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Episode 94: How to Make a Living As a Writer with Kenzi Wood

Welcome to The Career Clarity Show, where we help you find a lucrative, soulful, and joyful career path for you!

Today on the Career Clarity Show, we are talking about how to make a living as a writer. So many people have a secret dream, maybe it is becoming a therapist, or taking six months off to take a sabbatical. And for many people, the dream is to get to do more writing. 

This kind of thing is not one where you can just snap your fingers, quit your job, and then immediately have a perfectly profitable business blossom in front of you. There are a lot of steps you can be taking to do some risk management along the way. Kenzie Wood, an experienced freelance writer, is here to share all the details!

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Transcript:

Lisa Lewis Miller  0:04  

Transcript:

Lisa Lewis Miller  0:04

Welcome, welcome to the Career Clarity Show, it’s Lisa Miller. And on today’s episode of the show, we are talking about how to make a living as a writer. And one of the things that I have come to find out in the Career Clarity Show community is that so many people when you hit this inflection point of, I don’t know what I want to do, but it’s not this. So many people have a secret dream, maybe it is becoming a therapist, maybe it is taking six months off to take a sabbatical. And for a lot of people, the dream is to get to do more writing. And so it’s been really important to me to bring people on to the show, who have done it, who have been there who have created that as a career path and who can share some of the lessons learned with you, which is why I’m so excited for today’s guest. So this episode of the podcast is going to be fabulous for you. If you’ve had a dream of going out on your own in some capacity as a writer to see how somebody is doing it real deal today. This episode is for you, if you have ever thought about going out on your own, as a freelancer or as an entrepreneur, and you’re wanting to get a sense of the kinds of steps that one can take to make that happen. Because on today’s episode, we’re going to talk about how it is not the kind of thing where you can just snap your fingers rage, quit your job, and then immediately have a perfectly profitable business blossom in front of you. There are a lot of steps you can be taking to do some risk management along the way. And today’s episode of the podcast is for you, if you want to hear a real down to earth story of somebody who’s actually doing the work right now, because I know so many people in this space of career and coaching and whatnot, are talking to you from this place of now running businesses that have to do with teaching people how to do what they did. And frankly, from an integrity perspective, this gets a little funky for me, because it’s essentially like they’ve created a multi level marketing Ponzi scheme kind of business on, I don’t actually run the business that I’m telling you and teaching you how to build anymore. All of my revenue and income comes from teaching people how to build businesses instead of actually running the business, which just creates some funky ethical stuff about how good were you at running the business? How much can we trust what you’re sharing, so I hate that sort of stuff. So I’m so excited for today’s guest who can talk to you without that additional layer of conflict of interest in the conversation. Now, if you are listening to this and thinking Alright, Lisa, you got me excited. Who is our guest for today? I am excited to tell you all about Kenzie Wood. Kenzie Wood is an experienced freelance writer who partners with marketing agencies in her past life as a marketer. Because yes, Kenzie is a career changer just like all of us. She specialized in SEO, PPC and content marketing. And we’re going to dig into how she made the transition from her old life to her new life in today’s episode of the podcast. So I’m excited to talk about how to safely jump into self employment with Kenzi. Welcome to the show. 

Kenzi Wood  3:45  

Well, thank you, Lisa. It’s good to be here. I’m very excited to be talking about jumping safely into freelancing. I think a lot of time. You know, some of the advice out there is saying like, as you said, just rage, quit your job, come on, jump in, who cares. And that typically is a recipe for struggling for one to two months, running out of money, and then having to go back to the corporate world that you wanted so desperately to escape from. So I wanted to share my story as a way to show people how in real life, it actually works. Doing this safely and carefully. And I’m fortunate and blessed to have been doing this for over two years now. So I can say knock on wood that it works. 

Lisa Lewis Miller  4:32  

I love that. And I think that some people might be listening to this and even thinking, Okay, Mackenzie, this idea of making a jump safely is a contradiction in terms. There’s no way to be safe when you’re taking on a risk. So tell me a little bit more about this, this element of safety that you’re talking about?

