Self-care Wednesdays - Web Designer Diane Laidlaw
Bored at home when she first became a mum, Diane decided to launch an online shop. She didn’t have money to invest so she got to work DIY-ing the website herself. She barely sold a thing, but she did start getting questions from people who wanted the name of her web designer. And so a new business was born.
It’s ten years later now and, as well as running her own web design business, Diane’s teaching others how to use WordPress via her YouTube channel.
She’s struggled in the past to know when to stop working. But now, thanks to avoiding distractions during the working day, finding other interests outside of work, increasing her prices and being strict with her boundaries, she’s found a way of balancing things that feels good. Like making Wednesdays just for her.
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Transcript of the Being Freelance podcast with web designer Diane Laidlaw and Steve Folland
Steve Folland: As ever, how about we get started hearing how you got started being freelance?
Diane Laidlaw: Okay, well I got started maybe about 10 years ago, I think it is now. I just had my son and I was at home, very bored, didn't know what to do with myself. I had an idea for an online store. I had no money. Decided I'm going to create this store in six weeks. Did all my research. Decided to create a website myself. Got everything up and ready and launched and within about four months of me launching this site I had tons of people come up to me saying, "Who did your site?" Rather than actually buy from the store. I must have had four customers on the store, but I had way too many people asking me, "Who did your website?" And I said, "I did my website." And literally from that point on I've not stopped making websites for people. I closed stone the other business and just taught myself literally on the job how to create websites and that's what I've been doing for the past 10 years.
Steve Folland: I love that story there. That's so funny. You suddenly find yourself as a web designer but also presumably parenting. So you'd just had your son, had you?
Diane Laidlaw: Yes, my son was at that time maybe about eight months old. So I would have on one monitor, I would have me designing stuff and then on another monitor I would have me teaching him the ABC on YouTube. And that used to be basically what was happening for a year and a half. And it actually really works because you know by the time he got to about two, he was telling me his numbers backwards from 100. He did really, really well. So it's we're both learning at the same time. So yeah, it was so cool.
Steve Folland: I thought you're going to say, "By the time he was two he was sending out my invoices."
Diane Laidlaw: I would love that. I would love that.
Steve Folland: So how did it grow? So first it's all people seeing the site.
Diane Laidlaw: Yeah, so my business grew through word of mouth. So I did a website for a couple of my friends and then they told their friends and I'm quite introverted and quite shy. I would very rarely use my Facebook to say, "Oh look guys, I'm doing this now." I would very rarely do it. So the fact that my friends would always put the word out for me really, really helped me.
Diane Laidlaw: Now when I create a website, I'm happy to kind of show it on all social media and people get to know, "Okay, this is what Diane does." That literally is the most amount of traffic I get or the most amount of jobs that I get are literally all from word of mouth now. And I haven't done anything extra. It's only maybe last year I think I started working more on my own SEO so I could get much higher in Google rankings. And that has actually helped with getting a different type of clientele, which is cool. But yeah, more often than not it has been through word of mouth, which has been a good thing and then sometimes it has been a bad thing as well.
Steve Folland: In terms of that SEO that's interesting, what terms did you go after? You're in London, right?
Diane Laidlaw: Yes, I am.
Steve Folland: So I'm guessing that's got a lot of web designers in it. What did you go after? What did you do?
Diane Laidlaw: I went for WordPress web designer because that's basically the main thing that I work with and I'm number one I think for London for it.
Steve Folland: Wow.
Diane Laidlaw: Yeah. So it's good because it gets a whole different type of clientele that I wouldn't have been exposed to. And it's good because a large majority of those clienteles have the budgets that I want to work with, whereas sometimes when you work as a person who is constantly doing word of mouth, sometimes you might do a deal for one person and then that person goes back and says, "Yeah, I've got this website for a grand." And they'd be like, "Yeah, that'd be great." But actually your rates are no longer that, it's something else. So sometimes that could be the problem when it comes to working with a certain clientele. But overall I think the SEO thing really, really has helped me out for sure.
Steve Folland: How do you filter which projects to take on or not?
Diane Laidlaw: I wrote down a list recently about literally what type of projects do I want to take on and I've decided that I want to work with projects that really excite me. I think that's the number one thing is that if I look at their brief and I'm like, "Oh, I really want to do this," then that's definitely up there as, "Right, I'm going to take that project."
