From Enterprise to Content Marketing Autonomy via Deep Niche Mastery, with Dominic Kent

Have you ever wondered how a simple passion like writing can morph into a successful full-time freelance business? Let's hear it from Dominic, the CEO and founder of UC Marketing, who shares with us his transformation from being an entry-level provisioning coordinator to running a successful content marketing freelance venture, with complete personal control over lifestyle and work/life balance.

With his wealth of experience, Dominic serves up a plateful of insights - navigating the complexities of the freelance industry, managing conflicts of interest, and building a successful clientele.

In our deep-dive conversation, Dominic shares strategies for diversifying your business to maintain a steady flow of work, while also deeply niching down to become the go-to expert in a category most people outside of his industry wouldn't even have heard of.  What even is 'unified communications' anyway? You're probably using it already!

We also talk about sharing knowledge and experience via the traditional writer pathway of writing a book - and discuss Dominic's motivation for and drive behind his successful guide, The Autonomous Freelancer.

As we wrap up our conversation, we zoom in on the importance of treating your freelancing as a business, including collaborating with trusted fellow professionals to provide integrated services. Dominic unravels his journey to achieving this while simultaneously creating valuable products that provide passive income streams, and keeps his work pipeline steady. He also shares valuable tips on networking and building relationships in the freelance industry. 

So, whether you're a newbie freelancer or a seasoned pro, this episode is chock-full of wisdom to help you soar high in your freelance career. Don't miss the opportunity to learn from Dominic's journey, and connect with him for further insight:

https://twitter.com/domkent
https://instagram.com/dominickentblog
https://www.youtube.com/@domkent90
https://www.linkedin.com/in/dominickent/

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:12

Welcome to the Future is Freelance podcast for solopreneurs, digital nomads, slowmads, consultants, remote workers, e-residents and people living a life without traditional boundaries. We're here for everyone who defies categorisation and makes a living in a life their own way. Every other Freelance Friday, we're serving up an audio cocktail of expert tips, inspired insights and stories from the frontiers of freelancing To help you achieve success with your borderless business, whatever success means to you as you live life on your own terms. Thanks for listening to the Future is Freelance and for being part of the Future of Work Revolution. Hello, welcome, and a short intro today, because we've got an interview that speaks for itself, but I wanted to go a bit deeper, actually, on one of the things I touched on last week about how having a really unique niche can help you build an extremely successful Freelance solopreneur business, and having a global marketplace can help you do just that. Today's example, dominic, is a content creator who has achieved this, and here's his story. Let's go So. Dominic, welcome to the Future is Freelance. it's great to have you with us.

Speaker 2: 1:40

Thank you for inviting me. it's my pleasure to be on Wonderful to receive an invite on LinkedIn.

Speaker 1: 1:44

Well, i'm looking forward to diving into all of the work that you're doing in the Freelance space at the moment, but you're now the CEO and founder of UC Marketing, but I'd love to know how you got to doing what you're doing right now. Can you tell us a bit about your journey professionally?

Speaker 2: 2:01

Yes, i'm incredibly niche, kind of niche within a niche, gone as far as possible, as I know you've spoken about on this podcast. I started my career as the person pressing the buttons kind of order management, provisioning type person for phone lines and broadband. Then the company I worked for started doing a bit of VoIP, which has accelerated to become unified comms, collaboration tools, things like Microsoft Teams, zoom, sharepoint. It was all kind of filtered into my world as I went from entry level provisioning coordinator up to running a team of other provisioning coordinators, project management of large orders, escalations manager, which became product manager, pre-sales consultant type person, which is where I started doing some writing for the company I was working for at the time, discovered then that actually I didn't hate marketing and learned that content marketing was a viable channel for businesses.

Speaker 2: 3:01

Started doing a little bit of content marketing for the company I was working for at the time, did a little bit of kind of guest blogging for other publications that were out there, but knowing really that a freelance marketing career was a possibility. Then people started to come to me and said they like my work and could I do similar. That then snowballed really and one day I had 40 hours of full-time work and 40 hours worth of freelance work as well. That felt like the right time to flick the switch and go hey, i'm already making a success of this freelance content marketing thing. Why not ditch the full-time job? I took the leap in. Five and a half years on, here we are.

