Treasa: 0:00

Welcome back to the Boss Responses podcast. We are here for day five with our special guest co-host of the week, Melanie Padgett Powers. Melanie is the owner of Mel Edits. She's a freelance writer and editor, primarily for healthcare membership associations. Before she started her freelance business, Melanie used her journalism degree as a newspaper reporter. Melanie is also the creator and host of two podcasts. The first is Deliberate Freelancer, which focuses on the business side of freelancing. That podcast is packed with actionable insights that you can apply to your business every day. Her newest podcast is Association Station. On that podcast she interviews membership association leaders about content and media.

Treasa: 0:46

Today we're going to dive a little deeper into Melanie's business and then we're going to talk to her about how she manages her clients. You're in for a treat. Let's just jump right into the conversation. If you're a freelancer, business owner or anyone who deals with clients, you're in the right place. I'm your host, Treasa Edmond.

Treasa: 1:06

I've been dealing with clients and running my business for nearly two decades and in that time I've dealt with my share of doubt, imposter syndrome and not knowing what to say when a client asks a question I wasn't ready for. I created this podcast to empower you with the Boss Responses. You need to grow your business. Each week, my guest co-host and I will bring you five episodes packed with practical insights. Monday through Thursday, we answer your questions, and Fridays we dive deep to explore how our co-host embraced their role as the boss of their business. Welcome to Boss Responses, Melanie. I have been looking forward to today all week because I love your business and I love the things you do, so I'm excited to share that with the rest of the world. So let's start off with just tell me a little bit about you and what you do.

Melanie: 2:02

Well, thank you so much. That was very sweet. I'm really excited to be here and I'd love talking all things. Freelance businesses. As you know, so I am the owner of a freelance business for writing and editing and I specialize in working with membership associations, primarily writing and editing about healthcare and science. So my business is called MelEdits. In October 2023, it'll be 10 years that I've been doing this, which I cannot believe. It's been 10 years.

Melanie: 2:31

I am just a little bit about me. I'm from Indiana originally. I now live in Silver Spring, Maryland, which is in the DC area. I live with my husband and my two kittens I guess I should say they're cats now. They're a year old, but they're my little babies.

Melanie: 2:45

I'm a bookworm. I buy way too many books. I will talk books with you. If you want to talk books with me, find me on Instagram. I'll talk books all day long. Let's see A couple of things I've been obsessed with this year are true crime documentaries, which I guess is not really a new thing, but I've been doing a lot of binging of true crime, and I got back into watching professional cycling, like the Tour de France. I used to watch a tour years ago, and so I'm really into watching professional cycling this year and I'm a host of two podcasts. So Deliberate Freelancer is over four years old. It's all about the business side of freelancing, whatever your industry, whatever services you provide. And I'm the host of Association Station, which is more like a lead generation tool for my client base, which is a membership association, and in that one I do only interviews and it's seasonal. So I just did about seven, I think, episodes this summer, which was our second season, and then I'll have season number three in 2024.

Treasa: 3:43

Right, and I think we had chatted on Facebook in groups a couple of times, but I actually really found you through your podcast. So, people, if you're not listening to Melanie's podcast, go look, listen to it. We'll have links to all of that stuff in the show notes. Now, melanie, after the fact we're going to have to connect and talk about the true crime thing, I have a couple of podcasts you'll love Excellent.

Treasa: 4:05

All right, so let's talk first about your business. How did you get started and did you have any major growing pains when you first started working with clients?

Melanie: 4:16

That first question always makes me laugh because I'm so blunt when I answer it. So I hated my job. Yep, so many of us were in. The backstory is I was a journalism major. I started as a newspaper reporter, which I love. I would probably still be doing it if they paid anything. I moved to the DC area 23 years ago now and started working at membership associations and kind of fell into healthcare, which turned out I loved. So I was working at a healthcare association almost 10 years ago and I hated it. There had been. I'd actually worked there before and left and came back. And when I came back, I think I was excited to work with my old boss and coworkers and didn't ask enough questions. And after a year my boss was gone. There was a new CEO and it just became this really awful toxic environment and I was like I'll do anything I need out. I think it was probably now don't do the math here because you'll know how old I am but I don't think it was a coincidence that I was also turning 40.

