"Look any every interaction you have as a potential opportunity" with Jill L. Ferguson

Photo Credit: Rick Heckt

Jill L. Ferguson is an award-winning writer of 14 published books. She is also an artist and a serial entrepreneur. She is the founder of Women’s Wellness Weekends, a higher education consulting business, and Creating the Freelance Career, a coaching practice for entrepreneurs and authors.

Can you tell our readers about your background?

I started working at a young age, by choice. I was babysitting for neighbors at age 10 and selling greeting cards and gift items from a catalog to people who lived on our street before I was in my teens. At age 12, I published my first piece of writing in a magazine and that drove me to want to see my name in print often. When I was 18, I started my first company by buying into a franchise that made personalized products for kids (picture books that included them and their friends in the storyline, letters from Santa and the Easter Bunny, clocks, etc.).

As an undergrad, I majored in communications and business, and in grad school, I studied English with an emphasis on writing. That allowed me to become a professor and I taught and was a higher ed administrator for 12 years, but I was always doing a side hustle and running a business or two during all those years. And when I finally resigned from higher ed, I was asked by a university if they could hire me to consult on some projects so I started a higher ed consulting company that day in November 2012.

Since then, I have run my higher ed consulting company, a company called Creating the Freelance Career which provides coaching to entrepreneurs and authors, a company called Women’s Wellness Weekends (currently on hiatus since the pandemic started as virtual isn’t part of that business model), and I still write for newspapers, magazines, and companies, as well as do some ghostwriting.

 What inspired you to start your business?

I started Women’s Wellness Weekends in 2015 in honor of my late grandmothers, one who was an entrepreneur and one who didn’t meet a person she didn’t try to feed and turn into a friend. Most women I know care for so many people and things and then care for themselves last. I started Women’s Wellness Weekends as a place for women to learn, grow, nurture themselves, relax, and have fun with their sisters.

I started Creating the Freelance Career as a natural consulting extension of my 2019 Routledge/Taylor & Francis published book, titled Creating a Freelance Career. The book is a handbook for people who want to pursue life as contractors, freelancers, and solopreneurs, and features 25 disparate case studies of people who have done just that in a variety of fields. This book was a book I wished I had had when I started my freelance career back when I was 12. 

Where is your business based?

I physically reside in Long Beach, California, but I do business with people all over the world. I run closed FB and FairyGodboss groups for freelancers, etc. and people in the group are from Asia, North America, Europe, and South America. The clients I work with are from all over, too.

How did you start your business? What were the first steps you took?

When I started my first business as a teenager, I researched inexpensive franchises and picked one that made the most sense for my skill set, interests, and circle of influence.

When I started my other companies, I first searched company names and URLs to see which were taken or were free. Once I settled on what I thought would be a decent URL, I bought it, and then fill out the government paperwork I needed to start the business (to obtain the EIN, business license, etc.) After I had those, I built basic websites so that I at least had the start of an online presence.

I announced the launch of each business on social media and on LinkedIn, and through an e-mail blast to all of my contacts.

What has been the most effective way of raising awareness for your business? Networking has been most effective. I have joined groups of local businesswomen and business executives. I also offer a referral fee to anyone who sends me clients. Those two things plus word of mouth from past clients and people I’ve met along the way have helped bring my companies and me to the eyes and ears of the people who need us.

What have been your biggest challenges and how did you overcome them?

My biggest challenge was learning to trust my instincts and listen to my inner voice. Our early lives condition us and teach us lessons (consciously or subconsciously) about our worth, our abilities, our attitudes about money. Women, in particular, feel like impostors too often, like we don’t know enough or deserve things.

For example, when I was getting calls to speak at international conferences, my mother asked, “Why are they calling you?” It took me a while and a lot of inner discomforts to get to the point where I could answer, “Because I’m an expert in this topic and one of the first and few” and mean it and feel it inside. The statement is a fact but yet I felt weird admitting it like I was bragging or wasn’t good enough to use the word “expert”.

How do you stay focused?

I’m naturally detailed oriented and love what I do so the focus mostly comes easily. It’s part of how I can write books so quickly. (Routledge gave me six weeks when they asked me to write Creating a Freelance Career to research and write the book and turn in a polished product. I wrote Voice of Love, a pandemic sexy romance novel for fun in three weeks.)

When I feel stuck about anything though, I call my accountability partner. We’ve been friends for years and can talk through anything. We are both intuits so can usually feel why or where the other is hung up and what needs to be released to get into a focused flow again.

How do you differentiate your business from the competition?

Excellent customer service. That may seem strange in a climate that stresses providing more value than you are being paid for but the fact is many people and businesses don’t actually do that. I offer free consultation minutes to potential clients (with no sales pitch). I offer a $2.99 e-book on the most common business mistakes I’ve seen over decades of working with clients. I never log time on the clients who hire me for higher ticket consulting packages. Yes, we have a certain number of scheduled meetings together but they are free to e-mail, text, or call me at any time for advice and direction.

