Walk the walk - Copywriter Emily Read
After moving from her small island town to the big city of Brisbane, Australia, Emily set her sights on a job as a copywriter. She interviewed for positions but the market was tough, so she took on some nannying work to tide her over.
As luck would have it, the dad from the family Emily worked for was a web designer, and he just so happened to need a copywriter. Emily partnered with him on some projects, building her freelance business from there.
Within 6 months, Emily’s site was ranking number 1 in Google for keywords like “Brisbane copywriter” and business was growing.
She chats to Steve about how she got to where she is now, the ups and downs she’s dealt with along the way, and what freelance life is like for her now that she’s moved to the US to be with her husband.
TRANSCRIPT OF THE BEING FREELANCE PODCAST WITH COPYWRITER EMILY READ AND STEVE FOLLAND
Steve Folland: So you sound Australian, but you're not in Australia right now.
Emily Read: That's correct. So I was born and raised in Hobart, Tasmania. Most of my career has been in Brisbane, Queensland where it's a lot warmer, but actually recently married my American husband. Now I'm currently in Northern Virginia in the US.
Steve Folland: Ah, okay. Well, let's find out how you got started being freelance.
Emily Read: My story begins back in 2013. I had just finished university. I started a Bachelor of Arts majoring in history and German and then I did an honours year and got first class honours in history. And I moved from my little island farm in Tasmania to Brisbane, Queensland, which is bigger and significantly warmer and significantly more job opportunities. And when I moved, I told everyone that I was either going to work in a museum, or an archives or in a writing job.
Emily Read: But I didn't really know what kinds of writing jobs existed. And as I was searching online, I came across an SEO copywriting role. And as I was reading it, it was blowing my mind because I was like, I wonder what this SEO stuff is. But the rest of this just sounds like my perfect job description. This is awesome. And so, I started applying for SEO copywriting roles at a variety of different businesses. I got several interviews, but unfortunately for me, the timing didn't work out so great. Or fortunately, depending on how you look at it long term.
Emily Read: The state government in Queensland had just laid off a huge number of workers from the public sector, they made huge cuts to get the budget and balance or whatever the reason was. I'm not actually sure, because I wasn't there just before it happened. The job market was flooded with all these people who not only had an education like me, but also had years of experience which I hadn't zero of. I kept getting these interviews but nothing would come of it. So I went back to nannying part-time, which I had done while I was studying at university.
Emily Read: While I was nannying for one family, I had to change to my hours and stuff, and it didn't work for them. So I was looking for another nanny job. And I felt really strongly that I need to look on Gumtree, which is like Craigslist in the states. I'm not sure what the UK equivalent is, but like a buy and sell sort of site, but a bit more local. Someone was advertising that they needed a nanny, it was the perfect location and hours. So I went and interviewed, and as I was talking to the mother, she was asking me about what I was doing.
Emily Read: I was actually at that time planning on going back to university to study a graduate certificate in marketing to do some copywriting courses. And when I said the word copywriting, it was like a little keyword for her and she says that, “Oh, that's awesome. My husband's a web designer, and he's been looking for a copyrighted to work with.” Not really what I expected, but more than incredibly pleasant surprise. Anyway, so I ended up nannying for them for a while. And he ended up building my website for me and I would sometimes nanny for cash and sometimes for the website, basically.
Emily Read: My first clients were actually a few of his clients that needed some copy done. And then from there because I had my website now, I worked super hard on it writing all the different pages and blogging hardcore and everything else. Because I wanted to show that I could walk the walk. I was an SEO copywriter, I needed to show people that I could get the website ranking by getting my website ranking. I started my business in July of 2013, and I think that's when the website was built as well around about then.
Emily Read: And before Christmas of that year, I was number one on Google for the keywords Brisbane copywriter and similar keywords. And that really just launched me into my career.
Steve Folland: Wow. At what point did you give up the nannying?
Emily Read: Yeah, so I kept doing it for the rest of 2013, because of course, I think in my first month I earned a grand total of $200 copywriting, which is not enough to live on. So yeah, I was nannying till about the end of the year. The family actually moved from Brisbane back Towamba around about that time, I think. And the other family that I had been nannying for put their child into a daycare at their workplace. Now that he was a little bit older and wasn't a brand new baby. So yeah, I gave that up at the end of the year.
Steve Folland: And so, up until that point now, when would you squeeze in the copywriting?
