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Andy: This is Freelance Advisor. Hello everyone and welcome to Episode 22 of Freelance Advisor and today I am talking to Darren Fell about drumming up business.

Hello everyone I am with Darren Fell and today we are going to talk about how freelancers should go about drumming up business, marketing, and getting started. Darren actually one of the first things that I wanted talk about, because I know we’re going to cover personal branding in another show, so we’ll sort of leave that aside for today. What are some of the things a brand new freelancer should do to drum business? Because in my day, it would have been to go straight to an agency, I’m just wondering if that’s changed. I mean I was freelancing in the 90s.

Darren Fell: Yes, it’s changed a bit out there. The personal brand that we’re going to talk about next episode is all about having your own website. Having a reasonable website, not going overboard with it, making sure you’re set up online so people can easily find you, Linkedin all of that. So anyway, we’ll cover that next.

But the world has changed out there. And what the point of this podcast is, is to instil in you freelancers out there, is to get your sales hat on. You’ve got to get into sales mode to bring in business because this is the life blood of a business. And if you don’t bring in the sales or don’t at least dedicate some time out of your day or out of your week to sell, you aren’t going to make the business work. And you’ll be back as – sorry to be impolite, a wage slave, working full-time for somebody and maybe not enjoying it as much as this great life of being a freelancer.

Andy: Now it’s interesting actually because I remember when I was a freelancer and I am not a sales person and I survived really because of the agency I was working through. But I get the impression that things are little bit different today. What would you say to all those people out there, who are just not salesy, but yet they’ve got to sell themselves?

Darren Fell: Yes, that’s an interesting one because I suppose I am salesy and my job over all the past businesses that I’ve set up has been turning maybe non-salesy people with enthusiasm into sales people. And anybody, I can promise you, can be a sales person. You’ve just got to get the psyche right. Don’t think “I hate sales people and I wouldn’t dream – I don’t want to be a sales person.” You’ve got to be a sales person. Everybody is selling all of the time. So one of the first things I do, if they’re really not getting it is, I want you to go away and read a really good sales book.

Now back in my original days of Pure 360.com, I had been a strategic sales person for cold internet, doing long sales cycle, multi-million pound hosting deals across Europe. And I started up here and I’d forgotten – and it’s amazing, I’d actually forgotten the basics of selling.

And I know that sounds silly because in that world, back in the height of the dot-com boom, it was all hoity-toity and wining and dining and “Yes, of course you need 100,000 co-location spots in Berlin and Hamburg and Zurich and Paris” and all of those points. But the life of a freelancer is selling consultancy, often programming skills, graphic design or it could be building things. Say, even if you’re a tradesman listening, you’re offering a great skill. So that’s the core offering.

Andy: So could you recommend any good books then Darren?

Darren Fell: Yes. The one I always recommend is Richard Denny’s ‘Selling to Win’ book. It is the most basic of basic sales books out there. And if you’re still not feeling the salesy feel, a few minutes into this podcast, then get into the feeling. This book – just get it from Amazon. It’s next to nothing. Let’s have a look, it’s £9.99. It’s the best tenner you have ever spent in terms of knowing how to generate or learning how to generate business. And it starts off right from the beginning.

Andy: Actually you’re not an affiliate are you for this book? (Laughter) Maybe you should be.

Darren Fell: No. I should be actually. I have bought so many copies for sales people, it’s amazing and now in Crunch, all of the sales people are given this book. But just to give you a starting point. And everything I’ve instilled, I’ve almost got it in my psyche in every business I set up and of course when I am helping other entrepreneurs and other freelancers, I follow the same process when I do the seminars. And there’s going to be a lot of seminars going on this year in 2010, Drumming up Business; Sales Tactics for Freelancers, where I spend far, far more time with 50, 60, 80 people in a room really, really helping them.

But you start off with sheer simplicity. Tell everybody about what you do.

Andy: This is more along the lines of networking isn’t it?

Darren Fell: Sort of, sort of. But I know it sounds strange. The newsagent, mum, dad, aunty, nan, sisters, brothers, friends. They may look at you a little bit oddly when you start going, “Look I’m a podcasting expert I’ve got this great new business. We record people and it creates another marketing channel for them” or “I’ve just set up a graphic design business, I’m fed up of working for the agency I’ve been working for, for 15 years and this is what I do.” And I can honestly say – that’s the first point that Richard Denny will come out with. It works. I have had some fantastic leads from mum. Mum has turned in to be my – well mums are always very supportive of sons.

Andy: What, your mum?

Darren Fell: My mum has literally – she will tell people, back in the email marketing days, what I did then and that person’s said, “Oh Lynn’s son’s doing so-and-so” and maybe their son is actually a marketer for a big dot.com site. So I’ve got emails through from these people. So yes, “I’ve heard from my mum who spoke to your mum, that you do email marketing. I’ve looked at your site and it looks fantastic, can you tell me more about it.” And we’ve gone on to demo the product, quote and win the service.

So I can honestly say, just always be in a sales mode. Every single time you’re out talking to people. It doesn’t have to come across as “Oh my God I’m a sales person, I’m selling now.” No you’re not, you’re just enthusiastic and passionate about what you do. And that overrides anything coming across as salesy. Like a double glazing sales person comes across very scripted and very robotic like. This is not what it’s about. You are a freelancer for your own business so you can come across with a passion. You believe passionately in your skills. You can do a brilliant job. Far better than agencies for a tenth of the price.

Andy: I think enthusiasm is the key though. You mentioned enthusiasm. And I think in my mind, if you’re enthusiastic enough about what you do, that carries so much weight. Because it’s infectious isn’t it? Enthusiasm is infectious. If you’re just talking to someone about something that you do and they can see that you’re enthusiastic about it. They’re probably going to want to do business with you.

Darren Fell: Yes absolutely. So just carry on that note, I do talk to lots of people and you know; I’m not going to lean over on a train and go, “Do you know what I do?” But if you strike up conversation and you’re getting on with people, why not drop it in. “This is what I do, here’s my card.” That’s that persistent – and you go back to that word you use, networking. It is effectively networking but you’re marketing yourself everywhere you possibly can.

Andy: What about established freelancers. Is there a difference there in way that they should approach, perhaps if they want to increase sales or get more clients? Is there a difference in their approach, different perhaps to how a new freelancer would approach it?

Darren Fell: Well I think the classic is, and I brought this up right at the beginning. And this is what I see with brilliant freelancers out there. They are so good at what they do, they know they’re good at what they do. That’s all they want to do. They don’t want to sell really if they can help it. It’s a bane, it’s a pain. So what I see is maybe the initial perfect time management skills of, “Yes, I’m going to spend two hours a day calling up people.” It doesn’t have to cold calling, it can be friends of friends of friends; other people you’ve worked with in the past and keep calling.

So you see that two hours a day or the one day a week or the two days a week, specifically for selling get encroached by work, which is absolutely brilliant. But what that freelancer completely forgets about is that it’s so enjoyable, I’ve got all this work on, suddenly it dries up. And so the other thing I was going to mention here is about control and management of your sales contacts.

Andy: Yes, I was going to ask about software actually. Is there good software to use?

Darren Fell: Yes, absolutely. There’s stacks and stacks of stuff out there. I started off with Act. It’s a really painful, sorry Sage, painful application but for a one person business it does the job. There is an online version which is better.

Andy: I used to use Act as well.

Darren Fell: Now Highrise which is one of the Basecamp offerings.

Andy: Yes.

Darren Fell: I’ve not used it.

Andy: I’ve heard good reports about it.

Darren Fell: Yes, I don’t know if you can actually put the figures in. But what you’ve got to do is every opportunity, record it. Keep on top of it. Put the amount in. When is that likely to drop? This is sales terminology. When are you going to close that deal? And always be very conservative on it because it never drops when you think it’s going to drop. So maybe add ten days, maybe add a month to it.

And then with the right piece of software, you can look at your year and go “Oh my God, that doesn’t even pay for the mortgage in June, July and August. What do I need to do to actually get business closed there or close business before hand?” So you actually can ride yourself through those months. And in fact if you do a really good job, you can do what the ultimate, which us freelancers like to do, is like “I’m going to go on a month’s holiday or six weeks holiday.” I mean how beautiful is that?

But you’ve got to manage the pipeline and have all that business dropping. But see it and application’s are brilliant out there. Have a look, I mean I haven’t done research. At Crunch we’ve moved over to one I always wanted back at Pure, but was unaffordable. I’ve now got a really good price for it per user is Sales Force. And a freelancer can get Sales Force it’s anything up to £65 a month. It’s a lot of money, but you can get reductions for it if you get more users on it. And it’s the ultimate package. But in reality for a one person business, you don’t need anything as comprehensive as that. That’s required for a bigger sales team like at Crunch.

Andy: So Act might be enough?

Darren Fell: I think Act or Highrise, as long as it’s got the ability to record it. Me as a sales person, you think you could hold a lot of these figures in your head. I’m going to close £2,000 of business, next month I’m going to do four the following month. Keep on top of it, because the other thing to go on to the next point is to keep touch points. And I’m using other salesy…

Andy: What’s a touch point?

Darren Fell: Well I think that’s the right thing, that’s a thing that I’d come up with as a sales person. Is, I need to keep in front of that customer. So if that business is likely to drop in four months. I want to have made sure I’ve had a good enough reason to talk to that customer in between. So it could be I’ve got in the press. It may have been I swam on Christmas Day in the sea “Look at me” but it’s humorous, it’s business.

It’s any reason – and again this is where you don’t want to come across too salesy, these touch points are “I’m still here, don’t forget about me” because this is the classic where freelancers are so busy and they go “Yes I got that business in August.” And they finally get to August 1st, “Right I’m here Mr Customer ready to do it.” “Oh I’m really sorry Dave, someone else gave me a call and I really forgot about what we’d spoken about” and you are absolutely kicking yourself.

Andy: You’ve got to remain in their psyche haven’t you?

Darren Fell: Exactly.

Andy: You’ve got to remain in their consciousness. Keep in touch.

Darren Fell: Yes.

Andy: I find Christmas is always a good way to do that.

Darren Fell: Christmas cards?

Andy: No, just after Christmas. I hope you had a great Christmas and New Year, just emailing you to see how things are going.

Darren Fell: Yes of course you can.

Andy: Or Easter. Any excuse.

Darren Fell: Of course you can. But I think that is the thing I use because it is less obvious. They know what you’re doing but if there is a reason to mention something or it’s something in the Tech Press that they might be interested in.

Andy: Yes, I saw this and thought of you.

Darren Fell: Yes, so the other thing of course you find with sales people naturally is they want to find out more about you. It’s a personal sale. Don’t just think you’re just selling a skill and that skill is being bought. If you’re very technical, try and get as personal as you can. Like, “Oh you’ve got children, brilliant, yes my children are in at that school as well” or “Your wife does kick boxing, yes so does mine, yes I have to be really nice to her every evening.” (Laughter)

And you just get in on a personal level and that’s the first thing I do. Then that allows you more – the touch points, before the deal actually drops. “Yes, this happened, how’s it all going with you.” Because otherwise with your – I’m sure you’ve got loads of other ways of keeping in touch with them.

Andy: Oh there’s millions.

Darren Fell: Otherwise it’s just once a year isn’t it? “How was your Christmas?” (Laughter)

Andy: Yes, “How was your Spring?” So Darren you conveniently avoided answering the question about agencies there. What’s your view on agencies?

Darren Fell: I did actually didn’t I? I’m sorry about that. Agencies – I suppose I conveniently avoided agencies because I believe the sale can be done directly and you can build up a far better relationship with customers. The trouble with agencies is that it falls into contracting mode. You just go there, you do the job and you leave. You’re not invited to any of the parties often. You’re not invited to Christmas party often. I know this is different, so that falls for me into the world of contracting and that’s a perfectly acceptable world. But I think all of us would love to actually build up our own Client base that will come back again and again and use us.

So agencies have a perfect place out there. If that’s what you would like to do, is go contracting at locations or working from home through an agency, it’s perfectly fine. In which case, you need to go into sales mode for the agencies and get yourself near perfect for them to sell you. Obviously, they’re going to take big cut out of your hourly daily rate, which is probably why I was avoiding it, because I like being direct to the customer, but it certainly has its place out there.

