Writing Samples
Ghostwriting Sample from Lady Bizwiz Quick Launch Guidebook (2021)
Scaling a business can be something that sounds scary, but trust me, it’s not. It means that your business is moving along nicely and growing to the point where it’s getting a little bit bigger than you can manage alone. It means you’re going to have more people doing what you’re doing so you can produce more and increase your revenue.
Some businesses are not scalable in the traditional sense. For example, if you’re a fine art painter, you can only create so many paintings in a 24-hour day. You can’t hire additional painters to join your company because nobody paints like you. You can’t duplicate yourself. This is why you find artists in that space begin charging more for their art. They cannot increase the amount of art they produce, but they can build value in the individual pieces and therefore the demand for that art becomes greater, increasing the artist’s revenue.
A more traditional method of scaling is that you produce something, like candles, for example. Let’s say you can pour fifty candles a day on your own, and as you get orders in beyond that fifty, you can either delay your orders further or you can bring in an employee who can also produce fifty candles. Now you’ve taken your production from fifty to one hundred candles. Adding a second employee produces 150 candles, and as the volume of your business grows, you continuously add people to produce your product, therefore expanding your business.
I will warn you, that first person you bring in to help with this scaling model will be the scariest jump you will take. Many times, you’re not making a lot of money out of your business yet, because it’s just you. You may not even be making a full-time income, and so the idea of bringing in an employee to do what you do seems frightening, because they are going to need an income that is livable. This fear can become paralyzing, but what you haven’t seen is the fact that while you can produce fifty candles a day, you still have many other responsibilities in that day as the business owner. You may have accounting to do, supply ordering, packaging design to arrange, and at the end of your day you only have enough time to produce fifty candles. However, that employee you hire is not going to be burdened with other business matters; they can come in and focus on producing candles. Maybe they can produce 150 candles; if so, they’re not only doubling your revenue, but they are also increasing it by 400% - your work plus your work times three.
The challenge in the beginning is getting to where you have enough demand for another 100 or 150 candles a day. It will feel like a huge jump, but with each employee you bring on in your scaling approach, you should have enough production in the pipeline to afford these employees quickly. That first employee may cut you back a little bit; they may not always pay for themselves right out of the gate. Your business has grown to where it’s more than you can do alone, but you are not quite ready to use the first employee at full capacity - otherwise you would need two people. There will be that little growth period, and this is how you know if you have enough room in your business model to bring on an employee. Every time you add another staff member to help you scale your product line, your revenue should be following along.
Scaling works in a service-based business in similar fashion. Let’s say you’ve developed a piece of software or an app, and you can only visit so many businesses in a day selling that app. To keep it simple, let’s say you can call on ten businesses a day, and you get to the point where you need to hire a salesperson to increase your reach. You can pay them commission or structure it in some other way, but the scalability of that kind of business is done by putting more feet on the ground. You plus one can call on twenty, and this can have a dramatic effect on your growth.
I have seen substantial success with my own business sales by hiring a rep group. I sell a product with Blue Poppy Designs, and I only have enough time to run the design business and product products. I have staff who also produce products, but I don’t have it in my model to go out and call on gift shops. I have hired a rep group, and they are in eleven states and out there calling on stores every day on my behalf. I have gone from starting with them in January, opening one customer account, to having almost fifty accounts six months later. It didn’t require anything more of me; I pay them a commission on what they sell, and they are out there doing the scalable work for me. What I have found, however, is the work they have generated for me requires me to scale up my production facility. I’ve had to buy new equipment and hire new staff to take on that extra business. I call this a trickle-down effect, meaning when one area of your business grows (sales), the other areas of your business must grow with it (equipment, staff).
