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[00:05] Andy: Welcome to Freelance Advisor brought to you by Crunch, ridiculously easy accounting. This is episode 26, the second part of our credit control and debt collection discussion. I’m Andy White and I have with me Darren Fell, founder of Crunch.co.uk, Rob Warlow from the Business Loan Services and author of Loan sharp. Get the business finance you need, and Adam Home, operations manager at Credit Safe LTD, a family run credit recovery agency.

What should we do if it all starts to go wrong? Rob would you like to get the ball rolling?

[00:35] Rob: Yes. In most cases people wonder when do I know it’s gone wrong and it’s usually the letter from the bank where you’ve written a cheque a suddenly you realise the bank hasn’t honored it. That’s the first indication that things are not going to plan.

But clearly, if things are starting to go wrong there are some immediate steps that you can take. One of the first ones is to really just step back and take a good look at exactly where you are. I walk into many business owner’s offices and see a pile of paper on the desk and ask “What’s that?” and they say “Oh, those are my invoices”. So it starts with good management of documents and knowing exactly where you are every day or every week in regard to what is owed to you. So if you’re in that position where you’ve really lost control of your cash flow it’s taking a step back and first of all starting to priorities your list. Sit down, take each invoice, one at a time, and start listing down, the name, what the service was, when the invoice was issued, when it should have been paid and where you are today as regards, when did you last chase it and any other useful information that you think is going to help you get that payment. Then the next step is getting on the phone, picking that phone up, writing a letter or whatever, getting in front of the client to know they are now well overdue. This is another thing that business owners don’t like doing is getting a bit harsh with the client, it doesn’t matter, at the end of the day it’s your cash flow you’ve got to protect. Whilst you don’t want to be putting a good relationship at risk, it’s more important that you actually get that payment into your account. If you think “Well, this is a good client”, well at the end of the day how good can they be if they’re willing to put your business at risk. So it’s knowing where you are and prioritising the list are the two first good steps you can take.

[02:24] Darren: They clearly are not a good client if they’re doing that to you and keep stringing you on. You’re absolutely right. Many businesses are like that, they’re doing it very manually, they’re using Word templates to get their invoices out, they’ve got big piles of them, they’re not doing it properly. There are many pieces of software they can employ to get things done. They even put two or three hours a week into just getting all their expenses in, getting all the invoices out the door or email them or issue and print them then post them and then post them. Just by setting that time aside in sort of admin mode, it can make a massive difference to seeing exactly how their business is – because you’d hope that piece of software would tell you exactly your cash position. How much revenue you’ve generated, how much cash is actually in the bank.

Now if you’re doing it in the older school way of things and you simply don’t have the time to do it there’s this whole new world of virtual assistants out there or even credit controllers that can come in. They’re really not that expensive. We needed them back in the days of Pure 360, my first business, we went gun ho on selling. We were going so well and then we realised we had literally £120,000 in plus 120 days. I know exactly what it’s like where business can start running away with itself, maybe it’s going really well, maybe it’s not going so well, and you don’t do the key basics and you end up with those big piles of invoices there.

[03:52] Rob: Yes. I’m a great fan of outsourcing what you don’t know. It’s really about people starting a business because they have a particular passion. People don’t wake up on a Monday morning and say “Yeh! Today’s the day I’m going to be raising and chasing my invoices!”. So it’s the last job that gets done. If it’s not your bag, outsource it, get the software, get somebody else to do the chasing, if you’re not comfortable with it, do whatever you can to make sure everybody knows when payments are due and that you need the cash today.

[04:20] Andy: Getting your invoices out on time is a big thing, just remembering to invoice at the right time and don’t delay it.

[04:25] Adam: No absolutely. Never delay your invoice because you can only expect to be paid after you’ve issued the invoice. It’s something simple like that that can really trip up your cash flow. If you got one large client and you’re a week late in issuing the invoice the chances are they’re going to be at least a minimum of a week late in paying you. So you need to make sure you’re dotting the i’s and crossing the tees. If you’re not comfortable with chasing your own invoices, if your partner has an hour or two free every week it’s something that they could potentially do on your behalf and that gives the distance – a lot of freelancers are going to be working very closely with the end client. They may be working in their premises and they may be working cheek to jowl with them on a daily basis. If you’re not happy to phone up somebody that you’re in a position like that with and who you’re going to be meeting again next week, if you can get somebody with a bit more distance to give them a call and a nudge and find out when the invoice is going to be paid, that can make your life considerably easier. Similarly if you know another freelancer that you trust, there’s no reason to stop the two of you swapping your aged debtors and getting together once a week in one of your houses or in your offices…

Andy: I like that idea. A sort of a credit control buddy.

Adam: Yes. Essentially.

[05:45] Darren: Adam, just for the people who’ve just set out in business, just can you quickly clarify that aged debtors thing so they get it.

[05:54] Adam: It’s just any body that you owe money to who are past your terms. So if you’ve got five accounts that are past your 30 days they are aged debtors. Anybody who’s still inside your payment terms or who’s paying on time. It’s those people who are outside of it so you want to be hitting the oldest people first – people who are the most overdue.

[06:15] Darren: I made the mistake of flying out with a number which some people in the audience wouldn’t have understood anyway, like 120 day plus people. They’re aged debtors. So you’ve got to catch them within 30 days, worst case get the money in by the 45th day point. Just on that point of getting invoices out on time, that can make a massive difference. Just from my perspective when Iwork with a freelancer in another business and I’ve spoken to them and we’ve specced it out and in the same day I come back to my to my email box, it’s say 5 o’clock after I’ve met them earlier in the day, and I’ve have an invoice for the first part waiting for me from them – I can only say, I’m impressed. It’s not “Oh how dare they get those straight in”, I’m impressed that they are that on the ball. In out new build of Crunch.co.uk, we got in this great freelancer, we saw him, we specced it out, he understood it, and there was an invoice waiting for me in my inbox by the end of that day – impressed!

[07:14] Adam: Being proactive in your credit control will not hurt your professional standing amongst your peers or your clients. In fact presenting a professional face to handling your own accounts and your own cash flow is only going to reinforce the respect that your clients have for you. Not only are you good at the job that they’ve hired you for, but you’ve got enough business acumen to understand that cash flow is the very life blood of your business, and that you’re taking a proactive approach to making sure that that flow will always be there.

[07:46] Rob: I couldn’t agree more. It really sets the tone for how you’re going to deal with that client going forward. It really sends a clear message – I do things in a structured way, I do things professionally. It really gets your contracts off on a very firm footing.

[08:02] Andy: So what would the debt collection process be then Adam?

[08:05] Adam: Well initially assuming that you’ve got out the invoices et cetera to the client, you need to get on the phone – that’s absolutely imperative. A lot of people will suggest writing letters, however letters can be ignored, can be misfiled in the bin. If you get on the phone to your client, or your last client, you’re a lot harder to ignore. So, first things first, if they’re overdue, whoever is the most overdue – get on the phone and find out where your money is.

The second thing to do is to take notes. Even if it’s as low-fl as writing down what they say to you on the invoice you’re chasing itself, and keeping that somewhere safe. If they say, “Yes, I’ll definitely send you the cheque on Friday”, if you haven’t made notes, how are you going to know if they have definitely sent you the cheque on Friday? You’re probably not going to remember everything. So make notes however you wish, on your phone, in an email, in a spreadsheet, whatever you prefer. But keep a record of what they’re saying to you.

If it’s urgent, then make it clear to your client that there will be no second chances. By this point they will already be overdue – probably significantly overdue. If you’re on the phone to them and they’re promising you payment, make sure that they’re aware that if that payment is not received, that you will be upping the ante and placing it for collection with somebody else. You don’t necessarily have to tell them who at this point, but they do need to be aware that they get one chance to deal with you, and then they’ll be dealing with somebody else. Especially if it’s a case that you’re own cash flow is suffering as a result, just make sure that they’re aware that you’re playing hardball now, you’re not going to be messed around any more. Going back to what we said previously as well, never tell your clients or your past clients that you need the money. If you’re in particularly dire financial straights, do not tell the client that you desperately need this money to pay your rent, or your rates or your water or anything of that nature, because there are a significant minority of business owners who if they know you’re in financial trouble, will literally just sit on your cash for as long as humanly possible in the hope that you actually just go bust, and they either get to keep the money or merely only pay a small amount of it to the receivers or the liquidators.

[10:23] Darren: That’s pretty harsh tactics isn’t it but it’s got to be employed because maybe they’re suffering equally so I think in essence just don’t tell them the truth. You maintain a strong line that your business is going fine, you need to collect it, you gone past the terms. Don’t say, “Look I need to pay my VAT bill” or “The corporation tax is due and I need the money”.

[10:50] Adam: Yes, absolutely not. Just say, “This needs paying because it’s overdue”. Don’t go into any more detail than that, even if you’re reduced to living in your car and making a call on your mobile phone. Please don’t tell the client that because there are unscrupulous individuals who will take advantage of freelancers simply because they can. You don’t want to be one of those people.

[11:12] Darren: OK. Just so I get this straight, and for the audience who may be feeling a little bit passionate, shall we say, about the scenario about being owed this money. It’s about holding a professional tone isn’t it. For God’s sake don’t do letters because it’s going to go in the bin, don’t do emails it’s not going to worth while, get on the phone and hold a professional tone, you don’t want to be swearing down the phone at them. What’s your thoughts, Adam, should you turn up at the office or is that just a no-no?

