Elina Jutelyte Crafting Connections in the Freelance World.

Elina Jutelyte

Nigel Rawlins: Welcome Elina to the Wisepreneurs podcast. Could you tell us where you are today and something about yourself so that my listeners can find out a bit more about you?

Elina Jutelyte: Yeah, thanks, Nigel, for inviting. Great to be here. I'm based in Belgium, just outside of Brussels. If someone knows that little country on the map uh, that is quite important in nowadays politics. I'm a freelancer and all what I've been doing the last 20 something years, it's even scary to count, is to make sure that people meet and talk.

I am doing events. I'm organizing events for clients. Previously working for agencies and so called professional conference organizers. It's a special organization that's servicing associations or corporates, providing event resources. At some point I've realized I'm too tied into a corporate structure and I wanted to start my own business.

And this is how I started freelancing about six years ago. And since then the journey has been, on all sides, ups and downs and, happiness and tears, of course, like any freelance work that you may imagine cause this is something that you have to really live through. I would say it's you're never prepared.

I would say, even though I've been paving my path towards freelancing for several years, talking to people, trying to figure out whether they're going to work with me directly. The moment I heard yes, I started and still it was not like, it was a good start, but after a couple of years I realized it's actually very tough.

Nigel Rawlins: So have you always been in the events business?

Elina Jutelyte: Since my university, I started doing some little works. And I fall in love with the industry and the fact that it allows you to travel. I had international job from the start seeing different countries. This is what I dreamt about about when I was little. And also meeting different people.

I realized that it's so much joy and pleasure to learn about new cultures, new people, hear their stories and just seeing the effect of an event. When people come and meet, then you see that something else has been born, like ideas, new ventures new developments. It's just magic. I really love it.

Nigel Rawlins: Oh, that's fantastic. So when you decided to go freelance, how did you get your first clients?

Elina Jutelyte: Like I mentioned, I was talking to people I worked with while being employed. When I realized that someone is willing to work with me on the longterm so that, it's not going to be just a few weeks or months project. I resigned and I registered as a freelancer and signed a contract with them.

So that was quite an easy switch. And I worked for them for many years, and I'm still working for them, by the way, from time to time. At some point, they had to stop collaboration with all the consultants, and I was available in the market. And this is how I realized that I know nothing about freelancing.

I knew nothing how to find a customer, even though I, now I know that I was good in building relationship with people, but I was never good at selling as such, and once your contract is finished abruptly, you're without an income, let's say, in, in a month time. And so for me, it was a very stressful period realizing that I will not have money tomorrow.

So I need to find a customer very quickly. And if you work on a bigger project, Which takes months and years. It's not easy to find it from one day to another. You spend three, four months just looking for a customer like this. So it was a very desperate period for me. I remember I was accepting some small gigs here and there.

It just, I wasn't happy at all about that. And this is actually how Freelance Business Community was born because I wanted to learn from others. I wanted to connect with freelancers basically in Belgium. How they find customers, how they do marketing, how they do everything about freelancing.

Like administration and your accountancy here in Belgium is super complex. So that was also not clear to me. And, this is how I gradually started meeting with people and freelance business community was born with the first event here in Belgium for freelancers.

Nigel Rawlins: Oh, so tell me a bit more about that. So what you're saying is you set up an event, the freelance business event, and that's become a community. So tell us more about that.

Elina Jutelyte: Yeah. I made this event in partnership with another freelance, a couple of other freelancers and yeah it's a constant question whether you start a community first and then produce an event or you start producing an event and grow your community. In my case, it was exactly the second. So the first was the event.

And then community started to come together. And eventually it was a test as well, whether it's needed or not. It was the time six years ago when calling yourself a freelancer, at least here in Europe was yeah, I'm not a freelancer, I'm a consultant or I'm independent professional. I'm not a freelancer.

Connotation about freelancing was very bad. It's something that you do because you couldn't find a job or like you do just temporary doing like simple things here and there. In the outset of that community, I wanted to change that perception because I myself was embarrassed to call myself a freelancer.

And then I thought, okay, if I'm calling it's freelance business community, I should be able to call myself a freelancer too. So there was a little bit of a campaign going on also about freelancing and probably also thanks to pandemic it's easier nowadays to call yourself a freelancer. People are not afraid or ashamed of that. Telling the story about freelance business community completely, it's, it was also ups and downs. We had to split with our, my business partner in a year or two years time. It was very painful split to be honest. I was left without any network whatsoever because I was responsible for the infrastructure of the community and the event infrastructure, including, and she was managing the contact list and all the network.

And so the split happened. I'm totally happy for her to keep all the contacts that she generated, but I wasn't working on my network. And that is a mistake, I've realized that I should. I have never let that go. I should have been working on my network myself because again, I was meeting people, I was speaking with them, all the speakers and staff and sponsors.

So technically from scratch, I had to regenerate all the contact lists and start to grow for the community. And luckily in three months pandemic happened. And so we launched, I launched the freelance business month. Which was happening online and this is, we got thousand people attending that event just in three months.

It was tremendous for me I did not expect that at all. And since then we're just going up and up We celebrated almost 4, 000 people attending freelance business month this year and like a thousand almost to masterclasses that we had on during the year. So that's quite pleasant to see the numbers going up and that it corresponds to the need of other freelancers.

