TCC Podcast #244: Writing Content with Sarah Greesonbach

On the 244th episode of The Copywriter Club podcast, Sarah Greesonbach joins the show. After spending years in the classroom, she discovered the world of content marketing and e-commerce. Sarah is a prime example that you can be a highly paid and sought-after content writer when you position yourself as the expert and provide value time and time again. Here’s what we talk about: Writing an ebook all about life after teaching and jumping into the online business realm. Putting your all into your passion without boundaries. Creating an open door after getting laid off. Going from $20-30hr to $800 blog posts. How to make the shift in money and clientele. The reality of setting up your mindset for growth and success. Why you shouldn’t be shopping in your dream client’s wallet. The clear and cut process of writing white papers. What white papers are going for these days and how it can be your in with a potential client. How to showcase your authority right away and take the strategy lead. One simple skill that makes you more money. The shift from “perfect business” to realistic expectations of building a business. How to create buckets, so you can focus on the most important aspects of your business. Using LinkedIn to work with ongoing and steady clients. The difference between writing for B2B and B2C. The truth about being creative and understanding your capacity for scheduling it into your day. Want to create a profitable content writing business? Tune into the episode to learn how to make it happen. The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Think Tank Sarah’s website Full Transcript: Rob:  Over the past three years, we've interviewed hundreds of copywriters about their approach to business, their writing processes, their stories, and their tips for writing better copy. The vast majority of them describe themselves as copywriters, but today's guest for the 244th episode of The Copywriter Club podcast Sarah Greesonbach calls herself a content writer. And I'll be honest, I don't see a lot of difference between copy and content. Both are designed to create and support a relationship between a company or brand and its customers. Both are part of the sales process, and both require a smart, strategic approach to make sure that they connect with the right people. We talked a lot about Sarah's approach to content in this episode. And if you write and sell content as part of your business, you're going to learn a lot from this interview. Kira:  Before we hear what Sarah has to say, this podcast episode is brought to you by The Copywriter Think Tank. The Think Tank is our private mastermind for copywriters and other marketers who want to challenge each other, create multiple new revenue streams in their businesses, receive coaching from the two of us, and ultimately grow to six figures or more. Up until last year, we only opened the Think Tank once a year, but today we invite a few new members each month. If you've been looking for a mastermind to help you grow, visit copywriterthinktank.com to find out more. Rob:  Okay, let's jump into our interview with Sarah and find out more about her path to content writing. Sarah:  Through that is Craigslist, it was pretty amazing. And this was a bit more popular back in the early 2010s when Craigslist was more of a thing. But my story actually starts, I got a master's in arts and teaching, and I taught ninth grade English. And they basically chewed me up and spit me out in about two and a half years. I had reached ultimate burnout as a workaholic because the classroom will take everything you can give it, so I gave it everything. And I had to make my escape. And at that point, I hit that wall a lot of writers hit where it's like, what else could I possibly do? I did the teaching, that's not working for me. Where can I go? And so I just started Googling a lot of stuff about how people hire, what they look for in a candidate when they're trying to fill a position. And that led me to the world of online blogging. And I wrote an ebook of life after teaching. I tried to start a website with that and a community, and I learned about e-commerce. And it just cracked open the world of the internet for me. So after that, I realized I could be a content writer because that's a thing on the internet. And I used Craigslist and found a job that was closer to my husband. And they had a surprise for me, which was that I was laid off after about six months. So it felt like a lot of hope and then taken away, and then hope and then taken away. And while I was recovering from that and bingeing a lot of Netflix, I realized if that guy was selling my writing, so the marketing manager was doing the markup and selling that to companies as I know now, why couldn't I do that? So I embraced my fear of the phone, started pitching and landed some of those early projects. Rob:  Okay. I first want to ask about ninth grade chewing you up and spitting you out. Ninth grade is pretty hard on ninth graders, but I can't even imagine being a ninth grade teacher. Tell us just a little bit more about that experience. What was it that made it so that you just, two years was enough? Sarah:  Yeah. I want to maintain the innocent of the innocent, so let me think. I think it was the combination of workaholism and the classroom because there are people who can go into teaching and they have these boundaries built in, and they can go home and not think about work. They can not do the grading ... That's my husband, he was in the classroom and made it nine years. But the nature of the classroom is just that it will take everything you have. So you need to be as a circus wrangler, a teacher, a presenter, entertainer, subject-matter expert. There's no end to what it requires from you. So if you can't put the brakes on it, then that will be the end of you. Kira:  So let's jump to that, being a workaholic or just not having boundaries because that makes sense for teaching, but it certainly shows up for freelancers and copywriters who don't have boundaries. Many of us who tend to lean into being a workaholic even though we don't want to, so how have you worked through that over time, I know this is jumping years, so that it doesn't burn you out in this business? Sarah:  Yeah. It's really been a journey, and it's taken a lot of leaders for me to look up to like you guys and Ed Gandia, and people who can just reassure you that if you put boundaries in place, everything won't fall apart. It's okay, you can tell people no, you can tell people I can't start for two weeks. I think I was so excited by being able to control my income and lean in and see the results of that and lean back see the results of that that it took until this year to really implement capacity planning. So I've been doing this for eight years in October, and this is the first time that I've really mapped out what I'm going to do in the next two months and how much time it will take and how to make sure I'm not having 10-hour days. So I've never really had that transparency in there before. Rob:  I definitely want to come back to the capacity planning idea. I think there's a lot to explore there. But before we skip over, I also want to touch on the fact that you were laid off. And so this is something that I think is a pretty common experience for a lot of people who find freelancing whether they're copywriters or designers or something else, they learn the skill maybe in a bigger environment, corporate environment. And then this layoff comes. And for a lot of people, it's really disheartening. Some people, they're able to pick themselves up and just move on. But for others, it's a really hard thing to feel that kind of rejection. Tell us a little bit about your experience and how you got through that. Maybe you're one of the lucky few, I don't know. I was laid off at one point from a job. I know again, a lot of copywriters have been through that. Just give us a sense of what that felt like. Sarah:  I can still vividly remember that feeling of being led into the conference room alone like a little puppy. I was cold from head to feet, and I didn't really understand what was happening, and then they walked me out. And it was a really small team, so it was just me and a web designer and the graphic designer. So it definitely came as a surprise. But I did feel better finding out it was more of a change in direction, and the company was shifting models to be more sales focused and didn't need the content in-house and that kind of stuff. But I took it hard because work was my life and my identity. And it's really hard to separate that when the thing you're good at you're not allowed to go back there and do that for a little bit so you have to find your own way to do that. So I'd say, yeah, I had my two weeks of just eating sausage links and broccoli, laying on the couch, watching Netflix and had to move on. Kira:  And when you did move on, so you mentioned Craigslist or maybe the Craigslist was this job, but how did you gain traction once you got through that and you stopped bingeing Netflix and you landed your first few clients, what did that look like? Sarah:  It was really neat because I basically used the model that the company I've been working with was using. So I realized if that digital marketing company needed somebody to write content, surely there's another digital marketing company that needs you to write content. And this is right when HubSpot was really picking up, and everybody really needed bloggers. So I found a few people on LinkedIn that were in my local network and offered to write for them. And that worked out, which was a huge rush. And then I realized I could find anybody across the country,