Copywriter Anna Rogan
About this episode…
COPYWRITER ANNA ROGAN
Anna had built a career across corporate and government comms in Melbourne. But if she wanted to move her family out of the city and that meant first meant transforming the way she worked.
Anna set out to prove she could match her past income, now as a freelance copywriter.
The seeds she planted in the city are now bearing fruit. From a farm in rural Victoria she’s reaping the rewards - a business that feels good and that runs around her kids.
Today she’s questioning the external pressures that tell us to ‘scale’. The farmers before them planted olive trees. That doesn’t mean it’s a business for her. Just because other copywriters before her have grown with subcontractors and products, does she have to follow them too?
Read the highlights in the next tab.
AFTER THE FRANTIC START, A WORK LIFE BALANCE
When Anna started out, like many new freelancers, she’d take any work that came her way and would work any hours to make that happen…
“The last couple of years in my business have really been about: how do I continue to make the money that I need to make, and that I want to make in my business while also having semblance of work-life balance.
Now my business looks like: weekends off, very rarely working nights, school holidays off to be full-time mom with my kids. So essentially have 12 weeks a year off from client work and from my business. It is a much more kind of laid back pace now than it used to be..”
PROFIT FIRST
Anna has clear financial goals. She also pays herself a weekly wage using her own system inspired by the book and framework of ‘Profit First’…
“I use Profit First and it really works for me. I've kind of developed it into my own little system over the years. But essentially for every invoice that gets paid, I put some money away for tax, for my retirement savings, a percentage away for expenses and business expenses and I put a percentage of that money away in a salary account and then that account pays me a weekly wage.”
FREELANCING FLIP-SIDES
It’s not all easy but…
“A lot of my goals in my business are around how I want it to feel for me. I think being freelance and running your own business can be a very tough slog. But the benefit of it is, you get to decide; you make all the decisions.
So that 'you make all the decisions' coin on the one side of it is just an extreme amount of pressure and can be very stressful and overwhelming. But on the other side of it is - you get to decide what's important to you and then you get to make it happen.”
A WEBSITE THAT WORKS FOR YOU
Anna had a nicely designed site with professional photos from the beginning but her most recent redesign has really refined her messaging, her look and brand - it’s made a real difference…
“I was noticing that people coming onto my discovery calls to chat about their work already really wanted to work with me.
I dunno that I've seen an increase in the amount of leads that come through, but it's a very rare for me now to get somebody coming to me wanting to work with me that isn't a good fit client for me.
So I think it does a lot of heavy lifting in terms of finding, attracting and really retaining clients that I like to work with, projects that excite me.”
DO YOU HAVE TO ‘SCALE’?
At least in the copywriting industry, Anna felt there was a pressure to scale her business. That would mean she was successful. And that would either mean hiring others or creating digital products. She tried and didn’t like the first model and is working on a digital product but…
“I'm at a point now where I'm thinking - is scaling the be all and end all? Do you have to scale? Is that really the next logical step up? Or can you just do really good work on a one-on-one basis and hit your financial goals? You know? Does there have to be a next step like this? Or just really enjoy what I'm doing in my business now.”
“Is scaling the be all and end all?
Or can you just do really good work on a one-on-one basis and hit your financial goals?”
Copywriter Anna Rogan
More from Anna ROGAN
Anna’s website
Anna on Instagram
More from Steve Folland
Transcript of the Being Freelance podcast with Steve Folland and Copywriter Anna Rogan
Steve Folland:
How about we get started hearing how you got started being freelance?
Anna Rogan:
Sure. I sort of had pottered around a bit in my career after studying psychology, straight out of high school. And I had found myself in media and communications. I was working for one of the big four banks in Australia and popped on over to government for a little while and I'd had a baby. I had another baby on the way. I was living in Melbourne, in Australia, in the city, and looking around at the house prices thinking never ever will we be able to actually afford... My husband had grown up in the country and we started having conversations about potentially moving outta the city, which seemed like it was going to be impossible with both of us having city-based jobs. So we started sort of scheming and dreaming, I guess, about what it would look like if one of us took our skills freelance.
And because I was working in media and communications and I'd always written, I had side hobbies of writing fiction and short stories and poems and all those kind of things. Writing seemed like a really easy skill to transfer to home-based work and freelance work. I started talking to a friend who was doing some copywriting and she started flicking me jobs. And before you know it, I had my own little business running. I went on maternity leave with my second bub and sort of thought, here's my chance to see if this thing is really going to work. And it did, and here I am seven years later.
