Building a business on reputation - Digital Marketing Consultant Paul Sutton
Paul finally took the plunge and went freelance five years ago, with a solid 18-month gig lined up but no savings. With a young family to think about, it was a big decision.
These days, alongside his consultancy work, Paul produces a weekly podcast, runs an annual conference and hosts a Slack group. He talks to Steve about how each drives new business for him and how he manages his time with so much going on.
This is Paul’s second time around in business. The first left him with a sense that no matter what happens, everything will be okay. Tune in to hear what he’s learning this time around.
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Transcript of the Being Freelance podcast with Digital Marketing Consultant Paul Sutton and Steve Folland
Steve Folland: Paul, who is a freelance digital marketing consultant. Hey Paul!
Paul Sutton: Hello. Hello, thanks for having me.
Steve Folland: Thanks for doing it. So how about we get started hearing how you got started being freelance?
Paul Sutton: Yeah, so I started off as a consultant about five years ago now. I had been thinking of going that route for probably two or three years before that for various reasons. It just occurred to me at the time that with what I do, which is digital marketing consultancy, there was an increasing demand for people with specialist knowledge around agencies and brands that I was working with, and it just had been on my mind. Like I say, for two or three years, literally, but I never had the courage to take that actual step and do it. Probably because they've got family and as you yourself know, and as everyone else listening to this will know, it's a big step not to have that security of a salary coming in.
Paul Sutton: But eventually, I just thought it's either now or never. Talked to my wife about it and what the implications might be. It's so happened that I managed to get a gig that was kind of regular, a monthly gig sort of sorted and that gave me the confidence just to take the step. And that really helped me in my first probably 18 months because I always had that there just to cover things if I hadn't got any work.
Steve Folland: So you had a regular client. Did you put anything else in place? Did you have any savings or?
Paul Sutton: Not to speak of, no. And I know that's terrible advice to give anyone because everyone says you should have what, three or six months savings or whatever. I didn't really have much to speak of, but I did have this one regular client that I knew was going to be 18 months or so. Like I said, it was an ongoing thing really. And well, this is one of the benefits of freelancing is that I could earn from that one client effectively what I was earning from my salary job or not far off it anyway. So I had a sense of security that even if I never got any other work, I'd just about be okay.
Steve Folland: Yeah. And so how did you go about finding your other clients?
Paul Sutton: Yeah, I mean the first probably two years worth of client work that I ever did came off the back of my network, my social network and what I'd been doing for the last 10 years, probably. Now, I'd been blogging for a close on five to 10 years, something like that ahead of going freelance. I'd built up a very strong network on Twitter specifically, but through social media and LinkedIn and stuff. And I just knew quite a lot of people in the PR industry. And obviously when I went freelance, I made a bit of a noise about it and let people know and it was just that. I don't think for the first two years I did any form of active marketing.
Paul Sutton: It all just came to me, which is a pretty fortunate situation to be in.
Steve Folland: You say that, but did you continue blogging as you had been?
Paul Sutton: Yeah, yeah. I suppose, yes you can consider that. So I did continue blogging. I did keep my Twitter net going and my LinkedIn network. So I was doing all the same things that I had been for the previous five or 10 years, but I didn't add anything to that.
Steve Folland: You'd spent '80s basically positioning yourself as an expert and getting your personality across.
Paul Sutton: Yeah. Yeah. Effectively, because even in my jobs before that, which was within agencies, that was part of what I did. It was part of profile building. So I'd spent, like you say, five years building my profile with the industry, doing speaking gigs, all sorts of stuff. Contributing to other people's blogs and industry magazines and everything I could think of. When I did it, I had no intention of setting up by myself or doing anything with that. It was just part of what I did, but obviously it paid massive dividends when I did decide to set up on myself.
Steve Folland: What did you find most challenging when you started out?
Paul Sutton: To be honest, it's the thing that I still find the most challenging, which is the fact that you're only one person. And by that, I don't mean necessarily in terms of the amount of paid work that I do because I am generally quite careful to manage that so I don't overload myself. But I mean in terms of other things. So yes, I have clients and I do paid work for that, but I also run a conference once a year. I have a podcast, which I do in sort of weekly. I run a Slack group for people, I've got all the social media stuff. And then you've got the business things like invoicing and all the rest of it.
