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

Hi Valari, thanks for joining us today. Let’s kick things off with a hypothetical question – if it were up to you, what would you change about the school or education system to better prepare students for a more fulfilling life and career?

I was homeschooled all the way up through eleventh grade, took community college classes in twelfth grade, went to a private university for a four-year English degree, and just this past summer graduated from a three-year conservatory that teaches writing, business, and marketing skills. So I’ve experienced a wide range of different approaches to education, and reflecting back on all of it, I find it surprising that the most practical life skills I was taught in a classroom all came from the conservatory–after high school and traditional college.

The unfortunate truth is that many students, especially those who focused on the humanities like I did, do most of their learning in a sort of academic bubble that follows different rules than the rest of the world does. Yes, as an English major, I learned to write and write well. But I can tell you as a current editor and former college writing tutor, I see a vast difference between writing style conventions taught in high school and university and the writing style conventions used in 95% of print materials in the “real world.” Ironically, most of my growth in my editing skills has come through being LESS precise with grammar rules, not more. Most people just don’t care about semicolons, if they use them at all. And all the MLA citation rules drilled into me in high school and college are just going to waste today since I don’t work in academia.

Often what I’ve needed more than classroom time is life experience, and true, there’s only so much a classroom can do to foster that. But when high school students are told they need to take pre-calculus, trigonometry, and geometry in order to graduate, while learning how to take out car loans and do their taxes is optional, something is wrong.

Looking back at my college experience especially, I’m struck by how relatively little emphasis was placed on “real-world” skills. We had a career center, sure, but as an honors student, I wasn’t required to use it much. I had to go out of my way to learn how to seek out internships and excel at job interviews. During my senior year I signed up for a course on how to plan for a future career, but so few students signed up that it got canceled two weeks after it started. Since the class was optional and was worth only two credits, I fault the university instead of the students for not giving it the priority it deserved.

My conservatory experience was completely different. I joined it because I’m an aspiring fiction author, but for the first time in my life, I was being REQUIRED to complete business courses, where I learned the fundamentals of marketing. Even starting my own business was a requirement! So really, I have the Author Conservatory to thank for why I’m running my own editing business today. But even if my business had flopped, I would still have learned how to value myself and my skills, talk to strangers more comfortably, focus on other people’s needs and how I can help them instead of how they can help me, and communicate in a winsome manner. These skills transcend career fields, so I believe they should be prioritized more in our educational system. Not every student will be a writer, engineer, or doctor. But every student will need to “market” themselves, whether they’re entrepreneurs selling a product or employees looking for a traditional 9-5 job.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I am a copy editor and proofreader, so I provide the last or second-to-last pair of eyes on a manuscript to make sure the formatting is up to standard, the sentence flow makes sense, and the grammar is correct. Primarily I edit nonfiction book manuscripts, especially faith-based writing, religious studies, and academic works. But I’ve taken on a few fiction projects as well, and I have experience editing blog articles for SEO (search engine optimization).

When I graduated university, unfortunately, it was 2020. So I quickly discovered that searching for a traditional 9-5 job wasn’t going to work for me. Instead, I got on Upwork and started offering proofreading services, which kind of worked but never really took off. Thankfully, at the same time I enrolled in the Author Conservatory, and the business and marketing instruction I received there gave me the knowledge and confidence needed to market my services more effectively, rather than relying too much on a freelancer site. (That’s not to say sites such as Upwork and Fiverr could never work for anyone; only that they didn’t work for me.) Cold-calling, of all things, proved the most effective strategy once I could identify people who might actually need a proofreader.

I also realized that if I reached out only to authors, I’d have to reach perhaps hundreds of authors per year to gain enough clientele to sustain my business. The average author writes at most only one book a year, after all. So instead, I started reaching out to publishers and offering my skills on a contract basis. That has worked much better for me, because now I only need 5-10 regular clients to keep my work sustainable. It helps when they can send me work on at least a bimonthly basis!

Right now I’m best equipped to serve those with Christian and/or academic material. I’m very familiar with the specific quirks of Christian writing, such as checking Bible translations, consistency of capitalizing (or choosing not to capitalize) pronouns referring to God, etc. And thanks to my university experience and past work as a college writing tutor, I know enough different citation styles that I can create footnotes from scratch for academic work.

What’s been the most effective strategy for growing your clientele?

Again, it was the ever-dreaded cold-calling. Yes, this really can work as an effective marketing strategy! But only if you’re sending your calls to the right people, and only if you make it about THEM, not you.

I’ve been on the other end of a really bad cold call before, and there are two main reasons why it didn’t work. First off, the caller offered voiceover production. I’m an editor, and at the time I had not yet published a book myself. So why would I need to hire a voiceover artist? I’m guessing this person found my contact information off a social media site and decided to send me a message without checking into what I actually do. So right away I was annoyed because I wasn’t his ideal client.

Secondly, the message itself was generic and focused on the caller, not me. Phrases like “I wanted to know if you have questions about my work” don’t garner any interest. When I send out cold calls, I make sure to explain how I can serve this potential client, not the other way around. When I do talk about myself, I explain how my skills cwould benefit the client and why they can trust me to solve a problem they may have. And I ALWAYS personalize the message. A quick Google search for the publisher’s website will show me what their mission statement is and what kinds of writing they produce, which I can then incorporate into the message.

And if they respond and turn me down, then I thank them, say they can keep my contact info if anything changes, and end the conversation. That’s it. Nobody likes to be harassed, and there are plenty of other fish in the sea.

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

My favorite book on business that I’ve read so far is “Business Boutique” by Christy Wright. It’s written especially for female entrepreneurs, but it covers the fundamentals of starting and running a business that can apply to anyone, male or female. But beyond the fundamentals, what stuck with me most was what she pointed out about the majority of female business owners.

At the time of the book’s publication (and this may still be true today), people were saying businesses owned by women just aren’t as successful as businesses owned by men. But, Wright points out, the ones who say this are basing “success” on money alone. Most multi-million-dollar businesses are run by men, so if money is the only factor that determines success, then sure, women are behind. But who says business should just be about the money?

According to Wright’s observation, most women entrepreneurs who leave their traditional jobs to start businesses do it because they want more TIME, not more money. They’ll willingly take a (small) pay cut if that means they have more time to spend with their families and communities without having their schedules driven by corporate America. This principle of valuing time over money resonates so much with me.

So as I continue to grow my business, I recognize that my personal goal isn’t to one day run a multi-million-dollar corporation. Instead, I want to foster a business model that affords me a comfortable lifestyle without taking over my life. As an entrepreneur, I have the freedom to determine what my working hours will be, so I want to be the person my friends and family can count on for emergencies that occur during the 9-5 window. In my entrepreneurial philosophy, people will always come first.

Contact Info:

• Website: valariwesteren.com (should be up and running in September, but note it’s for my writing, not editing)
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/valari-westeren-580587152/
• Other: Email: [email protected] (best way to contact me for editing services)

  Reedsy profile: https://reedsy.com/valari-westeren

Image Credits

All photos taken by Debbie Gilman (Debbie Gilman Photography)