It works until it doesn't - Copywriter Hillary Weiss
“I’m working way too hard for way too little money. How do I fix this?”
That’s the question that triggered a series of business model shifts in just a few years.
From charging hourly and then daily, to focusing on retainers for a while, Hillary tested what worked and kept refining it as she went. She now takes on high-ticket project work, and it’s giving her the freedom she’d been looking for.
Hillary’s shaping her business to work for her, and she calls entrepreneurship the Thunderdome of personal development.
“Success means being able to be the person you want to be while doing the work you want to do,” says Hillary. Hear her tell Steve how she’s striving for both.
MORE FROM HILLARY WEISS
Hillary’s YouTube show #HAMYAW
and… the episode where Hillary roasts her old site
USEFUL LINKS
MORE FROM STEVE FOLLAND
TRANSCRIPT OF THE BEING FREELANCE PODCAST WITH COPYWRITER HILLARY WEISS AND STEVE FOLLAND
Steve Folland: How about we get started hearing how you got started in freelance.
Hillary Weiss: Once upon a time. I actually got my start in freelancing pretty young. I actually got introduced to the business at about, when I was I think a senior in college. So I would have been about 20 or 21 when a friend of mine sent me a link to a copywriter's website, a copywriter by the name of Alexandra Franzen. I'd never seen anything like it. I surfed on her website, and it was so creative and really interesting and the work she seemed to do was really fun. And most importantly, she was a writer by trade, and I had been writing for my entire life and I thought I wanted to go into journalism for a while, I thought I wanted to be a fiction writer for a while, but then it turned out none of those things paid very well. So I decided to pursue a degree in public relations at the university instead. And so when I found this copywriter's website, I was, "Oh my God, I think this is exactly what I should be doing."
Hillary Weiss: So I did what most young people do on the internet, I stalked her and read everything I could and found her on social media and eventually, I got in touch with her via a DM on Twitter where I basically asked her if she needed a minion to do her bidding, because I would do anything to learn from her and fortunately she said, yes. So I actually started by transcribing her strategy sessions for a little while. If you were to hold a gun to my head now and tell me I had to do transcriptionist's work for any reason, I would probably be, "You know what, I'm ready to go." It's not my favourite thing to do. But it really taught me the ropes and taught me a lot and eventually, she passed me my first client and I actually teamed up with that friend who sent me the copywriter's website in the first place. Her name is Cassie Oswald. And we actually started as a duo. So I started as a copywriter, she was the designer and we would do websites.
Hillary Weiss: We had this great brand name, Youngblood Sourcery, which I'm still particularly proud of, even though it's now we're on indefinite hiatus. And then we basically got our start in the world that way. We parted ways and I went solo, I want to say in 2015 or 16, and ever since then, I've sort of been a solo act and I got my start within the women's self-help coaching and creative spheres and now I do a little bit of everything. I've done work in SaaS, I do work in more creative spaces with you designers and artists, I work with positions to create personal brands. Basically, I'm in the business of personal branding interesting people. So I have no complaints there. And that's all started, I think in 2011. And so it's been a good eight years now and for every year in freelance days actually count, I don't know if you know this, but they actually count as dog's years, so I've actually been in business for 56 years now. Very, very proud of that longevity.
Steve Folland: I love that. That's so true. It should be that way, or it is that way now that you've said it.
Hillary Weiss: Yeah, it should be. See, I'm just spreading the gospel. Just letting everybody know the fact.
Steve Folland: So how was that, when you started as Youngblood Sourcery, which should also be some sort of pop group. But anyway-
Hillary Weiss: I know.
Steve Folland: When you started as Youngblood Sourcery, how was it collaborating?
Hillary Weiss: That was interesting and that was unexpectedly, we had two very different work styles. I'm very much like a steamroller and when you get something in front of me, I'm, "Yep, done. I will hit the deadline, even if I die." Whereas my designer friend, as designers tend to do, because it's a different sort of experience needed to take more space, and kind of puts a little bit more space between her and the client so clients relationships kind of fell to me a little bit, but we found a good balance and we worked together quite well for a couple of years.
Hillary Weiss: But then she realized that she wanted to go more into illustration, and instead of graphic design and websites, so that's a part of the reason why we parted ways and she's actually in school now for art therapy, which is pretty cool here in New York City. So she's doing really well, but I think it was interesting because we both started at the same time. I discovered that business was really for me and while she enjoyed the creative side of things and enjoyed being freelance, the business side of things wasn't necessarily for her. And that makes sense, it's really not for everybody this game but if you're a steamroller and if you're hungry and if you are really set on doing your own thing and there's nothing in the world like it and learning to succeed in this kind of world.
