Sabrina Rogers-Anderson on how to niche down and charge more

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.

Hello again, Rachel. So good to see you again. I know at school holidays, but you’re still tripping on. 

Rachel: I’m hanging in there by my fingernails!

Lynne: We’re talking about niching again, which is a really popular topic for all our listeners. But this time we’re going to drill down into the fine details with our guest today.

Rachel: You know, I was just talking to, funnily enough, an osteo about this whole niching topic because I’m trying to niche at the moment into web copywriting, but then there’s that fear of, if I go directly down that road and say no to everything else, you’re going to have this barren wasteland. So, I’m constantly doing other things as well, and then I come full circle and think, well, maybe I’m just meant to be a generalist. So yes, it’s interesting. 

We are going to talk to Sabrina Rogers-Anderson about niching down and that whole process of, is it tough at first? Does it pay off? How long does it take to make it work in your niche? 

Lynne: I think it’s really interesting and I think Sabrina’s story is quite powerful. She’s going to talk also about how to charge your worth and be quite unapologetic about it, which we love. Do you want to introduce her? 

Rachel: Yes! For 25 years, Sabrina Rogers-Anderson has been producing evidence-based and engaging content that empowers people to improve their health outcomes across the lifespan from healthy eating, to fitness, to mental wellbeing and longevity. She’s passionate about helping people live their best lives, and her work’s been published in magazines and websites around the world, including Women’s Health. Men’s Health, Women’s Fitness, Men’s Fitness, Good Health, Australian Women’s Weekly, Prevention, Body and Soul, Women’s Day, Runner’s World, Baby Centre, Kids Spot, The Tot, Ask Men and FHM! She’s also a professional member of the Australasian Medical Writers Association and the Association of Healthcare Journalists. 

Welcome Sabrina!

Sabrina: Thank you so much for having me!

Rachel: We were just talking on off air about how you and I have known each other for many years. 

Sabrina: If I can just fan girl for a moment. I have to go back about almost 15 years now and when I was thinking about launching, going freelance, I started researching. I’d seen your work here and there and I started researching freelance writers’ websites and then I landed on yours. I don’t know if you remember your website from 15 years ago, the beautiful portfolio website. I was so impressed with it, and I followed your work and then we got to know each other through various channels, and I’ve been following your career for a long time. Lynne, I’m new to your work, but it’s only been a couple of years I’ve been following your work, but you’re also a legend in the industry, so I’m very grateful to be chatting to you both today. 

Lynne: Ah, that’s so nice. Thank you.

Rachel: Thank you. That website was like a picture that was chopped up and had links applied to it. Terrible for SEO. It looked cool, but it was really bad for SEO or getting any traffic at all.

Sabrina: I can imagine but I really loved it, and I wanted to do something. Today I have a portfolio website, so you were my inspiration for that, so thank you. 

Rachel: I should chuck that on social. You know, people that revisit all their old stuff and they do that blast from the past stuff.

Sabrina: I still think it holds up even though it’s not good for ranking. It’s still looks like as I remember, it was amazing.

Rachel: Aw, thank you. Well, tell us about your career. Obviously, we’ve just had a little snapshot of it and all the amazing mags that you’ve written for, but how did you start writing and start freelancing?

Sabrina: Basically, I started freelance writing in the era of dial up internet, so I used to plug in my internet. Remember that and it would take forever to connect, and it was so slow. I actually did a bachelor’s degree in psychology and then did that angsty early twenties thing, what am I going to do with my life?

Before I decided to go back and do a graduate certificate in journalism, because I was kind of trying to figure out what to do. Everyone I knew was like you’re a really great writer. Why are you not doing that with your life? And I was like, good point. So, I did that and then as I was studying journalism, it was the era, it was the nineties, you know, dot com boom and a friend started a website called Ask Men, which was basically an online men’s lifestyle magazine, and it was huge at the time it just boomed and then there was that dot com crash, and this website survived. It did really well. So, it was like everyone knew it in those days.