But when you go into the agencies, you have to make sure the CV is a killer CV, it really is well prepared. When you go into see them, it’s always worth going to see these guys. Make sure you’re smart. (Laughter) I’ve heard so many stories of freelancers, maybe in the summer, you’re in a torn t-shirt with your ripped jeans on. You know, life’s great, but they’re not going to think much of you because they won’t want to send you to Clients. So it’s probably a whole discussion in its own right about using agencies.

But if it really is the mode you want to go down, make sure you’ve got the tools right and that’s the killer CV and make sure you’re very presentable and carry yourself well. And there are probably plenty of books out there that can help you with one. I think ‘Contractor Calculators’, Dave Chaplin’s book really speaks about that, that’s very specific about contracting and how to win agencies over. So, very big place in the selling aspect for your career.

But you could actually balance it out. Have some agencies working for you on your behalf and once you’ve done a good job of selling into them and make sure you still spend time selling and getting your own direct customer base. The other thing why I am slightly anti-agency sometimes is that you are completely dependent on them.

Andy: Yes, I remember back in the 90s, I got all my work through agencies. And occasionally I would meet contractors who would talk to me and I would talk to them and they’d say, “Well I don’t always use an agency, sometimes I go direct.” And I was always so jealous of them. I remember once meeting a guy who developed some software. And I thought “Oh that’s so cool developing your own software” and I always wanted to go there. So there is a sort of a pull sometimes when you’re using an agency to try and go a bit more freelance if possible.

Darren Fell: Absolutely, absolutely. Definitely if you can balance it up. Which is really why I avoided almost at the beginning, you’ve got to get that balance out there. The day an age out there, effectively these contracting agencies are recruiters. The recruiters are getting thinned down. They are not bringing in as much money. When your key recruiter has been absolutely fantastic for you, selling you into all these places decides – or gets sacked. What do you do then? So you’ve got to really balance this out with getting your own direct business.

And that’s why I come back to the core purpose of this podcast is to instill in you, get your sales mode on, get your sales hat on and make sure you do it every single week or for a few hours every day.

Andy: Okay brilliant. Just quickly then at the end, is there much point in analysing your competition as a freelancer?

Darren Fell: Absolutely. Now I think for bigger businesses, you know like Pure and Crunch, you spend endless amounts of time whilst you’re doing the business plan, while you’re checking out talking to mystery shopping. And I don’t think there’s any harm in actually doing the same with other freelancers out there.

I’m helping a tree surgeon at the moment and he’s “How do I brand myself, how do I market – how do I win this business out there?” And I am saying, “Right, analyse the competition. I’ve actually got two quotes for you because I’m obviously a perfect customer. I’ve got a tree in the garden that needs a lot of help. Here’s the quote, go and look at their website. Where do you come up on Google? How good is their site? Does it convey things? How good are they on the phone? When they come round, how personal is it? Is the quote professional? Does the quote come back fast?”

And actually on that note, this is obviously completely unscripted podcast, but the quote and proposals is incredibly important. And probably may fit into personal brand as well. But anytime someone wants something from you like that, that is the biggest buying signal ever. Produce the quote as quickly as you can – the proposal. Don’t go into in-depth, do a light proposal, three to five pages, but get it is back fast. It is the momentum that also can carry a sale through.

Andy: Yes.

Darren Fell: So anyway, that’s a tiny point. But I think competition is really, really important. But often competition isn’t competition. So down here at Brighton, I would recommend if you’re in the text scene or the media scene, go down to Brighton Farm. Every Wednesday go for beers in the pub. What better place to chat to people? And some freelancers have got it initially wrong when they come and they’re like “I’m an excellent PHP programmer.” I don’t want to go and mix with them, they’re my competition. There may be very, very few who may think that but you go in and mix with that community, get on with them.

Suddenly they realise you’re brilliant and “Look Dave I’m over loaded. I’m overloaded with all this work can you take this piece off me?” You do once piece of work for him, brilliant that’s fantastic, he knows he can trust you. So you end up creating network there. So that’s probably a whole other podcast on selling.

Andy: Yes.

Darren Fell: Is just getting out there, finding the groups, the communities that you can mix in with. Go for beers with them. Those networking things don’t have to be the glass of wine stiffly held, like “Hello what do you do then?” (Laughter) And walking away with a load of cards that you do nothing with. Network away, just try and get out there every evening.

Andy: It’s also to do with building relationships isn’t it?

Darren Fell: Yes.

Andy: Now Darren a huge area that we haven’t really spoken about it is online networking, social media, Facebook and Twitter, what are your views on that? How should they best be used for a freelancer?

Darren Fell: I think it’s difficult really. You can get sucked into that world. I have found that I personally haven’t. A lot of my competition probably have and spend so much time on Twitter. Be really, really careful with it. Yes you can find business, but it can just drag you in. And suddenly you look at the clock and it is 5 o’clock and you realise you missed your two hours of calling people about selling. So social networking is good. For example, Twitter, if you want to have something continually going out there and you’ve got some good points to make. A lot of people don’t like it, but how about chucking those hints or tips in a database in ‘HootSuite’ so it doesn’t suck up your time.

Facebook, brilliant. Get any bit of news you’ve got or great piece of work you’ve done, get it up there. LinkedIn is obviously on the professional side.

Andy: Yes I was going to mention LinkedIn actually because I’ve got a piece of work that’s happening next week that came via LinkedIn. Just completely out of the blue.

Darren Fell: Fantastic. That’s brilliant.

Andy: I’ve had generally pretty good results with social media and networking.

Darren Fell: Have you?

Andy: I mean I use Twitter. I have an app on my iPhone called ‘Tweety’ and whenever anything interesting happens, I will tweet that out and sometimes those things are do with business. I might be just about to go and see a Client about such and such or just recorded such and such a podcast.

Darren Fell: Yes, absolutely brilliant.

Andy: And that does help community because you get followers and then you get DM’d – Direct Messages on Twitter. And it’s all to do with building relationships with people and just swapping information and building relationships. And I feel that the more relationships you have, whether online or offline, the healthier your business and you are going to be. That’s my view.

Darren Fell: That’s a really good view. I think the important thing is not to get sucked in. If I had a sales person in the team who was just focusing a lot of Twitter and social media, I would be a little concerned. I think what you’re talking about is just making the most of it on every positive thing you’re doing and that I think is fantastic. There is no issue with that.

I was just saying at the beginning, be very careful for being sucked in because it’s just another channel. It’s not the channel. If anything should come across on this call – a lot of people don’t like having spoken conversations they try and do it on email. Do try and do things on the phone. It’s immediate, it’s personal and if you can sense from the other person that it’s not kind of the right time or it’s not working then, “I’ll speak to you at another point it’s not a problem.”

But yes, invest time in the phone is the key point. Social networking brilliant, but don’t take too much time on it. I think balance is the key there.

Andy: Okay just quickly before we go Darren, thanks so much. But just quickly before we go tell us a bit about these seminars that you’re doing.

Darren Fell: Yes it’s following National Freelancers Day back on the 23rd November when we gathered in The Eagle pub on Gloucester Road. Is it Gloucester Road or Gloucester Street in the Lanes? Probably Street. And the function room had a capacity of 60. I didn’t expect hardly anybody to turn up, but it was utterly packed. People were on the stairs, they couldn’t fit into the room. People were downstairs; they couldn’t fit on the stairs. And the key thing that came out of that was “Can you help us in some key areas? Can we do this again?”

And Drumming Up Business; Sales Tactics for Freelancers is what came out of it, so I am going to do seminars for New Media Knowledge, the University of Westminster and various other places if they’ll have me. If I’ll have me, if I’ll be useful and spend an hour and a half, interacting, so telling them my story of how I sell, how I sold, what you need to put together and letting everybody really interact. So I am hoping that will be really useful for the community out there.

Andy: Fantastic. So we’ll make sure that we put a link in the show that it’s to that. So Darren Fell of Crunch.co.uk thank you so much indeed.

Darren Fell: Great, thanks Andy.

Thank you for listening to Freelance Advisor. Please send questions and comments to feedback@freelanceadvisor.co.uk. Please note that everyone’s situation is different. Freelance Advisor is intended only as general guidance. Please consult a relevant professional before acting on any advice from the Freelance Advisor Podcast or website.

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Andy White: Hello and welcome to Episode 21 of Freelance Advisor and in today’s show we have an interview with Judy Heminsley, author of Work From Home. Enjoy.

So I’m talking to Judy Heminsley who’s the author of a book called Work From Home. Is that a book you’ve recently finished Judy or was it released a while ago?

Judy Heminsley: It seems like a long time ago I finished it. It actually came out last April so it’s been out almost a year but of course it’s six months or so before that the book actually has to go into the publishers.

Andy White: And I have to confess, I was just having a sort of little pre interview chat with Judy just before we went live, and I have to say I have not read this book. I didn’t have a chance to. We arranged this at quite short notice but I’m told it’s very, very good. And I know that you cover quite a few interesting subjects all about the sort of working on your own type sort of perspective.

Judy Heminsley: Yes, yes I do. What I was interested in covering here was about the, all the challenges of working from home that I’d never actually read about in other places. And you’d tend to get quite a lot of material on the web and in papers and magazines about how to set up your home office and that kind of thing. But I thought it would be really interesting to help people with things like well what happens when the kids want me and I’m trying to work from home.

Andy White: Yes.

Judy Heminsley: What about being on my own all the time and not been mixing with colleagues in the office, all that kind of thing. So that was why I wrote it.

Andy White: And I am absolutely dying to talk about co working and specifically jellies…

Judy Heminsley: Ahh.

Andy White: But I’ll save that to the end because I always like to save jelly to the end. (Laughter)

Judy Heminsley: You were obviously brought up very well.

Andy White: Oh, that’s absolutely. Now one of the things that… working on your own is quite challenging I know that you’ve covered this quite extensively in the book is procrastination, and have you got some tips you can give about freelancers who are suffering a bad attack of procrastination.

Judy Heminsley: Yes. I think it’s something that we all suffer from to some extent or other. It’s just a very human thing to put off something that we either don’t want to do or are not very sure about doing, or something that perhaps we think is going to take a long time and be quite complicated. And so we come up with all kinds of ruses. And I think the important thing is probably to realise what we’re doing when we’re putting something off, because a lot of us let it get to the point where really it’s spoiling all the day, because we’ve got this horrible thing at the back of our mind. We know jolly well we’ve got to do it at some point but anything, anything at all – cleaning the oven, doing the ironing, whatever, seems much more attractive than that particular thing. So, there are various things that you can try to kind of trick yourself into doing it. I think my favourite method is just to start with an element of whatever it is that you’ve got to do. The bit that appeals to you the most. So if you can start with something you enjoy or at least something that you don’t actually hate…

Andy White: Yes.

Judy Heminsley: Hopefully that then provides a momentum because it’s really the first point that is the most difficult, sitting down and getting on with it.

Andy White: Yes.

Judy Heminsley: And then once you’ve got a little bit, hopefully that will lead on to a bit more and a bit more and you can gradually get to grips with it. And then you lose that horrible dread at the back of your mind, you know when you wake up in the morning and you think “Oh, there’s something horrible and I can’t quite remember what it is.”

Andy White: Oh yes, it’s that.

Judy Heminsley: “It’s that. Oh no!” you know, that report or that project or whatever. And if you can kind of get into it and kind of get it moving I think it takes that awfulness away. And hopefully it will make you think of other things that you can do – ideas start to pop up and you can actually move forward with it.

Andy White: Isn’t that known as the “Salami Technique” as well, I think I’ve heard it described as?

Judy Heminsley: Really?

Andy White: Where you take a problem and you cut it up like a salami.

Judy Heminsley: Oh right, that’s good. I’ll remember that – the Salami Technique.

Andy White: The Salami Technique. Yes, so for example if it was like doing your tax return…

Judy Heminsley: Oh yes, well that would be a big one.

Andy White: Yes. The first slice… I mean that’s the horrible one that most people hate. The first bit of it would be going to find your, I don’t know your bank statements and getting them and putting them in a pile ready or something.

Judy Heminsley: Yes. Yes, I’m also a great believer in reward. You do that and you find all those different bits of paper and you put them in a pile ad then you go and have a coffee.

Andy White: Yes.

Judy Heminsley: Or you allow yourself to read the paper or whatever it is you like to do. Give yourself a bit of a break and then maybe come back and do a little bit more.

Andy White: That’s right. As long as the reward doesn’t last the rest of the day. (Laughter)

Judy Heminsley: This is true. You have to be a bit careful with that one, yes. And yet I think you also have to know what you’re going to do next.