Steve Folland: So how did you go about getting those first freelance clients?
Hillary Weiss: I was really fortunate in that my first, that client I was working with doing transcription work for, she actually sent me my first ever client who I worked with, I think for free to learn the ropes for about six months and I used to charge her something like, I don't know 20 bucks an hour temporarily and very small increments because I was too chicken to actually charge for all the work I was doing. But after that I actually got my name passed around. Are you familiar with Marie Forleo’s B-School?
Steve Folland: Yeah. Well, we've heard it mentioned a few times.
Hillary Weiss: Yes. This was in the early days when I was really starting to pick up steam. I think the big, everybody has heard about this now a year for B-School was 2014. And this was a couple of years earlier. So this was 2012 or 2011 and for some reason why I've never taken B-School my name started getting passed around in the community, which was really interesting. And people started hearing about me that way. I was also very cheap at the time so that's probably another reason, although I like to think it was because of my ridiculously amazing young talent. I was also very cheap so my name kind of got passed around there. And I remember what I was also offering clients was actually first service free, which was a mixed bag, because there was, I had no coach at the time and there was no one really teaching newbies how to run freelance copywriting businesses, not as many as there are now.
Hillary Weiss: So I offered the first service free and I got a lot of people in the door that way. So I'd write, a free blog post or an email or if I was feeling particularly inadequate that day, a landing page I would do for free. But that was fortunate that I got a lot of people in the door and it got my name passed around quite quickly. And I was really lucky to plug into a community like that and I talk to a lot of my coaching clients and students about that, where if you want to build up a referral-based business, getting active and being present in communities is so essential, and I really credit the B-School community for being a huge part of how I started to build my brand.
Steve Folland: And how did it start to change them over time especially because at this stage you're doing that first service for free, you're lacking in confidence but you're building in confidence and starting to get your name out there? I guess what happened next is probably the quick way of saying it.
Hillary Weiss: I would say minor, I think everybody experiences that first initial implosion of freelance work where you feel, okay, this is working, this is working, this is working and then it's working until it's not in the sense that I basically kind of woke up one day was, "Wow, I'm working way too hard for way too little money. So how do I fix this?" And actually, this is part of how I, and I was still with Youngblood Sourcery when I did this. So have you heard about day rates being really popular now? This idea of day rates for copywriters?
Steve Folland: Wow no, go for it.
Hillary Weiss: Okay. Well, I would just wanted to say, I wanted to brag because I was OG kind of day rater but, basically, what day rates are now, what they were then is that, finding a package where you worked together with a client to get a bunch of deliverables done in a single day, very... Sounds like an easy offer and so people were offering that around that time as well. It kind of goes in waves as a popular offer, because there's a lot of things wrong with it, which I'll get to in a minute. So I decided to switch my business model thinking that what would help is, if... I was really overwhelmed, I was working way too hard, I was charging way too little, so I figured what would help would be working with one client at a time-intensive style, because I could work really fast, but because I typed very fast and I had my systems down early, which was nice but what I was missing was being overwhelmed and I didn't have really good boundaries so I had clients' projects sort of wandering off into infinity until one of us died.
Hillary Weiss: So I decided, let me switch over to sort of the day rate intensive style model so I launched an offer, which I was very proud of the name for and I still am called the Astro Intensives because we were, Youngblood Sourcery was kind of witchy, Zodiac kind of themed, mystical themed so the Astro Intensives and I had the comet, the North Star, and the supernova and the comet was the one day offer where I would work with clients on one day on a small deliverable, the North Star was a three day offer, where I would set them up with a sales page and some emails and then the supernova, I could do a full website in a week. So that's sort of how I re-engined my business. I started offering exclusively those packages. And I did that for a couple of years. And what was interesting about that was that it got a lot of people in the door. People loved the system but what was also interesting was, it turns out, if you don't handle your boundaries problems when they're happening, changing offers isn't going to actually solve your boundaries problem.
