Own your job title - Copywriter and Content Marketer Rose Crompton
Rose is on her second run being freelance after things didn’t work out the first time around. After realising she’d underestimated the amount of work she’d need to put in, Rose took a job at an adult store in London.
She’d been a writer at a magazine for years before going freelance and then ending up in retail, so when she found out her new employers were launching a magazine and website, she put herself forward for the work and carved out a full-time writing role.
Rose learnt a lot on the job about the differences between journalism and writing as a marketer, and when she moved to Brisbane with her Aussie husband, she ended up freelance once again, and this time with a much better idea of how to make it work.
She shares all the lessons she’s picked up along the way, from the things that have gone wrong and those that have gone right, and talks about the one big mindset shift that’s made a crucial difference.
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Transcript of the Being Freelance podcast with copywriter Rose Crompton and Steve Folland
Steve Folland: How did you get started being freelance?
Rose Crompton: Sure. Okay. Well, this is a two part story.
Steve Folland: Excellent.
Rose Crompton: I know. Part one begins in London, between 2012 and 2014, and it's a tragedy, I'm afraid. Because I have been freelance twice during my career. The first time was when I was living in London, and I quit my job working in a high school as a teaching assistant, which I landed in because the magazine I'd been working for before that closed during the recession, so it was kind of one awkward thing after another. But I reached a point working at this school, and I was like, "Oh, I don't want to be doing this. I want to get back into writing, so I am going to go freelance." Because I struggled to find another job in London as a journalist, which is what I was doing on this lifestyle magazine.
Rose Crompton: So I was like, "Okay, I'll just go be a freelance journalist. It'll be fine. I've got a few connections. I'm sure the work will roll in." And how wrong was I? I massively underestimated the amount of work you needed to do to be a freelancer, and I had no idea what was involved in running a business. So I failed. I failed miserably, unfortunately. The first time I had no processes. I had very little idea where to find any clients, apart from going back to the few people that I had worked with when I was working in a publishing house, so contacting friends, which is a great way to start a freelancing business. But I had a pretty small network and it wasn't enough to really build a whole career on. So yeah, I had little idea of where else to find clients.
Rose Crompton: And the biggest problem was having no clue on how to set rates, or negotiate prices, or any of that. And I was living in Central London, I had rent to pay, I had bills to sort out, I had a lifestyle that I wanted to enjoy because I was living in the city. And I just wasn't getting enough work from it. So despite there being a few wins, I still needed to pick up some part time work. And so I did that by working in an adult store on London's Oxford Street. So I worked for London's biggest adult retailer, aka sex shop. And that was a lot of fun. And I eventually persuaded them to take me on full time as their in-house writer for their website that they were relaunching, rather than working for their shop. So that kind of ended chapter one of my experience of freelancing, and it slightly terrified me. It was scary, it was hard. And to be honest, I was happy then to back in full time work.
Steve Folland: The relief of having a steady-
Rose Crompton: Income.
Steve Folland: But you're working in that store. How did they end up knowing that you were... So you just told them you were a writer? Did you try and get freelance work out of them? Like how did you...
Rose Crompton: Yeah, so I told them that I was a writer. I think when it first came about, I had just went and did some CV dropping in Central London, and they were one of the stores that I went into. And I explained the magazine that I'd been working for previously, which was called Scarlet magazine, and that was a women's lifestyle magazine, and it was known for having an erotic literature section in the middle of it and doing lots of very raunchy, racy articles and features. It wasn't a top shelf magazine, though, I have to say. That part of my career came later. I did also write for top shelf magazines. I didn't model for top shelf magazines.
Rose Crompton: So I ended up going into the store and saying, "Look, I've got all this history of working in the adult industry, or yeah, with pleasure products more than anything, and so I would love to have a job here." So they hired me, and then I got to know the manager, and I was like, "Look, I can see you guys are working towards launching a website, and I have some writing experience. You're going to want to blog on there, you're going to want email marketing to go with this, you're going to want product descriptions. And I'm a writer, and I'm already working for you guys. So how about you let me at it?" And eventually they did, when they were ready to make a big project of it. And so that worked out really well.
Steve Folland: That's wicked. I don't know. It sounds like you took the jaws of being freelance, like where you have to go out and get work, and sort of let them bite away at the people you were actually working with. Created yourself a job.
