How to Become a Freelance Writer and Consulting Business w/ Austin L. Church

Learning how to become a freelance writer and consultant can allow you to be successfully unemployed. Learn how Austin L. Church started, runs, and grew his freelance and consulting business to be successfully unemployed.

Today, I am excited to have Austin L. Church on the podcast to talk about freelancing and consulting. Like Austin, you can be successfully unemployed.

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How Austin Makes Money Without Having a Job

By day, Austin is a brand strategist and marketing consultant. He runs his own agency, has one employee, has a whole bunch of freelancers and contractors that he pulls in as needed, and has amazing clients.

Austin sells a variety of products, some physical but most of them are digital. His most recent one, the new flagship product, is called Freelance Cake. A lot of freelance writing jobs make the mistake of creating a new J.O.B. for themselves. (Just Over Broke)

Having your cake and eating it too, the idea is having your freedom and actually enjoying it. Freedom is a currency that, if you are a freelance writer, you need to be enjoying.

What Austin Was Doing Before and How He Became Successfully Unemployed

Austin was the bird in the nest that was forcibly pushed out. He was working at a marketing agency, which was his first job out of grad school. Right out of grad school, he was the last person to find out there were no jobs for poets – surprise!

He got a job as a copywriter at a marketing firm and actually fell in love with it.

Six months later, in April 2009, he was laid off along with half of the firm. This started his journey into self-employment and freelancing. This was a lot sooner than he would have started otherwise.

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By November 2009, he landed his first big marketing retainer, which was $2,900 a month.

This was a lot for him at the time, because his living expenses were just over $1,000 a month at the time.

That first year, Austin made 24% more than he would have if he kept his salaried job. He was hooked. He loved the flexibility and making his own schedule.

Getting Started Involves a lot of Trial and Error

When Austin was in the middle of getting started, there was a lot of editing. He never took a marketing class or business class, he was a poet. He was not set up well to succeed in business, and he had a conflicted relationship with money.

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There was a lot of failing forward. Austin believes that if he can figure it out, anyone can.

Austin had a couple of things going for him. The first he calls swagger. He did not know any better so he took a lot more risks early on. The second is desperation.

Austin was not good at managing money and one of the reasons his layoff was scary is that he only had $486 in his bank account. He has incredible parents, but he would have been embarrassed to call them up and ask for help.

Austin got to work trying to find work wherever he could. That ended up being a good thing, because he diversified a lot sooner than he would have.

Eventually Niche Down to Focus Your Message and Reach People

He believes in niching down eventually, but when he coaches freelancers he tells them to say yes to everything in the beginning. You don’t know what kind of work you like the best.

If you niche down to early, you may miss out on work you find extremely satisfying. If you enjoy the work, the knowledge will be stickier and you will become a lot better a lot faster.

Starting from all of the piecemeal work with copywriting and social media management earlier in 2009 to a real deal marketing retainer later in the year, there were a couple of cataclysmic events.

The first is that he learned SEO. He took a free course, because he had nothing to do with his time. This taught him the important lesson that your time can give you leverage if you let it.

You can use your time on entertainment or traveling, but Austin chose to use his time to learn a valuable, marketable skill that ended up being a lot more valuable than the skill that had got him into business.

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Try a bunch of different things if you can, and sell a bunch of different things to the same client if you can.

It is hard to get one client, so if you can increase the lifetime value of that one client by proving yourself capable and responsible and selling more to that one client, then do it. You don’t want to create a freelance writing jobs.

A lot of clients will be faithful and will keep giving you money.

People tend to be averse to change.

Freelance is When You are the Hands and Feet of Your Clients

Freelancing can include writing, blogging, design, web development, photography, and illustration. There are freelance strategists and social media managers.

There are so many different ways to freelance these days. You can say you are a freelance architect or freelance engineer.

The meaning has evolved to now it means you are self-employed or, if you are employed, that you take on projects that revolve around your skillset on nights and weekends.

