Let's talk freelance finances and conference prep!

Plus: The Pitching Power Hour is back next week! Mark your calendar.

The Clothesline is a weekly newsletter from Vanessa Chiasson offering cozy business content for writers who love to plan, read, and travel.

Hey there, writing friends! I hope your week is lovely so far.

I have two new offerings to share - and one of them is already half-way to being sold out and I only released it yesterday! Plus: The pitching power hour is back next week! Scroll down for more details.

Join my FREE workshop on freelance finances!

Tell me if this sounds familiar...

• You get paid for that incredible article that you worked on for months. Cha-ching! You thought that this would finally be the big gig that would get you ahead financially but when the payment comes in, you use it to pay off your credit card and you feel as broke as ever.

• You pack your month with a respectable number of assignments but when it's time to pay rent, you're panicking and grabbing up any cheapie gig you can find just because you know they pay quickly.

• You keep signing up for freelance finance workshops but they all say the same thing: You can be a six-figure freelance! You just have to get several high paying anchor clients every month! Nothing to it! It's all about mindset.

I'm not an accountant or a millionaire. I have plenty of money woes. I agonize over my income during slow months (which seems to be every month these days). However, after 12 years of freelancing, I've also managed to set up a system which allows me to:

• Pay myself every two weeks like clockwork.

• Give myself a bonus each and every quarter.

• Save money so my cashflow isn't affected when I take vacation.

• Think of tax time as an administrative chore, not a financial stressor.

• Take the sting out of paying my biggest expense: conferences (and getting to them...)

Intrigued? Join me on Thursday, May 16, and learn more.

New Service! Conference and Symposium Prep

Have you ever been to a conference or symposium, the kind of event that you have on your calendar for months and spend plenty of money on, and when it's over you're not exactly sure what you got out of it?

Sure, it was great to see colleagues and that one speaker was really cool. But did any of your meetings go well? Why do you feel like you were just going through the motions, not exactly sure what anyone wanted? Wait. Why did it feel like you weren't sure what YOU wanted? There has to be a better way, right? I want you to go to your conference feeling confident and excited.  I want you to spend more time living in the moment while you're at the conference (so you can actually enjoy all those amazing speakers!) and less time grappling with worry, wondering why exactly you turned up in the first place.

Let's chat. During our 45 minute call, we will:

• Get to the root of what exactly is motivating you to attend and determine what you want to get out of the event.

• Plan a business strategy that is enhanced by the conference but isn't entirely dependant on the conference.

• Discuss how to craft an "escalator speech" (NOT an "elevator speech") and how to customize it on the spot for all kinds of situations (like when you *think* you're going to be meeting with a tourism board and turns out it's actually a PR firm and - surprise! - they don't have a budget for your project).

• Dig into marketing and branding - - what's the difference and how are you going to manage both? 

• Organize your post-conference plan. How are you going to maximize the time and money you've invested?
  
  A 45 minute session costs $145 (+HST)

May’s Pitching Power Hour is just around the corner!

Ever wish there was someone who would make you sit down and just do your damn pitches?

Uh, that’s me. Hi.

Once a month, I offer a free pitching power hour to all paid newsletter subscribers. We meet on Zoom on the first Tuesday of the month and we share what we’re hoping to work on. Then we work in silence, together, for the better part of an hour, drafting those tricky pitches to editors and publications. It’s kinda like a homework group except we are so much cooler. At the end, we take a few minutes to share how things went and, if anyone wants, they can ask for advice on where to send the pitch.

You get a solid hour of quiet time to pitch, pitch, pitch, plus accountability, community, and positive feedback. And it works! One participant got FOUR assignments after their first pitching power hour.

(If you don’t want to work on pitching but want camaraderie for something else that’s challenging, like bookkeeping or editing, you can do that too!)

I’ll see you next week on Tuesday, May 7, at 9:00 AM est. Your Zoom link is below.