Our Freelance Writing Podcast Turns 1! A Year of Freelance Success Stories

In a special anniversary episode of The Talk Freelance To Me Podcast, host Ashley Cisneros Mejia takes listeners on a reflective journey through the past year of the podcast, celebrating its first birthday with insights, stories, and key takeaways from a diverse array of guests. From personal finance writers to visual artists, each guest shares their unique path to leveraging freelance for freedom, resilience, and fulfillment. 

This episode is a treasure trove of wisdom on monetizing talents, embracing the freelance lifestyle, and the power of community in forging a successful freelance career. If you're a woman freelance writer, 1099 contractor, or solopreneur looking to be inspired, learn practical tips, and connect with a community that gets it, this episode is a must-listen.

About Ashley Cisneros Mejia and Talk Freelance To Me

Talk Freelance to Me™ is a multimedia company that helps women writers monetize their gifts to live life on their own terms. Led by 20-year freelance writer, journalist, and entrepreneur Ashley Cisneros Mejia, the company achieves this through the Talk Freelance To Me™ Podcast featuring interviews with freelance writers and freelance creatives, online programs like the Freelance Success S.Y.S.T.E.M.™ Course, and other digital products.

The Talk Freelance To Me Podcast helps busy moms and caregivers start freelance writing and other freelance creative businesses, so they make money on their own terms in a way that accommodates their lives.

Ashley’s mission is to give women the tools they need to take massive action in monetizing their talents through the power of freelance. Ashley teaches about freelance and entrepreneurship, sharing her own lessons learned, and interviewing amazing freelance professionals.

Click here for full show notes. 

Chapters

• 1:58 Recapping my interview with Lauren Ward from Write With Lauren
• 4:39 Highlights from my interview with Dianna Romaguera, a strategic communications consultant from NYC
• 7:45 Sharing insights from my chat with Carina Barrau, a talented freelancer in Portugal
• 9:07 Recapping lessons learned from fellow podcaster Ashley Feller
• 11:23 Highlights from my episode with professional artist Luisa Padro AKA Artysta LuLu
• 14:18 Sharing key takeaways from my chat with translator and wedding coordinator Leydi Montoya
• 15:52 Recapping top gems from my interview with journalist and author Amaris Castillo
• 17:56 Highlights from our first male guest, author, journalist and coach Damon Brown
• 20:05 Money lessons and financial burpees from wealth manager and CFO Christina Gamache
• 22:44 Sharing favorite gems from my talk with Jessica Walrack from All Things Freelance Writing
• 25:14 Wisdom from the queen of vision and influencing, Maria Ferrer
• 28:26 Recapping my favorite takeaways from business coach and freelance writing expert Ed Gandia

