Speaker 1So, what are your income numbers like today?
Speaker 2Close to $6,000 or $7,000 a month right now. You don't need any specialized degree. I hadn't worked a ton on much of anything when I got started in the freelance world. And I was applying to stuff on Upwork, and I got hired by Biggie Smalls' son.
Speaker 1What?
Speaker 2Notorious V.I.G.'s son.
Speaker 1When you're like, "I want to be a freelancer, what do I do?" How do you find customers?
Speaker 2Oh, they're everywhere. They are hiring AI model trainers, which is another lucrative opportunity. They're paying $90 an hour. I'm not a technical person. I have no coding background.
Speaker 1Who's stopping you?
Speaker 2No one is stopping you. It's never been easier to just do that.
Speaker 1All right, so what is the playbook to finding companies that will pay you a lot of money? So, the other day, I saw a chart on Google Trends that stopped me in my tracks. This is the phrase "hire a writer" and its popularity over the last five years. Would you believe, in 2023, when ChatGPT came out, it started dropping. People didn't need writers as much. Obviously. But now, over the last two years, it's been going straight up and to the right. Believe it or not, good writers are in more demand than they ever have been, and companies are paying $900 to $1,200 per article for people to write AI-assisted articles. I almost couldn't believe this was true. I had to find out for myself. I ran into Steph Spector. She drove up here from Austin. We're about to take a ride in my Cybertruck, so I can ask her, "How can we get paid $1,000 per article to write in this age of AI? How are we even having this conversation in 2026? How is writing still a thing? Teach me your ways, Steph. Let's go pick her up." Stephanie in Austin, Texas. This is 2026, the age of AI. No one is writing by hand anymore. Everyone has 100 blog articles all written by ChatGPT, but you make your money writing, like for real writing.
Speaker 3For real writing.
Speaker 1Right? Yep. How did you get your start? What led you to that? ChatGPT comes out in 2023. What are you doing at that point or before?
Speaker 2Around that point, I started working for Apple. I had a contract with Apple as an editor, and I was editing sales enablement materials for them, just a fancy way of saying stuff that their salespeople would read to help them sell Apple products. Okay. And everyone was kind of freaking out about it, like didn't know if ChatGPT was going to take their jobs, if the writers were going to have anything to write. And in the beginning, at least within Apple, everything is really secretive. They want to take their time. They want to make sure that they're getting the job done. They want to make sure that they're getting the job done. And so, I started working with them. I started working with them, and I started adopting new technologies. So, we didn't use it too, too much within the company. Okay. But I started experimenting with it just for myself, just to know what was going on there.
Speaker 1Like right after it came out?
Speaker 2Right after it came out.
Speaker 1Okay.
Speaker 2And immediately, I wasn't super impressed. Okay. But I know that I'm biased. I've been writing since 2016, so I can spot little tells that make it seem, I don't know, like it's a little more robotic or a little safe.
Speaker 1Right.
Speaker 2Right. So, I was like, "Okay. I know that this is a big deal, so I'm going to monitor this." Kept using it for brainstorming, for research, using it for little tweaks like, "Hey, help me tighten up this sentence," or, "This doesn't seem as concise as it could be." Mm-hmm. Started improving the way I would prompt AI. Tested out Clawd. Once that came out, found that that was much better at adapting to my voice. And then, I started using all these other AI tools, and I was like, "Oh, okay. Everything has its strength." Right? Like, I don't know. Like, I'll use Gemini for processing video and audio. I think it's particularly great at that. Clawd for marketing content, ChatGPT for writing and research. So I found that the more that I experimented and the more that I used these tools, I was like, "Okay. This isn't apocalypse now. This isn't the end of my career." Because I know that I can still write with a little more humanity. It still pops. Yeah. People still want that writing, but it's definitely helpful with a lot of aspects of the writing process.
Speaker 1Yeah. Okay. So that happened in 2023. Yeah. And your job was writing for the salespeople to do their job better?
Speaker 2So specifically, instructional designers, writers basically would write content. They would give it to me for review, and I would make sure that it's in line with Apple's style. So they have a really crisp, polished style. I had to make sure it aligned with all of those rules. I had to make sure it was clear, it made sense. A lot of the materials had to do with technical products. So everything needed to be clear and make sense. That was my job, was reviewing that. And I also, at one point, was tasked with coming up with a two-hour course that I would deliver on executive writing. So how salespeople, how sales leaders across the world at Apple could write stronger briefs that would be read by the CEO, Tim Cook. Okay. So I put together that as well.
Speaker 1Okay. So that was to teach the salespeople. To teach the salespeople on how to talk to executives better.
Speaker 2Yeah. How to write to executives better. Okay.
Speaker 1Yeah. Okay. All right. So when you say train the model or train ChatGPT on Apple's style, is that just a matter of uploading a bunch of Apple writing so it learns?
Speaker 2Yeah. So with Apple, we actually were not allowed to use AI at the time that I was there. But later, when that contract ended, I started working Zapier, and I would do exactly that. Okay. So I had to train the AI, so to speak, give it a lot of context that had to do with our writing styles. We had a style guide that articulated, you know, how we capitalize things, how formatting should look, what do we bold, what do we italicize, what words don't we use? So I would give it all of that context, and I would also create templates for certain pieces of content so AI understood the general structure of what I wanted it to create, and it could fill in some of the blanks.
Speaker 1Okay. Now, were you a freelancer at this time?
Speaker 2At this time, no. At Zapier, I was working there full time.
Speaker 1Okay. So you left Apple, started writing for Zapier, probably in my notes, but are you a freelancer today?
Speaker 2Now I'm a freelancer. I just left Zapier about three weeks ago. Wow. Congratulations. Thanks.
Speaker 1Yeah. I'm super excited. So that was your full-time job. Full-time job. Writing articles for Zapier. Yeah.
