EE035 – Jyssica Schwartz – Content is King

Jyssica has written a couple of books, her most recently published book is You Are Not Alone, and her first book was Write. Get Paid. Repeat.

In this episode she talks about book-writing, blogging, charging what you are worth, making the transition from a 9 to 5 corporate job to running your own business, mentoring freelancers and much more.

Her website is jyssicaschwartz.com and blog is medium.com/@jyssicaschwartz

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Transcript:
(All transcriptions are done using www.trint.com through a system of artificial intelligence and so on EVERY episode there are quite a few mistakes as AI is far from perfect when it comes to transcribing the human voice. However, it is a very time-consuming process to go through each transcript and correct all the errors. For quite a while I had the transcribed docs sitting on my hard drive in the belief that one day I would eventually get around to correcting all the errors and could then upload each transcript to the show notes for each episode. The reality is that isn’t gonna happen for quite a while as I simply do not have sufficient time to be able to do that. So please accept my apologies for the number of errors but I hope that these transcripts are in some way useful to you.)

Episode 35 – Jyssica Schwartz – 21-05-2019.mp3

[00:00:00] Exceeding expectations.

[00:00:01] Episode 35 welcome to the podcast where we try to give you ideas of how you’re able to give your customers a great experience which will then hopefully lead to you getting better testimonials and more referrals which will mean hopefully you won’t be spending so much money on marketing and advertising.

[00:00:25] If you do like this show leave a review for us on iTunes or Stitcher and maybe join the facebook group. Start a conversation ask some questions on there. This week’s guest is Jessica Schwartz. She’s based in New York and she’s a book writer and a full time writer and she’s a book coach and she’s written books with titles such as you are not alone. Great. Get paid. Repeat. And she said an interesting story she’s been a full time writer editor and book coach for a while now and she started her business while still be an employed full time in in corporate America. I made enough money to quit her full time job after just three months of going starting to do these part time things. And since then she’s grown her business and she now makes more money annually then when she was employed and she’s loving what she she does and she gives lots of tips on how if you are a writer if you do blog posts if youre thinking about writing books she has quite a few suggestions on all those different areas. Hope you enjoyed this week’s show. Remember if you do have ideas for people that you’d like to hear interviewed on the show then do you can send me a mail.

[00:01:46] Tony at exceeding expectations dot me dot M E and just let me know who it is you’d like to hear interviewed on the show. And recently we’ve had transcriptions for all of the episodes from ones 27 will be on the website in the next few days and then the remaining episodes the transcriptions for those will also be available within the next few weeks. Hope you enjoy this week’s show.

[00:02:20] Exceeded my expectations. And my guest today Jessica Schwartz. How are you Jessica. I’m doing great. Thank you so much Tony.

[00:02:29] I’m Jessica Yellin down in New York in the Big Apple. How is it how is life there today.

[00:02:35] It is cold and rainy today but it’s actually hit up into the 60s over the weekend Fahrenheit. That was just absolutely gorgeous. So it’s finally starting to feel like spring a little bit funny.

[00:02:48] We’ve had recent weather like that here as well. So it’s. Yeah.

[00:02:51] Hopefully with some is on its way. It is. It is April after things on Summer is my favourite.

[00:02:57] So Jessica you in New York you’re a full time writer and you told me before how you were working within corporate America. And you managed to transition into being a freelancer. So tell us a little bit more.

