Lessons from entrepreneurs and how it applies to freelancers – with Bernadette Schwerdt

Bernadette: Now I think thought leaders and CEOs are totally understanding that people buy the person behind the business, and the more that they can put themselves from around the desk and in front of the camera or on blogs, wherever it might be, then people connect with them, and then they connect with the business. People like to do business with people they like.

Rachel: 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: 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.

Hey, Rach, an interesting topic today. We’re talking with a returning guest, which we love, Bernadette Schwerdt. And she’s talking about how writers and freelancers can build valuable businesses, even in this day of AI. 

Rachel: I think it’s definitely something that freelancers are toying with, worrying about – something we’re talking to freelancers about because as Bernadette says, we all need to sort of move beyond selling words by the hour, and trying to build our authority, and building scalable services and multiple income streams. That’s a really big thing now. 

Lynne: You already do that with your freelance business, and Rachel’s List, and everything. And I do that with the speaking and moderating gigs I do. But I’m really interested to hear what she’s got to say and how we can all do it a bit better.  

Rachel: Well, we have had Bernadette on before. She’s really unusual in that she’s a copy coach and a comms expert, and also an entrepreneur who does a heap of ghostwriting. She’s just published her new book, Secrets of the New Online Entrepreneurs, which I started reading, but I think it’s only published today, so I got a little chapter online, somewhere I started reading. We’re going to get into the, all about the book in this chat. And also, what the key ingredients are of successful online businesses these days, and why they fail, and what you can do to succeed. 

Lynne: It’s great. Bernadette is such an expert at picking up little nuggets and so I think she’s going to share some of them today with us. 

Welcome Bernadette!

Rachel: Welcome!

Bernadette: Hello, ladies. Thank you for having me. Good to be back. 

Lynne: Yay! Now, I know a lot of our listeners will know you, because you were a keynote speaker at the summit. We’ve both been on your podcast, which is so helpful and useful. Also, you’ve taught at the Australian School of Copywriting and the Australian Writers Centre. But how about you give everyone a bit of a refresher about how you got to what you’re doing now. 

Bernadette: Absolutely. So, I help freelance writers turn their passion for words into profit – that’s the best way of saying it and help them develop an entrepreneurial mindset so they can keep going. Because there’s going to be lots of bumps along the road, and a lot of people give up. So, my role, I think, is to help inspire people to keep going, because I’ve been a freelancer for a long time and I totally love that lifestyle, but it does require a certain mentality. And over the last couple of years, I’ve been a ghostwriter, helping CEOs and thought leaders write their books and thought leadership pieces so that they can build their brand and build their businesses and stand out.

So, that’s kind of the essence of what I do. Is that an okay ten-second pitch? 

Rachel: That was great. 

Lynne: Sounds very good. 

Bernadette: Thought it was going to take me an hour. 

Rachel: And it’s so interesting. I’m going to interject here, because I was with some of our members yesterday, and they were all talking about how CEOs and leaders need writers more than ever now, just to extract that information and turn it into something that goes online and isn’t AI slop. 

That sort of brings me to my question, because you mentioned in your pitch that copywriting is more important than ever before, and I suppose ghostwriting is, too. Talk to us about why you believe that. 

Bernadette: Well, to make the distinction between copywriting and ghostwriting, because I think, five years ago you never really heard a lot about ghostwriting. And maybe because I wasn’t doing it then, but now that I do, I see it everywhere. But I don’t think there’s a big gap between the two. I mean, the copywriters are the ultimate ghostwriters. We don’t put our names to content and so the ghostwriting component, I think, is rising, and I really do make it very similar to copywriting because the very reason you said, Rach, is we’ve all known that copywriters write copy for brand and services, et cetera. 

But now I think thought leaders and CEOs are totally understanding that people buy the person behind the business, and the more that they can put themselves from around the desk and in front of the camera or on blogs, wherever it might be, then people connect with them, and then they connect with the business. People like to do business with people they like. 

So, when I talk to copywriters about the next phase, I guess, of finding new work, there’s a rich vein of leaders out there who all have a company who need content. And that’s what the books have become, because they really are just pieces of content that go out and become your sales rep 24/7 globally.

I think it’s a really nice niche that copywriters can have because you already have the same skills as a ghostwriter. You’re good at questioning, you’re good at briefing, you’re good at writing, you’re good at extracting the goodies, you’re good at storytelling, and they’re all the things that these thought leaders need.

Lynne:  So interesting.

Is there a preference between the copywriting that you do and the ghostwriting? Is there one that you love more than the other? 