Magazine Article Sample: Albany Living (2021)
LAUNCHING GOOD COFFEE INTO THE STRATA-SPHERE: LOCAL COUPLE CREATES ORIGINAL BRAND FOR TEMP COFFEE AND BEYOND
Let’s begin with a little coffee trivia:
1. What are unroasted coffee beans called?
a. Raw coffee beans
b. Green coffee beans
c. Organic coffee beans
d. Shelled coffee beans
2. What historical event made coffee the most popular drink in America?
a.The Great Depression
b. The American Revolution
c. The Boston Tea Party
d. The French and Indian War
3. Who is the most important person responsible for producing a great cup of coffee?
a. The barista
b. The coffee roaster
c. The coffee bean importer
d. All of the above
4. What is the process called after the coffee beans are roasted but before the coffee can be brewed?
a. Degassing
b. Deseeding
c. Decompressing
d. Decarbonating
5. What country produces the most coffee?
a. Guatemala
b. Ethiopia
c. Vietnam
d. Brazil
(answer key at end of article)
If you answered all of the above questions correctly, you are to be commended for knowing more about coffee than the average Joe. While touring the back rooms of wineries and craft breweries are popular American pastimes, the science of coffee roasting remains somewhat a mystery.
Regardless of how shallow or vast your knowledge is on the subject, chances are your morning routine is sweetened by that first sip of hot java. It is for this reason—the simple love of a great cup of coffee—that Catherine Garrett and Tyler Campbell have committed to bring their very own brand, Strata Coffee Roasting, to the Albany area.
Although Strata is the brainchild of Tyler, the story behind it begins with Catherine. Catherine, 28, and Tyler, 29, were both homeschooled kids who met in high school while serving in the Leesburg Key Club. “She ran the media and I was the president,” Tyler recalls. “Of course Tyler was president...and I just took photos,” Catherine quips without missing a beat. The two parted ways when Tyler went off to college at Southeastern University in Tampa and Catherine relocated to Atlanta. A self-described creative who is passionate about design, music and art, Catherine spent several years working in coffee shops and, though she secretly dreamed of opening one of her own, did not consider it financially feasible.
In 2018, Catherine moved back home after a year in Atlanta and was working odd jobs and considering joining the military. As fate would have it, she was working out in a Crossfit gym one day when two local investors approached her with a question about the coffee business. Brijesh Patel and Viral Patel were opening a convenience store and wanted to add a reputable coffee franchise next door. Catherine suggested that what the city really needed was a good, local coffee shop, and they agreed to help finance it. “I told them, ‘Sure, I’d be happy to help get it started,’ and I ended up doing a lot more than getting it started...and I’m still here [three years later].”
Temp Coffee Leesburg was born in November 2018, with Catherine creating the concept from the ground up, including the buildout, interior design, branding, and menu. Tyler had moved back home after college and the two reconnected and married, joining forces to bring the rich coffee culture they had enjoyed in other cities to their hometown. Temp built a healthy local following with Catherine at the helm, but a difficult pregnancy in 2019 required Tyler to step into a management role.
In late 2020, Tyler began seriously considering trying his hand at roasting coffee, motivated by his own creative bent and by the fact that it could reduce Temp’s coffee expenses by thirty-three cents per pound. He began reading books, watching Youtube videos and taking online classes, and in December of 2020 he ordered his first small batch roaster, setting it up in an old gas station. “The one kilo roaster makes two pounds of coffee,” explains Tyler, “and I worked on that for six months, roasting, practicing, developing profiles and trying to figure out what worked.”
In March of 2021, Temp opened its second location in Albany, and in August of 2021, Tyler installed a ten kilo roaster, which makes 20-22 pounds of coffee. As a result of his own learning, Tyler became passionate about sharing this knowledge with his community—the origin of the coffee, the tasting notes of each brew, and the importance of buying beans which are ethically traded and sustainably sourced. “Our long-term goal is to have a larger facility where I can host groups of people to come through a couple days a week, see the roasting process, and put some names and faces to the growers and producers of the coffee we’re selling to bring a little bit more weight to the product itself.”
Catherine shares Tyler’s excitement for bringing the community together around coffee. Temp will be opening its second Albany location in 2022, and the shops will each periodically host pop up art shows and community events. Catherine is also working on designing a line of merchandise which will combine Temp’s brand with a featured local artist.
When asked how the couple handles the challenges of working together and raising a family, Catherine says, “I wouldn’t have it any other way. We both know our strengths and weaknesses and compliment each other well in those areas. We have learned—and are still learning—how to establish a good work/home life balance, and I think that’s the key.”