Paul Sutton: And I think the biggest challenge of being freelance is balancing all that out and making time for everything because if I go through a particularly busy spell with work, for example, this happened back end of last year, absolutely snowed under. And so the things that get dropped to things like the Slack group and I'm not on social media anymore, and on the podcast suffers and it's that side of things. It's getting that balance right, I think.
Steve Folland: Wow. There's a lot in there though. So you mentioned a podcast, a Slack group for conference. Well, which came first actually? Let's start with whichever came first.
Paul Sutton: Yeah, so I know this is quite unusual, but the conference came before the podcast. Most people I've spoken to sort of start a podcast and then a conference falls out the back of it. I ran a conference first three years ago, which was all around bringing people I know, topic experts in for a day. Lots of different topics, standards sort of conference, but in a different sort of style. It was very discussion-based, to put it that way. And then I had people saying to me, again, for like two years, "You should start a podcast." And I hadn't done it because I guess I didn't know what was involved. Before you start it, you're not really sure what equipment you need, how to edit things, everything that goes into it.
Paul Sutton: But yeah, so after a while of being badgered, I just decided, okay, I want to learn this, so let's give that a try. And I started my podcast two years ago now. But yeah, it was after the conference gave me the confidence maybe to do that.
Steve Folland: So what was the thinking behind the conference? Who is the audience? Are they your potential clients or your peers?
Paul Sutton: My potential clients, absolutely. I mean, it's partly peers, but it's mostly clients. As I said, I'm a digital marketing consultant and I work with different agencies, PR agencies, marketing agencies, and also direct to brands as well. So the people the conference is for are people who in theory at least would employ me. So you can view it in a way as part of a sort of a marketing tactic from me. I don't make a hell of a lot of money off it, but it's fantastic for what we've talked about. For reputation and getting your name known as long as you can produce a good quality product, which is the really important thing.
Paul Sutton: There's too many conferences out there that are just substandard and I wanted to do something a bit different that would benefit me.
Steve Folland: So how did you find that? Going into that? So how many have you done now?
Paul Sutton: I've done three now, yeah.
Steve Folland: Okay. So that first one, in particular, how did that feel going into it and how long did it take? How big was it? There are so many questions popping into my head.
Paul Sutton: Yeah. So it was four. I limited the number of attendees to a, I think it was always either 50 or 60. I didn't want to produce something massive where everyone was in an auditorium blankly staring at people on a stage for six hours. I hate those things. So I wanted to make something a lot more personal, something where people can ask questions and get involved. So I limited it to sort of 50, 60 people. The amount of work that goes into it, you would not believe actually. And again, being one person doing this. So it's not just the logistical things like the venue and I don't know, organizing lunch and ticketing and all that sort of stuff.
Paul Sutton: It's the amount of time you spend coming up with an agenda, getting people involved in it, speakers and panelists and things. Getting presentations for them, formatting the day. There is so much that goes into a conference, you would not believe. But out the back of it, the feeling you get from having done it and having done it well is immense. It's incredible. And to get the sort of feedback that I had after that first one and I've had since just makes you want to do it again. You might not want to do it again straight away, but you want to do it again.
Steve Folland: How long would you say it takes you? How much of a, not time suck, but commitment, is it?
Paul Sutton: Do you know what? I have never sat down and worked out how much time goes into doing it and I'm never going to because if I then try and equate that to the amount of money I make off it, I would never do it again. But I mean, I start planning for it three to four months out from the day itself. And then I don't know, it's ongoing from there. Even to the point of marketing a conference is quite hard work because it's not simply a case of, I don't know, shoving out an email to your email list and putting it on social a couple of times and tickets go. That in itself, selling tickets, is really nerve-wracking. It's quite stressful because nowadays, people don't buy things until three weeks before they're going to them just in case something comes up.
Paul Sutton: So it does take an awful lot of time. But I daren't even give you a figure for how many hours goes into that thing.
Steve Folland: So client work-wise, do you deliberately quiet things down when it is heading towards conference time?
