Don't stop believing - Podcast Producer Vic Turnbull
About this episode…
Don’t stop believing - Podcast Producer Vic Turnbull
Her background is in marketing and fundraising but Vic knows that she was born to be a radio superstar. She stopped working for “the man” in 2017, after redundancy and a particularly bad interview left her ready to set out on her own.
Today she’s using her audio production skills to help organisations that do good. Vic’s set-up her business as a social enterprise, which means that the profits she generates go back into the pot to help her achieve her social mission. Listen to the episode for the full story.
Read highlights from the episode in the next tab.
What Is a social enterprise?
“It means that I've got a social mission. And that social mission is to amplify under-represented voices in podcasts. And to help people anywhere, wherever they are, to tell their story through high-quality audio.”
But if it’s a social enterprise, how does Vic make money?
“There has to be some money made that helps the running of it. It will always pay me. It has to pay me. But the profit that it makes goes back into the company to help achieve the social mission.
"Having that social mission and being a social enterprise has enabled me to go onto programmes such as The School for Social Entrepreneurs start-up programme, and be involved in an ethical enterprises network in Manchester. It's been really great to have those support networks.”
Becoming “That Podcast Lass”
Vic landed one of her first clients, who she still works with today, after leaving a job interview that went badly. On the train on the way home, she tweeted: “Right, I can do audio, I’ve got my own podcast, and I definitely don’t want to work for someone else again. I’m just putting that out there.”
Someone who Vic admired greatly got in touch and it went from there.
“I put myself in the place to be known as “That Podcast Lass”. Posting stuff that was helpful and made people know that I was podcasting now, and sending out updates to my networks and decorating my socials and my websites. I wanted people to get to where they saw me and thought of podcasts.”
Working too bloody hard
As a self-confessed work-a-holic, Vic tries to stick to a routine.
“When I was in my twenties, I had this amazing job. It was dead good but I worked my absolute arse off. I'd be working from 8.30 in the morning until 9.00 at night most nights. And it just broke my little head.
“So I do take a lot of lessons from those days, in that I need to not do as much. I typically try and be at my desk at 9.00 in the morning and finish at 6.30 in the evening.”
To stay organised, Vic relies on her calendar.
“My to-do list is on my calendar. I don't have any notebooks or Trello or anything. It's all calendar based. And I made that decision to get rid of notebooks a couple of years ago because I was stacking to-do lists. I consolidated everything and popped it all on a calendar. And for the minute the calendar thing is working.”
Don’t stop believing.
“It's going to take a while to get there, but keep doing it. What you're doing now you're doing for a reason.”
Vic Turnbull, Podcast Producer
More from Vic Turnbull
Transcript of the Being Freelance podcast with Steve Folland and freelance podcast producer Vic Turnbull
Steve Folland: How about we get started hearing how you got started being freelance?
Vic Turnbull: So I'm going to start in a place where I don't usually start my career journey. I'm going to start at the place where I was like, 'I want to be a freelance'. So, so it was 2017. It was summer. I was in Manchester and I was working as a marketing and fundraising manager for a national youth charity sitting on their senior leadership board. And during that year, I'd got in my head that I wanted to work for myself. I've done working for the man or woman, I've been doing it for quite a while. By then 11 years,. And in that year I thought, right, I want to start being my own cheerleader. It was very hard for me to talk about my own achievements and recognize that I'd done some good in the world.
Vic Turnbull: So I started to nominate myself for awards, which was a big step. And so that was the beginning of year - I got in the final for a thing called Northern Power Women. It was on their future lists. Their 'one to watch' list. And at the time at the charity I was working for, I just wasn't happy anymore. I didn't care enough. Like, I cared about the cause, but didn't care enough of what was going on internally. I didn't want to get involved in any politics. It's not worth my energy. I don't care enough. I just didn't want to be waking up every morning and fighting the good fight because I didn't care enough about, not the cause, but the politics and stuff like that. So I wasn't very happy.
Vic Turnbull: And the final straw came when I had a meeting with a partner in a public building in Manchester and they started shouting at me and I started crying and I'm not a crying person. I can't remember the last time I cried. I was like, do you know what? I don't come to work every morning to get shouted at and for me to burst into tears. So the day after, I had my resignation letter in hand, the same day, my CEO was up from London to talk to me about various stuff that was going on in the charity, a great charity, by the way, I'm not bad-mouthing, they were bloody brilliant. And she said, we're going to have to let you go. We're gonna have to make you redundant. And I was like, Oh - I hid the letter behind my back...
