Blagging and learning - Web Designer Andy Clarke
About this episode…
Blagging and learning - Web Designer Andy Clarke
In 1998 Andy gave up a comfortable position — “£35,000 a year to answer the phone about three times a week” — to start his own thing as a freelancer. It was the early days of the web and he didn’t have much of a plan, but he was keen and enthusiastic about doing better work.
Two decades later, Andy and his wife Sue, who handles the business side of things, are still going strong. He chats to Steve about putting out good content to show what you can do, maintaining a reliable income with fewer clients, and why living at work, rather than working from home, is bad for you.
Read highlights from the episode in the next tab.
Andy on going the distance as a freelancer:
Over his long freelance career, Andy’s developed three principles that guide him.
"Be adaptable. Because, particularly in this industry, things ain't gonna stay the same. Keep an eye on trends and where things are going, and make the most of the opportunities you get.”
"The world does not owe you a living. You don't have the right to the perfect job, the real world is not like that. You make the most of your own opportunities and you work hard to do it. You need to put the work in and you need to be adaptable. If you are in control of your own destiny, instead of working for a company, and you do it right, I think it can be a really great way of being independent, making a living and doing something which you enjoy."
Using your personality to connect
Back in 2004, when Andy was around five years in, he took his business online to reach a wider audience.
"I was one of only a handful of creative designers that were really investigating CSS and what it could do creatively, but then sharing it and writing about it, and that's how you build a reputation. And I think that the same thing still applies.
The medium has changed, the technologies have changed, but putting good content out into the world is a very good way of giving people a feeling of what you can do and what it might be like to work with you."
"Personalities and people really matter. Especially today. There's, you know, 18 million people that can write CSS, most of them better than I can. But the experience of working with me is unique, in the same way that working with you is unique and working with anybody is unique. That's one of the most difficult but most important things to get over as a freelancer: how do I show people that I'm good and reliable and fun to be around?"
“Our best financial year ten years ago is similar to our best financial year now.
“But the difference is that I don't work with as many companies in a given year anymore, because my rates are higher, the companies that I'm working with have bigger budgets and I also get hired for longer periods of time."
Finding balance and satisfaction
Andy says he’s learned to work in sprints, where he’ll go all in for three weeks and then take a week or two off, or to work on personal projects.
“I reached a point in 2017 where I'd been doing this work for nearly twenty years and I had just about had enough. I was burnt out, I was mentally dysfunctional, I let things slip, from a work point of view.
“And I remember sitting on holiday, saying to my wife 'I can't do this anymore. It's gone. It's finished. I cannot do it anymore, we've reached the end of the road.' I was very fortunate in that I got an opportunity to work in Australia for a couple of years, and that brought me back. Without that, Lord knows where we'd be.”
"We always said, we don't work from home, we live at work. It's always good to get satisfaction from your professional life, but if it goes too far and you value your contributions on work rather than other things, then that balance is way off.
“It took me a very long time to come to that realisation. I'm incredibly bad at work-life balance still. I work too much and I still get very absorbed in it. The difference now is that I have periods of time off in-between those sprints."
More from Andy Clarke
Transcript of the Being Freelance podcast with Steve Folland and Web Designer Andy Clarke
Steve Folland We have got Andy Clarke, who is a freelance web designer based in North Wales. As ever. How about we get started hearing how you got started being freelance?
Andy Clarke How did I get started? It was a deep, dark, windy night about 20 odd years ago. And I was working for a below the line ad agency in the south of London. And we'd been doing a bunch of Web stuff along the way very, very early on, you know, using Front Page, etc. And we decided on a whim that we were going to move right away across the country from Suffolk over to North Wales. I won't bore you with the whole story, but I'd kind of expected that when we got up here, I'd probably look for a job with a local agency in Chester or Manchester or whatever, and it didn't quite pan out like that. Two things happened. One was that people started to say to me, do you know anything about this Internet thing? And I would basically blag it and say, yes. And well, 20 years later, I'm still blagging it like a lot of other people. And then the other thing was, was that I got a call from an old friend of mine who was working with an American company, and he said, you know, we need some help doing something in Europe. Do you think you can do it? You can work from home and we'll pay all the expenses. And you might have to travel around Europe, you know, once in a blue moon. But most of the time it'll be helping people over the phone or over the web or whatever. And I said, well, of course, because, you know, I have bugger all else to do it. Can we say "bugger" on your show?