Melanie: 5:27

And I got to the point where I'm from, indiana. I grew up as the good kid. I listened to adults and I follow the rules. And then I got to about age 40 and I realized these adults who are my bosses don't necessarily know anything just because they're older than me. And why am I following these stupid rules when this is all just such a toxic, messed up, micromanage, managed environment? So I think I kind of grew up in that sense and realized I just didn't want to do that, didn't want to report to anyone anymore, and so I did not have a big plan to become a freelancer. I, as I said, I was a rule follower you go and you do your job. You do a really good job, you get paid. I just didn't think of myself as an entrepreneur and but I just was in this desperate situation and was like I'll figure it out. Yep, I was very lucky that I had been working at membership associations in DC. We like to say it's a small town and associations people who really love associations, working at them, jump from one to another over the years. So I had built this really big network of people, of just former coworkers and friends who were at all these different associations, and so I got working really quickly by telling them I'm becoming a freelance writer and editor, it's everything I can help you with, and so I was very lucky.

Melanie: 6:50

In that sense, I would say that some of the things that were kind of growing pains, I think, is I just took me a while. I didn't understand all the stuff that I talk about with freelancers and all my podcast about you are a freelance business and you're setting the expectations and the boundaries. I had to learn all that. I think some of the mistakes I made was allowing clients to tell me how much they would pay me, setting, providing hourly rates or agreeing to hourly rates, not pushing back, not negotiating a rate, but also doing the hourly rate, which, of course, I try not to do now, but it led to things like scope creep. I also worked one of my early editing clients so I found randomly not through any connections was kind of scattered and then they got a bit nasty, they got a bit mean and I probably stuck with them a couple of months longer than I should have, but I did fire them. I didn't call it firing them at the time, I didn't know that, I didn't think of it that way, but I basically was like.

Melanie: 7:53

I probably said really uncomfortably in an email yeah, I don't think I can work on this anymore, because they were just sucking the life out of me because they were mean and blaming things on me and just being nasty about it, and it took a while to learn how to say no and push back and set those kind of boundaries that I am really good at in my personal life. But as I was coming from years of being a worker, an employee and that's a big mindset shift- yeah, and it's hard.

Treasa: 8:26

It's really really hard to break from an employee mindset to a business owner mindset.

Melanie: 8:31

Yeah.

Treasa: 8:32

That trips a lot of people up and I know, I know a lot of people who have been freelancing for 10, 15 years. They still operate in an employee mindset and it's just not a shift that they are comfortable making and that will always mean your clients running your business and I'm stubborn, I didn't want my clients to run my business.

Melanie: 8:55

Yeah, and I think that prevents you not only from you know, I don't want to feel that way. It prevents you from looking for being brave and looking for different clients and trying new things. And I know these people that are like, well, I have this long-term contract with this group and this group and I'm like, and I know people that don't have a website, don't do any marketing, and that person goes away and you're done for and they start looking for jobs. And I say all the time I never want to be an employee, ever again. I'm in this for the long haul. I am not going back to being an employee. So, whatever mindset and service, the things I need to try and do and make that happen to keep my business going, that's my focus.

Treasa: 9:42

Yeah, and one of the realizations that I came to is when I operate as the boss of my business, I provide better services to my clients because you're in a partnership. Then, instead of your client telling you what to do and I think that's a huge change to make If you can make that change, your business gets so much better, I think, every day, because you're doing what you want to do and you're the boss of what you want to do.

Melanie: 10:10

I love how you phrase that. I think that's such a great point that otherwise you're just doing whatever they tell you to do, and maybe that's fine and maybe the relationship works. But they tell you to write a blog post. You write a blog post. You're not saying I could actually create your content strategy and write this many blog posts for a tainer each month, and then you could actually sell the strategy to them as well, because they don't know what they might not know what they want or need. I think I really like the way you phrase that.

Treasa: 10:38

Let's talk about challenges. What are some of the challenges you faced or still face, managing multiple clients simultaneously, and how did and do you address those challenges? You work with different types of clients, so that brings in a whole new level of difficulty, because you do managing editing in addition to all of your writing stuff, and that's two different businesses.