Rose Crompton: Yeah. Yeah. And carved myself a full time job from it. And yeah, I think after that, that gave me a bit more confidence when I came to having a go at freelance the second time around. Because while I was in that full time job, I learned a lot of skills, and I learned more marketing. So I moved more from doing a journalist and journalism side of thing to understanding the difference between marketing, writing, and copywriting, and content marketing, and SEO writing, and all of that that comes with it. And so, I'll be forever thankful for having the opportunity of working full time for that company, because I just learned so much on the job of being chucked in the deep end with them. And I loved it and it was absolutely brilliant.
Rose Crompton: So yeah, that was great. And then, part two of this story is slightly happier of me arriving here in Brisbane. 2017 I got to Brisbane, in Australia, and I got a little bit impatient after interviewing for several in-house copy jobs at agencies where I wasn't massively inspired by the kind of people that were working there or the sort of clients that they were bringing in. And I kept getting the feeling that a lot of these places just wanted someone to be a content monkey, and I am not a content monkey.
Rose Crompton: I care a lot about what I write, and who it's being put in front of, and the messaging that I'm putting out there, and what I'm creating for clients. In the end, I just got impatient trying to find the right company and thought, "Nope. Sod it. I'm going to do it myself. I'm going to go out and be freelance, and give this another go and give it the proper time and attention that it needed." So I joined courses, I joined communities, and I'm happy to say that it's all going a lot better this time round and I feel like I've got proper business.
Steve Folland: So how long were you in that full time role back in London?
Rose Crompton: So I did that for about two and a half years.
Steve Folland: And then was it just a lifestyle choice to go to Australia?
Rose Crompton: No, I'm married to an Australian, unfortunately. Or fortunately. I live over here. It's pretty good. So it depends which way you look at it.
Steve Folland: Did you marry an Aussie in London?
Rose Crompton: I married an Aussie in Edinburgh. We met in London, got married in Edinburgh, lived in London, got fed up of London-
Steve Folland: And then moved back to... Right. Okay.
Rose Crompton: I moved. With a little stint in South America, traveling, before that. When I went to South America, I was kind of "umm-ing and ahh-ing" whether I wanted to be a writer at all. I used the four or five months that we had away traveling to really think about what it was that I wanted to do. But when I came to Australia, I felt comfortable and confident that yes, writing is the right place for me, and it's the right job for me, and this is what I want to be doing. So that was a massive help, as well. Just having that break.
Steve Folland: So you decide to go freelance, because you're not happy with the job you were going for. How did you do it different this time around? What did you learn? How did you go getting those clients?
Rose Crompton: Yeah. I learned a lot more about using the resources that you've got available to you in the first instance. So the whole thing of telling people you know, like your family, your friends, past colleagues, and workmates that you're going freelance. So that gives you a good start and a good basis, in terms of bringing in clients, and bringing in that first bit of money. But then, I was well aware that if I was going to do this properly as a business, I needed those processes. I needed to learn, how do you manage a client? How do you manage a client from the first time they get in touch with you, and maybe they're talking to you about money and about prices, and then how do you manage the central project bit of it, and delivering what it is they need?
Rose Crompton: How do you manage any time that they're were upset with anything, and then how do you deal with wrapping up a project? There was that whole process from start to end, which I just completely overestimated the first time I freelanced, and was something that I needed to get sorted this time. So for me, a big thing was joining the Clever Copywriting Community, which is run by Kate Toon, who I believe you've spoken to many times before, and she's brilliant. And there's just such an excellent community there, where there's people who are going through the same things and offering advice, and so there are already templates there, there are people who have been through it who you can talk to if something's going wrong with a client. So that was a big starting point for me, making sure I got my processes set up.
Rose Crompton: And so I did a lot of reading online. I joined Copyblogger as well, which is another directory where I advertise myself and my services, and that's been a really big help. There was also a big learning curve of learning the difference between copywriting and content marketing, and deciding which side of that do I want to go into, or can I manage both, if I do do more strategy for content marketing, what more do I need, what other skills do I need to learn to help with that? So yeah, it's just been a lot of learning and taking new things on board, in order to make sure that I've got everything in place so that when a client comes to me, I feel confident that I can take them from the start of their project to the end of their project. So yeah, that was a big thing for me.
Steve Folland: How long did it take to get up and running, feeling like you had regular work coming in?