[11:44] Adam: It’s going to depend from freelancer to freelancer and client to client, there is no magic bullet. We don’t do personal visits here but when you deal with corporate debts it’s often far harder than it is with personal debts because you’ll have, potentially, reams of invoices, contracts that are 5 – 10 pages long. It’s simply not practical to turn up on somebody’s doorstep if you need to refer to documentation like that. We would always recommend that you just call. It’s personal enough but without the possibility of it becoming intimidating for either the client or the freelancer. If you’re a freelancer and you fall out with your client, you may very well find yourself physically thrown out of their premises and obviously any type of physical altercation like that is not going to help you get paid, which is what you want at the end of the day. If you’re uncomfortable in calling people that you’ve potentially been working very closely with, just ask your partner or your mum, or your nana, if she’s competent enough, to just spend an hour or two a week just touching base with your clients. If you’re calling before the invoice is due it gives you an opportunity to find out if there’s any issue with the invoice prior to when you’re actually expecting the money to hit your company. As for when it’s overdue, Sid, our MD here has a line he likes to use and its, “Persistence overcomes resistance”. Nine out of ten times if you’re on the phone every couple of days saying “My cheques still not here, can you make a bank transfer”, as Rob said before, he who shouts loudest gets paid first.

[13:20] Darren: OK. So there’s the preamble to the process. They’ve gone past the line, Adam, you’re handing it over to a specialist agency. You’ve told them that, you don’t need to tell them exactly who it is, you don’t need to say it’s Credit Safe in this example. What’s the next steps? What steps do you go through?

[13:35] Adam: The first thing is never ever pay a collections agency any money up front at all. If they’re as good as they claim to be, they would only want paying after you’d successfully received your funds. There are a number of agencies out there that purport to offer “no collection no commission” debt recovery, but they will charge you a £230 – £250 file placement fee, or they call it a joining fee, or a registration fee. But that’s essentially to cover them if/when they don’t collect your money. I spoke to a freelancer the other week who was in PR. I had a very long chat with her, I spoke to her a couple of times during the course of the day, and later on she came back and said that she’d decided to go with another agency. She said that she’d paid said other agency £229 plus VAT merely to begin acting on her behalf for a £2,000 debt that she had outstanding. The debtor at the end had offered £300, so after paying the fee to the collection agents and then paying their commission on top, she would have been left with about £45 in total for her pocket out of a £2,000 bill…

[14:48] Darren: What!? That is unreal. Adam is there any way – you now got me a little bit concerned and I’m sure the audience is a bit concerned as well on a debt collection agency, I can imagine there’re some cowboys out there – how do the freelancers and the small businesses search for a reputable debt collection agency that they can trust that won’t rip them off?

[15:11] Adam: Ideally if you’re going to choose a reputable collections agency you need a recommendation. Whether that comes from another freelancer, from your accountant or from a member of a professional body that you my be part of. A lot of them will have services that they recommend to their users. Phone them up and find out if debt recovery is a service that they are able to offer their members. If not, find out if they can personally recommend a reputable agency to you. Same with your accountant and other freelancers, they may have had the same issues and they may be able to point you in the right direction. But please, please, please, don’t pay any collections agency any money up front for the simple reason that they’re as good as they’re trying to tell you they are in the sales call, they wouldn’t need the money up front – it’s as simple as that.

[15:57] Darren: OK. Well I can concur as a chartered accountancy firm, Crunch has been looking for a really good debt collection agency for freelancers and small businesses for some time and I can tell you Adam, it’s not been an easy job at all. It really hasn’t been. I’ve been so unimpressed with conversations and meetings and haven’t felt an inherent trust. I think that’s a classic thing to watch out for if there’s any advanced payment it’s not good. The other thing that Credit Safe came with in terms of me picking them as a debt collection agency for our clients is a Professional Contractors Group accreditation, they are the ones approved by the PCG which is saying a hell of a lot. So get advice, get recommendations or overall look for an association recommendation like the PCG.

[16:45] Adam: Absolutely.

[16:46] Andy: Excellent. Exercising your right to add late payment and interest is an interesting one, I know certainly in my case there’s a sort of reluctance to do that, is there a sort of mind set you should adopt?

[16:59] Adam: Well, in my experience it’s a very useful stick to go along with the carrot of the service that you’ve provided in getting your clients to pay you. If you’re quite clear up front that you won’t tolerate late payment and that you will add your statutory late payment costs and interest, you can always use that when you’re chasing your overdue accounts. So they say, “Yes. We’re definitely going to pay it on Friday”, “OK. Are you sure you’re going to pay it on Friday because otherwise I will be adding late payment costs and interest”. The late payment costs and interest are statutory so you don’t need to include it in your terms and conditions because you’re always protected by that piece of legislation…

[17:40] Andy: Ah. That’s interesting.

[17:41] Adam: So can leave it out of your terms and conditions; you don’t need to include anything about late payment. Some freelancers can be wary of that because they think it gives the wrong impression to the client. So you can just completely leave it all out and you can still add the late payment costs and interest in line with the legislation at any point after the invoice is due. If you do add it, if they then turn round and pay immediately, be prepared to potentially waive any extra costs that you may have added to the account because if you add the late payment cost and interest and they pay in three days, do you really want to continue chasing your client for potentially £100 if you’ve just received, say, £5,000? It’s a useful stick to go along with the carrot.

[18:25] Darren: Adam, I don’t think I’ve had to use that. It’s about, in sales I call them touch points, always having an excuse to keep in contact with that customer, “How’s it going? We’ve got three quarters of the way through the build on this side, we’ve done all the user interface side”. Just keep reminding them that you’re there and the invoice is there. Try and keep the relationship on absolute tip top order, and the communication is regular. So to date, and really luckily I think now hearing this, I have never had to use that legislation.

[18:59] Adam: Well it’s one of those things if you can tie it in if you get somebody else to d your credit control on your behalf, if you’re working cheek to jowl with the end client but somebody else is actually chasing the invoices, you as the freelancer can hold your hands up and say “Oh see, I’m really good at what I do but I wouldn’t mess with the good lady that does my accounts…”

[19:21] Darren: She’s hardcore…

[19:23] Adam: “She’s hardcore. Blame her,” say “You know, she’s absolutely on the ball with late payment, so I’d suggest you get that paid fairly shortly and I’ll see if I can get her take it off”.

[19:31] Andy: I know what you mean. I made my self a sort of Heath Robinson robot that sent out email at certain time and that would send an email to people who owed invoice and they were late in paying and at the top of each email it would say in block letters, THIS IS AN AUTOMATICALLY GENERATED EMAIL. And then they’d phone me up and go, “Oh. I already paid that three weeks ago”, because sometimes it would go wrong, and I would say “Oh, I’ll have a word with credit control robot”, so I could blame a third party.

[19:57] Darren: Very good. I think it’s always useful in life to be able to, not pass blame or scape goat, but to have somebody else doing the other task. Yes I’ve always used credit control as the businesses have got to that point and get them doing it. But there’s two ways isn’t there Adam. There’s maintaining a fantastic relationship so the customer has no other way but to pay you precisely on time than muck you about because you’ve done a blindingly good job and you’ve delivered precisely on time. But yes, if things really don’t work out then, I like it, use an alternative person who’s experienced in that area and who can apply the necessary hard words.

[20:41] Adam: The problem that we see here when freelancers come to us and they’ve got large payments that are outstanding, is that they will have been working with someone very closely. They will have grown to almost treat them as a friend when in reality they should never loose sight of the fact that it is strictly a business agreement. And the terms may be 30 days and they could find one invoice is 60 days overdue, the next one is now due. The client will say, “Oh, I’ve got this reason, that reason, my dog’s been run over, my auntie is in hospital. I’ll pay you X now”, which is never more than roughly 10% of what they’re owed, “…give me two weeks, and then I’ll pay you the rest of these invoices that are outstanding”. So the freelancer thinks “Right, OK, so I’ve got X amount, so Y amount will follow shortly”. Two weeks later there’ll be another excuse and then they’ll find out that they’re three invoices down, and that their oldest invoice for 3 months ago has had maybe 10%, 20% paid off, and that’s how easily you can get into a hole with your client if you haven’t got somebody saying to you, or if you’re got hard enough to say to yourself, “I have to cut this client off at X point”.

[21:52] Rob: It’s got to be down at the end of the day that old adage of “He who shouts loudest”…

[21:58] Darren: I mean it’s always useful if you can stop delivering something. If it gets to a point that you’ve got a line in the sand and you can say, “Look. If you haven’t delivered the money on that point I’m going to have to suspend the service”. With software systems online it’s very easy if someone doesn’t deliver payment for a defined period then you can temporarily suspend it, allow access to the whole account, allow them to do a lot of things but allow them not to do other key things. There’s an advantage there. There’s a disadvantage of course for a consultant offering a whole strategy, completely helping a company turn itself around, delivering all of that really detailed and useful knowledge and then they’ve got nothing to leverage have they, really, other than what you were talking about in terms of interest payments and this legislation.

[22:48] Adam: Well yes, if your just delivering your knowhow, potentially if your delivering that to struggling business anyway, the chances are you will want your client to succeed. So if they come to you and say, “Look, I’m a little short this month. Can I pay you 25% and then I’ll pay you the remaining 75% in two weeks, the chances are you’ll look at your client and think “Well, I really want him to succeed. I’ve invested my time thus far in them, and the chances are you will probably let them carry on. So you’ll get 25% of your invoice, and you’ll work for another thirty days, and then you may find that, again, they’re paying you in dribs and drabs. So you have to have a very definite cutoff. We speak to freelancers all the time that have reached a very definite cutoff, an that cut off is that they can’t pay their mortgage this month…

[23:35] Darren: Oh God. That’s serious stuff.

[23:37] Adam: That’s serious stuff. That’s is far too late to actually be acting. If you get to the point where you can’t pay your mortgage, you probably went past the cutoff point 2 or 3 months ago…

[23:48] Rob: Clearly document all of these sub-agreements as well, so that both sides are both very clear as to what they’re entering into going forward. So it does them make that cutoff period that much easier because it is very clearly in writing , this is what we’ve agreed, I can’t continue any more.

[24:06] Adam: Absolutely.

