Seize the moment - Web Developer Tom Hirst
About this episode…
Seize the moment - Freelance Web Developer Tom Hirst
Tom began freelancing right out of university after realising that the suit-and-tie life wasn’t for him. 12 years on, he’s built a strong and successful web development business and he’s now ready to branch out and try his hand at other things.
When one of his tweets blew up and gained 2.5 million impressions, Tom seized the moment and wrote an ebook; the first in a lineup of digital products he’s creating to help freelancers get ahead. He’d always wanted to write a book and sell a product and he finds meaning in helping other freelancers to make their way.
Tom shares that story and chats to Steve about finding clients, pricing his services and balancing his time.
Read the highlights in the next tab.
Freelance from the get-go
Fresh out of uni and interviewing for a full-time job as a web developer, Tom realised that he had others plans.
“As soon as I sat in the seat waiting to be interviewed, I just hated everything about the whole process. I hated wearing a suit. I hated thinking that I might have to turn up here every day for the next 10 years of my life. I thought, ‘Why don't I go freelance instead?’ I told everyone that I knew about the skills I had and how I could help them out. And 12 years later, I'm still here.”
Experimenting with pricing
In his 12 years freelancing, Tom’s tried out many different ways of pricing his services. He took a keen interest in pricing methodologies, reading books to learn more before experimenting himself.
“I think that's one of the biggest things that a lot of freelancers don't do. They don't experiment with their pricing, whether it be the value of what they're charging or the methodology that they're using. And I think that there's a lot to be gained by doing that. It's good to experiment with multiple clients when you've got issues of price to contend with, because if one won't pay it, the likelihood is that someone else might.”
Subcontracting to other freelancers
Tom occasionally works with other freelancers on projects, bringing in friends to help him out when it makes sense. But does he tell his clients he’s doing that? Not always.
“If I employ a builder, I don't really want to know every single person who has laid every single brick. I just want the house, end of. And I think that the same thing applies if someone's coming to me for my expertise and they trust me to facilitate this project.”
Working in solitude
Working from home, where he lives with his wife and young child, Tom finds the solitude he needs for his work and then he gets the social time he needs elsewhere.
“I thrive in solitude when I’m working but I balance it with being quite extroverted on the social side. That's where my balance is. So I really like my time with my friends, going to the football, me and my wife like to eat out, we take the kids to the park quite a lot… So I think you can make it work, even if it is quite isolating at times.”
Writing a book and selling courses
When he wrote a Twitter thread on pricing and it gained around 2.5 million impressions, Tom took the next 30 days to expand his thoughts into a 30,000-word ebook. That book is still selling today and Tom’s developed other digital products to help freelancers get ahead.
“It just shows how, if you share what you know, it can alter the path of your life, basically. I could see that the demand was there for this information and experience. And I just felt compelled to drop everything else and write a more expanded version of it. I've always wanted to write a book or launch a product and, obviously with the success of the thread and the attention that it got, I just thought there's never going to be a better opportunity.”
Listen to the episode now to hear Tom’s full story.
More from Tom Hirst
Tom’s book, Pricing Freelance Projects
Related episodes
Business coach Jonathan Stark - Hourly billing is nuts!
More from Steve Folland
Transcript of the Being Freelance podcast with Steve Folland and Freelance Web Developer Tom Hirst
Steve Folland: Freelance web developer, Tom Hirst, hey Tom! Thanks for doing this. As ever, how about we get started hearing how you got started being freelance?
Tom Hirst: So yeah, I went through university not really doing what I'm freelancing for. So I'm a freelance web developer, but I did multimedia and communication design, which is more like videography and things like that. So, yeah. University, I thought, well, I'm just trying to earn some money to get a job. So I went and applied for a web development role at the local college. And as soon as I sat in the seat waiting to be interviewed, I just hated everything about the whole process. I hated wearing a suit. I hated thinking that I might have to turn up here every day for the next 10 years of my life. And I don't know what it was. I must've had like these thoughts before, but it all just came as like a single epiphany that, you know what? I know how to, well, I know loosely how to build WordPress websites, why don't I go freelance instead? And 12 years later, I'm still here.