He asked me if I wanted to do some freelance writing, and I was like, sure but you know, I would like to do these travel top ten articles. It was like ten partying destinations or things like that, and it would take me like 25 hours to write one article because of my stupid slow internet and because I was such a perfectionist and so terrified that someone would tell me that I’d made a factual error or I wasn’t a good writer and anyway, I poured my heart and soul into that. I eventually started working for Ask Men as a web editor because that was actually job back then because you had to know HTML to post stuff online. Then I became senior editor there and I moved to Australia in 2007, and people were literally throwing visas at me because I had this highly skilled web editor position. I ended up working for several years for a bunch of magazines in Sydney as a web editor, so NW, TV Week, FHM, and I was writing for them and also doing some freelance writing on the side. And then finally in 2011, I just decided to take the plunge and go freelance, and I haven’t looked back since then.

It’s been 14 years and it’s been great because obviously the flexibility with having children and all that. I didn’t even have kids at that time but started having children shortly after and it’s been the best move I’ve ever made, even though it can be quite, as we know, it has its issues as well. But I love working for myself. 

Lynne: Oh, we both sing from that playbook as well. I love it too, the flexibility and being your own boss. There’s nothing that beats it. I know when you pitched to us, I love the story about how and why you decided to niche down. So, do you want to share that with our listeners?

Sabrina: So, I’ve written about every topic under the sun during my career. I was a sex and relationships writer for a while. I had a column in FHM called Ask Sabrina, and then when I became a parent, I niched down into that for a little while, or just, I was writing a lot about that and I kind of gained a profile for writing a bogan baby names article that went viral.

Rachel: I remember that.

Sabrina: Oh, then I wrote a whole bunch of follow ups, and they were always picked up by media and ended up writing a book about that, so parenting was my thing for a while. I’ve written about business and tech, but my main passion has always been health and fitness. When I started writing for Ask Men back in the day, that was one of the main first topics I started writing about. It’s always been my thing. I live and breathe it. I’ve always been someone who’s really active into fitness, into healthy eating, so it’s a real passion of mine. But I never felt like that was something I could niche down into. Because I thought, like you said before, Rachel, I was so used to doing everything and I guess I had a bit of scarcity mentality, which was like if I eliminate all these other topics, how am I going to make enough money basically and I was worried I’m missing out on all this work. And strangely how it happened was I actually went through breast cancer treatment and my marriage broke down within the same two-year period. It was a pretty full-on couple of years. But bizarrely the year after that, when I was starting to kind of rebuild my life, I had the best business year I’ve ever had in the 14 years I’ve been freelance. My sales went through the roof. I just had a whole bunch of work coming at me and I was actually nominated for an award, an Ausmumpreneur award for overcoming the odds for having such a good year following all that adversity.

I went to Sydney for the awards, and I was listening to all these presentations and I felt like a lot of the advice didn’t really apply to me as a freelance writer. So, I remember popping up my hand and asking a question and saying, how can someone like me get some help. The speaker suggested getting a business coach and I was like, in my mind I was always thinking, can I afford a business coach? Is it for me? And after that presentation, someone came up to me and suggested I get in touch with Mel from Profit Lovers. Highly recommend. She was amazing. So, I hopped on her website, and she had such a beautifully designed website. I booked a free call. I saw her packages. I was like, I can afford that. Ended up working with her, and she’s the one who suggested niche down. She said something to me that I will never forget. So hilarious. It plays in my mind all the time. She said, right now you’re an easy lay, but we’re going to transform you into wife material.

What she meant by that is you’re kind of spreading yourself around trying to do work for everyone, but we’re going to make you special and by niching down, you can become an expert in your field, you can then charge the big bucks. So, I did that, I followed her advice. I can’t say it was easy right away. Work didn’t start just pouring in. It was for the first six months to a year after that, there was some growing pains. But I stuck to it and I’m really glad I did because now exactly what she said would happen has happened. 

I’m charging a lot more than I used to and I’m getting work in my field, and I used to have so many clients and jobs that I really just didn’t want to be doing and didn’t enjoy. And now I’m writing about what I like, and it snowballs. When I speak to an expert, I have so much more knowledge in my field now. I feel more knowledgeable, and then I’m a better interviewer. I just feel like I’ve really been honing my skills. Just this past couple of years, I’ve gotten even so much better at my craft because it’s all I’m doing and I have the confidence now to say, this is what I’m worth and this is how much I’m going to cost.