Transcript

0:01

Welcome to Talk Freelance To Me, the podcast for women freelance writers, 1099 independent contractors, and solopreneurs. I'm your host, Ashley Cisneros Mejia. For more than 20 years, I've worked as a journalist and freelance writer. Today, as a mom of three kids, I'm passionate about helping other women leverage the free dom freedom that freelance offers on Talk Freelance To Me we're all about the business of freelancing. If you want to learn how to monetize your talents, make money on your own terms and design a flexible work life that actually works for you, this show is for you. Before we get started don't forget to follow us on your favorite social media platforms. Review us on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen. And don't forget to share this episode with a friend. Visit our website at talkfreelancetome. com for free resources. Join our email list to be the first to know about our latest offers. Thanks for tuning in and let's get into the episode. Welcome back to a very special episode of the Talk Freelance to Me podcast. I'm your host, Ashley Cisneros Mejia. And today we are celebrating our very first birthday. Yep. It's our anniversary and we are reflecting on the last 12 months of starting this podcast, all of the lessons along the way and all of the wonderful connections that we've made with you, the freelancers in our community. Thank you so much for tuning in for listening to the podcast and for connecting with us on social media. Today, I want to chat some more about the amazing guests that I've had the privilege to interview along the way on the show. If you recall, I talked a little bit about some of these folks in our 2023 Recap. And I'm excited today to highlight things that I've learned, key takeaways from some of these talented people. So first up, I want to talk about Lauren Ward. She's one of the first, , folks that I,, interview early in the podcast journey. And she has an awesome Instagram called Write with Lauren. She is a personal finance writer and she also does coaching too. We met on Instagram and then later we even teamed up and did , a recap of key takeaways from the ASJA summer conference. We have our notes still available from that journalism conference, so if you're interested in those, let me know. You can email me at Ashley @ talk freelance to me. com and we can share our notes with you. I loved getting to talk with Lauren because when I met her I did not realize that her husband is also a freelancer. He was actually a teacher and Lauren started out like a lot of us do, doing freelance on the side to generate some extra cash in Lauren's case she was freelancing to keep her skills up while she , started to raise a family and have a couple kids. Before long, she realized what freelance, allowed her to do and the opportunity. So she went to her husband and convinced him to try to freelance as well. She felt confident that they could cover his teacher salary and make more than that with freelance. So today they are both freelance business owners. They also homeschool their three children, which to me is an even bigger feat. I'm so in awe of them and I love how freelance has allowed them to not just do work their own way, but also to parent in their own way and to give their kids the education and the childhood experience that they really think is best for them. Super inspiring story. She also gave a lot of tactical information just about maintaining, a record of your income of your projections , and committing to reviewing those regularly every day, every week so that you meet your goals. She also in that episode talked about the transformation that she experienced once she started connecting with other writers. And I love that advice because freelance it can feel solitary, you know, we're all tinkering away in our own offices or in coffee shops, and sometimes it can feel lonely, but by talking with each other, we cannot just bounce ideas off of each other, but we can share information about rates. Lauren mentioned that she went to a conference and talked to other writers. She realized that she was undercharging, and so she would not have had that information to know to charge more and to increase the revenue in her company if she hadn't have had those conversations. So I thought it was such a good reminder. You should definitely go back and check out Lauren's episode. Next up is Dianna Romaguerra, who has been my friend since 2000, I want to say, so I've known her for a long time. She's been my colleague. She's a marketing and communications consultant in the New York City area. We worked together at an agency that I used to own, and she's fantastic. One of the key takeaways that she mentioned is the importance of getting really clear on your client's overall goal from day one. And I loved how she meant that not just about that specific project, say they bring you on to do a series of blog posts, not just the basic information about what are these blog posts need to be about, what keywords do they need to include, stuff like that, but more of what does the client want to achieve with those blog posts? What's the overall plan? And I love that she mentioned that because so many times if you don't get that clarity, first of all, it's not good for managing expectations. If a client is expecting one thing from a communications project that you create,, but , you know that there's another route to get to that place, or, , what's realistic in terms of expectations. Also, sometimes clients they're not from our world. So they might think that the best route to getting somewhere is a white paper. Maybe, you know a different kind of lead magnet. Maybe they need to start a podcast. Maybe they