💋A Most Unreliable Narrator🫦 #183 More big news
How big? Pretty f*cking big, I’d say!
Dear Internet,
It’s Friday and Erika has just left to continue her sojourn to North Carolina. We were her pit stop on her way from Iowa and we’ll see her again next week on her return trip. We took her to Louisville Cream for fantastic ice cream, which is this week’s Wonderful Thing, after dinner and she was in love. Thursday barked a few times when Erika came in, but then they were the best of friends.
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The lede is innocuous because I have MORE BIG NEWS. I’m just full of surprises.
After long, serious, and heartfelt discussions, I’m no longer with my previous employer. Mr. Lisa and I are taking this opportunity for me to do two things: kick off a consulting company and finish my book.
I’ve been in the process of getting this set up for months down to getting my EIN and registering with Kentucky. I even have a business credit card! It’s super scary but I’m super pumped. I feel it in my bones.
I won’t reveal the name of the company just yet until I get the website and social media in order. A friend is making the logos and I’m working on the website. I’ve got my name reserved on IG and FB. I’ve also investigated scheduling software, business cards, bookkeeping websites, and what additional software I need to brush up on. I even have a business plan! Look at me being organized.
I’m not a web developer, web designer, graphic designer, marketing guru, or a user experience person. I work alongside them and not as these professions.
Originally, I was going to take my skill set and couple it with UX as I was workin my through a bootcamp and sell myself as a freelance UX designer, but the market is awful. Way more experienced UX designers are getting laid off and they can’t find jobs despite their portfolios, tenure, and skill sets. Post after post in FB groups, mailing lists, and subreddits about how fucking terrible the job market is is depressing. I stopped the bootcamp and chalked it up to live and learn. (But the skills I learned are fucking super helpful and I may pick up the bootcamp again.)
I’ve worked in a lot of industries from managing a liquor store when I was 20 (too young to buy but old enough to sell) to packing sausages at a meat processing plant one summer and years and years of retail. Then there is my foray into the tech world when the internet was a baby and on to a bookseller and then a librarian. I’ve got a unique skillset that when applied in previous employment, I am beloved for that knowledge.
But how do you market yourself when you can do a lot, but you don’t fall into a specific industry, where you know your skills are needed?
I was originally going to go with “content developer” or “content designer” as my title which people in the UX / content development world (fairly big and catering to medium and large businesses) know what those titles mean but what about the small business people I want to connect with? They will have zero idea what that title means and if they don’t know what it means, I can’t sell them my services.
I decided to refer to myself as “Principal Jane of All Trades.” On my company’s website, I give examples of everyday problems freelancers and small businesses have and they don’t know or have a resolution. Those are the kind of problems solved by me.
Examples:
You’re a small company with a social media presence but you can’t keep up
Your website is made with WordPress but you’re unsure or don’t have time to keep it updated
You want to create a regular newsletter and blog posts to promote your brand but you don’t have the time to research or write
This is but a taste of the examples given but enough variety so that someone can read this and say, “Yes, this is me! How do I hire this person?”
I list 17 different skillsets and coupled with the near dozen examples gives a clear view of what I can do.
I do have seed money that is not from Mr. Lisa so I’m not starting over with zero dollars. I must be incredibly careful of how I spend that money.
Mr. Lisa has asked me to put together a list of success markers. We’re going to revisit what I’ve done in April 2025.
I decided on my business cards to list skill sets on the back so when people receive the card, they can look at it and go, “Yes, I need help with my newsletter. Let me email Lisa straight away!”
I am researching software and apps I need to use in my daily work life and the ones I’ve found so far are geared for small companies who can afford to pay $120 A MONTH to use whatever they are selling. No, thank you. I am but one person with one client (yay!) and I do cannot afford to spend that kind of money on one thing when I also need other things.
Like I mentioned in the issue #34 of Lisa Writes Stuff, I’m now doing the social media and blogging for FF & P (under the pen name of Scarlet MacKenzie which I’ll get into in a bit). Last weekend, I either created or updated templates, created a social media plan, started a monthly summary list to report, and created and scheduled social media posts for May. I think I quoted myself 8 hours? More like double that spread over the week. It was a lot of work but now that there is a solid base, May and forward is going to be a lot easier and less time consuming.
That is all (mainly) handled by automation. FF & P’s blog runs on WordPress which allows you to schedule for all of eternity and posts to FB for you, so that’s done. I’ve started using Adobe Express because it allows me to create social media content such as posts and reels to post to FB, IG, Twitter, Pinterest, TikTok, and Linkedin. This is fanfuckingtastic, HOWEVER, for each of those social connections, you can get one each if you get on the free plan but three each on the paid plan (which is $10 a month which is totally doable). I’m possibly going to take over/help social media for another writer’s group and since all my FP and IG spots are filled, I must either disconnect one of them or see if I can up to another plan.
(Thinking about this further, I can keep the Adobe Express at $9.99/mo and use it to create the content and then I can use Buffer for the client (with their own logins) which is FREE. See, solving problems on my feet.)
I’ve started making a list of advertisers to reach out to and I’m going to push myself on other freelance sites. Mr. Lisa told me how much money he’d like for me to make per month and I laughed heartily. I have one client (who found me on a freelance site when I wasn’t pushing myself) so hopefully I can get more clients to even get half of what Mr. Lisa wants me to earn.
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Now on to the writing bit.
Those who’ve been around for a long time know that in 2014, I did not renew my contract at the community college as Mr. Lisa and I decided for me to take a year off to work on my novel. Then I had a nervous breakdown, left and divorced Mr. Lisa (those keeping track: we got remarried last year), and moved across country too many fucking times in spats of mania. (I’m better now.)
But this time is different. Whereas in 2014 I wasn’t even in research mode for my novel, this fucking time I’ve already got 1/3 of it done. I’m actively working on other written work. This is huge, huge difference.
So, that’s my big news. I’ve got a lot going on and 2024 – 2025 looks to be really fucking awesome!
Wonderful Thing
Mr. Lisa and I are blessed (or damned depending on how you look at it) that we live in the middle of two local ice cream shops. Ehrler’s is two blocks west of the condo and Louisville Cream is three blocks east. Ehrler’s sells traditional flavors (chocolate, vanilla, peanut butter) with a hint of change-ups like Moose Tracks. Mr. Lisa likes their orange cow, which is orange sherbet and vanilla ice cream. I’m a huge fan of their chocolate malts.
(Ehrler’s has been around since 1867 and Louisville Cream in the last few years.)
Louisville Cream, however, does small batch fancy ice cream. Yes, they have the standbys of chocolate and vanilla, but they also have crème brûlée, banana pudding (a fav), and pistachio honeycomb. Their malts are not that great and cost $3 more for less amount than Ehrler’s. But nevertheless, their ice cream is amazing.
If you’re in Louisville, and you like ice cream, Louisville Cream is where to go.
Pour some chocolate sauce on me,
lisa x