Welcome to the Live Free Podcast. I'm your host, Micala Quinn, and I am a mom on a mission to help you launch, grow, and scale a profitable freelance business from home.

Join me each week for tangible business advice, along with inspiring interviews, all designed to help you mom strong, work smart, and live free.

If you are loving this podcast, finding yourself motivated or inspired, learning something new, or just a fan of the show, do me a favor and help me spread the message.

Screenshot the episode, add it to your Insta stories, and tag me at mikayla dot quinn. Every share helps me reach more and more moms, and I may just share your share and feature you in my Insta Stories too.

Because together, we can take over the world. Alright, mama. It's time. Grab your coffee, water, or wine because we are starting.

Hey there. Welcome back to the Live Free podcast. I'm your host, Micala Quinn, and I am so excited you are here today and can't wait to introduce you to another fabulous Live Free Academy alum.

Today, you're gonna get to meet Liz and hear all about how she's been supplementing her corporate income on the side over the last ten or so months and just made huge strides in paying off debt and, doing amazing things for her family, setting them them up for an awesome future, and also hear about the big vision she has for her freelance business.

So without further ado, I'm so excited to introduce you to Liz. Liz, welcome to the podcast. Thanks so much for having me. I'm so excited. It's actually my first podcast interview, so you're getting me brand new. Oh my goodness.

Well, aren't we so lucky? Well, I'm so excited to have you and just sit down and kind of hear just your story from, you know, getting started freelancing to where you're at now and all the all the fun things along the way.

So before we kinda just dive in, if you wanna introduce who you are and kinda what you do, and we'll go from there. Okay. Great. So my name is Liz Denny. I have been in digital marketing for the past fifteen years.

I do work in corporate America in health care, specifically in women's health engagement. So I took what I know from marketing and decided that I wanted to freelance. I wanted to be able to stay home with my toddler.

My I have a son named Caleb. He's two years old. We do have a full time nanny, and I just want to be able to spend more time with him. My corporate job is very demanding, and I do work from home, so it's a constant demand.

It's never, like, I can shut my laptop at 05:00 and be done for the day and have time with him. In the evening, There's always a fire or always some chaos that happens at six, 7PM.

And because I work from home, I feel like it's more likely that they expect me to finish finish whatever is broken or, you know, fix whatever is broken.

So, it's just really demanding. So I wanted to freelance for that reason, to have more time, more flexibility with my family, with my son.

And I wanted to focus on digital marketing because that is what I know. So I took I took your course, I think it was March of last year, and I, yeah, I dove right in, and everything in the course was super helpful just to get started.

And for me, I just reached out to my network of friends and family when I first got started. I asked my massage therapist, like, does she need any marketing? She said yes right away.

I asked my petition. Does she need marketing, email marketing, you know, digital marketing, anything like that? She said yes right away. So for me, leveraging the people that I already know was super beneficial to me.

So I had those two clients right away. At first, we traded services so they could just understand what I was going to do and what value I was going to bring to them.

And then after two months, after seeing the value that I brought, we, went full into paid services with contracts. So So I was able to secure a two twelve month contract, so monthly income for twelve months with those two clients.

And it was a great experience for me just to learn the ropes of freelancing, to have all my tech in place, to have the invoices, and, my part set up so they could pay me.

So that was a really great start. And now fast forward to 2025, and I have five clients that are monthly retainers that have signed twelve month contracts with me.

They are all in the health and wellness space. So, again, massage therapy, aesthetician. I work with two nutritionists and a yoga teacher. That's awesome. So were all of these five, clients from your personal network or people you knew?

Yes. They were all from my network, people that I was going to for services, and then the yoga teacher. She's a teacher at the studio that I went to for many years, when I lived in Las Vegas. So it's just all people that I knew.

And I just started to put it out there within that specific network because I knew that they were all small businesses, whether online or brick and mortar, and I knew that they weren't doing any marketing because I was in their circle.

I was a customer first, and I was never getting emails or texts or anything like that.

And, that's why I wanted to stay really, really focused on health and wellness because that's what I know, and that is, like, my circle of people because I've been in that that niche for so long.

