Here’s the Sign You’ve Been Looking For: Goals Can Change
By: Emily Bezak Writes
Tags: Freelance Writing, Dreams, Goal Setting, Goals, Marketing

Remember when I said I was going to turn my freelance gigs into a real, live business? Yeah, that was in January 2020. So basically, 10 years ago at this point.

At the time, I had two regular clients I had worked with since 2017 on Upwork. I made my first hire. And I created an online presence for my business with social media business accounts and this blog. For the first two months of the year, I actually operated at a loss. But I decided to take my own advice of how-to market my services, and I was confident the pieces were in place and I just needed a bit of time.

A lot has changed since then, and as we approach the end of the holidays I can’t help but reflect on what I’ve accomplished and learned. I’m also here to tell you: Goals can change. And it’s totally OK.

Goals Can Change: I Didn’t Quit My Day Job in 2020

I started this blog at the beginning of this year with my goals for 2020, including quitting my day job in favor of becoming a full-time freelance founder. But, 2020 has been a mess. With rapid growth this year, and volatile uncertainty in the job market, I haven’t accomplished this goal. Instead, I’ve changed my goals. And I’m here to say you can too.

My Hours Were Cut at My Day Job for 6 Months Due to Covid-19

I was very lucky with this one. The pandemic has left thousands without work or forced to work overtime, depending on their industry. I’m a contract employee in digital marketing. And when we were sent home to work for two weeks in March, I knew there was more than a good chance I could find myself laid off. Luckily, I kept my job. But, my weekly hours were cut for six months. I had to figure out how to supplement my income and diversify my income streams even more to decrease our dependence on my day job to pay our bills. All at once.

This uncertainty led me to change my approach to my work. I needed my full-time job, and I also needed my freelance work.

Freelance Writing is Booming in The New Normal

Over the summer, I found many new clients to help with their blog content, copywriting and editing, and social media strategies. Over the summer, it seemed like every day I got a hot lead right into my LinkedIn and Instagram DMs. The common thread was companies were learning how important good content was for driving brand awareness, business growth, and building a community. In fact, ad agencies accounted for more than half of all layoffs reported in May 2020. And this shift, coupled with dismal forecasting for advertising spend this and next year, CMO and marketing department clients are facing a new set of challenges as their agency partners seem to make less sense as time goes on.

Companies that laid-off their marketing departments or severed ties with expensive agencies learned quickly they had a large gap in developing content that moves the needle toward business goals. With an agency model, the hourly fee you pay includes creative staff, an account manager, potentially an account supervisor or director, the C-suite and director-level teams that all result in markups and overhead on top of the fee for doing the actual work. For example, a blog post from me could easily be triple the price if completed in an agency format. Additionally, if CMOs are used to their agencies doing-it-all for that specific blog post (content, images, design, posting, social promotion), there are sure to be some spots they’re overpaying for in the sake of only having one point of contact for all the work. Convenience is starting to be a smaller part of the conversation as purse strings tighten and marketing departments on the corporate side continue to thin.

Should I Start My Own Marketing Agency?

Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce. I could’ve used my maiden name and called myself Harnett Bezak. Sounds so cool, right? As more and more companies came to me for content development and creation, I quickly felt the desperate need to scale my business and adjust my business model to accommodate the demand.

One Week I Onboarded Six Clients

You read that right. I onboarded two Pittsburgh startups, a corporate client, a Bay Area group in the tech space, and a handful of agencies and small businesses in the matter of a week. It was exihilirating and overwhelming. After work, I’d have 2–3 hours of onboarding or pitch calls with prospects. My weekends were filled with double-digit hours of work. And I engaged my network of freelancers for help on things like research, external linking on blog posts, and social media post research for news stories. And I relied heavily on my core team to keep this blog and my social media accounts active with guest posts and social media takeovers.

I also hired a digital operations manager, Emma Ferrick of ELF Operations. She helped me automate my onboarding process on my website with my calendar and onboarding forms. She has also overseen tech transfers from Trello to ClickUp and Hootsuite to Social Pilot. So far, so good. And if you find yourself becoming a bottleneck for your team or spending more time on admin work of your business than your actual work, I highly recommend outsourcing to a virtual admin or a digital operations specialist like Emma for also scaling your business. For me, both of these phenomena crashed right in front of me at the same time, and I needed to scale and work hard at the same time.

Around late July, I was riding high as a CEO making deals and taking names. The answer was yes, and I’d fall in line ASAP. Things were happening fast, I was closing every sale, and I was writing A LOT.

Surprise, Surprise: I Hated What I Created

But guess what? I hated it. After two months, I hated being an agency owner. I realized as much as I said I didn’t want to own an agency, I was in fact the owner of an agency. Not only did I make up the loss in income from my full-time job, but I was also able to invest in my business with marketing pieces, hire a freelance graphic designer on retainer, furnish a home office in cash, and save 3–4 months of my income to prepare for any job loss. I was also paying my team more than ever, and we were running a well-oiled project management process of my own design.

Every piece that left the door was still written by me, and more and more companies wanted me to do more and more for them. Soon I was creating Canva templates for social media images and launching emails in various tools, like Campaign Monitor and Mailchimp. Quickly my main business problem was I needed more hours in the week. I worked until 4AM during the week at least once. I worked all weekend. And even though I worked from home and only left for things like prescription refills or picking up groceries curbside, I never saw my husband or my dogs for more than an hour or two around dinner. And it sucked.

I changed my process of doing work three times. I outgrew and doubled my income twice in one month. But I still didn’t want to leave my full-time job. And at the end of the day, I didn’t like what I was doing despite the income. I wasn’t going to be excited to work on the work I was doing. And I started to dread reading my business emails or waking up on weekends. It felt like work.

So, I changed my business model again.

Here We Go: 2020 Is Almost Over [What I’m Working On + What’s Next]

That’s right. I think in total, I’ve had three different businesses this year. The combination of massive growth and transformation in the market in 2020 has been quite a challenge to overcome as I set out to make my business my full-time job.

I’ve had to scale back on offerings, make extremely tough calls on what I can do vs. what I really want to do. And I’ve carved out a niche for myself that isn’t specific to an industry or skill. Instead, my niche is based on the type of client and the process by which we work together. And although I have resolved to keep my full-time job, for the time being, I’ve shifted how I do my work to create something that fills my tank with excitement and satisfaction.

Over the next few months, here’s what you can expect from me:

A new brand and website (squeal)

More valuable blog posts and content about marketing and starting your own side hustle

New service packages and digital products

Growing Marketers in PJs into in-person events (post-COVID) and recorded interview format (podcast, maybe?)

AND a new physical product launch specially-designed for freelancers like me (ETA: February 2021)

I also plan to take some time off around the holidays. I’ve worked way too much this year. And I need to scale back on the work I do and ensuring the work I take on is something that feeds my appetite for creativity.

Find Your Place in Marketing with Friends

Digital marketing. Strategic content. MarTech stacks. Social media becoming the new PR. There’s a lot of marketing to keep up with, and there are endless career paths to choose from and navigate. It’s so much easier (+ more fun!) with friends. As a marketers, it’s difficult to be an expert in ALL. THE. THINGS. Algorithms change so frequently. Platforms update more rapidly than ever. And every-single-thing is now digital. Wouldn’t it be great to have a circle of marketing friends in your back pocket during the workweek?

Join the Marketers in PJs community on Slack. Add the workspace to your existing Slack account you use at work or for networking groups, and enjoy the benefits of asking expert marketers in various disciplines at any time. We share job referrals, freelance gigs, and swap best practices and brainstorm ideas for everyone’s toughest or most nagging marketing questions.