'We have to cut your hours': six words that changed everything for the better
A panic, a pivot, and a year of being a pig in clover
Hello! I hope you enjoy this piece - it’s free to read for everyone; paid subscribers will also receive a recording of it to listen to if you prefer.
FYI I’m launching my full menu of exclusive content to support writers with your use of Instagram, here on Substack, in just FOUR DAYS - on Monday 3rd June - but anyone who signs up now will secure an Early Bird price. You can find out more about the membership here.
I’m typically really bad at marking any kind of milestone - once something is over, my brain is very firmly of the opinion that it is Done With That and has a tantrum if I try to ‘reflect’ (the word alone makes my teeth itch).
Totally accidentally though, I seem to have unlocked a way to make my brain willing to look back: apparently all I have to do is simultaneously look forward.
If you read the bit in italics above (and if you skimmed over it then well done, you’ve sufficiently acclimatised to Substack marketing tactics to glide past them without even noticing they’re there 😉) then you’ll already know I’m about to launch a new service for writers looking for support with your Instagram. I’m INTENSELY EXCITED about it which, unexpectedly, has meant I’ve been able to pin my brain down long enough to write this reflective piece about how the heck I got here!
The Panic 😱 😳 😧
In November 2022 some stormy economic seas suddenly meant the small business clients I’d worked with for years as a freelance social media manager - loving every minute because they’re all fantastic people - couldn’t afford me.
And by suddenly, I mean I had one week’s notice that a massive hole was about to open up in my income.
It was the first time I’d been at the really sharp end of the insecurity of being a freelancer so I did what any self-respecting adult would do: I panicked.
For about a fortnight I fretted and faffed, doing things I’d never had to do before because all of my work had come through word of mouth. I set up my own Instagram account, a Linked In page, and an email list*. Then I panicked a bit more because I know too well how much work it is to grow these things and how much time it takes.
*in my experience, it’s not unusual for freelance social media managers to have a negligible digital footprint because we expend so much energy on our clients
One day I opened up my phone and read a post about how good it feels when your paid work closely aligns with your values and interests. I was still in thrall to panic, a healthy dose of self-pity, and a worrying lack of enthusiasm for finding new small business clients to work with, so my initial response was something like, yah, boo, whatevs, loser, easy for you to say <blows raspberry>.
But the post stayed with me, and a few days later I was walking my dog when I had an actual Epiphany. That sounds like I’m over-egging it, but it was genuinely as though a godly hand reached inside my skull and thrust an idea in front of my eyes with the words, ‘Here you are you numpty, do this.’
The Pivot
Since 2020 I have belonged to a writers group. We saved one another’s sanity during the pandemic, we’ve been early readers of, and advisors on, one another’s work, and are relentless cheerleaders for one another. They’re the kind of group of women I didn’t know existed until I met them (incidentally, most of us met through Instagram in the late-20teens 👀).
At the time my income went into free-fall, four of the group had been, or were about to be, published, so on occasion I offered up advice about how they might use their social media accounts to help them promote their books. Out on that dog walk in December 2022, like a crack of lightening, my brain lit up: WHAT IF I CAN TEACH WRITERS HOW TO USE SOCIAL MEDIA?
Immediately I sent the kind of long and rambling voice-note you never want to receive to two of the group, whose debuts had been published earlier that year (👋🏻
and Ilona Bannister), and asked them what they thought of the idea (if you’re so inclined, you can listen to some of my rambings here on my Instagram account).They responded with a resounding DO IT!
The Pig-in-Clover
It was another member of my writing group -
, whose book was coming out in January 2023 - who days later agreed to be a guinea pig for my initial unsteady steps into teaching writers how to run their accounts strategically for themselves, rather than what I was used to, which was doing it for small businesses.Another writer,
(whose second book, the thought-provoking and challenging, ‘It’s Not Fair: why it’s time for a grown-up conversation about how adults treat children’ is out in June) was a very early client who told me I’d made her, ‘feel excited about Instagram again’ after we worked together.I started to find my groove with my own Instagram content, and also received lots of positive and reassuring feedback following an appearance on Penny Wincer’s podcast, Not Too Busy To Write (listen to the episode here) in March 2023.
And slowly, I started to believe this could be A Thing.
For the first half of 2023 I continued working with my small business clients while I built up a funnel of writer clients, but by June 2023 - pretty much a year ago exactly, hence these reflections - I was ready to go all in 🎉 eek!😬
The last twelve months haven’t all been plain sailing - the summer into September was too quiet for comfort, and setting up, launching and marketing my own courses and workshops has involved several head-f*cks of epic proportions - but the thing that has propelled me onwards has been my clients: the writers, you.
Like many of you, I was the kid who had a stack of books she was reading next to her bed at any given moment; who maxed out her library card, and returned for more seven days later; who wrote long stories on pages of hand-drawn lines for fun; who only felt mildly embarrassed when her poems were published in the local newspaper.
Like many of you, I’ve loved words and stories and books and book shops for as long as I can remember, and just as it wasn’t until I was in my late-30s that I understood I too could be a writer, this pivot of my business has facilitated an alignment of my skills with my interests that I honestly never imagined was possible.
You know how writers say ‘nothing is ever wasted’ when they cut thousands of words from their manuscript? Apparently, it goes for life too.
Yeh sure, I still have to do a tonne of grunt work (pun fully intended 🐽), and I swear I am NEVER going to understand Stripe, but I also get to use the teaching skills I developed over 12 years as a secondary school teacher, combined with the expertise in social media marketing I’ve built up over the last 8 years, to teach writers how to use social media as word of mouth with a megaphone.
I get to show you how to connect with more readers, under your own steam, on your own terms.
I get to advise you on ways to resist the more challenging, less desirable, dynamics of social media that can feel inevitable.
And I get to watch as you get that thing you’ve been working on for months, possibly years, of your life, into the hands of more readers. That makes me happy as a pig in clover.
If you’d like to know more about the support I’m providing for writers who want to use Instagram to grow their readership, check out my ✨NEW✨ membership, TooMuch Instagram (50% discount EARLY BIRD price available until 3rd June), or visit my website.
Weirdly so timely as this exact thing has just happened to me !
Love your pivot and loved reading how you got to this point xx