Writer Momina Asif
About this episode…
WRITER MOMINA ASIF
Momina realised traditional office life didn’t fit with taking care of her mental health. Sh'e’d go freelance and be a better boss to herself.
Having quickly built up a personal brand and relationships on Twitter, work soon came her way.
This was in January 2022. So when she spoke for the podcast in July of that year, she’d really not been freelancing long. But that doesn’t mean she didn’t have a lot to share. A lot for us to learn from.
Having already experienced and dealt with burn out, the issues with outsourcing in a hurry, prejudices from those refusing to consider hiring someone from Pakistan… but also the flip side of community, building great client relationships and ultimately creating that work life that works for her.
Read the highlights in the next tab.
PRIORITISING HER MENTAL HEALTH
Momina left her office job to protect her mental health. And yet a few months into freelance life, was overwhelmed from her workload and was suffering. She took a three week hiatus from work and being online which gave her space to recover and reflect on what she wanted from being freelance…
“I was really scared about talking about it to my clients. And then I talked to a couple of people and they just told me, you should be very honest about it and just tell them that this is something you are struggling with and you don't need to overexplain. And that's exactly what I did. I just told them that this is something I'm struggling with, I will be back, but I really need some time off and I hope you understand.
And the thing is, they were not only understanding, but the response that I got from one client of mine, who in turn told me about struggling herself was really... Not overwhelming as such, but it was overwhelming in a nice way.
We are all humans at the end of the day, we are all struggling. We don't know how much anyone is struggling, but you being honest about your struggles can help someone else at least accept that for themselves.”
Working across time zones
There’s a 12 hour time difference between Momina in Pakistan and her clients in San Francisco. Yet that actually works really well for her. First of all, she naturally prefers to work at night, but it does mean she needs to set expectations communication wise…
“The one thing that I make sure to tell my clients and be very up upfront about is that I will take about a day to get back to you, and I normally only communicate through emails, so I just make sure that expectation is before we start. So give me 24 hours to respond because of this huge time difference.
And sometimes, when I wake up and I see there is an email that I have received at around 4 or 5 AM and I am getting up at around 12 or 1 PM. So I don't hurry into replying because I know at that point those people are sleeping. So I have plenty of time to just get my tea, get my coffee, and just you know, properly wake up and acknowledge that I have these emails. Mornings are super slow for me..”
BEING UP FRONT ABOUT PRICING
When a lead comes in, Momina will send portfolio links, along with a pricing sheet and details of her process…
“You know, money talk can be a little uncomfortable. And the back and forth for negotiation, I don't like that. So you can just send them a pricing sheet: these are my rates, and you can even do a package of six blogs or four blogs per month.
This helps to just start a conversation around your rates and just let them know that these are the rates I'll be sticking with. So everything is already talked about up front before they decide to work with me.”
BEATING IMPOSTER SYNDROME
Ah, the age old imposter syndrome raising its head again…
“I visualise it as a huge monster telling me that I suck. So I'll just tell my younger self to be a a bit more confident and at least don't doubt your talents and skills because you are good at what you do and you're constantly getting better and you deserve a seat at the table and you're the only person who is in the way of that seat at the table.
So basically shoot your shot, send that DM and send that pitch. That's the only way you will get opportunities and the worst that can happen is that you'll get 'No', and that's okay.”
“ You are good at what you do…
and you're constantly getting better - you deserve a seat at the table and you're the only person who is in the way of that seat at the table."
Copywriter Momina Asif on confronting the ‘huge monster’ that is imposter syndrome
More from Momina Asif
Momina’s website
Momina on Twitter
More from Steve Folland
Transcript of the Being Freelance podcast with Steve Folland and Writer Momina Asif
Steve Folland:
As ever, how about we get started hearing how you got started being freelance?
Momina Asif:
Yeah, absolutely. Let me just start by saying that I basically graduated as a chemical engineer, <laugh>. Yeah. When I was doing my bachelor's in chemical engineeringI first learned about freelancing and that you can have a career as a freelancer. And basically a couple of seniors, they had an online entertainment blog, celebrity gossip stuff, and they were looking for writers to write some short 200, 300 daily stories. And so I said, yeah, and turns out I was pretty natural at writing. I did not need a lot of instructions and basically enjoyed it a lot more than engineering <laugh>. I remember you know, quite clearly thinking that maybe writing can be something that I can pursue after graduation. And when I graduated, I started applying for both engineering and writing jobs, and I was like, Okay, let's just try my luck and see what I get.