[00:03:10] Absolutely. You know I think that a lot of people have that dream of working for themselves and being their own boss and to be honest that was never really my dream. I spent 10 years in corporate America I graduated college when I was 20 and I spent 10 years in sales and corporate business development. So I was a business development director of A. Recruiting firm here in New York and I was really good at it and it was something that I’d been doing for 10 years and I was good at it but I wasn’t so filled by it. If that makes sense and I turned 30 and they realized I was 10 years into a career that while it was lucrative and I was good at it and it was something that I’d been doing for a long time that I really wanted to reach for my dreams and I always wanted to be a writer. I do have writing competitions and I was young. I have been blogging since. I think probably two thousand two you know when the Internet really became a place to blog. I’m like MySpace and life journal and eventually I had a blogspot one for about seven years and then I turned 30 I realized I really wanted to see if I could make it happen. And I basically I use my sales skills and I basically woke up one morning and I was just going to say let’s see if I can find clients. Let’s see if this is even a possibility. So for zero dollars and I’m very adamant that you can start a service based business for no money. So for zero dollars I went out and found clients I used Instagram and Reddit and LinkedIn and I went out and did direct messaging and direct cold messaging to people personalizing it with their information and their websites and how I can possibly assist them and within a week I had four clients and immediately I just took off. I started working nights and weekends and I started taking on clients and talking to them in the evenings and on weekends and working as much as I could. And after a few weeks I realized that it might be a viable prop that it might be a viable product that might be able to be a writer and have clients. So I kind of stepped down and I did the maths and I realized that you know maybe once I get to a point where I’m making half or three quarters of my salary I could quit my job and try to do it full time. And I very conservatively said OK well I’m going to shoot for a year a year. Now I want to quit my job. But then about 90 days later I was making more than three quarters of my monthly salary. And I quit my job so that I could do this full time and now it’s been more than two years.

[00:05:52] Well it sounds like you really enjoy it.

[00:05:54] I love it. The diversity is insane. I get to because I didn’t pick a niche I chose to be a generalist writer. So I do general blogging articles on anything you can think of. I worked with clients robotics companies out of Singapore web development company is cryptocurrency Cannabis Company it’s out of California. I’ve worked with relatively successful very like you know six and seven figure business people that need the assistance everything from blogging writing articles copywriting for their Web site. I get to do really cool stuff like develop Kickstarter campaigns and write the copy for that for companies. I do a lot of book editing. So people who have written a book and they need to get it professionally edited either before they’re sending it out to traditional publishers or before they self publish it. And they need that help. So I get to read books before they even come out which is just the coolest thing.

[00:06:50] And why are you a book. Did you read a lot.

[00:06:53] Oh yeah. Oh yeah. I’m a big reader. I absolutely love reading it’s something I read every day easily. And it’s just something that I absolutely love.

[00:07:04] And so when you do your book editing is that you usually love a particular subject or what are you doing editing in all different types of books business and just novels and whatever as well.

[00:07:16] So I have edited books in the fiction young adult fiction general fiction but most of what I edit is non-fiction. So some a lot of the time it’s considered creative non-fiction because it’s like business self-help something where people are sharing expertise and trying to teach their readers something. So I’ve edited things like memoirs and biographies and then also things like financial textbooks or creative non-fiction example would be I’ve edited several books where it’s a collection of snores writing their stories and how they got to where they are and things like that. So it’s it’s something I really enjoy. I love reading. I love helping authors really polish their work and give them advice on how to make something better or restructure it or change it in a way that makes more sense to readers before we started recording you were telling me about how you recently had a book where you had self published which is now being published by a bible by major publisher. Yeah it’s definitely. It does happen where a self published author gets picked up by a traditional publisher. It does happen but it doesn’t feel like it happens very often. So it’s really really exciting for me. I self published my first book it’s called right get paid repeat and it’s a lot of business information about how to treat your freelance. You’re freelancing career as a business like treating it like an entrepreneur praising yourself like a business owner not just not just thinking of it as a side hustle or a gig but really treating it like a business. And I publish I self publish that in 2017 and then in twenty eighteen I self published a book called You Are Not Alone. And it’s a collection of 56 stories from both women and men from around the world of their experiences with sexual assault abuse and harassment and their experiences both what happened to them and kind of now and it’s in their own words. And it was really just a passion project. It was a labour of love. I had a platform I feel that because I have a platform and the capability to put together that kind of book and self publish it and take it seriously and treat it very professionally. I feel that I have somewhat of an obligation to try to use that platform for good. And so it’s really important to me to talk about difficult subjects and talk about things that some people might find taboo or hard to talk about because I think the more we talk about it the less difficult it becomes. And so it was something that I really felt strongly about. And after putting them together I ended up working with Sunbury press. It’s a traditional publisher based here in the United States. And they actually offered to republish to rerelease my. You are not alone loan book as a tree published book and they actually want me to write a second one because they really believe in it and they believe it’s helping people and helping people both through writing their stories and going through that catharsis and writing but also for the readers. It’s been a really powerful experience. People that read it come back to me and talk about how knowing that they that somebody else has gone through something similar and seeing that they’ve survived and thrived and that there’s hope and power and that just has been an incredible experience how different was the experience from doing it.