And one other way I differentiate my businesses from others is that I am honest to the point where if I don’t think we are a good fit or I know someone better suited to what a client or potential client needs, I’ll say so and find the person to serve their needs better. For example, one of my clients is in the cannabis industry and he needed a finance writer who focused on that industry. Could I have hired a subcontractor to fulfill his needs? Sure. And I probably could have even done the research and fulfilled it myself (I’ve had years of accounting courses and bookkeeping practice). But that isn’t my joy. So instead I found a great cannabis finance writer and introduced them. I paid it forward by giving more work to another female and meeting my client’s needs and further strengthening our relationship.  

What has been your most effective marketing strategy to grow your business? Word of mouth has marketed my business more than anything else. I get many of my clients through referrals. But that said, I’ve also been on television, done radio and podcast interviews, and appeared in print and online publications. And I’ve gotten a number of clients for Creating the Freelance Career through what used to be called LinkedIn ProFinder.

What's your best piece of advice for aspiring and new entrepreneurs?

1)   Look any every interaction you have as a potential opportunity. You never know when or how you will meet your next client, collaborator, business partner, or business idea. (The Advocates, a book I wrote with Robyn E. Gulliver, came about because she asked in a group we both belong to if anyone had ever written with a co-author and how it worked out. She’s in Australia and I’m in the U.S. and we’ve only met over Zoom, yet we wrote a fabulous, well-received book together that highlights the accomplishments of women in the Australian environmental movement and got a contract to publish it through Melbourne University Press.)

2)   Do the things that feed your soul and that fuel your love. My Grandma Jean, the entrepreneur, said the focus on what you love and hire someone else who loves things you don’t to do those things. Too often when we are new entrepreneurs or when we are solopreneurs we try to do everything ourselves and that’s a recipe for burn-out and only surviving instead of thriving. 

What's your favorite app, blog, and book? Why?

I guess my favorite app would be my messaging app as that is the way I keep in touch with many clients and friends and family. E-mail sometimes fails (gets delayed or blocked or ends up in spam) but texting or messaging rarely fails.

Jean Chatzky’s HerMoney newsletter/blog is one of my favorites as it is chock-full of finance and life information for women.

I love the Salary Cinderella book series Laura C. Browne and I have written. We have written other books on how to increase your income and on business lessons for women but these books teach business and life lessons through the guise of fiction, which makes the fun books to write and fun to read. 

I’m currently reading The Art of Possibility, which is a 20-year-old classic and I love it for its wisdom. Another favorite book of mine right now is Braiding Sweetgrass. It is a combination of science and Indigenous wisdom that we need so much right now if we can correct all of the damage we’ve done to the planet and ourselves.

What's your favorite business tool or resource? Why?

My favorite business tools right now include Square, PayPal, Zelle, Venmo, cash, checks, and all of the ways that people can pay us. Think about it. Years ago, even back when I started my first business, people paid with mostly cash or check or an occasional credit card. I’ve had coaching and consulting clients ask if they can pay me through FB Messenger and Cash App and all of the aforementioned ways. The beauty of some of these is that it doesn’t cost the recipient of the money a thing. I love the flexibility of all of it and the convenience.

Who is your business role model? Why?

My business role model is my late Grandma Jean. She was an entrepreneur who owned a beauty salon, rental properties, part of a construction company, and other businesses. She thought she’d be a wife and professional woman since she was born with only half an ovary and was told she’d not have children. But life threw her a curveball: she had three sons 13 months apart each, though that didn’t derail her plans. She hired a housekeeper/nanny and kept right on working. When her husband died of cancer in his early 40s, they were heavily in debt because my grandfather owned and ran seven businesses that faltered while he was sick. Grandma Jean told the creditors she would pay back the hundreds of thousands of dollars to them (this was the 1960s so lots of money then), and she paid back every penny.  

How do you balance work and life?

Balancing work and life can be tricky, especially as you are launching or growing a business, or when you are established and in-demand the challenge becomes not saying yes to everything as that would require you to work 24/7.

Personally, I wake up early, usually between 4 and 5 a.m., and in bed with my coffee, I respond to any pressing e-mails from people on the East Coast or in Europe or other time zones. I also start my daily gratitude list around that time as I keep in my phone and have done a daily list of everything I’m grateful that day for almost twenty years.

I don’t keep set work hours really. I mean I am usually in my office around 9, but I will schedule life appointments—massage, facial, lunch with friends, or whatever—during the day and I won’t feel obligated to work extra into the evening to “make up for it”. That’s one of the benefits of working for myself. I can choose how and when I work and that helps balance my life and business.

But that said, if it is more convenient for me to do so something for a client on a Saturday or a Sunday, I will do it then. I stay flexible with my time. And because my husband and I are up so early and the dogs get walked for their first of the day between 7:30 and 8:30 a.m. we go to bed early, too. Sleep is important. (I walk the dogs three times per day and we log usually three to seven miles every day—it’s part of my exercise, stress relief, and mental processing/creativity time.   

What’s your favorite way to decompress?

Walk the dogs to the beach—I have a cattle dog and a cattle dog mix. Garden. Read. Travel. I also get a massage and facial every month.

What do you have planned for the next six months?

The third book in the Salary Cinderella Series that I write with Laura C. Browne will be out by summer’s end. Depending on how the coronavirus goes, Women’s Wellness Weekends may reopen with a fall event.

How can our readers connect with you?

jill@jillferguson.com is probably the best way.