Lee Ellwood on editing and the value of professional networking

 

Rachel Smith: Hello and welcome to The Content Byte, a podcast for freelancers who use their words to make money. I’m Rachel Smith, a freelance journalist, copywriter, and content producer. I’m also the founder of Rachel’s List, a jobs board and community for Australian writers and other creatives. 

Lynne Testoni: I’m Lynne Testoni! I’m a journalist and content writer as well. Rachel and I are your weekly co-hosts, and every week we bring you all kinds of tips, tricks, and some fabulous guests to help you make the most of your freelance business.

This week we are looking at something that comes up a lot in the Rachel’s List Gold group, and it’s all about professional editing.

Rachel: It’s interesting, especially when it comes to qualifications, because I think you really do need them. A lot of people ask about courses and accreditation, and that’s why we have a guest on who is accredited and can hopefully tell us all about what it means and how to find work and all those things.

Lynne: It’s Lee Elwood and she definitely knows her stuff. In fact, we picked her because we wanted to cover this topic. Lee always gives such great advice in the gold group, and I always read her comments and know she can enlighten us on all the ins and outs. 

Rachel: Lee Elwood is an experienced IPEd accredited editor, content writer and copywriter based in Naarm, Melbourne. She holds professional level membership of both the Institute of Professional Editors (IPEd), and the UK’s Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP). She’s a graduate of Macquarie University’s, Graduate Certificate of Editing and Electronic Publishing. 

Through her editing and writing agency, EllWords, Lee has edited and/or written program evaluation reports, newsletters, annual reports, awards submissions, web and brochure copy, books, academic research and journal articles for a client list that includes Blacktown City Council, New South Wales Bar Association, QUT, Edith Cowan University, Leading Hand Design and social impact consultancies. Wow! Welcome Lee. 

Lee Ellwood: Thank you for having me. It’s great to be here! 

Rachel: We were just talking about the Wednesday Writing Sprint that we do at Rachel’s List and in the group, you don’t really know the ins and outs of someone’s career unless we get them on the podcast. It’s really interesting to see what you do.

You’ve been a member of Rachel’s List for years. For those of us who might not know you, tell us a bit about your business and how it’s evolved over the years. 

Lee: Originally it started as a side hustle around day jobs back in the two thousands. By about 2015, I was pigeonholed into some admin roles, and I started working seriously to get into editing. I’d worked in publishing at the National Library and the National Museum in the previous decade. As part of that I enrolled at Macquarie University in the graduate certificate, and I also got myself involved with Editors Queensland, which is the Queensland branch of IPEd. 

When a redundancy from my day job came along, it was the time where I thought, I’m going to jump off this cliff and go freelancing. Because I already had those networks established, word got around and that’s where the first work came in from.

I’m a huge fan of being an active part of networks because I think they’re really important in the communication trades. When I first started, I said yes to books, or to anything. My first jobs were self-published books and gradually, other things came along. Referrals were a big part of it through the networks. 

Over time, I’ve narrowed my focus to what I think I do best and what works best for me and my business. Now, I focus on helping purpose led organisations write effectively for impact. That might be reports and funding or award submissions, right through to content and copy.

Now it’s grown past being just me. I have a couple of regular subcontractor editors, I’ve just taken on a VA for a couple of hours a week to start, and I’ve also got a network of people that I commissioned to write articles for one of my clients. We’re really focused on scaling up at the moment.

Lynne: That’s so exciting! I did not know that it had grown so much. That’s fantastic. Well done! 

One of the things I noticed in your bio, and this is something that we’ve talked about in the Gold group, that you have a professional accreditation through IPEd. What is that and what does it involve? 

Lee: Accreditation is awarded by IPEd. It’s a program or certification that IPEd has developed. It’s validation by your peers that as an editor you know your stuff. It’s a quality measure and it says to clients that you meet at least a minimum standard of work.