Hillary Weiss: So for a while, I was working six, seven days a week for a couple of years because I would work-intensive style with a client and then of course, I would over-deliver so I wouldn't be able to wrap everything up. And so I would basically just go on to the next client the next day and then catch up on tying up the loose ends on the weekends. So I was making pretty solid money for me at the time and other people were coming in the door. And again, it was by all accounts working in one way or another but it was really not ideal for me so then I switched business models again. And then I had a retainer only business model, because I was, "I still think a little lower number of clients is the move, only work on this boundaries thing." So I started working with retainer clients and got really specific in my contract language, which helped, but old habits really do die hard. And eventually I ended the last, I think about a year and a half ago, maybe closer to a year ago, I let go of my retainer clients and now work mostly on high-end project basis, which is actually been the saving grace for me because now I'm at a point, I got a lot of work on myself and my business and how I relate to my clients and how I work.
Hillary Weiss: It has been a lot easier for me to set those boundaries because high ticket clients, the ones that I work with at least, tend to understand that you can't call me a weekend and we can't do something last minute because my time is billable. But it's been a really interesting journey and I always make this crack but it is true that entrepreneurship is the, probably the thunderdome of personal development. Everything is going to come up for you if you've got the poor boundaries, if you have self-doubt, if you have insecurities, it's going to bring everything up eventually. So you have to learn how to deal with it and shift according to what you learn that you need and what your strengths and weaknesses are.
Steve Folland: Wow. So actually going back to when you were offering those three distinct packages of a day, a few days a week, yeah, you were over-delivering but was it really to do with the scheduling that you didn't leave a day between jobs or whatever?
Hillary Weiss: Yeah. And sometimes I did it even that wasn't enough because it's so exhausting working intensive style, because it was doing the phone calls and then the draft and deliverables and editing on the same day. So my brain would just sort of fry at around 4 PM but I would still have three or four hours of work left to do. So I would leave a buffer of a day, but I also wasn't charging enough. Due to the nature of the packages being three days or five days, there wasn't a lot of room for me to take a buffer day because I think it was, I was charging like 400, this is back in 2013 so it was 400 for the one day, 850 for three days and 1000 for a week. So I just was not, I wasn't priced well. I didn't believe I needed coaching at the time, shame on me. But I think it was just the error in my pricing because if I left too much space, and took more time then I would not have been able to continue making the money. And while I could have absolutely raised my rates, I was just really lacking in confidence then and I realized that in terms of the way my brain works, I just need a longer time to really do good work. That's why with my projects now every deliverable has about a one week turnaround time.
Steve Folland: So at what point did you get a coach because you mentioned a coach a couple of times? So what point did you?
Hillary Weiss: Oh let's see here. So I probably invested in my first coach, it was a $200 a month group mastermind thing with a woman called Erika Lyremark and that was probably, I want to say 2016 but it's the arrogance of youth I was, "Why do I need a coach? I don't know. I'm fine. Look, I'm making money, I've been running a business since I was 22 and everyone thinks I'm very fancy and successful. Why would I need a coach?" And what I needed a coach for, because I always pictured a coach being more as like a, I really thought about it in terms of a sports coach being, "Go harder, do more things."
Hillary Weiss: But turns out what I really needed help with, was pulling back and boundaries and creating more space and not necessarily keeping my nose to the grindstone absolutely all the time, but really learning how to make a business that would work for me. And so my first coach Erika, I think she sat me down and we had our first call because it was a private call, an initial welcome call included in the membership. It was a weekly call and then boxer support and all that. She told me... I was going off about my five-year plan and she was, "So I've got to be honest with you. If you keep going at this pace, you're going to give yourself a stroke." And I was, "What? Nah, I'm hustling. This is the whole thing. This is the point, isn't it? I've been reading the Instagram memes they definitely told me I'm supposed to hustle hard, hashtag team no sleep, and all that stuff."
Hillary Weiss: So that was really helpful for me. And I've actually, at that time and I think 2017 I had three coaches, where I had someone helping me build the next phase of my business, I had somebody for accountability and I had somebody for mindset and physical fitness because turns out, burnout takes its toll on your health. So that's been super helpful for me and now I coach in turn, which is really fun and just the highlight of so much of what I do is helping other freelancers, sort of build their own brands and develop their own messaging and big ideas and really get out of the hole of feeling like they have to be behind the scenes all the time or working all the time in order to be successful.
Steve Folland: How did you find the mastermind wave working?
Hillary Weiss: I like it. I've done a few since and I actually, I've run my own. I have an incubator right now called THUNDER, which is sort of a six-week-long mastermind for idea development. But I actually really enjoyed it because I like getting to know other peers in the same sort of situations that I have, you learn so much from fellow business owners who are sort of on the same path you are or maybe already a couple years ahead of you, or maybe a couple years behind you, sort of learning about their experiences, and you have so much to contribute as a group. It's more than just the leader of the mastermind. That's the benefit of that kind of access because I think in the entrepreneurial world and freelance world, we can be very isolated. Well, despite the fact we're on social media at all times and just tweeting obnoxious stuff and sharing, team no sleep memes on Facebook.
