Janet Shaughnessy Transcribe Anywhere.com Janet Shaughnessy is the owner of Zoom Transcription and the founder/lead instructor at Transcribe Anywhere, the USA s finest transcription education available. If you ve ever wanted to work from home and pursue your own business destiny, she can help and inspire you. Janet will teach you the marketable skill of transcription the art of turning audio recording to text. Your course will include real-world practice dictations and plenty of personal help from Janet, Marsha, fellow students, and supportive graduates. Caitlin: Hey, everybody. I m here with Janet Shaughnessy. She is the founder and creator of TranscribeAnywhere.com, and she is also the owner of Zoom Transcription Services. And after running Zoom Transcription for over ten years and offering training to general, legal, and medical transcriptionists, Janet decided to take her award-winning training to the next and best level with TranscribeAnywhere.com. Now, the course has evolved from Janet s own notes that she used to train new hires in her very own business, so Janet doesn t just talk the talk of a successful transcription business, people. She has walked the walk and is walking the walk to this day. So welcome, Janet. Thanks so much for joining us. How are you this morning? Janet: I m fine. How are you? Caitlin: Good, good. So we re just going to hop right into it. Janet: It s good to be here. It s exciting. Caitlin: Is it raining there? You re in New York, and I m in Florida. Janet: Yeah, it is. Caitlin: It s raining in Florida too, although we have a little bit of sun I can see out my window. Well, I m so glad that we re here. We re going to get right into it. We have a lot to cover and a lot of value to provide for people watching this, so I m super excited about it. So how let s do a little background. How did you get started in transcription because we want to just show people who are watching that you actually know your stuff? So how did you get started? Janet: Actually, I learned how to transcribe when I was still in high school, which is just a few years ago. [laughs] It was a while ago. And then, through the years, I ve had many different careers, but most of them did involve some aspect of transcription. So I was doing that, and then there was a point in my life where we hit hard times. My husband became disabled. He couldn t work anymore, and then the other shoe dropped, and I lost my job because the company I worked for closed. And I needed to spend time with him. At the time, we were taking him all over to all different doctors and all these things. I ll try to make this
as short as possible. Anyway, long story short I had to sit down and think, what the heck can I do from home that will allow me to have the time to do these things that I need to do to help him and blah, blah, blah? And transcription I can do transcription. I can quit and Caitlin: Yeah. I know that that s how we yeah, you and me are preaching to the choir, and probably anybody who s watching this is probably like, yeah, I ve had that exact same moment where I was like, I need to make money from home because X, Y, and Z is keeping me from going to a traditional job. Yeah. Janet: Exactly. It just didn t fit with my life anymore. I couldn t do it. So that s what I did. I think I started searching online for transcription jobs and signed up several companies and built my own clientele and built my own business and then, went on from there. Caitlin: Yeah. So let s talk about Janet: Didn t happen overnight I m not going to say it happened overnight. I worked very hard. I want people to know that. I did work hard. There were times in the beginning where this might be a slight exaggeration, but not too much of one I swear I existed on naps because I had to work, and I did. Probably not as much as I did, but I did. But I think they were just that it isn t easy, but the blessings are many once you get to the other side. Yeah. Caitlin: Yeah, for sure. Well, the overlying theme for everything that we re about here Work-At-Home School is in existence to help people learn skills, and from your story, it s clear you put in the hard work, and that s what we re all about. There s no getting rich quick. There s no secret to success. It s simply learning skills and the more skills you learn, the more money you can earn. That s basically what it comes down to. I just realized we didn t even really define what transcription is. So some people maybe heard of it, maybe they think it s just typing. So what is transcription, and what do you do in it? Janet: There are a lot of misconceptions out there. We re not typing monkeys, okay? It s not just simply listen and type. It is at its core, but there are so many skills that come into it. I mean, you have to have a firm grasp of English grammar and punctuation. You really do. You need to, of course, know how to type. You do need a computer. You do need an internet connection. But transcription is taking audio or video and turning it into a text document. And within that, you need to make it a readable, clear text document, and people don t always speak that way. In fact, we often don t. I know I don t. So, yes, it s a skill, and it s also an art. And you have to learn how to handle situations that bad audio, accents, things like that. Caitlin: Yeah, absolutely. What you said is true, about it being an art. Language is an art. I remember being in school, and it wasn t English class, it was Language Arts. So anytime you re working with English language, you realize that that s an art form, and it s not just typing words that you hear. You actually have to make those words make sense, and whoever transcribes our video is going to be able to see that. I guess what we re going to talk