Diane Laidlaw: Another one would have to be at what their budget is like. Another one would also have to be how far they are in the progress because some people come to you just at the start and they're not quite sure what to do. Some people have already decided what they want to do, they just want someone to build out the website. I find working with those clients a little bit more easier, projects go quite quicker. And because I'm a work-at-home mum, I have very little time. I don't work 9:00 to 5:00. I have to cut up my day. So it's important that I spend that time working on projects that I really enjoy doing and that I don't have to micromanage people. That's a major thing for me.
Steve Folland: Have you figured out how to make that happen though, in terms of micromanaging?
Diane Laidlaw: Because I've done this for so long now it's pretty easy once you do a discovery call with someone, which is the first call that you make just to distinguish what type of website they need. Usually you can tell from that phone call how far they are. I've got a of questions which I ask them. I have a very brief planner on my website as well, which they go on and they fill in. I also have right at the top of the planner what is the minimum budget. So if they come to that planner and they've got under that budget, immediately they know, "Okay, she's too pricey for what I need," or whatever. So that kind of filters out whether people have got the budget or not.
Diane Laidlaw: But definitely having a conversation with them. Usually, from that conversation, you can usually tell how far somebody is, but also making sure you have a really good contract in place. So if you do have a meeting with someone and you do suss maybe you may have to add a little bit to this contract because there's a possibility this project can last for six months instead of three months or whatever, then again, I think it's just through my own intuition and just knowing, having different conversations with people and knowing where somebody is, whether they really know what their business is about, whether they're established. I know that there's another web designer friend of mine who only works at businesses who have been established for two years because already she's like, "They know what they're doing." Do you know what I mean? So yeah, it's just really establishing it from that initial phone call and just making sure you've got the right contract in place, so then if there is any scope creep, you've already got that in your contract.
Steve Folland: You mentioned there's a minimum budget sort of thing, like, "Here's an idea of what this might cost you, at least this." Have you always had that?
Diane Laidlaw: No.
Steve Folland: Did you put it on and then find something changed?
Diane Laidlaw: So, because I've been self taught, it's been very difficult for me to come up with ideas about how much I should charge for my work. So in the beginning phases I charged very little because I was like, "I don't even know what I'm doing. The fact that you're paying me is a blessing." I charged really low for a while and it's very difficult over the years, I've had to raise up my prices and raise them up and raise them up and more look at a business rather than a hobby, which is what I was doing for a while.
Diane Laidlaw: And even now I'm like, "Oh, I have to raise it again." So in the next couple of months I'm looking to raise the fees again, not because I'm trying to be greedy, but I really know how much I'm worth now. And I think that's really helped me in terms of making sure that I put in the right amount. But it hasn't been easy and actually you do get clients who will pay what you need, which was one of my biggest fears is that if I put the money up, then I'm going to have less clients or no one's going to pay that amount of money. But actually I've managed to get people who wanted to only pay, I don't know, £700 for a website and now they're paying over two grand for that website and they wouldn't have thought that they were going to do that before because they had that conversation with me and they're able to see the value, they've now bumped it up.
Diane Laidlaw: So it was just getting over that initial fear first of all, that I'm going to lose clients. But then also knowing that even if I do lose clients, I'm working less, so I'm not stressing myself out as much. But if I've got one or two clients a month, that's better than having one or two clients that's paying this amount rather than having six or seven or even up to 10 clients who are only paying a small amount because you're just stressing yourself out, especially when you don't really have an assistant or anything that, it just becomes a bit too much. Sorry, I'm rambling. I'm not even sure if I answered your question.
Steve Folland: No, that's a great answer. How do you manage those periods of stress? You've found a way to get around it, but when you're in them?
Diane Laidlaw: I take Wednesdays off actually, I call them my self-care days, and I take Wednesdays off, I don't do any client work. I actually goes to therapy. I do whatever the hell I want, which is either get my feet done or go and take a walk in the park. I don't answer calls after a certain time. It's more the boundary thing, which I think as a freelancer we tend to lack because we're so excited about our jobs, we're so excited about what we're doing that we forget that actually we have other stuff going on ourselves, our family, our partners. So just making sure you have appropriate boundaries and making sure that you don't answer your phone every time it rings or you don't go to the email every time you get an email, just giving yourself that space to answer when it's relevant for you to answer I think is important.
Diane Laidlaw: So yeah, that's what I've basically had to do in certain situations where it feels the client may be taking the mickey a little bit, I've just had to set certain boundaries and say, "Okay, well you can't contact me after 9:00, because that's crazy. 9:00 PM on a Saturday is just not the right time to... Let's just keep it business hours. Please don't contact me on WhatsApp. Let's just try to keep it to email." So yeah, just putting in appropriate boundaries I think is super important.