I think it’s important because I often hear people say, I was good at English at school, I think I’ll be an editor. It’s so easy to hang up your shingle and say, I’m an editor, but there’s so much more to the craft of editing than that. One of the first things I learned when I went into my Macquarie course, thinking I knew quite a bit about editing, was how much I didn’t know. It was one of the most valuable things to learn at the beginning of that course. 

To get your accreditation, you sit a three-hour exam. It’s a rigorous and very tight exam. If anyone was thinking of sitting the exam, I would really encourage them to book into all the IPEd workshops that are held in the run up to equip you for being able to manage the tight time of it. 

I think you do have to be an IPEd member to sit the exam and to get your accreditation. Joining IPEd is worth it if you’re wanting to step across into editing. The other thing with accreditation is that it’s very self-validating. The week that I got my notification that I’d passed the exam was the same week I had walked out from my previous employer. 

Lynne: And thought, yay, I’ve done the right thing?

Lee: Exactly. If you’re just launching or ramping up a freelance business, it is incredibly self-validating to get that vote of confidence from your peers. 

Rachel: Amazing! Do you know, is there a certain level that you have to get to in the exam to pass? 

Lee: It’s around an 80% pass rate.

Rachel: Oh wow. 

Lee: There are three sections to the exam and I’m not sure there is a minimum pass rate that’s lower than the 80% for each of the sections, but overall, I think it’s 80% that you have to get.

It is quite a high benchmark, and the exam is so tightly engineered that I honestly feel that without doing the preparation workshops, you simply won’t be able to tackle it in a time efficient way. That’s why I think those are so important. 

Rachel: How much does membership to IPEd cost?

Lee: There are different levels. I’m a professional member, which means if you’re accredited, you change professional level. If you have enough experience, you could probably be a professional member and it’s around $260 a year.

If you’re new to the profession, you can join as an associate member, and that’s a lot less, it is there on the IPEd website and for student members who are doing postgraduate courses or undergraduate courses in writing and editing, there’s an even cheaper student rate.

Coming in as an associate member is helpful. You still get access to the networks, the training, the jargon and the technical chitchat. Once you start getting more experience or you pass the accreditation exam, you can apply to be promoted up to professional level.

Rachel: Have you found that being a member has brought you referrals through their networks or do they post work? 

Lee: They do. IPEd will email out to members if jobs come to them. It’s not a very prominent function of IPEd in the way that you have a jobs board that is a big part of Rachel’s List. Various departments or organisations will approach IPEd looking for an editor and they’ll email that out. 

There’s also an editor’s directory where people can opt to list themselves and it’s searchable by genre and location. You don’t have to be an accredited editor to list, but somebody searching can narrow it down to an accredited member. It’s worth saying there are a lot of very experienced editors who don’t have accreditation simply because their career and experience predates the existence of the accreditation program.

Rachel: Have you found that’s important for securing editing work? Is it something that your clients look for or is it something that’s more important to say, government work?

Lee: I think it’s growing as more clients and potential clients become aware that there is an accreditation program. It’s an easy way for them to look for an editor or to be confident that they’re getting a quality editor. To me, it seems to be becoming better known in government work. I believe some universities for student thesis editing will only approve editing by accredited editors. I’m not sure if that’s all universities. It’s definitely growing. I don’t know that it’s been a deciding factor for any of my clients, but I feel having it there, on my website and in all of my marketing, it is reassurance to clients they are getting a quality editing job. 

Lynne: It sounds like you also do copywriting and how does that work? 

Lee: I do content and copy. The approach I’m taking now with the clients that I love to work with is to provide them with whatever high-quality words they need to achieve their purpose.

If they need writing done, I can do writing. If they need editing, and if they’ve used AI to draft something, I can humanise that for them. If they’ve sketched out an outline of a white paper or an article, or they’ve written the whole thing themselves, we can edit it. 

It grew out of one regular client where we started with editing in all the different manifestations of editing, copy editing and then gradually growing into deeper. They started asking me to do writing as they got busier, and they got to know me better and they started asking me to write content. That opportunity got me started and I really enjoyed it. I’ve been upskilling and expanding my networks on that side as well. 