The difference between consulting and freelance is that, with consulting, you are making recommendations, and it is up to the client to move forward with those recommendations.

If you have a marketable skillset and you want to build a business around it that you own, you are a freelancer.

How to Find Clients for your Freelance Writing Business

When you hear about freelance, the next thing you hear about is feast or famine. It ultimately comes down to the pipeline of how you get leads. There are a hundred different ways to get leads.

With his freelancing students, Austin starts with the same question: Do all of your friends and family know you are available for hire?

We lack confidence when we first get started.

We know we are going to make mistakes, but we don’t want to make mistakes where the consequences seem higher. We would rather make our mistakes on strangers, but Austin believes this is a mistake.

Austin advises anyone who is just getting into freelance writing to tell all the people that already know, like, and trust you, that you are available for hire, because they are more likely to take a risk on you.

Austin’s first client was his old boss at the marketing agency. His boss laid him off on a Friday and called him the next Monday.

His boss said they couldn’t finish all of the projects Austin was working on and his boss asked him what his freelance rate would be. Austin had to look up the word “freelance”, because he didn’t even know what it meant.

Austin felt very bold quoting him three times what he had been making while he worked for the agency.

He knew how much he made as a salaried employee and he knew how much his boss had been billing to the client. Austin came in right in the middle and his boss took it.

How to Get the Second Freelance Writing Client

One of the best things to do is to create a contact list and send them three emails. In the first email give a general life update, in the second email tell them you are going to be freelancing or consulting.

In the third email tell them what you can do for them and make them some sort of offer. This is one way to put out your shingle and get on peoples’ radars.

Post about your freelance writing on social media. Don’t just post once, post 30 times. People will not remember you are available for hire, until you make it impossible to forget.

We feel like a broken record, but you need to repeat yourself again and again or people won’t remember.

One of the first things Austin did was raise his rates. It sounds crazy, because he already felt very bold charging $40 an hour. Austin had an incredible encounter with a man named Andrew Gordon, and he is still a friend of his.

Austin was two weeks into freelance writing when he was able to get a meeting with Andrew, through a mutual friend. Austin’s friend thought Andrew may be able to give him some work, but he gave Austin something so much more valuable – the golden suitcase.

Austin met Andrew at his office and, after Andrew went through Austin’s portfolio, he asked if he could give Austin some advice. He asked Austin what his rate was and Austin said $40 an hour.

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Andrew said he needed to raise his rates immediately, because he would not be taken seriously in larger markets, like Charlotte, Atlanta, and Nashville.

They are accustomed to paying more and Andrew said Austin was good, but he would not signal with his rates that he is good if he only charges $40 an hour. Much better pay than regular freelance writing jobs.

Austin thought that because he was a new freelancer, the best way to get clients is to be a good deal. His old agency was selling his time for $85 an hour, so he would be a better price, because a client could get twice as much work for the money. That is not how people make decisions.

You don’t even get to discuss the project, because often the first question is “what do you charge”.

Raising Your Prices Is Necessary for Growth When Writing

Austin first took Andrew’s advice and raised his price from $40 to $75 an hour and it ended up being a very good move. After that, he told everyone he knew what he was doing.

Then, he started going to local events for business people and entrepreneurs. There are a lot of other ways beyond local networking groups and meetups to get new clients, but this is what worked for him.

You could do cold email outreach or try SEO. This is much harder and you may not see results for a year or two. Austin started pounding the pavement.

When looking back, Austin can see that one thing he was good at was conducting experiments. Try something for a while, see if you get new business out of it, and if you don’t, stop doing the thing that doesn’t work and then try something new.

Austin sees many freelance writers and consultants, who, if they are not confident with their business acumen, stick with dead-end strategies and tactics too long. Austin eventually stopped going to local entrepreneurship events for a very specific reason — it would eat up half of his day.

He started building his network, and, as he started getting busier, he was more protective of his time. Time mismanagement is one of the single, biggest threats to a freelancer.

