Learning New Skills, Asking Better Questions, and Growing a Ghostwriting Business with Marcia Layton Turner

Tim Melanson: [00:00:00] Hello, and welcome to today’s episode of the Work at Home Rockstar podcast. Excited for today’s guest. She’s the founder and executive director of the Association of Ghost Writers and as well the president of of her own, uh, business book, ghost Writing Firm. So I’m excited to be rocking out today with Marcia Layton Turner.

Hey, Marcia, are you ready to rock?

Marcia Layton Turner: Let’s rock.

Tim Melanson: Awesome. So we always start off here in a good note. Tell me a story of success that we can be inspired by.

Marcia Layton Turner: Well, I, I think I have two to share. One, one from early days. Um. So growing up, going through high school and into college, I, I never really thought of myself as a writer. Could never have conceived that I would eventually become a writer. Uh, my dad was a fine artist, so when other future novelists were writing stories and stuff, I, I was painting pictures. I was making the dr the illustrations for those books and, um. Went to a, a demanding high [00:01:00] school. So I was definitely like, just a little bit above average, but then I went away to college and at my college you had the option to either take an exam at the end of the semester or write a paper. I like to be in control of how much time I spend on things, and so I always took the paper option. So over the course of I, I graduated early, so three and a half years of writing papers for lots of classes. I sort of figured it out, but I didn’t really know that until I went out to the University of Michigan to get my MBA and we’re writing papers and they’re easy, and I’m getting A’s, and I distinctly remember thinking, wow, I figured it out. I got it. Okay, this is good. And so I went on to, uh, actually join the marketing communications department at Kodak. Rose quickly through the ranks, became, uh, director of one of their B2B divisions, then [00:02:00] left to run my own marketing company, and that eventually evolved into what I do now, which is business book Ghost Writing and running the Association of Ghost Writers. But I, I think the lesson that I really want your listeners to hear is that you can learn new skills in adulthood. Just because you didn’t learn it when you were in elementary school or middle school or even high school, you can still learn and get better and obtain new skills maybe that you never thought you could have, because I, I really never would’ve thought that I would become a writer.

But through the years I’ve really worked at it. And so I encourage people if there’s something that you’ve always like wished you could do. You can do it, it just needs, you just need to spend some time working on those skills. You know, I took online classes and read lots of books and went to conferences and things like that. Um, so, so it is possible, and it’s the skill now that my business is based on. [00:03:00] So, so that’s, that’s the first one. But, but then the second story, which I think is really relevant for everybody, and I keep threatening to write a book about it, is the power of asking questions. And I think this is so important for newer home-based business owners, is not to be afraid to ask questions. Um. And the, the best story that I can think of to illustrate this is back when I was starting my home-based business and I was doing marketing. I was primarily serving startup entrepreneurs, so I was helping them with marketing plans and business plans, and really just understanding how to get started. And I had heard, or I think I saw an ad in Entrepreneur Magazine for this series of conferences that they were running nationwide. I remember there was San Francisco, la, Miami, and New York major ones, and I thought, wow, that, that looks like a really good conference, but. When you’re in startup [00:04:00] mode, you don’t have a lot of money and

so I, I really wanted to be sure this was gonna be worth my time, but there wasn’t an agenda.

It was just come to this all day event, or actually it was three days, so I. Emailed the organizer and said, Hey, do you have an agenda for this? Can you tell me what the sessions are? Who’s speaking? And she said, oh, we’re still working on that. I said, oh, well, what’s, what’s the process to be considered as a speaker? And she said, well, what do you, what do you wanna talk about? And I thought, oh, this isn’t set in stone yet. And so, um, I said, well, I help people write business plans. I’d love to teach, you know, your attendees. And she said, well, send me a proposal. Which I did ultimately, as you can guess, she said, Hey, well sure you wanna come, you wanna come speak. So I just by asking questions about how does this work, what’s the process? Can I be considered? I was in front of the room in front of eight, I think [00:05:00] 800, 700 people at the Meadowlands, I don’t know what it’s called now, outside New York City for three days. Positioning myself as the expert in business plan writing.

And that was very early in my career. Again, just because I bother to ask questions about like, how does that work? So I would encourage people, I think you really can get so far just by asking

Yeah, what, what’s, and, and especially if they say no, asking, like, well, tell me more about that.

Why? Why is that a no, I don’t get it.

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. It doesn’t hurt to ask that extra question, right? Because you might end up getting some insight or you might even find a different angle to go at it next time, right?

Marcia Layton Turner: Exactly. You get feedback. It’s, I always encourage people, like in the Association of Ghost Writers, if you don’t get a project, ask Why.

What? What was it where? Where did you think I was weak? What did the other person have that I didn’t have? One time I discovered that I didn’t ask enough questions. Hey. That’s [00:06:00] great intel. Now I come with like pages and pages of questions, so yeah, just ask.

Tim Melanson: Yeah. It’s funny when you said about how, you know, you can learn new skills later in age, I think. ’cause I mean, you have that people that say you can’t teach old dogs new tricks. Is that what they say? Right.

Um, now I, I think it’s because I, I remember when I, when I first started looking at becoming self-employed and.