So I got a job as a junior writer at a company, and from then on there was no going back as a writer. And I love every aspect of writing content marketing. And I was just learning from YouTube tutorials and podcasts and social media and just quickly started, you know, taking care of my company's monthly newsletter and social media. And that was very exciting. And I was like, Okay, content marketing is something I'm gonna do. But unfortunately at the end of 2020, I had some health issues that I still struggle with to this day. So I had a very restricted diet. I had a lot of side effects from medication, so it was really becoming very difficult to be in an office for like eight to nine hours a day.
And then obviously apart from that, there was covid and then the company I was working, which will remain nameless <laugh> they started basically forcing people to come back to office. And that's when I realised that, okay, maybe I need to think about freelance seriously, because I can't be in an office. So I resigned from that job in January of 2022 and did a huge announcement on Twitter, and the next day I basically booked two clients, and I'm still working with them today. So that's basically just a story of how I got into full-time freelancing.
Steve Folland:
Only January 2022? Well, isn't that interesting, because I tell you what, from your online presence, you wouldn't know that. So how did you get those first clients?
Momina Asif:
So, yeah, that's an interesting story and that's why maybe it can look like that I've been freelancing for quite some time. So back when Covid hit and everyone was working from home, there was a huge trend of personal branding all of a sudden. And everyone was focusing on building their personal brands on LinkedIn. And I jumped on that bandwagon too. And then I started talking about content marketing, content writing on LinkedIn, and from there I learned that there was an existence of Marketing Twitter, and I was like, Mm, what's that? And so I just gave Twitter a try again.
And from there I built a personal brand/an online existence, and I was interacting with people, with writers, with freelancers, with content marketers already before quitting my job. So that was a huge plus when I basically announced on Twitter that I am now going full-time freelancing, or will be doing full-time freelancing - that was really helpful for me because then people started referring me, and there there was a lot of support as well. So even now, this is how I get my clients. So I am not a huge fan of LinkedIn anymore, <laugh>. But Twitter, I doubled down on it. I've properly made relationships on it, so that's really helpful. building your personal brand.
Steve Folland:
What would you say then that you did on Twitter in particular in that year to build your online presence so that you had those relationships that supported you in the way that it did when you went freelance?
Momina Asif:
Oh, that's a really nice question. So basically I know the buzzword is 'be yourself', but it's really hard to be yourself when you don't know what to talk about. So in the beginning, I decided to just talk about content marketing, how to write blogs and how to, and maybe in July of 2021, I did a 30 day series as well. It was like content writing 101 series - that helped a lot as well. So it was basically just me talking about what I've learned so far as a writer.
It was not about me as a freelancer, because at that point, the company I was working for did not like people working as a freelancer as a side hustle. So I could not say that. And I was not even doing freelancing at that point. I was just building my presence as a content writer. And that's how I met other marketers, other writers. And then the whole thing about maybe building your personal brand or just being active on social media is just not talking in a void, but also interacting a lot and engaging a lot. So I did that - commenting on other people's helpful threads, or even fun ones, when you engage with them and it builds the relationship.
Steve Folland:
And did you have a website when you went freelance?
Momina Asif:
Oh, yeah. I had a really bad website, <laugh> when I first started. So back in January of 2022 I had a really bad website. I had spent a lot of bucks on it, and I was really not proud of it. And I was like this does not reflect who I am. And then through Twitter, someone told me that you can make your own website and it won't even cost you so much, because I could not afford to spend a lot of money on it again. So someone told me, you can go on Carrd.co and make your own one page website. And that's basically what I did. Let me show my whole personality on it, because that other website is super boring. No one's gonna hire me looking at that website. So I just made this new website, talked about a little bit of my experience, added some articles that are already written for some clients, and that was it.
Steve Folland:
And so all of your work, you're saying, has come via Twitter?
Momina Asif:
For now,
Steve Folland:
Yes. But where are those clients?
