Copywriter Eddie Shleyner
About this episode…
COPYWRITER EDDIE SHLEYNER
In 2014 Eddie started the Very Good Copy blog. Using it to educate himself, to explore copywriting techniques whilst working in-house. But he wasn’t the only one reading it. As it grew in popularlity, people started reaching out, offering him work.
He turned them down. Until eventually in 2020, an opportunity came along that was too good to refuse. So he quit his job and went full-time-freelance.
In our conversation Eddie shares the process of building his newsletter audience, his decision to create courses whilst not abandoning client work, the danger to work/life balance when you get a high from creating, and the importance of not just growing for growth’s sake.
Read the highlights in the next tab.
SPREADING THE WORD
Eddie’s Very Good Copy blog and newsletter really took off when he started using LinkedIn to repurpose it. He’d write a new ‘micro-essay’ weekly, but show up on LinkedIn with repurposed content daily…
“I just started getting really strategic about how to move my work around the internet. Then it just became like, okay, well how well can I write? How well can I put this essay together, or put this interview together? How well can I do it, because I know that it's going to get a lot of reach..”
STAYING IN THE GAME
The success of Very Good Copy has also led Eddie to creating courses for that audience. But he’s still giving up on the freelancing work…
“I don't think I'm ever going to stop taking on clients. I think as a copywriter, or anybody doing creative work, it keeps you extremely fresh. Solving real world problems is a really good way to just stay on top of your craft and not become complacent.
If somebody comes to me with a business problem in their company, that's something that I have to think about. And that works a different muscle. So it's a really valuable thing to do…”
FAMILY FOCUS
Eddie worked a lot on the growth of his blog ‘out of hours’ over the years. It paid off. But now the growth of his family has made him reassess work/life balance…
“I could have worked less. I could have worked a lot less. And I have been working less. A couple of years ago we had our first kid. Out of necessity, I had to slow down, but also, you know, eventually I was like, wait, if I'm working all the time, I'm kind of missing the point here. That was a real transformational moment, like an illuminating moment for me.
And so I made a lot of decisions and took a lot of steps to make sure that I wasn't working as much. And now, we just had our second kid - now I really need to be smart about my time and smart about what I'm investing in…”
THE DOPAMINE HIT OF CREATION
Eddie found it hard to slow down, to not work and instead ocncentrate on his mental health, friends and family…
“That was tricky because I started to feel a void if I wasn't working or if I wasn't producing.
I think it was chemical. Some people get their dopamine hits from drugs, from alcohol. Some people get their dopamine hits from making something new and sharing it and seeing the response and seeing the growth of whatever it was you were building from nothing.
I was probably in that latter camp. And so it was a matter of rewiring my brain to think differently and to reprioritize a lot of the things in my life that were maybe kind of going by the wayside a little bit. ”
LINKEDIN LOVE
There’s a lot of choice when it comes to different social media platforms, but Eddie isn’t being distracted from the one that’s always worked for him…
“LinkedIn has just been good to me. That community was just extremely receptive to what I was putting out there. So I'm really grateful for that.
I also think the medium was right for me. I wrote articles that were a few hundred words and at the time, Twitter just wasn't accommodating that, LinkedIn posts were - my message fit that medium.
It's also my speed, you know? It's a considerate place. It's not an anonymous place.
It's a business minded place and this is a business.”
CRAFT MOde/GROWTH MODE
Okay, this is a longer quote than I normally pull out, but crikey it’s worth taking in. Go on, tuck in…
“There's gotta be an element of gratitude with what you have. Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of a cancer cell. Some philosopher said that and it's true. If you don't know why you're growing, if you don't know who the audience you're going after is, if you're always just chasing numbers and metrics and just trying to watch the numbers tick up without really focusing on craft, without really focusing on what it is that you started all of this for in the first place… there's something inherently wrong about that.
I think that as a creator you have growth mode and then you have craft mode and it's important to focus on growth mode, and I've been focused on it for a while.
You have to grow, you have to get your work in front of an audience to ultimately start attracting freelance clients, you have to sacrifice some things about the way that you work and what you're making in order to grow faster in order to get bigger and create a business and have a career.