You end up getting just thrust into this whole area of having to learn all these new things and read all these books. And someone had said something like, you know, most people don’t read another book after they graduate high school. And I thought to myself that, you know, that’s a good point. You know, maybe it’s not that they can’t learn new, new things.

Maybe it’s that it takes some time to relearn how to learn. Does that make sense?

Marcia Layton Turner: Yeah, or maybe they didn’t know how to learn in the first place.

Tim Melanson: And that’s true too. Yeah, exactly. Because I mean, a lot of, well, [00:07:00] especially now, most schools just push you through, right?

I mean, it’s not like it used to be where you actually failed. Right Now

you can’t fail anymore, so it’s

possible you could get all the way through school and not even know how to learn, right?

Marcia Layton Turner: Yeah. And, and reading comprehension is at least to me, a critical

skill, not just reading and, um, you know. Being able to regurgitate information, but really process it and wonder, okay, so what does that mean for me? What does that mean for my business? What can I take away from that? And I, I think too few people have that skill.

Tim Melanson: Yeah,

I agree. And it’s too bad. But I mean, the, the, the good news, I think anyway is that I was far more. Interested in the topics that I was learning right when it came to business than I was in the things that were thrust upon me in school. And so I’m, I’m guessing that probably everybody’s like that.

You know, once you get out, you, maybe you, you have this negative opinion of learning because you were learning things [00:08:00] you didn’t wanna learn, but now you can learn anything you want, right? And make it something that you love. Right.

Marcia Layton Turner: Well, and I think even going. Back to school. In college when you had the choice between taking all those required courses and then you got to take the courses in your major. I

think inevitably for most people, their GPA went way up.

’cause as you said, you’re studying stuff that you’re interested in, you’re curious about it.

You’re paying attention.

Yeah.

you’re gonna do better.

Tim Melanson: Yeah, that’s exactly it. I remember when I was taking, I never had an option between an, an exam and a paper. It was always a paper and a speech for us, and I always chose the speech, but I mean, I was, it was very few, there was very few of us that chose the speech.

Most people wrote, chose the paper and I thought that was a lot of work for me.

Right. The speech was. I thought easier, but I mean, I guess every, it depends on people, right?

Marcia Layton Turner: Uh, speech was probably shorter, and for [00:09:00] you, probably easier because I think you’ve probably always been very comfortable talking to people and

getting in front of the, of the room. But for those of us who are introverts mm-hmm. Oh, I would’ve taken the paper.

Tim Melanson: You would’ve taken the paper, of course you would’ve.

Marcia Layton Turner: I just slide it into the professors, you know, not having to get up in front of anybody. Yeah, that would’ve been my choice.

Tim Melanson: Yeah, most people did. And, uh, but yeah, the, just being able to, to, to get in front of people, like, it’s, it’s, um, I don’t know. I mean, I, I’d be interested to know which was graded. More, uh,

fairly, I guess. ’cause I think that just getting in front of a class, I think that that is just generally known as something that’s scary.

And so you might even be able to get away with a little bit of extra mistakes because you’re the one that got in front of the class and did that, whereas the paper probably was a little bit more strict. Right.

Marcia Layton Turner: I bet the professor was in a better mood sitting back in the class watching you speak and then giving you a grade [00:10:00] rather than having to read like a 10 page paper times however many people in the were in the class. Yeah.

Tim Melanson: Mm-hmm. But both of those, I mean, both of those would’ve been useful. ’cause I mean, hey, the people that wrote the paper would’ve been, you know, in your area and maybe they might end up being writers, right.

Marcia Layton Turner: May maybe. Maybe. Yeah.

Tim Melanson: So now not everything goes as planned. Sometimes there’s some mistakes that we make along the way, and I’m wondering, can you share with me something that didn’t go as planned and how you recovered from that?

Marcia Layton Turner: Yeah, I don’t, I don’t know that, um, what I’m gonna call like a recent failure was necessarily due to lack of planning. But I’ve, I’ve had time to think about this. So my ghostwriting business, which I started. Early two thousands, let’s say. I don’t know the exact year when I really moved into that, but my revenue has grown steadily into the, you know, multi-six figures.

And it was just booming through COVID, booming. ’cause everybody was [00:11:00] home and wanted to write their books. Right. And then. End of 2023, things started to slow down. Like I didn’t really have projects that were on my books for 2024, and I, I thought, well, you know, it’s just seasonality.

Um, not gonna worry about, I’m just gonna enjoy the holidays.

Well then 2024 comes in and it doesn’t pick up. I had a couple of projects, book projects that, um, the authors ended up. Not wanting to finish for whatever reason. So 2024 was quite the anomaly, but I was really nervous that this was not an anomaly. And this

Tim Melanson: Mm-hmm.

Marcia Layton Turner: the way things now were

my new normal. And, uh, it, it was a really scary time. I had, I had never had a year like that. And so. I think ghost writers face this regularly. You never know like, where’s my next project coming from? Or freelance writers in general, am I gonna get another project? You start to [00:12:00] wonder, and it took several months, but about middle of 2024, I realized, okay, this is not turning around. This is not really, um, my fault, but I gotta do something different.

And so. You know, they had this saying, which I kept repeating in my head, um, definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different

results. And I thought, I, okay, I’ve gotta do something different because I haven’t done anything different and nothing is changing.

