Being a geek about what you do - Email Developer Anne Tomlin
Anne got into web development in 2010 and eventually found that coding for email was her sweet spot. She worked in permanent roles for years while freelancing on the side, and then her cat got diagnosed with cancer and she went freelance full-time to be with him.
It turned out to be great timing for Anne. She’d been involved in ‘Email Geek’ communities online, and by being active, helpful and enthusiastic about her work, her name got around and she was picking up bigger clients.
She chats to Steve about where her work comes from now, how she manages her time, her experience of attending and speaking at events, and how she avoids distraction in her work by getting herslef into the ‘Code Zone’.
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Transcript of the Being Freelance podcast with email developer Anne Tomlin and Steve Folland
Anne Tomlin: Hey!
Steve Folland: Well as ever, let's get started hearing how you got started being freelance?
Anne Tomlin: Well, it's kind of a sad story at first but okay it's going to get better.
Steve Folland: Oh my goodness.
Anne Tomlin: Okay. So I started doing web development in like 2010 ish and started getting relatively good at it, but in 2000 and I think it was 16 maybe 17, my cat got cancer and I was very sad about it and decided that I wanted to spend the time that he had left with him. I wanted to work at home and be with him during that time. I decided to go freelance and made my company, which is named Email's Y'all and started getting some clients and it actually has turned out that my cat's cancer's very slow growing, so he's been fine since and he should be okay for a great while.
Steve Folland: Oh my goodness. I'm loving this already. I mean, I still wish your cat wasn't sick but still hang up. But back in 2010 so you described yourself as a web developer, so were you doing email?
Anne Tomlin: So yeah, I did. I was mostly a web developer, but email is always usually something that gets pushed on web developers they don't really like doing it by with me. I'm completely self taught so I never had to go to a coding class or anything like that because of that email seemed right side out for me. While it always seems upside down to other web developers. It just makes sense in my brain. It's like I said it's backward, it's like coding in 1999. It actually ended up being great for me because it made total sense to me and I loved the structure and the difficult aspects of it and yeah, so I would not say that I am a web developer anymore. I am definitely an email developer.
Steve Folland: So was that the case for you? You were working for what? Like an agency and got asked to do an email or…?
Anne Tomlin: Yes. Yeah, that was the case. Yeah, I got asked to do my first email and had some trouble with it at first, but started doing research and found that there's a huge Email Geek Community and that loves to help each other. I've been doing that for almost 10 years now.
Steve Folland: You're still working within that company though for another six years or, or maybe you went to others, did you start to be known as the person to go to for email or what were you?
Anne Tomlin: Right. That's, that's exactly what happened. I did bounce from job to job until I went freelance. But with each one I had gained more knowledge and more skills to be able to do specific things within email and that made me of course get to the next level where I would go to a different company and get not better job but a job more specified to email, which is what I wanted.
Steve Folland: And with those companies where you're working physically in house or working remotely?
Anne Tomlin: All of them were physically in house except for the last one. And I was working through SiriusXM, who's in Dallas, which is three hours away. I definitely doing remote at that point. I would go up to Dallas every once in a while, but it's three hours drive is a little bit too much of a commute.
Steve Folland: That's one hell of a commute. How long were you in that last job for? I'm just wondering how long you got that taste of working sort of solitary at home?
Anne Tomlin: Yeah I had that job for about a year and a half or so. But I also had been doing freelance on the side for about five years before that.
Steve Folland: Oh right!
Anne Tomlin: Yeah and I had been freelancing on the side and it just so happened that everything kind of worked out exactly at the right time where Sirius didn't necessarily need me on contract anymore. I was getting really good clients with my freelance and of course my cat. It ended up just working out great for everybody.
Steve Folland: You said that you work as a company, Emails Y'all, when you first started getting those freelance geeks, were you that then or?
Anne Tomlin: No, I was just doing freelance on the side. I actually, somebody from the Email Geek Community contacted me on Twitter and was like, "Hey, you willing to do some freelance?" And I was just, I've never done such a thing. So yeah, sure, why not, and then as, yeah, as my name got out there a little more and more, more clients came in.
Steve Folland: I see so you weren't even actively going out there trying to get them, they were coming to you by being part of a community.
Anne Tomlin: Yes, that's correct.
Steve Folland: Cool. And when you're in that community that makes it sound like it's a sort of community where you're asking questions, you're answering questions, was it that sort of thing?
Anne Tomlin: Yes, exactly. That's, it's a very tight knit community. Started on Twitter with the hashtag Email Geeks and then it went to Slack. There's now an email geeks Slack channel where pretty much all of us hang out and ask questions, talk about things, that sort of stuff. Geek out about email.
Steve Folland: How will you fitting that first section of freelance work in around the rest of your working life?
