Latest / The Side Hustle Career Podcast with Fexingo: Second Income, Freelancing While Employed / How a Restaurant Server Built a 4000 Monthly Ghostwriting Side Hustle
Transcript
- Lucas: Maria is a restaurant server in Austin, Texas. Most of her week is spent carrying plates, running food, and dealing with the chaos of a busy dinner service. But by noon most days, before her first shift, she's already written two thousand words for a client who pays her four hundred dollars per newsletter issue. Luna: That's a pretty stark contrast. And she's been doing this for about a year now — she's up to around four thousand dollars a month, which is more than her take-home from the restaurant. Lucas: Right. And she didn't come from journalism. She didn't have a blog, she didn't have a portfolio of published clips. She was just someone who read a lot of business writing and thought, I can do this. Luna: So how did she actually get started? Because 'I can do this' is a long way from having a paying client. Lucas: She picked a very specific niche early. She didn't just say 'I'm a freelance writer.' She decided she would ghostwrite LinkedIn thought leadership content for B2B founders — specifically founders in the enterprise SaaS space. She'd been reading people like David Sacks and Jason Lemkin, and she noticed that a lot of these founders had newsletters or LinkedIn posts that were clearly being ghostwritten, but the quality was inconsistent. Luna: So she saw a gap. A specific service for a specific type of client, rather than trying to be everything to everyone. Lucas: Exactly. She didn't have a website either. She cold-pitched her first client on LinkedIn — a founder whose newsletter she'd been reading for months. She sent a direct message that basically said: 'I've been following your content. I think I can write your weekly newsletter in your voice, and I'll write the first issue for free to prove it.' Luna: And the founder took her up on it? Lucas: He did. She wrote that first issue, he loved it, and he paid her for it anyway — two hundred dollars. That became her first client at two hundred dollars per weekly issue. Within three months, she raised her rate to three hundred, then to four hundred as she took on a second and third client. Luna: I love that she led with value instead of asking for permission. A lot of people would spend weeks building a portfolio or taking a course. She just did a sample. Lucas: And that's the key insight for this episode, I think. She didn't wait for credentials. She treated the first piece of work as her portfolio. Now she has three clients — all B2B founders — and she writes two to three newsletter issues per week, plus the occasional LinkedIn post. Luna: Let's talk about the money, because I think a lot of people hear 'four hundred dollars per issue' and wonder if that's realistic. How many words per issue? Lucas: Between twelve and fifteen hundred words. So she's earning roughly thirty cents per word, which is solid for someone without a traditional writing background. The average freelance rate for ghostwriting newsletters is closer to twenty-five cents per word, but she's on the higher end because she's in a specialized niche and she delivers on a tight schedule — usually within twenty-four hours of the interview. Luna: She interviews the founder each week? Lucas: Yes. That's part of the service. She does a fifteen-minute phone call where the founder rambles about whatever's on their mind — a market trend, a mistake they made, a piece of advice. She turns that into a polished newsletter. So the founder doesn't have to write anything. They just talk. Luna: That's the dream for a lot of busy founders. They know they should be building their personal brand, but they don't have the time or the writing skill. Lucas: And Maria figured out early that the value she provides isn't the writing — it's the time she saves them. A founder might bill at five hundred dollars an hour in consulting fees. If she saves them two hours of writing per week, she's effectively paying for herself. Luna: So how does she manage the dual work life? Because she's still serving tables thirty-five hours a week, plus she's commuting, plus she's doing these interviews and writing. Lucas: She's very disciplined about her mornings. She wakes up at six, does the interviews before nine when the founders are usually available, then writes from nine to noon. She's at the restaurant by one for the lunch shift. She told me the hardest part isn't the time — it's the mental switch. You go from crafting a thoughtful analysis of a SaaS pricing model to refilling ketchup bottles. Luna: That's a real cognitive whiplash. I think a lot of people in service jobs who start freelancing feel that. You have one identity that's very professional and intellectual, and another that's more service-oriented. It can be jarring. Lucas: Absolutely. And Maria said there were months where she almost quit the freelancing because it felt like two separate lives. But then her ghostwriting income passed her restaurant income, and that changed the calculation. Luna: That's a huge milestone. When your side hustle earns more than your day job, it stops being a side hustle. Lucas: Right. And she's now at a point where she's considering whether to leave the restaurant. But she's cautious — she wants to have six months of living expenses saved from