Our End-of-Year Biz Audit

There's no better time to revisit your business than at the end of the year. Take a moment to think about where you want to go, what you want to accomplish, and what happened during the past year. Which clients did you love working with?

SEASON 2, EPISODE 6:

There's no better time to revisit your business than at the end of the year. Take a moment to think about where you want to go, what you want to accomplish, and what happened during the past year. Which clients did you love working with? Which gigs fit well with your interests, and which relationships didn't serve you? For the first time, we're pulling back the curtain on our businesses to do a full business audit! We interview each other about how much we make, what services we offer, what percentage of our income comes from journalism versus brand work, what goals we wanted to accomplish in 2020 (and whether or not we met them), and what we plan to do in 2021. Our Writers' Co-op members will also receive two worksheets this week that will allow you to audit your business alongside us. This week, we also want to recommend the Creative Nonfiction Podcast, which is a great craft-based accompaniment to TWC. CNF Pod is now in its 18th year, and it’s hosted by freelance writer Brendan O’Meara, who talks to writers about the art and craft of telling true stories. He’s interviewed anyone from poets, memoirists, and nonfiction writers. Recently he had on New Yorker writer Patrick Radden Keefe, and he's also talked to Susan Orlean, among many others. He enjoys digging into what writers are working on, and how they work. You can subscribe to wherever you podcast!

***

Full Transcript Below:

W- Hello, and welcome to The Writers' Co-op

J- This is a business podcast for freelance writers and we're your co-hosts. I'm Jenni.

W- And I'm Wudan.

J- Hey Wudan.

W- Hello, how are you doing?

J- Well, things are a little nutty because I'm moving. So it's chaos over here.

W- Wahh, I mean, that was such a sad sound, but I'm sad. I've known this obviously, and I'm still sad.

J- Yeah, it's a little wild. We decided to spend the next year living in various locations around the Western U.S. My husband is a nurse, as you may have heard me say, so he is going to do some travel nursing and we've been packing up all of our stuff into a storage unit and preparing for the first rotation in January. It's definitely a little wild to think about living nomadically for a year with a one-year-old child and a dog during a pandemic, but you know, I'm actually really excited about it. I really need to mix things up and I want to try living in some new places. I've always said that the beauty of freelancing for me is being able to be anywhere I want. And so it feels pretty good to be taking advantage of that during this admittedly strange time. So tell me, how are you? How are you doing?

W- I'm fine. I'm working on winding down my year because I am trying to not work beyond the second week of December, just because I don't have to. I'm hoping to stick to that because I've somehow managed to create quite a lot of work for myself heading into those weeks. Typical of me.

J- Yeah, same. I am also feeling like I'm going to be pretty busy at the beginning of December, but I'm taking the holiday slow. So I think it's going to be nice. I'm looking forward to it.

W- So before we dig into the episode, we want to make a plug for another podcast. That's the Creative Nonfiction Podcast or CNF pod. CNF pod is now in its eighth year. And it's hosted by a freelance writer Brendan O'Meara. He talks to writers who are crushing it about the art and craft of telling true stories. He's interviewed poets, memoirists and non-fiction writers. Recently he had on New Yorker writer, Patrick Radden Keefe, Susan Orlene, and many others. He enjoys digging into what writers are working on and how they work. You can subscribe to wherever you podcast or visit brendanomeara.com.

J- And you were on the CNF pod a few weeks ago, right Wudan?

W- Yeah. Way earlier in the pandemic. It's a fun episode. You all can tune in and hear more about my life. Okay. Onto the show. So since this is the episode that we're shooting off into space before 2020 comes to a close, we are doing something a little different.

J- Yeah. We decided that instead of interviewing someone else on this episode, we are going to interview each other.

W- As you know, we've interviewed a handful of freelancers already this season about how they work. And for the first time we're going to do a full peel back the curtains on how we investigate our own businesses at the close of every year.

J- December is definitely a good time to do this, I think

W- For sure. Clients are often winding down or checking out entirely.

J- Because like we said, everybody deserves time off, even freelancers.

W- Yeah. And I think honestly, freelancers should do something similar,

J- Right. This time is really valuable. I think it's important to spend it with the people you care about, get some distance from work and when you're distanced enough, then it's a good business practice to look at your year in review and see how things went. It's like we say, it's always way easier to see the forest when you're not lost in the trees.

