138: Launching and Growing A Freelance Writing Business with Rachel Mazza

Let’s welcome Rachel Mazza to this new episode of The Savvy Scribe Podcast. She is a direct response copywriter that specializes in advertorial pages that are great for tracking cold traffic. She is also helping visionaries and business owners bring their ideas to life. In partnership with Kevin Rogers of Copy Chief, they offer one-on-one and group coaching to freelancers who want to grow a successful writing business.

One of the favorite things that Rachel loves in her business and the skills that they are developing is that you can do it everywhere and anywhere. She’s been traveling around the States for 6 years now, which shows the flexibility that freelancing brings for anyone who is involved in it.

How to Launch A Successful Freelance Writing Business

Here are two pointers that freelancers must take note of before launching a freelance writing business:

• Know where you’re at
• Know what to do next

They developed a timeline called the Freelancer’s Journey. It’s a seven-step roadmap that tells you how to build a freelance writing business from scratch. It introduces the seven phases of freelancing that most freelancers go through in their careers – all the way from discovering their craft to building a legacy business that may last for generations or can sustain them until their retirement.

This tool also allows you to focus on the ‘right now’ problems that you’re in. Rachel sees common mistakes that most freelancers do is focusing on future problems that get them distracted, taking their time, energy, and resources instead of focusing on what they need right now.

When you’re first launching or starting to launch a freelance writing business, you just want to focus on the craft. One of the phases in this freelancing journey is proving the model. It doesn’t matter if you’re charging what you truly want to charge, or you’re negotiating rates and structuring complicated deals. You just want to prove the model that you can get paid and you can get feedback for the skills that you’re learning.

One of the best pieces of advice she always gives to freelancers who are just starting out their freelance writing business is that, don’t worry about building a website or getting on a podcast. Just get good, feel confident, and get paid.

How do you get good, get paid, and practice that craft

Get a coach, or at the very least, join a community. Your community can give feedback on your work, ask you questions, and help you overcome your roadblock and get specific solutions to your problems. You can also get a different level of help and expertise when you’re investing in a good online community, yet it doesn’t have to be so expensive.

Quoting Janine’s piece of advice, “once you feel good in one area, don’t be afraid to branch out in another area. When you learn all the basics, know that there’s always room to grow.”

One of the things we usually teach a lot is specializing which makes a lot of people get stuck on that idea. But really it’s just specializing the field of where you need to look.

Specializing is going to help you get your new gig or focus on what you’re writing about if you’re putting out authority content that demonstrates your expertise.

More Tips in Growing a Freelance Writing Business

Get the basics. There is a lot of free information out there: they can be your peer, a coach, a blog that talks about all things that you want to learn about. So find someone who is done with what you want to do, ask them questions if how they did it, know the things that you can learn from them, and find a community.

Don’t be afraid to ask. You don’t have to know everything; it’s okay to learn as you go.

Get to know Rachel! Visit her little home on the internet: rachelmazza.com where you’ll also find her own The Business of Writing Podcast. Don’t forget to check her out as well on Instagram: @racheljoymazza.

Also, visit coaching.copychief.com/phases to get the free Freelancer’s Journey timeline. It includes free training that will walk you through and help you identify which phase you’re in.