[24:07] Darren: Yes. Exactly. So I think we’re running out of time for part two and again it;s probably blown the minds of the audience in terms of the thinking, “All these things I have to think about”. Don’t worry, we’re going to get the notes written up, transcribing all of this so you go back and look. You can obviously listen to this again and again, and Adam’s kindly written for Credit Safe, for the business for all of the customers they’ve got, a fantastic guide that we’re going to transpose into a Freelance Advisor guide and put it in our brand livery obviously with all the credits going back to Adam and Credit Safe which should prove to be invaluable. There’re some points that you made in there Adam on the interest to be charged and that legislation that I know is there but I personally as a business man have never had to use it so I’m unaware, so that’s when I hope that guide will be really useful for me and for the audience.

[24:56] Adam: Well the guide’s more for your average freelancer that knows exactly what they’re doing in their chosen field but may have little or no knowledge of credit control. So it should provide a useful guide for everything for setting up the account and making sure that you know you’re dealing with at all times. And always remember rule one: a sale is not a sale until the money is in the bank.

[25:18] Andy: Well we’ll have to leave it there. Yet another great discussion. Thanks for listening to Freelance Advisor so it’s goodbye from me, Andy White, it’s goodbye from Darren Fell.

Darren: Goodbye, Andy and thanks very much guys.

Andy: And it’s goodbye from Rob Warlow.

Rob: Yes. Goodbye. Thanks very much.

Andy: And Adam Home.

Adam: Goodbye, thank you.

Andy: We wish you all the best and we’ll see you next time.

• Steps we should take before giving credit.
• Steps to take before payment is due.

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Transcript

Andy: Welcome to Freelance Advisor brought to you by Crunch, ridiculously easy accounting. This is episode 25 the first part of a two part mini series on Credit Control. I’m Andy White. I have with me Darren Fell, founder of Crunch.co.uk.

Darren: Hi, Andy.

Andy: I have on the line Rob Warlow from Business Loan Services and author of Loan Sharp, get the business finance you need. Hello Rob.

Rob: Hi, Andy. Hi, Darren.

Andy: And I have also on the line Adam Home, operations manager at Credit Safe LTD, a family credit recovery agency. Hello Adam.

Adam: Good afternoon gentlemen.

[00:38] Andy: Credit control of course a big concern to us all but it’s not just credit control it’s debt collection especially in the current economic climate. What are your thoughts Darren?

Darren: Well exactly I think we’ve been wanting to do this for so long to help all of the freelancers, the contractors, the small businesses out there that are, unfortunately, regularly, pardon my French, screwed over by the bigger businesses because they think they can. This is completely unfair and the whole purpose of this podcast, that I’ve been wanting to do for so long is to help you out there in the right credit control processes, how to make sure the customer pays on time, how to make sure that they are a good customer and they probably will pay on time. All of the key areas in credit control which Rob is exceptionally expert at and then, when you’ve done all those processes perfectly unfortunately there still will be a customer or two that thinks they might be able to get away with it, they may be able to screw you over and not pay you the final amount, or even the whole amount. And that’s where Adam comes in from Credit Safe, debt collection done properly.

All of this podcast we’re going to divide into two parts, there’s going to be so much useful information in here for you. I want you to listen to it and hopefully listen to it again, both parts. Get your business in perfect shape and if there are any issues, you know exactly what to do in terms of debt collection. It’s not a nice part of life but it means getting that cash back rightfully where it should be; you’ve done a good job, get the money for it. So that’s the whole premiss of this two part podcast is to genuinely help in what I see is a critical area particularly with the economy. I think we’re actually looking at a massive increase, they reckon, in insolvencies out there. So it’s how to protect yourself against that, and how to recover that money. So we’ve got some top notch experts online here to help with those questions.

[02:38] Andy: So a quick introduction. Rob Warlow runs Business Loan Services which is a support service for businesses looking to raise finance or having relationship problems with their banks. Rob was in the banking industry for 25 years and the last 11 years were in senior positions in banks in East Africa.

Adam Home is Operations Manager and Credit Controller at Credit Safe Ltd. He is responsible for UK based collections and new media solutions. He has been collecting overdue accounts at Credit Safe LTD for the past 10 years.

So guys thanks for joining us perhaps we can break this part into couple of separate headings if you like. Perhaps the first one is steps we should take before giving credit and also we can take a look at steps to take before payment is due. Rob, would you like to get the ball rolling I know you’ve got some thoughts on steps freelancers should take before giving out credit?

[03:24] Rob: Yes certainly as Andy said it’s a major problem and if you look at many business failures we normally think it’s through lack of customers, or poor profitability. But the main reason for business failures is really lack of cash flow. You can push out as much sales as you want but until you’ve actually got the cash in the bank that’s when you’ve really got your business safe. Without it, you’ve got nothing. So I think the first thing that any business owner, or freelancers as well, need to do before giving out credit is to go back to the basics. Can you afford to give out credit? You may be forced to give credit terms out because that’s the nature of the competition in your market, you have to do that. But, if you can look at trying to get up-front payments of a certain percentage before you even start the contract to cover some of your basic costs that’s obviously the better position to be in. But if you are forced to give credit terms just to beat the competition what you really have to look at is to try and consider what the impact on your cash flow position’s going to be. Do you have the cash capacity to be able to deliver service and them having to wait one, two months or three months. So it’s really taking a good look at your position and assessing whether you can actually do this.

If you’ve got no option and you think you’ve got the cash kind of there, but you’ve looked at the position and you think it’s a bit tight, the next thing to do is making sure you’ve got that support in place and go and speak to the bank to make sure you can get an overdraft facility to provide some cushion there in case payments get delayed. The other thing to do as well is to really do your research right about who you’re actually providing credit terms to. You’ve got to remember that effectively you’re stepping in the shoes of the banker here. You’re becoming a banker to your clients, you’re providing them with credit terms, so you’re giving them an overdraft facility in a sense. So you’ve really got to make sure that you do your research right in the beginning. Can you trust these people? So the best way is to go out and weed the weaker payers out as best you can. That’s all about doing research. There’s a number of ways you can go online and check on the credit worthiness of your customers and sign up to some services, put your customers name in and just do a check on other people’s experience is of dealing with that company and just get that credit report, see what it says. A least then, in confidence, you can get out there and give your terms. And then it’s all about keeping up to date. I was talking to a business owner this week who just got hit by a £2,000 debt. The company went under, but he’d only delivered his services three weeks ago. His terms of trade are one month’s credit so he was well within terms but the company went bust so he lost two grand. I think the lesson there for him was to look at the sector; his client was in the transport sector. Now the transport sector, retail, hotels and restaurants, all of these are suffering really badly. So if you know you are dealing with an industry that is facing tough times, pay particular attention to the services you’re providing to those companies. And then when you’re doing the contract make sure that the rules are very clear. Exactly when invoices are going to be out, when you expect payment. So I think these are some of the things you can immediately take.

[06:58] Darren: Rob all very good points. What I’ve been telling freelancers and contractors for years is to test the customer. A brand new customer, you do a project, it’s all outlined, there’s no reason on earth you couldn’t ask for 50% up front to prove it. Now if the customer completely balks at that, then it’s a negotiation. If they completely balk at paying anything up front, my advice is can you really trust that customer. So it’s all the things you’re saying, the testing part of the process is completely fair for a small business. To actually say I need to prove this, I need to have money on account for me to be able to work, because I don’t have a significant cash flow, I don’t have a lot of team members bringing in lots of other cash, it’s just me. So what are your thoughts on that?

[07:44] Rob: Absolutely. That’s how I operate my business I essentially freelance myself out, it is money up front. The problem with being a freelancer, you’re not providing tangible good and services in many cases. It’s just yourself, it’s your knowledge and your hours if you like. So it isn’t like a traditional manufacturer where you can have a retention of title clause on some goods, and if the company goes under you get your goods back. Once you’ve invested your time that’s it you can’t get that time back. So freelancers particularly are at a disadvantage. So absolutely, if your background and CV hasn’t proven itself to the individuals and you’re feeling that they’re not playing ball yet, back away, because in this day and age you cannot risk investing your time and effort for no reward at the end of the day. So yes, certainly push for a minimum of 50% up front, absolutely.

[08:35] Darren: OK that’s really interesting to hear; that’s something I’ve been saying for years. Just as a business expert having done it for years and seeing people that haven’t paid very well. I want to see freelancers not get caught in that situation. So to hear it from a banking professional, 50% in that first stage in a relationship with a customer is rally good to hear. If they balk at it just walk away.

[08:58] Rob: Absolutely it’s not worth taking the risk. There’s always this dilemma. People are desperate for business, they may want to get into a company. But when your very early on in the relationship there has to be an element of negotiation to ensure that both sides are protected. You can understand why the other party wouldn’t want to pay you 100% up front, but here has to be a middle ground, in order to give you some leverage and some comfort that at least you’ve covered some of your basic costs if the whole thing does go terribly wrong.

[09:25] Andy: Rob you also mentioned about having a good relationship with your bank. How do you garner a good relationship with your bank and are banks being sympathetic at the moment?

[09:34] Rob: Well. How long have we got on this program…

Andy: I thought this might lead to a long answer.

Darren: Oh, Andy why did you ask that one?!

Andy: It had to be asked.

[09:41] Rob: It’s difficult for freelancers in particular because bankers find what freelancers do almost difficult to grasp. With 25 years as a practicing banker when you visit a clients premises and you see things around you, that gives you a sense of comfort. But in the freelance market it’s so difficult. So it’s really trying to get the bank to understand what you’re about. At the freelance end of the market we’re not talking big sums of money here, particularly if you’re a one man band. So you rally get stuck into the “computer says no” syndrome in that decisions are really credit score driven, and so the element of relationship is with a microchip as opposed to an individual as a bank manager so it is difficult.