So I overhauled my marketing. I started blogging much more consistently to get my website ranked higher in Google. I hired a LinkedIn consultant to help improve my LinkedIn profile and then also do some regular LinkedIn outreach. Um, I would. Pursuing more podcast opportunities, speaking opportunities. I created a lead magnet about the value of a book and how it can help authors get more opportunities. [00:13:00] So I really just started to introduce all these new things that I hadn’t been doing, and within a couple months I had a new project. So that was the end of 2024 and going into 2025, things started to happen. I can’t point to any one thing that I necessarily did right. But I, I think maybe the momentum of just

doing so many things to get my name out there to explain to people what the heck ghost writing is, how it works. Um, it started to bear fruit. And so by 2025, even like second quarter of 2025, I was busy and I was booked throughout the year. Started off 2026. Already multiple six figures booked. Like things things are back on track. But that was a really scary time and I think maybe the takeaway for your listeners is if you get to that point where nothing is happening, you, you just have to try something new.

And I might even encourage you to check out AI [00:14:00] for those kinds of discussions of like, here’s what I’m doing. Based on my business. What do you recommend? And sometimes it’s really interesting to see what recommendations come through.

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Yeah, I, I agree. I use AI quite a bit for that ki kind of brainstorming. ’cause

it is nice to, sometimes you just, you flesh out these ideas by talking to somebody. And now you don’t have to take someone’s time.

Now you could take the AI’s time, right, and just work through it. And sometimes you get some pretty good ideas.

Sometimes you get garbage though,

you know, just to put that out there, right?

Marcia Layton Turner: Agreed, and I’ve tried different platforms to see what kind of information they’re going to recommend because they pull from

different sources. Yeah.

Tim Melanson: Yeah.

But, uh, but I think that like, so every business is different and some businesses get off to a really great start and then slow down. Sometimes you get, have a really difficult time getting started and then it takes time, time to build up. I think actually the, the first [00:15:00] one is a little bit harder because if you, if you’re having a hard time getting started.

Then great. I mean, you’re learning all the things you need to do to get that momentum going, but if things go really, really well at first, ’cause maybe you have a really great network or you know, whatever it is, and then it drops. Like

that’s the situation you’re in. That is very difficult. ’cause you don’t even know, like,

it’s like I gotta start from like scratch now and I don’t even know what that feels like.

Right.

Marcia Layton Turner: Right. It’s what happened and what do I do about it? And I at the time had some inklings of what was going on, but I really just had to figure out, okay, what’s the workaround?

Tim Melanson: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Because there is something there, there is something. And, and it’s good. I mean, I, I think that, uh, the faster you recognize that you gotta start to do

something a little bit different, the better. Uh, but on the other hand, like it’s one of those things where it’s always been working. So you sort of had this idea of like, well, maybe it’ll just come back.

Right. [00:16:00]

And how long you’ll hold onto that, right?

Marcia Layton Turner: Exactly. And also you need to consider what is, what is enough time.

’cause ’cause there is, um, the argument to be made that you could pivot too quickly,

Tim Melanson: yeah,

Marcia Layton Turner: You have a couple weeks where business isn’t where it used to be and you think, oh my gosh, I’ve gotta start over and you know, revamp my website and do all these other things, when actually it was like the holidays and that’s just how things are.

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think so. I think that if probably the most dangerous one would be that you have work on your docket, whatever it is. That you’re working through, but no new work is coming in. That’s probably the most dangerous, right? Because if you, if you lost everything and you had no clients to work on, well then now it’s like, what am I gonna do when I get up?

I, I might as well do something. Right. So that, that makes sense. But if you have work to do, [00:17:00] but you got no work new coming in, it might be by the time you end that, that project, now you’re like, okay, now I have to start all over again. Whereas if you had sort of like, just. Carved out whatever it is, you know, 10% of your time or whatever it happens to be, just to this, the new marketing activities and recognizing that, well, I haven’t gotten a new, like, I don’t have anybody in the pipe right now.

Uh uh, that’s, that’s a problem, right? Like

so.

Marcia Layton Turner: You, you have hit on exactly sort of the definition of why feast or famine happens in freelance writing in general.

It’s exactly that, that you have business that is filling your time and you feel like you have so much work that you don’t have time to market. And you’ll get to that once you’re done with this assignment.

And so you keep your head down, you’re working, you’re doing great things, but then when you lift your head up and you realize. Oh, I don’t have anything. Then you’re starting from scratch and that’s when you know you get these dips, so you have nothing. So you put a hundred percent of your time in marketing and [00:18:00] things start to come in, and then you get fully booked again.

And so you stop the marketing and like, it’s not, it’s not an efficient or effective way to be. You need to always be marketing, to your point.

Tim Melanson: Yeah, and I, and I, I mean, I, I don’t think it’s just ghost, right? I think that’s, everybody

kind of ends up in that situation, especially when you’re a solopreneur or when you’re got a very small team because you’ve only got so many hours in the day and

it’s like. If you’ve got all this work on your plate, you might as well, like, you just think, well, I

just gotta get that work done.