Hillary Weiss: It's just very, we don't realize that, just how not alone we are. And I'm sure that you've experienced this too with the podcast, so many of the stories, everyone has the same kind of story in a lot of ways and everyone's found their way out of the woods over and over again. And I think being close to people who live this it's, because freelancing really is a lifestyle in many ways and seeing people, being connected to people who are on the other sides of their laptops all over the world, sort of experiencing the same things and learning similar lessons and finding their way on their own terms, I think there's such a blessing and in being in a group like that so I say a big hell yeah to masterminds. But a big hell yeah to one on one coaching too. It's just a totally different experience.
Steve Folland: Since you've had a few coaches then by the sounds of it.
Hillary Weiss: Yeah.
Steve Folland: How do you figure out what coach is a good one for you?
Hillary Weiss: So this is funny because I don't think I've ever taken on a coach from somebody hitting me up on LinkedIn, I mean, "Hello. I noticed that you are a creative business owner. I coach creative business owners to reach their next level, have consistent 10K a month and reach their first six figures in revenue." Those aren't my folks. The interesting thing about a lot of my coaches is, so Erika I got connected to because I had been following her for years. She had this book that I just loved. I listened to a lot of podcast episodes and, what I find I look for in a coach, I look for people who are no-nonsense but have a strong personality because I'm not, some people are looking for a coach to be kind of a encouraging yes man or a woman where they say, "Yeah, raise that rate. Do that thing." But what I look for in a coach is somebody I know and trust to give it to me straight, who will push me out of my comfort zone.
Hillary Weiss: But I also think what's most important for me is that they have a clear personal brand and are highly, highly creative, because watching people who have built a creative brand for themselves and it's one that is so clear and one have had a great track record of success. I find that's who I tend to be drawn to as coaches. One of my other biggest coaches is my mentor. Her name is Sarah Ancalmo-Ashman and she is a really amazing creative director in my space. She helped me put my brand Statement Piece Studio together. How we started to work together was I actually took a course of hers. We were friends for a while, and I basically reached out to her and I was, "Do you ever coach because I would really like to learn from you because you clearly have a lot of knowledge?" I think I take a look at people's track records and when I see a coach, it usually takes me a while to get to know them.
Hillary Weiss: I'm usually stalking them from afar for a minute and making sure that they are worth their salts because you got a lot of coaches in this sphere who have built business, teaching other people to build businesses and their first successful business was this build business building business. So they're basically sort of parenting things that they've learned before and they took all the MBA in B-School and now they know everything there is to know you so they can coach you. I'm looking for coaches with a lot of real-world experience first, who then came into the sphere and have that experience to bring because I find sort of diversity of experiences in a coach is just like diversity of experience in a freelancer, it's valuable. You need to be able to see things sort of out of your existing bubble and begin to imagine possibilities that maybe you would not have even dared consider before and be led there by people you trust, who've walked the walk so.
Steve Folland: You mentioned a while back that you got your systems down early.
Hillary Weiss: Yes.
Steve Folland: What are the systems that have helped you with your freelance business?
Hillary Weiss: In terms of my business-building systems, I actually right now, I run a super tight ship. I have a great assistant. I use Dubsado, everything is on the back end there. But when I mentioned systems earlier, I said that and I'm, "Oh, I got to make sure I clarify on this." Because my business systems were a hot mess but what was really tight were my systems for onboarding clients and off-boarding and my interview process. Alexandra Franzen, that first copywriter I worked for, I was transcribing her strategy sessions. So I had a grip on what questions to ask and that was really, really useful for me. And of course, it's evolved. But my onboarding for my brand voice brief hasn't changed much since I started, my interview questions regardless of sort of what page we're working on haven't changed much.
Hillary Weiss: But I've learned how to give a client interview and have the client sort of write the page as we go. I'm asking really specific questions so I can figure out, what are the headlines, what's the body copy, what's the big promise, what's the CTA? How does this all fit into the bigger picture of the site? And I've learned to be able to have these conversations with people who may not be super-tech familiar or website familiar, but just explaining how everything works together, because that not only makes my writing process easier by getting all these questions answered. It also helps with client buy-in because I reflect back things I'm hearing I'm, okay, this sounds like the big promise, this sounds like the key differentiator, this seems like the how let's talk about the features and benefits, all of that.
