LinkedIn-lingual - Copywriter Vic Giménez
About this episode…
LINKEDIN-LINGUAL - COPYWRITER VIC GIMÉNEZ
Vic realised he didn’t just want to be a Spanish copywriter. He knew his strength was in being bilingual.
He also knew other freelancers were using LinkedIn to great effect to find clients. So he formed a LinkedIn strategy and stuck to it.
Creating quality content and making real connections. Now Vic has great recurring clients and writes in Spanish and English. Confident to say adiós (or goodbye) to the work that no longer interests him.
Read the highlights in the next tab.
HAvE A SAFETY NET
Vic had the confidence to go freelance because he’d saved up money to help him as he got started. By not spending too much money, he soon built that buffer up ready to take the leap.
“As long as you have a safety net behind you. It doesn't have to be anything crazy. Just be sure that if it doesn't work out after a month, you won't be homeless. Just do it. You're probably good enough to do it...”
COMMUNICATE LIKE A HUMAN
Client relationships don’t have to be scary - they’re human.
“Just be a normal human being. They are normal human beings. A person having a relationship with another person, it's just that money's involved. But as long as you're professional and you deliver, that shouldn't be an issue..”
HELP FROM OTHERS CAN KILL IMPOSTER SYNDROME
Vic doesn’t let imposter syndrome hold him back. He’s realised he can hire other specialists to help him do things (like photography).. or to check what he’s done himself (like writing).
“The imposter syndrome for me was often when writing in English. I was so, so, so self-conscious when I wrote my website in English.
I said, okay, I need to pay someone to give this a read. And he made very minor edits. It gave me the confidence to push publish. I don't think I would have done it without it.
When I hate something and I think the results of something are going to be awful, I just pay someone else to do it for me.”
LOOK OUTSIDE YOUR SPECIALITY
Vic’s made a point of learning from and connecting with others outside of just his specialities of copywriting and translation.
“Exposing yourself to knowledge from outside your typical interest is very good. Like I already knew some things about branding, especially when it relates to tone of voice and written communication, but by exposing myself to graphic designers on LinkedIn, I've learned so much about these adjacent topics. So reading and listening to podcasts that are not directly related to what you do, but are some what adjacent can help you grow massively.”
Don’t take everything
Vic understands the temptation to say yes to everything when you start out. But it left him overbooked and working on some things he just didn’t enjoy. Now having three quality regular clients, gives him the confidence to turn other work away, whilst still leaving room for new interesting projects.
“(Having recurring clients) gave me the confidence to say no to other projects and focus on what I actually found really interesting. I don't think having just one recurring client works, so I've got three of them. And besides those three recurring clients, I just try to take the odd jobs that I find very interesting. I still have to remind myself, 'Don't take everything. You can do it.' I need to repeat that mantra every day. I still fail, but I repeat it to myself.”
Listen to the episode now to hear Vic’s full story.
More from Vic Giménez
Vic’s blog post about 200 episodes of Being Freelance
Example of Vic’s LinkedIn post - Active Campaign
(Seriously worth checking out to see what Vic did!)
Example of Vic’s LinkedIn post - Spotify
OTHER BF EPISODES VIC MENTIONS
Gareth Hancock
John Espirian
Jonathan Stark
More from Steve Folland
Transcript of the Being Freelance podcast with Steve Folland and Freelance Copywriter Vic Giménez
Steve Folland:
How about we get started hearing how you got started being freelance?
Vic Giménez:
This is a rather short one. I've been freelancing for two years and a half now. I used to work as a language teacher, as an English teacher at a language school, and started doing bits and bobs as a freelancer doing marketing things. And I realised... the pay could be better than actually teaching. So I decided to take the leap and do this full time and it's worked just fine. It probably wasn't the best decision to go freelance three months before the COVID pandemic started. But yeah, it's worked. I can't complain.
Steve Folland:
You make it sound so easy. You took the leap. So you were working as a teacher and then the next day suddenly you're a freelance copywriter?
Vic Giménez:
Uh, okay. Maybe it wasn't that short. So I gave them a very long notice. I let them know that I wanted to quit, but I was willing to wait until December or until they found someone to take my role. And they found that someone by the end of October, I think. And the thing that gave me the safety to take that leap was that I had a financial safety net behind me. I've always been "good with money", probably because I just don't spend a lot of money. So I have that there: saying, okay, if anything goes horribly wrong, I won't be homeless in six months.