Yeah. Do you now working with these types of clients, do their do they have any other freelancers on their team, or are you their the only freelancer that they work with?

So for my two nutritionist clients, they do have virtual assistants, but the other the other three do not. They just work with me, and I just do all of their digital marketing.

Oh, that's so cool that, you know, to kinda see that there a lot of these smaller traditional type of businesses, like, in our local communities are supporting themselves and supporting their business with multiple freelancers.

That's so cool. Yeah.

I actually suggested for, my friend Kylie, who's a nutritionist, that she get a virtual assistant because she was swamped on the back end of things that are not I don't wanna say outside of my scope as a digital marketer, but things that I didn't have the bandwidth to do besides her digital marketing.

I really like to stay focused on marketing so I can show them the results of their marketing efforts and their KPIs and then, of course, their revenue that's brought in from that.

So I didn't wanna do her admin tasks, so I suggested a virtual assistant. I suggested, it the network that you've created in your Facebook community.

And she found someone great, and she's continued to work with them. That's awesome. Well, we appreciate the referrals back to the free academy. What sort of things are you doing for your clients?

If someone's sitting here listening and, like, I've got a marketing background, you know, maybe they're interested in the health and wellness industry too, or maybe it's another industry.

They're like, oh, I, you know, I'm familiar with local contractors and plumbers, and, like, I could really help them. What are some of the things that you're doing on a day to day, weekly, monthly basis for your clients?

Yeah. So for my friend Amber, who's a massage therapist, and my friend Beth Ann, who's an aesthetician, I focus a lot on their SEO marketing. So we're targeting people in the local area.

Amber's in Downtown Blue Springs, and Beth Ann is in, Leawood, Kansas. So I'm focusing a lot on SEO, marketing and keywords and ads for that very specific area to drive new clientele into them. And then I'm also nurturing their list.

They both had great lists and thousands of people on their list that they've worked with over the past twenty years, and I do a lot of email marketing and text message marketing for their current list.

And then for my new one of my nutrition clients, her name is Kelly. She is really new. She is fresh out of school, super young, and just really ambitious, ready to get after it.

And for her, she really wants an online business. She wants to be able to see her patients from the comfort of her home or her office, wherever she's at.

So for her, to get her name out there, we built a classic funnel. We just built a lead magnet to get people to understand what services she wants to offer, what her niche is, which is sports therapy.

So she's really into working with athletes of all ages that need better nutrition in order to perform better.

So we've set up a lead magnet, which for those of you listening, it's that's just a simple freebie that you offer on the Internet.

That way people can get to know what you're offering, get to know your style, and start to build that connection with that person.

So we started doing that. She was incredible at her free resource. It was a great, valuable resource. She gained 5,000 followers on our list with paid ads in a three month period, and then she started to nurture that list.

So once you have that list, then you're nurturing. You're providing more valuable content. Then you're talking about building community, and then you're talking about inviting or making an offer.

So from there, she's she got 10 full time clients that will that did her full nutrition program, which was over, like, an eight month period.

So it was a big commitment, and she landed the sales, and she did really, really well doing that. And then for her, like, mid range offer, she did $10,000 in sales through a live launch on Facebook.

So she just went out went out there, did a live challenge. I think it was, like, a five day reset challenge that she did with her nutrition, and then she generated $10,000 from that live challenge. So she was super successful.

So I like to think that I can help you from if you're just out or if you're a seasonal like Amber who's been a massage therapist for twenty years, marketing is always going to work where where you're at and work with what you have as far as your list, your clients, brick and mortar, or just completely online.

Yeah. That's incredible. That's incredible.

How have you been doing this on the side of your full time job? Like, at the beginning, you're like, my full time job is super demanding. How has this kind of fit in with both? Yeah. So to be honest, I just have a strict routine.

I wake up at 6AM. I do my typically, I do yoga or a barre in the morning, and then I get started right at seven. I work seven to 9AM on all my freelancing clients three days a week, Monday, Wednesday, Friday.

And then I just go to my real job that I work nine to six, typically. So it's just all for me, it's just about routine and being very structured with my time.

