Get paid upfront - Professional Know-it-all Kat Molesworth
From spinning tunes in a gold sequined dress as DJ Super Kat, to organising a national conference for people in the blog and creative industries, Kat Molesworth has a lot going on.
She’s a mother of three and a freelance photographer and blogger. She speaks at events, consults with brands, and runs a YouTube channel and podcast. She’s also the founder of Blogtacular - a London-based annual conference with a list of sponsors that includes Microsoft and MailChimp.
Despite having so many strings to her bow, Kat knows how it feels to face the financial pressures that so often accompany freelance life. During our chat, Kat opens up about the struggles she’s had feeding her family when payment for freelance work has been late.
MORE FROM KAT MOLESWORTH
OTHER USEFUL LINKS
Petition against late payments
Ben the Illustrator on Being Freelance
IPSE (Representing and supporting the self-employed in the UK)
The Freelance Isn’t Free Law, NYC - Freelancers Union
MORE FROM STEVE
TRANSCRIPT OF THE BEING FREELANCE PODCAST WITH PROFESSIONAL KNOW-IT-ALL KAT MOLESWORTH AND STEVE FOLLAND
Kat Molesworth: I think my story is not uncommon to lots of women who start their own businesses. I got absolutely screwed over by my employer when I had my first child. I was on track to move into management. I got very little support when I was doing that. I had a manager tell me that I was gonna be stood down for my role, because I was going on leave, and that leave was maternity leave.
Kat Molesworth: When someone encouraged me to come forward and say that to the senior management in the company, I was taken through this process, like a grievance process against my will. They found that I was a terrible manager. I was like, "That's fine. I'm a brand new manager." They also found written evidence that the person was standing me down, because I was going on maternity leave. They still discounted that as the reason that I was being stood down. I just felt I couldn't go back to that employer, so I wanted to find a career where I could work at home, where I could look after my children, the way I wanted to. Eventually, I found online. Initially I started out childminding.
Steve Folland: Geez.
Kat Molesworth: I know right?
Steve Folland: There's just so much wrong. The trouble is, it's one of those things isn't it, where you can fight and win, and you still don't wanna go back there. You decided, essentially becoming your own boss, so that you can treat yourself a lot better than they did.
Kat Molesworth: Yep.
Steve Folland: You start with childminding. Where did it go?
Kat Molesworth: I think child minding worked really well for me. I kept having babies, which is really disruptive to running a successful Childminding business. You have to take maternity leave. It's not fair on your clients. And then, I'd finished having children. I was Childminding this lovely, lovely child. He's still one of my children's best friends. I had started an online film and photography school. All of this time, I was working on this, I had started my blog, Housewife Confidential, the year I had my daughter in 2007. That had led to me getting paid opportunities.
Kat Molesworth: When my husband suffered employment discrimination, when I just had my third child, the blog saved us. The blog was what kept us afloat, what paid the mortgage. I was on maternity leave with my third child. It was an absolute shot in the guts for us. It was really hard. At that point I'd realized that I could do something online. I could make money that way. I started an online film and photography school with one of my friends. That took off and was so successful, that I gave up Childminding at that point to focus in on running our business online. A year later, we launched a conference.
Steve Folland: Just to put things into perspective, when was it that you left work and became a Childminder?
Kat Molesworth: I left for in 2007 on maternity leave. Officially I left work a year later in 2008 and became a Childminder that year. And then, I launched Captain Childhood, which is our film and photography school in 2012, and Blogtacular in 2013, which the first of it being 2014.
Steve Folland: When did you start that first housewife confidential blog, which saved you?
Kat Molesworth: 2007, and then it was 2011, that my husband's boss stopped paying him randomly one day. He eventually went to jail. We've got a very coloured past with being employed by other people. Yeah. That went completely wrong. It was a really awful situation. It led to my husband starting his own company. We're now quite an entrepreneurial household. We support ourselves. I think that gives us a lot of freedom, both in how we live our lives, but also to control our income.
Steve Folland: You mentioned Blogtacular. Just to explain what Blogtacular is for people who haven't heard of it.
Kat Molesworth: Blogtacular is an online community, a podcast, and a conference. The conference is our sort jewel in the crown. It's our essential big event every year. We've run if for the last five years. It brings together speakers from across the blog and creative industries to talk about things that are going to have a direct impact on our audiences success. We're really not big on telling the story of how somebody got there at the event. We're big on telling them what somebody else can take away and replicate the next day, to give them success. We have a podcast for telling people stories. We have a conference for changing people's lives.