Speaker 2AI-assisted, but not AI-written? Yes. So at first, I was just editing for them, and then they wanted me to start writing more. So I thought to myself, "Okay, I know this is a company that really values using AI." They wanted everyone to experiment constantly. So at first, I was just doing what I described, right? Giving it context, giving it my template, seeing what it could do. We had a product, Zapier Agents, where I would build certain agents to help me automate the process of writing. But my favorite thing that I think I created when I was at Zapier... When I had to write a tutorial, a tutorial was a step-by-step guide on how you could build a very specific automated workflow. And the people reading our articles are like, "I have no idea how to use Zapier." I needed to be really clear, I needed to add some personality into the writing, and I needed to express at certain points, if a step was a little difficult to configure, I needed to make that clear, first of all, and then I needed to help them through it. Yeah. What I did was I recorded myself. I did a screen record, like a loom, if you guys use that tool, and I would build the automated workflow, and I would narrate as I was building it. So I would go, "Ooh, this is kind of complicated. What if I click here? What if I do this?" And this is your writing? This is my writing. This is... Writing is thinking. At the end of the day, writing is thinking. So all of that whole process, I want to document that, and the first reaction, if I can document my initial thoughts about something, that's the gold that you can feed AI if you're going to use AI. Your reaction. Your reaction, your first thoughts, you're humanizing it. Yeah. What is actually coming to mind during the writing process? Let's grab that. So I would record all of that. I would feed it through Cursor, and I would tell Cursor, "Okay, I want you to use Gemini to process the video and audio, and I want you to even watch..." And when I say I would tell Gemini, I was just writing out in plain English, right? "Process the video and audio through Gemini. Watch. I'm hovering over something. It's clear that I'm unsure what to do. Capture those points. Write up notes based on my narration." And then I want you to take all of those notes, and I want you to take a template that I've created for this tutorial, and I want you to feed it through Clawd, because I like Clawd for writing and Gemini for processing video.
Speaker 1And you're just using Cursor to route it to all these different models.
Speaker 2Yep. Because Cursor has that built-in model flexibility, so you can use both Gemini and Clawd easily in the same workflow. So loved it for that. Okay. It would filter all of those notes through Clawd. It would use my template. And then it would come up with a really solid first draft that I would, of course, edit afterward. There were still points that maybe didn't get quite right or points that were a little bland that needed to be punched up with my personality. But I've captured all of those tricky, sticky points of building a workflow that I needed to get in the article that would have taken me hours to document, to think about manually. Yeah. So really great way to use AI there.
Speaker 1Okay. So you're doing this full-time for Zapier. What made you want to quit your job?
Speaker 2Great question. I love Zapier. I am still going to be freelancing for them. But before Apple, before Zapier, I had been a freelancer. And I really loved the spirit of just working on one-off projects, seeing what is going out there. What is going on in the world out there? What are people writing and working on? What questions do they have? And I kind of miss that. Yeah. So I decided to go out on my own again. And already it's been very interesting, especially going out in this age of AI, I had not really been a freelancer with all of these tools out there so very different right now did you line anything up before you quit yes i had already been freelancing on the side while i was at zapier and they knew about it they were cool about it i'd been writing articles for a couple of tech companies and i also had been editing resumes for an executive writing coach okay i had been helping students in high school write their college application essays so i had my hands
Speaker 1in a few different pies already how were you finding those customers a lot of them through
Speaker 2upwork i started out as a freelancer on upwork that was how i got my first client back in 2016 and to this day i still use it i know a lot of people like don't love starting on upwork or they're a little worried it's great you think it's great yeah yeah it's rad because you have
Speaker 1nothing you have nothing to start from yes when you're like i want to be a freelancer what do i
Speaker 2do dude you don't have to collect leads like they're there okay so it's been 10 years since
Speaker 1you've been a freelancer yeah i've been a freelancer for a while now i've been a freelancer started on upwork though right yes yeah how are you finding jobs on upwork today are you like
Speaker 2actively soliciting them are people reaching out to you now i'm really grateful that i have a few contracts that allow me to just kind of coast on those so i haven't been hunting for jobs too many jobs recently but when i do look for jobs i'll get into little moments where i'll go okay i'm going to apply to 10 jobs a day uh-huh uh i'm going to carefully select ones that you know are interesting to me where i can communicate how i can help that person specifically and that also have the opportunity to grow into something more every once in a while i like a good one-off project where i just write you know i redo somebody's website or i write them an email and then it's done but if i see okay this person wants one blog post written they're probably going to want more after that so i can pitch that or they might just ask me i can also offer to up load the blog posts myself which is another great way to expand the contract and make a little bit more money so anytime i see opportunities like that and anyone anytime other people do like i always encourage people how else can you help this person once they like you once you have a good working relationship uh it's really easy to make a contract last even years which which i've done
Speaker 1okay how do you decide what to charge and how to charge for and yeah let me also ask what is like an average project look like what is an average project and then how do you decide what to charge and how to charge
Speaker 2sure this is a good question it's a question a lot of people have and it is tough for a reason but i'm going to focus on what i'm working on right now right i am writing a lot of blog posts for tech companies and right now i'm charging anywhere from 900 to 1200 per blog post okay takes me about five six hours to write each article holy cow i am using a little bit of ai but a lot of it's all me and the tech companies know that and that's why they'll offer that price
Speaker 1give me an example of tech companies that would hire you for this any b2b sas company i mean
Speaker 2sappier jot form softer those are the ones that i'm working with right now what about like chat gpt or open ai right right those are harder to break into i don't think that they're they are hiring ai model trainers which is another lucrative opportunity i know i just talked to a writer who does that every once in a while and i'm like oh my god i'm not going to be able to do that every once in a while and they're paying 90 an hour around that so i mean not everyone loves the idea of training ai models just ethically that's your business but that is there for you if you're
Speaker 1you know wanting to get involved with ai so okay so 900 to 1200 per blog article how many how many
Speaker 2words are they on average on average about 2500 3000 words okay so long long these are like lengthy yes yeah and is it is
Speaker 1is it more for like explaining things to an internal audience or to employees or is it solely
Speaker 2for seo solely for seo okay so solely for seo you still want it to be readable and enjoyable by humans but the goal is they'll give me so here's an example of a project i might get software might say hey i want you to write um a an app comparison so claude code versus cursor or they might say i want to write an alternative piece so eight alternatives to quickbase okay in pieces like that software is going to be one of the options right or whatever you know tool i'm writing or uh company i'm writing for or they might do i'm right for zapier like a tutorial where i'm showing step by step how to build a workflow things like that things that people might be searching for they'll give me some keywords that they want to target they usually provide that so i don't even
Speaker 1have to you don't need to be like seo savvy or technical you should know seo best practice