Momina Asif:
So almost all of my clients are based in the US and I also worked with one person who's based in Australia, and another person is based in the UK, but they were one time projects. And now long term clients are based in the US and I haven't had a chance to work with local Pakistani based clients yet.
Steve Folland:
How do you find the time zone differences? What would be the time difference?
Momina Asif:
With San Francisco, I know it's 12 hours. I'm not sure about New York. But the thing is that I am more of a night owl. I am really grumpy in the mornings <laugh>.
So like, it takes me around five hours to properly wake up and like accept that I'm existing, <laugh>. So I normally am working around till 2:00 AM or 3:00 AM. So it's pretty easy. But the one thing that I make sure to tell my clients and be very up upfront about is that I will take about day to get back to you if you're, and I normally only communicate through emails, so do I, I just make sure that that expectation is before we start, there is that expectation that I will be getting back to you at least after a day. So give me 24 hours to respond because of this huge time difference. And sometimes I, when I wake up and I see my email, there is an email that I have received at around 4:00 AM or 5:00 AM and I am getting up at around 12 or 1:00 PM So I don't hurry into replying because I know at that point those people are sleeping. So I have plenty of time to just get my tea, get my coffee, and just you know, properly wake up and acknowledge that I have these emails. Mornings are super slow for me. Not really a great morning person. <laugh>
Steve Folland:
How have you found the business side of being freelance?
Momina Asif:
Oh, that one's really hard for me personally. I'm really good at, you know, just getting the work, getting that content brief filled up and just starting writing on whatever I'm working on. But the admin work of keeping track of all the pitches that I was sending or even the admin work of invoicing and making sure that I am on top of all of this has been really hard for me. I do want to give a shout out to Harlow. I'm sure you know about that, but if you don't, it's basically a platform for freelancers where they can track their invoices and track their timings and what projects they're working on, track all of their clients as well. Yeah. That's been really helpful. But I'm still learning a lot about the admin or the business side of things.
Steve Folland:
Do you know other people who are doing what you do? As in, do you get to talk about the business side of things?
Momina Asif:
Shout out to Joanna Rutter, who I met on Twitter again. She introduced me to a Slack community called Pop Club, run by Rachel Meltzer. And Rachel helped me a lot with my process - she explained everything. Because when I was starting out, I was very confused about the whole process of it. So how do you approach a client and how do you onboard a client? And then what do you say when you're onboarding a client and after submitting a project and finalising that, how do you send an invoice and what do you do after that? So there is this whole process that I was extremely unclear about, and Rachel helped me a lot with that.
Even now I talk to her about contracts and proposals and the business side of these things. But there is a real challenge for us based in Pakistan - there is a lot of things that are not available to me, like PayPal does not work here or Stripe. And that has been really difficult, especially in the beginning, convincing people to just pay me through the platform that I use and I use Wise for payments. So that has been extremely difficult. Also, just a lot of the opportunities that I see are restricted to freelancers based in the US or in the UK. So that has been quite challenging as well, because when you're not obviously allowed in the room because of where you're based, you obviously don't get the opportunity to impress people through your portfolio and get them to take a chance at you or work with you.
So that was really frustrating in the beginning. Now that I'm working with really good clients and my portfolio is expanding, it is getting easier, but this particular thing of work restricted to people based in certain locations is really frustrating. I still don't understand the reasoning behind it. Sometimes people say it's because of taxes or payment issues, but the people that I work with are based in the US and they don't have those issues. So I, I don't understand that, but I'm not going to lie, it's still very frustrating.
The one thing that bugs me a lot is when they say they want 'native English speakers', and I'm like come on <laugh>, because I have been speaking English since I was born basically. So that's hurtful actually to say that since you're based in Pakistan and you're not a native, since my official language is not English. I speak English with my friends, I'm speaking English to you, I speak English with my clients, so I have a very strong hold of the language. So I don't understand,
Steve Folland:
Perhaps it's an ignorance where they simply haven't tried.