Steve Folland: What led you to starting that? Was it originally looking for a community of other people doing things like you?
Kat Molesworth: I mean, there's some of that. I had been to some really dreadful events, where I felt like I had been cheated out of my time. I'd be paid to go to them. I still felt cheated that I was there. They were just so bad. You would get people standing up and say, she didn't know what they were talking about, or you would have ... I went to a publishing talk where somebody said that she got her publishing deal, because her brother-in-law worked in publishing. I was like, "That's great." I can't replicate that. My brother-in-law makes planes. He's not helpful to me in that way, unless I want an ejector seat on a fighter jet, he'd be great. He's not gonna get me a book published. It just really frustrated me.
Kat Molesworth: And then, I had this dream one night right before my birthday, that I had been given a ticket for my birthday, this amazing event where there were a lot of creative speakers, the kind of bloggers I was reading, the kind of people who were doing really innovative things. It was really fun and it was colourful and it was just very friendly, which a lot of these events were not. I woke up in the morning and I was genuinely gutted that I didn't have that ticket. I spent the next week or so just remembering that dream and being really angry that it didn't exist. I realized that if I wanted it to exist in the world, I was gonna have to do it. By the end of the month we'd bought domains and had our launch plan in place.
Steve Folland: Three children, you're doing all of, the things that were bringing you money, but then you start that side project, which wouldn't have been bringing you money over time. How did you manage to fit everything in?
Kat Molesworth: When children are small they sleep a lot, which is great. I started writing for Bambino Goodies, which is a designer children's product blog in 2008, which was probably one of my big realizations that I could make money online. Was working professionally with Natalie at Bambino. I managed to write for that. My daughter had three naps a day. It was brilliant. You just find time where you can. There's plenty of things I don't do. I don't do huge amounts of socializing. I don't clean my house. I've literally zero tolerance for doing the cleaning, doing any housework. We pay somebody to come twice a week, to do the house, so that we don't have to. It's not a good use of our time. I just really prioritize things.
Kat Molesworth: Now, there are times when we did that launch, and when we're running up to the first conference, we didn't really know what we were doing. I'd be working til two in the morning. My youngest child was two at that point. It was really tough. I had no childcare when we set up. I had to beg, borrow and steal to have children minded or looked after for small periods of time, so I could sit down and get work done. It was definitely a struggle. I don't think anyone who has children and who runs a business is going to tell you that it's easy. There are plenty of people out there, who say they just don't see their children, and they're children have learned to understand that.
Kat Molesworth: You also have people like Richard Branson, who said, he would be on important international conference calls whilst also changing a nappy, because he worked at home, so that he could see his children. I think it's about prioritizing and giving as much time as you can. Now, you know, I can drop everything and spend a week doing the school plays, photos or going up to parliament with the school next week. I'm going to be making a video for them. I can take that time off to dedicate to the children, give 'em really good attention, whereas I don't know ... Maybe not everyone with a job can do that.
Steve Folland: If we were to look at your business today, all the many things that you do, what does that look like now, as in what brings you money to actually pay the bills?
Kat Molesworth: The majority of my income comes from three areas. Photography ... I'm a professional photographer. I love shooting people's products and shooting people. A percentage of my income comes from that. It's probably something that I don't push as much online, but it's my passion. It's been my passion since I was a child. I also do speaking. I will go to events. I will speak. I'll talk about the kind of work that we do. I'll be on panels.
Kat Molesworth: I was speaking at the ASA's conference last week, as they launched their new five-year plan. I was speaking alongside really important people like the head of policy at Facebook and Doctor Tanya Byron. These really interesting people like Lillian Betty. There's, you know, the element of feeling like, "What am I doing here?" I know that I've got knowledge that other people don't. Speaking works really well for me. I love to talk and I love to have an opinion.
Kat Molesworth: And then, I guess the majority of my income comes from consulting. I'll work with brands big and small on their blog outreach, and their social media plans and discussing blog of betting, all sorts of different reason a brand might come to me, to use my knowledge. It might be that we have a pic your brain Skype session, where they just hire me for an hour or two to work through various different, what if this, what if that questions, or if might be that I go in for a day or two and go and do training with a brand. That's probably my most interesting work. Every company is different. Every company has a different outlook. It's really finding out what's going to work in the market, for the way that company does business.
Steve Folland: Is that something you market yourself as doing?
