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Why Do We Need an Institute?

September 30, 2019 By FiveFigureSarah

The B2B Writing Institute launches January 2020. Get your beta invitation early at https://b2bwritinginstitute.com/.

Why do we need a b2b writing institute?

Howdy, friends.

Sorry it’s been so quiet here. But work’s been crazy. Plus the whole “two kids under two” thing. Though I guess that’s not technically true since the oldest is about 2.5 right now.

The main reason things have been crazy is that I finally hit (and flew past) that 6 figure mark in August. No one finds that harder to believe than me, and I’m the one billing it. And that’s because I’ve been in “head-down-and-deliver” mode since I came back to work from my second maternity leave in two years back in December 2018. And since we decided to try to buy a house, which is HAPPENING in the next month (!).

So, not only can I not believe I blew through that mile marker, but I can’t believe a year has passed since I had my second son.

(No, I’m not going to rename the blog. I’m going to take Dawn B.’s prophetic advice and say the blog is now about making five figures a month ;-).)

Anyway, I am copying a post I put out on LinkedIn to share the ongoing update of the B2B Writing Institute, my main personal project right now. Personal project sounds wrong, but what I mean by that is it’s not client work. So. My main business project? I don’t know.

But I got to thinking about how some people might respond to this idea of a B2B Writing Institute. And I had the question, “Why do we need an institute?” stuck in my mind. And I wanted to answer that. So, here’s why:

There are more than 1 billion websites on the Internet. And sometimes it feels like there are just as many opportunities to learn about writing, too.

No matter what your interests, there’s a website (or a few hundred) for you.

Freelance writing. Business writing. Conversion writing. White paper writing.

You name it, you can find it.

So where do you go when you don’t know what you’re looking for or what you need to know?

That’s why we need an Institute.

There are far too few places to go for neutral, trustworthy information about business writing. I know, because I’ve been writing since 2013, and I’ve exhausted all of those resources.

I’ve found some incredibly wise and generous people to learn from. And every penny I’ve spent on training for my writing career has been worth it. But I really wish there had been a safe, independent place to go when I first got started — I found the people I found by luck and SEO!

So, that’s what we’re building.

What are we after?

Well, the first version of the B2B Writing Institute mission statement looked something like this…

The B2B Writing Institute is an independent source of B2B writing instruction for in-house and freelance B2B writers. Our mission is to build a bridge between B2B writing and B2B marketing and improve every marketing funnel on the Internet.

That worked for a couple of days. Until I tried to work on an editorial calendar for the Facebook group. Suddenly the focus was B2B marketers (who are important, but not who the Institute is for) and marketing funnels (which are important, but not what the Institute is for).

Something was wrong.

So, I went back to the drafting table. I looked at the 4,400 members in the Facebook group and I looked at my “vision board” of ideas of what we want to accomplish. And I realized the mission of this Institute was all wrong. It’s not for marketers or marketing funnels. It’s for writers.

Natural-born writers who don’t get the business connection. Creative writers who want to support their work with income. Freelance writers who want to refine their skills like a surgeon’s blade.

So, that naturally led to the launch mission statement:

The B2B Writing Institute is an independent source of B2B writing instruction for in-house and freelance B2B writers. Our mission is to make the business writing industry accessible to anyone with a passion for writing.

There it is. That’s the connection we were looking for. Take all these people with a genuine passion for writing — at any skill level — and make business writing accessible to them.

It’s not about income. I’ve made more than half a million dollars freelancing, but I learned that side of the business from insightful and talented writing coaches who have the skills to coach you on that better than I ever could.

It’s not about B2B marketing. You need to know some principles to get started, but you don’t need to turn into an expert marketer.

It’s about taking this writing thing you love and showing you how to use it for businesses.

The B2B Writing Institute will have paid courses and programs and all the things you expect to see from a business operating online. But the most important course — the B2B Writing Foundations Course — will contain everything you need to know to get started in business writing, and it will be forever-free.

In fact, there will be free versions of everything we make — starting with the B2B Writing Institute Facebook group.

