We met Francesca online when she connected with 10K Webdesign. Her insights are helpful for all of us who think big, dream high, and attain the next level of success.
Where did you get started in your business?
My husband and partner Duncan and I moved to Seattle and opened a direct marketing business in 1993. We specialized in creating and implementing direct mail advertising campaigns for a variety of B2B and B2C clients in Washington and Oregon. I had fallen in love with direct response writing many years earlier and honed my skills with ad agencies and publishing houses in New York. Little did we know that the Internet would soon turn everybody’s world upside down, broaden our horizons and change our fundamental concepts of doing business.
In 1995 we hired a programmer to create our first company website for our direct marketing business. It was a fascinating process during which we wrote our first website – our own. For our company, the promise of the Internet not only opened up a wider market for our writing, it also created a new medium for our writing skills.
With the lack of competition in those early days, we were instantly number one on the search engines. I vividly remember the day we received our first call from a prospect – a major university. We wrote a direct mail project for them. A week later, we heard from a software company in Israel. Wow! It was a powerful feeling instantly reaching out to people around the world.
As a result of the Internet, Duncan and I have been able to focus exclusively on being professional business writers. In 2002, we launched www.FreelanceWriters.us. Thanks to our new business, we have met terrific clients in all walks of life. Each one has kept us sharp and at the top of our game – whether we are writing content for websites, email or direct mail campaigns, press releases or blog articles.
What values do you try to live by?
I have a strong center of personal ethics and honesty. I genuinely care about and have great empathy for my clients. They have chosen to trust me to help their business. That is a huge deal to me. Even though our company name is “Freelance Writers Dot US,” emotionally, I become a loyal and protective member of my client’s inner circle. I realize that instead of using phrases such as “I think that you should include this in your website…” I immediately begun saying “We should include this…” The emphasis is always that we are in this together.
Who do you consider to be a role model?
My Aunt Hilda was my role model since I was a little girl. Although she was my mother’s sister, Hilda was old enough to be my grandmother. She grew up in the South in a time when women were soft-spoken, genteel and groomed for marriage. Beautiful, stylish and smart, she had her pick of men but never married. She loved to write. In her twenties, a family friend offered her an editorial job at the Philadephia Inquirer newspaper. Horrified at the thought of Hilda living alone in another city, my grandmother refused to let her go. Hilda submitted to her mother’s decision and adjusted her dreams accordingly.
Several years after her mother died, Hilda did something that few women of her time would have dared to do. When her boyfriend Ben moved away to accept a lucrative job offer, he and Hilda continued their relationship by mail. One day she opened his letter and found a marriage proposal and an invitation to visit him before she made her decision. Doesn’t sound too exciting so far, does it? Here’s where the story turns: Ben had moved to Johannesburg, South Africa, a world away from Columbia, South Carolina. My aunt promptly bought a ticket on a transatlantic steamer (a working ship, not a luxury liner) and left for the journey of her life. She was the only woman on board and was treated like royalty.
Even though she decided not to marry Ben, she lived happily ever after. She eventually became a secretary to a realtor and, many years later, started her own property management business. She was active in her church, civic organizations and loved having dinner parties. Her actions taught me that it is never too late in life to be bold and take charge of your life and your destiny.
Through the years, I often paused in front of a framed document in Aunt Hilda’s study. It was the “Order of Neptune,” the official document that passengers on ocean liners receive when they cross the Equator. On ancient, maritime maps, cartographers warned ocean travelers of the dangers of uncharted waters with the phrase, “Here be dragons.” My aunt always reminded me to go after my dreams, and if there be dragons, remember, you have a sword.
Name one of your biggest challenges and how you learned from that situation.
My biggest challenge and my most successful moment in business occurred simultaneously over a short time period. In 1997 we met an importer who needed help marketing his beauty product in the United States. The product was fantastic and produced the results it claimed. We were very excited and began sending emails filled with testimonials and product benefits to drive traffic to our product site. Sales increased every month. Customers were thrilled and wrote glowing testimonials. Over two years, our sales increased every week. We hired a telemarketing company to handle orders 24/7. One day, we counted $15,000 in orders, the next day, our single, biggest sales day -- $20,000. All of this from an office in our home.
And then the sky fell. Inexplicably, the product stopped working, a devastating event when you’re offering a money-back guarantee. The importer claimed nothing had changed in the product. Just like that – in a matter of weeks – we were a dot-com bust. This brief description over-simplifies what happened and the financial repercussions we suffered.
Suffice it to say that in the business world, this was our biggest challenge on many levels. We had to come away from this experience whole, ego and optimism in tact. That’s not to say that my partner and I didn’t do the “would’ve, could’ve, should’ve” shuffle for a while. We did. It took time to remember that life is risky, and that you learn far more from your mistakes and challenging situations. You seldom regret the roads you’ve taken, but rather the roads you passed by.
Ultimately our experience selling a product taught us the incredible power of the Internet and the situations and opportunities that can suddenly appear. We took a risk. It was exciting to create an online, product-driven business in the early days of the Internet and actually succeed beyond our imagination for a few years. It taught us to be grateful for the opportunity, to be proud of ourselves, and to be resilient.
During this experience of importing a product, I found myself, for the first time in my professional life, not being able to control the quality of the experience for my customer, and I hated the feeling. Professional writing has always been a pure and passionate experience for me. My relationship with my clients has been overwhelmingly positive. When I make an impact on my client’s success, I can hear the crowd roar in appreciation. That’s my reward for being true to my heart and my passion.
Francesca Yates
Partner/Writer
www.FreelanceWriters.us
803-788-4200
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