Kenzi Wood  4:51  

Of course, so for me, it’s it’s all risk, right? Because we can all just stay in our corporate jobs and be miserable, but have that paycheck. Coming in, right? So that safety. So no matter what your risk level is, there’s some level of risk. In my opinion, you need to take what’s called a calculated risk. So that’s when you have a plan for mitigating danger. So my plan, just to give you a snapshot of how this all started, it was 2017. I was working as a marketing manager, and I absolutely love marketing, I still work with marketing agencies, I still help some businesses with their marketing, I love it. I love the job itself. I wasn’t a fan of working for other people. And that’s not to say that I had bad bosses or anything like that. I think it was just some of us are hardwired to want more freedom with our time, I thought, why am I sitting here, eight hours a day, when I know, we all know I can get this done in four hours. But I have to stretch out this time to fit it. Even though I’m asking for more work and doing more, it just didn’t seem efficient to me. And I thought there’s no room for life outside of my job, because we’re arbitrarily working these hours that frankly, we don’t need to. And I wasn’t going to change my boss’s mind about not doing an eight hour work day. So I kind of had that feeling of how can I have more freedom in my life. The problem was finances, right? We work for money. And at the time, I my husband and I collectively had $60,000 in student loans. We had car payments, and we had just bought a house. And so you want that comfort of that paycheck, from your, your regular corporate job. So that way you could pay for all this stuff. And I realized that I couldn’t have both, I can’t have all this debt. And I can’t jump off and do things. You know, I’ve seen people who were like, I have $100,000 in debt, and I’m just gonna become a rich Freelancer and pay it off. And that’s not how it works. Unfortunately, some people can make that work, but most of us do not. Most of us are not special in that way. So I started coming up with this idea. And the plan was to not owe anybody anything, I don’t want the bank to know my name. I don’t want nelnet to know my name, I want to be free. So my husband and I sat down. And we made a debt freedom plan. And at this stage, I knew I wanted to do something different career wise, but I didn’t know what it was yet. I had no plans, nothing in place. I just knew I want to get out of debt. And then I’ll figure out what I want to do later. I’ll just suck it up. So we came up with a very ambitious plan to pay off all this debt. I’m proud to say that in by 2018, we had paid off all the student loans, and the cars still working on the house. That’s a big one. But we eliminated most of our debt. And that’s a story by itself. But basically at that time, we had no debt. Right? So suddenly, my finances were wide open. People weren’t coming to me every month demanding bills. We had this, I don’t want to say extra income, but we had a lot more breathing room. So by getting out of debt first, I was able to start thinking about Okay, what else do I want to do? And I wasn’t sure yet. But at the time, I was running a blog just for fun. It was about frugal living, it was documenting our debt free journey. And I found a few people who were doing freelance writing just through the blog and getting to know people. And they said, you know, you can make some money on the side. And you can use it to pay for the blog. So it was kind of funny, I got into freelance writing to pay to advertise a blog that I was doing, which flopped. By the way, I wanted the blog to be my full time job and it didn’t work out. So for those of you who are considering a change, sometimes the first thing you’ve tried, might not work. I fell into this completely accidentally. That was not my goal to do freelance writing. But it worked. 