Hillary Weiss: So my systems for bringing clients on and putting ideas together have been really locked in since day one, which has been really, really great. And just a key question that I recommend everybody ask, and this can be a game-changer for a lot of clients and I love to think about it, especially when you're going for tone as a copywriter. And I stole this from someone else, I forget who it was, but I was reading about it years and years ago and one of my favourite questions to ask clients is, how do you want people to feel in three different stages? How do you want people to feel when they first land on this website or see this email or watch this video? How do you want people to feel the minute after they've made the purchase or they've invested in you? And then how do you want them to feel 10 years down the line looking back on their experience with you? Questions like that are really powerful because they force the client to get clear on their value, as well as helping you understand how to express it and how they understand themselves.
Steve Folland: And then on top of that, so your organizing you use Dubsado?
Hillary Weiss: Yes.
Steve Folland: Did you say you have an assistant as well?
Hillary Weiss: I do. Yes. I have a couple. I have a small team. I have a social girl and I have, who we repurposes a lot of my content. I'm the one who's just, I'm just sitting on this mountain of content, like a lot of freelancers are right now, eight years in, so she's repurposing on LinkedIn and social but my virtual assistant does a lot of my other pieces for me. So what I love about Dubsado is that everything is in house basically, with the exception of my email. I use ConvertKit. But what's great about Dubsado is that it has all of my client onboarding and offboarding documents, contracts, invoices, and it's all automated.
Hillary Weiss: So basically, I have a client sign up and they start to go through a workflow. So they get the contract, as soon as they sign the contract they get the invoice, as soon as they get the invoice, they get the brand voice brief, which is my onboarding form, as soon as they complete the brief, they get a link to my calendar and a schedule, a time to talk and then everything kind of lives in there. So because I was losing so much time, in my business before I had an assistant on admin work, or reminding other assistants I was working with to complete the admin work. So that was a big game-changer for me. And fortunately for me, my VA is a Dubsado wizard, because it's not a platform that, it's a platform that's kind of hard to DIY but she does an amazing job with it. And they're constantly adding updates at all times. So big heck yeah to Dubsado.
Steve Folland: When did you first bring on an assistant? How was that?
Hillary Weiss: Oh my gosh, I started working with my first assistant, I want to say in 2016 and she was great. She was a sweetheart, very smart, very hard working but what was interesting is as I started to kind of diversify my income stream, I started doing a course and I started doing one on one coaching and I started doing consulting and I started doing speaking which is all outside of the realm of one to one client where I'm doing launches. I realized that I really needed a virtual assistant who was well versed in the way those processes work, because trying to throw somebody from the frying pan into the fire on a launch, when they're not familiar with one, they've never seen it done, they don't know, they think but they don't have no idea what PLS stands for, that kind of thing.
Hillary Weiss: So I decided, I need to shift so I worked with a couple of assistants in between, until I found Emily, who was really, really well versed in all of this great, and Dubsado and understands how online business in the way I work sort of functions on from the launch side of things to the client-side of things. To just being able to have an assistant who can kind of predict what to do next has been awesome. And it's also really unusual to find sometimes with an assistant you have to test a few people out before you really land on the person and now it feels like we've been working together for years and years although I think we only started working together in January or February?
Steve Folland: Interesting. So it's worth trying different ones out but also, I guess, by the sounds of it thinking about what it is for you actually need doing, because different virtual assistants specialize in different things?
Hillary Weiss: Yeah, exactly. And my first one, she was great, but it was more of like a gopher kind of relationship. I was, I need this done today so she would do it, as opposed to having a consistent list you check off and being able to predict and be, "Okay, we're launching next month, I need this, this and this from you or Taylor, who's my social girl sent over this, make sure you check this out, because we need to get this rolled out and all that stuff." Just somebody who can keep those details and know-how they all string together in your head is so important.
Hillary Weiss: So I really think before people hire a VA, sitting down and just writing down where you're spending the most time right now, what you really want to give away, this kind of systems a person needs to know in order to be a strong part of your team or improve it, is so important and when I hired my first assistant I was just so grateful to have an extra pair of hands, I didn't even sort of sit down to write a job description and I was just, "You, you seem great and you came recommended by someone who's kind of in my sphere. So let's do it." And she was great but as your business needs to grow you need to make sure you have a team that speaks your language.