Andy White: Yes.

Judy Heminsley: Because if you don’t it can be hard to get back into it.

Andy White: Yes, absolutely. Now what about productivity? Because I know that when you’re sort of working on your own it’s quite difficult to motivate yourself sometimes. What tips have you got for sort of motivating yourself and becoming productive, or maybe some sort of streamlining tips you can give.

Judy Heminsley: Well, I always find that probably the worst part is actually starting work in the morning.

Andy White: Yes.

Judy Heminsley: That may just be me; it may be lots of other people too. But I find I kind of, I’ve developed this kind of technique where I almost tricked myself into getting into the work frame of mind. And what I tend to do is I come into the office, I sit down at the computer and I have a list of various sites that I like to check out in the morning. So they could be newspaper websites, other sites that have up-to-dated news and just kind of feel as though I’m keeping myself up-to-date reading a bit of gossip maybe, a bit of news, find out what’s going on in the world out there. And then sort of make them slowly more kind of work orientated and then you can gradually get into doing something without even realising it. And also if you then check your email accounts of course because then you’ll probably have stuff from other people saying “Please I want this, I want that.”

Andy White: Yes.

Judy Heminsley: And that’s a very handy hook to get you into the day and working.

Andy White: Absolutely. So it’s sort of, it’s interesting that you mentioned that because it’s a bit like having a sort of ritual first thing in the morning isn’t it to help you get into the swing of work.

Judy Heminsley: Yes. I think that’s quite useful. Mine does actually change all the time because I get fed up with routines.

Andy White: Yes.

Judy Heminsley: And so if you’ve developed a routine and then you find it’s getting a bit boring don’t hesitate to do something else.

Andy White: Yes, absolutely.

Judy Heminsley: And just to keep it fresh and invigorating. Because if it’s no longer working for you there’s no point.

Andy White: Yes.

Judy Heminsley: I know occasionally I’ve had a routine that involved tidying up the house a bit before I went into the office. That worked for a while. Now I tend to ignore that and just come straight in.

Andy White: Because a lot of people, a lot of freelancers work from home – what would you say to people that are having trouble with being distracted by, say for example they’re working and think “Oh God, I’ve got to do that washing,” or “I better go and do that washing up and sweep the path,” or something. What would you say to people that are having that problem?

Judy Heminsley: I think you’ve really got to be quite firm with yourself and say “Well, actually work is my priority because if I was going out to work I wouldn’t be here to see those things and do those things.” So don’t feel guilty that you can’t do them. And just the fact that you happen to be in the house doesn’t mean that you have to making it tidy and clean all the time.

Andy White: Sure.

Judy Heminsley: I know people have said to me “Well, I couldn’t start work until the house was tidy.” But they’re not actually people who work from home and I think those of us who do, we probably get used to the idea of ignoring things. I think it’s probably more difficult to ignore things, pleasant distractions like in the summer when the sun’s shining and you think “Actually I’d rather go out in the garden,” and that kind of thing. But I always find that it’s very motivating that you have to pay the bills and you’ve got to satisfy your customers and you’ve got to get your money in.

Andy White: Yes.

Judy Heminsley: That in itself is quite motivating.

Andy White: Now, I must talk about a subject which I have to admit I do suffer from this quite a lot. And whenever I think of this word it always makes me think of a certain song that was sung by The Mighty Boosh and Mighty Boosh fans will know which one I mean. Isolation. How do you tackle this sort of isolated feeling that you sometimes get if you’re a solo worker in your house?

Judy Heminsley: I think there are all sorts of ways that you can. And what you need to do is plan it in. So rather than ending up maybe, mid afternoon I think seems to be the classic time, you’ve kind of got a real burst of enthusiasm in the morning, you’ve carried on working, you’ve had your lunch and then suddenly you have a dip in the afternoon.

Andy White: Yes, yes.

Judy Heminsley: And then you suddenly realise “Oh, well it’s just me and I’m getting a bit bored.”

Andy White: Yes.

Judy Heminsley: So what you need to do is plan ahead. And if you need to put it in the diary – I think it’s actually first priority after actually doing the work and getting the money in from your customers. So you’ve got obviously these days you can use the internet and you can go to forums and post comments there. You can talk to people on the telephone or on Skype and or you can physically leave the house. But it is important that you recognise that these things are essential when you’re working from home. Because if you don’t do it , if you have this idea that you’ve got to be at your desk nine to five, you’re going to quickly run out of steam. And it’s fatal when you do that because you start to spiral downwards.

Andy White: Yes.

Judy Heminsley: And the thing about home workers is that they’re all there in their little offices and they tend not to talk about this very much, I mean people will go out to networking events or they’ll meet friends but they… At networking events they’ll talk about their business and what they do but you don’t really say to somebody else “Oh, do you find it difficult to sit there actually on your own at home and do this?” And so it’s something that we’ve just internalised and we all tend to think that we’re absolutely rubbish at discipline or productivity or whatever. And yet if you do talk to someone else about it you find that they feel exactly the same way.

Andy White: Yes.

Judy Heminsley: So it’s really a big priority I think and you no doubt will have your own favourite ways of doing it. And you mentioned jelly before; I don’t know whether it’s appropriate to bring that in now?

Andy White: Well, actually I was going to ask you about co working first of all. In fact my actual words were going to be “That’s a wonderful segway into co working.” (Laughter). And then let’s talk about the jelly. Yes, co working – is this something you recommend for people? It’s something that’s fascinated me, in fact talk of the devil I actually went just before I did this interview I had a bit of a late lunch and I’d just pop my head round the door of a quite well known co working office here in Brighton…

Judy Heminsley: Yes.

Andy White: And there was a bit of a buzz there. I have to say there is a certain appeal about spending at least some of your time with people that do maybe similar things to you. What’s your view on it?

Judy Heminsley: Yes. I think it’s really exciting actually and I understand that Brighton’s got quite a few places that you can do that.

Andy White: It has, yes.

Judy Heminsley: And they are beginning to crop up around the country too, which is really good for home workers and freelancers because it means we have a choice. Whereas once we didn’t really much choice – we either had home office or perhaps a coffee shop with all the [?? 0:11:04] difficulties of that.

Andy White: Yes.

Judy Heminsley: Co working spaces are places that rent out desks, from as little as a few hours a month. Or you can have a more permanent commitment on a lease. And so they’re very reasonably priced and a home worker can just use a desk in a co working space for a few hours a month just to get out of the house. And as you say they do tend to have a buzz. They tend to be likeminded people, they’re all freelancers, they’re all independent. And what happens is you go along and you can do your work but you can also chat to the person next to you and ask what they’re doing. And it’s amazing how many ideas come out of that. And of course you get lots of help. Because you might find yourself sitting next to the person who can do just the thing that you’ve been trying to do for ages, and haven’t quite managed it and they just give you a tip and it works out.

Andy White: Now, we’ve got to talk about jelly. Because I was looking at your website and everywhere I looked there’s jelly, jelly, jelly. What is this jelly thing? And I did have a quick read and it sounds very interesting but tell us in your own words how it started and what a jelly is?

Judy Heminsley: Right, well jelly actually started in New York in 2006. And it came about because two independent I.T. workers in New York were having a bit of a moan one day about the downsides of being freelance and working from home. Namely being the fact that you do get isolated and you tend to look at your same four walls all the time. And they thought “Well, wouldn’t it be great if we just all got together once in a while and work together.” And that would mean that those problems would be overcome. So they decided that they would do that and that’s how it all started. They did it first of all in the apartment of one of them and got a crowd of people that they knew to come round with their laptops and they all worked together. And the reason it’s called jelly is because apparently they were eating jellybeans at the time when they came up with this great idea.

Andy White: And there was me thinking it was some really profound reason like it was a very flexible way of thinking or something. (Laughter)

Judy Heminsley: Oh right, oh that’s very lateral, yes. I think we just have to be grateful they weren’t eating cabbage. (Laughter)

Andy White: So basically, let me get this right. It’s the idea of lots of, it’s a bit like co working but the goal isn’t so much to get work done; it’s more to swap ideas and do a bit of work. Is that the idea behind it?

Judy Heminsley: It is, jelly is co working but jelly is just a one day event.

Andy White: Oh, okay.

Judy Heminsley: Which is held usually by a home worker for others to come along. It’s entirely free so you have to find a venue that is willing to host you for nothing, for no charge.

Andy White: Yes.

Judy Heminsley: And usually people will do that because they’re glad to have people come along and be there for the day. I mean you can do it in a café which means the café’s got a buzz about it. It’s got a table full of people who are buying food and drink all day.

Andy White: Yes.

Judy Heminsley: And hopefully spreading word of mouth advertising. And you can do it in a co working space. So one of these places in Brighton might be happy to host a jelly and that would mean that people would come along and spend the day there that perhaps normally wouldn’t know about that place. And of course they may then return and pay for a desk at a later date.

Andy White: Is it taking off much in this country? I know you said you mentioned it started in the United States didn’t it?

Judy Heminsley: Yes, that’s right. It really seems to have started to take off now actually. Here in the Bath and Bristol area we’ve got someone who was really worked very hard and started organising jelly and he’s called [Lee Cottier 0:14:22] and he’s very interested in it. He found out about it last year and he’s now got it going regularly in Bristol and Bath. I came along and with Lee’s help I started here in Frome. And we started Tweeting about it and we got lots of enquiries from people all over the place saying “How do we do it?” That’s why I put the jelly guide on my website to answer people’s questions.

Andy White: Yes.

Judy Heminsley: And we’re now hearing from people in Cambridge, Yorkshire, Bradford I believe there’s one starting.

Andy White: I’m just writing on my to do list actually, start a jelly in Brighton, okay.

Judy Heminsley: The great thing about it is it is easy to do. It’s not particularly time consuming. And it’s a really good event because the point of jelly is simply to get together and work with likeminded people. The purpose isn’t to sell or to pitch your business or anything like that so it doesn’t have the same atmosphere as an event where people are to promote themselves.

Andy White: Yes, it’s not so much networking then?

Judy Heminsley: No, absolutely not. It’s definitely not. It’s a completely different vibe to that. But people to chat and they talk about what they’re doing and what their ideas are and who knows what wonderful new business or new projects might arise out of it. Because they’re people whom otherwise wouldn’t normally meet.

Andy White: Well, that sounds a really good idea. I really quite fancy the idea of getting one of those started. So thanks so much for talking to us. Just again the book is called…?

Judy Heminsley: Work From Home.

Andy White: Work From Home. And all good bookshops plus Amazon?

Judy Heminsley: Absolutely, yes. It’s published by “How To” books and you can get it from your local bookshop or if they don’t have it then they’ll order in for you in a couple of days. Or you can get it from Amazon.

Andy White: So, Judy Heminsley, thank you very, very much for talking to us today.

Judy Heminsley: Thank you.

Andy White: Hope you enjoyed that interview with Judy. One thing we didn’t mention in the interview her website is www.workfromhomewisdom.com. Do check it out, lots of great stuff there. Thanks for listening. See you next time.

Thank you for listening to Freelance Advisor. Please send questions and comments to feedback@freelanceadvisor.co.uk. Please note that everyone’s situation is different. Freelance Advisor is intended only as general guidance. Please consult a relevant professional before acting on any advice from the Freelance Advisor Podcast or website.

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In this episode:

• Accidental entrepreneurs
• Un-job fairs
• The future of freelancing
• Raising entrepreneurial children

Useful links:

http://barbarawinter.com/

http://joyfullyjobless.com/

Buy the book: Making a Living Without a Job

Transcript

Andy White: This is Freelance Adviser. Welcome to episode 20 of Freelance Adviser, and we’re back with part two of that interview with Barbara J Winter, author of Making A Living Without A Job. After hearing about putting passion into your work and finding the work that you love, we moved on to the future of freelancing.

Now, here in the UK, we’re seeing a lot of people turning to freelancing. I think possibly due to the way the economy’s going at the moment, it’s sort of forcing them into a new reality, if you like. Is this something you’re seeing in the US as well? Is this a trend that’s being mirrored across the pond?

Barbara J Winter: Well, it’s interesting because you would think so. I have been seeing some stories in the New York Times and elsewhere about people who became accidental entrepreneurs. I have heard from a number of people who have been afraid to quit their jobs; who lost their jobs and started their own business. So, we’re seeing a lot of people, who thought that they were just supposed to get a job and stick with it their whole life, who suddenly are really swimming and have no idea what to do next.