Steve Folland:
Right. So you had a nice buffer of cash waiting for you. But how about the work? Did you start doing writing on the side while you were still full-time employed? What gave you the confidence that the work was there?
Vic Giménez:
Yeah. I just finished a course in digital marketing. So I was doing some social media and some advertising for a marketing agency. And I had just started doing some writing too. It wasn't as much as copywriting, I would just say content writing and it worked and people liked how I worked and yeah, I didn't see why it should not work and it turns out I was right.
Steve Folland:
I love that. So where did you get your clients though? Who were your clients?
Vic Giménez:
Yeah, my first clients were all digital marketing agencies from my area. So it was 100% word of mouth.
Steve Folland:
You didn't send emails out to beyond the first one that you worked for?
Vic Giménez:
No, no, no.. I started because a friend of mine is a freelance SEO and he wanted some content written. So I started doing that for him. Then he worked as a freelancer for a marketing agency and they were looking for some writing and some advertising and they got in touch with me and from them, I got another marketing agency. It was all word of mouth until I set up my website and starting writing silly things on LinkedIn.
Steve Folland:
So this was marketing content. Was it Spanish and Catalan only? Cause I know that you write in English and in Spanish and in Catalan. Right?
Vic Giménez:
It was mostly Spanish and Catalan. Some writing in English, but I hated it. I was so uncomfortable writing in English then imposter syndrome is like a terrible, terrible thing. I didn't write in English professionally, at least until a year and a half into my freelance journey.
Steve Folland:
Interesting. So you said you went onto LinkedIn given that you're bilingual, would that be a Spanish profile? Does LinkedIn automatically translate pages to different countries? I don't know. Like, what was your LinkedIn page?
Vic Giménez:
It was in English from the very beginning. I knew I had to niche down, but I hated it. I don't want to write just for tourism from now on. So instead of doing that, I tried to niche down and find... that in the fact that I am bilingual and try to become the, "oh, he's the Spanish guy, who writes in Spanish for English and American companies". And that worked. That's why my communication on LinkedIn always was in English, but I made it clear that I wrote in Spanish. And it was only very, very recently I updated my LinkedIn bio to add that I can write in English too. But yeah, it was a choice to do my communication in English to target an English speaking client, but offer my services in Spanish.
Steve Folland:
So what sort of thing did you do on LinkedIn?
Vic Giménez:
The first thing I did on LinkedIn was contact 'Lord' John Esperian. I needed some guidance. I've never been very good friends with social media, but I believe LinkedIn could be good - from listening to this podcast I heard so many of your guests say how they found very good clients on LinkedIn. And I said, oh, I want to try this. You know, I really, really enjoyed the episode with Gareth Hancock. And he mentioned LinkedIn. I remember the episode with John Esperian and I knew he knew a lot about the platform. So I got in touch with him. I designed a bit of a strategy and I stuck to it. And it worked.
Steve Folland:
So... Without giving away the secrets, what was that strategy?
Vic Giménez:
There are no secrets. So some of the most popular posts I wrote in there were 'the very best and the shittiest transcreation examples' - where I compared the English website of a brand to the Spanish website of the same brand and see if they had just translated every word or they had changed the messaging. Some of them got viral-ish, as in people from Active Campaign got in touch because I said their website wasn't very good, but I used different words to say that - they weren't too angry. It was alright. And some of the examples were good. And I suppose that helped people understand why sometimes translating is not enough. Getting a bilingual copywriter behind it and think, 'okay, does this need some other changes rather than just changing the words into the target language?' is important.
Steve Folland:
I love that. I mean, there's a couple of things I want to pick up on - slight diversion into the word "transcreation". Now I hadn't come across transcreation until your website. So is that a well-known phrase or have you made it up?
Vic Giménez:
I haven't made it up. Someone has.
Steve Folland:
So it's like a translation, but you're a creator, so it's really creating it rather than just doing it word for word.