Anne Tomlin: I was doing it at nights and weekends, so I didn't very much have a lot of free time at that point, but I was also really enjoying it.
Steve Folland: Did you know what you were doing from a business side of things?
Anne Tomlin: No, not at all. I really just sort of get, like I said, the person asked me and I was, sure. Okay. I gave her a quote thinking just, whatever I make at my job which was drastically too low. But yeah, I mean I learned as I went on and of course, when I went full time you had to deal with the tax issue and all that kind of stuff. I made the company for that.
Steve Folland: Did you fail by the time you went freelance? Because obviously it sounded by the time you went freelance you hadn't been working up to it deliberately, you'd kind of been doing it almost subconsciously.
Anne Tomlin: Right, exactly.
Steve Folland: Did you feel prepared by that point?
Anne Tomlin: I was still very scared and asked a bunch of my friends, "what do you think should I do this?" So yeah I was super scared but made the jump and it was honestly the best thing I could have ever done.
Steve Folland: Awesome. Were those first clients still coming from the community?
Anne Tomlin: Yeah, the first ones came from the community. Pretty much that's where I get all of my clients come from the Email Geek Community. They just find me through word of mouth.
Steve Folland: But who is hiring in you? As in presumably it's not other email developers. So is it like, I don't know, conversion copywriters or, I'm trying to imagine who would be hiring you from within that community.
Anne Tomlin: There's usually two types of clients that I get and that's agencies who have too much work to do and like they have an email developer that's very stressed us too much and says, "Hey, there's Anne, why don't we hire her for this short period of time?" I also periodically will get actual brands, famous footwear, Naturalizer, NPR, etc. They either find me through, articles that have been written about me or just see my work or actually I don't really know completely how that works out. But I assume that it's like word of mouth-ish.
Steve Folland: What a wonderful reputation to have. You said he said articles, so articles being written.
Anne Tomlin: Yeah, so at first I started getting asked yeah, for my opinion on certain aspects of email development and that would get into an article about year end wrap up, what do you expect for the next for email? I'd give like a little blurb and then that has ended up progressing to full articles about me and how I got into the industry, what my take is on how one should do email development and other sorts of articles regarding me in my career.
Steve Folland: Cool. So do you ever write the articles or it's usually you being interviewed?
Anne Tomlin: No, it's always me being interviewed.
Steve Folland: That's the best way to do it, right. You've not got to stress about it so much.
Anne Tomlin: Yeah.
Steve Folland: Do you ever actively put yourself out there for them or these have all just come about over time?
Anne Tomlin: It's all come about over time through word of mouth. I have not put up any ands but I do have a listing in a specific email, newsletter type group. So I suppose you could call that advertising.
Steve Folland: Got you. So like an online?
Anne Tomlin: Yeah, it's a group of people who know about email and they're in, they have a daily newsletter type thing. And they also have a website and on that website there are people, there's lists of email developers or email companies and stuff. So Emails, Y'all is on one of those lists.
Steve Folland: How about, so on your website for Emails Y'all, which is a great name. Did you, do you do anything on there to build yourself... , like SEO or blogging or all of these things that we often hear about. How about any of that?
Anne Tomlin: I mean I did the simplest SEO course, type of thing on lynda.com to help with that. But now I don't, have a blog yet. I have very good, aspirations to do a blog but never seems to have enough time to do it.
Steve Folland: Do you do case studies?
Anne Tomlin: No.
Steve Folland: Cool. So it's more like here's me, here's my services?
Anne Tomlin: Yeah, pretty much and then showing how I can help, but why doing email the way that I do that is so incredibly specific. Why that's a good thing for your company. You'll get way more ROI if you make your emails the way that I make them. So there's, there's that sort of thing. There's also putting, giving examples of my work. So I have a whole portfolio yeah, but and also a whole listing of what I can do to help. If you don't need me to code your email, I troubleshoot it. If you're having problems with a particular email clients like Outlook, I can help you troubleshoot, those issues.
Steve Folland: I'm presuming proven nature of email marketing and stuff that there might be busier times of year, Black Friday, Christmas or the summer for certain clients. The summer as well.
Anne Tomlin: I would say. Yeah definitely the summer there's a little bit of a slower time and October through February is very busy for me. So because it's exactly what you said, Black Friday, Christmas, new years, Valentine's day, that sort of thing.
Steve Folland: How have you come to cope with that? With that busier time?
Anne Tomlin: I have a time management type of software, it's called Cushion app and it allows you to have a visual look at your schedule. So I do lots of making sure that my schedule is set at a certain time and I'm not going to be overly booked. If I do end up getting overly booked, I do have another coder that I trust but of course I always want to code my own emails. I do have perfectionist issues, so I usually will not go to somebody else. I like to make sure that my schedule is sets so that everybody gets my specific time when they need it.