Lisa Lewis Miller  9:11  

Well, let me jump in and ask some questions. Because there are lots of things that you’re talking about that I feel like are important to highlight here. I love that you are willing to be so candid about your story of like, here’s the thing that I tried that didn’t work. Here’s the things that I wanted to work that didn’t actually make the finances, calculate the way that I wanted to. Because so many times when people tell the story of their transition, it’s really easy to make it nice and tidy. of like I did this, and then this and then this worked. And now I’m here and it’s great. So thank you for being willing to be candid and honest about that. And I really appreciate you highlighting how important getting that sense of financial freedom and optionality was that feeling like you had this space to make the kind of career moves that you wanted to make? People who have been devoted listening The Career Clarity Show have heard me tell my story about this and selling my car and getting all of my overhead expenses down as much as I possibly could before I started out on my own entrepreneurial journey, and we had some fabulous guests on the podcast over the last couple years talking about the same thing. So if this is an interesting topic to any of you listening, check out the show notes. And we will link to the episodes that we had with Maggie Maggie, Maggie d’amato. And with Nicole Ciccone, who both talk about how they were navigating money and optionality in their own careers and lives. But I want to come back to falling into freelance writing, because so many people really have that as their their plan A, that’s the thing that they’re striving for and looking for. And I also think that there’s a lot of information out there, again, about people who, like they made a blog work. So then now they run a business where they teach other people how to make a blog work, but their blog never actually made a ton of money, but it made enough money. And now they’re making all their money on teaching people how to how to do this thing, if they only did it at a mediocre level. And it’s very seductive. It’s very interesting, compelling marketing of Ooh, all I have to do is write on a blog, and then people will send me products and people will let me stay at five star hotels for free. And then I’ll get advertising and sponsored posts, and then I’ll be an influencer. And it’s sounding like that’s not how it how it shook out for you, at a minimum.

Kenzi Wood  11:32  

At a minimum. And I confess I fell for people like that. Everybody makes it sound like Oh, it’s so simple to become an influencer and a blogger, why wouldn’t you do this? It’s so obvious. And for for payments of 299, I’ll show you exactly how to do it. So I, most of those people have good intentions, I think, but a lot of it is not useful. There were a few that I used, that I actually did find useful. But that’s kind of not the majority. So as far as falling into freelance writing, so I had the blog, and I wanted to do Facebook ads for it. And those are expensive, by the way. So I was like all go on Upwork, which is a freelancing platform. And I’ll just get a couple people, I’ll do some one off jobs and make a couple 100 bucks. And, you know, go and use that money for my blog, that was the plan. That is not how the plan works. So I got a couple of initially very low paying jobs. Because I didn’t know anything about freelancing, or about writing about pricing myself competitively. I just thought, hey, it’s better than $0. And I have a surplus of time. And I’m willing to use that time to make some money. So it didn’t seem like a bad deal at the start. So that was when I was willing to work for peanuts. But after a couple of months I’ve made you know, I think it was $300. And it’s just such a joke because I was charging so little, I could have made so much more. But I you know, you have to learn that right? You have to kind of get beat up a little bit before you learn how to dodge the bullets. 

Lisa Lewis Miller  13:19  

Well, and let me jump into say two there that when you’re thinking about actually selling your own services out in the world, there are a lot of emotional and mental hurdles to that. of, I can’t actually price myself at $50 an hour, $100 an hour, $150 an hour, who will pay that all this self doubt all of this, like bs internal narrative stuff comes to the forefront. And so we feel like, Well, you know, it’s, I already have a job and it’s not a big deal. Let me just I’ll be like $25 an hour. That sounds reasonable, right? Nobody would object to paying that. And sometimes it takes experimentation and putting yourself out there and trying something and realizing how woefully underpaid you are or how bad it feels to work for a certain amount of money that can then give you that sense of competence and self assuredness to say, You know what? I just can’t write for under $40 an hour anymore. Like that’s just not I can’t that is not no longer an available option in my reality.