If something comes up for me and I can't do it at that time, which is very rare, then I would just do it at night or the next day. So for me, the Monday, Wednesday, Friday gives me a lot of grace.

If something does happen, I have Tuesday or Thursday to to pick up. Awesome. So then on Tuesday, Thursday, do you just start your workday at nine then and kind of take a little break?

Yep. Yep. Tuesday, Thursday, I typically will do a later yoga class so I get to sleep in. And, again, that's for my, like, just work life balance.

Right? I do not wanna wake up every day at 05:45, so I get those two days a week where I get to sleep in a little bit, do a later yoga class, and then just start my regular job at night.

Does your current job know about your freelancing on the side?

I've never come out and set it to leadership, but I do block off time on my calendar sometimes if I have to take a call with, one of my freelancing clients, and I just mark myself as busy.

I don't really it I don't really feel like it's necessary for me to tell them because I'm really good at keeping it separate and making sure I have enough time to do everything.

And that's something too that I I learned in the beginning when I was just working with my two clients that we were trading.

That really gave me time to understand how much time was needed to do those tasks for them, and that allowed me to create my schedule.

So long answer there, but, no, I haven't really told anyone about it in my day job. I just that's a lot of people's questions, like, in the beginning when they're starting is, I wanna do this, but, like, what is my job gonna think?

Do I tell them? Do I not? What if they find out? And I, I mean, I think you're exactly right.

Like, it's it's none of their business if you're able to meet the dim like, meet your expectations and your responsibilities for your current role, they have no jurisdiction over what you do in your in your free time or your out of office time.

Yeah. For sure. I agree with that a %. And, again, it's just about balance, like, what what is gonna work for you and then being completely honest with your clients too. And I was very honest with my five clients that I have.

They know I have a full time job. They know I have a toddler. They know life is gonna come up, but I'm also really diligent in their tasks. Like, I am out for Amber and Beth Ann's newsletter.

I already have them done till June. Right? So, like, I'm setting myself up for success by working with them. When we when we are on calls, we knock out a ton of things, a ton of content ideas. I they run their promos by me.

We get working on things really far out in advance too. That way, if my son is sick for three days, I'm not freaking out. I'm staying up till midnight trying to finish all of their stuff as well as my regular day job.

So, again, just really prioritizing your time, sticking to a schedule, and working far ahead on things that can be done early, like newsletters.

Right? Like, there's no reason why we can't have our newsletter set up for the next three months. That's awesome. The batching and the work ahead just really comes in handy so much.

How long are you planning or planning doing both? So, originally, my first goal was that I wanted to freelance just to make a large lump sum of money because I really wanted to be buy a new truck for our family.

And I did that in just a few months, and we were able to put down a really large down payment on a brand new truck that we we got in February.

And, now that I have all those contracts in place, I'm thinking and working really hard towards just launching my own marketing agency, and that's what I'm working on now.

It's gonna be called BirdDog Marketing. We have a ton of German Shorthair Pointers, and that's my husband's favorite dog. And he is a professional outdoorsman, so he hunts professionally and raises GSPs.

So I felt like bird dog marketing was just a fun, cool name. And, to be honest, I just I don't wanna do, like, list any marketing or anything like that, So I wanna be a brand.

I I didn't wanna be a person. So a bird dog is also a pose and yoga. So it kind of mixes my personal life, my professional life, my love for health and wellness altogether.

So that is what I'm working on now, and my goal is to launch that within the next three months and then just test it and play with it for the next year. And I hope by 2026 that bird dog marketing will be super successful.

My goal is to have 20 full time clients that will sign twelve month contracts. That way, I can guarantee my my cash flow, and I can predict all the expenses of my business.

And, I hope by 2026, I will be out of my corporate job. Yeah. That's incredible. So what's the difference for those that are like, okay. Well, agency, how's that different from, like, what you're currently doing?

Can you kinda go into, like, what makes an agency and why you kinda chose to go that path? Yeah. For sure. So, what I'm doing right now is working on clients' digital marketing, but an agency will allow me to hire my own freelancer.

So I wanna have my own graphic designer, my own copywriter, my own ad specialist, maybe somebody who specializes in just automations and funnels, things like that.

