twallis2013 – Trevor Wallis

The Writing Cooperative: Building Your Writing Business with Momentum

Building a writing business takes hard work to get started. You constantly worry that, if you stop for even just a few hours, your business will come screeching to a halt. Even after you’ve built some traction in your business, it can still be hard to close your laptop, shut down your email and just breathe for a few days.

Originally published on: The Writing Cooperative

Momentum carries your business forward, even when you take your foot off the gas.

The Grasp of Growth

I’ve been building my writing business for several months now. Every day I get up early and stay up late working on projects, pitching new clients, connecting with fellow creatives and honing my website and LinkedIn profile.

My brother got married last weekend in Michigan in a beautiful outdoor ceremony on Friday evening. It had been a while since many of our friends and family gathered so it was an exciting week (and sometimes stressful…you know how weddings can be) of celebration and reunion. Yet, I still struggled with setting my writing business aside for even just a few days while I traveled and celebrated.

I read and listen to a lot of entrepreneurial stories. I hear successful business people like Elon Musk talk about putting in hundred-hour weeks, staying up all night and ignoring personal hygiene, fitness, and connection to build their businesses. I see how it consumes them, takes over their lives and sometimes destroys them. I’ve always thought “That will never be me. I won’t let something command that much of my time.” But I get it now. When you care so deeply about something that you pour yourself wholeheartedly into its success it becomes nearly impossible to stop–even just for a little while.

Momentum Moves Your Writing Business

Entrepreneurs struggle with work-life balance because they don’t understand the principle of momentum.

Momentum is mass in motion. When an object starts moving it requires less energy to maintain or increase its speed and more energy to stop or slow it down. An object’s momentum is determined by multiplying its mass by its velocity. The bigger and faster the object, the more difficult it is to stop. (It turns out I’m still a little bit of a physics nerd… this is the second physics principle I’ve referenced this month.)

Momentum will keep your business moving forward even when you take your foot off the gas. Once you build enough momentum in your writing business you’ll still have work, you’ll still find new clients and you’ll still be seen as a valuable writer even when you take a few business days off for vacation.

It takes a lot of energy to get your writing business moving. You need momentum and you can build it in two ways–size and speed.

Mass Builds Momentum

Your business will build momentum by increasing its size. When you first start your writing business it will be small. That’s just the nature of it, you know? You have no clients, only one employee (ehem… you), and, if you’re like me, only a few hours a day to dedicate to its growth.

Landing your first few regular clients will do wonders for your momentum. You don’t have to spend as much time searching for new clients and can instead focus on creating content that makes your current clients happy. You have more control over your workload and your income when you have regular work. Now, instead of writing email proposals or browsing freelance hiring websites you spend your time writing words that actually get you paid. Growing your business’ size makes you more efficient and allows you more time to breathe throughout the week.

Bigger isn’t always better

You do need to be strategic in how you increase your business size, though. Building the wrong way will only slow your momentum rather than increase it. Focus on growing vertically rather than horizontally. Establish your credibility and build your client list within one focused industry vertical before you even consider expanding to offer more services to your clients.

For instance, if you are a blog writer, don’t offer email marketing, paid ad consultation, brand development, and web development on your service list before you’ve established yourself as a reliable blog writer. Doing so will only confuse your customers and spread your attention and expertise across too many services, keeping you from developing your blog writing skills.

Cut out extras and focus on your One Thing

I had to make this decision when I started my content writing business. Before it launched, I invested in a Facebook ads course to learn another potential service that I could offer clients. However, once I tested my writing abilities and started seeing growth at Wallis Creative I decided to put Facebook ads on the back burner while I focused on building my reputation as an expert writer.

Making tough decisions like this will keep your business lean and focused while building momentum through growth.

Velocity Builds Momentum

Velocity builds your writing business’ momentum by increasing your content output and client acquisition. The hardest part of starting a writing business (or any business, really) is taking that first step. We are much more likely to stay still and do nothing because we don’t want to give our business that initial burst of energy to get us moving. Building momentum through velocity requires more energy to go from 0 to 1 than from 1 to 2 to 3 and so on. That’s because you have no momentum. However, once you start, it becomes much easier to grow from there.

The more clients you land, the faster you land clients

There is good news, though! Being small in size makes it easier to grow in speed. You don’t have the pressure of landing a $50,000 client in your first month. As a new writing business, you can land a $100 client or a $1,000 client instead. Small jobs are much easier to land for new writing businesses and, after you land a few clients, you’ll notice something incredible–clients start coming to you. Once that happens you can be much more selective in who you work with and for what price. You’re building momentum through velocity.

The more you write, the fast you’ll write

As you continue to write, both for clients and for yourselves, you’ll boost your momentum through velocity in another way–writing speed. Being a fast writer will help you create more content, land more clients and make more money. After all, you have a very limited number of hours to work on your writing business every day. You better make the most of it!