[10:27] Darren: I think the key point there having experienced my last business Pure 360 and getting to a turnover of 1.3 million, a really great net profit. And we still, just for an overdraft of £25,000, had to personally guarantee that – all three directors. So I think if any freelancer or contractor needs an overdraft it would naturally fall into a personal guarantee, a PG scenario. So really to the bank it doesn’t matter because you’re personally guaranteeing that money if your business goes down.

Rob: Yes. Just trading through a limited company doesn’t get away. Personal guarantees are de facto, they are there, you have to accept that fact. Especially at the smaller end and even businesses that are turning over a million plus, you’ve got to remember that banks are lending to you as an individual, they’re not lending to the business as an entity on it’s own. It’s you who drive the business and you who’re going to make it a success or a failure. And so the banker’s definitely going to be wanting to tie you in, to make sure that you make every effort to make sure that debt is paid back.

[11:31] Darren: The next thing I wanted to pick up in terms of credit control, just getting back to real basics here, is the term. I obviously work with a lot of freelancers and I get invoices come in with seven days on them and I think “I understand your position guys”, but in reality business will naturally work off a thirty day credit term, that’s standard, and any accounts department will almost completely look past seven or fourteen days. So if we go back to my original question – the whole discussion around getting monies up front, then you shouldn’t need to put abnormal credit terms like seven days which the business is just going to raise their eyebrows at and ignore anyway. So what are your thoughts on actual credit terms itself?

[12:18] Rob: Yes, as you say most terms do naturally default to 30 days, 7 days is really not going to work. By the time you’ve billed and the accounts department get around to it the seven days will have disappeared anyway. It also sends out a bit of a strange signal as what you’re about as a business. You don’t want the other party to think that you are strapped for cash and you’re trying to pull in as quick as you can. So again, there is this fine balancing act of trying to be professional but at the same time making sure that the terms work in your favour. It is down to negotiation, looking at what the underlying contract itself is. If there is a very big time commitment and you’re having to outsource elements of the contract as well, sit down with the third party, work it through and see if you could come at fifteen days or something like that. But just tread carefully on that, as you say, thirty days is really standard.

[13:10] Darren: Sure so if you have other suppliers then it goes to get the up front payment you need personally for your own business and then monies to cover any down payments for any other freelancers or contractors or hardware that you’re purchasing. You’re getting it up front. I’ve seen some disaster stories of companies that have gone in head first into fantastic projects, not got any up front payment. Are personally putting down ten thousand pounds if not more on some coding that they need to get one of their other freelancers to do, or some other hardware. And they’re not gathering any of that money, any of the true cost of the project up front. This is open to a disaster zone.

[13:52] Adam: You have to remember as well, Darren, a lot of freelancers are going to be really passionate about the work they’re conducting. If they get a very nice contract, and it’s work they’re excited to be doing, they can very easily forget the background stuff that needs to be done to properly prepare themselves to enter into that contract. They can so excited to get their teeth into the nitty gritty that they completely forget all about such small things as payments and terms and contracts.

[14:20] Rob: You’re right, many business owners start in business because of the skill set that you have and the way you deliver services, your product, or whatever. Nobody wakes up and says “Oh I’m good at managing cash flow, I’m going to start a business”. Nobody has that sort of skill, it doesn’t work that way.

[14:36] Darren: Absolutely. I sat with this Business Link guy yesterday and he was instilling on me on how many small businesses he sat with trying to get that cash flow sorted out to make them understand. And it’s obviously in Excel spreadsheets and people find it very painful. There is, and exists today, many pieces of software in accounting for small businesses, some painful and some easy to use, Now I would be saying this but this isn’t a salesy podcast, but there are many pieces of software that will show you, as long as you religiously enter in all of your invoices, all of your expenses, and you’ve got the credit terms running in there, it will show you all the amounts overdue when it hits there. The other thing I was going to say which I learned from a fantastic credit controller back in the last business, is that she used to call seven days before that thirty day period was expired. So she’d be calling prior to the thirty days being hit to warn them they needed to pay and that worked a treat. So the two things I’m putting forward there is, you can have a bit of software if you invest a bit of time initially in there, you can see exactly where the overdue amounts are becoming due and what you need to chase. And if you employ the classic little tricks that credit controllers that have been doing for donkeys years use, literally calling seven or ten days before it’s due, just a reminder, a nice friendly reminder, can pay dividends.

[16:03] Andy: What about prompt payment discounts I know Adam you had some on this didn’t you.

[16:08] Adam: I did. Something that we would encourage freelancers to start to get into the habit of doing, some freelancers can be concerned because it puts the quoted price up slightly, but you can always offer a 5% discount if paid within a certain period after the invoice is due. So you could potentially take off 5% from your quote if its paid on time and often if you’re dealing with invoices that are worth thousands of pounds at a go, 5% is a nice incentive for your client to actually pay you promptly. If it help you to get the money in on time then 5% can be a small cost to pay to pay you promptly.

[16:48] Darren: I really like that idea Adam. That’s the sort of thing that’s employed by the big boys isn’t it in fact I think they’re doing in reverse aren’t they? Like Boots allowing themselves to pay the suppliers early but on doing so they give a discount which is playing to their powerful position. I think that’s slightly unfair in the case of the big corporates. For a freelancer employing those tactics the other way round, I think it’s a fantastic idea to draw in the cash. It’s that careful balance though isn’t it to appear to not to be needy or that you’re running right on the edge on the business. I think you’ve got be very careful with that balance because if they start having any sniff that you’re business is going to go down then they probably might not pay.

[17:34] Adam: Absolutely if later on when you’re actually chasing the overdue invoices, even if you desperately need the money, never ever tell the end client that you need the money because there are people out there who will sit on your payment until such time as you cease to trade or the liquidators or receivers are called in. And then they’ll just argue with the liquidators or receivers, because they won’t have all the information that the client would have had regarding the payments. So there are people out there where the freelancer really needs the money for X, Y and Z, and the end client will completely shut down and refuse to answer any correspondence, refuse to answer the telephone and sit on thousands of pounds that rightfully belong to a freelancer, in the hope that they go pop and they can keep the money.

[18:17] Rob: It’s also a mindset issue as well, many business owners once the invoice has gone out are almost embarrassed to chase, because it’s not their thing, they didn’t come into into business to bill people and then expect to chase them. It’s picking up on Adam’s point really, it’s more about consistently chasing. Don’t just suddenly appear at the very last minute because it smacks of desperation. I also advocate the idea of ringing five or ten days before the invoice is due. In many cases I’ve heard of people who say “We lost the invoice could you send me another?”…

[18:54] Darren: That old chestnut!

Rob: …about 10 days after it was due and we’re into the whole process again. So be warming them up and reminding them that you’re five days away from the due date and a very regimented series of phone calls thereafter. But getting into the mindset of not being embarrassed about asking for your own money. I was with a business owner earlier this week who’s exactly got into that position, owed £40,000, it wasn’t a train crash for him, but has just fallen out of the habit. So pick up the phone. Sometimes it’s just a case of reframing what it is. It’s a case of sometimes saying that £40,000 or £50,000 whatever, what could it do for you? What would you be able to do with that money if you had it in your bank account today? Suddenly you say I could do this with it and there’s your motivation for picking up the phone and getting that money in

[19:48] Darren: Rob you bring up a classic, the old chestnut, “We’ve lost the invoice”. I absolutely hate that, that really gets to me, so going back to online software to help. What you can do, there’s a few of them out there, and it employs the same technology that we did in the email marketing company Pure 360 that I put together, you can show when that end person has opened and downloaded that invoice. Now this is classic. You create the invoice online, you press the button, it flies into their inbox, you can see exactly the time and date that they opened it. The the next thing is the chasing, love the chasing before the thirty day period, you set an alarm. So it comes up on your screen, it forces you into that process of picking up the phone and going “Hi John how you doing. Just checking and letting you know that our invoice that you downloaded 10:29 back on the thirtieth of the month when I sent it to you, that you’re going to pay it in ten days time. Is there any issues with the work I’ve delivered at all?”. In the nicest way, without it being cheesy I think it can work.

[20:57] Adam: Thats precisely what you should be asking in any call made to your client before the invoice is due, (a) have you received it, and (b) are there any issues that are going to delay payment? Because if you can find out there’s an issue with the work that you’ve done or the software or what have you, prior to the invoice due date, that gives you an opportunity to solve any queries before you’re expecting the money to arrive – which can be key. You’d be surprised by the amount of freelancers who will let invoices go thirty days overdue, and when they do finally get around to calling, suddenly the end client has a litany of complaints that the freelancer was completely unaware of until they made that call.

[21:38] Andy: I’m just interested in the idea of your payment terms superseding any purchasers payment terms. Adam you’ve got some thoughts on that?

[21:44] Adam: Yes. What you have to ensure is that your payments terms are the very last link in the order chain that’s come through. so you’ve got to make sure that your payment terms, whatever they are, supersede any purchasing terms that your client may be trying to force onto you essentially. I’ve seen payment terms from purchasers that say payment will be made in 365 days….

[22:10] Darren: Oh, of course. This goes back to what I was saying with the Boots example where they offered to pay their suppliers slightly earlier but for a discount and they had made the purchasing terms something stupid like 120 days or 180 days. They suddenly employed this right across the board and their suppliers were up in arms and they were giving a press release saying “But we offer them a discount if we pay them earlier”. So that’s a really good point, purchasing terms can supersede your own terms.

[22:41] Adam: They can. I’ve only seen one set of terms with 365 days on, and I don’t think they ended up being legal at the end of the day but it is something to watch out for.

[22:50] Darren: Adam can you tell us how does a customer instill their purchasing terms over and above you invoice purchasing terms? Does that mean to say you’ve signed a procurement document with them that supersedes your invoice credit terms?