Melanie: 11:04

Indeed, overall, for any of us, self-discipline is so crucial to being successful with this, and it can be. I'm usually pretty good at it but you go through seasons. Sometimes it's a bigger struggle than others. I think this is where you really need to build in systems and habits to keep on track. I'm a big believer in systems and habits. You don't have to go wild. They can be really easy things.

Melanie: 11:29

I have a lot of Excel spreadsheets just to track things. I don't have these big software programs and I'm not using because I know what works for me and I don't want to use Asana and Trello to track these things. I'm like a spreadsheet is just fine for me. You can try a bunch of different things out and see what works best for you. I also think it's important to have multiple systems. I'll talk more specifically about my different services in a second, but I just wanted to say that I keep an Excel spreadsheet open all the time and it's for the month. Then ongoing regular retainer clients whatever you want to call it have their own tabs at the bottom so I can track what I'm doing for them, what I need to do for them. Then I usually have a tab that's like writing. Those are the one-offs that month that I'm working on. I put in all of those tabs. I put the rates, because I charge people different things. I put the deadlines, especially important for the writing ones.

Melanie: 12:29

Something interesting for associations and I would never do this in journalism, but in associations I do it and I like to do it it is we send the draft articles to the sources to review and fact check and they can change their quotes. You would never do this as a reporter, but this is especially because I'm writing healthcare and science to wave for them to fact check it. Also, I'm interviewing members of this association that I'm working for. I have to track that stuff. I keep track of all that in Excel. Then I duplicate it by putting all of that on my calendar. I live and die by my Google calendar. It has everything on there. It has all my deadlines. I do that when I get the assignment so it doesn't slip through the cracks. I put that in the Excel sheet and then I put it in the Google calendar.

Melanie: 13:18

Then I have all these multiple systems for the same thing. I have a running to-do list just on a Word document. I used to do it in different ways. I like just a Word document because I can edit that very quickly. It's always open. Then I also use Post-it notes for these are the two things I must do today. Then I can just go answer that post and know you have to do these two things today. I forget about them because oftentimes I just forget. If I don't have all these systems, it's not going to stay in my head. I'm not going to remember my to-do list. I'm also not going to remember am I charging this client this much a Word and this other client this much a Word? Did I raise the rate on this person? There's just too many clients to remember, especially with writing.

Melanie: 14:02

I'm writing one-offs for a lot of people. I might work with them twice a year. You can't possibly remember all those details. Whatever system works for you, it's just writing it down, whether you keep Word documents or again, if you like, asana and Trello and all these systems have one for each client with all the basics. I do the same because I'm an editor as well. I have their internal style guides and I know whether they follow AP Style or Chicago or whatever. Then there's things that I catch in editing that they might not have a rule for. It might not be in their style guide, and we decide. Then I keep a running list of style notes for that client.

Treasa: 14:43

This is one area that we differ. Because Excel gives me hives, I use a very basic version of Excel.

Melanie: 14:54

I will say I had a virtual assistant years ago set up my Excel sheet to where I do an hourly rate for some things, really only copy editing and those are clients that I'm doing much bigger projects for too. I don't mind doing an hourly rate because it's almost like a retainer, except I'm doing editing for them all month. I'll put the time in and I bill in 15-minute increments 15, 30, 45, or 60 usually. Then it automatically puts the fee and then it adds it up.

Treasa: 15:27

I had someone set that up.

Melanie: 15:28

That was very basic, but I also had someone set that up for me.

Treasa: 15:32

I do love Trello. I use it for project management, though not client management. For client management invoices, contracts I use Bonsai. I can look up how the rates have changed over the different contracts and projects. That to me is worth the monthly fee. But I really like that it will automatically send invoices for me as well, because I forget to do that otherwise.

Melanie: 15:55

It's all about knowing yourself and what works for you. I added besides, I love my post-it notes, but I also added a whiteboard a couple of years ago, because right now, I have two magazines that I manage and I'm doing all these other projects as well. There are things with the magazines, with any project that you're working on. I know the deadline and I know what I'm supposed to be doing, but there's all those little things that I put on my whiteboard that way at a glance, I can say, oh, that person hasn't gotten back to me. I usually duplicate that on my Google calendar as well.

