Tom Hirst consistently earns over $100,000 / year, even though he’s never had proper job. Tom’s found success as a freelance WordPress developer, working on projects for the likes of England’s National Health Service, sportswear brand Umbro, and Facebook.
Tom also writes about the business of freelancing and mentors other freelancers. Tom is the author of two eBooks: 10 Steps To Becoming A Better Freelancer and Pricing Freelance Projects, and the creator of the video course, The Personal Website Playbook.
You can find all of these resources and more on Tom’s website.
In this episode we discuss:
- How Tom got started freelancing
- Landing the first client
- Do you need to be able to “sell yourself” to make it as a freelancer?
- Getting out of the “feast/famine” cycle that traps many freelancers
- What are the biggest mistakes that most people make when first starting out as freelancers?
- What would Tom do if he was starting over again today?
- Should you use marketplaces/platforms like UpWork to sell your services as a freelancer?
- Is it important to choose a niche?
- Where Tom gets virtually all of his new leads from
- The advantages of “working in public”
- Finding success on Twitter
- Tom’s viral Twitter thread on pricing freelance projects
- How to create additional sources of income as a freelancer (besides client work)
- Translating freelance expertise into creating and selling content online
- Tom’s new agency, Run the Show that specializes in Headless WordPress
- What is “Headless WordPress” and why would someone use it?
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Transcript
Neville Mehra
Tom, welcome to never normal.
Tom Hirst
Thanks for having me, Neville. It’s great to be here.
Neville Mehra
Yeah, my pleasure. A lot of us, myself included, start freelancing after, you know, working some years in a traditional job and sort of getting fed up at some point or just wanting more freedom. Was that the case for you as well?
Tom Hirst
No, I was actually completely the opposite, because I just started straight into freelancing for education.
Neville Mehra
So you went straight from university, and I think you applied for some jobs at least, right?
Tom Hirst
Yeah. So I applied for one job. And I kind of went through the whole interview process and things like that with, yeah, I just, I just kind of had this realization that even at that interview stage that this whole normal job thing I’m using that the air quotes right now, wasn’t really going to be for me. And yeah, they got back in touch men said I hadn’t got job I’ve come a close second. But it was kind of like a blessing in disguise. It kind of really, I don’t know, kicked me off, I guess to explore, you know, the freelance life that I guess I really want to deep down anyway.
Neville Mehra
Yeah, amazing how some little things like that, Kevin, maybe that other person, you know, if they’d rejected the offer, for some reason, if things had turned out differently, but Brian Clark, I think it is from copyblogger. And he refers to people like us as as unemployable. And you’re just curious, like, what was it that that made you especially at like a pretty young age that you were maybe 22? And having never even like worked a proper job at that point? What was it that that turns you off from that that made you so kind of like averse to the even just the idea at that stage of going and getting like a proper office job?
Tom Hirst
Yeah, I think I’d always had the entrepreneurial mindset in me from a young age, because of how I had been brought up. So my dad, he’s an accountant. And he’s had his own business since a young age as well. So when we were growing up, you know, me and my sister, we would sell Pokemon cards at car boot sales and things like that. And I would sell phones and buy and sell different handsets and things like that. And I just think that that kind of family upbringing, and the entrepreneurial spirit, I guess, was what kind of put me put me on the backfoot towards getting a proper job, as you would say, right from the earth.
Neville Mehra
And so once you made that decision, was it was it like an instant success? I mean, so you, you went for this interview, you kind of had that experience you you felt in the process that like, okay, maybe this isn’t for me, you already had some entrepreneurial leanings. But how did you get from there to, you know, did you just land a client straight away? Or was there some What did that process look like?