[23:05] Adam: The easiest way to do it is to have a clause in your own payment terms that states any deviation from your payment terms must be agreed by both parties in writing. So my payment terms are X, however any other any other payment terms must be agreed in writing by both parties. So even if you then take on a contract that’s got their terms in place if you haven’t agreed them in writing with them, you can’t be held to them. That’s generally the easiest way but sometimes you can find them buried in contracts – you’ll suddenly find a piece that related their their purchasing terms, and they won’t have advised you about them beforehand. So it’s just a case of keeping a very close eye on any document that you’re requested to sign by the client.

[23:46] Darren: Good. Absolutely brilliant. Now Adam, do you have any examples of clauses that the audience should put into their invoices just to make sure they’ve got it absolutely rock solid. I know that you’ve written a fantastic guide on debt collection and all the steps and processes, all the things to think about before, all the descriptions of things and we’re going to put that into a Freelance Advisor guide. Is there within that these clauses that can be inserted into the invoices for the freelancers and small businesses out there?

[24:17] Adam: The problem with terms and conditions is, in the worst case scenario, you are very likely to be relying on them in court to get paid. As such we generally here at Credit Safe LTD, don’t give advice on terms, we always recommend that you speak to a specialist lawyer, if you’re in software development a then a specialist in software terms and conditions. In simple things like invoice querying, our terms and conditions state that any queries of an invoice must be received in writing within 28 days from the issuing of that invoice and that they won’t be considered valid thereafter. So that cuts people out from people saying “Well I phoned you up and said I’ve got this problem and that problem…” Defining where the risk goes from yourself to the client at what point does the software become theirs if its software, if it’s knowledge, you’re in PR say, it’s at what point does it cut off when you’ve delivered your services. So if you’ve got to the point where you can say to the client “Well, I’ve delivered my services”, if you are in PR, how do you qualify that you’ve done that you’ve done what you said you were going to do? These are all the kind of things that you need to speak to a solicitor about and get some good terms and conditions drawn up. Because as I say, worst case scenario, you will be relying on these to get paid.

[25:35] Darren: OK. I mean that, Adam, is a whole discussion in it’s own right. I see lots of software builds, I’ve got religious about making sure the specs are prefect, making sure the programming team really get that, and getting every single bit of detail down there and then staging it and then signing off those stages. So that in itself is a big discussion and maybe we might have to do another podcast after the part two of this. I think for part one we’ve conveyed and gone through so much useful stuff already in terms of the credit control, the terms and really basic stuff. The audience out there don’t worry, just listen to some of the points. We’ll get the guides on Freelance Advisor and you can pick and choose the key bits that will make a massive difference to credit control and collecting debt.

[26:22] Andy: We’ll have to leave there thank you for listening to Freelance Advisor. Next time we’ll be talking about if it all goes wrong. So that’s goodbye from me, Andy White, Darren Fell, Rob Warlow and Adam Home.

We wish you the best see you next time.

• Choosing your brand
• Using Twitter to create a conversation
• Facebook, following and fans
• Social media as customer service
• Social media strategy and setup

Listen to the podcast:

Transcript

Andy: This is Freelance Advisor. Hello everyone and welcome to episode 24 of Freelance Advisor, brought to you by Crunch at crunch.co.uk. And in today’s episode, we’re taking a good look at personal branding.

Hello everyone and welcome to episode 24 of Freelance Advisor and today we’re looking at personal branding. I have in the studio with me, Mr Darren Fell and on the line, I have Mr John O’Nolan. Hello gentlemen.

Darren: Hello Andy, how are you?

John: Hello.

Andy: I’m very well thank you. It all started with a very interesting talk we did at the University of Westminster didn’t it, Darren?

Darren: It did, it did. I’ve been doing some seminars to help freelancers out there. The first one, of course, was my speciality, drumming up business and how to sell. So I was up at the University of Westminster, passionately marching up and down, encouraging people to get on the phone and cold call and get the sales coming in. And then, if they were involved in a big project, not to forget that they still had to sell, because they had to keep a pipeline, they had to get the right bits of software. So it reminded about all the conversations and they wanted to see the pipeline as it appeared over the year.

So I did all of that and then I realised that there was something else involved here that a lot of freelancers were forgetting. And that was personal branding. Appearing to be an expert, to be passionate, to be unique and how to do that. How to get a following in that specialisation area and get people coming to them. I mean, ultimately, these digital freelancers at the University of Westminster, wanted to know whether it actually affected them getting sales. So I had to prove how personal branding and doing it right, was going to get sales.

So I went through the whole exercise of looking into Facebook and having a fan page and the statistics on the people following you on that. Rather it’s not following you, if they’re a fan of you, they are more likely to buy from you. Looking at Twitter and all of these things. Now in order for me to do this personal branding sort of seminar, I had to learn a bit about personal branding. I know that sounds strange because I’ve done, you know, a number of businesses now, but I wanted to go and find some successful people who had created a personal brand very, very quickly. And the end result was big businesses approaching them.

Not the other way around, which was the previous seminar, cold calling, kicking down doors and, you know, trying to get the business in. This was the other way around and this so intrigued me. I’ve recently come into contact with Mr O’Nolan who’s with us now and enquired how he had been so successful as a web designer in nought to nine months. How big brands had actually called him up. Now, how on earth did this happen? So Mr O’Nolan is on the end this Skype call and probably getting a big head now, but don’t get a big head, John. The whole idea of this podcast is to chat and enquire how you did it.

You know, how you used Twitter, how you used Facebook, if Facebook was successful. How you used a site, how you used blocking, how you used interviewing your peers out there. And I think this makes for a fantastic story to all of our listeners on Freelance Advisor, as to how you successfully and very, very quickly, build up a personal brand. So much so, that big brands that you’d never be able to get in touch with in a million years, actually call you up for work. Now that’s what this is all about. So, where shall we start, Mr White?

Andy: Well I can hardly wait. I think we should ask John to tell us how he did it.

Darren: Sorry, have I built it up too much?

Andy: You’ve built it up so much, I’m bursting at the seams.

Darren: John, where shall we start?

John: I feel like you’re expecting me to have some sort of magic formula now. I’m slightly disappointed that I don’t have a concise answer like wear pink and good things will come. There’s slightly more to it than that, but yes, it’s been a roller-coaster of a year. About a year ago, I left my position at Leeds House, Leeds in-house designer and developer for an extreme sports company in Brighton. I was fed up with that, so I did, you know, I’m not going to go back and do more work for agencies. I’d been running my freelance web design stuff on the side and that’s what I ultimately want to do. So I’m going to do that full time now.

So it was a very natural kind of progression. I didn’t go into it thinking this is how business is done and this is how I’m going to follow in everyone’s footsteps and do it. I kind of felt my way along, felt well what was working for other people, learned from what they were doing. I tried to emulate them and also tried to do new stuff. And that really kind of was a learning experience along the way that just seemed to form very organically and naturally as I went along. But very exciting, I have to say. Going from, as you say, pretty much nothing, to having worked with some fairly big companies these days.

Darren: Right, okay. So John, what was the decision one? Now, for me, personal branding, you know, there’s two, there’s a big decision here, isn’t there? Should the freelancer choose their name as the brand, i.e. personal branding. Or should they go for something like, you know, I traditionally do, which obviously isn’t in the freelancing space, you know, per se. So pure360 for email, marketing and Crunch for, you know, a big accounting solution. What do you think? What’s the criteria that a freelancer out there should make the call on this? Their own name or, you know, a brand name?

John: Well I think essentially this is very personal to the individual. There isn’t a right or a wrong answer. I’ve actually been down both routes, I have a company, my web design agency, which is called Lyrical Media. That’s a limited incorporated company. But then obviously, as you know, because I’m here, I also heavily brand myself under my own name, which is John O’Nolan. So I’ve done both and the one that’s really worked for me, is my personal name, rather than the company name. And I think it depends how you want to approach something.

So if you’re starting a business like an accountancy firm or an actual agency where you’re looking to have offices and employees and entertain that sort of client base, then you want to go for a company name, because that’s where you want to end. You want to scale that up, you want to have offices and that’s where you want to get to. That isn’t entirely where I want to get to. I wanted to get my name up there, get big clients working with me. You know, become recognised as somewhat of a well known name in the industry. And the path that led me down, was to on day one, to start my own blog, talking about the process.

I’ve just quit my job, I’ve gone freelance, I’m going to write about it, why don’t you come and read? And that was as much as a promotional exercise, that was an exercise for me in keeping a diary and tracking my own progress, but in a public space. And that’s turned out to be really the catalyst for everything else that followed. So I think it was an important decision.

Andy: So writing a blog was the first step for you then, was it John?

John: Absolutely, yes.

Darren: John, what’s the, just to tell everybody, what’s the website?

John: it is www.john.onolan.org and I think you might have to link to that in the show notes, because it’s not a fairly obvious spelling.

Andy: So you started off with a blog. I mean, what, if you, if someone said to you, what steps did you take to sort of help your brand, in this case, your personal brand, really take off, what would the steps be?

John: Well starting the blog, I wanted to start getting some traffic and get people reading it. I mean, no one’s going to, if you start a blog and start writing about what you do every day, no one’s going to necessarily read it. What do they care if you get up and have a cup of coffee and do some work and you’re writing about that. That’s not particularly interesting. And so I went, I started out with going for the angle of creating some really relevant and interesting content to people in my kind of community, the design community. So I had some, I approached some companies to get some software giveaways, or web design based software and said can I promote this on my blog.

Several of them were very kind to give me some free licences, so that generated some traffic. As soon as I started generating traffic, then of course, people started subscribing. That meant they started coming back and becoming regular readers. So just kind of continuing on with that. The first couple of months, I was blogging every single day, just to really build that up. It’s slowed right down now, to about once a week. But it was really important to get people interested, not directly in me, but in things on my site, to kind of pull them in and then blog about things that are more to do with me and more to do with what I was doing about.