Steve Folland: And do you say to your clients, "I'm not around on a Wednesday."
Diane Laidlaw: I do. I tell my clients I'm not around on a Wednesday and those are my self-care days and some of them are like, "Wow, I've got self-care days too." Some of them are like, "Actually that's a really good idea." But the reason why I have those days is because I've actually worked with two guys who had a mental breakdown while I was working with them and it was literally because they were working constantly all the time. And that really scared me as a mother to think that I love my work so much and the fact that I can be so engrossed in it and forget everything else, it just scared me, and I just thought, "No, I have to have a time out or a day where it's just me." And I'm okay with that, and I'm not answering to anybody's... I don't feel I have to answer to everybody. Because your mental health is way more important than anything that a client has got to give to you. Do you know what I mean? So just having that balance I think is just so, so important.
Steve Folland: Yeah. Have you expanded your services at all? So you were designing websites?
Diane Laidlaw: Yeah, so I was designing the websites and I actually do YouTube as well. So I show other businesses or individuals how to use WordPress and I just do it all through my YouTube channel. And it's been quite entertaining actually because it's forked off into other things too, where I've got plugin companies that will contact me and they would ask me to review their plugins on my channel, which is really cool. I get to work hand-in-hand with plugin developers and get to help improve their products. I get to teach people from all around the world. So, I love teaching, I've always loved teaching, and the fact that I get to mix that with what I'm doing, give back. Because when I learnt how to create my website back when I was making that shop, I used YouTube. So the fact that I can now give back and be showing other people is a big thing for me. I really love it.
Steve Folland: How long have you been doing that?
Diane Laidlaw: About five or six years now I think.
Steve Folland: How have you found that over time?
Diane Laidlaw: Doing videos is not easy. I think designing websites is way more easier for me than making these videos, simply because I don't like, as much as I'm rambling now, I don't like to ramble in my videos, so I'm very straightforward in my videos and that's what a lot of people like them for. But it's difficult to try to find the time to try and fit that in. As well as the fact that I've got all of this work that I need to do, I've got my self-care Wednesdays. But this year I've been more dedicated and said, "Right, every week I'm just going to put a video out." Because there were so many things that week that I just needed to talk about it, but I haven't actually allocated enough time to it. So it's not I don't have time, it's just that I'm not allocating time properly.
Steve Folland: Do you sometimes record more than one at once?
Diane Laidlaw: Yes. Yes. So I have to batch record them and then I would upload. So I would have four videos that I would record and then I would upload those four videos, so I won't have to think about it for another month. And then during that month I might think about other topics, but I won't have to worry about, "Oh my gosh, it's Wednesday, I've got to put something up." You know what I mean? It's already pre-done. So yeah, that's basically the only way I've been able to do it. It's just batch recording them, it just helps so much.
Steve Folland: And how have you found doing YouTube has helped you?
Diane Laidlaw: When it comes to web design it's helped me a lot. Because when I have to show somebody how a particular plugin or how a particular function works, I'm literally teaching somebody who I'm assuming doesn't know anything. So when it comes to designing websites and me having to maybe hand off that website to my client, I am more thinking about how is this going to be user friendly for my client? How is my client, who maybe just knows how to email only, how is my client going to be able to interact with the backend of this? How can I make it simpler? So it's helped me in terms of simplifying things and making sure that my clients, who probably don't know how to do a bunch of stuff online, just how to make them feel at ease with it.
Diane Laidlaw: So when I hand off a website, I don't really sit down with them for an hour and say, "Okay, you have to do this, that and the other." I present videos to them as well, which they find very helpful because they can go back to it and listen to it whenever they need to. So it's just it's helped simplify a lot of things in that way, in terms of how I think about how users are interacting with things.
Steve Folland: That's brilliant. You use them as part of your business.
Diane Laidlaw: Yes.
Steve Folland: Do people find you? Does it bring you business as well?
Diane Laidlaw: It does actually. Where you've got some really frustrated agency owners who are like, "Do you know what? I've watched your video but I just can't be bothered. Just do it for me, please." Or they've come on my website and they really liked my website and they're like, "Oh, we've got some work that's coming, could you help us?" There's many ways in which I've made different types of income using YouTube, for sure it's helped.
Steve Folland: When I've watched people on YouTube or people have watched me on YouTube, I find that they feel like they know you and it's almost like they want to work with you, it almost takes out that selling element.
Diane Laidlaw: Yeah. I mean, to be fair, I've not really ever felt I've had to sell myself, which is maybe a bit of a blessing for me. But most people who have contacted me, whether they've gone through word of mouth, whether they've done it through Google, they have been impressed by something. Do you know what I mean? Otherwise they won't go through the contact form and try to contact me.
