The Unusual Journey of a Bootstrapped Female Entrepreneur
Written by Heather Morgan
I’ve had two passions all my life: writing and helping people resolve their problems.
From writing cold letters to my favorite author before kindergarten to constantly carrying around a notebook to write in, you might have guessed that I would become a professional writer. However, a few years ago I would never have predicted that.
Unfortunately writing words doesn’t pay nearly as well as writing lines of code. I never realized I could ever make a real living at writing, let alone build a sustainable and growing business around it. For at least 7 years writing was just a hobby and a way to make some extra money on the side doing something I already enjoyed. I did freelance blog posts, white papers, reports, copywriting, ghostwriting and more. But that was just a disposable income and not a business.
Since graduating college I’ve been an economist, project manager and a swiss-army knife for tech startups doing marketing and business development. I went where money was, chasing interesting opportunities from Hong Kong to Cairo. Life was exciting, but I never loved any of my jobs or felt they defined who I was. Even when I was doing some of my “best work,” my mind wandered. I was always secretly working on my latest article and preoccupied with brainstorming ideas for new content. No matter how I tried to hide it, it showed.
Crossing the Chasm: Taking the Leap to Finally Become a Real Entrepreneur
I was working for a mobile games tech company at 500 Startups when they decided to relocate back to Jordan, and I didn’t want to leave California for the Middle East again so soon. I had a number of offers to join other startups, but I wasn’t sure I wanted a job.
I definitely didn’t want to jump into another job I’d be bored with in 6 months, and I wasn’t sure what role would be able to keep me engaged.
As I weighed my options, a number of startups I knew started asking me if I’d be willing to do some small projects for them. I had actually already been doing this throughout my batch, and I had developed a reputation for content marketing and cold email in my network. Working with companies on copywriting projects without any long term commitment or obligation was perfect for me. And these early stage startups only needed a writer sometimes, so my on-demand services were great for them.
While my connections and opportunities made it somewhat easier to launch my small business, giving up a regular salary for uncertainty was a bit scary at first. I knew if I didn’t take a risk now and gave this my all I was never going to though. And that was a regret I knew I couldn’t live with: I had to at least give true entrepreneurship a try.
Using the 80/20 Rule to Double Down and Make More Money
In a few months I was making okay money from my freelance writing gigs, but my schedule was already packed and I was getting exhausted. Since there were only 24 hours in a day, I realized I needed to find a way to make more money in less time.
I initially accepted a wide range of projects, from blog posts and white papers to on demand marketing and sales functions because I wasn’t confident about my income stream. I was trying to make all the money I could, but in doing so I actually held my potential earnings back. One of the smartest things you can do as a freelancer, consultant or entrepreneur is aim for a clear niche with a specific deliverable or product (I had to learn this the hard way!). Because when you do that you create consistency which allows you to build a more scalable and repeatable system.
In the early days I didn’t know what my niche was, which is normal, and I spent too much time creating proposals because I didn’t have a template. And that wasn’t because I’m not organized, but because so many of my Clients and projects were different. I worked with everything from cute consumer startups and indie app developers to medium size business to business SaaS companies on a variety of projects. My process for finding and on-boarding new clients was a mess, and I felt overwhelmed working on too many types of projects at the same time. This wasn’t sustainable or smart entrepreneurship.
I paused to reflect of my business. I began thinking, “Who were my best clients, worst clients, and what projects did I hate or love to work on? Which projects made the best money? etc.” I realized that almost 80% of my revenue came from a few large SaaS companies. Of my 8 client engagements at that time, 2 SaaS startups were paying me more than all the other companies combined. Yet I was spending 80% of my time bending over backwards on helping early stage consumer startups that were driving me crazy.
This didn’t make sense. After looking at my 2 best clients and the type of work I did for them (email templates, white papers, & copywriting for Conversion Rate Optimization), I realized I needed to get more clients like these that I could do the same kind of work for. And so I gradually fired my other clients, and began focusing more on expanding and deepening my relationship with my favorite clients.
Lessons Learned in Scaling A Bootstrapped Consultancy
It’s been less than a year since I started my consultancy, and I’m now doing more than $10,000 monthly revenue. That was achieved by focusing and narrowing my consultancy, having a deep understanding of my customer base, and creating an outbound email prospecting system that regularly contacts people who fit that criteria.
I keep my business somewhat small and lean, only working with a few contractors and one full-time employee, and that’s the way I like it. I’ve had lots of offers from clients and competitors to become a full-time employee writing cold emails or doing other copywriting, but I’m not interested. I’ve even considered changing my business model to include a real product or leverage outsourcing like some of my competitors do, but that doesn’t excite me either.
Money isn’t the only thing that motivates me.
While I want to be well-compensated for my hard work and strive to work “smart” rather than just hard, I don’t need to make $30 million to be happy. I love writing, and as long as I keep writing everyday, continue to work with clients I love, and earn a decent living, I’m happy.
It may not be the usual Silicon Valley startup story, and writing cold emails for business-to-business SaaS companies isn’t as sexy as Instagram, but it’s working well for me.
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