Being Freelance Live Podcast at National Freelancer's Day
Awesome Photos by Nisha Haq Photography
On Thursday 28th June 2018, Steve Folland hosted a live version of the Being Freelance podcast at IPSE's National Freelancer's Day in King's Place, London.
Not just one guest but two guests shared their freelance stories to the live audience - and now they share it with you.
They are athlete Gianni Frankis and business coach & digital marketing stratgeist Chichi Eruchalu.
And if like Steve you prefer the biscuit tin to the running track, you may be surprised to find you have more in common with an international athlete than you'd first think!
Thanks to everyone who came along!
Check out the Steve's experience at National Freelancer's Day in his latest vlog here... and keep scrolling for more on the guests, IPSE and a transcription of the podcast.
More about Gianni Frankis
More about Chichi Eruchalu
More about IPSE and National Freelancer's Day
IPSE (Association of Independent Professionals and the Self Employed)
National Freelancer's Day site
Transcription of Being Freelance Live Podcast at IPSE National Freelancer's Day 2018
Steve Folland: Welcome to a very special live version of Being Freelance at National Freelancers Day. And not one guest but two guest as we do this live in London. And we have got Chichi and Gianni. I'm just gonna ask you really to start, as I always do by telling us how you got started being freelance. So, Gianni, should we start with you? It's a different one actually 'cause often I talk to designers and coders and so on but you're an athlete... much like myself.
Gianni Frankis: (Laughter) Yes. So, I'm an athlete. I did 110 metre hurdles and I've represented Great Britain a few times when I was younger and then throughout my career. So, how I started in that was a little bit different. People don't generally realize that athletes are actually freelancers and self-employed a lot of the time. People generally think we're doing it as a hobby around work of some kind.
Gianni Frankis: But actually when you do make money and you actually become good at it you are self-employed and freelance because that's how you get paid through prize monies and independent contracts, and sponsorship and so on.
Gianni Frankis: So, for me I was growing up in Basildon. At that time I didn't feel like I had loads of life choices and athletics and sport was a ticket for more, for me. And I didn't realize at the time it was a freelance and I was connecting with that state of employment, but it's something that allowed the freedom for me to do more than what was expected of someone, like myself in the area.
Gianni Frankis: But as you know, athletics as much people probably know ... there's not loads of money in athletics and it's quite an insecure business. You're only as good as your last race they say. So, because of the sheer amount of dedication you need, and the amount of training that you need it's hard to actually work and be a professional, especially in the harder times. So, generally athletes will take freelance jobs and do other freelance work, and self-employment work around the sport in order to be outside the rest periods, in order to do the training when you need to do it, and to be able to travel when you need to as well because there's a lot of traveling involved when you're doing athletics.
Steve Folland: Man, so, basically you have always been self employed?
Gianni Frankis: Exactly.
Steve Folland: And what kind of other jobs did you do on the side?
Gianni Frankis: Well, I've done lots of little things. When you're young you do things like leaf blowing just to keep going, but then later on I moved into a bit more modeling. I tried everything. And I would always work around my sport. But now, as I got older I do a bit more speaking, and inspirational speaking, generally in schools, and moving into teaching sometimes in colleges and universities now.
Steve Folland: Brilliant. Okay. Cool and Chichi, how about you? How did you get ... so, you're a business, sort of, coach so how did you get started being freelance?
Chichi Eruchalu: Yeah. So, my journey is a little, I guess, traditional in that freelance since I was working corporate for about six, seven years, had my daughter, and I was like, "I don't want to have this as my life story," sorta thing. I've always had kind of an entrepreneurial background. My dad had his own business, so I spent a lot of time, summers with him. He had a, kind of, print and design studio, so I learned how to design and all of that.
Chichi Eruchalu: So, when I had my daughter I was like, "What can I do?" At that time, being a Virtual Assistant was a kind of new thing in the UK, so I did that first. I set up my own business and I was like, "This is incredible. From my laptop I can just do stuff and work with people all across the world." So, I did that first for about a year and a half. And then, as my business was growing, and I was doing webdesign, and graphic design, people were coming to me more for strategy and kind of support on how they can grow their business online as the internet was growing more, and more. So, I moved more into coaching.