Speaker 1: 3:41

Excellent, similar time frame to me, actually, but you do get to a point where something's got to give, as you say. And that transition Some people leap earlier and take the chance on the freelance life coming together, but you clearly got to the stage where you were building them up in parallel, so that transition must have felt almost like easing into it and getting rid of the biggest client.

Speaker 2: 4:03

I got to the tipping point where, probably Monday, tuesday, i was traveling to see customers as a typical business consultant, really staying over one night, going to see another customer in the similar region. Then coming home I had that free evening where, rather than just going down to dinner watching the football if it was on and doing nothing with my time, i could fill it with freelance work and it didn't feel like I was burning out or anything like that. Then Saturday mornings I used to have this wonderful, lovely shed that I used to go working on a Saturday morning and just write an article for one client who was paying me £100 for one article. It just felt like an extension of my work. But also I enjoyed it more than what I was doing nine to five, because I was writing up everything that I'd learned that week or the technology that I'd seen for the first time, and it was just enjoyable.

Speaker 2: 5:03

That was the catalyst, i guess. And then that snowballed. Like I said, it was easy to just transition and pull the trigger because I already had those clients in place. It wasn't really in my head to ever take the one freelance bit of work I was doing and try and get to full-time freelance, but, as it happened, it became more obvious that this would make me more autonomous. I would have more freedom in my work-life balance. I would probably be happier. Five years on, my gamble has paid off.

Speaker 1: 5:39

Excellent. That's a really inspiring story and it's one that everybody who's thinking about this kind of transition. have I got enough freelance work to support me? Is it the right thing? There are so many factors that are important there, including the fact that you found you were enjoying the writing more than the day job. I think a lot of come to writing that way. Sometimes I think will I be able for somebody pay me to do this, because it's quite fun and quite easy compared to client?

Speaker 2: 6:08

There's the trade-off, isn't there. I've always enjoyed writing of some sort. I would do creative writing by hand and think, hey, this would be great if I could be an author or something like that. That would be wonderful. At school I always wanted to be a football journalist. If I couldn't be a footballer because I liked writing, i wish it was always my favorite subject outside of PE. Then I did English language at college, where really I don't think I learned anything, but I had a great time because I was writing a lot, which probably sorry to my teacher, but it was great fun, but I didn't learn anything.

Speaker 2: 6:43

I continued that enjoyment of writing outside of my day job. But there is always the trade-off of is anyone going to pay me for this? It wasn't until I discovered that content marketing was an actual working concept that paid the bill, because I've come from a generation where a blog was just somebody updating their website and you followed them. If they're interesting to this really strong, clear route to ROI inbound marketing machine that you'd be silly not to use today. I've gone through that and, as I've learned what that actually is, it's become a career for me.

Speaker 1: 7:19

I suppose it's relatively recently that people could actually measure that ROI and realize the benefits of outsourcing it. Because, yes, everybody knew you had to have a blog on your website and that that was important to show updated content and you were still existed and things like that. But yeah, i remember when I first thought about writing for a living, the only option really was copywriting and learning to write to sell in a very direct sort of end of funnel way, the revelation that you could actually do something much more narrative, much more interesting. Wow, okay, i remember that feeling, too.

Speaker 2: 7:57

It's where I feel that I could add my expertise. Rather than writing some sales copy, some website copy, something like that. The actual narrative is the right word, isn't it? It's the production of something using all my knowledge and expertise that I've gained. It's what gives me enjoyment and it's also what can make my now clients money. If they can demonstrate authority on a topic, why would they not use the person that is most qualified to do so and has the skill set to communicate that? If you package the two together, you get me within my very unique bubble. I think that's why I enjoy it and that's why my career is.

Speaker 2: 8:43

I guess lucrative is probably the right word, isn't it? It's not as if I'm going from day to day going. Will I ever get another customer? I know that my next customer is going to be probably a systems integrator or a competitor of somebody I've written for before. It might be someone I've already got on LinkedIn, because they're following me. They can actively see the quality of my content and I share the results of that content be a graph, number of signups, conversions, whatever it is. I know that as long as I keep doing that, the same types of customer will keep coming back because I'm especially still in that one bespoke area.

Speaker 1: 9:18

Yes, if you had to describe that niche in an elevator journey, how would you define it?