But, where we’re seeing a real change in thinking is with the younger generation and I’m finding this quite fascinating: that just in the last – even before we started having huge unemployment numbers here in the US – I’ve been seeing stories about how many college students today say that they intend to start their own business when they graduate. And they’re not taking business classes in college because the curriculum still is really designed to create corporate employees. So, it’s about – going to work for corporation is what the business departments are talking about: not about doing something on your own. So, a lot of kids are starting little businesses in college and, of course, the Internet is a huge contributor to all those things that are going on.

But, kind of slowly and gradually, I’m participating in something that I invented actually. We’ve been having a lot of job fairs around the country and lots of them in Las Vegas because unemployment here has been very, very high. So we have a lot of job fairs where people come – like 5,000 people show up – and there may be employers with 200 job openings. It’s kind of an exercise in futility, but we’re going to be running something in Denver in the spring called an ‘Un-job Fair’, which is going to be a whole day to introduce people to the idea of self-employment. Maybe people who haven’t actually thought about it but – really kind of demystifying some of the things about what it takes and what’s involved and how people can get started without a huge investment and that sort of thing: intellectual capital instead of the old way of pounds and dollars. So, I’m very excited about this and I think we can replicate it in other cities. I think it’s going to open the dialogue a little bit more.

But people have to be ready: this is something you kind of grow into and sometimes that readiness comes from being shown what the possibilities are and helping them see how they have something to contribute. For most of us, there’s a process like I went through where we have ideas, discard them until we really connect with the thing that just makes our heart sing and we’re like, “I’ve got to try this! I just know it’s a good idea!”

Andy: What do you think the future holds? Do you think we’ll all be freelancing in the future?

Barbara: Oh, gosh, I hope so! You know, Tom Peters talked about this years ago, and I thought it was so interesting because what he said was that more and more and more, work was going to look like the movie business and, essentially in the movie business, everybody is self-employed. You just have a couple of hundred people that all get together and build this film and then they disperse and sometimes they work together again on another project. But, he said – Tom Peters said – he thought that large corporations are going to function more that way, where more and more of us would be independent contractors and we would work on projects and then move on and work on other projects and that sort of thing.

It’s still – the percentage of people who are self-employed is still quite small. I tell people, “You’ve got to know, going into this; you’re volunteering to be in a minority and, consequently, don’t expect everyone around you to understand your decision and your choice because a lot of people aren’t even thinking anything like this.” We who came here after – were born after – the second world war have been conditioned to think about working for somebody else, not ourselves. But it gets easier every day. And it gets easier partly because we have better tools for being self-employed than ever before. I mean, technology has opened astonishing doors for people.

But even more importantly, as more and more of us are doing it and sharing what we’ve learned with other people, it gets easier and easier. I did a – we have an organisation here called Junior Achievement, which theoretically teaches kids about free enterprise, although it has evolved from the entrepreneurial organisation that once was. They go into schools and talk to kids about having their own business. I was a volunteer and taught a group of fourth graders – so, kids who were about ten years old – about – for six weeks I went in for about an hour a week and talked to them about what it meant to have your own business. And the first day I asked the kids – told them what I did – and said that I had my own business but I don’t have a store; I don’t even have an office, I work at home; I travel a lot with my business and told them about it. And then I asked the kids, “How many of you know anyone – do any of you know anyone who has a home-based business?” About two thirds of them raised their hand. I thought, ten years ago we wouldn’t have seen that response. I thought, that is so powerful because if you grow up seeing this, it doesn’t become – it doesn’t seem like such an oddity.

I think that more and more people are thinking about the impact of their own work on their children’s lives and whether or not they’re setting an example of doing joyful work for their children or if they’re sending the message that work is a drag but you’ve got to do it anyway.

So, there are a lot of factors, I think, that are coming into changing this, but in the meantime, those of us who are joyfully jobless are having such a good time that we’re just not paying much attention to all these things that people are wringing their hands over.

Andy: What are you working on now? Can you tell us a little bit about your various coachings that you do?

Barbara: Well, I am working primarily on special events. I think that’s my favourite thing to do: is to really work with people over a two, three-day period. One of the things I got really fascinated by – even though it’s something that comes very naturally to me, but… – something I got very interested in a couple of years ago was using storytelling to market our businesses. What really jarred me was looking at peoples’ websites and looking at how boring most of the bios were of the people running the website. I thought, most people don’t know how to tell their own story and they don’t even know what the best stories are. So, I started doing a three-day event called Compelling Storytelling, which has been wonderful fun.

Then I started a new event this year that – we ended up doing it three times because it was so incredibly powerful – called Follow Through Camp. The purpose of Follow Through Camp was for people to come with a project that they really wanted to get to but had been procrastinating about and to really develop a plan with witnesses of what they were going to do next. And so – and also, just give people tools for, ‘how do you bring an idea out of your head into real life?’ A whole process for doing that. So, I’m working on both those things but, the thing that’s really been calling to me: I do a seminar called How To Support Your Wanderlust, which is about how to create a portable business. It came out of my experience and my desire to travel and also get paid to do it instead of paying to do it. So, I’m really working on developing the How To Support Your Wanderlust thing and I think that’s going to be a big focus of mine next year.

I’m working on gathering all the things I’ve written on that subject and might do an e-book, might do an actual book, for all I know. And then the storytelling, so… Kind of those two things are really high on my list. And then the un-job fair that I mentioned before about introducing people to the joyfully jobless world.

Andy: You do some online seminars as well, don’t you Barbara?

Barbara: I do. I do teleclasses and how I even got into that is kind of funny. I was participating in a seminar with Barbara Sher – who’s a very popular writer and teacher here in the US – and we had this four day event in Colorado and at the end of the event, Barbara was going round the room asking everybody what they were going to do when they got home from the seminar and completely out-of-the-blue; without any premeditation, I said, “I’m going to do my first teleclass and it’s going to be How To Support Your Wanderlust.” We had a lot of people in the class that said they wanted to travel. At that time, I had never taken a teleclass and I had no idea how you ran one, but I had 65 witnesses, so I was committed!

I was very nervous about it because I love to be in a room full of people and, you know: just have that interaction and see people’s body language and have all that fluidity that you have in a room and I just thought, I can’t imagine just sitting on the phone giving out information. But I discovered that I really enjoyed doing it and I also was astonished that I could just be sitting on my couch and really comfortable and making money! So, it had a lot advantages and then about – I don’t know: sometime last – this year, we started recording the teleclasses, which is wonderful for people who – because I do them early evening in Las Vegas, which is, in your part of the world, the middle of the night – and I would have people who would stay up until one o’clock in the morning to be on a teleclass, but now they don’t have to: they can register and get the audio download the next day. They can have the information even if they can’t show up in person. That’s worked out really, really well and also had made it possible for people who wanted the information. And I do things that aren’t the same things I do in a classroom setting or a meeting room setting, so. It’s just added another whole dimension to what I do.

Andy: So, if UK freelancers would like a flavour of your seminars I guess they need to go to the website and register. Is that right?

Barbara: Exactly. They can go to joyfullyjobless.com. They can sign up for my email list. I schedule teleclasses usually two or three weeks out before I do them. I look at my calendar and say, “Oh yes, I’m going to be home for a couple of days. Let’s throw some in.” And so the best way to find out about the classes is to be on my email list because they don’t get announced very far in advance. The emailings also have resources and articles that are useful to people who are making a living without a job. That’s a good starting point.

They can also look on my website for the audio downloads of classes that have already been done but are available. That’s another option.

Andy: Now, Barbara: the best question is always at the end. What’s the one question that you never get asked that you’d love to answer?

Barbara: You know, I’ve been thinking about this a lot. I would say, the question nobody ever asks me is, how can I raise entrepreneurial children?

Andy: Ah!

Barbara: I would love to get in that conversation with parents. And nobody has ever asked me that.

Andy: Well, I’ll ask you now if you want! How do you raise entrepreneurial children? It’s a good question!

Barbara: I started my first business when my daughter was five and went off to kindergarten and I was really clear about the fact that I wanted her to see me working joyfully. So, I involved her in my business as much as I could, like, if I was sending out a newsletter, she would help me put the labels and the stamps on. Sometimes, if I was doing a talk, I would bring her along so she could see me talking in public. It was just a kind of integral part of our life and I ran my business from home, her father ran his business from home, so she just saw that happening. And when she was in college – and I wrote about this in my book – she called me up, I think by her third year of college saying, “You’ve ruined me. All my friends are going on job interviews and writing their resumes and I can’t do that.”

I said, “Well, I know: I did that on purpose.” She went through this kind of conflict because her vision of going to college was to go learn things; not learn to work for somebody else. She was out of sync with her classmates. But, it’s all paid off and now I have a granddaughter who’s five and I’ve written an article about a little business that Zoë started a few months ago doing books: she writes stories and illustrates them and then we sell them. That has been quite a hilarious operation.

But it really is so interesting to see how Zoë already thinks entrepreneurially and she’s only five years old. I was visiting them around Halloween and they were going to have a garage sale. Zoë got busy cleaning out her toys and clothes she’d outgrown, and got them in a big pile and got them all ready. Last week, I asked her how the garage sale had gone and she said, “I made $39,” then she told me what she had bought with it. I talked to my daughter afterwards. She said, “No, she actually made twice as much,” but half the money got put away for her to buy Christmas presents, so Zoë was only thinking of this $39.

It’s very interesting because this is one of the big, big changes of learning to think like an entrepreneur and not an employee. An employee, if you talk about – here’s a good example, Andy let’s take a trip to Las Vegas. An employee will look in their bank balance and say, “I can’t afford to do this right now.” An entrepreneur will say, “That is a fabulous idea! What can I do to finance this project?” So it’s a very different thing, and Zoë – who at the age of five – already understands that. She sees a real connection between the work that she does and the money she generates and the goals that she has for herself. That’s just thrilling to me that she’s growing up with that; that kind of thinking. She’s not going to have to un-learn all the junk that most of her elders had to un-learn in order to succeed.

Andy: It’s a wonderful story.

Barbara: But I’d like to that happen in more families.

Andy: Yes.

Barbara: I have a guy who does my CD production and he – originally I met him when he worked for a large company and then he went to a smaller company and then finally, he went out on his own. When he called to tell me he was on his own and hoped to have my business still, I said, “Do you have a studio?” He said, “Well I’m working at home.” I said, “Do you realise what an impact that’s going to have on your kids?” And I remember one day he was going to deliver some – an order to me – and he said that, “We’re on our way to the pizza place.” He had his kids with him, and I was like, this is so wonderful! The accidental role model I call him. And I think as more adults become entrepreneurial and are doing it with a sense of joy, it’s going – we’re going to have a whole generation of kids who just assume that work and pleasure are – can be one in the same, which is completely opposite of the message I got about work growing up.

Andy: Well, Barbara, it’s been fantastic talking with you. Just before we sign off, where can people go to find out about you on the Internet?

Barbara: Joyfullyjobless.com.

Andy: And where can people get the book from?

Barbara: I think you can get it from Amazon UK.

Andy: I think you’re right actually.

Barbara: I had a letter – an email – from someone in Amsterdam a few weeks ago, and I asked her where she’d got it and she said she had got it from there and I meant to check and I didn’t unfortunately. But I also – if that isn’t true – you can also order it from my website and I will personally autograph it and send a copy out to you. It costs a little bit more because of shipping but, it – we will find a way to get this wonderful book in people’s hands.

Andy: That’s a terrific offer. Now that’s – I think that’s at www.barbarawinter.com I believe, isn’t it?

Barbara: Well, joyfully jobless is my newer website; barbarawinter.com is just my original website and there isn’t much on that website. Joyfullyjobless.com is where all the good stuff is –

Andy: Okay, so that’s where people need to go to get your book is it, if they want a signed copy?

Barbara: Either one, yes.

Andy: Fantastic. Well, Barbara Winter, author of Making A Living Without A Job, thank you very, very much indeed.

Barbara: Thank you, thank you.

In this episode:

• Personal development and self-employment
• Building businesses limited only by our vision
• How traditional employment stifles exploration
• Finding the essence of what you want to do

Useful links:

Buy the book: Making a Living Without a Job

Transcript

So, we’re talking to Barbara Winter who’s the author of Making a Living without a Job. Barbara, thank you so much for coming on to Freelance Adviser.

