Not Enough Time to Make More Money? Writers Have to Try This
Faster, faster, faster…is that the only way to manage your freelance writing time to make more money? I've always been a slow writer and have used tools/systems to help me gain time back so I can take on more, higher-paid projects. But there is a specific relationship between time management, getting faster, moving up to better projects, and making more money that we need to dissect.
This week's livestream is going over several critical charts to help you understand time vs. money, what I use to manage my time on a day to day basis in my freelance writing business, how writing does get faster over time, and what to look for when analyzing time vs. money.
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Not Enough Time to Make More Money? Writers Have to Try This
Time management and freelance writing and making more money all go together, but you don't have to be a super fast writer to make more money. So a lot of times, hi Nadia. Uh, so a lot of times when we're dealing with our time management and our time and how we're making more money, uh, I often get a lot of questions about, well, how do I write faster?
How do I just do it faster? And that's part of the process. We get faster over time. But a big part of it too is understanding how things evolve over time and how to manage your time. So we're gonna go over a couple things that I do and a couple of different charts that I usually share that I think can be really helpful for understanding time management, money, freelance writing, and speed.
So let's get into it. We're gonna do number one. All right, hold on. Let me find the number one. Number one, okay, so number one thing, that's, that's what we're talking about. So we're talking about our charts first. So let's talk about our charts. And these are things that, um, these are like. Pieces of stuff that I go over with my Wealth Lab students.
So like, these are things that I think, um, these are like partially how you kind of get to that next level of understanding. So you have this like, um, relationship and I always like mess it up, but I think it's this way. I think like, 'cause I'm, I mean I, the idea is there, but the graph sometimes I mess up which one's like the right one or whatever it is.
What is it time and it's like, um, is it speed? Hold on. This one is basically, you know what, I'm not gonna label them. 'cause I think that'll make it easier for me to use this for different examples. Okay. So this chart is something that I often share with Wealth lab students that I think is really important.
So, This is how it works. Okay, so when we first start out, everything takes all of our time. It takes all of our time. It's really hard to do, and we're not doing a ton of work. Okay? So you have a really small amount of work here, and you have stuff that takes all your time. Hi Jennifer. Um, we are understanding that at the beginning, this is what it looks like.
Okay? It takes all your time and it's very little work, okay? It's like one blog post, or one article, or one case study or, or a really small like retainer, right? Something really small. Um, this is, this is how it works over time. So as your time goes on, right, as things take more t or as you become more experienced as a freelance writer, right, and you get more work, the more your work increases and the more experience you get, the less time it takes.
Okay. So the idea here is that when you start out, everything takes all your time. And this is a question I often get from my Wealth Lab students is like, how do you do all this stuff? Right? So I'm running my freelance business, right? My freelance writing business, which includes content strategy, brand messaging, freelance writing projects.
Um, plus I run runway, which is happening right now, uh, which is my five day live class, but it's also available as runway lifetime. If you wanted lifetime access, that's a different class. I mean, it's similar material, but, um, then I have my Wealth Lab classes, then I have one-on-one coaching, right? And it is a lot.
There are times when it is a lot. I, I'm not gonna like front on that, like it, there are times when it's a ton, but a lot of times it comes down to this idea right here is like when I started. Okay? So let's, let me give you some examples. When I started, I took a month, one month to do my first reported article.
Okay? It took, oh, we've got a special guest come on. Special guest. Our special guest doesn't have her, uh, her, her, uh, camera. Her camera's not. Here come our special guest. Come on. B. I know it's scary. Maybe someone will get the camera for her. All right. Charlie's here, everybody we're the camera's not in here, so we have to go get it, Mike.
Okay, so back to the example. When I started, it took me a month to do my first reported article. Okay? Then I got to the point where I could do 20 in a month. Okay? That's the, the relationship of this diagram. When you get started, it takes you a month, right? Or maybe you're faster than me, but it took me a month to find sources, figure out how to write it, do the interviews, edit it, get, turn it in.
It took me a month then, right? Then, by the time I get here, which is uh, I think a couple years, I think it took me like two years to get here. Uh, but like I said, I'm slower than most writers, so it took me about two years. To get to the point, well, maybe like a year and a half. Yeah, it was about 18 months.
Yeah, so it was about 18 months, a year and a half to get to here where I'm doing 20 reported articles a month and basically like 21 interviews a week. This was a whole month to do one reported article. This is 20 interviews or 20 reported articles with 21 interviews a week. Okay. Which is a lot High flower power.
Ooh, camera's here. Good girl. Thank you.
Good girl, peanut. So I want you to understand that evolution, right? So, so, so like that 18 month period is me working through all the complicated stuff that comes with writing, better, learning how to pitch, learning how to get my shit together, understanding how to run my business. All those things, but that's helping me make more money, right?
So I'm getting faster over time. But it's also about managing the time, man, the managing the pieces that go into working on my business versus in my business, right there she is. Being snugly. You wanna be wrapped up like a burrito. I know you already like fluffed the blanket, but Oh, sorry, mean I didn't mean to cover your face.
Good girl. She does like to have her face covered, but by cut oh five. Cute. Good girl. So she's here with us. All right, so that's the first thing, that's the first graph that I want you to understand about time and experience and speed and money. So yes, over time you do get faster. That's part of it. I'm still not super fast, like I'm I, that's not one of my magic talents.
Um, I know there's lots of other writers who they just, speed is their thing. Like speed is their magic talent. It's not my magic talent. But I do wanna tell you that as someone who's slower in putting my work together, um, it's still possible for you to get faster over time. Now, that also comes with, um, this idea where we're, um, so let me show you this.
So like, right, this next chart is like, let me show you this. So here's kind of like how I see it when I'm, when I'm building my business over time, it's going to look like this. It's, there's going to be times, especially when it comes to money where you get a new client, right? You get a new client and you're like, yay, I'm making some money.
And then you get a new client at a better rate, and then you get a new client where, That work takes a lot longer than you thought. So you're like, oh my gosh, I should have charged a lot more. Like I should have charged double, which I've done a bunch of times. Then you're like, now I'm charging double.