[00:10:38] Self publishing it to have a major publisher.

[00:10:41] Oh it’s a totally different experience. Self publishing is amazing because you’ve got to have complete control. I designed the cover. I worked with an interior format to get it exactly the way I wanted it. I edited the book followed by my own editors who I trust and love and know that they understand my voice. So working with a trade publisher you really give up a lot of that control they’d have their own editors and they have their own staff and the way that they market and promote books is exactly the way that works for them. So it’s a little scary giving up your publishing rights and giving up your control but I’m very lucky because Sunbury has been amazing. They really gave me a lot of leeway. They really allowed me to have a lot of control and they let me keep my scene cover.

[00:11:33] They took my criticisms and my thoughts very seriously and I guess also because you mentioned that you’re a book coach. The whole experience has really helped you and that side of things as well.

[00:11:43] Oh absolutely. Book coaching is something I’d never even heard of when I started my business. And then once I learned what it was I just immediately incorporated it into my business book coaching what it is really is helping people create their book. So it’s people who either have a book idea and don’t know how to get started writing a book or it’s people who’s got started and aren’t sure what to do next. Or maybe they don’t understand the self publishing process and they need help just to be guided through it. But it’s really like just giving them advice and teaching them how to read a book from start to finish. And it is so amazing it’s such a fun process to go through the realization of a dream. A lot of people that’s their dream. They want to be a published author. I read a statistic in the New York Times that said 82 percent of American adults want to write a book someday and most of them don’t. So if I can help them and figure out a way to allow them to realize that dream because I know personally how satisfying it is what would you say.

[00:12:45] People struggle with the most when it comes to writing a book.

[00:12:50] Most people seem to struggle the most with organizing a book. So a lot of people when they want to write a book and they get a great idea. They just sit down and start writing and all the sudden they have two thousand words and they’re feeling really good but then they get stuck and they’re just not sure what to do next. And that’s really something that I see in almost every author I’ve worked with. So really getting into it getting started finding a rhythm getting your book mapped out is is the biggest challenge for a lot of people. And I feel extremely strongly that you should outline your book whether you’ve already started writing or if you’re just thinking about writing a book Create an outline my all and they’re super simple they’re just a bullet pointed list of all the major topics I want to hit in the book but your outline your list your bullet points it creates a snapshot of your book so you can move things around. Decide what order you want to talk about everything in you can really use it basically as a first draft of your book because you outline and map out what the book is going to contain which then allows you as your writing. It allows you to know what the beginning middle and end is and where you’re going with each topic and allows you to have that structure in place. So it makes the entire writing process much easier and faster.

[00:14:07] I imagine people must also really shrug a like what style.

[00:14:11] Ta ta ta take in writing the book actually I think maybe less than you think. I think a lot of people question whether they should write in first second or third person or what kind of perspective but most of the time if you’re writing a book especially if you’re a subject matter expert. For example if you were to be writing a book about CEOs if you were to be writing about podcasting and the process of it and how to become a successful podcast or you wouldn’t have to think too hard about the style because who you are naturally is already an expert. So writing in a way that makes you comfortable and writing in your personal tone is really going to get the message across in the best way. So usually people want to write in how they feel most comfortable and sometimes sometimes people try to be really technical or academic. Sometimes people try to be too flowery and the point doesn’t come across but that’s something that can be addressed in editing. It’s really more about writing in a way that makes sense to the reader because you’re the expert. It always is going to make sense to you. It’s about breaking that down and breaking it into a manageable steps for the reader to understand.