Barbara Winter: My pleasure.

Andy White: And, I’m reliably informed, that your book – the first edition – went into, was it, eighteen printings?

Barbara Winter: It never went out of print, which was a huge astonishment to me. It was in print for sixteen years, even though when I wrote it – the first time I wrote it on a typewriter, if anyone remembers what a typewriter was –

Andy White: I remember.

Barbara Winter: – and there was no Internet: none of the things that are just basic tools to freelancers today even existed. And that’s an even greater astonishment to me, how things have changed in such a short period of time.

So, finally, my publisher said, “Maybe we should update?” And I thought that was a fine idea and so the new edition came out the end of August.

Andy White: And it’s already in its second printing, isn’t it?

Barbara Winter: It went into its second printing after five weeks. That was another lovely surprise.

Andy White: It’s incredible. Now, I grew up on things like Think and Grow Rich, Napoleon Hill; The Magic of Thinking Big, David Schwartz… And as I read your book – which I absolutely love, by the way – I noticed that you grew up on the same sort of things as I did.

Barbara Winter: You know, I think there’s a really strong connection even though I don’t see many people talking about it; between the interest in personal growth and development and the interest in self-employment. And I first started to realise that, during what I call my Self Help Junky Days, when I was reading all those books and going to personal growth seminars and really seeking to find out more about myself and what I could become; and I noticed that how often the conversation at seminars in the hallways kind of went to the idea of doing something on their own.

Now I think what this really is, is a reflection of when we are on this quest or journey, at some point we have to stop reading the books and build a laboratory for ourselves so we can test those ideas. And traditional employment hasn’t always been a welcoming laboratory for exploration. So, we kind of come in through the back door, and those two things are very linked together and I also now think that people who ignore that piece of the puzzle often are not especially successful in their business. Because the books you’re talking about are talking about personal success and really developing a philosophy and also a vision of what that looks like.

To each of us, that – here in America – and this is something that’s really starting to change – we have had what is called The American Dream, which is kind of a vision that has been imposed on us: “This is what you’re supposed to want. This is what success looks like here.” I think a lot of people who have created businesses like mine – which is much closer to a freelance business than a conventional building a business with real estate and a fixed location and all of those kinds of things – many of us realise that this is a really important piece of the puzzle that we can only go – we can only grow a business as big as our own vision. It’s an extension of who we are and how we think. And if we are crippled by limiting thinking about our own potential and possibilities, our business is going to reflect that.

So, the two things are very, very compatible and people who simply go at it from a left-brained approach, trying to find the formula and follow the steps, usually end up with a pretty mediocre operation.

Andy White: The thing I really enjoyed about your book was that it brings that sort of – I don’t really want to use the word old-fashioned – but that view that we were – we got from reading books like Think And Grow Rich, and it sort of brought it up-to-date. Your book is very pragmatic and down-to-earth. I was wondering, actually, what made you make the leap? What’s your early story?

Barbara Winter: Well, it wasn’t a leap: it was a crawl; I think would be a better way describe it! It was a very slow – it feels like it was a slow process to me, but when I look back, it really happened over a fairly short period of time. I grew up having no idea of what I wanted to do because there were so many things that seemed exciting to me. That was also very disconcerting to me because I have a sister who’s two years younger than I who knew from the time she was in eighth grade, so however old that was – fourteen – that she wanted to be an archaeologist. And I just watched her walk straight down that road, and I was zigzagging all over the place and every week I wanted to be something different.

And when I went to college, I was surprised because I thought I’d just kind of hang out in college and then I would be an adult by the time I graduated and then I would surely know what I wanted to do with my life. I was surprised they wouldn’t let me enroll unless I declared a major and so, on the spot, I said without any kind of thinking much behind it, that I would be and English major. So, I got a degree in literature and speech, then along the way acquired a teaching credential, so I taught high school English and speech for five years and loved it for the first two years and then really started to get bored with it.

I was teaching in a school where there were a lot of people who’d been there for decades teaching and I could see that they were just… phoning it in… and I was terrified by that. I thought, if I stay here, that’s going to be me. So, about this time, when I am in the midst of all this turmoil, is when these books that you mentioned started to come into my life and a man who became my mentor started introducing me to this whole world of personal growth and development that I’d never ever heard anything about. I also couldn’t understand why I hadn’t learned some of these things in all the years I’d been in schools, so that was the beginning of the winter of my discontent, I would say.

So I left teaching and tried to figure out what to do next but I wasn’t getting very far. I ended up going to an employment service looking for a job and the job that I got by doing that was that the employment service hired me to be a job counsellor. So, the irony of this is really hilarious to me now: that, I don’t know how to figure out what I’m going to do but I know I’m getting paid to counsel other people. But in a way I see how this was such a valuable piece of my own life puzzle, because all day every day, all I did was talk to people about work. I realised that almost nobody knew how to figure out what they should be doing and that there had been much too much emphasis on working as a means to get money, but nothing else. So, people didn’t know what they had to offer; they didn’t even know how to figure it out, much less, how that could become their livelihood.

So, all these perplexing things started to stir up more discontent in me. And then I left teaching – or I left the employment service – and my daughter was born and the first couple of years I was a stay-at-home mum, but that’s when I really began my own personal growth journey and started reading books and exploring on my own.

And then I got a third job, which was a crazy one, really crazy: without any training or experience I became an interior decorator in a real high-end furniture store. It was during that time I read an article about two women from New York who had started their own business and they had started it in their apartment. It was a personal service business, kind of just doing projects, creative projects. It was the first time I realised that a business could be something other than a store and that you could create something that was an extension of who you were and what you were good at doing. That book really changed my life: it was called Supergirls: The Autobiography of an Outrageous Business. I probably read it six times in a row.

Andy White: Yes, that became your working text, didn’t it, more or less?

Barbara Winter: It was just profound! It’s been out of print for years and years and I understand now in London, you can get out of print books printed in minutes, and I keep thinking I should send everyone there to get their own copy of Supergirls because you can’t buy it anymore. I think that their experience still was just a – really useful to me. By this time I decided that that was it: that was what I wanted. I wanted to have my own business, but I had no idea what that was going to look like.

We moved from the small town in southern Minnesota where I had grown up to a small town outside of Madison, Wisconsin. And I thought, “This is it. This is my opportunity. I’m in a new place, nobody knows who I am. I’m going to start my own business, and if it’s a dreadful failure, nobody will know, because I’m here kind of anonymously.” So, the day my daughter went off to kindergarten, I set up a card table and a typewriter in my TV room and I started a business called The Successful Woman. And I had had this idea that finally came to me after pondering for months what this business would be, to take all this personal growth stuff that I had been learning and using in my own life and put it into a context for women; because at that time, all the book and programmes were written by men for men. The women’s movement was starting to catch fire and they were talking about very different things than the things I was learning and I thought, “I think there’s an audience for this.”

I also decided at that time to start publishing a newsletter, because I knew in my own life I needed a lot of reminders and encouragement. I thought a newsletter would be just perfect, you know? You read a book and I had that experience, certainly, with reading personal growth books, that I would be just so confident as I was reading them but when I would finish the book, I would start backsliding. I realised reinforcement was a really important part of mastering anything. So, I just started out and Supergirls became my handbook and if I would get stuck and think, “Well, how do I do this?” I would see what Supergirls had done and then adapt it to my own situation. It was astonishing how quickly things took off. Once that happened, I knew there was no turning back.

So, that was kind of – that was a long answer to your short question.

Andy White: You mention in your book quite a lot – especially in the section on finding your passion – to try and find the essence of your passion rather than a specific role that you might want to do. Now, a lot of people listening to this podcast are freelancers or contractors, so they’re already doing something. I’m wondering what advice you’d give to quite new freelancers and contractors that maybe haven’t quite found their role or are looking – maybe they’re wondering if they’re doing the right thing. What advice would you give them?

Barbara Winter: You know, that was also a huge learning for me: learning the difference between essence and form. Essence really starts by becoming aware of when you feel the most creative and the most powerful and the most inspired, and what are the situations that lead you to feel that way. So, finding the essence often is about looking for the intangible quality.

For instance, one day I was doing something very mundane, like baking cookies, and I suddenly had this revelation, which – I mean it’s really funny to me that it was such a startling epiphany – and I realised I’m happiest when I’m making things. But the second part of that epiphany was, it doesn’t much matter what I’m making. It’s the act of being creative that really enchants me. So, writing an article or baking cookies both give me satisfaction even though they’re very, very different kinds of activities. So, as we can identify those kinds of things that really enhance what we’re doing, all of sudden, the possibility starts to explode because it goes way beyond just a single way of making that happen. And we realise, for instance, that we – the essence of what I love to do is help other people. Or the essence of what I love to do is inspire other people. Or the essence of what I love to do is teach other people. And then we can start asking ourselves the question, “How many different arenas can I create for doing that?”

So, it’s a really important part of the process and it takes us away from that singular thinking that is how we often go about thinking about careers because that’s what we’ve been taught to do: to pick that thing. If we instead go for the essence then we realise, “Oh my goodness. This really opens up the world for me.”

Andy White: Your book has lots of stories in: that’s one of the reasons I like it so much. What would you say is your favourite success story, Barbara, from your book?

Barbara Winter: Oh my goodness! You know, somebody just asked me that and I hear so many good ones. In fact, I think that that is perhaps the biggest pleasure of what I do I do: is that, I get to share people’s stories and they tell me about all the changes that have come about in their lives because something I said or wrote that was helpful to them.

But, I’ll tell you one of my favourite stories, about a guy named Al who called me up one day. He had taken my Making A Living Without a Job seminar in Minneapolis and he said he was starting a handy man business. He had some questions about insurance and bonding and things like that and then he said, “I want to tell you how this all happened.” He said, “I graduated from college, my parents insisted I get a real job. I got a job working in a computer chip manufacturing company” – I think in administration or management, or something like that: he wasn’t working in a factory. He said, “I was very unhappy there and I was afraid I was going to be stuck there for the rest of my life and so I started taking career assessment tests.”

He said, “I took every test ever invented. I worked with career counsellors trying to figure out what it was, what I should be doing with my life.” And he said, “While this was going on – while I was out there looking for ‘it’ – I remodelled my house three times.” And I said, “Oh! Kind of hiding in plain sight, huh, Alan?” And he said, “Yes. I realised that I really love to do projects that have a beginning, a middle and an end.”

The he went on to talk about how in any job he’d ever had, he’d never felt so appreciated as he did now with his customers who entrusted him with their houses. Besides the fact that he just loved doing the work, he also got paid on top of that. I just love Al’s story because I think that – it certainly has been true here in the US and I know it’s true also in the UK – there has been a lot of snobbery around careers and that there are like good careers, or ones where you didn’t sweat, and bad careers, or ones where you had to be physically engaged. And so, I think that stories like Al’s really get me excited because it’s about being authentic and true to yourself and not listening to all that conversation around good and bad work. It’s only good work if it makes you joyful to do it.

Andy White: It’s work you’ve got to be passionate about, isn’t it?

Barbara Winter: Exactly. And you know, it’s interesting to me now, Andy, that so many writers and seminar leaders talk about passion because when I started doing my Making A Living Without a Job seminars over twenty years ago, I had people who would say to me at the end of it, “I never heard anyone use the words work and passion in the same sentence.” Now, we throw it around and that makes me nervous: it’s like the first time we hear Joseph Campbell say, “Follow your bliss,” we all gasped. Then it became such a mantra and was used so often that it took away the power of it. I feel the same way about talking about passion is that it’s become denuded because it’s become thrown around so much.

But we’re really thoughtful about what that means, all of us know when we are working with passion and when we’re not. If we allow ourselves to spend our lives working in ways that do not generate that feeling of excitement within us – and I think also passion brings with it curiosity to go farther and attain more mastery – it’s kind of got a built-in catalyst there. If we don’t make that our quest, to find the work that we’re passionate about, we never can really fully maximise our potential. We’ll only be just okay. We won’t be fabulous.

Andy White: Well, we’ll leave it there for part one of our two-part interview with Barbara Winter. To make sure you don’t miss part two, then go to www.freelanceadviser.co.uk/subscribe or subscribe in iTunes. See you next time.