Lynne: So interesting.

Rachel: Talk to us about that process. That kind of hairy time, teething, process. Were you actually saying no to things and referring them on, or how did it work where you were doing everything for everybody and you suddenly just went, no, I am only going to work on health and fitness commissions or work with clients?

Sabrina: That’s a really good question. I absolutely didn’t say no to other jobs and to this day, I sometimes get someone pop in. I used to do some awards writing submissions. I’ve just had an old client, they pop up about once a year, ask me if I can, and they always ask me at the last minute. I charge them a massive rush rate and I take it on because why not? I don’t in any way need to. You don’t need to refuse. It’s just about your branding. I basically went on LinkedIn and was like, surprise, I’m now a health writer and changed my LinkedIn and just announced that I’m now a health writer and started like posting just about that.

I can absolutely take on jobs that are not, and I still do. More rarely now, but you can absolutely still do that while you’re kind of building up your brand as a niche in your niche, so you can absolutely do that. And it is hard to suddenly start being like, I’m going to charge you this much. For so many years I undercharged people. I didn’t have the confidence. I was charging people like 40 bucks an hour, or do someone’s website, entire website, contact five pages for like 500 bucks. I’d quote them 500 bucks, and then I’d end up doing this insane amount of hours and watch my hourly rate go down to peanuts. Then I’d get resentful because I felt like I wasn’t making any money. The client kept asking me for changes. I wasn’t happy doing the work, and I was always frustrated, and that’s where I got to the point where I guess both the niching down and the many years of experience, I now have doing this have given me the confidence to quote what I’m worth. 

Rachel: I know you’re big on charging what you’re worth. How did you move from say, $40 an hour? Did you, talk to other freelancers or did you look at what other people were charging? Or how did that kind of evolution happen for you? 

Sabrina: Well, my business coach was like, you need to be charging bare minimum a hundred bucks an hour, if not more. She wanted to push me towards more towards the 140 range. So, she gave me the confidence to start charging my worth. Before I worked with my business coach, there was also a client that I worked with. They were a big childcare provider, and they asked me for a quote, and I quoted them 50 bucks an hour to do this whole big work, and they were like, absolutely not, that’s ridiculous. You’re worth a hundred dollars an hour. So, it was all these little things, like Tetris that kind of clicked into place and I was like, okay, I am definitely worth more than this. There’s another thing that really was instrumental. I cannot remember who said this or if I read it somewhere, but this quote has stuck in my mind, and I live by it. It’s if you are not quoting an amount that makes you feel uncomfortable, you’re not quoting enough. 

If you’re hitting send and you feel okay, you need to go back and revise your quote until you’re sending something that scares you a little bit. It seems outrageous and you know what? When I started living by that principle, because it’s inevitably going to take you longer than you think, it always does. I’m getting better now at getting an idea of how long a project’s going to take me. But especially with small business clients, oftentimes their ideas are all over the place and they might change their mind midway. You have to have an end point, you know? So, I guess those are the two things I’ve done and what I do now is, for example, if I’m quoting someone for big website content creation project. I will give them an amount and I’ll say I won’t work for under a hundred dollars an hour anymore. That’s my minimum. Once I reach, say if I say $5,000 for this project, once I reach 50 hours, I tell them, well, I’ve now reached the amount of hours that I’ve allocated to this project, and I’m going to have to start wrapping it up. And if there’s more work beyond the scope because I’ll always tie up what promised, then I’m going to have to quote you an extra amount. People are always okay with that. They understand and that was something I was so fearful of doing before and now I’ve done it several times. Even with small business clients, they completely understand, and they are always willing to allow for me to quote more for extra stuff.

So, it’s just about, I think doing it in little increments and trying it. And then every time you send that big quote, or you tell a client that you set a boundary with them, and they accept it, then you gain that confidence to do it again. And I think that’s what you’ve got to do is just face that fear. It is scary hitting send on that big quote, but you’ve got to try it and realise that actually, if you position yourself as an authority, who’s worth this much and you have this many years of experience and you believe in yourself and you value your own work, your clients are going to start valuing your own work and they will pay you what you’re worth.

