Erika Heald Knows How To Juggle Multiple Content Businesses

Entrepreneur: Erika Heald

Biz: Erika Heald Consulting, Erika’s Gluten Free Kitchen, City Girl Career, The Content Academy for Operations and Strategy (CA4OS)

Tilt: B2B marketing; gluten-free lifestyle, mentoring marketing professionals

Primary Channel: Consulting – LinkedIn (2.8K); gluten-free blog; mentoring website 

Other Channels: YouTube, consulting website, Instagram (250), Pinterest (300), The Content Entrepreneur book

Time to First Dollar: 1 month

Rev Streams: Consulting, coaching, affiliate marketing, Amazon storefront, sponsorships, webinars, speaking

Our Favorite Actionable Advice

• Create your opportunities: From almost her first day as an office manager at a magazine, Erika Heald started freelance writing to grow her skills. Her stints at full-time jobs over the next 10-plus years gave her the expertise to launch her multiple content businesses.
• Experiment: Erika sets aside four hours weekly to work on her passion projects, including her gluten-free lifestyle blog, and step outside her comfort zone to try something new.
• See work as a profit center: In her full-time days, Erika monetized her employer’s newsletter and websites. She sees content as a profit center. You must think about how content can drive business goals, not just fill space.

The Story of Erika Heald

Erika Heald created newsletters before newsletters were even a thing. 

As a child, she created her first newsletter by cutting and pasting content (on paper!) and sending it to her pals. Even before social media, Erika had built a social network.

An eighth-grade project to show command of the English language led Erike to write a letter to San Diego State University requesting information about their journalism department. “I knew from that moment that I wanted to be a writer,” she says.

Erika earned her journalism degree from San Diego State University in 1994. She wanted to write for a magazine. 

Within a week, Erika secured a job as the office manager for a small magazine and decided to start freelance writing.

She quickly found out how tough it was to make a living as a freelancer when publications only paid $100 for a 1,500-word article.

Ever determined, Erika taught herself web coding and built a website for her employer’s magazine. It landed her the title of online editor and she relied on her trusty AOL dial-up internet connection and sold website advertising.

Erika also got a second job with the San Francisco Guardian to make its content accessible to its online community.

Seeking new challenges in marketing

Erika’s curiosity and drive to learn led her to change jobs frequently. “I would get bored and want to move on,” she says.

In 1997, she became the publications editor of the monthly newsletter for the Northern California Human Resources Association. She began selling advertising space in the newsletter.

“I realized that nobody was approaching these things as a profit center. I went on to create a consultant’s guide where people could pay for better listings. I really just monetized the content,” she says.

Erika added a website, a community, and an email program for the organization.

In 2000, she left for a job with Charles Schwab, handling web-related marketing and content on the institutional side of the business. In 2003, she left to freelance before landing full-time work at United Health Group and eventually returning to Schwab, later having stints at Achievers and Anaplan. 

In 2015, Erika next ended up at Highwire PR as the head of content and attended her first Content Marketing World conference. These two experiences marked a turning point in her career.

Becoming a full-time content entrepreneur

Highwire and CMW helped Erika realize that she “did not want to ever work in another company where I was an employee.”

So in 2017, Erika launched Erika Heald Consulting to help businesses create effective, revenue-driven content strategies.

“I was very deliberate in marketing myself as a consultant. I don’t want to execute without a strategy. If there is no strategy in place, it’s just random acts of content. I want to have an impact on the business. I want content to be a growth and innovation engine as well as a profit center,” she explains.

At noon PT on Mondays, Erika hosts the #ContentChat podcast on LinkedIn Live to explore emerging content trends and field questions from the audience. The podcast serves as a lead magnet for clients and establishes Erika as a leader in the industry.

Erika’s main revenue generator is her consulting work. Her services encompass nine areas. Erika also monetizes her expertise through workshops, webinars, and speaking engagements.

Always looking for the next opportunity led Erika to start her second content business, City Girl Career, to help people figure out a professional path in content. She sells one-on-one coaching packages that include an audit of the client’s branding.

Erika also started a third content business, Erika’s Gluten-free Kitchen, a blog dedicated to gluten-free recipes, tips, and lifestyle advice. Initially a personal project to relearn baking and cooking after being diagnosed with gluten intolerance, the blog quickly grew in popularity. 

The blog has an email component to it, as well as affiliate marketing links. Erika operates an Amazon storefront highlighting the best deals on gluten-free finds and the ingredients in her recipes. Her audience can also use Instacart, which automatically fills their Instacart with all the ingredients needed for a recipe. Erika also sells sponsorships if a brand or partner reaches out.

Erika says the blog allows her to experiment with content and marketing strategies and gives her an outlet for her writing and creativity in creating content.

(Erika also authored a chapter in the collaborative Tilt Publishing book, The Content Entrepreneur.)

Starting the fourth content business

Erika says she has a portfolio career – lots of experiences and positions often occurring simultaneously.

So, it’s no surprise she is adding a fourth initiative with entrepreneurs Pamela Muldoon and Carmen Hill. The Content Academy for Operations and Strategy (CA4OS) helps content professionals feel less isolated and elevate their content, strategy, and role in the B2B business realm. They offer a content maturity assessment, newsletter, resource library, and hands-on workshops.

Advice for content entrepreneurs

Erika offers the following advice for content entrepreneurs:

• Find people who love to collaborate with and figure out what you can do better together. The connections you make can open doors and create opportunities you never expected.
  
  This was part of the impetus behind Erika launching CAOS. Erika, Pamela, and Carmen knew that what they brought together as a collective was replicable and, most importantly, they loved working together. 

• Recognize that being a content entrepreneur is hard. You have to continually educate yourself. That mindset helped Erika stay ahead of industry trends and avoid burnout. Don’t get caught up in the daily grind of running your content business.