Celebrating 6 Years of Serve Me the Sky Digital
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Serve Me the Sky Digital turns six today! I’m so proud to have been in business for six whole years now. I’ve been a business owner through the COVID pandemic, the death of my mom and grandma, adopting a new dog, getting an ADHD diagnosis, becoming an adjunct professor, and having my first baby. It’s a lot! I’ve learned and grown so much over the past six years.
I’m grateful to all of the amazing clients, friends, and supporters who have cheered me on, sent me referrals, and shared kind words about me and my work. I feel seen and valued, and I hope to make those I work with feel the same way.
My business anniversary is always a good opportunity to reflect, so today I’m sharing some of my favorite projects and experiences from the past year, lessons I’ve learned, and a glimpse at the future of Serve Me the Sky.
Favorite Projects & Experiences
I enjoy working with a core group of retainer clients on a long-term basis; in addition to those partnerships, here are some other projects I loved working on during year six.
Content creation & community management for World Animal Protection Canada
I spent four and a half months working for an animal protection nonprofit to fill a gap while they were hiring for a social media manager. I created a high volume of content each week and answered all their comments and DMs on Facebook and Instagram. Their advocacy work is different from my other nonprofit clients, so it was a fresh, interesting challenge for me to learn about animal welfare issues and create educational, on-brand content for their audience. I leveled up my carousel creation skills and made lots of funny, relevant memes that their audience enjoyed. It was a great experience all around.
Writing for Sprout Social
As a social media consultant, I’ve long relied on the Sprout Social blog for expert social media guidance. I always thought it would be amazing to write for Sprout. In 2025, I decided to shoot my shot. I read several articles on their blog and researched the writers. I connected with one of their freelancers on LinkedIn and sent her a friendly message. She later pointed me toward a post from a colleague at Sprout who was hiring freelancers. I sent my portfolio and got hired for a paid test piece!
Their creative brief and brand guidelines were incredibly detailed and helpful. My piece was for an Australian audience, so it was interesting to research Australian brands and find good examples to include in the article. I’m proud of how the finished piece turned out! You can read it here.
Writing for River Campus Libraries
As a U of R alumna, library trustee, and hype woman for libraries, I was delighted about the opportunity to write a series of web articles for River Campus Libraries. So far, it’s been engaging and enjoyable. I’ve had the chance to interview smart people doing fascinating work and weave their stories into an accessible and compelling narrative. One of my favorites was this article about the Ghent-Bruges Book of Hours. I’m excited to keep sharing the amazing stories coming out of RCL!
Giving a Books Sandwiched In talk
Books Sandwiched In is a Friends & Foundation of the Rochester Public Library program that has been running for nearly 60 years. I was asked to give a talk as part of this iconic series–quite an honor! It was very different from the social media workshops I’m used to leading, but it was a fun challenge. I was asked to speak about Alua Arthur’s book Briefly Perfectly Human, a memoir I love on a topic I’m passionate about. I put a lot of thought and care into how I organized my talk. I explained who the book is and isn’t for, shared themes and insights I loved, and connections to my own lived experience. I had a lot of great conversations with attendees afterwards one-on-one. Clearly we all need more time and space to talk about death openly and honestly!
Social media strategy for a romance author
In the fall, I worked on a social media strategy for a self-published romance author. I enjoyed coming up with creative tactics that she could utilize to get her work in front of her target audience. My strategies always include benchmarking as well, so it was fun to explore romance content on BookTok and Bookstagram as part of my research!
Writing travel articles & editing a travel guide
In the fall, I had the opportunity to work with Visit Rochester on a series of blog posts and Finger Lakes Regional Tourism Council on editing a guide to the Finger Lakes. Rochester content is how I honed my digital marketing and interviewing skills while I ran the I Heart ROC project, so I’m always down to dive into that type of content again. Here is one of the Visit Roc pieces for you to enjoy!
LinkedIn content for Clockwork
This spring, I started working with a web development agency on creative and engaging content for their LinkedIn. I’ve been able to apply a lot of the lessons I learned while working with World Animal Protection Canada (and from my own LinkedIn experiences) to create content that resonates with their target audience. We’ve been sharing a mix of educational carousels, memes, and more. Our engagement rate has been around 22%, remarkably high given that the average LinkedIn engagement rate for companies is about 2-6%.