Rachel: It’s also a bit of a mindset thing, isn’t it? Maybe we think that person might not be able to afford my five or ten grand quotes, but actually it’s none of your business what they can afford or not afford. You have no idea if they can afford it or not afford it. But we try and put ourselves in the client’s shoes when actually, we should just stop doing that. 

Sabrina: If it’s too much for them, they will tell you. You can always negotiate as well. If someone comes back and says, I mean, there’s always the possibility they’ll just ghost you. But if someone comes back and says, that’s too much for me, you have the option to negotiate down and say, well, why don’t we reduce the scope of what I’m going to do for you? Maybe we won’t include this, or we limit it to this number of hours, and we can reduce the quote. You can still negotiate with the person, but I think you do have to have the confidence to charge what you’re worth, know you’re going to probably spend more hours than you initially thought you would and just hit send. 

Lynne: Do you think that by niching the way you’ve done; it also means that you’re getting clients coming to you? Is that part of it? So, you’ve got a bit more control in your setting rates rather than pitching out there. 

Sabrina: I am not a huge fan of pitching anymore. I do for some clients, but they’ll be short and sweet pitches. Doing that cold like pitches to mags like I used to do in the day, I don’t have the energy for that anymore. I am a very lazy marketer. I have to say that. My big strategy is to post regularly on LinkedIn and that’s pretty much it. I have relied on clients coming to me for most of my career. Recently I just did a push to get some new clients. because I was like, I need to. I’ve learned to always be planting seeds now. I used to wait until my workload dried up and then I was panicking to go. Now I’m like, oh, it’s slowing down, it’s not coming at me like it was. So now I know to be planting seeds ahead of time. 

Lynne: So, you really are marketing, even if you say you’re not really marketing. 

Sabrina: I am, but like I said to you before, I don’t even have a newsletter. I do the minimum. I’m really enjoying the LinkedIn. I’m a bit nerding out on LinkedIn at the moment. I do like posting there and I feel like I’ve had a few gigs come through there and I feel like it’s really helping my profile, but I could be doing so much more than I am. I guess I am pretty lucky. I also have a lot of contacts in the industry from working in magazines for so long.

Rachel, both of you would know what I’m talking about. Recently I just reached out – I sent a few emails to a couple of old contacts. I go on LinkedIn, I’m like, oh, this person’s working here now. I just sent an email with how are you? How have you been? And then suddenly I’ve got some new clients. So, I guess that is another advantage of when you’ve been in the industry for a long time, you do have those contacts you can reach out to. 

Rachel: Wow. I want to go back to pricing for a minute because I thought what you do kind of sounds a bit similar to what I do. Have you created packages or anything for your work? Or is that something you are thinking about doing? 

Sabrina: Oh, absolutely. Something I’ve been thinking about doing for so long, along with the newsletters. It’s on my to-do list and I have the quote from my web designers to do it. I just haven’t moved ahead yet. I do want to create some packages. So, the reason I signed up with my business coach is her website is so perfect. I always thought, a business coach is too expensive. I hopped on to her website. She had these beautiful packages. I realised that I could hire her for three months for a few grand, and it was totally affordable. She had payment plans and then she had an out underneath her beautiful packages, she had a nice book, a free call button. I clicked and within five minutes I was booked in with her and then once I talked to her, she had me hooked. That’s what I want to create on my website. Price transparency apparently is the absolute way to convert more clients because people will assume that you’re too expensive unless you prove them otherwise. And I think those packages can be really helpful. So that’s on my to-do list. 

But in terms of pricing, it’s kind of three ways and I’m sure you’re probably the same. I’ll either quote a flat rate per project and I really enjoy doing that because it gives me some leeway to play around and I kind of evaluate the number of hours and then my minimum rate that I’m willing to work for, and then I do now say once I’ve reached that set number of hours, I’m sorry, but the project’s done otherwise I can charge per hour. That’s not my preferred way. A lot of like clients that I work for now still, whether it’s mainstream media or even companies like I write for, HCF, they often do a per word rate. That works out really well for me because I’ve become so efficient at researching and interviewing that sometimes my hourly rate may work out to $150 to $200 an hour once I’ve done that. I do really enjoy that as well. So, I do have different pricing options and structures, and it really depends on what my client prefers. But packages I do think are something that are very helpful and useful to have on your website. I want to do that. 