Rose Crompton: I only just feel like that in the last four or five months, maybe. So I've only been in business really, this the second time around, for just coming up to three years. It'll be three years in April. So I still consider my business very young, and there's still lots of creases that need ironing out. But I hit a 10 year milestone in June last year, where I felt like I could finally admit that I have a career, and that I have a job and I do know what I'm doing. And so that was a massive mental mind shift for me, because before that I just sort of felt like I was still treading water. I was always saying to myself, "Oh, when you grow up," or, "when you become a copywriter," or "when you decide what your career is or what your job is."
Rose Crompton: Yeah. So it's only really been in the last few months that I feel more comfortable and more settled in what it is that I'm doing, and what it is that I'm offering, and how I talk about my services and my business. Before that the focus of my business was bringing in money, whereas now, I feel like I'm reaching that stage of, "Okay, I've got a good number of reliable clients who come back to me regularly." So now, I can start working on building up the other parts of my business. So I can invest more time in my marketing, or I can invest more time in sorting out my website and my SEO, and doing all those things, which, it's that whole, do I say not, as I do. And now I'm getting to that point where I can do what I tell other people to do, which feels like quite a luxury and quite a nice thing. It's probably only been the last four or five months where I feel like, "Yeah, this is all going well, and I can shift my focus a little bit."
Steve Folland: So there's three years of trading, only a few months of feeling like, "Yeah, I'm there." So how did that feel the rest of the time? Were you on edge or were you enjoying it? Did you feel like giving up? How was it?
Rose Crompton: How was it? It was exciting. I'm one of these people who thrives on being chucked in the deep end, and I've done that through a lot of my career, back from my Scarlet days, when I started at the magazine. I can deal with that, and I just learned to just keep my head down and get on with it a little bit. There were times where you panic and you faff, especially if you've got someone coming to you, and they're trying to haggle you on prices, and learning that whole client management thing and how to talk to people in that way.
Rose Crompton: So there were times when you just wouldn't know what to do, and you just feel like giving up, and you question yourself, and there is worry. But I think if you're just strong enough to push through that a bit... I don't know how else to explain it, I just kind of got on with it. You just have to suck it up. If the alternative is not having a job and not working somewhere, or having to go and do something every day that you're not 100% satisfied with or enjoy, even if you're going through a difficult time, maybe that feels sometimes uncomfortable, you just learn to get on with it. At least that's how I found it.
Steve Folland: No, I love that. So finally, you said you could start marketing, practicing what you preach. So how do you put yourself out there?
Rose Crompton: I've been trying to be a lot more active on social media, and I hate social media. For all the hours that I'm on it, annoyingly, it's not a service that I offer my clients, nor is it something I will ever offer them. For me, I find it a bit tedious, but I understand it's where I need to be and it's where a lot of my clients are. Marketing for me is being more present on social media, and being more organized in what it is that I'm putting out on social media and also on my website. So I've joined the Write52 project that just started by Ed Callow, so that's write52.com. And the idea of that is that you publish a piece of content every week for 52 weeks. For me, I didn't feel like I was putting enough content out on my blog or on my website, which, if you're doing that regularly, that gives you more to talk about on your social media.
Rose Crompton: So I signed up for that knowing that I wanted to do more on my website and be more helpful to my clients and my customers. So that's been a really big help, and has been what I've been... Yeah. It's helped me with the foundation of my own marketing plan of figuring out what content do I want to put out to who and when. Are there other themes of months that I want to do that I can create content and build content around, and then kind of feed that through my social media marketing and my email marketing, so that I'm doing a better job of showing up in front of my ideal audience and the people that I want to reach, and hopefully people who would like to become my clients in the near future. So that's been a big help.
Rose Crompton: There's still massive room for improvement. I know that there's still more I need to do. And this is the first time where I've been able to sit down and plan a whole year as well, which feels pretty daunting. But yeah, so far so good, I'm sticking to my deadlines and my goals of doing this. So yeah, that's been a big help.
Steve Folland: You've planned a whole year?
Rose Crompton: Yeah.
Steve Folland: Of your own content?
Rose Crompton: Of my own content, yes.
Steve Folland: Wow.
Rose Crompton: I should say, I have a Trello board that's full of unfinished, half-assed ideas that needed something doing with them. Trello is my brain dump area for my own business. So I've got all of these cards and bits and pieces of ideas floating around. So a bit like you would do if you were going to an editorial pitching meeting or something. You pick out which ones look decent to start with, do a bit of research, has it got legs, will it work? If it does, then cool, I'm going to now zip that into my content calendar and do something with it. Because there's no point in having these ideas constantly just sitting in Trello doing nothing and doing nothing for my business.