Speaker 2practices uh those have to do with things like what should headings look like what should sub headings look like how many words what should the title be you should know not to keyword stuff right google's very much values engaging writing that makes sense that's clear and that shows your expertise and it shows that you yourself are using the tools that's another reason why companies will pay so much money right now for these blog posts because if you know how to use these tools if you're tinkering with ai you're tinkering with automation and you can speak confidently about a certain tool they want to hear about that because a lot of people are this is very overwhelming for them to learn how to use something like cod code or whatever if they're if they're trying to learn how to vibe code vibe code for instance yeah so they want people with this kind of expertise and they'll pay them for it so if you can write like that you you already have a good idea of you know what seo best practices are there are some new things to keep in mind too with uh geo which is just generative engine optimization which is how you get your content showing up in ai tools uh very similar to seo i find there are a lot of overlaps but that's another
Speaker 1thing that you can you can study okay so call it a thousand dollars for a three thousand word blog article yeah taking you five to six hours what are you spending all that time doing specifically
Speaker 2yeah great question i'm signing up for the tools that i'm writing about i am noodling around in them just clicking seeing what my experience is and i'm going to be able to do a lot of things like i'm not like building a whole product or anything i'm not going wild but i am using them especially if i've never used them before taking screenshots potentially that are visually appealing like technically if you are tech savvy right and you use something like open claw which can take hold of your computer and take screenshots for you like it can do all this stuff but it's not going to have that that judgment that creativity that these companies are looking for like it
Speaker 1screenshot but that's not what the company's it's not going to know what to screenshot exactly right like yeah if you're writing an article of like the four best ai tools it's gemini grok claude and open ai right and you go to gemini on your phone and it's like it's not mobile optimized on a certain blog page yes and it's like off-centered yes you would screenshot that right open cloud would not
Speaker 2know to screenshot that right you could give it i suppose instructions this is what a lot of people try to do and this is a mistake i see a lot of writers making is they'll go i'm going to automate this process top to bottom i'm going to use ai for everything and then what happens is they actually spend so much time configuring the tool that they're using and maintaining it and the output isn't even 100 and now they're burned out and they've got ai brain fry as they call it from just constantly using ai for everything you can use it and there's a great way to use it but use it in the place you
Speaker 1need it the most yeah okay so that's really interesting five to six hours i'm thinking like how are you writing for that long especially if ai is helping but you're would you say you're spending like much of that time or most of that time actually testing the tools that you're writing
Speaker 2about a lot of it's testing the tools a lot of it is also reading reddit threads like what are people saying right now about these tools yeah um if i'm in like certain communities i want to see how people are using those tools right now what they're saying about it video editing and all of the videos about the tools what i'll do is i love rev the video transcription tool okay i'll port a bunch of videos into rev i'll get summaries of what they say in these videos are about the tools themselves reviews i'll try to find videos that aren't created by influencers that are like being paid to create videos about these tools and then i'll find some interesting tidbits and i'll do a little more research into that aspect myself yeah if people for example on reddit are you know a confusing pricing structure i'm then going to go in look at their pricing and really figure it out for myself and then go okay but i wouldn't put you know that would have might have taken me so long to find yeah if i had just manually done the whole thing so in my example if you were writing that
Speaker 1articles that you know similarities and differences between the four biggest ai tools yeah um if you were to ask any of those four tools ironically to write the same article you're just going to get like a regurgitation of other blog articles much much of them ai written as well yeah whereas you are giving your personal experience yes which that's sure you could prompt an ai tool to do that similarly but it wouldn't be honest and it would it just you would know yeah you know
Speaker 2you could tell 100 a lot of companies these big name companies right microsoft apple replit lovable anthropic i've seen them posting a lot of jobs for writers and editors and a lot of people I was just talking to my dad on the phone. the phone. He was like, why aren't writers gone? He was like, couldn't AI take over their jobs? And the point is, if you look actually at those job postings, I was just looking at one from Microsoft. They were looking for a lead writer and editor. They wanted someone who understood grammar, style, storytelling devices, but they wanted someone who also was plugged into meme culture and had some personal creative thing that they did. Like they played an instrument or ran a newsletter on something unrelated to work. And you have to think, well, why do they want that? Because they want a well-rounded person who's tapped into culture, who's going to pull from these rich experiences and put that into the writing. Because that's our advantage as humans, right? When I'm sitting down to write, I'm thinking about what quirky story can I weave into the- Right. Introduction? A little tidbit. If the Olympics are going on, I might reference that somewhere randomly. Whereas AI is pulling from what it's been trained on, your context, which maybe it's rich, fine, your prompt, and what it thinks is going to be most successful. Because of that, it's a little rigid. It's a little safe. It's like a Hollywood movie that's just perfectly scripted the way that you would expect it to be. It's watchable, but you're like, I know what
Speaker 1happens at the end. Yeah. It reminds me of some of my content because I'll see other people on YouTube with videos titled like the seven best side hustles for 2026. Yes. And they're reading an AI transcript. I know it. Yeah. And there's no personal experiences, no stories woven in. Yes. Whereas when I make that same video, it's like when I had this grass fed beef business, the cow's leg went through the floor and was dragging on the road and they're real stories, you know? Right. So I think that's the difference between like a great, hopefully a great YouTube video and like an okay YouTube video. All right. Like you read chat, to me instead of me reading it myself. Thank you. Yes, exactly. You can feel that immediately. Even
Speaker 2if you've never used AI tools before, you can watch content, read something and go, this all feels a little mushy. It's all feels very symmetrical, right? I'm not getting any reality
Speaker 1in here. Yeah. Well, the Hollywood movie example is perfect. Like it's like, it's like the Hallmark movie. It's always like the guy that comes home and he meets the girl and he's like a big city lawyer, but he wants to move. And it's like, it's generic. People watch them. Right. People read AI written articles. Right. Right. But it's not going to be a blockbuster. No, like no matter what it's going to be a double or a single, but nothing more. Exactly. Exactly. Now to me as a business owner, that would be quite a leap of faith to spend a thousand dollars on a blog article when I could spend four cents in tokens on a, on a comparably, you know, on a blog article of a comparable length. Yes. Right. What, do you have any like case studies or proof that a company is getting 10 times more, a hundred times, a thousand times more engagement leads, traffic, whatever it is from a Stephanie written article, as opposed to a Chad GPD written article? I think the biggest
Speaker 2proof that we're seeing now, cause this is all happening in real time, right? Is that companies did try to use AI for everything. And there was a big scare. I want to say a year or two ago where I was hearing a lot of stories from freelancers going, my employer just told me to hit the road, right? They're using AI for everything. And then a year later, those companies would come back and go, actually, are you free? Can you help me write this? And I think what happened was either they saw that the, the posts or whatever content they were writing, wasn't working, wasn't connecting. They might have hit some kind of an SEO got some SEO. Yeah. They got excited cause something worked for a little bit, but for something to continue working, it's gotta be engaging. And just like you said, you have to show that you're actually, you are creating this content. Otherwise they can find that anywhere else, right? It gets boring real fast. Yeah. And you do lose that connection with your readers. So I think, although I don't have a specific study to cite, I'm hearing so many stories of freelancers going, all right, it's my time again. Like people are recognizing that human writing again, could be AI assisted, might not be, but just having a little bit of humanity
Speaker 1in there, it makes a big difference. Now, what do you think about this new water market that Anthropic came out with and maybe explain to people what it is if they haven't heard of it?