Speaker 2: 9:24

Yes, it depends on who was in the elevator with me. If you're someone in the industry, it's quite easy. What I do I'm a freelance content marketer for Unified Coms and Contact Centre. But that's the point where normal people will say, well, what's Unified Coms? I might use the words digital collaboration tools and people go, oh, like Zoom and Slack and SharePoint, which the answer is, yeah, you got it. But us in industry folks label it Unified Coms, and Contact Centre really is how you contact customer support. Sales teams used to just make a phone call, but now it's online, automated web chat, social media, etc. So all these different pieces have fallen into the industry that I specialize in. So it's not even like it's just writing about phones or just writing about messaging. It's all of these different things that fall into this one segment of communications technology.

Speaker 1: 10:19

So it's a very narrow niche, but it's very deep. It feels like quite bottomless sometimes.

Speaker 2: 10:24

And to become a subject matter expert across the board. it's taken me 15 years to confidently say well, i can definitely do that for this amount of money. I can command my rate because I'm confident in my ability and expertise within that industry, whereas if I was to do this 15 years ago, I wouldn't be able to win that specific customer over somebody else that had that experience. And that's where I see a lot of freelancers ask me the question how could I have one, how could I have got in with this customer? And my first question is probably what have you tried so far? But the second is what makes you more qualified than the person that got it? And if the answer is, well, i'm not. The next step needs to be what you need to find some parameters to what you're applying for so that you can be that best person in the category that is an obvious hire for that particular job, gig, project, whatever it might be.

Speaker 1: 11:22

Yes, you need to find some way of demonstrating that, highlighting it, proving it socially or in numbers or some other way, and make yourself the obvious choice and make sure that niche exists. Have you ever had any issues in terms of the sheer narrowness of your niche with competition And you said that one of your next clients might well be a competitor of somebody you're already writing for? Has that ever been problematic?

Speaker 2: 11:50

Only once, i think, has it been even mentioned. I wouldn't say it was problematic Once it was mentioned, although lots of people ask me this, because people are worried that if they become so niche, so hyper focused on one area, will the competition run out? Will the pool of clients cease to exist? The answer is no. In any industry, really, you're never going to go that narrow. There's not going to be one industry or subset of an industry or craft where only two companies exist and one went high because you used to work for somebody else. There's no industry in the world really like that And if that is, that's a poor choice.

Speaker 2: 12:31

The one time it did happen, there was a online publication, more of a magazine type I guess you'd call it a magazine. They were already ranking high for lots of contact center key phrases and they wanted me to come and write some content that ranked them higher. Basically wanted me to do some content refreshers. Had seen that I'd written similar content for one of the vendors that pays them for, i think, ad space or advertorial content, something like that, and they wanted to know if I was still working with them because one of the key phrases that was ranking above theirs was written by me. So they didn't. I said no, i wasn't working with them anymore, and then it went quite anyway. I think their realization that I'd already done that is what attracted them to me in the first place, because I'd done the job that they wanted, just for somebody else.

Speaker 1: 13:25

That's quite pragmatic then Yes, we know he can do it.

Speaker 2: 13:29

I think they were worried that I would then undo the work I did for them and go back to that, which doesn't happen.

Speaker 2: 13:36

No, it doesn't, we're professionals, aren't we Yeah if I did that, then everyone would talk about it and I wouldn't have any customers ever again. My opinion on that was it was a bit petty really, and they didn't know what they wanted other than me to get them to the position that I'd already got. But in the main, no, that doesn't really happen. The industry is so wide that one day I can be working on a white paper for somebody about Microsoft Teams. The next day I might be writing a blog post about SharePoint, and then I'll be writing some website copy for a Zoom integration, something like that. And they're all in the same industry, but they're all very different topics and they're all very different formats as well.

Speaker 1: 14:21

And, as you say, hopefully we're all grown-ups about this thing. Maybe it's more of an employer mindset that they felt like they had to headhunt you away from a competitor or something and then buy your loyalty.

Speaker 2: 14:34

I have had somebody that if they would approach me today I wouldn't have accepted their request for a call anyway. I'd have learned to have filtered them out better, kind of qualified them as not my ideal customer. They wanted me to sign an NDA, for it was an agency. They wanted me to sign an NDA without me even knowing who the end client was, so that the end client couldn't come to me directly because then they would obviously cut themselves out as they wouldn't take their profit and the customer would use me anyway. I said no because it all felt a bit shady, but after half an hour of banging my head against a wall on the call, saying I can't say yes unless I know who it is, because I don't know if I'm in the right.