Right? You're at this point where you're like, now I'm charging double yay. And then you're like, oh no, I took another hard project. It took a lot of time. Then you're like, oh boy, I fixed that. Right? I fixed that with new stuff. Then you get to this point where you're like, everything is terrible and I need to revamp my business, and you need to like, um, start over.
Like there's all these different, I'm just saying like these as examples. It doesn't mean you're gonna end up in the Super Valley, but I think there's this misconception a lot of times where we think it's linear, right? We think it's this straight line that just goes across where we're like, as we go along, we just make more money, and that's just not the case.
There are a lot of complexities that go into making more money. I. Managing your time and doing the appropriate projects that make sense for you. And these ha correspond to both time, effort, right? Making more money, doing more complicated projects, working with different clients, raising your rates, right?
So this is the idea that I think is more realistic. Like it's, it's just very uncommon that in most of the time when you're running a business, especially freelance writing business, where it's just like a line, you're just like, magically I've made more money without any kind of trip up, without any kind of valley, without any kind of situation where you took on a project and you realized you should have charged double or you took on a new project and you're like, oh, shit, I, I have to figure this out on the fly.
Or, you know, something like that. Like this is kind of where you should be thinking about time, experience, expanding your skills, moving to different projects, um, getting better clients of realizing how to raise your rates, right. I think this kind of thing is more helpful to understand like the actual journey.
There's this other chart that I think is important too. So I'm, I'm gonna, I don't know how many charts, I had a couple in mind, but I might share some more. So let's do this other one. There's this other chart that kind looks like this. And this is like a common illustration that people talk about, right?
So people think they're doing this, but they're actually doing this, right? Okay, so lemme draw a line. So people think they're doing this right? They think they're going in circles, but what they're actually do is doing is growing in bigger and bigger ways. They're actually growing up kind of like a cyclone, right?
So this is something that really helped me understand. I know the drawing's messy, so like ride with it. So a lot of times people think they're going in circles and you could be right. This is like a plateau, right? So this is the plateau, E A E U, right? Okay, handwriting's terrible, but you get the idea. So this is the plateau, right?
If you, if you really are in this circley thing, you will be in a plateau in your business. It will be a, reflecting across all of your stuff. Like you won't, you'll be making the same amount of money. You don't see any growth. You're not working with new clients. You're trying to, to squeeze the, the lemon out of like four clients for like 10 years.
Uh, you're not expanding your skills. You're not kind of like learning how to write better or learning how to do a project better. You're just really plateauing Most of the time you're here, most of the time you're, you're actually growing in this kind of cyclone thing where you start really small and you're like, okay.
And then you kind of move up in this circular pattern where you get bigger and bigger. Over time you learn more things. You manage your time better. Um, you get to a place where you understand more stuff. Where you understand like this kind of gray area, right? Of pricing or this gray area. Of like how you're managing, um, your work this gray area of like, do I, don't I, how can much, can, how much can I handle?
Right. Flower Nadia says, oh my gosh, oh my gosh, this is so me. And, uh, flower power says these charts are calling me out. Dead. Too accurate. Yeah. Well, I'm telling you these charts because this is like, I don't feel like I was told this enough. Like, I feel like we don't talk about these things enough as freelance writers.
Like these are things that really helped me understand my journey over the last 10 years. Um, I've burned out a few times. I've been, you know, I take on too much sometimes, um, I end up in these places where I'm like, it's never gonna get better. And then like I, you know, I reconfigure my business and it gets worked out.
So I think these charts are kind of helping you understand the journey. Like this is part of understanding the actual journey, right? Like there's, there are lots of things, right? So this is something I think is important too. So I can tell my students, my, my, my Runway students, my wealth lab students, my breakthrough students, I can tell them until I'm blue in the face, right?
I can tell them all the stuff that doesn't change the fact that they have to go do it themselves. They have to experience those things themselves. And two, they need to build their own business, right? So even if I'm telling them stuff from my own business till I'm blue in the face, they're going to have their own quirks in their business.
They're going to have their own journey. So these kind of things, Allow freedom in that journey, right? You don't have to pay copy, paste my business. And in fact, if you did copy paste my business, it wouldn't work, right? There's certain frameworks and principles we need to follow as freelance writers, right?
I, I always think about it this way. Whenever I think about my students, I think about how do I fence them in temporarily? Like how do I put up a fence so that they're like, they have bumpers. They understand how to put the structure in place, they understand how to do the business part, they understand how to make money, they understand how to raise their rates or work with clients, right?
I'm giving you a fence. Eventually what ends up happening is you should be looking at that fence, being like, this is too constrictive. I need to blah, blah, blah, and you fix the fence, right? So I'm giving you the initial framework, right? And I always kind of think of it as the initial framework is like, I'm building the structure of the house.
It's your job to design the house. You need to pick the paint colors. You need to pick the style of the house, right? Like is it gonna be a house that's industrial modern or is it gonna be farmhouse or is it gonna be French country? Like that's kind of your job. My job is to frame the house and say, here is the basics plan right here.
Not even basic, I guess It's kind of like detailed. So here's the detailed blueprint, right? I'm giving you the detailed blueprint of the home. Your job is then to say like, cool, let me customize it. Right? That's your job. So I always feel like that's kind of, um, Yeah, the lonely tornado, right? I feel like that's something we need to talk about more, right?
So I always feel like these things give you freedom to understand that yes, we're kind of working in this fence, right? I'm giving you the framework of the house. By the time you get up here, you know what paint colors you want, you know what kind of style you want. You know, like the, the, uh, analogy, right?
Is like, you know your ideal client better. You know exactly what they make in revenue, right? Or funding. And you know who to reach out to. You know how to get more retainers. You know how to negotiate, you know how to set your rates or raise them. You know how to move into better projects, right? You're not just doing 700 blog posts for the rest of your life, or repetitive work, whatever that is, right?
You're moving into what you want, whether that's video scripts or webinars or content strategy or brand messaging or messaging and positioning or case studies or white papers or big giant retainers that last six months to a year, something like that, right? So this is, this is the process of getting to the point where you have more knowledge to expand, right?