Paul Sutton: Do I? Not deliberately, no. My conference is normally in May, and there are reasons for that because again, in my specific industry, there's a gap that sort of time of year. Thinking about it over the last three years I've done it, it's always fitted in okay. I can't say I ever turned a paid project down because of the conference. It would have to be something that was going to take a significant amount of my time in order for me to say I can't do it. But again, going back to that whole balance thing, it's a time of year where I have to be very aware of what I've got on and when it needs doing, and I have to plan very carefully around that.
Steve Folland: Okay. So off the back of the conference came the podcast. What's the podcast called?
Paul Sutton: So the podcast is called Digital Download.
Steve Folland: What's I guess, the format of that? If people are going to tune in, what's that? Conversation between you and somebody in the industry?
Paul Sutton: Yes. I mean, it's very similar to this. I talk to people who are quite senior in my industry and not just from the UK, but from... I mean, I've interviewed people from America, Australia, all over the place basically. And that is a result instantly of having that network that I've talked about. The ability to tap into people who I may not know well, but know a little bit, and they're quite happy to come on and talk to me. But the format is, yeah, it's interview-based. I talk to people once a week about some major issue in the industry, whether it's technology or I don't know, mental health or data privacy or strategies. There's all sorts of stuff recover.
Steve Folland: So other than that initial, I don't know how the hell to do a podcast, how have you found doing a podcast - what difference has it made?
Paul Sutton: I love it. I really love it. We talked about marketing, it's now my prime form of marketing, I would say. I really enjoy sitting down once every couple of weeks and talking to someone for sort of half an hour about something that has been on my mind and on the mind of the industry. And I don't know how you find it, but I find it really helps me think about stuff in more detail. The whole process of producing a podcast, again, it can be quite intensive in time-wise. If you're not careful, you can spend a lot of time doing it, but the benefits of doing it for me are huge.
Steve Folland: And then you have the Slack group.
Paul Sutton: Yeah.
Steve Folland: So again, the same audience. Potential client.
Paul Sutton: Yes, absolutely. So that runs across the conference, the podcast, the Slack group, everything is sort of there for a reason. And the Slack group, which again is called Digital Download, it's all branded the same, is there to take those sorts of conversations that I have on a one person level in the podcast out into a group format, if you like. So within that, I mean, I try and post every day as much as I can with the latest news that I'm seeing around the industry. Things that people might want to know about, case studies. I don't know, whatever I see that I think I might be interested with the intention of just keeping people informed and allowing them to have discussions around that stuff.
Steve Folland: Do any of your clients, as in new client, mention any of this stuff-
Paul Sutton: Yeah, they do.
Steve Folland: ... and the approach you?
Paul Sutton: Absolutely. I can say with certainty that the conference has led to consultancy work because I've been approached afterwards by someone who's come along, and that's happened more than once. The podcast itself, again, putting a monetary value against the business I've got as a result of the podcast is difficult, but it would be in the tens of thousands of pounds of business that I've had as a result of podcasting consistency for the last two years.
Steve Folland: When it comes to the podcast, I mean you said it's weekly.
Paul Sutton: Yeah.
Steve Folland: How are you fitting everything in? I mean, you touched on the fact that actually if it comes to it, some things get dropped.
Paul Sutton: Yeah.
Steve Folland: But how do you manage your time?
Paul Sutton: I guess it's just being fairly disciplined. I mean, off those things that we've talked about, the Slack group doesn't take long in any given day. I spend maybe half an hour a day every single day when I get to my desk, just reading up on the latest industry news anyway. That's part of what I need to do to do my job, so therefore it doesn't take me that long then to put the most valuable stuff that I read into that Slack group and to, for example, posts and stuff to social media. That doesn't take too long. The conference itself is an intense sort of two or three months and like I said, I have to be very planned during that time.
Paul Sutton: The podcast is the one that interferes the most, if that's the right word to use because it is regular. And the way I've taken to doing it, although I'm now thinking of changing this, is that I've done a season of sort of 10 or 11 episodes and I'll record the interviews in a batch. Say I've got a quiet week, I'll try and record as many interviews as I can in that week, which therefore gives me a bit of breathing space to be able to edit and get an episode out sort of once a week over the next three months. So I try working intelligently around it. It's not always easy and I do sometimes run into problems where I've got... I don't know.
