Note from Jennifer: In my Freelance Content Marketing Writer group on Facebook, writers share stories every day about how they run their business and how they make freelance work fit at all different stages of life. Ana Reisdorf is a Registered Dietitian Nutritionist and freelance writer with 12 years of experience in the field of nutrition and dietetics. Recently in the FB group, she shared about how she scaled up her business from being a solo operation to a team of content marketing writers she manages. Ana was kind enough to write this guest post to explain more about how she is growing her business. Learn more by visiting her website.

By Ana Reisdorf

2018 was a big year for me, both personally and professionally. I had a baby at the end of 2017, then
moved my family from Orange County, California to Nashville, Tennessee when he was four months old
(along with a two-year-old). Needless to say, it was a crazy year. Right before this happened, my writing business started really picking up and I didn’t know how I was going to juggle it all.

A little bit of background about me, I am a Registered Dietitian by profession. I have worked as an RD in several capacities, including teaching at a university and working at hospitals. Although I enjoy nutrition, I always got bored really quickly with these jobs. I dabbled with writing for several years but was too scared to take the leap into full-time writing.

When my first son was born, it seemed like a great time to finally quit working traditional RD jobs and
try this “writing thing” full time. It took a while to build up some momentum, but by the time I was
pregnant with my second child, I was making good income and had a fairly steady flow of clients.
As the birth of my second baby and the impending move came closer, more and more work started coming in. During my last two months of pregnancy, I was glued to my computer to try to keep up with the demand for my services. This was fine because I was very physically limited during this pregnancy, but I realized that with a newborn, a toddler, and a cross country move, I wasn’t going to be able to keep up. And I didn’t want to leave my clients that I had worked so hard to get.

To ease the burden, I decided to start outsourcing some work to other Registered Dietitians, like myself. I figured if I worked with other RDs, at least I knew that I could count on them to know what they were talking about nutrition-wise. I posted an ad in my RD-writers Facebook group and received over 30 emails from people interested in the position!

Over the next month or so, I interviewed these applicants and gave them each a trial writing assignment
(paid of course!). I narrowed the pool down to five writers and we were off.

In order to get some guidance about how to get started, I spoke to another writer who outsources a lot
of her own work. She told me she gives her writers an 80% cut of whatever she is making on the project
and keeps 20%. This is the agreement I proposed to the new writers. At the time, I wasn’t making
much and I am grateful they agreed to come on board with me. I have been working with the team for a little over a year now. They have motivated me to raise my rates significantly over the last year because I want to be able to pay THEM more for their hard work. They have been invaluable in keeping my business running with all of the personal demands I have. I give them overflow work when I have it. I do still do most of the work myself, but they have jumped in when I have been sick or just needed some help.

We use Trello to communicate about new assignments and I try my best to give them at least a few
articles a month. I read and edit their articles as needed before sending them to the clients. My clients all know I have a team of writers, but don’t usually ask who has written what unless a byline is going to be included.

Several of my team members also have ‘specialties’ in nutrition that have provided added value to my
clients. For example, one of them is an incredible recipe photographer. So, I have been able to sell this service to clients in addition to my writing work. It has been a profitable model for all of us. There have been several potential clients who did not like that I was a ‘team’ and not an individual writer. I have lost three or four opportunities in the last year because of the team. But, I still think it is an overall benefit to my clients. The team allows me to offer services I never could do on my own and never have to say ‘no’ to a potential client.

My dream is to have my team working full time (or as much as they would like) and really turn this into
THE nutrition writing agency online. For now, I am just trying to run a business with two small kids and my team is the secret to how I do it all!

Have you found a way to scale up your freelance writing business? Tell us about it in the comments!