But there is something to be said for just going, no, no, no. Spread that out a little bit. Make sure you have that, that small little snippet of stuff that you’re doing that continues to bring in more business. Right.

Marcia Layton Turner: Yeah, it’s, can I take, okay, is this thing due today by five or is it due in two days by five? Well, if it’s due in two days, you don’t actually have to finish it today. Take some of that time and spend it on LinkedIn, commenting on people’s posts. Or working in a blog post or pursuing podcasts and [00:19:00] then like, finish it tomorrow.

You’re still ahead of the game. But don’t, I think sometimes people make, um, sort of makeup deadlines

and, um, that’s not always, it’s great to be finished early. Clients will love you, but if you just keep only doing the work and not doing the marketing, it’s, it’s not gonna build a sustainable business.

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Well, and, and that kind of hits on another issue with getting done early too, is that now the expectation from the client. ’cause clients will always push for as much as they can get. Right.

And if you jump too fast. That’s great. I mean, if you’ve got nothing going on, then great. You can jump fast. But what that kind of sets you up for is in a few weeks when you have a bunch of clients you’re working on, and now every one of them thinks that you’re gonna jump on that task as fast as you did the last time, now you’re in trouble.

Right.

Marcia Layton Turner: Yep. E. Exactly right. And that actually happened to me early on in my career. I developed a reputation [00:20:00] among publishers as being a really fast writer. And I am, but exactly as you described, I. Was given all the, um, emergencies here, Marshall handle it, you know, send it to Marshall. She can get that done. And while I was thrilled to get all the work, it was, after a while, you should just get burned out

because I never actually pushed back and said, well, do you need it in a week?

Or can we have two? And so over time, I’ve gotten better at setting boundaries and resetting expectations when they come and say, yeah, I, I need a book by, you know, like February 1st, April 1st. No, let’s be reasonable.

Tim Melanson: You know, what I’ve been doing lately, uh, and is, uh, making use of the, of the schedule of an email, like that schedule thing that you can do with Google.

Because sometimes like, I mean, I, I like, sometimes I just like get in work mode at nighttime, for example. Right. And

it’s off hours. I should not be working there.

I should not be sending emails at that time because [00:21:00] then people are gonna expect you to be working at eight

o’clock in the evening. Right. Or whatever it is. So what I’ll do then is I’ll do the work, I’ll get everything all ready to go, and then I’ll set it to schedule to send it tomorrow or the next day, and then it’s, it’s off my plate.

I’m not thinking about it anymore. But now it gets sent in a timeframe That makes more sense for your business, right.

Marcia Layton Turner: Yeah. Yeah.

When people would expect to be receiving emails from you. Yeah.

Tim Melanson: Right. Yeah. I mean, there’s always ways to do it. ’cause I mean, you also don’t wanna, like, it’s a balance, right? I mean, if, if you’ve got like inspiration and you wanna be, especially in your area when you wanna be writing, well, it is not just like, well, I shouldn’t be writing right now, so I’m just not gonna write.

You can write it and get it done and then just set it to be sent out in a few days. Right?

Marcia Layton Turner: Yeah, with, with writing, especially, I think when you, you get into the flow,

you know, you’re, you’re writing and it’s going quickly, you don’t really wanna stop. So it’s best to just go with it. And so I’ll do that when I’m working on something [00:22:00] that’s due like later in the week, I’ll try and get a draft done, so I’ll, I’ll sit with it, I’ll work with it if I can get some momentum going. Um. It’s, it’s much faster that way. But yeah, I don’t, that doesn’t mean I immediately send it in. I’ll set it aside.

Tim Melanson: Yep. Set aside. So now what about your jam room? So tell me a little bit more about your home office. Like how do you be productive at home?

Marcia Layton Turner: Yeah. Well, early on I paid attention to what colleagues were doing and so many writers apparently like to have, um, soft classical music in the background.

Or they’ll go to coffee shops and work ’cause they like the hustle and bustle, like the energy, I think it

is around them that helps them write. And so I tried all of these things thinking that that was like the secret to being productive. Mm-hmm. Not for me. So I need silence. Silence is golden. So I have a home office that has a door. Um, [00:23:00] my desk is not facing the window because if I face the window, I’d be looking at it all day long. Um, my office has carpeting, it has window, you know, treatments to absorb sound. So when I concentrate, I hear nothing else.

And that’s, and that’s key. Um.

Tim Melanson: Yeah.

Marcia Layton Turner: then I, I also have tech, so in addition to the, the basics I have, well, I have computer, I have a huge monitor. I have, you know, a ring light, Yeti mouse. I have an ergonomic keyboard. I have an ergonomic chair, unfortunately, that keeps breaking. Uh, but I just try and I’m trying to be prepared for whatever situation I may need to contend with, whether it’s like a podcast interview, whether it’s, um, an interview I need to do and get transcribed. But just, just try to be prepared. Quiet.

Tim Melanson: Mm-hmm. So when we’re talking about your [00:24:00] equipment, like what’s your opinion on like the quality of the equipment that you get? Like do you think that it’s okay to just go with the bare minimum or do you think you should splurge a little bit for that?

Marcia Layton Turner: I, I think if it is something that you’re gonna be using on a daily basis to help you produce whatever it is, you, you gotta go high end, or at least I think it’s worth the money. I go through keyboards like you wouldn’t believe because I’m typing all day long and so I, I, you know, the letters get.