need to be sponsoring certain industry conferences. You might have that knowledge or those ideas, but unless you have that greater strategic conversation you're not gonna be in a position to share that with them. And when you do, when you are able to share that with them, it puts you in a position where you can then be a strategic partner with your client and not just a busy bee who's brought in for overflow work that they don't have anyone on staff to do. You want them to see you as a problem solver, as a solution finder, as an idea person who can also execute. And that's not just good for their business, but it helps you create a more sustainable business as well. I thought this was such good advice. Other topic, , Dianna and I spoke about were about networking and about trying to not burn bridges as much as you can and understanding that you can learn from everyone and that the nature of work is you might trade places with your client in different seasons of your life. So, for example, the intern that you hired today, they might be the boss five years from now for a company that you really want to work with. For one, you want to have that humility and being able to be open to everyone's ideas, no matter how different they are from you and no matter their age, no matter what industry they're in. And the quickest way to shut down a learning opportunity is saying, Oh, I already know that. And dismissing that dismissing the person, , idea. And so I just, I thought that was some really good advice. There's a whole lot more that we talk about. I definitely encourage you to go listen to that episode. It's episode eight. Next, I want to tell you about my friend, Carina Barrau so Dianna I've known her for decades. Carina's a new friend that I met on Instagram after I started some social media accounts for this podcast. She is in Portugal. And she actually became a freelancer right out of high school. I thought it was super interesting. and so we spoke a lot. She really talked about the importance of taking action. And I thought this was really good and really wise because there's so much information. There's information overload. There's so many YouTube videos and webinars and , blogs and articles that you can read about any given subject but at some point you have to start acting and putting these things into action if you want to see if they'll work for you so I really appreciated that , she also spoke about the ability to bounce back and start over and that you might have that multiple times in a year, , and to never be afraid of that, to always know that you can go back to your tried and true techniques, such as talking with other writers about work, , pitching clients, keeping those connections, checking in with old clients, , and continuing to have a system where you're pitching yourselves all the time so that you always have a full pipeline. I definitely suggest checking out Carina's episode., cause I think it was a good one as well. Next up, I want to tell you about, Ashley Feller. She is an awesome musician. She has a podcast as well and is a writer. And I actually met her at Podfest Expo , that was my first podcasting conference that I went to in January 2023. And it really was the catalyst for starting this podcast in March 2023., I met Ashley on the , conference app. I realized we had the same name. We were both writers and we were actually from the same hometown. I think the advice that sticks out most from that interview was about writing your wins down weekly. So many times especially in the freelance writing world , and in business in general, we are always focused on the next deadline on getting something out the door to a client., getting something done so that we can , meet our next milestone, send that invoice. And it can be very easy to lose sight of all of the progress that we've made. A lot of times we can be unrealistic in our expectations of what we want to get done over a quarter, over a month, over a week, or even a day. But by writing down all of the things that we're actually accomplishing can make us feel better about our progress on those hard days. It can be that reminder to us. Say you get bad feedback from a client and you start to feel down on yourself or second guess your abilities. Looking at that record of seeing your wins, seeing your accomplishments, that can really pick you up. And I loved that advice from Ashley. She also talked a lot about resilience. She talked about the hurricane, , when it hit her town, Panama City, Florida. And then the pandemic after and just how that really affected her as a musician and a performer. And just what it means to bounce back and a key to that was community. That's something that she started doing was turning her mic around as a musician and sharing the stories of fellow artists and creatives and musicians , in her local area and in the entire state of Florida. I loved the motivation and inspiration that she's shared in that episode. And if you want to take a listen, that's episode 11. Next, I want to highlight my conversation with another amazing artist, this time a visual artist, Artysta LuLu and she is incredible, super inspiring. She was going to start her MBA. She was going to attend law school, and had ticked off all of the checklist all of the things that she felt like She was supposed to do to be successful when she has been an artist for all of her life and was dedicating all of her free time to her art. So, , in 2016, she, or I think it was before then, she started taking her art in a more serious way and doing it more in a business way. And now she is a professional artist. She does commissioned, , people hire her to do murals., she's just done some incredible things. In 