W- Also, I know this is the time of year where a lot of folks are going to be posting year-end transparency.

J- Yeah. Those are always interesting to me.

W- Yeah, they absolutely are. And here's what I really want to say about transparency. It's not just the number on your tax return. It's not just the amount of money that you've made on an assignment. It's the context around it.

J- Yeah. This is so often missing. Like I want to know how many hours people worked, how many days they were able to take off, stuff like that.

W- Yeah — who you're providing for, how you've got certain commissions. And I don't mean the nitty gritty stuff, but just whether or not you were, it was through a referral, whether or not it was through your network or it was through cold pitching.

J- Yeah. Transparency matters because it shows other people what's possible, right,?

W- Exactly. And I think, you know, inflating numbers in any way is — this may be controversial — but I would say it's morally reprehensible. I said recently on Twitter that this is like the methods section of a scientific manuscript. If you lie about how you did something and others try and replicate it, that paper will ultimately be deemed fraudulent and the publisher would have to issue a retraction.

J- Yeah, that's a really great analogy.

W- I am going to get off my soap box now.

J- But really, I mean, louder for the people in the back: if you're seeing other people sharing numbers and there's not all this context, that's just sharing. It's not sharing for transparency. What we want to do is give you information that would allow you to replicate what we're doing.

W- Roger that. So Jenni, have you always audited your freelance business at the close of every year?

J- Yeah, I totally do. You know, I do a mini version of this actually at the end of most months, like I asked myself what worked, what didn't work? What did I like? What wins did I have? And then in December, I think it's just a bigger version of that. What about you? Do you do this regularly?

W- I don't do it formally, but I would say this year as good as any to start.

J- Totally. So if you're a Patreon member, we're going to include a worksheet with this episode, that's going to help you do a year-end review of your own for your own business. So you can even go now and grab that worksheet so that you can follow along. We think this is a really good practice for everybody to adopt.

W- All right, Jenni, want to go first?

J- Absolutely.

W- So tell me a little bit about your numbers. How much did you end up making this year?

J- By the end of December, I will have invoiced for about $68,000 this year, which I'm really proud of because I took the first quarter, January through April, actually more than the first quarter, four months completely off for maternity leave. I also want to say that I got a PPP loan from the government that was about $20,000. I think I'll keep about 15,000 of it once all is said and done because it's forgivable. So my total income was actually $88,000 if you want to count that loan. But I'm not going to include it when I talk about these numbers, because it feels a little bit outside of the realm of what I worked for. So without that PPP loan, I still hit about $8,500 a month, pre-tax for the eight months that I worked, which was more than what I planned on. For a year spent taking care of a new baby during a pandemic, like, this was a very solid win. I'm really proud. And interestingly, it's on pace with past years. If I had worked in those other four months, I would have hit about a hundred thousand dollars for the whole year, which is what I've made the other two years that I freelance

W- Give us a little bit more context around that number. How many hours a week did you find yourself working? How many vacation days were you able to take and where in your bandwidth level did you think you were operating? I know the answers can kind of vary.

J- Yeah. It really depends on the month. So like I said, I took January through April off 16 weeks to take care of my baby for maternity leave. And I worked on average about 25 hours a week, the rest of the time. So as you know, I typically take Fridays off and before I had a kid, I would take Fridays off and kind of noodle around on projects. Now I'm on childcare duty. So I'm like really taking Fridays off. And then I really only work for about six aggressive hours each day when I am working.

W- That's a lot of aggressive working. And when you say 25 hours a week, that's total, right. It's not just when you're billing a client.

J- :Absolutely. Yeah. It accounts for that unpaid time too. So in fact, I tracked my time for October, 2020, and I actually worked an average of 21 and a half hours each week. So that includes client work and business admin plus podcast stuff. So it means I'm making about a hundred dollars per hour, sometimes a little more, which tracks with the math that I've tried to do. Um, you know, I really knew that my bandwidth is going to be pretty reduced once I had a kid. So I definitely took less official vacation this year than I did in past years because of that whole four months off thing. And also, you know, because pandemic. Like usually I'm traveling and there's fewer places to go, but if you count the Fridays and the random hiking days that you and I like to take and a few actual vacations that were full weeks long, I come in at about 55 days off by the end of the year, which is pretty wild, like pretty great.