Tom Hirst
Yeah, so it wasn’t, it wasn’t easy at all at the beginning. And obviously, even though I had this, like fire in my belly, to, you know, be an entrepreneur, be going alone and have the autonomy and things like that. It wasn’t it wasn’t an easy start. So I while I was at university, I learned how to program through WordPress. So WordPress is like a content management system that’s powers like 60% of the web, or wherever, whatever it is, now, it’s really popular. But back in the back 12 years ago, when I started out, it was kind of in its infancy. But I decided to specialize in that straightaway. And I learned a lot about it while I was at university during we had like a module as like a free reign module, and you could do whatever you wanted. And I built a website on WordPress for my uncle’s band, as it was at the time and not just kill me Got me kind of started in in, in that sense. So once I had these WordPress skills, I could then say to everyone that knew look, you know, is anybody wanting a website and really, if anyone mentions WordPress, then then I’m your guy. And that’s, that’s how he started out. It was a little bit slow in the beginning. But then my dad had a hit with one of his clients who was looking for a website and they mentioned WordPress specifically, and the stars just kind of aligned he It sounds really weird, but just from putting myself out there and picking like quite a niche skill, and becoming known, even just to my father at that time as being someone who has these WordPress skills, he made that connection when it came up in conversation. And then yeah, I started working for that client. And that relationship lasted about a year and a half,
Neville Mehra
I think, Oh, wow. Is that typical for you even these days to have engagements that go That long?
Tom Hirst
And some, some have done in recent years, not so much right now. It’s more project by project. But when I when I started out, it was more like a direct kind of thing.
Neville Mehra
Just thinking back to what you said that you, you told people in your in your kind of personal network, it sounds like the WordPress guy, or I’m your WordPress guy, it sounds so simple to say that, but it’s funny the number of people who I talked to who are like interested in becoming freelancers or going into business for themselves. And they’re like, yeah, I’ve tried everything. And it’s just so hard to land a client. And I’m thinking like, I know, you, I’ve never seen like a Facebook post or any, like, it’s a sort of treated as this separate world of like, you know, I don’t want to bother the people that I know, with this business II stuff. So they just, you know, they’ll go to like a networking event or something like that. And then maybe try to land a client if somebody happens to ask them, but they won’t actually just go like, you know, put out a flag and say, hey, look, this is who I am, this is what I’m doing. If you know anyone who needs this service, you’re not even trying to necessarily sell to the people. You know, in your case, your dad was just like, hey, if you know someone who needs this thing, this is what I do. Just basically telling your story. Hey, here I am. Again, it sounds like such a simple thing that you did. But I think that’s it’s something that that not everybody actually does. And they give up without even doing that. Right that they think oh, yeah,
Tom Hirst
no, exactly. I don’t think that doing that kind of set me off on a good starting point really to become a marketer, because that’s one of my firm beliefs that if you’re going to go into the freelance game, and you want to go go it alone, making money online, or whatever you want to do, you’re essentially first a marketer, right? So it doesn’t matter how good you are at the skill that you’re trying to sell. If you don’t know how to sell it, you’re not going to get very far.
Neville Mehra
I couldn’t agree more. It’s funny you say that? Because actually the next question now I’ll tip my hand a bit and say, I have a question written down in front of me. And I’ll actually read it verbatim just because it’s funny how close what you just said is, and that is that there’s a lot of people out there who are software or web developers who just want to do the thing, right? I’m a developer, I just want to develop, they don’t necessarily understand marketing, or they just don’t feel comfortable to that previous point about selling themselves. What would you say to people like that? Like, is that? Is it realistic to be a freelancer? If you feel that way? Or is that something that they maybe need to overcome? Or how do you think about that,
Tom Hirst
it’s certainly going to be a lot tougher. If you don’t want to get into that realm to be a freelancer ultimate least reach a level where you know, you’re in in like, what what you would call I better than average money? I guess. I think I think the the marketing side of things is super, super important, but to give people hope, it can definitely be learned. And I would consider myself a student of marketing as well. Because I mean, at the beginning, we all know, I mean, well, this is what I was like, when I was 22 years old, I was pretty anxious to go out and sell, I was pretty nervous to have client calls and things like that. But I made it kind of my mission to study marketing, study business, not just study web development, obviously, that that came more naturally and what the marketing side of things did. So yeah, to answer the question, I think if you don’t want to be a marketer at all, then I would get a job. That’s what that’s what I would say to people. But if you are open to learning, marketing, and you feel like it could be, you know, it could become something that you get good at, then definitely you’ve got it, you’ve got a chance in freelancing for sure.
Neville Mehra
I couldn’t agree more. So for those people out there listening, who you know, they had the technical chops as it were, right? They maybe they’re a graphic designer, or they’re a web developer like yourself, maybe they’re in WordPress, or React Native or, or they’re in UX, whatever it is, but they have the technical skills, and they don’t, they don’t like us, they don’t want to, you know, work a nine to five for the rest of their lives. But that’s their only source of income right now. Right? They’re working full time they have a job. They have these skills are sort of interested in freelancing, what would you say is sort of step one, or how would you think about kind of getting started to land that first client if you were doing that today?