Steve Folland: So I noticed recently that, and obviously people could be listening to this at any point in the future but you have relaunched your website and you mentioned the statement piece brand that you've created. So I'm intrigued to chat about that as well brand because that must have been a huge undertaking. First of all, what was it before, so if people go and look at your website now they'll see one thing but what was before and then what made you want to rebrand yourself I guess?
Hillary Weiss: Oh, why not? Rebranding is fun, but no, so I launched, so I had my first website, the original iteration of hillaryweiss.com. I have a show on YouTube where I yelled at the first version of my website. The YouTube show is called Hillary And Margo Yell At Websites so that's what I was talking about yelling at it. So if you go on YouTube and look up #HAMYAW, H-A-M-Y-A-W the first episode, you'll see my first site because it was me in this straw boater hat and there were these yellow flowers and it was pinks and blues and, soft coal pastels. And that didn't really feel like me. So I rebranded in 2016 where I had, it was a lot more edgy, lots of blacks and tans and still the blues but still. But then when I was entering, this was actually probably in 2017 when I first hit on the idea, was that my existing site had me the focal piece was, of course, my copywriting, but it didn't really feel like a brand that could grow anymore. It felt like it was a great personal website, it was a great website for a copywriter. But my platform was expanding, I was offering more things, as my visibility was increasing, my hair colour had completely changed in the years since that website launched.
Hillary Weiss: So I was brunette in those photos and now I'm blonde. So you just can't confuse people like that. So I knew I wanted to sort of create a next-level brand, my business was ready for it. I wanted a brand that I could grow into the next five, ten years and I wanted to have a good name because, as much as I love copywriting, it is a piece of the puzzle now and of a much bigger picture. So I really wanted to build a brand that could create that. And so that was when I entered my mentor, now mentor Sarah's course called Mirror Brand, which is about essentially building a brand rooted in exactly who you are, and sort of where you come from and your speciality and all of that really creating a deeply personal brand that you feel really connected to and it's really built to stand the test of time. In that, I was thinking about my life and I was, what is that something about me in my day to day life that is reflected in my work? What am I kind of known for IRL?
Hillary Weiss: And I was, "Well, I'm always wearing one piece of statement jewellery at least or a shirt. There's one thing on my person at all times that's essentially like a conversation starter. Because I'm an extrovert. I don't know if you can tell. I'm an extrovert with a Godzilla of a personality. So I, everywhere I go, I'm "New friend?" So if I have a conversation starter on me I increase my chances of making a new friend. And also wearing that same piece of jewellery or clothing. What I loved about it, and then why I've made it a habit is that it expresses a little bit of who I am to somebody before I say a word. They can understand me a little bit better before I introduce myself or before they find out what I do. They can kind of see a little bit of who I am and that is, I realized what I do with my copywriting and creative direction work and branding work is I help people create brands that make them unmissable in their markets and communicate who they are to their chosen people before they have to say a word, or they have to get on that sales call, before they have to convince somebody that they should open their wallet.
Hillary Weiss: Being able to build a brand and have clear messaging and strategy that communicates who you are before you necessarily, without having to go through a whole spiel explaining can be really useful and powerful to people so I was, "Oh my God statement piece, statement piece of jewellery, statement piece of messaging. Oh my God Statement Piece Studio." And from there it actually took, and I realized I wanted to do all primary colours in the branding, which I'm sure you have noticed, because not a lot, I saw nobody using primary colours and also it was inspired by the artist Mondrian who is that, I don't know if you remember from the 90s that abstract white, black and then red blue and yellow those paintings, they're big boxes?
Steve Folland: Yeah.
Hillary Weiss: If you Google it you would be... There was a L'Oreal bottle with one of those designs on the face, basically which is all most people remember.
Steve Folland: Yes. Yes.
Hillary Weiss: Yeah, in the 90s, yeah, and so because they were, everything was reduced to those three colours and in this artist's work because he was essentially distilling everything down to its essence and every colour is a combination of that red, yellow and blue. So I was, oh cool, because I am distilling people down to their essence, their core essence which is what they're seeing in pieces, and that's sort of that foundational part of their personality and their key differentiator, so, and also nobody else was using primary colours in the space. There was a lot of pastels and there was a lot of sparkly golds and sparkly silvers and all this stuff. And I was, "You know what, let's go balls to the wall primary." And then we put together, and then at by that time I was working one on one with Sarah.