Diane Laidlaw: But yeah, I do get people who it does feel they may know me. So I'm in a lot of Facebook groups that work with WordPress and a lot of people understand my humor, or they'll say, "If it doesn't have a swear word in Diane's videos, then Diane's probably sick. There must be something wrong with her, she didn't swear today." So in that way, they get me. And my website, I try to put that part of my personality forward as well. Again, my website is quite simple, there's not really swearing on it, but there's a cheeky side to it. And I've had people who have gone out of their way to find me because they really want to work with me. But I don't know whether it's because they watched my video or because they saw my work or because they may have read a blog, I'm not sure how it is.
Diane Laidlaw: But I have been blessed to not actually have to sit on the phone and have to sell people myself, it's more I talk to people and try to figure out what it is that they want. And I think what people really need, what clients really need is just someone to understand them and someone to lead them in some ways and say, "Oh, actually this may not work. How about if we try this?" Rather than just being a yes man to all of your clients, I think people really love someone who's got a bit of personality, they know what they're doing, they're not just here to take your money, they're actually here to help you and your business. And I think when I've spoken to people on the phone, that's how I've always come across. I've never had to say, No, I've done this website, I've done that. I YouTube," I've never had to come on and say that to anyone.
Steve Folland: Do you work from home?
Diane Laidlaw: I do.
Steve Folland: What have you found works for you working from within the same place that you're also calling home?
Diane Laidlaw: What works for me is probably habit. Every morning I wake up, I have a particular thing that I do and I just consistently do that every time. And because of that, I now have this habit of I'm going to work even though I'm only going downstairs. But I do set myself up because I do have to bring my son to school. So, I bring my son to school and then I go for a drive, just to clear my mind and sometimes I listen to audiobooks. Then once I've done that drive, I'm in the mood to work. So I go back home and it's almost I'm going into the office, but I'm not, I'm just going home. And then I'll sit down and I'll do my work until about three o'clock until the school run is ready again.
Diane Laidlaw: I don't watch TV, so I don't get easily distracted. I actually have ADHD, so the fact that I don't get easily distracted is mainly because I have to put things in place so I don't answer to email straight away. I don't answer to phone calls straight away. I have a to-do list of things I need to get done for that day, things that I might be able to get away with not getting done I'll have that on my list. So, as long as I'm going through that list and I've cut off most distractions, then I'm pretty much good.
Diane Laidlaw: The problem lies in when to stop actually, that was my biggest problem was, "Right, now it's five o'clock or now it's six o'clock. Stop." For while I didn't do that. Sometimes I would carry the work in into the night because I was so amped and excited about what I was doing. But now it's pretty much I have a time and that's it, I'm not working anymore after that time. If I am working then it's probably just to sketch out what I've got to do tomorrow. But in terms of trying to balance out that, "Right, I've stopped working. Now it's family time. Now I need to wash the dishes. Now I need to Hoover. Now I need to check the post. Now I need to do these other things." Yeah, I've had to incorporate that because those type of things, I would leave it to the wayside and just be work, work, work, work, work.
Steve Folland: How about the weekend?
Diane Laidlaw: Weekend would be the same thing, it would be like, "Oh, it's Saturday, now I can work and not have to talk to clients at all." That's basically-
Steve Folland: So do you work on a Saturday?
Diane Laidlaw: Not anymore, no.
Steve Folland: How did you get out of doing that?
Diane Laidlaw: I think it's just trying to understand what is important. My son's nine now and you could spend so much of your time working as a freelancer and being amped because it's your thing, it's your business, it's your dream, but the most important thing is also learning that you have to balance, it's not always about work. And I think for a while, as a single parent, I battered myself, I was like, "I'm sitting here and I'm in a room, the same room that I share with my son, but I'm not sitting and playing with him. I'm doing all this work for my clients. But at the end of the day, my clients are at home with their families and probably enjoying their time with their children or their partners."
Diane Laidlaw: So I had to be patient with myself and not batter myself anymore about it and just make little moves every day and just say, "Right, I'm going to stop work at this time. I'm going to dedicate myself to doing this and not be so focused on the one thing." Other people who are listening also may have ADHD, which makes it a little bit worse because with ADHD you've got this thing called hyperfocus, which is as much as people say ADHD is where you can't focus, there's a part of you which can hyperfocus, which means you stay focused on something for so long that you find it hard to break away. And I notice that with me have ADHD, I was getting into these hyperfocus stages for way too long. So I had to ease myself out of it and find other things, which could also give me the same type of joy outside of sitting and doing computer work or works for my clients. So it's not been easy, but it's just been something that I just had to tell myself that there's more important things than HTML and CSS.
