Speaker 1: 0:00

Welcome back to the Boss Responses podcast. Today is the day we learn all about our special guest co-host of the week, leslie Lang. Leslie is a longtime freelance BDB content marketing writer who lives in Hawaii and specializes in writing about technology. In addition to writing about AI, the Internet of Things, sas and the cloud, she also writes about technologies. It pertains to travel, hospitality, food and agriculture so essentially all of the fun things. She also consults with businesses on content strategy and she copy edits books, both for those self-publishing and for small presses. Leslie also offers her clients video production and she currently produces regular vlogs for two YouTube channels, doing everything from planning content to scripting it, conducting interviews and editing. I encourage you to check out her passion project. It's called Midlife Dialogues and you can find it on YouTube.

Speaker 1: 0:58

On her channel, leslie interviews people 50 years and older who are living interesting lives, and they really are interesting. Today, however, we're going to learn more about Leslie and how she got started as a writer, how she runs her business and more about how she manages her clients. Let's just jump right into that interview. If you're a freelancer, business owner or anyone who deals with clients, you're in the right place. I'm your host, teresa Edmond, 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, leslie. Thank you so much for being with me and for answering questions all week.

Speaker 2: 2:14

You're welcome. Thank you so much for asking me. This has been fun, hey.

Speaker 1: 2:18

I've enjoyed it. Why don't you tell me a little bit about what you do, who you are, how you got started in your business, all of that fun stuff?

Speaker 2: 2:27

I live in Hawaii and I am one of these people that always wanted to be a writer. Anyone who's like that knows that that's something that's just in your blood. So I ended up going to college for journalism, started out working in broadcast journalism a little bit radio stations, radio news and did some other stuff, and eventually started for newspapers and magazines, and I've done several different things over all these many, many years and now I've gotten to the point where I am writing mostly for marketing agencies or directly for technology companies. That's the bulk of what I do. A B2B technology content marketing writer is how I describe it. So I write for companies now like Microsoft and IBM and Google and Adobe and big companies like that.

Speaker 2: 3:16

It's taken me a really long time to get to this point, but I have. Finally, I'm writing about all kinds of tech topics, like anything from the cloud and SaaS to a lot of AI. Ai is huge now the Internet of Things, cybersecurity, all kinds of things like that. Hospitality, travel, tech technology covers almost everything these days, so all kinds of it really does.

Speaker 1: 3:39

Was that a big switch from journalism for you?

Speaker 2: 3:42

Sure, it's a really different kind of writing, but the journalism background is great. You don't have to have that to do what I do, but I think it's a really strong training because you have a solid writing background that way. So that's been great. But yeah, it's a very different skill than writing for a newspaper or something like that. So I always say I write about technology. My goal is always to write about tech in a way that is it's both interesting and easy to understand, because it is fascinating what's going on with technology and it's also kind of complicated sometimes. So I got to get in there and figure out whatever it is I'm writing about and then try to make it both of those things interesting and understandable.

Speaker 1: 4:20

Interesting and understandable are what I need when I'm reading, and I like reading everything, but I still want it to be interesting and easy to understand, all right. So how did you make that transition from being a journalist to being a freelancer content writer? I?

Speaker 2: 4:37

worked in journalism a bit. I went off track and worked in the airline industry and traveled for a few years and then I started freelancing. I was kind of getting itchy because I always wanted to write and I started thinking to myself, why am I not writing? It was a good job to have, but I wasn't writing. So I started freelancing for newspapers, just dipping my toes in there, and then I kind of just kept going. Freelancing for magazines was the next step. Then I started ghostwriting books for people.

Speaker 2: 5:04

I had a business for a while helping people write their family histories, which was a really neat thing. I'm like a genealogy geek and I love it, but it was a hard business. To where I lived, I just couldn't find enough work to keep that going. Some people are doing that successfully. I had a hard time with it. It was the coolest thing I did, though. I really loved that. And then content marketing sort of started getting big and I saw the money and the jobs going that way and I followed them and I really liked doing that. I've never looked back. I just started doing that and have grown that business and it takes a while, but I've gotten to a point where I've got a real, solid business doing the content marketing writing now.

Speaker 1: 5:46

Yeah, did you have any major growing pains when you first started working with clients rather than employers?