Vic Turnbull: And I was like, 'that is... Oh, I'm upset.' So instead of me handing in my notice and not getting paid for three months, my three months notice period from September to December, I was getting paid for it. And it gave me time to reflect and think about what I was going to do next. Around the same time my housemate said, 'I'm going to move to London'. I was like, Oh great. I'm being made redundant, I'm gonna have to find a new house. And I've just acquired a cat.
Steve Folland: They're really testing what it takes to make you cry.
Vic Turnbull: I know - I should have been more phased by it. People go, 'what are you gonna do Vic when you've left your job?' and I was like, I have no idea. I'm going to move to a town I don't know, into a little house on my own. I've never lived on my own before and I'm just going to do it. So I started meeting people in my network who were on their own and asked them how they did it. And I was finding out stuff and letting people know that I was on my own as well.
Steve Folland: So when you say 'on your own', as in, that you were
Vic Turnbull: Going freelance. Self-employed. I still had no idea what I wanted to do. Literally. No idea.
Steve Folland: What would you have called yourself then?
Vic Turnbull: The idea in my head was that I was going to be a fundraising person, a freelance fundraiser for not-for-profits because that's what I'd known for the past two years. I got myself a mentor from a group I was involved with that supported women in social enterprise. I went to a mentor-a-thon of those, they're called Flourish CIC and a mentor-a-thon is like a speed mentoring session. And they were talking to me, they're like, so what are you thinking of doing? I was like, you know, I love audio. It's been my passion since I was a baby. Like to be the next radio superstar, I love music. And I want to pursue that. That's all I've ever wanted to be radio superstar, but somehow fell into charity. And they were like, well, why don't you do like radio or podcasts for charities? And I was like, Nah, nah, I don't want to do that.
Vic Turnbull: I left the job and it was January, 2018. And I had all these business model canvases in front of me, sketching out what I thought I wanted to do and go through all these iterations of what my business could look like. So I literally started from nothing. I didn't know what I wanted to do. And I started applying for jobs 'cause I was like, Oh I'm not getting any clients 'cause I don't know what to do. So I was slipping back into applying for jobs and I didn't get any of them. The last job interview I had was this really like,... It made me feel a bit weird. Have you ever had weird job interviews? You feel like you feel a bit weird afterwards?
Steve Folland: What did they do?!
Vic Turnbull: So it was the second interview I had, I got called back for another one and I didn't drive at the time. I live in Manchester and the interview was up in Lancashire but in this conference hotel centre on the side of a motorway and it took me ages to get there and the train was late and I was out of breath when I got there - they're all just sort of staring at me really weirdly. And I did what I had to do - a little presentation. And at the end they were like, Oh, you're a bit nervous. And I thought, of course I'm bloody nervous - this is a job interview! And I didn't get it. And on the train home, I thought, Oh, it was a bit weird that they're all a bit funny. And I don't want to put myself through all this for... I don't want a job.
Vic Turnbull: I want to work on my own. So on the train home on Twitter, I put 'right, I can do audio, I've got my own podcast, which I'll talk about in a sec. And I definitely don't wanna work for anyone again, I'm just putting it out there'. And a girl who I quite admired in the radio industry saw that tweet - Kate Cocker. And she said, you're not doing anything at the minute? Do you want to help me out doing some social media stuff and helping me grow my brand basically online? I was like, Oh, I'd bloody love to do that. I love you so much. So I met her, I met her for a wine and started working for her. Then my second freelance job was to start doing social media for her audio coaching company. And to be able to work with her and learn some of the ropes and learn some people in the industry and what was going down. And I'm sure loads of people on the podcast have said, it's one of those moments that changes things - that tweet and that awful interview on the side of a motorway was one of those things that changed things
Steve Folland: Because you put it out into the world, what you wanted to do, but also you knew you never wanted to be back doing that interview again.