Hillary Weiss: We did this whole photoshoot where I'm jumping out of the computer and I've got the prom queen thing and the praise page. It was just really a chance for me to mess around but also create a consistent narrative thread around this idea of the statement piece and Statement Piece Studio that would essentially create a brand that I can continue to build on and expand because Hillary Weiss Copywriting is for me exclusively as a copywriter whereas I am doing more different things now. Statement Piece Studio is a brand that could eventually house more subcontractors and is eventually can be a core sort of base brand for any creative direction work I do and all that stuff. So it really is a brand built with an eye to the future. And yes, it was a huge undertaking. It took about a year and a half.
Steve Folland: I was going to say, sometimes we can have ideas and we just want to do them just make them happen but you must have bided your time.
Hillary Weiss: Yes, yes, you cannot rush art. But no, yeah, it did, because I think and this is where a lot of freelancers tend to stumble a little bit because there are some people promising that they can build your brands in a day or if you could build a brand in a week or a month. And that is true for maybe a starter brand, if you are at square one and you don't even have a website right now, putting something together really simple and getting it up there is fine. And absolutely, you can do that in a short span of time. But when it comes to really building a brand you want to last, a brand that's going to grow with you, a brand that has the power to evolve, that takes a lot more time and you have to be patient. And this is what big brands understand.
Hillary Weiss: I think that a lot of smaller business owners and freelancers kind of sometimes struggle to grasp is the fact that it really does take time because you have to make sure that the brand is true to you, you have to test it out, you have to make sure your offers connect, you have to sit with it and really digest it and get into the nooks and crannies because that's how you build a vision. And that is how you build something that's designed to grow. It just takes time. So you've got to be patient, you can't rush it, but most importantly, give yourself time and space to enjoy the process because that's a big part of it for me. I love rebranding, because it's so creative and there are a million different little pieces, and I love every single one of them and it's such a privilege to be able to put together something like this that allows me to be so expressive and at times radical and bold and myself in public forum in a way that gets results.
Steve Folland: And how did you fit it in time-wise because you must have still been doing client work and stuff at the same time? So did you, I don't know have a specific day where you just worked on that, put your own project or?
Hillary Weiss: So I tend to take mornings for myself. Right now I'm shredding for my wedding. So I'm in the gym a lot but most mornings I am sitting down, I'm doing my own writing and I'm focusing on my own stuff and I'm editing my show, or I'm writing to my list or I'm writing an article. So I usually start client work, I don't even take client calls normally before noon, because, in the morning, it's just when I work on stuff because that's when I tend to be my most creative and when my mind is the most open. But for something like building my course, I had a course for a while called The Wordshops, which was my copywriting magnum opus. It was everything I wanted to teach people about copywriting and tad, and how I did that, that was when my schedule was even crazier because my boundaries were crap. And so what I did was I just took, I woke up an hour early every morning and I just worked on it for an hour and I did that for about three months until it was done. So you can really simplify time management in that regard. I'm not really a pompadour person, and I'm not really a time blocking person, I can only think in terms of very simple equations, so I was, "Add one more hour, one more hour to work on things"
Steve Folland: I like that whole idea though of making the first hour or the first part of your day, the morning.
Hillary Weiss: Yeah.
Steve Folland: Dedicated to working on stuff that is going to take you forward.
Hillary Weiss: Yeah, absolutely. I don't think freelancers give themselves that privilege enough.
Steve Folland: No, we crack straight on with the client stuff and then feel knack by the time it comes to our bed and you mentioned your visibility increasing, in what ways have you managed to get yourself out there more?
Hillary Weiss: Oh, just by being loud and bothering people. No, on social media, I think Facebook was my main platform for a very long time. I was active in Facebook groups around copywriting and creativity. And since then, Twitter has become a big platform for me, just in terms of an opportunity to connect with fellow marketers. I also do speaking and working in workshops. I speak at The Copywriter Club's events. I've spoken there the last two years, I was on tour with a company called LOCALiQ and their business accelerator. They're owned by USA Today. So I was on tour last winter for them. I teach client masterminds and I teach at client events. I also have my hot seat coaching sessions called The Lightning Rounds, which I do a few times a year or every other quarter really, where I can sort of bring my audience in and get a chance to work with them in 10-minute increments. And so it's been, there are lots of ways that I continue to build my profile.