Speaker 1: 15:21

You might be working with them.

Speaker 2: 15:24

I might already be working with them, As it transpires. three months later they come to me direct and said they were trying to get to me via this agency. It was just a massive waste of time using this kind of The agency lost the business.

Speaker 2: 15:38

The agency lost the business and I was completely full up at the time anyway. So I said I can't do it yet. I can do it in three, four months. They got there, i guess. Second choice I don't know if they went back to the agency or what happened, but it was a bit of a peculiar situation to be in, really, and it was the employee mindset, but with a middleman, i guess. Yeah.

Speaker 1: 16:00

That's even more weird and awkward, isn't it, i think? But this is bound to happen when you go deep into a niche. I had a situation where a client a client I'd been working with a while sent me a brief for an interesting piece of content and they knew it was right. in my wheelhouse They said these are the three articles ranking top at the moment that we want to beat. I had to go back to them and say do you realize that I wrote two of these Because one was ghostwritten? They knew I'd work for one of the competitors. It was like okay, i'm happy to have a shot. You're paying me now I'll try and outrank those. But it was a bit of a weird situation that I felt like you're pitting me against myself here.

Speaker 2: 16:44

Yeah, I've never been in that situation but I've had it happen accidentally, when I've written something and it just so happened to rank for something else that another client was paying me for. It wasn't until I was looking through a report and I went oh, I've lost that ranking position. Who's written that? It was me, It was for another client. It wasn't intentional. I wasn't directly trying to rank for that key phrase, It just happened. But at the time there was enough trust between both clients and I explained that it was accidental and they were both fine with it. We weren't targeting, there weren't direct competition. It was different technologies despite being in the same industry. Everyone was growing up so bad, like you said.

Speaker 1: 17:26

That's the best possible outcome, isn't it? Just trying to avoid those agencies that try and get you to sign the non-competes? Somebody put one in front of me once that you wouldn't work for anybody else in the same industry. I was like that's my niche.

Speaker 2: 17:42

Yeah, That's why you've come to me right.

Speaker 1: 17:45

Yeah, you're asking me to sign away my entire career. I don't think so. This is all.

Speaker 2: 17:49

Yeah, i should have made you sign that.

Speaker 1: 17:51

No, i didn't sign that one. I'm not currently working with any agencies at all, because those kind of things tended to keep popping up It was just easier to go to work directly with clients. But having said that, i noticed that you are. You definitely describe yourself as a solopreneur, but you do have a embryonic agency growing. How's that going?

Speaker 2: 18:13

Are you just collaborating with?

Speaker 1: 18:15

other freelancers, or are you empire building?

Speaker 2: 18:18

Yeah, embryonic agency Maybe I'll brand myself as that. So one of my longest-serving customer the CEO who pays the bills suggested that I could make a lot of money by opening an agency in my industry. So I thought you know what That sounds like a very good idea. He floated some numbers. So this is what I think you could realistically be earning, and I could not explore the option.

Speaker 2: 18:44

Very quickly I realized that I didn't want to manage other people And I went freelance in the first place because I enjoyed the free element of being a freelancer. I could do whatever I wanted and people would pay me right, yes, so it very quickly became the case that I had a bunch of really good people that could do things that I'm not very good at. So things like web analytics and website copywriting and graphic design things I'm not very good at and don't want to do I want to do the more narrative content that you mentioned earlier And, rather than actively trying to go and fill their time by selling more than I can deliver if I happen to have, it's a very passive approach, i guess if I happen to have so much work that I need to outsource it. I now have a very small group of trusted freelancers who run their own businesses and their own right, and I might say, hey, could you do a graphic for this white paper? I'm working on Perfect.

Speaker 2: 19:47

It's as simple as that. Right, it's not a fully fledged marketing agency. It's just a small group that I lean on to do other bits. But I'm not actively marketing those extra bits because I don't want to do them really And I don't want to be managing subcontractors. I don't want to do the accounting. I want to create content strategies. I want to write really long-form white papers about subjects that I'm deeply passionate about, rather than paying bills.