Useful links:

Buy the book: Making a Living Without a Job

The Sustainable Freelancer

• What do we mean by sustainability?
• Corporate responsibility.
• Going beyond environmental sustainability.
• What about social sustainability and financial sustainability?
• Holistic approach for Freelancers. Going beyond the bottom line.
• What’s the difference between “Corporate Social Responsibility” and “Sustainability”.
• How social sustainability can lead us to become a “sustainable citizen”.
• Sharing knowledge and best-practices to educate and sustain good ideas.
• Inspiring others with events and groups, like Tuttle.
• Getting started: Assessing your impact. Environmentally, socially and financially.
• It’s not just about ISO 4001. Or just about money. Or just about education.
• Financial, Environmental, Social bank accounts.
• Adding to your own personal values and portfolio, via social responsibility and education.
• Sustainable Widget Prototype
• Acorn – BS8555.
• You are not your job title. You are definite by what you DO, not what you put out in a CSR press release.
• Use social media to report on what you’re really doing… go beyond greenwash and spin.
• Collaboration and competitors. Learning from not clashing with competitors. Building knowledge and skillsets.
• Digital Legacy and ethics – Deathbook.info

Useful links:

• A good simple management system framework: Acorn – BS8555
• Legal and Regulatory Advice: Netregs
• Sustainable Widget Prototype

General Environmental Advice:

• The Environment Agency – Envirowise – The Carbon Trust – The Energy Savings Trust -
• Carbon Offsetting – reduce your emissions as much as you can, and offset the rest – Carbon Clear – The Carbon Neutral Company -

Awards Schemes – gain recognition of your work, and help benchmark yourself against your peers

• Business in the Community Awards
• Business Commitment to the Environment Awards
• The Green Awards
• The Green Apple Awards
• The Water Efficiency Awards

Design/Marketing related Sustainability & CSR

• Design Council – Business Essentials – Sustainability
• Design Council – Business Essentials – CSR

Additional Podcast mentions:

• Tuttle.101
• Creative Collaboration / Co-working Space
• Digital Legacy & Ethics
• Sustainable Creativity & Innovation

Image by Rich Renomeron

If you have any comments or questions for Carl and Paul please leave a comment below…

Topics include

• Fighting Back; Building your bounce-back-ability.
• Generating and maintaining a Positive Mental Attitude
• The exploding freelance market

Transcript of Interview with Hannah Keep

Hannah Keep: Hi Andy

Andy White: And I’d like to say a massive big welcome to the Freelance Advisor podcast.  I’ve read your book, and one of the reasons I like your book, and it’s a very very good book, I’m very bad at reading, and this book had quite big writing and lots of pictures.  Is this a book that was within you for a very long time, or did you write it quite suddenly?

Hannah Keep: I’ve always thought that there was a book in me, because apparently there is a book in everybody, so I’ve always been wondering when is this book going to suddenly appear then, and then last November I was on the train and I guess we were really in the midst of the credit crunch, and the book suddenly came to me.  How can I reach out to people who are having a tough time, being made redundant, money worries – how can I really help them bounce back and stay positive, so that they’ve got the energy to fight back and not give up.

Andy White: Now tell us a little bit about yourself, because I know that you’ve got quite an interesting history.  You were in recruitment at one point weren’t you?

Hannah Keep: I was.  I started first of all in the training industry about 12 years ago, but I’m not going to tell you how old I am because that would give everything away, but I started of in training and got head hunted to join a recruitment firm, where I was responsible for recruiting freelancers and contractors in the areas of IT support and development and programming, so I had a good five years placing people, and seeing what it was like from their perspective as well as from the clients perspective employing them.

Andy White: It’s always a good sign when you get head hunted.

Hannah Keep: Well yes, I think so.

Andy White: You must have been very good at what you did.

Hannah Keep: Well, I guess I’m going to be British now, I think I had a way with people and my passion is people, so I’m really keen to help people make the best out of themselves, and out of the situation that they’re in, and that’s what drives everything that I do.  So if I’m good at that then great.  I’ll take it.

Andy White: The book basically talks about getting yourself out of adversity by being sort of positive and saying the right sort of things to yourself.   Would you say, obviously you’ve met loads of people, would you say that there is a fairly common barrier that stops people from fighting back, is there a common thing that a lot of people do wrong in terms of remaining positive?

Hannah Keep: I think there is, and in the book it details six key steps to bouncing back, and I know you’ve read it, so you will know what I mean.  A lot of people get stuck at step one and what happens is that instead of acknowledging that there is a problem, they can either be stuck in complete denial, so there is no recession going on and I’ll carry on spending, or they think they are powerless to change the situation they are in.  We’ve always got a choice.  I believe that there is always a choice.  There is a recession, we can’t change that but what can we do.  What options do we have available to us.  It’s just taking that mindset of being stuck in the problem or not even seeing the problem, and then thinking what can I do?  Once people make that leap they can bounce back quite quickly.

Andy White: I’m interested in the same sort of question, but specifically in relation to freelancers.  You’ve met a lot of freelancers, and what should freelancers be concentrating on do you think Hannah?

Hannah Keep: For me I think it’s about selling themselves, you just asked me the question what you did, maybe we’re a bit British, maybe it’s a cultural thing, but we don’t like to overtly say yep you know what I am good at this, and I am an expert at this, and for me freelancers they tend to have a huge expertise, whether it’s in programming, media, camera work, they have a huge talent, their opportunity is to get out and really sell that and talk about those achievements, because the freelancing market is just exploding because of the economy, so they’ve got to be able to differentiate themselves over and above what they technically do in their day job. I guess it’s that question what makes you different?  They need to be able to answer that.

Andy White: Do you think a lot of freelancers just don’t give themselves credit for what they know?  It’s quite easy to forget how much you know.

Hannah Keep:  It is, and I don’t think it’s just freelancers.  I think many people I’ve come across don’t give themselves enough credit, and sometimes we can do very well in our careers, and instead of saying yep, I did that, we sometimes put it down to luck, and maybe not take all of the credit for what we have done, so you read in the book there, it is about looking at what have I achieved, what am I actually really really good at, because that’s what’s got me here today, and that’s what’s going to get me forward in the future, so everyone needs to take more credit.

Andy White: I think you were mentioning about being British earlier, I think we are all very prone to these modesty attacks aren’t we?

Hannah Keep: We are, but modesty doesn’t help you fight back. We are not talking about being arrogant here or taking credit for what we haven’t done.  We are talking about giving ourselves a pat on the back, because there are enough people out there with a stick, so take the credit.

Andy White: Now I remember a long time ago, I was reading a lot of books all about self development, and they were kind of like yours but not as good.  I was very much into this whole PMA, positive mental attitude, type thing, and I found, and I’m not sure if it’s true today, and that’s what the next questions going to be, but I found that a lot of people at the time were sort of quite skeptical of people who tried to be positive, and I was possibly just being positive in the wrong way.  It’s like a double-barreled question really.  Do you think that there is still a lot of scepticality today, if that’s a real word, about people who are positive, and is there a wrong way to be positive?

Hannah Keep: Yes there is, and I think there are two things for me there.  One, I believe that people in the world are naturally optimistic, so glass half full, whatever happens they will look on  the bright side.  Then you’ve got the pessimists who will focus on perhaps what’s gone wrong, or what could go wrong.  Neither is good or bad, it’s just a different way of looking at things, and actually you need to be optimistic and you need to be pesemistic as well.  So I think what you get from the pessimist is that skepticism, so I think yes there is still lots of that out there.  I think what can be irritating is a faked optimism and that’s what breads that skeptically.  We are having tough times now, so if I went out to all my clients and said get over it, look on the bright side, in that kind of annoying fake way, that’s what gets irritating.  So fake optimism and unrealistic optimism is perhaps the wrong way.

Andy White: That’s really interesting, because, I’m trying to be okay with myself here but, I wouldn’t describe myself as a particularly optimistic kind of guy. I think what I was doing all those years ago, I was being a bit over the top, and faking it until you make it.  But what advice would you give to people who aren’t naturally sort of gungho and optimistic.  What ways can they develop a more optimistic attitude?

Hannah Keep: I would say when they are going through experiences or situations or challenges, do what you would naturally do, which would be to look at what the worst thing is that could happen, and maybe what has gone wrong and analyse that, because they are very good problem solvers, then to also spend some time thinking about okay so what is positive in this, what opportunities might there be, and if I was going to give myself a break what’s the one thing that I have actually done quite well.  Look at both sides.

Andy White: You’ve hit on a really interesting point there, about remembering the good things that you’ve done.  I think we all ought to do that more shouldn’t we?

Hannah Keep: We absolutely do, because nobody else is going to do it for us.

Andy White: Tell us a little bit about, you’re doing some stuff with freelance adviser.

Hannah Keep: I’m really excited about this; they’ve been really kind to me, and given me the opportunity to set up the training function of the site. What that means is that they are going to be posting regular articles on different topics that we believe from a training and learning perspective are going to be useful for freelancers, whatever their background is, we are talking about generic skills, from selling yourself, market yourself, look at all the finances and accounting side of your business, because some of these things don’t come naturally to us, me as well.  I love being out there with people but get me around numbers and the finances and receipts and all that kind of stuff and that’s not my natural strength.  So what we are saying is between freelancers you’ve got huge expertise in what you do, let us help you with those areas that perhaps aren’t within your comfort zone, so there will be loads of stuff on the site for people to download, and podcasts, but also we are going to be running some workshops where people can come along and learn some of these skills with other freelancers.

Andy White: Now there’s an email address, is it training@freelanceadvisor.co.uk that people can send questions into, is that right?

Hannah Keep: Yes they can. What we are going to start to do is if people can send in any kind of question that they’d like to know the answer to and we are going to either answer that in a podcast or a post.  It’s a bit like having a coach, you don’t actually have to meet or speak to, so perhaps a one liner and a question that they’d like the answer from someone with some coaching expertise. On any topic, as long as it’s nothing to do with what they technically do in their day job, because that’s something I can’t help with.  So send in your questions and we can start that going, I think other people can learn from the answers that we post as well.

Andy White: How do people find out about these physical workshops?

Hannah Keep: If they go on to the freelance adviser website and see the posts there.  If you want to go direct into the training section then its freelanceadvisor.co.uk/training and that well have a list of all the sessions and dates, and you’ll be able to book on there or find out more information.

Andy White: What sort of things are you looking to cover in those Hannah?

Hannah Keep:  Well we thought Selling You, which is the first workshop we are promoting, which is actually a full days training, with a load of stuff in there, but it gives you a basic sales process which you can use, whether it’s on the telephone or face to face, we are going to do some objection handling, negotiations, how to communicate with different clients, because some personality styles will need you to be flexible in the way that you sell to them. Most importantly confidence.  A whole big area of self confidence and self belief, because I think some people when they get into freelancing, maybe it’s a bit tough, they are not getting as much work, then we start to get that self doubt gremlin, you know that voice that says are you sure you should have gone freelance.

Andy White: The little guy on your shoulder with the horns, the red guy.

Hannah Keep: We stamp him or her out, and we just work positively.  So I think it’s more than just selling, but also being able to demonstrate how you are unique, how you are going to sell you to others.

Andy White: Have you got some more people involved with this, isn’t there a little team of you doing this training?

Hannah Keep: There are a couple of us so far, but we are expanding the team, as we are looking to do this across the country. In London I’ve got a colleague  Darrell Close, he’s taking care of the financial management, accounting, business strategy, part of the business, and he is launching his first workshop which is called “Taking Care of Business” which is a good one to go for if you are just getting into freelancing, or even if maybe you’ve been in it for a while and you think am I going in the right direction here, do I need to just take a step back, so he’s about to publish some dates for that.  I’ve got another company that run a fantastic time management course called “Getting Things Done” and that will be up on the site soon, and they’ve been kind enough to let me go down and attend their workshop, so I will come back being even more of a whirlwind hopefully.  Loads of things happening, very exciting.

Andy White: Well it’s a fantastic resource for anyone, not just freelancers.

Hannah Keep: It is, and so far we are the only company out there that is just specialising in training for freelancers, and I believe that goods because we are unique and freelancing is a different market place and the training has to be geared to understand and appreciate that market place, and freelancers are different people, we are unique and different.

Andy White: So there we have it, Hannah Keep, author of Fighting Back.  Have you got a URL that you want to direct people to, and tell them more about what you do?

Hannah Keep: There is post that’s up on Freelance Adviser called “How to Deal with the Ups & Downs” and I detail the six steps there that are in the book, so that’s a really handy article to read if you need a boost and on the article there will be more about the book and if you want to purchase it there is a PayPal link there, so again that’s freelanceadvisor.co.uk/training.