Tim Melanson: Wear them off.

That’s hilarious. Yes.

Marcia Layton Turner: Um, and I invested it an ergonomic one, probably five keyboards ago because I was starting to get what I think was carpal tunnel. Um, so now I pay the big bucks for this pricey keyboard that allows me to continue to work. So it means that I am more productive. ’cause my wrists don’t get tired. My

hands don’t get tired. Um. So I, I think if you’re using it regularly, go all in. If you’re testing something out, you’re not really sure if you [00:25:00] need this, then maybe you can try the off-brand version. But I, I think it’s risky.

Tim Melanson: Yeah, I think you’re right. I, I mean, I imagine there’s probably some things that the minimum would be okay, but I mean, usually the higher end versions of it are like they, they’re, they’re more convenient. They’re, they’re, they’re

made that way to be more of a better experience when you’re using it. And so.

You know, if this is your business, like, right. I mean, and, and I

think about it from the perspective of like a, like a company, like a big, big company, oftentimes when they buy their stuff, it’s not all bargain basement stuff. They, they buy the equipment that’s gonna make their workforce most productive.

And so if you’re looking for ways to cut costs. You know, maybe that’s not the place to, to cut it. I mean, maybe not the top of the, of the line, but definitely somewhere near the middle. The, the top end of it, right?

Marcia Layton Turner: I, I think, um, this is especially relevant with [00:26:00] printers,

Tim Melanson: Oh, yeah.

Marcia Layton Turner: what kind of printer you have, but you know, there are printers that are, it’s like, it’s like the um, the razor and the razor blades. So you can get a printer for 25 bucks on Black Friday,

and then you’re gonna pay tons of money for those toner cartridges that last about a week. I discovered this when I was in my doctoral program and I had to be printing out case studies every week. Oh my gosh. I went through a toner every five days. It was crazy. So then I upgraded the printer to one that had more capacity for toner. Cartridge, paid probably 500 bucks for the printer, but now my cartridge lasts more than five days.

Tim Melanson: Wow. I, I barely print anything anymore. So,

but, but yeah, for, for that right there. I mean, it’s one of those things where you do, I mean, I, I do remember like some, like print cartridges are more expensive than the printer in the first place, like.[00:27:00]

Marcia Layton Turner: Yes, yes. However, I think the more you spend on the actual equipment, the more that can help keep your, your printer expenditures down

Tim Melanson: Agreed. Now what about the band? So tell me about the team that you have working around you.

Marcia Layton Turner: well. When I came outta Kodak, I thought I needed to build this empire. You know,

I surround myself with people because that’s the environment I came

out of where everybody had their team. And, and I tried it. Um, I hired a couple employees, had a couple part-timers, and I realized that what I actually needed, uh, was people who were already experts in their fields. Uh, the employees that I hired, they were great, and I, I probably was a terrible manager. They couldn’t work at the speed or provide the same level of, um, output as I could. And

so I let them go. And for the last oh, 25 years [00:28:00] probably, I’ve relied on outside experts. So I have, I’ve had a virtual assistant for at least 25 years, like before it was even popular because I wanted to be able to hand off things that I didn’t wanna learn how to do. Like Tim, I, I don’t really need to know about the backend of a website. She handles that when I need updates here and there, I send off an email. I don’t need to do that and it’s not the best use of my time. So that’s kind of how I think about, um, my band members is what else can I hand off to them and, and what do I need to retain?

Well, I need to retain all the writing ’cause that’s why people are hiring me.

Tim Melanson: Yes.

Marcia Layton Turner: handles the tech stuff. I have a computer consultant who deals with any viruses or issues with my actual computer. I bring it over to her. She’s local. I have a graphic designer who also happens to be local, but I do use other online platforms if I, if I need something. Um, I have an [00:29:00] online researcher who’s not local. Um, I have, you know, accountant, attorney, um. Other people. Oh, transcription. I have my transcription service. They’re based in Ukraine. Um, so I just try and identify what are the key aspects of my business or my process that I don’t personally need to do. And I think I’ve at this point, pretty much delegated everything besides the writing.

Tim Melanson: Now, did you start by doing it all and then you started to delegate, or did you

like build that right at the beginning. Okay. You did? Yeah.

Marcia Layton Turner: I, yeah, I was doing it all myself because you know, when you’re in startup mode. At least I wanted to build a sustainable business. I didn’t wanna spend all my money the first, you

know, month and then be wondering how I was gonna pay for mortgage and stuff. So I built it slowly. As business would come in, I would try and identify, okay, who’s better at this than me?

And I quickly learned that a virtual assistant is worth their weight and gold because they know how [00:30:00] to do things that I don’t know how to do, and they can do the tasks faster than I could ever do them. So it’s actually. More profitable for me to hand off things to them. ’cause they’ll do it in 10 minutes when it would’ve taken me four hours.

Tim Melanson: Right on. Okay. And also another thing that is that since you had a hand in everything, you knew what to look for as well, right? You

knew whether the person was actually good at what they do or not, right?

Marcia Layton Turner: good point. Good point. Because early on, if you don’t really know how to do anything, it’s hard to judge. Like is, is this person, could they do it better than me?