Steve Folland: So literally your first job has been freelance?
Tom Hirst: Yeah, I've had no job. And I think that everyone always like, is quite surprised about that. Because a lot of people start, you know, in like a design agency, development agency and then go freelance after that. But yeah, I went, I went straight into it feet first.
Steve Folland: So how did you go about getting those first clients?
Tom Hirst: Yeah, so first clients, basically, I just told everyone that I knew the skills that I had and how I could help them out. I think that a lot of people underestimate, you know, their existing network, cos, you know, that's how network effects work. Right? You tell your dad, you tell your brother, you tell your sister, you tell your friends, and then they've got their own brothers, sisters, and friends. And if you do a good job for one person, there's a good chance that they'll know someone else who needs a good job doing for them too. So that's where it all started for me.
Steve Folland: And were you living at home at that time?
Tom Hirst: Yeah. Yeah. I had a bit of a, you know, safety net I would say. So I was lucky in that regard. I was living at home and I just basically just told everyone, look, I've got these WordPress skills, who needs a website. And then the first two, the first two trickled in from my dad and my uncle. And then the rest is history really, from that side of things.
Steve Folland: So how would you say that you've got clients then over those past 12 years beyond that first batch? Has it all been referral or...?
Tom Hirst: There's been plenty of referral, plenty of repeat business, which I always say, you know, that's, that's the king, if you can get it. But yeah, mainly through my personal website, that's my primary marketing channel. So straight away I got my first client and I was working for them in a long time basis. But in the background, I set up a personal website and I really honed in on, you know, doing some like research into SEO and things like that that were a little bit out of my wheelhouse, but I knew would stand me in good stead. So then after around six months to a year or so, leads started trickling in because I'd optimize well for, you know, the freelance WordPress developer search term. And then, yeah, that's still the main source of leads to this, to this day really. I do really well the, on the organic stuff. I don't really pay for any ads. Most of it comes through the personal website with that SEO.
Steve Folland: Was that like local to you or...?
Tom Hirst: No. I just, I focus broadly on a, quite a wide term. So the main term that I focused on was freelance WordPress developer. I noticed that people were searching for that, did a bit of keyword research and I just doubled down on making my personal website wholly focused on that. So yeah, it's kind of strange really, because there's not a lot of people in the town where I'm from that will pay a decent amount of money for a website. So it was always the plan really to go broader than that. So I decided to optimize for, you know, a technology, in WordPress around my freelance services rather than, you know web developer in Barnsley, for instance.
Steve Folland: What were you doing? Were you like blogging on it or...?
Tom Hirst: You know what, I didn't do that much blogging right at the beginning. I just, like I said before, I just focused on these single service landing pages and it did really well for me. I think a lot of the studies that I did about small business when I first started were around like marketing and copywriting. So I think that you don't need that much traffic when, you know, the copy, the copy is good and you've got like a really good flow down the page. And I think that that's what a lot of freelancers fail to do, especially developers. It's more about you land on the personal website and it might be a Github link and nothing else, but I always went with, you know, the long-form marketing angle of a landing page and it seemed to stand me in really good stead.
Steve Folland: So if somebody visited your webpage today, would that differ greatly from how it looked over the years gone by?
Tom Hirst: It's probably a lot more polished. I'm a lot older on my picture as well, but there are... Few more greys, as freelancing will do to you sometimes. But yeah, I mean, it's pretty much the same structure and philosophy that I've had from early on. It's just, just adapted and developed over time.
Steve Folland: How did you get on with pricing?
Tom Hirst: So at the beginning, I kind of, I always believed that a freelancer kind of falls into the pricing methodology that the first client gives him. And my first client just said, oh, I'll pay you X amount per day. And that's kind of like what I stuck on for, for quite a long time, really. And then like the marketing angle, I kind of got super interested in pricing and how things, you know, the value of things and variety in pricing and the different methodologies that you can use and things like that. And as time has gone on, obviously I've gotten into researching that a lot more, reading a lot of books about it, putting into practice a lot of my own experiments. And now, yeah, my thoughts and feelings have kind of changed. I prefer to bill fixed price nowadays compared to, you know, by time.