Steve Folland Absolutely. Especially because people around the world.. I've discovered some people pick up English phrases from listening to this podcast. And that is a lovely one to add to their armoury.
Andy Clarke Oh, yes. Well, we can teach them all sorts of English phrases during the course of this podcast. So this was great because this was going back to '98 now and they were paying me £35,000 a year to answer the phone about three times a week. And I didn't have anything else to do.
Andy Clarke So I just decided that, well, you know, if people are asking me for this kind of Webby thing, then and this was at the time, of course, where, you know, you would phone up a local business, you know, Welsh Widgets and say, you know, oh, this Internet thing, would you like to talk about a website? And they would say, what's a website? So I didn't really have anything else to do. So we did that and started a wee business and it kind of just went on from there. So like a lot of things in my life and career, nothing was very well planned and everything was very accidental.
Steve Folland So 1998, you have like a full time role, but like working remotely, basically answering the phone, giving advice about a particular product. And then because people have started coming to you asking you whether you know about Internet, you decide to start designing websites from home.
Andy Clarke Yes. And that was it. I was completely self-taught. And, you know, this is going back to the day where, you know, we would do everything in Front Page or Dreamweaver. So there wasn't a particular technical excellence going on. But also, although I went to art school many, many years ago, I hadn't ever trained as a graphic designer, as a digital designer or whatever. So that's what I say about blagging it. Essentially, everybody, me particularly, is just always blagging and learning. And I think that's, you know, that's kind of how it goes.
Steve Folland So how did you go about getting those clients? How did the few people know to come to you in the first place to ask you? And did you end up phoning up 'Welsh Widgets' or other companies like cold calling to get work business grow?
Andy Clarke God, yeah, absolutely. I did. I mean, we had a few people, you know, that we would know locally, you know, business people or whatever in North Wales. But the vast majority of the business in at least the first kind of four years or so was and this is going to date me, it was going through Yellow Pages and phoning people up. And, you know, there were half a dozen kind of, you know, small, mainly terrible website design companies up around this kind of area and across the North Welsh kind of corridor, but without blowing my own trumpet, I would outsell an out perform them consistently and I was tenacious and I didn't take no for an answer.
Andy Clarke That's kind of how we got started, literally. And, you know, you've got to have a certain mentality for that. You know, you could have a reasonably kind of thick skin. But at the end of the day, if you're, you know, like I was you know, if I would if I would see a business I thought benefited or I would see somebody with a terrible website that wasn't doing them justice, then, you know, I would be very keen and enthusiastic about doing something much better.
Steve Folland So how did business grow or change from there? Because with 23 years back in time.
Andy Clarke Yeah, I mean, things stayed the same for a long time. I think it was up till about 2003, 2004, I suppose. So a good five years into into being a jobbing designer. And I know this podcast is you know, it's it's got freelance in the title. But I think that, you know, job for hire, you know, gun for hire is is essentially what we're talking about. You know, whether you do short jobs or long contracts or you structure your business because you're self-employed or you've got a small, limited company like I have, it's all pretty much the same. You just a gun for hire with no financial security.
Andy Clarke And for the first kind of five years or so, it was you know, it was really hand-to-mouth and it changed slightly with the whole kind of advent of CSS and web standards and blogging and, you know, Web conferences and stuff like that and book writing where the focus of the business shifted from doing work for local businesses or UK businesses to now where pretty much everything is international.
Steve Folland So let's talk about that. How did you how did you sort of grow that reputation from being the person working with the local community to sort of becoming more like an expert that people were coming to?