Emily Read: I was only nanny a couple of days a week. I was squeezing copywriting all the other days. And of course, yeah, I didn't actually at that stage have enough work for all of those days. I was spending my time nannying a couple of days a week working maybe a day and a half, two days worth of work each week, sometimes more. And the rest of the time I was frantically devouring everything on the internet from reputable sources about SEO and copywriting and marketing, because I was self taught. And while I knew I was... I'm a good writer, I always had been, I remember on my honours thesis, getting comments like, you have a beautiful, elegant writing style and lovely things like that.
Emily Read: But I needed to learn how to transfer my writing skills to a copywriting and marketing context. And so yeah, I was just frantically learning most of the time.
Steve Folland: So within about six months, you're ranking number one for Brisbane copywriter. And that was your URL as well, wasn't it?
Emily Read: Yeah, it is. So yeah, Brisbanecopywriter.com.au. That one was on the advice of the web designer that I'd worked with originally, because he had a huge SEO focus, which was great because that was what I wanted to focus on. And he was actually dyslexic, so he hated words, but he knew they are important. And so, it just worked really well, because he would look after his clients SEO from all the other perspectives, the links and everything else. And loading time for the pages and all that stuff, and I would write the words.
Steve Folland: So what were the key things, other than the URL that you were doing in order to build that up at that point?
Emily Read: So basically, in SEO, the place that you're starting when it comes to SEO copywriting, the foundation of it all is the main pages on your website. You want them to have plenty of content on them. And you want them to be all keyword optimized. And you want that keyword to be appearing in your title tag, in your meta description, in your H1 headline and that first headline, and a couple of times in the copy throughout. Which is actually how I see a copywriting work, because there's more to it, but at the same time at a very basic level that's what it is.
Emily Read: So, I was busy doing keyword research to understand what people were searching for when they were looking for somebody like me, or for services like I was providing. And then once I'd done the keyword research, I was assigning the keywords to different pages if it made sense. And that builds your foundation. Then the next thing that you need to start doing is to blog, because you want this regularly updated content on your website. Because Google rewards relevancy. And basically, if you're putting fresh content on your site, they're going to consider you more up to date and therefore more relevant.
Emily Read: Blogging also, on top of that, gives you the opportunity to capture some longer sort of tail keywords and people searching for longer things. I remember one blog I wrote accidentally went... Not viral per se, but it got a lot of traffic because I was an early adopter for the video chat service Zoom, which is like Skype or Google Hangout, etc. And I did a comparison between Zoom and Skype and Google Hangouts. And no one else had done that, and so it went to the top of Google straightaway for anyone searching for that. And of course, the number of people searching for that got more... had a bigger and bigger number as time went on, as more people discovered Zoom.
Emily Read: Yeah, that was a bit of a funny one, I had all these people coming to my website who actually weren't that interested in copywriting but wanted to know about video calls. But I had reviewed it because, of course, video calls can be a really valuable resource and tool for a freelance, in almost any line of work. So it was still relevant to my audience as well. Yeah, so that was the sort of the two main things was just really working on the content for my website and just refining it.
Emily Read: I mean, honestly, if I looked back at the original stuff now, I'd probably want to die. I'm sure it wasn't that great. But compared to where I am now. But yeah, it was, obviously, good enough to get to the top of Google. And frankly, I don't think anyone else that was on the first page was trying that hard by that stage. And they all had such established businesses that even when I overtook them, they didn't feel the need to fight back.
Steve Folland: So once you made it to the top, did you find that that was the key source of where you were getting your clients?
Emily Read: Absolutely. So, I've looked at the numbers a few times, not recently though. So I couldn't tell you percentage wise, but up to 90% of my clients have come by my website over time. And it does vary, there just seem to be seasons when people want a copyright more than other times. Those seasons vary for year to year, so I haven't really been able to nail down a patent from them.
Emily Read: Yeah, the vast majority of my work comes via Google. People see that I can walk the walk and talk the talk. They read the website, I get a lot of comments that they like how sort of friendly it is, and they feel like they get to know me a little bit radiant, which of course, is all very much on purpose, but it's good to hear that it's working, and that they appreciate that. Then after sort of Google and my website, the next source of clients for me over time has been referrals.
Emily Read: There have been, obviously, my first clients were via referral, they were clients of the web designer that I was working with. And after that, I have had a couple of referrals from existing clients, but I also joined a business networking group in Brisbane. Actually, joined one and then we formed another one. And by developing really close relationships with these different business owners, some of them are freelancers, solo business owners like myself. Others had small businesses or even small to medium businesses. And developing that relationship, it turns out that an accountant when they're working with a client and talking about sources of income, and everything is going to... They don't potentially talk about marketing when they talk about marketing, they're going to talk about SEO copywriting.