Vic Turnbull: No, and I never wanted to be back crying in the middle of Manchester Library and I had a cat to provide for as well now don't forget. So I was still marketing myself as this fundraiser marketer, and I had no passion in fundraising. Like I still do little odds and sods if people want me to do stuff. So by the end of 2018, I had three clients and I was like, god, this is going so slow. Why's it going so slow for me?
Steve Folland: And those three clients were all audio or...?
Vic Turnbull: No. So Kate was marketing and little bits of audio and another client was fundraising. So by the end of 2018, I remembered that mentor-a-thon conversation when someone went, well, why don't you just put your love for charities and not-for-profits together with your love for audio? And I was like, Oh, it makes sense now. So the beginning of 2019, I was like, right, I'm making podcasts for a living now. That's all I'm going to do. I'm going to makes podcasts for a living and it's going to be for the social good impact sector and value-led organizations. And I just did it. And I was just like, that's what I'm doing now. And I didn't plan it. And I didn't look at any business models or any business plans or anything. I just was like, I'm doing it now, which is unlike me. Oh, I'm such a, I'm a little planner. Like I'm an anal planner. At the beginning of 2019 I was like, this is now or never - I'm going to do it. And so that was the start of my podcast producing-ness.
Steve Folland: Wow. Okay. Now my gut instinct is to say, okay, so how did you go about doing that? But I just want to back up slightly, because you did say that you had a podcast.
Vic Turnbull: Yeah. So I launched my own podcast in 2018. So my first year of freelancing.
Steve Folland: And what was that podcast?
Vic Turnbull: The podcast is, I've still got it, but I'm too busy making other people's to keep it updated. So it's called Tourist Podcast and it's a travel podcast where your tour guides are standup comedians.
Steve Folland: So it wasn't like it was a podcast aimed at the charity sector or aimed at getting you clients. It was just something you liked the idea of doing.
Vic Turnbull: Right.
Steve Folland: Let's go back to it then. So you've decided, right. I am now calling myself a freelance podcast producer. What did you do?
Vic Turnbull: So like any good freelancer, I built a website, another one. So I'd already built the year before, I built my own personal branding Vic Elizabeth Turnbull website. So then the beginning of 2019, I thought of a name. So it's MIC Media - mic short for microphone - built a website because I'm like the most bootstrapping person you'll ever meet. I'm like, I'll do it myself. It's fine. We could be quite detrimental, like, my own books?. I'll do it myself. Website? Do it myself. Marketing? Do it myself. So I built my own website and was just going to the networking events that I go to in Manchester and from the networks I've built up over the years. And I went to the unveiling of the Emmeline Pankhurst statue in Manchester and bumped into a woman who worked for Manchester city council doing a campaign called Strong Manchester Women, which happens every year around International Women's Day.
Vic Turnbull: And I was like, that's really interesting, have you thought about maybe doing a podcast alongside it? So a couple of months later she got in contact. She was like, do you know what? That sounds like a really good idea. Here's some money. Or I gave her a cost. So I was like, well, this is how much I think it will cost... completely undervalued, like every little inch of my being, but this was the first thing that I had costed in terms of like a podcast. And she was like, well that sounds great. So it was 14 episodes each telling the story of one of the strong Manchester women that Manchester city council had selected that year in 2019. And it was to release weekly as a legacy project for that amazing campaign. So that was my first podcast project - was with Manchester city council. And a year later I'd get nominated for a British Podcast Award for it, which was just like, even now, I'm just like, that is so like bloody amazing. It's the same year that you won...
Steve Folland: Oh, we won for the Doing It For The Kids podcast! Yeah. Oh, we would have been mingling at the awards if it weren't for pandemic.
Vic Turnbull: I was a tiny bit gutted because I wanted to like be at an awards ceremony.
Steve Folland: Right! So that was your first project?!
Vic Turnbull: Yeah. First podcast was for Manchester city council and got nominated for a British Podcast award, which was unbelievable. Literally. And I was working in Manchester Library down in like the bowels of the library is like my makeshift office and the studios that I was using were the free studios that - I don't know where you live, but in Manchester some of the banks have got podcast studios now. So I was like, Oh, can I, can I use your...? So it was all done very.... very bootstrappy again. So I then incorporated the company in 2019 as a social enterprise. So it's a profit for purpose podcast production company, which is quite a unique prospect as well.