Vic Giménez:
Just a mix between translation and creation. I think when it comes to reality, it's just a copywriter who can speak both languages fluently and in an ideal world, that word, it shouldn't exist. Every translator should be able to do that, but yeah, I'd be, job-less probably.
Steve Folland:
Okay. Let's go back to those sort of case studies. So you would take an English website, compare it to the Spanish one and then sort of rip it apart and share them. So how regularly were you doing that? How big a job was it to do?
Vic Giménez:
It was a huge job. Just choosing the websites - because finding ones that were just, 'uh, this is alright' wasn't enough. So I either had to find ones which were very, very, very good or pretty bad. But then the thing is I'm not a graphic designer and I want things to look pretty. And when you put those two things together, you end up spending 10 hours on Canva. And that's not great. That's not right. So I wanted to do one a month because they were rather big. But then I found some very good clients and I had to stop that because I didn't want more clients. I KNOW that's not a good idea... I will eventually get back to them, just not now, but they served a purpose that's for sure.
Steve Folland:
So you said you spent a long time on Canva, so what did the posts look like?
Vic Giménez:
Like 20ish slides comparing everything - the headline, the sub-headline, the benefits...
Steve Folland:
And then on LinkedIn, the slides were... Like you could click through them like a slideshow?
Vic Giménez:
Absolutely. Yeah. It's the new document post, not 'new' - it's been there for over a year now, but yeah, you can just present a slideshow and just keep scrolling - that's what LinkedIn likes.
Steve Folland:
Were you connecting with certain people or were you just hoping that people would find it?
Vic Giménez:
I've always sent connection requests to people I thought were interesting. And on that one, it was following again, John Espirian's advice, and send a personalised connection request - every single one of them and not be salesy. From the very beginning, just build connections and make friends, get to see their content, get them to see your content and build a relationship. Time will tell if they are a right fit.
Steve Folland:
And would you target like, marketing people at the companies you were hoping to work at or..?
Vic Giménez:
I was targeting a lot of copywriters too, but copywriters who only wrote in English because they could read my content. If I target Spanish copywriters, 80% of them speak awful English. So it doesn't really make sense. So I targeted English speaking copywriters in the hopes that they got involved in some project where they needed a Spanish guy and they would think of me. So yeah, it was either marketing agencies, marketing people, localization people, companies I would like to work for and English copywriters.
Steve Folland:
Out of interest, did that have a side benefit beyond potentially bringing you work - like, did you know many people who were copywriters or translators or doing what you were doing before you started connecting?
Vic Giménez:
Oh no, no, no, absolutely not. I got to know a lot of them and they are great. I've met brilliant people through that.
Steve Folland:
So with LinkedIn, do you schedule time to go on there or is it just a natural thing - I'm just wondering how you sort of maintain that steady appearance.
Vic Giménez:
When it comes to just commenting on people and keeping those relationships alive, I've built the habit of before switching off for the day, logging on LinkedIn and maybe spend anywhere between 5 to 20 minutes - just sending a personal message or commenting on a post you've found interesting. When it comes to actually creating content, I did slot in time to do it. I've tried both - block a whole morning and try to create several posts in the morning. And I tried just blocking maybe 30 minutes, three or four different days in a week and just create one post a day. Both make sense. I think for me, I prefer blocking half a day or even a full day for content creation.
Steve Folland:
You said that you weren't a big fan of social media, so is LinkedIn the only social media you do?
Vic Giménez:
Yeah, I think I have a Twitter account, but no, I, I don't use it.
Steve Folland:
I hear that it's good to focus on one. I mean, it makes sense. It's great to focus on just one thing. So you spent all this time ripping other people's websites apart. How did you get on with your own website?
Vic Giménez:
Uh, I had someone rip it apart! And that was very helpful. Gareth Hancock - I mentioned before - he edited my website. As I said, the imposter syndrome for me was often when writing in English. I was so, so, so self-conscious when I wrote my website in English. I said, okay, I need to pay someone to give this a read.
Steve Folland:
So you approached Gareth Hancock and he re-wrote...
Vic Giménez:
He made very minor edits.
Steve Folland:
But that gave you that confidence.
Vic Giménez:
Yeah. It gave me the confidence to push publish. I don't think I would have done it without it.