about next is the demand of transcription. I can be the first person to say that there is a demand for transcription. There is people out here creating products and courses. I have a transcriptionist that I got from Janet s course, actually. He helps me transcribe any interview I do. This interview is going to be transcribed most likely by him as well. And I know the power of transcription, and the reason why transcription is so prolific now is because everything s in text, right Janet? We could do a video, but nobody s going to be able to find it unless Google, which makes an index of all these words, can actually find those words. So they re never going to find this video unless they re typing in words that are found in the video, and that s why transcription is so valuable. Janet: Exactly. That s such a common misconception too, that people just don t realize that. And there s so much video and content being created these days for both general and legal transcriptionists. We teach both of them. More and more courts on the legal side are going to audio recordings. Yes, there s still a need for court reporters because what if the audio fails? They have to have been there, but then it frees the court reporter up to take on more jobs, which pay her more money to then just have a transcriptionist transcribe the legal proceedings. And legal transcriptionists work in other areas too. And then, general encompasses everything other than medical or legal, so they can be marketers, podcasters, academia, just anything. We work in so many fields. Caitlin: Yeah. Anybody who needs text online which is literally every company on earth right now has need for text, and with the explosion of video on the internet, video and audio people want to watch videos. I don t know if you ve been scrolling through Facebook recently, but everything is a video, and all those videos need to have text to accompany them, and so that s why you would send a video like this one or a video like a promotional video of any kind. If you re a company that has promo videos, you would have those transcribed so people can read. I know I m a reader. I teach proofreaders, so a lot of people are readers, and they want to read instead of watch videos. I cannot stand it when I go out to a podcast or somebody s blog post and it s not a blog post. It s a video. And it s like, oh, this video will explain what s going on. Well, I don t want to put in my headphones and watch this thing. I want to read in five minutes what you have to say in twenty minutes. I m kind of a speed-reader, so I can get the gist of stuff. Janet: I m exactly the same way. Caitlin: I m so appreciative when they take the time to have it transcribed, and I m not talking about just show notes for a podcast or a summary. I want the whole thing transcribed, so I don t miss anything. So I know firsthand how valuable transcription is. We talked a little bit about the difference between general and legal transcription, and this work is really flexible. You really only need you mentioned the internet connection and a computer. What other equipment do you need to actually do the work? Janet: Some type of headset which we re both wearing them now, so almost everyone has one already.
Caitlin: They re cheap, too. Janet: Yeah. They re very cheap. And a foot pedal is optional. I prefer to use one. That s the way I learned. A lot of transcriptionists do, but I m finding more and more that people really newbies who haven t transcribed before, are perfectly fine not using a foot pedal. So that s optional. Caitlin: Yeah. What does the foot pedal do, for those who don t know? Janet: It controls the playback of the audio or video so that you can start and stop it. Caitlin: It keeps your hands free, so you don t have to stop. Yeah, I love that. Janet: Right. You never have to take your hands off the keyboard. You just keep going, yeah. Caitlin: I imagine that can be a little bit of a learning curve, where you re typing and you have to learn to use your foot along with your hands, right? But once you get it, it s probably like second nature? Janet: Oh, yeah. Totally. And when I don t have my foot pedal, like if I m working from a hotel or somewhere traveling, and I only I don t carry it around because it s kind of heavy. I ll just bring my laptop and use the hotkeys, and my foot s still going [doing foot pedal motions] Caitlin: Oh, wow. Janet: controlling my imaginary foot pedal because I m so used to that s how second nature it is. Caitlin: Yeah, that s funny. It s like yeah, I can imagine that. So you do travel and you take your work with you. I know just recently you said that you were on a little bit of a vacation, and you just bring your laptop. So it is really flexible. It s ideal for really like moms or working from home. It s somebody who s traveling, and they re a digital nomad. That s kind of a cool thing now, these digital nomads. As a side hustle, this is really flexible, and you can do the work at any time, right? If you re up in the middle of the night and you can t sleep, and you have a job say you re the one transcribing this video, for example you can do it anytime, right? Janet: That s me. Yeah. I prefer to work at night. I m not a nine-to-five person. I m not a morning person. So, yeah, and for people who have children or other people that they need to take care of or even a part-time job, as just a part-time job doing it whenever. Yeah. As long as you meet your deadlines. You always have to keep customer service in mind, but yeah,