[00:15:19] So since you’ve done the transition from corporate America into a full time how as it being plain citing is been ups and downs how’s it going.

[00:15:27] Definitely not saying failing there. There are absolutely ups and downs just like any kind of service based business. There is a lot of it’s very cyclical. So there are months that I’m just doing extremely well. Maybe I hit five figures in one month and that’s amazing. And then there are months like last month actually was it was a down month for me. I had some medical stuff that I was taken care of I wasn’t able to work as much. And because you know you only get paid for what you do. I had a lower month than average and of course that’s frustrating but all you can do is continue. You have to always be marketing yourself. You will constantly want to be building a pipeline so that even if it’s not the easiest right now you’re working to make sure that you have that pipeline and those clients the future. And I think pricing is a big part of that as well. You know I personally know quite a few freelancers who started on content mills places like up work or fibre which personally I’m not a big fan of. I think up work really does even though there have been people who have found success on work and make decent money. The majority of up work really seems to reinforce this idea of quantity over quality and really tries to force everyone to go for the lowest bidder like they’re constantly trying to get you to be paid one or two cents a word which is basically slave wages you’re not going to you know if you’re getting good ones and to work that’s ten dollars for a thousand word article which maybe took you two or three hours to research write and post which means you’re getting paid like three dollars an hour do you find that.

[00:17:03] I’m presuming you are still looking quickly does it begin work as well.

[00:17:06] Oh absolutely. So I do feel very passionately that you should never work for free. But I don’t feel that blogging fits that parameter for me blogging is a way for me to give out free useful valuable content. It’s a way for me to work through my emotions it’s a way for me to work through anything that’s in my head writing is both a catharsis and a release for me. So my blog is actually mostly geared towards business related content. I talk a lot about how to start a business how to start a business for free how to price yourself how to identify bad clients make sure you have a contract. Things like that aimed at small business owners and entrepreneurs. And it gives me a lot of valuable exposure. It really does. I have a blog on medium I have I think somewhere on 30 400 followers right now which allows me to extend my reach and my exposure and people find me they find me through there. They find my Web site. They look me up. I get people who will just message me out of nowhere. Through my Web site and just say hey I thank you so much for providing a copy of your contract that really helped me. So I get a lot of joy out of helping people. I think when I started as a writer it felt like there was so much information online and a lot of it contradicted each other. So it it’s a little frustrating when you’re first starting out to just you’re not sure what direction to go. A lot of places say you should pick a niche. A lot of places say you shouldn’t. Some places say you should start out and work for free so that you can build a portfolio. Other places don’t. So I just wanted to have somewhere where I was giving people a lot of practical useful information along with examples of how and why it worked for me.

[00:18:50] A lot of people want to log on a more frequent basis but they struggle for various reasons. Maybe they they just they can’t decide what’s right. So what advice would you give people who want to look more and maybe why they should look more.

[00:19:05] Oh absolutely. So I think blogging is great if you like blogging and it gives you the satisfaction and the exposure that you need. You absolutely should. I’ve been blogging since the live journal days and then Blogspot and then WordPress and now medium. So I feel like I can really run the gamut of the different tools and resources available. One way is to set a schedule. So I try to have a new post up every Monday or Tuesday no matter what. So if I’m on vacation even if I’m on a weekend at my brother’s house or hanging out with my nieces and nephews I try to have at least one well researched well written article per week for my blog. One thing that a lot of people have issues with is just finding inspiration you know finding content. And if you’re a business there’s a lot of reasons for you to have a blog. For example let’s say you are a web development company and you’re a smaller business and you’re trying to build a reputation. Having a blog and having regularly produced content original content on your Web site it encourages site visitors to stay on your site for longer. It gives valuable information for free which builds trust and expertise. It encourages site visitors to come back more often. It can also help you build your email list if you have people subscribe to it. And then on top of that it actually organically raises you in the Google search rankings because producing content regularly that Google is looking for that so you will be raised your SEO rankings will go up in Google. And so you really want to come up with ideas. If you’re a business you really want to talk about news that relates to your business. You want to talk about your business offerings and why they’re beneficial and what you do your process introduce your team. You can really talk about anything. And then on a personal side I blog because I love it and because it helps my business. And sometimes you run out of stuff to write about it. Sometimes you just aren’t sure what to write about. And so the best thing to do is to be inspired by the things around you. Go on Instagram go into Twitter go into Quora see what people are talking about read the news see what people are talking about in the world. I love Quora because people ask questions. It’s a free platform where people ask questions and then other. You’re basically crowdsourcing answers. Not a great place to find inspiration because there are so many people asking questions on so many different topics that just really gliding through it you can kind of get ideas of this is what people want to know. I have expertise in this topic. I can help people. And so a lot of times I’ll write a poor answer and then I just feel really good about that information so I’ll turn that and elaborate on it and try and do a blog post as a coach as a book coach.