Melanie: 16:30

I have a lot of duplication in different ways. It also helps how my brain is working that day if I'm all in my calendar that day versus. Let me look at my whiteboard today. Sometimes your brain works a little differently depending on the day and the energy level.

Treasa: 16:44

Yeah, I have a whiteboard for big projects, because I just cannot envision a book based on what's on a tiny screen. I need to see that spread out. I can do the post-it notes.

Treasa: 16:53

My only problem is I have a cat and it likes post-it notes, I'll find post-it notes stuck in strange places and I'm like I didn't never get to that task because it disappeared before I could focus on it. I like a lot of those same systems, but I also use getting things done system in Notion. That's where I track tasks. We've pretty much covered systems and tools. How do you use those specifically? Is there a specific system or tool that you would recommend to people who are just starting out on their journey or who are really struggling with managing multiple clients that could help them with that process?

Melanie: 17:32

Yeah. So I think it does help when you have multiple clients and especially multiple services, to have some sort of project management tool like the ones that we've mentioned or whatever works for you. I just use Excel, but again, you can use Notion or Trello or Asana and you can try out these different things. I think in the beginning I tried a lot of different tools and narrowed it down, because what you don't want to do is get all of these tools and pay for all these tools and then not use them and feel like I felt like this. You definitely feel like as a freelancer when you hear about all these tools. I think, especially in the beginning, I have to set all these systems and processes up and I need 42 ways and it has to be perfect and just know what works for you. Again, word and Excel works for me. Post-it notes it doesn't have to be fancy, I do use.

Melanie: 18:20

I started using a few years into my business, freshbooks for invoicing. I'm happy to pay for that. That has been a godsend. I do send the invoices manually because I'm very nerdy when it comes to money and I like doing all that at the end of the month. I do it at one time. I don't do it piecemeal. It's great because it helps track if I haven't been paid, if no one has opened the invoice, it will let you know that you can send reminders. In there. You can set up automatic reminders. It also will show you a dashboard of how much money you are owed that you still have coming in, which helps me plan financially and to know what else I want to if I need to earn more money next month. There's other systems. I think there's Wave some people use, but I like FreshBooks.

Melanie: 19:10

I will just mention two more specifically for writers. I use Otter AI to transcribe. It has saved me so much time and money. I used to spend money on Rev and it cost a lot. Frankly, otter saves me a lot of money. It's a good business investment and it's only getting better. I interview a ton of people about their science. Even if it gets it wrong, I don't need an exact transcript. I just need to be able to go in and look for a quote or to fact check something and you can play it back to double check what they said and fix it in the transcript. I've been using Otter for a year or so and I absolutely love it.

Melanie: 19:54

Then I also will say again I'm a huge fan of time tracking. If you've ever listened to the podcast, you've probably heard me mention time tracking and I use the Toggle app. I have it on my desktop. Time tracking is not because I'm billing hourly. It really shows me how long a project is taking. Did it take what I thought it would take? I'm making good money on it, or did I undercharge? Then all that data helps you price similar projects in the future, because if I do this kind of thing, it's going to take me around 15 hours over two months. You get a lot of information that helps you manage your time and price properly for you through time tracking. Toggle works for me, but there's a lot of time tracking tools out there.

Treasa: 20:48

Speaking of tracking client expectations, this is something that I hear all the time. Tracking expectations is our job, not our client's job, but it's crucial for a positive relationship. How do you make sure your clients have a clear understanding of project scope, timelines and deliverables?

Melanie: 21:11

I have learned that the more I can map out the scope of work for a project, the better. Now, with writing and writing is just one thing that I provide. With writing it's pretty straightforward. Usually I get an email saying can you write this? Sometimes they don't give you all the information. You ask me if I can write this and I said yes. Then they're like great, I'm like okay, I need word count. That is, I will say that to my head. But if you have a list of those things, even if you're doing an email, write that down, because it might be longer than my short list of what's the deadline in the word count and here's my rate. But all the questions you need to ask them. If it's a simple, straightforward project, you want to make sure that you ask those questions and have an email and that you both agree to it and that it's in writing in that email and it's pretty straightforward.