But at a certain point you have to think, okay, do I need more than 60,000 email subscribers to make a living? Do I need more than 100,000 LinkedIn followers to make a living? Probably not. You have way more than you need, you know? So at what point do you switch over to craft and say, okay, I'm really going to double down on my work.
I'm really going to double down on what got me into this in the first place, what's important to me. And I find that most people that do that, the growth comes naturally. The growth is going to be there. If you just focus on the things that are important to you, making them as well as you can.
All that effort that you put into growth marketing, that's all gonna be swallowed up by the fact that you're putting quality work out there and giving it everything.”
“It was chemical…
Some people get their dopamine hits from drugs. Some people get their dopamine hits from making something new, sharing it and seeing the response, seeing the growth of whatever it was you were building from nothing…”
Eddie Shleyner, Copywriter & Founder of Very Good Copy on the addiction of creation
More from EDDIE SHLEYNER
Very Good Copy website
Eddie on LinkedIn
More from Steve Folland
Transcript of the Being Freelance podcast with Steve Folland and copywriter and founder of Very Good Copy - Eddie Shleyner
Steve Folland: As ever, how about we get started hearing how you got started.
Eddie Shleyner: I think it was a symptom of starting my blog and newsletter. I have a newsletter called Very Good Copy and I've just been kind of working on it on the side for a while while I was working in house at software companies and agencies.
And eventually it got to the point where I was marketing it in earnest and I was getting more subscribers. And so that's what brought in a lot of opportunity. A lot of people sort of reaching out to me through that. And one day I got a really big opportunity and I quit my job.
Steve Folland: Wow. Okay. So to put things in perspective, when did you start the newsletter and when did it get so big that you thought, yeah, actually, okay. I'm out of here.
Eddie Shleyner: I bought the Very Good Copy domain in 2014, I think, and I was just kind of like piddling around with it. I didn't have a newsletter or anything like that.
I was just kind of posting on the blog and it was really just for my own education. You know, I would come into an insight, I would come into information that I thought was interesting about copywriting, about marketing, about creativity, and then I would write about it as a way to kind of like prove to myself that I understood that concept, that technique, that principle, what have you.
And then I would post it and then I would feel confident enough using those principles, those techniques in my promotions. So that's how it started. I did that for several years and then I got hired at a company called g2. com. It's basically like a Yelp, but for B2B, you know, I got hired there essentially on the back of Very Good Copy.
I think the CMO there and the marketing team there like that I had this initiative, like that I did this thing. It wasn't a big thing at all, but it was just something that showed, you know, my kind of passion, I guess, for, for marketing and for copywriting. And so, they hired me there, and then there was just a ton of support from everybody that I worked with, all of my colleagues.
They were like, hey, we love your little articles you know, you should write more of them, and then you should market them. And I think I was really, really lucky to work with a team. of extremely talented, extremely smart, much smarter than me, growth marketers that helped me spread my work around the internet really efficiently.
And so it was about from 2018 to 2020 where the blog, the newsletter, really took off. It was like that two, two and a half year period that I was working there that I really began kind of like focusing on it in earnest, which is another, it was another very lucky break for me that I worked with people that were totally cool with me having this side project and doing this thing on the side, you know, dedicating some of my like creative energy and like resources to that.
But I think that they really liked the fact that I was bringing a lot of the things that I was learning and a lot of the practice that I had. You know, writing and creating campaigns for myself to the team at large at G2. So yeah, yeah. To answer your question really long winded way of doing it, but it was like from 2018 to 2020 where it really took off.
And then I quit G2 in about October, 2020, right in the middle of COVID. Unbelievably.
Steve Folland: So for all that time though, when you were building it, you know, it sounds like people are going, Oh, he really knows what he's talking about copywise, can we hire him? And they're approaching you.
Were you doing freelance projects on the side? Or would you just say, Oh, I'm not actually for hire
Eddie Shleyner: Not really. Maybe I took on a couple or something, but I can't even remember. Yeah. For all intents and purposes, probably wasn't freelancing while I was at G2, but Very Good Copy was like an account in and of itself.