Steve Folland: Explain it to me though. What does that mean?
Vic Turnbull: It means that I've got a social mission with MIC Media and the social mission is to amplify underrepresented voices in podcasts and to help people anywhere, whoever they are to tell their stories in high-quality audio.
Vic Turnbull: So that's my underlying social mission. And as I grow, it'll enable me to offer my services at a low cost or free for people that can't afford it or people that can't or organizations that can't afford podcast production or training or coaching as it is now. So that's what that means. And having that social mission and being a social enterprise has enabled me to go onto programs, such as a school for social entrepreneurs startup program, and be involved in a social enterprise, ethical enterprises network in Manchester as well. So it's been really great to have those support networks as well - being a part of a social enterprise. And I think from working in charities and having that background, I don't think I'd have it any other way, really. I think caring and giving and giving back - that is in my blood, in my DNA. So thinking about it now in hindsight - it just made sense then to have an audio podcast based social enterprise.
Steve Folland: Which is awesome. So that's... when you create it like as a limited company... You actually specify it's a different formation, is it? Or is it...
Vic Turnbull: No. So a social enterprise is not a legal structure. It's how you operate. But within my mems and articles, they're written so that they include charitable objectives and they're written so that it specifies where the profit goes. If you know what I mean? So the mems and articles are slightly different, but it's still a limited company.
Steve Folland: You know, people might be listening and thinking that's really bloody great, I like the idea of that, but obviously you still need to make a living. You still need to get paid. So is there a change in the governance of it or how much you can take or...?
Vic Turnbull: No, there isn't, there is a misconception, if it's a social enterprise or any sort of doing good organization that you don't make money because it's not for profit, but there has to be some money made that helps the running of it. It'll always pay me. It'll have to always pay me. I could never do it for nothing. So within that mems and articles, there is a clause as whereby it says that it always has to pay people that are trying to achieve that social mission if you know what I mean, but the profit that it makes goes back into the company to help achieve the social mission.
Steve Folland: Calling yourself that, or being that opens you up to the possibility of working in certain ways with certain people getting grants, getting on schemes and stuff like that.
Vic Turnbull: Yeah, it does. And so many social enterprises are solely grant funded. And I'd never want to go down that route. I always want to earn income. So I have had small bits of grant funding, but mostly to help grow the business. So through the Co-Op Foundation and through an organization called Luminate, I've had a bit of funding to help me like buy equipment or, I've had hot-desking space for 18 months given to me. So it's just, things have slotted in nicely.
Steve Folland: How do you know where those things are? To apply for?
Vic Turnbull: So I'm... I was going to say lucky, I'm not lucky, I've worked to it, but through the years I've been working in the third sector, I've built those networks. So I sort of know what's going on and I'd been dipping my toe into the social enterprise sector in Manchester during that year I was thinking of leaving my job. So I'd made some new buddies and contacts and they were talking about things that they were on. And I was like, Oh, I'd like to do that. So yeah, it was, it was a bit of networking - knowing what's out there.
Steve Folland: Okay. So how did it grow? How did it continue? How did you get those clients ultimately that you needed?
Vic Turnbull: I put myself in the place to become known as 'that podcast lass' posting stuff that was helpful and making people know that I was podcasting now and sending out updates to my networks and decorating my socials and my website. And you know, that thing, like brand association, when people see something more than once or twice or whatever, they're like, Oh! So I wanted to get people to recognize that when they saw Vic they'd go 'ah podcasting!' So that's what I was trying to do. I was trying to build that recognition that you'd see me. And you'd like, Oh, podcast - in a good way, not in like, Oh God here she is again wanging on about podcasts. But also putting myself in the space of where my target audience was. So this was like 2019. And I had got my coworking space, the Federation in Manchester and was networking with all those people there in the coworking space.