J- As far as the bandwidth question, I should be honest that I was totally tanked a lot of weeks, like taking care of a child and working very aggressively for 20/25 hours a week is exhausting, especially during those first few months back from leave. I was so, so, so, so busy. And I also had a lot of COVID anxiety. A lot of my gigs disappeared during COVID. It was not really a great time for my mental health. I scaled back a lot in September and started bringing in more like $6,000 a month, which feels like a sweet spot for me. Also, now that I have a few days where I'm with my kiddo. So I'm thinking about that bell curve you always talk about, Wudan, of ideal income zone. And I think my ideal income zone is actually a little less than what I made this year. It's around like $60,000.

W- Yeah. I like the bell curve a lot. And you know what you're saying about bandwidth and all that is totally, totally reasonable. How were you making this money and I'm asking, what services did you offer? What is the breakdown look like with regards to how much each service contributed to your total income?

J- Yeah, I did this math and it was really fun. So I offered three different services— well almost four: writing, editing, and coaching. I did a little bit of fact checking, which I would kind of check in that editing bucket and then a little bit of speaking and we have our podcast. So I definitely made the most money from editing. It was about 30% of my business, 30% of my income. And we brought in a good chunk of money for our time spent on the podcast too, which is, you know, that changed. At first at wasn't that true, but net over time, it accounted for about 17% of my income, which I'm proud of. We changed the structure of our podcast business model and I think really improved things in terms of being compensated so we could still work on this project. And then I will also say product reviews are huge for me. They make up nearly 20% of my business for two or three different clients. I made 10% of my income from writing reported feature stories, you know, kind of like straight journalism, and 15% from brand work. And then coaching was a sad 8% of my business. I'll talk about that in a little bit. Definitely a lot of time for less money. So I guess if you consider product reviews to be journalism, which in my mind they are, it's the same reporting research process, 60% of my work mix was journalism: reporting, editing, writing, and 15% was brand work. And then the rest was what I would call teaching. So podcast, coaching, and I'm actually both happy and surprised with that spread. It feels right.

W- This is interesting because I feel like the year before 2020, you used to write a lot more. What changed and how did you make the switch from taking more writing assignments to editing?

J- Yeah, last year I think I wrote over a hundred stories.

W- Oh my God.

J- Yeah. This year, not joking, I think I maybe wrote 25. I think there's a lot of ways in which things have changed for me. I did get a huge byline this year in the New York Times, which I'm really proud of, but I was writing things that were longer, took more time instead of kind of quick one-off assignments, which is probably why that number is smaller. But it also has a lot to do with my bandwidth. With a kid and COVID, my bandwidth was like already just stripped down. So editing tended to be a much better fit for me. I was distracted a lot and I needed to do something that had sort of low emotional investment. So editing for me really filled that bucket. And I think I came to that decision when doing those end of month reviews, right? Like what's working, what's not working. When I was on leave, I actually reached out to a couple of former managers who I thought might need fill-in editing help because I had an inkling, sort of a sense that when I came back, I wanted to do something that was a little more stable, kind of hourly. And two of those people took me up on that in various configurations. So I talked a lot about how I was available for editing in my journalism circles. I was like, "I want to find something that's 20 hours a week editing. Where is it? Help me find it." I really like to be a sort of like substitute teacher editor. I come in, I fill in someone's maternity leave, for example. And then I leave before I have to get involved with any of the bureaucracy, like no meetings, no nothing. It's been a good fit for me during this season of my life. And I think this switch also happened because I lost big writing clients during COVID. That writing number, my sense is that it will creep up again for me in 2021, but I do want to be a bit more strategic about it. It's not sustainable for me to write like 5,000 words a week. Not now, and maybe it never was

W- Well to be quite frank, 5,000 words for anyone is a lot in a week. Jenni, tell us, what did you learn from that pivot to more editing?