It was writing the stuff, marketing the stuff, you know, just figuring out that system. And so that was in and of itself, kind of like a, a, freelance project for me. Yeah, but the freelancing work to make a living that didn't really take off until I left G2.
Steve Folland: Love it. You spend years almost accidentally positioning yourself as an expert making yourself an expert learning along the way, but you said that when you're at G2.
That they helped you spread your work around the internet efficiently - what changed? What did you start doing that was differently at that point?
Eddie Shleyner: Well they encourage d me to start posting on social media a lot more namely LinkedIn you know LinkedIn is probably my greatest source of of leads and greatest source of I guess attention for the blog and the newsletter and they just showed me these little hacks that I really leaned into and really doubled down on to get as many views on my work as possible. And to like just create growth loops that would amplify the reach of the post, you know, every single time I posted.
So I think that's what changed is that I started getting really smart and really strategic about how... well, I didn't get smart, but smart people told me what to do!
I just started getting really, really strategic about how to move my work around the internet and then it just became like, okay, well how well can I write? Like how well can I put this essay together, or put this interview together? How well can I do it, because I know that it's going to get a lot of reach.
So it was just that combination of attaining that reach, spreading that content around efficiently, and then also making sure that it was as good as that as that could be - it was that one two punch.
Steve Folland: So eventually somebody comes along and says, 'would you like to do this project?' And you can't say no...
Eddie Shleyner: So there was just a situation where I was like, man, you know, this is like four or five months salary.
So I talked to my wife about it and she was like, yeah, you should do this. And I was like, but it's COVID. Super precarious. And she's like, yeah, I think you could do it. And so, you know, a huge credit to her, for believing in me and just being supportive of me and, you know, giving me the confidence to kind of go for it at that point.
Because I'm not sure that I would have done that without her blessing and encouragement, you know what I mean?
Steve Folland: Yeah. So that sounds like a pretty meaty project to get started on. And then what happened when you get to the end of that and you think, Okay, actually, now I need more of these kind of things...
Eddie Shleyner: Well, I was lucky that I had a steady stream of leads coming in from the newsletter. And just from the growth that I was seeing online and on LinkedIn. So, I think I was just in a lucky situation. It was just one of those things where I had a pipeline. And so I decided to act on probably the biggest opportunity that I had.
But there seemed to always be other smaller things that I could take on. To kind of fill the gaps. And I also had other revenue streams, you know, the newsletter was taking on sponsors at that point, so I had sponsorships. And so there was different revenue streams that I could fall back on.
That kind of like eased the pressure a little bit. But it was that one kind of mega project that kind of put me over the edge.
Steve Folland: In that case, you've got all those leads coming in. How do you filter them? How did you know what to work on?
Eddie Shleyner: It was just the most interesting stuff for me personally. If I found an opportunity where, you know, I was really interested in the company or like their mission or their audience, the market that they were going after. And by interesting, I mean like it was something that I knew a lot about and I knew that I could do a good job, you know, and without that much research, that much product marketing work behind it that was something I probably prioritized.
Yeah. Obviously, financially, if the economics were right and people had a big budget and they were ready to commit to a bigger investment than average. Then that was interesting to me.
Steve Folland: How did you know what to charge?
You know, you've been employed for a long time. How did you deal with the business side of things?
Eddie Shleyner: It's a great question. And it's... there's no formula. There's no science to it. Really. I just worked at enough big software companies and enough big agencies, I guess, to know the significance of good copy and the impact that it can have and how it can scale across an organization.
One thing you could do is look at their average deal size, you know, what is one sale worth to them? And then you can extrapolate that and figure out, you know, if I rewrite this landing page for you or rewrite this email sequence for you, and you know, these are direct response assets, conversion assets.
If I increase the conversion rate by X amount, what does that look like on your end for your bottom line? You know, you could do the math on that and then charge accordingly. That's probably how it started. And then I just kind of landed on a day rate at a certain point.