Speaker 2: 5:53

I think the growing pains were just in finding the clients. It took me a long time to figure out how to do that and actually when I first started freelancing, there weren't all the resources that there are now, because I've been doing this for a long time. Now there's all these Facebook groups that help you and people who are more than willing to help with their knowledge of how to do it, and there's so many resources about how to do it. I wish I'd had that back then. I took a lot longer than I should have to get to the point where I am now, just because I was flailing around by myself trying to figure it out.

Speaker 1: 6:28

Yeah, yeah, back when I started, email was the thing the internet existed, but it wasn't what it is now, which it's hard to believe it's changed that much in that short of a time. Yeah, it really has. So you go from working for a boss or a company and then all of a sudden you're working for multiple clients or not working for Let me rephrase that, because I'm really adamant about this with everyone You're working with, so you're working with multiple clients simultaneously. What challenges did you deal with in that area and how did you address them?

Speaker 2: 7:04

That's a really good question. I kind of love that. Yeah, you know, just suddenly be working for a lot of different people and I've always felt and I feel it more than ever now it's you know, if you know what you're doing and you work hard, it's actually a much more secure way to work than working for one company that can lay you off the second they want to. When you have a lot of clients, you're protected against that, except let me tell you a quick little story. When the pandemic happened, I was specializing in writing about and just stop and think about this for a moment travel technology and hospitality technology. Oh no, travel stopped and hotels and everything that encompass hospitality pretty much stopped, and I went from doing very, very well to having a month, I think like June of 2020, I had zero work on the books, which had never happened. I was doing very well, it was just mind boggling. That was an extreme example.

Speaker 2: 7:59

Usually, working for a lot of different clients is a safer way to do it. Now I know I need to be more diversified than that. Who would ever have thought travel and hospitality would fall apart? Yeah, really, but diversifying as I have now, I've got my foot in a lot of different areas. It's a great way to work. You've got all these different clients. But the challenge, which is what your question was, is how do you manage that? And I think the challenge for me was just the figuring out how to organize that. I have to write everything down. I organize on a Google calendar because I keep nothing in my head. It turns out and if I don't write it down it's just gone. So I really depend on my Google calendar and every step of everything is in there for the day that I need to do it. And that's how I manage a lot of different clients. I just keep everything very tightly organized on a calendar.

Speaker 1: 8:53

Do you use spreadsheets as well? This is something I'm finding very interesting, as all of the guests so far have organized themselves in different ways, and you're the first Google calendar person.

Speaker 2: 9:06

Well, yeah, I use Google calendar, like, okay, I need to interview the setup interviews for this person, so that goes on the calendar for tomorrow or whatever. Do the interview get the transcript? It's all laid out every step. I use spreadsheets for my bookkeeping keeping track of assignments. That way, the bigger picture yes, but really without the Google. I worry if something happened to my Google calendar. Oh, not good, not good, good.

Speaker 1: 9:31

I back mine up to my iCalendar because I did lose my Google calendar once. It just randomly went blank and it was terrifying. I'm like you I use the calendar for all the really important things. So as your business grew, did you find you needed to implement systems and tools to streamline your client relation processes.

Speaker 2: 9:50

I have added tools and systems over the years, yes, and the ones that I let me see, the ones I use now that really helped me, are okay. I said mentioned Google calendar. I use Otter AI to try, which has changed everything, because I came from the world before that kind of transcription and people make it more complicated. Sometimes I have the Otter app on my phone. If I'm doing a zoom interview with someone. You're not always controlling that zoom interview and able to record. Sometimes you can, but if I'm recording the zoom, I also have Otter running. I just run it on my phone. I set it down right next to the computer so I have a backup and plus it's giving you, it's doing the transcription for you. It's not only recording the calls, it's just wonderful. So I don't know how we all did it without that, but I remember it was a big, horrifying pain, to be honest.

Speaker 1: 10:48

Otter, I do that. I started doing that when I was ghostwriting books and I've never looked back. So I use Otter and if I'm running the zoom call, I use Fathom, yeah.