Steve Folland: I'm intrigued by the word experiments though. So you're trying different things out?
Tom Hirst: Yeah. I think, I think that's one of the biggest things that a lot of freelancers don't do. They don't experiment ever with their pricing, whether it be the value of what they're charging or the methodology that they're using. And I think that there's a lot to be gained by doing that. I think a good analogy for this is like, let's say, you know, people who move jobs tend to get pay rises quicker than the people that stay in the same job for a long period of time. The same goes for freelance pricing. I think if you just, you know, charge the same rate forever, you're not really going to be getting to those higher echelons of pricing. So experimenting is something that I wish I would have done earlier on. Actually, when I first started,
Steve Folland: What did you try out that did or didn't work?
Tom Hirst: Firstly, different prices. So I was working for the long-term client that I mentioned that I got via my dad and we were on like the same rate for ages and I was just happy to have a work right there and then, and I think that what I should have done earlier is, you know, start increasing my prices. I got more valuable to that client because the more that I worked for them, the more that they had confidence in me, the more that I knew their systems, the more valuable I was becoming. So eventually I did start to increment my price by, you know, certain amounts with that client. But first I experimented with new clients. So the clients that were coming in through my personal website, I wanted to, you know, keep my little safety net, but I would experiment with new clients by giving them the new price first. And if I was noticing that I could replace that work with the new, more expensive work, then I had, you know, a backup to pitch against the existing client and raise my price with them as well. So that's kind of the thing that I always say is like, it's good to experiment with multiple clients when you've got issues of price to contend with, because if one won't pay it, the likelihood is that someone else might.
Steve Folland: Yeah. And so when you started to move more towards like doing a fixed price, did you find that you had to really be very clear about what it was? A website is a broad thing. Did you have any challenges with that?
Tom Hirst: Yeah, I think the main challenge that you will face is scope creep, especially if you're a little bit inexperienced with giving fixed prices, but I mean, the main two ways to combat scope creep, as I found it, is to have a really super definitive scope up front that you've both signed. So you can point out, you know, nicely that, sorry this is not in the scope, we can do a separate project after this. And then the second way to do it is to charge enough so that you don't really care about small scope creep. So, so what I mean by that is like, let's say on a website you want to change the color of a font. I think that when you've not charged that much, you start getting a little bit annoyed by those constant changes and you might see them as scope creep, but yeah, don't be doing like new features and stuff if it's not in the spec. That's another thing, you've got to be able to stand your ground. And that's where the, you know, the contract or the proposal with the specific scope comes in handy.
Steve Folland: Do you use certain software for like putting together proposals or contracts?
Tom Hirst: Not really, no. I just use Google docs. I have like a template that I've wrote myself. I took inspiration from a few people over the years. Jonathan Stark has got a really good proposal template, which I've looked at and incorporated into my own, put my spin on it. So yeah, just use that, no particular software.
Steve Folland: Yeah. Jonathan was on this podcast. So if you've not heard that episode go to beingfreelance.com, we'll put a link in the show notes. And obviously he was very much about that ditching hourly. Did you hesitate when you did that? Like how did it feel when you were moving out from that?
Tom Hirst: I didn't, because I think I'd seen the matrix. If you want to use that as an analogy, you know what I mean? I'd seen that just because I do something I shouldn't be punished for doing things quickly and the better that I get at my job, the quicker that I'm going to get. So essentially I'm going to be earning the wrong way around if I stick to selling time for money. And I think that once you've actually seen that, and you start thinking about the value of conversation it's really difficult not to want to make that switch and you probably never will switch back.
Steve Folland: You've mentioned having, like recurring clients, retainer type clients. Yeah. What does that look like for you and how, how do you work?