Steve Folland: Obviously you... I don't know, I don't want to say you started by accident.
Diane Laidlaw: I did.
Steve Folland: You were self-taught, therefore you weren't part of a community of web designers, for example.
Diane Laidlaw: Yeah, that's right.
Steve Folland: But have you become part of any since?
Diane Laidlaw: Yes, for sure. So, on Facebook I'm a part of quite a few Facebook groups. They've got meetups and stuff, which they do in London. I might go to a few, not that many, because obviously I've got my little one. But yeah, it's quite lonesome when you're working from home, so it is important, even if you're not meeting up with people who are in the same job as you, it is important to meet up with other freelancers because it does get a bit... I haven't spoken to an adult properly in a couple of days. There is this cabin fever thing that goes on where you're not even sure if you can hold a proper conversation anymore with an adult. So, getting out and mixing with the freelance community in general I think is quite important.
Diane Laidlaw: My friend actually, she runs a Christmas freelancers event. Every Christmas she gets as many freelancers as she could, because we don't have office parties, so she gets all the freelancers to come and we all have a drink and a party at this place in East London, which is quite cool. But in general I think that freelancers need to be in the community because it does get really lonesome, especially if you're working from home.
Steve Folland: And have you had any business help or mentors?
Diane Laidlaw: I've had bits and pieces from different people. I listen to a lot of audiobooks, I watch a lot of stuff on YouTube, and in some ways I'm being mentored by these people, even though they're just things that I'm watching on YouTube. But also just in general in life, when you do freelance you do realize that some things, for instance, where I was charging a very low amount in the beginning parts of my career, I had to come to a realization about how I was treating my business and how I was treating myself and I had to get over myself, so to speak, in order for me to start charging rates, which I was happy with.
Diane Laidlaw: And I did speak to a mentor actually about that and she basically just gave me a timeframe, she was like, "Just give yourself 12 weeks. Put your rates up to this amount of money. Give yourself 12 weeks and see what happens in those 12 weeks." And whereas before I might have had that thought, but I didn't have anybody to bounce that thought off. I may have thought that, but not have done it. But now I had somebody who was there telling me to do it and she was actually checking in on me, it helped me get to where I needed to go and have the confidence to say, "Well, actually I can put my rates up and it's not going to be detrimental. People are going to pay me my rates because they believe that that's an okay rate to pay you." I had to get over that. So, the mentoring that I have has been direct but also indirect and they've both worked.
Steve Folland: Now, if you could tell your younger self one thing about being freelance, what would that be?
Diane Laidlaw: The world is your oyster and learn to balance everything out, learn to balance your work, learn that there was life after work, don't always be on the grind. And it's also fine to have lots of interests in different things. This whole idea of you can only focus on one thing at a time, don't be... What's the saying? A master of...
Steve Folland: A jack of all trades.
Diane Laidlaw: A jack of all trades. There's more to actually that saying, a jack of all trades, that actually suggests that you can do loads of different things, but people only stick to one part of that, which has been a jack of all trades, a master of none, but there's actually more to it than that. And in my mind, I always thought that being a jack of all trades and a master of numbers was a bad thing, but actually you can be a jack of all trades if you're really passionate about the stuff that you're doing. I wouldn't feel that concentrating on one thing is the be-all and end-all, and that's what I would tell my younger self.
Steve Folland: I meant to say actually, so before you had your son, what did you do for living then?
Diane Laidlaw: Oh my gosh. I did everything that I didn't want to do. I really didn't know for a long time what I wanted to do. So I was doing lots of customer services jobs and then I was working for Newham Council for a while. And then after I got made redundant from that job, which was in 2008, I was like, "That's it, I'm not working for anybody ever again. I'm done." So I actually started working on a radio station and I was deejaying on this radio station and they really liked me there. So they were like, "Could you help out the other DJs there?" I stayed there until I got pregnant and then when I got pregnant and I was at home, I was like, "Right, what else can I do?" I really didn't know what it is that I wanted to do until I started doing what I'm doing now, and now I'm like, "Wow, if I had all the money in the world, if I won the lottery, I still would want to do this." That's why I know that I'm on the right track. Yeah, I really love what I do.
Steve Folland: Diane, thank you so much and all the best being freelance.
Diane Laidlaw: Thank you for having me. Thank you.