Andy Clarke I think this is a good lesson for people to learn in general, is to, first of all, be adaptable, because particularly in this industry, things aren't going to stay the same, but also keep an eye on trends and where things are going and make the most of opportunities that you get. Those are my three kind of principles, if you like, and... This was a time when, you know, I was doing everything in Dreamweaver and thought I was the the bee's knees and went to a seminar about Web accessibility and one of the speakers was talking about HTML and CSS and I had no clue at all what he was talking about, literally totally clueless, sat there like a kipper with a blank look on my face and came home, did the thing that I always did when I wanted to find out how somebody had made a cool website was that I viewed source and copied the source into Dreamweaver, you know, pasted it in, previewed it in the browser. And it was a text document because I had no clue about the concept of HTML or CSS or the web standards and the structuring of content separation, blah, blah, blah. I was completely dumbfounded, sat there with my mouth open and then just made it my kind of mission because the at the time that the resources available for learning CSS were limited to like three websites. So I kind of made it my mission to kind of experiment and learn as much as I could on my own and then when the whole first wave of blogging enthusiasts came along, I did the same thing.
Andy Clarke I was one of only a handful of creative designers, I suppose, along with Doug Bowman and Dan Cederholm and a few others that were really investigating CSS and what it could do creatively, but then sharing it and writing it and, you know, and doing that. And, you know, that's how you that's how you build a reputation. And I think that the same thing still applies: the mediums change, the technologies have changed, but putting good content out into the world is a very, very good way of giving people a feeling for what you can do and what it might be like to work with you. And that's the key difference. Personalities and people really, really matter. And particularly today when there's 18 million people that can write CSS, most of them better than I can.. but the experience of working with me is unique. Like it's the same - the experience with you is unique, working with everybody is unique, unless you're working with robots, it will be a different experience. And that is one of the most difficult but most important things as a freelancer to get over is... how do I show people that I'm good and reliable and fun to be around?
Steve Folland And so one way you do that was for your your blog. Your blog. Did that lead to other things?
Andy Clarke Yeah. Led to conference talks that led to to book writing gigs, all of which is, you know, carried on for for 20 years or so. Nobody's doing conferences obviously now, but, you know, other stuff. And it does you good to have a topic and be able to speak confidently about it. And that's great training for lots of things in life, not just for standing in front of a client and pitching yourself or pitching an idea or creative concept or whatever. It's great experience.
Steve Folland How did your business continue to grow? Because we're still stil 10, 15 years back and we're going through bigger companies, I guess as your reputation grew?
Andy Clarke It hasn't really changed that much. I've got to say, our best financial year 10 years ago was pretty much like our best financial year now. But the difference is that I don't work with as many companies in a given year anymore because my rates are higher and and the companies that I'm working with have bigger budgets. And I also get hired for longer periods of time as well. So the business hasn't really grown. You know, it's still the same amount of of hours in a day and equipment on a desk. But I just do the same amount of work for fewer people. And that's the biggest difference between then and now.
Steve Folland Now, you said 'our' best financial year. So does that mean you now work with other people or is it just you? Are you a royal 'we'?
Andy Clarke No, I have always worked with my my wife, my dear darling wife, my long suffering wife. So she looks after the the business end of the business, which leaves me free to, you know, talk to you on a podcast and and concentrate on the creative stuff.
Steve Folland That's cool. So literally, you've always worked that way, or was there a certain point where you went - actually, I could do with some help.
Andy Clarke No, it's always been that since the very, very beginning. You know, we both jointly own the business. We both take exactly the same salary out of the business, and it's always worked that way. Obviously, things have changed over the years. And we we now have less administration time and costs than we used to. So, you know, because I'm doing fewer jobs per year, we're raising fewer invoices, which means chasing fewer people for money. But we don't do the same stuff that we did, you know, ten to fifteen years ago. We don't buy people's domain names anymore for them. We don't we don't charge them for hosting on our server that we buy from somewhere else. We don't do any of that kind of stuff anymore. So we might send out three invoices a month now as opposed to twenty or thirty.