Vic Turnbull: So I've got some clients from there as well. Again, it was very much on the networks I'd already built up a level. And also this social media marketing level where I was getting my clients from. There were so many, like, so many scary bits that first year going, I've got no authority to do this. Why am I doing this? Who's gonna want to buy something off me that I've never done before? Well done previously before. So, you know, there was that trepidation as well in that first year, because I just started off from scratch, from nothing. It wasn't like I was taking anything from a previous role and going, okay, I'm doing this now, but on my own. So from going from three clients in my first year, I've got 26 clients at the end of 2019. And that was a mixture of podcast production, training - so workshops, and then also coaching. So doing like one-to-one podcast training with a lot of female entrepreneurs, and then that number then got repeat customers thereafter. So that was my first year. I was pretty chuffed by the end of last year, but it wasn't without this bloody challenges. It wasn't like, Oh, it was great. You know, I left my job and I started my own business. It's been so fricking hard, Steve.
Steve Folland: Yeah. You mentioned the fact that you were doing coaching, training is that because people came to you and asked you to do it, or you decided to put it out, like, how did that come about?
Vic Turnbull: So that's the training bit. The MIC Media offer will always be threefold. I figured out during this first year of operation, there was going to be production - so making it for people, making stuff for people. And showing people how to make their own. So in case they can't afford to do the whole shebang production, and that was split up into like workshops and coaching - especially for people like, 'I want to do it, I'd love to have a go at it on my own, but I'm too scared. And I don't know what, I don't know my mic from my mic stand, you know what I mean? And a lot of those people came from LinkedIn, which was surprising, but I realized that last year with the help of Manchester's business growth hub, who had got some support from that, I shouldn't be chasing or advertising for the coaching stuff as much because it's not quite... I don't say this in a really offensive way, but it's quite intensive income-wise - I'd need a lot of those jobs to match what I was getting for say, podcast production. So last year I stopped advertising the coaching.
Steve Folland: It didn't bring you enough money for the time that you were put into it.
Vic Turnbull: I need to change my priorities because even though in 2019, I had 26 clients, the income wasn't great. And around that time as well, I had savings - this is how I managed to leave redundancy without a plan. I'd had a, can I swear on here? I had what some people call a Fuck Off Fund. So from working my first as an intern, in the first charity I worked for - saving, so I had a good chunky amount that I had saved to do something, do some amazing travelling, but I used it instead to have a break, find my feet freelancing and start my own business. But that ran out 2019. So 2020 was the first year that all my income was mine. I had no savings or anything. And it was a hundred percent audio and yeah, that was a nice little feeling as well.
Steve Folland: So good. But how did you get around that thing? Like, did you start to charge more? How did you get your finances in a good place?
Vic Turnbull: Well, semi-good place Steve. I mean, I'm not there yet.
Steve Folland: But from that first project of clearly undervaluing yourself, it's 2020, and you've used up all your savings and you definitely need to make this work. How did you go about that?
Vic Turnbull: So I looked at my pricing and I still don't think it's right. So instead of me sticking finger in the air going...er..errr two grand? I did it on a.. I love a spreadsheet, right? So I've got this spreadsheet that I do it per hour. So this is the thing I'm looking at now is take my day rate and figuring out how long each bit is going to take me per hour. So that's where I am at the minute, but I know I need to develop that as well, because there's some things over the past, I'd say quarter that are quoted and it's been, I've looked at it and gone you idiot. Like you could have easily got more for that. I don't know if you've done it… when you press send on that quote and you're like, Oh, I wanna be sick?
Vic Turnbull: Like, they're gonna think I'm an idiot. They're gonna think I'm greedy. They're gonna think what you're doing charging this. And then you, you reflect on it. You go, I could have charged more. Literally these guys... Look at their website. I've done that recently. So I'm getting better at going, right, this is how much it is going to be. And it's only going for the high ticket sort of jobs and not only seeking these out, but making my marketing, my advertising appealable to those high tickety contracts and jobs, if you know what I mean?
Steve Folland: Right. How do you find balancing like those high ticket jobs with your social purpose?
Vic Turnbull: So I need to have the bigger jobs coming for me to be able to maybe do a job for 50 quid or so.
Steve Folland: Yeah. So you can't just be driven by good purpose because ultimately you need to live.
Vic Turnbull: Yes. But surprisingly, some of the value-led organizations that I work with have got budget. So for example, the Co-op - I did a podcast for those guys and some listener might be thinking, Oh, well, they don't match your social mission. But if you think of my mission as highlighting and amplifying underrepresented voices. Well, the podcast was an internal podcast to showcase stories of their employees. And I spoke to a funeral director down in the deepest, darkest Cornwall to talk about her achievements through the co-op and her apprenticeships and... And she would've never had that platform unless the podcast would have given her a voice. So I find it quite easy to not almost justify the social mission, but to achieve that social mission. From working with tiny domestic abuse survivors in Bolton to working with a big NGO, like Plan International, where I'm amplifying the voices of some amazing projects in Africa. So it's a whole spectrum of gorgeousness.