Tom Hirst: I mean, nowadays I still prefer to do it on a project by project basis. So it'll just be this is the brief, this is the project price. But there might be another project off the back of this project to come later, which we will re-brief and then quote again. But I have done retainers as well in the past. I prefer to do retainers based on, you know, my availability, really, to answer questions and things like that, as opposed to giving a set amount of hours, because you just, you'e just hourly billing really if you do that. You know, you've got a bit of a loss of autonomy there, so yeah. I still try and stick, at the most, most of the time, to project by project. I think that works really well for, you know, setting expectations and aligning incentives. Really.
Steve Folland: I see. So it's less about retainer, more about keeping that relationship going and fitting in the next thing they want.
Tom Hirst: Yeah, exactly. That's what it is for me now. And I think that that works really well for incremental software projects.
Steve Folland: What happens when somebody comes to you and they want something, but you're tied up on something else though?
Tom Hirst: Sometimes I will still take it on and I'll project manage it and I'll get someone else to help me out. Because I think when you freelance for such a long time, and you've tried to involve yourself in the community and things like that, you do end up making good connections. So you can share leads, you can subcontract and things like that. But it'd have to be the right project. That's kind of what I say nowadays. Like if it's something that's not a good fit, then I'm just, I'm just not bothered anymore. But if I was tied up on a really big project and I was like using most of my development time on that, and another one came in that looked like a good fit, I wouldn't hesitate. I probably wouldn't try and, you know, say, oh, can we do this next year or something like that, because people don't really typically want to wait that long. So I would probably still try and run the project myself, but bring in external help.
Steve Folland: When you do that, like how do you front that to the client?
Tom Hirst: Yeah, no, that's a good one. I mean, sometimes they don't really need to know, number one, because it's like if I employ like a builder, I don't really want to know every single person who has laid every single brick. I just want the house, end of it. And I think that the same thing applies, you know, if someone's coming to me for my expertise and they trust me to facilitate this project, then I think that a lot of it is irrelevant, you know, and it actually can sometimes benefit a project too. So for instance, if someone comes to me for a design and build, I can design, but I'm not the best designer. So I'm actually doing the best for that client by bringing in my designer friend to help me on that. So that's, that's the kind of, that's my take on that whole question really.
Steve Folland: How did you find when you started bringing on other people to work with you, like managing those rules?
Tom Hirst: I don't do it excessively. I do it only when it makes sense. So I think it's important to keep like a small pool of people that you trust. And then just honesty and just being really open and you know, setting expectations. Like what do I expect from you? Who's going to be in charge of, you know, managing the client and things like that. You don't really want there to be any ambiguity or even sometimes overlap. That can be a bit dangerous as well. So if you get let's use the designer and developer angle again, if you're both, you know, having a line of conversation with the client, sometimes things can get lost in translation between the team that you are running. So I think, yeah, it's managing those relationships. It's just about setting expectations, making sure that you're aligned and making sure that each party knows exactly what they're responsible for within the project.
Steve Folland: We talked about pricing, but how do you deal with payments? Like, are your projects quite long or...?
Tom Hirst: They can vary. Most of them are probably at least two or three weeks, and then at most they've been years. I've just done a website project, I launched it at new year and that had been, I think it was nearly two years that had been and that was like on an incremental project basis. I mean, but to answer your question, I try to keep my subcontractors on the same payment terms as how I billed the original client. So if it's a fixed price, I will say this is the part of this brief that I would like you to fulfill for me. Can you give me a fixed price as well? And then everybody just knows where they stand and there's no, you know, you don't have all the downsides of the hourly billing stuff, like logging hours and arguing about how long things take and stuff like that. It just removes a whole lot that nonsense really? Yeah.
Steve Folland: Yeah. But do you take like a payment? Like, do you have milestone payments or like...
Tom Hirst: Depends. I mean, the default for me is to ask for everything upfront, if I can get it, you know, that's the, that's the default for me and then I'm happy then to pay my subcontractors everything upfront as well. But let's say most of the time, you know, you're going to have to give some leeway on payment terms and I'd rather do that then than give leeway around price really. So if we go like to, I don't know, 50% up front, 50% at the end I'll then match that, you know, with my subcontractor. But I have done milestones as well before, so, you know, like you might do a third and then a third after a month and then a third at the end, something like that. So yeah, I've experimented with quite a lot of these.