Steve Folland:
Amazing.
Anna Rogan:
Yeah.
Steve Folland:
So those first projects came because you told a friend who was a copywriter, Hey, I wanna do this.
Anna Rogan:
Yes. And they were doing it. I'd known they'd taken a year long work sabbatical from their job and had gone to work for a content company. I had no idea what copywriting was <laugh>. I had no idea. And so she said, I have some blogs that you could write. And I'm like, oh, I can write blogs. I've been writing internal articles for the company intranet. It's the same thing. It's the same skill. There were obviously things I had to learn <laugh>, lots of things I had to learn. But yeah, it was, it was all through my lovely friend Julie Pierce, who knew that I was a great writer and was thrilled to be able to subcontract work to someone that could deliver.
Steve Folland:
And so you moved out of the city?
Anna Rogan:
We did - three and a half years ago.
Steve Folland:
I see. So you started freelance in the city still?
Anna Rogan:
Yes.
Steve Folland:
Do you think that helped as you started to get your own freelance clients?
Anna Rogan:
Um, no, I don't think so. I think I could count on two hands the number of times that I've actually met with clients or contractors or people that I've worked with face-to-face.
Steve Folland:
Great. So actually it was all remote, so that gave you even more confidence to make the move out. In which case, how were you finding those remote clients?
Anna Rogan:
So in the early days, a lot of my work was coming through subcontracting. So I joined a copywriting Facebook group. It was a paid membership, and I was connecting with writers there who were looking for subcontractors. So back in those early days, a lot of that work was coming through established writers who were either building an agency or team of subcontractors under them or who just had a volume of work that they needed help with and needed to manage. So I was subcontracting to those people and doing lots of work initially that way. And then once I had my website up, I had my name on a couple of copywriting directories online, and I was getting a couple of leads through that way, a couple of leads through my actual website. So yeah, in the early days, that's really how I was finding clients and finding work.
Steve Folland:
And did you have a portfolio? How did you show your work?
Anna Rogan:
I didn't in the early days. I have a portfolio now on my website and my web designer has done some funky things with how that works so that you can kind of see some of the copy next to how it looks on the website. But in those early days, I didn't have a portfolio, but what I did have was a really great website. It wasn't necessarily the best in terms of branding and visuals, but it looked professional. And I put a lot of work into the copy because I was essentially showcasing my skills. If I couldn't write copy for myself, then how could I expect, you know, this was my mindset... how could I expect someone to hire me to write copy for them? So I really put a lot of time and effort into making sure that copy on my website was the best showcase of my skills.
Steve Folland:
So did things change when you finally made that move... so three years ago -that's just before the pandemic?
Anna Rogan:
Yeah. Oh, Steve, so we moved in the September of 2019. And earlier in that year, I had said to my husband, like, we'd been looking for a while and I'd said, we can't move this year because the business is like...I've just been working my butt off. It's just about to take off. Like, this is the year that is going to be make or break - it's gonna be my biggest year. And it was to that point, and I just can't take on moving as well. And he said, all right, all right, we'll just look at this one final place that we'd avoided looking at because it was outside of our budget. It was gonna be our last weekend up in the country looking at houses.
And we looked at this place and of course we fell in love and we made a ridiculously low offer and they accepted. So <laugh> the move was on. And so we moved. And then that summer, so it was the summer here in Victoria in Australia. And my husband works in government. He was on fire deployments, so it was the worst bushfire season in Victoria on record. And he was away for six weeks out of eight over that summer <laugh>. So alone on Christmas day with our two young kids on this farm that we'd bought. Um, just kind of going out of my mind with the <laugh> <laugh>, the work and the stress and the pressure. And then, you know, everything kind of settled down with work. And we were full into Covid in 2020. But where we had moved from in the city was one of the worst impacted places in Melbourne in terms of covid cases and also very strict lockdowns. So when I was looking at my friends who were still living back there, who were allowed to go for an hour walk a day, that was what they were allowed to do. And here I am living on 17 acres of <laugh>, um, <laugh>, gorgeous bushland on the river. It sort of, yeah, it did make all the stress and overwhelm and work, I suppose of the year before somewhat worth it.
Steve Folland:
Is it like a working farm or is it just a massive bit of land?