And then I ended up just going with that day rate because it was easier and there was less math probably. ()
Steve Folland: Did you create case studies? A portfolio?
Eddie Shleyner: Well, no, I didn't create case studies or, or anything like that. I basically just kept on writing Very Good Copy the newsletter and just kept on honing that. And I would diligently collect testimonials from people that I worked with in a conversion capacity, you know, so if I worked with somebody that hired me for a landing page, hired me for an email sequence, hired me for conversion work, not content work, then I would always make sure to record proof of that work and get them to vouch for my work that way.
So that's something I did do. I didn't create case studies though. I definitely collected testimonials. I definitely doubled down on Very Good Copy, growing the newsletter, helping people write better copy themselves and kind of just led with value. You know, across the newsletter, across LinkedIn, Twitter, you know, growing my brand that way.
And I think that did a lot of the heavy lifting for me.
Steve Folland: Did you have a system at all when it came to asking for testimonials?
Eddie Shleyner: I would just ask. I mean, you know, somebody might write back and be like, Oh my God, we're seeing this in this conversion rate increase!
I'd be like, Oh, that's great. I'm collecting testimonials this week. You know, would you mind putting one together for me? Later on, I started working with a company called testimonial.to , which is a tool that helps you collect, aggregate testimonials really easily, and then display them really elegantly on a site.
So I'm a huge fan of them and that made collecting the testimonials, I guess, technically easier, logistically easier because I would just send somebody to a landing page, and then they could record one, or they could write a text testimonial like that and it wouldn't have to all be through email But there wasn't a system as much as it was just me shamelessly asking
Steve Folland: Okay, I've got to ask then, because clearly the root of all this goes back to starting that newsletter, starting a blog starting to create Regularly, so how regularly were you doing Very Good Copy ?
Eddie Shleyner: I would send out a new email, a new micro essay every week But on LinkedIn, I would post daily almost, because I had this backlog of all these essays and interviews that I did, and so, you know, I just looked at that as marketing the business, that was just my way of Marketing the newsletter, marketing the agency - my way of bringing attention to those assets. And so new work would come out weekly, but then I would put stuff into syndication essentially, you know, and that probably did more for the newsletter than some of the new work, just constantly being top of mind - constantly showing up.
Steve Folland: And so would you be sharing it? And maybe I'm going to get the LinkedIn lingo wrong. Would you be sharing a post direct to your feed, you know, or would you be creating an article that people would click into? Would it be one of those carousels taking learning points from your essay? How did it look and feel?
Eddie Shleyner: I would experiment. I would put down a text post one day. Create a carousel - take one of my articles, turn them into a carousel and put that down another day. And then, you know, sometimes I'll take an excerpt out of an article and create a shorter post. I always tried to mix it up and see what worked.
And sometimes I would double down on the things that worked. And sometimes I'll be like, no, I want to be an artist, you know, and I'll do something out of left field, that didn't get any play, but it brought me satisfaction. You know, I did whatever I kind of wanted to do because it was satisfying.
And if I was running a campaign, you know, I eventually started selling a course and started to try to productize the brand. And so, you know, if I was running a campaign, I would be a little bit more disciplined with the campaign, the assets that I put out - I would hold myself really accountable.
But if I was just trying to get people to the site to draw awareness and, you know, hopefully get some subscribers. I just put up whatever I wanted.
Steve Folland: And would each one have a call to action, I guess, of pointing them in the direction of your newsletter?
Eddie Shleyner: Yeah, of course. Absolutely. Well, that's the growth loop that I started with and to a very large degree, it's what I still do.
I mean, there's diminishing returns there and I don't know if it's working as well as it used to, but essentially I would write an article and then I would publish it on LinkedIn and then I would have a CTA underneath the article or if it was a carousel at the end of the carousel, be like, Hey, if you like this, I've got hundreds more on Very Good Copy. com - Go check it out. People would go to Very Good Copy. com - new, I guess readers, you could say go to Very Good Copy. com - a good percentage of them would convert because the whole site is really designed to get people into the newsletter to convert. I would send the same article that I just posted on LinkedIn out to the newsletter and I would ask people at the end of that article to go to LinkedIn to leave a comment, to leave a like, you know, support it if they liked it and then those comments, those likes, that support that people showed me from the newsletter would amplify the reach of the post and bring new people in and those new people would see you the CTA to go to Very Good Copy and it just become this virtuous circle. So that's what I did. And like I said, there's probably some diminishing returns there over time, but now it's just kind of like, you know, it's just part of my process. It's just what I do every week.