Steve Folland: So you called yourself MIC Media, but it's just you, right?
Vic Turnbull: It's just me for now. Yeah.
Steve Folland: So how have you gone about, cause you know, you wanted it to be that when people bumped into Vic or they saw Vic Turnbull, they'd go oh it's the podcast lass... But how do you find the balance of your own personal brand of Vic and MIC Media? Is it not an issue?
Vic Turnbull: So yeah, in some bits that is an issue. I want MIC Media to have the same tone as me. Like it's quite, non-formal, it's quite jovia. It's easy to get on with. It's quite Northern. It's quite honest. It's transparent. And MIC media was made on a whim like overnight, like I'm going to make a website and do it. There was no thought that went into it. So in some ways, MIC Media is me. God, that sounded, that sounded the most wanky thing I've ever said. So MIC Media is me, but a more toned down, watch your P's and Q's version of me, right? Which it gets a bit weird when you know, like you're on Twitter and you're talking as part of the company. Like 'we', 'we are so glad to have you...'. And it's just me talking.
Vic Turnbull: And I have had someone say to me recently, why did you do that? Why, why isn't MIC Media you? Why don't you have more of you on your website? I don't know why... I need to put more of me on my website. The idea is that it will become its own entity with its own team one day. I do work with a lovely marketing coordinator called Vicky. And I have got some help around some things I do as well. So the dream is to make that a property. And then that wouldn't be me. Then that would be MIC Media. And I would be the CEO and director, founder of MIC Media. So having it me at the minute and MIC Media is.. It's building the foundations.
Steve Folland: Nice. I was going to ask if you work with anyone else, because you were very much a to quote, "I'll do it myself".
Vic Turnbull: No, I am. It's terrible. Honestly. So the end of last year, so excited, I got a lawyer to make a contract and then I got an accountant to.... Let me rewind. So I incorporated MIC Media in June, 2019. I didn't put any money through it until June, 2020. Cause I was too scared. So I filed dormant accounts for it last year because I was a bit scared of like, like it was starting to get like big Boyness like putting money through it and having to do accounts for it. And yeah, it scared, it scared the shit out of me. So I just continue to do it through my self-employment.
Steve Folland: You would invoice people, not as MIC Media, but as Vic Turnbull.
Vic Turnbull: Yeah, because it scared the hell out of me.
Steve Folland: In what way does it scare you?
Vic Turnbull: I had to deal with paying myself and stuff and what if I didn't have enough money to pay myself and it just... honestly, and so I finally bit the bullet and start taking money through it in June and got an accountant who put me on all like the online systems and stuff and helped me figure out like PAYE and stuff. So the end of last year that got sorted. I was like, ah, I am grown up like, this is adult. I am serious now. Like when people say, Oh, I'll just go, I'll just get the lawyer to have a look at it. I'm like, I can say that now! It's brilliant.
Steve Folland: Do you wish you'd got an accountant sooner?
Vic Turnbull: No - I wouldn't have been able to afford it. So this is all happening because I'm now starting to be able to afford things. And that was one of the reasons why I hadn't done it as well. I wanted someone to sit there and explain it to me. So I'd just been doing everything through my self-employment sole trader QuickBooks and doing my own accounts and everything like that. So I'm now starting to leave that and navigate and migrate now to just doing things through the business. So another thing about me right, is that, um, I'm a bit of a worrier. So this is why I need things explained to me.
Steve Folland: Being a warrior can be a good thing though.
Vic Turnbull: Yeah. Yeah. I've lived with like really bad anxiety in the past. It got really bad towards when I was being made redundant. So navigating this whole business and self-employed thing while having massive anxiety has been a challenge as well, but Hey, we're getting there.
Steve Folland: What do you think has helped?