Anna Rogan:
We have 400 olive trees, so they are oil producing olives to make olive oil. We are not making olive oil at the moment, but the previous owners were, and it's something that we will be looking to do. So the olive trees are 20 years old, they're quite mature. And we're eating the olives at the moment. We're harvesting the olives and preserve them to eat ourselves.
Steve Folland:
Wow. I hope you like olives. That's a lot of olives to get through.
Anna Rogan:
It's a lot of olives. <laugh>. It is, but it's not enough to be a full-time commercial operation. So it is a bit of a side thing - And juggling a side hobby like that or a side enterprise like that when it's not something you know anything about and you also have full-time work and two young kids. It's a lot.
Steve Folland:
Okay. So that might come. So in that period, you know, when there's a sudden moment of change. So for example, your husband had to go away for six weeks for work. How do you manage your workload at points like that?
Anna Rogan:
Back then, <laugh>, it was very much just make it work. Just find the time. Just work nights, work early mornings, work weekends, work with the kids in front of the tv. At that point in my business, I was still saying yes to every single project that came through. I was subcontracting a little bit at that point as well to other writers to help manage the volume. But I was treading water, I was just making it work anyway that I could. I was just saying yes and finding a way, which was not awesome <laugh> for my mental health really at that point. And yeah, it was a lot.
Steve Folland:
Are you able to avoid that now?
Anna Rogan:
Totally, yeah. So I would say that first two or three years of my business, I was really very much like that. I had something to prove - I was giving up a really stable full-time income, I'd built this career, I was on a nice income and I was giving that up for this lifestyle and to be able to go freelance. And so I had something to prove to myself that I could earn what I was earning in my corporate and government job and that I could make this work and that I had the skills to make it work. And so the way that I made it work was to say yes to everything. And I think I used to get quite excited really, that people just wanted to work with me. So the yes was almost a reflex, like, oh my God, yes, you wanna work with me?
Of course I wanna, you know, do anything that you want me to do and pay me for it. Are you crazy? Of course I will do it <laugh>. So I said yes, and I made it work. And that was really what I did. And I was treading water. I had way too many projects on the go, but my bank account... I was able to make money very quickly and really sort of save quite a bit of money as well to get myself to a point where when projects came to me, I was able to be a bit more discerning about who I wanted to work with, the kind of projects that I wanted to do and actually begin to say no to things now. And the last couple of years in my business have really been about how do I continue to make the money that I need to make, and that I want to make in my business while also having semblance of work-life balance.
And now my business looks like weekends off, very rarely working nights, school holidays I have off as well to be full-time mom with my kids. So that's, you know, eight weeks over summer and two weeks in between each term. So essentially have 12 weeks a year off from client work and from my business, I still monitor things that come into the inbox and will do little bits and pieces, but they are break periods. And I can be quite flexible too, if one of the kids is sick, I can take the day off. If, you know my husband's away on fire deployments, I can shift work around. It is a much more kind of laid back pace now than it used to be.
Steve Folland:
That's great. I'm just imagining somebody listening to where you've got to, but recognising maybe they're in that point that you were at when you started out - how would you say you got there? So there's the buffer of cash...
Anna Rogan:
Absolutely essential. Okay. So there's the buffer of cash so that you know that if you say no to that project, you can still pay yourself. The other thing about the cash is that it's not just a buffer of cash, but you have a good system for your finances. So for me, I use Profit First. Lots of freelancers use Profit First and it really works for me. I've kind of developed it into my own little system over the years. But essentially for every invoice that gets paid, I put some money away for tax GST in Australia and my superannuation, which is my retirement savings here in Oz. I put a percentage away for expenses and business expenses and I put a percentage of that money away in a salary account and then that account pays me a weekly wage.
That's very simple. There's some sums you have to do to work out what your percentages need to be for that weekly wage to be what it needs to be to sustain your lifestyle and meet your household budget and all those kind of things. And then what the expenses need to be to sustain your business. Thankfully copywriting freelancing is very low overheads, especially if you do it from home. So yes, I knew I had enough money to be able to say no to people and continue to pay myself even if no other money came in. I was timing my projects. So I was using a tool called Toggl, but you can use a stopwatch, you can use anything you like. And I was actually beginning to get real data around how long projects took me so that I could price them in a way that was profitable for me and didn't end up in me working for $10 an hour.