Kat Molesworth: Not enough. If somebody listening to this, would listen to my advice, they would know that I would say, "You need to get out there and you really need to be telling everybody what you do, all the time, telling them how great you are at it, so that they know that, that's what they come to you for." I'm actually really quiet about the majority of my work. I spend more time promoting what I do at Blogtacular, than I do promoting my actual work I guess.
Steve Folland: How did that first consulting type work? How did that first come about? Was it simply that someone saw what you were doing with Blogtacular and went, "Oh, presumably she knows what the hell she's talking about."
Kat Molesworth: Yeah. I would be pitching to brands, who I would like to sponsor the conference. I would be talking to them about what we can do, ideas I had to work together. They might not take sponsorship, or they might hire me as a consultant, or they might take a sponsorship and hire me as a consultant, which is the ideal situation. I really love creating bespoke sponsorships with Blogtacular, that work for brands.
Kat Molesworth: Things are going to have an impact in the area that they're trying to work on in their business. There's nothing that's more boring than just renting space. That's not going to excite me. I want the company to have a really, really good experience at the conference. I think that's why companies trust me, to come in and consult. I might not look like your typical consultant. They know, from speaking to me and spending time with me, that I genuinely have a passion for what I'm doing and for their success.
Steve Folland: Presumably the first time you put on an event ... I mean, you said how much work it was. That's a big thing to do. I always presume like quite a financial stress of a thing to do as well.
Kat Molesworth: Oh my goodness. I did not really realize that when we started planning it. I didn't realize that the event space would want to be paid ahead of time, or that it wasn't easy to sell tickets on an unproven event. I just had no idea. I was very naïve. When I went into my experience before is that we'd run a 30-person workshop. I was like, "How much harder can 300 people be?" Turns out a lot harder.
Steve Folland: On top of everything you've mentioned so far, I know you do YouTube as well. There's another thing to add. Obviously you, photographer, but you make films as well. You make videos as well.
Kat Molesworth: Yeah. I love making films. I think it's one of those things I always really, really wanted to do. I don't know if you're of the same age of me, but when I was a kid, there was show called, Rolf's Cartoon Club, with Rolf Harris, who is now problematic. When I go in and do talks at school or make films of kids at school, I can no longer show the into to Rolf's Cartoon Club. You guys can't watch this anymore. This is bad.
Kat Molesworth: There was this show and it was all about, sort of making stop motions and cartoons. I always wanted to do it, but I just didn't know how. I didn't have access to the right equipment or the right knowledge. It was one of those ambitions that I just thought was gonna go nowhere, until I got my first camera that did video.
Kat Molesworth: And then, it just took off. I started making videos straight away. Yes. I did. I challenge myself to do a YouTube video every week for a year, which is really hard. I'd spend one day a week editing, cause editing takes a huge amount of time. I'm a bit more of a slacker on YouTube at the moment. It's definitely something I really enjoy doing.
Steve Folland: Was that challenge useful to have or was it overwhelming?
Kat Molesworth: I think a challenge allows you to just do it. You have said you will put out a video every week. You just have to meet that. You just have to find a way to meet that. There are a couple of weeks, especially around the conference, where I was behind on my videos. I skipped a couple, of week. I made them up at the end, so the total was there. It's really difficult, having to meet that deadline. You know, there are people out there, who make a video every day. A video every week isn't that stressful.
Steve Folland: Although, it depends how much footage you've got, you know, when it comes to editing it. Yours, that sort of documentary vlog-type feel, whereas if you were doing one a day it might not be quite so in-depth.
Kat Molesworth: Obviously, because I've got seven days of footage to edit down, they've only got one. It's the relentlessness of it. I think when you're filming it you have to think about what's the arc of this video going to be? Some weeks, I think my videos were really boring. I was filming every day. I wasn't editing out any big days, which I could have, could have edited out the more boring days, when I just sit at my desk and do nothing. Yeah, I do think I could get better at that. I could work harder at refining the story that I'm telling. I think when I come back, and start doing YouTube, a bit more enthusiastically, than I am currently, that will be my challenge.
Steve Folland: Is it easy for you to pick things up and then let them go? There must be lots of ideas that come into your head.
Kat Molesworth: Yeah. That's the hardest thing. I just want to do everything. I want to build everything. I wanna create everything. I want to have five different podcasts. I want to go and speak at every conference around the world. I want to travel. I also want to be a homebody. It's constantly a challenge to focus on what I'm supposed to be working on, not researching what I would like to be working on.