Darren: So blogging clearly proved to be really successful. I like the fact you were interviewing, you know, peers and people who were clearly very successful, you know, in the graphic design world, web design world. You interviewed them, that obviously appeals to their ego. They want to get involved. You put the blog up and they then get involved and they’re commenting on your site. And everybody is like probably quite impressed, you know, it’s so and so on John O’Nolan’s site. He must be good. You know, obviously, he’s interviewed them, but it’s, you know, they’re then following you on Twitter.

They’re then getting involved in your site, you know, in a massive way, but I think that really, really does look to the community that’s looking at you, on your website.

John: Yes, that was probably my best first business decision in terms of actual money and leads and jobs, was to interview these other web design business owners. Because as you say, what that led to, was them promoting my site, because they said look, I’ve been interviewed and kind of tweeted up those links and had their own following come into my site and have a look. But more importantly, it established relationships with other agency owners. So in particular, when I interviewed Tony Chester, who’s the MD of a large web design agency in America called OnWired, that then led to six months down the line, he had some work that needed doing and I was the person who he thought of.

And after that, I did a lot of work with them, over a period of about six month, where they were throwing work to me very regularly, so that led to my most stable income to start off with, from initially interviewing him and establishing that relationship, moving forward.

Andy: And this really underlines, doesn’t it, this whole concept of, we hear it a lot, don’t we, in sort of modern marketing. Don’t look at people as your competitors, but instead form relationships with them and I think this is a wonderful example of that.

John: Yes definitely. And it’s fairly important, though as you say, not to think of them as competitors and just to be humble and kind of, not necessarily get in at the ground level, but to approach every person as if they could be your next biggest business contact. And you know, I’m fairly young and hot headed and the big learning curve for me over the last year has been to really hold back on getting into arguments or responding negatively to a comment or a blog post. And to really try and, every person who you meet or interact with, to try and turn that into a positive relationship.

Darren: Brilliant. I didn’t actually realise you’d actually gained a load of business from Tony Chester, that is absolutely fantastic. So almost immediately with probably a smaller following on Twitter, smaller in traffic terms to your site, you interviewed this guy. He talks about your site, and he then comes back to you with work. Was that six months later?

John: Around about that, yeah, just over that period of time.

Darren: Perfect. Now this personal branding podcast that we’re doing. I think the most interesting thing that John taught me when we interviewed, well, I interviewed him at a pub, as you do, you know, over pints, it gets more exciting, every pint you get through.

John: Every drink.

Darren: Well exactly.

Andy: And slightly more slurry.

Darren: Yeah, well, you know, you don’t worry about things like that really. The thing that I learned the most, is Twitter. Now if you think about my past and Pure360. I started up in 2001, we didn’t have Facebook then, we certainly didn’t have Twitter. We had traditional methods, traditional selling methods, traditional website. You know, Twitter just wasn’t even in existence then. So you can imagine my thinking in setting up Crunch, that how on earth could this possibly be useful for business. I don’t get it, I don’t care if a mate tweets out that he’s in the Dog and Duck, you know, with Adam. Well, unless I really want to go down and see Adam and then go and get fairly inebriated.

You know, the Twitter thing really, really didn’t make any sense to me until I started talking to you John. So I think, can you guide us through exactly what you did with, you know, your personal brand. How you built up Twitter, the techniques you used and what that’s actually meant for you. How do you use Twitter differently to what many, many people imagine Twitter is used for?

John: Indeed. Yes, Twitter is probably the biggest route of all my success interestingly. And it’s so much more than what people think of it as. They think of it as just people saying I’m having a coffee, I’m going to the shed to get a spade. It’s not that. It’s a platform where you can do anything you want. And the platform is the important part. So if nothing else, you can think of Twitter as a massive forum, full of people who are likeminded to you. You just have to look for them. There are millions and millions of them.

And you will probably find that whatever your freelance niche is, whether that be plumbing, an electrician or something like me in the digital world, you can find a whole community of people who share those interests. So the most important thing, if you’re looking to get started with Twitter, is to immediately go on and find people and follow them. If you go on Twitter and you sit there following no one and you’re just tweeting your own status updates, you’re not going to get much from it. So the thing is, follow a lot of people, not more than a hundred a day or something, because then you would exceed their limits and their terms of use.

But follow people who you are interested in. So find a whole load of people in your actual industry, follow them, follow their updates and then actually reply to them. It’s not all about you. I tweet maybe once or twice a day, to do with what I’m doing. But I tweet thirty to forty times a day, replying to what other people are doing. And that follows on with the whole establishing relationships and networking with other people who are in your community, which then does lead on to other work. And as I think we’ll probably get onto later, leads to much bigger work coming your way.

Andy: So it’s all about interacting and building up relationships I suppose, at the end of the day John, isn’t it?

John: Exactly. It’s not about you. It’s about talking back to people which is, if you are a Gary Vaynerchuk fan, that’s exactly what he’ll tell you. Stop talking, start listening. And if someone else is having a hard time with something, offer them help. Don’t offer them help if you pay me, offer them help and form that relationship. Then next time they need help with something for a client project, maybe they’ll think of you and you will get paid. But it’s a selfless form of marketing. You can’t go in there thinking it’s all about me and I want to get paid for everything I do. It’s about meeting people essentially.

And, you know, that’s traditional marketing was meeting people but more at kind of dinner parties, cocktail parties, conferences, events, going out to local things and interacting with people that way. This is the exact same thing, but just brought onto the internet instead of face to face.

Andy: Brilliant.

Darren: Okay. So John, for the people out there who are non Twitterers, explain this process. You know, so on your site, on john.onolan.org, one of your articles about getting, you know, a hundred people, follow a hundred people and you show a graph. And suddenly all your followers increasing massively. How does someone find a hundred people they want to follow, that will actually make a difference to your following in return?

John: It’s fairly easy actually. All you have to do. If you go to search.twitter.com, Twitter has it’s own search engine, where you can search for absolutely anything you want. And it will show you the latest people who are mentioning the words you search for. So if you were to go onto Twitter right now, you search for “web design”, it will show you everyone who has used the words “web design” on Twitter in the last thirty seconds, let alone the last hour. So right away, I see someone who says “I love web design, I can’t wait to launch this new client site.”

I know that they are also a web designer, we probably, as we share that common interest, maybe we’ll share some others. So that’s really the basis of starting to follow people, is finding that common interest, in this case of where you work or what you do. But it could also be on hobbies or anything like that. And then, you know, once you start following them, hopefully they’ll say something interesting and you’ll reply to them. If not, then you just un-follow them.

Darren: God John, what have you done? You’ve given me the access to this amazing tool. I’m just typing in, I need an accountant. Will this work for me for Crunch?

John: Oh absolutely. That’s the number one thing I’d suggest you’d be doing for Crunch. In fact, you’re crazy if you’re not doing that.

Darren: Good gracious me. Well, you know, after that interview, I learnt so much that night and I was so converted to think about using Twitter, that I got back to the office. I set up TweetDeck and I actually saw a comment from one of our customers on crunch.co.uk. And this guy had inadvertently managed to lock himself out. It’s tight security on Crunch. He couldn’t put all of his expenses in over the weekend. He was rightly annoyed. He had contacted our support department, but on the email, the auto responder hadn’t worked. But we have 24/7 telephone lines. So he, being an uber-techie, he didn’t really want to pick up the phone and deal with the support line.

So no one could help him and get the new password reset for him. So as soon as I saw this on TweetDeck, I was replying back to him, saying I’m so, so sorry. We’ve rectified the auto responder. You could have called, you know. You know, in a nice way and by the way, we’ll give you £59.50 back for a free month because, you know, for making a mess of your weekend. And he was a convert instantly. You know, the loyalty was there and I think Twitter used in a support role, is an absolutely fantastic way of engaging that business into the community. You can literally see if there’s any problems at all.

So I think that, you know, literally all of our account managers now on Crunch, have TweetDeck set up, to see exactly that thing. So if they ignore every other support way of getting hold of our team, the emails, the telephone numbers answered 24/7, everything. If they go onto Twitter, like some people do, and say, you know, is this service running slow? Are these servers slow? If that company gets back really, really fast on Twitter, they’re going to be so highly impressed. So that, you know, that one thing and within half an hour, saved one of the customers from leaving Crunch by using Twitter in the way it should be used.

Andy: I’ve heard of this kind of thing quite a bit before. I was interested John, because your business, it’s basically you, isn’t it? I don’t think you’ve got a customer service team around you. So I guess it’s a bit different to you. Have you had any experience, anything, the sort of a single person’s version of this story, if you like?

John: No, it is quite different because Twitter can be used in a number of ways for companies. It’s most relevant as support as we were just discussing. But for a freelancer or an individual, it’s not so much, you’re less likely to have someone go onto Twitter and complain about something, because you’re one person. If they need something, they’ll come straight to you. You’re not a company, so you’re not faceless, you don’t need to go and complain somewhere else, you just come to the individual. So it is different and there’s certainly, it’s a different type of use. But it still applies in terms of being there, caring, being interested, all those things.

But yes, using for companies, Twitter is highly relevant and essentially as a company, you need to go where your customers are. If your customers are talking on Facebook, that’s where you need to go. If they’re on Twitter, that’s where you need to go. It depends who your company is, what your company is and who your customers are most importantly. But you can’t just say we have a phone number and we have a support forum. You’re a customer, you will use those things. Your customers will do whatever they want. If they want to use a different platform, that’s where they’ll go.

It’s up to the company to provide amazing customer service by making sure that they are there, wherever a user mentions their name. And a great way to keep up with that, is if you have Google Alerts set up, which is a service from Google that monitors for any pages appearing on the web that mention a keyword. So you can set up a keyword of your company name and Google will ping you with an email any time your company is mentioned anywhere across the web. So you can then see if someone is complaining about my company or this forum and you can get straight in there and support them properly.