Yeah. Victorian mansion, Jennifer, I can definitely see you in a Victorian mansion with all your kitties, with all your kitty cats. Yeah. I def Yeah, your Victorian mansion. Okay. So those are kind of the charts I think that are really important. There's lots of charts, there's lots of things that I, I think these diagrams kind of help, but these are the specific ones I think that help you understand the relationship between making more money, time, experience, and work.
Like these things are kind of helping you understand how you look at other people with more experience, right? And you're like, how do they get all that done? It's just like, um, I wrote this down. So there's this, uh, I'm gonna actually put this in a newsletter sometime in the near future, but I wrote down this, um, hold on.
Um, let me go find it. I, so Mike Tomlin, if you guys know Mike Tomlin, the Steelers head coach. Um, so he has this quote called tedious repetition of routine actions Make us Great. Okay? Write that down. Tedious repetition of routine actions make us great. That is kind of like how he explains doing these repetitive drills or doing these kind of like, um, like basics, right?
Like when, when you're going there, you have to get the basics right in order to expand upon that, right? If you're like, right, if you're, if you can't catch the ball, that's a huge problem, right? Or if you keep making the same mistake, right? Like you keep running the wrong route, uh, or you keep like, you know, like.
You have mechanical errors, right? Like let's say the quarterback has a mechanical error in how they throw the ball, like they're pulling their arm back too far or they're trying to launch it instead of being more accurate, right? So there's all these things where I think tedious repetition of routine actions make sense for us at a very deep level.
We have to be able to do this tedious repetition of these framework actions. Once you do the framework actions, then you get time back, you make more money, you work on more fun projects, you have this, um, you have this ability to be choosy about what you're working on. But unless I, I basically Mike Tomlin you and get you to the point of like understanding that these tedious repetition of routine actions is how you get to greatness.
We can't get anywhere, right? I have to get you on the bus. I have to get you on the bus of understanding. Like this is why I teach the framework, uh, like the filtering process and runway, right? So we go through a lot of stuff in depth in the wealth lab, right? Wealth lab's, 10 weeks runway is five days plus a bonus masterclass, which is actually happening today.
But runway is like a two weeks, sometimes three weeks. It depends on the time of year, but it's a short packed stuff. But you have to learn the filtering process so that I include that in runway. 'cause there's, that's just one of those tedious repetition, um, of routine action. You have to understand how to find client.
That's the routine action. We have to do that. The tedious repetition is me teaching you how to do the filtering process, and then you do that filtering process of making that list cutting by revenue, understanding who's answering your lois, figuring out who your best clients are, and trying to find more of those, right?
I am teaching you how to identify characteristics. That rou routine action, that tedious repetition, makes that process go a lot faster. And over time, that process becomes really quick. Then you can get back to making more money or taking time off or doing other stuff. But I have to set up the framework of these routine actions that you repeat enough that it's like, it's automatic, right?
And it's the basics. I'm, I'm giving you like, without the basics, like we can't get to greatness, right? We have to do these great, we these very specific, um, repetitive tasks. Because that's how we build our business, right? So I think that, um, that's a really important piece to kind of understanding how the business works, right?
Like we have to be go-getters, we have to go get clients, right? That's kind of our job. We have to get clients. We can't just sit around and hope somebody boards our bus. And that, it just so happens that somebody who boards our bus is the right person. Eventually, what ends up happening is that you get more of those people on the bus, right?
You have LinkedIn copy, you have website copy, you have samples. You are becoming a known entity, right? Excuse me, you're sending enough Lois, or Oh my gosh, look at you, you little loaf. Um, you're sending enough Lois, or you're becoming like people are seeing your work being published, right? You're becoming an, I always call it like a known entity, right?
So that all eventually leads to more qualified people getting on the bus. But in the beginning, we have to do these kind of routine actions so that we learn. Who exactly our client is and, and how that actually works so that when someone boards the bus, we can be like, yes, yes, yes. No, no, no. Right. This is all important.
Yes. The bus of understanding. And the tornado of loneliness. Yes. So these things are important. I've got a wagar, we've got a certified wagar, we've got a certified wagar who's really interested. So we're gonna, we're gonna give the certified wagon some snacks, right? Do you want some snacks? Can you catch it this time?
Or you wanna show everybody your belly? Do you wanna show everybody your belly? Okay. Good job. You're so funny. Minnie Charlotte's been doing better. She's been mostly eating on her own, so that's a big step. Uh, she just started eating on her own last week after her dental. So like I said, she had four teeth removed and, uh, so now she didn't eat breakfast today yet, so she's up here just for like, her pre-breakfast snacks, but, uh, she's doing better.
She's, she's. She's feeling better. Seems like, can you gimme a high five? Good girl. But she's over here wagging her tail looking snugly. Sometimes she falls asleep. Just 'cause like me talking, I guess, bores her or, uh, she falls asleep because like it's, you know, she's, she's used to me kind of talking a bunch.
Okay, let's get to two. All right, let's get to two. Hold on. All right, two, let's talk about two. I also like the bus of understanding versus like the tornado of loneliness. I might have to like put that in the noodle for later. Let's talk about two. So when I'm managing my time on a day-to-day basis, I kind of do a lot of things and those I can't, I don't have enough time on the live stream to go through all of those.
We have like compact things, that's why we have the waffle lab, right? So I can like bar for all the things. So here's the deal. When I'm managing my time, That comes down to a couple different things. So I forget things if I don't have a reminder. And I also can't have a ton of stuff in my mind 'cause it gives me like extreme anxiety.
So I either have a ton of reminders and I have two systems, right? So I have my dry erase calendar on the bo on the wall, right? And this is a huge dry erase calendar. It's like three feet by four feet. Uh, you can get it on Amazon, it's like 20 bucks. Um, and it helps me plan big picture so I can see like, how many deadlines do I have during the month, what's kind of going on?
Uh, what can I fit this work in? Do I, when am I taking time off? Then I have my day-to-day calendar, my I cal, right? Or my Apple Calendar, whatever it's called now. So that manages my day-to-day. So I know my appointments. I know if I have deadlines during the week and I keep it on like the weekly view.
'cause if I open my calendar up to a monthly view, it's just like I can't see anything. 'cause there's like. A ton of, like, it manages a bunch of things, right? So I have a bunch of reminders for like bills or appointments or don't forget to do this here or whatever. So my day-to-day calendar has like 57 reminders, right?