[00:21:50] How do you win it when people come to you and they have you know they want you to help them with the writing help them with their whole book process. How do you exceed them expectations.

[00:22:00] I would say that the best way to exceed expectations and this is across industry is I feel very strongly that managing expectations is one thing but exceeding expectations is how you succeed. And so I have the best customer service of anyone I know. I have made it an absolute top priority to be somebody that people want to work with that they find easy to work with. And let me explain what I mean by that I am not the best writer in the world. I certainly could not claim to be so I’m a good writer and I love what I do and I’m passionate about it but I’m not you know J.K. Rowling I’m not Stephen King or one of my favourites is David Bell dodgy but I’m not I’m not the perfect writer what I am is a good writer who’s very easy to work with people know what I’m doing. We have standing weekly meetings so that we can discuss projects and progress tasks. They want me to complete that week where I am in their in their book. If we’re doing an editing project I’m very easy to get a hold of. I’m always responsive by text or email when people want to set up a meeting. I make myself available and be flexible. And when it comes to exceeding expectations I make sure that when someone brings me on to work with them I make 100 percent sure that I am making their life easier before as well we were talking about rising prices.

[00:23:22] Does that feed into it.

[00:23:24] Oh absolutely. As I was mentioning earlier you know when you have a low rate you’re not making enough to be sustainable even if you’re working full time hours you’re never going to make enough when you are getting paid too little. And that’s what frustrates a lot of people a lot of entrepreneurs a lot of freelancers end up quitting and going back to a regular 9:00 to 5:00 because it’s not a sustainable living wage. Whereas you really in order to be competitive you really want to be at the top of the bell curve or even a little more. For me I realized almost immediately after starting that my prices were too low because it was difficult to research. It was difficult to find the right accurate information of what I should have been charging. So the first two or three projects I did I definitely under charged. And then I realized immediately I’m like I’m getting paid like five dollars an hour. This is not OK. So here’s the thing. If you as an entrepreneur were looking to bring someone on are you looking for the cheapest person or are you looking for the best person and that’s something that I really focus on is I’m not the cheapest. I’m not the most expensive but I’m definitely not the cheapest because first of all I value my work my work my work and my time are valuable and important and they have and my skills are valuable and worth money. And secondly it also helps you weed out the bad clients something that I really think a lot of people don’t focus on so much when they’re talking about businesses and building a business is there are some terrible clients out there. There are people who don’t want to sign the contract don’t want to give you a deposit they don’t want to pay your rates they’re going to push back for every nickel and dime and try to take advantage of you because they are your client. That is true in every industry. You know you look at places like clients from hell or choosing beggars on Reddit and you see people who just they want more than you’re willing to give or willing to charge or they want things for free. And I feel very strongly that having a fair price helps weed out some of the worst clients because if I if someone comes to me and they say hey can you do this for free I’m not negotiating. The answer is no. Like these are my prices this is what I can do for you. Here’s what you’re going to get from me which is valuable and relevant and going to be exactly what you need. Plus more if I can. And so every time I raise my price if I’m learning new skills if I am adding a new pillar or service into my business I am pricing those accordingly because my time is worth money and every time I take the time to do something with a client I want them to know that they’re getting the best of me they’re getting my full and undivided attention they’re getting exactly what they need. And the thing is is I don’t I would not give my all to somebody who only wanted to pay me three dollars an hour. I find that worth it. So my heart wouldn’t be in it. And I have to feel that on the on the other side of that as a business owner I don’t want to work with people who only want to pay three dollars an hour. You know it’s when I’m editing a book that’s many hours and several weeks of my time. And so when people say oh I only have three dollars for you to edit this book Well I’m sorry but that’s not what editing costs. And you know the difference between an amateur and a professional book is having an editor. It’s a necessary part and if you didn’t budget for that then you need to wait until you have the money for that because it’s just if you’re reading a book and you’re distracted by typos and errors and it doesn’t make sense then you are going to have a situation where people will want to read the book they’re going to put it down they’re going to give you bad reviews so as a as a coach as a writer as an editor how how were you able to surprise people.