Emily Read: I've actually helped clients that were my accountant's friends clients, because that kind of came up in conversation and it made sense. And I've also networked with web designers and people know to look for a web designer, they don't always know to look for a copywriter. So sometimes I've had web designers who have been sending me clients because they're like, “My client has no words for their website.” Or “My client has words for their website, and they are awful. Please fix them.” So yeah, so mostly from Google, but some from referral and networking.
Steve Folland: Because you went for a local SEO angle of Brisbane copywriter, were most of your clients local? Were you meeting them in person or was it more than that?
Emily Read: Sure. Yeah, so most of my clients have been from Brisbane or Queensland. But I have had some from other states as well. I even had a... I think they were Dutch, had a Dutch client once, they'd had something translated but they wanted it to be tided up. So I was editing that for them. That said, I have avoided face to face clients meetings in most situations, there are exceptions. Just from reading the experiences of other freelance copywriters, actually, who would talk about all the reasons why that just didn't make financial sense in their business.
Emily Read: They found that clients who wanted to make face to face were often media clients, which made them harder to work for. They found that a lot of people were just wasting their time. So I have done most of my work remotely. In fact, one of my favourite early clients was a Sydney piano teacher, and I actually play the piano myself. So that was great bit of synergy there as well. And we never spoke on the phone, everything was done via email. And then once when I was in Sydney, we caught up in person, and I realised I didn't even know how to pronounce his name, because we'd never spoken to one another. That was pretty funny. So yeah.
Steve Folland: So what are you going to do now? After, what are we on? Like five years or so of being Brisbane copywriter, you've now moved to the States, but equally seems like in a way didn't matter whether you in Brisbane or not. So have you got a plan in that respect?
Emily Read: Yeah. So I have a bit of a unique story to go along with that one. The reason that I'm in the states now is because I actually got married back in February. I met my husband, February 2018. And we actually met on an online dating app, and he was still finishing his MBA at the Marriott Business School in Provo, Utah, and I was working in Brisbane, Queensland. So there was about a... I think he was sort of eight hours ahead of me, but yesterday I tried to think about it.
Emily Read: Freelancing actually worked out really well for dating someone from another country, because I would work in the morning, and that would be his afternoon. He'd be at university or he'd be tutoring classes. He was what they call a TA here, we call him a tutor in Australia. And then it would be his evening and my afternoon, and I'd quit work and we'd hang out, we'd chat via video, we'd read books together. We'd press play and watch movies together, press play at the same time. And that worked really well for the two and a half months that we were in different countries.
Emily Read: And then as soon as he finished, he flew over to Australia. We spent time in Brisbane and we travelled to visit my family in Hobart, and we popped over to New Zealand, because he really wanted to go there. And I was like, yeah, I want to go to Hobbiton, great. And then we came to the states for almost three months, because when you're on a visa waiver to the states visiting Australian, and you can stay for 90 days. I kept working while we were holidaying around Australia and New Zealand. And I was very fortunate to have one of my best friend's mum was very happy to store all my stuff in Brisbane. So that was nice and easy, so I didn't have to keep paying rent in Queensland.
Emily Read: And so yeah, we continue to sort of date in person in the states for almost three months. Our sister-in-law teases us that we had the longest first date ever. And then we got engaged, and then I flew back to Australia because I had to go to my friend's wedding and my visa waiver was about to expire anyway. And then when I came to visit for Christmas this year, one thing led to another and we decided we were not going to wait any longer. I wasn't going to go home. I cancelled my return flight, I'm still waiting for my money from Qantas, but that's another story.
Emily Read: And we cancelled the return flight, let everybody back home know and frantically organised a wedding in about six weeks, which is a story of its own. And during all this time, I was still technically on a tourist visa waiver. So, I was still working for my Australian clients, but after we got married, we met with an immigration lawyer because we needed to go about the process of changing me from being a tourist to being somebody who actually has a right to live and work in the United States.
Emily Read: And basically, long story short, I don't have work authorisation for working in the United States. And there aren't really any laws to say whether it's okay to keep working for your foreign business and foreign clients when you're overseas but don't have work authorisation. It's just a completely grey area. There's just, nobody's really thought about it. And so, our lawyer advised us that we should take the better safe than sorry route, which was as soon as the immigration papers are in, I should stop working.