Steve Folland: And what makes you happier, the upfront? Everything upfront?
Tom Hirst: Yeah, because it's just, you know where you stand, you're not chasing invoices, you know, the more invoices that I have to write, the higher I'll probably put the price because it's just taking me time. So the least invoices I can send per project the better.
Steve Folland: Yeah. and how about how you work? Do you work from home or have you got somewhere you go to?
Tom Hirst: Yeah, yeah. So I'm in my home office now. This is where I work and I've worked like this for 12 years, so, yeah. And I've never had an office, never had a coworking space or anything like that. I'm quite good at like my own space really. And I think that's where I do my best work in solitude.
Steve Folland: But that's the thing, isn't it, solitude? So do you, are you part of, I mean, you mentioned community earlier, but like, is it just you, or do you have other people that you chat to about business?
Tom Hirst: Yeah. Yeah. So I've met a lot of people, you know, through the last 12 years you know, through the freelance stuff, through the, the writing stuff, through the Twitter stuff as well, you know, I've met a lot of really cool people. I would consider to be, you know, like genuine friends now. Even though some of them I've not really met in real life. But I think, I think the balance is, if you do thrive in solitude when you're working, like, what I definitely do is to balance it with being quite extroverted on the social side. That's, that's where my balance is. So I really like, you know, my time with my friends, going to the football, me and my wife like to eat out and stuff like that, take the kids to the park and stuff quite a lot. So I think you can make it work, even if, you know, sometimes it is quite isolating at times.
Steve Folland: So how many kids have you got?
Tom Hirst: I've got one and another one on the way.
Steve Folland: Oh, nice. Congratulations. Cheers. How do you find working from home with the family presumably around?
Tom Hirst: Yeah, it's not so bad because they kind of know like the separation, they know what you see is what you get with me. So they know that I work well when I can focus on things for a long period of time. So if they know that I'm on a project and the door is shut behind me, then you know, that's it, you know, leave dad alone. And he'll come down when he's ready and things like that. So we've, me and my wife have got a really good system of dealing with things like that. So, yeah. So we dovetail really well. And again, it's about setting expectations really, and letting people know how you work best professionally and within the family too.
Steve Folland: I like that. It sounds like your professional experience led into parenthood quite nicely. You just got to watch those kids on the scope creep.
Tom Hirst: There's always scope creep with kids. You just have to leave them to it!
Steve Folland: How has your business changed then? Like, is it just client work or...
Tom Hirst: Yeah, so for the first 11 years or so? Yeah, pretty much just client work. Got to kind of the limit of what I could do on my own, started like helping a few friends out, bringing them into my projects. But then when the pandemic came around in March last year, I think, that's, it seems to have been forever now, but yeah, March last year. I decided to try and do some other things just to build some other revenue streams and things like that. I got this overwhelming urge to want to teach as well, because I've been like doing this for so long now. I thought I want to try and like help others along, you know, through my experience. So, yeah, I've started well, number one, I started building an audience on Twitter quite intentionally, and then I started creating educational products for freelancers, you know, just going through my experience and the tactics and techniques that have helped me.
Tom Hirst: I also had a mentorship program for freelancers as well. So I was mentoring people who are earlier on in their careers, one-on-one and I found that super fulfilling too. And I've actually had to close it down recently because it was just getting a little bit too much. The demand was higher than I expected, so I'm looking at doing that in a more scalable way. But yeah, essentially, the way that my career has changed is that I want to try and help more people on this path at scale really. And that feels like the next chapter for me
Steve Folland: Whilst also diversifying your income. Yeah. Let's talk about how you've done that though. Cause you you've talked about being intentional in growing your, your Twitter audience. So you already had, you know, you were making friends on Twitter. What changed? What did you start doing differently when it came to March 2020 and onwards?