Bernadette: I think my passion has already been long form. I think that’s kind of where I’ve always had my bent, and I think everyone’s got their own little thing. Some people are very good with pithy sayings.  But I love long form because it gives me time to get the argument going. And also, I really love interviewing people about their backstories and their history and their why, and I just think that’s kind of my sweet spot. But I do think that my copywriting background has been integral to be able to do all that writing. It’s a lot of work; it’s a lot of words. You’ve got to be quite ruthless with what you leave in, what you leave out. You’ve got to know what’s a good story, what’s not. You’ve got to know what the features and benefits are – even of a person. Principle, but what’s the benefit of that principle to the reader?

So, I think the copywriting principles are incredibly important and same with journalism as to what kind of story you can tell. 

Lynne: Interesting. 

Rachel: I loved how you mentioned that writing for leaders, doing, say, thought leadership, doing ghostwriting is, there’s such a rich vein of work there for writers. Is something that – should freelancers be really actively looking at offering ghostwriting as a service right now? 

Bernadette: I think, why not? I think the need for personal branding is probably increasing because if you’re a coach, for example, and you’re a small business and you haven’t got any audience, it’s very hard to get found. But if you niche down into a particular area of coaching, e.g. coaching for tradies or coaching for women in media or coaching for athletes, then it’s easier to get found. And also, if you just create content around that and put your face to it, when people are looking, they’re going to find you and they’re going to say, “Well, I want to work with that person,” or “I don’t,” based on what they read and see. So, I think that’s the benefit there of being able to write content for people. 

Lynne: Now, how many books have you written altogether? I was going to ask you that earlier. Yes. 

Bernadette: I have written three of my own. And I have written seven for others with another one coming out in a few months. And there’s two on the go, and also, I’ve coached about ten CEOs to write their books as well. 

Lynne: Wow. 

Rachel: Wow.

Bernadette: It’s been a busy couple of years, and I recently sent out an email saying that I’ve become a bit of a hermit. I didn’t realise because, I’ve just been writing so prodigiously, and I’ve realised I’ve just got to get out a bit more.

It becomes very comfortable to be in the zone and even just getting out sometimes is a bit like, “Oh, wow, I’ve got to make an appointment for coffee.” I’m sort of losing my social skills a bit. But I’ve really enjoyed it, and I guess you get a bit of a critical mass going as well, and I’ve realised that there’s these books going and therefore other people want to see credibility, and therefore I don’t have to sell myself so much, if you know what I mean. The work comes and I guess that’s another point to make to your point earlier, Rach, was, these kinds of ghostwriting projects are quite long, and they can be quite lucrative, and it means if you do one well, you tend to get referred to others which means you never have to worry about business development ever again.

I’ve got a wait list now, and it’s just so joyful because I don’t have to think about, where’s the next job coming from and you can start to pick and choose the people you work with. And so, all these things that I talked about at your content summit is around if you can have these various forms of income, be it speaking or ghostwriting or emceeing or moderating, online courses, all these things, so if one falls off the perch, if you like, there’s another to replace it, which means you don’t have to do things you don’t want to do, and you don’t have to work with people you don’t want to work with. 

Lynne: So important. Tell us a little about this book and some of the people that you met. 

Bernadette: Well, this book is really the trilogy. The first one was Secrets of Online Entrepreneurs, and that was 2015. 2020 was How to Build an Online Business, and the publisher said, “Look, we’d really love a third to complete the trilogy.”

So, this is, I guess, I’ve gone back to all the people that I talked to all those years ago to see what they’ve done, how they’ve evolved, have they merged, have they devolved, and add new people in as well. So, I’ve got the big names like AirTasker and Luxury Escapes, Bondi Sands, Swisse, and then the smaller names as well, because I didn’t want it to be just about exiting and scaling, because I think there’s quite a predilection now for having a business that really suits your lifestyle. And in fact, a number of the people I talked to deliberately pulled back from their big businesses, with a million Facebook followers, to having just a small business with no team, just them. So, I’m kind of seeing that as well.

So that was kind of the premise, was how do you build an online business in this era? And when I say online, I mean we’re all online at some level. So, I’ve made a bit of a distinction in the book, firstly about entrepreneurial mindset, like I cover that off quite comprehensively. And then, okay, now you’ve got those fundamentals down, because you need those. It doesn’t matter whether it’s online or offline or bricks and mortar, you need a particular mindset in order to succeed. And then you bring in the online elements, and the book’s become a little bit of a blueprint for talking to social media superstars who’ve built a following from nothing, who have got an empire of masterclasses and products and services and books and groups and communities.

So, it’s kind of a bit of a playbook for whatever you want, whether it’s scaling or whether you want to just have a small lifestyle business, there’s something there for you. 

Rachel: Was there anything, like in talking to these people, anything that really surprised you or that you just weren’t aware of in terms of building online businesses?