Speaker 2Yeah. Essentially Anthropic is going to be putting, and they're already putting watermarks on any AI generated content. So if you copy and paste something that Claude created for you, there's going to be an invisible watermark. It's not like something physical that you see that will show you created this with AI. I think this was a long time coming. I think if you spend any time on LinkedIn, uh, everybody is losing their minds over it. And a lot of people are happy. Cause a lot of people are happy because they're like, I can't, you know, if LinkedIn's the worst, LinkedIn is so bad. Yeah. I mean, people are just copying and pasting completely soulless posts and hoping that it performs and it never does. So yeah, there is going to be some kind of a sign that you generated with some something with AI. If you edit the content enough, the watermark does go away. What constitutes as enough? I think people are discussing that, or I'm not sure if Anthropic has put something out on like. Specifics on that. But, uh, it's not permanent. Like it might go away if it's, if it's edited enough. Yeah. There are people coming out with tools already to remove the, the watermark. I just taught a class and my student was like, Hey, by the way, I thought you might want this. And it was some, some product that you can pay for that removes the watermark. I can't imagine that's going
Speaker 1to last. How is that product? Smarter than Anthropic, a trillion dollar company. Yes. Right. Right. And who Anthropic doesn't publish what the watermark algorithm is. Exactly. They don't say, yeah, this one.
Speaker 2Has a watermark. This one doesn't right. Right. So that's interesting. People are already trying to, to work around it, but I, I also think you don't have to there. It's, it's so much harder again, to spend all your time configuring these tools, learning how to get the watermark off. You could just use AI to assist you and then put in the human work of, of creating great content, even the CEO of Anthropic. I think a month ago, he did an interview with NBC. He said, I don't use a lot to write. I use it for research. I use it for assisting with certain, you know, aspects of the writing process, but the struggling that part that everyone can stand, that is what leads you to the great idea. That's what makes the content. So it's so hard to just get that out of the process.
Speaker 1You know, I'm glad you said that the struggle, because I, in my church congregation, I'm like one of a few kind of leaders. Right. And one of my jobs is to ask people to speak in church. Yes. Uh, just everyday members and like two to four of them every Sunday speak in church. And I was recently at like a, a church activity in the evening and there were a bunch of youth speakers and I just heard chat GPT chat GPT over and over, like in their words and every talk was polished and it was all, and it's not this, but it's this over and over. And so I texted like the main pastor of our congregation. And I was like, I don't want to sign myself up for a job, but like, I kind of want to speak in church one day, which no one ever does. No one wants to. Right. It's like, I feel so strongly about this. I kind of want to speak in church about like using AI to write your talks for you. Yes. Because like the most, the richest parts of my testimony are from when I got asked to speak in church and I spent hours just pondering, not like hours writing, but just driving around no podcast. Like, Oh no, what if I said this, what if I made this analogy? Like that's what everything's built on. Yes. What if we take all that away? What if we just replace it with a prompt? Like, Oh, there's no trade off. Like, of course there's a trade off. Right. And so I was just, it, it honestly worries me for these youth that they're just completely trading off that, that struggle, the wrestle for just a prompt and not thinking about it. And they just
Speaker 2move on with their life. And it's really sad to me. Yeah, man. That's, that's a really interesting development. Like you would not expect, like that's the last place that you would expect it.
Speaker 1And AI generated thing in church. And then like, I sent that text to him as we were at this conference. Yeah. And then another youth went up to speak and he never looked down. He had no notes. He told these heartfelt stories. He was unpolished. He was rough around the edges and it was the best talk of the day. And so I text him like, wow, imagine that like right after I send that text is this one, there's no AI. And it's just, I just missed that. Yeah. Yeah. And we're seeing things trend in that direction. Snapchat just came out and said, AI videos. Yes. Right. YouTube just came out and said, we're demonetizing thousands or millions of like faceless AI generated channels. You're not banning AI. Sure. But they're basically saying we're deprioritizing it. Right. And then Anthropic came out with a watermark. And then Sora, which was, you know, open AI's answer to TikTok, short form video, social media platform that was only AI generated videos. It got to a hundred million users in like a month. And then they shut down like three months later. Right. Right.
Speaker 2So it's like, we want real stuff more than ever. Yes. People crave it seriously. And you will feel better also. I mean, literally you will feel better. I know people who say that they've used AI for content creation. And after a couple of months of doing it consistently where they're heavily relying on it, they literally get headaches. And I know that there have been studies that have shown when you are delegating all of your thinking to AI, you, like something's going on in your brain where it's some things are not firing as much. Don't quote me on that. Someone's like, where's that study? But it's true. You can feel it. So yeah, the fact that that you think. are doing that. If I had something I can say to them, it's like, I get it. Writing is painful and it's struggle. And especially today, when there are all these screens, there are all these things you could be paying attention to. Staying focused is an art. Learning how to be articulate is an art. But that's exactly why people are paying so much for content right now. Why I have a job is because they value somebody who's taken the time to learn how to do that. And if you spend the time, this is a force multiplier that could spill into so many other areas of your life. I'm better able to talk to my boyfriend because I can clarify my thoughts. I can help people with their businesses. I can have more richer conversations. It's not just about, let me make a business out of this writing thing.
Speaker 1Clear thinking is clear. So if you publish a 3,000-word article, roughly, how many of those words or sentences or whatever, what percentage of them would you say was copied over, like copy-pasted over from AI? And what percentage was like actually hand-typed?
Speaker 2Sure. I think for me, 70, 80% of those words are mine. I'm more interested in what percentage was the, well, not more interested in, but there's all these other things that I can do. I'm more interested in what percentage was the, well, not more interested in, but there's all these other things that I can do. I'm more interested in, but there's all these other things that I can do. I'm more interested in, but there's also something to consider where like, how much of the structure was AI generated? That is all mine, typically. Like, you know, what is the introduction look like? How many headings do I have? How long or shorter are, you know, is the body copy within those sections? The idea behind the article, close to 100% mine, 70%, I'd say around, might be my words.
Speaker 1Okay. I want to go back to what you said about the Dario, the Anthropic CEO, not writing emails. I feel like the right way to use AI, if we don't want to lose ourselves and our brain and the struggle, is to like harness AI to enable us to do more, not to replace what we're already doing. Right? Like I use AI at church when planning talks, when planning lessons. But if I have like an hour in my week to devote to that, I still spend an hour. I just supplement it with AI and then it becomes more rich. I'm part of it. I'm pulling quotes from the most random places that I never would have found with Google.
Speaker 3Right.
Speaker 1Right. With emails, if I'm writing emails to colleagues, vendors, employees, whoever, people at church, it's all handwritten.
Speaker 3Yeah.