So I have like, so for example, when we are doing the bonus masterclass, the bonus masterclass is today for runway. That is, uh, I get a reminder like two days ahead of time saying like, Hey, don't forget you have this class. Then I have a, a reminder one day before, Hey, don't forget you have this class. Then I have like a one hour, a 30 minute, a 15 minute, a five minute, and an at time of event, right?
So I have all of these reminders going on to make me like cognizant of that. So I don't have to leave it in my mind. I don't have to like keep it in the back of my mind buzzing away like a little bee being like, oh yeah, you should be anxious about this. Don't forget, don't forget. I just have like 57 reminders set on my day-to-day calendar.
Um, I feel like for me, this helps me manage my time better because I can look at the dry erase calendar, or I can look at a big picture calendar and see what's happening this month, this quarter, this year. That helps me manage my time with what I can actually take on in terms of work, in terms of deadlines, where my classes are running.
Like when does runway start, when do I do promo for that? When does wealth lab start? When do I do promo for that? When does breakthrough start, right? Like this helps me. Big picture plan. Then I have like the day-to-day nitty gritty, like, you have an article due on Tuesday, get your shit together, right?
Like that kind of stuff. So for me, that really helps. And then I always talk about dodo. Dodo helps me do all the stuff in my business. It helps me schedule appointments. It has my to-do list. It helps me track financials, it helps me, um, just track all the invoices, like what's, you know, um, uh, who's overdue or who's coming up.
Um, it helps me track all my projects and all that. Hi, woo. I hear you. Um, so Sato is a good tool to use. If Dodo is, like, Dodo can be really overwhelming. I'm not gonna like front, I'm not gonna like that. It can be really overwhelming. So you could use a tool like Harvest, you could use FreshBooks, but I feel like FreshBooks for me is more complicated than Dodo.
But, so you could use, um, harvest, you could use Asana, you can use Panda Doc, you can use Moxie. Um, you could use a whole bunch of different things, but you need some way to kind of get a visual into your business because just having reminders about deadlines doesn't help you remember like, oh yeah, that invoice is overdue.
I need to follow up. Um, the other way that I track my time, or like, I manage my time as I have Boomerang, right? Boomerang allows me to pause my inbox when I'm feeling super, like I need to check my inbox all the time. I will pause it with Boomerang. So it will just stop having emails coming in, right? So when I unpause it, all the emails will drop into my inbox.
So every time if I wanna check it, there's no newness, right? There's new, no new stuff. 'cause I paused it. Uh, sometimes I will also put my inbox on a drip. So that means that I'll tell Boomerang to put emails in my inbox at 9:00 AM 1:00 PM and 5:00 PM right? So that way I can go back and do other work and I can check at those times, or I can check throughout the day, right?
Even if I check throughout the day, there's no new emails. They only come in at one in five and nine or nine, one in five, right? So I think those things help me get back to work, right? Um, and the other thing too with Boomerang is like, it helps me follow up. I don't have to have this ongoing. List anymore.
I don't have, I used to have this like big spreadsheet that was a pain in the butt to manage. Now I just have Boomerang and I'm just like, you know, put this back in my inbox in three months or in two weeks or whatever. And then that, you know, is really easy to follow up on. Um, for me too, I am, I think one of the things that helps me is like, I'm a big deadline motivated person.
So like, I rarely procrastinate. Every once in a while I'll procrastinate. Uh, but most of the time, like I'm very deadline motivated. So like, if I have a deadline, like I'm working on that thing, uh, I am not, I don't like to do things last minute and I'm, and I'm not fast, right? So like, me doing it last minute is not a good idea.
So for me, um, I am, I, one of my magic powers is like, I'm very deadline motivated. So like, I will do things in chunks and because I do them in chunks, that allows me to do more stuff instead of like waiting and waiting and waiting and then, oh my God, I gotta get it done. Like, so, Um, did. Nadia says, um, she says, I'm a catch, I'm a catchphrase queen.
It's part of my copywriting cell. You're welcome to borrow tornado of lonely Loneliness, Mandy. Yeah, you can ttm it and then like, maybe I can like borrow it just for, just for certain things. Uh, flower Power says I love boomerang. Uh, hitting pause has been amazing for my brain health. Yes. That's another thing is like, we wanna focus on our work, right?
That's for me that being deadline motivated can get off track by being distracted, by being like, what emails are coming in or what dms do I need to answer? Or like, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So what I end up doing, um, is hitting pause on the inbox. So I'm like, I need to do this work. I have a deadline, I gotta get this done.
Hit pause on the inbox, move on. So for me, um, when I'm doing work in chunks, that helps me stay on track, that helps me pay attention to deadlines. I. Plus I have a ton of reminders going on. So not only do I have a to-do list that lists my deadlines and says, Hey, get your shit together. I also have a ton of reminders on my weekly calendar, right?
Like my, I cal my Apple calendar, and then I also have a big picture planning calendar. So that kind of helps me manage my time. And by this point in my career, like, like what I said at the beginning, it took me a month to do my first reported article. Now I could, if I really have to, I could do 20, I don't like doing 20, but I could, but I know kind of like where my limits are.
So now that helps me plan my time better. So there also has to be this, like, what can your capacity be? So there's, as you move along, you have to kind of figure out like, can I really hand, is this healthy? Right? Like, is this amount of work, you know, even though I can do 20 articles, am I energized by it or am I feeling burned out?
Um, because I have, like, I talked about this on the livestream a little while ago. Um, I have a friend who did, who's like energized by 20 deadlines, right? She has 20 deadlines for clients. That energizes her, that makes me feel stressed out. So like if I have 20 deadlines in a month, that gives me like too much stress.
That doesn't work for me. If I have 20 deadlines over three months, yeah, that's probably fine. Uh, but there's a lot of stuff where I feel like, um, we need to kinda learn our capacity. So that's a piece of it. It's like you get faster over time, you manage your time better and you're making more money, but you're also understanding like what's kind of my healthy amount of capacity and then how am I balancing that with improving my finances or improving my work schedule.