Andy White: Fantastic.  Hannah Keep thank you very very much indeed.

• Step 1: Find the good accountant

• Step 2: Make sure you like their software

  Transcript:

  Steps to Accounting Heaven

  Darren: The freelancers approach is, I believe, that of a self sufficient person, a person who will try and think, as I will, to try and do it yourself, and where does that come down to, and that comes down to a software route.  So you start looking for a software approach first, and there are some fantastic pieces of software out there, absolutely fantastic, but that necessarily isn’t the right step first.  You may be choosing a fantastically graphically beautifully thing that maps out your P & L, your advanced cash flows, but you might not be following an approach correctly, and in the end, the accountant may not want to use that piece of software, and that’s the key point.

We are recommending find the accountant first.  They are not just a person that only know about accountancy, they are a person that clearly has built up a fantastic repertoire of good business advice, so they can put in place good bookkeeping practices, give you all the information on how long you need to keep your receipts for, every facet.  Should you go limited, or are you ok staying sole trader, and at what point should you go limited, what the responsibilities of being limited are, are there endless forms, or will the accountancy firm do that for you.  Lots and lots of key areas that they help you with, and will set your mind at rest.

Now other key areas are, these are questions that we’ve seen time and time again, at accountancy health checks that we’ve held with Crunch, should I be VAT registered?  At what point do I definitely need to go VAT registered?  Which scheme should I go for – flat rate or fully registered?  Again these are all key things that the accountant will go through with you.  So my experience is to choose the accountant first, not to pick the piece of software, because as I said at the beginning of this section, so many people have picked beautiful pieces of software, picked the accountant at the last minute, sat with them, and they’ve said I’m really sorry I’m not going to go into that  login and have to work through yet another accountancy bookkeeping system to get your P & L, or invoices, or your expenses out so I can do the year end, I’m just not going to do it.  What you have to do, you have to replicate it all in Excel and you’ve wasted anything between £15.99 and £25.00 a month for the whole year to get to the accountant to say I’m not using it.

Andy White: Have you had experience of people who have trodden this path?

Darren: I have, and that is exactly why I am communicating it now.  People have been on the phone, telling about the woes, and again I agree with them, they’ve picked a fantastic piece of software, and they’ve left it to the last minute and the accountant point blankly, and I mean point blankly, refuses to use that piece of software, and they really feel quite gutted they’ve wasted all that money.

1: Find the good accountant

No 2.  Make sure you like their software

Unlike any other podcast or article that is sponsored by an accountancy firm we are going to guide you through what we believe is the top five for you to go out there and make your own opinion on this.  Of course, as the sponsors we will have to say Crunch is with that top five, the first combined chartered accountancy firm and on line software system, so that’s in no.1, I’m not actually placing it in any particular order.  The second one worth looking at is KashFlow, been around for a long time.  State Side is a Company called Blink Sale, then there’s Fresh Books, again it’s a US based system, and another UK based one, which I believe is based in Scotland, is Free Agent Central.  These are all on line systems.  I was speaking to some consultants this morning who felt that was a really useful attribute to be able to log in anywhere, as they were often on different sites in different places, and wanted to get invoices off, and didn’t want to have to go all the way back home, which was going to be the end of next week because they were staying in hotels.  So online offers a lot of advantages, and all the systems that I have spoken about there, I would believe have gone through stringent security checks so I wouldn’t worry about security.

I’ve pick three key pieces of PC based software. The one we all know about is Sage, there are personal versions out there, I’m not going to say too much about these systems, all I’m going to say is not all of them are PC and MAC based.  Now Quick Books is second on the list, and I believe that is only PC based, so that is something really to watch out for and that is a system that I used on my MAC and obviously had to use it in parallels using a PC emulator.  Third and last in our top list, is MYOB, Mind Your Own Business, and that is software only and not on line.

So as I’ve discussed I think the key, key thing here is to make sure you get the chartered accountant you want, you know you are going to get excellent advice there, and get software you like and will actually use, because if you don’t like it you really won’t use it, and then you are going to get lumbered with lots of manual bookkeeping and high charges from the chartered accountancy firm.  Now the typical bookkeeping charge is anything from £18 – £25 an hour, so it’s well worth getting software that really suites you, and will work with the accountants.  So pick the system you like, if it’s not one the accountant normally recommends and just make sure they are going to actually log in for year end and do everything for you, because if they are not you are obviously wasting your time.

So there’s the two clear steps.  Pick the accountant first, right up front.  Don’t get half way through the year, or close to the year end, get the accountant, pick the three, chose the best one, then get the best software, make sure the accountant is going to use that software and your away – job done.

Contractors Aproach. If you think about the beast of, I’m not being rude to contractors, a contractor is looking for large swathes of work, they typically aren’t so self sufficient like a freelancer.  A freelancer would go and do their own marketing, a contractor is equally highly skilled but would prefer to go via a recruitment agency to find that job, so they are pitching for the jobs in that approach.  So consequently what happens is the contractor will take the first bit of advice from the recruiter, and that is often as a result of that recruiter or recruitment firm getting a kick back for recommending a particular firm.  Now this, on the contracting side, is where you see the recommendations for the contracting specific accountancy firms, the telephone based ones I spoke about earlier, it’s also a place where you may get recommended to an umbrella firm.  To be honest with you it’s highly likely you will get recommended to an umbrella firm.  So some typical recommendations just so you can see some big firms out there, do contracting specific, it could be SJD Accountancy, another one you could be recommended to if you are doing it through a recruiter could be Churchill Knight potentially.  Now there are loads of them out and all telephone based, and I believe that is the correct modern approach to save you having to keep going to an accountant.  The umbrella firm, we’ve all heard of umbrella firms, what does that really, really, mean?  What it means is that it’s a more efficient way for them to operate with multiple contractors, and the way they do it more efficiently is that they have everybody on PAYE.  Wait a minute, that’s exactly what I used to be on when I was an employee working for a corporate telecoms firms, and that is highly tax inefficient, the most tax efficient is becoming a limited company which we recommend at Crunch, so you are benefiting from paying yourself a small salary, which is the smallest possible, and then paying yourself through the profits of the business as dividends, so it’s a far more tax efficient approach.  Now umbrella firms, given they’ve got thousands of thousands of contractors, the easiest way for them to do this is via PAYE, so instead of getting something like 82 – 85% of your take home pay your only getting 62 – 65% so it’s getting close to what you were doing as an employee.  So, I can’t knock umbrella first, because they are often highly efficient, but just be aware that they are not very tax efficient and you want more money in your pocket.  The big umbrella companies that I have seen are Orange Genie and Giant, so they are worth looking at, but please be aware of the tax issues around that and the fact that you are not getting as much take home pay, in fact you are getting considerably less.  Now of course umbrella firms will argue strongly against, or for the reasons why the PAYE route is good and it is often around IR35, ultimately the HRMC wants to collect all taxes via PAYE and therefore IR35 doesn’t come into it.  You can do it very successfully via a limited company

So in summary for contractors.  Don’t grab at the first recommendation, pick three chartered accountants, ideally look to go down the limited company route, which is obviously obviously offering many tax adavantages and limited liability which is a very key benefit.  Go to the link freelanceadviser.co.uk/charteredaccountants and you can search by town, county, country.  Make sure you are happy with the software exactly the same as a freelancer would.

Crunch was set up to be completely different to the rest, to make sure you have the most tax efficient way of getting take home pay, we are fully registered members of the Institute of Chartered Accountants England & Wales, and also an accountancy software firm.  We have a whole enterprise Java development scheme.  You have telephone support, and speak to someone who not only knows about systems but technical questions about accounting.  All answered in one place, and you don’t have to rush around to get your year end done.  The others range from £95 to as much as £140/£150 per month, I’m not quite sure where there pricing point comes from especially when we talk to people who are leaving them, we’ve set  our pricing point at a really fair price at £59.50 per month plus VAT for the software, which is constantly being improved, chartered accountant, VAT returns as well.

We are trying to make accountancy software sexy, look at www.crunch.co.uk look at the demo and see how easy it is.  The really exciting part is the connection to the bank.  We’ve had support from Lloyds TSB for the last 2 years, and Crunch connects on a read only basis.  It is obviously banking grade secure, enterprise java, exactly like all the online banking systems, so let me give you an idea of what all of that means, that means that if you go into Crunch and issue the invoice, and send it out via email you can actually set Crunch to send an email, or you might even want a text message when you’ve been paid.  None of this waiting around for when have they paid me, they still haven’t paid me.  All these natty things that we all personally wanted is in the system, so you see that you’ve been paid, it will show you graphically, that invoice looks it equals that payment, click ok, and it graphically merges together, so reconciliation is done.  None of this £25 an hour bookkeeping stuff.  The next fun bit is the biggest pain, personally I’ve had.  Have you ever done lots of entering of receipts?

This is what I find are some of the biggest costs to what could be a £1,000 bill, you might get it cheaper, but often we are so busy the majority of the accountancy costs is made up in bookkeeping, so with a connect to a bank, we can completely eliminate that, so if you imagine using your debit card or cheque book to pay for all of your materials and your travel, hotel etc, and it automatically appear in Crunch, so you can simply click on each one, and go that was travel, that was hotel, that was materials, keep your receipts in the bag, and that will be completely the end of bookkeeping as we know it.  We are starting off with one high street bank, and we expect to bring the others on board, the others are dealt with in a normal electronic statement route.  But what a beauty to actually not have to worry about it.

We are working with a superb mobile application developer, and I love the gadgets, if we could make accountancy sexy we are trying every which way, we are working on an I phone application that will allow you to do a lot of things that you would do within your computer, that you can log on from anywhere, so that’s coming.  Every possible element that we can gadgetize in there is there. There are also lots of other accountancy benefits in there as well.

So many of us have stayed sole trader because we think going limited is only when we have employees or its going to be so much paperwork, well Crunch can do all of the paperwork for you, do the submissions so it is almost like being a sole trader again, although that is all mixed up in your own personal finances.  So the key point, now is the time to consider going limited.  If you go limited and say your earning around £25,000, we can save £3,000 – £4,000 in tax by using that dividend method that I spoke about earlier.  So many, many advantages.  Later on we may release a sole trader version, but at the moment we are firmly behind pushing limited for its tax advantages and limited liability benefits.

Andy White talks to freelance Art Director and Conceptual Designer, and winner of The Xchange Team Freelancer of the Year award, Anna Cowie.  In this interview, Annie gives us some tips and reveals her modus operandi.

Topics covered:

• Guiding clients
• Managing client expectations
• Taking risks / not be afraid to make mistakes
• Allowing clients to be the experts in their business
• The importance of working within a team
• How to listen to the client
• How to inject energy into a project

• Article on Anna’s awards

Andy White talks to Drew Griffiths of Mosaic about why companies hire freelancers and what they look for.

Topics covered:

• What companies look for in a freelancer
• How companies find freelancers
• The types of freelancers from the company perspective
• The importance of multiple skill sets in freelancers
• The importance of experience and how to get experience early on
• The importance of passion in freelancers
• The importance of knowing your own true value as a freelancer

• http://www.emosaic.co.uk/ – Mosaic, Brighton
• http://network.freelanceadvisor.co.uk/ – Freelance Advisor Network

Andy White talks to Emma Brierley, Director of Xchange Team, about her book, Talent on Tap: Getting the best from Freelancers, Interims and Consultants, and gain some interesting insights into why freelancers get employed from the agency perspective.

Topics covered:

• What the book Talent on Tap is about
• Helping companies understand how to hire freelancers, interims and consultants
• Main business drivers for companies hiring consultants
• Subtle reasons why companies hire consultants
• Hiring consultants as a means of lowering risk
• The role of agencies
• The relationship between hiring companies and agencies
• The relationship between agencies and freelancers
• Freelancer personality types
• What makes a good Freelancer?
• Where we see the freelance/contractor market going in the next 3 years
• Advice to people considering contacting an agency to become a freelancer

• http://www.xchangeteam.com – Xchange Team
• http://www.cipd.co.uk/Bookstore/_catalogue/HRPractice/1843981408.htm - Talent on Tap: Getting the best from Freelancers, Interims and Consultants

In the wake of the results of the Kingston University survey on freelancers, we get reactions and opinions from John Kell of the Professional Contractors Group and Nathan Pope of Latitude Hosting and the Brighton Farm.