Bernadette: I think there’s a perception that when you watch, media or you read the newspapers that these entrepreneurs win awards, and they sort of strut across the stage with their award and they ring the bell on the stock exchange. It looks kind of easy. The reality is there’s a lot more that goes on behind the scenes. And of course, that’s the job is to present, the glamorised image. So, what I tried to do in the book was really get into the hardcore details of what does it take? Because I didn’t want to just have an aphorism book, dream and believe and you’ll succeed. 

So, I talked about some of the obstacles that they’ve faced and also, how they’ve overcome that. And so, I think the first thing is these people really understand their sector. Most of them spent ten years at least doing an apprenticeship. Vince Lebon for example, who’s not a big name, but he runs a company called Rollie Nation, which is beautiful shoes. 

Lynne: Oh, I love them. 

Bernadette: Yes. They’re stunning shoes because I’ve got hard to fit feet, and they’re just outstanding beautiful shoes and they’re really soft, you know? But when I talked to Vince, he’s been in the shoe business forever. He wanted to make a shoe for his wife. That was kind of the original point. But prior to that, he studied multimedia at high school.

He did art and Photoshop, at university or post-grad. He worked in shoe shops. He worked in the shoe making business. He designed shoes and rendering shoes on 3D renders. He knew shoes backwards, right? And so, when it came time to do his thing, having worked for all these different companies, he knew exactly what he was doing.

But if you were just to not know who Vince Lebon is, you’d think, “Oh, he just got lucky.” He just loves shoes. It’s like, no, he’s an expert at shoes. And I think the same for Gabby Leibovich, for example – he was the founder of Catch and then a partner in Menulog. And it looks like he was just a really good online guy, but he had spent years working in the electronics industry prior to starting Catch. He knew everything about the supplier industry and partnerships and things and vendors. So, I think doing an apprenticeship is critical. 

And so, when people do win those awards, they look like they’ve just started and just got lucky, but there’s a lot of work behind the scenes which is not that inspiring, I grant you, as an answer. But I think we have to be realistic. And so, when people do spend five years trying to build a freelance business be it writing, they might think, “This has taken me a long time.” But that’s part of the process and it’s about being able to stick to it.

I think that’s the other thing too, is there are going to be bumps along the road where you get setbacks or you get declined or you get bad feedback. And they all did. They’ve had massive problems and massive, some legal situations and losses. Bondi Sands, for example, when they were just getting started, the tanning company, they got a deal with Priceline and they put their product in there and it went well, and they did a second batch and then they started getting all these complaints on Facebook about, “I’m turning green, I look like Kermit the Frog.” And turns out the batch hadn’t been tested properly, so they had to do a recall – go back to Priceline and say, “I’m really sorry, but we’ve discovered this.” It cost them $300,000 and they had to find that money. They’re just a startup. So those things can sort of derail you and they thought, “No, we just keep going.” 

I tried to highlight some of the bumps so that people can understand things are not always hunky-dory from the get-go.

Rachel: Interesting. 

Lynne: I think certainly social media tends to though or even LinkedIn when you sort of see these successful entrepreneurs and how easy it is and they can share secrets. But do you think that drive and that consistency is what they have in common with each other? 

Bernadette: I do. I think… I’m really interested in the question, are entrepreneurs born or made? I think there’s a little bit of both. But I think there’s an inherent competitiveness that they have that I think you’re born with. A bit of a white-line fever in a good way. In the sense they’re competitive not so much with others, but with themselves and they want to explore their full potential. They want to know what they’re capable of. And when things come their way, they’re very committed to fixing it and getting on with it. And I think they don’t take things personally, which I found really interesting as well, because they’ve taken a lot of flak publicly, privately, with their partners, with their suppliers, and they just keep on going.

I think that mental resilience of being able to say, “This is just part of the deal.” And a lot of the entrepreneurs I talked with, there’s a lot of legal argy-bargy going on always, and they see it as a bit of a sport. It’s like, “Oh, yeah, they got me on that one,” you know?

They don’t see these things… I’m not saying they don’t take it seriously, they do, but there’s a sense of this is just part of the game. And it is the game and not to take things personally, and I think that is something I personally struggle with a little bit. I have to work really hard not to take things personally.

And, you see people in the paper, and they get completely slammed, or they’re being brought before a court of some sort. You go, “Wow.” I’ll give you an example, not through the courts, but Kate Halfpenny, who you may know – she’s a journalist. 

Rachel: I read her book recently.

Bernadette: Yes, isn’t it gorgeous? 

I don’t know if you know the story, Rach, but she wrote this standard Saturday piece in The Age about her reverse sea change from moving from Collingwood to Ocean Grove with her husband then realising, “oh, we kind of love it, but we kind of miss the inner city,” so they rented a little apartment in Parkville.