Tom Hirst: Yeah. I started just sharing the thoughts that I already have in my head really publicly and seeing if they resonated and helped other people. And then when I noticed that they did I just started doing more of it and I just kind of, I guess I got the serotonin rush or dopamine fix or whatever you want to call it. And I was really enjoying it. You know, people tweeting from all over the world saying like, thanks so much for sharing this. And it kind of struck this chord with me about how I want to try and help people, you know, understand like what being, being freelance is all about and how they can make a success of it.
Steve Folland: And you tend to go for like quite a long thread. That's, that's like your, it's almost like a blog post in a thread, right?
Tom Hirst: Yeah. That's, that's kind of become the signature. And I, I think that they probably are the ones that have done the best. I do a lot of off the cuff stuff too, but yeah, the threads, I think talking in like Twitter and audience building terms they seem really overpowered at the moment. It seems like if you want to really try and grow your following, the threads is the best way to do it quick. And I kind of just like landed on that really. Especially with the pricing freelance projects one, which I think it's got like 2.5 million impressions. So 2.5 million people have seen my, just the thought I had in my head really that I decided to write out one afternoon. And yeah, it just shows you really how, if you share what, you know, how it can like alter the, you know, the path of your life basically. And it definitely has done for me. As I wrote, I wrote the book about pricing freelance projects off the back of that thread.
Steve Folland: But in terms of timescale, like how, when did you then think, oh, okay, I need, I can turn this into something more? Or that there's people here who might want it, you know. Like you could end up creating things and then there's like, nobody there for it. You'd obviously already found that people liked this Tweet, but yeah. What was your process?
Tom Hirst: Yeah, so I didn't plan anything whatsoever. I was just tweeting like daily and seeing what resonated. And I just thought I'm going to write a thread off the top of my head. What, what do I know best? And it was like pricing something that I've been involved in, obviously for 12 years. Let's just Tweet my thoughts about pricing and what I've learned. And then obviously, like you said, it blew up. So I could see that the demand was there for this information and experience. And I just felt compelled to drop everything else and write a more expanded version of it. So, yeah from, I think the tweet was on 30th of June last year, and I think by the 30th of July, I had written a 30,000 word book. So it was, yeah, I probably wouldn't do it. Wouldn't do it like that again. But yeah, it was just a really good way of, I just started taking pre-orders, you know, like when I saw the success of the thread, I thought maybe people want a little bit more and I put a link up saying if you're interested in reading the book, I'll write it.
Tom Hirst: Pre-Order here. And I think I got like maybe a hundred pre-orders or something like that. And then I wrote the book over the next 30 days, edited it, launched it. So within a month, basically.
Steve Folland: Nice. How did, how did you put it out?
Tom Hirst: I launched it on Gumroad. It was just an ebook. I am thinking about getting it made into a physical book as well, using like Amazon print-on-demand, but it's just something I haven't got around to yet, but again, it's done pretty well and people seem to like it.
Steve Folland: And how did you go about, you know, within the space of a month, writing that much? Were you still doing client work?
Tom Hirst: No. I had to drop everything, I just, I just had this thing, I just felt that the time was now to write this book. I've always wanted to write a book or launch a product and, and obviously with the success of the thread and the attention that it got, I just thought there's never going to be a better opportunity. But yeah, in terms of the method, it was just a Google doc write down like all the bullet points of what I want to talk about pricing and what I've learnt, and then just flesh them out one by one. But yeah, I was, I was doing no client work for that 30 days. I wasn't doing much sleeping either, if I'm honest, so I wouldn't want to do it again. Well, but you know, like when I finished it, it was just such a relief to get that first publication out there, you know? And I think that it will, the lessons that I learned from that will really help me you know when I want to, because I definitely want to write more books in the future as well. So it was a great experience, but perhaps done a little bit too quickly.
Steve Folland: Yeah. I was going to say, what did you learn from it? So first of all, slow down.