And you need to do that a few times. You need to do that over a period of time because some projects will blow out, some projects you will be faster on, you know, there's lots of variables with that. So to get an understanding of, on average what writing a blog or writing a website or doing a brand messaging strategy might be on average, to be able to price it appropriately and to be able to understand how much time you actually need in your calendar or in your day to deliver a project and deliver to the timelines that you've promised a client so you don't end up with 10 projects on the go and only enough time to really deliver on three of them. Um, what else? Really good marketing systems so that, you know, you always have leads coming in the door.
So for me, a lot of my leads now come from word of mouth and come from my Instagram, my email list, and also my website, which just sort of chugs along in the background doing its thing. But I think really investing some time and thought into how you are marketing yourself and really generating a really nice lead pipeline, is worth your time and energy so that, you know, if you say no to this lead, there'll be another one. There's another one coming. Yeah, I think those three things are probably the main things that have made a big difference for me in getting from that place. Obviously also as I'm talking, I'm realising there's a lot of mindset stuff as well. So just, you know, <laugh>, if you can say no to leads, if you are able to sort of intuitively understand how much time it takes to do something and you can say no to people without any problems and you're not as excitable as me, that might not be <laugh> as much of a struggle for you as it was for me. But there's definitely, you know, knowing, hey, there's another, but if I say no to this project, there will be another one coming. And that confidence, I suppose comes with time. Yeah,
Steve Folland:
Your website, which is beautiful... When did you get it looking like that? Is that a recent thing or?
Anna Rogan:
So that was October 2021.
Steve Folland:
Did it make a difference? I mean, I don't know what your site was like before, but you know this, like the branding on it, it's beautifully designed. You mentioned earlier how the portfolio works, like everything about it is lovely and gives a real sense of you as well. So I don't know what was there before, but whether that made a difference.
Anna Rogan:
Yeah, so my first website, I was very lucky. I worked with a successful graphic design agency in Melbourne who I had known through my career working in media in comms. And they were very lovely to me and they really wanted to support me and they helped me get an initial website up and took some black and white photos of me. So my first website looked pretty good and it had professional graphic design. I mean, I had to, because I sat down with Wix and tried to do my own and oh, I dunno, I, I'm not a visuals person - I spent so much time on it and every time I would just break it, I just, I dunno, the colours would look good and then I'd put them on the website, be like, oh my God, what have I done?
I look like a clown <laugh>, um, <laugh>. And I just knew, look, I can't take this business seriously if I just look like a backyard operation. Especially back then when I started because Covid hadn't happened. And so working from home wasn't, you know, this idea of, oh, you are working from home and you can still be professional and still do a professional job - wasn't a thing back then. If you looked like a backyard operation, people wouldn't take you seriously and wouldn't hire you. So I did have quite a nice website from the start, you know, the copy was really good, but the messaging wasn't quite there because I didn't really know what people were looking for. I didn't really want know what they needed from me. I spoke a lot about saving them time and doing work that they didn't wanna do.
You know, you don't wanna write, I'll do it for you. And my messaging has really grown up since then because the value of what I deliver goes well beyond just saving people time and doing a job that they don't like doing. Um, but it took me some time to understand, really understand that value, to be able to communicate it. So the first thing that I did to update the website was move from the, I think I had half a dozen black and white photos of myself and I got professional branding photography done and I had a whole, you know, two hour photo shoot and I ended up with like a hundred photos of myself and they were beautifully done. And when I had that done and put those on my website, I noticed a real difference in how people were connecting with me, the kind of people that were coming through the door.
I was noticing that people coming onto my discovery calls to chat about their work already really wanted to work with me. Um, at the same time I was, you know, popping those photos on Instagram and doing a bit on Instagram. And I think that's a nice little portfolio piece, like a demonstration of your writing skills on Instagram as well. So people were connecting with me in a better way through those photos and through what I was doing on social media and I think this latest rebrand... So I was operating on that website with those photos for quite a while. And then this website that you can see now is the first time that I did a full redo of the website, redo the branding, and I had new photos taken again because they're of me on the farm and I redid the messaging as well.