Steve Folland:
You say on your website copy that you don't like photos, but is that true? Because you do have awesome and massive photos of yourself on your website.
Vic Giménez:
I do hate them. Yeah. But again, I paid someone to take them. When I hate something and I think the results of something is going to be awful, I just pay someone else to do it for me. That's what I did with the website because I hated it. Until I got Gareth to read it and tell me, "shut up, this is very good, just change these two words.." The same thing for the photos. And I put them there so big because I paid for them.
Steve Folland:
Cool. And what about the logo?
Vic Giménez:
Yeah. I have a friend who is a very good graphic designer and he helped me with that..
Steve Folland:
It's a really strong brand. I love it. Going back into your story though. How has your business changed? It sounds like it changed pretty dramatically once you concentrated on LinkedIn,
Vic Giménez:
It changed very dramatically. When I started working for Stripe - I'm not a Stripe employee, I'm a freelancer who works with them, I need to say this because it's in the contract - but yeah, it's a lot of recurring work and very, very fun, very, very interesting. It's an amazing company. And they gave me this stability to say no to other projects, especially projects that I did not find interesting at all from smaller companies here around me, stuff from the word of mouth that was still coming, but I just didn't find interesting as well. So yeah, that just gave me the confidence to say no to those and focus on what I actually found really interesting. And I hope that works like that for a long time. I don't think having just one recurring client works, so I've got three of them. And besides those three recurring clients, I just try to take the odd jobs that I find very interesting.
Steve Folland:
Most of that work now comes from LinkedIn?
Vic Giménez:
All three recurring clients came from LinkedIn and they are very much what my target audience was at the very beginning. So for Stripe I'm on the international copy writing team, and I write copy in Spanish, then I work for a language service provider in London and they do translation for software as a service. And the other one is a client from the United States. Aaron, he's amazing. And I actually write in English for him.
Steve Folland:
It's so cool that it works. I mean, you said that you don't do the big sort of tear-down case studies that got you noticed anymore, just cause you don't have time, but are you still going into LinkedIn on a daily or weekly basis? Like how, how much tending to that reputation and connections does it take is what
Vic Giménez:
Going to LinkedIn as a.. Let's not lose the relationships you've built. I comment on other people's stuff and I speak through the direct message with them. I'm just not creating content at the moment, but I want that to change. Not for the client side of things, just because I actually do enjoy creating content. I just couldn't do it until now because I was overbooked because I'm dumb, but I've made the decision to just now.. 'Okay, you've got these three very good clients, just take the very interesting jobs. Don't take everything. You can do it.' Yeah. I need to repeat that mantra every day. I still fail. But I repeat it to myself.
Steve Folland:
You have to tell yourself to be able to turn down work.
Vic Giménez:
I don't know. I suppose it's counter-intuitive I imagine when you are new to freelancing and all you've heard before going freelance is 'Oh, be careful because now it's not guaranteed that by the end of the month you get the paycheck, blah, blah, blah.' So you try to take everything and say yes to everyone, but it's a skill you have to learn I suppose - a very important one. I'm stilly trying.
Steve Folland:
It's a work in progress, but how do you deal with managing your time?
Vic Giménez:
It's organised now I am using Click Up for myself and I've got everything synchronized with my Google calendar that works. I stick to that and I end up working more hours than my Click Up tells me I have to work, but that's fine.
Steve Folland:
And Click Up for those who don't know is...
Vic Giménez:
It's an organisational tool, like Assana or Trello. Just have your projects in there. You can break down the tasks and add time estimates to each one of them. And then you distribute those tasks and say, okay, so this one day I will work for six hours doing client work. And then I go like 'an hour to create content'. And I end up working 12 hours doing client work because I'm stupid, but that's all right.
Steve Folland:
So you can actually plan out your week quite intensely. It's just at the moment, you're the one ignoring the plan?
Vic Giménez:
Yeah. I'm always the one ignoring myself and neglecting my needs.
Steve Folland:
But when it comes to pricing and things, how have you found that?