Rachel: What kind of upskilling have you done in the copywriting landscape? 

Lee: I joined Kate Toon’s group for a little while, her copywriting school, before she shifted that across to digital marketing. I joined Rachel’s List and I’ve been in some of the webinars, and I’m enrolled in Bernadette Schwerdt’s, Copy School. 

A request will come along, and I’ll know a bit about it, but I’ll go and find out more for that particular kind of writing or that particular field.

Rachel: What’s the split like between editing and copywriting in your business? Do you do a 50/50 and what do you prefer working on? 

Lee: I’d say it’s probably 60/40. It’s probably more editing. Some of that is because my subcontractors are editors. That’s still the background that I’ve come from, but the writing is growing and I’m focusing my marketing a bit more on that as well.

I really like both. I often think if I had to do just one, if I only wrote copy or content, my brain would get a bit tired and if I only edited – I enjoy doing deeper, more interventional editing. Some days I enjoy the copy editing, the consistency, grammar checks and fact checks. If I had to do any one of them all the time, I think my brain would get either bored or tired. 

Lynne: Do you find there’s a good demand for qualified editors these days and does it pay better? 

Lee: My experience is that there is as much demand for my editing as there ever has been. Some of that is perhaps to do with the clients that I’m now working with, government departments and big business. The fluctuation in demand is probably more to do with your target market. I think smaller businesses have tightened up financially. 

There still seems to be strong demand for work from self-published authors. Book editing does not pay well. It tends to be something that you do for love, not for money. Editing for government and bigger businesses tends to be better paid. 

I think there’s always going to be a demand. There’s always going to be people who will value good writing and what it can do for their business or their organisation, and those people aren’t going to go away.

Rachel: I agree with you. I know that there are a few people at Rachel’s List who considered, moving into editing or offering it as a service. I’m guessing your advice to them would be to get into IPEd and take that accreditation route. Are there any skills that are really non-negotiable for a freelance editor these days?

Lee: Yes. I would suggest they get into IPEd. Before you tackle the accreditation exam, I would get a lot of experience. The exam is really designed for people who’ve got some experience and getting involved in the networks has just been invaluable. It’s the same as content and copywriters, you pass things around each other and so forth. Until you get into that world, you don’t know what you don’t know. 

I’d love people to know, for instance, that IPEd publishes the Australian Standards for Editing Practice. The third edition was released late last year. If you’re thinking of marketing your services as an editor, I would recommend grabbing or downloading a copy of the standards and looking to see what you can do and what might need to boost. If you’re doing academic editing, IPEd also has guidelines for editing theses, and they’ve been worked out with the universities. There are areas that you shouldn’t go into and nuances. Similar to journalism, I could write a feature article, but that doesn’t make me a journalist.

There are nuances in the different areas of communication. Most editors now have at least a graduate certificate in the field, even a master’s in publishing or editing. I’ve known of people who’ve gone to TAFE and done the graduate or certificate IV in editing. That’s a great start, but you need to know that you’re up against people who’ve done this at a tertiary level, so your skill set is not going to be as well developed as others.

Join IPEd as an associate member, and then there’s always workshops and webinars on so many topics and they’re not expensive to jump into. The hour-long webinars cost as a non-member; I think $25? As a member, it’s $15. 

Knowing the really hidden mysteries of Word is a huge thing. The editing world tends to use Word more than Google Docs. Some clients do use Google Docs, but we still tend to be in Word. Knowing how to do multi-level lists using macros, all those more technical things are really important.

Language change is a big thing to stay across. I think now more than ever, the rules of language are more like guidelines than actual rules, and you need a fine-tuned sense of judgment to decide when to adhere to a rule or not stick to that rule, whatever’s best for the circumstance.