Kenzi Wood  14:21  

Mm hmm. Well, and I agree, and I think that’s a pitfall a lot of people fall into is, first of all, hourly pricing for writing. Don’t do it. Don’t do it do flat rate or per word. I really do not like hourly rates for multiple reasons. But that’s a quick tidbit if you guys are ever thinking about that don’t do hourly jobs. I didn’t know any better when I first started. So I did the low paying stuff. And it made enough money. I ran my ads for I blog and predictably, it didn’t do well and I thought wow, I’m not getting a lot of subscribers, the blogs Got working. But wait a second. And this is when the cogs in my brain started working. Wait a minute, what if I just did freelance writing and instead of putting the money into the blog, which is bleeding money, I just kept the money. So that it didn’t take very long to realize that this was a better deal. I was still keeping the blog going, still a little spark of hope alive, you know that it would work. But I slowly started investing more time into freelancing, I at the time, I did not believe it could be a full time job, I was very much into the hot side hustle mentality. And I use some of those earnings to fuel our debt payoff and some of our other financial goals. So I thought, okay, I’ll keep my full time job as a marketer, I’ll wake up early, and use my weekends to make time for client work. And make I think, at the time, I was starting to see about $1,000 a month when I really started to try hard at it. And realize how this actually works, I was starting to figure it out, had to put more time into it. But uh, it started off as just a conduit to put more money into savings. And then I started thinking, What if I earn even more, because what we did is, my husband is a brilliant mathematician, loves spreadsheets, I am not good at spreadsheets, so I’m glad to have him backing me. But what happened was, we broke down how much time I was spending on freelance writing, versus my earnings. And so we broke down. Okay, how much are you earning per hour. And let’s compare that to your full time job. And what I found was sickening. It was the full time job, but I didn’t like very much, I was actually earning less there for the effort I was putting in, versus what I was earning freelance writing. And so it was like, okay, so I can make more money in less time. If I just do this interesting.

Lisa Lewis Miller  17:05  

Well, what a great aha moment that you are willing to run the numbers. Because it’s so easy to get intimidated by the numbers. And to say, like, Oh, I just, I’m not a math person. I’m bad with money, like whatever the stories are, that we tell ourselves about our ability to take a look at these things. But if you take the time to say, Okay, let’s say I’m working on an average 45 hours a week at my, my full time nine to five, let me take what my monthly paycheck is, and divide it by that number of hours to get a sense of a rough hourly take home. And then compare that to possible alternatives. It can make it really clear that the thing that looked safe and secure and stable, comes with all of these levels of risk, that it just might have been difficult to see a brand that might be obscured by this sort of halo of safety around it. 

Kenzi Wood  18:01  

I agree. And that’s what it comes. That’s when that’s what happens when we talk about calculated risk. So So math is involved, right? Seeing, am I earning enough to make a jump to doing this full time smart. And what I did not realize at the time, though, I did have a flaw in my math. And that was that it costs money to run a business. And freelancing is a business. So whether you pay a virtual assistant, any tools that you’re using, you know, like a zoom premium subscription, or web hosting, those are costs. And so they’re a liability against how much you get to put in your personal checking account, when everything’s said and done. So for anyone who wants to calculate the risk, if you’re spending any money on your side, hustle, or whatever you want to do, make sure you’re counting in your expenses, because that will show your true earnings take home after the fact, which is important. And you got to include taxes in those expenses too, because that is a big difference. Your employer is taking out all the taxes on your behalf, versus having to set aside a portion of what you’re making as a freelancer to pay to the IRS. And I will say I feel like I’m one of those people who’s intimidated by numbers. But I dig in I do it anyway because I have had actual nightmares about the IRS coming to me and saying you owe us taxes kenzi even though I’ve been paying my taxes, heck, I’ve probably been overpaying just out of fear. So that’s a separate part of the journey when I hired an accountant, and that will change your life. But on the actual jumping over to it full time. So we started calculating how much I was earning and then had that aha moment that freelancing was more profitable and I enjoyed it much more and I could have more of my time. Now, at that point, some people will jump off and say, heck yeah, let’s do it, then it makes sense. I believe in calculated risks. So what I did instead was okay, $1,000 a month is not a good enough data size. I want to prove to myself that I can earn enough to live off this. So my husband and I looked at our personal expenses and said, How much do I need to earn? That we won’t be in the poorhouse? Like, how much do I really need to be profitable? And the magic number was $3,000 a month. If I could earn $3,000 a month, it would make sense to jump off for my full time job. So the metric we used was like, some people will be like, okay, I reached $3,000. This month, let’s do it. I’m risk averse. And so I wanted to prove that I could hit $3,000.03 months in a row. So that way, it’s like, okay, I’ve done this for a whole quarter. I know that this is sustainable. This is a pattern, it wasn’t a freak, one off thing this can work. And in, let’s see, I think it was September of 2018, I finally hit that mark. And that’s when I put in my two weeks notice. And I said I’m going full time with writing. And that’s how I jumped in. calculated risks, lots of math involved. 