Tom Hirst
So I think With the marketing stuff and bringing clients in, obviously, first, you want to tell everybody that you know, like what we touched on at the beginning. But I think when you want to start, you want to start playing a long term game straightaway. So you want to start thinking, how am I going to get people to come to me, you want to be thinking about your inbound game. So for me that starts with, you know, your personal brand, and sharing what you know, online, whether that be through your personal website, or, you know, on Twitter, social media, whichever platform you choose, and becoming someone who’s a consistent share. Because I think what that consistency teaches you is the, it’s like a marketing skill in itself, right? If you can be consistent, and you can put out content on whatever platform it’s on, and it’s relevant to the people that you want to attract, then that’s going to stand you in good stead for years to come.
Neville Mehra
Yeah, it sounds like what you’re describing is kind of working in public, rather than just doing the work. And then when you run out of work to do or when you run out of clients going and then desperately trying to sell something, it sounds more like kind of a steady drip of content around what it is that you’re working on. So you’re not only showing up, say on LinkedIn, once a year when you’re looking for a new project, or once a month, or however often. One thing that’s changed since you and I kind of first got started, is that there are many more opportunities now on like freelance marketplaces, things like Upwork, and other websites that are out there where freelancers can bid on projects? Is that something you recommend as an approach for people who are getting started? Or I mean, you mentioned inbound? And this seems like kind of the opposite of inbound? How do you think about those? And what do you recommend for people getting started when it comes to projects on sites like those?
Tom Hirst
I mean, it’s hard for me to say because I never really use those sites, I worked primarily on, you know, telling the people I already knew, and then word of mouth, and then inbound. So that was my approach. But I think we’ve, you know, use sites like Fiverr, and Upwork, and things like that, I think it can get you a start. And I think that there is, it is viable for some people right at the beginning. But I wouldn’t make it my primary source of, you know, leads forever, I would, I would default back to what we talked about before in terms of working on this constant marketing flywheel to get people to come to you, because obviously, then your position does you know, the authority, people already know who you are, rather than you going out and pitching to them. And when you’re in that kind of position, you can usually charge more money.
Neville Mehra
So maybe, then, sites like Upwork could be a way to sort of build a portfolio in the very beginning and overcome that you mentioned a flywheel. So just running with the analogy, like a flywheel has no momentum in the beginning, you got to get the momentum going. So maybe there’s an opportunity there to work at it, perhaps at a cheaper rate or more is like a sort of commodity developer or designer, whatever your skill is, and get those initial projects, maybe get some testimonials going. Some experience, get your name out there. But you would you would try to transition away from that pretty quickly. It sounds like,
Tom Hirst
yeah, I think that what you just said, is a perfect way to do it, as long as you’re working on, you know, building your reputation alongside that as well. So you’re not just doing awkward, your job after awkward job. And then like nothing else, you know, you want to be doing the blogging and things like that as well.
Neville Mehra
Yeah, and that’s, that, to me is one of the sort of seminal challenges of freelancing, right? And I’m curious how you approach this, because it always sort of feels like, if you’re busy doing a bunch of the work you have, or you’re working in the business, as they say, you have no time to work on the business, and how do you think about balancing those two, like for you now, in your business? You know, how is your time split, sort of between doing actual client work, and doing all the other stuff, especially the marketing to bring in future client work to get those to generate those inbound leads?
Tom Hirst
Yeah, it’s kind of changing right at the minute because I’m kind of expanding my freelance work into like a more of an agency kind of company. But in terms of over the last 12 years, the split would always be at least one day a week where I’m just focused on marketing strategy, and talking to people even if it’s not like writing a blog post or doing some LinkedIn work, or some outreach or whatever it would be, just just talk to people, even if just just make sure it’s scheduled in number one, because if it’s in the calendar, then it happens, right? If you give some kind of time, then it happens. So yeah, I would always say it used to be like Fridays A few years ago, and I would just like communicate with people online, follow up on you know, emails that have gone a little bit cold and things like that. And that’s all part of you know, the marketing process. And it’s got to be something that’s scheduled and done on a on a weekly basis minimum. So yeah, it is difficult. And I think that you can easily get trapped in this cycle of work, work, work, and then stop, like the feast and famine thing, right? Yeah. But if you, if you keep if you keep marketing always that’s something that I would say keep marketing always keep that pipeline full. And it just makes everything else so much easier.