2016, I actually commissioned a piece of artwork from her , of the mythical phoenix bird that represents rebirth and recreation because I was undergoing a transition in my professional life and I still have it to my office just next to me. And I have so much , inspiration. It's just a reminder that you can always create something new. That you can all have a rebirth at any moment. And that everything that we do we're not tied to, we're not married to, we can always, change our mind and change our direction. She talked about laying your bricks consistently with quality every day and she got it from Will Smith the famous actor, hip hop rapper. In his biography, he talked about in a memory that he had when he was young where his father actually made he, and I think it was his brother, create a brick wall, and they felt like there was no way they were going to do it, , but by laying their bricks carefully, with intention, and just focusing on each brick one at a time before long they had this wall and they achieved what they felt was impossible. And it was a great reminder to just not lose sight of the fact that everything we do every day, it matters and it all adds up to our success. That consistency and that persistency, that's something that she mentioned, especially in the art world where everybody has an opinion, completely subjective, right?, How do you say something is art or something is not art who wins in that, right? Everybody has a opinion , so definitely being able to be persistent in your pursuit of new opportunities. That was something that I really appreciated from her episode., It's a really good one. Even if you're not a visual artist, I think you'll still get a lot out., , The ability to have a thick skin, the ability to work in accordance with your faith, to , communicate your value and to just focus on you and not worry so much about what other people are doing. Those reminders and more are in episode 12. Next up is Leydi Montoya. She is a fantastic business owner. She's had a translation company for like 12 years or something. Then she's also had this incredible, , corporate career with a really well known company., and she just keeps getting promotions after promotions. And I loved her perspective on entrepreneurship because she's done both. She enjoys her job. So she's working and climbing the corporate ladder while also having a side hustle. And I thought that was really cool., She was talking about the ability to delegate and to take breaks. She had a lot of good , nuggets in that episode, but that's one that I really liked because sometimes in entrepreneurship. When you look at the statistics of how many businesses, , unfortunately fizzle out after, I think it's two years, , it can be disheartening. And there's certainly, there's days where it can feel like I might as well just quit. I might as well just go get a job. Right? And she really talked about the importance of not giving up. Sometimes you just need to rest. Sometimes you just need to take a pause. Sometimes you need to delegate and outsource things. And I loved that very rational reminder. Of if you want a sustainable business, you've got to work in those periods where you will have breaks, where you will be able to take care of yourself, where it's okay to have pauses that you don't always have to subscribe to these old ideas of hustle culture and just grinding all the time. Her episode is episode 13 and I definitely think you should check it out.. Next up, I want to tell you about Amaris Castillo. She is an incredible writer that I've known for years and years. Well, she's a journalist by trade, but she's also ventured into fiction writing really exciting,, interview to talk about like that process and that transition. She's also a mom of two little boys Stinking cute. They're so sweet. I think my biggest takeaway from her episode was the fact that there's never going to be an optimal time to write. There's so many people that I talk to, not just writers, freelance writers, but people who are executives or business owners. And a lot of people feel like they have a book in them, that they want to write a book. Some of it's about their expertise. Some of it might be about their story or something completely different., A lot of times, people are looking for a time where they're going to be able to sit down and just crank out a book. And if you're waiting for that time, that time may never come. She talked about just the realities of what it means to be a mother of young kids and a creative professional, a writer. And so she talked about, for her, she finds pockets of time. It might be five minutes here, ten minutes there, where she's literally on Google Docs on her phone, , chipping away, writing down paragraphs, writing down sentences, not editing, just getting it out, getting that word count and increasing and making that steady progress on her long term goals. And I thought it was so refreshing and it almost gave you permission. I think sometimes we want, we expect things to be so perfect., or we feel like we have to get out thousands of words in a sitting in order to feel like we're making progress and it doesn't work that way for most people. For most of us, it's going to look like highs and lows. Maybe sometimes where you're going to have a lot of time to work on your passions. And other times it's going to be harder. You might be able to get less in, but the importance is that consistency. And I think you're really going to enjoy that conversation. And that is episode 14. In episode 15, we brought. on our first male guest, the incredible Damon Brown, who is a prolific author. He's written, I'm probably going to get it wrong, but he's written like 27 books. I