Lisa Lewis Miller  21:28  

Well, and I think that there’s a lot to be proud of, in thinking about yourself as somebody who’s not good with numbers, and yet also being willing to tango with the math and say, how do we make this happen. And there’s something really important in your story that I want to highlight for folks, which is, you did the calculation, you made sure that you could hit three consecutive months or three months where you’re hitting that number to prove to yourself, it wasn’t just a fluke, it wasn’t just a one off, which helps you to earn, earn your own trust, right? There’s an amount of self doubt that goes away when you have a track record. And when you can point to that history and point to your bank account and say, Well, this is the reality for me. And I’m so curious, with your $3,000 a month, earnings from your side hustle about how many hours was it taking to hit that.

Kenzi Wood  22:24  

I would have to estimate because at that time, I was not tracking my time as well as I do. Now. Back then I would say I was putting in probably 10 hours a week into the side hustle. And that’s with waking up at 5am. Working on client stuff from five to seven, getting ready for work, do my whole work day. And then either working in the evenings for an hour or on the weekends. And what I did guys was I spent, I talked to my husband, I said, Sunday afternoons from noon to four, I’m going to go to the coffee shop and knock out all this work. I’m not available for anything, Sundays noon to four. And that’s how I made it work while having a full time job. I was very tired, though. 

Lisa Lewis Miller  23:11  

Yeah, it’s it’s a lot to give to a side hustle. But one of the things that I’ve seen so consistently with folks is that when you have a really good idea of the goal that you’re moving towards making the trade offs and making the prioritization decisions to make, make that available, becomes a lot easier. And even if you feel like you are you’re over giving, right, you’re working more than you want to, you’re working more hours and you want to you also see the light at the end of the tunnel to say, Okay, if I put in a little extra effort and time and energy on this for this sprint of time, the result will be that I get to reap the rewards of that reap the riches of that by being able to have way more freedom, way more autonomy, way more control over my time and how I’m working and with whom I’m working. So I think that it can sound a little intimidating to hear stories like yours, and like mine, and like so many other people who have gone out on their own as freelancers or entrepreneurs. But when it’s really goal oriented, and it’s kind of exciting. You’ve got a goal that you have a little bit of like motivational fire to reach. It can happen more easily than it sounds like. 

Kenzi Wood  24:28  

Absolutely. And I think I look back on that time of my life as incredibly stressful and sleep deprived. And could I do that today? Probably not to tell you the truth. today. I work in my business full time I work maybe 25 to 30 hours a week. And I don’t pull hours like that anymore. But like you were saying I think it’s important to have something to work for. It’s not enough to be like Oh, I hate my job. I’m gonna do this. It’s not about being against something. It’s about being for Something so I’m for my freedom. I’m for doing tasks every day that I like and for being able to choose who I work with, and that, to me was more motivating. And I do love what you said, Lisa about the self doubt, because I think maybe I’m downplaying that a little bit, especially as a woman. Because we often have more doubt in the workplace, right? We are taught to be shrinking violets and not go out on your own and have that confidence. And I remember, to be honest, I leaned on my husband a lot. I didn’t believe in myself, for so much of this, I said, I felt like I was being irresponsible, or that I was putting a burden on us. And so he and I made that plan to hit those financial goals as proof to say, look, Kenzie, this is actually a gift, this is a good thing you’re doing for us and for our family, you are not hurting yourself or hurting us financially by doing this. And so in that way, tracking the numbers can help you feel more confident and less scared. So if you’re having a crisis of confidence, like I did, it’s, I can’t say the importance of numbers and tracking enough. 