Neville Mehra
Yeah, I think I’ve been just in what you said, there, there’s a couple of things that I just want to reiterate. And yeah, one is just that idea of continuing to market. And this is, it’s perhaps counterintuitive for people, especially when they’re just getting started. But like, when you already have work, when you already have a project, you still need to be marketing yourself, you just that feast famine cycle that you referred to comes out of this usual practice where it’s like, Okay, I need to hustle for a while to get a project. And then you land some project, and you’re like, Okay, now I’ve got a project, I’m too busy, I got to do this project, I have no time to market myself. And something as simple as your strategy of just blocking off, whether it’s one day a week, or, you know, half a day, twice, two days a week or whatever schedule makes sense, you know, for each person, just having deliberate time where you’re like, I’m not trying to sell a project today, for the sake of you know, eating tomorrow. It’s it’s just this ongoing effort that you can’t just turn off like you mentioned consistency earlier.
Tom Hirst
No, exactly.
Neville Mehra
Is there anything that you know, you mentioned, it’s been 12 years since you got started? Is there something that you would do differently now, either, because, you know, hindsight is 2020. And you’ve certainly learned a lot since then. But also, just because times have changed, right? We mentioned the proliferation of marketplaces, plenty of other things have changed as well, how would you? How would you do things differently? If you were kind of trying to get a business going? Again, like your own?
Tom Hirst
Good question. I think the first one would be, I would raise my rates quicker, and not. And that boils down to really getting kind of stuck. So we talked about the first client that I ever had, that lasted for a year and a half, I think I became a bit of a victim of the advice, you know, anti the advice that I’ve just given, really, because I stuck with them for so long. I wasn’t looking for the clients, I was very happy with that. But then whenever I wanted to increase my price, I always got pushed back, if you know what I mean. So if I would have kept marketing myself, and had potentially two clients at once, three clients at once, and then a couple more irons in the fire, it would have made the requesting more money a lot easier. Because if that client wouldn’t have paid it, then one of the others probably would, and I would have had some kind of idea of my market rate in advance where I could do testing and things like that and experiment on price without completely cutting off my income stream. So that would be the first thing that I would do different I would, you know, keep marketing always, as I said before, and get more, get more irons in the fire, so that it makes everything else easier, and it’s just a lot less pressure. When you go in and say look, I want more money, you know, you’ve got less fear, because you’ve got more optionality.
Neville Mehra
Yeah, yeah, it’s definitely it’s like an abundance situation that you’re coming from, rather than one of scares. But I think there’s even there’s something more to it than that, like, certainly at a practical level, you know, having more clients gives you more certainty makes you more comfortable to say, No, if somebody wants to give you work, that’s just not a good fit, or not necessarily at the rate that you want. But I think there’s there’s something transformational also about having multiple clients as a freelancer, because when you really just have one that you’re working for, a lot of times, it can be just like a job by another name, you know, where they’re, they’re just sort of dictating to you what to do, and you’re billing hourly or daily. And so you may be you’re not getting benefits, or, you know, the tax implications could be different than if you were an employee, but they’re sort of treating you like an employee, you’re not saying like, here’s my menu of services, which one would you like, they’re saying, okay, you know, we need this done by tomorrow, and you’re just at their, at their whim or mercy or whatever.
Tom Hirst
Yeah, exactly. I think like, as I’ve gone to get a little bit longer in the tooth, you realize that when you are freelancing for one client, you’re not really freelancing. And it’s exactly what you just said. It’s kind of like having a job with no benefits and no control, no power, and no real. Yeah, it’s commoditized. And I think that as you said, you know, the route where you start saying to people, this is my offer, and this is what it costs, as opposed to this is my rate is when you start making that transition from you know, the fake Freelancer to the real.