Tom Hirst: Yeah. Slow down and give yourself a little bit more time. Like like, obviously as a self-published author, you're probably gonna have a few typos and things like that. So I didn't really give myself enough time to have an editor. So the first draft that went out had a few typos, so I've since had to go back and re-release them. But that's obviously the benefit of doing it as a digital product rather than a physical book. Right. I could go back, edit the text and then send everybody a new copy at no cost really, to me. So yeah, there's pros and cons, but that's one of the things that I learned, just, you need more time than that to properly get it edited and things like that.
Steve Folland: So there's one thing creating it and I love that you did the pre-orders. How have you found then, like keeping an interest and people perhaps finding your book whilst you're then getting on with the next thing and with client work?
Tom Hirst: Yeah. Yeah, it's interesting that one, because I think that the product work is kind of pitched as complete passive income, which it's not like you've got to be talking about your, you know, your product, your book, your course, whatever it is, quite frequently to get, you know, the sales into an amount of money that you could actually live off. I mean, recently counter to that point really recently, I've not really promoted any of my products this month. There's a bit of a test, you know, to, to test the word of mouth and to see how that's going without me, you know, constantly banging the drum. And I think, I think I've still made about $1,500, which is pretty impressive to me anyway, from the, you know, from not having to spend any time, you know, writing about offers and doing deals and sales and things like that.
Tom Hirst: But I think typically when you stop talking about your products, people kind of forget about them because there's someone else launching another product. I have a mailing list as well, which has grown to about 6,000 off the back of a free product that I launched first. So I can automate a lot of, you know, emails that way as well. So when someone downloads my free products in the footer, I have like a couple of links, you know, to the paid products as well. So a lot of it's happening in the background as well. So there's ways and means really to keep it, you know, in the public eye, I guess.
Steve Folland: What was the free product?
Tom Hirst: So the, the free product, after I decided to grow the Twitter audience, I thought I'm going to need some way to get these people from Twitter onto my email list to 'own the audience' kind of thing.
Tom Hirst: So I wrote a really short ebook called 10 steps to becoming a better freelancer. And that's essentially like my manifesto of what's helped me throughout the last 12 years, get to where I got. And yeah, I just thought, what can I write about that I can get out really quickly that people are still going to find value in. Because people always ask me, like, why did you not write about like WordPress development? And, you know, I kind of could have, but I could write about freelancing because it's really top of mind, you know, I'm doing this, I'm living this life. So that's, that's where I really decided on that, on the topic for that for the 10 steps.
Steve Folland: Do you think it has helped your business as a web developer at all? Or is it like two different audiences bringing in different revenue?
Tom Hirst: I think it has to a certain extent because I think that when you show your expertise in one area, it kind of infers expertise in another. So I think if you can come across as like a good communicator and like well-spoken, and you can write clearly about your ideas, it probably says that you're going to be quite good to work with as well. So I definitely see your point though. There's definitely while there is crossover, I do think that it's obviously two different types of people that are gonna be interested in the two arms of what my, you know, solo business is. But saying that there has been like clients who have like messaged saying, oh, you know, thanks for this project, Tom. It was really good to work on it. By the way, I just bought your pricing book. I'm like, oh, that's cool.
Steve Folland: Do you trade, as I know Tom Hirst, or do you have a company name I meant to ask?
Tom Hirst: So for the first like 11 years I was just on my personal brand, freelance WordPress developer. And that's just everything that I did was under my own name. The last couple of months I've launched like an agency brand name really that's going to take hold of, eventually, all of my web development work. So at the minute there's not that much difference because it's not, it's just, it's still me. And then, you know, the freelancers that I work with on a regular basis anyway. But the idea is to do a lot more of the educational stuff. And I think that that's much more suited to my personal brand now than what the web development stuff is. So I'm in a bit of a transition with that, but yeah, I think, I think you can have both, because I know that this is a big contention point for freelancers. Like, do I have a brand, do I do my own personal name? I think if you're just gonna stick to, you know, doing the freelance web development, then I think that you do have a slight advantage as a personal brand, but if you ever want to sell that business at any one point, you can't really sell your own brand name because it's you, you kept the businesses as you, right. So I think there's pros and cons to both. And I think that you can actually try both in parallel.