Hillary Weiss: And of course, I write, and I blog and a lot of my pieces have done really well in recent memory because I tend to focus on talking about the stuff not a lot of people talk about in the online business space, that has got me in trouble a few times. But I'm really all about radical transparency and honesty in my work. So I try to always be encouraging, I try to always be positive, but I do try to be radically transparent about the realities of business and freelancing and working creatively for yourself. I think people really respond to that. So I've built a great amount of trust between my audience and myself and I teamed up with Margo Aaron, who's also fabulous. If you guys haven't heard of her, she's got the best newsletter on the internet, besides mine, no, it's way better than mine. Because we do this show together and we always, we both write an email on launch date and every time she kicks my ass. But we do our show together. So basically, I've built visibility by again, being transparent and just doing whatever I can to help people.
Steve Folland: When did you start that show, by the way?
Hillary Weiss: #HAMYAW? It's kind of coming up on a year.
Steve Folland: It's a great show. There'll be links to everything, of course that Hillary's chatting about at beingfreelance.com. Have you found a difference when it comes to potentially working with people as, because of doing that, as in people, because it feels like obviously, your voice and your personality is definitely coming across via YouTube.
Hillary Weiss: It's been great in terms of building that trust because a lot of my clients watch #HAMYAW. A lot of my colleagues would watch #HAMYAW and they definitely listened to me before. But it's sort of changed the conversation a little bit, as they have begun not looking to me for the answers but it has certainly shifted in how I talk with clients about the strategic side of things. Because they understand I have a depth of experience and a depth of knowledge now. And so it's opened up a lot of opportunity to help people build businesses beyond just messaging strategy or branding. And that's part of the reason why I was able to do my idea incubator that I'm running now THUNDER. I think every participant watches #HAMYAW, and they came to basically have access to my brain, which is really fun, and really flattering.
Hillary Weiss: So that has been a great tool for me to position myself as a quote-unquote "thought leader", as cringey as that is to say, it works though. And the interesting thing about it is I was, "I can only be a thought leader if I have, a million YouTube followers and a quarter-million followers on Instagram and all that stuff." But in fact it's, we have a small but really passionate audience. And that smaller passionate audience is often people who are in line with my ideal client and in line with the people who I coach and do copywriting for. So it is really, it's been very, very interesting how it has made me a bit of a magnet for more of the work I want to do by just talking openly about the work that I'm already doing.
Steve Folland: If you could tell your younger self one thing about being freelance, what would that be?
Hillary Weiss: It would be that working yourself to the bone is not the recipe for success. That is the recipe for burnout but I find what success is, is about being able to have a life, not just a job, not just a certain number of zeros in your bank account. Success, it's about being able to be the person you want to be while doing the work you want to do. And that looks like many things. For some people that looks like six figures, some people that looks like seven, some people that looks like 75K or being able to travel whenever they want. There are no rules. You make them up as you go. So I think just reminding myself that in order to be successful, I don't constantly have to have my nose to the grindstone and be sort of crawling to the next destination because I'm so tired and I've worked so hard and having that bragging point that I, "Oh, I haven't slept and all this." That's not necessarily success. Success is being able to have a life and do the kind of work you want to do and enjoy just being in business. That is what success is.
Steve Folland: Linking to that then, how is your work-life balance now?
Hillary Weiss: My work-life balance, it always stands to be improved but I stopped working on weekends two years ago. It's a rule, it's a law. I take the last Friday of every month off and I'll be taking more and more time off as time goes on. I'm going to keep building that up. I am away somewhere travelling every other month. Sometimes it's for work, sometimes it's for fun, sometimes it's to see family which is both things. I get up and I make sure I work out. My fitness is so much better now. My health is so much better because I take time away from my desk to feed myself.
Hillary Weiss: I try not to eat lunch at my desk, I try to eat it at the dining room table. And just really not being afraid to take the space and to take the time and sometimes to, if I don't have any deliverables on my plate that day, just take a day off, and relax and enjoy it and remember that taking some time and space is actually helpful to my creativity and it will make me better at my job as opposed to making me lazy or feel like I'm shirking responsibilities. I always hit my deadlines, but they're much better spaced out now. So I'm not constantly working till midnight. I'm no longer working six, seven days a week. I take every legal holiday off and then some and it just gives me much more space to be myself and to breathe and be creative.
Steve Folland: Hillary, it's has been so good speaking to you. By the way, make sure you follow Hillary on Twitter, one of my favourite Twitter bylines and it's I type words into the internet & money comes out.
Hillary Weiss: Yes, exactly. Yeah, distil things down to their essence, that's the secret. Well, thank you so much for having me, Steve. This has been a blast.