Speaker 2: 10:58

I like when I can have two different recordings of something, just because we've all had that horrifying experience where something went wrong. The other thing that I don't know if everyone knows about Otter let me throw this in here, since we have a minute to talk about this so you record, you do an interview, you have it transcribing on Otter and then you can go on your computer and go back to that Otter transcript that's been created. You can listen to it as you read through it and you can even put it on a faster speed. So it goes quickly and if there's some area you know you're going to use, some quote or some paragraph that you know you're interested in, you can just go right to that part, listen to it, check it, make sure the transcription is right, fix it if you need to, and then just browse with your eyes, look down to the next part you want, click on that part. It'll play just that part of the audio, correct it. It's just so easy to use.

Speaker 1: 11:52

I'm such a fan.

Speaker 2: 11:52

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 11:53

No, I'm a big fan of that too. What other tools do you use?

Speaker 2: 11:57

Grammarly. I use Grammarly as my last little shot at that After I've done my final edit. I think that's a really, really nice way to present yourself as polished as possible. I use Calendly for having people set up interviews, which save so much time, and it's so easy.

Speaker 2: 12:15

I use FreshBooks for my invoicing, which I really like, and it also makes things very easy. That's what I can think of off the top of my head. But yeah, all these systems have sort of come about bit by bit but make my days and my business much more organized and easy to deal with.

Speaker 1: 12:33

Yeah, how do you qualify your clients At what point in the process, or do you, do you still qualify your clients at some point, like before a discovery call? Oh, absolutely.

Speaker 2: 12:43

I think what I have gotten to the point I do now is when someone first contacts me. A lot of times people contact me first and we're looking for somebody to write this on this topic. Are you interested in available? And with? Probably my first response to them will probably be yes, I do have some time. Can I get an idea of your rate for that? So I make sure we're on the same page? Just because when you don't do that, you sit there and have a half hour phone call with someone, which is such a waste of time because at the end you realize they want to pay you five cents a word.

Speaker 1: 13:19

That's not that anymore, right.

Speaker 2: 13:21

No one can accept that, and that's just. And the people who are paying professional rates? They don't bat an eye. I have had no one ever hesitate to answer that question, so I recommend that. Yeah, I think that's a change too. I'd need to know more about this project to give you my rate, but can we just or I might say, if I know enough about it, for an article of that length with that many reviews, I might charge between this and this. I just get that price out there at the beginning, because that's going to separate the wheat from the chaff.

Speaker 1: 13:51

Yeah, I always ask for budget and I ask for it before we do a discovery call, if I can. Sometimes not so much. I ask that question because the next question is about setting expectations, and sometimes you can't set expectations if the client ends up being bad because you didn't qualify them. And this is something I've seen more often lately is people are like I have bad clients and I'm like, no, you have the wrong clients and it's because you didn't qualify them and then you didn't set expectations. So we know it's crucial you and I both do it, but how do you make sure that your clients have a clear understanding of the project scope, timelines and deliverables? Do you do a contract, a statement of work, or do you just lob it out there in an email?

Speaker 2: 14:35

I used to do statements of work more often and I don't do them as much now, unless it's some really big, complicated project. Now what I do is I make sure I ask all those questions and I make sure there's an email trail of them and if it's been confusing, I might restate it all okay, and email it back to them just to make sure on the same page. I'm understanding that it's this, that you're going to need it this time, that this is what you need, whatever. But yeah, I think you just have to and this comes with experience, although let us teach you.

Speaker 2: 15:05

If you don't have the experience, you have to ask the questions. You have to make sure you understand what the project entails, what they're looking for, so that you don't have project creep. I always try to state to in my email back okay, this is my fee and it includes this, this and this. Anything beyond that will be charged additionally. Nice, because you know. Then it's very clear and right. Then they can say okay, wait a minute, we do want this, and then you can make an adjustment till everybody's satisfied that you're on the same page.

Speaker 2: 15:36

That's very nice, same with the timeline, make sure you know when they need it and what your due date is, and that it works for both of you and deliverables. You need to know exactly what they're expecting from you. Those are just things you need to ask about and keep on top of until you're sure you both agree.

Speaker 1: 15:52

Now, do you do all of that kind of negotiating through email, or do you hop on a discovery call and find out about the project? Or does it depend on the type of project?

Speaker 2: 16:01

It totally depends. It totally depends. I do both. Sometimes it's easy to do an email and or I've worked with these people before, or it's a small project. A lot of times we'll get on the call and then we'll hash it out. Then it just depends.