Speaker 1: 20:13

Absolutely. And writing a long-form white paper, you need to be able to concentrate 100% on that white paper.

Speaker 2: 20:19

You can't be like managing a team and dealing with admin and Yeah, there's also the element of people coming to me because they know I'm good at something or I'm superior in a craft compared to a generalist in my specific industry, and I felt like I would degrade that almost if I then said, well, actually you've come to me for that reason, but I'm going to get somebody else to do it. That didn't feel like a growth strategy for me. The growth strategy for me felt like I should continue delivering high-quality content and more people will keep coming to me. Yes, i think I made that decision very quickly and it was definitely the right decision to make.

Speaker 1: 21:00

Yeah, no, it sounds like the perfect arrangement that you have a series of trusted collaborators that you can, because sometimes people do want the visual side of the white paper as well, and things like that. I mean I know that I can faff around in camera for an hour and come up with something that looks like a 12-year-old did it, or I could just work with somebody. I'm not even there. I trust to do a good job in the first place, and I'll concentrate on the words. We'll keep quiet.

Speaker 2: 21:29

Yeah, when it comes to outsourcing, i'd rather have someone I could say yes, this person is very good at that thing you've asked me to do and go do it through them, rather than me trying to make a markup on it or saying Or saying no really. Because if you start saying no, then customers will assume you're going to say no to everything, which, if they're the wrong customer, that's fine. If you want me to write about something I've got no clue about, i'm going to say no and you're not going to come back, and that's absolutely fine To me. That's productive way of growing my freelance business. But if it's someone who I've done a white paper for and use the example, they want me to format it and turn it into something, and that's a deal breaker. They want to do the entire package. Other than me hunting on Viva for somebody I've never used before, i would like to say, actually, molly, can you do this within this time frame? Yes, great, we'll do it as a co-project. It would be great, and it always turns out really.

Speaker 1: 22:25

And you don't have to worry about the quality of the work, you don't have to project manager and be an agency. Yes, i mean, it's something that obviously I've thought about in terms of how do we grow, how do we improve and become more professional, how do we make more money? at the end of the day, i agree with you, particularly with writing or anything creative. really, they're hiring you for your expertise and reputation. The minute you start outsourcing, you have less control over the quality You might get sucked into. I mean, i know I love writing, but I hate editing. So why would I want to do more?

Speaker 2: 22:59

I'm the opposite to the point where if I was an editor for my marketing agency, i think I'd be okay. I wrote the brief, if I handed it over to a writer and then got it back, edited it to something that I could hand over to the customer and say, look, this has been. It started with me, it ended with me, somebody did the business middle And I worked like that for a little while and two of my customers use me as kind of the blog editor and my responsibility is to hire other freelancers and work like that And I really enjoy that. But that becomes a process where I'm losing profit by outsourcing the words effectively And in the time that it's taken me to produce a brief and edit the final product, could I've just written it myself? Nine times out of 10, the answer is yes, because I'm so deeply embedded within this industry And nobody else really is going to do as good a job as not the right phrase. But what I expect? Yeah, what the client?

Speaker 1: 24:09

expects, then if they're hiring you, yeah, no, that makes complete sense And it's so. You've chosen to grow in other ways and just deepen that professionalism and that niche and the service that you provide, and something else you've diversified into. This year you've published your first book to help other people do exactly the same. So tell me about that. What was the motivation behind the autonomous freelancer?

Speaker 2: 24:35

The motivation was to finally write a book. Like I said, i've always enjoyed creative writing and just writing in general. I've probably started seven, eight different books and got to chapter three and come. Well, this is no good. This is not what I should be doing. I thought long and hard about what could I write a book on that people would generally find useful, will be of a value high enough that I could make some money from it, but also something that didn't take up so much of my time that I was leaving potential billable time on the table. So if I was, i wanted to be a spare time project. So if I finished it too, because I got my blog post done early that day, i would go to the coffee shop and start writing, writing that book. If I had nothing to do on a Saturday morning, i'd go sit outside and work on it for a little bit, et cetera, et cetera. I did a lot of it in a brewery when it was raining British summer, when it rains.

Speaker 1: 25:31

So you've got to dump quickly then.