Paul Sutton: Let's say I've run out of interviews and I'm supposed to have a podcast out next week, and now that leaves me having to record and to edit and get that out in a week when I've got client work to do. So it's not always easy, but I just try and be a bit planned with it.
Steve Folland: You mentioned that the end of last year, you had a lot going on.
Paul Sutton: Yeah.
Steve Folland: Do you ever feel like all of the plates are spinning out of control?
Paul Sutton: Yes. Well, yes. At the end of last year particularly. Like I said, I've been a consultant for five years now and I've never got to the stage I did at the end of last year, which it started probably back maybe August, September time. I started getting busy and I took on a couple of big projects. And I suppose over the course of the next sort of two to three months, in combination with some personal stuff as well, a family member died, which is obviously very stressful in itself. And trying to deal with that and look after the family and my wife and do all of this work at the same time, just got too much. And I mean, I suffer from depression.
Paul Sutton: I've never hidden that fact and I just went through a stage of burnout. So sort of October, November last year was really tough and I started to get sort of physical and emotional, symptoms of burnout, which is not nice by any stretch of the imagination.
Steve Folland: How did you deal with that?
Paul Sutton: It was difficult at the time. I mean, as I said, I've suffered from depression for... Well, diagnosed for sort of 15 years. It's a long time, so I know when to spot how I'm getting into that sort of frame of mind. In this case, I could feel it happening. I knew it was happening. I had no choice but to carry on to do the projects that I was working on. But because of the time of year, I then said, okay, well I am going to take a complete break or as much of break as I can in December. So I set myself a deadline. I didn't take on any new work as of, I don't know when it was, October, November, and I just said to people, "I can't do it this side of Christmas. If you still want some help in the new year, then absolutely let's talk."
Paul Sutton: But I didn't take it on your work. And yeah, I just took the best part of three to four weeks off over Christmas. Didn't even look at anything work. Not just clients, but podcasts, Slack group, social media, just didn't look at any of it. And that was so, so valuable. It really did. I came back in the new year then feeling refreshed and able to get back into things again.
Steve Folland: I'm so glad it worked. Do you then also sit there and think, how can I avoid that happening again?
Paul Sutton: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I don't want to be getting into that state again. I just don't. I think one of the contributing factors... I think there were several, but one of them was the fact that I hadn't had a proper holiday for 18 months. So I'd had days off and stuff as you do when you're a freelancer. You can take a day off whenever you like, really. But I hadn't had like a two week holiday for 18 months. And what that kind of taught me was how important it is to get a proper break and just get away from everything. Because even within a week in December of just dropping everything and spending time with the kids and doing whatever, I started to feel better.
Paul Sutton: So I just think it's a really valuable lesson. Sometimes as a freelancer, you do get busy and things do go ups and downs, but building in time to have a proper break is so important. It really is.
Steve Folland: How about the way you work? You work from home or do you often go into people's workplaces?
Paul Sutton: No, I'm someone who likes to work from home. My dining room table, which is where I've taken to work because I've got a nice view out the window. My wife will be around sometimes. The only time it's difficult is sort of 3:30 onwards when the kids come home. But it's just something I prefer doing is being at home by myself. I get far more done.
Steve Folland: How old are your kids?
Paul Sutton: They are 10, seven and six.
Steve Folland: Crikey.
Paul Sutton: Yep.
Steve Folland: So what happens when it comes to half three? Is that the end of your work day then or do you just hide in the loft?
Paul Sutton: It depends what I've got on actually. I know people work better at different times of day. I'm someone who works better in the morning, so I will sit down and start working sort of half eight as soon as the kids have got off to school, and I tend to have done everything that I need to do for that day by the time they come home. So if they are being a bit noisy or whatever, then I don't find it too stressful. If I am really busy and I need the extra time, then yes, I go upstairs and work in our little spare room. But for me, that works best for me.
Steve Folland: So you obviously had a lot of experience in what you were doing. Had you picked up from being in agency life the other side of it, of actually running a business?
Paul Sutton: I have actually run a business before. Going back about 12 or 13 years now, I ran an eCommerce company selling of all things luxury pet goods, which is a bit bizarre because I had no background in the pet industry or anything, but it was something my wife was very interested in and we researched it and wrote a business plan and everything and anyway, started this eCommerce company. And I ran that for three years. The unfortunate thing was we launched it the year before the credit crunch hit, so of all the bad timing, that was just about it. So we kept that running for three years, but it was just not making the sort of money that we wanted or needed.