Right. So that's our two. Let's talk about three. Nadia says literally installing Boomerang right now. Yes. I actually have an affiliate code for Boomerang. Um, I actually think it's like a link, but if Nadia, if you want the, um, you know what Nadia, you're in Boomer or you're in runway, so I have the Boomerang discount code or whatever it is.
In there. So Nadia, if you go to runway and you look at deals and discounts in the community, there's a runway. It's either a coupon code or like you get a free something or whatever. I don't remember what it is, but that's in there if you want it. Um, I always share those kind of like coupons or deals or bonus things with my students.
Um, I guess I share 'em here too, but that one's just, I don't remember what the link is right now, so. Okay. Um, let's talk about three. So when we're, we're talking about our work, our work does get faster over time, right? So as we kind of learn how to do something right, we get into the tedious repetition of routine actions, right?
Yeah. So Nadia, it's, if you just go to deals and discounts in the runway community, the boomerang links should be in there. I love coupons. I fricking love coupons and discounts. It's like one of my, my like, uh, Weird. I just love 'em. Like, they just bring me so much joy. Like if I can buy a product that I've bought a hundred times and someone gives me a coupon, I'm like, finally I get to save on the thing I bought 900 times.
I love coupons. Um, so anyways, when you're writing faster, when you're working over time, you have to do the tedious repetition, right? So I often have these conversations and I, I've been having them a lot recently. Oh, did you get it? Oh, here we go. Here you go. So I've been having these conversations recently where someone's like, Hey, I read that so and so does a blog post in two hours or four hours, or, um, that, um, there is like, uh, so-and-so's doing this thing really quickly.
And it's like, yeah, 'cause that person's been writing for 20 years. Like you've been writing for two, like if you had 10 times the experience, of course you could get it done faster, right? There's also a big difference too, in what you're working on, right? So your writing does get faster over time. Hi, woo.
And it's also about doing the tedious repetition. If you've written a ton of blog posts, you know how to ride that train, right? You know how to set it up as an outline. You know what things work for you. You know how to do your best work. You know when to do your best work. You know what to look for, either in a brief that someone's sending you or the outline you need to create yourself, right?
That's comes with experience. That's kind of like the writing does get faster, but you have to have, you know, the tedious repetition of those, oops, sorry. Being routine actions, right? The routine action is like understanding how to do the blog post and then you just repeat it, right? Tedious repetition, and that makes you faster.
So if your goal is to get to two hours on a blog post, right? There's also a difference in how people work, right? So I think this other thing that we need to talk about more is like how it's actually done. Literally, if you're talking about two hours of a butt in a chair, that's very different than the whole process, right?
'cause you need to create an outline or you need to do research. You need to go find studies. Sometimes you need to do interviews. A lot of articles are very different, right? There's a big difference between an article where you have to do three interviews and find three studies that apply to the topic and actually like weave everything together versus a blog post that's like five trends in food right now, right?
Like, like kind of, or like, uh, you know, the pantones five paint colors that are recommended, which you'd go, you know, find them and then report, you know, tell people what they are. There's a big gap there. So sometimes when we're talking about people getting work done quickly, that means butts in chairs.
That doesn't mean the whole process. So, yes, if, if it takes, you know, an hour or two hours to write something after someone's written it 20,000 times, right? Or maybe more than that, um, that's way different. Than someone who's working on a reported article. And it's also way different when it is just butts and chairs time.
It's not the research time, it's not the outlining time. Did you find it? It's not the editing time, it's not the the invoicing time. Right? It's literally butts and chairs writing. Did you find it? You lose it. So here you go.
I don't know where it went. Are you sitting on it? Hold on. Here it is. You are sitting on it. There you go. So Mandy, it's the coupon Duchess, uh uh. I prefer a coupon connoisseur. Yeah. So it's kind of, we, we need to understand the context because a lot of times the buts and chairs part is a small piece of the process, right?
It's just part of a larger process where, You, you have to read and understand the brief, or you have to read and understand what the topic's about. You have to know what you're gonna write about, then you can actually write it, right? So I think there's also kind of a, a, a piece to getting faster over time doing this tedious repetition of routine actions, right?
The whole Mike Tomlin thing, and understanding that when you're reading metrics from other people's businesses, sometimes those are taken out of context, right? It's not just start to finish two, three hours, right? It could be start to finish four hours, right? But a lot of times when they're telling you, oh, I'll write it in this period of time, that's not including other things that they have to do, right?
So like, here's a good example. One of the things that I got really fast on was, um, I was writing, um, these kind of like, um, profiley articles, right? So for me to do the interview took an hour. So the interview took an hour. Right? Not including all the time I spent setting that interview up, which can take quite a while 'cause they're very busy people.
So it took a long time. Sometimes many follow-ups for me to get someone on a call to go do that interview. Right? Then the second part is actually doing that interview that takes an hour. Then I have to get it transcribed. Then I have to put my notes in my doc, right? That's all time that we're not counting as buts in chairs.
Then if I tell you, oh, I can get this done in two hours, which I could, so I could write one of those articles in two hours. 'cause I, I had done it so many times and I would edit in one hour. Right? That's not including all the other stuff I had to do to get to the two hour buts in my chair, right? Like button chair thing to do the writing and the one hour of editing and then send it in.
There's a lot of different things that go into each project. So I think what we're kind of, I, that's why I don't like the comparison. I think you should be comparing to what you were doing before, right? So for me, being able to just write something in two hours and edit it in one. That's really good for me.
Right? And that's not, like, I'm not saying like, okay, well, you know, like that's three hours, it's not three hours. It's, it could be like six follow-up emails, finally get the interview schedule, you know, like get the interview done in an hour. Then I have to transcribe it, then I have to put all my notes together and that can take a couple hours.
Like it can take a couple hours between doing all that stuff. Right. Uh, and I think that that part is missed sometimes when we're talking about work. So I think when you're looking at getting faster, you should be doing that on your own metrics versus like comparing to what other people are doing.
So instead of it being like, so and so does it this fast, I'm failing. Right? It should be like, well, I noticed three months ago I was doing it like this. Now I'm doing it like this. Right. And for me, um, it took a while. Like it probably took six months or more for me to get down to two hours and one hour just for writing and editing.