Speaker 2: 25:34

Yeah, i would do something productive, but rather than I'm not somebody who can just sit at home and watch Netflix, i'd rather be doing something. It doesn't have to be work related, but I'd rather be doing something. The rain kind of restricts that. So I'd got to the point in my career where I was building a small audience on LinkedIn, twitter and medium and various other places And it became clear that maybe 25% of my audience followed me for industry stuff And the rest were maybe 70. Of that, 75% left were freelancers that were tagging along to learn things, to hear me on, and I thought this could be outside of my niche, where I'm an industry expert but that doesn't really need a book. This could be the one thing that I'm rather good at And I could turn into a book that people would want to read and want to pay to read. So it kind of all came together very quickly. I started I approached it as if I were to blog post. To be honest, i wrote a brief and thought that kind of makes sense. We'll see how that goes And maybe I think it's 36 sessions worth of writing. Some were half an hour, some were four hours, just when I had spare pockets of time it all came together, edited it nicely.

Speaker 2: 26:54

Publishing was a nightmare, but we should talk about that, yeah, and I thought it would be a great source of. It'd be a great income stream that diversified what I do. It'd be a passive income stream I always wanted to do. I always wanted to have a product, and the year before I'd made a blogging course and I kind of I got the bug really a little bit for making products. As I saw the sales come in from online course, i thought, well, actually it's a Saturday and I've earned 300 pounds. That's pretty good, right, that's a really nice. I guess it builds a pot for potential days off. If I'm sick as a freelancer, or if there's one day where I don't have any client work to do, i can say, well, at least I've got this pocket of passive income, that kind of substitutes, in there, if I ever have a big gap. And most of what I do is about building potential free time into my life so that my work life balance is heavily swayed in favour of life.

Speaker 1: 27:55

Yeah, That's all any of us want at the end of the day, isn't it? The trouble is, a lot of us end up doing that by getting very good at what we exchange time for money for. We exchange that for even more money and then trying to take time out of that to create a unique piece of content and offer it to the world on a see, if you like this space, it's like a book. It's much more difficult. So congratulations, first of all, because it's a huge achievement actually creating and putting something out into the world like that.

Speaker 1: 28:24

I know that one of the main things I took from the book was it was I've seen a lot of books on. This is how to be a content marketer. This is how to be a writer, and those things are incredibly hard to. You know, somebody can't write. There's no course, there's no book in the world that can teach them. But what you got to the heart of was that mindset of. It's a business. I'm providing professional service in a B2B environment. What does that look like? What am I offering to my clients? And, if I can get that right, that gives me the lifestyle that I want.

Speaker 2: 28:58

Yeah, i think there's a lot of books on how to be a freelancer And I didn't want to write that. I'd read them all, either during the course of my career as a freelancer or as kind of pre-reading for something I was going to write. I wanted it to be something where I could add genuine value rather than just laying out oh, you need to go and buy a laptop, you need to find a working space, which are the bones of being a freelancer. Yes, but my audience, i think, is people that are already aware of this. They're not doing it for the first time. It's not their first job. They want to. They have an established freelance business, whether they know it's a business or not. It might be part-time, it might be once a month, it might be when they have free time. It might be full-time. It might be too much time and they need to get some time back.

Speaker 1: 29:51

And.

Speaker 2: 29:51

I wanted to kind of cater that audience rather than begin a freelancers, because my career went from earning very good money as a full-time employee to having a bit of side income as some freelance work was coming in to. then, when I first went freelance, my day rate I just took from what I earned as a full-time employee, which is absolutely the wrong mentality to take. But I didn't know any different at the time because, okay, I read the Beginner's How to Be a Freelancer but nobody had published anything on how to be a successful freelancer from day one. which, looking back, why was I not charging the rate that I was charging then? Why was I not using project-based pricing? Why was I undervaluing myself just because I had a full-time job previously, even though it was a very well-paid full-time job?

Speaker 2: 30:50

The value for all of my knowledge and all of my skills that I've gained over those last 10 years were worth more than what I was being paid a salary for at that time. And then there's the obvious side of any customers they're not paying me a pension, they're not paying me any dental, there's no benefits. Using a freelancer is not just using that particular skill set and craft, it's freeing up a space in that business's payment cycle There's a gap, And who says that you should not fit into that gap for what you're worth rather than just what you were worth as a full-time employee?