Chichi Eruchalu: So, I do coaching, I do training, I kind of do workshops, I do group coaching as well. And all my clients are across the world, so I don't meet people face to face. I use technology. So, that also-
Steve Folland: How did you ... You're a Virtual Assistant, and it's only you're doing web design, to coach, right? How did you, ... add those services on but also decide to let others go, was there ever a point where you were offering everything?
Chichi Eruchalu: Yeah. So that was a very condensed story. So when I first started, I looked at what my skills were and I was like, I did everything. I was like, okay I can do that, I can do that. I realized quickly I hated admin and all that kind of spreadsheets and stuff. Then there was like two days before Christmas and I was stuck doing lots of little design jobs and I was like, this is not how I want to spend Christmas.
Chichi Eruchalu: So, I decided from them I was just going to focus, I would drop everything else and just focus on web design and become really good at that and everything was self taught in that sense. So I then just focused on web design, and when you then focus on one thing, you can become an expert in it. So I focused on web design and kind of digital strategy and kind of that allowed me to, yeah, people come to me for that specifically.
Chichi Eruchalu: Then you know as a freelancer you kind of realize when you do different things, I'm either really good at this or I'm not good at it or I don't enjoy it. Just because you can do something doesn't mean you should and I quickly learned that. Don't do things for the money, don't do things just because you can do it, because you'll just hate doing it. So that's how I kind of transitioned.
Chichi Eruchalu: Then kind of part way, when I had my second child, that was when I said, I really want to make the leap, because I was still doing alongside my 9-5. So I had a corporate job in London, kind of do my business in the early mornings, weekends, nights, all that sort of thing and I was like, I gave myself 12 months to get out and I did that.
Steve Folland: Flipping egg, two kids, two jobs.
Chichi Eruchalu: No sleep.
Steve Folland: Yeah. Wondering where you fit it in, and were you like putting money aside in that period or was it just?
Chichi Eruchalu: No I wasn't actually. So, a lot of people kind of take the leap and some people have savings, and all that sort, I wasn't that person. I was the one who was like, I'm just going to take a leap of faith and I knew that when I decided to leave I was kind of projecting forward and said okay, I have a group coaching program as long as I can cover my salary for the next six months then I'm cool with that. So I literally handed in my notice, I had like 30 days to fill this group program, which started in November and I got like one extra person than my target.
Chichi Eruchalu: I'm one of these people, if I believe I'm going to do something, I'll just take that leap and I just do it. You have to have faith in yourself. So no I didn't have the savings.
Steve Folland: You must have that sort of belief one would imagine as well, focus that you mentioned to boot.
Gianni Frankis: Yeah. It's a prerequisite to being an athlete at that level, is you just need to be focused and dedicated and disciplined and training all the time. So, when it comes to freelancing and such it allows you to focus on that so much in the fact you haven't got another job to go to and you haven't got the binding, black employment factor of it. I can actually take a break when I need to and things like that.
Gianni Frankis: So everything needed to go into athletics to be able to be good and you know there's ups and downs of it. You're really good at certain times and you can do it as your sole job but then if it's insecure you need something else to be able to supplement that. I think that, yeah, if you're not focused you just won't be able to do it. It's one of the prerequisites.
Steve Folland: So often my question would be something like, how did you find your first clients and so on and so forth, that must be really different for you but like how do you, kind of like how do you suddenly get somebody to give you money to do what might have been a hobby as you said?
Gianni Frankis: Well generally athletes try and reduce the load themselves to be able to stay focused and dedicated, by having agents for example. That does, as a young person sometimes leave you vulnerable because you're not solely in control of your own destiny with that, but it does allow you to have better competitive edge I think when it does signing things like contracts, for sponsorship or... when you're getting prize money at events or appearance fees for example which is another way we earn our cash even outside of athletics for example, you'll do photo shoots as part of your media and things like that as well.