Lisa Lewis Miller  26:11  

That’s amazing. So you were making $3,000 a month working about 10 hours a week. And that probably plant some really good seeds in your brain of I don’t think I’ve ever going to work 40 hours a week ever again, if I don’t have to. But I’d love to hear a little bit more about what what work in what life looks like for you now, about how many hours per day do you feel like you’re working? How much of that is writing? What are some of the other things that you have to do as part of your freelance business? And how’s it been going? 

Kenzi Wood  26:46  

Girl, it has been going good. I met with my accountant the other day, which is always kind of scary, because you look at yearly performance. And I was, you know, I was a little nervous, looking back on the past year, and she said you were more profitable this year than any other year in the past. So it’s been steadily climbing year over year, I haven’t knock on wood. I haven’t had a bad year yet. So it’s going great. As far as what my day looks like, it really depends. And that’s the beauty of freelance writing, you can do it anywhere, and pretty much at any time. I am, I like to give myself the illusion of like corporate normalcy. So that way, I don’t go completely off the deep end. And a lot of my clients are corporate. So I still keep pretty traditional work hours. I work from seven to four. That’s usually when I’m in front of my computer. Now, am I am I working that whole time? No, sometimes I’m looking at you know, memes and pictures of cats. But as far as how much work I do in a day, if I look at my schedule from last week, on average, I was working four to five hours a day. This is kind of cool. I give myself a two hour lunch break every day, because I go on walks and runs. And then I also want enough time to just watch TV and eat lunch. You know, I think corporate America does not give people enough breaks. And that’s something I wanted to incorporate my business was plenty of breaks. So I think I just get through the workday a lot easier that way. So that’s roughly what the schedule looks like. Now, what do I do all day, the bulk of what I do is purely client work. And that might not be the case, when you’re just starting out. If I looked at my time tracking from when I first jumped off into this whole time, I was pitching and looking for clients like 60% of the time and the other 40% of the time was actual work. Because I wanted to I was in that growth mode. Right now. I’m kind of like, unless I can clone myself. I am not in growth mode. Right now I am in like optimization mode. Because I will I will go crazy if I have any more clients. But so in the beginning, pitching and looking for clients is much more normal. That will be everything you think about over time as you get more people. What works for me to get out of the pitching hamster wheel was to start asking people for referrals and asking my existing clients for retainers. So what happens then is you get repeat business so that way, okay, I know that john pays me 1000 bucks a month for this work. And then once you get yourself 10 people like that, you’re looking pretty good for the month, and you probably shouldn’t take on any more work. So from that point, you can just focus on the freelancing itself. So that’s why I work so much on writing all day. And then you also have administrative tasks like checking email, phone calls and meetings. So I track those two. I am like very anti meeting though. I really don’t like meetings. So I scheduled most of mine to be 30 minutes now, because I’m like an hour, just is too much time. So you can use tools like calendly to limit how long you meet with people, and things like that. But you definitely have a lot more control over your schedule. And it’s awesome. I’m not gonna lie, it’s pretty nice. 