Melanie: 22:03

Now on the bigger projects, I will get on a phone call Once I've asked them on. We've gone through an email first. I don't just jump on the phone with anyone. I will usually have an email exchange first to see what their budget is and what they really want. Do they really want my kind of writer? Do they want a copywriter, which is not what I do and no one ever knows the difference. I will get on the phone. I will ask them a million questions when I have a list of different things that I asked them just about their project and we talk it through. I'm just taking I still like to take a lot of hand notes.

Melanie: 22:36

As soon as I get off that call, or as soon, as quickly as possible after that call, I map out a scope of work and I tell them that I never quote on the phone and I say I'm going to write all this down and send you a scope, send you what we just talked about. I am so specific on that scope of work, what the word kind of is, or how many items or what. Who's going to. Melanie will provide this. X client will provide this by this time, a week later. Melanie will do this. Then the other thing that I've done is add a section that says what is not included in the scope of work, because I think there is reading between the lines, they may think oh well, that includes that I work on magazines.

Melanie: 23:21

I will go through this whole process of managing the magazine. I work with the designer. We get to the end. I've approved the magazine. The designer uploads it to the printer. What I don't do is deal with the printer. The printer will often send a proof to the designer that the designer says yay, go ahead and print it. The client needs to send a mailing list. I mapped that out, I am done. Melanie's job ends at this part of the project. She does not write or she does not contact the printer or prove the final proof. She does not have anything to do with advertising sales. She does not have anything to do with I say it a little more eloquently, but she does not get involved with advertising sales. She does not have anything to do with the mailing list Things that are part of that process that are not my job but might be seen as like oh, should us do it.

Melanie: 24:15

I've done that because there have been assumptions in the past. You'll just figure that out. For us that has been really helpful. I do also tell clients I haven't had huge conversations about this, but I tell them that I prefer email If they in the association, where they're not really saying hey, please join our Slack channel. I know that's different with agencies and maybe corporations. I wouldn't do that necessarily or I would be charging for that if they were going to keep me because that's a constant. That's where they think you're more like an employee and you're going to be constantly checking it. If you're willing to do those things, just be very clear about the parameters and put all that in writing. As I said, my scope of work has become so much more detailed. What I end up doing is I said that and when we agree on it, we both sign it. It's an agreement and that is usually sufficient. I don't always send contracts. Sometimes my client will want me to sign a contract, but mostly I rely on those agreements.

Treasa: 25:22

Yeah, I'm very, very strict in my scope of work too. In every project, if there's any back and forth, I include deadlines for both parties. It's not just me. I hold myself to my deadlines, but I hold my clients to their deadlines too. In my scope of work I list out what happens if they don't respond by that date. So I have what happens in there and that stops so many problems before it begins. And you'd mentioned clients making assumptions, and we talked about this in one of the sessions earlier this week. Don't assume that because your client makes an assumption about what you do, that it's malicious.

Melanie: 26:01

It's not.

Treasa: 26:02

Sometimes they just they assume that because, look at them, they're working from a boss employee position and that's the mindset they live in every single day and it's really hard for them to think differently about you unless you set yourself up that way. So they will naturally treat you that way and make assumptions based on that if you don't set your expectations up front.

Melanie: 26:25

Yeah, and I think I'm working with people that often hire me because they're outsourcing a particular thing for the first time. So they have. They've worked with contractors before, vendors, freelancers, all these different people but for what I'm providing it might be the first time or the second time. It's not something they do all the time. And even if they've done it before, that freelance business owner might not have treated themselves like a freelance business owner. So I just approach it again like an education.

Melanie: 26:57

And especially if they were doing the magazine in-house and now they want me to do it, there are things I'm not going to do and they would know that because, of course, they did everything in-house. So I always, always, give them a benefit of that and approach it as an education. And I would say too, if you're working with small businesses or solo business owners, they may have never hired a contractor before. They have no idea how this process is supposed to work or how they're supposed to treat you. So, again, it's on you, if you want to work with those types of businesses, to educate them up front, early on, and you're also paying it forward to all the other people they hired down the road yes, to teach them how it's supposed to be done.