There’s a big degree of judgment involved, and grammar is never going to be useless, even though it changes. Understanding why you put the comma where you put the comma or why the syntax of a sentence is the way it is can be helpful. 

General knowledge is huge, like being able to spot if you know that Bateman’s Bay is south of Sydney and not north of Sydney, you can save the writer from stopping at Bateman’s Bay on his way from Sydney to Brisbane. It’s extraordinary the facts that you’ll stop and question because you think, that’s not right.

Rachel: Lee, I’m interested to know what different types of editing there are. How do you know what type is required on a different job? 

Lee: That’s really good question. I find that people have preconceived ideas of what editing is and that can sometimes muddy the brief, if you don’t have a conversation to clarify that.

There’s a full scale of editing, particularly for a book. Really early in the piece, you might work with a developmental editor who will help you develop your idea for the book. That’s quite a partnership. That’s quite an intensive thing, and it might not necessarily apply to an annual report. 

The next kind of editing that might happen is structural editing, which is where we’ll work with the written document to improve the flow, the structure of the whole thing, move paragraphs around and suggest breaking up chapters or sections. 

Line editing and copy editing we tend to call copy editing in Australia, but in the UK, they really differentiate the two. You’re talking here about a sentence level, word level, syntax, correct punctuation, grammar, that sort of thing. Proofreading is a funny one because technically proofreading happens to material that’s already been edited. It will be a last check of a designed document or webpage before it goes to print or before they hit publish on the webpage. That’s not the time to be picking up syntactical errors. 

Proofreading is meant to be that last check and to make sure that any copy edits and previous edits have been taken in, but people often now talk about proofreading. Really what you’ll give them is a copy edit. I find that the terminology can just muddy that conversation.

If somebody comes to me and says, could you edit my report? I’ll have a conversation with them to find out exactly what they’re imagining I’m going to do. They may only be wanting me to check the typos and put commas and capitals in the right place. They may be assuming that I will rearrange any sentences that aren’t clear. They may be hoping that I’ll just rearrange the whole document if it’s not flowing very well. But you don’t necessarily know just from the word edit.

Having a conversation and providing a list of dot points if you’re doing an editorial brief or a contract with that client, is important to understand because it varies so much in people’s minds. You might hand back an intensive edit and they’ll have a heart attack because they didn’t imagine you going that far.

Rachel: You definitely need to have that conversation. 

Lee: It’s a bit like the brief with copywriting. What is it that the client’s imagining you’re going to do? Let’s get on the same page and get it all clear and then nobody wastes time and there’s no heart stopping shocks when you deliver.

Rachel: Would you also need to see the document? What if they don’t really know what they want and you could say, can you show me a portion of the document or a sample and then I can help us work out what it needs.

Lee: That’s the absolute ideal. When you’ve got a regular client, when they’ve got repeat clients, you tend to get to know what they’re talking about. For a new client, I definitely want to see it because it can vary so much – what they want, what they can get for their budget and how much time have we got to do this in? 

Often, if people come along and say, could you edit this report, we’ll talk about budget and maybe if their budget is a little constrained, then I’ll suggest a level of intervention that I could do that would polish up their document, but still meet their budget.

Book editors in particular will always want to see a couple of chapters, at least see it if they don’t actually do the sample edit for you. 

Lynne: Which brings me to the sort of point about pricing these sorts of projects. How do you approach pricing? How do editors normally price? Is it by the word/hour? How do you do it? 

Lee: It varies. I know book editors seem to price per word. Government editors doing government work might price per hour because government departments often think in an hourly rate. I personally have in the past, based prices on an hourly rate. I’m shifting more to the project-based model. Which I think suits things like annual reports and more substantial reports, capability statements, those sorts of chunkier things. A couple of my regular clients are an hourly rate because of where the budget doesn’t quite matter and that’s just the pattern that we’ve fallen into. But I’m a big fan of project-based rates and project pricing ought to reflect the value that the output is bringing. 