Topics Covered:

• Growth in the freelance market
• Freelancer figures, statistics and research
• Male and Female freelancing split in IT contracting and creative industries
• Response and reflection from John Kell (PCG), Nathan Pope (Brighton ) Darren Fell (Crunch)

Related:

• Listen to Part-one

Whether you are a consultant or contractor, contracting or freelancing, the future could look bright for the independent and self-employed.

Related:

• Listen to Part II

Topics Covered:

• The role of networking;
• Online resources;
• Finding the perfect price point according to your skill;
• Selecting the rate you can afford;
• Strategies for getting started in pricing;
• Pricing for big clients;
• Price negotiating tips.

Topics Covered:

• Getting direct clients;
• Watch the trends;
• Attending industry events
• Having a team of experts around you
• The difference between design and artwork
• Flaunting your published work
• The role of networking in specific industry sectors
• Asking for referrals
• Free initial consultations

Topics Covered:

• Getting and capturing the scope
• How to charge for projects
• Handling scope changes and change control
• Project planning
• Contracts, agreements and legal matters
• Becoming a partner with your client and fostering long term relationships

Part 2 of an interview with Steve Crouch of SRC Chartered Accountants. Here Steve tells us about the types of expenses freelancers can claim such as those associated with working from home and some more general things to look out for.

Topics Covered:

• The expenses a freelancer can claim;
• Expenses associated with working from home;
• Motor expenses;
• Expenses related to working from rented accommodation;
• Insuring your equipment;
• Public liability insurance;
• Taking on employees;
• Health and Safety;
• Taking on contractors of your own;
• What should freelancers look for in an accountant?

Part one of an interview with Steve Crouch of SRC Chartered Accountants. Steve answers questions on such things as salaries, dividends, section 660, IR35 and VAT.

Topics covered:

• Limited company verses sole trader;
• Taking a small salary with big dividends;
• Section 660 – profit share between spouses;
• Consideration to IR35;
• When to register for VAT;
• The two VAT schemes.

• The Crunch limited company vs sole trader calculator.

3: Marketing Secrets Part 1: Tips From the Coalface

Andy White: I’m talking to Raju Aziz who has been an IT Contractor for twelve years. Raju hello, how are you doing?

Raju Aziz: : Hello, not too bad Andy, how are you doing?

AW: Pretty good thanks. Now I want to talk today about marketing secrets because freelancers have to market themselves of course. As a freelancer you have to do all of these things that were perhaps done for you when you were working for someone else. What top tips can you give us on actually marketing your services?

RA: I think what you need to do, you need to have a really good CV that needs to be precise and I think at the most it needs to be two at the absolute most three pages. It needs to be presentable. The best way to do it normally is to send it to a few agencies and do a follow up telephone call tothem. Ask them what they think of your CV, if it was good, whether they can use the CV or whether they’d be prepared to represent you looking for work. One of the other tips as well, if you do actually speak to agencies and make sure you do follow up calls basically most agencies will have a priority list and they’ll have four or five freelancers that they’re prepared to use at that current time and it’s important for you to get on that list and the best way to do that is to actually ring them or hassle them and say “is there anything that’s come in today?” Basically make yourself known well to them and get on their list.

AW: What do you think about online CVs? I’ve spoken to a few people that have their CVs online, good or bad in your opinion?

RA: Well I mean it allows obviously perspective employers to view your CV online in their own time which is a good thing but if you do forward anything like that then you should always there again follow up with a phone call. Make sure that if you do send your CV in to a particular job that you have a cover letter as well and that you tailor that cover letter more specifically to that role. It’s not a matter of lying or twisting the truth it’s basically you want that role and you need to be able to …….you know your skill set but you need to put it in a way that obviously they want to read it as well so it’s important for you to do all of these things.

AW: Fantastic. Any other tips you can give us?

RA: Well basically, don’t be afraid to speak to friends, old colleagues, and old work colleagues. I wouldn’t necessarily think it’s a good idea to do cold calling to employers because they probably get a lot of that from the agencies in any case so we are heavily reliant on agencies so it maybe advantageous to actually, once you’ve got a relationship with your agency or the person working at the agency is to go and meet them, take them for a beer. You know build up a relationship and don’t just do that once when your in a contract, do this all the time, keep continuing to do the search, keep continuing to make your contacts, keep speaking to the agencies because obviously staff in agencies they’ve got a very high turnover as well so one week you may know the person that’s dealing with your contract and then next week it might be somebody else. So make sure you stay in communication with your agency.

AW: What’s your opinion of people that want to break away from agencies and try and find work directly without the intervention of an agency? Have you got much experience of that Raju?

RA: Well I must admit, to be totally honest, it’s only been like one or two contracts that I’ve actually been able to do that with. There are a few pitfalls there. Basically, because you’re getting paid by the agency so you’ve got a definite wage coming in. Sometimes, if you work directly to an employer, obviously you have to do the invoicing, you have to chase up the invoicing etc etc. So ok, yes, you don’t’ pay the percentage to the agency but then sometimes it’s advantageous to do that as regards the finances. I think on the whole, in England at the moment, it’s quite difficult to keep a stream of people or perspective employers working direct to them so I think on the whole, at the moment, agencies is one of the main routes.

AW: Yes, because if you’re working for an agency, you’ve got that sort of buffer haven’t you. They can pay you on a regular basis and I know some of these big companies can be quite difficult to get money out of, can’t they, in a timely manner.

RA: That’s right, I mean obviously most companies will work on a 30 day basis but sometimes if they want to, they can defer that a little bit so it depends on how well your finances are etc. So if you are prepared to do that, then it’s worth while obviously bypassing the agency and going in that percentage which their cut is but I think on the whole myself I’ve been quite happy with most of the agencies that I’ve worked for and yes I think that is the main route at the moment.

AW: Because the interesting thing is, if you’re solely working through agencies, you are effectively only marketing to those agencies aren’t you?

RA: That’s right.

AW: Which I guess comprises your CV. What about referrals from previous clients, do you make use of that much?

RA: Well I’ve been quite fortunate really because I’ve been called back on several occasions for most of my employers so this is where it’s important to make sure that you do do a good job. Don’t burn your bridges when you finish a contract but unfortunately yes to be able to gain recommendations, I suppose the only real way that we can see a recommendation is that I obviously use a lot of these employers as referees and they will recommend me if contract work comes up so that is one form of recommendation I suppose.

AW: So in a way, your track record is one of your strongest assets really isn’t it?

RA: Definitely, definitely. I mean it’s been quite difficult to keep my CV down to three pages but what I tend to do is, the older contacts I’ll just do like a one-liner but yes definitely you can go through my CV and you’ll see the same names coming up. The thing is that at the end of the day the level that we’re at, you build your level up higher and higher and the way that you speak to say a colleague that’s on the permanent side, you always try and stay well with your colleagues because one day he maybe a manager.

AW: Yeh because the people you’re working with, whether you’re a freelancer or a permanent, you’ll never know who they’re going to end up being in relation to you in the future do you?

RA: That’s right and certainly in my case, people have actually said well they’ve done really well, they’ve become managers and I’ve spoken to them just by chance and they said “oh ok yeh” and they’ve asked me to come back and work for them so yes it’s important to get on well with everybody. Definitely. Even if it’s in a difficult situation, it’s definitely advantageous for you, if not now, at a later stage, for this to happen.

AW: So use your top people skills at all times.

RA: Well this is it. I try to. I may not be successful all the time but definitely I think that’s got to be part of your character. You’ve got to want to be that way and then this is why I think it’s important to be a really good freelancer, contractor you’ve got to have that ability to get on well with people and be diplomatic and it’s definitely an advantage if people call you back. It’s a good reflection.

AW: Any other ideas that we haven’t spoken about?

RA: All I can say is, don’t be afraid and that it may be a big jump for yourselves to move from permanent to freelance but if you know your work and you’re confident that you can do your work well then you’ll have no problems gaining work. It’s just a matter of being disciplined on some of the other things that we’ve discussed previously like paperwork, having good relationships with everybody but, on the whole, enjoy yourself, don’t work too hard, make sure you take a few holidays because that’s one of the benefits of being a contractor is that when you finish your contract and you feel able to work things out, you can normally take say a couple of weeks in between contracts and spend some of the lovely money you’ve earned.

AW: That’s right. We’ve all heard stories of contractors that will work six months of the year then spend the other six months travelling, assuming of course they don’t have families.

RA: You can still do that if you’ve got a family. It’s just that obviously, if your family’s quite young that’s not a problem but yeh when your kids get a bit older then things start to get a bit more expensive so you need to work more months (laughs).

AW: Yes absolutely. Well thank you very much for talking to us again Raju and perhaps you’ll speak to us again in the future. Is that alright with you?

RA: Yes no problem at all.

AW: Keep up the good work.

RA: Thank you.

AW: See you then. Bye.

Great interview with Raju there Darren. What are your thoughts?

Darren Fell: I love the idea of actually getting the CV online. I think it is so so important to actually be able to send the links to perspective employers. Just get your CV up there, get a site up there if you can and put your latest projects up there and if you’re a programmer, why not show off your latest technology. I’ve just seen a CV for Crunch from a great Java programmer who’s Ajaxed up his CV so it’s not just a bog standard HTML one it’s Ajaxed. You can grab sections, move it around the screen in the web browser and it’s utterly brilliant. It’s just showing off how good the guy is so yeh I think that’s really important.

AW: That is just so cool. So his actual CV is demonstrating his skills.

DF: Absolutely. I mean, I don’t know too much about Ajax myself other than the fact that I want Ajax technology in the Crunch system to get ultimate usability. Things you never normally could do in the world of the browser but you can grab sections, you can do things all interoperability within the actual page and no refreshing so yes he’s showing off how good he is in that particular field and no doubt many other fields.

AW: Now Darren, I know you’ve got some good thoughts on marketing from what Raju was saying. Your thoughts sir?

DF: Raju again, has picked up on a classic thing. Now I’ve somehow, naturally started doing that when I set up Pure and that the most important thing is to tell absolutely everybody so you’ve left this nice comforting world of the institutionalised corporate where you’ve been paid your regular salary and you’re given the work on a regular basis, in fact quite frankly you’d prefer not be given work because your getting paid that standard salary. Well that all disappears when you go freelancing and the freedom is fantastic but you’ve got to market yourself so I’d say tell everybody and I mean everybody, girlfriend, wife, husband, boyfriend, cousins, aunties, uncles and I am seriously talking about everybody. People you work with, especially past colleagues at work anybody you can think about. Tell them what you do, tell them what your skill sets are. It can be a very harmless conversation ring up or email “do you know what I’m doing? I’ve finally left bla bla corporation and I’ve set up my own company and here’s my online CV and I’m loving it, its great!” and it’s a damn good excuse to tell them what you’re doing because you never know in this networking, you’re actually doing, what business you might find from it. You never know, your girlfriend might speak to someone at her work and her mate at works boyfriend has set up a business and he needs a programmer for this, he needs a website designer and they’re going to put you in touch so that’s the first thing I’d say just get networking through everybody you know and that’s the first point.

AW: Now that kind of leads us on to what we’re going to be talking about on our next episode aren’t we because we are going to be talking to Paul Silver I believe aren’t we.

DF: Yes. Paul Silver is a very interesting chap. He set up Brighton Farm. I think it’s under Brightonfarm.com and it’s almost like a consortium, that sounds like a too strong a word, an official word but it’s a group of freelancers more in the programming and the HMTL and the web design world, a cold fusion. All those little technologies in the new media world. He’s put them all together to network amongst each other to find more business to help the market and that’s the other thing I’d say to networking. Normally most freelancers go “urgh I don’t want to go to networking functions there’s going to be a load of boring people.”

You do your little mini elevator pitch and then go on with your glass of wine to speak to the next person and you really don’t want to be there and I know how that feels but what Paul’s done and what he’d talk about in the next episode is the way he set up Brighton Farm. Again, we’re talking about Brighton’s locality in this podcast and it’s held at the Hampton Arms which is a pub and they just meet every Wednesday at 8pm and have beers and just chat and already, Paul has put forward, just by him networking up there, another Java programmer for the Crunch system, James Cohen, I think his name is and I’ll be meeting up with him today so there’s just an instant example how networking, really quite an enjoyable networking session, can work out well.

AW: Well we look forward to that very much and Darren Fell thank you very very much indeed. See you next time.

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