Vic Giménez:
I hate giving this answer, but it is the real answer. It's hourly billing. It's what works for me now. I want to move away from it. But I think it makes sense when you start saying, okay, how much money do I spend every month? How much money do I want to earn every month? How many hours do we want to work every month and just make that division and hourly billing is the easiest way to calculate that. Again, I don't want to make a list of episodes for the show notes, but I think it was Jonathan Stark's episode. He talks about his value based pricing and that episode was mindblowing, the way he approaches it - it was great. It's just more difficult. I think it takes practice. It takes confidence and I'm rather new to freelancing and I'm not very good with self-confidence. So it's going to take a while before I can finally get to this completely value-based pricing.
Steve Folland:
Although, within the realms of hourly pricing, because you sort of made it sound like, you know, you might estimate that something will take you X amount of time, but it ends up taking you X plus five. Are you able to bill for those plus five hours within your contracts or are you working and your hourly rate is effectively going down. If you see what I mean?
Vic Giménez:
It depends, for some of the clients I've got like a maximum amount of hours I can work with them per month. And usually the projects I get are slightly under it. So if something takes me a bit more it's okay. For others, yeah, I just take the hit myself and I wanted to an X and I ended up earning half X per hour. And that's fine.
Steve Folland:
Fine because...?
Vic Giménez:
Yeah, that's fine. As long as your initial X makes sense, if your initial amount you're charging is if I don't work 40 hours per week at this rate, I'm not going to pay the rent - that doesn't make sense. You may need to rethink that. But in my case, as I said before, I'm quite good at controlling my money and I spend very little. So I have room to experiment there. Yeah. I'm a nerd Steve. I just play role playing games and I stay at home and read books, that's all I do. I don't spend money,
Steve Folland:
But a nerd who likes to experiment - a nerd whosounds like you like to listen and learn and try things. What would you say are some of the key things, that we haven't touched upon that you've picked up along the way?
Vic Giménez:
I think that exposing yourself to knowledge from outside your ... I don't want to say comfort zone, but your typical interest is very, very good. Like I already knew some things about branding, but especially when it relates to tone of voice and written communication, and by exposing myself to graphic designers on LinkedIn, I've learned so much about these adjacent topics. So reading and listening to podcasts that are not directly related to what you do, but are some what adjacent can help you grow massively.
Steve Folland:
And how have you found managing client relationships?
Vic Giménez:
It's been okay. Yeah. Probably because since they are bigger companies, and sometimes we are not in the same time zone, communication has been over email. I can see how it can be a pain in the arse to take phone calls if they are smaller clients in your area that come from word of mouth and your cousin gave them your phone number, they want to call you when they have questions - that can be annoying. In my case, communication has been easy. I don't know... just be a normal human being and they are normal human beings. So it's just a person having a relationship with another person, it's just that money's involved. But as long as you're professional and you deliver, that shouldn't be an issue.
Steve Folland:
Vic, what would you say is like your biggest challenge of being freelance?
Vic Giménez:
The work-life balance? For sure. This comes from being a perfectionist to the point that it can become an illness. It makes me very, very obsessive about delivering work to a standard that sometimes is just unrealistic and that leads to overwork and struggling at maintaining a good work-life balance. I would say that is the main struggle for me.
Steve Folland:
It's being able to switch off.
Vic Giménez:
Yeah, I think it's being able to switch off and, and stick to the plan when it comes to, okay, this is the amount of hours I want to work per week. And that's it. And the rest of it is about living and having friends and having a family and time for yourself. But sometimes I just can't do it. Because I want to make things even better. It's just not feasible.
Steve Folland:
If you could tell your younger self one thing about being freelance, what would that be?
Vic Giménez:
I would tell myself that being freelancers doesn't have to be spending 16 hours a day working at a restaurant. Because that's what I'd seen before - my dad self employed and his life has always been spending 16 hours a day working at the restaurant. And that's why I didn't want to take the leap. I didn't want to become that. But it can be very, very different. It can be very fun. As long as you have a safety net behind you, it doesn't have to be anything crazy. Just be sure that if it doesn't work out after a month, you won't be homeless. Just do it. You're probably good enough to do it.
And build relationships. I think that's the other key. Don’t look for clients, look for people. People get in touch with people, speak with people and they pay people.
Steve Folland:
Brilliant. Thank you so much. And all the best being freelance!
Vic Giménez:
Thank you so much for having me - a pleasure to be here.
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