J- I had to be really intentional this year about listening to my gut. I don't think I anticipated quite how much parenting would change what I wanted to do and how much bandwidth I had to do my work. Like I really feel like I know myself pretty well in terms of the type of work I want to do, but it was a whole new world with a baby and a pandemic. You know, I didn't plan to be working from home and I was. I tried to not assume that what worked before would work now. And I do think that ultimately served me. It's felt a little chaotic and choppy, but I learned to, I think just be nicer to myself, if that's a thing. Like just give myself a break more often and also give myself the thing that feels like it's the right fit for me.

W- I like this because you know, we talk about diversifying the services that you offer, diversifying your client base, and it's a good way to switch your brain and still be working and not feel like you're just really overworking that critical thinking brain, which I think you probably would have to use if you're writing a reported 5,000 word piece or a total of 5,000 words every single week.

J- Yeah, absolutely.

W- Alright, Jenni, let's go big picture. What were your biggest wins?

J- Getting that New York Times byline was a huge win for me because the story was a topic that I really cared about very much. And it was also a story that I had rescued from another publication where it was killed. So all around I think that definitely sits up there as a top, top win/top assignment. I also brought on a few new brand clients with missions that I care about: a sexual assault training company and a bank targeted at freelancers, among other things. And so I think I'm getting better at courting corporate clients and especially finding folks who are aligned with things that I care about as well. I'm also really proud of this podcast and the coaching program that I built alongside it. I remember when I went on maternity leave, I was like, maybe when I come back, I'll coach people. And now I like have this thriving coaching business with a waitlist and we've built this incredible podcast community that I feel really helps people. From a satisfaction standpoint, I think this podcast project is truly the biggest win for me this year.

W- That feels really good. And I agree on the podcast and our ability to actually have a tangible impact on our listeners and other people who follow us on social media. Jenni, what about the stuff that didn't work for you?

J- Hourly work does not work for me. I figured this out very early on in my return from maternity leave. I was talking about those editing gigs and a lot of those gigs were hourly. And I think if I want my stress levels to be low and I want to make enough, project-based work is so much better. Editing was totally helpful for stabilizing my business. You know, during March, April when the pandemic was nutty and I was just coming back from leave, but I was also putting in probably 20 hours a week for one client because it was hourly work and I was locked into their workflow. So I just worked a lot more than my usual hours. And when I looked at the math, I realized my hourly rate had gone down because of that structure.

I will also say coaching has been touch or go financially. And I know that you'll probably talk about this too Wudan, because we've talked about this kind of incessantly privately, but I know that it takes a ton of time and energy, but it doesn't pay that well overall. My net income from coaching was $6,000 this year. That is like one assignment for me, otherwise, you know, maybe two. So I love it, but I've had to do a lot of fiddling, I think, to sort of corral coaching into a better bucket: set boundaries, raise my rates, things like that to make it work for me.

W- I agree. I mean, all of freelancing is about setting boundaries and I do feel similarly about coaching and I'll weigh in on that later. So Jenni, I'm curious about how this year ended up squares with the goals that you came in with.

J- It's funny, I'm a big goal-setter, but I actually didn't set any goals for this year. I was looking back at my notebooks when we were trying to figure out what we were going to talk about today. And usually I have a whole page of them, but my son came surprisingly early in December and by January I was a sleep-deprived mess. He spent some time in NICU. I just wasn't in a place where I was even able to think about the future. So I was making goals about things like I need to sleep and I need to pay our rent. Like, there was nothing ambitious on there. I wanted to be in the present moment more. I remember talking about that and I wanted to be able to like support my family financially and still work, but also be around my kid. And I think that the financial goal I set was to make $6,000 a month working part-time so I did meet those goals despite how crazy this year was.

W- Okay. Pause. My therapist always says pause when I say something big and cavalierly. That's insane. I mean, when I say that's insane, I'm referring to the, wanting to make $6,000 a month, a part time with a newborn. And I feel, I, you know, I say pause because I feel like most mothers priorities and productivity and workflow completely plummet immediately after the baby comes. And I'm really amazed by how you've held the line on work.

J- Yeah. It's been not easy, maybe not smart all the time. Like I did it, but I want to be clear to anybody who's listening in parenting that even if it looks easy from the outside, I think it feels fairly impossible while you're doing it. So part of what I'm going to be doing next year is being intentional about doing less, which I'll talk about in a bit, but it was a lofty goal and not always a reasonable one.