Emily Read: So I'm actually not working at the moment. And there's the process of getting a green card can take eight to 18 months, apparently, usually on the longer end of that. Getting work authorisation however takes four to eight months. So I will be back to work eventually. I don't know when. I probably will keep working with Australian clients, but as soon as I have the right to work in the US, I'll probably consider chasing some us clients as well.
Emily Read: Basically, we just have to work out the legalities of, do I keep my Australian business number and operate as an Australian business owner? Or do I start an LLC here in the States? All that boring confusing legal stuff that we'll need to work out, but for the moment I am very free, which isn't what freelance normally means. But yeah, it's a bit funny, that's the story.
Steve Folland: Oh my God. So yes, you actually can't work, or you're going for the better safe than sorry route of just not working. So it's like having a full month holiday or open ended holiday. Did you have recurring clients who you had to...
Emily Read: Yeah, so, I've actually had fewer recurring clients than I used to, just from I didn't manage my business quite as well as I could have when we were travelling in Australia or in the US. So I had fewer recurring clients than I used to. A bunch of them, we just did a heap of extra work before I stopped working. And others I've been able to refer to other copywriters. So everyone's taken care of, which is good. But yeah, I sort of like groan every time I get an email from an old client that I've loved working with and have to explain, I'm really sorry I can't help you right now.
Emily Read: I actually wrote a blog on LinkedIn that I published a few days ago called, The Day I Fired Myself. Which shares the story in a little more detail and is handy to have, because it let everyone in network know, okay guys like I'm off work for a bit. And it's just something that I can link to, so that they now I'm not making the story up, because it does sound a little bit far fetched.
Steve Folland: And it's like you've still presumably got leads coming in, because of your great standing as the Brisbane copywriter. I almost feel this frustration that you can't have other copywriters working for you. So you're not technically doing the work but your Australian business is.
Emily Read: Oh my gosh, yeah. So I've been gritting my teeth. And luckily I do have a few other freelance copywriters that I'm friends with, so I can send it to people that I trust and if they can't take care of it I can send people to sort of two directories in particular in Australia that I send people to. One is the Clever Copywriting School directory that's run by, it's a copywriter Kate Toon who I think you've actually interviewed before.
Emily Read: Yeah, she was one of my sort of copywriting heroes when I was a newbie copywriter. And then the other one is the Freelance Jungle directory, which is run by Beck Lambert, also a copywriter who's in New South Wales.
Steve Folland: And did you say Freelance Jungle?
Emily Read: Yes.
Steve Folland: Don't they do meetups as well? Do they do meetups?
Emily Read: Yeah, so let me tell you a bit about them, because I think they're awesome and I highly recommend them. The Freelance Jungle started off as, I think, it was a Google Plus group, so it's going back a while. Anyway, it started off and we had sort of groups of freelancers that all knew each other online. A lot of us were copywriters, I think to begin with, as I understand it from a copywriting Google Plus group. Beck started this group and she encouraged people to meet in person.
Emily Read: There was a small group of us that started meeting in Brisbane, sort of once a month-ish. And it just grew from there. And it became... it's now a meetup group, but it's also an online group where people can be part of the Facebook page. There are online meetups where people can join, I think it's a Zoom call. And then there's the in person meetups in Brisbane. And I was actually sort of running those for, I think, about two years before I left for the States. And basically the way it worked is, we'd set up an event we'd invite everyone to come along, we'd made up in a cafe or coffee shop somewhere.
Emily Read: The purpose of the meetup was effectively to end the isolation of freelancing. So when you're freelancing, of course, you're working by yourself for yourself. You're often either on the dining room table or in the little office at home. Maybe you're at the library, maybe you're at the cafe, maybe you're in a co working space, but chances are, you're in one of the more isolated of those options. And so, of course, we all know as freelancers, it can be quite an isolating experience. You only talk to your housemates or your spouse and children, or your pets for much of the week. You don't see a lot of other people.
Emily Read: And so, the idea of the group was just to get together and have a chat, and of course, building on from that was just that benefit of being able to discuss different problems and challenges that we might all be facing. Because it really doesn't matter whether you're a web designer or a copywriter or a carpenter, if you're a freelancer, there's still so much that you have in common with one another. It's just a great opportunity to troubleshoot and to also just talk with people who understand where you're coming from. Who understand a little bit more than your friends who all have regular nine to five jobs.
Emily Read: Just because you work from home doesn't mean you can necessarily drop everything at any moment all the time. It doesn't mean that when they got a day off, if they're in, they tell you that morning that you can suddenly take the day off to. It's nice to have people who understand a little bit better and who you can talk to about everything from quoting and pricing to invoicing, that sort of side of things to, okay, how should I manage my time better? Or how should I go about finding more clients? I'm really struggling with that.