Momina Asif:
Yeah, it might be, And I understand where they might come from, because I've seen people,if they hire people through some freelancing platforms like Fiverr or Upwork, and they're looking for writers for $5 per blog, and then they get that quality of work and then they say, 'Oh, I hired someone from Pakistan, or I hired someone from India or I hired someone from Bangladesh or whatever and the quality of the work was not good.' But the thing is - is it the quality of the work or is it you are getting the quality of the work based on the amount of money that you are willing to spend on that project? So I think a lot of it is that as well. We can go quite in depth on this and still not know the answer, but <laugh> I've talked to some other freelancers based in Pakistan and they're quite frustrated with that as well, and especially if you don't have a good online existence, and if you don't have a good portfolio to back you up as a writer or as a freelancer people are very hesitant to take a chance on you.
Steve Folland:
Yeah. But you do have those two things. And as that portfolio has grown, have you noticed it become easier?
Momina Asif:
Oh yeah, definitely. Six months ago I was just working on maybe ghost writing for some clients. I was not allowed to talk about those projects, or I was just writing one blog for one client. And they were not even that significant, you know as a company, they were not that well known. So it was frustrating. And honestly, my portfolio was not that impressive. And it took a while to get to where now, I just send someone my portfolio. I just send my pricing sheet and I've mentioned the people that I've worked with or the clients I've worked with, and I've gotten this response that they think my portfolio is impressive. So yes, that, that has been really helpful. And that also allowed me to increase my rates a little bit compared to when all my rates were when I started back in January. So that has definitely helped.
Steve Folland:
I'm intrigued that you said you send them a pricing sheet - so you have your website, if I were to hit that contact me button and say, hey Momina, I'm interested in working with you, what would you send me then?
Momina Asif:
Okay, so my portfolio is based a lot on marketing or e-commerce articles. And if they're looking for something different, then I make sure that I send those articles as well when I reply back to them. And then I also send them a pricing sheet. And the pricing sheet idea was basically Rachels and the Slack community that I'm part of, and she said to add all of your services - blogs, email and social media content - add those prices of your services and just send them. You know, money talk can be a little uncomfortable. Personally, it is quite uncomfortable for me. And the back and forth for negotiation, I don't like that. So you can just send them a pricing sheet: these are my rates, and you can even do a package of six blogs or four blogs per month.
That totally depends on what you want, basically. This helps to just start a conversation around your rates and just let them know that these are the rates I'll be sticking with. And then I also send them a small paragraph of my process - basically that I just get them to fill a content brief and then based on that content brief, I write a detailed outline, which I get them to sign off on. Then I send them a blog and then the edits, if there are edits, I do the edits and fix the edits and then the invoice. So that's my process, and I make sure to add that in the email that I'm sending as well. So everything is already talked about up front before they decide to work with me.
Steve Folland:
And do you find then that you've got plenty of work coming your way? Do you have too much work? Too little work?
Momina Asif:
So <laugh>, due to some mental health issues, I took a hiatus in June. Back in May it was getting too overwhelming. I got a lot of work, and I think a lot of that stress and overwhelming situation made my mental health worse. But that is something that I have learned that you know, I need to prioritise my calendar and be very upfront about with clients because there is this fear of losing out on work. And if you say, No, I don't have the bandwidth to take on more work this week or this month, or we can work through this project maybe the next month or the next, or the next two months, that maybe the client will run away. Maybe they won't, but I haven't tried it because I was too afraid to do that. But now I will be making sure that I'm very upfront about my calendar and I'm very upfront about my availability because that was very overwhelming. In May I was extremely stressed out. I took on way more work than I could handle. And then I had to take off some time in June.
Steve Folland:
How long did you take off?
Momina Asif:
I basically took about three weeks off. I said I'll be taking the whole of June off, but then I got bored and I did some <laugh> work for myself.
Steve Folland:
So three weeks. And did you also disappear from Twitter, for example? Did you stop being visible? Did you just totally step away?
Momina Asif:
Oh, I completely stepped away from Twitter, LinkedIn, Slack, everything. And I was using my laptop for binge watching and I completely turned off my notifications from everything. I even deleted Twitter and LinkedIn from my phone. So I completely disappeared.
Steve Folland:
Did that cause an issue when you came back? It can be something that we worry about. I can't possibly disappear from being online, because then I'll stop getting work...
Momina Asif:
So it worked because I was very upfront about it. I sound like I'm a huge celebrity and people are waiting for me to tweet <laugh>, but I was very upfront that I will be taking some time off. And the thing is with the community, and with the marketing Twitter community, they're very supportive and very helpful, and everyone was encouraging me to take time off. And those are the people who are basically, I'm not saying the whole of marketing Twitter is my client, but those are basically people that are my clients. And I got a lot of messages or DMs on Twitter about how they're also encouraged to take some time off because I'm doing so and because I'm being so transparent about it.