Lynne: Something like an annual report, there’s certain regulatory things that you have to bear in mind, so the value is high because the risks are great if it’s not done well and it may not be the same with other things, you know? 

Lee: Yes, that’s very true. It will vary a little bit depending on how wide the audience is that are going to see it. I should say too, IPEd does publish pay rates. There’s a pay rates committee or working group and they do publish recommended pay rates. For anybody who’s thinking of working as an editor or thinking of engaging an editor, do be guided by the pay rates that are available on the IPEd website, and that will give you a bit of a guideline or a range of what you should expect to pay for a professional editor. 

Lynne: Oh, that’s fantastic! I looked at your website and I saw that you do a lot of reports, especially annual reports. Do you love those sort of detail things? Is that your thing? 

Lee: In a way that it is. I like instructions that you can follow. I like summaries that accurately reflect what’s happened. I like information on web pages that I can easily understand, and I think I’ve always been like that, and I’ve always been able to just glance at a page and notice the typo which can be very annoying people. 

Rachel: For the record, I love it when people point out my typos. I love those people, but I know I’m in a real minority because others hate it. 

Lee: Well, it depends on how you go about it, and whether it’s the right time to mention that you spotted the typo or not. I will fess up that my kids have to stop me from rubbing out chalk apostrophes on blackboards outside green grocers! It does drive me mad. 

Ultimately, I love writing that’s clear, consistent and correct because it does the job. If that means burrowing down into the details, then I’m there. I do personally get frustrated if I’m reading an instruction manual or a set of directions to somewhere and it’s just not working. I guess it’s details, isn’t it.

Rachel: On that note, what sort of work or processes are involved in pulling together an annual report, or are they all vastly different? 

Lee: For the client they’re not vastly different, but in terms of the work that comes in, they can really vary. We have one that we do each year for a legal organisation, and it’s written by one person and comes to us for a copy edit late in the piece. Other annual reports in big organisations are going to have lots of contributors from different departments, so they all come in written in a different voice.

Even if the people have been handed a template, their natural writing voice will be different. That’s a different kind of editing where you need to make it all the one voice. It needs to be a consistent document that reflects the whole organisation and often in plain English, particularly for a government department or a council.

Some clients will outsource the writing and the project management of the whole thing. Project management skills can be really important at that level. It does vary a lot and recognising the challenges that your contact person might be facing can be very helpful because sometimes your contact person is tearing their hair out, trying to get all the submissions back so that you can edit them and it can go to design on time, but they don’t have authority over the other departments. And the other departments have got their own priorities, and the annual report is not one of them. It varies a great deal depending on the client and their particular situation. 

Lynne: Do you think that all writers can benefit from learning about editing? Do you think it makes you a better writer? 

Lee: I think there are some editing practices that will be helpful for any writer to understand grammar, to understand punctuation. I think some people are naturally better writers at the bigger picture level and may not ever grasp the details of an errant comma. 

Perhaps there are others who are really good with the punctuation and the grammar, but they don’t have that bigger sense of narrative or flow that really makes any kind of document work better. I don’t think there will never be ‘no’ call for editors. I don’t think we’ll ever do ourselves out of a job by teaching people some editing tricks. 

Rachel: I worked as a sub for many years, and I still think that that is one of the best things that I did in terms of becoming a stronger and really, a tighter writer.

Lee: I think journalists who’ve done sub editing would make the step across to professional editing as a specialisation quite well, and it’s a bit sad that you can see in a lot of the journalism now that they’re doing away with the subeditors. My favourite news source, who shall remain nameless, used to be the go-to for quality writing, and they’ve got to churn out the content really quickly and there’s no subeditors to catch them. 

Rachel: It makes you wonder, how many of those subs have thought about really upskilling into freelance editing? Where have they all gone?

Lee: They must be doing something. It’s definitely an option and you just need to expand from the technical expertise that you have as a subeditor out to the bigger picture. Often when I say to people that I’m an editor at a dinner party, they automatically ask, do you edit books?