Speaker 1: 16:15

Yeah, I do discovery calls with all of my new clients because sometimes you can see things looking into someone's eyes that you can't in an email. Also, if you're on there and they're calling you darling and dear, the entire call, you have to decide whether or not you can deal with that during the entire working relationship. That's an extreme situation. It doesn't happen very often, but it does happen. All right. On that note, dealing with difficult clients it's a challenge. It's a challenge no matter how long you've been in the business or in any business. How do you handle challenging situations? We had a question about this earlier this week that neither one of us deal a lot with disagreements anymore, because we've nailed down how not to. When you do have a disagreement or something's gone wrong with the project and they're placing the blame on you and it wasn't your fault or whatever the situation is, or even if it was your fault, how do you deal with that so that you can maintain a positive working relationship if it's a client you want to keep?

Speaker 2: 17:17

Well, there's a lot there, Okay. So yeah, first of all, I can't even think of a challenging situation or a disagreement that I've had with a client in years because, like you said, I think if you do everything right to start, you eliminate those problems. So that's the most important thing I'll say in general, if you do have something that comes up where there's disagreements or there's a problem, the number one thing to do is to just attack it, and I mean that in a way I don't mean that in a vicious way. I mean straightforward, be straightforward. Okay, get the phone call because things get hashed out better on phone calls always and say okay, I'm so sorry. Well, I don't know if you want to say that, but you say I realize that we have a problem with this particular thing, so let's talk about that and figure that out and what we need to do. That'll diffuse a lot of problems right there. If they see okay, she sees this too and she's willing to work with us, maybe half the time you can resolve it right there. And I would always want to resolve it if I can, because I don't know if I'm going to want to work with that client again, but I want to end up with having had a good situation with them People. That's human nature.

Speaker 2: 18:36

If it doesn't go especially well and you've done all the right things, then why didn't it? I'd spend some time thinking about that. I'd think about is it the client? Am I working with the wrong kinds of clients? Maybe they're not as professional as they should be? Did I handle it wrong? Maybe I'll run it by someone else that does what I do appear. What would you have done? Maybe I will work with that client again, maybe I won't. That's very possible, I think. Try to head things like that off by making sure you know what's going on at the beginning and being very, very clear both ways, and then when something comes up, address it and try to clear it.

Speaker 1: 19:18

This is hope for those who are just starting out as freelancers. It will get better. You deal, you struggle, with a lot more. At the beginning. You have a lot more uncertainty Am I doing this right? Are they doing this right? Are they being overbearing? Are they treating me like an employee? You asked yourself all of those questions because you're not sure of where you are.

Speaker 1: 19:36

But that attention to detail and I think I've said this in every call so far your onboarding of your client, whatever that looks like, however detailed it is, needs to be thorough. It doesn't all have to be written out on a checklist the way I do it, but it needs to be thorough. That stops a lot of this before it starts. If you pay attention to what's happening while you're working on the project, though, you see those potential issues before they become issues, and that's what Leslie is saying. You step in there and you head it off and you say, hey, I noticed in an email the other day that someone had said this thing and that actually isn't where we're going with the project and I don't want to get to the end and have someone with unreasonable expectations. Can we deal with that now, or can we discuss that to make sure everyone's still on the same page, and I do that constantly. Communication, and its proactive communication, is how you do not have challenging situations and disagreements.

Speaker 2: 20:36

Yeah, I think that's so important and it's something you learn and you get better at over time. But make a big point of doing that, because it makes all the difference in the world. Nobody wants to have a business where you're butting heads all the time.

Speaker 1: 20:50

And Leslie and I are both content writers and content strategists, and we're in the content world. But this is true for anything PR for designers, for landscapers. If you own a brick and mortar business and you have people coming in, one your clients not always right, but neither are you. But if you reach an accord at the beginning so that you know that you're both walking the same path, that's the big thing, makes a huge difference. So I'm so happy you've been here, leslie. So now I understand that you've recently done something that is not content writing. You are starting a YouTube channel, which I'm excited about because that's on my agenda after I get this podcast going, is it? Oh, that's exciting. Yes.