Vic Turnbull: Erm... Prescription medication that helped quite a lot and actually not being in employment helped so much with my anxiety. You wouldn't believe - even though it's been precarious and I've not had a regular income and you know, my mum's had to send me money to do the big shop. The cat's still on own-brand cat food. I'm happy. Like I'm happy. I'm content. And I'm back to being me. I often say that when I left that, and it wasn't their fault at all, I wasn't happy. I left the charity sector like Gollum. I was like hunched over - horrible cantankerous bitch. Like I hate everyone. Everyone can go to hell. And since working on my own and working with just me, I'm back to being me again, you know. I can get anxiety and it's, it's hard to do things sometimes, but I also think it's because I'm a bit of an introvert and I like being on my own.
Steve Folland: So you got out there and got known and you were mixing within Manchester, so quite a big city of business people and social enterprise, charity sector things going on. But did you know anybody doing what you were doing?
Vic Turnbull: So it was Kate that I knew who helped me figure out some direction and stuff. So there's Kate who I knew. Um, there are a few others in Manchester, a few other badass female podcasters running their own companies as well.
Steve Folland: And you'd met them at this point?
Vic Turnbull: Well, I'd been in contact with them by email, but never had a chance to actually meet them and have a cup of tea with them. So that area of my networks wasn't fully formed. And I think that's what some of the, the almost imposter syndrome comes out is that I was this new girl... I had experience in radio, I had my own radio show for four and a half years. I had worked within the creative industries, but hadn't come at podcasting through the radio route. And I think that's where some of the imposter syndrome came through as well. It almost felt like people were saying, who is this new girl? Like, how has she got any authority to talk about podcasting? But I think it was probably all in my own head Steve.
Steve Folland: So did you find a community of podcasters and get over yourself and get in amongst them?
Vic Turnbull: I made my own. So at the end of 2018, I saw a gap that there wasn't a physical space for podcasters. To me, it was all very much online. And I don't know if you're a part of any of these like Facebook groups, but it can become a bit of like, um, like an echo chamber, but a really noisy one. And it can almost be unhelpful if you're a new podcaster or a podcaster wanting to mix with your tribe. So at the end of 2018, I thought, you know what I was, I was in one of those moods, like, fuck it, I'm gonna start a business. Fuck it I'm gonna start a meetup for podcasters. So it started in a room above a pub in Manchester, Northern Quarter, and like all good things start in a room above a Boozer don't they Steve?
Vic Turnbull: It's called MIC. So this is where the name MIC came from. It was called MIC Talks at the start. And the idea was to do monthly talks about podcasting with local podcasters on the stage basically. And it was inspired by a series of events for illustrators and graphic designers that used to happen in Manchester called Blab. And they were big, massive meetup events with talks that I used to go to. Cause I used to be part of that sort of circle. So it was inspired by that, but for podcasters. So the first event happened in November, 2018 and it then developed into a monthly talk series. And then I started doing something called MIC's Podcast Edit Club - the idea was for people to come with their laptops and edit their podcasts together. So if you've had like, 'Oh, I can't just get rid of this awful fart sound..'
Vic Turnbull: Someone'll go, oh I'll help you with that. So I got on board Barclays Eagle labs and The Landing in Media City and they hosted these awesome MIC's podcast edit clubs, then that sort of developed into more of a meetup. So people coming out... I'd get the venues to sort out loads of free booze. So have loads of free booze, loads of podcasters coming together. And it just came together as a meetup. All these randomers coming together, but with one love of podcasting and it was gorgeous. So fast forward until the beginning of 2020. And for some reason we had to stop doing physical events. So now MIC's podcast club is not, that's what it's called now, has got something like 430 members and is online. So it's monthly online meetups for the podcasting community to come together and learn from one another. So it's like a live FAQ. So people come armed with questions and the community answers them. And every other month we have a special guest to talk about something podcasty. So it's one of the community. So, so yeah, I started my own community.
Steve Folland: I'll do it myself.
Vic Turnbull: Yeah! Fuck it. Like, you've done the same - you've got cracking community.
Steve Folland: Well, yeah. So it starts above a pub. And how do you find that that has helped you personally and business-wise?