So something that started from personally eventually is helping others as well.

Nigel Rawlins: It Sounds like it's magnificent because, I guess the one thing about freelancers is they're working from home. They're isolated. I guess they don't have a lot of knowledge about business and they don't want a normal job. So how are you finding not having a normal job anymore? You've said there were some ups and downs and some scary moments. Would you go back?

Elina Jutelyte: Not really, no I just hate this feeling, spending time on bureaucracy. I would still love to do the job, for example, but I hate it for the bureaucracy that's inherited in the corporate structure, internal politics, they just kills me every time. Some time that you waste on things that are not related to your job. And for the fact, for instance, that you cannot influence a relationship with the client. For example, there was a situation that I remember very well when you were executor, but someone else is responsible for the client relationship. And you see there is something bad is happening and you cannot go to the client directly because then you will make a very bad thing.

But the client manager, for example, would not raise it up. And yeah, the internal politics is a bit difficult. I had to accept a job for a while, which was in a very interesting company, I've really loved it. I started as a freelance there, but due to Belgian legislation they were not able to keep me as a freelancer.

So they had to switch a contract to employment. Unfortunately it ended up with us not finding a common language. So I had to leave the company due to personalities that were in the company. And probably my personality was not very fitted in the corporate structure. As a freelancer, I felt okay there.

I was still thinking about the situation as a freelancer. I was okay there because, okay, I'm doing my job, I'm paid per day, very well paid. I'm just, going to continue. But the moment you became an employee okay, I, I'm not able to do the job because I have to report to certain people and those people are creating a bottleneck and so you're not progressing.

And yeah, so then it escalates and conflict is being created. And you just don't see the way out only just leave the team.

Nigel Rawlins: Now, that's an interesting point you've made there, is one of the issues that freelancers find is they're not always able to fit in properly to a corporate structure or something like that because the corporate, whoever needs them, hasn't figured out how to work with freelancers. Is that one of the topics that you bring up?

Elina Jutelyte: Yeah, that's very common. Let's say there are organizations mostly big corporations, which are already putting freelance programs in place. So for them, it's pretty much clear how they hire freelancers, how they onboard them and what sort of role they play within the team. But there are still some other organizations, mostly smaller which thinks that they just ad hoc resource and they plug and play with freelancers the way they want.

They provide a task, but then they think that freelancer can do much more than that. I personally actually was working with different type of freelancers too. And I think it's. It's a problem of both sides, depending, I assume on the seniority of freelancers, when someone comes to a company or a client, and in my case, for instance, I was the client working with a freelancer.

There are freelancers that say, okay, tell me exactly what to do and I'll do it. Second time of freelancers, okay, tell me the problem and I will solve it. And I've really enjoyed working with. freelancers of a second category, that, because I cannot know everything and that's why I'm hiring professionals to solve my problem. We had several issues with freelancers I was working with, they're like, but I don't know exactly what you want me to do so for me, that means that the person probably doesn't know the work. From freelancer side, that was that I'm not very clear as a client and I have no idea what needs to be done. So this is somehow needs to be figured out at the early stage what type of freelancer you're hiring, problem solver or just executor. And I think for the company, it's also very important to understand that. What also is very difficult working, as a freelancer in a company is that you mostly are not considered as part of the team.

I've been going to that my first client for years and years coming to the office, knowing everyone, but at the same time they would celebrate something and I would not be invited. And I'm like, this is just so sad. Okay. I don't mind, but it's just so sad. They would go on a like corporate parties or whatever.

And again, I'm not invited. Just because I'm a consultant. But it doesn't mean I'm a piece of furniture, right? I'm still human. I'm still part of the team. It would be just nice to mingle and connect even better with our team members. So yeah, these are the things that are a bit frustrating.

Nigel Rawlins: Going back to your conference. How do you choose the topics? And can you tell us something about the topics that people are most interested in?

Elina Jutelyte: Mostly by research. Looking what's trending. Also hearing what community members are asking. Just trying to see what's the most demanded matters. But at some point I stopped doing the research, to be honest, because, it's like in marketing, If you want to develop something new don't ask how to formulate it.

Don't ask customers because they will probably don't know what they want, right? That's how it is. I try to see what may attract people. There are certain aspects that are most trending is pricing, finding customers, how to market themselves, LinkedIn is very popular topic too. So these are the topics that are always featured and then looking what happens in the market.

For example, artificial intelligence is a hot topic. Of course, you'll put something. The problem that they have is that our public is very general. General in the sense of professional sector. So we have software developers, we have marketeers, we have copywriters and many others.

And mostly they're in business for three, five years. The task for me is to select topics that would be relevant to all of them. Unless I go and create a specific conference, we had several of them, for software developers. And there I would need to do a better research, because I'm not a software developer myself.

I don't know what sort of matters are difficult for them at the moment. So I would go and ask several software developers like, okay, what would you like to talk about or hear about? And then I can bring a speaker on that topic. Also listening what has been said in other conferences. And then I do not repeat or repeat, but better.