It’s interesting that people either think you’re a book editor or you’re going to be all over their capital letters and full stops, and they don’t want to show you any of their writing. But there’s a lot more to it than that. Editing can be quite creative, which people don’t realise.

Rachel: We’ve talked a little bit about how a lot of your work comes from referrals and how you do similar projects or the same projects over and again every year, but what about other lead generation tactics? Where do you find other clients?

Lee: I’m focusing more on marketing this year and I’m taking a multi-pronged approach. I’m listed in the IPEd directory, I’m ramping up my activity on LinkedIn and I’ve now started a company page for EllWords on LinkedIn as well as my own personal page. 

The important thing is being visible. If that means going to networking or industry events, find some of those events, go to them and walk up and talk to people. 

A website is a must have and I’ve recently done quite a bit of work on our website. I do have some editorial colleagues for whom that kind of standing up being visible isn’t naturally comfortable. I recognise that’s not easy for everybody, but ultimately, if you’re not visible, how are people going to see you? I think it’s important to do what you can to overcome that feeling on uneasiness. Ultimately, it’s business. 

Rachel: You’ve made me think that there is a lot of editing out there, a lot of people who still want good editors. We just talked about subediting, and I think that that is sometimes seen as a bit of a dying art. What’s your thoughts about that? We all agree that subs are so necessary, but it’s sad to see them go. 

Lee: I think subediting is still necessary, but whether the media companies will pay for it, that’s a big question. There are always people who will recognise and the value of good writing and will understand that as an outsider, I can help to deliver that for them. 

A key thing now is anybody can churn out content, which means, 80%, 50%, 70% of it is rubbish. Good writing will float to the top of that, and I don’t think the demand for good writing will go away when people are so busy, and they will stop and read stuff that’s clear, that hooks them. 

Good writing is meaningful, and I don’t think that’s going to go away. Maybe it will fluctuate. I think it’s true that smaller businesses probably get by without outsourcing, but maybe when they come back into some good financial days, they might stretch out a little bit.

I haven’t noticed AI making a big impact on my editing work in the way that it did affect a lot of copywriters, particularly in that first year. I think it’s important to be able to ride the changes that come, especially tech changes. They’re going to come whether we want them or not.

Lynne: I wanted to ask you about tech changes and AI because you did say earlier that you are sometimes humanising AI content. Some discussions we had at the summit last year was that the growth is in editing rather than content. That people are generating some AI copy, but they need a good editor to humanise it, and to check it for factual accuracy. Do you think that’s made a difference? 

Lee: I think it has changed the size, shape, and colour of editing. I think humanising AI copy is a good thing for an editor to add to their service basket because it’s not going to go away.

Its main fault is that it doesn’t have that empathetic human touch and that’s what an editor can bring. All the AI tools seem to come out of America, so anything they write are also very American. The headings will be maximum capitals. The way it uses m dashes, and everybody says that’s a sign of ChatGPT but it’s a sign of an American piece of writing. 

When you’re writing in Australia for an Australian audience, you don’t want American formatting, you want to make it Australian. I think technological change for all of us in communication is a huge thing to ride, but it can bring opportunities.

One of the big tools that many of us use is PerfectIt, which was invented by a UK company called Intelligent Editing, and most editors that I know couldn’t get out of bed without PerfectIt. It’s a kind of consistency check, like a big box of macros, but it’s invaluable for entering your client style sheet into it and run it across the document and it can pick up inconsistencies.  New tools like that come along and make a really important difference. 

Rachel: We heard some freelancers who talk about using AI as an editor. What are your thoughts on that? They’re literally putting the document in and saying to ChatGPT, where can this be tightened? Where can this be improved? 

Lynne: Any inconsistencies? 

Lee: I think people are going to do that. Again, you still haven’t got that human touch and it’s going through an American lens. It’s not a bad idea to ask it where to tighten things up, but you still need to check it to make sure that it’s done a good job. 

Rachel: It’s also almost double handling, isn’t it? 

