Back
Intro
Greetings from your friendly neighborhood strategist ❤️🔥
What are you working on these days?
🔹Re-launch Brandcrafters Guild: a membership for creators to craft their brand and marketing strategy to grow their community. I currently have 3 members, but I haven't hard launched it yet. I need to create a MVP and launch it.
→ My launch goal is to get 25 new members at $55/month.
🔹Grow Brandcraft newsletter: a free Substack newsletter to help creators grow their brand without burning out. This is usually people's first point of contact with me, and it feeds my automated email marketing. I know I need to be more consistent with this and share it more.
→ I currently have 98 subscribers with a 45% average open rate.
→ My first goal is to grow the community to 250 subscribers with a 50% average open rate.
🔹Monetize Medium: Medium takes the place of a self-hosted blog and allows me to establish authority, grow community, and monetize content. (It'd also help grow Substack and my membership + serve as a portfolio for ghostwriting.) To monetize, I need 100 followers.
→ I currently have 36 followers with 2 articles.
→ My goal is to post at least 1 article a week and get 100 followers by end of Q3.
🔹Create Scale With Words: a ghostwriting service for 6 and 7-figure creators. I've ghostwritten content since 2008 and copy since 2017 as a freelancer, and I shifted into brand and content strategy in 2019 when I saw people were winging it. With SWW, this is less chaotic freelancer vibes. I'll repurpose AV content into written content -- e-books, articles, and newsletters. Since some people won't have a clearly defined brand or content strategy (or want to reposition), it's a natural way to lead people to strategy consulting.
→ I currently have one strategy client who wants me to ghostwrite several ebooks.
→ My goals with SWW are to get launched and get 10 retainer clients (articles + repurposing) + 3 ebook clients (in addition to my current client).
What can the WIP community help you with right now?
🔹Encouragement + accountability to stay consistent. I'm definitely not as consistent as I could be, and a large part is not having a community to stay accountable to (and not taking my own goals seriously because I'm overworking for and undercharging clients).
🔹Connections/referrals. If you know someone who could benefit from working with me (and if you think I do good work), I'd love referrals (and have a referral incentive).
What can you help others with?
🔹Freelancing questions. I've been a freelance writer since 2008, so I'm happy to jump in and answer questions for those looking to start.
🔹Super quick brand, copy, and content audits. If you're questioning if your positioning is strong enough or if your headline is enticing, I've got you. It wouldn't be a full audit since I charge for those, but I'd love to give insights.
🔹Connections/referrals. I've been doing this for 15 years, and my network/community is strong. I enjoy connecting people together and making sure my people get what they need.
Something else you want to share?
→ Where I hang out: Threads, Quora, LinkedIn, Substack, Medium
→ I'm a single mom of two kids (and two cats + two snails) and I juggle a consultancy, copyediting services, plus my goals, so I'll be as active as possible here. But also, I usually just need a nap.
→ I'm AuDHD with OCD and some other word salad stuff, so if you're neurospicy and struggle with mental health stuff while also working on your goals, you're a badass. Keep going. :)
👋 Join WIP to participate
👋 Welcome Cat! Awesome intro.
Thank you!
And thank you for inviting me! I'm already loving this community and how it's keeping me accountable to actually making 1% progress on my goals each day.
Hey Cat! Welcome to WIP. Seems like you’re working on a lot of different projects on top of being a mom. Not sure how you manage it all 😅
For your work projects, do you feel like they tie together well (e.g. progress with one project, makes the other easier) or does it divide your time and attention?
It’s something I still struggle with myself, although I try to repurpose the learnings of one project into the next.
don't forget, 2 snails as well! 🐌🐌
One does not simply forget the snails! (insert Mordor meme)
It isn't one of those immortal snails is it?
knowyourmeme.com/memes/immort…
👀 new weekend project coming 😆 inspired by @cat wip.co/projects/immortalsnail
Omg CLEARLY I need to be on TikTok because I had NO IDEA this was a thing! 🤣
Also, I saw your project before I saw this comment, so that makes it even more hilarious.
Mostly because I have to keep going! 😅 (That and a LOT of Death Wish coffee. I'm pretty sure I could single-handedly keep them in business.)
They definitely tie in! I wouldn't be able to do everything if they weren't. (Even super moms have a limit!)
→ Substack + Medium are my content marketing platforms that lead to Brandcrafters Guild (membership community) or 1:1 consulting work. (🤞)
→ Scale With Words is the newest add-on, but not really because I've been ghostwriting since 2008. I just took a break, and I'm moving from freelancing to building a brand (that I could potentially one day sell). The great thing about Substack and Medium is that they're public content and can be used as a portfolio (and for leverage to get published elsewhere, increasing my reach/visibility for more opportunities with ghostwriting).
It just looks like I have a lot going on because I separated them into different projects to make sure I'm staying accountable to my goals and not neglecting anything.
Welcome!! 🎉 great to have you here Cat!
Thank you for your warm welcome! 😄