So my big vision is that I have a team of five people who make up this agency, and we all work together to create successful outcomes for all of my clients.

That's awesome. So being able to serve more clients, it's not just you doing the work, but it's you and a team of people that you kind of hire and manage and oversee to get all the deliverables for for your clients. Yep.

And it will just mean bigger projects too. You know, I've had a lot of people come to me and want me to design full websites for them, which I am a % capable of doing, but I would like a graphic designer to make the graphics for that.

I would like a professional website copywriter for that. Right?

Like, yes. I am capable of doing all of those things, but I want to be able to outsource those bigger, heavier projects because those that would take me to code and fully develop a website could take anywhere from three to five months.

So in order to be able to have that bandwidth, having a strong team behind me is really the only way that I can do it. Even if I was to quit my full time job tomorrow, I still wouldn't have enough time for those bigger projects.

Just just being me alone. Yeah. Yeah. That's awesome. Yeah. Yeah. How have you like, how have you not gotten burnt out doing both for almost a year? Yeah.

To be honest and fully transparent, I have been burnt out. I've cried. I go to therapy every week, and my therapist is like, why are you doing this to yourself if you don't have to? And I just feel like I'm really motivated by my son.

I'm doing all of this, so my end goal is to be able to save enough money for him to go to college, for him to have some money as he starts his adult life, and for me to spend time with him and have the freedom to be with him and eat lunch with him every day and to be done at 05:00 and have our nighttime routine with him every day.

So that is truly my big motivation. When I'm getting burnt out and tired, I just take a few moments and remind myself why I'm doing it. And I do like to remind myself that it's not forever.

You know? Like, my goal is to finish out this year super strong, save as much money as I can so bird dog marketing can launch successfully with all the expensive tech stacks that I need to get started.

So, yeah, he's my main motivation, and then, again, just self care too. Like, I do a ton of yoga. Like I said, I go to therapy every week.

That's super helpful. And, yeah, just just trying to do it all. But it it is worth it, and I know in the in the long haul, it will be worth it. Yeah. You're just, not many people do both for as long as as you are.

But that's that's awesome that you have that kind of end goal in mind in the, like, the infrastructure set up within your family, within your day to day to help support that so that you can you can make that happen.

Yeah. And, again, in full transparency, like, I make over 6 figures in my corporate job, so my goal is to not lose that much of our income. Right? Like, that's that's the yes.

I could quit my corporate job now and work with my five clients and make a decent monthly income, but I am so used to making a certain amount of money that I don't wanna sacrifice my savings for retirement, Caleb's savings, again, our new car.

We're, you know, trying to pay off more on our mortgage every single month. So I just have these big lofty goals, and I think that's really important to motivate you when you are tired, when you are burnt out.

You have to remember why you're doing this. Absolutely. Are you comfortable sharing, like, how much you've been able to make in your first year freelancing? Okay. So like I said at the beginning, I did trade with my my friends at first.

So the first two months was all trading. And then once they signed contracts for a year, my friend, Amber, who's a massage therapist, signed for $9. 50 a month for twelve months. So let's do the math on that.

That's $11,000 just from her. And then my aesthetician friend did 1,200 a month times 12. That's 14. And then for the other three, we have similar deals in place, but it's for significantly less because of their need.

So I would estimate that that would be another 20 a year. So let's say I made about anywhere from 34 to 40,000 freelancing in my first year. And that's on this on the top of your full time your full time gig.

That's awesome. Mhmm. Yes. Yes. Yeah. And I highly recommend that, you know, you get contract signed. That is a huge piece of the puzzle so you can count on your revenue every single month.

And, also, you know, one thing I wanted to say too that I forgot to mention when you were asking me about being burnt out is when you work with people that you truly love and you wanna support their their business, it's it's easy to work hard for them.

Like, these are all my people. These are all my friends. I want their businesses to be super successful. And if I can help in that, that only means that they will continue to work with me on year number two.

Right? Like, if Amber is making an extra $20,000 a year in her business because of the the clientele that I helped bring in for her, she's not gonna hesitate to sign next year when her contract is up.