Steve Folland: How have you found the business side of it? When you started your blog, did you get out with an ambition of it being business, or not?
Kat Molesworth: No. I mean, there are a couple of people who had adverts on their blog and they were clearly making their living, and a comfortable living that way. I Knew it was a possibility. I just wanted to talk to people. I was suddenly cut off from this really busy corporate environment. In 2007, we only just had Facebook open up to people. There was no social media buzz. It was just suddenly I was at home. I was very tied to the home. I had no one to talk to. I had no one to share my ideas or my thoughts with. My blog was a way of reaching other people.
Kat Molesworth: I remember there was one day, probably about a year in. I was making a pair of trousers for my daughter. I blogged three times in that day to update people about these pair of trousers. Now, it's sadly archived, so you can't go back and look at it. You know, if that was now, I would just be Tweeting about it, or doing an Instagram story and taking people along with me and having that instant feedback.
Kat Molesworth: At the time, I just put out a few blog posts and whoever happened upon my blog during that day left comments. That's how I felt a small bit of connection. That was very much what I was interested in, was documenting our family life. I lost a parent when I was very young. Every snippet of that normality that you can get, really means something to you. I wanted something in the world, where my children could come back and relive that, but also connection. I was, oh my God bored, so bored.
Steve Folland: You know, you kind of said people who would stumble across what you were doing. As you said, it's a very different world. Maybe blogs were easier to trip over at the time or I don't know. Did the connection come easily?
Kat Molesworth: It did. You find blogs that you want to comment on. They become your readers, because they're also looking for people. One of the best things about early days of blogging was the blogroll. You had a list of people in your sidebar, whose blogs you liked. Anybody who read your blog and liked your blog would then go and look at whoever you liked. Being listed on people's blogrolls was one of the ways that I became known, I guess. It's how people started to hear about me, and also how I shared my appreciation for other bloggers.
Kat Molesworth: I really missed the blog world. I think it was just such a nice thing. It was like, Myspace, where you had your top six friends or whatever. It's one of those things where you could advertise to the world who it was you found interesting. It's like another string to your bow. I had a friend, when she had a blog roll, I think half of my traffic, knew people visiting the site would come from that blogroll.
Steve Folland: Just going back to that whole business thing. You were saying, you started it for connection. What was that point where you suddenly thought, "Oh, actually there could be more to this”?
Kat Molesworth: It was when I started working with Bambino Goodies. Quite soon after, I started writing for them, Natalie and I went to a trade event, which sadly doesn't exist anymore. It was basically a children's clothing event, but it was all filled with indie designers. It was really beautiful. I can't remember exactly what she said to me, but she said something along the lines of, "You know, have a lot of potential to make this your career. I'm excited about working with you." Something like that. That really stuck with me, that I haven't thought about it as my potential career at that point in 2008.
Kat Molesworth: I started to after that. Obviously Bambino Goodies was a paid roll. I was paid to write there, which was wonderful and I could bring in advertising. That really gave me the ability to understand how that type of blog business, the very on-the-page business worked. And then I just learned from my friends, what they were doing. I did have advertising on my site for a period of, time. The big break came when I launched my own school.
Steve Folland: What did you learn from that?
Kat Molesworth: Well, I learned that you can sell an eCourse, before you've written it. That's always my advice to anyone who wants to do an eCourse, is write it as you do the first one. You'll get that instant feedback. You'll understand what people want from you, like have it planned out, but don't necessarily have it completely written, before you sell it. You get that lovely feedback in that first ever class. That means you can shape it as you go along, rather than having to go back and correct yourself.
Kat Molesworth: I learned a lot, like marketing online is so important, having the right people speak up for you and tell people about what you're doing is really important. Press is invaluable. I think one of our biggest sales days, came when the Guardian featured us in their gift guide. It's something I'm so grateful for to this day. Literally, we upgraded our cameras that day, because we did so well. That really took our business to the next level. We suddenly had a much bigger market, and a lot more people who were taking our classes.
Kat Molesworth: Yeah, they featured our gift vouchers. A lot of people were gifted our classes, and so came to them, never having heard of us, not really knowing what we did, but leaving us taking beautiful pictures of their children, which is all I wanted. There's nothing worse than a bad Facebook photo of your friend's kids. I'm very lucky. None of my friends ever want to listen to my interviews. I can slight them all with impunity. My friends take terrible photos. They've inspired a lot of my work.
Steve Folland: You're learning all of that. As you learned that, about the importance of marketing in press, how much time does that take out? Is it something that is a regular part of your week?