Neville Mehra
Yeah, and obviously, everything. Everything starts from zero to one, right. I don’t want to, I don’t want to deter people from getting started. You need one client before you can have two clients, but I think the message here is that you should be pretty quickly looking for to clients. And especially if you’re transitioning from a nine to five, part of the awkwardness of that is that you’re no longer just sort of serving one master or one boss, right, you’re going to have one boss, who is the client who wants the website done tomorrow, or whatever the project is, you know, they want your full attention on that. But you’re doing yourself a disservice, as we just described, if you’re only doing that, if you’re not carving out time to look for that second client. And then once you have a few, it’s sort of becomes a little bit I mean, you have new problems to deal with. But that part becomes a little bit easier, where you get used to sort of juggling multiple things for multiple clients plus your own business.
Tom Hirst
Yeah, exactly. And I think, once you start doing like the same thing for a long time, it becomes easier because all the clients have the same kind of problems. So like what we spoke about with me specializing in WordPress, I was only doing WordPress, I didn’t really need to know anything about JavaScript or whatever, because that was not what I was specializing in. So as my client base expanded, the work actually got easier because I was, you know, solving a lot of this same problems for the same type of people.
Neville Mehra
This is probably one of the most underrated bits of wisdom or under followed, and I think it Blair Enns talks about this in in Win Without Pitching. And it’s, you know, the the people who are out there who study kind of this consulting and creative industry, it is a common topic. But I still think it’s, it’s so often overlooked this idea that like, the more you specialize, the more you kind of put yourself in a in a small box and a small niche. The stronger your business becomes, because you’re able to position yourself, you know, you said it from the beginning, you started out and you’re like, oh, there’s this new thing, WordPress, it’s cool. You know, I’m going to tie myself to that bandwagon or whatever. And so you told the world that you’re the WordPress guy, you could have said, I’m the, you know, website made with the CMS guy, or just the website guy, or the software guy, or the anything to do with a computer, really, it’s all technical, I can figure it out. And the further the broader you go. Again, it’s counterintuitive, because it sort of seems like oh, well, I’m just starting out, I should say yes to everything, I don’t have any clients, I don’t have any money. Like, I’ll just take whatever comes in the door. And, again, that that feels kind of good to say that to yourself, like I’ll just I’ll do whatever the client wants, or what anyone wants, I need the job. But the problem is, is the opposite of what you just described, right? Is that you don’t get any better at it. And you don’t get to position yourself and you don’t become known as you know, Tom Hirst, WordPress, web development expert guy who’s been doing it for 10 years, who’s done this project before who’s seen this problem a million times. I imagine going to the doctor and you’re gonna have surgery, you want the guy who’s done the surgery, or the woman who’s done the surgery, dozens or hundreds or 1000s of times you don’t want the person is like, Don’t worry, we’ll figure it out. I’m a doctor, I’ve done doctor type stuff before, you know, we’ll manage.
Tom Hirst
Now exactly, I think you saw right. Like people, I think that actually genuinely scared that they’re gonna cut people out. But they’re not they’re not thinking about the long term game. And I think that’s, that’s what the, the underused part is people are thinking, super short term. And I know that everyone, you’ve got to make money, right? And especially in the beginning, that’s hard, you’ve got to, there is going to be some kind of compromise, you know, you’re gonna have to compromise a little bit. But you also need to be thinking about the long term. So if you are going to do a WordPress website, or Joomla website, or web flow website, or whatever, you know, what what you’re going to become known for? What are you going to be what’s your differentiator? What’s going to make you stand out to the person that has a really specific WordPress problem that then is solved? And it’s like you said with the doctor analogy, right? You know, you don’t want the jack of all trades you want the master you don’t want the guy who or girl who you know, operates on hands, feet, kneecaps, and elbows when you’re going in for brain surgery, right?
Neville Mehra
It Exactly, exactly. And you can just for people listening to be clear, you don’t necessarily have to pick a particular technology. That’s certainly one way to do it. You can specialize in a particular vertical, you can specialize in a combination of the two, right? You could make your restaurants or sorry, websites for restaurants or something like that. Like there’s plenty of ways to do it. But just being deliberate about who you are and how you show up in the world, I think is the real message here.
Tom Hirst
Exactly. Speak.
Neville Mehra
Speaking of which, I mean, you’ve mentioned let’s talk websites, because you’ve mentioned your website here. And when I’m doing digital strategy work I always tell clients the the famous line from the movie was it Field of Dreams if you build it, they will come is simply not true. Yeah, and and that’s surprises. A lot of people and what surprises me is hearing you say how effective your website is, in the sense that I think it’s the the main source of leads. And I’ve heard you say before that you get something like one or two new leads a day from your website.
