Clubhouse recap
If you’ve been following along, you’ll notice I missed a month of recaps. April was somewhat of a comedy of errors, with Clubhouse changing a variety of things on the platform.
I do have access to the recordings now! I’ll link them at the bottom of this post.
9 May 2023 recap
Today’s Clubhouse discussion was scheduled as a social hour and was not recorded. About seven of us attended, and we touched on a variety of topics, including soft skills and copyright information.
I expressed a desire to build or implement some sort of client onboarding or inquiry-response email sequence, with boilerplate language I could use a shortcut or copy/paste to access. That led us to soft skills and Rebecca saying she has reached out to people who are doing well in their business, and buying an hour of their time to ask questions. Paying for their time is important, she noted, as this is someone’s business.
When you’re in the position of giving advice, be aware of how much you’re giving. “When they ask you [for advice], set boundaries. I want people to get to know me, but I set the boundary of a 10-to-15-minute talk,” Steve said.
A lot of people don’t realize a lot of their time can go to answering emails … and giving away their time. … Point them to other resources. – Korra
Freelancing can feel like a competition, but it shouldn’t be, Steve added. While freelancers’ time is valuable, and professionals are worthy of their fees, both Korra and Steve noted that economic inequality is real, and new freelancers, especially, may struggle to pay full rates. Korra suggested pointing inquirers to free or low-cost resources, and Steve suggested bartering or providing an alternate fee or fee structure. (I know editors who reserve special rates/projects for members of minoritized demographics.)
Rebecca used a different strategy, reaching out in a Facebook group to find people for regular co-working via Zoom. She uses those times to take care of the administration tasks for her freelance book editing and audiobook narration business. “I’m in groups on Clubhouse, but they can be large, and I feel more comfortable asking questions in our small [co-working] group,” she said.
And that brought us back to the original question. Steve and his business co-owner used their email provider’s vacation response feature to respond to emails, but it’s not a great long-term strategy, as the response doesn’t work well for returning clients.
I use Text Expander for editing and know it has features that would let me use it in emails, but it’s not intuitive, so I haven’t tried yet. When I did a web search for email autoresponder software, Hubspot came up first on this list of the top 10 services from—you guessed it—Hubspot.
We finished up our chat with a bit about artificial intelligence and copyright. If you or an author is concerned about what to put on the copyright page of a book, reach out to your handy-dandy copy of the Chicago Manual of Style. “CMOS has a section on copyright,” Korra said.
Recordings
And now, as I promised, recordings. Sorry, no captions or transcripts yet. Still waiting on hearing back from the EFA office on that.
Annnd, the file sizes of the rest are too large. Please email me, and I’ll make the replays accessible to you.