W- I hear you. All right, Jenni, last question. What's the thing you're proud of that you're maybe hoping to take into next year?

J- I am proud of how I listened to my gut and made changes when needed this year. It has been such a wild year for me, and I think for so many of us. I feel like I've been sort of relearning myself and what I want. The world looks so different than it did when, you know, if we'd been talking a year ago, when we were planning this podcast, everything has changed. So I'm planning to take that mindset with me, that agile sort of do what I need to do in the current moment mindset with me into 2021, we will be travel nursing and I'm going to be managing a lot more childcare. So I think that my business is really going to be operating at that 20 hour a week capacity for the next six months to a year. And the financial pressures on me will also be less, which is interesting. So it gives me a little bit more time to be strategic about the direction I want to go in the skills I want to build for me. My business has really been in service of supporting my family financially for the past three years. And then also allowing me to be creatively productive and free from a staff job. But this year I think it's different. I'm going to do some more work focused on psychology. I want to build up some of my reporting skills a little more. I have some new goal publications. And I'm actually just really interested in impact on other people, like teaching learning than I am in my overall financial end of year number, which will be a whole different way of working, I think.

W- I like that mindset. I mean, with regards to impact. And I think we talk about it a lot as journalists in the context of "did what we write lead to any change?" But I feel like freelancers, we don't often get to see that side of the curtain to always document that change or know about it. I do want to say objectively though, Jenni, I've been really, really amazed at how promptly you've pivoted when you had to change the shape of your business when you've seen yourself burning out on writing and saw that you'd be better suited for more editing or fact-checking. It requires a lot of self-awareness and acting on that self-awareness and I think acting on that comes a bit more easily when you know you've already built the relationships that will set you up for success.

J- Yeah. Thanks, Wudan. Agreed. I think that it has been so helpful to know good people who are doing cool work. You know, even when things paused because of the pandemic, they tended to come back around. The people I've loved working with, you know, they popped up again. It's all about, you know, knowing people, connecting with people.

W- Always to building relationships as probably the most important soft skill in running a business. But truly, I feel like you should feel good about your versatility and really leaning into all your skills because you never know when you need to change things up. In freelancing, you know, this we've said this before on the podcast, you can't just be a one trick pony. It doesn't make your business resilient.

J- I was definitely proud that no one service really took up more than like 20% of my time or, you know, 20% of my client load. It's a really big mix. So you're right. I think, thank God for that. One question for folks listening would be, what other skills do you want to develop or lean into in the coming year so that you can diversify? You know, maybe you can join me in my goal of skill building. It's a really good time around now or in the slower months to take an e-course to hone those skills. Think about that diversification this year, more than ever. I think it's become obvious how important that is.

W- Agreed.

J- Okay Wudan, you are up. I'm excited about this. Tell me about your business. You have had a big year.

W- Yeah. I'm ready. Ask me, ask me things.

J- Okay. So same first question for you. How much money did he make this year?

W- My gross was $107,000. My net is closer to 103,300-ish.

J- That is awesome.

W- Yeah, I'm sure a lot of listeners right now are like, well, at the start of the season, you said you were only making around 50 to 52K, And that's true. I was for the last few years leading up to this year, but a lot of things changed to make that happen.

J- We've totally flipped spots. So tell me, tell me what happened this year that changed things for you?

W- Well, for starters, because of the pandemic, my travel disappeared. Usually when I'm on the road, I can only focus on the story that I'm working on and nothing else. It's harder for me to juggle setting up interviews for my next feature and a fact check assignment and a copy writing assignment and just go down the list. And I think that's a large reason why I was able to take on more work and therefore earn more money, because I wasn't traveling.

J- It's wild to think that you can double your income by basically like sitting at your desk more often.

W- Yeah. Honestly, if I could just get paid that much money to just sit at my desk, that would be cool. But yeah, my brain was definitely the chaotic emoji for the better part of this year.

J- Yeah. I remember that, especially back in March. So tell me a little bit more about the context, how much time off did you end up taking and how much did you work each week?