Steve Folland I see. So all of that was able to be taken off you or not that it was ever you but it allows you to concentrate on what you felt you were good at.
Andy Clarke Yes, absolutely. And that's been a real pleasure, but it's also been a real life saver because I am the world's worst multitasker. So having somebody that... Actually I do know today how much money is in our company bank account because we are just finalising our financial year. But, you know, day to day, I have no clue how much money is in our bank account, who owes us money or what invoices have just gone out. And I've got absolute faith that all of that is just being taken care of because it is. And that is liberating. And that's another thing that I think that a lot of people, when they're freelance, struggle with is how do I deal with all of these competing demands on time and attention and having somebody that, even if it's your mum, that will just deal with all of those things for you - it's worth its weight in gold.
Steve Folland Did you work as a company name as well?
Andy Clarke We did, because we were always going to have a limited company and we were always going to be registered. So we set up Stuff And Nonsense Limited back in '98 and do everything through that. Every royalty for a book, every conference fee, every job, everything gets put through the business. And that's worked out incredibly well.
Steve Folland And yet you managed to maintain and you probably hate the phrase 'personal brand', but the fact is, like, it's not Stuff And Nonsense on a stage speaking, for example, or writing a book, but Andy Clarke is is someone too.
Andy Clarke Yeah. I mean, I think the two things are kind of synonymous. And, you know, I'm in the process of redesigning our website. It is very much about that kind of personal brand to the extent that the current website has gorillas on it and I really love gorillas - in the past it's had mods and scooters and and John Lennon and Planet of the Apes and various other things on the website, because it's a way of making a statement and it's a way of potentially differentiating you from the armies of other freelancers or web designers or business people that are out there doing pretty much exactly the same thing.
Steve Folland Hmm. So if I look at your site and I look at your client list, like Disney or Greenpeace, the UK government... These are massive names. How did you find working at that level? Had you learnt everything you needed to on the way to do it now or was it difficult in any way?
Andy Clarke Well, doing the jobs are always challenging... I'll let you into a little secret, you and you and your listeners. Right. None of the companies that I have got on my client list came to me directly. They all came via somebody that either I knew or I had made a connection with or had seen me speak at an event.
Andy Clarke The Home Office, for example, was the the Hillsborough independent panel, which was to do with the Hillsborough disaster, and that particular job came to me because the UX designer who'd been given the job of managing that particular report website I'd known for many, many years. And when they said we need a creative designer to do the pretty stuff, he came to me. And the same applies to a lot of that. So I suppose it's 50/50 split between people that would just know me by reputation or contacts, of contacts, of contacts. Very, very, very rarely do you get passing trade people that will do a Google search for, you know, a freelancer or designer or whatever. And, you know, they'll hop on an email very, very rarely.
Steve Folland How did you cope with pricing in your business over the years?
Andy Clarke That's a great question. I mean, back in the very, very, very early days, you know, we'd do a website for 400 quid, 400 quid today, buys you half or two thirds of a day, depending on who you are and what you're doing. So pricing has always been a difficult one. I mean, I think that I've undercharged massively for, you know, a fair amount of time. The biggest challenge is to get the initial quote right. And I base that on a daily rate that I thought was achievable. And I package it in such a way that I now say that we don't do anything that lasts less than a week because I'm the world's worst multitasker. So I won't say that I'm X amount per day. I will say that I'm, you know, four thousand four hundred pound a week and build it that way. And I'll say, I think that your project will take between two or three weeks. And that kind of makes it understandable.
Andy Clarke The interesting thing about finding that level, one of the things that I did was on a Friday, any estimates that I gave, I would double. So I had Double Your Day Rate Fridays. And I did this for a fair amount of time until people started to say ouch. And then I realised that, you know, perhaps I'd kind of hit the limit. And that was a really good way of increasing the rate.