feel, , he is a journalist., He had a column with Inc Magazine., He's written for Playboy. He's written for so many publications. He also had a couple mobile apps, one of which he sold, , very cool speaker. And he also coaches solopreneurs. I heard him speak at the ASJA conference and just really loved his ideas about creativity, about AI and writing. And so he came on to our show for episode 15. The takeaway that I really appreciated from that conversation was being able to stretch your timeline. Sometimes when we are very ambitious, we expect to achieve what we think we want, or what we, , make sense for us by looking at what other people are doing. We feel terrible when it doesn't happen and he was saying that it's not that you have to scrap your plans. It's not that you have to necessarily pick this or that meaning your family or your profession, but stretching your timeline, stretching your expectations of how long you think something's going to take and deciding to take action. If you are wanting to serve a certain community, to serve them now, it, whatever skill that you can. So if it's not, you know, you can't get out a daily podcast, , or a weekly podcast, say you can do something once a month. Okay, fine. Do that. That's something that he said., And I really appreciated that because again, sometimes we want our ideas of what good is or success is. Are different than what reality will afford., I really appreciated, , reminder to understand that things take time and that progress, no matter how slow is still moving forward, , we've talked a lot about parenting and being a creative and goal setting and boundaries, and he had some a great perspective as a father, and his episode is number 15. Next up is Christina Gamache in episode 17. She is a fantastic money expert, financial expert. She just worked for lots of financial companies all along the way before starting, , her wealth management company. And, , I loved getting to reconnect with Christina. Christina and I were, , master's in entrepreneurship program at the university of Florida many years ago. And now she really focuses on helping entrepreneurs , she was telling me about the fact that through her financial work, she really saw small business owners really hurting during the pandemic and having to make really difficult decisions to shut their doors for good. And she noticed that a lot of them hadn't planned on how to exit. When you work for a company, you have a retirement age where you're going to stop working and then hopefully start drawing your social security or your investments and retiring, but when you own a business, that can look different for different people and what she found is that too many businesses , had to shut down because they didn't have their financial systems and plans in place during the pandemic. So she decided from that experience that she could help these folks. And so she ended up leaving the big company she was at and starting her own company. The advice that stands out most to me is when she said that you can't fix your money problems until you get to the root of the problem and understand what that is. And that can be hard. It can be daunting because depending on who you are and your experiences with money, you might have some money , baggage, some issues, some ideas about money that might be hindering your business growth. And she talked about the, , necessity of treating our business just like we would our own finances and having a budget for our business. And just like in our own finances, we're looking for ways to save money, reduce costs, , to do the same, to be that same, have that same discipline when it comes to our business., and really looking at the numbers, paying attention to them. She encouraged everybody to do their financial burpees as she put it. And to get comfortable with the numbers to pull our bank account statements and our credit card statements for our business and to really check everything and get a good understanding of where our money is going and what our profit margin is. This is an essential episode, so anybody who's listening will get something out of the money episode. It's episode 17. The next guest I want to chat with you about is Jessica Walrack from All Things Freelance Writing. She's an incredible personal finance reporter and journalist, and she also coaches people as well who want to be writers. We had a great time talking shop and comparing notes about our experiences. The takeaway that I remember most is the importance of vetting your clients. I think a lot of times in conversations about freelance, we talk about just getting clients, period. How do you get client clients? How, you know, how much do you charge or how do you price certain projects? And all of that is essential, but I think one of the things we do miss is are we being as selective with our clients as they are with us and understanding that as business owners, we are peers, we are two businesses doing business. And that just because a client needs a service and is considering us doesn't necessarily mean they're the perfect client for us. She also talked about really targeting clients that are in a good position to invest in us., to pay attention to that, that if we want to start the relationship in a good way and have a sustainable business that we enjoy, , it's important to vet our clients and make sure there's no red flags., I thought that was really good advice that I feel like we don't hear a lot in the freelance space. And it's not just about avoiding late payments or scope creep, but really aligning with clients that respect your work and share your value and appreciate what you're bringing to the table. Jessica has a really cool story similar to