[00:27:00] Maybe you got any stories that you’ve done things people just weren’t expecting.

[00:27:03] Absolutely. I have a lot of writers who have come to me and said listen I had an editor I hired them. They took my book. They came back a month later and I don’t know what they changed but I don’t like it. They didn’t they didn’t explain their process. And unfortunately I think trusting the wrong people or not knowing their process and I and I absolutely think that those editors probably had the best of intentions. You know they’re sitting there and they’re saying well I made your book better. But the author is sitting there saying this isn’t what I wanted. This isn’t what I expected. So one way that I exceed expectations and the way that I’m that I think I surprise people is my editing process is super collaborative. So I actually put every book manuscript that I get. I put it in a Google Doc and I give the client commenting access. So what that means is they can pop into the book at any time to see how far I’ve gotten you check my progress. I can actually ask questions and ask for more examples or explain that you know I’m changing this because of this or you know this word does it make sense here. What do you mean. Could you explain or I can see things like this means more detail. As a reader they’re not going to understand this. And it allows it to be a really interactive collaborative process which is something that every author I’ve worked with has really appreciated that they get to be a part of the process. They’re not just cut out. You know when you read a book that’s a lot of time and energy and knowledge and you know it’s really a piece of your soul that you’re kind of putting out there and you’re giving it to an editor to judge and make changes. And it’s really terrifying for a lot of people which I completely understand. I had to do the same thing with my own books. It’s absolutely terrifying. But by making it a super collaborative process and allowing people to see the edits of their being made you know an editor is not a dictator. If you feel passionately about something in your book and you don’t agree with the editing change change back.

[00:28:57] Any editor worth their salt will be able to take a step back and say OK this is something that’s important to you let’s leave it how if you develop the mentality to to try to exceed people’s expectations was that something that started in your corporate life. Where did that come about.

[00:29:13] So yeah I think being in sales I was I worked directly with clients for many years and it’s not just an order taker you’re you’re building a relationship. You’re when you’re asking clients to spend forty thousand dollars a year with your company or eighty thousand dollars a year with your company. That relationship is really important and the extension of that relationship. Whether they trust you whether that your products work whether your services are fulfilling a need it all works together. And so I think being in sales really put me in that mindset of the client needs to get what they need but get more than they need. They need to feel that I take a specific interest in them that they’re not just a number to me. And so that relationship building was a huge part of the way I structure my business and the way I work with clients now. And in fact it’s actually it’s very interesting to me. So I’ve gotten the chance to meet quite a few other writers and editors in the in the community around the US and beyond just throughout the last few years of kind of making connections and building relationships with other freelancers and a lot of them are not good at sales. And I learned over time that people in the more creative side those that sales and marketing side of business is usually more difficult for them not across the board. Just in general tends to be something that they either don’t enjoy or they have a little bit of a harder time with or they’re not sure what to do about it. I get a lot of questions from freelancers about that about like how do I market myself how do I find clients. So I try to do quite a bit of writing on that to answer questions and I do get a lot of them that come to me individually to ask for advice and marketing and sales questions and advice and I am more than happy to help. And I just think that because I had so much experience in sales that it became second nature to me that that’s really what allowed me to be successful and profitable so quickly. And so I’m really thankful for that experience. And also if writing doesn’t work out I have a backup career. That isn’t the time and certainly didn’t go to waste.