And also trying to put different formats in the agenda because just listening lectures is one thing. I tend to believe from my event management perspective, that people consume information differently and so I'm not stressing too much about the fact that I need to have this and this.

I'm just going to plug several formats. And I know that some people like to listen, so they would probably watch the session afterwards. Some people like to participate actively and some people like to participate passively. For event organizers who are stressing that they have to have so many thousands live on the session, I'm not that type because I know that, it just, first of all, it's super difficult. And secondly, not everyone is open for that. So I'd rather provide options for freelancers to educate themselves or follow the session at the time of their of their convenience.

If I may ask at this point what sort of topics would be interesting for you?

Nigel Rawlins: I don't know, that's a good question. Let me think for a moment. I do so much research and so much reading. Floor is just piled with notes. I'm a mad reader and I set myself a target this year of writing two articles a week using the material . So I have been writing a lot about how you understand business. I keep, going deeper into what marketing is, even though I've been running a marketing services company for 20 years.

I'm still trying to get my head around what marketing is, what's involved, how do you use LinkedIn? And so the podcast has been very interesting to pull that stuff out. I guess one of the big issues, I think, is being very clear about the services we offer and how do you package them up?

And how do you present that? And that's something I'm going through at the moment and working very hard and redoing my website to attract the sort of customers or clients that I would like to get. I don't know how you would word that, but how do you specialize in such a way that the clients will find you who need that service?

Because I don't want to work with everyone. Like I had to do a quote today and I was thinking, I'm not going to give it away. I'm not going to do it too cheaply. And it's be an ongoing one, a monthly retainer. And I thought, nah, if they want me to do it cheaply, I can't be bothered.

I don't care about the money. I'd rather read a book.

Elina Jutelyte: Yeah.

Nigel Rawlins: That's probably a mix up of what I'd be after is just to clarify and get clear on what I'm trying to do, even though I've been doing it for 20 years. Now the interesting thing is, I've been trying to shift I guess towards more, consulting I suppose, as a freelancer rather than having to do the work. Cause I've built about 50 websites, mostly WordPress. And I look after 18 at the moment, 18 websites. And I manage those and update them and add content to them. And that's easy now for me, too easy. So I want to move into something else. So how do you make that shift as well would be interesting to me.

Hows that all sound?

Elina Jutelyte: That's interesting. You mentioned niching and how to find customers for the niche and how to upgrade your services going from one product to another. And that is, yeah, that's also very common topics that we feature. And I'll definitely remember those for next one.

Nigel Rawlins: Oh, good.

Elina Jutelyte: Maybe I can even recommend someone to to connect with.

Nigel Rawlins: Basically at the moment, I've decided I'm going to start writing e books . So I've decided I'm going to put an e book together about business mastery. So understanding the nature of business, because you mentioned when you were working for corporate that One, there's normally somebody who does the sale.

You end up doing the work and then you don't have to bill because somebody's doing the billing and somebody's paying you. So in a little freelance business, you're doing all that. Like I've got three screens and shifting stuff around so I can actually do my writing.

But I had to find all these little connectors to make them all work and you wouldn't want to see it's a real mess but I've got connectors and connections and all sorts of stuff and wires everywhere it would be lovely to know how to clean all that up and just have one little box instead of five.

Elina Jutelyte: Yeah.

Nigel Rawlins: It's crazy, but you know in a workplace, you'd have an IT department who'd sort all that out.

That's what we've got to do. And when you live in the country, like I do you can order it and then you've got to wait for it to turn up. So that's fun,

Elina Jutelyte: Yeah.

Nigel Rawlins: That's the nature of business. We've got to do all those things and then they've got to do the job. That's one.

Then I was going to do one on marketing and what do you actually need to do? You're my 23rd guest on the podcast, so I'll have 26 guests this year and editing that. So I've got to do all the marketing for that, and it's ongoing. So a big part of my day is marketing.

A part of my day is doing client work and I want to write these books. And the other one I want to write about is how do we actually do knowledge work, keep productive, keep our brains working well, especially when you get older. I'm 67, so a little bit younger than Jon Younger.

And I'm not prepared to give up yet, so I'm getting into a role. So creating ebooks, actually running the business, doing the marketing, and then seeing if I can help people by putting all that together. And I'm not worried about making any money with that stuff, but giving it away and then helping.

So like you're doing, but I think you're doing a better job by having a community.

Elina Jutelyte: Yeah. Yeah. It's fantastic. And I totally feel what you're saying. Like we have to run so many aspects of the business and we're not trained for that. I'm not trained business woman. I know how to do events. I learn on the go, how to run a community and many other things. And still, there are so many questions, how I can optimize my work in order to do more with less effort or more efficient.

I would say with the birth of my daughter, I became very efficient because then you have basically two hours to work on all the stuff that we have. But nevertheless it's I know that I can do so much more for community, but I just don't know. I don't have the knowledge and I don't know what I don't know.

Like situation that I described, hiring a freelancer to help me, basically the task was, listen, this is what I want to achieve. Can you help me to get there? But unfortunately it was not a very good hire at that moment. I spent money on her, but she was an executor. She's okay, I can do this and this, but don't ask me to do more because I'm not your employee she said, I just can execute your task, but don't ask me to do more because I'm not going to think with you. And that was the problem.