Rachel: Well, let’s talk a bit about health writing and the big elephant in the room, AI. What are you seeing in that regard? Because we are hearing so many stories, and some people aren’t touched by it at all, their clients don’t even care. Some people are losing client’s hand over fist. So, what’s going on in health writing? 

Sabrina: I think niching down into health has been, couldn’t have happened at a better time because I think AI is very useful for some things and for those generic topics. My field, AI is completely incapable of digging into scientific studies like I do. The number of times I’ve just tested it to see if it could summarise a study and it’s given me completely false information and then I’ve questioned it and it’s said stuff like, oh, sorry, that wasn’t actually in this study. I went and found that from other sources, and I’m like, no, please stick to this study, I’m just asking you to summarise this, and it’s still making errors. 

While AI may potentially be able to do that one day, it’s certainly not there yet. My research skills and my analytical skills are something that AI is completely unable to replicate at the current time. There’s also the fact that there is a huge pushback against AI sounding content at the moment. I think my clients specifically like a client like HCF or I write a lot for Citro as well, which is a website for people fifty plus, which has a lot of evidence-based content. It’s a rewards program that’s backed by AMP, but they’re not plugging any content. They really want their content to be evidence-based, and they take pride like HCF at the top of their blogs, they’ll write very clearly expert contributors and which doctors I interviewed, and they take pride in producing that content that’s expert and evidence-based and there’s no way they’d be associated with AI content. Because it’s not credible, it’s sounds generic. 

In my field, I don’t feel at the moment that I’ve been affected at all. What is it going to be like in ten years? I don’t know. But I’m not going to sit here worrying about that just now and I’ve made friends with AI as well. I do use it to spark creative ideas. I thought either I can be scared of it and ignore it and or I can just jump into it, try to understand it and see what it can and can’t do and actually that made me feel better because I’m not replaceable just yet. 

And it can be useful for some things just to spark those creative ideas. Or sometimes I’ve written a paragraph, and I don’t like how it sounds, and I pop it in AI. I’m like, please rewrite this and then I won’t take exactly what it’s written, but it’ll give me the idea, that’s a nice turn of phrase, and I’ll reuse that to rewrite. I’ve kind of embraced it rather than being scared of it. I think that’s the way to go, if you can. 

Lynne: It’s really interesting. We talked a bit off air about the books that you’ve written because you are a published author. Do you think in a niche that being an author also gives you implied expertise and that it makes you a position of authority too?

Sabrina: I think that could be the case for some authors. Both my books were commissioned from me. I wrote a sex sort of self-help book, which was an American publisher. He wanted to do like a for dummies type of series and he had one on financial wellbeing and all this stuff. It kind of tanked, so I can’t say that it was, I did it because I was like, I’ll be published author. And then, the second book was commissioned from me from an actual Aussie publisher. I wrote The Little Book of Bogan Baby Names because my column had gotten so much attention. It’s like a little coffee table book to give at a baby shower or whatever. I made no money off either of those books, and they don’t particularly help my profile, but they did at the time, especially the bogan baby names book. I did hundreds of radio interviews. I’m still the go-to baby names person on the ABC. They’ll often call me to just have a chat about crazy names. It certainly helped my profile at the time. Now less so and they’re not really relevant to health, but you know, no regrets. I think it was still an experience.

Rachel: You’ve got to write your next book, which is going to be about fitness in some way. 

Sabrina: My next one has to be a passion project. It has to come from the heart 

Rachel: It could be fitness for menopausal or perimenopausal women. 

Sabrina: Which is a huge passion of mine because I’m living it. 

Rachel: I want that book. You have to write that book.

Sabrina: I’m obsessed with that. 

Rachel: I love that. I wanted to ask, because we just had Amy Hadley on the podcast, and she’s a beauty copywriter talking about regulations and being in a regulated industry, which you are. And you are a member of two health associations. How do regulations affect your work? And have you had to do extra study to make sure you know what you can and can’t say? 

