We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Jaime Fleres. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Jaime below.

Jaime, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. What sort of legacy are you hoping to build. What do you think people will say about you after you are gone, what do you hope to be remembered for?

Wow this is such a big question, but it is actually a key driver in what I do and who I am.

I have worked as a writer for over 20 years and a helper of other writers for 18. I went back to school to get my Masters in Writing and become a professor because I am so passionate about helping other people write about the stories and ideas that matter to them.

As an author, artist, healer, and creative at my core, part of my legacy is to offer my own ideas, stories, and creations to the world in an unbridled, fearless way. I do this through the books I write, the content I create, and the relationships I have with others.

But my legacy extends beyond that. Through my business Whale Song, I help writers become authors of transformational non-fiction books (in personal growth, healing, and spirituality) and memoirs. This means that I help others get their ideas and stories out into the world too.

I hope my legacy will be to leave behind stacks of books that I helped make possible. (The stack is already so thrilling!) But the legacy is not just a stack of sitting books, of course, but books that are on nightstands, in bookbags, on eReaders, and in hearts + minds – out in the world helping millions of people live deeper, richer and more meaningful lives.

I love that I get to be not only an individual artist and a creator but a doula to so many others’ incredible creations. This is why I do what I do. I am here to make this world a better place, and this is one the biggest ways I get to do that.

Further, an additional aspect of my legacy is what I am modeling for my own wildly creative daughter. As a single mother, I am showing her how to thrive as an independent creative doing her own thing in the world and prospering. I am also showing her how to honor her own stories and ideas by helping her write books of her own. She sees just how possible it is to get support in bringing her creativity into the world.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

After two decades as a professional writer, college professor, author, and entrepreneur; Whale Song’s founder Jaime Fleres, began to formally focus her professional energy on supporting authors in 2017. Jaime founded Whale Song to support creative, visionary, change-agents who are here to affect change, guide healing, and contribute to the more beautiful world we know is possible.

Whale Song specializes in helping people write non-fiction and memoir on the topics of healing, wholeness, psychology, spirituality, personal growth, relationships, love, sexuality, parenting, and more.

We offer coaching, editing, proposal help, and self-publishing support to individual authors. We also offer retreats, online courses, and small group writing programs, including our popular program How to Heal a Story That Hurts.

Here are three things that make us distinct in our industry.

One, we focus on the author, their creativity and what they are here to bring into the world. This is central to all of our work. This means that the sales outcomes and marketing strategies, though important, are secondary. We center our client’s vision and see our role as the doulas and guides that help our clients trust, know, cultivate and refine the messages and stories they know best. Instead of guiding our clients by latest book fads or so-called best practices, we let our clients’ vision take priority and help them navigate their writing and publishing choices from there. It’s an inside-out, client-centric, creativity-centric approach our clients love.

Second, relationship is at the heart of everything we do. Many of our clients stick with us through many phases of their writing journey and often for many years. Our client’s loyalty is such a gift! We center our relationships with our people, whom we come to know and care for in the process. We offer a lot of high-level personal support, so we really get to know our clients not just as zoom squares or numbers, but real people we get the delight of supporting along their own creative journeys.

Third, Jaime is also a healer, studied and certified in numerous healing modalities (including somatic trauma healing, astrology, energy medicine, and coaching). This means that she inhabits, understands and shares a passion for the ideas her clients care most about. Her extensive knowledge of the personal growth, healing and spiritual spaces helps her meet her clients IN their work. Given her extensive education and experience in teaching writing, she also knows how to step into neutrality and keep her personal opinions and perspectives separate from the work of her clients. It’s a both/and win-win for everyone.

The name Whale Song was inspired, as you might guess, by whales and their songs. Jaime feels a deep affinity for whales, seeing them as an animal that models community, connection, depth, and voice. These deep, wise, big beings are like our clients, who have developed deep engagement with big the ideas and stories they are here to share with the world. Writing a book is like singing their song out into the world for those who need to hear it. It connects them to their kin in powerful ways. With this at the heart of our founding, we honor the creativity, soul calling, and heart songs of our clients and all change agents who are here to make this world a more beautiful place.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

Most entrepreneurs don’t talk about this and I think it does us all a great disservice: entrepreneurship is full of failure. I started my business in the wake of a divorce after being a stay-at-home mother for many years. I was already an entrepreneur and had just published my book Birth Your Story, when I launched Whale Song. In the early years of my business, I took every business course I could get my hands on and would apply as much of what I learned as I could to my business. I spent many years eyes-deep in website development, email marketing, blogs, course creation, and so much more. I worked so hard those first years trying it All, and not always knowing what to prioritize or what would actually work. I failed many times. I launched courses that didn’t fill, retreats that didn’t get enough participants, programs that didn’t sell. I have pivoted and refined my approach to business many many times. I know there were moments in my career when my best friends held back the words “Jaime, aren’t you ready to call it quits and find a safer job?” They may have been wise to have said that.

My business wasn’t an overnight success. It took years of profound effort and tenacity to see profitability. Each year, I would drastically increase my revenue compared to the year prior, but it was still a slow build. My resilience came in the dozens of moments it would have made all the logical sense in the world to quit but I chose to stay. I would grieve the “failures” and disappointments, and I would get out there again. I kept learning, growing and adapting. I stayed devoted to the vision even if the path was never clear.

One thing I really have learned these years inside the transformational cauldron of entrepreneurship is to listen to the experts, but ultimately trust my own intuition and vision before anything else. I’ve become less of a jump on expert’s bandwagon sort of entrepreneur, and a lot more of a deep visionary leader who trusts her own guidance and knows how to guide her company. Those failures are what made me the leader I am today. And I am so proud of myself for never giving up. My tenacity, passion and vision have made me resilient.

Any advice for growing your clientele? What’s been most effective for you?

Honestly, this one surprised me because I’ve done a ton of organic social media marketing with limited success, but one of the most effective strategies for growing my clientele has been my website. A few years ago, I invested in an SEO course offered by the DUO Collective. I took it seriously and applied everything I was learning to my website and blog. I also started to write key blog articles that offered what my prospective clients needed and would be searching for. I grew more generous with the value I delivered through my website and kept refining the site. Now, I rank on organic search engines for the resources my ideal clients are looking for. This brings me a steady stream of prospective clients who have gotten to know me and my work already through my website.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.JaimeFleres.com
• Instagram: instragram.com/whalesongcreative