Kat Molesworth: Yeah absolutely. Everything that you do on social media is marketing. Even my most asinine tweets, I consider them to be personal branding of marketing for what I'm doing. It's people understanding who you are, it's people getting to know what you're interested in. I do this ridiculous DJing thing, where I wear sequin dresses and over the top makeup that one of my Instagram friends taught me how to do.
Kat Molesworth: I go out and play really retro 80s, 90s songs. I put that on my socials. People really enjoy seeing every part of you. They want to understand who you are. When people are buying, they're going to be buying because of you. They're not necessarily gonna be buying, because of what you're selling. You have to really promote who you are, even if that means that you let the worst parts of you loose online.
Steve Folland: I mean, I'm presuming for the sequin DJing is not the worst part of you. That's sounds marvellous.
Kat Molesworth: It's terribly embarrassing. I call myself DJ Super Kat. I take myself very, very seriously. Yeah. No, people try, and book me for free and I'm like, "No. This is my job. You can pay me." No, that's not the worst part of me. The worst part of me is my unending sarcasm, which I also quite happily let loose on Twitter and on YouTube, because if somebody's gonna get to know you, they've got to know all of you.
Steve Folland: How has the work/life balance situation been for you? I know you mentioned getting a cleaner and letting some things go. Obviously, it must have changed a lot since you were first having your kids, as they've grown.
Kat Molesworth: Yes, well, now, they are seven, nine and 11 now. They have some kind of club every day of the week. There's a lot of life balance in just being the parent taxi. There's a lot of negotiation goes on at home, as to who's gonna be where at which club, with which child and when are we going to eat. We seem to spend every day driving them around. I tend to be quite fiercely guarding of our time off.
Kat Molesworth: We will go on holidays, and we will take our computers with us, if not only to watch TV. We won't work during the day. We'll be like, really strict about not working during the day. The holiday is for relaxing, spending time with each other, taking time off. I mean, the privilege position that I can knock back my work quite a lot during the school holidays, so that I can be present for them and just spend time with them.
Kat Molesworth: They also work with me. They really understand what I'm trying to achieve. They've been there since the beginning of Blogtacular. They have their own opinions about the conference and what we should do, and gone in the Goodie bags this year. They are very involved with what I do. I think it's a really nice thing to have as a family.
Kat Molesworth: When I was a kid, my dad worked in Westminster. I had no real concept of what he did, until he brought home some AIDS education badges. It was like, "Okay. This is a bit heavy. I'm only four." His work was top secret. You couldn't really talk about it. It was government work, whereas, my children watch me do work.
Kat Molesworth: Occasionally they do work with me, so they get paid anytime that I do campaigns with brands involve them and we're being paid, they get paid part of the money. Somebody once suggested that they should be getting all of, the money. I took exception to that. I've built the platform, I took the photos, I pitched the concept. They just sat there and did what they were told. They get some money, but they don't get all of it.
Steve Folland: It sounds like ... I mean, I don't know. Would you say you have a lot of goals and ambition?
Kat Molesworth: Yes. If they're listening, I would like to be in the House of Lords one day. I came up with that goal the other day. I was like, "I would really like to influence public policy." I'm not going to run as an MP. I can hold the ambition that one day I would like to be a lord. I don't think that's unrealistic.
Steve Folland: Hey. Who's to say that can't happen?
Kat Molesworth: Exactly right, Floella Benjamin's in there, somebody who I take as a personal hero of mine.
Steve Folland: Yeah.
Kat Molesworth: When I was at Childminders, all we did was watch TV. So Moira Stewart, Floella Benjamin, the entire cast of Sesame Street are all the people who raised me.
Steve Folland: What would you say has been the hardest thing of being freelancers, of a self-employed life that you've been leading for the last 10 years.
Kat Molesworth: When we have no money. That's the worst, when either people aren't paying or there's not enough work, or you're running yourself into the ground, and taking on jobs that give you a really low rate of return. That has always been the hardest and most desperate. Even when things go incredibly wrong, there's always people to support you and to help you. There are people out there who will give you advice, there are people out there, who will pass on work to you.
Kat Molesworth: When, in 2011, my husband's boss stopped paying him, by the end of the day, I'd put that in a blog post and I told people what's happening. By the end of the day, a group of my friends had passed on enough work to keep us going. One of my friends sent me a Tesco delivery to keep us fed for a week. It was just a gesture of kindness. It's somebody who I adore, I adored at the time. I adore her still. I will never forget that. It's something that I have done to pass that forward on many an occasion.