Steve Folland: Does that mean saying no to people or?
Anne Tomlin: That's another part where the Email Geek Community helps out. Since there's a bunch of us freelancing, we also know each other. So if I'm busy I'll say, "Hey, why don't you contact Annette or Josh over there and they might have time for you?" Periodically when Annette or Josh or anybody else has too much work, they'll be like, "Hey, go over to Anne, Anne will help you she has time.
Steve Folland: Do you ever educate your clients? Do you have like a process?
Anne Tomlin: Yes. Yeah, there's a lot of education when it comes to email. Some of my clients are brand new to email. So there's a lot of educating about the things about email that are vastly different from a web mail from a web development and how you will address those. I also have some clients that are raring to go. They're just, they already know what they want. They just hand me a PSD and say, make this and they don't need to know that's Outlook is awful at rendering emails. They already know that. So it really depends on where the client is at in their email journey.
Steve Folland: So do you have a lot of repeat clients over time?
Anne Tomlin: Yeah, definitely. I have a few regulars, Famous Footwear has me pretty much all the time. I have something from them. I also have a youth camp here in Texas called Pine Cove and yeah, they always need an email or something.
Steve Folland: So is that like a retainer where you know you're going to get the work or it just?
Anne Tomlin: It's not necessarily retainer in that they give me money beforehand. It's just I know that they're going to have work for me to do so I'll just put it in the schedule expecting something to come in. So if they don't need me during that week great, I can get another client in.
Steve Folland: It sounds clearly like the community has been huge for you, but is it all online or do you get to meet other people in face to face situations?
Anne Tomlin: Yeah, it's mostly online but we all meet up at email conferences. There are actually quite a few of them. Most of them are not necessarily about development but more the practical side of email, not necessarily design or anything. Just sort of what's the best subject line? Doing email, tangentially related things like analytics or making sure that your email service provider, what's the best one of that, that sort of thing. So there's lots of email conferences that are email related, that don't necessarily do email development but there is one that does email development and that's where all of us geek out like hardcore geek out. Yeah. You've never seen geek like email geeks!
Steve Folland: I'm presuming actually maybe you get different things out of those different conferences.
Anne Tomlin: Yeah, usually with the developer one it's really just hanging out with my friends. The other ones are more sort of I have to kind of be the spokesman for Emails Y'all. So it's more sort of those other email conferences are more sort of networking and talking to people, getting emails out, name out, that sort of thing.
Steve Folland: How do you find doing that?
Anne Tomlin: It's not necessarily easy for me to do, but I'm getting better at it. And so of getting out and approaching people and striking up conversations about emails and possibly their needs for email developments. So yeah, I said, it doesn't come naturally but I'm getting better at it.
Steve Folland: Do you ever speak at events?
Anne Tomlin: I have spoken at two events. At one I was on a panel about how to up your email career and they wanted me specifically because I'm a freelancer. So that one was the super fun to do and the other one I actually had a full presentation with slides. What you need to know about hiring a freelance email developer before you do the hiring. What you should already have in place before you contact an email developer to start helping you. Yeah, both were very satisfying. I hope that I can do more speaking.
Steve Folland: In terms of upping your career, what would you say has worked best for you over these past? Well, I mean, as you say, 10 years really, but certainly the last four being freelance full time.
Anne Tomlin: So I am very active in the community. I basically tweet at least once a day. I answer anybody's questions. That's another big way, I've gotten some excellent clients, especially with Famous Footwear, is somebody who was on the community said, "I'm having this really rough time. Can somebody please tell me what I'm doing wrong with my code?" I wasn't doing anything at that time. I just looked at her code, fixed it, and was like, "here you go." And she was like, "that's fabulous would you like to come help Famous Footwear?"
Anne Tomlin: Yeah, I mean it's getting out there and, and not necessarily networking in the traditional sense of trying to get your business name out there, but talking to people, I'm geeking out about it, trying to help has definitely been a driving factor in the clients that I've gotten.
Steve Folland: I love that. Yeah. How do you stop yourself getting distracted by media?
Anne Tomlin: I am actually, I call it the code zone and that's where I don't see, I don't hear, I don't, it's all code and not everything else disappears. So even if my Slack icon is bouncing up and down I just don't see it. So when I'm in the code zone, I will stay there for hours on end and just does, I don't get structured. Yeah. My husband will have to get in front of me and wave his arms and be like, "Hey I need to talk to you."
Steve Folland: I'm loving the idea of the code zone. Is it ever an effort to get in the code zone night if we were trying to get in the zone ourselves?