Also when you start hiring people to help, that's getting so difficult. It's amazing when you can get someone who really understands what needs to be done.

They can really help you to save time and produce the task that needs to be done. Plus think ahead, plus think together with you, whether that's going to be helpful for your business or just lots of money. Because what really frustrates me a lot is that, freelancers who like, okay, you want me to pay money for that?

I'll do it. But they don't think that actually you shouldn't be asking that. You should be asking something else, but let me help you to do that better. If you're a freelancer like this, you're golden, like you're really have a great career because otherwise you're just going to rotate into a task execution.

Nigel Rawlins: I've learnt the hard way. I outsource most of my work now because I really don't want to do it all. I manage it and but I've been very lucky. I've hired lots and lots and lots of freelancers and I work out who's good and if I'm lucky I find one that I can make sure I give them work every week so that they're earning some money from me at least.

I did have one freelancer and I think I mentioned on LinkedIn that a fabulous graphic designer I use for the marketing of my podcast, charged me $2.50 for the work and I said to her, what are you doing? And she said, oh I charge by the hour and I said you can't do that. $2.50 American for artwork.

And this was a freelancer, in the Philippines. And I just said to her the minimum charge, no matter whether it takes you one minute or five minutes is $10 USD and then add on top. And I have a, another freelancer who's brilliant in Vietnam, but I say to him, I don't care whether it takes you one minute, or five minutes, my minimum payment to you is $30 USD dollars, which I don't know if that's a lot in Vietnam, but he really solves the problem.

Elina Jutelyte: Yeah.

Nigel Rawlins: and it's worth it for me. And the problem we've got in Australia is $30 USD is like $50 Australian, so it hurts when I pay it. But it solves the problem. And that's what you're really saying.

See, that's the other thing freelancers have got to do. They've got to subcontract out some of their work as well. Otherwise, they'll never get anything done. I guess when you start, you've got to do a lot of it. We call it a make or buy decision. When you first start out, you are it.

You've got to learn unless you've got a bit of a budget and there are some great little ways now to get yourself going anyway, and I think younger people are more digital than I would be anyway. But I guess that comes back to your booklet on how do freelancers find work, because I think in there you listed the fact that the younger ones do it quite differently to the older ones.

Do we want to talk about that? How did that come about?

Elina Jutelyte: It was collaborative work with 13 other communities and the reason why I wanted to do it this way. And actually it refers back to when I started freelance business community, I wanted to figure out how people finding work, how freelancers finding work.

And actually only six years later, I got to the point where actually now I can do it as a global study, when before we intuitively knew more or less how freelancers finding customers, but they wanted to have data. This is one reason. Second reason for that is that I've seen many reports, coming from freelance platforms, saying that freelancers finding work on platforms.

And I know by myself, I'm not on a platform, at least I'm registered on some of them, never got a job, and I know other freelancers who are in the same position. So I'm like, who are those people who are finding work on platforms? And that platforms say that 70 percent, in some cases 40 percent in some cases, somewhere these freelancers are located, but at least not in Western Europe.

Nigel Rawlins: We should explain what platforms are because some people are probably not sure what we're talking about.

Elina Jutelyte: Yeah that's very great point. And I've been actually told once you have to be careful. Freelance platform marketplace where a freelancer registers and then client posts a job directly or indirectly. It doesn't matter, and then freelancer reacts on that call for requests and executes the job.

This is the common scenario. There are some variations to it. That was the second reason to validate the data that's been provided by freelance platforms in their reports. And so I made a call to communities that I knew whether they would be interested in participating in this.

And they said, yes, of course. So there are 13 communities US, Europe, Asia. Of course, it's not the biggest study yet, but it's the first one of that sort, where independent communities came together to do something like this. We've got 400 responses from around the world, majority, of course, European based.

My feeling was that I'll see difference between younger generation location and seniority, in where they would find customers. And I was disappointed that my feelings were not confirmed because of course majority indicated that they find customers via personal network, 90 percent almost said that the network is very important, then following by social media recommendations, and that type of scenarios.

And only 14 percent said that they get customers via platform, freelance platform. And that when I looked at demographics of those people who find new work on the platforms, I was surprised to see that freelancers with high education and sometimes even PhD, they're in their work from like three to 10 years.

So they have started freelancing. Probably they didn't know about the existence of platforms or whatever. And then they decided to try. And, location wise from Asia, freelancers rely on the platform 100%, so 100 percent of income coming from platforms for them. The representation is not so big to make it very scientific yet, but it's still, it shows a little bit of trends and tendencies among freelancers.

So that was very interesting. We also asked, because we were looking at education, for a formal education level, we also asked whether freelancers have upskilled themselves in the last 12 months. Majority said, yes, and also majority said that any formal business education or business skills would help them to succeed because only 25 percent of people that we surveyed have got business education via their corporate experience. Or business skills rather, corporate experience or university studies. Meaning that the other 75 percent coming to freelancing without any understanding of the business, and that is super, important because then they just like they're lost unless they have it inherited entrepreneurial character, then they can probably go by, but otherwise it's super tough. And that made me think that there is something that I was thinking for a while already, and we've done some prep work and research already to start creating a proper business course for freelancers. I know there are several options existing.

