We were lucky to catch up with Emily Crookston recently and have shared our conversation below.

Emily, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Getting that first client is always an exciting milestone. Can you talk to us about how you got your first customer who wasn’t a friend, family, or acquaintance?

Entrepreneurship runs in my blood. My dad owned a business my entire young life. But I think, partly because I watched him dealing with the challenges of running a small business, I never saw entrepreneurship as a smart path for me to take. I wanted a “secure” job. So, I became a college professor because I figured once I got tenure, I’d be set for life. It turns out that getting tenure is not something that lands in the lap of every person with a PhD, however. When I decided to leave academia, I gave myself one year to figure out what I wanted to do instead. I became the marketing intern for a friend-of-a-friend, Erika, and started writing blog articles for her and her clients. Eventually, Erika suggested that I start a business. After I hung up my shingle, I realized I would need to write a lot of blog articles to make a living as a blog writer, so I started telling people I could write longer things. At some point, someone called me a ghostwriter and that title felt oh so right. I remember hanging up after the sales call with my first client, a physician living in Boston, thinking “I can’t believe I just sold a single service that will bring in half my salary as a professor.” Since then, I’ve honed my book ghostwriting process to 16 weeks and I’ve nearly doubled my price.

Emily, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I’m the ghostwriter for rebels, renegades, and mavericks. I love helping experts with big ideas get those ideas out of their head and into the hands of their fans. I do this in a couple of ways. First, I help busy professionals write business books. Over the course of 16 weeks, my authors and I collaborate to turn their book idea into a complete manuscript. Second, as the Owner and Decider of All Things at The Pocket PhD, my team and I create content for thought leaders who want to post more consistently to their blog, write expert articles in their industry, send high quality newsletters, and take their LinkedIn presence to the next level. We offer fractional content marketing services to handle 90% of your content marketing. What sets us apart from other content marketers is that while many focus on either creating the content or working on a strategy, we do both for you. We meet monthly for a content strategy session and from there, we create the content you need to meet your goals. I’m also a frequent podcast guest, speaker, and a former philosophy professor. The team I’ve built is one of my greatest accomplishments. Less than 2 years ago, I was a happy solopreneur just doing my thing by myself. But I don’t want to be chained to my desk, so I knew I needed to bring in some other writers to help me with smaller writing projects. Now I have a writing apprentice and a senior writer. They’re both contractors, but I’d like to make them employees when we’re ready. The Pocket PhD is a really fun place to work and I’ll make sure that’s the case as long as I’m the owner. We’re also a lot of fun to work with. Creating content doesn’t have to be a task you dread. You can outsource the hard part and hang out with some really cool people to get the easy part done.

Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?

Since the beginning, I have built The Pocket PhD through in-person networking and referrals. Of course, when the COVID pandemic hit, in-person networking totally went away. Once I had the chance to move beyond the panic, I remembered that I had been wanting to start using LinkedIn to grow my network. Well, now I had the motivation to figure out how to really use social media to market my business. I signed up for a 5-day challenge and read everything I could find about how to use LinkedIn to grow your business. My only goal to start was to post 5 days per week. The LinkedIn algorithm rewards consistency and engagement (commenting on others’ posts). So, this is my advice for those starting to build a social media presence: make a point of being on the platform 5 days per week and engaging with others even before you start posting your own content. After a couple of months, I came up with a posting formula with themes for each day. This made it easier to create content. I also started an interview series where I interviewed experts about their journeys to becoming the experts they are. I was amazed at how quickly my audience grew. In the first 6 months, I received 8 prospects through LinkedIn (2 became book ghostwriting clients = $64,000 in revenue). In the most recent months, I’ve continued to receive 1-2 prospects per week. I have over 7,000 connections and we have great conversations every day.

Are there any books, videos, essays or other resources that have significantly impacted your management and entrepreneurial thinking and philosophy?

One book that I read fairly early in my business that has really stuck with me is Tara Mohr’s book, Playing Big. Entrepreneurs have to face and overcome fear nearly every day while running their businesses. Mohr’s book helped me to realize that fear isn’t a bad thing. It’s not something that I need to run from or avoid. It’s natural to experience fear when you’re operating outside of your comfort zone. Understanding more about my fear and why we experience fear as human beings, made it a lot easier to feel confident, especially when I was new to entrepreneurship. Another, more recent, book that has been helpful as I think about my management style is Radical Candor by Kim Scott. It has helped me to learn to mentally separate being an a**hole from setting and enforcing high expectations. It is possible and in fact, kind, to provide radically candid feedback to your employees and even clients. I recommend getting a hard copy of this book, rather than trying to listen to it on audio or reading an ebook. You’ll want to flip around and underline key points. Finally, I’d recommend the Innovation Stack by Jim McKelvey, one of the co-founders of Square. It’s the story of Square’s success and how they managed to make it easy for small businesses to accept credit card payments. It’s an inspiring narrative about a scrappy company taking on the “big guys” and why some ideas hit big, while others don’t.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.thepocketphd.com/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/emilycrookston/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCGtB1RKtWBmYXSPvhJ8qESQ

Image Credits
Christina Marie Noel