Treasa: 27:40

And I'm training people right now on how to do content strategy and this is one of the things we talk about is when you are dealing with clients. A good portion of what you do is educating your clients, and I'm not saying talk down to them. You're informing them about what's happening, why it's happening and why it's important, and that's part of our job, that's just part of what we do, and if you're not doing that, you're doing your clients a disservice.

Melanie: 28:06

Yeah.

Treasa: 28:07

So, speaking of clients and difficult clients, this is the topic everyone loves. So, on boss responses, we don't diss difficult clients, because my and I know this viewpoint is not shared by everyone. My viewpoint is if you deal with a difficult client and you let the situation keep going, that's your fault. They're difficult, that's who they are, but you have the choice to not bring that into your business. So how do you deal with difficult clients?

Melanie: 28:36

Yeah, I could just say I fire them. But it's way more nuanced than that and I had to get to that point right, it's not always. You can't always fire them.

Melanie: 28:46

And I used to work for a client where I worked with multiple staff people. I really like some of the staff people and really dislike some of the other staff people, but I like the client overall. So it's going to happen. I, as much as I hate it, I would get on the phone or even now I prefer a zoom call because you get to see body language and you just set face to face. I like it. Not everybody likes it, but I would say get out of email and get at least get on the phone and send that email and don't call, call them, say send the email and say briefly, I want to talk about some issues or there's a couple of things I need to discuss with you. Do you have some time? I will, actually, because I get nervous. I'm an introvert, I really don't like conflict or controversy and my definition of conflict or controversy is I'm like that's conflict, I don't want to talk about that, and other people are like that's just a conversation, it's fine. So it helps me because I know my personality and I'm never going to go out of that to write down my key points of discussion and practice and really practice taking all the emotion out of it. I'm harder on my tone sometimes because you might hear if you know me, you might think, oh, she sounds nervous or upset. I really try, but at least I can take the emotion out of the language I'm using. We've talked about this before. Yes, I try to be very diplomatic but stern. I stick to the facts. I don't apologize unless I've actually done something wrong I might offer. There has to be an end to whatever this conversation is. So what are we going to do about this? Here's what I propose. Here's what I think we should do. Here's what I need you to do. Or I had a client where I was working with multiple staff people and one of them was inherently difficult and I, frankly, probably would have fired her as an employee and I would have probably fired, I would have definitely fired her as a client, but she was just one person. And so I reached out to the company and my person there and said I'm not going to work with this person, you need to figure out what's. And so they switched it. Now, I didn't like that. They actually took something off that person's plate because they were difficult. But you know what? I don't work at it. I don't work. I'm not in a play anymore. They can deal with that nonsense. The fact is I'm not going to work with that person, so you're going to have to figure something out, but I was very frank about that and so I just will not. I work with.

Melanie: 31:22

I used to say nice, but it has some weird connotation. Sometimes I say kind. I think I'm a kind person. I try to be kind in my life. I want to work with fun, kind people. I am friends with a lot of my clients. We became friends and I noticed I think it was last summer. I noticed when I was doing an episode of my podcast I was looking at my client list for the first time. I loved every single client that year, like I didn't have.

Melanie: 31:51

I didn't have a bad client. I didn't have a client that I'm like, oh they pay well but they're annoying. Like I loved them all. And that was like nine years into my business. So it wasn't that I had horrible clients before, but like I loved all of them. I'll have to see if I can say that this year too. I'm not sure yet.

Treasa: 32:08

Well, I hope you can. Yeah, so two things you've said that I'd like to touch on. When you say something in an email, it can come across as harsh, even if you never meant it to, depending on the mood of the person reading it. But if you jump on a zoom call or a phone call, they at least can hear your voice better, they can see your face and see that you're smiling when you say it. If you're saying something that is important, it's worth the five minutes or the 10 minutes or the 15 minutes for the call, because we lose so much communication just doing emails and text messages. I've been mad at people for weeks because of a text message I sent, because I took it wrong. That's on me, but I was still mad at them for weeks. That's something that you can't bring into your business. Part of being a business person is getting over or not not get over. Embrace that you're going to be uncomfortable on the zoom call and then do it anyway. Just do it anyway.