And it's interesting because I think... I dunno that I've seen an increase in the amount of leads that come through, but it's a very rare for me now to get somebody coming to me wanting to work with me that isn't a good fit client for me. So I think it does a lot of heavy lifting in terms of finding, attracting and really retaining clients that I like to work with, projects that excite me. Like it does that sort of good fit work for me, which is great because that's a really hard thing to do once somebody is talking to you. Once you have them in a call, a discovery call or on email and they're telling you about their project and they're not a good fit for you because they don't have the budget, or you get a sense that they're not really going to value what you can deliver or, you know, the work doesn't excite you or isn't in your sphere of, you know, expertise, or they're not values aligned, you know, they're just not the kind of person that you would like to work with for whatever reason. It's really hard to then say no or to say, Hey, I don't think we'd be a great fit. I think that's a really hard thing for freelancers to do. And so I'm very grateful that my website is doing a lot of that hard work for me.
Steve Folland:
Interesting.
Anna Rogan:
Oh, the other thing with the website now is that I have people booking me for work and paying me upfront without ever having spoken to me straight through the website.
Steve Folland:
Hmm. Which sounds brilliant, <laugh> <laugh>, but actually, you just said, you know, like being on a call and then you get a feel as to whether, you know, maybe there's some red flags, maybe this isn't right. Like, do you ever find yourself in a situation where somebody's paid and they've hired you effectively, like you're kind of committed to it, but you haven't had that call so you haven't had that chance to suss 'em out?
Anna Rogan:
Not for ages, because I think the website's doing such a good job of attracting the good fit people for me. And I think because the investment is such a big one now, the pricing is... you know, I'm not the cheapest copywriter in Australia. So if you're going to make that investment, it's a benefit on the client end as well to make sure that they're really hiring someone that they know they're going to get on with and enjoy working with and get the value that they need. So there's a benefit to having some higher pricing there is that I have found that I've attracted better fit clients.
Steve Folland:
Nice. And so you have packages on your site?
Anna Rogan:
Yeah, so the way that I work isn't project based, it's time based. So my packages are hire me for a day, hire me for a week, hire me for two weeks. I have half a day and 90 minute bookings as well. But they're not on the website because they're the cheapest offerings. What I was finding was people were booking those and then coming in with loads of work that couldn't possibly be done in half a day, and then I would leave them disappointed. I think we would both leave feeling pretty dissatisfied - I don't wanna work with people unless I know I can make a difference to their business.
It doesn't feel good for me. Like, I need to make money for us to live here and for my life to work. Like the money isn't just a nice thing for me to have, but it's not worth it to me. If I walk away from a interaction with a client knowing that they're like, ah, this has been a waste of time and money for me because this is kind of good, but it doesn't get me where I need to go. It doesn't give me what I need. So now I ask people, I have those discovery calls - I do more admin to get someone on a 90 minute booking or a half a day booking because I wanna make sure that I can actually make a difference for them in that time.
Steve Folland:
God, I love this. And so if I was booking you for a week for example, is that using a Calendly type system that syncs with your calendar and you are in control of it in that respect?
Anna Rogan:
Yep. Right. So because I work school terms and I take school holidays off, I release my booking spots by term. So I'll say term one is now available and I can plan ahead. I can say, okay, in term two, I know there's a school camp, I know my husband's going away for work, I'm going on holiday, you know, what does that look like? Where are the public holidays? What does that look like? I look at my calendar, and Acuity is the platform that I use to sync it all up. The way that it works for me is I say a week booking is 18 hours over five days. So it's however I want to deliver that or however it works for the client to deliver that. But essentially that's sort of three days of six hours is kind of how I think about it.
So I look at my term and I try to put weeks back to back so that if somebody wants to book me for a two week spot, I can do that for them, which is really handy because I spend the first week doing brand messaging, strategy, customer surveys, you know, whatever that kind of strategic piece looks like. And then for the second week we can deliver the website copy, the email copy, you know, I find it's really helpful for launch copy because again, we can do a week of strategy and then a week of the execution on that strategy. So I'll do, okay, where are the two weeks that are going to sit together? And then for the other weeks I only do two full day bookings in a week together because then I have extra time in that week to do my own business admin or to do overflow work.
So if people book a day and then they see what I deliver in a day and they say, oh, Anna actually can you do this, this, and this <laugh>, I can say yes and I can do it tomorrow because I haven't booked... I can do it tomorrow while my brain is already on your brand, you know, while I'm already in the momentum of writing for you while we've already got attention on this project and get it done. And I find that's really helpful to have. And then I can have weeks where I say, well, I'm only going to open up one full day in this week because it's the end of term and I know there's going to be lots of school activity on or whatever. Uh, so I plot it all out in a spreadsheet that I have to say, okay, what does it look like to fit around my calendar and my life and to have the work life balance that I want and to, you know, work the way that I want, thinking about all the variables that I've, that now that I've done this system a few times I know I need to consider.