Steve Folland: So the new name is like a company name. It's not Tom Hirst design or whatever. And so the intension there though, is that it means that Tom Hirst becomes the guy helping freelancers and the web agency name becomes the front of that work.
Tom Hirst: Yeah, I think that's where it's naturally leading to. I'm still a little bit unsure. I'm just finding my way, but I think that that's, that's where it's gonna end up, yeah.
Tom Hirst: I'm sure you'll experiment. Okay, so in terms of that diversifying income, that we mentioned, so you've got the book that you created, and what came after that? Did you do something else?
Steve Folland: Yeah, so I, in January I recorded a course called the personal website playbook, which is essentially, I'm teaching how I've generated leads for free from organic SEO traffic over the last 12 years. And that's, that came about really, because number one, I wanted to test myself whether I could actually present a video course and not just be, you know, because obviously I'd wrote the book, I wanted to try something a little bit different. And I thought that the material of that would work really well in video modules. So, you know, we talk about like marketing messaging you know, how to narrow your focus and write nice landing pages and things like that. And that's, that's done pretty well as well. So yeah. I'm having quite a bit of success in the digital product game.
Steve Folland: So you did the course, anything after that?
Tom Hirst: Yeah, yeah. There's going to be more stuff. I'm actually working on another short course right now. It's going to be Twitter focused because I think that people even freelancers can really increase their opportunities by being active on Twitter. Obviously my approach has been a little bit different, but I think that if you can build up your own little community and have people that are doing the same job as you, that's a really valuable asset because you can share leads, you can support each other and things like that. So yeah, the next course is going to be Twitter focused, but yeah, to be announced.
Steve Folland: Cool. And then you mentioned the mentorship, which sounds like it almost went too well.
Tom Hirst: Yeah. The mentorship I actually, over the last couple of months, I had to stop taking on new mentees because it was just getting the demand was more than the supply really, as one person trying to help like 20 people on a one-on-one basis. So I've also got some ideas around that and how I can scale it a little bit better. Like what I touched on before, how can I help as many people as possible at scale is, is the problem that I'm trying to solve right now. But a community could potentially be the answer for that.
Steve Folland: How are you like time-wise balancing between the paying clients and the potential paid products in the future kind of thing? Because first, you know, being able to take a month off even within your schedule is quite something to do. So how do you find that balance? How, how are you managing it?
Tom Hirst: Yeah. I mean, I'm lucky because I've got like a lot of savings and I've done well over the years being freelance. So I can be pretty flexible with my schedule and who I work with. I can be choosy in that. So if I want to do a course, really what I'll try and do is I'll plan it on like on a month by month basis. So something that I came up with right early in the in the year was to try and do like a project per month, whether that be a personal project or it would be a client project. So I try and like take one thing as like my main focus for that month. And then I'll be doing other little things around it as well, but I'll try and have like one primary focus. But to break that down, like more granularly, like on a day by day basis, I never take on like more than two, like big tasks that I want to complete. So let's say let's you have today as an example? Like I know that I've got a couple of interviews like this podcast, so I'll do those like in the afternoon, but then this morning I was working on some programming work for a client and then that's me, that's my two, you know, mini projects for that day. And I find that that level of like separation works really well.
Steve Folland: Cool. Now, if you could tell your younger self, one thing about being freelance, what would that be?
Tom Hirst: Think like a business, you know, put time into learning about pricing, negotiation, sales, keep marketing always and invest in connections.
Steve Folland: Yeah. Yeah. Do you ever wish you had gone and worked elsewhere or are you glad you started straight out of uni as it were?
Tom Hirst: No, I'm glad I did what I did. Because I think it taught me how to fend for myself really early on. And I think that there's a, there's a point that you get to when you are freelancer, solopreneur or whatever, that you've always got confidence in yourself that you'll be able to make money somewhere. And I think that that's what jumping straight into freelancing taught me at a very early age. And it's, it's always stood me in good stead and give me the confidence that I've got now,
Steve Folland: Tom, it has been so good to talk to you, all the best being freelance.
Tom Hirst: Thanks a lot, Steve. It's been great.