So I think working with the right people is really, really important.

You want to be able to really cheer them on and believe in what they're doing. And, again, in full transparency, I have told a lot of people that have wanted me to work for them.

I've told them no because I just don't align with what they're doing, or they don't have enough invested in their small business to make it successful.

You know, a lot of people were like, can, you know, can I pay you $500 a month for email marketing, for website maintenance, and etcetera, all these things? And I I just had to say no.

And I am lucky that I'm in a position where I can say no because I do have a full time job, and I do have five amazing clients. But I would definitely think about what is worth it to you as you're starting out. Right?

Like, it's okay to say no to people that you just don't feel aligned with. Absolutely. And sometimes you learn that lesson after you say yes, and then you're in the working relationship, and you're like, this is not what I wanted.

If you ever find yourself in that, like, I would encourage everyone to remember that you are running your own business.

If there's a client that is not serving you, that is causing you more stress than, you know, joy, it is probably time to in that working relationship and in that contract, and make room for a better fit client to to work with.

I I know I had to do that. And saying yes, even though, like, I knew in my gut when I was signing them that this was not gonna be a good fit, like, there's so many red flags, but I was like, I I'm in the early stages.

I just need money. I just need someone to pay me. I'm I can't say no. Well, within it was either two or three months. I was like, yeah. I I cannot do this any longer.

But that experience helped me see in the future, like, okay. When I'm faced with those potential clients or people that I'm like, this isn't gonna be a fit, I'm I am stronger in my ability to be like, sorry.

No. This isn't worth it. Yeah. I agree. And I think that's normal too when you're first starting out, especially if you don't have a full time income and you're like you said, you're just like, I wanna make some money.

I need to pay for all my tech, you know, to get this business off the ground.

I think it's I think that just always follow your gut because it's never gonna lead you wrong, and just remember why you're doing it. Again, for me, it's to build a better life for Caleb and for me to have that freedom and flexibility.

And I think when you really lean into your why, you'll be more clear on who you should and shouldn't work with. Yeah. Absolutely. Anything else you wanna share with us about building your freelance business, lessons learned?

Or So I'm just gonna say to go for it. Right? Like, I was I've been really hesitant to start my own marketing firm, and my husband has been pushing me for, you know, six to eight months now.

And I am I just was like, no. I don't wanna do it. It's too much work. I just had all these excuses. And then when I finally decided to do it, I just felt really, really empowered.

So I wanna inspire all of you guys out there listening to just go ahead and do it. You don't have to quit your job right away. You don't have to have 20 amazing clients right away, and definitely tap into your network.

Right? The people closest to you wanna support you and help you, and I guarantee you everybody listening knows somebody that owns their own business. It could be super small, but they're running their business.

So they need help, whether that's for marketing or virtual assistant or really anything that you can do, you should just go out there and do it because you don't wanna think about what could have been.

You want to at least try it out and and get it started. Yeah. Yeah. And if that per first person you reach out to happens to be like, no. I don't need any marketing or no.

I'm good. It's not you know, I'm not looking for that. That's one person out of how many thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions of other types of businesses out there in the world. That's just one no.

So don't let that if you get one no your first time, don't let that mean or don't make that mean that no one else out there is looking for your services or your needs your support. Yeah. For sure. And I've got a lot of no's too.

Like, you know, I reached out to so many people in my network and also my husband's network. He has friends that own their own construction companies, concrete companies, landscaping companies, all the things.

And a lot of them told me no too because they weren't looking to grow or they didn't, you know, believe in the power of digital marketing and or it just didn't fit their business.

Right? His friend owns a concrete business, and he's like, I'm not really trying to gain more clients. Like, I'm not going to pour driveways.

I'm looking for more, like, city contracts. So I totally understood where he was coming from. Like, his need isn't to go out there and, like, create this brand for him to get more clients. That's not his area of business.

So I think being okay with the no and just knowing and believing that something else will come up is is totally normal. And like I said, I got a ton of notes at the beginning, and I just had to keep pushing forward.