Gianni Frankis: An agent is sometimes necessary to be able to take that work load off you, otherwise you're doing it by yourself, it is possible, but you have to remember whatever you do work wise is going to take away from the ability to actually perform I think, because it's one of those things that the more you put into it, in terms of training I mean, the more you get out.
Steve Folland: Did you feel like you got bogged down, because it's funny hearing you say that, like I'm sitting there going, oh my God, yeah I do so much stuff which distracts me from doing what I'm actually good at, but I still got, you know filling in my spreadsheets. Did you find a similar thing, probably like less stretching involved but still similar?
Chichi Eruchalu: So I think for me at the time I had to become really super organized because I had my 9-5 and that was obviously paying bills and things like that as I was growing the business, but I also needed to focus on growing the business, to get it to a point where I could leave. So you're having this kind of dichotomy of like how much time do I spend on my business as well as life in general? If you've got a family, you've got other things and you know the desire is that you want to have this flexibility to kind of run your business but if you still need to pay your mortgage and that sort of thing then you've got to obviously not get fired.
Chichi Eruchalu: So, for me it was having real structure around how I spent my time. Leveraging my time, so I had a VA who helped and supported me. So when I managed to get her on board, she took a whole lot of stuff away from me. So similar to you having an agent, I knew that okay the only things that I have to focus on are obviously coaching my clients, if I have to do anything in person or videos and things they have to be me, but anything in the background, that doesn't have to be me. I can give that to somebody else.
Chichi Eruchalu: I also looked at how I can leverage my time, software to automate things, just to make things a lot easier. In terms of social media, so you asked the question how does he get clients, for me it was a lot of using social media, and marketing online. Facebook was a big one for me, so I would make sure that I created content that I could share, repurpose but it wasn't physically me going on Facebook every single time posting something. It was all kind of put in to the system so it could come out and do that.
Gianni Frankis: So, I should mention that it is really important for athletes as well especially as young people to know this sort of stuff as well to do this because generally when we feel that when it's going well you don't need to worry so much because the agents come and, they come and pick you up, they say, I'll come find you stuff but it's only when you're doing well, because obviously they can't make anything out of you if you're doing so well. An injury to us is so, it can be devastating to us, because all of a sudden the sponsors walk away, or the end of the contract comes along and they don't want to resign. The agents start putting you down the pecking order when it comes to actually finding you that work.
Gianni Frankis: It's then you realize you haven't done nearly enough of your own stuff to give yourself a safety net for example. So, and remember we're talking about young people. I mean I was 21 when I got my first injury and from the age of 17 when I turned professional I had no experience in admining myself, finding my own clients, I didn't know what was going on. I had to learn this the hard way during this injury period, you know. So there's some real lows there and think it's crucial. I think that the knowledge of this background work, I think is, for younger people especially, but all free lancers, I think it's essential especially in the good times to make sure that you know that you're keeping track of it as well.
Steve Folland: What is that like, when you get injured like that, so how long were you out?
Gianni Frankis: So I mean injuries are a huge part, and they happen, smaller injuries, quite often. Yeah because you are pushing up to the absolute limit, but occasionally you get unlucky enough to have something that's more like a year, a year long injury and during that time you may have something that covers the first year but then you come back with a clean slate after that, of course and generally, we have the same problems that a lot of other industries have, like creative industries have. We tend to have the late payments, we tend to have the disproportionate payments, and sometimes we get offered free work because it's good for our networking.
Gianni Frankis: So, it's all those problems come into play when you're all a sudden not so popular because you're not the flavor of the month anymore, but yeah. Like I said I struggled at first with it but it did teach me a valuable lesson in terms of admining myself and maintaining the cash flow and all those things. I think it's imperative, I think that's what training has given especially to young people coming out of school who are turned into these professional athletes. As you know, every year there's good athletes come out. I call it the Olympic people, we all think we're going to be Olympic champions.
Gianni Frankis: We had Gail Emms talking earlier (at the event), she did become Olympic champion, it's very rare, and we all think and I think like I said a prerequisite, you need to think that you're going to be an Olympic champion or you won't do as well as you did, you know? So yeah, like I say, some of the issues that you face.