Andy Clarke And if you do that, it has a number of benefits. People often think that charging a higher rate is somehow profiteering. You know why are you £800 a day and somebody else is only £400? Are you twice as good? And the answer, of course, is no. But I think that there are benefits of trying to charge as much as you can, both for you and also for your client. And I know that sounds contradictory, but if I'm comfortable with the money that I'm earning for a project, it means that I don't have to watch the clock, I don't have to feel bad or go back to a client and say, you know what, this is going to be an extra X amount because it's taking me two more days. Obviously, if they massively change the scope, that's a different conversation. But it means that I can not have to worry about money and use all my mental capacity to solve a design problem that's a massive benefit to a client.
Andy Clarke The other thing is I can say you have my 100% attention. I'm not having to, I'm not dipping in and out of other jobs while I'm working for you. The time that you're spending with me, you're paying for, is exclusively yours. That's a great benefit for a client because, you know, projects run on endless amounts of time and drift. And I don't like that to happen. And then the other thing is by charging a reasonable rate, a comfortable rate, it means I'm more likely to be around when the client needs me next. So whether it's six months from now or two years from now or whenever the client's got a problem, I'm still going to be in business. And I wouldn't have had to go and work in Tesco or go work in a big agency or whatever. That level of financial security is actually really valuable for a client because what's the worst thing that can happen is, you know, they come back in two years or six months with a problem... you're not around. Well, what the hell do they do then? So I actually don't think that it's it's a bad thing to charge a really good but fair fee that takes into account all of those considerations.
Steve Folland This kind of follows on from what you just said, you know, you like to give 100% attention to a client. You have your availability on your site. And when I saw that, I liked that. But I was thinking how do you choose what to work on? And when?
Andy Clarke I am incredibly fortunate in that I now work three weeks out of every month with a company in Switzerland, and that gives me really great financial and work security. It means that my schedule is actually pretty much written for the whole of 2021 now. And what I do is I work three weeks solidly and then I have either one week or two weeks off between sort of, you know, call them 'sprints' if you like, one or two weeks where I can do other things and I could do nothing or I could work on a book or as has happened throughout 2020 when I can't leave the bloody house. Is that well, I might as well work then. Now, I'm probably not going to work for, you know, Welsh Widgets. But when something really appealing comes along like a busking music festival in Bern in Switzerland, I'm going to go - Yeah, you know, I could do some really nice stuff with that and I could really enjoy doing it. I can probably charge them less, too, because I'm not having to worry about making every last penny on every project. And that's how the last year or two has gone. And it's been incredibly good, you know, from a stress, mental health point of view, from a business point of view, from a creative point of view.
Steve Folland In terms of dealing with clients, like there's always this thing which gets shared like as soon as somebody starts in a Facebook group speaking about contracts, Contract Killer soon rears its head in the comments, which always will, of course, lead back to your website. So this was a contract that you put out there that others could use, right?
Andy Clarke Yeah. I mean, this is going back ten years or more now. And I would get contracts to sign from clients that, you know, were 18 pages long or I would go online to find a webdesign contract. And you could say it was written in kind of, you know, jargonese. But also, I could tell that it was just cobbled together, cut and paste from lots of different sources. And I just thought, you know what, I don't want to give my clients this. All I want to say to a client is you're going to hire me to work for this period of time on this project and you're going to pay me X and I'm going to do some things and you're going to do some things. And we both understand what's required of us. And if things go wrong, which, you know, sometimes they do, then this is what needs to happen so that we can all stay friends. And you can do that in like one or two pages, so I just sat down to write it and then again decided to share it because you know what's good for me, keeping that to myself? So it wasn't that I kind of went out there to say, you know, this is the best contract in the world because I'm damn sure it ain't. But I'm damn sure it's better than nothing at all, which is what a lot of people use. So, you know, would it stand up in the high court? Does it have holes? Can it be improved? Yeah, absolutely. But it's a damn sight better than doing doing knob all.
Steve Folland There's another one people can use - English phrases to cling to. Do you use that contract today still with your clients?