whenever is convenient for you and however is convenient for you. Laptop and headset and software there is transcription software too. Caitlin: Yeah. So let s talk about that a little bit. What s the main software that people use to transcribe what they re working on? Janet: Express Scribe is by far the favorite of almost every transcriptionist, and it s $39 when it s not on sale. Really, it s like Caitlin: That is so cheap. Janet: I know. It used to be free when I first started, totally free. Now, it s $39 when it s not on sale, and it s usually 50% off. The expense Caitlin: Oh my gosh. And that s only one-time or do you have to pay it every year? Janet: No, one-time. Caitlin: Oh my gosh. That s unheard of in the world of software as a service. You have to pay every month for everything now, even Netflix. So imagine that s huge value to pay one-time, $40 bucks, and then you get to use it. Janet: They ll probably change. Hopefully, they re not watching this and thinking of changing to a subscription method. Caitlin: Oh my gosh. Fingers crossed. Knock wood. Janet: It s Microsoft, you do need word processing software as well. Caitlin: Okay. So Microsoft Word could you use Google Docs? Janet: You can, but I wouldn t really recommend it only because, in the business world, it s a Microsoft work world. I mean, it really is. So, that s worth now, even with the subscription model, I believe $6.99 a month. So even if you didn t buy the hard copy which they re going to do eventually, switch us all over to the subscription model anyway. They are. Really you start a business for $39 and $6.99 a month? I mean, really think about that when you have no overhead or expense. It s Caitlin: That s probably the biggest draw. Yeah. I just mentioned Google Docs. And I just remembered that the last time I worked with Jim the transcriptionist that I got from you, from Transcribe Anywhere I asked him to put it in Google Docs, actually. Because he would send me the.docx, and I have a Mac, so I don t have I have Microsoft Word, but it s like the 2008 version, and I don t want to pay monthly, so I use Google Docs for everything. So I d been opening and opening it in Google Docs anyway, so I m like, Can you just put it
in Google Docs, and send me a link? So it s kind of going that way too just depends. Janet: It may be going that way too, and that s free. So that would be wonderful. Caitlin: I love it. Janet: It would. And well, you re advanced, Caitlin, and you know how to use everything, but many of our clients don t. No, they truly don t. And I m not insulting them in that way, but they really don t, so they re not even aware it s out there. Caitlin: Yeah. You have to know what your client wants. I guess that s a good piece of advice then, from you is to just make sure you know what your client wants and where they re at, and ask them what their preferences are. That s what Jim did really well. He was really good. He asked me how you want me to deliver the files. He asked me all the pertinent questions which I know he learned from you, so I know that your course has worked. I was just super impressed with him, and so yeah, definitely a testament to how well you can teach people. We talked about what the demand is like worldwide. Everybody uses transcription because not everybody s going to sit there and type out the script for their own video or listen and do it themselves. They might, but I highly doubt it because they re off doing other things and wanting to do what they re best at, and not everybody is good at typing what they say. So let s talk about earning potential. How much can you earn as a transcriptionist, both as a beginner and then as you get better? We ll talk about as a beginning transcriptionist, how much you can earn, and then, as you move on. Janet: Okay. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, a general transcriptionist can earn $45,000 per year, a legal transcriptionist, $65,000. Caitlin: Wow. Janet: Wow. Yeah. It is good, totally possible, and I far surpassed that. However, you re not going to start there. I don t want to mislead anyone. It does take a while to build up a clientele, to build up your business. But I think a beginning transcriptionist now should expect to we all get paid per hour, and we get into that in the courses how to charge for your services and all of that. But if I had to break it down, you re probably starting in the $15 to $20 an hour range. Caitlin: That s really good. My first job was well, my first official job out of college was $12 an hour, and I did not get to work from home. I had to commute there 40 minutes each way, and I didn t get to get paid for that, and I had to sit at a desk from 8:00 to 5:00, and the best hours of my day. I didn t get to work at night if I wanted to even though that s what I d probably be doing. So, yeah, changing world Janet: Exactly. Yeah. I thought I was being paid well in my career, and I suppose I was, but it s not like working for yourself. No. It s just not the same.