Emily Read: And so yeah, it just became this little support group. And we sort of had a core sort of few that would come each time and, and others would come and go. It was just always really great fun to meet other freelancers and to talk to people who really understood where you're coming from.
Steve Folland: That's so cool. And you were organising those as well in Brisbane?
Emily Read: Yeah. So I mean, organising only meant that I chose the date, time, and place and turned up. But someone had to do it. I've passed the baton on since then, and I think they're doing just well without me too. But yeah, it was really great fun and I really enjoyed it.
Steve Folland: What were, out of all of those sort of challenges that you would find yourself discussing there, what did you find most challenging?
Emily Read: For me personally, is the feast famine cycle of work. Work either seems to pour in and is more than... Your cup's overflowing, you can't do it all, you're fairing it or you're trying to convince someone that they don't need it yesterday, they can wait a month. And then you have other times where there's just crickets, and that's not so much fun. And I've definitely struggled with that probably the most of anything. I would always be really diligent about saving money during the feast times. So I did have that buffer, but it's never fun to spend your savings even if that's what therefore, it's just not fun at all.
Emily Read: There were a couple of times that that was it lasted long enough or it was frustrating enough that I considered quitting, especially because it's not just that you're not bringing money in, it really starts to affect you emotionally as well. I think it affects your self esteem as a freelance or business owner. It makes you question your decision to go freelance. It makes you question whether you're actually... Do you just have imposter syndrome? Are you actually imposter? Are you actually no good at this, and you just managed to hoodwink everyone all this time, and now they figured it out?
Emily Read: There's all sorts of tumultuous things that go through your mind a bit. And so, one stage actually started studying part-time. I was like, I'm sick of this, I'm going to be a high school teacher. So I did have a high school teaching graduate diploma until I realised that there was no way in hell that I wanted to teach history to uninterested eighth graders. So, that ended that.
Steve Folland: At what point did you go and do the teacher training thing?
Emily Read: That was back in 2016, I think. I studied part-time for a year, so I was working part-time studying part-time. Honestly, while I was studying, I was a little bit conflicted, because, of course, what happened since I started studying work picked up again, and I was enjoying it again. And so yeah, I would feel a bit conflicted. And then sort of had two things that made me realise I didn't want to do it. One was, I started working in December of that year, so the university year sort of runs from end of February, beginning of March to October, November. So the Australian summer you have off.
Emily Read: I was actually working on site with a client in December, and there was the opportunity to keep working on site with them for several more months, and I was really enjoying the work. It was also good money, but more importantly, I was really enjoying the work. And I was really conflicted because I knew that in the second year of my degree, I'd have to go and do prac teaching as a student teacher, and that would be six week blocks, which I had been saving up for, but I was really enjoying this work, and I wasn't sure if I wanted to give it up.
Emily Read: And then yeah, the other question was as that prac drew closer, I realised I didn't want to do this. High school in Queensland is a little bit different to high school in Tasmania. In Tasmania, the kids grow up faster because high school is a four year program. And then they do a two year program for year 11 and 12 called college at a different campus. Year nine and 10 students are actually awesome to teach, and you're 11 and 12 students are awesome to teach in high school in Tasmania. Whereas in Queensland, it's year seven to 12 in high school, and so, they're all brats until like year 11. And I was like, I don't want to deal with that.
Emily Read: I can nanny, I can look after five year olds and one year olds fine, but I don't want to go near 15 year olds. So, that was what happened there.
Steve Folland: And how about the sort of work life balance of it all? How have you coped with that side of it over the years?
Emily Read: Sure. So it took me... Probably as soon as I started working sort of full time as a copywriter, when I had enough work to be working five days a week. I realised that I needed to set some boundaries to myself. And so wherever possible, I tried to work nine to five, Monday to Friday. And I found that I needed a bit more of a sort of schedule, and a routine to stick to so I don't often work in my pyjamas, like a lot of freelancers love to.
Emily Read: I try and do the whole, get up, have breakfast, have a shower, get dressed, and then sit down at a desk and work. And that said, I tried to do nine to five, but if I was done, either sort of literally done or sort of mentally done, or whatever with something or whatever, I would happily knock off. And I wouldn't stress about that or hold that against myself. The other thing of course, is that I would regularly choose to work overtime into the evenings or on weekends if I wanted to go on holiday.