Lee: It’s almost double handling. I use it for research before I write, for brainstorming headings or points that you might talk about, but I’ll still check out all its suggestions.

I’m not sure how well it would go in the consistency thing, because these are American programs. They don’t know the Australian conventions for copy editing. They don’t know that we use single quote marks, not double quote marks and a whole pile of other things. I feel like you’re still going to have to go over it. 

I’m not up on this, but I’m very wary about putting client work into an AI for confidentiality reasons. I think most editors feel the same. You need to be a bit careful about that side of it and the complex side of it to understand. 

Rachel: Talk to us about, what a typical week might look like for you. 

Lee: In theory, first thing Monday I will focus on my business admin and my weekly schedule and sometimes that works and sometimes it doesn’t. I do try to start my week with a focus on my business, what’s coming up, what do I need to do, schedule myself some tasks that are admin, block out when I’m going to do a particular job, how much time I need to give it and whether it’s going to come back later in the week for a second round.

Every week I will have some writing and editing work for my biggest client. Then one of the things we deliver is the Compass website about elder abuse, and that’s a fantastic project to be involved in, but every month there’s always work for Compass and for other projects with that client.

I’ll schedule what other projects are on and make sure that they get time as for deadlines. Some weeks I will co-work with one of my subcontractors on a job that we’re both doing together. Sometimes the relationship might be that they do the work and then I review it.

We are building in a QA step for most of the jobs, as long as time permits. I’m ramping up my marketing, so I’ve got to allow time for that. There’s more marketing on the weekly schedule than there was before, like doing podcasts.

Rachel: You’ve ticked that box this week! We love to ask our guests about their tech tips. We have touched a bit on technology, but you’ve already mentioned one of the tools that you would be lost without is PerfectIt. Are there any others that you really love? 

Lee: It is the main one for editing and I really do like the Microsoft Office online. We’re making a lot more use of teams for the co-work jobs that we do with the team, and we’ve got quite a few clients who bring the work to us through OneDrive or through teams.

It is handy knowing how to work in that environment and not just the desktop subscription. Business wise, I shifted to Asana late last year and its game changing. Maybe it works with my head, but I just love the way that it works. I also couldn’t get by without Rounded. My accountant does make nudges about changing to Xero, but Rounded has just been brilliant because I really don’t know a lot about bookkeeping and for a freelancer, for a sole trader, it’s been great. 

Rachel: Well, we know our sponsors will love to hear that, Lee!

Lee: I’m not just saying it. It’s easy to get enthusiastic about something that works well for you.

Lynne: Fabulous! It’s so good to find out a little bit more about your business and what you do. It’s really made me think a lot about editing and the intricacies of it, which is great. 

Tell us where the audience can find you.

Lee: Our website is https://ellwords.com.au/ and there’s lots of details about us all there and who my subcontractors are and their skills. They’ve got professional backgrounds that really complement each other and that’s part of the strength of being the little group that we are. 

I’m on LinkedIn and EllWords is on LinkedIn, so you can find either of us there. 

Rachel: Amazing! Thank you, Lee, for being our guest this week. That brings us to the end of the show, but we will see you all next week.

Lynne: We’ll put all those connections to Lee in the show notes. Thanks everybody. 

Rachel: Bye! 

 

 

 

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Credits:

Connect with Lee via her website: https://ellwords.com.au/ 

or on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lrellwood/ 

Find Lynne www.lynnetestoni.com 

Find Rachel www.rachelsmith.com.au 

Rachel’s List www.rachelslist.com.au 

If you have questions you’d like us to answer in our next Q&A episode, just send them here.

Thanks (as always) to our sponsors Rounded (www.rounded.com.au), an easy invoicing and accounting solution that helps freelancers run their businesses with confidence. Looking to take advantage of the discount for Rachel’s List Gold Members? Email us at: hello@rachelslist.com.au for the details.

Episode edited by Marker Creative Co www.markercreative.co