She talked about this reverse sea change, and then the day she wrote the piece, the next day, the Facebook page for The Age went wild with comments, really negative comments about, “Oh, you’re responsible for the Australian housing market collapsing and no one can get a rental because you’re a boomer with your two properties.” 

She was completely sideswiped by that. She wasn’t expecting that. She thought it was just a regular article. She got death threats. 

Lynne: Oh, wow. 

Bernadette: People, “Kill the dog, kill the family, kill the mum,” you know, “kill your kids.” She said, “I was checking the, the gates. I was double-checking the locks,” because she felt physically threatened. That was very difficult for her. That’s the thing I also want to make these things matter to people. They really do affect you. It’s not just water off a duck’s back. 

But she turned it into a positive because a publisher saw all those comments and thought, “There’s something here. She’s touched a nerve.” So, they asked her to write her own memoir, Boogie Wonderland. And so, there’s a bit of a silver lining to this. She said, “All I can do is write my story – 640 words a week. I’m just a journalist. I’m just trying to talk about something that’s meaningful to me. I have to just block out the noise.” 

So, I take comfort from those stories because I think we can be sidelined when we get some kind of public criticism, but the good, successful people just keep going. 

Rachel:  It’s really interesting as well, in terms of the entrepreneurs you spoke to. When I think about it, I’m the only person in my family who runs their own business. Everyone else went to a nine-to-five. They’ve all got jobs where they go somewhere nine-to-five, get a salary, and I’m the only one that sort of worked for myself for twenty-five years. Did you find the entrepreneurs you talked to had come from, a long line of entrepreneurs, so they kind of had those skills, or were they striking out as the first one?

Bernadette: It was a bit of a blend. A lot of them did come from families with an entrepreneurial sort of lineage but others came from corporate life. Like Shaun Wilson from Bondi Sands, he worked for RACV and just had an idea about tanning, and he paired up with a salon guy who made tans.

So, the combination of those two was very powerful because, Shaun had the strategic and marketing and operations, and Blair had the tanning. But why they went so big was they brought a third person in, and that was a man called, I think he was called Craig Stewart, and he was an ex-Revlon guy, and all about retail and distribution and because of him, he was able to open the doors into the pharmacy world.  So in the book I do talk about when you bring on a partner, what kind of partnerships do you need?  Because I think it’s when you do partner, things can really go fast very quickly, or they can also go very badly quickly. So how do you choose the right partner? 

I know that’s a bit of a segue, but if you have an expertise at something, it feels like it lends itself very nicely because you know the industry, the problems. And I guess that’s a key point is what problem are you solving? Matt Rockman, who was one of the founders of SEEK, he said it’s very simple – find a problem that hasn’t been solved, do it well, give a S-H-I-T, and don’t give up.

And so I mean, that makes it sound really easy, but he said a lot of people are fixing problems that don’t need fixing, that people don’t care about, or there’s too many competitors or the competitors are adjacent and you haven’t quite noticed them, or a company can come in and fill that gap. I mean, look at what ChatGPT did. It just decimated so many AI businesses like two years ago that were flourishing. Look at Atlassian – you’ve got to look ahead, I think, to where the market’s going and who could be your competitor. And look at distribution too. How are you going to get your product to the market?

If you think about online courses, I mean, everyone can make an online course. But do you have distribution? Do you have a database? You need tens of thousands of people to sell a couple of courses. So, I mean, that’s a generalisation, but you know what I mean? Just because you make one course doesn’t mean you’re going to get thousands of people buying it.

So there’s a lot more to it, I think, than people sometimes realise about building a business, and you’ve got to have all these pieces of the puzzle, not ready to go because I think you’ve got to start and try, but I think the minute you get one sale, you’re onto something.  

So, I would say that – focus on getting a sale to a person and that tells you a great deal. If you can’t get that first sale, there’s something wrong. 

Rachel: Let’s bring it back a little bit just to freelancers now. And, we were talking in the beginning about, you feel like now is the time we need to be building our authority. We need to be thinking about scalable services and multiple income streams. What does that look like for freelancers these days? 

Bernadette: Freelancers in terms of writing? 

Lynne: Yes, most of our listeners are writers.  

Bernadette: I think you have to understand your niche, and I think you can go broad. I think anything can work, but if you’re not getting success through going broad, go deeper and think, “What do I know about? What do I love writing about? What will pay?” There are some industries that pay better than others. So, if you look at, say, sport – I worked for Carlton Football Club for a while teaching meditation, and people will work for these places for free.

Same with fashion and movies and fitness brands. You’ve got to pick an industry that’s going to pay, and I think everything can pay but I think there are some industries that pay better than others. For example, if I was starting my career again, I’d become an air conditioning expert.