Anne Tomlin: Yeah. In adult it comes and goes as well because I'll have days where I just can't force myself to code and then there are days when I'm in the code zone for hours on end. I can't really like force myself to get into it. It's just something that happens. I'll start working and then get really engrossed in what I'm doing especially if there's nitpicky little things that I need to, to work out. That's what really starts the code zone. And then it just goes on from there.
Steve Folland: So what do you do on a day when you can't get in the code zone?
Anne Tomlin: I will try to code, but usually I end up just tweeting or helping people or things like that. I'm not going to force myself if I sit here for two hours and get maybe three lines of code or whatever. That's just, it's a day, let's wash it and let's try to make, if it's not a code day, that's fine, just do something else related to work.
Steve Folland: Cool. How would you say your work life balances?
Anne Tomlin: I think it's fine. My husband and my friends would tell you that I am never available. I said, the code zone man really puts you in just time passes. So it doesn't feel long to me. And so, yeah. But I mean, I would say that, yeah, I'm working pretty much like 8:00 AM to 6:00 PM pretty much every day. Even including weekends. Every once in a while I'll have a weekend off. Yes. I know that's a lie.
Steve Folland: I'm just sitting there thinking and you're cool with that because you really enjoy. I presume anyway, it sounds you're very passionate about it. How do you schedule the weekends off or it's just for you or is it that your husband finally just breaks in and drags you out?
Anne Tomlin: No I schedule. I try to make it so they, I only have one project to do on the weekends so that I'm not constantly doing it. Like every once in a while I'll go to like a movie or make dinner, have a nice fancy dinner. But yeah, I mean I guess it works for me and works for friends and husband. They might want to make me a little bit more time. But I do try to balance a little bit.
Steve Folland: Can I also say like you're working a lot of hours. Is that because, I'm trying to think of the best way to say it, but it's like, because it sounds it's not bad time management. It sounded you on top of your time management, is it simply you have lots of work to do and actually you would quite happily just take on job after job after job or is it actually you really need the money and so therefore you'd rather take all of those jobs or because it can be different influences as to what affects our workload?
Anne Tomlin: Not say no to an email in peril. If there's an email that needs to get done I will do it.
Steve Folland: That's it's so beyond your website as the tagline. I love that.
Anne Tomlin: Yeah, I mean if I have time, if I think that I can mentally be okay, like have an okay balance. If I think that I can take on an extra little email, then yeah, I'm going to do it. So yeah, there are, I would say that I have so many clients that they are sort of now starting to get on top of each other. So I'm probably, this probably isn't going to last for too much longer. I probably I'm going to have to find a different way of handling things.
Steve Folland: But when it comes to taking vacation?
Anne Tomlin: With vacation, I actually, I took a two and a half week vacation in Italy and Spain and France this summer in July. I told people, I told all my clients a year beforehand and let them know every bout a month, "Hey, just let me know I'm leaving for two and a half weeks in July so get your emails into me way beforehand." And just kept doing it every month or so and then every week as we get closer. So I can take time off, I just need to make it very clear to my clients that I am not going to be available. For that two and a half week cruise. Yeah. I did not bring my computer at all. I had my phone but I didn't have my computer. So there's no possible way I could have done work.
Steve Folland: Nice. Actually I want to ask you about, because I said, I love Emails Y'all as a name, but obviously you've made a name for yourself as Anne Tomlin as well. When you decided to go full time freelance, why did you choose to work as a company name?
Anne Tomlin: I've actually been asked that because a friend to some other freelancers who just incorporate their name or do their name as an LLC. I can't tell you why I decided to do something too different, but I just thought that it would be more fun to have a funny name that would stick and people head rather than they were used to see an Anne Tomlin but Anne Tomlin seems a little forgettable, but Emails Y'all definitely sticks in people's heads.
Steve Folland: What would you say has been the biggest challenge for you being freelance?
Anne Tomlin: Can I say that getting into it, because I was so very hesitant to get into it to actually strike out and go full time freelance. And that was a very hard choice to make. And like I said, I talked with my parents, with my husband, with all my friends, with people who already had companies done. I talked to everybody and got their opinion about what I should do, what's, I should be ready for that type of thing. So yeah, jumping in, taking the first step was the most difficult thing, so far.
Steve Folland: What was holding you back?
Anne Tomlin: I'd just been doing freelance on the side, so it didn't seem something that would actually pay off. I was so in this mindset of I have to be a cog in a big company machine in order to be successful and have a very stable sort of job with, that I can provide for my family. And that's our thing. It just didn't seem like I could further my career if I went totally freelance. I mean, that was obviously extremely wrong, but it was definitely a very big worry for me at that time.
Steve Folland: Now if you could tell your younger self one thing about being freelance, what would that be?
Anne Tomlin: Do it! Do it now! Do it faster!