Vic Turnbull: It's helped me personally. I've, might've got some people to help me do some various bits and bobs, uh, helping me production-wise that's, that's helped me in my business. It's helped me in the fact that now I have a guy to help me with organizing. I've got a community manager. I like to call it, called Charles Commins. And he's awesome. He came to the second MIC. So now he helps me and it's been good for his profile as well. Um, and it, it, it is a good profile raiser that, you know, but that's not the main reason that I do it. It's also gone on to me co-founding a podcaster conference for the North of England called Pods Up North. So that's taken the same ethos as MIC's podcast club. And me going to Kate again, Kate, who I, um, started off doing the social media for saying, look, there's nothing up here. Should we just do it? Just do it ourselves? Let's do it. And it came off the back of the Manchester podcast festival that was just putting on shows and we wanted to do the maker side of it. So Pods Up North, as it was called November, 2019, we had our first physical event and then November 2020, we went virtual. So we had a two-hour masterclass.
Steve Folland: I love the fact that you never feel like all of these other people are competition.
Vic Turnbull: No, I've never seen anyone that comes as competition. I think it's because I've carved a niche. Which I've heard lots on your podcast is people carving that niche. And my thing is social and value-led organizations. So yeah, there are so many people popping up now doing podcasting that there's space for us all isn't there?
Steve Folland: And how about the way you work? Like how have you managed your time and your day and your weeks and yet, especially if some of these are like recurring projects, right?
Vic Turnbull: Yeah. Well, I'm a bit of a workaholic. I think anyone that knows me knows that I work so bloody hard, to my own mental detriment. I think this is where the anxiety came from in the first place is me. When I was in my twenties, I had a job, I had this amazing job. It was dead good by I worked my absolute arse off. I'd be working from nine o'clock, well, half, eight in the morning until nine o'clock at night most nights. And it just broke. It broke my little head. So I do take a lot of lessons from those days in that I need to sometimes not do as much. So I typically work. I try to be at my desk here in my living room because I got a little tiny house and don't have an office. Um, so my living room - try and be at my desk at nine o'clock in the morning and finish half six.
Vic Turnbull: And that's set out in my diary: nine o'clock - half six, and then listen to this, right. I sound so hashtag lockdown, right? I do half an hour of exercise. Then have my tea (dinner). And then I might revisit stuff as well. I got into that routine since the beginning of lockdown. I also, twice a week, more or less go into my coworking space in town, but that's dwindled obviously cause of lockdown and not being able to go in as much. And I am a very big calendar blocker. All my to-do list is on my calendar. I don't have any notebooks. I used to have a 'remember the milk' list online and I don't have any Trello or anything. I mean, it's all calendar-based. And I made that decision to get rid of notebooks a couple of years ago because I was stacking to-do lists. I had it, you know, your inbox becomes a to-do list. You know, like the paper becomes a to-do list, the back of a bus ticket, it becomes a to-do list. So I consolidated all that and popped it all on a calendar. And for the minute the calendar things working, um, I've got myself a whiteboard the other day and I felt so grown-up honestly, I was so excited. These are these little things I get excited about like a whiteboard and getting an accountant.
Steve Folland: If you could tell your younger self one thing about being freelance, what would that be?
Vic Turnbull: I think what I've realized is since I left school 20 years ago, last year, and again, that's like my number one thing was to be a radio superstar and I think it would be like, (sings) "Don't stop believing..." It's gonna take a while to get there, keep doing it and what you're doing now, you're doing it for a reason. And you've gone along these little tangents and it's fine, you know, there's loads of stuff and it's not a waste of time what you're doing, but you will get there in the end and you know what, you're going to have a great time doing it, but don't work so hard because you'll hurt your little head.
Steve Folland: Right. You have clearly picked up loads of skills along the way, which have fed into what you're doing now.
Vic Turnbull: Absolutely. Yeah. I wouldn't have been ready to be a freelancer when I'd left university. I wouldn't have been ready to have been a freelancer, even though I thought I could, when I'd left my very first job. Like it's all those things that mushed up in my head that means I can offer my offer if you know what I mean. And that I've gotten the networks and I've got the nounce, I've got the skills and this time next year if you speak to me Steve, I might be doing something completely different. It might, might've all failed, but you know what? I'm having a great time now. And I don't have to go to my mum to get the weekly shop.
Steve Folland: It's been so good chatting to you - all the best being freelance!
Vic Turnbull: Thank you very much.
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