Right. That other part of the process doesn't get faster. I can't make people schedule quicker. The interview is always about an hour, and then the transcribing time takes however long the robot takes. Um, and then there's like putting my notes together, which can take an hour, right? Just organizing and putting things together.
So it's this process that I think the getting faster over time, it does lead to making more money, but there's also a capacity you can only get so fast, right? That you can only get so quick with your work and you can only take on so much work, right? So that's why I think speed is kind of not the thing we should really think about so much.
I think it's more about charging more for the value of your work as you gain experience, as you do the tedious repetition of routine actions. Right. That piece then helps you charge more. 'cause you're getting more experience, you're creating more value, you're creating better work, right? That's heavier on price than time, right?
We want that to be the thing as the, like the lever for our clients as value, as experience, as what we're bringing to the table versus like, I do it in this short amount of time that I think is missing the point, right? Time isn't the thing that actually makes it work, right? Time isn't the thing that when you publish a blog post, that's how it works in Google.
That Google doesn't care how long it took you to, to write that, right? The quality and how it helps the audience and like how the, the work is constructed and all that good stuff. That's important to Google, right? So think about when you're, you know, raising prices for value and experience and getting better at your work versus time and understand that work does get quicker over time.
Okay. I see some things. Um, coupon connoisseur is so much better. Love the alliteration. Yeah. Um, Albert says 20 deadlines in a month. That's booking a lot of work. Yeah, I had like, uh, at that time I had like some, um, regular articles, so I had like a lot of ongoing like things, so like I would have, um, you know, I had like four, like I had multiple retainers that were like four articles a month.
And then I also had like, ongoing magazine assignments that some of them were four articles a month. And so that kind of, it was from a bunch of retainer work. Um, writer says butts in chairs, as you call it, is what I call a writing day when I actually sit down and do the article. Hopefully should be the bulk of your time.
Yeah, the writing time should is mostly the bulk of your time. I always split it up into three days. So like my first day is like understanding the brief, figuring my shit out, doing research and putting my article outline together, and then my next day is like writing it and my next day is editing it. So I usually like a three day process.
It doesn't take the whole day, like it doesn't, it's not three eight hour days, but it is something where like I, for me, the separation helps me think clearer and write better because if I just try to mush it all together, it just becomes very messy and I don't like it. Okay. Let's talk about four. This is the last piece.
Let's talk about four. What do you think, bean? Would you like to say something or you wanna catch this? You wanna ready? Oh, we were so close. You wanna give everybody some high fives for doing such a good job? Yeah. Good job, huh? You're so cute and funny. I think Charlie's having a good day today too, so I'm feeling good about that.
Yeah, you have. Bless you. Good job. Um, if you feel like this has been helpful so far, give it a thumbs up if you feel like, um, you wanna build a better freelance writing business. Subscribe. Let's talk about four. So when we're analyzing time and money, right, we're analyzing time and money in section four here in the fourth thing.
So we have to look at how we've been doing better than before, right? We're looking at time versus money in a couple different ways. The first way is, are we doing better than we were previously? Are we getting quicker or are things, you know, are we not, are we missing parts of the process? How is that going?
Right? Um, the next piece, what that we're doing is like, am I getting faster on the backend? So I don't like charging hourly, right? But. Those projects should be getting me a higher hourly rate on the backend as I move along. So what that means is like if I start out and a case study takes me 20 hours, right?
Let's say a case study between the interview, putting it together, whatever takes me 20 hours after a certain period of time, three, six months, whatever that is, maybe more, am I getting down to that case study taking 10 hours or taking 18 hours or 15 hours, right? Am I making more money on the backend where like now that I've done case studies for three to six months, I'm charging way more for it, right?
So let's say I started at a case study at a thousand dollars. Now I'm charging $3,000. Not only am I charging more for the value, I'm bringing in the quality of my work, but on the backend now it takes me less time to do it. So I'm making more money overall. This is why I don't like hourly, because there be, there gets to a point where like you only have so many hours in the day.
Then if you're going in there, and this is a weird thing where, um, a lot of times potential clients, if you go in there and say like, my hourly rate is 300 bucks. They're like, whoa, whoa, whoa. And you're like, well, you know, it's 10 hours and they're, you know, or 20, whatever it is. Like they just hear 300 bucks an hour and they're like, whoa, whoa, whoa.
But if you say, oh, it's a flat rate of $3,000, they're like, oh, that sounds right. Like, there's a weird dichotomy there. There's a weird thing that happens. So charging by the hour, I think especially even if you're raising your hourly rate, I, I've only seen that being shorted over time, because even if you're charging $300 for 10 hours, right, there's also this aspect of like, could you have a surprise invoice?
Right? Could there be a project you're working on where normally it takes 10 hours, but this one took 15. I just don't like the idea of having surprise invoices like I like my clients to know, like, this is the budget. There's no change. Here's when the, you know, the invoices are due. And if there's a project that takes more time, that doesn't cost my clients anything that's costing me, right?
That's just part of I have to eat it. Sometimes you just have to eat it. Um, but I feel like for me, when I'm thinking about that is those flat rates are easier to float than like telling someone a high hourly rate. And I feel like the flat rate puts the focus back on value experience and the quality that you're bringing versus like, I could do it really fast, which, you know, kind of misses the point.
So I feel like for me, you need to be looking at that. Like, am I getting faster on the back end? Like, are things going, going better? And even if you're not getting faster, is the quality getting better? Right? Are you doing a better job? That's what we should be charging more for. Right? So even if, even if you're not faster, even if it's still, even if forever a case study still takes you 10, 20 hours, whatever, then I'm just picking a number.
But. Let's say forever for 10 years. It takes you 20 hours to do a case study. You're still raising that price over time. So that hourly rate still goes up right on the backend. On the backend. So that's something that I think helps writers a lot to think about when they're really focused on hourly, is like you can still charge by the project and in and understand the increase in hourly rate on your backend.
So even if it takes you 20 hours, if you've done 10 years of case studies, you should have raised your prices by a whole lot, right? You shouldn't be doing a case study at a thousand dollars. You should be doing it well over that, right? And then that will translate back into making more money overall, right?