Reselling Your Sawdust as a Freelance Writer

When we are just getting started, we don’t know our capacity, so it is important to sample different types of work. If you had tapped Austin on his shoulder in his mid-twenties and said he is going to be really good at process design and documentation, he would not have believed it. It happened gradually.

Austin realized that he created a process just by finishing a project. There is all of the work, but then there is the sawdust.

He realized, through a couple of pivotal events, that the sawdust could be packaged up and sold. If he is a web content writer who follows a specific process, then refines that process over ten projects, by the time he gets to the end of ten projects, he has a checklist and a process.

You stack up a secret sauce, and it is not freelance writing jobs.

You have the artifacts you create just by doing the work. The sawdust has a lot of value to someone who is not quite as far down the road as you.

After 11 years, Austin has piles of sawdust. He does a lot of brand strategy now and he found a customer profile process he forgot he even wrote down six months ago.

With sawdust, a client pays you to complete a project, you capture the process and refine it, and once you have it and you can hand it off to someone else, you can sell it a million times.

Selling your sawdust gives you scale, in terms of leverage, with investing a little time and being paid again and again. A lot of Austin’s leverage is turning his process into a product and then selling it.

How to Guard Your Time as a Freelance Writer

Time management is a seasonal thing, and there is no such thing as a mastery of time management. Once you master it in one season, something changes and there are more demands on your time than before.

Austin manages his time with blocks and breaks. Each day, he tries to have four 90 minute blocks of work. Those blocks are interspersed with shorter breaks. It could be 15 minutes or 5 minutes. He tries to take a long lunch to reset.

Most problems in a freelance or consulting business, come down to not having enough leads in the pipeline. It is the feast or famine phenomenon. With marketing and business development, if you put 20 or 30 minutes into it every day, over time, you can eliminate that problem. It is like working out.

Following any workout plan, rather than none, is bound to produce better results.

If fixing your pipeline problem comes down to following a plan, executing, and achieving minimum viable progress on that plan every day, why don’t more people do it? Most people don’t manage their time well.

The mismanagement of time is the root cause of a lot of other business problems. If you need to get better at something, take the time to learn. We are all good at learning, but we spend our time doing other stuff that is less important.

Do you have a robust framework or rhythm for time management? If you do, and you become good at managing yourself and managing your time, you can allot enough time to fix your other problems. Austin realistically can do about six hours of work a day and that is sustainable.

Austin’s Thoughts About Freelance Writing Through Websites

There are a lot of websites for freelancers today, like Upwork, Freelancer, or Fiverr. People who are getting started should go make $1.

Too often, we start thinking about scale, before we even know that we like it. Do it once. If you like it, think about repeating the process. Get a paying project under your belt.

If you are inclined to work through Upwork, remember, they are going to take 15 to 30 percent out of your profit margin. Austin has spent about $150,000 on Upwork and has connected with talented freelancers.

If all of those freelancers were satisfied with building their businesses through Upwork, you wouldn’t see all of these forum posts about how to move away from Upwork and how to get private clients.

It is a great place to get started as you are figuring out freelance writing.

You need to be really strong in your positioning, if a business owner can pay someone $8.00 an hour for a project you are charging $40.00. Price conscious people find freelance writing jobs through Upwork.

The best clients are value conscious and want to pay for a positive outcome, and whether it takes you 30 minutes or 30 hours is irrelevant. Try it, do a six-month experiment.

As you mature, you will try to build your business outside of Upwork. Any time your entire business model is bolted onto someone else’s platform, there is inherent risk in that.

If you only sell products through Amazon and Amazon freezes your account or deletes your account, you are done. Think of it as an experiment, know what time horizon you are working with, and then evaluate.

How to Scale the Freelance Writing and Consulting Business

First, build an email list. This is something you can take with you from platform to platform. If you have a list of 200 people who have paid you money at some point, that is great!

The best way to get more business is from the people who have already given you money. The three R’s are Repeat Business, Referrals, and New Relationships.