W- The year's not technically over yet, but I looked through my calendar very diligently and I saw that I've taken 47 vacation days so far. Weekends are sort of hard to count in there and I'll explain why in a second. And that's not yet counting the three week I'm about to take off until the end of the year. I worked mostly 30 to 35 hour weeks earlier on in the pandemic. I had days off, but sometimes I needed to work on the weekends. So I would sort of make random weekdays my weekends.

J- I love that we've both taken like 50 plus days off by the end of the year. This is one of the reasons I got into freelancing, right? The flexibility that like I'm not tied to my desk and could go do what I want. And it is a true joy to see it map out on paper for both of us. I know that we've both done a lot of random hiking days, midweek, which we've talked about is a huge benefit for both of us, for our mental health and our efficiency. And I do a lot of that time-switching that you're talking about too, like trade off a Sunday afternoon, if I can spend a Wednesday in the woods. Tell me though about your bandwidth because you were working pretty aggressively. What was that like this year?

W- It was a really mixed bag. In January and February I was on the road for about a month. I was very focused on those projects and that felt fine. And then I came home from all of that and went on a vacation. So now timeline-wise, it's early March when the pandemic really started shutting things down and everything went in a tailspin. I'll say that the first few months of it were really hard for me. As lots of listeners know, I mostly cover science and health. And so suddenly a lot of publications were calling on me for COVID coverage. And because I just had a huge assignment canceled, it was hard for me to say no. I mean, also publications were collapsing left and right. And I basically lost out on work. So I needed something to grasp onto.

J- Yeah, the COVID panic hustle. I remember you being so stressed out then, but I think it paid off financially. Right? Was it worth it?

W- It's a hard question, actually. So in April I invoiced for over $14,000 and how do you, how do you answer the question "is it worth it," right? Like it was a lot of money. I've never seen that much money come in before, you know, any given month, but how do you weigh that against the trade-off, right?

J- Yeah.That's a wild amount. I mean, how did you handle the stress of it?

W- You know, I was a sprinter in high school and have basically never been able to run long distances and that translates almost to a T to how I work too. So I know I can work really hard in short bursts, take a break, start up again. But when I started to getting into that pattern and the breaks weren't long enough and I really needed breaks built in every day, I started burning out hard. I know it didn't look like that because I kept pushing. And so early on in the pandemic, I got a therapist, I call her my burnout coach. And I mean, that's accurate. I think people turn to us for coaching, but people may not realize that coaches need coaches or therapists too.

J- Yeah. Therapy has been so huge for me in recognizing when things are nuts. Like I think oftentimes I'm like, I'm just trucking along like normal. And my therapist is like, Jenni, what are you doing? So, I mean, tell us about your revenue streams over the past year. What services did you offer?

W- Yes, the services I provided this year were coaching, this podcast, fact checking, reporting for newspapers and magazines, speaking, writing for trade publications, and writing for brands. If I break that down, coaching was 5% podcast 10% fact-checking 19% reporting, 50% speaking, 1% trade publications, 13% and brands 3%. So I did the math and journalism still accounts for the bulk of my income, nearly 70% and therefore almost 70K a year. And if you're just adding up what I've made from writing, that's in the high 60 K range.

J- So many people ask us about this. Like, is it possible to make what you want if you only do journalism? And the answer to this is like both yes and no. We had Aurora Almendral on here a few episodes ago and she ranged from like $50-60,000 a year. And it's really cool for me to hear that you did $70,000 this year from journalism, Wudan plus, you know, the other stuff along the side to bolster your stability. The fact that 50% of your work is reporting is like, you know, that's legit. You should be proud of that.

W- Yeah, thanks. I set a lot of boundaries on the journalism work that I did take on, you know, the work had to pay at least a dollar a word in most cases. I took some 50 cents a word assignments, but only if I knew I could do them quickly enough. Almost rarely was byline and prestige something I cared about. I think I really just got into the FU pay me mindset this year.

J- This is what happens when you have a podcast talking about all this stuff, all of a sudden trickles into your life too. So Wudan, tell me about your biggest wins this year.

W- When I was putting together these numbers, I was looking at all the assignments that I booked. The majority of my work falls into two buckets, ongoing clients who gave me monthly work — that wasn't a huge sum of money, but was consistent enough to make it worthwhile. And then there were the bulk of my assignments that brought in more than $1,000 each. And I think this made the tracking of monies and booking assignments way easier. Booking in $1,000 increments or more, I found, is a much nicer way for me to run a freelance business effectively. Like for me, a thousand dollars a month is my rent.