So those are things to think about. I think the other thing when you're looking at time versus money is that we are focusing on. Increasing rates as we go with more clients, right? Because you're doing the tedious repetition of routine actions that allows you to get better at the framework, the better you are at the basics.
Now we can put on layers of complication, right? So if we're really, if the basics, sorry.
Sorry. If the basics become like, like pretty automatic, like the basics are things where it's like you don't have to use very much brain power to think about it, then you can start layering on all the pieces of complication. Then you can start putting on more complicated projects or more difficulty or improving the quality or, um, there's a lot of different things that we can add on, right?
That kind of help up the, what we're charging for the project, but also like we are doing the, like the stuff that's the bare minimum to do that project as getting done like this. So we also wanna make sure that we're thinking about money in terms of like, um, our ability to, um, add on more complex stuff.
Our ability to handle more things or do things that are more, um, strategy based or that are more, um, complex. Right? Versus just repeating the same thing over and over and over again. Woo. I hear you. I hear you. Woo. Good girl. So think about that too. Um, I think that it's kind of like, I, I I, I also wanna make sure that when we're managing our time, it's not just solely focused on always doing it faster or always doing it for, for more money.
There's also things like, this is another reason why I teach cake and icing is. We have cake niches and we have icing niches, but we should like our work, right? It's not just about like doing it quicker and making more money and time management and all the metrics. Like that's the thing is there's also, you have to actually like it.
You have to actually enjoy it. So there will be stuff, there will be projects that you will take that will just, you'll have to eat it, right? It's just a fun project. So there's times where you'll take a project because you either want the clip or you just like it. You just wanna do it and it won't get, you won't get paid a ton for it, but it's something that you really enjoy.
So that's something else to think about when you're doing time versus money is it's sometimes it's not time or money, it's about enjoyment, right? So sometimes that's kind of like extra money. Like there's sometimes where I will write articles that I won't think about that extra money, right? Like an article, like let's say it's like 400 bucks or 500 bucks or a thousand bucks, whatever.
I'm tracking money in like my retainers or my ongoing work, and so that becomes extra money, right? It's something I really enjoy doing. So I'm not really thinking about like, oh boy, it's an extra blah, blah, blah amount of money. I'm thinking about it as like, I really enjoy it and the money is nice, like it's a nice extra piece of money, right?
I either do whatever I want, right? So it's not something that puts so much pressure on like paying bills or having to be faster or having to make more money all the time, right? It's more about like, this is something enjoyable that I like doing and it turns out I also get paid money, right? This is how we balance, like that icing part of our job.
Um, and I think that that piece kind of allows you freedom too to do more projects that are just fun. Like instead of worrying about it having to like every single project, having to pay your bills, right? We wanna have more of this ongoing type of work where we get to take more fun projects that, that are just kind of like extra money, right?
They're kind of things that come in where we're like, yeah, I just wanna do that, you know, whatever. You know, even if I don't get paid a billion dollars to do it, I still wanna do it 'cause it's fun. So I think you should think about that as well. Okay. Cool. So what do you think, Charlie? Would you like to say anything more to the people?
No. Yes. You wanna get, oh, you wanna give 'em some high fives? Okay. Good job. We got a got a Mandy hair on you. Usually I have Charlotte hairs on me, but today you have Mandy hairs on you. What a strange turn of events. You're so cute. How'd you think it'd be so cute? Good job. I got a little good job.
Charlotte's been rolling around in the dirt outside. She's like a little chinchilla and she takes little dust baths outside. So she's been, uh, she's been coming in covered in dirt and dust and you probably, it can't really see it right now, but she has like, I, maybe you can, there's like little dust specks all over her back 'cause she likes to go outside and just become e This is like a.
Thing. So like, I'll give her a bath, right? She has allergies. I'll give her a bath and she'll just run straight outside when she's completely wet, even though I've tried to towel dry her as much as possible. And she will roll in the dirt and get all dirty again. And she's just like, what, what did I do? You know, like she's, she's just a little dirt hound recently.
Like she'll go out there and just take a little dust bunny bath. Good job. So right now she's super dirty right now. She really needs a bath. It's hard to tell, but you can tell the difference between like, when she looks not shiny, like normally she's very shiny, and, uh, when she doesn't look shiny, that's when she's really dirty.
Like she's been rolling around a lot in the dirt. And, uh, last time I gave her a bath a short while ago, like a couple weeks. She, uh, or I don't remember. She got a bath short just a little while ago, and she just went outside and completely got dirty, completely, just rolled around in the dirt. All right.
Let's see, flower power says, uh, the first time I prioritized return speed with a client over taking time to do what I felt was good. I missed something and fumbled a great opportunity, major regret, but, uh, I never forget. Now. Yeah, that's the thing is like when we focus on just being like, oh my gosh, I have to get this back to the client rather than quality, right?
That ends up kind of biting us in the butt sometimes, and I've done that, right? I'm like, oh my gosh, I just have to get it back to the client, right? This is also another thing about setting deadlines, right? Like, we wanna give ourselves an opportunity to succeed, so we don't wanna set like a 48 hour deadline, you know?
That's why I always say like, when you are onboarding a client, right, and you're setting a deadline, give yourself two weeks. Because it could be that it could take two full weeks just to onboard, right? Just to get everything signed, get an upfront payment, or set the payment schedule, whatever it is, right?
And then you're like, well, this two week deadline's not gonna work. I just, we just set everything up. So I think the two weeks is kind of helpful, but yeah, like we wanna make sure that we're focusing on quality, right? Time is nice, right? Doing it faster is nice, but it's, it's not, it's not as helpful as doing it well, like doing your work well leads to more referrals or leads to you, uh, people finding your work and being like, I want this work for me, right?
They're just like, I saw your clip. I want it. Um, doing your work well is, is a much more, like, it's not, it's like not self-fulfilling prophecy, but like, it's much more of like this loop that pays back a lot better than time, uh, doing your work. Well really overdelivering for your clients that pays more dividends than like just getting it back to your clients quickly.