Tyler and Catherine’s combined creativity and work ethic have them poised for continued success in business. Strata Coffee Roasting is already producing its own wholesale white label roasts through Temp Coffee, and in October 2021, the brand will venture into the retail market with small batches to ensure a quality experience for customers. Tyler insists on emphasizing that every step of the coffee making process is equally important: “To make a good cup of coffee it takes a quality variety of coffee, a great grower, a great producer, a great roaster and a great barista. A great barista can’t make bad coffee good and a great roaster can’t make a bad green coffee roast well. It all has to line up and a lot of people don’t see that chain. There’s just so much that goes into it that people in our region haven’t had the opportunity to realize.”
From the looks of it, Strata will be responsible for improving both our trivia game and our morning cup of joe.
For more information on Temp Coffee and Strata Coffee Roasting, visit:
(Answer key: 1. b, 2. c, 3.d, 4.a, 5.d)
Nonfiction Writing Sample: “Fat” (2019)
I stood there, surrounded by the familiar scents of rubber and sweat, my arms extended straight in front of my body, gripping the cold, metal handles of a body fat scanner. “All threes across the board,” the towering, Kentucky-born trainer reported, scribbling notes on my personal intake form. “33.3 percent body fat. We need to get that down into the 20s,” said Jason in a matter-of-fact twang, and I nodded in agreement, unsure as to what it meant that one third of my body was blubber. “Okay, so you need to lose 13% body fat, which should take you about one year…” my heart sank. I slumped down into the folding chair and looked down the gym’s hallway, watching chisel-bodied patrons make their way to the weightlifting area. I didn’t want to be there with Jason and his fat-finding toys. I had recently fallen off the clean-eating wagon…the broccoli-chicken-protein-shake routine that had become my latest new-habit-I-would-never-ever-break. I broke it this time after a solid run of seven weeks. For the seven weeks following, I had switched over to the hard exercise route, enduring soul-crushing Body Pump classes three times a week and long walks in between. Nothing was working.
I’m almost 46 and I love to eat. I adore the empty calories in wine, all colors, all grapes. I have no willpower to starve myself; my resolve is close to nil against the jagged, fried edges of an apple fritter at Baker’s Pride, the local crack house in my southern city. But I used to be thin, dammit. I was thin and I was hot. I felt powerful that way. The whole world agreed I was powerful that way.
The irony is, my Body Pump instructor, who I call Badass Lisa, referred me to Jason as a nod to my visible effort in her class. She thought she was doing me a favor, recommending me for a “free training session.” What she neglected to mention was that I would have to fill out a form, listing all of my habits – how often I eat fast food, drink alcohol, hide Cheetos in my glove compartment – and how I would bald-face lie. I knew what Jason wanted to hear – how I never drink coke, or rum and coke, or eat nachos with rum and coke. I lied about eating mainly salads for lunch. I lied about drinking water. I lied about being willing to log my food again on that godforsaken app, My Fitness Pal.
I know what I’m supposed to do, but what Jason doesn’t understand is that fitness and philosophy are flawed, and Socrates was wrong – to know the good is NOT to do the good. I know I shouldn’t go to bed on two slices of red velvet cake and two glasses of red velvet wine…but I do it anyway, and I use Body Pump as part punishment and part damage control.
So here I am, facing my own limitations: my own unwillingness to do what is necessary to achieve the thinness I once possessed. I refuse to refuse junk food. I want thin, but I want Netflix and M&Ms more.
I left the free training session dejected. It was an unusually cool morning, and I decided to take a walk at a local park instead of going home. I strolled around Lake Mayer, breathing in the beauty of the day, breathing out the toxic feelings about the state of my body. A lady passed me on the trail – a beautiful, voluptuous black woman with a much faster gait than mine. I admired her figure; she was short in stature with a small waist and a very large, very round backside. I wondered about her bodyfat, whether she was 35 or 40 or 45 percent; I wondered if she felt good about her body or if she was walking so fast, trying to outpace the same demons as me. I wanted to stop her and tell her she was beautiful, but I didn’t have the nerve.
Lately, I’ve wanted to tell a lot of women they’re beautiful. I see the insecurity in their eyes, and I fear they may be boiling chicken in a crockpot at home, or eating apples at Panera Bread, or missing a former version of themselves too. I want to put my arms around them all, and around myself, and, like a chubby, affectionate, Italian grandma, say “It’s ok. Enjoy your wine, honey. You’re perfect just the way you are.”