Andy: That is so powerful. I use Google Alerts, they’re absolutely fantastic.

Darren: So John, okay, so Twitter is a fantastic method and being used now. Tell us where you got to, what’s the following so far? And what the listeners really want to hear, is what’s the sales results? Who’s actually picked up the phone and called you, rather than you, you’ve been banging the, kicking the doors down, calling up, cold calling people. Who’s actually phoned you and given you business?

John: Well, the most important thing to know is that it’s not just Twitter. You can’t, in the famous words of Gary Vaynerchuk, sign up to Twitter and then shit happens. That is not it. It’s not the be all and end all. It is part of a larger strategy. So along with blogging and using Twitter and using Facebook to a certain extent, I started getting my name up there. So that meant companies, which in terms of big companies to start off with, was Ubisoft, who are the video games publisher. They found some works which I submitted, for no money. It was just a competition on smashingmagazine.com.

I submitted a typographical layout, which got to, I think about third place in the competition. They liked that. They found me on Twitter. They found my blog through Twitter. They saw all in all I was a, I hoped, well liked person in the community and decided to give me a ring based on that. Which then, further down the line, based on having Ubisoft in my portfolio and again having these presences on Twitter and other social networks, I received a call from Virgin Atlantic Airways about a month later, whose site I’ve just finished working on, which launched last week now.

Andy: How cool is that.

Darren: That is absolutely stunning. I mean obviously these are the results, I gave at the University of Westminster and everybody was like “Right, we’re now really listening.” So if you imagine me having prancing up and down in proper Professor mode, you know, really espousing the benefits of selling. To some people, there were hardcore techies in there and they don’t want to pick up the phone. Cold calling, “No please don’t make me cold call.” You know, it was really that bad. So the very thought of a method where big brands actually called you up, was fantastic. Of course, this requires so much hard effort.

And you know, John is probably making it sound very easy to all of our listeners. Yes, you know, I blinked and there was five and a half thousand people following me on Twitter and then Virgin called me up. I said hello and yes, I said I’d call them back once I had my cornflakes. No, it requires so much effort, so I think one of the caveats I was saying at the seminar, was do be careful, do be mindful of the amount of time. I think you can get so immersed can’t you John, in, you could be doing Twitter all day long. You could be on Facebook all day long. And then suddenly you look at the clock and it’s seven o’clock, you know, pm, and you’ve not done the project for the client.

So you need to be mindful of this. I mean, I think maybe as a roundup, you can tell the listeners how you’re set up. Maybe on your desk, give them an idea of how to use say Twitter and Facebook and email and interacts with all these sort of things. So you’re continually looking for leads but gauging the community as well and helping them.

John: Yeah. I mean, this method that I kind of use and other people use, isn’t for everyone. It’s definitely not. I mean, you’re right, it does sound quite easy in the way I’ve worded it and in essence, it is easy. Anyone can sign up for a Twitter account and anyone can reply to people in a friendly manner and literally just make friends. And through that, establish relationships, which can lead to business later on. Anyone can do that. That being said, I’m not going to lie. For the last year, I’ve had about on average, four to five hours sleep at night. I get up at nine, I work until usually eleven pm and I’m on Twitter that whole time. I’m working that whole time.

This is not a strategy that is light on hours. This is not cold calling from three to four pm then having a coffee and going home. This is not that at all. If you want people coming to you, then you really do have to put in the hours and it’s, like you said, it’s the least scalable business model in the world. But it does seem to work because it’s all you. But yes, you absolutely do have to put in the hours and you have to build it up. And my whole strategy is based on forming relationships with people and really just becoming friends with people. And that doesn’t happen. There is no bulk make friend option, that doesn’t happen.

You can bulk add friend on Facebook, it doesn’t mean anything, they’re just a number until you talk to someone and you know who they are and you know that they have a cat called Lucy and that cat got hit by a car and they’re very sad about it and you can relate to them. They are just a statistic. So there is no way to instantly increase your network or your number of people who you talk to. It takes time and it takes effort and you actually do have to care about the people who you’re talking to. So yes, it does take time. But it’s worth it. But going back to what you were originally asking which is how to manage it.

I have three monitors set up, so that I have one monitor for all my work and that’s only work. And then off to the sides, in my periphery if you like, I have a second monitor which runs Twitter in an app called TweetDeck which works on all platforms, Mac, PC, Linux. And that just runs off to the sides all day long. And I have about fourteen different columns of groups and search criteria that I monitor. So I’ve got everyone who I’m following in one column. Then I’ve got a list of VIP’s who I really want to follow and keep an eye on in another column. I’ve got a couple of columns which search for my company names so I can monitor my brands.

And I shove that off to the side, so if anyone says anything interesting or something that I feel I can help them with or I can reply to, then straight away, I’ll just notice that as it updates, quickly send them a reply and take some time to help them out. And in that way I integrate into my day without it kind of taking over my day, if you will.

Darren: Fantastic, perfect, perfect. Now as a final note. Anybody who’s wondering who the hell Gary Vaynerchuk is. Do you have a spelling John, so they can go and look him up? The want to see the YouTube Expo 2.0 video when he gets up on stage, don’t they? That’s the one, if they don’t still believe in personal branding after listening to this podcast, they should go and see that video shouldn’t they? So how should they search on this mad individual?

John: His surname is one that I wouldn’t even dare to attempt to spell on a podcast for fear of making myself sound like an idiot by getting it wrong.

Darren: Gary Vaynerchuk go and search and you’ll see where he originates from. His tv.wine.library.com which has made him a bit of a star out there. So we’ll leave it there.

Andy: Yeah, so that’s it then. So thank you very much John.

John: Thank you.

Andy: And thank you very, very much Darren.

Darren: Great, thank you Andy and thank you John.

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 Freelance Advisor podcasts or websites. The music featured in Freelance Advisor is Revolution by DJ Strano. For more information on Freelance Advisor, please visit the Freelance Advisor website at www.freelanceadvisor.co.uk. Freelance Advisor is brought to you by Crunch, ridiculously easy accounting at www.crunch.co.uk.

• Can you raise your rates?
• Are you saving enough for retirement?
• Where are your competitors spending their money?
• See how you are doing compared to other people like you with MyCake.
• Putting the data into your accounting system is not just for the taxman.

Listen to the podcast:

Read Sarah’s post on ‘Cost Comparisons’ >>

Transcript

Andy: This is Freelance Advisor. Hello and welcome to episode 23 of Freelance Advisor and in today’s show Turning boring business data into brilliant business plans. Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of Freelance Advisor. Now I want to paint a picture for you today. I want you to imagine what you would do if you had your business data visible to you in a way that’s very easy to digest and you could compare your business data with an aggregate of other freelancers’ business data. What sort of things could you do with that?. Imagine for example that you could see that the rate you were charging was perhaps not the optimal rate you could be charging. And you could perhaps raise your rate and therefore have more time to do the marketing to find the sort of clients that you really need to look for. Imagine for example that you were wondering if you were putting the right percentage of your turnover towards your pension and you were able to see what other freelancers were doing on aggregate, would that be useful?

Imagine also if you were wondering if you were doing enough training and how you compared with other freelancers to see how much they were putting aside for training. Well this is all possible. I have with me today, Darren Fell, of course we’re familiar with Darren and also Sarah Thelwall of MyCake. Hello Sarah, hello Darren..

Sarah Thelwall: Hello.

Darren Fell: Hi Andy.

Andy: Sarah, just before we go on, tell us a little bit about MyCake and a little bit about yourself..

Sarah Thelwall: Well MyCake came about because I’ve been working with creative entrepreneurs for the last ten years or so and one of the things that I’ve learnt is that like many of us, they don’t like doing their books. And they often end up with a shoebox of receipts that they look at once a year. And the trouble with that is, all the time that you’re spending it doing it for the taxman, you’re not gaining any benefit for your business.

So if there was a way in which it was easy to get that data into a system and that it could then tell you how you were doing, versus other people like you, it might form an incentive to change the way you do things. And you would run a better business by having numbers easily to hand.

Darren Fell: That’s exactly why I got Sarah on this podcast for Freelance Advisor listeners because it’s absolutely stunning. This is such interesting information that normally this benchmarking isn’t available to the average freelancer. Of course it isn’t, there isn’t any technology available. But to a big corporate, a finance director of a big PLC, it’s very, very available. And they’ve probably paid hundreds of thousands of pounds for a piece of software that will analyse it down to the minutiae so they can see exactly cost bases, cost bases between countries, offices, levels of salary to get away with, literally..

So imagine a system that could really help the freelancer, the contract, the independent consultant to see day rates against his peers, against her peers. And if you come in too low because you thought that was an acceptable level and then you could get away – maybe not the right word ‘get away’. But maybe it is the right word ‘get away’ with a rate that’s much, much better to use. So you wasn’t working every hour under the sun just to make ends meet because you’re charging a lower day rate, you were charging a reasonable rate and that meant that gave you time to market it to the client base you really wanted…

If you wanted Sony Playstation or HP to work with, then you charged high day rates and you spent the other time you weren’t working, marketing to get the clients and the work you really wanted, rather than running around like a headless chicken. So I thought that this was just so fundamentally interesting that we would actually try and convey what potentially could be a really, really complicated subject in the simplest way, just to show you how exciting it could be for you.

Andy: Well let’s cover a few success stories. Sarah, I know that you’re bursting to tell me some success stories. I’m just wondering, how can businesses be helped, when I say businesses, I meant freelancers. How can freelancers gain from this sort of knowledge. A couple of different ways they can gain and then we’ll have a look at some success stories.

