We recently connected with Gabbie Rhodes and have shared our conversation below.

Gabbie, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Have you been able to earn a full-time living from your creative work? If so, can you walk us through your journey and how you made it happen? Was it like that from day one? If not, what were some of the major steps and milestones and do you think you could have sped up the process somehow knowing what you know now?

I make a full-time living from freelance writing. However, I didn’t start out as a freelance writer. Instead, I created a content marketing agency in January 2019. To get my business started, I moved from San Diego to my hometown in St. Louis and lived with my mom, who was gracious enough to let me stay rent-free. In the initial stages of my business, I was relentless in my sales journey. I made a long list of people to contact every day and had multiple sales calls a week. This allowed me to quickly build my clientele and hire freelance writers and editors to help manage the workload. By the end of 2019, I had made the same amount of money that I did working full-time in San Diego, which was a big milestone for me!

In 2020, though, the pandemic hit. I lost a few clients who needed to cut their budgets, so I had to downsize my content marketing agency and stop using freelance writers and editors. This meant doing the strategizing, writing, and editing all by myself, but I found out that I actually enjoyed doing everything, particularly writing. That was surprising to me because I had always tried to stay away from writing for clients. My professional background was in content strategy, not writing and editing. But I enjoyed writing for clients. I woke up every day excited to string words into powerful stories to meet my client’s goals. I also received a lot of positive feedback from clients, which increased my confidence in my writing abilities and affirmed that I could pursue freelance writing solely and potentially be successful.

So, throughout 2020, I started getting more clients who needed freelance writers versus entire content marketing strategies. I built a good clientele, even through the pandemic. I know many businesses, however, didn’t perform well during that time, so I can’t say that I did anything particularly special or different to have success during the pandemic. I attribute my success to God, who I believe provided every opportunity for me to write and have financial stability during such an unstable period for the world. Things went so well with my freelance writing that I moved to Chicago later in the year. This was a big step for me because it proved that I could earn a full-time living from creative work and support myself.

In 2021 and beyond, I’ve continued working as a freelance writer — I haven’t tried rebuilding my content marketing agency. I’ve developed great relationships with clients as a freelance writer, and I’m immensely thankful for the opportunities I’ve had to write for amazing business leaders. I’m also thankful that I’ve been successful as a generalist freelance writer. I don’t write for a specific niche, and most say this is a one-way ticket to getting smaller contracts. But God has allowed me to write for companies in all kinds of industries, so I attribute my continued success in being a generalist to God.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I graduated from the University of Missouri-Columbia (Mizzou) after majoring in journalism and getting a minor in English. From there, I accepted a full-time position as a content strategist at a local content marketing agency where I had been interning. During this phase in my life, I developed content strategies for companies spanning all types of industries, from health and wellness to digital marketing to B2B tech. I worked on a team of three, and we managed a client load of more than 20 clients, which was a tall order but very fun and key to helping me become a quick learner, a great researcher, flexible, inquisitive, and personable, all of which you need to be to work successfully with people from different industries and vastly different personalities. After working at my first agency, I worked at a few other places as a content marketer before starting my own business and eventually becoming a freelance writer.

Currently, my services include writing blog posts, website copy, email copy, guest-contributed articles, e-books, guides, case studies, and anything else that’s long form. The only thing I don’t write is social media copy and scripts. My clients come to me when they need help creating content that generates traffic, trust, and differentiation. I specialize in writing SEO-optimized copy that’s well-researched, engaging, personable, and unique so that it achieves my client’s goals.

When it comes to the work I’m most proud of, it’s hard to pinpoint a specific project because I’ve worked with so many great brands. Honestly, I think my ability to write successful content for companies in completely different industries is what I’m most proud of. I love it when businesses take a chance on someone like me (who doesn’t specialize in their industries) and see their money was well spent.

Can you share your view on NFTs? (Note: this is for education/entertainment purposes only, readers should not construe this as advice)

Honestly, I think they’re pretty cool! I know that’s an unpopular opinion, but NFTs and all things Web3 are really interesting to me. I’d like to incorporate NFTs into my freelance writing at some point, whether that’s by working with brands who make them or creating my own.

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

My main professional goal is to become an author who publishes fiction books. I’d love for my books to be traditionally published, but I’m open to self-publishing if that’s the route God wants me to take.

Freelancing gives me the time, space, and mental energy to write books. I’m currently working on one! We’ll see what happens with it, but I plan to keep writing books until one gets traditionally published or self-published!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://roadstocontent.com/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gabbie-rhodes/
• Other: https://roadstocontent.com/portfolio

Image Credits
These images are courtesy of Roads to Content.