Mostly for corporate world because it's quite expensive to start with. If we look at proper MBA education, you pay from 20 to 40k for a course. All the alternatives, I would say not really fitted for freelancers. From what I've seen, we tried several of them. So my aspiration is to build a proper MBA course for freelancers that can be licensed to universities and other communities, if possible.

Nigel Rawlins: I don't think learning about business is too hard. It's just that the problem is explaining it. And I don't think a business course at a university is probably not going to teach them the practical skills they need to run a business. Because it, it is fairly simple.

The only problem is getting the cash flow coming. They've just got to get the cash flow coming, before they can do stuff. There's some interesting material out there at the moment. I was thinking, with your statistics, I know Matt Mottola, is really starting to dig in and find information about freelancing.

So your study was really quite important too, because the more we can see out there, the better. The Asian freelancers, I think it's very interesting because that's where the world has opened up. And it's giving really quite talented people in Asia the ability to earn some decent money. They don't charge a lot to start with, though the good ones really can.

I Guess that's an issue across the world where if you're an ordinary graphic designer in a Western country, you're competing against some of the top graphic designers from another country and they're much cheaper. That's why I was a bit shocked to be undercharged by a graphic designer from the Philippines.

It just wasn't right for the quality of the work. I had to pay them more, otherwise I just felt guilty. So going back to personal networks, for example, I used to be a primary school teacher, an elementary school teacher, and then I went out to, into business and bumbled along for several years.

So my network is not from a corporate environment. So I don't know if there's freelancers out there who don't have a big network, but how would you recommend that they grow a network?

Elina Jutelyte: Yeah, fantastic question. And I'm also not a good example, to be honest, because for all the years that I was in corporate world, I was servicing 11 or even 12 different industries from dredging to security, accountants and you just name it. And of course I was connecting with those people on LinkedIn without any plan behind.

It's okay, I'm just, this person came to the conference, let's connect. So it wasn't relationship building. And at the end of the day, when I left corporate world, like these people, sorry to say, they're useless to my business because they would not buy from me. They're just a different category whatsoever.

And they're not freelancers on top, most of them. So if I would start, for example, my independent business early enough, I would be more deliberate and more thoughtful in terms of who am I connecting with so I can build my following more thoroughly. Six years ago I met someone who gave good advice in terms of LinkedIn strategy.

It's not that I have any strategy whatsoever for my LinkedIn, but at least I know the principles behind it. And the funny thing, the moment you start featuring content, that you're interested in, or content that comes as a result of your business, then people start following you. And then that is, this is how you build your network of people who are interested in what you do.

And so basically the last, I would say four years were crucial in, in, in growth of my linkedin, for example, it's not the biggest one, of course, but still I have people who are relevant to my business. So advised those who starting feature, feature your expertise. That's the only thing.

And this is what we hear, every single time from all the experts who are speaking at our events, start featuring your expertise and then people will start joining. Feature others is the most important. This is what you do. This is how we started also freelance business community. After the break that I had with my partner, I just realized that I have to feature other people instead of, oh, instead of featuring myself because I'm not important. These are the people who are doing interesting things, and I have to talk about them. And it just goes one by one. Try to build meaningful connections in the sense that when you meet someone, try to see, first of all, be interested in what they do, and then try to see how you can fit together, whether it can be a potential partner or a colleague in a team that you would bring to a client, for example, or something else.

Anything, a podcast, and this is how you start building these connections and please, that's growing. And always ask for recommendation. I'm not doing it that often because now I have very small limited time to do any of the connections but quite frequently in the past, for example, who do you think I should talk to?

You know what I'm doing, who do you think I should talk to? That's, these are the suggestions I would give.

Nigel Rawlins: You made a very interesting point, and I hope the listeners did hear it. Four years! It is not an overnight sensation, and the biggest difficulty is, I think there's about a billion people on LinkedIn now, is finding how to connect with them, and I set myself a goal of writing two articles a week onto LinkedIn as an article, and that was a deliberate strategy to find my voice and find what I like to write about.

I'm now a couple of weeks in advance with my writing now, so I'm getting on top of it. And now I'm working out the topics I want to write. But I've only been doing it seriously this year, even though I've been a professional member for about three years on LinkedIn. So I don't think I've been using it properly.

And I guess that's the scary thing for most people, is, if you're a professional and most freelancers are professionals, then LinkedIn is probably one of the best places Connect. But you've still got to be found. And it doesn't matter on the social media elsewhere, you've still got to be found whether you're on X or on Facebook.

And again, that comes back to the business. That is your marketing and you've got to spend time doing it. But I think you're right. You've spent four years and it's starting to grow. It does take that long.

Elina Jutelyte: Yeah, absolutely. I totally agree. It's not overnight and you don't need to follow numbers or check the numbers every day. And in terms of platform social media platform in the sense if LinkedIn is not your place and maybe Facebook, why not? If not Facebook, then maybe Instagram. Everyone choose the platform that, more convenient for you.

And of course you have to be also mindful to think of where your client potentially can hang out and LinkedIn for that purpose is probably the best, but I know quite a lot of people who are quite successful using Facebook and Instagram, for example, for that purposes.