And sometimes you’re not really sure and you have to take a chance. But I think the good news about hiring contractors and consultants and people like that is that you don’t have an ongoing relationship. If they turn out to be duds and they can’t actually do the work that you need them to do in the timeframe that you need it, you can cut ties and find somebody else. And it’s much easier than if you have hired someone full-time. It’s, [00:31:00] you know, it’s a process.

Tim Melanson: So now I’m actually just curious and maybe, um, but were there any parts of your business that you felt you were really good at, but you still delegated it and why?

Marcia Layton Turner: I thought for a long time that I was really good at research.

Tim Melanson: Okay.

Marcia Layton Turner: And I, and I still think I am pretty good at research. When I went back to get my doctorate, that was the primary res reason. I wanted to get better at research. I wanted to, um, you know, be faster, find better information, and I did that. But I discovered that when I got really busy and needed to hone in on the writing itself, I needed to hand off the research.

’cause it just like, I wouldn’t get any sleep if I was trying to do everything myself. And so I found someone who was, who had access to the same resources that I did, you know, scholarly kind of [00:32:00] resources. And she worked fast. So, yeah.

So then, and then once you have somebody else who does that thing, unless you love doing that part of the process, I mean, I think that’s a reason to hold onto it too.

If you, if you love something and it just brings you joy, well then you don’t have to delegate it. Unless it’s impeding your progress and growing your business, then you should consider it.

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Yeah. And in this case, it was something that you didn’t necessarily love, but you, you were still good at it.

Marcia Layton Turner: Yeah, I thought I was good at it. I probably overestimated my speed and yeah, I think I was probably above average. But then again, when you go to somebody who, whose business it is to do online research, they’re

gonna be better.

Tim Melanson: Yeah, yeah. Well, and, and uh, and also like to what you said earlier, people are hiring you to do the writing. Are they, they’re not necessarily hiring you to do the research, so that could be the reason why you’d go, okay, well, between these [00:33:00] two things, which 1:00 AM I gonna offload? Right?

Because you you don’t need to be doing the research, but I mean, what would be the point

of hiring you if you weren’t doing the writing

right?

Marcia Layton Turner: but handing those pieces off gives you more capacity to either get the client work done faster, take on more client work, you know, it, it’s makes you potentially more profitable.

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Now, on the other hand there, is there a learning curve? Like, like is there like a step back before you take a step forward when you hire somebody?

Marcia Layton Turner: I. That’s a good question. I think, yeah, you do have to spend a fair amount of time evaluating your options. And even if you go to Fiverr, Upwork, you’re gonna have lots of candidates and you do need to invest some time figuring out who’s going to be the best one. And you may make a misstep, you may choose someone who’s grid on paper, but who doesn’t actually have the ability to do what you need them to do. [00:34:00] So you, you can. I don’t wanna say waste time, but you can spend time that doesn’t end up to be all that useful or productive, but that’s necessary.

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Yeah. I think it’s just a matter of the scaling a, a aspect of it, right? Because I think

I, I think that there’s a lot of people that are good at a lot of different things, and I mean, if you’re an entrepreneur, you probably are, you probably are pretty good at a lot of things, so you could do it all,

but when it comes down to it, you’ve only got so many hours in the day.

And we all know that when those hours are gone, you know, you can’t

take on any more work. So a decision has to be made at some point if you want to scale that business that you’re gonna have to let go of some of that work. Right?

Marcia Layton Turner: Yep. Yep.

Tim Melanson: Yeah. So now let’s talk a little bit about, about the tools that are available to us now.

And there’s a lot of them, right? Which tools do you use that are getting you the most success in your business?

Marcia Layton Turner: Well, [00:35:00] there are, I think, business tools and then there are writing tools. So, um, you know, some of the business tools that I’m using, zoom. It’s my preferred video platform. There are a bunch of other ones, but I just find it the easiest to use. Um, I use bench for my online bookkeeping,

um, so it’s automatically connected to my accounts, so they just download all the reports and then crank out the numbers for my accountant at the end of the year.

I don’t have to spend any time on it. It’s great. Um. Those are, yeah, some of, some of the businessy ones, but then for the writing, we’ve got, well, of course the Microsoft Office suite.

PowerPoint I use to some degree Excel and Word the most. Um, I use Speech Pad for, I think I mentioned for transcription. So I’ll do a Zoom call, I’ll record it, I’ll download the audio file and then I upload it to [00:36:00] Speech Pad. They have humans that will transcribe it. I love it because kind of back to your question about, um, efficiency’s kind of what we were talking about, speech pads provides. Results that I don’t have to go in and tweak. It’s formatted nicely, very accurate. So I don’t have to spend time going back through and trying to figure out, what was that word?

That doesn’t sound right, which happens a lot with some of the free services. Um. I also use Grammarly kind of in the background because I have a tendency to miss commas. It’s shocking. Uh, so it will tell me, you know, Marcia, you need a comma there, you need comma there. Um, yeah, it’s the, those are the basic ones. Just, and, and they’ve taken time to figure out, I’ve tried other ones. Some writers use a tool called Scrivener to help them with organizing material. I, I find that I like [00:37:00] word, I like starting with a blank page and then just figuring out what makes sense for me rather than being given a structure. Um, other people use. Team software like Asana

or Basecamp or things like that. I’m not generally working with a team, it’s, it’s mainly just my piece, so I don’t use those. Um, yeah, those are the basics.

