What's your personal background? What motivated you to start your own company?

Ever since a young age, I’ve been absolutely fascinated by the idea of entrepreneurship. I had always wanted to be able to run my own business. I was a bit of an outsider in high school. I didn’t have any friends and I would spend most lunch breaks on my own. This gave me a considerable amount of time to develop business ideas and try things without worrying about what others may think.

Fast-forward several years...

After parting ways with a digital marketing agency in October 2019, I was in a position where I could go all-in on an idea that had been brewing in my head for a while - a content writing business.

It was a scary time. There were a lot of unknowns. I wasn’t sure if I could make it work and I was worried I would fail. Failure is definitely something I was concerned about. At the same time, I was fully aware that allowing negativity to consume my head would be unproductive and distract away from the task at hand. I knuckled down and did everything that I could to build a customer base as quickly as possible.

What no-code tools did you use to build Freshly Squeezed and what purpose did each play in the final product?

When it comes to customer management, SPP plays a vital role in our workflow. I use Wix to host the website. I actually prefer WordPress, particularly for SEO. However, Wix offers a tremendous amount of flexibility in terms of aesthetics. It's super easy to jump into Wix and make subtle tweaks to the website.

I feel like I spend my life using Google Docs and Trello. These are both fantastic tools that help me on the operational side of things. I was never really a big fan of spreadsheets, but my love for them is starting to grow. I find them to be particularly useful for building email lists as part of outreach campaigns.

What were the initial costs to get Freshly Squeezed off the ground? 

There were hardly any costs that came with getting Freshly Squeezed off the ground. Wix can be a little expensive - but it's hardly off-the-scale! In the beginning, I was really looking for a business idea that would come without those large initial costs.

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What was the process of building your product from idea to launching? 

It all happened rather quickly. The first few days were filled with frantic outreach. I had just been laid off by the digital marketing agency that I worked for, so it was an emotional rollercoaster. I was determined to make this work, totally committed. Creating the website on Wix was the easiest part of the process, it was just a very basic landing page. It was very much a case of getting the website up and running.

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How do you attract customers?

Outreach! It's that simple. You can't wait for prospects to knock at your door. Every day, I'm reaching out to people, building those relationships.

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What are the biggest challenges you've overcome building Freshly Squeezed?

There have been many! It’s a constant learning process. I had to learn on-the-job with Freshly Squeezed. Fortunately, I’ve found great mentors who have helped guide me through certain challenges and obstacles. I’m always trying to push the quality of the content writing to a consistently exceptional level. 

Becoming a productized service has definitely helped to grow my business. Potential customers want to be able to see pricing instantly and the productized model facilitates this. I always loved the idea of having productized packages and it has worked very well for me thus far. It adds a level of predictability to my monthly revenue, which is always helpful. As I said, I have targets to hit! Facebook and LinkedIn advertising campaigns will continue to play a significant role in the growth of Freshly Squeezed.

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What's your advice for non-technical people who want to start a company?

Go for it! You don't need to be a technical person to succeed in business. Play to your strengths. People from all walks of life can start businesses. In my opinion, there's no such thing as a natural entrepreneur.

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What are your future plans for Freshly Squeezed?

Oh, I have a lot of plans! I think there’s always a danger of trying to grow too quickly. Nevertheless, I’m immensely hungry and want to be able to scale Freshly Squeezed both in terms of customer base and the service offering. Currently, we are focused solely on crafting SEO strategies and blog content. However, in the future, we could explore branching out into delivering other forms of written copy. 

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How do you think the rise of no-code tools will impact entrepreneurship? 

It's only going to have a positive effect on entrepreneurship. No-code tools are the ultimate time-saver. I'm all about efficiency. Anything that can help me to get my job done quicker and more effectively is a huge win.