Because our mission is to make business writing accessible to anyone with a passion for writing, whether they’re at a place in their career where they can afford to invest in it, or not.

If you have a passion for writing, you can be a business writer. Learn the art and science of writing for business at https://b2bwritinginstitute.com.

Filed Under: WRITING

The Freelance Parent: Freelancing With Kids at Home

December 3, 2018 By FiveFigureSarah

Freelance Parent - Freelancing With Kids

Q: I’m anticipating the balance of freelance writing life and motherhood, and I’m curious how you’re handling it these days. Are you building your work schedule around your little guy at the moment, or do you have any childcare help? I’m curious how other moms in a similar career plan out their days and whether it’s possible to do it without outside help.

Phew, motherhood!

Am I right?

I speak to this experience as someone who just pulled off two maternity leaves in two years. So, as of this writing, I have a 7-week old asleep in a Boppy lounger on the dryer and a 19-month year old asleep in his room in his crib. Talk about credibility.

Anyway, motherhood has a been a wild, unexpected ride, and I could go on and on, but my official answer on balancing freelancing with parenting is that it’s completely 100% individual.

I’m happy to explain. Here are four things about parenting as a freelancer that caught me by surprise and how I work with them.

1. Childcare

For some reason, when I first started down the prickly path of parenthood, I didn’t really factor in childcare! What was I thinking?? I was tripping on some ego-juice and just assumed I’d handle kids in the background of life.

Not. Very much not.

I know some freelance moms who were able to more or less make the “work during naps” model work for them. That sounds amazing, and it’s definitely the best of both words. Mom it up full time, then fire up your computer during naps and make the big bucks.

For me, at least, it very quickly became obvious that that was a pipe dream, and I couldn’t work without dedicated childcare.

It very quickly became obvious I couldn’t work without dedicated childcare.

Why? We make particularly active and alert babies!

When we just had the one baby, he would sleep in 30-4o minute spurts. By the time I put him down and collected my brain for 10 minutes, he’d be up again, and I’d be frustrated and stressed. With two babies, if one is asleep the other is awake (except for right now, this moment… but check with me by the time the blog post is done).

So, by about 4 months with Baby #1, we opted to have a nanny come to our home for childcare. My sweet spot is about 3-4 hours a day, 3-4 times a week, but that scales up and down depending on my workload.

Nanny care is more expensive than daycare, though less so now that we have two kids at home. It costs us about $1000-1500 a month, but it’s worth the price to see my 19-month old clap his hands and dance a little when the nanny walks in the door and know he has her full attention while I’m gone. Stuff like that makes it easier for me to slip away and not spend all my work time crying that my son misses me.

(Let me be clear… I love my quiet computer time, my clients, and working. But when your toddler is freaking out that you’re leaving, it can really hurt to have to go!)

So… how freelancing as a parent will go for you will really depend on your temperament and the temperament of your baby, which you won’t know until it happens. I ended up with an active, alert baby compared to the chill, sleepy baby a lot of my friends have. You may have a chill, sleepy baby, or you may have the second coming of Speedy Gonzalez. It’s out of your hands.

2. Concentration

Beyond the actual care-taking of your child, I also underestimated the sheer overwhelming-ness that comes with being the primary caretaker. So, pre-baby, I thought of the baby as “a task” I could check off throughout the day among other tasks. Something like… baby wakes up, so you feed it. Then it’s tired, so you put it to sleep. And then you go about your day.

Hah!

My motherhood experience ended up being a lot more distracting in every way. Emotionally, physically, hormonally… you name it, it was awry and stressful. I was barely getting by, let alone sitting around with the mental bandwidth to “pop out a blog post” when he finally slept for an hour. And before that hour? It’s more like…

Baby wakes up. Then goes back down without a bottle (wait, wasn’t he hungry?).

Ooops, he popped back up after 10 minutes. Oh, he’s wet. New diaper… but now he’s hungry.

He ate but then spit it up all over both of us, so we both need new outfits.

OK, he’s chilling… but then unhappy again after 10 minutes.