Tim Melanson: so many tools. How do you decide which one to choose? Like, because there’s so many options in every one of those categories.

Marcia Layton Turner: It’s, uh, well, some of that, like the transcription is trial and error. I, I tried them. Oh, you gotta try Otter. Okay. So I tried Otter

and the formatting was.

It was difficult for me to follow the, the results probably were very accurate, but the, the formatting made it hard for me to find the quotes that I wanted. So then I tried Rev and it was not as accurate as I [00:38:00] needed. So then somebody suggested Speech Pad, which is humans, you know, behind the scenes. And once I had it, having seen the results that were, um, not optimal. I stuck with it and if something else comes along that’s even better, I might try it, but you know, I’m very happy with the results so far.

So yeah, it’s, it’s trial. Trial. See if it works. Oh, I tried a CRM system, Pipedrive,

Tim Melanson: Yeah.

Marcia Layton Turner: uh, because I wanted to do a better job of managing the leads that I get. I get a lot of leads and I wanna stay in touch with them and. Back to our discussion about marketing. Sometimes when I’m too in the weeds with the work, I don’t do a great job of following up and so I bought Pipedrive, but it is so complex that, uh, I ended up canceling it ’cause I, I just wasn’t using it.

Tim Melanson: Hmm. I find that happens a lot with a lot of the tools is that [00:39:00] the tools are trying to be too much and they get too much work to figure out what they’re doing. Like a lot of these tools are like these all in one tools and you’re like, holy smokes. Like you’re doing more than what I need. And you know what?

That probably sounds a whole lot like the same thing that we talked about in the band, right? When you’re

hiring a person, you want to hire the best at what they do. You want them to be specialized because they’re probably not gonna be awesome at everything,

right.

They’re, they’re gonna have their thing.

And same thing with the tools, right?

Marcia Layton Turner: Yeah, but you don’t need somebody who’s able to do everything.

That’s again, why I went to just hiring the experts. I need you to do this one thing better than anybody else,

you know? And I’ll pay you for the half an hour that you have to spend on my task. Happy to pay more because still it’s gonna give me a better result. But

yeah, it is. It is trial and error a lot of the time.

Tim Melanson: Agree. So let’s move to your guest solo. So tell me what is exciting in your business right now?

Marcia Layton Turner: Well, you know, I [00:40:00] think, um, there are two sides and, and we gotta talk about ai.

Tim Melanson: Yep. Yep.

Marcia Layton Turner: So, ’cause that’s, that’s a big thing in the writing and publishing industry right now. Um. On one hand excited because I’m finding it really helpful for back to the research piece when I need to verify a quote, for example, or find a date for something.

I’m using AI tools to, to verify information. I’m not using it for writing. I won’t. That’s, you know, again, not why people hire me, but I think. It has the potential to make us more efficient and help us get done all those ancillary activities much faster. So I’m excited for that because I’m all about efficiency. The one thing that scares me about and I, is that I think some aspiring authors. Um, expect too much or are [00:41:00] thinking that AI is going to be the solution to writing their book this

Tim Melanson: Mm-hmm.

Marcia Layton Turner: And it worries me because there are some really big limitations that I think people need to be aware of with respect to AI and book writing. And the biggest is if you use AI to generate your manuscript. Based on whatever prompt you wanna give it, um, it cannot receive copyright protection. So you’ve created this thing and essentially it’s gonna be in the public domain. Uh, publishers also won’t publish it if you admit that you used ai ’cause they don’t want it. Uh, more publishers are including, uh, clauses that require the author to state that they did not use ai. The other problem is plagiarism that you’re not aware of. If you put in a prompt to AI and say, tell me about this, and it regurgitates information, you don’t know where it has pulled that information, and it could be directly from a book that somebody else [00:42:00] wrote,

so you can be hit with a plagiarism CL claim even though you didn’t. Know that you were plagiarizing. it’s it’s just all part of the problems with the system. So I’m excited, but I really hope that people are aware of some of the downsides. Again, especially with respect to publishing. There’s some really big issues and I think AI and people. Experimenting with, it was why 2024 was so quiet for me

because people were so excited, you know, about the possibility, Hey, I won’t have to pay a writer or a ghost writer.

I’m just gonna use ai. And then they suddenly started to see, oh, they’re big downsizes. So, so now things are picking back up again. Um, but yeah, just, I, I hope people will investigate some of the issues.

Tim Melanson: Yeah, I agree. I, I think, um, yeah, I think you’re right. I, I think that there’s a lot of, um. Well, I mean, there’s a lot [00:43:00] of lazy people out there. I think that AI is just gonna do it for them, and it’s, it’s not now. Uh, one of the ways that I’ve been using AI to generate content for, ’cause I, I built websites is one of the things that I do, is I will, I, I will actually either get the client or myself I’ll, I’ll, I’ll just dictate.

All the content and get it to reformat it for me. And it’s really brilliant at doing stuff like that because it’s taking me and just fixing it a little bit. Right.