Caitlin: Yeah. There are some ups and downs, of course. They say that the business owns you and but if you love what you do, and you have that freedom, there s really nothing better than having that freedom to just do what you want, whenever you want, and meet your deadlines. You have to be I find they re like, how do you stay motivated to actually do the work? I m like, well, if I don t do the work, I m not going to get paid. And so, that motivates me. I m like, I got this work to do. I got a transcript to proofread, or I have a transcript to do or to transcribe or an audio to transcribe if you re in transcription or whatever skill you do, you ll want to get that work done, so you can make that client happy, so you can continue to grow your business. When it s your business that you re growing, it is so much more motivating than just like, oh well Janet: It s a whole different mindset. You re not playing on Facebook when you know you re depending on you to make money. Caitlin: Yeah. You see the goal, and the goal is to not finance your boss Escalade. It s to build a business that creates freedom for you, and so that s where you get the motivation. I think a lot of people had asked me that question who were working a regular job. Like how because they re thinking that they d be doing the same thing that they re doing now at home. I m like, no, you re building something that is an asset for you, not for somebody else, so including your clientele and stuff. So what s required in terms of so we talked about equipment. We know what s required to actually do the work. We talked about it being more than just typing. What other characteristics, I guess you would say, are required to be actually successful in this type of business, in transcription? Janet: Well, I think you just hit on the most important one, is to realize that it is a business. Okay. And you are the owner of that business, and therefore, you re responsible for the output and the outcome, so that s self-motivating in itself. And also, to realize to get there takes work it takes work. You re going to have to train. You have to make a commitment to training and practice to be the best you can be. And if you re not willing to put your the only people who fail or aren t successful I won t even say fail are those who quit. Success can be just around the corner, and, oh, this is too hard or whatever. No, it isn t just hang in there. You ll get it. It does take work, so you have to be able to be self-disciplined to do that, to get through the rough part and come out the other side. Caitlin: It s so true. The only a lot of people who think they ve failed at something haven t failed at all. They just gave up, or maybe they never got started. It didn t pan out. I m like, you decided to stop. You decided to not keep going and keep pursuing that, and maybe you decided to not do it because you didn t like it, and that s one thing. But if you really want to do it and you feel like you failed at it, you have not failed. You ve only given up, or you ve stalled out or whatever, and you can always start back up again. Yeah. And there s really I tell my students there s no failure, there s only learning, and there s only stepping stones to your next success, and you have to be willing to put in the work. Nobody I mean you can probably vouch for it too I know that I wouldn t be where I am today if I hadn t spent the
time to master my first skill. It all starts with one skill just the same way it starts with one client. It starts with that one skill, with that one client, and it branches out from there. You don t wake up one day and become a successful business owner. Am I right? You have to be willing to start and I think it s proliferated by we get so much marketing, especially on Facebook, from people that are trying to tell you like, here s the secret to success. Here s the shortcut. Here s exactly what I did to make $15,000 a day. Janet: Yeah. Push this button and look. Yeah, not true. Caitlin: Yeah. And I run in the opposite direction. I wouldn t support those ads. I m like, nobody got anywhere successful without a lot of hard work first, and you have to be willing to do it, but knowing that every bit of effort counts, and it s going to add up. It s like compounding interest in a bank account. You have to keep putting in effort, like 1% every day, put 1% more effort in and improving yourself to get to that 1% every day, and it compounds over time. Skills are something that can never be taken away from you. Janet: And your confidence builds because some people do feel maybe a little beat up in the beginning, or oh, I can t do this, and yeah, you can. Just stick with it, stick with it. You ll get it. You ll get it. Caitlin: Yeah. I know you teach your students, as well as I, that the confidence doesn t come overnight. The confidence comes in mastering the skill. But if you think you re going to have confidence from the very beginning it s like when I went to personal training school years ago, I almost didn t go because I m like, well I don t know how to be a personal trainer, like I didn t want to even go, right? Janet: Panic attack, I know. I know, yeah. Caitlin: I was there to learn to become a personal trainer, and when I learned, I became a lot more confident because I knew what I was doing. But if you go into something thinking like, I m going to suck at this, or I m going to fail at this because I don t know how to do this, like, that s why you learn. That s why you invest in programs and in Work-At-Home School to learn. So who is not a good fit for transcription? I like to talk about who is a good fit, and who s not a good fit. Janet: Well, it isn t for everybody. Okay? If you are I don t want to say not self-motivated, but I don t really know a better term to put it. If you re not going to put in the work I ll just say that or willing to do that, then it s not going to work for you. If you don t want to work from home believe it or not, there are some people who want a job. They feel there s security. I think it s a false sense of security, but anyway, there s security in having a job, and they re afraid. It s fear. Fear s a blocker of many things. I don t want this to come off prejudiced in any way. It s not. But and this is only relatable to my courses but if you re not a native English speaker, I wouldn t suggest that you take my course because the English language is insane. It s hard enough for us. I just find that it s so difficult. We have a few