Kat Molesworth: Food bank donations and stuff are really important to me, because I remember that time, when I actually thought I couldn't feed my family. It's horrible. I think a lot of freelancers go through this. I talk to people who have six months’ worth of work outstanding for payment. They don't know what to do. The brands or the companies all telling them it's coming, it's coming, it's in the next run. It doesn't come. What can we do as freelancers in the face of that?
Steve Folland: Is that something that you've managed to figure out over time? Has it got easier?
Kat Molesworth: It has. My husband works in an industry where these things are more stable. The income that we get from his business is a lot more reliable. The income I get from blog work, is really difficult to manage, because I don't always get payment up front. Sometimes you can finish a job and find out the payment terms the company enforces on you, as a supplier are three months, which is just devastating, when you're hoping that, that money's gonna be with you within six weeks. In my work as a DJ or a photographer, I get paid upfront. That's a lot easier to manage. I can take on a job, and I can know that before I do that job, I will be paid. It's interesting that there's difference between the industries. It's the same when I'm consulting. I'm paid either upfront or within a week of doing the job.
Steve Folland: Actually having all of those multiple streams helps balance them out.
Kat Molesworth: Yes. Definitely. If you're relying on one sector, it's difficult. I do think that freelancers are not taken seriously, when it comes to pay. I see it in illustration. I see it in blogging. I see it in all kinds of industries. People aren't being paid. There's a petition that people can sign that's hoping to change legislation around that, so that companies can't get away with not paying or paying late.
Steve Folland: It's something they've done in New York.
Kat Molesworth: Oh really?
Steve Folland: In New York, it's Freelancers Union, which is stick up for freelancers in America, because everywhere gets to set their own laws. It is, I think specifically clear at the moment, just to New York. There's something which is now in place where freelancing isn't free, which is about that protection. It's that sort of thing. Organizations like IPSE here, in the UK, really need to kick government for some sort of legislation.
Kat Molesworth: Absolutely. Ben the Illustrator's really vocal on this. He's somebody, he's really interesting to follow. He's the person that introduced me to this petition. He's always talking about these, kind of issues they face, the illustration freelance industry. You're right. I think we need to unionize as a mass industry. We aren't being treated well.
Steve Folland: You mentioned your podcast. How have you found doing that?
Kat Molesworth: I love the podcast. I never thought that I would get to work in broadcast. I always wanted to, but I didn't know what the way in was. And so, I feel like podcasting is my way of living that dream of being able to interview people, and create something that nobody else is creating. When I started my podcast, nobody was interviewing creatives in Europe. They were all American based podcasts. I really wanted to tell the stories of people who you wouldn't necessarily have heard of, but you should have heard of. I think I've done that.
Steve Folland: Yes. Has it helped your business at all?
Kat Molesworth: Oh sure it has. We don't take advertising on the podcast. It's all in-house advertising. I get to talk about the conference. People who come on the podcast talk about the conference, which I'm always really grateful for, when they bring it up and they talk about how it's affected them. Yeah. Do think it's a good flagship product for the conference. It gives people the time to sit with us, understand where I'm coming from as an event organizer, what my knowledge is, and also the kind of people that they likely to meet or hear from there.
Steve Folland: Now, if you could tell your younger self one thing about being freelance, what would that be?
Kat Molesworth: Get paid upfront. That's it. That's the secret sauce to freelance life is get paid first. If you don't, you’re always going to be on the back foot.
Steve Folland: Do you find that it's ... You know, when you said about the payment terms and stuff like that, is it simply that thing of like, that feels unbudgeable and it's like, do I either do this and get that money further down the line or I just say no.
Kat Molesworth: Often, the person you're talking to won't discuss payment terms with you, unless you bring it up. Sometimes you will be lied to about when you'll be paid. I rally encourage everybody, if they're working the kind of industry like blogging, where you're not being paid upfront, take a deposit. Get some of, the money upfront.
Kat Molesworth: You need a written contract in place between you and that can be an email chain. I really, advise people to create simple agreements that say what the brand will do and say what you will do, what the deliverable are, what the dates are, and the date you will get paid. Once you've got that in writing, you can easily send a, follow-up legal letter that refers to it. You have a much better standing with a corporate entity, than you do with an email chain.
Steve Folland: Kat, thank you so much. All the best being freelance!
Kat Molesworth: Thanks for having me Steve.