If you’re new to regular writing you might notice one glaring problem–it takes you forever to write just a few paragraphs. How will you ever be able to write enough to make a living as a professional writer?

Hang in there! The more you write, the faster you’ll write. Once you learn to write faster, it will be much easier to build momentum for your writing business.

Wrapping Up

Building a writing business takes a lot of hard work and dedication. In the beginning, you’ll spend hours and hours working on your business to see just a little bit of progress. That’s because new businesses take massive amounts of energy to build the momentum needed to keep things rolling.

But once you put that effort in and begin growing your business’ size and velocity you’ll find a really cool thing happening–your momentum will allow you to step away for a bit without your business crashing and burning. At first, it may be only a couple of days, but that’s usually all you need to refresh and prepare yourself to keep pushing your business forward. If you keep building, you may be able to walk away for even longer, allowing your team (if building a team is your thing!) to care for your clients and create your content while you’re gone.

What steps are you taking to build momentum for your writing business? Share some love for your fellow writers by leaving a comment here to share your momentum building tips and tricks!

MacMillan Design: Managed SEO Service Executive Summary

At times your business will need a more formal document to explain a new service or approach investors. When MacMillan Design developed their new Managed SEO service they called on me to create an executive summary concisely explaining the details of their service.

Written for: MacMillan Design

MacMillanDesign.FullyManagedSEO.ExecutiveSummary-1

Medium: A Brief Primer on the Coffee C-Market Crisis

Concise explanations are a great way to quickly share the important details of the services you offer. An article like this makes either a great short blog post or an approachable piece of web content.

Originally posted on: Medium

The coffee commodity market (commonly called the C Market) is at an all-time low, and it is causing a global coffee crisis.

What is the C Market?

The vast majority of the world’s coffee is sold as a commodity future. Purchasers place contracts on large lots of coffee to be delivered sometime later. For coffee, that often means a full season or more in the future.

In theory, this system is helpful for both the farmer and purchaser. It allows the purchaser to lock in a price, and it guarantees payment for the farmer. But what happens when too much coffee is produced?

Why is the C Market so low?

The drop in the C price is caused by two factors: overproduction and currency devaluation.

The two largest coffee producing countries are Brazil and Vietnam. Over the last few years they have produced so much coffee that there is now a global oversupply. Because commodities are sold in one giant bucket, this affects the price of all commodity coffee globally.

This price drop is compounded by the devaluation of the Brazilian real against the U.S. dollar. Suddenly, a dollar buys more coffee from Brazil, causing the price to drop even further.

Currently, coffee is selling for less than $1/lbs. Here’s the problem: it costs farmers ~$1.20/lbs to produce. This means farmers are now growing their coffee at a loss, and it is creating a crisis.

What are the effects of a C Market crash?

When farmers produce coffee at a loss, it creates a snowball effect that continues for years. They now cannot afford to perform necessary maintenance on their farms. This leaves their crop susceptible to crop infestations that destroy crops and ruin livelihoods. If a farmer cannot maintain his farm, he produces less coffee and brings in less income, making it even harder for him to recover.

Nearly 20 million households worldwide depend on coffee production for their income. Many of them are already abandoning their coffee and growing other, more profitable crops. In many countries the farmers are returning to poppy and other illicit and dangerous products in order to survive.

Wrapping Up

The global coffee market is at a crossroads. Coffee companies further down the value chain can help alleviate the problem by bypassing the C market and purchasing directly from farmers. The specialty coffee industry and the Fair-Trade movements are already working toward that goal, but they only cover a small portion of the world coffee market.

If the C Market does not recover soon, the global coffee industry will look drastically different before these initiatives can make a large positive impact.

The Startup: Three Lessons from a Creative Pro (hint: it’s not me)

I’m a big proponent of conversation. It builds relationships, strengthens communication skills, and motivates you to keep moving forward. In this blog article I detail three key lessons I learned from a conversation with marketing and branding pro, Mike Spakowski of Atomicdust Marketing.

Originally Published on: goteachyourself.com and The Startup, Medium’s largest active publication

I’m a big proponent of conversation. It builds relationships, strengthens communication skills, and motivates you to keep moving forward. In this blog article, I detail three key lessons I learned from a conversation with marketing and branding pro, Mike Spakowski of Atomicdust Marketing.

This article was featured as recommended reading for Creativity and Productivity on Medium.

Conversations build confidence.

At least, that’s been my experience recently. In my journey to personal growth and continual learning, I’m figuring out that I can only get so far with one-way learning mediums. Sure. I can listen to hours and hours of podcasts (seriously, my addiction is bad…my PocketCasts app tells me I’ve listened to 135 days(!!!) worth of content), or read books and books and books, or subscribe to every blog and email list imaginable, but that will only get me so far.

It gives me knowledge, but not confidence.