Nigel Rawlins: Yes, it's definitely horses for courses, I think, but it's a job, that's the thing about if you're working on your own, one of your jobs or one of your hats you've got to wear is the marketing person, looks like I'm heading into about an hour per day of marketing, but that's also promoting the podcast, making sure I'm getting little Twitter things out of the podcast, writing articles. I guess if you're a very busy consultant or freelancer you've got plenty of work on, but like you said, sometimes that work runs out and then you've got no work for four months, so it's not like you can not do marketing.

Elina Jutelyte: Yeah. And it also depends a lot on your freelance type, if I may say so, for example, I'm just thinking about my husband who is also a consultant, but he doesn't do any marketing. He doesn't use, okay, he uses LinkedIn, just check the news and see what's happening. But he's not promoting himself.

And at the same time, he's very demanded consultant because of the network, because people know the work. Also going back to the study actually, interesting findings there is that freelancers who are mature in their, in the business, let's say they are, they've been freelancing more than 10 years or something.

Finding work via recruiters. So recruiters reaching out to them because of their expertise, versus if we compare with younger freelancers, they would probably be referring to job boards mostly, and recruiters are not interested in them. So this is also quite an interesting finding that we figure out through statistics.

So he's contacted by recruiters all the time. He doesn't need to promote himself. He has very specific niche and knowledge. Of course he has a massive experience working with some great brands and that is quite attractive for recruiters. So he doesn't need to spend a single minute on promoting himself.

Now, another story and what we discuss with him all the time is that, okay, do you want to follow this path that you have to wait until you're invited somewhere? Or do you want to promote yourself and build your own path? And this is how it becomes difficult because he's not used to do the other side.

He used to being invited and demanded all the time. He doesn't want to generate demand on his side. So I guess it's also has to do a lot of with the personalities and whether you old school like him, who prefers that way, or you maybe younger in mind and you want to generate demand by talking about your expertise. I feel sometimes so frustrated with him because he has tons and tons of knowledge, it's just brilliant, but doesn't want to feature that.

Nigel Rawlins: Just wants to do the work.

Elina Jutelyte: Yeah. exactly

Nigel Rawlins: And when you say recruiters, you mean people are chasing him to do a project?

Elina Jutelyte: Yeah, a recruiter is hiring freelancers or consultants on a long term basis Let's say replacing in a company for several years. Mostly a well paid job. I would say every freelancer would dream to have that, but it's similar as being employed almost. Even though in Belgium, it's very tricky because, I'm not sure if it's the same in Australia, but here we have like bogus independency, where a company can be sued and fined by employing freelancer on this constant role where freelancer could be actually employed.

But some companies close their eyes and do that still. Probably they've never faced that problem yet.

Nigel Rawlins: It's a little bit different, there is something here about contractors, I think, that they've got to be a bit careful about. But freelancers generally, to me, just go in and do a project and get out. And one of the things you were talking about there, about people chasing the skills of your husband, is that's the problem, finding expert people now, is if you've got a project you want done, and you're going to have to go through hiring somebody full time, can take you three to six months and then get them up to speed. So it's a year or so down the track before you can get onto that project. Whereas you bring in a talented freelancer and they can get moving fairly fast. You can get them on board within a couple of days often, and that's the benefit of freelancing.

So did you want to talk about your trip into Tashkent, was it?

Elina Jutelyte: Yeah. I'd love to. First of all, it's a beautiful country. And funny enough, it was my dream to go there before pandemic, but they have to cancel the trip. Everything was arranged because of the pandemic. So I was contacted by a local ministry of digital development to help them to put an event together for freelancers.

And as we started discussing the developments in the region, they mentioned so many interesting things about how they see freelancing in the country. Now the country is not super small, not super big, but it's in the middle of big monstrous countries like Russia, Mongolia, China, not far, Turkey, they don't have access to the sea. And they realized that, okay, it used to be part of a Silk Route where all the trade was happening, but not anymore. In order to trade, you need to get access to the sea, which is very difficult for them. So they realized that their potential with very young population, by the way is that the natural resource that they can export is the brain of people.

So their program is to invest in educating younger population so that they can export their skills to elsewhere in the world. And I find it fantastic. I find it brilliant. Like I have not seen a program like this in any other country. And so majority of that expert should be happening via freelance.

So they're throwing lots of resources into educating, population who is located remotely, not in the capital, but elsewhere. The country is very rural still, like in some places, but nevertheless, in those remote locations, they have the fastest internet, probably like fifth top in the world and the cheapest also, so they've made everything possible that people can connect and do the work.

And they also facilitating via e government that they have put in place to receive all the documents that they need, to work, driver's license, whatever they need, just in those remote locations in order to be able to do some sort of work. So of course the focus, the biggest focus is on IT, because this is how they see country will grow.

So the purpose there is to build kind of Silicon Valley of Middle Asia. So it's very interesting, and I've been there with the presentation, Why freelancing is the future of work for students to motivate them to go to freelance right after studies.

Even though my advice was don't go directly, just get at least one, two, three years of some experience, otherwise it's going to be very difficult. So I'm hoping they'll have a second event next year and then more together with the freelance business community. So that's very exciting.