The air conditioning and heating people make an absolute fortune, and it’s not the most glamorous of industries, but I’m sort of being facetious. I think you’ve got to make a decision about do you want to make money or do you want to follow your passion? And you can have that crossover, but sometimes the most glamorous industries don’t pay and the most unglamorous do.

So, you might focus on engineering, for example. It might be architecture or it might be finance. I think you’ve got to find your lane and find the niche within that. 

Rachel: This was very much what you talked about at the summit. It’s all coming back to me now. I was riveted by how you were saying, go and find your niche and then how to work within that to find paying clients. It’s really fascinating. It’s a whole podcast episode really. 

Lynne: Do you think that’s the key ingredient of a successful online business or a successful solo business? 

Bernadette: I think it helps. I think you’ve got to start somewhere. 

Lynne: Well, Bondi Sands, he was quite in his niche as well, wasn’t he? Tanning. It wasn’t everything. It was just tanning. 

Bernadette: Well, he knew his market, too. St. Tropez was the dominant competitor, and of course salon tanning, but that was expensive, hard to get into at a short notice. St. Tropez was his massive competitor. That was quite expensive, and the quality apparently wasn’t that good. So, he thought, “Well, how can we make it a really good product that’s affordable and aspirational as well?” It’s kind of the product that the rich and famous are using. So, then what he did was he went into activations with fashion festivals, music festivals, so the rich and the famous were sort of using this even though it’s quite a cheap product. He had the triple threat. It was aspirational, it was affordable, and it was A-grade quality. 

But that’s writing aside. I think with writing, you’ve got to just work out that hedgehog process. What do you love? What are you good at? What will pay? When you find that sweet spot – now be it, if you’re a teacher, you can maybe go into the education sector. But that’s kind of broad as well. You think, “Okay, well, I can go into private schools, I can go into tutoring colleges, I can go into, businesses that support schools,” in terms of landscaping or building or fencing or books and, desks. So, when you think about the ecosystem around an industry, it’s actually quite broad. So even though you say, “I’m in the education sector as a copywriter,” there’s literally hundreds of businesses that you could target as that kind of niche. 

Lynne: Interesting. 

Rachel: It is really interesting because we talk to a lot of freelancers. I know at Rachel’s List I talk to heaps of them, and some people just leave. Their businesses fail, they don’t know why. On a broader scale with all the businesses you’ve talked to, what are some common reasons that online businesses just tank and fall over? 

Bernadette: Well, there’s a few. I think the hustle mentality, and I don’t really like that word, being a hustler, because it has shades of being dodgy. But what I mean by that is you’ve just got to keep plugging on. You’ve got to keep building your database and accepting that not everyone’s going to buy from you today. But know that if you just keep going and keeping in touch with people, and building your partnerships and your distribution channels, that eventually people will come around, and there might be a critical mass when things start to turn.

And also, I think it’s just the sales mentality, is that the first sale is a no, the second, maybe the tenth is a no, but it’s the 11th you get three. Right. On the twelfth you get four and then on the fifteenth you get none and so on and so forth. So, it’s that sense of continuity and long-term vision, and I say to all my students, begin as you – sort of start as you intend to finish.

Build your database from day one. Get quality software. Get a quality website. Don’t just do things on the cheap. with a view that this may or may not work. It’s like, believe it will and just keep investing in it. And look, the only reason, not the only reason, but one of the reasons I stayed as a freelancer and running my own business is I just couldn’t work for anyone.

It wasn’t like I had a choice. It’s just my personality and need for freedom and decision-making was so strong, I just can’t survive in a corporate environment, and I’ve been there, done that. I just don’t want to do it. So, when there were shaky times, and I occasionally looked at SEEK, which wasn’t very often, but when I did, I got kind of PTSD. I said, “Oh my God, I can’t imagine going back into that world.” 

Rachel: Yes. 

Bernadette: Anything that I’m doing in my own business has got to be better. All the hang-ups and obstacles have got to be better than working for someone else.

Lynne: I think we feel that. We feel that definitely.

Rachel: Yes, we do. We’re unemployable, all of us. 

Bernadette: And I don’t say that in a way of, “Oh, this is a preferable way of being.” It is just my way of being.  I can’t do anything else and I really actually admire people who can actually turn up and go to work every day, and work for a boss and ask for time off for dental appointments and funerals. I just can’t even imagine doing that now. 

So, I think there’s a payoff and there’s a trade-off. If you want that freedom and flexibility, you’ve got to keep building your business, you’ve got to have that sales mentality, you’ve got to build your database, you’ve got to follow up. It’s one of the number one things but a lot of people don’t do it. Maybe it’s mental reasons in terms of, they don’t want to be seen to be pushy, they don’t want to be rejected, but it’s just the name of the game. And again, it’s a game. 