Steve Folland: Do you take that mindset of like, I can do this, I'm going, I can be an Olympic champion, into how you're diversifying your income now, like as you talked about speaking and sort?
Gianni Frankis: Yeah. I think, it's, I think when you're in that mindset, it's like an unshakable, but it's hard to explain exactly like the mindset that I was in at the time because like I said, I didn't have many life choices in my mind and regardless of it being true or not, in my mind I thought it was the only thing I could do. I was used to just using my body in order to actually make my money, and it does come to an end, and it scares you when it's coming to an end. So you have to try and have transferable skills. It has given me a good lesson in terms of moving into other things and I tend to take the same focus and determination into whatever I do and I think when I am speaking especially in the schools, it's not really the focus of just being a sportsman I focus on, it's the values which you portray as athlete because it doesn't matter what subject or whatever walk of life you decide to go in, it's important to have the same values I think.
Steve Folland: With, you decided partially to go freelance because of becoming a mum, how have you found like juggling that whole work, life balance?
Chichi Eruchalu: I think it's a personal choice in terms of how much you want to dedicate to both sides, and for me I was like, okay, what's the lifestyle I want to create for myself first and foremost? For me, I wanted to be able to kind of do the school runs, I wanted to be able to go on trips and things like that but I also wanted the autonomy of not knowing that, of knowing that I didn't have to call in to an office and do all of that sort of thing.
Chichi Eruchalu: So work, life balance for me, I was every clear on when I saw clients, I was very clear on what day that I did coaching calls, I was very clear that finishing at 6:00. I didn't work on the weekends and all these different things only came about because I got to a place of burnout. Like, I was doing all the opposite, I was working all the time, so I'd kind of do my 9-5 and put the kids to bed and then I'd be working till like really early in the morning and then getting up really early again and I was absolutely kind of destroyed by it.
Chichi Eruchalu: So it got to a point where this is not working Chichi so let's redesign this. So it was a case of you have to get better boundaries in place, understand that you can't do everything and again, you know people feel like you have to offer everything to everyone, but I realized actually no, I can actually cut back in terms of what I offer and simplify my offerings so that I can just focus on becoming good at that particular thing. Then knowing that I'm not necessarily stretching myself.
Chichi Eruchalu: So having boundaries around time, having boundaries around who you work with, having boundaries around you know the business is not your, be all and end all. A lot of us when we become, we have our own businesses we're so passionate about it, we throw ourselves into it, and you have to and just going back to the whole mindset piece, you have to be like rock solid in your mindset that this is going to be successful and you throw everything into it, but on the backside of that you then neglect your friends, you neglect your health, you neglect all these other things.
Chichi Eruchalu: Then you get to this place where you're like, I'm back in a job and I've created for myself, so what I've realized like I'm in a self-employed job I was like, no, this is not right. I have to redesign this. So, even with coaching, so I do like A and B week. So I have two weeks of the month I coach, the other two weeks I don't have coaching clients. So I have that flexibility and freedom to do other things.
Chichi Eruchalu: I don't work on Mondays and it was just all these different things, because you can redesign your business yourself. You're so used to, coming from a corporate background, you're so used to this kind of structure, it has to be this way, but actually when you're a freelancer you decide.
Chichi Eruchalu: So anytime I talk to anybody whose not enjoying their business, I kind of say well take a step back and really ask yourself, what is it that you wanted to create for yourself and why are you not living that lifestyle because you've made that choice and you know when you make that leap as well from working in a job, and then you go and create another job for yourself then it doesn't make sense at all.
Chichi Eruchalu: So you've got to be brave enough to say no, and you've got to be brave enough to put those boundaries in place so you can have that balance, but I won't lie, it's not always easy. Sometimes you kind of have to, particularly when I had a young baby, you're looking at your other peers kind of flying and doing things and you're like, I'm behind but actually behind by whose standards? You know we can look and see what everybody else is doing online and things and think we're behind or we should be doing this or doing this, but actually what are your standards for yourself in terms of what success means to you.