freelancing alone before she makes the jump. That's smart. Luna: So for someone listening who thinks, 'I could do this,' what's the first step? You can't just cold-pitch a founder without having some sense of their voice. Lucas: Maria's advice is: start by reading. Pick three to five founders or executives in a niche you're genuinely interested in. Read their newsletters, their LinkedIn posts, their blog archives. You'll start to hear their voice — their sentence rhythm, their pet phrases, their go-to examples. Then write a sample post in their voice. Just for yourself. Don't send it yet. Practice until you can mimic that voice fluently. Luna: That's a low-risk way to build the skill. You're not pitching anyone, you're just training your ear. Lucas: Then, when you feel ready, you pitch one of them with a specific offer. Not 'I can write for you,' but 'I've written a sample of what your next newsletter could look like. I'll send it to you for free, no obligation.' That's exactly what Maria did. Luna: And if they say no? Lucas: You move on to the next one. She pitched ten people before she got a yes. That's normal. The rejection isn't personal — it's a numbers game. Luna: We should also talk about the legal side. Maria is an employee at the restaurant, and she's doing this freelancing on the side. She's not violating any non-compete because it's a completely different industry. But the show has covered non-competes before. Lucas: Yeah, in episode three we talked about non-compete traps. But the freelancer's issue here is more about moonlighting policies. Some employers have clauses that say you can't do any other paid work without approval. Maria checked her employee handbook — it was silent on the topic, so she felt safe. But that's something everyone should verify. Luna: Also, she's operating as a sole proprietor. She files a Schedule C with her taxes. She tracks her income and expenses. That's a lot of administrative work on top of everything else. Lucas: She uses a simple spreadsheet. She's not fancy about it. But she does set aside roughly thirty percent of every payment for taxes, because she'll owe self-employment tax and income tax. That's a mistake a lot of new freelancers make — they spend the gross and then get hit with a tax bill. Luna: One thing I find interesting about her story is that she's not trying to scale it into an agency. She's keeping it small — three clients, maybe four. That's intentional. She doesn't want to manage writers or deal with client servicing. She just wants to write. Lucas: That's a valid choice. Not everyone wants to build a business. Some people just want a profitable side income that gives them flexibility. Maria told me she values the fact that she can take a week off from freelancing if the restaurant has a busy holiday season, and she can ramp back up later. That elasticity is hard to get with a traditional part-time job. Luna: If today's episode was useful to you and you want to keep it ad-free, buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo helps. We don't run ads — that's a deliberate choice. If you want to support that, buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo is the place. Lucas: Yeah, and it genuinely makes a difference. Even a small contribution covers the hosting and keeps everything free. Thanks to everyone who's already chipped in. Luna: Okay, back to Maria. One thing I want to dig into is her pricing strategy. She started at two hundred dollars per issue, then moved to three hundred, then four hundred. How did she know when to raise? Lucas: She raised when she felt the demand exceed her capacity. When she had a waiting list of interested founders, she knew she could charge more. She also benchmarked against other ghostwriters in the B2B space. She found that the top-tier ghostwriters charge eight hundred to a thousand dollars per issue, so she knew there was room to grow. Luna: But she's not at a thousand yet. Why not? Lucas: She says she's not confident enough in the 'executive presence' piece. She feels comfortable writing in a founder's voice, but she says the top-tier ghostwriters also advise on strategy — they shape the thought leadership narrative, not just the prose. She's working on that skill. Luna: That's a good distinction. There's a difference between being a writer and being a strategic partner. The strategic partners command higher rates. Lucas: Exactly. So her next step is to start offering a quarterly content strategy review — what topics to cover, how to tie them to a business goal, how to repurpose content across channels. She's already doing some of that informally, but she wants to formalize it into a package. Luna: I think that's a great example of how a side hustle can evolve. You don't have to have everything figured out on day one. You can start with a simple service, deliver it well, and then add layers. Lucas: And that's exactly what Maria did. She started with a single free sample. Now she's thinking about becoming a fractional content strategist. All while still carrying plates on the weekend. Luna: Yeah, I think that's the part that stays with me. The grind is real. But the trajectory is real too. Lucas: If you want to try something similar, Maria's advice is simple: pick a niche, read obsessively, write one free sample, and send it to someone who might care. You don't need a degree. You need one yes.