Steve Folland: Speaking of doing it every week, do you batch this or are you like just rocking up every day and thinking, okay, I'm going to jump on LinkedIn and do this thing?
Eddie Shleyner: Yeah, I think I would batch and do my best to prepare for the coming weeks as far as like posting goes and like syndicating some of the content. I would do my best to prepare as far as like new content goes as well, but that's harder. Like sometimes it's just hard to wake up and say, Hey, I'm going to finish this article today and send it out tomorrow.
You know, as much as I'd love to do that, it doesn't always work that way. So with writing, with like new content, I always have a dedicated block of writing time per day. But if I get something finished in that, is kind of up in the air. I don't know if I'm actually gonna complete something, produce something.
It's a little less predictable.
Steve Folland: You mentioned a course. At what point did you bring that into the world?
Eddie Shleyner: I pre sold that in November of 2022. And then I launched it in January of 23. So I pre sold it. And it was like, it was like eye popping. And so I was like, okay, I better nail this. So I, I disappeared for three months.
I just stopped, I just literally stopped everything. I didn't go online. I didn't answer my emails. I didn't send out a newsletter. I just heads down for three months working on finishing the writing and recording and just putting together this course. And then yeah, I launched it in January.
And that has actually been the main driver of business. I would say I'm starting to pare down the freelancing and starting to kind of focus on marketing that course and creating other products under the Very Good Copy kind of umbrella because it's so much more scalable.
Steve Folland: You say that you're going to do more of that - switching away from doing more of the actual copywriting clients?
Eddie Shleyner: Yeah, I think I'm definitely going to make more courses. Not just because it's scalable and it's good business, but because I really enjoy it.
And I think that way it scales how much I can help people in a really meaningful way. It's definitely by far the most practical and like actionable work I've ever done as far as like teaching people things. So I enjoy it for that reason, but I don't think I'm ever going to stop freelancing.
I don't think I'm ever going to stop taking on clients. I think as a copywriter or, you know, anybody doing creative work, it keeps you extremely fresh, you know, solving real world problems is a really good way to just stay on top of your craft and not become kind of complacent. Because it does force you to do things maybe that you're uncomfortable with, to look at problems in a different way.
If somebody comes to me with a business problem in their company you know, that's something that I have to think about. And that works a different muscle. And so it's a really valuable thing to do. So I don't think I'll ever stop doing it.
Steve Folland: How have you found the work life balance?
Eddie Shleyner: Well you know, I, I could have... I could have worked less. I think I could have worked a lot less. And I have been working less. A couple of years ago we had our first kid. So my son Bo came and I was like, you know, out of necessity, I had to slow down, but also, you know, eventually I was like, wait, if I'm working all the time, I'm kind of missing the point here, you know, like that was a real transformational moment, like an illuminating moment for me.
And so I made a lot of decisions and took a lot of steps to make sure that I wasn't working as much. And now, you know, we just had our second kid, my daughter is here and it's like, now I really need to be smart about my time and smart about what I'm investing in.
And so, yeah, I feel like I put in a lot of work for 10 years. Maybe stuffed more than 10 years of work into those 10 years, maybe 15 years, maybe more. It Was a labor of love. I love doing it. I was really passionate about it. I think I got lucky in that sense that I found something that I really love to do and something that, you know, people thought that I was good at and that just motivated me and gave me the conviction to sit down and get it done.
And so I worked a lot and built up a lot of equity in that sense. And so now that I have these things, these assets, like I just want to use them wisely and try to make as much space and room for my family as I can. So yeah, that's definitely number one for me at the moment.
Steve Folland: What have you found the most challenging part of being freelance?