Rachel: I think that is what’s missing with a lot of freelancers that I talk to – sales mentality, or they think that things are going to come to them, and they don’t know how to get it otherwise. So, they wait or they might put out a little bit of outreach, and it doesn’t work, and so they think, “Well, that’s failed. Okay, I may as well try something, try another industry completely or leave copywriting or whatever.”

So, it’s so, so important, isn’t it? It’s the ickiest part of the business, but after a while, it just becomes easy if you do it as much as you have to.  

Bernadette: Absolutely. 

It’s also changing the mindset from selling to servicing or, being of service, I think is probably a better word, where, with the ghostwriting, for example, with books, they genuinely want this done because they know that this book can make a difference, not only to themselves, but to the audience that’s going to read it.

I think we have to have that same policy with any kind of writing, is what is it going to do, and what will happen if we don’t do it for these people? And when you have that belief that it really makes a difference, I think that’s when you don’t worry about selling because you think, “No, you need this.” So, you don’t mind following up because you believe this is of value.  

Lynne: Interesting. I mean, the ghostwriting, what does having a book do for a CEO? 

Bernadette: So, overawed really with the power of books and the more I do, the more I see. And I’m not saying that in self-interest. It’s genuine. I see the satisfaction that a CEO has that their ideas have been documented – that their ideas have been formed because one of the things I do with them, as any ghostwriter would do, is you help them shape their ideas. Because they kind of know what they think, but they’ve never documented it. So, you have to be a little bit disciplined about what are you actually saying here and what’s an example where this can be applied?

So, they love the fact that there’s now a receptacle for all their ideas, and they’re really beautifully presented. So that’s one. Two is the legacy that they can share with their family and network, that this is how they built their businesses, and this is why they’ve been so busy, and this is why they’ve been absent or whatever it might be.

There’s also the business element where it’s a beautiful sales tool. It’s the ultimate calling card. And also, on a very practical level, once those ideas have been documented, you reserve your IP, number one, but number two, you’ve got two, three years of content to play with. It’s all been beautifully crafted and formed.

So, when you want to write a blog or do some social, you just pluck it from your book and that will keep you going for a couple of years. I think there’s the kudos as well. There’s a certain bucket list element, like, “I’ve always wanted to write a book, and I finally did it.” And seeing it at the airport or seeing it in the bookshelf, seeing it may be on the bestseller list – it’s a great feeling.

I think there’s something special about a hard copy book as well, not just an e-book or an online sort of piece. Because you can send it to people. They get it. People don’t throw books out that easily, and it can sit on your shelf. I’ve got my bookshelf with all my books, and it’s kind of like a little warm blanket.

Lynne: Yes. 

Bernadette: It’s like, “Oh, so this is what I’ve been doing the last five years.” It reminds me of what I’ve been doing. 

Rachel: Are all your books published through Wiley? Is it a case of just literally picking up the phone going, “I’ve got a new idea,” and they’re like, “Great. Let’s go”? 

Bernadette: Well, they have been. They’re all with Wiley. I’ve got a very good relationship with them. They’re great people. And I think they see me as a little bit of a portal to, a book that’s already done. It’s not just a loose manuscript. It’s generally going to be of good quality. 

Lynne: Proven your worth and that you’re going to deliver.

Bernadette: Yes, and it saves them time, and it saves them effort, and they have a little bit of a lot, a lot of trust with… and of course, they need to see the proposal. It’s not just a given. But it is a very good relationship, and I’m very proud that we’ve been able to do that for probably ten years now.

There’s been two Holocaust memoirs that I’ve written which are self-published, and they’re not actually for public consumption, but they’re for the family. So, they were quite a different, kettle of fish. And thoroughly enjoyed those and got access to a world that I wasn’t that familiar with. Obviously, we all know about the Holocaust, but reading and talking to people who’ve been through it, like literally through the camps was quite an eye-opening experience. 

Rachel: I remember you talked about that when we did the ghostwriting lunch club. I think you were working on one of them then.  

Bernadette: Yes, they’re out in the world now, and they’re making a big impact for the family. So, the family is sending it to all their networks, and that was a really great experience because they were so grateful to me for doing it, and I’m like, “Please, it’s the reverse.” But they wanted it documented so that their family could out that to bed.

Lynne: And that’s so important where we are now, because those people are now sort of not going to be with us for much longer. It’s so important to get those stories listened, documented and put down on paper.   

Bernadette: Yes, definitely. Well, one of the ladies, I wrote two books, one was the sister, one was the brother. She’s ninety, and she didn’t really want to tell her story. Obviously, it’s very traumatic. No one likes to talk about the Holocaust who’ve been through it. But again, I’ll probably put this down to the copywriting – the ability to build rapport with a client and be gentle and see where they’re going and work with them. She felt very comfortable with me, and we became really good friends. We love each other. She’s just fantastic and I feel very privileged that she was able to share it with me, because a lot of it was very, very distressing.