Tom Hirst
Is that right? Yeah, on average, at least at least 10 a week, at least anyway. Wow.
Neville Mehra
And so I mean, that’s First of all, that’s amazing. Congratulations. Where are those leads coming from? Is it all Seo? Or is it different traffic sources? Like how did you because I could put up a website tomorrow that says, you know, john smith, the whatever, React Native expert, and I wouldn’t expect to see that sort of results. And obviously, you’ve had to sign up for a while. But tell us more about how you’ve made that happen.
Tom Hirst
Yeah, so it’s mainly organic SEO, which is the source of the traffic. And then recently, as I’ve started to build out an audience on Twitter, started getting traffic from there as well. But yeah, it’s primarily organic, SEO, and focusing again, on WordPress terms. So the freelance WordPress developer term I rank really well for in the UK, and pretty well for in the US as well. And like you said, I’ve been doing this for quite a while. So the website’s been up, you know, 1112 years itself as well. So that just all compounds over time, right? Yeah, another tactic, as well as I write a lot of articles, not necessarily always about WordPress, but you know, about freelancing and business and things like that. And the good thing is that these articles get links. And that then boosts the overall domain authority of the website, and then that increases the visibility of the single service landing pages where the leads come in.
Neville Mehra
Yeah, and I love the way that you sort of peel back the curtain a little bit, both both in life and your business. And you talk quite openly on your website about what you’re working on, what’s working, like, even down to things like revenue numbers and lifestyle stuff. And I think that there are, you know, it’s sort of natural to think, okay, I’m making a website for my business. And even if that business is just me one person, as a freelancer, you know, I’m going to have like a homepage, and maybe an about page and some kind of price list or something like that. And really, you’re using your, your website to sort of showcase not just the stuff that would normally be in the front of a store, if you think of it that way. But also a little bit behind the scenes, like if it were a restaurant, it’s okay, come into the kitchen with me, and let me show you how we make the food. And yeah, it sounds like that strategy of working in public of just kind of putting stuff out there has, has worked well. And based on what you’re saying in terms of numbers of leads that you’re getting and the success you’ve had over the years.
Tom Hirst
Yeah, definitely. And I think your personal website is like your CV now, you know, I think in the next like 1020 years, we’re not going to be handing over paper CVS for jobs anymore. I think a lot of us will be freelancers, number one, but I think that if you don’t have a personal website, and you’re not sharing what you know, what you’re learning where you go in even a bit of personal stuff, if you’re comfortable with that, then you’re going to be at a disadvantage. And yeah, like you say, I completely agree with what you said, I think that that stood me in really good stead to open up a little bit and be quite personal about, you know, the decision decisions that are making the thought process that I’m going through as a freelancer because I think it builds character. And when you when you show, you show like, you know, that transparency, it adds to the layer of authenticity that you know, you know, what you run about, and it infers expertise, and it builds trust. And there’s really not many downsides that I can think of, of building in public. And I just wish that I would have done it earlier.
Neville Mehra
Yeah, I was I was gonna ask that because it I mean, yeah, it just shows that you’re a real human basically, that you had all this, you know, it’s WordPress, and all this technical stuff. But there’s a human there behind the scenes. And as you said, when people trust other people, and they especially trust them, if, if they’re there, and they’re consistent, they’re showing up again and again, and you can get a sense of who they are and how they work. And ultimately, it’s for many people, it’s a big decision, who they’re going to hire and to kind of pay them a lot of money, hopefully. So having someone that you can trust is important. So we’re talking about working in public and your experience as a freelancer, but I’ve noticed over the past, I guess it’s been about the past year or so that you’ve also sort of branched out a bit, right. So you’ve, I’d like to talk about both but let’s start between you’ve got an agency going now and you’ve got content that you’ve been creating and writing more and putting things out there for other freelancers and a mentorship program. Let’s Let’s start with the mentorship program.
Tom Hirst
Yeah, cool.
Neville Mehra
So how’s that going? How does that work? What What have you sort of learned So far, just tell us more about it in general.