I’m learning that I need someone to sit across the table from me, tell me what they do and why, and that I can do it too. Do you know why I need that?

Because podcasts, books, and blogs give me knowledge, but not vision and direction.

This morning I met with Mike Spakowski, founder and creative director of Atomicdust Marketing in St. Louis. He graciously let me pepper him with questions about his past and his vision for Atomicdust as well as trigger a few rants about creativity, motivation, and just getting stuff done.

Here are three big ideas from my conversation with Mike.

Big Idea 1: Creating Content Creates Opportunities

We are all in the same boat.

Everyone who wants to be a writer, a designer, or a creative of some sort who has any inclination for the craft is on a level playing field…until they aren’t.

So, what’s the difference between the people that make it and those who sit around moping because they didn’t?

Action.

That’s it. Those who succeed as a creative act. They create something new regularly. It doesn’t matter if it is for a client, for a friend, for themselves, or just for funsies—they make stuff. Every. Single. Day.

And I get that. On a cerebral level, it makes perfect sense. Wake up. Sit down. Write. Repeat. But what happens when you sit down to a blank screen (or piece of paper if you’re that OG) and nothing happens? You just stare at white waiting for some emotional spark of ingenuity to flow from your heart to your fingertips, magically manifesting a motivational masterpiece.

Good news: You aren’t alone when that happens. The key is to just flutter your fingers over your keys (in a word-forming pattern, preferably) until something starts flowing…making sense…creating.

Here’s an idea: write about how frustrated you are that you can’t come up with anything to write about. Just spew your frustration on the page. At least, FINALLY, you’ll have some words to work with.

Maybe it won’t be something worth putting online. Maybe it will be too raw, too emotional, too frustrating, or just too dang boring to share with the world.

But it will be a SUCCESS. Writing is happening. You are accomplishing your goal.

Lesson 2: Keep Pushing Toward the Next Milestone

Whatever you do, don’t get complacent.

It’s way too easy to stay so comfortable with where you are, that you don’t strive for where you could be. It’s too hard. Too risky. Not worth it… at least those are the lies you tell yourself.

There’s a scientific principle called inertia (side note—that’s really hard to type for some reason. I keep spelling it “intertia”), which says that an object will resist any change to its velocity. It may be more familiar as Newton’s First Law—objects in motion will remain in motion unless acted upon by an outside force. Objects at rest will remain at rest unless acted upon by an outside force. There’s resistance to change.

As people, we also experience life inertia.

We naturally run from change…by doing absolutely nothing. After all, it’s easier that way. No body just WANTS to learn a new skill, develop better habits, or change their future. Everyone needs a force motivating them to act, but it can’t just be any force. A force that is too weak can be ignored…resisted…overpowered. You need a strong force to push you out of your stationary position to move you toward the next stone on your path across the pond.

What’s that force going to be, though?

That’s the million-dollar question, right? Are you afraid of being stuck doing the same old boring work for the rest of your life? Do you have a burgeoning curiosity for the creative? Did you lose your job and now need to figure something out fast? Are your friends pushing you to finally take that creative leap you’ve talked about forever but never actually acted on?

Different forces will affect everyone differently. Some may be motivated to move by fear, while others become paralyzed by it. As you continue to grow as a writer (or whatever else you end up doing in life), you need to keep finding those forces that motivate you and keep you moving.

Your growth depends on it.

Lesson 3: Read Good Books

Mike recommended three books to help kickstart creativity and understand art, content, and branding.

The first is a short read called Steal Like an Artist by Austin Kleon. It’s written as motivational tidbits for creatives to better develop a healthy practice of content production. It’s okay to take inspiration and ideas from those you admire. You don’t have to be original because you can’t be original—at least, not entirely. Originality comes from synthesizing and recreating art and information that already exists. Make it again. Make it yours.

The second is Building a StoryBrand by Donald Miller. How do you create a brand that sticks—one that people love and come back to over and over again? You have to tell a great story, and every story has a hero, a villain, and a guide. Who plays each roll in your brand? I’m only just jumping into this one, but I’m already learning more about what story brands tell.

The last is The War of Art by Steven Pressfield. The title is a clever play on Sun Tzu’s The Art of War, but it’s fitting. Creativity is a battle. The enemy—Resistance. Resistance is the greatest obstacle to consistently create awesome work. I’m looking forward to reading this one soon.

Wrapping Up

I know, I opened this whole spiel by talking about how one-way communication only takes you so far…. But don’t worry. I’m definitely not saying you should disregard it altogether.

Instead, Be more selective in what you read and listen to. I just unsubscribed from about 20 different podcasts. I filled my TBR pile with books about story, marketing, and personal growth. I only read blogs and emails that help me develop into the person I want to become.

I just needed to trim the fat, really. Doing that gives me time to focus on what really matters—building meaningful relationships.