Nigel Rawlins: Now, you did say something very important there. It is worth them getting some experience, doing something, because that's the one thing I didn't have when I started my marketing services company. I had never worked in a marketing company before. Like you started out, you have to figure it all out for yourself.

And you've got to try and understand how do you price and all that. But then again, I did interview a young lady, a young Chinese lady just recently, who went to America and her first job is working remotely in learning and development.

She hasn't worked for a company before and she started off working remotely, but she's highly intelligent and right into AI I was quite impressed, so for some of them, maybe they don't, if they've got the intelligence and if the country's encouraging it, there's a good chance they'll be very successful. That's fantastic. How did they find you?

Elina Jutelyte: LinkedIn. But I'd like to ask you also a question, if I may cause you mentioned you started your marketing expertise from scratch, basically, what made you make the switch and why also the specific niche?

Nigel Rawlins: Okay, what happened is I was a assistant principal or a vice principal primary school and I just got sick of it. I thought, no, I want to be a business person, which is the silliest thing in the world to want to be if you've had no experience in business, like experience doing what? So I started out doing things on wellness and fitness and all that.

Because I'm still into it a bit. But I came across an ex Hewlett Packard marketing manager who worked as a consultant. And he and I worked together for 20 years. So he taught me about business and marketing. He consulted and I got the marketing work done. So that was my job, which was marketing services.

I'd hire graphic designers. I'd get things printed, distributed. Do all of that stuff. I was pretty good at organising stuff. I still am, and so I learned all about business working with him. So we'd sit down with some fairly big clients, and they were ongoing things and I had a big studio for a while, I'm glad I don't, I now run my business off a laptop and that's the best thing ever.

I'm actually a company, a propriety limited company. So I have a bookkeeper and an accountant, and a whole lot of support people who subcontract to help me out. So I've been doing that for 20 years now and, unfortunately he passed away a couple of years ago, he passed away at the same time my mother passed away, so I really didn't do anything for a couple of years, but I did read and I did take lots of notes and that's why I've started writing now.

But yes, he taught me, how to think about business. He was very strategic, and he also realised you don't have to do a lot to get a result, so you just have to think carefully about what you're doing. So he taught me about a framework of business, which I'm now writing about, which was, how you master the nature of running a business and what you've got to think about.

And I'm coming across some very interesting thinkers. Cedric Chin is one of them, who's on LinkedIn. And he's doing some brilliant work about writing about how you understand business at a higher level. Mine's at a basic business level. And so that's what I've been living and thinking. And, refining for many years.

So yes, I made a mad shift, and then luckily somebody helped me and I guess what he identified is what work is out there in your local community that people need? And he said middle sized organizations, need help with their marketing, not the big ones who everyone was chasing.

Everyone chases the big corporates, but he said, no, there's a whole lot of middle sized businesses out there who need marketing. I've still got one very big client, but I only do a little bit of work for them. They're a major business in the area I'm in, and then I've got another one, they're multi million dollar businesses, but I only do little bits for them.

But I've been working with them for many years. I'm probably a tiny little blip on profit and loss statement.

Elina Jutelyte: Yeah. So you said the shift was sudden, but as a matter of fact, you did have some prep work, a little bit.

Nigel Rawlins: No I jumped. What happened was I think at the time they were trying to get rid of a whole lot of teachers and I took the last package. So they paid me a bit of money to leave, which was good. Not a lot in those days. Not a lot today's days. And I just muddled through for a couple of years.

Now, if I was wise, I shouldn't have done it. I should have gone and got another job. But I wasn't wise. I was silly. So I do advise, do not jump.

Elina Jutelyte: Yeah, that's definitely. And why woman in 50s?

Nigel Rawlins: Oh, why do I work with women who are 50 plus? Because that's most of the women I work with now. I'm 67 and and because I was a primary school teacher I worked with women mostly and I get along well with women. I work very collaboratively with them. And most of my clients have been 60 plus. I don't have any 50 year olds on it. I might have one, and for most of the businesses, even though they're fairly big, the women are the ones I work with. I work with a fairly big building company, in a rural area, and I work with the owner's wife. So she's the one I work with and a major health organization in the area.

They're all women that I work with. I'd look after a medical practice and I work with the practice manager there, female, so they're all women.

Elina Jutelyte: Yeah. Interesting. Interesting niche, I have to say.

Nigel Rawlins: I enjoy working with them because they know I hear them and listen to them and don't boss them around and don't do the man thing. They're happy.

One I've worked with for six years now, former government senior manager. I helped her shift into self-employment. I do her websites. I've helped her with her podcasting. I help her think about this stuff. And then she's been working on another project with another lady and I've been helping them with that project.

And just works. I don't know. I must be easy to work with. But, my main thing is I can get stuff done quick. Often overnight, often within an hour, so God knows how I do that.

Elina Jutelyte: Interesting. Yeah. It reminds me of someone I know she's also niched down into developing website for freelancers in Germany. And she's I have my specific niche. And instead of going like all over the world, I just focused on that and became mega successful. And what she offers is that she can put the website up in the day.

And this is how she sells her services and quite successfully.