Speaker 1: 31:31

Yes, and you're bringing in that precise jigsaw fit of the value and the output that they need at that time. They're not having to commit to you with a contract with all the uncosts of recruitment and retention and onboarding.

Speaker 2: 31:44

Those are the hidden costs that freelancers are unaware of sometimes, aren't they? If you've always been freelance, you're unaware of how long and how expensive it is to hire somebody. There might be an agency that you pay £10,000 for, and then the person starts and they're no good.

Speaker 1: 32:01

Yes, so they quit in six months.

Speaker 2: 32:04

It's a complete risk. One role I had I know the company were using a prestigious recruitment company. I don't know how much it cost, but it was well known that it cost a lot of money to use this particular recruitment agency. They found me on LinkedIn, put me forward for a job. I accepted it because the money was really good. About three months in I wasn't really doing anything. I phoned the recruitment consultant back and said hey, look, this probably isn't for me because I can't sit here and pretend to be busy all day. In fact, i started my own blog then on productivity and remote work and things like that. Because I was sat in an office, because I had to go into an office and didn't have any work to do, my looking busy was actually doing stuff to further my own career. So after six months I did leave. It cost that company, whatever it was for the recruitment fee. It cost them my salary for six months and then they had to do it whatever again.

Speaker 1: 33:07

It's terrifying. I've been on the other side of that back in corporate life and you'd have to trust an agency so much. With this person We have a couple of interviews and then you've got to make them an offer. It's terrifying. Whereas if you're hiring a freelancer, you can agree on the smallest viable project that works for you both, to see if you're a fit, and you pay them for that project. If you go on to then work together for the next five years, fantastic. If not, then you both walk away.

Speaker 2: 33:38

Everybody's absolutely fine. I mean especially in startups as well, or smaller businesses that don't have that seemingly never ending business that the company I was working for all the time, I think turns over 80 billion. So it was a small drop in the ocean but in the grand scheme of things I probably didn't matter that much as a line item.

Speaker 2: 33:57

But today, living crisis now now they wish they had that money. But yeah, I think filling that gap with your expertise and your craft is money well spent right, And you deserve to be compensated appropriately for it.

Speaker 1: 34:16

Definitely And hopefully. It is a trend we're seeing more of Now. I've been writing quite a lot about blended teams and fractional execs and just the fact that the tools that you specialised in writing about make it so easy to form those instant, deep collaborations for a time limited period with anyone on the planet, Never mind whether they can commute to your office and sit there and do nothing. We have so much better ways of doing this now that that's got to be better for both sides. And I think the other thing is we've got there's so much talent now out of the workforce because, particularly in tech, because of all the layoffs that have sadly hit within the last 12 months, there's an awful lot of people out there who maybe don't want to go back into that all in relationship anymore either if they've been burned badly by it. There's so much talent waiting in the wings for freelancers and some of those will collaborate and form new startups, but others they can add so much value if they can flip into this autonomous mindset.

Speaker 2: 35:18

Yeah, you make a good point and was well about the. I guess the risk of being employed is almost the same as the risk of being a freelancer. Right, you might not renew your contract. You might not get another project from that particular customer. The same as one of my customers laid off their entire marketing team, pretty much to the point where I checked my email on Monday morning having heard that they had made some layoffs on Friday afternoon, emailed the person to say I hope you're okay, because I heard lots of your team had gone and my email bounced back because they disappeared.

Speaker 2: 35:55

I wrote about it in my book. What do you do at that point as a freelancer? Things like that have prepared me and other freelancers have the edge, i guess over-employed people of preparing for that inevitable moment when the customer says hey, you know what, i haven't got any more work for you. It's not necessarily a reflection on you, they haven't got anything else for you to do. That happens, right, yeah, and freelancers that build a steady pipeline, build a personal brand, know that the next piece of work is going to come literally knocking out the door because you've put in that time up front to make sure that people know who you are, what you're all about, how great you are.

Speaker 1: 36:31

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 36:32

And you've got a network.

Speaker 1: 36:33

You can turn to if they don't come knocking. You've already got that built out And also that bounced email isn't likely to be 100% of your income at any one time if you're a diversified freelancer.