Rose Crompton: So that was where I started in terms of, "Okay, let's plan out this year. Let's start with the articles and the content that I want to write." And I kind of think about everything from SEO to how much time am I going to have to write each week. If I know I've got holidays or other events or whatnot coming up, I'll try and plan what content I can write for that week around everything else or other client work. So some weeks, I know that, "Okay, I'm going to have to turn this blog around really quickly, so I need a quick blog topic idea." Whereas other times, it's like, "Yep, I've got a bit more time to write, so I can do something a bit more in depth." So yeah, it's been good to sit and think and time manage a little bit better, as well, which is a whole other thing that I've learned this second time around from freelancing, managing your time wisely through all the very many millions of things you need to do for your business.
Steve Folland: Yeah. How do you do that? What does a day, or a week, look like for you?
Rose Crompton: A day for me, I will always aim to do my writing in the morning. Ideally, all client writing gets done first thing in the morning, because I am just more of a morning person, really. And then I'll leave everything, like the email admin, or marketing, or social media marketing, or jumping on calls with clients, I'll aim to do that in the afternoons, or later in the week. Because for me, that doesn't take as much brain power as sitting and writing or editing a piece. So yeah, I try to plan my day hour by hour, which might sound a little bit full-on, but I just find that if I say, "Okay, I'm going to sit, and I'm going to write for three hours on this particular writing project." Then I'm a lot more productive and I know that I will sit down and I'll get it done within the allotted time, or quicker. So I really need quite structured days in order for me to be the most productive that I can be.
Steve Folland: And do you try to work fixed hours? Do you work from home?
Rose Crompton: I work from home, so I've got my little home office setup, and I do try and work fixed hours. I try and work regular office hours. I don't have kids, I don't have a pet or anything like that, so I really can just sit and work. But then I also have the luxury of, if I want, I can get up and go out and go to the cinema, or cut out early, and know that I can be a bit more flexible with my time on weeks I need to. But for me, I have to plan that a bit more. Like if I say, "Okay, I'm going to take an afternoon off here." I have to be able to see where can I make up that time. I'm quite rigid in that sense.
Rose Crompton: So yeah, I do work from home, but then once or twice a week, I will go and work in the library with my coworking buddy Kelly, who you may have seen me post about on Twitter or on Instagram. And she's a fellow copywriter, and we've gotten into the routine of going and working outside of our home offices, just for a change of scenery, because sometimes that really helps, and it's good to get out into the big wide world and have a look at what Joe Public are doing, and what's happening outside of our own four walls. And it's good to be able to have a fellow creative and freelance that I can bounce ideas around with.
Rose Crompton: I think that's one of the things I miss most about working in-house in an office, is having colleagues and being able to throw ideas around with people. So at least having this one day a week where Kelly and I get together, we know that we can have conversation, and if one of us is struggling with something, we can sit down and talk about it, or we can have a bit more fun sitting in a cafe or the bar and just chatting about work ideas that we've got coming up. And that's been a really big part of my business, I think, to help keep me motivated and also to help keep my inspiration or my creativity going. So, yeah. That's great.
Steve Folland: That's so cool. Who came up with that? How did you meet? How did you end up in that situation?
Rose Crompton: We met at another freelance coffee morning run by a group, an Australian based group, called The Freelance Jungle. There's a monthly coffee morning here in Brisbane. And so Kelly and I met there, and we just got chatting about how we needed time out of our home offices, and it turned out we both were going to the library already, to go and do our separate working days. So we just decided, I think it was like the start of last year, so the start of 2018, that we would get together and have those library days together. So it just worked out really, really well.
Steve Folland: That's really nice. Did you know, I've just realized, we had, I think she created The Freelance Jungle, a copywriter called Emily Read. Maybe she didn't create it, but I'm sure we have... Is she now based in America, or something like that?
Rose Crompton: Yes. I met Emily, and the first few times that I went to The Freelance Jungle coffee mornings, it was Emily Read that was organizing it and hosting it. So Freelance Jungle is run by a lady called Rebekah Lambert, I believe, and Emily was just doing the Brisbane based meetups. But then she moved to America, and it's now being run by a chap called Bill Harper, who's an excellent editor and is a very good friend, also. So yes, I have met Emily and knew Emily. So it's a small place, Brisbane.