J- Yeah. I love that. Matt Villano from episode two of the season was talking about how living in $500 increments is just incredibly hard and it made a huge difference for him financially to have anchor clients who paid him more per paycheck

W- Agreed. And one clever thing I saw was from Bizzy Coy. She's also a freelancer. She tweeted a while back to think about how you can get clients to pay you in those increments. So say there's a client who wants to pay you a hundred dollars for an email newsletter. Well, what if that same client books you for a bundle of 10 and pays you a thousand dollars for it? Again, it's easier for your brain and your books, you know what you're delivering and everyone can plan for these things. So I would say that's my biggest win. Like realizing that I can think in $1,000 or more increments of work.

J- For sure, the stability of that is huge. Any projects that you're particularly proud of or stories that you feel really good about that you've worked on?

W- You know, JennI, I also am really proud of this freelance coven we've built. I love hearing about how the stuff we put out there has led people to feel more confident in taking risks, just yes, to having that impact. I'm also really proud of doing more podcast stuff. I just wrapped up fact-checking a serialized investigative podcast about environmental justice. And I got to work with someone I really admire. It hit my need for something stable. It was great to work in a medium besides words. And I'm also proud of following the coronavirus story for a long time, especially since I initially resisted it.

J- Yeah. You've done some great reporting this year. What about stuff that didn't work for you.

W- I hate to say this, but coaching was really such a time suck.

J- Yeah. Like I said before, I'm with you like that one month I tracked how much time I was spending on things. And I realized I was making like 25 to $30 an hour on coaching when my rates are supposed to be a hundred dollars an hour. It was not good.

W- There's a psychological thing with coaching because I'm not usually a people pleaser, but when people reach out to me specifically and want my help, I love to feel like I'm helping them. And I think, you know, in coaching you see such a tangible effect so quickly. So, you know, having that impact is why I find it so rewarding. But somewhere through this year, I realized I was probably spending too much time coaching and it wasn't paying enough. I mean the sort of speak for themselves, right? Coaching made up around 5%. So $5,000 altogether, which is, it's not nothing, but it took me a while to refine my rates and boundaries about how many clients I could take on every month. In every given month, coaching probably took up 5-10% of my time, but didn't make as much. So that was a disconnect, right? Like when you see something creeping into your time commitment, but it's not giving you the money in equivalent amounts. And I think my key fix for this next year is to basically up my rates so that my time investment and earnings would be better matched.

J- I'm so with you on this. It has actually been really nice to have both of us dealing with offering this new service at the same time, because I think there's a big learning curve on pricing when you introduce something that you haven't done before. We both have found so much purpose and satisfaction in helping freelancers, like truly my coaching calls are some of my favorite things about my day, especially when they feel like really productive meetings. But it's like, how much do we help other people at the expense of our own businesses? So I think we're definitely getting closer to the ideal, both of us. And 2021 will be an interesting journey with coaching. Wudan, I'm curious about how your year ended up squaring with the goals that you came up with last year, if you set goals.

W- This is such a weird question. Honestly, I, you know, I had been very content making around 50K a year. I would have been content making another 50 K this year. At the end of quarter two, I realized I had basically made all the money I needed for the year. That was crazy. And from a purely monetary perspective, I did not need to make this much money. So I'm excited to just dump what I need into my retirement account. Use rest as a buffer for the first few months of 2021, pay my taxes, et cetera. When the pandemic first hit and canceled my big international trip, I told myself that ambition in 2020 was dead. I had plans of getting a four-year project published, which will now become a six or seven year project because this whole thing hinges on me getting abroad to South Asia.

J- Yeah. I feel like I just feel for all of you who has worked depends on travel, but I think, you know, the right thing to do when you can't do the work you expected as a business decision is to pivot and you totally did. And you did successfully, aiming your focus again on the COVID stuff. It's a major bummer though, that long-term project.

