Three Areas You Need to Focus on to Grow Your Writing Business
by Stacy Ennis
I started my business in the Dominican Republic.
At the time, I was working as a high school language arts teacher at an international school, but my big dream was to make money as a writer.
My business was initially called “Freelancexpat” because I planned to help businesses abroad create better content for English-speaking expats and tourists. I also wanted to be a travel writer. (PSA: that’s not a great way to make money as a writer. Hindsight, right?)
My first job was for a travel company in the Dominican Republic. Pay was paltry—and while I was hired to write hotel descriptions and locale summaries for the website, I soon found myself making calls to hotels in Spanish. I barely spoke the language at the time, so of course I struggled.
Long story short, that didn’t last long.
How a Forum Led to My First Ghostwriting Assignment
We moved to Vietnam the following year and I decided to get serious about my business. I was tired of relying on others to give me work and money to pay my bills. I wanted to be in control of my life and my work. So I set about writing thirty query letters to thirty publications in thirty days.
Anyone who was written a query letter knows how much work they are. I spent hours every day reviewing publications, writing thoughtful pitches, submitting them, and waiting. And waiting. And waiting.
Nothing.
However, I was also in forums, trying to learn about the best places to pitch and how to grow a writing business. In one of those forums, I met the founder of a young publishing company, who gave me my first ghostwriting assignment, writing a third of an academic textbook.
I did a good job, and that paid gig gave me the confidence to go after more work. I connected with another publisher and got my first book editing job. When that went well, I got another one. The jobs kept coming as my confidence grew and I proved my work.
My Niche is in Business and Leadership
I edited books and magazines for several years, eventually becoming the executive editor of Sam’s Club’s Healthy Living Made Simple, a publication that reaches about 11 million readers.
Over the course of my career, I have written more than 1,000 pieces of content, including books, articles, video scripts, and pretty much any type of content you can imagine. I also stepped into the worlds of leadership and diversity and inclusion, and I am cofounder of Next Level Women Leaders, a leadership training company.
Today, my revenue comes from ghostwriting books, speaking, and training, including one-on-one coaching and my signature book-writing training, Nonfiction Book School.
My niche is in business and leadership. I work with aspiring authors and individuals who want to contribute something good to the world. My clients aren’t just looking to make money; they’re also looking to grow their influence and impact.
While I mostly work with nonfiction books, I love a good novel. My love for fiction served me well when Ron Price and I coauthored Growing Influence: A Story of How to Lead with Character, Expertise, and Impact. This business fable brought together my niche, writing expertise, and love of fiction into a book Ron and I are deeply proud of.
To Grow My Business, I Focus On These Three Areas
My biggest areas of focus have been: 1) content marketing, 2) excellence, and 3) value-based pricing. I’ll dig into each.
Content marketing.
Content includes not just blog posts and social media but also the images and content on my website and social media profiles. I make sure to have up-to-date headshots, a current bio, and updated information on all platforms.
I also write a weekly email to my list and produce weekly content on my blog or podcast. While I haven’t always been perfect with consistently creating weekly content, I have been showing up since 2008. Everywhere I show up online makes up my platform, and a cohesive experience across all my sites and accounts creates a cohesive experience for potential clients.
By the time we meet for an initial call, they know all about me and have likely already made a decision about whether to hire me. (If you’re curious to learn more about how to create a great platform, I have a free e-mail course.)
Excellence.
My goal in each and every interaction and deliverable is excellence. Anyone who works with me will tell you they will rarely (if ever) hear me say “it’s good enough.”
My aim is always to show up with utmost professionalism and integrity, do what I say I’m going to do, deliver on time or early, and do my very best work. I believe this single area of focus has greatly contributed to my success.
Value-based pricing.
Early on in my career, I played the “what will they pay?” game. I based my pricing off of what I thought my clients could afford, or what I thought they’d think I was worth. I estimated every new project based on how many hours I thought it would take me.
The result? I had a “full” calendar, booking out two to four months at a time . . . and I was working like a dog. Plus, as I got better and faster, I was essentially making less money.
One day, I realized: Why am I penalizing myself for working faster?
As a business owner, I set my own rates. I don’t need to base my rate off of the number of hours. I switched to value-based pricing, which simply meant I was basing proposals off the value of my work instead of the time it would take me to complete a project.
Not long after, I had my first six-figure year, and my revenue has grown substantially in the years since. I book out typically nine to twelve months in advance, working with the best clients in the world (truly!).
Too Many of Us Default Our Way Through Our Businesses
My signature program, Nonfiction Book School, was a natural outgrowth of my professional progression. I started with teaching and writing short-form content, began editing books, started writing books, began coaching aspiring authors, and eventually turned my one-on-one coaching into a program. This took me more than ten years of skills development, and about three years of intentional development of my nonfiction writing program.
That said, I think the biggest part of my ability to grow and scale (and to continue to do so—I have so many dreams!) is vision and belief. Every year, I take three to four days away from my work and family to focus on business strategy. I write out my life vision, thinking of what I deeply desire for my work and life. I imagine the life I want, and then I create a plan to get there.
When I’m back to the office and my day-to-day life, I execute my plan.
Too many of us default our way through our businesses. I get it, because I did it too. But once I got really clear on the life I wanted—a location independent business, travel, experiences and adventures with my husband and kids—I became brave enough to believe I could actually build the business I dreamed of.
Advice for a Young Writer: Don’t Listen to the Nay-Sayers
Get started! Don’t listen to the nay-sayers out there, who will give you a million-and-one reasons why you won’t be successful. You can create a life and business you love. It takes vision, strategy, and courage. Embrace failure because it will come. Learn and continue on.
Be excellent in everything you do, and you’ll soon find there is no competition out there. The world is wide and work is plentiful. You can do this!
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Stacy Ennis is an award-winning author, creative consultant, and speaker, as well as the cofounder of Next Level Women Leaders, a leadership training company. She served as long-time ghostwriter for a Nobel Prize winner in medicine and executive editor of Sam’s Club’s Healthy Living Made Simple, a publication that reaches around 11 million readers.
Stacy’s latest coauthored book is Growing Influence (Greenleaf Book Group, 2018); her TEDx talk, “How to raise brave kids,” has been viewed thousands of times around the world. She lives in Portugal with her husband and two children.
For more on Stacy and her work, please see her website, or connect with her on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
Growing Influence: A Story of How to Lead with Character, Expertise, and Impact: Emily is a career-driven thirty-something with big ambitions and a young family. She is making an impact as a leader at a tech company, but after being passed up for multiple promotions, she finds herself at a loss for how to improve.
Fate answers her in the form of a kind—and surprisingly direct—older man in a coffee shop. A well-respected CEO before he retired, David has deep and rich leadership knowledge. Emily needs direction, and David is the perfect mentor.
Growing Influence offers readers both practical advice on how to develop leadership skills and a relatable account of one woman’s growth by applying the principles in the book. Unlike nonfiction business books or business memoirs, this story is a business fable that is both impactful and transformative.
Available at Amazon.
The Editor’s Eye: A Practical Guide to Transforming Your Book from Good to Great: Editing is integral to the writing process, but its role is often misunderstood. What if editing could make writing less stressful and more enjoyable? What if it could help you write sharper, more compelling prose?
The Editor’s Eye: A Practical Guide to Transforming Your Book from Good to Great shows you how editing can help you write your best book. In this no-nonsense guide, book coach and editor Stacy Ennis takes you through the ins and outs of the often bewildering book-editing process. As you begin to understand how writing and editing complement each other, you’ll become more confident as a writer, finish your book faster, and move toward the ultimate goal: publication.
Available at Amazon.