Chichi Eruchalu: So really get clear in what success means for you because that's going to be the yardstick by which you measure how much life balance you have.
Steve Folland: Yeah. I mean actually though that whole competitiveness thing which we try to resist, for you Gianni, it must be something you can't completely ignore because that makes you the win.
Gianni Frankis: What's being said though was quite relatable in a way because it is about perspective I think. For us, it can, work, life balance, I mean there's a huge crossover here, I mean we do enjoy what we're doing, it is a good lifestyle. I think that really when it gets a little bit too much is when you're having a quieter time, you know? When you're not doing so well, you're injured like I was saying before, or even if any freelance business you have a quieter time, it's important then to maintain the perspective that you had before because obviously you don't mind putting everything into it and not having so much rest when everything going great, right?
Gianni Frankis: So we're all thinking, we're thinking it's, well I'm going to stop, I'm going to be at training all the time and when you're not there, when you don't want to get up and go, it's, you just don't want to go and lose that race again because you know you're not in the same form as before. You know you get an added bit of spice from the fans or I love a bit of criticize when you're not doing so well as well. So it's quite hard, you can fall into an all or nothing situation in that point.
Gianni Frankis: You feel that when you're being successful, you've got everything and you can, you don't need any rest or anything like that, then when you're not doing so well, you've got nothing. None of it's true, you need to maintain this certain perspective which ever way you're, whichever situation you're in. If you're doing well at that time, my coach used to say to me, go and have a rest, you know. Go and have a rest because at that point, I just wanted to be there the whole time but it's when you're in that all or nothing situation, it's more dangerous when you're having a bad time I think, if you're in that mindset because you just you know, it's black and white for you.
Gianni Frankis: I think you should just keep a sense of perspective, whichever situation you're in I think. Take those rests when you're doing well, even still, because like I said you won't enjoy it, having that mentality when it's not going so well.
Chichi Eruchalu: I tell you that rest things really interesting because my mentor said the same thing to me when I was going, he was like I want you to switch off, don't go on social media, come off of everything for a week and I'm like whoa I can't do that. He's like, no you need to do that. It's incredible because that space, just allows you to get perspective back and you just think, okay the worlds not ending, it's all good, I can get back into things, but yeah you've got to, the mindset piece, I mean I keep saying it because you can be really talented at what you do, you can be very good at your gift, your skill, what have you, but if you don't believe that you can be successful, if you're constantly comparing yourself to other people, if you're constantly kind of down on yourself, kind of that has a much bigger impact on the success of your business than knowledge.
Chichi Eruchalu: I've seen that with clients, I've seen that even in myself and you have to, you know like you were saying you have to kind of look at what is the reality and then what is it I'm being told, you know I'm telling myself and kind of make sure that you're actually focusing on what the actual truth is, because that will hold you back if you don't.
Steve Folland: You mentioned having a mentor there, because I was going, you know I'm imagining athletes have a coach, but at what point did you think I need help?
Chichi Eruchalu: So I had, it was interesting because I didn't even know they existed in that sense until one of my friends was like, oh I'm doing this group program and she does this, this and this and it was like, oh okay, because what it allowed me to see was what was possible. So this si somebody who was like me, she had created a business that I wanted to create simply for myself, and I had like a path to follow. So from that point I've always had a mentor, or coach, just somebody guiding me, because I firmly believe that you don't need to reinvent the wheel. I also think just sometimes you're so into your business you can't see the bigger picture sometimes and you need a coach or mentor to be able to A, get you on track when you get bright shiny object syndrome and you kind of go from here to here, but also to reassure you when you're having those down days and kind of say like no it's not as bad as you think.
Chichi Eruchalu: Just again fresh ideas, you know the role I play for my clients is that, supporter, advocate, strategist, but also somebody who can say no, no, no, no, these are our goals, let's kind of bring it back in here and encourage and support. So I really I'm a huge fan of having that outside support and you can have, it can be a mentor, it can be peer support, be another mastermind, just rubbing shoulders with other people. Just so that you're not on you're own, in your own head all the time, because as we know as freelancers we're on our own all the time. So having other people around you can really help to kind of give you much more of a bigger perspective on things.