Steve Folland: Yeah. We'll put a link at beingfreelance.com through to Emily's episode. It was last summer that we spoke to her. That's so funny. But that's nice. Because as you say, it is a city but you can make it a small place. You've made connections locally since getting out.
Rose Crompton: Yeah. And it does feel small, and I think compared to London, and compared to the UK, and how easy it is to get around the UK and meet freelancers in various cities. Here, if you're doing that, you've got to travel for an hour by plane to get to Melbourne, or Sydney, or wherever, where there were other freelancers, where there are more freelancers. And so, it still very much feels like it's still a growing community over here, and is quite small. Actually, Kate Toon was one of the first copywriters that I met.
Rose Crompton: I think I'd been off the boat for all of three weeks over here, and I can't remember where I found Kate, I think on Twitter. And she was like, "Oh, I'm coming to Brisbane. Let's go for a drink. I'm getting a few people together." And I was saying to my husband, "Oh, I think I've made my first copywriting friend, and it's Kate Toon." And I had no idea who Kate Toon was at the time, and obviously she's huge over here, and runs very successful businesses. I massively underestimated who she was, but I'm part of her community, and have met her several times. And she is wonderful and a great mentor, a great person to be able to chat to about business and work.
Steve Folland: And are your clients local to you, or could they be anywhere in the world?
Rose Crompton: Anywhere in the world. I like to say I've gone global, which is ridiculous. It's not. I've got clients in Australia, the UK, and America. Most of my work does still come through from the UK, in all honesty, and still from people that I knew there, and connections that I had when I was living and working there. It's been harder to build up clients here in Australia than maybe I was anticipating. And I think it is just one of those things of just getting to know a new market, and a new audience, and the way that they talk, and the way that they approach business, and what they consider to be the priorities within their small businesses at the minute.
Rose Crompton: And that's who I primarily write for, is other freelancers and small business owners. And it feels over here like a lot of these small businesses are still just getting to grips with what it means to be marketing online and digital marketing. So yeah, it does feel like it's been a little slower to take off over here, but I've got some good, loyal clients here in Australia, and it's going well and business is building up well.
Steve Folland: Obviously early on, you found it tricky, but how have you found the business side of being freelance?
Rose Crompton: Difficult. Difficult. I think, especially talking about money and finance, it's hard at the best of times. And then when you're just trying to find your way through business at the same time, and stay creative and interested in what you're doing and what your clients need from you, and trying to learn more about the money and the contract and the business side of things. It's hard, because it's not the most fun part of the job, for me anyway. I enjoy being a writer. I enjoy talking to people, and interviewing people, and hearing about their stories. I don't like doing all the admin side of things, so it is difficult, but it's necessary. And I think that's what hugely fell down for me the first time that I freelanced.
Rose Crompton: I thought I could just get away with doing the romantic side of things and the fun bit of running a business and writing for people, without having to do the hard slog of, get your contracts in place, understand what legal clauses you meet, understand budgeting and how you're going to plan for if you have a quiet month, or if you have a busy month, how not to get carried away with spending it all. That's definitely the hardest thing. Or the amount of time that you've got to spend on your own marketing or on your own website, or sitting and reading and learning about the latest developments in your industry so that you remain relevant and on point and can keep giving your clients what it is that they need.
Rose Crompton: So yeah, overall, being freelance is difficult. It's not a walk in the park. You need to put the work in, I found. And if you do that, then that's when you can start to settle back and enjoy it and enjoy those bits of your business and what it is that you do and what it is that you want to become known for and do more of that. And that's the pleasure, and that's the payoff, and that's why we do it, I guess.
Steve Folland: If you could tell your younger self one thing about being freelance, what would that be?
Rose Crompton: Own your job title. I really struggled until recently, of admitting what it is that I do and that I have a career, and I've wrestled with that for a really long time. If I could give my younger self that advice, it would be, "Own what it is that you do, and be proud of what it is that you do, and be confident that you know how to do it, even if you're still learning. You don't know everything. You can never know everything in your area and what you do. But just start being proud enough of saying what it is that you do and how you do it. So own it."
Steve Folland: Thank you so much, Rose, and all the best being freelance.
Rose Crompton: Thanks, Steve. It's been really good talking to you.