W- Yeah. I'm just the shrug emoji with regards to that. But it is, you're right: It's rolling with the punches. I also feel good about having a broader diversity of clients, which was a goal of mine. I'm glad I've kept up with trade publications and expanded into brands. I'm not so secretly preparing myself for the collapse of journalism. I don't know if I've ever made this clear before, or if people get the impression from me, but there's a reason why I offer so many skills and services to a range of potential clients.

J- It is always the nagging voice at the back of our heads, for sure. I don't know how nice it is to hear us say this, but Wudan and I talk about this a lot, like having a safety net, build yourself a safety net, what's your plan B? Build a safety net. Make sure the safety net is very thick.

W- Yeah. One of my colleagues likes to say this industry, meaning journalism, it will never love you back.

J- It's so true. It's like the bad ex-boyfriend. I do think the key though, in, I just want to say it louder again is diversification. Don't put all your eggs in one basket. Like you don't want it all in one service. You don't want all your time for one client. It is great for journalists to take on other work too. I know this can be a little bit controversial, but we believe that you should, it's better for your anxiety, honestly, and also for stability. And it gives you that fallback plan, in addition to adding some freedom and wiggle room to your schedule, you know, the more you make the easier it is to make decisions about taking on work that aligns with what you value. So on that note, Wudan, last question. What is a thing that you're proud of that you are looking forward to taking into 2021.

W- I was thinking about this. It would be great to have another six-figure year. Although now I don't even care about that. And I'm not saying it because I did it. So late into this year, probably October, I realized I'd rather work with good people than just have to get work that paid well or seem prestigious. That really means tapping into my network and seeking out those partnerships for myself. They're not going to happen overnight. I sort of have to do the work and put it out there of what kind of work I'm looking for. On the money end, after I realized I'd hit six figures, and even with taking way too many vacation days, I tried to figure out how much money would be more reasonable for me to earn without feeling like I was losing my mind. You know, the month I clocked in 14K, there was another month where I invoiced for 16,K talking about these numbers makes me so tired. I was working my tail off and I know for freelancers, it's a lot of boom and bust, but sometimes I wonder if I can build a little more consistency in. I think a much more saner income for me would look somewhere between 75 to $85,000, which, you know, 2020 told me that I could do that and take on less work.

J- And you could do that basically exclusively with reporting if you wanted to. Right? Yeah,

W- Yeah. If I wanted to, but I don't think I would be up for taking that risk, honestly.

J- That seems smart. You know, it's also really cool though, that you have that math, it's like, maybe it'll push you. You know, you can push yourself a little less and it'll sort of move you less towards the panic hustle and more towards being strategic about picking good people to work with. Less drama feels like a very good 2021 goal. But wait, also, I think it's ironic that we're both talking, making less next year.

W- But it also sounds like we're trying to game-ify for lack of a better word, the system to see what can fulfill us, whether it's financially or creative so we can stay more sane.

J- Yeah. See? Six figures really isn't the end game here. It's all about a work setup that sustainable, gives you satisfaction that will help you pay your bills and save a little bit, but then you don't have to burn out while you're doing this. Neither of us hit that sweet spot each month. But I think less than the money, that sort of sweet spot is what we're striving for. Honestly, though, Wudan, I, I feel like I'm actually kind of proud of how 2020 went for us after listening to this.

W- Yeah, for sure. I'm also very glad this year is behind us for many reasons beyond just our freelance businesses.

J- Yeah. Honestly, who knows what will happen next year? I feel like we have to be ready for anything.

W- Agreed for sure.

J- So if you enjoyed this exercise, like we said, we have a worksheet for Patreon members that's going to walk you through doing your own year-end review. Plus a little bit of a cool exercise that will help you look visually at what you want more of and what you want less of. It should be fun.

W- The extras are good. I think they put some more focus on what you want to do in the coming year, which feels hopeful. It's good to plan. I always have a little sticky note on my computer that explains what my actual goals are and it's helpful to have. It keeps me on track I think, unless a pandemic comes along and tosses it out the window.

J- Well, on that note, we're headed out.

W- This was great, Jenni. As always, I will see you on the airwaves soon.

J- Bye, Wudan.

W- Bye Jenni.

J- Season two of The Writers' Co-op is made possible by a grant from the International Women's Media Foundation and edited by Susan Valot. Jen Monnier is our producer and The Writers' Co-op is hosted by me, Jenni Gritters and Wudan Yan.