Speaker 1But I get, you know, having a podcast, I get a ton of emails from people like, hey, what do you think about this? Should I start this business? Yeah. And those were going unanswered. But now I have an AI trained on my thoughts and I can respond to them with AI. And it's not me. Yeah. But it's trained on millions of words of my content, my data. It's almost like me. It's how I think. And most importantly, it enables me to answer emails and help people that I wouldn't be able to help otherwise. Right. Yes. So it's additive. It's not replacive.
Speaker 2Right. Right.
Speaker 1But what do you think about that?
Speaker 2I love that. I think that every time you sit down to write something or you're creating a process, you know, where you're going to automate that, the writing of something, you have to think about what makes sense for that situation. Right. If you are, you've been getting hundreds of emails every single day. Thousands, whatever, you got to have some kind of a process, otherwise you're going to be underwater real quick.
Speaker 3Yeah.
Speaker 2But one of the last things that I worked on at Zapier, I was copy editor on this report called the AI Workflow Index, and it basically looked at how successful or companies that were successfully using AI that were repeating the same workflows. That's how they define success, among some other things. How did they use AI? Where did they use it? And they found that they were not using AI. In fact, I think it took up just 18 percent of the of the workflow. So it was usually like one or two steps. And if it was a content creation workflow, they would just have AI analyze something or write up a rough draft, not expecting anything to be perfect. And that would always get filtered to a human. There would be some human in the loop step. Usually when you're writing something to someone, if the volume isn't like huge, there is something that you can add real quick at the end. Right. So if AI is assisting you, right, you can think about it that way. If it's truly like something that you can automate and you can you have so much content to pull from and you know that it's going to capture your voice well enough. Amazing. You can even add steps where if AI determines that this is beyond the scope of like the context that you've given it, it can, you know, filter or route that to a human and automate all the other things.
Speaker 3Gotcha.
Speaker 2If you're writing something really sensitive, that might be something you want to write from scratch with no AI. So it's not that everything should be dominated by AI. You want to be a little more thoughtful and considerate about what what you're using it for. And the best companies do that.
Speaker 1Yeah. So with you specifically, let's say you've written 100 articles that are 3000 words.
Speaker 3Yeah.
Speaker 1Why can't you just upload that to a cloud project and have it right for you like you? Is it is it still not good enough if you do that?
Speaker 2It is. You'd be surprised because I've tried it all of like I want to automate myself out of a job. I want to see if it works. I want to see if it's possible and it's not working.
Speaker 1Well, it's not replacing all the research.
Speaker 2Yes. Not replacing all the research. And it is capturing my voice somewhat, but it doesn't have all my memories. Like sometimes I'll start at a blog post with something that happened to me in childhood just because I feel like it makes sense. Yeah.
Speaker 1It would never know that. It would never know that. Even if it wanted to.
Speaker 2Right. Right.
Speaker 1And if it did have all those memories, the context window would be way too large for it to even pull on.
Speaker 2Then you would start to see, yeah, downgrade in just the quality of the writing. Because it's got so much context that it's processing. Another reason why I don't love that is if you want AI to do all the writing for you, you're not letting your own voice evolve. So over time, you become a more interesting thinker, writer, as you interact with whatever subject material you're working on. And that's reflected in the writing. With AI, you're in a static position if you're just having it do all the writing for you. Right. It's not growing. It's not learning.
Speaker 1When it comes to, like, the people that make the decision at these job forums and all these other tech companies to hire you, do you know how they look at it? Like, yeah, of course they know what Chad GPT is. Yeah. Are they thinking, like, you know what, this is just worth it because our product is X, Y price. And, like, we know that the lifetime value is, like, do you know what the calculus is in their head to justify paying $1,000 for an article?
Speaker 2Sure. I know from the perspective of, like, having worked in Zapier and seeing freelancers. I know from the perspective of sending us content. They are concerned with speed, so they know that AI is helping these freelancers write a little more quickly, which really matters when something happens like Fable 5 is discontinued temporarily, right? And they need to get on that, you know, for SEO, like, immediately same day. Not just SEO, just to be a, you know, a thought leader, if you want to say that in this space, right? I'm the person that publishes this content immediately after something happens. So they value the speed it provides. They also know that in-house, we can take an article generated by AI, if it's 70% of the way there, and touch it up. And I hesitate to say touch it up because there's a lot of work that is, you know, is involved with that. There's so much experience that we're drawing from. It's not like you can just change a word here or there. But we know that it's just helping us keep that process moving, and it's possible. And everyone is so bullish on AI and wants to see just where it can go. That we're pushing that limit. I do think there will be a conversation, a bigger conversation really soon about just the health effects of using AI to the max, of, you know, how it affects your creativity. I do worry that at a certain point, if you're constantly just going back to AI for everything, you yourself will start to run out of cool ideas. But companies are just seeing what's possible now.
Speaker 1Yeah. What is your background? Do you have a college degree? When are you trained at?
Speaker 2Yeah, I have a bachelor's degree in creative writing.
Speaker 1Okay.
Speaker 2I remember when I got it, everyone was like, you're going to be poor. They were like, why? Why did you do this? And right out of college, I was a little scared, but I was so passionate about what I was doing, I immediately got a job. I think I started working like the week after I graduated at Gotham Writers Workshop, which is this creative writing school. They've been around forever. They're right in the heart of Manhattan. And that's where I got a job. And that was a big start because I was doing admin work for them. I was talking to students who were signing up for their writing classes. They do like all kinds of creative writing classes. And I was also copy editing for them. They knew that I liked grammar and things like that. And then one day, one of their grammar teachers, they have like a little professional development program where they offer grammar and business writing. Their grammar teacher got sick. They had a full class. They didn't want to cancel it. So they asked if I wanted to sub in. I was 21. I was not like their other faculty members. All of their teachers are like New York Times bestselling authors. They're amazing. And here I am, like a little pipsqueak, and I'm teaching grammar, apparently. But I said yes. And even though I stopped working for them full time as like an admin after two years, I've been teaching grammar classes for them ever since. So it's been 10 years.
Speaker 1In person?
Speaker 2Some in person, but mostly virtual.
Speaker 1Okay. Okay. So creative writing. How much do you think that plays into these textbooks? The companies hiring you?
Speaker 2Huge. Yeah. I think people, and I play that up in cover letters or when I do just cold pitches to people, I will say like my background is in creative writing. I know storytelling techniques. I know what is a sentence, right? I know the parts of a sentence. And so I know how to manipulate everything down to the word to achieve a certain rhythm, to bring a little bit more engagement, you know, to a piece that as soon as it starts getting a little bit boring or we start talking about something technical, I have a thousand different tools to, you know, bring it back to life. And that's creative writing. It's holding your reader's attention. And that's, you know, no AI in creative writing. You cannot be using that to generate stories because what's the point? Like I'm very anti-AI in anything creative like that.