Nigel Rawlins: That's a good one. I'm finding it's taking several months now to do big ones. And I do a lot of the writing, and then I have to, because most people can't write, can't spell.

Elina Jutelyte: Yeah.

Nigel Rawlins: And you have to put it together in a careful way so that it works. I don't even know if Google works anymore, does it?

Probably get into trouble saying that. But, you've got to do the SEO and make sure that's working. Make sure it's getting traffic, every month, because I look after 18 websites, I prepare 18 reports. So I look at the stats, I look at what's happening with the keywords and the SEO and site speed and all that sort of stuff.

So I keep a good eye on them all and report on that, but, I'm finding that it's probably time to move on from that a bit. Okay, so is there anything else you want to tell us about? Because we've had a good talk.

Elina Jutelyte: Yeah, I really enjoyed it. I don't know. There are lots I can talk about if you're interested. Maybe about challenges a little bit. I don't know if your listeners would relate to that. I find, for example, a shift from being full time freelancer to part time freelancer. I've got my baby two years ago. First of all, I had no idea how different life is with the kid.

And I made no plans, no arrangements. I thought, life is going to be nice and beautiful. My parents can help. But then quickly I realized that I'm just not able to carry my business to the same extent as I used to. I know I can dedicate resources. I can hire people to help me to make sure that it's done. And the moment I've got my baby and that, I mentioned that because you work with women too.

I realized that I'm not able to pull this big projects anymore. So I had to redefine my business. So for a while, for the last two years, I'm not even taking big projects, taking big clients because I know that I don't want to fail. So technically it's a big effect on the business as such. And that's also a very crucial moment maybe to rethink the business, how it's run.

You mentioned a lot about delegation and I think we ask at some point our freelancers also what's the most difficult for them and delegation was one of the things they find difficult. And I can relate to that because, okay, how much can I delegate? I'm delegating my work in the house, for instance, cleaning, cooking, whatever this I can delegate easily.

But what sort of work I can delegate without harming the quality. I know it's an endless topic we can discuss, but somehow I'm working into direction to establish a system right now where I can return my business to the same level of earnings that I had by doing less, keeping the quality, but having a bigger team, for example.

So that's something that, for instance, if I feature something for next event that would be that just because I want to learn myself too from there. And I don't know if you had any, examples of your clients that have been in a similar situation that can suggest, or, maybe you heard some tips on that regard.

Nigel Rawlins: I think because my lot are older, their problems are elderly parents who may need caring, and because they're women, it generally falls to them it does interfere with their business.

Elina Jutelyte: We decided not to. So we're waiting until the school starts, which here in Belgium is from two years and a half or three years.

Nigel Rawlins: Like kindergarten or something. Yeah.

Elina Jutelyte: preschool. Yeah,

Nigel Rawlins: Yeah. I think that's the difficulty. I often talk to some of my clients about consulting to other people who do the same thing. Or to get some mentoring work if there are organizations out there that have people like yourself and you mentor them and keep an eye on them for the company so that you can do that from home over the internet and then that way you can work from home.

So it just shifts the nature of the business, but it is constant and it is a tough one. But, I've got to admit, the little ones are lovely. And you can't miss it I hate to say it, they grow up quick.

Elina Jutelyte: That's true. And I think freelancing is a beautiful thing for that, because then you're more flexible into creating the work style that you want. And you mentioned, parents also like, by now that I have a father to take care of. So it's again, additional element to include into quotation, into creating an environment that, I can function in work wise.

So it's yeah, it's, freelancing is very beneficial for that.

Nigel Rawlins: I must admit, I have had some discussions with women whose husbands or partners are studying and not doing their fair share. The relationship at home has to be negotiated in terms of that. Because often the woman, ends up giving up her business or her job, or if they do have a young child, she gets under a lot of stress, especially if she has to travel to work and stuff like that, and I've had a number of conversations like that, so it is interesting in terms of the relationship at home when you are freelancing and there are young children, so it is an interesting area to explore, I would think, and I think it's probably a topic that is probably important for you to bring up for your group to see if there is an interest in that one.

Elina Jutelyte: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Very interesting.

Nigel Rawlins: I don't generally deal with it because mine are all grown up. My lot and my client, clients, all their children are grown up too. That's probably why I prefer with that 50 to 60 year old age group. Because it was a lot easier. All right would you like people to contact you or how would you like them to find you?

Elina Jutelyte: Yeah, absolutely.

Always happy to make connections. Yeah LinkedIn is the thing. Elina Jutelyte and you'll find me there. Feel free to to send a message. I'm happy to connect with anyone who is in freelancing or in the field surrounding. The ecosystem is growing so quickly. Every day I get a message from like new company popping up and they want to talk and discuss.

And I'm happy to to get to know all those new systems that coming into play. So freelancers offering new services. So definitely, anytime. And freelancebusiness.au is our website. There we have all the reports, books, events when they're announced. So hopefully to see you in some of them.

Nigel Rawlins: Great. I'll put those all in the show notes. That's fantastic. Look, thank you very much for joining me today. It was wonderful.

Elina Jutelyte: Oh, thanks, Nigel. I really appreciate, I enjoyed the conversation.