Think about having two buckets. The first is the three R’s. The second is measured experiments.

This might be putting some money toward something, like Instagram, for 12 months to see if you can get clients. If you have stability and want to move into growth mode, have a weekly newsletter where you continue to create value.

Keep in front of the people who have already given you money through email, because they are the most likely to give you more money. Then, have your experiments and see what happens.

When it comes to leveling up your business, eventually you need to say no to low-paying clients. It is hard to say no, if you are desperate for the money.

Personal Finance Helps You Be Successfully Unemployed As A Freelance Writer

A lot of this comes back to personal finance. Do you have an emergency fund? Do you have about 90 days of operating expenses?

You need personal cushion and business cushion, because the nature of freelancing and consulting is that a lot of people are not looking to spend a lot of money from the end of November through early January, unless it is an e-commerce business.

There is a seasonality to freelancing and if you don’t have cash reserves to get through the lean times, you will end up saying yes to the wrong clients. Even if you have a freelance writing jobs, you want to make sure you are working smart.

You may be better off spending 50 hours finding a client that will pay you $150,000 over the next few years, rather than saying yes to the easy client because you needed the money.

Money gives us patience. As you are building your business, live as lean as you possibly can. There is nothing that fuels your walk-away power than money in the bank. You need to be selective.

Being a Freelance Writer Takes Courage

If you have come from a place where money is scarce, it is hard to say no, when someone is offering you money.

The calculated risks Austin took that ultimately paid off end up being inflection points for him, as well as the times he said no.

Sometimes saying no came down to having boundaries with a client that was asking too much. If a contract is not in place, it can get into a he-said-she-said arguing match of whether or not the client deserves that extra thing.

It is easier to say no, if there is a rock solid agreement in place.

We all have faulty memories.

It is easy to stand up for ourselves if we can make the contract the bad guy. Calculated risks and saying no strategically brought breakthroughs.

Complexity is the real enemy. As the world becomes increasingly complex, people who are figuring out strategic simplicity have a competitive advantage.

Austin has refined his service offerings, his messaging, and his brand strategy and made them simpler. Brands derive their power from simplicity and consistency. Always be trending toward simplicity.

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How Austin is Making the World a Better Place

The ministry of presence. Austin has three startups at home named Salem, Theo, and Ellis. A lot of his long-term impact will come from him being around.

He wants them to eventually wish that he would go away because he is around so much. Austin is using his extra time to invest in his kids.

Austin gives away a lot. He writes all the time, he is always reducing practice to progress, and he likes to share as much as possible.

When he has tools, and rubrics, and templates, and cheat sheets, he loves giving those away for free. There are so many people who are generous with their expertise and he wants to pay it forward.

The Advice Austin Would Give to Anyone Who Wanted to Become Successfully Unemployed being a Freelance Writer

Simplicity is your competitive advantage. Point your energy in one direction, whether that is writing or blogging. Learn as much as you can about that one thing. Creating a freelance writing jobs may be a good fit for you.

Be known for this one thing, establish yourself as a thought leader and the go-to person for the one thing, build a platform, create content around this thing, simplify around this thing, etc.

Hang your hat on one thing and focus your brand.

The Advice Austin Would Give to His Younger Self

Nobody is waiting for you to fail. We think other people are scrutinizing our performance, but they are not paying as much attention as we think.

You have the freedom to make mistakes and if you hurt a client, apologize, take responsibility, and make it right.

Austin is a one on the Enneagram, which is a perfectionist, and he doesn’t like to make mistakes. Yet, he has found that he has never lost a client due to owning up to a mistake.

He may have lost a client when he wasn’t quick enough to take responsibility.

Get out there and take the risks, because that is how we learn. You won’t fail nearly as much as you think.

The Tools Austin Uses in His Business

The Full Focus Planner, by Michael Hyatt, is Austin’s anchor point during stressful, busy times. This is a physical, printed planner that Austin carries everywhere.