So I am still encouraging everyone to take time off if they can. And because it, it has definitely helped, not only helped me just take some time off and focus on journaling and meditation and I also started going to the gym, which has been helpful, but also it has made me reprioritize what I want with my freelance career. Do I just want to constantly work, work, work, blog after blog or do I want something else? And this break has helped me reprioritize a lot of that.
Steve Folland:
That's great. It could be tempting to hide a struggle and just sort of like disappear for a bit and take care of yourself and that would be totally understandable, but actually being transparent about it and explaining to everyone, including your clients, but also your community, you know, it shows the value in that. I love that.
Momina Asif:
Yeah, definitely. I was really scared about talking about it to my clients. And I literally put it off - I had written an email like properly explaining myself and it was like a huge email explaining everything and I was like, should I send it or not? And then I talked to a couple of people and they just told me, You should be very honest about it and just tell them that this is something you are struggling with and you don't need to overexplain. And that's exactly what I did. I just told them that this is something I'm struggling with, I will be back, but I really need some time off and I hope you understand. And the thing is, they were not only understanding, but the response that I got from one client of mine, who in turn you know told me about struggling herself was really... not overwhelming as such, but it was overwhelming in a nice way.
I just felt, we are all humans at the end of the day, we are all struggling. We don't know how much anyone is struggling, but you being honest about your struggles can help someone else at least accept that for themselves.
Steve Folland:
And you said that you you couldn't go back to working in an office. You wanted to sort of create a career that fitted your health, your lifestyle and all of that. So would you say that you've achieved that?
Momina Asif:
Oh, definitely. I'm never going back - office life is not for me at all. I think conversations about mental health, conversations about disabilities or the requirements of a neurodiverse person and stuff like that - these conversations are not happening in Pakistan right now, unfortunately. But these things exist. People with these disabilities and people with these conditions exist and they do need some extra encouragement, sometimes help, and sometimes just a different set of standards than other people. And that's okay. But unfortunately conversations about this are not happening in Pakistan right now. Especially in the corporate world, you're just expected to come to work non complaining about anything and sit in an office chair for nine hours, eight hours straight. So yeah, at least I won't be going back to office work in Pakistan.
Steve Folland:
Also, you said when you took that June hiatus. You said it made you think about doing things differently...
Momina Asif:
As I mentioned, May was extremely overwhelming. And that's basically because I was really afraid of losing out on any work. So you know, we have this fear that if I pass on this opportunity, will another opportunity come up or will I get in any other job? This is also one thing that I've struggled with as a freelancer is this constant hustle to get work and this constant hustle to get more clients, especially if you don't already have a list of long term clients. So May was extremely overwhelming because of that. And now that I have taken some time to think about what caused that, all of that stress and how I can limit all of that, I've realised that I just need to be very transparent with myself about the kind of work I can take, the kind of clients I want to work with, and the amount of work I want to do in a day.
So I don't want to work on weekends and I'm not, the kind of person will say, I'll work from like 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM because I just start working actually at 5:00 PM. So from now on, I just want to work when I'm feeling the most productive, rather than just staring at a blank screen and strolling through Twitter and just writing one sentence and then going back to scrolling Twitter and just wasting my time basically. Giving myself the illusion that I'm working, it doesn't work, it doesn't help. So what I'm trying to instil in myself is just working when I'm the most productive and actually working during that time, you know, three, four hours or whatever it takes per day. And, and that is something that I will be focusing a lot on.
And one more thing that I am going to focus a lot on is to just figure out a visual representation of my calendar because I'm a visual learner, so I'll have a visual representation of my calendar on my desk with all the deadlines that I need to work on in a week or in a month. And I'll make sure that before getting back to any new client, I check my calendar and see if I do have the space to take on this project. And if I don't, I'll just be very clear with them, very transparent with them. And if they can move that project downwards to the next month, that's fine. If they can't, then I'll just say no because I'm really trying to say no to myself too. Because taking on too much work was really stressful and I'm not going to do that again.