Lauren. in that she used freelance to create this new life that she wanted and to travel abroad. She lived in Costa Rica, in Europe, in a ton of different countries, and was able to give her son, who's now a teenager, an opportunity to get a foundational education abroad, which I thought was so cool and inspiring. She was working in Corporate America prior. And her husband was as well, and they wanted something different. They wanted something different out of life. They wanted more time with their son. They looked at freelance as a way to achieve that. And they did, and they are both doing it successfully as well. That's a great episode to listen to as well. It's episode 16. Next up was one of my dream guests. And I still cannot believe she said yes to me. The amazing Maria Ferrer, A K A Maria Bone. She is a incredible businesswoman and social media influencer. I think when I last checked, she has something like 800, 000 followers across her social media platforms. So she does videos about, , 90s nostalgia, 90s culture, music, and hip hop, and also these workplace videos, , videos talking about , workplace humor, , she has this viral video where she has this character Richard and she's jamming out before Zoom session with him and just code switching from herself and the music she enjoys and then having to turn on her corporate speak and be professional. And it's so relatable and so funny. She has an amazing story. So she's been a business woman for, , I think it was 15 years that she had her Vocal , business. So she's a vocal coach., she's a, an amazing songwriter and singer herself. And so she was teaching, , who want to be singers for years. That was her main business. She's also done some things with fashion as well. And she. nearly gave up social media, but, and before she became viral and her friends encouraged her, , to be herself and to experiment with social media. Well, she went viral. I discovered her in 2021 just coming out of the pandemic still. A lot of us parents were still trying to figure out, how do we do life? And there was a lot of uncertainty. And I feel like her videos just offered such a place of escape and humor and fun and lightheartedness. And it's just, it's beautiful. She has a podcast as well. I listened to her podcast and it also inspired me for this podcast. I think the lesson that I got most from her was that authenticity wins every time and that she had tried different things on social media and was kind of sick of it and actually did take a break from social media. in general. And then when she came back and just started making these silly videos about her love for music, for hip hop and R& B music from the 90s and early 2000s, that was what took her to a new dimension. It took her to an incredibly new level and who would have thought right? She just picked her passion and started communicating and sharing her joy and lo and behold, that's what people are drawn to. She's done brand endorsements and brand , sponsorships and partnerships now and has continued to grow. I just loved her encouragement to be positive and to just stay true to yourself and the power of a personal brand. I think a lot of people are going to learn a lot from her because authenticity really attracts the right opportunities from the right people who appreciate what you uniquely have to offer. You definitely need to listen to episode 18 with Maria Ferrer. And last but certainly not least is our second male guest ever the incredible Ed Gandia for episode 19. So he was another person on my dream wish list of guests. Ed to me is one of the godfathers in the freelance writing coaching space. And I, I feel like his book was one of the first ones that I read back in 2009 ish when I was figuring out freelancing and how to make it work for myself. He was kind enough to say yes to me again, even though this podcast is new and he's been doing this for a while, for a long time. He talked about shifting your mindset from viewing freelance writing as a craft, which it can be, but to an actual business and to think about what you do strategically, because when you do, then you can consider pricing and services and sustainability in a different way., and so. I love that he talked about developing a business mindset that allows you to think more strategically about where you want to take your business. He gave another great reminder about charging by the project, not by the word. He talked about finding ways to package what you might do naturally,, in your, , freelance process. So if you're helping a client and they don't know what they want yet, and you're helping them develop that clarity so that they can hire you to do this writing assignment. Well, that process, if you helping them figure out where they're going, that is a service in itself. He calls it project roadmapping. Definitely go back and check out Ed's episode. Wrapping up the special anniversary episode, I just want to say thank you again for listening to this podcast, for watching us on YouTube, and connecting with us on all the Talk Freelance To Me platforms that we have in the social media space. And with that, we've come to the end of another episode. Please make sure you hit subscribe and give me a five star review on Apple. Check out the show notes and grab my free Niches Get Riches freelance writing worksheet to brainstorm the best niches for your writing business. Until next time, this is Ashley Cisneros Mejia. Don't forget, we all get this one, Don't constrain yourself to a box that you were never meant to fit in. It is your right to profit from your own creative gifts. Our music was composed by Donna Raphael of World Instrumentals. Talk Freelance to Me is a product of Fenix Creative Studio.