Sarah Thelwall: Well Darren has already raised the day rate issue. Knowing that the norms are for whether you’re just entering a field, whether you’re five years in, I think is one place to start. I think another place to look at that is to say, “How are the top 25% doing. And what would it take for you to be part of that crowd rather than the bottom cohort?. So one of the things that people have learnt along the way, is that they need to be investing either in the research and development of new products and services or in training and development of their skill set. Looking at the MyCake data for 2008/9, the average expenditure on R&D is 1% of turnover. That is not going to secure the future of your endeavour.

Darren Fell: That’s kind of interesting and that actually marries up with exactly what we found when we set up a training section for Freelance Advisor. I mean we’re doing everything we possibly can to help freelancers, contractors and independent consultants out there. And we got a fantastic training expert who normally did leadership for big corporates, you know, guys in to do freelancer training. And I don’t know if it was the semantics of it, should it have been called ‘Personal Development’ or ‘Training’ but no-one wanted to buy training for themselves. And I don’t know why.

So this data is kind of typifying that people are not investing in training. Or maybe they’re charging low day rates and don’t have a second to keep their skill sets up with the latest Adobe package or final cut Pro or whatever business they’re in. Maybe that’s what’s happening. So this is why this data and this crystal ball to see exactly what’s going on is so interesting and what you can potentially charge, if I just talk about the day rate side..

Andy: Sarah have you got a couple of success stories about people changing their business models as a result of seeing their data compared to others. I’m specifically thinking of profitability here I think. Have you got some success stories there?

Sarah Thelwall: There are a number of jewellers that we work with and the comparison of a gem based jeweller and the profitability of that where they might be turning over £100,000, but they might only be taking home £10,000 out of that. That’s a hell of a lot of risk for not a lot of return. Whereas some of the non-gem based folks might only be turning over £50,000, but they’re taking home £30,000. So the profit margins that operate in different bits of the market, is something that you could look at.. That may not fundamentally change the way that you want to do things in terms of gem based jewellers like working with gems and don’t want to work with plastic. But just understanding ahead of time what the likely model that you’re going to have to comply through is and whether you’re willing to do that. Rather than three to four years down the line finding out that this isn’t really working for you. Is that crystal ball show you what the future might look like.

Andy: Crystal ball is quite a good analogy really for the jewellers here. I think it’s worth explaining to the audience Sarah, exactly what MyCake, your business is doing at the moment. You’re focusing solely on the creative businesses, hence why you’re talking about gems and jewellers. And all the PHP programmers out there and the graphic designers and the plethora of different people that listen to the podcast who are going, “How does that relate to me?. Well I think that’s clearly why this is on Freelance Advisor as a topic, is that we want to bring this technology at some point into the space for the whole of the digital world of freelancers and consultants.

Sarah Thelwall: And we could talk about website designers instead if you like.

Andy: If you can. Go ahead.

Sarah Thelwall: In that the variations in rates that we see is anything from £20 to a couple of hundred pounds an hour. So of course there are the kind of literally working from bedroom, £20 an hour website designers. And that’s undercutting the market for what others may be able to charge, particularly if the client hasn’t hired this kind of skill set before. So how do you differentiate yourself from the cheapest in the market. Is that to do with the skills you have. Is it to do with what you invest in your future? Is it about the partnerships that you have with other software providers? What is it that makes you stand out from the crowd? Because you don’t really want to be in the £20 an hour range.

Darren Fell: No exactly. I think there’s a whole set of subjects within there and I’ve just done a seminar at the University of Westminster for New Media Knowledge on personal branding and how to get your personality out through the blogs and all your expertise. And then focusing on a case study of a fantastic web designer who went from nought to ten months in his web design business and made a phenomenal success of it; has a Twitter following of 5,300 by really getting his personality out there. So it’s personal branding, but I think this benchmarking, I’m trying to get my head around it…

I think it’s so exciting to be using an online accounting system and then to yes click anonymous data can be sent through to MyCake and then see exactly what is going on. All your peers are getting away with, some of them maybe £600 a day. It’s like, what are they doing differently. So yes, you can apply all of the other learnings and the articles and the seminars that Freelance Advisor is doing to get to that level, but it immediately should give you a kick botty to go “£20 an hour, surely, surely you can do better.. You can definitely get to say £120 a day or £200 a day if you’re new to the business.

Andy: Okay, so just before we go onto what people should be doing. I know Darren, you’ve got a couple of success stories of people that were able to look at their data compared to other data concerning tax efficiency and putting money aside, haven’t you?

Darren Fell: Well yes, this is the crunch system inherently. As long as they keep putting in the invoices and their expenses at least on a weekly basis, they suddenly are empowered and see exactly what’s going on in their core business. I’m not talking about benchmarking now. I’m talking about how much tax to put aside, how much VAT to put aside; their profitability really, their turnover levels. Some things when you ask a freelancer that hasn’t been using a system like this, “What’s your turnover?. “Oh I haven’t got a clue. My day rate is £400, I book maybe 20 days a month and I think I’m doing really well, but I actually haven’t added it up.”.

It gives you that instant dashboard of exactly what’s going on with your business. Now imagine that combined with a benchmarking to see how it relates to other PHP programmers, other graphic designers, other web designers. That’s when it gets interesting.

Andy: It’s very powerful isn’t it. Okay fantastic. So what should all freelancers be doing then Darren?

Darren Fell: Right, #1, I think I’ve alluded to it already. If you’re not using an online accounting system and I don’t want to make this sound like I’m suggesting Crunch, but there are many online accounting systems out there. If you’ve got an old piece of software that you absolutely detest using, then stop using it. Get something out there, there’s loads of them there’s Kash Flow, there’s Crunch, there’s Free Agent Central, all fantastic systems and get into the psyche of actually getting your invoices out on time. Clearly very important so you get paid on time and getting your expenses in. So religiously, save all the receipts and just enter them in on a weekly basis.

Andy: So just drip, drip, drip all the time.

Darren Fell: Absolutely. And it’s just the feeling – as I say on the Crunch side of the business, the calls we get and the emails and the tweets, that people are so elated for the first time ever, in the middle of the year, and it’s not because the taxman wants it, they actually know what’s going on in their business. The profitability as I’ve said before. You know the monies that are coming in. The expenses that are due, charging expenses properly. So many go array, they’ve collected all these travel to site things, then not tapped them in, they’ve lost them and they’ve lost out actually quite a substantial amount of money.

It’s about empowerment. So my key, key directive to all of you is use an online system you enjoy using and enter the information in religiously, weekly, worst case monthly. But you’ll know exactly where you are. And if you do that, the future of this discussion is that there will be benchmarking systems connected to pretty much all the online systems out there and you’ll know far, far more than what’s going on in your own business. You’ll know exactly how it is compared to your peers and the rest of the market place.

Andy: Fantastic…

Sarah Thelwall: So the first part of that is about empowerment and control because you will feel better if you do this, but the other message in here is to say, putting the data in isn’t just for the benefit of the taxman. If you simply see it as a one way feed and as a pain that you have to go through a bit of pain in January each year in order to get it to the taxman, then you’re missing an opportunity because the real opportunity is that this data can inform the decisions that you make and enable you to run a better, more profitable, with better holidays, business than you were doing before…

With relatively not a lot of pain. I would say it’s less painful than some of the old desktop systems because it’s designed for people who are not finance directors and don’t particularly want to spend their time looking at spreadsheets. So the interfaces are better it’s easier and all the data is connected. You don’t have to move it from on. not quite well structured Excel sheet into another not quite well structured excel sheet and a bad chart. That kind of stuff has all been thought out by the people who design these systems.

Andy: Brilliant. So what we’re going to have for all of you is, within Freelance Advisor, there will be an article written very kindly by Sarah and there will be a lot of key learnings in there. So what are all the learnings like. The percentages you should spend on rent for your offices?

Sarah Thelwall: Out of a percentage of turnover, what should you spend on rent, or travel or marketing or training. What are the norms within those. What is too little and what is too much?

Darren Fell: Okay some fundamentals. You don’t normally get that sort of information anywhere. To have actual key tolerances, you often may think to yourself as a freelancer or consultant, “Am I spending too much on travel, am I spending too much for that Savile Row office” or wherever you might need your office. Is that disproportionate to the turnover. So yes, I think this is going to be really, really insightful and hopefully it will really age your business and get the data in and then get it in regularly.

Sarah Thelwall: And your source of that kind of conversation and insight becomes an accurate one. So at the moment, I think the best you can hope for is a conversation down the pub with some other people who work in a similar way to the way that you do but the thing is, if it’s the blind leading the blind, none of you put your data into anything and none of you want to look bad to each other, then you’re going to give a slightly rosier picture than is true, partly because that’s what you want to tell yourself and partly because that’s what you want to tell others.. This will give you an accurate answer to that which may on occasion be not the one you want to hear, but at least it gives you something you can then do about it.

Andy: Absolutely fantastic. Well we’ll have to leave it there. Just before we go Sarah, the website for MyCake is?

Sarah Thelwall: Mycake.org for the website and Mycakefinancialmanagement.co.uk/blog for the blog.

Andy: Fantastic. Now Darren of course the website for Crunch as always is? .

Darren Fell: Crunch.co.uk

Andy: So thank you very, very much to Sarah Thelwall.

Sarah Thelwall: Thank you.

Andy: And to Darren Fell.

Darren Fell: Brilliant thanks very much Andy.

Andy: Thanks everyone. See you soon. Thanks Sarah.

Sarah Thelwall: Bye.

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.

The music featured in Freelance Advisor is Revolution by DJ Strano. For more information on Freelance Advisor, please visit the Freelance Advisor website at freelanceadvisor.co.uk. Freelance Advisor is brought to you by Crunch, ridiculously easy accounting at www.crunch.co.uk.

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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.

The music featured in Freelance Advisor is Revolution by DJ Strano. For more information on Freelance Advisor please visit the Freelance Advisor website at www.freelanceadvisor.co.uk. Freelance Advisor is brought to you by Crunch, ridiculously easy accounting at www.crunch.co.uk.

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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