Tom Hirst
Yeah, sure. So I think I started that last January. And I kind of kind of got to a point where I was a little bit fatigued on the client work side. And it got to a point where, you know, I didn’t really want to just keep pushing it and just taking on more and more work. I wanted to kind of diversify a little bit. Not really, for financial reasons, but for fulfillment reasons, I guess. Yeah. A lot of people that have been coming to me anyway, and asking for like advice on freelancing, small business, working from home and things like that, what I’ve been doing for such a long time. And that’s just kind of become second nature to me now, but it’s becoming really relevant to a lot of my friends, especially with the COVID stuff as well.
Neville Mehra
January was an interesting timing for that one.
Tom Hirst
Yeah. So I mean, people, people were coming to me anyway, and asking for your advice and things like that. And then people started saying, could we pay you to do some like coaching and things like that, and I didn’t feel quite ready to do like a full blown coaching and consultancy transition, right there. And then, but I just set up this small mentorship community. And I think we got up to about 20 people at one point. And I was just offering just one on one, email, mentorship. Because if it would have been video calls, it would have been a little bit too hard to handle unless I did like group sessions or whatever. But yeah, then we’ve built a little slack community as well, where people could get together. And it was nice to bring people together all on the on the same path, you know, somewhere, you’re starting out somewhere trying to get get to that next level. And yeah, we’ve really, I really helped slate some people with the pricing and things like that, and positioning, the two things that we touched on right at the beginning. That’s what a lot of people are really struggling on in the freelance world. And yeah, marketing, all sorts of stuff we talked about. So yeah, it’s been a, it’s been a relative success. I’ve got some ideas on how I want to change it, so that I can scale it a little bit better. And because I’m the bottleneck right now, more people want to join them. Well, I can I can handle so yeah, I’ve got a few ideas. Yeah, yeah, I can’t, I can’t complain. And it’s really great to be able to help these people on a one on one basis. But I want to try and reach more, if you know what I mean, it’s, there’s a lot of people that want to get into this game, especially now. So yeah, it’d be, it’d be great if I could scale it somehow.
Neville Mehra
So one of the things that, you know, when we’re creating content online, especially on a website, as opposed to social media, and just putting stuff out there, one of the challenges sometimes is that it’s, it’s not interactive by default, in the sense that it’s sort of just like shouting into a void. And you never really know like, is this connecting is this like, if you’re speaking in front of an audience, at least you can sort of read people’s, you know, facial reactions and sort of like, is this landing? Do I need to kind of speed up this point? They’ve already got it? If you’re teaching a class, say or, you know, should I slow down and kind of explain this in more detail, because it looks people look confused. But when you’re writing an article, say online, you don’t necessarily get that feedback, and inviting your actual readers into something like a mentorship program, and then having those one on one conversations, I would imagine one of the benefits is that you’re actually getting you because it’s 12 years, you’re 12 years into this right. So like, I mean, I’m sort of probing what were the challenges early on, but, you know, if we’re being honest, they’re they’re quite far back in your memory. And so I imagine hearing from the people who are dealing with them today, and the way things have changed from just the industry to now COVID. Plus, it’s just been a while, right, since you’ve gone through all of this. And so actually getting a chance to hear directly from the people who are your readers who are struggling with these issues, who are interested in taking that journey. is, I imagine is is helpful.
Tom Hirst
Yeah, definitely, it’s a two way relationship. When you do any kind of like coaching or mentorship, there’s definitely something that the coach gets as well. Because it’s that insight of going back, you know, like what you just said?
Neville Mehra
Well, especially because you’re you mentioned sort of this idea that you can only help so many people in a vat, sort of a coaching model where you’re having really kind of high touch hands on one on one coaching sessions. The alternative, you know, if you’re sort of adding a bit of leverage would be to publish right to create, whether it’s ebooks or a video course or something which you’ve which you’ve done, which is one of the other things I wanted to get into. And so that’s where I was thinking that you know, doing the coaching, even if it doesn’t scale nicely, it at least gives you sort of a chance to almost like try on your material like imagine like a comedian, right? Like they’re, you know, you you test the material out in sort of like a small club before you go and you do the big Netflix or HBO or whatever special, right? Like you use the material in front of a smaller audience. So you’ve you’ve as I said, over the last kind of year or so you’ve transitioned from from I’m strictly freelancing to the mentorship program. And now you’ve also created it to books and an online course. Is that right?