Speaker 1So how can people find success at this if they don't have a creative writing degree or professional writing experience?
Speaker 2Yes. So actually in preparation for our conversation, I went on Upwork and I hired four or five people to talk to me for 20 minutes.
Speaker 1So you hired people as an employer on Upwork?
Speaker 2Yes. I went on like the employer side. And I said, I'm looking for freelance writers who have been doing this for X number of years, making, I think I said like at least 3,000 a month, just to talk to me about how newcomers can break into this business. Oh, that's awesome. And you, I mean, it was up for two days. I got 15 applications that were all really thoughtful.
Speaker 3Yeah.
Speaker 2Talked to four people. They wanted to talk beyond the 20 minutes. Like they were more than happy.
Speaker 1Even though you only paid them for 20.
Speaker 2Only paid them for 20. And they were like giving me resources. Someone gave me their like SEO, AEO guide. They were like, you can share this. I mean, writers are, writers are solitary. So anytime we can like, yeah, like they were very excited to talk. I'm sure I'm going to keep in touch with, with all of these people. So I was asking them, what can, what can people do? Because I have ideas, but everyone has their own journey, you know, into freelancing.
Speaker 3Yeah.
Speaker 2And a lot of them were saying things like, well, all of them said, I'm going to do this. And a lot of them said, you don't need any specialized degree. You don't have to have even studied creative writing, English, whatever. None of those writers had a writing degree. What they said you need to do is first, like if you wanted to get started in 90 days, right? First month, you need to understand the landscape of what's possible. You've got the creative writing world. A lot of people are publishing like self-publishing books, fiction, memoir, whatever, nonfiction books for their business. You can be an editor. Yeah. You're in that space. There's also this whole marketing corporate world where you can create copy for small businesses, bigger companies. There's blog posts, landing pages, ads, scripts. I mean, you name it, you can write it. So look at what's possible. Ask yourself, what am I interested in? Because if you have just a glimmer of interest, you know, you, you're probably drawn to something.
Speaker 1And start in that niche.
Speaker 2Start in that niche, right? I, I think I started as a generalist. And it took me a bit of time to realize, all right, I need to get good at one form because that's how someone's going to trust me to hire me.
Speaker 1So if I love barbecue, like Texas barbecue, and I want to write or I like writing. Yes. That could be my niche. Totally. Like I could write for Traeger or company, e-commerce brands that sell barbecue stuff or a restaurant.
Speaker 2Yes. I saw, I'm like, I'm really into barbecue. I saw that there was a new beef protein powder that was getting sold in stores. Oh, interesting. I contacted the guy. Who ran the company. I said, Hey, I tried this. This flavor is awesome. Like, don't stop whatever, some human connection there. That's honest and true and genuine. And then I said, Hey, like, I see you have a blog. Do you need a writer? Yeah. He hired me.
Speaker 1Really?
Speaker 2Right. Like, just like that. Yeah.
Speaker 1Did you wait for him to respond before you pitch that?
Speaker 2No, I put that in the pitch. Yeah. Wow. So sometimes that just being upfront, uh, works.
Speaker 1Well, my, my friend Brandon has a marketing agency for e-commerce brands and any, he would just be like swiping. Reels on Instagram and see like a new e-commerce brand, new Shopify brand. He's like, wow, that's really cool. They're good branding. And then he'll just like DM them and say like, I can help you with Facebook ads. Like, this looks really cool.
Speaker 3Right.
Speaker 1And it's just like, really? That's it. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 3Yeah.
Speaker 1Not, not everyone says yes, of course, but like if it's authentic, if it's not AI, if it's your real experience, which we keep coming back to like testing all these technical tools, then your chance of success is much higher.
Speaker 2Absolutely. Absolutely.
Speaker 1Okay. So. What else did they say in these interviews?
Speaker 2In these interviews, they were saying you have to have a portfolio. So you don't need a, some kind of a certification, but you want to have produced, I would say four, maybe five pieces of writing. You can just put it up on your site. It doesn't have to be like you have to get published somewhere. Um, cause that's quite hard when you're just starting out. But yeah, if you want to write blog posts, right. Three blog posts and a landing page and some other form just to show you've got range.
Speaker 1Right. Well, go write an article about. What makes Franklin barbecue different and then put it in your, you don't have to sell it to them. You can give it to them, but it's, you don't have to say like, they paid me to do this. They are my customer. It's like, no, I wrote this blog article for Franklin barbecue. Here it is. Right. You're like, that's kind of a rare opportunity. Whereas usually when you need your first case studies or clients or something, like you've got a chicken and egg problem because you have to get hired before you have that, but you can't get hired until you have that.
Speaker 2Right. Exactly.
Speaker 1You just go write the thing. Who's stopping you?
Speaker 2No one is stopping you. It's never been easier. In fact, to just do that. Yeah. See, and if you have that and you can offer that once you get hired, then breaking into the right, you've already broken into the writing industry. It's about developing those client relationships and seeing what else you can do for that person. Especially if like you get along great. I mean, I've got, I referenced earlier, I edit resumes for this like executive resume writer. We've been working together for two years. She's awesome. We chat, we, you know, we're laughing. We're laughing over video call. And then she knows she can just send me whatever. She knows that if she's refreshing her website, I'm also available to help for that. So once you develop that trust, people don't want to go out and find another writer. Even at Zapier, we were like, we had our freelancers that we were like, we got to hold on to these people. They're amazing. So, yeah.
Speaker 1Is there like a piece of writing that you've written and is on the internet that you're particularly proud of? And I could read like a paragraph from it.
Speaker 2Yes. Yes. So then they. They might have edited it because they're all, they're always having to refresh this. But I wrote a feature guide, Zapier MCP. If you search that and then search feature guide after that. This was something we had just come out with this product when MCP technology came out. Everyone was losing their mind about it. And I, I'm not a technical person. I have no coding background. And they said, write a feature guide now.
Speaker 1I said, okay. What is a feature guide?
Speaker 2Great question. So feature guide explains. This is everything.
Speaker 1Is this everything it does?
Speaker 2This is everything it does. This is what it is. This is all of the things that you can do with it. Sometimes I'll also show you how to set it up step-by-step with screenshots. So it was, it was quite dense. What I love about it is you would think just by hearing the name, oh, this is kind of complicated. This is not for me, but this product is for non-technical users. So I had to make it fun and make it accessible. And this was so, this succeeded in that regard so much that Anthra. Opic actually published it or, or linked to it in one of their newsletters, driving a ton of traffic to it. And they had said something like, this is great. And I was like, I was so proud of it.