Andy Clarke Generally speaking, I use that. Yeah. Even my Swiss client. That's the contract that we're currently working on. I think we might have to because, you know, they've changed a lot over the last few years. So I think that we might have to switch to a different contract for 2021. But that's okay, because it's one client and it's a very, very specific application. But if I was to send a contract out to Welsh Widgets tomorrow, it would be exactly that one bar a few changes that have been made along the way that are no longer relevant.
Steve Folland So have we covered all the ways that people find you? So you started writing, you started speaking.. You started a podcast?
Andy Clarke I did do a podcast. My friend John and Paul and I are possibly going to be starting a new one again soon. But I did that because I wanted to talk about the the business aspect of it. We called it Unfinished Business. And the original concept of that podcast was to talk about a lot of the stuff that we're talking about now, you know, contracts and rates and how you find clients and, you know, deal with issues and manage your time and all of that kind of stuff. Of course, this me being me, it quickly dissolved into a weekly therapy session where we would talk about weeing in hotel kettles and brioche buns on a burger. So it kind of ran its course.
Andy Clarke Just so that, you know, I don't actually wee in hotel kettles, but you never know who has so... always take your own travel kettle, kids. So, yeah, that was interesting. I doubt that it did any more than, you know, some of the other stuff that I did back in the day, apart from podcasts like this do give... it's good to put a voice and a personality to to a name, you can say a lot more on a podcast authentically than it's easy to do by writing it down.
Steve Folland Is there a difference in what you offer and get paid to do? Now I notice you use the word consultant as well as designer on your website.
Andy Clarke Well, the reason why the consulting stuff is there, and actually it won't be when I redesign this website, is that I wanted to try to move away from doing. And more about the consulting angle, rather than just the pure designing angle? And I've got a lot of friends who who consult. It's a very grand word, but a lot of people that, you know, specialise in particular areas. My friend Harry Roberts specialises in performance. Paul Boag specialises in how businesses adapt to digital, you know, and those kind of things kind of appealed to me. And one of the things that I think that the that the Web lacks as an industry in general is a focus on art direction and creative direction in the same way that the advertising industry or the graphic design or magazine publishing industry, it focuses on it. We just don't seem to to do that kind of stuff online. And I wanted to carve a niche for doing that kind of stuff. So that's why the whole kind of consulting thing launched in a way, but at the end of the day, 99% of the time, people are looking for a specific solution and they want something designed. And I am more than happy to do that.
Steve Folland So it's actually something you're stepping back from promoting?
Andy Clarke Yeah, it's not going to appear at all on the new website. I'm purely going to talk about design and a portfolio and some of the stuff that we talked about today, really as well as showing off the work, explaining what the process might be. And, you know, what the overall experience of working with me is like. And that's the difficult challenge to get across on a quick view of a website.
Steve Folland But you've also started coaching and mentoring others, right?
Andy Clarke Yeah. Now, that is something that I that I like to do. And, you know, when you get to advanced years, you do build up a fair amount of experience and there's not an awful lot of support or training of people in terms of a lot of the things that we've been talking about today. You know, if you're a young guy sort of starting out, then how do you deal with some of these issues? There's not a lot of support out there for that kind of thing. But the other thing, the thing that I really, really enjoy doing is working with people who are of a similar age, maybe slightly younger, because there's an awful lot of people that will have been doing, you know, they'll be either running their own business big or small, or they'll have been freelancing or self-employed for a very long time.
Andy Clarke And they're at the stage in their life and their career where they think, do you know what? I need to reassess this. I need to figure out what I want to do for the next 5, 10, 15 years, because maybe I can't just carry on doing what I've been doing for the past 5, 10, 15 years. And that's the kind of thing that I think this whole kind of mentoring and support thing can be valuable. I've been mentored by people like Paul Boag and other people in the industry, and I've found it incredibly valuable.
Steve Folland How do you approach that dynamic yourself, that whole, you know, like what's the I don't to say the end game? What's what's the future of my freelancing look like?