And then I have a little finance table that says, okay, well I'm opening up six full days and six working weeks, for example. How much money is that equivalent to, does that hit my financial targets, yes or no? Okay, so then I know, yes it does. And actually it's more than what I need to make. Great. I'll take some time out or take some weeks out. Or I'll say, okay, great, I don't have to worry about filling every single one of those spots. I can just chill a bit about needing to kind of hustle to book all those spots or get in touch with people and say, Hey, spots are open. Do you want one and fill them all? I can kind of relax a bit about whether all the slots will get filled or Oh no, it's not really going to hit my financial targets...
Right - Luke, who's my husband, I need to work another week. What do we do? Can you look after the kids? How do we open up time for me to be able to make some more money this term so we can do X, Y, Z? So it's a very data driven kind of process. That's how it works on the backend. So then it's all linked up to Acuity. So I take all those bookings, I open them all up in Acuity, and then I tell my email list and I tell Instagram, Hey, you know, they're open now go for your life - book away.
Steve Folland:
Wow. I can hear several people making notes right now. <laugh>, <laugh>. Um, and with your email list, how did you start to grow that?
Anna Rogan:
Um, really non strategically? So <laugh>,
Steve Folland:
Oh, that's nice to hear.
Anna Rogan:
Yeah, I went, oh <laugh>, how hard could it be? I'll just put a form on my website and people will sign up. And then I did, and then they did and I thought, oh dear <laugh>, I have all these people on my list. I better start talking to them. What should I talk to them about? It's not a massive list. I think I have about 500 people on there, but they do really enjoy my emails and it's been a bit like fits and starts. I'll have periods where, you know, I have a strategy, I have everything planned out for a few months. I'm really rolling with it. I had a really great series last year where I collaborated with other copywriters and we took questions from our audience, so from our email lists and from Instagram and from wherever. And then we would both answer the same question, but we wouldn't tell each other what we were going to write <laugh>.
So then we were, you know, having a different take or a similar take, but saying it in different ways on the same question. And that was heaps of fun. Like I just really enjoyed doing that. I really enjoyed writing specifically for the questions that people were asking, because then I knew that what I, the content I was delivering was actually going to help someone. And it grew my list as well because I was getting exposed to these other copywriters email lists. So I've done a few little idea driven campaigns like that in my emails. And then in between them I neglect the list a little bit. So <laugh>, it's unfortunate, but I'm a one woman show, so there's only so much you can do. And yeah, I do find the email list really is worth nurturing and is a really fun content channel for me. So I do try to put time and energy into it.
Steve Folland:
Are you somebody who has goals?
Anna Rogan:
Oh yeah, always. So obviously I have financial goals and I have lifestyle goals. A lot of my goals in my business are around how I want it to feel for me. I think being freelance and really running your own gig and running your own business can be a very tough slog. But the benefit of it is, you get to decide, you make all the decisions. So that 'you make all the decisions' coin on the one side of it is just an extreme amount of pressure and can be very stressful and overwhelming. But on the other side of it is you get to decide what's important to you and then you get to make it happen. And so in my life what's important to me is feeling good about the work that I do, actually helping people, being able to spend time with my kids, being able to enjoy my life and work is such a big part of my life. I want to enjoy my work too. So a lot of my goals around wanting to feel good about the work that I do and working in my business, but I'm the kind of person that always has a lot of ideas and I have to be quite strict with myself about which ones I follow and execute and yeah, that can be a bit tricky sometimes.
Steve Folland:
How do you pick?
Anna Rogan:
Ah, <laugh> Yeah, <laugh> very non strategically. So usually I'll just get very excited and start following an idea, and I'm a very 'learn by doing' kind of person. So I'll start doing it and then I'll figure out very quickly, oh, this is not the rabbit hole that I wanna fall down. And that can be a bit heartbreaking sometimes, cuz you can get really excited by an idea and then put work into it to discover actually this isn't going to be a good fit or this is going to require a lot more of me than I'm willing to give right now. And you kind of have to shelve things once they're already started and that hurts a little bit.
Steve Folland:
So you've had an experience of hiring subcontractors. How's that been for you?