Emily Read: One thing I used to love doing, because I had my two best friends that I was living with when I first moved to Brisbane. One of them was a nurse so of course, she had shift work. And the other one was working at a hardware store, so she sometimes works weekends and had week days off, and we'd sometimes all coordinate a week day off and go to Movie World, the theme park, because we loved roller coasters.
Emily Read: Yeah, for me, it was about setting up a schedule and working a work day, but breaking the rules when I wanted to, I suppose.
Steve Folland: One thing you mentioned that was in that phase when you went travelling with your boyfriend, you said that you didn't manage your business as well as you could have. What did you feel that you did wrong? Or that you could do better if you were doing that?
Emily Read: So basically, I struggled to manage my time as far as planning ahead, even though I did know, when I was going to be back and working, able to work steadily and everything. And so rather than trying to schedule clients into the future, I was referring them to other copywriters. What that meant was, as soon as we got to the States and we weren't travelling anymore we were actually visiting family and staying in the same place for an extended period of time. And he, my boyfriend at the time, my husband now, he was working on a Kickstarter project, so he was busy doing that.
Emily Read: I hadn't scheduled work to start then and no new work came in, and so it's such a stupid thing to do, it was really, really dumb. And yeah, I've done the same thing when I've gone holiday in the UK, actually, is because I was in a holiday frame of mind, just work, the idea of work stressed me out a little bit. And so rather than planning ahead, I would push it on to other people basically.
Emily Read: It worked out great for them, they all got some great clients and some great work, but it was a bit of a mistake on my end.
Steve Folland: Interesting. Now, if you could tell your younger self one thing about being freelance, what would that be?
Emily Read: It would depend on what stage of my freelance journey you asked me. Sometimes the answer would definitely just be don't. That's during the harder times when either the lack of money, because you've got no clients, or when the isolation really gets to you. And other times it would just be charge more. I think pricing is a really difficult journey for any freelance. And you realise pretty quickly, or not so quickly actually, which is the problem that it's difficult to charge your worth. But when you charge your worth, you get better clients, you get better work, and you actually produce better work, because you're not stressed trying to do too much in too little time.
Emily Read: And then the biggest thing though that I would tell myself would be to build up a support network around you, to end the isolation and to have a bit of mentor and support and to provide mentoring and support as well. So yeah, for me, that was sort of two things, one was making a lot of friends in Brisbane, which is a little bit difficult to do when you actually work in workplace. I was fortunate in that the church I was going to there were lots of people my age, so I made a lot of friends there.
Emily Read: It's really important to have that social network in any place and at any time if your life. And especially when you're freelance, you need to be able to get away from work and have people to get away from it with. But the other sort of side of that, of course, is building a network is getting to know other freelances and other business owners, like small business owners and everything. Because it can be really lonely and it can also be really challenging, and it's really great to have people to talk to and to bounce ideas off of.
Emily Read: I remember at one stage there was another copywriter that in Brisbane that I was friends with, and we actually were doing a weekly call. Every week we would call on a Tuesday morning and we would talk through any troubleshooting or any challenges we had in work. But also, half the time the conversation was around just sort of freelancing challenges like “Oh, I have invoiced this guy and he hasn't paid me. What should I do?” Or “I'm quoting this guy, how much should I charge?” And it was just great to have that support.
Emily Read: And then in networking groups in the Freelance Jungle, being able to talk to people and very quickly not only are they supporting you and helping you, but you're able to support them because you all have different experiences. And it's always valuable to share that and to reassure someone or to help them. Yeah, it's really great. So, build a network, that's my biggest advice.
Steve Folland: I love that. And it's interesting, you mentioned like that almost co mentoring your Tuesday call with that fellow freelancer. How did that come about? Did you suggest that sort of weekly thing? Did they?
Emily Read: Yes, it was I was really stressed about work and I was talking to someone else about it, and they're like, “Well, is there somebody who understands what you do that could help you?” And I'm like, oh, yeah, there's this other freelance that I'm great friends with. “Well, why don't you guys do a weekly call?” I was like, that's genius. So I called her up and I'm like, Shauna, this is an idea someone gave me, what do you think? And she like, “That's brilliant. Let's do it.”
Emily Read: So, that was that, it wasn't my brilliant idea, but I totally recommend it.
Steve Folland: I like that. Emily, it's been such a pleasure speaking to you. I was going to say, as I do always, all the best being freelance, but also all the best, being married, being in America. It's got quite a long checklist of stuff here, but all the being freelance.
Emily Read: Nice. Thank you so much, and thank you for your time. It's been a pleasure.