Nope, doesn’t want to nurse. Or swing. Or soft carrier.

Oh, he wants to walk around the apartment and see the light fixtures. That makes sense…

(Note: This is the individual part. I’ve also heard of moms who realized they had so much time on their hands with a baby that that’s when they started their business! That was not my experience, but I hope it’s your experience.)

I’veĀ  heard of moms who realized they had so much time on their hands with a baby that that’s when they started their business! That was not my experience.

So, part of what I need to buy when I pay for childcare is the ability to pick up my work bag, leave my home, and put my brain in a whole other zone of concentration. I’m lucky that a co-working space opened up in my neighborhood, so I “commute” down there and focus on work for a few hours (and then a few more after my husband gets home).

You certainly can crank it out from a desk in your bedroom during naps, but I was really frazzled when I tried to do that, so I don’t do that anymore.

3. Values

It’s a luxury to be able to think this way, but once I had kids, I started having some serious opinions about what kind of work was “worth” being away from them.

Whereas before kids I might have considered taking calls and writing proposals for work I was lukewarm about, after kids it was suddenly a lot easier to identify the potential projects that I wanted to be involved with. My internal barometer for “This is worth missing time with the kids” and “If I were stuck at work working on this when I could be with the kids, I’d be mad” was finely tuned.

This piece of the puzzle is still evolving as I consider what kind of writing and what kind of clients make me feel like I’m zeroing in on what I was meant to do for a living, but having kids definitely pulled things into focus.

It works the other way, too. When I was locked into a project because I had already committed myself or simply wanted the opportunity for other reasons, it was really hard to focus and appreciate the work! I would find myself procrastinating or thinking of my kids and wishing I were elsewhere the entire time I was trying to research and write. Not cool.

4. Pressure

As I adjust to having two babies at home, this one has come to be the real clincher.

Since the first day I started freelancing, I’ve been fed a strong, long diet of “Time is your most valuable asset.” Even though I basically had unlimited time to work each day, I quickly switched to a project rate ASAP, I finely tuned my writing process, and I hunted down the most valuable work I could find, all to make the most of my time.

And then I became a parent, and I found most of my day was spent… just… waiting… for time to pass.

(I’m sorry… I love my kids… and a lot of the time I spend with a toddler is waiting for lunch, waiting for the nap, waiting for dad to get home. It’s just really hands-on and often the opposite of productive!)

That feeling of being stuck in jello most of the time means that when I get my hands on a chunk of work time — when I step outside of the family bubble and become a person in time once again — sometimes I freeze from the pressure.

It’s a lot of pressure to pay $18+ an hour for work time and be away from my two little (stress-inducing) drool-y angels. It’s a lot of pressure to fit a full day of work and marketing and outreach and interviewing into a few hours per week. There’s more pressure than ever to write quickly and efficiently, and sometimes, especially right before my most recent maternity leave, the pressure is too much! And my brain just stops and it’s impossible to “make the most of my time”.

I’m not sure there’s a solution to this — just scheduling as much work time as is reasonable and continuing to train myself to be efficient and productive and capture the flow.

So, there you have it! That’s how we’re handling freelance life with two kids. I can’t believe this is my life or that I’m writing this, but I hope to make the most of it :).

What are you worried about when it comes to freelancing with kids?

P.S. 4 Strategies I Used to Invoice $10,000+ Two Months In A Row

P.P. S. Yep, Baby #2 woke up before this post was done!

Filed Under: MOMMING, WRITING

Copy, She Wrote: Santa’s Elves

December 3, 2018 By FiveFigureSarah

Sweet yurt, brah

Before the hate email comes in, I myself once was… GASP… a millennial content marketer.

I witnessed keyword stuffing (never participated, though), and I worked with people who wore pretty tight clothes sometimes (again, I never participated… except by accident if I gained some weight).

Eventually I worked into that PT schedule FT pay thing. But it took a while.

Filed Under: Copy She Wrote

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Freelance B2B writer. Building things and breaking them (including myself).

Making money with words since 2013 (& teaching others to do it since 2016).

Warning: There be opinions here.