Sabrina: Amazingly, I’ve researched over the years so many times and I reached out to another member of Rachel’s List to ask her because she is a medical writer as well. And there are not really any sort of accredited medical writer’s courses. It’s amazing how little there is out there, and I honestly just make sure that I triple check all my sources. I guess that’s one thing that’s made me successful in this, is I’m so stringent on making sure my evidence is backed up by credible sources.

I don’t work in like the pharmaceutical or the really medical. I write health content mainly for mainstream media. I will analyse a lot of studies and research, but always putting them into layman’s words for mainstream media, so I don’t have to worry too much about anything regulatory. And I’ve never in 25 years of writing had any issues. I’ve never had anyone say I got something factually wrong. I’ve been lucky, I guess, in that sense, and I haven’t had to worry too much about it. 

Rachel: Interesting. We talk a lot on the podcast about using your transferable skills, especially from journalism to say copywriting. You seem to have done that really well. You must meet a lot of journalists, who are coming from magazines and don’t realize the other areas they could step into or too nervous to do that. Do you think journalists are just so skilled and so perfectly poised to move into other areas and use those skills. 

Sabrina: Absolutely. I felt the same way when I started copywriting. I felt like a massive imposter. But honestly, I think journalists at this stage probably have no choice but to branch out because there’s just not enough work in editorial anymore and oftentimes the pay is just not up to scratch. I used to think copywriting would be real salesy and I hate sales. I’m not a salesperson, I don’t have a sales bone in my body, and I thought it would be like having to write that real salesy copy. But to be honest, if you’re writing within your niche and what you’re passionate about, it doesn’t feel salesy. 

Rachel, you just passed on a client to me who, she’s a personal trainer and I’m writing all her website copy and all that, and I don’t feel like I’m having to sell something that it’s not a hard sell. It’s something I’m passionate about and I’m someone who’s at the gym six days a week, so it comes easy for me. I really feel like if you connect with a person’s product or service, it’s not going to feel like you’re trying to sell something you don’t believe in. It’s a natural step and I do think it’s such an easy way for journalists to kind of get more work because it is really tough out there, especially if you came from the print magazine industry and it’s not exactly going strong anymore. I think it’s about building your confidence. It’s normal to feel totally out of your depth and like an imposter. When I went into copywriting, I started charging low rates because I was like, I’m not good at this and then I don’t know what I’m doing. But now I’ve only been doing copywriting for a small portion of my career, but I still have all that experience. 

My clients love that I’m a storyteller. I think that’s an overused word, but they love that I come from an editorial background, and I can bring that storytelling aspect to their brand. So, you actually have to see it as a real strength for your clients.

Lynne: I definitely find that because I do think as media has shrunk and the opportunities there that brands are taking up, that slack. They’re making their content much more editorial in style and more that storytelling idea. It’s definitely, I’m seeing that in interiors.

Sabrina: Absolutely. 

Lynne: How much of your work is content and how much is journalism? 

Sabrina: It’s funny that you ask that because. I actually don’t see a division between the two. There’s a lot of crossover. One of my major clients, I write the news pages for Prevention Magazine, Australia, every issue. That’s my most editorial client. It’s really just like a print magazine. I still, hold onto that because I still love writing for print. Otherwise, I write for Citro, I write for HCF, which is a health fund. I write for another health fund. When they commission an article for me, it’s literally just as if I’m writing it for a magazine or they commission an editorial. They never asked me to skew my writing or plug products. They may insert some product plugs or ask me; can you please mention this product quickly? But they’re never trying, it’s never biased or they’re never asking me to put this. So, I kind of feel it’s a bit the same. I’ll get a brief from a client, whether it’s an editorial client or a company, and it’s like, write an article on dental health or on whatever it is, fitness, like you said, for menopausal women, and I’ll write it the same way.

So, I do find, I guess that’s comes back to what you were saying, Lynne, people do want that really credible editorial content for their brands because they don’t want to seem like they’re selling people something and they want that credibility, so I do find that the lines are very blurred between the two.