Steve Folland:
That's good to hear. I read a post that you put on LinkedIn. And I presume perhaps it then came off the back of having lots of work and thinking, well, I've got all this work, maybe I could, and I'm paraphrasing here, but this is my own thought processes: I've got lots of work coming my way. There's only so much I can do. Could I maybe outsource some of it? So almost have a team of writers, so I'm still keeping everyone happy. And you tried that, right?
Momina Asif:
Oh my God, yes. <laugh>. And it failed so bad. Yeah. You're exactly right. I was super stressed out about work, super overwhelmed with a lot of the work that I'd taken. And I was like, okay, let me just try outsourcing some of it. And since I wanted to support people of my own country, I was like, I'm going to work with Pakistani writers, this is not to say that people in Pakistan are not good writers. I am from Pakistan, I am a good writer and that LinkedIn post was also in the heat of the moment. Because I actually did interviews before hiring them to write those articles.
And I think looking back at it, there was a lot of my mistakes in that process. And I think I was just in too much of a hurry and I was super overwhelmed about you know, just getting work done that I did not actually look at the portfolios properly and look at the articles properly. And then just made some bad decisions. And this is not to say that people from Pakistan are not good writers, they definitely are, but this was just not handled properly even on my side as well, and obviously not on the side of the people that I eventually hired.
Steve Folland:
And then you ended up basically rewriting everything you outsourced yourself?
Momina Asif:
Yeah, that was just a disaster. I basically had to do everything. Because at the start of that month, I was like, okay, I've outsourced this, I'm good to go. And then after two weeks when those deadlines were approaching, everyone started emailing me, 'Oh, I had some emergency and I could not do it'. And I just started getting stressed out. I was like, why is everyone saying that and are they not interested in working and submitting those articles?! And then when I eventually did receive those articles and they were not the ones I wanted to put my name on and send them to my clients, and I was like, crap. And I was super stressed out. I was like, I have to do this again. I would not recommend anyone outsourcing in a hurry - don't do that.
Steve Folland:
So you might be tempted to do it again, but just to perhaps approach it in a different way?
Momina Asif:
Absolutely. Even though it was a really awful experience, I have learned that I need... I think someone on Twitter or LinkedIn said something along the lines that they actively seek out writers to collaborate with, even if they're not currently looking for someone to subcontract to. They just keep an eye out for good writers. And I think that's what I'm going to do as well. I'll just keep on, you know, passively looking and seeing if I like someone's portfolio, if I like someone's article, I'll just note down their name. And if I do eventually decide to subcontract, why not contact them instead of, you know doing a LinkedIn post that I'm looking for writers and then hardly doing interviews and hardly doing all of that process because nobody should be doing that for their own sanity.
Steve Folland:
Yes. That's a really good point. It's something that we sometimes talk about on the Doing It For The Kids podcast that I also host - the idea of keeping an eye out and having a network of people that you could pass work to if you needed to. Which could be if you were really busy, like you're saying, but equally it could be something happens to your family and you have to go and deal with them, and so you can't work or something happens to your own health and you can't work, but you've got those people ready to go because you've already built the connections.
Momina Asif:
Yeah, absolutely. And then, you know, those people are really good at what they do and you already have a sort of a relationship with them. So yeah, I think I think I'll be going with that approach, you know?
Steve Folland:
Yeah. Momina, obviously you've not been freelance for that long, but even so if you could tell your younger self one thing about being freelance, what would that be?
Momina Asif:
I'd tell my younger self to be a bit more confident because, as I'm sure a lot of people do, I suffer from imposter syndrome. I visualise it as a huge monster telling me that I suck. So I'll just tell my younger self to be a a bit more confident and at least don't doubt your talents and skills because you are good at what you do and you're constantly getting better and you deserve a seat at the table and you're the only person who is in the way of that seat at the table. So basically shoot your shot, send that DM and send that pitch. And you know, that's the only way you will get opportunities and the worst that can happen is that you'll get 'No', and that's okay. So yeah, this is something that I'm going to get framed as well because this is something that I not only need to tell my younger self, but I also constantly need to tell myself daily.
Steve Folland:
Momina it's been so good to talk to you. All the best being freelance!
Momina Asif:
Thank you so much for having me. I was really nice to talk to you.
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