[00:31:25] So where do you see things going in future if you got ideas for a movie.

[00:31:28] You know what that’s so funny because I think about that all the time is like am I still going to be kind of doing this up and down and you know freelancing in general. It’s not a stable career. It is it has its ups and downs. It’s incredibly isolating sometimes just be at home by yourself. It can get incredibly lonely and difficult. But ultimately I find it very fulfilling. And so I think about that a lot. I am currently working on a third book I’m working on the next volume two of you are not alone. I’ve had about 50 people share their stories with me. I’m actually waiting on a few more and then I’m gonna start putting that book together. I just recently started writing a book and really excited. I’ve never really written fiction but I read it all the time and I love fiction it’s just non-fiction has really become my specialty but I really love fiction books and so I have outlined and started writing a fiction novel set in a dystopian future that is unlike more the Y the young adult side. But then I also have a lot of plans for my business. You know I just about six months ago I created a book of course called How to write a book in three months. And I just had my first class of Book of members go through the class. It’s a live kind of online based class with weekly calls but then videos and content in between which was incredibly exciting too. So I created this course how to write a book in three months specifically for non-fiction people who want to write a book people who want to read a non-fiction book. It walks you through the entire process and it’s really comprehensive. And it went against the grain of everything that course creators told me I should do. Everyone said that I should be doing things like creating a free webinar or creating a free content course first to build up an email list and I just kind of blew past that and created a three month long commitment course. And it’s incredible. And that’s something that I really want to build up. I’ve only gone through it once with with people so now I really want to do more of that because it was so successful and so exciting. I have a few plans that I’ve been with for a long time I’ve a couple of clients that I’ve actually had since right after starting. And that just comes back to relationship building and exceeding expectations and making sure that I’m giving them valuable services. And so I hope to continue to do that and extend those relationships. And you know it’s funny because I I hope new things pop up that I haven’t even thought of yet. I hope that as I learn more and grow and my skills get better I hope that I get to keep learning and keep finding new ways to be passionate about what I do.

[00:34:07] So if people want to find out more about that course you just mentioned where would they go to.

[00:34:12] Oh they can check out my Web site so my Web site. Jessica Schwartz dot com. It’s funny because I’m the only person in the world with the spelling of my name from with both first and last name. So I’m very easy to find online. So my Web site is Jessica Schwartz dot com. And that has the book. Course it has books I’ve worked on some books that I’ve edited. It has information and blogging information just free information for people. They just have questions. I do get e-mails to that site. So if anybody has a question they just want some advice on freelancing. They’re more than welcome to reach out. I am a one man show so I personally respond to everything. But it’s really all about. I think being an entrepreneur and b being a freelancer is especially I think that you have to treat it as a business.

[00:35:02] If you think of it as a side hustle or as a side gig or if you don’t have that mindset of growing a business and taking on clients and having contracts in place and you know pricing that puts you in a competitive spot then I don’t think it can be successful long term.

[00:35:21] Jessica I really appreciate your time and it’s been some great advice and suggestions you’ve given. So thank you for taking the time to be on the show.

[00:35:29] Thank you so much Tony.

[00:35:31] This is the next episode of exceeding expectations is with narration visa. He has a digital marketing agency and he’s that does lots of things in the world of podcasting and books and many other things in summer. Some of the books that he’s written include titles such as 50 Shades of marketing your business into shape dominate your competition podcast nomics the book of podcasting to make you millions. The new PR but one intrigue insider was Trump book which is about how digital liberals silenced the nation into making America hate again. And he gave some very interesting perspectives on how he saw the 2016 US election and how it was that Trump was able to win by using social media in a different way. So that’s next week’s episode with nourish visa. Hope you’ve enjoyed the show. Please do leave a review on the usual channels maybe start a conversation on our Facebook group. Hope you have a fantastic week. I look forward to speaking with you next week.

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