Talking about gene therapy for babies on Connections with Evan Dawson
This fall and winter, I had a streak of joining Connections with Evan Dawson four times in four months! Most exciting for me was sharing the story of my baby receiving gene therapy before he was even a month old. The first month of his life was a whirlwind, and it felt good to share my perspective in the hopes that it might help other parents navigating something similar in the future. This was the first time I had ever pitched Connections; I had the idea for an episode, asked my baby’s neurologist if he’d be interested in going on the radio with me, suggested the topic to Evan, and filled out the official WXXI form. After the doctors’ participation was approved by URMC, we were good to go!
Dr. Sam mackenzie, me, kate white, evan dawson, & dr. bo lee
I also joined for episodes on Bluesky, Rochester and Western New York’s favorite books of 2024, and the future of libraries. My visit in January was the first time there since they started doing video episodes, and I wound up in an Instagram Reel about Genderqueer that you can watch here.
Teaching another new-to-me course at Nazareth, Writing for Digital Media
I recently completed my second year of teaching at Nazareth University! It’s hard to believe I have four semesters as an adjunct under my belt now. This spring, I taught Writing for Digital Media for the first time. I was frantically finalizing my syllabus in January when norovirus knocked out me and my family for days, but somehow I still came up with course content, assignments, and projects I really loved.
I had several guest speakers throughout the semester (as has become a hallmark for my courses), and students had to write a blog post for a brand they love, write a personal essay about a hobby they enjoy, conduct an audio interview with someone in the industry they hope to work in someday, and create a video that tells the story of something they’re passionate about. Seeing their video and audio projects presented on the last day of class made me proud of them and their creativity.
Lessons Learned
Don’t Put All Your Eggs in One Basket
I’ve always known the classic freelancing/life advice of “don’t put all your eggs in one basket,” but sometimes you have to learn the lesson the hard way. Last September, I cheerfully wrote about how I took 3 months of maternity leave as a freelancer. A few days later, my largest client let me know that my services were no longer needed due to some restructuring that occurred while I was away.
I was devastated. This was a brand I had worked with for three years as part of their digital team. I even worked every holiday, including Christmas day. I try not to let my identity get wrapped up in my work, but I was really proud to work with this client and would eagerly tell people about it. I shared examples from my community management work for them in my classes at Naz. It was a big deal!
Frankly, it hurt to be cut loose so abruptly. They had just sent me a gift when the baby was born in June! This was a great lesson that no matter how loyal you are, or friendly, or excellent at what you do, you are expendable and companies will not be loyal to you at the end of the day.
I spent the rest of the fall hustling hard to find new clients. The reality is that this one client made up a whopping 62% of my income. I won’t let that happen again. I networked constantly, asking for referrals, touching base with past clients, and reaching out to friends. By December, so much work had come in that I was working every night and weekend (ouch) and had my most profitable month of business ever.
It doesn’t make it suck any less that the client let me go, but it felt good to be able to recover from it. And then in December, one of my long-time clients notified me that they lost some grant funding and needed to scale back our work together. Again, it was a reminder that even if you have a great relationship with a client and do wonderful work for them, when times get tough, your work might get cut.
Ignore Red Flags at Your Own Risk
Sometimes I’ve worked with clients that don’t seem like the best fit for me just because I could use the income. We’ve all done it. But ignore those red flags at your own risk. In the first few weeks of one project this fall, I found myself facing red flag after red flag. As our work together approached the planned end date, I made no effort to extend the arrangement, even though it meant foregoing additional income. Sometimes walking away is the best choice you can make.
Work-Life Balance is a Mirage
…especially for parents. And even more so when you’re a work-from-home, self-employed parent with limited childcare. We had no childcare when we first returned to work and quickly realized how naive we’d been to think we could simply pass the baby back and forth and still get our work done as usual. After a few months of chaos and exhaustion, we hired a part-time nanny for about 15 hours a week. During the winter, our nanny was sick for a few stretches and we had no childcare and no backup plan other than scaling back our work and hoping to accomplish as much as possible while the baby napped. It’s been tough.
On top of that, in December when I had so much work come in at once, I had to work during naptimes, evenings, and weekends to get it all done. I felt burned to a crisp by the time I reached the holidays. I took two weeks off at the end of the year, but it’s hard to relax or veg out when you have a baby!