Paul Sutton: So I ended up going back into agency life. But I mean, I learned a lot from doing that. Although you can look back and go, well, maybe I shouldn't have done it, I learned so much from running that business that I use now.
Steve Folland: What did you take away from it other than maybe a stockpile of velvet colors?
Paul Sutton: Yeah. I guess I took away a sense of everything will be all right, which I know that sounds a bit odd, but it's a case of... Things happen, right? You can do your best, but things external to you will happen, whether it is a massive global recession or whether it's, I don't know, a client not paying you all time, or it could be anything. But shit happens basically, and in any of those cases, things will be okay. It was a tough time for us when we had to close that down and I went back to working in an agency because it felt like we failed and that's not an easy thing to get over necessarily.
Paul Sutton: But having been through that, you learn a lot just from that itself, I think.
Steve Folland: So there's obviously an entrepreneurial thing inside you, right?
Paul Sutton: I guess so. I mean, it's funny. I've never thought of myself as an entrepreneur, but I guess I am now on my second business. So maybe, yeah.
Steve Folland: But not just your second business, but also... For example, not just the work, but the risk being involved in putting on a conference, that's not just the norm of selling your consultancy, that's somebody who is relishing a challenge and I don't know, he's seeing something in a different way, I think.
Paul Sutton: Maybe. Maybe you're right. I don't know. Like I said, I've never really thought of it like that, but you're right when it comes to a conference. There is a lot of risk involved in it and it's not just a financial thing either in terms of, okay, well I've got to shell out however much to put this thing on and if I don't sell enough tickets, I'm going to lose money. It's not even just that. For me, the risk in that is doing something that is not up to par or that people don't like. And I guess for me and my business, my whole business is built on my reputation. If my reputation goes down the pan, so does my business. That's the way I see it. So yeah, there is a risky element to that, you're right.
Steve Folland: Are you someone who sort of looks longterm and has goals ahead of you or do you just see what comes your way?
Paul Sutton: I have tried looking longterm, but in fact, even about... Two years ago, I set out a plan at the start of the year, which was based upon the fact that in the previous year, I'd run this conference and I'd run a lot of sort of mini-conference workshops off the back of it because I was getting approached saying, could you do a specific day on this topic and that topic? And so I did a lot of that stuff and I love doing conferences and workshops and speaking to people. It's just something that really gives me a buzz. And so I set out this plan to, this would have been 2018, to do a whole load more of this stuff.
Paul Sutton: I was going to do sort of two or three day long workshops every single month, all year round sort of building on this conference theme. And I planned this all out and it just didn't work for whatever reason. I think it's partly that thing of trying to sell tickets is just a constant stress. And 2018 was a bad year for my business because I'd kind of got sidetracked into this thing that I thought was going to be great but didn't work. And because of that, the consultancy side of things had fallen by the wayside. So when it came to 2019, I just thought, you know what? I'm just going to go with whatever comes and take it easy and go with the flow.
Paul Sutton: And last year was my best business year by a very, very long margin, and that's despite what's happening in the economy and stuff. So I've got to come round now having run this business for five years to thinking for me personally, and I know it's not for everyone, but for me personally, not having a plan is almost as good as having a plan, if that makes sense.
Steve Folland: Now if you could tell your younger self one thing about being freelance, what would that be?
Paul Sutton: Do you know what? I would tell myself just to trust your instincts and not to pay too much attention to what other people do and the way they do things and go with what feels right. Trust your gut. And I apply that even to myself in the last, I suppose a year. I said in 2018 on a bad year, I was looking around at other people, other consultants and thinking, why are they doing what? At the time, there was this thing about everyone had to be on Instagram and that's how you sell business. And I know people who would say they did, but I tried it. It didn't work for me. And I just think that was going against my instinct, which said, this isn't going to work.
Paul Sutton: So if I was to tell myself one thing, it would just be to go with your gut. Trust yourself.
Steve Folland: Paul, thank you so much. All the best being freelance.
Paul Sutton: Thanks so much for having me.