Rachel: It’s like that brand journalism, isn’t it? I don’t think that term is used that much these days, but it’s interesting. I would love to know your process for keeping your pipeline full. Maintaining that steady cash flow, it’s something that we all struggle with, but do you have a system at all? So, your experience, you’ve been doing it for a long time, so you don’t worry so much anymore?

Sabrina: Oh my gosh. Okay. I’m going to be fully vulnerable and honest here. Cash flow is my Achilles. I honestly, I’m not going to give, I actually have some tips someone gave me on LinkedIn, which I’ve not implemented, but cashflow is my Achilles. I’m a single mom of three, life is expensive. I am constantly chasing my tail and constantly waiting for money to land in my account. I have not solved that problem for myself yet. It’s the worst part of my business and I wish I was better at it, but with time, hopefully. 

Two things I’ve implemented is for big projects, I charge 50% upfront. So, if I’m quoting you for website content, or I’m currently ghost writing a sobriety memoir for a reality TV star, those kinds of projects, it’s a big quote, 50% upfront, and then 50% upon completion. Also, I chase my overdue invoices unapologetically now. I will send you reminders from my accounting software until it’s paid. I used to feel, oh, maybe they won’t send me more work. No, I did the work. I’ve given you plenty of time to pay me. I just chase my money now and you know what? People still send me work because they know they’re supposed to have paid me. It’s funny, it’s the big companies that don’t pay on time. The small business clients are the ones who pay on time because they know what it’s like because they’re also a small business. So, I don’t have any problems chasing my money from like big accounting departments because I’m like, where is it? Those are my two strategies. They’re not the best. 

I posted about this on LinkedIn a while ago. I had a bookkeeper called Nina Miller, if you want to follow her. She gave a couple of tips that I thought I’d share. She said that she provides debt collection services for her clients, and she says that nothing beats personal service coming from a real person, but she also says that from an automation perspective, there’s a solution called Debtor Daddy. If you Google that, it does start out at like $119 a month. So, it’s not cheap, but I guess that is an automated solution to collect your money. And then there’s also, she mentioned GoCardless, which is like for scheduled payments. I don’t know if you know about it, but I’m a bit clueless about this stuff. It automates the payments, you can collect payments directly from people, so there are automated solutions out there. I do want to look into them, but of course, it’s a budget thing, right? For me, it’s not viable to go and pay $120 a month but cash flow’s definitely not my area of expertise. If anyone else has any tips for me, come at me with them because I would love to improve that part of my business. 

Rachel: I don’t have tips, but I’ll tell you something I did recently, because I was finding more clients wanted to pay via credit card and I never offered that in my own business. Yes, it is with Rachel’s List, that obviously is built into the system, but with my own business it was my account or nothing, basically. I recently started a new, Stripe account, but then I was dithering about, what if I’m taking a $3,000 payment and then Stripe has this fee on top, do I wear that fee or do I make them pay that fee? I just make them pay the fee and it could be a hundred bucks or more or whatever. Anyway, people are just paying it, so I figure, you’ve got the option to put it in my account, not pay a fee, but if you want to pay with a credit card, you can pay the fee. 

Sabrina: I’m sending myself an email right now about this. Thank you. That is really good. 

Lynne: Good advice.

Rachel: It’s very nerve wracking, isn’t it, because you think there’ll be pushback, but then maybe people just accept that that’s part of the cost of convenience.

Sabrina: It is, and I think when people are sort of, it’s funny you say that, because I had to pay a large fee the other day for something like exactly this kind of situation, and I was like, I’ll pay it because I just want peace of mind. I hate having debts over my head. I’m like, I will pay the extra $70 or whatever it was, just to have that paid. So, I think that’s a really good tip and I’m going to implement that as soon as we’re done here. 

Rachel: Let them pay the fee. 

Sabrina: That makes complete sense. 

Lynne: So, tell me what a typical week looks like for you. Is it similar sort of work or does it vary?

Sabrina: Juggling work and all my children’s activities and scraping for hours of work. But, in terms of content, I do have quite a few regular clients now. I was mentioning the prevention news pages that come back and then every month I’ve got a couple of pieces of content for HCF, a couple for Citro. I start my week by looking at my week and what I need to do and all the expert interviews I need to do. I do a lot of interviews with experts in my field because I’m not a qualified health professional. I need to lean on the expertise of other people.