Marcia Layton Turner: Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Tim Melanson: and, and that’s, that seems to be working really well, but I have not had any success with just saying, write this for me, and I don’t think it ever will.

Right.

Marcia Layton Turner: Right. I, what I’m seeing people doing is they’re creating their own GPTs, which is like kind

of like a tool

and they’re uploading all of their content into it so that it now has like a library of me then based on that. Asking for new [00:44:00] content, and I could see how that could be interesting. It may not be perfect, but if it’s drawing from you, then it’s gonna sound like you, based on your background, but you still have plagiarism.

You can self plagiarize and you know that’s, that’s a problem too.

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Yeah. You could plagiarize even. Yeah. But, but I mean, I do, I do think that that’s where the power is gonna be is by

teaching it who you are.

Uh, because I mean, technically. I mean, wouldn’t it be, I mean, if, if AI just takes you and rewrite something that you just wrote, well, that’s kind of what you’re gonna do too.

Like, so I, I mean, I, I, I think some people are like, uh, some people are. Too scared of it and some people aren’t using it enough.

It’s somewhere gonna be in the middle. I think where it is a, a super powerful tool and uh, for things like research, as long as you make sure you ask all the fact checking questions that you need to be asking, ’cause

it, it’ll go find stuff that’s not real.[00:45:00]

Right. But I mean,

it is like having a. You know, a whole research department in, in one prompt that’ll go out there and find a bunch of stuff for you. Uh, as long as you, like you say, you make sure that you, you fact check it properly. But, but I think it’s gonna be really interesting to see what the next few years are gonna be with

with ai.

I think it is gonna tighten up quite a bit. ’cause I mean, it has come a long way in the last two

years, so imagine where it’s gonna be in the next five, right.

Marcia Layton Turner: absolutely. Yeah. No, it’s, it’s leaps and bounds ahead of where it was in, I think 2023 is probably the year I would guess that it went mainstream and that people really started to experiment. But yeah, it, it will be interesting.

Tim Melanson: We will. We’ll see. So

how do people find out more about you then?

Marcia Layton Turner: Uh, if they want to learn a little bit more about me, they’re welcome to check out my website, which is my name, Marshall layton turner.com. And if they are interested in exploring whether a ghost writer could help them with their writing, if [00:46:00] they go to the association of ghost writers.org, we have a find a Ghost writer. It’s one of the tabs, and you can search our directory of members, or you can fill out a form. And I’m happy to try and connect you with somebody who is legit and qualified.

Tim Melanson: That’s awesome. So what’s the, what does the process look like? They do. Are they, are they sending what they already have or like, does this start from scratch? Like, what, what, what? What? What do they do?

Marcia Layton Turner: Sure. So the form is really just some of the basics, and when I take that information and share it with our members, I take out identifying information. So it’s, it’s still sort of anonymized, but it’s basics like. What is it that you’re working on? Is it a book? Is it an article series? Is it blog posts?

What do you need?

What is it about? Um, what do you already have? If it’s a book, like do you have an outline? Do you have notes? Are other people gonna need to be interviewed? Just, just trying to get a sense of the scope. What’s your timeline? When do you need this buy or is [00:47:00] it just whenever? What’s your budget?

And we have some different tiers that you can choose from, along with an explanation of the level of experience you can expect

at each of those. Um, and then they. Fill that out shouldn’t take very long. It comes to me, as I said, I then check out identifying information and send it to our experienced members and say, who, who might be up for this?

Who’s interested, who has the background? And then I forward it on and the client takes it from there.

Yeah.

Tim Melanson: I love that. That’s awesome. And especially like, because you do blog posts, that’s great. ’cause I mean, I know that when you’re doing SEO, writing content is a big deal and sometimes, I mean, it can take some time, right? Even if you’re using ai, so,

so having some help with that is huge.

Marcia Layton Turner: and, and I think especially for authors, I think they don’t realize sometimes that a book is a great product to have. But even before you publish the book, you should be doing some of these other things

like blogging, writing [00:48:00] articles, things like that to establish yourself as the expert in your field if, if you’re writing a nonfiction book, of course.

Yeah.

Tim Melanson: Awesome. So let’s talk about music. Who’s your favorite rock star

Marcia Layton Turner: Ooh. I dunno, I’m, I’m not as much of a rock person.

Tim Melanson: musician?

Marcia Layton Turner: more pop. Um, but back in the day in high school, I’m trying to think of some of the bands that we would listen to. Led Zeppelin, A CDC, um,

Tim Melanson: So

then what pop do you like? Then tell me what your favorite pop star is.

Marcia Layton Turner: It, it varies by the week. I, I have serious radio and so I turn it on. I have it on hits one and I’ll just listen to, I like things that are like bop, um, like there’s one, I don’t know who the artist is, but so unfair. I sing along to that song. I love that song.

Tim Melanson: Nice. Right on. Awesome. Well thank you so much for rocking out with with me today. This has been [00:49:00] awesome.

Marcia Layton Turner: pleasure. Thank you so much for having me.

Tim Melanson: Awesome. And to the listeners, make sure you go to workathomerockstar.com for more information and we’ll see you next time on the Work At Home Rockstar Podcast.