Steve Folland: Yeah, yeah. Are you part of communities outside of that as well?
Chichi Eruchalu: Yeah. So I had, obviously I have mentored myself, I have groups I'm in, I have offline groups I'm in, because a lot of my business is online, and again that's it's own little world. So I really think it's important to get offline and sit face to face with people and have conversation, and yeah, and have people who are not in your industry as well because you can just be talking to people who are in the same thing and you kind of forget about there's a life outside of that as well.
Chichi Eruchalu: So don't kind of neglect that. One of the things I said when I left my job was like every week I was going to make a point to meet somebody face to face and have coffee and preferably somebody who was not like an entrepreneur, just because you lose perspective and you just kind of think your world resolves around your business.
Steve Folland: Interesting, yeah. So you were trying to find people who weren't doing what you were doing?
Chichi Eruchalu: Yeah. Just because you know I realized I'm just so into my business and we love it so much. So like, I could be doing it and it could, I used to joke if I didn't have kids, like I wouldn't get up and eat and do stuff because I enjoy what I do so you just doing it, you're kind of working on projects, you're designing something, you're kind of talking to somebody and you're in the flow. So like the only thing that stops you is because someone wants to go and you know, so I think you have to kind of make the effort to see things outside of your industry and business as well.
Steve Folland: Yeah, and do you have that sort of experience too?
Gianni Frankis: Absolutely, yeah. It's I think sometimes and I go back to young people as well, because you know, especially young people with sport because like I said it's an outlet for a personality as well. You can really get caught up in a situation where it's just everyday you're thinking about it. That like I said, it's okay if it's going well, that you can live with it, but you don't want to enter this sort of all or nothing situation. So trying to escape it, or well trying to escape it but also trying to keep a sense of perspective when there's much pressure on yourself is the challenge.
Gianni Frankis: I think that we do get support, we turn to sport psychologists and we have our personal coaches, we also generally have a training group which we all sort of experience in the same situation. As I said it's, when you're not flavor of the moth anymore, that tends to stop, they tend to go towards the people who are doing well at the moment, that's generally when you need it the most, but I think that most people when they're going well, shouldn't rest in their lulls, don't let them get themselves sucked into the, you know everything's going well so it's okay for it to be my life, because there's a cliff edge potentially.
Steve Folland: Awesome. Now we're going to do the truth or lie game that I do on the podcast but is there any questions for the guys who are actually in the room, who all are lovely by the way, because we have a roaming microphone. If you've got a question, if you've been sitting there going, why the heck didn't he ask that? Oh a question down here, other than the fact why are you wearing shorts Steve, it's freezing in here?
Anna: Hi there I'm [Anna Lindbergh 00:24:12] I'm a freelance writer and also a business coach like you Chichi, so not so much an athlete I'm afraid. But I wanted to ask, so the theme of today is freedom and flexibility, and I wondered what your sort of personal really practical tips and techniques and secrets were to managing the balance with, on one hand your ambitions and your ideas, not to mention your income goals, but also the freedom and flexibility that was the reason why you started the freelancing or business in the first place?
Chichi Eruchalu: Yeah, that's a great question. So for me personally, like I said I got two kids, six and a three year old, so I built my business around kind of school hours, so I could make sure that I had that time. I make sure that I get enough sleep, because I used to think like who sleeps? Nobody sleeps, but that just is detrimental for me, and it's funny what works for you because my husband likes to go to the gym, I'm not a gym person but I will like drop them off at school then I'll just go for a walk just to kind of get outside and get some fresh air.
Chichi Eruchalu: I make sure that I'm, I take holiday, so it's easy for us to work, work, work all the time but I say to my clients, in the summer I'm not available. In August there's no calls, there's none of that and they know that in advance. I make sure that I don't book anything around that time, you also, you know one thing that does well is write a list of things I actually enjoy doing that are outside of my business, so I'll go and do those things.