Speaker 2: 36:45

That's something I've been working on, so I was on a call with what's the right term on the right phrases. I guess they are startup founders. maybe They're rolling out a new freelance marketplace platform type thing the kind of thing that I despise, because I assume they're all like artwork and fiver and they pay you correctly.

Speaker 1: 37:05

What's your hourly?

Speaker 2: 37:06

rate. Yeah, yeah, billing per minute. They were talking to me about what I wanted to do next with my freelance business. How much money did I want to earn? How did I want to grow it? And my answer was actually, i just want more of the same, because I enjoy my job so much. I enjoy my work-life balance. I don't want to change anything. There's nothing else I'm striving for in terms of more. I don't need any more. But what I would like to do and this definitely wasn't the answer they're expecting was to diversify where my clients come from. So I'm less relied on one customer than another And I wasn't particularly bad at it anyway just naturally, organically I mean, it happened without me doing anything I've got a group of customers. One pays me for a retainer, so that's.

Speaker 2: 37:57

It's nice to have a retainer on your workbook, One pays me for one big project at a time. I've got a handful of customers that pay me a smaller amount at a time for lots of different things Anyway, but I wanted to make it even more diverse in case layoffs happen. So even the biggest companies Microsoft, Zoom, Cisco, all made layoffs and they're all in my industry, right. So I was very aware that I could probably tweak that a little bit. And on my invoicing software, my accounting software, free agent, it pops up to say well done, you've diversified your income more than six months ago, which was nice to have Yeah that's a nice touch.

Speaker 2: 38:32

I was doing it kind of subconsciously And then it popped up and it said, hey, you've done it. I was like, oh great, well, i've achieved that. And then I went back to the question and they asked me on that call, what do I want to achieve next? What do I want more of? And the answer is more of the same, really. And if I can factor in the time to write a book to a course, something like that, not even make a course but do somebody else's course and continue learning, then I know that I'm going to continue growing as a person, i guess, more than a business.

Speaker 1: 39:01

That's fantastic. I think that's a brilliant note on which to wrap up, because for so many people who we know despise their work or just get bored by their work and they're not engaged and they're not enjoying it and would answer that question so differently and they would rather not do it at all, i think you're basically living the dream. You've got the work that you have.

Speaker 2: 39:22

I've never lied to you, right, right. If you asked me five years ago what did I want my work day to look like, that's exactly where it is now. I didn't know it at the time, but this is what I wanted, right? The only thing I would change, like I said earlier, is I wish it didn't rain as much in the summer.

Speaker 1: 39:39

Well, you see your work's location, independent. You don't have to do it in the UK.

Speaker 2: 39:44

My dogs don't travel very well, so that's the only thing tied me down.

Speaker 1: 39:47

Okay, yes, well, we all have our dependence wires down, definitely. I've just published a 5,000-word paper on digital home advises. It's on my LinkedIn profile if you want to go and dream about Desert Islands.

Speaker 2: 40:03

I should check that out.

Speaker 1: 40:04

If they have pet visas as well. It might get complicated, but we do have so many possibilities. Now, Very quickly, what's the best place for people to learn more if they're intrigued about your book, your work, your work in UC? Where's the best place to connect with you, dumb?

Speaker 2: 40:21

You can get my book at theautonomousfreelancercom. You can choose from the paperback or you can buy the ebook version. If you're in a country outside of the UK or the US, you will benefit from the pay parity scaling, which is quite nice. That's why I wanted to launch ebook as well. If not, find me on Twitter I'm at Domkent and LinkedIn I'm Dominic Kent. There's not many of me on LinkedIn.

Speaker 1: 40:42

Excellent. Well, thank you so much for being part of the Future is Freelance.

Speaker 2: 40:46

My pleasure. Thanks for inviting me.

Speaker 1: 40:50

Thank you for listening to the Future is Freelance podcast. We appreciate your time and attention in a busy world and your busy life. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with a fellow freelancer. Help us grow this movement of independent entrepreneurs. If you rate and review the Future is Freelance in whatever app you're listening to this right now or over at FutureisFreelancexyz, then that will help spread the word and help us reach more people who need to hear this message and join the conversation. Together, we can change the world and make sure the future is freelance. This is Maya Midlemish, wishing you success and happiness in your enterprise until our next episode.