Anna Rogan:
Yeah, it's really interesting because there's this narrative in freelance land that's like, okay, so once you've established your business and you've got customers coming in and things are going well - the next step is to scale, like scale, scale, scale, scale, scale, scale. And so in copywriter land, or in our industry, two of the ways that people do that, it's like you start an agency or you subcontract or you create digital products and you go the one to many digital product/course kind of route. So scaling is the thing and the copywriting group that I was in, the community that I was part of - that membership back in the real early days, I don't know if it was just me, but it felt like there was this real kind of... if you had an agency, like if you were hiring other copywriters to work with you, there's almost prestige around that.
Or you've really made it - you are doing something important here because you have a team of people. And so I was like, okay, I'll give it a go and you know... not terribly strategic. I'll find out what I find out. And I didn't love it. I very quickly found out that to make it work, it seems very obvious, but you have to work with really great subcontractors and to make the model work, you need to be charging a price and then you are paying subcontractors less of that price so that you are making some money out of the situation. But to get really good subcontractors who are happy to work for less than what they could earn if they were just working directly with the client, you either need to get people who are early on in their freelancing copywriting career and you lose them.
Like, once they realise what they're worth or they get busy - you lose them quickly. So you've gotta put a lot of time and energy into retaining those people or you know, whatever you wanna do to invest in those people to retain them. Or you work with people who aren't so great or don't have the skills that you need, don't add the value that you need. And then you are spending a lot of time editing and making their work better to then present to the client. And for me, once I had to bring my mental energy into that space with the work to do, be doing lots of editing or lots of sort of rewriting myself, the benefit of working with the subcontractor was gone. Because if I'm gonna put the mental energy in, at least give me the fun part of even starting the work and doing the creation and there's a lot of time and energy and investment that you have to put into project management and not just the people management and hiring good talent and retaining good talent, but managing them so they know their deadlines, the work's coming in on time, you 've got a buffer to be able to send it onto the client.
And, you know, my way of working now, which is time-based, the whole idea around that is to remove a lot of the admin around project management because my brain doesn't like it. I don't enjoy it. It's not how I like to work. It's not what I enjoy doing so the less of it I can do the better. And when you've got subcontractors, you've got a lot of more project management to do. And then the third thing about it that I found out was - people wanted to work with me. They didn't want to hire me and then when I would suggest, hey, I can take this project on in the timelines that you need, but I'm going to work with a subcontractor to deliver it. They would say to me, I want you to do the work, let's push out the timelines.
And I think that was because I'd really worked on my Instagram and my website and my emails and all of that kind of stuff to really sort of build my brand and build my name and showcase my writing skills and style that people were very keen to work with me and I liked that and I still like that. So I was like, well, I'm just gonna double down on that. Now in my business I've been spending some time thinking about it - okay scaling in that way isn't a good fit for me for lots of reasons and it's probably not an avenue that I will would look at again. So what might scaling look like in terms of digital products or a course? And I've been working on something for quite a while now and coming up against a lot of... learning a lot about it and wondering if scaling in that way is going to be a good fit for me. And I don't think I'm going to know until I actually deliver something and have people doing it to work out whether the things that I'm worried about are real or imagined - I think is where I'm at with that. That's a bit vague, but yeah.
Steve Folland:
It's a work in progress.
Anna Rogan:
It is a work in progress and I think I'm at a point now where I'm thinking - is scaling the be all and end all? Do you have to scale? Is that really the next logical step up? Or can you just do really good work on a one-on-one basis and hit your financial goals? You know? Does there have to be a next step like this? Or just really enjoy what I'm doing in my business now.
Steve Folland:
Anna, if you could tell your younger self one thing about being freelance, what would that be?
Anna Rogan:
This is so hard because what I wanna say is 'do it sooner!', but I couldn't have done it sooner. Like, everything I did in my career that led me to doing this, I felt like it happened at the right time for me to have the skills that I was able to take freelance. I really had that foundation. But I would say to people younger than me, maybe 'younger me' way back when I was looking at my career and I just had tunnel vision and I thought the only thing that I could do was to work for other people. I would say just consider it. Just put it in the mix. This is a possibility. Running your own business and being freelance, you can use your skills in this way. Put it in the mix of things that you could consider doing. It doesn't always have to be job boards and resumes and bosses and managers. You can do it for yourself. People are doing it. It is possible.