So that one is probably one of the most satisfying projects I’ve done because it really meant a lot to her, because she didn’t want to talk about it. And she wanted, but she did want to get it done. And she said, “Now that it’s done, great, I never have to think about that again.” And her whole family can read the book for the rest of their lives, you know?

Lynne: Wow. 

Rachel: We talked a bit earlier about storytelling in general. You’re a master storyteller, obviously. So, what role does it play in branding and marketing and is there a formula that freelancers can apply to their own business? I see on LinkedIn all the time posts that don’t really start with a story, and I think that’s where you start, to get people in. So, what’s the formula? 

Bernadette: Well, thanks for that lovely compliment of obviously I’m a great storyteller. 

Rachel: Yes, you are. 

Bernadette: Well, I appreciate the compliment. I just use a formula. It’s the hero’s journey. I’ve adapted it for myself with a six-step process, and I can’t escape it, and I love it because whenever I’m confronted with a client, or wait, confronted is the wrong word, but presented with information from a client – in my head, I’m going, “Okay, what’s the date?” That’s number one. Where are we in time?  What’s the conflict? What’s the problem here? Why didn’t things go according to plan? And then what actually happened that, what was the result, and what’s the lesson in that? It’s a very simple structure and when I’m able to ask my clients those questions, the stories just fall out. 

But above that, the arc above that is principles, values, beliefs. It’s what I call them. And so, when I write a book, what I am interested in is what do you believe? What are the values you hold dear? What are the beliefs you have about success, or leaderships, or team, or failure? So, I’m interested in extracting their beliefs and then I find the principle. It’s like, okay, so this is about think big, or this is about keep going, or be persistent, or don’t take it personally. I’m always looking for the moral of the lesson or the moral of the story, and then I tell the story. 

I basically collect all these morals of the story. And then the content, the guts of it really is the date, the time, the players, the conflict, the action, and the result. And they become series of blogs, and then I rearrange it into a book. And what I find people who haven’t maybe focused on storytelling, and these are clients who come to me for coaching, is they’ve just kind of done this anecdotal, “This is what happened in my life.” And that’s okay. You’ve got to start somewhere. But then I say, “Okay, well, why is that important to you? Now, what are you trying to say here? What’s the lesson?” And once we get through that, then the book shapes up a lot more quickly. 

Rachel: Interesting. 

Lynne: Do you think there are things that you see behind the scenes with these online entrepreneurs that never make it to LinkedIn or Instagram? What sort of things do you see? 

Bernadette: Of course. Well, there’s a cost to success and I talk about that in the book, too, because again, I wanted it to be really real. One of them is relationships. Divorce. It’s family, it’s health, it’s marriages, it’s financial devastation and ruin.

Matt Rockman, who was one of the founders of SEEK that I mentioned earlier, he had enormous success with SEEK. He was in it for ten years, and the exit was astronomical. But he said there was a cost. He was on a plane two weeks out of four. He was in Europe. He was all around Australia. He had 10,000 clients that he had to service, and he said his wife, they called themselves the SEEK widows because they went to everything on their own. And eventually his wife got tired of it, and he had to make a decision. Do I keep going? I’m already burnt out. Or do I prioritise my family? And after ten years he exited. 

So, there is a cost, and even Gabby Leibovich, when I wrote his book, Catch the Decade, he talked about his daily routine – wakes up, checks emails, has breakfast, goes to work, meeting, meeting, meeting, comes home, has dinner, kisses the kids good night, email, email, email, go to sleep, rinse, repeat. And that is the routine. I think we can glamorise work a lot and the results, but this is the reality. That’s the other thing I really saw, too. I mean, this is going back now before I started all these entrepreneurial interviews. I honestly thought they were figureheads. That they just sort of waltz in and just become the visionary. They are behind the scenes working. 

Lynne: They are unpacking boxes.

Bernadette: The are across the detail. The detail mentality is beyond. You think they’re not going to notice something, and they go, “Oh, that, that date, that, that, that’s not actually right, and that was not the figure. The figure was 2.0 million,” or whatever it is. They’re so across the detail of their business and I think that’s what makes them successful. They don’t let things go really good attention to detail. 

Rachel: Wow. Well, if, if someone’s listening and they want to start an online business today, what would be your advice to them?

Bernadette: Well, I think find a problem.

Rachel: Yes. 

Bernadette: That requires solving, and that could be quite niche. I was just in the city today and I couldn’t help noticing… I look at everything through a lens of business, but there was a store that sold press-on nails. How niche is that? It wasn’t even nail salon. It was, they sold press-on nails, and it was a full store in Melbourne CBD. 

