickly. There wasn't a period where you were thinking, "Huh, is this working?"
Helen Pollock: No. For me, I saw results as soon as I overhauled my LinkedIn profile. I started seeing results. And that was purely writing a nice headline and a decent About section and getting as clear as I could on my customer avatar as well. Because I've always struggled, even though I'm a blinking marketer, the thought of having a customer avatar that's quite narrow and then nobody else would be interested, was something it took me a long time to get my tiny mind around. It's like, "No, Helen, that is the bullseye on the target. That's your ideal customer avatar." But then there are people in the other rings who say, "My ideal customer is a female entrepreneur, probably 45 to 55. She's probably got older or grown up children." But actually, in those outer rings, men of a similar age might get in touch. Younger women. Older. It doesn't matter. It's just about sorting out in your head who you're talking to, because those are your perfect people.
Steve Folland: And so when you had that vision of that person in your head, it helps you create the content-
Helen Pollock: Yes.
Steve Folland: Even if it does speak to other people.
Helen Pollock: Absolutely. And that's one of the things that I teach people when I'm coaching them as well, for books or for more general business content. The first thing you need to get your head around is, who am I writing this for and what do they need from me? What they need this book or this blog post or whatever to tell them. Then, started to do the videos and then I did Helen Pritchard's LinkedIn free five-day sprint challenge in January, and that has just made things go crazy. So I now send between 10 and 15 connection requests to my ideal customer avatar every day, even at the weekends. No message.
Steve Folland: So you track people down who you think would be good and then reach out to them.
Helen Pollock: Yeah.
Steve Folland: But without a message.
Helen Pollock: Without a message.
Steve Folland: Just so you connect.
Helen Pollock: Yes.
Steve Folland: And seeing what happens.
Helen Pollock: Because my headline on my profile should say it all. When my connection request comes up, they will be able to see exactly what I do for my headline and know, yes, this is someone I want to connect with or, no, I don't. And so there's no agonizing over a really naff message, which is slightly, I don't know, uneasy.
Steve Folland: We've all read them.
Helen Pollock: Makes me feel slightly uneasy even thinking about it.
Steve Folland: Helen, it's been so good speaking to you. Thank you so much. All the best being freelance.
Helen Pollock: Thank you so much, Steve. It's been my absolute pleasure.