Speaker 1That's a great example of justifying a thousand dollar blog, because how much money did that bring Zapier?
Speaker 2Yeah, that's, I'm sure that's recorded somewhere.
Speaker 1And does Anthropic post it if they look at their watermark and like, big deal, we wrote this.
Speaker 3Yeah.
Speaker 1Let's just write our own and publish it.
Speaker 3Exactly. Right.
Speaker 1Is there like a part of this? That you're particularly proud of or that, that really shows the human in it?
Speaker 2There's definitely, I have a few lines where I mentioned something where I said like, this is bananas. Trying to see if I can quickly find it.
Speaker 1I saw earlier, you said like, or if you want to play a video game, more on that later. Yes, I had. Or stick with me here.
Speaker 2Right, right. I had compared it to being like a video game.
Speaker 3That's what I saw. Yeah. There it is.
Speaker 2Yeah, yeah. So the menu customization built. And to zap your MCP reminds me of action role playing video games. Stick with me here. In these games, you can equip your main character with gear that complements your play style or the quest at hand. Similarly with Zapier MCP, you choose which actions to equip based on your workflows and security needs. So it's not like you, when I say, you know, making your writing human or adding some personality, that doesn't mean making it clownish with very informal examples. So it's not like you, when I say, you know, making your writing human or adding some personality, that doesn't mean making it clownish with very informal examples. And you're right, it doesn't even land with your audience. Just these little additions, like I play video games, so I have that, that vernacular built in.
Speaker 1You can speak to that with authority.
Speaker 2Right. And no one, you know, you don't have to play video games to understand what that means too. So that's a little pop of color that like AI would have never come up with on its own.
Speaker 1Now I'm going to do something I'm curious about. I just wonder if, because I remember two years ago, everyone was like, man, writers are the first to go. Artists are the first to go. Oh, you can make these images. You can make videos. They're the first. They're the first to go. That's crazy.
Speaker 3Right.
Speaker 1And now I'm just wondering if writers are going to be even more demand than they were before.
Speaker 3Yeah.
Speaker 1So I'm going to go to Google Trends and I'm going to look for the phrase hire a writer and see what it looks like. Look at that.
Speaker 2Look at that. How cool.
Speaker 1It's never been higher.
Speaker 2Right.
Speaker 1And then let's go last five years. I want to see if it dipped when Chia GPT came out. Oh, yeah. Chia GPT came out late 2023. It did kind of dip a little bit. I mean, it was coming up and then. went down and then people were like, "We need a ride around Slate." Imagine that. Now, something like that, like your feature guide, you have no way of really knowing this. Maybe it's a bad question, but five years from now, let's say 100,000 people have read that.
Speaker 3Yeah.
Speaker 1What percentage of those people are AI agents or, you know, chat GPT, like them, like reading it to source stuff from it and spit out an answer? What percentage of that are actual humans?
Speaker 2That's a great question. There are people whose job it is now to create content for AI agents, and they are structuring the writing a little differently. So I think if those roles exist, that means that's coming. If it's already here. It doesn't really matter. It doesn't really matter. Yeah. I do still think, and this is just an opinion, people will tire of the always automated everything all the time deal. And they will kind of like records, right? Record players. They'll want to go back to reading something manually, not just getting their AI to look for it. I mean, I'm hearing so many people go, I don't even know how to read anymore. Like I haven't picked up a novel in like three years, which is so sad. That's like, yeah, you learn so much, so many lessons, so many interesting stories from creative writing. And we're not talking about creative writing necessarily, but I think it starts there, like the curiosity to go out. And read something yourself. That impetus drives like what, you know, makes people read blog posts on the internet and find things out for themselves. And it also drives their interest in books and stuff like that. So I think there will be a resurgence of more people reading stuff on their own. So it won't all be AI agents.
Speaker 1Yeah. One of my favorite quotes, and I say it way too much, is there are no solutions, only trade-offs.
Speaker 2Yeah.
Speaker 1Right?
Speaker 2Yeah.
Speaker 1And the worst decisions that we make. Are the ones where we don't know what the trade-offs are.
Speaker 3Yes.
Speaker 1Trying to think of an example. If I go to a grocery store and I'm hungry and I've got an apple and a Snickers bar, I know what the trade-offs are.
Speaker 3Right.
Speaker 1The apple is going to be cheaper than the Snickers. It's not going to be as many calories, but it's going to be significantly healthier. It's going to be one ingredient instead of 15 or whatever. Right. I know what the trade-offs are. Like this is good for me, that's bad for me. Got it. But like with AI, we don't yet. And maybe we never will. And it's even, it's similar to things like GLP-1s. Mm-hmm. No shade to anyone taking them. For sure. If I needed them, I would take them. But what you hear people say is like, actually, it seems pretty good. Right. Everyone's good. And it's like, you don't know. Like, let's say it never gives anyone cancer. It never gives anyone like adverse effects, like physiologically speaking.
Speaker 3Right.
Speaker 1We still don't know the mental effects. Yes. Of like not having to actually lift weights to get strong anymore. Right. Or to go running to lose weight. Like, will we ever truly know the trade-offs that we're making? Right. If not, my theory is that's pretty harmful. Yeah. Like we want to know the trade-offs.
Speaker 2Yeah. You want to, sure, you want to try new things. I know people are really into whatever the latest thing in tech is, I'm going to try it out.
Speaker 3Yeah.
Speaker 2But you want to go into it thoughtfully. Yeah. So again, you really don't know what that could result in. And I think what you want to protect most of all is in here, right? In your mind. You want to make sure you have the sovereignty and just the energy to think for yourself. As soon as we start delegating that. You want to make sure you have the sovereignty and just the energy to think for yourself. As soon as we start delegating that. You want to make sure you have the sovereignty and just the energy to think for yourself. As soon as we start delegating that. You want to make sure you have the sovereignty and just the energy to think for yourself. As soon as we start delegating that. You want to make sure you have the sovereignty and just the energy to think for yourself. As soon as we start delegating that. Even if you don't know what the effects are. No, that gets me a little scared. I would want to hold on to at least some of that.
Speaker 1Yeah. All right. So what is the playbook to finding high paying or to finding companies that will pay you a lot of money to write articles?