So, I think find that problem that you need to solve, find a unique way of solving it. The more you can niche down in terms of the audience that you serve, the easier it’s going to be to be found. I think maybe sell it before you make it. I did that with my online course back in the day. I wrote a big fat manual. Anyone who knows me back in the day, they know it was a 700-page manual, and I actually sold it before I finished it. I put it online, brand-new website, $10,000, cost you twenty bucks these days, and I hadn’t even finished it before I had a sale.

I thought, “Oh, my God, what do I do?” So, I sent out half the course, and I said to the people, “This is 50% of the course. The rest is coming.” Because I knew if I didn’t sell it, I’d just probably get hung up on detail and I’d never get it out. And even the manual that I sent out had things like notes to my graphic designer, like, “Lee, make it look a bit better.”

I absolutely had all this stuff in there. So, it wasn’t perfect. I’d say that’s probably another lesson is don’t worry about perfection. But sell it before you make it’s a really big one. If you’re going to do an online course, don’t create the whole thing. Probably do a small webinar. Do a Facebook group or whatever it is. See if you can sell one or sell the concept of one, and then you make it because I’ve certainly created stuff that hasn’t sold. So, I’ve learnt my lesson is don’t make stuff… don’t put a lot of effort into something that you don’t know the market’s there for yet. Sell it before you make it’s a good one. 

Rachel: Interesting. Okay. 

Lynne: Right, Bernadette, we now end the podcast with fast three questions, so are you ready? 

Bernadette: I’m ready. 

Rachel: Okay. First question, favourite tools of the trade you can’t live without? 

Bernadette: Well, right now it’s WhisperFlow. 

Rachel: Oh, okay. We’ve heard that a couple of times.

Bernadette: Oh my God. I can’t tell you. It’s fantastic. I can dictate an email in five minutes and I’m a quick typer. I’m not accurate, but I’m quick. And also, it’s beautiful because you can speak into it, and obviously it just takes down what you say, but it’s across all devices because what’s the big deal about WhisperFlow? We’ve got speech to text already. But it’s across all devices, you just have to use it. So that’s my number one. 

Rachel: Okay.

Lynne: Oh, cool. So, what’s a habit that generally saves you time, besides WhisperFlow? 

Bernadette: I think it’s turning off my phone when I’m working. I got a couple of girlfriends who, like to talk and ring at any time of the day, which is fine, and I just have to turn it off and then I say later, “I’m writing,” and they go, “Oh, I don’t know how you do it.” I say, “Well, I don’t have a choice. I’ve got deadlines.”  So, I think just turning off the phone and just committing to the project and just knowing that you can’t be distracted.

I don’t even look at email. I don’t look at the internet. I’m just completely with that document. Because the minute I move focus, I have to chunk back in to switch gears, and it takes another five minutes to get back to where I was. 

Rachel: So true. All right, last question, and I’m really interested in your answer to this one. One thing you wish you’d done sooner in your career. 

Bernadette: I really thought about this, and there’s probably a lot. I think systems. They’re not my strength, and I probably would have done a lot more systems in the beginning. Another one is, interestingly, I would have posted more, because I think I used to write a lot, but I didn’t post. I was a little bit, just held back from posting for whatever reason. And I think now I wish I’d posted a lot more a lot earlier. And the last one is I wish I’d learned how to build a website, like that coding. I’m not a techy person, and I don’t really know how websites get built. I’ve got a, obviously an understanding of wire frames, et cetera. But I would have loved to have understood the coding behind a website, because I think that would’ve helped me a great deal. 

Lynne: Oh, wow. 

Rachel: Amazing. 

Lynne: So interesting. Well, thank you, Bernadette.  It’s so lovely to chat with you again. Tell us where people can find the book and find you. 

Bernadette: Well, they can find me on LinkedIn or at my website bernadetteschwerdt.com.au or copyschool.com.

Books are available at Booktopia, at Dymocks, at Amazon – wherever you get your books. So, thank you, ladies, for having me. It’s always a delight to talk to you. 

Rachel: It was just such a great chat. 

Lynne: So good. 

I think you’re also giving a couple of resources away to our listeners, including a chapter of your new book, which is great, and a copywriter’s rate card. So, thank you for those. We’ll put them in the show notes so people can access them. 

Bernadette: Beautiful. Thank you so much for having me.  

Lynne: Thanks. Bye. 

Rachel: Bye.

Credits:

Connect with Bernadette via her website: https://bernadetteschwerdt.com.au/ 

Download the first chapter of Bernadette’s book here  

Find Lynne www.lynnetestoni.com

Find Rachel www.rachelsmith.com.au

Rachel’s List www.rachelslist.com.au

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