Speaker 2: 21:36

Yes, I started a YouTube channel. I'm a YouTuber how weird is that? And I love it. It's brand new. But it's called Midlife Dialogues and it's about I'm just really interested in people who are embracing their midlife, which I call like age 50 or so on. So what I'm doing is the main gist of this channel is I'm talking to people who are doing really interesting things. At that point of their life They've started something brand new, or they've taken something on, or they've got a hobby or they've changed how they're living. There's people doing such interesting things and that has always been really interesting to me and I decided I'm going to start interviewing these people and putting them up on YouTube. So I'm just doing interviews and teaching myself to edit, which I also really enjoy. Remember, I started in broadcast journalism.

Speaker 2: 22:27

I'm enjoying that and I also. I have one episode up now and it's something else that I think will appeal to that age group and it's a book review for really good novels I've read recently, so I'm going to have other content interspersed within these interviews, but I'm really enjoying it. It's really fun. That sounds interesting to anybody. Please check it out at YouTube. Midlife Dialogues.

Speaker 1: 22:48

Yes, and midlife is the state of mind people. You don't have to be over 50 to enjoy over 50 content. I fall into that section of TikTok every once in a while and I absolutely love it because they've lived life. I'm thrilled you're doing this One because I think you're going to find a young demographic that watches you as well, because when I grew up, learning from our elders and quotes, there was something that was really important. We didn't have all of the internet, we didn't have the school of TikTok and the school of YouTube, so we actually had conversations back in the good old days, where people talk to one another, which is fun. But I think this is such a great way for younger people to hear from the generation right before theirs so that they can actually learn from them, because I think there are a lot of issues caused nowadays because that connection is gone.

Speaker 2: 23:43

Yeah, that's a good point. This is a way to see that maybe your kids are off to college and your life's not over. You've got so many decades left and there are such interesting things to do. Don't stop. You've got more free time, more free time. Now go for it. I just look around and so many of my friends are doing interesting things, which is what got me started and I was like well, this is kind of exciting, yeah.

Speaker 1: 24:06

And for those of you out there in your early 30s, remember that 150 years ago 30s, 33, was midlife, so that's a constantly moving line. So you might want to start beefing up on that content now 50 is the new 33.

Speaker 1: 24:22

50 is the new 33. All right, one last question, leslie, and once again thank you so much for being here today. I've really enjoyed having you and I hope you'll come back in the future and we can talk about how your YouTube channel is gone, All right. So last question what advice would you give to service providers looking to create lasting, successful partnerships with their clients?

Speaker 2: 24:44

Let's see what would I recommend. I think you know remember what you're doing and why you're doing it. The reason I'm doing what I'm doing is I love freelancing, I love creating my own business. I work here at home, which is great. I live in the rainforest out in the country in Hawaii and it's just a lovely place to be. I was asking Teresa did she hear the birds in the forest outside as we're recording here? This is what I want to do. I want to work with people who need the skills that I have and I want to enjoy my workdays.

Speaker 2: 25:18

So creating lasting and successful partnerships to me is just finding the right kind of clients. I know what it is that I like doing and I know how to do this content marketing, writing about tech. There's a lot of people that need that. So it's about finding those people and then having good relationships with them. These are real people and when you can chit chat a little bit, kind of have these little bits of friendships with people, that makes your day more interesting. It makes their day more interesting. It makes it easier to work with them, friendly, little back and forth.

Speaker 2: 25:51

So I would say be yourself, be friendly, do the whole job. That's what I raised my daughter saying do the whole job, do a good job. That's one of my things I always think about is I want them to hire me again, so I'm going to get this thing in on time and all those little things. They said they needed a headline and a deck, and those are going to be there and I'm going to have reviewed and made sure I hit everything. Do the whole job. So they don't have to come back to you and say, hey, what about this? That's part of it. Just do a good job and clients are going to be thrilled to work with you and they're going to continue to do so.

Speaker 1: 26:29

That's, everything's relational Do it, do it right and do it in a friendly, professional manner. Yes, so that's the way I approach everything. And if you do all of those things and it seems like a lot, but it's not, it's very simple steps to take Then you'll walk away with super fan clients who will not only hire you for new projects but they'll refer you out. And once you start getting those referrals, your business will snowball and you'll never look back.

Speaker 2: 26:56

And I think it takes a certain kind of person to be a freelancer. But if you're that person, you can do it. It's all out there. You can do it and it's a great life.

Speaker 1: 27:04

It's fun, just be the boss of your business. Leslie, thank you so much for being here. I've really appreciated having you on the show.