Eddie Shleyner: I mean, to piggyback off my last answer - figuring out when to slow down, you know, figuring out how to chill out You know freelancers are usually really self motivated people, really driven people, passionate people -I think you have to be to enter into you know a freelance career because if you don't make yourself do it then nobody will and so nobody's breathing down your neck to go and find clients or to make this work. You got to do it, you know?
So I think that for a long time, that was really hard for me. It was just figuring out how I was going to slow down and focus on other things that were important. You know, my mental health, my friends, my family, that was tricky because I started to feel a void if I wasn't working or if I wasn't producing you know, it was a difficult situation sometimes.
I think it was chemical, you know, like some people get their dopamine hits from drugs, you know, from alcohol. There's all sorts of ways to get that dopamine. Some people get their dopamine hits from making something new and sharing it and seeing the response and seeing the growth of whatever it was you were building from nothing.
So it was probably in that latter camp. And so it was a matter of rewiring my brain to think differently and to reprioritize a lot of the things in my life that were maybe kind of going by the wayside a little bit.
Steve Folland: You mentioned earlier about LinkedIn and Twitter. Is that the extent of your social media. You've avoided Instagram, for example?
Eddie Shleyner: Yeah, basically. I mean, I have an Instagram profile. I have a Reddit profile.
I have a Twitter profile and I don't really use it. LinkedIn has just been good to me. I think as a platform, they gave me the little blue thing - I think that that was fortuitous. But that came on the back of a lot of support from that community - I think that community was just extremely receptive to what I was putting out there. So I'm really grateful for that. I also think that like the medium was right for me, you know, I, I wrote articles that were a few hundred words and at the time, Twitter just wasn't accommodating that.
And LinkedIn posts were and so the medium is the message and my my message fit that medium, you know what I mean? So it just all came together really well on LinkedIn and that's where I grew the most and that's that's where I've basically been and it's also my speed, you know ? It's a considerate place. It's not an anonymous place. It's a business minded place and this is a business. And so, yeah,
Steve Folland: It's interesting because things come along, don't they, especially as a writer as well. Most recently Substack and Medium. I'm sure there's others that I've forgotten and lost along the way.
So when you see those, are you tempted by them? Do you side glance them, think, what if I can put myself in front of more new people?
Eddie Shleyner: Yeah, sure. Platforms that have, like, growth mechanisms built into them are really interesting to me. So, you know, if, if there's a platform out there that can recommend you automatically, there's a built in engine that recommends you to other folks or, you know, there's engines out there that like help you collaborate with other writers in your field and, you know, help you grow that way organically.
I think that's cool. And that is something that I'm interested in. It's a big deal I think to switch platforms. Like I'm on MailChimp. I've been on MailChimp for 10 years. You know, I realized that it's not like optimal for me at this point, but it's just a. It's just a whole thing, you know, so like I gotta be able to sit down and focus on that transition for a few weeks in order to do it correctly, you know.
But the other thing is... you know, there's gotta be an element of gratitude with what you have. And growth for the sake of growth is like the ideology of a cancer cell . Some philosopher said that it's true. If you don't know why you're growing, if you don't know who the audience you're going after is, if you're always just chasing numbers and metrics and just trying to watch the numbers tick up without really focusing on craft, without really focusing on what it is that you started all of this for in the first place, you know, there's something inherently wrong about that.
You know what I mean? So chasing the next platform, chasing the next thing, that's just feeding into that narrative. And so it's something that I do want to be thoughtful about and avoid that as much as possible. Not to say that I'm not gonna move to a different platform and I'm gonna use all of those features that they have to my advantage, but just kind of like... keep things in perspective.
I think that as a creator you have growth mode and then you have craft mode and it's important to focus on growth mode, and I've been focused on it for a while.
Like you have to grow, you have to get your work in front of an audience to ultimately start attracting freelance clients, you have to sacrifice some things about the way that you work and what you're making in order to grow faster in order to get bigger and create a business and have a career.