Melanie: 33:10

It's so true about communications we assume tone when they didn't mean tone or we assume the wrong tone, whereas I can get a zoom call and be like okay, theresa, I love working with you, I love this project, I love your team, but Sally is driving me bananas and I just can't work with her anymore and this is why she doesn't do her, doesn't turn things in on time. I'm on a schedule, I'm on a deadline. This is not working. What are you gonna do about it? I mean, that's so much easier to say on a zoom call or even a phone call. And then what's two real people having a real conversation? As opposed to what does this email mean? And so, yeah, so much easier.

Treasa: 33:50

I have one other question I'm really curious about. I I've always not always, I didn't used to have this rule, and then I Implemented this rule that when I'm dealing with an organization, I have one primary point of contact. So there are situations, especially in content strategy, where I need to talk to other people, but I manage the entire project through that one primary point of communication, and if I don't get along with them, then I will ask for that to be changed, which is rare, because I get along with most people. How do you you work and you've mentioned this you work with multiple people within an organization. Have you ever thought about doing the one point of contact, or is it just not possible with the way you do your work?

Melanie: 34:31

I don't think it's Easy. It's not possible, really, for the way I do magazines and the services I provide. What I do, though, is I have the one person who's in charge, so if there is an issue, I have no problem, and if it's their boss it's usually the person's boss, or sometimes it's a co-worker. I will email them and say So-and-so was supposed to get me this article three days ago. I haven't heard from them, or I'll email the person and say your articles do on such-and-such. I haven't received it, and I'll CC either their boss, which is usually like my one person, so I keep them in the loop, and they have to be a person that always has my back. I will not continue to work with them.

Melanie: 35:20

I had a client a few years ago that seemed to twist my words a little bit, and I was like I'm done, I'm out of here, and I had given them. This was a lead-up to this. This was like one misunderstanding, but I used to work at a before the pandemic, and I've talked about this a lot. I used to have a client that was almost like a part-time job, so it was a local country club, and I had to work with all the different departments at the country club. But the CEO of the country club and the guy that I was the CEO was one guy. I didn't work directly with him on everything. And then there was another guy that I worked directly with. They had my back anytime I had an issue. I could always go to them. I could let them know. I was there in person a lot, so I could just stop in their office. They always treated me as a colleague, a partner. They treated me with respect. So anytime there were issues that came up, I kept working with that client because they were so great and I knew that they would deal with it.

Melanie: 36:16

And that's the great thing about not being an employee. I was like I'd go to them and say, listen, this is what's going on, and they would deal with it and they would fix it. And I could go on do your job. Yeah, oh my gosh. My husband and I complain all the time. Anytime we're talking about something, we say, oh, it always comes back to if this person would have just done their job, I wouldn't have had this problem. But yeah, I would say so. I work with multiple people, but I have one direct person who sort of oversees the whole project and that person has to respect me and has to have my back and has to be willing to deal with people, because the beauty of not being an employee is when there is an issue with one of these people, they have to deal with it. I'm not dealing with it, I'm not getting on the phone and we're not going to Discuss how we don't get along or I don't care.

Treasa: 37:03

I'm not with this person. That's not part of your business. That's exactly.

Melanie: 37:07

I, I love not having to deal with that stuff. As a non employee, I don't have to deal with drama. That's the, that's one of my, the bottom line.

Treasa: 37:16

No drama mentioned cc. A lot of people think cc is passive, aggressive, and I think it's the perfect amount of aggressive Because, seriously, if you're working with someone you don't know what they're telling, they're superior. And if you just loop them in on the conversation when it gets out of hand and they see that email thread, they are looped in. They deal with it because it's not your responsibility. Our job is to do our job and run our business and it's their job to do their job and run their business and I let them.

Melanie: 37:46

Yeah, I just see it as informative and that took me a while to Feel more comfortable with that. I'll do it all the time now, not overkill, but what it needs to be done, because when I was an employee, when you cc'd people, that was like tattling, like, oh, you cc'd my boss because you don't think I can do this thing, and it was a whole great drama. And that was the assumption. And now, and so it takes a while to sort of break out of that, and now I'm like no, this person has hired me to do this thing and if somebody else at the company has preventing that, they need to know I'm doing what I'm supposed to do. You are not going to be able to throw me under the bus because I have the receipts.