Chichi Eruchalu: So I'm a big DIY fan, so like even two weeks ago, I went on a DIY course here in London, it was really good. So I kind of like use a drill and all this stuff so completely different to business coaching but it was so much fun. I met other people and do all that sort of thing. So that whole balance piece, I yeah, I kind of I try to be more intentional with it because I've seen the other side.
Chichi Eruchalu: So when I'm starting to feel like exhausted and tired, I kind of step away and I don't have that mindset that my whole business is going to fail if I don't work today because I think that the world revolves around us and our businesses and if we stop everything's going to stop. Another thing as well is delegate, like get help. So a lot of freelancers are afraid to do that because they think they can't afford it or nobody does it as good as me, but actually that's one of the greatest ways to bring back more time into your life. Just delegate things that A, you're not good at and you just don't enjoy as well.
Steve Folland: Did you struggle with delegating there?
Chichi Eruchalu: Yeah, because you want, you know your point about learning things and knowing how to do admin all that type of thing, I know how to do all of those things. So when I'm going to hire somebody, but I'm like I can do this myself, and that is really hard to kind of then let go of the reigns. For the first couple of times, you're kind of like hovering over this person figuratively, you know, you're just like, I'm paying money for somebody to do something and I can do it faster and all that sort of thing but you have to have that patience for that kind of period of time while they transition into becoming better than you. That's what you actually want to get to where they're better at you doing something, but to answer your question, yeah, it's really hard, because I'm, I like to have the control of things so yeah.
Steve Folland: Yeah. Was there anything else you wanted to add to that?
Gianni Frankis: Well, the opposite actually I was going to say, because we actually try and offload our responsibilities a lot of the time and don't feel that we worry about getting rid of it, but I think as you get older it might come more into play I think, into my other line of work which I'm doing speaking, I tend to want to have more control over it, and the times in which I work. So I can relate now more but as an athlete, no, it's the opposite I think.
Steve Folland: When you started doing that speaking, did you like go and get any coaching at doing that, like how did you?
Gianni Frankis: Well I mean they had media training as part of being a sports person so I was always a confident speaker in that sense, but yeah I mean it started off with like schools and stuff so it's not so daunting but-
Steve Folland: I don't know.
Gianni Frankis: I suppose so.
Steve Folland: Yeah.
Gianni Frankis: But yeah like it became something I practiced I wasn't great straight away but yeah.
Steve Folland: Yeah. Any other questions from everyone in here? Oh here we go.
Amanda: Amanda Brown here from the Home Pillar Community, I'm writing a book about overcoming the challenges of working from home. My question to you is what would you advise your younger self to have done differently?
Gianni Frankis: Think of it? I mean I touched on it a little bit in the, as we were answering the questions there, that I think that when things are going well you don't tend to concentrate so much on the background work. I think that it's something that you tend to overlook a little bit more. I think that you should make sure that you are protecting yourself for when things aren't going so well in the future potentially. Just like when people say to sports people, get your education, you know because it might not be the same as before. Something that probably I should've taken more heed of I think at the time as well, but you know I was 18 years old, but yeah those sort of things, especially I think work something that I've had to learn when at the time wasn't going so well, it's sometimes harder I think mentally.
Steve Folland: Chichi?
Chichi Eruchalu: To my younger self, I would tell her to have the confidence in herself. I think that like I said earlier, you know you can have the skills, but just having that self belief is something that's really, really important. Then another lesson I say to myself is not to be afraid to try things and not be afraid to fail at something because it's all part of that journey to getting closer to the thing that you really actually love and do so like I said at the beginning I tried everything. I do this, I do this and I realize actually I don't like doing this kind of VA work, I don't like to design these kind of websites, or what have you and then you get to a place where you're in this, I enjoy this. Also, knowing to your younger self, not every day is going to be hunky dory, but just as long as you remember the end jail and why you decided to make that decision, that keeps you going when times are not so great.
Steve Folland: Nice. Okay, now. That's normally my final question. Chichi and Gianni, and everybody here, on National Freelancer's Day from IPSE, thank you very much.