Lisa Lewis Miller  30:21  

Well, it’s so exciting and so refreshing to hear you genuinely enjoying your business and what you built and what you’re doing. And one of the things that I wrote about in my book last year, was that the freelancers union says that by 2027 50% of the American workforce will have been freelance or will be freelance. And Kenzie, I think that stories like yours are so inspiring, because you’re giving people a roadmap, right? You’re giving them my lessons learned, you’re giving them my experiences, you’re giving such great advice to help people go through the process of setting themselves up to be able to do this work, whether it’s on their own terms, or whether it’s the result of something unexpected that happens in their lives, that forces their hand to have to try something new and different. So I think it’s so important and so helpful. And I love that you’re even sprinkling in the little insights, like get your clients on retainers, because when you’re first starting out, as a freelancer and a baby business owner, the idea of being on a retainer may seem really overwhelming and intimidating. Because you might be thinking to yourself like, well, if it’s how do I how do I know if they’re getting what they want from this? And how do I know how much time I’m supposed to do as a part of this. And there can be a lot of growing pains in figuring out how long stuff takes you what the pricing needs to be for it to make financial sense. But switching from hourly to project based or word based to retainer is such a natural progression for one’s business to make it more stable, to make it more recurring and more predictable. And the thing that we hardly think about as the business owners or the freelancers ourselves is that it’s actually a really helpful forcing mechanism to give it to a business, because that forces them to change their business strategy or their marketing strategy, to utilize you to utilize the time to utilize that commitment that they’ve made. Because if you’re working with clients who are just doing one off projects, every once in a while, you don’t really get a chance to know their style and know their audience and really embody their their voice in the same way that you do. If you know you’re going to have recurring work with them every single month. And it kind of rewards them having a piecemeal throw spaghetti at the wall and see what sticks marketing strategy, as opposed to being really thoughtful and intentional about showing up in consistent ways, predictable ways, reliable ways for their prospective customers and clients. 

Kenzi Wood  32:57  

And I will say as far as because I think a lot of us start out hourly, because we think that’s the fairest way to price our services. And you don’t have that proof of concept yet, right? Like, I don’t have proof that I’m a great content writer, I don’t know. So you only feel like you can go after those small potatoes stuff. But what I will say that the best mindset tool I can offer to someone who wants to write full time is stop saying that you’re a freelancer, because of that comes loaded with a lot of connotations that you’re almost like a pen for hire, which in many ways you are. But it gives your clients more power over you. The second you say you’re a freelancer, and this is just mindset work. So instead of calling yourself a freelancer, you are a business owner, the IRS considers you a business with many of the things that you do, regardless of how you are earning that money, your business. So the second I realized that I stopped saying, I was a freelance writer and I said no, I run a Content Agency, the Content Agency of one lady in a virtual assistant, but it’s still an agency, I’m still delivering valuable service. And so that’s really when the mindset clicks of, I’m not just an individual typing some stuff into a computer, I’m delivering a valuable service. And I deserve to be compensated fairly for that. 

Lisa Lewis Miller  34:21  

I love that. And as somebody who also came from a marketing background, when you think through the lens of an agency, it also makes it easier to think about the overhead that you need to be accounting for in whatever mode of pricing and pitching you’re doing. So I remember back when I was working in Washington DC at a corporate communications agency, consulting firm externally who was getting hired to work with lots of different clients. I was helping with some of the new business pitching and one of the things that you learn when you look at the new business pitching is the essentially hourly rate that they associate with each level of employee within the organization. And back in that day, I was noticing that my work as a supervisor was being priced out to clients at something like somewhere between 230 and $270 an hour. And when I did the same calculation of given the number of hours per week that I work because we had to track it, because we had to build it to each of our clients, given the total number of hours I’m working, I was bringing home like 30 $35 an hour, but being billed out at 230 plus an hour. So that gave me a really clear sense of what was possible as an entrepreneur. And it gives you a sense of what market norms and market rates ought to be for the amount of input that is going into creating something, even if you end up pricing it on a project basis, even if you price it on a retainer basis, thinking about your own hourly rate as being into three digits is really important to build a sustainable, profitable business. 