Treasa: 38:24

So I have no problem with that. That's part of that employee mindset. Yeah, that you have to deal with these situations on your own, it's a personal thing. It's a personality thing. No, no, no, it's not right. You were hired to do a service. You do the service. If someone's in your way, then you need to figure out how to get them out of the way. It's not your business to deal with their issues at all, ever and we cc people.

Melanie: 38:50

We talk all the time, as freelancers and solopreneurs, about the freedom of running our own business, and to me that is an aspect of freedom. I have the freedom I am not dealing with difficult personalities or drama or fixing your Whatever so and so doesn't have like their boss or these two co-workers don't get along. I have the freedom to walk away from all of that and that's their problem to deal with and I. It's a beautiful thing.

Treasa: 39:18

Well said, absolutely agree with that. So, as we start to wrap things up here, you mentioned at the beginning that you have the two podcasts. We'll make sure we include the links to those in the show notes. You also have a community and a newsletter. Do you want to tell us a little bit about those?

Melanie: 39:34

Yeah. So a year or so ago I started a Facebook group for deliberate freelancer listeners. So you can find that it's always at the in the show notes for the podcast or you can Just search deliberate freelancer on Facebook and the Facebook groups. You have to answer a few questions, so you have to be a listener of the podcast. I don't want it to become this group of A million people who are just joining groups. I really want it to be the community Of listeners and so that is a great place to get a lot of support and get your questions answered, that kind of thing.

Melanie: 40:06

And then I also have a newsletter. So my business is mel edits. So if you go to mel edits comm slash newsletter, you can sign up for my newsletter, and that newsletter is specific to deliberate freelancer. I actually have an on pause. I've had a pause for a while so you wouldn't be getting a newsletter all the time, but I keep you updated on the podcast, like when I'm going on hiatus, when I'm having special things. And when you sign up for that newsletter you get two freebies. And these are email templates that I've used that Really outline when I'm trying to drum up new work. Very specifically Outline the services that I provide people and each of those emails when I sent them out yielded about 30,000 dollars in new work just by reaching out to Current clients and previous clients. So people that knew me saying hey, I don't know if you knew, I did these things also, so you get those freebies when you sign up for the newsletter. Sign up people.

Treasa: 41:06

All right. One last question what advice would you give to service providers looking to create lasting, successful partnerships with their clients?

Melanie: 41:14

Well, I think we've talked about this a lot, and this is kind of the theme, but I'll say it again, just what you said think of them as partnerships. They are not your boss. You are in charge. So Everything you do from the way you structure your business, but also From the moment you start talking with these potential clients craft your language, really, think about how You're phrasing things and how you're presenting things and it all comes from.

Melanie: 41:40

I am the business owner. I have these skills and these talents and services that can help this person. They need your help. They want your help and if they ever treat you like an employee or blame things on you or treat you as this, they're just quote, unquote, the vendor, and that's the person we can kind of blame things on. You don't need to work with them. And then the other thing that we talked a lot about, but I'll just reiterate is Be very clear from the beginning what the scope of work is, what the deliverables are, what the deadlines are, what the scope of work is not, and put that all in writing and, whether it's a contract or agreement or email or whatever, make sure that they sign it or they agree to it. So there's a record that like, yes, they agreed to this and you could always point back to that. That's so true. All right, melanie, thank you so much for being here.

Treasa: 42:29

If you want to talk about this, all right, melanie. Thank you so much for being here. If you loved what Melanie's had to say this week, make sure you go and listen to her podcast. Deliberate freelance is amazing. I'm part of that community. It's a great community and I always love the value that Melanie brings to the table. People listen and make sure you leave her review those help podcasts. Thank you, melanie, for being here. I've really appreciated it and I really appreciate that you've given us so much of your time.

Melanie: 42:54

Thank you so much for having me on the show. It's been a lot of fun and I love talking about these issues, so I think this is a great thing that you're doing with this podcast, and I'm excited to hear all the other episodes as well.

Treasa: 43:04

Well, hopefully we'll have you back again in the future, because these are great answers. All right, thank you everyone.