Right? Boop, boop, boop. Um,
Okay, so Albert says, I found that time produces money. The thus, the amount of time you spend on a project correlates how much you get. See, I think of it the opposite way. I don't think about it as like, if I'm spending more time than that should be more money. Or like if I'm spending more time, then I should, that would relate to more money.
I think of it as a different way of like if I'm providing a lot of value that costs this amount, right? So I always think about it as like if I'm providing value and quality work and I'm doing a good job, that to, in order to work, get that kind of work, it costs this money and then the time factor is not.
Like a thing, right? So like, there's a lot of times where we'll do a bigger project, right? We'll do a case study or we'll do a white paper, um, or we'll do something that will bring in giant piles of money for our clients, right? And it doesn't matter how much time we spent on it, right? It matters of the value of that thing, right?
So you could be doing a $10,000 white paper, right? You could be doing this ultra complicated, really difficult white paper that then even if they pay you $10,000, they're getting millions of dollars from that thing, right? So I always think about it as like, value of the work, quality of the work, lifetime value of that thing, right?
So that white paper could live for years, right? It could, it, it may not. But there's a lot of our content that lives for years and years and years, even after you stop working with a client. So I always kind of think about it as like, well, if it lives and it keeps bringing them money, right? I'm not gonna see any extra of that money.
But I know that the value of this thing is much higher, right? Like the quality that that's delivered, the, the amount of, um, Like how you're connecting with the audience, um, how that work does the thing it's supposed to do. Right? Get leads or sales or licks, uh, likes, licks, likes, clicks, subscribes, uh, downloads, all that stuff.
So we're looking at like the r o i, right, the return on investment versus the time part. And I, I always feel like for me it's the, I always think about like the value piece versus like spending more time. I feel like those, there, there becomes a point in your career where you have like a case study where you're like, I know this case study is like five grand.
I know this is like a really complicated case study or three grand, right? Whatever it is. You end up with a complicated case study and the case study could be like 12 pages and you know, that thing is gonna bring them in a lot more than $3,000 worth of stuff, right? So we wanna make sure we also relate it to that.
We also understand that like them paying us that amount is a small drop in the bucket to usually what they get out of that piece of content. Okie dokie. Um, I think that is, um, that's all the stuff I wanted to cover, but I hope that this has been helpful. I hope this has been something where you kind of see a better relation to time and money and time management and then like, understanding how things work over time.
Because a lot of time, like when I was thinking about it early in my career, I always thought about it as like there was not enough time to make more money, but I didn't understand that over time things got faster. I was just like, it's gonna be this way forever, but like over time things get faster. But you also, like, your brain doesn't have to work as hard to do those repetitive actions.
Like, you know how to do a blog post, right? It's riding that bike. You know how to do a case study, ride the bike, you know how to set up brand messaging, right? Ride that bike. So it's a lot more about riding the bike and then you get time back and then you're making more money 'cause of the value of that project and the quality that you're bringing and the experience that you're bringing, right?
So think about it as like over time, things end up balancing in, in a better direction, but it's also about really, I think the main focus isn't on time. It should really be on quality, and it should really be on delivering value and gaining that experience and then charging more for that. Hi Vicki. It's good to see you.
Um, I think it's just kind of like when we're thinking about value and we're thinking about time, we're thinking about profits that your client might make. Like I really, there's a lot of times where we just forget that, right? Even if you charge 10 grand for a white paper, right? You have this big, complicated, giant, beefy white paper.
It's 10 grand. They will make millions of dollars off of that, right? There's, there's a reason why they're creating that content. It's bringing in stuff that matters to them, right? So we have to kind of remember that piece too, is that the better we make the content, the better it works out for our clients, right?
So that 10 grand then becomes a very small drop in the bucket to what they're getting out of it. So I think that's important too. Like we wanna make sure that we're, um, that we're balancing kind of that idea of value, quality experience with like, am I managing my time better? Are thi you know, am I getting that tedious repetition of routine actions down?
Am I getting, you know, better quality work? Am I getting the experience and am I charging for that accordingly? What do you think, Charlie? Charlie, you're gonna fall off. Oh my gosh. You can see your little pink belly, your little pink bean belly. I know. You're so cute today. Here you go. Charlie says that she hopes everybody makes more money and that everybody has a great day.
Um, I hope everybody has a great weekend. Oh, one last thing, um, on Monday, if you're not, if you grab my free pricing guide on Monday, this, I've been asked about this. I've get been getting emails. My free masterclass is coming back. My free masterclass is coming up in September. I. If you get my free pricing guide, mandy ellis.com/pricing guide, it's free.
It's super cool. But also you'll get invites to the masterclass, the free masterclass. And if you wanna be spicy, I think I have it. Nope, not that one. Which one? Nope. Did I delete it? Oh, there it is. If you go to mandy ellis.com/masterclass one that is open right now, it's on Tuesday, September 5th. It's free masterclass.
It's live. Um, it's like a more, like, we'll have slides. It's a more focused version of the live stream. Like it's a lot more like very specific steps for different parts of your business. Um, but it is open, so it's two September 5th at, uh, 2:00 PM Central, which is noon Pacific time, 3:00 PM Eastern. And I wanna say, oh man, I forgot.
Is it 8:00 PM British Standard Time? Um, it's at 2:00 PM Central, which I'm pretty sure is two P is 8:00 PM British Standard Time. But, um, That's open right now. So I'm gonna have three master classes. The first one is open, it's Tuesday, September 5th at 2:00 PM Central, which makes it noon Pacific and 3:00 PM Eastern.
And I think 8:00 PM It's like, I always forget what it is. I think it's 8:00 PM British Standard Time. Um, but that's open if you wanna do it, you'll get an announcement on Monday for that free masterclass, but it is coming back. So that will be open. Um, I hope everybody has a great day. Yes, 8:00 PM b s t.
Okay, cool. Um, I hope everybody has a great day and everybody has a great weekend. And, um, thanks so much for hanging out. I hope it was helpful. I hope you enjoyed Charlie Charlie's always fun to have on here. Um, and, uh, yeah, keep that in your noodle. Tedious repetition of routine actions makes us great.
Mike Tomlin, that's put that in the noodle. Okay. All right, I'll see you guys later. I hope everybody has a great weekend. Bye.
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