exceptions. There are some people who are multilingual, and they re quick at all of them, but it s going to be difficult. I want to be really honest about that. It s not because I think we re better or anything. In fact, I just think it s too hard for me to teach you. That s the truth, you know? Other than that I mean, the other things I think can be learned. You ll get faster. The more you practice, you ll get faster. So, yeah, you have to be comfortable working from home. You have to it s kind of working without a safety net in the beginning. You kind of feel that way. You have to be willing to take that leap. If you re not willing, you re not a good fit. Caitlin: Yeah. And that s, I think, where the community comes in. You have a great Facebook group where people are collaborating with each other and letting people know what they re struggling with and stuff like that. So you can actually and, of course, talk to you about you don t just Janet: Yes. I m there every day. Marsha is there every day. But it s really the group. It s such a great, supportive group of people. I really love our students. We really have such a good group. Yeah, a really good time. Caitlin: Me too. Me too. And we can talk a little bit about the false sense of job security. I am such a huge fan of working for myself and upskills, and the overlying theme for Work- At-Home School is mo skills, mo money, right? And that s the real job security in your skills. Nobody can take skills away from you. So I totally agree with you. There s a lot of people out there who are just conditioned. I was one of those people conditioned to think that a real job is what s going to get you security and success Janet: We all were. Caitlin: and money and the dream or whatever, but they can take it away from you at any time. And especially if you working for the same company for 30 years, 40 years, that s not a thing anymore. Companies are getting smart to that. They re saying hey, it s cheaper to hire somebody fresh out of college and pay them a third of what you re making, so we re going to fire you. And you re out on your own, and you worked for the company 20, 25 years already, and you only know how to do that job. I ve had a lot of students come my way telling me that that is what they re facing, and they need to get back into they need to make some money. They need to learn some skills because they ve done the same thing. Or moms have a lot of skills as parents, you know. I m not a mom yet myself although I have a dog. So I m a dog mom, and Janet s a dog mom too. Janet: [laughs] Buffett! Caitlin: It takes a little less skill than being a kid mom, I think. But anyway a lot of moms, they re doing the same thing for 16, 17, 18 years, and then they re like, I need to start making some money, or they re trying to make money to save for their kid s college, if they re going to be going to college and whatnot. And they need skills, and so they re trying
to go find a part-time job, and I m like, oh, you re going to make $10, $12 bucks an hour. But if you invest in yourself to actually learn skills, to learn marketing skills, to learn a marketable skill like transcription or proofreading or virtual-assisting, whatever skills that you can learn in the Work-At-Home School, then you can branch out from there. It all starts with one skill. So I learned proofreading, and I branched out into blogging, writing, creating online courses, marketing, networking, all kinds of different skills, and now I have a multimillion dollar media company. It s just I didn t wake up like that. If I had woken Janet: Oh, amazing! Caitlin: up one day and I said, hey, today I m going to start a multi-million-dollar media company, I would probably be living under a bridge right now. Right? Janet: That was so true. Caitlin: But it just started with proofreading, and now we won t get into I didn t even have the mindset that that was possible for me. I thought I would be a proofreader until I was 80, that I would never be able to retire, and I had no concept of the true capacity of my brain. So I think that s really cool that you re teaching that to your students as well, that it starts with a skill, and then you can branch out from there. A lot of your students are starting with general transcription and then adding legal transcription. Some of them have even come over to Proofread Anywhere and learning proofreading, and there s just so much overlap because Janet: Yep. And they re becoming writers and bloggers. Like their eyes are opening up to the whole world out there, so it s really exciting. Caitlin: One cool thing that transcriptionists can do, actually, is they transcribe something, and then they can upsell the person that gave them the job and say, hey, would you like me to turn this into a blog post for you? Then it s not just a transcript, it s like you can actually create different things out of it. You can create an ebook out of a Janet: You can create a lot of yes. All of these videos should be a book. I ve done that. Yes. Absolutely. Caitlin: Yeah. That s a way that you can upsell your services and work with it s just you can go so much more in-depth after transcription, but it starts with just that one skill. So I would encourage anybody watching this who s interested in using your typing skills, your language skills they want to start with something like transcription to look into what Janet offers. And I want to thank Janet for coming on and sharing your expertise, and thank you for tuning in. If you re interested in transcription, we have some links on this page. You can either click this link below the page, on this page, to learn more about Janet and her resources over at Transcribe Anywhere. Or you can actually get access to level one of General Transcription / Theory and Practice, which is a $127 value along with a ton of
additional resources to build your income from home, all for one low price at Work-At-Home School and you can do that by investing in the Competent Package or the Committed Package within the school here. The buttons for that are right here on this page as well. I want to thank you again, Janet, so much. And I hope whoever s watching, you have found this interview as inspiring and motivating as I did. I know I love working with transcriptionists in my business, and as soon as we re getting done with this video, I m going to send it to a transcriptionist to transcribe. So until next time, guys, bye! Janet: Bye. Thank you. Thank you, Caitlin.