Job title: Marketing strategist & creative producer
Industry: Marketing
Company founder or freelancer: Freelancer
Website: Chapps.online
How long have you been doing it: 3 months
Age: 24
Location: London
What pushed you to start on your own?
I perhaps have more ideas than is good for me, and with experience in tech-startups, social media, events, and production there are a lot of avenues my train of thought finds possibilities in. With this, I felt I needed to be at the conceptual level of marketing and find a situation that used my full knowledge base.
So, I met mentors, fellow creatives and friends who turned my ‘felt’ into a ‘knew’. Getting that reassurance, my passion for making ideas happen plus having time to action personal projects was the full push I needed.
What was the very first thing you needed to do to set everything up?
They say ‘your network is your net worth’, so I was able to start freelancing through email introductions. My peers knew me and my skill-set, so they introduced me to ideal job opportunities and the right people to work with. If you’re talented and hard-working, people are keen to introduce you as it makes them look good too and you’ll owe them a favour.
To iterate, this isn’t a simple case of ‘it’s who you know’, but a 5-year-long aggregation of ‘who you can meet’, doing favours, being nice and earning respect. Long-term investments make for the most lucrative ‘net worths’, if you get what I’m saying?
What was the riskiest decision you had to take?
As it’s still early days for me, no decisions have been super high-risk but if I had to pick the riskiest I would say probably backing myself.
When you start working as a freelancer you just presume that you’ll do great work. You only fully know if it’s working once you get feedback from clients or positive performance indicators. Thus far, it’s all panning out and I’m working hard to keep this the case.
What was a skill you didn’t foresee needing that you had to learn?
Learning how people work and how they want to be worked with. Some people want things justified, others just want the solution. Some people like WhatsApp, others only emails. Some people are 9 to 5, others are 24/7. Some people need to be asked specific questions in order for you to get the right answers, while with some others you only have to give answers to get the right questions.
A new understanding comes with a new person, so remember to share your way of working (clients might prefer it) and then to adjust in order to find the perfect process.
I’m still waiting for a client who loves Slack as much as I do, so holla if that’s your fave communication tool and need a marketeer!