Kenzi Wood  36:05  

I agree. And I think that it’s so hard to determine your own rate see become profitable, right? So for me, I charge I tend to charge 20 cents a word for blogs, and some people say, Whoa, that’s a lot of money, but not really, because they’re paying for my expertise, my time and all the things that I put this content through before they post it. But to arrive at your final price, whatever it may be, you do have to have an eye for those expenses and your overhead because even freelancers have overhead OR, or NOT freelancers, business owners, we all have overhead. And so if you say okay, I spent 200 bucks last month, so I know I need to at least make 200 bucks this month, build that price into whatever you’re charging your clients like. So for example, if you were going to charge, you know, $10 an hour just as an example, like maybe bring that up to $12 an hour to account for how much you’re spending so that way that’s always covered. So always keep an eye on those expenses, because they can sneak up and they can wreck your profitability if you aren’t watching them carefully. Whenever I first went full time, I was very, I guess I just you know, it was a confidence issue. To be honest, I thought I needed all this fancy equipment. I thought I needed to go to all the marketing conferences. I thought I needed to just, you know, go out and get suits, I actually did, I actually went out and bought suits, and I work remotely guys, I don’t need suits. It’s such a joke. And I wasted so much money on things that you don’t need to be a good business owner, you just don’t need it. So I would say if you’re jumping off and you’re tempted to over invest in your business, just by one or two things a month. And I think that feeling goes away, as you get more confident and you stop wasting your money on things that don’t work. I’m trying to think of things that I bought that were pointless. And it’s just it’s just silly stuff. Like, I bought two different microphones. And it’s like, I don’t need to I just need one or keyboards, software that isn’t particularly helpful. Just equipment and things that you don’t need to clog your life like it’s okay to earn money, and then just take it home. It’s okay to do that.

Lisa Lewis Miller  38:22  

I love that. Well, Kenzi, this has been such a fantastic conversation. And I’m guessing there are people who are listening to this who are either thinking, I want to learn more about this person’s story and their life. Or I would love to hire this person to write for my organization or my business. So if somebody has been listening to this, and they’ve been loving what you’re saying, Where do they find out more about you and what you do? Yeah, so I really I’m just here to share my story. I love helping other people jump off and do their own thing. I don’t charge for that or anything. I just like talking to people about it. But I am at kenziwrites.com. It’s my email is Kinsey at kenzi. Rights calm. If you guys have any questions about your own freelance writing journey, if you have any questions in general about how to price yourself, how to find clients, I’m more than happy to answer a couple questions. We can even do a zoom coffee if you want. I’m just here to inspire more people to be happy doing what they do, because I love what I do. So reach out to me. 

Lisa Lewis Miller  39:26  

That is pretty wonderful. kenzi and she’s kenzi with an AI K and ZI. So make sure that you are typing that in appropriately when you’re looking for her or check it out in the show notes from today. But Kenzie, thank you so much for being here and sharing your brilliance with our listeners. 

Kenzi Wood  39:41  

Thank you so much, Lisa. It’s been a pleasure.

Lisa Lewis Miller  39:50  

And that’s a wrap. Let us know what you thought about today’s episode. leave us a review on Apple podcasts. Because not only can your stars and words help us find great guests Send topics to feature on future episodes. Your input also helps other people find the resources they need to discover the work that lights them up. And make sure to check out my book Career Clarity Show finally finds the work that fits your values and lifestyle. For the link to order it go to getCareerClarity.com/book. And don’t forget to get your other tools resources and helpful goodies at getCareerClarity.com/podcast. Thanks again for joining us for the Career Clarity Show today. And remember, if you don’t love your work, we should talk because life is too short to be doing work that doesn’t light you up. Talk to you next time.Welcome to the Career Clarity Show. If you want to create a career path you’ll love, you’re in the right place. I’m Lisa Lewis Miller, career change coach, published author and your host. And each week, we’ll bring you personal transformation stories, advice and insights from experts about how you can find a more fulfilling, soulful and joyful career.

About the Author Lisa Lewis

Lisa is a career change coach helping individuals feeling stuck to find work that fits. She helps people clarify who they are, what they want most, and what a great job for them looks like so they can make their transition as easily as possible. Lisa completed coaching training in Jenny Blake’s Pivot Method, Danielle LaPorte’s Fire Starter Sessions, Kate Swoboda's Courageous Living Coaching Certification, and the World Coaches Institute. In addition to that, she apprenticed with the top career coaches in the country so she can do the best possible work with — and for — you. She's helped more than 500 individuals move into more fulfilling, yummy careers and would be honored to get to serve you next!

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