Speaker 2I think got to get started with a portfolio. So first, make sure that you have some writing out there in the world. It will feel a little uncomfortable. But if you get started on Upwork or if you you ask a family or a friend for, you know, hey, do you know anybody who's starting a business or just needs needs help with their writing? I mean, again, I mentioned earlier, I do this thing where I help college or high school students write their college essay applications. 90 an hour. Like really lucrative stuff is out there. And even if you don't start at that rate, if you start for a little cheaper or even free, it is not for nothing. One, you might be developing a really great relationship with that person that will pay you more later. Or two, you just might learn a new skill or a new format or get better at your craft, which you can then show to somebody else. I hadn't worked a ton on much of anything when I got started in the freelance world. And I was applying to stuff on Upwork, had a little portfolio, and I got hired by Biggie Smalls' son, Notorious B.I.G.'s son. He was starting a CBD brand. And I didn't even know at first because he didn't advertise that he was his son. And it just came out as we were working together. It was like, oh my gosh, this is so cool. And then from there, I mean, they trusted me with, helping them edit press releases, doing PR and communication stuff that I'd never done before. But because I worked for cheap in the beginning and then worked my way up, asked for more money at some point, that worked out. That was great. How did that brand end up doing? I don't think they're around anymore. Despite you. Despite me. Despite me. No, but they were, I think he might've started another clothing company. He was so involved with everything. That kid was amazing.
Speaker 1Okay. So- A portfolio. Does it matter where you host it? Could you put it in a Google Drive folder? Do you want it on a website?
Speaker 2I think on a website is, I don't know if you, yeah, you make something look professional, you put it up there. That's probably the best. I have put together curated portfolios for certain projects. If I know that this person just wants me to work on emails, I'm just going to compile emails that I've written to show them that. And I'll put that in a Google Drive folder and that's okay.
Speaker 3Okay.
Speaker 2To start, I think having a more professional, like well-designed thing is probably your safest bet.
Speaker 1Okay. Now, how do you find customers?
Speaker 2You, oh, they're everywhere. They're everywhere and nowhere, right? They're like, how am I going to find this person? I have found customers and the people that I spoke to have found them. If you're not on freelancing sites, getting on social media and just, whether it's LinkedIn or wherever it is that you're active and commenting, engaging, directly messaging people, it doesn't have to be gross. Like you don't have to be weird about it. You can talk to them like a human. If you master the art of the cold pitch, right? Which really I think comes down to four or five sentences where you are briefly introducing yourself. You're making some sort of connection to something that person does that you like, that you genuinely like, not just like the first piece of content that you see that they posted recently. One time I listened to a whole podcast that some agency had put out and it was a lot of time investment on my part, but I was able to reference some really specific detail and they literally called me and they were like, this is so impressive. Like we need to talk to you right now. So you never know like what doing a little more research than you wanted to do might get you like in the long run. So yeah, some little personal detail. You don't have to go crazy and then show them the portfolio and then say, I'd love to get connected. The worst they could do is ignore you or say no.
Speaker 1Right. Get over it.
Speaker 2Get over it. Yeah.
Speaker 1What's like a good rate to start at? Like a rate that is where you're worth your while, like, but is like, you know, aggressive enough so they won't say no.
Speaker 2Yeah. I'm seeing, I struggled with this because I thought about this and I was like, man, it really, really depends, but that answer is boring. So I think I'm seeing a lot of 30 an hours on Upwork, 40 an hour. You, you can get away with that, especially if you've got the things that I'm describing the portfolio and the, the, the pitch that's tailored well, and they might come back and counter with something lower. And if you think it's worth it, that might still be worth it.
Speaker 1Yeah. Now you say per hour, is that how people want to be quoted?
Speaker 2I don't like it, but, but, uh, sometimes people want to be quoted per hour.
Speaker 1Are you, when you're saying per hour, are you saying you go to the brand and say, all right, articles for you for 30 per hour? Or are you saying you kind of budget in your head? This is going to take me three hours. So 90 bucks.
Speaker 2Sure. Sure. There's, it can be both. Yeah. You can do, do it in either way. Some brands will say, we're going to get you on something hourly. And they, I've seen it done in a really weird ways where they think they will tell you how many hours you're working and you're like, well, it's actually taking more time. Yeah. Not quite that way. But now when I work with people, I ask them for a few things. I'll ask them for, if I know it's going to be like a single deliverable, like I'm going to update your website or I'm going to write a totally new copy for your website. I want to get a sense of how many words total it's going to be or how many pages, right? It's kind of hard to estimate words. I want to get a sense of if they have existing copy already, can I take a look at it? What shape is that writing in? If it's really rough, I know it's going to take me a little more time to get it into shape. Or if they have no copy at all, I got to create stuff from scratch. You know, I might need to spend a little more time with them. And this is another great way to use AI. When you're in a meeting with somebody, gathering content for your writing, if they're cool with it, turn on Granola, like capture. Explain what Granola is. Granola is a tool that you can use that plugs right into your like video calls that transcribes everything that they're saying. It knows, takes notes, knows who's speaking. And after the call, you can ask it questions like, hey, what was the due date for the project? Right. It'll give it to you. And you can ask it much more detailed questions. I just used that with my boyfriend's business. We were writing copy for his new water softener installation site. And I just had a conversation with him and recorded it all with Bruno. And it was like, because I know nothing about water softeners. And he's got all the technical lingo. So I was able to create this really awesome site for him based on that. So yeah, you can get a sense of how much time a project is going to take you by asking those questions first. And then rather than charging them hourly, give them a project based quote that feels fair. You might even still be calculating it based on like an hourly rate. But there are no surprises. You know that like, you know what the scope is, you know, this is what you're going to charge them. It just feels better for everyone involved. I think that's my preference. So what are your income numbers like today? Today, I would say I'm writing anywhere from five to 10 blog posts at around $1,000. I'm writing about $1,000 a month. I'm writing about $1,000 a month. I'm writing about again, anywhere from $800 to $1,200 per blog post. Is this per week or per month? Per month. Okay. Per month. And I have a bunch of side projects going on as well. So once or twice a month, I will help a student with their college application essays. I sell it in packages of five at 90 an hour, so $4.50. And I also do coaching and those packages vary. I just got back into six or 7,000 a month right now. Wow. Yeah. Mostly from writing. From writing. And it's like technical writing from a non-technical person. Yeah. Yeah, pretty much. Writing, coaching, editing, all in the same family, different skills, but yeah. Well, if someone wants to hire you, where can they find you? You can find me at stephspector.com. S-T-E-P-H-S-P-E-C-T-O-R.com. Okay. Thank you,
Speaker 1Steph. Thank you, Chris. Appreciate it. Hey guys, if you're still listening to this, it's probably because you haven't had a chance to take your AirPods out. You're still mowing the lawn. You're still driving. What have you. If you're still here with me, I would really, really love and appreciate a five-star review on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts. It would mean a lot. If you want to go the extra mile, share this episode with a friend that might have an interest in starting a business. It would mean a ton. Hope you have the best day of your life today.
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