Andy Clarke Yeah, that's a really, really good question. I reached a point in 2017, 2018, I suppose. Maybe a little bit before that, where I've been doing this type of work, running this business in the way that we run it for 20 years nearly, and I had just about had enough. I know I was burnt out. I was mentally dysfunctional. I let things slip from a business, from a work point of view. And I remember sitting on holiday with my wife saying, you know what, I can't do this anymore. You know, it's just... it's gone. It's finished. I cannot do it anymore. I've reached the end of the road. That was the point where, hopefully other people don't reach that point, and I was very fortunate in that I actually got an opportunity to work in Australia for a couple of years, and that brought me back. It gave me the space and the time to be enthusiastic about design and really figure out what I wanted to work on. And without that, Lord knows where we'd be. But it is a difficult thing for a lot of people because it's such an unpredictable industry. It's such an unpredictable, bloody world at the moment that you do need to, you know, consider, what am I going to do? What else can I do?
Steve Folland You mentioned feeling burnt out a few years ago. How do you feel about your work life balance?
Andy Clarke We always said that we don't work from home. We live at work. And that was not good, and I think that if you are the sort of person who is great to get satisfaction from your professional life, but if it goes too far and you kind of value yourself and your contributions on work rather than on other things, then that balance is is way off. And it took me a very, very long time to come to that realisation. So I am you know, I'm incredibly bad at work life balance still. I, I will still work way more hours in a day than I should, and I don't watch East Enders often enough. No, I mean, I'm sure there are other things between watching soap, crappy programmes and doing work. But I work too much and I still get very, very absorbed in it. The difference is, is that now I have periods of time between those sprints and that works for me now. So I don't mind sitting up till 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning working on a client project if that's when I'm in the flow. But then I'll know that the following week, I can you know, I can watch I'm A Celebrity and not get out of my Pokemon onesie until 4 in the afternoon.
Steve Folland If you could tell your younger self one thing about being free lance, what would that be?
Andy Clarke This is something that I've tried to teach my son, and I think it's one of the most important things - is that well, a few things, really. First of all, the world does not owe you a living, right? You don't have the right to the perfect job. You don't have the right to whatever. It is not like that. The real world is not like that. The world does not owe you a living. You make the most of your own opportunities and you work hard to do it.
Andy Clarke And you need to put the work in and you need to be adaptable because things are not going to stay the same. If you get a job at 22, you're not going to be doing the same job when you're 65. And if you are in control of your own destiny as opposed to working for a company and you do it right, then I think it can be a really great way of... being independent, making a living and doing something which you enjoy.
Steve Folland Now, I'm just intrigued. Has there been moments over the past 20 years when you considered, hiring other people? Growing a thing beyond yourself and your wife?
Andy Clarke Oh, yeah, we did it twice. I went into business with with a developer back in 2004, and we set up a sort of a sister company. And that had six to eight staff, I suppose, overall. And that didn't work out. It was a miserable experience. I'm not a good manager. You know, I don't play political games in the way that a lot of people do. So it was a miserable experience.
Andy Clarke Slightly better: a few years ago, we hired a very nice lady who worked with me for two or three years doing kind of print design and graphic design related stuff. And I enjoyed working with her. And I learnt a lot about about print work and about graphic design principles from her. And that was great. But then the situation changed. So, you know, we're now doing what we're doing and it's back to how we were.
Steve Folland I see. So it's that whole thing. In the main, it was that you didn't like you didn't like the feel of that. You prefer working by yourself?
Andy Clarke Well, also, I like designing things. I don't like doing paperwork. I don't like looking at accounts. I wouldn't want to grow a business. I've got tremendous respect for people that do. It's like, you know, if I worked for a company, this thing where you become a developer or designer and then you're a 'senior something', and then you end up managing a team or whatever. It'd be my worst nightmare. I don't want to manage a team. I don't want to develop a strategy. I want to do the nice stuff. I want to get paid for making things look great. And I've got no interest in managing people. I'm terrible at it.
Steve Folland It's been so good to talk to you. Thank you so much. And all the best being freelance!
Andy Clarke Cheers. Lovely to speak to you.
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