And, again, offer a trade at first too. Like, show people your value without them having to commit to, like, that financial like, I don't wanna say burden, but for some some they're gonna look at it as a financial burden.

So just offer a trade and whatever that you can do and see or whatever they can offer you, I should say, and see if it will work after a few months, and then you can show them your value.

And then that's an easier sell too. Yeah. Absolutely. So with BirkDog Marketing, is your husband gonna come in? Will that be, like, husband, wife run, or would that be completely you could advise, say, a separate? Oh, no. No. Yep. No.

It'll just be me and hopefully, like and and, you know, another great thing that I've that I've had access to and met a ton of great people through your course, through your community, like, I already know who I want my graphic designer to be.

I already know who I want my copywriter to be.

So, that's another thing that, everyone that's listening can think about is, like, when you start this course and you're in that community, you meet so many other people that can really help you, really hone in on your skills, and you can just create this amazing community with the Live Free Academy alone, and then those people will know people as well.

So, I'm in Kansas City, and Mikayla is pretty close to me too. So I did meet a lot of people from Kansas City that are, like, local, like, just a few few minutes away, so that was pretty powerful in the community as well.

Mhmm. Yeah. Have you done any local networking? Not really. I had I had pitched a couple of local boutiques that I shop at, like, religiously that and especially for my son.

I won't drop their name here. But, I did pitch a few brick and mortar locally, and they they were hard nosed. They they didn't wanna get into anything. They didn't wanna do any trades.

And I just said, great. And and I didn't let that deter me. Like, I still go there and shop there for my son and for me, and, you just have to get comfortable with with the ask, and then you have to get comfortable with what they say.

Right? Like, it's not personal. They if most of the time, they don't even know the value that you can bring, and you just have to have the mindset of, like, okay.

On to the next. You know? Yeah. Absolutely. That's awesome. I love that. On to the next. If it wasn't didn't work for them, there's someone else. There's always someone else. Awesome.

Well, Liz, thank you so much for coming on and sharing with us about your business and the big vision you have for your new marketing agency and your family and everything you've accomplished in the last, in the last year, really.

That's that's incredible.

Well, thank you for having me. I appreciate it. And I do wanna, you know, give you credit for, for the course and your coaching, and that really gave me the stepping stone that I needed to start and move forward.

And, again, have the having the community for support is really, really great and important. So if you're out there listening and you are hesitant to do it, again, just do it. You don't wanna live with what could have been.

I a % agree. Don't live with what could have been, and just do it and try. And if you have I think everyone knows themselves. Like, you have to look in and and and ask yourself, are you a person that's going to dive in and do the work?

Or are you someone that's going to enroll and just sit there and be like, I don't know. If you're gonna be a, I don't know, don't do it. Like, save your money. Don't don't do that.

But if you are someone who is motivated, who just needs that plan and that support of here's what to do, here's how to do it, and that community to go to when you get stuck, then I have no doubt that we will be successful and can make financing work for you and your family no matter what those needs are.

Yeah. Definitely. Definitely. Just think about if if you've ever been in this situation before, you know, and if you've done something that you really, really wanna do, again, like Micala just said, you know you.

If you're the kind of person who buys every online course and doesn't come back to it and doesn't implement, then, yeah, this isn't gonna be for you because this is a lot of work.

It's a lot of work on the front end. It's a lot of work on the back end, and you have to be dedicated to it. And, again, just come back to your why.

Like, think about why you wanna do it in the first place, and that will help it and motivate you, inspire you, and you'll do it. You'll get it done. Yeah. Awesome. Well, thanks so much for the pep talk, Liz.

Thanks, Micala. I appreciate you. Thanks so much for having me. Now just because the episode is over, doesn't mean the knowledge party has to stop. Come hang out with me and thousands of other mamas in my free Facebook group.

Just search Facebook for the Live Free Podcast Mastermind with Micala Quinn or go to the show notes. We have it linked there. And make sure you answer the questions so our gatekeeper knows that you want to end.

And don't forget, sharing is caring. If you are loving this podcast, please take a moment to share it with your friends. But make sure you tag me at Micala dot Quinn on Instagram and at Micala Quinn on Facebook. See you next week.