Tom Hirst
Yeah. So starting last April, so nearly a year now, I decided to start packaging up some of this knowledge as well. Because obviously, the, like you said, the feedback from the mentorship program on a one on one basis was was really cool. I was getting to know a lot of similar problems. Again, like what I said on the service side, you know, yeah, the coaching side as well, a lot of people had the same issues. And I think that that kind of made a light bulb go off, when I thought, you know, what I can package this experience into a product that will allow me to help, you know, the more people that I mentioned earlier.
Neville Mehra
Yeah. And so was that, did all of that sort of come out of the pandemic as sort of a reaction to that? Or what? Because you, I mean, again, for more than a decade, you were working as a freelancer, and something started to shift, it seems like in the last year, we’ve kind of branching out into these additional revenue streams, is it? Is it just basically like, I’ve been doing this for a while, and I want I want to try my hand at something else. Is it? Are you intentionally diversifying your your income? How do you think about kind of creating digital products now?
Tom Hirst
Yeah, I would say it’s both those things. I think when that when the pandemic first it, I don’t think anybody could have predicted what would happen in the economy. So I think it made smart sense to try and diversify, even if it was just a little bit. Because I wasn’t sure whether, you know, the client work might completely marketing budgets, website widgets might completely be eradicated across the globe, you never really knew no one knew it was the uncertainty. So there was an element of that, definitely. But again, the other point that you made about having done it for so long, and I think you reach this natural point, where the practice only fulfills you so much. And you want to start teaching as well. And I think that every it becomes a part of everyone’s life. And I think that I was just at that stage just at that right time. And that was the driver.
Neville Mehra
I often asked questions about like, you know, what would you do differently? Or what’s changed? or things like that? And, or, like, what belief Do you have that’s changed over time. And I know, one for me, I think there’s this old adage, like, those who can’t do teach or something like that. And it’s, and I did believe that it’s a really toxic, almost like cynical idea that if you see somebody, whether they’re selling a course about something, or writing a book, or teaching a class about something, it’s almost like they couldn’t cut it as that thing, whatever it is, whatever that profession is. And so this is kind of like this, you know, consolation prize way of making money, using the knowledge instead of actually going out and doing it. And maybe that’s true in like, some tiny, tiny percentage of cases, but but the more I talk to people like yourself, the more I dig in and realize that actually, yeah, it’s why not, right, because you can only make so many websites in a year, I imagine like yourself, you even no matter how good you are, there’s 24 hours in a day, and there’s only so many clients that you can serve as one person. Whereas if you create an ebook, or an online course, or something like that, you add this element of leverage where you can create the course once and potentially help, you know, 1000 people or many, many more.
Tom Hirst
Yeah, exactly. That’s one of the one of the reasons why I did it. But I mean, to go back to you, at the beginning of the sentence, you mentioned that, you know, practitioners versus teachers and things like that. And I think that the problem with the online course world and, and ebooks and things like that is that there are a lot of people haven’t done what they’ve said that they’ve done. So it’s kind of like, I think there’s a, there’s a term, it’s like unearned wisdom. If you know what I mean by that, it’s just like, you tweet a lot of like, thoughts out on Twitter from no relevant experience, and then start selling an E book. And I think that’s what kind of gives it a bad name. For sure. Whereas I think if you’ve had that skin in the game, whether it’s current, or it’s very recent, like as well as I have, that, I think that you would be kind of silly not to try and productize what you’ve learned, because number one, it could provide an additional revenue stream for yourself, but also number two, and perhaps most importantly, it can help other people along the path that you went. And I think for me, that’s, that was one of the biggest drivers when I made the decision to start doing the products.
Neville Mehra
Yeah, I think that’s a really, really good way of thinking about it. And we talked just kind of momentarily, they’re about this idea of leverage, right? You can only create so many websites yourself. So So what are your options, right, you can just sort of continue on a path and just have that ceiling, you can definitely raise your rates over time and as we just I think it’s something that probably more people should do earlier on. But within reason that only goes so far right, you can raise your rates, you can do so many projects, you can productize your knowledge and sort of start creating digital products that do have a lot of leverage sort of built in. And then the other kind of most classic form of leverage is really just hiring other people, right? Instead of being a one, a one person shop, you can have other people working with you. And you’ve also done that recently, I think very recently, I saw a post from you about launching an agency.