But at a certain point you have to think like, okay, do I need more than 60, 000 email subscribers to make a living? Do I need more than 100, 000 LinkedIn followers to make a living? Probably not. You have way more than you need, you know? So at what point do you switch over to craft and say, okay, I'm really going to double down on my work.
I'm really going to double down on what got me into this in the first place, what's important to me. And I find that most people that do that, the growth comes naturally. You know what I mean? Like the growth is going to be there. If you just focus on the things that are important to you, making them as well as you can.
You know all that effort that you put into growth marketing that's all gonna be swallowed up by the by the fact that you're putting quality work out there and giving it everything.
Steve Folland: You obviously had people around you at G2 who helped you that you mentioned earlier. Have there been other people, particularly as you've gone from having a side project into, well, you call yourself the founder of Very Good Copy, you know, like into running a business , of looking at it differently - are there other people helping you, or do you figure it all out yourself?
Eddie Shleyner: No, I certainly don't figure it all out myself. I mean, the creative piece. Yes. Like doing the work. That's all me. But my wife has been a huge part of this business. I mean, she is the silent partner, so to speak. Like she's a CPA, she's an accountant and she's just extremely talented at all the things that I'm really bad at, you know, invoicing people, having those financial conversations, figuring out how to get set up in someone's AP system, just doing everything you need to do as a freelancer to get paid.
I'm not good at that stuff and I'm not good at all of the admin and that's her forte. And so, you know, just like she was there with me when I started freelancing in 2020 and I took that really big leap and felt really nervous about it, really, you know, it was such a precarious moment for me.
She was there for me then. And then she's kind of persisted with me all the way through taking on a lot of this administrative responsibility that, you know, like I said, I'm just not good at that stuff. So if it wasn't for her, if it wasn't for her figuring out that end of the business and kind of running it for me, I would not be anywhere near as productive or happy as I am.
Steve Folland: Eddie, if you could tell your younger self, one thing about being freelance, what would that be?
Eddie Shleyner: You have to stay with it. You have to be resilient, pace yourself and do everything you have to do for yourself, but also just be realistic and stay the course.
And eventually it will turn into something that's very comfortable and very convenient for your life. You know, I think it's just a matter of having that resolve to push through the hardest parts of this business, which is just the precariousness and like not knowing what's coming next that takes a huge emotional toll and psychological toll and so It's like figuring out how to cope with those things and just realizing that there's much much better days ahead.
And then it's all worth it because freelancing is such a beautifu way to to make a living. You know being your own boss and setting your your own rules and your own your own schedule. It' s just that doesn't come immediately And I think a lot of people fall into this trap of thinking that the way it feels right now in year one or two is the way it's always going to feel.
But that's just not true.
Steve Folland: It's been so good to talk to you. It's interesting cause you use the word 'luck' so often and you put all the credit on lots of smart and lovely people around you.
But clearly none of this would happen without you sticking with it either, Eddie. So good for you.
Eddie Shleyner: But it is luck, Steve. I mean, like I have just been so fortunate throughout so many different parts of my career that I met the right person or I stuck around long enough at something that that I got an opportunity or, you know, just Luck has played an enormous role in my career.
So luck is a huge part of it as well. And I can't give that enough credence for sure.
Steve Folland: But do you think there is a way though, to make your own luck or to spot those opportunities? Sometimes maybe they're there and they pass by because we're not looking with the right optimism or...?
Eddie Shleyner: Definitely. I mean, the fact that I had this thing on the side and was doing things that maybe most full time writers, copywriters weren't doing, that was a way of like making maybe your own luck right there, just like putting in that effort and maybe doing what most people weren't doing at that time because it was just kind of like squirreling away nuts, just building this little thing that just little by little it became bigger and bigger and that's where the opportunities came from so I think yeah...
Was I lucky over and over again? Absolutely. But a big part of that was I just felt strongly enough about something to keep doing it.
Steve Folland: Amazing. Eddie thank you so much and all the best being freelance.
Eddie Shleyner: Thank you, sir. Thanks for having me.
This episode is sponsored by Freelancer Magazine
Dedicated to helping you grow a freelance business you love. Subscribe to Freelancer Magazine!