I love that working for myself gives me the flexibility to take my baby for a wagon ride or to the zoo in the middle of the day, but the catch is that it usually results in playing catchup in the evening or on a weekend. It’s hard to believe that back when I started Serve Me the Sky, on slow days I could take a two-hour lunch break and lay on the couch and finish a good book. That feels like a distant memory!
I know that my business ebbs and flows, and that being a parent requires you to be on pretty much constantly. I’m embracing this phase of life and love seeing my kiddo happy and making memories. I’m also looking forward to an era where I will be well rested again. Hopefully. That’s going to happen at some point, right? 😬
Change Things if They’re Not Working for You
I was frustrated with Mailchimp for a long time. I got tons of spam subscribers and it was hard to grow my email list. I ended up pivoting to Substack last fall and am so glad I did! I’ve seen more growth on Substack than I ever did on Mailchimp.
I did my newsletter the same way for years. Like, 5.5 years and no changes. The first month I made a big shift, I wrote about online reactions to the Kylie Kelce x Liquid Death collab… and the VP of Creative at Liquid Death saw my Substack and commented on my LinkedIn post about it!
Don’t be afraid to deviate from the way you’ve always done things.
Keep Investing in LinkedIn & Relationships
I’ve had a lot of content perform well on LinkedIn this year, including a post that went mildly viral about Kendrick Lamar memes after the Super Bowl. If you read enough LinkedIn content (and are chronically online) then you can start to mimic the types of posts you know will do well. That’s exactly what I did with the post about the Kendrick memes–I ranted about them in my Instagram story and turned that into LinkedIn content. I shared examples and insights, and people found it useful and on point. I gained followers and had good conversations.
More importantly than just posting on LinkedIn, though, is personal relationships. Maintaining friendships, both IRL and online, has been the best thing for my business. And I don’t mean that in a cringey, transactional way! People hire people, and knowing people helps you get hired. My work with World Animal Protection Canada was the result of a years-long online friendship. I still haven’t met that friend yet IRL, but maybe someday! And an IRL friendship resulted in my work with the U of R libraries. I’m thankful for the supportive friends who I’ve been lucky enough to work with, and those who refer me to others or tag me when they see relevant opportunities online.
It’s Okay to Let Go
I know we can’t do it all, especially as women and working parents, but it’s really hard to let go sometimes. Since my baby arrived last June, I did not blog every month and I did not send my newsletter every month. No one seemed to notice or mind. It didn’t hurt my ability to get clients, either.
I’m not saying my business blog and Substack aren’t helpful tools for my business–just that it’s not the end of the world to miss a month occasionally. My business blog has been such a useful tool that it even got me noticed by Buffer and included in a great article!
Charge More
Inflation, am I right? Raising your rates can be daunting, but it’s necessary, especially given the current economy. I sent out a few proposals over the past year with rates that made me squirm a little… and they were accepted! Raising my rates was the right thing to do and reflects my value. The cost of everything keeps going up. I am highly experienced and skilled at what I do. I need to charge accordingly.
Looking Ahead
I find myself saying the same things the last few years, but here’s what’s on deck for Serve Me the Sky:
Content writing – I’ve been able to do more writing I love in the past year, and I want to continue doing more of that in the future. AI can generate syntax on a particular topic relying on research that may or may not be accurate. I can conduct lengthy, thoughtful interviews with real humans, ask great questions, unpack complex concepts, and weave everything together into an engaging and moving story. I can research and understand trends and identify relevant examples for a specific audience. Humanity is necessary for telling stories that make people feel something, or for understanding pop culture and humor. AI can be a powerful tool, but it can’t do everything. TL;DR: if you want to hire me for a writing project, please reach out!
Launching a podcast – Last year I put it out into the universe that I’d love to start a podcast. This year, it’s happening! It will be part of the Lunchador Podcast Network. Stay tuned.
Whatever surprises come my way – Being open to new and different opportunities has never led me astray so far! Giving a Books Sandwiched In talk at the library wasn’t on my 2025 bingo card, but it was a great experience. I’m curious to see what the seventh year of Serve Me the Sky has in store for me.
Thanks for celebrating and reflecting with me today! Check out my past recaps here: Celebrating 1 Year | Celebrating 2 Years | Celebrating 3 Years | Celebrating 4 Years | Celebrating 5 Years.
For more self-employment, digital marketing, and social media insights, check out my Substack!