That’s another thing I’ve gained confidence with. I used to be like, oh, I don’t want to bother this person. Now I relentlessly hunt down the top experts. I’m trying to land an interview with this amazing, I mean, she probably won’t mean anything to anyone unless they’re in the field, but she’s just, really in demand. She’s been on Mel Robbins podcast, she’s an exercise physiologist and, I have the confidence to just hunt people down now and I will just chase them. A lot of that is setting up these interviews, interviewing experts. Thankfully I don’t need to transcribe interviews anymore because that used to take hours and just trying to look ahead, see what needs to be planned. I guess I’m lucky enough that I do have that regular content in there, and sometimes there might be those longer-term projects, like that book, I’m ghost writing. I do have to set aside hours every week and those are a bit trickier because you can be tempted to be like, I’ll do that later.

I find that keeping myself accountable and scheduling time or even when I have to schedule a call with the client that puts fire under my bum. I’m like, got to get this done. My weeks are quite structured now, I guess in terms of, I have to make sure all those puzzle pieces are in place so I can get everything done.

Rachel: Well, if you’re a regular listener, I think you probably are to the podcast, you know that we love to ask all our guests about their favourite tech tips or the tools they’d be lost without. So, what are yours? 

Sabrina: I’m not too techie, but the CRM I use is called Go Indy. I searched for a client relationship management software that was specifically for freelancers or for one person. I didn’t want to pay for three people when it’s just me. It drove me crazy, and I tried so many things and nothing was adapted to what I needed and then this has been a game changer for me, and it’s not actually that expensive. It’s based in America. I had a couple of teething issues with it one time. They went offline for days, and I couldn’t access my calendar, and I was freaking out. But they fixed it for me, and everything was back.

But overall, for the price it allows me to make beautiful proposals that look really profesh, the calendar function where I can see all my month at a glance, all that stuff. It’s really well adapted to what I need, and I don’t feel like I’m paying this insane price for a team of three or four people that I don’t need. So, Go Indy or is it We Are Indie? I should know. You’ll find it and then I just use accounting software, QuickBooks. That’s also a game changer for getting your BAS done and those are my two main things. 

Lynne: What do you use for transcription?

Sabrina: Otter. I’ve tried the new iPhone function, but I don’t know. My Otter subscription’s about to renew for another year and I just really like it. I feel like everything’s in one place and it’s reliable. I’ve never had any issues with it, so I’m not ready yet to cut the cord. I think I’m just going to go for another year and maybe next year. The iPhone function works well. I was quite happy with it the few times I’ve used it. 

Lynne: Yes, I’ve been nervous about using the iPhone one. I’ve done a couple of tests, but I haven’t used it yet because interviews, they have a lot of insecurity about losing the audio.

Sabrina: I completely understand that. But it creates a sort of voice note and, and it transcribes, like the transcription and the audio is all there in one beautiful package you can send to yourself. So, it did work really well. But yes, I think it’s wise. I think journalists have been burnt once in the lives by losing one important interview.

Rachel: And it’s usually the most technical one with all the information in it that you can’t remember. 

Sabrina: Exactly. 

Lynne: Wow. That was so interesting. Such a great chat. 

Sabrina: Thank you. 

Rachel: Thanks for coming on.

Lynne: And tell us where our audience can find you.

Sabrina: Sabrinarogersanderson.com and on socials, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn. All at Sabrina Rogers-Anderson.  

Rachel: Amazing. Well, that brings us to the end of the show this week, but thanks to everyone who’s listening and feel free to leave a rating and review. We love it when you do that. don’t we? 

Lynne: We do. We do. 

Rachel: And we’ll pop everything into the show notes so you can find out more about where you can connect with Sabrina and we’ll see you next week, won’t we? 

Lynne: For sure. We will. Okay, thanks. Bye!

Rachel: Bye!

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Credits:

Connect with Sabrina through her website: https://sabrinarogersanderson.com/ or via LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/sabrinarogersanderson/  

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